South Africa: SA updates climate change measures South Africas updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) will soon be deposited with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This as Cabinet approved the revised NDC, the Climate Bill and SAs negotiating position for COP26. The NDC represents South Africa's contribution to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. The countrys NDC target range for 2025 has been updated from its original value of 398-614 Mt CO2-eq, to a range of 398-510 Mt for 2025. Of greater significance is our 2030 mitigation target range, which has been updated from 398-614 Mt CO2-eq to a range of 350-420 Mt CO2-eq. The top of the range of our revised NDC is consistent with the Paris Agreement's temperature limit of well below 2 degrees, and the bottom of the range is consistent with the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree temperature limit, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment said in a statement. South Africa has also brought forward the year in which emissions are due to decline from 2035 in the initial NDC, to 2025 in the updated NDC. The submission of the updated NDC follows widespread consultation with business, organised labour, government, civil society and the Climate Commission. This consultation indicated that current mitigation strategies in the energy, transport and waste sectors, together with afforestation measures, will allow us to achieve the upper range of the target. More ambitious achievement will require significant multilateral financial support and technological transfer. Discussions in this regard are ongoing with a range of governments and financing institutions, the department said. The updated NDC contains South Africa's first Adaptation Communication, detailing the country's adaptation goals to be implemented via the recently-finalised National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, and updated mitigation targets for 2025 and 2030. Cabinet has also adopted the long-awaited Climate Change Bill, South Africas negotiating position for the 26th international climate change (COP26) talks later this year, as well as our fourth Biennial Updated Report (BUR). This 4th BUR provides an update on the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions inventory for the period 2000 to 2017, including the GHG mitigation achieved in the same period, along with the support needed and received. The Climate Change Bill, which will soon be tabled in Parliament, provides for a coordinated and integrated response by the economy and society to climate change and its impacts. The Bill spells out that all adaptation and mitigation efforts should be based on the best available science, evidence and information. It further gives effect to South Africas international commitments and obligations in relation to climate change, and defines the steps to be taken to protect and preserve the planet for the benefit of present and future generations. The tabling of the Climate Bill in the National Assembly will represent an important step forward in the development of the countrys architecture to manage and combat climate change. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: SA backs call to put reparations for victims of slave trade on UN agenda South Africa has called on the United Nations to put the issue of reparations for victims of the slave trade on its agenda. Addressing the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), President Cyril Ramaphosa said millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty. He said the legacy of slavery - a crime of unparalleled barbarity - persists in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East and in Africa. President Ramaphosa said South Africa supports the adoption of special measures, including affirmative action programmes and targeted financial assistance, as restitution to communities whose ancestors were sold into slavery. We further support all measures being undertaken to address the historic and contemporary discrimination against people of African descent. As we strive to correct the wrongs of the past, we must combat the racism, sexism and national chauvinism of the present, the President said. Racism directed at ethnic minorities, migrants, refugees, the LGBTQI+ community and other marginalised groups has led to the denial of opportunities and to institutionalised discrimination and violence. Twenty years ago at the World Conference against Racism, we committed to an antidiscrimination agenda that would bring new hope and change to the lives of millions. Just as we stand united to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, we must recommit ourselves to implement the Durban Declaration and Platform for Action. We must pursue this objective with energy and goodwill, said the President. He said countries were called on by history to redouble efforts to build a world free of racism, to right the wrongs of the past and to restore the human dignity of all. It has been 20 years since South Africa hosted the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban. At this conference, UN Member States adopted a landmark plan for combatting these scourges. The 2001 declaration embodies the commitments of the international community to address the legacy of the past, as well as contemporary forms and manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, including the acknowledgement that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: NantAfrica to launch ambitious COVID-19, cancer vaccine initiative President Cyril Ramaphosa will later today attend an announcement by Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder of the multinational conglomerate, NantWorks LLC, of an ambitious initiative to build capacity for advanced health care in Africa. The initiative will entail collaboration between NantAfrica, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI), the Universities of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch and KwaZulu-Natal. NantWorks is a multinational, California-based conglomerate that is leading the digital revolution in healthcare, technology and media through the harnessing of science, digital infrastructure, supercomputing and communication. NantWorks LLC has signed a collaboration agreement with the CSIR and the SAMRC that will initiate the transfer of biologic manufacturing technology for COVID-19 and cancer vaccines, and next-generation cell-based immunotherapies. This will enable the rapid clinical development of next generation vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer at centres of excellence across the country. Dr Soon-Shiong will make the announcement during a virtual engagement with the media that will be streamed live at 17h00. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: Prof Mkhize honoured at memorial service Tributes continue to stream in for the late Deputy Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and People with Disabilities, Professor Hlengiwe Mkhize, at a memorial service held in her honour today. Mkhize passed away last week at the age of 69. Senior government officials, politicians and members of the public are attending the memorial service which is underway, under strict COVID-19 regulations, in Randburg. Mkhizes family confirmed that the late Deputy Minister was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. Tributes have been pouring in for Mkhize since her passing last Thursday. Mkhize, who was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) National Working Committee, has been remembered as a dedicated and passionate servant of the people. She served as Higher Education and Training Minister, Home Affairs Minister and Deputy Minister for Economic Development. Mkhize also served as South Africas ambassador to the Netherlands. President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared an Official Funeral Category 2 be held in her honour, and that the national flag be flown at half-mast at every flag station in the country until she is laid to rest. President Ramaphosa said Mkhize applied her extraordinary personal achievements to the upliftment of traumatised children, to asserting the equality of oppressed women, to upholding the human rights of victimised and persecuted people around the world, and ensuring the doors of learning open to new generations of South Africans. She played her part unselfishly and with great love for humanity. Our task is to keep her legacy intact and build on it, President Ramaphosa said. Mkhize is expected to be laid to rest at the Fourways Memorial Cemetery on Saturday. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: Vaccine gap undermines global health security The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the full extent of the vaccine gap between developed and developing economies, and how that gap can severely undermine global health security. President Cyril Ramaphosa said this on Wednesday during the global COVID-19 Summit hosted by United States President Joe Biden on the side lines of the UN General Assembly. Currently, Africa is lagging far behind its counterparts, with only 2% of the population vaccinated against COVID-19. In the US, that number is 55% and in August, the European Union announced that 70% of its adult population had been fully vaccinated. President Ramaphosa said the gulf is widening between better-resourced nations who are buying up and even hoarding vaccines, and developing countries who are struggling to have access to vaccines. Of the around six billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, only 2% of these have been administered in Africa, a continent of more than 1.2 billion people. This is unjust and immoral, President Ramaphosa said. The President said a structured plan on how to combat the virus must be put in place and gave support to the establishment of a global health Financial Intermediary Fund for pandemic preparedness. This summit must come up with a sustainable plan on how developing countries will be supported, not only to meet targets around vaccination, oxygen, diagnostics, personal protective equipment but also for manufacturing, President Ramaphosa said. During the summit, President Biden announced his country will be donating at least 500 million doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine to developing countries, with another $370 million committed to help deliver and administer the vaccines. The United States is leading the world on vaccination donations. We need other high-income countries to deliver on their own ambitious vaccine donations and pledges. Thats whywere launching the EU-U.S. vaccine partnership to work more closely together and with our partners on expanding global vaccinations. And as we do so, we should unite around the world on a few principles: that we commit to donating, not selling donating, not selling, doses to low- and lower-income countries, and that the donations come with no political strings attached; and that we support COVAX as the main distributor for sharing WHO-approved vaccines, President Biden said. President Ramaphosa welcomed the donations but repeated the call that countries should be allowed to produce their own vaccine. We reiterate our proposal that developing countries should be enabled to manufacture their own vaccines, as well as to procure them directly. South Africa and India have proposed that the WTO should approve the proposal we have made for the waiver of the TRIPS provision, President Ramaphosa said. Currently, the TRIPS agreement prohibits self-manufacturing of vaccines because of intellectual rights on the technologies and information needed to do so. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Hong Kong: Kat O Heritage Trail opens The Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department today opened the Kat O Heritage Trail in collaboration with Kat O village to mark the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark. In addition to further promoting Kat Os history, culture and intangible cultural heritage, the trail offers an in-depth travel experience to visitors. Located in northeastern New Territories waters, Kat O is a harmonious community built by fishermen and Hakkas hand in hand. The trail, with 27 interpretation panels along the route, was planned on the existing footpath and connects many important historical and cultural relics. Visitors may explore an old Chinese restaurant and grocery store on Kat O Main Street, walk past old banyan trees where villagers used to take a rest or stop by a former pig farm and outdoor cinema. A more in-depth understanding of Kat Os long history is warranted by a visit to Kat O Tin Hau Temple and Sai O Hexagonal Well. Visitors may also enjoy the fascinating scenery of the Double Haven from Ko Tei Teng and Ko Pang Teng along the trail. They can read the text introduction or scan the QR code on the panels and log in to the audio guide webpage to listen to stories about the island. The webpage also features historical photos and information on all the interpretation panels for visitors. This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: Kekana urges SA to adopt a culture of saving, investment Deputy Minister in the Presidency, Pinky Kekana, has encouraged South Africans to inculcate a culture of saving and investment in order to realise the ideals of economic freedom. Today, we ask you to take hold of your [economic] liberty. Let us normalise savings and investment in property, as much as spend on funerals and weddings. Let us throw new business showers, as much as we throw baby showers. We need to have a culture of wealth creation and economic autonomy as much as we have a culture of spending, said Kekana. She was taking part in a panel discussion on economic freedom as part of Heritage Month. The discussion was organised by the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), in partnership with I Am South African, on Thursday. The panel discussion was aimed at calling all South Africans to refocus the lens on creating a new collective culture to strive for liberty and true freedom in the context of heritage. Sthembile Ntombela from Brand SA emphasised the importance of South Africans encouraging each other to making things happens. We are a country that boast a rich heritage and we can use that heritage to emancipate ourselves, Ntombela said. Nelson Mandela Foundation Chief Executive Officer Sello Hatang said there is a need for the nation to focus on legacy building. When we talk about legacy building, we should ask ourselves about the kind of legacy we want to build, the legacy we want to leave behind. Touching on the recent July unrest, Hatang said the nation should remain vigilant and not forget what we have learnt. We should not forget the lessons learnt from the July unrest. Hatang said the nation should build a legacy that Madiba would be proud of. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: Communities, SMMEs main beneficiaries of Msikaba Bridge construction President Cyril Ramaphosa says the job creation and SMME support resulting from the construction of Msikaba Bridge is an example of a government at work. He was speaking during a visit to the construction of the bridge in Lusikisiki, Eastern Cape. What I have seen today is truly an extraordinary operation of enormous proportions that is rising to the skies in a rural part of our country. This project is a sign of our governments determination to proceed with our infrastructure build. We are committed to ensure that we grow our economy through infrastructure development. Infrastructure is the flywheel of our economic growth, he said. The R1.65 billion Msikaba Bridge is one component of the 410km N2 Wild Coast road project, which will link four provinces and improve connectivity between South Africa and Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho. The President highlighted that infrastructure projects not only boost investor and business confidence, but also bring a wealth of benefits to communities. What is most beneficial about massive infrastructure projects such as this one, is that the yields are sustained over a prolonged period. Mobility is a major challenge for our people in the province, especially rural communities. This highway will narrow travelling distances and time, and it will also be safer. There is the benefit to tourism from both inside and outside the province. There is the benefit to the provincial and national economy. This highway will support the transportation of goods and services to the entire Southern African region, he said. Job creation and SMME benefits According to President Ramaphosa, about R4 billion has been earmarked to flow to local small and medium enterprises. Thousands of jobs are set to be created during the lifespan of the N2 Wild Coast road project, with already 62% of the workforce at Msikaba Bridge alone being local people. Already, some R120 million has gone to local SMMEs as part of upgrading and linking of roads, and there are several more projects in the pipeline. Work on the N2 Wild Coast Project will lead to the creation of 8 000 direct full-time jobs and between 21 000 and 28 000 indirect jobs during the construction phase. Once the road is completed, ongoing maintenance work is anticipated to create another 900 direct, full-time jobs and around 19 000 indirect jobs, he said. President Ramaphosa pointed out that the job creation and investment in SMMEs is a sign that government is working for the benefit of communities. What we are seeing here makes it clear it is not true that communities do not benefit from big government projects. This project has created jobs, especially for women and young people; and it has supported livelihoods for entrepreneurs and SMMEs. More of such benefits will be realised as the project is being rolled out. Community participation President Ramaphosa acknowledged that the N2 Wild Coast Project has not got on without some resistance from communities. This as work at the projects Mtentu Bridge construction site was halted due to community unrest. President Ramaphosa said although communities have a rightful expectation to benefit from projects in their area, they should make use of the channels available to lodge any objections that they have. Using intimidation or violence to secure a share of benefits from the project is counterproductive, and it has far-reaching impacts. When there are stoppages, it doesnt just cost the contractors, it costs the entire country. The very purpose the [bridges] are being built is to allow people, goods and services to reach you, our communities. We all lose when projects are forced to stop or even have to shut down. He urged communities in the Eastern Cape to lend support to the completion of the project. I call on all our communities... to support not just this project but all our projects in the Eastern Cape. We want to create jobs here and turn the economic fortunes of the province around. What [we have to do] now is to proceed with the completion, and do all we can to prevent further delays or disruptions. Working together with communities, I am confident this can and will be achieved, he said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: SA rethinks water use to secure the resource and improve sanitation A sustainable sanitation future lies in the countrys ability to adapt to new technologies in an era where water scarcity is taking a firmer hold, says the Department of Water and Sanitation. We live in a time where there is not enough water. We are flushing toilets with clean water at a time when climate change has pushed us into a space where we have no assurance about water supply and security for the future, said Leonardo Manus, the Chief Director of Infrastructure Development at the Department of Water and Sanitation. Manus on Thursday addressed a webinar hosted by the department, the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), together with the Department of Science and Innovation and the National Press Club. The objective of the webinar was to reflect on the challenges at both national and municipal level, and to share insights into the innovation ecosystem. Over 5 000 mega litres of water, Manus said, is being flushed away daily. This in a country where approximately 23% of households do not have access to services that are above RDP level. We sit with a situation where people dont have services that are acceptable and there are often water supply interruptions. The status quo, said Manus, is something the country can ill afford. A flushing toilet was created at a time when there was enough water but we are now moving into a time where we do not have enough water, and the price we pay for the convenience of flushing a toilet is an expensive one that our future generations might not afford. Manus said that according to statistics, water supply assurance is currently at 65%, which is way below the 98% the country is supposed to have to ensure that people have water supply for all their needs. Bringing change at municipal level William Moraka, the Water Services Manager from the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), said in their work with municipalities, they have realised that municipalities are often approached by innovators, claiming they have world class technologies that can solve all their problems. It is our observation that municipalities dont apply their minds when employing or evaluating those innovative solutions. He said that SALGA has created a web based one-stop shop with proven technologies that have been vetted by the organisation and other stakeholders in order to ensure that whatever solutions are employed, the technology will work with the unique setting of municipalities, whether rural or urban. Weve also created an online advisory facility for when municipalities experience difficulties in understanding the technology. They can refer to the advisory. Moraka said SALGA has partnered with the Department of Science and Innovation, in order to test the viability and validate innovative solutions for service delivery in the water and wastewater domain. We are excited that we have received over 120 municipalities that have expressed interest to work with us on the three-year programme. Through this intervention, we should be able to change the situation we are faced with in the sector. Moraka said the laboratories of municipalities need to reflect on the five key areas of focus, which are inclusion of all water scientists, infrastructure and capacity building of water science sector, policy and regulation influence, research and development and process technology support. We have put together a nation municipal services forum and we are excited that a number of milestones have been reached in attaining these five intentions, Moraka said. Valerie Naidoo from the Water Research Commission (WRC) said in order to address the current challenges, South Africa needs to rethink water and sanitation. We have to not only be innovative around technology choices, but also be innovative around our approaches and processes. Naidoo said the planning paradigm life cycle, the workforce paradigm and partnership paradigm, among others, need to be reworked to suit the current times. Closing off the webinar, Ashton Mpofu from Young Water Professionals (SA-YWP) said South Africa needs to look at wastewater differently. We need to look at wastewater as a resource. We need to think around circular economy. We need to step in as human beings and use our innovation to help nature to fast-track the treatment and reconversion of waste into a product that can be utilised, Mpofu said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: Employers warned against Employment Equity Act non-compliance The Department of Employment and Labour in the North West has cautioned employers against non-compliance with the Employment Equity Act (EEA). The warning came during the departments annual employment equity workshop for the province, which was held virtually on Thursday. The workshops are being held under the theme: Real transformation makes business sense. Speaking during the session, the Provincial Chief Inspector, Boikie Mampuru, said most of the challenges they experience during their reactive/proactive inspections are that of employers amending Approved Employment Equity (EE) plans without informing the department, and employers providing incorrect information on their EE reports, plans, analysis and EEA 7, among others. For the 2020/2021 financial year, the Inspection and Enforcement branch in the province had 110 EE focused inspections, which were either reviews/re-assessment or monitoring. Of the 61 reviews conducted, 19 were still non-compliant and were issued with the Director-Generals recommendations, which gave them 60 days to comply. In addition, one from this 19 was referred for prosecution. Some of the reasons given for non-compliance are that employers would claim to have lost documents when contract with consultants or the EE manager resigned, or employers confusing Accounting Officers (CEO) with Financial Directors or Office Managers. These are minor but serious transgressions that can have the compliance certificate withdrawn, Mampuru said. This workshop was part of the departments plan to give an update on the EE amendments and EE sector targets. The EE amendments are currently in Parliament for processing and are expected to become an Act once all the necessary processes have been finalised by March 2022. The Amendment of the EE Act of 1998 is intended to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses; empower the Employment and Labour Minister to regulate sector specific EE numerical goals and to promulgate section 53 of the EEA for the issuing of the EE Compliance Certificate. These workshops started early this month in all the provinces. The remaining province is Mpumalanga and its workshop is scheduled for Tuesday. Meanwhile, the EE reporting season for both manual and online reporting opened on 1 September 2021. The manual EE reporting period closes on 1 October 2021 and the online period closes in January 2022. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: President urges world leaders to support equitable access to vaccines President Cyril Ramaphosa has once again told world leaders that vaccines are the greatest defence that humanity has against the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is, therefore, a great concern that the global community has not sustained the principles of solidarity and cooperation in securing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, he said on Thursday. President Ramaphosa delivered a brief address during the General Debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA76). The UNGA76, which is currently underway, is taking place under the theme: Building resilience through hope to recover from COVID-19, rebuild sustainably, respond to the needs of the planet, respect the rights of people, and revitalise the United Nations. The President has since described it as an indictment on humanity that more than 82% of the worlds vaccine doses have been acquired by wealthy countries, while less than 1% has gone to low-income countries. Unless we address this as a matter of urgency, the pandemic will last much longer and new mutations of the virus will spread and emerge. The First Citizen took the opportunity to reaffirm South Africas call for fair and equitable distribution of vaccines. He urged all Member States to support the proposal for a temporary waiver of certain Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreements to allow more countries, particularly poorer nations, to produce COVID-19 vaccines. In this interconnected world, no country is safe until every country is safe, he stressed. We need to prepare now for future pandemics and work with greater determination towards the goal of universal health coverage. Special Drawing Rights While President Ramaphosa said he welcomed the International Monetary Funds approval for an allocation of $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights, the largest such disbursement in history, he said it was still insufficient to meet the extent of the need. South Africa, therefore, reiterates its call for 25% of the total allocation, amounting to around $165 billion, to be made available to the African continent. Climate change Shifting his focus to climate change, he said although poor countries bear the least responsibility for causing climate change, African countries are among those that carry the greatest cost. Climate change is an existential crisis for the entire world, yet poor countries are particularly vulnerable. He believed that the upcoming 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP) should adequately respond to the crisis. The pandemic has been a stark reminder of our mutual dependency, and that instability in one region of the world inevitably impacts its neighbours, he added. Peacebuilding Meanwhile, he reiterated South Africas efforts to contribute to international peace and security through its membership of the Peacebuilding Commission and involvement in UN peacekeeping. He put the spotlight on the Palestinian people, who said they had a right to self-determination. We believe that there shall be no peace and no justice until the Palestinian people are free from occupation and can exercise the rights for which this United Nations stands. The President repeated the countrys position that the people of Western Sahara also have the right to self-determination in line with the relevant African Union decisions and UN Security Council resolutions. He also affirmed solidarity with the Cuban people and called for a lifting of the sanctions that are crippling Zimbabwe and crippling its economy. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. South Africa: President Ramaphosa to lead countrywide celebrations of Heritage Day President Cyril Ramaphosa will lead the countrywide celebrations of Heritage Day on Friday. The President will join a virtual ceremony hosted by the Western Cape province under the theme: The year of Charlotte Maxeke: Celebrating South Africas Intangible Cultural Heritage. Government has declared 2021 as the Year of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the pioneering human rights activist whose legacy has paved the way for generations of anti-apartheid and present day social activists working for the improvement of socio-economic conditions for all South Africans. According to the Presidency, endowed with abundant diversity of indigenous knowledge, languages and beliefs, South Africas intangible cultural heritage cements the identity and belonging of all its people. These attributes are expressed in language, arts, customs, religion, clothing and food and the preservation of our natural habitat. The national motto, All diverse people unite reflects the national values tolerance and respect for human, social and cultural rights. Heritage Day 2021 will celebrate the human treasures and living legends who are the repository of traditions and culture, knowledge and accumulation of intellectual capital, said the Presidency. President Ramaphosa will address the virtual Heritage Day celebration that will be broadcast on major news channels and government digital platforms from 12:00. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Hong Kong: CE starts Chengdu visit Chief Executive Carrie Lam today held bilateral meetings in Chengdu with the leaders of a number of provinces and a region. The leaders were in the Sichuan capital to prepare for attending the 2021 Pan-Pearl River Delta (PPRD) Regional Co-operation Chief Executive Joint Conference. The meetings followed Mrs Lams hosting of the High-level Meeting & the Second Plenary Session of the Hong Kong/Sichuan Co-operation Conference with the Sichuan leaders this morning. The Chief Executive first met Hainan Governor Feng Fei who she was pleased to meet again after the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in April. Noting that Hainan is developing into a free trade port under the support of the central authorities, Mrs Lam said Hong Kong is willing to share its experience with the province in opening up and she wishes to seize the opportunities brought by the establishment of a free trade port in Hainan. She thanked the province for agreeing to provide internship opportunities in Hainan for Hong Kong youths and expressed the hope that a detailed plan could be worked out with the province next year. At her meeting with Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Chairman Lan Tianli, Mrs Lam thanked Guanxi for supporting Hong Kong in its fight against COVID-19. The region sent a nucleic acid test support team to assist the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in rolling out the large-scale universal community testing programme, and provided care and support for Hong Kong people in Guangxi during the epidemic. The Chief Executive said Guangxi is a passageway between the country and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and an important gateway under the Belt & Road Initiative. Pointing out Hong Kongs proactive development in its relations with ASEAN and participation in the Belt & Road Initiative, Mrs Lam added that she believes there will be more room for co-operation between Hong Kong and Guangxi. In their meeting, the Chief Executive told Jiangxi Governor Yi Lianhong that Hong Kong is the largest source of external investment in Jiangxi and has all along been an ideal platform for Jiangxi enterprises to go global. Mrs Lam said she is pleased that Jiangxi has organised economic and trade co-operation and exchange activities in Hong Kong for many years in a row since 2002. Noting that such activities were suspended last year amid the epidemic, Mrs Lam said she hoped Jiangxi would actively consider resuming them as the epidemic situation alongside the stabilisation of the epidemic situation in Hong Kong. The Chief Executive gave an interview to Sichuan media during the day, then in the evening, she joined PPRD leaders to meet CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee Secretary Peng Qinghua and Sichuan Governor Huang Qiang. She also attended a gala dinner and watched cultural performances. This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. RTHK: Quad leaders plan first in-person meeting A first in-person meeting of the leaders of the Quad group of countries the United States, Japan, Australia and India on Friday will yield progress in several areas including infrastructure, health and cyber, a senior US administration official said. The Quad leaders US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will also discuss regional security, the official said on Thursday, although he stressed that security was not the focus of the informal grouping. While declining to provide specifics, the official, who did not want to be identified, said the summit at the White House "will have much to say" about next steps on vaccines for the Indo-Pacific region. "We have what we call deliverables in infrastructure, on broader health engagements on science and technology on the space, on cyber," he said. He called a commitment made at a virtual meeting of the Quad leaders in March to supply a billion Covid-19 shots across Asia by the end of 2022 "important." "Obviously, there have been challenges in India over the course of the summer. But ... we believe that it will be important to meet the ambitions that we laid out at that time." The March initiative stalled after India, the world's biggest vaccine producer, was hit by a devastating surge of infections and halted all vaccine exports. India has since said it is ready to restart vaccine exports in the October quarter, prioritizing the Covax international vaccine initiative and neighboring countries first. The meeting of the Quad comes just over a week after the United States, Britain and Australia announced a security pact dubbed Aukus that will help Australia acquire US nuclear-powered submarines, a move immediately denounced by China. The US official called Friday's meeting "historic," and an opportunity for the four leaders to talk openly about "modern challenges, their hopes and aspirations." "We'll talk about a variety of things, including regional security, but we'll also talk about our goals on education, on infrastructure," he said. (Reuters) This story has been published on: 2021-09-23. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 Health Ministry urges Covid-19 vaccination for pregnant women The Ministry of Health has urged localities nationwide to vaccinate against Covid-19 for pregnant women. According to the Ministry of Health, cities and provinces have listed all local women in the 13th week of pregnancy onwards. Vaccinations for them need to be carried out at medical facilities which can provide obstetrical emergency aid in case they face reactions after the vaccination. The Covid-19 testing for a pregnant woman in Vietnam Under the ministrys instructions, the vaccination is also prioritised for frontline medical staff in the Covid-19 fight as well Covid 19-ravaged localities. Medical check-ups must be conducted before the vaccination. The Ministry of Health said that pregnant and breastfeeding women are barred from using the Sputnik V vaccine. Doctor Tran Danh Cuong, director of the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, cited by Vietnam News Agency as saying that the Covid-19 vaccination for pregnant women was necessary to protect them from SARS-CoV-2. Before getting a Covid-19 vaccine shot, pregnant women need a medical check to identify the health condition of themselves and their babies. Pregnant women with underlying health conditions need more careful medical checks. Only those with risks of preeclampsia, placental abruption and other serious obstetric complications should delay their Covid-19 vaccination. Presidents statement at general debate of UNGAs 76th session Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc delivered a statement at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, the US, on September 22 (local time). President Nguyen Xuan Phuc delivers his statement at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, the US, on September 22. The following is the full text of the statement. Mr. President, I wish to extend my congratulations to Mr. Abdullah Shahid on the assumption of his duties as the President of the 76th UNGA. I am convinced that under his able leadership and with his vast experience, he will lead our session to success. I highly appreciate the significant contributions of Mr. Volkan Bozkir in his capacity as the President of the 75th UNGA. I also wish to, once again, congratulate Mr. Antonio Guterres on his re-election as the UN Secretary-General. I believe that, with his perseverance and dedication, he will work to realize the Organizations directions and priorities in the years to come. Mr. President, The UNGA this year convenes against a unique backdrop, as the COVID-19 pandemic is jeopardizing the peoples lives worldwide. I believe that all our thoughts these days are with our countries and our people. And my heart yearns for my homeland Vietnam, where the entire nation is vigorously combating this pandemic to protect the health and lives of the people, to sustain economic growth and to ensure social security, leaving no one behind. No statistical figures can truly measure grief and loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is, above all, the loss of lives, and subsequently severe economic damages and far-reaching impacts on societies and the peoples well-being. The pandemic sounds a warning bell of the shocking destruction that may be caused by non-traditional security challenges such as diseases or climate change, if they are not addressed at timely and decisively. The pandemic has also exposed the shortcomings of the global governance system and the increasing inequality among nations. Nonetheless, COVID-19 is not the sole challenge that we are facing today. Increasing tensions among major powers has led to a divisive and unstable international system. Wars are taking the lives of many innocent people. Disputes over territories and resources in many areas are on the verge of erupting. The rise of power politics, the disregard for international law, and the unilateral acts of coercion and hindrance against countries in exercising their legal rights are still taking place in many regions. In that gloomy picture, what really motivates us are the strong desire for peace, cooperation and development among the people around the globe, and our recognition of the importance of international solidarity and multilateralism. The United Nations - with its 75-year experience in preserving peace and nurturing friendly, just and equitable international relations - continues to assert its key role in the multilateral system. The Organization continues to effectively coordinate global efforts to respond to global challenges that cannot be resolved by any one country acting alone. Against such backdrop, I fully support the theme proposed by Mr. President. And let me share some of my thoughts. First, our most urgent task today is to expeditiously contain COVID-19 worldwide. The world cannot be safe if any single person or country still suffers from this pandemic. Vietnam values the role of UN agencies and other multilateral institutions, particularly the COVAX Facility in promoting fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and medications. For the pandemic to be repelled, it is essential that we stand in solidarity, uphold a high sense of responsibility, and step up cooperation. Particularly, priority allocation of vaccines should be given to nations with a low vaccination rate. And developing countries should be enabled to engage in vaccine production and supply chains. Second, the key solution to contain the pandemic and foster economic recovery lies in our ability to strengthen our own resilience, particularly in face of crises. But this does not mean that we have to do it alone. Resilience can only be sustained if it is based upon cooperation and connectivity among nations, particularly at a time when non-traditional security challenges do not know borders and can impact any nation. We value the role played by the UN system and expect that it will continue to support member states efforts to build resilience, accommodating the interests and concerns of all countries. Third, the challenges we face can be turned into development opportunities. As our daily lives as well as production and business activities have to undergo changes to adapt to the pandemic, this is an opportunity for digital transformation, utilization of novel technologies, and enhanced productivity, competitiveness and self-reliance of our economies. It is also a chance for us to pursue green transformation, sustainable development, trade and investment facilitation. We should also work together in promoting the flow of goods and people and maintaining global supply chains. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides us with an excellent blueprint for seizing such opportunities, and calls for enhanced cooperation. We call upon all countries to fulfill their financing for development commitments, reschedule debt payments by developing countries, and provide these countries with necessary resources to contain COVID-19 and foster recovery, thereby turning opportunities into concrete development outcomes. Fourth, cooperation in mitigating and preventing the dire impacts of climate change has become more crucial than ever before. Harsh weather conditions, sea level rise, environmental pollution, and biodiversity degradation are the cumulative consequences of decades of mankinds reckless quest for development. Those challenges are pushing us into acting promptly to safeguard our planet and realize the internationally agreed threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. As we are heading toward COP-26, we need to make every effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, in which developed countries should take the lead. Developing countries should receive further assistance in financing, technology transfer and capacity-building so as to reduce emissions, and enhance disaster prevention and mitigation in ways that foster transition towards green and circular economy. This is a shared opportunity for us to ensure the harmony between man and nature. Fifth, the pre-requisite to fostering recovery and growth in the post-pandemic era is to sustain peace, security, and stability in each country, each region, and the world at large. Vietnam calls for a global ceasefire and an end to all violence to ensure the safety of civilians and facilitate humanitarian assistance in areas of conflicts. Vietnam has undergone decades of wars to reclaim independence and national reunification, escape isolation and embargoes. We have made every effort to mobilize our internal strengths, uphold self-reliance, and adapt ourselves to the prevailing trends of our time to achieve our potential, international standing and prestige today. We understand thoroughly the meaning of nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, and of peace and development of each nation. Vietnam condemns all acts of war and power politics, and violations of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and international law. More than ever before, all actors in international relations need to act in good faith and uphold responsibility, while avoiding tensions and confrontation. We should together strive to reshape international ties and build trust among countries on the basis of equality and cooperation. We must also respect the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, and resolve disputes by peaceful means. At this august forum, we once again reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Cuba, and reiterate our strong call for a complete end to the unilateral embargoes against Cuba. We hope that the situation in Afghanistan will soon stabilize for the Afghan people, particularly women and children, to be able to live in peace. We support the just struggle of the Palestinian people and the two-state solution towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian State living in peace alongside the State of Israel. Mr. President, After 35 years of Doi Moi, Vietnam has made historic accomplishments. We are aiming to become a high-income developed country by 2045, on the centenary anniversary of Vietnams independence. The aspiration for a strong and prosperous Vietnam can only be realized when the country is truly a law-governed state of the people, for the people and by the people, and is able to invoke the patriotism, perseverance, great national solidarity and innovation of the entire nation. Vietnam is pursuing a people-centered approach, and is striving to achieve social progress and equality, preserve cultural values, and protect the environment, while promoting sustainable and inclusive development. This is closely aligned with the SDGs that we endeavor to fulfill. Vietnam has been pursuing a foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, friendship, cooperation and development, and diversification and multilateralization of external relations. As a responsible member of the international community, Vietnam is proactively and actively engaged in extensive international integration, making responsible contributions to the concerted efforts of the international community. Vietnam wholeheartedly support multilateralism, with the UN at the center, and international law as the foundation. We uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and endeavor to make substantial contributions to a more democratic and effective UN. We will always remember and treasure the UNs invaluable assistance accorded to Vietnam. The fruits of Vietnams reform and integration owe partly to the resources and policy advice the UN development system has been rendering to us over the years. In the region, Vietnam is working closely with fellow ASEAN members to promote ASEAN centrality in the maintenance of peace, security and prosperity in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific at large. The ASEAN - UN relations has constantly been consolidated and developed, becoming a role model for cooperation between the UN and other regional organizations. We are making vigorous efforts to implement the Five-point Consensus endorsed by ASEAN Leaders to foster dialogue, reconciliation, and humanitarian assistance to the people of Myanmar. Vietnam shares ASEANs position and the international communitys common voice on the importance of peace, stability, maritime security and safety, freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. We believe that all parties should refrain from unilateral actions that may further complicate the situation, resolve disputes and differences through peaceful means in line with the UN Charter and international law, particularly UNCLOS 1982. It is also necessary to fully observe the Declaration of Conduct by parties in the South China Sea, and soon achieve a substantial and effective Code of Conduct in line with international law, including UNCLOS 1982. Mr. President, On this momentous occasion, on behalf of the State and people of Vietnam, I sincerely thank all member countries for the trust placed in Vietnam in its capacity as a non-permanent member of the UNSC for the term 2020-2021. Over the past almost two years, Vietnam has always upheld the principle of Partnership for sustainable peace. We have promoted dialogue and cooperation, and actively joined the concerted efforts to prevent and address conflicts. Vietnam has advocated strengthening the upholding of the UN Charter and international law, bolstering cooperation with regional organizations, conflict prevention, mine action, and the protection of civilians and civilian critical infrastructure in armed conflicts. The national flag of Vietnam is flying high at the UN Peacekeeping Missions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, and it will soon be flying in other UN Missions as well. With our desire to make further contributions to the work at the UN, Vietnam is running for a seat at the Human Rights Council for the term 2023-2025, and at other important UN agencies. We look forward to the continued support from all countries in this endeavor. Mr. President The path ahead will not be easy. But I am convinced that the world peoples hearts will beat as one. Vietnam will work with countries and people around the world so that together we can prevail over the pandemic, and build a world of peace, prosperity and happiness for all. And this will be a glorious victory for us all. Thank you. President holds bilateral meetings with foreign leaders in New York Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc had bilateral meetings with Presidents of Mongolia, Switzerland and Austria, and President of the European Council (EC) in New York on September 22 (local time). President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) meets resident of the European Council Charles Michel (Photo: VNA) At the meeting with Mongolian President Ukhnaagin Khurelsukh, the two leaders affirmed that they always attach great importance to the bilateral friendship, as well as the mutual support and assistance during the past struggles for national liberation and the current process of national construction. President Phuc said he is willing to coordinate with President Khurelsukh and the two countries ministries and sectors to find appropriate measures to further develop bilateral cooperation in more fields. He proposed both sides work together to create favourable conditions for the export of each country's strong products so as to early achieve the goal of 100 million USD in two-way trade. President Nguyen Xuan Phuc meets Mongolian President Ukhnaagin Khurelsukh (Photo: VNA) They agreed to continue maintaining and promoting the exchange of delegations at all levels and meetings through different forms, increasing the role of the intergovernmental committee, stepping up cooperation between the two countries ministries and sectors, flexibly deploying existing bilateral dialogue and cooperation mechanisms, and strengthening people-to-people exchanges, thus facilitating collaboration in all fields. During the meeting with Swiss President Guy Parmelin, the Swiss leader affirmed his desire to promote economic and trade ties with Vietnam, speed up the implementation of the development cooperation programme for 2021-2024 with an ODA capital of 80 million USD that Switzerland has committed. The two leaders agreed to find solutions to restore trade exchanges, which have been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the early signing of a free trade agreement between Vietnam and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). President Phuc thanked the Swiss Government for presenting Vietnam with medical equipment for pandemic prevention. President Nguyen Xuan Phuc meets Swiss President Guy Parmelin (Photo: VNA) Appreciating Switzerlands provision of ODA in human resource training, urban development, poverty alleviation, and rural development, he stated that Vietnam hopes to continue receiving the European countrys ODA through development projects for the next period. He also showed his wishes to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the fields of science, technology and innovation. At his meeting with Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, President Phuc invited the Austrian leader to visit Vietnam in 2022 when the two countries will celebrate the 50th founding anniversary of diplomatic ties. The two leaders agreed that economic partnership has been the focus of bilateral cooperation in recent years. The two sides should soon organise the 10th meeting of the Vietnam-Austria Joint Committee, even in the online format, they said. President Phuc pledged that Vietnam will create favourable conditions for Austrian firms to do long-term business in Vietnam. The Vietnamese leader suggested Austria create favourable conditions for Vietnam in cooperating in vaccine production technology transfer, while considering the provision of medical supplies to help the country overcome the pandemic quickly. Meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel, President Phuc affirmed that the European Union (EU) is one of the leading partners in Vietnams foreign policy, underlining Vietnams hope to further deepen ties with the EU. He thanked the EU for its assistance to Vietnam in responding to COVID-19. Noting that the pandemic is developing complicatedly in the country, President Phuc said he hoped that the EU will continue to support Vietnam in accessing vaccine sources, treatment medicines and medical supplies. The two leaders highly valued bilateral economic partnership, describing it as a bright sport in Vietnam-EU relations. They agreed to resume the exchange of delegations and high-level meetings soon, while optimising the efficiency of existing cooperation and dialogue mechanisms, and seeking measures to further promote bilateral relations. President Phuc proposed the EU urge its member nations to promptly complete procedures to ratify the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA). The Vietnamese leader also suggested leaders of the countries to create favourable conditions for Vietnamese communities to effectively integrate in the host societies and make contributions to the development of the host nations, and help promote connections between Vietnam and the countries where they live. President Phuc and the foreign leaders also discussed regional and international situation as well as the significance of building an efficient multilateral system with the UN as the core, aiming to respond to diverse and complicated global challenges as, fight abuse of power, promote the observance of international law, and ensure security, safety, and freedom of navigation and overflight in seas, including the East Sea./. Vietnamese beauty selects national costume named 'Angel" at Miss Grand International contest Vietnamese beauty Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien said she decided to pick on Angel as the national costume at the Miss Grand International 2021. Vietnamese beauty Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien and "Angel" costume. (Photo courtesy of Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien) On September 18, Tien officially received the Miss Grand Vietnam 2021 ribbon from her predecessor, runner-up Ngoc Thao, to attend the Miss Grand International 2021 to be held in Phuket, Thailand, in December. Talking about the meaning of the newly-chosen national costume, she said the angel is soft but also very brave and persistent in the fight against COVID-19. This design exploits the characteristics of the ao dai (long dress) and depicting the resilience and strength of Vietnam in the fight against the epidemic, she said. Stylist Louis, who supports Tien in preparing outfits for the contest, said he planned to prepare 40 sets of costume within 17 days of the competition for her with sexy image orientation, showing off the advantages of curves through body-hugging or cut-out dresses. Designer Nguyen Minh Tuan revealed that the semi-final costume for Tien has an unprecedented colour in the costumes of Vietnamese representatives so far, although it still has the appearance of a fancy dress. Xi extends greetings ahead of Chinese farmers' harvest festival Xinhua) 08:17, September 23, 2021 Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, talks with farmers while visiting Gaoxigou Village in Mizhi County, during his inspection tour of Yulin City in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Sept. 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday extended greetings to farmers and people working in agriculture and rural areas on the eve of the fourth Chinese farmers' harvest festival. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed speeding up the modernization of agriculture and rural areas to enable constant improvements in farmers' lives. Overcoming difficulties such as the COVID-19 epidemic and natural disasters this year, China had ensured bumper harvests in grain and agricultural production, which has played an important role in the country's efforts to make new advances amid changes and maintain overall stability, Xi noted. He stressed the role of rural vitalization in realizing national rejuvenation. As China embarks on a new journey toward the second centenary goal, the focus of work concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers has shifted to comprehensively promoting rural vitalization, said Xi. He urged Party committees and governments at all levels to implement the major policies, decisions and plans of the CPC Central Committee and prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas so as to improve the lives of the farmers. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) China expresses grave concern over U.S.-UK-Australia nuclear submarine cooperation Xinhua) 08:25, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday expressed grave concern over the cooperation between the United States, the UK and Australia on nuclear submarines, stating that it deliberately escalates regional tensions, provokes an arms race, threatens regional peace and stability, and undermines international nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Answering a press question at a daily news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said it is widely believed by the international community that the cooperation between the three countries poses a serious risk of nuclear proliferation, in violation of the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). He said that the U.S. and the UK are likely to export to Australia highly enriched uranium with a purity of 90 percent or more, which is weapon-grade nuclear material. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state, Australia's acquisition of highly enriched uranium itself poses severe nuclear proliferation and nuclear security risks. However, the current safeguards mechanism of the International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify whether Australia will use the highly enriched uranium in the power reactors of nuclear submarines for nuclear weapons," said the spokesperson, adding that China believes that these concerns of the international community are completely justified and reasonable. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the NPT and a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, Australia is now introducing nuclear submarine technology of strategic and military value. The international community, including Australia's neighboring countries, has reason to question Australia's sincerity in honoring its nuclear non-proliferation commitments," said Zhao. He said that, faced with the dual challenge of combating COVID-19 and revitalizing the economy, people in the Asia-Pacific region need growth and employment, not submarines and ammunition. Zhao stressed that the nuclear submarine cooperation between the U.S., the UK and Australia proves once again that the U.S. and the UK pursue double standards and use nuclear cooperation as a tool of geopolitical game. China urges the three countries to heed the call of the international community, discard the outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow geopolitical perspective, revoke the wrong decision, faithfully fulfill international nuclear non-proliferation obligations and do more to contribute to regional peace and stability, said the spokesperson. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) UN holds high-level event to mark 20th anniversary of adoption of Durban Declaration Xinhua) 08:29, September 23, 2021 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses a high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action at the UN headquarters in New York, on Sept. 22, 2021. Guterres on Wednesday called on all member states to take concrete actions, including policy measures, legislation and more granular data collection, to build on the current momentum against racism. (Xinhua/Wang Ying) UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly on Wednesday held a high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and adopted a political declaration to carry forward the fight against racism and racial discrimination. In his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all member states to take concrete actions, including policy measures, legislation and more granular data collection, to build on the current momentum against racism. "A movement for racial justice and equality has emerged with unprecedented force, reach and impact. This new awakening, often led by women and young people, has created momentum we must seize upon," he said. "Together, we must work to recognize the contemporary resonance of past crimes that continue to haunt our present: the lingering traumas, the transgenerational suffering, the structural inequalities so deeply rooted in centuries of enslavement and colonial exploitation. And we must reverse the consequences of generations of exclusion and discrimination, including their obvious social and economic dimensions through reparatory justice frameworks," he said. The 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action offers an important opportunity to reflect on the status quo and future actions, said Guterres. Racism and racial discrimination still permeate institutions, social structures, and everyday life in every society. Structural racism and systematic injustice still deny people their fundamental human rights, he said. Africans and people of African descent, minority communities, indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, displaced persons, and so many others, all continue to confront hatred, stigmatization, scapegoating, discrimination, and violence. Xenophobia, misogyny, hateful conspiracies, white supremacy and Neo-Nazi ideologies are spreading -- amplified in echo chambers of hate, he said. From glaring infringements to creeping transgressions, human rights are under assault. Racism is often the cruel catalyst. The linkages between racism and gender inequality are unmistakable, said Guterres. "We are witnessing a troubling rise in anti-Semitism, a harbinger throughout history of discrimination against others. We must condemn, without reservation or hesitation, the racism and discrimination of growing anti-Muslim bigotry, the mistreatment of minority Christians, and other forms of intolerance around the world." The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was meant to break the vicious cycle, in which discrimination leads to deprivation, and poverty deepens discrimination, he said. "We can overcome these harmful afflictions and heal ... if, and only if, we stand together as one human family. Rich in diversity, equal in dignity and rights, united in solidarity." Abdulla Shahid, president of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, said the international community has not done enough 20 years after the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. "When the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was adopted in 2001, it was done with emphasis to tackle racial discrimination and intolerance. Sadly, two decades later, the doctrine is still being pursued. This is not to say that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action has failed, but rather that we have not done enough," he told the high-level meeting. "We, as a global community, have not done enough to tackle the pervasiveness of racism, racial discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia. Tackling racism in all its forms is a moral responsibility for justice. Racism begets violence, displacement, and inequality. It lives on because we allow it to. It penetrates society because we fail to acknowledge diversity," said Shahid. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action is a comprehensive toolkit to address racism. It makes references to various groups of people, such as Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent, indigenous peoples, minorities, youth, women, and children, he noted. He stressed the importance of acknowledging the past, whether in the form of a formal apology or through other means. "You cannot move past what is not addressed," he said. "I encourage the international community, individuals, leaders, and stakeholders to engage in deeper and honest dialogue to address this global issue," said Shahid. At the high-level meeting, the General Assembly adopted a political declaration to reaffirm that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and subsequent documents provide a comprehensive UN framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to reaffirm member states' commitment to their full and effective implementation. The political declaration welcomes the progress made in many parts of the world in the elimination of the scourge in the past 20 years, while acknowledging with concern that the scourge still persists in all parts of the world and countless human beings continue to be victims to the present day. It acknowledges with deep concern the rise in discrimination, hate speech, stigmatization, racism, systemic racism, stereotypes, racial profiling, violence, xenophobia and intolerance, both in-person and online, directed against, among others, Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent, indigenous peoples, Roma and persons belonging to other racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, as well as motivated by prejudices against persons based on their religions or beliefs, such as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, and against women and children, migrants, refugees, forcibly displaced persons, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, persons with disabilities, older persons, youth and other persons in vulnerable situations. The political declaration vows to pursue the common goal of ensuring the effective enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, while continuing to promote respect for human rights and to enhance democratic governance, the rule of law, independent judicial institutions and the fight against impunity nationally and internationally. It reiterates that the primary responsibility for effectively combating acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance lies with states and affirms that, whenever such acts occur, they must be condemned and their reoccurrence prevented, and urges states to take appropriate preventive measures, including legislative measures, in this regard. It reaffirms member states' strong determination to mobilize political will at the national, regional and international levels and to accelerate momentum to make the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and the protection of the victims a high priority. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China's GDP forecast to hover above 8 percent China Daily) 08:45, September 23, 2021 Workers weld at a workshop of an automobile manufacturing enterprise in Qingzhou city, East China's Shandong province, Feb 28, 2021. (Photo/Xinhua) China is expected to see 8.1 percent economic growth this year, as solid export performance and increased fiscal support in the second half will offset a more protracted recovery in household consumption, said economists at the Asian Development Bank. The forecast made by the Manila-based development bank on Wednesday was unchanged from its projection in April. However, the ADB lowered the GDP growth forecast for developing Asia, which groups 46 developing economies in the Asia-Pacific region that are members of the bank, to 7.1 percent this year, down from the prediction of 7.3 percent in April. "We would expect a more protracted recovery in household consumption (in China), while at the same time, this would be compensated by higher infrastructure investment and ongoing good export performance," said Dominik Peschel, head of the economics unit for the ADB resident mission in China. Economists at the bank expect household demand in China to further recover gradually, and this should also help the services sector. "We think people will travel more and demand more services once the COVID situation is fully under control and the restrictions have been lifted," Peschel said. China's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is in good shape, showing the strong resilience and vigorous dynamics of the economy, said Liu Qiao, dean of the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.4 percent to 3,628.49 points on Wednesday. Overall market liquidity in the A-share market is adequate to stimulate further economic growth, said Zhu Hong, investment director of Nuode Asset Management. Looking ahead, China's economic fundamentals are still strong and its future growth will remain stable in 2022, said David Chao, global market strategist for the Asia-Pacific region (except Japan) at Invesco, who added that the country could further tap the potential of its monetary policy to support the economy. The ADB's economists also expect China's monetary policy to ease marginally. "Another cut in the reserve requirement ratio is possible in the second half of this year," Peschel said. "At the same time, credit to the real estate sector and shadow bank financing will remain tightly regulated." Peschel said he is looking forward to more fiscal support because there is room to increase spending without incurring a high fiscal deficit as revenue recovers. New issues of local government special bonds will pick up and will support infrastructure investment in the second half of the year, and manufacturing investment should expand solidly in line with robust exports, the report said. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its interim economic outlook released on Tuesday that China's real GDP is expected to grow 8.5 percent this year and 5.8 percent in 2022. Both figures are the same as the OECD's projections in May. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China to halt overseas coal-fired projects Global Times) 08:48, September 23, 2021 'A great economic sacrifice' to curb global warming Photo taken on Jan. 26, 2021 shows a view of Sahiwal coal-fired power plant in Sahiwal, Pakistan.(Photo: Xinhua) Chinese President Xi Jinping's pledge that China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad constitutes a "huge economic sacrifice" for the country's thermal power sector, which is now the world's largest and mostly relies on overseas markets during China's strong push to curb global warming in the past years. The huge sacrifice China made also demonstrates its "firmest determination and greatest efforts" to make solid and detailed plans in achieving its green commitment and its devotion to solving humanity's most crucial issues, experts and industry players said. "China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad," Xi said in his speech by video at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. Xi also stressed accelerating the transition to a green and low-carbon economy and achieving green recovery and development. "China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. This requires tremendous work, and we will make every effort to meet these goals," he said. "China has the most competitive and efficient thermal power ability in the world. The central government's commitment means the whole industry, dominated by state-owned firms, will have to transform," Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. In response to the call, a source close to a major state-owned power firm told the Global Times on Wednesday that the firm will gradually phase out coal-fired power plants and will turn to clean-energy power businesses. The source added that thermal power plant projects are mainly in developing countries, that as of 2020, clean energy accounted for about 80 percent of all its businesses, while thermal power and nuclear power accounted for a relatively small proportion. "Chinese investment will have to abandon some of the thermal power projects they track in countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh, which are relatively rich in coal resources," another industry insider who worked at a state-owned energy firm told the Global Times on Wednesday. But Chinese investment in countries such as Nepal and Myanmar will not be impacted, as they are rich in hydroelectric power resources, the person said. "Chinese firms that take on project contracting are set to suffer more, since with the adjustment of the domestic power generation structure, this type of project contracting companies are focusing on developing overseas markets, and they may face more uncertainties," the source said. Experts said the goal is in line with China's detailed timeline of meeting its overall targets. "China will gradually detail its existing goals, such as the coal industry reaching the carbon emissions peak earlier," Li Junfeng, former director general of China's National Center of Climate Change Strategy Research under the National Development and Reform Commission, told the Global Times on Wednesday. Li said that the promise to stop building coal projects overseas will encourage other developing countries which are cooperating with China to turn to clean energy and to contribute to the fight against climate change. The carbon peak and carbon neutrality target means that China will complete the world's highest reduction in carbon emission intensity, and achieve the goal of achieving carbon neutrality from carbon peak in the shortest time in global history, China's top climate advisor Xie Zhenhua addressed a meeting on Wednesday. Per capita GDP and per capita carbon emissions at peak time in China will be lower than the peak levels of developed countries such as the US, Europe, and Japan then. "This will bring about a wide-ranging and profound economic and social systemic transformation, which requires all of us to make great efforts," Xie said. At a US-led global climate summit in April this year, Xi promised that China would include the strategy to reach carbon emissions peak and carbon neutrality into the country's whole layout of building an eco-civilization. He said China is supporting places and key industries that have the ability to reach the carbon peak first, and the country will impose strict regulations on the coal power industry. The move is also in stark contrast to US President Joe Biden's hollow promises on climate change, COVID-19, and global unity, on which the US hasn't contributed much or, in some cases, even sabotaged progress, experts said. "The most difficult part for China, a developing economy, to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 is that it has to take economic development in mind while curbing global warming," Lin said. "That's a different case for developed countries like the US," Lin noted, implying the US can contribute more to human concerns rather than just pressuring others. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China seeks to benefit all by building community with shared future for mankind 08:59, September 23, 2021 By He Yin ( People's Daily Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech titled Bolstering Confidence and Jointly Overcoming Difficulties to Build a Better World at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly via video link on September 21. The second batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to Togo arrives in the latters capital city Lome, Aug. 20, 2021. (Photo/Embassy of China in Togo) Xis speech at the platform of the UN, the most universal, representative and authoritative international organization, following the Chinese leaders addresses at the high-level meetings marking the 75th anniversary of the UN last year, bears great significance for promoting global solidarity to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulating global economic recovery, and improving global governance when the international community needs more than ever to jointly meet challenges and achieve common development as the world is once again at a historical crossroads. COVID-19 reminds us that we are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake. All countries are closely connected and we share a common future, said Xi in his speech at the general debate of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly last September. He also elaborated on the great significance and practical ways of building a community with a shared future for mankind in the speech. When changes unseen in a century are intertwined with the COVID-19 pandemic in todays world, people understand better the profound significance of Chinas solutions to global challenges and have shown stronger support for the countrys idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently presented a report entitled Our Common Agenda to the UN General Assembly, stressing that the world needs effective multilateralism and calling on countries to re-embrace global solidarity and find new ways to work together for the common good and eventually build a safer and greener future for mankind. A batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to Lesotho arrives in Maseru, capital of Lesotho, Aug. 20, 2021. (Photo/Embassy of China in Lesotho) Against the backdrop of resurging epidemic, sluggish economic recovery and profound and complex changes to international order, the reports suggestions on strengthening global solidarity and cooperation and creating a better future mirror the strong desire of people around the world to turn the Earth into a big warm family and their aspirations for a better life realities. The desire is also an important part of the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must intensify international anti-epidemic cooperation, which is the most urgent task at present. Countries around the globe have so far reported a total of more than 220 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 4.6 million deaths from COVID-19. Such a crisis unseen in a century makes global cooperation an imperative choice. Always putting people and their lives first, China has not only achieved significant strategic results in curbing the pandemic at home, but actively advocated and practiced the idea of building a community of common health for mankind and carried out the largest humanitarian operation in the world since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), trying its best to help other countries, especially developing countries, combat the virus. As of June, China had provided anti-epidemic supplies for more than 150 countries and 13 international organizations. To date, the country has provided nearly 1.2 billion doses of finished and bulk COVID-19 vaccines to over 100 countries and international organizations, and will strive to provide a total of 2 billion doses by the end of this year. It has made contributions to the global public health cause and demonstrated its sense of responsibility as a major country with practical actions. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must promote common development, which is the key to improving peoples well-being. Although world economy is climbing out of the deep recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries economic recoveries are following divergent trajectories, and the North-South gap risks further widening and even perpetuation. China has advocated stepping up macroeconomic policy coordination and jointly promoting strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth of the world economy. By effectively balancing epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, the country has restored and stabilized economic growth, injecting strong impetus into the recovery and development of world economy. China has continuously expanded opening-up, providing important development opportunities for countries around the world; and it has promoted high-quality construction of the Belt and Road with other countries, making positive contributions to the common prosperity of humankind. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must constantly improve global governance, which is a guarantee of common development and progress. The world has entered into a phase of fluidity and transformation, with instability and uncertainty clearly on the rise. The future of humanity depends on what countries do at the moment. They should bear in mind the shared interests of mankind and make responsible and wise choices to uphold and practice true multilateralism and improve global governance. Committed to a vision of global governance featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, China believes that international affairs should be addressed through consultation and the future of the world should be decided by everyone working together, and stresses adhering to the universal values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, pointing the way for countries to peaceful coexistence, mutual benefits and win-win results. It is the universal aspiration of mankind to let everyone live in peace and harmony, make the fruits of development benefit all countries, and allow various civilizations to coexist in harmony. This year marks the centenary of the Communist Party of China as well as the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the lawful seat of the PRC in the UN. Standing at the new starting point, China will, together with the rest of the world, make new contributions to world peace and tranquility, global development and prosperity, and exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, so as to benefit all by building a community with a shared future for mankind. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) Which farm products get Xi's thumbs-up? (People's Daily App) 09:00, September 23, 2021 President Xi Jinping shows deep care for agriculture, rural areas and farmers. Xi shows extra care for the livelihood of farmers and is always trying to help them out of poverty. In trips to China's rural areas, Xi has hailed local specialties and their role in enriching farmers. As the fourth Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival approaches, let's follow Xi's steps and see which farm products earn his approval. (Produced by Fan Jingyi and Di Jingyuan) (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China launches campaign to make smart devices more friendly to seniors 09:04, September 23, 2021 By Han Xin, Tang Yixin ( People's Daily A volunteer teaches a senior patient to use a smart registration machine exclusively set up for the elderly at the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, east China's Jiangxi province, June 18, 2021. (People's Daily Online/ Shi Yu) China is currently working to make smart facilities more friendly to the elderly, as a way to bring the charm of the ever-changing digital technology to the gradually expanding aging group. A woman surnamed Wang in her seventies is quite a binge watcher. However, a recent cataract surgery made TV watching a little bit harder for her. In addition, the complicated user interface of the smart TV also stood in the way. Thanks to an "elderly mode" which supports voice control on her Mi TV, produced by a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics Xiaomi, it has become more convenient for her to control the smart device. Once the TV works under the "elderly mode," the font size on the screen becomes enlarged and bold, and the pictures would also turn less sharp automatically. Apart from TVs, smart phones, as the most frequently used mobile terminals by the elderly, are also turning more and more friendly to the aged. For instance, an AI voice assistant on the mobile phone of a senior citizen surnamed Wang in Anqing, east China's Anhui province, is making his life much more easier. "Hi Xiaobu, open the WeChat QR code scanner." As he spoke, the phone automatically turned to the mobile payment page on social app WeChat. "It took long for me to open this page by tapping on the phone, especially when I was doing grocery shopping every day. Now it's much more convenient with the voice control," Wang told People's Daily. This AI-based voice control function was specifically tailored for senior users by Chinese phone maker OPPO. As long as the users make voice command to the phone by saying "open the simple mode," the phone will present everything in a bigger form, from the font to the icons. Besides, the volume of the phone will be turned up, too. This mode offers over 60 convenient functions for the senior users. "It has solved nearly five million problems frequently encountered by senior users since it was launched, and is activated by over 600,000 users every day," said Liu Haifeng, President of Data & AI Engineering at OPPO. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued a notice in February this year, requesting to expand the supply of smart terminals that are friendly to seniors, and urged relevant parties to solve the difficulties frequently encountered by seniors when they use smart products and enjoy smart services. Recently, technical standards on senior-friendly mobile terminals and smart TVs were published, making the display, audio control, voice interaction, remote control and emergency response of smart terminals more friendly to senior users. Seniors often suffer from vision problems, loss of hearing and touch, as well as declining cognitive capability and comprehension, said Zhang Rui, deputy chief engineer of China Telecommunication Technology Labs, explaining that upgrades are mostly made to tackle these problems for seniors when they use smart devices. Under the same standards, enterprises are increasing the supply of senior-friendly terminals, to make senior users dare and able to control modern devices. It is reported that in the second half of this year, all relevant enterprises will launch senior-friendly products that conform to the standards. "It is a constant process during which the standards must be upgraded to conform to the development of new technologies and products, based on how the seniors are using the devices," Zhang said. The elderly shouldn't be left behind on the "digital road." Qiao Yueshan, director of the MIIT's electronic information department, said that the ministry will keep encouraging enterprises to further enrich the variety of senior-friendly smart terminals, and make different evaluation systems on such terminals to make the job more fruitful. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) Shenzhou-12 astronauts return home safely after completing three-month space station construction mission 09:07, September 23, 2021 By Yu Jianbin ( People's Daily Three Chinese astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo, who were sent into space onboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship for the space station construction mission on June 17, departed from the Tianhe core module of Chinas space station about 400 kilometers above the Earth and landed successfully at the Dongfeng landing site in north Chinas Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Sept. 17, 2021, Beijing time. Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng (middle), Liu Boming (right) and Tang Hongbo, who were sent into space onboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship for space station construction mission, wave to the crowd after returning to the Earth safely at the Dongfeng landing site in north Chinas Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Sept. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua) The successful manned mission marks the second time within five years that Chinas Shenzhou manned spaceships have taken Chinese astronauts to space and brought them back home safely, represents the complete success of Chinas first crewed space flight during the construction of the countrys Tiangong space station, and bears great significance for the countrys advancing its space station project as planned. Spending 90 days at the space station, the Shenzhou-12 crew have set a new record for Chinas manned space mission duration and gained rich experience for future space flights. From the big smile on the faces of the three astronauts after their landing on the Earth, people saw another stride of China on its space exploration journey. As Chinas first manned space flight mission during the construction of the Tiangong space station, Shenzhou-12 manned space mission is of profound significance and has achieved rich fruits. From building Chinese peoples new home in space to entering the space station and carrying out extravehicular activities twice in one space mission, and from one day of the Shenzhou-5 to 90 days of the Shenzhou-12 in space, Chinas footprints in outer space represent the progress of its space program and the results of the efforts of people working for the program. As bigger and bigger leaps were made in space technology and more and more challenging tasks were completed during Chinas seven crewed missions to space, Chinese astronauts living and working conditions in space were improved constantly. Meanwhile, their sense of responsibility, perseverance, and resolve to strive for sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening have never changed. Young aerospace workers of the country, who are calm and confident, have fully demonstrated the spirit of aerospace in their work. They give instructions to start the countdown for the launch of satellites in a clear voice and with confidence, are scrupulous about every little detail in the assembly of satellites and spaceships, and work wholeheartedly so that the astronauts can get out of the return capsules safely. It is countless Chinese aerospace workers, either at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south Chinas Hainan province, or spacecraft monitoring and control stations and space tracking ships on the ocean, who have helped send astronauts into space and build the Tiangong space station. The return capsule of the Shenzhou-12 manned spaceship lands successfully at the Dongfeng landing site in north Chinas Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Sept. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Ren Junchuan) To greet astronauts in the most reliable, safest, and warmest way when they return home, members of the search and rescue team of the landing sites prepare themselves for tasks all year round. They often pass through depopulated areas and brave storms, freezing cold and intense heat on plateaus, grasslands, and in deserts, eventually equipping themselves with excellent search and rescue skills. Generations of aerospace workers in China have cultivated a spirit featuring toughness, braveness, professionalism, and devotion. Moreover, the spirit has constantly inspired and motivated followers. As the country gains more experience in manned space flight missions, Chinese astronauts have become more confident, and Chinese people who become familiar with space flight scenarios have also found more pleasure from reading news and watching videos of astronauts life in space. Chinese netizens joked that the three Shenzhou-12 crew members returned to the Earth from a business trip to space just in time for the Mid-Autumn Festival. During the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the Shenzhou-12 crew congratulated Chinese athletes on their excellent performances, and the latter expressed their gratitude and wishes to the astronauts. The communication between them has become one of the most discussed topics on the countrys social media platforms. Besides, the magnificent pictures taken by Shenzhou-12 astronauts have amazed numerous Internet users. The fun interactions between Chinese astronauts on the space station and netizens have revealed a kind of beauty and joy brought by advances in science and technology and the increasing prosperity and strength of the country. At the same time, the sci-tech innovations behind astronauts wonderful life in the space station and the stunning pictures taken from space have become a bond linking Chinas space program with the countrys teenagers and adults. It motives teenagers to dream of exploring the unknown, encourages adults to work hard and pursue progress, and attracts everyone in the country to setting off for a beautiful future. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) Fourth Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival approaches (People's Daily App) 09:08, September 23, 2021 As the fourth Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival approaches, come and join farmers across China to celebrate this year's bumper harvest and share their joy. Initiated in 2018, the Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival coincides with the Autumnal Equinox on the lunar Chinese calendar each year. It falls on Thursday this year. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Pandemic, climate result in G20, UN shifting focus on anti-hunger "synergies" Xinhua) 09:25, September 23, 2021 ROME, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Multilateral organizations are lining up to confront the world's hunger problems made more severe by the coronavirus pandemic, but major challenges remain and the problem may still worsen despite the redoubled global efforts. In an unusual move, the just-completed Group of 20 agricultural ministers' meeting in Italy and the United Nations Food Systems Summit set to get underway Thursday in New York have aligned their priorities to address the challenges that the pandemic, climate change, political instability, and other factors represent to the world's fragile food systems. The overall problem has only been getting worse. According to the UN, some 957 million people in 93 countries do not have enough food to eat this year, and the problem will get worse without significant action. According to analysts, the acute problem of hunger is forcing a shift in the way multilateral groups are confronting the global hunger problem, focusing on creating more resilient food systems rather than looking at access to food as an economic challenge. The G20 concluded a two-day agriculture-focused meeting in the central Italian city of Florence on Saturday with a joint declaration vowing to "recognize the need to identify paths for sustainable and resilient food systems and to find appropriate institutional, collaborative, and financial frameworks for their implementation, to overcome short- and long-term challenges." The closing came days before the UN Food Systems Summit. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the creation of the one-time Food Systems Summit in 2019, "with the aim of maximizing the co-benefits of a food systems approach" to reaching the UN' 2030 sustainable development anti-poverty and anti-hunger goals. In its final communique, G20 agricultural ministers formally welcomed the food systems summit, stating that "now, more than ever, we need decisive, inclusive, sustained and coordinated action to ensure that our food systems can step up to address the shared challenges we face." The communique called the work of the G20 and the UN in this area "mutually reinforcing." David Nabarro, a senior adviser on Food Systems Summit Dialogues and a veteran UN and World Health Organization official agreed, referring to the G20 communique as a "welcome shift away from looking at food as a commodity" in response to a press briefing question from Xinhua. Nabarro called food systems "the connective tissue that connects questions of food, nutrition, and health." According to Daniele Fattibene, an analyst with the Institute for International Affairs (IAI), a Rome-based think tank, it's significant that the two events are taking place back to back. "The coronavirus pandemic has called attention to the vulnerability of global food systems and so countries are taking action," Fattibene told Xinhua. "It's more of a priority now than it has been in the past." He noted that while there is some overlap between the two processes, they are broadly focused on different countries -- the G20 is made up of the world's largest economies while the UN Food Systems Summit is focused mostly on the world's most vulnerable countries -- which means that the dual focus will cover more of the world's population and more of the food system needs. "There are natural synergies when both negotiation paths are taken at once," Fattibene said. Carmelo Troccoli, director-general of the Campagna Amica Foundation, part of the Italian agricultural union Coldiretti, said that the fact that multilateral talks are focusing on food issues this year has symbolic importance as well. "The world is increasingly taking notice that many of the world's biggest challenges, whether nutrition, poverty, biodiversity, the environment, rural depopulation, poverty, that they are all related to food systems," Troccoli told Xinhua. "The time is right to be addressing these issues." (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Chinese diplomat calls on int'l community eliminate legacies of colonialism Xinhua) 09:43, September 23, 2021 GENEVA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations at Geneva, Chen Xu, on Wednesday urged the international community to make more efforts to eliminate the negative impact of legacies of colonialism, promote and protect human rights, and enhance international justice. Speaking at the 48th Session of the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of a group of countries, Chen said that legacies of colonialism, in their multiple manifestations, are seriously impeding the enjoyment of such human rights as economic, social and cultural rights, the right to development, and civil and political rights. He explained that legacies of colonialism include economic exploitation, inequality within and among States, systemic racism, violations of indigenous peoples' rights, contemporary form of slavery, armed conflicts, and damage to cultural heritage, and so on. "We call on the Human Rights Council, the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant Special Procedures to pay continued attention to the negative impact of legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights," he noted. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China, UAE FMs hold phone conversation over bilateral ties Xinhua) 10:09, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone conversation on Wednesday with his counterpart of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, with both sides vowing to promote bilateral cooperation. In the phone call, Wang said that this year is of great significance to both countries, noting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and also the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UAE. Noting that bilateral relations have maintained a high level of development, Wang said that Chinese President Xi Jinping cherishes the mutual trust and friendship established with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The China-UAE relationship has always been placed in an important position in China's Middle East diplomacy, Wang said, adding that China firmly supports the UAE to safeguard sovereignty, security and stability, and supports the UAE to independently explore a development path in line with its national conditions. China appreciates the valuable and firm support given by the UAE on issues involving China's core interests and major concerns, and is willing to work with the UAE to uphold the basic norms of international relations such as non-interference in internal affairs, and jointly defend the international equity and justice, Wang said. Noting that important progress has been made in vaccine cooperation between the two countries, Wang said China will continue to make every effort to ensure the UAE's vaccine procurement needs, fully support the smooth operation of the bilateral project of vaccines filling production line, and help the UAE and other countries in the region to secure an early victory over the COVID-19 pandemic. China is glad to see the UAE play a more active role in safeguarding regional and world stability, Wang said, extending congratulations to the UAE on its appointment as a non-permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council from 2022 to 2023. China stands ready to maintain close strategic communication and coordination with the UAE to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of emerging economies and developing countries, Wang said, adding that China is also ready to fully support the UAE in hosting the Expo 2020 Dubai. In view of the common expectations and the current challenges that the international community faces, especially the impact of the pandemic on the economic development and improvement of people's livelihood in developing countries, Wang said that President Xi delivered an important speech at the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, proposing a Global Development Initiative, which will help the international community to reach consensus on common development issues, and contribute to the success of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For his part, Sheikh Abdullah said that the UAE highly appreciates the great achievements made by CPC since its founding 100 years ago, expressing belief that China's prosperity and progress are of great significance to promoting world development. The UAE attaches great importance to developing relations with China, he said, extending gratitude to China for its strong support in fighting the pandemic as well as its support for the UAE's hosting of the Expo 2020 Dubai. The UAE always upholds the basic norm of non-interference in internal affairs, and firmly adheres to the one-China policy, he said, adding that the UAE stands ready to work with China to continue to enhance the friendship between the two peoples and make joint efforts for a better prospect of cooperation between the two countries. The UAE pays attention to and supports the important initiative put forward by President Xi in the general debate of the UN General Assembly, and looks forward to more international cooperation with China, he added. The two sides also exchanged views on tackling climate change and agreed to make joint efforts to achieve the transition to green development. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China, Luxembourg to enhance parliamentary cooperation Xinhua) 10:31, September 23, 2021 Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, holds talks with Luxembourg's President of the Chamber of Deputies Fernand Etgen via video link at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Li Zhanshu held talks with Luxembourg's President of the Chamber of Deputies Fernand Etgen via video link Wednesday, with both sides pledging to enhance exchanges between their legislative bodies. Li, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said that Luxembourg is a friendly and cooperative partner of China in Europe. Adhering to mutual respect, equality and win-win cooperation, the two countries have maintained sound and steady development of bilateral relations. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Luxembourg have supported each other and stood together in difficult times, injecting new meaning into the traditional friendship, Li added. Noting that next year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Li said China is ready to work with Luxembourg to uphold mutual respect and consolidate mutual political trust. China seeks to promote economic recovery through openness and cooperation, to maintain communication and exchanges for enhancing mutual understanding, and to uphold multilateralism and address global challenges to push bilateral relations to a new level, Li added. Noting that the European Union (EU) is an important force in the world, Li said China will work with the bloc to advance important political agenda through consultation, explore ways to deepen practical cooperation, strengthen coordination in international affairs, and make greater contribution to world peace and prosperity. The Chinese NPC is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Luxembourg's Chamber of Deputies, maintain high-level exchanges, and promote communications among special committees, Li added. Etgen said that both countries are committed to opening-up, and the development of bilateral ties has seen mutual trust and unshakable solidarity and mutual assistance between the countries. Etgen expressed the hope that bilateral cooperation in economy, trade, finance, equipment manufacturing and other fields will be strengthened. Luxembourg's Chamber of Deputies is willing to deepen exchanges with Chinese NPC and play an active role in promoting bilateral relations. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Ghanaian university praises China's aid in education, health sectors Xinhua) 10:33, September 23, 2021 ACCRA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- A Ghanaian university whose infrastructure is aided by the Chinese government praised China for its support to the West African country's education and health sectors. Speaking to Xinhua in an interview, John Owusu Gyapong, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), said that Chinese support for Ghana's health and education sectors has been transformative. The Chinese government funded the construction on the first phase of UHAS's infrastructure project and handed it over to the Ghanaian government in 2015, while the second phase of the China-aided project began construction on September 10 this year. "International partnerships are things that we will live with for a very long time. And it is good to have good partnerships around the world, and China has been one of the best partners of Ghana," he stated. Gyapong described the second phase of the university infrastructure as a monumental leap for the school with high prospects for its development. Gyapong said UHAS would consider partnerships between the school of nursing and midwifery with some institutions in China in the future. Adu Osei, medical biochemistry and molecular biology student in UHAS, described the project under construction as mind-blowing. "I say a big thanks to the Chinese government for showing such heartfelt support for my university," Osei added. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Hong Kong reports new imported COVID-19 case Xinhua) 10:35, September 23, 2021 HONG KONG, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP) reported one new imported case of COVID-19 on Wednesday, taking the total tally to 12,167. The new case involved a person arriving in Hong Kong from the Philippines. A total of 37 cases were reported in the past 14 days and all were imported, according to the CHP. Hong Kong's vaccination drive is making steady progress. Since the launch of the government inoculation program in late February, more than 4.41 million people, or 65.6 percent of the eligible population, have taken at least one shot of the vaccine, while around 4 million are fully vaccinated. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Commentary: China's overseas coal power plant promise a paradigm shift Xinhua) 10:46, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- In a major policy announcement that has quickly won praise across the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he welcomes the announcement made by President Xi. The United States climate envoy John Kerry called it "an extremely welcome decision." Alok Sharma, president-designate of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), also hailed Xi's announcement. This is the latest step China has taken to tackle global climate change which requires ambition and action. As the world's largest clean energy equipment manufacturer, China has been actively working toward green and low-carbon global energy transition by engaging in extensive cooperation in renewable energy. China's efforts can be seen in cooperation projects such as the Kaleta hydropower project in Guinea, the Kaposvar PV power station project in Hungary, the Mozura wind park project in Montenegro, the Karot hydropower project and the first phase of the solar PV power project in the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Pakistan. China is also the largest renewable energy market. The wide application of renewable energy technologies in the Chinese market is helping reduce the cost of the green resource across the globe and accelerate the transition process to the new form of energy. Rarely mentioned and insufficiently acknowledged in the West, China's enormous investment in renewable energy such as solar power has significantly improved technology expertise and increased global supply. If it were not for China, especially the Chinese government's ambitious and generous investment, the world would not have gained increasingly wider and inexpensive access to renewable energy. China has also been supporting capacity building to address climate change in developing countries. The nation is committed to deeper South-South climate cooperation. From 2016 to the end of 2020, China set up 10 low-carbon pilot industrial parks, launched 100 mitigation and adaptation programs, and provided 1,000 training opportunities on climate change cooperation in developing countries to help them develop clean and low-carbon energy and jointly address global climate change. The response to climate change has set off a new round of industrial revolution, and grabbing the opportunity to transform to green industry is to catch the competitiveness of the future. Under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, China is making every effort to meet the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, a mission that requires extremely hard work and a promise that must be kept. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China-Northeast Asia Expo to kick off in NE China Xinhua) 10:59, September 23, 2021 A visitor tries a woolen cap at the Mongolian exhibition area at the 12th China-Northeast Asia Expo in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, Aug. 25, 2019. Various kinds of specialties from 28 countries and regions were presented for people to visit and select during the expo. (Xinhua/Xu Chang) CHANGCHUN, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The 13th China-Northeast Asia Expo is scheduled to be held online and offline from Sept. 23 to 27 in Changchun, capital city of northeast China's Jilin Province. Over 1,000 enterprises from countries and regions in Northeast Asia are expected to participate in this year's expo. The second Northeast Asia Regional Cooperation Roundtable, a major sideline event of the expo, was held Wednesday. Representatives from China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea attended the meeting. The roundtable has issued an initiative, calling on local governments in the region to connect their market resources and jointly build a Northeast Asia maritime economic cooperation community. First launched in 2005, the expo has become a major platform for countries in Northeast Asia to build consensus and conduct economic and trade cooperation, with a total of 2,822 cooperation projects signed. Northeast Asia is one of the world's most dynamic regions. In the first half of 2021, the trade volume of China with five other countries in the region totaled about 417.9 billion U.S. dollars, up 26 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Commerce. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China to intensify regulations on secondary vocational schools Xinhua) 11:14, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- China will implement stricter regulations on secondary vocational schools in students enrollment, financial aid and student status management, according to the Ministry of Education on Wednesday. A circular issued by the ministry requires checks of the qualifications of secondary vocational schools across the country, and the establishment of an annual inspection system. Branch schools or teaching centers of secondary vocational schools set up without the approval of educational administrative departments will be deprived of their admission qualifications, says the document. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Chinese envoy regrets absence of U.S., other Western countries at UN anti-racism meeting Xinhua) 13:47, September 23, 2021 UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, on Wednesday regretted the absence of the United States and some other Western countries from an important UN anti-racism meeting. It is a shame that the United States and a few other Western countries chose to openly boycott and be absent from the UN General Assembly high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, said Zhang. "This only raises more doubts over their sincerity in fighting racism and their willingness to participate in international anti-racism cooperation. We call on relevant countries to face up to the reality, heed the voice of the international community and do some serious soul-searching," he said. These countries, the Chinese envoy said, should take concrete measures to fully and effectively implement the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, prohibit the spread and provocation of racist rhetoric, fundamentally improve the livelihoods of ethnic minorities, and earnestly protect everybody's human rights, including those of ethnic minorities, all in an effort to build a world of equality for all. Zhang pointed out that all parties at Wednesday's high-level meeting agreed that racism is a deep-rooted global problem left over from the past, and has caused a host of issues, including inequality, oppression and marginalization. All parties called on the international community to take this high-level meeting as an opportunity to fully and effectively implement the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action for the complete elimination of racism and racial discrimination, he added. The UN General Assembly on Wednesday held a high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and adopted a political declaration to carry forward the fight against racism and racial discrimination. The meeting was attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, President of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid, and heads of state and government and ministers from more than 60 countries. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended via video teleconference and addressed the meeting. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) World leaders pledge to fight pandemic, climate change Xinhua) 13:51, September 23, 2021 Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa addresses the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, Sept. 21, 2021. The General Debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly kicked off on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Wang Ying) UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- World leaders on Tuesday pledged to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change on the first day of the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. In his statement delivered via video at the general debate, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the pressing priority in fighting COVID-19 is to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of vaccines globally. He said China will strive to provide a total of 2 billion doses of vaccines to the world by the end of this year. In addition to donating 100 million U.S. dollars to COVAX, China will donate 100 million additional doses of vaccines to other developing countries this year, he said. On climate change, he said China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad. "China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. This requires tremendous hard work, and we will make every effort to meet these goals," he said. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, president of the Maldives, said COVID-19 will persist as long as it is not defeated everywhere. Vaccinating the world as soon as possible is the way to overcome. Vaccine equity is of paramount importance in this regard. The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of global warming is a "death sentence" for the Maldives, he said. One overarching fact remains. The state of environmental ruin small-island states endure now will, without doubt, catch up with bigger nations sooner than later. There is no guarantee of survival for any one nation in a world where the Maldives cease to exist, he warned. Addressing the climate emergency requires a break from the lackluster business-as-usual practices that currently dominate the global climate change regime. It requires countries to adopt more stringent measures to halt their emissions. It needs the world's wealthy nations to help smaller nations receive support in capacity building, technology transfers and financial resources to ramp up their defenses in the climate fight. It also requires countries to give up their addiction to fossil fuels and adopt cleaner, smarter technologies for energy use, he said. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, president of Uzbekistan, said his country pays special attention to combatting climate change, protecting the environment and biodiversity. "This is our noble human duty not only for today, but also before the future generations," he said. "We are determined to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. We are taking concrete steps to move toward renewable energy sources. In particular, it is envisaged to double the energy efficiency of our economy by 2030, increase the share of renewable energy by 25 percent and develop environmentally clean transport." Uzbekistan intends to put forward an initiative in the General Assembly to develop a Global Environment Charter aimed at laying the foundation of a new environmental policy of the United Nations, he said. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said that to end this pandemic, the solution has to be global. For a global response to succeed, there is a need to ensure equitable access to effective remedies. Global action is also needed in order to be better prepared for future pandemics, he said. "It is high time to take concrete steps to improve our common health security beyond the current challenges." He called on countries to use the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to put themselves on a sustainable course. "We need more ambitious emission reduction plans well ahead of the meeting in Glasgow. And we must speed up the ongoing transition away from fossil fuels. To succeed, we need adequate climate financing. As a global community, we have to increase the quality, quantity and accessibility of climate finance, in particular to the least developed countries and the small-island developing states." Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado Quesada said his country advocates for COVID-19 vaccines to be available to all the world's population as a global public good. "Today it is necessary that, through effective multilateralism, we manage to make COVAX a concrete solution. In that sense, I request the G20's support to make this a reality," he said. The shortage of vaccines and the passing of time are the breeding ground for more pain, deaths, and the surge of new variants, he warned. On climate change, he said that ironically, the countries that have low carbon emissions, such as the island states, are most affected by climate emergencies. "The reality of an interconnected planet must make us understand that today the interests of the most disadvantaged is in the interests of all; to realize that the best way to be selfish is to be supportive and generous; that accumulating money, knowledge, or health deprives the world of better conditions for all humankind," he said. Countries must be ambitious in the objectives for the Glasgow conference, which is imperative for the survival of humankind, he added. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) China's pledge to stop building new coal power plants overseas welcomed: AIIB Xinhua) 14:50, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has said that it welcomes China's announcement to increase support for green and low-carbon energy in other developing countries and stop building new coal-fired projects overseas. "This is a bold and consequential step for China, and for the rest of the world. It is also a clear signal of the country's concrete commitment to global efforts to address one of the most pressing issues of our time," said Jin Liqun, president of the AIIB. Jin said that the international community must continue to work together to agree on a clear pathway to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement with a sense of urgency. "AIIB is committed to working with China and all of our members in their efforts to implement their Paris commitments to put our world on a path to a sustainable future," he said. The bank has set a target to invest half of its annual direct financing into projects linked to climate change mitigation by 2025. In 2020, 41 percent of the bank's total financing went to climate finance, the bank said. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Financial literacy of Chinese consumers improving, central bank report shows People's Daily Online) 15:30, September 23, 2021 A report from the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), Chinas central bank, has found that the level of financial literacy amongst Chinese consumers has improved notably. In international terms, the report ranked Chinese consumers at an upper-middle level when it came to financial literacy. A staff member (right) hands over a stack of renminbi banknotes to a customer at an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) branch in Beijing, Aug 30, 2019. (Photo/Xinhua) The Consumer Financial Literacy Survey and Analysis Report (2021) gave Chinese consumers an overall score of 66.81 for financial literacy in 2021, an increase of 2.04 compared to 2019. It said Chinese consumers performed comparatively well in terms of their financial attitudes and improved notably in terms of their financial techniques. The report said that Chinese consumers now know more about basic financial knowledge in the areas of credit, insurance, loans, deposits, and the calculation of annualized returns, finding that 85.15 percent of respondents affirmed their awareness of the consequences a bad credit history would have on their application for loans, while 71.03 percent of respondents indicated knowledge of the rules regarding unconditional insurance cancellation. The financial behaviors of Chinese consumers have improved notably, according to the report. Compared with 2019, Chinese consumers credit card repayment behavior has improved significantly. The proportion of full repayments of credit card debt increased by 8.2 percentage points, and the proportion of minimum repayments of credit card debt, along with the number of consumers having an insufficient ability to make a repayment, dropped by 2.81 percentage points. Meanwhile, the number of people who carefully read contract terms increased by 12.31 percentage points. The financial attitudes of Chinese consumers have also improved. The report pointed out that Chinese consumers are generally cautious about consumption when they owe money to the bank and only 23.57 percent said they would consider borrowing up to an agreed upon maximum threshold when purchasing large commodities. Nearly 90 percent of the respondents recognized the importance of financial education, with most believing that a financial education curriculum at school is the most effective way to provide financial education for youth. The financial techniques of Chinese consumers have similarly become stronger. On the whole, Chinese consumers perform well in the daily management of income and expenditures, and most of them are in a state of budget surplus or an income-expenditure balance. The report found that 78.41 percent of respondents could afford unexpected expenses equivalent to three months of their incomes. Among those having cultivated the habit of reading contracts, more than 80 percent of the respondents said they could understand the key terms in financial product contracts. In terms of handling financial-related consumer disputes, the respondents were basically able to choose the correct complaint channel. These improvements in consumer financial literacy can be attributed to the rapid development of the countrys financial industry in addition to strengthened publicity and the popularization of financial knowledge, as well as efforts taken by consumers themselves to become financially literate. Compared with 2019, the proportion of consumers who think financial education is very important has increased by 14.04 percentage points, while the proportion of consumers who think financial education is unimportant has dropped by nearly 10 percentage points. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) Chinese FM urges lifting economic sanctions on Afghanistan at G20 meeting Xinhua) 15:34, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday attended a video conference of the foreign ministers of the Group of 20 (G20) on the Afghan issue and urged lifting unilateral sanctions and restrictions on Afghanistan. Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserves are national assets and should belong to and be used by the Afghan people, Wang said, adding that they cannot be used as a bargaining chip to exert political pressure on the country. The Chinese foreign minister put forward several propositions on the Afghan issue at the meeting. He said it is necessary to increase the intensity and speed of aid to Afghanistan, especially to provide timely assistance to the most urgent needs of the Afghan people. China has decided to provide Afghanistan with 200 million yuan (30.89 million U.S. dollars) worth of aid materials, including the donation of the first batch of 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, Wang said, expressing the hope that countries responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan will seriously reflect on what it has done, do more to alleviate the difficulties faced by the Afghan people as soon as possible, and fulfill its due responsibilities. Calling on G20 members to actively take practical measures to help Afghanistan ease the current liquidity pressure, Wang said international financial institutions should also provide financing support for poverty reduction in Afghanistan, sustainable development, people's livelihood and infrastructure projects. Under the premise of respecting Afghanistan's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, the Afghan people should be supported to independently choose a development path that suits their national conditions, and a broad and inclusive political structure should be formed finally, Wang said. On the issue of counter-terrorism, Wang said Afghanistan must earnestly fulfill its commitments, draw a clear line with various international terrorist forces, and resolutely crack down on them. He added that the international community must stand for a shared future for mankind, build a united front against terrorism, oppose double standards and selective approaches to counter-terrorism, and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a breeding ground and sanctuary for terrorism again. Wang called on the United States and NATO countries to assume the primary responsibility for resolving the immigration problem in Afghanistan. Achieving economic reconstruction in Afghanistan is a fundamental solution to preventing the emergence of complex immigration problems, he said. Afghanistan should increase the inclusiveness and predictability of its governance. The international community should also help Afghanistan speed up its reconstruction and fundamentally reduce the emergence of a complex immigration situation, he said. Wang said China supports the United Nations (UN) in playing its role as the main channel in maintaining peace and stability in Afghanistan and humanitarian assistance, urging the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and various UN agencies to perform their duties and responsibilities. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) Researchers study samples from bats to dig into relatives of COVID-19 virus Xinhua) 16:18, September 23, 2021 BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Researchers in Cambodia, the Philippines, Laos and France are studying samples collected from bats for possible clues to pinpoint the origins of COVID-19, according to media reports. Eight researchers at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge (IPC) in Phnom Penh have been collecting samples from bats in the Stung Treng province near Laos and logging their species, sex, age and other details for a week. Similar research is going on in the Philippines, according to Reuters on Monday. Last year, researchers at the IPC did test on two samples collected from horseshoe bats in the province in 2010, and found a close relative to the coronavirus. "We hope that the result from this study can help the world to have a better understanding about COVID-19," field coordinator Thavry Hoem was quoted as saying. Bats dwelling in limestone caves in northern Laos were also found to carry coronaviruses that share a key feature with SARS-CoV-2, according to a report by Bloomberg. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the University of Laos have found three viruses with "closely matched receptor binding domains, the part of the coronavirus's spike protein used to bind to human ACE-2, the enzyme it targets to cause an infection," said the report. The researchers studied 645 bats from 46 species captured on four sites -- in Fueng and Meth districts of Vientiane Province, and in Namor and Xay districts in Oudomxay Province -- between July 2020 and January 2021. The three viruses found in Laos, dubbed BANAL-52, BANAL-103, and BANAL-236, are "the closest ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 known to date," Marc Eloit, head of pathogen discovery at the Pasteur Institute, was quoted as saying. "These viruses may have contributed to SARS-CoV-2's origin and may intrinsically pose a future risk of direct transmission to humans," he said. (Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun) 97 cultural firms from East Chinas Anhui province are attending the 17th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair (ICIF) in Shenzhen, South Chinas Guangdong province. As China's top, internationalized and comprehensive fair for cultural industries, the ICIF kicked off on Thursday in Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center. The five-day fair features both online and offline activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Covering an area of 1,189 square meters, the Anhui pavilion showcases the provinces latest achievements in developing cultural industries. The pavilion highlights culture+ and internet+, giving a glimpse of scenery in Huizhou, traditional opera, folk customs and characteristic townships. Traditional handicrafts are also on display, such as the scholars four jewels (writing brush, ink stick, ink slab and paper), iron paintings and wickerwork. Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent best wishes to renowned physicist Chen Ning Yang on his birthday. Entrusted by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, senior officials of the Ministry of Education visited Yang at Tsinghua University on Wednesday, presented him with a flower basket on Xi's behalf and conveyed Xi's greetings. Yang is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yang was born in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, on Sept. 22, 1922. In 1957, Yang shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Tsung-Dao Lee for work on the so-called parity laws, which led to important discoveries regarding elementary particles. The Yang-Mills gauge theory introduced by him is one of the most important achievements of physics in the 20th century. After returning to China, Yang started working at Tsinghua University in 2003 and has made important contributions to cultivating and recruiting talent and promoting international academic exchanges. BEIRUT, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Qian Minjian said on Wednesday that China is keen to push forward friendship and cooperation with Lebanon, according to a statement by the Chinese embassy. "We are keen to work with the Lebanese side on advancing bilateral ties," Qian said during his meeting with newly appointed Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati. The ambassador mentioned that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Lebanon. "Ties between the two countries have witnessed smooth development, and the two sides have exchanged assistance and support in various fields over the past 50 years," he added. Meanwhile, Mikati praised the Lebanese-Chinese relations, and expressed his aspirations to achieve more from practical cooperation between the two countries. BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday expressed grave concern over the cooperation between the United States, the UK and Australia on nuclear submarines, stating that it deliberately escalates regional tensions, provokes an arms race, threatens regional peace and stability, and undermines international nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Answering a press question at a daily news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said it is widely believed by the international community that the cooperation between the three countries poses a serious risk of nuclear proliferation, in violation of the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). He said that the U.S. and the UK are likely to export to Australia highly enriched uranium with a purity of 90 percent or more, which is weapon-grade nuclear material. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state, Australia's acquisition of highly enriched uranium itself poses severe nuclear proliferation and nuclear security risks. However, the current safeguards mechanism of the International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify whether Australia will use the highly enriched uranium in the power reactors of nuclear submarines for nuclear weapons," said the spokesperson, adding that China believes that these concerns of the international community are completely justified and reasonable. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the NPT and a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, Australia is now introducing nuclear submarine technology of strategic and military value. The international community, including Australia's neighboring countries, has reason to question Australia's sincerity in honoring its nuclear non-proliferation commitments," said Zhao. He said that, faced with the dual challenge of combating COVID-19 and revitalizing the economy, people in the Asia-Pacific region need growth and employment, not submarines and ammunition. Zhao stressed that the nuclear submarine cooperation between the U.S., the UK and Australia proves once again that the U.S. and the UK pursue double standards and use nuclear cooperation as a tool of geopolitical game. China urges the three countries to heed the call of the international community, discard the outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow geopolitical perspective, revoke the wrong decision, faithfully fulfill international nuclear non-proliferation obligations and do more to contribute to regional peace and stability, said the spokesperson. A still image from the documentary Remembering 1950 features veteran Lin Bingyuan looking at a photo of himself as a young soldier.[Photo provided to China Daily] Three years ago, Beijing Film Academy graduates Song Kunru and Li Mu were engaged in shooting a commemorative film about war heroes in Southwest China's Sichuan province. During the shoot, Song discovered a folded photo in the home of Ye Fakun, an 83-year-old veteran who lost both his legs during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-53). The image features Ye, who was 20 years old at the time, standing with a fellow soldier who wasn't fully captured in the frame, merely a hand placed on Ye's shoulder. The young man was killed by an aerial bombing on the very day the photo had been taken, making Ye reluctant to reminisce about the heartbreaking moment. After hearing war stories recounted by Ye and approximately 50 other veterans who joined the Chinese People's Volunteers army, Song was keen to shoot a documentary, taking it as a responsibility to record the "disappearing" history of the war of 71 years ago. By the end of August, three of the 26 veterans featured in the documentary had passed away. The 98-minute documentary Remembering 1950 was released in domestic theaters earlier this month, garnering a score of 8.9 points out of 10 on Douban, one of the country's most popular online review aggregators. "Most of the veterans rarely accepted interviews. Sometimes, we had to sit with them silently for a long time to wait for them to speak. When they finally started to talk, it made us feel like we were allowed to enter their hearts, which had been sealed for many years," recalls Song. Over the course of nearly four years, Song alongside Li, who is the documentary's scriptwriter, traveled to multiple cities, including Chengdu in Sichuan and Shenyang in Liaoning province, accumulating around 80 hours of footage. Ren Hongju, a former member of an art troupe with the Chinese People's Volunteers army.[Photo provided to China Daily] The documentary features interviews with the 26 veteransaged between 88 and 95whose military duties varied from scouting the enemies' positions to giving medical care to the injured. Ren Hongju, a Beijing native who crossed Yalu River in 1951, serves to some extent as the "backbone" of the documentary with his talent for arresting storytelling, honed as a former member of a military art troupe, recalls Song. Later promoted to the role of war reporter, who interviewed many soldiers in caves and trenches on the battlefields of the Korean Peninsula, Ren has "an exceptional memory for details", says the director. As the first veteran to appear in the documentary, Ren is seen in the opening scene wearing dozens of medals over his military uniform, speaking softly to convey some of the most traumatic moments of the war. Some of his memories recounted in the film include the gruesome death of a young troupe actress, who once played the lead in the well-known story of the White-Haired Girl, and the time the then 17-year-old Ren sneaked into a nearby village on a scouting mission and was horrified to discover a cohort of enemy soldiers asleep in one of the houses. There are also some heartwarming scenes in the documentary, including one in which two female veterans have a joyful reunion after many years. For Song and his crew, the project took them on a special journey to revisit history from a more private perspective, and redefine their idea of heroes. "All those soldiers who survived the war and returned safely to China are heroes. Their stories deserve to be heard by more people and history should never be forgotten," says Song. Friends during their service Liu Suqian (left) and Xiong Chaorui are reunited in the film in 2020.[Photo provided to China Daily] Li, a scriptwriter educated in the United Kingdom, adds: "Actually most of the veterans who had experienced a war are often unwilling to revisit that dark chapter of their lives, and most of them rarely talk about the past to their grandchildren. "But we hope this film will not only spark interest in history among younger people, but also encourage them to spend a bit more time with their grandparents, to hear their stories of when they were young and passionate about their dreams," he says. However, just as most theatrically released documentaries struggle for limited screenings due to the preference of cinema managers for showing more lucrative commercial blockbusters, Remembering 1950 has faced a similar dilemmaits screening occupancy had fallen to 1.0 percent as of Wednesday, according to the live tracker Beacon. "Unlike most projects with a similar theme, which employ a grand scope, the documentary revisits the past with a restrained tone through the perspectives of individuals, thus making it distinctive and more powerful to stir in-depth thoughts. It deserves to have more screenings to help youngsters take a more profound outlook of our history," one Sina Weibo user posted on the microblogging platform. As a tribute to these veterans and their compatriots, Song says crew members have decided to donate their earnings from the first two days of box-office receipts, totaling 227,000 yuan ($35,230), to a charity organization founded in 2016 that helps veterans of the Chinese People's Volunteers. "We can understand the financial stress for the cinema operators, but we hope they can give us more screenings to enable more people to watch the film, which will make it possible for us to help more veterans," says Song. By Li Chun ORENBURG, Russia, Sept. 23 -- The SCO Peace Mission-2021 anti-terrorism military exercise entered the anti-terror operations planning stage from September 20 to 22. In the joint directing department and the joint anti-terrorist group headquarters, commanding officers from participating countries were mixed in different groups of comprehensive operational planning, combat commanding, information and firepower strike for joint operation planning. They gathered around the maps and tables, exchanging views and negotiating with each other from time to time. According to Major General Liu Ping, deputy commander of the joint anti-terror groups in the exercise and commander of Chinese participating troops, the mixed grouping has been realized at the commanding level, which is conducive to deepening mutual trust and intensifying coordinating capabilities among the troops, and meanwhile boosting their mutual understanding and friendship. According to Cui Haibo from the Chinese participating troops, who is also head of the operations division under the joint anti-terror group headquarters, the "combination" of the exercise has been embodied in three dimensions. The first is the combination of armed forces from participating countries working together to fight against terrorist forces. The second is the combination of the SCO member states from the legal perspective to solve problems within the SCO framework through mutual support ", said Cui. In addition, the Agreement between Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Holding Joint Military Exercises also makes legal restraints to the incoming troops, stipulating that all troops involved in exercises must respect the sovereignty, laws and customs of the host nation, not interfere in its internal affairs, nor engage in the political activities on its territory. The document has provided legal guarantees for holding joint military exercises by the armed forces of the SCO members. The third is the combination of operational commanding. Li Shuyin, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences of the Chinese PLA, pointed out that one of the key subjects of the joint exercises held by the SCO member states is the joint planning of operations. Given the diversity of armed forces of the participating countries in terms of commanding system, communication mechanism and force composition, it is not easy to achieve real joint actions in the exercise. Hence, it is quite necessary to hold such joint exercises to find out the problems in coordination and cooperation among the participating sides, and list them out and search for solutions in a targeted manner. Cui believed that the mechanism featuring a list of problems leading to solutions in the phase of joint operational planning is an outcome achieved in this years joint exercise, which will be of great referential significance to the holding of live-fire operations in the next phase of the exercise. BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday called on the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to become a positive force for peace and to solve problems instead of creating them. Wang made the remarks during a video conference between the permanent members' foreign ministers, also including French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Facing uncertainties and instabilities, the international community has high expectations on the five permanent members, especially in the hope that the five nations could strengthen solidarity and coordination to bring confidence and stability to the world, Wang said. He said the five nations should perform their duties of maintaining world peace, and deal with hotspot issues through upholding the UN Charter, making good use of mediation and peacekeeping operations, refraining from using coercive measures, and avoiding arbitrary use of force. Wang said the five permanent members should practice true multilateralism, which is about having international affairs addressed through consultation, jointly formulating international rules, sticking to dialogue and inclusiveness instead of confrontation and exclusiveness, and forging a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. Stressing the fact that U.S. President Joe Biden's recent remarks of not seeking a "new Cold War" had drawn attention from all sides, Wang said the key is to make this statement into substantial actions, such as giving up the Cold War mentality, ideological bias and a tendency for bloc confrontation. All countries will have their eyes on the United States, Wang noted. The Chinese foreign minister also called for stronger cooperation in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the five nations should pool the strength and confidence, set an example of respecting science and upholding solidarity, and take the lead in safeguarding the role of the UN and the World Health Organization. The five countries should jointly provide assistance to the developing countries, make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good, and promote joint efforts to contain the pandemic. They should also oppose politicizing the pandemic and using origins tracing as a tool, Wang said. He called for more cooperation to cope with global challenges including regional hotspot issues, terrorism, climate change, food security and economic recession. China welcomes parties from various sides to be part of its newly proposed global development initiative with aims to promote the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Wang said, adding that the five permanent members should honor their commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change. The foreign ministers and the UN secretary-general also discussed the Afghan situation, Iran nuclear issue and strengthening coordination between the five nations. "The two leaders agreed that the situation would have benefited from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," the White House statement said. "President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard," it said. A White House statement after the phone call suggested regret over the handling of the deal, in which the United States and Britain will sell at least eight nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. That prompted Canberra to abandon a US$66 billion, 2016 contract to purchase 12 conventional diesel-electric subs from French majority state-owned Naval Group. U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron have agreed to meet in person next month in Europe after a Wednesday phone call in which they sought to ease tensions over a high-profile submarine deal. The two presidents will meet at the end of October, with both scheduled to attend the Group of 20 summit in Rome at that time. "The two leaders have decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence and proposing concrete measures toward common objectives," the White House said. The statement did not elaborate. Macron called France's ambassador to Washington, Philippe Etienne, back to Paris after the Australian submarine deal was announced. But the White House said Macron has decided that Etienne would return next week and "then start intensive work with senior U.S. officials." France was upset by the loss of the Australian submarine deal, but French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed deeper concern over what he characterized as "deceit" by one of its oldest allies. Le Drian told reporters at the United Nations this week that the United States went behind France's back and hid the new deal for months. Australia has sought to augment its naval weaponry to counter China's military buildup in the Indo-Pacific region. "President Biden reaffirms the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region," the White House statement said. "The United States also recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defense, that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to NATO." A growing number of Koreans are planning for overseas travel again as vaccinations pick up and restrictions are being dropped in some countries. This year's Chuseok was a damp squib at home as Korea remains in lockdown, but some destinations promised greater freedoms. One group of about 60 travelers left Incheon International Airport for Guam for a five-day trip on the morning of Sept. 18, the first day of the Chuseok holiday. It was officially the first group package tour in a year and a half. According to Incheon International Airport Corporation on Wednesday, a total of 31,545 travelers left for overseas destinations over Chuseok, a daily average of 5,258 and nearly double the number during the same period last year. Health authorities on Wednesday warned that the current wave of coronavirus infections could escalate after the Chuseok holiday. Lockdown fatigue and holiday traffic have increased the risk of infections spreading as people gathered with their families over the biggest holiday of the year. According to government data, traffic increased by 5.4 percent last week compared to a week earlier, especially at night, before the Chuseok holiday this week led to an even bigger surge. Vice Health Minister Kang Do-tae said, "There's a possibility that the situation in outside the capital will deteriorate again due to the increased traffic over Chuseok." But so far there are no signs of a spike. The daily tally of new coronavirus infections stood at 1,716 as of Thursday morning, and over Chuseok the number was about similar level at 1,604 on Monday, 1,729 on Tuesday and 1,720 on Wednesday. He made no mention of North Korea's recent missile tests and restarting of plutonium and uranium production at Yongbyon. "I propose that three parties of the two Koreas and the U.S., or four parties of the two Koreas, the U.S. and China come together and declare that the War on the Korean Peninsula is over," Moon told the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. President Moon Jae-in on Monday reiterated a call to formally end the Korean War even as North Korea is restarting production of weapons-grade nuclear materials. Earlier, Raphael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a general meeting in Austria that North Korea's nuclear program is a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions. But Moon claimed declaring an end to the war will "mark a pivotal point of departure in creating a new order of reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula." "I expect that the international community... remain always ready and willing to reach out to North Korea in a cooperative spirit," he added. A Cheong Wa Dae official, providing the customary gloss, told reporters here, "It was a message calling for the creation of positive momentum by agreeing to declare an end to the war this year, which marks the 30th anniversary of the South and North joining the UN together." U.S. President Joe Biden ignored Moon's plea in his own keynote address and did not meet him in New York. Biden merely said, "We seek serious and sustained diplomacy to pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." After his speech, the U.S. president sat down for summits with the heads of Australia and the U.K. to discuss their scandal-ridden Aukus pact against China. On Friday he meets with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshide Suga. Moon instead met the leaders of the U.K., Vietnam and Slovenia during his stay in New York. That left him and first lady Kim Jung-sook plenty of time to spend in photo ops with boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, who were accompanying him as newly appointed special envoys to "promote Korea to future generations." Moon and BTS attended the opening ceremony of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Moment, held each year to highlight the Paris climate agreement from 2015. Around 1 million viewers watched BTS' speech at the General Assembly live on YouTube. The boys' video clip for their Billboard No. 1 song, "Permission to Dance" was then shown to bewildered global delegates. More than 100,000 Chinese residents with voting rights are expected to cast their ballots in Korea's local elections next June. According to the National Assembly Budget Office, 95,767 Chinese residents in Korea had voting rights as of the end of June this year, accounting for 78.4 percent of all foreigners with voting rights here. That means they could sway the ballot in some areas where they are concentrated. Foreigners over 18 who have lived in Korea for three years after obtaining permanent residency can vote in local elections but not in presidential or general ones. Meanwhile, 1.22 million foreigners have signed up for national health insurance benefits over the last five years, and they have 194,133 dependents who also benefit. One Syrian national has nine dependents under his name. The National Health Insurance Service paid W3.66 trillion for 4.56 million foreigners who had treatment over the same period, which boils down to more than W800,000 per person (US$1=W1,179). The foreigner with the highest payout was a Chinese who had W3.3 billion worth of treatments of which only W332 million was self-paid. Seven out of the top 10 foreign residents who had most treatments were Chinese. Expats gather to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2021-09-23 11:00 Wearing makeup, costumes and headwear, Canadian Shawn Patrick Tilling acted as a general in ancient China. That was his first experience of Kunqu opera performance, after nearly an hour of makeup preparation. But, as he said, it was a wonderful experience. Shawn Patrick Tilling was among the many expats who participated in the Mid-Autumn Festival gathering held in Shanghai on September 21. (Shawn Patrick Tilling acts as a wusheng [male martial arts role].) Armenian young lady Astrid Poghosyan brought her violin to the event. The day was of unusual significance to her, as it was also the National Day of Armenia. On the stage, she played classic Chinese folk music, and sang a Chinese song with her Chinese friends. (A group photo of the participating expats) After some music appreciation, expats gained a basic understanding of Kunqu opera from Zhao Jinyu, a professional promoter of the art. With a history of 600 years, Kunqu opera amazed many of the foreigners, who tried to put on the costumes and learn some movements from Zhao. Wonsook Hong, a TCM physician from South Korea, tried shuixiu (literally water sleeves, one of the most skillful stunts in the ancient opera). Surprisingly for her, it was difficult to even do a little gesture well, though it looked very easily done. I gained a deeper understanding of the Chinese culture, said Wonsook Hong. For Anastasiia, who comes from Russia, the gathering was her first formal experience of the Mid-Autumn Festival in China. Before, our Chinese teacher only gave out some moon cakes to us. Anastasiia likes Kunqu, and she had listened to Peking opera before. As she said, such traditional Chinese music makes her feel relaxed. There were also folk art performances, like paper cutting, sugar painting and sugar-figure blowing. Pilar Mejia Buenfil from Mexico is an international student at Shanghai University. She came to the gathering with her classmate and was attracted by the lovely paper cuttings. The Mid-Autumn Festival is no stranger to her. The first thing that came to her mind was moon cakes. She also said, I know the story of Chang'e flying to the moon. In Mexico, we also have a similar legend about the moon. (Expats experience paper cutting and sugar-figure blowing.) Ali, a Bangladeshi who came to Shanghai in 1992, still remembers the first Mid-Autumn Festival with his wife in Shanghai. "At that time, money was tight for us. We bought some egg yolk moon cakes on the street. Now, he has established a stable career here, and the couples two children were born in Shanghai and grew up in the city. In his opinion, Shanghai is one of the safest cities in the world, and because of the sense of security, he has been here for 29 years. Texas flags wave in the wind outside the Comal County Courthouse for Texas Independence Day on Tuesday, March 2, 2021. MIKALA COMPTON | Herald-Zeitung New Braunfels Family YMCA celebrates one year in its new home Comal County deputy Will Reed screens people as they enter the Comal County Courthouse Annex Friday, Sept. 17, 2021 in New Braunfels. Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. Press Release September 23, 2021 De Lima seeks probe into PITC's questionable procurement of PPEs, deficiencies in funds utilization Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has urged the Congress to investigate the Philippine International Trading Corporation's (PITC) questionable procurement of personal protective equipments (PPEs), as well as the delays and deficiencies in its procurement and utilization of funds from various source agencies (SAs). De Lima filed Proposed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 906 underscoring the need for PITC to explain its failure to return billions in public funds to SAs and to the national treasury. "The PITC's deficient and delayed delivery of its procurement responsibilities to various source agencies and disbursement of funds hampered the services and projects that are greatly needed in this time of pandemic," she said. "It is imperative for the PITC to explain its failure to return billions in public funds to source agencies and to the national treasury and justify its action of scheduling for bidding/procurement 99% of the unutilized fund transfers from CYs 2014 to 2020," she added. The 2020 Commission on Audit (COA) Report on the PITC noted deficiencies, delays, and irregularities in PITC procurement as it found a suspicious awarding of emergency-procurement of PPEs to a single supplier. Notably, contracts accessed on the PITC website showed that there were ten (10) separate contracts for different items worth ?129.9 million, and a cross-check of the report's reference number with the PITC website indicated that all contracts were awarded to Biosite Medical Instruments of Matina, Davao City. Reports also revealed that the PITC website had about 10 distinct notices of award sent to Biosite on April 1, 2020, adding that a total of ?129.803 million in contracts were awarded for surgical masks, shoe covers, N95 masks, head covers, gowns, goggles, gloves, face shields, coveralls, and aprons for the Department of Health (DOH). The COA reported that with the total ?186.584 million in the approved budget for the contract (ABC), the PITC awarded the procurement of PPEs to a bidder without taking into consideration the lowest price proposal for each item, which would have resulted in ?2.166 million cost savings for the government. In filing the Proposed Resolution, De Lima, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, stressed that it was not the first major irregularity for which PITC has been cited this year. Reportedly, COA flagged PITCs failure to return unutilized funds totaling ?11.022 billion from various SAs to the concerned SAs or to the Bureau of Treasury (BTr). Instead of reverting back to the SAs which transferred the funds or to the BTr, these funds were "earmarked for procurements in CY 2021 and onwards." "Kailangang suriin ang ganitong mga kahina-hinalang transaksyon para masigurong walang hokus-pokus na naganap, at kung may kailangang panagutin sa paglimas ng kaban ng bayan; na sa halip na pakinabangan ng taumbayan ay napunta sa luho o bulsa ng iilan," said De Lima. Press Release September 23, 2021 OP and PMS proposed budgets for 2022 approved in Senate Committee level as Bong Go manifests PRRD's commitment to deliver promised reforms Senator and Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance Christopher "Bong" Go expressed his support for the proposed 2022 budgets of the Office of the President and Presidential Management Staff which will ensure the effective implementation of the presidential programs and management of all national security matters. Go said he is confident that the offices will use the funds prudently in a speech delivered at a hearing of Finance Subcommittee "A'' presided by Committee Chair Sen. Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara on Wednesday, September 22. "First of all, allow me to congratulate this administration, led by President Rodrigo Duterte ... for leading us in a path of reform in the past five years. It was a difficult task but all it takes is political will from a leader to accomplish the mission of providing better services to Filipinos, and combating criminality, illegal drugs and corruption," he said. The Senator also hailed the administration's commitment to deliver on its promise of providing a more comfortable life for all. In terms of infrastructure, he lauded the completion of 29,264 kilometers of roads, 5,950 bridges, and 451 seaport and 214 airport projects, as of June 2021. He also noted its emphasis on agriculture through the distribution of 229,289 hectares of land and support of 937,040 farmers under the Free Irrigation Act, one of Duterte's campaign promises in 2016. Go added that access to education has considerably grown, with around 1.62 million students benefiting from free education and 150,149 classrooms completed as of June. Following the disruptions caused by COVID-19, he welcomed the administration's efforts to help children safely return to school through a pilot test for face-to-face classes in some 120 schools. "I remind our authorities to have a limited and careful implementation in the meantime. Ibig sabihin, unahin natin ang kalusugan at buhay ng mga kabataan at ng mga guro dahil talagang delikado pa [ang panahon]. Mas lalong magiging busy ang ating government workers sa contact tracing once na kumalat itong sakit ... unahin natin ang buhay ng bawat Pilipino," reminded Go. In the campaign against criminality and illegal drugs, the Senator praised the President for the dramatic 64% decline in crimes nationwide from July 2016 to June 2021. As of May 2021, a total of 203,715 operations have been conducted which have resulted in the seizure of an estimated P60 billion worth of illegal drugs, arrest of 12,356 high-value targets and surrender of 1.22 million drug users. "Part na ito noong mga nakaraang drug haul ng ating gobyerno. Nakita niyo naman, na talagang seryoso ang kampanya ni Pangulong Duterte laban sa iligal na droga. Alam naman natin na marami pong apektado nitong drogang ito. Ito rin ang kanyang ipinangako noon bago siya naging Pangulo," continued Go. "Sa mga gusto naman pong magbagong buhay, bigyan naman natin sila ng pagkakataon kaya may mga rehabilitation centers tayo all over the country," he said. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Go lauded the efforts to expand access to quality, affordable healthcare services through the establishment of 141 Malasakit Centers, which have assisted over two million particularly poor and indigent patients nationwide. The program was institutionalized under the Malasakit Centers Act of 2019 which Go authored and sponsored. On this note, he called on the administration to continue its efforts to boost the country's vaccination rates which currently stands at 42.1 million vaccinated individuals. Of this figure, 23.1 million have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine while another 19 million are fully immunized. "Patuloy lang ito hanggang maabot natin ang population protection tungo sa herd immunity ngayong taong ito para sumaya ang ating Pasko. Pakiusap ko lang sa mga kababayan natin, magtiwala kayo sa gobyerno. Magtiwala kayo sa bakuna. Ang bakuna lang ang tanging susi o solusyon sa ngayon upang makabalik tayo sa ating normal na pamumuhay tulad noon," appealed Go. "Malayo na ang ating narating at maraming pangako ang natupad ng Pangulo. Pero hindi pa natatapos ang ating laban," he cautioned. The Senator lamented that the pandemic disrupted the economic development of the country under the President's term. Despite this, the country managed to stay afloat and battle the crisis under his steady guidance through the support of the OP and PMS. "Ang ganda na sana ng takbo ng ating ekonomiya sa pamumuno ni Pangulong Duterte bago dumating itong COVID-19 ... [Gayunpaman] buti na lang ang Pangulo natin ngayong may pandemya ay si Pangulong Duterte na may political will at mayroon tayong kapitan sa ating barko. I have no doubts that with the leadership of our President, our nation will be able to defeat this virus," encouraged Go. In the end, he recognized the men and women of the OP and PMS without whom the offices could not function. Go thanked them for their professionalism and dedication and expressed confidence that with their continued support, the Duterte Administration will fulfill its missions to get the country safely through the pandemic and revitalize the economy. "Noong nagtratrabaho pa ako sa Malacanang, nakita ko ang dedikasyon ng mga tao sa mga opisinang ito. Alam kong hindi basta-basta ang kanilang tungkulin, walang oras ang pagtatrabaho, dedicated itong mga empleyadong ito. Lalo na ngayong pandemya, walang tulog ang mga 'yan. Saksi ako sa kanilang galing at sipag sa pagseserbisyo sa bayan at sa mga kapwa nating Pilipino," said Go. "Ngayong pandemya, alam kong nasa mabuting mga kamay ang bansa dahil nandyan ang [OP] at PMS na umaalalay kay Pangulong Duterte." Press Release September 23, 2021 Gordon gains more support for leading fight vs gov't corruption More groups and institutions are standing behind Senator Richard J. Gordon for leading the Senate's investigation into the alleged irregularities in the government procurement of medical supplies and equipment to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Various alumni of the University of the Philippines (UP) Dilliman have recently launched an online petition denouncing what they call the "unjust persecution" of Gordon and the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) by Duterte and his allies. "We stand by and support Sen. Richard "Dick" Gordon in his bold and courageous crusade to unmask the perverse and rapacious theft of the nation's coffers, and to hold accountable those responsible for the same," they said in the petition. They also challenged the President to file criminal cases against the personalities involved in the alleged anomaly and allow the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee which Gordon chairs do its job "unhampered and free from any threat." Last Sept. 20, the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) Classes of 1957, 1961 and 1965 have also issued a strong statement to express their full support behind Gordon for fearlessly calling for public officials to live up to decency in governance. "It is time to draw the line and demand from our elected officials to put first the interest of Filipinos, especially the medical frontliners, the marginalized and the millions now forced out-of-work by the pandemic, and hardworking small Filipino businessmen now struggling to survive and to keep their workers from starving," they said. Other AdMU alumni also lauded Gordon "for his courageous efforts in weeding out scalawags who have allegedly stolen billions of our taxpayers money while thousands of fellow men, women and children are suffering and dying from this deadly pandemic." They also expressed gratitude and appreciation for Gordon's tireless and unselfish efforts in leading the Philippine Red Cross in responding to the needs and demands of the public, 24/7, especially during the protracted pandemic. On September 21, De La Salle Manila alumni of grade school, high school and college classes of 1961, 1965 and 1970, respectively, conveyed support for the Blue Ribbon's recent investigation, and lauded Gordon and other senators. "Senators Richard Gordon, Risa Hontiveros, Franklin Drilon, Panfilo Lacson, Kiko Pangilinan and Ralph Recto: at this crucial moment in our history, you embody the La Sallian mission of promoting and defending the aspirations of the poor and authentic social justice," said in their statement. During the 7th Senate hearing, Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon and other senators commended Gordon's courage for investigating the alleged irregular procurement of medical supplies and equipment that the government granted to a favoured Chinese supplier, Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation. Pangilinan to Comelec: Don't 'ghost' voters lining up to register as early as 2 a.m. FILIPINOS lining up as early as 2 a.m. proves that voter registration needs to be extended, Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan said Thursday, a week before the September 30 deadline. "Kitang-kita sa mahahabang pila madaling araw pa lang na sabik ang mga kababayan natin na makaboto. Huwag nating ipagkait ito (The long, early morning lines show clearly that our fellow Filipinos are eager to vote. Do not disenfranchise them)," he said. The Senate on Tuesday approved on second reading Senate Bill 2408 or An Act Extending the Registration of Voters for the 2022 National and Local Elections. This is following Pangilinan-authored Senate Resolution 851 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 17, urging the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to move the voter registration deadline from September 30 to October 31, 2021. "Kahit pa may banta ng Covid ay hinaharap ng mga pumipila. Hindi pwedeng i-ghost lang ng Comelec ang mga pila. Kailangang i-extend ang voter registration (Those who are lining up are doing so even at the risk of Covid. Comelec cannot simply ignore the lines. The period for voter registration must be extended)," Pangilinan said. According to Comelec, the number of registered voters as of September 18 is 62,470,000. Pangilinan, however, notes that data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) show that the eligible voting population for 2022 is 73.3 million. This leaves 10.83 million qualified voters that are yet to register. "Hindi sapat ang isang linggo para i-accommodate ang lahat ng gustong magpa-rehistro. Inuulit ko: Ang September 30 deadline ay pre-pandemic deadline. Hindi kinonsider ang mga restriction ng pandemya (One week is not enough to accommodate all those who still want to register. I reiterate: the deadline is a pre-pandemic deadline. It was not made to accommodate all the pandemic restrictions)," Pangilinan said. "The least Comelec can do is to extend the registration," he added. The Comelec will face the Senate tomorrow, September 23, for deliberations on their budget. The Senate is expected to pass Senate Bill 2408 once session resumes on Monday, September 27. Press Release September 23, 2021 Villanueva rallies public employment managers: Jabs, jobs go together Senator Joel Villanueva today called for the vaccination of all workers either by their employers or the government as the COVID-19 pandemic changed the dynamics of employment altogether. "We should focus not only on jobs, but also on jabs," Villanueva said. "But first, we should face our problems and deal with them squarely." Villanueva spoke at the 2021 Congress of the Public Employment Service Office (PESO), an employment service facility established in all Local Government Units (LGUs) in coordination with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). PESO offices at local government units are in charge of collating data on job openings, matching jobseekers with these and conducting seminars or counseling sessions for individuals in search of jobs. Latest employment data in June showed that the unemployment rate reached 7.7 percent or 3.76 million Filipinos eligible to work or those 15 years or older. On the other hand, underemployment in the same period was up to 14.2 percent from 12.3 percent last May. "That is equivalent to 6.41 million underemployed Filipinos," Villanueva said, referring to workers who took substantial pay cuts because their work hours had been shortened. He said that as a result of the pandemic, "it seemed there's an additional pre-employment requirementthe vaccine." "It's not really a requirement but COVID vaccine is slowly becoming an employment issue," Villanueva said. As the pandemic and lockdowns continued to kill jobs, Villanueva said he saw signs of hope that should be replicated nationwide. He cited two examples of a vaccination program designed to bring back jobs and workers which could be done on a more massive scale. One was the vaccination program for 70,000 workers of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), one of the country's biggest companies and employers. Villanueva recalled visiting SMC's vaccination rollout. SMC hired 300 medical workers to roll out the program. "Damang-dama ko ang mga empleyado habang pinagmamasdan ko silang nakapila para tumanggap ng bakuna," Villanueva said. "May sinasabi ang bawat kilos at galaw nila. May matatakbuhan ako. Ligtas ako. May laban na ako," Villanueva said. The second sample that Villanueva cited was the vaccination rollout for seafarers by the Magsaysay Maritime Corp. At least 2,000 Filipino seafarers received vaccine jabs last June 17. "There are seafarers who already boarded ships even without vaccines," he said. "Some of them are lucky because their ships or manning agencies have vaccination programs especially for Filipino seafarers working in cruise ships," Villanueva said. "But many still need to be vaccinated before they can board ships," he said. "Most of the time, it's to each his own for them in lining up at LGUs," he added. He said a program for vaccination that would not be a burden to workers can be inspired by a law that he helped passthe First-Time Jobseekers Assistance Act. That law, which Villanueva is the principal sponsor and author, mandates that people applying for jobs for the first time should not be made to pay for pre-employment documents. "If pre-employment documents serve as stumbling block to get immediate employment and we waived the fees to provide assistance to first-time jobseekers, PESO should also take an active role in assisting first-time jobseekers to ensure that jabs reach their arms if COVID vaccine jabs get in the way of our people getting dignified jobs," Villanueva said. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Villanueva: Vaccine jabs sa mga manggagawa, susi sa panunumbalik ng trabaho at ekonomiya Iginiit ni Senator Joel Villanueva ang kahalagahan ng pagbabakuna sa mga manggagawa upang mapadali ang muling pagbubukas ng ekonomiya at pagbabalik ng trabaho. "We should focus not only on jobs, but also on jabs," ani Villanueva. "But first, we should face our problems and deal with them squarely." Nagbigay ng talumpati si Villanueva sa 2021 congress ng Public Employment Service Office (PESO) managers nitong Setyembre 23. Ang PESO ay itinatag sa mga local government units sa tulong ng Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). Trabaho ng PESO ang pagtipon ng datos sa mga job opening, pagtutugma nito sa mga manggagawang walang trabaho, at pagbibigay ng mga seminar at counseling sa mga naghahanap ng trabaho. Ayon sa pinakahuling tala ng gobyerno, umabot ang antas ng unemployment sa 7.7 percent o 3.76 milyong Pilipino, habang ang underemployed ay tumaas sa 14.2 percent mula sa 12.3 percent noong Mayo. "Katumbas ng underemployment rate ang 6.41 milyong Pilipino," ani Villanueva. Masasabing underemployed ang manggagawa kapag nagkaroon ng pagbabawas sa oras ng trabaho na nagresulta sa mas mababang sahod o paycut. Isang resulta ng pandemya ay ang tila panibagong pre-employment requirement na ang bakuna, na nilarawan ng mambabatas bilang "nagbabadyang employment issue." Tinukoy ni Villanueva bilang "sign of hope" ang private sector-led vaccination programs tulad ng dinaluhan niya kamakailan. "Damang-dama ko ang mga empleyado habang pinagmamasdan ko silang nakapila para tumanggap ng bakuna," Villanueva said. "May sinasabi ang bawat kilos at galaw nila. May matatakbuhan ako. Ligtas ako. May laban na ako," ani Villanueva nang ikinuwento niya ang kanyang pagdalo sa vaccination kick-off ng San Miguel Corp. Dumalo rin si Villanueva sa pagbabakuna sa Magsaysay Maritime Corp. para sa mga seafarers noon Hunyo 17. "Some of them are lucky because their ships or manning agencies have vaccination programs especially for Filipino seafarers working in cruise ships," ani Villanueva. "But many still need to be vaccinated before they can board ships. Most of the time, it's to each his own for them in lining up at LGUs." Red Sea Development Company (RSDC), the Saudi developer of the Red Sea project unveiled plans to build 17 hotels on four Islands the kingdom is creating on the Red Sa, local Arabic daily Aleqtisadia reports. Mohammed Al-Rihawi, facilities manager at RSDC, outlined the Red Sea projects at a seminar held in Riyadh to highlight key projects in the Gulf Kingdom, the media notes. Rihawi reportedly said he Red Sea development scheme is divided into 4 phases that will be completed at the end of Vision 2030 which aims to diversify the Kingdoms economy away from volatile oil exports. The kingdoms Vision 2030 is led by Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman who hopes to turn the Gulf country into a major tourist destination and provide economic alternatives to the oil-dominated revenues of the Arab country. Phase one comprises the construction of three man-made islands and a village housing RSDCs employees and workers, Al-Rihawi added. This phase also includes the construction of 17 hotels on 4 man-made islands and it is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2023, he said. Egypt will welcome in 2023 the annual meeting of the board of governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) following approval by the Abidjan-based bank of a request by the Arab country. The board unanimously rubber-stamped Egypts request Wednesday, during their 56th meeting held virtually, News Egypt daily reports. The conference is scheduled on 22-26 May 2023. Sharm El-Sheikh will host the guests. The resort city also played venue for the AfDBs Board of Governors Consultative Committee meetings on 18 September 2019. During 2019 gathering, AfDB Governors successfully concluded the negotiations to increase the banks capital base for the seventh time by 125%, from $93 billion to $208 billion, Daily News Egypt notes. The approval of Egypts request demonstrated the depth of relations between Egypt and AfDB, commented Tarek Amer, Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and Governor of Egypt at AfDB Group. Egypt was one of the banks founding States in the1960s and second biggest shareholder in AfDBs capital, and the third on the level of all 81 member States. The bank has funded dozens of development projects in Egypt to an average value of $6.4bn. Your browser does not support the video tag. The digital edition will be sent out as an email blast a week prior to the market to approximately 35,000 media executives in our database. The digital edition will have virtual exposure at MIP Cancun. The digital edition will be extensively promoted across our newsletters, websites and social media handles. We will publish an article about your company up front in the magazine. The article includes a color image of a program, the headshot of your executive, and his/her highlighted quote. The article will be published in DIARIO TV LATINA before the market. 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A single-page advertisement in the digital edition and a Double Banner in DIARIO TV LATINA for two weeks in November for US$2,000. A 2-page spread advertisement before the first page of editorial in the digital edition for US$2,000. A 2-page advertisement before the first page of editorial in the digital edition and a Double Banner in DIARIO TV LATINA for two weeks in November for US$2,500. You can also add an embedded video to your advertisement in any of our digital editions. The cost is US$500 per enhanced page. To learn more about this innovative service, click here. DEADLINES: Space Reservations..........October 27 Ad Materials.......................October 29 For more information, please contact Ricardo Guise at rguise@worldscreen.com or Dana Mattison at dmattison@worldscreen.com. [September 23, 2021] Majesco Gears Up for InsureTech Connect 2021 Majesco, a global leader of cloud insurance software solutions for insurance business transformation, today announced its continued commitment and active participation at InsureTech Connect 2021 as a silver level thought leadership sponsor. This annual event held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, from Monday, October 4th through Wednesday, October 6th, welcomes over 5,000 attendees to explore and exchange information on today's new innovations and best practices across all segments of the industry. "We're proud to once again actively participate in this year's InsureTech Connect and excited to be back in-person to collaborate and meet with some of the industry's brightest minds," says Adam Elster, CEO of Majesco. "Our continued commitment to this event and leadership in the InsurTech space reinforces our dedication to enabling the insurance industry to seize the opportunities and navigate a path to the future that embraces speed, agility and innovation for today and tomorrow." Participants in the event can connect with the Majesco team at booth #846 to discuss and understand how investing in the right solutions to build a field of insurance dreams for P&C and L&A and Group segments to enable growth, accelerate innovation and adapt rapidly to market changes can provide customers wat they want, need and expect digitally. In this era of insurance, customers are in the driver's seat. They expect personalized products and services to meet their risk profile, leverage data intelligently, be friction-free, be available via multi-channels and provide real-time, digital engagement. During the event, Majesco is sponsoring a panel on Tuesday, October 5th from 10:30 - 11:05 PDT titled, "Accelerating P&C Insurance Industry Transformation to Thrive in a New Digital and Data Arms Race." Hosted by Denise Garth, Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco and Top 50 InsurTech Influencer, she is joined by industry leaders and innovators Gail McGiffin, Chief Information & Operations Officer at Vantage Group Holdings Ltd., and Arlene Kern, Innovation Executive & SVP at Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. Together they will discuss and highlight the evolving P&C insurance landscape, entry of new players within and outside the industry, changing customer expectations, and the acceleration of new technology and innovative products. The ripple effect is the start of a digital and data arms race no longer just in the personal and small commercial lines, but now in mid-large commercial and specialty insurance, separating front runners who will thrive from those left trailing and/or ultimately risk becoming increasingly irrelevant. If you're looking for information on how to build your field of insurance dreams with market-leading, next-gen solutions, stop by our booth or join us for the panel session at the world's largest InsurTech event. About Majesco Majesco is the leading software partner to both the P&C and L&A insurance markets to modernize, optimize and innovate their businesses at speed and scale. Over 330 insurers, from greenfields, start-ups and MGAs to the largest insurers, reinsurers and brokers use Majesco's next generation SaaS (News - Alert) platform solutions of core, data, and analytics, digital, distribution, absence management and a rich ecosystem marketplace of established and InsurTech partners to build the future of insurance. Our technology, expertise and leadership help insurers innovate and connect to build the future of their business. With over 825 successful implementations and over 65% of our customers on Cloud with Majesco platform solutions, together we have an amazing track record of innovation and real-world results. For more details on Majesco, please visit www.majesco.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005095/en/ [ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ] Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Another Navalnys appeal against prone to escape status rejected Moscow's Babushkinsky District Court 15:40 23/09/2021 MOSCOW, September 23 (RAPSI) The Vladimir Regional Court on Thursday dismissed Alexey Navalnys appeal against his prone to escape status, the courts press service told RAPSI. In August, the Moscow City Court rejected a similar appeal lodged by Navalny against labeling him as a convict prone to escape. The Preobrazhensky District Court dismissed Navalnys suit against the penal colonys decision on June 25. The blogger sought to declare the decision illegal. Earlier, the convict filed a similar lawsuit with a court in the Vladimir Region; but the move was also dismissed. Navalny is serving sentence in a penal colony in Pokrov, a town in the Vladimir Region. In February, a Moscow court ordered Navalny to be jailed for 3.5 years in the Ives Rocher embezzlement case. In early March, the ruling was upheld. The blogger is to serve about 2.5 years behind bars. He is serving sentence in the Vladimir Region. September 21, 2021 To: Alok Sharma, the 2021 President of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties Parties to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP-26) A Declaration: Climate mitigation efforts must reject so-called sustainable hydropower as a solution to combat climate change On behalf of 300 organizations from 69 countries, representing civil society, peoples movements, Indigenous Peoples organizations, scientists, conservationists, we call upon Alok Sharma, the 2021 President of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP-26), and all parties to COP-26, to reject attempts by the hydropower industry to secure scarce climate funds to finance a new wave of hydropower projects. Funding hydroelectric power construction would not only fail to prevent catastrophic climate change, it would also worsen the climate crisis by exploding methane emissions and diverting scarce climate funds away from meaningful energy and water solutions in a world that is already grappling with severe impacts of climate change. We call instead for just and sustainable solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises that recognize and support the role of natural systems and free-flowing rivers in promoting climate resiliency and mitigation and center the invaluable role of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities on the frontlines of these crises. We are facing an unprecedented threat posed by the global climate crisis. In August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we are already experiencing severe climate impacts in every region of the globe and we are likely too late to hold maximum global temperature increase to 1.5?C, as called for in the 2015 Paris Accords. The report detailed, however, the imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to bring down global temperatures in order to stave off worsening and irreversible impacts. The report further called for curbing methane emission as among the most immediate, effective and practical steps to quickly reduce temperatures in the coming decades. Meanwhile, at the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity COP in Kunming, China, the parties will discuss how to respond to the dramatic and precipitous biodiversity loss and the acute threat of ecosystem collapse that could dwarf the loss of biological diversity experienced to date. At the same time, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic speaks to the need to protect ecosystems and river-based food systems while challenging us to avoid the same mistakes in the economic recovery that led us to these simultaneous crises. We must heed this moment and use it as an overdue opportunity to build resilience in our communities and in the natural world. Unfortunately, this is happening against a backdrop where the hydropower industry is gearing up for a massive greenwashing effort to present its destructive product which has been shown time and again to destroy ecosystems and communities as the pathway out of our predicaments. The industry is enlisting national governments and global organizations in its efforts to resuscitate the waning hydropower sector plagued by unfavorable economics, declining opportunities, community opposition, aging infrastructure, and climate vulnerability. This industry has already shown its deadly impact, creating decades of impoverishment in riparian communities, particularly for Indigenous Peoples whom we know to be the best guardians of natural resources, and precipitating the rapid decline in freshwater biodiversity. We expect this industry to make polished appeals under the guise of sustainability a goal upon which they have consistently failed to deliver but this time with an apparent acknowledgment of the harms they have caused in the past. We ask that you view these overtures with healthy skepticism. It is of grave concern that this industry, which has caused so much harm, including extinctions, endangerment, violence, forced displacement, and impoverishment, is now positioning itself as a climate savior, in order to lobby for climate funds to bankroll a new wave of hydropower expansion. This is the definition of business as usual, and is the very thing we must escape to make true progress on addressing the climate crisis. We base our call on the following: Free-flowing rivers and natural lakes have immense value for the welfare of the ecosystems they sustain, humankind, and survival on the planet. Rivers can also play a central, often spiritual and cultural role for many Indigenous riparian communities. These life-giving systems are being destroyed by growing pressure from a variety of sources, chief among them hydropower dams. Urgent removal of these pressures is necessary to protect the immense benefits these waterways provide. Rivers play a vital role in sequestering carbon and building climate resiliency, yet hydropower dams prevent rivers from serving these critical functions. Rivers help regulate an increasingly volatile global carbon cycle by drawing an estimated 200 million tons of carbon out of the air each year. Dams, however, block the natural carbon sequestrations cycle of watersheds. Healthy rivers and their catchments are also critical to building climate resilience by reducing the impacts of floods and droughts, recharging groundwater supplies, sustaining fisheries, maintaining local ecosystems, and transporting sediment and nutrients downstream. Dams interrupt these processes, prompting erosion and coastal flooding, further reducing ecosystem resiliency, undermining food security for people, causing population displacement, and risking conflict with downstream neighbors. Hydropower dams are vulnerable to climate change and will be further impacted by changing hydrology. Our climate and hydrological cycles are changing, but hydropower dams are particularly ill-suited to adapt to these changes. Unprecedented floods exacerbated by climate change are already threatening the safety of dams around the world, with more extreme weather events elevating the risk of catastrophic dam collapse. Meanwhile, increasing and prolonged droughts are causing dam reservoirs to run dry, with hydropower-dependent energy systems facing extended power disruptions that have entailed significant knock-on economic impacts. These trends are predicted to only worsen in coming decades. Adding more dams will exacerbate methane emissions at precisely the time IPCC warns they must be dramatically reduced. Hydropower reservoirs are a significant contributor to the climate crisis, primarily through emitting vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent in the near term than carbon dioxide. Despite efforts by the hydropower industry to obscure the GHG footprint of dams, dam reservoirs are estimated to emit 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases per year, and scientists have found in some cases that dam reservoirs can emit more greenhouse gases than coal-fired power plants. Methane emissions from dams are typically much higher in the first years of operation, and thus new dams would contribute to a spike in emissions at the precise moment the IPCC urgently warns that we must drastically cut methane emissions to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Expanding hydropower is incompatible with efforts to address the looming biodiversity crisis. While they account for less than 1% of the Earths surface, freshwater ecosystems are home to more than 10% of all species. There is growing recognition of the immense benefits that freshwater ecosystems provide, as well as growing urgency to address the considerable threats that they face. Hydropower dams are a key culprit in the rapid 84% decline in the populations of freshwater species experienced since 1970. Meanwhile, a recent study found that over 500 dams are currently under construction or planned within protected areas such as national parks, UNESCO World Heritage sites, and wildlife reserves that include nearly half of the worlds Key Biodiversity Areas. An expansion of hydropower would further jeopardize efforts to address the biodiversity crisis, including through the Convention on Biological Diversity. The construction of hydropower dams routinely violates the human rights of impacted communities, particularly Indigenous Peoples. The hydropower industry has a long history of human rights violations, with many companies and financiers never held to account. Over 20 years ago, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) estimated that dams had displaced up to 80 million people, and that number is likely significantly higher today. Dams have also negatively affected an estimated 472 million people living downstream. Dams have particularly impacted Indigenous Peoples, violating their rights to lands, territories, resources, governance, cultural integrity and free, prior and informed consent. These impacts persist today despite the efforts of the hydropower industry to promote its own brand of sustainability tools to divert attention from its poor track record. Climate finance has the potential to play a critical role in ensuring positive outcomes for rivers and for energy access. It should prioritize projects that restore and promote the health of riverine ecosystems and communities. This could include: protecting threatened freshwater resources; restoring flows that facilitate reconnection of fragmented ecosystems; ensuring cultural and environmental flows determined in consultation with affected peoples; and promoting river restoration efforts such as the decommissioning of obsolete dams. Meanwhile, better energy options exist that obviate the need for new hydropower. In most instances, these options cost less, are more equitable, can be developed more sustainably, come to market faster, and be deployed more quickly to displace fossil fuels. In recognition of the foregoing, we the undersigned call for: A prohibition of funds committed under the Paris Agreement for the construction of new hydropower dams. Countries to remove new hydropower dams from their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). A just and sustainable energy transition and economic recovery that centers people and ecosystems. Investment to rapidly upscale truly renewable energy sources capable of delivering needed energy access while transitioning away from destructive fossil fuels and hydroelectric dams. Removal of destructive and obsolete dams that inhibit ecosystem processes (including carbon sequestration), providing additional benefits of spurring resilience and food security. Upgrading or refurbishing existing dams where economically feasible, not disruptive to ecosystems and river communities, and free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples has been granted. Enhanced energy conservation and efficiency measures, along with upgrades to electrical grids to lessen the demand for energy. Permanent protections that prohibit dam construction on free-flowing rivers and most vital freshwater ecosystems. Signed, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) Burma River Network Coalition des OSC pour le Suivi des Reformes et de lAction Publique (CORAP), Democratic Republic of Congo Comunidades SETAA/Movimiento Rios Vivos, Colombia Ecosistemas, Chile Earth Thrive Fundacion Yumana, Colombia Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) Indigenous Peoples Major Group (IPMG) Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) International Rivers Justica Ambiental, Mozambique Karen Environmental Social Action Network (KESAN) Karen Rivers Watch Rios to Rivers Rivers without Boundaries Save the Mekong Coalition Save the Salween Network Save the Tigris South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) Waterkeeper Alliance and others [as on September 21, the Declaration has been signed by 297 organizations (listed here)] (The following statement was issued today 23rd September, 2021 by the Platform of Central Trade Unions and independent sectoral Federations/Associations) Press Release September 23, 2021 India Put on Sale by the ruling regime at the Centre It is the task of the Working Class to Save India! The so called National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) was announced by the Union Finance Minister on 23 August 2021, to raise Rs 6 lakh crore over the next 4 years. The plan envisages leasing out various Government assets such as 26,700 Kms highways worth Rs.1.6 Lakh (L) Crore (Cr); - 400 Railway stations and 150 trains (Rs.1.5 L.Cr); - 42,300 Circuit Kms of Power Transmission Lines (Rs.0.67 L.Cr); - 5,000 MW Hydro, Solar and Wind Power Generation assets (Rs.0.32 L.Cr); - 8,000 Kms of National Gas Pipelines (Rs.0.24 L.Cr); - 4,000 Kms Pipelines of IOC and HPCL (Rs.0.22 L.Cr); BSNL and MTNL Towers (Rs.0.39 L.Cr); - 21 Airports and 31 Ports (Rs.0.34 L.Cr); 160 Coal Mining projects (Rs.0.32 L.Cr); and 2 Sport Stadiums (Rs.0.11 L.Cr) etc. for various durations of lease. It is claimed that the funds so generated will be invested in expanding infrastructure. This is nothing but a nefarious design to hand over all infrastructural assets to private hands virtually free for revenue generation by them without any obligation of capital cost and share a small part of that huge revenue with the Govt. That is why this plan is being criticized roundly as free-privatisation (rather doling out) of national assets built with tax-payers money. Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, the FM, is defending this decision saying the ownership of the assets will remain with the Government and therefore it is not outright privatisation. Nobody is convinced with this justification. While this debate is going on, further advisories went out from the Government to all the Gram Panchayats, to monetize their assets such as common lands, water bodies, common buildings etc. to add to their finances. The diabolic effect this will have on village society can only be guessed. Commonsense will tell you that the immediate effect of this latest Government move will be price-rise for the common man for all the infrastructural services being leased out to private players. Because the private operators, as per the official NMP document, have been empowered to increase the user/service charges of all those infrastructures and make windfall profit at the cost of common people. Contrary to the argument by the government, that jobs would be created, thousands of workers will lose their jobs worsening the already alarming unemployment situation. Quality of jobs would further deteriorate. The SC/ ST sections would be among the worst affected, as there is no reservation in jobs in the private sector. Add to this the Governments announcement to sell 100 profit making PSUs. This means that the profit flowing into Government coffers will stop and start flowing into private corporates coffers. Again It does not require deep economic knowledge to know that Governments ability to provide Social Security to people will be curtailed due to these steps. It also does not require deep economic knowledge to know that Government can fill its coffers by taxing the rich and super-rich in India. But the Government refuses to tax their friends, rather their masters the rich and the super-rich. Why is the Government embarking on such policies, obviously detrimental to the interests of the common man? The blunt answer is because they are in the interest of the Corporates, who finance the party in power. What should the common man then do? The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions, Independent Federations and Associations and the Samyukta Kisan Morcha are showing the way: throw the perpetrators in the governance committing this heinous crime on the national economy and the toiling people out of power in every available opportunity, while simultaneously building determined resistance unitedly throughout the country. Let us, the working class take up the cause as MISSION INDIA to defend our national assets, nation as a whole and also the lives and livelihood of the toiling people by developing determined resistance struggle against this direly anti-national policy regime of the present Govt. in power as the toiling people are bearing the brunt of the destructive policy regime in the form of incessant price rise of everything, continuous loss of jobs and livelihood, sky-rocketing unemployment, aggravating hunger and impoverishment and atrocious attack on the rights of the toiling people along with manifestation of obscene inequality through huge increase in wealth of handful rich and super-rich among the corporate/big-business class. Let us spread among the mass of the common people much broader awareness through intensive campaign against this anti-people, anti-national regime and the crime being committed by them on the national interests and lives and livelihood of the people. Let us expose the real anti-people and anti-national ugly face of the ruling class sought to be camouflaged through their captive-media-backed propaganda. We therefore have to counter this propaganda with facts, which are there for all to see: the PRICE-RISE. So take part in the signature campaign to reach out to every neighbor. Let us make it MISSION INDIA. The Joint platform of CTUs thus decided the following roadmap of heightening decisive struggle of resistance against the anti-national destructive projects of the ruling regime at the centre: 1. All round collective initiative for extensive continuous campaign among the mass of the common people against this destructive policy regime and its grievous impact on the lives and livelihood of the common people from all walks of lives. 2. Countrywide National Protest Day through massive joint demonstration/ agitation/mobilizations at least up to district level on 07th October 2021. 3. National Convention of Workers at New Delhi against the anti-national, anti-people policies of the Govt. with a focus on latest exercise of loot and plunder on people-the NMP on a date after Dussera and before Diwali to decide on future course of action/agitation in preparation to multiple days of strike action at appropriate time. 4. Support sectoral actions including strikes in the sectors directly and immediately affected by NMP. INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC And Independent Sectoral Federations/Associations Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) Statement on the status of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission September 18, 2021 The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is a national human rights institution with a mandate to protect and monitor human rights in Afghanistan. It was entrenched in Article 58 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. It is an independent institution in line with Resolution 134/48 of the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 and the Paris principles relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions. Since August 15 the AIHRC continues in office but has been unable to fulfil its duties to the Afghan people. All AIHRC buildings have been occupied by Taliban forces, who have also made appointments and used AIHRC assets such as cars and computers. Furthermore, since the Taliban have consistently shown disregard for human rights, including attacks on human rights defenders and flagrant violations of international human rights standards, the leadership of the AIHRC has little confidence in a Taliban government to respect the mandate and independence of the AIHRC. Given the restrictions by the Taliban on womens employment and role in public life, we fear the Taliban would not allow female staff to continue to carry out their duties, including at a leadership level. This is unacceptable: the AIHRC cannot protect the rights of all Afghans if it cannot protect the rights of its female staff. The leadership of the AIHRC is deeply concerned about the inability of the commission to carry out its functions, particularly given serious allegations of ongoing human rights violations, including to those coming from Panjshir, Kandahar & other places and concerns about the rights of women and girls. The Afghan people need an independent human rights body where they can take concerns about infringements of their rights, with confidence that in doing so they will be safe and their concerns investigated by a rights respecting institution. The inability of the AIHRC to carry out its duties, combined with the legitimate concerns of civil society leaders and journalists about restrictions on freedom of expression, has led to a dramatic reduction in the ability of Afghans to monitor and protect serious violations of human rights. While we appreciate the ongoing work of UNAMA and the OHCHR, in this context it is imperative that the United Nations Human Rights Council establishes an independent mechanism to monitor human rights violations in Afghanistan. The AIHRC calls upon the Taliban to respect the independence of the AIRHC and its staff and all Afghan human rights defenders, who have worked tirelessly to protect the rights of the Afghan people. Phone: +93(0) 202 500 676 Email: aihrc[at]aihrc.org.af Address: Faiz Mohd Kateb Road, Darulaman, PD 6, Kabul, Afghanistan Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on September 23, 2021 2021/09/23 CCTV: Today the G20 virtual foreign ministers' meeting on Afghanistan was held. Do you have anything to read out on China's participation? Zhao Lijian: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the G20 virtual foreign ministers' meeting on Afghanistan on September 23. He stated that as a major platform for international economic cooperation, the G20 should, based on its purview, play a constructive role in efforts to seek peace, promote development and build consensus in Afghanistan. The Chinese side made the following six proposals: First, humanitarian assistance is of utmost urgency. China has decided to provide 200 million RMB worth of supplies to Afghanistan, including an initial batch of 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. We hope countries responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan will seriously reflect upon what they have done and take prompt and concrete actions to ease the Afghan people's difficulties and fulfill their due obligation. Second, economic sanctions must stop. Various unilateral sanctions or restrictions on Afghanistan should be lifted. The country's foreign reserves are national assets that should not be used as leverage to exert political pressure on Afghanistan. China calls on G20 members to actively adopt concrete measures to help ease the liquidity pressure in Afghanistan. Third, interactions and engagement must be inclusive. The international community should support the Afghan people in independently choosing a development path suited to the national conditions, eventually building a broad-based and inclusive political architecture, respecting the basic rights of ethnic minorities, women and children, and following a peaceful foreign policy of good-neighborliness and friendship with other countries, especially neighboring countries. Fourth, counter-terrorism cooperation should be deepened. The international community should bear in mind the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, build a united front against terrorism, oppose double standards and selective counter-terrorism, and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a hotbed and harbor for terrorism again. Fifth, both the symptoms and root causes of the refugee issue need to be addressed. The US and NATO countries should bear the primary responsibility for resolving the refugee and migrant issue in Afghanistan. The international community should also help Afghanistan speed up its economic reconstruction and fundamentally reduce the number of refugees and migrants. Sixth, various mechanisms should coordinate for greater efficiency. China supports the role of the UN as the main channel for upholding peace and stability and promoting humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, and urges the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and other UN agencies to earnestly fulfill their duties. We welcome various multilateral mechanisms on Afghanistan to leverage their respective strengths and form synergy for assisting Afghanistan. Xinhua News Agency: On September 20, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published the Global Innovation Index 2021, where China ranked the 12th, up by two places compared to 2020. The report also spoke highly of China's progress in innovation, emphasizing the importance of government decisions and incentives to encouraging innovation. What is China's comment? Zhao Lijian: I have seen relevant reports. According to the WIPO report, China has been moving up the ranking for nine consecutive years since 2013 and has been the top among middle-income economies. China ranks the first in nine areas, including patent filings, trademarks filings, industrial designs, high-tech exports, creative goods exports and domestic market scale. This is a full testament to the remarkable achievement China has made in scientific innovation and IPR protection. In recent years, the Chinese government has been prioritizing the central role of scientific innovation in national development, implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and IPR strategy, and strengthening innovation and IPR protection, which resulted in significant improvement in innovation capabilities and the awareness of IPR protection in society. Yesterday, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the guidelines for building a country strong on IPR for the 2021-2035 period. It put forward such objectives as accelerating the advancement of IPR reform and development, comprehensively improving China's IPR capability, upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, planning and promoting IPR reform and development with a global perspective, and working to build open, inclusive, balanced international IPR rules to deliver benefits of innovation to people of all countries. As an important force for global scientific innovation and a major country of IPR, China is ready to work with all countries as always, take the historic opportunity presented by the latest round of scientific revolution and industrial revolution to speed up translating scientific outcomes into real productivity, build an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for scientific development, tap new drivers for post-COVID economic growth and jointly achieve leapfrog development. CCTV: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended a meeting between foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary-General. Do you have a readout on that? Zhao Lijian: Today, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended via videolink a meeting between foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary-General in Beijing. State Councilor Wang said that the international community has high expectations for the P5, hoping in particular that they will strengthen solidarity and coordination and be a source of confidence and stability for the world. First, the P5 are duty-bound to safeguard world peace. We should become a positive rather than negative factor for peace and be solution-providers rather than trouble-makers. In resolving hotspot issues, we should adhere to the UN Charter, give full play to mediation, make good use of peacekeeping missions, use coercive sanctions with caution and prudence, and refrain from wanton use of force. Second, the P5 are duty-bound to practice multilateralism. All parties set great store by the US President's statement that he is not seeking a "new Cold War". The key is to translate this statement into action by abandoning the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game, renouncing ideological prejudice and exclusive cliques, and rejecting the impulse of group confrontation and geopolitical rivalry. Countries will be watching. Third, the P5 are duty-bound to promote solidarity against COVID-19. We should unequivocally oppose attempts to politicize the pandemic, label the virus, and use origins tracing as a tool, and remove all words and actions that interfere with international cooperation against the coronavirus. Fourth, the P5 are duty-bound to promote global cooperation. In his speech at the General Debate of the UN General Assembly, President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Development Initiative, which aims to galvanize global synergy and speed up the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We welcome the active participation of all parties. The P5 have made commitments to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, and should keep our word. AFP: I have a question on the South Korean presidential race. One of the leading candidates said that if elected he would urge the US to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea if it is threatened by the North. What is China's position on the redeployment of US nuclear weapons in South Korea? Zhao Lijian: China's position on the Korean Peninsula and the nuclear issue is consistent and clear. It is irresponsible that some politician in the ROK make an issue out of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. Global Times: An interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery was held a few days ago during the 48th session of the Human Rights Council, where many countries expressed concern over human trafficking and forced labor in the US. Could you shed some light on China's position? Zhao Lijian: China shares the concern over human trafficking and forced labor in the US. Throughout history, the US practiced abhorrent slavery and slave trade and committed genocide against American Indians. Today the US still remains plagued with human trafficking and forced labor. I'd like to share some statistics with you: nearly 100,000 people are trafficked to the US from abroad for forced labor annually in the past five years, with half of them ending up in sweat shops or domestic enslavement; around 500,000 child laborers, many below the age of ten, are trapped working 72-hour weeks in the agricultural sector in the US; roughly 240,000 to 325,000 women and children in the US are victims of sexual slavery; the average life expectancy of children after sex trafficking is 7 years. Behind these numbers are tragedies, broken families and living and breathing individuals whose fundamental rights are trampled upon. The deliberate indifference and inaction of the US government is directly culpable for the fermenting human trafficking and forced labor issues. The US is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); nor has it ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The US should take immediate actions to ratify relevant human rights treaties, crack down on crimes of human trafficking and forced labor, rescue innocent women and children and bring those responsible to justice. The international community will continue to voice concern over human trafficking and forced labor in the US. The Human Rights Council and relevant mechanisms should give continued attention to these issues and take necessary actions. Kyodo News: Yesterday, the Taiwan authorities submitted application to join the CPTPP. Considering that China's mainland and the Taiwan region both acceded to the WTO, what is China's comment on the position of the Taiwan authorities? Zhao Lijian: There is only one China in the world, and the Taiwan region is an inalienable part of China's territory. The one-China principle is a universally recognized norm governing international relations and the consensus of the international community. China firmly opposes all official interactions between Taiwan and any country, firmly rejects Taiwan's accession to any agreement or organization of official nature. China's position on this issue is clear. People's Daily: According to reports, vaccine assistance from China has arrived in African countries including Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire and Kenya. Cambodia, Cuba and other countries have also received medical supplies from China. Could you update us on how many doses of vaccines China has provided to how many countries? Zhao Lijian: To date, China has provided 1.2 billion doses of finished and bulk vaccines to more than 100 countries and international organizations and provided assistance of anti-epidemic supplies to over 150 countries and 14 international organizations. We have also played our role in actively supporting UN agencies in combating COVID-19. This is a strong testament to China's deep bond of friendship with other countries and also a vivid illustration of our shared journey through weal and woe. Relevant countries and international organizations have compared China-assisted vaccines and supplies to "timely rain", acknowledging their positive role in helping fight the pandemic and protecting people's health. At the General Debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, President Xi Jinping stressed the need to make vaccines a global public good and ensure vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries. Of pressing priority is to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of vaccines globally. China will strive to provide a total of 2 billion doses of vaccines to the world by the end of this year. In addition to donating 100 million US dollars to COVAX, China will donate 100 million doses of vaccines to other developing countries in the course of this year. China will carry on international anti-epidemic cooperation and continue to make its efforts and contributions until COVID-19 is vanquished across the globe. We will do our best to promote the equitable access to vaccines in developing countries. We also call on capable countries to take concrete actions to support and help the vast developing world in acquiring vaccines and necessary anti-epidemic supplies and to contribute to the global efforts to defeat the pandemic and resume development. Kyodo News: I have a question on Australia's acquisition of nuclear submarines. Yesterday, the Chinese foreign ministry expressed opposition to Australia's development of nuclear submarines. According to my knowledge, the People's Liberation Army of China also possesses some nuclear submarines. Does the foreign ministry mean that China will not build any new nuclear-powered submarines in the future? Zhao Lijian: I answered three relevant question yesterday to make clear elaboration on China's position. As a non-nuclear weapon state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, Australia is now introducing nuclear submarine technology of strategic and military value. The international community, including China, has full reason to question whether Australia is serious about fulfilling its nuclear non-proliferation commitments. Whether China, a nuclear weapon state party to the NPT, will build new nuclear submarines is a completely different issue. Beijing Daily: During the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Australia's grave violation of human rights drew wide criticism. Can you further elaborate on China's position on the issue? Zhao Lijian: In Australian offshore detention centers, a large number of refugees and migrants have been long held with chronic mental and physical sufferings, and unnatural deaths occur from time to time. Outsourced to private security firms, the detention centers have bad living conditions. The Australian government fails to effectively monitor them and gravely violates the human rights of refugees and migrants. Historically, Australia committed genocide against the Aboriginals and inflicted permanent pain on the "stolen generation" by taking 100,000 Aboriginal children by force from their families. Even today, the average life expectancy of the Aboriginal Australians is 8.2 years shorter than that of White people. The Aboriginals account for 3.3% of the Australian population but 28% of the prisoner population. The Australian Aboriginals are still subjected to serious unfair treatment in living conditions, law enforcement and justice system, among others. During the war in Afghanistan, Australian troops brutally killed prisoners of war and even civilians by shooting or cutting their throats. My colleagues and I have shed light on and condemned the atrocity of the Australian troops many times. The truth has come to light, but justice is still not upheld. These Australian troops remain at large despite their grave war crimes. Afghan lives also matter. The Australian side owes the world an explanation. Bloomberg: Chinese Taipei is a member of the WTO. Could a similar arrangement be made for the CPTPP? Zhao Lijian: I just gave an clear answer on China's position on this issue. China News Service: Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, recently announced that a deadly drone strike launched by the US in Kabul in late August killed 10 civilians including 7 children. The youngest victims were only 2 years old. "We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K, or were a direct threat to US forces," he added. McKenzie said that the strike was a "tragic mistake". Do you have any comment? Zhao Lijian: China believes that the use of all weapons, including armed drones, should comply with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international humanitarian law. The abuse of drones by the US to launch attacks without accurate verification in advance claimed the lives of 10 innocent civilians, including those of children. This has gravely violated international humanitarian law. It is not only an irresponsible use of force, but also an outright crime. Openly available reports show that the incidents of civilian deaths in Afghanistan as a result of US drone strikes happen frequently. A former US soldier and a drone pilot said in a testimony for a UN expert committee that US drone strikes were purely "killing for the sake of killing", and that the US airstrikes led to far more Afghan civilian deaths than the official statistics of the US government. China urges the US side to thoroughly investigate the incident, bring the perpetrators and those responsible to justice, make responsible explanations to the Afghan people and the international community, and avoid repeating such tragedy in the future. Beijing Media Network: It is reported that representatives of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan had a debate on Japan's plan to discharge nuclear contaminated water into the sea at the 65th Annual Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference on September 21. The ROK side criticized Japan for unilaterally making the disposal decision without consulting neighboring countries and urged Japan to reconsider it. Japan responded by saying that this ocean discharge plan is technically "feasible". Do you have any comment? Zhao Lijian: Japan claims that its ocean discharge plan is technically "feasible", but there are frequent reports that TEPCO is irresponsible and unprofessional. As recent as last week, the media reported that 24 of TEPCO's 25 multi-nuclide removal devices which are used to purify the nuclear contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are broken. In addition, leakage at the nuclear waste containers at the Fukushima plant has been reported three times since March. With technology and supervision like this and TEPCO's poor record of tampering with data and covering up accidents, the international community has every reason to question the confidence of the Japanese representative when he said that the plan is technically "feasible". In addition to the ROK, many Pacific-rim countries including China, Russia, and Pacific island countries, have expressed similar concerns and doubts over the Japanese government's unilateral decision to discharge nuclear contaminated water from Fukushima into the ocean. The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) said that the basic concerns of the PIF members over Japan's ocean discharge decision have not been answered and resolved. By forcibly pushing for the preparatory work for releasing nuclear contaminated water into the sea, Japan is forcing its own mistake on the international community. This extremely irresponsible approach is completely unacceptable. Instead of finding excuses for its wrong decision, the Japanese government should face up to the serious harm this may do to the global marine environment, seriously reflect on itself, earnestly shoulder responsibilities and win the trust of its neighbors and the international community with real actions. Japan should refrain from wantonly discharging the nuclear contaminated water before reaching consensus with all stakeholders and relevant international agencies through full consultations. This image shows InSight's domed Wind and Thermal Shield, which covers its seismometer. The image was taken on the 110th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The seismometer is called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS. The lander cleared enough dust from one solar panel to keep its seismometer on through the summer, allowing scientists to study the three biggest quakes they've seen on Mars. On Sept. 18, NASA's InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be about a magnitude 4.2 and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half. This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On Aug. 25, the mission's seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1. For comparison, a magnitude 4.2 quake has five times the energy of the mission's previous record holder, a magnitude 3.7 quake detected in 2019. The mission studies seismic waves to learn more about Mars' interior. The waves change as they travel through a planet's crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface. What they learn can shed light on how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon. The quakes might not have been detected at all had the mission not taken action earlier in the year, as Mars' highly elliptical orbit took it farther from the Sun. Lower temperatures required the spacecraft to rely more on its heaters to keep warm; that, plus dust buildup on InSight's solar panels, has reduced the lander's power levels, requiring the mission to conserve energy by temporarily turning off certain instruments. The team managed to keep the seismometer on by taking a counterintuitive approach: They used InSight's robotic arm to trickle sand near one solar panel in the hopes that, as wind gusts carried it across the panel, the granules would sweep off some of the dust. The plan worked, and over several dust-clearing activities, the team saw power levels remain fairly steady. Now that Mars is approaching the Sun once again, power is starting to inch back up. "If we hadn't acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great science," said InSight's principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. "Even after more than two years, Mars seems to have given us something new with these two quakes, which have unique characteristics." Temblor Insights While the Sept. 18 quake is still being studied, scientists already know more about the Aug. 25 quakes: The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight - the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far. Scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves traveled, but they know the shaking occurred too far to have originated where InSight has detected almost all of its previous large quakes: Cerberus Fossae, a region roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 6,027 miles (9,700 kilometers) from InSight. To the surprise of scientists, the Aug. 25 quakes were two different types, as well. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterized the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander - only about 575 miles (925 kilometers) away. That's good news for seismologists: Recording different quakes from a range of distances and with different kinds of seismic waves provides more information about a planet's inner structure. This summer, the mission's scientists used previous marsquake data to detail the depth and thickness of the planet's crust and mantle, plus the size of its molten core. Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest - and, to a seismometer, noisiest - time on Mars. InSight's seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind. Looking ahead, the mission's team is considering whether to perform more dust cleanings after Mars solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. Because the Sun's radiation can affect radio signals, interfering with communications, the team will stop issuing commands to the lander on Sept. 29, though the seismometer will continue to listen for quakes throughout conjunction. More About the Mission JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors. Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the leading international financial hub in the Middle East and Africa region, has announced that HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, in his capacity as the Ruler of Dubai, has made amendments to the Employment Law. The Board of Directors of the DIFC Authority also issued new Employment Regulations, which brings the Qualifying Scheme regime under the Employment law in line with DFSAs Employee Money Purchase Scheme, so that only a single layer of regulation is applied to these schemes. The amendments to the Employment Law clarify the application of limitation periods to claims made under the Employment Law, the accrual of vacation leave, the duration of the probationary period for short term fixed-term contracts, and certain defined terms used in the law. The Amendment Law also modifies the basic workplace health and safety requirements under the Employment Law, to account for working from home arrangements. It reflect the Centres continuing commitment to maintaining a transparent and robust legal and regulatory framework aligned with global best practice.-TradeArabia News Service The UAE is poised to be a global hub for cryptocurrency as market capitalisation hit $1.4 trillion, up 86% year to date, said experts ahead of the AIM Summit running from October 11 12 in Dubai, UAE. The worlds leading alternative investment summit, global and regional pioneers Coinbase, BitOasis and Matrix spoke of how this space is growing in the region and of the regulatory policy being laid out in preparation to service these demand needs. Cryptocurrency adoption in the Middle East is higher than its ever been. On the BitOasis platform, weve seen transaction volumes exceed $3 billion in the first half of 2021. User signups have also soared, effectively doubling our platforms user base in the last six months, said Srinu Chowhan, VP Marketing & Growth, BitOasis. This emerging sector is growing in breadth and depth during a period of pandemic-driven turbulence and unprecedented economic policy interventions. Prices declined nearly 50% between April and July, yet more than US$2 billion of investment was allocated to the sector in August. Underneath all of that, technical and financial innovation is flourishing. The world is realizing what many of us have known for a while: virtual assets are here to stay, added Terry Culver, CEO Matrix. On a more global level, Coinbase has continued to witness strong demand from their institutional practice. Coinbases institutional practice saw strong demand from institutional investors in the first half of the year, continuing momentum from 2020. The first half of 2021 significantly improved Ethereums five-year performance, bringing the assets total return to 17,962% for the period with many of our largest institutional clients, including hedge funds, endowments, and corporates, increased or added first-time exposure to ETH, said John DAgostino, Director, Institutional Sales and Strategic Accounts, Coinbase. While the region prepares to deliver on this largely unmet demand, there are also significant inroads being made on the regulatory framework to ensure that transparency and trust form the foundation for the long-term growth. With growth comes regulation. It is a necessary stage of development for the sector, and the recent and ongoing regulatory changes are significant. For example, the policies in the US regarding tokens as securities or in China regarding mining have had an immediate impact, and the sector is adapting quickly. This is one reason we choose to launch Matrix in ADGM. The ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market) virtual asset policy framework is thoughtful and clear, and sets a high standard. It enables us to build our business with confidence that we are protecting our customers, added Culver, CEO Matrix. Since our launch in 2015, we have been working very closely with policymakers and regulators to build trust and transparency into the crypto ecosystem. BitOasis meticulously self-regulated to ensure the platform was at par with some of the best digital asset exchange platforms in the world. This has also helped regulators recognize us as an established and trustworthy entity, making them open to have that regulation-building conversation with us. We are also constantly working with regulators to refine and enhance our product offering, thus helping us shape a more efficient crypto ecosystem, added Chowhan, VP Marketing & Growth, BitOasis. On a more global level, regulation remains equally paramount. Coinbase plans to roll out an alternative strategy to address the growing demands in broader international markets. We put a huge amount of effort into working with regulators in the US, UK, EU, etc. which has generated an enormous amount of value for customers in these regions, but it can also lead to products that are hyper focused on the western world. Were going to flip this approach on its head by shipping more products in international markets on day one, while still partnering with regulators in more established markets to ensure our products are compliant with their local rules, concluded DAgostino, Director, Institutional Sales and Strategic Accounts, Coinbase. DAgostino, Culver and Chowhan will be delving further into the complex world of digital assets at the 11th edition of the AIM Summit on from October 11 12 at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Also in attendance will be representatives from Tezos, Invictus Capital, RChain, Hut 8 and CasperLabs. TradeArabia News Service Ideal Standard, a leading provider of innovative bathroom solutions, said its unique series of cinematic events, Together World Tour, has landed in London, exploring the iconic and diverse design scene in the city. The London leg of Together World Tour, the innovative event series created specifically by Ideal Standard for the international architecture and design community, began on September 23. It is the third of six events taking place across the globe. An innovative fusion of digital content, the Together World Tour aims to inspire attendees by diving into the design culture of the six unique cities. Following the success of the first two events in Milan and Berlin, which saw the brand launch the striking new Linda-X and Extra ranges from its new Atelier Collections, the London event premiered Tipo-Z, the flagship piece from Atelier. The collections are influenced by the brands rich design heritage and are the result of the partnership with Italian design studio Palomba Serafini Associati (PS+A) and its co-founder Roberto Palomba, who is also Ideal Standards chief design officer. The latest film in the series showcased Londons unstoppable creativity and its influence on the design community, including the development of Tipo-Z. From celebrated artist Soheila Sokhanvari, to textile and fashion designer Darren Cross, the immersive event introduced some of Londons most celebrated artists, as well as exploring its most inspirational moments from over the years. The event was the first in the series to be premiered at a physical event, the Design London exhibition, as well as being streamed live from the Together World Tour microsite. At the exhibition, Ideal Standard also hosted several unique and creative sessions based on the key themes explored in the film, including forums with Soheila and Darren. Attendees at Design London were also able to experience the first UK showing of the Atelier Collections at Ideal Standards booth. Ideal Standard Mena CEO Ahmed Hafez said: "Creativity and design are fluid concepts and cannot be limited to geographies. London has been a melting pot of cultures since the turn of the century and is home to a dynamic mix of people, making it a city influenced by a multitude of cultures. "As the third edition of Together World Tour brought us to London, taking inspiration from the city, we dove into the diversity of design and how it has evolved over the years. Exploring the dynamism of our brand and its many applications on the multi-city journey that we have embarked on, taking our century old legacy to the next frontier," noted Hafez. Tipo Z is the centrepiece of the Atelier Collections and a modern reimaging of the Gio Pontis timeless Zeta basin, created by the Italian architect and designer in 1954. Approaching design as a timeless concept is a key notion at the heart of Atelier and Tipo-Z, which harness the past, present and future for inspiration. The flagship washbasin of the Atelier Collections draws from the original Zeta basin as well as the design and cultural diversity of cities like London to create a unique, statuesque basin with distinct character. Using cutting-edge technology, Tipo-Z has been cast as a single piece, with no gap between basin and pedestal, creating a complete, singular form which would not have been technically feasible in 1954. Owing to these technological advancements, Ideal Standard has used new materials and methods to create a durable, lightweight, ultra-thin basin. Roberto Palomba, co-founder of PS+A and chief design officer at Ideal Standard, said: Tipo-Z is a natural evolution of Gio Pontis original Zeta basin, drawing inspiration from modern life, the diversity and viewpoint of varying cultures, and Ideal Standards rich design heritage to create a unique piece for the present-day bathroom. "Tipo-Z has been sculpted into an architectural, monolithic silhouette, expressing elegance and allowing it to become the shining star of the bathroom," he noted. "We believe in designing pieces that push the boundaries of whats come before and challenge what we know about bathroom design. By capturing the elegant, iconic elements that Zeta expressed, we have reinvented its shape and used new technologies and materials to create a striking, lightweight single cast basin," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Expo 2020 Dubai has unveiled its community art project, known as Hammour House, at a preview attended by UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence and Commissioner General of Expo 2020 Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan. Hammour House will bring together fishermen, scientists, artists, students and a number of institutions to showcase a selection of visually striking and emotionally inspiring installations on-site. Inviting communities around the world to connect with the issues of sustainability, Hammour House examines the coral reefs of the UAE and its inhabitants, particularly the orange-spotted grouper, known locally as hammour. Sheikh Nahyan said: Hammour House embodies Expo 2020s theme, Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, which links creativity and engagement, and aims to bring the whole community together to build awareness, and enable action towards addressing our biggest challenges from the viewpoint of the arts. During the six-month mega-event - from October 1-March 31, 2022, the project will showcase a tapestry depicting marine life, created by school students using batik technique and sustainable dyes. It will also feature Hammour Fish, a sculpture made from ghost nets (fishing nets lost and/or abandoned at sea), by Australian artist Sue Ryan. In a programme that includes daily knitting experiences and UAE-based artist- and art teacher-led workshops, visitors will have the opportunity to contribute to an ever-growing coral reef sculpture, made from recycled materials The programme also presents musical evenings in collaboration with the Centre for Musical Arts (CMA), where students will compose and perform soundtracks, especially for Hammour House. Bringing together diverse segments of the community and organisations, Hammour House tells stories that respond to the expos subtheme of Sustainability (one of three subthemes, alongside Opportunity and Mobility), celebrating the underwater world. One of Hammour Houses inspirations is the One Thousand and One Nights story of Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman, particularly the introduction of the story where the fisherman develops a friendship with the merman and learns about underwater life and begins to appreciate that fish are not only a source of food, but also organisms subject to complex systems and hierarchies similar to those found on land. Expo 2020 Dubai Arts & Culture Senior Vice President Dr Hayat Shamsuddin said: We are highlighting connections between seemingly disconnected narratives and community members. By bridging arts with science, we aim to engage with serious topics to develop a deeper understanding of sustainability issues; and by facilitating connections between fishermen, scientists, artists, schoolchildren, and institutions, we aim to address the future of our oceans. "We also want visitors to consider that whatever happens in any body of the ocean, affects the entire state of the environment on a global scale.-TradeArabia News Service Engie, a global reference group in low-carbon energy and energy efficient solutions, has been honoured with a Gold award in the Environmental Sustainability Programme Large enterprise category. The firm also won a Silver and Bronze award for Innovation in Sustainable Technologies Large enterprise category at the Gulf Sustainability Award 2021. Held on September 20, 2021, at Jumeriah Creek Side Hotel in Dubai, Engies Blue Carbon project in partnership with the Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD) and Distant Imagery, was commended for its pioneering feat to restore the mangrove habitat in Abu Dhabi. In addition, Engie Solutions Integrated Centre for Engineering & Environment (iCEE) platform also took center stage for its capability to support clients in assessing operational and energy savings of their facilities and assets. Carbon dioxide is sequestered three to four times faster by mangrove forests than other ecosystems on the planet. The coastline of Abu Dhabi is covered by mangroves, which play a vital role in storing blue carbon and offsetting carbon emissions. The Blue Carbon project was launched in 2020 by Engie and EAD with an aim to ensure the rehabilitation of the regions natural biodiversity through impactful climate actions. Engies efforts are supported by its partner, Distant Imagery, specialists in engineering drone solutions based on blue carbon restoration expertise, who use their custom-built drones and innovative technology to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of planting mangrove seeds. Similarly, with the aim to drive sustainable technology solutions across the business, and support clients in their transition towards becoming carbon neutral, Engie Solutions set up an Operational Control Centre called The Integrated Centre for Engineering & Environment (iCEE). From there Engie operates smart IoT platforms that include artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically identify energy and operational savings and detect issues before they happen. Florence Fontani, EVP Communications & Sustainability, Engie Africa Middle East & Asia, said: Engie is committed to a carbon-neutral transition, and through natural based solutions we are actively contributing to the sustainable development goals. Blue carbon ecosystems also support local industries like fishing, tourism, and agriculture to flourish, that has the potential to contribute towards the UAEs carbon-neutrality and sustainability agenda. Projects such as the Blue Carbon project are fully aligned with Engies decarbonisation pathway as it uses scientific expertise to provide innovative solutions to offset CO2 emissions. The Gulf Sustainability Award 2021 celebrates conscientious business practice within the region that are leading the way for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance. It aims to inspire businesses to take the road towards sustainability and promote changes in that regard.-- TradeArabia News Service The Board of Directors of the newly formed Dubai International Chamber has identified target markets for expanding Dubais trade to AED2 trillion ($540 billion) in the next five years. Member companies of Dubai International Chamber will work towards achieving this target and consolidating Dubais position as a global trade hub. The board discussed ways to leverage the Chambers international network to tap into the 30 priority markets, which have been identified as high potential markets that can accelerate the growth of Dubais foreign trade. In its first meeting at the Dubai Chamber headquarters chaired by Sultan bin Sulayem, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dubai International Chamber, it was acknowledged that trade is the cornerstone of Dubais economy and essential for its diversification. Board members who took part were Helal Saeed Al Marri; Stephen Moss; Gassan Al Kibsi; Mark Willis; Nader Haffar; Dr. Habib Mulla; Nabil Habayeb; Sanjiv Kakkar; Elissar Farah Antonios; Julia Onslow-Cole; Rani R. Raad; Rola Abu Minh; May Nasrallah Merville; Shukri Eid; and Ahmed Alkhallafi. The meeting was also attended by Hamad Buamim, President & CEO, of Dubai Chamber. Through integrated plans, the chamber will target new international markets and support the expansion of national companies abroad. The chamber will also support and integrate global investors, entrepreneurs and talent into Dubais flourishing business community within a comprehensive framework that ensures providing an agile pro-business environment, said Bin Sulayem. I am confident that the Dubai International Chamber will not only achieve its new targets but take Dubais trade ties with promising markets to the next level. The Chamber is already in strong position to achieve its objectives as it can leverage Dubai Chambers resources and vast network of international representative offices across Africa, Eurasia and Latin America, he added. Dubai International Chamber was established to strengthen partnerships with global corporations, investors and entrepreneurs and boost Dubais status as a major trade hub. Adopting a more specialised approach to driving Dubais foreign trade, the chamber will promote the opportunities that the emirate offers in facilitating trade flows. The Chamber was established under the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, as part of a recent government restructuring that aims to drive a comprehensive economic development in Dubai.-- TradeArabia News Service Mastercard has launched Strive, a global initiative focused on strengthening the financial resilience of small businesses, with initial commitment of $25 million in philanthropic funding. To address the transition to digital, Mastercard, through the Centre for Inclusive Growth, will help five million micro and small businesses around the world access the tools and resources they need to digitise. Micro and small enterprises are important contributors to job creation and global economic development, representing approximately 90% of business and more than 50% of employment worldwide. However, the pandemic necessitated a rapid shift to digital platforms and processes that have created new opportunities but also pushed many to the brink of failure. today launched Strive, and supporting their recovery and growth. When small businesses thrive our local communities and economies thrive, but when they struggle, the impact is widespread, said Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard. What small business owners need right now are partners who will listen to them and develop innovative solutions that will help them grow in the wake of the pandemic. It comes down to an investment in making their success our success. Thats what makes programmes like Strive so critical today and tomorrow. This programme builds on lessons learned and a body of work developed as part of Mastercards long-term focus on financial inclusion, said Shamina Singh, President and Founder of the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth. By leading with an equity-intentional lens and partnership-driven approach, Strive will meet owners where they are and connect them to the resources they are telling us they need to succeed and grow over the long-term. As part of the Strive initiative, global platforms will combine with localised programmes to address and respond to the unique challenges and opportunities of the most vulnerable small business populations in regions across the world. Strive Community the first of these programmes will impact more than five million small businesses across Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. With the support of Caribou Digital, a research and advisory firm focused on aiding the development of inclusive and ethical digital economies, the programme will help small businesses utilise technology resources that will digitise their operations, streamline financial and back-office services and improve market access to ensure they succeed in our modern economy. Grants will be allocated to organisations that are experienced in working with micro and small business owners. We are excited to partner with Mastercard to provide small businesses with the tools they need to reach their potential in a digital world, said Chris Locke, founder of Caribou Digital. By partnering with a wide range of interconnected organisations, the programme will deliver valuable resources for digitisation and foster further innovation, while enabling us to drive impact at scale. With a data insights first approach, Mastercard is responsibly working with regional fintechs, social impact firms and non-profit organisations to ensure the most vulnerable small businesses have access to secure tools and resources that will simplify their ability to manage cash flow, gain and retain customers and prosper digitally. In Europe, Strive Community will initially partner with fintechs to support small businesses in Spain and France. Strive UK, the second programme launched as part of the Strive initiative, aims to bolster the financial resilience and unlock the growth of 650,000 UK micro and small enterprises through personalised advisory services, data science-driven tools, and insights and digitisation support. Working together with local small business focused NGOs including Enterprise Nation, Digital Boost and Be the Business, while complementing UK government efforts such as Help to Grow, Strive UK will focus on providing dedicated resources to the most vulnerable small businesses including those that are women and minority owned. Even before the pandemic, small businesses were falling behind their larger competitors in integrating digital technologies in the way they do business. A European Union survey in 2019 found that roughly 80 percent of large businesses had implemented at least one digital technology versus only 30% of micro businesses. Todays announcement builds on Mastercards $250 million commitment to support small businesses financial security made last year. Strive extends Mastercards longstanding commitment to financial inclusion, with efforts underway to bring in a total of one billion people and 50 million micro and small businesses with a focus on 25 million female entrepreneurs into the digital economy by 2025. John W.H. Denton, AO, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, said: Small businesses around the world continue to play a critical role in rebuilding a more inclusive and sustainable economy. Technology-driven, partner-led financial inclusion programmes of the kind developed by Mastercard can help small businesses strengthen their operations and will propel them into this new digital-first era we now inhabit.-- TradeArabia News Service PepsiCo, the official beverage and snack partner of Expo 2020 Dubai, has revealed three exciting new innovations as the World Expo readies to open its doors to welcome the world for 182 days starting from October 1. Pepsi Go is an AI-powered, unmanned store that will first open its doors at Expo 2020. In partnership with Mastercard, Pepsi Go has been designed around shoppers needs, and is secure and contactless. Start your journey by tapping, inserting or swiping a payment card to open the kiosks doors. Once inside, the store uses AI and computer recognition technology to track the PepsiCo snacks and beverages selected. To check out, simply exit and the Mastercard Payment Gateway Services technology automatically initiates the payment, making checkout queues a thing of the past. As part of an ongoing commitment to reduce single-use plastics, PepsiCo will debut the Aquafina Water Station at Expo. Providing a personalised experience while encouraging mindful consumption, the station allows you to customise your drink, choosing between still or sparkling water, with the option to add a variety of flavours. Once you have perfected your order, the Water Stations QR code-enabled reusable bottle syncs to the system, remembering your choices for personalised refreshment every time you visit. In line with its sustainability commitments, PepsiCo is also bringing compostable packaging for Sunbites, exclusively to Expo 2020. Industrially compostable and bio-based, the snacks new packaging includes plant-based materials and has a lower greenhouse gas footprint compared to a traditional snack bag, meaning the entire production line is kinder to the planet. Throughout Expo 2020, PepsiCo will take a leading role in showcasing the future of the food and beverage industry, from sustainable practices to exciting innovations that will transform the sector. TradeArabia News Service According to the World Health Organisation, the global average life expectancy increased by more than six years between 2000 and 2019 while the population grew by more than one billion. This, combined with rising cases of health conditions associated with diabetes and obesity, are putting healthcare systems under pressure to treat an increasing population suffering with sustained illnesses. Medical professionals must often choose between curing a patient of a condition or simply managing it over time to ensure they can live the best life possible. Many treatment plans are designed to monitor peoples illnesses, not necessarily cure them. This maintenance approach means patients require ongoing treatment from their healthcare provider, which is more costly and time-consuming than curing a condition. For medical conditions which are difficult to cure, such as diabetes and chronic wounds, the situation is more complex. Frequent care leads to higher costs In the case of chronic wounds such as leg and foot ulcers, the wound will need cleaning and redressing sometimes as often as three times a week to avoid infection. Wounds can take months to close, if they even heal at all, requiring a lot of time and resources from medical staff. Treating the wound over time, however long that is, can therefore cost a lot of money. According to a 2006 report by the Wound Healing Society, chronic wounds including pressure ulcers, diabetic ulcers, venous ulcers, and arterial insufficiency ulcers are becoming more frequent as the global population is living longer. Venous leg ulcers (VLU) alone are estimated to affect up to 3 percent of the global adult population. As the modern world becomes more populated, and as conditions such as diabetes and obesity are rising, cases of chronic wounds are expected to increase further. Healthcare systems will therefore need to dedicate more time and resources towards wound treatment; however, this will increase the costs associated with treating these patients. Wound treatment already costs global healthcare systems billions each year: treating VLU costs the US approximately $3 billion, while treating leg ulcers in the UK costs the NHS 1.94 billion. These costs are largely attributable to nurse visits and the bandages and dressing needed for treatment. Until recently, the maintenance approach has been widely adopted for treating chronic wounds. However, medical technology (MedTech) is introducing new methods of treatment which are making healthcare systems more efficient and cost-effective. Improving costs and patient care Medical devices are allowing new methods of treatment to be implemented into healthcare systems around the world, particularly in the treatment for chronic illnesses such as leg ulcers and diabetes. MedTech is working alongside, and in some cases instead of, traditional methods of treatment. Such devices are speeding up in patient recovery times, reducing the need for ongoing treatment and, crucially, decreasing costs for patients. This new breed of technology can also provide a permanent treatment to chronic medical conditions, rather than solely maintain a patients wellbeing over time. Integrating new devices within healthcare systems is not an easy process. It can take decades of consistent work and requires a lot of money, clinical data, regulatory approval and backing from clinicians within the system. MedTech devices are also required to meet regulatory approval before they can be implemented into healthcare systems; the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) are two of the worlds leading regulation services and help to set standards for healthcare across the globe. MedTech devices, such as Sky Medical Technologys geko device, can be used in the treatment of leg ulcers. Clinical data has found that increasing blood flow to the wound surface, thereby enhancing oxygen and nutrient delivery, ulcers can eventually be cured rather that treated and monitored over time. The wearable geko device sits behind a patients knee and sends short, painless electrical pulses down the leg to promote blood flow equal to 60 per cent of walking. This, in turn, increases circulation, reduces swelling and accelerates wound healing allowing the wounds to close in a matter of weeks as opposed to months or not at all. Now approved and regulated devices are being used by forward-thinking clinicians to treat conditions such as leg ulcers, significantly reducing the financial and staffing strains on healthcare systems all while improving patient outcomes. Implementing devices into evolving healthcare systems The challenges that drivers of MedTech innovation now face involve finding ways to reward innovation and risk without tearing up what already exists: how can we adopt new and improved solutions into existing treatment plans without causing harm, wasting time or losing money? The vast differences in healthcare systems around the world make this particularly complicated, especially in terms of costs. Healthcare payments vary depending on the type of treatment a patient needs, how long treatment can take, whether the patient can access public or private healthcare, and in some cases whether the patient is a native or an expatriate. Many healthcare systems across the world, including the US and parts of the Middle East, have traditionally operated under a fee for service payment scheme. This means each healthcare provider gets paid separately for each service they provided. For instance, if a nurse attended a patients home to redress a wound, that is one cost; if a patient needed a specialist assessment, that would be another, separate cost. Under this model, healthcare providers get paid regardless of whether the service leads to a positive patient outcome, including for treating a leg ulcer over time that does not ever heal. For the growing number of global patients suffering with chronic conditions who require long-term care management, especially wound care, this can result in extensive medical bills. However, many of these healthcare systems are shifting towards a fee for quality or episode-based approach. Under these systems, patients will pay for the quality of care they receive irrespective of how long and how often treatment is needed. Healthcare systems can predetermine the best products and approaches for treatment based on medical evidence, enabling patients to access the best quality and most cost-effective care, making it fairer and more effective for both providers and patients. This should in theory help to ease the pressure on healthcare systems which are having to treat an increasing number of individuals with chronic illnesses. The sooner patients can be treated and cured, more patient beds will be available, fewer nurse visits will be required and less resources will be needed. Better healthcare for all A less expensive, more efficient treatment plan for patients will allow healthcare systems to provide the best care possible seeking to adopt medical innovation with the aim of curing a patients illness as quickly and effectively as possible. MedTech is uniquely placed to bring about positive change across global healthcare systems. Instead of trying to ensure adoption of new innovations within the confines of the previous system, healthcare systems are changing to actively foster adoption. This important shift will not only enable more investment in the development of new medical technologies, but in turn will help lessen the pressure on the entire healthcare operation creating a brighter, more effective, and affordable system for all. Andrew Thelwell is Chief Commercial Officer at Sky Medical Technology (www.skymedtech.com) Help India! Instead of addressing recent issues facing women in the state, the unsubstantial claims of the Bishop have raised concerns whether he is genuinely concerned about women in Kerala and their issues or is simply using them as a tool for his agenda. Support TwoCircles Nikita D | TwoCircles.net KERALA The Pala diocese commemorated the Eight Day of Lent on September 9. At the event held in Kuravilangad Church in Kottayam, Kerala the Bishop of the diocese, Joseph Kallarangatt, gave a rather unusual speech that had nothing to do with the teachings of Christ or the festival of Lent. He delivered a speech on how Christian girls and women are falling prey to not just love jihad, but also narcotics jihad. He called it a war strategy against women where instead of using arms, narcotics were being used to derail the youth of the state. The excessive use of narcotics among the youth has been a topic of social concern in the south Indian state, but no one had publicly linked it to the misdoings of a particular religion. Bishop Kallarangatt has an expansive career in education and theology, including a ThD (Doctorate in Theology) from the Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. He has authored 30 books and is the chairman of the Syro-Malabar Synodal Commission for Family, Laity, and Life. He is an important authority figure who yields a lot of influence and power in the state, which is why his controversial remark caused a ripple effect. BJP and the Catholic Church This, however, is not the first time that the representative of a Catholic Church in the state has made such Islamophobic comments without backing it with evidence. In January 2020, Cardinal George Alencherry had commented, [It is] a matter of concern that love jihad is on the rise in Kerala. Love Jihad poses danger to secular harmony and societal peace in the state, the Cardinal was found stating. It is the same Cardinal who, along with two other Archbishops, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2021, following the expose of the economic offences of the Catholic Church. While most parties and organizations in Kerala denounced the Bishops comments, the BJP in Kerala reacted to the issue by supporting the claims of the Bishop. BJPs state president K Surendran stated that the Bishop is being silenced from speaking the truth, while the state unit sent a letter to the Home Minister asking to provide security to the Bishop against anticipated attacks. Is there a silent political allegiance between the BJP and the Catholic Church in Kerala? TwoCircles.net spoke to a renowned writer in Malayalam and one of the directors of the Indian Institute of Christian Studies, Kerala, Paul Zacharia, regarding the matter. Shedding light on the issue, he said, Kerala has had a fairly harmonious history of three religions, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, co-existing together. There is mudslinging in the political sphere which no one takes seriously. But when a serious religious head, stands at the altar and speaks the language of the Sangh Parivar by using the word jihad, it becomes concerning. Zacharia spoke about the Sangh Parivar-Catholic Church allegiance. This is part of a lengthy Parivar strategy which we have been observing here for the past 10 years. Their strategy is to pit Christians against the Muslims in hopes of winning at least one seat in the state assembly. The Catholic Church in Kerala is the most powerful segment in the state. They have amassed so much cash and black money that is unaccounted for. Modi-Shah have caught them by the tail on this and various investigations are ongoing. So the Church is being blackmailed brilliantly and they have to cave in because of the large amounts of unethical wealth they possess. Reaction across the state The controversy sparked reactions from all sides of the state. State actors such as the ruling CPI(M) government as well as the Opposition Congress government vociferously spoke over the distasteful comment. Pinarayi Vijayan, CM of Kerala said, The narcotic mafia should be seen as mafia, which is against the social fabric of the state, and religious tone should not be attributed to the mafia. However, he declined to register a case against the Bishop. He suggested holding discussions among the different sections involved. Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan made a public statement that appealed to the Kerala society to not jeopardize the peace and harmony between different communities in the state. Several Muslim organizations and other political groups staged protests outside the house of the Bishop. Kerala Sunni Federation demanded that the Bishop must corroborate remark with evidence, while the Jamaat Council called for legal action over hate speech and bid to divide the two communities. Hypocritical concern for women In his speech, Bishop Kallarangatt expressed concern over the growing cases of abuse and crime against women. However, Paul Zacharia told TwoCircles.net that it is the same Bishop who two months ago sent a letter to all the parishes under him asking the women to produce 5 children. He did this because he was worried that the Christian population is depleting. In a circular issued by the Bishop on July 27, 2021, financial support and incentives were assured to couples who married after 2000 and produced 5 or more children. It was only last month that the suicide of a woman in Kerala, allegedly due to the domestic violence she faced, caused a stir where many voices from Kerala spoke about the grave issue of domestic violence and marital rape in the state. Instead of addressing recent issues facing women in the state, the unsubstantial claims of the Bishop have raised concerns whether he is genuinely concerned about women and their issues or is simply using them as a tool for his agenda. Watch: COVID-19: I'm A Celebrity crew member blamed for sending thousands of Australians into lockdown An I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! crew member who tested positive for COVID-19 has been blamed for sending thousands of Australians into lockdown. The 31-year-old make-up artist flew to Ballina, New South Wales (NSW), from Sydney on Saturday, carrying an exemption that allowed her to travel for work-related purposes only, according to ABC News. She was working on the Australian production of the show when she reportedly visited shops, cafes, and restaurants in Byron Bay and Kingscliff without checking in using her QR code. She later tested positive for coronavirus, sparking a seven-day lockdown of the wider Tweed and Byron Shires. Queensland closed its borders to these areas at 1am on Wednesday. ITV told ABC the woman in question was "fully vaccinated and was wearing PPE while at work". It added that all of her close contacts were now in isolation. She has now been arrested for multiple breaches of public health orders. According to coronavirus restrictions in Australia, people who have travelled from Sydney, which is still in lockdown, must stay at home when they are not working. Catherine Cusack, a Liberal member of the NSW upper house, called on the state health minister, Brad Hazzard, to resign over the incident. Watch: COVID will end up resembling common cold by spring next year, leading experts say She tweeted on Tuesday: "I am devastated to learn the lockdown of Byron and Tweed LGAs triggered by a so called 'essential worker' closing businesses, schools and ruining cross border progress. 100% OUTRAGEOUS! Brad Hazzard massive fail - RESIGN!" Local leaders have also expressed anger at ITV studios over the filming of its shows in the area. I'm A Celebrity is based in Tweed Shire and Love Island is based in the nearby Byron Shire. Byron Shire mayor Michael Lyon said he is looking to rescind his council's approval for the filming of Love Island. Story continues "It is so devastating to be in lockdown again, and it is clear the honour system relied on by the state government is deeply flawed," he posted on Facebook. In a separate post, he added: "Our local community is once again paying the price for the lack of consideration as to how COVID can spread to the regions. "People are allowed to leave Sydney for a range of reasons and I think it's time the NSW government looked very closely at further tightening these rules that are allowing people to travel or, at the very least, restricting their movements while they are here." A spokesman from the Tweed Council said the community was "seeking clarity around what essential work exists that requires an individual from a Sydney hotspot to spend four hours at a Kingscliff Pub". The Australian version of the popular reality series is being filmed in the country for the first time due to coronavirus travel restrictions. It is usually filmed in South Africa. The UK version, meanwhile, is to be filmed in Wales for the second time. Armenia's Assyrian Community Oppose Village Rezoning Representatives of the Assyrian community of Armenia today gathered near the National Assembly and held a protest against inclusion of the Assyrian Dmitrov village in the process of enlargement of communities. The Assyrians call on the authorities to revisit the bill and not turn the 200-year-old village into a separate community. According to the residents of the village, this may put preservation of the language and culture of the villagers at risk. It should be mentioned that Armenia's laws stipulate that the villages with a compact population of representatives of national minorities must not be affected by the enlargement of communities. Nevertheless, the authorities want to merge the village with Artashat community. Head of Dimitrov village Irina Sahradova-Gasparyan says she and the residents had been promised that the village "wouldn't be enlarged", but in his recent speech in parliament, Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Gnel Sanosyan said "the Assyrians make up only 14% in the village". "The village school has only one Assyrian teacher. If Dimitrov becomes one of the 40 villages of Artashat community, who will think about the Assyrians?" Sahradova-Gasparyan said, adding that out of the 7 members of the village's council of elders, only one member is Assyrian. by Giorgio Licini * The new security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States comes at a time when there is talk of a new US military base on Manus Island (PNG). Meanwhile, container ships deliver Chinese goods to ports, while Beijing has set sights on Daru Island. An increasingly armed balance of power is emerging, raising fears that the ocean might became a theatre for military confrontation between major powers. Port Moresby (AsiaNews) After 18 months of secret negotiations, Australia has avoided Chinas encirclement in the Pacific through a security pact with the United States and the United Kingdom (AUKUS). The supply of technology for nuclear-powered submarines is a major part of the pact, but not as much as the promise that durable collaboration will be permanent and multifaceted. For at least a couple of years, unconfirmed rumors, but with obvious clues, had circulated, pointing to a new US air base in the Pacific with about 5,000 people next to an Australian naval base on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Soldiers from the two countries have been present for some time, seemingly to rehabilitate an old military facility in Lombrum, which played a crucial role in the Allied campaign in the Pacific during the Second World War. Not only Papua New Guinea, but all the islands of the Pacific now risk being caught up by the new confrontation between China and the West. The main interests of the two blocs are not in this part of the world, but a lot travels through the Pacific. Australia cannot remain trapped in the event of an air and sea blockade. In the worst-case scenario, the vast ocean lends itself to the decisive military confrontation between the two sides, far from their own coasts and the untouchable and perhaps unreachable sanctuaries of Los Angeles, Sydney, London, Shanghai and Shenzen. War, however, would be catastrophic for the Pacific region and its peoples. Already the sudden pandemic emergency in 2020 highlighted how much the economy can suffer from the interruption, even temporary and partial, of transportation, from delays in the delivery of products from China and Asia in general, from the contraction in demand for non-essential goods. The consequences would be devastating even in the case of mid-range conflict. The French reacted emotionally to Australia scrapping its agreement to buy French submarines. For Paris, the damage was not only financial and a blow to its international prestige, but also a show of deep disrespect in both form and timing, so much so that the French government recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra. Australia was cold and totally detached. Its government and a large part of public opinion place national interests and security ahead of human life and people as evinced by Australias approach to the recent crisis involving asylum seekers and refugees. How much Chinas military threat in the world is real or overblown is difficult to say. What is certain is that China has reached unprecedented levels of penetration in the world economy, far grater than any other country in the past. It is inevitable that its interests could be easily lost without military backup. In the Pacific (and elsewhere), the Chinese dont walk around with guns, but their supermarkets are open in cities and their small shops are multiplying in the remotest villages. Container ships unload Chinese goods in scores of ports. Chinas diplomatic missions abroad are very active in securing opportunities for investment, jobs, procurement in both the public and private sectors. Like others, they support host countries with infrastructure and development projects. Chinese diplomats closely monitor their Taiwanese counterparts in the few countries that still recognise the Republic of China and those that host its cultural or trade delegations, which operate as thinly disguised diplomatic missions. In 2019 Taiwan was forced out of the Solomon Islands. Despite denials, reports this year began suggesting that China wanted to turn Daru Island into a development hub. Located at the southern tip of Papua New Guinea, the place is but a few kilometres from the nearest Australian islands in the Torres Strait. From hindsight such anti-Chinese alarmism, which might seem excessive now, were probably a way for Australia to cover its back should its secret military negotiations with the United States and the United Kingdom be leaked. China has two main concerns, both of which are domestic in nature, but with significant international repercussions. The first one is about its population and the need for raw materials and resources of various kinds to ensure its survival and development. The second is the preservation and completion of national unity. Just over 20 years ago, the southern territories of Macau and Hong Kong returned to the motherland after being occupied by European colonial powers in past centuries. Following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, Taiwan broke away from the mainland and remains steadfastly opposed to reunification. For the international community, China also has other problems to solve in order to be understood and respected rather than feared. Certain complex facts must be mentioned rather than swept under the carpet, starting with domestic democratisation, human rights and pluralism. The issue is not about adopting a Western model outright, but of having free elections and multiple parties. Contrary to what some believe, they are possible while respecting Chinas character and sensitivities, with Taiwan as the living example in the past 70 years. Also worrisome is the unscrupulous and ethically dubious approach by Chinese businessmen and Beijings administrative-diplomatic apparatus in support of Chinas economic expansionism, with individual and political corruption as a commonly used tool. From a geopolitical perspective, the disputes with various countries over a number of Chinese-occupied maritime zones and islands that are near the coast of Philippines and very far from Chinas coasts, have raised suspicions about Beijings possible use of force when and where it deems it necessary (including in Taiwan). Australians have no major or reliable ally in Southeast Asia or the Pacific that could help them keep lines of communication with the world open in case of disruptive actions by China. Well equipped, however, with the atavistic cynicism of their origins, they know not to underestimate Chinese unscrupulousness. AUKUS has left France and Europe out in the cold, but it will cure the formers short-sightedness and the latters blindness. It is clear that France has major interests in the Pacific, starting with hundreds of thousands of its own citizens (almost 300,000 in New Caledonia alone). It is also the only European country with substantial post-colonial influence in West Africa and the Pacific. AUKUS has clipped Frances wings to the extent that its much-coveted monopoly in the East in support of Australia, with all that implied for the decades to come, is now gone. At present, the French can no longer put national prestige before shared European interests. For its part, the Old Continent, almost blind to the global blocs of interest and tired of its centuries-old history of wars and killings assuming that it develops some ambition or is forced by events to take sides cannot do much without France. In any case, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia also have an interest in mending fences with France and Europe. AUKUS unequivocally reasserts Anglo-American leadership in the West and is sympathetically viewed by the great pro-Western and anti-Chinese powers of the East (starting with India and Japan). Nevertheless, everyone has an interest in France remaining a Pacific power. Europe too has an interest in working with AUKUS, not to win a war, which would devastate the Circum-Pacific region, but, perhaps, to preserve the peace, an increasingly armed peace, in a region paradoxically more pacific in name than in fact, which risks being torn apart in the future by external interests and fears. * Secretary General, Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands The US president spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. India will once again play a role in vaccine production, resuming exports next month. At least 45 per cent of Indians got a first dose. Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) US President Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. In his address, he said that one way to stop the pandemic is to have vaccines produced in the most vulnerable countries. We are working with partner nations, pharmaceutical companies, and other manufacturers to increase their own capacity and capability to produce and manufacture safe and highly effective vaccines in their own countries, Biden said. Under this plan, India would play again a central role in the fight against the coronavirus. Back in April, the countrys authorities suspended vaccine exports to cope with a devastating second wave surge. In his speech, the US president noted that QUAD[*] countries (US, Australia, Japan and India) will produce at least a billion doses in India in order to boost global supply by 2022. South Africa is also getting help to increase its Johnson & Johnson production, the US president said, so that at least 500 million doses will be available in the African continent. So far, the United States has donated 160 million doses through COVAX, the World Health Organisation's program that seeks to ensure equal access to immunisation for all the countries of the world. Back in April, India ended its participation in the initiative to deal with an exponential rise in infections, which peaked on 6 May with 414,188 new cases reported in a single day. By comparison, yesterday there were only 31,923 cases. Before exports were suspended, India was a key supplier of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which unlike mRNA vaccines, does not need to be kept in cold storage, thus making worldwide distribution easier. According to COVAX, delays in the first part of the year cut vaccines global availability by 25 per cent. On Monday, Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced that his government would resume exporting excess vaccines in October. In recent months, the vaccination campaign in the country picked speed; so far, more than 45 per cent of the population has had a first dose and almost 16 per cent a second one. Two locally-produced vaccines Covishield (under license from AstraZeneca) and Covaxin, by Bharat Biotech, an Indian pharmaceutical firm have made this result possible. India had exported 66 million doses before April. When Narendra Modi's government suspended exports, it was criticised for leaving other countries to face a vaccine shortage. [*] Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. by Shafique Khokhar Pakistans religious establishment rejects a bill designed to stop kidnappings for the purpose of marriage. For minority leaders, this legitimises coercion and legalises abuses. Islamabad (AsiaNews) In Pakistan, the countrys minorities continue to be alarmed by the growing number of kidnappings of underage non-Muslim girls and young women forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men. Making matters worse, Muslim religious authorities recently came out against a bill that would have put a stop to such abuses and banned forced conversion. As a result, the bill has been dropped. Minority leaders have slammed this decision, done without any discussion with the interested parties. Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, special adviser on religious harmony to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, recently called the bill anti-Quran. I want to make it clear that no bill can be passed against the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah because the Constitution of Pakistan is under the Quran, he said. Under the Pakistani constitution of 1973, equal status and equal opportunities are guaranteed to all of the countrys citizens. However, very little is in place to uphold those principles. Instead, crimes like forced religious conversion are widespread, facilitated by systemic discrimination, and a tolerant attitude towards such abuses by political and religious groups within the Muslim majority. According to the Minority Caucus (MC), a minority support group, The government must set the legal age at 18 years for marriage and make the national identity card mandatory to solemnise marriage(s). This is a first step to discourage those who, legitimised by an unfair law, can commit acts of violence and abuse against girls and teenage women. At a press conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Islamabad, members of pro-minority political parties spoke out against the bills rejection. The right not to be forced to change religion is an absolute human right guaranteed in international human rights instruments to which Pakistan is a party, said MC joint secretary Yasir Talib. Muslim clerics and religious scholars should avoid viewing any legislation to protect minorities rights as if it is against the majority religion, he explained. What is more, they should abstain from looking at the reprehensible practice of forced conversions through a majoritarian lens, and eschew imposing their own religious ideology on religious minorities, he added. For MC president, Lala Robin Daniel, The government should take appropriate measures to ensure that complaints are impartially and promptly investigated, perpetrators are apprehended and brought to justice, and victims have access to an effective remedy, exercising their right to a fair trial. For his part, MC convenor Manzoor Anthony wants Muslim scholars to support such a bill against using coercion in religion, as rejection to the proposed bill will be tantamount to facilitating the actors involved in forcible faith conversion. The first problem for Philippine voters is registering for next Mays election. Offices have been closed for weeks due to the pandemic. Ex boxer Manny Pacquaio has announced a run for the presidency, but faces Duterte loyalists. The outgoing president cannot run under current rules. Manila (AsiaNews/Agencies) Next years presidential election in the Philippines is heating up after popular professional boxer Manny Pacquiao announced his intention to jump into the political arena to become President Rodrigo Duterte's successor. At present though, Filipinos have to deal with difficulties in registering for the May 2022 election. Just one week before the deadline for registration on 30 September, people are queuing up for hours outside the offices of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). The lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc to the registration process since COMELEC offices were shut down for months. Many groups and Members of the Philippine Congress are urging the commission to extend the registration period by at least one month and to allow registration even in areas under tighter quarantine measures. While waiting for a decision, local media are describing scenes with people waiting six to eight hours just to register. What is more, presidential hopefuls have until 8 October to fill out the paperwork to become candidates. Under the countrys current constitution, incumbent Duterte cannot run again. This left the field to people like Manny Pacquiao, a 42-year-old boxer and senator, who announced his intention to run for president last Monday. Although a member of the PDP-Laban, Dutertes own party, Pacquiao is running against Dutertes record, especially over the question of relations with China. He has in fact accused the outgoing president of being too soft on China and its territorial claims in the South China Sea and wants to boost the traditional alliance with the United States. In all likelihood however, Pacquiao will not be the only PDP-Laban candidate of. Duterte loyalists have already declared their support for Senator Christopher Lawrence "Bong" Go, who has not yet accepted. Further mudding the waters, Duterte is planning to run for vice president while his daughter Sara Duterte, the popular incumbent mayor of Davao City, is waiting in the wings. Francis celebrated Mass with participants at the plenary assembly of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences. The 'dictatorship of consumerism, whimsical but suffocating, attempts to quench' the thirst for Christ. "Leaving behind the conveniences of the immediate in order to return to the farsighted vision of the founding fathers, a prophetic and comprehensive vision, because they did not seek the consensus of the moment, rather they dreamt a future for all". Vatican City (AsiaNews) - To help Europe "sick with fatigue" rediscover "the ever-youthful face" of Jesus and the Church, Pope Francis says the continent's bishops the need to "reflect, rebuild, see". Francis' reflection came during the Eucharistic celebration with the participants in the plenary assembly of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (CCEE), on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its establishment, this afternoon in St Peter's Basilica. First of all, the Pope pointed out, it is necessary to reflect on how to behave in the Europe of today. "We Christians are tempted to stay comfortable in our structures, in our homes and in our churches, in the security provided by tradition, in the satisfaction of a certain consensus, while all around us the temples are emptying and Jesus is increasingly forgotten. Let us reflect: how many people no longer hunger and thirst for God! Not because they are bad, no, but because there is no one who can give them the appetite for faith and rekindle that thirst that exists in the human heart: that "concrete and perpetual thirst" of which Dante Alighieri speaks (Paradise, II, 19) and which the dictatorship of consumerism, light but suffocating, tries to extinguish. Many are led to feel only material needs, not the lack of God". Yet material possession does not give happiness. The Pope questioned "are we content because in the end we lack nothing to live on, or are we restless at seeing so many brothers and sisters far from the joy of Jesus?" "The lack of charity causes unhappiness, because only love satisfies the heart". The problem can be "concentrating on the various positions in the Church, on debates, agendas and strategies, and losing sight of the real programme, that of the Gospel: the impetus of charity, the ardour of gratuitousness. The way out of problems and closures is always that of free gift. There is no other". The "second step: rebuilding. "Rebuild my house", God asks through the prophet (Hag 1:8). And the people rebuild the temple. They stop being content with a quiet present and work for the future. This is what the construction of the common European house needs: to leave behind the conveniences of the present and return to the farsighted vision of the founding fathers, a prophetic and comprehensive vision, because they did not seek the consensus of the moment, but dreamt of the future for all. This is how the walls of the European house were built, and only in this way can they be strengthened. This also applies to the Church, the house of God. To make it beautiful and hospitable, we must look to the future together, not restore the past. Of course, we must start from the foundations, because that is where we can rebuild: from the living tradition of the Church, which is based on the essentials, on the good news, on closeness and on witness. From here we rebuild, from the foundations of the Church of the origins and of all time, from adoration of God and love of neighbour, not from our own particular tastes". The great saints of Europe "did not worry about dark times, adversity and some divisions, which have always existed. They did not waste time criticising and blaming. They lived the Gospel, regardless of relevance and politics. Thus, with the mild strength of God's love, they incarnated his style of closeness, compassion and tenderness, and built monasteries, reclaimed lands, gave back souls to people and countries: no social programme, only the Gospel". "Let us encourage one another, without ever giving in to discouragement and resignation: we are called by the Lord to a splendid work, to work so that his house may be ever more welcoming, so that everyone may enter and live in it, so that the Church may have its doors open to all and no one may be tempted to concentrate only on looking and changing the locks". It is therefore necessary to rebuild, but "all reconstruction takes place together, in the sign of unity. With others. There may be different visions, but unity must always be preserved. Because if we preserve the grace of unity, the Lord builds even where we fail. It is our call: to be Church, one Body among us. It is our vocation as shepherds: to gather the flock, not to disperse it, nor to preserve it in beautiful closed enclosures. Rebuilding means becoming craftsmen of communion, weavers of unity at every level: not by strategy, but by the Gospel. If we rebuild in this way, we will give our brothers and sisters a chance to see". This is the third point. "Many people in Europe think that faith is something already seen, that it belongs to the past. Why? Because they have not seen Jesus at work in their lives. And often they have not seen him because we have not shown him enough in our lives. Because God is seen in the faces and gestures of men and women transformed by his presence. And if Christians, instead of radiating the contagious joy of the Gospel, repropose worn-out, intellectualistic and moralistic religious schemes, people do not see the Good Shepherd. They do not recognise the One who, in love with each of his sheep, calls them by name and seeks them out to put them on his shoulder. They do not see the One whose incredible Passion we preach, precisely because He has only one passion: man. This divine love, merciful and overwhelming, is the perennial novelty of the Gospel. And it asks of us, dear Brothers, wise and bold choices, made in the name of the mad tenderness with which Christ saved us. It does not ask us to demonstrate, but to show God, as the saints did: not with words, but with life. It asks for prayer and poverty, it asks for creativity and gratuitousness. Let us help today's tired Europe to rediscover the ever-youthful face of Jesus and his bride. We can only give our all so that this timeless beauty may be seen". At least 5,500 people have fled to the Indian state of Mizoram. The junta has bombed about twenty houses and killed a Baptist pastor. Emergency shelters made of metal sheets and tarpaulins have been set up for the displaced. Yangon (AsiaNews) - Following armed clashes between ethnic militias and Myanmar's military junta, thousands of people have fled from Chin State and crossed the border into India. About 10,000 people live in Thantlang under normal conditions, but in recent days at least 5,500 have fled to the Indian state of Mizoram. During the latest fighting at least 20 houses were set on fire in the area. According to Myanmar Now, soldiers also shot a Baptist pastor who was trying to put out the flames. The pro-government Global New Light of Myanmar disputed the report, saying the cleric's death was being investigated. A relative of the pastor told Reuters that only a few families and about 20 children in an orphanage remained in Thantlang. "Th"The murder of a Baptist minister and bombing of homes in Thantlang, Chin State are the latest examples of the living hell being delivered daily by junta forces against the people of Myanmar," Thomas Andrews, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said in a message on Twitter. After the National Unity Government called on the people to rise up against the military junta's rule, there has been an upsurge in clashes across the country. Attempts by militias to attack soldiers of the Tatmadaw (the Burmese army) has often led to retaliation against civilians. Last February 1st, in a coup d'etat, the military put an end to the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy. Salai Thang, head of the Thantlang community, said he was concerned about the displaced people. NGOs in Mizoram reported that most of the refugees arrived in India by crossing the Tiau River by boat. At the moment, the Burmese people who crossed the border are in temporary shelters made of sheets and tarpaulins, explained Young Mizo Association cooperators. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Could AI help optimize aneurysm surgeries? Members of the QAS.AI team. Left to right: Kelsey Sommer, chief operating officer; Vincent Tutino, chief financial officer; Ciprian Ionita, CEO; and Mohammad Mahdi Shiraz Bhurwani, the companys lead AI scientist over summer 2021. Sommer and Bhurwani are UB PhD students. Tutino and Ionita are UB faculty members. Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo UB spinoff QAS.AI is developing software trained on past cases to inform decision-making during surgical procedures Our collaboration with UBs Incubator @ CBLS has been extensive and extremely beneficial to us. Through mentoring programs and funding opportunities, we were able to develop a business plan and solution which addresses real clinical needs. The neurosurgeon is always going to be the driver. Our AI will provide valuable data and predictions to help the surgeon make informed decisions. BUFFALO, N.Y. A company founded by University at Buffalo researchers is looking to employ artificial intelligence (AI) to improve treatment of vascular lesions in the brain, starting with intracranial aneurysms. Called QAS.AI, the startup is developing software for the operating room. The program is trained on data from past surgeries and uses live video data analysis to forecast how likely a selected treatment method is to succeed in a new patient all while a procedure is going on. The goal is to provide real-time information to aid in decision-making during operations on intracranial aneurysms, which are bulges in arteries that can sometimes leak or burst. Ruptured aneurysms can lead to problems that can include stroke, coma or death. QAS.AI has received $256,000 from the U.S. National Science Foundations Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program to support development of its software. We want to see patients get the best health care, says Kelsey Sommer, QAS.AI chief operating officer and a UB PhD candidate in biomedical engineering. The main potential benefit is to reduce the rate of re-treatment. Re-treatment, involving another surgery, can come with so many complications and adds additional treatment cost. If we can improve outcomes from the initial surgery, the hope is that patients wont have to come back in. The neurosurgeon is always going to be the driver. Our AI will provide valuable data and predictions to help the surgeon make informed decisions, says Ciprian Ionita, PhD, QAS.AI CEO and a UB assistant professor of biomedical engineering and neurosurgery. The software is based on research done in his lab, and UB has filed a patent application covering the technology. In the future, the team hopes to expand the softwares capabilities to target treatments for other vascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis and ischemia, Ionita says. Defense Minister chairs security meeting in Bamenda Unknown Joseph Beti Assomo, Minister Delegate at the Presidency of the Republic in charge of Defence paid an emergency visit to Bamenda Wednesday, September 22, 2021, prompted by the killing of some 15 soldiers by armed separatists in Ngoketunjia Division last Thursday, September 16. We are here in Bamenda, the North-West Region today for an emergency, said Beti. The High Military Command and myself, dispatched by the President of the Republic, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the aftermath of the bloody and treacherous attacks whereby the Defense and Security Forces have been subject to of late in this Region by irredentist separatists, obviously equipped with increasingly sophisticated equipment and benefiting, this is an established fact, from human and external material support. Cameroon's defense minister proceeded to announce a change in military strategy against separatist fighters active in the North-West and South-West Regions. His words: This new paradigm of the security situation, which is already in the process of consolidation in this Region, as in that of the South-West, warrants a change of approach in the action of the Defense and Security Forces. We wish to convey to the biological bereaved families and the large military family, the deep and sincere condolences of the President of the Republic, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, His Excellency Paul Biya, and those of the Nation, following these tragic incidents. We equally extend same condolences to the families of civilian victims, sometimes butchered with incredible barbarity, by these armed gangs. The Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces hails and encourages the Defense and Security Forces for their bravery, their tenacity, and their rock-solid morale which has enabled them to preserve the territorial integrity of the country and thus, preserving many human lives in this Region. Likewise, he commends and congratulates those of our compatriots who, on a daily basis, braving fear and threats, provide their civic support to the Defense and Security Forces in operations. Defense Minister announces paradigm shift in military operations in the troubled North-West and South-West Regions (c) MINDEF The in-depth assessment of the situation which we have just carried out will consolidate the achievements of the operations carried out so far. The Defense and Security Forces remain united and closely so, in the conduct of operations. Obviously, I cannot give you here the details of the appropriate readjustments and actions which will be deployed without delay; because, in this matter, action cannot go band in band with incantation. You also give me the opportunity to tell all these so-called well-meaning souls who seem to have found in these trying moments, an opportunity to engage in populist campaigns and subtle or active weakening of the demobilization of the Defense and Security Forces, that their maneuvers as lesson-givers and critics of government action are well known and followed. And it is at the very least curious to observe the unbridled activism of some yesterday arsonists today draped in the false appearances of lesson-givers or late humanists. The country needs peace with the sincere and patriotic support of all its daughters and sons in accordance with the policy of the Head of State asking all these compatriots irrespective of their location to lay down their arms and allow a return to normal life, to the unhindered implementation of reconstruction projects already decided by the government with the support of some of our partners. Jean de Dieu Momo addresses workshop attendees Afuh Percy Some Magistrates of the Special Criminal Court, SCC, as well as judicial police officers working on criminal investigation matters in the Centre Region have upgraded their knowledge on the different forms of cybercrime and how they can track down perpetrators and bring them to justice. This was the key objective of a three-day workshop that took place recently, organised by the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies, ANTIC. For the two days, attendees of the workshop listened to presentations from experts of the cybersecurity sector as well as from other related industry players, on the broad notion of cybercriminality which is a fast growing concern in Cameroon today. Tackling Cybercrime With the supersonic changes in digital technologies and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic which caused a spike in digital transactions, cybercriminals have also taken advantage of the situation to device new ways and means of perpetrating their activities online. It is against this backdrop that ANTIC thought it wise to bring together actors who are at the heart of criminal probes and procedures to share ideas and brainstorm on how to handle the phenomenon given that the commission of economic crimes is also being facilitated through digital means these days. In the course of the training, the participants received lessons on various cybersecurity-related subjects including cybercrime and its legal ramifications in the Cameroonian context, maintaining digital public order and digital intelligence gathering, techniques of collecting digital evidence, as well as methods of identifying cybercriminals and the relevant legal provisions that sanction them. Legal Context To ANTICs Director General, Prof Enaw Ebot Ebot, the workshop was organised as part of the mandate of the institution to accompany government in not only promoting of the use of ICTs but in ensuring that this is done in an atmosphere of digital security. He said the blessings of ICT tools notwithstanding, there is the urgent need for stakeholders to speed up efforts in tackling cybercrime which is costing the state financially. The Minister Delegate at the Ministtry of Justice, Jean de Dieu Momo, who addressed attendees at the start of the workshop, noted the importance of the exercise and thanked ANTIC for the initiative. He said it will go a long way in giving a boost to governments efforts in the fight against cybercriminality. Noting that he has been a victim of cybercrime himself, Momo took time off to cite a couple of sections of the penal code as well as the 2010 law on cybercriminality which describe certain cybercrimes and the penalties they attract. He said the workshop was a veritable platform for synergy between ANTIC, Magistrates of the SCC and judicial police officers to tighten their collaboration on how to detect, investigate and punish cybercriminality. Hon. Findi Stanley Mokondo National Assembly Hon. Findi Stanley Mokondo, one of the two Members of Parliament for Fako East (Limbe, Muyuka & Tiko) Constituency has precipitated the signing of an economic cooperation agreement worth FCFA 3 billion for phase 1 of the drinking water supply project in the towns of Buea, Tiko, and Mutenguene. The related credit agreement was signed on September 21, 2021, in Yaounde by the Minister of the Economy, Planning, and Regional Development, Alamine Ousmane Mey, and the General Manager of Export-Finance Deutsche Bank New York, Humaya Narati. The first phase of the drinking water supply project in the towns of Buea, Tiko, and Mutenguene is dedicated to feasibility studies lasting six months, for an estimated cost of FCFA 3 billion. The second phase is devoted to the execution works which will be spread over a period of 24 months, with a financial estimate of FCFA 51 billion. This project aims to improve the living environment, the state of health, and the socio-economic conditions of the target populations, thanks to the design of a realistic, sustainable drinking water supply program adapted to their income and to the environment. According to the minister of economy, the project seeks to bring the level of the daily production of drinking water to 30,000 m3 in the towns of Buea, Tiko, and Mutengene. It will also expand the transport and distribution network of potable water over a distance of 288 km as well as strengthen storage capacity to 16,000 m3 of water. With a view to improving the supply and the quality of access to drinking water services, in accordance with the guidelines of the National Development Strategy 2020-2030, the Government intends to initiate the process decentralization of the public drinking water supply, set up a vast investment program in the sector and create a favorable framework for the installation of private companies for the production and distribution of drinking water in localities not covered by the public network. Hon. Findi walks the talk On June 288, 2021, Hon. Findi Stanley Mokondo mounted the rostrum at the National Assembly, urging the Minister of Water and Energy Resources, Eloundou Essomba Gaston to find urgent solutions to the persistent, prolonged, and often unexplained power outages and water shortages across the national territory, despite the countrys bountiful natural resources. Hon. Findi wondered aloud why authorities of the Cameroon Water Utilities Corporation (CAMWATER) had refused to install water pipes to no fewer than one thousand homes around the Limbe Omnisport Stadium, forcing the residents of the area to resort to digging boreholes. I wish to draw your attention to the fact that the people around the Limbe Omnisport Stadium are still to be connected by CAMWATER. CAMWATER has refused to take its pipes to close to 1000 residents in an area full of potential customers. I want to use this medium, Mr. Minister to ask the director of CAMWATER what the problem is. The inhabitants of this area have resorted to boreholes, said Hon. Findi. The lawmaker said three years five months ago, President Paul Biya instructed the minister of economy, planning, and regional development to engage a loan of FCFA 3 billion for feasibility studies, and project conception for the rehabilitation and extension of the treatment and distribution of water in Tiko, Mutengene, and Buea. At the time, he said the project was yet to see the light of day, although Buea, Mutengene, and Tiko can boast of security. Hear Hon. Findi: This project has not been realized. Recently, the contract was awarded to a contractor but the execution still poses problems. I will want to join my voice to the other speakers who are from the crisis-hit regions or areas to say the people of Tiko and Mutengene will not appreciate it if in the future they get to understand that the contractor is unable to execute his contract because of insecurity. The MP for Fako East assured the Minister of Water and Energy Resources that: Tiko and Mutengene are very safe areas and these projects can be executed without any delay. Hon. Findis intervention yielding fruits Exactly 85 days after Hon. Findis outing at the National Assembly, the government has proceeded to engage a loan of FCFA 3 billion for feasibility studies, and project conception for the rehabilitation and extension of the treatment and distribution of water in Tiko, Mutengene, and Buea. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Foreign Ministers of permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss issues concerning Afghanistan and Iran, State Department informed on Thursday. "People's Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom in their capacity as permanent members (P5) of the United Nations Security Council," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement about the meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. Secretary Blinken emphasised the importance of constructive P5 action to maintain international peace and security, said Price. The top US diplomat also requested his P5 counterparts to maintain unity on Afghanistan and to hold the Taliban accountable to its commitments. He also called on for cooperation to ensure humanitarian access to those in need, Price added. "On Afghanistan, the Secretary called for P5 coordination to mitigate the emerging humanitarian crisis and prevent an economic collapse," he added. Speaking of Iran, Blinken reiterated the United States' intent to pursue a path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the statement read. This statement comes amid the 76th UN General Assembly. (ANI) The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odour and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory. Neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine have discovered specific types of neurons within the memory centre of the brain that are responsible for acquiring new associative memories. The findings of the study were published in the journal 'Nature'. Psychologists began studying associative memory in the 1800s, with William James describing the phenomenon in his 1890 classic The Principles of Psychology. Scientists today agree that the structures responsible for the formation of associative memory are found in the medial temporal lobe, or the famous "memory centre" of the brain, but the particular cells involved, and how those cells are controlled, have remained a mystery until now. This study has also discovered how these associative memory neurons are controlled. We rely on associative memories in our everyday lives and this research is an important step in understanding the detailed mechanism of how these types of memories are formed in the brain. "Although associative memory is one of the most basic forms of memory in our everyday life, mechanisms underlying associative memory remain unclear," said lead researcher Kei Igarashi, faculty fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the UCI School of Medicine. The study reported for the first time, that specific cells in the lateral entorhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe, called fan cells, are required for the acquisition of new associative memories and that these cells are controlled by dopamine, a brain chemical known to be involved in our experience of pleasure or reward. In the study, researchers used electrophysiological recordings and optogenetics to record and control activity from fan cells in mice as they learn to associate specific odours with rewards. This approach led researchers to discover that fan cells compute and represent the association of the two new unrelated items (odour and reward). These fan cells are required for the successful acquisition of new associative memories. Without these cells, pre-learned associations can be retrieved, but the new associations cannot be acquired. Additionally acquiring new associations also requires dopamine. "We never expected that dopamine is involved in the memory circuit. However, when the evidence accumulated, it gradually became clear that dopamine is involved," said Igarashi. "These experiments were like a detective story for us, and we are excited about the results," added Igarashi. This discovery is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding how memories are formed in the brain and lays a foundation on which other researchers can continue to build. Associative memory abilities are known to decline in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease. Understanding the neurobiological mechanism of how these memories are formed is the first step to developing therapeutics to slow the loss of associative memory abilities in Alzheimer's Disease. (ANI) On the itinerary-packed first day of his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold meetings with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison, US Vice President Kamala Harris and the select heads of corporates that have the potential to invest significantly in India. According to sources, Prime Minister Modi will start his day by meeting with select heads of corporates in the United States. The CEOs will include the heads of Qualcomm, Adobe, Blackstone, General Atomics and First Solar. The Prime Minister reached Washington on Wednesday local time. "Prime Minister will start the day with meetings with select heads of corporates in the United States I think these are CEOs that represent fairly large corporate interests, companies that have particular expertise and invested in India and has the potential to invest significantly in India," the source added. "They represent diverse areas from technology, the IT sector to finance to defence to renewable energy. I think it is a very good mix of CEOs, that would be meeting Prime Minister Modi on a one to one basis, investments in the United States have been very important and very significant in India's recent development activities in line with our major economic initiatives, the flagship program. In particular what we call Make in India," the source further added. On Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The official said that Prime Minister Modi is looking forward to meeting Prime Minister Morrison on a range of issues. "In the afternoon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. They have met on a number of occasions on the sidelines of various international conferences, Prime Minister Morrison recently called Prime Minister Modi to brief him about the plan to go ahead with the AUKUS Alliance," he said. "And I think, you know this meeting has been long overdue because Prime Minister Morrison was to visit India in January last year but he couldn't be here, he could not make it because of the fairly severe fires at that time in parts of Australia. He was then supposed to come in May last year but because of the COVID situation he could not make it," the source added. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24, this is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Ahead of leaving for the US to participate in Quad Leaders' Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said his visit will be an occasion to strengthen the strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia. He will then come to the White House where he will meet Vice President Kamala Harris in her ceremonial office. The discussion on issues is expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides. "We have allocated one hour for the discussions and discussions are expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides, from the management of COVID-19 to issues like cooperation in the high tech sector the space sector, where the Vice President has an interest and owned a number of areas including the resilient and secure supply chain are something that both sides have great interest in," he said (ANI) Also Read: Kirit Somaiya files complaint against Maha govt, Mumbai police over his detention The United States has earmarked an additional USD 180 million to aid more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced nearly USD 180 million in additional humanitarian assistance for those affected by the Rakhine State/Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma, Bangladesh, and elsewhere in the region. "With this new funding, our total humanitarian assistance for this response reaches more than USD 1.5 billion since August 2017, when more than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee ethnic cleansing and other horrific atrocities and abuses in Burma's [Myanmar's] Rakhine State to safety in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh," Price said in a press release on Wednesday. The state department lauded humanitarian actors for a strong and well-coordinated humanitarian response, which includes preventing and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup on February 1, when the Myanmar military led by Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing overthrew the civilian government and declared a year-long state of emergency. The coup triggered mass protests and was met by deadly violence. US state department said that the military junta must immediately stop the violence, release all those unjustly detained, restore Burma's path to democracy, and implement ASEAN's Five Point Consensus. "We also call on the regime to allow immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to people in need --including for the delivery of critical COVID-19 assistance," the spokesperson said. (ANI) Also Read: UNHCR shocked at images of 'deplorable conditions' of Haitian immigrants at US Del Rio border While foot traffic is returning to the Loop, 9-to-5-ers are still easing their way back in. Many employers pushed Labor Day return to office plans back as the delta variant fueled a resurgence in COVID-19 cases another setback for businesses catering to the Loops formerly bustling office crowd. While businesses like coffee and shoe repair shops are optimistic their customers will eventually return, they may be downtown less often and may need time to rebuild old habits. During the pandemic, he has watched as others experience the limitations of not utilizing our full face to communicate, and how we are trying to cope. Responding to issues posed by masks hiding faces, some speech therapists, for example, wear see-through masks so clients can see their mouths move. Various consumer masks with see-through partitions so people can still see a mouth are on the market to address this. Like many nannies, she was juggling her own familys changing needs, as well as the unique challenges of serving a family also adjusting to a new environment with working from home. Meanwhile, she was more limited in where she could take children. They went on a lot of car rides, she said, seeing planes land at the airport and doing scavenger hunts around the city. Levin Richards is close with her former nanny family, who she felt was very conscientious and just as worried about her as they were about themselves. My response to that is just simply look at the map of where we have the most amount of per capita COVID cases, she said. When you look at the map every day, the United States is still where the fire is burning strong. Theres a handful of other countries that have had COVID to the degree that we have. So if youre fighting a fire, you do tend to point the hose at the fire. Currently, restaurant options remain limited, focusing almost exclusively on large national chains like Dunkin Donuts, Subway, Sbarro, Panda Express and Starbucks. Tuohy explains Starship launches with restaurants that are technically on campus, before expanding to other options around the area. It just so happens UIC only has these options right now. Hopefully Starship can bring in some of these family-owned restaurants soon; but currently, if you are looking for a more interesting lunch or dinner, there are no robots for you. Played with quiet intensity by former professional boxer John Duddy, Matt Donnelly is confronted by the ghosts of his past and there are plenty of them, some dead but many alive and a few not just resentful but even menacing. We meet an old lover, his brother who is a priest, old friends who are now anything but friendly. Its a brooding journey as Donnelly tries to make sense of the Northern Ireland of his youth and what he discovers there as an adult. Light creeps in to slowly cast a glow over seven bodies lying prone in the hut. The eighth, Joshua L. Ishmon, is seated on the center upstage stool, watching as the others fill their backs with a pulse that nearly levitates their bodies. Nicholas Aphanes score hums over them like a hot guitar amp, rising in intensity toward its resting place at hypnotic sensory saturation. Ishmon stands and walks downstage, paying no mind to the other dancers (or us, for that matter), and spins like a top. The others have scattered to the perimeter by this point, leaving him alone in the box, bearing witness to this transfixing, seemingly unending paddle turn. Its a big bucket list item for us to meet Myrna Salazar, said Diaz. She has been a pioneer in this community. When you have that opportunity, you cant help but be tenacious and pitch your ideas of what your vision is. She really invested not just her energy and her listening space, but she invested financially in us as well. We needed it in order to bring this project to fruition. You need people in your community that pull you up like that so you can bring big ideas to the forefront. In a half-hour call that the White House described as friendly, the two leaders agreed to meet next month to discuss the way forward after the French fiercely objected when the U.S., Australia and Britain announced a new Indo-Pacific defense deal last week that cost the French a submarine contract worth billions. France also agreed to send its ambassador back to Washington. At approximately 4:12 a.m., an ATM was taken from a vestibule of a restaurant in the 3500 block of West Montrose Avenue after someone broke out of the window. The 240-bed rehab center, which Haymarket says is needed to combat the overdose crisis in the suburbs, sparked plenty of resistance from the start. The opposition mostly focused on the potential cost to the village, especially the possibility that Itasca would have to expand its ambulance services to assist the centers residents. Hospitals generally will not provide it for COVID, and that has prompted some patients and their families to go to court. Pais daughter, Tiffany Wilson, said in an affidavit that her own research into ivermectin convinced her it was safe and effective, and she sued last week to force Condell to let an outside doctor give the drug to her mother. Day was in his second semester at ISU. He had attended Alabama A&M, where he ran track and was in the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, then decided to go to graduate school to study speech pathology and become a doctor, so that his mom would never have to work again, his mother, Carmen Bolden Day, previously told the Chicago Tribune. If youre on the south side of Promontory Point, that point gives you protection from the wind and the waves wrap around the point and come into the shoreline. And those waves are going to be less chaotic; theyre going to have some shape and form to them, Benjamin said. Theyre going to have like a long line so when you pop up, you know you can go down the line is what they call it. Otherwise its just kind of like a washing machine sloshing back and forth. Chloe Mrozak, 24, was arrested Aug. 28 at Inouye International Airport in Oahu and faces a misdemeanor charge of falsified vaccination documents, according to court records. She was scheduled to appear at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday for a remote hearing before a judge in a Honolulu courtroom. When she did not show for the videoconferenced hearing, a $500 bench warrant was issued for her arrest on a charge of criminal contempt of court. When everything was on Zoom, I really missed the connection with my friends, but now everything is back in full swing, and were adjusting back to normal, Zach said, adding: Its a bit of a challenge, and we still cant really see each others faces because of the masks, but we need to keep everyone safe. The United States has barred travelers from most of the world for 18 months, even as other countries have welcomed Americans. Many of these countries are managing the pandemic better than we are. These rigid restrictions not only harmed business but kept families separated through traumatic times. Since the U.S. has continued to allow Americans to travel in and out while COVID-19 rages here at home, it hardly serves as an effective health protocol. If this continues, affluent suburbanites and other visitors to the city wont be strolling Boul Mich, theyll be headed to max out their credit cards in the Magnificent Fulton Market District, breakfasting at Beatrix, lunching at the Girl and the Goat, making some deals at Soho House Chicago, shopping for mattresses at Casper, drinking at the Aviary, eating dinner at Nobu then heading up to their rooms or back to the suburbs without ever crossing the expressway into the rest of the city. Remember Spiaggia and Macys at Water Tower have closed. All of the momentum has moved west. And jobs are following. Balance and standing were concerns for Jackson during his recuperation, but he has since improved after his three hours of therapy, five to seven days a week, split across occupational, speech and physical therapies. Now hes transitioning to an intensive outpatient regimen where he will continue with those three hours of therapy over three days a week, said his physical therapist, Talia Shapiro. When he arrived, he needed a lot of assistance, probably more than 50% with every task. The White House offered no further details on Bidens visit next week. In a statement, Pritzker said that he was proud to welcome Biden to Illinois, the most vaccinated state in the Midwest, as we work together to encourage anyone on the fence about vaccination to get protected as soon as possible. The Texas law in question, Senate Bill 8, bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, when women usually cannot tell theyre pregnant, and with no exceptions for rape or incest. The law also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who aids and abets a procedure. The law went into effect at the start September after the Supreme Court declined to block what then became the most restrictive abortion law in the country. If Dolton officials want to change the narrative about their community of 23,000 residents, they ought to start by getting their own village government house in order. A mayor openly at odds with a board majority not only creates an unfavorable image of conflict and tension, it also undermines the communitys hopes of improvement and success. Gun owners in the village contend the ban is actually a new law that restricts the ownership of a specified list of guns. Attorneys for the village argue the restriction was an amendment to an already existing local ordinance and does not restrict ownership, but only says the guns cannot be used or stored in the village. On September 22, 2021, Ambassador Qin Gang was invited to attend an online conversation jointly held by The Carter Center and The George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations and delivered a speech. The Ambassador also answered questions from the participants. The Q&A is as follows: Q1: How to interpret and handle public mutual criticisms and blaming from China and the US? A: A very important thing between China and the US is mutual respect. China is open and inclusive. We welcome and readily accept various suggestions or criticisms, as long as they are objective, truthful, well-intentioned and constructive, and we will make improvements according to them. As Chinese Ambassador to the US, a very important job of mine is to communicate and listen. However, we do not accept baseless slander and disinformation. We do not accept condescending lecturing. And we do not accept words or deeds that undermine China's sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity. Citizens must abide by the law. Likewise, countries must abide by the basic norms governing international relations. US law prohibits secession and racial hatred, but why do some Americans want to treat China in this way? Q2: What is China's reaction to the cooperation between Australia, the UK and the US about nuclear submarines? A: China has expressed concerns to the US side. Foreign Ministry spokesperson has made it clear. In fact, not only China, but also many other regional countries have stated their concerns and even opposition. The nuclear submarine cooperation between the US, the UK and Australia will intensify arms race, undermine regional peace and stability, and sabotage international nuclear non-proliferation efforts. It is extremely irresponsible. We urge these countries to discard Cold-War zero-sum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical perception, and not to gang up. Security affairs of the Asia-Pacific should be jointly decided by people in the region, and not be dominated by the Anglo-Saxons. China will closely monitor the developments of the situation. Q3: What is the role China will play in Asia-Pacific regional economic integration? A: First, as the world's second biggest economy and the number one trading partner of over 120 countries, especially Asian countries, China has maintained stable economic growth. This is in itself a powerhouse and a source of confidence for the growth of Asian and world economy and trade. China is a strong link in the global supply chain. Second, China is striving towards common prosperity. It is committed to high-level opening-up. This means it will provide a broader market and greater development opportunities for Asian countries. Third, China is committed to economic globalization and regional economic integration. We have joined the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), and are applying to join the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership). We will also upgrade FTA arrangements with the Republic of Korea and Singapore, and speed up negotiations of a China-Japan-ROK FTA. These initiatives will inject strong impetus into regional economic integration of the Asia-Pacific, advance integrated development of regional industrial chain, supply chain and value chain, boost trade and investment, and promote development and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific. Q4: What are the concrete measures that can be taken by the US and China to promote mutual confidence, especially on the resumption of effective cooperation in educational, scientific and technological fields? A: China-US relations were seriously damaged during the previous US administration. Our educational, technological and people-to-people exchanges also suffered. Some Americans say Chinese students are spies, and Confucius Institutes are engaging in cultural infiltration. Many Chinese students and scholars have been repatriated, denied visas, interrogated, and harassed for no reason. Scientific and technological exchanges between the two sides have almost been cut off. Educational, technological and cultural exchanges serve the interests of both countries. They are critical for our mutual understanding and trust. Since I assumed office, over 10 American universities and educational institutions have written to me, expressing their hope for continued US-China educational exchanges and cooperation. We hope that the Biden administration will turn this around as soon as possible. I noticed that the US side has recently issued visas to 85,000 Chinese students, but still some Chinese students' applications got rejected. We hope that the US side will do more things to lift the iron curtain between our people, and allow our students, scholars, scientists and artists to talk and work together without fear and obstacles. For example, our scientists could cooperate on major infectious diseases and on climate change. China also welcomes American students to study in China. Not long ago, President Xi Jinping spoke with President Joe Biden on the phone. They had candid, in-depth and strategic communication and exchanges, sending out positive signals. They have agreed to maintain frequent contact by multiple means and instructed officials at the working level to conduct extensive dialogue, tap the potential of cooperation, effectively manage differences so as to avoid conflict and create conditions for the further development of China-US relations. President Xi stressed that the two sides should advance coordination and cooperation on the basis of respecting each other's core concerns and properly managing differences. To be frank, what I worry about is that the US uses competition to define China-US relations, while competition on the US side often takes the form of confrontation, especially on major issues concerning China's core interests. If this does not change, it will undermine China's efforts to promote our mutual trust and cooperation. There isn't any example in the history of international relations where the political relationship between two countries is in competition or even confrontation but other spheres remain safe and sound. Q5: At present, non-Chinese citizens need to wait several weeks or even months to get their visas to travel to China for emergent humanitarian reasons. Will the embassy re-consider expediting the processing of such visa at the shortest timeline possible in days? Have the US and China begun discussion on reopening the Consulates in Chengdu and Houston? A: Due to the pandemic, in-person visa application has been replaced by a mail-in process. This has caused inconveniences to the applicants and affected the processing speed. In July last year, the US suddenly and unilaterally demanded China shut down the Consulate General in Houston. This is against the China-US Consular Convention, international law and basic norms governing international relations. It has seriously damaged China-US relations. Visa applications which used to be processed by Chinese Consulate General in Houston have been transferred to the Embassy, so there has been a sharp increase of workload for us, which makes the processing time somehow longer. Our staff at the Embassy will do their best to speed up. We also hope that visa applicants will provide complete and accurate information as required to avoid hiccups and delays. Facing the abrupt closure of the Consulate General in Houston, the Chinese side had no choice but to reciprocate and close the US Consulate General in Chengdu. Let the person who tied the bell on the tiger take it off. This is something unilaterally started by the US side, and the US side must act first to resolve it. Q6: Over the next decades, global issues where the United States and China must work together (global warming, nuclear proliferation, limits on cyber-warfare, and new technologies) will likely become more salient and their solutions more complex. What should be done to ensure that the next generation of US and Chinese diplomats are well equipped to handle these issues? A: During the telephone conversation between President Xi Jinping and President Biden, President Xi emphasized that with the international community facing many common challenges, China and the US need to show broad vision and shoulder great responsibilities. On the basis of respecting each other's core concerns and properly managing differences, the two countries need to continue their engagement and dialogue to advance coordination and cooperation on major international and regional issues. On climate change, China and the US must first do their own things well. Both sides have announced their NDC goals, so we must honor our words with real actions. The international community has misgivings about whether the US can fulfill its promises and whether it will flip again. Both China and the US should practice multilateralism, and safeguard the international system with the UN as the core and the international order based on international law. For example, on nuclear non-proliferation, the US cooperation with Australia on nuclear submarines give people reasons to question their sincerity and ability to honor international responsibilities and obligations, including non-proliferation commitments. If a country likes to talk about safeguarding a rules-based international order, but does not follow the rules set by itself, or only follows them selectively, or keeps flip-flopping, how can you expect other countries to trust this country? The Internet and other new technologies have enabled progress, but also brought about risks and challenges. The international community must have new norms and standards to regulate them, so as to maximize their pros and minimize their cons. China and the US can negotiate and coordinate in this field. For example, China has put forward a Global Digital Security Initiative. We welcome the response from the US side, so that we can jointly maintain global digital and cyber security. Q7: The US-China relationship is inching toward the danger of a conflict. What can China unilaterally do to deescalate the tensions in this relationship, so as to avoid conflict and confrontation between the two countries? A: China has great sincerity in starting up a dialogue with the United States to deescalate the tensions in bilateral relationship. We will continue to work with the US side, as long as there are opportunities for cooperation. However, the cooperation between the two countries must be conducted in the principle of mutual respect. And the United States should not expect China's cooperation in areas where only the US has demand and interests, while neglecting or even undermining China's interests at the same time, in particular on these core issues concerning China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. You are here: Arts China released a 15-year plan (2021-2035) on the development of intellectual property rights (IPR) Wednesday. The plan, which demands stricter IPR protection, a high level of public satisfaction, and greater market value of IPR by 2025, was released by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. By 2035, China's IPR competitiveness will rank among the top in the world, says the guideline. The guideline maps out a number of key tasks including building an IPR protection system that supports world-class business environment, establishing an IPR market operation mechanism that encourages innovation, building a public IPR service system that is convenient and beneficial to the public and stepping up participation in global IPR governance. Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi pays tribute to China's generations of astronauts and aerospace industry workers with her directorial debut "Poem." A special screening of the film was held on Sept. 21, the Mid-Autumn Festival, which also coincided with the 29th anniversary of the launch of China's manned spaceship program, at Beijing Aerospace City. The event was attended by actress-and-director Zhang Ziyi, executive producer Huang Jianxin, and producer Fu Ruoqing. Also present were prominent figures from China's aerospace industry including Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut in space; Qi Faren, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, technical leader of China's first satellite DFH-1 and former chief designer of China's Shenzhou spaceships; Gao Chongwu, former head of the Sixth Research Institute of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC) and former director of the Development Planning Department of Aerospace Science and Industry Group; and Xu Liping, national-level senior aerospace technician who is also a prototype for the film. Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut, also spoke to the audience and exchanged words with the film's two child actors via video link. "Poem" tells an emotional story about two children's memories of their parents who were part of the DFH-1 satellite program, as well as their sacrifices and dedication to the cause, with the father calling himself "a poet for the sky." The short film is one of four shorts that form an anthology titled "My Country, My Parents." It will be released nationwide on Sept. 30 to coincide with the busy National Day holiday period. After the advanced screening, many of the audience members were in tears. Qi Faren, 88, recalled the hardships and struggles of China's aerospace workers in the early days of the industry, who even faced the risk of losing their lives. "The film reenacts all those years when we were burning with passion for the country's aerospace cause," Qi said. Gao Chongwu added that the film provides a realistic and detailed portrayal of the times, so much so that he felt as if he had been transported back in time. "I'm in tears. They've done a great job reproducing our memories," he said. Zhang Ziyi not only directs but also stars in the film as a rocket fuel expert and mother of two. "I'm a fan of aerospace heroes, and I'm thrilled to meet Yang Liwei today," she said. Making this film is not just a responsibility for me, but also a challenge." She also admitted that it was nerve-wracking to have so many aerospace legends and workers as her first audience. Fortunately for Zhang, all the feedback she received was positive. Producer Fu Ruoqing, who is also the general manager of the China Film Group Corporation, added that Chinese filmmakers are ever grateful to China's aerospace workers whose dedication and spirit has inspired generations, and is the source of the film's creation. "I remember my first space flight," Yang Liwei echoed. During the countdown, I made a salute gesture, not only expressing my confidence as a Chinese astronaut, but also paying tribute to the hard work, hardship and sweat of the generations of aerospace workers." German company, Volocopter, a specialist in the manufacture of autonomous air vehicles, has teamed up with a second-tier subsidiary of Geely Holding Group to establish a joint venture in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province on Wednesday. The joint venture will take charge of production and market operation of Volocopter products in the Chinese market. It plans to help promote urban air mobility (UAM) in China in the coming three to five years. The new company, which was named Volocopter (Chengdu) Technology Co., Ltd., or Volocopter Chengdu for short, also signed orders with Volocopter for 150 aircraft, including logistics unmanned aerial vehicles and manned aircraft. Air vehicles and their parts will be produced in Hubei Geely Terrafugia, a manufacturing base of Geely in China, according to the joint venture. Volocopter Chengdu will also attend the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (Airshow China) on Sept. 28. "Today marks another important milestone on our journey to bring affordable electric air mobility to China, the biggest single market opportunity for the UAM industry," said Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter via video link. UAM refers to a new mode of urban transportation that uses electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to move people or goods within lower urban and suburban airspaces. It helps relieve the strain on increasingly congested city roads and allows people and goods to reach their destinations faster and more safely. Volocopter is currently the world's first and only eVTOL aircraft manufacturer that has obtained design and production approval from European Union Aviation Safety Agency. Flash A high-level meeting of U.S. and Russian military officials took place in Finland on Wednesday, the Finnish Defense Forces announced in a press release. The bilateral meeting was attended by Mark Milley, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff. While the agenda of the meeting was not made public, Milley's spokesperson told the international media that the two officials discussed efforts to improve communications between the two nations as well as how to reduce potential risk factors. Although the meeting was held at Finnish Government premises at Konigstedt Manor in Vantaa, near Helsinki, Finland was not represented in the meeting. A media representative for Milley was quoted by Finnish national radio as saying that in the meeting the talks continued aiming at "increasing communication and reducing risks." Russian news agency TASS quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying that during the meeting the two sides addressed "issues of mutual interest, including reducing the risk of incidents during military activities." "At the strategic level, this (meeting) is really significant," Petteri Kajanmaa, director of the warfare department at the Finnish National Defence University, told Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Flash China on Wednesday expressed grave concern over the cooperation between the United States, the UK and Australia on nuclear submarines, stating that it deliberately escalates regional tensions, provokes an arms race, threatens regional peace and stability, and undermines international nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Answering a press question at a daily news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said it is widely believed by the international community that the cooperation between the three countries poses a serious risk of nuclear proliferation, in violation of the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). He said that the U.S. and the UK are likely to export to Australia highly enriched uranium with a purity of 90 percent or more, which is weapon-grade nuclear material. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state, Australia's acquisition of highly enriched uranium itself poses severe nuclear proliferation and nuclear security risks. However, the current safeguards mechanism of the International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify whether Australia will use the highly enriched uranium in the power reactors of nuclear submarines for nuclear weapons," said the spokesperson, adding that China believes that these concerns of the international community are completely justified and reasonable. "As a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the NPT and a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, Australia is now introducing nuclear submarine technology of strategic and military value. The international community, including Australia's neighboring countries, has reason to question Australia's sincerity in honoring its nuclear non-proliferation commitments," said Zhao. He said that, faced with the dual challenge of combating COVID-19 and revitalizing the economy, people in the Asia-Pacific region need growth and employment, not submarines and ammunition. Zhao stressed that the nuclear submarine cooperation between the U.S., the UK and Australia proves once again that the U.S. and the UK pursue double standards and use nuclear cooperation as a tool of geopolitical game. China urges the three countries to heed the call of the international community, discard the outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow geopolitical perspective, revoke the wrong decision, faithfully fulfill international nuclear non-proliferation obligations and do more to contribute to regional peace and stability, said the spokesperson. Flash China's top legislator Li Zhanshu held talks with Luxembourg's President of the Chamber of Deputies Fernand Etgen via video link Wednesday, with both sides pledging to enhance exchanges between their legislative bodies. Li, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said that Luxembourg is a friendly and cooperative partner of China in Europe. Adhering to mutual respect, equality and win-win cooperation, the two countries have maintained sound and steady development of bilateral relations. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Luxembourg have supported each other and stood together in difficult times, injecting new meaning into the traditional friendship, Li added. Noting that next year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Li said China is ready to work with Luxembourg to uphold mutual respect and consolidate mutual political trust. China seeks to promote economic recovery through openness and cooperation, to maintain communication and exchanges for enhancing mutual understanding, and to uphold multilateralism and address global challenges to push bilateral relations to a new level, Li added. Noting that the European Union (EU) is an important force in the world, Li said China will work with the bloc to advance important political agenda through consultation, explore ways to deepen practical cooperation, strengthen coordination in international affairs, and make greater contribution to world peace and prosperity. The Chinese NPC is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Luxembourg's Chamber of Deputies, maintain high-level exchanges, and promote communications among special committees, Li added. Etgen said that both countries are committed to opening-up, and the development of bilateral ties has seen mutual trust and unshakable solidarity and mutual assistance between the countries. Etgen expressed the hope that bilateral cooperation in economy, trade, finance, equipment manufacturing and other fields will be strengthened. Luxembourg's Chamber of Deputies is willing to deepen exchanges with Chinese NPC and play an active role in promoting bilateral relations. You are here: World Flash Russia has stepped up its search for an An-26 military transport aircraft that disappeared from radar earlier on Wednesday. More than 70 rescuers and 20 pieces of equipment are involved, but the work is complicated by darkness, unfavorable weather, and mountainous terrain, the Emergencies Ministry said. The plane with six people onboard lost contact some 38 km away from a military airport in the Khabarovsk Region in Russia's Far East. The flight was aimed at checking ground-based radio technical support. For I was hungry and you fed me (Matthew 25:35 NLT) The COVID-19 pandemic has raised serious concerns about food security in Africa. From the start of the pandemic, it has been feared that economic recession, along with disruptions to food supply chains, would leave Africa on the brink of starvation. Africa imports more food than it exports, and relies on countries like India, Russia, Cambodia, and Vietnam for staple grains. Fortunately, the initial pandemic-related export ban from these countries was lifted, and grain exports to Africa were resumed. During 2020, various African governments and organisations also took action to increase Africas grain imports. But increased grain imports have not been able to compensate for the impact of the pandemic, which has reversed years of economic development in Africa. Widespread job losses have led to food insecurity. This has been compounded in some regions by ongoing conflict, locust plagues, droughts and floods. As a result, over 100 million people in Africa are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity. 100 million is overwhelming. But each one is an individual with a basic human need to eat. And to feed their family. Last year, beneficiaries of Ghanas WIN project were equipped with the skills and equipment to safely process cassava into gari (flour made from the cassava root). Rachel Ohene describes how this vocational training project helped her feed her family during 2020s COVID lockdown: This project could not have come at a better time than this. Little did we know that gari was going to become the food saviour for Ghana this year. African Enterprise, God bless you for your foresight. You came in at the right time to offer us the right job. May the Lord richly bless the donors of AE. Their generosity has been a mind-blower. I have decided to buy the raw material cassava from the farmers in and around Akropong so that I can process it to gari with the help of the milling machine AE has provided. I know in the coming days gari will be in high demand. In 2021, AE is preparing to launch a vocational training program in Togo which will provide skills, seeds and equipment so that needy participants can start vegetable-growing businesses. Because they were hungry. And Jesus simply told us to feed them. In my last couple of articles I diverted from commenting on current events to bring you some encouragement. I received some encouragement of my own recently with the below email. Thank you for your article on pastors in prison. I was looking for any news on Pastor Paul Furlong in Melbourne and saw this article. I agree! Why are church leaders not awake to what is happening? I spoke to each of my ministers and they all questioned my attitude of choosing to "disobey the government that God had instituted." No amount of logic or discussion would sway them. I argued that not all that long ago the state told churches to butt out of government matters, now the state is imposing on what happens inside a church - and we just let them! When we were still meeting but had to be masked and not sing, I and another woman spontaneously joined in when Be Thou My Vision was played. I could not stand there and not worship my God! The minister called me to say that if I continued to do that, I would have to watch online! I asked what would happen if half the congregation started singing, and he replied after a little thought, that he would probably have to close the service. My heart broke. (sorry for all the exclamation marks!) Have you seen the video of Pastor Paul after he was released on bail after 17 days in prison? 15 people brought to Christ in the 3 days. See youtube, look for "pastor paul release". It also makes me think of The Heavenly Man, Brother Yun who was imprisoned so many times due to persecution of the church in China. His request to the West for prayer was "do not pray for the persecution to stop, but that God would use him every time he went to prison to bring many to faith." Keep up the work, and hopefully more people will see and read and start to question the constant narrative. Edits The only edits Ive made to the email is to remove the identification of their denomination and themselves. The rest Ive left verbatim as I affirm their stance. If you want to read the article they are referring to all my previous posts can be found via the link at the bottom of this article. As too many of our churches in Australia are closed to in person services one has to ask why? Finally some Australian court cases are in progress at the time of writing asking the question medically and scientifically how is attending a religious service different to any of the currently permitted activities that are allowed? In America where some churches chose to keep their doors open despite fines and other legal action taken by their local governments, some court cases have already been settled. According to Paul M. Jonna Partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP tweet on September 2nd. Yes heres what CA paid in settlements for attorneys fees in just the 3 cases our firm filed in response to Newsoms attacks on religious liberty: South Bay v Newsom: $1,600,000 Grace Community Church: $800,000 (CA and LA County) Burfitt v Newsom: $550,000 Total: $2.95M Why not Ill never understand why the larger churches in Australia didnt use their resources to fight restrictions last year and still most curtail to unconstitutional rules this year. Is it because they are to reliant on government funding or are their leaders only willing to minister to their carefully curated congregation rather than meeting the needs of those most in need? Knowing history has never been more important. If you know the truth of the history of America in the years leading up to the American revolution church leaders had to send their sermons via ship to England for approval by the king before they could share them with their congregation. That is the truth of the separation of church and state. It was to remove the states influence on the church not the other way around. Yet we still see governments telling pastors around the world to close their doors without providing the evidence to support their decisions, and those pastors complying. While some pastors have stood their ground and there is still an arrest warrant out for a Canadian pastor. If the church is truly the people and not the building why are pastors more afraid of risking losing their building than they are of losing Gods church? The USA has long fascinated me, and I have embarked on a series of reflections on culture in the USA, using American film or television as a prompt. This is the fifth article and considers politics. At least one can say that in the USA politics is rarely boring. The characters (and many do play a character role) are often larger than life. I had twelve years between visits to the USA, with my latest coinciding with the start of the international covid explosion (February March 2020). Among many themes that came to mind from my latest visit was that of a more defined political polarisation usually based around contemporary moral issues. Certainly, many Americans who are registered voters have become more entrenched in their political orientation, but rather than taking all their parties policies on board, it seemed that now more people were following a party for one issue or policy. This allowed them to vote in good conscience for people who they did not like personally or even abhorred, because they believed in the sanctity of the issue or policy more. The West Wing The role of religion figures prominently in many political films and TV series, simply because of the foundation of civil religion in the USA, but I think for its longevity and impact outside of the USA, The West Wing is significant. Idealistic to a fault, it was even nearly even-handed in how it portrayed opposing presidential candidates in its last season. There is a key episode (No. 25) The Midterms that has prompted significant discussion and analysis, including by Australian John Dickson in his book A Doubters Guide to the Bible. In this episode President Jed Bartlett buttonholes a conservative talk show host at a White House gathering, asking several of the usual red herring questions about aspects of Old Testament culture and theology. Bartlett seemingly gives an unassailable critique that renders the talk show host speechless and portrays her views on homosexuality as simply indefensible in a modern age. As Dickson however explains, these questions can be answered and answered well. The scene itself is simply a pure liberal fantasy designed to ratify the interests of a certain group of viewers (the context is based on a chain letter attack on a real conservative talk show host), as well as teach those still ignorant the better path to enlightenment. Religion seeps through The West Wing. It is more than a civil religious context highlighted by Bartletts personal God debates in Two Cathedrals (Episode 44), and in another episode Take This Sabbath Day, (Episode 14) Jed seeks counsel over the matter of capital punishment from his familys priest. Quaker and Jewish views also come to the fore here. The highly emotional topic of capital punishment in the USA is given a full-fledged moral treatment culminating in the ritual of confession at the end. The Ides of March (2011) This film directed by and starring George Clooney is the sobering alternate to the idealism of The West Wing. The film interestingly confounded left- and right-wing critics because it looked at two Democratic contenders without self-promotion of the Democratic way of politics, presenting the internal political struggle in an almost Shakespearean tragedy way. Faith and morality are absent here in equal measure. Whether one orients to the idealistic or the realist, no-one should be surprised that there has been growing polarisation. I have commented on this before. The issues between the major parties are more distinct, but nowhere more prominent than in the areas that are part of the contemporary culture war. The conservative and Christian community has felt more alienated as the focus and priority of American life has been inverted in a short space of time to an agenda now dominated by sexuality and identity politics. From just over a decade ago where same-sex marriage was a matter not even on Barack Obamas initial progressive agenda to a present administration doing its best to consider ever more radical policies with such earnestness that one could think they were now self-identifying as the self-righteous. How do Christians Fit into the Two-Party System? They Dont. Tim Keller wrote this above titled oped piece for The New York Times in 2018, and continues a theme he enunciated in 2009 when asked a Big Think question: Do either of the parties espouse true Christian values? Keller commended involvement but not association of either party with the Christian faith (though he has since made an essentially pragmatic change to his personal policy of non-disclosure). A helpful article by Daniel Strand in Juicy Ecumenism on Kellers position of moderation (April 4, 2019, Ideology Matters: Time Keller and Politics) considers the broader issues in this increasingly polarised environment and the impact of ideology in limiting the impact of moderation. Suffice to say, even moderation is taken as a position now, and when the issues have become more personal as all sexuality and identity issues do, the focus can become more personal as well. It was illuminating to learn in the podcast series Everything Just Changed (with USA pastors Brad Edwards and Bryce Hales) that internal political debate has become such a strong feature among church members that it is increasingly impacting on the ministry. People may stay or leave depending on what they hear or dont hear from the pulpit. There was always a tendency in the USA for didactic messaging to take place, whether by left leaning or more conservative pastors, but usually people attending a particular church leaned that way, so it was not an issue. What was revealing is that many ordinary pastors are now afraid to comment on issues even if the members ask or want to know where their pastor stands. Pastors fear that taking a stand on matters will prompt a focus on their party orientation, even if they dont have an orientation. These matters include marriage, family life, gender, and identity, but one matter highlights the growing polarisation more than all the others. I need to conclude this article with a reference to my next topic: Abortion. In the USA, ones position on abortion has become a major, if not the prime marker for political orientation or at least voting. It is also a prime marker for determining whether one is viewed as an orthodox or faithful Christian. These two factors: politics and religion, have become more intertwined than ever before. The global precision agriculture market is anticipated to reach over USD 13,016 million by 2026, According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research. In 2017, the yield monitoring application dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. North America is expected to be the leading contributor to the global market revenue during the forecast period. There has been an increasing adoption of precision farming across the world owing to growing agricultural industry, and high-demand for food crops. The global precision farming market is driven by the increasing need to improve the quality of crops produced, maximizing crop production, and enhanced crop monitoring. Technological advancement along with government subsidies further boosts the market growth. However, high initial investment and lack of awareness limit the precision farming market growth. Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market/request-for-sample North America generated the highest revenue in the precision agriculture market in 2017, and is expected to lead the global market throughout the forecast period. This is due to high cost of labor, and presence of large farmlands in the North American region. Increasing investments and subsidies in the agriculture sector by governments boost the precision farming market growth during the forecast period in the region. Increasing need to improve food quality and productivity along with increased industrialization of farming equipment further supplements market growth. Various applications of precision farming include irrigation management, crop scouting, yield monitoring, weather tracking and forecasting, field mapping, inventory management, and farm labor management. In 2017, yield monitoring accounted for the largest share in the global market, and was estimated at $1,974 million in 2017, registering a CAGR of 13.2% during the forecast period. This is attributable to the benefits offered by yield monitoring such as reduced cost, improved yields, and enhanced decision making. Yield monitoring is further divided into on-farm yield monitoring, and off-farm yield monitoring. Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market The well-known companies profiled in the report include Ag Leader Technology, AGCO Corporation, Deere and Company, Topcon Corporation, Trimble, Inc., The Climate Corporation, Farmers Edge Inc., and AgJunction, Inc. among others. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers. Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Hardware Type o Automation & Control Drones Application control devices Guidance system Remote sensing Driverless tractors Mobile devices VRT Wireless module o Sensing devices o Antennas/access points Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Deployment Type o Web-Based/Local o Cloud Based Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Service o System Integration o Managed Services o Maintenance & Support o Consulting Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Application o Irrigation Management o Crop Scouting o Yield Monitoring o Weather Tracking and Forecasting o Field Mapping o Inventory Management o Farm Labor Management Precision Farming Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Region o North America U.S. Canada Mexico o Europe Germany UK France Italy Russia o Asia-Pacific China India Japan Australia o Latin America Brazil o Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/precision-farming-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to our customers. Contact Us: Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com According to a new study published by Polaris Market Research the global artificial intelligence market is anticipated to reach USD 54 billion by 2026. The advancements of robots and the rise in their deployment rate particularly, in the developing economies globally have had a positive impact on the global artificial intelligence market. Augmented customer experience, expanded application areas, enhanced productivity, and big data integration has highly propelled artificial intelligence market worldwide. Although, absence of adequate skilled workforce as well as threat to human dignity are some of the factors that could affect the growth of the market. However, these factors are expected to have minimal impact on the market attributed to the introduction of advanced technologies. An extraordinary increase in productivity has been achieved with machine-learning. For instance, Google, with the help of its experimental driverless technology has transformed cars including, Toyota Prius. Integration of various tools by artificial intelligence has helped in the transformation of business management. These tools include brand purchase advertising, workflow management tools, trend predictions among others. For example, the Googles voice accuracy technology has 98% of accuracy rate. Furthermore, Facebooks DeepFace technology has a success rate of approximately 97% in recognizing faces. Such accuracy in technologies is further anticipated to bolster the market growth during the forecast period. Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-market/request-for-sample Currently, North America dominates the global artificial intelligence market attributed to the high government funding availability, existence of prominent artificial intelligence providers in the region, and robust technical adoption base. Also, the region is expected to continue its dominance during the forecast period. Moreover, the adoption of cloud-based services in key economies, such as the US and Canada, is considerably adding to the market growth in the North American region. The markets in Asia Pacific, MEA and South America region are expected to notice a high growth during the coming years. The growth in Asia Pacific region is attributed to the increasing demand for artificial technologies by the developing economies. Thus, the region is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Major companies profiled in the report include Google Inc., Intel Corporation, Nvidia Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, IBM Corporation, General Vision, Inc., Qlik Technologies Inc., MicroStrategy, Inc., Brighterion, Inc., and Baidu, Inc. among others Complete Summary with TOC Available @. https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-market Key Findings from the study suggest North America is expected to command the market over the forecast years. APAC is presumed to be the fastest growing market, developing at a CAGR of more than 65% over the forecast period. The artificial intelligence market is presumed to develop at a CAGR of over 55.9% from 2018 to 2026. The high implementation of artificial intelligence in several end-user verticals including, retail, automotive and healthcare is projected to boost the growth of the market over the forecast period. Several companies are making considerable investments to integrate artificial intelligence competences into their portfolio of products. For instance, in 2016, SK Telecom and Intel Corporation signed an agreement for the development of the artificial intelligence based vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology as well as video recognition. Artificial Intelligence Market Size and Forecast by Technology Machine Learning Natural Language Processing Image Processing Speech Processing Artificial Intelligence Market Size and Forecast by End-use Verticals BFSI Transportation & Automotive Manufacturing Healthcare Retail Media & Advertising Others Artificial Intelligence Market Size and Forecast by Regions North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany UK France Italy Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil Mexico Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Contact us- Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com According to a new report published by Polaris Market Research the worldwide Photovoltaic Materials Market is anticipated to reach around USD 44,073 million by 2026. In 2017, the Polycrystalline Silicon segment dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. In 2017, Asia-Pacific accounted for the majority share in the global Photovoltaic Materials market. The increase in the adoption of renewable energy sources drives the growth of this market. Growing concerns regarding environmental pollution caused by fossil fuels and their limited availability support the market growth. There has been an increasing demand of solar technology owing to low operating costs and less maintenance. Governments are increasingly investing in the development of solar technology to accelerate the adoption of renewable sources, thereby supporting market growth. However, high installation costs of solar systems limit the growth of the market. New emerging markets, and declining costs of photovoltaic materials would provide growth opportunities in the coming years. Get sample copy of this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/photovoltaic-materials-market/request-for-sample Asia-pacific dominated the global Photovoltaic Materials Market during the forecast period. A significant rise in the initiatives taken by governments of China, India, and Japan to promote the use of solar technology to reduce carbon footprint supports the growth of the market in the region. Incentives provided by the governments to the commercial sector industries using solar technology has resulted in high demand of photovoltaic materials in the region. China leads the Asia-Pacific Photovoltaic Materials market during the forecast period. Regions such as North America and Europe export solar cells from Asia-Pacific, thereby supporting market growth in the region. Increasing awareness regarding use of renewable sources and green technologies augments the market growth in the region. Leading global players are expanding their presence in developing nations of India, Indonesia, and Malaysia to tap the growth opportunities offered by these countries. The various types of photovoltaic materials include Monocrystalline Silicon, Polycrystalline Silicon, Cadmium Telluride, and Copper Indium Gallium Selenide among. The Polycrystalline Silicon segment is expected to lead the market during the forecast period owing to affordable manufacturing process and use in varied applications. The Copper Indium Gallium Selenide segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Browse for full research summary: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/photovoltaic-materials-market The well-known companies profiled in the report include DuPont, Targray Technology International, Inc, Shin-Etsu Chemicals Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Material Corporation, Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation LLC, Atecom Technology Co., Ltd., American Elements, Ferrotec Corporation, Topray Solar, Hangzhou First Applied Material Co. Ltd., 1366 Technologies Inc., NovoPolymers NV among others. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers. Photovoltaic Materials Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Material Type Monocrystalline Silicon Polycrystalline Silicon Cadmium Telluride Copper Indium Gallium Selenide Others Photovoltaic Materials Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Product Back Sheets Encapsulants Front Sheets Others Photovoltaic Materials Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by End-User Commercial Residential Utility Others Photovoltaic Materials Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Region North America U.S. Canada Mexico Europe Germany UK France Italy Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin America Brazil Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/photovoltaic-materials-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. Contact us- Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com Nonstick Cookware Market Growth & Trends The global nonstick cookware market size is expected to reach USD 15.39 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.2% from 2021 to 2028. The nonstick cookware industry is rapidly changing due to technology improvements and shifting customer preferences. Businesses have long tried to stay on top of new developments and advances in this industry, such as electronic cookware and smart kitchen gadgets. The rise in the popularity of home cooking, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, is another factor fueling the demand for nonstick cookware products. Consumers are not only trying new recipes at home but also improving their cooking skills. The coronavirus outbreak has also led to an increase in cooking at home as consumers want to avoid any exposure to outside food. This, in turn, has boosted the overall demand for nonstick cookware products. The intention to keep up with home cooking is particularly strong among younger groups, according to a survey of 2,200 U.S. consumers. When questioned about their post-pandemic intentions, a whopping 43% of Gen Z respondents stated they expect to cook more at home once the epidemic is gone. Cooking shows on TV and the internet and regional and international food publications have all aided the trend of cooking at home, thereby driving cookware sales all over the world. Moreover, cookware and bakeware sales in the third quarter of 2020 and the first nine months of 2020, according to BridgeTower Media, demonstrate the rising interest in at-home food preparation that has occurred during the pandemic. Total cookware sales in the U.S. increased 36.2% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, while sales from January to September were up 20.7% over the same period in 2019. The market for nonstick cookware is rising due to the growth of the hospitality industry. The growth of the restaurant and hospitality industry is primarily due to companies reorganizing their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had previously resulted in restrictive containment measures, such as social distancing, remote working, and closure of commercial activities, all of which created operational challenges. Request a free sample copy or view report summary: Nonstick Cookware Market Report Nonstick Cookware Market Report Highlights By raw material, the teflon coated segment accounted for the largest volume share of 47.0% in 2020. Teflon coated nonstick cookware is the most popular among middle-income families owing to its stiffness and longevity Based on distribution channel, the supermarkets and hypermarkets segment accounted for the largest revenue share of 59.7% in 2020. The easy accessibility of nonstick cookware in a variety of price ranges and the availability of a variety of local and worldwide brands are fueling the segment growth Europe held the largest revenue share of 37.7% in 2020. The increasing adoption of nonstick cookware products in the region is supported by the growing number of new product launches by regional and global manufacturers Access Press Release@ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-nonstick-cookware-market Nonstick Cookware Market Segmentation Grand View Research has segmented the global nonstick cookware market on the basis of raw material, distribution channel, and region: Nonstick Cookware Raw Material Outlook (Volume, Million Units; Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028) Teflon Coated Aluminum Coated Enameled Iron Coated Ceramic Coated Others Nonstick Cookware Distribution Channel Outlook (Volume, Million Units; Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028) Supermarkets & Hypermarkets Convenience Stores Specialty Stores Others Nonstick Cookware Regional Outlook (Volume, Million Units; Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028) North America US. Europe Germany UK. Asia pacific China India Central and South America Brazil Middle East and Africa South Africa List of Key Players of Nonstick Cookware Market Groupe SEB (Tefal, All-Clad Group, WMF) Tefal All-Clad Group WMF Newell Brand Inc. (Calphalon) Cuisinart Meyer Corporation TTK Prestige Limited Scanpan USA, Inc. Hawkins Cookers The Cookware Company About Grand View Research Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare. Vishnu Manchu, who will be contesting as the president of the Movie Artists Association (MAA) election, has finally announced the names of his panel members. Interestingly, the actor has picked a few veterans in his team. Additionally, actors Madala Ravi and Balireddy Prudhvi Raj are contesting for the vice presidents post, while veteran actor Babu Mohan is contesting for the position of executive vice president. Actor Raghu Babu is vying for general secretary and Siva Balaji, for treasurer. Readers might remember that actor Prakash Raj has already announced his panel members. With Vishnu now announcing his team, things are certainly set to heat up. Both the actors, however, have been working on their poll promises, holding extensive meetings with their respective panel members. MAA election is due on 10 October. The protesting farmers have been demanding the repeal of the laws, which they are afraid will do away with the MSP system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporations. (Representational Image: DC) Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala's ruling LDF on Thursday called for a state-wide hartal on September 27 to express solidarity with the farmers protesting against the Centre's anti-farm laws. The Samyukt Kisan Morcha, spearheading the anti-farm agitation has announced "Bharat Bandh" on September 27 aiming at further strengthening and expanding the farmers' agitation which began in November last year and the LDF in Kerala will observe state wide hartal on the same day in solidarity with it. This was announced by LDF convenor and CPI(M) acting secretary A Vijayaraghavan after the meeting of the leaders of the ruling party alliance here. Talking to reporters, Vijayaraghavan said five lakh people will participate in the protest in the state against the central government's anti-farmer policy. He claimed that over 100 organisations including motor transport workers, bank employees and farmers organisations have extended their support to the LDF agitation. The protesting farmers have been demanding the repeal of the laws, which they are afraid will do away with the MSP system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporations. Rao will meet Union jal shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Saturday to discuss his governments concerns over the gazette regarding the Godavari and Krishna river management boards. (DC File Image) Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao will leave for Delhi on Friday on a three-day visit, after the first days session of the monsoon session of the Legislative Assembly. This is Rao's second visit to Delhi this month after the nine-day stay from September 1. His sudden visit has triggered speculation in political circles but the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) clarified that he will be in the Capital to attend a meeting convened by Union home minister Amit Shah with Chief Ministers of states that are affected by left-wing extremism (LWE) on September 26. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are among the ten states identified as LWE-affected. Rao will meet Union jal shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Saturday to discuss his governments concerns over the gazette regarding the Godavari and Krishna river management boards. He is to meet Union minister for public distribution Piyush Goyal to take up the issue of FCI refusing to procure boiled rice from Telangana, which is causing huge losses to the state and to farmers. Meanwhile, Raos counterpart from Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is expected to attend Sundays meeting. This will be their first meeting after January 2020, when they met at Pragathi Bhavan. The two had met over six times between May 2019 and January 2020 to resolve pending disputes between the two states. However, they avoided meeting each other due to Krishna water sharing dispute between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Each state has moved the Centre, Supreme Court and NGT against the other on projects related to Krishna. In PM's meeting with the president and CEO of Adobe, Mr Shantanu Narayen, the focus was on on Indias flagship programme Digital India, and the use of emerging technologies in sectors like health, education and R&D. (Twitter) New Delhi: Hours after landing in Washington in the early hours of Thursday (IST), Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a series of individual meetings with the CEOs of top global companies to push for investment in India, including one with Vivek Lall, chief executive of US energy and defence firm General Atomics Global Corp, which manufactures armed drones. The meeting is seen as significant, given Indias reported interest in a proposed $3 billion (Rs 22,000-crore) deal to acquire 30 Predator drones, manufactured by the company, that can attack long-range targets. Media reports said Mr Lall had suggested to Mr Modi that India could set up a dedicated drone hub. On the meeting, New Delhi said Mr Modi and Mr Lall spoke about strengthening the defence technology sector in India. Mr Lall appreciated the recent policy changes to accelerate defence and emerging technology manufacturing and boost capacity building in India, the MEA said. The PM first met Cristiano Amon, CEO of American technology company Qualcomm. In a statement, New Delhi said during the meeting, they discussed investment opportunities offered in Indias telecom and electronics sector (which) included the recently launched Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) as well as developments in the semiconductor supply chain in India. Strategies for building the local innovation ecosystem in India were also discussed, the MEA said. In his second meeting, Mr Modi met the president and CEO of American software giant Adobe, Mr Shantanu Narayen. In a statement, New Delhi said they discussed Adobes ongoing collaboration and future investment plans in India and that discussions also focused on Indias flagship programme Digital India, and the use of emerging technologies in sectors like health, education and R&D. The third meeting on Mr Modis schedule was with Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar, an American company building solar panels. Mr Modi spoke of Indias renewable energy landscape, particularly solar energy potential, and our target of 450 GW electricity generation from renewable sources by 2030. Discussions at the meeting also took place about First Solars interest in setting up manufacturing facilities in India using their unique thin-film technology by availing the recently launched Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme, as well integrating India into global supply chains. After the next meeting with Mr Lall, Mr Modis fifth individual meeting was with the chairman, CEO and co-founder of American investment company Blackstone, Mr Stephen Schwarzman. The MEA said: Mr Schwarzman briefed the Prime Minister about Blackstones ongoing projects in India, and their interest in further investments in the infrastructure and real estate sectors. Promising investment opportunities in India, including those under National Infrastructure Pipeline and National Monetisation Pipeline, were also discussed, the MEA further said. Mr Modi, who is on an official visit to the US, was received on his arrival by deputy secretary of state for management and resources T.H. Brian McKeon. Exuberant members of the Indian diaspora were also present at Joint Base Andrews and cheerfully welcomed the Prime Minister, the MEA said. Mr Modi is also scheduled to have official bilateral meetings in the next few hours with US vice-president Kamala Devi Harris, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga. The high court directed the girl's father to approach a government hospital with a copy of the order. (Photo: PTI/File) Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday came to the aid of another minor rape victim by paving the way for her to undergo medical termination of the pregnancy which was a result of the sexual assault committed on her. This is the third such order passed by the high court in the last one week, with the first one being on September 14. In the earlier two cases, the victims were more than 26 weeks pregnant and based on a medical board's recommendation, abortion was permitted. In the latest case, the 16-year-old victim was 8 weeks pregnant and had to move the court as the private hospital she had approached for terminating the pregnancy refused to carry out the procedure as a crime had been committed. The state government lawyer said that a permission of the court was not required in the instant case as under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, a pregnancy of less than 12 weeks can be aborted by a medical practitioner if he or she is of the opinion that continuing with it would be detrimental to mental and physical health of the victim. Subsequently, the high court directed the girl's father to approach a government hospital with a copy of the order in the instant matter for carrying out medical termination of the pregnancy. With the direction, the plea moved by the victim's father seeking permission for medical termination of pregnancy was disposed of. A baby crocodile was spotted in River Godavari by a farmer in an islet off the Relligaddalanka area near Katheru village. (DC file photo) KAKINADA: In a surprise find, a baby crocodile was spotted in River Godavari by a farmer in an islet off the Relligaddalanka area near Katheru village in Rajamahendravaram rural Mandal. The farmer having a cow farm in the islet went there in the morning and noticed what looked like a monitor lizard or Udumu, which is edible. He managed to draw it into a gunny sack and took it to his village. When he opened the sack, to the surprise of one and all, it was a baby crocodile. The baby crocodile was swiftly handed over to the Three Town Police Station at Rajamahendravaram and they reached it to the WildLife department. Three years ago, some tourists sailing along the area videoed two crocodiles in the river and posted the video on social media. Forest department officials denied these were crocodiles and insisted that they had never seen crocodiles in the river. However, East Godavari district wildlife forest officer C Selvam told Deccan Chronicle that there existed no statics on the population of crocodiles in the river, but the spotting of crocodiles near Papikondalu and Maredumilli rivulets and citations from fishermen and tribals have come as confirmation of their presence in the river. The caught crocodiles age is about two years. It showed weakness and was given treatment. It will be dropped back to the river, he said. He said the recent floods may have carried the baby crocodile to the river. No specific zone for crocodiles has been found so far. However, the Zoological Survey of India would do a survey on the number of crocodiles and other species in the river soon, he said. Meanwhile, fishermen, farmers and others relying on the river for their livelihood are worried over the presence of crocodiles there. Sand excavation activity is on in the river and many fishermen are mining the sand transporting it with their boats in the river. They were freely moving about in the river without such fears so far. They urged Wild Life officials to reserve a crocodile zone and bar their entry into the other areas in the river. Else, there will be serious threat to the lives of both humans and animals venturing into the waters. Selvam said there is no need for such apprehensions as the fishermen can easily identify such species as they frequently moved about in the river. Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao aims to unveil a roadmap for the implementation of the Telangana Dalit Bandhu scheme when the state Assembly meets for the Monsoon Session from Friday. The brief session would last till October 1. The Legislative Council will also meet simultaneously. TRS sources said the CM wants the House to hold a special debate on Dalit Bandhu and pass a legislation to accord constitutional status to Dalit Bandhu to enable the continuation of the scheme permanently. The CM wants to explain the action plan on Dalit Bandhu, explainining how the government wants to cover all the 17 lakh, Dalit families, in phases. He wants to counter Opposition criticism that Dalit Bandhu was launched in Huzurabad with an eye on bypoll and that it was practically impossible to mobilize huge funds for this scheme. This apart, during the session, the Opposition Congress and BJP want to raise the issues pertaining to the Tollywood drugs case investigation by the ED and the excise department, as also the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in Singareni colony in city recently. This apart, they would raise the issues of the increasing liquor sales, the Krishna water dispute, paddy procurement, the welfare schemes not reaching people due to funds crunch, the pending irrigation projects, the failure in the issuing of job notifications etc, to challenge the government. I cant remember when I last enjoyed a memoir so much while learning from it in equal measure. No review that I have seen so far has done justice to the recently published Home in the World: A Memoir, by Amartya Sen. I thought I would use this column to talk about what our young could learn from reading this book. The great advantage is that Prof. Sen writes lucidly about a stupendous range of topics and ideas that a general reader can relate to. For example, the learned discussions about different economic theories have been narrated in such a way that even the unscholarly can grasp the essentials without much difficulty. So, what are the learnings from this brilliantly written memoir? We learn about the brutal contrast between the way the British ruled their own country and the way they ruled ours. How ironical it appears that the savagely exploited India was called the jewel in the crown of the British empire, where the sun did not ever set. We also learn that Calcutta was an already thriving area of established urban living and consequently it was Job Charnocks deliberate choice for being the centre of English trade and commerce. It was not at all chance-directed, as Rudyard Kipling suggested in his famous poem. Prof. Sen cites the richness of Bengal, proximity to the sea and downriver trade as the reasons for Charnocks choice. Thus, the history of Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it is called now) can be traced well before the advent of Job Charnock. Incidentally, the authors relationship with the city of Kolkata and its people makes those who have ties with the city fall in love with it all over again. The reader is reminded that a city can be loved for a variety of reasons. A valuable lesson to learn from this book -- especially in view of the growing intolerance that we observe in contemporary India -- is the need to respect different views. The author strongly condemns blind support for only one school of thought. We are made to realise that blinkered thinking is the reason for senseless polarisation and vice versa. Prof. Sens description of Joan Robinsons unyielding attitude towards new theories of economics illustrates this principle powerfully. She was a better speaker than a listener is such a loaded comment! Indeed, listening is something that people seem to have forgotten these days. Its true that the past is always present and that is why a misrepresentation of the past is so harmful. This memoir shows how important it is to be ready to look at new evidence and to re-investigate established ideas and past events. For instance, the author shows that the acceptance of different religions was the firmly declared policy of the Mughals beginning with Akbar, contradicting many of todays pronouncements. After reading this book many readers have learned that the Bengali calendar is an example of multi-cultural integration -- the handiwork of Emperor Akbar himself. Other examples of set ways of thinking are the way we overlook the defence of individual freedom by Karl Marx as opposed to the authoritarian practices of the Communist regimes that we unfairly associate with him. Giving us food for thought is the startling revelation that undernourishment actually dropped in Britain during the food shortages in the Second World War. This was on account of rationing and price control. The multi-dimensional character of the individual has always been a central idea in Prof. Sens thinking. An appreciation of this truth would not only prevent destructive misunderstanding but also stem the formation of faulty ideas and policies. For instance, theories cannot be based on a workers link with labour alone: a worker has several identities like all other people. The overarching need for basic education, healthcare and nutrition are stressed repeatedly in the book, along with how neglect of these negatively affect the productivity of a nation. No country can prosper without attention to these vital factors. Hopefully, a central learning that young readers will take away from this book is the need for genuine compassion for the poor and hungry. It is extremely important for the young to understand that just voting does not make a democracy. Discussion, argument and persuasion are all essential marks of a vigorous democracy. But even in these assertions Prof. Sen demonstrates gentleness and elegance as well as an almost childlike sense of humour while pressing a point. We learn that it is possible to argue effectively without being aggressive or nasty; it is possible to love ones country without being aggressively nationalistic and that it is possible to be patriotic without having to hate others. Prof. Sens exemplary generosity of spirit shows the reader the importance of acknowledging various individuals contributions to scholarship or to society in general, irrespective of their ideology or faith. Friends and friendship find a heart-warmingly significant place in this memoir while the mention of innumerable thinkers, teachers, historians, philosophers, poets and economists of diverse kinds in his memoir indicates the authors phenomenal breadth of mind. There are lessons to be learned from Prof. Sens love of Sanskrit and ancient texts, from his deep interest in Mathematics and from his valiant and informed battle with cancer at a young age. But what is most endearing is his expression of gratitude to ordinary people such as his landlady, his doctors of old and his favourite bookseller on Kolkatas College Street. Apart from gaining hours of pure pleasure from the pages of Home in the World, the mindful reader is sure to learn some valuable lessons of life. The French are furious. They believe they have been had. Their $66 billion deal to build a dozen conventional submarines for Australia has been torpedoed by a counter-offer by the United States to build eight nuclear-powered undersea behemoths for the Australian naval fleet. The Australian government, on learning about the offer, which was announced by US President Joe Biden on September 15, promptly scrapped the French deal and announced they would be delighted to have nuclear submarines instead. The US-Australia submarine deal is part of a far more significant trilateral partnership launched that day between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. It is a major step towards resisting rising Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. This is President Bidens first significant strategic move and one that will have profound effects on global geopolitics. It also highlights the criticality of the Indo-Pacific in world politics. Pointing out that the US, Australia and Britain have long been faithful and capable partners, Mr Biden declared: Today, we are taking another historic step to deepen and formalise cooperation among all three of our nations, because we all recognise the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term. The French, however, did not see the bigger picture. Its a betrayal, said French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Commenting on the Australian governments decision to renege on the submarine contract, he remarked: Speaking politely, its a real stab in the back We had established with Australia a relationship of trust ... that trust has been betrayed. And today I am angry, with much bitterness at this break. Indeed, he had reason to be angry. For, the French-Australian deal had been in the works since 2014 and had virtually been cemented. Moreover, it was designed to last 50 years. The French foreign minister said that they had been discussing the details of the submarine deal with their Australian counterparts up to a couple of days before the surprise announcement. The French received no hint the deal was about to be broken and put the blame squarely on the United States. The French foreign minister said that relations with the United States and Australia were in a crisis. The Australians on their part stoutly defended their decision to go with the United I dont regret the decision to put Australias national interest first, said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. He said the new partnership is the most significant strategic development for Australia since the signing of the ANZUS treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the US following the Second World War. Not only will Australia become the second country after the UK to get state-of-the-art US nuclear technology, but it also signifies its integration into a much larger military system. All that is of course little consolation for France, which has lost a massive defence contract, as well as suffered a loss of face. Its a humiliation for France and one that is destined to leave a scar on trans-Atlantic ties. Paris has withdrawn its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra in protest. It also cancelled a high-profile US-France celebratory event marking the 240th anniversary of the Battle of the Capes. The grand official reception at the Residence of France in Washington D.C. to celebrate this event on September 17 was called off at the last minute, with the French foreign minister saying that going ahead with it would have been ridiculous! What should worry the French and other European powers more is that the announcement of the AUKUS marks the beginning of a significant strategic shift away from Europe, a part of the globe that has dominated global geopolitics for over a century. The focus has shifted completely and irrevocably to the Indo-Pacific, which is now the current fulcrum of world geopolitics. The consequent downslide in Washingtons relations with Western Europe is somewhat inevitable. The influential US think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace carried an article last year on why Europes relations with the United States are destined to erode. Author David Whineray wrote one reason for this is that the US interest in Europe -- a product of the dominance of the Cold War in US foreign policy -- will continue to decline this decade. As others have argued, the new Cold War is with China. The focus of US foreign policy of any futuremadministration will be the Pacific, not the Atlantic. And indeed, this is the broader reason for the spat involving France and Australia. For Washington, Australias ability to stand up to China is more important than relations with Paris. Europe perhaps does not quite see it that way. It only feels increasingly frustrated with the United States for several reasons, not the least of which was the sudden, unilateral US decision to quit Afghanistan in the middle of the night. The reaction in Britain, the closest US ally, was nothing short of fury. A BBC report quoted an unnamed Cabinet minister who felt the US unconcern about the Afghanistan debacle shows that America is looking inward and is unwilling to do even a modest amount to maintain global order. The minister added: The US remains by far and away our most important ally, but we are not Washingtons most important ally by some stretch. Coming from a British minister, that is indeed something. The trans-Atlantic divide can only further widen. Already issues like Washingtons decision to restrict visas for Europeans (as part of its Covid-19 containment plan), its continued apathy on climate change, the abrupt troop withdrawals from Germany as well as disagreements over issues involving China and Hong Kong have made relations more acerbic than ever before. The Europeans also complain that President Bidens policies demonstrate an unconcern for the rest of the world and are not very different from Donald Trumps America First approach. There are, however, other more profound dynamics at work. America is rapidly shifting away from dependence on the Chinese economy and its technology while Europe remains deeply engaged with China in both those areas, and therefore has not supported a hard anti-Beijing posture. The French might have reason to be furious, but they would only be imprudent if they do not read the writing on the wall. It is time for some serious strategic rethinking in Europe, which has leaned far too long on the United States for its security requirements, and more. The mood could not but have been sombre as the United Nations General Assembly became the venue for world leaders to gather if only to reassure a world hit by long term climate change and racked by two years of the pandemic that all is not indeed lost. The warning from the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres that the world faces the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetime, was accurate enough to trigger concern. Both US President Joe Biden and Chinas supremo Xi Jinping sought to allay fears with Mr Biden promising relentless diplomacy instead of relentless war in answer to fears of a new Cold War developing in the world, this one between the US and China. Mr Xi, in a recorded message, postulated that disputes among countries need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation and that the world is big enough to accommodate common development and progress in all countries. History has been witness to the fact that the United Nations in Manhattans UN Plaza is where world leaders usually ring the alarm bells as well as call for the peace pipe. But actions always speak louder than words like in the edge of the abyss scenario woven by the UN chief that seems chillingly accurate. But Mr Biden took it as his main task to stave off a stinging backlash from allies to various US moves of recent vintage, most of all against the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mr Biden spoke of the sanctity of old alliances like Nato even as his actions in arming Australia in furtherance of strategic interests in containing Chinas sea power in the Indo-Pacific meant something else. Reports of a move by a peeved France offering to trade a permanent seat at the Security Council to the EU in return for empowering Nato with a strike force have been denied but the very thought is an indication of how much has gone awry even among the oldest allies. If global warming mitigation funding was proving an albatross around the necks of the developed world which had cause all the pollution in the first place, there was good news that Mr Bidens USA has agreed to raise its contribution to $11.2 billion a year to developing nations, which will come in handy towards the main COP-26 pledge of $100 billion a year to help fund the fight. China has significantly pledged to stop funding overseas coal projects. There is no word on whether China will also seek green and low carbon energy sources. A start has, however, been made towards tackling the second big problem after the threat of a Cold War facing the world. If the mismatch between words and deeds may be reflected most in a new arms race in the emerging bipolar world with China ranged against the rest on suspicions over where and how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerged, its refreshing that Mr Biden reiterated that bombs and bullets cannot defend against Covid-19 or its future variants. The inequalities of the world have never been made more apparent than in the distribution of vaccines. Cynicism regarding the efficacy of its vaccines notwithstanding, China may hand out two billion doses to disadvantage countries whereas the US is making a virtue of having passed on a few million doses close to their expiry dates. In reality, a world tormented by the pandemic and tortured by thoughts of nuclear proliferation expects much more by way of concerted action from leading powers to rein in the weaponry and invest more in peace. Written by ACM *Strasbourg/EU Parliament/Angelo Marcopolo/- This 2nd Day, Saturday, during the 1st Citizens' Panel on Economy-Social/Culture-Education/and Digitalisation, was Focused mainly on a particularly Extended Work about Concrete "Topics", Initialy and at the End Between the Participant Citizens, (only Partly aided by "Facilitants"), added to an Intermediary Phase, where "Moderators" and "Experts" had an Important Role to play. Such an Exceptional Overload in collective Work apparently Obliged even to Extend the initialy Scheduled Time-Frame for almost an Hour More, "Eurofora" was informed... -------------------------- But, nevertheless, since around 17.30, Both the Plenary and Working Rooms appeared Deserted, leaving Only ...Cleaning Ladies to work around, while Many Tourist Citizens, Visiting the Parliament on the occasion of the Day for European Cultural Heritage, were strolling on the Gallery, trying to Attract the attention of Paparatzi... In Addition, Participant-Citizens of the Conference had been, reportedly, Invited to Socio-Cultural Events, mainly by Strasbourg's Mayor Barseghian, for the Rest of the Day, including a Visit of the Historic, Huge Cathedral, and a Boat-Trip accross its Rivers, from the 3 Towers of Ancient Strasbourg, up to the Modern Buildings of EU Parliament, the CoE and the ECHR, (etc)... Nevertheless, "Eurofora" was Surprized to find out that, while Most People were piled up inside the ...Restaurant of EU Parliament, on the Contrary, some (including even a Young Lady still Working with a Computer) were striving to continue Building on the Conference's Issues, still until Late Evening, (probably Because Tomorrow, on Sunday Morning, it was going to be an Important Decision-Making moment !). I.e., "Eurofora"'s estimation that the Time is Tight, (Comp. Sura, at : ..., etc), seems Right. ---------------------------- And even that Restaurant, this Evening, appeared to be Rather a conveniant Meeting-Place for ..."Food for Thought !" Indeed, soon 3 or 4 Participants, one afte another, Kindly Invited "Eurofora" to enter Inside, Revealing that, in fact, there was something Exceptionaly Important going-on, particularly in the form of "a Speech", by a Leading European Personality, whose Name, Curiously, they did Not Disclose asap... So, the Surprize was Great when, Suddenly, we saw ...Guy Verhofstadt, walk out of that EU Parliament's overloaded Restaurant, with a smile, Contrary to his Past Declaration, Yesterday Afternoon (Friday) at the Plenary, that it would be the Last Time that he adressed this Panel's 1st Meeting, since he was going to Leave Strasbourg, then ! => "Eurofora" immediately Seized that Opportunity to Ask the EU Parliament's Chief Negociator on the Conference for the Future of Europe, and former Belgium's Prime Minister, whether he Believed that those Participant Citizens miht have Still Enough Time and Occasions to eventualy Rectify possible Ommissions or Deformations of Topics, on what they considered as the Main Issues that Should be Raised, Discussed and Settled in their Panel. >>> Verhofstadt's Reply to the above-mentioned "Eurofora"s Question appeared Adamant : - Yes, these Participant Citizens could, indeed, do so, Given, particularly, the Fact that they have 3 Meetings for their Panel, (1 in Strasbourg, Nowadays, anOther -Digital- on October, and a 3rd -at anOther EU City- on November 2021. +Moreover, Theoreticaly, anOther Possibility might be for someone to Raise such Issues During the subsequent, "Plenary" Meetings of the CoFoE, Later-on, (But, then, it would have to be one among the 20 "Ambassadors", that this Panel of 200 Participant-Citizens would Chose Tomorrow (Sunday, 19/9/2021). Such ReEnsurances were given to "Eurofora" with a Kindly Smiling Face, s and While Many Other, simple EU Citizens had Inundated EU Parliament's Building Today, Often with all their Family, including Kids, proudly holding a European Flag, (one of the Gifts offered to Visitors by EU Parliament's staff, on the Occasion of this Day for European Cultural Heritage, that Even some Journalists Received, including "Eurofora", placing it at their Desk in the PressRoom)... (../..) ("Draft-News") One of the most prolific ships in the US Navy is the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers which have undergone several upgrades and refits to keep it up to specifications from challengers on the high seas. For now, these missile destroyers will have to wait for the FFGX before they are replaced. When the US Navy needed a new surface combatant for a new warship, they built these destroyers for that purpose. These ships were built around a new naval radar and capable of launching missiles similar to the Ticonderoga class, but smaller. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are best ship of its generation The first ship came to service in 1991, guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) produced until now that is the most for any navy ship past the second world war, reported the Nationalist Interest. There are now 68 in the US Navy currently serving actively from the first one built three decades ago. Ten more ships of the class were ordered, with seven being built and three more added to the ten ships. Last April 2020, US Navy told the media that eighty-nine of them were to be built after the Spruance Class destroyer was phased out of service. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, on September 21, 2005, were the only destroyers in active service when the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) was engaged in October 2016. Read Also: US Navy to Start Fabricating First Constellation Frigate with Shipyard Expansion The class is one of the largest destroyers that have sailed in the US Navy, with the added advantage of a high-speed hull made by the designers. The design of the ship had incorporated ways to convince radar its smaller than it looks, angle the surfaces, and a featured tripod mainmast that give fewer radar waves reflected. The overall design is a nod to passive protection, giving ship-killer missiles a hard time to lock on. Equipped on the Burke is an electronic warfare suite or ECM system that spoofs detection and even a decoy function to draw a missile attack without ballistic kinetic weapons. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are equipped with four features Aegis combat system is the system on which the ship is built with several components included in the package. Superior sensor with weapons to stop threats against the vessel. Aegis combines four features: AN / SPY-1 radar, command and decision systems, display system, and its weapons control component. An entire length of 505 to 509.5 feet with a total displacement of 8,230 to 9,700 tonnage, with a broader span, on-board are 90 missiles in the vertical launch system (VLS), combined weapons make it the most formidable missile destroyer in the navy's history. Only the funnels are made of aluminum and steel, combined with two steel layers and tons of Kevlar all over the ship. The missile destroyers are classified into configurations call Flight I to Flight III with subtypes in the class, from the first variant to the latest one in 2021. Ironically the two Zumwalts would be the last of the DDG-1000. It was canceled in favor of the Flight III Burkes that has a new addition to its platform. Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers were the replacements of the Zumwalt class, noted Defense News. The USN is planning the future, but for now, the Burkes may fire missiles against China. Related Article: US Navy Wants a Next-Generation Destroyer Designed From the Ground Up @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the US would purchase 500 million extra doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to provide to developing nations across the world, more than doubling the previous pledge to combat the deadly coronavirus. Biden didn't say how much the purchase would cost American taxpayers, but he did say it would roughly double the number of shots the US has promised to pay for internationally. Biden also linked his proposal to the American military campaign to combat Fascism in the 20th century, calling it a "historic commitment." The US president also urged other wealthy nations to contribute vaccines "without any political conditions attached." His offer of 500 million doses was matched by the European Union, which increased a previous commitment. Biden is expected to unveil a plan to help developing countries The COVAX global vaccine agency will distribute the American vaccinations, and Biden stated that the US would raise financing to help organizations that administer the shots, NY Post reported. Although more than 5.9 billion doses have been delivered to almost 43% of the world's population, some of the world's poorest nations have yet to reach vaccination rates greater than 2% or 3%, and COVAX has fallen short of almost all of its distribution targets. Per Daily Mail, it all happened at a White House event, where Biden turned down yet another opportunity to answer questions from the gathered press corps. After British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on British media, he gave two quick replies in an Oval Office meeting with Johnson. Biden has steered away from shouted questions at other events, dodging inquiries about the US-French spat and a US drone attack in Afghanistan that killed ten people, including seven children. Biden is expected to unveil the proposal on Wednesday during a virtual summit of world leaders as part of an effort to improve low immunization rates in poorer countries throughout the world. In June, the President announced that the United States would purchase and distribute half a billion Pfizer vaccines to 92 low-income countries and the African Union as part of an unprecedented global vaccine program. To reach Biden's 70 percent objective, the US is now allegedly planning to double that amount and purchase an extra half-billion shots. However, the worldwide target of 70% is a high one and one that the US has fallen far short of. Read Also: North Korea Threatens Nuclear Arms Race After US Announces New Alliance, Submarine Deal With The UK and Australia Activists say Biden' vaccine donation plan is not enough Activists were outraged by the Biden administration's timeline for sending the newly announced Pfizer doses: Only 300 million of the 1.1 billion doses pledged by the US for donation are likely to be delivered this year. Scientists have cautioned that the longer the virus travels worldwide, the more hazardous it will become, even for vaccinated individuals in rich countries. "Purchasing doses for donation sometime next year is helpful, but it does not meaningfully expand the global supply, and it is not justice," said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program. Some experts urged Biden to be more aggressive in pressing American vaccine manufacturers to share their formulas with countries needing COVID-19 vaccines. The administration's plans for allocating the extra funds for vaccination deliveries were not immediately clear. Some nations have struggled to train and compensate vaccine providers, as well as deliver vaccine doses. Pfizer doses are particularly difficult to store since they must be kept at extremely low temperatures, necessitating the construction of freezers and, in many cases, backup generators. Supply constraints were the most serious issue for worldwide vaccines earlier this year. Rich countries rushed to obtain dosages while delaying commitments of money and supplies to Covax, the UN-backed global vaccination program. However, when the production challenges eased, other issues arose. One was clear inequality: more than 5.9 billion vaccines were administered worldwide, yet the vast majority were given in wealthier countries. Another reason was that poorer nations lacked the financial means to transport shots from airport tarmacs to people's arms. Although the Biden administration's commitments have exceeded those of other Western countries, analysts say other wealthy nations have set an extremely low standard, as per The New York Times. Related Article: Joe Biden Urges To Thoroughly Investigate Afghanistan Drone Strike; White House Dodges Question If Anyone Should Be Fired @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. American lawmakers continue to struggle to finalize discussions regarding government funding and debt ceiling legislation as Democrats, and GOP members trade blows, risking a massive shutdown of the United States administration. Republicans continue to refuse to give in to Democrats regarding the increase of the debt ceiling. The latter's preferred public option is to add more pressure on GOP members to yield and accept their proposal. However, if that fails, they have said they would need to prevent a government shutdown next week amid the coronavirus pandemic and other issues. Risk of Massive Government Shutdown During interviews, several Democrats have expressed their growing desperation to do anything to keep the American government working as the debt stalemate risks a shutdown. One of the ways lawmakers can avoid this situation is by dropping a borrowing limit hike included in Democrats' funding package. They could also start negotiations with GOP members who are opposed to any increase. Many lawmakers argue that a government shutdown was not an option, but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not prepared a backup plan with his members. Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, while supporting a bipartisan debt increase, said the government should not be allowed to shut down, Politico reported. Another politician, Senator Tim Kaine, said it was not in the best interests of Democrats to threaten GOP members with a government shutdown to pressure Republicans about the debt ceiling. On the other hand, Senator Ben Cardin said his party would continue to support a debt limit hike using various strategies. Read Also: Joe Biden Says He Needs To Discuss A Post-Brexit Free Trade Deal Between US And UK Further With Boris Johnson Two former GOP treasury secretaries recently had private talks with current Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The officials aimed to resolve the issue regarding the debt ceiling increase that is threatening a massive government shutdown. However, despite pleas from Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary under former President George W. Bush, and Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary under former President Donald Trump, the matter was not resolved. The United States continues to plummet down a federal government shutdown, the Washington Post reported. Lawmakers at Odds on Debt Limit Hike Paulson and Mnuchin have discussed with McConnell and Yellen amid the Biden administration's attempts to increase the debt limit in recent weeks. The latter argues that without the legislation, the United States could face a global financial crisis. The issue comes as Senate Democrats also pressure other lawmakers on voting rights and immigration reform. However, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough argued that immigration would not fit into a fiscal bill. The situation means that Republicans may be forced to filibuster a bill designed to prevent the United States federal government from shutting down. On Tuesday night, the plan was approved by House Democrats during a party-line vote. If there was no filibuster in play in the Senate, the latter might have the power to pass the bill independently, using Vice President Kamala Harris' vote as a tiebreaker. With the Democrats' $3.5 trillion social spending plan, they are also forced to try to shoehorn immigration policy to be included, Fox News reported. Related Article: Biden Commits To Working With International Allies in Tackling Global Issues During UN Assembly @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On the day Gabby Petito was last seen alive, Brian Laundrie was apparently involved in an intense dispute with a waitress at a Wyoming restaurant. Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans claimed she and her boyfriend were visiting the state on August 27 when they stopped for lunch at Merry Piglets, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson Hole, between 1 and 2 p.m. During an altercation about the bill, witnesses claim that an "aggressive" Brian Laundrie berated staff at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Wyoming, leading girlfriend Gabby Petito to apologize for his conduct only days before she vanished. Witness recalled Brian Laundrie's aggressive argument with restaurant staff During an interview, Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans recalled the incident at Jackson Hole on August 27. Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, Matthew England, a financial adviser, when they stopped for lunch at Merry Piglets between 1 and 2 p.m. In late August, the couple traveled to Wyoming to attend a wedding. They overheard a heated conversation in which another diner was heard yelling at wait staff in what looked to be an altercation about the check while dining at the restaurant. The individual involved in the argument had aggressive body language, according to Angelo. She claims the man left the restaurant and returned four times. After then, the man's companion entered the restaurant and apologized to the wait staff for his actions, Daily Mail reported. Officials have verified that a corpse discovered near Grand Teton National Park over the weekend belonged to Gabby Petito and that she died of homicide. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of fiance Brian Laundrie, 23, are unknown, and no charges have been filed. Laundrie's parents, who reported him missing in a swampy preserve area near their North Port, Florida, home last week, might be affected by the warrant. The FBI went to Laundrie's parents' home in North Port on Monday and took numerous boxes out of the house, as well as a car that neighbors said Laundrie's mother usually drove, as per ABC Chicago. Read Also: Mississippi Man Fatally Shoots Roommates While Child Witnesses Parents' Death Brian Laundrie may have misled his family Since September 14, Laundrie has been missing. According to his family, he traveled to Carlton Reserve, a 25,000-acre nature reserve in Sarasota County, Florida, who reported him missing on Friday. According to a search-and-rescue expert, Brian Laundrie, Gabby Petito's fiance, may have misled his family about his location and "maybe almost anywhere." Chris Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, said there's a potential Laundrie misled his family about where he was going. Boyer went on to say that the fact that Laundrie vanished three days before his family reported him missing posed a significant problem for authorities. According to Boyer, police may be looking into Laundrie's digital trail, which includes any efforts to contact individuals from his smartphone since he went missing, as well as any search history that may lead to his whereabouts. Laundrie has not been charged with any wrongdoing. After he returned from a cross-country road trip without Gabby Petito this month, he was declared a person of interest in Petito's missing-person investigation. The FBI discovered Petito's body in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, and her death was ruled a homicide. Boyer said if Laundrie was in Carlton Reserve, it'd be difficult for police to find him because much of the park is underwater, making it difficult for officers to walk around the area. He said that police would likely use boats and drones to search the reserve along with on-foot search teams. Boyer said that if Laundrie were at Carlton Reserve, cops would have a tough time finding him because much of the park is submerged, making it impossible for officers to wander around. Police would likely scour the reserve with boats and drones, as well as on-foot search teams, he added. Per Insider, the search in Carlton Reserve resumed on Wednesday, with authorities enlisting the help of dive teams. The presence of divers does not necessarily indicate that authorities are looking for a corpse; they may alternatively be looking for personal things that Laundrie may have discarded in the water. Related Article: Autopsy Confirms Gabby Petito's Body Found in Wyoming, Death Ruled Homicide While Search for Brian Laundrie Intensifies @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Biden allegedly passed questions to Boris Johnson during their meeting White House when reporters shot to queries. This was when the usual question and answer part went by and would not oblige the reporters. The meeting comes after the furor over the AUKUS deal, which causes a row in the EU. Instead of the US president taking command of the proceedings, he passed it onto the UK instead. No answers given by the POTUS One of the questions asked by the Sun's political editor Harry Cole, about whether the UK will have to wait longer for a 'free trade deal' with the US. He cited the US seems to be not so keen about it, reported the Express UK. At that point, Biden just diverted the query directed at him and gesticulated to ask the UK prime minister instead. This was seen as a disappointment that the US leader did not answer anything again. Allegedly Joe Biden said tersely to Johnson, not him. They would need to go through the FTA deal. Johnson added that they eventually fixed the Boeing Airbus deal between the US and UK, which was a big issue too. He also mentioned is the beef and whiskey in the conversation. Spontaneously Biden said the UK prime minister smiled at the whiskey remark. President Biden allegedly passes questions to Boris Johnson when everything heats up, leaving the press unsatisfied. Read Also: Australia, France Row Over the Conventional Submarine Deal; Affects European Union Backing Macron Former US President Barack Obama is the one who made the back of the line comment way back in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. He said if it did happen, the UK would last to get an FTA from him if it abandoned the European Union, cited the BBC. The remarks came as Boris Johnson would not commit to having the UK-US FTA deal in the next election. Should a post-Brexit deal be ready by 2024, the PM said that the UK would have free trade deals worldwide, even with the US. He added that there is optimism it will happen, although the Americans are hard in negotiations of that kind. He added that both countries would try to have results for a deal to be made. But Johnson cautioned earlier before the US trip that getting an agreement is far off; it won't happen now. White House handlers stop questions to Biden about the US border crisis The US president talked with the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, he made assurances of the US commitment to the UN, noted Republic World. Conservative traditionalists have criticized US media who accuse them of allegedly covering up for the White House; many reported supposed gaffes. In many press junkets, questions are selected, unlike when Donald Trump was on anything in his press dealings. The reporters asked questions about the migrant crisis that prompted his handlers to deal with the situation. The deluge of questions caused the president to look at the reporters while they were asked to march out. Members of the White House assigned to the president's press activities told the press to go and said that you noted an unnamed observer. In their FTA talks, Joe Biden obviously passes questions to Boris Johnson without clarity on the president's stand. Related Article: Von Der Leyen Orders EU To Halt Business With US Until France Gets an Explanation Over the AUKUS Deal @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The UK's gas crisis is part of a larger global natural gas phenomenon, with prices skyrocketing and businesses unsure of how to respond. Europe and North America are aiming to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. Gas prices in the United Kingdom rose to 291.18 ($340.22) per megawatt-hour on Monday and are anticipated to rise to 1,083.78 ($1266.29) if the trend continues. Wholesale energy costs jumped by 70% in August, according to OGUK, the UK national group for the oil and gas sector. With North Sea output predicted to drop by half by 2027, the UK's reliance on imports is anticipated to increase, even more, accelerating this trend, as per Yahoo Finance. UK energy companies collapse The UK gas sector has been struck particularly hard as gas prices rise across Europe, hitting their highest levels since 2014. Greater rivalry for natural gas supplies between Europe and Asia, disruptions at US production plants following Hurricane Ida, and tougher carbon market restrictions within the EU are all important factors to the trend. Furthermore, due to an exceptionally harsh European winter and the strong energy demand rebound observed with the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, gas supplies have already drained more quickly this year. As the market continues to be battered by rising gas costs, Avro Energy and Green have become the latest energy companies to go out of business. Ofgem stated that the 580,000 residential gas and electricity customers of Avro and the 255,000 homes of Green will be protected. Per Daily Mail, customers should wait to be contacted by their new provider, according to the regulator, who will pick a new supplier for the homes. Up to one-fourth of UK households rely on wholesale suppliers who aren't "hedged" against market swings, leaving them vulnerable. Gas wholesale costs have risen by 250 percent since the beginning of the year and by 70% since August, implying that these vulnerable businesses are buying energy for less than they offer it to consumers. Read Also: China's Xi Jinping Vows To Halt Building Coal-Burning Power Plants Abroad Ahead of Climate Talks UK gas fragility revealed over global fuel prices Igloo Energy started steps today to hire Alvarez & Marsal as administrators for probable insolvency. Bulb, which has 1.7 million customers, is looking for further private funding. However, it protects itself from growing energy costs by agreeing on contracts in advance. Nine companies have gone out of business so far this year, with the director of the energy regulator, Ofgem, warning that more are likely to follow, putting "far over" hundreds of thousands of consumers in jeopardy. Customers should expect years of rising gas prices, according to the Energy Secretary. Top Tory Kwasi Kwarteng expressed concern that recent wholesale cost hikes, which have resulted in cost increases for electricity companies, might continue. And rising costs are expected to lead to increased family bills. Spain has placed a charge on "the generators and dealers who are earning very significant profits" to support consumer protections, according to Darren Jones, chairman of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee. Tens of millions of pounds in taxpayer funds may be used to cover the running costs of a big US-owned fertilizer company that emits massive volumes of carbon dioxide as a by-product. MPs had already heard from the Government and Ofgem that the industry has been unstable for at least two years. Emma Pinchbeck, Chief of Energy UK, said a short-term crisis caused by rising gas prices has highlighted certain flaws in the UK system and warned that even well-run companies might go bankrupt, MIRROR reported. Related Article: Scientists Mark 2020 as Hottest Year in the UK; Climate Change Expected to Have Devastating Effects Worldwide @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The World Health Organization has warned that Afghanistan's health system is on the verge of collapse, with thousands of health institutions missing financing for medical personnel and materials. Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan In a recently published article in Newsweek, the humanitarian catastrophe is only one of the many difficulties the Taliban have faced since taking control of Afghanistan last month, including fresh threats from the terrorist Islamic State group, which has lately increased its assaults against Taliban members in their stronghold in the country's east. Following a recent visit to Kabul by a WHO delegation headed by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization issued a statement emphasizing the gravity of the situation. According to the WHO, the nation is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster; and institutions lack the necessary funds to function effectively, exacerbating the situation. Many of these institutions have now decreased or shut down, requiring health professionals to face difficult choices about who to rescue and who to let die, according to WHO. Women must have access to education, health care, and the health workforce, according to the agency, according to a published article in Reuters. Read Also: IMF Refuses to Release $450 Million to Afghanistan; Taliban Cannot Access Most Afghan Central Bank Assets UN Aid Coordinator Releases $45 Million for Afghanistan Martin Griffiths, the United Nations' assistance coordinator, released $45 million in life-saving help for Afghanistan from the global body's emergency budget on Wednesday as an emergency measure, according to a recently published article in NPR. Allowing Afghanistan's healthcare delivery system to collapse, according to Griffiths, would be catastrophic. Primary health treatment, such as emergency caesarian sections and trauma care, will be denied to Afghans throughout the country, he said. Taliban Request that Suhail Shaheen Be Allowed To Address in the UN General Assembly Suhail Shaheen, a former peace negotiator and spokesperson for the Taliban political office, was previously announced as the Taliban's new UN representative in a letter to the UN. They asked for Shaheen's permission to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which is now in session. In a published article in Hindustan Times, Afghanistan is scheduled to speak at the ministerial conference on Monday. If the Taliban does not get international recognition by then, Afghan Ambassador Ghulam Isaczai will deliver the speech. Shaheen told a news outlet on Wednesday, "We have all the requirements needed for recognition of a government. So we hope the U.N . as a neutral world body recognize the current government of Afghanistan." Furthermore, Isaczai is currently recognized as his country's United Nations ambassador; but the Taliban, who took control of most of Afghanistan last month as US and NATO forces were preparing to leave the country in a chaotic manner, argue that they are now in charge and have the authority to appoint ambassadors. Taliban Appoint All-Male Cabinet Including the So-Called UN 'Blacklist' The Taliban have chosen an all-male Cabinet made up mainly of hardliners from when they previously controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, including many individuals on the United Nations sanctions list after they stormed to power and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country. Amir Khan Mutaqqi, the Taliban foreign minister and the author of the letter to the United Nations asking Shaheen to attend the General Assembly, is among individuals on the so-called UN "black list." Related Article: Afghanistan in Economic Disaster, Food Shortage; Locals Encounter Devastating Results Days After Taliban Takeover @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 'Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan,' a new Netflix four-part docuseries, revisits the historic case of Billy Milligan, who became the first person to be acquitted of a violent crime claiming the defense of criminal insanity. One of the victims recognized her assailant as Milligan, a young man from the area with a criminal record for rape and robbery after three rapes happened at Ohio State University in the late 1970s. Milligan, on the other hand, appeared to have no recall of the acts when he was apprehended in 1977. Milligan, then 22, was charged with three counts of kidnapping, three counts of aggravated robbery, and four counts of rape after a gun was used in the crimes and firearms were discovered at his home. Billi Milligan: First person to use personality disorder in legal defense He was imprisoned at the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he received psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. Milligan's attorneys claimed that throughout his youth when he was allegedly abused by his stepfather Chalmer Milligan, Billy Milligan's personality began to split. However, Chalmer always denied the allegations against him, Bustle reported. Milligan's legal defense rested on the premise that he couldn't be held liable for the attacks because they weren't carried out by his primary character. His attorneys also claimed that his condition prohibited him from recognizing what was right and wrong and from cooperating with his lawyers. Milligan's diagnosis was questioned by both medical experts and the general public, resulting in extensive media coverage of the case and a lingering fascination in DID. Milligan was eventually judged not guilty owing to insanity, and he was confined to a state-run mental institution. Psychiatrists discovered that Milligan's mind had at least 24 different personalities. A British intellectual named Arthur, who studied science and medicine, an Eastern European named Regan, who was dubbed the "keeper of hate," and a young lesbian named Adalana, who Milligan claimed was the mastermind behind the rapes, were among those allegedly involved. As a consequence of his alterations, Milligan claimed to be able to talk and write in a variety of languages. The film depicts Billy Milligan's eight years of imprisonment in jails and psychiatric facilities following his conviction, up until his July 4, 1986 escape from Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital. Milligan got false documents under the name Christopher Carr and moved to Bellingham, Washington, according to the Netflix docuseries. Milligan fled the state when his roommate Michael Madden went missing in September 1986 and was apprehended by authorities in Florida shortly after. Although no one has ever been charged in Michael Madden's disappearance, many of his belongings were discovered in Milligan's apartment, and Milligan had been cashing Madden's disability payments in a joint bank account. Milligan was sent to Ohio after his arrest and re-institutionalized. Per Esquire, Milligan was freed in 1988 when an independent psychiatrist determined that he was not a risk to society. Milligan returned to Columbus, Ohio, after several years in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where his sister had acquired a mobile home for him. He worked there for the rest of his life, until he died of cancer in 2014, at the age of 59. Read Also: Tom Cruise's BMW X7 Stolen While Filming Next Mission: Impossible Movie; Thieves Also Take His Hundreds of Thousands Worth of Luggage Can a person possess multiple personalities like Billy Milligan? People were split on whether Billy Milligan, a serial rapist, had more than two dozen personalities. Was he truly in control when he raped several women or was he just a smart and cunning sociopath who made it all up? Is it possible for a human to have more than one personality, let alone 24? While Milligan's lawyers were the first in the United States to successfully use several personalities in court, the concept was not new. Only a few years before, the 1973 book "Sybil" had sparked people's interest. Shirley Mason, a woman with 16 personalities, was said to be the inspiration for the story, as per Yahoo. While the book and following 1976 miniseries were well-received, Mason subsequently acknowledged inventing the characters' personalities for publicity. Other hypotheses concerning multiple personalities have been contentious, if not outright ridiculed. Dr. Dorothy Lewis has been accused of encouraging criminals to fabricate sickness as a legal defense. Is dissociative identity disorder, or DID, real or just a "psychiatric phenomenon," as National Public Radio described it? According to a 2016 research published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, the disorder is real and not a fad. Nonetheless, the diagnosis appears to be uncommon. It affects around 1.5 percent of the world's population. In terms of the number of personalities, it looks that dozens are possible. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, people with DID frequently experience amnesia and time loss, a claim Milligan stated in court. Milligan's condition was attributed by psychiatrists to his violent and terrible childhood. Dissociative identity disorder is frequently linked to childhood trauma. "DID patients generally benefit from psychotherapy that addresses trauma and dissociation in accordance with expert consensus guidelines," according to the Harvard research. Related Article: Bob Ross Documentary: Revelations About the Vicious, Secret Battle of the Painter and the Cause of His Death @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A new COVID-19 strain that evades antibodies created by vaccines has been discovered in 47 states after infecting vaccinated patients and employees at a Kentucky nursing home. R.1 Variant Evades Antibodies In a recently published article in MSN News, according to Haseltine, the five mutations identified in R.1 may contribute to "enhanced antibody resistance." This may improve the variant's ability to evade antibodies produced by the vaccination as well as antibodies produced by individuals who have previously been infected. According to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention, R.1 has the W152L mutation in a region of the spike protein that is the target of antibodies, which may decrease their efficacy. The W152L mutation was also found in a small Delta strain variation that was discovered in India. R.1 has a mutation in common with three additional variants: C241U, NSP12: P323L, and D614G. The impact of D614G is that it produces more infections while the effect of the other two is unknown. All three alterations have been found in strains that have replaced the Wuhan strain, according to a published report in Newsweek. Read Also: Vietnam Reveals Hybrid COVID-19 Variant First Found in India and the UK Spreads Faster Than Other Versions New Variant Found in 47 States and Other Countries The mutation allowed the variant, which was originally discovered in Japan, to escape the antibody protection provided by fully vaccinated people. After an unvaccinated staff member caused the illnesses in March, the R.1 strain spread among 45 residents and employees at the nursing facility, according to the Kentucky Department of Public Health. According to Outbreak.info, a website that gathers data on COVID variant, R.1 has infected more than 10,567 individuals worldwide and has been detected in 47 states as of September 21. There are already 399 reported instances since its first discovery, and Maryland holds the record of the most number of cases. The R.1 strain, which was first identified on March 15, 2020, has been found in 2,259 americans. The most recent instance in the United States was discovered on August 6, and it was identified in 0.5 percent of patients, according to a published report in DEADLINE. CDC Does Not Categorize R.1 as a 'Variant of Concern or Interest' R.1 is not yet classified as a variant of concern or interest by the CDC although it does contain many "mutations of significance." According to the CDC, one of them shows indications of increased viral transmissibility. Others have been found in variants of concern that display indications of decreased neutralization by convalescent and post-vaccination sera, according to the CDC. Another mutation found in R.1 may make neutralizing antibodies less effective. The good news is that, despite the outbreaks, vaccination has been linked to a lower risk of infection and clinical disease in both patients and workers. R.1 also doesn't seem to be outcompeting and therefore appears to be more transmissible than Delta. The CDC reported just 1,125 R.1 infections in the United States as of April 22. According to Outbreak.info, the strain has been discovered in at least 31 countries across the globe, including China, India, and several countries in Western Europe. Despite the limited number of infections, William A. Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor, believes the additional mutations discovered in the R.1 variety may make it easier to spread. Related Article: Epsilon, Lambda COVID Variants: Is It True That These Are COVID-19 Vaccine-Resistant? What Experts Are Doing Now @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Another stimulus check may never be issued, owing to a lack of agreement among lawmakers. However, the process of obtaining approval for stimulus checks may become more simple in the future. President Joe Biden may make future coronavirus stimulus checks automatic, eliminating the need for approval through a vote. The first stimulus checks were authorized by Congress in March of last year. The second stimulus check, on the other hand, took more than eight months for Congress to approve. The Democrats had to use the reconciliation procedure to pass the American Rescue Plan for the third batch of stimulus checks. President Joe Biden has yet to address automatic stimulus checks This implies that if specific economic criteria were to trigger, the stimulus checks would automatically kick in. For example, if the unemployment rate falls below a particular threshold, stimulus checks will begin to be sent out, and they will cease once the rate rises over that level. Those in favor of the concept believe that such a provision would ensure that households would continue to get financial assistance to meet their basic expenditures in the aftermath of a pandemic. Twenty-six Democrats addressed to the White House a few months ago, urging that future payments be made automatic, as per Value Walk. Since then, many more members of Congress have shown support for this measure, known as "automatic stabilizers." Congressman Andrew Gomez wrote a letter emphasizing the need of making future payments automated. Even after this, the President's office has yet to issue a remark on the matter. Biden appears to be more concerned with the American Jobs Plan. The idea was approved on the floor of the United States Senate, but not on the House of Representatives. Senators must propose one of the reconciliation measures, they insist. The President's administration is pleased to unveil the American Families Plan, which focuses on improving the lives of families. At the same time, there is still a need for another round of payments in the country, as per Digital Market News. Read Also: Child Tax Credit: Still Haven't Got Your September Stimulus Check? Here's What To Do! Petition calls for $2,000 recurring stimulus payments Many families have received much-needed financial help since the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from stimulus checks to advance Child Tax Credit payments of up to $300 per month per child. Last week, almost 2 million Californians got a second batch of Golden State stimulus checks for $600 or up to $1,100. If you have a baby or adopt a child this year, you may be eligible for an extra stimulus check worth up to $1,400, though the money won't come until 2022. The delta variant cases continue to have a significant economic effect, with many families seeking more direct aid - one petition requesting $2,000 recurring stimulus payments has received over 2.89 million signatures. Despite this, Congress has not passed a new stimulus package this year. Instead, lawmakers are concentrating on a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and a $3.5 trillion federal budget proposal that may give more assistance. The first three stimulus checks helped alleviate burdens such as food insecurity and financial instability, according to researchers. So far, eligible adults have received a maximum of $3,200 and children have earned up to $2,500 during the pandemic. Per CNET, for low-income families, this isn't enough to make up for lost earnings and benefits. The White House has offered numerous packages since the American Rescue Plan, including the American Jobs Plan and the Build Back Better agenda, but none of them ask for further direct assistance. According to a June statement from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden is "open to a range of ideas" on stimulus spending, but he has already proposed what would be "the most effective in the short term." Related Article: Fourth Stimulus Check Coming This Week To Millions of Americans; Here's Who Will Get One! @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An elderly man reported to authorities that a wild rabid 50-pound beaver attacked him when he swam in a Massachusetts pond in the US . Beavers have been known to attack people on several occasions when they expect it to be a cute furball, forgetting its incisors are deadly weapons. Aggressive 50-pound beaver attacks swimmer Mark "Pres" Pieraccini, 73, the victim, never expected the large rodent to be fierce and attacked him brutally. He sustained severe injuries after he escaped the beaver's wrath. Like many before him, they never expected an attack from such a quiet animal. Pieraccini said that the beaver attack came after he swam in a Massachusetts pond. He added the ferocity of the large rodent's attack could have killed him, reported the Daily Star. The injuries sustained were enough to send the victim to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. His typical swim in a remote pond had a fierce and rabid rodent waiting to ambush him like a furry gator. It happened early in September in Massachusetts, when the attack nearly took the man's life and was almost drowned by the ruthless rodent. Upon examining the injuries the victim sustained on different parts of his body, the animal bit him in the arm and leg, leaving large bloody gashes and multiple lacerations that might have come from the rodent's sharp teeth on the scalp and body cited Mass Live. The hospital gave treatment for rabies to the victim. The wild rabid beaver wanted to kill him, as his knuckle was fractured from hitting the wild rodent. Read Also: Beastly Hyena Tried to Kill Old Man and Small Dog, But Passerby Saved Them By Beating Animal With a Stick Pieraccini remarked the beaver was about 50-pounds when he struggled to stop its attacks. Successive hits on the wild animal nearly tired him out and drowned him. He added that during the struggle to stop the rampaging rodent, drowning is not far from happening. Fighting back made the beaver furious to attack more The animal got wilder and slashed with its teeth more instead of driving off the attacking rodent by punching it. It seemed to get angrier. He could not believe the animal was so fierce! The victim did not think the attack inflicted so many bloody wounds. He struggled to get back to his car, which was a mile and a half from the pond. He luckily got to his car in his injured state to the Baystate Franklin Medical Centre to treat his injuries. Doctors said the injuries of Mr. Pieraccini were severe and terrible, added that he was lucky he did not lose much blood or drown in the beaver pond. Pieraccini did not disclose to the park rangers where the pond is for fear that the beavers would be euthanized. This would lead to the notion if the attack were an actual claim. Potomac River attack by an angry beaver In a report in Unofficial Networks, YouTube channel Aquachigger is another person attacked by a beaver. While wading in the Potomac River, he was ambushed by a wild beaver who attacked from behind. It bit him on his lower back, but he threw the 40-pound rodent and ran to the shore. He posted a video of the attack on YouTube. When wild rabid beavers attack and want to kill a man for swimming in its pond, it is a far and unlikely image of these comical-looking rodents. There have been just 11 attacks by beavers on people in North America over the last ten years. Related Article: Alligator Suspected of Devouring Louisiana Man During Hurricane Ida Captured, Human Torso Remains Found in Its Belly @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A report released Wednesday stated that illegal Haitian immigrants being deported from the United States attacked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents onboard a plane prepared to take off from a US Air Force facility in Texas. The incident was one of at least three this week in which Haitians caught for attempting to enter the US illegally from Mexico turned violent after being placed on planes home. Around 8 a.m. Monday, two unidentified men jumped out of their seats on an aircraft carrying passengers toward a runway at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas - where as many as 15,000 illegal Haitian migrants had gathered during the previous week - and attacked ICE officials who were bitten among the chaos. Guards at US border reportedly whipped at Haitian migrants According to the Washington Examiner, the plane returned to the gate and the men were taken into prison for federal assault charges. The incident came after a 5 a.m. trip to Haiti was postponed earlier Monday because apprehended migrants awaiting deportation were "being disruptive and not cooperating" as the plane was ready to take off. Deportees are typically not allowed to be restrained during flights due to FAA regulations. Per BBC, many Americans have compared the photos to historical depictions of slavery, which ended in 1865, and other terrible times in American history for black people. For example, one frequently circulated image combines a current photo from the US border with a historical picture of an African slave being dragged by a rope and whipped. The claim that the agents "whipped" the migrants have been refuted by officials. The policemen are just holding the reins that are used to manage the horses, according to the National Fraternal Order of Police labor union. Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation's oldest civil rights group, is one of the notable voices who has spoken out about the photos. Johnson discussed the matter with administration officials and members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Monday. The new photos of officers on horseback corralling black individuals - notably white males - come at a time when the United States is "in the middle of a racial reckoning." Mark Naison, history and African and African-American studies professor at Fordham University in New York, feels that the public's reaction to the border pictures is a logical outcome of rising public knowledge of the country's history of maltreatment of black people. Read Also: UK Gas Crisis: Prices May Rise To $1260 Per MWh as Energy Firms Face Collapse Due To Botched Strategy Groups condemn Biden administration's reaction to the migrant encampment According to a letter delivered to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, civil and human rights organizations criticized the White House's immigration policy for inflicting "cruelty on Black, Brown, and Indigenous immigrant communities." The letter arrived at the White House amid widespread bipartisan condemnation of President Joe Biden's reaction to a migrant encampment of thousands of primarily Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. During a trip to the area earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress on Tuesday that the situation in Del Rio was a "human tragedy" that officials were working to resolve. Mayorkas said US officials have decreased the size of the encampment to about 10,000 individuals by Tuesday, down from a peak of 15,000 last week. The letter made no mention of pictures and videos that surfaced earlier this week purporting to show Border Patrol officials on horseback charging migrants as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande in Del Rio. The agents looked to be waving or whipping reins towards the migrants or in the air in several of the images. Democrats have been especially outspoken in their condemnation of the agents' actions, as per the LA Times. The photos were "horrible and human beings should never be treated that way," said Vice President Kamala Harris. Related Article: Donald Trump Visits "Unfinished Wall" in Texas Border with Gov. Abbott, Says Biden is Destroying US @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged humanity to 'grow up' on the topic of climate change during a speech to the United Nations in New York as the threat of global warming continues to rise and countries have no sufficient plans to mitigate the issue. The official said that the world was nearing what he called a "critical turning point" and the world's nations must now take full responsibility for the destruction that has been caused. Johnson's speech to the United Nations comes ahead of the COP26 climate summit scheduled to be held in Glasgow this November. UK Prime Ministers Call to World Leaders Johnson used his time in the United States to urge other countries to start taking drastic actions to mitigate the effects of climate change. About 100 world leaders are expected to be in attendance at the meeting at the UN General Assembly. During his speech, the UK Prime Minister attempted to be less serious with his call for other countries to address climate change. "If you imagine that million years as the lifespan of an individual human being, about 80 years, then we are now sweet 16," the official said, BBC reported. In the Glasgow UN Climate Summit, Johnson is expected to host and will use the opportunity to tackle climate change and its growing threat to world nations. The UK prime minister said that humans need to stop treating the planet like a teenager on a bender, trashing the place. Read Also: Joe Biden Pledges To Double COVID-19 Vaccine Donation For Poor Nations; President Calls For More Global Shots On Wednesday, during his speech to the UN General Assembly, Johnson said it was high time that international leaders should act now to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The official said this was when humanity came to an "inflection point" that gave people the chance to decide whether or not they would take the necessary steps to mitigate the issue and prevent catastrophe over the next century. The British government released advance extracts of Johnson's speech that he would give out during the November summit. The documents said that the prime minister argued that many world leaders believe that the issue will be solved by some other authority, ABC News reported. Mitigating Effects of Climate Change On Tuesday, United States President Joe Biden committed to giving more funding to poorer nations in an attempt to help them mitigate climate change. Chinese President Xi Jinping followed several hours later by saying that his administration would enforce the ban on the construction of coal-fired power plants outside of their home country. "We still cling with part of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our gratification and pleasure and we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality," Johnson said during his speech at the UN General Assembly. Johnson said world leaders need to be accepting of green technologies to reduce the threat of climate change. The UK prime minister's statements come as countries worldwide have been trying to come to an agreement regarding the phasing out of coal power before the November climate summit, Bloomberg reported. Related Article: Donald Trump Files $100 Million Lawsuit Against Niece Mary, New York Times Over Tax Report That Alleges "Insidious Plot" @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Newly released documents show that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology intended to genetically modify viruses to make them more contagious for people and release them into bat caves less than two years before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Scientists and Activists Determine the Origin of the Global Pandemic In a recently published article in Newsweek, according to Johns Hopkins University, the study proposal was part of a cache of papers published this week by a group of scientists and activists attempting to figure out the origins of the pandemic, which has killed 4.7 million people worldwide. The plan is likely to exacerbate the debate about the Wuhan lab's involvement in the pandemic. The Chinese government insists that the outbreak started in a wet market and dismisses claims that research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology resulted in a pathogen release. Meanwhile, an increasing number of scientists and governments across the globe, including the Biden administration, have refused to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis and have urged that China fully participate in a worldwide scientific inquiry, according to a published article in The Washington Post. Read Also: WHO Investigators Defend Wuhan Lab on COVID-19 Origins Suspicion of the Origin of the COVID-19 Grew The Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19 or DRASTIC, which published the papers last week, has fueled increasing skepticism of China's official version, according to a published report in BBC News. Throughout the pandemic, approximately two dozen DRASTIC researchers and correspondents, many of whom are anonymous, have discovered obscure papers, put together the facts, and explained it all in lengthy Twitter threads. Professional scientists and journalists have gradually praised the quality of their research. The results of the newest DRASTIC document leak were tweeted out by Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory and director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology. The EcoHealth Alliance "collaborated" with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to "carry out advanced and hazardous human pathogenicity Bat Coronavirus research," according to papers provided by an anonymous whistleblower, according to a funding application EcoHealth Alliance submitted with DARPA. What is DARPA? The Wuhan scientists were identified as collaborators on a grant application submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency by the environmental health organization EcoHealth Alliance (DARPA). Through the PREEMPT program, DARPA, a research organization within the US Department of Defense, seeks to "preserve military preparedness by protecting against the infectious disease threat." EcoHealth Alliance suggested infusing lethal chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanized and 'batified' mice in their grant proposal, according to DRASTIC Research. Additionally, the planned initiative, according to a copy of EcoHealth Alliance's proposal provided by DRASTIC Research, sought to prevent the spread of new bat-origin high-zoonotic risk SARS-related coronaviruses in Asia. According to the proposal's executive summary, researchers would sample bats in field areas where scientists indicated significant coronavirus spillover risk. In a document shared by DRASTIC Research, EcoHealth Alliance stated that it planned to collaborate with researchers from the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, the University of North Carolina, the Palo Alto Research Center in California, the National Wildlife Health Center of the United States Geological Survey, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. DARPA was asked for $14 million to undertake the study, which was expected to take three and a half years. Related Article: Former CDC Chief Believes COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Lab @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Scientists conclude that the massive Maya pyramid was found in El Salvador called Campana is the ancient equivalent of a modern disaster shelter, except this was in ancient times. The discovery shows how the ancients were aware of their chaotic world and sought to protect their populations. The Maya built the pyramid after they experienced the volcanic explosion that reduced world temperatures, adversely affecting their civilization. In 539 A.D., the 'Tierra Blanca Joven' eruption of Ilopango volcano was the largest, which is now a caldera in a lake. It is the most powerful volcanic event in South American in 10,000 years. Most powerful eruption of Ilopango volcano One indication the Ilopango is impressive is that the release of volcanic material into the air was 20 cubic miles. After the tephra or pyroclastic material fell, it covered the ground with 1.6 feet of it, reported the Daily Mail. One of the scientists from the Colorado Boulder University, Archaeologist Akira Ichikawa, studied the Campana pyramid located at San Andres, Zapotitan valley about 25 miles from Ilopango, noted Phys Org. Analysis of the ancient pyramid had revealed that it used bits of volcanic rock or tephra, about five to thirty years after the catastrophic event, to be complete about 80 years in all. For the Maya's it must have been traumatic how the eruption caused so many changes. The pyramid was devised for such a purpose by their engineers to be proactive and built the massive Maya pyramid found in El Salvador. Read Also: 2,300-Year Old Spell from the Book of the Dead Completed by Matching Ancient Shrouds from New Zealand and the U.S. Mayans relocating and return to former lands For sure, when Tierra Blanca Joven blew its top, said Ichikawa, the Mayans had to leave their homes and wait until it was safe to return. The pyramids' age's finding indicates that it began shortly after Mayans would return to the San Andres site. They rebuilt it to be center in the valley, with the pyramid as a priority to finish. When measured, the Mayan pyramid has a height of 43 feet tall, built over a platform that is 23 feet tall. The structure's volume has been measured to be 1,165,384 cubic feet, which is considered one of the biggest when built. Mayan buildings would have a religious function attached to them, like the Campana pyramid, double-up as a social hall. Construction of the structure was a massive undertaking that had those who lived through the volcanic disaster and new people to the area finish it. Mayan rulers used the pyramid to shelter if the volcano erupted again and show status and power as rulers in ancient Mesoamerica. Studies show it was not just the La Campana. Still, in 620 A.D., a second volcanic eruption of the Loma Caldera, about 3.7 miles away, drove other pyramids' construction in the northern part of San Andres. He added the smaller but more complex Acropolis in the same pyramid area was constructed after the Loma Calder eruption. The massive Maya pyramid found in El Salvador, called Campana, is a disaster shelter reacting to the environment, noted Ichikawa in the journal Antiquity. Related Article: A Mound Shaped Like a Pyramid With 30 Bodies Can Be One of the Oldest War Memorials From Ancient Syria @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Kamala Harris has expressed grave concerns over the cruel treatment that the Haitian migrants are receiving at the hands of law enforcement officers in the United States. After seeing videos taken by Reuters and Al Jazeera, it became evident that law enforcement officers on horseback are employing aggressive tactics to prevent the Haitian migrants from crossing into the country. Harris' chief spokesperson, Symone Sanders shared Harris' thoughts on the matter. "The Vice President raised her grave concerns about the mistreatment of Haitian migrants by border patrol agents on horses, and the need of all (Customs and Border Protection) agents to treat people with dignity, humanely and consistent with our laws and our values," she said in a statement via CNN. According to the publication, the statement shows Harris' involvement in the issue because Joe Biden tasked her to address the root causes of migration from Central America. The publication also stressed that it's rare for the White House to read out individual statements made by the vice president and the administration members. Read Also: U.S. Border Crisis Deepens As Thousands Of Haitians Swarmed U.S.; Human Rights Leaders Decry Treatment Of Migrants Kamal Harris in talks with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Sanders also confirmed that Harris has already spoken to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week. The latter also shares the same concern as Harris and has vowed to update the vice president on the matter. "Secretary Mayorkas also spoke with the Vice President about the efforts DHS has underway to address the humanitarian needs of people at our border in Del Rio through the provision of food, shelter, clothing, and medical care, as well as engagement with non-governmental and international organizations," Sanders said in Daily Mail. Harris is also asking the help of Mayorkas to ensure that Border Patrol agents will treat the Haitian migrants with dignity. Why are Haitian migrants trying to cross the border? Haitian migrants are trying to cross the border into the United States to seek a better life. According to Reuters, the deportations came amid the profound instability in the Caribbean nation. A presidential assassination, rising gang violence, and a major earthquake have also affected the lives of the residents. However, the U.S. authorities prevent the Haitian migrants from getting into the country via the Mexican border. Over 500 Haitians have already been deported back to their homeland. Mexico has also started flying migrants away from the U.S. border. And some have been sent away by bus towards the Guatemalan border. Joe Biden's handling of the situation dubbed as a disaster Joe Biden is being criticized due to his handling of the situation at the border. After photos and videos of the Haitian migrants being attacked surfaced, his opponents also slammed the POTUS. However, the administration said they already pulled out the agents that mistreated Haitian migrants from their front-line duties. Related Article: U.S. Border Agents on Horseback Chasing Haitian Migrants Stirs Outrage; Democratic Lawmakers Demand Accountability @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Australia's Tourism Minister Dan Tehan recently revealed that the country is on track to reopen for tourism over the holidays. During a talk organized by the National Press Club in Australia, Tehan said that he empathizes with Australians who have not had the opportunity to travel overseas due to the pandemic. He added that he's confident Australians will finally be able to head to their dream destination as long as they are fully vaccinated. "It's another reason why everyone should get vaccinated and we have to stick to the national plan that will see our international border open up -- at this rate by Christmas at the latest," he said via CNN. As of writing, the national vaccination rate in Australia is estimated at 38 percent. Tehan said that for the borders to reopen, the vaccination rate should be at around 80 percent. Read Also: Australia Targets To Complete Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Review By January 2021 Australia has been pushing for COVID-19 vaccinations for months Last month, the Australian tourism board launched a campaign called "It's Our Best Shot for Travel" to encourage those that have not been vaccinated to get the jab. Phillipa Harrison, the managing editor of Tourism Australia, explained their motivation behind the video after the campaign's release. "We need to claim back our way of life so that we can visit friends and relatives, get back into the workplace, get our kids back to school, travel domestically and internationally again, and welcome the world back to enjoy all that Australia has to offer," she said via CNN. International visitors will also be allowed entry into Australia The reopening of the international border won't only benefit Australians that want to travel abroad. The country is also eyeing the reopening to allow visitors to enter the country. However, international visitors need to verify that they are fully vaccinated before they can set foot in Australia. Australia will also test out vaccine passports with other countries like Japan, United States, and Singapore. "What we've seen so far and all the reports back, is that the QR code system - which has obviously been modelled on the international aviation organization's model of what they think is needed in a QR code - seems to be interoperable with most of the countries that we've been dealing with," Tehan said in The Australian. This way, Australians will be able to travel with a QR code linked to their passport. Australia reports thousands of new COVID-19 cases Australis is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, at least 1063 new cases and six deaths have been recorded in NSW. More than 92 people were arrested for holding protests in Melbourne after the Andrews government said they would require those in the construction sector to get vaccinated. A spokesperson said that the arrests were made after the 92 protesters failed to follow the Chief Health Officer's directive to stay home and avoid coming into the city without a lawful purpose. Related Article: Massive Protests Erupt In Australia As COVID-19 Cases Prompt To Lockdown Half Of Nation; New Exposure Sites Revealed @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The terror group ISIS-K is moving fast and recruiting all Jihadis in Asia, to probably start an Islamist civil war between the militants in the Taliban. After the fall of Kabul, it seems the Talibs are facing challenges to their rule, which have untold consequences on the world. ISIS-K is turning out to be a bane for the Taliban, which power only recently, having a guerilla war directed at the rulers of Kabul has the making an Islamist civil war. It gets worse as the ISIS-K are going for former Talibs who might be disillusioned about the changes from a guerrilla force to a more organized group. Gone are the days of more mass killing as their leaders try to tell the world they've changed. Taliban members are joining the ISIS-K The ISIS-K Jihadis, formed in 2015, were the architects of the attack on Kabul airport before August 31. Their suicide bomber got past the Taliban and detonated the explosives that killed 180 people, reported The Sun UK. In the blast was killed 13 US service members caught in the explosion that day, even several Britons too, noted the Washington Post. The Taliban counter conducted more bombing during the weekend, causing the death of eight people, with a child as one of the victims. The death-obsessed ISIS-K is doing all these terrorist acts in Afghanistan, with some of the hardcore Taliban members even thinking of a move to the chaotic group. The prospect of an Islamist civil war between the militants is speculated. Read Also: Taliban Terrorist Seen Celebrating in Leaked Video After Hoisting Severed Head of Afghan Soldier The analysis states that ISIS-K or Islamic State Khorasan Province considers the Talibs becoming indeterminate and not ruthless enough. Worse is they view giving women a chance to get schooled and conferencing with the West as a travesty. ISIS-K says Taliban reformists betray Islam According to Dr. Rakib Ehsan, an expert on why the jihadis are that way, the ISIS-K terror group is getting members from the south and Central Asia who are opposed to Kabul's current situation. He added that the ISIS-K is fundamentally different from the Taliban, who are moderated in their view. Their main goal is to install a global Islamic caliphate (ISIS-K), while the Taliban focuses on imposing the Sharia in Afghanistan. But the ISIS-K is convinced the Taliban reformists betray Islam. This idea will pull in their members who disagree with the direction taken by their leaders. This taken into account, the Taliban is a lesser threat than the Islamic State, which breathes and eats the destruction of the West. A recent report says that about 2,200 ISIS-K members are in Afghanistan, many of the radical hardliners live in the Nangahar province, east of the mountainous area. The composition of this small group is the former Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), says Dr. Rakib Ehsan, cited ISPI online. If the ISIS-K can beat the Taliban and replace them, the smaller group cannot defeat the new Kabul rulers. Many of the Taliban members are not happy with the leadership's new direction, which has unrest in the group. Rahmatullah Nabil, a former Afghani spy chief, added things could break, cited The Times. The way things are going, which might become an Islamist civil war between the militants, will be worse in Afghanistan and the world. Related Article: Taliban Fighters Seen Leisurely Enjoying Paddle Boats, Shockingly In Contrast From Their Hardcore Character @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Quebec Police is searching for a man who reportedly assaulted a nurse from Sherbrooke Pharmacy because she vaccinated his wife without his consent. Police spokesman Martin Carrier told Reuters that the man became enraged and aggressive while confronting the nurse that was administering COVID-19 vaccines at the pharmacy. "Our suspect went directly into the office and began to yell at the nurse," Carrier told Reuters. Carrier added that the suspect punched the nurse on the face multiple times. The medical professional was then rushed to a nearby hospital to seek treatment. She is now recovering at home. Quebec Police wants anti-vaccine suspect to be identified Police are asking for help from the residents to direct them to the suspect. He is described as a 30 to a 45-year-old man with a medium build and dark complexion. He also has a distinctive tattoo on his hand. On Wednesday, Quebec Premier Francois Legault said he would push for a special law to prevent anti-vaccine protesters from protesting close to schools and hospitals. Those that will be found guilty will face fines. "My patience has reached its limit. I think it's important to leave our children and patients in peace," he said via Reuters. Read Also: German Anti-Vax Nurse Switches 8,600 COVID-19 Vaccine With Saline, Risking Lives Anti-vaccine protesters have been swarming the streets of Canada According to the publication, the altercation involving a healthcare worker is not an isolated incident. Earlier this month, several protests were staged by anti-vaccine groups and those opposed to mandatory vaccination. According to CBC, the protesters are flocking outside hospitals, police headquarters, and other busy areas after Premier Drug Ford announced its COVID-19 vaccine passport plan. The vaccine passport will be required to allow residents to dine at restaurants, go to theaters, or work out at the gym. It came into effect this week. According to reports, the ongoing protests across Canada were staged by two Ontario nurses who promoted conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine. They also attended rallies in the United States for those who believed the pandemic was a fraud. The Canadian Medical Association (CMS) and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) released a statement saying that the ongoing protests demoralize healthcare workers. "We have confronted uncertainty, exposed ourselves to risks and worked prolonged hours, weeks and months all in support of our patients and the public we serve. We have not signed up for bullying, attacks and violence, at the hands of those who do not subscribe to science or health advice. The healthcare workers who have worked tirelessly for months on end are being bullied and harassed for doing their jobs. This is wrong and unacceptable - full stop. We are in a health crisis of unprecedented proportions," CMA president Dr. Katherine Smart said (via CBC). Anti-vaccine protesters holding rallies in the US Canada isn't the only country that's dealing with anti-vaccine rallies and protests. The United States is also experiencing a similar dilemma. Earlier this week, anti-vaccine protesters gathered outside the Los Angeles City Hall to fight for medical freedom. The protesters praised the LA police and fire departments for refusing to submit to vaccine mandates. One of the protesters said that their voices would not be silenced. "If you silence your voices, you are giving your power away to the authorities who pretend they have your best interest in mind," she said (via the Los Angeles Times). Related Article: Anti-Vaccine Protesters Storm COVID-19 Vaccination Site Prompting Temporary Closure @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There has been a distinct shortage of good news stories in recent weeks, so the discovery that consumer spending in the USA rose by 0.7 percent came as a welcome surprise to economists. Recent spikes in Delta variant cases and concerns of the efficiency of vaccines were widely expected to reduce consumer numbers in restaurants and shopping malls. To an extent, that has been the case, but other types of spending have continued undeterred. Who are the big spenders? Spending patterns have shown significant variability from state to state, with the usual suspects the most willing to put their hands in their pockets. Data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) showed California, Washington and New York to have seen the greatest percentage increase in spending, while Vermont, Illinois and Mississippi brought up the rear. Mixed fortunes for retailers and service providers While overall spending is on the up, there have been decidedly mixed fortunes across different sectors. Restaurants and bars have flat-lined at best, while online purchases saw a dramatic overall increase of more than five percent. More specialist areas have also seen a boom in August. For example, increased levels of vaccination have provided the necessary confidence for postponed weddings to be rescheduled. Here, it is not just a case of wedding venues seeing an increase in bookings. There are all the peripheral aspects such as clothes and jewelry to add to the mix. While Vermont has seen the smallest increase in overall expenditure, couples here have been spending more on engagement rings than people in any other state. The average rock in Vermont has a price tag of $9,329, almost three times the amount people are spending in Wyoming. There has also been the general boost to the economy provided by children returning to school after the summer break. The Commerce Department reported that department stores were among the few categories of physical retailers to see an increase in spending. For children in some states, this was their first return to the classroom in a year or more, so inevitably, there has been even greater demand than usual for school clothes and student supplies. Looking ahead Economists are optimistic that there will be further spending spikes ahead. Already, retailers are gearing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with expectations that families will be looking to make up for what was a low-key holiday season in 2020. Furthermore, data from the Labor Department suggests that unemployment figures have not just levelled off, they are starting to drop. Sal Guatieri is a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. In a recent press release, he commented that more people are managing to find jobs, and that many of those who remained in work throughout the pandemic had put extra aside. These two factors should point towards more confident consumer spending in the run up to Black Friday. After all that 2020 and 2021 have thrown as us, it could spell the Happy Holidays we all need. @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. What does a dead galaxy look like? The NASA Hubble Space Telescope's latest discovery revealed six galaxies that ran out of cold hydrogen gas and are unable to make new stars. The celestial phenomenon left researchers shocked and a lot of space fans are fascinated. Arguably, these six dead galaxies look incredibly amazing. A healthy galaxy is a dust-and-gas-rich galaxy. Frontiers explained that galaxies create sun-like stars using gas and dust. Together, gas and dust generate gas clouds that collapse and reform due to gravity. The cycle repeats for a million years until the gas cloud begins to shine like the Sun. Leftover materials from the star's birth are used to create planets and other space objects that orbit around the star. With that in mind, researchers found something odd in space. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured six young, massive, "dead" galaxies that ran out of cold hydrogen gas. The cosmic phenomenon was immediately published in the Nature journal. NASA Hubble Images: 6 Massive 'Dead' Galaxies Found! Hubble tweeted its amazing discovery early on Tuesday. The post said, "Astronomers discovered six massive, "dead" galaxies that had run out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars." The tweet also contained four images, with the left images at "regular" size and the right images as "zoomed in" sections of space. Hubble found galaxies running on empty! Astronomers discovered six massive, "dead" galaxies that had run out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars. Learn more about this unusual discovery: https://t.co/mkxgsfTuQ2 pic.twitter.com/TvFET61yfV Hubble (@NASAHubble) September 22, 2021 NASA explained that yellow traces on the image show the glow of starlight. The artificial purple color represents traces of cold dust found in ALMA's observation. The cold dust is also a proxy for the cold hydrogen gas needed for star formation. On image MRG-M1341, the purple blob to the left of the galaxy is a dust-and-gas-rich image. In comparison, image MRG-M1341 only has very little gas and dust at its center. Researchers suggest that the star formation sequence for this galaxy already shut down. Read Also: NASA Reveals Plan to Crash Spaceship to Deflect Massive Asteroid: Full Simulation, Mission Launch Date and MORE All six dead galaxies found don't appear to rejuvenate, even through minor mergers and accretions from nearby galaxies and gas. Researchers are confused with this development. They do not know how this celestial phenomenon happened. According to NASA, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, Kate Whitaker, proposed several theories. "Did a supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center turn on and heat up all the gas? If so, the gas could still be there, but now it's hot. Or it could have been expelled and now it's being prevented from accreting back onto the galaxy. Or did the galaxy just use it all up, and the supply is cut off? These are some of the open questions that we'll continue to explore with new observations down the road." NASA Hubble Space Telescope and REQUIEM Program Hubble and ALMA's latest discovery was part of the ongoing REQUIEM program, which stands for Resolving QUIEscent Magnified Galaxies At High Redshift. Combining technologies between Hubble and ALMA, the REQUIEM team plans to study more about the formation of these six galaxies and other galaxy clusters in the distant space. Related Article: NASA Hubble Images Reveal Final Moments of Dying Star in Rare Event [PHOTOS] Mark your calendars because 2022 is going to be a blast as Twitch announced in their official blog the upcoming schedule of the highly anticipated convention for gamers and streamers -- the TwitchCon 2022. As usual, the event aims to celebrate the creators and streamers in the gaming platform, with meet and greet events of famous streamers, game tournaments, esports streaming, new merchandise, announcements for future projects, hanging out with friends and new acquaintances, and more. As the bi-annual event highlights the culture of video game streaming and gaming, it intends to gather crowds that fail to meet in person as the pandemic compromised the health and security of many in 2020. It can be recalled that the 2020 event was canceled and shifted to a virtual gathering, the GlitchCon 2020. Multiple virtual stages replaced the typical convention setup. Next year, Twitch aims to bring together the exponentially growing Twitch community in person while closely following local health guidelines and recommendations. Read also: 6 Most Entertaining Twitch Streamers to Watch Now Just like the other years since its launch in 2011, the TwitchCon 2022 location will be in Europe and the U.S., specifically in Amsterdam and San Diego, respectively. Though the release of the TwitchCon tickets will still be announced soon, the TwitchCon 2022 dates are clear: TwitchCon Amsterdam is slated for July 2022, while TwitchCon San Diego is in October 2022. Mark your calendars. Next years about to be extra pog. TwitchCon Amsterdam: July 2022 TwitchCon San Diego: October 2022 Read more: https://t.co/1yy3uQ1bg7 pic.twitter.com/Scvqe7bt7z TwitchCon (@TwitchCon) September 22, 2021 Despite the certainty of the announcement, TwitchCon maintains that the schedule will remain flexible as the unexpected could happen due to the current global health crisis. Nevertheless, their intention to gather the community that boasts its 8,550 new partners and 548,000 new affiliates could not be hampered. Though the pandemic affected the conduct of TwitchCon, it also brought more people into the streaming and gaming platform since the virtual world remains to be the safest space for social interaction. The more reason to celebrate in the TwitchCon 2022! Follow the official Twitch account on Twitter for succeeding event updates, including official dates, discounted hotels, and TwitchCon 2022 tickets. Related article: Life-Threatening Moments Caught On Twitch And What They Say About The Future Of Streaming This 2017 July file photo shows a Netflix logo on an iPhone in Philadelphia. AP-Yonhap Netflix said Tuesday it has acquired the whole works of acclaimed children's author Roald Dahl, creator of such classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Matilda." The streaming giant said it had bought The Roald Dahl Story Company the family firm which owns the late British author's copyright. Netflix in 2018 signed a deal with the company to create animated series based on 16 Dahl books. "This acquisition builds on the partnership we started three years ago to create a slate of animated TV series," Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos and Luke Kelly, managing director of the RDSC and Dahl's grandson, said in a joint statement. Under the previous deal, Oscar-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi and "Zootropolis" screenwriter Phil Johnston are working on a series based on the world of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and an adaptation of "Matilda the Musical" is underway. "These projects opened our eyes to a much more ambitious venture the creation of a unique universe across animated and live action films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more," Netflix said. This 2015 Oct. file photo shows a cake decorated in the style of the Roald Dahl children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at the Cake and Bake show in London, Britain. Reuters-Yonhap From left, filmmakers Bong Joon-ho, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Leos Carax will attend the 26th Busan International Film Festival. Courtesy of BIFF By Kwak Yeon-soo With less than two weeks left until the scheduled start of the 26th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), an impressive line-up of filmmakers and stars have confirmed their participation in the event. Organizers expect the film festival to return to normal as the film industry anticipates that it will be able to shake off the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. French auteur Leos Carax will visit Busan with his latest film, "Annette," for the first time in nine years, since his last screening at the festival with "Holy Motors" (2012). "Annette," which opened this year's Cannes Film Festival and won the best director award, has been selected to premiere in the Gala Presentation section at this year's BIFF. Carax will conduct a masterclass on filmmaking on Oct. 10. Japanese filmmaker Hamaguchi Ryusuke, who won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival with "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy," and the Best Screenplay Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival with "Drive My Car," will have these two films showcased at the BIFF. After screening his films in the Gala Presentation section, Hamaguchi will participate in a special talk with director Bong Joon-ho, Oct. 7. "About 1,200 people are expected to attend the event on Oct. 6, and around 400 film industry participants will take part in the festival," a BIFF representative said. "We expect that most of the Korean filmmakers and actors who have been invited to the festival will visit Busan." Director Im Sang-soo and the cast of the comedy drama, "Heaven: To the Land of Happiness," which was selected as the opening film, will make their way to Busan. Actors Song Joong-ki, left, and Park So-dam will co-host the opening ceremony of the 26th Busan International Film Festival. Courtesy of HiStory D&C, Artist Company Meanwhile, auteur director Park Chan-wook will give a talk at the Asia Content & Film Market conference, which will be held primarily online. He will share his vision on overcoming the pandemic and the future of cinema. Actors Song Joong-ki, who rose to stardom through "Descendants of the Sun" and "Vincenzo," and Park So-dam, who starred in the Academy Award-winning film, "Parasite," will co-host the opening ceremony. A total of 223 films from 70 countries were invited to screen at this year's festival. Altogether, 11 films are vying for the prestigious New Currents Award, including "The Absent Director" by Arvand Dashtaray, "Photocopier" by Wregas Bhanuteja and "Farewell, My Hometown" by Wang Er Zhuo. To reflect the increasing popularity of OTT platforms, the organizer launched the On Screen section, in which they showcase highly anticipated drama series via OTT platforms. This year's lineup includes: "Train to Busan" director Yeon Sang-ho's "Hellbound," "Extracurricular" director Kim Jin-min's "My Name" and Thai director Anucha Boonyawatana's "Forbidden." The 26th BIFF will take place from Oct. 6 to 15. The film festival will keep its capacity level at 50 percent in theaters while face masks will be required to attend screenings. Citibank Korea CEO Yoo Myung-Soon, center, poses with the bank's ESG Council members at the bank's main branch in Seoul in this June file photo. Courtesy of Citibank Korea By Park Jae-hyuk Citibank Korea is focusing more on providing its corporate clients with diverse services and products satisfying environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards, under its annual strategic goal of becoming the "Best ESG Bank," the U.S. bank's local subsidiary said Thursday. Since the second half of last year, the bank has welcomed any Korean conglomerate executives in charge of financial affairs to communicate with Citi's global ESG experts through videoconferencing, giving large domestic companies a chance to study the best ESG practices and cope with the rapidly changing market environment. In February, Citibank signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Trade Insurance Corp. to lend domestic companies money that can be used to help them export more materials, components and equipment, and to make inroads into future industries, renewable energy and environmental mobility in other countries. Based on its global networks, the lender has also enabled domestic companies, financial institutions and government agencies to raise ESG-related overseas funds. According to the bank, Citigroup raised over $25 billion to satisfy the needs of the sustainable financing of its Asia-Pacific clients. The amount was a 400 percent increase from a year earlier. Of the $25 billion, Citibank Korea raised $8.1 billion, as it conducted 17 sustainable finance-related transactions in the Asia-Pacific the largest number in the region. Regarding corporate governance, Citibank Korea appointed Yoo Myung-soon as the first female CEO in the nation's private banking industry. In addition, six among the bank's 14 executives are women. Citibank Korea launched its 25-member ESG Council in June to raise awareness of ESG values and to provide ESG-related products and services tailored to the needs of customers. The bank also emphasized that it is operating diverse social contribution programs to contribute to Korean society as a responsible corporate citizen. For example, the bank signed a partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Korea under the title "Change Now for Tomorrow," to help prevent the global temperature from rising to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It has also conducted in-house green campaigns for a more sustainable society, such as reduction in plastic consumption and use of tumblers. The Export-Import Bank of Korea headquarters in Seoul / Yonhap Private sector still facing obstacles to codetermination system By Park Jae-hyuk Attention has been focused on whether KB Kookmin Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) will follow the example set by the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank), which became the country's first financial company and state-run institution to give a board seat to an expert recommended by its union. According to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki appointed Maritime Finance Institute CEO Lee Jae-min and lawyer Yun Tae-ho of the law firm Bae, Kim & Lee, as Eximbank's new nonexecutive directors last Friday. The person backed by the union is Lee, who previously worked for the state-run bank. After his retirement in 2011, he served as a professor at Korea Maritime & Ocean University. The Eximbank union recommended him for his expertise in maritime financing and reputation for strong communication with employees. After former Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance auditor Na Meong-heon exited the board in May, the union requested appointing an additional outside director to improve governance structure, which was accepted by the government and the bank's management. In 2020, the Eximbank union failed in its attempt to introduce a codetermination system, referring to a system in which seats on a board of directors are given to employees or their representatives. President Moon Jae-in originally promised to allow public institution workers to directly join their companies' boards, but doing so will require a revision of the law. So unionized workers at state-run financial firms have instead urged the government to give board seats to union-backed outside experts. Although the government has remained lukewarm over this matter over the past four years, the Eximbank union accomplished its goal, just a few months before the end of Moon's five-year term. Industrial Bank of Korea headquarters in Seoul / Yonhap From left are Naver founder Lee Hae-jin and Kakao founder Kim Beom-su. Yonhap Shares of big tech firms fail to bounce back By Lee Min-hyung Naver and Kakao, two of the nation's largest big tech firms, are facing temporary shutdowns of some of their financial services unless they revise their operations to meet requirements under a set of newly-introduced regulations. The Financial Services Commission (FSC), the country's top financial policy regulator, said Thursday the companies should either reform their current services in line with the newly introduced Financial Consumer Protection Act, or seek licenses to operate their brokerage businesses. "Any company that could violate the new act can choose to revise their services or apply for a relevant license and they can pick either of the measures on their own in order to continue operating the services after the implementation of the act on Sept. 25," a spokesman for the FSC said. The financial authority introduced the toughened consumer protection act March 25 with a six-month grace period which expires Sept. 24. Naver Financial and Kakao Pay decided to temporarily suspend their relevant services after the watchdog took issue with the two firms' units that compared funds or insurance products. It remains unclear when they will be able to resume the services, as both Naver and Kakao are still busy revising the services while negotiating with the watchdog. It is unlikely that they will be able to finalize the revision by the end of the grace period. "In general, it takes about two months for a financial firm to win a license to operate a loan brokerage service, but it is not that time consuming for insurance, fund or card brokerage services," the FSC spokesman said. "But companies have the autonomy in their choice of whether to get a license or revamp their services, and the FSC does not intervene if they abide by the new act." Financial Services Commission Chairman Koh Seung-beom speaks during a conference with leaders of the nation's financial associations at the headquarters of the Korea Federation of Banks in Seoul, Sep. 16. Joint Press Corps- Yonhap Park So-yeon, a 28-year-old Seoul resident and yoga instructor, poses near Mount Gyeryong in South Chungcheong Province on July 16. Courtesy of Park So-yeon By Park Ji-won Park So-yeon, 28, a yoga instructor in Seoul, leaves the city for a house located near Mount Gyeryong in South Chungcheong Province, about 140 kilometers southwest of Seoul, once she is done with her busy workweek. The house is owned by her friend's parents, and there she relaxes doing only yoga and essential household chores. She also works on a farm near the house, exploring a rural lifestyle that is completely different to her weekdays in the city. "For my work as a yoga instructor, I need to travel a lot and take a subway to meet students. I can easily get stressed out and exhausted on the crowded subway, as there is no personal space there," she told The Korea Times. "Spending four to five days in the city and two days in the countryside is perfect for a balanced life. It makes me feel alive. I am planning to continue to live like this." "I feel grateful to live in the city because I can easily buy food, meet my friends and be part of a yoga network that is centered on Seoul. But I have often felt that something is missing in my urban life and have wanted to explore Mother Nature," she said. Near her weekend home, there are no convenience stores or supermarkets. Park So-yeon heads back inside after gathering some vegetables near Mount Gyeryong on Aug. 8. Courtesy of Park So-yeon An eggplant lasagna made with locally sourced ingredients / Courtesy of Park So-yeon U.S. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a media briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Sept. 20. AP-Yonhap The United States is open to discussing a possible end of war declaration with North Korea as it seeks to engage with the reclusive state in dialogue over a number of other issues, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. South Korean President Moon Jae-in earlier called on the U.S. and South Korea to formally end the Korean War with North Korea. "We continue to seek engagement with the DPRK to address a variety of issues, and we are open to discussing the possibility of an end of war declaration," the Department of Defense spokesman, John Kirby, said in a press briefing, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "The United States remains committed to achieving lasting peace on the Korean peninsula through dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea," he added. North Korea's official newspaper on Thursday called for all-out efforts to speed up harvests of crops to minimize loss from natural disasters and maximize grain production amid worries about chronic food shortages. "All means at our disposable should be mobilized for harvesting and threshing grains in the autumn," the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North's ruling party, said. "All sectors, units and party organizations should also ramp up efforts to support the farming community." "Carrying out autumn harvests with our whole mind is not just work to resolve food problems for our people but also a powerful political business," the paper said. The paper also stressed the importance of accurate weather forecasting and improvements in farming techniques needed to protect crops from flooding and other natural disasters. North Korea has called for better water management and speedy harvests of crops as it wants to prevent the repeat of damage to its farming sector by typhoons and resultant flooding last year, which apparently reduced food production and worsened its chronic food shortages. State media recently reported on damage from heavy downpours and such weather conditions as large-sized hailstones, which fell in some regions. In June, leader Kim Jong-un said his country's "food situation is now getting tense as the agricultural sector failed to fulfill its grain production plan" due to damage from typhoons last year. (Yonhap) By Bahk Eun-ji The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Thursday that more than 5,000 COVID-19 breakthrough infections, mostly among young men who received Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine, have been detected as of Sept. 12. Janssen COVID-19 vaccine / Yonhap According to the KDCA, 5,880 people tested positive for COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated with the one-shot vaccine. This means 40.2 people per 100,000 fully vaccinated patients have been subject to breakthrough infections. By age group, people in their 30s made up the largest ratio, of up to 110.1 per 100,000. People march in central Seoul during the annual parade of the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, June 27. Yonhap By Lee Hyo-jin A conflict is deepening between the Seoul Metropolitan Government and organizers of the annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF), following the city government's recent decision to reject the latter's application to be registered as a non-profit organization. The Seoul Queer Culture Festival (SQCF) Organizing Committee, consisting of members of the LGBTQ community and their allies, has been holding the annual festival in central Seoul since 2000. The festival calls for human rights for sexual minorities and the eradication of discrimination. The committee filed an application to the city government in October 2019 to be registered as a non-profit organization. After nearly two years of review, the city sent a letter to the committee, turning down its application, on Aug. 25. The city government explained that its decision was based on a history of reports of indecent exposure by the participants in its cultural events, such as at its parades and film festivals. It also cited booths at cultural events selling products depicting genitalia, saying that such activities potentially violate certain laws. According to Korea's criminal law, those who distribute, sell or openly display "obscene" documents, pictures, films or other objects can be subject to imprisonment of up to one year or fines of up to 5 million won. In addition, it said that the annual event requires the local government to mobilize "excessive" administrative resources in order to prevent physical conflicts with anti-gay protesters. Thousands of police officers are dispatched to SQCF events to separate festival participants and anti-LGBTQ activists, consisting mostly of right-wing and Christian groups, who hold counter rallies in adjacent spaces and attempt to blockade the annual pride parade. The local government's decision to reject the application immediately prompted backlash from the festival organizers, who view the rejection as "inappropriate and discriminatory." The committee also believes that the city government had intentionally delayed its decision for the past couple of years, in order to obstruct the establishment of the non-profit organization, while acknowledging that the committee had made no errors in its application. They stated that the reasons listed by the city government are "merely repeating the arguments made by the anti-LGBTQ protesters who oppose the festivals, without doing any actual fact-checking" of whether those arguments are indeed reasonable or true. "The Seoul Metropolitan Government should not shift the responsibility of mobilizing administrative resources which are needed because of the disturbances caused by anti-queer protesters onto the organizers of the festival. Doing that is an abandonment of its responsibility to resolve social conflicts," read the statement released by the committee. The statement noted that the committee plans to take every possible legal action, such as filing an administrative lawsuit, in response. President Moon Jae-in speaks at a virtual summit on COVID-19 hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden, Sept. 23. Yonhap South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday reaffirmed his country's commitment to playing a leading role in the fight against COVID-19, while attending a virtual summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden. The session was convened on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly to rally world leaders for a common vision to end the pandemic by the end of next year, according to the White House. Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong speaks to reporters after completing trilateral talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York, Sept. 22. Yonhap The top diplomats of South Korea and the United States have discussed "creative and various" measures to reengage with North Korea during bilateral talks in New York, the foreign ministry said. The talks between Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday (local time), shortly after the two held trilateral talks with their Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi. "The secretary and minister shared the assessments on the recent situation on the Korean Peninsula and the understanding on the urgent need for dialogue for substantive progress on the Korean Peninsula peace process," the ministry said in a press release. "They had in-depth discussions on creative and various measures to engage with North Korea," it said. Seoul and Washington have been exploring ways to resume talks with Pyongyang through humanitarian cooperation in such areas as public health, antivirus quarantines, sanitation and clean water. President Moon Jae-in speaks at a joint ceremony with the United States at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to transfer the remains of Korean and American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, Sept. 22. Yonhap South Korean President Moon Jae-in has received the remains of 68 Korean soldiers, killed in the 1950-53 Korean War, from the United States in a ceremony in Honolulu. South Korea also handed over five sets of American service members' remains to the U.S. during the joint repatriation ceremony held at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) hosted the event, along with the South Korean defense ministry's Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification, and Moon "organized" it in person, according to Cheong Wa Dae. He became the first South Korean president to organize such a remains handover ceremony abroad, it added. Moon was on a visit to Hawaii following a New York trip for a U.N. General Assembly session. The remains of two soldiers who have been identified Pfc. Kim Seok-joo and Pfc. Jung Hwan-jo was transported on Moon's presidential jet after a mutual handover signing ceremony. The caskets carrying the remains were drapped in the South Korean national flag. The caskets containing the remains will be placed on the seats of the aircraft in a show of respect for "the heroes" even while in flight, according to Cheong Wa Dae. The two were serving at the 32nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Seventh Division under the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army (KATUSA) Soldier Program. They were killed in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950. Their remains were discovered by North Korea and sent to Hawaii, along with those of American soldiers. The remains were identified in early September. "What our war heroes wanted to see on the Korean Peninsula was a complete peace," Moon said at the event and reiterated his call to bring an official end to the Korean War by forging an end of war declaration between the two Koreas and the United States, and possibly China. The Korean War ended only with an armistice, technically leaving the divided Koreas at war to date. Moon added, "Sustainable peace is what the world hoped to achieve through the foundation of the U.N. An end of war declaration will give new hope and courage to everyone around the world aspiring for peace beyond the Korean Peninsula." He also said Seoul and Washington's "unwavering endeavor to achieve complete denuclearization and establish permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula" will never stop. Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said that the Korean War "brought our two nations side by side to fight for and defend the values embodied in the ideals of freedom," and also thanked member nations of the U.N. Command for paving the way for the strong network and alliances offering security and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. South Korea's military will carry the other 66 sets of remains, still unidentified, on a KC-330 Cygnus Multi Role Tanker Transport, with Defense Minister Suh Wook aboard. Among other attendees at the ceremony were Hwang Ki-chul, South Korea's minister of patriot and veterans affairs; Gen. Paul J. LaCamera, commander of United Nations Command; and Hawaii Gov. David Ige. (Yonhap) Police said Thursday that they have launched a probe into a female North Korean defector for seeking to cross the inter-Korean border to return to North Korea. The woman, who is in her 60s, was taken into custody by the police near Tongil Bridge in the western border city of Paju around 3:40 a.m. on Sept. 13 after telling a military solider on duty that she wanted to return to North Korea. It remains unclear why she sought to return to the communist homeland. Tongil Bridge is the gate to the customs, immigration and quarantine office at Dorasan Station in Paju that is heavily guarded by the South Korean military. The police said the case is currently under investigation, adding that the woman has not been booked yet for the violation of the national security law. In 2017, a female North Korean defector appeared in a North Korean propaganda video, claiming she returned to North Korea after suffering "physically and mentally" in South Korea. Last year, 229 North Koreans defected to South Korea, a sharp decline from 1,047 tallied in 2019 and 1,137 in 2018, according to the unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. The total number of North Korean defectors living in South Korea stood at 33,752 as of the end of last year. (Yonhap) A petition posted on the Cheong Wa Dae website, calling for stopping construction of apartment complexes near a 17th-century royal tomb, has garnered more than 112,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. Screenshot from Cheong Wa Dae website Possibility of demolition alarms owners of units in new buildings By Jun Ji-hye Voices are being raised over the construction of three apartment complexes located near a royal tomb dating back to the 17th century, with critics saying that the construction will seriously harm the value of the tomb as a cultural asset. A petition posted on the Cheong Wa Dae website called for demolition of the buildings under construction, which are scheduled to be completed next year. It said the construction was pushed forward without due process such as seeking approval from the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) although the buildings are being built near the Joseon-era royal tomb that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009. The site of the apartment complexes is within Geomdan New Town in northern Incheon, and is close to Jangneung Royal Tomb in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. The tomb is for Prince Jeongwon (1580-1619), also known as Wonjong, and his wife Queen Inheon, who are the parents of King Injo, the 16th king of Joseon. Since being posted on Sept. 17, the petition has already garnered more than 112,000 signatures as of 1 p.m. Thursday. "The apartment complexes in question disrupt the landscape of the royal tomb and nearby Mount Gyeyang, seriously harming the value of the tomb as a cultural heritage site," the petitioner wrote. "The complexes should be demolished as their construction, which skipped the approval process, is illegal. If authorities let the construction go ahead and do not hold local governments or construction companies responsible, it will set a bad precedent for handling cultural heritage sites." Site for Geomdan new town in Incheon / Korea Times file The ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Thursday reaffirmed its plan to put a controversial medial bill to a plenary parliamentary vote early next week. "(The DP) has a goal to seek (the bill's) passage next Monday," DP spokesperson Rep. Shin Hyun-young told reporters, adding that no decision has been made yet over how to convene a plenary meeting that day. She stressed her party is sticking to the deadline Sunday, agreed upon with the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) last month, for bipartisan negotiations over the bill, suggesting the DP plans to process it the next day with or without consent from the opposition. Under a vision of "media reform," the DP championed the bill, which will require an up to fivefold increase in penalties for media outlets spreading false or fraudulent news reports. Amid fierce protest from opposition parties and press-related organizations, however, the DP shelved its initial plan to pass the bill late last month and agreed with the PPP to modify it through a bipartisan consultation group with a goal to process the bill Monday. The latest position from the DP is apparently seen as a political gesture to press its rival party as they have made little headway in their ongoing negotiations. The rival parties, in particular, are in discord over a clause that allows victims to claim punitive damages for deliberate or grossly negligent misinformation and fraudulent reports, which media associations and opposition parties see can seriously hurt freedom of press. The ruling party has proposed an alternative version of the bill, but the PPP is insisting complete removal of the controversial clause, Shin said, arguing "it's regrettable the PPP is objecting for the sake of objection." (Yonhap) Video by Yun Da-been The average Korean generates a little over 1 kilogram of solid waste each day. Multiply that by Korea's entire population, and that equates to nearly 56,000 tons of waste being disposed of in just a single day. Now the question is where does it all go? "The country's overflowing landfills and worsening pollution levels, in general, have made it unsustainable to freely dispose of our waste as was done in the past," Phae Chae-gun, professor of Environmental Engineering at Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech) said. "But that means we have to build new incinerators, right? The problem is that nobody wants one in their neighborhood. You have opposition from both the residents and the regional governments. Not in my backyard, as they say. Given these negative perceptions that are entrenched in our society, it is difficult to get anything going when it comes to building new incinerators." Amid public concerns over our conventional means of handling waste, all-new waste management solutions are now coming under the spotlight. Here at the Union Tower and Union Park in the city of Hanam, a new waste management facility has been constructed recently along with a number of amenities for nearby residents. By Yi Woo-won On Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, was absolute mayhem with huge crowds of people Americans, coalition forces and their families and Afghan allies who were desperate to escape from the advancing Taliban forces moving to occupy the country. It was a hell of confusion when I saw the images in the media. Hundreds of Afghans, trying to get on a plane, were running alongside a U.S. C-17 military cargo plane which was moving on the runway a few of them clinging to the side of the plane and then plunging hopelessly. It surely was not a pretty sight for the eyes of the world to watch. It was a disgrace and disappointment to the nationality of the plane. Harsh criticism is widespread among Americans and in Europe against Biden's handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying his administration is responsible for the quick collapse of the Afghan government. But Biden blamed the Trump administration for the situation and said that he inherited a deadline from his predecessor. Biden also maintained that his administration had done the right thing in ending 20 years of war. Biden's other serious mistake was that he prioritized the pullout of all U.S. troops before evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies, leaving 650 Marines and soldiers to protect 1,400 American citizens. An intelligence assessment of his advisers estimated that Afghan forces could hold off the Taliban for at least 18 months. But they underestimated that the American withdrawal would quickly jeopardize their will to fight. By July, nearly all U.S. forces were out of Afghanistan and the Taliban escalated their onslaught across the country. On Aug. 15, Ghani, the Afghan president was gone. He turned up days later in the United Arab Emirates. The Taliban celebrated the collapse of his government at his presidential palace. The American flag was lowered over the abandoned embassy. The country was so quickly and easily back to being the Taliban's territory again. The war in Afghanistan, which was sparked by the horrible 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S. 20 years ago, finally came to an end. It was the longest war in U.S. military history. The 20-year cost of the war is estimated at more than $6 trillion, plus more than 7,000 U.S. military fatalities. Sadly, the fatalities included 13 American troops who were killed by an ISIS-K suicide bomber while they were amid the peak of the evacuation efforts. The detonation also killed at least 170 others who were mostly Afghans. The death of 13 service members, most of them aged between 20 and 23, was an atrocious and heartbreaking incident in the final days of the evacuation operation. They were helping thousands of people, adults and children of Americans, coalition forces and Afghan allies, to be safety airlifted from the Kabul airport. Their bravery and altruism in performing their mission is highly commendable. They really gave their lives for others. Estimates suggest that over 70,000 Afghan allies and family members still remain in the country which is now occupied by the Taliban forces. They were loyal to the United States and helped in its war efforts for the last two decades. They worked as translators, contractors, construction workers and in other occupations. After the last American soldiers left Afghanistan, they are now exposed to the threat and retribution of violent Taliban fighters. They are horrified and feel abandoned. I am glad and also proud that South Korea accomplished its share of responsibility in the evacuation mission of Afghan friends. On Aug 26, three Korean military aircraft safely airlifted 391 Afghan evacuees from Kabul airport to their new homes in South Korea. They worked at the Korean Embassy, a hospital, a vocational training institute and military bases before the Taliban seized power. Immigration is a contentious issue in South Korea, where many pride themselves on ethnic homogeneity, even as the population of 52 million ages rapidly and the labor force dwindles. The government is now considering amending the current immigration laws to provide long-term residency for the evacuees. The writer ( ) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province. By Donald Kirk The acronym, "AUKUS," when you try to pronounce it, sounds like some weird wild animal, an AUKUS. The initials stand for Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., but to the North Koreans and their Chinese supporters, they might as well be spelling the exotic name of one of those strange beasts that only inhabits Australia. Maybe a new breed of kangaroo or wombat with particularly sharp claws and mean teeth, poised to spring and strangle and tear apart enemies near and far. Actually, AUKUS is a brand new alliance whose first dividend should be a nuclear submarine for the Australian navy, reliant on American and British technology, just the thing for scaring the Chinese in the South China Sea and intimidating a few others too. Surely North Korea sees it that way, warning darkly but vaguely of "extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of a nuclear arms race." Hang on, what are the North Koreans getting so worked up about? It's not likely that this submarine will be sniffing around the waters off the Korean Peninsula, and what "strategic balance" do they mean? The first answer is that North Korea is so beholden to China that it's a good idea to put on a show of sticking up for the Chinese even though the AUKUS beast poses no real threat to the North. As for "strategic balance," since when have the North Koreans shown signs of respecting an equilibrium with its neighbor to the South while building up their stockpile of nuclear weapons along with the missiles to send them to targets anywhere in northeast Asia meaning Japan and South Korea and also long-range models capable theoretically of reaching the U.S. The word, "nuclear," is cause for alarm, but this submarine won't be hefting nuclear weapons, at least for the foreseeable future. Australia is not yet a nuclear power, and the Americans and Brits are not talking about providing them with nuclear warheads, not yet. One more nuclear submarine in the southern hemisphere, in addition to the American versions, will be significant but not a game-changer, not right away. There is no question, though, that the stakes are rising, as are the chances for catastrophe. Experts to whom I've talked seem convinced that China will soon lose patience and fight to recover Taiwan, the island that's functioned as an independent state ever since Chiang Kai-shek's defeated forces retreated there, as Mao's Red army was taking over the mainland in 1949. These experts predict that the Chinese will swarm across the Taiwan Strait within ten years, maybe sooner. But sensational predictions are risky. A couple of considerations weigh against China going to war for Taiwan. One is that China reaps enormous wealth from its incredibly favorable balance of trade with the U.S., and they would risk losing it all if the U.S. sided with Taiwan in an armed showdown. Another is that an invasion of Taiwan could trigger a terrific response from Japan, which could drop all inhibitions and constraints against engaging in foreign wars and decide to fight for Taiwan, which it ruled from victory over China in 1895 until defeat in the Pacific War in 1945. The Australian nuclear-powered submarine might stay out of the fray for Taiwan, but pose a threat to China elsewhere. The Korean Peninsula, North and South, would not be immune. South Korea might try to remain relatively neutral, but that would be difficult as long as the U.S. maintained forces in the South. North Korea could then exploit the differences between the Americans and South Koreans, all in keeping with its own alliance with China. The scenarios are endless. It's quite possible that war in the South China Sea, then for Taiwan, could spread into the regional conflagration that always hovers on the horizon. But it's also possible that nothing will happen, other than ever more rhetoric. There's no doubt though that the AUKUS alliance opens a new chapter in the history of military relationships in the region. Does anyone remember SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization that existed until after the Communist victory over the U.S.-backed regime in Vietnam in 1975? Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. were all stalwart members. France and Pakistan were included too and now France is furious over Australia's cancellation of a deal for non-nuclear submarines, while Pakistan, a nuclear power, harbors the Taliban and cozies up to China. Who would have predicted such twists and turns when the papers forming SEATO were signed in Manila, capital of another ambivalent American ally, 66 years ago? Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, writes from Seoul as well as Washington. By Yun Byung-se This month marks a historic milestone for us Koreans the 30th anniversary of the two Koreas' simultaneous admission to the United Nations. I remember many sleepless nights, working tirelessly with my colleagues at what was then South Korea's Observer Mission to the U.N. to complete this mission. September 17, 1991, the day when our national flag was hoisted at U.N. Headquarters, remains a vivid memory, as it coincided with "World Peace Day." One week later, then President Roh Tae-woo made Korea's first-ever keynote speech at the U.N. General Assembly as the leader of a new member state. This anniversary is a timely reminder of what it meant to South Korea's post-Cold War global diplomacy, as we look to the future. The road to the U.N., a smooth pro forma procedure for most member states under the "universality principle," was bumpy and treacherous for us, for well-known reasons among others, the long-standing Cold War confrontational stance among permanent members of the Security Council who had major stakes on the Korean Peninsula. The United States supported South Korea while the Soviet Union and China stood behind the North, objecting to the South's sole entry. For Kim Il-sung, Pyongyang's "supreme" leader, the idea of simultaneous entry directly clashed with his longcherished scheme of founding a single Korea federation under one "red flag." Regardless, simultaneous admission was made possible thanks to the well synchronized mix of the meltdown of the Cold War and South Korea's agile move to seize this opportunity with its Nordpolitik or Northern Policy. Indeed, Seoul successfully normalized its relations with the Soviet Union a year before in September 1990, and communicated with Beijing via its U.N. and Hong Kong channels. As in the German case, strong U.S. backing was a key factor. While the two Germanys were also simultaneously admitted to the U.N., 24 years after their formal division, it took 43 years for the two Koreas to join. Whereas the two Germanys reunified in 1990, realizing the "Wir sind ein Volk" (We are one nation) slogan 17 years after their U.N. membership the two Koreas still have a long way to go. From the standpoint of foreign policy makers and historians, South Korea's U.N. admission diplomacy merits special attention from several aspects. First, it was a very rare case of a unilateral surrender by Pyongyang to Seoul's diplomatic pressure and persuasion, buttressed by overwhelming support from the community of nations that included North Korea's patrons. Second, two ultimatums were decisive South Korea's ultimatum memorandum of April 5, 1991 to the U.N. Security Council and ensuing, yet quiet, ultimatum by Chinese Premier Li Peng to his North Korean counterpart during his visit to Pyongyang in May, 1991. The South Korean memorandum that I had the honor of drafting notified all U.N. members of Seoul's unstoppable resolve to submit its admission application in 1991, hoping the North would follow suit. Its additional key message was that if the bid were to be again vetoed, it would not only be against the Republic of Korea (ROK) but the will of U.N. members. China took this message seriously and notified Pyongyang that it could no longer deny the legitimate cause of South Korea's entry. Three weeks later, North Korea grudgingly announced that it would drop its opposition to the simultaneous entry. The last phase of a decades-long U.N. admission war concluded with a happy ending. Third, this drama was immediately followed by a series of historic developments in and around the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas announced the Basic Agreement as well as a denuclearization declaration. The U.S. then announced the withdrawal of its tactical nuclear weapons from the South. And South Korea and China engaged in a series of meetings between their foreign ministers and other high-level representatives that finally led to the normalization of relations in August 1992. Unfortunately, this honeymoon was short-lived, and both Koreas went their own ways. Contrasting their track records since 1991 is an exercise in sadness. For North Korea, its record is disastrous. Less than two years after its U.N. membership, Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); it then proceeded to conduct six nuclear tests and launch all kinds of ballistic missiles in violation of about a dozen legally-binding U.N. Security Council resolutions over the last fifteen years, including this month; it is the first country to officially declare itself a "nuclear-armed state" in its constitution; and its human rights abuses are a standing item at the U.N. Human Rights Council. In short, Pyongyang is like a serial offender in its non-compliance with the U.N. Charter and related resolutions. In contrast, South Korea has expanded its role to make up for the late start. Seoul has served as a non-permanent member of the Security Council twice and is now aspiring for a third term. It has also held the prestigious presidencies of the U.N. General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Human Rights Council and Peace-building Commission, to name just a few. It is now among the ten largest financial contributors to the U.N. budget and developmental assistance. Among other achievements, it is home to Ban Ki-moon, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations (200716). For South Korea, U.N. entry was pivotal to globalizing its diplomacy beyond the Korean Peninsula and the Asia-Pacific region, addressing challenges in all three pillars of the Charter: peace, development, and human rights. Now, global priorities including climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic response and nuclear non-proliferation will be high on its agenda. Looking ahead, the key task for Korean diplomacy is to live up to its commitment to peace on the Korean Peninsula and in the world, and ultimately realizing reunification. As U.N. SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said recently, "this anniversary is a painful reminder of the lack of peace on the peninsula." Amid new strategic competition between the U.S. and China, we need a new agenda for sustainable peace and a hard-nosed strategy to build a new kind of Korea. Yun Byung-se is the former foreign minister of South Korea. He is now a board member of the Korea Peace Foundation and a member of several ex-global leaders' forums and taskforces, including the Astana Forum and its Consultative Council as well as the Task Force on U.S. Allies and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. gettyimagesbank By Kim Bo-eun Along with semiconductors, batteries are considered as a core technology for Korea in terms of the country's national security and economic growth, as the United States and China invest more to develop next-generation batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). In order to take the upper hand in this sector, securing skilled workers is the most pressing task for Korea's battery manufacturers and also a highly challenging one. This is due to the dire lack of individuals that have studied battery-related technology. The absence of undergraduate-level battery-tech programs at universities has led battery companies to hire employees that have experience with rival firms or rely on the small number of individuals with master's or doctoral degrees in the field. Most automotive engineering departments at the undergraduate level are still focused on conventional vehicles with internal combustion engines, only offering a few courses on EVs. This national shortage of trained experts in the field even resulted in a major dispute between two major battery makers, as a late market entrant poached employees of a rival firm to secure key technology. While the dispute was settled, it cost the companies years of time and effort, as well as money. LG Energy Solution (LGES) recently unveiled plans to establish the world's first institute of battery technology at its Ochang plant, to deal with the dire lack of experts in the sector. Having more skilled engineers is an urgent matter, given the rapid growth of the EV battery market. The global market for EV batteries is set to expand by more than 22 times from last year's 140 gigawatt-hours to 3,000 gigawatt-hours in 2030. Industry insiders say talent is the most important factor in maintaining competitiveness to capture market opportunities, and this is why state-backed efforts to foster experts is key. They point out that for the government to develop the battery sector as a key industry, it needs to provide support for battery departments at universities as it did for semiconductor departments. The government has backed the establishment of semiconductor departments at leading universities here, such as Yonsei and Korea, in collaboration with local chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, as a means to foster personnel in the field. Graduates of the departments are provided full scholarships and ensured positions at the companies. In June, the government unveiled a long-term plan to strengthen the battery industry as a strategic sector. Part of the plan covered the fostering of battery experts, but the scheme lacked specifics on how this would be done. The government stated the education ministry and universities needed to reach a consensus to be able to set up battery departments at the schools. Existing faculty members are opposed to the plan given they risk losing their positions. Korea's three battery makers LGES, Samsung SDI and SK Innovation currently rank in the top six global battery firms. However, they cannot afford to remain complacent given heated competition in the industry amid the growth of Chinese competitors. For now, Korea faces the task of bolstering its battery industry's human resources through the setting up of key departments in the nation's universities if the country's competitive edge in the field of EV battery technology is to be maintained. In this July 11 file photo, former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas. Trump on Tuesday, Sept. 21 sued his estranged niece, Mary Trump, and The New York Times over a bombshell 2018 story about his family's wealth and tax practices that was based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper's reporters. AP-Yonhap Former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday filed a $100 million lawsuit against his estranged niece Mary Trump and The New York Times, alleging they engaged in "an insidious plot" to obtain his tax returns for the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of his finances. The lawsuit, filed in Dutchess County, New York state, says that New York Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner conducted "an extensive crusade to obtain Donald J. Trump's confidential tax records." "The defendants engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works," the lawsuit says, alleging they were "motivated by a personal vendetta." The New York Times and the three journalists won the Pulitzer in 2019 for their investigation of the Trump family's finances, which the Pulitzer Prize Board said "debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges." The newspaper's story alleged that Trump had received more than $400 million in today's terms from his father's real estate empire, much of it through fraudulent tax schemes. Mary was the daughter of the eldest Trump brother Fred Trump Jr, who died in 1981 from complications due to alcoholism. In her no-holds-barred 2020 memoir, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," she revealed that she was the primary source for the New York Times investigation. The July 7, 2020 file photo shows 'Too Much and Never Enough', the controversial book by Mary Trump about her uncle, US President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C. EPA-Yonhap In this June 12 file photo, President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands during a bilateral meeting at the G-7 summit, in Carbis Bay, England. AP-Yonhap The most significant rift in decades between the United States and France seemed on the mend Wednesday after French President Emmanuel Macron and President Joe Biden got on the phone Wednesday to smooth things over. In a half-hour call that the White House described as ''friendly,'' the two leaders agreed to meet next month to discuss the way forward after the French fiercely objected when the U.S., Australia and Britain announced a new Indo-Pacific defense deal last week that cost the French a submarine contract worth billions. France also agreed to send its ambassador back to Washington. The White House made a point of releasing a photograph of Biden smiling during his call with Macron. In a carefully crafted joint statement, the two governments said Biden and Macron ''have decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence.'' So did Biden apologize? White House press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped the question repeatedly, allowing that Biden did acknowledge ''there could have been greater consultation.'' ''The president is hopeful this is a step in returning to normal in a long, important, abiding relationship that the United States has with France,'' she said. The call suggested a cooling of tempers after days of outrage from Paris directed at the Biden administration. In an unprecedented move, France last week recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia to protest what the French said amounted to a stab in the back by allies. As part of the defense pact, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. It was clear there is still repair work to be done. The joint statement said the French ambassador will ''have intensive work with senior U.S. officials'' upon his return to the United States. U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with French President Emmanuel Macron from the Oval Office of the White House in this official White House handout photo released after the call in Washington, U.S., Sept. 22. Reuters-Yonhap Lava flows following the eruption of a volcano in Los Llanos de Aridane, on the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain, Sept. 22. Reuters-Yonhap Lava flowed from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma for a fourth day on Wednesday, forcing more people to evacuate their homes and blanketing towns in ash, while residents struggled to come to terms with the destruction. "All we can do is cry. We are a small business, we live off all these people who have lost everything," said Lorena, 30, who works in a jewelers in the small town of Los Llanos de Aridane. Since erupting on Sunday, lava from the Cumbre Vieja volcano has destroyed at least 150 houses and forced thousands of people to flee, mostly in Los Llanos de Aridane and nearby El Paso. Holding back tears as she swept away a thick layer of ash from the street outside her store, Nancy Ferreiro, the jewelery shop owner, said: "There are no words to explain this feeling." Less than 5 km (3 miles) to the south, in Todoque, forked tongues of black lava advanced slowly westward, incinerating everything in their path, including houses, schools and the banana plantations that produce the island's biggest export. Emergency services tried to redirect the lava towards a gorge in an effort to minimise damage but had little success. "Faced with the column of advancing lava ... nothing can be done," regional leader Angel Victor Torres told a news conference, adding that the flow had slowed to a crawl. Miguel Angel Morcuende, technical director of the Pevolca eruption taskforce, said the lava's speed had reduced so much that it might not reach the sea. Experts had originally predicted it would hit the Atlantic Ocean late on Monday, potentially causing explosions and sending out clouds of toxic gases. Marine authorities are keeping a two nautical mile area in the sea closed as a precaution. Morcuende said for now there was no indication that gases released by the eruption were damaging to human health. People from the El Paso neighborhood of Jerey were ordered to evacuate on Wednesday as the lava crept close to their homes. About 6,000 of La Palma's population of 80,000 have been evacuated since Sunday. Some were allowed back briefly to recover belongings. Property portal Idealista estimated the volcano had caused around 87 million euros ($102 million) in property destruction so far. Late on Tuesday, the Canary Islands' volcanology institute said the scale of seismic activity within the volcano was intensifying. Drone footage captured towers of magma bursting high into the air, spraying debris onto the flanks of the Cumbre Vieja volcano. No fatalities or injuries have been reported (Reuters) Stock Market News BAY Shares - Quang Ninh, Phuket discuss post-pandemic tourism recovery 23-09-2021 02:45 Stock News headlines are gathered from financial news sources around the web. Views and opinions on each item are from their respective authors and website. They are not opinions of LiveCharts.co.uk Sunil Bholah a participe a la ceremonie de remise de certificat le 21 septembre 2021 pour les participants a une formations faite par SME Mauritius et Inbound Tourism Promoters Association. It is my pleasure to join you at this Certificate Award Ceremony. I want to first commend the entrepreneurs here today, who have shown great tenacity amidst adversity. I would also like to acknowledge the important contribution of SME Mauritius in collaboration with the Inbound Tourism Promoters Association for the upskilling of our entrepreneurs to pick up again. Tourism continues to be one of the sectors hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourist arrivals are estimated to have fallen 74% in 2020 compared to 2019. This decrease represents around 1 billion trips. According to an UNCTAD report published on 30 June this year, international tourism and its closely linked sectors suffered an estimated loss of $2.4 trillion in 2020 due to direct and indirect impacts of a steep drop in international tourist arrivals. A similar loss may occur this year, the report warns, noting that the tourism sectors recovery will largely depend on the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines globally. Ladies and gentlemen, Tourism is one of the main economic pillars of Mauritius, providing livelihoods to some 100,000 workers. Buzzing airport fully booked hotels, resorts and guesthouses day round activities at attraction parks and sites round-the-clock calls made to travel agents and tour operators proud guided tours of our island shopping spree by foreigners at our local markets and boutiques pleasure crafts happily riding our tourists in our coastal waters This state of affairs was the lifeblood of all operators and individuals in the sector. A majority of tourism enterprises are micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSME) of less than 50 employees. According to the International Labour Organization, in the global tourism sector, about 30% of the total workforce, is employed in firms with 29 employees. Moreover, for every directly created tourism job, nearly one and a half additional jobs are created on an indirect or induced basis. COVID-19 has affected the whole world at its core, causing the major disruption to the tourism industry. We feel your pain. We are in it together. We reckon that the blow is harder to SMEs. The Government has been quick to acknowledge the specific circumstances of SMEs, and has put in place policies to support them. Whether to address liquidity by deferring payments, more financing plans to strengthen SME resilience, measures to avoid the consequences of unorganised lay-offs, and other structural policies. These general SME measures have also been accessible to SMEs in the tourism sector. Ladies and gentlemen, After almost two years of struggling, the global roll-out of vaccines has now boosted hopes for recovery even though challenges remain. International travel will not likely return to pre-COVID levels any time soon. Mauritius has taken a practical and progressive approach towards reopening of its borders. The health and safety of our travellers remains our top priority. Compared to where we were a year ago, we now have clearer knowledge of the virus and its transmission mechanism, a wider variety of stronger testing options, and more robust tracing capabilities. There is greater confidence. There is hope. It is with this spirit that we look forward to the reopening of our borders on the 1st October 2021. We all agree that being back to business will no longer be the same as it would be before the pandemic. New normal New world new skills! Sanitation and social distancing measures will continue to play a role in our lives, as the virus is brought under control. The trend towards digital and contactless technologies will keep on accelerating. Businesses that have struggled through the pandemic will be looking for fresh ideas and skills to guide them into recovery, when the economy picks up again. The tourism sector will always require professionals who excel in skills that form the backbone of the industry such as customer service, culinary, food and beverage or management skills. As we struggle to revive our tourism industry in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, skills are emerging as the deciding factor for recovery. The pandemic has accelerated the shift in how people and businesses connect with one another, by pushing the boundaries of remote working, remote learning, and remote experiences. In a world where visitors are not constrained by physical boundaries, travel is no longer just about meetings or sightseeing but the unique suite of experiences that it offers to visitors, from pre-arrival to post-departure. The next bound of growth for the tourism sector will come from creating quality end-to-end experiences, to meet the needs and expectations of travellers. To deliver on these expectations, it is crucial that professionals in the tourism sector be well equipped with the required knowledge and skills. Hence, I fully welcome the idea of training for the upskilling of our entrepreneurs in the industry. It is gratifying to note that 75 participants comprising of tour operators, travel agents and taxi drivers, have been part of this training organised by SME Mauritius, in collaboration with the Inbound Tourism Promoters Association. I am informed that the training was carried out simultaneously in the 3 outstations of SME Mauritius namely at Rose-Belle, Bel-Air and Goodlands from 17th to 20th August 2021. Hospitality trends; health, hygiene and sanitary protocols, communication and customer care were among the modules proposed for the training. I think that the training session is proof that when different organizations and entrepreneurs come together for the purpose of rebuilding and consolidating, the resilience of our SMEs can be improved. I am totally for such partnerships which uplift each other in these testing and tough times. Looking ahead, the measures put in place today will shape tourism of tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, In the near-term, there will still be headwinds. But we remain committed to supporting our tourism sector, to help our businesses and workers build new capabilities, and break new ground. Ladies and Gentlemen, We know that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has always been considered the main pillar in providing the labour market with skilled workers, in different sectors and particularly in the tourism sector. It must also be acknowledged that TVET and skills development programmes are well-placed to play a major role during and post COVID-19 pandemic. As you may be aware, since August 2018, the SME Employment Scheme is in place. While the initial objective was the placement of 1000 graduates, SME Mauritius has since inception, placed 1,500 graduates and some 400 Diploma holders in SMEs. A monthly stipend of Rs 14,000 to Graduates and Rs 10,200 to Diploma holders, respectively is paid by SME Mauritius. SMEs can benefit from one graduate and one diploma holder. The SME Employment Scheme has just been extended to June 2022. Moreover, to bridge the skills gap and further reduce unemployment among Youth, we will also enlist MQA approved holders of TVET Level 3 qualifications in: plumbing, electrical, culinary skills, beauty therapy, hairdressing, automotive mechanics and electronics amongst others to be placed in SMEs. Just as diploma holders, TVET trainees will be paid a monthly stipend of Rs 10,200. I would strongly appeal to both SMEs, especially those involved in the tourism sector, and qualified vocational qualification holders to enrol for this program, which is expected to be in place as from 15th October. Ladies and gentlemen, As we push forward in 2021, the challenge that lies ahead is not recovery within this year, or even next year, but how Mauritius will prepare for long-term success, and reinvent global travel. We look forward to working closely with you to not only overcome the current challenges of reopening our borders safely for travellers, but to reimagine and reinvent the tourism industry post-pandemic. The present era will open up more avenues for sustainability and digital revolution. While there will be challenges, there are also many opportunities that we can seize. If we come together as a nation, we can achieve anything. Unity is key if we want to heal faster. On this note, let me convey my appreciation to all entrepreneurs who believe in our support mechanism and are willing to walk together hand in hand to overcome underlying challenges. Congratulations to all the participants. Thank you for your attention! The United States will lift restrictions on air travelers from 33 countries from November, the White House announced on Monday. Energy Capital & Power (ECP) , organizer of the U.S.-Africa Energy Forum (USAEF), and the African Energy Chamber, host of the African Energy Week in Cape Town, welcome the news. Current bans on travel from South Africa, the UK, Ireland, the EU Schengen zone, Iran, China, Brazil and India for non-US citizens will be replaced with a new policy requiring vaccination for non-citizens. Testing requirements for unvaccinated Americans will also be introduced. Full details of the policy are still being developed, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients stated, noting that the new system will be in place from early November. We know vaccines are effective, including against the delta variant, and vaccines are the best line of defense against [Covid-19], so this vaccination requirement deploys the best tool we have in our arsenal to keep people safe and prevent the spread of the virus, said Zients on Monday, according to Reuters. Shares in European airlines saw an immediate uptick upon the announcement, including British Airways parent company IAG, which gained 11.2%. The move will be welcomed by African energy businesses with offices and headquarters in South Africa, Europe and the UK. On 9-10 December 2021, ECP and its partners will host the U.S.-Africa Energy Forum in Houston (www.usafricaenergy.com). The re-opening of U.S. air travel to vaccinated travelers will allow South African delegations and African private companies to participate in the forum and secure new funding and technology partners from the United States. ECP is excited to reunite Africas and the United States energy leaders in Houston. The USAEF is held with the support of the African Energy Chamber, City of Houston, Texas-West Africa Chamber of Commerce, Rystad Energy and other partners. On 9-12 November 2021 the African Energy Chamber brings African, European and American investors and delegations to Cape Town for African Energy Week (www.aew2021.com). The meeting represents the safest, most innovative and most comprehensive energy sector gathering on the African continent in 2021. The new U.S. rules, if implemented on time, could provide a boost to attendance and will demonstrate a move to a more pragmatic travel regime for energy businesses. The lifting of the U.S. travel ban from South Africa follows Germanys decision on Sunday to remove South Africa from its list of high risk countries. The UK maintains its restrictions on travel from South Africa and many other African countries but removes Egypt and Kenya from its red list starting on Wednesday and will introduce a new travel regime in October. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Our Jenny Green who hosts the Jazz Mix-Up Show on Tuesday evenings received a 4 star review in Jazzwise for her second album Always and Forever. The review was included in Octobers publication, and Jenny was thrilled and proud to receive the news. Jazzwise, is the UK's largest-selling jazz monthly magazine. Her album includes the single Dont Sleep in the Subway a remake of the1960s classic. Since its launch her album has had rave reviews from many Jazz writers inc Sammy Stein for Jazz Views and the London Jazz News. Read Sammys review here . https://www.jazzviews.net/jenny-green---always--forever.html As well as being a Meridian FM presenter, Jenny is the curator of the East Grinstead Jazz Club where she hosts and performs with her house band every month at the Chequer Mead Theatre. Jenny is a seasoned performer having performed in many venues in London and the South East including Ronnie Scotts and Pizza Express Jazz Club in the West End. National PM Modi on 5-day visit to US: Whats on agenda Prime Minister Narendra Modi departs from New Delhi for his visit to the USA. (PTI) NEW DELHI, SEP 22 ( AGENCIES) | Publish Date: 9/22/2021 2:03:24 PM IST Prime Minister Narendra Modi has embarked on a five-day visit to the United States on Wednesday where he will address the UN General Assembly, attend the Quad Summit and will hold bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House, reports Times of India. This is Modis first visit to the US since Biden assumed charge early this year. The two have met virtually on at least three occasions the Quad summit in March, the climate change summit in April, and the G-7 summit in June this year. The PM is accompanied by a high-level delegation including external affairs minister S Jaishankar and national security advisor Ajit Doval. Visit an occasion to strengthen strategic ties In a statement just before leaving for the US, PM Modi said he will conclude his visit with an address to the United Nations General Assembly focusing on the pressing global challenges including the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to combat terrorism, climate change, and other important issues. I am also looking forward to meeting Vice-President Kamala Harris to explore opportunities for cooperation between our two nations particularly in the area of science and technology, he said. Heres all you need to know about whats on the PMs agenda in the US: Bilateral meeting with Biden on September 24 in Washington One of the highlights of PM Modis visit will be his first in-person bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington on September 24. At a media briefing ahead of the Prime Ministers visit to the US, foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla had on Tuesday said the developments in Afghanistan will be extensively discussed in the bilateral talks between Modi and Biden and the Indian side will convey that Washington needs to continue focus on that country. What are the issues likely to be discussed in the first in-person meeting between Modi and Biden- The Afghan crisis and its implications Chinas growing assertiveness Ways to stem radicalism and cross-border terrorism Expansion of the India-US global partnership How to bolster bilateral trade and investment ties Strengthen defence and security collaboration Boost the Strategic Clean Energy Partnership Explore new avenues and emerging technologies, including R&D, innovation and industry linkages. Both leaders have been in regular contact in recent months. It was in November that PM Modi had called to congratulate President Biden on his electoral victory. Since then, they have spoken in February and April this year. PM Modi- Kamala Harris meeting PM Modi will also hold bilateral engagements with Vice-President Kamala Harris. This will be the Prime Ministers first formal interaction with the US Vice-President. PM Modi and Vice-President Harris had earlier spoken on the telephone in June this year. Harris had offered to prioritise India, in making US vaccines available in the wake of the Covid situation at that time in India. At their meeting at the White House, the Prime Minister and Vice-President Harris are expected to exchange views on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest. PM likely to meet CEOs of American companies on September 23 in Washington The Prime Minister is also scheduled to meet a number of top executives of major American companies. According to news agency ANI, Modi will arrive in Washington on September 22 and the next morning he will be meeting with the top US CEOs. Modi is likely to meet with Apple chief Tim Cook. First in-person Quad Leaders Summit on September 24 in Washington PM Modi will participate in the first in-person Quad Leaders Summit along with President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Premier Yoshihide Suga on September 24. The Summit provides an opportunity for the four leaders to take stock of the outcomes of the Quad leaders Virtual Summit in March this year and identify priorities for future engagements based on our shared vision for the Indo-Pacific region, the PM said. I will also meet Prime Minister Morrison of Australia and Prime Minister Suga of Japan to take stock of the strong bilateral relations with their respective countries and continue our useful exchanges on regional and global issues, Modi said. My visit to the US would be an occasion to strengthen the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with the USA, consolidate relations with our strategic partners -- Japan and Australia -- and to take forward our collaboration on important global issues, he said in his departure statement. He will also participate in the Covid-19 Global summit hosted by President Biden. UNGA address on Covid on September 25 in New York After concluding his engagements in Washington, Modi will travel to New York on the evening of September 24 and address the 76th session of the UN General Assembly the next day. PM Modi in his statement before leaving for the US said that he will conclude his visit with an address at the United Nations General Assembly focusing on the pressing global challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to combat terrorism, climate change and other important issues. Pakistan gives nod for usage of its airspace for PM Modis flight The aircraft carrying PM Modi and the Indian delegation will fly over Pakistans airspace to avoid Afghanistan. This is the first time that Air India One (AI1), the call sign of Indias VVIP Boeing aircraft, has been deployed for US long haul direct flight. The new Boeing B-777 aircraft Extra Range (ER300) aircraft, which was recently modified for VVIP guests of India, is also equipped with advanced defence systems. The B-777 will take 15 hours to reach the US. Since the aircraft is avoiding Afghanistans airspace, the flight will take extra hours for the US trip. Notably, Pakistan had previously denied permission to President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Modi to use Pakistans airspace thrice to travel to foreign countries in 2019 after India abrogated Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. York Festival of Ideas International relations are shifting across the Middle East as regional powers adapt to the USs retrenchment and Chinas growing influence. Although the region could become the site of another great-power competition, it also has a chance to pursue diplomatic openings and new security arrangements, writes Fawaz A Gerges WHAT are we to make of the reshuffling of relations and shifting alliances in the Middle East? Diplomacy has gained momentum among bitter foes; cracks have appeared among close friends. Regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Egypt are recalibrating their foreign policies and restoring relations with estranged neighbours. The United States and Russia have renewed their regional rivalry and China has entered as a new competitor. The shifting geopolitics could make the Middle East the scene of fierce and truly global competition. But they also could defuse regional rivalries, by bringing together countries that historically loathe one another. Much will depend on the main factors behind the new realignments: the United Statess regional retrenchment, Chinas rise and the adverse effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on already weak regional economies. US president Joe Biden has made it clear that the Middle East is not a foreign-policy priority for his administration. Whereas former president Donald Trump built an anti-Iran coalition led by Saudi Arabia and Israel, Biden has sought to distance himself from Saudi Arabia, not least by ending US support for the war in Yemen. His administration has resumed diplomacy to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew the US in 2018, and it has kept Turkey and Egypt (two of Trumps favourites) at arms length. US pivot towards China WITH the complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan last month, Joe Biden made it clear that the United States is disengaging from the regions cold wars as it pivots to Asia and China. Across the Middle East, there is a widespread belief that the US is no longer a real partner. Moreover, while the US pulls back, China is increasingly making its presence known in the region. In March, it concluded a major agreement with Iran, promising $400 billion of investment over the next 25 years in exchange for steady shipments of oil and gas. On a tour through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman the same month, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi affirmed his countrys commitment to the regions security and stability. In an obvious dig at the US, he said that China will oppose foreign interventions and act as an honest broker in resolving persistent conflicts in the region. Wang also dangled the prospect of a Chinese free-trade agreement that would bring tens of billions of dollars in investment opportunities, by linking Chinas Belt and Road Initiative with local development projects. This kind of economic sweetener resonates widely in the Middle East, where youth unemployment rates, poverty levels, and other economic indicators were dismal long before the pandemic. Over the past 18 months, Covid-19 has exacerbated already severe social crises in many countries. Regional diplomacy UNDER these conditions, it is little wonder that regional dialogue and diplomacy are making a comeback. Most local rulers understand that regime security depends more on satisfying the needs of the population, than on sectarian incitement and hatred of the other. Hence, last April, Saudi Arabia and Iran held secret talks to discuss how to end the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting a war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels since March 2015. Saudi Arabia has also reconciled with Qatar (which maintains friendly relations with Iran), after having severed all links with its neighbour in June 2017. In a powerful gesture of rapprochement last April, Saudi Arabias king Salman formally invited Qatars emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to visit his country. As a further sign of the broader political reshuffling, the Saudis have also normalised relations with Iraq (an Iranian ally), thus ending three decades of mutual estrangement and hostility. And after years of conflict with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (another close Iranian partner), Saudi officials recently held secret talks with their Syrian counterparts in Damascus, leading to reports that an agreement on diplomatic normalisation may be forthcoming. Iran, too, may be on the verge of improving ties with its neighbours, particularly the United Arab Emirates. Irans former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif completed a diplomatic charm tour through Qatar, Iraq, Kuwait and Oman in April, and there have been reports that an official Iranian visit to the UAE is still on the cards. Iranian-Saudi rapprochement BUT most important is the possibility of an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement. Ebrahim Raisi, the hardliner who replaced Irans former moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, at the beginning of August has said that he sees no obstacles to establishing diplomatic relations with the kingdom. A restoration of ties would curtail the civil strife and proxy wars in Syria and Yemen two of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world today and might also bring stability to politically and religiously divided countries like Iraq and Lebanon. Finally, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone on a diplomatic offensive to mend his countrys strained ties in the region, particularly vis-a-vis Egypt and Saudi Arabia. After almost coming to violent blows over Libya last year, Turkey now wants to improve economic relations with Egypt and other regional and global powers. These recent regional realignments can be explained by changing assessments of the balance of power and converging interests. The USs retrenchment has forced regional powers to attend to their own security by mending fences. Regional leaders increasingly recognise that there is nothing to gain from pouring gasoline on a raging fire, as Trump did. Through international diplomacy led by the United States, Europe, China, Russia, and Japan, the Middle East can continue on its current path of de-escalation. Could the international community broker an agreement for a new inclusive security architecture and nuclear weapons-free Middle East, or at least support and encourage the regional dialogue and conflict management that is emerging there? It is no longer wishful thinking to imagine so. Endless conflict may mark the Middle Easts past; but it is not the regions settled destiny. Qantara.de, September 21. Fawaz A Gerges is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Coos County Democrat Jefferson bids farewell to Claudette Couture by Tara Giles Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author JEFFERSON The town of Jefferson lost a big personality last week, with the passing of Claudette Rose Couture on Sept. 14. At 77 years old, her most known greeting was "Hey, girl," or when she had something to say, she would lean in and say, "Listennnn" with great enthusiasm only a French Canadian could deliver. Last but not least, her simple words of wisdom were, "Life's too short to be sorry." The mother of three children, there was no shortage of Shenanigans going on at the Couture home, on Turnpike Road. To mini-bikes being sped up and down grated roads, pool parties in the backyard and countless sleepovers, Claudette was always there to patch up a skinned knee and was always offering words of encouragement in her own, humorous way. Known as the best sleepover mom ever, she would laugh the next morning carrying a frozen bra she had just discovered in the freezer and would shout, "What the heck is this thing doing in the freezer, you girls!" You knew she meant business, when she was saying something if her eyebrows shot straight up. And she meant business often. The counter in her kitchen was always a place of comfort where she would serve anyone who stepped up, the best crepes imaginable. If you were being polite by not asking for seconds, she knew and would pop more on your plate anyway. She was an amazing seamstress, who had an entire floor of her home dedicated to just that. If you are lucky enough to be in possession of one of her fleece hats or mittens, you are in the possession of an item made with passion and love. Couture had so many great stories to share. One was recalled by her daughter Lisa, who told us, "Memere and Papa were in their RV, on their way to a craft show in southern New Hampshire and Papa stopped at a rest area thinking Memere was sleeping in the back, went in and came back and left. He didn't know that she went into the rest area and proceeded to leave. Memere went out to the RV to get back in and it was gone. She didn't know what to do so she called the state police to have him pulled over so he could turn around and go get her!" Always doing right by her family, her granddaughter Brennah shared a story that encapsulates who she was. "Memere has always had a lifelong fear of water, she never learned how to swim. Yet in 2018, when I got married in the Dominican Republic (which was her favorite place to vacation), the whole family was out on a big boat when we decided we all wanted to go in the water and hangout. After a while, Memere decided she wanted to join, and she overcame her fear to be with her family. She put her life jacket on, wrapped her arms around the ones she loved most and got in the water!" Claudette's grandchildren loved helping their Memere at the annual Jefferson Christmas Festival each year. She was always seen chatting with fellow residents and loving every minute. Grandaughter Jayda said, "There wasn't a chance you could walk by her booth without trying on a hat or a pair of mittens, and once you tried them you were hooked for life." Claudette was born on April 13, 1944 in Saint Isidore, Quebec. She was the daughter of Marcel and Antoinette (Vachon) Gelinas. She moved to Jefferson in 1960 to work as a nanny and soon met Julien (Chick) Couture. They were later married on July 7, 1962 in East Hereford, Quebec. They settled down in Jefferson after their marriage and raised their family in "Couture Ville." Claudette was an active member of Gate of Heaven Parish. She also enjoyed going to "the mall" with her best friend Carol Bacon, beating everyone at cribbage and having her grandchildren take her to "therapy" (Bingo). She also thoroughly enjoyed crafting with her grandchildren, taking trips to Prince Edward Island with her family and helping anyone in need. JEFFERSON The town of Jefferson lost a big personality last week, with the passing of Claudette Rose Couture on Sept. 14.At 77 years old, her most known greeting was "Hey, girl," or when she had something to say, she would lean in and say, "Listennnn" with great enthusiasm only a French Canadian could deliver. Last but not least, her simple words of wisdom were, "Life's too short to be sorry."The mother of three children, there was no shortage of Shenanigans going on at the Couture home, on Turnpike Road. To mini-bikes being sped up and down grated roads, pool parties in the backyard and countless sleepovers, Claudette was always there to patch up a skinned knee and was always offering words of encouragement in her own, humorous way. Known as the best sleepover mom ever, she would laugh the next morning carrying a frozen bra she had just discovered in the freezer and would shout, "What the heck is this thing doing in the freezer, you girls!"You knew she meant business, when she was saying something if her eyebrows shot straight up. And she meant business often.The counter in her kitchen was always a place of comfort where she would serve anyone who stepped up, the best crepes imaginable. If you were being polite by not asking for seconds, she knew and would pop more on your plate anyway. She was an amazing seamstress, who had an entire floor of her home dedicated to just that. If you are lucky enough to be in possession of one of her fleece hats or mittens, you are in the possession of an item made with passion and love.Couture had so many great stories to share.One was recalled by her daughter Lisa, who told us, "Memere and Papa were in their RV, on their way to a craft show in southern New Hampshire and Papa stopped at a rest area thinking Memere was sleeping in the back, went in and came back and left. He didn't know that she went into the rest area and proceeded to leave. Memere went out to the RV to get back in and it was gone. She didn't know what to do so she called the state police to have him pulled over so he could turn around and go get her!"Always doing right by her family, her granddaughter Brennah shared a story that encapsulates who she was."Memere has always had a lifelong fear of water, she never learned how to swim. Yet in 2018, when I got married in the Dominican Republic (which was her favorite place to vacation), the whole family was out on a big boat when we decided we all wanted to go in the water and hangout. After a while, Memere decided she wanted to join, and she overcame her fear to be with her family. She put her life jacket on, wrapped her arms around the ones she loved most and got in the water!"Claudette's grandchildren loved helping their Memere at the annual Jefferson Christmas Festival each year. She was always seen chatting with fellow residents and loving every minute.Grandaughter Jayda said, "There wasn't a chance you could walk by her booth without trying on a hat or a pair of mittens, and once you tried them you were hooked for life."Claudette was born on April 13, 1944 in Saint Isidore, Quebec. She was the daughter of Marcel and Antoinette (Vachon) Gelinas. She moved to Jefferson in 1960 to work as a nanny and soon met Julien (Chick) Couture. They were later married on July 7, 1962 in East Hereford, Quebec. They settled down in Jefferson after their marriage and raised their family in "Couture Ville."Claudette was an active member of Gate of Heaven Parish. She also enjoyed going to "the mall" with her best friend Carol Bacon, beating everyone at cribbage and having her grandchildren take her to "therapy" (Bingo). She also thoroughly enjoyed crafting with her grandchildren, taking trips to Prince Edward Island with her family and helping anyone in need. Coos County Democrat Whitefield selectmen hold public hearing on solar arrays Spartan harriers tackle challenging course at Newfound Recent Tara Giles Old popcorn machine reunited with Rialto 2021-Oct-07 Allard Block purchased by new owner 2021-Oct-07 City Council recognizes Aug. 7 as Purple Heart Day 2021-Sep-30 Whitefield selectmen hold public hearing on solar arrays 2021-Sep-30 Spartan harriers tackle challenging course at Newfound 2021-Sep-30 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Coos County Democrat Buckley discusses outlook for Democrats in 2022 by Tara Giles Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author LANCASTER Last week, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley visited the North Country, making stops in Lancaster, Littleton and Berlin, prior to heading over to the Truman Dinner. Sitting down in the Coos County Democrat office, Buckley began to discuss what he knows best, politics. "There's a lot going on politically this year, and the nation will be watching our 2022 Senate race," he explained. "We will have presumably opened the Governor's race, both Congressional races with the legislative bodies being so divided by such close margins that you'll see a lot of national attention to those as well," he added. Buckley mentioned a special election in Bedford in which a democrat won the seat. When asked how the shift was made from a typically red area to blue, the Chair explained, "Well, we really think that there's a real response to the overreach by Gov. Sununu and Republican legislators. For the first time ever, they put some major policy positions that have nothing to do with the budget in the budget bill, including the first time ever, the anti choice legislation. That includes some pretty Draconian aspects." Further, Buckley stated, "Their attacks on public education, public schools, taking public tax dollars, hundreds of thousands and transferring it to these private schools, that there's very little oversight on them." The conversation then moved towards how harsh the division between lawmakers has become, as compared to the 1980's and '90's. Buckley recalled the start of his own political career, noting "I was first elected to the house in 1986, and I've worked for the legislature, before that, so I'd been around, and I knew the majority of the Republicans in the House and in the Senate." "The '70s, '80s, and '90s were, by and large pretty moderate, when you compare to the characters in the legislature now. The idea that we had a Republican legislature that repealed the minimum wage. That was something that wasn't even up for conversation when I was in the legislature. But now, we have no innovation to save it," said Buckley. When asked why the shift may have happened, Buckley offered that "I think that a lot of the moderates have been driven out of the Republican Party, and that they have either become Independents or Democrats. You're seeing that in whole communities that 40 years ago were solid Republican, like Peterborough. Now, Republicans don't even run candidates in those areas because they are solid Democratic." Buckley relayed that when he served in the House, he passed 180 bills into law, with nearly every single one of them having a Republican co-sponsor. "I'm still friends with a lot of those Republicans today," said Buckley. He added, "Nowadays, you don't see that same communication, where you can argue something on the floor, then go to dinner after with them." In speaking of New Hampshire, Buckley discussed the 'Live Free or Die' mentality, commenting "I think that's a unifying philosophy for Democrats whether your family's been here for 100 years, or if you're a recent retiree and you move to New Hampshire, that there's an attractiveness of allowing people freedom of being able to make their choice. There's a philosophy in New Hampshire, of letting people make their own decisions and respecting that and other Republicans, say they agree, but when you really peel off the cover of that, it's absolutely not true." Buckley discussed the uniqueness of North Country politics, noting "Up here, you get to know your elected officials, and people don't necessarily vote by party, but they vote by their relationship with that person. I think that was key to Ray Burton's success. His focus was entirely constituent service. It wasn't policy driven and he earned that sort of bipartisan support." Lastly, Buckley said, "What's happening across the state, and especially in the North Country, is that Democrats are becoming even more enthusiastic and engaged with building the party and getting ready for 2022. There's a lot of new ideas happening that's bubbling up from the grassroots, and we're encouraging every one of them." Buckely said that he thinks it's important to allow local folks to develop their own style or their own way of structure and to do whatever makes sense in their area. "I think you're going to see some pretty exciting things coming up," he said. LANCASTER Last week, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley visited the North Country, making stops in Lancaster, Littleton and Berlin, prior to heading over to the Truman Dinner.Sitting down in the Coos County Democrat office, Buckley began to discuss what he knows best, politics."There's a lot going on politically this year, and the nation will be watching our 2022 Senate race," he explained."We will have presumably opened the Governor's race, both Congressional races with the legislative bodies being so divided by such close margins that you'll see a lot of national attention to those as well," he added.Buckley mentioned a special election in Bedford in which a democrat won the seat.When asked how the shift was made from a typically red area to blue, the Chair explained, "Well, we really think that there's a real response to the overreach by Gov. Sununu and Republican legislators. For the first time ever, they put some major policy positions that have nothing to do with the budget in the budget bill, including the first time ever, the anti choice legislation. That includes some pretty Draconian aspects."Further, Buckley stated, "Their attacks on public education, public schools, taking public tax dollars, hundreds of thousands and transferring it to these private schools, that there's very little oversight on them."The conversation then moved towards how harsh the division between lawmakers has become, as compared to the 1980's and '90's.Buckley recalled the start of his own political career, noting "I was first elected to the house in 1986, and I've worked for the legislature, before that, so I'd been around, and I knew the majority of the Republicans in the House and in the Senate.""The '70s, '80s, and '90s were, by and large pretty moderate, when you compare to the characters in the legislature now. The idea that we had a Republican legislature that repealed the minimum wage. That was something that wasn't even up for conversation when I was in the legislature. But now, we have no innovation to save it," said Buckley.When asked why the shift may have happened, Buckley offered that "I think that a lot of the moderates have been driven out of the Republican Party, and that they have either become Independents or Democrats. You're seeing that in whole communities that 40 years ago were solid Republican, like Peterborough. Now, Republicans don't even run candidates in those areas because they are solid Democratic."Buckley relayed that when he served in the House, he passed 180 bills into law, with nearly every single one of them having a Republican co-sponsor."I'm still friends with a lot of those Republicans today," said Buckley.He added, "Nowadays, you don't see that same communication, where you can argue something on the floor, then go to dinner after with them."In speaking of New Hampshire, Buckley discussed the 'Live Free or Die' mentality, commenting "I think that's a unifying philosophy for Democrats whether your family's been here for 100 years, or if you're a recent retiree and you move to New Hampshire, that there's an attractiveness of allowing people freedom of being able to make their choice. There's a philosophy in New Hampshire, of letting people make their own decisions and respecting that and other Republicans, say they agree, but when you really peel off the cover of that, it's absolutely not true."Buckley discussed the uniqueness of North Country politics, noting "Up here, you get to know your elected officials, and people don't necessarily vote by party, but they vote by their relationship with that person. I think that was key to Ray Burton's success. His focus was entirely constituent service. It wasn't policy driven and he earned that sort of bipartisan support."Lastly, Buckley said, "What's happening across the state, and especially in the North Country, is that Democrats are becoming even more enthusiastic and engaged with building the party and getting ready for 2022. There's a lot of new ideas happening that's bubbling up from the grassroots, and we're encouraging every one of them."Buckely said that he thinks it's important to allow local folks to develop their own style or their own way of structure and to do whatever makes sense in their area."I think you're going to see some pretty exciting things coming up," he said. Coos County Democrat Whitefield selectmen hold public hearing on solar arrays Spartan harriers tackle challenging course at Newfound Recent Tara Giles Old popcorn machine reunited with Rialto 2021-Oct-07 Allard Block purchased by new owner 2021-Oct-07 City Council recognizes Aug. 7 as Purple Heart Day 2021-Sep-30 Whitefield selectmen hold public hearing on solar arrays 2021-Sep-30 Spartan harriers tackle challenging course at Newfound 2021-Sep-30 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Granite State News Dock hand initiative a success by Elissa Paquette WOLFEBORO Selectman Luke Freundenburg reported at the Sept. 15 Board of Selectmen's meeting on a dock hand initiative he proposed and put in place as a pilot program with approval of the Board. Freudenberg, owner of Northeast Barge and Dock Company, has more than a passing familiarity with the Town Docks and was able to put his expertise to use on two recent Saturday stints. His idea was to have dock hands, including himself and two Public Works Department employees, offer assistance to boaters as they negotiated in an out of parking spots along the town docks. Freudenburg noted at the meeting that there are a lot of new boaters, evidenced by information from the state that there were 24,000 new boat registrations and his own personal observation. According to Freudenberg, he and his team were continuously helping boaters park from 10 a.m. 2 p.m. They offered instruction on how to tie up a boat, offered people a hand getting onto the docks and helped turn boats around to ease getting back out to the bay. "The docks are wide enough with a little bit of guidance," he commented. "Boats gather out at the end of the docks because they can't see the spots," said Freudenberg. The boat traffic was continuous, with people circling by 1 or 2 p.m., but the team was able to alleviate the crunch and be there to catch the rope and guide them in. He stated, "I never saw anyone have to drive away. At maximum, they had a 15-minute wait." "We got a lot of compliments," he remarked, adding that he had no negative comments until he posted about the work online. Asked about use of the 10 15 minute parking spot, Freudenberg said he observed a number of boats going in and out. Someone would drive a boat in, use their cell phone to notify their family members or guests that they had arrived, and minutes later, they would return to the boat and head back out to the bay. With voters on record in rejecting expansion of the docks, he felt institution of such a program would be a good solution to alleviating congestion during the summer months. He estimated a cost of about $8,000 to do so. Chairman Linda Murray and Selectman Brad Harriman expressed appreciation for the initiation and support for the proposal. WOLFEBORO Selectman Luke Freundenburg reported at the Sept. 15 Board of Selectmen's meeting on a dock hand initiative he proposed and put in place as a pilot program with approval of the Board. Freudenberg, owner of Northeast Barge and Dock Company, has more than a passing familiarity with the Town Docks and was able to put his expertise to use on two recent Saturday stints.His idea was to have dock hands, including himself and two Public Works Department employees, offer assistance to boaters as they negotiated in an out of parking spots along the town docks. Freudenburg noted at the meeting that there are a lot of new boaters, evidenced by information from the state that there were 24,000 new boat registrations and his own personal observation.According to Freudenberg, he and his team were continuously helping boaters park from 10 a.m. 2 p.m. They offered instruction on how to tie up a boat, offered people a hand getting onto the docks and helped turn boats around to ease getting back out to the bay."The docks are wide enough with a little bit of guidance," he commented."Boats gather out at the end of the docks because they can't see the spots," said Freudenberg.The boat traffic was continuous, with people circling by 1 or 2 p.m., but the team was able to alleviate the crunch and be there to catch the rope and guide them in.He stated, "I never saw anyone have to drive away. At maximum, they had a 15-minute wait.""We got a lot of compliments," he remarked, adding that he had no negative comments until he posted about the work online.Asked about use of the 10 15 minute parking spot, Freudenberg said he observed a number of boats going in and out. Someone would drive a boat in, use their cell phone to notify their family members or guests that they had arrived, and minutes later, they would return to the boat and head back out to the bay.With voters on record in rejecting expansion of the docks, he felt institution of such a program would be a good solution to alleviating congestion during the summer months. He estimated a cost of about $8,000 to do so. Chairman Linda Murray and Selectman Brad Harriman expressed appreciation for the initiation and support for the proposal. Littleton Courier Lincoln's Highland Games return with low numbers and high enthusiasm The American Rogues performed on the Governor's Lodge Stage during the Scottish Highland Games at Loon Mountain in Lincoln last weekend. (Photo by Angel Larcom) (click for larger version) LINCOLN After a one-year hiatus, the NH Gathering of the Scottish Clans returned to Loon Mountain last weekend. NH Department of Health mandates capped attendance at no more than 4,000 people per day at the three-day event, but clans, competitors and volunteers were thrilled about its return nonetheless. According to 25-year veteran volunteer Nancy Lee Badger of North Carolina, less than half the typical number of clans attended this year, with only 31 present. Before the pandemic, the Highland Games drew international attendance and well over 70 different Scottish clans. Likewise, attendance rates reached well beyond 54,000 people in 2018. Badger said many of the more than 300 volunteers consider the 2021 Highland Games a practice run before returning to their previous event size. Notable among the competitors that year was Hafor Jul'us "Thor" Bjornsson, a six-foot, nine inch tall Icelandic strongman best known for his role as Gregor "The Mountain That Rides" Clegane in the popular television series, "Game of Thrones." Both Badger and Chieftain Society member Steve Brown recalled the sheer volume of fans waiting patiently for Bjornsson's autograph that year. In 2018, NHSCOT also formed its first Pipes and Drums group. Membership quickly blossomed, and the group provides free weekly lessons to newcomers interested in bagpipes, snare bass or tenor drums. Two years later, NHSCOT developed an official New Hampshire Tartan to celebrate the event's 20th anniversary. The unique plaid pattern was designed by Ralf L. Hartwell and featured purple to represent the state bird and flower (purple finch and lilac), green for the forests, black for the granite mountains, white for the snow and red for the state heroes. Ongoing border restrictions prevented several participants from traveling to the festival from Scotland, as well as countless competitors and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Band, noted Badger. "We're hoping we can go wide open next year. There's a lot of us [volunteers] and this festival is our passion. There are only five paid staff members in this organization and all of this is done by the volunteers," noted Brown. According to Brown, Lincoln's Highland Games is the second-largest Scottish gathering in the United States, falling closely behind the Scottish Highland Gathering and Games in Pleasanton, Calif. It began as a simple clan picnic in 1975 that quickly blossomed one year later to a formal nonprofit organization and an annual event. In addition to the Highland Games, NHSCOT also hosts an annual Beltane music event in May, a family-friendly Scottish New Year celebration called Hogmanay and an annual Heritage Lecture Series. LINCOLN After a one-year hiatus, the NH Gathering of the Scottish Clans returned to Loon Mountain last weekend. NH Department of Health mandates capped attendance at no more than 4,000 people per day at the three-day event, but clans, competitors and volunteers were thrilled about its return nonetheless.According to 25-year veteran volunteer Nancy Lee Badger of North Carolina, less than half the typical number of clans attended this year, with only 31 present. Before the pandemic, the Highland Games drew international attendance and well over 70 different Scottish clans.Likewise, attendance rates reached well beyond 54,000 people in 2018. Badger said many of the more than 300 volunteers consider the 2021 Highland Games a practice run before returning to their previous event size.Notable among the competitors that year was Hafor Jul'us "Thor" Bjornsson, a six-foot, nine inch tall Icelandic strongman best known for his role as Gregor "The Mountain That Rides" Clegane in the popular television series, "Game of Thrones." Both Badger and Chieftain Society member Steve Brown recalled the sheer volume of fans waiting patiently for Bjornsson's autograph that year.In 2018, NHSCOT also formed its first Pipes and Drums group. Membership quickly blossomed, and the group provides free weekly lessons to newcomers interested in bagpipes, snare bass or tenor drums.Two years later, NHSCOT developed an official New Hampshire Tartan to celebrate the event's 20th anniversary. The unique plaid pattern was designed by Ralf L. Hartwell and featured purple to represent the state bird and flower (purple finch and lilac), green for the forests, black for the granite mountains, white for the snow and red for the state heroes.Ongoing border restrictions prevented several participants from traveling to the festival from Scotland, as well as countless competitors and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Band, noted Badger."We're hoping we can go wide open next year. There's a lot of us [volunteers] and this festival is our passion. There are only five paid staff members in this organization and all of this is done by the volunteers," noted Brown.According to Brown, Lincoln's Highland Games is the second-largest Scottish gathering in the United States, falling closely behind the Scottish Highland Gathering and Games in Pleasanton, Calif. It began as a simple clan picnic in 1975 that quickly blossomed one year later to a formal nonprofit organization and an annual event.In addition to the Highland Games, NHSCOT also hosts an annual Beltane music event in May, a family-friendly Scottish New Year celebration called Hogmanay and an annual Heritage Lecture Series. Littleton Courier Downtown Littleton buzzes with weekend activity Mittersill to gain $50,000 in slope improvements Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Littleton Courier Air National Guard christens new aircraft as The Spirit of Grafton County by Angel Larcom Grafton County Commissioner Wendy Piper attended the christening of The Spirit of Grafton County, a KC-46 air refueling plane. (Courtesy Photo) (click for larger version) NEWINGTON Grafton County Commissioner Wendy Piper attended the christening of The Spirit of Grafton County, a KC-46 Pegasus air-refueling plane at the Pease Air National Guard base near Portsmouth during the Thunder of NH Air Show last week. It was one of twelve aircraft named after New Hampshire counties and towns. The new tankers can refuel other aircraft mid-flight but also serve as flying medical facilities, noted Piper. During her tour of the new Spirit of Grafton County, she inquired if any units in the fleet were used to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. While the answer was no, she was informed that a larger NH Air National Guard tanker had instead. "What's interesting about these airplanes is that they have their own defense. Each aircraft has a pilot and a boom operator who sits in the lower cylindrical portion of the plane that extends to connect to other airplanes. Each airplane has five cameras so they can see what's coming up to them mid-flight. They can close distances at an increment of one foot per minute, which allows them to get incredibly close to other planes," noted Piper. All 12 KC-46A Pegasus refueling planes are part of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, based on the Pease Air National Guard base. The dedication ceremony was one small part of the Thunder Over NH Air Show, held on Sept. 11 and 12 in Newington. According to keynote speaker Major General Laurie Farris, Pease was the first Air National Guard to receive the KC-46 planes and the first Air Force unit to receive its full complement of airframes. She serves as the Air National Guard advisor to the Air Mobility Command commander. "What a big difference this makes to these 12 [aircraft] tails lines up on this ramp with all of your names on them; we wouldn't be here without you. You've been there every step of the way, and I want to thank you for that," said Farris while addressing representatives from each county. More than 90,000 spectators attended the air show, hosted by the 157th Air Refueling Wing. Civilians, volunteers and military personnel watched over a dozen performers and more than 50 static ground displays, including the US Thunderbirds and several aerial acrobatic productions. The 157th Air Refueling Wing last hosted an air show more than a decade ago, in 2007. "The air show grants us the opportunity to connect the citizens of New Hampshire and we are grateful for that. This is a true partnership and they support us every day, so it's nice to be able to host them here," said Col. Todd Swass, vice wing commander for the 157th Air Refueling Wing. NEWINGTON Grafton County Commissioner Wendy Piper attended the christening of The Spirit of Grafton County, a KC-46 Pegasus air-refueling plane at the Pease Air National Guard base near Portsmouth during the Thunder of NH Air Show last week. It was one of twelve aircraft named after New Hampshire counties and towns.The new tankers can refuel other aircraft mid-flight but also serve as flying medical facilities, noted Piper. During her tour of the new Spirit of Grafton County, she inquired if any units in the fleet were used to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. While the answer was no, she was informed that a larger NH Air National Guard tanker had instead."What's interesting about these airplanes is that they have their own defense. Each aircraft has a pilot and a boom operator who sits in the lower cylindrical portion of the plane that extends to connect to other airplanes. Each airplane has five cameras so they can see what's coming up to them mid-flight. They can close distances at an increment of one foot per minute, which allows them to get incredibly close to other planes," noted Piper.All 12 KC-46A Pegasus refueling planes are part of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, based on the Pease Air National Guard base. The dedication ceremony was one small part of the Thunder Over NH Air Show, held on Sept. 11 and 12 in Newington.According to keynote speaker Major General Laurie Farris, Pease was the first Air National Guard to receive the KC-46 planes and the first Air Force unit to receive its full complement of airframes. She serves as the Air National Guard advisor to the Air Mobility Command commander."What a big difference this makes to these 12 [aircraft] tails lines up on this ramp with all of your names on them; we wouldn't be here without you. You've been there every step of the way, and I want to thank you for that," said Farris while addressing representatives from each county.More than 90,000 spectators attended the air show, hosted by the 157th Air Refueling Wing. Civilians, volunteers and military personnel watched over a dozen performers and more than 50 static ground displays, including the US Thunderbirds and several aerial acrobatic productions.The 157th Air Refueling Wing last hosted an air show more than a decade ago, in 2007."The air show grants us the opportunity to connect the citizens of New Hampshire and we are grateful for that. This is a true partnership and they support us every day, so it's nice to be able to host them here," said Col. Todd Swass, vice wing commander for the 157th Air Refueling Wing. Littleton Courier Downtown Littleton buzzes with weekend activity Mittersill to gain $50,000 in slope improvements Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Newfound Landing Nature enthusiasts observe annual hawk migration by Donna Rhodes Leslie Dion greeted nature enthusiasts like Rich and Kathy Murdy, who dropped by the Slim Baker Lodge in Bristol after climbing Little Roundtop Mountain to enjoy the annual fall hawk migration from Inspiration Point last Saturday. (Photo by Donna Rhodes) (click for larger version) BRISTOL Last Saturday, nature enthusiasts gathered at Little Roundtop Mountain's Inspiration Point, located on land maintained by the Slim Baker Foundation in Bristol, to observe the annual hawk migration. According to New Hampshire Fish and Game, thousands of hawks can be spotted between the months of September and October as they gather for their annual fall migration and Little Roundtop Mountain is a prime viewing area. While places such as Pack Monadock at Miller State park in Peterborough or Carter Hill in Concord are popular locations to observe the massive migration each year, Inspiration Point is also known as one of the oldest and equally spectacular places to watch this event take place. Inspiration Point is accessible by foot on a somewhat steep yet short hike up Little Roundtop Mt. from the Slim Baker Lodge. Once people reach the summit, they step out of the tree line to sweeping views of Bristol and the Pemigewasset River valley, and last Saturday the public was invited to come take part in the spectacle of the hawk migration. Leslie Dion, Executive Director of Tapply-Thompson Community Center, is also a member of the Slim Baker Foundation's board of directors and was stationed at the lodge on Saturday where information on hawks was available to visitors. She said that because the hawks were soaring high that day, it was hard to determine how many had been spotted, but it was a wonderful sight to behold for those who made the trek up to Inspiration Point. "We've had a couple dozen people stop here at the lodge but most just hiked up today to look for the hawks," she said. Two of those who did stop at the lodge were part-time local residents Kathy and Rich Murdy of Bridgewater and Newtown, Connecticut. The couple said while they have been spent many years in the area, from renting cottages in the mid-1970's to buying property on Whittemore Point in 1980, they had never been up to the hawk watch. While up on Inspiration Point they reported to have seem a "couple of hundred" hawks soaring high above them as the birds gathered to make their way south for the winter. "We've been wanting to come here for a long time. There was one big flock that came by while we were up there, then lots of smaller flocks or hawks that were still flying on their own. It was amazing to see," he reported when they came back to the lodge. In addition to the experience of seeing so many hawks gathered together, people like the Murdy's who stopped at the lodge were also to take home a guide to identifying birds of prey in the Northeast as well as coloring sheets for children, and trail maps for the 135-acre tract of land on and around Little Roundtop Mountain. New Hampshire wildlife experts say there are 15 species of birds of prey that can be seen in the state. While some are year-round residents, others are here seasonally or may be spotted as they simply pass through the region during times of migration in the spring and fall. Among the hawks typically seen in New Hampshire are the Northern Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, and Broad-winged Hawk. Falcons like the Peregrine Falcon and American Kestrel can also be spotted soaring through fields and woodlands in the spring and summer months. These majestic winged hunters can range in size from nine to 33-inches long with 20- to 72-inch wingspans, depending on the species and maturation of each. The Slim Baker Area was established in 1953 as a memorial to Edward "Slim" Baker, a local conservation officer who envisioned an outdoor education area for people of all ages. It offers a variety of resources for the public, including year-round hiking, snowshoeing and camping opportunities. For more information on the Slim Baker Foundation, visit them online at slimbaker.org. BRISTOL Last Saturday, nature enthusiasts gathered at Little Roundtop Mountain's Inspiration Point, located on land maintained by the Slim Baker Foundation in Bristol, to observe the annual hawk migration.According to New Hampshire Fish and Game, thousands of hawks can be spotted between the months of September and October as they gather for their annual fall migration and Little Roundtop Mountain is a prime viewing area.While places such as Pack Monadock at Miller State park in Peterborough or Carter Hill in Concord are popular locations to observe the massive migration each year, Inspiration Point is also known as one of the oldest and equally spectacular places to watch this event take place.Inspiration Point is accessible by foot on a somewhat steep yet short hike up Little Roundtop Mt. from the Slim Baker Lodge. Once people reach the summit, they step out of the tree line to sweeping views of Bristol and the Pemigewasset River valley, and last Saturday the public was invited to come take part in the spectacle of the hawk migration.Leslie Dion, Executive Director of Tapply-Thompson Community Center, is also a member of the Slim Baker Foundation's board of directors and was stationed at the lodge on Saturday where information on hawks was available to visitors.She said that because the hawks were soaring high that day, it was hard to determine how many had been spotted, but it was a wonderful sight to behold for those who made the trek up to Inspiration Point."We've had a couple dozen people stop here at the lodge but most just hiked up today to look for the hawks," she said.Two of those who did stop at the lodge were part-time local residents Kathy and Rich Murdy of Bridgewater and Newtown, Connecticut. The couple said while they have been spent many years in the area, from renting cottages in the mid-1970's to buying property on Whittemore Point in 1980, they had never been up to the hawk watch. While up on Inspiration Point they reported to have seem a "couple of hundred" hawks soaring high above them as the birds gathered to make their way south for the winter."We've been wanting to come here for a long time. There was one big flock that came by while we were up there, then lots of smaller flocks or hawks that were still flying on their own. It was amazing to see," he reported when they came back to the lodge.In addition to the experience of seeing so many hawks gathered together, people like the Murdy's who stopped at the lodge were also to take home a guide to identifying birds of prey in the Northeast as well as coloring sheets for children, and trail maps for the 135-acre tract of land on and around Little Roundtop Mountain.New Hampshire wildlife experts say there are 15 species of birds of prey that can be seen in the state. While some are year-round residents, others are here seasonally or may be spotted as they simply pass through the region during times of migration in the spring and fall. Among the hawks typically seen in New Hampshire are the Northern Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, and Broad-winged Hawk. Falcons like the Peregrine Falcon and American Kestrel can also be spotted soaring through fields and woodlands in the spring and summer months. These majestic winged hunters can range in size from nine to 33-inches long with 20- to 72-inch wingspans, depending on the species and maturation of each.The Slim Baker Area was established in 1953 as a memorial to Edward "Slim" Baker, a local conservation officer who envisioned an outdoor education area for people of all ages. It offers a variety of resources for the public, including year-round hiking, snowshoeing and camping opportunities. For more information on the Slim Baker Foundation, visit them online at slimbaker.org. Newfound Landing Faith Smith named U.S. Youth Ambassador to Special Olympics Volleyball Bears hit their way to three more wins Recent Donna Rhodes Bristol Falls Park marred by vandalism 2021-Oct-07 Ashland library celebrates 150th anniversary 2021-Oct-07 Reinartz steps down after 22 years as Tiltons Town Clerk 2021-Oct-07 Community enjoys opportunity to explore Old Hill Village 2021-Sep-23 Danbury community comes together for Grange Fair 2021-Sep-16 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Plymouth Record Enterprise Boston Post Cane awarded to Ashland's Virginia Danforth (click for larger version) ASHLAND The Boston Post Cane for Ashland has been awarded to Ashland's oldest resident, Virginia Danforth. The daughter of Raymond and Eleanor Micklon, she was born in Bertha Brown's maternity home in Ashland village on Dec. 31, 1925. She lived in Holderness as a child and attended the Holderness Bridge School until the third grade, when the family moved to Ashland. She then attended the Ashland schools, graduating with honors from the high school in 1943. She graduated from the Boston School of Dental Nursing in 1944. She returned to Ashland and married Floyd Danforth after he came back from serving in World War II. They had three children. "Ginny," as she likes to be called, worked in child care for 25 years and later in home health. In 1986, she became the on site property manager of the senior housing apartments at White Mountain Court, off Highland Street in Ashland, where she still lives. When asked to what she attributes her long and healthy life, Ginny credited the long walks she began taking in her sixties that helped keep her in shape, as well as her attitude. She has been easy going and accepting of all people and of circumstances beyond her control. Ginny recalls the Squam Lake Hotel fire of 1934, which she watched from the dining room window of her River Street house, as well as the hurricane of 1938, when neighbors stayed in her house because of the flooding of their homes. She has vivid memories of World War II, of the many Ashland boys and the three Ashland girls who went into the service. The women left behind had to take over the men's jobs, so she clerked in the First National Store. Ginny writes, "I'm proud to call Ashland my home. I treasure my job at the apartments and the many friends I have made along the way. I'm retired now and enjoying playing lazy and getting waited on hand and foot. I've got it made in the shade!" The Boston Post Cane dates from 1909, when Edwin A. Grozier, the editor and publisher of the Boston Post newspaper, sent ebony canes with ornate 14 karat gold heads to the selectmen of some 700 towns in the four New England states served by his newspaper. He asked the selectmen to present the canes to the oldest citizen in their town and to continue to transmit it to the next oldest citizen. In Ashland, the Ashland Historical Society now takes care of the Boston Post Cane, displaying it in the Whipple House Museum and overseeing its transmission. Because of the pandemic, the Boston Post Cane was presented to Ginny Danforth at a short ceremony outside her home attended only by a few family members. ASHLAND The Boston Post Cane for Ashland has been awarded to Ashland's oldest resident, Virginia Danforth.The daughter of Raymond and Eleanor Micklon, she was born in Bertha Brown's maternity home in Ashland village on Dec. 31, 1925. She lived in Holderness as a child and attended the Holderness Bridge School until the third grade, when the family moved to Ashland. She then attended the Ashland schools, graduating with honors from the high school in 1943. She graduated from the Boston School of Dental Nursing in 1944. She returned to Ashland and married Floyd Danforth after he came back from serving in World War II. They had three children. "Ginny," as she likes to be called, worked in child care for 25 years and later in home health. In 1986, she became the on site property manager of the senior housing apartments at White Mountain Court, off Highland Street in Ashland, where she still lives.When asked to what she attributes her long and healthy life, Ginny credited the long walks she began taking in her sixties that helped keep her in shape, as well as her attitude. She has been easy going and accepting of all people and of circumstances beyond her control.Ginny recalls the Squam Lake Hotel fire of 1934, which she watched from the dining room window of her River Street house, as well as the hurricane of 1938, when neighbors stayed in her house because of the flooding of their homes. She has vivid memories of World War II, of the many Ashland boys and the three Ashland girls who went into the service. The women left behind had to take over the men's jobs, so she clerked in the First National Store.Ginny writes, "I'm proud to call Ashland my home. I treasure my job at the apartments and the many friends I have made along the way. I'm retired now and enjoying playing lazy and getting waited on hand and foot. I've got it made in the shade!"The Boston Post Cane dates from 1909, when Edwin A. Grozier, the editor and publisher of the Boston Post newspaper, sent ebony canes with ornate 14 karat gold heads to the selectmen of some 700 towns in the four New England states served by his newspaper. He asked the selectmen to present the canes to the oldest citizen in their town and to continue to transmit it to the next oldest citizen. In Ashland, the Ashland Historical Society now takes care of the Boston Post Cane, displaying it in the Whipple House Museum and overseeing its transmission. Because of the pandemic, the Boston Post Cane was presented to Ginny Danforth at a short ceremony outside her home attended only by a few family members. Plymouth Record Enterprise PSU recognizes faculty, staff with Distinguished Service Awards Rotary seeking acts for Plymouth's Got Talent Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Winnisquam Echo MVSB supports Gale School redevelopment project BELMONT MVSB (Meredith Village Savings Bank) recently purchased $10,000 in tax credits from Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD) through the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA) to support their efforts in the Gale School Redevelopment Project at 60 Concord St. in Belmont Village. The Gale School was built in 1894, and was used by the Belmont School District until the mid-1980s when it was vacated. Since then, the empty building has stood vacant and fallen into disrepair. In 2017 it was selected as one of New Hampshire's Seven to Save and in 2018 was named to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places. In July 2020, the building was successfully moved by the local Save Our Gale School Committee (SOGS) to its new location at 60 Concord St. in Belmont. Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD) agreed to partner with SOGS to redevelop the building and, once funding for renovations have been secured, SOGS will donate the land and building to LRCD and the Gale School will become part of LRCD's real estate portfolio. The newly renovated community facility is expected to host a child care center operated by the Boys & Girls Club of Central NH and a Lakes Region Community Services (LRCS) Program Center. The child care center will add 35 new child care slots to the Lakes Region and the Program Center will serve over 100 families. "We are grateful to Meredith Village Savings Bank for supporting our efforts to revitalize the Gale School as the project will save a beautiful piece of history, while providing affordable space for the Boys & Girls Club and Lakes Region Community Services to expand their programming," said Carmen Lorentz, Executive Director of LRCD. "Access to quality childcare and other support services is critical to the health of our communities," said Rick Wyman, President of MVSB. "We are proud to partner with Lakes Region Community Developers to provide support for the Gale School Redevelopment Project and their plans to restore this historic building and give it such a worthy new purpose." CDFA tax credits allow businesses to fund qualifying economic or community development projects in exchange for a tax credit that can be applied against state business tax payments. The tax credits are administered by the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA). Any business with operations in New Hampshire that contributes to a CDFA tax credit project receives a NH state tax credit worth 75 percent of their contribution. The credit can be used over a period of five years to reduce the business' state tax liability (business profits, business enterprise or insurance premium taxes). The tax credit program allows NH businesses to use their state tax dollars to support local projects that they care about. CDFA reviews many project applications each year and awards tax credits to those they determine are feasible and will make the biggest impact on economic development in the state. For more information, visit nhcdfa.org. LRCD is a non-profit housing and community development organization whose mission is to create opportunities for the Lakes Region to thrive by developing healthy homes, creating energetic community assets, and engaging residents. Over their 27-year history, LRCD has developed 366 healthy rental homes in six Lakes Region towns, including Laconia. In 2017, they expanded their mission to include community building & engagement programming for the people who live in their properties. Their goal is for everyone in the Lakes Region to live in healthy housing, regardless of their income. Unlike a stock bank, MVSB is a mutual savings bank that operates for the benefit of its depositors, borrowers and surrounding communities. As a result, MVSB has remained steadfast in fostering the economic health and well-being of the community since it was founded in 1869. For over 150 years, Meredith Village Savings Bank (MVSB), has been serving the people, businesses, non-profits and municipalities of Central New Hampshire. MVSB and its employees are guided by the values of accountability, mutuality, excellence, respect, integrity, teamwork and stewardship. To learn more, visit any of the local branch offices located in Alton, Ashland, Center Harbor, Gilford, Laconia, Meredith, Moultonborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth or Wolfeboro, call 800-922-6872 or visit mvsb.com. BELMONT MVSB (Meredith Village Savings Bank) recently purchased $10,000 in tax credits from Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD) through the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA) to support their efforts in the Gale School Redevelopment Project at 60 Concord St. in Belmont Village.The Gale School was built in 1894, and was used by the Belmont School District until the mid-1980s when it was vacated. Since then, the empty building has stood vacant and fallen into disrepair. In 2017 it was selected as one of New Hampshire's Seven to Save and in 2018 was named to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places.In July 2020, the building was successfully moved by the local Save Our Gale School Committee (SOGS) to its new location at 60 Concord St. in Belmont. Lakes Region Community Developers (LRCD) agreed to partner with SOGS to redevelop the building and, once funding for renovations have been secured, SOGS will donate the land and building to LRCD and the Gale School will become part of LRCD's real estate portfolio.The newly renovated community facility is expected to host a child care center operated by the Boys & Girls Club of Central NH and a Lakes Region Community Services (LRCS) Program Center. The child care center will add 35 new child care slots to the Lakes Region and the Program Center will serve over 100 families."We are grateful to Meredith Village Savings Bank for supporting our efforts to revitalize the Gale School as the project will save a beautiful piece of history, while providing affordable space for the Boys & Girls Club and Lakes Region Community Services to expand their programming," said Carmen Lorentz, Executive Director of LRCD."Access to quality childcare and other support services is critical to the health of our communities," said Rick Wyman, President of MVSB. "We are proud to partner with Lakes Region Community Developers to provide support for the Gale School Redevelopment Project and their plans to restore this historic building and give it such a worthy new purpose."CDFA tax credits allow businesses to fund qualifying economic or community development projects in exchange for a tax credit that can be applied against state business tax payments. The tax credits are administered by the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA). Any business with operations in New Hampshire that contributes to a CDFA tax credit project receives a NH state tax credit worth 75 percent of their contribution. The credit can be used over a period of five years to reduce the business' state tax liability (business profits, business enterprise or insurance premium taxes). The tax credit program allows NH businesses to use their state tax dollars to support local projects that they care about. CDFA reviews many project applications each year and awards tax credits to those they determine are feasible and will make the biggest impact on economic development in the state. For more information, visit nhcdfa.org.LRCD is a non-profit housing and community development organization whose mission is to create opportunities for the Lakes Region to thrive by developing healthy homes, creating energetic community assets, and engaging residents. Over their 27-year history, LRCD has developed 366 healthy rental homes in six Lakes Region towns, including Laconia. In 2017, they expanded their mission to include community building & engagement programming for the people who live in their properties. Their goal is for everyone in the Lakes Region to live in healthy housing, regardless of their income.Unlike a stock bank, MVSB is a mutual savings bank that operates for the benefit of its depositors, borrowers and surrounding communities. As a result, MVSB has remained steadfast in fostering the economic health and well-being of the community since it was founded in 1869. For over 150 years, Meredith Village Savings Bank (MVSB), has been serving the people, businesses, non-profits and municipalities of Central New Hampshire. MVSB and its employees are guided by the values of accountability, mutuality, excellence, respect, integrity, teamwork and stewardship. To learn more, visit any of the local branch offices located in Alton, Ashland, Center Harbor, Gilford, Laconia, Meredith, Moultonborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth or Wolfeboro, call 800-922-6872 or visit mvsb.com. Winnisquam Echo Harlow, Swain finish in top 10 at Newfound No tricks, just treats at the Belmont Library in October Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-22 20:48:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Empty spaces are seen on shelves at a supermarket in Manchester, Britain, on Sept. 22, 2021. British Environment Secretary George Eustice said on Wednesday that the food industry could face a sharp price rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) even though the government reached an interim deal with a major producer to restart CO2 production. (Photo by Jon Super/Xinhua) LONDON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- British Environment Secretary George Eustice said on Wednesday that the food industry could face a sharp price rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) even though the government reached an interim deal with a major producer to restart CO2 production. CF Industries, a North American manufacturer and distributor of agricultural fertilizers, had halted two of its fertiliser factories in Britain -- which produce carbon dioxide as a by-product -- because of soaring gas prices. It produces around 60 percent of Britain's CO2, used primarily by the food sector. In food industry, CO2 is used to stun animals prior to slaughter, added to soft drinks to produce fizz and injected into the packaging of perishable foods for longer shelf life. The British government announced on Tuesday a short-term arrangement with CF Fertilisers to allow the company to immediately restart operations and produce CO2 at one of its plants in Billingham. The government said it will provide limited financial support for CF Fertilisers' operating costs for three weeks while the CO2 market adapts to global gas prices. "They're big costly plants," Eustice told Sky News, adding that it will take 48 hours for operations at the plants to get up and running again. "We need the market to adjust, the food industry knows there's going to be a sharp rise in the cost of carbon dioxide, probably going from something like 200 pounds (about 273 U.S. dollars) a tonne eventually up to closer to 1,000 pounds (about 136 dollars) a tonne, so a big, sharp rise," Eustice said. He said if the government did not act then, by this weekend, or certainly by the early part of next week, some of the poultry processing plants would need to close, resulting in a real animal welfare challenge and a big disruption to the food supply chain. Nick Allen, CEO of the British Meat Processors Association, said earlier that this crisis highlights the fact that the British food supply chain is at the mercy of a small number of major fertiliser producers spread across northern Europe. Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, welcomed the decision, but said the timetable to restart CF Industries' factory and start producing carbon dioxide "will still be tight". "Our understanding is that provided that carbon dioxide starts to get through to food producers by the end of the week, then we can avert major and significant disruption in our stores," he told the BBC. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 04:18:50|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Jewish and Arab women attend a rally in Jerusalem, on Sept. 22, 2021. Jewish and Arab women rallied in Jerusalem on Wednesday to mark the International Day of Peace and call for a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. (Photo by Gil Cohen Magen/Xinhua) JERUSALEM, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Jewish and Arab women rallied in Jerusalem on Wednesday to mark the International Day of Peace and call for a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. "We marched in Jerusalem, demanding the advancement of an agreement," Women Wage Peace, an Israeli peace group composed of Jewish and Arab women that organized the event, said in a statement. The women created a human chain around the walls of East Jerusalem's Old City near the Jaffa Gate and chanted songs for peace. Women Wage Peace was formed by Jewish and Arab women in 2014 aimed for peace between Israel and Palestine and for women's involvement in the negotiations. The last round of peace talks between the two sides failed in 2014. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 13:56:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder speaks during an interview with Xinhua in Berlin, capital of Germany, Sept. 14, 2021. Germany should not be involved in a trade war with China in any form and restrictions against China are not the option, Schroeder has said. TO GO WITH"Interview: Germany should not be involved in trade war with China, says former German chancellor Schroeder" (Xinhua/Zhang Yuan) BERLIN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Germany should not be involved in a trade war with China in any form and restrictions against China are not the option, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said. In a recent interview with Xinhua, Schroeder responded to the opinions circulated in the political circle and media that Chinese businesses are competitors and Europe should reduce economic dependence on China. Schroeder said that competition is vital and stimulates business in German market economy. "That is why competition is not something that should worry us, but something that should be an incentive," said Schroeder. He said Germany, as a country with a high technology level, has to be constantly challenged and redeveloped. Germany-China cooperation remains important because Germany needs the market especially for Germany's automotive industry and mechanical engineering, he said. "More and more people are moving towards the fact that we not only want to have the market in China, but also to manufacture there, even for the German medium-sized companies," Schroeder said. On Germany's China policies after the federal election scheduled for Sept. 26, Schroeder said the long-time pragmatic attitude toward China should not be changed. Germany, he cautioned, should stick to the one-China policy despite global upheavals and under no circumstances should that be changed as there will be "not any good consequences for both China and Germany." On the current situation in Afghanistan, Schroeder noted it has sparked discussions within the European Union (EU) about its strategic autonomy. He said the U.S. hasty withdrawal without consultation with their allies was a "strategic mistake." Echoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel's earlier remarks, Schroeder said, "EU can no longer rely on our allies as in earlier times." "It (the situation in Afghanistan) can't repeat itself. And it will not repeat itself when Europe becomes more independent in foreign and security policy than it has been up to now," Schroeder added. Schroeder, who was the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, served as German chancellor from 1998 to 2005. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 16:51:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang attends a virtual conversation jointly held by the Carter Center and the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations in Washington, D.C., the United States, Sept. 22, 2021. It is a fundamental misjudgment for some Americans to describe China-U.S. ties as "democracy versus authoritarianism," and stoke up ideological confrontation between the world's top two economies, Qin said on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- It is a fundamental misjudgment for some Americans to describe China-U.S. ties as "democracy versus authoritarianism," and stoke up ideological confrontation between the world's top two economies, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang said Wednesday. Qin made the remarks in his speech at a virtual conversation jointly held by The Carter Center and the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations. "Thanks to generations of Chinese and American leaders and people, China-U.S. relations have made remarkable progress. However, today, some Americans' misunderstanding and misjudgment about China is building up," he said. "A fundamental one is to define America's relations with China as democracy versus authoritarianism, and to stoke up ideological confrontation, which has led to serious difficulties in China-U.S. relations," he said. Although the two countries are different in history, culture and political system, both peoples desire peace and prosperity, and leaders in Washington and Beijing share one common goal, just as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said, "to create peaceful and stable conditions for their people to pursue happiness," Qin said, adding this is "the biggest commonality" between the two countries. "We never say that our system is the best, because we know only the suited is the best. Whether it is good or not should not be judged by what we say, but what we do," he said. "Our two countries should not and cannot change each other. Instead, we should break ideological barriers, discard zero-sum mentality, respect other countries, and accommodate each other without losing our own distinctions, so as to get along with each other in peace," he said. Stressing that the two countries need to show broad vision and shoulder great responsibilities, the ambassador said both countries "should look ahead and press forward, and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of stable development as soon as possible, for the good of the people in both countries and around the world." "Let's demonstrate strategic courage and political resolve to chart a new course in China-U.S. relations," he added. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:50:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Aerial photo taken on Sept. 23, 2021 shows farmers operating rice harvesters during an demonstration event in celebration of the Chinese farmers' harvest festival at Hongguang Village, Changchun City of northeast China's Jilin Province. Thursday marks the Chinese farmers' harvest festival, which is celebrated on the Autumn Equinox. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan) Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:44:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland resolutely opposes Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seeking "independence" under the pretext of economic and trade activities, a Chinese mainland spokesperson said. Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said Thursday in response to a query about the DPP's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying that the one-China principle is the precondition for Taiwan's participation in regional economic cooperation. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 23:39:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close -- As a key founder of French smart card producer Gemplus, Marc Lassus's startling revelation in his new book has sparked a worldwide outcry against the American coercion in economic and technological sectors. -- The United States not only usurped Gemplus' leading position in the industry, but also made best of the high-tech unicorn's smart cards to collect information and eavesdrop the rest of the world. -- The Gemplus affair was just one historical scene in which the United States used its national power to steal information by all possible means. For decades, the country, relying on its technological superiority, has been addicted to peeping and wiretapping on ordinary people, their competitors and even their allies. BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- In his new book The Chip Trap, Marc Lassus, key founder of French smart card producer Gemplus, has chosen to speak out and reveal how the U.S. security services persecuted him and seized control of his tech firm. The startling revelation has sparked a worldwide outcry against the American coercion in economic and technological sectors. The book, which came after The American Trap: My Battle to Expose America's Secret Economic War against the Rest of the World written by Frederic Pierucci, a former senior manager for French energy and transport conglomerate Alstom, serves as yet another testimony to America's dark history of handicapping tech companies of other countries by hook or by crook to make ill-gotten selfish gains. U.S. MANIPULATIONS Gemplus, founded in 1988, used to be a world's leading provider of smart card-based solutions. Running production plants and research and development centers in 37 countries and regions worldwide, the company had led the world production of smart cards by the end of 2000, taking a more than 40 percent share of the world market. As the company grew, what co-founder Lassus did not expect was that the U.S. security services had been on its tail and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had already sent an investment group to sneakily seize absolute control of Gemplus. "It was when I started my company that I began having problems with the Americans. They wrote a big check, they put in 550 million euros (643 million U.S. dollars) to take 26 percent shares of the company," Lassus told Xinhua via a recent video interview. "But what I did not know was the first shareholders at that time, who were allies for me since they had gone up in the capital -- they had 20 percent, I had 19 percent and we were working hand in hand. And all of a sudden, what we see was that they were completely at the service of the Americans, of the CIA," he recalled. At the same time, the U.S. investment group also launched a consulting firm that had long worked closely with the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) to train representatives of U.S. investors in Gemplus and "provide several strategic advice to the management of Gemplus," he added. Lassus was eventually forced to resign and "Alex Mandel, an American who served on the board of directors of the CIA venture capital agency IN-Q-TEL, became Gemplus CEO," he said. File photo shows journalists reporting at the headquarters of Alstom in Levallois-Perret, outside Paris, France, on April 27, 2014. (Xinhua/Li Genxing) BUGGING THE WORLD In Pierucci's memoirs, he was arrested, charged, and thrown into jail in the United States in 2013. After being heavily fined by the U.S. Department of Justice, Alstom's core business was sold to its main U.S. competitor, General Electric. Alstom was never the only case that the United States managed to considerably undermine its foreign competitors and fortify its own economic edges by long-arm jurisdiction and other ulterior means. In the case of Gemplus, the U.S. side not only usurped the company's leading position in the industry, but also made best of the high-tech unicorn's smart cards to collect information and eavesdrop the rest of the world. "Since the Gemplus affair, spies no longer need to go out in the field. Most of the time, they can just stay behind their PCs. They use the right software. They have the entry systems and in particular as regards telecommunications, it was the SIM card," Lassus said. According to Lassus, the CIA had all the data of his company's customers, covering billions of people. He said by the time the Americans got their hands on Gemplus, they had all the access codes available to every customer of the company. After the U.S. manipulation was exposed in his book, voices condemning the United States spread quickly on social networks. Internet user Fofifonfec said, "faced with the voracity of sharks ... a certain naivety can lead to ruin preceded by the theft of all its property." "The USA is in fact nothing more than cuckoos which plunder and appropriate the technologies which interest them, without any shame," commented Internet user Cliona. This undated combo photo shows Marc Lassus (L), key founder of French smart card producer Gemplus, and (R) the cover of his book The Chip Trap (Chinese Edition). (CITIC Press Group/Handout via Xinhua) PULLING STRINGS IN SHADOW "I and my company, we were attacked by the CIA in 2000," Lassus said in his interview with Xinhua. The Gemplus affair, as he put it, was just one historical scene in which the United States used its national power to steal information by all possible means. For decades, the United States, relying on its technological superiority, has been addicted to peeping and wiretapping on ordinary people, their competitors and even their allies. In fact, they have become the biggest source of cyberattacks in the world, and their army of hackers pull the strings in the shadow. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former CIA and NSA employee, blew the whistle to the media on the colossal scale of the U.S. government's eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A year later, the "WikiLeaks" website disclosed that the United States had monitored several French presidents, including Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande. In May this year, the Danish media revealed that the NSA was using the services of some U.S. allies to monitor other allies, not least in cooperation with the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency, monitoring leaders of the European countries. The U.S. commitment to its allies sounds eloquently assertive, but it is as fragile as soap bubbles when the truth has been brought to light. After the exposure of U.S. eavesdropping European leaders, France and Germany deplored the alleged spying as "unacceptable," and demanded "full clarity" from the U.S. side. "It is time to speak out the truth," Lassus said after experiencing countless repressions and threats from the United States. "We must make European countries aware that the United States are not real friends, sometimes even enemies," he added. (Video reporters: Chen Shaohua, Yang Jun and Zhang Jian; Video editor: Li Li) Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 12:40:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga on Wednesday urged the local businesses to increase domestic investment in order to eradicate poverty in the country. He said while the country welcomes foreign direct investment (FDI), the locals must play a bigger role in boosting the economy. "The government welcomes FDI into all sectors of the economy, but the key to lifting our people out of poverty is increased investment by locals in key sectors, partnering the local sector through joint ventures," Chiwenga said while addressing delegates attending a business conference at the annually-held Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo. According to the World Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened extreme poverty in Zimbabwe with the extreme poverty rate rising to 49 percent in 2020 from 42 percent the previous year. The 960 million U.S. dollars that Zimbabwe received from the International Monetary Fund last month will be deployed prudently to support key social and economic programs that will ensure sustained all-round development which leaves no one behind, he said. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 12:50:14|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe is pinning its hope on a comprehensive vaccination program to sustain economic recovery, as tourism and education sectors remain the most battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said Wednesday. "Our medium to long-term economic strategy is the vaccination program," Ncube said during an international business conference at the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair being held in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo. The pandemic has a devastating impact on the overall economy, with tourism and education among the most affected sectors, Ncube noted. For example, tourism has seen an 80-percent drop in global air passenger traffic, a 60-percent drop in tourist arrivals, a 90-percent drop in hotel occupancies, and a drop in aviation services, he said. Meanwhile, manufacturing, health and agriculture, to some extent, have positive externalities from the pandemic and its mitigation measures, Ncube said, adding that health, information communication technology and foodstuffs manufacturing remain resilient due to increasing demand for medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, health care services, e-learning and e-commerce. After two years of economic recession, Zimbabwe is expecting an economic growth rate of 7.8 percent in 2021, buoyed by a successful 2020/21 agricultural season and the national vaccination program starting in February this year. The country, which is emerging from the third wave of the pandemic, is utilizing a budget surplus of 100 million U.S. dollars from the previous year to procure vaccines, Ncube said. "The government will continue to mobilize additional resources to ensure the target population is fully vaccinated," he said, adding that the vaccines are mainly from China, India and Serbia. By Saturday, Zimbabwe has managed to inoculate around 13.7 percent of its more than 14 million population with both shots of COVID-19 vaccines, reaching the September target of a 10-percent vaccination rate set by the World Health Organization. The African country aims to inoculate at least 60 percent of its population to achieve herd immunity by the end of the year. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:18:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Mahmoud Darwesh TRIPOLI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan House of Representatives' (parliament) decision of withdrawal confidence from the Government of National Unity (GNU) has ignited worries across the country. Experts are concerned that it may disrupt the upcoming elections. The parliament on Tuesday announced withdrawal of confidence from the GNU and keeping it as a caretaker government. It was decided during a voting session attended by 113 members, where 89 voted in favor of the decision, Abdullah Blehig, spokesman of the House of Representatives, said on the parliament's official website. Iman Jalal, a Libyan political science professor, said that the move is unjustified and will be quickly rejected both at home and abroad. The parliament's no-confidence motion against the GNU merely serves as an attempt by some parties to disrupt the elections, and even to postpone the elections in an indirect way, Jalal told Xinhua. "The deputies that oppose the government said the decision was made due to the failure and corruption of the government. This raises the question of how could the government be held accountable for corruption and wasting public money when its budget wasn't approved?" she said. Parliament member, Abubakr Saeed, described the decision as "shameful and illegal" and a violation of the interim constitutional declaration and the political agreement. "The parliament should have focused on preparing laws governing the upcoming elections, instead of going through illegal and controversial issues that could increase the division and disrupt the elections," he said. On Sept. 8, the parliament held a session to question Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah over financial and administrative violations, which Dbeibah denied as his government's budget wasn't approved by the parliament. "We will continue to serve you and provide a better future," Dbeibah told his supporters who demonstrated against the parliament in the Martyrs Square of the capital Tripoli on Tuesday. He also called on his supporters to protest against the parliament. "A parliament is a representative of the people, and it will no longer be there. We will meet on Friday to express the will of all the Libyans," Dbeibah said. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Tuesday called on the parliament to focus on the preparations for the upcoming elections. "As emphasized by Special Envoy of the Secretary-General and Head of UNSMIL Jan Kubis, the UN Mission expects that the Libyan parliament would focus on finalizing the Parliamentary elections law, and that the leadership of the parliament would advance efforts to build broad consensus on the emerging electoral legislative framework," it said in a statement. The UN Mission also reminded the parties in Libya to adhere to the legal and constitutional framework governing the Libyan political process. Libyan political analyst Emad Jallool said that the UN Mission's position will prevent the parliament from implementing the decision. "The parliament knows well that Dbeibah's government was selected in Geneva with wide international acceptance. Despite any remarks regarding its performance, it has managed to end the division and financially supported the High National Elections Commission," Jallool told Xinhua. "Therefore, the removal of the government cannot be accepted internationally," Jallool added. The GNU was selected by the UN-sponsored Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) in February, ending years of political division in the country. Libya is expected to hold general elections in December as approved by the LPDF. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 22:27:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Zimbabwean government on Thursday criticized the U.S. Embassy in Harare for meddling in the country's domestic affairs and using undiplomatic means to call for by-elections. The embassy had earlier in the day asked on social media when Zimbabwe would hold by-elections, saying many people were being disenfranchised by lack of representation in Parliament. It argued that Zimbabwe could follow in the footsteps of other countries in the region and elsewhere which had conducted elections during the pandemic. However, Zimbabwean government spokesperson Nick Mangwana called the embassy to order saying that it should follow the correct channels if it had issues it wanted to be addressed. "Surely, the U.S. Embassy knows where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is located. Should there be a need for a conversation on this subject you can easily engage them and get a briefing. These highly inflammatory tweets are as much disrespectful as they are unnecessary," Mangwana said. The Zimbabwean government put all elections on hold amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a bid to arrest its spread. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 23:20:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOMBASA, Kenya, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Thursday the government will invest in maritime security to ensure the safety of the industry. Kenyatta made the pledge during the presentation of the Presidential and Regimental Colors to the Kenya Navy Manda Bay Base, an exercise that will see the military installation gain expanded operational autonomy as it sets out to become a more geo-strategic facility for national, regional and global security operations. While noting that emerging maritime security challenges require responsive multilateral approaches, President Kenyatta promised that Kenya will continue to actively engage with partners to improve its naval capabilities and that the government will continue allocating adequate resources to the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) to enable them to fulfill their mandate of securing the country's interests. "I call upon the local communities and leadership to collaborate with security agencies to achieve the success we desire," said the president in the coastal Lamu County, stressing that the frontline military installation plays a critical role in defending Kenya's sovereignty, maintaining territorial integrity, and securing the nation's maritime borders. In a statement released by the presidency, Kenyatta said that Manda is an "invaluable listening and watching tower for Kenya and Kenyans." And the expansion of the naval base's operational autonomy was meant to establish a military installation with adequate capacity to respond to all forms of enemy aggression. "The Kenya Navy Base Manda Bay is of utmost significance in enhancing counterterrorism efforts and maritime security, besides protecting the country's port infrastructure. In addition, this base boosts security in the region and guards vital trade routes that are the lifeblood of international commerce," said Kenyatta, who singled out the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor projects such as the new port, roads and other supporting infrastructure as some of the prized national and international investments that the military base is tasked to proactively protect round the clock. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 23:20:29|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARARE, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe has targeted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from the current levels by 2050 to prevent disastrous impacts of climate change, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa has said. Zimbabwe is currently emitting 0.05 percent of all greenhouse emissions, lower than it is capturing, the minister was quoted as saying by the Herald newspaper on Thursday. Zimbabwe has developed the Low Emission Strategy (LEDS) 2020-2050, which identifies mitigation actions to help keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. "The Draft LEDS has identified 38 mitigation actions across the four Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change recognized sectors, and implementation of the mitigation actions will result in 40 percent reduction in emissions," Mutsvangwa said. The strategy focuses on economic sectors inducing energy, agriculture, forestry and other land uses, industrial processes and products use as well as waste management. Mutsvangwa said Zimbabwe's implementation of renewable energy projects and use of more efficient low emission technologies in thermal power plants reflects the government's commitment towards reduction in emissions. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to attend the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties meeting from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, where he will present the country's mitigation measures. Zimbabwe, like many other countries in southern Africa, has not been spared from the effects of climate change, manifested in either floods or droughts. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 18:52:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- All six people onboard a crashed Russian An-26 military transport aircraft died, the TASS news agency reported Thursday. According to a source from the emergencies ministry, none of the crew on board the aircraft survived, as debris from the plane was spotted earlier by rescuers near the city of Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East. Regional rescuers are currently approaching the crash site, and they have spent several hours in trying to find the location in strong winds, with further details to follow, TASS reported, citing Mikhail Degtyarev, the regional governor. The plane lost contact some 38 km away from a military airport in the Khabarovsk Region on Wednesday. The flight was on a mission to check ground-based radio technical support. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 18:53:50|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BERLIN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were off to a good start on Thursday, with the benchmark DAX index rising 123.26 points, or 0.79 percent, opening at 15,630.0 points. The biggest winner among Germany's 40 largest listed companies was automotive supplier Continental, increasing by 2.49 percent, followed by chipmaker Infineon with 1.91 percent and biopharmaceutical industry partner Sartorius with 1.77 percent. On Thursday, Swiss bank UBS raised its price target for Infineon from 43 to 45 euros and left the rating at "Buy." Shares of the German chipmaker were trading at around 38 euros at the start of trading on Thursday. Shares of Fresenius fell by 0.02 percent. The German dialysis specialist was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Thursday. Germany's exports to third countries outside the European Union in August declined by 1.3 percent on the previous month but were still up 12.6 percent year-on-year, reaching 48.6 billion euros (56.9 billion U.S. dollars), the country's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Thursday. The yield on German ten-year bonds grew 0.0165 percentage points to minus 0.3105 percent, and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.1728 dollars, increasing by 0.01 percent on Thursday morning. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 13:59:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Washington Post has questioned whether President Joe Biden's foreign policy is a faithful continuation of Donald Trump's and a repudiation of Barack Obama's. In an opinion piece in the paper, columnist Fareed Zakaria raised the question after "almost eight months of watching policies, rhetoric and crises." "...Many foreign observers have been surprised - even shocked - to discover that," wrote Zakaria. "A senior European diplomat noted that, in dealings with Washington on everything from vaccines to travel restrictions, the Biden policies were 'America First' in logic, whatever the rhetoric," the article said. A Canadian politician said that if followed, Biden's "Buy America" plans are actually more protectionist than Trump's. Despite having criticized Trump's tariffs repeatedly, Biden has kept nearly all of them, wrote Zakaria. Another striking example of Biden's surprisingly Trumpian foreign policy is the Iran deal. Since he took office, Biden has failed to return to the deal and has even extended some sanctions. Zakaria also noted such continuity in issues relating to Cuba. "If Joe Biden continues his current course, though, historians might one day look back on him as the president who normalized Donald Trump's foreign policy," he wrote. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 18:35:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- "Whether a system is democratic depends on whether it can represent the overall interests of the people and whether the people are satisfied. Democracy is not for embellishment; it should deliver," said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang on Wednesday. "At the center of democracy is people," said Qin, elaborating on what democracy is and how to evaluate if a system is democratic in a speech at a virtual conversation jointly held by the Carter Center and the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations. Some Americans today "define America's relations with China as democracy versus authoritarianism" and "stoke up ideological confrontation, which has led to serious difficulties in China-U.S. relations," he said. In fact, both China's people-center philosophy and former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's "of the people, by the people, for the people" are for the sake of the people, said the ambassador, adding that China's socialist whole-process democracy shall be understood as "from the people, to the people, with the people, for the people." In China, Qin said, the rights and freedoms of the Chinese are fully protected by the Constitution, absolute poverty has become a thing of the past, almost every Chinese has basic medical insurance and old-age pension insurance, and COVID-19 has been basically put under control in China with 1.1 billion people fully vaccinated. China has also signed 26 international instruments on human rights, provided vaccines to over 100 countries and international organizations, and will supply altogether 2 billion doses by the end of this year, he said. "The Belt and Road Initiative, guided by the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, will take tens of millions of people of other countries out of poverty." "We never say that our system is the best, because we know only the suited is the best. Whether it is good or not should not be judged by what we say, but what we do," said Qin. Citing a mayor's hotline that has lasted for 22 years in Changchun, a provincial city in northeastern China, the ambassador provided a brief explanation of why, as a Harvard Kennedy School survey found, Chinese people's satisfaction with the Communist Party of China has been over 90 percent for each of the 10 years. Citizens in Changchun can use the hotline that works 24/7 to report problems that need the government's attention, said Qin. Over the years, more than nine million problems have been reported and resolved through the hotline, and people's satisfaction rating has remained above 90 percent. "There are many similar hotlines and high satisfaction ratings across China. If you know about them, is it still hard to understand the results of Harvard surveys?" he asked. "I'm not saying China is perfect. There are many difficulties and challenges on our way ahead, such as how to make our development more balanced and adequate, and ensure fairness and justice in a market economy," said Qin. "We are deepening reform, improving socialist democracy, and modernizing national governance. These efforts are to meet the people's aspiration for a better life and make greater contribution to mankind," he added. "China and the United States are different in history, culture and political system ... Our two countries should not and cannot change each other. Instead, we should break ideological barriers, discard zero-sum mentality, respect other countries, and accommodate each other without losing our own distinctions, so as to get along with each other in peace," said the ambassador. Enditem THE United States of (US) embassy in Harare yesterday criticised President Emmerson Mnangagwas government over continued suspension of by-elections, arguing that elections could be held safely despite the COVID-19 pandemic as has been proven in other African countries. Government banned elections early last year, citing the COVID-19 outbreak, but critics accuse Mnangagwa of using the pandemic to asphyxiate the MDC Alliance while propping up the smaller MDC-T faction led by Douglas Mwonzora, which is seen as a Zanu PF proxy. But government officials reacted angrily to the call, and accused the superpower of disrespect and interference in the affairs of a sovereign State. The US embassy noted that the suspension had left 754 000 people in 26 constituencies with no representation in Parliament, after recalls of the legislators aligned to the Nelson Chamisa-led MDC Alliance party by MDC-T. The purges also affected over 80 councillors, paralysing operations of some local authorities. Posting on Twitter yesterday, the US embassy questioned why Zimbabwe continued to suspend by-elections when other countries allowed the running of polls. When will the Zimbabwean government resume by-elections? Long-standing parliamentary vacancies have left over 754 000 voters in 26 constituencies without elected representation. Only by-elections will restore these citizens rights to representation, the US embassy said. Many countries have held elections despite the pandemic, including Zambia, South Africa, Malawi, and the United States, demonstrating that COVID-19-safe elections are possible. We are confident Zimbabwe can do the same #ZimsSafetoVote #ZimVotesMatter. In response, Information secretary Ndavaningi Mangwana said the US consulate was being disrespectful to the Zimbabwean government by publicly taking it to task over holding of by-elections. Surely, the US embassy knows where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is located, Mangwana responded on Twitter. Should there be a need for a conversation on this subject, you can easily engage them and get a briefing. These highly inflammatory tweets are as disrespectful as they are unnecessary. Zanu PF acting spokesperson Mike Bimha told NewsDay that: We are not scared of the by-elections. We are a political party and the decision on when to hold the elections lies (with) Zec. No political party dares us, because we have become stronger than ever. I am currently at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair at our party stand, where queues for new members who want to join our party are winding. We have also seen defections of several members from (opposition MDC Alliance leader Nelson) Chamisas party to Zanu PF, proving our party to be strong. Therefore, even if the elections are to be held today, we are confident of our victory. Government has, however, on several occasions eased lockdown restrictions, in the process allowing the resumption of normal business operations under strict COVID-19 protocols. The ruling Zanu PF party conducted its nationwide district co-ordinating committee elections in December last year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic while the Zec election ban was in effect. The party was also scheduled to hold more internal polls this week for provincial executives, but suspended them to control rising infighting. Human rights defenders criticised Zec for violating the Constitution by prolonging the suspension of by-elections, saying the ban was depriving citizens of their basic human right to choose representatives of their choice. In March this year, Zec suspended the holding of by-elections indefinitely, citing the need to adhere to COVID-19 regulations following the gazetting of Statutory Instrument (SI) 10 of 2021 on lockdowns by government. The commission has previously blamed Mnangagwa for deferring by-elections saying it was waiting for him to proclaim election dates. Zec once announced dates for the holding of elections, but the SI then came in, Zec spokesperson Qhubani Moyo told a virtual meeting held under the theme Zambias Historic Elections: Lessons for Zimbabwe, which was hosted by the Centre for Information and Technology last month. Countries have responded differently to COVID-19. Our response has almost been like that of South Africa. Zec will hold elections once the SI is out of the way. Zec manages elections, but the proclamation of dates is done by the President and because of the SI in place, proclamation has not been done. Chamisas spokesperson Nkululeko Sibanda said there was nothing amiss for an institution to demand by-elections as it was a constitutionally-given right of Zimbabwean citizens. We cant continue to have a Zanu PF narrative on democratic issues, he said. Democracy is the only reasonable path to a successful country and upholding the citizens right to choose a representative is one important pillar of democracy. The call for by-elections does not depict any political affiliation. What is important is the message. It doesnt matter who brings the message, but what is clear is that a by-election is a constitutionally enshrined right and government has to take heed of the call to lift the ban on the elections. Political analyst Fidelis Duri said the postponement of by-elections was a calculated move by politicians who knew the peoples choice in the polls would end their short-term political glory. Politicians, especially those in the African continent, have capitalised from the COVID-19 pandemic to curtail the freedoms of the people provided for in the Constitution, Duri said. In the Zimbabwean situation, we have seen the ruling Zanu PF party dining with an inferior opposition party (MDC-T) led by Douglas Mwonzora and have agreed to infringe citizens rights by postponing the elections. Mwonzora is in no hurry to hold by-elections as he knows very well that he has no followers to vote for him. He knows well that the election will end the enjoyment of his temporary political glory. Mwonzora met Mnangagwa this year and pleaded for the suspension of elections. His spokesperson Lloyd Damba said Zimbabwe was a sovereign State, not an extension of the US. He said his party was concerned about what motivated the US to make such a call. Secondly, we are a political party that was formed to take State power through peaceful and constitutional means and that is through an electoral process. We are not afraid to face anybody in any election, be it harmonised or by-elections, Damba said. You also must know that we are not going to be competing with Nelson Chamisas party, but we will be competing with a lot of parties for vacant constituency posts and the contestants also include Zanu PF and several other political parties as well as independent candidates and we are ready for those by-elections. Newsday South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has today called for the lifting of illegal sanctions imposed by the West on Zimbabwe saying they are crippling the countrys economy. We call for the lifting of the sanctions that paralyse Zimbabwe and its economy, said President Ramaphosa in his address to the United Nations General Assemblys 76th session. President Ramaphosas call comes as SADC prepares to commemorate the SADC Anti-Sanctions Solidarity day set for October 25. Speaking during this weeks post-Cabinet media briefing, the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Monica Mutsvangwa said that the anti-sanctions drive by SADC as a region over the past two years has rallied more support for the country, even from non-SADC countries. Herald A UNITED Kingdom-based Zimbabwean lost US$53 000 after a Bulawayo woman she had tasked to buy her a house converted the money to her own use. Mary Bayephi Matewele, through her lawyer, Godfrey Nyoni, filed summons at the Bulawayo High Court against Annastancia Sibanda demanding reimbursement of the US$53 000. Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Evangelista Kabasa granted the application and ordered Sibanda to reimburse Matewele. It is ordered that the respondent pays the applicant the sum of US$53 000 together with interest at 5% per annum from May 12, 2021 to date of full payment, Justice Kabasa ruled. Legal costs in the sum of US$2 000 in terms of the acknowledgement of debt signed on April 16, 2021. The defendant shall further pay costs of this application at an attorney and client scale. In her founding affidavit, Matewele submitted that on May 12, 2021, she sued Sibanda claiming back the US$53 000 she sent her for the purchase of a house. She stated that Sibanda fraudulently converted the money to her own use. Facts were that between November 2020 and March 2021, I sent a total of US$53 000 to respondent for purchase of an immovable property in Zimbabwe. In March, the respondent advised me that she had purchased the residential property being a house in Queens Park East Bulawayo for US$65 000 and that she needed to make a down payment of US$53 000 using the money that I had sent, and there would be a balance of US$12 000, the affidavit reads. I then advised her to proceed with the purchase of the house and she later sent me through WhatsApp a copy of the agreement of sale. I later discovered that the agreement of sale she sent to me was fake as she had not acquired the house and had not paid the US$53 000. As a matter of fact, the respondent used the funds to acquire stand number 1789 New Magwegwe, Toyota Land Cruiser and Nissan Tiida vehicles and some sofas. Matewele stated that Sibanda, in a meeting with her lawyers, acknowledged her indebtedness and through letters from her lawyer Task Viki. Sibanda committed to pay back the money and did not oppose the claim. Newsday MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa said his party would get back everything it lost to a rival faction, including the partys Morgan Richard Tsvangirai (MRT) headquarters. He said the MDC Alliance did not react radically to the illegal State-assisted takeover of the party headquarters by the Douglas Mwonzora-led MDC-T faction because it wanted to give peace a chance. Speaking in an interview with HSTV, Chamisa opened up on his relationship with Mwonzora, disclosing that he had to negotiate with Giles Mutsekwa to step down and pave way for his former secretary-general turned tormentor to be Senator for Manicaland after he begged him. If you have people getting open support from the State to take over illegally and criminally the headquarters of the party and of course, we are waiting for the Supreme Court to determine this issue, you know that kind of act is criminal, flagrant violation of the law, Chamisa said. We have not responded in a radical manner because we want to give peace a chance, but we will get back everything that was taken away from the organisation. The MDC-T took over the MRT house last year with the aid of the military and armed police after a controversial Supreme Court ruling that declared Chamisas presidency of the opposition party illegal. The MDC Alliance challenged the takeover of the party headquarters and the Supreme Court is still to make a determination. Chamisa said he served Mwonzora embarrassment after he had lost primary polls to represent the people in Manicaland. Mwonzora, Chamisa said, begged him to accorded a senatorial position. I am the one who appointed Mwonzora on bended knees after he had failed to secure a seat as a Member of Parliament in Nyanga, Chamisa said. He then came to me and said, look, Mr President, can you accommodate me on the list of proportional representatives in the Senate because I dont have where I would serve the people of Zimbabwe from. I said, fine thats fine, we had to convince Giles Mutsekwa in Manicaland because he was the one on the list after provincial consultations to actually step aside for Mwonzora because he was senior in the party. Chamisa said he did the same for Morgen Komichi and Elias Mudzuri. They pretend as if they were parachuted from nowhere to be senators, we appointed them, but you know borrowed robes are very temporary, watch this space, he said. Referring to the 2014 congress held in Harare where Chamisa lost to Mwonzora for the secretary-general post, MDC Alliance said the MDC-T leader never won against him. Which election, we dont want to go into it. They know what they did in 2014 when they claimed they won. I dont want to speak ill of the dead, Chamisa said. They know what they did, including the role of the State. They released money at night without following procedure from CBZ and the Reserve Bank and that money was released to some people in the party as a way of stopping Chamisa. This project of trying to fight the peoples representatives started way back. Chamisa said after his defeat to Mwonzora, he had talks with Tsvangirai over the issue. He said Zanu PF had always targeted the MDC for infiltration. I have said that because we are a big organisation, the bigger the size, the bigger the risks and hazards of infiltration, an elephant will always have an elephant of problems, a rat will always have a rats problems. Size determines the size of your challenges, Chamisa said. Newsday If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East Moscow court extends detention of Irkutsk lawmaker accused of embezzlement RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 16:21 23/09/2021 MOSCOW, September 23 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court extended detention of Andrey Levchenko, lawmaker of the Irkutsk Region Legislative Assembly and son of a former regional Governor, who stands charged with embezzling over 185 million rubles (about $2.5 million), until November 20, his attorney Dmitry Agranovsky told RAPSI on Thursday. The decision would be appealed, the lawyer added. In late September, the defendant was transported to Moscow and charged with embezzlement. Searches were conducted at his place of residence, office and at premises of his father Sergey Levchenko. He was put in detention until November 20. The official pleaded not guilty. According to investigators, Levchenkos involvement in the crime was established as part of a criminal case against CEO of Zvezda company. Allegedly, Oleg Khamulyak along with other persons in October 2017 filed forged documents with the regional Ministry of the procurement contractual regulation to the applications for participating in a capital repair contractor tender. Later, Khamulyak and Levchenko signed a 167 million-ruble lift equipment supply contract with a foreign company and submitted it to the regional overhaul fund in order to receive advance in accordance with the concluded agreements. Then the defendants created one more company through which they unfoundedly increased the sum of repair works to nearly 3.2 million rubles and continued sending overpriced equipment cost documents to the repair fund. In total, they stole over 185 million rubles, the Investigative Committees statement reads. In mid-August, Moscows Basmanny District Court extended house arrest of Khamulyak until October 20. Russian communications watchdog starts development of social networks register RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov 10:44 23/09/2021 MOSCOW, September 23 (RAPSI) The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) has started to form a register of social networks. It already includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Likee, Youtube, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. The body reminded that this February a law on self-control of social networks came into force, according to which Internet sites themselves are obliged to identify and block prohibited information. The innovations in the law will make it possible to achieve the prompt removal of socially dangerous information that requires an immediate response, for example, trash streams and other socially dangerous content. In situations where speed of response is of key importance for the safety of citizens, social networks will be guided by the requirements of the law on self-control, Roskomnadzor said in its statement. The law also obliges Internet resources to post the rules of social networks, an attendance counter, an electronic form for users' applications identifying illegal information, and also to publish reports on the examination of such requests annually. Social networks should notify users about restrictions on their content, take measures according to the instructions of Roskomnadzor, including canceling the measures they introduced to restrict access to users content. In addition, the law stipulated that Roskomnadzor was responsible for the development and maintenance of a register of social networks aimed at monitoring compliance with the requirements of Russian legislation. For this purpose, a special section has been created on the body's website, which provides general information on the respective law. Owners of Internet resources will be able to visit their personal accounts with Roskomnadzor for further interaction with the service, including such issues as the alleged illegality of the content and the need to remove it. Currently, the register of social networks includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Likee, Youtube, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Roskomnadzor has sent the respective notifications of inclusion in the register to the owners of these Internet resources. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. At least two people were killed and 20 others injured on Thursday when a mob clashed with police during an eviction drive in Assam's Darrang district. The incident triggered widespread condemnation, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi calling the police action "state-sponsored fire". In the violent incident at Dholpur, at least 11 policemen were among the injured while a wounded policeman was rushed to Gauhati Medical College and Hospital in Guwahati. The slain people have been identified as Saddam Hussain and Sheikh Forid. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the police were forced to take action as the mob of several hundred people protesting the eviction drive, attacked the security personnel with sticks, machetes, and spears. Sarma, who also holds the Home Department, said the eviction drive, which had started on Monday, would continue on Friday. The Assam government later on Thursday night ordered a judicial inquiry by a retired judge of the Gauhati High Court. Director General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, who is now camping at Sipajhar, to take stock of the ground situation, said that the cameraman Bijoy Bonia who was seen attacking an injured man in a viral video has been arrested. "As per the direction of the Chief Minister, I have asked the CID to investigate the matter," he said, adding that the cameraman is now in CID custody. Officials said that around 800 families of Bengali-speaking Muslims were unlawfully occupying about 4,500 bighas (602.40 hectares) of government land for many years and the government recently decided to use the land for agricultural purposes by removing the settlers. On Monday, when the eviction drive was started, some families removed their 'houses' themselves and shifted elsewhere. According to the officials after a break of two days, the police re-launched the eviction drive on Thursday when the agitated mob tried to put up a strong resistance leading to the violence. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted: "Assam is on state-sponsored fire. I stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the state - no children of India deserve this". State Congress chief Bhupen Kumar Borah, condemning the "barbaric act" of police firing, said: "The very act of eviction is itself inhuman, especially during the Covid situation. The Supreme Court had also given a directive against eviction during the pandemic, yet the Assam government has remained adamant behaving in an autocratic manner to evict the residents who have been living in the area since the 1970s." He said the government should have arranged for rehabilitation and alternative housing ahead of the eviction drive. BJP national General Secretary Dilip Saikia, however, said the people were served notices before the drive. "These are Bangladeshi nationals. They settled there a few years ago after grabbing government land," he alleged. Sharing a video of the incident on Twitter, CPI-ML Politburo member Kavita Krishnan tweeted : "What protocol orders firing to the chest of a lone man coming running with a stick Who is the man in civil clothes with a camera who repeatedly jumps with bloodthirsty hate on the body of the fallen (probably dead) man?" All India United Democratic Front MLA Rafiqul Islam strongly criticised the Chief Minister saying Sarma planned the drive "to please Nagpur (RSS headquarter)". "God will give justice. Eviction for cultivation is fine but it should have been done after rehabilitating these landless people," he said. The BJP-led government has undertaken eviction drives in many districts to evict the people who illegally occupied huge government lands in different parts of the state. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will remain in isolation for the next five days after coming in contact with Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga, who has tested positive for Covif-19. The President's special communications secretary Andre de Sousa Costa said that all members of the delegation that accompanied Bolsonaro and Queiroga on a trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly will also remain isolated, reports Xinhua news agency. Bolsonaro and the other officials are to be tested over the weekend. If the results are negative, they will be released from isolation and placed under medical supervision for 14 days since coming into contact with Queiroga. Meanwhile, Queiroga will be quarantined for 14 days at a hotel in the US. According to Costa, the President is "totally asymptomatic" and "will follow these guidelines". The members of the delegation with over 50 people are also asymptomatic. Bolsonaro contracted Covid-19 in mid-2020 but recovered quickly. During his visit to New York, Bolsonaro reiterated that he has not been vaccinated against Covid-19. image source, foundation.app/@SideEyeingChloeimage captionChloe Clem's disapproving look when she was two years old has become an internet sensation A young girl who became an internet sensation when a picture of her went viral is now selling the original image for thousands of dollars at auction. Chloe Clem, now 10, became an internet hit in 2013 when, aged two, her mother videoed her giving an unimpressed reaction to a surprise Disneyland trip. The image has since become a popular meme for anyone expressing concern. It will be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT), a way of owning the original digital image. An NFT provides a digital certificate of ownership for the piece, and allows original versions of popular online content such as viral memes and tweets to be sold as if they were physical pieces of art. In many cases the artist may retain the copyright of their work, so they can continue to produce and sell copies of it, but the buyer owns the "original" of it. Some people compare it to buying an autographed print, and collectors have said they value the "bragging rights" of owning the original. EXPLAINER: What are NFTs and why are some worth millions? In September 2013, Chloe's mother Katie uploaded a video featuring her two daughters reacting to the Disneyland surprise. One of the girls, Lily, started crying, she said, "but then the camera panned over and Chloe made her cute little buck-toothed side-eye face and the internet did the rest." The video has been watched more than 20 million times, while the image of Chloe's reaction became an internet sensation. "I opened up Tumblr and there were just pages and pages of Chloe's face," her mother told the BBC. "It was very weird, very overwhelming. I had my family, friends sending me these memes till this day they still send me the memes of Chloe they see on the internet." image source, Katie Clemimage captionChloe Clem, now 10, and her mother Katie Within weeks, a Buzzfeed article had declared Chloe "the patron saint of Tumblr" and "the queen and goddess of the internet". Now the Utah family has decided to auction off the image as an NFT. Bids start at 5 Ethereum a form of cryptocurrency worth roughly $15,000 (11,000). Ms Clem said that after learning about the NFT market, selling the meme was a "no brainer". "It's a cool opportunity, especially if there's a Chloe fan out there who loves this meme they'll be able to own it. Even Chloe has said 'that's pretty cool' it's a typical 10-year-old thing to say." The market for ownership rights to digital art has boomed recently after several multi-million-dollar NFT sales. In March, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first ever tweet for the equivalent of $2.9m to a Malaysia-based businessman. And in April, the woman featured in the so-called Disaster Girl meme sold for $500,000. Weeks later, another image called the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme sold for $411,000. In August, however, a fan of British graffiti artist Banksy was tricked into buying a fake NFT by a hacker, off the artist's website. Luckily for him, the hacker returned most of what he paid more than $336,000. image source, Dave Rothimage captionThe Disaster Girl meme, featuring Zoe Roth won a photography prize in 2008 and went viral when it was posted online Ms Clem says she would like to use any money made from the sale to help pay for her daughters' education. "Chloe is like, 'I'd like to buy a horse, I'd like to build a Walt Disney World,' but I'd just like to put her through college," she says. Chloe has amassed over 500,000 followers on Instagram, and has even featured in a Google advert in Brazil. "We've been able to travel to Brazil and do all these amazing things," Ms Clem says. "[But] at the end of the day I'm just a stay at home mom with my girls." media captionDigital-only artwork by Beeple sold for $69m (50m) Page Content On Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021, the Honorable Minister of Justice Anna E. Richardson along with her support staff met with the Mayor of Leiden Henri Lenferink, the District Chief of Police Marieke Bosch, and the Public Prosecutor Fleur Simonis. The meeting was arranged for Minister Richardson to gain an understanding of how the "triangle" meeting also known as the "driehoeksoverleg", functions in the Netherlands. In Leiden, the triangle meeting is held once a month to discuss issues that are impacting the municipality. In Sint Maarten, the meetings were agreed to be held quarterly. One of the positive aspects of Minister Richardsons work visit to the Netherlands is gaining more insight in the way certain structures are intended to function and how beneficial these meetings can be once utilized in the correct structure and manner. During the meeting mayor Lenferink stated to which Minister Richardson agreed that: "Safety and security is all about collaboration with all organizations involved that contribute to a positive result". Mayor Lenferink explained that the triangle operates from a safety plan which is developed and agreed upon by majors of cities who also hold meetings with stakeholders in the community. This sort of systematic approach differs from that of Sint Maarten as those discussions are mostly based on the topics that have been placed on the agenda for that meeting and are then discussed amongst the Minister of Justice, the Prosecutor and the Chief of Police. Though it is recognized that our structures differ due to geographical size, Minister Richardson believes that adapting an approach with a safety plan as the point of departure and applying it in Sint Maarten can contribute positively to the current situation. Thereafter Minister Richardson met with the Mayor of Leidschendam-Voorburg, Mr. Jules Bijles, where they discussed public safety and security matters. Mayor Bijles explained the structures and procedures of his organization and gave a presentation that specifically delved into the assistance of the municipality community officers. The Municipality Community Officers can be seen equivalent to Sint Maartens Community Police Officers (CPO). These are BAVPOLers and take on minor offences and tasks such as supervising public areas, offering fines and so on. Recognizing the plus of the CPOs, Minister Richardson sees a great opportunity to increase the number of this division with the aim to outfit our schools and school districts for heightened law enforcement presence and quicker action. We recognize strategies used by those who wish to continue with negative behavior such as assaulting other students and more. As such, efforts will be made to heighten and tighten every area possible, stated Minister Richardson Upon Minister Richardsons return, this will be one of the prioritized agenda points that will be discussed with the Chief of Police, Public Prosecutor, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, schools boards and other stakeholders as a plan of action to protect our students, faculty, staff and communities. Finally, Minister Richardsons evening ended with a dinner hosted by members of the Progress Committee namely Mr. Nico Schoof and Mr. Michel Marijnen. The latter also invited the Mayor drs. Elizabeth Spies of Alphen aan de Rijn to the dinner, giving Minister Richardson an opportunity to dialogue with a third Mayor with over seven years in service. In conclusion, Minister Richardson experienced a full day of interaction with persons who have a vast amount of knowledge and experience when it comes to managing safety and security in their communities, working with the relevant authorities tasked to do so and who passionately hold interest to make a positive difference in the communities as Ministers Richardson also aims to do. The U.S. and Australia Signed a Nuclear Arms Deal, Simple as That by Vijay Prashad On September 15, 2021, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, a new enhanced trilateral security partnership between these three countries. Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined U.S. President Joe Biden to preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific, as Johnson put it. While China was not explicitly mentioned by these leaders at the AUKUS announcement, it is generally assumed that countering China is the unstated motivation for the new partnership. The future of the Indo-Pacific, said Morrison at the press conference, will impact all our futures. That was as far as they would go to address the elephant in the room. Zhao Lijian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry associated the creation of AUKUS with the outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical perception. Beijing has made it clear that all talk of security in the Indo-Pacific region by the U.S. and its NATO allies is part of an attempt to build up military pressure against China. The BBC story on the pact made this clear in its headline: Aukus: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China. What was the need for a new partnership when there are already several such security platforms in place? Prime Minister Morrison acknowledged this in his remarks at the press conference, mentioning the growing network of partnerships that include the Quad security pact (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States). A closer look at AUKUS suggests that this deal has less to do with military security and more to do with arms deals. Nuclear Submarines Prime Minister Morrison announced that [t]he first major initiative of AUKUS will be to deliver a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia. Two red flags were immediately raised: first, what will happen to Australias preexisting order of diesel-powered submarines from France, and second, will this sale of nuclear-powered submarines violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? In 2016, the Australian government made a deal with Frances Naval Group (formerly known as Direction des Constructions Navales, or DCNS) to supply the country with 12 diesel-electric submarines. A press release from then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his minister of defense (who is the current minister of foreign affairs) Marise Payne said at the time that the future submarine project is the largest and most complex defence acquisition Australia has ever undertaken. It will be a vital part of our Defence capability well into the middle of this century. Australias six Collins-class submarines are expected to be decommissioned in the 2030s, and the submarines that were supposed to be supplied by France were meant to replace them. The arms deal was slated to cost about $90 billion to build and $145 billion to maintain over their life cycle, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Australia has now canceled its deal with the French to obtain the nuclear-powered submarines. These new submarines will likely be built either in the U.S. by Electric Boat, a subdivision of General Dynamics, and Newport News Shipbuilding, a subdivision of Huntington Ingalls Industries, or in the UK by BAE Systems; BAE Systems has already benefited from several major submarine deals. The AUKUS deal to provide submarines to Australia will be far more expensive, given that these are nuclear submarines, and it will draw Australia to rely more deeply upon the UK and U.S. arms manufacturers. France was furious about the submarine deal, with its Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling it a regrettable decision that should advance the cause of European strategic autonomy from the United States. Words like betrayal have flooded the French conversation about the deal. Australia ratified the NPT in 1973, and it is also a signatory to the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985), or the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty. It does not have nuclear weapons and has pledged not to have nuclear material in the South Pacific. Australia is the second-largest producer of uranium after Kazakhstan, and most of this nuclear material is sold to the UK and the U.S. For the past several decades, Australia has been considered a nuclear threshold state, but it has opted not to escalate its nuclear weapons program. The three heads of government of Australia, the U.S. and the UK made it clear that the transfer of the nuclear-powered submarines is not the same as the transfer of nuclear weapons, although these new submarines will be capable of launching a nuclear strike. For that reason, not only China but also North Korea has warned about a new arms race in the region after the AUKUS submarine deal. Costs Morrison admitted during a September 16 press conference that his country has already spent $2.4 billion on the French submarine deal. He did not, however, answer a journalists question as to what the ultimate price tag would be for the UK-U.S. nuclear-powered submarines. He asked his Secretary of Defense Greg Moriarty to answer it, to which Moriarty spoke about task forces that will set up a number of working groups with the U.S. and UK to look into several issues relating to the deal; but Moriarty also did not touch on the topic about the price tag. One of the questions asked at the press conference with regard to the cost to Australian taxpayers was whether Australia would buy the Astute (UK) class submarines or the Virginia (U.S.) class, since this decision has a bearing on the cost. The Virginia class submarine, according to a recent U.S. Congressional Research Service study, costs $3.45 billion per vessel. To this must be added the cost of upgrading the naval bases in Australia and the cost of running and maintaining the submarines. The U.S. and the UK firms will make considerable profits from this deal. Ever since the Australians signed the deal with the French, media houses associated with the U.S.-based Rupert Murdoch have attacked it. Any small delay was picked up to be clobbered, and any adjustment to the contractincluding a change in contract proposed on March 23, 2021became front-page news. Aware of the problems, Frances Foreign Minister Le Drian spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Paris on June 25 about the deal. He told the French-speaking Blinken that the submarine contract is not only a French one but also a French-U.S. partnership since Lockheed Martin is party to the deal. French attempts to get U.S. buy-in to the deal came to nothing as the Biden administration was already in talks with the UK and Australia on their own regarding the AUKUS deal. That is why the language of betrayal is so pronounced in Paris. Belligerence On September 16, the Australian and U.S. governments released a joint statement that included a direct attack on China, with reference to the South China Sea, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Two days later, an article in Australias leading newspaper, the Australian, by Paul Monk, who is the head of the China Desk at Australias Defence Intelligence Organization, stated that his government should facilitate a coup within Chinas Communist Party. This is a direct call for regime change in China by Australia. The belligerent language from Australia should not be taken lightly. Even though China is Australias largest trading partner (both in terms of exports and imports), the creation of these new military pactswith a nuclear edge to themthreatens security in the region. If this is merely an arms deal hidden behind a military pact, then it is a cynical use of war-making rhetoric for business purposes. This cynicism could eventually lead to a great deal of suffering. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the 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. The fallout over the AUKUS deal, as we are now seeing, has been a severe rift in relations between two historic allies, the U.S. and France. And the collateral damage may also include NATO. by James W. Carden Only weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden courageously ended the war in Afghanistanin the face of bitter opposition from the media and Congresscame the announcement of the formation of AUKUS, a new trilateral security alliance between the U.S., the UK and Australia. The creation of AUKUS is only further confirmationas if more was neededthat the Biden administration intends to wage a new cold war in Asia with China as its target. This is not a development we should welcome. As the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecrafts Anatol Lieven has recently observed, a new cold war with China will continue to lock in place the power of the U.S. military-industrial complex and squander trillions more on wasteful and unnecessary military programs designed to benefit American corporations rather than defend the actual security of actual American citizens. And so, as Biden puts an end to one hot war, he finds himself starting yet another cold war: One step forward, two steps back. AUKUSs debut has been marred by a high-profile controversy with France, which believed it had reached a deal with Australia to provide it with 12 diesel-electric submarines. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, meanwhile, noted in a statement that, instead, the Americans and the British will be providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. European leaders have come out strongly against AUKUS. Both European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the move. And the French are furious. French President Emmanuel Macron has recalled his ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia, while the former French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud observed on Twitter, The new reality of the world rivalry of great and middle powers should lead France to a 2.0 Gaullist stance. Allied but not aligned. Some confrontations are not ours. And so, the fallout over the AUKUS deal, as we are now seeing, has been a severe rift in relations between two historic allies, the U.S. and France. And the collateral damage may also include NATO. The AUKUS controversy puts the future of the transatlantic alliance in question. Recall that Macron has long been a vocal and perceptive critic of the nearly 75-year-old alliance. A self-described disciple of Frances wartime leader and former President Charles de Gaulle, Macron has criticized the foreign policy of his immediate predecessors as a kind of imported neoconservatism. His own foreign policy forays can be characterized as a quest for strategic autonomy, away from the dictates of Washington and London. Bidens AUKUS debacle just may give Macron the leverage he needs to move the rest of Europe in his direction, toward a foreign policy that rejects the decades-old Atlanticist consensus in favor of a continental security architecture that takes into account the interests of all of Europe, as de Gaulle once put it, from the Atlantic to the Urals. At a minimum, the AUKUS debacle may have the effect of pushing France closer together with its old ally Russia. Macron may double down on his policy of detente with the Kremlin, which only recently was the target of criticism by his partners in the EU. This would leave Anglo-American neoconservatives and liberal hawks seething, but such a development might be just what is needed for a stable and peaceful future for Europe. This article was produced by Globetrotter in partnership with the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. James W. Carden is a writing fellow at Globetrotter and a former adviser to the U.S. State Department. Previously, he was a contributing writer on foreign affairs at the Nation, and his work has also appeared in the Quincy Institutes Responsible Statecraft, the American Conservative, Asia Times, and more. Dushanbe has finally accepted the Taliban as a reality. Imran Khan has won over Rahmon who has been an obdurate, seemingly recalcitrant critic of the Taliban. by M.K. Bhadrakumar An Indian news website that is wired into Panjshir Valley reported this week that Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan vice president and security tsar in the Ghani government has relocated to Tajikistan and that he was given a safe passage by the Tajikistan government. This comes within days of the lengthy meeting in Dushanbe on September 17 between Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan where they thrashed out the terms of a consensus approach towards the Taliban Govt in Kabul. Imran Khan later hinted that he would be working on Rahmons preconditions for accepting the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Rahmon himself said in a major speech later in the presence of Imran Khan that he was satisfied with the process of regular political contacts between our states, including at the highest level, and expressed interest in connectivity with the ports of Karachi and Gwadar and in joining regional corridors and transport projects. Rahmon stressed that stabilising the situation in Afghanistan, as a country connecting regional and international transport networks, is especially important for Dushanbe. He expressed the hope that peace and stability in Afghanistan will be restored in the near future and the interests of all political and ethnic groups in Afghanistan will be taken into account. We support inclusive government in this country with the participation of all social groups. Importantly, Rahmon and Imran Khan agreed that the speedy elimination of the conflict and tensions in the Panjshir province by declaring a ceasefire and opening roads for providing humanitarian assistance is one of the most important tasks today. And the two leaders also agreed to direct all efforts to achieve these goals. Rahmon concluded, We agreed to facilitate negotiations between the Taliban and Tajiks in Dushanbe. Dushanbe has finally accepted the Taliban as a reality. Imran Khan has won over Rahmon who has been an obdurate, seemingly recalcitrant critic of the Taliban. It is entirely conceivable that Rahmon provided safe passage to Saleh so that the deck is clear for ending the strife in Panjshir Valley and reconciliation talks with the Taliban to begin. Since then, a joint Russian-Chinese-Pakistani diplomatic mission to Kabul on September 21-22 has held talks with the acting Taliban Prime Minister Mohammad Hasan Akhund, acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting Finance Minister Hidayatullah Badri and other senior officials, aside former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and and former Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has stated that in-depth and constructive discussions took place on the whole range of issues, especially on inclusiveness, human rights, economic and humanitarian issues, friendly relations between Afghanistan and other countries, especially neighbouring countries, and the unity and territorial integrity of the country. The Taliban leaders appreciated that the three countries are playing a constructive and responsible role in consolidating peace and stability in Afghanistan. It appears that the inputs from the meeting in Kabul have gone into the meeting of the foreign ministers of the permanent members of the UN Security Council on Wednesday in New York chaired by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. In subsequent remarks to the media, Guterres sounded optimistic. Importantly, this P-5 meeting took place at the initiative of the UK, a day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson met President Biden on Tuesday at the White House. A readout from 10 Downing Street later summed up that Johnson and Biden agreed that the best way to honour all those who gave their lives to make Afghanistan a better place will be to use all the diplomatic and humanitarian tools at our disposal to prevent a humanitarian crisis and preserve the gains made in Afghanistan. The restrained language reflects the mellowed tone in Bidens brief references in his UN General Assembly speech on Tuesday where he en passe spoke of closing this period of relentless war (in Afghanistan) and opening a new era of relentless diplomacy. Biden made no threatening references to out-of-the-horizon military operations directed at Afghanistan and eschewed any demonising of the Taliban. Interestingly, Biden did advocate the rights of women but from Central America to the Middle East, to Africa, to Afghanistan wherever it appears in the world. The bottom line is that the Pakistani line on the imperative need to engage with the Taliban government is steadily gaining traction. The Pakistani mantra is: Be realistic. Show patience. Engage. And above all, dont isolate. as a AP dispatch neatly summed up an exclusive interview with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN GA in New York. On granting recognition to the Taliban government, Imran Khan told the BBC this week, We will collectively take a decision We think that all the neighbours will get together, we will see how they [Taliban] progress, and whether to recognise them or not will be a collective decision. He underscored, There will not be any long-term sustainable peace in Afghanistan unless all the factions, all the ethnic groups are represented. Pakistans decision to work for and through a regional consensus, is a tactically prudent course, that raises the comfort level of Afghanistans neighbours. Imran Khans understanding with Rahmon becomes vital. Imran Khan was at his persuasive best in the BBC interview, candidly discussing the international communitys anxieties over the rights of women under Taliban rule, etc. But his unspoken message is hard-hitting: What is the alternative to engaging with the Taliban government nudging it, cajoling it, incentivising it? Perhaps, it smacks of a poker game where Imran Khan knows Pakistan is holding a strong hand and doesnt have to flaunt it while claiming victory. But Pakistan has learned from the experience of the 1990s high risk of going out on a limb in a triumphalist frame of mind. Today, the external environment is working favourably for Pakistani diplomacy. Chinas readiness to salvage the Afghan economy is an altogether new factor. Again, with the Biden Administration disinclined to get into further entanglements in Afghanistan and Central Asia and big-power strategic competition accelerating elsewhere globally, the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan are becoming the main stakeholders Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan and their number one priority is the stability of Afghanistan. The Turkmenistan president Berdimuhamedow probably spoke for the region when he said in his speech at the UNGA earlier this week: The situation there is not easy, the government and public institutions that are being formed are very fragile. This is why assessing the situation in the country requires ultimate consistency, prudence and responsibility both in words and actions. The situation in Afghanistan has changed, and when forming an approach to it, one needs to abandon ideological preferences, old grudges, phobias and stereotypes, thinking first and foremost about Afghan people who are tired of wars and turbulence and dream of a peaceful and quiet life. Turkmenistan is deeply interested in a politically stable and safe Afghanistan. We call for normalising the situation in Afghanistan as soon as possible and expect that new government agencies will operate effectively in the interests of all Afghan people. Turkmenistan will continue to provide comprehensive economic support and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. Indeed, the mood in the region is radically changing. It is noticeable too that Afghanistan has become a much calmer place. Violence and bloodshed have ceased. The civil war conditions are receding. The change of mood is reflected in a recent interview by former Afghan President Hamid Karzai to the Iranian media where he said that the Taliban are from Afghanistan and part of its people, they love their homeland and want calm and a peaceful life. Author Bio: This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter. M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. Source: Globetrotter The Taliban must know the world is watching its actions. We are concerned about reports regarding the Talibans brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls. by Anwar A. Khan Women's rights in Afghanistan have been varied throughout history. Women officially gained equality under the 1964 constitution. However, these rights were taken away in the 1990s through different temporary rulers, such as, the Taliban during the civil war. Especially during the latter's rule, women had very little to no freedom, specifically in terms of civil liberties. Ever since the Taliban regime was removed following the so-called September 11 attacks in the United States, women's rights have gradually improved under the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and women are once again de jure equal to men under the 2004 constitution, which was largely based on that from 1964.However, their rights are still complicated by a reactionary view on women by certain classes of school, particularly realties, which continue to cause international concern. When the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan again in 2021, concern about the future for women in the country increased. The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban has undoubtedly put womens lives in danger and threatened their human rights in new ways. The threat of violence has long been a harsh reality for many Afghan women: a survey showed that 90% of women in some areas of the country have experienced violence from their husband. Women who manage to leave their abusive partners and families frequently experience further abuse from those who we may think of as trustworthy, including the police, doctors and government officials. While safe houses for women did exist before the Taliban takeover mostly in Kabul these shelters were already perceived as shameful and immoral by many in Afghan society. For a survivour of violence living in a safe house, leaving for any reason is dangerous and requires a bodyguard, even to go to the doctor. In most other countries, women who have survived violence are protected by government institutions, but this has never been the case in Afghanistan. A woman in full burqa, anonymised, makes hand signs against a blank wall. Women who suffer domestic violence in Afghanistan are not provided with shelter by the government. Reading and analysing womens stories of violence from Afghanistan is one of the hardest things. These are not like stories of violence anywhere else in the world. They are brutal and the women involved are nearly always blamed. Most women have no choice, but to stay with their husbands, and are beaten or abused if they ask for help. Other women, including mothers-in-law, are also often involved in perpetuating the violence. So, the inequalities exist between Afghan women and the men in their lives. The men we spoke to are also acutely aware of the inequalities between men and women. But Afghan men often perceive women as needing mens protection and guidance. Teaching women through the use of violence is described by some men as a means of keeping women safe or ensuring that they do not dishonour themselves (or their families). Not all men agree with these arguments, though, and several speak out against the use of violence against women for any reason. As in all countries, ideas about gender inequalities are a point of discussion, with arguments on both sides. Four decades of armed conflict have magnified many of the inequalities women live with on a daily basis in Afghanistan. During the US occupation, it was found the role of international actors in supporting the mujahidin, fundamentalist warlords who had themselves been war criminals and perpetrators of sexual violence. Under the Afghanistan government, these same warlords will become ministers, governors and members of parliament. War has a way of emphasising gender inequalities. Many women talk about the Taliban, and how fathers and brothers were killed or exploited by the conflict. This was often the tipping point for their lives without these men to protect them; these women were often married to violent or abusive men because there was no one with enough power to care for their interests. How the war had affected the mental health of everyone in Afghanistan and how they thought this had led to more violence in the home. One man even asked why we were asking about women, when men had been so severely affected by the war. Under the Taliban, Afghan womens stories will be lost deliberately hidden to protect them from those who would do them harm. This is already happening. Meanwhile Americas Vassal State - the UK government is publicly claiming that the overwhelming majority of eligible people have been evacuated. Yet talented, highly-educated women researchers are still trapped in Afghanistan. UK help lines have been down or un-responsive, and only 5,000 people will be offered resettlement in the UK over the next year, as it is learnt. Thus Womens voices are in danger of being silenced in Afghanistan with the return of the Taliban. As time passes, we must not turn our back on these womens stories both before and after the Taliban came into power. The US intervention in Afghanistan has had severe consequences for womens lives, many of them negative. Conflict and poverty have contributed to underage marriages, and fed a drug trade that further perpetuates domestic violence. Afghanistan is proof of just how fast their human rights can be stripped away and their lives erased. We must continue to listen to what Afghan women have to say, no matter what happens! For Afghan women, the waiting pains are more agonizing. The last time the Taliban held power, in the late 90s and early 2000s, repression was a feature of their rule. This was especially true for women. Girls could not attend school; women could not hold jobs or leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them. Those who defied the Talibans directives and their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam were punished, often brutally, with floggings or beatings. The US invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks put the Talibans worldview under scrutiny. The war became about more than terrorism; things like the expansion of womens rights became embedded within the US mission there. In November 2001, first lady Laura Bush said the Talibans retreat meant the people of Afghanistan, especially women, are rejoicing. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of female Afghan ministers: We will not abandon you; we will stand with you always. But this was a false promise! Twenty years later, the United States has departed and as it executed those plans, those earlier justifications fell away. President Joe Biden has said, in the military drawdown, that the US objective in Afghanistan was to defeat terrorism there. He said last week, the idea that were able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational whereas the US administration itself is an international terrorist. The uncertainty facing Afghan women comes after 20 years of US intervention which itself followed decades of foreign intervention by the Soviet Union and others where womens rights were packaged as another justification for the war in Afghanistan. The gains were real, if uneven and often tenuous, undermined by the insecurity that the decades-long conflict brought. But womens rights got inserted into the rallying cry for war regardless of whether Afghan women wanted them, and at times, they became a cause celebre. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women, a foulard Laura Bush said in November 2001, a few weeks after the US invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban must know the world is watching its actions. We are concerned about reports regarding the Talibans brutal treatment of all Afghans, especially women and girls. A small group of Afghan women protested near the presidential palace in Kabul a day after women in the western Afghan city of Herat took to the streets in daring public demonstrations against Taliban restrictions on their right to work and seek education. Around 20 women with microphones gathered in the heart of Kabul recently under the watchful eyes of Taliban gunmen, who allowed the demonstration to proceed. The protest in the Afghan capital was the second women's protest in as many days, with the other held in Afghanistans largest western city, Herat. Gathering near the presidential palace, the women demanded access to education, the right to return to work and a role in governing the country. "Freedom is our motto. It makes us proud, read one of their signs. -The End The writer is an independent political analyst who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs. In spite of criticism from all sides, the young congresswoman from New York sparked a necessary national conversation about the need for higher taxation of the rich. by Sonali Kolhatkar New Yorks Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs recent Met Gala dress caused a stir for sporting the bold message Tax the Rich. The progressive lawmaker, who is known for being media-savvy, donned a simple white gown with the blood-red wording emblazoned across the back, designed by a Brooklyn-based brand called Brother Vellies. Attending the gala on a free ticket (wealthy elites usually pay tens of thousands of dollars to be seen at the annual event known for its outrageous and eye-catching fashion), Ocasio-Cortez seized the opportunity to amplify her simple, yet powerful, political message. She explained to the press, When we talk about supporting working families and when we talk about having a fair tax code, oftentimes this conversation is happening among working and middle class people (on) the senate floor. She added, I think its time we bring all classes into the conversation. In other words, she was aiming her message of higher taxation of the wealthy directly at the faces of those elites, with the press as witness. The congresswomans dress, however, was criticized not just by the rightDonald Trump Jr. called her a fraud because she wore, [t]he tax the rich dress while shes hanging out with a bunch of wealthy leftwing elitesbut by liberals too. CNN host Chris Cuomo bizarrely ranted that because she is a member of Congress for a poor district, she should be fighting their fight all the time. He added, I think she was having it both ways. I think theres a poser aspect because she likes to be with those people, implying that Ocasio-Cortez likes to hobnob with wealthy elites while ignoring the fact that it took courage for her to confront those same elites with a bold call to tax them. Some on the left balked at the dress for similar reasons, such as John Ganz writing for Gawker. Ganz, who called Ocasio-Cortez a working-class hero and ostensibly supports her, critiqued her Met Gala dress as lame. And juvenile. And sad. His appraisal, which appears to reflect much of the liberal and left-wing critique of the congresswoman, is based on the question of whether it makes sense to demand taxation of the rich while evidently enjoying the celebration of glamour and wealth. Had Ocasio-Cortez showed up at the Met Gala with her complimentary ticket making a fashion statement based purely on apolitical theatrics (like other celebrity attendees), she likely would have received even more criticism from all sides. Perhaps her critics would have been happier with her forsaking the opportunity to make a political statement altogether by refusing to attend. If Ocasio-Cortezs Met Gala stunt was performative, it was by design and at the very least consistent with her political persuasion as a democratic socialist and her support of bills and proposals to levy hefty tax rates on millionaires and billionaires. Recall the Kente cloth scarves that liberal Democrats wore while they knelt for cameras at the Capitol to mark a moment of silence for George Floyd whose police killing sparked a national uprising. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who were among those kneeling, subsequently failed to introduce or even support the BREATHE Act championed by the Movement for Black Lives that was meant to hold law enforcement accountable for racist police brutality. Instead, Schumer, Pelosi, and other Democrats backed the reformist Justice in Policing Act, indicating that their support for Black Lives Matter has been largely performative. Meanwhile, for an example of right-wing performative fashion that was just as sincere as Ocasio-Cortezs (albeit appallingly callous), one need look no further than former First Lady Melania Trump. Her infamous green jacket worn during a 2018 visit to an immigrant child detention center sported the sentence, I really dont care, do u? The message on her jacket, clear as day, was an intentional performance that reflected her lack of concern about the optics of family separation. Regardless of whether or not Ocasio-Cortezs dress was appropriate, she provoked a strong reaction, which in turn sparked a discussion of the words adorning her dress. Coming at the same time that Congress is considering a massive $3.5 trillion spending bill that includes a modest rewriting of the U.S. tax code to garner more revenues from the top earning tiers, the message on the dress was apropos. It was also fitting that Ocasio-Cortez donned the controversial dress right around the 10th anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which aimed a razor-sharp focus on the worlds wealthy. That movement sparked a new level of class consciousness among the American public using language such as we are the 99 percent to identify the obscenely rich as the source of unequal power and wealth and put them on the defensive. The right-wing pushback against taxation of the rich has been relentless, eager to cast the wealthy as benevolent caretakers of the economy. Fox Business echoed a popular statistic, saying, The richest households paid 40.1% of all federal income taxes in 2018, adding that, [t]he share of taxes shouldered by the nations richest individuals has climbed over time, as if to suggest that wealthy Americans are becoming more generous. That assessment conveniently plays down the critical fact that the rich suck up a disproportionate (and increasing) percentage of all earnings. The mistaken notion of the wealthy as generous revenue generators, as Jonathan Chait explains, turns the fact that rich people account for a massive share of the income pool into a reason to see them as mistreated. Chait also reminds us that the statistic that Fox Business cited focuses only on federal taxes, not all taxes. When accounting for all taxes, the rich pay a much lower percentage of revenues. Increasingly, higher taxation of the rich is a very popular proposal, rejected by only the very wealthy and their allies, which is why the reactionary responses to Ocasio-Cortezs dress are so puzzling. When put into the context of the modest proposals to restore the tax code to pre-2017 levels, the message is hardly radical, and indeed, some on the left have used the tax the rich message as a jumping-off point to pithily demand its time to eat the rich. Others have expanded the conversation to remind us that the Met Gala is an opportunity for wealthy Americans to write off donations, suggesting that Ocasio-Cortezs dress could have sported the (somewhat less catchy) slogan, This Event Is a Tax Loophole for the Rich. USA Today used the story of Ocasio-Cortezs dress as a jumping-off point to identify who qualifies as wealthy enough to face higher taxation and to clarify that [m]ost U.S. households will not see a tax increase. This is an important counterpoint to head off the standard right-wing argument against higher taxes, which plays on fears that taxes will rise for all Americans. The dress also sparked a conversation around the fact that the U.S. tax system has become regressive over time and that the Democrats modest proposal to increase the top marginal income tax rate and add a surcharge on incomes of over $5 million, will barely dent Americas long slide from progressive taxation. Ocasio-Cortez herself has continued the conversation, explaining in her Twitter post about the dress that the increased tax revenues are necessary for funding bread-and-butter progressive policies. She wrote, The time is now for childcare, healthcare, and climate action for all. Tax the Rich. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. 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According to UCLA's Hollywood Diversity Report 2020, only 14.4% of directors of theatrical films represent people of color. Alarmingly, only 3.4% were directors of Asian origin in 2019. Lakpathy Wijesekaras last cinematic endeavor was a Virtual Reality film from a newborn's perspective about Child Laundering. This film generated more than 1.5 million views worldwide. Free By Noon movie has a truly diverse cast and a crew. Not one or two but seven different languages were spoken on the set. Free By Noon is about a married man who tries to have some "extra" fun in Las Vegas, where he gets locked up in a very unusual situation. He has to get himself out of this quirky situation to save his marriage before his wife gets home. "I felt like this was a unique Hollywood film and a really good human drama done with a small plot," Mr. Aruna Gunarathna- Editor of Sarasaviya newspaper, a trade magazine equivalent of Hollywood Reporter/ Variety in Sri Lanka. The film was shot on an Arri Alexa camera with a single Anamorphic lens. Once the film is screened at the Glendale Laemmle theater from Oct 15th -21st, filmmakers plan to take it over to New York, Texas, Atlanta and screen it in Sri Lanka as well. Sagala is one of the very few genuine politicians in Sri Lankan politics Editorial The local media has reported that the reorganization of the UNP has been handed over to Sagala Ratnayaka. This is an apt choice and Sagala has the potential to pull the UNP out of the mire. Mr. Sagala is one of the very few genuine politicians in Sri Lankan politics. Sagala Ratnayaka A simple reorganization project will not be able to revive the UNP. The party must undergo a complete overhaul on both the structural and ideological levels. Then the UNP has the potential to transform itself into a new political front by recognizing local and regional political trends. The important thing here is not to waste time blaming those responsible for the defeat. To increase the manpower of those who have the skill and sincere intention to take responsibility within the party for a new desired political culture. There is no need for conspirators to seize power and the people will unite to lead the party to victory. What is needed for this is to identify the youth who represent all ethnic groups in the country and mobilize them. At the same time, it has become imperative to change the administrative structure of the party to suit the current geopolitical trends by understanding the sentiment of the people of the country. Sagala's political art, unfortunately, is not one that can appeal to the rural masses. He is not a fake actor who can deceive the public to get votes. Therefore, his decision to shift his constituency and pursue his political activities in Colombo district is good for his political future. There is a great demand for the political revival of a constituency like Ratmalana, especially after the assassination of Lalith Athulathmudali by the LTTE terrorists. Several attempts were made but they failed. The upper middle class living in such an area can easily understand Sagala's political art and its mutual benefits. It will be a strategic move to strengthen his politics. The social order has changed like never before since the Covid-29 Pandemic. The majority in the country has an interest and desire to change the political culture which has become a paradise for brokers and fraudsters. A gentleman politician with strategic thinking and political ability will be able to recognize and take advantage of this tendency. The selection of Sagala Ratnayake by the UNP to restructure its party can be seen as a strategically important and useful decision at this moment of need. True answers to the following questions will help anyone to decide whether Hejaaz is a toddler or a mastermind behind propagating extremism. by Our Defence Correspondent The arrest and detention of Hejaaz Hizbullah a lawyer with multiple talents and designations has sparked a debate between local and foreign organizations. During the sessions of the UN Human Rights Council as well as various human rights and civil society organizations have expressed various views on this incident. Many of them have overlooked a number of important points in their comments. Therefore, it is very important to align those omissions. As we emphasized in the first part of this series, everyone has the right to know the truth. However, the actions of certain political clusters and some NGOs in this regard prove the enormous effort they are making to suppress the truth. Lets formulate a few important questions on this issue. Let us dream for justice, yes justice for those who die in vain. 1. A. When was Hejaaz Hizbullah arrested? B. Has the investigation into him been completed? 2. A. Did Hejaaz Hezbollah contact by any investigative agency investigating the Easter Sunday attack before the incumbent government came to power? If yes, when? What are the reasons for such a call? B. If such summons had been made, would he have been investigated and arrested at that time? 3. A. After the declaration of the so-called Islamic State by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on 29.06.2014, about 34 Sri Lankans have gone to Syria. In 2015, several organizations such as Jamaat-e-Millat Ibrahim and Pearls of Wisdom were formed. In what year was Save the Pearls formed? What is the purpose of this organisation? What is the role Hejaaz Hizbullah played in this organization? B. Is Save the Pearls registered in Sri Lanka? If not, what are the reasons for not registering? Hejaaz is well versed in law, but why did he run such an organization without proper registration? C. Were there any discussions regarding the founding of the Save the Pearls at Jameel's brothers house in Dematagoda? Jameel was a suicide bomber who exploded at the New Tropical Inn Hotel on Easter Sunday in 2019. What were the issues discussed there? D. How does Jameel's brother know lawyer Hejaaz? What did you do with him? E. Who maintained the social media accounts named Save The Pearls Action Group, Save The Pearls Group, Save The Pearls Trust, and Save the Pearls? Who were their administrators? F. What is the relationship between Save The Pearls Trust and Save the Pearls? 4. A. Did Ilham, who launched a suicide attack with Zahran at the Shangri la Hotel, serves as the treasurer of Save the Pearls? If so, from what year and who appointed him? B. What was the relationship between Hejaaz and Ilham to appoint him as the treasurer of his organisation? C. How much money did Inshaff, who carried out the suicide attack on the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, give to the Save The Pearls Trust? What purpose did the Hejaaz use that money for? D. Did Hejaaz has links with Jameel's brother, father of Ilham and Inshaf, who are in custody on suspicion of involvement in the Easter Sunday attack, and many others involved in the Easter attack? 5. A. Was a foreigner (a Sri Lankan descent) involved in a suicide bombing in Syria deported from Sri Lanka at the request of the country's authorities? B. Did Hejaaz has any contact with that deported person? If yet, what kind of relationship is that? 6. According to Hejaaz, if he had been involved with the terrorists who launched the Easter attack only for his professional work as a lawyer, A. How did Ilham (who carried out the suicide attack at the Shangri la Hotel) become the treasurer of Save the Pearls? B. Did Ilham, who carried out the suicide bombing at the Shangri la Hotel, identify the Hejaaz organization as a welfare organization and raise funds in foreign countries as its treasurer? What was that money used for? C. Has the suicide bomber at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel on Easter Sunday donated money to Hejaaz's organization? What was that money used for? 7. A. Did Save the Pearls Trust receives money through the Islamic Relief Committee, an organization called Qatar Charity, which has been banned by several foreign countries for providing money to terrorist organizations? B. If so, how much is that? C. For what purpose was the money used? D. Did Hejaaz, a lawyer, not knows that the money came from an organization that had been banned by several foreign countries for providing money to terrorist organizations? 8. Did Hejaaz, a lawyer, received money from a third party to represent the suspects who had damaged the Buddha statues in the Mawanella area through his junior lawyers instead of directly appearing for them? 9. Was the money raised by Save the Pearls at the inception of the suicide bombers' links to the three suicide bombers on 21.04.2019 used for extremist as well as other fundamentalist activities? So what is it? 10. A. Did an initiative called the Advocacy Reconciliation Council (ARC) award millions of rupees in the 2016 Best Mosque Competition held at the Prime Minister's Office? If so, were the financial rewards for winners provided by any organization or individual? B. For what purpose was the above event organized? Were the members of the network involved in the Passover attack involved in organizing this event? If so, who are they? 11. A. Was Hejaaz in Sri Lanka at the time of the Easter attack? B. If he was abroad, in what country? From when to when? 13. How many mobile phones did he use from 2015 to 2019? Have all those phones been provided for investigations? If not, what are the reasons? 12. A. Was Jameel summoned to the CID in 2018? For what reason? On what basis was he released after questioning there? B. Did Jameel consults with Hejaaz prior to appear before the CID? True answers to these questions will help anyone to decide whether Hejaaz is a toddler or a mastermind behind propagating extremism. An extremist group inspired by IS ideology carried out suicide bombings that killed more than 250 innocent people while a financially and ideologically complex network has aided in defending extremism. This sophisticated network continues to function. They have no intention of changing the Muslim marriage act which is support harassing Muslim women as per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other conventions ratified through international law. They choose the best mosque in the name of reconciliation and pay millions, but they do not want real reconciliation. They talked about multicultural inclusiveness but schemed for inclusiveness where no one but them had every right to decide on others. Some of them even established schools for underprivileged communities and fed those kids with books on extremist ideas. In the name of charity, they began to brainwash innocent children. It is clear that this network worked with medium and long-term goals. Against this backdrop, it is a national responsibility to do justice to those who died in the Easter attack. But there must be a better understanding of the long-term damage that wolves disguised as sheep are doing to society by spreading extremism. They are worse and more destructive than Saharan, the ring leader of the terror attacks. DGAP-Ad-hoc: Dexus Finance Pty Limited / Key word(s): Acquisition/Real Estate Dexus Finance Pty Limited: Dexus expands industrial platform with $1.5bn transaction 23-Sep-2021 / 12:28 CET/CEST Disclosure of an inside information acc. to Article 17 MAR of the Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Dexus (ASX: DXS) ASX release 23 September 2021 Dexus expands industrial platform with $1.5 billion of acquisitions and developments Dexus today announced the acquisition of a portfolio of quality industrial properties alongside APN Industria REIT (ADI) for a combined acquisition price of $1.5 billion[1], delivering on its strategic objectives of investing in sustainable income streams as well as expanding and diversifying the funds management business. The acquisition includes: - Jandakot Airport, Perth, WA (initially 66.7% Dexus[2], 33.3% ADI), a high-quality industrial portfolio comprising 49 properties, circa 80 hectares of developable land and an airport opeRating business - Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW (50% Dexus, 50% ADI), a fund-through development - 2 Maker Place, Truganina, VIC (100% ADI), a logistics facility leased to Australia Post Darren Steinberg, Dexus CEO said: "These are high-quality investments that will further enhance the resilience of our property portfolio. The near term development potential and scope to enhance returns by introducing third party capital make this a compelling opportunity, and one aligned with our priorities to grow our funds management business and recycle capital into high returning opportunities. "This transaction also provides the opportunity to achieve a step change for ADI as it secures an interest in quality logistics-oriented real estate with embedded development potential. We see considerable opportunity in ADI and will be supporting the equity raising announced today. "In addition to the transactions announced today, we remain focused on meeting the investment objectives of our third party capital partners, with the Dexus Industrial Partnership (DITA) in exclusive due diligence on the circa $123 million acquisition of 113-153 Aldington Road in Kemps Creek, NSW." Ross Du Vernet, Dexus Chief Investment Officer said: "These transactions will leverage our strong development capabilities and demonstrate how we are allocating more capital to opportunities with development potential and in structures where we are investing alongside third party clients. "The acquisitions will provide our industrial business with a meaningful footprint in Western Australia and new product in the Sydney market to service our growing customer base. Across the group, the industrial portfolio is expected to grow to $11.3 billion (4.6 million square metres) post completion of the near term developments and recent acquisitions." ADI equity raising ADI will undertake a fully underwritten circa $350 million equity raising to partially fund its share of the acquisitions at a fixed issue price of $3.45 per security, comprising a circa $100 million institutional placement and circa $250 million 1-for-3 non-renounceable entitlement offer. Dexus intends to take up its full $40 million entitlement under ADI's Entitlement Offer, and has also provided a commitment to sub-underwrite circa $39 million across the retail tranche of the Entitlement Offer. ADI's offer price reflects an attractive FY22 distribution yield of 5.0%. Further details relating to the equity raising are provided in ADI's announcement released to the Australian Securities Exchange today. Jandakot Airport, Perth, WA Dexus has agreed to acquire a 66.7% interest2 in the entities that own a 76-year ground lease at Jandakot Airport, WA, with ADI acquiring the remaining 33.3% interest, for a combined acquisition price of $1.3 billion[3]. The existing structure includes senior asset-level debt of $405 million which will remain in place at acquisition, reflecting a combined equity commitment of $895 million3. The acquisition was secured off-market and the $1.3 billion3 combined acquisition price is attributed as follows: - $875 million3 for a diversified stabilised portfolio of 49 modern prime industrial properties[4] leased to more than 54 tenants across circa 360,000 square metres, reflecting a 5.2% initial yield and 4.7% cap rate[5] - $225 million3 for circa 80 hectares of immediately developable land, of which 12 hectares is currently under Heads of Agreement and the remaining 68 hectares is approved under a current master plan - $200 million3 for an operating airport deriving income from long term ground leases, landing fees and infrastructure services, reflecting a circa 19x EBIT multiple Jandakot Airport is the major General Aviation Airport in Western Australia encompassing 620 hectares and located approximately 20km south of the Perth CBD and 25km south west of Perth airport. The location appeals to both first mile and last mile industrial customers due to its proximity to Freemantle Port, major road networks and nearby amenity. The stabilised portfolio is 100% occupied with a weighted average lease expiry of 7.6 years. The operating airport supports a long-term diverse and secure income stream, with a weighted average lease expiry of more than 14.6 years[6]. Initial settlement is expected to occur on 31 October 2021, with Dexus acquiring 100% of Jandakot City Holdings Pty Ltd (JCH)[7] and 49% of the company which owns the ground lease, Jandakot Airport Holdings (JAH)[8] for circa $825 million3,[9]. Dexus intends to bring in ADI for 33.3% shortly after initial settlement and additional third party equity capital partners into the Jandakot structure prior to settlement of the remaining 51% of JAH, which would result in Dexus's overall balance sheet interest in each of JCH and JAH reflecting an equal minority interest. Following the securing of equity commitments from additional third party capital partners and receipt of required regulatory approvals, settlement of the 51% remainder of JAH for $70 million is expected to occur in March 2022. Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW Dexus and ADI will jointly acquire a 42,500 square metre[10] prime logistics facility at Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW as a fund-through development for a combined total consideration of $125.4 million3 (50% Dexus, 50% ADI). The facility is located in an emerging strategic industrial precinct, underpinned by extensive public infrastructure upgrades, and provides new development product in the near term to meet significant latent demand from customers in Western Sydney. The facility is in close proximity to the development land recently acquired by Dexus at 113-153 Aldington Road, Kemps Creek where Dexus has secured a pre-commitment with McPhee Distribution services for a 72,000 square metre logistics facility. Progressive land and development payments will be made from July 2022 until expected practical completion in May 2023, attracting a 4.25% coupon from the vendor/developer throughout the build period. 2 Maker Place, Truganina, VIC ADI will acquire 100% of 2 Maker Place, Truganina in Victoria for $69.0 million3. In August 2021, Dexus exchanged on the property with the ability to nominate an alternate purchaser within the Dexus group. The property will now settle with ADI nominated as the purchaser. The circa 30,000 square metre property is 100% leased to Australia Post with 4.5 years remaining on the initial term, with a further five year extension option. The 66,590 square metre site has further development potential across 16,740 square metres of land which could accommodate an additional 11,537 square metres of warehousing. Overall Impact to Dexus The combined transactions will be accretive to Dexus's Adjusted Funds From Operations per security for FY22. Dexus will update the market regarding guidance at the HY22 result in February 2022. Dexus will fund its share of the combined transactions through debt facilities, with gearing expected to initially increase by circa 3.3 percentage points[11] before reducing post the introduction of additional third party equity capital partners into the Jandakot structure. Authorised by Brett Cameron, General Counsel and Company Secretary of Dexus Funds Management Limited Images of Jandakot Airport can be downloaded here For further information please contact: Investors Rowena Causley Senior Manager, Investor Relations +61 2 9017 1390 +61 416 122 383 rowena.causley@dexus.com Media Louise Murray Senior Manager, Corporate Communications +61 2 9017 1446 +61 403 260 754 louise.murray@dexus.com [1] Includes the fund-through cost of Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek and excludes forecast future development spend. [2] Dexus will initially acquire 100% of Jandakot City Holdings Pty Ltd (JCH) and 49% of Jandakot Airport Holdings (JAH). Dexus intends to bring in ADI for 33.3% shortly after initial settlement, and additional third-party capital partners into the Jandakot structure prior to settlement of the 51% remainder of JAH, which would result in Dexus's overall balance sheet interest in each of JCH and JAH reflecting an equal minority interest. [3] Before acquisition costs. [4] Excludes three industrial development assets currently under Heads Of Agreement. [5] Reflects leasehold cap rate, with 4.5% core cap rate. [6] Including related JCH ground lease party lease arrangements WALE is 20.1 years. [7] JCH derives its revenue from rent from 49 high quality customers with strong tenant covenants including K-Mart, Amart, Reece, Baker Hughes, Tradelink, WA Government, Schenck, and Yokohama. [8] JAH's income is attributed to ground rent from JCH, infrastructure services, apron licences and airside parking from more than 100 tenants, predominantly associated with the aeronautical industry and private individuals. [9] Comprised of $757 million for JCH plus an initial $68 million for JAH. [10] Subject to Council approval. [11] Gearing impact calculated post ADI coming into the Jandakot structure shortly after initial settlement. Information and Explanation of the Issuer to this News: About Dexus Dexus (ASX: DXS) is one of Australia's leading fully integrated real estate groups, managing a high-quality Australian property portfolio valued at $42.5 billion. We believe that the strength and quality of our relationships will always be central to our success and are deeply committed to working with our customers to provide spaces that engage and inspire. We invest only in Australia, and directly own $17.5 billion of office, industrial and healthcare properties, and investments. We manage a further $25.0 billion of office, retail, industrial and healthcare properties for third party clients. The group's $14.6 billion development pipeline provides the opportunity to grow both portfolios and enhance future returns. Sustainability is integrated across our business, and our sustainability approach is the lens we use to manage emerging ESG risks and opportunities for all our stakeholders. Dexus is a Top 50 entity by market capitalisation listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and is supported by more than 30,000 investors from 23 countries. With over 35 years of expertise in property investment, funds management, asset management and development, we have a proven track record in capital and risk management and delivering superior risk-adjusted returns for investors. www.dexus.com Dexus Funds Management Ltd ABN 24 060 920 783, AFSL 238163, as Responsible Entity for Dexus (ASX: DXS) Level 25, 264 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000 23-Sep-2021 CET/CEST The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de 13-18 ... MBABANE Invite or not, I will attend the Municipal Council of Mbabane AGM. The above statement was made by businessman Walter Bennett, who stated that he was aware that council did not regard him as a resident of Mbabane and that he did not have properties registered under his name. Bennett said he had the right to attend the meeting as a concerned ratepayer and member of the business community. He said since 1986, together with his employees, they voted under the council by virtue of being a business entity. Bennett stated that he spent a lot of money in rent, including rates he paid then. He said he would now engage the courts to clarify his position following that council continued to sideline him. According to Bennett, his interest was on the financials released by council, which had very minimal information. He stated that as ratepayers, they needed to know who authorised councillors to remove critical information from the financials. I have an interest in the meeting, which is why I am going to attend, he said. Clueless Bennett said it was clear that council was clueless on who had to attend the meeting. He said persons who were open to attend the meeting included street vendors and businesspeople. I am a member of the business community and have a right to attend the meeting, he said. The businessman stated that he would attend the meeting armed with financials from Mbombela Municipality which he wanted to show to the council. He said the issue of council financial statements was a thorn as they did not provide proper and quality information on their financial goings. They instead provide us with irrelevant information including how many stray dogs were shot and condoms distributed, he noted. Furthermore, he questioned the issue of council allowance, which was paid to the CEO as his contract stated that his salary included that by virtue of his employment, he would work odd hours, hence there was no need for him to be paid the allowance. These, he said, were the issues which were to be addressed during the meeting. Meanwhile, councils Public Information Officer (PIO) Lucky Tsabedze said attendance to the AGM was by invitation only. Tsabedze said representatives of all stakeholders had been invited. He said due to the COVID-19 regulations, numbers for physical attendance were less, but there were virtual zoom and Facebook platforms which were open for use. This is for the safety of everyone and for people like Bennett. Only invited people will be allowed into the venue because we will not let the meeting be a superspreader event and risk the lives of participants. Tsabedze said it was regrettable that there were those who wanted to breach COVID-19 regulations and council would not hesitate to involve law enforcement agents to observe the COVID-19 regulations. Challenge On the issue of the financials, Tsabedze said the opinion of the auditors was clear and if Bennett wanted to challenge them, he was free to engage as he so wished. He added that the comparison of financial statements from Mbombela Municipality and those produced by the Municipal Council of Mbabane served no purpose because the municipalities used totally different legislation. Local governments in Eswatini are governed by the Urban Government Act of 1969 and all we do as an organisation is informed by the Act. Tsabedze stated that their sister city, Mbombela, was governed by a totally different legislation that was uniquely applicable to that city and others in South Africa. He stated that council did what was required by the laws of the country and not what Bennett wished for. Tsabedze also noted that councils financials had been available across council web platforms for the past two weeks. Meanwhile, last years AGM was also marred by controversy from attendees who disrupted presentations by the councils administrators to voice their discontent. Other people were denied entry on grounds that they were not invited to the meeting. MBABANE Talk about a stellar performance by Royal Eswatini Sugar (RES) Corporation, whose profit after tax grew from E298.1 million to a whopping E508 million. The company reached such a milestone in history despite the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020. Even though this year the companys crop yields were lower than last year, it achieved good performance because of excellence in their factories and an increase in the sugar price, good rains and effective cost control. The final result is a record profit after tax, reads RES Corporations 2021 integrated annual report. Resilience RES Corporation Board of Directors Chairman Absalom Themba Dlamini said the company displayed its resilience during a year which had been extremely challenging on a number of strategic fronts. The chairman described such an achievement as the highest profit in the companys history, despite a low crop due to a long dry season and the outbreak of COVID-19, negatively affecting the yields. The company also had a revenue of E3.78 billion, which indicated an increase compared to the previous years E3.37 billion. Dlamini said they achieved a 12 per cent higher sugar price and a 32 per cent higher ethanol price compared to the previous year. Cash generation was strong and they were able to pay a good dividend. Response Firstly, the COVID-19 pandemic required a prompt, decisive and ongoing response to ensure the health and safety of our people, the continuity of our business and the provision of support to our social partners and the government, said Dlamini. The chairman said as the past year had been dominated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, RES Corporations Risk Committee worked with management to prioritise the well-being of employees and their families, and had taken steps to assist local communities. We have done everything possible to minimise the negative effects of the outbreak on employees and business operations, he said. Despite having spent E38 million on healthcare services, 678 employees tested positive and seven succumbed to the virus, during the year under review. We extend our deepest sympathies to their families, said the chairman. Dlamini said the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic would continue until Eswatini achieved herd immunity through vaccination in the country and neighbours. He said until then, as a company, they would continue to follow the guidance and regulations required to keep their people safe and healthy and to preserve the sustainability of their business. Meanwhile, RES Corporation further expressed concerns over the high number of sick leave days of 7 502 (E4.2m) by 1 776 employees, considering the number of wellness interventions initiated by the company, but was also exacerbated by COVID-19. We are pleased to have been able to fulfil investor expectations in terms of cash returns, with the payment of dividends totalling E254.5 cents per share during the year, said the chairman. Meanwhile, RES Corporation Managing Director (MD) Nick Jackson said COVID-19 presented both disadvantages and advantages. He said the companys employees and their families were affected in differing degrees, with 678 contracting the virus and 670 recovering. He said the pandemic made trading conditions extremely difficult for exports and for operations in relation to the movement of skilled personnel in and out of RES. One of the positive outcomes was that RES produced 46 000 litres of sanitiser (80 per cent alcohol content), which was used internally for all staff and operations and was also donated to communities and regional health facilities, said Jackson. Safety He said in response to COVID-19, the health and safety of people was paramount. Jackson said for that reason, they improved their own medical clinic, including piping in oxygen, purchasing ventilators and employing an additional doctor and five nurses. We also converted our country clubs into isolation facilities for employees who were unable to isolate at home. These amenities had individual rooms with en suite bathrooms, cooking facilities and full-time security, he said. Jackson also said they changed the way they operated to comply with COVID-19 regulations. He said as they transported all their workers on a daily basis, they reduced numbers per vehicle and purchased extra vehicles. Accommodation Jackson said social distancing in the housing they provided was also a challenge, but they refurbished unused accommodation to meet the requirement. He said they added more washing facilities, sanitising stations and provided thermometers throughout the operations. Jackson also said each employee was provided with face masks, which were now a regular stock item. The MD said those who were not required to be physically on site, moved to work from home and the company developed a procedure to guide remote workers. We embraced technology for meetings and engagements, he said. MBABANE A former employee of ESRIC has been arrested and slapped with 41 counts of fraud. Linda Sabelo Nzunza (41) of Sigangeni is alleged to have defrauded the Eswatini Royal Insurance Corporation (ESRIC) over E1.3 million. According to the charges, while he was still on employee of ESRIC, Nzunza allegedly misrepresented to the Life Claims Officer and Pensions Department at ESRIC, that certain people had passed away and their alleged relatives were entitled to claim and receive certain amounts as funeral benefits. It is alleged that in committing the offences, he purportedly used manufactured or forged documents like birth, marriage, deaths certificates and personal identity numbers (PINs) of different people whom he reportedly claimed were entitled to receive certain amounts as funeral benefits in respect of the deceased. Misrepresentation Through the alleged misrepresentation, ESRIC is said to have made payments ranging from E10 000 to E60 000 to the alleged beneficiaries. In one of the counts, it is alleged that he misrepresented to Irene Moketsi as the Life Claims Officer in the Group Life and Pensions Department at ESRIC that Gladys Dludlu had passed away and one Khosi Dlamini was entitled to claim and receive E60 000 as funeral benefits in respect of the deceased. Nzunza is said to have done this knowing very well that the death certificate of Phelelaphi Dludlu PIN 7308121100457 and marriage certificate number 54198 attached to the claim were false documents and that Khosi was not entitled to receive E60 000. The highest amount that the accused allegedly defrauded the corporation, according to the charge sheet, was a sum of E60 000. In another charge, it is alleged that on January 20, 2017, Nzunza unlawfully and with intent to defraud, misrepresented to Moeketsi as the Life Claims Officer in the Group Life and Pensions Department at ESRIC that Belina Dlamini had passed away and Nathi Dube was entitled to claim and receive E40 000 in terms of the policy of Samson. It alleged that when Nzunza forwarded the alleged forged documents to the life claims officer, he knew that Dube was not entitled to receive the E40 000 as funeral benefit and thus committed the crime of fraud. On July 7, 2017, Nzunza is alleged to have employed the same modus operadi to defraud ESRIC another sum of E40 000 through another beneficiary. The accused is alleged to have misrepresented to Moeketsi that Thembi Glory Dlamini had passed away and one Lungelo Dlamini was entitled to claim and receive E40 000 as funeral benefit in respect of Themba. Again, when the accused made the alleged misrepresentation, he knew that the documents he had attached to the claim had been manufactured and that the said Lungelo was not entitled to receive the sum of E40 000. In the charge sheet, it is further alleged that on November 7, 2017 Nzunza unlawfully and with intent to defraud misrepresented to Moketsi that Themba Henry Mndzebele passed away and Sifiso Mndzebele was entitled to claim and receive E50 000 as funeral benefit in respect of the deceaseds policy. Whereas the said accused person at the time he made the aforesaid misrepresentation well knew that the death certificate of Themba Henry Mndzebele and birth certificate of Sifiso attached on the claim were false documents and that Sifiso was not entitled to receive the sum of E50 000, reads part of the charge sheet. This is Nzunzas second arrest as he is currently out on bail for a fraud charge which he allegedly committed while he was still employed at ESRIC. In this matter, he was arrested with lawyer Sikhumbuzo Hlophe, who is also out on bail. Nzuza and Hlophe are facing 15 counts of fraud. Annuity When the duo allegedly committed this offence, Nzuza was employed at ESRIC in the Group Life and Pensions Department and was responsible for annuity business administration. According to the charges, the accused persons allegedly misrepresented to the Manager in the Group Life and Pensions Department at ESRIC, Queen Maud Maziya, that Eliz Corporate Consultants had brokered and brought annuitants for a particular capital amount and, therefore, the company was entitled to be paid commission. An annuity is a fixed sum of money that is paid to someone (annuitant) each year, typically for the rest of their life. It is a form of insurance or investment entitling the annuitant or investor to a series of annual sums of money. The amounts claimed as commission ranged from E5 036.22 and E123 403.84. The total amount that was allegedly claimed by Eliz Corporate Consultants was E532 178.58. Hlophe is alleged to have colluded with Nzuza during the commission of the offences. SIDZAKENI Police are working tirelessly, due to the current political unrest which has seen government buildings being burnt. As a result, they are in the process of finding and putting behind bars the culprits behind the damage to the national property. This was said by National Commissioner of Police (NATCOM) William Tsitsibala Dlamini during the presentation of a house by the Royal Eswatini Police Service to Gogo Sithole at Sidzakeni yesterday. The presentation ceremony was attended by traditional authorities of the area, community members, police officers, as well as donors who contributed towards the construction of Gogo Sitholes house. Vandalism The NATCOM said the police service was presently experiencing sporadic class boycotts and vandalism in a number of schools around the country as well as disturbances from undesirable elements disrupting the learning process in schools where peaceful learning was taking place. Kuhlupheka kwetfu singemaSwati namuhla kuhlupheka kwelive. Singemaphoyisa siyagijima, sihlushwa yindzaba leyinhlupheko- kusha tinkhundla netakhiwo tahulumende, he said. Dlamini said he had noted how pupils defied rules and disturbed the learning process by rioting. He highlighted that other pupils were not going to take their practical examinations because they were left with no structures to learn from. He said this was not ideal and urged emaSwati to revert to respect. Dlamini stated that if there were any grievances, dialogue should be used. We do not sleep a wink, searching for the culprits. It is our prayer that they end up in jail, he said. Dlamini further urged communities, parents and leadership structures to play a leading role in protecting and preserving the ideal learning environment for the benefit of the future generation. Further, the NATCOM appealed to society to desist from the despicable tendency and practice of burning and vandalising government structures, including tinkhundla centres and school buildings. He said such acts of subversion were condemned in the strongest possible terms. Dlamini elaborated that it was against this background that the police service appealed to the peace-loving citizens of the country to assist them with information that would lead to the arrest and subsequent prosecution of the perpetrators of the acts of sabotage. The NATCOM mentioned that there was a cash reward for such information that would be proffered to the police. He said the police were already getting information from emaSwati on those who were behind the burning and damage to government structures. Meanwhile, he pointed out that seeing minors on various social media platforms communicating disparaging comments about the nation was a clear indication that they were being used by their parents. Dlamini said children were even making utterances about people they did not know because their parents (allegedly) instructed them to do so. He said it was uncalled for and criminal. NHLANGANO Missing classes for a long period of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic seems not to have propelled some pupils to make up for the lost time. This is because in just one day, 10 schools, mainly in the Shiselweni and Lubombo regions, engaged in protests, with the main agenda being the call for the release of incarcerated Members of Parliament (MPs), Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza of Hosea and Mthandeni Dube of Ngwempisi. In the Shiselweni Region, classes were disturbed yesterday in eight schools as the pupils engaged in protests. It was established that the protests started during morning assembly at Hosea High School. The pupils were told to sing a song but instead, they started blowing whistles and sang political songs. It was said that the teachers tried to bring them to order but they ended up retreating to the staff room as the pupils became violent towards them. While this drama unfolded, Hosea Primary pupils were watching just before their assembly time. Refused Soon after their morning assembly ended, the primary school pupils refused to go to their classrooms as some started banging desks and others threw stones on the roof of the school. They then joined the high school group and headed towards Ngozi High School. It was established that by the time they got there, the pupils from Ngozi had also started protesting and they headed towards Jericho Primary and High schools. As they were making their way to Jericho, police are said to have tried to disperse them with tear gas. Worth noting is that there were also Grade I pupils who were running along the sides as the pupils were protesting. According to a witness, it is said that some of the pupils had to be attended to and were given water as they were having difficulties breathing due to the tear gas. It is said that both Jericho Primary and High school pupils were also protesting and they met their colleagues from the other schools along the way and formed a huge group. The five schools were also joined by Ngololweni High School, making a total of six schools. It was established, however, that Ngololweni pupils had other grievances, which included that they were disturbed by livestock grazing in the schools premises while learning because it was not fenced. They further said they wanted Wi-Fi connection, they did not want to find teachers at the library and at the computer lab. Other grievances were that they did not want to eat beans that did not have vegetables and that they wanted Buhlalu Rice, not mshamndane. They further said they wanted new electrical plugs fitted as they suffered electric shocks when using the ones at the school currently. They also needed an explanation on where the chickens they were growing as part of their Agriculture project went to while alleging they were eaten by the teachers. The pupils said they wanted online learning and that they did not want to pay E50 registration fee each year as they were returning to the school. They said, they wanted all these grievances sorted out in two days. Meanwhile, Ngudzeni and Velebantfu High pupils were also separately protesting yesterday. Ngudzeni pupils were said to be protesting against a E30 fee that they were made to pay monthly for guards who guarded the school while Velebantfu pupils also wanted the pro-change MPs released. Yesterdays protest happened despite a meeting that was held at Hosea over the past weekend where the pupils were told to stop protesting and concentrate on their studies. They were told that they would only join the protests on weekends or when they had completed school. According to the pupils, they were protesting as per Siphofaneni MP Mduduzi Gawuzela Simelanes advice on Monday, during a family meeting on the Swaziland News online platform. They said as Simelane said in due time there would be a day in a week which would be solely for protesting. Protests Worth noting is that the protests happen at a time when the external examinations timetables have been released. Examinations will start as early as October 11, 2021, according to the timetables from the Examinations Council of Eswatini. The pupils, when asked if they would be ready to write their examinations, said they would not sit for examinations as long as the MPs were still in custody. When some of the head teachers were called for a comment, they said they were worried about losing the little time they had left as the pupils were protesting. Ngozi Primary Head teacher Daphne Xaba said yesterday when the pupils started protesting, she had to tell them to go inside her office and retrieve the MPs they were protesting for because the manner in which they acted, it was as if they were the ones keeping the MPs. It is frustrating, she said. Meanwhile, at Nkhanini High School, the pupils also embarked on a protest, calling for the release of the incarcerated MPs. According to one of the pupils who was called to shed light on what transpired during the protest, he claimed that Form I pupils were the ones who started the protest after complaining that they were attending classes on a daily basis due to a shortage of staff. The school is situated at Ncandweni community, which is under the Nkilongo Inkhundla. The pupil alleged that it was around 7:30am while they had assembled for their routine morning prayer when some pupils, the majority being in Form I, went to deliver firewood used for cooking at the school. He claimed that upon delivering the firewood, the pupils joined them at assembly, chanting political songs that resulted in the rest of the pupils joining in. The pupil claimed that the incident took place in the presence of the schools Head teacher, Khumbulani Ndwandwe, with another teacher. The pupil alleged that they then went out of the school gate to mobilise learners at their sister school, Nkhanini Primary, who also joined them. The learner claimed that they resorted to mobilising their counterparts at Big Bend High, which is situated 2.5km away. The pupil asserted that they were stopped by police at around 9am before reaching the school and were told to go to their respective homes. A white police vehicle with police officers armed with guns and tear gas canisters stopped us before reaching Big Bend High. They told us that what we are doing was wrong and we should go back to our respective homes. However, we continued with our journey while still singing. The police van sped off to our school. Another vehicle with police officers came and they fired tear gas canisters. We ran in different directions and some were taken by the police, alleged the pupil. Comment The schools Head teacher, Ndwandwe, could not be reached for comment as his mobile phone was switched off. Lubombo Regional Education Officer (REO) Richard Dlamini said Ndwandwe alerted him about the incident that unfolded at the school. Dlamini said police were called to calm the situation as the pupils had mobilised those in primary and were on their way to disturb lessons at Big Bend High when they (police) stopped them. We pray that the situation normalises. I first learnt about the matter through social media and I called the head teacher about it. I was told that the pupils wanted the release of the arrested MPs, the REO said. Major Australian group Sandfire has reached an agreement with Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Investment Company and global commodities trader Trafigura to acquire one its JV subsidiaries, Minas de Aguas Tenidas (Matsa) for 1.58 billion ($1.85 billion). The deal is expected to conclude in the first quarter of 2022. A leading Spanish mining company, Matsa is the only company among the top 30 in turnover in the province of Huelva located in the Sierra. Its activity has an annual economic impact of about 190 million in the province, including payments to suppliers and contractors, salaries, fees and taxes. It is the owner of the exploitation rights of the Aguas Tenidas, Magdalena and Sotiel underground mines, all of them in the province of Huelva. Currently, it generates about 4,000 jobs, between direct, indirect and induced. Its workforce is made up of about 750 people, with 90% permanent employment and an average age of around 42 years for men and 36.5 for women. Matsa CEO Audra Walsh said: "This is a historic moment for our company, which we welcome with joy and enthusiasm. This operation guarantees the continuity of our commitment to excellence and efficiency in all our processes, since we share with Sandfire the commitment to the highest standards of safety, responsibility and sustainability." Sandfire, he stated, was a dynamic, innovative company with a solid track record in underground base metal mining, and which is why it offers Matsa stability and certainty thanks to its knowledge and experience in the sector. In turn, Matsa represents a fundamental investment for the Australian company as it has global projects in the main areas of the world: Asia-Pacific, Europe, America, the Middle East and Africa and America. Located north of the Iberian Pyrite Belt, Matsa is one of the only two mining operations in the Huelva Province and one of the three copper mines currently operating in Spain. The Magdalena mine commenced production in late 2015. Mubadala, which has over $243 billion of assets under management, acquired its stake in Trafiguras flagship Matsa as part of a joint venture to invest in the base metals mining sector. Besides Matsa, Mubadala has investments in Canadian miner Equinox Gold and Sociedad Minera de Santander in Colombia. Dubai-based dnata has been named Ground Handler of the Year at the 2021 Air Cargo News Awards. The award, recognised as the preeminent accolade in the air cargo industry, was presented at a gala event in London. David Barker, dnatas Divisional Senior Vice President for Airport Operations, said: We are proud to be recognised for our quality and safe services for the 7th consecutive year. The pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for us and our partners but our teams hard work, resilience and commitment to service excellence paid off and resulted in outstanding achievements across our global network. I thank each of my colleagues for their dedication and extraordinary efforts. We continue to take an agile approach to be the best in everything we do. Over the past year, dnata has continued to adapt business and operations to the rapidly changing environment. The company implemented new operating procedures and introduced innovative products and services in response to new customer expectations and business opportunities, while keeping a laser focus on quality and safety. dnata continued to make strategic investments in its operations to further enhance its service offering. This included the opening of new, state-of-the-art cargo facilities in Manchester (UK) and Lahore (Pakistan), and additional cargo capacity and infrastructure in Sydney (Australia), Brussels (Belgium) and Toronto (Canada). In addition, dnata broke ground on the second phase of the dnata City East project at London Heathrow (UK). dnata also invested in innovative products, new technology and digitalisation, including hi-tech cool dollies in Australia and Singapore, UV cabin cleaning service in Switzerland, a baggage disinfection station in Singapore, just-in-time freight handling platform in UAE, thermal screening in the USA, as well as the network-wide rollout of a turnaround tool and IATAs innovative Dangerous Goods AutoCheck (DG Autocheck) solution. dnata also inked strategic partnerships to expand its reach. In Italy dnatas subsidiary, Airport Handling SpA, partnered with Beta Trans to provide a full range of cargo services to customers at Milan Malpensa Airport. dnata also entered the Indonesian aviation market through a partnership with PT UNEX Rajawali Indonesia (UNEX) where both companies will make joint investments in facilities, equipment and training. dnatas quality of service and high safety standards helped it win or retain over 100 contracts with key accounts across its network. dnata also achieved prestigious industry certifications, including CEIV certification in Singapore, ISAGO registration in Canada, USA and Iraq and GDP certification in Pakistan, which demonstrate its ability to deliver world-class services across its global operations. As one of the worlds leading air services providers, dnata provides quality and reliable ground handling and cargo services at 90 airports in 14 countries. TradeArabia News Service Chennai, Sep 23 (UNI) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin today launched a scheme to provide one lakh agricultural power connections to farmers. Mr Stalin handed over orders in this regard to 25,000 farmers in the first phase at an event held in the city. In his address, he said several schemes have been announced after the DMK government assumed power in May and most of them have already been launched. Accusing the previous AIADMK regime of spoiling the health of TANGEDO leading to piling up of arrears, Mr Stalin said only 53 MW of additional power capacity were added during its last 10 year rule. During the last 10 years of AIADMK rule only 1,481 MW of additional power capacity was added in the state. Of this 1,428 MW capacity projects were planned during the 2006-11 DMK regime. "In net effect only 53 MW of additional power capacity was installed in the 10 years of AIADMK rule", he added. 'We have planned for several new schemes. Works to generate 17,980 MW power in the next ten years have already commenced. Officials have been directed to ensure the completion of these projects as per schedule', he added. Pointing out that preference will be given for solar power generation, Mr Stalin also announced setting up of a solar power park at Thiruvarur. UNI GV 1450 Author and Former UW Faculty Member Ann McCutchan to Speak on Campus Oct. 6 Ann McCutchan (Photo courtesy Susan Moldenhauer) Ann McCutchan, an author, lyricist, librettist and former professor at the University of Wyoming, will speak Wednesday, Oct. 6, at UW. Her talk, which is free and open to the public, will be at 4 p.m. in Room 506 of Coe Library. The event also will be livestreamed on Zoom. To attend the event via Zoom, register at www.uwyo.edu/libraries. The University Store will have copies of her newest book available for purchase before and after the talk. McCutchan is the author of six books of memoir, essay and biography. Her latest book is The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling. Rawlings, a leading 20th century writer, received a Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for The Yearling. The novel was made into a movie in 1946. Colette Bancroft, with the Tampa Bay Times, describes McCutchans portrayal of Rawlings life as an engaging, lively biography of an accomplished and complicated woman. McCutchan is a sensitive observer of Rawlings work and of her deeply unconventional life, says Dwight Garner, of The New York Times. McCutchan taught in UWs music and English departments from 2001-05, and she was the founding director of UWs MFA in Creative Writing Program. From 2005-2014, she taught creative writing at the University of North Texas, and she also served as editor-in-chief of the universitys American Literary Review. Additionally, she has written eight commissioned musical texts, from songs to operas. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Rockefeller Foundation, Cornell University, the MacDowell Colony and others. McCutchan recently moved back to Laramie, where she shares a home with her partner, Ken Gerow, a UW statistics professor, and their Australian shepherd, Cora. For more information about McCutchan and her works, visit her website at www.annmccutchan.com. For more information about McCutchans talk, call Rochelle Hayes at (307) 766-3641 or email mhayes6@uwyo.edu. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. BATON ROUGE, La. - When Louisianas first-ever legal medical marijuana products hit the shelves in 2019, the list of restrictions was long. To be eligible to use them, patients had to find one of about 60 licensed doctors statewide who would recommend the drug. They had to suffer from at least one of several specific medical conditions like cancer, intractable pain or AIDS. They could only buy the drug in tincture form. How times have changed. Come January, the states licensed marijuana growers and pharmacies will be able to sell the raw, smokable flower that has long been preferred by users. Any doctor licensed to practice in the state can now recommend marijuana for as many patients as they want, for any ailment they deem fit -- they need only contact the Board of Pharmacy to get Schedule 1 privileges added to their license. The number of doctors prescribing the drug has nearly quadrupled, from 59 in 2019 to 219 in the second quarter of this year. In short, getting legal marijuana in Louisiana has gotten far easier. And the states pot program, once considered an extreme outlier for its burdensome rules, is starting to resemble those of some of the 36 other states who have legalized the drug for medicinal use. I think a lot of people dont realize that this exists and that its so accessible now, said T.J. Woodard, the pharmacist in charge at Capitol Wellness Solutions, the marijuana pharmacy off Essen Lane in Baton Rouge. State Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, a pharmacist, is widely credited with navigating the tricky political waters in Baton Rouge to bring Louisianas medical marijuana program to life in 2015 and 2016. He says that in order to do so he had to craft a compromise. He envisioned a program that would allow doctors to decide when and how to prescribe marijuana, as is the case now. But to win over the powerful Louisiana Sheriffs Association and Louisiana District Attorneys Association, Mills had to agree to some onerous rules. I realized that we had such opposition between the sheriffs and the DAs and the different forces of law enforcement that I had to really, really crawl before we walked, and we had to prove the model worked, Mills said. That meant the Republican-led Legislature passed laws that only allowed certain non-smokable forms of the drug: only tinctures were permitted. To be allowed to recommend the drug to patients, a doctor needed to get a special permit from the state Board of Medical Examiners to recommend the drug to patients. Only 60 doctors would be allowed, and each one had a cap of 100 patients each. After Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the framework into law in 2016, marijuana was only to be allowed for people with cancer, HIV/AIDS, wasting syndrome, seizure disorders and spasticity, Crohns disease, muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis. But over the last couple of years, views on marijuana among the states conservative lawmakers have taken a striking turn. Sheriffs and district attorneys are largely neutral or supportive of medical marijuana. During this years regular legislative session, several Republican lawmakers who said they were once skeptical of the drug testified that they now can point to family members and friends who have seen their symptoms improve from using it. Separate from the medical marijuana program, the conservative Legislature agreed this year to decriminalize possession of up to a half-ounce of marijuana. That means people caught on the street with relatively small amounts of non-medical pot won't go to jail; instead they'll only get a fine. That represented a stark turnaround from the state's decades-long harsh stance on pot. Some of those same lawmakers also sponsored legislation to loosen the medical marijuana program. Since the laws setting the program in motion were passed in 2015 and 2016, the Legislature and Edwards have agreed to allow doctors to recommend the drug to any patient for any ailment for which they think marijuana could help. They allowed the marijuana pharmacies to sell metered-dose inhalers," or vapes. Rules saying doctors can only recommend the drug to a certain number of patients -- and that they had to try alternative methods first -- disappeared. So did caps on the amount of THC, the chemical that elicits a high, in each package. And in the most significant move to date, Edwards this year signed into law a bill by Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee, R-Houma, that will let pharmacies sell the smokable flower -- think joints -- to patients, starting in January. Sometimes when your phone doesnt ring with problems it means things are going well, Mills said. I cant remember the last time a patient or regulator called me with a problem. My phone used to ring off the wall with people who thought the program was too restrictive. Beefing up supply Now, perhaps the last vestige of Louisianas timid entrance into the medical marijuana world is the limited number of growers and pharmacies allowed to dispense the drug. Only two growers -- private firms hired by the agricultural centers of LSU and Southern University, respectively -- are licensed in the state, and only nine pharmacies may dispense the drug. By comparison, Arkansas, which has just over half the population of Louisiana, had 29 operating dispensaries and five growers last year, according to a state report. A new task force that met recently for the first time is looking at whether Louisiana should allow more people in on the growing and dispensing of marijuana. Rep. Joe Marino, a Gretna independent, is heading the committee after failing to get enough support for a bill to let another grower get a coveted license. But the effort to expand could face pushback from the companies and institutions who currently enjoy a monopoly on the industry. They say there is too much supply already. If we go in and make changes were going to upset some apple carts, Marino said in an interview. Thats not my concern. My concern is getting medicine to patients. LSUs growing partner recently took on several new investors and a management team of Arkansas marijuana growers. The company, previously known as GB Sciences before being bought out and renamed Wellcana, has rebranded again, to Good Day Farm Louisiana. Terrence Fitch, a former Coca-Cola executive who oversaw marijuana grows in Colorado, chairs the firm. Stephen LaFrance Jr., a former owner of a large private pharmacy chain and an Arkansas medical marijuana grower, and Peyton Bush, an executive at New Orleans-based Bollinger Enterprises, are among the board members. The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, which regulates marijuana growing, approved the ownership change earlier this month after a lengthy suitability investigation required when equity changes hands in the states marijuana industry. With the new investment, Good Day Farm raised $55 million, said John Davis, the firm's president. Ahead of the rollout of marijuana flower in January, the company is expanding its footprint: Good Day Farm bought a 225,000-square-foot facility in Ruston where it will grow and produce medical marijuana. Davis is the husband of Rep. Paula Davis, a Baton Rouge Republican who has become a leader in the state House. The company has been growing marijuana in a smaller facility in south Baton Rouge since 2018. Davis said the company is currently overproducing, and is packaging flower and freezing it until it can be legally sold in January. Were prepared to supply whatever the market brings, Davis said. Louisianas medical marijuana industry had a sluggish start. When LSU and GB Sciences finally began supplying pharmacies, in mid-2019, only 2,762 patients had signed up to buy it, according to records from the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy. In the second quarter of this year, 12,288 patients filled a marijuana recommendation, and 219 doctors were prescribing it. In all, 21,964 patients have gotten medical marijuana in Louisiana since the programs inception. There's reason to think those numbers could grow steeply. In Arkansas last year, about 43,000 people were approved for medical marijuana cards, which lets dispensaries sell flower. Records also show steep growth in the number of prescriptions, called recommendations to alleviate legal concerns among physicians. From the second quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2021, the number of prescriptions grew by 526%, while the number of patients grew by 293%, indicating an increase in people who refill their prescriptions often. Its the de-stigmatization of medical marijuana, said Ruston Henry, owner of the marijuana pharmacy in New Orleans, H&W Drug Store. Youve got people who are using this product and seeing significant results...The word is spreading out among patients and the doctors. Especially with this opioid crisis, medical marijuana is a viable alternative to opioids. Dr. Victor Chou, who runs a medical marijuana clinic in Baton Rouge, said the loosening of rules for doctors has made a big impact. He said by far, the majority of his patients get marijuana for chronic pain, followed by mental health conditions like anxiety, insomnia or post-traumatic stress disorder. Under previous regulations, those patients may have had to go to a psychiatrist first. Steve Gleason, the New Orleans Saints icon who has lived with ALS for the past decade, recently emerged as perhaps the most well-known public advocate for medical marijuana in Louisiana. Gleason told lawmakers on a new medical marijuana commission that in around 2013, his doctor-prescribed cocktail of pain and anxiety medication made him feel like a zombie, giving him severe side effects that caused him to spiral psychologically and physically. A friend who lived in a state where medical marijuana was legal offered him a tincture bottle. Gleason decided hed rather break the law than continue with that anguish," and he tried it. I felt healthy. I felt energized. I felt free, Gleason said. Free from the downward spiral my body and my mind had experienced with pain and anxiety pills. Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 08:54:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WELLINGTON, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- An outstanding group of people with extensive and wide-ranging governance and health experience have been appointed to lead the centralized Health New Zealand and Maori Health Authority, replacing the District Health Boards (DHBs) existing for about 20 years across the country. The government is building a truly national health system to provide consistent, high-quality health services right across the country. This is another step towards fixing the health system so it works for everyone, Health Minister Andrew Little announced on Thursday. "The future health system will mean New Zealanders will be able to have equitable access to healthcare to live longer, with the best possible quality of life, no matter who they are or where they live," Little said, describing it as "a long overdue transformation". Health New Zealand will bring together the country's 20 DHBs, a workforce of about 80,000, an annual operating budget of 20 billion NZ dollars (14 billion U.S. dollars) and an asset base of about 24 billion NZ dollars (16.78 billion U.S. dollars), he said. "This marks a significant milestone in progress towards a more equitable health system," Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare said in a statement. "The new Maori Health Authority will be a gamechanger for our people," Henare said, adding it will give Maori a strong voice in a new system focused on improving the disproportionate health outcomes that have long affected the community. Rob Campbell, an experienced professional director with extensive union, public and private sector governance experience, has been appointed as the Chair of Health New Zealand. With his extensive experience leading large organizations, these skills will be essential to lead Health New Zealand which will become the country's largest employer, Little said. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 16:26:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COLOMBO, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank has agreed to give a 100-million-U.S. dollar loan to support Sri Lanka's efforts to curb the spread of the COVID-19, local media reported here Thursday. The Sri Lankan government said the funding would be to procure 14 million doses of the Pfizer vaccines as well as for financing other costs pertaining to the vaccination program. Sri Lanka's Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal submitted by Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella to this effect, the government information department said in a statement. A mass-scale vaccination program is currently underway in the country with over 51 percent of the population vaccinated to date. The Health Ministry said the leading vaccine being administered across the nation was the Sinopharm vaccine with 11,182,365 people receiving the first dose and 9,102,271 receiving the second dose, till Wednesday. Sri Lanka has recorded an overall COVID-19 patient count of 508,672 and 12,376 deaths from the virus. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 16:43:07|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MANILA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 17,411 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,434,753. The DOH also reported that 177 more people died from COVID-19 complications, pushing the country's death toll to 37,405. The Philippines has been reporting below 20,000 daily cases since Sept. 19. On Sept. 11, the DOH reported its highest ever daily tally with 26,303 cases. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to help augment the medical staff of hospitals in Metro Manila that are "filled to the brim" with COVID-19 patients. In a pre-recorded public address aired late Wednesday night, Duterte said he ordered the medical corps of the AFP and the PNP to be "on deck." Duterte noted that frontline health workers in some public and private hospitals are sickened by COVID-19 and unable to work. "Our government workers are being impaired. Our healthcare workers are getting sick, our hospitals are being filled to the brim, and more of our people are getting sick and dying from COVID-19," Duterte said. "Many of our public and private hospitals are already running at full capacity. Their health workers are quarantined, so they can not accept COVID-19 admissions anymore," he added. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana reported to Duterte that the AFP surgeon general has already coordinated with some hospitals regarding the deployment of nurses. He added that the military is gathering more medical personnel from the provinces. Hospitals in Metro Manila and its adjacent areas are short-staffed as the country battles a third COVID-19 surge, forcing some hospitals to turn away severely ill coronavirus patients. The Philippines, which has around 110 million population, has tested more than 19 million people since the outbreak in January 2020. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 17:54:19|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COLOMBO, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Hambantota International Port (HIP) has entered into a memorandum of understanding with bus manufacturer Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry Co., Ltd. in China's Fujian Province, HIP said in a statement here on Thursday. The MOU was signed at the King Long Motor Group offices in Fujian last week and was attended by representatives from the Hambantota International Ports Group (HIPG) and Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China Palitha Kohona. Ambassador Kohona said "Sri Lanka welcomes Chinese high-end manufacturing facilities setting up in Sri Lanka and commends King Long for choosing the Hambantota International Port Group's Industrial Park to expand its regional footprint." HIPG CEO Johnson Liu said "We believe there is a great synergy to be achieved between China and Sri Lanka trade. The Hambantota Industrial Park is being promoted globally and it is our goal to have a vibrant international investor community operating within the zone." King Long Motor Group Vice President Zhang Bin said "With the Hambantota Port being so strategically located, we would be able to reach newer markets in South East Asia." Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 18:42:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHONGQING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A cargo train departing from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi arrived in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Thursday. It marks the launch of a new cross-border railway service between China and Vietnam. The train, carrying machinery equipment, clothing, and other goods worth about 1.62 million U.S. dollars, traveled for eight days, said the New Land-Sea Corridor Operation Co., Ltd. The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor is a trade and logistics passage jointly built by Singapore and provincial-level regions of western China. Chongqing Municipality is the center of operation for the corridor. Li Na, head of the company's Eurasian logistics, said the cross-border railway trains have the advantages of punctuality and cheapness and will directly connect with China-Europe freight train services after arriving in Chongqing. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 18:54:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TASHKENT, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Uzbek law enforcement bodies have detained 27 people suspected of extremist activity in three districts of the Tashkent region, the regional police department said in a report Thursday. Investigations were underway to give a legal assessment of the actions of the detainees, the police said. Earlier this month, the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs reported the arrest of dozens of people joining the banned religious extremist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the same region. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:10:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COLOMBO, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan authorities on Thursday unveiled a PCR testing laboratory in the country's main Bandaranaike International Airport which will enable travelers to undergo a PCR test at the airport upon arrival and have their results within three hours. Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga said at least 1,000 tourists arrive in Sri Lanka daily, and each tourist will be charged 40 U.S. dollars by the Tourism Promotions Authority to direct them to the PCR tests at the airport. Results can be obtained within three hours. According to health officials, all those arriving in Sri Lanka are required to undergo a PCR test upon arrival at the airport and can enter the country only if the results are negative. The minister said this laboratory will be operated under the guidance and regulation of the Health Ministry using technology that is in line with international standards. The Tourism Ministry in collaboration with the Health Ministry said this facility would now end the mandatory one-day hotel quarantine which is required for all arrivals. Since re-opening the borders on Jan. 21 this year, Sri Lanka had recorded 24,337 tourist arrivals in the first eight months of this year. According to official figures, tourist arrivals in August increased by 107 percent to 5,040 from July, despite the ongoing third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:12:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close YEREVAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Armenia on Thursday reported 939 new COVID-19 cases, taking the national total to 255,648, according to the Ministry of Healthcare. Data from the ministry showed that 592 more patients have recovered in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 237,855. Meanwhile, 19 people died in the last 24 hours, raising the death toll to 5,200. As of Thursday, Armenia has administered a total of 377,405 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, minister Anahit Avanesyan said, adding that more than 133,000 Armenians have already received two shots. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 20:44:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MANILA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Australia's move to establish an enhanced trilateral security partnership with the United States and Britain undermines the region's goal of maintaining a nuclear-free zone, an analyst has said. The new partnership, also known as AUKUS, "is creating security anxieties" in the Asia and Pacific region and "putting many countries like the Philippines in guessing game scenarios," said Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, told Xinhua in a recent interview. "It's a serious concern for Southeast Asian countries because the plan of these three powers will run counter to the two major principles enshrined in various ASEAN declarations," Banlaoi said. He referred to the documents of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality signed in 1971 and the Southeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in 1995, saying the two major declarations will be affected by the new security arrangement. Banlaoi warned that Washington and London's decision to help Australia build nuclear submarine capabilities could "intensify major power competition" in the region. Aside from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Banlaoi said Australia also faces a problem with its immediate neighbor New Zealand, because of that country's "very strong position on nuclear weapons-free principle." "It's really problematic for Australia to enter into such kind of submarine development and at the same time adhering to the non-proliferation treaty," Banlaoi said, warning "Australia will be in a very odd, difficult position if it pursues (the plan)." "It will have strategic implications and economic effects," the analyst added. Banlaoi said Southeast Asia "will continue to reaffirm its long-standing position of making ASEAN a central figure in maintaining peace and stability in the region." "ASEAN countries want to be part of the mechanism to open dialogues to remove these security uncertainties," Banlaoi said, noting that Southeast Asian countries do not want the region to be the "central arena" and "playground" of competition between major powers. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-23 21:25:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KATHMANDU, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's airlines are resuming scheduled mountain flights over the Himalayas following a suspension that lasted more than four and a half months, targeting mainly Nepali and Indian tourists, industry representatives said Thursday. Buddha Air and Yeti Airlines, both prominent private airlines in Nepal, are planning regular mountain flights from the coming Saturday and Sunday respectively. "We conducted a chartered mountain flight for some Indian tourists last Saturday," Rupesh Joshi, marketing and sales director at Buddha Air, told Xinhua. "Starting from the coming Saturday, we shall conduct one flight a week in the Himalayan mountains for sightseeing." Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesperson for Yeti Airlines, said his company has been conducting chartered mountain flights for a month and is preparing to resume scheduled flights from Sunday. "Tickets have already been sold for Sunday's flight," he said, adding Yeti initially plans one flight per week. Mountain flights were halted along with the suspension of domestic flights on May 3 after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic struck Nepal in April. Domestic flights resumed on July 1, but the airlines did not restart mountain flights at that time. Mountain flights have remained a lucrative business for Nepal's airlines operating domestic flights during the travel season in normal times. The flights fly close to the Himalayan mountains from the west to the east, as Nepal has eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks in the world, including the highest Mt. Qomolangma (8848.86m) that straddles Nepal and China. Early this week, the Nepali government decided to reopen all land border points for movement of the Nepali people and foreigners who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. In the absence of foreign tourists, Buddha Air and Yeti Airlines are offering a respective discounted fare of 8,500 Nepali rupees (71.12 U.S. dollars) and 8,848 rupees (74.66 dollars) to attract Nepali and Indian tourists. Nepal's airlines has lost about 25 billion rupees (210.97 million dollars) in potential earnings due to flight restrictions enforced after the first and second waves of the coronavirus hit the country in early 2020 and last April, according to a recent report of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. Enditem Al Azhar on Tuesday 21/9/2021 mourned the death of former defense minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawy, who passed away earlier in the day. In a statement, Grand Imam of Al Azhar Sheikh Ahmed El Tayyeb said that the late defense minister passed away after a long trip of heroism and patriotism. He was a military hero who confronted the enemies of the homeland in a very critical time of the history of Egypt, added the statement. Sheikh Tayyeb expressed condolences to, the Egyptian people, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the family of the late field marshal and the men of the Egyptian army. Tunis/Tunisia A new support programme geared towards women entrepreneurs in export-oriented textile-home-design, agri-food and IT was launched by OCO Global- a leading integrated engineering consulting firm wotking with companies and governments- after the success of the first cohort in 2020. This programme is intended for women entrepreneurs in Sfax, Gabes, Gafsa, Medenine, Tozeur, Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia, and Kairouan, Tunis, Bizerte, Kef, and Jendouba, the Technical Centre of Textile (French: CETTEX) said Wednesday. The ultimate purpose is to help women entrepreneurs build skills and offer them tools to develop their businesses. Target recipients with successful projects which are operational for at least one year will be given the opportunity to participate in several interactive workshops. They need to be founders or co-founders of businesses with successful projects and have a good understanding of English. Three workshops will take place between October and December in each region via webinars. E-mentoring will follow. This programme, launched in collaboration with Next Women Tunisia, will be funded by the British Embassy in Tunis. Malawi's hands-on-the deck vice President, Saulos Chilima on Wednesday oozed confidence and shades of hope when he assured Malawians that the Chakwera led administration will deliver on its promises and that Covid-19 is no longer an excuse to get things done. The country's citizen number two emphasised that the Tonse Alliance government is on course to transform the country into a formidable economic sound nation as promised during the 2020 court sanctioned presidential elections. Said Chilima: "We will deliver on all our promises and Covid-19 is no longer an excuse for failing to give the people what we promised them. "President Chakwera and all of us will deliver to Malawians what they deserve. We are working very hard. Some of us must be given the benefit of the doubt that we know what are doing." The Vice President was speaking at the launch of 2020 Malawi Poverty Report presented by the National Statistical Office. The report is derived from a study by the National Statistical Office (NSO) done with support from the World Bank and it is expected to highlight strides made and challenges faced in fighting poverty in the country. The Vice President said much as the report connotes negativity, but the document was important to the country because it provides recommendations for a complementary two-track approach. "This two-track approach entails responding effectively to our urgent challenges - COVID 19 being one of them - in the short term, while continuing to focus on long-term developmental goals as outlined in the MW2063, the country's development blueprint," said Chilima. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Malawi Coronavirus By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. He explained that in the short term, most of what was promised by the Tonse Alliance Administration will be fulfilled in a phased manner and that eventually everything that was promised will be fulfilled. "I know, high poverty and unemployment levels are a concern and COVID 19 will no longer be an excuse. We will have to move on as a country regardless. "Therefore, give some of us the benefit of the doubt that we know what we are doing," Chilima said. Chilima said in the worst case scenario some promises could be modified to meet the reality on the international stage, but no single promise will be abandoned. This was perhaps a thin reference to the Affordable Input Program which has seen a bag of fertilizer being pegged at K7,500 this season from K4, 995 last growing year. Commentators have hailed government for maintaining the program despite a mounting opposition to the initiative, which many believe benefits the political elite more than the poor through corruption. Among others, the report shows that poverty levels have been worsening in the central region when compared to other regions of the country. The report also indicates that poverty levels are worsening in urban areas. During both the 2020 constitutional court summoned presidential elections, the Chakwera - Chilima campaign partnership hinged on the creation of one million jobs in one year, subsidised and cheap fertiliser, rule of law, security and economic growth, improved education and a zero tolerance against corruption among others. The Centre for Investigative Journalism-Malawi (CIJM) on Wednesday drilled journalists in investigative journalism skills at Ilala Crest Lodge in the city of Mzuzu. The training was made possible by the Africa-China Reporting Project (ACRP) hosted at the Journalism Department of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The project is aimed at improving the quality of reporting on Africa-China issues by providing facilitation and capacity building for journalists via reporting grants, workshops and other opportunities. ACRP facilitates journalists to investigate complex dynamics and uncover untold stories, with an emphasis on on-the-ground impact and perspectives to illustrate how the lives of people of Africa are changing amid the comprehensive phenomenon of Africa-China interactions. There is great need to expose and illustrate how Africa-China relations, activities and role payers are impacting the lives and futures of African people, communities and countries, and how African people and communities are shaping their own futures or being hindered or assisted in doing so. During the training, Dr Precious Madula and Mrs Elida Kamanga from Mzuzu University unearthed the relationship between Malawi and China with their challenges as well as opportunities. It was observed that China has of late become the largest trading partner on the continent of Africa and with its soft power policy which is communism in nature, it is providing loans to African countries with "no strings attached" but it is asking Africans to learn Chinese unlike the West who will keep on checking democratic issues and financial prudence to countries they offer loans. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Malawi Media By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Magistrate Godfrey Nyirenda from Mzuzu High Court presented on the essential law for journalists focussing on libel and defamation in Malawi before Executive Director for Centre for Investigative Journalism-Malawi (CIJM), Collins Mtika drilled the journalists on pitching guidelines and deliverables. Speaking to Nyasa Times about the training, Board Chairperson for CIJM, Dan Msowoya, said it was time for journalists to begin to look at issues pragmatically and more specifically. "There are certain issues that are hidden. This deliberate idea of looking at China-Africa relationships is particularly significant because Africa seems to have turned its attention more to China than anywhere else and therefore that should trigger curiosity among the media to find out why such is the case. "China was not an ally of Africa for a long time and why now? Will the relationship between China and Africa bring real joy to Africans or just superficial joy?" wondered Msowoya. CIJM Executive Director, Collins Mtika, said it was time for journalists to embark on developmental journalism where they are able to write feature stories, investigative stories and analytical stories. "We want to develop a cadre of journalists who can come up with news ideas, explore those ideas, investigate and write feature stories and documentaries about Africa-China relations but focussing on Malawi. The stories may go either way; positive or negative but it is the readers who should judge the relationship and not the journalist themselves," explained Mtika. The training drew journalists from Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu. Almost one year following the nationwide mayhem unleashed by the #Endsars protests, the Senate Joint Committee on National Security & Intelligence, Defence, Police Affairs and Judiciary & Legal Matters, Tuesday, visited Calabar to assess the level of damage to property in the state. Led by its Chairman, Senator Ibrahim Gobir, the Committee expressed shock and sadness at the level of destruction of both public and private properties in the state. The committee visited several places including the Tinapa Lake Resort, the Calabar International Convention Centre located at Summit Hills, the Calabar Garment Factory, Ayade Industrial Park, Federal Psychiatric Hospital and the World Health Organisation (WHO) office, amongst other. Speaking when the committee paid a visit on the state governor, Professor Ben Ayade shortly after inspecting the damaged properties, Senator Gobir said members of his committee were "saddened by the event and especially the mindless level of destruction visited on all the properties we saw." The committee chairman said the committee felt the need to visit the state and see things for themselves before concluding its report. "Immediately we landed, our first port of call was Tinapa and what we saw was unbelievable because we never expected that kind of destruction we saw in that place." Gobir recalled that he was "in Tinapa some years back and I know the kind of things you could find in Tinapa because what was there was second to none in this country, but unfortunately when we went there yesterday, the situation was so bad and the destruction was so much." Lamenting, the chairman said: "Sometimes we wonder why people should go to that extent. But because people are senseless they tend to sabotage or go on that kind of wanton destruction. In spite of the gloom, the Senator said it members could not help but notice the scale of industrialization undertaken by the governor. "Despite all these, we have seen the kind of development through industrialization under your watch and of course, we are not surprised because you are a man of intellectual capacity," Senator Gobir stated. Thanking the committee for its evaluation tour of the state, Governor Ayade, who described the attacks as willful, vicious and mindless, lamented that "for the little intellectual money we have struggled to be able to push in value, some people came in and destroyed everything. "We have people on video while destroying saying: 'Let's see how Cross River will be boasting about their Tinapa, let's see how they will be talking of this Industrial park'. Truly, the highest destruction in the whole country was in Cross River, as most of our assets including our piles and pylon factory which you could not go because it is in far away Akamkpa were destroyed. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Nigeria Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "It is the major factory that will build the sub-structure for the deep seaport. So there was somebody behind the strategic attack because even the looting they did was just too much. All the persons arrested in connection with the violence happen to be non-indigenes. When we did door to door search, the people in whom we found some of our looted assets were linked to a certain ethnic nationality. So, for us as a state, it is like we lost a whole generation." According to Ayade, "What happened in Cross River State during the Endsars was something I will say was not natural because when the protest started across the country, Calabar and indeed, Cross River was totally at peace. I therefore, took proactive steps by putting out a broadcast offering scholarships to all indigenes of the state in the Cross River State University of Technology, including announcing massive programs of incentives. I spoke to the youths, encouraged them to be cautious that Cross River State was the state with the least federal allocation. I told them that the destruction would hurt us as a state. "I was on TV and radio, I addressed them through these mediums, we had several meetings with the service commanders to forestall anything that could go wrong but we also saw on social media, people asking why was Cross River so peaceful while all our neighbouring states were burning? It was almost as if somebody was actually pushing an agenda about why should Calabar have peace? And so, if you check the systemic destruction you will know that it was orchestrated. In one of our security meetings we were told that there was a team of people who were going to come through the waters to come and attack us because they think it was an embarrassment that everywhere else was burning except Calabar." The Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation (MoCD), in collaboration with Huawei Technologies, Ghana, S.A. Limited, is introducing an ICT programme, "Tertiary Girls-in-ICT", to stimulate girls' interest in pursuing ICT related courses. The programme is targetting senior high schools students to prepare them to choose ICT related careers as they enter universities. The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, who spoke at a workshop to introduce the initiative, said the world had transitioned from manual systems to digital systems to enhance efficiency, transparency, accountability in the delivery of services. Therefore, she said there was a need for women to embrace modern technology use in business transactions to increase their chances of getting jobs. Mrs Owusu-Ekuful encouraged girls and young women to take up careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Innovation (STEMI) to make them marketable in ICT jobs. She disclosed that "Tertiary Girls-in-ICT" would be an annual programme to develop young women's skills in tertiary schools in ICT and urged participants to attach importance to the training so that they could make the best of the opportunity given them. "This workshop is one of the modules we are introducing to the Girls in ICT Initiative, and with the support of Huawei, it will become an annual programme," she added. On her part, the Deputy Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ms Ama Pomaa Boateng, reiterated the government's commitment to helping girls and young women in Ghana take up opportunities in the digital space. She said there was a huge gender gap in the ICT ecosystem and that the government was working hard to bridge the gap. "I am happy to say we are making a significant impact in the lives of Ghanaian girls and breaking the notion that ICT is a preserve for men", she added. Tunis/Tunisia "The number of COVID-19 vaccines administered in private pharmacies has reached 40,000, since the start of the vaccination campaign in these facilities on August 16, said president of the Tunisian Union of Private Pharmacies Naoufel Amira, pointing to a reluctance recorded among people aged 40 years and over. "Vaccine doses are administered in nearly 650 private pharmacies throughout the territory and targets the age group of 40 years and over, with the use of the AstraZeneca, Amira told TAP. He said that private pharmacies have been able to overcome all the difficulties associated with the evax platform, thanks to the efforts of all parties involved including the Ministry of Health and Communication Technologies. Tunis/Tunisia President of the Republic Kais Saied enacted Wednesday a decree on new exceptional measures. This includes the extension of the parliament's suspension and lifting of MPs' immunity. Likewise, the speaker of the parliament and its members will see their allowances and benefits suspended. Under the presidential decree, published Wednesday in the Official Gazette of the Tunisian Republic, the preamble to the Constitution and chapters 1 and 2 (the guiding principles and rights and freedoms) remain in force along with all constitutional provisions that do not run counter to these exceptional measures. The Provisional Authority for the Review of the Constitutionality of Draft Laws will be abolished. The President will be in charge of developing draft amendments in relation to political reforms, in collaboration with a committee that will be established by a presidential decree. By virtue of this presidential decree and with respect to the legislative power , the President will enact legislation in the shape of decrees following cabinet meretings. The President exercises the executive power with the help of a government led by a prime minister. Kais Saied announced last July 25 a host of exceptional measures under Article 80 of the Constitution. The latter stipulates that the President of the Republic can take necessary measures in the event of an imminent threat to national security and the country's independence which impedes the smooth running of the State machinery. Saied decided to freeze the parliament for 30 days, lift MPs' immunity and dismiss prime minister Hichem Mechichi. An extension of these measures was announced on August 23. WATER shortage in Monduli District, Arusha Region could be a thing of the past following a government's pledge to implement a major project in the area. Speaking at Makuyuni while gracing a pass out parade for 1198 young men and women who had completed a three-month military training at 839 KJ Makuyuni Camp on Tuesday, Monduli District Commissioner Frank Mwaisumbe said the project with a capacity of supplying 15 million liters a day in the district was in the offing, exuding confidence that it will address the serious shortage of water in the area. "We've liaised with the Ministry of Water and hopefully the said project will be up and running next year," he explained. His assurance comes following a request from the young men and women, who informed the District boss that they were forced to compete with wild animals in pursuit of the precious commodity. JKT Makuyuni is also a migratory corridor for wild animals traversing between Tarangire and Manyara National Parks. Briefing Mr Mwaisumbe earlier on, the camp's Commanding Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Denis Luanda said a total of 1,219 youth had been picked for the intensive rigorous training dubbed Samia Suluhu. At least 21 young men and women dropped out along the way for different reasons, according to Lieutenant Colonel Luanda. On his part, Colonel Gerald Amos Mollo, who represented JKT's Head of Defence and Training at the event, commended the young men and women for making it to the end of the rigorous training. He singled out valor and sheer determination as key to their completion, urging them to become patriotic and law abiding citizens. "You were normally exposed to intense training but you still pushed on, this is a true spirit of JKT that requires you to serve your country diligently," he said. The government announced the re-introduction of compulsory national service in parliament in 2019, following calls for its revival as a tool for social cohesion. The service, which involves one year of military training, was established in 1963 by the first president of post-colonial Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. It was suspended in 1994, due to a lack of funding. A team of sixteen health personnel including nurses and doctors have completed a training of trainers programme on Disaster and Pre-hospital Emergency Medicines in the Turkish city of Izmir. The objective of the training, according to the health authorities, was to equip Gambian medical professionals with knowledge to conduct step - down training for health workers and members of the security on disaster and pre-hospital emergency medicine, as well as train village health workers on basic life support. The Turkey trainees are expected to conduct all future training for pre-hospital management including the paramedics for the community ambulance services. "As part of the community ambulance service delivery, eleven ambulance stations will be built in the 11 areas most prone to road traffic accidents in the country. This will significantly reduce the reaction time to accidents," said Mr. Ousman Ceesay, Program Manager Primary Health Care at the Ministry of Health. Ceesay, who led the Gambian cohort to Turkey, said the team visited the state hospital, emergency call centre and the disaster training centre in Turkey. Readers could recall that President Adama Barrow on Monday 13th September 2021, inspected and handed over twenty (20) new ambulances to the Minister of Health, Dr. Amadou Lamin Samateh. The 20 ambulances were part of the 80 ambulances procured by the government in 2021 to strengthen the country's health system. Government officials said they are expecting another 25 in two weeks' time and all the 80 ambulances will be in the country by November 2021. Government's Covid-19 vaccination programme, apart from its health benefits, is also an economic recovery strategy that will jump-start the economy following the debilitating impact the pandemic, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube has revealed. The Treasury chief said the economy took a hammering in 2020, due to various restrictions by the Government to contain the deadly pandemic, which caused a dip in production in a number of key sectors of the economy. Minister Ncube said the Treasury was utilising the budget surplus of US$100 million from last year to procure vaccines to safeguard livelihoods, the basis upon which the Government would fully reopen the economy. Economic indicators for 2020 do not look good after most productive sectors registered recessions. The mining sector dipped by 9 percent, manufacturing recorded 3 percent decline whilst agriculture managed growth of just 4,2 percent, mainly affected by drought. Accommodation and food services, under which the hotel sector falls, registered the heaviest decline of minus 53,6 percent in 2020, but the sector is expected to recover by six percent this year. In his speech at the National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF) business meeting held at the ongoing Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) Minister Ncube said the Government would not rest until national herd immunity was achieved. "The vaccination programme is an economic recovery strategy; how do we (fully) open up the economy safely without vaccinating all of us? So far, over US$127,3 million has been spent on the procurement of 12,5 million vaccines and 15 million syringes from various countries. The target is to reach 60 percent herd immunity. "There is no doubt that the advent of Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated economic challenges around the world and for us as well, but we are holding strong, the pandemic has claimed lives but it has also affected our economy and this is something unprecedented, as Government we will continue to mobilise additional resources to ensure the targeted population is fully vaccinated," said Minister Ncube. He highlighted that the transport and distribution sector as well as the financial services sector, were some of the moderately affected sectors while the education sector was amongst the worst-hit sectors. According to Minister Ncube, the Government had spent more than $23,8 billion towards containment of the pandemic as at 20 August, 2021 in addition to resources spent on procuring vaccines, with much of the spending allotted towards construction of quarantine centres, Covid-19 allowances, transportation of vaccines, personal protective equipment, test kits and reagents. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Business Zimbabwe By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. Minister Ncube was upbeat about the economic recovery currently taking place where he indicated that the country was looking towards robust recovery led by agriculture, which is expected to expand by 34 percent in 2021 up from 4,2 percent recorded last year. The mining sector is anticipated to grow five percent from a nine percent decline recorded in 2020 whilst the manufacturing sector is expected to realise a recovery of up to seven percent growth from minus three percent in 2020. "Some silver lining coming out of the pandemic is what we see, we are holding up quite well and the economy is recovering mainly led by the agricultural sector," said Minister Ncube. The construction sector is anticipated to grow by 7,7 percent in 2021 owing to a boom in the sector lately evidenced mainly by high demand for cement from housing and private sector construction. The remaining housemates in the Big Brother Naija season 6 Shine Ya Eye edition were all in shock when Nini reappeared in the house after 24 hours. Nini sneaked back into the house in the wee hours of Thursday after executing a mission assigned by Big Brother. Biggie had asked her to leave the house on Tuesday and by Wednesday, he tasked the housemates to look for Nini. Upon seeing Nini, the housemates questioned her whereabouts but she told them she had been in the house. She lied that she went to the "Blue Room", one of the bedrooms in the house. She even started letting out some of the conversations she had heard from the other housemates in her 'absence'. This left all the housemates in shock, disbelief but most of them felt relieved that she was back. Nini had been in a secret room in the Big Brother house. She had access to the television and was able to monitor activities in the house, including the conversations the housemates had in her absence. THE Cash strapped Victoria Falls City Council has started summoning residents who owe the local authority huge sums of money for residential and commercial stands. Some beneficiaries have reportedly not paid anything for stands they were allocated two decades ago. After numerous attempts to recover its money, the council has now threatened to institute legal proceedings if defaulters fail to pay within 14 days. This follows a council resolution that defaulters should have their stands repossessed if they don't show commitment to pay up. Summons seen by this publication show that defaulters owe varying amounts. They were each given 124 days from day of service, most of them Tuesday, to clear the arrears or be handed to debt collectors. The council is owed more than US$20 million by residents and other ratepayers. "Reminder for outstanding land and related charges," read the summons signed by finance director Neville Ndlovu. "Our records show that you owe Victoria Falls Municipality the sum of $544-00 being outstanding land and related charges for the above mentioned address. We are therefore advising you to clear the stated amount within 14 days failure of which council will have no option but to start legal proceedings against you to recover the debt. We hope you will find the above well in order." It could not be established how many residents are affected. A majority of those served with summons are beneficiaries of the contentious BC847 scheme. The beneficiaries numbering about 400 once demonstrated against council a few years ago complaining about being charged for services that were not being rendered. They serviced roads and sewer on their own and many have built houses. The suburbs is not yet connected to electricity. Victoria Falls council has been at loggerheads with residents who feel they are being short-changed as they are allegedly overcharged yet service remains below quality. Early this year they objected to the council's annual budget and forced for its review downwards, a supplementary which is still with the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works pending approval. Walvis Bay The Walvis Bay municipal council will require at least N$250 million to develop Farm 37, an area identified four years ago to ease the housing challenges experience at the harbour town. Town councillor Olivia Andrews during a monthly meeting held on Tuesday night tabled a motion seeking financial assistance from government to implement flexible land tenure to develop the area that can yield 30 000 erven. The flexible land tenure system is an innovative concept to provide affordable security of tenure to inhabitants in informal settlements. The basic idea of the flexible land tenure system is to establish an interchangeable tenure registration system parallel and complementary to the current formal system of freehold tenure. According to Andrews, council has set aside N$38 million in its current budget towards the development of Farm 37. However, she said, a feasibility study showed that approximately N$250 million is needed to develop the new township. Farm 37 was identified in 2016 by the former council and the late Erongo governor, Cleophas Mutjavikua, as the solution to the housing shortage the town is facing. Last year, government also approved the settlement to relocate 800 residents as part of the decongestion programme due to Covid-19. "The objective of the motion is to seek financial assistance from government for the development of low and ultra low housing at farm 37 by means of implementing flexible land tenure. Walvis Bay is one of the towns with limited land available, and there is a need to restore our people's dignity by availing land and housing," she explained. Andrews further added informal settlements face a huge challenge of shack fires that have left people homeless. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Namibia By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. According to Andrews, Covid-19 also had extended repercussions on the community from job losses, resulting in homelessness at the town. "Land grabbing can also be avoided as well as backyard shacks. Housing and land is overall a concern for our town," she said. Thus, she said, the purpose of the motion is for government, through the ministry of urban and rural development, to assist financially towards the development of Farm 37 by implementing the flexible land tenure. "This request is in line with the Cabinet directive that addressed the development of Farm 37. Therefore, is it imperative that government speed up the process by budgeting sufficient funding for the development of Farm 37," the Independent Patriots for Change councillor appealed. Opposition Andrews' motion was, however, opposed by Swapo's Ndota Shozi, who requested the issue to be referred back to council for informal discussions. "The motion is referring to two separate issues: the flexible land tenure system and Farm 37. We, as council, need to interrogate ourselves to have a common position before we approach government," Shozi said. As a result, the motion was referred back to council for an informal discussion. Auditor General Junias Kandjeke has once again poured scorn on the books of the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund for the financial year ended March 2020, but the fund has refuted some of the concerns. NSFAF once again got an adverse audit opinion from the attorney general. An adverse opinion is a professional opinion made by an auditor indicating that a company's financial statements are misrepresented, misstated, and do not accurately reflect its financial performance and health. The auditor general highlighted an unexplained amount of about N$184 million in a report tabled in parliament last week. Kandjeke said N$164 905 459, from note 13 of the annual financial statement for cash generated from operations, differ from the amount in the cash flow statement of N$18 990 324. "The amount of N$164 905 459 is the total amount for cash and cash equivalent at year-end. This resulted in an unexplained difference of N$183 895 784," he explained. He further indicated the recoveries on loans amounting to N$3 627 619 are observed recorded as revenue straight from the bank statements which are not complying with IFRS 15 and the accrual basis of accounting. The auditor general further indicated that his observation shows that loans in the fund's financial statements were not treated according to paragraph 8.2 of its financial policy, which states that loans due for repayment are maintained in the books as matured study loans. "Funds disbursed as student loans without a suspension period (study duration) are recorded as loans in the accounting records of the fund as mature student loans when they become due for payment," stated Kandjeke. He, therefore, said the improper recording of student loans resulted in the absence of interest being charged on student loans due. The auditor general further stated that the reasonableness for the estimation of legal fees amounting to N$10 million could not be recalculated for accuracy. "The evidence provided was not sufficient to determine how the fund calculated the amount utilised of N$3.4 million and estimation of addition amounting to N$8.7 million," he emphasised. The report further shows that the student loans amounting to N$4 billion in 2019 were disclosed in the fund's annual financial statements, however, the amounts for student loans and impairment could not be verified since the fund could not provide a loan book for audit purposes. The auditors also pointed out the 23 875 students' fund payments made without invoices, as a concern. "It was observed that a total number of 23 875 payments were made for tuition and non-tuition of students studying at the IUM, NIMT, NUST and Unam amounting to N$358 million, however, no corresponding invoices for these payments could be found from the invoices provided. These students' payments could include valid payments which could not be accurately matched due to inadequate data quality," read the report. Another concern indicated was the payment of more than the awarded amounts, it is reported that 9 898 students were all paid more than the amounts stipulated in the fees schedule, the payments have amounted to N$123 million. "During the comparison of student fund payment made for tuition fees versus awards, it was observed that the fund made payments to 25 095 students studying at various institutions amounting to N$517 million, however, due to deficiencies in the current awards database, no matching records could be found," says the report. The report indicated that NSFAF processed payments to seven bank accounts of different embassies for purpose of student fund payment. But the fund gave no assurance that no payment was made through any of the seven accounts for the year under review. "However, when scrutinising the journals file, it was observed that a payment instruction amounting to 8 369 euros was sent to the bank in favour of the embassy in Cuba for stipends on 21 May 2021," said Kandjeke. He charged that the fund must evaluate the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statement including the disclosures and whether the financial statements represent the underlying transaction and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation. 'Not true' Meanwhile, NSFAF acting CEO Kennedy Kandume dismissed some of the concerns raised by the attorney general, saying payments without invoices were not true because all payments are done with invoices. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Books Namibia By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "This is not true but because the auditors have their deadlines, the invoices were submitted after the deadlines that is why the report stipulates that there were no invoices," he said. Kandume further explained during the period under review, the fund was converting a manual database to electronic and the process was incomplete during auditing. "We now have a loan book. By the time of auditing, the book was incomplete and the auditors are correct to opine that," he said. While on the notion that payments were made more than the awarded amount, Kandume said because of the policy of paying 100% tuition fees, the fund often have to pay more than the agreed amount as universities make changes to their tuition fees after NSFAF agreed with beneficiaries and the fund has to pay more based on the invoices received other than what is on the awards letter. "We had a very successful meeting with the auditors and we have discussed all those issues. It was a learning experience and we now know how to deal with the auditors on the way forward," he added. "Taylor sent Benjamin Yeaten to Ganta to put things under control... Yeaten's deputy was the first that stabbed Bockarie on the back. He escaped in a cocoa farm but was overpowered and beaten to death." - Witness X5 MONROVIA, Liberia - A witness testifying before a Finnish Court in the ongoing war crimes trial of Gibril Massaquoi has told judges that the former Sierra Leonean rebel leader Sam Bockarie was shot, stabbed and beaten to death by Benjamin Yeaten, then-Liberian President Charles Taylor's Director of Special Security Service(SSS) on Taylor's orders. The incident occurred in 2003 in a village in Nimba County, the witness said. The witness, codenamed "X5" to protect him from retaliation, said as soon as Taylor learned that Bockarie had intended to go back home to Sierra Leone, he ordered Yeaten to act. The UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone had begun investigations and Taylor believed that Bockarie might testify against him. Bockarie's death, the witness said, paved the way for Massaquoi, a fellow Sierra Leonean commander with the Revolutionary United Front who was stationed in neighboring Ivory Coast, to cross over to Liberia to help Taylor fight the LURD rebels. "Taylor sent Benjamin Yeaten to Ganta to put things under control," said X3. "When Yeaten and Bockarie met, he asked Bockarie to take a walk with him to brief him. On the walk Yeaten's deputy was the first that stabbed Bockarie on the back. He escaped in a cocoa farm but was overpowered and beaten to death." Samuel Sam Bockarie, widely known by his nom de guerre, 'General Mosquito', was a Sierra Leonean commander who served as a leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group that fought a failed 11-year war to overthrow the government of Sierra Leone and fought closely with President Taylor. Bockarie was infamous during the Sierra Leone civil war for brutal tactics, which included amputation, mutilation and rape. It was reported at the time that Bockarie, then a fugitive wanted by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, was offered sanctuary in Liberia by Charles Taylor. This is not the first time a witness has accused Taylor of giving the order to kill Bockarie. The government, at that time, said he was killed in a standoff with Taylor's forces by militia who wanted to turn him over to the Special Court. However, in his testimony before the Special Court in 2008, President Taylor's Vice President, the late Moses Blah, told judges Mr. Bockarie was killed by Yeaten on the orders of Taylor to "destroy evidence" of Taylor's secret support to the RUF. Taylor would later deny his former VP's accusation. Ironically, Bockarie's death was pivotal in Massaquoi's return to Liberia from neighboring Ivory Coast where he had linked up with Bockarie and fought in the Ivorian civil war. Massaquoi went on to give information about Taylor to investigators in Sierra Leone. While in the Ivory Coast, X5 said Bockarie and his men captured the town of Mahn, and seized weapons which they brought to Liberia and helped Taylor's forces recapture Ganta, a commercial hub in Nimba County, from LURD. Bockarie, the witness said, died shortly after the Ganta operation. X5 said he had earlier fought on the battlefront in Lofa County where he headed the 'Wild Geese,' a militia group that was supervised by Roland Duo, the commander of the Navy Division. While in Lofa, he said the RUF leaders including the late Foday Sankoh and Bockarie commanded their men and fought alongside Taylor's forces. He claimed that some of Taylor's generals in Lofa were Roland Duo, Jack-the-Rebel and Mark Guam. He said some of these men ate humans to instill fear in their enemies. "When the Marines get there, they also eat human beings," X5 told the four-judge panel in his second appearance. "It's no joke about that. That's fighting tactics. They killed, designed body and eat them. That's what make them fearful when they are really fighting." The court is in Liberia for the second time when it became clear that dozens of witnesses in the first hearing here in March were referring to battles that took place in 2003, outside the dates the indictment had originally listed for Massaquoi's alleged crimes. Massaquoi, 51, is standing trial in Finland where he was living under an immunity deal with the Special Court for Sierra Leone when he was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity during Liberia's civil war. The inconsistency of witness' statements has been a major problem for the defense and prosecution cases. And it continues. During Tuesday's hearing, Kaarle Gummerus, Massaquoi's defense lawyer spent nearly three hours grilling the witness, and pointing out inconsistencies in his testimony. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Liberia Conflict Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. The account of Massaquoi's return to Liberia from Ivory Coast is in contrast to his previous testimony on Monday when he said he brought in Massaquoi from Sierra Leone at Bo Waterside in Monrovia. He also claimed that while celebrating their victory against LURD in 2003, he and Massaquoi took several pictures that were damaged by the rain. On Monday, he said the pictures are available in Grand Gedeh County, and when given some time, he will go and get them. Earlier, the first witness, a Sierra Leonean, said he was brought to Liberia by a friend named Emory who asked for his help to drive his truck. It was in Liberia that he discovered that Emory was one of Massaquoi's soldiers. The witness said, although he did not come too close to Massaquoi because he was not a soldier, he saw him at few places including White Flower- Taylor's Monrovia residence and at Massaquoi's relative's house in Congo Town. The trial continues on Friday. This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. Walvis Bay Fisheries minister Derek Klazen has warned Walvis Bay residents against what he calls an entitlement syndrome. Klazen, who was addressing new entrants to the fishing industry, says he has noted with concern that some residents feel that they are more entitled than others as some of their parents worked in the industry. "I was even cornered this morning and told that Coloured people started the fishing industry, saying that their fathers came from South Africa and started the fishing industry but today our families have nothing. I am also Coloured but we must understand the resource is a national resource," Klazen said. The minister, who hails from Walvis Bay, added he understands Walvis Bay should also benefit from the resources, but so should people from the other regions too. "This is not for Walvis Bay people alone. You cannot say only Khomas benefited while you didn't even apply," he said. At least 5 176 applicants applied for fishing rights during 2018, while 862 applicants were disqualified and 85 existing players in the industry had their rights renewed. A total of 213 new applicants were successful, translating to 298 successful applicants. Khomas region topped the list of beneficiaries with 11% followed by Erongo with 9.9%, Omusati (5.9%), Otjozondjupa (5.8%), Oshikoto (5.5%), Ohangwena (5.1%), Hardap (4.4%), //Kharas (4.4%), Kunene (3.6%), Oshana (3.2%), Omaheke (1.4%), Zambezi (1.3%), Kavango East (0.6%) and Kavango West with 0.4%. The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has decried moves by some countries in Europe in not recognising Covishield, the Indian version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, being used by many African countries. According to President Akufo-Addo, "one unfortunate development appears to be the recent measures on entry into some countries in Europe, which suggest that Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, is not recognised by some countries in Europe." The President made this known on Wednesday, 22nd September 2021, when he took his turn to speak at the 76th United Nations General Assembly, currently ongoing in New York, in the United States of America. His comments come on the heels of the "simplified travel measures" announcement by recently by the UK Government, and, indeed, by some countries in Europe, which comes into effect from 4th October. The measures specify that persons who have received double-dose vaccines such as Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna or the single shot Janssen vaccine "under an approved vaccination program in the UK, Europe, US or UK vaccine programme overseas" will be considered fully vaccinated. The rules also consider persons who have received jabs under public health bodies in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan as fully vaccinated. "What is intriguing is the fact that this vaccine was donated to African countries through the COVAX facility. The use of vaccines as a tool for immigration control will be a truly retrogressive step," the President noted. Ghana, President Akufo-Addo said, has so far received five million doses, which have been administered to frontline health workers and those classified as being most at risk. "Five million is not a figure to be sneered at, particularly when we consider the situation in many other African countries. We are grateful that our efforts at the management of the pandemic and vaccine distribution have been recognised, and we have received these amounts so far. We are still hoping to vaccinate twenty million of our people by the end of the year," he said. President Akufo-Addo continued, "Ghana agrees with the call of the Rome Declaration of Global Health for voluntary licensing and technology transfers to boost vaccine production. The Africa Union is working with WHO, WTO and other global partners to expand its vaccine manufacturing and deployment." He told the Assembly that Ghana recognised that vaccination is the way to protect populations, and revitalise societies. In the case of Africa, the President stated that vaccinating seventy percent (70%) of the population in the shortest possible time, as is being done elsewhere in the world, means some nine hundred million Africans have to be vaccinated. He stressed that the Afreximbank's structuring of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce's two-billion-dollar acquisition of four hundred million Johnson & Johnson vaccines is part of the historic African Union's COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy. "It is a critical milestone in our collective fight against the pandemic, in a continent suffering the worst brunt of vaccine nationalism. The Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce vaccine programme, partly manufactured in South Africa, is the single largest and most far-reaching trade transaction since the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area in January this year," he added. President Akufo-Addo described it as an "eloquent testimony" to the benefits of domestic production and pooled procurement in Africa, as envisioned by the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. COVID-19 has been damaging Recounting his statement at the 2017 UN General Assembly, where he indicated that he wanted to build an economy that was not dependent on charity and handouts, President indicated that the significant progress that had been made by Ghana between 2017 to 2020, where an average growth rate of 7% was recorded, had been eroded. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Ghana Legal Affairs Coronavirus By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. "In 2020, when the global economy and sub-Saharan Africa's contracted by 3.5% and 2.1%, respectively, Ghana was one of the few countries that produced a positive growth rate. This is a testament to our determination to build a Ghana Beyond Aid," he said. However, he stated that many economies in Africa are in recession, as the virus's impact on economies and livelihoods has been devastating. "The latest numbers from the African Development Bank indicate that African economies, which contracted by 2.1% in 2020, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. More than thirty million Africans fell into extreme poverty in 2020, and nearly forty million could do so in 2021," he said. The social impact of the pandemic, President Akufo-Addo reiterated, "has been devastating; over one hundred and three million African jobs have been lost. Women, who account for forty percent (40%) of total employment, have been most hard hit." Independent Patriots for Change member and teacher Abed 'Bishop' Hishoono says he regrets publishing a video containing falsehoods against First Lady Monica Geingos and her involvement in a local airline. "I regret publishing the video with little and not accurate information and that is why I issued a public apology to Mrs Geingos and her entire family and all those that are affected by what I said," said Hishoono in a witness statement recently filed in the High Court. Hishoono is facing a N$350 000 defamation lawsuit from Geingos after a video in which he allegedly made "false suggestions, innuendos, insinuations [or] statements" about Geingos. In the video, Hishoono alleges the First Lady corruptly influenced the planned liquidation of Air Namibia to protect and advance her own economic interests as she is a shareholder of Westair Aviation and was instrumental in its establishment. Hishoono further alleges in the video, Geingos has a son with one 'Hatuikulipi' who is currently in prison. He went on to say Geingos' marriage to the head of state Hage Geingob was arranged by 'Hatuikulipi'. In his witness statement, Hishoono claims he mentioned something which has been a "national hearsay that the first lady has a child, if not children with James Hatuikulipi who is also a friend of her husband, the President of the Republic of Namibia, Hage Geingob". He said he has since apologised after realising that he had no knowledge of who fathered Geingos' children, as he has not seen the children's full birth certificates. In relation to Westair, Hishoono said he did not have the latest and accurate information, that Geingos no longer had interest in FlyWestair. He said he made the video in February after hearing about Air Namibia's liquidation and was wondering where the nation was headed. He said he has since issued a public apology in the same manner in which he made the allegations and has also deleted the initial video. In addition, he has also left all social media groups on which people kept circulating the video. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Namibia Governance Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. In the suit, Geingos argued Hishoono's remarks were false and defamatory and were intended to depict her as corrupt, greedy, selfish and as putting her own interest above the general interest of the Namibian people. She also said his remarks were intended to create an impression that she corruptly and inappropriately conspired with other people to achieve the collapse of Air Namibia and that she corruptly and inappropriately uses her influence to the disadvantage of the Namibian people. The sole purpose of Hishoono's alleged false allegations was to injure and harm her reputation and dignity for political reasons, Geingos claimed. The matter is currently before High Court Judge Orben Sibeya for a pre-trial hearing. Algiers Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aimene Benabderrahmane on Tuesday described as "practical" the Government Action Plan, being based on a "thorough diagnosis of the reality with a forward-looking approach to address major structural deficiencies due to many years of opacity." During the presentation of the Government Action Plan for implementation of the president of the Republic's programme before the members of the Council of the Nation (upper house of Parliament), Benabderrahmane said "the plan is the guideline for the government's actions." Benabderrahmane reiterated the commitment of the government to implement the plan "in a transparent and clear way," with a view to "addressing the major structural dysfunctions caused by years of opacity and mismanagement with all its implications, namely the squandering of the country's wealth and the systematic looting of its resources." See also: Government Action Plan lays foundations of new economic model independent of oil rent "While developing the plan, the government has taken into consideration the assessment of the achievements made as part of the implementation of programmes, the finalization of the remaining projects with the required corrections," the prime minister said. It also includes "new projects and activities, through which we will work to carry out the ambitious development programme adopted by the president of the Republic, and will continue the reforms initiated in various fields to build a new Algeria." See also: Government action plan to enable Algeria to arrive safe, sound The premier stressed the importance of "upholding the values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights," principles "guaranteed by the Constitution." ALGIERS-Algeria has decided to "immediately close" its airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircrafts as well as those with Moroccan registration numbers, as from Wednesday, following the meeting of the High Security Council chaired by the President of the Republic, Supreme Chief of the Armed Forces, Minister of National Defence, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. See also: President Tebboune chairs High Security Council meeting "The High Security Council has decided to immediately close Algeria's airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircraft as well as those bearing a Moroccan registration number, starting today," said the source. Two men, accused of stealing 453 pieces of unpolished diamonds from a vessel owned and operated by Debmarine Namibia, pleaded not guilty to all charges yesterday before Windhoek High Court Judge Christie Liebenberg. The suspects, Emmanuel Shikololo and Rodney Klim, who are both aged 48, are accused of stealing diamonds with a combined weight of 668.26 carats, valued at N$6.2 million from the diamond mining vessel Debmar Atlantic between September and November 2011. They are facing one count of theft of unpolished diamonds, alternatively possession of unpolished diamonds and one count of conspiracy to commit an offence. It is alleged that between September 2011 and 6 November 2011, at or near Oranjemund, the accused unlawfully and intentionally stole 453 pieces of unpolished diamonds - or that during the period in question, they were in the unlawful possession of the gemstones. The conspiracy charge allege they wrongfully and unlawfully conspired to aid or procure the commission of or to commit an offence. According to the summary of substantial facts in the indictment, Shikololo and Klim were employed at the vessel as plant hand and process controller, respectively. They initiated a plan, where they lobbied security officer Dawid Jarvis on the vessel to allow them to smuggle the diamonds they intended to steal, the indictment reads. It is further alleged that during October 2011, the accused arranged a trip to Cape Town for the security officer with them to meet the potential buyer of the stolen diamonds. Furthermore, the indictment states, the accused deliberately blocked the vacuum air transfer unit on the vessel, which resulted in the vacuum pressure to increase to above normal levels and warranted the manual intervention to empty the pipe. Shikololo then, under the guise of unblocking the airlifts, entered the recovery plant, where he picked up the diamonds. It is further said that on 6 November 2011, Shikololo called Jarvis to the forward stores, where he handed him a yellow bag containing the unpolished diamonds for him to smuggle them out of the vessel and deliver them to the buyer in Cape Town. However, immediately after the handover, Shikololo, who was under surveillance from security personnel, was apprehended. Yesterday Jarvis testified and told the court how he was approached by Shikololo. Close Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox Top Headlines Namibia Legal Affairs By submitting above, you agree to our privacy policy. Success! Almost finished... We need to confirm your email address. To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you. Error! Error! There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later. According to him, he was on a different shift, as Shikololo and the latter approached him to change shifts so they could be on the same shift. He further said Shikololo told him there is something on the ship that he wishes to remove. Jarvis further said he immediately informed his superiors at the company and it was agreed he would play along. He further said during subsequent conversations with Shikololo, he was informed Klim was also involved. He further told the court about two times when Klim would call him, telling him there was a problem with the airlifts and whether Shikololo could enter what he called the Red Area, which is where unpolished diamonds are found. During those times, he said, Shikololo would walk under an iron grid, where he could not follow him on the CCTV - and that after he was done, he could not find anything during a body search on Shikololo. The trial continues today. Shikololo and Klim are free on bail. They are represented by legal aid lawyers Meriam Kandoni and Loretha Muvangua, respectively. Ian Malumani is representing the State. The meeting, which was also attended by the Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations (UN), Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros, took place within the framework of the opening of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 76). Meanwhile, Ambassador Rodriguez Cuadros highlighted the talks being held with the Venezuelan Government to organize a voluntary return of Venezuelan citizens, in accordance with the human rights standards in this field. The migration of Venezuelan nationals has had a multidimensional impact on the region, particularly on Peru, the second largest destination for Venezuelan migrants and the largest recipient of asylum requests by Venezuelans worldwide. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this phenomenon is expected to be addressed in a three-dimensional manner: with the regularization of Venezuelan citizens through the corresponding administrative processes; ensuring their economic integration; and guaranteeing their citizen organization, including full awareness of their rights and responsibilities as citizens. In this context, the UNHCR was proposed to lead an initiative in conjunction with Peru and Colombia to allow articulating actions in order to address the problems derived from migration in South America, including migratory flows from Venezuela. For his part, Grandi thanked Peru for being the second country in the region to have received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and recognized the praiseworthy efforts of the Peruvian State to address the needs of migrants and refugees, as well as the efforts to promote their integration into Peruvian society. (END) NDP/RMB/MVB Loading... In a working meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi Foreign Affairs Minister Oscar Maurtua affirmed that Peru has a foreign policy that respects human rights, humanitarian law, and refugees.Publicado: 23/9/2021 #DominaLaOla | La variante delta esta incrementandose y ha pasado a ser la variante predominante con 54% (534) de los casos de #COVID19, afirmo el ministro Hernando Cevallos, desde Iquitos, Loreto donde llego para supervisar la jornada de vacunacion de comunidades indigenas. pic.twitter.com/4LUxqN0lTy Hoy inicia el 15. #GOREEJECUTIVO, un espacio de articulacion en el que ministros y ministras de Estado dialogan con los gobernadores regionales y sus equipos, logrando fortalecer el trabajo conjunto a favor del desarrollo de los departamentos. https://t.co/uBKXOvl1a4 pic.twitter.com/7pckir5Ovw The expert explained that, to date, Metropolitan Lima and Callao mainly the latter have more than a 70% prevalence of the Delta variant , which is characterized by its rapid transmission in people. "It is also present in Junin and Ica. Unfortunately, in recent weeks, an important source of infection has been identified in the north: in Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, and La Libertad, with a proportion of the circulating Delta variant at over 55%. In total, it is present in 22 out of the 25 regions across the country," Solari stated. According to the infectious disease specialist, at the epidemiological level, "this was a visible bad omen. Important third and fourth waves have been recorded in countries where Delta has been the predominant variant, depending on the country." Based on the evidence, she added, the Delta variant has caused not only infections but also deaths among unvaccinated people. Solari recalled that this is a much more contagious variant, that is to say, one person infected with the Delta variant can infect between 5 and 8 people, which is the highest number recorded so far. COVID-19 vaccine, top priority "We know that this variant can reduce effectiveness of most vaccines; therefore, we could get infected even if we were vaccinated. However, the good news is that the vaccines are highly effective in reducing severe disease and death," she explained. "We need to continue with the face masks and the measures we have always commented on," the expert remarked. (END) KGR/RRC/RMB/MVB Delta has become the predominant variant in Peru, displacing Lambda and Gamma, whose cases have reduced in the past weeks, according to Lely Solari , infectious disease specialist at the National Health Institute (INS) Published: 9/22/2021 The meeting, which was also attended by the Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations (UN), Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros, took place within the framework of the opening of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 76). Meanwhile, Ambassador Rodriguez Cuadros highlighted the talks being held with the Venezuelan Government to organize a voluntary return of Venezuelan citizens, in accordance with the human rights standards in this field. The migration of Venezuelan nationals has had a multidimensional impact on the region, particularly on Peru, the second largest destination for Venezuelan migrants and the largest recipient of asylum requests by Venezuelans worldwide. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this phenomenon is expected to be addressed in a three-dimensional manner: with the regularization of Venezuelan citizens through the corresponding administrative processes; ensuring their economic integration; and guaranteeing their citizen organization, including full awareness of their rights and responsibilities as citizens. In this context, the UNHCR was proposed to lead an initiative in conjunction with Peru and Colombia to allow articulating actions in order to address the problems derived from migration in South America, including migratory flows from Venezuela. For his part, Grandi thanked Peru for being the second country in the region to have received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and recognized the praiseworthy efforts of the Peruvian State to address the needs of migrants and refugees, as well as the efforts to promote their integration into Peruvian society. (END) NDP/RMB/MVB In a working meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi Foreign Affairs Minister Oscar Maurtua affirmed that Peru has a foreign policy that respects human rights, humanitarian law, and refugees.Published: 9/23/2021 The IAU Working Group on Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) Bulletin (Volume 1, #6 2021) announced that the asteroid 369134 (2008 RG79) was named Mariareiche, while the other minor planet, 369297 (2009 SW20), was named Nazca. The two rocky cores were discovered in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The international organization highlights the work of Reiche, who arrived in Peru for a short period at the age of 29 but returned in late 1937, captivated by the country's landscapes. In her research, the German mathematician introduced new theories about the meaning of these lines. Besides, she promoted the site's revelation to the world and its tourism promotion. She passed away at the age of 95 and her wake was held at the premises of the National Institute of Culture (now Ministry of Culture). Nazca Lines The Nazca Lines are detailed designs and lines depicting geometric and zoomorphic figures covering an area 50 km long and 15 km wide. This magnificent archaeological site can be found between km 419-465 on Panamericana Sur Highway. First reports on these lines date back to 1927. However, it was not until 1946 that more thorough research works emerged, when German researcher Maria Reiche became interested in the geoglyphs. She would dedicate the rest of her life to their study. In November this year, Peru will commemorate 27 years since the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca and Palpa were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994 (END) SPV/RMB/MVB The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named two asteroids in honor of the Nazca Lines and German researcher Maria Reiche, who dedicated her life to studying such geoglyphs , thus leaving a legacy in the preservation of these enigmatic figures located in Ica region.Published: 9/22/2021 ?? AHORA | Titular de la PCM, @GuidoPuka, llego a Iquitos para participar en el 15 #GOREEJECUTIVO, espacio de articulacion que reune a ministros de Estado con los gobernadores regionales y sus equipos, para impulsar el trabajo conjunto por el desarrollo de los departamentos. pic.twitter.com/UZdX4Md3d1 Latin America has suffered very heavily because of the COVID-19 pandemic but, macro-economically speaking, the region has recovered from the sharp drop of last year more rapidly than expected, according to The Economist's Editor and Columnist for Latin America, Michael Reid. About Latin America Latin America has suffered very heavily because of the COVID-19 pandemic but, macro-economically speaking, the region has recovered from the sharp drop of last year more rapidly than expected. "In late 2021, most countries will recover what they lost, but that does not imply the two lost years in terms of growth of their (gross domestic) product and employment," the columnist for Latin America explained. In 2022, he said, Latin America may return to normal, but this is a drama, because normalcy prior to the pandemic was mediocre and problematic. Reid explained that with five years of economic stagnation or slower growth the perception of the population has led to a narrowing of opportunities and an evident socio-political unrest, expressed in three forms. One of these forms has been the victory of opposition candidates (left wing or right wing) in most of the recent elections. This situation has been a dominant trend, he said. The other ones involved the election of communist presidents in Brazil and Mexico, and street protests in various parts (of the region), he added. According to The Economist's editor, the pandemic turned this unrest into anger in various countries, so it was relevant to understand the causes of such unrest and anger. In the first decade and a half of this century, Chile, Colombia, and Peru were the most successful countries economically speaking. However, the economic slowdown and the narrowing of opportunities led to frustration and made the multidimensional inequality existing in Latin America and these countries not only in incomes and wealth, but also in services and treatment of citizens by the State less tolerant. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan met on September 22 with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia Nikola Selakovic in New York on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, the Armenian MFA reports. The two FMs discussed the cooperation on bilateral and multilateral platforms. The opening of the Serbian diplomatic representation in Armenia was emphasized in terms of further deepening the cooperation. Regarding the promotion of economic cooperation, the officials stressed the importance of establishing an Armenian-Serbian intergovernmental commission. Issues on EAEU-Serbia cooperation were also discussed. Touching upon the situation resulting from the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stressed the urgency of the unconditional repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians held in Azerbaijan. In the context of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the need for resumption of the peace process under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship was emphasized. PYONGYANG, SEPTEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The Premier of the Cabinet of Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Kim Tok Hun sent a message of greetings to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to congratulate on Independence Day on September 21, DPRK Today reported. Kim Tok Hun wished Pashinyan great success in his responsible work for the socio-economic development. The North Korean Premier also expressed belief that greater progress would be made in the development of the bilateral relations on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries which will fall next year. Editing by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua Denis Moncada in New York on the sidelines of the 76th UN General Assembly. During the meeting Minister Mirzoyan underscored the readiness of the Armenian side to develop relations with the Central American states, particularly with Nicaragua. In this regard the formation of the relevant legal framework, as well as the promotion of political dialogue was mutually emphasized. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Nicaragua also highlighted the interest of the sides to deepen Armenian-Nicaraguan cooperation in international platforms. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The U.S. House passed the Cardenas-Schiff-Sherman Amendment, demanding Azerbaijan's immediate release of Armenian POWs, and calling for a report on Azerbaijani war crimes, including the use of illegal munitions and white phosphorus against Armenian civilians. The amendment also requests an investigation into the use of U.S. technology in Turkish drones used to target Armenian civilians during the 2020 Artsakh war, ANCA reports. The document says in particular that on September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, with support from Turkey and foreign militia groups, launched a military assault on Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, resulting in the deaths of thousands and displacing tens of thousands of ethnic Armenian residents. It states that the Third Geneva Convention, of which Azerbaijan is a signatory, and customary international law require the release of prisoners of war and captured civilians upon the cessation of hostilities and require that all detainees be treated humanely. Despite Azerbaijans obligations under the Geneva Conventions and their commitments in signing the November 9 statement, long after the end of the conflict, the Government of Azerbaijan continues to detain an estimated 200 Armenian prisoners of war, hostages, and detained persons, misrepresenting their status in an attempt to justify their continued captivity, the document says. The Cardenas-Schiff-Sherman amendment states it is the sense of Congress that Azerbaijan must immediately and unconditionally return all Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians. The Biden Administration should engage at all levels with Azerbaijani authorities, including through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Minsk Group process, to make clear the importance of adhering to their obligations, under the November 9 statement and international law, to immediately release all prisoners of war and captured civilians. It goes on to demand a report from the Secretary of Defense on the use of U.S. technology in Turkish drones used by Azerbaijan to attack Armenia and Artsakh during the 2020 war. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan, who is currently in New York to participate in the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Jean-Yves Le Drian, the MFA reports. The sides discussed issues on the Armenian-French privileged relations, as well as further expansion and deepening of mutually beneficial cooperation in a number of spheres. The sides have also touched upon the humanitarian issues resulting from the 44-day war and the prospects of the peace process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Minister Ararat Mirzoyan specifically emphasized the speedy repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians held in Azerbaijan. Both sides agreed on the need to resume the peace process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan, in the framework of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, held a meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece Nikos Dendias, the MFA reports. The officials discussed the issues on the Armenian-Greek rich bilateral agenda, emphasizing the need to make efforts aimed at further strengthening the mutually beneficial cooperation. During the meeting the sides commended the mutual support within the framework of international organizations. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Greece exchanged views regarding a number of urgent issues of the regional and international agenda. Minister Mirzoyan briefed his Greek counterpart on the situation resulting from Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression against Artsakh, underlining the immediate need for repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians. Minister Mirzoyan stressed the importance of resuming the peace process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative has prepared a unique program for the 2021 Aurora Prize Ceremony and accompanying events that will take place in Venice, Italy, on October 810, IDeA Foundation said in a statement. In accordance with the tradition established over the years, every Ceremony features carefully curated cultural impressions honoring the spirit of our shared humanity, and the events in Venice will include some outstanding performances to celebrate modern-day heroes. On October 9, a Prayer for Solidarity will be held in the Church of the Armenian Catholic congregation of Mekhitarists on the San Lazzaro Island, with religious and state leaders and representatives of the international humanitarian community in attendance. The service will be accompanied by live performances. The 2021 Aurora Prize Ceremony, titled Reviving Together, will be hosted by Dalia Atallah, Auroras Amal Clooney Scholarship Fellow and UWC Dilijan alumna from Lebanon, and David Ignatius, Associate Editor and Columnist for The Washington Post and long-time friend of Aurora. The title of the event was chosen to reflect the Initiatives commitment to putting into action the gratitude to those who saved Armenians more than a hundred years ago and helped them revive, as well as to highlight the eternal values of empathy, unity and cooperation that allow us to address the worlds most pressing issues, including the fight against the global pandemic of COVID-19 and its consequences, together. The Ceremony will feature performances by Aram Ipekdjian and Jivan Gasparyan Jr. playing duduk, a traditional Armenian instrument, as well as by the Hover State Chamber Choir, conducted by Sona Hovhannisyan and famous for its experimental choral performances and promoting the Armenian choral heritage throughout the world. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate, whose name is to be announced during the Ceremony, will be honored with a US $1,000,000 award and a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by supporting the organizations that help people in need. The event will culminate in a performance by Maestro Andrea Bocelli, a world-famous Italian opera tenor and philanthropist. After the Ceremony, according to tradition, the name of the 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate will be added to the Chronicles of Aurora, a unique modern hand-written tome that contains the depictions of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiatives activities. The first manuscript of its kind created using ancient Armenian techniques and materials, it was crafted in 2018 in the Matenadaran, the national repository of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan, Armenia. In 2021, for the first time since its creation, the Chronicles of Aurora tome will leave the walls of the Matenadaran to be brought to the San Lazzaro Island, one of the world's most prominent centers of Armenian culture, where the first Armenian book was printed in 1512. The program also includes two Aurora Dialogues events aimed at advancing insightful discussions about some of todays most pressing humanitarian challenges. The first discussion, titled Conversation with the 2021 Aurora Humanitarians, will take place on October 8 and give the humanitarians an opportunity to introduce their work and the causes that motivate them. The second one, Humanitarian Dimensions of Health Security, is scheduled for October 10 and dedicated to the lessons learned from COVID-19 and necessary to prevent the future pandemics. In the meantime, nominations are still open for the 2022 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. Until October 31, 2021, any person can submit a nomination for the candidates they believe have overcome great personal challenges to help others. * * * About the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is a foundation that seeks to address on-the-ground humanitarian challenges around the world with the focus on helping the most destitute. Its mission is rooted in the Armenian history as the Initiative was founded on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors and strives to transform this experience into a global movement. All Auroras activities are based on the universal concept of Gratitude in Action. It implies that countless people around the world who have received aid in time of crisis can best express their gratitude by offering similar assistance to someone else. By involving Aurora supporters around the world, this will become a global endeavor that will snowball to expand the circle of saviors and most importantly the number of those saved. Addressing urgent humanitarian challenges, the Initiative provides a second chance to those who need it the most. True to its vision We believe that even in the darkest times, a brighter future is in the hands of those who are committed to giving others help and hope Aurora welcomes all who embrace this philosophy. This commitment aims to promote action-based philanthropy focused on tangible results. This is achieved through the Initiatives various programs: Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, Aurora for Artsakh, #AraratChallenge movement, Aurora Dialogues, Aurora Grants, Aurora Community, Aurora Index, and the 100 LIVES Initiative. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is the vision of philanthropists Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan and Ruben Vardanyan who have been joined by thousands of supporters and partners. Auroras Chair, Dr. Tom Catena, draws on his experience as a surgeon, veteran, humanitarian and the 2017 Aurora Prize laureate to spread the message of Gratitude in Action to a global audience. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is represented by three organizations the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Foundation, Inc. (New York, USA), the 100 Lives Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Charitable Foundation (Yerevan, Armenia). About the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is a global humanitarian award. Its mission is to recognize and support those who risk their own lives, health or freedom to save the lives, health or freedom of others suffering as a result of violent conflict, atrocity crimes or other major human rights violations. The Aurora Prize Laureate is selected based on the nominees demonstration of courage, commitment and impact. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, an Aurora Prize Laureate is honored with a US $1,000,000 award, which gives the Laureate a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by supporting the organizations that help people in need. The Aurora Prize Selection Committee is comprised of Nobel Laureates Shirin Ebadi and Leymah Gbowee; former president of Ireland Mary Robinson; human rights activist Hina Jilani; former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo; Medecins Sans Frontieres Co-founder and former foreign minister of France Bernard Kouchner; journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Dele Olojede, former CEO of Unilever and Co-founder and Chair of IMAGINE Paul Polman; human rights activist and Co-founder of The Sentry John Prendergast and President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York Vartan Gregorian. The Committee is chaired by the Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London Lord Ara Darzi. World famous peace and human rights activist Benjamin Ferencz and Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian George Clooney are the Committees Honorary Co-Chairs, and its honorary members include two-time President of Costa Rica and Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias; Artistic and General Director of Mariinsky Theatre and Principal Conductor of the Munich Philharmoniker Valery Gergiev and former foreign minister of Australia and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group Gareth Evans. We honor the memory of Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), inaugural Selection Committee Co-Chair, President of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity; Nobel Laureate. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Prime Minister Suren Papikyan received today Russian Ambassador to Armenia Sergei Kopyrkin, the government of Armenia reported. At the meeting Mr. Papikyan stated that the Armenian-Russian relations are at a high level, expressing confidence that the productive cooperation will continue. Suren Papikyan congratulated the Russian Ambassador on the holding of the State Duma elections, noting that they create new preconditions for the implementation of programs and ideas. During the talk the sides highlighted the cooperation of the Armenian Parliament and the Russian State Duma aimed at deepening and strengthening the bilateral relations. The Russian Ambassador highly appreciated the previous cooperation with Suren Papikyan, noting that a good experience has been accumulated and based on this broad preconditions have been created for implementation of upcoming programs. He expressed the readiness of the Russian side to conduct cooperation in all areas. The officials then continued discussing the development prospects of the Armenian-Russian relations, in particular in the fields of security, defense, energy, infrastructure, new technologies and entrepreneurship. They touched upon the operation of the South Caucasian Railway, highlighting its importance for Armenias economic development. The Armenian and Russian officials also discussed the productive cooperation in energy sector. Deputy Prime Minister Papikyan said the latter is of strategic importance for Armenia, and the comprehensive development of that sector is vital for the implementation of the governments action plan. In this context they discussed expanding the cooperation with Rosatom. As for the unblocking of transportation communications in the region, Suren Papikyan highlighted Russias key and productive role both within the trilateral format and the OSCE Minsk Group. The situation on Armenias Goris-Kapan highway was also discussed. They emphasized Russias important and constructive role in reduction of tension and finding solutions to the problems. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The Genetic Architecture, Genome Editing and 3rd Generation Sequencing Educational and Scientific Center of Excellence was inaugurated today at the Armenian-Russian University in Yerevan, seeking to train highly qualified researchers and experts for the sector. The Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Vahram Dumanyan attended the opening ceremony. In his remarks, Dumanyan stressed that higher education and science are one entirety and cant be viewed separately from one another. He said that there cant be a high-quality higher education without science, and vice versa. From this perspective the opening of this laboratory is commendable, he said. This is a big achievement. This center is highly needed in educational processes. We must continue our approaches in all sectors, so that all educational institutions are equipped with laboratories, without which it is difficult to imagine both education and research. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent a congratulatory letter to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the Independence Day of Armenia, the PMs Office said. Dear Prime Minister, I cordially congratulate you and the Armenian people on the national holiday of Armenia the Independence Day. I am convinced that the mutually beneficial cooperation between Armenia and Uzbekistan will continue consistently developing in accordance with the potential of our countries. By using this occasion, I wish you good health, happiness and new achievements to your responsible state activity, and to the people of Armenia peace, welfare and prosperity, the letter reads. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Servicemembers of an artillery division of the Armenian Armed Forces held live-fire exercises September 22-23 to perfect tactical-professional knowledge and firing skills, the Ministry of Defense said. Simulated enemy positions were hit with precision artillery strikes. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The special operations forces of the Armenian military conducted direct action exercises at the north-eastern border of the country, the Defense Ministry said. The drills featured a simulated reconnaissance and ambush against an enemy strategic facility, extraction of intelligence documents and destruction of enemy firing positions. Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met with Foreign Minister of Finland Pekka Olavi Haavisto within the framework of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the MFA Armenia, the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Finland expressed readiness to further develop the Armenian-Finnish cooperation through joint efforts. The establishment of a format of consultations between the foreign ministries of the two countries, the development of cooperation in the fields of education, environment and business were highlighted. Touching upon issues related to regional stability and security, the Armenian FM stressed that the maintenance of the ceasefire regime, the speedy and unconditional repatriation of Armenian POWs and civilian hostages still held in Azerbaijan, as well as refrain from anti-Armenian hostile rhetoric are important factors for establishing regional stability and security. Ararat Mirzoyan also stressed the need to resume the peace process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs format, aimed at a comprehensive and lasting settlement of the conflict. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan, who is currently in New York to participate in the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Jean-Yves Le Drian, the MFA reports. September 23, 2021, 11:51 Armenian FM meets French counterpart on sidelines of UN General Assembly in New York STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 23, ARTSAKHPRESS: The sides discussed issues on the Armenian-French privileged relations, as well as further expansion and deepening of mutually beneficial cooperation in a number of spheres. The sides have also touched upon the humanitarian issues resulting from the 44-day war and the prospects of the peace process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Minister Ararat Mirzoyan specifically emphasized the speedy repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians held in Azerbaijan. Both sides agreed on the need to resume the peace process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, discussing the need for Tehran to return to talks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program, a Foreign Office Spokesperson told TASS, commenting on the meeting's outcome. September 23, 2021, 15:37 British top diplomat, Lavrov discuss need for Iran to resume nuclear talks spokesperson STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 23, ARTSAKHPRESS: "They discussed the need for Iran to return to nuclear talks. They also discussed stability and security in Afghanistan, including the need for the Taliban to form an inclusive government. They looked forward to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November," the spokesperson specified. It was the first meeting between Lavrov and Truss, who was appointed as British foreign secretary last week in a cabinet reshuffle carried out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The talks involving Iran and the five world powers (Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and France) on restoring the nuclear deal in its original form have been underway in Vienna since April. The agenda includes issues related to the lifting of US sanctions on Iran, Tehrans implementation of its nuclear obligations and Washingtons return to the JCPOA. The nuclear deals participants are also holding separate consultations with the US, which dont involve Iran. The delegations initially intended to wrap up the endeavor by late May. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Tuesday that the talks would resume in Vienna in the next few weeks. (Bloomberg) -- A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel backed booster shots of the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine for people ages 65 and older in the U.S. People over 18 with weakened immune systems were also recommended for an extra dose. Most Read from Bloomberg New York Governor Kathy Hochul said shes ready for a potential shortage of health-care workers, an acknowledgment that some may opt to quit or stay away rather than get vaccinated by Monday. Federal workers and contractors sued the U.S. government over its Covid-19 mandates, challenging President Joe Bidens executive order requiring staff to be vaccinated. With the school year under way, the U.S. has reported almost 1 million cases among kids under 18 over the past month. Key Developments: Global Virus Tracker: Cases pass 232.5 million; deaths exceed 4.7 million Vaccine Tracker: More than 6.03 billion doses administered Pfizer clearance sets stage for broader booster push in U.S. Whats in a number? For OSHA vaccination mandate, its crucial Fauci sees three doses as the eventual standard for mRNA vaccines Understanding the debate over Covid booster shots: QuickTake Dubai turns page on Covid with hottest jobs market in two years CDC Panel Backs Pfizer Booster for Elderly (4:16 p.m. NY) Americans ages 65 and older as well as adults with compromised immune systems should get booster shots, a panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a unanimous vote Thursday. The decision came one day after the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for people 65 and older, as well as those whose jobs put them at risk of infection, who got the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE shot to receive boosters. Story continues The recommendations require CDC Director Rochelle Walenskys approval to take effect. Florida Adds to Antibody Treatment Supply (4:11 p.m.) Florida has acquired monoclonal antibody treatments from GlaxoSmithKline Plc because the federal government reduced its pipeline, Governor Ron DeSantis said in Tampa on Thursday. DeSantis has opened more than 25 state-sponsored sites to administer the treatments. CDC Panel Says Boosters Arent Panacea (3:21 p.m. NY) Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed concern that resistance to getting vaccinated will prolong the pandemic regardless of whether booster shots are offered. My concern is that were just going to keep give booster doses to the vaccinated as different variants come onto the scene, and were not going to be able to move forward in truly mitigating the pandemic, Lynn Bahta, a member of the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from the Minnesota Department of Health, said. U.S. Deaths Rise Almost 3% on the Week (2:08 p.m. NY) Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. rose 2.9% during the week that ended Tuesday, with some counties in New York and Pennsylvania showing increases of 26% or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. States including Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia had among the most widespread increases in deaths. Deaths as a share of population also are soaring in eastern Texas and central Florida, according to a CDC national data update published Thursday. Hospitalizations for Covid declined 12.5% during the week through Monday compared with the previous seven days. The pandemic has claimed some 682,000 lives in the U.S., more than the estimated death toll of 675,000 in the 1918 influenza pandemic. U.S. Pays Fines for Florida County (1:15 p.m. NY) The U.S. Department of Education reimbursed a Florida county almost $150,000 after it was fined by the state of Florida for imposing a mask mandate in its schools. The money is the latest escalation in the fight between the Biden administration and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been withholding money from school districts that defied his ban on mask mandates. The federal government said it would cover those costs, and the $147,719 announced on Thursday is the first payment. We should be thanking districts for using proven strategies that will keep schools open and safe, not punishing them, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a press release. Kansas School Outbreaks Rise (12:59 p.m. NY) In Kansas, public health data show school-based Covid-19 clusters increased by 11 over the past week to total 72, and the states education commissioner reported a middle school student died this week, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson said: Those are the types of things were working hard to make sure does not happen while we keep schools open its keeping them open and safe. N.Y. Readies for Shortage of Health Workers (11:20 a.m. NY) New York Governor Kathy Hochul said shes ready for a potential shortage of health-care workers, with the states mandatory vaccine deadline set for Monday. Health-care workers including at nursing homes and hospitals are required to get the first vaccine by Sept. 27 or potentially risk losing their job. I will be announcing a whole series of initiatives that we are doing to be prepared for a situation on Monday, which I hope doesnt happen, Hochul said at a briefing on Thursday. A group of workers has taken the state to court over the mandate, saying it violates their religious beliefs. Singapore Reports Record New Cases (11 a.m. NY) Singapore added 1,504 new cases, a new high, as the spread among residents intensifies. The bulk of the infections were within the local community, where health authorities are monitoring more than a dozen clusters. Travelers arriving in the city-state made up just 13 of the new cases. The number of deaths increased by two to 70 -- both elderly patients who have underlying health issues and werent vaccinated. A total of 23 are in the ICU. In the past month, 97.9% of the cases were asymptomatic or had just mild symptoms, it said. The city-state has fully vaccinated 82% of its population. Idaho Running Out of Room for Corpses (10:41 a.m. NY) As Covid-19 deaths mount in Idaho, where vaccination rates are lagging, funeral directors are running out of room to store the deceased, the Idaho Statesman reports. One mortuary converted a train car into an external refrigeration unit thats noisy and smells of diesel fuel. It can hold up to 56 bodies. The coroner in Ada County, Idaho, reports multiple funeral homes are no longer taking bodies. It has turned to a mobile refrigeration unit with a capacity of 70, the newspaper reported. Almost 1 Million Infected in U.S. Schools (10:36 a.m. NY) U.S. schools were counting on widespread vaccinations to help get all students back to in-person classes for the first time since early 2020. Mere weeks into the effort, signs of another taxing year are emerging amid scattershot safety rules and rising Covid-19 among children. Over the past month, with kindergarten through 12th grade in session, the country has reported almost 1 million cases among those under 18. Though kids typically are less likely than adults to become severely ill with Covid, they increasingly are contracting the highly contagious delta variant. As of Sunday, 2,000 schools nationwide had closed 18% more than a week earlier, according to the Burbio tracker. Novavax Files for WHO Listing (9:31 a.m. NY) Novavax and its partner Serum Institute of India Pvt. filed for an emergency use listing of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate with the World Health Organization. The listing is a prerequisite for exports to countries participating in the Covax vaccine initiative for poorer countries. U.S. Federal Workers File Suit (9:31 a.m. NY) A group of federal workers and contractors filed suit against the U.S. government over its Covid-19 vaccination mandates. The lawsuit, filed in Washington Thursday, challenges President Joe Bidens executive order this month requiring federal workers to be vaccinated and the U.S. Defense Departments August memorandum that members of the military must be protected against coronavirus. Among other things, the suit argues that a Christian is required to refuse a medical intervention, including a vaccination, if his or her informed conscience comes to this sure judgment and that naturally acquired immunity provides greater protection than vaccines. Israel Sets Conditions for Teachers (6:38 a.m. NY) Israel will require that teachers present negative Covid-19 tests or proof that theyre fully vaccinated to be allowed to enter schools starting next month, according to a letter sent Thursday by the Education Ministry to principals. Educators who dont comply wont be permitted to teach remotely and they wont be paid for the days theyre absent, the ministry said. Those who recovered from the virus in the past six months will be exempted from the requirement. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2021 Bloomberg L.P. Bill Browder said he was recently warned by Britain's Foreign Office that Beijing might target him (AFP/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS) A prominent rights campaigner said Thursday Britain had warned him and other Beijing critics to avoid travel to countries that have an extradition agreement with China because of Hong Kong's national security law. China is remoulding Hong Kong in its own authoritarian image, armed with a national security law that has outlawed much dissent and crushed its democracy movement. Beijing claims universal jurisdiction for the security law, meaning it can pursue anyone, regardless of their nationality or location, for perceived offences. Bill Browder, a US-born British citizen who has campaigned for international sanctions against various countries, said he was recently warned by Britain's Foreign Office that Beijing might target him and other activists if they travelled to countries willing to send suspects to China. "They indicated to me that I should be aware of those countries that continue to have extradition treaties with Hong Kong and China and then read off a list of those places," Browder told AFP. China has extradition agreements with about 60 countries, ranging from democracies such as Spain to authoritarian states like Iran. Nine western countries cancelled their extradition agreements with Hong Kong after the security law was passed, partly because of its extra-territorial claims. So far Chinese authorities have not publicly made any extradition requests under Hong Kong's national security law -- although they have cited the legislation in an unsuccessful attempt to get a website hosted in Israel to remove content. Browder said the call was sparked by his name appearing among others in a "foreign collusion" prosecution in Hong Kong that involves jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Hong Kong police have charged Lai and some of his journalists with collusion because they campaigned for sanctions through his Apple Daily newspaper, which closed after its assets were frozen under the security law. Story continues "The gist of the conversation was they wanted to let me know my name was in the document and that the national security law of Hong Kong doesn't just apply to people in Hong Kong, it applies globally and to foreigners as well," Browder said, adding officials said they were calling others named on the list. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said it "cannot comment on the content of a private meeting". The UK has publicly warned that the national security law covers activities conducted "both inside and outside Hong Kong". jta/jfx The United States and Britain on Wednesday welcomed China's promise to end funding for coal projects overseas, but voiced hope the world's largest emitter would also do more at home on climate change. President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that China will stop backing coal overseas, all but drying up the world's foreign assistance to the dirty form of energy in developing countries after similar announcements by South Korea and Japan. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, seeking to rally international support for strong climate action ahead of UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, voiced hope for a complete global end to coal by 2040. "I thank President Xi for what he has done to end China's international financing of coal and I hope China will now go further and phase out the domestic use of coal as well," Johnson told the General Assembly. "Because the experience of the UK shows it can be done. Despite China's pledge on overseas assistance, it has kept investing at home in coal -- an issue raised on a visit earlier this month by US climate envoy John Kerry. A US official said of Xi's move: "We welcome this announcement but we also recognize that more needs to be done." "We look forward to hearing more about the additional steps that they can take in this decisive decade to further reduce their national emissions," the official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity. The official said that further Chinese action would "help put the world more closely on a trajectory that will hold temperatures from rising to well above 1.5 degrees," as appears increasingly likely despite an aspiration set by the 2015 Paris accord. UN scientists say that warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels is a threshold at which the planet can avoid the worst ravages of climate change including increasingly severe weather, droughts and flooding. President Joe Biden has put a high priority on the environment after defeating the climate skeptic Donald Trump and in his own UN speech Tuesday vowed to double US aid for countries hardest hit by climate change, a key gap ahead of the Glasgow talks. sct/ch Members of a Tamil family in a high-profile battle to remain in Australia have been granted 12-month bridging visas, allowing them to remain in the country. Visas were granted to three of the four members of the Murugappan family on Thursday by Immigration Minister Alex Hawke. However, while visas were given to parents Priya and Nades and daughter Kopika, a similar visa was not granted to the family's youngest daughter Tharnicaa. That decision has meant the family would not be able to return to their former home of Biloela in Queensland, and will have to remain in community detention in Perth. The visa decision comes a week after the family were granted a reprieve in their fight to remain in Australia after a three-month bridging visa was granted, which had allowed them to stay in the country until just before Christmas. The family have been living in Perth after years of detention, following the medical evacuation of Tharnicca from Christmas Island earlier this year due to a blood infection. Supporters of the family have said they were surprised by the decision to grant the visa extension to three of the four family members. Biloela resident and family friend Angela Fredericks said the withholding of a visa for Tharnicaa prevented the return to their former hometown. "Australian law gives minister Hawke the power to bring this sorry saga to a close with the stroke of a pen, by issuing the same visa to four-year-old Tharni he has granted to her mum, dad and sister," she said in a statement. "Just like her sister Kopika, Tharnicaa was born in Queensland, and that's where she belongs." China continues to lay into Australia over its new defence pact with the US and UK which will see nuclear-powered submarines produced on home soil. Beijing last week described the move as "extremely irresponsible" and warned of consequences while state media went even further, with the Communist Party of China's mouthpiece the Global Times saying if provoked "China will certainly punish [Australia] with no mercy" in military conflict. And Beijing continues to let Prime Minister Scott Morrison it strongly rejects the AUKUS alliance, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Wednesday evening saying a raft of nations were justified in questioning Australia's intentions. Zhao Lijian has questioned Australia's intentions over the move. Source: FMPRC "The nuclear submarine cooperation between the US, the UK and Australia, which poses a serious risk of nuclear proliferation," he said. "It also gives the international community every reason to question Australia's sincerity in complying with its nuclear non-proliferation obligations as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT (Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons)." An unnamed senior Chinese military expert told the Global Times last week they believed it will now be "easy" for Australia to acquire nuclear weapons as a next step. Mr Zhao said the uranium likely to be used in the Australian submarines will be "weapon-grade" nuclear material. He accused Australia, the US and UK of "provoking an arms race", with the announcement "deliberately escalating regional tension". China has its own fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Source: Reuters China itself has embarked on an ambitious expansion of its military capabilities in recent years, including the production of nuclear-powered submarines. Beijing has reacted angrily to recent comments from the Morrison government which it claims is unfairly hyping up the threat of China and potential military conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Defence Minister Peter Dutton was singled out for his remarks suggesting China has become increasingly aggressive and coercive. Story continues Ministry of National Defence spokesperson Wu Qian said Mr Dutton had "seriously poisoned" relations and it was evident Australia was "willingly serving as the pawn to the US" in a bid to stifle China. Labor to stress importance of Australia's independence It comes as Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong responds to criticism from former prime minister Paul Keating who questioned Labor's "muted" response to the deal. In a speech to the United States Studies Centre on Thursday, Ms Wong will warn Australia must not sacrifice its independence with the deal, the ABC reported. "With the prospect of a higher level of technological dependence on the US, how does the Morrison-Joyce government assure Australians that we can act alone when need be; that we have the autonomy to defend ourselves, however and whenever we need to," her speech reads. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. There is a surplus of different financing options that are advertised to businesses. Most startup businesses become very overwhelmed with the options they are presented with. For instance, small businesses may need a loan for equipment. I would recommend a small loan solely for that purpose. You never want the term of the loan to be longer than the working life of the equipment. When larger businesses look for a larger loan, the first question I ask them is: Have you attempted to secure bank financing? Once they tell me they are eligible, then we go through a series of questions that will help determine a correct financing option for them. Some businesses may just need help with cash flow during a certain time of the year. In that case, a line of credit may be their best option instead of a loan that requires them to pay larger payments for a substantial period of time. Crime-and-courts AUBURN Sheriff's office releases name of person killed in Auburn shots-fired incident Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen Police in tactical gear move in while working the scene of shots fired at 12 Wheeler St. in Auburn on Tuesday. The person found dead inside an Auburn residence was a 30-year-old woman who lived at the duplex where police responded to shots-fired complaints, the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday. In a news release Wednesday morning, the sheriff's office said Brandi R. Baida, 30, of 12 Wheeler St., was the person police found dead when they entered the residence after trying for more than three hours to make contact with anyone inside. No one else was inside the home. Baida was found in an upstairs bedroom. Neighbors called in shots-fired complaints around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. When officers responded, the sheriff's office, they encountered gunfire from an upstairs window at 12 Wheeler St. Officers returned fire, and then established a perimeter around the house to secure the scene. The sheriff's office is involved in the investigation because the incident involved Auburn Police Department gunfire. New York State Police and members of the New York Attorney Generals Office of Special Investigations are also working on the investigation, and the Cayuga County District Attorneys Office is assisting, the sheriff's office said. Another resident at 12 Wheeler St., Jeffery Meaney, was picked up on an unrelated bench warrant around 2 p.m. Tuesday at the corner of Clark Street and Aurelius Avenue, where police had blocked traffic as part of the established perimeter. But Sheriff Brian Schenck said it does not appear that Meaney had any involvement in the shots-fired incident. One person killed after gunfire exchange with police at Auburn home One person was found dead inside an Auburn home where police officers encountered gunshots and returned fire during an incident Tuesday morning. The sheriff's office said an autopsy will be conducted Wednesday by the Onondaga County Medical Examiners Office to determine exact cause of death. Schenck said investigators are still trying to determine why shots were being fired from the Wheeler Street residence, and additional information is not being released at this point because the investigation is continuing. One of the neighbors who called 911 about hearing gunshots is Christopher Anthony, who lives next door to the 10-12 Wheeler St. duplex. In an interview Wednesday, he told The Citizen that he first heard shooting around 11 a.m., but at first didn't think it was gunfire because there are often loud banging noises coming from a nearby industrial site. But about 15 minutes later, after he heard more of the same kind of noise and thought he heard glass breaking, he went outside to check out the situation. That's when he eventually saw a gun barrel sticking out from an upstairs front window. He placed his 911 call at 11:19 a.m., according to the APD calls for service log. An officer arrived and came to his door to ask about what he heard and saw, and while they were talking another shot was fired, Anthony said. At that point, Anthony retreated inside and the officer took cover, he said. When additional law enforcement units arrived, the gunfire exchange with police occurred. Anthony said he never saw any people inside or around the 12 Wheeler St. residence. Anthony, who has lived on Wheeler Street a little over a year, said Baida was a friendly person. He is trying to process what happened. "I never expected anything like this to happen at all, ever," he said. "I'm still kind of dumbfounded." The sheriff's office is asking anyone with information related to the case to call Detective Sgt. Rob Franklin at (315) 253-1132. Information can also be submitted at www.CayugaSheriff.com by clicking on the Send a Tip tab. The towns of Conquest, Ira and Victory split from Cato two centuries ago, but their residents still celebrate as one community. That will be the case again from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, when the 200th anniversary of the three towns is celebrated at the CIViC Heritage Historical Society in Cato. The history center, which takes its name from an acronym comprised of the four towns, will host a presentation that afternoon about two Titanic survivors who settled in the area. Amy Sholes will tell the story of mother and daughter Helga and Hildur Hirvonen, of Finland, who were third-class passengers on the British liner when it began to sink after striking an iceberg on April 15, 1912. The Hirvonens would live in Pennsylvania and then Syracuse before spending the rest of their lives in Cato, said Sholes' mother, town Historian Eva Taylor-Sholes. More than 70 years after a Cayuga County soldier was killed in the Korean War, his remains have been identified. Army Pvt. Donald Fabrize, 19, was killed during a battle on July 16, 1950, along Geum River near Daejeon, South Korea. He was serving with Company B, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. Fabrize was the first soldier from Auburn to be killed in the Korean War, according to a Democrat & Chronicle story published in September 1950. In that story, it reveals that Fabrize's mother, Stella Leone, "had mail returned marked 'deceased' for several days." She contacted the Department of Defense, which notified her by telegram that her son died in combat. Fabrize was awarded several medals for his service, including the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge and the Korean Service Medal. But his remains could not be located or recovered, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said. The Army announced in January 1956 that he was non-recoverable. In a memo obtained by The Citizen, NYSCOPBA's executive board informed its members that it received updated guidance from the state regarding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Some state employees are required to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, while others, namely those who work in hospitals, must get vaccinated or they will lose their jobs. NYSCOPBA's leadership writes in its memo that the guidance for one mandate excludes a testing option and offers "little to no exemptions." There is an incentive offered to get vaccinated, the union reveals, but the bonus is "contingent upon a percentage of the workforce being vaccinated." "Simply put, it's a slap in the face to our members who were hailed as heroes just a few short months ago, and now the state has cast them aside," the union's executive board wrote. "With that, our team of attorneys have built a case and we have filed a lawsuit to fight back against this mandate." It is the latest federal lawsuit challenging New York's COVID-19 vaccine mandates. A group of 17 health care workers wants to prevent the mandate from being enforced without a religious exemption. A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the state from taking action against those who refuse the vaccine on religious grounds. Gov. Kathy Hochul has said the state will fight the lawsuit. Politics reporter Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding. Love 2 Funny 3 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 4 Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Former U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri was serving in Congress when he received a call from his predecessor, Sherwood Boehlert. It was common for the two men to talk, Arcuri told The Citizen on Tuesday. But this call was unusual. Arcuri, a Democrat, had voted against a Democratic bill in the House. Boehlert, a longtime moderate Republican congressman, questioned his decision. "How could you not vote for that bill?" Boehlert asked him. Arcuri laughed as he recalled that phone conversation. Here was a Republican wondering why he didn't vote for this Democratic bill. For Arcuri, it was an example of how Boehlert approached the issues, even after a quarter-century as a congressman. "Sherry is one of the last of the elected officials that I would call a statesman," he said. "He just had that way about him. He was (Oneida County executive) before and then he went to Congress after that. He loved Congress. He put Congress ahead of cause. He put the people ahead of the party. He was what you want in an elected official." A collection of prominent current and former elected officials, including Arcuri, shared their memories of Boehlert, who died on Monday. He was 84. Empire State Development's tourism office is posting weekly fall foliage reports. Below is the report posted Sept. 22, 2021: This is the third 2021 I LOVE NY Fall Foliage Report for New York State. Reports are obtained from volunteer field observers and reflect expected color conditions for the coming weekend. Reports are issued every Wednesday afternoon. I LOVE NY urges travelers to follow all COVID-related public health and safety guidelines while enjoying the foliage this season. Visitors should call ahead and check websites and social media to make sure attractions are open and available. More information on New York State travel and COVID-19 is available here. The annual parade of vibrant, colorful fall foliage continues its journey across New York State this weekend, with the Lake Placid, Wilmington, and Tupper Lake areas of the Adirondacks expected to see the most notable leaf changes, and color change is underway in most other parts in the region. Leaves are also significantly changing in the northwest portion of the Catskills, along with parts of the Chautauqua Allegheny, Central New York, and Thousand Islands Seaway regions. Fall colors will also be making their first appearances in the Greater Niagara, Finger Lakes, Capital-Saratoga, and Hudson Valley regions this weekend. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) An elected county prosecutor in Pennsylvania was charged Wednesday with violently raping a woman he knew through work, leaving her home only after she told him she would not call police, authorities said. Somerset County District Attorney Jeffrey Lynn Thomas, 36, was accused of attacking the woman in her Windber home Saturday. He was charged with rape, indecent and simple assault, strangulation and criminal trespassing. The Republican's lawyer, Ryan Tutera, said that he was not guilty and that Thomas' wife was working to get him bailed out of the Cambria County jail. The criminal complaint's police affidavit said the woman told investigators that Thomas had repeatedly contacted her for several years to seek a sexual relationship and would routinely drive around her house. At about 11 p.m. Saturday, he sent her an Snapchat message saying he would be at her home in minutes, to which she responded he was not welcome and to stay away. Shortly afterward, he walked uninvited into her home with several beer cans and handed her one, police said. She repeatedly told him to leave and slapped him, police said. He then struck her face, causing her nose to bleed, then pulled down her top and undressed himself, according to the affidavit. The Greens, who have made the issue their core campaign topic, pledged to do everything to put Germany on course to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. They want to achieve that by ramping up carbon prices, requiring solar panels on all new public buildings and ending the use of coal eight years earlier than planned. ...AND WHAT'S NOT Foreign policy, including the future of the European Union, received comparatively little attention during the campaign. Although Berlin's allies have long called for Germany to show more leadership on the international stage, the three candidates shied away from presenting any radical foreign policy visions. Migration has also slipped down the list of priorities for voters compared to the 2017 election, when the far-right Alternative for Germany party came third. Its co-leader said recently that the party is focusing on state elections in the east, where polls suggest it could also win several constituencies on Sunday. NOT LAUGHING ANYMORE Volkswagen Taigun will be officially launched in the Indian car market today and all eyes would be on the pricing structure. After all, it has a long list of rivals to compete against with the list dominated by Hyundai Creta and with worthy players like Kia Seltos, Tata Harrier and even the newly-launched Skoda Kushaq with which Taigun shares several commonalities. (Also read: Full first-drive review of Volkswagen Taigun) Since Taigun, like Kushaq, will only be offered in two petrol engine options, those looking at a diesel motor will continue to look elsewhere. For others, this Volkswagen vehicle could well be worth their consideration. Volkswagen Taigun price expectations: Since Kushaq starts at 10.49 lakh, expect Taigun to also start at around 10.50 lakh mark. Pricing could go all the way to 18 lakh (all prices are ex showroom). If Volkswagen does play it smart though, it could eventually undercut these figures to undercut some of its rivals. Aggressive pricing isn't what Volkswagen has been known for thus far but the stakes are quite high this particular time. Volkswagen Taigun engine and transmission options: Volkswagen Taigun is being made available with two TSI petrol engine options. There is a 1.0-litre TSI and a 1.5-litre TSI unit. The smaller engine comes with a manual and a six-speed automatic transmission unit while the 1.5-litre box is mated to a six-speed manual as well as a DSG automatic gearbox. Volkswagen Taigun style highlights: The rear-light scheme on the Volkswagen Taigun gives the SUV a fresh appeal, helping it stand out in a crowd. Taigun is well designed and is likely to appeal to someone who prefers a European styling philosophy. It isn't the most muscular and yet has a sporty and fresh take. The largest-in-segment wheelbase is likely to help its cause further. The upper variants get LED lights at the front and the back while the alloy design looks appealing. Volkswagen Taigun feature highlights: The cabin of the Taigun has a 10.1-inch infotainment screen with support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It also gets a conventional sunroof and red-coloured ambient lighting. The front two seats are ventilated while the dashboard has a clean and wide design element. " " In New Jersey, a gas station attendant like this one is required to pump your gas for you. But why? Minerva Studio/Shutterstock As a Jersey girl, I grew up riding in cars that were serviced by gas station attendants. While they were filling up your tank, they also topped off your car's fluids (radiator, washer fluid, oil), cleaned your windshield and asked if you needed anything else. When I first visited Georgia, I was gobsmacked to discover that there were no gas attendants. Let's take a little road trip back in time to find out why, to this day, it's still illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Advertisement A Bit of Gas History The official ban on self-serve gas in Jersey began in 1949 with the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act, citing safety concerns like fire hazards. But like a lot of things New Jersey, there's really a more sinister reason for the ban that's worthy of a Tony Soprano storyline. According to a 2019 story by journalist Paul Mulshine, the legislation supposedly arose as a tactic to fix gas prices and stop an enterprising business owner from undercutting his competitors. In 1949, Irving Reingold opened a 24-pump gas station on Route 17 in Hackensack. He offered gas at 18.9 cents a gallon when others were selling for 21.9 cents. The only requirement was that his customers had to pump it themselves. The idea was a hit with his customers, and they lined up for blocks, according to Mulshine. His competitors? Not so much. When shooting up his gas station didn't deter Reingold, thanks to bullet-proof glass, (apparently, he was expecting a negative reaction), the rival owners turned to the law for a solution. They persuaded the state to pass a resolution outlawing self-serve gas, which quickly passed, and Reingold was out of the gas business and consumers returned to paying higher gas prices. Advertisement Hit the Brakes on Progress In the ensuing decades there have been challenges to the law. The first, in 1951, failed. By the late 1970s, every U.S. state except for New Jersey (and Oregon) had overturned their bans on self-serve stations. In 1981, New Jersey Assembly member Gerald Cardinale introduced new legislation to overturn the state's prohibition on self-serve stations. Cardinale continued to do so as he progressed to the state Senate, still to no avail. Consumers almost had a choice in 1988 when Kirschner Brothers Oil Company filed suit against the state, claiming that "the law is antiquated and that customers ought to have a choice between full service and self-service." A Superior Court judge initially sided with the company but later, an appeals court overturned the decision, citing the 1951 ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court. So, what about Oregon? In 2015, the state eased its law by allowing self-serve gas in some rural and tribal areas, leaving New Jersey as the lone statewide holdout. Some might call it archaic; I consider it nostalgic (and slightly spoiled). Now That's a Gas A couple of local municipalities outside of New Jersey also ban self-serve gas stations. They are Weymouth, Massachusetts, and the town of Huntington, New York. Oregon lifted its statewide ban for two days in June 2021 due to a heat wave. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese automaker BYD recently established in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, a subsidiary whose business scope covers sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), according to the business information provider Tianyancha. The new company, named Zhengzhou BYD Auto Co.,Ltd. (called Zhengzhou BYD for short), was founded on September 22. It involves a registered capital of 50 million yuan ($7.732 million) and is wholly controlled by BYD Auto Industry Co.,Ltd. He Zhiqi, Chairman and General Manager of BYD Auto, serves as the legal representative of the Zhengzhou-based subsidiary. According to Tianyancha, Zhengzhou BYD has a line of business including the manufacturing of auto parts, the sales of NEVs, as well as the R&D, retail and wholesale of auto parts. In August, BYD Auto saw its insurance registrations of new energy vehicles (hereby merely referring to BEVs, PHEVs, and REEVs) reach 50,480 units, accounting for 22% of China's total locally-made NEV registrations, according to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC). This volume made BYD ranked highest among China's auto brands in terms of China-made NEV registrations. In Zhengzhou, the registrations of BYD-branded NEVs stood at 741 units last month, according to the CBIRC's data. The best-selling NEV model for the city was the BYD Tang DM, whose registrations were 159 units. In addition, BYD Auto Industry Co.,Ltd. set up a Hefei-based wholly-owned subsidiary in July, whose business scope extends to cover the sales of NEVs and NEV-related electrical accessories, the R&D of auto parts, the wholesale and retail of auto components. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese augmented reality (AR) technology company Nreal announced on Sept. 23 it nabbed over $100 million in the Series C financing, which was co-led by NIO's investment arm NIO Capital, Yunfeng Capital, and Hongtai Aplus. Photo credit: Nreal The newly-closed funding round also attracted CPE Yuanfeng and several strategic investors. Existing investors including GP Capital, GL Ventures, and Sequoia Capital China still took part in this round. According to a post on Nreal's WeChat account, the new financing increased the capital Nreal raised over the past year to $150 million. The backers included Kuaishou, CCIG, Sequoia Capital China, GP Capital, GL Ventures, ShunWei Capital, China Growth Capital, as well as iQIYI. Founded in 2017, Nreal is dedicated to offering consumer-facing AR user experience around the world. To be more specific, such experience allows a person to see the real world overlapped with digital information including text, graphics, and audio through a pair of AR glasses. Nreal has not launched its AR glasses in China yet, while its flagship product Nreal Light, the lightweight glasses that can work with 5G compatible smartphones, has been retailing in markets of South Korea, Japan, and Spain. NIO Capital made the investment as it is upbeat about future applications of AR/VR glasses in various scenarios related to automobiles, especially, in-car infotainment systems, according to Ian Zhu, a managing partner with NIO Capital. As optical technologies mature and computing power of terminals leaps, AR applications are being widely popularized to innumerable households and are expected to be new terminals in the intelligent life. We expect to see that Nreal, who takes the lead in AR industry, contributes to the upgrade of intelligent transportation system and smart city, Mr. Zhu said. With Gasgoo Daily, we will offer important automotive news in China. For those we have reported, the title of the piece will include a hyperlink, which will provide detailed information. Third week of Sept. daily retail volume increased 15% versus last month: CPCA According to the CPCA, average daily vehicle retail volume during the third week of September was 43,000 vehicles, down by 14% year on year, but up 15% comparing to that of August. Cumulative retail volume of the first three weeks in September saw a decline of 13% year on year, but increased 8% versus the same period in August. Sales of NEVs surged, while stock of joint venture brands and luxury brands were significantly low. Chervon Auto plans to build new plant in Tianjin for RMB150 million Chinas auto parts supplier Chervon Auto revealed its plan to build a new production plant in Tianjin with a budget limit of RMB150 million from shareholders. The projected construction period is four months. Changqing Machinery budgets RMB52.3 million for NEV auto parts project Changqing Machinery Co. Ltd. plans to allocate RMB52.3 million to intellectualize its commercial vehicle parts production, and new energy vehicle light weight auto parts construction. Wolong Holding: ready to produce NEV motors for Vitesco Technologies Wolong Holding Group stated, the company is close to produce electric motors for Vitesco Technologies under a RMB2.1 billion order. NIO launches 75kWh standard-range hybrid-cell battery NIO announced the launch of its 75kWh standard-range hybrid-cell battery on September 23. Vehicle models armed with the new battery are available for orders from 14:00 on the same day, and will be handed over to users from November 2021. photo credit: NIO HUAWEI: 20% of new cars in China will be autonomous vehicles in 2030 Chinas telecom giant HUAWEI released the Intelligent World 2030 report, discussing the future and expectations of how intelligent technologies change the world in a decade. BYD registers Zhengzhou-based subsidiary for NEV, auto parts sales Chinese automaker BYD recently established in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, a subsidiary whose business scope covers sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), according to the business information provider Tianyancha. Car and City: Aug. registrations of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV In August 2021, the insurance registrations of the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, a mini-sized all-electric car model of SAIC-GM-Wuling (SGMW), reached 32,817 units, rocketing 270.5% year on year, while also rising 8.7% month on month, according to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC). Bosch, HYCAN unveil automated valet parking ecosystem On September 22nd, Bosch and NIO-backed HYCAN auto brand unveiled their co-developed automated valet parking project, which will be loaded on HYCANs Z03, marking the automakers first attempt at adopting this technology on its mass-produced model. General Motors invests $300 million in Momenta General Motors announced a $300 million investment in Chinas leading autonomous driving startup, Momenta, to push forward the development of next-generation autonomous driving technologies among future GM vehicle models in China. Xpeng delivers 50,000 P7s in 15 months Chinas EV startup Xpeng delivered 50,000 vehicles of its intelligent sport-sedan, the P7, in fifteen months, shattering the record of Chinese startups single model delivery speed, according to the results released by the automaker today. VW Group breaks ground on wholly-owned battery system factory in Hefei On Sept. 23, Volkswagen Group (VW Group) celebrated the first spade cut for a battery system manufacturing factory in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, according to a press release from the German auto giant. Chinas Jan.-Aug. registrations of NEV-related firms exceed 100k In the first 8 months of 2021, a total of 107,088 NEV (new energy vehicle)-related companies newly registered in China, posting a 137.8% year-on-year surge, according to the database query platform Qichacha. Beijing (Gasgoo)- Black Sesame Technologies has completed several hundred million dollars worth of strategic round and C-round of financing, the Shanghai headquartered AI company announced recently. photo credit: Black Sesame Technologies The strategic round investors include Xiaomis joint venture, Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund, and FulScience Automotive Electronics, a FAW Group joint venture with FAWER Automotive Parts and Desay SV. The C-round was led by Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund and participated by other major capital firms such as Lenovo Capital and Incubator. The two rounds of financing provided substantial support to Black Sesame in developing high-performance, high computing power autonomous driving platform and expanding its business and team. After the investments, Black Sesame has a market value of nearly $2 billion, helping to accelerate the transformation of intelligent vehicles in China with chips from local companies. Aside from the capital-level investments, the Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund will also support Black Sesame via its reliable industry chain strategic resources. Notably, this marks the first investment in the automotive chip field made by Xiaomi after its automaking announcement. FAW Group, parent company of FulScience, is also a long-term partner of Black Sesame Technologies. In 2019, FAW Group and Black Sesame cooperated to develop autonomous vehicle chips, visual perception algorithms, and data, aiming to deploy autonomous driving technologies onto FAWs products. Black Sesame has been commercializing its L2-L3 ADAS and autonomous driving perceptual system solutions through numerous partners, such as FAW Group, Bosch, SAIC Group, Dongfeng Sharing. The companys algorithm and image processing technologies have been implemented in consumer electronics sectors like smartphones, post-production vehicle use, and smart home systems. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On Sept. 23, Volkswagen Group (VW Group) celebrated the first spade cut for a battery system manufacturing factory in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, according to a press release from the German auto giant. Photo credit: Volkswagen Group Wholly owned by VW Group, the Hefei-based factory will feature an initial capacity of 150,000 to 180,000 high-voltage battery systems per year for local-produced all-electric vehicles. Covering an area of over 45,000 square meters, the factory is neighbor to the MEB plant VW Group is building under a majority-owned venture with JAC Group. VW Group China plans to pour more than 140 million euros ($164 million) in the construction of the new battery system factory and supporting facilities by 2025. Besides, the factory is scheduled to commence production in the second half of 2023. With the rapid expansion of the future all-electric vehicle market, we should take moves in such key components as battery system so as to reinforce VW's strength in electric vehicle value chain and maximize the groups synergy and innovation abilities. The strategic battery deployment plays a vital role in the group's e-mobility offensive and will help VW Group China increase the sales of NEVs to 40% of overall auto sales by 2023, said Stephan Wollenstein, CEO of Volkswagen Group China. VW Group currently has four ID. series BEV models for sale in China. The automaker announced on Wednesday it delivered 7,023 ID. vehicles in August, representing a 20.9% month-on-month jump. The ID.3 hatchback is expected to hit the market at the end of this year and was available for orders from late August. 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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Aims to cater to the growing pool of start-ups while also attracting German and European companies looking to access and accelerate in the region. An official launch of the "Life Science Incubator" was held on 22 September 2021, at German Center Singapore. The launch was officiated by Guest-of-Honour, Minister of State, Mr Alvin Tan, Ambassador to German Embassy, Dr. Norbert Riedel and attended by representatives of educational institutions, ecosystem builders, industry accelerators and partners from Singapore and Germany in a hybrid setting. Life science companies are reinforcing their presence in Asia, particularly here in Singapore. With eight of the top ten pharmaceutical and medical technology firms basing their headquarters in Singapore, there is a growing demand for expertise in the laboratory, technical sales, quality, and engineering-related skill sets. The aim of the Life Science Incubator is to cater to the growing pool of start-ups that demand agile, equipped, affordable facilities and to be a resource for the thriving local ecosystem to leverage, while also attracting German and European companies looking to access and accelerate in the region. The incubator will work with local accelerators, universities, and polytechnics to engage in their missions, stimulating entrepreneurship and provide external resources to support the spin-out efforts of these institutions. The venture also aims to aid in the creation of employment opportunities in the field of life sciences. Corporate Email Address: You forgot to provide an Email Address. This email address doesnt appear to be valid. 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State/Province: You did not provide a full local address. Zip/Postal Code: You did not provide a full local address. Phone: You forgot to provide a phone number. This phone number format is not recognized. Please check the country and number. I agree to TechTargets Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and the transfer of my information to the United States for processing to provide me with relevant information as described in our Privacy Policy. Please check the box if you want to proceed. I agree to my information being processed by TechTarget and its Partners to contact me via phone, email, or other means regarding information relevant to my professional interests. I may unsubscribe at any time. Please check the box if you want to proceed. By submitting my Email address I confirm that I have read and accepted the Terms of Use and Declaration of Consent. ITAI Truesee's Daily Wonder Thursday, September 23, 2021 Archives Truesee presents the weird, wild, wacky and world news of the day. October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 Subscribe Lt Col Doug Hague served in the army for 18 years, receiving multiple vaccines during that time, including eight anthrax shots. Nevertheless, Hague has decided to resign after refusing to take a required Covid vaccine. On Hannity, Hage explained that his refusal to take the vaccine "is really about the freedom of the American people." Hague: I've spent 18 years active duty service, I've got two years until I'm eligible to pull my retirement. And I don't want the COVID vaccine, and I don't plan on getting it. But I've had all the other army vaccines, I've had eight anthrax shots, I've had the smallpox vaccination, I've had 'em all. So it's really not about whether or not I'll get the shot. But this is really about the freedom of the American people, the right to choose your own medical procedures, the right to decide, you know, what's going to be injected into your your body and what's not. That's a natural human right that, you know, we can't take away from people. And I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, which affords those rights to the Americans. Hannity: Let me ask you that, because there is a slight loophole in the vaccine mandate for companies of 100 employees or more, which is that you have to agree to get tested once a week. Is that option exists for the military? Hague: No, not to my knowledge. That that does not exist for the military. No. Hannity: So really, you've pushed into a corner. Do you have any medical reason that perhaps maybe a rare condition of some kind that would prevent you from getting the vaccine? Or is this just a matter of principle? Hague: This is this is about principle. Like I said, it's about the freedom of the American people and I swore an oath to, to protect that freedom. And I've looked at the Army's publishes recent guidance on how it's going to unfold this plan for implementing this, I've looked it over I do believe that if I wanted to, I could wiggle my way through the next two years and get my retirement, but I would have to sacrifice my personal integrity. And I'd have to turn my back on the oath that I took to protect Americans' rights and that's what I believe this is about it. It's not about me, it's not about my retirement. A group of scientists did a fascinating experiment: They proved that adding more plants to even tiny, mangy little urban greenspaces can massively boost their biodiversity. In 2016 they honed in on a small, 200-square-meter greenspace in downtown Melbourne a place that is "adjacent to a major road, surrounded by large buildings, and embedded in a dense urban matrix." It wasn't exactly a verdant paradise; in fact it only had two gum trees. They added twelve more indigenous plant species, then monitored what happened over the next four years. The insect diversity exploded: In a year there were five times as many insect species, and two years after that, there were seven times as many as at the beginning. Better yet, most of the insects were indigenous, so it wasn't a case of the new plants attracting invasive species. (Their paper on the experiment is here.) The upshot is that we clearly ought to be adding far more locally-appropriate plant-life to urban greenspaces. Given that insect populations are globally and disastrously on the decline, this is one awfully easy and probably not-that-expensive way to help out, at scale, around the world. As the lead author told the New Scientist (paywalled article, but worth quoting): "I can't think of any drawbacks," says Mata. "On the contrary, the indigenous plant species require less water and don't require fertilisers." Now they have grown to cover most of the ground, there is also no more need for weed control, he says. "This report demonstrates the ability of healthy plant and fungi communities to provide the building blocks for ecosystems abounding with biodiversity," says Ian Dunn, head of UK conservation charity Plantlife, which has been campaigning to boost wild flowers and wildlife simply by encouraging individuals and city officials to mow lawns, parks and road verges less often, or to mow at better times. (CC-2.0-licensed photo of street flowers in Tel Aviv via RG in TLV's Flickr feed) Daylight saving wasn't implemented to trick farmers into getting up early, as popular myth suggests. It was first proposed in 1895 for a much more important reason so entomologist and astronomer George Hudson could study insects at night. Hudson is dead, so daylight saving is no longer necessary. Japan, India, and China don't observe it, and now the South Pacific island nation of Samoa is joining them in scrapping the confusing, accident-causing, useless-to-all-but-bug-watchers ritual of mass delusion. On Sunday, November 7 at 2 am local time, Samoa will do the right thing by doing nothing. It's time for the rest of the world to wake up and do the same. From the website Time and Date, which covers breaking news about the time and the date: "The Ministry hereby advises that the Daylight Saving Time (DST) policy has ceased as per Cabinet Decision []. There will be no activation of the Daylight Saving Time policy for this year." The announcement came from the Government of Samoa on September 20, 2021, following a decision made by Samoa's new Government Cabinet on September 15, 2021. DST was implemented in 2010 by the previous Government of Samoa to give more time after work to tend to their plantations, promote public health, and save fuel. Instead, it "[] defeated its own goals by being used by people to socialise more," according to the Samoa Observer. [Photo by SONYA KERR on Scopio] In late 2018, San Francisco launched an initiative to redesign its trash cans. Though previous receptacles were functional, the director of the Department of Public Works wanted more beautiful trash cans because the city is "obviously very unique." Nearly three years later, the project is still underway; representatives recently voted to spend $427,500 to test fifteen prototype cans. When Supervisor Matt Haney realized the stunning amount of time and the multi-million dollar price tag of the trash can beautification efforts, he had concerns. "I realize we're pretty far down the path here already," he said at a Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee meeting July 21. "But why did we choose this path to begin with? And why are we still doing this rather than putting out a bunch of different types of cans that already are produced, that are much cheaper, that are already performing well in some other place and then making a decision based on this? This is a very expensive, much longer, uncertain process that we've chosen." "The idea that San Francisco is so unique that we need a separate trash can from anyone deployed in any city around the world is preposterous," Haney told Mission Local this month. "It's something that reflects a broader and deeper brokenness of city government and the services it provides." Mission Local Based on the project's current trajectory, trash cans will likely cost between $2000 and $3000 possibly as high as $5000 each, greatly exceeding the city's initial request to spend less than $1000 per can. The price tag also exceeds that of other cities. In a new scientific paper published in Nature titled, "A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea," a group of two dozen scientists present the results of 15 years of research into the lost Middle Eastern city of Tall el-Hammam, presenting evidence that it was in fact destroyed by an asteroid some 3600 years ago or so: The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000 more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 510 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO 3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 C. [] An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). First, those are some impressive feats of calculation to figure out all that stuff from the 4,000-year-old ruins of what used to be a city in the desert. Good on them (this Online Impact Calculator apparently helped). If you don't want to read the scientific paper (which is very Scientific Paper), they break down their discovery process with some much-more accessible language in The Conversation. It's actually pretty fascinating how each new archaeological find lead to more questions, and how so many disciplines came together to figure out that, holy shit, it must have been a slightly smaller version of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and here's how it burned all this stuff and affected these minerals and this geography and caused all this domino chain of other issues in the area. But what does any of this have to do with sodomy? Well, as detailed in the Book of Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities that were chock full of sin, which has been largely interpreted as a euphemism for homosexuality, unless it's not. Whatever the case, Old Testament God got pissed and destroyed these two "cities of the plain" as punishment for doin' butt stuff, I guess. These scientists weren't necessarily looking to prove or disprove a Biblical story. But they did not in their paper that, well, Tall el-Hammam was a city of a plain, and it was pretty brutally destroyed by a giant flash of fury from the Heavens, and given the time, it could have very well been the folkloric inspiration for that particular Bible story: There is an ongoing debate as to whether Tall el-Hammam could be the biblical city of Sodom, but this issue is beyond the scope of this investigation. Questions about the potential existence, age, and location of Sodom are not directly related to the fundamental question addressed in this investigation as to what processes produced high-temperature materials at Tall el-Hammam during the MBA. Nevertheless, we consider whether oral traditions about the destruction of this urban city by a cosmic object might be the source of the written version of Sodom in Genesis. We also consider whether the details recounted in Genesis are a reasonable match for the known details of a cosmic impact event. [] It is worth speculating that a remarkable catastrophe, such as the destruction of Tall el-Hammam by a cosmic object, may have generated an oral tradition that, after being passed down through many generations, became the source of the written story of biblical Sodom in Genesis. The description in Genesis of the destruction of an urban center in the Dead Sea area is consistent with having been an eyewitness account of a cosmic airburst, e.g., (i) stones fell from the sky; (ii) fire came down from the sky; (iii) thick smoke rose from the fires; (iv) a major city was devastated; (v) city inhabitants were killed; and (vi) area crops were destroyed. If so, the destruction of Tall el-Hammam is possibly the second oldest known incident of impact-related destruction of a human settlement, after Abu Hureyra in Syria ~12,800 years ago. That's a cool bit of story!though, I'm sorry not sorry if it ruins your fantasies of a vengeful sky-father burning a bunch of people to death for doing sex. If it makes you feel better, a giant asteroid demolishing a city would almost certainly count as an "act of God" in legal terms, according to your insurance adjustor. A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom [Christopher Moore / The Conversation] A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea [Ted E. Bunch, Malcolm A. LeCompte, A. Victor Adedeji, James H. Wittke, T. David Burleigh, Robert E. Hermes, Charles Mooney, Dale Batchelor, Wendy S. Wolbach, Joel Kathan, Gunther Kletetschka, Mark C. L. Patterson, Edward C. Swindel, Timothy Witwer, George A. Howard, Siddhartha Mitra, Christopher R. Moore, Kurt Langworthy, James P. Kennett, Allen West & Phillip J. Silvia / Nature] Image via Public Domain Posted Thursday, September 23, 2021 8:04 am USDA announces pandemic assistance The U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing up to $200 million to provide relief to timber harvesting and timber hauling businesses that have experienced losses due to COVID-19 as part of USDAs Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative, according to a news release. Loggers and truckers can apply for assistance through USDAs Farm Service Agency through Friday, Oct. 15. The Pandemic Assistance for Timber Harvesters and Haulers program is administered by FSA in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service. The release stated timber harvesting and hauling businesses that have experienced a gross revenue loss of at least 10% during the period of Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2020, compared to the period of Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2019, are encouraged to apply. Weve heard from loggers and truckers whose livelihoods were significantly impacted this past year by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are pleased that USDA can help alleviate some of the financial burden, said Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen, per the release. I encourage those logging and log-hauling businesses hardest hit by the pandemic to learn more about the assistance offered through this new program. According to the release, to be eligible for payments, individuals or legal entities must be a timber harvesting or timber hauling business where 50% or more of its gross revenue is derived from cutting timber, transporting timber or the processing of wood on-site on the forest land chipping, grinding, converting to biochar, cutting to smaller lengths, etc. Payments will be based on the applicants gross revenue received from Jan. 1 through Dec. 1, 2019, minus gross revenue received from Jan. 1 through Dec. 1, 2020, multiplied by 80%, the release said. The maximum amount that a person or legal entity may receive directly is $125,000. Loggers and truckers can apply by completing form FSA-1118, Pandemic Assistance for Timber Harvesters and Haulers Program application, and certifying to their gross revenue for 2019 and 2020 on the application, according to the release Additional documentation may be required. Visit farmers.gov/pathh for more information on how to apply. Applications can be submitted to the FSA office at any USDA Service Center nationwide by mail, fax, hand delivery or via electronic means. To find a local FSA office, loggers and truckers can visit farmers.gov/service-locator or call 877-508-8364. Phillips Media Group acquires five publications Phillips Media Group announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire five publications from Gannett Co., Inc. The transaction is scheduled to close Wednesday, Sept. 1, according to a news release. Dirks, Van Essen and April, a media merger and acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, represented Gannett in the transaction. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, the release said. The five publications include the Baxter Bulletin in Mountain Home, Arkansas, as well as Missouris the Big Nickel in Joplin, the Rolla Daily News, the Kirksville Daily Express and the NEMO Trader in La Plata. These publications are all located within the general footprint of other Phillips Media Group properties. We are excited to bring these publications into our group, president of Phillips Media Group Jim Holland said, per the release. We believe we have the expertise to effectively operate publications in these markets, putting out products that will be valued by the respective communities. According to the release, Holland went on to say that he appreciated the confidence that Gannett has shown by selling these newspapers to Phillips Media Group and entrusting the stewardship of these publications to a company that has a large presence in the region. Phillips Media Group acquired the Quincy, Illinois, Herald Whig and Hannibal Courier Post earlier this year, the release added. With the addition of these five papers from Gannett, the company puts out 17 publications in Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois. The company also operates Springfield-based Nowata Printing Company. Bolivar groups sponsor new House of Hope facility Fidelis Club of Bolivar-General Federated Women's Club, Lambda Zeta Chapter Beta Sigma Phi and Beta Sigma Phi Sorority of Bolivar each donated $1,000 sponsorship checks to Polk County House of Hope for rooms at the organizations new facility, according to a news release. A big thank you to them for bringing us this wonderful gift, the news release from House of Hope stated. It is very much appreciated. The release said the donations will help House of Hope get closer to achieving its goal of getting its building completed and ready to move into. Each group will each have a plaque outside the rooms they sponsored and a small plaque on the organizations donor board on the administration side, the release added. According to the release, these sponsorships go a long way toward having a better place for victims of domestic and sexual violence to start their recovery and allows House of Hope to provide services to help get victims started in a new life. Northampton, MA --News Direct-- Cisco Systems Inc. Now that the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge 2021 winners have been officially announced, we are excited for you to learn more about each winning team and the story behind each innovation. The Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge is an annual competition that awards cash prizes to early-stage tech entrepreneurs solving the worlds toughest problems. Now in its fifth year, the competition awarded its largest prize pool ever, $1 million USD, to 20 winning teams from around the world. Globally, about $120 billion worth of crops and forest residues are burned in the open each year. Burning these residues is counterproductive to climate change, as it significantly increases air pollution, but its also a missed opportunity, economically. Thats where co-founders Kevin Kung and Vidyut Mohan began their journey with Takachar, which won a $25,000 USD Third Runner-Up Prize. The team has designed and patented small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment to convert these biomass residues into products that can be sold back to farmers, ensuring less dependencies on the global supply chain. What problem is your technology solution trying to solve? Kevin: A lot of crop and forest residues which we call biomass is often very loose, wet and bulky, which makes it very difficult and expensive to transport from many rural areas. As such, rural communities often resort to burning their residues because theres no economic way for them to make use of those residues, so thats sort of the problem that we are trying to address. By residues I mean rice husks, rice straws, wood chips, hay straw, coconut shells, different types of post-harvest waste that doesnt otherwise have any value. Biomass is fairly context-dependent so even moving from one village in Kenya or India to the next, the type of crop grown differs. Even at the local level, thats the kind of robustness the technology needs to meet. And fortunately for us, we dont have to change the hardware, its more of the operation and so forth that needs to be tailored from place to place. Story continues Vidyut: Having said that, we do realize the importance of focusing on key pilots that wed like to scale. We can establish a strong base and scale up to other options. Can you explain how the solution works? Kevin: I tried to develop small-scale, low-cost portable systems that can latch onto the back of tractors and pick-up trucks. Something that can be deployed to rural areas that are hard to access regions and on farms and so forth, and locally upgrade and densify these residues into higher value bio-products or bio-fuels without needing any external energy or fuel input. For rural communities, what we can offer is a way to utilize the waste and turn it into higher value, thereby bringing additional income. One of the products that we have made is a carbon rich form of fertilizer and we have sold it back to the same communities about 5,000 farmers and on average, it has increased their yields by about 27 percent and their net income by up to 50 percent, from the use of our locally produced fertilizer blend. Our solution is deployed mostly in emerging markets, in places like Kenya, where we have a pilot in collaboration with a local partner, as well as in India where some of the crop burning and pollution problems are prevalent. In the States, there is significant interest in utilizing the technology for better wildfire management on the West Coast. So even understanding that and considering how the technology should be designed so that it is robust in different contexts has been really helpful in our product development. What inspired you to develop this solution? Kevin: I grew up in Taiwan actually, right beside paddy fields, where occasionally we also had this residue burning and affecting the air quality. I moved to North America when I was around 12 and went to school here and was lucky to really get a pretty good education around engineering. That really fuels some of my passion around design resource constraints. I conducted my PhD research at M.I.T. where I was working on small-scale, low-cost, portable systems for residues. This was part of that process and after I graduated, it looked like something that has a compelling case. I wasnt interested in just letting the technology sit on a shelf somewhere. I mean, when we decided to start a company to try to commercialize and scale it, such that it has real impact. We are still actively testing and iterating on our prototype and product development, making sure its actually something that can be used and scale for greater impact, beyond a single village. In the long term, we really envision if we could get these fleets of bioconversion reactors to rural communities, then potentially we could create this self-sufficient community that supply their own commodities and chemical needs from a locally available resource and labor, rather than depend on global logistics chains. We could also mitigate a lot of air pollution and potentially wildfires as well, that get started from burning biomass residues. Vidyut: Ive grown up in India, in the city of Delhi and Ive seen biomass residues being burned in farms surrounding the city, causing a lot of air pollution. There are a lot of related issues to this, I was interested to understand why this problem exists, to find a solution, and to find productive ways to utilize these biomass residues. I was interested to see how we can bring value to farmers instead of these residues being burned. So I was exploring this as part of my Masters thesis. After graduating, I managed to connect with Kevin. We wanted to develop this solution on the ground as a commercial venture that brings social and environmental value. How will winning a prize in the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge help you advance your business? Kevin: Its a great honor to be highlighted and be part of the cohort, right? The validation we get, as well as the network it has opened up. Weve already had quite a few people reach out to us because they heard about us through social media or the online announcements at Cisco. So, I mean, that just that network has been pretty valuable in helping us gain additional partners as we contemplate scaling this. Do you know what you will use the prize money for specifically? Kevin: The prize money also goes a long way. As a socially and environmentally driven organization we try to work around impacts, right, and a lot of that funding really helps us build that initial use case for how this could be scaled. This money is going straight to our field pilots and helping us bring this to rural farmers. I mean so our most recent prototypes can be tested and get feedback, and potentially use it on a continuous basis after the pilot. Vidya: Well also spend time understanding the markets where we want to commercialize in. How has the global pandemic impacted your work? Kevin: The funny thing was that actually for quite a few years before the pandemic our team have been working a lot initially over video, just because geographical locations makes it intractable for us to meet in person. I guess we were lucky to have established that kind of relationship and communication channel before the pandemic even started. But it has been challenging because it does limit travel. I cannot go to the pilot site, I havent been since 2019. A lot of our communication has been sort of more virtual and reliant on what I hear or observe on the ground and vice versa. Its slowed and delayed some of our work invariably and thats something were coping with. I guess the fortunate thing is that our work happens outdoors, it still requires a lot of precaution, but its not like working in indoor environments. Working in rural communities, weve worked in buffer systems so that if things get interrupted, we can still run things internally. In remote places, sometimes, it is a challenge in terms of connectivity, but at least for us in the pilot sites were focused on getting those easier parts solved, before we work on the harder parts. Vidyut: Weve essentially set up local teams in the areas where we operate, that take ownership of operating without having to communicate with our design team. Theyre very independently managed operations on the ground. We also design the equipment to be maintained and serviced locally, using local skill sets and resources Why did you decide to start your own social enterprise versus going to work for a company? Vidyut: Funny enough, soon after graduating, I took up a job in a company that was working on the same problem and that company became bankrupt. But by investigating the problem, and why the company failed, that became a partial thesis for this company and starting it. For me, my family is very supportive, there were plenty of questions about how I would be able to support myself financially. I didnt have answers at the time, but we are starting to get more answers. Kevin: For me, after I finished my research project, this seemed like a natural course to continue. For me, status quo would be to go into academia or find a teaching position at a university. But I wanted to see the technology go forward. Ive seen a fair bit of technology get shelved because the student working on it graduated. It just didnt feel right for me to do that for technology like this. It took a while for people to wrap their heads around what Im doing, partly because it took me a while to figure that out. I think in general, they see and understand the sort of value of the work. What advice do you have for other social entrepreneurs? Kevin: One thing I found extraordinarily challenging was getting into the minds of the end users. I think in very far removed places, it requires a lot of immersion and spending time in the field, actually working with them, shadowing them, trying to understand their actual pain points and dreams that they have. Being able to connect with end users enables the team to create things which they value. Vidyut: Ive learned a lot of us come with a passion to solve a very large, abstract problem, but its also important to find a compelling need that users are willing to pay for. Finding that compelling need through extensive user research is one of the most important steps. Thats what leads to all your product specifications and functional requirements, so I would say focusing on that is really important and doing that well is about fifty percent of the job. View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Cisco Systems Inc. on 3blmedia.com View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/takachar-meet-the-team-that-developed-a-solution-to-make-economic-use-of-biomass-residues-while-reducing-air-pollution-620933771 Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific has started seeing "green shoots" after the national government eased coronavirus rules in the capital region, a company executive said on Thursday. During a virtual briefing, Candice Iyog, vice president for marketing and customer experience at Cebu Pacific, said passenger loads have been improving gradually since the government placed the capital region under the general community quarantine with Alert Level 4. We're seeing green shoots since the announcement of GCQ," the official said. She noted that the airlines load factor has been averaging low to mid-50% since the past week. Iyog acknowledged that the number remains very far from Cebu Pacifics pre-pandemic levels of 85%. But well take it," she said. "Thats why were talking about how to simplify travel requirements. Iyog said the airline has been urging the national government to reduce the quarantine period for international travelers and drop the requirement for a negative COVID-19 test result for domestic tourists who are fully vaccinated against the virus. RELATED: Airlines want cap on intl arrivals raised, shorter quarantine for vaccinated passengers She said Cebu Pacific has no plans to conduct layoffs or reduce its 73-strong fleet as the airline is cautiously optimistic about its four-quarter operations. Its easy to add capacity, we have the aircraft, we have the crew," Iyog said. "We are ready to ramp up as quickly as demand comes back. We expect to fly 38% of our pre-covid capacity by October, she added. Cebu Pacific said it will increase its flights in October to Siargao, Boracay, and Bohol. It said it will also resume its daily flights to Dubai, Japan, and Kuala Lumpur. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Presidential aspirant and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno wants to continue the administration's anti-drug campaign, but this time, "under the blanket of existing laws and rights," he said Thursday. "Tuloy ang war on drugs (The war on drugs will continue) in a different manner, under the blanket of existing laws and rights," he told CNN Philippines' The Source. "It is not up (to) me who is going to say who will live or die or who is guilty or not. It is up to the court," he said. "Yun ang importante (That's what's important), that there is already a system existing. All we have to do is lessen and implement it." Moreno acknowledged the lapses in the deadly drug war, which is already being looked into by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity. "Hindi rin naging perpekto, may mga insidente kami na talagang nakikipagbarilan, namatayan pa nga ako ng pulis eh, diba," Moreno said of his city's own anti-drug operations. [Translation: It's not really perfect, even in our city there are incidents where shootings are involved, and I even lost a policeman once.] "But the things is, that's part of the job, (we) expose ourselves into a (hazardous) way. But again and again, we will continue to follow what is written in our laws," he added. The tribunal estimated that the number of civilians killed in President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody drug war ranged from 12,000 to 30,000 from 2016 to 2019 alone. Government data only counted some 6,000 dead in the campaign. READ: ICC can summon Duterte, Dela Rosa over deadly drug war Diokno When asked whether he will cooperate with the ICC if he secures his post, Moreno expressed willingness to improve relationships with international organizations. "We will work and recognize our agreements with countries and organizations in the world. Kikilalanin natin yung ating mga ipinangako sa mga sinalihan natin (We will recognize our promises and memberships with them)," he said. Moreno formally declared his presidential bid on Wednesday. He will be the standard bearer of Aksyon Demokratiko Party, in tandem with vice presidential aspirant Dr. Willie Ong in the 2022 elections. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Presidential aspirant and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno is willing to work with anyone, whether from the administration or opposition in the upcoming polls, including Vice President Leni Robredo, who has yet to declare her 2022 plans. In his interview with CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday, Moreno was asked whether he still intends to talk with Robredo, who is also being floated as a standard bearer of the Liberal Party in the upcoming elections. RELATED: Trillanes persuades Robredo to decide on 2022 plans "Di namin kakayanin ni Doc Willie na kaming dalawa lang, itong laban na ito [Doc Willie and I cannot handle this fight alone]. That is a fact already," Moreno said. "As I have said yesterday, I can work with anybody. That includes maybe the administration, maybe the opposition...that includes the Vice President," he said, noting that their ultimate goal is to work for the people. Opposition coalition 1Sambayan has yet to decide on who among Moreno, Robredo, and other possible presidential bets it would endorse based on its internal survey. Political pundits have speculated about Robredo settling for a local post, but the Vice President recently said she will run for president if chosen by a unity ticket. READ: Robredo ready to run for President if chosen by unity ticket Moreno said, however, that he will be "honored" to have Robredo on his side, along with other groups or individuals who share the same view on "protecting lives, saving what is left in our economy, and bouncing back." He appealed to 1Sambayan to also endorse his running mate Dr. Willie Ong, if the coalition chooses Moreno as its official bet. Failed tandem with Grace Poe 'divine intervention'? Moreno assured that he and Ong are "battle-tested" in the fight against COVID-19 due to their experience in their respective fields. "Sinabi ko rin kay Dr. Willie noon, siguro sinasadya ng tadhana na with all the dealings of some leaders in the country, then here we are, pinaglinaw ang isip natin. 'Oo nga no? Why not?'," said Moreno, when asked what he thinks of their tandem after failing to have Senator Grace Poe as his running mate. [Translation: I also told Dr. Willie before, maybe destiny found a way with all the dealings of some leaders in the country, then here we are, and we now have a clearer mind. 'Thats right. Why not'?] Moreno will be the standard bearer of Aksyon Demokratiko party, in tandem with Ong, who is currently under the Lakas Christian Muslim Democrats party. The official filing of candidacies for all elective positions is set from Oct. 1 to 8. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) There's a lot of room for the country's music industry to grow, but an expert said the lack of support it gets potentially blocks its way towards conquering the global stage. This is the weakest point of the local music sector and it should be addressed for it to take advantage of the growing market, Dr. Ma. Alexandra Chua from the National Research Council of the Philippines told CNN Philippines' The Final Word. "Once we acknowledge that we can do this because of the abundance of talent in the Philippines then I am positive and bullish that we can conquer the global music scene," she said. Chua said there is a need to assess the music ecosystem - market, data, key players, stakeholders, and value chain - to determine the assistance that "original Pilipino music" needs. Chua is part of the council's team that formulated the "MusikaPilipinas," which was conceived to support House Bill No. 10107, or the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act recently approved by lawmakers on third and final reading. "We see it pushes promotion, protection and improvement of the creative economy where music and performing arts are important sectors. We see that the creative industry itself emerged already as key drivers in the economic growth in this globalized world," she said. "There have been so much global studies on popular music... The Korean wave that is happening now was a result of a research that was done around 20 years ago. It was a result of careful study and this is what we want to achieve in this particular study - [to know] what are the factors that we need to identify these opportunities or challenges and vulnerabilities in our music ecosystem so we can provide the help that it needs," Chua explained. (CNN) In his United National General Assembly debut on Tuesday, United States President Joe Biden declared a "new era" of US diplomacy, making a case for international cooperation as the world stands at an "inflection point in history." But the President's call for unity comes as the US is embroiled in a series of global controversies that have left allies questioning if his administration is truly ready to move past an "America First" era of foreign policy. Here are a few key points from Biden's maiden speech -- and how global leaders might respond. On Afghanistan Biden proclaimed a new chapter was beginning after the decision to end two decades of war in Afghanistan. "As we close this period of relentless war, we're opening a new era of relentless diplomacy, of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world," the President said. But many nations have also questioned the largely unilateral decision by the Biden administration to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of August after 20 years of war, one that led to a chaotic withdrawal and a rapid, humiliating takeover of the country by the Taliban. Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran -- which has no formal diplomatic relations with the US -- used his first UNGA speech to attack Biden's Afghanistan strategy, referencing Afghan civilians who were seen falling from American evacuation planes last month in Kabul. Raisi called for the US to refrain from trying to influence the world, saying the world no longer cares about "America First" or "America's Back" -- taking a dig at both Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump. "Freedom does not fit in the backpacks of soldiers coming from outside the region," he said. Meanwhile, the Taliban have requested representation at the UNGA and for their spokesman to address the assembly. On fears of a new Cold War Without naming China, Biden said the US does not want a new Cold War with the most populous country in the world, but that he was looking to "compete vigorously" with the world's autocracies. "We're not seeking -- say it again -- we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocks," Biden said, adding that the US is "ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared challenges, even if we have intense disagreement in other areas, because we'll all suffer the consequences of our failure." In a pre-recorded speech broadcast after Biden's, Chinese President Xi Jinping underscored China's commitment to multilateralism, although Beijing's critics will note that its policies toward the South China Sea and Taiwan, for example, paint a different picture. China considers the 1.3 million-square-mile South China Sea as its own sovereign territory, expanding and fortifying military installations on man-made islands there. Beijing regards Taiwan as its territory to be brought under Chinese control, by force if necessary. Biden said the US will "stand up for our allies and our friends and oppose attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones," citing attempts to change territory by force, economic coercion and disinformation as examples of malign activity the US would oppose. He said the US is turning its focus to the Indo-Pacific region and is "fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future." The US recently entered a trilateral partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines -- a major step toward countering China (and prompting a diplomatic row with France.) Still, the leaders of the world's two largest economies did take a markedly less confrontational tone, perhaps a nod to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' call for the countries to fix their "completely dysfunctional" and confrontational relationship -- one that risks affecting the world order. "One country's success does not have to mean another country's failure, and the world is big enough to accommodate common development and progress of all countries," said Xi. On the climate crisis Biden urged world leaders to unite in fighting climate change, calling the climate crisis "borderless," and one that is reaching a "point of no return." He announced an effort to mobilize $100 billion to support climate action in developing nations and called on world leaders to "bring their highest-possible ambitions to the table," when they convene at a climate summit in Scotland later this year. In his pre-recorded speech, China's Xi made a major new climate commitment on behalf of the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, saying that the country will not build any new coal-fired power projects abroad. That vow marks a shift in policy around Beijing's sprawling Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which had already begun to draw down its coal initiatives. China will also increase financial support for green and low-carbon energy projects in other developing countries, Xi said. Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic whose policies have undone decades of progress on reducing deforestation, claimed in his speech that the Amazon had "a 32% reduction in deforestation in the month of August when compared to August of the previous year." However non-governmental organizations say that figure contradicts data and aerial images of the region that show deforestation is on the rise, consumed by fire, scars from mining activities within protected areas, illegal landing strips, large plots of land being prepared for planting, and cattle grazing alongside recent fires. Peru will declare a national emergency as part of its commitment to tackling the climate change crisis, President Pedro Castillo said in his address, without providing further details on what that entails. He also demanded that countries that "pollute the most" work to "meet their obligations." Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his speech that his country would move to ratify the Paris climate accord -- an international agreement among nearly 200 nations to combat climate change -- next month. On vaccine inequality Biden lauded the US' vaccine sharing efforts, saying they'd provided a "little dose of hope" in communities around the world. The US has contributed more than $15 billion toward global Covid-19 response, shipping "more than 160 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to other countries," he said. Still, vaccine inequality continues to be fueled by the actions -- or inactions -- of the world's richest nations. Last week, the World Health Organization said that more than 5.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, with 73% of those doses administered in just 10 countries. Biden's comments followed a scathing indictment on vaccine inequality from the UN Secretary-General, who pointed out that more than 90% of Africans are still waiting for a first dose while many in rich nations are already fully vaccinated. "This is a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity," Guterres said. Biden said he'll be announcing additional commitments to fight the virus at a US-hosted global Covid-19 summit on Wednesday. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Biden called for diplomacy over conflict at the UN General Assembly. Here's how world leaders responded" (CNN) Angela Merkel has been written off many times in her career by the politician's rivals, her own party members, and, yes, the press. It's difficult to imagine today, as Germany's widely respected Chancellor prepares to step down after more than 15 years in the top job, but in the early stages of her career, Merkel was regularly belittled and looked down on even by those who were supposedly on her side. The protege of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel was known by him as "mein Maedel" "my girl." "She always was underestimated by her enemies and by other politicians, and when they realized that a woman from the east is able to play this power game, it was too late," Ralph Bollmann, author of the authoritative Merkel biography "Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her Time," told CNN. The media only added to this sense that Merkel was not a serious political contender. At one of her earliest media appearances as the new leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin in 2001, Merkel appeared out of her depth. Uneasy in front of the bright lights and cameras of the press pack, she seemed not to know where to look or what to do with her hands, and gave flat, boring answers to reporters' questions. Chatting afterwards, many of the (mostly male) journalists present agreed: This woman would never be chancellor. But what did they know? Merkel went on to secure four terms in office, making her one of the longest-serving chancellors in German history only Kohl, the mentor she eventually turned her back on, has served longer in the modern era. Two decades on, she has cemented her position as an elder stateswoman, having led her nation indeed some would argue Europe as a whole through a series of potentially devastating crises. Named the most powerful woman in the world several times over, Merkel also played a crucial role on the international stage, helping to manage the global financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the war in Ukraine. As Germany prepares to go to the polls this weekend to elect a new government, and by extension her successor, it is not clear whether any of those lining up to replace her Armin Laschet of Merkel's own CDU, the center-left Socialist Party (SPD)'s Olaf Scholz, or the Greens' Annalena Baerbock will be able to fill her shoes. Bollmann says the world will sorely miss Merkel's steady leadership: "I think there is one common thing in Germany and abroad: She is seen as a guarantor of stability. In future times many people will look back at this time as a time perhaps the last time of stability." 'Don't fool yourself' Merkel, 67, grew up under Communism in East Germany, and trained as a scientist, earning a doctorate in quantum chemistry before making a move into politics following the fall of the Berlin Wall. She won a seat in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, in the first election after reunification. In the years that followed, Merkel would not only become the first female Chancellor of Germany but would also change the country's politics for good. Yet when the CDU won Germany's elections in 2005 by just 1% it was widely seen as having happened despite Merkel's perceived weaknesses, not because of her. Appearing on TV talk show "The Elephant Round," after the nail-bitingly close 2005 vote, the incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder appeared dismissive of Merkel, laughing off the notion that she would be able to form a governing coalition. "She will not manage to form a coalition with my Social Democratic Party," he said. "Don't fool yourself." Merkel held her tongue but went on to do just that, patiently biding her time before working to form a so-called "grand coalition" between the two largest parties the CDU and the SPD and, in doing so, ending Schroeder's political career. The imperturbable, unemotional Merkel had triumphed. "There are many things she learnt from her youth ... in the GDR, in Communism, because she had to hide her real opinions, not saying something ... she's a very quiet person, she's patient," Merkel biographer Bollmann told CNN. The early years of Merkel's chancellorship were largely uneventful. Germany's economy slowly gained steam after years of stagnation. But in 2008, when investment banking company Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world seemed headed for an economic abyss, Germans feared their export-dependent nation could go under. That's when Merkel took charge, becoming the country's crisis manager. On October 5, 2008, she told Germans: "Your savings are secure, the federal government guarantees that." Her calm, reassuring words helped to prevent a run on the banks and marked the start of a period of confidence in the face of adversity for Germany, led by Merkel. Her government started a short-term labor program, known as "Kurzarbeit," which helped companies keep their employee on staff by making them work shorter hours, while the government supplemented their incomes. The program cost around 6 billion euros, according to the Federal Employment Agency, but it helped Germany avoid mass unemployment and ensured that German companies were at an advantage once the global economy picked up, since they had retained their skilled workforces. By the time the Greek debt crisis hit in 2012, Germans had faith in their chancellor, trusting that she could handle the adversity. Merkel took charge, creating giant funds to save not just Greece's economy but those of other debt-ridden Eurozone nations as well. Though Greece and other countries criticized what they saw as the draconian terms of their bailouts, Merkel likely saved the single currency. "Europe will fail if the euro fails. Europe wins if the euro wins," Merkel told the German Bundestag in 2012. "She has led Germany, Europe and, in parts, the rest of the world through an era of crises big crises which we never thought could happen in a Western democracy," says Bollmann. But while Merkel is seen as a bold and accomplished crisis manager, critics say she risked alienating the conservative voter base of her own party, the CDU, by taking left-of-center positions on key topics including nuclear energy, foreign policy, and immigration. Merkel's government had initially halted Germany's planned exit from nuclear energy, but she reversed that decision in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The move was popular with those on the left, but not necessarily with CDU supporters. "The phenomenon of Angela Merkel is basically leading from behind," said Julian Reichelt, managing editor of Germany's largest daily tabloid newspaper, the right-leaning BILD. "You see where people are going and you follow the masses, you don't lead the masses. She was brilliant at doing that." The same was often true in foreign policy, which saw Germany's role shrink, compared to the Schroeder years. "Germany certainly punches below its weight when it comes to foreign policy," Reichelt told CNN. "Angela Merkel tried to ignore all major conflicts and problems all over the world as good as she could. She was one of the champions of ignoring all the problems that were so obvious in Afghanistan and which would obviously hit us after the withdrawal." Arguably, Merkel's highest-profile moment of international leadership came in the summer of 2015 when hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly displaced by the civil war in Syria, made their way to Europe. While many of her fellow leaders across the European Union argued in favour of trying to stop the masses from entering thebloc, Merkel believed that the moment called for a huge humanitarian response. "Germany is a strong country. We have achieved so much -- we can do it!" Merkel famously said at a press conference in 2015, opening her country's doors to the refugees. "We will manage this, and if something stands in the way, it must be overcome." Germany eventually welcomed an estimated 1.2 million refugees over the next year and a half. Hajo Funke, a professor at Berlin's Freie University, believes opening Germany and Europe up to the influx of people in need was one of the greatest humanitarian acts in German history. "This was a golden hour of the post-World War II democracy. This is the legacy: To be non-nationalist," Funke told CNN. In the wake of Merkel's call to action, many Germans welcomed the asylum seekers with food and clothes; some opened their homes to those who had made the arduous journey, or helped them find work. But the magic of the moment eventually wore off. Integrating the new arrivals was a tricky task some critics say was handled poorly. Her handling of the refugee crisis put a dent in Merkel's popularity at home and helped fuel the rise of far-right political forces including the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD became the first far-right group elected to the Bundestag since 1961. It came third in the 2017 election, with 12.6% of the vote. While Merkel did win another term as chancellor, poor showings for her party at local elections convinced her it was time for change; in 2018 she announced that she would hand over the leadership of the CDU, and that she would not seek re-election in 2021. But a new crisis soon came knocking. In early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Merkel was one of the first world leaders to acknowledge the scale of the health threat posed by coronavirus. "Since German unification, no, since the Second World War there has not been a challenge to our nation that required us to act in solidarity with one another so much," she said. Under her leadership, Germany quickly introduced a strict lockdown, reinstated the "Kurzarbeit" program to protect the economy, and helped launch the search for a vaccine. Merkel's handling of the pandemic saw her popularity spike, as Germans once again learned to appreciate the dogged resolve of their often-underestimated leader. Some are left doubting whether those lining up to take her place as chancellor will match up to their predecessor. "The question is: Who's going to replace (Merkel), and will that person have the same charisma and ability that she did?" Ben Schreer, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) wondered in an interview with CNN earlier this week. "Allies are skeptical, and Germans as well are quite cautious in that regard." Laschet, Scholz and Baerbock can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that pundits and politicians alike once doubted Merkel's abilities too. As the politician who arrived on the scene as an inexperienced "Maedchen" prepares to leave the world stage, Germany's voters are left wondering who will fill the void left by the woman they came to know affectionately as "Mutti": the mother of the nation. This story was first published on CNN.com Angela Merkel saw Germans through crisis after crisis. Now they wonder who'll fill the void Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) The country's budget deficit reached 120.9 billion in August as government spending rose, the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) reported Thursday. In a statement, the agency said the amount is thrice as high as the 40.1 billion recorded in the same month last year, but is lower than the 121.2 billion deficit registered in July. August's figure brings the government's cumulative fiscal deficit to 958.2 billion a 29.36% jump. It's also equivalent to 52% of the revised 1.85 trillion program for this year. The BTr said public expenditure climbed by 34.2% to 380.2 billion during the month the second highest growth recorded this year next to the 37.27% rate logged in February. The disbursement of several COVID-19 financing requirements such as cash aid to families affected by strict quarantine restrictions in Metro Manila, and subsidy releases to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) led to higher spending in August, the bureau explained. Meanwhile, interest payments grew by 6.13% in August, reaching 23.9 billion due to coupon payments for retail treasury bonds issued last year. Revenues also increased during the month, but only by 6.59% hitting 259.3 billion. The Bureau of Internal Revenue raked in 186.1 billion, slightly lower by 0.99% according to the Treasury. The Bureau of Customs, on the other hand, collected 53.4 billion in August. Higher by 20.23% from last year, the figure also reflects a 133-million deduction in tax refunds, the bureau said. The Treasury itself hauled 4.7 billion in August more than double its 2.1-billion income in 2020 - due to "higher remittance of NG (National Government) share from PAGCOR income, dividend remittances and earnings from BSF (Bond Sinking Fund) investment." Collections from other offices likewise went up in August by 78.8% to 13.9 billion, with the agency citing more relaxed lockdown rules compared to last year. "The return of 4.0 billion unutilized funds under the Bayanihan 1 Act from the Department of Transportation also contributed to the strong performance for the month," the BTr said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) A Commission on Elections official has a counter-offer to lawmakers seeking a one-month extension of the voter registration period which will on Sept. 30. Our proposal, we extended to Senator Risa (Hontiveros), is to give a one-week extension after the filing of COCs (certificates of candidacy), said Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo, who heads all preparations for next years polls. The hearing of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System saw the poll body bargaining with House and Senate members who want to postpone the deadline for those who want to sign up and vote in the May 2022 presidential polls. Both chambers have passed bills calling for a month-long extension for registrants, but the Comelec has stood firm. However, Casquejo admitted that the poll body will have to comply if these measures are signed into law. The COC filing is set from Oct. 1-8, when local politicians formally indicate their intention to run before local Comelec offices, the same place where people line up to register. But the lawmakers didnt buy Casquejos offer. Yun nga ang problema e, kasi ang layo noong one week na binibigay ng Comelec sa one month na hinihingi ng legislature, Sen. Imee Marcos said. Sa dinami-dami ng nakapila, ang layo naman ng one week sa one month. Hindi siya compromise. [Translation: Thats the problem. Comelecs one week offer is not comparable to the one month sought by the legislature. For the thousands of people lining up, one week and one month are vastly different. Its not a compromise.] Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga, Jr. also tried to negotiate with the poll body, asking if it can give two weeks instead. Casquejo said he will look into the request, but noted that even his one-week extension proposal has not been tackled by the Comelec en banc. As of this writing, there are only seven days left for voter registration of first-time voters, transfer of district, and reactivation for delisted voters who were not able to cast their ballots in the last two polls. Long lines for registration have been reported, with many camping out at dawn to secure their spot in the line. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to file a case against Senator Richard Gordon for allegedly failing to settle misused public funds when the lawmaker was the chairperson of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. In his public address aired Wednesday night, the President said the Commission on Audit issued a notice of disallowance for 140 million to SBMA under Gordons leadership, but the senator allegedly pocketed 86 million. I would like to inquire from the Ombudsman if there is a case filed against you because lahat na na-disallow (everything was disallowed) and the money was not returned. The money was not used in the right way. It deduces into something like a personal liability, Duterte said. Kindly settle or [else] I will personally see to it that a case will be filed against you, he added. Its malversation, the crime is malversation. Duterte also urged Gordon to choose between being a senator or chairman of the Philippine Red Cross. You are a dual personality which is banned or prohibited by law. Bawal 'yan, actually... Bitawan mo na 'yan kasi (That is not allowed. Let go of it because) I will insist that you give up one because you cannot be both, the President said. Gordon is the chairperson of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that has been investigating the Duterte administrations purchase of medical supplies for pandemic response. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Malacanang on Thursday said the progress in Metro Manilas COVID-19 vaccine drive could have played a role in President Rodrigo Dutertes move to drop the mandatory face sheild use outdoors. As the President said po, 'yan ay sang-ayon din sa mga advice ng ating mga dalubhasa," said presidential spokesman Harry Roque during his regular briefing. "So siguro may mga factors na kinonsidera ang ating mga dalubhasa kasama na diyan 'yung halos 70% na nabakunahan na dito po sa Metro Manila." [Translation: As the President said, this is in accordance with advice from our experts. Perhaps they considered factors including the nearly 70% rate of fully vaccinated people in Metro Manila.] Latest government data shows 15.08 million doses have been administered in the National Capital Region as of Sept. 22. Of this number, 6.76 million individuals are already fully inoculated against the disease yielding a 69.16% coverage ratio. In a taped address aired on Wednesday night, Duterte announced that the use of face shields will no longer be required outdoors. However, these must still be worn by those in closed and crowded areas and places that could promote close contact. Roque likewise asked the public to wait for the guidelines of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on the pronouncement, adding these are part of the agenda for their meeting today. Duterte initially ordered the lifting of face shield mandate in June but changed his mind, citing health experts advice and the threat of the more transmissible Delta variant. RELATED: Duterte apologizes for flip-flopping on face shield use (CNN) President Joe Biden spoke for the first time Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron after a major diplomatic crisis exploded between the two longtime allies over a deal to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. In the 30-minute call, Biden appeared to acknowledge missteps in how the United States approached the talks. A joint statement between the United States and France afterward said Macron and Biden "agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners." "President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard," the statement said. The rare, if indirect, admission of error was a signal of how seriously both sides are taking the diplomatic dispute, which has led to the lowest point in relations between the United States and France since the "Freedom Fries" era at the start of the Iraq War. In their call, Biden and Macron agreed to meet in person at the end of next month in Europe. Biden had already planned to attend a Group of 20 summit in Rome at the end of October and an official said the assumption is that the meeting between the two leaders will take place there. "The two leaders have decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence and proposing concrete measures toward common objectives," the statement read. Macron also agreed to return his ambassador to Washington after recalling him for consultations in Paris. And Biden voiced support for "the importance of a stronger and more capable European defense," a longtime priority for Macron. The talks were expected to be tense, though the White House said afterward the tone was "friendly" between the two leaders. Press secretary Jen Psaki said it was important for Biden to directly convey his belief that "there could have been more of a discussion" ahead of the submarine announcement. She stopped short of saying Biden apologized for what transpired. Macron had mostly withheld comment publicly on the dispute, waiting to air his rage directly to Biden. But other officials in his government have spared nothing in describing France's shock and fury at the submarine agreement, which deprived France of a major contract of its own and left Paris feeling excluded and diminished. Biden himself has ignored all questions on the France dispute since the crisis erupted at the end of last week, but officials said he was surprised by the outsized reaction from Paris and wanted to smooth things over with his counterpart, aiming to lower the temperature over the phone. Psaki said the White House would look to identify how the breakdown occurred, but avoided saying Biden blamed any individual for what transpired. "He holds himself responsible," she said. "Certainly, though, he has a responsibility to talk to his team always about how we can best manage our diplomatic relationships and that's what he does in any scenario." Before the two presidents spoke, French officials laid out a lengthy list of expectations for the telephone call, which occurred mid-morning Washington time. An official at the Elysee, the French presidential office, said Macron expected Biden to offer clarification for how the deal came together without consultations with the French. "We expect our allies to recognize that the exchanges and consultations that should have been conducted were not, and that this poses a question of trust," the official said. Macron would also seek to identify a "solid process in a concrete time frame and at a high level (that) will allow us to create the conditions for restoring trust," the official said. Biden requested the call with Macron over the weekend as tensions simmered over the surprise submarine deal, which was viewed as a significant strategic move to counter China in the region. The French informed the White House on Friday that Macron's ambassador in Washington, Philippe Etienne, was being recalled to Paris for consultations. The French were quick to announce Biden's request for a phone call publicly, and the White House confirmed the two men were trying to connect. American officials said Biden wanted to speak soon with Macron about the "way forward." "We understand the French position," a senior US administration official said Monday. "We don't share their view in terms of how this all developed." While Biden met in person on Tuesday with the prime ministers of Australia and the United Kingdom, he did not have any in-person meetings with Macron on the books until they spoke on Wednesday. The French President did not travel to this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York, a decision based in pandemic concerns that predated the submarine spat. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Tuesday he would not speak with Macron during the UN this week. "That is not an opportunity for that at this time. I'm sure that opportunity will come in time. But right now, I understand the disappointment," Morrison said. And British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared to make light of France's outrage during an interview outside the US Capitol in Washington. "I just think it's time for some of my dearest friends around the world to prenez un grip about this and donnez moi un break," Johnson said, using a bit of Franglish to suggest France may be overreacting. He called the agreement a "fundamentally a great step forward for global security." Biden wasn't likely to similarly diminish the French concerns, at least in public. Still, some American officials said they believed France was being overly dramatic in its response to the submarine deal and have noted Macron is set to compete for reelection in the coming months. France has reacted with intense indignation over the agreement between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom to create a new defense alliance focused on security in Asia. The foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Biden's actions recalled something his predecessor, Donald Trump, might have done but "without the tweets." The move has also opened a new fissure in the Western alliance and sparked growing public criticism from other European officials. Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for internal markets, said in an interview with CNN on Monday that "something is broken between our relations in Europe and the US." In an exclusive interview with CNN on Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said "a lot of questions" must be answered when it comes to the breakdown of the French-Australian submarine deal. France stands to lose the equivalent of $65 billion US dollars from an existing deal to provide Australia with conventional, diesel-powered submarines. The canceled deal is expected to make a significant economic impact on the French defense sector. France also stands to lose out strategically in the Indo-Pacific, where the country holds significant interests. But more broadly, the announcement triggered anger in France at being left out of sensitive discussions over the new pact, which they said amounted to a stab in the back. American, Australian and British officials had been in highly secret talks for months over a plan to share technology for nuclear powered submarines, a process that was hatched more than a year ago and accelerated after Biden took office in January. Officials familiar with the matter said the discussions were kept exceedingly quiet, even within their own governments, given the sensitive nature of the technology, the prospect for angering China and the belief that any word leaking out could potentially scuttle the entire thing. The process "was undertaken with a high degree of discretion," a senior administration official said. Talks proceeded at the staff level over the course of the spring before the issue was raised in a meeting between Biden, Morrison and Johnson on the sidelines of the Group of 7 summit, held in June on the English coast. There was no public disclosure of the submarine deal at the time. Biden met Macron on the same day their only in-person one-on-one to date and the two men appeared to get on well: cameras caught them wrapping their arms over each other's shoulders as they walked from the beach to the summit venue. Officials said talks between the men, which occurred on a sunny deck overlooking Carbis Bay, seemed cordial. But the brewing submarine deal never came up, according to US and French officials. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Biden holds first call with French President Macron since diplomatic crisis erupted" (CNN) -- Vaccine maker Pfizer said Monday tests have shown its Covid-19 vaccine works well in children ages 5 to 11. It's now discussing these findings with the US Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner who is also on the board of Pfizer who may not have direct knowledge but who certainly has the basis to make an informed guess, says kids 5 and older could be getting Covid-19 shots by the end of October. But the vaccines these younger kids get will almost certainly be different than the shots teens and adults have been getting, at least in terms of the dose. Here's why it's different, and what you need to know about Covid-19 vaccines for younger people: Smaller doses work well in younger kids Children have different immune systems from adults. Knowing this, Pfizer tested varying doses in its trials of children 5 to 11. Kids, it turns out, have a strong immune response even to lower doses. So children under 12 will almost certainly be getting a 10-microgram dose of vaccine, compared with a 30-microgram dose for adults. In fact, most adults could get by with lower doses, too, says Dr. Robert Frenck, who leads vaccine trials at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "We looked at 10 micrograms, 20 micrograms and 30 micrograms in adults," Frenck told reporters. "We found in 18- to 55-year-olds, a 10-microgram dose gives a very good immune response," he added. "But the 65 and above, they did not respond as well to the lower doses and so that's why we chose that 30-microgram dose, across the adult age range from 18 to above." Frenck said there wasn't any time -- nor any reason -- to finesse the dosing last year. "During a pandemic we wanted to get a vaccine out quickly," he told CNN's John Berman. "We knew we needed the 30 micrograms for the 65 and above to get the best immune response and we also knew that the 30 micrograms was well tolerated in the younger adults. So we just used that one dose for everybody." So even older children won't miss out if they get the smaller dose. "My guess is that if we gave a 12-year-old a 10-microgram dose that they would still have a similar immune response as a 30-microgram dose, but we don't have the data for that," he said. For the youngest children -- children under 5 -- doctors are testing a 3-microgram dose of vaccine. This lower dose keeps side effects to a minimum Frenck said so far, the Pfizer vaccine appears very safe in younger children. "What we found is that the side effects in the children really mirrored exactly what we saw in adults," he said. "So the most common thing is pain at the injection site. Also having headache, and maybe fatigue. Fevers and chills were unusual -- only around 10 to 11% of the children having those. Similar to the adults, or identical to the adults, is that side effects lasted a day or two and then people were back to normal." Many parents may be worried about reports of a rare heart inflammation called myocarditis, which has been seen with both Moderna's and Pfizer's vaccines. "And so the myocarditis -- which means swelling of the muscles of the heart -- we have seen that as a rare side effect has been associated with it looks like the second dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine," Frenck told reporters. "Rare meaning in the likelihood of a few per 100,000, so it's still like a 99.999% chance that this won't happen. It's been almost all in teenage boys, and it's been mild been treated with Motrin (ibuprofen), and they've gotten better." The only two side effects that did not appear in clinical trials were the rare instances of myocarditis that were easily treated, and blood clotting seen among mostly older women who got the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca vaccine, Frenck noted. "Beyond the clinical trials now, we've given literally hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine to adults and teenagers throughout the country," Frenck said. "If we haven't seen anything with the hundreds of millions of doses, we're not going to see anything -- so I think parents should feel comfortable that this vaccine has been given to lots and lots and lots of -- literally to hundreds of millions of people, and that it continues to show a very good safety profile." People can get the Covid-19 vaccine alongside flu vaccines and other immunizations "You can get any vaccines together that's necessary," Frenck said. "The only restrictions is if we have live viral vaccines, like with chickenpox and measles, if they don't get those on the same day we'd like to space them at least a month apart. But for the Covid vaccines, they can be given with the flu vaccine," he added. "If you're a teenager and you're looking to need to get your meningococcal vaccine or your HPV vaccine or your TDaP (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis or whooping cough vaccine), you can get all of them at the same time. There's no need to space -- our immune system can handle all the vaccines at the same time." Other Covid-19 vaccines are in the pipeline "For now we're evaluating the Moderna vaccine -- we're working with National Institutes of Health," Frenck said. "We finished the enrollment of the 6 to 11 years of age, and it's now on a planned to pause just to review the data and look at the dosing," he added. The Moderna vaccine, which is authorized for people 18 and older, has been formulated at a higher dose than Pfizer's -- 100 micrograms, compared to a 30-microgram dose for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine -- although both of these vaccines use a technology called mRNA or messenger RNA to deliver instruction to the immune system. Moderna has filed with the FDA for emergency use authorization for children 12 to 17. It expects to have data ready on younger children later this year. Johnson & Johnson says it is in "active discussions with regulatory authorities regarding our development plan and trial designs" for teens and children and expects to start trials in the fall. Plus, Frenck said, companies are beginning to test nasal spray formulations of the vaccine -- needle-free vaccines that resemble the FluMist vaccine given to prevent influenza. Vaccinating kids will help control the pandemic "I do think vaccinating children will have a significant impact on helping control the pandemic," Frenck said. "If you look at the number of cases, the percentage of cases in the United States over the last couple of weeks, it's been closing in on 30% of the new cases have happened in children under 18. Children under 18 only make up about 20% of the population, so we're actually now having a disproportionate percentage of cases in children," he noted. While kids mostly experience mild disease and are far less likely to end up in the hospital than adults, they can and do get severely ill. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 548 children have died of Covid-19 in the US so far. "If we could get the 40% of people that aren't vaccinated vaccinated, that would give us more bang for our buck than trying to get boosters into everyone now," Frenck told CNN. This story was first published on CNN.com "Covid vaccines are on the way for younger children. Here's why they're different". (CNN) European natural gas prices have soared so high that hundreds of millions of people could be facing cold homes or inflated energy bills over winter. There's also fears of a knock-on impact as carbon dioxide used in food production a byproduct of fertilizer made with natural gas also gets more expensive. Politicians are blaming the surge in prices on an increase in natural gas demand as the world wakes up from the pandemic, supply disruption caused by maintenance, and a less-windy-than-usual summer that saw a drop in wind-generated power. But really, Europe's crisis is in its renewables sector. The region has invested heavily in renewables, such as wind and solar, but it can't get enough of this green power to the people who need it. After the UN published its state-of-the-science climate report in August, warning the world must make deep and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions this decade, there has been a growing understanding among political leaders that the transition away from fossil fuels needs to happen more quickly than planned. There are other incentives to moving faster on renewables, however. A fuller transition would free Europe from the disruption of volatile energy markets and reduce its dependence on other oil and gas providers, such as Russia. Europe could avoid its energy security getting tangled up in geopolitical storms. More than 40 European Union lawmakers, mostly from eastern and Baltic states, have appealed to the European Commission to launch an investigation into Russia's state gas company Gazprom. They suspect it had been restraining its supply to push up prices and pressure Germany to expedite the launch of Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline that runs from Russia and under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Gazprom told CNN Business that it was supplying gas to customers abroad "in full compliance with existing contractual obligations" and that supplies were "at a level close to the historically record high" over the past eight months. The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that Russian exports to Europe were down from 2019 levels and that the country could do more to increase supplies ahead of winter. "In terms of the Russian state, there is clear evidence that it uses its gas exports for its own geopolitical gain, it uses that strategically, it's not just a commercial venture," said Manchester University's Matthew Paterson, a professor of international politics who researches climate politics. "It's used gas to get leverage over Ukraine very, very aggressively, and it seems to use it in relation to other eastern central European states," he added. Europe has long been a world leader in renewables. Last year, the European Union and United Kingdom used more renewable energy than fossil fuels to generate electricity. But at the same time, the United Kingdom relies on gas for around 40% of its electricity and Europe is expanding and investing heavily in gas. The European Union currently has 87 billion ($102 billion) worth of gas projects in the pipeline, according to a report by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM). The bloc is looking to increase gas imports by 35%, which GEM says sits "at odds with the EU's stated goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050." Gas has been widely regarded as a "cleaner" bridging fuel to use during the transition from coal to renewables for electricity. But there are some problems with that. While gas emits less carbon than coal and oil, it is made mostly of methane, a very harmful greenhouse gas that leaks from pipelines and abandoned wells. Smart grids are part of the answer The gas shortages are being felt more sharply in the United Kingdom, where prices have more than quadrupled and some small energy companies are going bust. Experts say the current energy crisis exacerbated by a lack of wind in the North Sea this summer underscores the need for Europe to build more renewable infrastructure in more places, and to diversify its sources. "Part of the answer is to put more windmills up in different places, because the wind will be blowing somewhere," Paterson said. The United Kingdom could explore more around hydropower and solar energy. "People make the quip about the UK being gray, but you don't need to know too much about solar cells to know that's irrelevant. You will get more if it is sunny, but even in Manchester, you'd get plenty of electricity and there's opportunity for that." Another part of the answer is focusing on the demand side, not just supply, said Lisa Fischer, who leads the climate think tank E3G's program on the decarbonization of energy systems. "Europe has been building renewables quickly, and while we could go faster, what has been slow is critical action in cutting energy demand and making it more flexible," she told CNN Business. In England and Wales, data shows that homes that aren't newly built are not meeting basic energy efficiency standards. Many older properties have no effective insulation, with single-glazed windows that let too much heat out and cold air in. People also typically heat their homes with gas-fired boilers, though electric heat pumps run on renewables are growing in popularity. Smart grids are another big part of the solution, Fischer said. Smart grids are digital electricity networks that can intelligently assess the behavior of its consumers, then respond with the right amount and type of energy required. While Europe has strong mandates for smart grid developments, the bloc and the United Kingdom lag behind countries like the United States and China, which are leading investment in this technology, according to the IEA. Rooftop solar panels are another option. The UK government has flip-flopped several times on subsidies and regulations around rooftop panels for new homes. Better support in that area would allow residents to store energy themselves and sell unused power back to the national electricity grid, Fischer said. "If we don't harness that, then we will need fossil fuels as a backup. If we do, it's definitely possible to operate energy systems without a fossil fuel backup," Fischer added. China the new energy world's winner While a full transition to renewables and low-emissions energy will mean more security independence for countries, the technology to harness the energy will create clear winners and losers in an energy-driven world order. A report by the International Renewable Energy Agency showed that China was in the best position to become the globe's "renewable energy superpower." It is currently the world's biggest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles, the report shows. Exporting and even building this infrastructure will give China's standing in the world a boost and increase its influence. "What China has been doing and will likely continue to do, is to export the equipment that is used to produce renewable energy," said Dominic Chiu, a China analyst with the Albright Stonebridge Group. "China has also been helping countries, such as Pakistan, build solar farms. Energy infrastructure, renewable or otherwise, plays an important role in China's Belt and Road initiative," Chiu added. That dynamic means that there is still lots of potential for energy security to get tied up in geopolitical tensions, or other thornier topics. An investigation published in May by the UK's Sheffield Hallam's University, for example, found that China was using forced labor from ethnic-minority Uyghurs in the production of solar energy panels. This prompted the United States to impose trade bans on five Chinese entities linked to the abuse. On a recent trip to Tianjin, US climate chief John Kerry said Chinese officials complained about the sanctions, arguing they limited how cooperative China could be with the world on climate. "That is a potential concern that many countries have with China's polysilicon production," Chiu said, referring to the material used in the panels. But sanctions haven't had a huge impact on the industry, Chiu said. Beyond the obvious climate benefits, there is an undeniable political advantage of renewables over fossil fuels such as gas. A country like Russia can cut off supplies for Europe with a flick of a switch, but once a solar panel or windmill is installed, that's that no country can take the sun or wind away from another. This story was first published on CNN.com Europe's gas crisis is also a renewables crisis, but there are ready solutions (CNN) Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old teacher from south London, is believed to have been murdered on the five-minute walk from her house to a pub, police say, sparking renewed outcry about the UK's epidemic of violence against women and girls. London's Metropolitan Police said in a Thursday statement that Nessa had left her home in the borough of Greenwich just before 8:30 p.m. on Friday September 17. Detectives believe that she was walking through Cator Park towards a bar in Pegler Square, where she had planned to meet a friend. She is thought to have been murdered on her journey through the park, the Met statement said, with her body found the following afternoon, close to a nearby community center. "Sabina's journey should have taken just over five minutes but she never made it to her destination," Detective Chief Inspector Joe Garrity said, adding: "We know the community are rightly shocked by this murder as are we and we are using every resource available to us to find the individual responsible." Garrity has appealed for anyone in the area of the park around the time of the attack to come forward. Zubel Ahmed, Nessa's cousin, told ITV News on Wednesday that the family is still in shock, and that the news of her death has left them "devastated" and "inconsolable." Nessa, who taught at a primary school in Lewisham, southeast London, was "truly the most kind, caring person out there," Ahmed said. "I don't understand how someone can do this, I really don't. It's a big, big loss to our family," he said. Epidemic of violence against women Nessa's death comes six months after the UK was left reeling following the assault and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard. Everard went missing after leaving a friend's house in Clapham, south London, on May 3. Her body was found a week later, more than 50 miles from where she was last seen. Her killer, a serving police officer, pleaded guilty to her kidnap, rape and murder. Everard's story prompted an outpouring across social media from women sharing their own experiences of sexual assault and harassment, catapulting the UK's damning record on violence against women and girls into the national spotlight. More than 200 women were killed between March 2019 and 2020 in the UK, according to data from the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish government. Around one woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK, according to data from the Femicide Census, an organization that tracks violence against women and girls. The group argues that the government's new strategy to curb such violence "shamefully ignores" victims of femicide. Following Nessa's death, many are pointing out that little has changed. In a message posted to Twitter on Wednesday, Women's Equality Party leader Mandu Reid said: "The media have been asking today: have things gotten better since Sarah Everard's murder? The answer is NO." Reid added that the "muted" reaction from the press and a "lack of public outcry" for Nessa a woman of color "demonstrates, once again, that not all victims are treated with the same respect and reverence." In the wake of Everard's murder, the UK media's problematic relationship with diversity and race was again put under the spotlight. Many activists and social media users drew a comparison between the coverage of Everard's killing and the death of a 21-year-old Black business student, Blessing Olusegun, which garnered little national media attention. Olusegun's body was found on a beach on England's south coast in September 2020. Her "unexplained" death was not treated as suspicious by local police. On Thursday, Greenwich Council told CNN that they had handed out 200 personal alarms to women and vulnerable residents in the borough this week "following the horrific murder of Sabina Nessa." The small device can be attached to keys, handbags or held, and activate a loud alarm in the event of an attack, a Greenwich Council spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the alarms have been distributed at events since 2019. But women shouldn't have to be on the defense. A report from a police watchdog in July said that "radical," cross-sector reform is needed to protect women and girls from an "epidemic" of crime. Police should make the "relentless" pursuit and disruption of perpetrators a priority, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services said. From 2008-2018, 1,425 women were killed by men, according to Femicide Census data. The majority (62%) of those murders were committed by a woman's current or former partner, while 15% of women were killed by men that they knew. One in 12 (8%) of those murders were by strangers. Speaking on the Good Morning Britain program on Thursday morning, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said "we have to give this issue the same seriousness we give other issues," adding that it was time to "make misogyny a hate crime." A vigil, organized by the group "Reclaim These Streets" will be held for Nessa on Friday at 7 p.m. at Pegler Square in Lewisham. This story was first published on CNN.com "A London teacher was killed on a walk to the pub, police say. Her death is the latest tragedy in the UK's femicide epidemic" (CNN) After more than a year of racial reckoning that saw historic monuments to enslavers and colonists torn down on both sides of the Atlantic, the United Nations convened a major day-long event on racism and reparations on Wednesday. But representatives from some of the West's biggest powers never showed. On its face, the day's news made a jarring split-screen: Several countries that once grew fantastically rich from colonialism and slavery, including the US, Canada and the UK, attended an optimistic summit focused on extending COVID-19 vaccine supplies to the rest of the world, convened by US President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, ambassadors from once-exploited regions in Africa, South America and Asia undertook most of the discussion of structural inequality and racism at a separate conference, themed "Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent." UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who attended both events, opened the racial justice conference with an argument for why just such an event mattered, pointing to a new spread of "xenophobia, misogyny, hateful conspiracies, white supremacy and Neo-Nazi ideologies." "Racism and racial discrimination still permeate institutions, social structures, and everyday life in every society. Structural racism and systematic injustice still deny people their fundamental human rights," he said, pointing to the unequal toll of COVID-19 on minority groups. The solution is not just to reject hate, but to right historical wrongs, Guterres added. "We must reverse the consequences of generations of exclusion and discrimination including their obvious social and economic dimensions." However, some of the countries that skipped the event cited its controversial origins. The meeting had been called to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, a framework for fighting racial intolerance that was originally conceived at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. That 2001 event started with lofty aims but ended in an ugly uproar in the wake of negotiations on how and whether to include Israel-Palestinian issues under the rubric of discrimination. The US and Israel ultimately walked out in protest of one draft of the conference's final declaration that denounced "racial discrimination against the Palestinians" and others by Israel and equated Zionism with racism. "The original Durban Conference in 2001 was intended to fight racism but in reality it did the exact opposite, encouraging hate and antisemitism," Israel's Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Gilad Erdan said in a statement to CNN Wednesday. He lauded the US' and dozens of others' decision not to participate. "This proves that there is a growing recognition of the fact that the Durban Conference was plagued with bigotry and that the Durban Declaration does nothing to promote the fight against racism ... I hope this will be the last UN event commemorating that shameful conference." The US issued a similarly forceful statement about boycotting Wednesday's conference, with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, saying it "remains opposed to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic underpinnings of the Durban process, and has longstanding freedom of expression concerns with the DDPA." Both countries said that fighting racism and discrimination was still a "top priority," if not in Wednesday's forum. The UK cited "historic concerns regarding antisemitism" in a one-line statement about its absence. Canada and the European Union acknowledged but did not respond immediately to requests for comment. 'Millions of lives ruined' As the day wore on and speeches at the commemorative event continued, the absence of such former colonial powers to acknowledge past wrongs and face calls for reparations became an elephant in the room. Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, called for restitution for slavery a demand that the US has made long tradition of rejecting, and which it refused to contemplate back in 2001. "Millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty. South Africa calls on the United Nations to put the issue of reparations for victims of the slave trade on its agenda," Ramaphosa said. "We support the adoption of special measures, including affirmative action programmes and targeted financial assistance, as restitution to communities whose ancestors were sold into slavery." Jamaican Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith also demanded reparations for the "millions of lives ruined" by the transatlantic slave trade, as well as for the "structural under-development that our people have faced since Emancipation." By avoiding the event, wealthy Western governments also offered opportunities for critics and antagonists to attack. Cuba's President Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel criticized rich "capitalist countries" as trying to divert attention from their historical debts, while Ambassador Zhang Jun of China which has been accused of carrying out a contemporary genocide on predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region (Beijing denies the claims) devoted a significant part of his statement slamming the US and other countries as cowards. "The relevant countries should at least have the courage to face up to this disgraceful past, and take measures to end the sufferings caused by their practices," he said. This story was first published on CNN.com "The United Nations held a major meeting on race. Why the US and UK skipped it" Everyone eligible should be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of long-distance travel or employment. Vaccination should be voluntary but those who don't get vaccinated should be frequently tested for COVID-19 as a condition of long-distance travel and employment. Both vaccination and testing should be voluntary and not required as a condition of long-distance travel or employment. I defer to the judgment of lawmakers as long as they base their decisions on a consensus of medical professionals. Vote View Results The 1,500 Afghan refugees who are headed to Colorado in the next year to resettle after fleeing their country last month are going to need more than school supplies and a toothbrush when they get here. This week, Gov. Jared Polis announced the creation of a fund where companies and residents can donate money for critical services like physical health, mental health and legal assistance. The Colorado Afghan Support Fund is up and running in conjunction fiscally with Rose Community Foundation. Polis is one of 37 governors who have announced that Afghan evacuees are welcome to start a new life in the states. According to his press release, most of the Afghans headed to Colorado will resettle in the Denver metro area. Organizers are hoping to collect $5.6 million for the fund, which will then be funneled to non-profits in the area, "We utilized the expertise within committed partners, and we utilized the expertise within our state government agencies to identify areas with the greatest resource gaps, to include mental health and health supports and services," said Victoria Graham, spokesperson for the governor's office. Click or tap here to donate to Afghans4Tomorrow (in the incoming refugees tab). Click or tap here to donate to the Colorado Afghan Support Fund. Recently, the White House projected 865 Afghans were going to resettle in Colorado. But state organizations say they based that on previous resettlement patterns, they are expecting up to 2,000 people with most of those landing in metro Denver and Colorado Springs. Some governors, including Wyomings Mark Gordon, say they are not interested in taking in Afghan refugees or those who hold Special Immigration Visas or SIVs. So far, around 31,000 Afghans have arrived in the United States and are being processed, according to reporting from the New York Times. There are two ways to get here: by gaining refugee status or by obtaining a special SIV, and it's expensive. Many Afghans who are still hiding out from the Taliban don't have the hundreds of dollars needed for application fees and legal advice. According to the State Department, Qatar Airways continues to fly U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents out of Kabul. The latest flight, which left Sunday, evacuated 61 people. A recent CBS News poll indicates that 80% of Americans approve of helping Afghans who worked for U.S. troops and officials in recent years who might now face punishment from the Taliban. HELP FOR FAMILIES STILL STRANDED IN AFGHANISTAN The Colorado Afghan Support Fund will go toward Afghans who have made it out and are being vetted at eight military bases across the country, but there are still Afghans left behind who are in fear of their lives. Wahid Omar and a group of American volunteers have helped 28 of those families flee to the United States, but he says there are still 140 families stranded and broke, and in need of money in order to start the approval process. These are professors and businesswomen, journalists, and attorneys who represent the intelligence of Afghanistan, says Omar, who fled Afghanistan as a teenager during the Soviet Invasion. It costs $575 per person for an application fee. For a family of six, its impossible to raise that much money. There are just a few cases, he says, and these people are at risk. Says Omar, Theyll pay the money back. These are hardworking people who will contribute to life in the United States. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), the largest mobile network operator in Russia, has deployed two 5G network pilot areas for Russian bank Sber. Both operate in the 4.9 GHz band and both trial areas are located alongside bank offices in Moscow, said a press release from the Moscow-headquartered operator. According to the release, the first zone inside the banks new Kutuzovsky Prospekt headquarters will enable users of compatible 4.9GHz 5G smartphones to connect to unlimited high-speed internet and digital services. The second 5G pilot zone near Sbers offices on Andropova Avenue is additionally designed to test wireless services of the Sberbank ecosystem, including unmanned solutions for transport, where connection reliability, low latency, and high data transfer rates are critical, it said. Sberbank says that in addition to increasing bandwidth and reducing latency, the 5G standard offers several other benefits. The technology allows us to use different connection quality parameters and, in fact, customize the communication parameters based on the specific needs of companies and individuals, said Ruslan Gurdjian, CEO of Sberbank-Telecom. Andrey Zimenkov, MTS B2B Commercial Director, said: "Sber is our key partner and client, for whom we have built a pilot public 5G network, providing not only access to high-speed mobile internet and Sber services but also opportunities for research in the field of ecosystem solutions." Kalyanaraman Rajaraman has been appointed by the Government of India as the new secretary in the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). He has replaced Anshu Prakash, who was the former DoT secretary. K Rajaraman is a Tamil Nadu cadre 1989-batch Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer. K Rajaraman will take over his new role post the superannuation of Prakash on September 30, 2021. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet conveyed the decision about the appointment to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). Currently, he is working as an additional secretary of investments in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) with major responsibilities areas. According to market observers, his appointment in the DoT as the secretary is seen as a step in the ambition of Prime Minister Narendra Modis government. Rajaraman will be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that the reforms are implemented without any hindrance and with speed, they say. The industry body Cellular Operators Association of India tweeted: "We congratulate Shri K. Rajaraman on his appointment as Secretary, DoT, India. We look forward to working with him for the development and growth of the sector that is vital to the Governments Digital India vision." It also added that as the industry readies to usher 5G and catalyse the digital economy, the government has announced path-breaking telecom reforms. Lynk Global has signed its first commercial deals with operators in the Bahamas and the Central African Republic. Through these agreements, Bahamian operator ALIV and Telecel Centrafrique have obtained the right to implement Lynks services ahead of the competition in their respective markets. Styling itself as the worlds only independently verified cell-tower-in-space connectivity provider, Lynk claims to be able to offer connectivity virtually anywhere in the world using a standard unmodified mobile phone via Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. According to TeleGeography, Lynk accomplishes this via patented technology which can deliver connectivity without requiring hardware or software upgrades. The company is based in the US, and has applied for an operators licence via the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the aim of launching a global commercial service in 2022. Kenyan operator Safaricom has confirmed that it plans to launch a commercial 5G network in 2022. Prior to commercialising 5G services in 2022, it also plans to increase the number of its 5G sites to 200 by the end of the year. In March Safaricom launched its upgraded network in major urban centres, including Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Kakamega, all of which are areas with strong levels of data traffic. It says it now wants to take high-speed internet to additional towns. But the Kenyan operator is not alone in targeting high-usage urban areas. Rival Airtel Kenya recently upgraded 600 network sites to meet 5G mobile internet service capabilities with the aim of being ready to roll out services in Nairobi, Mombasa and Malindi. The Safaricom chief executive Peter Ndegwa has been quoted in a number of local news services as saying that the company would use some or all of the 200 5G sites for testing the upgraded network as it seeks to capitalise on burgeoning mobile internet use in the country. Testing will allow the company to help customers in terms of speed and reliability, he said. This process may also help enable the company to accelerate its commercial launch, although Ndegwa did not reveal precise timescales. The QH9149 flight, using the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, took off at 7:55 p.m. from Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport for San Francisco. The flight, the first of 12 direct flights between Vietnam and the U.S. that Bamboo Airways has won approval from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is expected to take over 14 hours. The flight crew included four pilots, 14 flight attendants and several technicians and ground controllers to perform necessary functions at the San Francisco Airport. Before the flight took off, a commemoration ceremony was held at the airline's headquarters on Cau Giay Street the same day. Nguyen Manh Quan, deputy general director of Bamboo Airways, said the flight was a historic one, not just for Bamboo Airways also for Vietnam's aviation industry itself. "We will once again affirm the capability for operation, safety, security and infrastructure for Vietnamese airlines and the entire Vietnamese aviation industry in general," he said at the meeting. Nguyen Ngoc Trong, another deputy general director of Bamboo Airways, said the flight's goals were to serve tourists in both Vietnam and the U.S., foster commercial, diplomatic and cultural exchanges, and to affirm the status of Bamboo Airways, considering that direct flight to the U.S. is among the hardest flight paths to achieve. "In the last two years, we've managed to see opportunities in developing flights not just within Vietnam, but also in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia like Japan, Taiwan, and even reaching towards Europe and Australia. And now, to the U.S.," he said. "By introducing direct flights to the U.S. at this moment in time, we're showing that we are ready to operate commercial flights once the pandemic dies down to meet customers' demands in both countries," he added. Bamboo Airways had earlier announced plans to organize three direct flights to the U.S. each week, gradually increasing the frequency to 5-7 flights, and then to daily flights. An industrial park in the southern province of Binh Duong. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran Industrial park investors have highlighted tardy land clearance as a persistent problem causing losses of business opportunities in Vietnam. Vu Thu Hang, head of sales with TNI Holdings Vietnam, enumerated several problems with land clearance at a recent webinar on "Identifying new trends in industrial park development." She said infrastructure investors were forced to pay site clearance compensation in stages and the process was prolonged even further because of legal and procedural hassles. This, in turn, interferes with enterprises' planning process and reduces project duration for investors, she added. "Businesses have lost many opportunities, especially when there were many orders that could not be met because site clearance did not happen in time," Hang said. A wave of factory relocations from China has heated up Vietnam's industrial real estate market generating high demand and increasing rentals. While investors are willing pay a premium to sign leases, complete licensing procedures and begin operations, land clearance continued to be a bottleneck for industrial real estate investment enterprises, Hang said. For instance, she noted, data from the HCMC Department of Natural Resources and Environment in May 2021 showed the city currently has 11 industrial parks with incomplete land clearance covering more 100-hectares and thousands of households yet to be relocated. One 20-year-old business had to ask the governments intervention to resolve a land clearance dispute. Industrial real estate firms like TNI Holdings want the government to remove these difficulties, cut red tape and shorten the time taken to complete legal procedures, Hang said. Hong Sun, Vice President of the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam, said industrial parks in Vietnam are typically traditional, with just factories and no accommodation. "The industrial park is simply a production base," he said, adding that the trending model in many countries, especially in South Korea, was to combine urban areas, houses, schools and hospitals, virtually evolving industrial parks into a miniature city. "In the context of Covid-19, many factories in Vietnam have applied the stay-at-work model. If Vietnam develops a mixed industrial park model, it would be much more convenient to live and work on site," he said. Ko Tae Yeon, general director of the Heesung Electronics Vietnam Company based in Hai Phong, agreed that having accommodations like houses or dormitories inside industrial parks will facilitate production while ensuring the health and safety of workers. Ko Tae Yeo nalso emphasized the need for specialized IPs. He noted that at the Trang Due Industrial Park in Hai Phong, the presence of LG Electronics has brought in many suppliers and other partners. As of the end of the first quarter this year, Vietnam had 370 industrial parks with 115,200 ha, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment. Farmers harvest sugarcane in the Mekong Delta Province of Soc Trang. Photo by Shutterstock Vietnamese authorities have begun an investigation into alleged circumvention by Thai sugar through five countries to avoid anti-dumping duties. Imports from Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar jumped by nearly five times year-on-year to 527,200 tons in the period from October 2020 to June this year, according to the Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam. This was the period that Vietnam was investigating Thai sugar for dumping and subsidizing. In the period sugar imports from Thailand fell by nearly 38 percent to 595,000 tons. The sugar industry has provided evidence indicating that Thai sugar came into Vietnam through the five countries, the authority said. The average price of sugar exported from Thailand to Vietnam was $334 per ton in December last year, lower than the average market price in that country of $755 and even lower than its cost of production, which was $410. The Thai government last year subsidized its sugar farmers with $325 million, an action challenged by Brazil at the World Trade Organization. Vietnam imposed preliminary anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on Thai sugar on Feb. 9 and gave the final ruling on Jun. 15. The country applied an anti-dumping and countervailing duty of 47.64 percent on sugar originating from Thailand that would last five years. Vietnamese companies and farmers have been complaining that cheap Thai sugar flooding the market has caused major difficulties for them. IPPGs CEO awarded Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy Le Hong Thuy Tien, CEO of Imex Pan Pacific Group (IPPG), was bestowed the Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy by the Italian president, one of the highest recognitions for foreigners. The merit and insignia contribute to affirming the imprint of the businesswoman in the Vietnamese and international markets in business development and social activities. On behalf of the President of the Republic of Italy Sergio Mattarella, Dante Brandi, Consul General of Italy in Ho Chi Minh City emphasized Tien's leadership ability that has contributed to IPPG's sustainable development, becoming a reference model in the sector of high, medium and consumer goods. Le Hong Thuy Tien holds the merit and the insignia of the knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy by the President of the Republic of Italy. Photo by IPPG According to the Italian Consul, Tien has always acted as an effective promoter of female participation in business in Vietnam, and the cause of meritocracy and equal treatment in the private sector. She has inspired many young Vietnamese entrepreneurs. "In her professional capacity, Tien has constantly contributed to the development of the group to Italian standards of excellence. She has effectively boosted economic relations between both countries for the consolidation of Italian economic and cultural interests in Vietnam," added Brandi. IPPGs CEO awarded Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy IPPGs CEO awarded Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy The businesswoman also has numerous charitable activities in Vietnam and abroad, like fundraising initiatives from primary Italian and Vietnamese health facilities for research therapy that contrast the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Le Hong Thuy Tien (C) is awarded the Merit Global Trade Ambassador 2017 from the Los Angeles women's board of enterprises. Photo by IPPG IPPG is the leading enterprise operating in non-aviation business investment, import and export to trade centers and distribution of international luxury fashion in Vietnam. Under Tien's management, IPPG from a company distributing only three fashion brands in 2010 has become a multi-industry business group with the distribution of over 100 world famous brands like Burberry, Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace ... with double-digit annual revenue growth and more than 1,000 retail stores at major airports nationwide. Last year, the enterprise contributed VND1,950 billion ($85 million) to the state budget and created jobs for more than 25,000 domestic workers. IPPG has received more than 350 badges, medals, certificates of merit and medals from the president, prime minister and ministries, chairman of the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and more than 50 provinces and cities nationwide. The knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy is awarded by the President of the Republic of Italy to Italian individuals abroad, or foreigners who have made a special contribution to promote friendly relations and cooperation between Italy and other countries. In Vietnam, this merit has been awarded to a number of senior leaders, individuals and entrepreneurs in the fields of politics, economics, justice and culture. 'One year on - The Essex Lorry Tragedy' will be screened at three global film festivals after being hailed at the Pune International Film Festival in India. The documentary produced by Vietnam News, which depicts the stories of those losing their loved ones in container truck tragedy in the U.K. in 2019, will be shown at the Druk International Film Festival in Bhutan, the Virgin Spring Cinefest in India and the World Film Carnival in Singapore. Earlier this year it also received special praise at the Asia South East Short Film Festival. A still from 'One year on - The Essex Lorry Tragedy'. Photo courtesy of Vietnam News 39 Vietnamese found dead in a truck near London in 2019. The deaths of the 39 Vietnamese made international headlines. The youngest were two 15-year-old boys and the oldest was a 44-year-old man. Their remains were brought home later that year. Twenty one of the victims were from Nghe An Province, 10 from neighboring Ha Tinh and the rest from Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue provinces in the central region and Hai Duong Province and Hai Phong City in the north. Localities nationwide should narrow lockdowns to the smallest possible area like a household, an apartment floor or an alley instead of entire neighborhoods, officials and experts say. National Assembly deputy Pham Van Hoa said that because of the complicated development of the pandemic, anxious local authorities have cordoned off large areas every time a Covid-19 case was detected. He said lockdowns have been imposed "in an extreme way," greatly affecting people's lives, production and business operations. Instead of carrying out thorough epidemiological investigations and screening tests to determine the scope of the outbreak, "many places rushed to blockade entire villages, hamlets, communes, wards and apartment buildings," said Tran Dac Phu, a senior advisor with the Public Health Emergency Operations Center. He said such responses not only wastes resources, lockdowns imposed on a large scale but weakly managed could actually increase the risk of infections. He suggested that localities determine the scale of an outbreak accurately and apply the lockdown in accordance with infection risks. In order to assess the level and scope, every time a Covid-19 case is detected, the local health sector must test the people involved and urgently investigate the epidemiology. For example, if an infection is found in an apartment building, local authorities can temporarily blockade the entire building, but immediately after, conduct mass testing. If residents in the building are all negative, the scope of the lockdown must be narrowed down to only one floor where the patient lives. At the same time, the health sector must quickly investigate the epidemiology of all people who have come into contact with the case. The same method should apply for an alley or a neighborhood, with a lockdown applied on the household that the infection is found or several houses nearby, instead of an entire ward, commune or village. "The scope of the lockdown must be based on science. The virus cannot fly from house to house on its own, but spreads from sick people to healthy people through close contact," said Phu. He cited an actual example to make his point. In August, infections were detected in alleys 228 and 330 on Hanois Nguyen Trai Street in Thanh Xuan Trung Ward, Thanh Xuan District. Only those two alleys were blockaded instead of the entire ward and until now, no infection has been detected outside the alleys. "Small scale lockdowns make for easier, more effective management," Phu said. Nguyen Anh Tri, Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, said that when a Covid-19 infection occurs at any place, it should only be considered an "infected point" instead of "infected area." "Then, the scope of the blockaded area should be scaled down to a narrow area and only those related to the infected case should be tested," he said. Nguyen Huy Nga, former head of the health ministrys General Department of Preventive Medicine, said the people's understanding and awareness of disease prevention about Covid-19 has been improved over nearly two years. At the same time, the capacity and experience of the health sector in testing and contact tracing have been consolidated while many localities have almost finished vaccinating all adults with the first Covid-19 jab. "These are favorable conditions to end the habit of imposing widespread lockdowns," he said. From his own experience in fighting the pandemic, Le Tu Gia Thanh, chairman of Hai Chau District in Da Nang, said that whenever a Covid-19 case is detected in a residential area, officials must be there immediately to work with the health sector to investigate epidemiology, assess risks, and identify the scale of infections, instead of "rigidly applying any principle." Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has sought continued support from France for combating Covid-19 through supply of vaccines and transfer of technology to produce them in Vietnam. At a meeting Wednesday with French ambassador to Vietnam, Nicolas Warnery, he also hoped French businesses and organizations would support Vietnam by providing medical equipment, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He called for stepping up bilateral cooperation in medicine, especially through sharing their experiences in combating the epidemic. Warnery said he would cooperate with French authorities to boost the progress for completing the ratification of the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA), and to seek ways to aid Vietnam with more Covid-19 vaccines, among other assistance. France provided 672,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam through the global vaccine access mechanism Covax on September 14. Vietnam has bought or received donations of around 45 million doses so far. Over 28 million people have received at least one shot, with around seven million being fully vaccinated. The country aims to secure 150 million doses to cover 70 percent of its population by next year. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently discussed three areas where the alignment and cooperation of the international community are especially important regarding Afghanistan. In a major policy announcement that has quickly won praise across the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he welcomes the announcement made by President Xi. The United States climate envoy John Kerry called it "an extremely welcome decision." Alok Sharma, president-designate of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), also hailed Xi's announcement. This is the latest step China has taken to tackle global climate change which requires ambition and action. As the world's largest clean energy equipment manufacturer, China has been actively working toward green and low-carbon global energy transition by engaging in extensive cooperation in renewable energy. China's efforts can be seen in cooperation projects such as the Kaleta hydropower project in Guinea, the Kaposvar PV power station project in Hungary, the Mozura wind park project in Montenegro, the Karot hydropower project and the first phase of the solar PV power project in the Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park in Pakistan. China is also the largest renewable energy market. The wide application of renewable energy technologies in the Chinese market is helping reduce the cost of the green resource across the globe and accelerate the transition process to the new form of energy. Rarely mentioned and insufficiently acknowledged in the West, China's enormous investment in renewable energy such as solar power has significantly improved technology expertise and increased global supply. If it were not for China, especially the Chinese government's ambitious and generous investment, the world would not have gained increasingly wider and inexpensive access to renewable energy. China has also been supporting capacity building to address climate change in developing countries. The nation is committed to deeper South-South climate cooperation. From 2016 to the end of 2020, China set up 10 low-carbon pilot industrial parks, launched 100 mitigation and adaptation programs, and provided 1,000 training opportunities on climate change cooperation in developing countries to help them develop clean and low-carbon energy and jointly address global climate change. The response to climate change has set off a new round of industrial revolution, and grabbing the opportunity to transform to green industry is to catch the competitiveness of the future. Under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, China is making every effort to meet the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, a mission that requires extremely hard work and a promise that must be kept. Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech titled Bolstering Confidence and Jointly Overcoming Difficulties to Build a Better World at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly via video link on September 21. The second batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to Togo arrives in the latters capital city Lome, Aug. 20, 2021. (Photo/Embassy of China in Togo) Xis speech at the platform of the UN, the most universal, representative and authoritative international organization, following the Chinese leaders addresses at the high-level meetings marking the 75th anniversary of the UN last year, bears great significance for promoting global solidarity to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulating global economic recovery, and improving global governance when the international community needs more than ever to jointly meet challenges and achieve common development as the world is once again at a historical crossroads. COVID-19 reminds us that we are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake. All countries are closely connected and we share a common future, said Xi in his speech at the general debate of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly last September. He also elaborated on the great significance and practical ways of building a community with a shared future for mankind in the speech. When changes unseen in a century are intertwined with the COVID-19 pandemic in todays world, people understand better the profound significance of Chinas solutions to global challenges and have shown stronger support for the countrys idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently presented a report entitled Our Common Agenda to the UN General Assembly, stressing that the world needs effective multilateralism and calling on countries to re-embrace global solidarity and find new ways to work together for the common good and eventually build a safer and greener future for mankind. A batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to Lesotho arrives in Maseru, capital of Lesotho, Aug. 20, 2021. (Photo/Embassy of China in Lesotho) Against the backdrop of resurging epidemic, sluggish economic recovery and profound and complex changes to international order, the reports suggestions on strengthening global solidarity and cooperation and creating a better future mirror the strong desire of people around the world to turn the Earth into a big warm family and their aspirations for a better life realities. The desire is also an important part of the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must intensify international anti-epidemic cooperation, which is the most urgent task at present. Countries around the globe have so far reported a total of more than 220 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 4.6 million deaths from COVID-19. Such a crisis unseen in a century makes global cooperation an imperative choice. Always putting people and their lives first, China has not only achieved significant strategic results in curbing the pandemic at home, but actively advocated and practiced the idea of building a community of common health for mankind and carried out the largest humanitarian operation in the world since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), trying its best to help other countries, especially developing countries, combat the virus. As of June, China had provided anti-epidemic supplies for more than 150 countries and 13 international organizations. To date, the country has provided nearly 1.2 billion doses of finished and bulk COVID-19 vaccines to over 100 countries and international organizations, and will strive to provide a total of 2 billion doses by the end of this year. It has made contributions to the global public health cause and demonstrated its sense of responsibility as a major country with practical actions. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must promote common development, which is the key to improving peoples well-being. Although world economy is climbing out of the deep recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries economic recoveries are following divergent trajectories, and the North-South gap risks further widening and even perpetuation. China has advocated stepping up macroeconomic policy coordination and jointly promoting strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth of the world economy. By effectively balancing epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, the country has restored and stabilized economic growth, injecting strong impetus into the recovery and development of world economy. China has continuously expanded opening-up, providing important development opportunities for countries around the world; and it has promoted high-quality construction of the Belt and Road with other countries, making positive contributions to the common prosperity of humankind. To build a community with a shared future for mankind, countries must constantly improve global governance, which is a guarantee of common development and progress. The world has entered into a phase of fluidity and transformation, with instability and uncertainty clearly on the rise. The future of humanity depends on what countries do at the moment. They should bear in mind the shared interests of mankind and make responsible and wise choices to uphold and practice true multilateralism and improve global governance. Committed to a vision of global governance featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, China believes that international affairs should be addressed through consultation and the future of the world should be decided by everyone working together, and stresses adhering to the universal values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, pointing the way for countries to peaceful coexistence, mutual benefits and win-win results. It is the universal aspiration of mankind to let everyone live in peace and harmony, make the fruits of development benefit all countries, and allow various civilizations to coexist in harmony. This year marks the centenary of the Communist Party of China as well as the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the lawful seat of the PRC in the UN. Standing at the new starting point, China will, together with the rest of the world, make new contributions to world peace and tranquility, global development and prosperity, and exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, so as to benefit all by building a community with a shared future for mankind. (Photo Source: Xinhua) As requested by US President Joe Biden, the final report on COVID-19 origins compiled by the US National Intelligence has been released. Despite US media hype, the international community has paid far more attention to the report's motives than to its conclusions. Because from the very beginning, the so-called virus tracing was seen as a political operation by the US to cover up the huge losses caused by its inadequate response to the pandemic and to stigmatize China. Given the long history of US intelligences "lying, cheating, and stealing" for political purposes, it's no surprise for them to blame China for anything. Tracing the origins of the virus is a complex scientific mission, which should be carried out by professional scientists independently to provide a scientific basis for human understanding and prevention of the virus. However, after taking office, the Biden administration did not give up Trump's political manipulation of the pandemic, and continued to ignore the Chinese government's responsible behavior of reporting the pandemic to the WHO and relevant countries as soon as possible, and sharing with the world the virus genome sequencing results as well as the pandemic prevention and control experience. In March, shortly after a WHO team of experts conducted a joint tracing investigation in Wuhan, and concluded that a laboratory leak was "highly unlikely", the Biden administration ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the virus was caused by contact between humans and infected animals or by a "laboratory leak". A US intelligence report submitted in early May summarized both possibilities but drew no definitive conclusions. In response, Biden called on the intelligence community to step up efforts to produce a final report within 90 days. What kind of conclusion does the Biden administration need? Allowing the intelligence community to take the lead in tracking the virus is in itself a breach of basic science and in defiance of the joint WHO expert tracing report. Its main purpose is nothing more than to use virus tracing as an excuse to stigmatize China. Even if the conclusion is not China's responsibility, in the "post-truth era", the US goal is clear, that is, to damage China's image and reputation through prolonged sensationalism -- of course, the impact will decline due to the obvious political motives of the US and the so-called evidences lack of credibility. The US incited its allies and media to hype things up. From the General Assembly of the World Health Organization and the G7 summit, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit and the US-EU summit, the US has kept instigating its allies to pressure China. Fundamentally, the US hyped up the investigation of the COVID-19 origins because of its need to intensify strategic competition with China. Since the Trump administration, the US has openly regarded China as a strategic competitor and has tried hard to suppress China in economy and trade, science and technology, humanities, geopolitics, and ideology. The Biden administration has yet to bring about the expected changes in China policy, maintaining the perception and policy tone of the Trump administration. Although based on realistic interests, the Biden government claims not to seek conflict with China, and that US-China relations consist of competition, cooperation, and confrontation, but as the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out, the US concept of competition, cooperation, and confrontation" is the smokescreen to suppress China confrontation and containment are the essence, cooperation is an expedient, and competition is a rhetorical trap. A growing number of US strategists have argued that the Biden administration's approach misreads the real challenges the US is facing, and it jeopardizes the US interests and challenges its future policy adjustments. Casting China as an imminent "major threat" through ideological attacks will make it increasingly difficult for the Biden administration to persuade domestic to support its policy of continuing engagement with China based on US interests. That, of course, makes it harder to get Chinese cooperation. In response, Joseph Nye, a renowned US scholar and former assistant Secretary of Defense, believes that the US current strategy is not fully prepared for the new threats posed by ecological globalization. For example, global climate change could cause damage on a scale comparable to war; the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more people in the US than all wars combined since 1945. However, the US spends far less on disease prevention and control than it does on national defense. The budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is less than one-hundredth that of the defense budget, while the budget of the National Institutes of Health is one-fourth of that. The US has much to lose if it does not cooperate with China to face these common challenges. It should be noted that the so-called COVID-19 origins tracing the US proposes has become a recognized political manipulation, and its conclusions have lost credibility. Continued hyping the "Wuhan lab leak" will also pose a huge challenge to the Biden administration: how to hold China accountable? Verbal criticism is not enough. Action must be taken. What action is commensurate with the enormity of the pandemic? A bottle of washing powder might have allowed the US to go to war with Iraq, but how should the Biden administration, facing its disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, deal with a mighty China? According to the views of some extremist forces in the US, it is possible to freeze China's assets or cancel debts owed to China, but the serious consequences of such actions are conceivable. The US intelligence community, which is accustomed to political maneuvers, is well aware of this challenge and has concluded that the investigation cannot confirm China's "fault", but will sustain doubts about China with "rigorous scientific discourse". For them, the process of stigmatizing and upsetting China is more valuable than figuring out the origins of the pandemic. As part of a complex ecosystem, the onset of any virus requires an environment and course. The US political virus that puts individual political considerations above life originates from its current political system and culture; its course is restricted by international and domestic environmental pressures. Its predictable that in the face of the lessons of reality, lies cannot sustain, and human conscience and reason will prevail in the end. "No wall is high enough to stop any virus," US President Biden declared in his April address to Congress. It seemed to mean that he recognized that the virus was a common challenge for all mankind. The virus knows no borders, and the only way to effectively address this common challenge is for countries to cooperate. In particular, major countries should respect each other and shoulder their responsibilities as leaders. On the contrary, political attacks and confrontation under the pretext of tracing the origins of the virus will only lead to greater loss of life and health, which is against the ethics of all mankind. According to data released by the WHO on September 20, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide reached 228,394,572, with 4,690,186 deaths. More than 40 million confirmed cases and nearly 700,000 deaths have been reported in the US alone. The virus doesnt understand politics, and the pandemic is still raging. Blaming other countries won't solve the US' problem, but would prove a farce that humiliates and harms itself. Contributed by Ruan Jianping Translated by Zhang Andi Editor: ZAD The House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress has adopted amendments to the draft U.S. Defense Authorization Act for 2022 regarding new mandatory sanctions against Nord Stream 2, the head of Naftogaz Yuriy Vitrenko has said. "The House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress has passed amendments to the defense budget, containing mandatory sanctions against Nord Stream 2... Now it is the turn of the Senate," Vitrenko wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday, pointing out that this is "an intermediate and important victory, but we need to press by common efforts." Later, in another message, he suggested that, taking into account this decision, as well as the decision of the German energy regulator, the Federal Network Agency of Germany, to allow the Polish state-owned company PGNiG to the participation in the certification process of the Nord Stream 2 operator, the chances that this gas pipeline will work in commercial mode in the near future "not so high." In the comments to the previous post, Vitrenko added that the sanctions can also be imposed on the operator of the constructed gas pipeline. "Then European companies will not work with this company, they will not buy gas flowing through this gas pipeline," the head of Naftogaz said, later adding in the comments that in view of the sanctions on the operator and "no one will buy gas from Gazprom then going through Nord Stream 2." In his post, he said that Ukraine continues convincing the U.S. administration of the need to urgently impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2, expressing regret that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden immediately after his inauguration in January 2021 exercised its right to make a waiver regarding the sanctions for the Nord Stream 2 operator. At the same time, Vitrenko called "surprising" the reasoning behind this decision "for reasons of national security." "We continue convincing the U.S. administration that it is for reasons of national security of the United States, Europe, Ukraine, the entire free world that these sanctions must be urgently imposed," the head of Naftogaz said. At the same time, he said that Ukraine is working with the U.S. Congress "so that changes in legislation would remove the possibility of providing such sanction waivers." Later, in comments to reporters, Naftogaz Integrated Communications Director Maksym Beliavsky said that if the amendment adopted by the House of Representatives is approved by the entire Congress, it will oblige the U.S. president's administration to impose sanctions on the Russian pipeline without the possibility of applying the waiver, that is, without a possibility of rejecting it. Two servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were wounded in Donbas over the past day, Russian-occupation forces violated the ceasefire 12 times. Since the beginning of the current day, no shelling has been recorded, the press center of the Joint Force Operation (JFO) headquarters said. "As a result of hostilities, two members of the Joint Forces received gunshot wounds. They received emergency pre-medical care and were evacuated to the hospital. The servicemen's health is satisfactory," the headquarters said on the Facebook said in the morning. In particular, in Pryazovia area, the enemy used unmanned aerial vehicles three times, with the help of which he dropped VOG-17 at Pavlopil and twice at Vodiane. In the same place, the enemy fired three times from grenade launchers of various systems and small arms, two of which in the direction of Vodiane. Russian-occupation forces conducted targeted fire from small arms in the area of the settlements Zaitseve and Novotoshkivske. In addition, not far from Novotoshkivske, the enemy twice used grenade launchers of various systems. Near Prychepylivka, Russian-occupation forces twice used prohibited weapons, firing 23 shots from 120-mm mortars. "The Ukrainian defenders conducted an active defense and suppressed the enemy's firepower, using weapons permitted by the Minsk agreements," the headquarters said. "During the current day, September 23, no violations of the ceasefire by Russian-occupation forces have been recorded," the JFO said. Bill No.5600 on balancing budget receipts (the so-called "resource bill") was removed from consideration by the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday, Head of the Holos faction Yaroslav Zhelezniak said. "As announced, bill No.5600 will not be considered today," Zhelezniak told journalists following consultations of the heads of factions and the leadership of the Ukrainian parliament. According to him, now there is a discussion among the factions regarding the bill on de-oligarchization, so that "each deputy can raise his amendments." "Some factions, including the Holos faction, which have a hundred amendments, said that if an agreement is reached not to violate the procedure, the law, not to destroy parliamentarianism, I personally guarantee that we will not raise not a single amendment. Perhaps I will take a minute to say what I think about this process," Zhelezniak said. According to the leader of the Holos faction, all factions are approaching the discussion rather constructively. "At 11:15 is the last round of negotiations. I hope that after it we will come out with an understanding of what the plenary day will be like. Unfortunately, it looks like this populist law [on de-oligarchization] will be adopted, but parliamentarism will not be destroyed," Zhelezniak said. Former chief of Kyiv police Andriy Kryschenko has been appointed as Deputy Head of Kyiv City State Administration for the exercise of self-government powers. The relevant decision was made by the deputies of Kyiv City Council at a meeting on Thursday. Some 91 deputies supported this decision, two were against, one abstained. Earlier, Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko called on the deputies of Kyiv City Council to support this appointment. He said that Kryschenko will be responsible for issues of municipal security, civil defense, emergencies, territorial defense and interaction with law enforcement agencies. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at all meetings, during his visit to the United States, consolidates support for the Crimea Platform and attracts the support of partners in the release of Ukrainian political prisoners held by the Kremlin in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia. "The first cross-cutting theme of all meetings is the release of Ukrainian political prisoners held by the Kremlin in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the Russian territory. We pass on a list of these people and ask for help in their release. The second theme that sounds at all meetings is the Crimea platform. All interlocutors comment on it very positively. We are discussing the further development of this initiative," the ministry's press service said, citing the minister's speech during an online briefing in New York during the visit of the Ukrainian delegation to participate in the high segment of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in a statement released on Wednesday evening. Kuleba spoke about the meeting of the President with the UN Secretary General, the President of the UN General Assembly, NATO Secretary General and the President of Turkey. "Volodymyr Zelensky and Recep Erdogan discussed cooperation between Ukraine and Turkey in security and defense. There are several very ambitious projects in the field of military-technical cooperation between our countries. This is the production of drones and ships for the Naval Forces of Ukraine," the minister said. Kuleba said that a plant for the production of Bayraktar drones will be constructed in Ukraine. According to him, Erdogan and Zelensky are determined to develop trade between Ukraine and Turkey in the interests of the Ukrainian economy, business and entrepreneurs. "A very friendly meeting and positive conversation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. It is important that it took place on the eve of the NATO Secretary General's meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister. NATO Secretary General positively assessed the reforms in Ukraine and expressed gratitude to the President of Ukraine for decisiveness in their implementation," he said. The minister said that he uses the opportunity of the UN General Assembly to meet with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Mongolia, Mozambique and the meeting of the GUAM ministers, which includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might meet when both leaders are prepared for this and when an agenda of their communication is agreed upon, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said. Asked by journalists whether Putin is prepared to meet with Zelensky, Peskov replied "Certainly, the two presidents will meet when both are prepared for this, when there's some agenda for their communication, and when they understand what to talk about. This is when they'll meet." The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), as part of the COVAX mechanism, delivered three freezers to Ukraine to store the Pfizer coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine at ultra-low temperatures. According to the Health Ministry website, freezers with a temperature range of 40C below zero to 86C below zero manufactured by Vestfrost (Denmark) will be installed at the warehouse of SOE "Ukrmedpostach." Additional ultra-cold freezers will increase Ukraine's national storage capacity for Pfizer's vaccine, which requires ultra-low temperature conditions down to 80C below zero. "In the coming months, we expect weekly deliveries of almost 500,000 doses of Comirnaty vaccine from Pfizer-Biontech, so we need more equipment for supply chains," Health Minister Viktor Liashko said. According to Head of the UNICEF office in Ukraine Murat Sahin, the emergence of mRNA vaccines amid COVID-19 has now prompted many countries to update their cold chain equipment. "At UNICEF, we are proud to be able to support Ukraine in this update and would like to express our gratitude to the partners and donors within COVAX who make this possible. This allows a larger volume of vaccines to be stored at ultra-low temperatures, ensuring that they remain effective to protect people in Ukraine from COVID-19," he said. The storage and logistics of mRNA vaccines obtained from COVAX, in compliance with the appropriate cold chain in Ukraine, is provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Ukraine will also continue to receive COVID-19 vaccines as part of COVAX. Currently, within COVAX, over 4.325 million doses of vaccines from various manufacturers (Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca) have already been delivered to Ukraine. The COVAX Initiative aims to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for every country in the world. COVAX is coordinated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), and UNICEF is working with manufacturers and partners to procure and supply COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX works with civil society organizations, vaccine manufacturers, the governments of the United States, UK, European Union, the World Bank and others. Over past six months, some 51% more civilians killed, wounded in Donbas than in previous six months UN Mission From February 1 to July 31, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 62 civilian deaths and injuries in eastern Ukraine, up 51% from the previous six months, according to a human rights report Human Rights in Ukraine, prepared by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. "The number of ceasefire violations in the conflict zone considerably increased resulting in increased civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects. From 1 February to 31 July, OHCHR recorded 62 civilian casualties: 15 killed and 47 injured. Some 51% increase compared with the preceding six months," Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner at the presentation of the report in Kyiv on Thursday. She said this trend continues as heavy fighting in August and early September resulted in 16 civilian casualties, with two killed and 14 injured. "This is the highest monthly data since June 2020," Bogner said. The HRMMU head said that restrictions on freedom of movement due to coronavirus (COVID-19) continue to be a heavy burden for civilians who need to cross the contact line. "From February 1 to July 31, the number of crossings of the contact line in both directions decreased by 95% compared to the same period before the pandemic in 2019," she said. Bogner said that during HRMMU visits to settlements on both sides of the contact line, residents expressed their frustration with access to water and sanitation, health care, lack of public services, public transport and passable roads. Regarding the transitional bill, Bogner said while it contains some provisions that the HRMMU welcomes, she is concerned that it is structured around the definition of "transitional justice," which does not meet international standards and does not provide a victim-centered approach. The 32nd HRMMU report on human rights in Ukraine covers six months of monitoring from February 1 to July 31, 2021. The report draws on observations from 92 field visits, some 12 visits to places of detention, some 82 court hearings and 75 assemblies, and 1,156 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses of human rights violations and other stakeholders. G7 ambassadors concerned over process of judicial reform in Ukraine, call for nomination of experts to HCJ Ethics Council, draw attention to draft law on Constitutional Court The ambassadors of the G7 countries are watching with concern the process of judicial reform in Ukraine, calling for the nomination of experts to the Ethics Council of the High Council of Justice (HCJ), and also draw attention to the bill to improve the procedure for the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. "G7 Ambassadors continue to follow closely the process of Ukraine's judicial reform with concern. They note with disappointment the Council of Judges timetable for selecting candidates for the High Council of Justice Ethics Council after international partners nominated theirs. The proposed timetable does not reflect the importance and urgency of this reform. Ambassadors continue to call on the Council of Judges and all Ukrainian partners to ensure the swift nomination of experts to the HCJ Ethics Council," the UK Presidency of the G7 Ambassadors Support Group in Kyiv said on Twitter. In addition, the ambassadors are concerned about bill 4533, stressing that the reform of the Constitutional Court should ensure transparent, competitive selection of new judges of the Constitutional Court and guarantee a temporary increase in voting requirements, in accordance with the recommendations of the Venice Commission. "Comprehensive judicial reform remains a high priority for the G7, being crucial to the success of all reforms in Ukraine & to fulfilling the demands of the Ukrainian people. Delivering these reforms will enhance Ukraine's investment climate & ability to fulfil international obligations," the ambassadors said. The High Court of Justice in London does not have jurisdiction to consider the case of the Deposit Guarantee Fund against ex-owner of Bank Finance and Credit Kostiantyn Zhevaho, it is indicated in the court ruling, which is referred to by the press service of the fund. "In his [the judge's] conviction, the English court does not have jurisdiction to consider this case, since it sees a problem in the need to apply Ukrainian legislation, in which it is not an expert," the report explains. At the same time, the judge concluded that the evidence of the fund and the bank presented during the hearings indicated that there were sufficient grounds to issue an order for the worldwide seizure of the assets of the bank shareholder. "Under any conditions, we will continue our struggle for the return of withdrawn funds and assets both in Ukrainian courts and in the courts of foreign jurisdictions. After all, we are talking about billions of hryvnias that Ukrainians and the state lost in this bank due to the applied schemes," deputy managing director of the fund Viktor Novikov said. The fund's press service recalled that in February this year the fund initiated a lawsuit to recover $ 582.5 million from Kostiantyn Zhevaho, three English companies and one citizen of the United Kingdom involved in withdrawing funds from the bank. Hearings in the case were held behind closed doors in July 2021. As reported, the accepted claims of the creditors of the insolvent Bank Finance and Credit reach UAH 30 billion. On December 17, 2015, the National Bank of Ukraine, at the suggestion of the fund, adopted resolution No. 898 to revoke the banking license and liquidate Bank Finance and Credit, whose beneficiary was MP of the Verkhovna Rada of the VIII convocation and Executive Director of Ferrexpo mining company Kostiantyn Zhevaho. KYIV. Sept 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) Ukraine's accession to the European Convention on a Common Transit Procedure is expected at the end of the second quarter of 2022, already in the third quarter Ukrainian enterprises will be able to go in transit through 35 countries on the principle of one vehicle - one transit declaration - one guarantor's undertaking, Director of the Department for the Implementation of the International Transit System of the State Customs Service Serhiy Demchenko has said. During a roundtable entitled "Implementation of customs procedures in accordance with EU practice: what changes may Ukrainian business expect? Practical aspects" held at Interfax-Ukraine, he said that these are all EU countries, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, Turkey, Serbia, North Macedonia and the U.K. The expert recalled that joining the Convention is stipulated by the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and shall intensify international trade due to the establishment of joint transit procedures by Ukraine with the countries-members of the Convention and their use of a single technology the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) system. This system allows the member countries to exchange customs data in real time and monitor goods at every stage of transportation. "The common transit system provides for four main special transit simplifications for enterprises: the authorized consignor, the authorized consignee, special sealing and a guarantee," Demchenko said. He added that new approaches are being applied to the standard guarantee amount, which will reduce the amount when it is used by 50%, 70% or 100%. To obtain simplifications in NCTS, the legislation provides for a special procedure. The guarantee can be provided by companies that have received the financial guarantor status. To submit a transit declaration to NCTS, a company needs to register on the Trader's Portal in the "personal account" on the "Single Window for International Trade" portal. "Ukrainian legislation on common transit has already been generally shaped and is in line with the best European practices," International Key Expert on Customs reform of the EU4PFM Programme to improve Public Financial Management (PFM) in Ukraine, former Deputy Chairman of the Lithuanian Customs Service Vytenis Alisauskas said during the roundtable. To date, more than 3,000 customs officials are registered in the system, more than 180 companies have access to the Trader's Portal, about 300 T1UA declarations have been submitted, three companies have received the financial guarantor status, and the Helpdesk operates. As reported, NCTS is still used in Ukraine on a national scale. However, as a representative of the State Customs Service said, "enterprises that use NCTS (have submitted 50 or more declarations) can submit documents to the State Customs Service for simplifications, which will be valid even after Ukraine joins the Convention, that is, with the international application of the system." Ukraine is carrying out customs reform, one of the directions of which is the introduction of principles and instruments used in the EU countries. The EU, in turn, assists Ukraine in the development and implementation of such customs instruments. This was emphasized by the participants in the round table "Implementation of customs procedures in accordance with European practice: what changes should Ukrainian business expect? Practical aspects," which took place at the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on September 21, 2021. The event was attended by President of the Exporters' Club of Ukraine Yevhenia Litvinova, President of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Hennadiy Chizhikov, representatives of business associations, Director of the Customs Policy Department of the Finance Ministry of Ukraine Oleksandr Moskalenko, Director of the International Transit System Implementation Department of the State Customs Service of Ukraine Serhiy Demchenko, Director of the Department for Customs Audit and Registration of Persons of the State Customs Service Svitlana Anischenko, Head of the AEO Support Department of the Customs Control and Customs Clearance Organization Department of the State Customs Service Andriy Teply, the EU4PFM international expert on customs issues, ex-deputy head of customs of the Republic of Lithuania Vytenis Alisauskas. Organizer and moderator of the round table Maksim Urakin noted that now the State Customs Service provides 35-40% of revenues to the state budget, and these figures have remained stable over the past years. "In general, in January-August 2021, the State Customs Service fulfilled the revenue plan by 107% and transferred UAH 291 billion to the state budget (against the planned figure of UAH 272 billion). At the same time, in the eight months of this year, compared to the same period last year, receipts from customs payments increased by UAH 76 billion, or 36%," Urakin emphasized. In addition, the organizer noted that, based on the monitoring of data of Ukraine's foreign economic activity in 2021, conducted by the Experts Club analytical center, the state budget revenues will continue to grow, as the country continues to increase the volume of international trade. "Thus, exports to the EU countries in the first half of 2021 grew by 43.9% compared to the same period last year, imports - by 26.3%. The total volume of trade with the EU countries for the six months amounted to almost $ 25 billion, with China about $ 9 billion. These data indicate that the stimulation of foreign trade through the harmonization of customs legislation is a key factor in the financial stability of the state, ensures budget replenishment and economic growth," the speaker said. The speakers provided an overview of the principles laid down in the EU Customs Code and the instruments used by EU countries to implement these principles; what of them should be expected in Ukraine (including thanks to the support of European partners), and which of these customs instruments are already being introduced or are close to being introduced in Ukraine - in particular, the common transit regime (NCTS), the Authorized Economic Operator Program (AEO) and customs audit. Of particular interest to business representatives was the system of customs simplifications, which is used in the EU countries and is now being implemented in Ukraine - in particular, as part of implementation of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. Yevhenia Litvinova, the President of the Exporters Club of Ukraine, in turn, emphasized that it is important for business to know what changes await us. "Do opportunities or additional costs await us? The round table will give an impetus to better understand the expected changes, to prepare for them, so that our exports after 2022 are painless, efficient and active," she stressed. "We want everything to be good at once, but the customs reform is not an easy process. But what we see now gives a large share of positive. And above all, we are moving towards the EU, including mentally," Hennadiy Chizhikov, the President of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said. According to Vytenis Alisauskas, the EU4PFM international expert on customs issues, the ex-deputy head of the customs of the Republic of Lithuania, the changes to the EU Customs Code fixed the new mission of the European customs. If earlier the customs had to protect the local market and collect customs duties, now it is becoming part of the international trade chain. And the competitiveness of local exporters depends on how it works. The international expert focused on the tasks that must be solved with the help of the EU Customs Code - so that it would be profitable for an entrepreneur to be honest, so that a conscientious business could save his time and money, so that some of the processes that are (as a rule) performed at customs could be carried out by such a business on its own. "An authorized economic operator (AEO) is a symbol of a conscientious entrepreneur who is trusted by customs and who has significant advantages in customs clearance," he said. Alisauskas highlighted the key tools used by European customs to save time for fair business - in addition to the simplification system (the AEO program and simplification in the general transit regime), this is a customs audit system (post-audit) and a customs risk management system. International partners help create and implement these principles and tools in Ukraine. Oleksandr Moskalenko, the Director of the Customs Policy Department of the Finance Ministry of Ukraine, stressed that the country is now working in the vector defined by the Constitution - European integration. Europe is our largest trading partner, and therefore, it is important to approximate, introduce the best European practices - so that European and Ukrainian customs work according to the same rules. "We have completed a large layer of legislative changes. Now both the customs and the business must deploy all this. We need training, enlightenment, promotion. Therefore, I would like international partners to help us also conduct business training. So that all participants in the process not only have the rights, but also know how to use them," he said. In his opinion, the acceleration of customs clearance should be achieved not at the expense of a command to customs officers to "work quickly," but at the expense of an efficiently built system. "We are moving towards building partnerships between business and customs. It will take some time," he concluded. Serhiy Demchenko, the Director of the Department for the Implementation of the International Transit System of the State Customs Service, said that in the second quarter of 2022 Ukraine is expected to join the Convention on the Common Transit Procedure, and already in the third quarter of 2022 - the stage of Ukraine's international application of the NCTS system. "In a year, Ukrainian enterprises will be able to transit with 35 countries (including all EU countries, EFTA, Turkey, Great Britain) on the principle of "one vehicle - one transit declaration, one financial guarantee"," Demchenko said. He also informed about the main four special transit simplifications that the general transit system provides: an authorized consignor, an authorized consignee, self-sealing of a special type, a common financial guarantee. Regarding the guarantee, the Customs Service representative emphasized that new approaches are being applied that make it possible to reduce the amount of security for the base amount of the guarantee when it is used - by 50%, 70%, or 100%. "As you know, now NCTS is used on a national scale, however, enterprises using this system (having issued 50 declarations or more) can apply for simplifications, which will also be valid for the international application of the system. Currently, the system has registered more than 3,000 officials of customs authorities, more than 180 companies gained access to the Trader Portal, about 300 T1UA declarations were submitted, three companies received the status of a financial guarantor, Helpdesk works, seven seminars were held with subjects of foreign economic activity," the expert summed up. According to Andriy Teply, the head of the AEO support department of Customs Control and Customs Clearance Organization at the State Customs Service, the full implementation of the functioning of the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) Program is a priority of the State Customs Service for the next 2-3 years. Among the main challenges, he named the transformation of customs-business relations: such relations today are built on the distrust of business in customs, but should be open and partnership. As you know, the Authorized Economic Operator Program has been operating in Ukraine since August 2020. Its implementation is stipulated by the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. It provides a number of simplifications and advantages in customs clearance. To obtain the status, it is necessary to go through a rather difficult and lengthy authorization procedure. "As of September 2021, the State Customs Service received five applications for authorization of the AEO. Of these, one enterprise was granted authorization as the AEO, two were denied an assessment, while two applications are under preliminary consideration," the expert said. Svitlana Anischenko, the Director of the Department for Customs Audit and Personnel Registration of the State Customs Service, stressed that customs audit in Europe is more focused on foreign economic activity and acts as a system that allows speeding up the process of customs clearance. "We feel the need to create a high-quality IT tool - with the support of European partners, the first version of the Customs Audit information system was created, in August-September it is tested by customs. A month ago, an agreement was reached with European partners to support the creation of the second version. Also, the development of a risk management system for the selection of enterprises for customs audit has begun," she said. The event record can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VBpReShdr8. The organizers of the event are the European Union Project EU4PFM "Public Finance Management Support Program in Ukraine," the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Exporters' Club of Ukraine, and the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. More than quarter of Ukrainians stand for ORDLO autonomy, same number stand for their isolation - Social Monitoring opinion poll KYIV. Sept 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) More than a quarter (27.9%) of Ukrainians support the granting of autonomous status to certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO) not controlled by the government as part of Ukraine as a solution to their problem, according to the results of an all-Ukrainian public opinion poll conducted by the Social Monitoring Center on September 11-19. At the same time, 28.5% support the official recognition that these territories in the coming years cannot be returned to Ukraine, and the isolation of ORDLO. Some 18.4% support the continuation of hostilities aimed at restoring full control of Ukraine over these territories by military means, and 25.2% found it difficult to answer the question. Some 40.3% of the respondents said that they would support the decision to grant autonomy within Ukraine at the relevant referendum if it was held, 42% would not support, and 17.7% found it difficult to answer. In the regional context, this decision was supported by the majority of residents of the east (52.5%), southern Ukraine (60.4%) and Donbas (57.8%), a relative minority of residents of the center (35.3% versus 44.7%) and an absolute minority of westerners (20.9). At the same time, two-thirds of respondents said that they receive socio-political information about events in Ukraine by means of television, and of these, 11.8% said that from Russian television channels (5.4% in the west, 8.2% in the center of the country , 20.9% in the east, 29.2% in Donbas, and 16.8% in the south of Ukraine). In the course of the study, 3,010 respondents aged 18 and over were interviewed by the method of individual interviews at the place of residence of respondents in all government-controlled regions of Ukraine. The standard deviation is 1.1-1.9. "To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change more often," Winston Churchill said. "If you want to change your reality, you need to change your mindset," says Robert Kiyosaki. Teachers' Self Upgrade - about multitasking and collaboration vectors It is the idea of self-improvement and self-motivation that is embedded in the social and educational project Teachers Self Upgrade, which Arricano generated and invited to participate partners from various segments of the FMCG, fashion, NGO industries, government, business, as well as experts in providing educational services. As a result, it became a multitasking collaboration idea, which was joined by Desnianska district administration, "Osvitoria", EBA, "Wikend u Kyievi", "Tyzhden", "Kyiv" TV channel, Multiplex, Ad.A.Agency, VOVK, Colin's, Prospekt shopping mall, and May Ukraine. About the idea and it's development The way from the idea of Teachers' Self Upgrade, and preparation to the implementation took three months. During this time, Arricano turned to socially oriented brands that support CSR projects, together with a creative contracting agency Ad.A. Agency held talks with the best experts on educational services the European Business Association and the public union "Osvitoria", enlisted the support of the Desnianska district state administration and the Department of education of the Desnianska district state administration, conducted an online survey among the capital's teachers to find out what topics they are interested in. It turned out that the most pressing issues are mastering new digital tools in remote and mixed format, feedback skills, positioning the teacher's personality and influencing students. Therefore, together with educational experts, a special training program for teachers was developed in the style of a business conference to convey to teachers the dynamic motives of networking, collaboration, the desire for self-motivation and self-improvement, which are key in modern corporate cultures of business leaders. "We are grateful to our partners who ideologically shared our idea of the project Teachers' Self Upgrade, believed in the idea and contributed to its implementation. Modern school education needs a new fervor, because online learning of schoolchildren requires different competencies than in an offline format. Attracting students' attention today is much more difficult, because teachers often have to compete for their influence and authority with gadgets, YouTube and TikTok. Already in adulthood, we rethink our school life and are eternally grateful to those teachers who found a personal approach and taught us the basic principles, motivated and passed on their knowledge. Each of us has our favorite teachers, whom we remember with warmth and gratitude. And it is important that even today there is an effective transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, even in distance learning, so that students get a passion for learning. And that teachers have effective modern technological life hacks in providing high-quality educational services. This is our idea and response to the need for teachers to improve their professional skills," says Olena Obukhivska, Communications Director at Arricano. About the project status Teachers' Self Upgrade starts on September 25, 2021 in Prospekt shopping mall, in the Multiplex cinema hall. In total, more than 150 teachers of the capital were registered, mainly from the Desnianskyi district. Due to quarantine restrictions, registration was suspended. Throughout the day, Teachers Self Upgrade participants will have the opportunity to listen to thematic trainings from top speakers of Ukraine. Upon completion, certificates will be awarded for teachers' professional development hours. About Arricano's CSR position Arricano, as a leading developer in Ukraine, pays great attention to the social component of business in its activities. In 2021, at the meeting of the Board of Directors, the corporate ESG policy was updated, that is, the corporate policy on environmental issues, social activities and management of the company. Educational projects and interaction with the community were determined as the priority areas of social investment. "Corporate social responsibility of the business and response to social requests are important in Arricano's activities. After all, this is the formation of a corporate social portfolio of projects, interaction with the community of shopping malls and the desire to join the life of communities, get involved and solve socially significant issues together. Education for Arricano has always been and is a priority area of CSR in various formats working with students, schoolchildren, shop assistants, advising business partners. We have worked out such tools as edutainment, crowdfunding, and various motivational patriotic performances. Teachers' Self Upgrade is a new project unique for Ukraine, where together with the business community we want to support teachers, and most importantly - to convey the passion for learning to students," says Anna Chubotina, CEO of Arricano. The results of the project will be announced next week at Arricano media sites. A worker walks at the Yara ammonia plant in Porsgrunn, Norway (Photo : REUTERS/Lefteris Karagiannopoulos) Global record high natural gas prices are pushing some energy-intensive companies to curtail production in a trend that is adding to disruptions to global supply chains in some sectors such as food and could result in higher costs being passed on to their customers. Some companies, including steel producers, fertiliser manufacturers and glass makers, have had to suspend or reduce production in Europe and Asia as a result of spiking energy prices. That includes two of the world's largest fertiliser makers, which said they would cut production in Europe. The UK on Tuesday said it agreed to provide state support to one of the companies to restart production of by-product carbon dioxide, which is used in food production, to avert a supply crunch. Advertisement Natural gas prices have risen sharply around the globe in recent months. That has been due to a combination of factors: including increased demand particularly from Asia due to a post-pandemic recovery; low gas inventories; and tighter-than-usual gas supplies from Russia. Gas prices in Europe have risen more than 250% this year, while Asia has seen about a 175% increase since late January. In the United States, prices have surged to multi-year highs and are about double where they were at the start of the year. Electricity prices have also risen sharply as many power plants are gas-fired. Industrial Energy Consumers of America, a trade group representing chemical, food and materials manufacturers, has in recent days called on the U.S. Department of Energy to stop the country's liquefied natural gas producers from exporting gas to help keep the energy costs down for industry. Additional supplies of gas could alleviate pressure. Norway has allowed increased gas exports. More supply could flow from Russia by the end of the year with the country's new Nord Stream 2 pipeline awaiting approval from Germany's energy regulator. The pipeline project has drawn criticism from the United States, which says it will increase Europe's reliance on Russian energy supplies. PRODUCTION DISRUPTIONS The pressures so far have been particularly acute in Europe, where gas stocks are much lower than usual heading into winter. Norway's Yara International ASA, one of the world's largest fertiliser makers, on Friday said it would cut about 40% of its European ammonia production due to high gas prices. That came after U.S.-based CF Industries Holdings Inc said gas prices were prompting it to halt operations at two of its British plants. Natural gas is the most important cost input for nitrogen-based chemicals and fertilizers. Yara's chief executive, Svein Tore Holsether, told Reuters in an interview Monday that the company was bringing ammonia to Europe from production facilities elsewhere, including the United States and Australia. "Instead of using European gas, we are essentially using gas from other parts of the world to make that product and bring it into Europe," he said.CF Industries didn't respond to requests for comment. Some industries are calling on governments to intervene on their behalf. These pleas come as some countries have acted to protect consumers from soaring energy bills, such as Spain, which last week approved a package of measures including price caps. Among those asking for help is the food industry following a shortage of carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by the suspension of production in some fertiliser plants. CO2 is used in the vacuum packing of food products to extend their shelf life, to stun animals before slaughter and to put the fizz in soft drinks and beer. In the UK, meat processors had warned they will run out of CO2 within five days, forcing them to halt production. Soft drink manufacturers, who rely on the gas to make carbonated drinks, said supplies were running low. On Tuesday, the British government said it struck a three-week deal with CF Industries for the American company to restart the production of carbon dioxide in the UK. Britain's environment minister, who said the state support could run into tens of millions of pounds, also warned the food industry that carbon dioxide prices would rise sharply. CF Industries said in a statement it is immediately restarting ammonia production at its Billingham plant following the agreement. WEATHERING THE STORM Other energy-intensive sectors such as steel and cement are also feeling the pinch. Soaring gas prices have in the past couple of weeks "forced some steelmakers to suspend operations during those periods of the night and day when the cost of energy rockets," said Gareth Stace, director general at industry group UK Steel. He declined to identify which companies. British Steel, the country's second-largest steel producer, said it was maintaining normal levels of production but that the "colossal" energy-price increases made "it impossible to profitably make steel at certain times of the day." Some manufacturers say they are able to cope, so far. Germany's Thyssenkrupp AG, Europe's second-largest steelmaker, said hedging mechanisms it had in place against energy price increases, especially gas, meant it was not curbing production. But it said it was indirectly affected because the industrial gases it used are linked to electricity prices. HeidelbergCement AG of Germany, the world's second-largest cement maker, said higher energy prices were driving up production costs but that operations had not been halted as a result. In China, several steel, ceramic and glass makers have reduced production to avoid losses, according to Li Ruipeng, a local supplier of liquefied natural gas in the northern province of Hebei. And, China's southwestern province of Yunnan this month imposed limits on production of some heavy industries, including producers of fertilisers, cement, chemicals, and aluminium smelters due to energy shortages, a move that analysts said could reduce exports. To weather the storm, some energy-intensive industries and utility firms in Asia and the Middle East have temporarily switched from gas to fuel oil, crude, naphtha or coal, analysts and traders said. That trend is expected to continue for the rest of the year and into the beginning of next, according to the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based energy watchdog. In Europe, demand for coal as an alternative power source has also risen significantly. But options for switching to alternative sources of energy are limited in the region largely due to government policies aimed at encouraging the use of gas over more polluting fuels such as coal. The glass industry was historically run on fuel oil, but almost all sites in the United Kingdom have now transitioned to natural gas, according to Paul Pearcy, federation coordinator at British Glass, a UK trade association. Only a few sites have fuel oil tanks that enable them to switch energy source if prices skyrocket, he added. A prototype of an electrical air-taxi drone by German start-up Volocopter that takes off and lands vertically performs a non-passenger flight over Le Bourget airport, near Paris, France (Photo : REUTERS/Christian Hartmann) German flying taxi startup Volocopter said on Wednesday it would sell 150 electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to its joint venture with a unit of Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Volocopter, which counts Daimler, BlackRock and Intel Capital as some of its investors, said it expects the partnership to bring eVTOL aircraft to China within the next three to five years. Advertisement China represents the "biggest single market opportunity" for the urban air mobility industry, said Florian Reuter, Volocopter's chief executive officer, in a statement. Volocopter did not disclose any financial details of the sale. The company in April had announced the formation of the joint venture with Zhejiang Geely's Aerofugia. Volocopter, which has raised EUR 322 million ($377.87 million) from its investors, added that Zhejiang Geely's top boss Daniel Li Donghui had joined its advisory board. ($1 = 0.8522 euros) In climate pledge, Xi says China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a welcoming ceremony for Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos outside the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, China (Photo : REUTERS/Jason Lee) Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, using his address at the United Nations General Assembly to add to pledges to deal with climate change. Xi provided no details, but depending on how the policy is implemented, the move could significantly limit the financing of coal plants in the developing world. Advertisement China has been under heavy diplomatic pressure to put an end to its coal financing overseas because it could make it easier for the world to stay on course to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement to reduce carbon emissions. Xi's announcement followed similar moves by South Korea and Japan earlier this year, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry have urged China to follow the lead of its Asian counterparts. "China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad," Xi said in his pre-recorded video address at the annual U.N. gathering, in which he stressed China's peaceful intentions in international relations. Kerry quickly welcomed Xi's announcement, calling it a "great contribution" and a good beginning to efforts needed to achieve success at the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. "We've been talking to China for quite some period of time about this. And I'm absolutely delighted to hear that President Xi has made this important decision," Kerry said in a statement. Alok Sharma, the head of COP26, also hailed the announcement. "It is clear the writing is on the wall for coal power. I welcome President Xi's commitment to stop building new coal projects abroad - a key topic of my discussions during my visit to China," he said on Twitter. Xi spoke after U.S. President Joe Biden gave his first United Nations address. Biden mapped out a new era of vigorous competition without a new Cold War despite China's ascendance. In a measured speech, Xi made no direct mention of China's often bitter rivalry with the United States, where the Biden administration has made policies on climate change mitigation a top priority and sought to cooperate with Beijing. Xi repeated pledges from last year that China would achieve a peak in carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. Some experts have criticized those targets as not ambitious enough, though it allowed Beijing to claim moral high ground on the issue after then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who had called climate change a "hoax", had withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. China, the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, is still heavily reliant on coal for it's domestic energy needs. One of Biden's first moves after assuming office in January was to reassert U.S. leadership on climate change and return the United States to the Paris agreement. "China was the last man standing. If there's no public finance of coal from China, there's little to no global coal expansion," Justin Guay, director of global climate strategy at the Sunrise Project, a group advocating for a global transition from coal and fossil fuels, said of Xi's promise. Guterres welcomed both Xi's move on coal and Biden's pledge to work with the U.S. Congress to double funds by 2024 to $11.4 billion per year to help developing nations deal with climate change. "Accelerating the global phase out of coal is the single most important step to keep the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris Agreement within reach, he said in a statement. 'BREATHE FREE' Hours earlier, without mentioning China by name, Biden said democracy would not be defeated by authoritarianism. "The future will belong to those who give their people the ability to breathe free, not those who seek to suffocate their people with an iron hand," Biden said. "We all must call out and condemn the targeting and oppression of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, whether it occurs in Xinjiang or northern Ethiopia, or anywhere in the world," he said, referring to the western Chinese region where authorities have created a network of internment camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. China denies allegations of abuses in Xinjiang. Ties between the world's two biggest economies have been languishing at their lowest point in decades over issues ranging from human rights to transparency over the origins of COVID-19. Xi said there was a need to "reject the practice of forming small circles or zero-sum games," a possible reference to the U.S.-led Quad forum of Australia, India, Japan and the United States seen as a means of pushing back against China's rise, which is due to meet at leader level in Washington on Friday. China last week warned of an intensified arms race in the region after the United States, Britain and Australia announced a new Indo-Pacific security alliance, dubbed AUKUS, which will provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines. Biden's image has taken a battering over the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but he has said the end to America's longest war will allow the United States to refocus resources and attention to the Indo-Pacific. "Military intervention from the outside and so-called democratic transformation entail nothing but harm," Xi said, in an apparent swipe at the United States. Analysis-JPMorgan's 2021 deal spree aims to fill the few holes left in its global operations A woman walks past JPMorgan Chase & Co's international headquarters on Park Avenue in New York (Photo : REUTERS/Andrew Burton) JPMorgan Chase & Co has been on a boutique-business buying spree this year, acquiring or investing in around 30 companies since the start of 2021. In September alone, the bank took a close-to 75% stake in Volkswagen's payments, bought the media company that owns Zagat and on Tuesday bought a college financial planning used by more than 5 million students in the United States. Advertisement Those three transactions illustrate the contours of JPMorgan's dealmaking strategy, analysts and bank executives said: the largest U.S. bank is filling the few holes left in its offerings, without facing regulatory hurdles that would almost surely accompany larger transactions. "These are acquisitions that are bite-sized and span a full range from payments to big data, have applications for AI and (provide) premium customer experiences," said Wells Fargo bank analyst Mike Mayo. "It's another reason Goliath is winning," he added. "They can go ahead and pick off forward-looking, niche fintech firms and scale them across their global franchise." While most deals and their terms are not public information, Reuters estimates JPMorgan has bought and invested in around 30 companies in 2021, according to data from Refinitiv, Dealogic and media reports. The average size of the deals the bank has done this year are smaller than at almost any point in the past decade, Dealogic found, counting only deals where the value was disclosed. Average deal size last year was smaller. Only in 2012 did JPMorgan do more deals, according to Dealogic. The bank made 34 investments and acquisitions that year, again counting only those deals with disclosed values. "The benefit of our franchise is our scale," said Leslie Wims Morris, who heads corporate development for Chase. "It's less about deal size than it is about strategic impact: what capabilities do we need, and what experiences do we want to deliver?" DEALS APLENTY JPMorgan is not alone in its pursuits lately. Rivals have also been buying companies or stakes in companies that thrive on algorithms, apps, data and a specific appeal to desirable customers in markets where they do not have a foothold. For instance, Goldman Sachs Group Inc last week purchased home-improvement lender for $2.2 billion, and on Tuesday Wells Fargo & Co and Mastercard Inc participated in a $60 million funding round for Bilt Rewards, a credit-card loyalty startup that targets renters. Although some of the deals are sizable enough to warrant announcing the purchase price, they are generally smaller and less meaningful than the mega-bank mergers that happened in the 1990s and 2000s. U.S. regulators have been loath to approve transactions that help the biggest financial firms get bigger. That is especially true under the Biden administration, which has a stated policy of cracking down on anticompetitive practices and whose Justice Department effectively quashed a merger between two large insurance brokers in July. There is also an issue of profitability relative to size. The larger U.S. banks become, the more capital they must hold against certain assets. Because JPMorgan is so large, it makes sense to target companies that provide services for fees or can offer data about customer preferences, said Odeon Capital Group analyst Richard Bove. "JPMorgan does not want to grow its balance sheet, but it does want to grow its profits," he said. That dynamic, combined with JPMorgan's saturation across the United States, explains its 75% stake in Volkswagen Payments SA; its acquisition of UK digital wealth manager Nutmeg ; and a 40% stake in C6 Bank, a popular digital lender in Brazil, he said. Investing internationally also gives JPMorgan an edge over domestic competitors like Citigroup Inc, which has exited large chunks of its global consumer operations, analysts said. JPMorgan is considering large deals too, but some of the transactions this year simply came together faster, said Ben Hesse, head of the bank's strategy & business development for asset & wealth management unit. His division oversaw recent purchases of ESG-focused fintech startup OpenInvest, forest manager and timberlands investor Campbell Global LLC and a minority stake in Kraft Analytics Group, the sports-focused data analytics firm. "Just because we haven't announced anything large doesn't mean we haven't looked at it," Hesse told Reuters. "It's just that the bar for these things is very, very high." Protesters hold signs during an anti-vaccine mandate protest outside Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Photo : REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo) Police in the Canadian province of Quebec are searching for a man they suspect of punching a nurse in the face for giving his wife a COVID-19 vaccine without his consent, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The man confronted the female nurse on Monday morning in the office of a pharmacy in the city of Sherbrooke, about 155 kilometers (96 miles) southeast of Montreal, where she was assigned to administer vaccines, police spokesman Martin Carrier said by phone. Advertisement "Our suspect went directly into the office and began to yell at the nurse," Carrier said. The man appeared to be very shocked that his wife was vaccinated at the pharmacy "without his authorization," and hit the nurse in the face, Carrier added. Nurses globally have faced cases of abuse along with suffering burnout on the job in the long fight against COVID-19, health advocates say. It was not clear whether the suspect opposed vaccinations or whether his wife had in fact been inoculated at the same pharmacy, Carrier said. Anti-vaccine protests across Canada ramped up in the run-up to this week's federal election, with some demonstrations targeting schools. Protesters had drawn the ire of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail for targeting hospitals and healthcare workers, and he has vowed to crack down on such actions. Quebec Premier Francois Legault said on Wednesday his government would try to get a special law passed as early as Thursday to stop anti-vaccine protestors from demonstrating close to schools and hospitals or face fines. "My patience has reached its limit," he told reporters in Quebec City. "I think it's important to leave our children and patients in peace." Maldives' President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, U.S. (Photo : REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/Pool) Faced with what they see as an existential threat, leaders from low-lying and island nations implored rich countries at the United Nations General Assembly this week to act more forcefully against a warming planet. The failure by developed economies to effectively curb their greenhouse gas emissions contributes to rising sea levels and especially imperils island and low-lying nations at the mercy of water. Advertisement "We simply have no higher ground to cede," Marshall Islands President David Kabua told leaders in a pre-recorded speech at the high-level gathering on Wednesday. "The world simply cannot delay climate ambition any further." Countries agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold scientists say would head off the worst impacts of warming. To do that, scientists say, the world needs to cut global emissions in half by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050. "The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees is a death sentence for the Maldives," President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih told world leaders on Tuesday. Guyana President Irfaan Ali criticized large polluters for not delivering on promises to curb emissions, accusing them of "deception" and "failure" and warning that climate change will kill far more people than the COVID-19 pandemic. "We hold out similar hope that the world's worst emitters of greenhouse gases that are affecting the welfare of all mankind will also come to the realization that, in the end, it will profit them little to emerge king over a world of dust," Ali told world leaders on Thursday. He said small island states and countries with low-lying coastlines, like Guyana, will bear the full brunt of the impending disaster despite being among the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases. "This is not only unfair, it is unjust," he said. Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group, said there had been a "sense of existential crisis" running through the annual gathering at the United Nations. "Both Beijing and Washington want to show they are leading the fight against global warming. If the small islands' leaders can't get people to listen at this General Assembly, they never will," Gowan said. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he would work with Congress to double funds by 2024 to $11.4 billion per year to help developing nations deal with climate change. The funding would help achieve a global goal set more than a decade ago of $100 billion per year to support climate action in vulnerable countries by 2020. Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to stop building coal-fired power plants overseas, a move widely welcomed. 'WE MUST ACT NOW' Biden and Xi made their commitments less than six weeks before the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 COP26 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said runs the risk of failure over mistrust between rich and poor countries. President Chan Santokhi of Suriname, where much of the coastal area is low-lying, called for "ambitious and actionable commitments" to be made at COP26, urging developed countries to recommit to the $100 billion per year. Santokhi said that ideals and political commitments do not mean much if not supported by new financial resources. "In the case of my country, Suriname, and the countries with low-lying coastal areas, we are committed to fighting climate change because we are particularly vulnerable even though we have contributed the least to this problem," he told the General Assembly. The Pacific archipelago nation of Palau warned the world is running out of time. "Simply put, we must act now to ensure our children inherit a healthy and reliable future. We need to act now before further irreparable damage is made to our planet," Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., said at the gathering. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is preparing to host COP26, on Wednesday called on world leaders to make the necessary commitments and a collective pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. He warned that, on the current track, temperatures will go up by 2.7 degrees Celsius or more by the end of the century. "Nevermind what that will do to the ice floes, dissolving like ice in your martini here in New York," Johnson said. "We will see desertification, drought, crop failure and mass movements of humanity on a scale not seen before, not because of some unforeseen natural event or disaster, but because of us, because of what we are doing now." A migrant is silhouetted at a makeshift camp near the U.S. border after Mexican authorities arrived at the camp in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico (Photo : REUTERS/Daniel Becerril) The U.S. special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest in a letter that blasted the Biden administration for deporting hundreds of migrants back to the crisis-engulfed Caribbean nation from a camp on the U.S.-Mexican border in recent days. Daniel Foote, a career diplomat named to his post in July, said conditions in Haiti were so bad that U.S. officials were confined to secure compounds. He said the "collapsed state" was unable to support the infusion of returning migrants. Advertisement "I will not be associated with the United States' inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants," Foote said in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that circulated publicly on Thursday. Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, has been badly hit in recent weeks by a presidential assassination, gang violence and a major earthquake. The United States has returned more than 1,400 migrants from the camp in Del Rio, Texas to Haiti - including families - and moved over 3,200 people for processing away from the encampment, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said on Thursday. At its peak on Sept. 18 there were some 15,000 people there, around two-thirds of those families, the officials said. https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION/MEXICO/mopankddwva Many of the migrants say they hope to stay in the United States and seek asylum but because of a widespread expulsion policy in place since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic which bars most asylum claims, many may not get that opportunity. Some are being loaded onto flights back to Haiti while others are being released into the United States to pursue their immigration cases in court. Images of a U.S. border agent on horseback using long reins to whip in the direction of migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande caused outrage within the White House and from rights groups and prompted Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday to seek answers from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. DHS said patrols on horseback had ceased in Del Rio and the agents involved had been put on administrative duties. Foote submitted his resignation to Blinken on Wednesday, a State Department spokesperson said, adding that Washington was committed to the long-term well being of Haiti, as well as offering immediate help to returning migrants. State Department spokesman Ned Price rejected Foote's criticism. "This is a challenging moment that requires leadership. It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation." "He failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead," said Price. The resignation follows growing pressure on the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden from the United Nations and his fellow Democrats over the treatment of the Haitians. Biden's handling of what Republicans portray as a crisis at the border - including record numbers of migrant detentions this year - has led to growing disillusionment https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-biden-idAFKBN2GI1U5 from advocates who hoped for an end to deterrent measures brought in by his predecessor Donald Trump. Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N refugee agency, warned that this week the U.S. expulsions to Haiti might violate international law. The expulsions have taken place since March 2020 at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic for public heath reasons. Under the policy known as Title 42, most migrants encountered at the border - largely Central Americans - have been quickly returned to Mexico. Haitians are being expelled back to their home county, however. At least four deportation flights to Haiti were scheduled for Thursday, according to a flight tracking website and activists who track deportation flights. Foote's decision to leave was interpreted and welcomed by rights groups as a stern criticism of the administration's immigration strategy. "A big bold move. And a big deal," said William O'Neill, a lawyer specializing in humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. "He will be missed." MEXICAN PRESSURE In recent days, the population of the squalid encampment under a bridge over the Rio Grande on the border has been reduced to around 4,000 by expulsion flights, detentions and releases. DHS officials said that determinations on who was expelled and who has been allowed to stay in the United States to pursue their immigration cases were made on a "case-by-case" basis, without providing numbers of releases. Wade McMullen, an attorney with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, said several hundred people, mostly pregnant women and parents with children, had been released in Del Rio over the past several days. Others have left the dusty riverbank for Mexico to avoid being sent home. Mexican authorities in Ciudad Acuna, across the border from Del Rio, stepped up security operations on Tuesday with close to 20 patrol cars and numerous officers hoisting heavy-duty firearms lined up along the river where migrants were crossing back and forth between the two countries. Jean Pie, 48, was awoken shortly after 6 a.m. from where he was sleeping on the grass on the Mexican side as police cars rolled by. Like many of the Haitians, he had first tried to make a life in South America. Migrants have said they decided to head north when they encountered discrimination and dwindling opportunities in countries like Brazil and Chile. He said he had spent two months and $3,000 to reach Mexico from Chile, including $500 to a man in Mexico who promised to take him from the southern city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala to the U.S. border but then disappeared. He was also deported from Mexico to Guatemala by Mexican authorities. "We are living in constant fear because Mexican migration officials can pick up anyone," he said. "I have run out of money. It is all just too much." International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva makes remarks at an opening news conference during the IMF (Photo : REUTERS/Mike Theiler/File Photo) The Economist magazine on Thursday called for International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to resign over her role in a China-related data-rigging scandal while at the World Bank, saying it has undermined the IMF's credibility. The influential London-based publication said in a scathing editorial https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/09/25/why-the-head-of-the-imf-should-resign that an external investigation's findings that Georgieva pressured staff for changes to the World Bank's "Doing Business" rankings in 2017 to favor China compromises the IMF's ability to act as the custodian of data for the world's macroeconomic statistics. Advertisement "The head of the IMF must hold the ring while two of its biggest shareholders, America and China, confront each other in a new era of geopolitical rivalry," the Economist said, adding that critics of multilateralism are already citing the findings as evidence that international bodies cannot stand up to China. "The next time the IMF tries to referee a currency dispute, or helps reschedule the debt of a country that has borrowed from China, the fund's critics are sure to cite this investigation to undermine the institution's credibility. That is why Ms Georgieva, an esteemed servant of several international institutions, should resign," the editorial said. It cited the allegation in the WilmerHale law firm's report https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/84a922cc9273b7b120d49ad3b9e9d3f9-0090012021/original/DB-Investigation-Findings-and-Report-to-the-Board-of-Executive-Directors-September-15-2021.pdfthat Georgieva, who at the time was the World Bank's CEO, thanked a senior bank researcher for "doing his bit for multilateralism" in altering the China data. "Now she too should do her bit for multilateralism by falling on her sword," the Economist said. The World Bank's "Doing Business" reports, now canceled, ranked countries based on their regulatory and legal environments, ease of business startups, financing, infrastructure and other business climate measures. Georgieva, a Bulgarian who is a former World Bank economist and European Commission official, has denied the accusations in the WilmerHale report, saying last week they are "not true" https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/imf-chief-spotlight-after-china-rigging-report-2021-09-17 and she has never pressured staff to manipulate data. The IMF's executive board is conducting its own review of the allegations and has emphasized "the importance it attached to conducting a thorough, objective and timely review." An IMF spokesman declined comment on the Economist's editorial. A U.S. Treasury spokeswoman also declined comment beyond the Treasury's earlier statement that it is analyzing "serious findings" in the WilmerHale report. LAWMAKERS SEEK ANSWERS Republicans in the U.S. Congress who have been critical of Georgieva's work at the IMF have stopped short of calling for her ousting. Instead, three Republican members of the House Financial Services national security and development subcommittee sent a letter https://barr.house.gov/_cache/files/6/a/6a963516-15ab-4cf3-9dd5-74c2b5cd70b0/8188BD9289936633A1917C30E851F3F2.final-2021-09-22---jfh-ab-ag-to-treasury-re-imf.pdf to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting she report to Congress the Treasury's review of the matter. Representatives Andy Barr, French Hill and Anthony Gonzalez asked Yellen to include information on Georgieva's interactions with Chinese IMF officials in shareholding review discussions and during the decision making process for August's $650 billion allocation https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-finance-imf-reserves/imf-650-billion-reserves-distribution-clears-last-hurdle-in-unprecedented-move-idUSKBN2F404Q of IMF monetary reserves known as Special Drawing Rights to all IMF member countries. China received about $42 billion worth of new SDRs. "China feels entitled to a greater say in how these international organizations operate; its lack of commitment to multilateral values demonstrates why it must not be allowed to," the lawmakers wrote. They also are seeking from Yellen to ensure "strict and transparent data integrity" in IMF and World Bank reports. The meetings were held on the sidelines of the ongoing 76th session of the UN General Assembly Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry affirmed on Wednesday the need to support efforts to achieve the stability of Libya and its national institutions. The minister made the comments in a meeting on Libya within the framework of the Berlin Process with the participation of a number of neighbouring countries, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. Shoukry affirmed the need to respond to the Libyan peoples legitimate aspirations for a prosperous and sovereign Libya, the statement added. A number of top officials attended the meeting, including head of the Libyan Presidential Council Mohamed Al-Menfi, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Italys Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio. The meeting was held during the third day of Shoukrys visit to New York. Durban Declaration During the day, Shoukry gave a speech during the high-level meeting celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action adopted in 2001 to fight racism. During his speech, Shoukry said the manifestations [of intolerance] are still showing their ugly face to us, taking many forms, despite the positive steps achieved to face racial discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance. These manifestations are represented in discrimination and hatred on the basis of religion, race, colour and others, Shoukry said during his speech. The observer of the escalating trend taken by the phenomenon of racism in recent years notes that [racism] targets people of African origin, Arabs, Muslims, immigrants and asylum seekers in the countries receiving them, Shoukry added. Shoukry also warned of the continuation of some wrong policies and elements of political discourse to form stereotypes about people of certain ethnicities or followers of certain religions and link them with some criminal behaviour. The Egyptian foreign minister said such discourse sometimes comes under the pretext of protecting freedom of opinion, thought and expression, in a way that contradicts the values of democracy, equality and respect for the other. He warned that this discourse also violates the peremptory rules of the international law regarding the criminalisation of racism. Shoukry highlighted the urgent need to take decisive steps to criminalise racism in all its forms as well as to enact effective measures to ensure accountability in this regard. He also called for spreading societal awareness of the dangers of this phenomenon, and strengthening national institutions tasked with combating it. Meeting top diplomats During the day, Shoukry held separate meetings with each of his counterparts from France, Ireland and Vietnam, the Egyptian foreign ministry said. Meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Bui Thanh Son, Shoukry discussed ways to enhance bilateral cooperation between the two countries in various fields. They also coordinated efforts between the two countries in multilateral forums. Shoukry started his third day in New York on the sidelines of the UNGA with a meeting with Simon Coveney, Irelands foreign and defence minister, an Egyptian foreign ministry statement read. The top ministers discussed means to boost bilateral relations and coordinate on regional and international issues in light of Irelands current presidency of the UN Security Council. Later in the day, in a meeting with Frances Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Shoukry discussed boosting the strategic relations between Egypt and France, a separate statement by the Egyptian ministry read. The meeting aimed to foster coordination on regional and international issues of great importance for the two sides, the statement added. Shoukry participated on Tuesday in the opening of the 76th session of the UNGA high-level segment. The top diplomat held separate meetings with his counterparts from Estonia, Tunisia, Rwanda, India, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ukraine, Pakistan, as well as Josep Borrell the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy. During his visit to the US, Shoukry is set to take part in several events to express Egypt's vision and stances towards the current issues in the region as well as means of supporting the pillars of peace and security at the international and regional levels. The foreign minister will also discuss mechanisms of reinforcing multilateral action in regard to the issues on the agenda of the UNGAs high-level segment. Shoukry is also expected to meet with senior UN officials and other leaderships of international and regional organisations. The UNGAs 76th session aims to build resilience through hope to recover from COVID-19, rebuild sustainably, respond to the needs of the planet, respect the rights of people, and revitalise the United Nations. Search Keywords: Short link: On Wednesday, Egypt received 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine provided by the German government Egypt registered 27 fatalities on Wednesday, the highest single-day rise of coronavirus deaths since early 28 June when 33 fatalities reported. The countrys total number of deaths from the virus became 17,043, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health. Egypts daily-detected infections are on the rise since the beginning of August. On Wednesday, the health ministry reported 692 new coronavirus, the highest daily rise in more than 100 days. This raises Egypts total infection tally to 298,988 since the outbreak began in early 2020. As many as 507 patients have been discharged after recovering from the virus, the ministry said, raising the total number of recoveries to 251,902. Vaccine shipments continue to arrive Egypt received 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday night, provided by the German government via COVAX agreement in cooperation with GAVI vaccine alliance, the health ministry said in a separate statement. Wednesdays shipment brought the total amount Egypt has received from the German government to 2,350 million doses after receiving 850,560 shots earlier on Monday, Assistant Minister of Health Mohamed Hassani said. Hassani, who accompanied German Ambassador to Cairo Frank Hartmann while receiving the shipment at Cairo International Airport, stressed the importance of solidarity between the Egyptian state and German government in order to address the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, a shipment arrived in two batches consisting of 546,400 doses of AstraZeneca donated by France via COVAX last weekend. In a Cabinet meeting earlier today, Minister of Health Hala Zayed said Egypt has possessed 33,678 million coronavirus vaccine doses since the beginning of the inoculation campaign launched earlier this year. The doses are an amalgam of the Astrazeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, Sputnik, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, Zayed said. Egypt will receive its first shipment of Pfizer vaccine containing 612,000 jabs on Friday, as part of a total of 1.6 million doses, the health ministry spokesman said in recent statements. Egypts total storage capacity has reached 4.366 million after purchasing and locally distributing 600 refrigerators dedicated to Pfizer vaccine which needs special refrigerators to store vials at 2C to 8C. More than 13 million citizens have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Egypt so far, according to health officials. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly asserted on Thursday that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is especially supportive of the strategy to localise the automotive industry. This came during Madboulys meeting with a delegation of members from the Africa Association of Automotive Manufacturers (AAAM) in the presence of Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, Head of the General Authority for the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) Yehia Zaki, and Deputy Finance Minister Ahmed Kajouk. The PM asserted that the government has done a lot to back the industry, referring to the presidential initiative to convert vehicles to run on natural gas. He assured that the steps taken to support the automotive industry fall within the framework of the governments plan to make Egypt a promising regional centre for export to African and international markets. Meanwhile, Zaki reviewed the investment incentives in the SCZone that makes it an important investment destination, asserting that the zone is ready to receive major investments of international companies in the field of manufacturing cars. The AAAM delegation asserted that Egypt has all the potentials to make it a promising centre for the automotive industry, adding that Egypt is the best choice in the coming period. The delegation also reviewed the AAAM plan and vision to launch major investments in the field of car manufacturing in the East Port Said Zone. Zayed thanked Germany at the press conference for donating 2.3 million AstraZeneca doses to Egypt Egypt is prepared to meet African countries' demand for coronavirus vaccines in about 45 days with the locally produced VACSERA-Sinovac, Egypts health ministry said on Thursday. Health Minister Hala Zayed said Egypt currently produces two million doses of the WHO-approved VACSERA-Sinovac per week, adding that by the end of December Egypt will have manufactured 80 million doses. A new production line in the VACSERA factory in Dokki will be inaugurated in five weeks, Zayed said, adding that it will raise the total production capacity to one million doses per day. The Sinovac vaccine has been approved by 12 European countries so far, Zayed noted. Zayeds remarks came during a joint press conference on Thursday with the German Ambassador to Cairo Frank Hartmann, where means of bilateral cooperation to provide coronavirus vaccines were discussed. Zayed thanked Germany at the press conference for donating 2.3 million AstraZeneca doses to Egypt as a gift from the German government to the Egyptian people. Egypt-Germany medical cooperation The AstraZeneca doses provided by Germany via COVAX arrived at the Cairo International Airport in two shipments: 1.5 million doses on Wednesday, and 850,560 doses on Monday. On behalf of the Egyptian government, I thank the ambassador and the German government for the vaccines, Zayed said. Hartmann noted that Berlin seeks to provide vaccines for all countries in need, especially Egypt which has strong relations with Germany in various fields. There is close and forked cooperation in various medical fields, including in medical engineering and the supply of hospital equipment, Hartmann said. We are always ready to cooperate with the Egyptian side, the German ambassador stated. Zayed will visit Germany next week to discuss boosting cooperation with leading companies in the production of Covid-19 vaccines and the medical field in general, he added. Hartmann said Egypts vaccination campaign is very ambitious, praising the governments goal of vaccinating 50% of the population by the end of 2021. The fourth wave in Egypt Zayed said the peak of the fourth wave of the coronavirus will be felt in three or four weeks. It is possible to pass the fourth wave with the least number of infections if we intensify the vaccination campaign and inoculate half a million citizens daily, Zayed said at the press conference on Thursday. The fatality rate of the fourth wave is less than the previous waves, she noted, attributing the decline to the fact that more people are being vaccinated. On Wednesday, Egypt registered 27 fatalities, which is the highest single-day toll of coronavirus deaths since 28 June, when 33 fatalities were reported. In May, during the peak of the third wave, Egypt was reporting more than 60 deaths per day. As many as 3.4 million people working in the Ministry of Education have been vaccinated with the Covid-19 vaccine, said the minister, adding that 1.6 people working in the government were vaccinated as well. Zayed revealed that there is a plan to vaccinate all the high school and preparatory school students in the upcoming period after the inauguration of the second production line of VACSERA. According to the latest figures announced by Egyptian health officials last week, out of the 102-million population more than 13 million people have been vaccinated in Egypt. In a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Zayed said Egypt has recieved 33,678 million coronavirus vaccine doses since the beginning of the inoculation campaign launched earlier this year. The doses are an amalgam of the Astrazeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, Sputnik, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, Zayed said. With the latest German shipment received later on Wednesday, Egypt has obtained around 35 million doses. The country will receive its first shipment of Pfizer vaccine containing 612,000 jabs on Friday, as part of a total of 1.6 million doses, the health ministry spokesman in recent statements. Egypt, whose daily-detected infections are on the rise since the beginning of August, has recorded a total of 298,988 infections, including 17,043 deaths and 251,902 recoveries. Search Keywords: Short link: The new e-system will be rolled out at full-scale by March 2022 Egypt announced on Thursday the pilot launch of the new e-receipt system for consumers at points of sale, a step toward rejuvenating and automating the county's tax and customs systems, which is part of a broader scheme of digital transformation. Under the new system, Egypt Tax Authority (ETA) will be able to follow up on all business to consumer (B2C) dealings via an electronic central programme, a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Finance said. The statement did not provide further details on how many sale points have so far registered in the e-receipt system. However, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said the new e-system will be ready for full-scale adoption within six-and-a-half months. The timeline of modernising and automating the tax and customs systems will be condensed in order to be ready by March 2022 to further strengthen the governance of the country's financial system, the minister added. The step aims to localise modern technologies to help the business community, stimulate investment, reduce the size of the informal economy, ease procedures for taxpayers, curb tax evasion to maximize the public revenues to enhance the country's spending on improving peoples living standards and improve the level of services, Maait added. The new step, Maait noted, integrates with the recently launched e-invoice system, to which 2,500 companies have registered so far. Egypt launched the first stage of the e-invoice system on 15 November 2020, while the second was launched on 15 February 2021. After the implementation of the e-invoice system, more than 2,800 tax evasion cases have been detected, with tax gaps of over EGP 5.3 billion collected, according to Maait. Search Keywords: Short link: 'We condemn any external interference that seeks to sow disinformation and undermine the will of Sudan's people,' he said in a statement, without elaborating The United States on Tuesday condemned the coup attempt in Sudan and warned against "external interference," as the nation transitions to democracy. "Anti-democratic actions such as those of September 21 in Khartoum undermine the call of the Sudanese people for freedom and justice and place international support for Sudan, including the bilateral relationship with the United States, at risk," State Department spokesman Ned Price said. "We condemn any external interference that seeks to sow disinformation and undermine the will of Sudan's people," he said in a statement, without elaborating. Search Keywords: Short link: Israeli soldiers rounded up a Palestinian after ransacking his family house in Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah city Israeli army on Wednesday detained at least six Palestinians from various parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, quoting local and security sources. Israeli soldiers rounded up a Palestinian after ransacking his family house in Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah city. In East Jerusalem, dozens of Israeli soldiers hiding in a minibus stormed Shuafat refugee camp and detained four others. Meanwhile, the sources confirmed a similar raid in Jericho city, resulting in the detention of another. Israeli forces frequently raid Palestinian houses almost on a daily basis across the West Bank on the pretext of searching for "wanted" Palestinians, triggering clashes with residents. Search Keywords: Short link: Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Al-Mangoushs statement came in a virtual roundtable organised by the United Nations Development Programme that was focused on the 'pursuit of sustainable peace' in Libya Libyas Minister of Foreign Affairs Najla Al-Mangoush announced on Thursday that the 5+5 Joint Military Commission will soon set forth a plan for the withdrawal of all foreign troops and mercenaries from the country. Al-Mangoushs statement came in a virtual roundtable organised by the United Nations Development Programme that was focused on the pursuit of sustainable peace in Libya. The Libyan top diplomat also announced that a conference will be held on the ministerial level on 21 October regarding Libyas stability, adding that it will discuss unifying the military and integrating or dismantling any armed militias left in the North African country. The minister stressed that Libyas stability requires the support and backing of the international community. Search Keywords: Short link: The council members affirmed their readiness to support Sudan during the transitional period, and reaffirmed their strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Sudan The United Nations Security Council has condemned in the strongest terms Tuesday's attempt to disrupt Sudan's transitional period by force, according to media reports. In a statement, the members of the Security Council reiterated their full support to Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his endeavors to see Sudan passing successfully through the transitional period, while achieving the hopes and aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive, peaceful, stable, democratic and prosperous future. The council members urged all players to engage constructively with the national initiative known as "The National Crisis and Issues of the Transition -- The Way Forward," and further encouraged Sudan's civilian and military actors to remain committed and continue working in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration to achieve the goal of Sudan's inclusive transition as outlined in the Constitutional Document and the Juba Peace Agreement, said the statement. The council members expressed their solidarity with the people of Sudan and affirmed their readiness to support Sudan during the transitional period, and reaffirmed their strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Sudan, it said. Also, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attempted coup on Tuesday. "Any effort to undermine Sudan's political transition will jeopardize the hard-earned progress made on the political and economic fronts. The secretary-general called on all parties to remain committed to the transition and the realization of the aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive, peaceful, stable, and democratic future," Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres said in a statement. Search Keywords: Short link: Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers The doubts and uncertainties suggested yet again that the matter of whether to dispense extra doses to shore up Americans' protection against the coronavirus is more complicated scientifically than the Biden administration may have realized when it outlined plans a month ago for an across-the-board rollout of boosters. Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers. But even then, some of the experts said that the data on whether boosters are actually needed, precisely who should get them and when was not clear-cut. ``What would be the downside'' of simply waiting a month in hopes of more information? asked Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University. The two-day meeting had been scheduled to resume on Thursday, but it was not immediately clear whether that would happen. The meeting came days after a different advisory group _ this one serving the Food and Drug Administration _ overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus. While the COVID-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, immunity against milder infection seems to be dropping months after vaccination. ``I want to highlight that in September of 2021 in the United States, deaths from COVID-19 are largely vaccine-preventable with the primary series of any of the three vaccines available,'' said CDC advisor panel member Dr. Matthew Daley, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado. And the public must understand that no matter how good a COVID-19 vaccine, when it comes to milder infections, ``it is unlikely that we will prevent everything,'' said Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University. Several panelists said another challenge is the public confusion that could result if they recommend a booster only for certain recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, leaving people vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots wondering what to do. Booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine were the question before the panel. Moderna more recently applied for authorization of a third dose, and a major U.S. study on whether mixing-and-matching booster doses is safe and effective isn't finished Many experts are torn about the need for boosters because they see the COVID-19 vaccines working as expected. It is normal for virus-blocking antibodies to be highest right after vaccination and then wane over the following months. ``We don't care if antibodies wane. You care what is the minimum`` needed for protection, Long said. No one yet knows the antibody level threshold below which someone's risk for infection suddenly jumps. Even then, the body has backup defenses. Antibody production and even those backup defenses don't form as robustly in older people. But it's impossible to pinpoint the age at which that becomes a problem, CDC microbiologist Natalie Thornburg told the committee. Ultimately the committee must decide who is considered at high enough risk for an extra dose. CDC officials presented data from several U.S. studies, saying there is growing evidence of a decline in the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in preventing new COVID-19 infections in some groups, most notably people 65 and older and health care workers who got shots early in the vaccination campaign. There's also a hint that at age 75, there may be some decline in protection against hospitalization. But the CDC said there is little information on waning immunity in younger people with chronic medical problems. Some panelists also wondered about boosters for health care workers who can't come to work if they get even a mild infection. ``We don't have enough health care workers to take care of the unvaccinated. They just keep coming,'' Talbot said. Another question was how many months after the second shot the booster should be given. Scientists have talked about six months or eight months. As for booster safety, serious side effects are exceedingly rare with the first two doses. And Pfizer pointed to 2.8 million booster doses given in Israel, mostly to people 60 and older, with fewer reports of annoying side effects like pain or fever with the third dose than with the earlier shots. There was one report of a rare risk, heart inflammation, that is sometimes seen in younger men. In the U.S., more than 24,000 people who have volunteered for a CDC vaccine safety tracking system have reported getting an extra dose, and likewise have reported no red flags. Search Keywords: Short link: The announcement was welcomed by Japan but could rile Beijing which tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the world stage Taiwan has applied to join a major trans-Pacific trade deal, officials confirmed Thursday, days after China said it also wanted to become a member of the agreement. The announcement was welcomed by Japan but could rile Beijing which tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the world stage. Signed by 11 Asia-Pacific countries in 2018, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is the region's biggest free-trade pact and accounts for around 13.5 percent of the global economy. "Taiwan can't be left out in the world and has to integrate into the regional economy," cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng told reporters. Tokyo responded favourably to the announcement. "Japan welcomes Taiwan's application to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership," Japanese foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters in New York. Negotiations for the sweeping trade deal were initially led by the United States as a way to increase its influence in the Asia-Pacific region. It was also designed to keep China, which has its own regional trade deal, locked out. But former US president Donald Trump, who disdained multilateral agreements, pulled out of the deal in 2017. The CPTPP is the successor to those negotiations and includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. Taiwan had been lobbying to join the pact for years but Thursday's application made it official. The island's announcement came less than a week after China said it had also formally applied to join. Those hoping to join, such as Britain, must have the unanimous support of all the pact's member countries. China's application comes at a time when Beijing is feuding with a host of western nations. On Thursday, Australia said China must end a freeze on contact with senior Australian politicians if it hopes to sign up. Taiwan's application will likely be opposed by Beijing, which views the self-ruled democratic island as its own territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary. China's authoritarian leaders baulk at any international relations with Taiwan. They have ramped up economic, military and diplomatic pressure on the island since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen who views Taiwan as a sovereign nation. All of the CPTPP members have official diplomatic relations with Beijing, not Taipei. But China's growing threats towards Taiwan have generated international sympathy for the island among western powers. John Deng, Taipei's lead trade negotiator, told reporters on Thursday that he expected Chinese opposition to Taiwan's inclusion. But he portrayed Taiwan as a more reliable free-trade partner. "We have the foundation of democracy and the rule of law so all our regulations are transparent and we respect private properties," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: 'The international community has to realize: What's the alternative? What are the options? This is the reality, and can they turn away from this reality?' Pakistani Foreign Minister told AP Be realistic. Show patience. Engage. And above all, don't isolate. Those are the pillars of an approach emerging in Pakistan to deal with the fledgling government that is suddenly running the country next door once again _ Afghanistan's resurgent, often-volatile Taliban. Pakistan's government is proposing that the international community develop a road map that leads to diplomatic recognition of the Taliban _ with incentives if they fulfill its requirements _ and then sit down face to face and talk it out with the militia's leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi outlined the idea Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's meeting of world leaders. ``If they live up to those expectations, they would make it easier for themselves, they will get acceptability, which is required for recognition,'' Qureshi told the AP. ``At the same time, the international community has to realize: What's the alternative? What are the options? This is the reality, and can they turn away from this reality?'' He said Pakistan ``is in sync with the international community'' in wanting to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan with no space for terrorist elements to increase their foothold, and for the Taliban to ensure ``that Afghan soil is never used again against any country.'' ``But we are saying, be more realistic in your approach,'' Qureshi said. ``Try an innovative way of engaging with them. The way that they were being dealt with has not worked.'' Expectations from the Taliban leadership could include an inclusive government and assurances for human rights, especially for women and girls, Qureshi said. In turn, he said, the Afghan government might be motivated by receiving development, economic and reconstruction aid to help recover from decades of war. He urged the United States, the International Monetary Fund and other countries that have frozen Afghan government funds to immediately release the money so it can be used ``for promoting normalcy in Afghanistan.'' And he pledged that Pakistan is ready to play a ``constructive, positive'' role in opening communications channels with the Taliban because it, too, benefits from peace and stability. This is the second time that the Taliban, who adhere to a strict version of Islam, have ruled Afghanistan. The first time, from 1996 to 2001, ended when they were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the 9/11 attacks, which were directed by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan. During that rule, Taliban leaders and police barred girls from school and prohibited women from working outside the home or leaving it without a male escort. After they were overthrown, Afghan women still faced challenges in the male-dominated society but increasingly stepped into powerful positions in government and numerous fields. But when the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan last month, the government collapsed and a new generation of the Taliban resurged, taking over almost immediately. In the weeks since, many countries have expressed disappointment that the Taliban's interim government is not inclusive as its spokesman had promised. While the new government has allowed young girls to attend school, it has not yet allowed older girls to return to secondary school, and most women to return to work despite a promise in April that women ``can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab.'' Pakistan, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has a long and sometimes conflicted relationship with its neighbor that includes attempts to prevent terrorism there and, some say, also encouraging it. The Islamabad government has a fundamental vested interest in ensuring that whatever the new Afghanistan offers, it is not a threat to Pakistan. That, Qureshi says, requires a steady and calibrated approach. ``It has to be a realistic assessment, a pragmatic view on both sides, and that will set the tone for recognition eventually,'' the Pakistani minister said. The good news, he said: The Taliban are listening, ``and they are not insensitive to what is being said by neighbors and the international community.'' How does he know they're listening? He says the interim government, drawn mostly from Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group, made some additions on Tuesday. It added representatives from the country's ethnic minorities _ Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are Shiite Muslims in the majority Sunni Muslim country. ``Yes, there are no women yet,'' Qureshi said. ``But let us let the situation evolve.'' He stressed that the Taliban must make decisions in coming days and weeks that will enhance their acceptability. ``What the international community can do, in my view, is sit together and work out a roadmap,'' Qureshi said. ``And if they fulfill those expectations, this is what the international community can do to help them stabilize their economy. This is the humanitarian assistance that can be provided. This is how they can help rebuild Afghanistan, reconstruction and so on and so forth.'' He added: ``With this roadmap ahead, I think an international engagement can be more productive.'' On Wednesday night, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after a meeting of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that all five nations _ the United States, China, Britain, Russia and France _ want ``an Afghanistan at peace, stable, where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems or discrimination.'' He also described a hoped-for ``Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that won't be a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan where we have an inclusive government representing the different sectors of the population.'' Qureshi said there are different forums where the international community can work out the best way to approach the situation. In the meantime, he asserted, things seem to be stabilizing. Less than six weeks after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, he said, Pakistan has received information that the law-and-order situation has improved, fighting has stopped and many internally displaced Afghans are going home. ``That's a positive sign,'' Qureshi said. He said Pakistan hasn't seen a new influx of Afghan refugees _ a sensitive issue for Pakistanis, who are highly motivated to prevent it. A humanitarian crisis, a foundering economy and workers who return to jobs and school but aren't getting salaries and don't have money could cause Afghans to flee across the porous border into Pakistan, which has suffered economically from such arrivals over decades of conflict. Qureshi prescribed patience and realism. After all, he says, every previous attempt to stabilize Afghanistan has failed, so don't expect new efforts to produce immediate success with the Taliban. If the United States and its allies ``could not convince them or eliminate them in two decades, how will you do it in the next two months or the next two years?'' he wondered. Asked whether he had a prediction of what Afghanistan might be like in six months, Qureshi turned the question back on his AP interviewer, replying: ``Can you guarantee me U.S. behavior over the next six months?'' Search Keywords: Short link: For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began early last year, more than two dozen world leaders appeared in person at the UN General Assembly on the opening day of their annual high-level meeting Racism, climate change and worsening divisions among nations and cultures topped the agenda Wednesday as leaders from China to Costa Rica, from Finland to Turkey to the United Nations itself outlined reasons why the world isn't working as it should - and what must be done quickly to fix it. Said one country's president: 'The future is raising its voice at us'. For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began early last year, more than two dozen world leaders appeared in person at the U.N. General Assembly on the opening day of their annual high-level meeting Tuesday. In speech after speech, the atmosphere was somber, angry and dire. Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that 'the world has entered a period of new turbulence and transformation'. Finland President Sauli Niinisto said: 'We are indeed at a critical juncture'. And Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada declared: 'The future is raising its voice at us: Less military weaponry, more investment in peace!' Speaker after speaker at Tuesday's opening of the nearly week-long meeting decried the inequalities and deep divisions that have prevented united global action to end the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed nearly 4.6 million lives and is still raging, and the failure to sufficiently tackle the climate crisis threatening the planet. COVID-19 and climate are certain to remain top issues for heads of state and government. But Wednesday's U.N. agenda will first turn the spotlight on the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the controversial U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The U.S. and Israel walked out during the meeting over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism to racism _ a provision that was eventually dropped. Twenty countries are boycotting Wednesday's commemoration, according to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which urged more countries to join them 'in continuing to fight racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism'. Following the commemoration, heads of state will start delivering their annual addresses again in the vast General Assembly hall. Speakers include King Abdullah II of Jordan, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Perhaps the harshest assessment of the current global crisis came from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who opened his state of the world address sounding an 'alarm' that 'the world must wake up'. 'Our world has never been more threatened or more divided', he said. 'We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes'. 'We are on the edge of an abyss - and moving in the wrong direction,' the secretary-general warned. Guterres pointed to 'supersized glaring inequalities' in addressing COVID-19, 'climate alarm bells ... ringing at fever pitch,' upheavals from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen and beyond thwarting peace, and 'a surge of mistrust and misinformation (that) is polarizing people and paralyzing societies'. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the pandemic was a reminder 'that the entire world are part of a big family'. 'But the solidarity test that we were put to failed us miserably,' he said. 'It is a disgrace for humanity that vaccine nationalism is still being carried on through different methods,' and underdeveloped countries and poor segments of societies have been 'literally left to their fate in the face of the pandemic'. As for the climate crisis, Erdogan said whoever did the most damage to nature, the atmosphere and water, 'and whoever has wildly exploited natural resources' should make the greatest contribution to fighting global warming. 'Unlike the past, this time no one can afford the luxury to say, 'I'm powerful so I will not pay the bill' because climate change will treat mankind quite equally,' the Turkish leader said. 'The duty for all of us is to take measures against this enormous threat, with a fair burden-sharing'. Romania's President Klaus Iohannis did find something positive from the COVID-19 crisis. 'While the pandemic affected almost all aspects of our lives,' he said, 'it also provided us with opportunities to learn, adapt and do things better'. Two of the most closely watched speeches on Tuesday were delivered by U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In an Associated Press interview on Saturday, Guterres warned that the world could plunge into a new and probably more dangerous Cold War if China and the United States don't repair their 'completely dysfunctional' relationship. 'Unfortunately, today we only have confrontation', he said. Biden said in his U.N. address that the United States was not attempting to be divisive or confrontational. 'We are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs', he said. 'The United States is ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared challenges even if we have intense disagreements in other areas'. Speaking later, Xi said disputes among countries 'need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation'. 'One country's success does not have to mean another country's failure', Xi said. 'The world is big enough to accommodate common development and progress of all countries'. By tradition, the first country to speak was Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro rebuffed criticism of his handling of the pandemic and touted recent data indicating less Amazon deforestation. He said he was seeking to counter the image of Brazil portrayed in the media, touting it as a great place for investment and praising his pandemic welfare program, which helped avoid a worse recession last year. Bolsonaro said that his government has successfully distributed first doses to the majority of adults, but doesn't support vaccine passports or forcing anyone to have a shot. He has said several times in the past week that he remains unvaccinated. He had COVID-19 last year. Brazil's health minister, Marcelo Quiroga, who was with Bolsonaro, later tested positive for the coronavirus and will remain in isolation in the United States, the government said. Quiroga got his first shot of coronavirus vaccine in January. Search Keywords: Short link: US special envoy Daniel Foote said, `Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own' The Biden administration's special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest of ``inhumane`` large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants to their homeland as it is wracked by civil strife and natural disaster, US officials said Thursday. Daniel Foote was appointed to the position only in July, following the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise. Even before the migrant expulsions from the small Texas border town of Del Rio, the career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti. Foote wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was stepping down immediately ``with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes.'' ``I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,'' he wrote. ``Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.'' The State Department criticized Foote for resigning at a critical juncture and pushed back against suggestions that his policy prescriptions were overlooked. ``This is a challenging moment that requires leadership,'' spokesman Ned Price said in a written statement. ``It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation.'' He added that the role of the president's advisers is to provide him with the best possible advice. ``No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas,'' Price said. Foote's sudden departure leaves a void in US policy toward Haiti _ US Ambassador Michele Sison is expected to depart soon after being nominated to serve in another State Department post _ and adds another critical voice to the administration's response to Haitians camped on the Texas border. Criticism has been fueled by images that went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. Democrats and many pro-immigration groups say efforts to expel thousands of Haitians without giving them a chance to seek asylum violates American principles. The migrant camp has shrunk considerably since surpassing more than 14,000 people on Saturday, with many of them expelled and many others released in the US with notices to report to immigration authorities. The expulsion flights to Haiti began Sunday and there were 10 by the end of Tuesday, according to Haitian officials. US. officials say they are ramping up to seven flights a day, which would make it one of the swiftest, large-scale expulsions from the US in decades. At least one top official in Haiti cheered Foote's resignation while accusing the Biden administration of violating the rights of Haitian migrants. ``This is the first time we see a US diplomat who has decided to go against the will of the US government,'' Mathias Pierre, Haiti's election minister, told The Associated Press. ``We salute that.'' Pierre also criticized Haiti's elite, saying they have turned a blind eye because migration fuels the economy. He noted that 35% of Haiti's gross domestic product is remittances, with the diaspora, much of it in the US, sending roughly $3.8 billion a year. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has barely discussed the expulsions in public, saying only that his government is worried about conditions that migrants face on the US border and that it will help those sent back to Haiti. Pierre was far more critical of the US. ``While they're receiving (thousands) of Afghan people, they're rejecting Haitians while Haiti is in the middle of a crisis: a crisis with the earthquake, a crisis with the assassination of the president and a poverty crisis that is clearly one of the major issues why people are leaving,'' Pierre said. Foote served previously in Haiti as deputy chief of mission and is a former ambassador to Zambia. In his new position, he worked with the US ambassador to support Haiti after the president's assassination. For weeks, he had been quietly pushing in Washington a plan to boost US security assistance to Haiti to pave the way for new presidential elections. But Haiti watchers said he became increasingly disappointed with the pace of decision-making in the administration. ``When someone who is tasked with Haiti policy at the highest level resigns because 'recommendations are ignored and dismissed' it's not only troubling, but shows you this administration does not tolerate anyone who won't go along with their distorted view of the facts,'' said Damian Merlo, a Republican strategist who has worked for years on Haiti policy and is now a registered lobbyist for the country's government. ``Dan Foote is a world class diplomat who refuses to be told what do. I wish more foreign service officers had his courage to stand up and call out their bosses.'' Search Keywords: Short link: The case was lodged at the International Court of Justice a week after Armenia filed suit against Azerbaijan at the same Hague-based world court, accusing Baku of a `state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred' Azerbaijan on Thursday filed a case at the United Nations' top court accusing neighboring Armenia of a ``policy of ethnic cleansing'' targeting Azerbaijanis. The case was lodged at the International Court of Justice a week after Armenia filed suit against Azerbaijan at the same Hague-based world court, accusing Baku of a ``state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred.`` Both cases focus on the two countries' decades long territorial dispute that erupted into armed conflict again last year, leaving hundreds dead. Referring to that eruption of hostilities, Azerbaijan alleged in its written filing that ``Armenia once again targeted Azerbaijanis for brutal treatment motivated by ethnic hatred,'' the court said in a statement. ``Armenia's policies and conduct of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and fomenting of hatred against Azerbaijanis systematically infringe the rights and freedoms of Azerbaijanis, as well as Azerbaijan's own rights,`` the case alleges. It accuses Armenia of breaching an international convention aimed at eradicating discrimination. Armenia last week cited the same convention in bringing its case to the court, which handles disputes between nations. Both countries have signed the convention. The legal dispute is the latest battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government for more than a quarter of a century. The predominantly Armenian-populated region had an autonomous status within Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. Tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris boiled over as the Soviet Union collapsed. Conflict broke out in 1988 when the region tried to join Armenia, and escalated into war after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, leaving an estimated 30,000 dead and displacing about 1 million. Azerbaijan asked the court to urgently order so-called ``provisional measures'' aimed at compelling Armenia to ``protect Azerbaijanis from the irreparable harm caused by Armenia's ongoing conduct.'' Armenia made a similar request last week aimed at protecting its interests while the case is heard. Cases at the court often take years, but hearings on the two requests for provisional measures will likely be scheduled in coming weeks. Search Keywords: Short link: Plug and Play is one of the world s leaders in managing innovation hubs Egypts Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and the company Plug and Play have inked an agreement to establish a strategic partnership boosting Egypts entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem, ITIDA announced on Thursday. The agreement was signed by ITIDA CEO Amr Mahfouz and Plug and Play CEO and Founder Saeed Amidi, in the presence of Minister of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) Amr Talaa. The three-year agreement comprises launching an innovation platform for startups in Cairo focusing on digital transformation, and a program for accelerating 60 growth-stage startups and incubating 60 early-stage startups. The agreement eyes to attract $20 million of investments in the beneficiary technology startups while creating 500 job opportunities. It also aims to create a vibrant startup community at the Creativa Innovation Hub in Sultan Hussein Kamel Palace in Cairo and cement Egypt as the premier centre for innovation-driven entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Were keen to promote entrepreneurship and foster tech- and innovation-driven projects. MCIT endeavours to create an enabling environment for the growth of startups as part of the plan of building Digital Egypt and in light of Egypt's successes and progress in this field at the regional and global levels, said Talaat. Talaat added that the agreement would reinforce his ministrys efforts in advancing entrepreneurship through partnering with one of the major companies specializing in startup incubation and acceleration. In addition, he said that MCIT is establishing Creativa Innovation Hubs nationwide to promote entrepreneurship and empower university students and entrepreneurs through developing their innovation skills and supporting their information and communication technology (ICT) projects. ITIDAs CEO emphasized that Plug and Play is one of the world's leaders in managing innovation hubs, adding that the company's presence in Egypt will add value to the startup ecosystem, thus positively reflecting on regional and international reports. Mahfouz clarified that Egypts global position is expected to advance this year thanks to the boom in the entrepreneurship scene and the surge of investments in Egyptian startups, in addition to the huge investment by the government in spreading digital innovation hubs across the country and in building digital and freelancing skills and fostering tech innovation and helping startups to grow. Plug and Play works as a bridge between Silicon Valley and 35+ locations around the world and is one of the top innovation-enabling platforms worldwide. On his side, Sobhan Khani, Plug and Plays vice president, said that Egypt's economy is expected be one of the top 10 economies in the world by 2030, adding that the talent and entrepreneur culture in Egypt makes this an incredible opportunity for them to establish this office with help of ITIDA. He added that they are extremely excited about this launch. Establishing a Creativa Innovation Hub at Sultan Hussein Kamel Palace is part of a national plan Egypt adopted to turn some cultural heritage buildings into youth innovation hubs. The project is also part of MCIT strategy to establish digital innovation hubs across Egypt to promote technology innovation and entrepreneurship. The palace is being transformed into an innovation hub while preserving its architectural character and cultural value. The Hub will include laboratories of tech giants, emerging technologies facilities, startup incubators, training halls, meeting rooms, and co-working spaces. Based in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play is one of the world's most prominent investors in early-stage startups; it has invested in almost 1,000 startups. The company is also one of the top innovation-enabling platforms worldwide, with around 40 offices in 19 countries. Plug and Play's business model involves fostering and boosting innovation through establishing sustainable partnerships between big businesses and startups. Search Keywords: Short link: Song elaborated that the platforms continue to provide Egyptian customers and partners with innovative ICT solutions that meet local needs. Huawei Technologies has invested about $10 million over the past five years to set up three innovation centres in Cairo, according to Vice President of Global Communications at Huawei Technologies Karl Song. Song's comments came in response to a question by Ahram Online on the solutions Huawei Technologies has provided Egypt with to help the country deal with the challenges imposed by the pandemic. This came during a roundtable Huawei Technologies held on Thursday on the sidelines of Huawei Connect 2021 annual event that kicked off on Thursday. The three innovation centres include two industry solution innovation centres at Huawei's Smart Village headquarters in Cairo, which is a carrier-oriented technology innovation and experience centre, and a joint technology innovation centre for various industries. Song elaborated that the platforms continue to provide Egyptian customers and partners with innovative ICT solutions that meet local needs. Huawei has cooperated extensively with more than 120 local partners in Egypt, indirectly providing more than 20,000 jobs in Egypt society, he added. He noted that Huawei Technologies has been in Egypt for more than 20 years, thanks to customers' long-term trust. Over the past 20 years, we have been widely recognized by customers and partners through long-term cooperation and development together with shared happiness and hardship. Egypt is a country with great potential when it comes to a large population, and with great geographic advantage, stable and strong economy in the Middle East and Africa and Huawei is keen to enable Egypt to be an ICT hub in the region, Song pointed out. He added that Huawei focuses on two main pillars in Egypt: developing Egyptian capabilities and skills to lead Egypt towards achieving digital transformation in accordance with Egypt's Vision 2030, and continuing to provide the latest technologies and solutions to its customers and partners. "Huawei is not only working to provide our partners and Egyptian governments with the latest solutions and technologies and providing employment opportunities, but it is also working to develop the capabilities of young Egyptian people in the field of information and communication technology through two axes. The first is related to internal employees in Huawei and at the level of success partners through training centres in Egypt, and the second is to develop youth capabilities in universities through our pioneering program ICT Talent Bank, a program launched by Huawei in 2019 in cooperation with three ministries: Ministry of Communications, Information Technology, Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of Manpower, he explained. He also added that despite the pandemic, Huawei's training for Egyptian youth has never stopped, pointing out that in 2020 Huawei cooperated with the Egypts government and universities to bring talent training online and trained more than 7,500 young Egyptians through more than 430 online courses. Answering Ahram Onlines question on how digital transformation is aiding the Middle East's efforts, including Egypts, to recover from the pandemic, Song illustrated that 2020 has emphasized just how important a solid ICT foundation can be on a national level. Following accelerated digitalization initiatives in 2020, technology has played a significant role in enabling the continuity of business and public services. Our work in the ICT field has also been paramount to combatting the disease itself, especially through innovations in scientific R&D, data analytics, e-healthcare, and more, according to Song. We continued to pursue open partnerships to jointly create greater value for our customers and society at large. In particular, we have kept innovating to help organizations fight the pandemic, and to support both economic recovery and social progress. A foundation of connectivity enabled many countries to cope with a surge in data traffic as a result of work, education, shopping, and even health services moving online, Song expounded. He added that emerging digital technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) have also provided new opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve operational efficiency, promote innovation, expand their market and financing channels, and facilitate remote operations during the epidemic. For example, we provided the Ministry of Health and Prevention in UAE with an autonomous AI-driven vehicle to distribute personal protective equipment to residents and workers in a step that aims at containing the spread of the corona virus. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Huawei acted immediately to support Egypt during such critical time. The company provided video conferencing system to facilitate the communication between the Egyptian Ministry of Health and the quarantine hospitals. In addition, Huaweis advanced solutions (data centres, intelligent connectivity solutions) implemented at schools has contributed to the continuity of learning process. We also supported the expansion of connectivity for home broadband to ensure the online learning and the working from home, he said. Concerning Huawei Technologies future plans in Egypt, Song unveiled that they include opening 100 academies in Egypt within five years, clarifying that that 72 academies have been established, so far, through the cooperation of universities and government, expanding the recruitment platform by cooperating with 100 recruitment companies, and keeping contributing with the Egypts government and providing trainings for different levels; students, graduates and engineers in order to make Egypt a centre of excellence. Search Keywords: Short link: In an effort to urge citizens to get vaccinated and help them register for the vaccine, a 10-day campaign was recently launched by the Ministry of Health. The mobile campaign, which tours the various governorates on buses, is an effort to expand the number of vaccinated people. So far more than 17,300 citizens have registered during the campaign to get the vaccine, said Khaled Megahed, the spokesman for the Ministry of Health. According to the latest statistics issued by the Ministry of Health, 8.2 per cent of the population have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and 4.2 per cent are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, Egypt continues to receive more vaccine doses. On 19 September, 546,400 doses of AstraZeneca were donated by the French government via COVAX. The shipment will be distributed to 781 vaccination centres across the country. In addition, 1,600,000 doses of Pfizer will arrive in the coming few days. Moreover, according to Minister of Health Hala Zayed, Egypt has already manufactured five million doses of Sinovac, 2.5 million of which will be released this week. Starting November, the new VACSERA plant will be producing 300,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine daily, confirmed Zayed. Zayed noted that Egypts total doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had reached 17 million, using AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Sputnik, and Pfizer. In addition, five million doses of Sinopharm will be arriving by the end of this month. According to Megahed, UNICEF via COVAX has sent to Egypt 20 refrigerators, part of a total of 63 refrigerators, to store Pfizer which needs to be stored at -15 to -25C. The government is also ensuring that various sectors are vaccinated. University faculty and students are among those targeted. Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said there were 290 vaccination centres in 60 universities. He said around 300,000 dozes were provided to students, faculty members, their assistants and workers. Similarly, vaccination is at full throttle in the tourism sector. Adel Al-Masri, head of the Chamber of Tourist Establishments, said that 60 per cent of restaurants and tourist shops workers in several governorates have been vaccinated. One hundred per cent of all workers in Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh have already been vaccinated, Al-Masri said. He stressed the importance of vaccinating all tourism workers against Covid-19, while touristic facilities and restaurants continue with their commitment to apply all precautionary measures, as this will contribute to increasing the turnout of customers. A statement issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) encouraged the countries who have the vaccines to increase their support to other countries in an act of solidarity since no one is safe until everyone is safe. Our global target as WHO is to support every country to vaccinate at least 40 per cent of its population by the end of this year, and 70 per cent of the worlds population by the middle of next year, the statement said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: In the latest flurry of meetings in the evolving relationship between Egypt and Libya talks have covered a wide-range of political, security and economic issues. On 14 September, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi met with Speaker of the Libyan House of Representatives Aguila Saleh and the General Commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Khalifa Haftar. According to a statement released by the Egyptian presidency, the discussions focused on the latest political and security developments in Libya. The Libyan political roadmap is at a crucial juncture, with the legislative and presidential elections scheduled for 24 December fast approaching. And now that Haftar has announced his intention to run for president, the elections have assumed significant military and security related dimensions. If Haftar does run, he will have to resign his military posts, and do so quickly given that recent legislation allows military officials to field themselves in the presidential polls on condition they resign three months ahead of the vote. Cairo is naturally concerned to know how Haftars border security functions will be fulfilled in his absence. Meanwhile, the entire Libyan government visited Cairo last week. Prime Minister Abdel-Hamid Dabeiba arrived with 30 cabinet members for the second round of meetings of the Egyptian-Libyan Supreme Joint Committee. During the first meeting in April, the Egyptian prime minister headed Egypts delegation to Tripoli where a raft of bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding were signed. They included executive agreements on major infrastructure projects such as the third Libyan ring road which will be built by a group of Egyptian contractors. Egypt will make a great contribution to Libyan reconstruction, said Libyan Minister of State for the Economy Salama Al-Ghawil. Egypt has the ability to get things done, and a majority of Libyans believes Cairo has no ambitions in Libya, unlike many other parties which are thirsting to get their hands on Libyas wealth. Al-Ghawil estimated that Egypt is likely to have a $70 billion share in Libyas reconstruction programme. According to Egyptian sources, Egyptian firms have already begun work on some projects after having received the go-ahead from the Egyptian government. The Egyptian and Libyan authorities, they say, see eye-to-eye on the urgency of completing essential infrastructure projects as quickly as possible. The reconstruction drive dovetails neatly with Cairos vision for a comprehensive solution to the Libyan crisis. That solution consists of five pillars: the preservation of Libyan national unity and integrity; the belief that a political solution is the only viable path out of the crisis; the rehabilitation of Libyan national sovereignty and an end to foreign intervention in Libyan affairs, including the removal of all forms of foreign military presence and the dismantling of militias dependent on foreign support; the equitable distribution of national wealth among all sectors of the Libyan population, and an end to the bifurcation of government institutions. Cairo wants Libya to be firmly on the path to stability and recovery after a decade of conflict and anarchy. While the forthcoming elections are a crucial step towards this end, they are only one part of a multidimensional process. Elections were, after all, held in Libya in 2012, only to serve as a prelude to polarisation and schism, and subsequent interim phase agreements, which in the end were not that different in substance to the current agreement, invariable broke down in their final phases. Cairo has two basic concerns. The first is to prevent a collapse of the political process, not just before, but also after the elections. It is crucial for all parties to accept the results of the polls if Libya is to avert a repetition of the 2012 scenario. The second concern relates to national security concerns and the impact on continued instability or, worse, military re-escalation in Libya. Last weeks developments in Egyptian-Libyan relations cannot be divorced from the second round of exploratory talks between Egypt and Turkey earlier this month. Libya has been a central concern of both rounds, with Cairo insisting Ankara end its military presence in Libya and remove its mercenaries before bilateral relations are normalised. There is considerable international support for Egypts position, which is consistent with the outputs of the Berlin Conference on Libya. There is little doubt that Turkey has been involved in attempts to undermine the Libyan political process. According to a Libyan political figure who took part in the Libyan consultative dialogue sponsored by the Swiss-based Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) Centre last week, a group of Libyans scheduled to take part in the dialogue flew first to Ankara. While there they agreed to form a 26 member committee consisting of members of the House of Representatives (HoR) and the Higher Council of State (HCS) in order to rewrite the recently passed election law. Although the final statement of the consultative meeting stressed the need for the HoR and HCS to reach a consensus on the legislation, the participants rejected the proposals that had been brought from Turkey. Not that this was the end of Turkish machinations. After the Geneva dialogue, the HCS persisted in its plan to produce an alternative to the election law recently passed by the HoR. The text, which has been submitted to the Supreme Electoral Commission, includes the stipulation that military figures who want to run for political office must resign two years ahead of the elections. The obvious purpose of this text is to exclude Haftar from running. Another provision, designed with Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi in mind, bans individuals who have had judicial sentences handed down against them or are wanted on criminal charges from running for high office. A source close to Gaddafis son described the HCS action as an attempt to politicise the law. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: In a recorded statement to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said on Tuesday that Egypt is still committed to work to reach, in the nearest time possible a fair, balanced, and legally binding agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Al-Sisi told the UNGA that Egypt fully recognises the development ambitions of neighbouring African countries and that at the same time it calls on African countries to recognise its legitimate worry over water shortage, given the fact that Egypt is already suffering water poverty and that the River Nile is its main source for water. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri arrived in New York on Sunday to head the Egyptian delegation to the UNGA which opened on Tuesday evening, as Al-Ahram Weekly was going to press. Maintaining Egypts quota of Nile water will be the subject of an intensive diplomatic campaign, with the Egyptian delegation hoping to win international support for Cairos position. For three years Cairo and Khartoum have been pushing for a legally binding deal with Ethiopia covering the filling and operation of the GERD, so far to no avail. Last week, the Foreign Ministry welcomed the presidential statement released by the UN Security Council on Wednesday calling for a mutually accepted and legally binding deal. The statement, which also referred to the need for the parties to reach this agreement within a reasonable time frame, came three months after Egypt and Sudan started a joint push to persuade the Security Council to intervene to encourage Ethiopia to commit to reaching an agreement. Rather than a legally binding deal though, Ethiopia continues to insist it will only commit to a set of guidelines. Shoukri will meet his Sudanese counterpart Mariam Sadek Al-Mahdi in New York. In press statements over the weekend Al-Mahdi said that Sudan and Egypt are in close consultation over the crucial GERD file. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the current chair of the African Union which serves as the umbrella organisation for negotiations over GERD, last week presented Cairo, Khartoum, and Addis Ababa with a set of ideas that Kinshasa hopes will end the deadlock. Two informed sources, one Egyptian, the other Sudanese, say the DRC paper falls short of specifying the legally binding nature of any agreement. What it does do, they agree, is offer alternative language on some details concerning mitigation and dispute settlement. The sources added that while both Cairo and Khartoum are willing to work on the paper in an attempt to agree a possible draft for a legally binding deal, neither capital is optimistic that Ethiopia will be forthcoming. While the [UNSC] presidential statement does not directly pressure Ethiopia to work towards an agreement it does state that any agreement on the filling and operation of the dam should be legally binding which is a good start, said a concerned Egyptian official. He added that while in New York Shoukri will push for an understanding that negotiations towards an agreement cannot be open-ended, and that a deal should be concluded by spring 2022, before the third filling of the dams reservoir. In 2011, Ethiopia started building GERD, with a planned capacity of over 74bcm on the Blue Nile, in 2011. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the Blue Nile provides Egypt with most of its water. In 2015, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia signed a Declaration of Principles that stipulated the three countries must come to an agreement on the filling and operation of the dam. Yet in July 2019, and again in July 2020, Ethiopia unilaterally executed two fillings of the reservoir in the absence of an agreement. The first filling reached close to 5bcm, as did the second which fell far short of the 13bcm Addis Ababa had planned. Officials in Cairo insist Egypt cannot decide its water policy based on the situation in Ethiopia, especially given what they qualify as a total failure on the side of the Ethiopians to embrace transparency. Similar concerns were voiced in Khartoum. Last week Yasser Abbas, Sudans minister of water resources, sent a letter to his Ethiopian counterpart Selshi Bekele complaining of Addis Ababas failure to furnish Khartoum with accurate information about the second filling. We have given Ethiopia the benefit of the doubt over and over again but unfortunately our accommodation has been misunderstood. Now we have to tell the world that it needs to get Ethiopia to act in good faith on this crucial file, said the Sudanese source. He added that the messages the Egyptian and Sudanese delegations to New York will be pushing are almost identical. They make two basic demands: that the agreement be legally binding, and a target date be set for any deal to be concluded. Egyptian officials say Cairo wants a reasonable compromise to work towards. If that compromise is not forthcoming, Shoukri will end up warning his interlocutors in New York that Egypts patience is wearing thin. Shoukri will also use his meetings around the General Assembly to lobby support for Egyptian plans to restart Palestinian-Israeli talks before the end of this year. While Egyptian officials concede there is little if any chance of securing a deal any time soon, they argue that there is an urgent need for peace talks to resume after a decade of being put on hold. In his statement before the UNGA, Al-Sisi said there is no way for the Middle East to enjoy stability without a fair solution to the Palestinian question that remains the central cause for all Arabs. He added that the end objective is a negotiated peace deal that leads to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. For now, however, Al-Sisi said that Egypt is working to consolidate a ceasefire it helped broker in the spring of this year in Gaza and to improve the living conditions of Palestinians there, especially through a reconstruction scheme that it has committed to. During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet in Sharm El-Sheikh last week, Al-Sisi pressed Bennet to commit to restarting peace talks. According to statements made by the Israeli minister of interior this week, however, Bennet has no plans to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt has managed to secure Israeli agreement on the slow launch of a Gaza reconstruction plan. A delegation of Egyptian engineers and other experts arrived in the Gaza Strip this week to finalise details on rebuilding 1,500 houses that were damaged during the war on Gaza earlier this year, and Egypt continues to negotiate with Israel on the timeline for starting major infrastructure reconstruction work. Officials in Cairo warn, however, that reconstruction is not enough to consolidate the frail situation in Gaza and on the borders between Gaza and Israel, or to keep the tense situation in the West Bank free from some unexpected explosion. They argue that a political process is needed to contain tension and give hope, and it is support for this process that Cairo is canvasing in New York. Egypt is working on this in close cooperation with Jordan, France, and Germany. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: On 7 September, former US deputy assistant secretary of defence Simone Ledeen wrote an opinion article in the Washington political magazine The Hill arguing that her country should continue to provide security assistance to Egypt. Some Democratic Party voices had been calling for the opposite, including Senator Christopher Murphy. Ledeen feared that Egypt might lose US financial support as the House of Representatives had passed a bill that suggested withholding US$150 million from it. If promoting human rights was a primary consideration, the Biden administration would not support the Taliban a designated terrorist organisation under the UN and the US treasury department and one which this past week blamed the US for the September 11 terrorist attacks, Ledeen said. Washington should not stop its financial and military support to Egypt, she said, pointing to the security challenges the latter has faced, including the Sinai insurgency, war in neighbouring Libya and the crisis over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) with Ethiopia. However, on 15 September, the Biden administration withheld $130 million of US military aid to Egypt. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Ledeen discussed a number of regional issues in an interview that took place three days before the Biden administrations decision to proceed with aid restrictions on Egypt. US deputy assistant secretary of defence until January 2021, Leeden is a principal at EVG Consulting and has designed policies towards many Middle Eastern states. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has spoken about a potential comeback by Al-Qaeda after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. How could this development affect Egypt, including the Sinai insurgency, and the wider Middle East? The US surrender in Afghanistan is the greatest recruitment event for terrorist organisations since September 11 2001. Certainly Al-Qaeda, Daesh [the Islamic State group] and other extremist groups will benefit from this catastrophe, and we should expect an increase in fundraising and membership in these groups. Statements by Al-Qaeda and others celebrating the Talibans victory indicate they feel emboldened by it. Al-Qaeda has survived, and a new generation of recruits will be fighting in a conflict that began before many of them were born. In my view, Egypt should be worried about renewed energy and support behind the Sinai-based insurgency. How can the world now avoid a new wave of global terrorism? I would say broadly and until now the US has provided leadership on this issue because of the massive attacks we sustained 20 years ago. That was a policy decision to pursue terrorism and terrorists wherever they were. But 20 years later, and given the policy decisions especially of the current administration and some of the previous ones as well, its clear that the United States has decided to change its counterterrorism strategy. I can say that the current administration does not want to provide leadership on this issue. Given the new realities that we are all living in together, I think the most helpful thing to do is to support our like-minded partners and allies who are also, to different degrees, very interested in fighting terrorism. The violent extremist ideology is a threat to people living worldwide, and many countries need assistance in order to effectively fight terrorism. Thats why continued US assistance, security cooperation, intelligence support and partnership will be so important even if we dont want to provide leadership. Amid the ongoing insurgency in Sinai and the Talibans takeover of Afghanistan, what kind of support should the Biden administration provide to Egypt? I think, first and foremost, Egypt has made some formal requests for certain defence articles and weapons systems. At this point, I think the Biden administration might want to reconsider its original approach and response to these requests. The reason is that the situation for Egypt is changing, and not in a positive way. Its not about people coming from Afghanistan or other places. Its a matter of internal radicalisation because what we have just witnessed in Afghanistan is a major recruiting boost for terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda, Daesh or any of these groups. These groups now see that its possible to win against the United States because we surrendered, and this is a massive recruiting tool for them. So, the threat will also increase internally as a result. Daesh, although they still have pockets, was destroyed in Iraq and Syria, and there is no longer a piece of land that is called the Islamic caliphate, which was a big victory for the forces trying to combat these radical, violent groups. But now we are in a difficult situation, and it may last for a number of years. I think we can collectively figure it out. So, Egypt needs a lot of assistance, and I always like to see it coming from the United States or US allies. It would also be great if Israel can provide additional assistance in terms of counterterrorism, and Gulf nations as well share the view that these radical, Islamist groups are dangerous to all of our societies. Does this indicate that attacks by insurgents in Sinai might increase? Unfortunately, yes. I think they are going to feel motivated by recent events, and that may in turn increase their ability to raise money and recruit new fighters. Unfortunately, at least in the short term, I am a bit pessimistic. This is why increased aid is needed as soon as possible. Egypt also had aid problems with the former Obama administration in the US. Why do such problems grow during Democratic Party administrations? I wrote about this in a piece for the Human Interest, where I said that president Barack Obama in his historic June 2009 New Beginning speech in Cairo may have intended to signal that realism would finally catch up to the aspirations of those who continued to view Egypt as the historic heart of the Arab world. He argued that with American diplomacy and assurances of a more benevolent approach to mutual respect, concrete actions would demonstrably reduce extremism. Of course, that did not happen. Apparently, even the former president has realised the folly of substituting hope for policy and words for reality. In his most recent writings, Obama admits that in the end, the facts of what happened are the facts, and Im left with the same set of questions I first wrestled with as a young organiser. How useful is it to describe the world as it should be when efforts to achieve that world are bound to fall short?... [Is] it possible that abstract principles and high-minded ideals were and always will be nothing more than a pretense, a palliative, a way to beat back despair, but no match for the more primal urges that really moved us no matter what we said or did? The tripartite crisis between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over Ethiopias building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is ongoing. Is the Biden administration willing to play a mediating role in the dispute? Until recently, there was no indication that the Biden administration was interested in mediating in the Nile crisis between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. The recent focus on Ethiopia has been exclusively with respect to the situation in Tigray. Several months ago, the administration appointed Jeffrey Feltman as special envoy to the Horn of Africa. Hopefully this is a focus area for him he could play an important role in mediating this dispute in order to avoid escalating it. Feltman has visited parties to the crisis and the Gulf and African states. But he has not announced the results of his tours. I think that the appointment of Ambassador Feltman is definitely a positive statement in terms of how much the Biden administration wants to solve this issue. If it wasnt a priority, I dont think they would have bothered to appoint someone in that role. So thats a good sign. But usually in these sorts of dialogues there is no statement when nothing gets resolved, or the statement might just be everyone met. I dont really have a lot of insight into the specifics of the discussions or how hard Feltman was pushing for a resolution, especially with the Ethiopians. But I think its very clear that unless there is a solution, there is going to be some sort of military crisis or intervention that nobody wants, maybe except for the Ethiopians. Nobody wants to say that, but this is sort of where things are lurching towards. The concern really is that the Ethiopians are dealing with their own insurgency in Tigray, and this is almost a good way to unite the country against the common enemy, which is unfortunately Egypt and to a certain extent Sudan. All that Egypt and Sudan want is to ensure that water levels in the Nile remain the same, and there is no clarity around if the GERD is fully filled the threats of water access for Egypt and Sudan. You are not going to make all the parties happy here: there has to be some sort of agreement based on mutual understanding that nobody wants a military intervention. But the longer this goes on without a formal agreement, the Ethiopians will continue to fill the GERD, and I fear what the reaction will be. By the way, I dont think its unreasonable, and the Ethiopians have not been forced to make any changes to their plans so far. So, I hope Ambassador Feltman and the Biden administration are heavily pressuring Ethiopia to stop its dangerous activities. A new conflict is really not what anyone is looking forward to at this time. Water security is an existential threat to any country. Libya is facing many post-ceasefire challenges at present, including the withdrawal of foreign fighters, the disarming of armed groups and reduced international involvement in the peace process. How can the Biden administration push this process forward? So far, the Biden administration has not significantly engaged with the relevant parties on Libya. When Biden was vice-president, he argued against any NATO intervention there, and now, given his loss of credibility after the Afghanistan withdrawal, it is difficult to imagine a robust engagement from him or his team, at least in the near term. A lot of people have looked at Libya given the broad ceasefire, although it has been very tenuous. The fact that elections are scheduled I would say has sort of reduced the temperature for the amount of time other nations want to spend on Libya. They are looking at these sorts of developments and saying, ok it has calmed down a bit. So, people have moved on, and I think, with the Biden administration coming on board, some nations have been distracted by the Eastern Mediterranean crisis. So, we have all been stuck with the status quo. For Egypt, most specifically, it has very legitimate concerns about the continued existence of the Syrian militias that are paid by the Turks, and they are part of violent extremist groups. So, they have this ideology that is threatening the current government in Egypt, which has worked so hard to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, the continued lack of mediation and leaving everything in place meaning not demanding the return of Turkish and Syrian fighters to Syria is a significant problem for Egypt that people are not really paying attention to. Frankly, this is one of the many reasons why I keep writing about Egypt because I dont think a lot of people understand the many, many challenges that it is facing right now. Egypt is a long-term ally of the United States and our ally Israel in many ways. So, I see the situation, and I am thinking like this is a really big deal. We need to step up and provide support, and I hope we do. The United Nations and several other nations should help to create real peace in Libya and support the Libyan people to have free-and-fair elections. Following the recent Palestinian jailbreak in Israel, Palestinian-Israeli tensions are increasing. To avoid large-scale unrest in the West Bank or a new war in the Gaza Strip, what can Washington do to stabilise the situation? The Biden administration is unfortunately eager to go back in time, pre the Abraham Accords, and pretend the region has not undergone a significant shift. I believe this is part of the reason for the increased unrest. Egypts recent engagement to achieve a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel shows the important leadership role Cairo plays in the region. I hope Washington continues to rely on Egypt and supports its efforts to achieve a more permanent ceasefire. Making sure humanitarian funds do not end up with Hamas terrorists or enrich individual Palestinian leaders would be a good starting point for the Biden administration on this issue. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Corruption, instability and mismanagement threaten millions of Africans with famine, and the Middle East is right behind The UN has been warning of imminent famine in a number of African and Arab countries, unable until present to put together the resources necessary to prevent widespread hunger. This will be the subject of discussion of the UN General Assembly this week. The UN announced in 2016 a list of areas threatened with famine or near-famine. The list included northeastern Nigeria, southern Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, eastern Syria, Burkina Faso and Tigray in northern Ethiopia. In every case the famine, which can affect the lives of millions if not tens of millions of people, is man-made, resulting from war, mismanagement, corruption or all three. Countries on the verge of famine in Africa and the Middle East all share a fragile political situation and the mismanagement of their resources, which in turn have led to civil war, said Nirvana Shawki, regional director for the Middle East at CARE International. War is the last link in a chain of failures to establish a stable political situation, manage state resources as rationally as possible and fight corruption. Many developing countries in Africa and Asia are using climate change as an excuse for their failure to deal with the effects of changes such as drought, flooding and desertification. The efficiency of a country in responding to the challenge of climate change is an indicator of its efficiency in resource management and the quality of its economic policies, Shawki said. The 1984 famine in Sudan is a striking example of what happens when politics takes priority over lifting peoples suffering. Sudanese president Jaafar Numeiri refused to declare his country was stricken with drought and desertification, preferring not to receive international assistance in order to preserve the image of a strong regime. The famine, however, was one of the factors that led to his overthrow the following year after a popular uprising organised by professional unions. Corruption in Nigeria, which President Muhammadu Buhari admitted was one of his countrys most catastrophic challenges, has resulted in the failure of one of Africas largest armies to terminate the terrorism of Boko Haram. The terrorist group embarked on attacks starting in 2010 and to this day the army and security forces have not managed to beat it. Even worse, they failed to retrieve tens of girls whom Boko Haram kidnapped. This failure embarrassed the Nigerian authorities, and resulted in former president Jonathan Goodluck losing the 2015 elections. The damage of Boko Haram expanded with its proliferation in neighbouring countries, such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The joint forces of Niger, Nigeria and Benin has not made tangible progress towards liquidating the terrorist organisation. The groups terrorist attacks and the governments retaliatory responses have led to the death of more than 37,000 people and the displacement of over two million. The disasters that result from displacement end up in a bitter conflict to make available the slightest amount of food. This is when a famine starts, beginning with malnourishment of women and children, until hunger strikes the entire country, Shawki said. The mismanagement of resources, coupled with widespread corruption, led to crises that contributed to the creation of terrorist movements, such as Boko Haram, or reviving secessionist trends in Africas more populous countries, the people of which stand at 200 million. That Boko Haram targeted girls and children led to heightened fears for their lives, and consequently locking them up in houses, preventing them from going to school or work, Shawki added. This is man-made famine: corruption, terrorism and mismanagement of resources, and it could spread to neighbouring countries with fragile economic and political conditions. According to international reports, South Sudan has more than ever before since its independence been suffering the lack of food security. Since 2013, South Sudan has been enduring an ethnic civil war between the Dinka the largest ethnic community from which President Silva Kiir and the majority of government, army and security forces hail and the Nuweir, the group to which Vice President Riak Mashar belongs. The civil war that broke out following independence in 2011 has claimed the lives of 400,000 South Sudanese, while 8.3 million people 70 per cent of the population have become largely dependent on humanitarian aid, according to UN reports. Days before the countrys independence, the Secretary-General of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement, the ruling party in South Sudan, Pagan Amum, told Al-Ahram Weekly he was optimistic that his country would turn into a major food producer, thanks to its huge animal wealth and torrential rains. Two years after the secession, civil war broke out, with countless rape cases recorded. Rape and sexual slavery, being used as weapons of war, mean preventing mothers from going out of their houses or their escape to dangerous places, and consequently depriving children of food and care, Shawki stated. Rape was used as a weapon of war in the Darfur conflict, the westernmost region in Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a doctor, Denis Mukwege win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end sexual violence as a weapon of war and conflict. Mukwege shared the prize with Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad, who had escaped the sexual slavery of the Islamic State. The rape incidents during the Darfur conflict led the agriculturally rich region to the cusp of famine. Rape is currently being used as a weapon in the conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayans, which is the model most significant in man-made famine, according to a report by Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the US. The report pointed out that farmers are being forcibly prevented from cultivating their lands, and the women are widely raped, which threatens the northern region with a famine that may affect more than two out of the regions six million people. Under normal circumstances, when farmers are allowed to cultivate crops, and with a rainy season like this years, the people can harvest large amounts of food. In refugee camps, many women were raped by Amhara militias, preventing them from going out to work, searching for food, bringing water to drink or clean up, and rendering their children, especially those below the age of five, prone to death. A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated that 363,000 children below five years old in Somalia died for reasons that could have been avoided. The Tigray famine is the second largest in the history of Ethiopia, following the 2011 East Africa drought, during which millions of people went hungry. The famine was exacerbated by locust attacks dealing a deafening blow to the fragile food security situation the year before. Ethiopia had known prosperity from 2003 to 2012, with its growth rates hiking to 10 per cent, according to government estimates. Then the country ushered in a period of economic slowdown, political instability, and the civil war which international bodies are saying may lead to famine that could destroy Tigray, as happened in the 1980s. It is true that after 1980, the number of famine victims has gone down, according to a study by Tufts University professor Alex de Waal in his book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. However, it has become clear that politics pays an integral role in creating famines, as evidenced in the tactic used by the Syrian government to prevent food from reaching rebel cities from 2011 till present. Famine threats in Middle East Today, millions of people living by the Euphrates are suffering due to the drought resulting from climate change on the one hand and the blocking of water shares of Syria and Iraq behind Turkish dams on the other. In both cases, the Iraqi and Syrian governments didnt address climate change and drought seriously enough. The drought of 2005-2009 was one of the main reasons behind the Syrian Revolution. The state ignored the suffering of its people, leading to fury and the bearing of arms. The result was the death of more than 300,000 people and the displacement of millions across neighbouring countries. Damages were estimated at $250 billion. The situation in the Arab worlds poorest country, Yemen, is growing even worse with the conflict over humanitarian aid and political fights between the warring parties, the internationally recognised government and the Houthis. Half of the Yemeni population depend on humanitarian aid, a field to which 200 organisations are dedicated, albeit with very limited resources. Some pundits believe the rise of the European and American right has resulted in a decrease in aid in crisis-stricken areas. Aid workers are hoping for an international move this week at the UN General Assembly to alleviate the pain and suffering of tens of millions of people. There is a multi-dimensional structural crisis in the political, economic, educational and service fields, Shawki said. Even with a technology advanced enough to face the repercussions of the climate change challenge, all partial solutions would remain insufficient. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Muslim Brotherhood-backed forces in Yemen are facilitating the advance of the Houthi rebels and frustrating efforts to bring peace to the war-torn country Media reports this week highlighted how the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islah Party in Yemen has been handing over positions to Iran-backed Houthi rebels in a new obstacle to ending the war in the country that has now lasted for seven years since its outbreak in 2014. With a stalemate in the fighting around the town of Marib, the Houthi rebels have claimed advances in the Shabwa governorate where government forces, mainly Islah Party fighters, fled to the capital leaving their arms and positions to the Houthi rebels. The Southern Transitional Council (STC) and other parties in South Yemen are wary of Islah activities, especially in the South. They blame the rise in the presence of Al-Qaeda and Daesh (Islamic State group IS) terrorists there on the Muslim Brotherhood. Rivalry between Islah and the STC has intensified amid demonstrations blaming the Brotherhood for the deteriorating security situation and territorial gains by the Houthi rebels. The STC has opposed the movement of Brotherhood-backed Islah forces into Sabwa and Abyan in the South, which southerners say contradicts the Riyadh Agreement of late 2019 between the STC and the government of Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The chaos in the South has derailed efforts by the UN special envoy to Yemen to stop the war and start negotiations. The Saudi-led Arab Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen is also keen to see a halt to the fighting and the start of a political process. But the Houthi rebels have been stubborn in refusing such efforts. The Brotherhood component in the Yemeni government seems to be the main beneficiary of this stalemate, exploiting it to gain influence through the disguise of charity outlets that provide money received from backers outside Yemen. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood has been using its position in the government to help the Houthi rebels. Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar of the Islah Party, a main Brotherhood member of the government, has been exposed on social media as a traitor to Yemen. US researcher and human-rights lawyer Irena Tsukerman told the online TV channel Aden Today in an interview this week that the rise in terrorist threats in Yemen were linked to Muslim Brotherhood elements strengthening their position within the Yemeni government. Ali Mohsen is supported by some factions in Saudi Arabia who think he gives the legitimate government more popular support within Yemen. That is how Islah became an important lobbying force within the government, especially after the US stopped its support for the Arab Coalition, Tsukerman said. She added that in Yemen and everywhere else you cannot separate the Muslim Brotherhood from Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. Many Al-Qaeda terrorists came from Brotherhood ranks. This view was shared by Saudi commentator Abdel-Aziz Alkhames in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. Saudi Arabia has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. Yet it deals with the Islah Party as a component of the Yemeni political scene even though the partys interests are opposed to Saudi interests, Alkhames said. Because of their ideology, Muslim Brotherhood parties are never patriotic, he added. They do not believe in a state or a country. They are in government, but they do not care about Yemen. Their loyalty is to the international organisation of the Brotherhood. They divide themselves into wings: one tries to impose conditions on the ground, while another is in government trying to influence it. But their goals are different from those of the legitimate government of Yemen and from the goals of the Southern Yemenis. Their goal is ultimately to achieve opportunistic benefits and to strengthen their hold, Alkhames said. Such developments have made it more and more difficult to achieve a breakthrough in the peace negotiations in Yemen. There are many wars within the war in Yemen, all of them interconnected. The power struggle within the Yemeni factions is also hindering the peace efforts, Tsukerman said. She added that two main dangerous influences are the Iranian support of the Houthi rebels and financial support for the Islah Party from the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Earlier in the war, Islah collaborated with the Houthi rebels when they first swept the country in 2014. The partys goal at the time was the hope that if the Houthis prevailed, they would repay the Brotherhood by sharing the country between them. I think the Brotherhood in Yemen will continue in this direction. It is part of their nature and ideology. They are always traitors to their homelands, Alkhames told the Weekly. They are also liars. One of their leaders, Zandani, said he had 40,000 fighters ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the legitimate government and coalition forces. Later, it turned out that he had no one. All the positions entrusted to the Brotherhood fall easily into the hands of the Houthi rebels, he said. Alkhames was referring to Islah collaboration with the Houthis in the Yemeni city of Taiz, under rebel siege since the start of the war in 2014. The Brotherhood is active in Taiz, and Islah has had to quell demonstrations in the city against it, as it did with demonstrations against the Brotherhood in Shabwa last week. One of the main goals of the Islah Party is to sabotage the Riyadh Agreement that reconciles the legitimate government of Yemen and the STC. If successful, this will make the Brotherhood Party more powerful in the government and facilitate efforts to harness the terrorist groups in South Yemen. This will indirectly help the Houthi cause, complicating further efforts by the UN, the US and Saudi Arabia to end the war in Yemen and start a political process to bring peace to this devastated country. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Faced with uncertainty at the polls, Iraq has invited foreign observers to watch upcoming elections, but many doubt if they are qualified to assess whether vote is free and fair Next months parliamentary election is probably the most dramatic in Iraqs recent history. Given the highly partisan atmosphere at a time of conflict fatigue, a meaningful and effective election is crucial for the nations stability and its dysfunctional democracy. But disputed ballot and contested outcome will certainly lay the groundwork in the following weeks or months for further political upheaval and an outbreak of new popular protests similar to the uprising that toppled the government in 2019. Every Iraqi election since the overthrow of the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein has been marred by allegations of fraud and irregularities. Together with regional and international stakeholders, Iraqis fear that the October election could be a tipping point for the future. To help ensure a successful poll while battling voters mistrust and fighting one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the Middle East, the government of Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is inviting international observers to oversee the ballots. But while the government can see real value in foreign observers giving the poll a legal cover, many Iraqis remain sceptical about whether international observers can provide an objective means of validating the election to rescue Iraqs tortured democracy. Still, much of the outcome depends on the United Nations Political Mission in Iraq, UNAMI, which is empowered by numerous UN Security Council resolutions to assist in the electoral process and help towards free and fair Iraqi-led elections that are inclusive. Last month the 15-member council unanimously approved an Iraqi request for a UN team to monitor the elections. A resolution it adopted authorised UNAMI to provide a strengthened, robust and visible UN team to monitor Iraqs election day with as broad a geographic coverage as possible. The UN is expected to deploy some 130 international experts to monitor the polls, along with 600 support staff whom UNAMI Chief Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said will provide Iraqi electoral authorities with technical assistance from the UN. Meanwhile, the European Union has upped the international ante to improve the quality of Iraqs election, deploying a watchdog mission to assist with the process. High Representative Josep Borrell said the observation mission was dispatched to support the strengthening of Iraqi democracy. A core EU team of 32 election experts and observers have been deployed in different parts of the country. On election day the mission will be reinforced with short-term local observers coming from the EU member states diplomatic missions in Iraq. The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in Iraq said some 15 international organisations, including the Arab League, as well as foreign diplomatic missions in Iraq are also expected to send representatives to watch the ballots. In all, foreign teams are expected to monitor some 8273 centres that include 55041 polling stations covering 83 electoral districts in 18 provinces across Iraq, a task many believe will be difficult to fulfill by such small groups. As election time approaches, many Iraqis who had seen voting improprieties in past ballots remain in doubt, however. There is limited trust in the election system and widespread concern that the vote will not be characterised by fairness, political pluralism, confidence, transparency or impartiality. Independent electoral observers as well as voters attribute that scepticisim to several factors. First, in the aftermath of the 2019 uprising and the crackdown on the protest movement, mistrust has deepened in the countrys political elite and their willingness to patch the failures and loopholes in the institutions and processes that had led to problems. Instead of an electoral law that would allow the participation of independent, secular parties, a new electoral law has maintained the influence of entrenched sectarian-affiliated political groups and helped to ensure their victory in any upcoming elections. Pro-reform activists who declared their intention to participate in the election have faced a brutal crackdown, including targeted killings, disappearances and intimidation which forced many of them to abandon the vote or consider fleeing the country. Secondly, reports of investigated irregularities and manipulation have further fuelled a politically fraught debate over voter fraud ahead of the election. In late August, the Supreme Judicial Council said it had formed a committee to probe attempts to rig the election and manipulate the will of the voters by buying their cards. Earlier, the council said it had cracked down on a network linked to unidentified political groups using social media to spread false information about the upcoming election and working to change the results. A former election officer, Miqdad Al-Sherifi was briefly detained earlier this month on suspicion of helping with fraud in 2014 and 2018 elections before he was released without charge. Another major concern was that millions of old, unclaimed electronic voter cards which were never picked up by registered Iraqi voters in the 2014 and 2018 elections have mysteriously been kept by IHEC. Though UNAMI has announced that some 4,670,000 electronic voter cards were shredded and disposed of, many Iraqis still fear that some of these cards could still be used for rigging the October election. In addition, allegations of voter bribes and voting card purchases are rampant despite assurances of strict measures to block fraud and manipulation. On Saturday, the private Al-Sharqiyya TV reported that a candidate in a north Baghdad district had paid voters who promised to vote for him 100-300 dollars. Thirdly, there are increasing signs of low expectations among Iraqis in the international observers ability to ensure Iraqis confidence in a credible election largely due to their limited mandate and their past experience in Iraq. Both the United Nations and the European Union have insisted that they are sending their observers in response to an invitation by the Iraqi government to assist the electoral authorities in holding the upcoming elections. Both organisations have also made it clear that the elections are Iraqi-led and Iraqi-owned and they are not organising or supervising the poll, thus cautiously distancing themselves from potential election problems. Despite reports of fraud and vote recounts in the 2018 election, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had congratulated the people of Iraq on the holding of parliamentary elections and stated that the elections represented further progress in building a stronger Iraqi democracy. However, his representative Hennis-Plasschaert has admitted to loopholes from the past elections that have undermined public trust in Iraqs electoral process and promised that the upcoming vote had the potential to be different. More ironically, the European Union which sent an electoral team to oversee Iraqs elections in 2018 had not made public a report of its findings which was reportedly critical to the process. Iraqi media said the report which was sent to the Iraqi authorities ten months after voting day expressed doubts about the integrity of the election which was held in May 2018. Among the criticisms voiced by EU experts were lack of transparency, absence of independent checking of the electronic system and counting irregularities. The EU report also noted that changes in election regulations were made after voting ended. Foreign observer missions have long been criticised for being ineffective in ensuring electoral integrity and failing to induce the authorities to respect the basic criteria of a free and fair election that deserves to be observed. In many countries, foreign electoral missions were dubbed electoral tourism for sending unqualified and poorly trained observers who lack professional experience, arriving in a country few days before polling day and spending only a few hours at voting centres. In Iraqs case, where the electoral process has fallen short of basic requirements may also need overall international supervision, and not only through day-long monitoring, to help block illegal and dishonest practices and ensure a credible election. The danger with UNAMI is that it is trying to wear two hats at once. While it provides technical electoral assistance in Iraq, which makes it a partner in the process, it wants to act as an observation mission to confer legitimacy on an election which many Iraqis see as fraught with uncertainty and doubt. The EU, meanwhile, has failed to commit to making public its final report to the Iraqi people, reiterating that the findings of its mission will only be presented and shared with stakeholders after the finalisation of the entire electoral process. The international community has failed Iraqis with each election held since Saddams ouster and poor conclusions by foreign election observer missions this time will further frustrate the desire for free, fair and transparent elections. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: Proposals from UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen to end the crisis in the country will not have the desired results In his last briefing to the UN Security Council, UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen suggested taking advantage of the relative cessation of hostilities in the country to bring together the main regional and international stakeholders for exploratory talks over confidence-building measures to prepare the ground for a political solution to a crisis that has been continuing since 2011. This article argues that Pedersens proposal will not produce the desired results and that a more effective alternative would be to encourage those stakeholders to agree on a single issue to begin with and then gradually resolve the others. Since the outset, the Syrian conflict has in fact consisted of several conflicts across various divides: between the regime and the armed opposition, between US-led coalition forces and the Islamic State (IS) group, between Turkey and the Kurds, and between Israel and Iran. With the interventions of various regional and international powers, the map of Syria became a weave of numerous conflicting agendas and interests. Today, ten years after the conflict began, the regime has regained control over around 70 per cent of the country. The rest is divided between Turkey, the Kurds, the US, the armed opposition and terrorist organisations. Despite the recent clashes in southwestern and northwestern Syria, a relative calm does indeed prevail along the various fronts. This has largely been the case since Russia and Turkey signed the Idlib Agreement in March 2020 that brought about a ceasefire. Some analyses maintain that the current calm is the product of a consensus reached among key stakeholders after they concluded that they had accomplished as many of their objectives as they could. The regime was also satisfied with the amount of territory it controlled after factoring in the economic and military costs of attempts to retake more from the militant opposition, the analyses said. Moreover, Russia and Iran were pleased with their success in ensuring the survival of the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and securing their influence and interests in the area. Turkey feared that new bouts of warfare in northern Syria would drive new waves of refugees into Anatolia, already the host of more than four million Syrian refugees. It had also found an acceptable formula for dealing with the perceived danger of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) near its southern border. Israel was content with the occasional strikes it has been launching against Syrian areas it believes are controlled by Iran and could be used as staging points for Iranian offences against it. But while most strategic research centres predict that this relative calm will continue for the foreseeable future, experts still caution against banking on what they describe as a fragile and provisional consensus. Not only is the Syrian crisis complex, it also interweaves with many other complex issues in the region. There always remains something that could trigger a flare up that could spiral dangerously out of control. This is a main reason why various parties have seized on the current calm to propose ideas to bridge the gaps between regional and international powers and to encourage them to move towards conciliatory policies in the interest of ending the suffering of the Syrian people. The UN envoys main mandate is to facilitate a Syrian-led political solution to the crisis in the country in keeping with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Geneva Communique. The Resolution calls for the establishment of a credible, inclusive and non-sectarian system of government in Syria, a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution, and free-and-fair elections, in line with the provisions of the constitution, all administered under the supervision of the United Nations and in which all Syrians in the country or abroad can participate. However, the UN has been unable to make any progress towards these ends. The 150-member Syrian Constituent Assembly made up of representatives of the regime, the opposition and civil society has made no progress in drafting a new constitution for the country in the five meetings it has held so far. The UN envoy has been trying to convince the members of the assembly to convene for a sixth round, but most observers do not expect him to succeed because of the mutual recriminations between the Syrian camps and the divergence of views between Russia and the Western nations. Indeed, the conflicting views and interests of the main regional and international players in Syria have been a main obstacle to UN efforts to fulfil its mandate in Syria. This is precisely what inspired Pedersens recent proposal to invite key states to work with me on exploratory discussions on a package of concrete, mutual and reciprocal steps that are defined with realism and precision, and that are implemented in parallel and are verifiable, as he said in his Security Council briefing on 24 August. Such steps are needed, above all, to help save Syrian lives, ease suffering, promote regional stability and further the implementation of Resolution 2254, Pedersen said, which seeks a comprehensive and lasting political settlement to the Syrian crisis. LACK OF REALISM While the UN envoys proposal is theoretically sound and consistent with the principles and procedures for phased confidence-building measures in conflict-resolution, applying it in the Syrian case will not yield results. The main reason is that the issues under dispute between the key states are not of a nature that can be resolved through confidence-building measures. For example, they have no shared conception of the future of Idlib or even of whether the Syrian regime has a right to reassert its sovereignty over it and whether to fight the terrorist groups that currently control it. They cannot agree on the future of the militant factions that have been relocated to Idlib as a safe zone in the framework of the various de-escalation agreements. One of these groups is Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a former Al-Qaeda affiliate that the UN Security Council, the US, Russia and Turkey have all designated as a terrorist organisation. Some quarters are now urging the US to reconsider this designation, which would make it possible to assimilate the HTS in the political process under certain conditions, thereby benefiting from its presence on the ground in Idlib. Advocates of this idea argue that the organisation has undertaken certain ideological revisions to distance itself from jihadist fundamentalism and that lifting the terrorist designation would facilitate the delivery of humanitarian relief to the people of the Idlib province and help pave the way for talks over the future of its capital city. Needless to say, this suggestion, if implemented, would aggravate the already considerable tension over how to deal with the area. Turkey, even if it agreed with the lifting of the terrorist designation, would adamantly oppose any attempt on the part of the Syrian regime to regain control over Idlib using military means for fear of additional influxes of refugees into Turkey and because of the concern that terrorists would flee to other countries. Other crucial and interrelated examples of why the UN envoys proposal will not work include the future of the YPG and the status of the Kurds in northern Syria, the future of the Turkish military presence in northern Syria, the US role in Syria, the impact of the Iranian military presence on Israel, the efficacy of the economic sanctions on Syria, the future of the Al-Assad regime and the question of reconstruction deals. All these issues and more are highly controversial, and the differences over them are not only between pro-regime and anti-regime countries. They also exist within the same camp. Russia and Iran, for example, are reportedly at odds over rights to drill for natural resources and in other economic areas, their respective roles in relation to the Syrian government, and their areas of influence in the country, not least in the vicinity of Syrias southwestern borders where the presence of Iranian forces would stir up trouble with Israel. In the light of the multiplicity of issues, the complicated patterns of the divides over them and the depth of the divisions, it is highly unlikely that the regional and international powers will be able to reach a consensus over confidence-building measures acceptable to all the parties. It would be a waste of the currently available opportunity of the relative calm in the country to engage in exploratory talks that will lead nowhere. Some analysts believe that direct talks between Russia and the US resulting in a comprehensive agreement on the various issues is the only way to end the Syrian conflict. This possibility is difficult to conceive, however, especially as there are no precedents to support it. A more realistic approach would be to invite the key stakeholders and the two superpowers above all to engage in talks over a single issue at first, such as the question of Idlib and the fate of the militant factions there. If they could reach a consensus on this, it would open avenues to a series of further consensuses on other issues. Certainly, an international consensus on Idlib would avert many complications. It would eliminate the multiple repercussions of any use of military force on the part of the regime to retake Idlib on the pretext of fighting terrorism. It would also encourage the regime to take positive steps towards a political solution and would help to resolve other issues such as the economic sanctions and obstacles to reconstruction. Until progress is made on Idlib, the most that can be hoped for at present is a prolongation of the relative calm with a view to using it to deliver as much humanitarian aid as possible to the Syrian people. * The writer is a researcher on security and crisis management. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: It looks like the world has not yet had its fill of surprises from the US, which has recently outdone itself on this score. I am not about to rehash Afghanistan or Iraq, how Americans commemorated 11 September 2001, or how the current administration is trying to reverse what the previous administration did. My concern is the behaviour of the foremost world power towards the Arab region, today, in the light of Bidens electoral campaign pledge to steer the US back to international leadership and to do so while withdrawing from the Middle East and repositioning itself among its allies in Europe and across the Pacific. Accordingly, while trying to reorder the domestic front, the Biden administration would strengthen trans-Atlantic bonds with the EU and NATO and to the West it would strengthen its alliances with India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. All this is understandable. If the understanding turns out to be wrong or misguided, the US has the institutions to change course several times if need be, as it has from one electoral round to the next during the past two decades. Indeed, one of the main lessons to draw from contemporary world history is that the US has not acted with the greatest clarity of mind or sagacity since 2001. Its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were disastrous blunders. Equally mistaken was its plan to build nation states using American-made tools and ground plans. Democracy, conceptually and institutionally, is not necessarily the best system of government for other countries. In fact, it has its own painful problems even within the American framework. Just this month Washington provided two major examples of lack of wisdom, both involving this region. The first was its decision to remove its Patriot missile batteries from Saudi Arabia, even though they have been paid for up to the last dime and are used to protect civil targets from Iranian missile strikes. The second was the decision to freeze $130 million in military aid to Egypt in the interest of unidentified human rights purposes. Ironically, this action occurred while Egypt was hosting the Bright Star military exercises which serve joint US and Arab interests. The US has had a long and deep defence relationship with Saudi Arabia. It dates back to President Franklin Roosevelts meeting with king Abdel-Aziz Al Saud aboard the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt. Washingtons relationship with Egypt has grown increasingly close during the past five decades, in light of their common focus on various matters related to peace and stability in this region. Yet Washington went ahead with the aforementioned steps without consulting either Cairo or Riyadh and, moreover, without achieving anything positive for US national interests. Most likely, the actions were undertaken to appease certain camps within the Democratic Party who, heedless of the lessons learned from the above mentioned US failures abroad, remain determined to impose their ideological hegemony on US foreign policy. In all events, such measures will have no significant impact on Saudis defence or Egypts economic capacities, both of which have evolved greatly thanks to the sweeping reform in both countries. To me, these measures are indicative of American energy dissipated over domestic divides and the failure to appreciate the abilities of Arab states. On a broader scale, the US appears to be operating under an illusion. It sees the current world order as a popularity contest between Washington and Beijing in which the former is destined to win because of the dazzling allure of the American model. The attrition the US has sustained in the past two decades is in fact of such magnitude it will cast a heavy shadow for many decades to come. In dollars and cents the losses exceed $4 trillion, or $9 trillion if we factor in lost opportunities. Such figures do not take into account the adverse impact on American decision-making power. American software and soft power in general was an important part of Washingtons appeal. Unfortunately, shortcomings in handling system-related issues, from policy implementation to electoral processes and inter-agency cooperation, plus the rise of various forms of fascism and racism, have severely undermined it. The USs main rival, China, by contrast, approaches relations with others with a considerable degree of reserve and respect for the traditions of different countries. It does not use the Communist Party to disseminate centralised political and economic planning, and it does not presume to give lessons in economic and political management. Yet its development model has much to offer developing economies. China currently has a foreign exchange reserve of $3.2 trillion, of which $1.4 trillion is in hard cash. The US, whose dollar is the global currency, is indebted to the tune of $28 trillion, yet is pumping $3.5 trillion into a national infrastructural development drive and other federal projects. Seth G Jones, an American defence expert, recently published a book called Three Dangerous Men, referring to three key figures in powers opposed to the US: China, Russia and Iran. He shows how, while the US was focused on building fighter jets, missiles and conventional warfare capabilities, those rivals have increasingly resorted to irregular warfare: cyber attacks, the use of proxy forces, propaganda, espionage and disinformation to undermine American power and to intervene in US elections. Put another way, those countries have been more in tune with the instruments of the 21st century than the US, the bastion of the third and fourth industrial revolutions. At the same time, Washington has gone to great lengths to alienate its main allies in the West. As though Trump had not stirred sufficient alarm in Europe with his tenuous commitment to Western values and even to NATO, Bidens Afghanistan debacle raised concerns over a senescent US leadership that appears unable to overcome divisions at home and a growing distance from its allies abroad. To assert the rationale of liberal ideology without taking a clear stance on terrorist Islamist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood makes Washington and its pundits here in the Middle East look foolish and inconsistent, to say the least. And what a boost this gives forces antagonistic to Arab relations with Washington, further undermining US influence in the Middle East and elsewhere. * The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. *A version of this article appears in print in the 23 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: The most significant rift in decades between the United States and France seemed on the mend Wednesday after French President Emmanuel Macron and President Joe Biden got on the phone Wednesday to smooth things over. In this June 12, 2021 file photo, President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands during a bilateral meeting at the G-7 summit, in Carbis Bay, England. [File photo: AP] In a half-hour call that the White House described as friendly, the two leaders agreed to meet next month to discuss the way forward after the French fiercely objected when the U.S., Australia and Britain announced a new Indo-Pacific defense deal last week that cost the French a submarine contract worth billions. France also agreed to send its ambassador back to Washington. The White House made a point of releasing a photograph of Biden smiling during his call with Macron. In a carefully crafted joint statement, the two governments said Biden and Macron have decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence. So did Biden apologize? White House press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped the question repeatedly, allowing that Biden did acknowledge "there could have been greater consultation. The president is hopeful this is a step in returning to normal in a long, important, abiding relationship that the United States has with France, she said. The call suggested a cooling of tempers after days of outrage from Paris directed at the Biden administration. In an unprecedented move, France last week recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia to protest what the French said amounted to a stab in the back by allies. As part of the defense pact, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. It was clear there is still repair work to be done. The joint statement said the French ambassador will have intensive work with senior U.S. officials upon his return to the United States. Biden and Macron agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," the statement said. Biden reaffirmed in the statement the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a visit to Washington, didn't mince words in suggesting it was time for France to move past its anger over the submarine deal, saying French officials should get a grip. Using both French and English words, he added they should give him a break. Johnson said the deal was fundamentally a great step forward for global security. Its three very like-minded allies standing shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a new partnership for the sharing of technology. Its not exclusive. Its not trying to shoulder anybody out. Its not adversarial towards China, for instance. Psaki declined to weigh in on whether Johnsons comments were constructive at a moment when the U.S. was trying to mend relations with France. The European Union last week unveiled its own new strategy for boosting economic, political and defense ties in the vast area stretching from India and China through Japan to Southeast Asia and eastward past New Zealand to the Pacific. The United States also recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defense, that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to NATO, the statement said. No decision has been made about the French ambassador to Australia, the Elysee said, adding that no phone call with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was scheduled. Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. [Photo: AP] Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. [Photo: AP] Migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, to return to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021, to avoid deportation from the U.S. [Photo: AP] Migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, to return to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021, to avoid deportation from the U.S. [Photo: AP] Many Haitian migrants camped in a small Texas border town are being released in the United States, two U.S. officials said Tuesday, undercutting the Biden administration's public statements that the thousands in the camp faced immediate expulsion. Haitians have been freed on a very, very large scale in recent days, according to one U.S. official with direct knowledge of operations. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, put the figure in the thousands. Many have been released with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, an outcome that requires less processing time from Border Patrol agents than ordering an appearance in immigration court and points to the speed at which authorities are moving, the official said. The Homeland Security Department has been busing Haitians from Del Rio to El Paso, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border, and this week added flights to Tucson, Arizona, the official said. They are processed by the Border Patrol at those locations. A second U.S. official, also with direct knowledge and speaking on the condition of anonymity, said large numbers of Haitians were being processed under immigration laws and not being placed on expulsion flights to Haiti that started Sunday. The official couldn't be more specific about how many. U.S. authorities scrambled in recent days for buses to Tucson but resorted to flights when they couldnt find enough transportation contractors. Coast Guard planes took Haitians from Del Rio to El Paso. The releases in the U.S. were occurring despite a massive effort to expel Haitians on flights to Haiti under pandemic-related authority that denies migrants an opportunity to seek asylum. A third U.S. official not authorized to discuss operations said there were seven daily flights to Haiti planned starting Wednesday. Accounts of wide-scale releases - some observed at the Del Rio bus station by Associated Press journalists - are at odds with statements a day earlier by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who traveled to Del Rio to promise swift action. If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your familys life, he said at a Monday news conference. Homeland Security, asked to comment on releases in the United States, said Wednesday that migrants who are not immediately expelled to Haiti may be detained or released with a notice to appear in immigration court or report to an immigration office, depending on available custody space. The department declined to say how many have been released. A bipartisan effort spurred by the death of George Floyd to pass a police reform bill in Congress has collapsed, US lawmakers said Wednesday, in a setback for President Joe Biden. In this file frame from May 25, 2020, video provided by Darnella Frazier, a Minneapolis officer kneels on the neck of George Floyd, a handcuffed man who was pleading that he could not breathe. [File photo: Darnella Frazier via AP] The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was approved by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in March but has been stalled in the Senate. Democratic and Republican senators had been seeking to hammer out a compromise and bring the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote but they said on Wednesday that they have given up. The failure of the negotiations is a blow to Biden, who was elected last year with strong African-American support and has pledged to make police reform a priority of his administration. Biden accused Republicans of rejecting even "modest reforms" while "refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address." "I still hope to sign into law a comprehensive and meaningful police reform bill that honors the name and memory of George Floyd, because we need legislation to ensure lasting and meaningful change," he said in a statement. Biden said the White House will consult with members of Congress, law enforcement, civil rights groups and victims' families to "define a path forward," including potential executive actions. Democratic Senator Cory Booker had been engaged in months of negotiations with Republican Senator Tim Scott in a bid to reach agreement on the legislation. "It remains out of reach right now," Booker said. "The time has come to explore all other options to achieve meaningful and common sense policing reform." Scott said the two sides had reached agreement on numerous areas including banning chokeholds, limiting the transfer of military equipment to police and increased mental health resources. "Democrats said no because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement," he said, adding that they have "squandered a crucial opportunity to implement meaningful reform." The House bill was named after George Floyd, the 46-year-old African-American man who was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, sparking protests against racial injustice and police brutality across the United States. Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, expressed "extreme disappointment." "In the last year and a half, we have witnessed hundreds of thousands of Americans urging lawmakers to bring desperately needed change to policing in this country so there can be greater accountability, transparency, and ultimately trust in policing," Crump said. Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said it was "disheartening that there is a lack of courage and bravery to bring about true reform." "But one thing is clear, the battle for police reform is far from over," Johnson said. "It will remain a top priority for us because innocent lives are at stake." Search teams found nothing of note Wednesday at a Florida wilderness park where they have spent days looking for the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the young woman who authorities say was killed while on a cross-country trip with him. The search resumed Wednesday morning at the 24,000-acre (9,700-hectare) Carlton Reserve park and ended just before dark, North Port police spokesperson Joshua Taylor said. Investigators say Brian Laundrie's parents told them he had gone there after returning home without Petito on Sept. 1. It marked the fourth day of searching in the Carlton Reserve, with operations suspended Monday while the FBI searched the nearby Laundrie home for evidence. The search of the reserve was set to resume Thursday morning, Taylor said in an email. The outdoors search includes thousands of acres of forbidding, swampy subtropical terrain replete with alligators, snakes, bobcats, coyotes, turkey, deer and many other wild creatures. There are more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of hiking and horseback riding trails, plus numerous camping areas and rivers. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office brought in a diver unit called SURF, or Sheriffs Underwater Recovery Force, to perform a more specialized search for evidence. These highly-trained deputies work in the most difficult and challenging environments imaginable. They are on call 24/7/365, the sheriff's office said in a tweet. Petito, 22, was reported missing Sept. 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West. Her body was discovered Sunday at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Petito's death as a homicide meaning her death was caused by another person but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results. Laundrie, 23, is not charged with any crime but is considered a person of interest in the case. With online sleuths and theories multiplying by the day, the FBI and police have been deluged with tips about possible Laundrie sightings. Taylor, the North Port spokesperson, said none have so far panned out. He also batted down rumors that Laundrie had been captured Tuesday. These reports are unfortunately false. Please rest assured that when Brian is found, we will be more than happy to let everyone know, Taylor said in an email. Petito and Laundrie grew up together in Long Island, New York, but moved in recent years to North Port, where his parents live. Their home, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Sarasota, was searched by investigators earlier this week and a Ford Mustang driven by Laundrie's mother was towed from the driveway. Authorities believe Laundrie drove that car to the Carlton Reserve before disappearing. The couple documented online their trip in a white Ford Transit van converted into a camper, but got into a physical altercation Aug. 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case. Ultimately, police there decided to separate the quarreling couple for the night but no charges were filed and no serious injuries were reported. The FBI is seeking information from anyone who may have seen them in the Grand Teton area as well as any other tips nationally. We join the FBI in asking for continued public assistance by sharing any information through the tip lines 1-800-CALL FBI or tips.fbi.gov, Taylor said. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 17:00 | World, All Taiwan said Thursday its application for inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact was not motivated by China's request to join and that its submission should be assessed on its own economic merits. Trade representative John Deng told a press conference at the Executive Yuan, or Cabinet, that President Tsai Ing-wen has been pushing for accession to what is formally known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership since she was first elected in 2016. He said Taiwan has undertaken extensive consultations with the current member states on the topic. "China's submission should have no bearing on our application, which should be considered by the member states on our own economic merits," Deng said. However, Deng added that if China is admitted to the Pacific trade deal, Taiwan's chances of also gaining entry are reduced. China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province awaiting unification, by force if necessary, submitted its application to join on Sept. 16 in an attempt to increase its economic clout in the region. China's bid appears aimed at countering moves from the United States and others to decouple from its economy. Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng told the same press conference that Taiwan submitted its application on Wednesday afternoon to New Zealand, the depository of the multilateral trade organization that aims to liberalize trade and investment among Pacific Rim economies. Later Thursday, Tsai said in a Twitter post that Taiwan's bid to join the trade pact reflects its commitment to promoting free trade in the Asia-Pacific region. "I am confident that our membership in this deal would strengthen joint economic development and benefit people across the region and the world," she said. #Taiwan's bid to join the #CPTPP reflects our commitment to promoting free trade in the Asia-Pacific. I am confident that our membership in this deal would strengthen joint economic development & benefit people across the region & the world. Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) September 23, 2021 Tsai also posted in Japanese and said she has been preparing to join the high-level trade agreement since she took office and that Taiwan is ready to follow every rule of the TPP. "We would like our Japanese friends to support our efforts," she added. To join the free trade deal, however, both China and Taiwan will need the unanimous approval of all 11 member countries -- Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The United States originally promoted the trade pact to counter China's growing economic influence, but under the administration of then President Donald Trump withdrew from negotiations in January 2017. Current President Joe Biden remains cautious about returning to it. Japan, who played a leading role in negotiations after the United States' withdrawal, has expressed concern over Taiwan's ban on food imports from five Japanese prefectures hit by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. If Japan brings up the issue during the official negotiation process, Deng said Taiwan must face it head-on. While Deng said he believes "both sides shall be able to find a proper solution," he emphasized that the government will base its decisions on public health, scientific evidence and international standards. In 2018, Taiwan voters supported the ban remaining in place in a referendum. Tsai said at the time that, despite opposing the ban, she would respect the vote, and her government would continue barring food imports from the areas for two years. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 10:06 | All, World, Japan Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Wednesday he and his counterparts from the United States and South Korea agreed to further strengthen cooperation to rid North Korea of its nuclear and missile program. During talks in New York held on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly sessions, the three pledged to work closely toward complete denuclearization of North Korea by boosting diplomatic efforts, ensuring the implementation of U.N. resolutions barring Pyongyang from developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and enhancing deterrence in the region. The trilateral meeting between Motegi, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui Yong comes after North Korea test-fired two ballistic missiles that fell within Japan's exclusive economic zone on Sept. 15. Calling the ministerial meeting a "very timely opportunity of exchanging views," Motegi told reporters, "I said recent North Korean nuclear and missile activities, including recent missile launches, pose a threat to Japan, the region and the international community and we shared the view." Blinken also "reaffirmed the United States' commitment to continued consultation and cooperation" with Japan and South Korea in working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, according to State Department spokesperson Ned Price. The three last met in person in May on the sidelines of the Group of Seven foreign ministerial meeting in London, which South Korea attended as a guest. They also discussed other regional and global issues such as Myanmar, China and climate change, and agreed to deepen cooperation on these areas as well, Motegi said. The discussion also covered issues such as securing supply chains, said the State Department spokesperson. The U.S. administration of President Joe Biden has been emphasizing the importance of cooperation between the three nations despite the strained relationship between Japan and South Korea over wartime history and other disputes. Ahead of the trilateral session, Motegi and Blinken also held bilateral talks and agreed to deepen the alliance further toward the goal of a free and open Indo-Pacific region through working with allies and like-minded countries. Motegi and Blinken also reaffirmed close bilateral coordination to resolve the past abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea, while discussing regional issues such as China and Afghanistan, the Japanese minister said. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 19:22 | World, All China expressed strong opposition Thursday to Taiwan's bid to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, repeating its mantra that the self-ruled island is an "inalienable part of China." The Communist-led government's remarks indicated it will make every effort to prevent Taiwan from joining the TPP under its "one-China policy," cementing speculation that tensions between the mainland and the democratic island will intensify over membership. "The one-China principle is a recognized norm of international relations and a general consensus of the international community," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters. The mainland "resolutely opposes Taiwan's accession to any official agreements and organizations," he added, a day after the island submitted an application to join the trade pact, from which the United States withdrew in January 2017. The leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping filed its bid for membership in the TPP, formally known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, last week in an apparent attempt to bolster its economic clout in the region. Late last year, China also signed the world's biggest free trade deal, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP, with 14 other Asia-Pacific countries -- Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations members. While Japan has welcomed Taiwan's application to take part in the TPP, some of the 11 member countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, whose economies have relied on China's huge market, have voiced hope for Beijing's participation in the pact. It is still uncertain whether both or either China and Taiwan will be allowed to enter the TPP, given that the unanimous approval of all 11 members is required to join the deal. A source close to the matter said Beijing's bid to join the TPP may just be intended to thwart Taiwan's ambition to become a member of the pact. The TPP is designed to cut tariffs on agricultural and industrial products, ease investment restrictions and enhance intellectual property protection, with an eye on improving economic integration among participating nations. The so-called high-quality TPP, so far composed of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, is widely seen as being aimed at countering China's growing economic influence. Many TPP members, including Japan, have been at odds with China over technology transfer, intellectual property protection, market openness and transparency as well as other trade issues, diplomatic sources said. Meanwhile, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who prioritizes multilateralism in diplomacy, has remained cautious about the country returning to the treaty. In 2017, then U.S. President Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor, pulled the United States out of the TPP by pursuing trade policies widely viewed as protectionist under his "America First" agenda. Washington has also not participated in the RCEP. China and Taiwan have been separately governed since they split in 1949 as a result of a civil war. Their relations have deteriorated since independence-leaning Tsai Ing-wen became Taiwan's president in 2016. The mainland considers the island as a renegade province. Related coverage: Taiwan says TPP bid should be assessed on merit, independent of China Japan welcomes Taiwan's application to join TPP: minister Taiwan applies to join TPP free trade pact on China's heels By Ayano Shimizu, KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 12:11 | All, Japan While flying cars may seem like a futuristic fantasy from science fiction movies, a startup in Japan is aiming to offer people rides in such vehicles in about four years' time at the World Exposition in Osaka. SkyDrive Inc., a developer of flying cars founded only three years ago, demonstrated the country's first public test flight of a manned vehicle in August last year, and hopes to introduce such mobility as an option that has advantages over existing modes of transport. "Our mission is to drive a once-in-a-century mobility revolution," CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said Wednesday in a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. "One hundred years ago, automobiles and airplanes were introduced to humans (allowing us) to go anywhere we wanted. After that, for one hundred years, there was no revolution...but only improvement." The Tokyo-based company, with about 100 employees including engineers from Toyota Motor Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., signed a partnership agreement with Osaka Prefecture and the city of Osaka this month to work toward the practical utilization of its flying cars in the western Japan metropolis ahead of the World Exposition. Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura said this month he wants flying cars to begin carrying passengers in the Osaka Bay area in 2024, such as by shuttling the around five kilometers between Universal Studios Japan and the city's Yumeshima artificial island, the venue of the exposition. "The strong leadership of Osaka Prefecture and Osaka city is now pushing ahead our project," said Fukuzawa, who used to work in Toyota's procurement operations, expressing hope that the partnership will lead to the social acceptance of such vehicles. "From here, we will go straight to the 2025 Osaka Expo to start flying cars," he said. About 150 countries and 25 international organizations are expected to participate in the exposition, which will take place between April 13 and Oct. 13, 2025. Over 50 nations had confirmed their participation as of Aug. 20, according to the organizers. Companies around the world have been developing flying cars, formally called "electric vertical takeoff and landing" or eVTOL vehicles, with about 10 starting manned test flights, Fukuzawa said at the press conference. SkyDrive's SD-03 used for the test flight is powered by electric motors that drive rotors deployed in four locations, with each location housing two rotors, and the company is aiming to develop the world's smallest eVTOL vehicle. Flying cars are quieter and easier to operate than helicopters, Fukuzawa said. The Japanese government is also pushing the development of flying cars, in collaboration with private companies in the logistics and automobile sectors, for purposes such as transportation in rural areas and disaster relief. In 2018, a public-private panel established by the government drew up a road map stating that it aims to start commercial flying vehicle services in the mid-2020s, while stating that improved safety and reliability are among the challenges that need to be addressed. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 09:44 | Others The U.S. and French presidents on Wednesday moved to mend bilateral ties that soured over a recently unveiled Australian submarine deal under a new Indo-Pacific security partnership involving the United States and Britain. According to a joint statement issued after a phone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, the two leaders decided to "open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence." The spat quickly escalated after last week's announcement of the security partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States, dubbed AUKUS, which led to France losing a multibillion-dollar agreement to sell submarines to Australia. Canberra has decided to pursue nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS. France, which said it was blindsided by the announcement and felt excluded from the new Indo-Pacific partnership despite its active engagement in the region, said Friday it was recalling its ambassadors to the United States and Australia. During the phone call on Wednesday, Biden and Macron agreed "the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," according to the joint statement. The two agreed to meet in Europe at the end of October while Macron has decided the French ambassador will return to Washington next week. Biden also reaffirmed "the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region," according to the statement. The phone call was conducted at the request of Biden. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 14:29 | All, World Foreign ministers from the Group of 20 major economies urged the Taliban Islamist group, which took control of Afghanistan last month, to accept international humanitarian aid and implement measures against terrorism in a meeting Wednesday, the U.S. government said. The online meeting arranged by Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the G-20 this year, highlighted joint efforts by the group that includes China and Russia to address problems faced by Afghanistan, such as safe evacuations of locals wishing to leave the war-torn country. "The international community is united in its expectations for the Taliban to adhere to their commitments," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter. The United Nations and other organizations have warned of food shortages and a lack of basic services affecting daily life in Afghanistan. It is also feared that human rights, particularly for women and children, could be infringed upon by the Taliban, given its record of governance. Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who attended the G-20 meeting while in New York, said the global community should urge the Islamist group to respect diverse ethnic and sectarian voices in political processes as well as women's rights. The minister reiterated Japan's plan to offer some $200 million in aid to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries by the end of the year, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the Taliban should keep its promise that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for a terrorist movement again, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for the lifting of "unilateral sanctions" on the conflict-ravaged country. The Italian government aims to arrange an emergency summit of the G-20 leaders after annual speeches at the U.N. General Assembly through next Monday, according to sources familiar with the matter. The G-20 groups Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and the European Union. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 23:45 | All, Japan Three of the four candidates for Japan's next prime minister on Thursday encouraged more elderly people to stay on the job and contribute to the public pension system in a bid to ensure its sustainability amid the country's rapidly aging population. Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi and former gender equality minister Seiko Noda said in an online town hall meeting for the Sept. 29 presidential election of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that more people aged 65 and older should continue to work and pay pension premiums. Speaking in the meeting involving about 100 citizens online, Takaichi said the government can oblige companies to keep employing people until they turn 70. Kishida said age should not be the sole criterion which divides workers and retirees. "I would like elderly people with the will and ability to join as backers" of the system, he said. Noda said the declining birth rate is behind rising concerns about the future of the pension system, and that it is vital to increase the number of people shouldering the system. Government data show the number of people aged 65 and older totals an estimated 36.40 million, accounting for 29.1 percent of Japan's total population, the highest level on record. Meanwhile, the fourth candidate, vaccination minister Taro Kono, did not go into details, only saying it is important for the government to show various options and discuss with people after presenting data on the nation's pension system. "What we must defend is our pension lives in the future, not the pension system itself," Kono said. Kono has drawn questions from his rivals after proposing creating a guaranteed minimum portion of public pension that would be fully financed by tax revenues instead of premiums. Kono has yet to show the size of a fiscal source for the proposal and the margin of a possible increase in the consumption tax to that end. Kishida, in contrast, has said he would not raise the consumption tax from the current 10 percent for about 10 years. The LDP vote will virtually decide the successor to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as the party currently controls the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament. In Thursday's 90-minute session, the four hopefuls answered questions from the citizens on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic, economic and fiscal policies to digital transformation of society and social security. Given the situation over the COVID-19 pandemic, the LDP is to hold the meetings in a virtual format for four days through Sunday, rather than the barnstorming presidential candidates have traditionally carried out. The four contenders are set to focus on diplomacy, national security, the environment and energy on Friday, and disaster risk reduction, national resilience, tourism promotion, as well as agriculture and fisheries on Saturday. On Sunday, they will exchange views on constitutional amendment, measures against the falling birth rate and population, regional revitalization, the promotion of sports and culture, as well as investment in education and human resources. KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2021 - 10:36 | All, Japan, World Japan welcomes Taiwan's application to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters Thursday from New York. Describing Taiwan as an "extremely important partner of Japan" that shares basic values such as the rule of law, Motegi said Tokyo will respond to the island's bid to join the 11-member TPP "based on a strategic point of view and with the public's understanding." Taiwan's move Wednesday follows a similar bid made last week by mainland China for membership of the trade pact, which involves such countries as Japan, Australia and Singapore. The unanimous approval of all 11 members is required to join the deal. Japanese ministers with responsibilities related to the TPP did not make similarly welcoming remarks when Beijing applied to join the regional framework on Sept. 16. Motegi said Tokyo needs to examine whether Taiwan is ready to meet the high-standard market access and other rules of the TPP, formally known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The other existing TPP members are Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Vietnam. Earlier this year, Britain applied for participating in the TPP. The United States remains cautious about returning to the treaty after its withdrawal in January 2017 under the administration of previous President Donald Trump. KYODO NEWS - Sep 24, 2021 - 06:46 | All, Japan, World Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and his South Korean counterpart Chung Eui Yong on Thursday failed to narrow gaps over a host of bilateral issues including wartime compensation, with both sides repeating their respective positions in their meeting in New York. Nevertheless, Motegi and Chung agreed to step up communications between the two countries including through diplomatic channels so that Japan and South Korea can improve their soured ties and cooperate in broad areas, Japan's Foreign Ministry said. The two ministers shared the view that it is necessary "to get Japan-South Korea relations to a normal condition" to move forward on broad cooperation, the Japanese minister told reporters after the meeting. "We had a candid and thorough discussion," Motegi added, noting that the bilateral talks lasted 50 minutes, extending beyond the initially scheduled 30 minutes. During the meeting held on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly sessions, Motegi called on South Korea to take appropriate steps over wartime issues such as compensation for forced labor during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and "comfort women" in Japan's wartime military brothels. Chung, for his part, repeated Seoul's positions on the matter. He also reiterated South Korea's opposition to Japan's plan to allow Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to release treated water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean. Motegi told Chung that Tokyo will continue to explain its plan on scientific grounds. Chung also called on Japan to lift strict export control measures which Seoul sees as retaliation from Tokyo for South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese firms to provide compensation for wartime labor, according to South Korea's Foreign Ministry. The export controls have made it difficult for South Korea to procure materials to produce semiconductors as Tokyo removed Seoul from a list of trusted trade partners. The meeting comes a day after the two foreign ministers joined a trilateral gathering involving U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Echoing the view shared during the trilateral talks on Wednesday, Motegi and Chung reaffirmed bilateral cooperation in dealing with North Korea, following recent launches of ballistic missiles into Japan's exclusive economic zone earlier this month. They also discussed a territorial dispute over Takeshima, a group of islets in the Sea of Japan controlled by South Korea, which calls them Dokdo. Relations between Tokyo and Seoul, which have been strained for years due mainly to a feud over wartime compensation, deteriorated in particular after the launch of South Korean President Moon Jae In's government in 2017 as he questioned the legitimacy of a 2015 diplomatic accord between Japan and South Korea and reversed the policies of his predecessor. In a deal reached in December 2015, the two countries agreed to "finally and irreversibly" resolve the comfort women issue between then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun Hye. Despite a lack of tangible progress on various sticking points, a Japanese government official saw the latest meeting positively, saying the two countries had "a thorough discussion." When the two ministers met in May on the sidelines of a Group of Seven ministerial gathering in London, their meeting lasted only 20 minutes. KYODO NEWS - Sep 24, 2021 - 06:17 | All, Japan, World Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Thursday he told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov during their talks in New York that Tokyo cannot accept Moscow's proposal to launch a tariff-free special economic zone on disputed islands. During their meeting, held on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly sessions, Lavrov took up the issue and Motegi repeated Tokyo's position that Japan does not support the scheme as it would involve applying Russian laws to the islands. With regard to joint economic projects on the islands, they should be implemented without infringing on Japan's legal position, Motegi added. Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the proposal earlier this month, with the aim of luring overseas investment to the islands off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido. The two ministers also discussed a longstanding territorial dispute that has prevented the two countries from signing a postwar peace treaty. Motegi told Lavrov that Japan wants to develop the relationship with Russia broadly and mutually, including through efforts on the issue of a postwar peace treaty. "We agreed to continue talks by using various opportunities toward broad development of Japan-Russia relations," Motegi told reporters after the meeting. The bilateral talks became the first in-person meeting between Motegi and Lavrov in about 19 months due to the coronavirus pandemic. The two also exchanged views on the annual visa-free visits to the islands from Japan that have been suspended for two years in a row amid the pandemic. Such programs allow groups of Japanese nationals to travel to the disputed islands, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, without passports or visas. The dispute over the sovereignty of the islands has been a major stumbling block to the countries signing a peace treaty more than 70 years after the end of World War II. Tokyo claims the Soviet Union seized the islands illegally soon after Japan's surrender, while Moscow argues it did so legitimately. Among other issues, Motegi called for Russia's cooperation in efforts to resolve the past abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea and Lavrov assured his country's support. They also agreed to cooperate toward ensuring stability in war-torn Afghanistan. Washington: In multiple raids in the past two days, federal authorities have arrested a number of Indian nationals, enrolled as students in an alleged fraudulent university in Metro Detroit area and working across the country. The students now face probable deportation. The arrests followed by raids were carried out by officials of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in various cities across the US: Columbus in Ohio, Houston in Texas, Atlanta in Georgia, St Louis in Missouri, New York and New Jersey. ICE did not immediately respond to questions related to the arrest and the reasons for the arrest. In a statement posted on its website, Reddy & Neumann group of immigration attorney said it has received multiple reports that at 6:00 am Wednesday ICE raided multiple worksites containing Day 1 CPT students authorized by the University of Farmington, located in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Curricular Practical Training (CPT) is an off-campus employment option in the US specifically meant for F-1 students. There are some universities in that offer Day 1 CPT for international students. "The reports include worksites located in Tampa, St. Louis, and Houston. The University is generally known as a Day 1 CPT school which immediately authorizes CPT for students who only have to attend classes once a semester, the statement said. As per the information available on the website of University of Farmington, it has a rolling admission process and operates on a quarterly academic calendar. Some of the students said the university fee ranges from USD 10,000 to USD 12,500, which is abysmally low as per American standards. The university has about 900 students enrolled, a majority of whom are said to be from India. In its documents to students, ICE said that their non-immigrant student status has been terminated because you are not pursuing a full course of study or participating in authorized practical training. Murthi Law Firm also said that it has received numerous reports that F-1 students, currently enrolled in University of Farmington, being taken into custody on the evening of January 29. The F-1 visas are a type of non-immigrant student visa that allows foreigners to pursue education in the United States. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Crisis-ridden Jet Airways has cancelled 15 flights today following the grounding of six Boeing 737 planes due to non-payment of lease rentals, according to sources. The airline, which is grappling with acute financial woes, cancelled around 20 flights on Tuesday as three more Boeing 737 aircraft were grounded, they added. In two days, the carrier has grounded six such planes following non-payment of lease rentals. The sources said the airline would be cancelling 15 flights on Wednesday, including a few flights from the national capital to various destinations. "Jet Airways has defaulted on aircraft lease rentals and it has been forced to ground three more narrow-body Boeing 737 planes," a source told PTI earlier in the day. Due to the fresh grounding of the planes, the airline, which is negotiating with its partner Etihad for an additional cash infusion, has cancelled as many as 19 flights to/ from Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Port Blair and Bengaluru, the source said. The full-service carrier would be holding a meeting of the shareholders on February 21. The airline will seek shareholders' approval for conversion loan into shares or convertible instruments or other securities, according to a regulatory filing made on Monday. The carrier would seek shareholders' nod to "convert the whole or part of the outstanding under loans, extended / to be extended by the lenders, into shares, or convertible instruments or other securities, of the company...", according to the notice of the meeting submitted to the stock exchanges. The conversion will be done as per the terms contained in the respective loan documents between the company and its lenders. It would also be subject to all requisite regulatory approvals. Besides, Jet Airways will seek shareholders' approval to negotiate and finalise the terms and conditions with the lenders for raising further loans from time to time as well as provide the lenders with a right to convert such loans into shares, or convertible instruments or other securities. Jet Airways on cancellation of its 4 flights on January 28 Meanwhile, Jet Airways issued a statement on the cancellation of its four flights on January 28. "The cancellations were due to scheduled termination of an aircraft lease and to carry out an engine normalization exercise. The aircraft temporarily grounded are expected to rejoin operations from February 1," it said. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A Mumbai man allegedly stabbed a 22-year-old bank employee in her neck and slashed her face before slitting his own throat after she reportedly rejected her relationship proposal. The brutal assault on the woman took place outside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbais East Borivli on Wednesday. An auto driver, who was present at the spot when the incident happened, informed the police, which later rushed the two to Shatabdi Hospital in Kandivli. According to the police, the accused has been identified as Kunal Bavdane, a travel agency employee from Walkeshwar and knew the victim from childhood. He has been stalking the girl for a long time. On Wednesday, he convinced the victim to meet him. During their meeting, the police said, a heated argument broke out between the two and the man stabbed her multiple times in neck and face. He later stabbed himself in the stomach and slit his throat. "We made a mistake by not approaching the police when he used to constantly harass her," the victims father was quoted as saying by The Hindustan Times. According to the report published in the English daily, the accused had recently visited the womans house and apologised to her father for harassing her. "Just a month ago, the accused and his uncle came to our house, touched my feet and apologised. He told me he will not stalk my daughter any more after I had warned them that I would complain to the police. I never imagined this to happen," her father added. The accused used to follow the woman when she lived in Walkeshwar. She moved to Bhayander from Walkershwar several years ago. However, a year ago, the man found the woman on Instagram and started the same old drama. For all the Latest Crime News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Wednesday slammed Congress president Rahul Gandhi for stating that he was not involved in the new Rafale deal. The ailingA chief minister said that he feels let down that the Congress president used the meeting for his petty political gains. "Reading media reports covering your visit to my office has caused me distress. It is reported in media today that you have said quoting me that I was nowhere in the process of procuring Rafale nor did I have any information then about it. I feel let down that you have used this visit for your petty political gains. In the 05 minutes you spent with me, neither did you mention anything about Rafale, nor did we discuss anything about/related to it. Nothing whatsoever about Rafale was even mentioned in your meeting with me," Parrikar writes in the letter to Gandhi. Goa CM Manohar Parrikar writes to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, writes "I feel let down that you have used this visit for your petty political gains. In the 5 minutes you spent with me, neither did you mention anything about Rafale, now did we discuss anything related to it.' pic.twitter.com/HbUX6yiDk3 a ANI (@ANI) January 30, 2019 "Paying a courtesy visit and then stooping so low as to make a false statement for petty political gain has raised, in my mind, questions about the sincerity and purpose of your visit itself," he added. Questioning the purpose of visit, Parrikar said that he thought Rahulas visit would give him good wishes in the cause of serving people but had no idea about his other intention. aPaying a courtesy visit and then stooping so low as to make a false statement for petty political gain has raised, in my mind, questions about the sincerity and purpose of your visit itself. Here am I fighting against a life-threatening illness. Due to my training and ideological strength. I wish to serve Goa and its people against any/all odds. I thought your visit would give me your good wishes in that cause of serving our people. Little did I know that you had other intentions,a the 63-year-old chief minister said. His letter came a day after Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Rafale deal, claiming that Parrikar, the former defence minister, had clearly stated that he has nothing to do with the 'new deal'.A "Friends, the ex-defence minister Mr Parrikar clearly stated that he has nothing to do with the new deal that was orchestrated by Mr Narendra Modi to benefit Anil Ambani," the Congress chief told a booth-level party workers meeting. The Congress president had met the chief minister on Tuesday at the Goa Assembly complex in Panaji. Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah also attacked the Congress president saying his act shows how insensitive he is. "Dear Rahul Gandhi, you showed how insensitive you are, by lying in the name of a person fighting a disease. The people of India are disgusted by your reckless behaviour," tweeted Amit Shah. Dear Rahul Gandhi, you showed how insensitive you are, by lying in the name of a person fighting a disease. The people of India are disgusted by your reckless behaviour. In his trademark style, @manoharparrikar ji sets the record straight. https://t.co/ok4GN8I6yS a Amit Shah (@AmitShah) January 30, 2019 For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. highlights Anant Kumar said that any hand that touches a Hindu girl "should not exist". Anant Kumar is an embarrassment to every Indian: Rahul Gandhi. Hedge's comment was also condemned by Karnataka Congress president. New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday demanded the sacking of Union Minister and senior BJP leader Anantkumar Hedge from Modi Cabinet after his controversial remark. On Sunday, Anant Kumar at a public event said that any hand that touches a Hindu girl "should not exist". He also hit out at a Congress leader by dragging his Muslim wife into a Twitter spat. "We have to rethink the priorities of our society. We shouldn't think of caste. If a Hindu girl is touched by a hand, then that hand should not exist," said Anantkumar Hegde in Karnataka's Kodagu district, adding to a growing list of controversial, ill-considered comments. The remarks of the BJP leader were also condemned by Karnataka Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao, who also termed the Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship as "deplorable". "Wht are ur achievements after becoming a Union Minister or as MP? Wht are ur contributions for Karnataka's development? All I can say for sure, it's deplorable tht such people have become ministers & have managed to get elected as MP's," Rao tweeted. On Monday, Congress party chief Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter and wrote, "This man is an embarrassment to every Indian. He's unfit to be a Union Minister and deserves to be sacked." This man is an embarrassment to every Indian. He's unfit to be a Union Minister and deserves to be sacked. https://t.co/SbrvEdQBur Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 28, 2019 However, the condemnation by Karnataka Congress president Rao didn't go down well with Hegde, who stooped to a new low and dragged his Muslim wife Tabu Rao. "I shall definitely answer this guy @dineshgrao's queries, before which could he please reveal himself as to who he is along with his achievements? I only know him as a guy who ran behind a Muslim lady," Hegde tweeted back. Union Minister of State for Employment and Skill Development had in that past said that people should identify themselves with their religion and caste rather than being secular. Hegde also said the Constitution too would be changed in accordance with such thinking. Reacting to the Hedge's comment, Tabu Gundu Rao, said, 'I only know him as a guy who ran behind a Muslim lady': First, he never ran away with me, it is a sanctimonious marriage. To drag me into it is getting way below the belt & pathetic. "There's a line, leaders need to draw. They should mind their language. I want to state that I am not a political person, I am a housewife. Why do you want to use me to polarise elections? At least you should redeem his chair," she added. Also Read: Modi's minister Anantkumar Hegde kicks up new row with 'Hindu girl' remark "We are here to change the Constitution," Hegde had said during a function organised by the Brahmana Yuva Parishat and women's organisation at Kukkanur in December, 2017. He also described secular people as those who do not have an identity of their parental blood. "Those claiming to be secular and progressive do not have an identity of their parents and their blood. One will get self-respect through such identity," he had said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate to the nation the National Salt Satyagraha Memorial at Dandi in Gujarat on Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary today. During his day-long visit to the state, he will also lay foundation stone for extension of the terminal building at Surat Airport. "PM Modi will go to Dandi in Navsari district where he will dedicate the National Salt Satyagraha Memorial to the nation on Bapu's death anniversary," an official release said. "The memorial has statues of Mahatma Gandhi and 80 Satyagrahis who had marched with him during the historic Dandi Salt March. It also has 24-narrative murals depicting various events and stories from the historic 1930 Salt March," it said. PM Modi will address a public meeting later, it said. The Salt Satyagraha March, better known as `Dandi March', was a landmark event in the freedom struggle. As part of the civil disobedience movement against the British rule, 80 Satyagrahis led by Gandhi marched 241 miles from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to the coastal village of Dandi and made salt from sea water, thus breaking the Salt Law imposed by the British. Before visiting Dandi, the prime minister will lay foundation stone for extension of the terminal building at Surat Airport. PM Modi will also inaugurate Smt Rasilaben Sevantilal Shah Venus Hospital in Surat. On return to Surat from Dandi, he will interact with participants at the New India Youth conclave. This will be PM Modi's second visit to Gujarat this month. He had visited the state on January 19 to dedicate the Armoured System Complex at Hazira besides attending the Vibrant Gujarat Summit on January 17 and 18. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Vitamin D supplements may promote greater insulin sensitivity, lowering glucose levels and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a study claims. The benefits of vitamin D in promoting bone health are already well known, researchers said. Other recent studies have shown a clear relationship between vitamin D and glycemic control, suggesting that vitamin D increases insulin sensitivity and improves pancreatic beta-cell function, they said. The study, published in the journal Menopause, involved 680 Brazilian women aged 35 to 74 years, to evaluate the possible association between vitamin D deficiency and increased glycemia. Of the women interviewed, 24 (3.5 per cent) reported using vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D supplementation was found to be negatively associated with high glucose levels, researchers said. Habitual exposure to the sun also provided the same association, demonstrating that vitamin D deficiencies are associated with high blood glucose levels, they said. "Although a causal relationship has not been proven, low levels of vitamin D may play a significant role in type 2 diabetes mellitus," said JoAnn Pinkerton, executive director of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS). "Vitamin D supplementation may help improve blood sugar control, but intervention studies are still needed," Pinkerton said. Bengaluru: Union minister Ananth Kumar Hegde, whose comments have often triggered controversies, on Wednesday called Congress president Rahul Gandhi a "hybrid breed", saying how can a son of a "Muslim" father and Christian mother be a Brahmin. He also hit out at Gandhi for his repeated allegations targeting the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal. Addressing an event in Uttara Kannada district, Hegde said: "...they have no sense about religion. See how much they lie, father is a Muslim, mother a Christian, son is Brahmin. How did it come?" "You cannot get such hybrid breed in any laboratory in the world, it is available in our country's Congress laboratory only," he said, attacking Gandhi. Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde in Karwar, Karnataka: He (Rahul Gandhi) does not know this country. He has no clue about religion. Look how they lie. A father who is a Muslim, a mother who is a Christian and the son is supposed to be a Brahmin. How is that even possible? pic.twitter.com/ujaRLDpumA a ANI (@ANI) January 30, 2019 A priest at the Pushkar lake in Rajasthan, who presided over the puja offered by Gandhi during the poll campaign there, had said that the Congress president's gotra was 'Duttatreya' and he was a Kashmiri Brahmin. Hegde's comments come days after he said at an event at Madikeri that a hand that touches a Hindu girl's body should not be there. On Monday, Hegde referred to Karnataka Congress president Dinesh Gundu Rao as "a guy who ran behind a Muslim lady" after he criticised the BJP leader's remarks. Gandhi had criticised Hegde's comments and said, "This man is an embarrassment to every Indian. He's unfit to be a Union minister and deserves to be sacked." Attacking the Congress chief over Rafale Wednesday, Hegde said there was a "limit to lying". "Rahul Gandhi these days is uttering Rafale, Rafale... he doesn't know how many letters are there, he doesn't know the spelling. He thinks Rafale is a three-wheeled cycle....," he alleged. The Union minister also levelled corruption charges against Karnataka Revenue Minister and district in-charge of Uttara Kannada R V Deshpande, calling him "percentage Pande". For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath welcomed the Centres move of approaching the Supreme Court for the release of excess land acquired around the disputed site in Ayodhya and be handed over to the Ramjanambhoomi Nyas. The chief minister said, "I welcome this move by the Centre. The Centre's application to start work on the non-disputed land is welcome. This is on one's own respect of faith and a dispute that has been going on for years. We've been telling this from the beginning, the application that has been sent by the Central government, we must get permission to work on the undisputed land ... We welcome the Central government's this move" The Centre has sought direction to release 67 acres acquired land out of which 0.313 acres is disputed. The government's petition comes a day after the Ayodhya case hearing was cancelled because of the non-availability of Justice SA Bobde. The hearing was scheduled to start from today. The new date for the Ayodhya case hearing has not been decided yet. As many as 14 appeals have been filed in the top court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land be partitioned equally among three parties - the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla. In the last September verdict of 2:1, a three-judge bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had said the civil suit has to be decided on the basis of evidence, adding that the previous verdict has no relevance on this issue. However, the Supreme Court is yet to announce the next date for hearing the politically sensitive Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid land title dispute in Ayodhya. On January 25, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had reconstituted the Ayodhya bench where he inducted Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Abdul Nazeer. The case was scheduled to be heard today. Earlier, the Supreme Court decided to constitute afresh the five-judge Constitution bench to hear on January 29 the politically-sensitive Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land title dispute in Ayodhya after a judge, Justice UU Lalit, recused himself from the hearing. Justice Lalit, who was part of the five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, "expressed his disinclination to participate in the hearing any further" and opted himself out of the contentious matter. The apex court had said since Justice Lalit has opted out of the hearing in the matter, there was no option left but to adjourn the case "to fix a date of hearing and to draw up a time schedule for hearing of the case". Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for a Muslim party, said Justice Lalit had appeared as a lawyer for former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh in a connected matter "sometime in the year 1997". Dhavan, who was appearing for lead petitioner M Siddiq (since dead) and now represented by his legal heirs, pointed to the September 27, 2018 judgment, by which the top court had refused to refer the 1994 verdict in Ismail Faruqui case to a five-judge constitution bench to examine the observation that a mosque was not integral to Islam. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will be announcing the JEE Main 2019 Paper 2 Result soon on the official website. The candidates who have appeared for the examination are asked to keep all the details ready for the fast and easy access to the result. Soon after the formal declaration of the result, the scorecards will be available on the official website i.e. jeemain.nic.in. Some of the reports suggested that the JEE Main Paper 2 scorecard 2019 will be announced on Thursday, January 31. JEE Main 2019 Result for Paper 2 released by NTA, CHECK NOW As per the official notification released by the NTA / the National Testing Agency earlier, the JEE Main Result 2019 (both for paper 1 and 2) was supposed to be announced on 31st January 2019. But on January 19, 2019, JEE Main Paper 1 result was released. The JEE Main January examination was held from January 8 to 12, 2019. Around 11 lakh candidates had registered for the JEE Main January 2019 exam. The candidates will have to enter their application number and password or application number and date of birth on the official website to check their JEE Main scorecard 2019. For the convenience of the students, we have mentioned the steps through which the candidates can check the results: Go to the official website, jeemain.nic.in. Click on the 'JEE (Main) January 2019 NTA Score' link on the homepage. Enter your application number and date of birth in the space provided. Click on submit button. Results will be displayed on the screen. Download or take a printout of the JEE Main 2019 result for future reference JEE Main is a national level engineering entrance examination conducted by NTA. Starting from 2019, the JEE Main exam will be held twice in a year - January and April. The candidates who want to appear for the JEE Main April 2019 exam can visit the official website for registration. The registrations for April session will commence from February 8 and the examination will be conducted from April 6 to 20. New Delhi: No more asking awkward leaves because of the date you had scheduled last week. Two companies in China are giving single female employees over the age of 30 an extra eight days of annual dating leave. This comes as big news for working women over 30 who have been labelled the controversial leftover women, because the companies are now urging single women to go out there, date and find love. As of now, two companies, Hangzhou Songcheng Performance, and Hangzhou Songcheng Tourism Management have said that unmarried/single women over 30 in non-frontline roles would be given an additional eight days of leave over the Chinese New Year for dating reasons. This news has been well-received by the employees at the firms and are reported to have welcomed the move. Read | Do you know dogs may help diabetes patients regulate blood sugar? Female employees mostly work in internal functional departments, and some are show performers, Huang Lei, a human resources manager at one of the firms, told a local publication. They have less contact with the outside world; thus we hope to give more leave to them to give them more time and opportunities to be in contact with the opposite sex. Single women in China in their late 20s and early 30s are deemed as leftover women or shengnu, which are seen as the more undesirable women due to engrained traditional beliefs, which the Chinese people have tailed for a long time. The Telegraph reported that Chinas marriage rate has also fallen every year since 2013, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, leaving roughly 200 million single adults in the worlds second-largest economy. Guwahati: The video of a mother removing a black jacket of her crying three-year-old child on the instructions of security personnel before entering Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal's function in Biswanath district on Tuesday morning has drawn sharp criticism from the public, prompting the CM to order a police inquiry into the episode. The video has gone viral on social media and has also been aired by local TV news channels in Assam. The Citizenship Amendment Bill has triggered widespread protests in Assam. Sonowal is witnessing hostile reactions from citizens over the controversial legislation piloted by the BJP at the Centre. "My three-year-old child was wearing a black coloured jacket. The security personnel didn't allow him to enter the meeting venue in it. The security personnel asked me to remove the black jacket", the mother of the child is heard saying in the video to journalists, who asked her the cause for removing the jacket of her child, leaving him with a cotton shirt in the chilly morning. Watch Video: Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal directs State DGP Kula Saikia to probe incident where a toddler was reportedly forced to open his black sweater at a function attended by the CM at Borgang in Biswanath today amid the spectre of black flag protests. pic.twitter.com/KtwmPCF8Fw a Nandan Pratim Sharma Bordoloi YY (@NANDANPRATIM) January 29, 2019 "There is a phobia among the police personnel against the colour black. They even forced a child to remove his black jacket exposing him to cold fearing the black garment may be a sign of protest," locals said, referring to the black flags being shown to the chief minister, ministers and senior BJP leaders in the last few weeks amid the ongoing protests against the controversial Citizenship Bill. Many adult male visitors at the chief minister's programme to lay foundation stone for an Eri spun silk mill are also seen in the video removing their black jackets and woolen pullovers. They are heard saying, "The security personnel will bar us from entering the meeting venue if we do not remove our black clothes". Meanwhile, Sonowal has directed Assam Director General of Police to investigate the incident of the child being forced by security personnel to remove his black jacket and submit his report at the earliest, said a government release in Guwahati. During Republic Day celebrations on Saturday security personnel vigorously frisked the public to prevent any of them from carrying any black clothes to the official functions attended by ministers across Assam. At the central Republic Day function in Guwahati, security personnel from Assam Police politely asked each and every one if they were carrying black handkerchiefs. "We have been asked to check if anyone carries any black clothes. They are not allowed to carry any black items inside the ground," an Assam Police Constable had told PTI, showing a pile of black clothes, handkerchiefs, mufflers, shawls and head bands near him, which were confiscated from the public. A Protests broke out across the state and other parts of the North East after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Silchar on January 4 that the contentious bill would be passed as soon as possible in Parliament. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill passed by the Lok Sabha on January 8 seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India even if they do not possess any identity documents. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: BSE benchmark Sensex zoomed over 650 points while the NSE Nifty reclaimed the 10,800 mark on Thursday on value buying in banking, auto, pharma, IT and FMCG stocks ahead of the Budget. Trading sentiment received a boost as global markets rallied following US Federal Reserveas dovish policy stance. Heavy short-covering on expiry of January series futures and options (F&O) contracts too buoyed the benchmarks, analysts said. The 30-share Sensex rallied 665.44 points, or 1.87 per cent, to close at 36,256.69. The broader Nifty soared 179.15 points, or 1.68 per cent, to 10,830.95. All BSE sectoral indices finished in the green, led by IT, energy and banking. According to Joseph Thomas, Head Research, Emkay Wealth Management, the market was well bid across segments and sectors throughout the day. aIt was mainly propelled by two important factors. The first being the moderation in the monetary policy stance of the Fed, as the key Fed funds rate was left unchanged. The status quo, in the midst of looming fears over an impending economic slowdown, and also as the probability of future hikes may be far and few, catapulted the markets to higher levels. Also Read | Gold slips Rs 70 to Rs 34,000 per 10 gram on muted demand aThe second one being high expectations from the interim Budget by way of measures that would alleviate the agrarian distress and boost the employment and consumption levels,a he said. On a net basis, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net of Rs 130.25 crore Wednesday, and domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers to the tune of Rs 502.26 crore, provisional data available with the BSE showed. In the Sensex pack, Axis Bank, Tata Motors, Infosys, Kotak Bank, HDFC Bank, RIL, Bajaj Auto, SBI, HUL, Tata Steel, Vedanta, HFDC, TCS, ITC and Sun Pharma jumped up to 4.64 per cent. On the other hand, Yes Bank, HCL Tech, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, and Coal India fell up to 2.56 per cent. Global investors were also optimistic about the ongoing two-day high-level talks between the US and China aimed at settling their six-month trade war. Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kongas Hang Seng soared 1.08 per cent, Japanas Nikkei rallied 1.06 per cent and Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.35 per cent. Koreaas Kospi slipped 0.06 per cent. In the Eurozone, Frankfurtas DAX gained 0.38 per cent, Paris CAC 40 was up 0.42 per cent and Londonas FTSE jumped 0.53 per cent in late morning deals. The rupee, meanwhile, depreciated marginally against US dollar to 71.15. The benchmark Brent crude futures were trading slightly higher at USD 61.55 per barrel. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. highlights Foundation stone of Ram Mandir will be laid on February 21: Shankaracharya RSS had been seeking a legislative route for the construction of Ram temple We have to construct grand ram temple in those 66 acres: Shankaracharya New Delhi: Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati today declared that the Ayodhya temple foundation will be held on February 21. The massive congregation of sadhus that was called by Shankaracharya has also decided to march towards Ayodhya on February 21 before laying the foundation stone. The 'dharamadesh' issued by the Dwarka Peeth Shankaracharya after the `Dharam Sansad' urged Hindus to reach Ayodhya carrying four bricks each. "We all know that Mandir can't be built in a single day, but one has to start building to complete it," Shankaracharya said. "We will have to build Angkor Wat type Ram Temple in Ayodhya," he added. Speaking after the Param Dharam Sansad at Prayagraj on the sidelines of the ongoing Kumbh, Swami Swaroopanand said they are ready to take bullets if stopped from going ahead with the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. He also demanded that Ayodhya should be given the status of Vatican city. They are planning to construct a statue by taking possession of the land around Ram Janmbhoomi and not the 0.3 acres of the disputed land, Saraswati said. How did you decide that land should be returned, who are you (govt) to decide. We have to construct grand ram temple in those 66 acres, he added. The Shankaracharya criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government for not bringing legislation to enable the construction of the temple, even though it had an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. It said the government demonstrated this majority when a bill to provide reservation in government jobs and educational institutes for the economically weaker sections was passed in Parliament. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has also planned a two-day Dharam Sansad in Allahabad, beginning Thursday. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the RSS had been seeking a legislative route for the construction of temple at Ayodhya. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an interview earlier this year ruled out any move to bring in an ordinance for the acquisition of the disputed land as the matter was pending before the court. Earlier, the Centre said that the entire 2.77-acre premises, within which the disputed structure stood before its demolition on December 6, 1992, cannot be termed as disputed. The Centre claimed in its application before the apex court that only 0.313-acre plot, on which the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid structure stood, was the disputed land. Meanwhile, an advocate, representing a Muslim body in the Ayodhya land dispute matter, dubbed the Centre's move as "political stunt" and questioned the delay of almost 16 years in seeking modification of the apex court's 2003 order. Facing growing pressure to move swiftly on the Ram temple issue, the Modi government Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to return the "non-disputed" surplus land acquired around the disputed structure in Ayodhya to a Hindu trust and other original owners, in a significant move ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The move could see some form of construction of a Ram Temple by Hindu groups if the handover is allowed, amid pressure from the RSS and Hindutva groups on the Centre to facilitate this step. The statement made by the Centre, in an application, may have some impact on the hearing of the main title dispute case. The hearing by a five-judge constitution bench, which was to be held Tuesday, was cancelled due to non-availability of one of the judges. The fresh application by the Centre was filed in another connected matter relating to Ayodhya in which the apex court in 2003 had directed to maintain status quo on the entire acquired 67.7-acre land, which included 2.77-acre land. The advocate, on condition of anonymity, said, "What was the urgency to file such an application. Why do you want that order to be changed." "It is all a political stunt," he said, adding that there was no need for such an application when the apex court has been on more than one or two occasions and even the Allahabad High Court had favoured maintenance of the status quo on and around the disputed site at Ayodhya. Fourteen appeals have been filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land be partitioned equally among three parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Days after the extradition of 'middleman' Christian Michel in the AgustaWestland chopper scam, Rajiv Saxena, a co-accused in the case, has been extradited to India from Dubai on Wednesday. This is the second big achievement for the investigation agencies in the matter. aRajiv Saxena was picked up by UAE state security from his residence this morning at 9:30 am (UAE time) and illegally extradited to India around 5:30 pm (UAE time),a Geeta Luthra and Prateek Yadav, lawyers of Rajiv Saxena, said. aThere were no extradition proceedings started in the UAE & he was not allowed access to his family or lawyers or essential daily medicine. He was onboard onto a private jet from a private terminal at Dubai International Airport,a ANI quoted the lawyers as saying. Rajiv Saxena, an accused in AgustaWestland chopper deal scam, was extradited from Dubai, UAE, to India on Wednesday, making it second such catch for the investigating agencies after Christian Michel Read @ANI story | https://t.co/AbCCbpAoPJ pic.twitter.com/tE4TbGBbdU a ANI Digital (@ani_digital) January 30, 2019 When his lawyers asked to speak to UAE state security and demanded to understand what happened, they were told he's on a flight and canat be stopped. When they queried this further, they were told, aAsk the Indian Governmenta. It is also understood that corporate aviation lobbyist Deepak Talwar, wanted by the ED and the CBI in a case of misusing over Rs 90 crore taken through the foreign funding route as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR), is also being deported along with Rajeev Saxena from Dubai. Talwar has been charged with criminal conspiracy, forgery and under various sections of the FCRA for allegedly diverting Rs 90.72 crore worth of foreign funds meant for ambulances and other articles received by his NGO from Europe's leading missile manufacturing company. His role in some aviation deals during the UPA government's regime is under scanner. Talwar has been booked by the ED and the CBI in criminal cases of corruption, even as the Income Tax Department has charged him with tax evasion. Earlier, alleged middleman Christian Michel was extradited from Dubai and arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on December 22 last year. On January 5, Michel was sent to judicial custody in the ED case. He is also lodged in judicial custody in the CBI case related to the scam. Michel is among the three alleged middlemen being probed in the case by the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The others are Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa. The ED, in its chargesheet filed against Michel in June 2016, had alleged that he had received 30 million euros (about Rs 225 crore) from AgustaWestland. The CBI, in its chargesheet, has alleged an estimated loss of 398.21 million euros (about Rs 2,666 crore) to the exchequer due to the deal that was signed on February 8, 2010 for the supply of VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million euros.A With PTI Inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The SHO of Noida sector 20 police station, Manoj Pant was arrested and suspended from duty, along with three journalists in connection with an extortion case, the police said on Wednesday. Another inspector Jaiveer Singh is said to be on the run. The three journalists were identified as Sushil Pandit, Udit Goyal and Raman Thakur. They were extorting money amounting to Rs 8 lakh from an owner of a call center for removing his name from an FIR which was registered against him in November last year, SSP Vaibhav Krishna said. A Mercedes car was also seized from one of the journalists, which the SSP said, prima facie seemed to be related to some "criminal activity". A pistol and rs 8 lakh cash were also recovered from their possession. Additional SHO Jaiveer Singh was suspended in the case. Chennai: Actor-politician Kamal Haasan on Wednesday welcomed Priyanka Gandhi Vadras official entry into politics. Welcome sister, said Makkal Needhi Maiam chief when asked about his opinion on Vadra being appointed Congress general secretary of Uttar Pradesh east ahead of Lok Sabha Elections 2019. Hassan also described Congress president Rahul Gandhi's promise of minimum income for the poor as a worthwhile dream. However, he said that implementing it would be very difficult. It is a great dream, nice dream. I would not say it is an epiphany. But is a nice worthwhile dream. We'll pursue it. But to enact and actually bring it into force is very difficult. I hope he (Rahul) succeeds," Hassan said after launching the Puducherry unit of his party Makkal Needhi Maiam. Earlier on Monday, while addressing a 'Kisaan Abhaar Sammelan' in Raipur had promised that Congress would ensure "minimum income guarantee" for every poor person if it comes to power at the Centre. On the Ram temple issue, the MNM leader said he stood for amity and unity of the country. "My personal opinion, which I have said in 1993 or 94 as soon as Babri Masjid was demolished. I was the single voice which rose from here. I still stand by it. I am very sure any sensible Indian would stand for amity and unity of India," he said. Answering questions on alliances for fighting the upcoming General Elections, he said the executive committee of his party had given him the authority to decide on it, but no time limit had been set to take the call. "We are deliberating on it. It is very important to not carry other people's laundry," he said without elaborating. With PTI Inputs Washington: President Donald Trump has plenty of detractors, but for spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, he has support from above. "I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president," Sanders says in an interview to be aired by the Christian Broadcasting Network. CBN journalist David Brody tweeted Sanders' claim after the interview was taped. Trump, a Republican, has strong backing from the politically influential US evangelical movement, which early on decided to overlook multiple lurid reports regarding his private life. Taking a dig at the White House, The Tweet of God, a popular Twitter handle said, Leave Me out of it, alright? See, this is exactly why I choose not to exist. On January 26, in a surprise move, US President Donald Trump agreed to open the federal government without any fund for building the border wall. The announcement meant that the US government would open, albeit temporarily. Trumps sudden remark ended the longest shutdown in the US history. I will sign a bill to open our Government for three weeks until February 15th. I will make sure that all employees receive their back pay very quickly, Trump said in a brief address outside the Oval Office. The White House took to Twitter to inform about the decision. President Trump supports reopening the Government now that many Democrats have finally agreed to negotiate on border security and barrier funding. While we hope that Congress finds a solution in the next 3 weeks, the President will continue to keep all options on the table, the White House said in a series of tweets. The tweets also hinted that Trump agreed to open the government after apparent support from the Democrats. Dozens of rank-and-file Democrats have reached out to the Administration and signaled they are willing to provide wall funding if the Government reopens. The President made a good-faith offer, and there's real opportunity to do things that BOTH parties want (sic), the White House said. Regarding the future of the brief relief, Trump said that, "If we dont get a fair deal from Congress, the Government will either shutdown on February 15th againor I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency. We will have great security. The announcement came on the 36th day of the UWs shutdown. Throughout the shutdown, the Democrats have repeatedly voted to reopen government so that federal workers can pay their bills. Functioning of several key wings of the US government, including Security and State departments, were paralysed for nearly four weeks because of the partial government shutdown. President Trump insisted that building a wall is the only solution to protect the nation from a large flow of illegal immigrants and drug smuggling. The Democrats are opposed to any such funding. After Trump walked out of a meeting at the White House last week, Democrats have refused to come to the negotiation table. Pelosi and the Democratic party argue that such a funding is a wastage of tax payers payer and does not reflect the ethos of American culture. The divide between the parties has led to some 800,000 federal government employees being rendered without work. The ongoing shutdown on January 12 broke the previous record of 21 days of US government shutdown under the Bill Clinton administration in December 16, 1995 to January 5, 1996. Besides the border issue, the divide between Trump and Pelosi deepened after he denied her a military plane for an "excursion" to Brussels and war-torn Afghanistan, a tit-for-tat retaliation after the House Speaker asked the president to reschedule his annual State of the Union address slated for January 29. Pelosi, who is third in line to the presidency, had made the suggestion citing security reasons triggered by the shutdown that has entered its 28th day. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Social activist and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare began his indefinite hunger strike on Wednesday at his hometown Ralegan Siddhi. He is protesting against state governments not enacting Lokayukta Acts. I will begin my hunger strike from my village Ralegan Siddhi. However, I will not be fasting against a party or a person. I will be protesting for the betterment of the nation, said Hazare. Speaking on Centre's "non-fulfilment" of assurances to put together a Lokpal, Hazare added, It has been five years now, but Prime Minister Modi led government at the Centre is making excuses. If they wanted, they could have done the needful by now. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Giving his stamp of approval to the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that negotiations are proceeding well with the militant group to end over 17-year old war in Afghanistan. Trump made the comment after US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad held fourth round of talks with the Taliban in Qatar last week, following which he said significant progress was made. Negotiating are proceeding well in Afghanistan after 18 years of fighting..., Trump said in a series of foreign policy tweets Wednesday. Fighting continues but the people of Afghanistan want peace in this never-ending war. We will soon see if talks will be successful?? Trump said. Khalilzad held six days of intense negotiations with the Taliban representatives in Doha last week. After the talks, Khalilzad said that the US and the Taliban have drafted the framework of a deal which could pave the way for peace talks with Kabul. Since being appointed in September last, Khalilzad has met with all sides in an attempt to end Americas longest war in which the US has lost over 2,400 soldiers in more than 17 years. Also Read | UK MPs reject chaotic 'no-deal' Brexit, back PM May's bid to reopen deal The Taliban control nearly half of Afghanistan and are more powerful than at any time since the 2001 US-led invasion after the 9/11 terror attacks. A day earlier, CIA Director Gina Haspel said a very robust monitoring regime? would be essential in Afghanistan and the US needed to retain the capability to act in national interests. ?Its very important that we maintain pressure on the terrorist groups that are there and so if there were an eventual peace agreement a very robust monitoring regime would be critical and we would still need to retain the capability to act in our national interests if we needed to,? Haspel said in testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Coats, Director of National Intelligence said that his assessment is that neither the Afghan government nor the Taliban will be able to gain a strategic advantage in the Afghan war in the coming year, even if coalitions support remains at current levels. However, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan has said the US has de-legitimised the Afghan government by negotiating with the Taliban without its involvement. He described as surrender the Trump administrations framework of a deal with the terror outfit. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Snapping its upward trend, gold prices on Thursday declined by Rs 70 to Rs 34,000 per 10 gram at the bullion market here on subdued demand from jewellers, according to All India Sarafa Association. Silver, however, advanced by Rs 20 to Rs 41,350 per kg on increased offtake by industrial units and coin makers. Traders said, subdued demand from local jewellers put pressure on the prices of the yellow metal but a firm trend overseas helped in reducing the decline. Globally, gold rose to USD 1,318.86 an ounce and silver rose to USD 16.02 an ounce in New York. In previous three days, gold prices had increased by Rs 770. In the national capital, gold of 99.9 per cent and 99.5 per cent purities reduced by Rs 70 each to Rs 34,000 and Rs 33,850 per 10 gram, respectively. Also Read | Petrol, diesel become cheaper after two-day rally, check January 31 rates here However, sovereign gold held steady at Rs 25,900 per piece of eight gram. Silver ready rose by Rs 20 to Rs 41,350 per kg and weekly-based delivery declined by 44 to Rs 40,390 per kg. On the other side, silver coins continued to be traded at previous level of Rs 79,000 for buying and Rs 80,000 for selling of 100 pieces. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. IMTS Institute is a prestigious institute. It has already established a strong reputation among Indian students, and it is now accepting international students as well. It helps students to fly in the sky of boundless knowledge. Owing to a high level of education and ongoing assistance, IMTS institute has been successful in helping over 25,000 students in achieving their study dreams. 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Fans have not yet recovered from the grief of his demise that another man has bid farewell to the world amidst all this. In fact, MTV Love School fame Jagnoor Aneja has passed away. According to some reports, he died of cardiac arrest. People have lost their senses as soon as this news came to light. According to some reports, Jagnoor Aneja was currently holidaying in Egypt and died of a sudden heart attack. There is reportedly an atmosphere of grief as soon as the news of his demise comes to light. Now people are reacting and expressing grief by posting fast. Film and TV actor Karan Singh Chhabra shared a post on his Instagram story and condoled the passing away of Jagnoor Aneja. You can see he wrote in the caption- 'I don't know what happened... So young and fit... Yet this cardiac arrest is taking lives. Jagnoor Aneja was not such a close friend, but still, he was very cheerful whenever he met.' Tell all of you, Jagnoor attended MTV Love School with his ex-girlfriend Monika. Hina Khan's new steamy song 'Main Bhi Barbaad' released Hina Khan's new song to be released today, said- 'Yeh Bilkul Hatke Tha' This contestant became winner of Khatron Ke Khiladi 11, picture of trophy surfaced General Mark Milley, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, met his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov in Finland amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow, as per the source familiar to the developments. While the agenda of Wednesday's meeting was not made public, Milley's spokesperson told the media that the two officials discussed efforts to improve communications between the US and Russia as well as how to reduce potential risk factors, according to reports by Xinhua news Although the meeting was held at the Finnish government premises at Konigstedt Manor in Vantaa, near Helsinki, Finland was not represented in the meeting. A media representative for Milley was quoted by Finnish national radio as saying that in the meeting the talks continued aiming at "increasing communication and reducing risks". During the meeting, the two sides addressed "issues of mutual interest, including reducing the risk of incidents during military activities". "Despite the ongoing and occasionally contentious disagreements between the US and Russia on Ukraine, cyberattacks, and the Arctic, the purpose of the meeting was to improve dialogue and deconfliction between the two militaries," the reports add. US FDA approves Covid booster shot for people above 65 WHO says, Air pollution kills 7 million people annually One should learn to respect CULTURE from Assam, CM Sarma set an example The World Bank has agreed to give a USD 100 million loan to support Sri Lanka's efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19, local media reported on Thursday. The island nation's government said the funding would be to procure 14 million doses of the Pfizer vaccines as well as for financing other costs pertaining to the inoculation program, as per reports Xinhua news agency. Sri Lanka's Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal submitted by Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella to this effect, the government information department said in a statement. A mass-scale inoculation program is currently in progress in the country with over 51 per cent of the population vaccinated to date. The Health Ministry said the leading vaccine being administered across the nation was the Sinopharm vaccine with 11,182,365 people receiving the first dose and 9,102,271 receiving the second dose till date. Sri Lanka has recorded an overall of 508,672 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 12,376 deaths. Land-sea trade corridor links China, Vietnam T20 World Cup anthem released, check out video here Won't Afghanistan be able to play in T20 World Cup? ICC may impose ban FCW Insider: September 23, 2021 The board will also likely have to address fallout from disciplinary measures taken as the federal employee COVID-19 vaccine mandate takes effect. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said candidate interviews are underway for the space acquisition system secretary position and he expects to make a recommendation to the defense secretary and White House soon. The Biden administration appears determined to stick to plans to retire legacy platforms and systems. The General Services Administration is hoping to build a comprehensive framework and market contractual vehicle for agencies seeking cloud solutions, with a request for information set for release in the coming weeks. Quick Hits *** Dominic Sale, deputy assistant commissioner for general supplies and services at the General Services Administration announced his departure from federal service after 14-year career in government. Sale has held a variety of posts in tech and acquisition, including a stint as acting deputy federal CIO. He won Federal 100 honors in 2010 for his work launching the IT Dashboard and the now-defunct Recovery.gov website. *** Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) are asking the Government Accountability Office to examine the equal employment opportunity complaint process and anti-harassment programs for federal employees. GAO last did such a report in 2009. *** Washington Technology takes a look at the transition in the Navy's multibillion Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. Boston, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - The Thornton Law Firm alerts investors who purchased Annovis Bio, Inc. securities (NYSE American: ANVS) between May 21, 2021 and July 28, 2021 may seek to participate in the case as a Lead Plaintiff. Interested investors may contact the Thornton Law Firm's investor protection team by visiting www.tenlaw.com/cases/Annovis for more information. Investors may also email investors@tenlaw.com or call 617-531-3917. A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors of ANVS. Investors do not need to be the Lead Plaintiff to recover as class members if the case is successful. FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.tenlaw.com/cases/Annovis The case alleges that Annovis and its senior executives made misleading statements to investors and failed to disclose that Annovis's ANVS401 did not show statistically significant results across two patient populations as to factors such as orientation, judgement, and problem solving. Interested Annovis investors have until October 18, 2021 to retain counsel and apply to be a lead plaintiff if they are interested to do so. A lead plaintiff acts on behalf of all other investor class members in managing the class action. Investors do not need to be a lead plaintiff in order to be a class member. If investors choose to take no action, they can remain an absent class member. The class has not yet been certified. Until certification occurs, investors are not represented by an attorney. Thornton Law Firm is not currently representing a plaintiff who filed a complaint but is investigating the case on behalf of investors interested in being a lead plaintiff. FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.tenlaw.com/cases/Annovis Thornton Law Firm's securities attorneys are highly experienced in representing investors in recovering damages caused by violations of the securities laws. Its attorneys have established track records litigating securities cases in courts throughout the country and recovering losses on behalf of investors. This may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. Story continues CONTACT: Thornton Law Firm LLP 1 Lincoln Street State Street Financial Center Boston, MA 02111 www.tenlaw.com/cases/Annovis To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97070 LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- B. Riley Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq: RILY), through its wholly owned subsidiary, B. Riley Securities, Inc. ("Purchaser" and together, "B. Riley"), today commenced its previously announced cash tender offer for the purchase of up to 2,000,000 American Depositary Shares ("ADS") of DoubleDown Interactive Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: DDI) ("DDI"), a leading developer and publisher of digital social casino games. B Riley Logo (PRNewsfoto/B. Riley Financial) B. Riley is offering to purchase up to 2,000,000 ADS of DDI, each representing 0.05 of a common share of DDI, that are not held by B. Riley or any of its subsidiaries ("DDI ADS"). The Offer Price is $18.00 per DDI ADS, to be paid net to the seller in cash, without interest, less any applicable withholding taxes. The Offer is being made upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase, dated September 23, 2021, and the Letter of Transmittal which will be filed by B. Riley with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") today. B. Riley is making this Offer to increase its investment and because it believes the current market value for the ADS is not reflective of DDI's intrinsic value. The Offer is scheduled to expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, on October 22, 2021 (one minute after 11:59 P.M., New York City time, on October 21, 2021) (the "Expiration Date") unless the Offer is extended or earlier terminated. Any extension of the Offer will be announced publicly on the first business day after the Expiration Date. The Offer is subject to customary closing conditions. There is no financing condition to the Offer. Holders interested in tendering their DDI ADS must do so in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Offer to Purchase. Complete terms and conditions of the Offer are set forth in the Offer to Purchase, Letter of Transmittal and other related materials, which have been filed by B. Riley with the SEC. Story continues Copies of the Offer to Purchase, Letter of Transmittal and other related materials are available free of charge from D.F. King & Co., Inc., the information agent for the Offer. Questions regarding the Offer and requests for assistance in connection with the Offer may be directed to D.F. King by contacting (866) 207-2356 (toll-free). Banks and brokers may contact D.F. King at (212) 269-5550. American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC is acting as depositary for the Offer. About B. Riley Securities B. Riley Securities provides a full suite of investment banking, corporate finance, advisory, research, and sales and trading services. Investment banking services include initial, secondary and follow-on offerings, institutional private placements, merger and acquisition (M&A) advisory, SPACs, corporate restructuring and recapitalization. B. Riley is nationally recognized and highly ranked for its proprietary small-cap equity research. The firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of B. Riley Financial. About B. Riley Financial B. Riley Financial provides collaborative solutions tailored to fit the capital raising and business advisory needs of its clients and partners. B. Riley operates through several subsidiaries that offer a diverse range of complementary end-to-end capabilities spanning investment banking and institutional brokerage, private wealth and investment management, financial consulting, corporate restructuring, operations management, risk and compliance, due diligence, forensic accounting, litigation support, appraisal, valuation, auction, and liquidation services. For more information, please visit www.brileyfin.com. Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release that are not descriptions of historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the business, operating results, financial condition, and stock price of B. Riley or DDI could be materially negatively affected. You should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are based on the information currently available to us and speak only as of the date of this press release. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include (without limitation) the possibility that the tender offer will not be consummated at the expected time, on the expected terms, or at all; and the risks associated with the unpredictable and ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the other risks described from time to time in B. Riley Financial, Inc.'s periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including, without limitation, the risks described in B. Riley Financial, Inc.'s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2021 and June 30, 2021 under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" (as applicable), and the other risks described from time to time in DDI's periodic filings with the SEC (as applicable). These factors should be considered carefully, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. All information is current as of the date this press release is issued, and B. Riley undertakes any duty to update this information, except as required by law. No Offer or Solicitation This press release is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities, nor is it a substitute for the tender offer materials that B. Riley and DDI have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). B. Riley will file a tender offer statement on Schedule TO containing the Offer to Purchase, the Letter of Transmittal, and other materials relating to the Offer. HOLDERS OF DDI ADS ARE URGED TO READ THESE DOCUMENTS CAREFULLY BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT HOLDERS SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE MAKING ANY DECISION REGARDING TENDERING THEIR ADS. The offer to purchase and related letter of transmittal will be made available free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Additional copies may be obtained for free by contacting B. Riley. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by B. Riley will be available free of charge on B. Riley's investor relations website at ir.brileyfin.com or by contacting B. Riley's investor relations at ir@brileyfin.com. Contacts Mike Frank Investor Relations ir@brileyfin.com (212) 409-2424 Jo Anne McCusker Media Relations press@brileyfin.com (646) 885-5425 Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/b-riley-commences-tender-offer-for-up-to-2-000-000-ads-of-doubledown-interactive-301383646.html SOURCE B. Riley Financial (Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration is preparing to propose cutting biofuel quotas for 2020 and 2021, amid pressure from refining interests and their Democratic allies in Congress, according to several people familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg The Environmental Protection Agency also is on track to propose a modest increase in the amount of plant-based fuels that must be mixed into gasoline and diesel in 2022, under a draft plan now being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Under that draft proposal, the overall renewable fuel requirement for 2020 -- previously set at 20.09 billion gallons -- would be reduced by as much as 15%, said the people, who asked for anonymity before the measure is announced. The proposed target for 2021 would also drop under the draft, though a modest increase is planned for 2022. The EPAs approach represents a bid by the administration to balance competing demands from Democratic allies and industry. Lawmakers from the U.S. Midwest have pressed for more bullish targets and politicians from the U.S. Northeast have argued reductions are essential to make up for the pandemic-spurred drop in fuel demand and compensate for 2020 targets they say exceeded blending capacity. Spokespeople for the EPA did not comment on the plan, which was reported earlier by Reuters. Ethanol credits used to track compliance with U.S. biofuel blending rules began soaring late last year on expectations that the incoming Biden administration would be more friendly toward the industry than Donald Trumps EPA. The credits, known as RINs, have tumbled over the last few months and touched 91 cents each on Wednesday, down about 33% from $1.35 on Sept. 10, according to traders active in the market. Oil companies argue that high RIN prices put refinery jobs and the broader economy at risk. Story continues We hope the administration acts to address skyrocketing RIN costs and to ensure that refiners will simply be able to comply with whatever standard is finalized, said Brendan Williams, head of government relations for oil refiner PBF Energy Inc. Shares of biofuel producers slumped Wednesday. Green Plains Inc. fell 6.6% to the lowest in two months, while biodiesel maker Renewable Energy Group Inc. retreated 3.9%. Oil refiners rose, with PBF climbing 11% to the highest price since mid-July. HollyFrontier Corp. rose 6.3%, the most since April. The biofuel blending quotas are closely watched because of their importance in bolstering demand for corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel. A document showing the potential number of compliance credits that would be needed to fulfill the targets was widely circulating in Washington this week, as stakeholders clamored for more information about the quotas that could be finalized later this year. The Renewable Fuels Association on Wednesday warned against relying on an email purportedly showing numbers the trade group distributed to members. Instead, the numbers are fake and the message is a complete fabrication, the group said. The planned reductions would be blow to biofuel producers, who had hoped President Joe Bidens campaign pledges to support the federal renewable fuel program would translate into more aggressive quotas and an end to waivers exempting some refineries from the mandates. Emily Skor, chief executive officer of ethanol lobby group Growth Energy, said if reported figures are accurate, they would amount to a back pedaling on Bidens promise. Its hard to imagine any justification for the administration to make such a move, Skor said. (Adds RIN prices in sixth paragraph, comment in seventh, shares in eighth.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2021 Bloomberg L.P. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., September 23, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cambridge Savings Bank (CSB), a full-service mutual bank with a customer-first approach and more than $5 billion in assets, announced that its Asset-Based Lending team has extended an $8 million credit facility to The Ockers Company, an information and communications technology reseller located in Brockton, Massachusetts. After growing 40 percent in 2020, Ockers was seeking a new banking partner to help maintain their rapid expansion. With the recent development of TouchView Interactive, a new technology that offers collaborative panels to education institutions and businesses, Ockers will leverage CSBs inventory lending solutions to support their new product launch, tactics for future acquisition opportunities, and the Companys overall business development strategy. "As a family-owned business, we prioritize forming dynamic relationships with our customers and our partners alike. From the moment we were introduced to Cambridge Savings Bank, their attentiveness and dedication to our Companys vision made it clear that this would be a successful partnership," said Jay Houser, President and CEO of The Ockers Company. "The customized lending solutions extended by CSB have afforded us the freedom to expand our business and make important strides towards our growth objectives." Originally coined an office equipment supplier in the 1920s, Ockers has spent the last century transforming their business to offer a variety of technology solutions to organizations nationwide. Most notably, they purchased all affiliate companies under the Ockers umbrella in 2009 and restructured to offer a diverse range of services to their customers. "We are thrilled that The Ockers Company has trusted our Asset-Based Lending team to provide financial guidance as they look to exceed their impressive goals," said Yvonne Kizner, Senior Vice President Asset-Based Lending, Cambridge Savings Bank. "As part of our commitment to treating every customer like our only customer, we took the time to get to know Jay and his team and understand the ins and outs of their business to best identify how we could add value and deliver the appropriate solutions that would set Ockers up for success in 2021 and beyond." Story continues CSBs commercial division is focused on serving the needs of their local communities and businesses, offering a full suite of Corporate Banking and Lending, Commercial Real Estate Lending, Treasury Management and Trade Services solutions. Cambridge Savings Bank is the bank you can trust to provide customized services to meet your business needs. To learn more about CSBs custom solutions for commercial entities, please contact: kbroyles@cambridgesavings.com. About Cambridge Savings Bank Cambridge Savings Bank is a full-service banking institution with over $5 billion in assets. As a mutual bank, CSB is committed to improving the quality of life of our employees, customers, and the communities we serve. One of the oldest and largest community banks in Massachusetts, Cambridge Savings Bank offers a full line of individual and business banking services across a robust Massachusetts-based branch network and through digital banking solutions for commercial, small business and consumer customers. To learn more about how we can meet your needs, visit us at cambridgesavings.com, or better yet, come meet us to help you make the most out of your banking relationship. About The Ockers Company: The Ockers Company is an all-encompassing information and communications technology reseller that excels at designing, installing, and supporting cost-effective solutions that optimize business performance. Ockers authorized service centers and certified technicians offer more than 700,000 computer related and communication technology products from over 3,800 of the world's leading hardware manufacturers and software publishers. Ockers primary markets include businesses of every type and size; educational institutions at every level; state and local governments plus various vertical industries including healthcare, financial and others. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005100/en/ Contacts MEDIA CONTACTS: StreetCred PR Will Ruben William@streetcredpr.com 847-208-8289 Jason Lahita Jason@streetcredpr.com 973-460-7837 Less than one month until National Shawarma Day! ChickenShawarma_wrap_plate-12507_ret Osmow's Chicken Shawarma Wrap Osmow's Chicken Shawarma Wrap TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canadas most popular Middle Eastern and Mediterranean fast, fresh eatery, Osmows is inviting Canadians to celebrate the second annual National Shawarma Day on October 15 in honour of the historic Middle Eastern street food. The second annual National Shawarma Day calls on carnivores and vegetarians alike to enjoy perfectly seasoned rotisserie-cooked chicken or crisp-fried falafels at one of 120 Osmows locations across Canada at prices last seen in 2001, the year Osmows launched. For just $5, Osmow's is offering its legendary Chicken Shawarma wrap or ROCKS at its original price, while vegetarians can take part in the day too with a Falafel Wrap or ROCKS for the same price. Shawarma is a tender, fragrant, boldly spiced and marinated meat that slowly cooks as it rotates on a vertical skewer. At Osmows, Shawarma is prepared a little differently. Once the marinated meat is delicately carved, its grilled to caramelized perfection and then served on ROCKS (rice), STIX (fries) or classically wrapped in a thin pita bread thats then expertly grilled. Personalized with add-ons like fresh herbs and grilled vegetables, feta or house-made sauces means there are endless combinations of Shawarma meals bursting with delicious flavours. A fan-favourite for a reason, be sure to add regular or NEW light and vegan garlic sauce! Only adventurous eaters dare to add Osmows Scorchin Hot Sauce! Last year, National Shawarma Day was a huge success! says Osmows CEO & Head of Franchising Ben Osmow of the fast-growing Canadian QSR company. We didnt simply measure impact by the impressive number of national social posts and line-ups at our locations across the country. We also knew last years celebration was a hit because of rave reviews from both people who had never tried Shawarma before and Shawarma aficionados alike! Our National Shawarma Day made news across Canada and spread into the US. We are excited to build on this fun themed day. When my parents opened the first Osmows in 2001 and started serving a dish they enjoyed since growing up in Egypt, no one could have imagined that we would be celebrating the official Canadian National Shawarma Day during our companys 20th anniversary year, says Osmows President & CMO Bernadette Farag. The time for shawarma is now, says Ben. Its clear that the popularity of Shawarma is on the rise, seen in our impressive growth over the past 20 years into 120 locations! Join us and all Canadian restaurants serving Shawarma in celebrating National Shawarma Day on October 15. Osmows invites all other Mediterranean brands to celebrate October 15 as National Shawarma Day in Canada as this exciting flavourful food niche continues to grow, in the spirit of diversity and cultural exploration. To show your love for Shawarma, order yours on October 15 and tag photos, reels and videos with #NationalShawarmaDay, which will help spread word and support the fast, casual restaurant sector and local businesses. For more information about National Shawarma Day and Osmows, visit osmows.com and follow @osmows on all popular social media channels. About Osmows Founded in 2001 by Sam Osmow, the first Osmows store was located in Streetsville, Ontario, Canada and remains a successful operation to this day. Over 20 years ago, as a recent immigrant to Canada, Sam saw an opportunity to bring his Egyptian roots to the Canadian landscape blending traditional Egyptian cuisine balanced with a North American palate. Filling a void in the current fast-casual culinary marketplace, Osmows flavourful dishes with signature sauces such as the fan-favourite garlic sauce keeps bringing customers back to satisfy their cravings. Osmows has grown to 120 locations and is expanding across Canada. Osmows invites all other Mediterranean brands to celebrate October 15 as National Shawarma Day in Canada as we continue to grow this exciting flavourful food niche, in the spirit of diversity and cultural exploration. ChickenShawarma_wrap_plate-12507_ret Story continues FAST SHAWARMA FACTS In Arabic, shawarma means to turn and inspired the name for the Middle Eastern method of slow, even cooking where a conical slab of meat slowly spins or spirals on a large skewer One of the worlds most popular forms of street food, especially in Egypt, Shawarma was believed to have been created in Turkey as early as the 18th Century These scenes from The Avengers caused a spike in shawarma sales https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYiZeszLosE&feature=youtu.be Depending on toppings, Shawarma is considered a low-calorie meal *The Registrar at National Day Calendar proclaimed National Shawarma Day to be observed on October 15, annually, starting in 2020 sparked by Osmows NOTE TO JOURNALISTS AND INFLUENTIAL PERSONALITIES Interviews, photo and review opportunities and cross-promotional ideas are welcome. Attachment CONTACT: Heather Kirk Immedia PR 416 500 17562 heather@immediapr.com Grants to The Nature Conservancy and The Arbor Day Foundation reinforce company's commitment to a net-zero economy HOUSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CenterPoint Energy (NYSE: CNP) today announced that through its charitable foundation a $1 million contribution will be made to two environmental organizations focused on land and water conservation, environmental education, and tree plantings to help build sustainable futures for communities the company serves. CenterPoint Energy logo. (PRNewsFoto) The Nature Conservancy and The Arbor Day Foundation will each receive a $500,000 grant from the CenterPoint Energy Foundation to support restoration of the Mississippi River and provide environmental education and tree plantings to elementary school students throughout the company's eight-state service territory. "In 2020, we promised our stakeholders we would execute on strategies that would transform CenterPoint Energy into a leading utility company," said Dave Lesar, President and Chief Executive Officer of CenterPoint Energy. "Top performance requires a commitment to excellence and continuous improvement, and today we are taking a significant step with the announcement of two contributions to leading environmental organizations that will help build sustainable futures for our communities." Collaboration with The Nature Conservancy will focus on restoration of the Mississippi River in two key regions the headwaters in Minnesota and Indiana, and the Gulf Coast region in Texas and Louisiana. The headwaters region initiatives will be comprised of nature-based solutions, including increased floodplains, agricultural best management practices, and comprehensive education to increase awareness of the importance of keeping pollutants out of clean water and mitigating flood risks. The Gulf Coast region efforts will support the building of oyster reefs to clean the freshwater flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, contributing to the success of Gulf-wide fisheries. Story continues "The Mississippi River Basin and Gulf of Mexico are two critically important natural systems in North America," said Trey Cooke, The Nature Conservancy's Director for the Mississippi River Basin Program. "The Nature Conservancy's goal is to reduce nutrient loading in the Mississippi River Basin by 20% by 2025. CenterPoint Energy's support will be critical for helping us reach this goal." The contribution to The Arbor Day Foundation will provide environmental education curriculum to third graders throughout CenterPoint Energy's service territory. The curriculum will include classroom activities and a tree for students to plant at their home. Engaging students will teach them the importance of caring for the Earth, with 9,000 trees to be planted throughout CenterPoint Energy's service territory of Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Texas. "Part of the Arbor Day Foundation's mission is to inspire the next generation of tree planters," said Dan Lambe, President of the Arbor Day Foundation. "We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to do so with CenterPoint Energy. This grant is not only an investment for the preservation and conservation of the environment, but also an investment in the children who will benefit from a greener future that we are all working toward." Lesar added, "The CenterPoint Energy Foundation is dedicated to preserving our environment and encouraging our communities to engage in sustainable practices. Our contributions to and collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and The Arbor Day Foundation further demonstrate our commitment to move toward a net-zero economy and provide environmental benefits for years to come. We see these investments as the beginning of impactful relationships and actions to build a cleaner future for all our stakeholders." The CenterPoint Energy Foundation is committed to conservation and environmental education as a component of our funding priorities. We have supported organizations at local, state and national levels for over a decade in conserving land, providing environmental education, building and sustaining outdoor environments such as trails and nature preserves, and planting trees. About CenterPoint Energy As the only investor-owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) is an energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution operations that serve more than 7 million metered customers in Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. The CenterPoint Energy Foundation is a charitable giving organization focused on strengthening the quality of life in the communities served by the company. For more information, visit CenterPointEnergy.com. For more information, contact Communications Media.Relations@CenterPointEnergy.com Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/centerpoint-energy-foundation-announces-1-million-in-environmental-contributions-301383379.html SOURCE CenterPoint Energy, Inc. Innovation and integration define exocad's newest software releases DARMSTADT, Germany, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- exocad GmbH (exocad), an Align Technology, Inc. company and a leading dental CAD software provider, detailed the company's achievements over the past year and recent productivity-boosting software innovations at its International Dental Show (IDS) press event. Under the new slogan "Imagine the CADabilities," exocad executives highlighted new product launches, recently formed strategic partnerships and company milestones. exocad will showcase at this years International Dental Show (IDS) in Cologne, Germany its newest software releases and innovations for dental technicians and dentists on 360m at booth A-020, hall 3.2 with a multitude of demo stations. "IDS is the biggest tradeshow of the dental industry and the biggest event for exocad. For us, it was always very clear that if IDS took place, we would be there," said Tillmann Steinbrecher, CEO exocad. "Our innovation is based on having a direct contact with the users and strategic partners, and, while we have always been very active on social media, nothing can replace the personal communication that happens during a trade show. Sharing ideas, discussing improvements, learning about new technologiesthat is really what IDS is all about." A year of solid software releases Seamless digital workflows and simplicity of use underscore the new series of exocad's Galway software releases. ChairsideCAD 3.0 Galway, announced at the 2021 IDS, is part of exocad's next generation of open-architecture CAD software for single-visit dentistry. The new ChairsideCAD is highly automated, intuitive, and optimized for practice use. "When we developed the Galway releases, the focus was on the increase of productivity for our customers," said Novica Savic, CCO exocad, citing new features that simplify the design process. Instant Anatomic Morphing enables the anatomy of the teeth to automatically adjust in real-time for dynamic occlusion, and AI-based detection of facial features makes smile design with Smile Creator faster and more accurate. Other recently unveiled Galway releases include DentalCAD 3.0 Galway, with new AI- supported functions, and PartialCAD 3.0 Galway, which offers faster and more accurate partial denture design. Story continues New strategic partnerships and software integrations Furthering its role as an industry leader in integration and collaboration, exocad announced that it entered two large strategic partnerships this quarter. exocad will team with the Liechtenstein-based, dental product and systems provider Ivoclar Vivadent to create integrated, efficiency-boosting solutions for labs and dental technicians. exocad also deepened its relationship with longstanding strategic partner Amann Girrbach. The Austrian company recently presented a new system for same-day dentistry called Ceramill DRS that includes exocad-based ceramill software. In addition to new strategic partnerships, exocad reached a new milestone in product integration: 10,000 implants from 100 producers are now available in the exoplan 3.0 Galway implant libraries. The comprehensive libraries include order numbers, links, information about implant surfaces and more. Growth to meet demand Following its acquisition by Align Technology Inc. in 2020, exocad has released significant innovations, almost doubled its research and development team, and discussed plans to relocate to a larger, high-tech headquarters in Darmstadt. The company has extended its presence in the U.S and expects to continue hiring globally this year and in 2022. Scavenger hunts, smile design and social outreach at IDS exocad will showcase a growing spectrum of solutions for labs and practices at the company's eye-catching, newly designed IDS booth. Visitors will have the opportunity to watch live demos at a dozen different software islands and sign up to receive their own 3D-printed try-ins using the AI-assisted Smile Creator. exocad experts and dental trailblazers Dr. Gulshan Murgai and Waldo Zarco Nosti will present exocad's software solutions: DentalCAD, ChairsideCAD and exoplan. Attendees can take part in a scavenger hunt in line with health and safety guidelines - to visit the booths and demos of exocad's strategic partners and receive special prizes. Anyone unable to attend the Cologne trade show in person can tune in online to exocad's IDS livestream for top-notch software tutorials hosted by the exocad team, first-hand impressions of the trade event and interviews with strategic partners on the showroom floor. exocad also offers IDS visitors the opportunity to participate in social outreach. Since 2005, the Italian charity organization Overland for Smile (O.N.L.U.S.) has traveled thousands of miles with its mobile surgery to bring indispensable dental care to children living in Eastern European orphanages. During IDS, exocad will collect donations on behalf of O.N.L.U.S. Attendees can donate 15 euros to the cause and receive an exclusive exocad T-shirt as a thank you. Additional information is available at exocad.com/IDS exocad names its releases after current EU "European Capitals of Culture" and selected the Irish city of Galway for this year's releases. About exocad GmbH exocad GmbH, an Align Technology, Inc. company, is a leading dental CAD software provider. exocad vigorously pushes the boundaries of digital dentistry, providing flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use CAD/CAM software for dental labs and dental practices worldwide. More than 45,000 valued customers plan implants and create functional and refined restorations with exocad's DentalCAD, ChairsideCAD and exoplan software. For more information and a list of exocad reseller partners, please visit exocad.com. exocads ChairsideCAD, its open-architecture CAD software for single-visit dentistry, received a 2021 Best of Class Technology Award from Cellerant Consulting Group. This is the third consecutive year that ChairsideCAD has been recognized for this award. Visitors will have the opportunity to watch live demos at a dozen different software islands and sign up to receive their own 3D-printed try-ins using exocad's AI-assisted Smile Creator. Under the new slogan Imagine the CADabilities, exocad presents a new booth design at this years International Dental Show (IDS) in Cologne, Germany. Our innovation is based on having a direct contact with the users and partners, and, while we have always been very active on social media, nothing can replace the personal communication that happens during a trade show. Sharing ideas, discussing improvements, learning about new technologiesthat is really what IDS is all about, said Tillmann Steinbrecher, CEO exocad. Anyone unable to visit the Cologne trade show in person can tune in online to exocads IDS live stream for top-notch software tutorials hosted by exocad experts, first-hand impressions of the trade event and interviews with strategic partners on the showroom floor. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/exocad-highlights-new-releases-strategic-partnerships-and-special-offers-at-the-international-dental-show-in-cologne-301383651.html SOURCE exocad GmbH SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new market study published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., (GIA) the premier market research company, today released its report titled "Flavored Yogurt - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics". The report presents fresh perspectives on opportunities and challenges in a significantly transformed post COVID-19 marketplace. World Flavored Yogurt Market FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 4; Released: April 2021 Executive Pool: 669 Companies: 52 - Players covered include Arla Foods; Cabot Creamery; Cargill Inc; China Mengniu Dairy Company Ltd.; Chobani LLC; Danone, Inc.; Emmi Group; Fage International S.A.; Fonterra; General Mills, Inc.; Lactalis Group; Nestle S.A.; Stonyfield Farm Inc; Yilli Group and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Flavor (Strawberry, Blueberry, Vanilla, Peach, Other Flavors); Distribution Channel (Supermarket, Convenience Stores, Online, Other Distribution Channels) Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; Spain; Russia; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific (Australia; India; South Korea; and Rest of Asia-Pacific); Latin America (Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; and Rest of Latin America); Middle East (Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates; and Rest of Middle East); and Africa. Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry Story continues ABSTRACT- Global Flavored Yogurt Market to Reach $54.6 Billion by 2026 Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Flavored Yogurt estimated at US$38.6 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$54.6 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 5.7% over the analysis period. Strawberry, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 6.6% CAGR and reach US$21 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Blueberry segment is readjusted to a revised 5.3% CAGR for the next 7-year period. The U.S. Market is Estimated at $11.1 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $11.3 Billion by 2026 The Flavored Yogurt market in the U.S. is estimated at US$11.1 Billion in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$11.3 Billion by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 8.9% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 3.1% and 5.2% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 3.6% CAGR. Vanilla Segment to Reach US$13.6 Billion by the year 2026 In the global Vanilla segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 5.3% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$7.2 Billion in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of US$10.4 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. More MarketGlass Platform Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide. Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years. CONTACTS: Zak Ali Director, Corporate Communications Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Phone: 1-408-528-9966 www.StrategyR.com Email: ZA@StrategyR.com LINKS Join Our Expert Panel https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp Connect With Us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./ Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/marketbytes Journalists & Media Info411@strategyr.com Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-industry-analysts-predicts-the-world-flavored-yogurt-market-to-reach-54-6-billion-by-2026--301382932.html SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Hope House Colorado receives financial donations, social media recognition from High 5 Cares DENVER, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- High 5 Plumbing, a family-owned and operated plumbing company serving residents in the greater Denver metropolitan area, designed its High 5 Cares program to act as a pillar for giving back to the community. For September, the company chose Hope House Colorado as its nonprofit recipient. High 5 Cares is a program designed to provide High 5 Plumbing an opportunity to give back to the community. Hope House Colorado is an organization that provides resources for supporting teen mothers, including but not limited to residential, high school and GED, and college and career programs. The organization also offers parenting classes, healthy relationship classes, certified counseling and much more. "At High 5 Plumbing, one of our core values is giving back to a community that has provided so much for us, and the High 5 Cares program is the perfect avenue to meet that goal," said Levi Torres, owner of High 5 Plumbing. "Hope House Colorado is an amazing organization providing a great service to these young women. They help teen moms become self-sufficient members of their community by providing services that may otherwise be cut off from them. "Whether it's teaching teen mothers how to be financially literate, providing personal growth classes or simply giving them a safe place to rest their head at night, Hope House Colorado is a great program and deserves to be recognized for what they do." High 5 Plumbing started its High 5 Cares program in 2018 with the mission to provide financial support to reputable trusted charity organizations in the community. The company spotlights a different nonprofit each month and donates a set amount of $500. In addition, the nonprofit receives $10 for every High 5 Club Membership that's sold during the month and receives 100% of the proceeds from the company's High 5 clothing line. High 5 Plumbing recognizes the nonprofits on their social media platforms, as well. Story continues "Community should be a focus for anyone in the home service industry, and we are always looking for an opportunity to serve our neighbors," said Torres. "High 5 Cares shows that we genuinely care about our residents and want to make a lasting impact on the families we serve. We are more than a plumbing company. We are a company that strives to meet the physical and emotional needs of our community through this program." To donate to Hope House Colorado, please visit https://www.hopehousecolorado.org/donate/. For more information about the High 5 Cares program, please visit https://www.high5plumbing.com/high5-cares/ or call (720) 388-8247. About High 5 Plumbing Founded in 2012, High 5 Plumbing is a local, family-owned company serving residents in the greater Denver metropolitan area. With a professional team that has extensive experience and a commitment to service, High 5 Plumbing offers comprehensive plumbing, sewer and drain services. The company was built on the values of solving plumbing problems and serving every customer with professionalism and respect. For more information about High 5 Plumbing, visit https://www.high5plumbing.com/. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR (865) 977-1973 hripley@ripleypr.com Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/high-5-plumbing-gives-back-to-denver-community-through-charity-program-301383161.html SOURCE High 5 Plumbing FILE PHOTO: Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani wearing a protective mask reacts during an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian authorities are monitoring the financial market situation in China, finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Thursday, and warned that property firm China Evergrande's debt woes could affect the world's economy. "We see a new risk to the financial system stability in China," she told a news conference. "They are going through a situation that is not easy and could have an extraordinary ripple effect not just for China's domestic economy, but also the world's. So we have to be careful." (Reporting by Gayatri Suroyo and Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Shri Navaratnam) DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Indonesian Data Center Colocation Services Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Research and Markets Logo This research service provides an analysis of the Indonesian data center colocation services market, covering market trends, strategic imperatives, recent developments, market drivers and restraints, market size and revenue forecast (2020-2027), compound annual growth rate, market share (by raised floor space and industry vertical demand split), competitive landscape, key participants, and growth opportunities. Indonesia is a prominent data center colocation services market in Southeast Asia. With the increasing implementation of digital transformation initiatives, favorable government policies toward digital technology adoption, and improvements in the country's connectivity and network infrastructure, the market is expected to continue growing. Enterprises across industries and the government of Indonesia are shifting their focus toward disruptive technologies, enhancing the country's readiness to embrace and support the establishment of hyperscale data centers. The country's demand for colocation services is primarily driven by the regional expansion of over-the-top participants and content service providers, boost in data center requirements by hyperscale public cloud providers, multiple government policies and initiatives that support data center colocation growth, and the surge in mobile data and internet adoption. Global participants are among the cloud vendors expanding their infrastructure and availability in Indonesia, including Alibaba, Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services. Global service providers' presence increases hyperscale colocation services demand, further growing the market in the country. However, the market faces restraints such as rising competition and service providers' need to drive differentiation, enterprises' security concerns, power and connectivity challenges, and lack of trained manpower to effectively lead data center operations. Story continues Key Issues Addressed What are the expected growth rates and drivers of specific service areas in the market? What are the expected growth restraints shaping the market's future in Indonesia? What are the significant developments in the market in Indonesia? What are the key industry market trends? What is the market's competitive landscape like? Who are the key participants in the market? What are their latest developments? What is the market share by raised floor space of key participants? Key Topics Covered: 1. Strategic Imperatives Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow? The Strategic Imperative Impact of the Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on the Indonesian Data Center Colocation Services Industry Growth Opportunities Fueling the Growth Pipeline Engine 2. Growth Opportunity Analysis-Indonesian Data Center Colocation Services Market Data Center Colocation Services Market-Scope of Analysis Data Center Colocation Services Market Ecosystem Key Growth Metrics for the Data Center Colocation Services Market Key Data Center Locations-Data Center Colocation Services Market Location Analysis-Data Center Colocation Services Market Market Overview-Data Center Colocation Services Market Key Market Trends-Data Center Colocation Services Market Growth Drivers for the Data Center Colocation Services Market Growth Drivers Analysis-Data Center Colocation Services Market Growth Restraints for the Data Center Colocation Services Market Growth Restraints Analysis-Data Center Colocation Services Market Forecast Assumptions-Data Center Colocation Services Market Revenue Forecast-Data Center Colocation Services Market Revenue Forecast Analysis-Data Center Colocation Services Market Market Share-Data Center Colocation Services Market Demand Analysis-Data Center Colocation Services Market Competitive Environment-Data Center Colocation Services Market Competitive Landscape-Data Center Colocation Services Market Competitive 3. Growth Opportunity Universe-Indonesian Data Center Colocation Services Market Growth Opportunity 1: Developing Hyperscale-ready Data Centers to Meet the Growing Demand for Colocation Services from Major Hyperscale Cloud Vendors Growth Opportunity 2: Establishing Edge Data Centers to Address Increasing Demand for High-speed Connectivity and Low Latency Growth Opportunity 3: Providing Retail Colocation Services to Enterprises with Captive Data Centers 4. The Last Word Companies Mentioned Alibaba Amazon Web Services Google Cloud Microsoft For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/vvvf8a Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 Cision View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/indonesian-data-center-colocation-services-markets-2020-2021--2027---developing-hyperscale-ready-data-centers-to-meet-the-growing-demand-for-colocation-services-from-major-hyperscale-cloud-vendors-301384150.html SOURCE Research and Markets Call to Action for Researchers and Healthcare Professionals to Improve Infant Health Outcomes by Protecting and Promoting Breastfeeding 15th Global Breastfeeding and Lactation Symposium 15th Global Breastfeeding and Lactation Symposium Baar, Switzerland, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Medela, a leading breast pump brand and medical device manufacturer, concluded its 15th Global Breastfeeding and Lactation Symposium with 1,400 people tuning in virtually from around the world. Medela convened a diverse group of global health leaders and lactation experts to share the latest research and insights in lactation and human milk, empowering the lactation and breastfeeding community with key information to support a strong call to action: respond to future pandemic threats with lactation needs in mind, improve clinical practice, better care for breastfeeding families and drive change. There is power in bringing the top minds together to focus on improving infant and womens health. Over the past two days, leading scientists from six countries shared the latest research insights and discussed their views on current challenges with healthcare professionals from around the world, said Annette Bruls, CEO of Medela worldwide. We deliberately focused this year's symposium on the pandemic and the NICU to demonstrate the importance of building a strong community and establishing a research-based approach. Only together can we ensure the promotion and protection of breastfeeding and human milk to combat disparities as a shared responsibility. We are grateful to every expert and healthcare professional who helped make our first-ever virtual global education event a success, but even more so, for their work continuously advancing breast milk and lactation research and practice. At the symposium, Medela celebrated its 60th anniversary by building on its commitment to research, advocacy, and mothers. Announced at the event, Medela shared its intention to support up to 60 Ronald McDonald House locations around the world funded by the Symposium registration fees and further support through the companys Medela Cares program. This donation will include hospital-grade (multi-user) Symphony breast pumps, kits, and breastfeeding accessories for use by families with breastfeeding needs to ensure parents staying at a Ronald McDonald House have one less thing to worry about. The Symposium featured diverse research sessions focused on: Protecting Human Milk and Breastfeeding in a Covid-19 World Focusing on the protection and promotion of breastfeeding, experts emphasized the importance of a multidisciplined and coordinated response to the global threat. Based on knowledge and scientific data on the impact of Covid-19 on human milk and breastfeeding related clinical practices around the world, experts presented a clear roadmap for healthcare professionals to preserve and promote breastfeeding in times of a pandemic. Story continues In times of crisis like the COVID pandemic, we need to quickly assemble the most capable teams to generate robust data that allows us to make evidence-based recommendations and ultimately save lives, says Prof. Lars Bode (USA) , who presented the Safety evaluation of human milk at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He demonstrated scientific evidence revealing that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from mother to infant through breastfeeding and the use of human milk is highly unlikely. 1,2 Furthermore, the current pandemic has uncovered the urgent and immediate need to invest in research that establishes the safety of human milk at crisis onset, and the need for governments, public health agencies, and the scientific community at large to establish a response task force capable to rapidly and rigorously monitor and assess the safety of human milk and breastfeeding at the onset of the next global health crisis. Dr. Rebecca Powell (USA) highlighted research she conducted on breast milk collected through the pandemic. Findings revealed that 95% of pandemic samples from COVID-19-recovered donors had SARS-CoV-2-specific sIgA activity, and 75% of samples were also positive for specific IgG. All milk samples from COVID-19-recovered donors with significant levels of sIgA also exhibited robust SARS-CoV-2 neutralization capacity. Importantly, in all milk samples, the specific sIgA persisted as long as 7-10 months after infection, demonstrating the value of human milk to combat future threats. Dr. Dani Dumitriu (USA) focused on the threat to vulnerable populations during a pandemic. The COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes (COMBO) study seeks to understand the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and prenatal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infections on babies and their mothers, for early identification of potential risks and development of interventions. The data highlight an additional example of health inequities brought to light and exacerbated by the pandemic. My timely presentation analyses the factors contributing to Nigerias low rates of exclusive breastfeeding while exploring how investments made in creating and strengthening the continuum of care have stood the test of resilience during COVID, and proved to be the enabler for a strong start to building back better, said Her Excellency Mrs. Toyin Saraki (NGA) . Her Excellency presented the Sub-Saharan effect; COVID-19, maternal and neonatal health and community-centred approaches and the instrumental role midwives and other healthcare workers play in advancing the continuum of care. Every effort should be made to inform and help parents provide optimal nutrition for their child, said Prof. Hans van Goudoever (NLD). Prof. van Goudoever presented recommendations for clinical practices to preserve and promote breastfeeding, now and in the future. The public health impact of COVID-19 around the world has been profound, with studies reporting a decline in breastfeeding rates worldwide due to measures like infant-parent isolation, fear for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through breastfeeding, rapid discharge from hospital and lack of in person counselling in the postnatal period. Delivery care providers should have a comprehensive breastfeeding plan in place to support breastfeeding. When managed with practices known to be positive for the initiation of lactation (i.e. informed decision making, skin-to-skin care, etc.), it will allow for an increase in the rates of human milk usage at discharge. Perhaps now, more than ever, it is important for healthcare professionals to acknowledge the value of such antenatal planning as well as staff education related to policy and protocol development, says Prof. Hans van Goudoever. 25 Years of Research Learnings & Future Innovation Reflecting on decades of breastfeeding and lactation research and collaboration with industry and academia, experts are pushing for greater recognition of the value of human milk, paired with a desire to translate that value with the support and development of a strong scientific community. A holistic view and an engaging approach must underpin this to comprehend research and generate impact for mothers and babies. Translational research is essential in the field of human lactation if we are to engage science to solve the issues that breastfeeding women and their babies face, explains Prof. Donna Geddes (AU) , who reviewed a quarter century journey in human lactation from discovery to translation. Geddes presented on the importance for human lactation research to be conceptualized as a biological framework where maternal and infant factors impacting human milk are studied along with relationships to infant growth, development, and health. By summarising seminal findings of their research programme using a biological systems approach, it allowed for the translation of the findings with respect to education, and clinical practice and sets a foundation for improved study design for future investigations in human lactation. Prof. Paula Meier (USA) presented twice during the event, first speaking on Initiation breast pump technology: Integrating clinical scholarship and basic science research, which outlined the collaboration between academia and industry, leading to breakthrough innovations in the initiation of lactation in pump dependent mothers. Her second discussion followed up on the practical outcomes of her research and focused on Best practices for initiation of lactation in the NICU. The initiation of lactation is a short, critical postpartum window that is linked to subsequent outcome measures of achievement of secretory activation, achievement of coming to volume, and receipt of mothers own milk at NICU discharge for breast pump-dependent NICU mothers and their vulnerable infants, said Prof. Meier. Progressing Clinical Standards of Care for Lactation Establishing and advancing clinical standards of care for breastfeeding in the NICU is critical given the benefits of human milk in improving health outcomes for preterm infants. Quality improvement programmes play a central role in this regard in today's neonatal intensive care unit. Medela has worked with leading global experts to outline 10 key areas clinicians can focus on to improve the dose of human milk. Of equal importance is infant nutrition and the need to get each mothers milk production off to the best start possible. With both fields still not optimally managed today, the experts provide clear roadmaps and reasoning as to why it is important, pointing out that feeding remains one of the last fields to be optimised, with standards for individualisation needing to be developed to ensure preterm nutrition is in line with term breastfeeding, giving each infant what they need. The importance of human milk, particularly own mothers milk (OMM), is even more profound for infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Quality improvement projects clearly demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the dose of human milk in the NICU, said Dr. Rosalina Barroso (PRT) . This will have a positive impact on reducing morbidity and infant mortality, especially in preterm infants. Barroso discussed increasing the dose of own mothers milk in the NICU: A quality improvement approach, based on data showing that substantial improvements in the dose of OMM can be achieved by implementing evidence-based lactation practices. 3,4,5 In Nanjing, China, our NICU center serves 1000+ pre-term and sick infants annually, said Prof. Shuping Han (CHN) who presented on continuous quality improvement practices on human milk feeding of very low birth weight. By consistently implementing quality improvement for mothers own milk feeding since 2015, we have achieved some promising outcomes. Recent studies found that the dosages and timing of human milk feedings play a critical role in reducing the risk of morbidities during hospitalization in preterm infants. By consistently implementing the QI protocol, researchers achieved infant feeds composed of 80% MOM on average during the first 28 days post-birth and during hospitalization. More importantly, there were reductions in incidence of feeding intolerance, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), late-onset sepsis (LOS) in preterm, and shortened hospital stays. 6,7 With COVID, they designed a digital lactation consultant intervention on WeChat to promote MOM feeding of premature infants in the NICU. The effect of digital lactation consultation through the WeChat mini-program increased the ratio of MOM feeding in premature infants in the NICU. I believe in human milk as the best nutritional source to feed premature infants, explains Prof. Christoph Fusch (DE), who discussed the optimisation of nutrient intake in the NICU. Human milk is the best nutrition for term born neonates. Its protein content supports typical term growth rates. In addition, human milk protein is better tolerated by the newborn gut when compared to formula and contains a number of special substances like immunoglobulins, enzymes, bio-factors like hormones and cytokines, cells (including stem cells) and bacteria. Mother nature did invent human milk for term babies, and extreme preterm babies have different needs, said Prof. Fusch. Recent research shows that nutrient intake of human milk is by far not meeting recommendations and even more critical random changes in human milk composition puts preterm infants at substantial risk for unbalanced intakes. Hence, neonatal teams need to know about the preterm infants human milk needs and how best to achieve these. The importance of my talk is to bring nutritional facts and physiology to the NICU team and to delineate ways to overcome and make human milk a successful and safe nutrition for preterm infants. Translating Evidence to Practice Risk factors appear to cut through all demographic groups, meaning that breastfeeding outcomes are worse for African American and BIPOC women, regardless of traditionally supportive parameters such as education. Some of the identified biases, such as dismissive attitudes towards pain and long waiting times, are known risk factors for breastfeeding success. Experts recommend the importance of assessing the known risk factors to determine the anticipatory guidance needed. This is in addition to previous comments about the value of providing tailored, personalised support to mothers and infants, that must be constantly reassessed to improve outcomes and ensure that all breastfeeding parents receive the right support they need. Implicit bias has been well documented as directly linked to the black maternal mortality crises and high rates of black infant deaths. 8 Kimberly Seals Allers (USA) discussed Understanding experiences of bias in hospital lactation support from African American and BIPOC women: Data from an 18-month study of the IRTH project. The study, conducted through a new digital project, Irth (as in birth, but without the B for bias), captured the lived experience of maternity and infant care by BIPOC women, including feedback on their specific interactions with lactation support professionals in hospital settings. Using a reproductive justice framework, Irth centers on the communities most burdened by the problem of biased care. Many families around the world are not able to meet their personal breastfeeding goals. Only 41% of infants worldwide receive exclusive human milk for the first six months (UNICEF & WHO, 2018). Currently, only 42% of infants are breastfed within one hour of birth (UNICEF & WHO, 2018). As such, Prof. Diane Spatz (USA) closed the event with A call to action: Ensuring coming to volume for all lactating parents. Sharing research that identifies a critical window of opportunity for lactation initiation: the time between the infants birth and the feed/milk expression, as well as the patterns of feeding/milk expression during the postpartum hospital stay, are key drivers for maternal milk supply. Health care providers should provide anticipatory guidance to educate and emphasize the importance of early and frequent feedings/milk expression so that all women can reach their personal breastfeeding goals. All registered attendees have on-demand access to all the event presentations and poster sessions through June 2022. Those interested can get on-demand access to the recorded event for 40 EURO, beginning in October by registering at www.medela.com/symposium. About Medela Through advancing research, observing natural behavior and listening to our customers, Medela turns science into care while nurturing health for generations. Medela supports millions of moms, babies, patients and healthcare professionals in more than 100 countries all over the world. As the healthcare choice for more than 6 million hospitals and homes across the globe, Medela provides leading research-based breast milk feeding and baby products, healthcare solutions for hospitals, and clinical education. Medela is dedicated to building better health outcomes, simplifying and improving life, and developing breakthroughs that help moms, babies and patients live their life to the fullest. For more information, visit www.medela.com. 1 Chambers C, Krogstad P, Bertrand K, Contreras D, Tobin NH, Bode L, Aldrovandi G. Evaluation for SARS-CoV-2 in Breast Milk From 18 Infected Women. JAMA 2020;324(13):1347-1348 2 Krogstad P, Contreras D, Ng H, Tobin N, Chambers CD, Bertrand K, Bode L, Aldrovandi G. No Evidence of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 in Human Milk: Analysis of a Cohort of 110 Lactating Women. medRxiv. 2021 Apr 7:2021.04.05.21254897. 3 Spatz DL, Froh EB, Schwarz J, et al. Pump early, pump often: a continuous quality improvement project. J Perinat Educ 2015; 24: 160170. 4 Takako H, Mizue M, Izumi H, et al. Improving human milk and breastfeeding rates in a perinatal hospital in Japan: a quality improvement project. Breastfeed Med 2020; 15: 538545. 5 Parker MG, Patel AL. Using quality improvement to increase human milk use for preterm infants. Semin Perinatol 2017; 41: 175186. 6 Feng Liu,Shu-Ping Han,Zhang-Bin Yu, et al.Effect of breastfeeding quality improvement on breastfeeding rate in very low birth weight and extremely low birth weight infants. Zhongguo Dang Dai Er Ke Za Zhi.2016 Oct;18(10):937-942. 7 Liu Feng, Han Shuping, Yu Zhangbin,et al. Evaluation of continuous quality improvement on breastfeeding in very/extremely low birth weight infants Chin J Perinat Med, Jul. 2019, Vol. 22, No. 7:451-455 8 Alkema L, Chou D, Hogan D, et al. Global, regional, and national levels and trends in maternal mortality between 1990 and 2015, with scenario-based projections to 2030: A systematic analysis by the UN Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group. Lancet. 2016;387(10017):462-474. Attachment CONTACT: Kate Schraml Medela 815-578-2343 medelateam@ogilvy.com OSHKOSH, Wis. & PITTSBURGH, September 20, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE: OSK), a leading innovator of mission-critical vehicles and essential equipment, and Carnegie Foundry, a robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) venture studio headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., announced today a strategic partnership and Oshkosh Corporation investment in Carnegie Foundry to accelerate innovation in autonomy and robotics. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210920005673/en/ Carnegie Foundry has an existing relationship with the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University, the world leader in autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence. The new partnership will build upon this relationship and will complement Oshkoshs ongoing work in autonomous vehicles and equipment, providing significant benefits to the millions of people that do important work every day including the nations soldiers, firefighters and first responders, as well as environmental service, refuse collection and construction workers. "The Carnegie Foundry team is comprised of industry leaders with outstanding expertise in autonomy," said John Pfeifer, Oshkosh Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer. "For years Oshkosh has been developing autonomous technology that delivers greater productivity while reducing total cost of ownership for our customers. Oshkoshs strategic investment in Carnegie Foundry will put our customers at the forefront of emerging innovation and technology in the robotics and autonomy space." "We are very excited to partner with Oshkosh Corporation as we bring autonomy, robotics and AI innovations to market," said Carnegie Foundry Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Robert J. Szczerba. "Industrial-scale innovations require specialized experience, a deep understanding of these unique markets and a long-term approach. Its our good fortune that we found investment, aligned mindsets and large-scale industrial specialization with our partners at Oshkosh Corporation." Story continues As part of the strategic partnership, a member of Oshkosh Corporation will join the Carnegie Foundry Board of Directors. About Oshkosh Corporation At Oshkosh (NYSE: OSK), we make innovative, mission-critical equipment to help everyday heroes advance communities around the world. Headquartered in Wisconsin, Oshkosh Corporation employs more than 14,000 team members worldwide, all united behind a common cause: to make a difference in peoples lives. Oshkosh products can be found in more than 150 countries under the brands of JLG, Pierce, Oshkosh Defense, McNeilus, IMT, Jerr-Dan, Frontline, Oshkosh Airport Products, London and Pratt Miller. For more information, visit oshkoshcorp.com. , All brand names referred to in this news release are trademarks of Oshkosh Corporation or its subsidiary companies. About Carnegie Foundry Carnegie Foundry is a unique Robotics and AI venture studio, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. In partnership with the world leader in autonomous robotics and AI - the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University we develop, mature and commercialize cutting-edge IP and advanced prototypes, already market tested and primed for new and expanded applications. Our business model mitigates the engineering risk, long lead times to market ready products and high burn rate that are the most common points of failure for other robotics companies. This allows Carnegie Foundry to build-out and spin-off multi-use technology solutions better, faster and cheaper. For more information visit carnegiefoundry.com or contact us at info@carnegiefoundry.com. Forward Looking Statements This news release contains statements that the Company believes to be "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Companys future financial position, business strategy, targets, projected sales, costs, earnings, capital expenditures, debt levels and cash flows, and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, words such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "should," "project" or "plan" or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology are generally intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, some of which are beyond the Companys control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Companys business, results of operations and financial condition; the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic; actions that may be taken by governmental authorities and others to address or otherwise mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economies and the Companys customers, suppliers and employees; and the cyclical nature of the Companys Access Equipment, Commercial and Fire & Emergency markets, which are particularly impacted by the strength of U.S. and European economies and construction seasons. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210920005673/en/ Contacts Financial: Patrick Davidson Senior Vice President, Investor Relations 920.502.3266 Media: Bryan Brandt Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer 920.502.3670 Carnegie Foundry info@carnegiefoundry.com EDMONTON, AB, Sept. 23, 2021 /CNW/ - Two storms this summer across Alberta and Saskatchewan caused a total of $120 million in insured damage. Strong winds, hail and rain on July 22 caused $56 million in insured damage, while severe storms on August 31 brought flash flooding and large hail that caused a further $64 million in insured damage, according to initial estimates from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ). Hail damaged homes and vehicles in both provinces, while strong winds downed trees and power lines, leaving many without power for hours. Contact Us Insurance Bureau of Canada (CNW Group/Insurance Bureau of Canada) "Again this summer, Canadians across the Prairies had their homes, vehicles, and businesses damaged by heavy storms," said Aaron Sutherland, Vice-President, Western and Pacific, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). "Our thoughts are with those who have been affected by these storms. Canada's insurers are here to help. Anyone with questions about their home or business insurance should call their insurance representative or IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC." Damage caused by hail and wind is typically covered by home, commercial and comprehensive auto insurance policies. IBC reminds residents in Alberta and Saskatchewan that the insurance industry is committed to assisting its customers throughout the entire claims process for this, and any other, severe weather event. "As our climate changes, the frequency and severity of weather events is on the rise, and so too are the financial costs borne by insurers and taxpayers," added Sutherland. "Nowhere is this more true than in Alberta. Of the 10 most costly natural disasters in Canadian history, six of these have hit Alberta." These storms are the latest in a very concerning trend and follow closely on the heels of a hail event in Calgary earlier this summer that caused over $500 million in insured damage on July 2. Last year, Calgary also witnessed the costliest hailstorm in Canadian history, causing roughly $1.2 billion in insured damages, making it the fourth costliest natural disaster of all time. The most expensive natural catastrophe on record is the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, which resulted in almost $4 billion in insured losses. The next highest loss, at $3.5 billion, was in 2013, and included the flooding in southern Alberta. Story continues Governments at all levels must do more to prioritize investments that build our resilience and better protect our families and communities. Canada must prioritize its work on a national adaptation strategy including a high-risk flood insurance pool to address climate-related disasters such as extreme heat, wildfires, floods, windstorms and hail. Increased collaboration across the public and private sector collaborate is essential to defending Canadians from these events. The amount of insured damage is an estimate provided by CatIQ (www.catiq.com) under licence to IBC. Resources If you have questions, contact your insurance representative or IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC. For additional information, visit www.ibc.ca/hail or email AskIBCWest@ibc.ca. About Insurance Bureau of Canada Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties. For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca . Follow us on Twitter @IBC_West or like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC. Insurance Bureau of Canada (CNW Group/Insurance Bureau of Canada) SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2021/23/c5070.html NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rosen Law Firm, P.A. Logo WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) between April 22, 2021 and September 8, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important November 15, 2021 lead plaintiff deadline. SO WHAT: If you purchased Boston Beer securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement. WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Boston Beer class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2159.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than November 15, 2021. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers. Story continues DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Boston Beer's hard seltzer sales were decelerating; (2) as a result, Boston Beer was reasonably likely to incur inventory write-offs; (3) the Company was reasonably likely to incur shortfall fees payable to third party brewers; (4) a result of the foregoing, Boston Beer's financial results would be adversely impacted; and (5) as a result of the foregoing, defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages. To join the Boston Beer class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2159.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/. Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Contact Information: Laurence Rosen, Esq. Phillip Kim, Esq. The Rosen Law Firm, P.A. 275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 686-1060 Toll Free: (866) 767-3653 Fax: (212) 202-3827 lrosen@rosenlegal.com pkim@rosenlegal.com cases@rosenlegal.com www.rosenlegal.com Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rosen-skilled-investor-counsel-encourages-the-boston-beer-company-inc-investors-with-losses-to-secure-counsel-before-important-deadline-in-securities-class-action--sam-301384340.html SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A. TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 /CNW/ - Today marks Skills for Success Day (formerly Essential Skills Day), an annual initiative to raise awareness about the importance of the key skills needed for learning, work, and life. Founded in 2010 by ABC Life Literacy Canada, a national literacy organization, the day encourages Canadians to improve upon these important skills. abclifeliteracy.ca (CNW Group/ABC Life Literacy Canada) Skills for Success include skills that are foundational for building other skills and knowledge and important for effective social interaction. They overlap and interact with each other, and with other technical and life skills. These skills, which have been identified by the Government of Canada in response to an evolving labour market and changing skill needs, include: Reading, Writing, Numeracy, Digital, Problem Solving, Communication, Collaboration, Adaptability, Creativity and Innovation. To access free workbooks and tools that support the Skills for Success model, visit abcactivatelearning.ca. Everyone benefits from having these skills. They help you to get a job, progress at your current job and change jobs. These skills also help you become an active member of your community and succeed in learning. Skills for Success are skills that help Canadians in a quickly changing world. The Canadian workplace, labour market and economy continue to evolve as a result of automation, artificial intelligence, and other technological advancements. This kind of automation decreases the need for physical and manual skills while intensifying the need for social-emotional skills that are not easily replaced by computers. In addition to these social-emotional skills, math and numeracy continue to play a key role in an estimated 70 per cent of jobs, especially with the growth of data-driven processes and analytics. "The Skills for Success have been identified at a crucial time when the workforce is changing and there are rapidly evolving skill requirements," says Elizabeth Robinson, Programs Director at ABC Life Literacy Canada. "Employers are facing challenges finding workers with the right combination of social-emotional, digital and literacy skills, while workers need support to keep up with the changing skill demands of the modern labour market. The Skills for Success have come at the right time and it's crucial that we use this day to shed light on the importance of these skills for all Canadians." Story continues In Canada, the number of people who struggle with literacy skills has increased to almost one in two during the past decade. As a result, these Canadians may be unable to meet the skills demands required in today's workforce. Improving the skills of workers can have a major impact on business bottom lines. Furthermore, individuals who have these skills are more likely to have higher salaries, better overall health and higher levels of participation in their community. "To ensure that our country has a strong skilled workforce, it is essential to inform youth about the importance of developing the Skills for Success they need to have for a rewarding career in the continuously evolving job market," said Shaun Thorson, Chief Executive Officer, Skills/Competences Canada. "Skills/Competences Canada will be raising awareness of Skills for Success Day through their Back to School Campaign, where SCC's partners will be highlighting how they use these skills in their skilled trade or technology." The Activate Learning project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Adult Learning, Literacy & Essential Skills Program. To learn more about Skills for Success Day and to download free resources, visit SkillsForSuccessDay.ca. About ABC Life Literacy Canada ABC Life Literacy Canada is a non-profit organization that aims to strengthen organizations that promote adult learning by developing and supporting the use of high-quality introductory learning materials and resources written in clear language. We envision a Canada where everyone has the tools and opportunities they need to improve their literacy and essential skills. For more information on digital literacy and ABC Life Literacy Canada's programs, visit abclifeliteracy.ca. About Skills/Competences Canada Skills Canada was founded in 1989 as a national, not-for-profit organization with partner Skills Canada organizations in each of the provinces/territories that work with employers, educators, labour groups and governments to promote skilled trade and technology careers among Canadian youth. Its unique position among private and public sector partners enables it to work toward securing Canada's future skilled labour needs while helping young people discover rewarding careers. Skills Canada offers experiential learning opportunities including skilled trade and technology competitions for hundreds of thousands of young Canadians through regional, provincial/territorial, national and international events, as well as skilled trade and technology awareness programs. Headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Skills/Competences Canada is the Canadian Member Organization of WorldSkills. Follow Skills/Competences Canada on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and LinkedIn. SOURCE ABC Life Literacy Canada Cision View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2021/23/c5518.html Available in several configurations, SolidSense N8 Compact edge gateways create powerful wireless IoT networks and are ideal for smart building, lighting, and other enterprise applications LYON, France and TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SolidRun , a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance edge computing solutions, today announced the addition of SolidSense N8 Compact IoT to its line of SolidSense-branded enterprise-grade IoT edge gateways. Powerful, scalable, and cost effective, the new SolidSense N8 Compact IoT edge gateway features a mix of technologies that make it an excellent solution for business applications. The new SolidSense N8 Compact IoT edge gateway will be showcased at SIDO, taking place in Lyon, France on September 22-23, 2021. SolidRun Unveils SolidSense Edge Gateway with Wirepas Mesh Support for Unparalleled Wireless Industrial IoT Connectivity (PRNewsfoto/SolidRun) Building upon SolidRun's partnership with Wirepas, the new SolidSense N8 IoT Compact features Wirepas Linux Gateway software that enables reliable, massive-scale communications from Wirepas Massive-enabled devices backhauled over cellular, Wi-Fi or ethernet connections. Additionally, Wirepas provides built-in support for communication with Wirepas cloud assets, such as network diagnostics and positioning engines. With its flexible radio features, the SolidSense N8 IoT Compact can support up to two Wirepas radio interfaces, which benefit further from Wirepas Massive's unique automatic multi-gateway and load-balancing support, which automatically gives higher data throughput. These features allow SolidSense gateways to support large Wirepas mesh networks with massive data requirements. Using its powerful networking and processing capabilities, SolidSense gateways seamlessly integrate Wirepas mesh capabilities into any enterprise IoT network. "Wirepas customers use Wirepas Massive in industrial-grade applications like sensor monitoring, preventative maintenance, lighting control and asset tracking. Devices running on Wirepas mesh ensure coverage everywhere in a building, even in the largest warehouses and hospitals. One network can have several gateways without having to configure or commission a device on a particular gateway. This means that the requirements for gateway reliability and performance are high. SolidRun's N8 IoT Compact gateways perfectly match the expectations of our customers," said Jani Vehkalahti, SVP Global Sales at Wirepas." Story continues "Modern enterprises rely on several network-connect devices and sensors for their daily operations. However, the amount of data generated by these networks can create a major bandwidth bottleneck if processing and analytics is managed at the cloud. Our SolidSense N8 edge gateway is designed to monitor and analyze tons of sensors at the edge, reducing the volume of data sent over the internet and making networks far more efficient," said Dr. Atai Ziv, CEO at SolidRun. "With its vast performance and limitless application support and seamless expandability, our new SolidSense N8 is a swiss army knife for enterprise IoT applications." Ideal for enabling automation, asset tracking, security, smart buildings, and more, SolidSense Edge Gateways are scalable and capable of managing single applications to processing the data from numerous sensors within a building in real time. SolidSense N8 IoT Compact Edge Gateways can be ordered with a variety of connectivity options and are powered by NXP i.MX8M Nano processors. The solid-state, fanless design of all SolidSense products allows for a compact, fit-anywhere package that can withstand a variety of environmental factors and temperature fluctuations, providing years of reliable operation. Running on Linux, SolidSense gateways have a near limitless amount of open-source software applications available to them, and software can be deployed or upgraded automatically over the air, or by a field technician. Out of the box, developers are provided access to a full suite of open-source software solutions that can run on the gateways and in the cloud for device and connectivity management. SolidSense cloud is available as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) or can be deployed on customer IT infrastructures. All SolidSense Edge Gateways are OEM ready, but SolidRun will work with customers to configure custom systems to any industry's or enterprise's specific IoT needs. SolidSense N8 Edge Gateways are available today from SolidRun at www.solid-run.com/solidsense . Press Kit: https://bit.ly/SolidRunN8 SolidSense N8 IoT Compact BLE SolidSense N8 IoT Compact LTE BLE SolidSense N8 IoT Compact Extended SolidSense N8 IoT Compact Extended LTE I/Os 1 x USB 2.0 1 x USB 2.0 1 x RS485 1 x RS485 1 x BLE 5.0 (SDR based on nRF52832 Wirepas Compatible) 1 x BLE 5.0 (SDR based on nRF52832 Wirepas Compatible) 1 x CAN 1 x CAN 1 x USB 2.0 1 x USB 2.0 Networking 1 x Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000 1 x Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000 1 x Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000 1 x Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000 1 x 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WIFI and Bluetooth 5.0 1 x 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WIFI and Bluetooth 5.0 1 x 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WIFI and Bluetooth 5.0 1 x 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WIFI and Bluetooth 5.0 1 x LTE Cat 4 Worldwide + GPS (with fallback on 3G/2G) 1 x LTE Cat 4 Worldwide + GPS (with fallback on 3G/2G) Processor NXP i.MX 8M Nano Arm Cortex A53 Single core @1500MHz + Cortex M7@650MHz NXP i.MX 8M Nano Arm Cortex A53 Single core @1500MHz + Cortex M7@650MHz NXP i.MX 8M Nano Arm Cortex A53 Single core @1500MHz + Cortex M7@650MHz NXP i.MX 8M Nano Arm Cortex A53 Single core @1500MHz + Cortex M7@650MHz Memory & Storage 1GB DDR4 1GB DDR4 1GB DDR4 1GB DDR4 8GB eMMC 8GB eMMC 8GB eMMC 8GB eMMC MicroSD MicroSD MicroSD MicroSD Misc. Programmable LEDs Programmable LEDs Programmable LEDs Programmable LEDs Supercap protection Supercap protection Supercap protection Supercap protection RTC w/ battery RTC w/ battery RTC w/ battery RTC w/ battery Development and Debug interfaces Console port (internal) Console port (internal) Console port (internal) Console port (internal) Power 9V-36V 9V-36V 9V-36V 9V-36V PoE sink PoE sink Expansion card I/Os 1 x internal expansion header 1 x internal expansion header 1 x internal expansion header 1 x internal expansion header Temperature 0C to 50C 0C to 50C 0C to 50C 0C to 50C Dimensions 150 x 85 x 40mm 150 x 85 x 40mm 150 x 85 x 40mm 150 x 85 x 40mm Enclosure Plastic casing with internal antennas for WIFI-Bluetooth/BLE Plastic casing with internal antenna for WIFI-Bluetooth. One SMA port for LTE. Plastic casing with internal antenna for WIFI-Bluetooth Plastic casing with internal antenna for WIFI-Bluetooth. One SMA port for LTE. About SolidRun SolidRun is a global leading developer of embedded systems and network solutions, focused on a wide range of energy-efficient, powerful and flexible products. Our innovative compact embedded solutions are based on ARM and x86 architecture and offer a variety of platforms including SOMs (System-on-Module), SBCs (Single Board Computer) and industrial mini PCs. SolidRun offers a one-stop-shop for developers and OEMs, providing a complete service from hardware customization, to software support and even product branding and enclosure design. With a mission to simplify application development while overcoming deployment challenges, SolidRun proudly provides customers faster time-to-market and lower costs. About Wirepas Wirepas Mesh enables wireless IoT networking at massive scale. It is a decentralized IoT network protocol that can be used to connect, locate and identify lights, sensors, beacons, assets, machines and meters in cities, buildings, industry, logistics and energy with unprecedented scale, density, flexibility and reliability. It can be used on any radio hardware and on any frequency band. Wirepas has its headquarters in Tampere, Finland and offices in Australia, France, Germany, India, South Korea, the UK and the United States. Things connected Naturally. Media Contacts: Michael Farino New Era Communications michael@newerapr.com 949-346-1984 Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/solidrun-releases-solidsense-n8-iot-compact-edge-gateway-with-wirepas-massive-support-301382737.html SOURCE SolidRun Company pushes beyond current frontiers of IoT security and observability as the first platform to establish "presence" on variety of devices, whenever made past, present and future to both secure them and provide real-time data insights Sternum embeds its endpoint solution without compromising performance while solving the "IoT Blindness" crisis through its intelligent Cloud Platform; its patented technology is already embedded in over 100,000 devices including medical, industry 4.0, communication and critical infrastructure TEL AVIV, Israel, September 23, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sternum, the pioneering IoT company that brings security, observability and data capture to every IoT device, announces the completion of its $27-million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital, with the participation of existing investors Square Peg capital, the Hinrich Foundation, the European VC firm btov, and other private investors, which represents a total of $37 million raised to date. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005786/en/ (Photo: Haya Gold Photography) This is believed to be one of the largest amounts ever raised by a female-founded and led security and analytics firm, not limited to the IoT sector. Sternum works in a fundamentally different way than any other autonomous IoT technologies. It recognizes that while IoT devices are brilliantly engineered from tiny pacemakers to railway sensors they are purpose-built for a single use, and hence are low on internal resources. So they are smart but not intelligent. Those inherent limitations are transcended by Sternum, as it can embed its patented, code-free technology and software sensors inside all devices, enabling them to instantly become self-securing, while simultaneously collecting intimate data at runtime execution, and processing it in their intelligent cloud platform. This proprietary approach yields active-mitigation and prevention; data analytics; software and security alerts; quality and performance root-cause analysis; user behaviors, enabling new business models for IoT vendors and more. Story continues Sternum plans to use its new funding for R&D to advance its already successful and scalable platform and to grow its team overall as it ramps up global go-to-market efforts. It is well-established that the global IoT market is rapidly growing, and is expected to reach over $1,854.74 billion by 2028. This enormous market demands the Sternum solution, because without it, companies are unable to both secure their devices at scale, and be empowered with consistent visibility including live data. This challenge is compounded by the sheer diversity of these edge devices different operating systems, technology stacks, and industry functionality and their pervasive reliance on third-party supply chain components. Sternum is able to overcome the current untenable situation, where companies find themselves constantly patching vulnerabilities and collecting logs from their devices - and where updating devices is expensive, complex, and takes a long time to propagate - through its advanced binary analysis and instrumentation. This is all made possible by the Companys "Exploitation Fingerprint" and code-free data capture technology which goes beyond security and observability to bring actionable intelligence and active-mitigation to any device from routers to medical devices to small sensors to smart toys collecting invaluable data about behaviors and operations, from development to production and in-field deployment. Simultaneously, it prevents attacks autonomously on-device during runtime execution no connectivity needed. The ability to both be universally retrofittable, and scalable to any device in the future no matter what the operating system or technology stack with and virtually no overhead cost - is truly transformative; Sternum has been successfully embedded into code that was written in 2013. "We could not be more thrilled that Spark Capital is now our lead investor," said Natali Tshuva, co-founder and CEO of Sternum. "They have deep knowledge of our space, so their validation of our vision means a great deal. We seek to create a world where the ability of IoT to bring efficiency and insight to the global economy - and transform the lives of billions can continue without encumbrance. This potential has been held back by the lack of an infrastructure for every smart IoT device. We are pushing the boundaries of whats possible, by bringing security to these devices, and extracting data from them." "We couldn't be more pleased to lead the investment round for Sternum," said Santo Politi, co-founder and general partner of Spark Capital. "From the first time we met Natali and her team we were deeply impressed by their combination of vision and executional prowess. We see the unmet needs in the IoT security and data space to be one of enormous promise. Sternum is perfectly poised to seize and lead this moment, with their no-code platform that creates truly autonomous devices that require no connectivity to be protected against exploitation." About Sternum Sternum is the only code-free, device-resident IoT security, observation, and data-harvesting company. The Companys transformational, patented software can be embedded into any IoT device, no matter the underlying code, manufacturer, or year of production, and is actionable whether the device is connected or not. This self-sustaining, unified platform brings intelligence to otherwise non-communicative edge devices, enabling them to autonomously protect themselves without connectivity and generate real-time data; processing happens in the Sternum cloud platform when available. Sternum was founded in 2018 by a team of highly experienced research, development, and business leaders, many coming from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) elite 8200 unit. visit https://www.sternumiot.com/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005786/en/ Contacts Media contact: Alona Stein ReBlonde for Sternum alona@reblonde.com Were streaming daily on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, and Spotify! You can also listen to it right here on The Phoblographer. There are still photographers who hate electronic viewfinders (EVFs). They just cant get used to them. But sometimes, I think that its part of just not adapting and embracing whats possible. I myself love electronic viewfinders. Theyve revolutionized how much easier its become for someone legally blind (me) to use a camera. But at the same time, I keep them functioning like optical viewfinders. Technologically, theyre superior to optical viewfinders. Theyre also better if you understand them. So Im going to help some folks understand electronic viewfinders better. It Might Be the Wrong Camera First off, not all electronic viewfinders are created equal. The best ones weve tested tend to be on Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, and Leica bodies. Fujifilms are alright. Sonys arent always there, or they tend to be small with a small amount of magnification. Panasonics tend to be so good that I sometimes dont need my glasses to shoot with them because of the diopter. So overall, you have to just try various electronic viewfinders. Probably the best one Ive used is on the Canon EOS R5. Disable Exposure Preview This is a big one! Always disable exposure preview with electronic viewfinders. Lots of folks will say youre then throwing away a big advantage. And in some ways, you are. But if you know how to meter to begin with, you wont need to worry. Keeping exposure preview also slows the cameras autofocus. Thats why manufacturers are pushing to make their cameras autofocus down to the lowest and darkest situations possible. The darker the scene is that your camera sees, the harder it will be to focus on the subject. Set the electronic viewfinders to instead have a constant readout. Disable White Balance Preview Heres another big one; disable the white balance preview. I sometimes like to keep white balance preview on because I shoot in Tungsten or Daylight. But in this case, electronic viewfinders are better with a neutral setting. Some cameras, like Olympus cameras, have a simulated OVF mode. Try that! Story continues Maximum Refresh Rate One big complaint about electronic viewfinders is that theres a lag in the refresh rate. Thats easily fixable. You have to set the refresh rate to the maximum or something that doesnt make you lose your mind. Sometimes it can appear like theres tearing going on. But thats not all the time. This has become significantly better with cameras made after 2017. Consider a Viewfinder Magnifier Lastly, maybe the viewfinder is just too small. This happened to me many years ago when it became really tough for me to see my cameras viewfinder. So, I prolonged the life of my camera by using a DSLRKIT viewfinder magnifier. Its sometimes harder to get them for mirrorless cameras, but theyre not impossible to find. Kits like this are adaptable. They fit around the cameras viewfinder and then magnify exactly whats in the viewfinder. Sometimes you need to recalibrate the diopter because of this. But its worth it. If you have bad eyes and your cameras diopter isnt doing it, then grab these. Theyll really enhance electronic viewfinders. DUBLIN, September 23, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "United States Biobanks Market, By Type (Population Based Biobanks v/s Disease Oriented Biobanks), By Ownership, By Product, By Specimen Type, By Application, By End User, By Region, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. United States biobanks market is expected to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period. Growing need to store and preserve the biological samples such as nucleic acids, tissues, blood which are in demand for research activities for advancements in biomedical research and identify disease-relevant biomarkers. The rise in the number of research activities is considered the major driver for the forecast period. An increase in investments and funding made by the leading authorities and market players to advance the sectors such as regenerative medicine, cell & gene therapy, stem cell therapeutics is promoting the scope of research activities which in turn is accelerating the market growth. The surge in the adoption of cord blood banking techniques by healthcare facilities offers several benefits such as more people can receive stem cells than received through the bone marrow and this process is less complicated and painful for the donor which in turn is fostering the growth of the biobanks market. Biobanks play a significant role to maintain and update the age demographic databases. The rising demand for personalized medicine as it is considered more effective and provides better results is contributing to the surge in the biobanks market growth. United States biobanks market is segmented into type, ownership, product, specimen type, application, end user, regional distribution, and company. Based on product, the market can be divided into equipment & consumables, media, software & services. The equipment & consumables product segment is expected to hold a major market share in the forecast period. The rise in the number of biobanks is aiding to increase the capacity to store a large number of biosamples is increasing the demand for biobanking devices which in turn is accelerating the market growth. Story continues Major companies are developing advanced technologies and launching new services to stay competitive in the market. Other competitive strategies include mergers & acquisitions and new service developments. Objective of the Study: To analyze the historical growth of the market size of United States biobanks market from 2016 to 2019. To estimate and forecast the market size of United States biobanks market from 2020 to 2026 and growth rate until 2026. To classify and forecast United States biobanks market based on type, ownership, product, specimen type, application, end user, regional distribution, and company. To identify dominant region or segment in the United States biobanks. To identify drivers and challenges for United States biobanks market. To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc., in United States biobanks market. To identify and analyze the profile of leading players operating in United States biobanks market. To identify key sustainable strategies adopted by market players in United States biobanks market. The major players operating in the United States biobanks market are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Hamilton Company Brooks Automation, Inc. VWR Corporation, LLC Promega Corporation Becton, Dickinson, and Company RUCDR Infinite Biologics LabVantage Solutions Inc. US Biolab Corporation, Inc. ProteoGenex, Inc. Cureline, Inc. Bay Biosciences LLC Geneticist Inc BioLifeSolutions Inc. All of Us- Biobank Report Scope: Years considered for this report: Historical Years: 2016-2019 Base Year: 2020 Estimated Year: 2021 Forecast Period: 2022-2026 United States Biobanks Market, By Type: Population Based Biobanks Disease Oriented Biobanks United States Biobanks Market, By Ownership: National/regional agency Non-profit Organization Universities Private Organization United States Biobanks Market, By Product: Equipment & Consumables Media Software & Services United States Biobanks Market, By Specimen Type: Blood Products Solid Tissue Cell Lines Nucleic Acid Others United States Biobanks Market, By Application: Therapeutic Research United States Biobanks Market, By End User: Academic Institutes Pharma & Biotech Companies Others United States Biobanks Market, By Region: South West Mid-West North East For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/o0cdqj View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005715/en/ Contacts ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 Projected Revenues of $66 million Over 5 Years DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UpHealth, Inc. (NYSE:UPH) today announced, that through a venture with TSHELA, a partner of UpHealth in this project, it has entered into an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to build 260 state-of-the-art digital clinics and healthcare centers to provide high-quality, affordable healthcare across the country. These healthcare centers will be outfitted with UpHealth's proprietary technology for comprehensive digital patient care. The centers will be constructed by the end of the year and open to patients in early 2022. The projected overall revenues over the next five years from the agreement with the DRC are $136 million, of which UpHealth is expected to receive approximately $66.6 million. "This partnership will dramatically improve access to healthcare for millions over time," said Ramesh Balakrishnan, CEO of UpHealth. "With our advanced technology platforms and digital health infrastructure, we are making affordable, high-quality care available everywhere to address fundamental needs for primary, secondary and acute healthcare." DRC's Minister of Public Health, Hygiene and Prevention negotiated the agreement between the DRC and UpHealth earlier this month. Rachel Izizaw, President of TSHELA expressed great hope for this public private partnership. "I see this as a great step forward to meet the challenges of healthcare that DRC faces," said Izizaw. Balakrishnan continued: "The unfortunate reality is that quality healthcare in the DRC is scarce, and there is an urgent need to invest and expand access. Legacy infrastructure and models face many obstacles, but UpHealth brings the future of healthcare to emerging economies. We are confident that our solutions will quickly, dramatically and affordably improve health across the country." The DRC faces many challenges common to emerging economies globally, including: Story continues Lack of a clinical workforce, with only 0.11 physicians per 1,000, far below the WHO recommended ration of 1.0; Lack of infrastructure and access to care, with estimates indicating that less than 25% of the population has access to healthcare; High levels of maternal and infant mortality; High out-of-pocket costs for care, with 41% of expenditures carried by patient spending; and High incidence of insect-borne disease, such as malaria, hindering economic growth. The 500-square-foot UpHealth digital clinics and health centers are prefabricated, modular structures that are powered by solar technology, making it possible to deliver care in remote locations. The digital clinics and health centers will include: Electronic health records and a real-time dashboard that displays all health information. Video consultations via a virtual care platform. Remote examinations with connected IoT and devices such as laryngoscopes, otoscopes, rhinoscopes, dermascopes and fetal doppler imaging. Testing with on-site blood and urine tests for lipid profiles, blood chemistry and other diagnostics markers, as well as for infectious diseases, such as malaria, dengue, Yellow Fever and blood and urine tests. Clinical decision support to help physicians better interpret results, diagnose patient conditions and prescribe medications using evidence-based protocols, thereby reducing medical errors. Instant additional investigations using dry biochemistry, chromatographic immunology tests and other rapid tests. Automated dispending of medications and inventory management to provide better access. "UpHealth provides a reproducible model of bringing affordable, high-quality care to people with limited access to care and we're looking forward to making a difference in the DRC. In many ways, we are doing in healthcare what cellular phones did with telecommunications, leapfrogging a generation of legacy," said Balakrishnan. "We are deeply grateful for the trust placed in us by the DRC and are committed to our mission to bring accessible, affordable, quality healthcare to the world." About UpHealth, Inc. UpHealth is a global digital health company that delivers digital-first technology, infrastructure and services to dramatically improve how healthcare is delivered and managed. The UpHealth platform creates digitally enabled "care communities" that improve access and achieve better patient outcomes at lower cost, through digital health solutions and interoperability tools that serve patients wherever they are, in their native language. UpHealth's clients include global governments, health plans, healthcare providers and community-based organizations. For more information, please visit https://uphealthinc.com and follow us at @UpHealthInc on Twitter, UpHealth Inc. on LinkedIn and @uphealthinc on Instagram. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements regarding our management team's expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions, plans, prospects or strategies regarding the future, including revenue growth and financial performance, product expansion and services. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intends," "may," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on our management team's current expectations and beliefs in light of their collective experience and their perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments and their potential effects on UpHealth as well as other factors they believe are appropriate in the circumstances. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting UpHealth will be those that we have anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, including regulatory approvals, the ability of UpHealth to continue to meet the NYSE listing standards, product and service acceptance, and that UpHealth will have sufficient capital to operate as anticipated. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" and in other sections of UpHealth's filings with the SEC, and in UpHealth's current and periodic reports filed or furnished from time to time with the SEC. All forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date hereof, based on information available to UpHealth as of the date hereof, and UpHealth assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/uphealth-expands-globally-by-signing-partnership-to-bring-state-of-the-art-healthcare-to-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-301383704.html SOURCE UpHealth, Inc. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council are united on seeking a stable Afghanistan, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on September 22 after talks among the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States. All five powers want "a peaceful and stable Afghanistan, where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems and without discrimination," Guterres told reporters after the meeting. They seek "an Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that is not a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan with an inclusive government representing all sections of the population," he said. The U.S. secretary of state and the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Russia met in person on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Their Chinese counterpart joined them virtually for the talks. None of the ministers spoke to the press afterward. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss sought the meeting, voicing hope for unity on how to approach the Taliban. Britain, which is currently coordinating the so-called P5 group of permanent Security Council members, said Truss aimed to use the meeting to call for greater cooperation to improve international security. The Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan last month as the United States and NATO troops withdrew from the country has raised fears that Afghanistan could again become a haven for Islamist militants planning to carry out strikes on the West. China and Russia have described the Taliban victory as a defeat for the United States and have moved to work with the Islamist insurgents, but they have held off on recognizing the Taliban-led government. Russian President Vladimir Putin has advocated for the gradual unfreezing of Afghanistan's assets and restoration of programs through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Washington put a freeze on Afghanistan's central-bank assets and the IMF cut off the Taliban-led government from the international lender's resources, including $500 million that was to be distributed on August 23. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said economic sanctions on Afghanistan must end and called for Afghanistan's foreign-exchange reserves to be used by the people of Afghanistan and not as a bargaining chip to exert political pressure on Afghanistan. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wang made the comments in a speech at a virtual Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting on Afghanistan on September 22. With reporting by AFP and Reuters The Taliban says two high-ranking Kyrgyz officials have traveled to Kabul for talks with the groups leadership, the most-senior Central Asian delegation to meet with the militants since they seized power in mid-August. The acting foreign minister in the Taliban-led government, Amir Khan Muttaqi, met with the deputy chairman of Kyrgyzstans Security Council, Taalatbek Masadykov, and the head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Kyrgyz presidential administration, Jeenbek Kulubaev, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted on September 23. There was no immediate comment from Kyrgyz officials. Muttaqi "welcomed them and thanked them for their assistance. He also stressed the need for continued cooperation and assistances," Mujahid wrote, adding that the emphasis of the meeting was "bilateral relations and continued cooperation." The Taliban spokesman also posted photos of the meeting. The meeting comes as the international community faces a growing dilemma over whether to recognize the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan following the hard-line Islamist groups takeover. World powers have opened up channels of communication with the group but made clear this does not mean recognition, which would allow its officials to represent the country in international organizations and funds to be unblocked for Afghanistan as the war-torn country faces a looming economic crisis and humanitarian disaster. On September 21, the acting head of Afghanistan's Taliban-led government, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, met in Kabul with representatives from Russia, China, and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan have been concerned about security threats emanating from the country and the potential for tens of thousands of refugees to pour over the border. The Taliban has sought to reassure neighboring countries that it poses no threat since gaining control over almost all of Afghanistans territory following a lightning offensive at the end of the 20-year U.S.-led military presence. Earlier this week, the president of neighboring Uzbekistan told the UN General Assembly in New York that the Central Asian country has resumed the supply of oil and electricity to Afghanistan. It is impossible to isolate Afghanistan and leave it within the range of its problems, Shavkat Mirziyoev said. The Taliban has asked to address world leaders at this week's UN General Assembly meeting in New York City and said it was nominating a new UN permanent representative, Mohammad Suhail Shaheen. The UN Secretariat said has forwarded the request to the credentials committee for consideration. Afghanistan is scheduled to give the last speech on the final day of the UN General Assembly meeting on September 27. It wasn't clear who would speak if the UN credentials committee were to give the Taliban Afghanistan's seat. Human rights defenders say the Taliban is committing widespread and serious rights violations against women and girls in the western Afghan city of Herat, which they say raises serious concerns about the ability or willingness of the groups leadership in Kabul to control the actions of its members across Afghanistan. Since taking over Herat on August 12, members of the hard-line Islamist group have instilled fear among women and girls by searching out high-profile women; denying women freedom of movement outside their homes; imposing compulsory dress codes; severely curtailing access to employment and education; and restricting the right to peaceful assembly, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the San Jose State University (SJSU) Human Rights Institute said in a statement on September 23. The two organizations say they have interviewed seven women in Herat by telephone, including activists, educators, and university students, about their experiences since the Taliban took control of the city. The women spoke under condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, they said. The women told HRW and the SJSU Human Rights Institute that their lives had been completely upended the day the Taliban seized Herat, finding themselves trapped indoors, afraid to leave their house without a male family member or because of dress restrictions, with their access to education and employment fundamentally changed or ended entirely. They said they faced economic anxieties due to lost income and their inability to work, as well as distress and other mental health consequences as they contemplated an abrupt end to the dreams they had worked toward for many years. For the women in Herat we interviewed, life as they knew it had vanished overnight, and they were left hiding indoors, waiting in fear to see whether the Taliban would come for them, said Afghanistan scholar Halima Kazem-Stojanovic of SJSUs Human Rights Institute. For these women, the best-case scenario is to be unharmed but forced to live a drastically diminished existence. The worst-case scenario is to be arrested or attacked for their past achievements or for their fight to keep their hard-earned rights. When the Taliban imposed its brutal rule on Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work, education, and sports. After the Taliban captured most of Afghanistan and toppled the internationally recognized government in Kabul on August 15, the Taliban suggested that it is now more moderate, but the Taliban-led, all-male government has rolled back the rights of girls and women in recent days. On September 2 in Herat, the Taliban did not intervene when up to 80 women took to the streets calling for the Taliban to respect their rights. However, two men were killed and at least eight other people were wounded when fighters fired indiscriminately to disperse a similar rally held five days later. The militants subsequently banned protests that did not have prior approval from the Taliban-led government in Kabul. HRW and the SJSU Human Rights Institute say the women they interviewed expressed particular concern that the Taliban would again require them to have a mahram -- a male family member as a chaperone -- with them in order to leave their homes, as the militants did during their first stint in power 20 years ago. This requirement barred women from most public life, cut them off from education, employment, and social life, and made getting health care difficult, they say. It also made women completely dependent on male family members, blocking them from escaping if they experienced abuse at home. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on September 7 that being accompanied by a mahram would only be required for travels longer than three days, but some of the women interviewed claimed they had been stopped on the streets, at universities, and other public places, and barred from going about their business if they were not accompanied by a mahram. Kazem-Stojanovic urged the Taliban leadership in Kabul to ensure that their statements upholding rights are respected in practice in all Afghan provinces. Claims by Taliban leaders to respect womens rights will be meaningless if women and girls have to live in constant fear of abuse by the Taliban on their street. The Alexander isnt quite ready for its closeup for that, youll have to wait until Sept. 25 and the grand opening at 3104 N. Nevada Ave. A preview earlier this month offered a sneak peak of whats to come in this fresh reboot at a former Colorado Springs film studio that once was the largest of its kind in the world. Founded in Spokane, Wash., in 1919, Alexander Film Co. helped pioneer the idea of advertising shorts, creating brief commercials that would air in movie theaters for companies such as General Motors and Ford. When the concept took off, the company expanded and eventually settled in the Springs, on a 260-acre compound that grew to include multiple installations as well as its own airstrip. They were so large they founded the Alexander Aircraft Co. They were building their own airplanes to fly their own equipment around, and this (building were in) was actually their service department, said Matt McCartan, of The Public House Pub and Grill. The site also was home to 32 movie sets, labs and departments that produced cutting-edge audio, film and animation, and, at its peak, employed some 600 local workers. Were trying to play a lot off of that history and have brought a lot of the old pictures back in, got some of the old artifacts and old movie projectors, just trying to revive that story, McCartan said. The reenvisioned Alexander Building is a joint venture by The Public House and Blackhat Distillery, and their respective owners and good friends, McCartan and Joe Koscove. The 18,000-square-foot space will be the second location for both Colorado Springs businesses and will eventually house the distillerys production facility. When we open, were going to be one of the biggest in the state . producing 25,000 bottles per week. Thats a lot of booze, said Koscove, whose distillery will mark its second anniversary Saturday. Alexander Film Co. thrived in the Springs until the late 1950s, when its star began to fall thanks to changing times and information delivery systems. The property was eventually carved up, and the barebones services building at 3104 N. Nevada became a warehouse and industrial storage. In 2017, the family whod long operated a tile business out of part of the building launched a massive renovation, creating a German-themed, craft-focused destination, Tap Traders. Tap Traders closed during the pandemic, and Koscove and McCartan acquired the building in May. We kind of gave the whole place a facelift, did some brickwork, brought back some of those warmer colors, those historical references, said McCartan. Its been a fun project, and now we cant wait to get the doors open. After being canceled last year due to the pandemic, Colorado Springs Oktoberfest returns. The event takes place Friday through Sunday at Western Museum of Mining and Industry, and features four beers, wine and cocktails, along with live music, dancing, contests and wiener dog races. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Colorado school districts mandating masks as students returned to class this summer have fewer coronavirus cases than those without a mask requirement, according to statistics released Thursday by state health officials. Rates tend to be higher in school districts where masks are not in place, state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said Thursday in a news conference. Herlihy said coronavirus infections have risen for children in recent weeks. As classes resumed, infection rates in school districts with mask mandates continued climbing but at nowhere near the rate suffered by districts that do not require masks. We see those lines diverge and you see that the lower case rates are associated with districts that are requiring masks in schools, again showing a clear impact that masks are having in decreasing transmission in our school settings, Herlihy said. Colorado dropped a statewide mask mandate in the spring, leaving local jurisdictions to decide whether masks should be required. The data covers schools that kicked off their school year between Aug. 16-19 and excludes schools that have changed their masking policies since the start of the school year. In all, Herlihy said the data covered around 38% of Colorado public school enrollment. Herlihy also noted that data dovetailed with vaccination rates among 12-17-year-olds, the youngest age group eligible for the vaccine. For that age group, Herlihy said, case rates tend to be higher in those counties where the vaccination rate among those vaccine eligible children is lower. That matches findings she presented at a COVID-19 briefing early this week on the correlation between vaccinations rates and hospitalization rates for the state as a whole. State COVID-19 Incident Commander Scott Bookman also provided an update on hospitalizations and hospital capacity, though those data points didnt show a stark difference from the rates presented at a state COVID-19 briefing earlier this week. Colorado poised to open free at-home testing program to all As Dr. Herlihy talked about with that unstable equilibrium where (cases) go up and down a little bit each day, we seem to be at a similar place with our hospitalizations, Bookman said, noting the state has been floating between 875 to 900 COVID hospitalizations. It's still incredibly high, equal to where we were during the first wave in the spring of 2020. Bookman also urged COVID-19 vaccinations, highlighting data showing 80% of hospitalizations from COVID-19 stem from those who are not vaccinated. I want to really just reiterate that our hospitalizations are a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point, he said. Summer monsoons brought good moisture to the Western slope, easing the two-year drought that has plagued areas west of the Continental Divide, state officials said this week. But higher than average demand for water, spurred by growth in some parts of the state, drained some reservoirs to their lowest levels, approaching the records set in 2002 and 2018. And one particular river basin is in pretty bad shape, state reports found. The state of reservoirs, streams and rivers was aired the Water Availability Task Force, a collection of state water officials, climatologists, municipal water providers and federal agencies. According to Assistant State Climatologist Becky Bolinger of the Colorado Climate Center, the Yampa/White River basin, primarily in Routt and Moffat counties, has seen the worst of it this year, with below average precipitation and, more concerning, below average stream flows. Recent reports from the U.S. Drought Monitor found the Yampa basin is in the most severe drought level, called exceptional drought, since the first monitoring of drought levels started in 2000. The drought level there has persisted for almost 52 straight weeks, also a record. Large sections of the Yampa have been closed to fishing this summer, according to the state Parks and Wildlife. Bolinger said 2021's summer was the fourth warmest on record, going back 127 years. There was only one month February where temperatures were below average. Monsoons, however, eased dry conditions, Bolinger indicated. But above average rainfall in Western Colorado, particularly the Colorado River basin, didn't topple drought conditions in northwestern Colorado counties such as Moffat, Rio Blanco and Routt. Drought conditions are starting to rise on Colorado's Eastern Plains. Bolinger noted that Washington County had its driest summer on record. About 41% of the state is battling drought, an improvement since January, when the entire state was in drought. Low humidity has exacerbated the drought, officials said. Bolinger said there is a high likelihood that Colorado will experience a weak "La Nina" winter, offering more snowfall for northern mountains but drier conditions and less snowfall in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado and the Eastern Plains. Karl Wetlaufer of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service said the Yampa basin got a bit of a reprieve with recent rains. His biggest concern was for declining reservoir storage in almost every basin except for the South Platte, where reservoir levels have been well above average. The South Platte was the only basin where reservoir levels increased in 2021. The Gunnison River basin, where the Bureau of Reclamation is tapping Blue Mesa Reservoir to keep up Hoover Dam electrical generation, has reservoir levels near historic lows, Wetlaufer said. Statewide, reservoir storage is at about 80% of average, down from 85% a year ago. Stream flows remain below normal even in areas of the state that had good snowpack, Wetlaufer said. Dry soils from the winter months combined with a warm and dry summer cut stream flows in some parts of the state, like the Yampa, to 32% of normal. "This is the most dramatic example of the multiyear effect of drought, making a huge gap between peak snowpack and what we observe in the streams," Wetlaufer said. Brian Fitzpatrick, water resources manager for the city of Aurora, said he hadn't seen flows on the South Platte that low since the state's worst drought in 2002. Representatives from Denver, Castle Rock and Highlands Ranch all said water demand has been higher than normal, and hasn't yet tapered off in September as is usual. Castle Rock's Matt Benak attributed the 5% increase in demand to growth. The impact of this year's precipitation could herald low yields for millet and winter wheat, warned Joel Schneekloth, a regional water resources specialist at Colorado State University. Colorados independent congressional redistricting commission will release a new draft map Thursday the first in a series of drafts that comes with a trigger that could lead to it being the final map, sent to the state supreme court for review and approval, then used for the next decade. The map coming Thursday will be the third staff plan draft map, following a preliminary plan draft map released in late June, and two subsequent staff plan draft maps. Each plan used different approaches to the states soon-to-be eight-district U.S. House map, and each was required to reflect the commissioners guidance and public input received at dozens of hearings or through the online public input submission portal. After the third staff plan is released, the commission will have five days to hold more meetings and vote to adopt a final map for submission to the supreme court. The 12-person commission made of four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated Colorado voters can consider and vote to adopt a final map from any number of maps that have been submitted to or considered by the commission in public hearings, but if the commissioners cannot agree on a map by a vote of at least eight commissioners, including at least two unaffiliated commissioners then the third staff plan will be submitted to the supreme court for approval. The most recent draft plans have gravitated toward a southern district concept, which is built around the idea of keeping together Colorados rural Hispanic voters, who are concentrated in pockets throughout the southern half of the state. The recent drafts also include a new 8th Congressional District proposal that stretches from the northern Denver-metro area north toward Greeley, which is also designed to empower Hispanic voters. Denver, in the maps proposed 1st Congressional District, and the Colorado Springs area, in the maps proposed 5th Congressional District, are largely kept whole in the most recent drafts as well. The commissioners remain divided over several issues, and recent meetings have become heated as commissioners have clashed and sometimes impugned one another's motives. Coordinated persuasion efforts emerge in Colorado redistricting commissions public comments About one in every seven public comments submitted to the redistricting commissions matches verbatim to others. The commissioners have butted heads on issues like how best to group Hispanic communities around the state and comply with federal Voting Rights Act requirements intended to empower minority voters, both in the southern part of the state, as well as in parts of northern Colorado, like in Greeley and surrounding areas in Weld County. Some commissioners have opposed the southern district concept, in favor of the more expansive two-rural districts concept that was the foundation of the preliminary plans configuration. Some commissioners have also argued that county boundaries should be reflected in the district lines where possible, while others have proposed dividing the states more populous counties. Theyve also disagreed over the importance of competitive districts, where the political makeup of the district means candidates from either party could win. Competitive districts are seen as more responsive to the changing attitudes of voters from election to election, as well as better at producing moderate candidates. The most recent second staff plan draft map would result in three solid Republican districts, three solid Democratic districts, one Democratic-leaning district and one competitive district with a slight Democratic-lean. That follows the first staff plan draft maps two solid Republican districts, three solid Democratic districts, one Republican-leaning district, one Democratic-leaning district, one competitive district. The preliminary plan map had three solid Republican districts, four solid Democratic districts and one competitive district. The rules around redistricting, which are in the state constitution and federal voting laws, have cascading criteria that must be followed. In the end, each district must be contiguous and within one person of the target population: 721,714. The states minority communities must also not have their voting power diluted. Then, communities of interest should be kept whole; districts should be compact to the extent possible; political subdivision boundaries, like county and municipal boundaries, should be respected where possible; and finally competitive districts should be created where possible and after adhering to the other criteria. The commissioners will meet more in the coming days to evaluate map plans and possibly vote to adopt a final map by Sept. 28, so that the supreme court filing can be submitted by Oct. 1. Cory Gaines is a physics instructor at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling. He runs the Colorado Accountability Project on Facebook and lives for what Richard P. Feynman called the pleasure of finding things out. Sweeping federal vaccination mandates announced this week could help slow the coronavirus delta variant in Colorado, but the vague details and unknown timeline have left questions about when the communities could see the benefits of more immunity. The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs library was closed Thursday due to a Freon leak, the university tweeted Thursday evening. The Colorado Springs Fire Department has been attending to the situation since Thursday afternoon. Approximately 1,500 were evacuated, fire department officials said. The leak occurred around 2 p.m. when a contractor who was repairing the air conditioning in one of the library's server rooms attempted to shut off the Freon valve. The valve broke, releasing Freon into the room, UCCS spokesperson Chris Valentine said. An estimated 1,500 people were evacuated. Fire Department Public Information Officer Michael Smaldino credited UCCS for evacuating the building by the time first responders arrived at the scene. "They met us and basically said, 'We're getting done getting 1,500 people out of here. Here's where the leak is,'" he said. Smaldino said the leak was in a place where the hazmat teams can't control it, so they were waiting on the system to either drain completely or working on a way to siphon off the rest of it. Smaldino said that while firefighters weren't concerned with the amount that had leaked, they did their due diligence, evaluating people who had been close to the leak. Valentine said three people were evaluated, including the contractor and a couple people who were in close proximity. The danger with Freon is that in a super concentrated form, it can displace the oxygen in a room and eventually in a person's body over prolonged periods of exposure. "What we're looking for right away is [dizziness], nausea, [lightheadedness], things like that, and we didn't get anybody who was complaining of that," he said. Hazmat crews have monitors that can detect the presence of the chemical. Smaldino said they would go through the building, room by room, until all rooms are clear. There was no estimated time for the library to reopen. Graph of weekly proportion of variants of concern, listed on the state's COVID-19 dashboard. The Colorado Springs hotel market continued to rank as one of the nations best last month, even though the citys occupancy rate fell somewhat from July. The Springs 78.3% hotel occupancy rate in August was second only to the 86.4% rate in Portland, Maine, among 165 cities tracked by hotel research firm STR and was well above the 63.2% national average. Colorado Springs also ranked second in July and third in June in the SRT rankings as the local economy works to shake off the impact of the COVID pandemic. The fact that Colorado Springs was second overall in the nation speaks to the power and draw of outdoor recreation and our improved air access with the March expansion of Southwest Airlines to Colorado Springs, said Doug Price, CEO of Visit Colorado Springs. I am ecstatic about the ranking, but we still have a ways to go to completely recover. We have seen some fall-off in meeting attendance here this month due to the (COVID) delta variant triggering tighter corporate travel policies. The Rocky Mountain Lodging Report from the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, which uses different criteria for its survey, pegged the local occupancy rate at 75.8%. That was down from 85% in July, but up from 70.9% in August 2020. Giving a boost to Augusts numbers was the Space Symposium. Traditionally the citys largest convention, the symposium was held Aug. 23-26 at The Broadmoor hotel, although the resort is not included in the lodging reports Colorado Springs totals; it and Cheyenne Mountain Resort are listed in a separate category that includes many ski resorts. Occupancy for the first eight months of the year increased from 48.4% last year to 64.6% this year, with limited-service and full-service hotels posting double-digit percentage gains from last year. The symposium helped keep room rates high, even as occupancy dipped. The average room rate in August fell less than 1% from Julys record to $171.12 and was up nearly 50% from August 2020 and 23.4% higher than the average rate in August 2019. The average rate in the first eight months of the year rose 26.1% from a year earlier to $132.11, with limited-service hotels outpacing gains from full-service properties. Colorado Springs had the states third-highest hotel occupancy rate, behind Durango at 89.7% and Estes Park at 76.5%. The statewide occupancy rate was 69.3%, well ahead of 51.1% in August 2020, and so far this year is 57.2%, up from 44.8% last year. Denvers occupancy rate increased to 70.3% in August from 45.6% in August 2020. Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland reported August occupancy rates of at least 70%. The states average room rate in August jumped 35.3% from a year ago to $178.13. The average room rate in Denver last month surged 52.8% from August 2020 to $154.25 and for the first eight months of the year was up 8.6% to $120.91. Reporter Stephanie Earls is a news reporter and columnist at The Gazette. Before moving to Colorado Springs in 2012, she worked for newspapers in upstate NY, WA, OR and at her hometown weekly in Berkeley Springs, WV, where she got her start in journalism. After a lower court ruled that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act compels her to create content for opposite-sex and same-sex couples, website designer Lorie Smith is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the decision amounts to an unconstitutional burden on her religious exercise. I create MBA success stories, one candidate at a time. http://www.MyMBAPath.com Signature Read More This is the time of year when all MBA hopefuls are in full essay writing mode. As a former Dean of MBA Admissions turned MBA admissions consultant, here are the mistakes I continue to see in essays, year over year.1. Tell the damn story ~Tom ClancyThis is what a sentence in an MBA essay too often looks like:Therefore, on a day-to-day basis, I am absorbed in managing customer projects of varying magnitude, ensuring that work aligns with organizational capabilities and/or risk mitigation policy, working to ensure and maintain compliance, pinpointing and fulfilling coaching needs of my employees, and lastly, endeavoring to reach personalized targets set individually by the executive leadership.Do you know what an MBA admissions reader just learned from reading your attempt to cram everything and the kitchen sink into one sentence? That you are unable to synthesize your experience succinctly. And that you are having a hard time relaying information in a way that makes it possible for your audience to understand. Which ultimately means that your analytical and communication skills leave a lot to be desired. All qualities that can help move your application into the deny pile.Ways to cure: Keep your writing streamlined and simple. Make it easy for others to read and follow the story.2. Youre so vain, you probably think this essays about you ~Carly SimonWait, what?! The MBA essay is not about ME? you say. How could that possibly be?Its one of the beautiful intricacies of MBA admission (which doesnt end up feeling particularly beautiful if it results in a rejection of your candidacy).Yes, the adcom wants to know about YOU. But what is the number one quality that top MBA programs look for? Leadership, right? And leadership is about OTHERS.When you write your essays, consider the role each anecdote serves. An extremely frequent mistake candidates make is to veer too far in the direction of stories that they think will make their application unique and memorable but that dont convey the qualities they need to demonstrate to the MBA admissions committee.Ways to cure: Before you write, outline the takeaways you want to communicate in each MBA admissions essay, then select the right examples that do that. Once done writing, check back to make sure each takeaway is indeed there.3. A word about drama and traumaThere is a persistent myth that is harming MBA applicants. Its that you need to write about a traumatic experience in order to gain admission into a top MBA program. As a result, some applicants choose to write about experiences that are not truly central to who they are as a candidate and force fit them into their MBA admissions story. Others do even worse they make up a dramatic story about a perilous or difficult experience. Both approaches are a minefield.If an experience in your past shaped you and profoundly influenced your personal and professional path, you could definitely consider writing about it in your MBA essays. But dont do it just because you think it will score you points. If you do, the rules from above still stand keep it simple and focus on how and why it turned you into the individual you are today. Being disingenuous or conceited is way more easily detected than you may think._________________ Since the 13th of August, the Tal Tamer area has witnessed daily and intense attacks by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries. The attacks of the Turkish occupation target inhabited villages and defenseless civilians, using heavy weapons. These attacks caused temporary displacement of the people of villages that are subjected to indiscriminate bombardment, in addition to significant material damage and casualties among civilians, including children, all in front of the eyes of the Russian forces, which are considered as guarantors of the ceasefire. The commander Brosk, explained to our agency, that the villages being targeted are "Al-Dardara, Al-Taweelah, Tal Karrah Beit and Umm Al-Keif", in addition to several villages of Assyrians despite the agreements that prevent the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries from targeting them from attacking. In an effort by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries to force demographic change operations to occupy the area, they target public and educational facilities and infrastructure in various villages located on the frontlines in Serekaniye and Gire Spi / Tel Abyad. Destroying schools and places of worship The commander noted that the occupation and its mercenaries deliberately target schools and places of worship directly without discrimination, and said: "There are houses and schools that were destroyed as a result of the bombing, which inflicted great material losses." He added, "The occupation also destroyed schools in the village of al-Abush, Bab al-Khair, al-Dardara and al-Guzliya village, and deprived hundreds of children from completing their education." As is the case in the countryside of Ain Issa and Gire Spi / Tal Abyad, the Russians and the forces of the Damascus government in the countryside of Serekaniye are watching the Turkish crimes, despite the occurrence of dozens of deaths and injuries in their ranks. "The forces of the Damascus government can only defend themselves with Russian orders." Regarding the Russian forces that entered the region as guarantor forces, he says: "The Russian and the Damascus government forces are the guarantors of a ceasefire, and together we can deter these attacks, but after two years, we have not yet seen any serious stance from the two forces to deter attacks." . The recent attacks on the villages of Tel Tamer and Zarkan have left casualties among the Damascus government forces, as their points were directly and deliberately targeted. The commander of the Tal Tamr Military Council indicated, "There were casualties among the Damascus government forces during the recent attacks on Dardara and Umm al-Kaif, and they remained silent, and when asked about the reason for their silence, their response was that they were waiting for orders from the Russian forces so that they could defend themselves and respond to the sources of the fire. Our forces are defending, not attacking. And the media outlets affiliated with the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries have recently published news, especially after their forces suffered heavy losses in lives, that the military forces in the region are violating the ceasefire truce, so they intensified their attacks. Berusk denied these allegations, and said: "our forces didnt carry out attacks on their points in the areas they occupy. We are committed to the agreements, and our forces are only present as defensive forces for the region and our people." He added, "We do not attack anyone, they attack our forces and areas, and we have more than once thwarted their attacks within the framework of legitimate defense. We are defensive forces and are committed to agreements. You are attacking our areas." He stressed that they are ready to respond to all violations and all attacks targeting the region, and "we did not wait for the help of any forces and any country to defend our land and people, and we will be a dam against all attacks." Message Demhat Brusk stressed: "We, the forces of the Tal Tamr Military Council, are present and strong and will defend our land, and we affirm that our strength lies in your presence around us and our support so that we can overcome the stage, and we will not allow anyone to harm our people and people in all our regions." The commander of the Tal Tamr Military Council, Damhat Brusk, concluded his speech by saying: "Tal Tamr, despite its smallness, is known as the city of martyrs, so we pledge to the families and children of the martyrs that our forces are on the path of the martyrs and will never leave that road until reaching their goals." (A) ANHA The commander of Tal Tamr Military Council, Demhat Brusk, confirmed that their forces will defend the area and all Turkish attacks will fail, pointing out that the Russian forces and the Damascus government forces remain silent despite their losses and can only defend by a "Russian decision." (photos and video attached). The General Command of the Internal Security Forces in Deir ez-Zor stated that all areas of Deir ez-Zor witnessed a remarkable development in terms of security, after intensifying efforts by all internal security formations to eliminate terrorism and crime. (photos and video attached). The co-chair of the Tel Abyad County Council, Hamid al-Abed, held the international coalition and the Russian guarantor responsible for Turkey's continuation of its crimes against the peoples of northern and eastern Syria, and its follow-up to its plans to change the demographics of the region, stressing that the resistance continues until the liberation of the last inch occupied by Turkey. (photos and video attached). The Deputy Joint Presidency of the Health Authority in Al Jazeera region, Berivan Darwish, appealed to the people to adhere to preventive measures to limit the spread of the Corona virus, and noted the possibility of imposing a curfew in the region if the situation continued as it was. (photos and video attached). The co-chair of the Public Relations Committee in the Civil Administration of Tabqa region Ibrahim Al-Mohammed said that recognition of the Autonomous Administration is a legitimate right for all components of north and east Syria, and the international community and political forces should support the concept of Autonomous Administration as it is considered a project for a political solution to the crisis in Syria. (photos and video attached). The Arabs and Kurds condemned the Turkish attacks on the regions of northern and eastern Syria, especially the Ain Issa district, and said, "Do not continue with the series of blood, if not for the shameful international silence." (photos and video attached). The displaced people of Afrin living in Barkhdan camp (the resistance) in al-Shahba refuse to return to Afrin and live under the umbrella of the Turkish occupation and its slaves from the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), who are trying to tempt the people to return in light of the ongoing crimes of the occupation and mercenaries. (photos and video attached). Kurdistan The families of the martyrs in Kobani canton denounced the assassination of the fighter Shukri Sarhad, and considered it a cowardly act, and demanded the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) to clarify its position on the assassination of the fighter Shukri Sarhad. (photos and video attached). Politics Politicians and human rights activists considered the silence of the international community regarding the Turkish occupation army's use of chemical weapons in the legitimate defense zones in cooperation with the occupation, and stressed the need to form a legal committee to look into Turkey's violations of international laws and issue a decision against it to punish it for its crimes. (photos and video attached). a file The crises are deepening more and more in the areas under the control of the Damascus government with the loss of fuel and food, and people still remember the past winter and how they spent it in darkness and cold, and they fear that this years winter will be harsher for them, with the presence of a government that fights them for their livelihood, and leaves the space for large whales to swallow what Remains of the dignity of the Syrian people. (Pictures attached). A ANHA As the year of the global pandemic, 2020 forced people and companies to slow down and take a break from normal operations. Of course, that included the international dairy industrys meeting place: World Dairy Expo. Last years cancellation left a hole in the schedules and hearts of the more than 60,000 people who attend Expo each fall, not to mention an approximately $45 million dent in the economy surrounding Madison, Wis. While canceling the 2020 show was an extremely difficult decision to make, the organizations leadership did not waste the additional planning time it found itself with. Instead, this time allowed for discussions about what future editions of the iconic gathering might hold. The opportunity for strategic dialogue with stakeholders was really the big win for us relative to not having an event in 2020, said Scott Bentley, World Dairy Expos general manager. We were able to do some strategic work that allowed the staff, the executive committee, and the board to really stretch our imaginations and boundaries and create some new initiatives that we think will be effective not only in 2021 but also in the longer term. Visitors to Expo this year will get the first look at the results of some of that creativity in a number of new opportunities that complement regular attendee favorites. Encouraging connections Anyone who has experienced the hustle and bustle of the barns and trade show of Expo knows that its tagline, Where the global dairy industry meets, is no exaggeration. Connecting with experienced, passionate individuals is a major draw for many who make the journey to the Alliant Energy Center. While there will certainly be fewer attendees from outside the United States this year, that desire to meet is growing for a number of those planning their trip. The global dairy industry is overdue for an opportunity to convene, and although we know that many will not be able to attend in person, were going to try to have as interactive and as much of an experience as we possibly can have, Bentley shared. Key to that mission are a few additions designed to bring people together. A clear change to visitors will be the relocation of The Tanbark, the dining and networking hub on the grounds, to the Arena Building. Bentley explained, This will double the size of The Tanbark and make it, what we hope, is really a central meeting point for all attendees. Commercial exhibitors that were previously housed in the Arena Building will benefit from significant expansion and improvement of the Trade Center, he continued. Brand new this year is a program specifically geared toward helping young professionals network with a variety of dairy industry companies. Beginning with a virtual job board, Career Connections will allow commercial and dairy cattle exhibitors to interact with students and other young people looking for career opportunities in the industry. Then, during the week of Expo, an in-person open house event will facilitate further conversations and give young adults a chance to learn more about their career options. It really is trying to facilitate a critical function in the dairy industry today, which is getting the right people in the right roles, Bentley believes. Plenty of connections are formed back in the barns, as well. While the dairy cattle shows are largely the same this year, a few modest changes will ensure they continue to run smoothly. One is the shift of the Youth Showmanship Contest from Thursday evening to Monday afternoon. That change was approved to be implemented last year to create a schedule that was more conducive for the youth participating and for their families watching. Further, new leadership comes to the Holstein and Red and White Shows this year after their longtime superintendents, Ken Elliott and Bill Langel, respectively, turn over the reins. Jennifer Keuning will take over the Holstein role, and Mike Marean will head up the Red and White Show. Putting on excellent shows is one of Expos highest priorities, and its no simple task to get there. Those of us that work near the cattle show recognize that it really starts with a high-quality group of breed superintendents, and we feel that we have that with the individuals in place, Bentley shared. We think that Jen and Mike are really going to continue to keep the team strong and bring new perspective and skill sets. Additionally, Jersey Superintendent Jon Rasmussen will also be tackling the role of assistant overall breed superintendent to work with all exhibitors throughout the week. Read more about these past and present leaders on pages 491, 498, and 504 of this issue. Education is a cornerstone Each year, thousands of visitors to Expo take the opportunity to hear knowledgeable dairy experts and professionals speak on subjects ranging from calf care to trade policy. Expo Seminars and Dairy Forage Seminars provide dairy producers with valuable insight into topics that affect how they run their business, and Virtual Farm Tours are a longtime favorite to get a view of dairy operations all over the country. First introduced in 2019, the Knowledge Nook schedule is expanded this year to shine a light on even more of the newest research in the dairy landscape. Two new opportunities will enhance further learning this year, with the first capitalizing on the expanded Tanbark. Attendees can start each day of their Expo trip by joining nationally recognized speakers, including television personality Tyne Morgan from the U.S. Farm Report, for Tanbark Talks at 8 a.m. These presentations are designed to create a learning and networking opportunity for all visitors with industry leaders, Bentley said. Later in the afternoon on three days during the week will be the first educational sessions specifically designed for Spanish-speaking dairy owners, managers, and mid-managers. These will be held in the Exhibition Hall. Were particularly excited about bringing another flavor to the educational programming with Expo en Espanol, Bentley shared. Presentations will be given exclusively in Spanish and include a question-and-answer segment. Sessions this year cover employee management and training, cultural understanding, and leadership. For some of Expos younger attendees, touring the event with their school or competing in FFA contests bring the dairy industry to life. Those opportunities will proceed as normal as possible this year, Bentley confirmed. Rebooted edition Old and new will blend for whats sure to be an exciting 2021 Expo experience. Although it wont look exactly as we remember it as the world continues to heal from the pandemic, it will still serve as a chance for dairy enthusiasts to gather, compete, and share ideas. Theres pent up demand for all of us to get back to the business of dairy, Bentley said. We look forward to hosting the opportunity for everyone to participate in the way that they can. The author was the 2021 Hoards Dairyman editorial intern. Pull up a seat and grab some popcorn because just like any great movie, the underdog is about to rise to the top. The character once seen as hidden and reserved will emerge in humble glory. This newly found fame comes from years of working hard behind the scenes while others get the chance to shine in the limelight. Andy Buttles of Stone-Front Farm near Lancaster, Wis., watched this story play out for 16 years. The dairy farmer, along with his wife, Lyn, their two daughters, Christina and Kayla, his parents, Elam and Barbara, and 28 employees have been waiting in anticipation for the plot to unfold. In the role of the underdog, Stone-Front Leader Hilda showed her true colors in 2020 when she broke the record for the most lifetime milk produced by a Holstein. Upstaging those before her, Hilda produced a total of 460,720 pounds of milk, according to Holstein Association USA. Before Hilda, the reigning cow was Koepke K0017229-1660, also known as Granny, who made 458,616 pounds of milk in her life. As Buttles worked with Hilda over the years, he had been watching her production and foreshadowed her stardom. However, there was another notable cow on the farm that claimed attention for her own showstopping performance. Both had their place in this dairymans barn. A star in the background Buttles grew up on his familys dairy farm in Racine County in southeastern Wisconsin. The farm was established in the mid-1800s, and his family has been milking registered Holsteins since 1913. His wife grew up on her familys dairy farm in Pennsylvania. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Buttles began his full-time farming career. In 1997, he started looking for a less urban area to expand the family dairy operation. He found a farm in the scenic southwestern corner of the Badger State and gradually upgraded the facilities to meet his needs. After the move, he bought cattle from the neighbors to better utilize the double-7 parlor that was eventually renovated into a double-16 herringbone. Buttles said, I bought a group of well-producing heifers. We just needed a group to fill the barn out. He never would have guessed that 23 years later, one of the heifers from that group would be the granddam of a record breaker. Stage fright is not what halted Hildas claim to fame; instead, she was in the presence of another celebrity. Stone-Front Iron Pasta, the 2010 World Dairy Expo Reserve Grand Champion, lived on the farm until she was 6 years old and was housed in the same pen as Hilda. Buttles never underestimated Hildas capabilities or looks, but he admitted that most of the farms visitors came to admire Pasta. While the EX-96 cow carried All-American titles and excelled in the showring, Hilda earned an EX-90 score herself and showcased her talents in the parlor. A synchronous cast Even though Hilda is the perfect combination of type and production, Buttles believes that her life-long success is due to management and consistency. Like most cows, Hilda enjoyed following a routine. She was always a consistent cow, he shared. She would always be in the same stall and about the same place eating. Predictable management practices can be spotted all over the farm. From rations to milking routines, the staff at Stone-Front prides themselves on being timely in their work and always catering to the 1,300 head of milking cows. The key to success is our people a great crew from top to bottom, Buttles insisted. It is really why our cows do well; its because they get treated well. The ration includes silage and haylage, and he contends that high-quality forages greatly impact a cows performance. The team frequently pushes up feed to ensure the cows are always eating. Lifetime production is based on good forages, he explained. Good forages go a long way. The herd is milked three times a day, and 12 employees work in the parlor on their respective shifts. Through communication and staff trainings, the farm has been able to perform milkings consistently even with different people working. Stone-Front has been able to achieve a rolling herd average of over 30,000 pounds of milk with 4.3% fat and 3.04% protein. The farm maintains a somatic cell count of around 100,000 cells/mL. All milk is sold to Rolling Hills Dairy Producers Cooperative. Setting the scene Raising a successful cow like Hilda is no dress rehearsal for Stone-Front Farm. The dairy follows a routine with their animals that is centered around health and comfort. Starting at birth, calves are born in an all-in/all-out system. Cows near calving are placed into pens of five with a straw-bedded area. Buttles explained, Its a lot more socially stable, and weve had really good luck with it. Buttles believes this process is more sanitary and less stressful for his herd. The cows are able to familiarize themselves with the other animals in the pen and relax. Once all of the cows in a maternity pen calve, the used straw is removed, and new bedding is arranged for the next group. After the maternity pen, the calves are moved into the calf barn and cows enter the regular milking routine. Calves are housed individually and fed pasteurized milk twice a day for eight to 10 weeks. Following weaning, heifers are taken to local growers just a few miles from the farm, where they are eventually bred. They are brought back to the home farm six weeks before calving. The celebrity treatment In the milking herd, cows are grouped by age, production, and reproductive status. The farm provides sand-bedded freestalls for the registered group of predominately Holsteins with a few Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, Jerseys, and Milking Shorthorns mixed in. The farm also uses fans and sprinklers for cooling during the warmer weather. All cows wear collars to track their production, activity, and rumination. Buttles especially likes detecting heats from the devices. He shared that they are more accurate in their breeding decisions and time effective with reproductive work. Rumination monitoring is also used to identify potentially sick cows. This allows us to manage more cows without animals falling through the cracks, he said. Stone-Front Farm relies on top tier genetics for the future of their herd. I like a cow that makes a lot of milk but doesnt look like she makes a lot of milk, Buttles said. Using A.I., half of the milking herd is bred to Holstein semen while the others are bred to beef semen. The top half of the heifers are bred to sexed semen and the rest carry embryos or receive conventional or beef semen. The resulting beef calves are sold by a week of age. In her 16 years, Hilda produced eight natural daughters. We have a lot of daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters from her, Buttles said, smiling. It is a highly productive family! Referring to Hildas success, he stated that with her size and structure, high milk production came easy. Her strength and moderate frame allowed her to be a reliable cow. Like any unproblematic cow, he noted that she was constantly eating and mostly kept to herself. He also said she had a little luck along the way to remain in the milking herd as long as she did. There is no doubt that Stone-Front Farm raises some productive, famous cows. Their commitment to comfort and consistency is not an act, and developing a cow like Hilda is the result of hard work and years of dairy farming experience. No one had to tell Hilda to break a leg as the saying goes in show business because at Stone-Front Farm, her stage was one of routine treatment, comfort, and exceptional feed. For years now, government, industry, and recruitment agencies have been claiming there is a technology skills shortage. But what is the real story behind the skills shortage? And what needs to change to improve the Australias IT workforce? In part two of this four-part series, Information Age takes a look at why degrees dont guarantee jobs, and the difficulties of having broad experience. Geoff Augutis runs his own managed services provider in regional Queensland the aptly named Queensland Computers. He spoke with Information Age on a Microsoft Teams call from his car on a sunny afternoon in the Sunshine State. Look, theres certainly no shortage of degrees and TAFE certificates, he said. I think weve got a perception issue with our industry. What were finding is the people who leave school and want to work in IT tends to be a very specific demographic typically theyre young men who arent necessarily excellent at communicating and want to work solo writing code. But in a business like mine there are only one or two people like that; the rest of us are out there working closely with clients. Geoff talks quickly and with purpose about his experience facing the IT skills shortage in regional Australia. Speaking with Geoff, its clear there is a problem. As his business Queensland Computers has expanded it has enterprise and government clients from Brisbane to Rockhampton Geoff has been constantly hiring and is genuinely frustrated by the pool of talent to choose from. The issue for Geoff isnt that Australia doesnt have any people who want to work in IT, or have some qualifications to work in the sector, but that their education and understanding is often ill-suited for the professional realities. Often when we get people saying theyre good at IT, it means they can build a gaming computer, he said. But IT repairs are small part of what IT means in reality, nine out of ten tickets we do are software-based, human-based, fault-based. Trust me, the guys on $120,000 a year arent building gaming computers. Importantly, Geoff speaks with a lot of young people looking for entry level positions to get their start in an industry that, by all accounts, is in high demand and well-paid. The results, he said, are underwhelming. Not the right training My biggest bugbear is that we punch these kids through TAFE courses that may be a useful starting point but dont have much specific value, Geoff said. Its disheartening for them, too. There are kids who have a passion for IT and computers. Then they go to a job search agency that points them in the direction of a TAFE course that I immediately toss out. I think it can be more destructive to waste their time because that person might go on to think qualifications arent important, when they are you just have to have the right ones. Its a similar story with university degrees. When we get someone who has an IT degree and dump them into a role, they often sink pretty quickly unless theyve independently upskilled in another area, Geoff said. He complained that many graduates lack a deep understanding of specific environments they would be expected to work on, such Unix-based systems, or individual cloud environments like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. If I change anything, I would give kids more industry insight about what jobs are available and what specialisation aligns best with them, Geoff said. Industry exposure and work experience is the biggest step; the rest of it we can control in industry by asking for certain entry requirements for jobs. Parts of the IT industry last year called on the government to help develop a new pathway into the profession, one involving an apprenticeship model that would focus heavily on workforce training. A $10.7 million trial of the Digital Skills Cadetship program was outlined in this years budget with the stated aim of building tailored workforce training and on-the-job experience over a six month cadetship. 30 years in IT Were again nearing one of the difficulties inherent in Australias IT skills shortage (as outlined in the first part of this series): if you arent specialised enough, you cant get hired; but if you are too specialised, the market might soon move away from your area of expertise. Graham Plowman had a similar experience. In late 2019, Graham wrote an article for Information Age questioning the narrative of the skills shortage that has been commonly told around the country for years. Why was it that he, a man with three decades of IT experience, couldnt find a job while there was a shortage for IT workers? At the time, Graham was critical of senior management in organisations that he perceived were too focused on having the latest and greatest technology but were inept at nurturing the kinds of people who could effectively operate it. Graham has since found work and recognises a shift in the Australian IT jobs market due to the pandemic, but hes still wary about saying there is an outright skills shortage. I think theres too much of a focus on individual technologies, Graham told Information Age. Say youve got someone with a lot of experiencing programming in different languages across different businesses and theyve got professional qualifications you would think those skills would be transferrable. If you can program in C, for example, theres a fairly good chance you can program in Java. But when he was looking for work, Graham found it difficult to express his willingness and abilities in the early stages of an application. The principle he believes in, that an experienced IT professional will have transferrable skills, wasnt reflected by hiring processes that scanned resumes for specific skillsets and tested them on rigid online platforms. There are plenty of people like myself who have been in the industry for a long time and may have developed 150 different skills, but if you dont have the exact one an employer is looking for right now or you dont get 100 per cent on a test then you are completely discounted, he said. Sometimes it feels like the fact youve shown you can do other things gets used against you, as a way of filtering you out. The result is companies dont get the workers theyre really looking for and people like me spend time sitting on the sidelines. A new paradigm The business community is aware of criticisms about inflexible hiring processes and is looking to adopt different strategies to find and attract high quality IT professionals. One such company is Australian customer experience (CX) platform Cyara whose talent acquisition manager, Paula Kilby, said is trying to give candidates a more personalised experience. This includes regular feedback for applicants to know where they stand in the hiring process. Crucially, Kilbys team is active in its approach to finding new employees and has moved away from what she called a post-and-pray approach to recruiting. Experience has taught us that while not everyone is actively out there looking for a new career opportunity, many people are open to a discussion if approached in the right way, Kilby said. Often, we find an initial conversation turns into a longer and deeper one that allows us to understand whether their ambitions align with our opportunities. For all the good a shift toward active recruitment might bring to people like Graham who have been in the industry for a long time, it doesnt help those who are struggling to get their foot in the door because, despite having qualifications and sufficient specialisation, they are locked out of entry level positions because of a lack of on-the-job experience. In part three we talk to graduates who are blocked out of taking the next step in their careers. Why? Because they dont have the necessary paperwork. Complaints about telecommunications providers declined last year for the third year in a row but a surge in complaints from small businesses suggests that Australias telecommunications providers are still falling short of their promises of improved customer service. Phone and Internet-related complaints declined 6.1 per cent during the 2020-21 financial year, according to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO)s newly released annual report, which documented 119,400 complaints about a broad range of issues. Internet problems were the most frequently complained-about issue, comprising 33.4 per cent of complaints from residential consumers and small businesses who particularly reported issues contacting telcos, and telcos failing to cancel a service when requested. Significantly, there were fewer complaints about intermittent service and slow data speeds likely reflecting the positive impact of telcos network investments and ACCC-authorised collusion to keep up with surging pandemic-era demand in the last year. Mobile services also accounted for around 33 per cent of complaints down 1.5 per cent from the previous year as customers complained about poor coverage and reported that they couldnt contact telcos, change their contracts or plans, or cancel services. In an encouraging sign for the industry, the TIO noted a reduction in issues like telcos not delivering on their agreements, losing phone numbers, misleading conduct when establishing a contract, and delays in establishing a mobile service. Fixed-line customers were also complaining less, with landline complaints dropping by 18.3 per cent but fault and connection problems dominating with 47.1 per cent of all complaints. Despite the overall improvements, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Judi Jones said there was still room for improvement, with an increase in the number of complaints that were returned to the TIO because they werent resolved by telcos creating frustration for consumers wanting to have their phone or Internet problems addressed quickly. The problem was particularly pointed for small businesses, which lodged 19,689 (16.5 per cent) of all complaints the highest level in three years in what Jones called a concerning trend. That included 3,946 complaints about Internet services 20 per cent of small-business complaints which was the highest proportion and volume of Internet complaints for small businesses in the past few years. Complaints that telcos had taken no or delayed action increased by 28.2 per cent over the previous year, while the number of small businesses reporting that a telco was uncontactable increased by 181 per cent likely reflecting the staffing challenges suffered by Telstra and other firms that had previously relied heavily on contact-centre offshoring. Small business complaints about business loss due to telecommunications issues were up by 13.3 per cent over the previous year highlighting what Jones called an industry need for an effective complaints process. Small businesses need reliable phone and Internet services, she said, and useful support when those services arent working as they should. Promising to do better Despite new Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) figures that ranked Australian telcos lowest out of six key industries when it came to customer service, telecommunications providers iiNet, TPG, Dodo, and Optus recorded significant declines in complaint volumes. Southern Phone Company, Aussie Broadband, Boost Tel and Foxtel saw complaints increase but Telstra dominated the statistics, accounting for 62.1 per cent of all complaints, up significantly from 52.4 per cent in the previous year. Thats equivalent to 203 complaints per day, on average leading Macquarie Telecom group executive Luke Clifton to slam systemic issues such as poor service, billing issues, and the baffling inability to even contact telcos continue to go unfixed. What kind of wake-up call does the sector need to meet even the most basic levels of service Australians are calling for? he asked. Major telcos like Telstra should be leading the charge for better service, not be culpable for an 11.3 per cent rise in their own staggering level of complaints. Telstra has acknowledged its persistently high complaints volumes, recently launching an updated T25 corporate strategy that positions customer-service improvements as a key goal. By facilitating customer contact across the channel of their choice and better personalising services and offers for its customers, CEO Andy Penn told the companys recent Investor Day that the company is aiming for a point where for over 90 per cent of customer service requirements, they only need to engage with us once and its done. The two-year-old Telstra Plus loyalty program had boosted net provider score (NPS) metrics by 18 points amongst its 3.5m members, which the company hopes to grow to 6m by 2025 as it leans heavily on AI and analytics to improve its proactivity and personalisation. Reducing customer complaints is a core metric for T25, with Telstra aiming to cut customer complaints by a third in the next two years, and in half by 2025. I know that we do not always get it right, said Penn, so we need to take customer experience to a whole new level. The Best Little Floorhouse in Texas Your choice for flooring in Central Texas! Your flooring is more than just the surface you walk on it's an integral part of your home. With over 35 years of flooring experience, The Best Little Floorhouse in Texas has the resources and knowled 1. Yes. There should be absolute certainty that the election was free and fair. 2. Yes. The audit could and should lead to stronger laws governing elections in the state. 3. No. Former President Trump wants the audit to further cast doubt on the 2020 vote. 4. No. Its a waste of money, an attempt by Abbott to gain favor among Trump backers. 5. Unsure. It seems unnecessary but it may provide some worthwhile findings. Vote View Results Offer a personal message of sympathy... You'll find individual Guest Books on the page with each obituary notice. By sharing a fond memory or writing a kind tribute, you will be providing a comforting keepsake to those in mourning. . From a Guest Book, you may log in with your Google, Facebook, Yahoo or AOL account to leave a message. If you have an existing account with this site, you may log in with that. Otherwise, it's simple to create a new one by clicking on the Create "Sign up" button and following the simple steps on the Sign Up page. Byars Promotes Love and Joy of God Through Music More than 30 years ago, God anointed the creative talents of Rickie Byars, empowering her to write as directed by the Holy Spirit. Since that time, shes only soared higher and higher while proclaiming the love, joy and power of the Lord. Such is the uplifting ministry of Byars, who has introduced countless people to Christ through her musical skills. Many people became acquainted with gifts during her tenure as the founder and director of the Agape International Choir, but not everyone realizes shes also composed more than 200 songs. ADVERTISEMENT Byars dynamic abilities will be displayed on Friday, September 24, at 7:30 p.m., when she appears on The Inner View series with Dr. James Mellon, host of the show and spiritual director of Global Truth Center Los Angeles. Admirers can join the studio audience or view the program via live-stream. To have a conversation with James Mellon for The Inner View is a celebration of life, in and of itself. He is a great teacher who considers my works to be great and will ask questions of one who for many years was considered only a musician, Byars said. I am thankful for the opportunity to be honest and to share my joy in both music and philosophy. Joy of music and joy in the Lord are two defining characteristics of Byars, who attributes her creativity to God. Once the Holy Spirit filled her up, she said, her point of view shifted. The world became more expansive when I discovered that God was so much more than the emaciated White man on the cross that was the central focus in the Catholic church of my youth; and way more colorful than was the White Madonna with the beautiful White baby, she recalled. I would learn that Santa Monica was actually an African saint from Ethiopia and the mother of St. Augustine, an African from Carthage. I would learn that the first Madonna images were Black and that these particular paintings and sculptures were to be found in museums all over Europe and even now, in the bedroom of the Pope, remembered Byars. Through her spiritual awakening, she grew closer to God, learned more about the teachings of Jesus and committed to the principles of love. These beliefs guide her as she produces The B-Hood Sunday Devotionals, a live streaming program where she imparts inspiring messages and music. This confidence will also empower her in her newest project of compiling an archive of her works to make her songs easily available to public. ADVERTISEMENT I believe in life, I believe in God, I believe in the teachings of Jesus and the ways of love. I believe that this universe is magnificent and intelligent and I intend to align in it by learning to love who I truly am and deliver my gifts to the world for the liberation of all people, declared Byars. And is she ever feels hesitant in her determination, Byars will be comforted by her favorite scripture, which she said is The 23rd Psalm the whole thing starting with The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. Her mantra is, Use me, O God. I stand for You and here Ill abide as You show me all that I must do. Celebration of Life: Earl L. Bakewell Earl L. Bakewell was welcomed to the world and his family July 26, 1930 at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. He passed away of natural causes on Tuesday September 22, 2020. In May of 2020. Earl unfortunately contracted Covid 19 while being a long term resident of an Orange County nursing home, and was never able to fully return to normal health. Earl was a proud native son of New Orleans, Louisiana. The community known as the Treme within the 6th Ward was where his family was from, and St. Peter Claver Catholic Church was where they practiced their faith and formed true friendships. Family was Earls was core, followed by friends, food, music, and faith. The French Quarters was his playground and where he had expressed a many of fun times. It also was where learned his first hustle in life, to shine shoes. Yes, Earl built himself a small wooden shoeshine boxes and proceed to market his services. Nickle a shine Nickle a shine, would you like a shine? Earl attended Xavier University Preparatory for high school. The Nunes, Teaching Staff, and student body would connect fondly with Earl until his passing. After graduating from his beloved Xavier Prep, he enlisted in U.S. Army. He was off to serve his country and see other parts of the U.S. and the world. While in the Army, he discovered that he was gifted with leadership and administration skills which opened the door for rapid promotions. During his tenure in the Army, he found himself in New Jersey Fort Dix, New York City, Japan, then Korea. During the Korean war, he was stationed towards the frontlines where he witnessed the war first-hand. During the conflict, he and other members of his division would pull monies and materials to support the local orphanage and assist where they could; he survived the Korean War. After serving six years in the Army, it was time return to the U.S. notably New Orleans, and then college. Earl resettled with his family and enrolled in Xavier University with a focus on business administration. During this time, he began a business venture with his brother Frank. The business was a small neighborhood tavern, The Cozy Corner, which connected the local community and enabled him to apply the business principles which he learned at Xavier. In the winter of 1956, Earl left his beloved New Orleans for new opportunities in Los Angeles, California. Earl was among many from the Crescent City to relocate to Los Angeles. Southern California was new, exciting, and full of promise. Earl settled in the Crenshaw district among his fellow New Orleanians. Earl worked in aerospace, hospitality & spirits, retail, automotive, legal, and real estate industries. The lessons that he learned as an entrepreneur back in his beloved New Orleans, he used in his new hometown of Los Angeles by starting several businesses The Cazbar Cocktail/Jazz club, a convenience market & Liquor store, Petroleum Transport, and Real Estate. Let history note that Earl Bakewell was driven and was always seeking success. His ambitious drive rewarded him all of the comforts of success. He prided himself as a well-dressed man, enjoyed having the best cars and owning homes. Earl enjoyed sharing his success with his family. He was a giving man. Earl loved music and those who performed. As a child in New Orleans, he was surrounded by music and this began his love affair with music and song. While stationed in New York with the Army, he began to study the art of Opera. From that instruction, he used that as a platform to sing, and sing often. Singing was his hobby and passion which he shared with friends and family. When he would hear a few notes from either Nat King Cole, or Frank Sinatra, dont be surprised if you would hear his baritone voice riding the notes of the song. ADVERTISEMENT In the later part of his life, he left his beloved Los Angeles for the warmth of Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, he and his beloved June would enjoy all that Vegas had to offer. Visiting with friends would lead into dinner and drinks at a casino. Maybe taking in a show, where maybe he would be asked to sing a song or two, or just enjoying the warm desert nights under the neon lights of the Vegas strip. Earl liked Vegas. Earl was a son, brother, father, grandfather, and great grandfather. He was the youngest son of Lawrence and Willamina Bakewell. His siblings: Marion Bakewell Carter, and Frank J. Bakewell. Earls two sons: Michael Lance and Vernel. From Lance, he was gifted with three granddaughters: Consuelo Morgan, Angela Moore, and Jackie Honaker. Earl was also the loving stepfather to Valencia Blanks Burner. In-addition, he was the cherished uncle of Danny J. Bakewell, Sr., Pamela Bakewell (Pams Godfather) and Lawrence G. Carter. In addition to the younger generations of the Bakewell family. For the past forty years (1980 to 2020), Earl has shared this life and love with his beloved Ms. June Gaines of Las Vegas NV. If anyone knew Earl Bakewell, it was truly June. From the time they met at the perfume counter at Searss department store in Inglewood California in 1980, It was one adventure after another. Earl being the Don Juan that he was, said to himself, this one is a keeper. And forty years later, the love affair continued. A true blessing! As our family reflects on the loss of beloved Earl and his many accomplishments, everyone is confident to say that they are all blessed to be able to call him a Life Companion, Dad, Grandpa, Great Grandpa, Uncle, and friend. We will always love you and well always miss you. Rest in peace Earl L. Bakewell Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Highlights African American Issues at 50th Legislative Conference Health equity, wealth creation, environmental justice and wrongful convictions were among the topics highlighted at the 50th Annual Legislative Conference sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. The virtual symposium, held September 12-17, featured dozens of sessions with expert speakers dissecting the challenges and opportunities minorities face in fields such as science and technology, civic engagement, financial wellness and professional development. Other topics emphasized national security, lifestyle and culture, voting rights and Black womens leadership. A lively discussion emanated during the session on Building Sustainable Communities in Our Underrepresented Communities Creating Change in our Social Systems. The program, hosted by the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce, was opened by Azizza Davis Goines, Chamber president/CEO, and moderated by Larry Lee, publisher/CEO of The Sacramento Observer. According to Goines and Lee, the goal of the conversation was to offer tactics to enhance equity for Blacks in the areas of health, economic development, education, housing and energy. ADVERTISEMENT Equity means you looked at each individual and said what do you need to succeed? We need that in the community because sustainability is people, planet and prosperity. You have to have all three, insisted Leonard Robinson, partner and chief strategist at consultant firm SEMCO and sustainability strategist for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Georgia. Robinson, who has more than 45 years of experience in environmental management and sustainability, recommended three activities that municipalities must implement to achieve sustainability good policy, education and activism. Elaborating further, he said, We have to help our politicians make good policy by telling them what the needs are and the best strategic advantages. What we have to do with education is not only educate, but put our children in the best environment to succeed. The last thing is we have to get involved. We need activism and protest. Voting is activism. Dr. Torence Powell, associate vice chancellor at Los Rios Community College District, echoed the importance of education to build equity and improve underrepresented communities. His institution, Powell said, focuses on increasing an areas economic development by preparing a workforce for craft or skilled professions as well as white collar jobs along with ensuring that students have access to the same level of instruction that more affluent colleges offer. As the education sector, its our role to ensure that were creating the opportunities for students to prosper in the economy and then also improve the outcomes in our communities. We are essentially preparing these students by equipping them with information and knowledge that theyre going to need to be responsible leaders moving forward and we have the responsibility to prepare them to be better stewards of the environment. Its our responsibility to essentially equip them so they can push on our civic leaders to really advocate for improvements that are going to help us all, noted Powell. And one of the more pressing improvements needed is in the area of healthcare, which is often reported as sorely lacking in minority neighborhoods. To upgrade the quality of medical care, Dr. Mario San Bartolome, suggested that healthcare should be approached from a whole person type of perspective and as an investment into the community, which will help to determine a persons real health. When you think of healthcare, I would say maybe the most important thing to really consider is that movement toward equity around those social determinants of health and invest in it. Were past the days of being reductionistic. We really need to look at health from the context of all of our environment. We should be holding all of ourselves accountable to the investment, particularly among those healthcare [factors], which is such a large part of our economy and our lives. Lets keep everyone accountable around those social determinants, advised Bartolome. In addition to accountability, another critical element in building sustainability is the collaboration between public and private sectors in advancing a better community. Louis Stewart, who heads strategic initiatives for Developer Ecosystem at NVIDIA, said his company advocates training Black and Brown folks in the community to prepare them to contribute to the local economy. NVIDIA is a multinational technology company that creates interactive graphics for computers and similar hardware. Everything is connected. Its going to take government, academia and industry and all three of those sectors have to be super-intentional about how sustainable theyre making the world, said Stewart, the former chief innovation officer for the city of Sacramento. From the private sector side, therere a whole lot of companies speaking equity. Now its time to have people make them do equity, not just in dollars and cents, but programmatic and relational. Theres a lot of folks out there that the [people] can reach out to and actually help make a change, he said, adding that NVIDIA tapped him to help the firm nurture relationships with minority partners and develop a more inclusive tech community. Sharing closing remarks, Robinson concluded, A whole bunch of things are tied up into [sustainability] and a society cant go forward unless the underserved are brought along. We have to communicate the idea of sustainability. Its about embracing social opportunities. We have to communicate things better. To learn more about the legislative conference, visit cbcfinc.org. FALL READ: Anita Kopaczs debut novel SHALLOW WATER was part of her deep ancestral healing Hello fall, 2021 the long, hot summer is behind us and as we cast our eyes towards the fall, winter with a new year just 22 odd weeks away, the idea of moving forward swirls around our collective consciousness. Ive read a few books that I feel strongly will provide your mind with a kind of comfort while still engaging your mind in deep exploration and the first on my fall reading is Anita Kopaczs gripping debut novels SHALLOW WATERS. What immediately caught my imagination was that the main character was not only a mermaid but a reimagining of Yemaya, an Orisha (deity) from the Yoruba religion. This beloved deity has been kept alive with respect through an oral tradition brought to the new world by enslaved Africans in the early 16th century. You see, compelling, right? ADVERTISEMENT Here, Kopacz crafted and breathed life into Yemaya, giving her a body who makes the journey to the U.S., not as a captive African slave who survived the brutal, inhumane transatlantic slave trade. Instead, she followed the ship filled with stolen Africans in her true form as a mermaid. Lets rewind for those readers who dont know much about this ancient religion. Yemaya, also known as Yemoja, is considered the mother of all Orishas and is the Yoruba powerful divinity of the waters, specifically, Nigerias Ogun River. In this story, Yemaya is released from a fishermens net by a young boy, Obatala, who, while in awe of her presence. Many years later, when Obatala is taken by the slavers ships, she follows them with the hope of returning the favor. Knowing that her mermaid form would not terrify humans, she transforms into a human with great effort to continue her search for the know-grown man, Obatala. When she awakes she finds herself in a community of Indigenous people who are aware of her spiritual significance, and in taking care of her, shes informed that shes just at the beginning with Obatalas capture just the inciting incident that gets Yemaya moving. Kopaczs novel is swift as it chronicles a path dotted with important destinations and historical figures that are woven into the story. ADVERTISEMENT By using traditional folktale techniques, Kopaczs builds a vibrant world for Yemaya as she moves through the United States experiencing the tense, secret world of the Underground Railroad and the pain experienced on the Trail of Tears and meeting icons like Fredrick Douglass, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. There is great intelligence at work with Kopacz centering on an African woman within the context of important markers of our shared past. Yemaya (here, in this story) is the key to why some significant points in history happened and why they were successful making her presence just as memorable. At first glance, many contemporary audiences might be reminded of Disneys Little Mermaid which is yet another example of cultural reappropriation of which white people are known for. Its important to know that Yemaya and the existence of mermaids [merpeople] predate all popular culture. What this Orisha represents is the healing of a life-long trauma, both physical and cultural. Yemaya can heal her own injuries and those of others, removing an illness from Ralph Waldo Emerson and sending him into the world with a new point-of-view. In his literary piece, she steps into the shoes of the villain the plantation owner who healed the whipped and beaten slaves, never losing any of his property. And what is Yemayas source of power? Water just as the Earths sun powers up Superman. Kopacz strives to visually replace chains that were placed on the African and Indigenous bodies with them wearing bright colored beads around their ankles, wrists, and neck, and elaborate headdresses adorned with feathers and beads. And in the air there is joy. Our tradition is important to remember and to demand that it not be diluted by the very people who enslaved us and tried to destroy our culture. Mermaids have always been a part of our cultural heritage as passed down by a rich oral tradition. Its no coincidence that our people have been searching for information to fill in the gaps. Its not by happenstance that our people use strong words like [famiy] tree and roots and the need that water plays in helping them grow. The reviews have been strong. A riveting and heartbreaking story strengthened by Kopaczs superb ability to create a sense of place. Fans of Ta-Nehisi Coatess The Water Dancer will want to take a look Publishers Weekly A fairy tale for American adults, Anita Kopaczs spellbinding first novel imagines the Yoruban mermaid deity Yemaya as she follows a fleet of slave ships across the ocean in the mid-1800s A captivating debut. Harpers Bazaar We transcend time and space as Yemaya herself grows from a tentative young woman into the powerful deity shes destined to become this novel crosses genre as easily as it does time. Buzzfeed Kopaczs commitment to a vision of healing even while detailing tragedies shapes this tales themes of redemption and the universal soul. Most remarkable is Kopaczs abilty to maintain a brisk narrative pace as she delves into the weighty issues and complex experiences that shaped Yemayas quest. Booklist Anita Kopacz is an award-winning writer and spiritual advisor. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Heart & Soul Magazine and Managing Editor of BeautyCents Magazine. When she is not writing, you can find her on the dance floor or traveling the world with her children. Anita lives in New York City with her family I only had one question for author Anita Kopacz about her debut novel SHALLOW WATER. Just. One. LOS ANGELES SENTINEL: Ms. Kopacz with great respect, I only have one question. Were you guided by an Orisha to share this story, and if so, which one? ANITA KOPACZ: I was deeply guided by Yemaya throughout the entire journey. It felt as if she was sitting on the side of the bed telling me what to write. I actually had a reading from a Babalowo (Priest) in the Ifa tradition who told me I would be sharing this story with the world. I asked how he knew that, and he said that Yemaya told him. It has been a journey of deep ancestral healing in order to birth this medicine story. Thank you so much for asking this question. SHALLOW WATERS is the first work of fiction from Charlamagne Tha Gods imprint, Black Privilege Publishing. Americas Inhumane Treatment of Haitians Thousands Displaced Haitian Migrants were expelled from American soil over the weekend; the forced movement is bleeding into the current week. A lot of footwork took place on Monday, according to U.S. officials, as over 6,000 people of the Haitian community were removed from Texas. Horse patrol and other actions taken from Homeland Security are under scrutiny, highlighting the Inhumane force being practiced to revert Haitian families to their starting point. Multiple sources reported that this large population of the Haitian community did not legitimize their citizenship within the U.S., therefore, they are not recognized as American citizens. Speaking on behalf of Homeland Security, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was captured stating, If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned. Your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your familys life. Traveling across Mexico, Haitian men, women, and children reached encampments found within Texas. Some people traveling from Haiti have taken refuge in Mexico, Associated Press recorded Marcelo Ebrard, Mexicos foreign minister, stating Mexico does not have any problem with them being in our country as long as they respect Mexicos laws. There have been multiple flights issued by the U.S., transferring hundreds of recently deported people back to Haiti this past Sunday. The Haitian government has shown concern in the abrupt arrival of the unsheltered population. ADVERTISEMENT New York Times recorded the head of Haitis national migration office, Jean Negot Bonheur Delva, stating, We are here to say welcome; they can come back and stay in Haiti but they are very agitated, said Delva. They dont accept the forced return. Agents on horseback engaged with the weary Haitian families, preventing further movement across the border. Major concerns expressed by the Haitians that are currently being moved include food and security. Reporters on the frontlines have captured the following statement from a Haitian man, We need food for every day. I can go without, but my kids cant, The man was identified as Jean, with his last name omitted, he had been living in Chile for five years before beginning the journey north to the U.S. It is unknown if he made it back across and to the camp. Many Haitian families shared their fear of returning to their homeland, due to gang-controlled areas and the extremely low levels of resources. A number of Haitian people are returning to no direct place to live. Since Friday, approximately 3,300 people from the Del Rio camp have been removed, with zealous goals to expel thousands more before the week is over. This type of rapid expulsion came from initiatives put in place by former U.S. president, Donald Trump, in March of 2020. It allowed for people who have not been recognized by the U.S., to be immediately removed from the country without an opportunity to seek asylum. according to recent reports from Politico. Different reactions have erupted from Capitol Hill on the matter. The following elected officials and academic experts weighed in on the heaviness of the current events. Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies, CSULB, and executive director of the African American Cultural Center (Us), stated, The chasing down and charging with horses, herding like cattle and whipping Haitian immigrants for simply seeking asylum in the U.S. as a human right and urgent need is cruel, inhumane, savage and unsupportable. It is also a reflection of a racist approach to immigration policy in which the dark peoples of the world, especially Black people, are seen as dirty, diseased, dangerous and deficient in human dignity and social worth, and therefore, unworthy of acceptance in the U.S. for any reason. Karenga continued, Clearly, this savage and abusive treatment calls for immediate and vigorous disciplinary punishments and policy correctives that not only address and end this particular form of brutality, but also ends similar policies and practices and instead offer an immigration policy that is dignity affirming, rights respecting, and a firm expression of equity and justice for Haitians and all peoples of the world. Congresswoman Maxine Waters shared her response. In her recent press release, Waters condemned the current behavior observed in the rapid expulsion of the Haitian people from the borders. ADVERTISEMENT She stated, In every sense of the word I am absolutely outraged by the United States Border Patrol agents incomprehensible treatment and abuse of Haitian migrants seeking refuge in the United States. Congresswoman Waters continued, Right now, Haitians are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives after a devastating earthquake in August the second catastrophic earthquake to hit the island nation in less than twelve years. Haitians are reeling from the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Jovenel Moise and the lack of a credible, functioning government that has followed. Waters shared within her press release, an overlooked perspective of the Haitian people, Haitians are facing widespread gang violence that has paralyzed entire communities. The situation in Haiti is devastating, and Haitians are attempting to seek refuge in the United States for the possibility of a better, safer life for themselves and their families. Fueled by the ongoing strife in Haiti, Haitians are making long and dangerous journeys to reach the United States a country they believe is fueled by compassion and justice only to be met by the brutality of cowboys on horseback with whips. The images of this unconscionable attack by United States border agents on helpless Haitian migrants have an uncanny resemblance to the photos in our history books that show the truth of how Black people were treated in this country in centuries past. I demand that this detestable treatment of Haitians be stopped immediately! Congresswoman Waters said. Providing her final thoughts, Waters said, Not only am I outraged by the reprehensible behavior of these border agents who seem to lack humanity, I am extremely disappointed in the Biden Administration for its willingness to continue the racist application of immigration policies and tactics utilized by Donald Trump, the most xenophobic and dangerous president in our nations history. I am calling on the United States to allow the Haitian migrants to file for the refugee or migration status they are seeking as allowed by the United States Constitution and urge the Department of Homeland Security to conduct its investigation into the matter comprehensively and credibly. Waters declared. Actions practiced by Homeland Security have been flagged as inhumane, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar tweeted Saturday the following statement, This is completely inhumane, Haitians are experiencing a crisis after crisis and deserve compassion. Instead of stepping up deportation, we should be halting it. Its shameful that from administration to administration our cruel immigration policies remain. Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (OH-03) stated, The images that weve seen over the last 24 hours are horrific and I share the outrage being expressed by Americans across the country. This sort of mistreatment is an affront to the very conscience of this nation, and it is absolutely unacceptable. Beatty continued, The Congressional Black Caucus has a long history of supporting our brothers and sisters across the Diaspora and we have pledged our support for the people of Haiti. To that end, I have called for an investigation into the actions of CBP and call on DHS Secretary Mayorkas to ensure that mistreatment and violence like this never happen again. The Congressional Black Caucus is actively monitoring developments and we are prepared to travel to the border to observe this situation ourselves. Treatment like this cannot be tolerated. Congresswoman Karen Bass stressed her distaste, by stating, Seeking asylum in this country is a legal process. Whats happening is unconscionable. Border patrol agents on horseback whipping Black immigrants is reminiscent of the 1800s. They must be held accountable. Its unacceptable and must stop immediately. We have to get to the root of this issue which starts with international engagement and addressing why people are leaving their homes, their families, and their communities to make this perilous journey. When Vice President Harris was prompted to speak on the current action taken against Haitian people crossing the border in refuge, she stated, What I saw depicted about those individuals on horseback treating human beings the way they were is horrible. She continued, And I fully support what is happening right now, which is a thorough investigation into exactly what is going on there. But human beings should never be treated that way, and Im deeply troubled about it. And Ill also be talking with Secretary Mayorkas today about it. Labeled as Americas swiftest large-scale expulsions of migrants or refugees in decades, over 320 Deported Haitians arrived in Port-au-Prince on three flights on Sunday. According to National Public Radio (NPR) on Monday, there were more than 10,000 people, many of them originally from Haiti, camped out in neglected conditions under the International Bridge. The source confirmed flights made back to Haiti was a directive uber the Biden administration. The general request from those fleeing their homeland in Haiti is to have a better life. Heading to a Bar in LA County? Bring Your ID and Proof of COVID Vaccination Going to an indoor bar or nightclub in Los Angeles County will soon require proof of COVID-19 vaccination, while attending a theme park or large outdoor event with 10,000 people or more will require vaccination or a negative COVID test, the countys public health director announced today. The restrictions will be included in a revised Health Officer Order expected to be issued by Friday in an effort to get more people vaccinated against the virus, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors Wednesday. The order will require proof of vaccination for all customers and employees in indoor portions of bars, wineries, breweries, nightclubs and lounges. All patrons and employees will need at least one dose of vaccine by Oct. 7, and a second dose by Nov. 4. The order will recommend, but not require, vaccine verification for employees and customers in indoor portions of restaurants. ADVERTISEMENT The requirement for outdoor mega-events including Dodgers, Rams, Chargers, LAFC and Galaxy games and theme parks such as Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Magic Mountain will take effect Oct. 7. The order will require attendees and employees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours. Attendees at indoor mega-events are already required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. This modified health officer order aligns with the continued need to reduce risk of transmission and increase vaccination coverage, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors. This is a reasonable path forward that will position us to be better able to break the cycle of surges. She said county health officials believe that targeted vaccine mandates are now a very important strategy for quickly raising vaccination coverage across our county and ending the pandemic. One affected outdoor venue the Hollywood Bowl announced Wednesday it will impose a vaccine/testing requirement for audience members beginning Sept. 24. Ferrer said the county will be working with operators of all affected venues to discuss implementation strategies. She noted that the vaccine- verification mandate at indoor bars, wineries, breweries, nightclubs and lounges should not be onerous for the businesses, since they already must check patrons IDs to ensure they are of legal drinking age. ADVERTISEMENT Asked why the order only recommends vaccinations for patrons and employees and indoor restaurants, Ferrer said activities that occur in a bar such as dancing and singing tend to present a higher risk of virus transmission than a sit-down restaurant. She said the order is more targeted at drinking establishments without restaurant permits. Ferrer said the pace of vaccine administration has slowed dramatically in the county, and without a turnaround, more surges can happen and more potentially deadly variants can emerge. There is a cyclical nature to this virus, and as long as we have large numbers of unvaccinated people here in the county, were at the mercy of the cyclical nature of the (virus), she said. We doom ourselves in some ways to potentially another surge later in October, November, December, when conditions really favor COVID-19 virus replication if were not really diligent now and take some actions that will reduce risks of exposure. Because every place you have high risk of exposure, youre going to have spread. And you want to cut out as much of that spread as possible, she said. Moderna Vaccine Appears to Offer Strongest Protection Against COVID CDC Says All Vaccines Offer Strong Resistance to the Virus According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two-dose regimens of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines provided a high level of protection against COVID-19 hospitalizations in a real-world evaluation at 21 U.S. hospitals during the period between March 11 and August 15. Vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 hospitalization for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech doses were 93 percent and 88 percent, respectively, whereas the single-dose Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine had a lower effectiveness rate at 71 percent. Protection for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine declined four months after vaccination. Released Friday, September 17, the report revealed that individuals vaccinated with the Janssen vaccine also had lower postvaccination anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels than did recipients of mRNA vaccines. In addition, although an immunologic correlate of protection has not been established for COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers found that antibody titers after infection and vaccination have been associated with protection. ADVERTISEMENT These real-world data suggest that the 2-dose Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine regimens provide more protection than does the 1-dose Janssen viral vector vaccine regimen, the researchers wrote. Although the Janssen vaccine had lower observed vaccine effectiveness, one dose of Janssen vaccine still reduced risk for COVID-19associated hospitalization by 71 percent. The study included 3,689 patients. Overall, 2,362 (64 percent) were unvaccinated; 476 (12.9 percent) were fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine; 738 (20 percent) were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and 113 (3.1 percent) were fully vaccinated with the Janssen vaccine. Among all participants, the median age was 58 years, 48 percent female, 23 percent non-Hispanic Black, and 18 percent Hispanic. Efficacy for the Moderna vaccine was 93 percent at 14 to 120 days (the median equaled 66 days) after receiving the second vaccine dose and 92 percent after 120 days (with the median equaling 141 days). For Pfizer-BioNTech, efficacy stood at 91 percent at 14 to 120 days (the median equaled 69 days) after receiving the second vaccine dose but declined significantly to 77 percent at more than 120 days (the median equaled 143 days). The postvaccination antibody analysis included 100 healthy volunteers, 32 fully vaccinated with Moderna, 51 fully vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech, and 17 with Janssen. ADVERTISEMENT Antibody levels were higher in participants vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine than those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or the Janssen vaccine. The report revealed that anti-spike levels in participants vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine did not significantly differ from those in recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech but were considerably higher than levels in participants who received the Janssen. The report arrives as a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel reviewed the need for booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. The panel also expected to vote on whether the agency should approve additional doses for people 16 and older. We will evaluate and see, said Dr. James Hildreth, the president and CEO of Meharry Medical College and an FDA panelist deciding on the booster shots. Nonprofit Groups and Health Agencies Partner to Increase Vaccine Access Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute co-sponsor an initiative to fight COVID-19 disinformation in Black communities The campaign to increase vaccine access in minority communities has stepped up a notch as churches and community organizations join with agencies such as Kaiser Permanente and Watts Healthcare Foundation to inoculate more Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). The COVID-19 African American Education and Outreach Initiative, co-sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, is part of a strategy to fight COVID-19 disinformation, persuade more BIPOC groups to get vaccinations and ultimately, end racism in public health. To provide an update on the effort, the East Bay Community Foundation (EBCF), held a virtual briefing on September 16 featuring top executives from nonprofits and health groups that partnered to work directly with populations registering the lowest vaccination rates. ADVERTISEMENT Lee and U.S. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) shared greetings prior to the panel discussion as well as stressed their commitment to educating African Americans and minorities about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccines. Following their comments, Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds moderated the panel discussion. Brown-Hinds is the publisher of Black Voice News and owner of Voice Media Ventures, a strategic media and creation firm based in Riverside, California. Stephanie Ledesma, Kaisers interim senior vice president of community health programs; the Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Thompson, senior pastor of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California; Dr. Oliver Brooks, chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles; Gloria Warner, chief operations officer at Buford Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Centers in South Carolina; Dr. Gary Puckrein, founder of the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF); James Head, EBCF president/CEO; and Keshee Dozier-Smith, CEO of the Rural Health MediCal program in Selma, Alabama, comprised the expert panel. The panelists not only underscored the various challenges that groups both grassroots and professionals encounter in trying to reach vaccine hesitant individuals, but also highlighted the significant successes made possible by the partnership between the agencies. We believe very strongly that increasing vaccinations will end this pandemic. We also believe that our standing in our communities and our strong partnership with community-based organizations will help prevent the further spread of COVID-19 that has disproportionately impacted communities of color, said Ledesma, who added that Kaiser has invested $35 million to assist nonprofits across the U.S. in promoting vaccinations and distributing accurate information about the virus. Thompson, who heads a mega-ministry in the Bay area, noted that the partnership allowed Allen Temple to augment the outreach work that the church was already doing. The relationship with the other agencies led to access to additional data and tracking tools. Because of this key connection with East Bay Community Foundation on this particular project right on our little church campus, weve been able to vaccinate 30,000 people and test over 50,000, Thompson said. And so we hope thats an example to faith-based communities across the nation about the power of partnership, about the power of being forced outside of your doors, and to help do the things that enhance the holistic health of all of those that we are trying to benefit. ADVERTISEMENT A major roadblock to benefitting vaccine reluctant individuals is overcoming their lack of faith in getting inoculated, noted Brooks. Although well-known supporters like U.S. Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Karen Bass publicized testing offered by his agency, Watts Healthcare Foundation, new COVID-19 cases still continued to rise in L.A.s Black community. We knew that the community needed to hear relevant accurate information and they needed to be heard, they needed to have their concerns voiced to someone like us. There are those that did not trust the vaccine, did not trust getting tested, he recalled. As opposed to dismissing them, this partnership allowed us to address their concerns [through] focus groups that we did. Also, we got data and now we have information that we can use to better our community, said Brooks, the immediate past president of the National Medical Association and the past president of the California Immunization Coalition. Comparable success was cited by Dozier-Smith, who used the funding provided by Kaiser to implement a COVID-19 testing and vaccination program along with hiring additional community health workers. This allowed us to see how important the patient engagement, the community partnerships and also the importance of establishing a workforce that is going to be very beneficial to sustain the work that we were able to do with this particular grant, she explained. We see how beneficial it was relationship-building with those patients that are chronically ill, making sure that their primary care did not take a backseat because of COVID. We found ways, through using this funding, [to create] pop up clinics in their neighborhoods. We also partnered with local churches and when they were doing food programs, we would [offer] testing, said Dozier-Smith, who also serves on her congressional districts COVID-19 Advisory Board. As for future steps, Puckrein recommended exploring ways to maintain and build upon the partnership, which aligns with his organizations mission of strengthening national and local efforts to use evidence- based and data-driven projects to eliminate preventable illnesses and deaths of racial and ethnic minorities. To that end, NMQF reached out to Twitter for support and connected with its program, Twitter For Good. The platform contains many components to aid nonprofits including pro bono advertising credits, skills training on content and engagement, and assistance in promoting specific online campaigns. With Twitter For Good, Puckrein said, Youll have some resources to support your social media activities and were going to do the same thing with Google because if weve learned anything here, we have to also bring in social media and drown out some of the disinformation and unfiltered content that thats coming out. From the National Minority Quality Forum standpoint, we want to help you. Offering the resources of his organization, the executive related, We have a lot of data [that] we spent the last 20 years building a database of over five billion patient records. We know whats happening in your zip code, we know how many people have diabetes and heart disease and cancer. We have all of that data. We want to share it with you and the way we want to share it is by empowering the relationship that started here. The advice from EBCF President Head contained a reminder that since the pandemic will likely continue for the foreseeable future, ongoing health resources will be needed to rectify the disparities in BIPOC communities. Fortunately, said Head, the partnership model can be tailored to mold community based organizations into trusted messengers. These organizations are doing this work on a daily basis. They are aware community residents look for assistance for advice to be able to give input and these organizations listen, said Head. So my hope is that we in philanthropy especially, but also in the governmental sector, that we will understand how the importance of community-based organizations has revealed itself. Pfizer Vaccine for Children 5 to 11 is Safe with Robust Antibody Response A Phase 2/3 trial conducted by Pfizer and BioNTech revealed that the Covid-19 vaccine was safe and generated a robust antibody response in children ages 5 to 11. These are the first such results released for this age group for a US Covid-19 vaccine. Pfizer said it plans to submit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization soon. The company said it hopes to have approval by the end of the calendar year. ADVERTISEMENT Over the past nine months, hundreds of millions of people ages 12 and older from around the world have received our COVID-19 vaccine, said Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer. We are eager to extend the protection afforded by the vaccine to this younger population, subject to regulatory authorization, especially as we track the spread of the Delta variant and the substantial threat it poses to children, Bourla continued. Since July, pediatric cases of COVID-19 have risen by about 240 percent in the U.S. underscoring the public health need for vaccination. These trial results provide a strong foundation for seeking authorization of our vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old, and we plan to submit them to the FDA and other regulators with urgency. The trial included 2,268 participants ages 5 to 11 and used a two-dose regimen of the vaccine administered 21 days apart. The trial used a 10-microgram dose smaller than the 30-microgram dose that has been used for those 12 and older. The Phase 1/2/3 trial initially enrolled up to 4,500 children ages 6 months to 11 years of age in the United States, Finland, Poland, and Spain from more than 90 clinical trial sites. ADVERTISEMENT It was designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on a two-dose schedule (approximately 21 days apart) in three age groups: ages 5 to 11 years; ages 2 to 5 years; and ages 6 months to 2 years. Based on the Phase 1 dose-escalation portion of the trial, children ages 5 to 11 years received two-dose schedule of 10 g each while children under age 5 received a lower 3 g dose for each injection in the Phase 2/3 study. The trial enrolled children with or without prior evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection We are pleased to be able to submit data to regulatory authorities for this group of school-aged children before the start of the winter season, said Dr. Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech. The safety profile and immunogenicity data in children aged 5 to 11 years vaccinated at a lower dose are consistent with those we have observed with our vaccine in other older populations at a higher dose. Supporters, Opponents Clash Over Bill That Would Decriminalize Loitering for Prostitution Stephany Powell, an advocate for sex crime victims and survivors, hopes Gov. Newsom will veto Senate Bill (SB) 357. The legislation proposes ending punishment for people loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution. Powell, who is Director of Law Enforcement Training and Survivor Services for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), and other advocates say, if the bill is signed into law, it would provide increased open-air activities in disadvantaged communities. ADVERTISEMENT Im just thinking about the people living in the communities that would have to deal with (prostitution), said Dr. Powell, a former city of Los Angeles law enforcement officer. They (the lawmakers) need to come up with something else because its a band-aid approach to the issue. People who dont have a full understanding of how this can be problematic. I hope its vetoed. The Washington DC-based NCOSE is dedicated to creating an environment free from sexual abuse and exploitation, through policy, legal, corporate advocacy, education, and public mobilization. Dr. Powell joined the organization in 2020. The author of SB 357, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) presents a counterargument. Wiener says the bill protects sex-trafficked women from the police who use loitering laws to discriminate against minorities, including Black, Latino, Trans, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual people. Existing law prohibits soliciting or engaging in an act of prostitution. It also prohibits loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution, as defined, or directing, supervising, recruiting, or aiding a person who is loitering with the intent to commit prostitution. Under the existing law, a violation of any of these provisions is a misdemeanor. SB 357 would decriminalize them. California Penal Code 653.22 allows police to arrest someone for intending to solicit or engage in prostitution even if the person never actually engages in the act. The offense is commonly referred to as loitering to commit prostitution or loitering for prostitution. ADVERTISEMENT Powell said this law is effective. Police officers do not actually have to catch someone engaged in prostitution before apprehending them she says, adding that the police can arrest the sex buyer and the person selling the service. Although Powell says it is easy for innocent people to find themselves under suspicion because of the latitude police officers have under current law, she insists, based on knowledge from prosecutors and D.A. offices investigations of sex trafficking and underage prostitution, it would not be a significant problem. Say if I am the vice cop out there. I see a girl but dont know if shes 16 or 19. But remember: if she is under the age of 18, she is automatically considered to be a victim of human trafficking, Powell said. The only reason why I would be able to stop her is because of P.C. 653.22. So, lets say SB 357 becomes legal. Well then, what am I stopping her for? Because, God help me, if shes 21. Im going to have some legal problems? The governor is getting increased pressure from individuals for and against SB 357, including sex worker advocates across California. Sex-trafficking survivors and anti-trafficking advocates held a news conference at the California State Capitol to protest SB 357. Vanessa Russell, founder of the Bay Areas Love Never Fails, a non-profit dedicated to the restoration, education, and protection of those involved or at risk of becoming involved in domestic human trafficking, said SB 357, the Safer Streets for All Act, is deeply disturbing. As a direct service provider, I think its important to call out a few things, unfortunately. The false narrative that is present and embodied in SB 357, said Russell. This is a bill that is preying on the current anti-sentiment of communities of color. This is not a partisan issue. This is a humanitarian issue. It is an issue that all of us need to engage on to show (sex trafficking) survivors they can be safe. Four survivors of sex trafficking spoke outside the state capitol to express their displeasure with the bill. They said police officers use loitering laws to nab solicitors and traffickers as well as to save trafficked women and men from their brutal traffickers. The survivors believe that without a loitering law, exploitation of these vulnerable women is only going to increase. This piece of legislation only protects the buyer and the trafficker, said survivor Marjorie Saylor, who also runs a nonprofit for former sex-trafficked women exiting prostitution. And these are traffickers that send his girls into your high schools to recruit your sons and daughters. Saylor, a Black woman, said that it was a police officer that helped her escape a sex trafficker. I was rescued by law enforcement, and I feel that it is necessary that we work and partner with law enforcement to engage these men, women, boys, and girls on the streets. They need a reason to go in and say someone is being exploited. The bill authorizes a person convicted of a violation of loitering with the intent to commit prostitution to petition the court for the dismissal and sealing of their case, and resentencing. The U.S. Department of State has estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked into the country each year. The figure does not include victims who are trafficked within the United States each year. New York City is currently dealing with an open-air sex market that vice authorities are turning a blind eye to due to the Brooklyn District Attorney shifting from prosecuting prostitution cases. Brooklyns D.A. has moved to vacate 262 warrants related to the sex trade. Powell said actions such as these empower pimps and sex traffickers. This is what it looks like if prostitution is legal, Powell said of New York Citys approach to the worlds oldest profession. California a populous border state with a significant immigrant population, the States Department of Justice stated is one of the nations top destination states for trafficking human beings. After SB 357 passed the Senate Public Safety Committee in March by a vote of 4-1, Fatima Shabazz of Fatima Speaks, and co-lead of the Policy Committee for the DecrimSexWorkCA Coalition stated, this is the first step in repealing a Jim Crow law that criminalizes Black and trans people in public spaces. Sex workers are workers like anyone else, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, said Wiener, presenting his case for repealing what he views as a discriminatory law. Our criminal justice system criminalizes people particularly Black, Brown and LGTBQ people for simply existing and going about their lives. Laws like this one do nothing to make people safer, or stop sex trafficking. Instead, they criminalize members of our community who are simply going about their lives. We need to support sex workers instead of criminalizing them. The Radical Emergence of Kawaida Philosophy: A Critical Time of Turning Again, in our continuing celebration and assessment of our 56 years and 224 seasons of work, service, struggle and institution-building as the organization Us, we are ultimately and unavoidably led to Kawaida philosophy. For indeed, it is Kawaida philosophy that is not only the central source from which I created the Nguzo Saba (1965) and Kwanzaa (1966), but also it is the indispensable foundation and framework on and within which we live our lives, do our work and wage our struggles for African and human good and the well-being of the world. What follows below is again an excerpt from my book, Kawaida: A Communitarian African Philosophy, with additional commentary. Kawaida philosophy evolved in the 1960s, forged in the crucible of the struggle for freedom. It, of necessity, bears the tone and texture of an organization, Us, and a movement, the Black Liberation Movement, both engaged in intense ideological and practical struggle to change society and the way we think about it and thus, the way we think about ourselves in it. The Sixties was a time of critical social struggles and sustained ideological discourse about the good and just society, the role of culture, the meaning of Black, the relevance of Africa, and the road to revolution or radical and progressive societal change. And the organization Us, the organizational context for the development of Kawaida, played a significant role in these ideological and social struggles in this critical time of turning. In spite of reductive translations by a host of interpreters of various political and academic orientations, the Sixties marks one of the most definitive decades, perhaps the most definitive decade in African American history. In fact, as a result of its achievements and often exaggerated failures, it has become an unavoidable historical referent for understanding our immediate past and making critical assumptions about the future. Its weight as a critical period in African American history is established by several factors. First, it was a time in which African Americans through sustained and costly struggle expanded the realm of freedom in the U.S. in a most definitive way. In other words, they, along with their allies, liberalized the established order, breaking through racist barriers, opening up closed doors of opportunity, raising critical questions about the unequal distribution of wealth and power, and pointing the way toward a free, equal and just society. Thus, Africans launched, fought and won struggles which not only benefitted them, but also expanded the realm of human freedom, improved the quality of life, and inspired struggles of other oppressed and politically marginalized peoples and social groups, i.e., other peoples of color, women, seniors, the disabled and others. ADVERTISEMENT Secondly, the 60s marked a period of massive organization, mobilization and political education of Black people. Among the most prominent organizations were: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Nation of lslam (NOI); Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); The Organization Us; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Black Panther Party (BPP); Urban League (UL); and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) reached their height in the 60s and have not duplicated such strengths since. Thirdly, it is in the context of this flowering of organizations that a second flowering took place, i.e., the flowering of ideological discourse and struggles. In fact, the processes of organization, mobilization and political education all involved ideological discourse, discussion of issues from differing vantage points and worldviews, reflecting a heightened interest of African Americans in social issues, reinforcing political involvement in both community discourse and action, and providing a context necessary for the raising and engaging of issues. Fourthly, the 60s also was a time of armed struggle through revolts in hundreds of cities as essentially an act of self-defense as argued by Robert Williams, Haji Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon. The Movement was not yet aware of Ida B. Wells argument for self-defense which preceded Williams, Malcolms and Fanons. Fifthly, it is during the 60s that African Americans challenged the structure and functioning of academia, redefined relevant education, established Black Studies as a necessary and legitimate discipline, and mobilized and organized Black Students into politically conscious student unions. Moreover, the 60s marked a heightened internationalization of the African American struggle with men and women like Haji Malcolm X, Martin L. King, Robert Williams, Fannie Lou Hamer and members of SNCC travelling around the world, speaking our special truth as a people and winning for us moral and political allies we did not formerly have. In addition, the 60s was a time of alternative institution-building with many rooted in the Nguzo Saba and Kawaida philosophy, i.e., independent schools, co-ops, businesses, cultural centers, theaters, art galleries, alternative churches, Black caucuses within integrated institutions, alternative media, political parties and as mentioned above, Black Studies programs, departments, and research centers. The thrust for structural self-determination was clearly seen as indispensable to the actual control and direction of ones destiny and daily life. Finally, the 60s was, especially in its latter half, the Black Power period, defined by its thrust to return to the source, to go back to Black. It stressed the rescue and reconstruction of African history and culture, redefinition of ourselves and our culture, and a restructuring of the goals and purpose of our struggle for liberation and a higher level of human life. Moreover, there was stress on returning to the Continent of Africa permanently or temporarily, physically and/or spiritually and philosophically for cultural revitalization, to reestablish links and build mutually beneficial relationships as Haji Malcolm X taught. Likewise, there was a stress on living and practicing African culture as an indispensable part of the liberation struggle and process. The call was for a break with all things European and oppressive and to reassert Africanness, Blackness in its awesomeness and beauty, in its reaffirmed history and humanity. In all these ideological and political struggles, Us played a pivotal role on the local and national level, especially through numerous organizations building their work, value systems and projects of struggle and institution-building around the Nguzo Saba, Kwanzaa and other aspects of Kawaida philosophy. Definitive of these organizations are: Uhuru Sasa Independent School and the East in New York; Ahidiana Independent School in New Orleans; Institute of Positive Education in Chicago; the Committee for a United Newark; Ujamaa Shule in Washington, D.C.; and the national Council of Independent Black Institutions. Kawaida also had and continues to have an international impact through both the Nguzo Saba and Kwanzaa, as well as other dimensions of the philosophy selected for application and study by those who embrace it as a result of Us pan-Africanist teaching and practice. This intellectual, ideological and programmatic impact of Us does not include its direct work as an organization in these cities as well as in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Akron and Dayton Ohio, building united fronts and self-defense formations modelled on the Simba Wachanga (The Young Lions of Us). In spite of reductive translations about our work and struggle, we have always maintained a focus on the revolutionary character of culture, seeing culture as the fundamental grounds for the practice of liberation as a wholistic project, i.e., on every level of life. Indeed, we agreed with Haji Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral and Haji Malcolm X that the liberation struggle, itself, is an expression of culture and we accepted the revolutionary obligation to wage a relentless cultural revolution within and a political revolution without, resulting in a radical transformation in self, society and ultimately the world. And we have not ceased since! ADVERTISEMENT Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org. U.S. President Joe Biden announced new rules on September 9 that require certain people to get a COVID-19 vaccination. One part of the announcement said businesses that employ 100 people or more must ask their employees to get vaccinated or require them to show a negative virus test once per week. The rules will affect about 100 million Americans. However, Biden also said people may choose not to be vaccinated due to their religious beliefs. This is known as a religious exemption. In the days following Bidens announcement, many people began claiming that religious exemption. In Los Angeles, about 2,600 police department employees are claiming the exemption. In the state of Washington in Americas northwest, thousands of people who work for the state government are also claiming the exemption. In Arkansas, so many employees of a hospital are claiming the exemption that the hospital says they are bluffing. In the past, not many people used religious beliefs as a reason to avoid vaccinations. But the COVID-19 pandemic is different. Even though the vaccines are safe, protective and widely available in the U.S., many people do not want to get them. Now people are claiming the religious exemption. Many religious leaders do not object to the vaccines. There has been some concern, however, over the cell-line used by the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The Janssen vaccine uses cells grown in a lab that came from a fetus in 1985. Johnson and Johnson has said repeatedly there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine. The Catholic church said it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive vaccines that come from fetal cell research. Pope Francis said not getting a vaccine would be suicide. He received the vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech. The White House said it understands people may use religion as a reason to refuse the vaccine. However, it argues, if the new rule makes more people say yes, it will save lives. In the first part of September, about 1,000 people died each day in the United States from COVID-19. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti said: we will not tolerate the abuse of these exemptions by those who simply dont want to get vaccinated. People who work for the city must be vaccinated by October 5. A group of police employees who do not want the vaccine is taking legal action. In the state of Washington, Governor Jay Inslee said state employees may lose their jobs if they are not vaccinated by October 18, unless they receive an exemption. However, receiving an exemption does not guarantee people will stay employed. The state will decide if people who are not vaccinated can still do their job without putting others at risk. Other large employers in the U.S., including United Airlines, said people who get an exemption will not be permitted to work until new COVID-19 testing plans are put into effect. Jackson Lahmeyer is the leader of a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is offering a religious exemption form on his churchs website. In only three days, more than 35,000 people downloaded the form. They can bring it to their own religious leaders or, if they join the church in Oklahoma and donate money, Lahmeyer will sign it. Were not anti-vaxxers. Were just pro-freedom, Lahmeyer said. He added that he does not think it is right for someone to lose their job if they do not want the vaccine. Im Dan Friedell. Colleen Long and Andrew DeMillo wrote this story for the Associated Press. Dan Friedell adapted it for Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor. Do you think people who go without the vaccine should be able to keep working? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page. ___________________________________________________ Words in This Story negative adj. not showing the presence of a particular germ, condition, or substance tolerate v. to allow (something that is bad, unpleasant, etc.) to exist, happen, or be done exemption n. freedom from being required to do something that others are required to do usually + from bluff v. a false threat or claim that is meant to get someone to do something American Martin Diky says he panicked recently when a huge wildfire began racing down a hill toward his home in Northern California. He did some quick research to learn how how he might protect his $700,000 mountain home near Lake Tahoe. He chose to cover his house with a product called fire wrap. Fire wrap is made with the soft metal called aluminum. The special aluminum covers withstand very high heat for short periods of time. Diky bought $6,000 worth of fire wrap from a California-based company called Firezat Inc. That was enough to cover his 130-square-meter home on the edge of the small California community of Meyers. The fire wrap is very costly, Diky said, and youd feel stupid if they stopped the fire before it got close, he added. But Im really glad we did it. Fire wrap is not widely used by homeowners in America. Along with the high cost, it is difficult to put in place. But the material has saved properties, including small historic houses, or cabins, owned by the U.S. government. It can even be used to protect the living. This week, firefighters in Californias Sequoia National Park covered the base of the worlds largest tree with the aluminum. The tree, known as The General Sherman, is thousands of years old and stands in the parks Giant Forest area. Protective aluminum wrapping can deflect temperatures as high as 550 degrees Celsius. Any structure underneath the wrap stays cooler. This helps prevent fire-linked explosions. It also keeps small, pieces of burning material, or embers, from entering small openings in buildings. Firezats biggest customer is the U.S. government. The Forest Service and the National Park Service are responsible for about 95 percent of the companys sales. Dan Hirning is Firezats president. He estimates the Forest Service has wrapped 600 to 700 buildings, bridges, other structures and trees on its sites just this year. Firefighters on social media have compared the shiny, silver-colored wraps to a big baked potato. One firefighter who helped cover some structures said it felt like he was wrapping Christmas gifts. Fumiaki Takahashi is an engineering professor at Ohios Case Western Reserve University. In 2019, he published a report about the effectiveness of wraps used for wildfire protection. He said they demonstrated both remarkable performance and technical limitations. The wrapping is most effective if a wildfire moves quickly beyond the structure, he said. It is less effective in areas with many houses. The wraps show promise in being effective, he said. But additional research is needed to develop more effective and lightweight versions, Takahashi said in an email to The Associated Press. He said he would not suggest the products for use by everyone because wrapping correctly is still a complex process. But, once a dependable wrapping method is in place, he said, he would call for wider public use. Firezat Inc. sells its fire wrap rolls for $700 each. They are 1.5 meters wide by 61 meters long. Getting a structure wrapped usually costs thousands of dollars for labor. Hirning said most individual buyers he has had over the years are looking to protect, in his words, really expensive homes. They include homeowners in Malibu, California, who are asked to sign an agreement that the Forest Service is not responsible for protecting their property in some cases. As for sales increasing as a result of recent wildfires, Hirning said that it is an extremely seasonable business. Once it starts raining and snowing, he says he often does not sell anything for nine straight months. That could change, however, as climate change leads to more extreme and destructive weather and a longer wildfire season. Im Ashley Thompson. The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story panic - v. to be overcome with extreme fear : to be affected by panic withstand - v. to not be harmed or affected by (something) deflect - v. to cause (something that is moving) to change direction customer - n. someone who buys goods or services from a business remarkable - adj. unusual or surprising : likely to be noticed expensive - adj. costing a lot of money Americans do not believe their personal information is safe online, suggests findings from a new poll. They also are not satisfied with the federal government's efforts to protect such information. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk did the polling. It found that 64 percent of Americans say their social media activity is not secure. About as many have the same safety concerns about online information that shares their physical location. Half of Americans also believe their private text messages are not secure. They are not just concerned. They want the federal government to do something about it. Almost 75 percent of Americans say they support creating laws for how companies can collect, use and share personal data. Jennifer Benz is the head of the AP-NORC Center. What is surprising to me is that there is a great deal of support for more government action to protect data privacy, she said. But after years of failed efforts to create stronger data privacy laws, Americans do not trust the government to fix the problem. A majority of those who took part in the poll said they have more trust in private companies than the federal government to address security and privacy issues. This comes even after years of hacks of U.S. corporations that shared the personal information of millions of people around the world. I feel there is little to no security whatsoever," said Sarah Blick. She is a professor at Kenyon College in Ohio. Officials at the college told Blick earlier this year that someone had used her identity to seek unemployment insurance money. Such fraud has greatly increased since the pandemic began. The poll answers showed that about 71 percent of Americans believe that individuals data privacy should be treated as a national security issue. But only 23 percent are satisfied in the federal governments current efforts. Terri Carver is a Republican Party state lawmaker in Colorado and the writer of a data privacy bill that will take effect there in 2023. The law follows similar measures passed in California and Virginia, and gives people the right to find and delete personal information. Colorado's law also permits people to opt out of having their data tracked and sold. Facebook and other companies opposed the bill. Theres great frustration that individuals have that they dont have the tools and the legal support to establish any kind of effective control over their personal data, Carver said. She hopes the efforts by Colorado and other states push Congress to make national protections. The poll showed that protecting personal information online is an area where people do see a direct role in government, Benz said. Im Dan Novak. Matt OBrien reported this story for The Associated Press. Dan Novak adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. __________________________________________________ Words in This Story poll n. an activity in which several or many people are asked a question or a series of questions in order to get information about what most people think about something text n. data handled by a computer, cell phone, etc., that is mostly in the form of words hack n. to secretly get access to the files on a computer or network in order to get information, cause damage, etc. insurance n. an agreement in which a person makes regular payments to a company and the company promises to pay money if the person is injured or dies, or to pay money equal to the value of something (such as a house or car) if it is damaged, lost, or stolen fraud n. the crime of using dishonest methods to take something valuable from another person opt out n. an opportunity to choose not to do or take part in something frustration n. a feeling of anger or annoyance caused by being unable to do something : the state of being frustrated role n. a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the United States is doubling its purchase of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccines, up to 1 million shots, to share with the world. Biden made the announcement at a COVID-19 meeting of world and business leaders and aid groups alongside the U.N. General Assembly. Speaking to the group over video conferencing, Biden said, Were not going to solve this crisis with half measures or middle of the road ambitions we need to go big. The purchase of another 500 million shots brings the total U.S. vaccination guarantee to more than 1.1 billion through 2022. That is more than donations from the rest of the world combined. However, the latest U.S. donation is only a small part of what will be necessary to meet a goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the worlds population by next September. Biden added that the U.S. would also increase the amount of money given to groups and nations that are administering the shots. He also urged other wealthy nations to donate, rather than sell, the shots to poorer nations. And the European Union said the group would donate another 500 million vaccines, a small increase from its earlier plans. Too little Some have criticized the plans for being too little. Many people in poor nations have not received their first shot while the U.S. is considering additional booster shots to millions of Americans. About 6 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide to 43 percent of the worlds population in the past year. But many poor nations are struggling to vaccinate even those with the most risk of infection. Some have yet to vaccinate more than 2 percent of their population. Colombian President Ivan Duque said Tuesday at the United Nations, "The existing gaps between nations with regard to the vaccination process are unheard of." The World Health Organization (WHO) says only 15 percent of promised donations of vaccines from rich countries have been delivered. The health agency has said it wants countries to meet the sharing goals "immediately." The WHO especially wants to make the shots available for programs that benefit poor countries and Africa. COVAX, the U.N.- supported program to ship vaccines to all countries, has struggled to produce and supply vaccines. The WHO has appealed to wealthy countries to delay booster shots so vaccines can be made available to developing countries. As of Tuesday, COVAX had shipped more than 296 million vaccines to 141 countries. To deal with the supply problem, Biden said the U.S. would work with drug companies and other nations to produce vaccines in their own country. Im Jill Robbins. Zeke Miller reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story ambition n. a particular goal or aim; something that a person hopes to do or achieve administer v. to give (a drug, medicine, or treatment) to someone booster (shot) n. extra amount of a substance (called a vaccine) that is injected with a needle into a person or animal to help protect against a particular disease gap n. a difference between two people, groups, or things often + between in regard to relating to (something) deliver v. to do what you say you will do or what people expect you to do; to produce the promised, wanted, or expected results What do you think of the U.S. promise to send two times as many vaccines to the world? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. Sharing COVID-19 vaccines has been a major subject of discussion at this years United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. South Africas President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chads President Mahamat Idriss Deby and Ugandas President Yoweri Museveni were among those who spoke on Thursday. Most of Thursdays speakers were leaders from African nations. Their countries are not able to get enough vaccines to protect their people. Ramaphosa said that it is an indictment on humanity that more than 82 percent of the worlds COVID-19 vaccines are in the hands of rich countries. He said less than one percent have gone to poor countries. He added, "Unless we address this as a matter of urgency, the pandemic will last much longer as new forms of the virus appear. The struggle to contain the coronavirus also has been a big issue in speeches given at the U.N. meeting. In a statement to the U.N., Mokgweetsi Masisi, the President of Botswana said: Botswana shares the frustration by many and strongly supports the call for the vaccines to be treated as a global public good. On Wednesday, American President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. would buy 1 billion of Pfizer's COVID-19 shots to share with the world. That was two times the amount of his earlier promise. He also said he supported a goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the worlds population within the next year. Some countries have had vaccines widely available to their populations for months. But other countries have struggled to get supplies. The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that four percent of the population is fully vaccinated. Ramaphosa took part in a meeting Wednesday that was called by Biden to talk about increasing efforts to vaccinate people all over the world. At that meeting, Biden announced the U.S. deal to buy an additional 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to send to other countries. Of the around 6 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, only two percent of these have been administered in Africa, a continent of more than 1.2 billion people, Ramaphosa said. This is unjust and immoral. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, a number of world leaders made video presentations instead of traveling to New York to speak in person. About half of Thursdays speeches were by video. Speaking on video from Havana, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced the U.S. embargo against Cuba. He said it has been made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking at the U.N., Panamas President Laurentino Cortizo said his country has vaccinated more than half of its population. "Thanks to this, we are only weeks away from reaching herd immunity," he said. Cortizo asked for the support of the international community to deal with the large number of migrants passing through his nation. Many of the migrants are from Africa and the Caribbean islands. Cortizo said, This is everyones responsibility. Im Jill Robbins. Jill Robbins adapted this report for Learning English from VOA and Associated Press Reports and other materials. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor. __________________________________________________ Words in This Story discuss v. to give information, ideas, opinions, etc., about (something) in writing or speech indictment n. an expression or statement of strong disapproval address v. to give attention to (something) frustration n. a feeling of anger or annoyance caused by being unable to do something dose n. the amount of a medicine, drug or vitamin that is taken at one time herd immunity n. the situation where a large portion of a population becomes immune to an infectious disease, limiting further disease spread What do you think of the speeches of the African leaders? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. Taiwan has officially requested to become part of the trade agreement known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. The move by Taiwans government comes shortly after mainland China requested to become a member of the trade group. Taiwans cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng said in a statement Wednesday, "Applying to join the CPTPP is an important economic and trade policy that the government has worked hard to promote for a long time. Taiwan has been discussing the issue unofficially with current members of the group. The island has been prevented from being a member of many international organizations because of objections by the government of mainland China. But Taiwan is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Taiwan has been working towards trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. The two sides have been frustrated because mainland China has not opened its economic markets as it promised to do. The U.S. and EU also want to show support for Taiwans democracy and its open market economic policies. Last week, Taiwans Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua expressed concern about mainland Chinas sudden decision to apply to join the group. She said she hoped it would not affect the islands own application. Mainland China had requested to join the trade group in a letter to New Zealands new trade minister, Damien OConnor, last Thursday. China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as a rebel territory and has threatened to seize it by force. Japan is the chair of the CPTPP this year. Japan said it would discuss Chinas request with member countries. Japanese Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said last week: Japan believes that its necessary to determine whether China, which submitted a request to join the TPP-11, is ready to meet its extremely high standards. Eleven countries signed the CPTPP agreement in 2018. The deal is aimed at reducing import taxes and putting in place trade rules for member nations. The two largest economies that are members of the trade group are Japan and Canada. Other countries signing the deal are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Mexico. New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are also included. The original agreement, known as TPP, had 12 countries including the United States. It was seen as an important economic measure against Chinas growing influence under former U.S. President Barrack Obama. However, former President Donald Trump, who followed Obama, withdrew the United States from the deal in 2017. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. has not commented on the current trade agreement. But Britain started negotiations in June to join the group. Im Mario Ritter, Jr. Mario Ritter Jr. adapted this Reuters report for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. __________________________________________________ Words in This Story promote v. to help something happen, develop or increase sudden adj. happening, coming or done quickly in a way that is not expected apply v. to formally or officially ask for something, such as membership in an organization determine v. to officially decide an issue, especially doing so based on evidence or facts standards n. (pl.) a group of requirements that are expected to be met frustrated adj. upset as a result of not being able to do or complete something original adj. happening or existing first or at the beginning We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. Thuy Do was reminded of her own family when she saw the images of Afghans at the airport in Kabul. She saw people desperate to flee their country after the Taliban takeover. Do remembers hearing how her parents tried to leave Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, after Vietnam fell to communist rule in 1975. As in Kabul, the American military tried to bring out as many allies as they could from Vietnam by air. But many did not make it out before the American military left. It took Dos family many years and several failed attempts to finally get out of the country and make it to the United States. She was nine years old when they arrived. Her family had a combined $300. Each person had just two sets of clothes. Today, Do is a 39-year-old doctor living in Seattle, Washington. Because of her own familys experience, she decided to help Afghans facing a similar situation. We were them 40 years ago, Do said. With the fall of Saigon in 1975, this was us. Do and her husband decided to offer an empty house they own to refugee resettlement groups. The groups set up the house for newly arriving Afghans in need of a place to stay. Television images of Afghans seeking to leave on U.S. military flights out of Kabul brought back painful memories for many Vietnamese Americans. They remembered their own attempts to escape Saigon. The crisis has also led many Vietnamese Americans to give money to refugee resettlement groups. They are offering housing and legal assistance to arriving Afghans. Some have also said they want to offer guidance that refugees and new immigrants may need. This can include how to buy things at a food store, sign up children to go to school or how to drive a car in America. Since the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have come to the United States. They have settled in communities from California to Virginia. Today, Vietnamese Americans are the sixth-largest immigrant group in the country. The U.S. had long announced plans to withdraw from Afghanistan after a 20-year war. But the militarys final days in the country were much more dangerous than expected. More than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in an attack on the Kabul airport. In the last two weeks of August, the U.S. removed 31,000 people from Afghanistan. Most of them were Afghans who supported American military efforts. But many Afghan allies were left behind, with the country now under control of the Taliban militant group. In a similar way, many Vietnamese Americans remember how they could not get out before the fall of Saigon to communism. Some faced long periods in reeducation camps as a punishment for helping the Americans who had fought in their country. Once they got out of the camps, many tried to leave the country by boat. They took extremely dangerous trips across the sea in hopes of making it to neighboring countries. Thousands of people did not survive their escape. Afghans arriving in the United States may have a special status for those who supported U.S. military operations. Some may have been sponsored to come by family members already here. Others are expected to arrive as refugees or seek permission to travel to the U.S. under a process known as humanitarian parole. For parole, Afghans need the support of a U.S. citizen or legal resident. Some Vietnamese Americans have signed up to sponsor people they have never met, said Tuan inhJanelle. He is with the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. Other efforts have centered on raising money for refugee resettlement groups. Vietnamese and Afghan American artists held a special music event this month in Southern California to raise money to help Afghan refugees. The Saigon Broadcasting Television Network said the event raised more than $160,000. The event also aired on Afghan American satellite television, said Bilal Askaryar. He is a spokesperson for the #WelcomeWithDignity campaign aimed at supporting asylum seekers. They saw the need. They saw the parallels, Askaryar said. Its really powerful to see that they saw that link of common humanity between the Afghan community and the Vietnamese community. Thi Do is another Vietnamese American who is doing what he can to help. Do is an immigration lawyer in California. He is helping newly arrived Afghans register petitions to have family members join them in the U.S. Do was a young boy when Saigon fell. His father, who served in the South Vietnamese army, was sent to a reeducation camp. When his father returned, the family left Vietnam by boat in hopes of reaching a country that would take them. Do remembers how the boat passed dead bodies floating on the water. He remembers how his father apologized for putting him and his brothers and sisters in danger. Dos family first reached Thailand and Malaysia. But both countries forced them back out to sea. The family later made it to Indonesia, where they were processed at a refugee camp. Do said, through his work, he has helped people fleeing persecution before. But until now, no situation has reminded him so much of Vietnam. Do said, I see a lot of myself in those children who were running on the tarmac at the airport. Im John Russell. And I'm Ashley Thompson. The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor. _________________________________________________ Words in This Story desperate adj. very sad or upset because of having little or not hope status n. the official position of a person or thing according to the law sponsored adj. to be supported or helped by a someone, called a sponsor, who takes responsibility for a person resident n. someone who lives in a particular place parallel n. a way in which things are similar petition n. a formal written request made to an official person or organization persecution n. to treat someone cruelly or unfairly especially because of race, religion or political beliefs tarmac n. the area covered by pavement at an airport We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. Josh Blackman (South Texas College of Law Houston) has posted The Irrepressible Myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts on SSRN. Here is the abstract: During the COVID-19 outbreak, Jacobson v. Massachusetts became the fountainhead for pandemic jurisprudence. Courts relied on this 1905 precedent to resolve disputes about religious freedom, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, the right to travel, and many other contexts. But Justice John Marshall Harlans decision was very narrow. It upheld the states power to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. No more, no less. Yet, judges now follow a variant of Jacobson that is far removed from the Lochner-era decision. And the Supreme Court is largely to blame for these errors. Over the course of a century, four prominent Justices established the irrepressible myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. This myth has four levels. The first level was layered in Buck v. Bell (1927). Justice Holmes recast Jacobsons limited holding to support forcible intrusions onto bodily autonomy. The Cambridge law did not involve forcible vaccination, but Holmes still used the case to uphold a compulsory sterilization regime. The second level was layered in 1963. In Sherbert v. Verner, Justice Brennan transformed Jacobson, a substantive due process case, into a free exercise case. And he suggested that the usual First Amendment jurisprudence would not apply during public health crises. The third level was layered in 1973. In Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmun incorporated Jacobson into the Courts modern substantive due process framework. Roe also inadvertently extended Jacobson yet further: during a health crisis, the state has additional powers to restrict abortions. The fourth layer is of recent vintage. In South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, Chief Justice Robertss superprecedent suggested that Jacobson-level deference was warranted for all pandemic-related constitutional challenges. This final layer of the myth, however, would be buried six months later in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. The per curiam decision followed traditional First Amendment doctrine, and did not rely on Jacobson. But Jacobson stands ready to open up an escape hatch from the Constitution during the next crisis. The Supreme Court should restore Jacobson to its original meaning, and permanently seal that escape hatch. This article, written in the midst of the pandemic, will revisit, repudiate, and replace the irrepressible myth of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Highly recommended. James Millerds 1673 map of Bristol marks the citys pesthouse on the very edge of his map of the city. He seems to have brought the house in by about 150 metres so that he could include it on his plan. This image of the house is taken from an updated version of the map printed in 1728. Credit: Society of Merchant Venturers/Bristol Record Society An undergraduate history student from the University of Bristol has uncovered previously unknown details about one of the worst-named, but possibly most successful, quarantine hospitals in English history: Bristol's "Forlorn Hope Pesthouse." Working from original source material from Bristol Archives, Alex Beard was able to discover information about the hospital that led to the discovery of its exact location, who worked there, how it operated and how it was financed. In 166566, London was devastated by The Great Plague. A hundred thousand people died in just a few months. In absolute terms, this was the worst loss of life in any English city since the arrival of the "Black Death' in 1348. Between 60 and 80 percent of those who contracted Bubonic Plague died horribly within ten days and about half were children. Plague had visited Bristol many times before 1665, frequently killing 1020 percent of the city's population. But 1666 was different. During an outbreak lasting from April to September, only a hundred or so people died, about 0.6 percent of the population. This fact prompted Alex Beard to find out why. Working from photographs taken at Bristol Archives during the summer of 2020, he employed two main sources. These were the Common Council Proceedings and the Mayor's Audit Books, which record the council's decisions and expenses. In an effort to prevent Plague spreading from London, Bristol imposed a strict quarantine on goods and people coming to the city from June 1665. After that, fairs were canceled, public gatherings stopped and infected houses 'locked up' and placed under armed guard. All this was in line with national government guidelines. But on 5 December the Council went further, resolving 'to agree and contract for the House called the Forelorne Hope belonging to Mr Butcher and the barne thareunto adjoyning' to be used as a pesthouse. Bristol and other cities had established pesthouses during earlier Plague outbreaks. But these were often just flimsy sheds built for plague victims who had nowhere else to go. The Forlorn Hope Pesthouse would be different. Later expenses from the Mayor's Audit Books include payments for food and medicines. And when patient numbers grew during the summer of 1666, temporary huts with sailcloth roofs were constructed. Most importantly, the pesthouse was run by a doctor, the surgeon John Dunbarr, assisted by physicians. These included Dr. William Sermon, a London physician who was later to receive a Doctorate of Medicine from Cambridge University at the urging of King Charles II. After the Plague outbreak was over, Bristol expressed its gratitude to its chief health worker. "For his late faithfull service at the Pesthouse in the time of Infection to the greate hazard of his life' the surgeon John Dunbarr was awarded 44. That was equivalent to four years earnings for an ordinary laborer. Alex said: "To be honest the treatments offered at the pesthouse probably didn't help much. But the pesthouse took people away from their crowded households in the center of the city. That limited the spread of the infection. "It would also have reduced the chance of the disease spreading to the local rat population. The role played by rats in transmitting Bubonic Plague was not understood until the early twentieth century. But, as every modern schoolchild knows, black rats carried Plague." Dr. Evan Jones, Alex's supervisor from the University's Department of History, added: "This was not COVIDit was a hundred times worse and it was when the rats became infected that things got really bad. "Major Plague epidemics seem to have happened when Bubonic Plague jumped back from human travelers and their goods to local rat populations. That allowed the disease to spread widely. When fleas from infected rats then bit humans the fleas transmitted the bacteria, Yersinia Pestis." Turning the Forlorn Hope into a proper hospital, would have encouraged people to send family members there. It was only in June 1666 that the King mandated the use of a "pest-house, sheds or huts, for the preservation of the rest of the family." Charles II ordered that these pesthouses were to be guarded by wardens to stop the plague victims "from conversing with the sound." However, he left it to local authorities to decide how much, if any, medical assistance should be provided. People were unlikely to send their children or spouses away to a pesthouse unless they knew that they would get proper care and, even in the seventeenth century, health care cost a lot of money. One of the other documents Alex uncovered revealed that, at the height of the outbreak, in the summer of 1666, Bristol was spending 400 per month on relief, prevention and treatmentdoubling its expenditure on public services. But all this left one final mystery: where was the Forlorn Hope Pesthouse? James Millerd's 1673 map of Bristol depicts a large stone "Pest House" off Newfoundland Lane, right on the edge of his map. This lies in what was to become the St Paul's area of the city. But was this pesthouse the Forlorn Hope? Alex was unable to find out because Bristol Archives remained closed because of COVID throughout the winter and spring. In the summer, Dr. Jones was able to visit the archive. His work, assisted by others, has enabled the house's location to be pinpointed. It soon became apparent that the pesthouse was likely to have been located on a 13-acre farm, in the most isolated part of the County of Bristol, later known as the Forlorn Hope Estate. Jones was able to identify the limits of this from 19th century plans, which also indicated the probable core of the estate. Yet it was a 1743 map of Bristol that confirmed the location of the house on the estate. The map also provides a clue to both why the Forlorn Hope House was chosen and why it got its name. The house being the most isolated dwelling house within Bristol's county boundaries: the ideal site for a quarantine hospital. Any remains of the hospital probably lie under what was 2025 St Nicholas Road. This area was developed as Victorian terrace housing in the 1870s, as Bristol grew. Much of the site was redeveloped for flats in the late twentieth century. The documents Alex transcribed for his dissertation, along with extra material identified by Jones and others, has now been published online by the Bristol Record Society. The aim is to provide a resource for students, scholars and the public. After the plague outbreak was over, Bristol rewarded John Dunbarr, its chief medic. Apart from getting a hefty financial reward, he was granted freedom of the city, allowing the surgeon to practice in Bristol for many years, training a string of young apprentices. Dr. Jones added: "In 1666, Bristol was saved from the Great Plague. For that, it had good reason to thank a brave doctor and a Forlorn Hope." Alex said: "It was great to make such a discovery after so much work went into the research. It was fascinating to see how plague was combated in the 17th Century, especially after the last two years we have had, in and out of lockdowns. "I must credit all those at the University who aided my research especially Dr. Evan Jones, who was an amazing help. I hope it inspires those studying History to go out and conduct their own primary research, it's extremely fulfilling." Explore further 31 dead in DR Congo plague outbreak More information: Documents relating to the Great Plague 1665-1666 in Bristol: Documents relating to the Great Plague 1665-1666 in Bristol: archive.org/details/beardplague Most people who work in nursing homes have experienced elder abuse. Credit: Shutterstock, NTB Abuse of older patients in nursing homes is common. In a new survey, around 60 percent of nursing home staff report that they have committed violence, abuse or neglect of the elderly. The NTNU report that has documented these findings has led the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) to take action. As many as 76 percent of health care staff say they have seen other health personnel commit abuse. Nearly 89 percent have observed aggression between elderly residents and about 46 percent have observed at least one incident of violence and abuse committed by relatives in the past year. (See fact box.) Earlier this year, researchers at NTNU completed a major project on violence against the elderly in nursing homes. Their research has already generated concrete results that will improve the situation for older patients. The Storting has asked the government to ensure that there is a duty to report when elder abuse occurs, and that national rules be developed for handling violence against the elderly. Reducing violence against the elderly "Our goal is to reduce violence and abuse in nursing homes," says associate professor Wenche Karin Malmedal from NTNU's Department of Public Health and Nursing. Malmedal has been manager of a research project that surveyed the situation for nursing home residents in Norway. Professor Arne Henning Eide from NTNU's Department of Public Health and Nursing was the project manager. He is also the acting research director at SINTEF Digital, Health research department. Anja Botngard was a Ph.D. research fellow for the project. She defended her dissertation in April 2021. Approximately 100 randomly selected nursing homes from all over Norway participated in the survey, and the data collection was completed in January 2019. The data showed that the situation was serious, and the authorities were contacted. Parliament took unanimous action Malmedal and Eide met then-Minister for the Elderly Sylvi Listhaug in December 2019. "We talked about the need for reporting and that this should be introduced. After that I was contacted by the Progress Party (Frp) in connection with formulating a recommendation to the Storting," says Malmedal. Through her involvement in the Norwegian Association of Pension Funds, Malmedal provided written input to the parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Care Services, which she signed both in her NTNU capacity and as a member of the Pensioners' Association. The NTNU research was also described in her recommendations to the Storting. On 25 May this year, the Storting unanimously adopted the following two points: The Storting asks the government to establish national guidelines for the investigation and handling of cases of elder abuse. The Storting asks the government to establish a duty to report to the supervisory authorities when there is reason to believe that the elderly are exposed to violence and abuse. Supervisors often don't know The survey also shows that nursing home supervisors often do not have a full overview of conditions for their residents. Supervisors describe incidents where residents are subjected to violence and abuse from relatives, other residents or employees. But many supervisors have complex and demanding work responsibilities that make it difficult for them to detect, deal with and prevent violence and abuse. "We want our research to help management find good strategies for reducing violence and abuse in Norwegian nursing homes," says Eide. Age discrimination Elder abuse occurs all over the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that between three and five percent of the elderly over the age of 65 are subjected to some form of abuse. But research on violence against the elderly in nursing homes has not been a priority. Until now. "We know that age discrimination occurs, including within the health care system. This can lead to elder abuse not receiving the necessary attention that would enable us to prevent and deal with the situation in a good way," says Malmedal. Need more people with health education Several factors come into play for both the individuals who commit abuse and those who report it. "Employees who have a health education background, poor mental health, a desire to quit their job or a poor attitude towards the elderly reported more situations than employees with no health education, good mental health, a desire to stay in their job and good attitudes towards the elderly," says Eide. Employees with health education report abuse and violence more often than people without health education do. "This finding could have several reasons. It may be that health-educated nursing staff are more often assigned to work with residents with dementia and challenging behaviors. Another possibility is that health-educated staff have greater knowledge and expertise that enables them to reflect more critically on their own practices, and thus to more easily recognize and report negative events," says Eide. Among the measures that the researchers have proposed to politicians is having more people with a background in health education at the worksite at all times. Recommended measures to reduce elder abuse: Larger staff size on the job, primarily people with health education. Increase employees' dementia, violence and abuse expertise. Smaller and more home-like settings for residents with dementia. Use of welfare technology such as various alarms and sensors. Help supervisors develop strategies to prevent violence. Ensure that there are national guidelines. Duty for nursing homes to report when violence and abuse are discovered. Dementia often a contributing cause Employee behavior is far from the only problem. Abuse among residents or between relatives and residents is very widespread. Previous research shows that behavioral problems due to dementia are among the greatest risk factors for aggression between residents. "International research further shows that such incidents can be related to mental illness, physical injury, reduced quality of life, long-term disabilities and death," says Malmedal. Increasing employee expertise in dementia, violence and abuse could also help the situation, according to the researchers. Smaller and more home-like settings for residents with dementia are another recommendation. Welfare technology such as various alarms and sensors can create security and prevent unrest. The project has now been completed, following seven research articles and conclusions that were clear enough for the Storting to take action. The research was supported by the Research Council of Norway. Explore further More than one in 10 elderly adults experience mistreatment Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A Dutch court has ruled that a 12-year-old boy had the right to get a COVID jab to visit his dying grandmother despite his vaccine-sceptic father's objections. In one of the first cases of its kind in the Netherlands, the unnamed boy in the northern city of Groningen argued that getting the vaccine would reduce his chances of passing on an infection to her. Children aged 12 to 17 in the Netherlands can choose to be vaccinated but need permission from both parents. In this case, the boy's parents are divorced and his mother agreed. Judge Bart Tromp of Groningen District Court granted permission for the boy to be vaccinated due to the "interests involved in vaccination, in particular the interest of this minor". He ordered that the boy be given the shot "shortly" because his interests were more important than any possible appeal by the father's lawyers. The judge made the ruling on Tuesday but it was not released until Thursday. Court papers said the boy's father, who does not believe in vaccines or testing for coronavirus, refused to allow him to get a jab. "The boy wanted to be vaccinated because he did not want to get infected and wanted to limit the chance of infecting others," court papers said. "On top of this, his grandmother is suffering from metastatic lung cancer and is in the final stages of her life." "The minor wants to spend as much time as possible with her, but he is not vaccinated. He is afraid that he may infect his granny and is convinced that if he did it would be life-threatening," the papers said. The boy "found it difficult to talk to his father and felt his pleas were not being heard." His father argued that vaccines "were still in a test phase" and said it was possible there would be "great risks for the reproductive organs in the long term". But the judge said there appeared to be no scientific basis for such concerns. Dutch law says judges can make decisions in the best interests of children if their parents cannot agree. Vaccine scepticism is a growing issue in the Netherlands, with the leader of one far-right party espousing anti-vaccine views in parliament. Protests are expected this weekend when the government introduces a COVID pass to enter restaurants and bars. 2021 AFP Graphical abstract. Credit: DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.009 In a first, a computer that could fit on an implantable device has interpreted brain signals for precise, high-speed, multifinger movements in primates. This key step toward giving those who have lost limb function more natural, real-time control over advanced prosthesesor even their own handswas achieved at the University of Michigan. "This is the first time anyone has been able to control multiple fingers precisely at the same time," said Cindy Chestek, an associate professor of biomedical engineering. "We're talking about real-time machine learning that can drive an index finger on a prosthesis separately from the middle, ring or small finger." Brain/machine interfaces capable of providing real-time control over a variety of high-tech gadgetry is under development by a variety of interests, from government institutions such as DARPA to private ventures such as Elon Musk's Neuralink. A major hurdle for players in the field, however, has been getting continuous brain control of multiple fingers. So far, continuous individual finger control has only been achieved by reading muscle activity, which cannot be used in cases of muscle paralysis. And current technologies for harnessing brain signals have allowed primate or human test subjects to manipulate prosthetics with simple movementsmuch like a pointer or pincer. In contrast, the system developed in Chestek's lab enabled primate subjects to create intricate movements for digital "hands" on a computer screen. The technology has the potential to benefit a variety of users suffering from paralysis, resulting from spinal cord injury, stroke, ALS or other neurological diseases. "Not only have we demonstrated the first ever brain-controlled individual finger movements, but it was using computationally efficient recording and machine learning methods that fit well on implantable devices," said Sam Nason, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering and first author of the paper in the journal Neuron. "We are hoping that 10 years from now, people with paralysis can take advantage of this technology to control their own hands again using an implantable brain-machine interface." The system gathers signals from the primary motor cortex, the brain center controlling movement, through an implanted 4mm x 4mm electrode array. The array provides 100 small contact points in the cortex, potentially creating 100 channels of information and enabling the team to capture signals at the neuron level. Chestek says very similar implants have been used in humans for decades and are not painful. Key to the effort was defining a training task that would systematically separate movements of the fingers, forcing them to move independently unless instructed otherwise. Brain activity corresponding to those movements could not be isolated without the movements themselves being isolated. The team achieved this by showing two able-bodied rhesus macaque monkeys an animated hand on-screen with two targets, one presented for the index finger and the other for the middle, ring and small fingers as a group. The targets were colored to indicate which fingers should go to each target, allowing the monkeys to freely control the animated hand using a system that measures the positions of their fingers. They hit the targets to get apple juice as a reward. When the monkeys moved their fingers, the implanted sensor captured the signals from the brain and transferred the data to computers that used machine learning to predict the finger movements. After about five minutes of training time for the machine learning algorithm, these predictions were then used to directly control the animated hand from the monkeys' brain activity, bypassing any movements of their physical fingers. With direct access to the motor cortex, the speed with which U-M's technology can capture, interpret and relay signals comes close to real-time. In some instances, hand movements that take the monkeys 0.5 seconds to accomplish in the real world can be repeated through the interface in 0.7 seconds. "It's really exciting to be demonstrating these new capabilities for brain machine interfaces at the same time that there's been huge commercial investment in new hardware," said Nason. "I think that this will all go forward much faster than people think." The team is undergoing regulatory review to translate this research into clinical trial testing with humans. Those experiments could begin as early as next year. Explore further A smart artificial hand for amputees merges user and robotic control More information: Samuel R. Nason et al, Real-time linear prediction of simultaneous and independent movements of two finger groups using an intracortical brain-machine interface, Neuron (2021). Journal information: Neuron Samuel R. Nason et al, Real-time linear prediction of simultaneous and independent movements of two finger groups using an intracortical brain-machine interface,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.009 Credit: CC0 Public Domain Legislators around the world are being asked to reconsider how to regulate the latest developments in gene technology, genome editing and gene silencing. Both the European Court of Justice and the New Zealand High Court have ruled that genome editing techniques should remain under the regulations specific to genetically modified organisms. But a few other countries, including Australia, have exempted some uses of these techniques from their regulations, based on similarities to what occurs in nature. The main argument is that the biochemical processes of editing are like the processes that cause natural mutations. The "equivalent to nature" narrative blurs the boundary between natural processes and technology. Unfortunately, the risks from technology don't disappear by calling it natural. The risk of harm from gene technology accumulates over time and scale of production. In our new research, we propose a framework that regulates technologies depending on their scale of use. Proponents of deregulation of gene technology use the naturalness argument to make their case. But we argue this is not a good basis for deciding whether a technology should be regulated. Risk of harm grows with increased use The notion of naturalness has been criticized as unscientific in the past, but now some scientists are using it to say that gene editing should be exempt from regulations. Geneticists have long used the term "spontaneous" to refer to events that are outside of human control. Mutations can be either spontaneous or caused by people using gene technology. Differences in DNA sequences produced by either might give rise to a new trait. In nature, if a new trait brings an advantage to the organism, it is amplified through reproductive fitness. When humans amplify a trait through selective breeding, we substitute our hands for the invisible hands of natural selection. We therefore create additional potential for harm through our interventions. Some uses and outcomes of gene technology can be made to appear natural, but this is a diversion from how and why gene technology should be regulated. Instead we should recognize that gene technologies allow more people to produce and amplify modified organisms more quickly and in more environments. Any potential harmful outcomes of the use of gene technology increase as it is used more. What makes gene technology useful is also what makes it risky. Complex risk Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner described gene technology as a biological Archimedian lever for doing what could occur spontaneously in a faster, more concentrated and very different manner. "We now have the tools to speed up biological change and if this is carried out on a large enough scale, then we can say that if anything can happen it certainly will. " Safety increases with the use of some technologies, such as car brakes. The more cars with brakes, the safer our roads. No tool of gene technology, including gene silencing and genome editing, becomes safer the more it is used. Gene technologies can be improved incrementally, but that isn't making them safer when used more. Any potential risks multiply as more people use them more frequently and on more species. Regulation is our least imperfect tool to manage this risk. Imagine if other technologies with the capacity to harm were governed by resemblance to nature. Should we deregulate nuclear bombs because the natural decay chain of uranium-238 also produces heat, gamma radiation and alpha and beta particles? We inherently recognize the fallacy of this logic. The technology risk equation is more complicated than a supercilious "it's just like nature" argument. Critical control points We proposed the use of critical control points in a governance framework to regulate technology consistently with its risk to cause harm. One such critical control point is between the introduction of mutations and the release of the organism. Another is the decision to make genome editing and gene silencing reagents available for sale to nearly anyone. Deregulation and tiered regulatory frameworks release important critical control points from oversight. That is a problem even for what might be considered low-risk uses of genome editing and gene silencing because if they are used more without regulatory oversight, the likelihood of harm increases. Critical control points tether governance to risk rather than downplay risk using metaphors that sound like science but are not. "No foreign DNA" or "just like nature" are slippery semanticsthey are not measurable but make risk assessments sound quantitative and precise. This approach raises misunderstanding of the underlying causes of harm from technology, inviting Brenner's future where "if anything can happen it certainly will." Whether it is by sweeping or creeping deregulation, carefully chosen metaphors descale the risk of any kind of genetic engineering. By sleight of speech any technology can be made to sound like an extension of nature. Critical control points instead inform both risk assessment and risk mitigation with precision. Regulated gene technologies can produce safe and possibly socially acceptable products, but we don't get to them faster by taking short cuts. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. A transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (UK B.1.1.7 variant), isolated from a patient sample and cultivated in cell culture. Credit: NIAID With global COVID cases declining and pandemic fatigue on the rise, many countries are easing restrictions put in place to block the spread of the virus. But it's far too soon to declare victory, say experts, who warn that unequal vaccine access could still lead to the emergence of new and more deadly variants of the virus. Positive signs On September 14 the World Health Organization (WHO) announced "the first substantial decline in weekly [COVID] cases in more than two months" after new infections during the week of September 6 totalled four million. That number fell again the following week to 3.6 million as did the number of deaths, to "just under 60,000", the WHO said in its most recent update this week. In Europewhere a large percentage of adults are now vaccinatedthe pandemic seems to be waning after spikes of infections caused by the Delta variant. "I believe that most of the world (including most of Europe and the Americas) is entering the final phase of the pandemic," Francois Balloux of the University College of London tweeted last week. "There will be outbreaks over the coming months/years but I don't anticipate COVID-19 waves comparable to those we've experienced over the last 18 months." Epidemiologist Mircea Sofonea, a specialist on the evolution of infectious diseases at the University of Montpellier, said COVID is spreading differently now, especially in Europe. "We are seeing the transition from a wave pattern to more scattered spikes that aren't as high," he told AFP. This improvement has emboldened several European countries to end some or even all pandemic-related restrictions, as Denmark did on September 10. "We will know in two or three weeks whether the results of Denmark's experiment are positive or not," epidemiologist Antoine Flahault told AFP. He said that what happens in Denmark will determine "whether we can encourage other European countries to lift the widespread use of health passes and even mask-wearing without risking a new spike in the pandemic." "The measures could always be reinstated if infections go up again," he added. Reasons to be cautious So is the pandemic in its final phase? "I think it is too early to say just yet for everyone, though in the highly vaccinated parts of the world, this will be more true," virologist Julien Tang told AFP by email. For now, he said, statements about how the pandemic is progressing "have to be very country- or region-specific". "There are now clear inequalities in terms of vaccination coverage across the world," Tang said. Less than two percent of the world's poorest populations have received even a first dose of vaccine, noted Flahault, director of the University of Geneva's Institute of Global Health. "In certain placeseastern and central Europe, Africa, Asia, Israel, Canada, El Salvador, Belizecases are increasing exponentially, so we can't say the pandemic is behind us," he said. Even in rich, well-vaccinated countries showing a downward trend, things could reverse, experts caution. As the northern hemisphere approaches winter, people will once again gravitate toward large, indoor gatherings that boost circulation of the virus. "We have to be careful of the situation in Europe and North America as we enter the middle of autumn," says Sofonea. "What we know about this pandemic is that it is unpredictable," added Flahault. "No one foresaw the appearance of the Delta variant in India last spring, even though we feared that kind of thing might happen." Reasons to worry The highly contagious Delta variant is now dominant across the world. Although vaccines are less effective at impeding its spread, they still work very well in preventing hospitalisation and death. But that could change. "If a mutation of the Delta variant made it more resistant to existing vaccines, it could reverse the improvement we are currently seeing," Flahault said. Since a huge proportion of the population of poor countries is not vaccinated, it is likely that major spikes in infections could cause new variants to emerge, he added. "As long as the virus is circulating at a high rate somewhere in the world, we won't be safe from new waves," Flahault said. "Right now for world safety we must vaccinate as many people on Earth as possible." Explore further Has Delta killed the herd immunity dream? 2021 AFP Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The treatment of lower back pain is by no means always based on research evidence and, for example, too many imaging examinations are still being carried out. Researcher Anna Sofia Simula assessed the effectiveness of the new patient education booklet in the treatment of lower back pain patients in her study conducted at the University of Oulu, Finland. A total of over 400 patients with lower back pain took part in the study in eight health care units. For the study, the units were randomized into intervention and control groups. The use of the patient education booklet significantly reduced both imaging examinations and sick leave days. During the one-year follow-up period, 18% of patients in the intervention group and 30% of patients in the control group underwent lower back imaging examinations. The average length of sick leave was around one week in the intervention group and as much as three weeks in the control group. There were no significant differences in physical function between the groups. The results of the impact study were published in the scientific journal BMC Family Practice. "The new patient education booklet is an affordable and effective way to reduce unnecessary imaging and sick leave days due to back pain. The results were in line with the suitability study of the booklet, which found that it facilitated the implementation of evidence-based treatment by professionals. Patients also felt that the booklet helped them to understand their back problems, and they felt encouraged to exercise. The implementation of the study in a normal health care environment makes it easier to put into practice. The extensive introduction of a patient education booklet in primary health care may help to reduce imaging examinations and sick leave days related to lower back pain in Finland and internationally," Simula says. Originally developed by Australian researchers at Macquarie University, the purpose of the patient education booklet is to promote evidence-based treatment of lower back pain. The booklet contains correct information, reminds professionals of the recommended treatment, assists in clinical decision making and supports the interaction between the professional and the patient. The booklet has been translated into Finnish, and its applicability was examined in Simula's previous study in cooperation with professionals and patients. Explore further Educational booklet improves bowel preparation for inpatients More information: Anna S. Simula et al, Patient education booklet to support evidence-based low back pain care in primary care a cluster randomized controlled trial, BMC Family Practice (2021). Anna S. Simula et al, Patient education booklet to support evidence-based low back pain care in primary care a cluster randomized controlled trial,(2021). DOI: 10.1186/s12875-021-01529-2 Provided by University of Oulu Credit: CC0 Public Domain England is on track to have diagnosed 95% of people living with HIV by 2025, putting it in a strong position to eliminate HIV transmission by 2030, say researchers at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, and Public Health England (PHE). In 2014, UNAIDS set an ambitious target of 90-90-90 by 2020that is, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy; and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression. According to the Cambridge and PHE team, in 2019 there were an estimated 105,200 people living with HIV in the UK, of whom 94% were aware of their HIV status. In addition, 98% of those living with diagnosed HIV were on treatment, and 97% of these were virally suppressed. In other words, England had already reached the UNAIDS goals. In a publication today in The Lancet Public Health, the researchers extended their analysis of evidence from multiple surveillance, demographic, and survey datasets relevant to HIV in England from estimating HIV prevalence in a single year to estimating the trends over time in HIV prevalence. Trends in the number of people living with HIV, the proportion of people unaware of their HIV infection, and the corresponding prevalence of undiagnosed HIV are reported. According to their analysis, the estimated number of people in England living with HIV aged 15-74 years who were unaware of their infection halved from 11,600 in 2013 to 5,900 in 2019, with a corresponding fall in prevalence from 0.29 to 0.14 per 1,000 people. At the same time, the increase in the number of people living with diagnosed HIV resulted in the total number of people living with HIV rising from 83,500 to 92,800 over the same period. The percentage of people living with HIV whose infection was diagnosed therefore steadily increased from 86% in 2013 to 94% in 2019, reaching the UNAIDS target in 2016and even earlier, in 2013, for Black African heterosexuals. Professor Daniela De Angelis from the MRC Biostatistics Unit, the study's senior author, said: "Overall, we see a positive picture for the HIV epidemic in England, with a dramatic fall in the number of people living with undiagnosed HIV. We estimate we are already several years ahead of the UNAIDS 2020 goals and are on target to reach 95% diagnosed by 2025 and to eliminate HIV infections by 2030. Dr. Anne Presanis from the MRC Biostatistics Unit added: "However, examined more closely, the situation is not as positive for everyone. We estimate that areas of England outside London have not seen as steep a decrease in undiagnosed HIV prevalence as in London, and there is evidence of missed opportunities to diagnose HIV infections among some population subgroups." In England, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, and Black African heterosexuals remain disproportionately affected by HIV, with considerably higher undiagnosed HIV prevalence per population in 2019 than heterosexuals in other ethnic groups. However, undiagnosed HIV prevalence rates within these communities have seen dramatic falls: for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, prevalence fell from 13.9 to 5.4 per 1,000, and for Black African heterosexuals prevalence fell from 3.3 to 1.7 per 1,000 population. London saw more dramatic falls in the prevalence of undiagnosed HIV during the study period than other regions of England, down from 0.74 to 0.31 per 1,000, compared to a decrease from 0.20 to 0.11 per 1,000 outside London. Although sexual health clinics provide free and confidential HIV testing to all clinic attendees, the researchers estimated that among heterosexuals in an ethnic group other than Black African, undiagnosed prevalence in clinic attendees in 2019 was more than 30 times greater than in those who had not attended in the past year. This implies that sexual health clinics are missing opportunities for testing attendees. This is in line with findings from Public Health England that among individuals outside those subgroups at greatest risk of HIV infection, the proportion declining a HIV test had increased to more than one in four (27%) in 2016. The researchers say their estimates have important implications for efforts to eliminate HIV transmission in England and the UK. Dr. Valerie Delpech, head of the HIV Team at Public Health England said: "This research is good news and shows that combination prevention, and in particular HIV testing and early treatment, is working in England. The increasing use of pre-exposure prophylaxis among persons at higher risk of HIV has further amplified our response to end HIV transmission. Nevertheless, further reducing the number of people who remain undiagnosed with HIV infection will become very challenging in the coming years. This is particularly the case for heterosexuals who may not consider themselves at risk of HIV. "The priority must be to ensure that all sexual health clinic attendees are offered and encouraged to accept a HIV test, regardless of ethnicity, rather than the 73% that currently do test. If we can increase the number of clinic attendees unaware of their HIV status who get tested and diagnosed, as well as improve partner notification, the prospect of eliminating HIV transmission becomes increasingly likely." Explore further England on track to eliminate HIV transmission by 2030 More information: Presanis AM, Harris RJ, Kirwan PD, Miltz A, Croxford S, Heinsbroek E, Jackson CH, Mohammed H, Brown AE, Delpech VC, Gill ON, De Angelis D. Trends in undiagnosed HIV prevalence in England and implications for eliminating HIV transmission by 2030: an evidence synthesis model. Lancet Public Health; 23 Sept 2021; www.thelancet.com/journals/lan (21)00142-0/fulltext Journal information: The Lancet Public Health Presanis AM, Harris RJ, Kirwan PD, Miltz A, Croxford S, Heinsbroek E, Jackson CH, Mohammed H, Brown AE, Delpech VC, Gill ON, De Angelis D. Trends in undiagnosed HIV prevalence in England and implications for eliminating HIV transmission by 2030: an evidence synthesis model.; 23 Sept 2021; DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(21)0042-0 Human paediatric brain tumour cells. Credit: Valeria Molinari, Louise Howell, Maria Vinci, Katy Taylor and Chris Jones via the Wellcome Collection. Licence: CC BY NC Scientists have used artificial intelligence-enhanced tools to successfully propose a new combination of drugs for use against an incurable childhood brain cancer. The approach, which is designed to expand researchers' capabilities using AI, allowed the scientists to explore ideas on how to target children with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) who have mutations in a gene called ACVR1. The scientists found that using a drug called everolimus alongside a drug called vandetanib could enhance vandetanib's capacity to pass through the blood-brain barrier in order to treat the cancer. The proposed combination has proved effective when tested in mice and has already been tested in a small cohort of children. Opening up new doors for cancer treatment The study, led by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, is an example of how use of an AI-augmented approach can open up new doors for cancer treatment by spotting new ways of combining existing medicines. The research is published in the journal Cancer Discovery, and was funded by Brain Research UK, the DIPG Collaborative, Children with Cancer UK, Abbie's Army, Lucas' Legacy, The Lyla Nsouli Foundation, Cancer Research UK, and a George and the Giant Pledge donation to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. The initial hypothesis for the study came from BenevolentAIa company that has built a leading artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery platform and its own in-house pipeline of drug discovery programs. Researchers at the ICR worked closely with experts at BenevolentAI to make use of the platform's capabilities. Uncovering insights using AI A quarter of children with DIPG have a mutation in a gene known as ACVR1, but there is currently no treatment targeting this mutation approved for use in DIPG. The targeted drug vandetanib, which is approved for treating thyroid cancer, acts against the ACVR1 gene, but has difficulty getting past the blood brain barrier. It is pushed back out of the brain, meaning it cannot build up to a high enough concentration in the brain to have a therapeutic effect. The researchers used BenevolentAI's platform to identify drugs that could be used to target ACVR1 mutations in DIPG and suggested combining vandetanib with another drug, everolimus, which prevents vandetanib from being ejected from the brain. The process involved scientific experts searching BenevolentAI's biomedical knowledge graph using computational tools. The knowledge graph contains all publicly available biomedical dataas well as further information that BenevolentAI's machine learning system has ingested and 'read' from scientific articles. Computational tools allowed scientists to explore the information in the graph and uncover insights they would not have been able to find using human reasoning alone. Treatment extended survival in mice A team led by scientists at the ICR showed that combining the two drugs increased the amount of vandetanib in the brains of mice with DIPG by 56 percent. The researchers also found that the treatment extended survival in mice by 14 percent compared with those receiving a control treatment. The drugs identified in the study, vandetanib and everolimus, are already approved to treat other types of cancer by NICE, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and could be repurposed for use in combination to treat children with DIPG and an ACVR1 mutation. In the study, doctors also carried out initial tests of the drug combination in four DIPG patients. The next step will be for the drug combination to enter clinical trials, which researchers hope will happen in the near future. The value of AI Study leader Professor Chris Jones, Professor of Paediatric Brain Tumor Biology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "DIPG is a rare and aggressive childhood brain cancer, and survival rates have not changed over the past 50 years, so we desperately need to find new treatments for this disease. "Our study demonstrates just how much AI can bring to drug discovery for cancers like DIPG, in proposing new treatment combinations that would not have been obvious to people. "The AI system suggested using a combination of two existing drugs to treat some children with DIPGone to target the ACVR1 mutation, and the other to sneak the first past the blood brain barrier. The treatment extended survival when we tested it in a mouse model, and we have already started testing it out in a small number of children. "We still need a full-scale clinical trial to assess whether the treatment can benefit children, but we've moved to this stage much more quickly than would ever have been possible without the help of AI." Bench-to-bedside approach Dr. Fernando Carceller, Consultant in Paediatric and Adolescent Neuro-Oncology, Oak Drug Development Unit at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and Leader of the Paediatric & Adolescent Neuro-Oncology and Drug Development team at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "This encouraging research highlights the possibilities of harnessing Artificial Intelligence to find better cures for childhood cancers. "Close collaboration between scientists at the ICR and clinicians at The Royal Marsden made possible this bench-to-bedside approach. The clinical results are too preliminary as to draw firm conclusions, but we are working to take this combination forward in a clinical trial for children with ACVR1-mutant DIPG." A 'transformative effect' on drug discovery Professor Kristian Helin, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "The use of AI promises to have a transformative effect on drug discovery, by identifying the most promising drug targets, understanding the structures of proteins from their amino acid sequence, or as here, proposing ways of combining existing drugs together to create powerful new combinations. "In this study, use of AI has identified a drug combination which appears to have promise as a future treatment for some children with incurable brain cancer. It's exciting to think that it could become one of the first examples of a treatment proposed by AI going on to benefit patients." Promising early results Professor Peter Richardson, VP Pharmacology at BenevolentAI, said: "We are pleased that our AI-assisted drug repurposing hypothesis for this new combination has shown promising early results. AI-enhanced approaches are already proving their value in expanding researchers' capabilities to find innovative new treatment approachesbe it through uncovering new therapeutics or repurposing existing onesnot only in DIPG, but also other diseases in the future." A step in the right direction Dr. Diana Martins Carvalho, first author of the study and a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "At the ICR, we are lucky enough to work with some amazing parent-led charities dedicated to funding research into DIPG. This important study would not have been possible without their support, and we are incredibly grateful for that. "Though we still have a long way to go, I'm proud of the progress we are making to better understand DIPG and how to treat it. This study is a step in the right direction towards finding effective treatments, so that children with DIPG can have a better chance at life." Vital to accelerate progress Abbie Misfud was six years old when she passed away from DIPG, five months after being diagnosed. Her parents Amanda and Ray set up the charity Abbie's Army in her memory. Amanda Misfud said: "Our support of Prof Chris Jones and the Jones lab at the ICR goes back a number of years now, we're very proud to be connected to this study. Since Abbie lost her life to DIPG, and having witnessed so many other children pass away since, we are simply compelled and driven to help. "One of our very first projects with Chris was supporting a Ph.D. student and the pre-clinical work around the new discovery of ACVR1 , and its relevance to the subset of DIPG patients with these specific driving tumor mutations. "Having something biologically relevant to treat this disease come forward to clinical study is absolutely central to our aims, any new development individually and specifically designed for DIPG treatment in the UK is hugely significant. "Harnessing AI and any new technologies available to treat and improve outcomes will be vital to accelerate progress that all children with DIPG so desperately need." Explore further Researchers find new way to target deadly childhood cancer More information: Diana M Carvalho et al, Repurposing vandetanib plus everolimus for the treatment of ACVR1-mutant diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, Cancer Discovery (2021). Journal information: Cancer Discovery Diana M Carvalho et al, Repurposing vandetanib plus everolimus for the treatment of ACVR1-mutant diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma,(2021). DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-20-1201 Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A data analysis of public sentiment about the COVID-19 vaccine from December 2020-May 2021 on one popular social media platform by a team of researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center found more positive than negative sentiment regarding the vaccine. The study led by Arash Shaban-Nejad, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UTHSC-Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) Center for Biomedical Informatics, and the Department of Pediatrics, was published recently in the Journal of Infection and Public Health. The study is titled "Public sentiment analysis and topic modeling regarding COVID-19 vaccine on the Reddit social media platform: A call for strengthening vaccine confidence." "Using sentiment analysis and topic modeling, our study examined approximately 11,000 social media posts about COVID-19 vaccinations on the popular online platform, Reddit," Dr. Shaban-Nejad explained. "Sentiment analysis is a quick and inexpensive technique utilized to gauge the public's opinion and determine the deeper context about a certain event or idea. Topic modeling is an equally useful tool to identify a cluster of words or latent topics being discussed in a body of texts. Accordingly, these employed algorithms can provide a near realistic assessment of the public's mood and focus of discussion in just a few minutes." "Our results show that sentiment remained overall more positive than negative throughout the duration of the timeframe in focus," Dr. Shaban-Nejad said. Though, he said, public discussions showed more concern about vaccine side-effects, than about conspiracy theories. "Understanding public opinion and sentiment is key for public health policymakers to implement effective and efficient vaccination policies and targeted transparent culturally-sensitive vaccine promotion programs, which take into account individual differences," Dr. Shaban-Nejad said. "The results of this finding can be used to implement and optimize intelligent digital technologies to identify misinformation on social media and assist users to access reliable sources of vaccine information." Explore further New AI tool tracks evolution of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on social media More information: Chad A. Melton et al, Public sentiment analysis and topic modeling regarding COVID-19 vaccines on the Reddit social media platform: A call to action for strengthening vaccine confidence, Journal of Infection and Public Health (2021). Chad A. Melton et al, Public sentiment analysis and topic modeling regarding COVID-19 vaccines on the Reddit social media platform: A call to action for strengthening vaccine confidence,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jiph.2021.08.010 Mice can become experts in sorting images by subtle differences. Part of the acquired knowledge is stored in early visual areas of the brain. Credit: MPI of Neurobiology/ Kuhl Is it a Rembrandt or a Vermeer? For lay people, it is often challenging to distinguish paintings by these two old masters. For the trained eye of an expert, on the other hand, it is not difficult at all. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now demonstrated that mice can also become experts in sorting images into categories. The study shows that part of the category knowledge is already present in early visual areas, highlighting how widespread such semantic memories are stored throughout the brain. Semantic memory is a store for expert knowledge One key to success is practice. Art experts look at hundreds of paintings day in and day out. They gradually develop a sense of the features playing a role in the discrimination. This sense is nothing but acquired knowledge, which is stored in their semantic memory. This type of memory contains all abstract information that is not linked to a specific experience: for example, the general fact that Vermeer is a Dutch painterin contrast to the exact memory of where they first saw a Vermeer painting. To date, however, we know little about how semantic memory is stored in the brain. Pieter Goltstein, neurobiologist working with Mark Hubener in Tobias Bonhoeffer's department, explains: "To study how such information is stored, we first need to know where to find it in the brain. We came up with the idea to give mice a task similar to those of art experts, and test if the animals can also acquire such complex knowledge." Mice become experts at categorizing Together with Sandra Reinert, Pieter Goltstein showed mice different pictures of stripe patterns, which they had to sort into two categories. To do so, the animals had to weigh different aspects of the stripes and include both their width and their orientation. Surprisingly, after an initial learning phase, the mice had no trouble in sorting the patterns into the correct category. They had become experts and could readily apply their newly learned category knowledge to patterns that they had not seen during learning yetextrapolating from the category features that they had stored as semantic information. The visual cortex helps to categorize But is the category information already stored in the visual cortex, where visual stimuli arrive and are represented? Or is it only found after many initial processing steps, in some higher brain area? The scientists used a little trick to answer this question: Since neurons in the visual cortex react to visual stimuli in a particular location, they initially trained the mice using stripe patterns shown only in a part of their visual field. In this way, only a specific group of neurons were trained in these animals. When the researchers then shifted the patterns to another location, and therefore stimuli were processed by different neurons, the mice could not categorize as well anymore. Inactivating the visual cortex led to a similar outcome. Together, these results indicated that neurons in the visual cortex are involved in the task of category learning. Signatures of semantic memories are already found in the visual cortex In parallel to the category training, the scientists were able to repeatedly measure the activity of many neurons and identify changes over the course of learning. Interestingly, toward the end of the learning process, some regions of the visual cortex became better in distinguishing categories. Mark Hubener, senior author of the study, explains: "The neurons in these regions receive two kinds of input. They respond to a specific visual stimulus, and they also receive information when the mouse sorts an image into the correct category. This allows the neurons to identify important visual stimuli related to categories, and enhance their reaction to them." Neurons in the visual cortex are thus able to adapt their response during learning. But not only that: Analyzing the data, a region of the visual cortex, called POR, stood out in particular. There, the researchers found signs of stored abstract category information. The study thereby tracks down that abstract learning already begins at the first levels of visual processing. Explore further Mice master complex thinking with a remarkable capacity for abstraction More information: Pieter M. Goltstein et al, Mouse visual cortex areas represent perceptual and semantic features of learned visual categories, Nature Neuroscience (2021). Journal information: Nature Neuroscience Pieter M. Goltstein et al, Mouse visual cortex areas represent perceptual and semantic features of learned visual categories,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-021-00914-5 Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The results of research into suicide rates in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic show that rates fell despite a simultaneous increase in unemployment. The researchers say the measures put in place by the Canadian government to reduce insecurity during the stringent shutdown of the economy offer suicide reduction lessons for governments globally, even after the pandemic has passed. The study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, compared suicide rates in Canada between March 2020 and February 2021 with the same period the year before. The rate reduced from 10.82 deaths per 100,000 in 2019/20 to 7.34 deaths per 100,000 in 2020/21. Lead researcher Dr. Roger McIntyre, of the Mood Disorder Psychopharmacology Unit at the University of Toronto, said: "It was projected that in Canada there would be an increase in completed suicides, or 'deaths of despair' unless financial provisions and social programmes, as well as other services including mental health programmes, were immediately initiated to specifically address aspects of insecurity including economic and housing." The researchers describe how the Canadian government provided financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians of $2000 (CAD) every month for up to 28 weeks and $1250 (CAD) to students every month for up to 16 weeks. Leniency on mortgage payments was recommended and there was increased funding for emergency childcare provisions. In addition, funding was deployed for emergency psychiatric services in the form of access to 24/7 crisis lines as well as the provision of psychotherapeutic and counselling services at no charge to Canadian residents. Dr. McIntyre added: "It is noteworthy that the observed decrease in the Canadian suicide rate alongside an increase in rates of psychological distress, mental illness and reports of suicidality reflects the multifactorial and discrete phenomenology of suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic." He concluded: "A national imperative in Canada, and globally, should be to reduce suicide rates. Government interventions that broadly aim to reduce measures of insecurity, as well as provide social support and timely psychiatric services, should be prioritised as part of a national suicide reduction strategy, not only during but after the termination of the COVID-19 pandemic." Explore further Queensland suicide rate unaffected during first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic More information: Roger S McIntyre et al, Suicide reduction in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons informing national prevention strategies for suicide reduction, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2021). Journal information: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Roger S McIntyre et al, Suicide reduction in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons informing national prevention strategies for suicide reduction,(2021). DOI: 10.1177/01410768211043186 Editor Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the Best Editorial Writer Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the CNMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His three books are available on amazon.com Mining companies in South Africa are considering spending as much as R40 billion to construct 2,000 megawatts of power generation capacity, said Roger Baxter, chief executive officer of Minerals Council South Africa. Mining companies have been pushing to develop their own power plants because of persistent power cuts imposed by state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. They are also keen to move away from total reliance on the mainly coal-fired power supplied by Eskom as their investors pay more attention to climate issues. Those plans have been given impetus by this years decision by the government to allow the construction of plants of up to 100 megawatts in capacity without generation licenses. The mining companies are planning to largely install renewable energy such as solar and wind power. This would be a game changer for South Africa going forward, said Baxter, who was speaking at a webinar convened by the Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission on Thursday. While a constant supply of power is a key concern, improving companies green credentials is also taking center stage. The European Union is considering imposing tariffs on imported goods that cause a lot of carbon emissions during the production process. Unless South Africa changes its energy mix its not going to sell its products, Neal Froneman, the chief executive officer of Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., said in an interview last week. The country has no option, it will be excluded from the rest of the world if we dont transition in the right way. A second recorded incident shows a staff member pulling the resident away from the dining room table, resulting in another fall. The Department also obtained photo evidence of multiple bruises on the residents body. The department issued an immediate civil penalty of $500, and additional civil penalties are under review. After the department presented its findings, Cedars Care agreed to elder abuse prevention training from an outside vendor, according to the report. Lopez-Ortega could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Cedars Care was licensed in 1999. In 2013, Lopez-Ortega was cited by state regulators for running an unlicensed residential care facility for seniors, L&B, as reported in The Weekly Calistogan. That facility was licensed in 2017. Lopez-Ortega was appointed to a vacant seat on the city council in February 2013 and has served on the council since then. The council unanimously voted to appoint Lopez-Ortega to the position of vice-mayor last December. Mayor Chris Canning said Thursday that the current matter is not related to the city of Calistoga or in Lopez-Ortegas role as a city council member. If convicted, however, she would not be allowed to serve. LONDON (AP) The European Union announced plans Thursday to require the smartphone industry to adopt a uniform charging cord for mobile devices, a push that could eliminate the all-too-familiar experience of rummaging through a drawer full of tangled cables to find the right one. The European Commission, the blocs executive arm, proposed legislation that would mandate USB-C cables for charging, technology that many device makers have already adopted. The main holdout is Apple, which said it was concerned the new rules would limit innovation, and that would end up hurting consumers. iPhones come with the companys own Lightning charging port, though the newest models come with cables that can be plugged into a USB-C socket. The push by the EU will certainly be cheered by the millions of people who have searched through a jumble of snarled cables for the one that fits their phone. But the EU also wants to cut down on the 11,000 metric tons of electronic waste thrown out every year by Europeans. Roy Melanson was a serial rapist and killer who terrorized women around the country. His crime spree, unfortunately, included the Napa community which was traumatized for 37 years until his identification and prosecution, said Assistant District Attorney Paul Gero, who successfully prosecuted Melanson in Napa in 2011. We are gratified to know he was convicted of first-degree murder and never released to re-offend again. The killing of Andrews left a lasting mark on Napa. Andrews sister, Muriel Fagiani, owned the Main Street bar and kept it locked and vacant for decades while detectives searched for the killer. She and the family sold the building in 2007, but it remained essentially untouched until 2010 when the new owner began renovations for a new restaurant. The iconic Fagianis neon sign remained in place until 2015 and the old red tile exterior remained until 2017. Muriel Fagiani became a fixture in Napa city politics, as a fierce advocate for preserving the old character of downtown. She also kept her sisters memory alive, pushing to keep the attention of law enforcement on the case despite the passage of decades. She died in 2010 at age 85, less than two months after Melanson was indicted for her sisters killing. Napa County has tentatively approved changes to the controversial Walt Ranch vineyard development to try to address a court decision involving greenhouse gases. The planned vineyard project would remove about 14,000 carbon-sequestering trees. Walt Ranch planned in return to preserve 248 acres of woodlands. But the courts thought some of this land might already be undevelopable. Applicant Hall Brambletree Associates in May presented to the county a revised proposal it said provides overwhelming mitigation. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register. Special offer: $1 for your first 6 months! A conservation easement would preserve up to 124 acres of Walt Ranch woodlands that otherwise could be developed. The land is not restricted because of steep slopes or watersheds, proponents said. Hall Brambletree would also plant 16,790 oaks. It would monitor the trees and replant if necessary so at least 80% survive after five years. Hall also wishes to disincentive the relentless opposition that has resulted in years of delay, Mike Reynolds of Hall Brambletree wrote to the county. To do this, Hall Brambletree is willing to plant yet another 16,790 oaks for a total of 33,580 but only if no one challenges the county approval. Supervisor Belia Ramos later in the meeting said supervisors should discuss what is the right salary evaluation structure. Some counties have gone to a civil service review of salaries, she said. I just think it merits revisiting to make it reflective of this time, so we are not referring back to a 16-year-old ordinance, she said. Whether enough supervisors will agree with Ramos to take another look at the supervisor salary structure remains to be seen. The item is to come back as a future agenda item discussion in effect, supervisors must decide if this is worth their time and the time of staff to pursue. "I do see the efficiency realized by utilizing the judges' salaries to set compensation for the board," Ramos said on Monday. "That said, a 16-year-old ordinance is worthy of review for relevance." When determining whether supervisors earn an appropriate salary, it's important to look at comparable counties such as Contra Costa, Marin, Solano, Sonoma and Santa Cruz, Ramos said. Salary surveys should inform the Board's compensation discussion, she added. The Washington-based Tax Foundation, which analyzed federal income tax data from 2018 returns county-by-county, reported recently that the SALT limitation had its greatest impact on taxpayers in high-income counties in high-tax states such as California, New York, Maryland and Virginia. In California, that meant San Francisco and other Bay Area communities such as Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. In Santa Clara, for instance, the average tax return with itemized deductions reported outlays of $46,817.53 in state and local taxes but could deduct just $8,931.28 due to the SALT limit. When the SALT limit was enacted, leaders of the most affected states howled, claiming that Republicans were punishing them because of their Democrat-leaning politics. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained the loudest, worrying aloud that the SALT limit would encourage the rich to relocate to low-tax states such as Florida and Texas. Theres no evidence, at least yet, of a massive out-migration of high-income Californians, although there have been specific moves, such as Teslas Elon Musk to Texas, which has no income tax. Ive been writing about wine for 45 years and every time I think Ive got a handle on it Ive met people who think of themselves as wine experts. At least, they act that way. They know things like the soils of Napa Valley, can explain the meaning of terroir, and speak expressively of the differences between French and American oak barrels. Yet they have no idea what the term erzeugerabfullung means. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register. Special offer: $1 for your first 6 months! Wine experts come in all shapes and sizes, from generalists to specialists. What constitutes expert knowledge in one area of wine may have no meaning in other areas. This is one aspect of wine that makes it such a complex and difficult subject to master. Indeed, Master of Wine (MW) is a term that takes decades of study to acquire. The title may be used only by those who have passed a rigid exam originally devised to certify expertise in a broad range of wine topics and to be used by those primarily engaged in the selling of wine. It was a British construct aimed at validating wine merchants. Today a list of MWs now includes people from around the globe, some of whom do not sell wine at all. Launch of Armenian Studies Program announced during Armenia President's visit to Sapienza University Will Turks be able to enter 26 countries of Schengen Area without visas? Dinner served in honor of Armenia President and his wife in Italy Armenian parliamentary standing committee chairman meets with Russia Ambassador Armenia Ombudsman submits to Pope Francis reports on tortures of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan Customs Attache: There hasn't been and there is no bias against Armenian drivers at Upper Lars checkpoint Greece-France defense agreement will allow them to help each other in case of third country's attack Turkish FM: Turkey's position on supporting Ukraine's "integrity and sovereignty" remains unchanged Russian peacekeeping forces, charitable organizations provide assistance to boarding school in Karabakh Zakharova: Moscow proceeds from priority to ensure geopolitical stability in South Caucasus Armenia President pays tribute at Altar of the Homeland monument at Venice Square in Rome Turkey, Iran to hold political consultations Karabakh FM expresses condolences over death of Vigen Chitechyan Armenia territorial administration and infrastructure minister has new deputy Armenia Deputy PM Mher Grigoryan receives US Ambassador Armenia Security Council Secretary, Netherlands Ambassador attach importance to fight against corruption Digest: Armenian POW returned from Azerbaijan, PACE speaks on mandatory COVID-19 vaccination risks Armenia and Italy are deepening cooperation in justice sector Apprehended ARF-D members are released Armenia high-tech industry minister receives Russia Ambassador Armenia Embassy in Russia hosts delegation led by Armenian parliamentary speaker Decisions to arrest Armenia ex-defense minister, arms supplier are appealed Dollar continues going down in Armenia Artsakh President to Putin: Your role in process of peaceful, final settlement of Karabakh conflict is invaluable Amir-Abdollahian: We consider inadmissible Zionist regime provocative movement in our region from Azerbaijan territory Iran FM announces readiness to visit Armenia, Azerbaijan US ambassador to Armenia attends unveiling of new x-ray machine donated to Ashtarak city hospital (PHOTOS) Putin: Russia attaches great importance to close cooperation with strategic ally Armenia Police disrupt ARF youths protest outside Armenia government building Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople meets with the Pope, in the Vatican UK envoy to Armenia does not comment on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, Karabakh situation Iran Supreme Leaders representative leaves Azerbaijan Armenias Pashinyan to Russias Putin: We are grateful for your efforts to establish peace in South Caucasus Putin, Aliyev confer on situation in South Caucasus Putin, Erdogan discuss regional issues 4 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh PACE new resolution urges to ensure that COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory Zelensky sacks Ukraine ambassador to Armenia PM: Armenia, Armenian people are grateful to Japan Armenia PM: We have made decision regarding local elections Armenia, Italy presidents farewell ceremony held in Rome (PHOTOS) Sarkissian to Putin: Armenia highly values your contribution to maintenance of peace, stability in region Having legal system is important for business development in fair environment, says UK ambassador to Armenia Armenia President, Italy PM meeting in Rome (PHOTOS) Baku not ruling out another meeting between Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs Armenia President meets with Rome mayor 1,309 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Biden approval rating hits new low in latest poll Armenia ombudsman in Italy parliament, presents evidence of Azerbaijan torture of Armenian captives World oil prices dropping Serial killer in US lured by social media is sentenced to 160 years in prison Newspaper: Armenia authorities face new problems in setting up parliament committee of inquiry into 44-day war Newspaper: Opposition Armenia bloc plans to hold forums, rally Armenia PM admits that in 2018 he could have disclosed Karabakh negotiation process content Armenia health minister: Out of 2,446 hospital beds for coronavirus patients, 2,300 are occupied China-Taiwan military escalation reaches peak in past four decades Armenia President: We welcome pro-Artsakh documents adopted by nearly 50 regional and city councils of Italy Armen Sarkissian meets with President of Italian Senate Nikol Pashinyan: Armenia to build new nuclear power plant, negotiations have been launched Italy's Quirinal Palace hosts exhibition featuring works of Aivazovsky, Saryan and other Armenian painters Armen Sarkissian meets with President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies Roberto Fico Catholicos of All Armenians meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican Armenia ex-Ambassador to The Netherlands Vigen Chitechyan dies Armenia PM again says he is guilty for all the failures of the Armenian side during last year's war FM: Discussion on occupied territories of former NKAO will create new threats to Armenia Karabakh emergency situations service: Rescue squad finds remains of another Armenian soldier in Jrakan Mattarella: Armenia and Italy can boast about their friendly relations Nikol Pashinyan: Armenia agreed to stop the hostilities on October 7, 2020 Iran, EEU begin talks to reach agreement over permanent treaty on free trade zone An abundant TechnoFall with Inecobank - NFC payments and more Armenia FM says his Indian counterpart will visit Yerevan in the next few days Deputy PM: A comprehensive study of documents agreed by Armenian and Azerbaijani is necessary Digest: Azerbaijan using Armenia's airspace, Baku says it's ready to mend relations with Yerevan Health minister: All coronavirus vaccines in Armenia meet quality standards Armenia health minister: Those who recovered from COVID-19 also need to get vaccinated Armenia Deputy PM announces name of another POW returned from Azerbaijan Armenia and Italy Presidents hold personal talks at Quirinal Palace Armenian FM: MFA welcomes Iran's stance on inviolability of Armenia's borders EU ready to share experience with Azerbaijan and Armenia in borders demarcation and delimitation Dollar dropping in Armenia Lavrov: Russia, Iran discussed 3 + 3 format concept with Turkey, Caucasus countries participation Hossein Amir-Abdollahian: Iran won't accept geopolitical changes in the Caucasus Armenia Ambassador meets with Iranian Deputy FM Armenia Parliament Speaker visits Armenian church of Russia and New Nakhijevan Diocese Armenia to host event with companies having made investments worth over $2,000,000,000 Aliyev announces start of process of opening communications with Armenia Civil Aviation Committee confirms Baku-Nakhchivan flight through Armenia airspace Wednesday Armenia government programs under EU assistance package are discussed Azerbaijan lodges complaint with ECHR for review of case of assassination attempt against Lapshin Armenian MP also on list of Erdogan's petition to strip several Turkey lawmakers of parliamentary immunity Armenia Deputy PM Suren Papikyan has new advisor Armenia State Revenue Committee chief has new deputy Italy President to Armen Sarkissian: OSCE Minsk Group is the format for sustainable and peaceful solution Armenia ombudsman emphasizes to Vatican Secretary of State urgency of returning Armenian captives in Azerbaijan Aliyev: Azerbaijan is ready to launch negotiations with Armenia for normalization of relations Armenia Parliament Speaker meets with Russian State Duma chairman Ruling faction MP: Armenia airspace has never been closed to Azerbaijan civilian air transportation New France ambassador visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Opposition MP: Not only is there no security system in Armenia but there is no one who wants to maintain that system Not first time that reports are made on opening of Armenia airspace to Azerbaijan The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative has prepared a unique program for the 2021 Aurora Prize Ceremony and accompanying events that will take place in Venice, Italy, on October 810. In accordance with the tradition established over the years, every Ceremony features carefully curated cultural impressions honoring the spirit of our shared humanity, and the events in Venice will include some outstanding performances to celebrate modern-day heroes. On October 9, a Prayer for Solidarity will be held in the Church of the Armenian Catholic congregation of Mekhitarists on the San Lazzaro Island, with religious and state leaders and representatives of the international humanitarian community in attendance. The service will be accompanied by live performances. The 2021 Aurora Prize Ceremony, titled Reviving Together, will be hosted by Dalia Atallah, Auroras Amal Clooney Scholarship Fellow and UWC Dilijan alumna from Lebanon, and David Ignatius, Associate Editor and Columnist for The Washington Post and long-time friend of Aurora. The title of the event was chosen to reflect the Initiatives commitment to putting into action the gratitude to those who saved Armenians more than a hundred years ago and helped them revive, as well as to highlight the eternal values of empathy, unity and cooperation that allow us to address the worlds most pressing issues, including the fight against the global pandemic of COVID-19 and its consequences, together. The Ceremony will feature performances by Aram Ipekdjian and Jivan Gasparyan Jr. playing duduk, a traditional Armenian instrument, as well as by the Hover State Chamber Choir, conducted by Sona Hovhannisyan and famous for its experimental choral performances and promoting the Armenian choral heritage throughout the world. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate, whose name is to be announced during the Ceremony, will be honored with a US $1,000,000 award and a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by supporting the organizations that help people in need. The event will culminate in a performance by Maestro Andrea Bocelli, a world-famous Italian opera tenor and philanthropist. After the Ceremony, according to tradition, the name of the 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate will be added to the Chronicles of Aurora, a unique modern hand-written tome that contains the depictions of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiatives activities. The first manuscript of its kind created using ancient Armenian techniques and materials, it was crafted in 2018 in the Matenadaran, the national repository of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan, Armenia. In 2021, for the first time since its creation, the Chronicles of Aurora tome will leave the walls of the Matenadaran to be brought to the San Lazzaro Island, one of the world's most prominent centers of Armenian culture, where the first Armenian book was printed in 1512. The program also includes two Aurora Dialogues events aimed at advancing insightful discussions about some of todays most pressing humanitarian challenges. The first discussion, titled Conversation with the 2021 Aurora Humanitarians, will take place on October 8 and give the humanitarians an opportunity to introduce their work and the causes that motivate them. The second one, Humanitarian Dimensions of Health Security, is scheduled for October 10 and dedicated to the lessons learned from COVID-19 and necessary to prevent the future pandemics. In the meantime, nominations are still open for the 2022 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. Until October 31, any person can submit a nomination for the candidates they believe have overcome great personal challenges to help others. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today sent a congratulatory message to Archbishop Raphael Minassian, Catholicos Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church, the press service of the Government of Armenia reports. I cordially congratulate you on being elected the 21st Catholicos Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church. The Catholicosate of the Holy See of Cilicia plays a major role in the strengthening of the spiritual values and national identity of the Armenian people and preservation of Armenian cultural heritage. I am certain that, during the period of your enthronement, the Catholicosate of the Holy See of Cilicia will continue to make efforts to help solve the several issues facing all Armenians. In its turn, the Government of Armenia will support you in this and other godly initiatives. I wish you good health and success in your high spiritual mission, the congratulatory message reads. Armenias Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan today met with Secretary General of the Council of Europe Maria Pejcinovic Buric, as reported the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia. Greeting the Secretary General, Minister Mirzoyan expressed satisfaction with the multilateral cooperation and stated that the Council of Europe remains one of Armenias key partners for democratic reforms, ensuring of rule of law and human rights protection in Armenia. Maria Pejcinovic Buric congratulated Armenia on holding parliamentary elections in line with democratic criteria. Touching upon Azerbaijans aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the minister highly appreciated the statements and calls that various bodies of the Council of Europe and the Secretary General made starting from the first days of the war for cessation of hostilities and the need to eliminate the humanitarian consequences of the war. Mirzoyan emphasized that Azerbaijan continues to keep Armenian prisoners of war and civilians hostage and attached importance to the need to ensure the unobstructed entry of international organizations, particularly the competent bodies of the Council of Europe into Artsakh. The 2019-22 Armenia-Council of Europe Action Plan was also discussed during the meeting Schoolchildren and parents got into a massive brawl that took place on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Moskovskiy Komsomolets newspaper reports, referring to Deputy Head of Batken region of Kyrgyzstan Marufkhan Tulayev. According to him, today at 1 p.m. Kyrgyzstan time, nearly 30 Tajik schoolchildren attacked four 13-14-year-old Kyrgyz teenagers and beat them in the bordering Kok-Tash village. The victims were admitted into hospitals with several injuries. Tulayev stated that the situation on the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border is currently under the control of power structures. Smotrim.ru reported that the victims parents and relatives went to the neighboring region and beat two schoolchildren and their parents, after which more than 50 people joined the brawl, which was stopped through the efforts of the regional administrations and law-enforcement authorities of both countries. According to the Tajik side, the schoolchildrens attack on the Kyrgyz teens might have been incited following the incident that had taken place two hours before the brawl. According to Sputnik Tajikistan, referring to leader of Jamoat Chorkukh Shukurkhon, at 11 a.m. the residents of Batken threw stones at the schoolchildren of School #64 in Somonion village of Tajikistan, hurting one of the residents and a child. The Tajik side reported the hospitalization of four persons. During his visit to the US, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan touched upon the situation created in the South Caucasus. We have an option for cooperation that we refer to as the platform of five or six. Currently, we are receiving positive messages from Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan in regard to this platform. In this context, we envisage taking certain steps, Erdogan stated. According to him, this issue will be among the issues that he plans to discuss during his meeting with President of Russia Vladimir Putin. We will have the opportunity to see positive development of the issue of establishment of peace in the region. This is included in the agenda of issues that I will discuss with Mr. Vladimir Putin in late September. Thus, this will serve as a powerful impetus for the Turkish-Russian relations, Erdogan said. Story Highlights Approval down from 49% in July Current reading is lowest in Gallup's trend; prior low was 42% New high of 37% say court is too conservative WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court have worsened, with 40%, down from 49% in July, saying they approve of the job the high court is doing. This represents, by two percentage points, a new low in Gallup's trend, which dates back to 2000. The poll was conducted shortly after the Supreme Court declined to block a controversial Texas abortion law. In August, the court similarly allowed college vaccine mandates to proceed and rejected a Biden administration attempt to extend a federal moratorium on evictions during the pandemic. Line graph. Full trend in Supreme Court job approval. Forty percent approve of the Supreme Court in the September 2021 survey, down from 58% in July 2020 and 49% in July 2021. The 40% approval rating is the lowest in Gallup's trend, while the high is 62% measured in 2000 and 2001. These latest findings, from Gallup's annual Governance survey conducted Sept. 1-17, come little more than a year after 58% of Americans approved of the Supreme Court, among the highest readings in the trend. The previous lows in Gallup's trend include 42% approval in 2005 after the court expanded government's eminent domain power, and again in 2016, after the Supreme Court ruled colleges could continue to consider using race as a factor in admissions, a decision most Americans opposed. In 2013, 43% approved of the Supreme Court after it issued rulings that expanded the rights of same-sex couples and weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Now, a majority of 53% disapproves of the job the Supreme Court is doing, exceeding the prior high disapproval of 52% from 2016. A Sept. 9-13 Monmouth University poll found 54% of U.S. adults disagreed and 39% agreed with the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Texas abortion law to go into effect. Confidence in Federal Judiciary Also Down The September survey also reveals a steep decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who express "a great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government, from 67% in 2020 to 54% today. The current reading is only the second sub-60% trust score for the judicial branch in Gallup's trend, along with a 53% reading from 2015. Line graph. Full trend in trust and confidence in the judicial branch of the federal government headed by the Supreme Court. Fifty-four percent in the September 2021 survey have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the federal judicial branch, down from 67% in 2020. At least six in 10 have had confidence in all but one other survey, 53% in 2015. The high point in confidence was 80% measured in 1999. In recent weeks, three Supreme Court justices -- Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer -- have made public speeches defending the court and its decision-making. These speeches have come amid pressure from some Democrats to expand court membership, presumably to add more liberal-leaning justices. This is likely a response to Republican President Donald Trump's nominating three conservative justices in his four-year presidential term, the first after the Republican-led Senate refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's nominee in 2016, citing the upcoming presidential election, and the last confirmed by the Senate days before the 2020 election. More See Court as Being Too Conservative The plurality of Americans have consistently viewed the court as being "about right" ideologically, and that continues today, with 40% describing it that way. However, perhaps reflecting changes in the composition of the court or its recent decisions, a new high of 37%, up from 32% a year ago, consider the current Supreme Court "too conservative." The previous highs in perceptions that the high court was too conservative were 33% in 2019 and 32% in 2007 and 2020, all under Republican presidents. Meanwhile, 20% describe the court as "too liberal." That is similar to the 23% rating it this way a year ago, but lower than the high points of 32% and 37% recorded when Obama was president. Throughout Obama's two terms, during which two of his nominees were confirmed, more Americans perceived the court as being too liberal than being too conservative. The opposite pattern occurred during the Trump administration. Line graph. Full trend in perceptions of Supreme Court ideology as too liberal, about right or too conservative. In the September 2021 poll, 37% say the court is too conservative, 40% about right and 20% too liberal. The plurality of Americans have always said the court is about right, while the percentages who say it is too liberal or too conservative have varied, with more tending to say it is too liberal when a Democratic president is in office, and more tending to say it is too conservative with a Republican president in office. As might be expected, those who see the court's ideology as too far left or too far right are less likely to express confidence in the institution and to approve of the job it is doing. In fact, those two groups hold nearly identical views of the court, with just one in three saying they are confident in it and fewer than one in five approving of the way it is handling its job. In contrast, 81% of those who believe the Supreme Court's ideology is about right are confident in it, and 75% approve of the job it is doing. Approval of and Confidence in the Supreme Court, by Perceptions of Court Ideology Court is too liberal Court is about right Court is too conservative % % % Job approval of court Approve 17 75 19 Disapprove 76 20 79 Confidence in court Great deal/Fair amount 33 81 36 Not very much/None at all 67 19 64 Gallup, Sept. 1-17, 2021 Perceptions of whether the Supreme Court's ideology is appropriate are influenced by Americans' own political leanings. The large majority of Democrats, 66%, describe the court as "too conservative," while 25% say it is "about right" and 8% "too liberal." In contrast, 56% of Republicans believe the Supreme Court's ideology is about right, while 33% say it is too liberal and 6% too conservative. Independents' views exactly match the national average. Compared with a year ago, before Barrett was confirmed and increased the number of Republican-nominated justices from five to six, Republicans are now more likely to say the Supreme Court is about right. Meanwhile, Democrats and independents are more likely than in 2020 to say it is too conservative. All of these shifts have been modest (less than 10 points). Declining Approval, Loss of Confidence Seen Among All Party Groups Compared with readings last year and earlier this year, Republicans, Democrats and independents are all less likely to say they approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and to say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the federal judiciary. Job approval among each of the three party groups is either 12 or 13 points lower than it was a year ago. For Republicans and independents, about half of the decline was evident in the July survey and the remainder has occurred since then, while the decline among Democrats has been seen only since the July survey. When it comes to confidence in the federal judiciary, Republicans show a much steeper drop from a year ago than Democrats or independents do, perhaps because of the change in the partisan power structure in Washington this year. The greater decline may also be a consequence of low Republican satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. more generally. Changes in Job Approval and Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court, by Political Party Sep 2020 Jul 2021 Sep 2021 % % % Approve of court U.S. adults 53 49 40 Democrats 49 51 36 Independents 53 46 41 Republicans 57 51 45 Confident in court U.S. adults 67 n/a 54 Democrats 58 n/a 50 Independents 63 n/a 51 Republicans 82 n/a 61 Gallup The decline in approval among Republicans may seem at odds with the court's allowing the Texas abortion law to go into effect, given that most Republicans identify as pro-life and favor greater restrictions on abortion. Abortion opponents hope the Texas law, or similarly strict laws passed in Mississippi and other states, will provide the Supreme Court with an opportunity to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide. Indeed, the court plans to hear arguments over the Mississippi law in its coming term. Gallup polling from earlier this year found that Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, as well as bans on early-term abortions such as those in Texas and Mississippi. Support among Republicans is higher, but even they are divided over overturning Roe v. Wade and on the types of restrictions on early-term abortions enacted in those new state laws. Implications Americans' opinions of the Supreme Court are now the worst Gallup has measured in its polling on the institution over the past two-plus decades. At this point, less than a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents approve of the job the court is doing. Barely half of Democrats and independents are confident in it, while confidence is slightly higher among Republicans. The decision on the Texas abortion law has received the most attention, but the high court's recent emergency rulings on college vaccine mandates and the eviction moratorium were also controversial. The new court term beginning next month will include cases that deal with abortion and gun laws, issues that stir great passion in the U.S. and are certain to elicit strong pushback from people on the losing side of those decisions. To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter. Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works. View complete question responses and trends (PDF download). Story Highlights 72% of Afghans reported lacking money for food in 2019, an all-time high Before U.S. withdrawal, Afghans reported more difficulty making ends meet WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Donor countries pledged more than $1.2 billion last week to ward off an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of "the collapse of an entire country." There are concerns that rising hunger and severe drought may compound an already perilous situation in Afghanistan as the Taliban assert control over the national government for the first time since 2001. Gallup World Poll data in recent years have painted an increasingly difficult economic situation throughout the country as Afghans have struggled to afford even the basics. In November/December 2019, just before the February 2020 signing of the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, more than seven in 10 Afghans (72%) reported that there had been times in the past 12 months when their household lacked enough money for food. This marked a 15-percentage-point increase from 2018 and a new high since Gallup first began measuring this item annually in Afghanistan in 2008. Line chart. Trend line showing the percentage of Afghans who struggled to afford food. A record 72% in 2019 could not afford food at times for themselves or their families. After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August, U.N. agencies have warned of disruptions in the distribution of emergency aid, even calling for a "humanitarian airbridge" to be put in place to ensure medicines and hospital supplies are delivered. But while the collapse of the former Afghan government has exacerbated the country's humanitarian crisis in recent weeks, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been sounding alarm bells for months, warning of a potential 25% reduction in wheat yields in 2021, a crop that provides half of all caloric intake in the country. Reflecting Afghans' increased inability to afford food even before the Taliban's takeover, a record-high percentage of Afghans in 2018 (90%) reported that they were finding it either "difficult" or "very difficult" to get by on their household income, a figure that remained at 86% in 2019. In 2019, however, a record-high 50% of Afghans were in the "very difficult" category. More economic pain may be in store for Afghanistan as a cash-strapped Taliban government asserts control of the country. At least $10 billion of central bank funds remain outside the reach of the country's new authorities, money badly needed to help pay salaries and keep government ministries and programs running. Disruption within the financial system has already reached ordinary Afghans as well, as local banks remain closed -- creating a cash shortage for residents and businesses and a resulting decrease in economic activity at a time of already heightened economic uncertainty. Line graph. Trend line showing how well Afghans perceive they are getting by on their current household incomes. A record 50% of Afghans found it very difficult to get by on their household incomes in 2019. Eighty-six percent found it difficult or very difficult to do so. Bottom Line After 20 years of insurgency, Afghanistan's new Taliban government must now turn its attention to governing. Already among the world's poorest countries, Afghans' economic outlook had taken a turn for the worse in recent years, a situation now further compounded by regional drought, isolation from the world financial system and political uncertainty. Both Afghans and the world wait to see if the Taliban's assurances of moderation on many issues will come to pass or if the new regime will behave similarly to its last time in power from 1996 to 2001. Humanitarian pledges from the international community show a continued commitment to the people of Afghanistan and a willingness to engage, even if not recognize, Afghanistan's new rulers. Recent developments in Afghanistan have increased the vulnerability of many Afghans who had already struggled for the basics of survival. The likelihood of a reduced wheat harvest this year in the face of severe drought threatens to push the country toward famine just as the Taliban takes the helm of the country's ministries. The Taliban's willingness to work alongside international aid agencies to address the impending food crisis poses an early test of the new government's ability to meet the needs of its population and gain a degree of acceptance among nations. While the Taliban has proven its staying power as an insurgent force, it may yet find that it was easier fighting people than feeding them. Watch the video to view more Gallup trends from our past surveys in Afghanistan, and keep visiting news.gallup.com for updates on our surveys in Afghanistan since the Taliban's takeover. To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter. For complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup's Country Data Set details. Learn more about how the Gallup World Poll works. HK reports two imported Covid-19 cases The two new imported cases were both fully vaccinated. Image:Shutterstock Health officials on Thursday reported two new Covid-19 infections, both of them imported. The two men flew in from Kenya and Pakistan, and both had received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine. The two, aged 35 and 43, did not show any symptoms. Separately, health authorities said a 52-year-old woman tested positive for the coronavirus in the United Kingdom two days after she left Hong Kong. She had tested negative three days before her flight. The patient earlier received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine on the mainland. The Centre for Health Protection told people who had stayed at the Butterfly On Prat Boutique Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, where the woman stayed during her time in the territory, to get tested. Friends of Morris Library to honor Beadles, MacDonald and Waters by Pete Rosenbery CARBONDALE, Ill. A pair of books that shed light on pieces of the states history will be recognized next week as the 2020 and 2021 Friends of Morris Library Delta Award winners at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Stained with Blood and Tears: Lynchings, Murder and Mob Violence in Cairo, Illinois, 1909-1910 by John A. Beadles is the 2021 award recipient. Kaskaskia: The Lost Capital of Illinois, by David MacDonald and Raine Waters, the 2020 award winner, will also be honored at this years event due to the events cancellation last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A presentation and award ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30 in the librarys John C. Guyon Auditorium. A reception and book signing will follow in the first floor rotunda. Darrel Dexter, one of the editors of Beadles book, will discuss Stained with Blood and Tears. Mark Wagner, associate professor of anthropology at SIU, and director of the Center for Archaeological Investigations, will give a presentation on the archeological dig at Fort Kaskaskia and its connection to Kaskaskia. This event is free and open to the public. SIU is committed to protecting the community, so all those attending must follow current campus and state pandemic safety protocols and wear masks in shared indoor spaces. SIU University Press published both of the award-winning books. Founded in the mid-1950s and located on the SIU campus, University Press publishes books of scholarly, intellectual, and creative merit. Publications include books celebrating the history and culture of Southern Illinois, the state, and the Midwest region. The two awards now make 117 Delta Awards given annually since 1976 by the Friends of Morris Library to individuals who have contributed significantly to the Southern Illinois region, either by their writing, or by other service. Stained with Blood and Tears Author John A. Beadles, who grew up in Cairo, recounts the story of what he said was called the equal opportunity lynchings of a Black man and a white man in Cairo in November 1909, when at least a thousand men and women were transformed into a murderous mob. The 2019 book also details a lesser-known attempted lynching of a suspected purse snatcher by another mob about three months later that was stopped by about a dozen mostly black deputies and a white sheriff, and the killing of a Cairo police officer by a Pulaski County sheriff over an incident that started in a Cairo brothel. Beadles, a history professor who retired from Kennesaw State University, had heard about the lynchings while growing up and later learned of the shooting death of the Cairo police officer. Beadles was visiting his father, Thomas, who served as Cairos mayor from 1963 to 1967, at a retirement home in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, when he decided to begin collecting information and material for the book. Beadles, who is 80 and lives in Georgia, will be unable to attend the ceremony but Jerri Pasborg and Dexter, who worked with Beadles on research of the book, will receive the award on his behalf. Beadles is also the author of the 1990 book, A History of Southernmost Illinois. The states first capital MacDonald and Waters take a comprehensive look at Illinois first territorial and subsequent state capital and the states early history in Kaskaskia: The Lost Capital of Illinois. MacDonald, an emeritus professor of history at Illinois State University, said he and Waters became interested in Kaskaskia because of the bicentennial of Illinoiss statehood in 2018 and that there was no comprehensive history of the town. The book focuses on the towns growth, vibrancy, struggles and subsequent demise. The original village of Kaskaskia began in 1703 when the Kaskaskia Indian tribe, along with French Jesuit missionaries and a number of Indian traders, moved to the location. The location ultimately became one of the largest French villages in Illinois. MacDonald said Kaskaskia became the territorial capital after George Rogers Clark annexed the Illinois country in 1778 to what would become the United States. After the Illinois legislature moved the states capital to Vandalia in 1820, Kaskaskia went into a slow decline, due in part to a terrible flood in 1844 followed by an epidemic that MacDonald said devastated the town. The Mississippi River broke through in 1881 to the Kaskaskia River north of town, ultimately taking over the course of the lower Kaskaskia River and beginning to wash away the town. The last substantial house in the town of Kaskaskia was taken by the Mississippi in 1907, MacDonald said. The modern village of Kaskaskia, where some of the antiquities of old Kaskaskia are preserved, was founded in 1893 three miles from the original site of Kaskaskia. The site of old Kaskaskia is now largely the course of the Mississippi River, he said. For more information on the program, contact Morris Library at adminoffice@lib.siu.edu or 618-453-2522. Both books will be for sale at the event on the 30th, and can also be purchased online from the Press at www.siupress.com. SIU spurs innovation with Saluki Pitch competition and IDEA LAB 2021 by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. Southern Illinois University Carbondale continues to foster innovation and creative entrepreneurship. As winners are announced for the recent 2021 Saluki Pitch competition where ideas turned into cash, registration is underway for IDEA LAB 2021, where participants can take their ideas to the next level and compete for funding. The ideas presented at this years Saluki Pitch Competition were both innovative and unique, Deborah Barnett, Business Incubator Program director, said. As a follow-up to the pitch competition, the Pitch participants, as well as anyone else, have the opportunity to further develop their concepts through IDEA Lab 2021, a six-week program designed to help innovators move from the idea stage to a real business plan. Everyone is welcome to participate in the program, which can also benefit current business owners looking to expand or pivot in a new direction. The registration deadline for IDEA Lab is 9 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 28. Additional information and online registration is at incubator.siu.edu. Constant is top Saluki Pitch 2021 competitor Zavi Constant, a senior civil engineering major, took top honors and $750 in the Saluki Pitch competition, with CROWD, a crowd-funding app that smaller groups can utilize to collect funds for a common goal. The app has a variety of uses whether its roommates pooling money to pay rent, friends or family members chipping in to pay for a vacation or co-workers combining their resources for a shared purpose. Constant also won the crowd favorite vote to claim an additional $250. SIU alumna and employee Kayeleigh Sharp took second place and the $500 prize. Sharp is the founder of EduCultureXR, which brings education, culture and virtual reality together by creating virtual hands-on archaeology exhibits and cultural experiences and making them accessible to the community. Innovation winners The competition, held virtually this year, also rewarded innovation, with winners each receiving $250. Those winners, with project descriptions, were: Nelson Fernandes, a senior mechanical engineering major and member of the SIU Green Team, for a simplified guide to build inexpensive, temporary wind turbines largely from household items. The turbines would provide power for charging phones and other small electronics when needed, proving especially beneficial in areas of the world where outages are common. Tyler Knupp, a senior computer science major, for his concept to help the animation industry by combining concepts of various 3D modeling programs to smoothly incorporate virtual reality full-body tracking into 3D animation using motion capture of keyframe animations for editing. SIUs Saluki Entrepreneurship Corps registered student organization, in conjunction with the SIU Research Park and Business Incubator Programs, sponsored the event. More than 30 people participated in the pitch competition workshop prior to the contest. Register now for IDEA LAB to win funding IDEA LAB 2021 provides a chance for community members and SIU faculty, staff, student entrepreneurs, along with Saluki Pitch competition participants, to take their concepts a step further by creating viable business plans. The free weekly sessions will be on Tuesdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 28-Nov. 2. The sessions will provide all the information needed for establishing business plans and participants will be positioned to compete for up to $10,000 in funding through a business plan competition to be announced in October. Participants can join the sessions either online, or in person at the Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Center, 1740 Innovation Drive in Carbondale. The sessions will cover market research, financial planning and projections, strategy and more, presented via step-by-step instructions. The programs sponsors include the SIU Research Park, SIU Business Incubator and the Illinois Small Business Development Center at SIU. SIU is committed to protecting the community, so all those attending IDEA LAB 2021 in person must follow current campus and state pandemic safety protocols and wear masks. Ships sit off the coast of Seal Beach, CA, on Tuesday, January 26, 2021. Cargo ships enduring one of the worst U.S. port bottlenecks in more than a decade faced down another obstacle as they waited to offload near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images In the past month, backlogs at Southern California ports have hit multiple records. The delays have caused shortages and price hikes, threatening Black Friday shopping. Graphics from Flexport and the Marine Exchange of Southern California highlight the impact of the backlog. See more stories on Insider's business page. A near record backlog of cargo ships in Southern California could have serious ramifications for the US economy. The build up of cargo ships carrying key exports from China, including electronics, furniture and toys, threatens to increase shortages and price hikes in the US ahead of the holiday season. The dozens of hulking cargo ships wait an average of nearly 10 days to dock and unload, according to data from the Port of Los Angeles. On Wednesday, Los Angeles and Long Beach had over 150 ships in port, including 95 cargo ships, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported. Before the pandemic, the ports handled about 60 to 70 ships at once. Today, those numbers have more than doubled. Courtesy of the Marine Exchange of Southern California On Wednesday, the ports had 62 cargo ships waiting at anchor or in drift areas for a spot to open up to dock and unload, turning the ports into a highly orchestrated parking lot for container vessels that can be valued at over $100 million and weigh in at over 200,000 tonnes. Before the pandemic, the ports typically had zero or one ship waiting to dock, Kip Louttit, the executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, told Insider. Courtesy of the Marine Exchange of Southern California A screenshot from the Marine Exchange of Southern California's dashboard taken on Wednesday afternoon shows the careful planning that goes into not only where each ship will dock, but also where the cargo ships will be placed at anchor or to drift. The triangles indicate different ships. The circles and rectangles on the screen show anchorages and drift areas, while the purple hashes designate the shipping lanes for incoming and outgoing vessels. Courtesy of the Marine Exchange of Southern California A spike in ordering, COVID-19 port shutdowns, and labor shortages led to the build-up of boats last year and continue to add to the congestion. It has also created a shortage of container ships which has further exacerbated the issue. Story continues Flexport The compounding effects have impacted all facets of the supply chain from exporting the inventory out of China to to ground transportation efforts in the US. The number of days it takes to transport an item from Asia to its final destination has more than doubled, according to data from Flexport. Flexport Even as transportation timelines continue to lengthen, demand continues to outpace the available supplies. Early on in the pandemic the work-from-home boom and panic-buying frenzy bolstered online sales at a time when ports were combating COVID-19 shutdowns. Today, backlogs are spiking again as the holiday shopping season looms. Flexport As demand for products and as a result demand for space for cargo ships at ports has spiked, delays have made the space at ports and in cargo ships increasingly more valuable. Last week, Judah Levine, the head of research at Freightos, told Insider that the price for transporting a 40-foot container between the US and Asia jumped 500% from this time last year to $20,586. Flexport The build up of ships in the Port of Los Angeles shows no signs of abating in the coming weeks, according to data pulled by Flexport of the container ships scheduled to come into the port. Executives have warned the supply chain crisis will continue into 2023. Flexport Do you work in the shipping industry? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work email at gkay@insider.com Read the original article on Business Insider When Jim Macklin last flew through Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in June, he booked a flight with Southwest Airlines. Needing help to navigate the airport, he highlighted one word on his reservation: blind. It was Macklin's first time traveling since his diagnosis of Stargardt disease, a rare genetic condition that causes macular degeneration. He hasn't completely lost his vision but his eyesight has deteriorated to the point where he cannot navigate the labyrinth of an airport without assistance. Unsure how he would find his gate, he flagged down someone in a uniform when he arrived curbside at Sky Harbor. What US travelers need to know: New COVID rules for international flights don't just impact foreign tourists Subscribe: To our weekly travel newsletter "I talked to the first guy I saw and said, 'I need help,'" Macklin said. The person helped him get where he needed to go, but Macklin is one of many travelers who might have felt less anxiety if they had known of a Transportation Security Administration program designed to make trips through airport security less stressful. What is TSA Cares? The TSA screening process can induce anxiety in even the most seasoned travelers. Remembering what's allowed, what's not. Taking off shoes. Taking out laptops. Separating 3-ounce liquids into a plastic bag. Getting hands swabbed. Standing in an X-ray machine. Navigating crowds of people in a noisy, packed environment. A medical condition or sensory issue could make the process even more taxing. Kelly Campbell of Foundation for Blind Children takes a TSA Cares tour on Sept. 14, 2021, in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Recognizing that, the Transportation Security Administration launched TSA Cares in 2012. People who might need extra support through security, whether due to a disability, medical condition or other circumstance, can call in advance to let the agency know. A specially trained TSA agent called a passenger support specialist then meets the traveler at security to guide them through the screening process. Story continues Who is eligible for TSA Cares? The program is generally open to any passenger who believes they would benefit from extra support navigating security and is available nationwide. Some of the most common requests are from people with autism, those who use a wheelchair or scooter, travelers with cognitive disabilities and passengers with diabetes. Jeff Cote, a TSA supervisor and passenger support specialist, said the role is personal to him. His daughter, who is 29, has Asperger's syndrome. He understands as a parent the difference a little extra patience and care during the screening process can make for travelers. He said the passengers he's guided through security range in age from infants to elderly people. TSA supervisor and passenger support specialist Jeffrey Cote (center) talks with Kelly Campbell (second from left, of Foundation for Blind Children) during a TSA Cares tour on Sept. 14, 2021, in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. "We have a lot of babies that come through that are on feeding machines," Cote said. "A lot of that can't be scanned through X-ray so we will screen that ourselves." "Sometimes we get people who are going through treatments medically and have a lot of extra medical equipment, including IV bags and oversized liquids," said Tracy Blake, a TSA supervisor and passenger support specialist. Blake said the goal is to make the traveler feel comfortable while still performing the security duties required to screen passengers. She said a passenger support specialist may take a different approach, such as moving to a separate lane where they can conduct a screening without creating anxiety. "Just helping them through that process really ensures they have a better travel experience," Blake said. Spreading the word about TSA Cares In TSA Cares' first year, it had 3,000 requests for assistance nationwide. So far in 2021, it has received more than 18,000 requests. Those figures include people who called in advance and passengers that TSA identified at security as needing support. Despite that growth, the program is little known to many of the people who could use it most. Word of it is often passed by word of mouth. Families tell other families how the program can help give their loved ones dignity while traveling. TSA agent Tammie Malkow Dunham (center) guides Connie Cobb (right, of Foundation for Blind Children) during a TSA Cares tour on Sept. 14, 2021, in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. TSA does outreach to let travelers know how they can assist. For instance, on Sept. 14, TSA held a tour at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport for a group from the Foundation for Blind Children, which serves children and adults with visual loss in metro Phoenix. During the tour, Blake and Cote walked the two dozen visitors through security, giving them the opportunity to hear, feel and experience what it would be like to go through a checkpoint before they need to navigate it themselves. Melody Girouard, who participated in the tour, has a genetic condition that has affected her eyesight since she was a child. She has traveled around the world and often does so with a companion. Subscribe: To our weekly travel newsletter From Belize to Brazil: Here are the travel restrictions across Central and South America due to COVID-19 She described the few times she's traveled by herself as "scary and, to be honest, hard." "Airports are terrifying because I can't read the signs. I can't see where I'm going," Girouard said. She also can't see visual cues such as a hand gesture waving her over. The tour was the first time the 39-year-old had heard about TSA Cares. "To know you can preplan and have that security (of assistance), that's incredible," she said. Jim Macklin (center, Foundation for Blind Children) waits to go into the body scanner during a TSA Cares tour on Sept. 14, 2021, in Terminal 4 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Macklin, also part of the tour group, said learning about TSA Cares was a game changer. A former registered nurse, he said he was devastated when his diagnosis forced him to retire. He credits the Foundation for Blind Children with giving him his life back. He said he now has the confidence to search for a new job in the medical field utilizing his 30 years of experience as a nurse. He is also about to embark on another trip. In a few weeks, he's planning to fly to Tennessee to visit friends. This time, he anticipates his arrival at Sky Harbor will be far less chaotic. "I'll definitely be contacting TSA," he said. You can connect with Arizona Republic consumer travel reporter Melissa Yeager through email at melissa.yeager@azcentral.com. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: TSA Cares explained: Helping travelers who need support at the airport An Algiers court on Thursday sentenced a former presidential candidate and retired general to four years in prison for undermining army morale, the official APS news agency reported. Ali Ghediri had said he would stand in Algeria's April 2019 election against longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The ailing autocrat's decision to seek a fifth mandate led to mass protests against his rule and he later stepped down under army pressure. Ghediri, detained since June 2019, appeared in court on Thursday accused of "participating during peacetime in undertakings aimed at weakening army morale", APS said. The prosecution had requested a sentence of seven years behind bars. Ghediri was a political novice without a strong support structure to back him when he threw his hat into the ring against Bouteflika. He had said he wanted to "break the system" and "build a second republic". In a late 2018 interview with El Watan newspaper, Ghediri had hit out at speculation that the April election might be postponed and Bouteflika's mandate extended, suggesting he expected the army to stop any such move. The comments earned him a rebuke from the defence ministry, which threatened to go to court if rules on the conduct of former military officers were breached. Bouteflika delayed the April elections indefinitely after the Hirak pro-democracy protest movement broke out in February that year. Then interim president Abdelkader Bensalah scheduled a new vote for July but the country's constitutional council cancelled it, citing a lack of candidates. An election was eventually held in December 2019, with Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared the winner. Bouteflika died last week, aged 84, while Bensalah died Wednesday, aged 79. abh/fka/lg/hkb By Josue Gonzalez and Jorge Lopez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers congregated outside Mexico's refugee agency in the capital and in shelters in the northern city of Monterrey on Wednesday, as migrants deterred by a crackdown at the U.S. border sought legal status in Mexico. Nearly 10,000 migrants, mainly Haitian, remain in worsening conditions in an impromptu camp that sprang up under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande from the Texas town Del Rio to Mexico's Ciudad Acuna. In recent days, U.S. authorities have removed at least 4,000 people from the site for processing in detention centers. Some 523 Haitians have been deported to their homeland on four flights, with repatriations set to continue on a regular basis, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said. Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N refugee agency, has warned that U.S. expulsions to such a volatile situation might violate international law. The chaotic scenes at the border and news of the expulsion flights convinced some Haitian migrants transiting through Mexico that it would be better to petition for legal status there, rather than risk crossing the U.S. border. "My thinking is to find a better life, wherever I find it... I never said it had to be in the United States," said Wilner Plaisir, a Haitian asylum seeker waiting outside the offices of the Mexican refugee agency COMAR in Mexico City on Wednesday. "If I can find work, I'll stay here with my family," said the construction worker. Statistics published by COMAR show that 18,883 Haitians applied for asylum in Mexico in the first eight months of this year, the second-highest nationality after Hondurans. (Reporting by Josue Gonzalez and Jorge Lopez, writing by Laura Gottesdiener; Editing by Aurora Ellis) Arizonas charter schools experienced a rush of new applications amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a compilation of state-by-state data on charter school enrollment compared with enrollment in the 2019-2020 school year. It found nearly 240,000 new students enrolled in charter schools nationally, a 7% increase from the prior year. The report, released Wednesday, said the pandemic forcing schools to educate children remotely led to frustrated parents who saw charters and private schools welcoming students back to classrooms. During the 2020-21 school year, the pandemic forced schools of all types to close their doors and switch to remote learning, the report said. Many families were dissatisfied with the quality of what was available to their children. And that dissatisfaction led them to learn more about the other educational options available. For many families, charter schools nimbleness and flexibility made them the right public school choice. Arizonas charter districts increased by 18,429 students in the most recent school year, an 8.6% increase. Meanwhile, public school districts experienced one of their most significant decreases in years. Public districts reported 56,979 fewer students year-over-year, according to Arizona Department of Education data, amounting to a 6% decrease in public school enrollment. Charter schools have continued to grow in Arizona, even during the pandemic, further validating our position in public education, Arizona Charter Schools Association President Jake Logan said. Its a testament to our teachers, faculty, and charter leaders for providing a quality education for Arizona students. With the increase, Arizona is the first state to see 20% of public school students enrolled in charter schools. In the current school year, 232,249 students attend the states charter schools, while the state lists public school enrollment at 880,358. Story continues The Grand Canyon state is known nationally for laws and funding formulas conducive to private and charter schools. Of all states that provided information, Oklahoma saw the largest shift to charter schools with a 77% increase in enrollment year-over-year. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: States, News, Arizona, Charter Schools, Coronavirus, Schools, Education Original Author: Cole Lauterbach, The Center Square Original Location: Arizona charter schools add thousands of new students amid COVID-19 closures By Paulina Duran SYDNEY (Reuters) -Commonwealth Bank of Australia accused Apple Inc on Thursday of uncompetitive behaviour over control of payments on its phones, which have grown to about a third of all in-person payments the country's largest lender processes. Matt Comyn, chief executive at the Sydney-based bank, urged lawmakers to boost scrutiny of technology giants, saying payments through digital wallets developed by Apple and Alphabet's Google made up about 45% of all physical consumer payments, as distinct from other payments such as online or direct debits. "The ... claim that Apple is pro-competition, I think, is a fair statement, as long as one accepts that competition is welcome as long as no one can compete with Apple," Comyn told a regular parliamentary committee. The bank has been calling for Apple to free up the Near Field Communication (NFC) chip on its phones for the use of banks' own apps, estimating the U.S. firm captures 80% of all contactless transactions done through smartphones and smartwatches. Contactless payments are growing fast in Australia, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic and mobile payment services such as Apple Pay, and Comyn estimated customers tap more than 90% of their transactions. Apple, which requires banks to process all contactless payments through its digital wallet and pay an undisclosed fee, declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. "It is analogous to imagine a world today where, on your Apple phone, the only person that could determine which carrier you used is Apple," Comyn said. Shayne Elliott, chief executive of fourth-biggest lender Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, which was the first in the country to link Apple Pay with credit cards, said it had not been focused on the issue up "until that particular complaint". "It's kind of ironic, one of Australia's biggest companies complaining about having to deal with other big competitors," Elliott told the parliamentary committee. Story continues Last month, Apple told a senate inquiry its payments app was "pro-competitive", and accused companies urging further scrutiny of its products of doing so "for their own commercial gain". The inquiry findings have not been published. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which has been reviewing whether Apple breached competition laws, declined to comment on Thursday. Its chief, Rod Sims, told the Australian Financial Review newspaper last week that the issue was complex and the anti-trust agency was "going into this with an open mind". Unlike Apple, search giant Google allows banks and other third parties to access its NFC chip. The inquiry comes amid intensifying scrutiny from global regulators over Apple and Google's dominance in the mobile market. South Korea approved a bill last month that bans major app store operators, including Apple, from forcing software developers to use their payment systems. In Germany, lawmakers in 2019 moved to https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-germany-apple-pay-idUSKBN1XP16M force Apple to open its mobile payments system to rivals for a reasonable fee. (Reporting by Paulina Duran in Sydney; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Miyoung Kim) STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish online gaming company Betsson said on Thursday that its chairman, Patrick Svensk, had resigned effective immediately in the wake of the dismissal of the company's Chief Executive earlier this month. The company, which said it had appointed board member Johan Lundberg as its new chairman, said Svensk's decision to resign was because major shareholders had lost confidence in him. "The lack of full trust is due to how the dismissal ofthe CEO was handled," the company said in a statement. Betsson said on Sept. 17 that the board had begun a process of finding a replacement for CEO Pontus Lindwall. Svensk has been the chairman of Betsson since 2017 and a board member since 2005, while Lundberg has been a board member since 2018. "It is very sad, and I am sorry that I have disappointed our major owners, but I have done what I thought was best for the company," said Svensk. (Reporting by Helena Soderpalm; Editing by Shri Navaratnam) State Department spokesperson Ned Price (right) slammed former Haiti Special Envoy Daniel Foote (left) for lying in his resignation letter (Getty / AFP) State Department spokesperson Ned Price has slammed Haiti Special Envoy Daniel Foote for lying in his resignation letter and for not properly raising his concerns about migrants leaving the country amid multiple crises. There have been multiple senior-level policy conversations on Haiti, where all proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process, Mr Price said in a statement to The Independent. Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false. It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation, Mr Price added. He failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead. Im not going to parse the contents of his resignation letter, but I do want to emphasize that we have active policy debates in this administration on a number of issues. The role of the Presidents cabinet and his advisors is to provide the President with the best advice possible. No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas, Mr Price said. More follows... DEL RIO, Texas Haitian migrant families who illegally crossed the southern border and lived in a makeshift camp beneath an international bridge are being released into the United States, contradicting the Biden administrations claims that they would be removed from the country. Border Patrol released just over a dozen Haitian migrants at a gas station Wednesday evening. Large government-contracted buses drop off families twice a day at a gas station on a busy commercial road in the middle of town. Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner The buses come from processing centers throughout the region where migrants who have been waiting for days under the Del Rio-Acuna International Bridge are transported and processed into the system. From there, they are either released into the U.S. if they make a credible claim of fear returning to their home country or flown back to their country of origin. TWO HAITIAN MIGRANTS BITE ICE OFFICERS ON DEPORTATION FLIGHT Greyhound buses arrive at this gas station at 11:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. daily. The buses take passengers directly to San Antonio, Texas, roughly two and a half hours away. On-site support assists migrants on buses from the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition. Two volunteers were present at the Stripes gas station Wednesday evening. Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner The Greyhound bus pulled in at 5:35 p.m., and a white boarded-up school bus pulled in several minutes later with detainees onboard moments away from being out of federal custody. Just over a dozen people stepped off the white bus and walked across the lot to board the commercial vehicle. Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner Two days earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at a press conference at the bridge that individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion. Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of the migrants themselves and should not be attempted. If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, Mayorkas said. Story continues While the U.S. government said it would fly up to three planes of Haitian migrants back to Haiti daily, it has fallen below its promise due to violence on the flights. In two incidents this week, Haitian migrants assaulted federal law enforcement on the plane, biting them. The two flights were canceled before making it to the runway at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio. Anna Giaritelli / Washington Examiner Under a public health policy imposed at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, families are to be returned across the border immediately if they are encountered by Border Patrol. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER However, some Mexican states have refused to accept migrant families, forcing the Biden administration to detain many families and subsequently release them into the U.S. sometimes without paperwork mandating they appear in immigration court for illegally crossing the border. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, Haiti, Homeland Security, Immigration, White House, Joe Biden, Texas Original Author: Anna Giaritelli Original Location: Biden administration releases Haitian migrant families at Del Rio gas station The White House. Ken Cedeno/Reuters President Joe Biden is set to nominate Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to a Bloomberg report. The banking law professor has been a critic of cryptocurrencies and envisions a larger role for the government in overseeing banks. Omarova needs Senate confirmation to serve a five-year term. See more stories on Insider's business page. President Joe Biden is preparing to nominate a Cornell University law professor who has been critical of cryptocurrencies and envisions a larger role for the government in overseeing banks to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to a Bloomberg report. Biden as soon as this week will name Saule Omarova as his choice to head the OCC, Bloomberg reported late Wednesday, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the nomination process. The OCC is a key regulator overseeing consumer banking and supervises large lenders such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. Omarova, a banking law professor, is expected to push for tougher oversight and rules in the industry. A native of Kazakhstan, Omarova in an October 2020 academic paper wrote about a blueprint for a "People's Ledger," or a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet to democratize money and finance the world's largest economy. By separating the lending function from their monetary function, a proposed reform for banks would "effectively 'end banking,' as we know it," with Omarova making a direct play on the title of the 2014 book, "The End of Banking: Money, Credit, and the Digital Revolution". Biden's aides were vetting Omarova in August, according to The New York Times, noting that Omarova has said cryptocurrency operations could allow banks to conduct more trading activity out of oversight of the Federal Reserve and other regulators. Bloomberg reported that Omarova contends that digital tokens threaten to destabilize the economy and are vulnerable to abuse by private firms at the expense of public safeguards. Story continues Omarova served in President George W. Bush's administration as a special adviser for regulatory policy in the Treasury Department. She's practiced law at Davis Polk & Wardwell, specializing in corporate transactions and advisory work in financial regulation. If confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term, Omarova would take over from Michael Hsu, a former Fed official who has been running the OCC on an acting basis since May. Hsu this week told a blockchain panel that crypto and decentralized finance look similar to the financial instruments that sparked the 2008 global financial crisis. Read the original article on Business Insider WASHINGTON President Joe Biden is scrambling this week to save his agenda from a bitter fight among fellow Democrats and signaling that he will sacrifice some parts of it to secure others. If the president can't fashion a compromise, he risks losing roughly $4 trillion worth of spending on social safety net and infrastructure programs. On the other hand, a little legislative magic could deliver most of his agenda in a quick one-two punch. Biden met at the White House on Wednesday with a parade of lawmakers, including party leaders and, separately, representatives of the warring progressive and moderate factions. Each side is holding a legislative hostage: the moderates are threatening to kill a $3.5 trillion budget measure, and the progressives are threatening to kill a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Neither side trusts the other. While there was no evidence of progress toward a deal Wednesday, Biden and White House officials are tacitly acknowledging their $3.5 trillion budget bill will have to be cut back. In his meeting with moderates, the president pressed lawmakers without success to name their preferred dollar figure, according to a person briefed on the session. At the same time, his aides have asked allies in Congress to identify their top priorities in the measure, according to a senior Senate Democratic aide a strong indication the White House is looking for programs that can be cut. And White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden is not married to the bottom line of the budget bill. "The president has always been open to negotiations and discussions and knew that he was not going to be, alone, able to wave a magic wand and pass a proposal," Psaki said Wednesday. The real question is how much each wing of the party is willing to give. And so far, the answer is: nothing. After failing to elicit even a bottom-line spending figure from moderates, Biden told Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to "find a number you're comfortable with based on the needs you still have and how we deliver it to the American people," Manchin said. Story continues Likewise, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement that her allies won't vote for infrastructure unless the budget measure is in hand first. In recent days, West Wing officials have shown a greater appreciation for the risk that Biden could emerge empty-handed if he didn't personally engage with Congress, according to Democratic sources close to the White House. "There was a misconception in the first few months that Biden was going to have this transformational presidency; it was an extreme honeymoon period," said one Democratic strategist who speaks frequently to top administration officials. "Now, there's a growing sense that something needs to happen." House moderates are demanding that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., fulfill her vow to put the infrastructure bill to a vote by Monday, and their chief allies across the Capitol, Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., are insisting on shrinking the budget measure. Progressives worry that moderates will walk away if the infrastructure bill passes. They want Pelosi to hold it up until the unfinished budget measure is ready for a vote. "Speaker Pelosi also committed that we were not going forward with one piece without the other," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a leading progressive, said on MSNBC. "That is something that the president of the United States committed to. This is something that we all agreed to from the beginning." They are also pressing Biden to stick as close to the $3.5 trillion bottom line as possible. The fight over timing is based in the deep distrust between the wings of the Democratic Party, and Biden's meetings did little to lower the acrimony. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., a prominent progressive, accused moderates of carrying water for industry. "The debates were having are not about progressives versus moderates, but its a fight between the special interests who dont want to pay their fair share, and making sure we build back better for the American people," he said in a statement after the progressives' meeting with Biden. In accordance with her promise, Pelosi plans to hold a vote on the infrastructure bill Monday. If there's no deal on the budget bill by then, progressives say, they will shoot down the infrastructure measure. Sinema has said the budget is dead if the infrastructure bill goes down. That was the situation before Biden's meetings and after them. The lawmakers walked out of the White House with nothing in hand but chocolate chip cookies, individually wrapped in gold with a presidential seal. To nail down his priorities, he'll have to make the pot a little sweeter than that for both factions. The celebration will take place at The Potters House in Dallas later this month After 45 years in ministry, famed Bishop T.D. Jakes is being honored at a special worship service later this month. Jakes has had an incredibly impressive career. The senior pastor of The Potters House in Dallas, Business Insider reports that Bishop Jakes has, blazed the trail in bringing a message of hope to millions around the world through any mode of communication, never being limited to just the pulpit. From being named Americas Best Preacher by Time Magazine and CNN, and also writing a New York Times bestseller, Jakes impact is unparalleled. Bishop T.D. Jakes speaks with the press during the premiere of Faith Under Fire: The Antoinette Tuff Story at the Potters House on January 18, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images for A E Networks/Lifetime) Now, it seems the bishop is getting his much-deserved flowers. Jakes will be honored with a special worship service at The Potters House of Dallas and is set to feature special guests and tributes. The service will take place on Sunday, Sept. 26. at 9 a.m. CT. The Potters House of Dallas shared a tribute video on their official Instagram account earlier this week. They wrote in their caption, Family, dont miss out this Sunday! Were celebrating 45 groundbreaking years of @BishopJakes Get Ready, Get Ready, Get Ready ministry! Come and mark the milestone with us! RSVP at the link in or bio for this joyous event, happening Sept. 26 at 9 a.m. (CDT)! #TPHDallas. Bishop T.D. Jakes speaks during the MegaFest Women Thou Art Loosed closing session at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center on July 1, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images for MegaFest 2017) Jakes was a part of theGrios Vote For Your Life panel in 2020, alongside Byron Allen, the owner of theGrio and CEO of Allen Media Group Charlamagne Tha God, April Ryan, and Common, theGrio previously reported. Jakes discussed the state of the world at the time during the fall of 2020, the importance of the Black vote, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He shared, As a pastor, Im on ground level zero. We are the people who bury the dead, we are the people who get the calls in the middle of the night of people screaming. We are the people who are there in the cemeteries. We are there when people stop by on their way to the divorce court. Believe me, the trauma thats going on in this country right now, irrespective of race, is so dynamic. Story continues Speaking to the state of the country during the final months of the Trump Administration, he still shared that he had hope. He explained, I think that there is hope. I think that there definitely is hope. But I think that the soul of America is at stake right now. Have you subscribed to theGrios podcast Dear Culture? Download our newest episodes now! TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. Download theGrio today! The post Bishop T.D. Jakes to be honored for 45 years in ministry appeared first on TheGrio. (AP) Federal prosecutors have indicted Brian Laundrie in the case of Gabby Petito, whose remains were discovered in Wyoming last week after an extensive nationwide search. The partner of the 22-year-old van blogger, whose death has been ruled a homicide, Mr Laundrie was travelling with Ms Petito on a cross-country road trip when she went missing. He returned to his familys home in Florida alone with the van the couple had been living in, and ultimately disappeared himself. Days later, when Mr Laundries parents reported his disappearance, a major manhunt was launched, which remains underway. The FBI announced the charge against Mr Laundrie on Thursday for alleged use of unauthorised access devices along with an arrest warrant. Heres everything we know about the missing man so far: Indictment Authorities had labelled Mr Laundrie a person of interest in Ms Petitos disappearance, as he was the last person known to have been with her before she went missing. The grand jury indictment against Mr Laundrie was not related to her death, but rather related to money he allegedly withdrew which affected interstate commerce. After Ms Petito was reported missing, Mr. Laundries lawyer released a statement saying his client would not be speaking to authorities on the advice of counsel. North Port Police, who said Mr Laundries lack of cooperation was hindering the investigation, tweeted a direct plea to the lawyer, asking for help. Mr Laundrie did not speak to police, but instead went missing, and has not been seen since 14 September, despite a couple of reported sightings that proved to be false. Whilst the warrant allows for his arrest, the facts and circumstances of Ms Petitos death are still been investigated. Where is Brian Laundrie thought to be? The search for Mr Laundrie is largely focused on the Carlton Reserve in Florida, which is close to the Laundries family home in North Port. Mr Laundries parents say he headed to the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, which connects with the reserve, for a hike on 14 September. He drove there in a silver Mustang, which they later collected and, according to their account, brought only a backpack with him. Story continues Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito (Instagram/Brian Laundrie) Is he a survivalist? Mr Laundrie told friends and coworkers that he was skilled in outdoor survival, allegedly boasting to a co-worker that he had lived in a forest for weeks on just snacks. He also reportedly told a friend of Ms Petitos that he spent three months hiking alone in the Appalachians. However, experts have said the swampy region they are searching is particularly unforgiving with wild animals and dehydration, both potential dangers. Who is the Laundrie family? Mr Laundries father, Christopher Laundrie, 62, and mother Roberta Laundrie, 55, live in North Port, Florida. Mr Laundrie also has a sister, Cassie Laundrie, whose children Mr Laundrie and Ms Petito appear to have been close with. Ms Laundrie appeared on Good Morning America on 17 September, saying she had not spoken to her brother since he returned from his trip, but that Ms Petito was "like a sister and my children love her and all I want is for her to come home safe and sound and for this to be a big misunderstanding. Mr Laundries parents also appear to have had a close relationship with Ms Petito, as she lived with them for more than a year, as Ms Petitos mother Nicole Schmidt outlined in an open letter to the Laundries when her daughter was still missing. Roberta Laundrie was a Pinterest collaborator on a Life Goals Pinterest board created by Ms Petito that showed pictures of newlyweds with backpacks, and posts of baby clothes. Relationship with Gabby Mr Laundrie met Ms Petito at Bayport-Blue Point High School on New Yorks Long Island, according to Ms Petitos stepfather, Jim Schmidt. The pair began dating in March 2019 and got engaged in July 2020, according to posts on their Instagram accounts. Mr Laundrie wrote: My biggest fear is that one day Ill wake up and it will have all been a dream, because that is what every second has felt like since the moment we found each other. Till death do us part or until I wake up, Im so happy the answer was yes, Love you hunny. Ms Petitos mother Nichole Schmidt told the Daily Mail she believed the couple may have called off their engagement ahead of the trip because they were still so young. Mr Laundrie presented an idyllic picture of the couples relationship on social media, posting pictures of them kissing, and posing for pictures together smiling. But witness reports described a very different picture of Mr Laundries treatment of his partner. He was allegedly seen slapping and hitting Ms Petito in the Utah town of Moab weeks before she went missing. A 911 call was made by a Moab resident who witnessed the alleged altercation and was concerned enough to report it to authorities. Police later pulled their van over to find a crying and distressed Ms Petito, and Mr Laundrie with scratches on his face. "Weve just been fighting this morning. Personal issues," Ms Petito told police. One officer said in body-camera footage, that they considered Mr Laundrie to be the victim, although not at risk, and no further action was taken. Job Mr Laundrie does not appear to have been in full-time employment, but he did earn money selling his artworks online. On a Depop site called Bizarre Design, Mr Laundrie sold his artworks, including bookmarks, print stamps and t-shirts . Social media presence Mr Laundries social media accounts show a man presenting himself as outdoorsy, a loving and devoted boyfriend, and an artist with conspiratorial leanings. On Instagram, he railed against being brainwashed by the media and revealed a fondness for pop culture icons such as Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk and the creator of the Hellboy comics, Mike Mignola. His posts are sprinkled with references to nature, and he showed admiration for film characters like Joaquin Phoenixs The Joker, violent video games like Hotline Miami, and the book Lullaby by Mr Palahniuk, in which a man investigates the death of his wife and child. Read More Gabby Petito death: Arrest warrant issued for missing boyfriend Brian Laundrie Brian Laundrie skilled in solo wilderness survival, say sources Utah police investigated over Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie bodycam incident (AP) A former co-worker of Brian Laundrie has said the missing 23-year-old is well-versed in surviving in the wild. The revelation comes as Mr Laundrie, identified as a person of interest in the death of Gabby Petito, has been missing for more than a week. Investigators have struggled to find any trace of him during six intensive days of searching in the 25,000-acre, swampy Florida reserve where it is believed to have gone. A team of divers joined police and FBI agents using boats and helicopters in the search for him on Thursday. An unnamed source who used to work with Mr Laundrie told the New York Post that he had once boasted to colleagues he was able to survive on next-to-nothing for weeks on end when camping in the wild. In conversation about hiking Brian talked about the longest time that he spent in the woods was 6 weeks and bragged about only having a large pack of either cheese or peanut butter crackers to sustain him for that time, the source told the New York Post. He is well-versed in spending a long time in the woods and living off nearly nothing, they said. Mr Laundrie, who was engaged to Ms Petito, was on a cross-country road trip with his fiance. The couple had blogged about their travels in national parks and experiences living in a van on social media. Mr Laundrie returned to his family home in Florida on 1 September without Ms Petito. Her death has been ruled a homicide, though no cause of death has been released. Police have not outlined evidence of a crime. A friend of Ms Petitos also warned that Mr Laundrie had well-honed solo survival skills, in a separate Daily Mail report. Rose Davis, a friend of Gabby Petito, told the news outlet that, as she remembered, Mr Laundrie had lived alone for months in the Appalachian Mountains, which span large portions of the US. I know he lived in the Appalachians for what I believe was three months, and he did it by himself, so I know hes skilled at it, she said. Story continues He and Gabby both told me stories about it, Ms Davis added. And you could see the enthusiasm in his voice when he would talk about his adventures by himself like that trip into the Appalachians. Read More Gabby Petito live: Police note found on Brian Laundries car What has happened to Gabby Petito? Everything we know so far A timeline of the disappearance of Gabby Petito PHOENIX (AP) Donald Trump supporters hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to review the 2020 vote count are preparing to deliver their findings on Friday, the climax of a bizarre quest to find evidence supporting the former presidents false claim that he lost because of fraud. Nearly every allegation made by the review team so far has crumbled under scrutiny. Election officials in Arizona and around the country expect more of the same Friday from the review team they say is biased, incompetent and chasing absurd or disproven conspiracy theories. Every time Trump and his supporters have been given a forum to prove this case, they have swung and missed, said Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election attorney and vocal critic of Trumps push to overturn the election. The unprecedented partisan review focused on the vote count in Arizona's largest county, Maricopa is led and funded largely by people who already believe that Trump was the true winner, despite dozens of lawsuits and extraordinary scrutiny that found no problems that could change the outcome. Theyve ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law. Despite being widely mocked, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are eagerly pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania's Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don't comply. In Arizona, five people are scheduled to publicly outline the findings for two top Republicans in the state Senate chamber, including Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity consulting firm with no election experience. He served as the head of the review team despite his prior work to promote stop the steal election conspiracies. Story continues Shiva Ayyadurai, who has developed a loyal following for promoting COVID-19 misinformation on social media, will discuss his review of signatures on mail ballots. It's not clear why he is qualified to do so. Ayyadurai, who is known as Dr. Shiva to his fans, has a Ph.D. but is not a medical doctor. Ben Cotton, a computer forensics expert, will outline his analysis of vote-counting machines. Cotton has walked back his allegation that a key elections database was deleted. Also scheduled to speak are Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state, and Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Both served as liaisons between the Senate and the review team. Theyve been tight-lipped about their findings, but Bennett told a conservative radio host this week that he will have a brief report about where Maricopa County failed to meet and comply with state statutes and election procedures. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, controlled 4-1 by Republicans, has vehemently defended the vote count. Republican Chairman Jack Sellers has called the review a grift disguised as an audit. GOP Supervisor Bill Gates said Thursday that the review's reliance on funding from out-of-state Trump allies means the findings won't be believable. The people who are funding this audit, the people who have called for this audit, we all know what they want it to find, Gates said. They want it to find that Donald Trump won Maricopa County. The Senate has agreed to spend $150,000 on the audit, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies. Another county supervisor, Clint Hickman, has been the subject of an outlandish conspiracy theory claiming a fire that killed 120,000 chickens at his familys egg farm west of Phoenix was a ruse to destroy evidence of Trumps victory. Maricopa County's vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand count found a perfect match. Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems, but Senate President Karen Fann and others backing her partisan review were unpersuaded. Election experts predict the report could misinterpret normal election procedures to claim something nefarious or elevate minor mistakes into major allegations of wrongdoing. Theyre minor procedural issues, and to try and amplify them to the point where they cast doubt on the election is nothing more than sore loserism, said David Becker, a former lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice voting section who founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research. Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes and Arizona by 10,457 votes. Minor procedural issues wouldn't affect a margin that large, Becker said. In July, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots that were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. But they had innocuous explanations. Fridays report stems from a process that began nearly a year ago. Trump and his allies, after their claims of election fraud were repeatedly dismissed in court, searched frantically for a way to block the certification of Bidens victory on Jan. 6. Two top Republicans in the Arizona Senate came through, issuing a sweeping subpoena for all ballots in Maricopa County, the machines that counted them and a trove of election data. They said they would use the materials to conduct a forensic audit. A court battle over the validity of the subpoena delayed the delivery of materials until April, three months after Biden took office. The review was supposed to take about 60 days but has been repeatedly set back, most recently because Logan and four others on his team contracted COVID-19. The review has energized Trump supporters who hope it will prove he was the legitimate winner of the election and lead to his return to the White House, despite extraordinary scrutiny finding no fraud that would affect the elections outcome. Theres no constitutional mechanism to reverse the certification of Bidens victory. Fann, the Senate president, says the review is not intended to overturn the 2020 election but will find ways the Legislature can improve election laws. Even as the Arizona review nears the finish line, Trump supporters are pushing for a repeat in other swing states where Biden narrowly won, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not all Republicans, even in the Senate, trust whatever results will come out of the review. Theyre going to have to justify their existence, so theyre going to have to come up with something, GOP Sen. Paul Boyer said Thursday. And God knows what that is. ___ Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed. Cannabis consumption in Denver hit an all-time high during the pandemic. Driving the news: A new city report shows medical and retail marijuana sales totaled about $715 million in 2020, up 21% compared with record-setting sales in 2019. Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free. Denver's 215 dispensaries generated more than $70 million in tax revenue, marking a 17% increase over the previous year. Why it matters: The pandemic accelerated the growth of an already booming industry, as people stuck at home increasingly turned to vices to cope with the mental and emotional toll of COVID-19. Flashback: Denver Mayor Michael Hancock initially told residents that marijuana stores were nonessential businesses and would need to shutter in the lockdown last March. The announcement led to massive lines before the mayor reversed the move. What they're saying: "We see no signs of the important role this industry plays in our economic growth slowing down anytime soon," Eric Escudero, spokesperson for the Department of Excise and Licenses, told the Denver Business Journal. By the numbers: About half of the tax revenue from marijuana last year went into Denver's discretionary spending account to support a slew of city services, from parks and street maintenance to public library operations. $24.6 million was appropriated for affordable housing and homelessness services, youth violence prevention, the STAR program, city leases and more. $8.8 million was allocated to cannabis regulation, enforcement and education efforts. Roughly $1 million was dedicated to free after-school and summer programs for kids from primarily underserved communities. Of note: Denver's proportion of sales statewide totaled 33%, a dip of about 3% compared to 2019. The decrease is likely due to more cities across Colorado now allowing cannabis sales, Escudero tells Axios. Zoom out: Cannabis dispensaries statewide generated more than $2 billion in 2020 sales, according to data from the Colorado Department of Revenue. Story continues What's next: This November, Denver residents will be asked to vote on increasing marijuana taxes by 1.5% to fund pandemic-related research. That's in addition to a separate statewide measure voters will consider that seeks a higher tax on cannabis products to support programs designed to close education gaps for low-income students. Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free. A shot of the Pfizer vaccine at a FEMA vaccination center in Philadelphia. Mark Makela/Getty Images An advisory committee to the CDC voted 15 to 0 to recommend Pfizer booster shots for people 65 and older and long term care facility (nursing home) residents on Thursday. They also voted to recommend booster shots for all adults with underlying medical conditions. The advisors voted 9-6 against recommending booster doses for adults who are "in an occupational or institutional setting" that puts them at higher risk of COVID-19 - a break with the FDA. The CDC later said those groups "may" get boosted, if they wish. See more stories on Insider's business page. An independent group of medical advisors to the CDC voted 15 to 0 on Thursday afternoon to recommend free booster shots of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to millions of older adults who had their first two shots at least six months ago. The panel also voted to recommend boosters to all adults with underlying medical conditions, but not unanimously, and there was some frustration with whether that makes the booster recommendation overly broad. The panel voted 13-2 to recommend boosters to 50-64-year-olds with underlying medical conditions, and 9 to 6 to recommend boosters for 18-49-year-olds with underlying medical conditions. But the advisors voted 9-6 against recommending booster doses for adults who are "in an occupational or institutional setting" which puts them at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19, like healthcare workers or teachers. That decision marked a break with the US Food and Drug Administration, which authorized boosters for all adults who work or live in places that put them at higher risk of catching the virus on Wednesday. "We have a really effective vaccine and it's like saying it's not working, and it is working!" Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University who is on the CDC committee, said. CDC officials weighed in overnight with a final declaration, bridging some of the gap between the FDA and the CDC's independent experts. Story continues For now, these final booster recommendations apply only to certain groups of people who've already been fully vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer. What the CDC recommends: Adults 65 years old and over who've had Pfizer's vaccine should get a booster shot after at least 6 months Long term care facility (nursing home) residents who've had Pfizer's vaccine should get a booster shot after at least 6 months Adults ages 50-64 with underlying medical conditions who've had Pfizer's vaccine should get a booster shot after at least 6 months The booster recommendations for younger adults are not as strong. The CDC suggests: Adults ages 18-49 with underlying medical conditions who've had Pfizer may get a booster after at least 6 months, based on their individual benefits and risks, and Adults ages 18-49 who've had Pfizer and who are at increased risk of COVID-19 exposure and transmission "because of occupational or institutional setting" (e.g. healthcare workers, prisoners, and other frontline workers) may get a booster shot of Pfizer after at least 6 months, based on their individual benefits and risks. Boosters won't end the pandemic An elderly woman receives a booster shot in Netanya, Israel, January 19, 2021. Ronen Zvulun/REUTERS The top priority for the country, experts agreed, must still be to get the more than 1 in 4 eligible Americans who have gotten zero shots so far vaccinated. "We're fighting a pandemic, and it's not because people got two doses of vaccine," Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, who serves on the CDC advisory committee, said during the meeting, echoing a sentiment repeated time and time again through hours of emotional comments from the committee members. Unvaccinated Americans are far more likely to get seriously ill, hospitalized, or die from COVID-19 than people who've had one or two shots, regardless of their age, making the booster decision merely something that "may move the needle a little bit," Talbot said. Boosters alone won't be enough to end the pandemic, she and others said. More needs to be done to get those who've had no shots vaccinated. Lacking evidence for younger people getting boosters A Thai healthcare worker receives a booster dose of Pfizer's vaccine in Bangkok on August 9, 2021. Vichan Poti/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images During their deliberations, the CDC advisors took a look at hospitalization and infection data from around the country, and weighed the risks and benefits of giving booster doses to adults who are already fully vaccinated. The data suggested that, while the risks of boosting are low for everyone, boosting younger adults may not change much, while boosting people 65 and older could prevent a few more hospitalizations and severe cases of COVID-19. For example, CDC estimates presented on Thursday suggest that more than 480 adults over age 65 would need to get a booster dose in order to prevent one additional hospitalization over six months. That number jumps to more than 8,000 boosters per hospitalization prevented among adults in the 18-29 year old age group. "This isn't about who deserves a booster, it's about who needs a booster," committee member Dr. Matthew Daley from Kaiser Permanente Colorado said during the meeting. Others agreed. "If we can do a little bit of good by giving boosters to people over 65, I'm in favor of that," committee member Dr. James Loehr added. In particular, adults in their 70s, 80s, and beyond who are vaccinated are not as well protected by their shots, because their immune systems are older and weaker. Only Pfizer boosters for now For now, only some of those people will be able to get boosters, though, since not everyone got Pfizer's vaccine initially. That doesn't "sound like good public health policy," committee member Dr. Sarah Long said. The issue could become especially thorny in long term care facilities, like nursing homes. (The FDA has promised that more booster doses will be on the way for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson recipients, once more data is available on boosting those vaccines.) According to CDC estimates presented during the meeting, Pfizer boosters will bring vaccine effectiveness up to around 90% against infection, and up to 95% against hospitalization. For 18-65 year olds, that's only a very marginal improvement to the very strong vaccine protection they already have. Some argued in favor of extra shots for healthcare workers to keep them healthy as hospitals fill up Medical workers outside Houston Methodist Hospital on June 9, 2021. Getty Images/Brandon Bell One of the main reasons that healthcare workers were included in the final recommendations was in the hopes of keeping a strained healthcare system, near buckling under the burden of unvaccinated patients, afloat. "We don't currently have enough healthcare workers to take care of the unvaccinated," Dr. Talbot, who works at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said during the committee meeting. Talbot stressed that boosters, if they help prevent more mild symptomatic infections, could keep more doctors and nurses healthy and at work, but that's mainly to take care of the "large populations which are unvaccinated." "We are declining care to people who deserve care because we are full of unvaccinated patients," she said. It's not clear yet whether boosters could reduce transmission of the virus from vaccinated people. Read the original article on Business Insider Chad's foreign minister warned against outside interference on Thursday, referencing Russian paramilitaries operating in neighboring countries. Cherif Mahamat Zene said "external interference, wherever it comes from, poses a very serious problem for the stability and security of my country," when asked about Russia's Wagner Group. He told AFP and Africa Confidential on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York that every measure would be taken "to ensure" Chad is protected. "There are Russian mercenaries present in Libya, who are also present in the Central African Republic," he said. Zene said rebels who killed former president Idriss Deby Itno in fighting in April had been trained by the private security Wagner Group. "We have reason to be concerned about the presence of these mercenaries," he said, adding though that Chad did not have proof that the mercenaries were in the country. Russian paramilitaries, private-security instructors and companies have grown increasingly influential in Africa in recent years, particularly in the conflict-ridden Central African Republic (CAR), where the United Nations has accused Wagner contractors of committing abuses. Zene said an attack on Chad near the Central African border on May 30 was "certainly backed" by the Russians. "We have all the evidence of the presence of these Russians alongside the Central African forces and that concerns us," the minister added, saying Chad detected telephone communications between Wagner groups in CAR and Libya. Moscow admits having deployed "instructors" to CAR but says they aren't active in fighting. Moscow insists there are no paramilitaries in Libya. This week, France warned Mali that using the Wagner Group would isolate the country internationally after reports that Mali's army-dominated government was close to hiring 1,000 of the paramilitaries. "I met my Malian colleague at the UN. He assured me that there was no government engagement with Wagner. We cannot prejudge something that does not exist," said Zene when asked about the reports. Story continues In a pre-recorded video speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Chad's transitional president, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, the late president's son, called for more aid for Sahel countries to fight the rise of jihadist groups. Deby senior died aged 68 after more than three decades in office and on the cusp of winning a sixth term in office. prh/pdh/caw Hours after President Biden announced that the US would double climate finance funding for poorer nations, Chinas President Xi Jinping used his moment in the spotlight at the 76th UN General Assembly to make headlines on the climate crisis. In a pre-taped address from Beijing on Tuesday, President Xi said that China would no longer build coal-fired power plants overseas. China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, he told the gathering of world leaders. President Xi then reiterated his commitment from last year that China will strive to peak carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. The commitments were a much-needed jolt of good news from the worlds two largest polluters, whose relationship remains fraught on other issues, ahead of the global climate summit, Cop26, taking place in Glasgow in a matter of weeks. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the pledges but cautioned that much still needed to be done to make Cop26 a success, as the climate alarm bells are ringing at fever pitch. Everyone, developed & emerging economies alike, must do their job, he said. Cop26 is highly-anticipated as the moment in which major strides can be made on the commitment of nearly every country under the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb global temperature rise to 1.5C, amid ever worsening climate-linked disasters around the world. Leading up to Glasgow, garnering commitments on ending coal use, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, has been a major focus. Chinas announcement was welcomed by climate scientists, policy experts and activists but they underlined that the devil would be in the details. Its a step in the right direction, but this only involves their financing of international coal projects. We need to see what [China] does domestically, Dr Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State and member of the National Academy of Sciences, told The Independent in an email. Story continues Theres no way we keep planetary warming below catastrophic levels if China continues to build new coal-fired power plants. The key negotiations going into COP26 will involve incentivizing China not to go down that road. Li Shuo, of Greenpeace East Asia, called President Xis announcement a step towards the right direction but said China needed to work harder on its domestic coal addiction. Beijing should drastically reduce coal in its energy system to ensure its emissions peak before 2025, he tweeted. China is the largest public financier of overseas coal plants, accounting for around 50 per cent of funding. President Xis announcement makes China the last major player to get out of the space after Japan and South Korea committed to doing so earlier this year. Chinas announcement could impact 44 plants, mainly in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mongolia, Indonesia, and South Africa, said Christine Shearer, coal program director from Global Energy Monitor, totalling nearly 42 Gigawatts (GW) of coal power. One gigawatt is roughly the energy it takes to power 750,000 homes. (New York City runs on upwards of 12GW, depending on the season, as Bill Gates writes in his new book on the climate crisis). The cancellation of these overseas plants could reduce CO2 emissions by 200-300 million tonnes a year, depending on the utilization rate. By one estimate, its equivalent to the total annual greenhouse gas emissions of France. President Xis remarks did not include a timeline for the coal drawdown, or whether it included private and public funding for overseas coal plants. And saying that China would no longer build coal projects abroad also left open to interpretation whether it means plants that have been proposed, in planning stages, or where ground has been broken. Dr Cecilia Han Springer, senior researcher at Boston Universitys Global China Initiative, told The Independent that it seemed unlikely projects already underway would be abandoned. But there's this nebulous pipeline of things that were going to happen in the future which is not insignificant, she added. 13.5 gigawatts of projects that are under planning with no specific date announced. I think those will vanish very quickly. Then there is the major question of Chinas booming domestic coal industry, the largest in the world by a long stretch. In 2020, China built more than three times the new coal power capacity as all other countries combined, the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported. ChinaEs coal fleet grew by net 29.8 Gigawatts (GW) in 2020 while in the rest of the world net capacity decreased by 17.2 GW, the center noted, essentially canceling out the emissions-reduction impact. Dr Han Springer said that she hoped to see clear language from China in the coming weeks about how President Xis speech would impact the financing of coal projects. Were already seeing early signs [from] Chinese companies, that are providing capital for overseas coal projects, trying to scramble to show that theyre going to achieve what Xi announced. These companies - state-owned enterprises as well as private companies - will hopefully fall in line with this announcement. I would hope that this is all hammered out by Cop, and then we can hope for even more exciting announcements at the climate negotiations. Dr Kevin P. Gallagher, director of Boston University Global Development Policy Center, said that Chinas announcement also meant it was high time for the global private sector - which finances 87 per cent of overseas coal - to follow the example. We will not meet our global climate and development goals if the private sector continues to finance overseas coal while leading governments have stopped, he said in a statement. Dr Han Springer drew a line between President Biden and President Xis announcements at UNGA as crucial issue for all countries to have a just transition from fossil fuel power to clean energy. The US specifically phrased its commitment in terms of financing whereas China is getting a lot of attention for saying that they will no longer build new coal plants overseas. But Xis announcement also was pretty clear that they will be supporting lower carbon sources of energy, she said. I hope that the support China would have provided for coal will go to renewable energy, and that China and the US can both scale up their support for renewable energy overseas. She pointed to how Chinas technical knowledge, particularly in ultra-high voltage transmission lines, could help not only achieve clean energy but provide reliable grid infrastructure in countries where it had been supporting coal. Its really a matter of seeing this support not disappear, but shift, she said. Mr Biden said on Tuesday the US would double its commitment to a global climate finance fund, providing $11.4billion annually by 2024 - for which he will need sign off from Congress. Wealthy nations agreed a decade ago to provide $100bn every year by 2020 to poorer countries which face extreme impacts from global heating but have historically contributed low levels of emissions. Making good on the Green Climate Fund is seen as vital in creating trust among countries at Cop26, and driving its success. John Kerry, President Bidens special envoy on climate, had pressed China on the countrys coal use when he visited several weeks ago. Weve been talking to China for quite some period of time about this. And Im absolutely delighted to hear that President Xi has made this important decision, Mr Kerry said on Tuesday. Its a great contribution. Its a good beginning to the efforts we need to achieve success in Glasgow. But Mr Kerry added that China needed to do more on reducing emissions or we cant get where we need to go to be net-zero by 2050. In confronting the global crisis, Dr Mann said that American leadership is important. China was decommissioning coal-fired power plants during the Obama years. Then Trump came in, scuttled our global agreements, and that took pressure off of China, and they started to build more coal-fired power plants, he said. What were seeing here now is a good sign that American re-engagement is making a difference here, and bringing China back to the table where we need them. Read More Sign up to The Independents virtual climate event on Cop26 What do tougher WHO air quality guidelines mean for the UK? Activists risk prison after injunction granted against M25 protesters (Bloomberg) -- Chinese policy makers reiterated the need to fine-tune economic policies as the worlds second-largest economy faces increasing headwinds from virus outbreaks and high commodity prices. Most Read from Bloomberg Policy should be preemptive and coordinated across cycles, the State Council, the equivalent of Chinas cabinet, said in a statement after a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang Wednesday. Governments at all levels should maintain the continuity and stability of macroeconomic policies and enhance their effectiveness, while also do a good job in preventing and controlling virus cases, it said. Efforts are needed to better coordinate fiscal, financial and employment policies in order to stabilize reasonable expectations by the market, it said. China again vowed to make sure the economy is operating within a reasonable range, with further measures to boost consumption, guiding private capital to play a better role in expanding investment, and ensuring stable growth in foreign trade and foreign capital, according to the statement. While the employment situation is stable this year, efforts are still needed to maintain employment and help companies, it said. The economy took a knock in August from stringent virus controls and tight curbs on property. While Chinas Covid zero approach helped to quickly quash the infections, retail sales growth suffered, slowing to 2.5% in August. Facing the continued commodity boom, the State Council also pledged to use more market-based measures to stabilize commodity prices and ensure supplies of power and natural gas during the winter. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2021 Bloomberg L.P. Reuters A former SS guard, now 100 years old, hobbled into a German courtroom on a walking frame on Thursday to face charges of helping to send more than 3,000 people to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two. Prosecutors say Josef S., a member of the Nazi party's paramilitary SS, contributed to the deaths of 3,518 people at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by regularly standing guard in the watchtower between 1942 and 1945. Some people interned in Sachsenhausen were murdered with Zyklon-B, the poison gas also used in other extermination camps where millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The Daily Beast Dallas County Sheriff's OfficeA bizarre saga in Missouri involving a missing woman who was seen being held captive in a cage has taken a baffling turn as the house where she was apparently kept burned to the groundimmediately after authorities discovered it had been boobytrapped.The Dallas County Sheriffs Office said the fire at the home in Windyville, an unincorporated Ozarks community about 160 miles from Kansas City, occurred Monday night, according to the Springfield News-Leader. Thats mo Sep. 23The Cullman City School Board recognized two Cullman High School anglers for their recent high school national championship victory during Tuesday night's board meeting. Juniors Brody Hopper and Landon Franks were joined by fishing team coach Kyle Morris as they were recognized for their victory at the Mossy Oak Bassmaster High School Classic over the summer. The duo notched a five-bass limit of 13 pounds, 1 ounce at Eagle Mountain Lake in Texas to best the nine-boat field in the tournament. Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff and Cullman City School Board President Chris Branham presented the pair with certificates to honor their achievement during the meeting. Kallhoff also presented the members of the school board with a plaque from the Alabama Association of School Boards after they received the Team Training Achievement Award for continuing their professional development, which is something on which the system has placed a priority. "I just want to let you know, on behalf of the employees, how much we appreciate you guys modeling professional development," he said. Kallhoff also gave an update on the system's COVID-19 cases, and said the number of positive cases is the lowest it has been for the school year, with a current positive case rate of .5 percent across the system. He thanked the students and staff at East Elementary School and Cullman Middle School for adhering to the temporary mask mandate that was put into place on those campuses, and said the student percentage of positive cases dropped from a little over 5 percent of the schools' populations to less than 1 percent while the mandate was in place. Kallhoff said the system began an after-hours cleaning program last week that uses electrostatic misters and foggers and a virus-killing solution, and he appreciates everyone's efforts to keep students in the classroom during the pandemic. "We have data to show that remote learning and virtual learning is not as effective as face-to-face learning, not just academically, but socially and emotionally as well," he said. "So we're excited that it appears things are moving in the right direction to keep face-to-face instruction going on." Story continues Kallhoff also provided an update on the system's upcoming capital projects, and said the final design meeting for the Cullman Middle School construction project was conducted last week, and the drafts and prints are currently being finalized by the architects. The final design meeting for the project at Cullman City Primary School is set for Wednesday, so those plans should also be finalized in the near future, he said. The bid opening process for the middle school and primary school projects should open in January and February of 2022, and the system will open bids this week for the project to install turf on the high school softball field, Kallhoff said. The system also received an air quality report on West Elementary School from Terrell Technical Services, which found little to no counts of active mold in the school, he said. "In most cases there were higher counts of mold outside the building than inside," he said. Classrooms at West Elementary have been closed during the beginning of the school year after mold was detected that was caused by moisture from one of the school's HVAC units. Kallhoff said the system is still moving forward with the cleaning services of Servpro and is consulting with HVAC engineers to find a solution to prevent the problem from occurring again. Terrell Technical Services and Horton Engineers will present their findings to the faculty and staff of West Elementary early next month, and that plan will be released to the public after it is shared internally, he said. Confronting classrooms without permanent teachers, school administrators across the country are turning to an assortment of incentives many of them financial, some unprecedented to fill widespread vacancies. Some districts are offering thousands in signing bonuses, others adapt to four-day work weeks and many are easing the way for college students or other would-be teaching candidates to get quickly certified. Get essential education news and commentary delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up here for The 74s daily newsletter. In 2018, the National Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated 270,000 teachers would leave the profession annually through 2026 a number that did not take into account the pandemics effects on teacher retention and retirement. A 2020 poll of educators revealed that almost a third nationwide would likely retire early or leave the profession because of the pandemic. Yet the bureaus recent job data shows that actual teacher turnover levels are similar and in some cases lower than pre-pandemic levels. The estimated outcomes from alarming polls, suggesting that teachers everywhere would imminently leave the profession, have not necessarily come to fruition. Retirement and attrition do vary greatly by county or state Arizona saw about 200 more teachers leave by the end August 2020 than in 2019 or 2018, while Minnesota experienced the opposite effect and theres still much to be understood about the full scope of how the pandemic has affected the teaching force. At the same time, we do know that fewer adults are heading into teacher residencies and degree programs. The lengths that some school and state leaders are going to to fill current vacancies, especially for special education and substitute teachers, does demonstrate that districts are seeing urgent staffing needs and are getting creative to meet them. Accelerated licensure programs and alternatives for state teaching exams are popping up across the country to urgently meet students needs. Houston, for instance, had over 400 teacher openings as of mid-August; some may be filled by candidates still earning certifications. Story continues Though places like metro Atlanta arent experiencing the same levels of staff scarcity, they are still offering a $5,000 sign-on incentive for special education teachers. Greater Atlantas DeKalb County Schools are also recruiting parents for full-time positions. Out West, a bill in Colorado aims to transform the educator pipeline by recruiting high school students into teacher programs, former military personnel and adjunct professors. Nevadas Carson City Schools will hire retired public employees to fill special education vacancies, and others in California are adopting the strategy of recruiting teachers where theyve grown up, incentivizing staying in-state for higher education or pursuing teaching residencies in their home districts. Related: Colorado District Uses High School Apprentices to Grow Its Own More Diverse Teacher Workforce One Texas superintendent framed staffing challenges as a human capital problem, not a financial one. To aid schools pandemic recovery, millions in unprecedented federal relief funds are on their way to states. Only a handful included teacher recruitment or retention strategies in their budget proposals; nationwide, priorities for the relief funds are expanding academic tutoring and mental health care. And critical shortages go beyond the classroom hundreds of schools are hard-pressed to find bus drivers, after many have retired or decided to not risk COVID-19 exposure. Up to 250 National Guard service members will drive students to school in Massachusetts, and school leaders in Philadelphia are encouraging their governor to consider the same. Efforts to engage the National Guard in New York were rejected by Gov. Kathy Hochul; a spokesperson for her team said school transportation was outside [their] current scope. In Chicago, where drivers are leaving en masse after the district mandated staff vaccines, some families of students with disabilities were given two days to find alternative transportation for the first day of school. Related: Aldeman & Roza: From Paying Parents to Transport Their Kids to School to Calling Out the National Guard Innovating in the Face of a Bus Driver Shortage Students and families across the country are feeling the impacts of missing critical staff as the 2021-22 school year and quarantines get underway. Weve compiled some of the special education and substitute teacher recruitment efforts currently in effect: Special Education Teacher Recruitment All but six states reported teacher shortages in special education in the 2020-21 school year. We beg, borrow and steal wherever we can to find some good quality special education teachers for our district, said Carson City Schools Superintendent Jose Delfin. The schools chief spoke during a school board meeting where the district designated the labor shortage as critical, enabling the hiring of retired public employees. And while advocates have sounded the alarm on a declining special education force for years, states like Alaska have just established recruitment and retention task forces. Click here if you cannot access the interactive version of this map. Related: How New Orleans Schools Are Making Up Special Education Losses From the Spring Pandemic Shutdown and Why the Process Could Improve Distance Learning This Fall Substitute Teacher Recruitment Schools across the country employ between 500,000 and 600,000 subs annually, according to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics. School administrators in central Massachusetts say substitute applications have trickled to a stop. For smaller districts in California with teachers heading into COVID-19 quarantines, declining substitute teacher pools could force school closures. In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little is encouraging workers statewide to fill shortages, I urge Idahoans in a position to serve as a substitute teacher or other classroom support staff to contact your school district and get signed up. Idaho students and our communities need you. Click here if you cannot access the interactive version of this map. Related: Sign up for The 74s newsletter Motley Fool The U.S. International Trade Commission recently ruled Philip Morris International's (NYSE: PM) IQOS heated tobacco device violates two patents held by rival British American Tobacco (NYSE: BTI) and that the electronic cigarettes can't be imported or sold in the U.S. While the ruling is obviously a major blow to the tobacco giant because the U.S. is potentially the world's biggest, most lucrative market for e-cigs and IQOS is so far the only e-cig that has earned a modified-risk label from the Food and Drug Administration, the decision is a devastating blow to Philip Morris partner Altria (NYSE: MO) because it has no vapor products to fall back on and no other markets it can sell into. By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former World Bank official who prepared reports at the center of a data-rigging scandal that aided China defended IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva on Thursday as the Economist magazine called for her to resign over her alleged role in the controversy. Shanta Devarajan, who helped oversee the World Bank's "Doing Business" report in 2017, said that an outside investigation report alleging that Georgieva, during her time as World Bank CEO, applied "undue pressure" on staff to boost China's ratings was "beyond credulity." Devarajan, now a Georgetown University professor of development policy, said in a series of tweets that he never felt any pressure to change China's scores and said that WilmerHale lawyers used only half of his statements from an hours-long interview. Georgieva's "direction was to verify the China numbers, making sure that China received credit for the reforms they undertook, without compromising the integrity of Doing Business. The Bank's lawyers left out the latter phrase," he said, adding that a rush to judgment on Georgieva's prior role as World Bank CEO "is misguided." Some of the changes were correcting coding errors "or judgment calls on questions where judgment was required," said Devarajan, who was a senior director in the World Bank's Development Economics group until 2019. OUSTER CALL His tweets came after a scathing editorial from the Economist, an influential magazine in policy circles, saying Georgieva should resign because the incident has undermined the IMF's credibility as custodian for the world's macroeconomic data and intermediary between economic powers. "The head of the IMF must hold the ring while two of its biggest shareholders, America and China, confront each other in a new era of geopolitical rivalry," the Economist said, adding that critics of multilateralism are already citing the findings as evidence that international bodies cannot stand up to China. Story continues "The next time the IMF tries to referee a currency dispute, or helps reschedule the debt of a country that has borrowed from China, the fund's critics are sure to cite this investigation to undermine the institution's credibility. That is why Ms Georgieva, an esteemed servant of several international institutions, should resign," the editorial said. The World Bank's "Doing Business" reports, now canceled, ranked countries based on their regulatory and legal environments, ease of business startups, financing, infrastructure and other business climate measures. Georgieva, a Bulgarian who is a former World Bank economist and European Commission official, has denied the accusations in the WilmerHale report, saying last week they are "not true" and she has never pressured staff to manipulate data. Georgieva has personally retained a public relations firm, SKDK, to push back against the allegations. Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist, also called the WilmerHale report "a hatchet job" and said that he has also been told by Doing Business staff that they did not feel pressure from Georgieva in 2017. "The fingerprints arent there. The report does not accurately reflect what happened," said Stiglitz, who also questioned why it did not mention current president David Malpass when data irregularities involving Saudi Arabia's rating occurred under his leadership. The report found "no evidence suggesting that the Office of the President or any members of the board" were involved in changes that boosted Saudi Arabia's ratings. The IMF's executive board is conducting its own review of the allegations. An IMF spokesman declined comment on the Economist's editorial. A U.S. Treasury spokeswoman also declined comment beyond the Treasury's earlier statement that it is analyzing "serious findings" in the WilmerHale report. A World Bank spokesman declined comment on the Devarajan tweets. LAWMAKERS SEEK ANSWERS Republicans in the U.S. Congress who have been critical of Georgieva's work at the IMF have stopped short of calling for her to be ousted. Three Republican House of Representatives members sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting that she report the Treasury review to Congress, including information on Georgieva's interactions with Chinese IMF officials in the decision making process for August's $650 billion allocation of IMF monetary reserves known as Special Drawing Rights. China received about $42 billion worth of new SDRs. (Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Matthew Lewis) BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The inaugural meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) will go ahead as planned next week after it was put in doubt because of French anger over the scrapping of a $40 billion submarine contract. The European Commission, which oversees trade policy for the 27-nation European Union, said on Thursday the meeting in Pittsburgh would take place, and EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said on Twitter that he would be attending. France has been incensed by Australia's decision last week to cancel a French contract and opt instead for a deal with the United States and Britain to purchase nuclear-powered submarines as part of a new security partnership called AUKUS. Paris recalled its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra for consultations and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday it would take "time and actions" to restore confidence. French fury had threatened to force the postponement or cancellation of the first meeting of the TTC. The council aims to agree on common technology standards and has working groups on issues such as supply-chain security, green technology, data governance and export controls. The U.S. co-chairs - Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai - will host European Commission Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Dombrovskis for the first meeting next Wednesday. (Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Leslie Adler and Peter Cooney) BEIJING (Reuters) - China should abandon a top-level strategy promoted by President Xi Jinping to increase self-reliance, or risk harming innovation and growth prospects, said a European business group on Thursday. "There are troubling signs that China is increasingly turning inwards ... and this tendency is casting considerable doubts over the country's future growth trajectory," the report from the European Chamber of Commerce said. A desire for political control and a "fear of volatility" are to blame, Chamber president Joerg Wuttke said at a briefing. China has been trying to cut its dependence on overseas markets and technology in its long-term development, a shift brought on by a deepening rift with the United States, in a so-called "dual-circulation" strategy. Continuing policy support for state-owned companies, the "unsettling" influence of national security concerns on economic policy and efforts to increase control over the private sector, will drag on innovation and efficiency, said the report. "Although the costs of such an approach may not be felt for several years, they are considerable and should not be overlooked." Dual circulation will require China to "deviate from the spirit" of the 1970s reforms that opened up the country's economy and spurred decades of rapid growth, it said, resulting in less foreign investment, misallocation of resources and growing push-back abroad. "China runs the risk of punching below its weight," said Wuttke. 'MARKET EXIT' China's policymakers have stressed the country will continue to open up and welcomes foreign firms. While some foreign companies, such as those in the chemicals sector, which have technology China needs, are encouraged, others are not, the Chamber report said. Some foreign suppliers of network equipment and services have told the Chamber that "market exit is inevitable" due to increased scrutiny on the grounds of national security. Suppliers of health equipment, for example, are sometimes unable to sell as hospitals try to "buy Chinese", said Wuttke. Story continues The report also urged China to de-escalate tit-for-tat sanctions against Europeans that are holding back the ratification of a key investment agreement with the European Union. The bloc had imposed sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in the western region of Xinjiang, to which Beijing responded with its own sanctions on Europeans including European lawmakers. The bloc's executive arm, the European Commission, unveiled plans in May to cut dependency on Chinese and other foreign suppliers in six strategic areas. Foreign companies contribute to significant chunks of China's tax revenue, trade and employment, said Wuttke, and in turn China remains a key market for European companies which helped prop up operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. "In many cases...the China operations are the ones that stabilize headquarters and basically bring business to the group," he said. (Reporting by Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Alex Richardson) Lesotho As dawn breaks, pilot Matthew Monson makes the final checks on his small plane and gets ready for a busy day. He'll spend it flying health workers on the front line of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic to the most remote parts of the tiny African nation of Lesotho. Dubbed "The Mountain Kingdom" for good reason, the towering peaks and deep river valleys make many parts of Lesotho incredibly hard to reach. That's why the work being done by the Lesotho Flying Doctor Services is so vital. Thanks in part to donations from the U.S., the country has all the vaccine doses needed to inoculate its entire adult population but acquiring them was only the first challenge. Now it must get them to the people. A view from the Lesotho Flying Doctor Services plane, flown by pilot Matthew Monson of the Mission Aviation Fellowship, which works with the project to bring health care to people in far-flung corners of the rugged southern African nation. / Credit: CBS News "They have understood the importance to get vaccinated, and they are ready to get vaccinated, but sometimes the challenge is how we can reach them," Dr. Justin Cishiya told CBS News. After years battling HIV and other illnesses as the medical officer in charge of the Flying Doctor Service, Cishiya is now focused on preventing a fourth wave of COVID-19 from sweeping across Lesotho. The flying doctors serve 11 isolated clinics in the impoverished nation. They aim to visit each clinic twice a month, weather permitting and it often doesn't. The government-run flying doctors unit is assisted by a Christian charity called Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). Together they provide medical services and emergency treatment to communities that are completely inaccessible by road. On the day we visited, MAF pilot Monson, who's originally from Seattle but has been flying in Lesotho for years, said the weather conditions were perfect. The Lesotho Flying Doctor Services team walks through a remote village in the mountainous southern African nation after arriving by plane to administer COVID-19 vaccinations. / Credit: CBS News The first stop was the village of Lebakeng. Only five people turned up for a shot. One of them was 69-year-old Kapetjana Maphondo. He said it took him two hours to walk to the clinic to meet the flying doctors. But for him, it was worth it to get the potentially life-saving jab. Story continues Some people have to cross mountains and rivers to get to the clinics. The villages are miles apart and donkeys are the most common form of transport, for those lucky enough to own one. The next stop was Manamaneng. While bad weather often makes flying impossible, a different obstruction blocked the plane's touchdown on the day CBS News visited: A first attempted landing had to be aborted because there were too many sheep on the runway. With that obstacle cleared, the team's work was still far from straight-forward. "Even after we have reached the place, it wasn't easy to vaccinate everyone at the clinic," Cishiya told us. "We have to move out in the village, to find people from their homes." Cishiya and his team go door to door, taking vaccines to the people. But they can't travel too far on foot in the rugged terrain. By the end of the day, the flying doctors had only inoculated a handful of people. As in so many far-flung regions of Africa, the pace of vaccinations is excruciatingly slow. Lesotho only has about 2.1 million inhabitants, but less than 14% have been vaccinated so far. That's a much better rate than many other African nations, however, where similar logistical challenges and supply shortages have hampered inoculation drives. According to data compiled by the World Health Organization, 26 African nations have yet to get even 4% of their populations a first shot. In the U.S., by comparison, almost 55% of the population has been fully vaccinated. And while wealthy countries roll out booster shots, Africa remains dangerously exposed to a looming fourth wave of infections and the risks of more deaths and possible new coronavirus mutations that come with it. Cishiya told us that the Lesotho Flying Doctor Service plans to send teams into hard-to-reach communities more regularly. But he knows all too well that, in Africa, reaching President Joe Biden's stated goal of getting 70% of the world's inhabitants vaccinated within a year, "can be really a big challenge." Monson, with his cockpit-view of the front line in the war on COVID, agrees. "We need more help and we need more support whether that's funding or personnel to keep the vaccine moving," Monson told CBS News. "Certainly, if we don't get support, we're not going to reach those kind of numbers in a year, or two years." Anti-domestic violence advocate on Gabby Petito case, widespread issue in the U.S. Author Michael Clinton shares tips on how to thrive in the second half of your life in his new book How virtual reality is helping police learn how to make life-or-death encounters less dangerous By Khalid Abdelaziz, Nafisa Eltahir and John Irish KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese authorities have taken control of lucrative assets that for years provided backing for Hamas, shedding light on how the country served as a haven for the Palestinian militant group under former leader Omar al-Bashir. The takeover of at least a dozen companies that officials say were linked to Hamas has helped accelerate Sudan's realignment with the West since Bashir's overthrow in 2019. Over the past year, Khartoum has won removal from the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism (SST) list and is on course for relief of more than $50 billion in debt. Hamas has lost a foreign base where members and supporters could live, raise money, and channel Iranian weapons and funds to the Gaza Strip, Sudanese and Palestinian analysts said. Seized assets detailed by Sudanese official sources and a Western intelligence source show the reach of those networks. According to officials from a task force https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-politics-idUSKBN2BT20R set up to dismantle the Bashir regime, they include real estate, company shares, a hotel in a prime Khartoum location, an exchange bureau, a TV station, and more than a million acres of farmland. Sudan became a centre for money laundering and terrorism financing, said Wagdi Salih, a leading member of the task force - the Committee to Dismantle the June 30, 1989 Regime and Retrieve Public Funds. The system was "a big cover, a big umbrella, internally and externally", he said. A Western intelligence source said techniques were used in Sudan that are common to organised crime: Companies were headed by trustee shareholders, rents collected in cash, and transfers made through exchange bureaux. Bashir openly supported Hamas, and was friendly with its leaders. "They got preferential treatment in tenders, tax forgiveness, and they were allowed to transfer to Hamas and Gaza with no limits," said a task force member, speaking on condition of anonymity. Story continues ISLAMIST HUB Sudan's journey from pariah state to U.S. ally has been gradual. In the decade after Bashir took power in 1989 the country became a hub for radical Islamists, sheltered Osama bin Laden for several years, and was sanctioned by the United States over links to Palestinian militants. Bashir later tried to distance himself from hardline Islamism, stepping up security cooperation with Washington. In 2016 Sudan cut ties with Iran and the following year U.S. trade sanctions against Khartoum were dropped after Washington accepted that state support for Hamas had ceased. But until Bashir's fall, networks that had supported Hamas remained in place. Hamas investments in Sudan began with small-scale ventures such as fast food restaurants before venturing into real estate and construction, according to an official on the task force. An example was Hassan and Alabed, which started as a cement company and expanded into large real estate developments. The task force says it was in a network with about 10 other large companies with interlinking share ownership connected to Bashir ally Abdelbasit Hamza that moved large sums through foreign bank accounts. The biggest was Alrowad Real Estate Development, established in 2007 and listed on Khartoum's stock exchange, with subsidiaries that the Western intelligence source said laundered money and traded in currency to finance Hamas. Hamza was jailed in April for 10 years on corruption charges and sent to the Khartoum prison where Bashir is being held. The task force said he had assets worth up to $1.2 billion in his name. Hamza's lawyer, who also represents Bashir, could not be reached for comment. A second network, worth up to $20 million, revolved around the broadcaster Tayba and an associated charity named Almishkat. It was run by two Hamas members who got citizenship and amassed businesses and real estate, according to Maher Abouljokh, the caretaker brought in to manage Tayba. The TV channel was funnelling money from the Gulf, laundered millions of dollars, and had clear links to Hamas, said Abouljokh. Contacted by Reuters, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri denied the group had investments in Sudan, but acknowledged an impact from Sudan's political shift: "Unfortunately, there were several measures that weakened the presence of the movement (Hamas) in the country (Sudan) and limited political ties with it," he said. NORMALISATION By last year, Sudan was desperate to escape the SST list, a prerequisite for debt relief and support from international lenders. Under pressure from the United States, it joined the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in agreeing to normalise ties with Israel - though it has moved slowly to implement the deal. A former U.S. diplomat who worked on Sudan under the Trump administration said shutting down the Hamas network was a focus in negotiations with Khartoum. "We were pushing on an open door," he said. The United States gave Sudan a list of companies to shut down, according to one Sudanese source and the Western intelligence source. The State Department declined to comment. Many Hamas-affiliated figures went to Turkey with some liquid assets but left behind about 80% of their investments, the task force official said. Sudan's transitional leaders "consider themselves the exact antithesis of Bashir in regional terms," said Sudanese analyst Magdi El Gazouli. "They want to sell themselves as a component of the new security order in the region." "The coup against al-Bashir caused real problems for Hamas and Iran," said Palestinian analyst Adnan Abu Amer. "Hamas and Iran had to look for alternatives - alternatives that had not been in place because the coup against al-Bashir was a sudden one." (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Nafisa Eltahir in Khartoum, John Irish in Paris, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Arshad Mohamed in Washington and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Aidan Lewis and Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Giles Elgood) The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for people 65 and older and those whose jobs put them at high risk for exposure to COVID-19. Individuals 18 and up who are at high risk for severe COVID-19 were also included in the authorization, which only covers those who are at least six months out from their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. High-risk jobs include "health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others, said acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock. The decision comes almost six weeks after the FDA authorized extra doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for people who are severely immunocompromised. "We believe boosters have an important role to play in addressing the continued threat of this disease, alongside efforts to increase global access and uptake among the unvaccinated," said Albert Bourla, Pfizer chairman and chief executive officer. The newly-authorized boosters won't be made available until after a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee meets Thursday and decides exactly who should get them. The FDA's authorization was not what Pfizer and BioNTech had originally asked for. Almost a month ago they submitted an application to the FDA to get boosters approved for everyone 16 and over at least six months after their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Since then, the FDA has been evaluating the data the companies submitted. It reached a decision Wednesday evening. Related: When will the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine be ready for kids? How does COVID-19 affect me?: Dont miss an update with the Coronavirus Watch newsletter. Empty bottles of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine await disposal by a nurse with the Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center in Jackson, Mississippi. On Friday, an outside advisory committee to the FDA decided there wasn't yet sufficient evidence to show COVID-19 booster shots for people under 65 are necessary. That was "relatively unusual" said Phyllis Arthur, vice president of infectious diseases and diagnostics policy for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Story continues "A lot of their conversation was around whether there was enough ability to parse the data out by population... to ensure the data was clear for multiple populations," she said. Data from Israel suggests that COVID-19 vaccine protection begins to fade over time, beginning at around six months, with vaccinated people becoming first more prone to mild disease, and then to increasingly severe disease. Committee members wanted to wait for more data to become available before issuing blanket approval for a booster shot for everyone 16 and older. Instead, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted to recommend a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine six months after full vaccination for people aged 65 and older and those at high risk of severe COVID-19. Now, the FDA has made its decision based on the data the companies submitted and the committee's recommendations. "The committee advises FDA, they are not the decision-makers," said Dr. Kelly Moore, chief executive officer of Immunize.org, which educates health care professionals about U.S. vaccine recommendations. 'It was like a revolving door': School nurses are exhausted over students' COVID-19 cases, and have had enough 'Concerning and dangerous': Asthma organization warns of new social trend using hydrogen peroxide to treat COVID-19 The boosters can't be made available to the public until the CDC committee votes. The two agencies have different responsibilities. The FDA decides if a drug or vaccine is safe and effective and whether it meets the claims made by the manufacturer. The CDC decides who should get that drug or vaccine. The CDC's outside committee, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, met Wednesday and will meet again Thursday. It is expected to vote on who the boosters should be recommended for Thursday afternoon. That recommendation then goes to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky for a signature. Only when it's published by the CDC does it become official and health care workers can begin giving booster shots for this group. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FDA authorizes Pfizer's COVID-19 booster shot for people 65 and older Pfizer vaccine doses. Sean Gallup/Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized booster doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for Americans 65 and older and two other groups: younger people with underlying health conditions and those whose jobs put them at high risk of getting the virus. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must come up with its own recommendation on booster shots and when people should get them. A panel of CDC advisers convened on Wednesday to discuss the matter, and some suggested waiting a month and seeing what new evidence might come out about booster shots, The Associated Press reports. Pfizer has released data compiled by the pharmaceutical company and the Israeli government, which suggests that boosters are beneficial for people 65 and older, but might not do as much for younger people, even those with underlying conditions. "As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed," Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA, said in a statement. You may also like Jimmy Fallon and Nicole Kidman almost make it through an interview without residual awkwardness from dating miss Did Theranos Lose Afghanistan? J&J says booster shot provides 100 percent protection against severe COVID-19 Florida State Senator Manny Diaz has called for the review of all vaccine mandates (Getty / Florida State Senate) Florida Republican State Senator Manny Diaz has called for a review of all vaccine mandates, including for diseases like polio, mumps and rubella. Mr Diaz, the top GOP Senator on healthcare policy in Floridas senate, was infected with Covid-19 last winter but still hasnt received the vaccine. He has said he wants to review the states vaccination efforts and Governor Ron DeSantis attempts to provide monoclonal antibody treatments for those who test positive for the disease. The Florida legislature passed legislation earlier this year to prevent private companies to require that their customers provide proof of vaccination. But Mr Diaz, who is against vaccine mandates, is for businesses being able to make their own decisions on requiring vaccinations from the customers. Mr Diaz said finding a balance between the rights of individuals and companies gets more complicated. Republicans who have come out against vaccine passports have faced some pushback, specifically in terms of vaccination requirements for students to attend school, as a number of vaccines are already necessary to attend class under current legislation. But parents can use religion or health as reasons for their child not to get vaccinated. Mr Diaz said it could be time to review the mandates, including the requirements for vaccinations against illnesses such as mumps and measles, Florida Politics reported. But he also said that the use of the Covid-19 vaccines isnt the same as the use of vaccines that have been in use for decades. I think theres a distinction when you have something that is proven to work and doesnt have any side effects, Mr Diaz said. A study by the CDC released in August showed that unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to end up in hospital because of Covid-19 than those who have received the vaccine. Mr Diaz said the Florida Senate Health Policy Committee will look into a telehealth bill during the legislative session of 2022. The practice was used during the pandemic to limit in-person doctor visits and lobbyists for physicians urged the state to freshen up the laws surrounding the system earlier this year, but no new law was passed. Story continues Just when you thought the state of affairs in Florida could not get any worse, Aaron Parnas tweeted about the news that Mr Diaz wants to review all vaccine mandates. Okay, get used to [seeing] kids with crutches and braces and kids who are blind and/or deaf. That is if they survive Polio, Measles, and Mumps. The Polio vaccine came out after I had Polio in 1951 at age 14 months. I was one of the lucky ones who survived and only had 1 limb involved, Vicki Steward added on the platform. We can infer a lot of information from that graph. First, we are spending way too much on healthcare in the US. For-profit health has gotten out of hand. Also, I don't think we necessarily have worse healthcare in the US. Many people just lead unhealthy lifestyles. Jim Hand (@jhandtx_jim) September 23, 2021 Unless the majority of people in Florida stand up to this blatant power grab and flex, they will keep at it, one Twitter user wrote. I know there are science-based rational people here in this state, we have great engineers, and scientists, we need to push back against this nonsense. Great, lets bring back polio! This is the most ridiculous thing Ive heard in my whole life, and we have had a lot of ridiculous in the past few years, another account holder added. The Independent has reached out to Mr Diaz for comment. Read More Florida landlord to evict tenants who refuse to get vaccinated Florida doctor draws a line in the sand and refuses to see patients who arent vaccinated DeSantis defends $5,000 fines for businesses that require proof of vaccination as Delta continues to sweep Florida If Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted to smooth roiled waters in the time of pandemic, his selection of Dr. Joseph Ladapo to succeed Dr. Scott Rivkees as Florida Surgeon General failed to do so. Lapado made it clear he shares DeSantis personal freedom approach to pandemic management, rejects business lockdowns, face mask and vaccine mandates, and doubts the safety of vaccines. The states new surgeon general, who will direct Floridas Department of Health (DOH) and serve on the board of the University of Florida College of Medicine, told reporters during an introductory press conference the politically polarized climate of distrust was brewed by scientists and partisan operatives. Part of why that is an issue is because of the climate of distrust that had been engendered over the past year-and-a-half. And that was a direct result of scientists my colleagues, some of them taking the science and, basically, misrepresenting it to fit their agendas, their interests, what they wanted to see people do, Ladapo said. A Nigerian native, Lapado, 42, is a cardiologist who earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard. Before assuming his new post, he was an associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. He has served on the faculty at NYU School of Medicine and with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Under Lapados two-year contract, he will earn an annual base salary of $262,000. Rivkees left the position Monday after serving more than two years. He maintained a low profile after the pandemic emerged in spring 2020 and, during the 2021 legislature session, was prohibited from answering questions by lawmakers. Unlike Rivkees, Lapado said he will be a more active presence and one DeSantis will find more accommodating since Stanford University Professor Jay Bhattacharya who has advised and defended DeSantis for more than a year is a good friend of mine. Lapado has signed The Great Barrington Declaration, which Bhattacharya partially wrote. It emphasizes protecting older, venerable people from the coronavirus but allowing younger and healthier people to become infected and develop herd immunity. Story continues The Great Barrington Declaration has found no support from medical or public health institutions and organizations. There are a couple of things that I didnt totally agree with in the declaration, Ladapo said. But the spirit of what they believe that, you know, we need to respect human rights; that, you know, people do have autonomy over their lives and its not OK its not even not OK but its not virtuous and its not right to just sort of take away those rights from individuals. I completely agree with that. Thats why I signed it. Lapados nomination must be confirmed by the Senate. Although outnumbered 24-16 in the chamber, Democrats pledged to vigorously challenge his confirmation. Floridas surgeon general should be an expert in public health, but instead the governor has chosen someone who has questioned the safety of the COVID vaccines, has advocated against masks as a way to stop the spread of the virus, and who believes herd immunity through natural infection is the best possible way to end this pandemic, Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, said in a statement. Unfortunately, Dr. Ladapo seems like a perfect fit for Gov. DeSantis, House Democratic Leader Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, told the Miami Herald. He downplays masks and vaccines, while supporting surrendering to the virus to reach herd immunity, which would cost untold thousands of lives. "We feel that Joe is just the right guy for the job," DeSantis said. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, Florida, Coronavirus, State Original Author: John Haughey, The Center Square contributor Original Location: Florida surgeon general nominee rejects business lockdowns The Daily Beast Twitter/NBC DFWPolice have arrested an 18-year-old student after he allegedly got into a fight at a North Texas high school on Wednesday morning, then drew a gun and opened fire.The Arlington Police Department said that three students and one 25-year-old adult were injured in an incident that forced hundreds of students and staff at Mansfield Timberview High School into lockdown. A 15-year-old boy is in critical condition, while the other three are in good condition or have already been treated. Sep. 23Former Bangor High School star and University of Maine Freshman All-American pitcher Justin Courtney said he had a productive first season in minor league baseball even though the statistics may not show it. He was signed by the Los Angeles Angels and was used as a reliever on the Low-A team for the first time in his career before being released by the organization. He then signed with the New York Mets and had a pair of solid relief outings for the organization's rookie league team in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Courtney still feels pitching in the major leagues is an attainable goal and said he would love to pitch for the AA Eastern League Binghamton Rumble Ponies next season because it would mean he would get a chance to pitch in Maine against the Portland Sea Dogs. He pitched 43 innings between the two teams, the Angels' Low-A Inland Empire League 66ers and the Mets' Florida Complex (Rookie) League team. Courtney was 3-1 with a 5.23 earned run average. He struck out 49, walked 11 and hit three batters while surrendering 49 hits, six of which were homers. Opponents hit .288 against him. "For my first pro season, I would call it a success," Courtney said. He was 2-for-3 in save opportunities and had three holds, meaning he held the lead. He tossed three scoreless innings in two appearances for the Mets' rookie league team. "I made some mistakes in a couple of outings and things got away from me. I learned a lot. My velocity was back up to 93-96 mph and I'm healthy," Courtney said. Courtney underwent Tommy John surgery to repair his elbow in 2018 and struggled when he returned more than a year later. He concluded his UMaine career with a 12-17 record and a 3.92 ERA. He was 5-6 with a 3.24 ERA as a freshman and was chosen to the All-America East second team and all-rookie team. This season, he was used in high-leverage situations as a reliever, being summoned in the late innings of a close game. He enjoyed it. Story continues "It's so much fun. The game is in your hands," said the 6-foot-5, 225-pound Courtney, who was also a standout soccer and hockey player at Bangor High School. "To come in and get out of a jam is unbelievable," he said. Courtney is going to take a few weeks off to visit family and friends in Maine. He will head to San Diego in October to continue working with pitching guru Tom House and do some conditioning. "I want to get my legs and shoulder stronger and sharpen up my pitches," said Courtney, who will head to Port St. Lucie for minor league training camp in February. He wants to work on his four-seam fastball and curve, and may also add a slider and cut fastball to his arsenal. He noted that as a short reliever, you only need two quality pitches. Flynn made the claim on a conservative podcast, calling it "Bizarro World." There is no evidence that vaccines are currently being infused into salad dressings. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn is pushing a theory that COVID-19 vaccines are being snuck into salad dressing. There is no evidence that vaccines are being infused in salad dressing. Flynn's rant may have been a reference to an ongoing study on growing produce that could potentially contain vaccine material but it is unclear. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn this week pushed a theory that COVID-19 vaccines are being snuck into our salad dressing. Flynn was speaking this week to Clay Clark, the host of the conservative podcast "The Thrivetime Show," and Andrew Sorchini, a Beverly Hills-based precious metals dealer. "Somebody sent me a thing this morning where they're talking about putting the vaccine in salad dressing. Have you seen this? I mean it's - and I'm thinking to myself, this is the Bizarro World, right? This is definitely the Bizarro World," Flynn said. "These people are seriously thinking about how to impose their will on us in our society, and it has to stop," Flynn added. Insider has reached out to Michael Flynn for comment. The fact-checking site Snopes found that Flynn's rant might have been an indirect reference to an ongoing preliminary study about growing produce that could contain mRNA vaccine material without needing to be deep-frozen. The study is being conducted by the University of California-Riverside, which said in a news release that it was working on growing plants that could contain the immunizing capabilities of a single COVID-19 shot. There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines will be infused into salads, or their dressings. Insider reported this month that Flynn and other high-profile Trump loyalists like Roger Stone and Lin Wood are embarking on a "ReAwaken America" tour. The events - organized by Clark - have been dubbed as "health and freedom" conferences. Story continues However, these conferences have largely been vehicles for election misinformation. At one of the events in July, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell baselessly claimed that former President Donald Trump won 80 million votes, and President Joe Biden received less than 68 million votes in the 2020 election. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and judges have ruled resoundingly against the Trump camp's lawsuits alleging voter fraud in states including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Flynn himself has previously claimed that COVID-19 was fabricated as a distraction from the 2020 election. In a video this August, Flynn said he was participating in the "ReAwaken America" tour to criticize COVID-19 safety measures, which he called "COVID craziness." Flynn, a retired general, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with Russia's ambassador and resigned after just 22 days as Trump's national security adviser. He was pardoned by Trump last year. Read the original article on Insider Reuters MANILA (Reuters) -Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal war on drugs, joined the race for president on Thursday, promising to usher in a government that cares for the people, not personal interests. Robredo, 56, who was elected separately from Duterte and was not his running mate, said her decision was a difficult one but she wanted to be of greater service to a country facing unprecedented health and economic shocks. "If we truly want to liberate ourselves from this situation, we should change not just the surnames of those in power; the corruption, the incompetence, the lack of compassion must be replaced by competence and integrity in leadership," said Robredo, who is running as independent candidate. An avalanche of online coverage and high-profile television broadcasts: The death of young adventurer Gabby Petito sparked immense US and worldwide interest -- and triggered debate over the disproportionate attention accorded missing white women. The recent discovery of the 22-year-old travel blogger's body in Wyoming, and Tuesday's ruling of her death as a homicide, drew headlines far and wide. With her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, Petito embarked on a cross-country camper van journey to explore majestic landscapes of the American West. But Laundrie returned home to Florida alone -- 10 days before Petito's family reported her missing -- and has since disappeared. On Thursday, the FBI issued a warrant for Laundrie's arrest. Similar tragedies are sadly commonplace in a country where hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year. And yet Petito's fate triggered a staggering amount of interest. "At first I was interested just because it was a very captivating story. It was 'Why did he come back? Why did she not come back?'" explained 28-year-old Paris Campbell, a comedian and writer in New York. Under her pseudonym "stopitparis," Campbell has posted roughly 30 videos on the subject to her 265,000 followers on TikTok. "It's definitely a very relatable situation," she told AFP. - 'Millions of eyes' on lookout - In images shared by the couple on social media, they are all smiles -- barefoot in a canyon or surveying the ochre rocks of state and national parks. According to Campbell, the disconnect between how people "romanticize" Petito's roadtripping life and the "tragedy" of what occurred fueled the fascination. Campbell said she has gained more than 100,000 followers since she began reporting on the case last week. By Thursday the hashtag #GabbyPetito had accumulated more than 915 million views on TikTok. Campbell devotes several hours each day to producing her videos, adding it was a comment by a Petito cousin, urging her to continue her work, that served as motivation. Story continues "It felt like it was the right thing to do," she said. In the deluge of the sometimes fanciful postings about the case, some videos have moved the investigation forward. One couple reported on YouTube that they saw Petito's and Laundrie's white van in Grand Teton National Park. Police took the claim seriously, according to US media, and Petito's body was found near the van's reported location. "In this case social media is very much like an AMBER (child abduction) alert, just more effective," said Michael Alcazar, a retired New York police detective and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "You have... millions of eyes on the lookout," boosting the chances of the case being resolved, he said. - 'Missing white woman syndrome' - Such extraordinary vigilance is rarely afforded to Black or other minority women who go missing. The disappearances of young white females -- especially those who are relatively wealthy and fit traditional "stereotypes of being attractive" -- get far more media coverage than their minority counterparts, according to lawyer and criminologist Zach Sommers, who has conducted research on "missing white woman syndrome." Fifty percent of the articles he studied focused on white women, a category which accounts for only about 30 percent of those missing, Sommers estimated. The blonde and "fragile" Petito, in the eyes of some, became a "damsel in distress" who needed saving, a narrative that pervades American culture, Sommers said. Other factors leading to the explosion of interest, according to Sommers, include the abundance of accessible content on the couple's social media accounts, and police bodycam footage of an August police encounter in which the couple is seen arguing. The murky behavior of Laundrie, who declined to be interviewed by investigators and then went off the radar, has propelled him into the role of "natural lead suspect" for an audience hanging on the case's every twist and turn, according to Sommers. And because American society has "stronger associations with people of color and criminal acts, maybe it's not seen as noteworthy or newsworthy when a black individual goes missing," he said. "The people who are in the roles of making decisions about what could be news lack diversity," added Martin Reynolds of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, in addressing the disparity. Conscious of such bias, the TikTok user Campbell and others are now publicizing various missing person cases, including for Asian woman Lauren Cho and African-American Jelani Day. Day's body recently has been identified, authorities in LaSalle, Illinois said Thursday, although the cause of death remained unknown. "It's great" that Campbell is helping, Reynolds said, but stressed that responsibility for getting the word out rests with journalists who should be "making sure to be equitable in their approach to coverage." led/seb/mlm/bgs/bfm For millions of young Germans, Chancellor Angela Merkel is the only leader they have known, a beacon of stability in a world plagued by uncertainties. But as her 16-year tenure comes to end, some say her slowly-slowly approach stymied progress on burning issues such as climate protection and the digital race. Voters under the age of 30 make up 14 percent of the electorate in Germany, which goes to the polls on Sunday. Eager to see change on climate issues, many are shunning her Christian Democrats (CDU) party in favour of the Greens. Some accuse the old-guard parties -- like the CDU or the centre-left Social Democrats -- of failing to bring about meaningful change. "She has completely failed on digitalisation, the climate crisis has worsened, the gap between rich and poor has widened and she has done nothing about inequality of opportunity in schools," said Christophe Dierckx, a 27-year-old entrepreneur from Frankfurt. He added that Merkel has largely ignored his generation and their future, practising conservative politics "at its worst". He's not the only young person to feel sidelined. Merkel's CDU policies are "mostly aimed at older people", Kaan Ogurlu, a 19-year-old Berlin law student, said. A youth-led movement has in recent years made a vocal push for Merkel's government to step up climate protection, protesting on Fridays in school strikes inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Young activists have also taken the government to court to force it to improve environmental targets. After a TV debate between the three main candidates to replace Merkel last weekend, just 11 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 picked the CDU's Armin Laschet as the winner, with 52 percent opting for the Greens' Annalena Baerbock. Besides anger over the climate, many young people have felt let down by the German government during the pandemic, with a lack of equipment hampering remote learning and promised ventilation systems for classrooms largely failing to materialise. Story continues - 'Aura of security' - But for others, Merkel was a much-appreciated steady hand amid a cascade of crises. She offered stability in the face of financial turmoil in 2008 and the refugee influx of 2015, when Germany left its doors open to hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Syrians fleeing war and conflict. For young people, especially those in their 20s, the chancellor "with her reassuring, calm way of governing has been very valuable", sociologist Klaus Hurrelmann of Berlin's Hertie School, told AFP. She has an air of "I am your mother, I'll take care of you", according to the expert -- a demeanour that earned the veteran politician the popular nickname "Mutti", or mummy. Her exit will be a major change for many young people. "Merkel has always been there. I just took it for granted that she would take care of everything," said Robert Mally, a 28-year-old technician from Cologne. For Maria Elliott, a 26-year-old biology student from Berlin, Merkel "was good in a crisis". "She had presence and an aura of security," she said. Yet many among the younger population say it's time for a new government without the CDU. "A new party at last, or rather a new coalition, would be great," said Mally, calling for increased focus on the climate crisis and inequality. Their votes could have a real impact on the elections, which are still wide open with the CDU polling just a touch behind the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Greens in third place. Although youngsters will not be sorry to see Merkel go, Elliot has one thing to thank her for. "After 2015, my mother and stepfather adopted a young Afghan refugee," she said. In this respect, the chancellor had "a direct influence on my life, and a very positive one", she added. ilp-fec/hmn/bp/jv More COVID-19 vaccine booster shots have been approved. Who exactly does that cover? Horse patrols have been suspended at a Haitian migrant camp in Texas. And millions of Boppy pillows have been recalled. Helloooo! Laura here, it's Thursday, here's all the news you need to know. But first, we're following a couple of breaking news stories. At least two people are dead and 12 more were injured in a shooting at a Kroger in Collierville, Tennessee. The shooter is also dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. Follow along with our coverage of this breaking news. An arrest warrant has been issued for Brian Laundrie, the fiance of Gabby Petito. A grand jury indictment released Thursday accuses Laundrie, who is still missing after more than a week, of unauthorized use of a debit card and several accounts, spending more than $1,000. Catch up with the latest updates on this story. The Short List is a snappy USA TODAY news roundup. Subscribe to the newsletter here or text messages here. CDC OKs more COVID-19 vaccine booster shots A booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is recommended six months after initial vaccination for a number of groups, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee said Thursday. People 65 and older; those who live in long-term care facilities; and adults with underlying medical conditions should receive booster shots, the committee said. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is likely to quickly sign off on the committee ruling, making boosters available to more people within a few days. The vote comes almost six weeks after the FDA authorized extra doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for people who are severely immunocompromised. That includes people 18 and up who are at high risk for severe COVID-19. Here's who else may be eligible for the shot in a few days. COVID-19 news: New York health commissioner resigns; COVID-19 spurs mental health crises in kids: Check out the latest updates here. Story continues Could COVID-19 precautions break the stigma and spread of head lice? Who is considered 'high risk' for COVID-19 booster shots? What to know. Nurse practitioner Lisa Flemmons takes a selfie as she receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020. Horse patrols suspended at Haitian migrant camp The Biden administration faced questions Thursday about its handling of a surge of Haitian migrants crossing the southern border, even after suspending horse patrols in the area. Images of horseback patrols pursuing Haitians spread this week, drawing outrage from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as well as the White House. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security and White House confirmed those patrols had been stopped for now. DHS officials said about 7,000 migrants remained in Del Rio, Texas, down from a peak of about 15,000 on Sept. 18. Migrants have been moved to other sectors for processing, sent back to Haiti and, in some cases, turned back to Mexico. Read more of the latest updates from Del Rio. Migrants, many from Haiti, are camped along the Del Rio International Bridge on Sept. 22 in Texas. What everyone's talking about The Short List is free, but several stories we link to are subscriber-only. Consider supporting our journalism and become a USA TODAY digital subscriber today. Millions of Boppy pillows recalled Gotta Boppy? Please don't use it, the company says. After eight infants died of suffocation, Boppy, makers of nursing pillows and baby carriers, recalled three types of baby pillows. The infants' deaths occurred from December 2015 to June 2020 after the babies were placed on their back, side or stomach on a newborn baby lounger, the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday. Boppy, based in Golden, Colorado, has recalled about 3.3 million baby loungers sold. The products covered are the Boppy Original Newborn Loungers, Preferred Newborn Loungers and Pottery Barn Kids Newborn Loungers. Consumers are directed to immediately stop using the recalled loungers and contact Boppy for a refund. Total recall: Find out about recalls on cars, food and other products. From left, Boppy's Original Newborn Lounger, Preferred Newborn Lounger and Pottery Barn Kids Newborn Lounger were recalled after eight infant deaths. Do you know where they are? The disappearance of Gabby Petito captured the nation's attention and attracted the sleuthing skills of thousands on social media who shared her story and even turned up leads. Thousands more need that same level of care and attention. Hundreds of thousands of people vanish every year, according to FBI data. In 2020, more than 540,000 people disappeared, including more than 340,000 juveniles, according to the data. The FBI has compiled a list of 43 active missing persons cases of people under the age of 21 that the agency says need fresh leads. Some date back decades. You can see the list here. Gabby Petito mourned at vigil; search still on for Brian Laundrie. John Walsh on search: Florida police fell for 'red herring.' Capt. Jason Gates of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office introduces the family of missing 7-year-old Kyron Horman at Brooks Hill Historical Church across from Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Ore., on June 11, 2010. Behind him, from left, are Kyron's mother, Desiree Young; Tony Young; Terri Horman; and Kyron's father, Kaine Horman. Real quick Is a housing market crash on the horizon? Exuberant buying with multiple offers and bidding wars has become common, reminiscent of the fevered market before the housing crash in 2008. Home prices nationwide increased year-over-year by 18% in July, the largest annual growth that CoreLogic Home Price Index has measured in its 45-year history. That leads to the inevitable question: Will history repeat itself? USA TODAY spoke to eight experts to find out whether a housing crash is on the horizon. The short answer? No. They say the housing market is not like the boom-bust cycle leading up to the Great Recession. When it comes to demand, buyers desire for more space during the pandemic, low mortgage rates, rising savings, an improved labor market and millennials reaching their peak homebuying age have contributed to the tightening of the inventory. If you're in the market, there's a bright spot on the horizon: Home price growth will decelerate in the coming year, experts predict. 3 families bought, sold homes during the pandemic. What they learned. Rent or buy? That depends on where you want to live. A sold sign is shown outside a single-family home on the market in Denver. On Thursday, May 24, the National Association of Realtors reports on April sales of existing homes. A break from the news Psssst: USA TODAY launched something really fun. It's a new and improved Crossword App! Check it out.. This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network. Want this news roundup in your inbox every night? Sign up for The Short List newsletter here. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID-19 booster shots, Collierville, Tennessee Kroger shooting, Brian Laundrie, Del Rio, Texas, border, Boppy recall. It's Thursday's news. The Houston doctor fired for distributing expiring COVID-19 vaccines instead of throwing them out claims he was punished for giving the vaccine to too many individuals with Indian sounding names. Dr. Hasan Gokal has sued Harris County Public Health for $1 million, alleging that the agency demonstrated a pattern of discrimination and hostility against Dr. Gokal based on his South Asian race and Pakistani national origin. Dr. Gokals actions were heroic and directly in line with the orders from the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control. But HPCH proceeded to fire Dr. Gokal anyways, articulating that Dr. Gokal did not equitably distribute the vaccine and gave the vaccine to too many individuals with Indian sounding names, the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, reads. At every turn, even prior to the vaccine roll-out, HCPH discriminated against Dr. Gokal for his South Asian race and Pakistani national origin which motivated HCPHs decision to take adverse employment actions. Gokal was fired in early January, days after he raced around Houston distributing the remaining 10 Moderna doses from a vaccine site before the vial expired. After handing out nine to people with preexisting health conditions, he gave the 10th to his wife, who has a lung disease that affects her breathing. The doctor reported the vaccinations to health officials the next morning, but was told that he should have thrown out the leftovers instead. On Jan. 7, he was fired and eventually charged with misdemeanor theft. In July, a Texas grand jury declined to indict him. But Gokal claims that Harris County Public Health lied about what happened when they reported him to the county, then district attorneys office, including misreporting the number of doses administered and falsely claiming there was a waiting list of employees who were supposed to get spare doses. There was also no written protocol for handling leftovers, according to the lawsuit. Story continues HCPHs termination and relentless false information campaign is the epitome of malice and recklessness. Indeed, HCPH never interviewed Dr. Gokal, never took his statement, never asked for his side of the story, conducted no internal investigation of the matter, and never sought to get the facts straight, the lawsuit reads. Yet, HCPH, with malice and recklessness, sought to get Dr. Gokal stripped of his medical license (which is his livelihood) and indicted criminally for theft of a vial of vaccine that would have otherwise been thrown in the trash. A spokesperson for the Harris County Public Health did not immediately return a request for comment. Iceland holds legislative elections on Saturday after four years of an unprecedented left-right coalition that has managed to put a lid on a volatile decade of crises and scandals. But with so many political parties vying for power and no one clear coalition option emerging, analysts say it is hard to predict the shape of the next government. Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, whose Left-Green Movement had never before been in government, is seeking a second mandate in a political landscape more splintered than ever. Opinion polls point to a record nine parties expected to win seats in the Althing, Iceland's almost 1,100-year-old parliament. That makes it particularly difficult to predict which parties could end up forming a coalition together after the vote. With 33 of 63 seats, the outgoing coalition is an unholy mix of the conservative Independence Party, the centre-right Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement. This is only the second time since 2008 that a government has made it to the end of its four-year mandate on the sprawling island of 370,000 people. Deep public distrust of politicians amid repeated scandals sent Icelanders to the polls five times from 2007 to 2017. "This government was not founded on the premise of undertaking societal changes, but much rather for the purpose of co-habitation politics in a country that had been in upheaval for a long time," noted Eirikur Bergmann, a political science professor at Bifrost University. - 'No clear alternative' - Opinion polls suggest the current coalition will likely fail to win re-election. Jakobsdottir, 45, is however broadly popular, having won over Icelanders with her integrity, sincerity and consensual management style. She has also been praised for her handling of the Covid-19 crisis, with Iceland recording only 33 deaths. "I think this government has done a good job, and I think it has really shown what is possible in politics," she told AFP in an interview this week. Story continues But her coalition has at times struggled with internal divisions and the head of the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson, has his eyes on the post of prime minister. The Independence Party is credited with between 20 and 24 percent of votes in surveys, and is expected to remain the largest party. A former prime minister, he comes from a family that has long held power on the right and is the current finance minister. "I'm optimistic, I feel supported," he told a campaign rally this week, insisting his party would continue to be "the backbone of the next government". But there are five other parties all hot on his heels, credited with 10 to 15 percent of votes. They are the Left-Green Movement, the Progressive Party, the Social Democratic Alliance, the libertarian Pirate Party and the centre-right Reform Party. "There is not a clear alternative to this government. If it falls and they can't continue, then it's just a free-for-all to create a new coalition," political scientist Bergmann said. - Big coalition ahead? - A coalition made up of just two parties is largely ruled out and few three-party combinations seem conceivable. The country may therefore be headed for its first four- or five-party coalition. "That makes the coalition game very different from what it used to be," said Olafur Hardarson, a political science professor of 40 years. "We are not used to having four or five parties together in a coalition and a lot of people think that such coalitions will be very unstable." The pandemic has highlighted problems with the healthcare system. It has also hit Iceland's economy -- heavily dependent on the tourism sector and facing major debt. Meanwhile, the climate and the environment, more consensual topics in Iceland, have been heavily debated. Several parties have called for the volcanic island to make better use of its renewable energy sources. The North Atlantic nation is already a leader in geothermal energy and has opened the world's largest plant sucking carbon dioxide out of the air to turn it into rock. First results are expected Saturday after voting ends at 10:00 p.m. (2200 GMT), but it will likely be the next day before the counting is completed and a clearer picture emerges. str/po/bp New York vs. Houston. Tayler Adigun/Insider I traveled from Houston to stay with a friend in NYC for five days during New York Fashion Week. I noticed a few differences between life in the two cities. You can easily get around NYC without a car, and the city is taking vaccination mandates seriously. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. I stayed in Brooklyn, New York, with a friend for five days earlier this month. I enjoyed the NYC rooftop bars. Tayler Adigun/Insider I've been to New York before but this was my longest visit and the first time I've stayed with someone who lives there. It allowed me to see what life in New York City is like beyond the tourist experience I was familiar with. After landing at the airport, I found out that Uber and Lyft prices were much higher than I expected. The high price of a Lyft surprised me. Tayler Adigun/ Insider I expected things to cost more in New York City because the cost of living and median salary are higher than they are in Houston. However, I thought maybe my Lyft from the airport would cost less since the distance wasn't that far. I was wrong. A Lyft to my friend's apartment was almost double what it would cost me to get to my local airport at home despite both distances being around 13 miles. There was also more traffic in New York City than I anticipated. Thankfully my driver was super cool but the drive was longer than I expected. Tayler Adigun/Insider I hear a lot about how horrible the traffic is in Los Angeles and other major cities, but I've actually never heard much about New York's. This could be because New York has such an expansive public transportation system compared to other cities (including Houston), so I probably hear more about people traveling by subways and buses than by car. As we drove from the airport, I was shocked to learn how brutal the traffic can be. The rent in New York City is higher for less space. Even though her rent is more than what I'm used to in Houston it's still cheaper than other apartments in the area. Tayler Adigun/ Insider This one was kind of a no-brainer, but my friend's Brooklyn $1,600-a-month apartment was smaller than the typical one-bedroom apartments I see in Houston, even though it was around the same range in rent. According to RentCafe data, this is typical: The average rent in Houston is $1,205 for 880 square feet, while the average rent in Brooklyn is $3,010 for 654 square feet. Story continues Many apartments don't have in-unit washers and dryers. Inside the laundromat. Tayler Adigun/Insider Probably one of the biggest differences about living in an apartment here was having to leave to do laundry. In Houston, in-unit washers and dryers are the standard. Some places in New York City have this as well but it's not as common. Thankfully, it was only about three blocks or a five-minute walk to a laundromat from where my friend lives so it wasn't too far. The weather was nice when we walked there, but I imagine it's inconvenient during the colder months. I was surprised to find large grocery stores in New York - I expected them to be smaller. Produce at Super Foodtown. Tayler Adigun/Insider Typically, my friend orders groceries online, which makes sense since it can be quite difficult to haul a bunch of groceries on the subway. However, I wanted to see what a physical store looked like so we stopped by Super Foodtown near her neighborhood in Brooklyn. This particular store surprised me because I was expecting something much smaller. This is one of the largest grocery stores in Brooklyn, and I would say size-wise it is pretty comparable to similar grocery stores in Houston. That said, despite the space and the popularity of grocery delivery, the line in this grocery store was still very long. Unlike in Houston, driving is not the primary mode of transportation. Taking the subway in NYC. Tayler Adigun/ Insider A subway in Houston seems pretty unlikely at the moment, and our light-rail system doesn't serve many neighborhoods, so if you don't have a car you might have a hard time getting around on your own. However in New York City, it seems to be more cost-effective to avoid owning a car altogether plus you don't have to worry about the stress of where to park it. During my stay, we used the subway system, and I thought it was very efficient for the number of people it transports daily. Also unlike in Houston, you can walk to get pretty much anything in New York. If we wanted to grab a smoothie or coffee all we had to do was walk a couple of blocks. Tayler Adigun I walked more during this five-day visit than I have in the past month in Houston. That may sound like hyperbole, but we did walk a lot more than I'm used to since everything is so close together in New York. For example, I was craving a green juice and Google revealed there were three places within walking distance of us. In Houston, I would have to drive at least 10 minutes to find a similar place. I was surprised that the cost of dining out wasn't as high as I'd expected. I'm surprised at how not surprised I was at dinner prices. Tayler Adigun/ Insider The meals were a bit more expensive in New York City, but I think it had more to do with the type of food we had that week. Overall, our totals were comparable to what I would spend on nights out for dinner and drinks in Houston. One restaurant we went to did charge for chips and salsa which I've never experienced but that could be a one-off. Unlike in Houston, vaccination cards are checked regularly. Most of the restaurants and bars we went to required proof of vaccination and ID Tayler Adigun/Insider This was one of the most pleasant surprises I found in New York. Most restaurants and bars won't let you in without proof of vaccination. Starting September 13, New York City required indoor diners to prove they've had at least one shot my visit to the city was actually before this mandate went into effect, but multiple businesses still asked me for proof. While some individual businesses in Houston have vaccine rules, so far no establishment in Houston has inquired about my vaccination status. Read the original article on Insider Independent legislation that would allocate $1 billion to Israels Iron Dome defense system, introduced after House progressives stripped the support from a previous government spending bill, overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday. Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro proposed the stand-alone legislation on Wednesday, eliciting outrage from squad member Representative Rashida Tlaib, who was one of just nine House members to vote no. The progressive congresswoman announced her opposition Thursday, saying she refuses to financially support a violent apartheid system. We cannot be talking only about Israelis need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes, Tlaib remarked. We should also be talking about the Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks. We must be consistent in our commitment to human life. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted no on the bill but switched her vote to present, which has the effect of an abstention, at the last minute. As the House approved the measure, Ocasio-Cortez appeared visibly upset on camera, as if she were crying. Tlaib repudiated the bills reasoning that military aid should be sent to replenish Israels exhausted defenses after it intercepted hundreds of rocket projectiles that the Gaza-based terrorist organization Hamas launched at the nations highly populated centers in May. She claimed that Israel manufactured that crisis, triggering it after Israeli Defense Forces soldiers got into an altercation with worshippers at the Al-Aqsa mosque, a holy Islamic site, in Jerusalem. I firmly believe our country should oppose selling weapons to anyone, anywhere without human rights law compliance, she asserted. .@RepRashida opposing Iron Dome funding for Israel: "I will not support an effort to enable and support war crimes, human rights abuses, and violencePalestinians are living under a violent apartheid systemwar crimes Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks" pic.twitter.com/C0WG0CRXKG Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) September 23, 2021 Shortly after, Democratic Representative Ted Deutch enthusiastically condemned Tlaibs comment as anti-Semitic. Story continues I cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on floor of House of Representatives and label the Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid state. I reject it. Today this caucus, this body, the House of Representatives will overwhelmingly stand will our ally, the State of Israel in replenishing this defensive system, he declared. Granted additional speaking time, Deutch concluded that leaving Israel vulnerable to assault and destruction from enemies such as Hamas and other neighbors constitutes anti-semitism. To falsely characterize the State of Israel is consistent with those, lets be clear, who advocate for the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world. And when there is no place on the for one Jewish state, thats anti-semitism, he said. .@RepTedDeutch after Rep. Tlaib: "I cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on floor of House and label Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid statemy colleague who just besmirched our allywhen there's no place on map for one Jewish state, that's anti-Semitism" pic.twitter.com/kCa5Y5W8EI Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) September 23, 2021 Eight Democrats and one Republican rejected the Iron Dome supplemental measure, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Andre Carson, Ilhan Omar, Marie Newman, Ayanna Pressley, Jesus Garcia, Raul Grijalva, Cori Bush, and Thomas Massie, respectively. Massie, the lone Republican to vote against the measure, opposes all foreign aid. The bill now advances to the evenly-divided Senate for a vote. More from National Review MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) A former school principal who was extradited from Israel after a six-year legal battle was ordered to stand trial Thursday on 70 charges of child sex abuse. Malka Leifer, 55, pleaded not guilty to all the charges at the end of a court hearing. The committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates Court was held to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. Leifer is accused of carrying out the abuse against sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper when Leifer was head of Melbournes Adass Israel School between 2004 and 2008. The three sisters testified by video link during a closed court hearing. Leifer also appeared by video from Melbournes womens prison, the Dame Phyillis Frost Centre. Melbourne is currently in lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak. The judge, Magistrate Johanna Metcalf, said she believed the evidence was of sufficient weight to support a conviction. Leifer faces 44 counts of indecent assault, 13 of an indecent act with a child, 10 of rape, and three of sexually penetrating a child. Prosecutors withdrew four further charges after it became clear those alleged incidents occurred in Israel. The next hearing will be held at Victorias County Court on Oct. 21. Leifer's lawyer Ian Hill didn't make any submissions at the end of the prosecutions case. The judge noted Leifer denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Five witnesses gave evidence on Thursday including former Adass Israel School staffer Esther Spigelman, who said she went to see Leifer the day after she was stood down by the school board over the allegations in 2008. It was a very big shock and I went to say goodbye. She was very upset with what they were doing to her, Spigelman said. We didnt go into detail of things but she definitely said I did nothing wrong and pretty much that she felt very unfair with what was happening. Erlichs former husband Joshua Erlich said that Erlich had previously described Leifer as taking the place of a mother, saying that the school had given the sisters respite from troubles at home with their mother. Story continues He said he heard Leifer had hugged her, rubbed her thighs and gave her special attention, but he didnt find it particularly concerning. If she had said it was under the clothes or something of that nature I would have been concerned, Joshua Erlich said. Last year, the sisters were granted a court order allowing them to speak publicly and under their real names about their allegations of being abused by Leifer. The Associated Press does not usually identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the siblings have spoken publicly about their accusations as part of their campaign to force Leifer to return to Australia. Leifer was extradited from Israel in January. The protracted court case and repeated delays over her extradition had drawn criticism from Australian officials as well as the countrys Jewish leaders. As accusations against her began surfacing in 2008, Israeli-born Leifer left the school and returned to Israel. The two countries have an extradition treaty, but critics, including Leifers accusers, said Israeli authorities had dragged out the case, while Leifer claimed she was mentally unfit to stand trial. Last year, an Israeli psychiatric panel determined Leifer was lying about her mental condition, setting in motion the extradition. In December, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a final appeal against her extradition, and Israels justice minister signed the order to send her to Australia. US President Joe Biden spoke with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday "to discuss the implications", according to a joint statement by both governments, of a military alliance with Britain and Australia, which cancelled its US$66 billion purchase of French submarines. Macron agreed to send French ambassador Philippe Etienne back to Washington; he had been recalled to France two days after the announcement last week of the trilateral "Aukus" partnership took Paris by surprise. "The two leaders agreed that the situation would have benefited from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," the statement said. "President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard. 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. A joint statement by both governments said that US President Joe Biden "reaffirms the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region". Photo: Reuters alt=A joint statement by both governments said that US President Joe Biden "reaffirms the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region". Photo: Reuters "President Biden reaffirms the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, including in the framework of the European Union's recently published strategy for the Indo-Pacific," it added. "The United States also recognises the importance of a stronger and more capable European defence, that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to Nato." The Biden administration had negotiated with Britain and Australia for months to formalise Aukus, which is widely seen as another part of US efforts to counter a more assertive China, along with closer coordination on this front with Nato, the G7 and the European Union. Story continues White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki characterised the 30-minute phone call between Biden and Macron as "friendly" and declined to say whether Biden had apologised. The joint statement said that Biden and Macron would meet in Europe at the end of October to discuss their Indo-Pacific strategies further. Asked whether the meeting might take place at the G20 summit in Rome during the last weekend of October or the United Nations COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, immediately after G20, Psaki said only that "there are some international forums that are happening next month that might bring the president to Europe". She added that the administration was still finalising travel plans. However, the nascent rapprochement between France and the US has not yet carried over to all Aukus members. The mending of fences contrasted with comments by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters while in Washington, Johnson used fractured French to tell Paris to "prenez un grip" (get a grip). "Donnez-moi un break" - give me a break - "because this is fundamentally a great step forward for global security," Johnson said in an interview with Sky News. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking with reporters during a visit to the US Capitol on Wednesday. Photo: AFP alt=British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking with reporters during a visit to the US Capitol on Wednesday. Photo: AFP Johnson described Aukus as "three very like-minded allies standing shoulder to shoulder, creating a new partnership for the sharing of technology", rather than a snub to Europe. He added: "I find it very hard to see in this agreement anything not to like." France did not recall its ambassador to Britain, as it had its envoys to the US and Australia. Justifying that decision, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France 2 last week that France was "familiar with Britain's permanent opportunism" and called them the "fifth wheel on the carriage". Moreover, London has not been spared the Elysee's ire. The alliance was a sign that a post-Brexit Britain had "returned to the American bosom in a form of accepted vassalisation," France's minister for European affairs, Clement Beaune, told France 24. On Monday, France cancelled a meeting scheduled for this week between its defence minister, Florence Parly, and her British counterpart Ben Wallace. Additional reporting by Owen Churchill This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday cast UN climate talks in Glasgow in November as a last chance for humanity as he made a passionate appeal for the world to slash carbon emissions. In a characteristically colorful speech before the United Nations as he seeks success in Glasgow, Johnson urged humanity not to treat the planet as an "indestructible toy" and warned of irreversible damage from climate change. "We will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable -- not just for us but for many other species," he told the General Assembly. "And that is why the Glasgow COP26 summit is the turning point for humanity," he said, using the official name for the meeting of the UN climate body's Conference of Parties. Johnson backed a goal of the developed world phasing out coal, one of the dirtiest forms of energy, by 2030 and the developing world doing so a decade later. Pointing to Britain's own track record at reducing emissions while preserving growth, the Conservative leader rejected conspiracy theories often voiced on the political right about the intentions behind climate plans. "I am not one of those environmentalists who takes a moral pleasure in excoriating humanity for its excess," Johnson said. "I don't see the green movement as a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism." - 'Everything to gain' - Johnson hailed a pledge made a day earlier by Chinese President Xi Jinping to end coal financing overseas and urged the world's largest emitter also to end its own growing use of coal. The 2015 Paris accord set a goal of reducing global warming by two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels with an aspiration to go further and limit the rise to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). But each nation chose its own way to make efforts and UN scientists say the planet is well off track on the 1.5 goal, the threshold at which the planet is seen as avoiding the worst ravages of climate change including intensifying droughts, worsening storms and widening flooding. Story continues Johnson voiced hope that all countries would emulate Britains goals, among the world's most ambitious, to cut carbon emissions by 68 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. "We have nothing to fear and everything to gain from this green industrial revolution," he said. "When Kermit the Frog sang, 'It's Not Easy Bein' Green,' I want you to know he was wrong -- and he was also unnecessarily rude to Miss Piggy." sct/ch Former President Donald Trump and Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary. Alex Wong/Getty Images Kayleigh McEnany deleted a tweet blaming Biden for a spike in murders that occurred under Trump. "The U.S. murder rate under Joe Biden..." she wrote about a graphic showing an increase in 2020. The graphic, from The New York Times, shows the number of murders increased by nearly 30%. See more stories on Insider's business page. Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany deleted a tweet blaming President Joe Biden for a spike in U.S. murders that occurred under her former boss, then-President Donald Trump. As CNN's Brian Stelter noted, McEnany quote-tweeted a post Thursday morning from Axios reporter Lachlan Markay that highlighted a New York Times graphic showing a significant surge in the number of US murders in 2020 to her 1.1 million followers. She wrote: "The U.S. murder rate under Joe Biden..." about the graphic before deleting the tweet, presumably after realizing that Trump was president that year. The underlying data behind the Times' graphic and article, from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, which is set to be published in full on Monday, showed the number of murders in the United States spiked by nearly 30 percent from 2019 to 2020. That stat represents the largest year-over-year increase in murders documented since the FBI began collecting yearly data on murders and far surpasses the previous record of 12.7 percent increase in the number of murders in a year, set in 1968. The US murder rate, defined by the number of murders per 100,000 people, still remains lower than the all-time peak in the 1990s. The data show that 77% of the murders in 2020 were committed with firearms, The Times said, reporting that the rise in murders was not driven by any particular regions but was nationwide. Overall crime, however, slightly declined. Story continues McEnany, who served as press secretary from April 2020 to the end of the Trump presidency, was accused many times of stretching the truth or outright lying from the podium. Before becoming press secretary, McEnany wrongly predicted that "we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here." McEnany lied to the press at least five times during her tenure, including about Trump downplaying COVID-19 (he had), the crowd size of a pro-Trump march, and whether Trump was the first to put a red ribbon on the White House for World AIDS Day (he wasn't). Read the original article on Business Insider A missing Western Kentucky woman and her suspected kidnapper are dead after a police chase that ended in Lincoln County Wednesday, according to Kentucky State Police. KSP said the victim, Tammy Beechum, and the suspect, Thomas Hungerford, died in what appears to be a murder-suicide. WKYT, the Herald-Leaders reporting partner, said the two died after a shooting. According to KSP, Beechum was originally taken in Cadiz at a business parking lot on Lafayette Street. Officers said they were able to identify Hungerford as the suspect after conducting interviews and an investigation at the scene. KSP initially said Hungerford was armed and dangerous. He was Beechums estranged boyfriend, police said. According to KSP, at approximately 5 p.m. Wednesday, troopers spotted what was believed to be Hungerfords vehicle on U.S. 27 in Lancaster. Hungerford fled from troopers and eventually stopped on the same road near Stanford. Troopers approached the vehicle and found Beechums and Hungerfords bodies inside, according to the press release. Beechum was 53 while Hungerford was 65. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). A newly arriving inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola was found dead in his cell early Wednesday, after apparently committing suicide by hanging, according to a report. Kenneth Gleason, a convicted killer who had just been transferred to Angola on Monday from the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, was found with a bedsheet around his neck around midnight, FOX 8 of New Orleans reported. TESSA MAJORS MURDER SUSPECT PLEADS GUILTY IN KILLING OF BARNARD COLLEGE STUDENT Gleason was alone in the cell, in accordance with quarantine guidelines for newly arriving inmates because of the coronavirus, the Louisiana Department of Corrections said in a statement, the station reported. Correctional officers found him hanging while making routine checks inside the facility, according to FOX 8. Gleason was convicted by a jury April 27 of first-degree murder in the 2017 deaths of Donald Smart and Bruce Coefield, the report said. He was reportedly spared the death penalty at the request of Smarts family, and received a life sentence Aug. 23, according to the report. Both victims were Black men. East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings claimed during Gleasons sentencing hearing that he had been "hunting Black men" during a five-day rampage in September 2017, WAFB-TV of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reported. A former Louisiana State Police trooper was charged Thursday with a civil rights violation for beating a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight, according to the Associated Press. Why it matters: Former state trooper Jacob Brown's indictment is the first criminal case to come out of federal investigations into attacks in which state troopers and their bosses concealed incidents of misconduct, according to the AP. Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free Details: A grand jury Thursday charged Brown with one count of deprivation of rights under color of law related to excessive force. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the Department of Justice. He was "perhaps the Louisiana State Polices most prolifically violent trooper in recent years. Records show he tallied 23 uses of force dating to 2015 19 on Black people and he faces state charges in Bowmans case and two other violent arrests of Black motorists," AP writes. Catch up quick: In May 2019, Aaron Larry Bowman was pulled over for a traffic violation improper lane usage when state trooper Brown arrived on the scene. Deputies forcibly removed Bowman from his vehicle and tackled him to the ground. Brown struck Bowman 18 times with a flashlight in the span of 24 seconds, leaving Bowman with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash in his head. Brown later claimed Bowman had hit a deputy and that the beating was intended to force Bowman into handcuffs. Bowman denied striking anyone and is not visibly violent with officers in footage of the incident. The trooper did not report his use of force and mislabeled his bodycam footage in "an intentional attempt to hide the video," investigators reported in internal records obtained by AP. State police did not probe the alleged assault until after Bowman filed a lawsuit 536 days later. What they're saying: "We're very grateful for what has happened today, but this by no means is going to satisfy Aaron Bowman or anybody else to stop here," Bowmans attorney Donecia Banks-Miley told Louisiana newspaper The Advocate. Story continues Brown is not the "only officer who has been allowed to do this," Banks-Miley said in an interview with BNC News last month. "They have repeat abusers of the citizens in their office and something has to be done." Brown's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "The actions of Brown and others charged by LSP in excessive force incidents undermines the public trust earned by the exemplary work of our dedicated men and women," Louisiana State Police Captain Nick Manale said in a statement. "These actions are inexcusable and have no place in professional public safety services." The big picture: An AP investigation identified a dozen cases over the past decade in which troopers or their bosses turned a blind eye to evidence of beatings and resisted efforts to scrutinize misconduct. In recent years, 67% of Louisiana State Polices uses of force were against Black people, per AP. Worth noting: Federal prosecutors are investigating a separate incident in which troopers punched, stunned and dragged Ronald Greene, another Black motorist, before he died in their custody on a roadside. Bodycam footage of both attacks, which occurred less than three weeks apart, was not made public until AP obtained and published it this year. Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free. Rep Maxine Waters speaks during a news conference on the treatment of Haitian immigrants at the US border in Texas (Getty Images) Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an outspoken member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Democratic Partys liberal wing, turned her fire on the Biden administration on Wednesday over shocking images of migrants in Del Rio, Texas, being confronted by US Customs and Border Protection. At a rainy press conference outside the US Capitol, Ms Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus slammed the administration for continuing with the flat ban on entry for asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, instituted under the Trump administration, which cited Covid-19 as a reason but had sought to dismantle the US asylum system long before the pandemic hit US shores. Im pissed. Im unhappy, and I'm not just unhappy with the cowboys who were running down Haitians and using their reins to whip them. I'm unhappy with this administration," said Ms Waters on Wednesday. We are following the Trump policy; he is the one that does not follow the Constitution and would not allow those seeking refuge to petition to enter the country. What the hell are we doing here? What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery. Cowboys, with their reins ... whipping Black people, Haitains, into the water while theyre scrambling, falling down, she said. To President Joe Biden, she added directly: You gotta stop this madness. The White House and DHS confirmed on Thursday that the practice of using CBP agents on horseback had been temporarily suspended in the Del Rio region, but the US has already begun expelling some of the gathered Haitian migrants on flights back to Port-au-Prince without allowing any to apply for asylum. Typically, migrants must prove a credible fear of facing violence at home before being granted asylum in the US. More than 12,000 migrants, mostly Haitian are estimated to have arrived at a makeshift set of camps erected under and around the international bridge connecting the US and Mexico in recent days. Many previously fled Haiti for countries in South America before coming north to Mexico and eventually the US, according to media reports. Story continues Haiti remains devastated after an earthquake and tropical storm struck the island within a few days of each other earlier this year; recent weeks have also seen the assassination of the countrys president in his home. The growing controversy led on Wednesday to the resignation of the US special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, who cited the administrations treatment of Haitian migrants at the border as inhumane in his resignation letter. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the administration wants an investigation into the treatment of migrants in Del Rio conducted as quickly as possible. "This has been an incredibly heart-wrenching issue. We've watched the photos of Haitians gathering under a bridge, many with families, and the horrific video of the CBP officers on horses using brutal and inappropriate measures against innocent people," she said. We're not going to stand for that kind of inhumane treatment and, obviously, we want this investigation to be completed rapidly, added Ms Psaki. Read More Biden admin slams Haiti special envoy for lying about resignation, claims he didnt flag migration concerns US Border Patrol said their whips in pictures of Haitian migrants were reins so I asked for more details Congressional Black Caucus members rail against treatment of Haitians at US-Mexico border Bambi Nicole Kuttkuhn was afraid when police came through the I-95 overpass on NW 11th last month, an area where she and some 60 homeless people resided. She said they took some of her belongings, saying theyd been stolen, and forced her and the others to leave. After three weeks living in a vacant lot about a mile away, the 43-year-old is back, but worried about a proposed city ordinance that would give the police new powers and could make such clearings more frequent. City commissioners last week gave initial approval to an ordinance that prohibits encampments on public property and in entryways. It would give police officers the authority to arrest people experiencing homelessness, as long as theyd been offered a shelter bed. The city also allocated $7 million in federal funding for homeless services. Proponents argue that Miami residents are afraid of encampments that block city sidewalks and leave litter and human waste strewn about, but critics charge the ordinance criminalizes homelessness and will only end up making the problem worse. The new legislation, which is scheduled for a final vote Oct. 14, comes almost three years after a federal judge rolled back a consent decree known as the Pottinger Agreement. Meant to protect people without housing in Miami from police harassment, the agreement specifically prevented Miami Police from arresting homeless people for life sustaining activities, such as sleeping on the sidewalk, urinating in public or cooking fires. Housing advocates say the new ordinance is a sharp escalation in punitive tactics after the Pottinger Agreement was dissolved by Federal Judge Federico Moreno in 2019. Encampment ban Commissioner Joe Carollo sponsored the ordinance, which passed 4-1 and would take effect 30 days after the final vote. Commissioner Ken Russell was the lone no vote. The measure defines encampments as the presence of any tent or temporary living structure for human habitation, people using heating devices such as camping stoves, grills or heaters and/or the unauthorized accumulation of personal property, of up to three cubic feet. Story continues Police would be instructed to give a written warning to violators, allow them up to two hours to gather their belongings and offer them a shelter bed. If the violator refuses a space in a shelter, officers can arrest the person. But many homeless people say shelters are worse than being on the streets they often encounter violence and drugs inside shelters and say it can feel more like a jail than a shelter. Makeshift beds and living quarters can be seen underneath the I-95 expressway off Southwest 1st street and Southwest Second Avenue in Miami, Florida, on Monday, September 20, 2021. Shelters can be scary, Kuttkuhn said. You never know who youre going to be in there with rapists, dangerous people. Theres a lot of fighting, and you have to follow all their rules. Youre not free in the shelter. Originally from Michigan, Kuttkuhn moved to Miami with her boyfriend and lived with his family until the couple broke up. Depressed and hopeless, she said she got a drink one night and relapsed to drug use. Shes been on and off the streets of Miami for six years. We cant arrest our way out of homelessness, said David Peery, an attorney, plaintiff in the Pottinger Agreement and chairman of the Advocacy Committee of the Camillus Health Concern Consumer Advisory Board, a nonprofit that provides healthcare and social services to homeless and poor people in Miami-Dade County. Its a social justice issue and a housing issue, not a criminal issue, he added. Scattering people to cover homelessness up, it works for short term goals but it traumatizes people and makes it harder for them to accept services and eventually get off the street permanently.. Carollo said in an interview that his proposed ban on encampments on public property is a response to complaints from Downtown residents and people who live in parts of Little Havana where homeless people block sidewalks. He described Miamis homeless population as mostly out-of-towners, many of whom have drug addictions. Our residents are so tired. They cant even walk their own sidewalks because theyre covered by tents, by sofas, by lounge chairs, by all kinds of things, Carollo said. They cannot cross or walk through the sidewalk. The elderly, in particular, are afraid as they walk in front of these encampments. Carollos proposal found support from the Downtown Neighbors Alliance (DNA), a coalition of homeowners associations from condo buildings who complain about people lacking housing setting up tents, urinating and defecating on Downtown sidewalks. Addressing commissioners before the vote last week, DNA President James Torres compared conditions to those in a third-world country. Thats what many Downtown individuals feel that Downtown looks like because of the homeless problem, Torres said. Miami commissioners last week also approved two other Carollo-sponsored measures aimed at people experiencing homelessness. City Manager Art Noriega was told to order cleanings of streets and sidewalks three times a week where those without homes congregate and he was instructed to find an area or areas where temporary encampments could be permitted. Earlier this year, Carollo suggested Virginia Key could host a temporary tent city. Carollo sharply rejected criticism that the city would be criminalizing homelessness under the ordinance, noting that Miami has spent millions on homeless programs and arguing that it shouldnt grant unchecked freedoms to people who choose to live on the street and resist shelter. The homeless issue that we have in the city of Miami is mainly about people that are out there because they want to be out there, Carollo said. Criminalization is exactly what it is, said Peery, the attorney. This is an ordinance that establishes criminal punishment. Thats criminalization. Peery said hes seen a stark change in the citys approach to people without housing since 2018, when Mayor Francis Suarez took office and the city sought to overturn the Pottinger Agreement. Under the ordinance, homeless people could be charged with a misdemeanor for creating an illegal encampments on public property and face a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail. Violators could also be given a civil fine from a code compliance officer. Mayor Suarezs plan While the proposed encampment ban stirs debate, another initiative aims to bring the number of homeless people in Miami to functional zero a term Suarez used in public statements after the Pottinger consent decree was dissolved. I dont look at it as what more can we do in terms of arresting and policing, he told the Miami Herald in 2019. Its more about what we can do to get to the functional zero. On the same day the encampment bans initial vote, commissioners last week approved a $7 million budget for Suarezs plan to drastically reduce the homelessness population. The allocation was part of a larger $137 million spending plan that is funded by the federal American Rescue Plan. Jeffrey Snow, a former Booker T. Washington math teacher who lacks housing, sits underneath the I-95 expressway off Southwest 1st street and Southwest Second Avenue in Miami, Florida, on Monday, September 20, 2021. In a statement, Suarez said his office will work with police, the Homeless Trust, Camillus House, the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery and faith-based groups to reach people have have previously refused shelter. This plan provides resources for the homeless which includes specialized mobile teams for the service resistant homeless, workforce courses which will guarantee jobs, and identifies new housing options for the homeless population whether through temporary and/or permanent housing, Suarez said. In June 2020, with the consent decree no longer in place, the city put limitations on charity groups feeding people experiencing homelessness and began clearing out encampments more frequently, according to housing rights advocates. Jeffrey Snow, 58, a retired teacher who lost his spot in public housing in Liberty City after having a stroke, lives underneath the I-95 on-ramp on SW 2nd Ave in Downtown. Hes hoping to get into an apartment through Carrfour, a nonprofit group, but says hed prefer to get arrested and go to jail than go to a Miami shelter. Id rather take my chances out here, he said. A 20-year-old man who left his home in Waterford Township, Michigan, to go for a walk five months ago and never returned has been found dead, investigators with the Waterford Township Police Department said this week. Police located the body of Noah Kerridge in a heavily-wooded embankment of the Rouge River in Southfield on Wednesday, September 22, according to a press release provided to Dateline. The release also stated that the search for Noah has been ongoing and it was new information that led to his body. Noah Kerridge (Help Find Noah Kerridge Facebook page) The 2019 graduate of Linden High School was last seen just before 5 p.m. on April 19, 2021, leaving the apartment complex in Waterford Township, Michigan, where he had been living with his father, Keith Kerridge. He told his father he was going for a walk and left the complex, but never returned. Noahs stepfather, Josh, who lives about an hour away in Linden, Michigan, with Noahs mother, Sarah Whitson, told Dateline back in April that it wasnt unusual for Noah to go for a walk. But when he didnt return, his family grew concerned. Whats unusual is that he didnt come home - and he hasnt had contact with anyone for all this time, Josh said in April. A missing persons report was filed with the Waterford Township Police Department and for months, extensive searches for Noah have been conducted. The most recent search was made on Wednesday, in a wooded area near Telegraph Road and 12 Mile Road with the assistance of the Oakland County Sheriffs Search and Rescue Team and the Southfield Police Department. It was during that search that Noahs body was found. A cause of death has not been released, but police say foul play is not suspected. Noah, who had been working at a local gas station in Waterford when he disappeared, was a 2019 graduate of Linden High School where he ran cross country and was on the robotics team. His family created a Facebook group Help find Noah Kerridge where they organized searches and posted updates about his case. Todays update by Noahs mother, Sarah, broke the news. Story continues This is not the post I ever wanted to make. Or the news we wanted to hear. Our precious Noah was found an angel today at the young age of 20 yrs old. Please give our little family time to process and grieve. I had to tell our kids over the phone which made this even harder. We are all together and taking this day by day. Thank you to the Oakland County sheriffs office, Waterford Police Dept, and Jane Doe Investigations. Thank you to everyone for the prayers, shares, and help with the flyers. Mama loves you Noah. We miss you so much. One day we will see you again. Multiple high school students in Missouri allegedly posted a racist petition online calling for bringing back slavery in the United States, according to multiple reports. School district officials in Missouris Park Hill School District declined to confirm the petition's contents and when it was posted. Officials also declined to describe any disciplinary action taken in response to the petition. Officials confirmed to USA TODAY that a small group of students from Park Hill South High School were involved in an incident. The school is located in Riverside, Missouri, near Kansas City. Kerrie Herren, principal at the school, wrote in an email to parents and students last week that school officials found out about some unacceptable and racist statements that some students posted online during a school-related activity. Oregon: A school staff member showed up to work in blackface. The employee was suspended. Herren told USA TODAY that a student first reported the incident to him on Thursday. School employees began an investigation the next day. We quickly knew that this was going to have a heavy impact on our community, especially our students and especially our families, Herren said. Monday specifically we invited all students to come have lunch with administrators that needed a space to debrief or talk about how they were doing, he added, noting that school officials also spoke with teachers and staff in response to the incident. Jeanette Cowherd, superintendent of the Park Hill School District, shared in a message with parents and students on Wednesday that the district does not tolerate discrimination or harassment, and that it is following its board of education policies to discipline students. Arizona: School district investigates video of Highland High School students reenacting George Floy California: Defaced Black doll at high school sparks calls for accountability on racist inc Terri Deayon, the school districts director of access, inclusion and family engagement, told USA TODAY that the district is striving to foster an environment where everyone feels included and valued. Although not the events that we would be advocating for, this is an opportunity for us to listen, an opportunity for us to understand, an opportunity for us to hear about lived experiences from all of the people in our community, Deayon said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Missouri students share petition calling for the return of slavery A Moroccan court has handed down 20-year prison sentences to 11 men found guilty of brutally raping and kidnapping a 17-year-old woman in 2018, according to the prosecution lawyer. The young woman - called Khadija - had gone public with the assault showing the scars, burns and tattoos she says the perpetrators inflicted on her. In a 2018 interview she said she would "never forgive" her attackers. The case caused national outrage and led to a #JusticePourKhadija campaign. Khadija's lawyer told the AFP news agency that he would appeal. Ibrahim Hachane said that the verdicts handed down in Beni Mallal were "not tough" because suspects convicted of trafficking can get up to 30 years in prison. Mr Hachane told AFP the attackers were also ordered to pay a $16,000 (12,000) fine. Human rights campaigners warn that attacks against women are common in Morocco, with a study showing that more than half of women had experienced violence. In 2018 the government passed a law criminalising violence against women including a ban on forced marriage, sexual harassment in public places, and tougher penalties for certain forms of violence. But it was criticised by Human Rights Watch for not explicitly criminalising marital rape and lacking a precise definition of domestic violence. There are conflicting reports about the sentences of two further perpetrators. They were given two years in prison and a one-year suspended sentence respectively, according to AFP. However local news site Article19 says both the sentences were suspended. It also cites a minor who was given a three-year prison sentence. Khadija said she also suffered torture at the hands of the attackers, saying that what they did "destroyed" her. "I tried to escape several times, but I was caught and beaten," she said told Morocco's Chouf TV in a 2018 interview. "They tortured me, they did not give me food or drink, and they did not even allow me to take a shower." Story continues While many Moroccans were shocked, there was also a backlash as relatives of the suspects accused Khadija of lying in Moroccan media, accusing her of living a "depraved" lifestyle. You may also be interested in: UPDATE: Collierville Police identified the suspect as 29-year-old UK Thang, according to the Associated Press. It is believed he acted alone, and he had been described as a third-party vendor to the store who was on site on a daily basis. A motive has not been released. The original story is below. A shooter killed one person and wounded at least 14 others Thursday inside a grocery store in Tennessee, officials said. The shooting happened at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, a city about 25 miles east of Memphis, about 1:30 p.m., police said during a news conference broadcast by Fox 13. The shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said officers flooded the grocery store within minutes of the shooting and began going aisle to aisle in search of shoppers and employees. We found people hiding in freezers and in locked offices, Lane said. They were doing what they had been trained to do run, hide, fight. I hate that we had to do it here. The shooters vehicle was found in the Kroger parking lot, and a bomb squad was investigating it. Lane declined to describe the type of gun the shooter used. He was found dead in the rear of the store, police said in a news release. The woman who died in the shooting was identified as Olivia King, AP reports. Friends told The Commercial Appeal she was a widowed mother of three, the AP said. Investigators planned to execute a search warrant at an undisclosed location Thursday evening, Lane said during a second news conference broadcast by WMC. Were going to carry this thing as far as we can to see and make sure that theres no one else involved, Lane said. The people who were shot included 10 employees and five customers, the AP reported. The store had 44 employees and an undetermined number of shoppers inside the building during the shooting, Lane said. Glenda McDonald, a Kroger employee in the floral department, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal she heard gunfire while standing at a counter. Story continues I just ran out the door, McDonald told the newspaper. I left my purse, my keys, everything. A Kroger cashier told reporters she heard gunfire near the deli while she stood at her register and helped others to safety outside the store. She said the shooter followed them through the store and then police arrived. I said Oh, no, these are gunshots, the cashier, who wasnt identified, told WMC. I got out of there and whoever was in front of me, I grabbed them and just took off. Lane described the injuries to the survivors as very serious. Its horrific, Lane said. Ive been involved in this for 34 years and Ive never seen anything like it. Collierville High School is less than three miles from the Kroger store. Students there sheltered in place until police secured the scene of the shooting, WMC reported. In a statement to multiple news outlets, Kroger said we are deeply saddened by the incident. The entire Kroger family offers our thoughts, prayers and support to the individuals and families of the victims during this difficult time. We are cooperating with local law enforcement, who have secured the store and parking lot, the statement said. The store will remain closed while the police investigation continues, and we have initiated counseling services for our associates. BREAKING UPDATE: An updated look at the Collierville Kroger scene after a reported shooting https://t.co/GOJ7UaeiVE pic.twitter.com/VDCpDY3xYB Action News 5 (@WMCActionNews5) September 23, 2021 Collierville Kroger employees hugging each other tight after multiple people were shot inside the store pic.twitter.com/iD6MVNs7Ji Luke Jones (@LukeJonesTV) September 23, 2021 Sep. 23The National Guard has been called in to assist Baptist Health Richmond as the hospital continues to see high volumes of patients with COVID-19. As of Wednesday, 32 patients are receiving treatment for the virus at the hospital. Twenty-eight of whom are unvaccinated, and four individuals who are vaccinated. Baptist Health Marketing Coordinator Sara Stringfield stated there were currently eight individuals in their facility in the intensive care unit. One of whom is a vaccinated patient, and seven individuals who are unvaccinated. This number is down from 38 patients which were being treated as of Monday. Baptist Health Richmond President Greg Gerard said the Guard showed up at a critical point for the facility. "We are so grateful to have the Army National Guard at Baptist Health Richmond," Gerard said. "The members will be assisting with various non-clinical, support staff roles. Their arrival was just when we needed it the most due to the increase in the number of COVID-19 patients we're caring for at our hospital." On Monday of this week the hospital issued a statement which said, unless a person is experiencing a life threatening event, shortness of breath, or chest pains, they need to use the services of urgent care or virtual care. "Without our community's support and collaboration, we are at the brink of being unable to effectively care for our patients in the same way we are all accustomed," said Erica Gregonis, MD, Baptist Health Richmond chief medical officer. CHI Saint Joseph Berea is also seeing a steady number of patients in their facilities for COVID. According to St. Joseph Berea spokesperson Mary Branham, since this surge began, Saint Joseph Berea has consistently had between eight and 12 COVID-positive inpatients. Before that, the most patients Saint Joseph Berea had at any one time was eight and that was back in December 2020. Beyond that, the facility averaged less than five patients consistently. Story continues In addition to continued surges at hospitals, deaths related to the virus are also rising. Five people have died in the past week and a half due COVID-19 related deaths, according to numbers reported on the state's virus dashboard. As of Sept. 21, a total of 126 deaths have been recorded since the pandemic arrived in March 2020. An additional death was reported Monday, Sept. 20, and three deaths were reported the week of Sept. 13 through Sept. 19. The dashboard also recorded 100 new cases from Monday to Tuesday. Madison County's incident rate is 117.8 cases per 100,000 population per day. Local officials and healthcare providers are still urging anyone who can to get the vaccine, as well as use a mask, social distance, and practice good hygiene. Richmond Mayor Robert Blythe made comments at a Tuesday commission workshop meeting for the board to do everything they can as officials to encourage others to "do the right thing." "We are hearing news from our hospitals that just isn't good," he began. "They are asking certainly for our help by doing the right things that will keep us out of their numbers so to speak. They are having a tremendously difficult time." Blythe said he did not mind admitting to the board because of previous health issues, the mayor finds himself scared to think he could not use the hospital's services if he needed to do so. "It scares me that if I need to go to the hospital for emergency services not related to COVID-19 they are now discouraging showing up because they don't have the personnel, they don't have the capacity to handle anymore. What a dilemma this is. I simply ask all of us to do our part and to try to stay as healthy as possible so that we don't have to call upon their services. I cannot imagine," Blythe said. Despite the rise in cases, popular events in Richmond and Berea are continuing. The city of Berea hosted just last weekend their three-day event Spoonbread Festival which welcomed thousands of people to their city park. In addition, the event hosted vendors from all across the state. Madison Southern High School will also plan to host a traditional homecoming celebration this weekend. Halloween in the Park will continue as of now on Oct. 31. Also in the month of October, the city of Richmond plans to host numerous events such as the Halloween Hoedown and the first annual Millstone Festival. For several weeks, the Millstone Committee has watched the COVID-19 situation, but as of Tuesday, still plan to move forward with the event. Mayor Blythe and City Manager Rob Minerich shared they felt it was okay to still move forward with the event following the example of other cities in Central Kentucky, as well as Berea. "(I) shared also with our friends through the Central Kentucky area through the Bluegrass Ad, just to let them know we are moving forward. We noticed this last weekend of course, Berea moved forward with their annual Spoonbread," Blythe said. "I think every community represented in Bluegrass Ad meeting, in that call, suggested that they were planning to follow through with their annual festivals this year with precautions of course and perhaps some modified approaches. But, they plan to proceed so I think we are right on schedule with our neighbors." To find a vaccine visit vaccine.gov. OEIRAS, Portugal (AP) As Portugal closes in on its goal of fully vaccinating 85% of the population against COVID-19 in nine months, other countries in Europe and beyond want to know how it was accomplished. A lot of the credit is going to Rear Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo. With his team from the three branches of the armed forces, the naval officer took charge of the vaccine rollout in February perhaps the moment of greatest tension in Portugal over the pandemic. Now, the county could be just days away from hitting its target. As of Wednesday, 84% of the total population was fully vaccinated, the highest globally, according to Our World in Data. Along with the rising number of shots, the COVID-19 infection rate and hospitalizations from the virus have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly 18 months. Portugal could end many of its remaining pandemic restrictions in October a coveted development for many countries still in the grip of the highly infectious delta variant and lagging in their own vaccination rollouts. Previously unheralded outside the military, Gouveia e Melo is now a household name in Portugal, having made a point of going on television regularly to answer public concerns about the vaccination program. Easily recognizable even behind a face mask due to his blue eyes, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and 1.93-meter (6-foot-3-inch) height, he's often greeted in the street by people wanting to thank him. People are very nice, he says. But the 60-year-old officer also is quick to insist he is just the tip of the iceberg in the operation and that many others share the credit. Military involvement in rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine is not uncommon elsewhere, but Portugal has given it the leading role. It turned out to be an inspired choice: Although Gouveia e Melos team works hand-in-hand with health authorities, police and town councils, the military's expertise has proven invaluable. People in the military are used to working under stress in uncertain environments, he said at his office in a NATO building near Lisbon that commands a view of the Atlantic. Theyre organized, have a good logistics set-up ... and are usually very focused on the mission. Story continues Gouveia e Melo set the tone of the rollout with his no-nonsense approach and emphasis on discipline. His straight-talking style endeared him to many who worried they might not get vaccinated in time. In an interview with The Associated Press, he admitted that replacing a political appointee who quit after only three months was intimidating. At the time, Portugal was in the worst phase of the pandemic, when it was among the hardest-hit countries with public hospitals near collapse. Promised vaccine deliveries werent arriving. And jockeying for shots was threatening to undermine public trust in the rollout. I felt like I had the eyes of 10 million people on me, Gouveia e Melo said, referring to Portugals population. His 42-year military career helps explain how he handled the pressure. He was a submarine commander, and at one point was in charge of two of the vessels at the same time -- returning to base with one, eating a meal on shore and then taking another out to sea. Gouveia e Melo also captained a frigate, led Euromarfor, the European Unions Maritime Force, and has logged the most hours at sea of any serving Portuguese naval officer. He is unapologetic about couching the vaccine rollout as a battle and has worn combat fatigues ever since taking over the effort. He said he wanted to send a message that it was a call to arms. This uniform ... was symbolic for people to comprehend the need to roll up our sleeves and fight this virus, he says. Gouveia e Melo did away with Portugals initial efforts to piggyback on established vaccination strategies, such as those used annually for flu shots in usually small, public health centers. The demands of scale and speed to address COVID-19 required a very different approach. Portugal began using large sports facilities around the country to set up what Gouveia e Melo called a production line: a reception and processing area; a waiting room; cubicles where injections are given; and a recovery area. He used soldiers as guinea pigs at the Lisbon military hospital to figure out the fastest flow of people through a building. A major push came with what he described as a tsunami of vaccine deliveries in mid-June, which allowed a shift into a higher gear. Tiago Correia, an associate professor in international public health at Lisbons New University Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reckons that the public view of Gouveia e Melo as the principal factor in the successful rollout is an exaggeration of his role. A key factor, Correia says, is the traditional consenting attitude in Portugal toward national vaccination programs. Its vaccination rate for measles, mumps and rubella, for example, is 95% -- one of the EUs highest - and there is no significant anti-vaccination movement. Even so, Gouveia e Melos military background meant he was able to cut through all the politics and ensure public trust in the rollout, Correia told AP. These days, Gouveia e Melo is often greeted with spontaneous applause from the public when he visits vaccine centers and poses for selfies. He has been the subject of TikTok videos and poems. Framed on the wall behind his desk is a drawing given to him by a child who wrote Obrigado Thank you in capital letters. On a visit Tuesday to a vaccine center at the Lisbon University campus, Gouveia e Melo strode around in his combat fatigues and handed out a cloth crest he designed for the rollout to those waiting for their shots. The emblem, worn by many in the effort, depicts a three-headed hydra lunging at two virus cells, with a green border representing the more than 4,700 people who have worked at Portugals vaccine centers. Claudia Boigues, a 53-year-old waiting in the recovery area with her 15-year-old son who had just been vaccinated, said she marveled at the swift rollout. I never thought we'd reach 85%, she said. But now we deserve congratulations. Other countries, which Gouveia e Melo declined to identify because their requests have not been made public, have asked Portugal about its effort. Gouveia e Melo will soon be able to say mission accomplished for his immediate goal. But with significant vaccination hesitancy in some wealthier countries and many poorer countries without sufficient doses, hes under no illusion that virus variants could come back to torment Portugal. Weve won a battle, he says. I dont know if weve won the war against the virus. This is a world war. - See AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic Photo of a help wanted sign along Middle Country Road in Selden on July 20, 2021. Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday RM/Getty Images A survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com suggests hiring managers have a strong preference for vaccinated applicants. Of the 1,250 managers surveyed, one-third said they would automatically throw out resumes without vaccination status. The survey was conducted in August - before President Biden announced a series of strict employee vaccine requirements. See more stories on Insider's business page. As employment numbers across the US continue to lag, a new factor in the typical hiring process could complicate Americans' return to work. One thing is clear: Companies want vaccinated employees. According to a survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com, 69% of hiring managers are more likely to hire someone who has already been vaccinated against COVID-19 than someone who has yet to be inoculated. The website, which aims to help job seekers find employment, surveyed 1,250 hiring managers across the country in August and found that vaccination status is shaping up to be a major sticking point for many companies. One-third of the hiring managers surveyed said they would automatically eliminate resumes that don't include an applicant's COVID-19 vaccination status. Of the 1,250 managers surveyed, 63% of them work for companies that were already mandating the vaccines among employees in mid-August. At those companies, 43% of hiring managers said they would throw out resumes that don't include the candidate's vaccination status, with an additional 33% saying they would give vaccinated applicants priority in the hiring process. Industries in which hiring managers surveyed said they prefer seeing applicants' vaccination status on resumes include computer and information technology, food and hospitality, retail, education, and healthcare. Companies' desire for vaccinated employees transcends work arrangement status, as well, ResumeBuilder's survey shows. Hiring managers who work at businesses where employees work a hybrid schedule are the most likely to seek out vaccinated individuals, at 72%. Sixty-nine percent of surveyed hiring managers at companies that operate in-person prefer vaccinated employees, and 61% of remote hiring managers agree. Story continues The survey was conducted on August 13, according to ResumeBuilder.com - nearly one month before President Joe Biden announced a series of stricter COVID vaccine requirements targeting both the public and private sector. The administration will require employers with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccines or weekly testing - a move slated to affect more than 80 million workers. In spite of most companies' strong preference for vaccinated employees, an applicant's qualifications are still the most important factor, according to the survey, but only barely. Fifty-three percent of the hiring managers included said they are more likely to hire a better qualified candidate, even if they are not vaccinated, over a less qualified but vaccinated applicant. Read the original article on Business Insider UNLV (0-3, 0-0 Mountain West) at No. 22 Fresno State (3-1, 0-0), Friday at 10 p.m. EDT (CBS Sports Network). Line: Fresno State by 30 1/2, according to FanDuel Sportsbook. Series record: Fresno State leads 16-7. WHATS AT STAKE? The Bulldogs moved into the AP poll for the first time since 2018 after beating No. 13 UCLA 40-37 last week. Fresno State last hosted a game as a ranked team in 2013 when Derek Carr led the Bulldogs to a 24-17 win over Utah State in the 2013 Mountain West championship game. The Rebels look for their first win since 2019. KEY MATCHUP UNLV's pass D vs. Fresno State QB Jake Haener. The Rebels rank 115th in yards passing allowed per game (286) and 121st in passer efficiency against (167.8) and now face one of the most productive QBs. Haener threw for 455 yards and two TDs last week and ranks fifth in the nation with 366 yards passing per game. PLAYERS TO WATCH UNLV: RB Charles Williams. The Fresno native comes into the game with the most yards rushing (3,194) of any active FBS player. Williams rushed for 172 yards and two TDs in the opener against Eastern Washington but has been held to 77 yards the past two weeks against Arizona State and Iowa State. Fresno State: RB Ronnie Rivers. Rivers was the star in last season's meeting, gaining 232 all-purpose yards and four TDs in a 40-27 win. He had 133 yards rushing and 99 receiving, coming up one yard shy of being the first Fresno State player to surpass 100 yards in both categories since Dale Messer in 1960. FACTS & FIGURES UNLV is 0-9 in two seasons under coach Marcus Arroyo, getting outscored by 22 points per game. ... The Rebels are playing a ranked opponent for the third straight game for the first time in school history. They have lost 24 straight against ranked teams since beating No. 15 Arizona State 23-20 in OT on Sept. 13, 2008. ... UNLV has started a different QB every game this season with Justin Rogers starting the opener, Doug Brumfield the second game and Cameron Friel last week. Brumfield should be healthy this week and able to play. ... Fresno State has won the past three games in the series by an average of 29 points. ... The Bulldogs had two receivers top the 100-yard mark last week in Josh Kelly (120 yards) and Jalen Cropper (141). ... Fresno State has six TD drives that have taken less than one minute. ___ More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 NEW YORK (AP) After being pummeled by two tropical storms that submerged basements, cracked home foundations and destroyed belongings, Northeastern U.S. residents still in the throes of recovery are being hit with another unexpected blow: Thousands of families are now swamped with financial losses because they didn't have flood insurance. Most of those caught off guard by the intense downpours from the remnants of Hurricane Ida and Tropical Storm Henri lived in areas outside of coastal floodplains, making flood insurance an afterthought for most of the working-class families whose neighborhoods were among the hardest hit. When we called the insurance company, the first thing they told us is that they dont provide any assistance for anything thats caused by a storm. And they left it at that, Amit Shivprasad said, his rising voice echoing frustrations shared among his neighbors in the Jamaica section of Queens. For weeks now, Shivprasad and his parents have been crammed into a relatives apartment after New York City building inspectors declared their home uninhabitable. Floodwaters from Ida, exacerbated by overflowing storm and sewer drains, ripped through an exterior wall and drowned two of the family's tenants in a basement apartment. The storm killed about 50 people across the Northeast, many of whom drowned in basement apartments or in cars. It lashed the region less than two weeks after a drenching from Henri. Residents in Shivprasad's neighborhood have long complained about inadequate drainage that makes flooding a frequent worry. This is not a flood zone, which is something I was shocked at, said Shivprasad, whose family home lies 4 miles inland from the nearest flood plain. If it were in a flood zone, the familys mortgage company would have likely required flood insurance. Among the roughly 10,000 homes in his neighborhood, just 16 were protected by flood insurance, according to a database compiled by the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Story continues Flood damage is not covered by homeowners or renters insurance policies. People without a flood policy have few options for getting help paying for damage, according to Loretta Worters, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute. They may be able to get federal assistance, she said, including low-interest loans and grants for damage. While officials are still calculating the losses believed to be in the billions of dollars residents wonder how theyll come up with the money to repair homes and replace belongings. Fans continue to whir in dank basements and dump trucks still make the rounds to haul away mildewed couches, squishy mattresses and now-useless electronics. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has already disbursed at least $22 million to nearly 5,200 families in New York City. More than 38,000 households have applied for aid. In New Jersey, assistance to some 39,000 families is still pending, while FEMA has paid out about $11 million to nearly 3,000 families. Thus far, about $10 million in flood insurance claims has been paid out in New Jersey to 6,000 policy holders, according to FEMA. In New York City's five boroughs, about $3 million has been disbursed for 2,600 flood insurance claims. Flood insurance, offered through the National Flood Insurance Program, is generally required for mortgages on properties considered to have a roughly 1 in 100 chance each year of flooding but is optional for everyone else. Some see it as an unnecessary cost, even as severe weather now strikes with more frequency and greater intensity. You never know, particularly with the way the world is acting right now, when that flood is going to occur in your neighborhood, said Michael Wade, a FEMA spokesperson. All you got to do is look at this particular storm, he said, and youll see that people who didnt live in flood plains and who have never been flooded before all of a sudden they get inundated with 6 inches of rain an hour. Now they got problems. John and Roseann Kiernans neighborhood in Rossmoor, a sprawling senior living development in Monroe Township in central New Jersey, is 20 miles from the coastline and not near any major rivers. The Kiernans and others said they were told over the years that they didnt need flood insurance because the area isnt in a flood zone even though the neighborhood flooded in 2005. John Kiernans mother previously owned the house and had flood insurance that cost about $650 per year, he said. She died eight years ago, and they eventually let the insurance lapse. Now, the Kiernans estimate it will cost $100,000 to get their house back to a livable condition and replace their car. Their existing policy covered nothing, said John Kiernan, a retired corrections officer. The insurance company sent out some very nice, understanding people, they listened to everybody for an hour or so, then basically said, Youre not getting anything. So thats the way it is. Around the corner from the Kiernans, Joan Russo and her husband have lived in the same house for 16 years and moved in a few days before the flooding in 2005. Their house suffered extensive water damage during Henri, forcing them to move in with her sons family in another town. When we were getting our insurance, they said, Youre not in a flood area, theres no need for that, she said. You listen to the supplier and they say you dont need it, so you dont get it. Back in Queens, Sahadeo Bhagwandin worries about how he will get his family back home. They've been spending nights at a hotel, courtesy of the Red Cross, ever since the flooding. I dont know how Ill fix this, said Bhagwandin, a structural engineer, as he pointed to a thick fissure in his basement wall. It could cost upward of $125,000 to repair his homes foundation, which buckled after floodwaters gushed into the basement. Until a few years back, Bhagwandin said, he had flood insurance bought after a 2007 storm inundated streets but the policy was later canceled. Some of his neighbors, especially working-class immigrants who face language barriers, aren't as familiar with the complexities of property insurance and might not have realized they needed separate coverage for acts of God like flooding and earthquakes. Even if they were aware of the risk of flooding, he said, their financial priorities might have been elsewhere. Its not a rich community," Bhagwandin said. "People try to save every dollar they have to do something else with it, instead of buying flood insurance." __________ Associated Press writer Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report. One person was killed and at least 12 others were injured in a shooting at a Tennessee grocery store on Thursday, according to authorities. The shooting took place at a Kroger in Collierville, about 30 miles east of Memphis, and Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said the suspected shooter died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Its with a broken heart that I have to stand before you today, Lane said. Please keep the families in your prayers. Lane called the shooting the most horrific event thats occurred in Collierville history" and said some people inside hid in freezers. They were doing what they had been trained to do. Run, hide, fight. I hate that we had to do it here," he said. One employee was rescued from the building's roof. POLICE OFFICER SLAIN IN SOUTHEAST DC SHOOTING IDENTIFIED AS MOTHER OF FOUR Information about the extent of victims' injuries and descriptions of the suspect or the weapon used in the shooting were not immediately made available. Lane did say investigators are looking into the shooter's relationship with Kroger. Kroger employee Glenda McDonald said she walked out of an office and to the floral counter when she heard a gunshot sound. "I just ran out the door," said McDonald, who was uninjured. "I left my purse, my keys, everything." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER A shelter-in-place order was placed on all Collierville schools after the shooting but has since been lifted. Schools dismissed the day as normal. The Memphis Police Department said its officers responded to the scene to support the Collierville Police Department and help secure the perimeter. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, Tennessee, Crime, Law Enforcement Original Author: Jeremy Beaman Original Location: One dead and 12 injured in Tennessee grocery store shooting It wasnt until I returned home from the Peace Corps that I noticed the eatery down the street from my house. The white sign read Darou Salaam Restaurant. Like many Senegalese restaurants trying to make it in America, it promises African food and food from all over the world. It eschews the specificity of a West African country most people havent heard of for mass appeal. I had never even noticed the place before. But now, I instantly knew this was somewhere I could speak Wolof and order a plate of thieb, a local dish made with fish, vegetables, and rice. I proceeded to do both, to the pleasure and confusion of a kitchen staff whod never seen a white American speak their language. I joined the Peace Corps in 2018 for the opportunities: to live in and learn about West Africa, to improve my French, to learn a new language on top of that, and to do some meaningful work along the way. While adjusting to life in a rural village, I never thought lessons learned there would be applicable back home. But here I was, two neighborhoods over from my childhood home in Cincinnati, speaking Wolof with a set of neighbors I had never known I had before. If my time in Senegal was the Peace Corps at its best, Wednesdays lead story, which I co-wrote with our Johannesburg-based staff writer Ryan Lenora Brown, probes a bit deeper. We find global citizens and do-gooders, yes, but also people who are disillusioned, unsure if their work is actually helpful, and questioning what representing America means in such a divided age. The Peace Corps has always had two missions: to build literal bridges through volunteer work, and to build more figurative cultural bridges. In many ways its been successful. In many ways it hasnt. What I learned reporting this story was the danger of generalizing, whether positively or negatively. No single experience with the program seemed to be universal. Amid drastically competing visions for the program, then, what is the Peace Corps supposed to do? Theres no shortage of ideas. In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, where I live now, I was out recently with some other former Peace Corps volunteers. We debated whether the organization should exist and whether it was effective a classic Peace Corps pastime. In some ways, it felt a bit rich benefiting from the program, moving to Dakar, and then pondering whether we should pull up the ladder behind us. But most crucially, we debated what we meant by effective. One can easily log the number of wells built or mothers trained in nutrition classes. Its harder to measure the impact of cultural exchange carried out, cross-border friendships made possible, or worldviews expanded. Story continues In many ways, the figurative bridges that the Peace Corps builds are exactly what todays divided yet shrinking world needs a heavy dose of. That can only happen if volunteers coming into the program bring humility, rather than elitism or saviorism. The challenge for the Peace Corps will be making sure its ideals are being lived out in the field, and not just on paper in Washington. What I know is that I wouldnt trade my experience for anything. And I hope, when speaking Wolof in Cincinnati, that I can light that same spark in my Senegalese neighbors as I felt on the rare occasions in Senegal when I had the opportunity to speak my language, English a feeling of instant relaxation, and a sense that I belonged. Related stories Read this story at csmonitor.com Become a part of the Monitor community Photo: Banda/Ben Anders Banda Design Studio, a London-based development, design, and property search business founded by the British royal familys newest father, Edoardo Edo Mapelli Mozzi, is more focused on exceptionality than prestige. That said, the companys collection of properties, which are scattered throughout the world, exude an unrivaled refined elegance. Such is certainly the case for a $13.4 million town house in Londons highly coveted Leinster Square. On the cusp of Notting Hills famous pastel-hued homes, Bandas recently completed property is an exceptional addition to the brands already impressive portfolio. Mapelli Mozzi notes, We always want to take our clients on a design-led journey: Each and every piece tells a story bringing about a unique overall experience. Our mantra at Banda is design for living, and we feel the town house reflects this vision beautifully. Though the three-bedroom 4,250 square-foot home is vibrant in essence, its palette is a gentle mixture of creamy earth tones with the occasional dramatic white-veined black marble fireplace surround. The decor, however, is the star of the space: The creatives over at Banda selected a uniquely eclectic collection of contemporary furniture, antique pieces, retro accents, and even some bespoke decor by Banda Design Studio. Plus, theres no shortage of carefully curated pieces from emerging artists and designers alike. Each detail lends itself to the homes utterly approachable yet polished look. Photo: Banda/Ben Anders That said, theres an undeniable element of glamour thats most obvious in the living room, where the ceiling is a whopping 12 feet tall and is anchored with a Nicholas Haslam terra-cotta chandelier. Even though we were working with enormous ceiling heights, we were keen for the lighting to be a central feature to this project. We aimed to feature both dramatic pieces, like the Nicholas Haslam piece, with more subtle lighting, such as the vintage brass lamp from 1stdibs that sits alongside it, Mapelli Mozzi explains. Story continues The British native wanted to infuse the space with an utterly contemporary feel without sacrificing the town houses historic bones, which is why he and his team managed to keep and restore the circa-1850 Grade IIlisted facade and offer the interiors some much-needed TLC. One of his proudest restorations? The cornices are original, but we have restored it all to its former glory, he beams. Its been an honor to breathe fresh life into it and bring it into the present day. Photo: Banda/Ben Anders He glides antique structures gently into the 21st centuryhes transformed former bakeries and breweries around townbut his signature is his clever use of material. He suggests, Natural materials are at the very heart of all of our designs. We use marbles and woods that will stand the test of time and adore stepping away from the norm in terms of color choices. And in this particular home, the attention to warmer woods, like walnut, is at the forefront now that working from home is an integral part of day-to-day life. Mapelli Mozzi considered an emphasis on calm a necessity in the library, which is wrapped in Italian fluted walnut panels. Of course, the Ward Bennett cane lounge chair thats parked at the burr walnut veneer desk adds that classic Banda element of modernism. Additional more contemporary spaces include a lower-level cinema whose walls are dressed in an amaretto-tone suede and accented with seductively curved brass Allied Maker sconces. Theres also a bar area that features striking artwork, including a piece by the Connor Brothers titled We Must Be Careful and a black-and-white David Yarrow photograph dubbed No Country For Old Men. Photo: Banda/Ben Anders Mapelli Mozzi says, The pivotal part of this project has been the quality of craftsmen and women involved. Over the past 15 years, Banda has built a little black book of the very best from around the globe, and it shows. Mapelli Mozzi and his team of experts are headed across the pond to the U.S. to work on a classic Brooklyn brownstone and several dwellings in California, including a sprawling space on San Francisco's waterfront. Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest (Facebook) The family of missing Lauren Cho have pleaded for the same level of media coverage as Gabby Petito received after she vanished from Californias high desert. Ms Cho, 30, was reported missing in late June after she disappeared in Californias Yucca Valley. She was last seen at around 3pm on 28 June in the area near Hoopa Road and Ben Mar Trail between Morongo Valley and Yucca valley. Authorities say that her friend, Cody Orell, called sheriffs at 5.13pm and told them that she had seemed upset and walked away on foot while he was inside his tour bus. Ms Cho, who is also known as El, had met Mr Orell in New Jersey and the pair had travelled across the country together. When she did not return from her walk, police say that Mr Orell raised the alarm and called her friends to help look for her. They told law enforcement that she did not take her phone, or food and water with her when she left. Earlier this week her friends and family wrote on Facebook that they understood the comparisons that were being made online to their daughters disappearance and the killing of Gabby Petito. MISSING: Investigators from the Specialized Investigations Division are assisting in the effort to locate Lauren Cho https://t.co/4Ae3rVWXNn pic.twitter.com/pPZUWNC4A1 San Bernardino County Sheriff (@sbcountysheriff) September 21, 2021 We realise that on the surface, the public information for both cases share some similarities, they wrote on Facebook page dedicated to find her. We understand the frustration many of you have expressed about how and why certain cases receive national coverage. Ultimately, these two cases are NOT the same and the differences run deeper than what meets the public eye. We are wholly appreciative of the love that continues to be shown to El. Story continues Ms Cho left the east coast after becoming dissatisfied with her music teaching job, and was renovating a school bus to use as a food truck when she vanished. On Sunday, she was going out to meet someone and wasnt saying who. I didnt pry into it then, but of course now I wish, Mr Orell, who used to date Ms Cho, told the High-Desert Star. (Facebook) Earlier this week San Bernardino County Sheriffs officials announced that its Specialised Investigations Division would be assisting Morongo Basin Station deputies in the search for Ms Cho. The search effort has previously included fixed-wing aircraft scouring nearby remote mountain terrain on 24 July, and seven canines searching the Benmar Trail home and its surrounding area on 31 July. She is described as an Asian woman, 5ft 3in tall, with black hair and brown eyes. Pictures released by sheriffs officials show she has a tattoos on her left shoulder below her collarbone, and on her inner right arm. She was last seen wearing a yellow T-shirt and jean shorts. Emina Ilora Alice Winterbottom, 15, went missing from her home in Majorca on 31 August. (Facebook) Concerns are growing for a missing British teenager who disappeared in Majorca in August. According to reports, police have launched a search for 15-year-old Emina Ilora Alice Winterbottom after she disappeared from her home in Palma on the Balearic island on 31 August. The teenager is British but lives in the Majorcan capital and it is believed her parents reported her missing after she didn't return home. The website SOS Disappeared shared an appeal for information on the missing teen. (Asociacion Sosdesaparecidos) Spanish news site Ultima Hora reported that Spain's Policia Nacional has launched a hunt for her. The site quoted a source close to the investigation as saying the case is "disturbing and of the highest priority". Read more: Vigil planned for murdered teacher, 28, attacked in park minutes from home The teenager has also been listed on the website SOS Disappeared, a not-for-profit organisation that works to help find missing people. According to the site, Emina is 15 and was last seen on 31 August 2021. Emina is British but lives in Palma, Majorca, where she has gone missing. (Getty) She is described as having long, straight chestnut-coloured hair, green eyes, and is around 5ft 6in tall. Anyone with any information on her is being asked to contact police. Watch: What does woke mean? priestlayinghandsdip_getty_750x422.jpg A Catholic priest in Italy has been arrested and accused of stealing over $100,000 from his parish which he then used to fund drug-fueled gay sex parties with his roommate. Father Francesco Spagnesi, 40, was put on house arrest after authorities received a tip that his roommate was buying and importing the date-rape drug GHB, which they then sold to guests at his sex parties. According to Corriere, Spagnesi allegedly confessed to his lawyers and has promised to make full restitution to the parishioners he victimized. So much pain, Bishop Giovanni Nerbini said in a videotaped message to parishioners at the Annunciation at Castellina after news of Spagnesi's arrest broke earlier this month. Nerbini said church leaders became suspicious last spring about financial transfers from the parish coffers to Spagnesi. When he confronted the popular priest, Nerbini explained, I was told that it was aid for needy people in the parish. As the internal investigation unfolded, however, he was forced to relieve Spagnesi of both his ministerial and fiduciary responsibilities at the parish. He then gave the priest a year-long sabbatical. In my heart, I wanted to save the person, Nerbini said. According to La Nazione, Spagnesi experienced a difficult past and had become addicted to drugs about two years ago. They also reported the Spagnesi had been sexually and romantically involved with a childhood friend for the past seven years. Police became involved in the investigation following the tip of Spagnesi's roommate being in possession of various amounts of drugs. Prosecutors alleged he purchased the drugs both online from The Netherlands and local dealers, and the drugs were then sold to gay men attending their private group sex parties, which were also arranged online. According to TV Prato, investigators believe up to 200 men may have been involved in these parties. Story continues One of Spagnesis lawyers, Costanza Malerba, said her client had confessed to the crimes and wanted to make full restitution to his aggrieved parishioners. In 2017, the Catholic Church learned of drug-fueled orgies taking place in the apartments of a high-ranking aide within the Vatican itself. Vatican police allegedly received complaints from neighbors about loud noises coming from the secretarys residence. Police allegedly entered the apartment to find men engaged in sexual activity and drugs. RELATED | Could First 9/11 Victim Become the Catholic Church's First Gay Saint? A recent study shows the health care workers who perform most of the direct care for nursing home residents are lagging in vaccination rates. JAMA Internal Medicine reports vaccination rates for certified nursing assistants are less than 50% nationwide as of July 18. Registered and licensed practical nurses were 61% vaccinated, while therapists and physicians were at 71%. Maximizing vaccination coverage among nursing home staff and residents is critical because of the extreme vulnerability of this population to COVID-19, the authors of the study wrote. According to the latest figures from the AARP COVID-19 dashboard, just 31% of Illinois nursing homes have a vaccination rate of at least 75% for all staff. It is very unfortunate that there are so many people in any given location that are unwilling to go get vaccinated, but look, the testing regimen is there in order to make sure they are not entering the institution where they work and spreading COVID-19, Pritzker said Tuesday at a Cicero health center. Vaccines will be required for all state employees at congregate housing facilities. The deadline for compliance is Oct. 4. Nationally, about 84% of nursing home residents are now vaccinated, which is being credited with slowing but not preventing the spread of the delta variant among patients. Pritzker said fear may still be playing a part in some health care workers avoiding the shot. They are people who are genuinely still afraid to get vaccinated for whatever reason, Pritzker said. They need to be educated about the vaccine. In an industry that was dealing with worker shortages before the pandemic, there are fears a vaccination mandate will cause some workers to quit and go to other health care fields. Focusing only on nursing homes will cause vaccine-hesitant workers to flee to other health care providers and leave many centers without adequate staff to care for residents, said Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living. Story continues Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, Illinois, State, Coronavirus Original Author: Kevin Bessler, The Center Square Original Location: Pritzker discouraged some long-term care workers refuse to get COVID-19 vaccine Nirvana's Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, and Krist Novoselic in 1991. (Photo: Paul Bergen/Redferns) Over the past 25 years, drummer and producer Butch Vig has established his band Garbage who just released their critically heralded seventh album, No Gods No Masters as elder statespersons of alternative rock. But Garbage actually represents Vigs second successful music industry venture. Long after Garbage found success, Vig was still being asked regularly about his career in the 90s as a record producer and about his most legendary project, Nirvanas Nevermind, which turns 30 on Sept. 24. For years, Vig downplayed talking about the album; he had his own music to promote, after all, plus it was just too painful to talk much about Nevermind and the late Kurt Cobain. However, now that enough time has passed, Vig is looking back at the past with renewed fondness. Here, in his own words, he recalls working on one of the biggest alt-rock releases of all time. (as told to Jon Wiederhorn) My relationship with Sub Pop Records started when I produced a couple albums for them. One of them was Tads Eight Way Santa, which the label was quite happy with. While I worked with them, the guys in Tad were saying, Oh, youve gotta work with Nirvana. Theyre amazing! And Id say, Yeah, OK, maybe, Not really expecting it to happen. Then one day, Jonathan Poneman, the co-founder of Sub Pop, called me and asked me if I would produce a record for Nirvana. You should work with these guys. They could be as big as the Beatles, he said. I thought that was a pretentious statement for him to make but in a way, it turned out to be true. He sent me their first album Bleach so I could check out Nirvana, and to be honest, I was sort of unimpressed. A lot of the sounds were cool and the record had a great vibe, but I thought the songs were pretty one-dimensional except for About a Girl. To me, that sounded like a Lennon/McCartney composition. The way the melody was juxtaposed over the chord progression sounded brilliant. There was a real sophistication in the writing and, as it turned out, thats where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were headed. They wanted to get much more ambitious with how they approached song structure and melody. Story continues I told Jonathan Id love to work with them and they showed up about three or four months later at the door of [my place in Madison, Wisconsin], Smart Studios. We were ostensibly making an album for Sub Pop. Chad Channing was on drums, and he, Kurt, and bassist Krist (then Chris) Novoselic showed up in the Sub Pop van. The guys were pretty grubby. They had been playing shows through the Midwest and probably hadnt had a hot shower for a week. But we just got right to work. We loaded in on a Monday and started setting up, and by late afternoon we started tracking. Kurt was outgoing, funny, and very witty, but he could also get extremely moody. Those sides of his personality flipped back and forth the whole time I was working with him. Sometimes a light switch would go off in his head and he would go sit in the corner and wouldnt say anything for a couple hours. Chad was cool on the drums, although he seemed to be having some issues right off the bat with Kurt, who wasnt particularly pleased with his drum parts. Even on the first song Sappy, at one point Kurt got up and said, No, you should play something like this, and he tried to show Chad how he wanted the part to go. It was frustrating for Chad because Kurt obviously was not a good drummer. But I could understand Kurts frustration because Chad wasnt quite getting the arrangement down the way Kurt heard it in his head. There was definitely some tension between them. Krist was great because he was really easygoing, funny, and he rolled with whatever was happening. He kept the sessions really loose. No matter what kind of darkness fell on Kurt in the studio, he would help him get back out of it by joking around or just talking to him. We had six or seven days scheduled to record before they had to do more shows, so we jumped right in. Nirvana really wanted to get takes of the songs that were tight and had a good flow. They didnt want it to drag or rush too much, but I could tell that Kurt didnt have a lot of patience. Im one of those guys who can do a lot of takes until I feel like Ive gotten the best performance I can from an artist. But if Nirvana didnt get a good take in three or four tries, they had to move on. We struggled with a couple of songs especially when Kurt wasnt happy with one of Chads drum fills but by day four we had done eight songs: Sappy, Lithium, Dive, In Bloom, Immodium [later renamed Breed], Pay to Play, the Velvet Underground cover Here She Comes Now, and Polly. Right after they did Polly, they played a show at Madison at a club called Bunkys and it was downstairs in an Italian restaurant. It held, maybe, 120 people, and the room was packed. I went to the gig and they were amazing. I had never seen them play live before and they were incredibly intense. But they had a really crappy PA and horrible monitors, so Kurt sang even louder then he normally did and he completely blew his voice out. By the end of the set he couldnt even sing. We couldnt work on any vocals the next day. We tried to do a track but no noise came out of his mouth when he tried to sing. We kind of had to blow off the last couple days of vocals, and I spent that time cleaning up and mixing the songs that we had done. The whole time we were in Madison, Nirvana were serious and dedicated. They didnt really seem like a band that wanted to go out and party. Krist liked to drink beer and Jack Daniels, but they didnt seem interested in going to a club or a bar to chase girls or anything. They were pretty focused on the music. There was a corner bar right across from Smart Studios, and they had cheap beer there and really cheap food. You could get a grilled cheese and a cup of tomato soup for $1.50 and get a big beer for another 50 cents. They were into that. But Kurt didnt seem to be much of a drinker. Even then I could tell he was having some problems with his stomach because he would always have Maalox or antacid that he would take pulls off of to try to calm his stomach down. Before they left Wisconsin, Nirvana planned to come back in two months to finish the recordings. They were happy with how the tracks we did sounded and Sub Pop was certainly happy. Jonathan Poneman flew out on the last day to see how things were going and he loved the mixes. I finished the mixes and sent them to Sub Pop and I sent some copies to the band. Nirvana pressed up 100 cassettes and ostensibly bootlegged themselves. They sent them out to all their friends, who made more copies and sent them to their friends. All of a sudden people were coming up to me and saying, Hey man, I heard the Nirvana sessions. And I said, Well, thats funny. We havent even finished recording it. But enough people at the big record labels heard it and that led to a bidding war. It got on Sonic Youths radar and Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore were huge fans, which is one of the reasons Nirvana signed with Geffen. They had much respect for Sonic Youth. Then, on my end, nothing happened for a while. Initially, I thought I was going to be doing a second session with Nirvana because thats what Sub Pop requested. But things changed after all the major labels jumped on board. At that point they were just interested in signing to a major label. Kurt wanted his band to be very successful. He was very ambitious. If youve ever looked through any of his notebooks youd see that he used to make drawings of the band playing these enormo-domes for 100,000 people. And he put together lists of what he was going to do when they were massively successful. He had a pretty intense work ethic when it came to songwriting and rehearsing. Nirvana may have come across as punk slackers, but thats definitely not who they were. But at that point I could never see them becoming these huge rock stars. There was no way to know something like that could even happen. Before Nirvana called me again they talked to three or four other big-name producers, who I knew and respected. At one point they checked with me about the possibility of me engineering for one of those guys because they felt comfortable working with me. I didnt know if I wanted to engineer for someone else, and luckily the band held out for me to produce. But I didnt really know that, because Nirvana had kind of fallen off my radar at that point. Butch Vig today. (Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic) I had just finished doing Gish with Smashing Pumpkins. Their vocalist Billy Corgan was well aware of what was going on with Nirvana and he kept asking me if I was going to work with them. And I said, I dont know if I am. It doesnt seem like it. Then I got the call and booked a flight to go to Los Angeles a week later. The day before I left, I received a tape from Kurt that they had recorded in their rehearsal space. It started out with the message: Hey Butch, we got a new drummer, Dave Grohl. Hes the best drummer in the world. Were gonna play some of the new songs. And then they clicked into Smells Like Teen Spirit. I could hear the guitar, but as soon as Dave kicked in with the drums, the boombox recording became unbelievably distorted so I couldnt hear any finesse at all in the songs. But I could hear the riff and I could feel the rhythmic power. And I could hear the hello, hello back and forth with the vocal part, which I liked. They ran through 12 or 13 songs on the cassette, and even though it sounded horrible because of the distortion, I could tell that Kurts songwriting had jumped up another step. It was quite powerful to hear Teen Spirit and Come as You Are even in their really crude form. I flew to Los Angeles and went straight to a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood with the band. The hugest difference I could tell right way was the way they sounded with Dave on drums. He was so rock-solid in terms of his groove and he hit the drums really, really hard. It made their sound way more powerful than I had ever heard it in any sort of live setting in the studio. And Dave brought this great levity to the band because he was such a goofball and he had this manic energy. Thats just part of his personality and hes really a joy to be around, because he has this incredible lust for life and music. The band was riding high. They had just got their first credit card. We put them in the Oakwood Apartments on Barham Avenue, which is right over the 101 as you cross over the Hollywood Hills. Everyone always called it the Cokewood apartments because there were a lot of B-actors and actresses who always stayed there. We got Nirvana a three-bedroom apartment and the band Europe was staying there. They were working on the follow-up to their album The Final Countdown. They were good-looking blond guys from Sweden. Nirvana would go and sit by the pool in their long, grubby flannel shirts, tattered jeans, and unkempt hair, and the comparison between the two bands was ridiculous. Nirvana were miles away from the post-glam metal that had been dominating rock music for the last three or four years. As they were sitting there and quietly making fun of the guys in Europe, no one knew that a profound change was going to happen in music. While they were staying at the Oakwood complex they totally trashed their apartment. Kurt wrote all over the walls and they had these big food fights. Kurt told me he had never lived in place that spacious and well kept. He felt like he was living in a mansion, even though it was just a corporate apartment. We did three days of rehearsals in North Hollywood, and that was when I met Dave Grohl. We had set them up in a pretty big room to practice and Kurt said, Were gonna play that new song Teen Spirit. It was the first song on the cassette they had sent me, so I said, Cool, man. I dig the song. Lets hear it. And they kicked into the song and it was so fing loud and intense it completely floored me. I got up and I was pacing around listening to them. I kept thinking, How am I gonna harness this energy in the studio? They finished the song and Krist said, Whadya think, Butch? I said, Man, this sounds great. Play it again. Play it again. Then I settled in a little bit, calmed down, and was able to focus. I watched Daves drumming to see how they were interacting. We did a few things to the arrangement, but they were very subtle. We just tightened up a couple sections. At the end theres a little break when they come out of the chorus. Theres a musical part and then Kurt goes, Yeah, and they go back into the rest of the riff. They did that over and over and over again sometimes four or eight times. I said, Thats cool, but just do it two times as a little transition. Get out of the chorus and get right back into the verse. That was one of the final arrangements we did that day. There were a couple options for how Kurt was going to sing the melody for the verse of Teen Spirit. He tried them all for me and I told him I liked the one he wound up using, which moved around more and I thought it was more like a Paul McCartney melody, which fit the song well. After three days of pre-production we went right into Sound City to record the album. We had 16 days, which seemed like plenty of time. I would get in at noon and the band would roll in at around 1 or 2 p.m. Wed record all afternoon into the evening and then they would go out at around 10 p.m. By that point they had developed a taste for going out at night. We saw the Butthole Surfers play at the Palladium. Kurt saw Rick Rubin and chased him around making comments about Ricks beard. That was the night Krist got arrested. We had tracked in the day and Kurt did some vocals while Krist dove into a bottle of Jack Daniels. We knew we were going to see the Butthole Surfers so we stopped working at about 7:30 p.m., and for some inexplicable reason we all decided Krist was fine to drive. He drove the van over one of the canyons to get down from Ventura Blvd. all the way to the other side. I was in the passenger seat, and it was the scariest ride. Krist was talking crazy and cranking the Meat Puppets really loud. When we got there, I got the keys from him and told Dave, You cannot let him drive! I lost them during the show. The Buttholes had these strobe lights onstage that made it impossible to see, and we all got split up. I got a ride home from a friend. The next day I went to the studio and didnt hear anything. At about 3 or 4 p.m., I called Nirvanas management and said, Wheres the band? Has anyone seen them today? Then I got a call back informing me that Krist was in jail. He had tried to drive and got pulled over and arrested. They left the van there along the freeway, and in the middle of the night Kurt walked back to the hotel, which was probably five miles from where they had been. So they were all exhausted the next day, and they didnt come in the studio until 6 p.m. Another night, they were hanging out with L7, and they all went to the beach in Santa Monica and took mushrooms and tripped all night long. I was in the studio going, Wheres the band, wheres the band? And they showed up at about 5 in the afternoon kind of sleepy-headed. Nirvana had their fun when they were in the studio, but when it came to recording they were pretty focused. I didnt know it at the time, but Dave told me later that they had rehearsed every day for six months and they wanted the songs to be really tight. So I didnt have to do a lot. I just gave them some suggestions for arrangements here and there if I thought something was too long. Sometimes Id suggest a drum fill to Dave. Kurt had some alternate areas where he could sing melodies, but they were all really good choices. It wasnt like I had to struggle to whip the band into shape. I had heard Come as You Are on the boombox cassette demo tape they sent me, but it was so distorted that I couldnt really hear the part when Kurt plays the riff clean. We really liked the idea of keeping the guitar trippy and watery-sounding and waiting until the bridge to really kick into the heavy guitars and let those carry it through till the end. I got Kurt to double-track his guitar. And then I got Krist to double-track the bass. The biggest battle was getting Kurt to double-track the vocals. They recorded a lot of the songs live, and we overdubbed some guitars. I would keep the live vocal, but I always liked Kurt to go back and redo the vocals because I could get a clean performance without any bleed from the rest of the band on the microphone, so you can really control the vocal sound in the mix. Kurt didnt want to double-track all of his vocals because he was afraid they would come out sounding too produced and polished. I said, Thats what John Lennon did, Kurt. And he paused and said, If thats good enough for him, its good enough for me. We had some problems at first recording Lithium. For some reason the band kept speeding up, and it took away from the power of the song. After the fourth take that didnt come out right, Kurt went right into Endless Nameless. He didnt even tell anyone he was going to do it and the rage and frustration on his face was so f***in scary. All of us were like, Whoa! The band just went into it with him, and I was rolling tape so I recorded the whole thing. And then Kurt smashed his guitar to bits at the end of it. The beginning of Territorial Pissings starts with Krist doing a really smarmy version of the Youngbloods song Get Together. That was my idea. He sang it after he had about a half a bottle of Jack Daniels in him, so its kind of loose. It was supposed to be a little bit of a knock against hippie flower power and it set the song up nicely. It was very different from a song like Drain You, which to me has this joyful melody thats almost like Mozart. The way Kurt sings it sounds sort of celebratory, but the lyrical content has a lot of pain. And I think thats one of the reasons Nevermind connected with so many people. Even though they didnt know what Kurt was singing about necessarily, they could hear the fragility and pain and frustration coming through his vocal cords. Yet the melodies were these super-upbeat pop hooks, and no one was really writing anything like that at the time. After we were done recording I went to Devonshire Sound Studios in North Hollywood to mix. That was a bit of a disaster because when I had mixed the Sub Pop stuff I did it on my own. The band was not around. It was impossible to mix with the band there. Kurt would come up to the console and say, Turn the treble off everything. I want to hear it more like Black Sabbath. And hed come up and turn the treble all the way off, and it sounded terrible. He didnt know what he was doing from an engineering standpoint. So the mixes sounded flat. The label thought they could make the recordings better, so they sent us a list of all these hot mixers. I was excited to get it because I figured wed be able to get someone really good. We started going down the list. There were the names of the best guys mixing rock music. And Kurt kept saying, Scott Litt. No. I dont want to sound like R.E.M. No to Ed Stasium. I dont want to sound like the Smithereens. He kept going down the list. And at the bottom it said, Andy Wallace: Slayer. Now, it turns out Andy also did Madonna, but Slayer was the first name on his credits, so Kurt said, Call this guy. So Andy came to L.A., mixed the album, and did an amazing job. They werent really that different from my mixes, he just put a little more fairy-dust on there, but theyre still pretty dead-simple mixes. When I listened by to the recording I thought it came out great. I knew they had written some amazing songs, and I thought we captured them well, but I was already starting to focus on my next project. I was back in Madison and the Smashing Pumpkins came in to finish some B-sides at Smart. They were there on the Fourth of July so we had a barbecue. At one point somebody said, Hey, put that Nirvana record on. I had a cassette of it, so I put it on the boombox on the picnic table in the backyard. There were 30 or 40 people there, and while it was playing no one said anything. It sort of made me nervous. It ended and someone just said, Play it again! And during the second run through someone said, Oh, my God, this is going to change the world. I said, Really? Its a good record, right? I think people were starting to hear something that I couldnt be objective about. And the next day, I was back in the studio and there were all these phone calls on Smarts answering machine from people I didnt even know. Marketing guys from Geffen called to tell me how much they liked it. They kept piling up all these calls. And I was like, Wow, somethings going on here. Then they played a show in Chicago at the Metro. I called up an artist friend of mine, Bill Rock, in Chicago and asked him if he wanted to come with me to the show. And he goes, Whos Nirvana? We got to the gig and there was a massive line around the block. It was oversold and there were a thousand extra kids trying to get in. There was an insane buzz in the air. The started out with a cover of the Vaselines song Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, and it was like Beatlemania. It wasnt even their song, and there were people in the audience crying and freaking out. That was the first time I realized the record was going to take on a life of its own. And it changed my life completely. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Sep. 23BEDFORD A public defender will represent civil rights activist Orsino Thurman at an extradition hearing on Tuesday in DeWitt County, Illinois. Bedford County is seeking to have Thurman extradited to Pennsylvania to face charges stemming from a shooting incident in Schellsburg last summer. Thurman, 37, who is originally from Milwaukee, surfaced in Illinois where he was arrested in DeWitt County and charged Monday with a rash of crimes stemming from an alleged child abduction and high-speed chase, according to Illinois authorities. Bedford County District Attorney Lesley Childers-Potts expressed frustration that Thurman was able to post bond and get out of jail. "I was disappointed and frustrated to learn that Orsino Thurman posted bond in DeWitt County," she said in a news release. "... A judge in Illinois saw fit to set bail that only required $20,000 bond to be posted. The roadblocks that we are facing will not deter my office from continuing to fight to extradite Orsino Thurman back to Pennsylvania." State police from the Bedford barracks have been searching for Thurman since he was charged on May 7 with exchanging shots with Terry Myers, 52, of Schellsburg, during a Black Lives Matter march along U.S. Route 30. State police charged Thurman with aggravated assault and illegally possessing a firearm. Meyers will stand trial in Bedford County for his role in the Aug. 24, 2020, gunfire that injured Thurman. Myers is charged with harassment and reckless endangerment. The more serious charges against him were dropped at a preliminary hearing. Myers is free on $75,000 unsecured bond. Shane Dawson said he felt like he "ruined everybody's lives" around him when he was canceled last summer. Shane/YouTube Shane Dawson appeared on his fiancee Ryland Adams' podcast "The Sip" on Wednesday. He spoke about getting canceled, and feeling like he "ruined everybody's lives" around him. The internet turned against Dawson last summer when old offensive content resurfaced. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. YouTuber Shane Dawson appeared on his fiancee Ryland Adams' podcast "The Sip" on Wednesday, where they spoke about his future as a content creator, and how that was impacted by getting canceled last summer. Dawson has been a YouTuber since 2009. He grew a following of over 20 million subscribers on the platform, becoming particularly well known for his multi-part documentary-style videos on figures such as controversial influencers Jeffree Star and Jake Paul. But in the past year, Dawson has been mostly absent from the internet, appearing only in Adams' YouTube videos and podcast, where he and cohost Lizze Gordon talk about internet drama. On the latest episode, Dawson said he felt like he had "ruined everybody's lives" around him when his past mistakes were dredged up. The internet turned against Dawson in July 2020 when compilation videos of him dressing in blackface, making pedophilia jokes, and talking about adult topics to his audience circulated online. He told Adams and Gordon that he felt Adams had taken on some of the backlash. "This is such a dark place to go, but over the last couple of years I feel like, and I've really tried to work through it, but it is hard not to feel like I've ruined everybody's lives around me because of my mistakes in the past," Dawson said. "And that was definitely a feeling for a while. And it's like, I don't know, I just felt like you've got thrown through the mud." Dawson added that he was proud of Adams and Gordon for continuing to make the podcast, and staying "loyal to the people that watch." Story continues The conversation happened about an hour into the episode, titled "Spooky Special with Shane Dawson," where they also discussed Adams and Dawson's life since moving from LA to Colorado, and mental health. Following the resurfaced clips in June 2020, Dawson posted an apology video before disappearing from the internet, reappearing in Adams' Instagram stories and YouTube videos in October 2020, which was met with a mixed reaction. Dawson and Adams recently relocated to Colorado from LA. Dawson said he was "ready to create again" in an Instagram story on August 28, according to PopBuzz. According to a recent Insider poll, Dawson has a net favorability rating of -35.3%. Out of the 15.1% of 1,105 respondents surveyed who knew him, 7.8% liked him, while 43.1% didn't. However, many of the comments underneath the podcast episode on YouTube appear to be positive, congratulating Dawson on being so open. Read more stories from Insider's Digital Culture desk. Read the original article on Insider By Crispian Balmer and Angelo Amante ROME (Reuters) - An Italian appeals court on Thursday overturned convictions in a major mafia trial, dismantling accusations that the state had colluded with Sicilian mobsters after a deadly wave of bombings in the 1990s. In a ruling read out in the Sicilian capital Palermo, Judge Angelo Pellino said three former police investigators and a close associate of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had not committed any crime in the case which had captivated Italy. However, he upheld guilty verdicts against two mobsters, including Leoluca Bagarella, a convicted killer for the Corleone mafia family. The judge's full opinion will be published at a later date. His initial ruling said charges levelled against the investigators did not constitute a crime, suggesting state officials could contact mobsters if deemed necessary. The case involved allegations state representatives had negotiated with the mob following a string of mafia bombs and assassinations that killed 23 people, including prominent anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The original verdict came in 2018 after a five-year trial. It said Marcello Dell'Utri, a Berlusconi confidant, had brokered a deal with the mob to stop the attacks. He was handed a 12-year prison term for undermining the state, as were two retired Carabinieri (paramilitary police) generals while an ex-colonel got an eight-year sentence. All four men have maintained their innocence. "This acquittal is a turning point, not only for me but for Italian justice. This trial was monstrous," Dell'Utri told Italy's Adnkronos news agency. The verdict raised questions about the effectiveness and coherence of Italian justice. "This is just the latest proof of the need for a genuine and deep justice reform," said Matteo Salvini, head of Italy's leading League party. According to prosecutors, talks between the mafia and the Italian state began after judge Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards were assassinated by a bomb under a motorway in 1992. Story continues The states willingness to enter negotiations after Falcones murder encouraged further bombings, prosecutors said, including the one two months later that killed Borsellino because he had learned of, and opposed, the negotiations. The following year Cosa Nostra stepped up the pressure with unprecedented mainland attacks on cultural and church targets, including Florences Uffizi Gallery. Ten people were killed in Milan and Florence. After 1993, the attacks abruptly stopped. The prosecutors said they would review Thursday's ruling to decide if they would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. (Reporting by Angelo Amante and Crispian Balmer; Editing by David Gregorio) Massive plundering of South Sudan's public coffers is undermining human rights in the world's youngest nation and threatening its already fragile peace process, a UN report said Thursday. Since independence a decade ago, South Sudan has struggled to emerge from five years of civil war, and is battling chronic instability, economic chaos, ethnic violence and a hunger crisis. The UN's Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said a "staggering" amount of money and other wealth had been diverted from public coffers and resources -- more than $73 million (62 million euros) since 2018, with almost $39 million stolen over a period of less than two months. It described the figure as only a fraction of the overall amount looted, saying President Salva Kiir had admitted as far back as 2012 that South Sudan's ruling elites had diverted more than $4 billion. The report said that through these actions, "South Sudan's leaders are undermining human rights and endangering security" and called on them to implement the terms of the peace deal to ensure proper economic management. "This plundering also continues to fuel political competition amongst elites, and is a key driver of the ongoing conflict, violations and serious crimes, jeopardising the prospects for sustainable peace," the commission said in a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. A 2018 ceasefire to end the civil war and a power-sharing deal was agreed between Kiir and his rival turned deputy Riek Machar but little progress has been made in fulfilling the peace deal's terms. The commission said its investigations revealed the involvement of politicians, government officials, international corporations, military personnel, and multinational banks in these "crimes". It accused South Sudan's elites of deliberately adopting a "highly informal" system of oil revenue collection without independent oversight and transparency that is enabling the misappropriation of public funds. Story continues The country, which ranks last on Transparency International's corruption index along with Somalia, is almost entirely dependent on earnings from oil. "The commission's documentation of the corruption, embezzlement, bribery, and misappropriation of state funds by political elites is merely the tip of the iceberg," commission chair Yasmin Sooka said in a statement. The report also charged that the oil industry was dominated by unaccountable consortiums, whose actions it said have caused environmental degradation and damage to people's health. It spoke of oil spills in areas of northern Unity state that have led to pre-term births, stillbirths, congenital anomalies or deaths in new-borns, blindness, male sexual dysfunction, and low fertility. It said it had identified several individuals allegedly linked to rights violations and economic crimes whose names would be passed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for possible investigation or prosecution. bur/txw/amu The Taliban are searching for a 2,000-year-old treasure called Bactrian gold. The group ruling Afghanistan reportedly said that if the treasure had been taken out of the country, it would consider that action treason against the state. The items comprising the Bactrian gold date back roughly two millenniums, RepublicWorld.com reported. INDIA SEIZES 3 TONS OF AFGHAN HEROIN WORTH $2.7 BILLION Many fear that if the Taliban are able to seize the items, they will destroy them in their attempt to cleanse the history, culture, and people of Afghanistan. The items, discovered by archaeologists in the graves of wealthy northern Afghan nomads in the 1970s, reportedly show a variety of Persian and Greek influence. Chief among these is an ornate gold crown. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The crown stands five inches tall, was forged out of hammered gold, and is adorned with leaves and a golden mountain goat. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, Taliban, Afghanistan, treason Original Author: Luke Gentile Original Location: Taliban announce hunt for ancient treasure Tennessee reported wider improvements at the elementary school level than the middle school level in summer learning camps created to make up for learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing was done in math and English and Language Arts (ELA) before and after the summer as more than 120,000 students statewide took place in the camps, which were paid for by federal pandemic relief money. The largest improvements were in elementary math, where students improved their results by 11.66 percentage points. For math it declines faster but it grows faster, Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said Wednesday. Most importantly, we did not see differences between our economically disadvantaged and not academically disadvantaged peers. The state set aside $116.8 million in pandemic relief funding for the summer program with an additional $18.5 million to pay for transportation. Not all school districts have submitted reimbursement for the summer programs, but one-third of the summer camp funding ($44.7 million) has been spent, along with 35% of the transportation funds. Districts close their books throughout the fall, so many of our districts have not fully closed their books, and so that means that those reimbursements have not yet come in or they are still pending in process, Schwinn said. We do expect that the full amount will be drawn down based on what we are seeing from what has been submitted and early reports. K-8 students had a 10.49 percentage-point improvement in math, and the average middle school specific improvement was 6 percentage points. ELA scores improved 5.97 percentage points overall over the summer with a 7.34 percentage-point increase at the elementary school level and a 0.66 percentage-point increase in middle school. What we were balancing this year is to make sure that we were keeping assessments as brief as possible and maximizing instructional minutes, Schwinn said. It is not a full [Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program] assessment. I do not think it is appropriate to give students a three-hour test at the beginning and end of the summer program. Story continues It does give us a directional sense of improvement. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Vincent Dixie, D-Nashville, welcomed the improvement scores but said it's too early to celebrate. I think the sample size of the students who attended summer school is pretty small, and Id wait until we find out more about this school year and the 1 million students who have struggled this year through the COVID-19 pandemic, schools and classes shutting down for weeks due to quarantines and the lack of consistent opportunities for remote learning during those quarantines," Dixie said in a statement. "Without taking a deep dive into the data, I applaud any learning gains but remain concerned that the lack of leadership from the Governor will wipe out any modest gains the Summer Learning Camps may have provided. Schwinn said her department received feedback and will attempt to embed some of the assessment program into the instructional work next summer. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said it was good to see the progress after the work that we have done this past year to really address the challenges that our kids have faced throughout the pandemic, particularly the challenge of learning loss that we knew was coming as a result of time away from the classroom. We anticipated the struggles that we knew were coming. Because of that understanding of what was coming, we decided early to be swift, to be bold and to lead in this effort, so we called a special session in January. Tennessee public schools will receive $4.5 billion in federal relief between spring 2020 and fall 2023. The largest portion of those funds, $3.58 billion, go directly to Local Education Associations (LEA). Also being allocated are $385 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER), $126 million in Governors Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds, $150 million in Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF) and $45 million in competitive federal grants. The state had reimbursed 77% of its ESSER 1.0 funds and 21% of ESSER 2.0 funds as of Sept. 15. The end dates for the three phases of ESSER funding are September 2022, 2023 and 2024. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: States, News, Tennessee, Students, Schools Original Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Original Location: Tennessee reports student performance improvement after summer camp program CIUDAD ACUNA, MEXICO - SEPTEMBER 20: Haitian immigrants cross the Rio Grande back into Mexico from Del Rio, Texas on September 20, 2021 to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. As U.S. immigration authorities began deporting immigrants back to Haiti from Del Rio, thousands more waited in a camp under an international bridge in Del Rio while others crossed the river back into Mexico to avoid deportation. John Moore/Getty Images Biden is facing rampant criticism over an evolving crisis involving Haitian migrants at the border. Republicans are falsely accusing Biden of allowing open borders. Top Democrats and activists are comparing Biden to Trump as he moves to deport thousands. See more stories on Insider's business page. The Biden administration is facing criticism from all angles over its handling of an influx of Haitian migrants at the US-Mexico border. Republicans baselessly accuse President Joe Biden of opening America's borders to immigrants. Meanwhile, as Biden moves to deport thousands of Haitians, top Democrats and activists are comparing his immigration policy to former President Donald Trump's. "Joe Biden is presiding over lawless open borders," GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a tweet earlier this week, even as the administration began actively deporting Haitian migrants who've fled violence, poverty, and political turmoil. "There is a growing crisis in Del Rio, Texas and across the southern border. Biden's open borders policies created this mess," the Republican National Committee tweeted on Thursday. Seemingly regardless of what Biden does on immigration, Republicans and their right-wing media allies continue to falsely accuse him of opening America's doors to anyone and everyone. "You've got to ask yourself, as you watch the historic tragedy that is Joe Biden's immigration policy, what's the point of this? Nothing about it is an accident, obviously. It is intentional. Biden did it on purpose. But why? Why would a president do this to his own country? No sane, first-world nation opens its borders to the world," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show on Wednesday, while peddling the white supremacist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. -nikki mccann ramirez (@NikkiMcR) September 23, 2021 The GOP's primary talking point on immigration has been that Biden's desire to offer a pathway to citizenship to roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants has induced a crisis at the border. "As tens of thousands of illegal immigrants come across the border, Joe Biden promises them citizenship," GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted last on Friday. "He's making this crisis much worse." Story continues But as Biden uses a Trump era rule to deport Haitians, his allies are accusing him of reneging on his pledge to take a more humane approach to immigration than his predecessor. Democrats and activists compare Biden to Trump "The question that's being asked now is: How are you actually different than Trump?" Marisa Franco, the executive director of the Latino civil rights organization Mijente, told the New York Times. "You campaigned that immigration was one of the places where Trump was inhumane and failed. And last time I checked, Trump is not the president." The Biden administration has continued to use a Trump era public health policy, a law known as Title 42, to expel migrants and deny them an opportunity to apply for asylum - and it's defended the law in court. The Trump administration began invoking the law in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spiral out of control (and as Trump simultaneously downplayed the threat of the virus). A New York Times review of government data found that officials caught people crossing the southwestern border roughly 1.24 million times from February to August, and Title 42 was used to turn them away 56% of the time. Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have called on Biden to halt expulsions and end the use of Title 42. "I urge President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to immediately put a stop to these expulsions and to end this Title 42 policy at our southern border," Schumer said. "We cannot continue these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws. We must allow asylum seekers to present their claims at our ports of entry and be afforded due process." "Haitians fleeing violence & the lack of a credible government in Haiti are being treated like animals," Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California said in a tweet on Tuesday. "U.S. government cowboys on horses used whips on Haitians as they sought refuge. Why are we following the Trump policies? This horrendous treatment of Haitians must STOP NOW." Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent progressives in Congress, in a tweet described the situation at the border as a "stain on our country." The White House this week fervently decried images of Border Patrol agents on horseback whipping at Haitian migrants. "What I saw depicted about those individuals on horseback treating human beings the way they were, was horrible. And I fully support what is happening right now, which is a thorough investigation into exactly what is going on there," Vice President Kamala Harris said on Tuesday. But the administration's words have seemingly been insufficient to top civil rights organizations. "The humanitarian crisis happening under this administration on the southern border disgustingly mirrors some of the darkest moments in America's history," Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said in a statement. "If we were to close our eyes and this was occurring under the Trump administration, what would we do? The inhumane treatment of the Haitian refugees seeking help is utterly sickening." A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuna Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 19, 2021. Paul Ratje/Getty Images 'Inhumane, counterproductive' Thousands of Haitian migrants have crossed the border in recent weeks, gathering in a makeshift camp in terrible conditions under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Haiti's president was assassinated in July, launching the already embattled country into further turmoil. Its capital, Port-au-Prince, is overrun by violent gangs. And the country is also still reeling from a devastating earthquake that killed over 2,000 in August. But the Biden administration has been adamant that Haitians, and other migrants, should not come to the US. "If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned," Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas said earlier this week. Deportation flights to Haiti began on Sunday. As a result of the Biden administration's approach to the massive influx of Haitian migrants, the US special envoy to Haiti resigned. Ambassador Daniel Foote, a career diplomat, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and said he won't be associated with the US's "inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life." The evolving crisis at the border comes on the heels of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which also led to widespread, bipartisan criticism. Read the original article on Business Insider Mitch McConnell, a la izquierda, y Kevin McCarthy, atras, habian apoyado previamente los desafios electorales de Trump. (Getty) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is still persona non grata with former President Donald Trump. The former president was quizzed on the issue during a radio interview on the John Fredericks Show, during which Mr Fredericks brought up reports in various media outlets from April speculating that he may be mending ties with the GOP Senate leader. Mr Trump held Mr McConnell responsible for not whipping senators to vote in favour of objections to the counting of the Electoral College votes from several states due to the former presidents false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. No, no, the former president said dismissively when Mr Fredericks suggested their relationship was on the mend. He went on to suggest that his endorsement was the reason that Mr McConnell won reelection against a well-funded Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, who raised nearly $90 million in her losing Senate bid while barely coming within 20 points of Mr McConnell on Election Day. The only guys who win are the guys who embraced the MAGA movement, Mr Trump said, referring to the Make America Great Again slogan as well as the phenomenon that has gripped the Republican Party where loyalty to the former president frequently trumps all other qualities in primary elections. The Senate GOP leaders campaign did not immediately respond to The Independents request for comment regarding Mr Trumps comments. Mr Trump also took aim at two GOP senators who supported his impeachment following the deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Their political opponents in the Democratic Party, the former president suggested, were more unified than the GOP caucus despite the very public feud currently ongoing between the Democrats conservative and progressive wings over President Joe Bidens infrastructure bill. The Democrats dont have a Romney and a dumb little Ben Sasse, he said, adding: They stick together whether you like them or not. Story continues In April, several news outlets, including one in Mr McConnells home state, the Lexington Herald-Leader, suggested that the feud between the two men may be abating after the Senate GOP leader declined to attack the former president or even mention his name after Mr Trump called him a dumb son of a bitch and a stone-cold loser during a donor event. At the time, allies of Mr McConnell suggested that the Kentucky senator did not hold Mr Trump in personal disregard despite his stinging criticism of Mr Trump for a dereliction of duty in a Senate floor speech while voting to acquit him at his second impeachment trial. Right now, its sort of a one-sided thing. The leader has no animosity and hes made it very clear he wants to work with the president to get the majority back, Sen John Thune told The Hill in April. Mr Thune added that he was hoping the president and leader at some point can come to an understanding. Fox News host Tucker Carlson on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Screenshot via Fox News Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked his own publisher in the opening pages of his new book. Carlson described the publisher's president as a "cartoonish corporate censor." Carlson criticized the publisher over its decision to cancel Sen. Josh Hawley's book earlier this year. See more stories on Insider's business page. Fox News host Tucker Carlson did not mince words in the opening pages of his new book, in which he targeted his own publisher, Simon & Schuster. The conservative commentator used his book's "acknowledgement" section, a space often dedicated to publicly recognize and thank everyone who helped the author, to attack his publisher's president and CEO, Jonathan Karp. "I'd like to acknowledge Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster, whose descent from open-minded book editor to cartoonish corporate censor mirrors the decline of America itself. It's been a sad education watching it happen," Carlson wrote in his new book, "The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism." The Washington Post first reported the comments. Carlson continued to slam Simon & Schuster in his introduction, rehashing when the publisher ended its book contract with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection on January 6. A day after the riot, the major publishing corporation decided to cancel its release of Hawley's forthcoming book, "The Tyranny of Big Tech," after "his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom," the company said. Hawley was among dozens of Republican lawmakers who objected to the certification of the 2020 election results on January 6 and was accused of helping incite the mob that later stormed the Capitol. Carlson has regularly defended the senator on his nightly Fox News show and did so again in his book, writing: "None of Hawley's behavior on January 6 seemed especially controversial." Story continues Upset by Simon & Schuster's cancelation of Hawley's book, Carlson said he reached out to Karp and the publisher's senior vice president, Dana Canedy, for further explanation. "This seemed like a worrisome standard to me-not to mention unintentionally hilarious-and I said so," Carlson wrote in his book. "'You can see why this would make people who believe in free expression and the intellectual life of the country nervous, can't you?'" he asked the publisher's executives during a Zoom call, per the book. "No," Canedy replied, according to the book. "I can't. I actually can't." "It's a business decision, Tucker," Karp said, per the book. "The explanation was absurd," Carlson wrote in his book. Hawley soon made a deal with a conservative publisher, Regnery Publishing, to release his book after Simon & Schuster dropped him. The book came out in May. Carlson also called out Simon & Schuster's cancelation of far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos' book in 2017 after he made controversial comments about pedophilia. In the past year Simon & Schuster has published explosive books by former President Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump, former national security advisor John Bolton, and veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster is set to publish a memoir in 2023 by former Vice President Mike Pence. Hundreds of the publisher's employees disputed the deal and petitioned against it, arguing that publishing Pence's book would be "legitimizing bigotry." Yet Karp dismissed the petition, Fox News reported. Simon & Schuster did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider The speaker of Tunisia's parliament Rached Ghannouchi called Thursday for "peaceful struggle" against a return to "absolute one-man rule", a day after President Kais Saied took steps towards rule by decree. "There is no longer any alternative to struggle, naturally a peaceful struggle," the head of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party said in an interview with AFP. Saied on Wednesday announced decrees that strengthen the powers of his office at the expense of the government and parliament. Ghannouchi called the moves "a step back towards absolute one-man rule" a decade after Tunisia's 2011 revolution. "We call on the people to take part in peaceful actions to resist dictatorship and return Tunisia to the path of democracy," he said. The new provisions come almost two months after the president sacked the Ennahdha-supported government of Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament, presenting himself as the ultimate interpreter of the constitution. Ennahdha, the largest party in the divided legislature, condemned the July 25 moves as a "coup d'etat" and a violation of the country's hard-won 2014 constitution. While many Tunisians backed Saied's moves out of frustration with the political system, some observers saw them as a setback for the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings. Ghannouchi, 80, camped out for 12 hours in front of parliament in Tunis after Saied's power grab. "The situation is worse now than it was before July 25," he said in Thursday's interview. Before that "there were no arrests over blog posts, no thousands of Tunisians banned from leaving the country". - 'Authoritarian slide' - Tunisia has seen years of political deadlock since its 2011 revolution, with fractious coalitions and short-lived governments proving unable to resolve pressing social and economic crises. Elections in 2019 produced another fragmented parliament that once again allowed Ennahdha to dominate the government. Story continues The resulting legislative deadlock, crippling a country hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, meant Saied's July power grab enjoyed significant public support. But civil society groups have warned against a slide towards authoritarianism that would wipe out Tunisia's democratic gains a decade after the revolution toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. "The president has gone back to before the revolution," Ghannouchi said. He said his party was ready to work with all sides to restore democracy in Tunisia. Ghannouchi founded Ennahdha four decades ago and has remained at the helm ever since despite years of exile under the dictatorship of Ben Ali. - 'Harsh methods and violence' - After Ben Ali fell in the 2011 revolution, Ennahdha made a return to politics and has since been part of every parliamentary coalition, backing the country's string of short-lived governments. But the party has clashed with Saied, a former legal academic who bitterly opposes Ennahdha and Tunisia's party system, instead calling for a form of decentralisation. "The president has convictions he expressed before he took office: his vision of popular government, his rejection of political parties, parliaments. That is his choice, his right," Ghannouchi said. "But its not his right to use harsh methods and violence." Ennahdha is the most organised party in the deeply fragmented 217-seat legislature, which is also headed by Ghannouchi. But since 2014, the party's share of the vote has plummeted. It has also seen internal fractures in recent years as younger members have demanded changes at the top, including replacing Ghannouchi himself. "The one positive aspect of the presidents decisions is that they will unify Ennahdha with other political parties and unify Ennahdha itself," Ghannouchi said. Asked if his party would take part in elections were Saied to call them, he said: "We would take part, absolutely." kl-ezz/par/hc Two wildfires were threatening California's sequoia trees overnight hours after authorities issued fresh evacuation orders and warnings, along with air quality alerts. The big picture: Air quality alerts were issued Wednesday for the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley as smoke from the Windy and KNP Complex fires resulted in hazy, "ash-filled" skies from Fresno to Tulare, the Los Angeles Times notes. Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free. The Tulare County Sheriff's Office issued an evacuation order late Wednesday for communities in the Camp Nelson area of the Sierra Nevada, just northwest of the Sequoia National Park, as the Windy Fire neared. The sheriff's office issued evacuation warnings hours earlier for residents in and around Eshom and Hartland Camp, some 80 miles north of Camp Nelson, due to the approaching KNP Complex Fire. For the record: Both wildfires have burned across nearly 60,000 acres and are largely uncontained, as they threaten communities and sequoias, including in the Sequoia National Park which contains the world's largest tree by volume. It's one of more than 2,000 giant sequoias in the park. Of note: Firefighters' prevention efforts, including prescribed burns and wrapping the giant sequoia tree trunks in aluminum foil, have helped avoid major damage to trees in the Sequoia National Park's Giant Forest. Yes, but: KNP incident spokesperson Mark Garrett said the blaze was threatening the Lost Grove and Muir Grove, where hundreds of giant sequoias are located, and they "don't have the prescribed fire history like Giant Forest," per the L.A. Times. Fire information officer Thanh Nguyen told the news outlet that officials had confirmed that a "portion of one giant sequoia" along a trail in the Giant Sequoia National Monument area of Sequoia National Forest and the Tule River Indian Reservation, "was confirmed to have burned" in the Windy Fire. The big picture: Several world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly have appealed for action on cutting emissions and combating climate change, which scientists say make wildfires larger and more intense. Story continues The World Health Organization updated air quality guidelines on Wednesday after finding that negative health effects from air pollutants can begin at lower levels than it previously thought. The #KNPComplexFire grew by about 1,399 acres and based on infrared flight, it is at about 28,328 acres. There is 0% containment. There are 1,412 personnel assigned to the fire, which includes 42 crews, 55 engines, 20 water tenders, and 8 helicopters . pic.twitter.com/xou1jRi8FR Sequoia & Kings Cyn (@SequoiaKingsNPS) September 22, 2021 Go deeper: Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from Nguyen. More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free Two Afghan refugees have been federally indicted for crimes allegedly committed during their stay at Wisconsins Fort McCoy. Bahrullah Noori, a 20-year-old Afghan evacuee, is being charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person along with three other counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. PLUNGE AMONG INDEPENDENTS DRAGS DOWN BIDEN APPROVAL RATINGS: POLL Nooris alleged victims are under the age of 16. Additionally, 32-year-old Mohammad Haroon Imaad is being charged with assaulting his wife by choking and suffocating her on September 17. FOUR HOUSE REPUBLICANS FILE IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES AGAINST BIDEN OVER BORDER AND AFGHANISTAN The two have been removed from the base and are being held at Dane County Jail. If convicted, Noori faces a minimum of 30 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison for the use of force charge alone. Imaad faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Roughly 12,500 Afghans are being housed at Fort McCoy after being airlifted out of their country last month during President Joe Biden's military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Officials at Fort McCoy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News. VILNIUS (Reuters) - The top U.S. Army general in Europe said on Thursday the United States and Lithuania would work to preserve the continent's peace "no matter who positions what, where", after Belarus and Russia held war games and set up a military training centre. Christopher Cavoli, the commanding general of the U.S Army Europe and Africa, added in answer to reporters' questions that the United States and its allies were paying close attention to the joint Russian and Belarus training and combat centre. Cavoli was speaking on a visit to Vilnius where he discussed regional security with Lithuanian General Valdemaras Rupsys. The "Zapad-2021" military exercises took place on Russia's and Belarus's western flanks, including sites close to the borders of the European Union, and their proximity has unsettled neighbours including Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin denies the drills are directed against any foreign power and says they are sensible given increased NATO activity near Russia's borders and those of its allies. Asked about the joint training and combat centre established by Russia and ex-Soviet ally Belarus, Cavoli replied the United States and its allies "pay close attention" to it, as part of their overall monitoring of the positioning of forces inside Europe and on its peripheries. "We keep an eye on things and we make sure that in any eventuality, no matter who positions what, where, that we take that into producing deterrence and continuing peace inside of Europe," he said. Russia has maintained close military and economic ties with Belarus while Western countries have ostracised the country since Alexander Lukashenko cracked down on mass protests that erupted after he won a disputed presidential election. Rupsys said he and Cavoli discussed "common actions in case of a crisis or a war". The United States has deployed a battalion of troops and equipment in Lithuania, including Abrams tanks, in rotations since late 2019. "We discussed the security situation in region, U.S. forces presence in Lithuania, common exercises and common actions in case of a crisis or war", Rupsys told reporters, adding Cavoli had assured him the United States and Lithuania would act together "in face of a threat". (Reporting by Andrius Sytas, Editing by William Maclean) Latin Americans lying beneath unmarked tombstones and in mass graves across the region are recovering their names, decades after the conflicts that took their lives. Driving the news: Last week six Argentine soldiers who died during the 1982 Falklands War were ID'd through forensic anthropology and genetic testing, as part of an international project supported by the Red Cross. Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free. Five had been buried under a single tombstone reading C.1.10: Argentine soldier known only to God. Why it matters: The identification of sometimes minuscule remains is helping to build cases so justice can still be served and families can finally get closure. Experts around the world have engaged in the pioneering work. The Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF), for example, has supported investigations in 35 countries, including identifying remains of migrant people who died on the U.S.-Mexico border, or the search for people missing during Apartheid in South Africa or due to war crimes in the Central African Republic. The team was originally formed in 1984 to trace thousands of people forcibly disappeared by the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship. Details: A similar team in Guatemala has so far identified over 3,700 people who were slaughtered or disappeared during three decades of civil war. Forensic anthropology is prominent in an El Salvador court case arising from one of the worst massacres committed during the civil war: The slaughter of 1,000 civilians, half of them children, by a U.S.-backed army unit in El Mozote in 1981. The El Mozote-related trial is currently underway, though its future is uncertain after the leading judge retired. Last year, Colombia launched a national plan to identify victims of the 50-year conflict primarily with the FARC guerrillas, using techniques developed by forensic anthropologists in the region. Of note: Several of the Latin American forensic anthropology teams were founded with help from U.S. bone detective Clyde Snow. Story continues Between the lines: Many of the people who do this work are not professionally trained, such as the Buscadoras in Mexico, who developed through trial and error a way to find remains in cartels extermination fields. They insert a metal rod deep into the soil. If it smells like rot when taken out, they dig, hoping to find their loved ones. Authorities claim they are too overwhelmed to search for those reported missing under violent circumstances, with official estimates pointing to over 85,000 people disappeared since 2006 and over 1,600 mass graves sites found just in the past three years. What theyre saying: We will give our lives to find our loved ones, even if they are in hell itself, like these places are, because we do not accept that their deaths be swept under the rugs just because their bodies cant be found, searcher Edith Perez of Mexico tells Noticias Telemundo. Go deeper: Seeking DNA samples to identify those "disappeared" Get more news that matters about Latinos in the hemisphere, delivered right to your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sign up for the Axios Latino newsletter. Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free. The US special envoy to Haiti resigned Thursday two months after his appointment, denouncing the Biden administration's deportation of Haitian migrants from the US-Mexico border back to their home country. "I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti," State Department Special envoy Daniel Foote said in a scathing letter of resignation. In the letter to US Secretary of state Antony Blinken, Foote described Haiti as a place where US diplomats "are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life." "Mired in poverty, hostage to the terror," Foote wrote, the Haitian population "simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy." "More refugees will fuel further desperation and crime," he wrote. The resignation came after the administration of President Joe Biden began last weekend loading Haitian migrants who crossed into the country from Mexico onto aircraft and flying them back to haiti. Many of the thousands who crossed the border actually travelled from South America, where some said they fled to years ago from the grinding poverty of Haiti. pmh/dw PARIS (Reuters) - French vaccine maker Valneva is expanding trials of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate called VLA2001, and remains in talks with the European Commission over a potential contract, the company said on Thursday. Valneva shares plunged 42% after Britain said on Sept 13 that it cancelled its contract for about 100 million doses of the vaccine the company is developing, partly over concerns about when it would win approval for use. "Valneva continues discussions with the European Commission regarding a potential VLA2001 supply contract," the company said in a statement. "The company is also actively pursuing opportunities to make VLA2001 available to other customers, subject to positive Cov-Compare data and regulatory approval." Its shares rose 6.5% on Thursday, up around 33% from a low hit on Monday and up 82% since the start of the year. Valneva's vaccine candidate, which relies on an inactivated virus similar to flu vaccines, is seen by some as having the potential to win over people wary of vaccines that use new mRNA technology. "Topline results from the pivotal Cov-Compare trial are expected early in the fourth quarter of 2021 and are intended to form the basis for potential regulatory approval in adults," Valneva said. Chief Executive Thomas Lingelbach added "We're confident that many countries, and regulators, will want to have the opportunity to consider our inactivated COVID-19 vaccine." Valneva said it has started to recruit adolescents, aged 12 to 17 years, in the UK. A further expansion of the study to include volunteers younger than 12 years old is also envisaged, subject to data from the adolescent group. The VLA2001 candidate vaccine is also now being evaluated in elderly volunteers in New Zealand, Valneva said. Last week, British health minister Sajid Javid told lawmakers it was "clear" that Valneva's vaccine would not be approved by Britain's medicine regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Story continues His answer has now been corrected on the official parliamentary record to remove the phrase "would not get approval", replacing it with "has not yet gained approval... and may not." A government spokesman said that it would not comment on commercial decisions but the cancellation of the contract would have "no impact on our vaccine supplies for the autumn". "Clinical trials for the Valneva candidate vaccine have not yet been completed," he said. "As such, our independent medicines regulator - the MHRA - has not approved the Valneva candidate vaccine for use in the UK." (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris and Alistair Smout in London; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Clarence Fernandez and Jane Merriman) Storyful A sneaky shark circled an alligator and nibbled on its foot while it was minding its own business near a dock in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.Cory Conlon filmed a video that shows a shark and an alligator appear near the surface of the ocean. Onlookers throw pieces of fish into the water to feed the two before the shark decides to get close to the alligator to bite its foot. The alligator reacts and charges in the sharks direction, while the shark continues to swim beneath the gator.I was surprised to see this so I filmed it with my phone to show family and friends, Conlon told Storyful. Credit: Cory Conlon via Storyful BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Software Volkswagen AG used to alter pollutant emissions based on the temperature and altitude is illegal unless it prevents potentially dangerous sudden damage to the engine, an adviser to the EU's top court said on Thursday. The finding, if confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), is the latest step in a series of cases following the German carmaker's 2015 admission of wrongdoing in the Dieselgate scandal. Judges at the CJEU typically follow opinions of the advocate general, but are not bound to. Volkswagen said the temperature windows used in VW group vehicles was permissible because their their purpose was to prevent sudden and immediate risks of damage to the engine. The case, brought by consumers in Austria, centres on software controlling a valve that recirculates exhaust gases from the engine outlet. This reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which can cause respiratory problems in humans. The software shuts off the valve at temperatures outside the range of 15-33 Celsius (59-91 F) and at altitudes above 1,000 metres (3,280 feet), increasing NOx emissions. The consumers contend this is a prohibited defeat device, for which they should be compensated. In his legal opinion, CJEU advocate general Athanasios Rantos noted the court ruled last December that emissions-rigging software was illegal, even if it contributed to preventing ageing or clogging up of the engine. Rantos said the temperature window was not representative of real driving conditions in Austria and neighbouring Germany, as the average temperature was significantly lower than 15 C. Vehicles would also often be driven above 1,000 metres. The software was a "defeat device", he said, and could only be justified if a malfunctioning of the valve had a sudden impact on the engine, such as a power failure while being driven, even if the vehicle undergoes regular maintenance. The advocate general said that it was for the Austrian courts to determine where the defeat device was necessary. He added that one court had said this was impossible to do. (Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels and Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt; editing by Barbara Lewis) Sep. 23WHITLEY COUNTY Employees, contractors and volunteers of the Whitley County Health Department will now be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine. On Monday night, the Whitley County Board of Health met virtually where board members voted to approve a policy requiring that all employees, contractors and volunteers performing work at or on behalf of the Whitley County Health Department be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. "We have worked hard to vaccinate our staff the best we can," said Whitley County Health Department Public Health Director Marcy Rein. "We have a really high vaccination rate, somewhere between 88 and 91 percent vaccinated at this point. But we do have some that have not gotten vaccinated and have indicated that they are not planning on it for a variety of reasons." While the mandatory vaccination policy does require that all employees, contractors and volunteers be fully vaccinated, it does allow for exemptions for medical or religious reasons or a conscientiously-held belief. It will provide a timeframe for those who are unvaccinated to get their vaccine and give them the choice of which vaccine they get and what provider they go through, as well as time off for any side effects related to the vaccine or time off if they were to get COVID-19. "I think it's really important for us to have this policy for several reasons," Rein said. "One is we have a role in modeling to our community the behavior that we're asking others to do, so as a public health entity, I think it's important for us to model our vaccinated status. We provide patient care for very vulnerable patients, particularly in home health and so, we want to keep our patients safe, we want to keep the people that come to the health department for services safe. And I have some concern for liability in that patient care or staff exposure if we have unvaccinated staff providing care on an ongoing basis." Story continues Those who choose not to follow the mandate will face disciplinary action and possible termination, unless they have asked for accommodations due to a medical or religious exemption. During Monday's meeting, Rein also discussed third doses of the COVID-19 vaccine which the health department is currently offering to those who are immunocompromised. Rein said the health department is not currently offering the COVID-19 booster shot, only third doses for those who are immunocompromised. Rein also reported to the board of health that the health department's Health Access Nurturing Development Services or HANDS program, which is a voluntary home visitation program for new and expectant mothers, had 352 visits in August. "HANDS has been doing much of its visiting still via telehealth," Rein said. "We did try to move back to home visits. With the case rate high, if they are doing a home visit, we are requiring them to do it outdoors, so we've had some adjustment in how we're doing those services going forward." The Whitley County Health Department is looking at developing a mobile app for community members to take advantage of. "It's going to be basically an electronic version of the written resource guides that we produce for the community," Rein said. Rein told board members the app would be free on Google Play and in the App Store but likely won't be ready for a few weeks. "We're really excited about it," she said. "It's an opportunity to advertise better what the health department does but it's also an opportunity to make it easier to find information about how to access community resources, like if they need a food bank or a place to go for housing and transportation and things like that." The Whitley County Board of Health is scheduled to meet again on November 15, location to be determined. Xi Jinping For decades life in China had evolved around its home-grown version of let-it-rip capitalism. Despite being technically a "communist" country, the government had put its faith in trickle-down economics, believing that allowing some people to become extremely rich would benefit all of society by dragging it out of the disastrous quagmire of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution as quickly as possible. To an extent it worked. A large middle class has emerged and people in virtually all strata of society now have better living standards as a result. Wealth disparity From the stagnation of the 1970s China has been thrust to the top of the pile, now challenging the United States for global economic dominance. But it left a chasm of income disparity. It is there to be seen in the children of those who were in the right place and the right time. Parents who were able to take over factories in the 1980s made exorbitant profits which have paid for their progeny to now drive flashy sports cars around gleaming cities, zooming past the construction workers who wonder how they will ever be able to afford to buy a home. The get-out-of jail card for the Party had always been the phrase "with Chinese characteristics". The concept of socialism - "with Chinese characteristics" - allowed the government massive philosophical leeway to run a society which, in many ways, was not very socialist at all. General Secretary Xi Jinping appears to have decided that this is no longer acceptable. The Chinese government, under his leadership, has started putting the Communist back in the Communist Party, at least to some extent. Despite the communist system, there is a huge gap between China's richest and poorest people The new catchphrase is "common prosperity". It hasn't really appeared yet on the street side propaganda posters but this can't be far off. It is now the cornerstone of what China's leader is doing. Crackdowns on daily life Under this banner, targeting tax evasion by the wealthy makes more sense, as do moves to make education more equitable by banning private tutoring companies. The ongoing crackdown on the country's tech giants can also be seen as part of the plan. Story continues So does Xi Jinping really believe in this idea of a communist project? It is hard to be 100% sure but some observers would say it certainly seems that way. China is this year celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party As a comparison, in the past it didn't feel like that with many other Party officials. The thing is that - along with the wealth redistribution aspects of the communist path - Mr Xi also seems to believe that this means thrusting the Party back into most aspects of daily life, as the only realistic way of achieving what needs to be done. Kids are being lazy, wasting away their youth playing video games? Party to the rescue: three-hour gaming limit. Teenagers having their minds poisoned with silly, idol-worshipping television? Party to the rescue: "sissy looking" boys banned from programmes. Demographic time bomb ticking: Again, the Party has the solution: Three-child policy for all! Football, cinema, music, philosophy, babies, language, science the Party has the answers. At odds with his father's beliefs To try to understand what has made Xi Jinping the leader he is today you have to take a look at his background. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a Communist Party war hero, known as a moderate, who was later purged and imprisoned in the Mao era. At the time Mr Xi's mother was forced to denounce his father. After his father's official rehabilitation in 1978, he pushed for economic liberalisation in Guangdong Province and reportedly defended one of China's most progressive leaders Hu Yaobang. Given the persecution of Mr Xi's father at the hands of Communist Party zealots, given his father's inclination towards reform, many have asked why Xi Jinping now seems to be taking the Party in a direction which would appear to be at odds with his father's beliefs? There are various possible explanations. Perhaps he simply disagrees with his father's line on certain political matters. Or maybe China's leader intends to pursue a plan which, while different in emphasis to the priorities of his father, will not end up anywhere near the policies of the Mao era. At least not intentionally. However, it does still seem quite remarkable. Xi Jinping appears on a large screen during an event marking the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party When his father was sent to prison, Xi Jinping, at the age of 15, was made to go to work in the fields for years, living in a cave house. These tumultuous times clearly toughened him up but could just have easily transformed into a hatred of politics, especially of a hard-line variety. Some China watchers have speculated that he perhaps believes that only a strong leader can guarantee that China will not return to the chaos of the 1960s and 70s. And remember the rules have now been changed so that he can remain in power for as long as he likes. One reason for all this guess work is that we never hear him explain what he is doing in terms of his decisions. China's leaders do not give interviews even with the compliant Party-controlled media. Mr Xi turns up in rural villages for television opportunities and is welcomed by orchestrated crowds of cheering locals who receive his wisdom on corn growing or other aspects of their work and then he leaves. So it is hard to predict what new rules, restrictions or guidelines might be placed on economic activity in China or how far any of this will go. In recent times, barely a week has gone by without a major change to the regulations governing one part of the Chinese system or another. It has been, frankly, difficult to keep up with them. Many of these changes have come completely out of the blue. It is not that there is an innate problem with the state controlling various levers of production here. That is for economists to debate in terms of what is most efficient. The problem has been the sudden uncertainty. How can anybody reliably make investment decisions if they don't know what the ground rules will be in a month's time? There are those here who see the whole process as a natural part of the country "growing up". In areas which had been unregulated there have needed to be regulations. If this is the case, then this period of shock tactic transition may be only a temporary state which will eventually calm down as new rules become clear. But it is by no means clear what the length or breadth of these moves will be. One thing that is certain is that any shift should be seen through the prism of Xi's "common prosperity" drive at a time when the Party will not give up an inch of its power while implementing it and, in China, you can either get on board this truck or get run over by it. This is the first in a three-part series looking at China's changing role in the world. Parts two and three will explore how Beijing is rewriting the rules of doing business and the global implications of this. REDDING, Calif. (AP) A woman has been arrested on suspicion of starting a Northern California wildfire that spread rapidly, burning homes and prompting evacuation orders Thursday in a rural community, authorities said. Workers at a nearby quarry reported seeing a woman acting strangely and trespassing in the area in Shasta County where the Fawn Fire was sparked Wednesday afternoon, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement. Later Wednesday, Alexandra Souverneva walked out of the brush near the fire line and approached firefighters and told them she was dehydrated and needed medical help, Cal Fire said. Souverneva, 30, was taken out of the area for evaluation and treatment. During an interview with Cal Fire and law enforcement, officers came to believe Souverneva, of Palo Alto, was responsible for setting the fire, officials said. She was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail. It wasn't immediately known if she has an attorney. KRCR-TV aired video Thursday of multiple houses burning near the unincorporated Mountain Gate area north of the city of Redding. Officials said 25 structures were destroyed, but didn't specify how many were homes. The number of people affected by evacuation orders was not immediately known. People living in other areas were warned to be prepared to leave. About 2,000 structures were threatened. The fire scorched more than 8.5 square miles (22 square kilometers) of heavy timber on steep, rugged terrain amid hot, dry and gusty conditions. It was just 5% contained. Statewide, more than 9,000 firefighters remained assigned to 10 large, active wildfires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. California fires have burned 3,671 square miles (9,507 square kilometers) this year, destroying more than 3,200 homes, commercial properties and other structures. Those fires include two big forest blazes growing in the heart of Californias giant sequoia country on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Smoke from those fires raised air quality concerns for the southern end of the Central Valley and flowed over greater Los Angeles, darkening skies and causing mistaken reports of mountain fires. Story continues On Wednesday, officials showed reporters how Sequoia National Parks famous Giant Forest has been protected from the KNP Complex fire by years of using carefully set and controlled fires to burn away vegetation that can serve as wildfire fuel. The bases of some of the most famous giant sequoias were also wrapped in fire-resistant materials. Giant Forest has 2,000 sequoias and includes the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world by volume. The fear of catastrophic fire coming through that section of the national park has been greatly reduced because of the combination of the prescribed burns and the low intensity of the fire that moved into part of the forest, said Ed Christopher, deputy fire director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And because of that, we feel that the majority of the trees in this Giant Forest area should come out of this event like they have for the past thousands of years, he said. Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say 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. The KNP Complex began as two fires ignited by lighting on Sept. 9. The fires later merged into one and have charred more than 56 square miles (145 square kilometers). Sequoia and adjacent Kings Canyon National Park have been closed. Several communities are under evacuation orders or warnings for people to be prepared to leave. There was no containment. Nearby, the Windy Fire has burned through nearly 77 square miles (199 square kilometers) on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in Sequoia National Forest, including Giant Sequoia National Monument. It was just 6% contained. Also ignited by lightning on Sept. 9, the Windy Fire has forced the evacuation of small forest communities, but no privately owned structures had burned as of Thursday morning. A fire lookout structure and a radio repeater site on a peak were destroyed by the blaze. The fire has moved through several groves of giant sequoias and damaged one of the big trees on the famed Trail of 100 Giants. An expert from Yosemite National Park was expected to examine the groves Thursday. A New Zealand father announced Thursday via a public letter to his pastor that he had forgiven his wife for allegedly killing their daughters, saying she was also a victim in the tragedy. Graham Dickason wrote in the letter that even though he would carry the loss of his precious angels for the rest of his life, he already forgave his wife for the alleged homicides and urged others to do the same. The letter was read aloud on Thursday by a reverend during a candlelight vigil outside the familys home in Timaru, according to Associated Press. TWO MEN ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED ILLEGAL SMUGGLING OF KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN The Dickason family moved to New Zealand from South Africa in late August. The father returned home from work just before 10 p.m. on Sept. 16 and found the bodies of his daughters. Neighbors called police when they heard a man screaming and crying, the outlet reported. Emergency services said that when they responded, they found Mr. Dickason's wife, Lauren, who was hospitalized in stable condition and later charged with murder by the police. She is being kept at a psychiatric facility ahead of her next scheduled court appearance on Oct. 5, per the outlet. A motive for the alleged murders is still unclear, as her social media pages indicated no internal conflicts within the family. She celebrated the couples wedding anniversary on Facebook in May and also encouraged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the outlet. Mandy Sibanyoni, a childminder worker for the Dickasons in South Africa, told the outlet that the Dickasons were an awesome family with wonderful kids with no obvious problems. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER I dont know what to do about this because the only question that Ive got now is, 'what happened?'" She told the outlet. "What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids. Washington Examiner Videos Tags: News, New Zealand, Family, murder Original Author: Asher Notheis Original Location: New Zealand father says he forgives wife for killing their three daughters New Delhi: The Indian Army eliminated three terrorists in the Rampur sector near Uri on the Line of Control (LOC) on Thursday. The terrorists had recently crossed over from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir into the Indian side. Five AK-47s, eight pistols, 70 hand grenades were recovered from the terrorists killed in the operation. Addressing a press conference, 15 Corps Commander Lt Gen DP Pandey, said the movement was observed in the Hathlanga forest during the early morning and an attempt at infiltration was made. In a short and brief operation, the terrorists were eliminated by the alert soldiers along the LOC. On September 18, a similar attempt was made which was also foiled. So within a week, one attempt has been foiled and the terrorists were eliminated in the other, he said. A movement was observed in Hathlanga forest early this morning. The attempt was eliminated, with neutralization of 3 terrorists A similar attempt was made on (September) 18, which was foiled: Lt Gen DP Pandey, General Officer Commanding (GOC), Srinagar's Chinar Corps(15 Corps) pic.twitter.com/V7j5ZAbFun ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 Lt Gen Pandey said that documents obtained from terrorists show that at least one of them is a Pakistani. He said verification of documents will be done and further details will be released. Lt Gen Pandey said that the army was receiving inputs since the last few weeks about the increasing level of activities at the launch pads used for infiltration by Pakistan and there is complicity and connivance by local Pakistan military commanders. The current peace and stability, tourism, visits of MPs in Kashmir valley is rattling some elements from Pakistan. Their attempts will not sustain here for long. We are committed to maintaining peace, he said. Indian Army has eliminated 3 terrorists in Rampur sector near Uri on LoC. The terrorists had recently crossed over from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir into Indian side. Indian Army has recovered 5 AK-47s, 8 pistols & 70 hand grenades from terrorists killed in operation: Govt sources ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 Vijay Kumar, Inspector General (Kashmir) said that police and the army have been offering a chance to terrorists to return to the mainstream. Initially, it received a lot of support from all. Tourism is increasing here. Over 300 MPs have also made visits here. After the death of (Syed Ali Shah) Geelani, people have demonstrated that they want peace. This has frustrated several elements from Pakistan. They are thus killing innocent civilians, unarmed police officers using pistols that are easy to carry and conceal. Ninety-seven pistols have been recovered this year. It is Pakistans agenda to send weapons here and create an atmosphere of terror, Kumar said. New chrome version, Chrome 94 released: Check Chrome 94 Features New Delhi, Thu, 23 Sep 2021 Supratik Mitra The stable update for Chrome 94 has been released by Google for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows operating systems. The updates will be rolled out over the coming weeks, bringing new security features, new functionality, and bug fixes. Chrome 94 stable is the first version of Chrome to be released under the new four-week cycle. Chrome updates were formerly delivered every six weeks. HTTPS-First mode is one of its characteristics, which makes browsing safer for consumers. In addition, Google stated that Chrome 94 fixes 19 separate security vulnerabilities. On September 21, Google Chrome received an upgrade, which was mentioned in a blog post. HTTPS-First mode is a new feature in Chrome 94. Chrome for desktop computers and Android are both supported. Many websites offer HTTPS, which is a more secure version of HTTP. When a user visits a website that does not support HTTPS, the browser will now display a full-page warning. When utilizing public Wi-Fi, this guarantees your privacy. This was initially intended for Chrome 92, according to Google. Once Chrome is updated with the latest version, users can enable it by heading to Settings > Privacy and Security > Security > Always use secure connections. Android tablets can now host desktop websites thanks to Chrome 94. It can now freeze idle tab groups, activate Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) immediately, refresh the UI on Android, and display updated table renderings on webpages, among other things. In addition, there are 32 bug fixes and improvements in Chrome 94 for desktop. The sharing hub is another new feature in Chrome 94 for desktops. Users may copy links, receive a QR code, and share them on third-party websites using this function. Signed-in users have access to the Send to Your Devices option. Chrome's sharing hub may be accessed through an Omnibox icon or the three-dot menu. The option does not display if the user is not logged in. Chrome for Windows, macOS, and Linux has a desktop sharing hub. Downloading and opening .mobileconfig files is now possible in Chrome 94 for iOS. An iPhone, iPod touch or iPad may be configured to work with specific corporate systems using a .mobileconfig file. Users on iOS may now download these files using Chrome. The profile may then be manually installed from the Settings app. On iOS, Chrome 94 improves the current onboarding screens by separating the sign-up and sync functions. The blog post made by google gives the list of changes for developers and also asks for suggestions on issues that one might spot. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. A man selling Taliban flags walks along a street in Kabul. Photo: Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images Now that the Taliban have consolidated control over Afghanistan and formed an interim government, the world will soon find out whether the victorious insurgents are actually capable of running the country they have reconquered or whether they will run it straight into the ground. So far, the group has shown no inclination to temper the brutal austerity of its vision for an Islamic emirate, but the Taliban government also appears unlikely to maintain internal cohesion, domestic and international legitimacy, or any semblance of competent governance. What this means for the Taliban and for the Afghan people remains deeply uncertain. The composition of the government announced earlier this month shattered any international expectations that the Taliban had become more inclusive or moderated its ideology. The interim cabinet is all male and overwhelmingly made up of Pashtuns, the predominant ethnic group in Afghanistan. Most of its members are Taliban loyalists, including some old-guard figures from its last stint in power in the late 1990s. Some are notorious terrorists, such as interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBIs most wanted list with a $10 million bounty on his head. Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, Foreign Affairs Minister of Taliban interim government holds a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 14. Photo: Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images During their negotiations with the Trump administration last year and their rapid rise to power as U.S. forces withdrew, the Taliban have sought to project an image of legitimacy, rationality, and relative tolerance abroad, to assure world leaders that their return to power would not result in a total collapse of human rights and the re-emergence of Afghanistan as a cradle of terrorism. Taliban leaders have been cagey, however, about just what they mean when they say, for example, that they will respect the rights of women within Islamic law. The pledges of moderation are contradicted by what is reportedly happening on the ground throughout Afghanistan following the militant groups victory: girls schools being shut down; women being told to stay home from their jobs and restricted from leaving their homes without a male guardian; reports of forced marriages, harassment, and executions. Female middle and high-school students have been prevented from returning to school, universities are being segregated by gender, and the ministry of womens affairs has now been replaced with the Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Afghan women activists gather to protest against Taliban restrictions in front of the former Ministry of Women Affairs in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 19. Photo: Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images All signs point to a Taliban that is no more enlightened than it was 20 or 25 years ago, even if its leaders are a bit more media-savvy and attuned to the value of optics. The group is ideologically opposed to democracy and does not plan to hold elections. It is still not clear how the Taliban plans to organize the legislative and judicial functions of government, but there is no reason to expect these institutions to be representative or inclusive. The open question, then, is not just whether the Taliban plan to rule any differently than before (and they likely dont), but whether they can govern effectively enough to hold onto power, and whether the pressures of governing will force them to make concessions and moderate their positions. Afghanistan in 2021 is not Afghanistan in 1996, when they last took control: While the country remains deeply impoverished and underdeveloped, with very low levels of literacy and internet penetration by global standards, the population has grown significantly, and Afghans today are better educated and connected with the outside world than they were a quarter-century ago (especially in the major cities). At the same time, the eyes of the world are trained on Afghanistan, whereas the country received little international attention before the 9/11 attacks. The challenge of obtaining and maintaining domestic and international legitimacy is much more daunting for the Taliban indeed, the fact that they now seek international legitimacy at all is perhaps the one significant difference from the 1990s. Already, the new Taliban government appears to be in disarray. The groups supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, has not been seen in public since the takeover, fueling speculation that he may be ill or dead. Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister, also disappeared from view earlier this month and was rumored injured or killed in a physical brawl among Taliban leaders, until he went on television last week to reassure everyone that he was alive and well. Other leaders, like Haqqani, are apparently in hiding out of longstanding fear that they might be targeted in U.S. drone strikes. Sharp divisions have reportedly emerged between more pragmatic and hardline factions within the senior Taliban leadership, including disagreements over the makeup of the cabinet. The hardliners appear to have prevailed for the time being, but these early conflicts do not bode well for the groups ability to coherently govern a country of 38 million people. The question of the Talibans ability to govern carries no small amount of urgency, as Afghanistan is facing economic and humanitarian crises that would test the abilities of even a stable, well-established government. The country is experiencing a severe drought that threatens to spiral into a famine, with 14 million Afghans at risk of acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Program. Millions could starve in the coming year without food aid, and long-term food and water security challenges loom beyond the immediate emergency. In the meantime, civil servants have not been paid, the nations currency has depreciated, and the economy appears to be collapsing. To rescue the Afghan economy, the Taliban government will need to attract aid and investment from the international community, most of which is reluctant to do business with a despotic theocracy that subjugates women and persecutes ethnic and religious minorities. China has emerged as a potential lifeline, as Beijing is willing to look the other way at even the most egregious human rights violations. But even China, which would like to get its hands on some of Afghanistans $1 trillion in untapped mineral wealth, is not necessarily willing to invest in a country where it cant safely send engineers or where the government may be providing a safe haven for terrorist groups that target China. The new government must also contend with brain drain, as the Afghans who have fled the country since the U.S withdrawal and those who continue to look for ways out are disproportionately educated people with specialized skills. Afghans who assisted the occupying U.S. and allied forces or worked for the former government or foreign aid organizations have fled or tried to flee out of fear of retribution from the Taliban. It will be very difficult to provide public services if the people who know how to do that work have left: this is one reason why the Taliban tried to prevent would-be asylum seekers from reaching Kabul airport last month to be airlifted out of the country by the U.S. At the same time, the Taliban are stupidly enforcing another form of brain drain by once again shutting women out of the workforce. The interim mayor of Kabul announced on Sunday that most female employees of the city government had been told to stay home pending a further decision except those who could not be replaced by men. In addition to being morally outrageous, the choice to curtail womens rights is a strategic mistake, as it will hold Afghanistan back by preventing half the population from participating in its economy and government. Relegating women to their homes will only hasten the countrys economic collapse. A Taliban fighter drives a bumper car in an amusement park in Kabul. Photo: Oliver Weiken/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images While Taliban leaders are failing to keep their two-faced promises about womens rights, they also have to deal with another gendered crisis: large numbers of unemployed young men. The Taliban foot soldiers who have waged the insurgency over the past 20 years have few skills other than warfare, and integrating these men into a peacetime economy will be challenging for their leaders. Do they just tell them to go back to their family farms or find jobs in the cities, try to organize them into a police force, or give them administrative jobs for which they are completely unqualified? In any case, who will pay their salaries? Meanwhile, many of these men are poorly educated and deeply ideological, having been indoctrinated into the Talibans extremist worldview. They expect to be part of a fundamentalist Islamic state and could become disloyal and troublesome if their leaders decide to make compromises. Already, in recent years, the Taliban has seen defections in its ranks to the more ideologically extreme ISIS-K, the local affiliate of the notorious terrorist group. On one hand, the Taliban could earn international respect by including women and ethnic minorities in the government, by holding elections, or by welcoming their rivals into a unity government. Actions like these might also win them more popularity in Kabul and other major cities. On the other hand, the conservative, rural, male, Pashtun constituency from which they draw their core supporters would be outraged and could even revolt. The balancing act of maintaining legitimacy among the rural and urban, illiterate and educated, ultraconservative and more cosmopolitan segments of Afghan society may prove an impossible task for this government. Speaking of the rural/urban divide, what experience the Taliban do have in some form of civil government has been in the countryside, where the former government in Kabul exercised little real authority, the population is sparse, and there is little civilian infrastructure to manage or maintain. Managing the sprawling metropolis of Kabul, with over 4 million residents, or even smaller cities like Herat or Jalalabad, is a much taller order. The Taliban loyalists now in charge of the government, as well as the interim mayors appointed to the cities, have none of the expertise they need to do the jobs they are now expected to do. To cope with this responsibility, the Taliban would need to accept help from former adversaries who actually know how to do these jobs. It would also help if they appointed officials based on competency, rather than loyalty or seniority within the Taliban but theyre probably not going to do that. History provides few examples of successful insurgencies transforming into successful governments. The skills honed in guerrilla warfare dont translate easily into the peacetime work of political power brokering, legislation, monetary policy, urban planning, or trash collection. At the moment, the Taliban government does not appear up to the challenge of governing Afghanistan a notoriously difficult country to run under any circumstances. Perhaps, if the Taliban fail miserably, their regime will collapse and what follows in its wake will be better. Or perhaps the country will plunge once again into anarchy and civil war. In any case, the world should be prepared for the possibility that, for better or worse, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is as destined for debacle as the state which preceded it. Biden owns this. Photo: Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty Images Some images burn themselves into the brain. In this one, a U.S. Border Patrol agent on horseback lashes a whip near the face of a Haitian migrant; Reuters reports he later grabbed a man by the shirt. The migrants on our border are fleeing poverty and political chaos; they seek the same future we all want for ourselves. They have found a violent welcome in Joe Bidens America. Asked to comment on the use of whips by border agents, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she did not think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate. This is parental rhetoric, the language a person uses to express disappointment in a misbehaved child. The agent on horseback offers a more accurate depiction of the Biden administrations position on immigration. In at least one respect, Biden differs little from his hated predecessor, Donald Trump. As the Associated Press reports, the administrations mass expulsions of migrants are possible because Biden left a Trump policy partially intact. That policy, introduced by Trump in March of last year, citing COVID, allows for migrants to be immediately removed from the country without an opportunity to seek asylum. Biden did make one adjustment to the rule: He exempted unaccompanied migrant children from its strictures. In lieu of broader, and more humane, reform, Bidens decision looks like a capitulation to political optics, rather than a real desire to rectify the outrages of the Trump era. Biden fixed the policy that caused the most public outrage. All other migrants, however, remain vulnerable. Its an outcome some migrants advocates may have predicted. Biden, after all, served as Barack Obamas vice-president, making him complicit in that administrations similar efforts to deport people en masse. When protesters with RAICES Action disrupted a Democratic debate in February 2020, they targeted some ire directly at Biden himself. You deported 3 million people, one shouted when Biden began to speak. The protesters highlighted a crucial question about Biden: He said he wanted to build America back better, but for whom? For immigrants and their advocates, a Biden presidency was a risky bet. The Obama administrations record on deportations underscores the degree to which immigration restrictionism, and the xenophobia that informs it, are bipartisan sins. The Democratic Party wanted voters to believe that the cruelty of the Trump White House was partisan in character. Reject Trump, and the GOP with him, and a different future awaited the nation. But that future, its clear, is exclusionary. If Biden ever believed immigration could enrich America, that the right to asylum is sacrosanct, that America owes anything at all to the human beings seeking shelter at her border, its not evident. Indeed, the administration increased deportation flights as outcry gathered in Haitian diaspora communities in cities like Miami. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, Daniel Foote wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a letter resigning his job as the U.S. special envoy for Haiti. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the dangers posed by armed gangs in control of daily life. Biden, meanwhile, appears unconcerned, both about the optics of his policy and the fate awaiting the Haitians he drives away. Perhaps he thinks voters wont care about the Haitians, that his collapsing approval rating will sink even lower if he shows mercy at the border. No one should ever underestimate the racism animating much of American society; Trump won, in part, because he was the sort of person who would call Haiti a shithole country. But its moral cowardice to allow racism to dictate policy. The images taken at the southern border distill immigration restrictionism to its purest essence. The Biden White House is the hand that wields the whip. Better to take that whip and burn it. They want a measure of peace, a crumb of prosperity. To play a part in the nation Biden says he wants to build. Its not much to ask. If Biden cares to distinguish himself from Trump, hell heed his critics and reverse the deportation policy hes left in place. Until he does, he is keeping Trumps legacy alive. The result shames Biden, and shames us, too. Novelist Jonathan Franzen, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, explained why he refused to sign a letter to Harpers defending free speech norms from the left. Theres a chilling of nuanced discourse he conceded, but I also think, until people start being sent off to Lubyanka for having said the wrong thing to the wrong person, the risk is probably overblown. Franzens line has drawn fawning praise on the left. It is one of the most insane yet simultaneously revealing statements I have ever seen. Franzens position is a common one among liberal intellectuals: He concedes the threat to free speech norms on the left is real, but insists it is too insignificant to merit criticism. Obviously, different problems have different scales. Treating illiberal norms on the left as the single greatest crisis in the world strikes me as an overreaction, especially given the Republican Partys institutional descent into outright authoritarianism. But Franzen isnt merely cautioning against overreaction. He is not arguing that left-wing illiberalism is too small a crisis to merit fleeing the country in panic, or voting Republican, or even writing an op-ed against it. He is arguing that left-wing illiberalism is too small a problem to merit even the meager step of signing a letter somebody else wrote for him. Franzens position, a common one on the left, implicitly concedes that there could be a point at which the problem grows to a level that it does merit criticism. Usually, that point is left unstated. Franzen takes the clarifying step of making that level explicit: when people start being sent off to Lubyanka the headquarters of the Soviet secret police for having said the wrong thing to the wrong person. I would suggest that, once we have gotten to, or anywhere near, the point at which stray comments result in abduction, torture and execution, it will be a bit late to speak out. Yet that is apparently the point at which Franzen is willing to start complaining publicly. Ill take Franzen at his word that he is personally willing to brave a bullet to the head, which makes him far braver than me, but I find it very strange that he considers any critique of the illiberal left before its carrying out mass murder premature. Franzens mind seems to have particular difficulty calibrating and ordering multiple problems; the same befuddlement once inspired him to argue that environmentalists should focus on saving birds because mitigating climate change is hopeless. But his candid answer to the Journal, and the praise (rather than embarrassed silence) it has drawn on the anti-anti-PC left, exposes an all-too-common tendency by the mainstream left to shrink away from open criticism of the far left. A far more nuanced and intelligent version of this all-too-common position comes from Michelle Goldberg. I should state right at the outset that Goldberg is not an anti-anti-PCnik. She has criticized illiberalism on the left, and she is one of the writers I most admire. Im bracketing the argument she makes in her recent New York Times column because it sits on the opposite end of the spectrum of sophistication. She is making the smartest version of the critique Franzen gestured at so crudely. Goldberg offers some well-taken points about exaggerated denunciations of left-wing illiberalism. The nature of public opinion is such that every problem, including the most serious ones in the world (climate change, right-wing authoritarianism, economic inequality), will inspire some people to overreact. Identifying those overreactions is necessary to maintain rigorous thinking. But Goldbergs corrective veers into a strange complacency. She begins with an example of a fictional story line from the Netflix series The Chair, in which a professor loses his job for giving a mock Nazi salute. Few instances of real-life cancellations are so factually simple or ethically ridiculous, she claims. I have seen many real-life episodes that are more ridiculous than this fictional episode. Here is a case of a UCLA professor sanctioned for a lecture in which he read from Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter From a Birmingham Jail and showed clips from a documentary that included graphic descriptions and images of lynchings, causing distress and anger over the depiction of racist language and violence. Here is a story of a Chinese-language professor suspended for using a Chinese word that sounds like an English racial slur. She further contends that the amount of ideological policing on campus is not as large as we may think. Quoting a statistic tabulating 426 scholars being targeted for sanctions over their political views since 2015, she declares the number relatively small, describing the problem as effectively solved. To see how inadequate this number is for measuring the problem at hand, let me revisit a matter I reported out a year ago. In 2020, Civis Analytics, a Democratic Partyaffiliated data firm, fired one of its number crunchers named David Shor. Shors offense was violating a progressive taboo against criticizing violent or destructive acts associated with left-wing protests. He violated the taboo in the mildest way, by sharing a study by Princeton professor Omar Wasow. Nonetheless, Shors colleagues complained that his tweet was racist, and the pressure led to his firing. This episode would not be one of the mere 426 cases Goldberg cites, because it took place outside of academia. Even if it had occurred within a university, it probably wouldnt have made the list but for the fact that I heard whispers about it and reported out the case. In this instance, and many others I have heard about, neither party has any interest in publicizing the matter. The canceler isnt going to send out a press release boasting that they purged a dissident, and the cancelee typically feels humiliated and has no interest in becoming lionized by Fox News. More significant were the broader reverberations Shors firing made within the community. A listserv that functioned as a professional networking space for the progressive data community banned Shor after his firing. When a handful of his colleagues criticized this measure, they too were labeled as racist by the lists moderators. Many others kept quiet out of fear that they would suffer the same treatment if they spoke up. If you kept a running total of ideological firings in the progressive data space, the number would have been one (or, more likely, zero if the story hadnt fallen into my lap). But the chilling effect it had on the community seems to be much broader and deeper. Its a change to the climate of opinion that is difficult to capture in empirical terms, but can be very real nonetheless. Goldberg mocks analogies to Mao and Stalin that infuse denunciations of left-wing cancel culture. And that is fair enough as far as it goes. The illiberal lefts power cannot and will not resemble a 20th-century totalitarian horror, because it lacks state power. The power to get somebody shamed, fired, or banished from their community stops well short of imprisonment, which requires the coercive power of government that the left is barely even seeking. But the rational version of the fear has never been Stalinism. It is what these illiberal norms will do to progressive institutions. Here is another case that indicates the problem in a way that no body-count index could capture. The Urban Institute, a respected center-left think tank, has published a new guide* to equitable research. The guide explains that concepts like objectivity and rigor are harmful: Photo: Urban Institute You can try to sanewash these claims as merely urging researchers to examine their own biases and try to include the perspectives of people outside the research community. But that would require a willful misreading of a document that all but declares research has to affirm a left-wing perspective. Racism, sexism, classism, and ableism permeate US institutions and systems, and that equitable work requires a shift in researchers mentality on the values and practices of research and deep questioning of the status quo. As an example, it suggests, in a participatory project on policing, the people who are policednot the policeare the experts to include. The guide doesnt allow for any circumstances in which the views of police officers would be worth studying. If I were a researcher at the Urban Institute, an organization whose work Ive relied on for years, it would be impossible to read this guidance as anything but a warning that any work produced that challenges the left (i.e., bolsters the status quo) is liable to get you ruinously accused of committing a long list of -isms. Its possible Urban will revise or pull down this document, or at least permit its staff to ignore it. Its also possible it will become a guiding dogma that turns a respected think tank into a source of progressive agitprop. The question depends on the choices made by those who disagree with it. People at institutions like Urban are facing choices like this all the time. Goldberg is right to caution them to critically examine their own biases before leaping to hysterical conclusions. Changing institutions that have usually been led by white men so that other people feel like true social equals is not always easy or pretty. Sometimes what looks at first like a repressive mob is merely changing social norms. But many times the urge to go along with illiberal ideas is not high principle at all. The taboo against breaking ranks with ones friends and political allies has never been more powerful. The impulse to downplay abuses by ones own side for fear of giving ammunition to the enemy is not exclusive to the political right. Goldberg argues that while ideological coercion in progressive institutions may be a source of personal anguish, it doesnt constitute a political emergency. That depends on how people in those institutions respond. If they push back on illiberalism, this will all be a passing fad. If they stand pat and allow academia, journalism, large chunks of the nonprofit world, and other outposts of progressive thought to adopt norms that make it impossible to question unfounded ideas, then the emergency will eventually arrive. *Update: The Urban Institute emails, The Urban Institute publication you referenced is a blog post, not a guide. We have added some language to the top of the post in an effort to make this distinction more clear. This seems to indicate, encouragingly, that the pushback was strong enough to force Urban to present this piece as a single persons perspective, rather than an institutional statement. Good for him! I hope others follow suit. Reply Thread Link Texas is really having a bad year huh. Reply Thread Link Yes I grew up with GWB as TX governor, then he became president. You know the rest... Reply Parent Thread Link The worst Reply Parent Thread Link And yet nothing there will change. Reply Parent Thread Link yes, i hate it here lmao :( Reply Parent Thread Link good. the more people who stop doing business with Texas (because that is 100% the only thing state leaders care about), the better. Reply Thread Link "but I cant and wont ask female cast/crew to forgo civil liberties to film there." i'm glad. i hope the texas government continues to receive repercussions Reply Thread Link good for him, i am so glad he is taking this stance. Reply Thread Link Good! I heard that next season of Top Chef will be in Houston and at first I was like whatever but then I was like hey wait actually no one should be filming in Texas if they can help it. Reply Thread Link That's the attitude people should have. "But what about the good people?" Sorry, but that's what happens. You have to take a stand somehow. And i saw this as someone who lives in a state who just pushed a similar bill. Reply Thread Link Yea, I get that point but realistically I don't think there's a form of protest that only negatively impacts the people at the top. The only other solution is to do nothing and that's not really an option anymore. Reply Parent Thread Link Dig this. Some of these responses are just savage. Burn it to the ground! I love when people get burned so bad they delete the tweet. Always give an extra laugh. Reply Thread Link good for him. the dianabunchofnumbers took me out tho LMAO. Reply Thread Link diana and her numbers need to sit down. Reply Parent Thread Link You're being so condescending to women right now and you don't even realize it!!! Reply Parent Thread Link Same, that one made me audibly snort at my desk lmao. Reply Parent Thread Link I appreciate his No, fuck you. Attitude. Reply Thread Link we cant ethically ask any female cast/crew to relocate to any state that requires them to forgo civil liberties. The end. Love this Reply Thread Link I really like this. A set is a workplace and protecting workers should be a priority, including keeping them safe on location. Reply Thread Link Lol that's what he looks like? Knew he was white, but damn. He looks like the apple guy. Speaking of which, him announcing they'll pay for the travel costs of Apple staff needing abortions was very ??? That's a nice gesture I guess, but these big tech ppl would never go toe to toe with the congress ppl that make the laws that allow them to work so exploitatively. Eta, that is the Apple guy. I didn't read and thought the pic on the first tweet was supposed to be him lmao Edited at 2021-09-23 12:42 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link Yeah thats Tim Cook. David Simon is a bald guy who looks like hed punch you. Reply Parent Thread Link i am dying at the edit Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao same I thought the guy was David Simon and I was like yikes he looks petrified and like he doesnt have the balls to do anything this ballsy Reply Parent Thread Link Imagine having to tell your boss, "hey my good dude, gonna go get an abortion, pls pay". The whole point is that they absolutely shouldn't have to be involved in this! Reply Parent Thread Link "Bastions of blue" lmaoooo. Not even close. Austin is very accessible to ppl with dogs who like to bring them to brunch, but "bastion of blue" is taking it too far imo Reply Thread Link Mte, I almost feel pity for people who genuinely believe every major city here is blue lmao. Oh, the delusion Reply Parent Thread Link Every day I'm really glad places like Evernote and .... whatever that movie theater chain is never responded to my applications to work there and move to Austin. I'm still bitter, but they're the ones suffering talentwise or financially now. Reply Parent Thread Link What sort of argument is 'bastions of blue' even supposed to be? It's not like they can opt out of state laws because they voted against the person/party that implemented a particular law.. Reply Parent Thread Link loving this energy, well done, d! omg i do not know this man but I amthis energy, well done, d! Reply Thread Link Have you watched the wire? I've been meaning to for the last decade Reply Parent Thread Link Army was being Too Much about this on Twitter yesterday. But lol I could not be bothered to care. Too much other fun BTS content to enjoy! The pics with Megan were cute. The Chuseok videos posted to YouTube. The pics with Coldplay. All the selcas from the UN and RM like literally JUST posted some pics from his visit to the Met. Literally who has time to be mad about some hacky late night show joke? Reply Thread Link But it's happening to James Corden so it's fuuuuuuuun. Reply Parent Thread Link being Too Much is kind of army's thing though. i despise Corden too though, so I literally have no horse in this race. Edited at 2021-09-23 12:34 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link I hope they did a performance with Megan!! Reply Parent Thread Link Same! I'm cautiously optimistic since they met up and everything. Reply Parent Thread Link Couldn't happen to a nicer person. I don't get why the army disliked Corden's comments though. Surely BTS appearing at the United Nations General Assembly is an unusual event? Reply Thread Link I mean. Theyve spoken at the UN before. Lol idk. I think Army felt like his comment treated BTS like a joke which is a sure fire way to get Armys hackles up. Idk I saw a few tweets about it cross my timeline and idk why they were upset. Reply Parent Thread Link yeah, I don't get it. Seems like an extremely thin-skinned reaction and a whole lot of projection. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I feel like it would have been if it was the first time-- but this is their third year being ambassadors? And apparently they accompanied the President of S. Korea lol not sure how often that happens but the "15 yr old girl fan" jokes are so old. Not just regarding BTS but any fanbase that skews more towards the female population. I could be wrong but I don't think guys are degraded for things they like-- at least not to the same degree as girls Edited at 2021-09-23 12:29 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link They get super offended if you say the fanbase is mostly young girls (it wasn't necessarily made up of mostly teens like maybe five or four years ago but it is now. Source: my eyes in a stadium concert) Reply Parent Thread Link I thought he was calling BTS 15-year old girls and I was ready to side with ARMY. This is too much. It is unusual. BTS is a boyband at The United Nations. That is unusual AF. Reply Thread Link Really I don't understand how no one is joking about how absolutely desperate it looks for Pres. Moon to pander so hard to K-fans. Reply Parent Thread Link I mean BTS alone is bringing in millions of dollars (not even won) to the Korean economy so I can't exactly fault him for this. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Especially considering they could care less for the message, and more interested in using their appearance there for clout and as fodder in fan wars Reply Parent Thread Expand Link isn't he unpopular with young/millennial males? those are not k-fans. Reply Parent Thread Link Random celebs go to the UN all the time, they have a ton of celebrity ambassadors for their agencies and initiatives. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Army needs to focus their ire on the hotel Wi-Fi that BTS was trying to use yesterday to do a VLive before finally giving up. SMH. That Wi-Fi is the real villain here. Reply Thread Link So much for Samsung Galaxy's hot spots amirite? Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao. Team No One so hard rn but also Team Why Is This Reality. Reply Thread Link Alright I'm here to say it. Americans still look down on Asians-both Asian men and Asian women. That's number one, number two-men have always disrespected anything that primarily women like. Any singer or show or anything at all that we like all the sudden is dumbed down to being so stupid that only kids would like it. Of course this sweaty hog would pretend to care, it gets him ratings. But at the end of the day he's just as misogynistic and disgusting as any other male. He sees what he perceives as something "feminine" and shits on it by insinuating that it's clearly not for ADULT consumption so idk how they got there!! No GROWN woman in her right MIND would like music that isnt insulting them, slangin their dicks around and degrading them like TRUE women are supposed to like. He looks right into a crowd of fans and dismisses them all as 15 year olds when half the fucking group is almost 30. I just!! I get it but I dont get it. I get it but I hate it. If he could keep his eyes in his living room for longer than 5 minutes, he would have realized that that's not even their first time going but go off I guess oogieboogie. Reply Thread Link um I'm not a fan of James Corden on any level, but you do your valid points a disservice by calling him a sweaty hog Reply Parent Thread Link ikr as if fat people dont face their own discrimination from fatphobes but who cares about that amirite i stopped reading after that so idk if they went further out of pocket but im glad you said what you said. Reply Parent Thread Link james is from the uk, not the us. have you never heard him speak? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yikes this is ott Reply Parent Thread Link You could've just avoided commenting on his weight. Disgusting comment. And even if you did have valid point, you took away from their power by being so disrespectful and fatphobic. Reply Parent Thread Link this comment has EVERYTHING omg! "sweaty hog" as a fat joke instead of a gay porn search term. "dick slangin" thrown in without a hint of irony. rabid defense of a boy band's target demographic somehow being people who care about and/or watch events unfold at the UN. it's giving CAMP, it's giving 2010 stan twitter REALNESS honey!!! pls never stop commenting lmao Reply Parent Thread Link It's the perfect person for this to happen to. Reply Thread Link Jesus I can't believe I'm going to defend James Corden, but it was just a way to be like, "hey people that wouldn't normally be at the UN were at the UN today." And I know BTS are ambassadors, but it's a colloquial/conversational way to get into the subject. I don't think it means anything. The 15-year-old girl thing... I guess it's a boyband trope and their fans don't like them being referred to as such? Reply Thread Link Jesus I can't believe I'm going to defend James Corden You didn't have to be that person but you chose to be. Make better choices next time, sister friend. Reply Parent Thread Link I mainly feel bad for the writer who wrote the joke innocuously that will likely get shafted in the process lol I will never feel bad for James Corden Reply Parent Thread Expand Link You aren't wrong, and people who are acting like you are are being ridiculous. The 15-year-old girls comment wasn't a knock on 15-year-old girls or BTS - it was mocking the irrelevant old men at the UN. I really don't like James Corden but this whole thing is stupid beyond belief. Reply Parent Thread Link Twitter army rarely think things through before posting. I was on FB this morning and Facebook army were so confused about what Twitter army were mad about. Reply Parent Thread Link sadly, (or not) celebrities from industries otherwise unrelated to global policy-making are not as unusual at the UN, at least as people who are uninterested in policy-making might think. Reply Parent Thread Link I know nothing about BTS except that I am terrified of their fans, but there was a point where James Corden was called Papa Mochi????? my full body cringe!!!! This seems like too much over quips which I think would have been said about any boy bands that would have been featured at the UN the way BTS was, but also it's impossible to deny that western platforms are clout-chasing via kpop features + anything anti-James-Corden powers my soul. Reply Thread Link but also it's impossible to deny that western platforms are clout-chasing via kpop features It's a two way street imo. There's a lot of validation seeking from some Kpop artists and their fans. There's a weird, warped attempt at trying to prop up and "legitimize" a lot of what Kpop does. BTS bending at the knee to put out songs in English to get more recognition/validation from "legitimate" audiences and awards shows instead of just continuing to do their thing for their fans, coupled with award shows using BTS for ratings, views, etc., is a toxic little relationship. People up thread are talking about how problematic it is that young women have their interests dismissed and disrespected, but the piece of the conversation that's missing is how artists contribute to that too - there's nothing to be said of BTS's desperate attempts at Grammy and western award show nominations and attempts to appeal to broader English speaking audiences and how it signifies a dissatisfaction with being "just" a boyband with a primarily female audience? Somehow making it onto the Billboard charts justifies their artistry? But their fanbase alone doesn't? Reply Parent Thread Link Ahhh definitely, and very well-said! Western pop culture is still seen as the standard to live up to and how the system appropriates from other countries while the other countries to conform to their standards is a whole other issue. Hand-in-hand, let's face it, Western/english-speaking fandoms are still the main arbiters of fandom mass culture/top of the pyramid when it comes to how the power-structure of fandom is perceived. This same side of fandom, comparative to others, becomes increasingly militant and defensive in validating the lens by which they view their artists seeing it as the only and 'correct' way to view/stan. Clout-chasers take advantage of that, while artists (from BTS to Taylor Swift) weaponize that to form and reform their images according to whatever's trendy and to set them apart from other artists like them. Idk these are scattered thoughts lol but the Public Culture convo around it is so layered and interesting!!! I so badly wish I did my thesis on it lol Reply Parent Thread Link Eh, Korea is a small country and kpop acts have put out numerous albums in Japanese and have done efforts in Mandarin as well before. The random song here and there in English is not that unusual too. I think this sort of effort, for BTS especially, was definitely pushed by a desire to expand ($$$) reach, especially with the consequences of the pandemic and the lack of that tour money hitting companies. I do think there's a desire to be seen as legitimate but it's not the primary force behind this. Being "legitimate" ultimately is monetary interesting for acts who are looking for long careers in the USA. It's what every single act is chasing, doesn't matter how many producers and songwriters they have to bring into a project. At the end of the day, BTS became much more about turning HYBE into a internationally successful company and bringing in the money to diversify their portfolio than anything else imo. Reply Parent Thread Link BTS fans are so desperate for validation that they prop up notoriously awful people like James Cordon and then act surprised when a known shitty person turns out to be shitty and it's like ?? How are these people not tired? Just reading about it is exhausting. I can't imagine living my life this way. Reply Thread Link Someone on Instagram was posting about this and I couldnt stop myself from commenting that its known corden is an ass, but they would have never listened because he was nice to bts. But your question is a good one. How ARE they not tired? They have all this going on and still manage to camp under other groups twitters so they can comment toxic things. Like Ive managed to find my group of people who like the groups I like and we just we happily watch/listen and when you come across that negativity sigh. Theres a limit and Im reminded on the daily that Im so glad we didnt have Twitter or social media when I was a teen. Reply Parent Thread Link I mean thats what these fandoms are though. Online all the time and ON all the time. Even here on ONTD there are fans talking about buying multiple copies of the same album and taking part in streaming parties or bringing stan Twitter beefs here. Its exhausting af. But its not isolated to one fandom. Reply Parent Thread Link Either destroy him irl or stfu army Reply Thread Link who would win in a battle: barbz or bts army? Reply Thread Link army hands down Reply Parent Thread Link ARMY is way more organized, its not even a close competition. Reply Parent Thread Link But the Barbz defy all logic and reason, you can tell them the sky is blue and they'll say no it's not, it's made of magnets. Can organization alone win against pure, distilled chaos? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link BTS army. I think there are more of them and they seem to be able to organize Reply Parent Thread Link armys probably, they're huge and crazy organized and they'll make sure that anyone who slanders bts is fired from their job. barbz have more experience in covering up actual crimes though so we could be surprised lmao. Reply Parent Thread Link Unstoppable force meets unmovable object, honestly. Reply Parent Thread Link Barbz, while mean, are very stupid. Army figured out all that international finance stuff to get those chart numbers so I figure they would win. Reply Parent Thread Link i feel like barbz bc they're more willing to let themselves get hit in the crossfire Reply Parent Thread Link irl? barbz. a lot of bts fans fall apart whenever they have to leave their houses, whereas a barb will cut you. online? bts fans could easily dox them all. Reply Parent Thread Link barbz because they're insane so they don't care about consequences. the majority of army, especially the ones who do shit like this, are literally that meme about people who act tough online but are too scared to ask for ketchup in a restaurant. army relies on trying to cancel people but you can't cancel the barbz because they don't care Reply Parent Thread Link Well done ARMY, please continue to bully him off the air and send his career into the abyss. Reply Thread Link After getting wind of the comments, ARMY lowered The Late Late Show's audience rating on Google from 4.2 to 2.5 This is cracking me up lmaooo Edited at 2021-09-23 12:47 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link A North Carolina-Based Health Care Provider Terminates Employees for Not Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine Employees who received exemptions from getting vaccinated must follow specific protocols while at work. As of Tuesday, North-Carolina based health care provider has suspended hundreds of employees for not meeting the companys COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Novant Health says employees should have already received at least one dose of the vaccine or applied for and received a medical or religious exemption, according to an article. Around 375 workers across 15 hospitals, hundreds of clinics and outpatient facilities are now suspended for not doing so. Anyone who does not comply with the vaccine policy put in place within the five-day, unpaid suspension period will lose their job, the Winston Salem-based company said. About 98.6 percent of the companys more than 35,000 workers are compliant with the policy. Workers who started the two-dose vaccines will have until October 15 to get their second dose. Employees that receive exemptions, however, must undergo weekly testing. They are also required to wear N95 respirators, masks or other PPE while working at Novant Health. President Joe Biden mentioned he would require the 17 million health care workers at facilities receiving funds from Medicare and Medicaid to be fully vaccinated, including home care facilities, hospitals and dialysis centers. Besides Novant Health, other health care systems and hospitals have also suspended or terminated peoples jobs who didnt comply with vaccine policies. Arctic oil and gas drilling is enjoying strong interestand not just from Russian companiesdespite the political rush to transform the worlds energy systems and remove fossil fuels from them. A new report by Reclaim Finance, an organization that seeks to build a financial sector that will support the energy transition, has found that oil and gas companies had plans to increase their output in the Arctic by 20 percent over the next five years. These Arctic expansionists such as Gazprom, Total and ConocoPhillips have, it is revealed, been backed by hundreds of billions of dollars of support from banks and investors, despite many holding commitments to restrict fossil financing in the region, the reports authors wrote. The nonprofit said it had uncovered some $314 billion in funding for new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic distributed between 2016 and 2020, all from major banks and asset managers, most of whom have already made net-zero commitments. Among the lenders to Arctic oil and gas, Reclaim Finance listed JP Morgan, which, according to the report, provided $18.6 billion in Arctic oil and gas financing, as well as Barclays, with $13.2 billion, and Citigroup, with $12.2 billion in financing for the oil and gas industry in its Arctic endeavors. Private equity giants were also on the list with their holdings in the industry. The pack was led by BlackRock, which has holdings of $28.5 billion in companies with Arctic oil and gas operations. BlackRock, whose CEO Larry Fink recently said that a net-zero world is the shared responsibility of every citizen, corporation, and government, was followed by Vanguard, which has some $21.6 billion in exposure to oil and gas drillers in the Arctic, and Amundi, with $12.9 billion in oil and gas holdings in companies with Arctic operations. The Arctic is a climate bomb, and our research shows that the oil and gas industry is hellbent on setting it off, thus blowing up our chances of avoiding runaway climate breakdown, the author of the report, Alix Mazounie, said. But they are not the only culprits: financial institutions have bankrolled these companies, making a mockery of their own climate commitments. Since the oil & gas tigers wont change their stripes, the likes of BNP Paribas, BlackRock and JPMorganChase must heed the instruction of the International Energy Agency and cut off the taps. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Despite huge oil reserves waiting to be tapped, the ongoing sanctions on Venezuelan oil and the current state of politics and the economy are driving international oil majors away from the Venezuelan energy market. International companies are starting to give up on Venezuela, which has the worlds largest proven oil reserves standing at 304 billion barrels, as U.S. sanctions and the political state of the country present too much risk to ongoing investment. This summer, both TotalEnergies and Equinor divested their interests in Venezuelan state-owned Petrocedeno, leaving PDVSA with all of the equity, in a move that suggests they are giving up on their stake in the Latin American oil giant after decades of investment. Petrocedeno operates in the Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, producing extra-heavy crude, which it transports to be upgraded and blended to become a lighter crude, suitable to export. TotalEnergies blamed the inability for operations in the Orinoco Belt to meet the companys new environmental criteria for its withdrawal, as Total pledges to invest only in low-carbon oil projects going forward. Equinor also avoided blaming U.S. sanctions or the state of Venezuelan politics for its withdrawal, instead citing its focus on international core areas and prioritised geographies where Equinor can leverage its competitive advantages as the reason. But if oil majors stop their investments, due to the current state of the national economy Venezuela will no longer be able to sustain its oil and gas industry, seeing billions of barrels of oil left in the ground. A decrease in the countrys oil production, which dropped from around 2.03 million bpd of oil in 2017 to just 480,000 bpd in 2020, saw Venezuela contend with fuel shortages and a damaged economy. Svetlana Doh, an upstream oil and gas analyst at GlobalData, explains of the fuel shortage situation and response, Petrocedeno upgrader is planned to be re-designed to produce naphta as a feedstock for refineries. This essentially means that refineries in the country are in such a desperate need for renovation or even simple upkeep, that now upgraders have to perform a refining step for them. In addition, The conversion of the upgraders could be very challenging, as it would require new equipment, while cash-strapped PDVSA can barely find the funds to conduct an elementary maintenance of its refineries. The continuous drop of crude oil production in Venezuela, which is a major pillar of the countrys economy, combined with sanctions imposed by the U.S. Government, the Covid-19 pandemic, corruption in the government, and lack of investment have led the country to collapse, Doh stated. Even before the change in Venezuelas oil industry landscape took place this summer, production figures plummeted due to a shortage of dilutants required to blend the extra-heavy crude, making it suitable for export. In August, output in Orinoco dropped by a quarter to below 300,000 bpd. The shortage occurred because of the decision to use medium and light crudes to manage the countrys motor fuel scarcity instead of prioritizing diluting its heavier crude. If the country has to continue this strategy to stay afloat, it could have a dramatic impact on its output and export figures for the rest of 2021. State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) changed tact last month when it imported 620,000 barrels of the dilutant condensate to support its oil refining industry. PDVSA is also considering the use of synthetic crudes to keep output levels up as Venezuelas import options are limited due to U.S. sanctions on the countrys oil and gas industry. One of Venezuelas few hopes is emerging oil power China. Expected to keep international oil demand high over the next decade as European and American counterparts shift away from fossil fuels towards alternative forms of energy, China is aggressively pursuing new oil ventures. As Venezuelas oil industry hits its worst challenges ever, with U.S. sanctions restricting the countrys energy exports and imports, and international oil majors withdrawing, China has spotted its opportunity to increase its presence in Latin America, filling the void that the U.S. left behind. As China looks set to surpass the U.S. to become the worlds largest refiner and importer of crude oil this year, the country appears willing to ignore U.S. sanctions on both Venezuela and Iran to fuel its oil demand. And in April and May this year, China Concord Petroleum Co (CCPC) charted vessels to transport more than a fifth of Venezuelan oil exports in a clear disregard for sanctions. However, the Venezuela-China energy relationship has not been easy, with new taxes imposed by China on heavy sour crude earlier this year threatening Venezuelas export ties with the country. The new taxes were expected to make profit margins on Venezuelan crude too low to justify investment. Yet, with the recent change in the countrys oil industry, it looks like China may not give up quite yet. As international oil majors withdraw from Venezuela, leaving the national oil industry underfunded, during a time in which it is already facing major fuel and dilutant shortages, will China swoop in to save the day, expanding its emerging oil market to Latin America? By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Last month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its landmark 6th Assessment Report on the worldwide state of global warming and the response to changing climates and the greenhouse gas emissions that are powering that change. The report sounded a code red for humanity and warned in no uncertain terms that we have reached a point of no return. Humans have already irreversibly altered the climate, and it is now paramount for the global community to do everything they can to mitigate the damage and cap rising temperatures and future greenhouse gas emissions to the greatest extent possible. While climate scientists have been sounding the alarm bells for years and these doomsday warnings have become commonplace and can even come off as a bit trite, the urgency of the report is all too real, and it finally seems like world leaders may be ready to respond. As the novel coronavirus pandemic swept the world and disrupted global supply chains, shutting down industries, bottoming out fossil fuel demand, and slowing the flow of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, this interruption to the status quo offered a rare window of opportunity to rewrite a cleaner energy future, and some companies and countries took it. The pandemic catalyzed what is now, in many places, a concerted effort toward a clean energy transition. Lets not overstate it; oil, gas, and coal are still king. And they will not be disappearing overnight. But solar and wind are getting competitive, and there is an extremely promising amount of investment in the research and development of new clean energy technologies. And some of the most inventive and innovative clean energy initiatives are coming from a surprising place: the oil and gas industry. Related: Crude Prices Jump On Oil Sands Outages The writing has been on the wall for a long time in the Permian Basin. The shale revolution has been waning for years, oil prices are volatile, and oils days are numbered. Peak oil is right around the corner, if it isnt already happening. For many of those working in the fossil fuel industry, getting ahead of the curve and pushing to the forefront of the clean energy revolution was a no-brainer. And as these converts leave the oil fields, theyre taking oil and gas technology and know-how with them. One of the biggest burgeoning industries which promises to explode in coming years is energy storage. Renewable energies like solar and wind are variable, meaning that they depend on the weather and daylight hours, and their flow of energy to the grid is anything but steady. This means that scalable, cheap, and reliable energy storage, which can collect surplus energy in peak production times and feed it back into the grid at peak demand times, is paramount to building a future in which renewables can displace fossil fuels. There are a million and one approaches to energy storage, from green hydrogen to the suspension of concrete blocks. But one of the more interesting ideas currently receiving a lot of investor attention is a method that, on the surface, is anathema to the clean energy sector: fracking. Houston-based Quidnet is pumping water underground, not to release oil and gas, but to store that water in a high-pressure environment until energy is needed, at which point the water is released, gushes to the surface, turns a turbine, and creates electricity. Quidnet represents a new breed of Texas start-ups that are tapping into the gusher of funding now available to clean energy companies. Their payrolls are stocked with veterans of the oil and gas industry who are leveraging the drilling and geological expertise born of the fracking revolutionhinting at a promising area of job growth in Texas, Texas Monthly reported last week. The green frackers are far from the only example of oil and gas workers using their know-how for the greener good. Drillers are using their cutting-edge technologies to improve geothermal energy potential, a movement being spearheaded by more Texans including Houstons Fervo Energy. Others are using oil and gas industry methods for capturing and storing carbon in underground wells. Every day I meet another oil and gas guy who is now a climate entrepreneur, Maynard Holt, the chief executive of fracking financier Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., told Texas Monthly. I think there is going to be an explosion of clean energy activity out of the oil and gas sector, and well be stunned in the next five to seven years . . . by how many of these problems are being handled by the oil and gas industry. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: It was only a matter of time, really. In a globalized world, energy crunches can hardly remain regionally contained for very long, especially in a context of damaged supply chains and a rush to cut investment in fossil fuels. The energy crunch that began in Europe earlier this month may now be on its way to America. For now, all is well with one of the world's top gas producers. U.S. gas exporters have enjoyed a solid increase in demand from Asia and Europe as the recovery in economic activity pushed demand for electricity higher. According to a recent Financial Times report, there is a veritable bidding war for U.S. cargos of liquefied natural gas between Asian and European buyersand the Asians are winning. Coal exports are on the rise, too, and have been for a while now, especially after a political spat had China shun Australian coal. But supply is tightening, Argus reported earlier this month. In July, according to the report, U.S. coking coal exports dropped by as much as 20.3 percent from June. The report noted supply was constrained by producers' limited access to funding and a labor shortage that has plagued many industries amid the pandemic. All this should be good news for U.S. producers of fossil fuels. But it may easily become bad news as winter approaches. The Wall Street Journal's Jinjoo Lee wrote earlier this week high energy prices could be the next hot import for the United States. Lee cited data showing gas inventory replenishment was running below average rates for this season, and gas in storage in early September was 7.4 percent below the five-year average. Related: Goldman Sachs: Heres How Oil Prices Could Reach $90 This Winter Coal inventories are also running low because of stronger exports, with prices for thermal coal three times higher than they were a year ago. According to calculations from the Energy Information Administration cited in the WSJ report, coal inventories in the United States could fall to less than half last year's inventory levels by the end of the year. Last year, energy demand was depressed because of the pandemic. This year, the U.S. economy is firing on all cylinders once again. No wonder electricity prices are already going up. In a way, the events in Europe could be seen as a trailer of what might happen in the United States. It is a trailer because it shows all the worst bits. The United States is much more energy independent than, say, the UK, and that's a big plus. Yet exports bring in revenues, and it would require government intervention to make gas producers cut exports. In an alarming move, such intervention was requested last week by a manufacturing industry group. Industrial Energy Consumers of America, an organization representing companies producing chemicals, food, and materials, asked the Department of Energy to institute limits on the exports of liquefied natural gas in order to avoid soaring prices and gas shortages during the winter, Reuters reported on Friday. Opinions seem to differ on whether rising LNG exports are in fact hurting U.S. consumers. But the fact is that gas prices are already double what they were a year ago. According to the IECA, they are not, however, high enough to motivate a ramp-up in natural gas production. Therefore, in order to stockpile enough gas for the winter, the U.S. government must force a reduction in exports. The LNG industry is, of course, against this. The executive director of Center for Liquefied Natural Gas told Reuters most LNG exports are shipped under long-term fixed-price contracts that have no relation to benchmark gas prices and their movements. Yet some cargos are sold on the spot market. "Buyers of LNG who compete for natural gas with U.S. consumers are state-owned enterprises and foreign government-controlled utilities with automatic cost pass through," Paul Cicio, president of IECA, said, as quoted by Reuters. "U.S. manufacturers cannot compete with them on prices." Related: Crude Stocks At Cushing Have Dropped By 42% So Far This Year Traders are already getting jittery, and this will likely contribute to price uncertainty; regardless of how the fundamentals situation develops. Again, Europe is at the heart of the uncertainty - or rather the certainty that prices have higher to climb. But now, China has added to concern about gas supply and the potential for shortages. For now, China's biggest problem seems to be coal rather than gas. A recent Bloomberg report said that China coal power plant operators are struggling to buy enough coal to keep their plants running, and some are being forced to shut down their boilers because of insufficient coal supply. This, however, might lead to stronger gas demand to ensure enough electricity and heating for the winter. This will further exacerbate the difference between global demand and supply. The European energy crunch is spilling over into other regions. The blame game has begun with culprits ranging from years of underinvestment in local gas production to a Gazprom scheme to get Nord Stream 2 approved by Germany. For now, it is still unclear how much of the price surge is due to a gap between demand and supply and how much of it is due to market nervousness, at least according to RBC commodity strategist Christopher Louney, as quoted by the WSJ's Lee. This question is less important than another, however, and it is a scary one: Just how bad could things get this winter? By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The price tag of the energy transition in Italy could be over $760 billion (650 billion euro) over the next ten years, the president of the local employers association said on Thursday. The national recovery plan provides only 6% of the investment needed for the transition. Almost 94% has to be covered by companies, Carlo Bonomi said at the annual meeting of employers federation Confindustria, as carried by Reuters. According to the head of the influential business association, the soaring gas and energy prices and spikes in prices of key metals could slow down the economic recovery from the pandemic globally. At the same event, Italys Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that the energy transition is not a choice but a necessity. Still, Italy needs to take into account its capacity to repurpose its energy system to lower-carbon sources, Draghi said. The government should help consumers and businesses bear the costs of this transition, paying special attention to the most vulnerable consumers, the Italian prime minister said. The world will need to invest up to $173 trillion in greener energy infrastructure and supply over the next 30 years if it wants to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, BloombergNEF said in its New Energy Outlook 2021 report published on in July. If governments and companies want to see the coveted 2050 net-zero emissions they have been racing to pledge in recent months, they would need to invest between $92 trillion and $173 trillion in the next three decades, according to BNEF. The energy transition that would be compatible with a net-zero world in 2050 would need rapid scaling of investment, the research firm says, adding that the route to net-zero remains yet uncertain. According to BNEF, the world needs to more than double yearly investments in order to achieve net-zero emissions. Those investments should jump from around $1.7 trillion annually at present to somewhere between $3.1 trillion and $5.8 trillion per year on average over the next three decades. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Military forces of the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen are advancing amid heavy fighting in the regions of Yemen that hold its oil and gas fields and assets, sources from the Houthi movement and the Yemen military told Reuters on Thursday. The Houthis are pushing toward the city of Marib in the region of the same name currently under the control of the Saudi Arabia-backed Yemeni government. The region of Marib is home to the largest gas fields in Yemen and is the last northern stronghold of the government. According to Reuters sources, the Houthis are also pushing to the south to the oil-rich region of Shabwah, which holds several oilfields in Yemen and the only terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the country. The fighting between Houthi and government forces has been most fierce in the Shabwah region in recent days, the sources told Reuters. Both sides are reported to have sustained many casualties. The Houthi movement began its advance toward the region of Shabwah two months ago. Fighting in Yemen has been ongoing for six years now after the Iran-affiliated Houthis overturned the elected president, which prompted Saudi Arabiahis allyto wage war on the rebel group. In response, the Houthis have made Saudi Arabias oil facilities their preferred target of attacks. Most of the country, which is suffering one of the worst humanitarian crises in history, is currently under the control of the Houthis, and the Saudi-backed forces are losing further ground. If the Houthis seize Marib, they will be in control of northern Yemen. Some from the elected Yemeni government blame these developments on the U.S. withdrawal from the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis. Last week, Saudi Arabia said it had prevented yet another attack by the Yemeni Houthis in the city of Jazan, which is home to extensive Aramco oil infrastructure. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: India saw its domestic crude oil production drop by 2.3 percent in August compared to August 2020, government data showed on Wednesday, while India is estimated to have significantly boosted its oil imports last month compared to previous months. In August 2021, Indias crude oil production slipped due to lower crude production from oilfields operated by state-held Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the PTI news outlet reported, citing the government data. Natural gas production, however, jumped by 20.23 percent, thanks to higher output from recently started up gas fields operated by oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries and supermajor BP. Indias refineries operated at 87 percent of their combined installed capacity last month, compared to a utilization rate of just 76.1 percent in August last year. India, the worlds third-largest oil importer, depends on imports for 85 percent of its petroleum demand. In August, Indias oil imports surged by 23 percent month-on-month to reach a four-month high of 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd), amid refiners preparing to ramp up crude throughputs for the festival season that starts next month, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing tanker data from trade sources. Last months oil imports in India reached a four-month high after several months of lower shipments due to the resurgence of COVID cases in the spring, weakened fuel demand that came with the coronavirus spread in April and May, and refinery maintenance in July. Indian oil imports rebounded in August as refiners bought more crude in anticipation of raising their fuel production just in time for the festival season in October and November. Last month, India imported more oil from the United States and Latin America, with cargoes booked in May-June thanks to arbitrage, according to trade sources data obtained by Reuters. The incremental purchases of crude from the Americas left the Middle East with a lower share of Indias oil imports last monthat 61.8 percent, it was down from 64.7 percent in July. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: OPEC+ is working to keep prices around $70 per barrel, Reuters has reported, citing Iraqs oil minister, Ihsan Abdul Jabbar Ismail. The official said the ministry hoped that oil prices would remain above $65 per barrel. OPECand its allies led by Russiaagreed earlier this year to add 400,000 bpd to total production beginning August until they restored their production levels to those from before the pandemic, which would occur by the end of the first half of 2022. However, demand has grown faster than initially expected, and there have been callsincluding from the United Statesfor OPEC to boost production more quickly. For now, the cartel has resisted. A recent Reuters report noted that not all OPEC+ members can simply turn the taps back on. In Nigeria, Angola, and Kazakhstan, the report said, years of underinvestment had coupled with delayed maintenance due to the pandemic to make production restoration a challenging task. OPEC+ compliance with its production control deal rose to 116 percent in August. The cartel also revised its demand outlook for next year in its monthly publication, and substantially. OPEC said it now expected oil demand to reach 100.8 million bpd, an upward revision of close to 1 million bpd from its August Monthly Oil Market Report. This year, total global oil demand remains unchanged at 96.7 million bpd for the whole of 2021. But the fourth-quarter demand was revised slightly down, by 110,000 bpd from the August estimate of 99.82 million bpd to 99.7 million bpd now, OPEC said in its September report. This was before the gas crunch in Europe really took off, however. Now, OPEC producers are warning that the crunch could drive oil demand higher. Iraqs oil minister said he expected stronger demand for its crude as utilities looked for alternatives to gas. The head of Nigerias state oil firm, for his part, predicted that oil prices could rise $10 per barrel over the next six months. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Forest Hill Club House Architect: Bernard Maybeck Constructed: 1919 Location: 381 Magellan Street San Francisco, CA PLEASE NOTE: The Western Neighborhoods Project has no information about rentals of the Forest Hill Clubhouse, please call the Forest Hill Association at 415-664-0542 From "Here Today, San Francisco's Architectural Heritage" by the Junior League of San Francisco in 1968: "The facade [...] is more restrained than Maybeck's other works, but the interior is Maybeck at his best. The high ceiling with its massive beam work is one of the architect's most inspiring." Images: 1) Forest Hill Club House, 381 Magellan Street, January 2003. (WNP photo) Contribute your own stories about western neighborhoods places! Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minister of Food and Agriculture, has inaugurated a nine-member Governing Board for the Cocoa Processing Company (CPC), with the task to help transform the company into a viable and profitable enterprise. They should also work to support governments Ghana Beyond Aid agenda. The Minister said there were already signals that the company had begun the process of turning its fortunes from a heavy loss-making entity to a vibrant one. Dr Afriyie Akoto, who was speaking after administering the official oath and oath of secrecy, stated that it was the policy of government to encourage and facilitate enhanced local processing of cocoa to generate income and create jobs. The essence of CPC is to be part of governments transformation agenda in the shortest possible time for the benefit of the people especially value chain actors, by helping improve livelihoods he emphasized. The Minister expressed optimism that the management of the company, with the support of the highly qualified and capable board, would help the organisation to realise its goals. He commended Mr Joe Forson, the Managing Director of CPC, for leading and instituting rigorous measures aimed at turning around the fortunes of the company, saying I have great faith that with the support of the board he will succeed. Mr Kwaku Owusu Baah, Chairman of the Governing Board on behalf of members pledged to work diligently to ensure the sustenance of the cocoa sector and its critical contribution to the livelihood of people. He assured that they would support the growth of the company with their experience and professionalism to achieve the mandate of the state enterprise. Mr Baah recalled that CPC was in dire distress when the former board took over, however the pursuit of strategic policy interventions was yielding desired results. At the close of the 2019 financial year, we had reduced company annual losses by a whopping 70 per cent, from US$10 million to about US$3 million and but for the COVID pandemic that disrupted our markets in 2020, we would have made profit for the first time in two decades. But we haven't given up, especially as the markets begin to pick up again, he said. Mr Baah said with old dilapidated machinery and equipment, the company had expanded production at the confectionery section from four per cent to 15 per cent of company's total annual production. Source: BBC Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video US President Joe Biden has pledged to donate 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to developing nations from next year. He made the pledge at a virtual Covid-19 summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, promising an "arsenal of vaccines". To beat the pandemic here, we need to beat it everywhere, Biden said. He added that with the new commitments, For every one shot weve administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world. The additional vaccines will see the total US commitment on vaccine sharing exceed one billion jabs. The World Health Organisation has set a minimum target of 40% vaccine coverage in every country by the end of 2021.Health experts say some 11 billion doses are required to vaccinate at least 70% of the global population. But according to data from the University of Oxford, only 2% of people in low-income countries have had their first dose, compared to many high-income countrieswho have now given at least one shot to more than half their populations. In June, members of the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - pledged to donate one billion doses to poor countries over the next year. Biden pledged 580m at the time, of which the US has delivered only 160m so far. The donated vaccines are routed through Covax, the global scheme supported by the WHO to get doses where they're needed most. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Agona Swedru District Police Command has arrested one Joyce Okyere, for hitting her husband, Mr. Francis Efrim with a wood leading to his death. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Irene Oppong Serwaah, Central Regional Police Public Relations Officer, confirmed this to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Cape Coast. Giving an account of the incident, she said about 07:40 hours on Tuesday, September 21, the police received a report that a woman had hit her husband with wood and proceeded to the Agona Swedru Government Hospital where Mr Efrim had been taken for treatment. She indicated that the police found Mr. Efrim who had been pronounced dead on arrival by a Medical Doctor, on a stretcher. DSP Oppong said a deep cut was found on his forehead when the body of the deceased was carefully examined. The body has been deposited at the same hospitals mortuary for preservation and autopsy, while the suspect also known as Esi Atta, was in police custody assisting with investigations, DSP Oppong added. Source: BBC Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Tamale South Constituency Executives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have called on the Police Administration to properly investigate and punish officers involved in the assault of some residents of the constituency over alleged electricity theft. This was contained in a statement issued by the Tamale South Constituency Executives of the NDC signed by Mr Abdul Ganiyu Sandow, Communication Officer of the Constituency, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Tamale on Wednesday. The statement said, "In as much as we commend the Inspector General of Police (IGP) with the swiftness with which he interdicted the officers in uniform, we expect that the assault will be properly investigated and proper punishment be meted out to those recalcitrant Police officers." Some Police officers were caught on videos that went viral on social media on Tuesday beating some residents of Nakpanzoo and Lamashegu, suburbs of Tamale, for allegedly engaging in illegal electricity connections. Subsequently, the Police Administration on Tuesday issued a statement announcing that it had interdicted the four Police officers involved in the assault of the residents and that they would face Service Inquiry subject to the regulations of the Ghana Police Service. The NDC's statement said, "We deem the action by the Police as uncouth and unprofessional." It said, "On the substantive issue of electricity power theft, we do not subscribe to it, and will seize every opportunity to condemn and discourage such acts." Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video University of Chicago and Argonne beamline scientist Barbara Lavina observes one of the tiny asteroid fragments through a microscope, with the magnified image on the screen beside her, during the initial research session at Argonne in July. Credit: Jason Creps/Argonne National Laboratory Using X-ray techniques, scientists will study tiny specks of asteroid 162173 Ryugu, collected by a Japanese space mission. Learning more about how this asteroid formed will further our understanding of the solar system, including Earth's formation. It's not uncommon for scientists to bring interesting objects thousands of miles to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory for study. But it's fair to say that the latest of these to land at the laboratory came from much, much farther away, and their journey to Argonne was unique. A team of Argonne scientists is among the few groups around the world chosen to study tiny fragments of an asteroid. These dust particles came from 162173 Ryugu, part of a group of near-Earth objects called the Apollo asteroids. This asteroid's orbit brings it within 60,000 milesabout a quarter of the distance to the moononce every 16 months. The fragments were collected by Hayabusa2, a mission operated by the Japanese space agency, JAXA. These bits of rock are remarkably tinyeach is about 200 microns in diameter, about the size of three human hairs. But they carry with them information about how these asteroids were formed, and may tell us long-hidden secrets about the early days of the solar system, including Earth itself. Argonne Distinguished Fellow Esen Ercan Alp is leading the research team using the ultrabright X-rays of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne, to examine the asteroid samples. Alp and his colleagues worked for years to be included among the international group of scientists taking a first earthly look at these fragments. "This is very exciting," said Alp. "We've been preparing for this project for two years. We've been practicing our X-ray techniques on samples from meteorites that fell to Earth, but they were just a rehearsal for the real thing." The APS is the only U.S. facility chosen to study these fragments, and according to Alp, that's because of a particular X-ray technique he and his team specialize in: Mossbauer spectroscopy. Named after German physicist Rudolf Mossbauer, this technique is highly sensitive to tiny changes in the chemistry of samples, and it allows scientists to determine the chemical composition of these fragments particle by particle. It is a technique Argonne has been developing since the 1960s, and the laboratory is a world leader in its use. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory Over an initial series of observations in June and July, the Argonne teamwhich includes beamline scientist Barbara Lavina (of the University of Chicago and Argonne) and physicist Jiyong Zhaotook readings of 25 different spots on these fragments using X-ray scattering methods at beamline 3-ID-B at the APS. In September, the fragments will return to Argonne and the team will take more extensive readings using Mossbauer spectroscopy techniques. Lavina, whose background is in geology, is particularly excited by the chance to study rocks that are literally not of this earth and would not have survived a journey to Earth if not safely stored in a spacecraft. She noted that the technique the team used is designed to closely investigate the state of iron in samples like these. "Iron is amongst the finest record-keepers of a rock's history," Lavina said. "We will have a unique chance to unravel a key piece of the puzzle that is the formation and evolution of our solar system." The thrill of being among the first to even see these asteroid fragments is only amplified by their fantastic voyage from deep space. Just getting the Hayabusa2 module to 162173 Ryugu took more than three years. The module landed on the asteroid in June 2018 and proceeded to survey it for a year and a half. As part of that mission, the lander deployed a kinetic penetrator, a small explosive device that broke the asteroid's surface, stirring up rocks and dust that were then collected. In November 2019, the Hayabusa2 rocket left the asteroid's orbit, and it returned its precious cargo to Earth in December 2020. Though that was the farthest leg of the fragments' journey to Argonne, it may not have been the most perilous, as eight of these tiny samples were placed into a box and sent via Federal Express from Japan to Illinois. "We were watching the tracking information pretty closely," joked Lavina, while noting that the samples did arrive safely. The results of the Argonne team's work are under wraps, and won't be revealed until a paper is prepared and published. The asteroid fragments, meanwhile, have been sent to another scientific facility, this one in Europe, where another research team will get a chance to observe them. Alp and his colleagues are anticipating a second opportunity to learn more about these otherworldly objects and to put their well-honed X-ray techniques into practice. "It's very significant to be a part of an international endeavor such as this," Alp said. "Our first round was quite successful, but we are just beginning." Its important to consider: for whom and when is online learning a good fit? Credit: Pexels/Valery The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked a public debate about the value of learning online for elementary school students. Much of this dialog has been negative, with a focus on the experiences that children are missing by not being a part of in-person classrooms. In an effort to learn more about remote education at the elementary level, we collected data from those with the most first-hand experiencesparents, students and teachersin the form of a survey and interviews. As we suspected, we found that the situation of online schooling is more complex than a simple "good" or "bad"and the public dialog is not telling the full story. We think it's important to ask for whom and when is online learning a good fit. Parent, student, teacher surveys We are a team of multidisciplinary researchers with an interest in children's rights and education who collaborate with community partners to better understand how to improve the equitable delivery of engaging educational experiences. Through our program, the McMaster Children and Youth University (MCYU), McMaster professors and students from different faculties and departments offer public lectures and community-based workshops designed to appeal to children, youth and families. We recruited participants through e-mail requests for participation distributed in collaboration with the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board to those who experienced remote learning during the 2020-2021 academic year. Before the pandemic Online schooling existed in limited formats long before the pandemic and has been valuable for certain students and specific circumstances. In 2010, research reporting on national studies of school district administrators in the United States found the majority of "K-12 online learning is conducted at the secondary level where students are older and beginning to come into their own socially and emotionally." It also found that the "basic reason K-12 schools are offering online and blended learning is to meet the special needs of a variety of students"and that online learning is helpful for offering courses that are not otherwise available in schools and for reducing scheduling conflicts. Students in remote areas, hospitalized students, incarcerated students, elite athletes, students with severe anxiety and students who learn differently are also among those who have often benefited from remote learning. What students, families said While this year's version of online learning must be contextualized as "emergency remote teaching,", many still found advantages to this format. Specifically, some students found the lack of bullying, peer pressure and social anxiety were a welcomed change that allowed them to better focus on learning. Others mentioned the comfort of being at home, the reduced stress around the morning rush, the extra time to sleep, the increased time with family and the ability to eat and have washroom breaks at will as all contributing to a more fruitful learning environment. Fewer barriers, safer learning environment One parent of a child with physical disabilities mentioned that their child preferred online learning because, "his physical disabilities aren't a barrier to inclusion as much as they are in person." This student already used a computer to learn, so they felt like they were no longer standing out as being "different." In fact, unlike the in-person experience, they were able to take on a leadership role that had previously been inaccessible. As explained by the parent: "He is very proficient online and this has provided opportunities for him to help others when he's usually the one requiring all the help. He's having his best year with remote learning [] now he's just another kid." In another example, a parent mentioned their relief knowing that their child will not be around school-based racism: "Racism is there, bullying is there in schools for brown kids. So staying away from school and study[ing] from home helped kids to be safe and away from bullying and racism." As a result, not all families are eager to return to in-person education and many are opting to continue with remote learning regardless of public health recommendations. Some missed social interaction Of course, this is not to say that the transition to virtual learning was a seamless fit for everyone. Many parents, students and teachers recounted the negative issues associated with online learning. Most notably, participants highlighted the lack of social interaction, the limited physical exercise, the increased amounts of screen time and tech issues as all contributing to an overall negative experience. The variation in experiences is perhaps the very lesson that should come from this unique year: learners require many strategies and opportunities to learn effectively, and we should be skeptical of a one-size-fits-all model or even a one-size-fits-most model. Include children in conversations Additionally, it is important to include children in conversations about what is best for them. At the onset of the pandemic, leaders, like the prime ministers of Canada, Denmark and Norway, made direct appeals to the children of their countries recognizing the importance of their participation. But as we can see in reviewing debates about deciding on a return to in-person learning, children's voices were largely left out. Failures of traditional classrooms Based on our early findings, we caution against arguments that solely champion the need to promptly return to in-person classrooms, as these arguments glorify traditional learning environments and reinforce the idea that they are ideal for everyone. Our team continues to work on several papers related to equity and barriers to education to be published out of this research. Rather than using this moment to make a definitive call on remote education for elementary students, we should consider how we can be creative and re-imagine classroom formats to better meet all students where they are. We are not advocating abandoning efforts at being inclusive and addressing power dynamics in the classroom. Rather, we must address the reality that testimony of positive experience in this alternative format demonstrates the need for multiple approaches. Conversations about what post-COVID schooling looks like must consider the reality that traditional learning formats often fail marginalized students. We must create opportunities to bolster learning formats and processes that benefit students who face barriers to education via traditional schooling and delivery. Explore further The online learning needs of students across different grades during the COVID-19 pandemic This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. University of Cincinnati chemical engineering student Tianyu Zhang holds up a vial of graphene used as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Creative Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel to address climate change and get astronauts home from Mars. UC College of Engineering and Applied Science assistant professor Jingjie Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Known as the "Sabatier reaction" from the late French chemist Paul Sabatier, it's a process the International Space Station uses to scrub the carbon dioxide from air the astronauts breathe and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in high orbit. But Wu is thinking much bigger. The Martian atmosphere is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide. Astronauts could save half the fuel they need for a return trip home by making what they need on the red planet once they arrive, Wu said. "It's like a gas station on Mars. You could easily pump carbon dioxide through this reactor and produce methane for a rocket," Wu said. UC's study was published in the journal Nature Communications with collaborators from Rice University, Shanghai University and East China University of Science and Technology. Wu began his career in chemical engineering by studying fuel cells for electric vehicles but began looking at carbon dioxide conversion in his chemical engineering lab about 10 years ago. An experimental reactor uses graphene quantum dots as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Creative "I realized that greenhouse gases were going to be a big issue in society," Wu said. "A lot of countries realized that carbon dioxide is a big issue for the sustainable development of our society. That's why I think we need to achieve carbon neutrality." The Biden Administration has set a goal of achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas pollutants by 2030 and an economy that relies on renewable energy by 2050. "That means we'll have to recycle carbon dioxide," Wu said. Wu and his students, including lead author and UC doctoral candidate Tianyu Zhang, are experimenting with different catalysts such as graphene quantum dotslayers of carbon just nanometers bigthat can increase the yield of methane. Wu said the process holds promise to help mitigate climate change. But it also has a big commercial advantage in producing fuel as a byproduct. UC chemical engineering assistant professor Jingjie Wu, left and doctoral student Tianyu Zhang are experimenting with different catalysts to convert carbon dioxide to storable fuel to address climate change. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Creative "The process is 100 times more productive than it was just 10 years ago. So you can imagine that progress will come faster and faster," Wu said. "In the next 10 years, we'll have a lot of startup companies to commercialize this technique." Wu's students are using different catalysts to produce not only methane but ethylene. Called the world's most important chemical, ethylene is used in the manufacture of plastics, rubber, synthetic clothing and other products. "Green energy will be very important. In the future, it will represent a huge market. So I wanted to work on it," Zhang said. Synthesizing fuel from carbon dioxide becomes even more commercially viable when coupled with renewable energy such as solar or wind power, Wu said. "Right now we have excess green energy that we just throw away. We can store this excess renewable energy in chemicals," he said. UC chemical engineer Jingjie Wu is experimenting with different catalysts to convert carbon dioxide to fuels such as methane to address climate change. Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Creative The process is scalable for use in power plants that can generate tons of carbon dioxide. And it's efficient since the conversion can take place right where excess carbon dioxide is produced. Wu said advances in fuel production from carbon dioxide make him more confident that humans will set foot on Mars in his lifetime. "Right now if you want to come back from Mars, you would need to bring twice as much fuel, which is very heavy," he said. "And in the future, you'll need other fuels. So we can produce methanol from carbon dioxide and use them to produce other downstream materials. Then maybe one day we could live on Mars." Explore further Making jet fuel out of carbon dioxide More information: Tianyu Zhang et al, Regulation of functional groups on graphene quantum dots directs selective CO2 to CH4 conversion, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Tianyu Zhang et al, Regulation of functional groups on graphene quantum dots directs selective CO2 to CH4 conversion,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25640-1 In this Aug. 12, 2021, file photo, a student gets help with his mask from transitional kindergarten teacher Annette Cuccarese during the first day of classes at Tustin Ranch Elementary School in Tustin, Calif. Now that California schools have welcomed students back to in-person learning, they face a new challenge: A shortage of teachers and all other staff, the likes of which some districts say they've never seen. Credit: Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP, File One desperate California school district is sending flyers home in students' lunchboxes, telling parents it's "now hiring." Elsewhere, principals are filling in as crossing guards, teachers are being offered signing bonuses and schools are moving back to online learning. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stress of teaching in the COVID-19 era has triggered a spike in retirements and resignations. Schools also need to hire staffers like tutors and special aides to make up for learning losses and more teachers to run online school for those not ready to return. Teacher shortages and difficulties filling openings have been reported in Tennessee, New Jersey and South Dakota, where one district started the school year with 120 teacher vacancies. Across Texas, the main districts in Houston, Waco and elsewhere reported hundreds of teaching vacancies at the start of the year. Several schools nationwide have had to shut classrooms because of a lack of teachers. In Michigan, Eastpointe Community Schools abruptly moved its middle school back to remote learning this week because it doesn't have enough teachers. The small district north of Detroit has 43 positions vacanta quarter of its teaching staff. When several middle school teachers resigned without notice last week, the district shifted to online classes to avoid sending in unqualified substitutes, spokeswoman Caitlyn Kienitz said. "You don't want just an adult who can pass a background check, you want a teacher in front of your kids," Kienitz said. "This is obviously not ideal, but we're able to make sure they're getting each subject area from a teacher certified to teach it." In this March 2, 2021, file photo, socially distanced and with protective partitions students work on an art project during class at the Sinaloa Middle School in Novato, Calif. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stresses of teaching in the COVID-era caused a spike in teacher retirements and resignations. Now that California schools have welcomed students back to in-person learning, they face a new challenge: A shortage of teachers and all other staff, the likes of which some districts say they've never seen. Credit: AP Photo/Haven Daley, File According to a June survey of 2,690 members of the National Education Association, 32% said the pandemic drove them to plan to leave the profession earlier than expected. Another survey by the RAND Corp. said the pandemic exacerbated attrition, burnout and stress on teachers, who were almost twice as likely as other employed adults to feel frequent job-related stress and almost three times more likely to experience depression. The lack of teachers is "really a nationwide issue and definitely a statewide issue," said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of California's State Board of Education. A school district in California's West Contra Costa County is considering hiring out-of-state math educators to teach online while a substitute monitors students in person. "This is the most acute shortage of labor we have ever had," associate superintendent Tony Wold said. "We opened this year with 50that's five-zeroteaching positions open. That means students are going to 50 classrooms that do not have a permanent teacher." There are an additional 100 openings for non-credentialed but critical staff like instructional aideswho help English learners and special needs studentscustodians, cafeteria workers and others, Wold said. California's largest district, Los Angeles Unified with 600,000 students, has more than 500 teacher vacancies, a fivefold increase from previous years, spokeswoman Shannon Haber said. Schools try to fill in with substitutes, but they're in short supply, too. Only about a quarter of the pool of 1,000 qualified substitutes is willing to work in Fresno Unified, said Nikki Henry, a spokeswoman for the central California district with 70,000 students and 12,000 staffers. In this March 13, 2021, file photo, parents, students, teachers and supporters march during a rally for San Francisco public schools to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic in San Francisco. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, but the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File At Berkeley High School, a shortage of substitutes means teachers are asked to fill in during their prep periods, leading to exhaustion and burnout typically not felt at the start of a school year. "We are absolutely strained. This has been an incredibly stressful start to the year," said Hasmig Minassian, a ninth-grade teacher who describes physical and mental exhaustion as she tries to juggle staffing needs and the emotional needs of students who are showing signs of more mental fragility and learning loss. "It doesn't feel like there are enough adults on these campuses to keep kids really safe. We feel short-staffed in a way we've never felt before," she said. "You know the early videos of nurses crying in their cars? I kind of expect those to come out about teachers." The California shortages range from dire to less severe in places that planned ahead and beat the competition, but those are the minority, said Darling-Hammond of the board of education. In a new twist, money is not the main problem. School districts have the funds to hire additional staff, thanks to billions in federal and state pandemic relief funding. There just aren't people applying. "We're all competing for a shrinking piece of the pie," said Mike Ghelber, assistant superintendent at the Morongo Unified School District in the Mojave Desert, which has more than 200 openings for special education aides, custodians, cafeteria workers and others. "I don't know if everybody is getting snatched up, or if they don't want to teach in the COVID era, but it's like the well has dried up." The district of 8,000 students has ads in newspapers, radio and social media. Teachers are packing "now hiring" flyers into kids' lunchboxes, with a long list of openings so families can spread the word. In the meantime, everyone is pitching in. In this March 2, 2021, file photo, a sign is displayed at a COVID-19 vaccination site for employees of the Los Angeles School District, LAUSD, in the parking lot of SOFI Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stresses of teaching in the COVID-era caused a spike in teacher retirements and resignations. On top of that, schools now have to hire all kinds of additional staff, like tutors and special aides to help kids make up for learning losses, and more teachers to run online school for those not ready to return. Credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File "Principals and administrators are out being crossing guards. Secretaries are directing traffic because we're short on supervisors," Ghelber said. The shortages raise concerns that schools will hire underqualified teachers, particularly in low-income communities where it's already harder to fill positions, Darling-Hammond said. Class sizes also are expanding. Mount Diablo Unified School District, which serves 28,000 students east of San Francisco, has had to fill several elementary school classrooms at the maximum capacity of 32 students. It's not ideal for social distancing but frees up teachers for online school. About 150 kids initially signed up for distance learning, but with spiking infections blamed on the highly contagious delta variant, the number ballooned to 600 when school reopened. The same happened in Fresno, where enrollment in remote learning exploded to 3,800 from 450. Superintendent Adam Clark said the Mount Diablo district is offering $5,000 signing bonuses for speech pathologists and $1,500 for paraeducators who help students with learning needs. San Francisco Unified is offering a similar starting bonus for 100 paraeducator jobs. Nearby West Contra Costa County Unified has set $6,000 signing bonuses for teachers, with a third paid out after the first month and rest when the teacher enters year three. In this April 12, 2021, file photo then Superintendent Austin Beutner speaks to teachers at Normont Elementary School in Harbor City, Calif. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, but the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. Credit: Brittany Murray/The Orange County Register via AP Districts in Oklahoma, North Carolina, New Jersey and elsewhere are offering a range of cash incentives for new teachers, particularly in low-income and low-performing schools. Of a dozen officials interviewed in California districts, only one said it was facing no shortages. Long Beach Unified, the state's fourth-largest district with over 70,000 students, anticipated the need last spring for a hiring spree of about 400 jobs. "We went full aggressive," assistant superintendent David Zaid said, including beefing up human resources for a 24-hour turnaround on contract offers. A virtual interview team worked through the summer. Recruitment events drew hundreds of applicants, and as HR employees met hiring benchmarks, they got rewards like catered breakfasts and an ice cream truck. "We probably would have experienced the same shortages as others," Zaid said. "But we became much more assertive, and as a result, we are not in the same position." Explore further Pandemic prompts more teachers to consider early retirement or new career 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Thomas Urban conducts a magnetometer survey of mammoth footprints at White Sands. Credit: David Bustos / Cornell University Footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico provide the earliest unequivocal evidence of human activity in the Americas and offer insight into life over 23,000 years ago. The footprints were formed in soft mud on the margins of a shallow lake that now forms part of Alkali Flat, a large playa at White Sands. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey dated these tracks using radiocarbon dating of seed layers above and below the footprint horizons. The dates range in age and confirm human presence over at least two millennia with the oldest tracks dating from around 23,000 years ago, which corresponds to the height of the last glacial cyclemaking them the oldest known human footprints in the Americas. The research, published in Science on Sept. 24, was conducted by scientists from Cornell, Bournemouth University, the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona. The tracks at White Sands were first discovered by David Bustos, resources manager at the park. In order to investigate the site, the team pioneered non-invasive geophysical techniques led by Thomas Urban, research scientist in the College of Arts and Sciences and with the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory. Footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, providing the earliest evidence of human activity in the Americas. Credit: Cornell University "Detection and imaging with nondestructive technology has greatly expanded our capacity to study these remarkable footprints in their broader context," Urban said. "Now we have a unique window into life during the Pleistocene in North America, and this new study provides the first unequivocal evidence of a sustained human presence in the Americas thousands of years earlier than most archeologists thought was likely." The footprints tell an interesting tale of what life was like at this time, say the researchers. Judging by their size, the tracks were left mainly by teenagers and younger children, with the occasional adult. Animal tracksmammoth, giant ground sloth, dire wolves and birdsare present as well. "It is an important site because of all of the trackways we've found there show an interaction of humans in the landscape alongside extinct animals," said co-author Sally Reynolds of Bournemouth University. "We can see the coexistence between humans and animals on the site as a whole, and by being able to accurately date these footprints, we're building a greater picture of the landscape." Traditional archeology relies on the discovery of bones and tools but can often be difficult to interpret. Human footprints provide unequivocal evidence of presence and also of behavior. It was previously thought that humans entered America closer to 16,000 years ago, after the melting of the North American ice sheets, which opened up migration routes. However, the footprints show a much earlier migration of humans into the Americas. "The footprints left at White Sands give a picture of what was taking place, teenagers interacting with younger children and adults," said Matthew Bennett, Bournemouth University, who helped lead the study. "We can think of our ancestors as quite functional, hunting and surviving, but what we see here is also activity of play, and of different ages coming together. A true insight into these early people." Explore further Fossil footprints tell story of prehistoric parent's journey More information: Matthew R. Bennett et al, Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum, Science (2021). Journal information: Science Matthew R. Bennett et al, Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abg7586 Credit: George Washington University The use of GPS-equipped ankle monitors is increasingly viewed as a more humane alternative to incarceration, yet a report released today finds they cause many of the same harms associated with traditional incarceration. The report by Kate Weisburd, an associate professor of law at the George Washington University, and a team of GW law students sheds light on how electronic monitoring, while not as restrictive as prison, deprives people of fundamental rights, violates basic privacy norms, extracts wealth, jeopardizes employment and undermines family and social relationships. "Unlike traditional models of probation and parole, GPS ankle monitors are more intensive, restrictive and dependent on private surveillance companies that are driven by profit," Weisburd said. "Our report finds that electronic surveillance is not an alternative to incarceration, it is an alternative form of jail and prison." The research team collected and analyzed over 247 records from 101 agencies across 44 states and Washington, D.C. These records included policies, terms, and contracts governing the use of electronic monitoring for people on pretrial release, probation, and parole. The most significant findings include: A Prisoner in Their Own Home: People ordered to wear electronic monitors are often required to remain in their homes unless they obtain pre-approval, which often must be sought days in advance and is inconsistently granted even for the most routine activities. People ordered to wear electronic monitors are often required to remain in their homes unless they obtain pre-approval, which often must be sought days in advance and is inconsistently granted even for the most routine activities. No Privacy: Privacy is practically nonexistent since the monitors capture, analyze and store months of location and movement data, often sharing it with law enforcement agencies and the courts. Most of the policies reviewed by the research team did not provide any privacy protections or rules governing use of data. The privacy of family and friends is also impacted through random and invasive home searches. Privacy is practically nonexistent since the monitors capture, analyze and store months of location and movement data, often sharing it with law enforcement agencies and the courts. Most of the policies reviewed by the research team did not provide any privacy protections or rules governing use of data. The privacy of family and friends is also impacted through random and invasive home searches. Set Up for Failure and Reincarceration: The nature and number of rules and restrictions imposed on people wearing monitors may lead to reincarceration for technical and rule violations that often have nothing to do with public safety. For example, failure to keep the device charged, or failure to charge it for a particular amount of time, could land a person back in jail. The rules are often vague, overly broad, and open to interpretation. The nature and number of rules and restrictions imposed on people wearing monitors may lead to reincarceration for technical and rule violations that often have nothing to do with public safety. For example, failure to keep the device charged, or failure to charge it for a particular amount of time, could land a person back in jail. The rules are often vague, overly broad, and open to interpretation. Wealth Extraction: Most jurisdictions require people on monitors to pay expensive user fees for the surveillance devices. The combination of monitoring fees, court costs and other expenses such as phone and internet service to maintain contact with supervising agents can run between $2,800 and $5,000 per year. Meanwhile, the four companies that dominate the electronic monitoring market are profiting from the use of the devices. "Our report shows that the private prison industry's hold on the criminal legal system is strong and rapidly growing through electronic monitoring," Fatima Khan, a GW Law student who co-authored the report, said. "I hope this study will help inform criminal justice reform and policymakers who are considering putting an end to the use of electronic monitoring." The report, "Electronic Prisons: The Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal System," was authored by Weisburd, Khan, and GW Law Students Varun Bhadha, Matthew Clauson, Jeanmarie Elican, Kendall Lawrenz, Brooke Pemberton, Rebecca Ringler, Jordan Schaer, Mikayla Sherman and Sarah Wohlsdorf. Explore further Ankle monitors could stigmatize wearers, research says The hot hydrogen test loop, shown in this diagram, will circulate hydrogen gas at high temperatures for materials testing. Credit: Image provided by Will Searight Nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses heat from nuclear reactions as fuel, could be used one day in human spaceflight, possibly even for missions to Mars. Its development, however, poses a challenge. The materials used must be able to withstand high heat and bombardment of high-energy particles on a regular basis. Will Searight, a nuclear engineering doctoral student at Penn State, is contributing to research that could make these advancements more feasible. He published findings from a preliminary design simulation in Fusion Science and Technology, a publication of the American Nuclear Society. To better investigate nuclear thermal propulsion, Searight simulated a small-scale laboratory experiment known as a hydrogen test loop. The setup mimics a reactor's operation in space, where flowing hydrogen travels through the core and propels the rocketat temperatures up to nearly 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. Searight developed the simulation using dimensions from detailed drawings of tie tubes, the components that make up much of the test loop through which hydrogen flows. Industry partner Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) provided the drawings. "Understanding how USNC's components behave in a hot hydrogen environment is crucial to bringing our rockets to space," Searight said. "We're thrilled to be working with one of the main reactor contractors for NASA's space nuclear propulsion project, which is seeking to produce a demonstration nuclear thermal propulsion engine within a decade." Advised by Leigh Winfrey, associate professor and undergraduate program chair of nuclear engineering, Searight used Ansys Fluent, a modeling software, to design a simulation loop from a stainless steel pipe with an outer diameter of about two inches. In the model, the loop connects to a hydrogen pump and circulates hot hydrogen through a test section adjacent to a heating element. Searight found that while consistent heating of hydrogen to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit was possible, it was necessary to include a heating element directly above the test section to prevent a reduction in heating. Data collected from the modeling software showed that the flow of hydrogen through the test section was smooth and uniform, reducing uneven distribution of heat through the loop that could jeopardize the setup's safety and lifespan. Analysis of the results also verified that stainless steel would allow for more convenient and cost-effective construction of the loop. "We are excited to take the first steps in developing a unique capability for extreme environment simulation at Penn State," Winfrey said. "This preliminary work will enable us to pursue research that could have a major impact on the future of space exploration." With further research, Searight's preliminary work could enable expanded testing of materials that could one day be implemented to create faster, more efficient space travel using reactor-fueled rockets. Recently, Searight received the George P. Shultz and James W. Behrens Graduate Scholarship from ANS. Searight will use the award to support his future work on the test loop. The $3,000 scholarship honors Shultz, a nuclear nonproliferation advocate and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who died in February, and Behrens, a previous ANS board member who held numerous positions in the national security sector. Explore further NuclearOut of this world More information: William Searight et al, Preliminary Design of a Hot Hydrogen Test Loop for Plasma-MaterialInteraction Evaluation, Fusion Science and Technology (2021). William Searight et al, Preliminary Design of a Hot Hydrogen Test Loop for Plasma-MaterialInteraction Evaluation,(2021). DOI: 10.1080/15361055.2021.1913373 Credit: CC0 Public Domain Researchers from the University of Cologne and University of Bremen published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how micro and macro conditions influence grocery shopping behaviors in different ways. How does grocery shopping change with economic conditions? This new study suggests that micro (i.e., individual income) and macro (i.e., the business cycle) conditions substantially influence grocery shopping behavior, but in very different ways. Households experience constantly changing economic conditions. These changes may take place at a personal, microeconomic level, such as if the main breadwinner receives a pay raise or a household member loses a job (micro conditions). Alternatively, changes may occur at a macroeconomic level, in terms of the business cycle with its recurring expansions and contractions or in response to global events such as the Great Recession or the Covid-19 pandemic (macro conditions). Scholdra explains that "While changing micro conditions directly affect households' ability to purchase, changing macro conditions, all else being equal, affect only households' willingness to purchase. Accordingly, households' response to changing conditions depends on whether they are affected at a micro or macro level, or both, and may manifest in very different shopping outcomes." The researchers analyze seven measurable and managerially relevant shopping outcomes reflecting how households allocate their budgets across brand types and store formatstheir shopping basket allocation (in terms of private label and national brand spending in discounters and non-discounters)as well as how much they spend and purchasetheir shopping basket value (in terms of total spending, purchase volume, and an index of prices paid). Through the analysis, they uncover and characterize the differential effects of micro and macro conditions on households' shopping behavior by addressing the following research questions: To what extent do micro (i.e., income) and macro conditions (i.e., the business cycle) affect households' CPG (consumer packaged goods) shopping behavior? How do micro and macro conditions differ in terms of their effects on households' shopping basket allocation and shopping basket value? Do asymmetries exist between negative (i.e., income losses/economic contractions) and positive conditions (i.e., income gains/economic expansions) and, if so, do these asymmetries differ between micro and macro conditions? The study uses detailed data about daily CPG transactions as well as demographic and psychographic information for more than 5,000 households in Germany over a period of eight years including the Great Recession. Based on this, it identifies what and where households shop, how much they purchase, what prices they pay, and how much they spend. The analyses show that micro and macro conditions both have a substantial impact on households' shopping behavior. Importantly, households adjust their shopping behaviors without a concrete change in their budget constraints. In addition, micro and macro conditions differ substantially in their effects on households' shopping behaviors. Whereas micro conditions primarily have an impact on households' basket value, macro conditions affect households' basket value and also cause shifts in households' basket allocation. During adverse micro conditions, households buy lower volumes and spend substantially less in total but do not shift spending to other brands or store formats. In contrast, as macro conditions change, households shift spending to private labels (from both discounters and non-discounters) during contractions and to national brands during expansions. In addition, they increase their total spending and purchase volume during contractions. "We argue that the shifts during macro conditions are driven by a greater society-wide acceptance of frugal consumption that does not emerge during changing micro conditions," says Wichmann. Eisenbeiss explains that "These discrete effects of micro and macro conditions and the proposed underlying mechanisms have distinct managerial implications. For example, to buffer the negative effects of when and where wages are expected to decrease, manufacturers as well as discounters can profit from listing national brands in discounters. Especially hard discounters like Aldi and Lidl, whose overwhelming majority of revenues stem from their own private labels, may profit from this strategy." During economic contractions, retailers can use the opportunity to extend their private label portfolio into higher price tiers and product categories with high involvement and complexity. "On the other hand, during subsequent expansions, they may narrow their price gap to national brands and strengthen their branding to preemptively counteract households' shifts back to national brands," adds Reinartz, "especially non-discounter private labels may get away with raising prices because they are unaffected by increasing budgetary constraints." In conclusion, even though manufacturers and retailers have little control over economic conditions, knowledge about the associated reactions by households allows them to adapt and navigate the economic ups and downs. More information: Thomas P. Scholdra et al, EXPRESS: Households under Economic Change: How Micro- and Macroeconomic Conditions Shape Grocery Shopping Behavior, Journal of Marketing (2021). Journal information: Journal of Marketing Thomas P. Scholdra et al, EXPRESS: Households under Economic Change: How Micro- and Macroeconomic Conditions Shape Grocery Shopping Behavior,(2021). DOI: 10.1177/00222429211036882 Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti The advance of lava from a volcanic eruption on one of Spain's Canary Islands has slowed significantly, raising fears Thursday that the molten rock might fan out further in coming days and wreak more destruction instead of just flowing out into the sea. One giant river of lava 600 meters (2,000 feet) wide slowed to four meters (13 feet) per hour after reaching a plain on Wednesday, officials said. On Monday, a day after the eruption on La Palma, it was moving at 700 meters (2,300 feet) per hour. A second stream of lava has virtually ground to a halt, the head of the National Geographic Institute in the Canary Islands, Maria Jose Blanco, told a news conference. It won't reach the Atlantic Ocean before the weekend, she said, with some scientists saying it might never reach the sea. Blanco said seismic activity on La Palma island was now "low" but molten rock is still being thrown out of the volcano26 million cubic meters so far. Stavros Meletlidis, a volcanologist at Spain's National Geographic Institute, said the dynamics of any eruption were in constant flux. "The lava is advancing very slowly because it cools in contact with the atmosphere, through friction with the ground and building materials and, above all, because its front edge is widening out," he told Radio Television Canaria. Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti As it slowed, the lava grew thicker. In places, it rose up to 15 meters (50 feet) high, authorities said. It now covers 166 hectares (410 acres) and has swallowed up around 350 homes. The uncertainty left many residents on the western side of the island of 85,000 people in limbo. Scientists say the lava flows could last for weeks or months. Joel Francisco, 38, said he and his elderly parents had to evacuate the area around the village of Todoque in a rush, taking only a few belongings and important documents. Now that the flow seems to have slowed, he hopes to go back and retrieve some more things in case the house is entombed in lavaif police let him. "We don't know how long we have to wait until we can return to our homes because the roads are closed," he told The Associated Press. "Some people have it worse off, their houses are gone." Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti Like many on the island, Francisco works on a banana plantation, and his livelihood is also at risk of being ruined by lava or damaged by volcanic ash. "We are waiting to see if we can go out to work or not," he said. "This changed our life." Spain's King Felipe VI, who visited the homeless Thursday along with Queen Letizia and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, vowed to help the island's needy. "Suddenly, you have had almost everything taken from you, in one fell swoop. No home, no equipment, no clothes, no food, no resources, no work," the monarch told reporters. "We have to do everything we can to help these families." The eruption occurred along the island's Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge. The Canary Islands are a volcanic archipelago. La Palma witnessed its last eruption in 1971. As lava, ash and smoke continued to pour from the volcano, shooting up to 4,200 meters (nearly 14,000 feet) high, there were concerns about whether airspace above the island should remain open. Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti ENAIRE, which manages Spain's airspace, said two areas above the affected area are being declared no-fly zones to allow emergency services to operate freely. Many flights to and from La Palma were delayed early Thursday. Volcanic ash can be dangerous for aircraft. It can also cause respiratory problems, as well as potentially being an irritant for the eyes and skin. The Emergency Military Unit deployed on the island said the readings it has taken of the air found no threat to health. Authorities haven't reported any casualties from the eruption. Scientists had been monitoring the volcanic activity and had warned of a possible eruption, allowing almost 7,000 people to be evacuated in time. Officials had initially expressed fears about what would happen when the lava reached the Atlantic. The molten rock, whose temperature exceeds 1,000 C (more than 1,800 F), could cause explosions, trigger landslides and produce toxic gas when it hits the water, experts say. Life on the rest of La Palma, which is roughly 35 kilometers (22 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide at its broadest point, has been largely unaffected, with undeterred tourists landing for previously scheduled vacations. Explore further EXPLAINER: Wide dangers ahead for Spanish volcanic island 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. The Sentry, an autonomous undersea vehicle, was used to map the magnetic stripes in Pito Deep, a large chasm in the Pacific Ocean that provides a cross-section of samples of lower oceanic crust. Michael Cheadle and Barbara John, both UW professors of geology and geophysics, contributed to a paper titled Three-Dimensional Magnetic Stripes Require Slow Cooling in Fast-Spread Lower Ocean Crust that was published Sept. 23 in Nature. Credit: Michael Cheadle Two University of Wyoming researchers are part of the first-ever mapping of magnetic stripesone of the foundations of plate tectonicswithin the lower gabbroic section of fast-spreading oceanic crust. In the process, the group may have potentially solved a 30-year-old question of scientific debate: At what speed does fast-spreading oceanic crust form? "This has never been done before. The magnetic stripes are a record of how the Earth's magnetic field changes through time and, in particular, how the Earth's magnetic field flips or reverses when the magnetic North Pole becomes the magnetic South Pole and vice versa," says Michael Cheadle, a professor in the UW Department of Geology and Geophysics. "This mapping in the third dimension is exciting in itself because the magnetic stripes, first discovered in the early 1960s, provided some of the key evidence for the theory of plate tectonicsthe theory that explains how and why we get mountain ranges, ocean basins, volcanoes and earthquakes." Cheadle is a third author of a new study that is highlighted in a paper titled "Three-Dimensional Magnetic Stripes Require Slow Cooling in Fast-Spread Lower Ocean Crust" that was published today in Nature, an international weekly journal of science. Cheadle and Barbara John, a UW professor of geology and geophysics, the paper's fourth author, and Jeff Gee, a professor of geosciences at the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, designed the experiment, as well as carried out sample and data collection. Sarah Maher, a Ph.D. student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is the paper's lead author. She and Gee completed the data processing and analysis. The manuscript addresses the question of how fast-spread ocean crustwhich accounts for 40 percent of oceanic crust and, therefore, 25 percent of the Earth's surfacecools and forms using novel applications of crustal magnetization. The shape of the magnetic stripes in the third dimension shows the ocean crust actually cools very slowly. "So, we've just placed a major constraint on how a quarter of planet Earth's crust forms," Cheadle says of the study's results. Cheadle, John and Gee were the three principal investigators on the cruise to Pito Deep in 2017. Located near Easter Island, Pito Deep is a large chasm, which is one of the few places in the Pacific Ocean that allows sampling of a cross-section of lower oceanic crust. Pito Deep is approximately 3.5 kilometers deep, which is about twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. Jason II, a remotely operated robot submarine connected by cable to the ship, was used to collect the rock samples from the seafloor. Credit: Lucas Kavanagh Ocean crust is created at midocean ridges and forms by freezing and crystallization of magma, which is produced by melting of the Earth's mantle. That magma has a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius when it first escapes from the mantle before it cools and solidifies into rock. As it cools below 580 degrees Celsius, it becomes magnetized and traps a record of the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field at that time. As a result, it records the periodic flips or reversals of the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field, when the magnetic North Pole becomes the magnetic South Pole, and vice versa. These polarity reversals lead to the normally magnetized and reversely magnetic stripes of ocean crust. "The magnetic stripes can be considered to be a tape recording of the history of the Earth's magnetic field," Cheadle says. "And the pattern of that tape recording shows that fast-spread oceanic crust must have cooled very slowly." The research team documented a subhorizontal magnetic stripe or polarity boundary that extends over 8 kilometers from the paleo-spreading axis. To do so, the group used Sentry, an autonomous submarine, to map the seafloor magnetization of gabbroic rock over two 8- to 10-kilometer-long regions and made direct measurements of the magnetic polarity of more than 200 oriented samples collected by Jason II, a remotely operated submarine. Gabbroic rock is the frozen magma that forms a magma chamber below volcanoes, which erupts lava on the seafloor. Ocean crust preserves changes in magnetic field polarity and intensity as it cools through its lock-in or blocking temperature. This occurs either instantaneously, as in the lava section, which flash cools on eruption; or more slowly in the deeper gabbro section. The geometry of the recorded boundaries between normal and reversely magnetized rocks in the crustal cross-section thus reflects the past cooling history of the ocean crust. The research leads to two important, testable predictions from the study's results, Cheadle says. "First, we suggest that our cooling model is consistent with 100- to 200-meter offset faults that occur 8 to 10 kilometers off axis, allowing for deep hydrothermal circulation," Cheadle says. "If correct, this implies there is a significant area of relatively unexplored, likely diffuse, hydrothermal circulation occurring about 10 kilometers off axis at fast-spread ridges. "Secondly, our results imply only shallow earthquakes would occur within 8 to 10 kilometers of the spreading axis," he continues. "Our results have widespread implications across multiple fields of geoscience, including formation of the Earth's crust, fluid flow within the oceans, geochemistry and seismology." Explore further Researchers uncover 340 million year-old oceanic crust in the Mediterranean Sea using magnetic data More information: Sarah M. Maher et al, Three-dimensional magnetic stripes require slow cooling in fast-spread lower ocean crust, Nature (2021). Journal information: Nature Sarah M. Maher et al, Three-dimensional magnetic stripes require slow cooling in fast-spread lower ocean crust,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03831-6 Credit: CC0 Public Domain A few years ago, Edoardo Charbon, an EPFL professor and head of the Advanced Quantum Architecture Laboratory, unveiled a new, ultra-high-power camera called Swiss SPAD2. His device was the first to be able to capture and count the very smallest form of light particle: the photon. It can also generate 3D images and calculate depth of field by measuring the amount of time it takes for a photon to travel from the camera to an object. Since then, Charbon has tweaked his invention even further. He sent it to a colleague at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire so that they could work together on the technology. By pooling their efforts, they were able to photograph, identify and locate tumors in human tissue. Their method involves projecting red light onto an area of diseased tissue with a laser while the camera simultaneously takes a picture of the area. "Red is a color that can penetrate deep into human tissue," says Charbon. The tissue is also injected with a fluorescent contrasting agent that attaches only to tumor cells. A less than one-nanosecond delay When the red light particles reach a tumor, they behave slightly differently from when they pass through healthy tissue. More specifically, it takes them longer to return to the point they were sent from. And it's this time differential that gives scientists the information they need to reconstruct the tumor. "The delay is less than a nanosecond, but it's enough for us to be able to generate a 2D or 3D image," says Charbon. Thanks to this approach, their new system can accurately identify a tumor's shape, including its thickness, and locate it within a patient's body. The time lag is due to the fact that when red light comes into contact with a tumor, it loses some of its energy. "The deeper into a tumor the light travels, the more time it will take to return. That allows us to construct an image in three dimensions," says Charbon. Until now, scientists have had to choose between identifying a tumor's depth or its location. But with this new technology, they can have both. Today, surgeons can use MRI to locate a tumorbut the task gets a lot harder once they're in the operating room. Charbon's technology aims to help surgeons with the delicate task of removing a tumor. "The images generated by our system will let them make sure they've removed all the cancerous tissue and that no little pieces remain," says Claudio Bruschini, a scientist in Charbon's lab. The research was recently published in Optica and could also be used in medical imaging, microscopy and metrology. Explore further Capturing moving subjects in still-life quality Credit: CC0 Public Domain The COVID-19 pandemic has made it necessary to innovate flexible teaching methods. As a result, many instructors have learned to deliver their agendas and instruction via Zoom and Teams. In autumn of 2020, students returned in limited numbers. They were welcomed by "HyFlex Learning" in which half received remote instruction while the other half were physically present. This new normal became a part of the day-to-day lives of UCPH students. But how, in practice, did HyFlex instruction for large lectures work out? One University of Copenhagen researcher studied exactly that in a study just published in the Danish journal, Lring og Medier (Learning and Media). "Something that surprised us was how active online students were in terms of asking questions about their instruction. They asked plenty of questions in their chats, unlike physical attendees, who asked very few questions to lecturers," explains Helle Mathiasen, the Department of Science Education professor behind the study. Together with e-learning consultant Henrik Bregnhj of UCPH's Centre for Online and Blended Learning (COBL), she included 282 lectures delivered at the University of Copenhagen's pharmaceutical, medical and veterinary faculties and analyzed instant message records of three lectures. Furthermore, Helle Mathiasen conducted 15 group interviews with students regarding their instructional experiences. "The students express that it is easier to ask questions like, 'how exactly does it affect the molecule?' in a chat than in a physical space, where students don't want to be pegged as the 'he or she that asked the dumb question'. Another possible explanation for why online students were more active in chats may be that they are used to communicating with one another in writing on social media," suggests Mathiasen. Difference between discussion groups and lectures Differences in participation between online and physical attendees may also be due to expectations of what a lecture is intended to be. Professor Mathiasen explains: "Some students have an expectation that large lectures involve mostly one-way communication by the instructor. Hence, they don't feel that it makes sense to ask questions during that time. The same students may be more active in other situations, such as in smaller discussion groups," says Mathiasen. However, several research projects demonstrate that students learn most when they actively engage with material by, for example, asking about things that they are uncertain about or in seeking confirmation. According to the professor, it can be "problematic" when students who have shown up on campus for lectures are not prompted and engaged. "If we don't actively use what we learn in instruction, it is quickly erased from our memory. Therefore, chats provide a fertile ground for deeper understanding, because there is greater communication between students, as well as with the lecturer," she says. Chats cannot stand alone While a chat can be a useful learning tool, certain aspects can't replace physical attendance, where students experience gestures, eye contact and body language as part of the teaching. "Online education cannot stand alone. However, blends like HyFlex could serve as teaching formats that are more widely deployed in the future. And in particular, if there is an e-moderator who includes questions from the chat and controls the camera in a dynamic way that allows remote students to see when the lecturer is writing on the board or pointing to slides, which as a whole makes them feel seen," she says, concluding: "However, we must combat our own tendencies to censor ourselves or be shy about asking important questions. Here, an instructor can play a major role in telling their students that it is okay to make mistakes and that mistakes can be learned from." Explore further Those who fail productively are all the wiser More information: Henrik Bregnhj et al, Hvad kan HyFlex-organiseret undervisning?, Tidsskriftet Lring og Medier (LOM) (2021). Henrik Bregnhj et al, Hvad kan HyFlex-organiseret undervisning?,(2021). DOI: 10.7146/lom.v14i24.125533 A special trap: Michael Gibson 23 gets ready to set a crab trap at a test site off the York River. The team uses special traps equipped with a wire snorkel (right) that allows turtles to get to the surface of the water and breathe. Hes part of a team comparing two designs of devices intended to keep turtles out of the traps of crabbers. Credit: Madeline Reinsel Diamondback terrapins have always found it hard to catch a break. Up through the first third of the last century, terrapins were at the top of the list of luxury foods. Joseph Mitchell had a 1930s piece in The New Yorker reporting on a firm in the Fulton Fish Market that sold 2,000 quarts of diamondback terrapin stew a year. A patchwork of state and federal regulations keep America's only truly estuarine turtle from being served up as seafood, variously classifying terrapin as endangered, threatened or species of concern throughout the species' East Coast range. Randy Chambers explains that diamondback terrapins continue to be unintended victims of the seafood industry, as they end up drowning as bycatch in crab traps. Chambers, the director of William & Mary's Keck Environmental Field Laboratory, is leading a team that's trying to find a way to keep turtles out of the traps in the first place. Madeline Reinsel, research assistant at the Keck Lab, explained that terrapins enter the wire traps attracted by the bait set for blue crabs. Like the crabs, the terrapins can't find their way out. Unlike the crabs, the terrapins can't breathe underwater, and they drown in the traps. Much of the effort to keep terrapins out of traps has been concentrated on bycatch reduction devices, or BRDs. Chambers said that the crabbing community has been resistant to adopt BRDs voluntarily and also has resisted any proposed regulations. Chambers, Reinsel and two William & Mary undergraduates hope to win over even the most hard-shelled BRD skeptics. This summer, they have been testing a new BRD, designed by Reinsel. Her design has an oval opening, a departure from the usual rectangular BRD. "The oval BRD design was originally dreamed up by J.D. Kloepfer of the Department of Wildlife Resources, who asked me if anyone had ever considered using oval BRDs on crab traps," Chambers said. "I thought this was an excellent idea, and decided that it would be useful to compare the efficacy of the oval BRDs vs. rectangular BRDs." Reinsel created the original 3D print design on Tinkercad, and then worked with students and employees at Swem Library's Makerspace to print around 50 oval BRDs for use during the summer experiment. The principle of a BRD is to narrow the oval opening in a crab trap so that crabseven the jumboscan enter, but terrapins can't. Chambers explained that there are no good statistics on the toll of crab traps on Virginia's terrapin population. Reinsel added that there are several reasons for the dearth of data, beginning with the fact that because any Virginian can run two crab pots without a crabbing license, there is no way of knowing how many recreational crab pots are out there, especially in the shallow, estuarine waters where blue crab and terrapin habitat overlap. "We don't know whether more terrapins are killed by recreational crabbers or by commercial crabbers who venture into shallow waters to crab," Chambers said. "Another issue is that commercial crabbers lose a large number of their traps annually because of storms, propellers slicing through float lines, etc. These 'ghost pots' may be death traps for terrapins, especially when the traps get carried into shallow water by storms." Michael Gibson '23 and Natalie Klesch '23, spent their summer working in the field to collect data for a study comparing rectangular BRDs against the oval design. They received funding from William & Mary's Charles Center and Committee on Sustainability for their research; the project itself benefited from support from the PADI Foundation. Oval vs rectangular: Studies show the two designs work equally well at keeping terrapin from entering crab traps but the oval is much easier to install. Credit: Madeline Reinsel Gibson and Klesch worked from a canoe at Indian Field Creek and Felgates Creek in the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station on the York River, an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Chambers noted that the group received special permission to conduct the study in areas closed to both commercial and recreational fishing. The study used traps much like a commercial or recreational crabberbut fitted with a snorkel that allows a trapped terrapin to swim up to the water's surface and breathe. Working with Chambers and Reinsel, Klesch and Gibson tended the traps every day, pulling up the traps, extracting crabs and terrapins, rebaiting and re-setting. They measured their catchcrabs as well as terrapinsand recorded the data. "At the end of the summer, they did a preliminary analysis of the data and presented their findings at the Mid-Atlantic Diamondback Terrapin Working Group conference in late August," Chambers added. Reinsel documented the work in a video, which has been submitted to the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation's film festival. Preliminary results show that the oval design was just effective as the traditional rectangular designs at terrapin exclusion, but the new design has one significant advantage. "It is much easier to install," Reinsel said, "because the oval shape of the funnel lends itself better to an oval BRD. Unless you have very small hands, it can be difficult to install rectangular BRDs in crab trapsit's literally, a square peg, round hole phenomenon. It takes about half the time to install an oval BRD vs. a rectangular BRD per funnel." Explore further Recreational blue crab harvest in Maryland higher than current estimates In SBRC, the responsivity of an IR sensor is measured as a black-box to obtain its whole output when viewing the radiation from a source (i.e. blackbody). Conversely, in SIRC, the responsivity of a full or at least closely-approached BLIP sensor, which can be satisfied by most onboard sensors, is calculated by modeling the relationship between the incident background radiation and its responsivity. In essence, SBRC is a measurement-based method while SIRC is a modeling-based one. Particularly, the responsivity here merely refers to the linear component of the whole relationship between DN and radiance illustrated above. Credit: Qiang Guo, Fuchun Chen, Xiangyang Li, Boyang Chen, Xin Wang, Guilin Chen, and Caiying Wei Radiometric calibration (RC) guarantees measurements from infrared photonic sensors with certain accuracy, where a traditional radiation source will introduce unexpected uncertainties for degradation. To overcome such a limitation, Scientist in China proposed an original source independent RC (SIRC) principle by modeling the incident background radiation to both photoconductive and photovoltaic HgCdTe detectors, respectively. SIRC will ensure a long-term stable service of Chinese geostationary meteorological satellites and benefit the future infrared micro-satellite constellation for climate applications. To guarantee measurements from infrared (IR) photonic sensors with certain accuracy, radiometric calibration (RC) is implemented to determine the radiometric responsivity of sensor and usually be solved by comparing with some radiation source (i.e. blackbody), called source based RC (SBRC). SBRC method provides a reasonable calibration way, where the targeted sensor is measured as a black-box to obtain its whole output when viewing the incident radiation from a source. However, there are three main intrinsic limitations in design, manufacture and application aspects for SBRC respectively. Firstly, since some non-ideal characteristics of a source (i.e. the emissivity of an available blackbody is absolutely less than unit) exist in nature, the additional uncertainty from such a source to the ultimate calibration results is inevitable. Secondly, it is hardly to be guaranteed that a well-qualified blackbody together with some relevant assembly are equipped for all IR sensors, particularly for those onboard the popular micro-satellite platforms. Finally, diverse sources will bring extra difficulties to unify the costs of traceability for different sensors, which is inacceptable for the current climate and climate change researches. In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a team of scientists, led by Professor Qiang Guo from National Satellite Meteorological Center, China Meteorological Administration, China, and co-workers from Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have proposed an original source independent RC (SIRC) principle based on modeling instead of comparing for SBRC, where the incident background radiation to detector, as a dominated factor influencing the responsivity characteristics of a photonic sensor, is modeled to implement RC for both two fundamental types (photoconductive and photovoltaic) of HgCdTe photonic detectors. The SIRC merely requires the temperature information of main components of a sensor other than some complex source and its assembly, and provides a traceable way at lower uncertainty costs relative to the traditional SBRC. a, Monthly biases of FY-2G VISSR IR1-IR3 bands with IBBC method. b, Monthly biases of FY-2G VISSR IR1-IR3 bands with SIRC method. c, Scatter plots of the collocated observations between FY-2G IR1 band and IASI with IBBC method. d, Scatter plots of the collocated observations between FY-2G IR1 band and IASI with SIRC method. Credit: Qiang Guo, Fuchun Chen, Xiangyang Li, Boyang Chen, Xin Wang, Guilin Chen, and Caiying Wei In essence, the characteristics of the sensor's calibrated response are independent of such a known and controlled source (e.g. blackbody for an IR sensor), which implies that we may obtain them in other ways, e.g. modeling with the dominant impact factors, instead of the traditional one by using measurement with a source. These scientists summarize the operational principle of SIRC: "We propose the SIRC principle which establishes a new methodology to calibrate an infrared photonic senor by modeling the relationship between the incident background radiation and its responsivity for the available IR photonic detectors, particularly for space utilization. The main defects and limitations of SBRC are completely overcome in SIRC, e.g. without additional uncertainty from source, without a complex source or its assembly to be equipped, and easy to be traceable with some measured temperature information to provide more reliable measurements from a sensor." "The proposed SIRC principle is expected to set up a whole new solution for both design and development of a spaceborne IR photonic sensor as well as its corresponding radiometric calibration processing on ground, and particularly benefit the IR measurement accuracy of micro-satellite constellation in a more applicable way." "The SIRC is being implemented in Fengyun-2 satellites (FY-2G and FY-2F) since 2019, which ensures a long-term stable service of Chinese geostationary meteorological satellites for the global observation system under the framework of World Meteorological Organization. Moreover, a 20-year-period traceable Fengyun-2 dataset to be re-calibrated with SIRC will benefit the further climate applications." Explore further New developments with Chinese satellites over the past decade More information: Qiang Guo et al, High-accuracy source-independent radiometric calibration with low complexity for infrared photonic sensors, Light: Science & Applications (2021). Journal information: Light: Science & Applications Qiang Guo et al, High-accuracy source-independent radiometric calibration with low complexity for infrared photonic sensors,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41377-021-00597-4 The Soyuz MS-18 crew ship, pictured, will relocate from the Russian Rassvet module to the Nauka module on Sept. 28. Credit: NASA Three residents of the International Space Station will take a short ride aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft Tuesday, Sept. 28, relocating the spacecraft to prepare for the arrival of the next set of station crew members. Expedition 65 flight engineers Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos will undock from the station's Earth-facing Rassvet module at 8:21 a.m. EDT. They will dock again at the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module at 9 a.m. This will be the first time a spacecraft has attached to the new Nauka module, which arrived at the station in July. Live coverage of the maneuver will begin at 8 a.m. on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website. The relocation will free the Rassvet port for the docking of another Soyuz spacecraft, designated Soyuz MS-19, which will carry three Russian crew members to the station in October. Soyuz commander and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and spaceflight participants Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild are scheduled to launch to the station Tuesday, Oct. 5, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This will be the 20th Soyuz port relocation in station history and the first since March 2021. Vande Hei and Dubrov are scheduled to remain aboard the station until March 2022. At the time of his return, Vande Hei will have set the record for the longest single spaceflight for an American. Novitskiy, Shipenko, and Peresild are scheduled to return to Earth in October aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. For more than 20 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. As a global endeavor, 244 people from 19 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 3,000 research and educational investigations from researchers in 108 countries and areas. Explore further Space station crew to relocate Soyuz to make room for new crewmates LLNL scientists have developed a new approach using machine learning to study with unprecedented resolution the phase behaviors of superionic water found in ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory The interiors of Uranus and Neptune each contain about 50 000 times the amount of water in Earth's oceans, and a form of water known as superionic water is believed to be stable at depths greater than about one-third of the radius of these ice giants. Superionic water is a phase of H 2 O where hydrogen atoms become liquid-like while oxygen atoms remain solid-like on a crystalline lattice. Although superionic water was proposed over three decades ago, its optical properties and oxygen lattices were only accurately measured recently in experiments by LLNL's Marius Millot and Federica Coppari, and many properties of this hot "black ice" are still uncharted. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have developed a new approach using machine learning to study with unprecedented resolution the phase behaviors of superionic water. Buried deep within the core of planets, much of the water in the universe may be superionic and understanding its thermodynamic and transport properties is crucial for planetary science but difficult to probe experimentally or theoretically. Under the pressures and temperatures found in ice giant planets, most of this water was predicted by First-Principles Molecular Dynamics (FPMD) simulations to be in a superionic phase. However, such quantum mechanical simulations have traditionally been limited to short simulation times (10s of picoseconds) and small system size (100s of atoms) leading to significant uncertainty in the location of phase boundaries such as the melting line. In experiments on superionic water, sample preparation is extremely challenging, hydrogen positions cannot be determined and temperature measurements in dynamical compression experiments are not straightforward. Often the experiments benefit from the guidance provided by quantum molecular dynamic simulations both during the design stage and for the interpretation of the results. In the most recent research, the team made a leap forward in its ability to treat large system sizes and long-time scales by making use of machine learning techniques to learn the atomic interactions from quantum mechanical calculations. They then used that machine-learned potential to drive the molecular dynamics and enable the use of advanced free energy sampling methods to accurately determine the phase boundaries. "We use machine learning and free energy methods to overcome the limitations of quantum mechanical simulations, and characterize hydrogen diusion, superionic transitions and phase behaviors of water at extreme conditions," said LLNL physicist Sebastien Hamel, a co-author of a paper appearing in Nature Physics. The team found that phase boundaries, which are consistent with the existing experimental observations, help resolve the fractions of insulating ice, dierent superionic phases and liquid water inside of ice giants. The construction of effective interaction potentials that retain the accuracy of quantum mechanical calculations is a difficult task. The framework that was developed here is general and can be used to discover and/or characterize other complex materials such as battery electrolytes, plastics and nanocrystalline diamond used in ICF capsules as well as new phases of ammonia, salts, hydrocarbons, silicates and related mixtures that are relevant for planetary science. "Our quantitative understanding of superionic water sheds light into the interior structure, evolution and magnetic fields of planets such as Uranus and Neptune and also of the increasing number of icy exoplanets," Hamel said. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Lyon and Tohoku University also contributed to the paper. The LLNL portion of the research is funded by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development project "Unraveling the Physics and Chemistry of low-Z Mixtures at Extreme Pressures and Temperatures" and the Institutional Computing Grand Challenge program. Explore further Two strange planets: Neptune and Uranus remain mysterious after new findings More information: Cheng, B. et al. Phase behaviours of superionic water at planetary conditions. Nat. Phys. (2021). Journal information: Nature Physics Cheng, B. et al. Phase behaviours of superionic water at planetary conditions.(2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01334-9 Members of the Fornax galaxy cluster fill this image from the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSFs NOIRLab. Appearing in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace), the Fornax Cluster is a relatively nearby galaxy cluster, only about 60 million light-years from Earth. Some foreground stars, which belong to our own Milky Way Galaxy, appear in the image as well. Credit: CTIO NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA The Fornax Clusterwhich, as the name suggests, lies primarily in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace)is a relatively nearby galaxy cluster, only about 60 million light-years from Earth. This means that it looms large in the night sky, stretching across an area more than 100 times larger than the full moon. With over 600 member galaxies, the Fornax Cluster is the second "richest" (most populous) galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years of our galaxy (after the much larger Virgo Cluster). Two elliptical galaxies dominate the center of this imagevisible as the two large patches of diffuse light with bright cores. Such galaxies usually contain much older stars than the more picturesque spiral galaxies, and they tend to be found in galaxy clusters such as the Fornax Cluster. These elliptical galaxieswhich are named NGC 1399 and NGC 1404are among the brightest members of the Fornax Cluster and are inexorably being drawn together by the force of gravity. This interaction is stripping gas from NGC 1404, the lower elliptical galaxy in this image. In the bottom left corner of the image appears the irregular galaxy NGC 1427A. This ragged patch of light is a small, irregular collection of stars similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud. Similarly to NGC 1404, NGC 1427A is plunging toward the heart of the cluster at roughly 2.2 million kilometers (or 1.3 million miles) per hour. This headlong rush to destruction will eventually result in the galaxy being disruptedpulled apart by gravitational interactions with other galaxies. As with most astronomical observations, this image shows not only the intended target but also a menagerie of objects both close to home and at tremendous distances. The image is dotted with interloping objects from within our own Milky Waybright stars with diffraction spikes. At the other extreme, distant galaxies provide a colorful backdrop to this image: some are recognizable as spiral galaxies, while others are mere smudges. Despite appearing tiny in this image, each of the distant galaxies contains billions of stars. This image was captured by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), one of the highest-performance, wide-field imagers in the world, as part of the Dark Energy Survey. Funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and built and tested at DOE's Fermilab, DECam was operated by DOE and the National Science Foundation (NSF) between 2013 and 2019. Among its many accomplishments, DECam observations have helped astronomers discover nearly 300 previously unknown dwarf galaxies in the Fornax Cluster. At present DECam is used for programs covering a huge range of science. Like other survey instruments, DECam captures images of large swaths of the night sky, allowing astronomers to understand structures in the universe at large scales. Telescope surveys also help identify intriguing astronomical objects worthy of follow-up observation; the most powerful telescopes can only study a minute portion of the night sky at any given time, so astronomers often use surveys to find objects that are interesting enough to observe in detail. Explore further Dark Energy Camera captures detailed view of striking peculiar galaxy Provided by NOIRLab A firefighter hoses down hot spots around a sequoia tree in the Trail of 100 Giants of Sequoia National Forest, Calif., as the Windy Fire burns on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. According to firefighters, the tree sustained fire damage when the fire spotted into its crown. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger Growing armies of firefighters battled wildfires in the heart of California's sequoia country on Wednesday. A big increase in personnel put more than 1,400 firefighters on the lines of the KNP Complex fire in Sequoia National Park, fire information officer Ana Beatriz Cholo said. The fire remained a threat to the park's famed Giant Forest. But the weather was expected to clear out smoke and allow aircraft to begin operations against the flames. Weather conditions that trap smoke have the benefit of reducing fire activity but also can make it unsafe to fly. The fire earlier entered a portion of Giant Forest, but none of its famous gigantic trees were harmed, officials have said. For decades, the grove of 2,000 sequoias has been regularly subjected to prescribed burns that clear out other types of vegetation that could intensify fire and carry it to the crowns of the trees. Fire-resistant material has also been placed around the bases of some of the most famous forest inhabitants, including the General Sherman Tree, the largest in the world by volume. The KNP Complex began as two fires ignited by lightning strikes on Sept. 9. They later merged into one blaze that has scorched more than 44 square miles (114 square kilometers) with zero containment, forcing the closure of Sequoia National Park. Most of adjacent Kings Canyon National Park is also now closed. Firefighters mop up hot spots in the Trail of 100 Giants grove of the Sequoia National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger The windy fire burns along a ridge in Sequoia National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger A firefighter mops up hot spots in the Trail of 100 Giants grove of Sequoia National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger Firefighter Sal Valencia hoses down a hot spot in the Trail of 100 Giants grove of Sequoia National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger Line safety director Joe Labak marks a falling branch hazard in the Trail of 100 Giants of Sequoia National Forest, Calif., as the Windy Fire burns on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Labak said the sequoia at center sustained fire damage when the fire spotted into its crown. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger Firefighters mop up hot spots in the Trail of 100 Giants grove of the Sequoia National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Noah Berger To the south, the lightning-sparked Windy Fire grew to 49 square miles (127 square kilometers) in the Giant Sequoia National Monument area of Sequoia National Forest and containment crept up to 7%. Nearly 1,300 firefighters were assigned to the blaze. "The fire's active, but we've got a good number of staff out there," information officer Kate Kramer said. The Windy Fire has affected several sequoia groves, but the extent of any damage has yet to be assessed. One big tree on the Trail of 100 Giants was confirmed to have sustained some burning. Giant sequoias can benefit from fire if it is not too intense. Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say 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. Explore further 4 famous giant trees unharmed by Sequoia National Park fire 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. COVID-19 lockdowns influenced most North American birds. Credit: Jessica Waldinger A team of researchers from several institutions in Canada and one in the U.S. has found that the numbers of some birds in urban areas increased during last year's pandemic lockdown. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes how they used data from eBird, a large biodiversity community science program run by Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, to compare bird numbers in different parts of Canada and the U.S. during the early stages of the pandemic and what they learned from their effort. Anecdotal evidence arising from people living in urban areas suggested that last year's lockdown during the early stages of the pandemic gave many types of animals the opportunity to venture into areas temporarily abandoned by peoplea time many in the field have described as an "anthropause." In this new effort, the researchers wondered if birds were among those that had benefited from the lockdown, and if so, to what degree. To find out, they accessed data held by eBird, a program that hosts an online database of bird observations made by volunteers across Canada and the U.S. The database contains information on over 4.3 million birds of 82 species going back to 2002, when eBird was launched. This allowed the researchers to compare the number of sightings of bird types in sites all across North America for the years 2017 to 2020. Factoring out the sudden increase in posts by bored people in lockdown, the researchers found that the majority of species became more abundant in most urban areas and that such increases were particularly noticeable along major roads and near airports. Overall, they found increases in 80% of the species in the database. Interestingly, there were some species that maintained levels with prior years and some that actually had lower numbers. The findings indicate that the birds showed a high degree of adaptability in a very short time frame. They also note that the sudden rise in bird numbers in certain areas showed that it is possible to create spaces for birds in designated areas by simply reducing the bustle of human activity. Explore further Study identifies patterns in bird-plane collisions More information: Michael B. Schrimpf et al, Reduced human activity during COVID-19 alters avian land use across North America, Science Advances (2021). Journal information: Science Advances Michael B. Schrimpf et al, Reduced human activity during COVID-19 alters avian land use across North America,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf5073 2021 Science X Network Hunting wolves is now illegal in northern Spain. A 4x4 pulls up on a dirt road in northwest Spain and livestock farmer Ana Vega climbs out, walking over to a ditch where a few days ago a wolf killed a calf. "They haven't left anything... devoured everything," she said, pointing at the ground. There is nothing left of the carcass, not even the smallest bone. Wolves have long roamed the valley Ungilde, a paradise for the Iberian wolf near the Portuguese border, four hours' drive from Madrid. Controlled hunting has helped to keep their numbers down in the areaand protect livestockbut on Wednesday a ban on killing the animals came into effect, inflaming farmers but delighting conservationists. The hot-button ban brings northern Spain in line with the rest of the country, where hunting wolves has long been prohibited. Many herders and farmers like Vega are dismayed over the new rule, fearing that a proliferation of wolves will put the animals at risk. But conservationists have long pushed for the ban, saying the species should be protected. "In this tragic wolf tale, there are three main actors: the herders, the conservationists and the hunters. And each one has his own solution," said forest ranger Carlos Zamora. Livestock farmer Ana Vega remembers a time when locals took matters into their own hands if a wolf killed a sheep. 'Wolves' paradise' There are eight packs of wolves in the Sierra de la Culebra, which spans 70,000 hectares in the northwestern tip of the Castilla y Leon region. Each pack is made up of 10 wolves, and there are several more lone individuals, Zamora explained. The number has remained steady for the past two decades, he added. The area is famed for the Iberian wolfor canis lupus signatus, a sub-species of grey wolf which lives mainly in northwestern Spain. Its image is everywhereon billboards and t-shirts and plastered all over souvenir shops. "It's always been a wolves' paradise here," said Zamora from behind his binoculars, scanning the horizon under the morning sun. Until now, controlled hunting has been allowed north of the Duero river, which flows across northern Spain, to keep numbers down. The Cantabria region had planned to cull 34 wolves this year, or 20 percent of the local population. In the Cantabria region, they planned to cull 34 wolves this year20 percent of the local population. But Spain's Socialist government decided to unify the rules, banning wolf hunting throughout the peninsula, following similar moves in France and Italy. "When you're talking about a unique species like the Iberian wolf, responsibility for its conservation lies with all regions, it can't be just in one area," junior environment minister Hugo Moran told AFP. "It's a shared responsibility." But the news has angered the regions of Cantabria, Castilla y Leon, Asturias and Galicia, where the vast majority of wolves roam, with officials vowing to appeal. While ecologists have hailed the ban as "an important step" towards species conservation, farmers are up in arms. "It is unbelievable that communities that don't have wolves can impose their radical environmental agenda on us," raged Castilla y Leon's UCCL farmer's union. The government has banned wolf hunting throughout the peninsula. Unfair competition Vega remembers a time when locals took matters into their own hands if a wolf killed a sheep. "They would go out and catch it or kill it," she said, her phone full of gruesome images of carcasses and half-eaten animals. "I'm not saying we should kill them all, but that we all have to exist together," she added. Extensive farming where animals graze on local resources involves a big investment to protect them against predators. Vega has a pack of 15 mastiffsdogs as big as ponies which are not cheap to keep, what with vets bills and the huge piles of food they gobble up. She has also paid for tractors to uproot vegetation where wolves like to hide on the land. Farmer Jose Castedo has shelled out too, installing electric fencing to safeguard his 450 sheep. "There are very few farms like this here," said the 62-year-old of his fortified enclosure. Forest ranger Carlos Zamora scans the horizon for wolves. He worries about "unfair competition" from properties where flocks are kept behind one-metre-high fences and monitored for just a few hours a day. The ecology ministry has pledged to invest and help, with Moran from the environment ministry promising "financial help" to those who live in areas that are home to "large carnivores". Explore further 1st gray wolf pups since 1940s spotted in Colorado 2021 AFP Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new study finds that that some large whale species (humpback, fin and minke whales) use the waters off New York and New Jersey as a supplemental feeding area feasting on two different types of prey species. Publishing their results in the journal Marine Biology Research, a team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Columbia University describe the New York Bight (NYB) the area of water from Montauk Point, New York to Cape May, New Jerseyas an important supplemental feeding ground for several whale species gorging on locally abundant prey fish. From their boat surveys, the team studied three species of baleen whales: humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), and minke (Balaenoptera acutorostrata). They found that large, mixed-species groupsoften including all three whale species, common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), and various seabirdsgathered in certain areas mid-shelf (6.237.2 miles from shore) to feed on schools of sand lance (Ammodytes spp.), a slender species of baitfish. In nearshore waters less than 6.2 miles from shore, whales were more scattered and fed mostly on schools of Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), a larger, oily species. Use of the NYB as a feeding area for some of these whale populations may be evolving with time as unprecedented and ongoing climate-driven shifts in ocean temperatures, currents, and salinity in the Northwest Atlantic drive shifts in whale distribution within other documented feeding areas in adjacent regions. Said one of the study's co-lead authors, Carissa King of WCS's Ocean Giants Program: "There is a lot of excitement about seeing whales in the waters off New York, and we often don't get to highlight what they are doing here. Considering the high prevalence of foraging behavior documented in the study, it is more likely that changing prey availability and/or oceanographic conditions have led to some recent shifts in whale distribution and greater habitat utilization in coastal waters of the New York Bight." Foraging was the primary behavior documented, though resting, traveling, and socializing behaviors were also observed including instances of competitive group behavior for humpback and fin whales, behaviors that typically associated with breeding areas. The scientists noted that whales were often observed feeding around shipping lanes and in areas of high recreational boating activity. Of particular concern is the potential for vessel strikesone of the main causes of injury or death for humpback, fin, and minke whales along the U.S. East Coast. During this study, a number of humpback and fin whales were observed with evidence of a previous vessel strike, such as healing or healed boat propeller wounds, missing dorsal fin, or missing part of its flukes (tail). In one particular instance, the center of the wounded area on an individual humpback whale's fluke was still raw indicating it was a relatively recent injury. In addition to vessel strikes, potential impacts from vessels include behavioral disturbance, physiological impacts, and injury from exposure to increased noise levels, which could impact feeding and other whale behaviors. The authors say the results of the study can help inform management decisions to balance the needs of whales and other wildlife with various ocean resource users and other human activities in the region. Said Dr. Howard C. Rosenbaum, Director of WCS's Ocean Giants Program and a co-author of the study: "The extent that we have seen whales and other marine life feeding in the New York Bight are truly amazing wildlife spectacles that need better protection. This new information is particularly important given the current and potential pressures facing whales within the New York Bight. Hopefully our data now illustrate the need for better practices and effective mitigation in this urbanized region." Explore further Acoustic research sheds new light on whale sounds More information: Carissa D. King et al, Baleen whale distribution, behaviour and overlap with anthropogenic activity in coastal regions of the New York Bight, Marine Biology Research (2021). Carissa D. King et al, Baleen whale distribution, behaviour and overlap with anthropogenic activity in coastal regions of the New York Bight,(2021). DOI: 10.1080/17451000.2021.1967993 AEW PRE-SALE CODES FOR KANSAS AND MINNEAPOLIS AEW has two online pre-sales today for upcoming TV tapings. They return to the Kansas City area on Wednesday 11/3 for an AEW Dynamite taping in Independence, MO at the Cable Dahmer Arena. The pre-sale for that event is AEW816. Tickets can be ordered at this link. AEW also debuts at The Target Center for a Rampage taping on Friday 11/12. The pre-sale code for that taping is AEW612. The pre-sale for that taping can be found at this link. If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here! Many agree that bitcoins major upside over the last 10 years has largely been the result of FOMO, a fear of missing out. Loosely related to that, its also likely been fueled by a generous amount of testosterone After all, investing in Bitcoin is rather easy. It doesnt require much due diligence, and there are no companies to do background on. That sets the stage for a wild variety of predictions and expectations on the future of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for the next few decades. Those predictions range from total collapse to a situation in which cryptocurrency replaces cash entirely. Bitcoin investors are fueled by the fact that some financial experts speculate that one coin could be worth $1 million within five years. That fact alone should be enough to attract a flock of investors. However, other financial experts, no less credible, are warning investors that crypto will eventually go to zero. That wont dissuade a large group of predominantly male traders who are prong to a higher level of risk-taking. On the other side of the gender divide, female traders seemingly do level things out a bit and tend to counterbalance the male impulse trading. Plenty of experiments have shown how testosterone affects decision making. People with higher levels of testosterone are more likely to take bigger risks. And bitcoin investing is all about the risk. One recent study found that the amount of money that a male trader makes in a day is associated with his testosterone level. The new data reveals that the interest in cryptocurrencies still comes largely from men around the age of 35. The majority 58 percent are young, between the ages of 18 and 34. On other hand, women and older investors are largely steering clear of the crypto game. Only 15% of bitcoin traders are women. Still, that percentage of female investors has increased compared to early last year, when only 10% of bitcoin investors were female. It doesnt help that bitcoin trades 24/7, not giving the testosterone any downtime. The 12-year-old crypto already has more trading hours than the S&P 500, founded in 1957. Cointelegraph recently reported that the most active trading time in terms of volume was 1 am. Late night and weekend trading are known for volatility and price crashes tend to happen then. That could possibly be because there is nothing else to trade at that time, in U.S. markets, or that is an hour in which men are willing to take more risk. The bitcoin craze--as has been the case for all bubbles historically--is an overwhelmingly male affair. Several studies show that the more women in the market, the smaller the odds of a price bubble. Since last year, cryptocurrency has been the fourth most traded asset, following real estate, stocks, mutual funds and bonds. A recent poll conducted by CNBC and Momentive now finds that 10% of investors surveyed have invested in cryptocurrency. Some 65% of those cryptocurrency investors jumped into the digital coin in the last year, citing the excitement of investing and the fast returns. Already highly competitive and having a tough time creating an edge, 2020 further decimated the restaurant industry. Ravaged by the pandemic, restaurant and food-service sales were $240 billion below pre-pandemic forecasts. More than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed last year, either temporarily or for good, with 2.5 million jobs lost. We saw a lot of businesses fail in 2020, but with lifted restrictions, the restaurant industry is making a slow but sure comeback. The restaurant industry is usually one of the first industries to bounce back, because people will always want to go out. When restrictions lift, people flock to in-door dining because everyones just excited to get back out. Another element to consider is food delivery. A lot of fast casual/ fast-food chains werent hit nearly as hard because they either had their own delivery service or worked through a third party such as DoorDash or GrubHub. Here are 3 restaurant stocks we think its worth looking at from a recovery standpoint: #1 Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) Stock in Chipotle saw a 38% drop in March 2020 when the lockdowns started, but they quickly bounced back to even higher than pre-pandemic levels. CMG finished 2020 up over 144% from its lows in March. The fast-casual chain gave themselves an edge because they offered free delivery service through much of 2020. That trend is persisting over into 2021, with the stock now up over 44% YTD. This growth looks to be sustainable as Chipotle is continuing to expand its outreach, despite the pandemic. Chipotle is helping to reconceptualize what quality means in fast food. Its doing that through the quality of service and food, and offering fair wages to its employees. This year, Chipotle announced its starting wage would be lifted to $15 per hour, matching the minimum called for by many American labor activists. Having opened about 300 new stores since 2020, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol is confident that the chain will continue to grow nationally and internationally, and rightfully so it seems. #2 Yum Brands, Inc. (YUM) Yum Brands is the parent company of some of the biggest fast food chains in the world, including KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, as well as many other smaller chains worldwide. YUM has over 50,000 restaurants in 150 different countries. Fast food chains took quite a hit in 2020 with the pandemic, forcing them to quickly rethink how they serve their customers. The faster thinkers survived. Yum Brands has had its subsidiaries shift focus to drive-thrus and mobile orders. It has also opted to make more room in the parking lot for multiple drive-thru lanes as opposed to indoor dining. And the stock has been on the rise this past year as a result, nearly doubling its market cap from $20 Billion to $37.6 Billion. The stock is up 16% over the last six months, but it has begun to fluctuate in the last month or so. This could continue as Yum Brands tries to keep up with consumer food trends, but surely the parent company of some of the largest international food brands will continue to have long term potential as they iron out kinks. #3 Dine Brands Global (DIN) Dine Brands Global is a company with a much smaller market cap of $1.39 billion--but it has a lot of potential for the future. Currently, Dine Brands Global oversees IHOP and Applebees Bar & Grill. CEO John Payton is looking toward expansion, however. Between the two franchises, Dine Brands Global operates over 3,530 restaurant locations in 17 countries around the world. DIN has been a strong performer this year as Covid-19 restrictions ease and dining out resumes. Since January, the companys share price has risen 35% to a bit over $81 per share. In the second quarter of 2021, the company reported revenue of $233.6 million, up from $109.7 million in the same period last year at the height of the global pandemic. Q2 EPS came in at $1.94 and beat analysts expectations by 27 cents. In spite of its gains already this year, Wall Street investors remain bullish on Dine Brands Globals prospects. The median price target on the stock is currently $110, suggesting that the share price has a further 41% to run. My Journey with NOAAs Office of National Marine Sanctuaries By Brijonnay Madrigal September 2021 Over 30 years ago, my father immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico seeking a better life. He began as a migrant worker, and was later granted amnesty in 1986. He is one of the hardest workers I have ever met. He never went to college, but understands the importance of education. I was the first person in my family to graduate with a bachelors degree, masters degree, and subsequently will be the first in my family to earn a doctoral degree. As I have continued in higher education, I found that among my peers and colleagues there are less and less people of color and people that look like me. Hispanics are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields and the percentage of Hispanic women in higher education is extremely low. A teenage Brijonnay preparing to snorkel in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and National Park as part of her Ocean for Life experience. Photo: Claire Fackler/NOAA I seek to overcome the statistics and strive to achieve my goal of earning a PhD as a Mexican American woman in marine science. I have been very fortunate to work with NOAAs Office of National Marine Sanctuaries since high school, and this government organization has provided me with incredible opportunities to thrive, not only as a scientist but as an educator and steward of the ocean. Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary When I was a junior in high school, I was selected to participate in the Ocean for Life program, an ocean science and cultural exchange program. I joined students from the Middle East and across the U.S. in Santa Barbara, California. It was an incredible experience because as an aspiring marine biologist, I was excited to learn about the work of the National Marine Sanctuary System. We explored Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary through hiking, snorkeling, and kayaking and gained an appreciation for these underwater parks. This was a special experience for me because it was my first time being in a national marine sanctuary. I connected with students from diverse backgrounds, learned about different cultures and gained an appreciation for the local Chumash community of the Channel Islands area. We learned how to be ocean advocates and the importance of ocean conservation while also cultivating an understanding of other cultures. This field program really ignited my passion for marine science and solidified my desire to commit my life to the ocean. After high school, I moved to Hawaii for college, excited to study marine biology as an undergraduate at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Conducting education and outreach for NOAAs Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary was one of the roles that Brijonnay assisted with during her internship. Photo courtesy of Brijonnay Madrigal. As part of the Sanctuary Ocean Count team, Brijonnay was able to enjoy some whale watching along the coast of Oahu herself. Photo courtesy of Brijonnay Madrigal. As an undergraduate, I became involved with NOAAs Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. I was excited to work with the humpback whale sanctuary because it was the sanctuary right in my backyard! I was an intern for the Sanctuary Ocean Count, a citizen science project where volunteers conduct humpback whale surveys from land and collect data on sightings (number of individuals) and surface-active behaviors. This project engages the community in monitoring this vital migratory species and promotes awareness of humpback whales in Hawaii. My role was to organize volunteers, schedule volunteers for sites across the islands, and conduct site visits on Ocean Count days. I also was involved in education and outreach and went to various events on the island of Oahu to educate the public on humpback whales and the important role the sanctuary plays in the conservation of this species. I enjoyed not only engaging with the volunteers but also doing a little whale watching, too, as I am always amazed by their incredible breaching behavior. Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary After graduating from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a bachelor of science in marine biology, I knew I wanted to continue pursuing higher education. In the heart of Monterey Bay, California is a tiny town called Moss Landingif you blinked you would miss it. I attended Moss Landing Marine Laboratories where I was a masters student in the Vertebrate Ecology Laboratory. I am passionate about marine science, so when the opportunity came up to work for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center, in the education and outreach realm, I jumped at the chance! I enjoy the research side of science, but education and outreach has always been my other passion. The exploration center is a visitor center off the Santa Cruz wharf almost entirely run by volunteers, docents, and a small staff, which educates the public about Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. I started working as a program assistant and eventually became the volunteer coordinator. I managed over 60 volunteers at the exploration center and was not only in charge of training docents on how to educate the public about the sanctuary, but also how to engage visitors in using our interactive exhibits. I led education programs, including field trips that took us to the beach, hands-on activities in the classroom, and led interactions with the exhibits at the center. Brijonnay Madrigal was the volunteer coordinator for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz, CA during her graduate studies at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Photo courtesy of Brijonnay Madrigal. Introducing students to NOAAs Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary during their field trip, was a part of Brijonnays duties. Photo courtesy of Brjonnay Madrigal. I loved that my job was hands-on, and I got to work with a broad variety of people from kindergarteners to retired docents. I loved seeing the enthusiasm of the docents when they came in ready for their shift and their excitement when they shared their knowledge of the sanctuary with visitors. Volunteers are truly vital to the success of national marine sanctuary education and outreach and they play an important role in increasing public knowledge and awareness of Americas underwater treasures. I really enjoyed working with sanctuary volunteers, so after nearly three years, I was sad to leave the exploration center, but a new opportunity arose that I couldnt pass up. Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship Program After earning my masters degree, I applied to the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship Program offered by NOAAs Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. This program funds graduate students conducting marine research within the sanctuary system. I was ecstatic when I received the callI had gotten the scholarship! This scholarship allowed me to fulfill my lifelong dream of attaining a PhD. I am currently a second year PhD student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the Marine Mammal Research Program. My lab is located on Coconut Island (a.k.a. Gilligans Island) at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. Sometimes I have to pinch myself because it is not every day you get to take a boat to work! An aerial view of the Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology on Coconut Island in Kaneohe Bay off O`ahu. Photo: Doug Peebles Short-finned pilot whales off the island of Lanai. Photo: Brijonnay Madrigal, NMFS Permit No. 20605 I am collaborating with the sanctuary systems SanctSound acoustic monitoring project, Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, and the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. For my research, I am using passive acoustic monitoring to understand the occurrence and distribution of two Hawaiian resident toothed whale species; false killer whales and short-finned pilot whales, inside and outside the sanctuary and in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. I am also interested in measuring the overall soundscape and quantifying anthropogenic (human made) noise, including shipping and naval sonar. Ultimately, I am interested in understanding how anthropogenic noise may affect false killer whale and pilot whale acoustic behavior. Although I have just completed my first year of my PhD, I am excited to see how the results from my work may influence management and impact conservation efforts in Hawaii. Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar, Brijonnay Madrigal, on a research boat conducting marine mammal surveys with MMRP collaborator, Cascadia Research Collective. Photo: Robin Baird/Cascadia Research Collective Thankful for NOAA Opportunities During my time at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, on my way to the lab every morning, I would pass by migrant workers picking in the fields, fields where my father and grandfather once worked, and I was always reminded that behind every humble beginning is a big dream. I am proud of my heritage, and I strive to make my father proud as I work towards achieving my goals. Over the last 10 years, NOAAs Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has provided me with invaluable opportunities and has enabled me to pursue my dream of becoming a marine biologist. Without the support of this government organization, I would not be in the position I am today. Through my story, I hope to inspire Hispanic youth to pursue science and encourage more Latino involvement in STEM. I strive to increase diversity and inclusivity in my field, and I hope that one day we will see more Hispanic representation in marine science. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Still more great essays at Inquest, including an especially disheartening book review | Main | "Understanding Drug Sentencing" conference feature keynote with former AG Eric Holder and Piper Kerman A helpful reader made sure I did not miss this notable unanimous opinion by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in State v. Melvin, NO A-44-19 (N.J. Sept. 23, 2021) (available here). Sentencing fans and long-time readers should know why I think this ruling is spot-on and today's must-read. Here is how the opinion gets started: One of the most important tenets of our criminal justice system is the finality of a jurys verdict of acquittal. These consolidated appeals test that principle through a common legal issue: whether a trial judge can consider at sentencing a defendants alleged conduct for crimes for which a jury returned a not guilty verdict. In State v. Melvin, the jury found Melvin guilty of second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun and, after two trials, not guilty of the most serious charges against him, including first-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder. At his second sentencing, the trial court -- notwithstanding the jurys not-guilty verdicts on the murder charges -- determined that the evidence at trial supported the conclusion that Melvin shot the victims. Citing United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997), the trial judge found that it was within the courts broad discretion at sentencing to consider all circumstances of the case, including evidence that Melvin was the shooter. Despite the jurys verdict, the trial court found that Melvin not only possessed the weapon, but used it to shoot three people. The trial court sentenced Melvin to a term of sixteen years imprisonment with an eight-year period of parole ineligibility. The Appellate Division affirmed that sentence. In State v. Paden-Battle, in a trial before the same judge who presided over Melvins case, the jury found Paden-Battle guilty of kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and felony murder. The jury acquitted Paden-Battle of the remaining seven counts, including first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. At sentencing, the trial judge again relied on Watts to make findings of fact, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Paden-Battle, despite having been acquitted of the most serious murder charges, was the mastermind who orchestrated the victims murder. The trial court stated that Paden-Battle falsified her testimony and found that she was the moving force behind the murder and ordered her co-conspirators to act. The trial court sentenced Paden-Battle to a sixty-year sentence. On appeal, the Appellate Division vacated Paden-Battles sentence and remanded the matter for resentencing, holding that the trial court enhanced her sentence based on its belief -- a belief contrary to the jurys verdict -- that Paden-Battle ordered the execution. We granted the petitions for certification in both cases and now reverse in Melvin and affirm in Paden-Battle. Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution bestows upon all citizens certain natural and unalienable rights. From those rights flows the doctrine of fundamental fairness, which protects against arbitrary and unjust government action. State v. Njango, 247 N.J. 533, 537 (2021). For the reasons stated below, we hold today that fundamental fairness prohibits courts from subjecting a defendant to enhanced sentencing for conduct as to which a jury found that defendant not guilty. "How often does a judge end up sentencing someone for breaking a law the judge personally disagrees with?" | Main | Law enforcement and prosecutor groups urge Prez Biden to commute sentence of all in home confinement cohort This new NBC News piece, headlined "Other than prison, electronic monitoring is 'the most restrictive form' of control, research finds" report on this interesting new report from folks at George Washington University Law School, titled "Electronic Prisons: The Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal System." Here are excerpts from the press piece: In the past 18 months, as the judicial system has increasingly used electronic monitoring instead of prisons to monitor inmates through the coronavirus pandemic, newly released data confirm what activists and advocates have long argued: Ankle monitors are onerous, and they often subject wearers to vague rules, like avoiding people of disreputable character. The ankle monitoring business, the research found, is also dominated by four profit-seeking companies, and it ultimately could drive more people back to prison. The new, comprehensive collection of hundreds of electronic monitoring-related rules, policies and contracts, obtained through public records requests across 44 states, demonstrates that four companies that make millions of dollars a year account for 64 percent of the contracts examined in the study. The companies Attenti, BI Inc., Satellite Tracking of People LLC and Sentinel Offender Services LLC, according to the report also keep location data indefinitely, even after monitoring is completed, which is within the law. Governments also often require family members or employers to act as agents of the government and report potential violations, putting them in an awkward position in which they must be both supportive and supervisory. Crucially, wearers must pay both one-time and ongoing fees for the monitors, which can be $25 to over $8,000 a year. The report argues that such costs undermine financial security when it is needed most. By comparison, the Justice Departments Bureau of Prisons said in 2018 that it costs just under $100 per day to incarcerate a federal inmate, or over $36,000 a year.... This is a form of incarceration that happens outside of prison walls, said Kate Weisburd, an associate professor of law at George Washington University, who led a team of 10 law students that filed and analyzed the trove of documents . Its always intended to be a positive alternative to incarceration. But based on what we found, its doing the opposite. More rules and more surveillance generally leads to higher incarceration.... Put another way, people on monitors are subject to a vast number of government rules, which makes compliance difficult, according to the report. Some of the rules are quite vague. For example, the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Parole mandates that wearers shall abandon evil associates and ways, while the New Mexico Corrections Department says parolees must maintain acceptable behavior.... Weisburds research found that because the results are open to interpretation and wearers can be hit with technical violations of the rules, people are more likely to be reincarcerated for minor infractions that previously would have been invisible and ignored. In most cases, electronic monitoring is coupled with a form of house arrest wearers must stay at or near their homes for a certain amount of time. They cannot leave without permission in advance. But according to the policies and contracts that Weisburd and her team obtained, most agencies do not clearly explain how far in advance such permission must be sought. Basically, every record we looked at had a negative impact, and by every measure it undermines peoples ability to survive outside of prison, she said. Just having to comply with the sheer number of rules, vague and broad rules, it means people are getting dinged more easily.... The most recent data from the Pew Charitable Trust, released in 2016, found that about 131,000 people were on monitors during a single day. Weisburd and her team say in the report that it is likely that the numbers are higher considering the pressure to release people from incarceration because of the pandemic.... The frequency with which such monitoring is assigned varies wildly across the country. For example, Weisburds research shows that over 11,000 people who are on probation are also on monitors in Marion County, Indiana, alone, while the entire state of Florida has less than half that number, at just over 5,400. NJ Supreme Court holds, as a matter of state constitutional law, that "fundamental fairness" precludes sentence enhancement based on acquitted conduct | Main | "How often does a judge end up sentencing someone for breaking a law the judge personally disagrees with?" September 23, 2021 "Understanding Drug Sentencing" conference feature keynote with former AG Eric Holder and Piper Kerman After pandemic delays in the hope we could do an in-person event, I am a bit sad that a conference organized by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center and the Academy for Justice now set for October 7-8, 2021, is still going to have to be on-line. But, of course, the upside is that everyone all over the country and the world can now attend this event formally titled "Understanding Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment." The main event page is here, with this overview: Join the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center and the Academy for Justice October 7-8, 2021 to explore the myriad issues surrounding drug sentencing and its contribution to mass incarceration and mass punishment during this major symposium. In addition to academics, researchers, and advocates discussing sound drug sentencing policies, this event also includes judges, current and former prosecutors, defense attorneys, and justice-involved individuals sharing their perspectives on drug sentencing practices. The symposium will take place virtually. Discussion of the war on drugs frequently fails to examine precisely how drug offenders are sentenced and how they should be. Drug sentencing practices are implicated in many fundamental criminal justice issues and concerns. Research suggests incarcerating people for drug offenses has little impact on substance use rates or on crime rates more generally. And, despite reports of comparable use rates, people of color are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses than white counterparts. Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes are applied commonly, but inconsistently, in drug cases and for persons with a criminal history that involves drug offenses. And while states have created specialty courts to handle the cases of low-level drug offenders, the efficacy and appropriateness of the drug court movement has long been subject to debate. Distinct state and federal realities complicate our understanding of the relationship between the drug war and punishment. Nearly all federal drug defendants get sent to prison and nearly 50% of the federal prison population is comprised of drug offenders; relatively few state drug offenders are sent to prison and less than 20% of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges. But data on arrests, jail populations, and community supervision highlight the continued, significant impact drug cases still have on state and local justice systems. The role of drug criminalization and sentencing contributes to mass incarceration, yet mass punishment can look quite different depending on the criminal justice system(s) and the drugs. Registration Separate registrations are provided for each days events. Attendees may register separately for each of the events on Thursday, for all Friday events, or both. See the Agenda page for details and registration links. As the agenda page details, on day one of the symposium (exactly two weeks from today), there will be the "Inaugural 2021 Menard Family Lecture on Drug Policy and Criminal Justice" on Thursday, October 7 from 12:30-2pm EDT. Here is the summary description of a discussion that I will have the honor of moderating: The Drug Enforcement and Policy Center is pleased to invite you to the Inaugural 2021 Menard Family Lecture on Drug Policy and Criminal Justice featuring Eric H. Holder, Jr., former Attorney General of the United States, and Piper Kerman, social justice advocate and author of Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Womens Prison, with special guests Ohio Chief Justice Maureen OConnor and Chief U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley for the Southern District of Ohio. September 23, 2021 at 12:27 PM | Permalink Comments Post a comment UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned for years about the impact of divisions at the Security Council. Now the gaps will be tested again with a rift between France and its US and British allies. Ministers of the five veto-wielding nations on the UN's most powerful body -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- will meet together Wednesday during the annual week of diplomacy, with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan high on the agenda. "If we want to avoid Afghanistan becoming a haven for global terror then the international community -- including Russia and China -- needs to act as one in its engagement with the Taliban," said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who is leading the meeting. China and Russia have quickly moved to work with the Taliban but have withheld recognition. Russia, China and the United States serve on a credentials commission that is reviewing the Taliban's request to address the General Assembly as Afghanistan's representative. France, Britain and the United States are largely united on the way forward in Afghanistan, even if some Europeans voiced misgivings over President Joe Biden's withdrawal of US troops that allowed the Islamist insurgents to take power. But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has so far refused talks with his US and UK counterparts, although he shook hands with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a larger meeting on Libya. France has been furious over Australia's cancellation of a mega-contract for conventional submarines and decision to buy US nuclear versions amid rising tensions with China. Australia will have access to the US nuclear technology as part of a new three-way alliance with Washington and London. - Anger vs. interests - The three Western nations on the Security Council have clashed before, notably with France's strident objections to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, but during the Cold War and again in recent years they have largely been in lockstep. Story continues "Eventually these disagreements could get worse, showing that this old design of international security needs to be revised," said Bertrand Badie, an international relations expert at the Sciences Po university in Paris. Donald Trump's turbulent presidency and Britain's divorce from the European Union drew concern from France, but the three Western powers have almost always been united at the Security Council, with Russia and China exercising their veto notably on Syria. Even if President Joe Biden succeeds in calming France's fury, Paris could see less incentive to rally behind the US position when it disagrees. Badie expected Russia and China to seek ways to make inroads. "Attempts at diplomatic phishing will of course be aimed at France," Badie said. But many doubted a significant shift by France, the oldest ally of the United States which largely sees eye to eye with Washington on key questions from the rise of China to the threat of Islamist extremism. "I don't think that the submarine deal will torpedo the P3," said Richard Gowan, who follows the United Nations for the International Crisis Group. "France is stuck with the Anglo-Saxons, even if it is a complicated relationship." prh/sct/st BEIJING (Reuters) -General Motors Co said on Thursday it will invest $300 million in Chinese autonomous driving startup Momenta to develop self-driving technologies for future models in China, its first such tie-up in the world's biggest car market. Momenta is among the few companies that hold a permit for gathering high-definition maps in China, a key tool in autonomous driving technologies. It is working with automakers to develop mass-production vehicles with self-driving functions to gather real-time data. The company is also backed by SAIC Motor, GM's main Chinese partner, as well as Toyota Motor and Daimler AG. "Customers in China are embracing electrification and advanced self-driving technology faster than anywhere else in the world, and the agreement between GM and Momenta will accelerate our deployment of next-generation solutions tailor-made for our consumers in China," said Julian Blissett, GM's China chief. The U.S. automaker said in June it would spend $35 billion through 2025 on electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies globally. Earlier this month, its venture capital arm invested in Oculii, a U.S. maker of software for radar sensors used in self-driving cars. Automakers and technology firms are investing billions of dollars in autonomous driving, aiming to take an early lead in what many consider the future of mobility. Other global automakers have tie-ups with Chinese firms in the nascent technology. Toyota is testing vehicles with Pony.ai, Nissan Motor works with WeRide, while Honda has teamed up with AutoX. (Reporting by Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh; Editing by Stephen Coates) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US Vice President Kamala Harris (File photo) Washington [US], September 24 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet Vice President Kamala Harris at her ceremonial office in Washington on Thursday afternoon. This will be PM Modi's first in-person meeting with Harris after she took office. Harris shattered barriers, becoming the first Black, Indian-American and female vice president of the United States. And once again, she is scripting history as the highest-ranking Indian American to welcome the leader of her heritage country. Earlier in June this year, PM Modi held a telephonic conversation with Harris and discussed the US' strategy for global vaccine sharing and the Quad vaccine initiative to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and immigrated to the United States as a teenager where she met Harris' father, Donald Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica. Harris' maternal grandfather, PV Gopalan, had participated in the Indian independence movement and would later go on to become a senior civil servant in the country, at one point serving on an Indian diplomatic mission to Zambia. Mukesh Aghi, President and Chief Executive Officer of the US-India Strategic Partnership, explained why the meeting between the two leaders is crucial, saying Harris is quite powerful within the administration and the connection between the two is going to help both countries in the short and long term. "We are proud, we are proud I think. Are we proud because she's an American? Are we proud that she is the first woman, we would be surprised to break what I call the glass ceiling, but I think more importantly is for Prime Minister Modi to build relationships with Kamala Harris, because you have to understand she comes from the left side of the progressive wing of the party, and they are very much cautious about doing trade deals with nations itself, and they would like to see more of human rights, labour rights embedded into trade deals so I think it's important that the relationship between the Prime Minister and Cabinet house is built," he said, Story continues Although Vice President Harris has, in her own words, identified herself as a Black woman, it is still a point of pride for many in the Indian diaspora that a Vice President of Indian heritage will be hosting a bilateral meeting with the Indian Prime Minister. "She is a force. She is quite powerful within the administration, and I think a connection between the two is going to help both countries in the short and long term itself," he added. In a statement before leaving for the US, Prime Minister Modi said that his upcoming meetings will provide an occasion for India to strengthen the comprehensive global strategic partnership with the US. "I am also looking forward to meeting Vice President Kamala Harris to explore opportunities for cooperation between our two nations particularly in the area of science and technology," he said. Harris and Modi will discuss regional issues, including democracy, human rights, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and security, according to a senior administration official who would brief reporters only on the condition of anonymity. Indian Americans are one of the fastest-growing political forces in the United States. Harris, whose mother was born in India, attracted donations, votes and attention from Indian Americans during her political rise to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency. Indian American community believes that the greatest import of the meeting is symbolic. "Community members think the greatest import of the meeting is symbolic. The prime minister of India will be sitting down face-to-face with the first vice president of Indian origin," said Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Earlier in the day, PM Modi met five global CEOs for potential investment in India. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. The meeting with PM Modi is one of several meetings Harris is having this week while many world leaders are in the United States to attend the General Assembly at the United Nations' New York headquarters. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24. This is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Biden will host the first-ever in-person Quad Leaders' Summit, which will be joined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. (ANI) Pay Dirt is Slates money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena and Elizabeth here. (Its anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, My father is severely mentally ill and suffers from Parkinsons disease and moderate cognitive impairment. He is currently living in an assisted living facility across the country from my sister and me. He used to be very wealthy and has not worked for almost all of my life. My parents divorced when we were kids, and my dad was a verbally abusive parent, although he was loving too. Later on, he became violent toward his girlfriend of 20 years, and she eventually left him. Now he has run out of money and can no longer afford the assisted living facility. He is not sick enough to qualify for a Medicaid bed in a nursing home, but he is too sick to live independently. We do keep in touch with him and try to help him when he needs assistance with small matters. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement He wasnt a horrible enough dad for my sister and I to feel comfortable letting him live on the streets, but we cannot allow him to move in with us eitherhe is too toxic, and his propensity toward physical abuse is abhorrent, not to mention his demanding and entitled ways. We are not wealthy but comfortable, and we do not feel like it is our responsibility (nor our partners) to pay for our dad. We also dont feel like we should have to sacrifice our childrens college funds or our own retirement savings, especially since he at one time had millions of dollars that he has since squandered, despite our best efforts to intervene. We have no idea what the best course of action is here. He refuses to give us control of the less than $100,000 he has left and expects us to put him up in one of our homes. We have visited and contacted assisted living facilities and nursing homes, but none are affordable. What do we do? Advertisement Conflicted Deadbeat Kids Dear Conflicted Deadbeat Kids, Youre in a tough position, and one that many Americans increasingly experience as the population ages and there are few options for people like your father who lack an adequate safety net. And given his behavior, its not unreasonable to refuse to let him move in with you. Advertisement You may want to explore programs that are not quite an assisted living center but still provide some of the same services. There are federal and state grant programs for senior housing that your father may qualify for since he has little in savings and no income, and there are some home services that are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. There are also community organizations that do some of these things, and can help take some of the burden off of you and your sister. The department of aging in your fathers state is a good place to start that search. Advertisement Advertisement You should make it clear to your father that moving in with you is simply not an option, but that youre willing to help him figure out what options he has instead. That will likely entail cobbling together several different programs to make sure that he has shelter and appropriate care. If he chooses to refuse your help on the basis that youre not letting him live with you, I think youve done as much as you can. He will probably qualify for public assistance sooner rather than later if his money is running out and he has no other source of income. It may be that the only way he comes to terms with that reality is to get to the point where he has no choice. Advertisement Advertisement Dear Pay Dirt, When I was in my mid-20s, I borrowed around $30,000 from my parents. At the time, I was living in Los Angeles and working as a bartender and barista while, ahem, working on a screenplay. They offered to loan me money for grad school at a university much nearer to my hometown. Id broken up with my boyfriend the day before they made the offer, so I leapt at the chance to walk away from that life. I have never felt great about any of this. They deeply disapproved of my choice to move far from home, and the timing of the offer seemed a bit manipulative. I should say that theyre generally loving parents who respect my autonomy, but they do have a really outsized sense of the dangers faced by a Woman Alone in the Big City. Advertisement For the past decade, Ive been paying them back, with interest, at a rate of $100 a month. They recently called me to say that theyve decided to cancel my remaining debt to them. They cited their own advancing agetheyre in the late 70sand the desire to simplify their final affairs. But Im just not sure where my ethical responsibility lies here: Should I pay them off irrespective of their wishes? I assume that, despite being on a fixed income in their retirement, their lifetime of aggressive saving and thrift has left them well-fixed. Should I plan to, when they pass, share an appropriate fraction of my share of their estate with my brothers to even things out? Or should I say Great, I never really wanted that money anyway? and go out and buy a $100 steak to celebrate? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement (Formerly?) Indebted Daughter Dear Indebted Daughter, I think your ethical responsibility is to make good on whatever terms your lender (in this case, your parents) sets. And your parents probably dont want you to still be indebted to them when they die. Youve been responsible about paying them back so far, and thats probably what was actually important to themmore so than the money. So if they want to change the terms of the agreement, you should let them. You also need to stop beating yourself up for taking the risk to try something creative in your 20s. Thats precisely when people do that! And even though it didnt work out, if you hadnt given it a shot, youd probably be wondering right now if youd made a mistake by never attempting it. That kind of regret is often more powerful than any misgivings you have about a dead-end career path. Its not a moral failing to make a decision that doesnt ultimately work out the way you hoped, and you shouldnt feel guilty about it. Advertisement Regarding your brothers: You should perhaps talk to them about the debt, and if youre worried that theyll be resentful if you get an equal share of the estate, and then you can make a decision based on that information. But chances are, they dont care, so I say go get yourself a nice juicy steak and celebrate the fact that you responsibly paid off your loan for the last decade. You should be proud of that. Your parents probably are. Advertisement Advertisement Get the Pay Dirt Newsletter Money advice from Athena and Elizabeth, delivered weekly. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. Dear Pay Dirt, My wife and I are recently married. On paper we make about the same; however, I have three children (two adults now) and an ex-wife, and a large chunk of my net income goes to them for another six years. Advertisement Advertisement My wife and I bought a new house that I considered at the top of my affordability range. It needs updates, so Ive been racking up bills and now believe I have reached my limit on extra home improvement expenses for a while. But she is still pushing for updates much faster than I can afford them. I have tried to address it, but it ends in her stating that she does not want to argue about money, when really I am just trying to set boundaries. I cannot afford to spend at the pace I am, when she can. Any help here to get her to understand my financial limitations given my obligations? Balancing Unequal Net Income Dear Balancing, Advertisement Your wife is in denial about the fact that youre stretching your spending beyond your means, and the only way to snap her out of it is to articulate to her exactly what the options are. And talking about money is not de facto arguing about money. Tell her you need to be able to discuss your finances with her so that you can make joint decisions that are good for both of you. These are important conversations to have in any marriage. Advertisement If you think she will push back on this idea, you should suggest talking to a financial planner about long-term spending and investing. (After all, your upgrades are ostensibly investment in the property.) Sometimes its easier to talk about money objectively when a third party is mediating and can remove some of the emotional tension around the conversation. This will force your wife to examine your financial situation in detail and should help her better understand why you cant spend the same way she does. Advertisement You should also emphasize to her that your hesitancy to spend is not a function of lack of enthusiasm for the project. It just needs to happen on a timeline that you can afford, and all of the extra spending is causing you unnecessary anxiety. She cannot simply pretend it isnt happening and dismiss your concerns. The whole point of improving the house is to make a home you both feel comfortable and happy in, and that wont happen as long as youre stressed out about the rate at which youre spending. Advertisement Dear Pay Dirt, I am a successful professional after many years of hard work. I worked full time during college and graduated with only $3,000 in student loans that I paid off quickly. I then went to graduate school, and I have paid that off in full. I paid off my mortgage two years ago. I now have no debt and a lot of disposable income. I did this all with no help from anyone, including my parents. As soon as I started earning my own money as a teen, I was expected to pay for my own toiletries, clothes, etc, which made it challenging it to save (and which led to a shoplifting problem). My parents both died in debt after making poor financial decisions. Advertisement Advertisement I am terrified of being poor. This has caused me to really have a tough time helping others. I would love to donate to favorite charities and nonprofit groups. I would love to help out coworkers more if they need help in a crisis. I do give some money here and there, but I am always afraid. I have an unreasonable fear that if I give money away, I will suddenly become a pauper, and I will have needed that money to survive. I also sometimes think that no one ever helped me financially, so why should I help anyone else? But I dislike myself for feeling that way. How can I be more generous without the anxiety? Regrettably Uncharitable Advertisement Dear Regrettably Uncharitable, Growing up with financial stress is a kind of trauma, and a lot of people underestimate how it affects overall health and well-being long after youve escaped poverty. That you were able to get financially stable by yourself is remarkable, but not everyone can do that, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people have to ask for help. Its also unlikely that you had no help, which doesnt always come in the form of a direct cash transfer. There are people in your life who probably opened doors for you, encouraged you, contributed to where you are now, so its worth thinking about what it really means when you say you did it all yourself. Advertisement Advertisement You should also probably see a therapist to talk about your anxiety around money. Nearly everyone has some fear of financial ruin, but yours is disrupting your life in a way that makes it difficult for you to think rationally about it and seems to be affecting your self-esteem as well. You think of yourself as an ungenerous person, and that may not be the case. Until you can learn to manage those fears, think about other ways you can help people who are struggling. Charities dont just need money; they usually need volunteers, too. Your time is valuable, and you may have less anxiety to be generous that way because its not a cash contribution. You can also help people the way you were helped, even if you dont think about it that way. If youre a successful professional, you can mentor people who are in the same situation you were at one point. You can find other ways to be charitable when you see people struggling. Elizabeth Introducing the How to Do It Podcast Your wildest sex advice questions are now being answered in your headphones. Listen to new episodes with Stoya and Rich every Sunday, with exclusive episodes for Slate Plus members on Mondays. There is little agreement among experts as to how employers should think about religious exemptions for the COVID vaccineor whether employers even have to offer exemptions in the first place. But for employers who do opt to offer them, there are many more questions: How can you tell if a person is faking a religious belief? Does it matter if the requester has the backing of a major religious institution? Does it matter if that institution publicly supports the vaccine and opposes exemptions? How do you judge if a request is in good faith when there is an entire industry built around helping people falsely claim religious objections? Where do you draw the line for something as complex and personal as faith? Advertisement In Tucson, Arizona, the city is in the midst of grappling with these questions. Tucson voted in mid-August to implement a COVID vaccine mandate for all city employees. The states attorney general then declared Tucsons mandate illegal and promised to withhold millions in funding if the city does not repeal it in 30 days; Tucson put the vaccination policy on hold while the city decides its legal response. But the city carried on with its process of reviewing religious exemption requests in preparation for the mandates implementation. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement To get a sense of how one major employer takes on the vagaries of religion with life-or-death stakes, Slate spoke with Ana Urquijo, the citys interim assistant manager, who has overseen the process with a team of four human resources employees. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Advertisement Slate: How many exemption requests have you received? Urquijo: Medical exemptions, we received 329. Religious accommodations, we received 288. What does the process look like for reviewing religious accommodation requests? A couple of staff got together first to sort and go through requests and try to put them in some form of categories. And then the team got together as a group and met in two-hour blocks of time over the last several weeks to go through them. [We sent out] requests for additional information where we needed more information. And now its kind of slowed down. I dont know if all additional information [we requested] has made it back in, but thats the only thing thats pending. The majority have been reviewed already. Advertisement Were you consulting others who were also figuring out how to process these applications as you came up with your approach? Advertisement This is something new, but there are guidelines: [the Society for HR Management] puts out guidelines. So we tried to be well informed, and then we worked with our city attorneys office to make sure that at least the benchmarks were setting and the criteria that we were trying to follow were consistent. Then we set up what our own process would be. But we really didnt know what to expect until we jumped in. How did you sort out the applications? As you sort, you start seeing many things fall into similar categories, similarsincerely heldreligious beliefs. Then you try to sort out things that make no mention, for example, of religion. Theyre just personal or political. And those are big red flags. Advertisement Advertisement We put them in certain categories to narrow them down, but we go back and take a look at them again, to really see if we have what we feel we need for the nature of the request. In areas where they were very vague, we would send out a request for additional information or make a call to find out if there was anything more than that they could provide. Advertisement How do you determine the sincerity of a religious belief? We have to be careful, we have to make sure that were understanding where theyre coming from. Some employees, the way they have written their request, you can tell that they put some time and effort into what they were trying to share. Some are very vague, one or two words. So thats one way you can determine whether someone is sincere. But we presume sincerity from the beginning. We set that as our own expectation and we receive everything with that presumption. Then we jump into what the nature of the request is, and if its too vague, well go back and ask some questions. Advertisement Do you make a distinction between religious and philosophical views? We do have to be careful that were not basing it just on a personal belief. But it doesnt have to be an organized religion either. There is some gray area. But yes, you do have to throw out the Its against my personal beliefs or anything that seems to stem from a political framework. So I assume this means that the people who are looking over the requests do not need to be experts on the theology of the major religions, then? Advertisement No, no. It just goes back to the sincerity of the belief and not of the organized religion. Advertisement There are, for example, pastors out there offering letters for religious exemptions to anyone who wants one. Is that something that you are monitoring or taking into account in any way? Advertisement Yeah, some of the guidelines we are following alert you that there are things you can find online. So we are careful of that. Were looking out for that. [Were] asking more information when it seems like its too rubber-stamped. But again, its about that person being able to say what the nature of their belief is, and not being vague about it. Whats been most challenging about this process? I think the volume. For an organization of 4,000, 288 doesnt seem like a big number. But when youre taking them individually, the biggest challenge is just making sure that each one gets the attention that it needs to have under the protection of the law. Ive managed this type of work for many, many years, and Ive had maybe a handful of religious accommodation requests. I dont know that we knew what to expect. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Would you say you have learned anything from this experience? I think what the team has learned is that there are pretty broad variables. You cant just presume that because it was not well written, for example, that its not sincere. And we learned that thats why its important to have the follow-up process. Its not something that can easily be placed in writing. Its not all at face value, because your employees come from different backgrounds and different perspectives. And some may just require a little more Q-and-A to be able to get you where you have enough information for a response. Jim Newell, Slates senior politics writer, is focused on this coming Monday, Sept. 27. Because that is the day when many of President Joe Bidens legislative priorities will dramatically collide in Congress. There are two big bills the Democrats are trying to pass right now. One is a $550 billion infrastructure package negotiated with Republicans in the Senate. The other is a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which doesnt require Republican cooperation at all. Progressives want to pass the big bill first to make sure it becomes law. Moderates want to pass the compromise bill first, because spending $3.5 trillion sounds like a pipe dream. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said voting will begin on Monday, but progressives and moderates are basically threatening to tank each others priorities if they dont get their own way. On Thursdays episode of What Next, I spoke with Newell about the mess the Democrats are facing, how it reveals a subtle shift in the center of gravity within the party, and whether Biden is in danger of having to kiss his agenda goodbye. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Mary Harris: Have you ever seen the progressives this angry or empowered since youve been covering Congress? Jim Newell: Ive never before seen them and thought, oh, they might actually go through with a threat this time, because theyre not the equivalent of the Freedom Caucus and the Republicans who really dont care if they screw up everyone elses plans. Usually, progressives try to use their leverage, but they also understand that you have to keep this moving as a team to prevent embarrassing everyone. But this time, they really are willing to tank some plans because this is their last shot to get through a progressive agenda for potentially a pretty long time, and I think they want to make sure they have some leverage to make sure climate change is addressed, along with everything else theyve been running on for years. Advertisement I feel like when you have two bills like these moving at once, it doesnt encourage folks to actually resolve any of the differences they have in terms of legislative priorities. You just have everyone going their own way, and then it comes together like a car crash at the end. Advertisement If you focus all of your energies on the infrastructure bill first, as the Senate did, thats just going to be done and sitting around waiting forever for the reconciliation bill. So then it leads to a situation where you have the moderates doing everything they can to try and get that bill signed into law so that they then have leverage in the reconciliation bill. And you have progressives trying to slow that process down to make sure the reconciliation bill has time to catch up so they can force the moderates to negotiate with them. Its led to a lot of threats between each faction trying to get a leg up on the other and, you know. The way to resolve these differences, rather than threatening to vote to kill the other persons bill if yours isnt done first, is that have to sit in a room and make a deal. Advertisement Advertisement As soon as this bipartisan infrastructure bill passed, it was really celebrated in the Senate. Senators were just so happy and patting themselves on the back. They were extremely psyched. And then you get this letter from 10 House moderates to Pelosi basically saying, Youre going to have to deal with us. Can you describe exactly what went down in the summer and what you thought? Advertisement So the infrastructure deal was kind of a prerequisite to get the Senate on board with kicking off reconciliation. The way thats done is, you have to pass a budget resolution that that sets up reconciliation. So they pass that out of the Senate, but then these 10 moderates led by Josh Gottheimer, who represents suburban New Jersey, they send a letter to Pelosi saying, We will not vote for the budget resolution setting up reconciliation until weve already passed the Senate infrastructure bill. Advertisement Pelosi can only lose three votes and still pass this stuff. Thats why she compromised and said shed schedule a vote on the moderates infrastructure plan for Monday. The problem with that? It was nowhere near enough time for the progressives to get their reconciliation bill written. Democrats havent even agreed how much this bill should cost. The $3.5 trillion handshake deal that was reached in the Senate Budget Committee was mostly negotiated between Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner. That was just a deal to the budget resolution out of that committee. Its not that there was a unified Democratic agreement to spend $3.5 trillion. So youre saying the first step is to be like, OK, lets talk about a bill, and then the second step is to be like, OK, heres the number were all comfortable with. And then you can start talking about everything thats in there. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Pretty much. Here, no one quite knows what the agreed-upon number is that everyone is willing to spend, but its not $3.5 trillion. The real negotiations will take place when the real bill is written actually approved in the Rules Committee. It seems to me this is a point where a president or a vice president comes in and starts saying, Hey, this is my agenda. We need to get it done. So how are we going to do that? Is that happening? Yes. I dont know exactly what persuasion techniques theyre using. But as we speak right now, this is a revolving door of every Democratic lawmaker from all these critical groups who all have concernsthey are going in and out of the White House for all these meetings. It doesnt look to me like theres like a plan here. But it does seem like you really need the administration to come in and remind everyone that both Bidens presidency and the Democratic Congress are at risk of being a failure here. So they need to figure something out. Advertisement We probably havent seen the worst of how its going to get yet. When youre trying to do something really hard with really narrow majorities, you usually expect a certain amount of turbulence. But I think this is really the first week where people have started to entertain the possibility that this might not get done. Still, I think figure something out. Yet I do think each camp could work a little bit to build some trust with each other. Thats the thing thats been missing. Subscribe to What Next on Apple Podcasts Get more news from Mary Harris every weekday. During Justice Anthony Kennedys long reign as a swing vote, Supreme Court litigators catered their arguments straight to him. Savvy lawyers stoked Kennedys ego by stuffing their briefs with citations to his past opinions. After he stepped down, the Supreme Court bar began aiming their arguments at the conservative justice most likely to be a swing vote in a particular case. This tactic, however, only worked when the court split 54 along ideological lines. Today, the conservatives hold a 63 conservative supermajority. To prevail, progressive litigators must secure not just one but two conservative votes. And so these lawyers have started directing their arguments at multiple conservatives in the desperate hope of winning five votes. Advertisement This strategy is on full display in the briefing for Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the upcoming challenge to Mississippis 15-week abortion ban that could formally overturn Roe v. Wade. Pro-choice lawyers have three conservative justices in their sights: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. They only need to convince two out of three to preserve Roe, but theyve tried to boost the odds by flattering all three conservatives whom they seem to view as gettable. Heres how the parties and their supporters attempted to lasso each perceived swing vote. Chief Justice John Roberts Roberts vote is the lowest hanging fruit for abortion rights supporters. In 2020, the chief justice sided with the liberals in June Medical Services v. Gee to strike down Louisianas draconian restrictions on abortion clinics, which were designed to regulate legal abortion out of existence. Roberts didnt sign onto the liberals opinion, which took an expansive view of abortion rights. Instead, he authored a separate concurrence that preserved the core right to abortion before viability while still permitting a slew of restrictions. The chief justice insisted that the court adhere to stare decisis, or respect for precedent, to keep the scale of justice even and steady and avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The plaintiffs in Dobbs rely heavily on Roberts June Medical opinion in a bid to nab his vote once again. Their brief cites the chief justices concurrence three separate times to emphasize his point that Roes most central principle, the right to terminate before viability, is now grounded in nearly a half-century of precedent. The Department of Justice, which filed a brief supporting abortion rights, outdo the plaintiffs with four citations to the chief justices June Medical opinion. Multiple amicus briefsfriend of the court briefs filed by non-parties with an interest in the casepick up on this strategy as well. The Justice Department also soft-soaps Roberts with two citations to a very different opinion: His dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a fundamental right to same-sex marriage. At first blush, Roberts Obergefell dissent might seem unhelpful to abortion rights supporters: The chief justice took a cramped view of the liberty protected by the Constitution, a bad omen for Roe since the right to abortion rests on this word. But the DOJ seems to think it found a silver lining in his dissent. In Obergefell, Roberts acknowledged that some liberties not mentioned in the Constitution are nonetheless so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. He did not reject the concept of unenumerated rights, but simply concluded that same-sex marriage isnt one of them. The DOJ appears to hope that Roberts might view bodily integrity as a right sufficiently rooted in Americas traditions and conscience to merit protection by the courts. Justice Brett Kavanaugh Kavanaughs vote will almost certainly be necessary to preserve Roe v. Wade. Thats a problem, since Kavanaugh auditioned for the Supreme Court by stomping all over the right to abortion. After he did not make Donald Trumps first SCOTUS shortlist, Kavanaugh gave a speech condemning Roe as part of the general tide of free-wheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights. It worked: Kavanaugh popped up on Trumps revised shortlist. He then cemented his position as frontrunner by voting to prevent an undocumented minor in government custody from terminating her pregnancy. Once on the court, Kavanaugh consistently voted against abortion access. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Yet the pro-choice parties in Dobbs seem to hope that they can win over Kavanaugh by appealing to his own personal views on precedent. Kavanaugh laid out these views in 2020s Ramos v. Louisiana, penning a disquisition on stare decisis that seemed to say: Please direct arguments from precedent at me, too! Criticizing the current doctrine as muddle, the justice offered three broad considerations:: Whether the precedent is egregiously wrong; whether it has caused significant negative jurisprudential or real-world consequences; and whether overruling the prior decision unduly upset reliance interests. (In a cryptic footnote, he also noted that the court has tinkered with the parameters of abortion rights since Roeperhaps implying that precedent is not exactly rock solid.) Advertisement Predictably, many briefs filed in Dobbs zero in on Kavanaughs insistence that the court should only overturn a precedent if it is egregiously wrong. The plaintiffs, the Justice Department, and many of their supporters cite this portion of Kavanaughs opinion in an effort to persuade him to preserve Roe even if he disagrees with it. At an absolute minimum, the DOJ writes (citing Kavanaugh), Roe is not so egregiously wrong as to overcome the powerful stare decisis principles counseling adherence to precedent. Other amicus briefs are overflowing with citations to Kavanaughs Ramos opinion, including one filed by 236 members of Congress that cites it a whopping eight times. Advertisement Such arguments are a long shot. Kavanaugh has repeatedly voted to overturn precedent without even paying lip service to his Ramos roadmap. Just last term, Kavanaugh wrote a stunning opinion overturning a 32-year-old precedent that no party asked the court to overturn. He wrote another opinion that overturned two precedents strictly limiting sentences of juvenile life without parole. Kavanaugh has also signed onto opinions that radically alter precedent without acknowledging their impact. In September, he even allowed Texas six-week abortion ban to take effet, even though it flagrantly violates Roe. Justice Amy Coney Barrett If Kavanaughs vote is a longshot, Barretts is a moonshot. Trump put Barrett on the court to overturn Roe. The justice has a track record of opposition to abortion, both in her academic writings and her votes on the court of appeals. Moreover, the justice has served on SCOTUS for less than a year, so pro-choice lawyers eager to cite her past opinions have little to work with. Still, they seem to think theyve identified at least one Barrett opinion that bolsters their position: Her concurrence in last terms Fulton v. Philadelphia. Advertisement Advertisement Fulton asked the Supreme Court to overturn a 1990 precedent called Employment Division v. Smith, which held that a neutral law of general applicability does not violate the free exercise clause even if it burdens religion. Conservative groups begged the court to reverse Smith and grant stronger protections for religious liberty. When the court declined to overrule Smith, she authored a concurring opinion explaining her vote. While she was doubtful of the precedent, Barrett explained, she was unsure what should replace Smith. There would be a number of issues to work through if Smith fell, she wrote, and she was hesitant to swap it out before addressing those questions. Notably, Kavanaugh joined her concurrence in full. The plaintiffs in Dobbs view Barretts Fulton opinion as a ray of hope. Mississippis ban begins at 15 weeks, so the state is essentially asking SCOTUS to abandon Roes core rule: The government may not outlaw abortions before fetal viability, which occurs around 23 weeks. But it has not identified what should replace that rule, or what protections (if any) the Constitution affords to reproductive autonomy. For instance, could a state outlaw Plan B or regular birth control? The precedents protecting access to contraception are inextricably intertwined with Roe. Advertisement The plaintiffs and the Justice Department seize on this problem, citing Barretts concurrence in Smith. A party asking this court to take the grave step of overruling a rule of lawone that has been repeatedly reaffirmedshould at least propose and seriously develop an alternative legal framework, the plaintiffs write in their brief. The Justice Department echoes this point, arguing that Mississippi cannot demonstrate that the viability line is wrongmuch less that it should be overruledwithout identifying an alternative that reflects the significance of the interests on both sides of the balance. Barretts brief concurrence is a thin reed upon which to hang the future of Roe. But that is all these parties have. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The plaintiffs and the Justice Department do not enunciate the subtext of this case: that overturning Roe would confirm the fact that Trump viewed his Supreme Court nominees as politicians in robes who would enact the Republican Partys preferred policy positions. His justices have tried to avoid this impression, with mixed success, but they will cement their reputation as partisan hacks if they go along with the GOPs plan. For now, progressive litigators are still trying to win over these justices votes with obsequious references to their past work. Should the court overturn Roe, these attorneys may need to terms with the reality that they cannot fight a political agenda with flattery and reason. The official guidance about booster shots has largely left out 14 million people: Those who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With a new announcement from the company, that could change. The discussion about boosters has so far centered on the mRNA vaccinesand its involved a lot of confusing back-and-forth. Last month, President Joe Biden announced the plan to offer additional shots for adults who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines starting Sept. 20. But on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer vaccine boosters only for those 65 and older and others at high risk of getting severe COVID. The discussion of Moderna booster shots for all adults is still ongoing, as health regulators requested more time to review the data submitted by the company. In the meantime, immunocompromised people can already get Moderna or Pfizer booster shots, according to recommendation officials issued last month. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But, until recently, theres been nothing official at all about boosters for the J&J vaccine, which comes in a single dose and offers less protection that the other options. There hasnt even been guidance on what immunocompromised people who got the single-dose vaccine should do in terms of an additional shot. Experts have for months been advising people who receive the J&J vaccine and are interested in getting a booster that it might be a good ideabut that they should consult their physician, who in turn may or may not be comfortable giving advice about coronavirus booster vaccines. Those who did decide to get a booster (perhaps mixing and matching J&J with an mRNA shot) sometimes had to skirt the rules to find a place that would give it to them. Advertisement There might be better guidance coming soon. Finally, on Tuesday, J&J shared its findings on the effect of booster shots for its vaccine. The company unveiled in a press release that giving a second dose of the vaccine two months after the first shot provides 94 percent protection against moderate or severe COVID symptoms and 100 percent protection against severe-to-critical symptoms. If the second shot is given six months after the first one, the protection is even higher, said the company. Johnson & Johnson didnt mention the percentage of efficacy in the delayed-booster case, but it did lay things out in terms of antibodies. People who got a booster shot two months after vaccination had antibody levels four to six times higher than after the single shot. Those who received the second dose at six months saw that their antibody levels rose 12 times higher. Advertisement Advertisement These numbers might look like getting two doses of J&J is on par with getting two doses of other vaccines, but the company claims that the data actually indicate something better. When the FDA authorized the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for emergency use in February, its overall efficacy rate in the U.S. was 72 percent, while Moderna and Pfizer effectiveness was around 95 percent. But studies demonstrated that Moderna and Pfizer vaccines protection wanes within months. Pfizer effectiveness declines to 84 percent over six months after full vaccination, and Moderna efficacy wanes by 36 percent after 12 months. Johnson & Johnson, however, claims in its press release that its vaccine protection doesnt weaken over time. Advertisement Of course, its not clear whether the J&Js two-dose version of their vaccine will be as compelling once it gets more scrutiny. Some experts were disappointed that Johnson & Johnson published their studies in a press release, as they expected a publication in a scientific journal, where they would be able to see more of the data, and better understand if J&Js claims hold up. The company promised to submit the results of its trials for publication in the coming months. In the meantime, the drugmaker said that it provided data on boosters to the FDA. On Sunday, Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House COVID response, told NBC News that the FDA might review data on the second shot for the Johnston & Johnson and third shot for the Moderna in a couple to a few weeks. In the meantime, based on the information J&J did release, it looks like the effectiveness of two shots of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is comparable to the efficacy of full vaccination with Pfizer or Moderna, which made some wonder: Why wasnt J&J a two-dose vaccine from the very beginning? Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Landmark case in Spain as Barcelona sues company for electrocuting birds Barcelonas Prosecutors Office has initiated actions against Spanish electricity company Endesa The Environmental Prosecutors Office has filed a complaint against an electricity company which it claims has not adopted sufficient measures to adapt its power lines to prevent the deaths of protected bird species. This is the first legal action of its kind in Spain After two years of investigations, last April, Barcelona Public Prosecutors Office initiated actions against Endesa and six of its executives for crimes against the environment and the protection of fauna. According to reports from Rural Agents, several electrical towers have dangerous supports and unprotected cables which have led to the electrocution of dozens of birds in recent months. Many of the birds belong to protected species, including storks, vultures, goshawks, eagles, harriers and kestrels. A 2008 royal decree established preventative measures against this kind of accident, something which prosecutors claim Endesa hasnt followed through on, and now they are asking the court to force the electricity company to repair its defective power lines. The official documentation shows that 255 birds were electrocuted in the Osona region alone between 2018 and 2020, while 72 white storks were killed between August 3 and 5 of 2020, when they entered the area on their annual migration to Africa. The prosecutors claim that Endesa has repeatedly ignored their requests to resolve the situation, acting in only the most serious cases. The Department of Agriculture and Natural Environment issued a resolution in 2013 that ordered the owners of high-voltage overhead power lines that did not comply with technical specifications to present a project to adapt the supports within one year. While Endesa agreed to undertake the work, the company then failed to maintain its equipment. In Spain, collisions with electrical lines is one of the main causes of bird mortality, with recent studies showing that between 11,000 and 33,000 birds of prey are killed by electrocution each year. It is the main cause of death for several species, including the endangered Iberian imperial eagle, Bonellis eagle and the bustard. Image: Archive Donkey, dog, cat and a rooster. Four friends find a new home in Bratislava A 'Town Musicians of Bremen' statue has been unveiled in the city. The new Bratislava sculpture is made of coloured bronze, its height is almost five metres, and it weighs two tons. (Source: Barbora Jancarova) The Town Musicians of Bremen have found a temporary home in Matej Korvin Square in Bratislavas Old Town. A painted bronze statue depicting the famous Brothers Grimm tale will stand in the new square for 10 years, after the city of Bremen and the private German art collection MAP Collection lent it to the Slovak capital. The work is inspiring and positive. In todays difficult pandemic times it can be a source of encouragement, said Bratislava-Old Town Mayor Zuzana Aufrichtova. The sculpture, which is five metres high and weighs two tons, was created by German artist Markus Lupertz, the Bratislava Old Town wrote on Facebook. Strange statue As for the well-known German fairy tale, it tells a story of aging, neglected animals that decide to start a new life. Because the masters of the donkey, rooster, dog, and a cat mistreat them, the brave animals rebel against their fate and set out into the world, experiencing adventures and dangerous situations as they travel around. Though they want to become musicians in Bremen, they eventually move into a house of robbers, whom they have scared away. Symphony of destruction: Art installation plays on sounds of demolished PKO site Read more I believe people will like the statue, that it will become a meeting point, and that they will say: We will meet there, under that strange statue with the four animals stacked on top of each other, Lupertz said during his visit to Bratislava. Statues inspired by the fairy tale can also be found in Germany, the USA, Latvia and Japan. 23. Sep 2021 at 11:25 | Compiled by Spectator staff Editors-in-chief supported accused journalists before charges were dropped. Poll unveils how an ideal foreigner should look. No vote on changes to the Citizenship Act. Good evening. The Tuesday, September 21, 2021 edition of Today in Slovakia is ready with the main news of the day in less than five minutes. We wish you a pleasant read. Journalists no longer face charges Monika Todova (Source: Archive of Sme) The Dennik N daily's journalists Monika Todova and Konstantin Cikovsky no longer stand accused for revealing confidential information. Following the order of General Prosecutor Maros Zilinka for the Bratislava regional prosecutor's office to examine the charges, the prosecutor decided to drop the charges, calling them "unlawful and unfounded, as well as arbitrary," ordering an authorised police officer to act and decide again. Earlier today, the editors-in-chief of the biggest Slovak dailies and radio stations condemned this attack against journalists. "We consider these charges another attempt to threaten journalists who have been revealing the missteps of those in power for many years," they wrote in an open letter. Poll shows Slovaks' attitudes to foreigners The latest Focus poll has found that 57.7 percent of Slovaks think the government should not be lenient when it comes to taking refugees in. (Source: Facebook/[fjuzn]) The latest Focus poll for the Milan Simecka Foundation, conducted between June 28 and July 4, 2021 on a sample of 1,004 respondents, paints a picture of how a perfect foreigner should look to Slovaks. They do not reject foreigners in principle, with 75.9 percent of them disagreeing that foreigners should never be accepted in Slovak society. Yet, the poll implies that the ideal foreigner looks like a Slovak. The poll also revealed that Slovak people have different ideas as to what criteria foreigners should meet in order to be at all allowed into the country. Find out more in the report by Peter Dlhopolec. Coronavirus and vaccination news (Source: TASR/AP) 880 people were newly diagnosed as Covid positive out of 10,475 PCR tests performed on Monday. The number of people in hospitals has increased to 438 . The vaccination rate is at 44.03 percent; 2,421,940 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. out of 10,475 PCR tests performed on Monday. The number of people in hospitals has increased to . The vaccination rate is at 2,421,940 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. 23 percent of pupils aged 12-17 years (or some 80,000 children) have been vaccinated against Covid. The biggest share of those vaccinated with the first dose is in the districts of Bratislava (52 percent), Senec (47 percent) and Pezinok (42 percent), while the lowest is in Medzilaborce (7 percent), Revuca (8 percent), Rimavska Sobota and Gelnica (each 9 percent). (or some 80,000 children) against Covid. The biggest share of those vaccinated with the first dose is in the districts of Bratislava (52 percent), Senec (47 percent) and Pezinok (42 percent), while the lowest is in Medzilaborce (7 percent), Revuca (8 percent), Rimavska Sobota and Gelnica (each 9 percent). 851 out of almost 53,000 classrooms switched to remote education this week. 1,391 pupils tested positive for Covid-19. this week. 1,391 pupils tested positive for Covid-19. Vaccination opponents interfered with the vaccination in the village of Podbiel, Orava region, which required the intervention of police. A similar incident occurred in Martin in early September. (Aktuality.sk) Travel info Cyprus placed Slovakia on the list of orange countries , i.e. the countries with a higher risk of the infection . The decision comes into force on September 23. , i.e. the countries with a . The decision comes into force on September 23. People from Slovakia travelling to Switzerland who are not vaccinated against Covid must present a negative test result when entering the country. If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription . Thank you. Picture of the day Stranik Hill near Zilina is a popular spot for paragliding and short, undemanding hikes. (Source: TASR) Feature story for today Dusan Kovacik is the first high-ranking official under the Smer-led governments to hear a guilty verdict on corruption charges. The court sentenced him to 14 years in prison for bribery and cooperation with an organised crime group. Here are the 10 main points of the verdict. The ten strongest points of the verdict against former special prosecutor Read more In other news The prosecutor pressed further charges against convicted former special prosecutor Dusan Kovacik , this time for accepting a 50,000 bribe from controversial businessman Peter Kosc, charged with bribing Kovacik and on the run from the police. Kosc allegedly wanted the ex-special prosecutor to take two files from then supervising prosecutor Peter Kysel. (Aktuality) against , this time for accepting a 50,000 bribe from controversial businessman Peter Kosc, charged with bribing Kovacik and on the run from the police. Kosc allegedly wanted the ex-special prosecutor to take two files from then supervising prosecutor Peter Kysel. (Aktuality) Sme Rodina will not leave the coalition for now, said its chair and Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollar. Yet, he outlined several conditions under which the party would consider leaving the coalition, including the scrapping of paragraph number 363 of the Penal Order, which allows for the extraordinary intervention of the general prosecutor, and has been recently used to scrap several charges. said its chair and Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollar. Yet, he under which the party would consider leaving the coalition, including the scrapping of paragraph number 363 of the Penal Order, which allows for the extraordinary intervention of the general prosecutor, and has been recently used to scrap several charges. Opposition party Smer filed a criminal complaint against Specialised Criminal Court Judge Pamela Zaleska , who delivered a verdict in the case involving ex-special prosecutor Dusan Kovacik on Monday. against , who delivered a verdict in the case involving ex-special prosecutor Dusan Kovacik on Monday. Culture Minister Natalia Milanova (OLaNO) dismissed Stanislav Micev from the post of director of the SNP Museum in Banska Bystrica, citing several instances of misconduct in relation to the museum's management. Micev, who has been at the helm since 2006, recently opposed the idea of moving the SNP Museum to the Defence Ministry. from the post of in Banska Bystrica, citing several instances of misconduct in relation to the museum's management. Micev, who has been at the helm since 2006, recently opposed the idea of moving the SNP Museum to the Defence Ministry. President Zuzana Caputova will make a video speech on the 76th UN General Assembly . She will be the first woman speaker and the first speaker among European leaders. on the . She will be the first woman speaker and the first speaker among European leaders. MPs have once again postponed the discussion on the amendment of the State Citizenship Act, this time to the October session. this time to the October session. Parliament failed to adopt a resolution expressing support to all minorities and communities living in Slovakia . The proposal, submitted by the MPs from Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) and Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), was supported by only 55 MPs out of 125 present. Those who did not vote for the resolution included MPs from the OLaNO and Sme Rodina coalition parties. expressing . The proposal, submitted by the MPs from Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) and Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), was supported by only 55 MPs out of 125 present. Those who did not vote for the resolution included MPs from the OLaNO and Sme Rodina coalition parties. Several buses have blocked the road in front of the Governments Office in Bratislava, in order to point out the weak assistance of the government towards the private sector. The protest was organised by the Republika party, formed by the renegades of the far-right Kotlebovci - Peoples Party Our Slovakia (LSNS). Blockade in Bratislava (Source: TASR) Do not miss in Spectator.sk today Consumption of medicine decreased in Slovakia during the pandemic Read more Five examples of how artificial intelligence is used in retail Read more If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk. 21. Sep 2021 at 17:55 | Nina Hrabovska Francelova MEPs leave Slovakia cautiously positive The delegation spent two days in the country, and discussed a broad range of topics including the developments in the Kuciak murder case and reforms. Font size: A - | A + The delegation of Civil Liberties Committee MEPs is leaving Slovakia cautiously positive, said its chair Sophie In 't Veld at the end of a two-day visit to Slovakia. The delegation came to Slovakia to assess respect for the rule of law, as part of their ongoing monitoring of the situation across the EU. As In 't Veld recalled, she visited Slovakia for the first time two and half weeks after the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova in late February 2018. Since then, she and her colleagues have been monitoring the situation in the country on a permanent basis, and she herself has returned several times. Weve heard a lot of things which are very worrying, she told the press conference. Weve heard about hate speech and intimidation of journalists, weve heard about intimidation and harassment of people who are fighting corruption in authorities, we still hear about resistance against reforms. So there are still reasons for concern. Kuciak murder needs to be clarified in order for Slovakia to move forward Read more On the other hand, there is still a very strong spirit of citizenship in Slovakia, and there are a lot of people working very hard on making Slovakia a modern state with a clean and efficient government. Those people deserve our support, In 't Veld said. Inquiries about reforms and Kuciak murder During their visit to Slovakia on September 22-23, the MEPs met with the families of Kuciak and Kusnirova, as well as with civil society representatives, including NGOs and journalists. They also met with several representatives of the state, including PM Eduard Heger, Interior Minister Roman Mikulec (both OLaNO), and Justice Minister Maria Kolikova (SaS caucus), as well as the members of parliament. They held talks about Supreme Court justices, prosecutors and police representatives. How an anti-team dismantled an elite police team with the help of the secret service Read more The MEPs were interested in the planned reform of the judiciary, the fight against corruption, measures to protect journalists and whistleblowers, and the freedom of press. They also inquired about the current developments in the Kuciak and Kusnirova murder case. There are still concerns about things in Slovakia, but we can also see that things can get better, In 't Veld told the press. If people put their minds to it, if they work together and work hard, they can make things better and improve the rule of law. In her opinion, Slovakia can become an example for Europe in that respect. Charges against Dennik N journalists dropped Read more Opposition critical The EP delegation did not meet with the representatives of the political opposition, which was criticised by Hlas chair and former PM Peter Pellegrini. He called the visit tendentious, and said that the delegations chair failed to explain why they did not meet, as reported by the SITA newswire. In 't Veld commented that she was surprised by such reaction. They invited various politicians to discussions, not based on their political allegiance, but their function. As she stressed, the delegation represented a broad political spectrum, and they answered all relevant questions. 23. Sep 2021 at 11:19 | Compiled by Spectator staff Anti-vax mobilisation starting to look like a losing strategy Several countries no longer rely on positive motivation to get vaccinated against Covid. Font size: A - | A + I recently returned from a work trip to New York City, where starting September 13 all customers and staff at restaurants, gyms and other indoor retail businesses were required to be vaccinated. In the few days that my trip overlapped with the new policy, enforcement was still spotty (only one restaurant actually asked for my proof of vaccination), but it got me thinking about what a sensible policy it is. In democracies, we prefer persuasion over coercion, but in a world where people are unable or unwilling to comprehend evidence, persuasion looks to have reached its limits. And vaccine mandates are nothing new. Most countries, for example, mandate that children get certain vaccines before they attend school. Along with posing a public health risk, Covid vaccine skeptics result in slow economic recovery, prolong restrictions on travel and make it necessary to wear masks indefinitely. Far from an individual decision, their actions have a profound impact on the rights and freedoms of others. 23. Sep 2021 at 12:05 | Benjamin Cunningham Healthcare staff want better salaries but cannot go on strike Representatives of healthcare professions have signed a declaration with a number of demands. Illustrative stock photo (Source: Archive of Sme) Top stories Foreigners community has a big voice, but it needs to be more organised Bratislava Mayor Matus Vallo addressed the questions and concerns of foreigners in Bratislava during a special Q&A. Bratislava Mayor Matus Vallo speaks to foreigners at [fjuzn] festival's "Ask the Mayor" event. (Source: Michal Babincak) Is Bratislava, a historically multicultural city, as diverse as it used to be? Do foreigners have a loud enough voice in local government? Bratislava Mayor Matus Vallo, elected for the post with no previous experience in municipal government in 2018, answered these and some other questions in a discussion with foreigners earlier this week. When he first ran for mayor, Vallo took a different approach than his predecessors and main competitors in the election by addressing the community of foreigners living in the Slovak capital in his election programme. Vallo, whose first term as mayor ends in the autumn of 2023, declared that making Bratislava a more integrated city is a priority for him until the end of his term. He said so during the first public debate with foreigners in English, the Q&A with the Mayor event that took place on September 21 as part of the multi-genre festival [fjuzn] organised by the non-governmental Milan Simecka Foundation. An important question is how are we going to use the energy of foreigners to improve the future of Bratislava, Vallo told the discussion participants. Organise better, mayor says 23. Sep 2021 at 16:35 | Anna Fay The coalition disputes are not over. Police broke up an organised group of smugglers in eastern Slovakia. Good evening. Catch up on the main news of the day in less than five minutes with the Thursday, September 23 edition of Today in Slovakia . We wish you a pleasant read. Coalition tremors continue Boris Kollar and Igor Matovic during the coalition talks in March 2020. (Source: SME - Jozef Jakubco) The construction of state-funded rental flats, a leading topic of coalition party Sme Rodina's campaign, is back in the spotlight. The coalition party conditioned their stay in the coalition with this topic and a distrainment amnesty after the party refused to be part of the expert group that aims to return confidence in rule of law in Slovakia. Boris Kollar, chair of the party, seems to have lost the support of Finance Minister Igor Matovic on this topic. Other coalition partners are also critical. In addition, he called on coalition partners to swiftly address the plight of the poor, adding that they should deal with the rising electricity, heat, gas and food prices. MEP delegation left Slovakia cautiously positive Sophie in 't Veld during a press conference in Bratislava. (Source: SITA) Slovakia hosted a delegation from the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) for two days. They arrived in Slovakia to assess respect for the rule of law, as part of their ongoing monitoring of the situation across the EU. Its chair Sophie In 't Veld said that they are leaving Slovakia cautiously positive," but they have still heard a lot of things that are very worrying and give reasons for concern. Weve heard about hate speech and the intimidation of journalists. Weve heard about the intimidation and harassment of people who are fighting corruption among authorities. We still hear about resistance against reforms," she said. Coronavirus and vaccination news Covid spreads also in school (Source: TASR) 949 people were newly diagnosed as Covid positive out of 9,925 PCR tests performed on Wednesday. The number of people in hospitals has increased to 442. The vaccination rate is at 44.16 percent; 2,428,855 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. out of 9,925 PCR tests performed on Wednesday. The number of people in hospitals has increased to 442. The vaccination rate is at 44.16 percent; 2,428,855 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. Bratislava reached a 75-percent vaccination rate among people in the 50 and over age group. This means that according to the current rules, the epidemic tier will always be two levels better than it should be according to other factors. This means that according to the current rules, the epidemic tier will always be two levels better than it should be according to other factors. The entrance of hospital employees or those working in outpatient departments should be conditioned with whether they are vaccinated against Covid-19 or not, the Health Ministry said. Fully-vaccinated employees and those who have recovered from Covid-19 in the past 180 days do not have to take a Covid test. Unvaccinated and unrecovered employees will have to take tests every 72 hours . the Health Ministry said. Fully-vaccinated employees and those who have recovered from Covid-19 in the past 180 days do not have to take a Covid test. Unvaccinated and unrecovered employees will . As of September 13, the regional public health authorities took a total of 174 samples during wastewater monitoring . The samples were examined by qualitative and quantitative methods. 153 samples (87.93 percent) were positive or marginal values. . The samples were examined by qualitative and quantitative methods. 153 samples (87.93 percent) were positive or marginal values. The government approved a draft amendment to the law extending the possibility of obtaining a mediatory bonus within the vaccination lottery until the end of 2021. If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription . Thank you. Photo of the day A commemorative banknote with a value of zero was made on the occasion of Pope Francis' visit to the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth in Kosice. (Source: TASR) Feature story for the day Parking in the capital will soon follow different rules. The Bratislava authorities are wrapping up preparations for the city-wide parking policy. Inhabitants will be required to register. Parking in Bratislava changes. Required registration opens soon Read more In other news The police reported that they broke up the main organised group of smugglers in eastern Slovakia and also detained its boss, Radoslav H., during the "Spider" operation. They also seized radios, photo traps and signal jammers. and also detained its boss, Radoslav H., during the "Spider" operation. They also seized radios, photo traps and signal jammers. Hotels and apartment houses in Slovakia were visited by more guests in July than in the first half of this year . Almost 585,000 people visited the accommodation facilities in July, but attendance in that month was almost 18 percent lower than two years ago. . Almost 585,000 people visited the accommodation facilities in July, but attendance in that month was almost 18 percent lower than two years ago. More than 200 new shelter roofs will be added to public transport stops in Bratislava next year. They will build them in busy places and spots that have been missing them so far. New markers and showcases with a timetable will also be added. Reconstructed stop at Racianske Myto (Source: TASR) U.S.Steel in Kosice is selling its daughter company producing refractory materials to the local construction company Termostav-Mraz. The company will take over RMS Kosice with all 370 employees. in Kosice to the local construction company Termostav-Mraz. The company will take over RMS Kosice with all 370 employees. In August of this year, 6,778 new passenger cars were registered in Slovakia , which is 2.9 percent less year-on-year. Skoda models were the most common passenger car produced (16.5 percent of the total production share), followed by Volkswagen brands with a share of 12.4 percent and Hyundai with a share of 10.25 percent. , which is 2.9 percent less year-on-year. were the most common passenger car produced (16.5 percent of the total production share), followed by Volkswagen brands with a share of 12.4 percent and Hyundai with a share of 10.25 percent. The sound of the bell from Bojna in the district of Topolcany was carried in the Vatican. The bell was symbolically cast on the day of Pope Francis' arrival on the territory and during the general audience in the hall of Paul VI. in the Vatican. The mayor of Bojna, Jozef Stankovsky, gave it as a token of gratitude to the pope for visiting Slovakia. The bronze replica of one of the oldest Christian bells in Europe is the first exact replica of a bell discovered in Bojna. in the district of Topolcany was carried in the Vatican. The bell was symbolically cast on the day of Pope Francis' arrival on the territory and during the general audience in the hall of Paul VI. in the Vatican. The mayor of Bojna, Jozef Stankovsky, gave it as a token of gratitude to the pope for visiting Slovakia. The bronze replica of one of the oldest Christian bells in Europe is the first exact replica of a bell discovered in Bojna. The operation of the cable car from Kamzik to Zelezna studnicka in Bratislava will be temporarily interrupted due to reconstruction. Renovation work will start on Monday, September 27. It is tentatively scheduled for 40 days. Do not miss on Spectator.sk today Anti-vax mobilisation starting to look like a losing strategy Read more Donkey, dog, cat and a rooster: Four friends find a new home in Bratislava Read more Healthcare staff want better salaries but cannot go on strike Read more Network of hydrogen stations should be established in Slovakia Read more 23. Sep 2021 at 17:43 | Nina Hrabovska Francelova https://sputniknews.com/20210923/algeria-closes-airspace-to-all-planes-from-morocco-over-provocations-1089323517.html Algeria Closes Airspace to All Planes From Morocco Over 'Provocations' Algeria Closes Airspace to All Planes From Morocco Over 'Provocations' CAIRO (Sputnik) - Algeria's authorities have decided to close the country's airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircraft roughly a month after... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T06:33+0000 2021-09-23T06:33+0000 2021-09-23T07:05+0000 algeria morocco world africa news /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/17/1082164126_0:166:3053:1883_1920x0_80_0_0_97778268d14ac6d7153849ee6a228001.jpg The decision was made during a meeting of the national security council on Wednesday. The agenda included relations with Morocco.In late August, Algiers announced it was severing diplomatic ties with Morocco due to its neighbour's "hostile actions". Rabat responded by slamming the move as "unjustified and regrettable".The two North African nations have long been at odds over control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was transferred to the control of Morocco and Mauritania in 1973. Three years later, the Polisario Front, of which Algeria is considered to be the main supporter, established the partially-recognised Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) on a very small part of the disputed territory. Morocco, which controls much of Western Sahara, has been pushing for the region's autonomy, while the United Nations and SADR have been in favour of a referendum on its self-determination. algeria morocco Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 algeria, morocco, world, africa, news https://sputniknews.com/20210923/americans-favour-trump-over-biden-after-afghanistan-pullout-disaster-poll-says-1089336340.html Americans Favour Trump Over Biden After Afghanistan Pullout Disaster, Poll Says Americans Favour Trump Over Biden After Afghanistan Pullout Disaster, Poll Says Americans Favour Trump Over Biden After Afghanistan Pullout Disaster, Poll Says 2021-09-23T13:26+0000 2021-09-23T13:26+0000 2021-09-23T13:26+0000 joe biden donald trump us /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/0b/1088993386_0:0:2648:1491_1920x0_80_0_0_ad49217ad61f486ca18488f2bcc018c0.jpg President Joe Biden's approval rating has dipped to 46% and has, for the first time since the start of his term, fallen below that of former POTUS Donald Trump, a new Harvard/Harris poll has shown. The president has lost nearly 10% since May 2021, when his approval rating was at its peak. At the same time, Trump's rating bounced back from a slip to 43% in February 2021 and rose to 48%.The poll was carried out in September in the wake of the Biden administration facing a number of serious issues. They ranged from mounting Delta variant COVID-19 cases, dissatisfaction over the vaccination mandates for federal employees and contractors, looming vaccination mandates for medium and large businesses, a surge of Haitian migrants at the Texas border with Mexico, and to continuing deliberations among the Democrats regarding infrastructure bills and disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.Biden's allies in the current administration also rank below some members of Donald Trump's team. Namely, 55% of respondents found Mike Pence to be a better vice president than Kamala Harris, while 63% also believed that Mike Pompeo fared better as secretary of state compared to Antony Blinken.Another poll, carried out by Gallup in the first half of September, showed even lower ratings for Biden with 43% of Americans approving and 53% disapproving of his performance in the Oval Office. The poll also suggests that voters, who do not align with any party, were the prime source of Biden's drop in popularity. Only one-third of independents, a new low for Biden, expressed support for the current president versus two-thirds at its high.The Gallup poll additionally suggests that Americans approve of Vice President Kamala Harris' work significantly more than that of Biden 49% versus 43%. In addition, an overwhelming majority of US residents, nearly 70%, disapprove of the way the country is currently being governed.Afghanistan Withdrawal Undermines Biden's RatingsThe polls were carried out hot on the heels of the wrap up of the trouble-ridden American pullout from Afghanistan. Even before the process was concluded, the Taliban* managed to seize power in the country, bulldozing through the defences of the Kabul government installed with the help of the US and NATO and under the supervision of the UN. Washington claimed it did not anticipate such a rapid advance by the insurgents.To add to the trouble, the US failed to organise the timely evacuation of its citizens from the country, as well as Afghans who helped both US and NATO forces and feared retribution from the Taliban. Washington was unable to get them all out in time before the insurgent group closed the skies to international travel. The evacuation was also shadowed by the deaths of 13 US servicemen and around 200 civilians in terror attacks by Daesh-K*.Trying to respond to the attack and prevent a new one, the US military carried out an airstrike in Kabul, which, however, only killed 10 civilians, including seven children. The Pentagon later admitted that the strike was a mistake, despite initially claiming to have killed Daesh-K terrorists.*The Taliban and Daesh-K (also known as ISIS-K) are terrorist organisations banned in Russia and many other countries. https://sputniknews.com/20210920/iranian-commander-says-us-humiliating-escape-from-afghanistan-lesson-for-dependent-allies-1089238868.html Thomas Turk Not forgetting his ILLEGAL,disgusting sanctions on Iran, Cuba, Ven., Syria, et al. Nasty streak in DJT, which no doubt Murikan warmongers enjoy. 8 FeEisi The Pull out is Trump's idea but Trump didn't get his second term to take full credit. The same with AUKUS which started under Trump but was made public under Biden. Trump also wanted to exit from New START on the second term but Biden became president and Biden extended New START. 2 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg joe biden, donald trump, us https://sputniknews.com/20210923/as-modi-meets-us-firms-google-moves-court-against-indias-competition-watchdog-over-leaked-report-1089328055.html As Modi Meets US Firms, Google Moves Court Against India's Competition Watchdog Over 'Leaked' Report As Modi Meets US Firms, Google Moves Court Against India's Competition Watchdog Over 'Leaked' Report Earlier this year, US firms Twitter, Amazon, Facebook, and Facebook-owned WhatsApp got into loggerheads with New Delhi over data privacy laws and regulations... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T13:18+0000 2021-09-23T13:18+0000 2021-09-23T13:18+0000 narendra modi world united states google google google narendra modi india /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/11/1082657874_0:199:2536:1626_1920x0_80_0_0_f44a711c559dbd35f0dd831105789525.jpg Technology giant Google has taken India's anti-trust body, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), to the Delhi High Court over a confidential report leak on Thursday. The tech giant, in a statement, said it aims to prevent any further unlawful disclosures of confidential findings by the investigative arm of the CCI."Google has not yet had the opportunity to review the Director General's findings, much less submit its defence of any allegations", the statement read.On 20 September, Reuters reported that the CCI, in its two-year-long probe, found that Google had abused its power in the country to hurt competitors."Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google reduced the ability and incentive of device manufacturers to develop and sell devices operating on alternative versions of Android, says the June report by the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) investigations unit", the news report, based on CCI's confidential investigation and obtained by Reuters, read.The development comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet America's top businesses in Washington to seek investment. As per initial reports, the CEOs of Qualcomm (Cristiano R. Amon), Adobe (Shantanu Narayen), First Solar (Mark Widmar), General Atomics (Vivek Lall), and Blackstone (Stephen A. Schwarzman), among others, will attend the meeting. Prime Minister Modi is on a three-day visit to the United States. Frequent run-ins between the federal government and tech giants have become a usual affair in India. These altercations are generally over Indian laws or the companies' policies, as of late cautioning other investors to think before investing in the country. https://sputniknews.com/20210713/google-chief-sundar-pichai-admits-free-internet-is-under-attack-amid-row-over-indias-it-rules-1083372871.html https://sputniknews.com/20190918/ahead-of-modi-trump-meeting-44-us-congressmen-call-for-lifting-trade-sanctions-against-india-1076832943.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Deexa Khanduri https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0c/1e/1081607388_0:0:961:960_100x100_80_0_0_e9e931b8c1e18fb41f3074e2145d7a3a.jpg Deexa Khanduri https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0c/1e/1081607388_0:0:961:960_100x100_80_0_0_e9e931b8c1e18fb41f3074e2145d7a3a.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Deexa Khanduri https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0c/1e/1081607388_0:0:961:960_100x100_80_0_0_e9e931b8c1e18fb41f3074e2145d7a3a.jpg narendra modi, world, united states, google, google, google, narendra modi, india https://sputniknews.com/20210923/boris-johnson-reveals-why-he-wants-to-be-renamed-in-honour-of-ancient-greek-god-of-north-wind-1089329498.html Boris Johnson Reveals Why He Wants to Be Renamed in Honour of Ancient Greek God of North Wind Boris Johnson Reveals Why He Wants to Be Renamed in Honour of Ancient Greek God of North Wind On Wednesday, Boris Johnson fully focused on global warming-related issues when addressing the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, where he warned that it... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T10:28+0000 2021-09-23T10:28+0000 2021-09-23T10:28+0000 boris johnson climate change news address un general assembly world /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/17/1089328031_0:153:2048:1306_1920x0_80_0_0_3ca583b0b84b8827039d6b89e65167d6.jpg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is considering being renamed in honour of the Greek God Boreas. The moment came as BoJo talked about climate change at a UN General Assembly session in New York.He then mentioned his childhood, when the UK produced "almost 80 percent of our [British] electricity from coal", something that Johnson said "is now down to two percent or less and will be gone altogether by 2024".In Greek mythology, Boreas was one of four seasonal wind gods, also being the god of winter.In November 2020, Johnson unveiled the government's plan for a "green industrial revolution" in the UK, which he pledged would "create, support, and protect hundreds of thousands of green jobs, whilst making strides towards net zero by 2050".The 12 billion ($15 billion) plan stipulates that sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in the UK by 2030, amid the push for electric vehicles. The latter will come with a 1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) investment in charging points in homes, streets, and trunk roads. https://sputniknews.com/20210205/uk-faces-criticism-over-support-for-coal-mine-project-ahead-of-climate-summit-reports-suggest-1081988196.html See you in the ice That vaccine has done wonders for Borish the pig. Coronavirus or the vaccine, one or the other, no escape. :D 7 Mike Literous The GAYreek God of flatulence 'Splayedbutticus' 2 7 world Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg boris johnson, climate change, news, address, un general assembly, world https://sputniknews.com/20210923/china-reportedly-mulls-bailing-out-evergrande-developer-as-default-economic-shock-loom-1089343352.html China Reportedly Mulls Bailing Out Evergrande Developer As Default, Economic Shock Loom China Reportedly Mulls Bailing Out Evergrande Developer As Default, Economic Shock Loom China Reportedly Mulls Bailing Out Evergrande Developer Amid Its Looming Default, Economic Shock 2021-09-23T16:19+0000 2021-09-23T16:19+0000 2021-09-23T16:19+0000 asia & pacific china default /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/17/1089342958_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_e305a02a89888813643bd5ba128266c2.jpg The government of Xi Jinping is still considering how to act in regard to the threat that its largest developer Evergrande will default on its obligations and potentially go bankrupt, The Financial Times reported citing an anonymous government adviser.According to the source, Beijing is on the horns of a dilemma - on the one hand, the Chinese economy is heavily in debt, having hit 290 percent of GDP recently. However, Evergrande's collapse will leave thousands of Chinese retail investors nursing huge losses and several thousand citizens without a home. There are also a number of banks - both foreign and domestic - that lent money to Evergrande meaning that its collapse will deal a heavy blow to the China's development sector and economy.But bailing out such a giant will not only cost a vast moment, it will also set an "expensive" precedent, prompting other troubled companies to come begging for state assistance, the FT cited another source, allegedly familiar with Evergrande's talks with China's financial regulators, as saying.Election Politics and Possible Salvation for EvergrandeEven though Beijing reportedly has its reservations about helping Evergrande, it did save several other businesses this year from going bankrupt. The government organised debt restructuring for state-owned asset manager China Huarong and HNA Group, a conglomerate which deals in aviation and tourism. Evergrande's collapse would affect many more people than would the failure of either China Huarong or HNA, but would be much more costly to avoid.But it is not just the cost of the bail-out, but also the political implications of the move, that might worry Beijing, the FT suggests. The country's President Xi Jinping will be moving to secure his third term next year and has already announced what is perceived as his re-election platform a "common prosperity" policy which is meant to iron out inequalities in how wealth is distributed in the country and has already led to major economic shifts, slashing profits of some technological and educational businesses.So if the government bails out Evergrande, it runs the risk of being accused of hypocrisy as it would save the vast fortune of the company's billionaire founder - Hui Ka Yan, the fifth-richest person in the country, who owns 70 percent of Evergrande. However, the FT's source, an adviser to the Chinese government who remained anonymous during the interview, hinted that Beijing might find a way to bail out Evergrande without rescuing Hui's wealth. The adviser brought up the case of HNA Group, where the government replaced the company's chairman and found a state-owned white knight investor, who bought out a major asset of the conglomerate.At present, Evergrande owes banks, suppliers, retail investors and bondholders $300 billion, and it has $368 billion. The company fell into such difficulties because of exorbitant borrowing, the aggressive building of new objects and a 20 percent slowdown in the Chinese housing market. With regular bond interest payments being due on 23 September, concerns have arisen that the company will default on its financial obligations.The fears that that might really happen sent ripples through the Asian markets. Western markets also experienced falls of 2 or 3 percent as many investors had redirected their money to Chinese assets as global bonds have been at historic low yields, being seen as a safe haven for many traders in times of uncertainty. Some economists questioned such assessment, blaming the stocks' price correction on a spike in COVID-19 cases after a summer rally.Evergrande itself issued a statement on 22 September in which it pledged to honour all onshore bond payments without saying whether they would be paid on time. However, the development giant gave no word on keeping its obligations to the high-yield offshore bondholders, which are estimated to be worth about $20 billion. https://sputniknews.com/20210920/global-stock-markets-plunge-as-chinese-giant-evergrande-faces-mountain-of-debt-1089250911.html china Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg asia & pacific, china, default https://sputniknews.com/20210923/erdogan-says-work-with-biden-saw-not-very-good-start-1089345099.html Erdogan Says Work With Biden Has Seen a 'Not Very Good Start' Erdogan Says Work With Biden Has Seen a 'Not Very Good Start' ANKARA (Sputnik) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that work with his US counterpart, Joe Biden after the latter's inauguration had seen "not a... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T16:37+0000 2021-09-23T16:37+0000 2021-09-23T16:57+0000 recep tayyip erdogan joe biden us middle east turkey /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/10/1080184117_0:0:3241:1824_1920x0_80_0_0_d937a8262f3f14704db68d5aa464597f.jpg He accused the US of providing weapons to "terrorists" in Syria and slammed Washington for leaving a large amount of weapons in Afghanistan, noting that the US "will have to pay a price" for that. Erdogan also noted that Ankara won't back down on the S-400 deal with Russia, which is another bone of contention in US-Turkey ties. babai I like Erdo, he is a strong leader 4 Charlie McD No wonder 0 6 turkey Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 recep tayyip erdogan, joe biden, us, middle east, turkey https://sputniknews.com/20210923/former-czech-president-klaus-hospitalised-twice-in-two-weeks-1089346186.html Former Czech President Klaus Hospitalised Twice in Two Weeks Former Czech President Klaus Hospitalised Twice in Two Weeks PRAGUE (Sputnik) - Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has been hospitalized for the second time in the past two weeks on Thursday at the Central Military... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T17:28+0000 2021-09-23T17:28+0000 2021-09-23T17:28+0000 czech republic europe vaclav klaus /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/16142/39/161423920_0:0:2257:1270_1920x0_80_0_0_7f6e6b7f3dc6dbaa1e16309a2e1efc72.jpg Last week, 80-year-old Klaus was admitted to the CVH due to high blood pressure and stomach problems but was released from the hospital on 17 September.Klaus, who served as president of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013, underwent hip surgery in 2008, and cataract surgery four years later. At the end of February this year, Klaus tested positive for COVID-19. Prior to that, he strongly objected to various government measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 and was even fined twice for not wearing a mask at public events. czech republic Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 czech republic, europe, vaclav klaus https://sputniknews.com/20210923/former-islamist-preacher-there-is-a-salafist-in-every-swedish-mosque-1089322794.html Former Islamist Preacher: 'There is a Salafist in Every Swedish Mosque' Former Islamist Preacher: 'There is a Salafist in Every Swedish Mosque' Salafism is a hardline and ultraconservative brand of Islam linked with literalist interpretations and a puritanical approach that has come to be associated... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T06:42+0000 2021-09-23T06:42+0000 2021-09-23T08:19+0000 news europe sweden radical islam scandinavia salafism /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105789/53/1057895330_0:623:5115:3500_1920x0_80_0_0_131ea9b9aed1472800f3e976d9136bb6.jpg Anas Khalifa, a former Salafist preacher, has warned of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism in Sweden, describing it as a viable movement with popular preachers who affect the country's Muslims, both directly and indirectly.According to Khalifa, who has for 20 years been one of the most influential Salafist preachers in Sweden, Salafists and their ideas are present in all mosques across the country.According to Khalifa, the mosque isn't the only place where Salafists remind the public of their presence.The former preacher, who likened Salafism to "cancer" in a previous interview, suggested that young people are the most affected."They spread hatred against Christians and Jews, strong prejudices about other groups. The basic message is hatred", he said.He cited his young followers who tag radical preachers in his social media feeds, when he confronts them with liberal ideas."These are ordinary young people born and raised in Sweden", he said.Khalifa additionally stressed the role of fundamentalism in ideological indoctrination that spurred many Swedish Muslims to travel to the Middle East and join terrorist groups, admitting that he himself has "blood on his hands", having been in contact with many of them. At the time of Daesh's* so-called "caliphate", about 300 Islamists left Sweden to join the jihadists' cause, which is some of the highest per capita in Europe. With about half of them having returned, the Swedish authorities are struggling to hold them accountable. Due to the heavy burden of proof, charges are seldom pressed. Instead, Sweden relies on various "de-radicalisation" programmes that rest upon counselling and assistance.Egypt-born Khalifa is known in Sweden as the first defector from violent Islamist circles to speak out against their dangers. During his time as a preacher, he lectured to children about armed jihad, celebrated 9/11, sympathised with the massacre of Charlie Hebdo, and saw friends and followers join terrorist groups.The term Salafism is used primarily to describe a hardline and socially conservative current within Sunni Islam that has come to be associated with various extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherood*.The exact number of Muslims in Sweden is up for debate as religious profiling is considered unethical in the Nordic country, but Pew Research estimated its Muslim population at 8.1% of the total population of over 10 million.*Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/"Islamic State") and the Muslim Brotherhood are terrorist organisations banned in Russia and other countries. https://sputniknews.com/20210907/swedish-report-warns-of-rising-extremism-due-to-overseas-ties-financing-1083812610.html Cool boi It is obvious someone somewhere is trying hard to keep the human race brainless and unable to think. Why do media always rely on renegades like khalifa to pass a general suspicion on a people you know little or nothing about? Salaffy is the only unadulterated ideology of islam today,that tells you to stay away from crimes against every entity,be it government or individual. What do you think is good about liberalism? It teaches you not to have your ways or ideas,that you should accept all junks that are given to you by whoever. It teaches you to condemn as criminal those who are genuinely conservative. There is no how you can be a true salaffy if not a spy or a mole or should I say hypocrite who claim to be what he is not and wish to quit to the extent of being referred to as a former salaffy preacher. I think only a pfuul can be deceived by the media propaganda against Islam especially the salaffy. Forget about the government sponsored programs aimed at creating confusion. 1 Thomas Turk ..of Islam linked with literalist interpretations.. interpretations of WHAT? The Holy Book? From where did that appear? A non human, invisible, silent deity 'instructed' a non-human, invisible messenger Jibriel, (Gabriel) in 6000+ verses, mostly of self praise and threats to followers and non followers. incl. DEATH. (How)? Jibriel then taught these 6000+ verses to an illiterate, (How)? He learnt them perfectly. Decades later scribes write up these verses with no errors from the deities 1st 'transmission'. (How did the scribes know exactly what the deity 1st 'transmitted')? later the illiterate gets elevated to Prophet.. One scholar suggested that the scribes may have changed some of the verses to better control the people of that time. Mullahs may interpret these phrases as they wish. All makes perfect sense, eh? 1 5 sweden scandinavia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Igor Kuznetsov Igor Kuznetsov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Igor Kuznetsov news, europe, sweden, radical islam, scandinavia, salafism https://sputniknews.com/20210923/german-greens-leader-accuses-russia-of-exacerbating-gas-crunch-1089330729.html German Greens Leader Accuses Russia of Exacerbating Gas Crunch German Greens Leader Accuses Russia of Exacerbating Gas Crunch BERLIN, (Sputnik) - Annalena Baerbock, a German election candidate and leader of the Greens party, has accused Russia of not doing enough to help... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T10:50+0000 2021-09-23T10:50+0000 2021-09-23T10:50+0000 europe russia germany gas green party of germany nord stream 2 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/02/1082524068_0:245:3072:1973_1920x0_80_0_0_916ab271192963dd8705c830aeaa3572.jpg Baerbock, who has long demanded that Germany drop the Nord Stream 2 gas project, told the RND group of newspapers that Russia wants to "increase political pressure to speed up the approval process for Nord Stream 2 and put the pipeline into operation".She said that the German government should send a message to Moscow that "Russia must stick to its promises and supply enough gas through the existing pipelines like it used to".The German energy ministry's spokeswoman, Suzanne Ungrad, said on Wednesday that Russia was fulfilling existing supply deals and did not disregard any contracts.Gas prices skyrocketed to 60-65 euros ($70-76) per megawatt/hour, almost triple the average seen in the past years. Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, blamed gas shortages on the recovering demand, longer heating periods and slumping wind power generation.Gas storage facilities are estimated to be filled to roughly 70 percent of capacity, down from 93 percent at the same time in 2020. Mike Literous How can you claim that someone has Not given you something that you have not yet paid for "if You pay then they will send " 7 Mike Literous This is not logical thinking 6 7 germany Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 europe, russia, germany, gas, green party of germany, nord stream 2 https://sputniknews.com/20210923/gop-house-members-file-impeachment-articles-against-biden-over-clear-violations-of-his-duties-1089322981.html GOP House Members File Impeachment Articles Against Biden Over 'Clear Violations of His Duties' GOP House Members File Impeachment Articles Against Biden Over 'Clear Violations of His Duties' The GOP congressmen's efforts came as recent polls showed that Biden's popularity had begun to slide following a turbulent summer in the US. The events... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T06:56+0000 2021-09-23T06:56+0000 2021-09-23T07:47+0000 joe biden pandemic us afghanistan migration impeachment covid-19 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/17/1089324135_0:0:3071:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_0f074e030dcd0444a776a1f3e946ee7b.jpg Four House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden over his handling of the situation with migrants on the nation's southern border, efforts to extend the federal moratorium on evictions, and the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Congressman Bob Gibbs is leading the effort, along with Andy Biggs, Brian Babin, and Randy Weber.Gibbs said on his Facebook page that he had "filed three articles of impeachment against President Biden based on what I believe to be clear violations of his duties as president".According to the GOP lawmaker, the president's "willful negligence of the border crisis is a failure to maintain and defend American sovereignty".He admitted that he doesn't "take this step lightly", adding "before the Afghanistan debacle, I urged my colleagues to consider a measured, thoughtful conversation on the merits of impeachment".The congressman also tweeted that "it's clear" the 46th president is "not up to the job" and that "his entire administration is willing to thumb its nose at the Constitution".Articles of Impeachment In Article 1, the congressmen accused Biden of failing to maintain security on America's southern border "by halting construction of a barrier along the US-Mexico border, leaving Border Patrol agents to fend for themselves in the effort to secure our borders".Article 2 says Biden extended the moratorium on evictions "despite publicly acknowledging it would 'not pass constitutional muster'".The article claims the US president violated "the separation of powers by extending the moratorium despite a clear warning from the US Supreme Court" and despite him having received "no legislative directive from the US Congress" to do so.One more article of impeachment berates Biden for failing "to act responsibly as Commander in Chief" with regard to the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.Article 3 accuses POTUS of abandoning "thousands of Americans with the removal of military personnel before American civilians were evacuated, willfully putting their lives at risk".It argues that the US president pursued a policy that "leaves Afghanistan in the hands of a terror-supporting regime and weakens America's ability to prosecute the Global War on Terror".Biden's Approval Ratings Nosedive The impeachment efforts by Republicans against the US president come as polling indicated plummeting support for Biden among independents.In a fresh Gallup poll, POTUS holds a 43% approval and 53% disapproval rating, a drop from a 49%-48% approval/disapproval rating in Gallup's survey released in August. Gallup's June poll saw the US president standing at 56%-42%.According to Fox News, Biden's approval rating is "lower at this point in his presidency than any of his most recent predecessors, except for then-President Trump".The new poll came after previous surveys showed that Biden's popularity began to slip following a bumpy summer in the United States, which saw a new surge in coronavirus infections, the chaotic US troop exit from Afghanistan, and a tough hurricane season, along with wildfires.Biden has been repeatedly criticised over what Republicans described as a botched evacuation effort in Afghanistan that included deadly terrorist attacks claimed by Daesh*, in which almost 200 Afghan citizens and 13 US soldiers were killed.The US president is also under fire over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a recently-unveiled plan to curb rising coronavirus cases in the country, which includes mandatory vaccinations for companies with 100 or more employees and all federal government officials. Additionally, the situation with illegal border-crossings show no signs of resolution as more migrants continue to arrive at the country's southern border.*The Taliban and Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/"Islamic State") are terrorist organisations banned in Russia and many other nations. https://sputniknews.com/20210901/trump-says-whole-world-deserves-bidens-apology-over-disastrous-us-troop-exit-from-afghanistan-1083765970.html https://sputniknews.com/20210823/i-havent-seen-that-poll-biden-smirks-as-he-reacts-to-dip-in-approval-rating-amid-afghan-crisis-1083689922.html Belfast Antagonist Qanon clowns doing what hate filled Qanon clowns do best ... HATE 11 See you in the ice thousands of years of hate, violence, murder, theft, plunder and rape in Northern Ireland and among the supposed Irish. Easy to see who the real invaders, thieves, parasites and haters are. ;) 5 7 us afghanistan Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Oleg Burunov https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/0b/1080424846_0:0:2048:2048_100x100_80_0_0_3d7b461f8a98586fa3fe739930816aea.jpg joe biden, pandemic, us, afghanistan, migration, impeachment, covid-19 https://sputniknews.com/20210923/its-a-gas-russia-blamed-for-europes-fuel-crisis-1089333090.html It's a Gas!... Russia Blamed for Europe's Fuel Crisis It's a Gas!... Russia Blamed for Europe's Fuel Crisis There's panic setting in across Europe of unaffordable fuel bills, gas shortages, blackouts and freezing households as winter approaches. And guess who's to... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T11:56+0000 2021-09-23T11:56+0000 2021-09-23T12:04+0000 europe columnists russia gas nord stream 2 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/16877/07/168770775_0:26:2914:1665_1920x0_80_0_0_50b06ad1d52c760be9da047c2e8670f4.jpg Amos Hochstein, an energy official at the US State Department, said there was deep concern about Europe not being to keep warm this winter because of "inexplicably low supplies of gas from Russia". The sinister implication being that Moscow was for reason deliberately shutting down exports to boost prices.Meanwhile, Britains Guardian newspaper sought to explain the energy crisis hitting Europe which has seen prices soar by 250 percent in recent weeks as partly due to "Russia's games". It reported: "As shipments of gas have turned from Europe towards China, flows of pipeline gas to Europe from Russia have failed to make up the shortfall".That's hardly "games". It's called the prerogative to supply your product to meet market demand.Never mind that it was acknowledged that Russia's state-owned Gazprom had fulfilled its contractual obligations to meet European demand. And never mind that the company's chief executive Alexey Miller has said it is willing to increase supply quotas if requested.The fact is that Europe would not be in the energy market mess that it currently is in if the Nord Stream 2 gas project had been completed on time without the inordinate delays caused by US sanctions and the bickering Russophobia of Poland and the Baltic states.The 9.5 billion, 1,222-kilometer pipeline, which will pump natural gas from Russia to Germany and the rest of Europe, lost a year in construction due to American sanctions. In December 2019, the Swiss-Dutch pipe-laying company AllSeas pulled out under threat of sanctions from the Trump administration. Twelve months later, Russian pipe-laying ships took over the task and finally completed the project earlier this month.But a whole year was cut from scheduled supply because of Washingtons political and economic bullying over what is a sovereign matter of EU energy trade, with US administrations claiming that Russia would abuse gas supply as a geopolitical weapon against Europe. Who is abusing whom?Gas industry analysts reckon that if Nord Stream 2 were operating right now there would be no supply crunch in Europe. There would be no grim forecasts of freezing households and power outages for rationing dwindling storage stocks.So whats the hold-up? Gazprom says it is ready to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would double the supply capacity to Europe. But EU regulators are still deliberating over giving the go-ahead to commissioning the new supply route. That regulatory obstacle may take four months to overcome by which time Europe will be plunged into sub-zero temperatures.Then there is still the looming threat of US sanctions. The Biden administration has appeared to relent on opposing the project, at one stage admitting it is unstoppable. However, Hochstein, the State Department energy official cited above, maintains that President Biden is still opposed to Nord Stream 2 and that "no sanctions have been lifted". There may be no new sanctions under Biden, but there are still economic restrictions against Nord Stream 2 on the books.Washington also wants Russia to increase gas supplies over the transit route through Ukraine. So, lets get that straight shall we. Give a Russian-hating regime in Kiev millions of more dollars in transit fees while this regime is waging a criminal war against ethnic Russian people in Eastern Ukraine? Instead of maybe just opening up Nord Stream 2?This inevitably adds uncertainty to what should be a straightforward market issue of supply and demand. Russia is able to supply and Europe has a growing desperate need. It's a matter of turning on the switch. Problem solved.Its the Americans and bumbling European bureaucrats who are the ones playing games over a vital public need. Hundreds of millions of households across Europe are fretting and potentially freezing over something that should not even be an issue the abundant supply of affordable Russian gas to customers who need it. Politics, prejudice and, dare we say, Russophobia are distorting normal economics.Still, the culprits can't help twisting the sorry tale into a morality play blaming "evil Russians". Such a gas!The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. Shadowwalker Can EU and Washington verify its not gas supplies over the transit route through Ukraine are secured. Looks like Ukraine is sabotaging the supplies through this route and as in past it was caught stealing. 10 FeEisi Winter is going to be brutal. Prepare ahead. 10 7 russia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Finian Cunningham https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/01/0c/1081745381_0:429:2048:2477_100x100_80_0_0_02c0961b33c51d5d1a17db3237ef3811.jpg europe, columnists, russia, gas, nord stream 2 https://sputniknews.com/20210923/johnny-depp-says-no-one-is-safe-from-cancel-culture-as-he-hints-that-metoo-got-out-of-hand-1089326725.html Johnny Depp Says No One is 'Safe' From Cancel Culture as He Hints That 'MeToo' Got Out of Hand Johnny Depp Says No One is 'Safe' From Cancel Culture as He Hints That 'MeToo' Got Out of Hand Johnny Depp is no stranger to media attention, however, for the past three years the name of the three-time Oscar nominee has rarely appeared in stories about... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T10:02+0000 2021-09-23T10:02+0000 2021-09-23T10:02+0000 society domestic abuse johnny depp amber heard metoo /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0b/07/1081074169_0:175:3019:1873_1920x0_80_0_0_f4014c2aaca26ba5b60147e713ddf172.jpg No one is safe from the "instant rush to judgment" by the cancel culture movement, said Hollywood star Johnny Depp. Speaking in the Spanish city of San Sebastian, where the actor accepted a lifetime achievement award during a local film festival, the star of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" saga launched a veiled attack on "MeToo", a social movement against physical and sexual violence against women.This was the second time the actor had publicly spoken about the issue. Last month, during an interview with The Sunday Times, the 58-year-old claimed that Hollywood is "boycotting" him after his ex-wife claimed he was violent towards her.What Are the Accusations?In May 2016, 15 months after their nuptials, Amber Heard filed for divorce from Depp citing irreconcilable differences. That same year the pair reached a $7 million settlement, which said that their marriage had been bound by love and that there had been no intention to cause physical or emotional harm.In 2019, Heard penned an op-ed in The Washington Post in which she spoke about being a victim of domestic violence. Although Depp was not mentioned in the article, he nevertheless sued his ex for $50 million, saying it was clear she meant him. The actor has categorically rejected all accusations of domestic violence, which he described as an elaborate hoax by Heard to promote her career.His legal team claimed that the actress was herself violent during their relationship and presented a photo of Depp's severed finger and bruises, which reportedly came as a result of Heard's attack. Due to the coronavirus pandemic the court hearing has been postponed several times and is now scheduled to take place in April of 2022.Depp also filed a libel case against the publishers of the UK tabloid The Sun after he was described as a "wife-beater" in one of the newspaper's articles.However, the actor lost the case, with Judge Andrew Nicol ruling that claims in The Sun's story were "substantially true" and that there were three incidents in which Depp had put Heard in "fear for her life". The actor's lawyers appealed the verdict, but the plea was rejected.Following the loss, Depp revealed that Warner Brothers asked him to resign from the role of Gellert Grindelwald in JK Rowling's "Fantastic Beasts" saga. The news prompted a wave of indignation from the actor's fans, who claim that Depp is innocent. In response, they launched a petition asking the film studio to remove Amber Heard from the "Aquaman" sequel. Hampar Tokatlian The Cancel Culture is a derivative of the Feminist Movement.They are both attempts to emasculate men into becoming androgynous assholes. 1 1 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Max Gorbachev Max Gorbachev News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Max Gorbachev society, domestic abuse, johnny depp, amber heard, metoo https://sputniknews.com/20210923/moroccan-liberal-parties-form-coalition-government-ousting-islamists-after-decade-of-rule-1089319509.html Moroccan Liberal Parties Form Coalition Government, Ousting Islamists After Decade of Rule Moroccan Liberal Parties Form Coalition Government, Ousting Islamists After Decade of Rule After Moroccos ruling Justice and Development Party (PJD) was dealt a stinging defeat in elections earlier this month, several liberal parties have come... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T00:26+0000 2021-09-23T00:26+0000 2021-09-23T00:26+0000 morocco africa coalition government liberals prime minister /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/17/1089319471_0:104:1333:854_1920x0_80_0_0_c67304c6307c7727e4ed16daaa8ff5e6.png Akhannouch, who was assigned by Moroccan King Mohammed VI to form a government after his party, the National Rally of Independents (RNI), won a plurality of seats in parliament, announced the new coalition on Wednesday. It will include the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), another liberal party, and the Istiqlal Party (IP), a center-right nationalist party that supports the monarchy and helped lead the country to independence from France in 1956, but has a long reputation of working with centrist and left-wing parties.RNI won 102 of the 395 seats in the Moroccan House of Representatives, while PAM took 87 seats and Istiqlal 81 seats. By contrast, the PJD, who had held power for a decade, saw their base of support totally collapse, winning just 13 seats in the lower house. Turnout was reportedly 7% higher than in 2016, with 50.3% of the electorate casting ballots.Akhannouch promised to create one million jobs, expand health insurance coverage to all Moroccans, increase the salaries of teachers and to provide a pension program for the elderly.The new coalition pledged to work united and strong" toward implementing the New Development Model, a social and economic renewal program commissioned by the monarchy. A panel formed to draw up recommendations presented its report to King Mohammed VI in April.Istiqlal secretary-general Baraka also said the coalition "will give a new impetus" to reform the ailing economy, which has been "severely marked by the health crisis caused by the pandemic and which "limits the room for manoeuvre.Akhannouch, who has previously headed the respective ministries of finance and agriculture, is CEO of the Moroccan conglomerate Akwa Group, which is heavily invested in gas and petroleum. He is worth an estimated $2 billion, making him Africas 12th-richest man, according to a count by Forbes.The new government will take power amid an ongoing crisis with Moroccos chief regional rival of Algeria, which cut ties with Rabat last month after claiming it was responsible for stirring up dissent and causing wildfires to break out in the country. On Wednesday, Algiers announced it was closing its airspace to Moroccan aircraft.On Tuesday, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita met with Alexander Ivanko, the United Nations newly appointed Special Representative for Western Sahara and head of its peacekeeping mission there, MINURSO. Rabat has proposed an autonomy scheme for Western Sahara, but the UN has promised since 1991 to facilitate an independence referendum in the territory. Erikao Morocco claims the territory is a historic part of Morocco - a claim the us backed in December hmmm backing the claim because it is a historic part of that country. Perfect, so Taiwan and Hong Kong do belong to China and Crimea/Ukraine belong to Russia! 1 morocco africa Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Morgan Artyukhina https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/17/1082703728_0:0:800:800_100x100_80_0_0_0b6ce8daa7411284d60c8a0b6d84186d.jpg Morgan Artyukhina https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/17/1082703728_0:0:800:800_100x100_80_0_0_0b6ce8daa7411284d60c8a0b6d84186d.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Morgan Artyukhina https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/17/1082703728_0:0:800:800_100x100_80_0_0_0b6ce8daa7411284d60c8a0b6d84186d.jpg morocco, africa, coalition government, liberals, prime minister https://sputniknews.com/20210923/outrage-as-missouri-high-school-students-reportedly-come-up-with-petition-to-reinstate-slavery-1089335450.html Outrage as Missouri High School Students Reportedly Come Up With Petition to Reinstate Slavery Outrage as Missouri High School Students Reportedly Come Up With Petition to Reinstate Slavery A petition calling to reinstate slavery in the United States was circulated in Missouri's Park Hill South High School, according to a report by The Kansas City... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T13:43+0000 2021-09-23T13:43+0000 2021-09-23T13:43+0000 us slavery school racism /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/104410/10/1044101069_0:0:2500:1406_1920x0_80_0_0_b29995921d2c0113331cebd9dfe2b563.jpg Parents and officials from the Park Hill South School District, along with some netizens, have been angered by a "racist" petition launched last week by Park Hill South High School students calling to bring slavery back to the United States. Officials from Park Hill School District have reportedly only said that there was a so-called "discipline incident", while other officials hinted at racism possibly being involved. According to reports, parents were notified in an email of "unacceptable and racist statements that some students posted online during a school-related activity". However, there were no details that could clarify the nature of the said activity or any information about the "signatories" of the petition.Some parents within the school are reported to have demanded accountability. The Kansas City Star reported that about a dozen parents attended a meeting with Principal Ryan Stanley of LEAD Innovation Studio - another high school in the district. During the discussion of the matter, Stanley said it was "his understanding" that the vaguely described "racist" incident was indeed about the petition to reinstate slavery.In their calls for accountability, the parents have been joined by many netizens, who expressed their outrage online after the report emerged. Users offered their own measures to be taken against those involved in the petition.Others recalled Critical Race Theory (CRT) - a theory suggesting that the United States is a country of "systemic racism", which prompted controversy on several occasions when some schools tried to include elements of CRT in the curriculum.Slavery was officially abolished in the United States on 18 December 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. In June, President Joe Biden signed a law proclaiming Juneteenth a federal holiday, officially making 19 June a day to commemorate the end of slavery in the US. Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Daria Bedenko Daria Bedenko News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Daria Bedenko us, slavery, school, racism https://sputniknews.com/20210923/paris-to-bill-canberra-for-cancellation-of-submarine-deal-after-aukus-pact-1089338024.html Paris to Bill Canberra for Cancellation of Submarine Deal After AUKUS Pact Paris to Bill Canberra for Cancellation of Submarine Deal After AUKUS Pact The cancellation of Australia's order for French submarines as a result of the trilateral defence pact between Washington, Canberra and London has caused great... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T15:13+0000 2021-09-23T15:13+0000 2021-09-23T15:13+0000 aukus france europe australia submarine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105676/40/1056764081_0:0:5184:2916_1920x0_80_0_0_f9e7a41d879ace19de8a3c6674c39168.jpg France is set to send Australia a bill "in a few weeks" to compensate for the submarine deal that was cancelled because of the AUKUS security pact, according to French newspaper Le Figaro.Pierre-Eric Pommellet, the chief executive of Naval Group, which had been due to build submarines for Australia, told the newspaper that, since the contract was terminated on Canberra's own accord, his company is not "at fault". He also said that the cancellation of the submarine deal had been a complete surprise for the firm.According to Pommellet, the company was informed of the contract termination on 15 September, the exact day the AUKUS pact was announced.Moreover, according to Herve Grandjean, a spokesman for France's Ministry of Defence, on the very same day the ministry and Naval Group received an official letter from the Australian Navy in which it praised the "excellent" performance of the French-made submarines.Grandjean is cited by The Guardian as saying that a senior official who was overseeing the project informed him that he had taken a close look at the state of progress in the contract, in line with the contract, and was extremely satisfied that performance of the French submarine was excellent, which clearly means that we were to move to the next phase of the contract.According to The Guardian, a spokesman for the Australian government confirmed that the letter had been sent, but noted that "this correspondence did not refer to, or authorise, commencement of the next phase of the programme, which remained subject to the announcement of decisions by the Australian government."On 16 September, Naval Group issued a statement concerning the matter, saying that the submarine deal fall-out was "a major disappointment" for the company "which was offering Australia a regionally superior conventional submarine with exceptional performance."After the AUKUS-prompted cancellation of the French submarine deal with Australia, Paris dramatically withdrew its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra. Although France has already agreed to return it US ambassador Philippe Etienne to Washington next week, Australian PM Scott Morrison reportedly faced nothing but silence from the French president when he tried to contact him, and there is no indication as to when Canberra may expect the French ambassador back.The reaction against the United Kingdom was not as harsh as that for the US and Australia, with France believing that London was a "third wheel" in the trilateral security pact. However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson still weighed in on the tensions surrounding AUKUS, using his Franglais to say that it was time for Paris to prenez un grip (get a grip) and donnez-moi un break (give me a break).Paris described the AUKUS pact as a "stab in the back", with French Defence Minister Florence Parly accusing the United States of attempting to instigate a confrontation with China. Beijing, in its turn, also voiced concerns that the pact could undermine non-proliferation efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and prompt an arms race. https://sputniknews.com/20210922/european-commission-yet-undecided-on-aukus-deal-response--1089314179.html Willyspit They did the Zionazis bidding and cancelled the Russians ships and now have been fucked over by the same Zionazis. Suprise, suprise. Lie down with dogs - get fleas. 9 babai I believe France deserves this; they cancelled Russia's order at the request of their master; the Oz will reimburse their costs and they will still be friends 8 8 france australia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Daria Bedenko Daria Bedenko News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Daria Bedenko france, europe, australia, submarine https://sputniknews.com/20210923/photo-armored-vehicles-national-guard-appear-on-texas-border-amid-abbotts-steel-wall-deployment-1089320901.html Photo: Armored Vehicles, National Guard Appear on Texas Border Amid Abbott's 'Steel Wall' Deployment Photo: Armored Vehicles, National Guard Appear on Texas Border Amid Abbott's 'Steel Wall' Deployment Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told US senators that he was "horrified to see" viral videos depicting horseback Border... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T04:09+0000 2021-09-23T04:09+0000 2021-09-23T04:24+0000 texas texas governor greg abbott /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/17/1089320445_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_725d12cba456c2f2f19d985cbf3ff118.jpg Texas Governor Greg Abbott took to social media on Wednesday to announce that Texas Department of Safety personnel and the National Guard have been working to secure southern border cities such as Del Rio, Texas. Additional photos published by the Texas Governor on Wednesday showed armed US personnel monitoring an area along the Rio Grande River. A varied collection of armoured vehicles and trucks were seen along the border as well. Abbott argued to Fox News on Tuesday that his state government was covering tasks that should be left to the administration of US President Joe Biden. The deployment to the Del Rio area comes on the heels of reports that indicated thousands of Haitian migrants were arriving with the hopes of being allowed to gain refugee status within the US as many were leaving their homes over violence and racial discrimination.A spike in US immigration was recorded shortly after the start of the Biden administration once the new president began striking down many Trump-era immigration policies. Skyrocketing figures and traffic at border crossings even prompted American officials to urge them to not make the dangerous journey to the US-Mexico border. TruePatriot Bravo Governor Abbott. Back those vehicles with phalanxes of water cannons and National Guard with arms locked and loaded. The invaders can get blown back across the border with the water jets. If that doesn't work, then use a lead deterrent. 3 Chimesickle Wouldn't it be funny if rich Americans started buying property in Haiti, rebuilding, improving, and totally transforming the country into a first class, high end luxury resort. Then the Americans move there so that the Haitians that have been trying to enter the USA have no home to go back to. Not a third world crap hole anymore. They will have to try to turn the USA into a massive slum, ghetto like their homeland 2 2 texas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Evan Craighead Evan Craighead News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Evan Craighead texas, texas governor greg abbott https://sputniknews.com/20210923/president-biden-addresses-the-un-avoids-apologizing-for-afghan-civilians-killed-by-drone-strike--1089318460.html President Biden Addresses the UN, Avoids Apologizing for Afghan Civilians Killed by Drone Strike President Biden Addresses the UN, Avoids Apologizing for Afghan Civilians Killed by Drone Strike On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including large numbers of Haitian asylum-seekers... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T09:46+0000 2021-09-23T09:46+0000 2021-09-23T09:46+0000 radio un germany police brexit healthcare nato radio sputnik covid-19 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/16/1089318435_0:0:613:344_1920x0_80_0_0_c81b20bfc74ebc29bc1120fc3d068f18.png President Biden Addresses the UN, Avoids Apologizing for Afghan Civilians Killed by Drone Strike. On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events, including large numbers of Haitian asylum-seekers being released into the United States, and Amazon, Facebook, and Uber pledging to hire Afghan refugees. GUESTPeter Oliver - RT European Correspondent and Sputnik European Correspondent | China, COVID-19 Protests in Germany, and Mask Dispute Murder in GermanyBob Schlehuber - Political Misfits Co-Host | The US Institute for Peace, Police Cars Illegally Parked, and J6 RallyIn the first hour, Lee and John spoke with Peter Oliver about China's plan to stop funding coal plants, German protests, and mask mandates in Germany. Peter talked about the conversation between French President Macron, US President Joe Biden, and the commitment to NATO. Peter spoke about the UK and food supply situation after Brexit.In the second hour, Lee and John spoke with Bob Schlehuber on the International day of peace, Australian protests, and Huey Newton. Bob discussed the revolutionary left and activists who seek the death of police. Bob talked about the need for protests and both sides of the political spectrum getting attacked in protests.And we continue to cover Joe Biden's participation in the United Nations General Assembly.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com Mitch Fatouros is this the chatroom? 1 germany Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 John Kiriakou https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107587/24/1075872494_475:-1:1818:1343_100x100_80_0_0_5f29aff18491914c2428c30eddaa3bae.jpg John Kiriakou https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107587/24/1075872494_475:-1:1818:1343_100x100_80_0_0_5f29aff18491914c2428c30eddaa3bae.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 John Kiriakou https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/107587/24/1075872494_475:-1:1818:1343_100x100_80_0_0_5f29aff18491914c2428c30eddaa3bae.jpg radio, un, germany, police, brexit, healthcare, nato, radio sputnik, covid-19, , the backstory https://sputniknews.com/20210923/putin-zelensky-to-meet-when-both-are-ready-kremlin-says-1089328795.html Putin, Zelensky to Meet When Both Are Ready, Kremlin Says Putin, Zelensky to Meet When Both Are Ready, Kremlin Says MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, will meet when they both are ready and when they... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T09:51+0000 2021-09-23T09:51+0000 2021-09-23T09:51+0000 world russia ukraine un vladimir putin news volodymyr zelensky /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/102431/64/1024316411_0:116:5083:2975_1920x0_80_0_0_af54fffa4958786f2e325dacaa4236db.jpg After his address at the UN General Assembly, Zelensky told reporters he would meet with Putin when the Russian president is ready.The Ukrainian president's spokesman earlier said that Zelensky was ready to meet with Putin, but only if the issue of territories that Kiev considers occupied was raised at the negotiations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasised that Crimea cannot be discussed at the potential summit. sharknbake21 comedian and empty vessel knows exactly what Ukraine needs to do but, the comedian is not prepared to mend fences. 1 Hampar Tokatlian In other words , they will not meet unless the comedian changes his shtick. 1 3 russia ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 world, russia, ukraine, un, vladimir putin, news, volodymyr zelensky https://sputniknews.com/20210923/russia-ready-to-cooperate-with-new-german-govt-based-on-mutual-respect-ambassador-says-1089323280.html Russia Ready to Cooperate With New German Gov't Based on Mutual Respect, Ambassador Says Russia Ready to Cooperate With New German Gov't Based on Mutual Respect, Ambassador Says MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Moscow respects the will of the German people and is ready cooperate with the newly elected government on the basis of mutual respect... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T06:28+0000 2021-09-23T06:28+0000 2021-09-23T06:58+0000 bundestag news world europe germany /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/09/01/1080334043_0:154:3093:1894_1920x0_80_0_0_02f743544ed35835d6eec771688b9334.jpg "We are ready to cooperate with the future German government on an equal and mutually respectful basis, regardless of its party configuration. We hope that a constructive and pragmatic approach will also prevail in the future German leadership's approach to building relations with Russia", Nechaev said.He noted that Russia respects the choice of the German people and is always open to cooperation with Germany as its natural neighbour and longtime partner, but only if there is a balance of interests and "no sanctions, ultimatums, or other absurdities like trying to talk to us from a position of strength".Nechaev further said that both Moscow and Berlin realise that the current state of bilateral relations is inadequate, and there is a need for a "leap forward" to ensure that Russians and Germans live in peace and harmony in a "prosperous Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok".Germany is set to hold a crucial Bundestag election on 26 September, in effect electing a new government and new chancellor, as longtime leader Angela Merkel steps down after fifteen years. https://sputniknews.com/20210909/merkel-admits-her-bloc-knew-it-wouldnt-get-an-automatic-win-without-effort-after-16-years-1088932337.html wtfud Russia's constant bleating for equal status with western regimes is pitiful. Don't they fucking realise they are head and shoulders above these failed EU regimes? Gott in Himmel. 1 1 germany Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 bundestag, news, world, europe, germany https://sputniknews.com/20210923/russian-officials-assess-proposal-to-populate-siberia-with-resurrected-woolly-mammoths-1089341030.html Russian Officials Assess Proposal to Populate Siberia With 'Resurrected' Woolly Mammoths Russian Officials Assess Proposal to Populate Siberia With 'Resurrected' Woolly Mammoths Scientists say woolly mammoths went extinct some 4,000 years ago, with researchers citing climatic changes and overhunting as the key reasons for the animals... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T15:17+0000 2021-09-23T15:17+0000 2021-09-23T15:17+0000 siberia startup tech climate change mammoth extinction /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/104368/47/1043684782_0:30:1320:773_1920x0_80_0_0_adfc882f9a94d8b0541b628efcfdd957.jpg Officials in Russias Republic of Sakha, located in Siberia, have assessed a proposal by a US company to populate the region with "resurrected" woolly mammoths. According to Nikita Zimov, head of Pleistocene Park, which aims to restore grazing ecosystems in the Arctic as well as mitigate the effects of climate change, the park is ready to accept the animals.The statement comes several days after a US startup, Colossal Biosciences, unveiled plans to "resurrect" a woolly mammoth. According to the firm, it plans to create an "elephant-mammoth hybrid" using gene-editing technology. Colossal Biosciences said it would insert the DNA of a woolly mammoth that was recovered from bones, tusks, and other well-preserved parts of an animal, into the genome of an Asian elephant. It then plans to populate Siberia with the "resurrected" creatures.According to the companys CEO, Ben Lamm, the projects goal is not only to bring extinct animals back to life, but also to "rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future".Colossal Biosciences claims it has already raised $15 million for the project. Although some scientists found the endeavour exciting, others criticised it, noting that the money should be spent on animals currently facing extinction."It's a ridiculous waste of money to try and reconstruct the genome of an extinct animal or plant and attempt to bring it back to life when other species are slipping through our fingers almost on a daily basis", said Jeremy Austin, an evolutionary biologist at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. babai Don't do it! I would not trust those US resurrected beasts for not being programmed to spy and sabotage for Uncle Sam 5 Thomas Turk Hope they are really woolly, as..''Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is the highest its been in nine years, increasing more than 30% from last year, while the Antarctics level is well above normal. Most years the Arctic loses ice, but this year ice extent has increased more than 77,000 square miles. Thats according to the Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facilitys High Latitude Processing Center.'. That dreaded Global Cooling, that was the 1970s scare, comin' back! Yikes.. help Al and Greta. 3 siberia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Max Gorbachev Max Gorbachev News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Max Gorbachev siberia, startup, tech, climate change, mammoth, extinction https://sputniknews.com/20210923/russias-sco-envoy-says-taliban-recognition-not-on-agenda-while-dialogue-is-important-1089334497.html Russia's SCO Envoy Says Taliban Recognition Not on Agenda, While Dialogue is Important Russia's SCO Envoy Says Taliban Recognition Not on Agenda, While Dialogue is Important MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Recognition of the Taliban* movement is not being considered, while it is important to maintain contact with the new authorities in Kabul to... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T12:24+0000 2021-09-23T12:24+0000 2021-09-23T13:40+0000 afghanistan world russia afghanistan news shanghai cooperation organisation (sco) /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/0f/1089089526_0:0:3073:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_d948e584bc658cdd97a326ed120c5c20.jpg "The Taliban movement holds power today. At this stage, we are not talking about recognition, we are talking about establishing contacts with those who came to power in order to launch a constructive dialogue, as promoting an inter-Afghan crisis resolution remains a priority" ,Khakimov said at a press conference.Following the Taliban's capture of power in Afghanistan on 15 August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalled that Moscow was in no rush to recognise the terrorist group as a legitimate authority in the country. He called for an inclusive government in Afghanistan that would see different political forces. Earlier this month, the organisation announced the composition of the interim government of Afghanistan. It is headed by Mohammad Hasan Akhund, who served as a foreign minister during the first Taliban rule. Akhund has been under UN sanctions since 2001.*The Taliban is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other countries. https://sputniknews.com/20210921/taliban-say-no-al-qaeda-members-present-in-afghanistan-1089283017.html See you in the ice how did talking to the Taliban work out for the US? talking to the Muslims work out for Indians? talking to Arabs work out for the West? talking to Africans work out for Europe? 0 1 russia afghanistan Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 world, russia, afghanistan, news, shanghai cooperation organisation (sco) https://sputniknews.com/20210923/separate-bill-introduced-in-us-congress-pushes-1-bln-funding-for-israels-iron-dome-defence-system-1089330269.html Separate Bill Introduced in US Congress Pushes $1 Bln Funding for Israel's Iron Dome Defence System Separate Bill Introduced in US Congress Pushes $1 Bln Funding for Israel's Iron Dome Defence System Earlier, a decision by Democratic lawmakers to cut $1 billion in funding for the Israeli Iron Dome defence system from a government bill caused waves among... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T12:52+0000 2021-09-23T12:52+0000 2021-09-23T12:52+0000 us government israel iron dome republicans democrats defence congress /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/05/0c/1082861520_0:161:3070:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_ef2ae8833559889cfe40d961d05b5e4e.jpg Democratic lawmakers in the US have introduced a separate bill envisaging $1 billion in funding for Israel's Iron Dome defence system. This came shortly after it was removed from a bill aimed at funding the US government through 3 December and raising the nation's debt ceiling.She insisted that America's commitment to Israel's security remains "ironclad", stressing that "replenishing [the] interceptors used to protect Israel from attacks is our legal and moral responsibility".After the Iron Dome funding was earlier removed from the government bill, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced a separate bill for the defence system to be brought to a vote during the week.Dems, GOP Clash Over Iron Dome FundingFunding for the Iron Dome defence system in Israel was cut out of the short-term government bill on Tuesday after the move was reportedly initiated by a group of left-wing lawmakers, among them Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. They, along with other members of the so-called "Squad", have reportedly warned the House they will not back the bill if it included the additional $1 billion.Aside from AOC, Omar, and Tlaib, other members of the progressive "Squad" include Ayanna Pressley, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Betty McCollum.The decision to leave the Iron Dome aid out of the bill that would keep the government financed until December has prompted massive bipartisan criticism. Fellow Democrats have accused those backing the move of anti-Semitism and irresponsibility, insisting that defence aid to Israel is critical in light of its recent government changes.Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin argued on Twitter that the Iron Dome is a "purely defensive" system, saying that the move to strike down its funding "isn't a genuine concern over the system, but rather the desire to attack something - anything - related to the State of Israel".Slotkin's sentiment was backed up by fellow Democratic Representative Brad Schneider."4,400 rockets were fired against Israel last spring. Iron Dome defended Israel, saving lives on both sides of the border. The US stood by Israel then, and we stand with Israel now", he assured his Twitter followers.Republicans weighed in on the criticism as well, slamming the rejection of Iron Dome funding as a betrayal of Israel. House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik even took to Twitter in a tirade calling to support funding for the Israeli defence system.House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy echoed her assertions."Democrats abandoned our ally Israel to appease the pro-BDS, far-Left radicals who run their party. Speaker Pelosi must immediately bring legislation to restore Iron Dome funding to the House floor for a vote", he tweeted.According to some Israeli officials, cited by Axios, the recent Iron Dome-related development is a result of the policies of ex-Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that "harmed Israel's bipartisan status in America". African Farmer The children of Maryland could sure use an Educational Iron Dome, so they can learn to read and write in their failed schools. In 2018, 246 gun-related deaths in Baltimore and 757 for the whole state (12.6 per 100,000). It was 1.36 per 100,000 for Israel. Who needs protection more? I think Representative Hoyer is not representing the people who actually voted for him. Is this how democracy works? 4 Crookim You mean the US embassy built on occupied land? 3 6 israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Daria Bedenko Daria Bedenko News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Daria Bedenko us, government, israel, iron dome, republicans, democrats, defence, congress https://sputniknews.com/20210923/setback-for-quad-survey-suggests-almost-all-american-firms-are-bullish-on-china-1089331688.html Setback for QUAD? Survey Suggests Almost All American Firms are Bullish on China Setback for QUAD? Survey Suggests Almost All American Firms are Bullish on China The QUAD, a group comprised of India, the US, Japan, and Australia, has been trying to ensure uninterrupted trade even if tensions erupt with China. India and... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T19:56+0000 2021-09-23T19:56+0000 2021-09-23T19:55+0000 american chamber of commerce (amcham) asia-pacific region world japan china australia india trade war trade quadrilateral security dialogue (quad) /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/03/0c/1082321005_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_9c918d919e811b34758be3b835967490.jpg A day ahead of the QUAD leaders' meet in Washington, a new survey has found glaring differences in thinking between member countries and American firms carrying out business in China. "US Multi-National Companies (MNCs) are bullish on China," reads a state-sponsored 2021 China Business Report, released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai on Friday. The report, said to be based on a survey conducted among 338 out of the 1,400 member companies of the American Chamber of Commerce, claims that 90% of pharmaceutical, medical device, and automobile industries expect growth in their revenue in 2021. The members reportedly spelt out their businesses favouring the Chinese economy, as 60% of respondents said they are increasing investment this year compared to previous year, up from only 20% of members in 2020. Overall, about half of those surveyed are producing goods and services for customers in China. Last week, Tesla founder Elon Musk lauded the growth potential of China's market after the firm reported the best sales and exports to date in August. According to the data, the electric vehicle maker sold 44,264 units in China while its exports of China-made cars hit a record high of 31,379 in the same month.There have, however, been reports about the presence of loopholes in the data safety of China-made Tesla cars. Tesla last month temporarily halted some operations at its Shanghai factory as the global shortage of semiconductors also hit the electric carmaker, Bloomberg News reported. Other companies have shown some interest in the Chinese economy, as 70% of respondents reportedly expect revenue gains in China to exceed their companies' worldwide growth in the next 2-3 years.This state-sponsored survey arrives against the backdrop of QUAD's first in-person leader summit, where they will likely seek to ensure "resilient, diverse and secure technology supply chains for hardware, software, and services." Decoupling from China has reportedly become a buzzword, as any trade tension between China and other QUAD nations could disrupt sections of the global marketplace. The US has long urged India to reduce its economic dependence on China, the world's second-biggest economy. Despite these efforts, China is India's biggest trading partner in 2020.Reports, including the World Investment Report 2020, have suggested that capital-intensive industries such as automobiles and telecommunications would be very difficult to move from China. https://sputniknews.com/20210823/quad-white-paper-calls-for-including-attacks-on-chinas-sea-cables-as-part-of-malabar-naval-drills-1083690061.html See you in the ice look at the head size. Head size is relative to body size. Head size mostly sets at a young age...difficult to manipulate. The body grows for a long time. Easy for evil Magi to stimulate growth or stunt it. The Japanese guy should be the largest....a giant. The Aussie should be the smallest. People are NOT the same but somebody is trying to make us think we are the same. 1 See you in the ice wouldn't that mean those firms are bearish on the USA, UK, Australia, India and Japan? Those nations seem to have chosen to be self declared opponents/enemies of China and the Chinese. 0 2 japan china australia india Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg american chamber of commerce (amcham), asia-pacific region, world, japan, china, australia, india, trade war, trade, quadrilateral security dialogue (quad), us-china trade war, american chamber of commerce of china, india https://sputniknews.com/20210923/swedish-minister-authorities-failed-to-tackle-crime-because-they-didnt-want-to-be-seen-as-racist-1089325623.html Swedish Minister: Authorities Failed to Tackle Crime Because They 'Didn't Want to Be Seen as Racist' Swedish Minister: Authorities Failed to Tackle Crime Because They 'Didn't Want to Be Seen as Racist' The recent uptick in gangland violence, setting Sweden apart from its EU peers, has triggered a national debate on immigration amid reports that highlighted... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T08:28+0000 2021-09-23T08:28+0000 2021-09-23T08:28+0000 news europe sweden immigration crime scandinavia /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/03/03/1082247668_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_d021c8da255df7874176331ee3fea05d.jpg Swedish Interior Minister Mikael Damberg has admitted that some of the country's burgeoning gang-related problems were not properly tackled before due to the authorities' fear of being seen as racist.Now, he ventured, society has ripened for a debate about problems linked to large-scale immigration, including gang-related crime. Damberg identified growing segregation as one of the underlying causes of Sweden's organised crime, alongside an insufficient police presence which allowed drug sales and gangs to take over.The recent uptick in gangland violence, which goes against EU trends, triggered a national debate, as reports have highlighted immigrants' overrepresentation in crime, which the authorities long refused to address and discuss. Even the very mapping of criminals' ethnicity was considered unethical and hasn't been performed for decades.Earlier, renowned journalists Ivar Arpi and Adam Cwejman penned a book called "How We All Became Racists", in which they argued that the current debate climate made it difficult to shed light on and discuss topics such as anti-Semitism among immigrants, racism between immigrants, honour culture, and crime.Damberg, however, mentioned an ideological swing within the ruling party, as the current list of the Social Democrats' proposals calls for increased penalties and includes more tools for the police, as well as stricter social measures. Among other things, the party wants to legalise the eviction of criminals to clean up segregated residential districts, many of which are in the national registry of "exposed" and "particularly exposed" areas some refer to as "no-go zones".Aside from this, Damberg, emphasised that the recent negative developments within organised crime must be reversed.In recent years, spiralling gang-related blasts and shootouts have become a national problem in Sweden. According to the Moderate Party, the largest in the opposition, in the last four years alone, more than 150 people have been killed in over 1,100 shootings. The Swedish police estimated some 5,000 gang members to be active in vulnerable areas across Sweden and counted some 40 criminal clans, several of which settled in Sweden from abroad solely for the purpose of committing crimes. https://sputniknews.com/20210906/immigration-created-barbarism-swedish-politician-blasts-gang-wars-organised-crime-1083804566.html mandrake Damberg is an ambitious low talented minister in the hands of the poleeece which will have any request to introduce measures infringing on the personal sphere (which was used to be untouchable), like secret filming and/or listening on people not even suspected of a crime and witnesses not named or seen and so on, deconstructing the democratic society into a fully fledged police state! And despite all these criminal efforts the underworld thrives and the politicians continue to be dumb (because they are and have never had an honest job)! Rokenbok These politicians need to apologize to ethnic Swedes as well as resign and stand trial for endangering lives. Their assets should be confiscated and used towards compensating the victims of these unnecessary crimes. It is disgusting to see Western politics in motion where there is no action, no leadership and no accountability. 2 sweden scandinavia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Igor Kuznetsov Igor Kuznetsov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Igor Kuznetsov news, europe, sweden, immigration, crime, scandinavia https://sputniknews.com/20210923/the-russia-gate-hoax-is-under-indictment-biden-forgets-us-empire-is-at-war-1089319032.html The Russia-gate Hoax is Under Indictment; Biden "Forgets" US Empire is at War The Russia-gate Hoax is Under Indictment; Biden "Forgets" US Empire is at War The indictment of attorney Michael Sussman is shining a light on the Clinton campaign's involvement in turning the Russia-gate opposition research operation... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T09:44+0000 2021-09-23T09:44+0000 2021-09-23T09:44+0000 shanghai cooperation organization eric schmidt us joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa) regime change radio sputnik jcpoa the critical hour aukus /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/16/1089319007_14:0:626:344_1920x0_80_0_0_2498594f9b44607685980aa97913baf8.png The Russia-gate Hoax is Under Indictment; Biden "Forgets" US Empire is at War The indictment of attorney Michael Sussman is shining a light on the Clinton campaign's involvement in turning the Russia-gate opposition research operation into a criminal investigation. Ted Rall, political cartoonist and syndicated columnist, joins us to discuss the indictment of attorney Michael Sussman that shines a light on the Clinton campaign's involvement in turning the Russia-gate opposition research operation into a criminal investigation. We now know that the FBI illegally hid the Steele dossier's connections to the Clinton campaign, while Michael Sussman was hiding his connection to the same organization. Is it plausible to argue that the FBI was ignorant of the fact that Sussman was running a politically motivated scam?Professor Peter Kuznick, author and historian, joins us to discuss President Biden's UN speech. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Biden implausibly argued that the United States is not currently involved in any wars. Also, he named several nations that the US is currently targeting for regime change as bad actors on the international stage.Jack Rasmus, professor in economics and politics at St. Mary's College in California, joins us to discuss the economy. The US House of Representatives has passed a spending bill that will prevent the shutdown and suspend the debt limit. Will the bill pass the Senate or will we see another fiscal cliff fight between the ruling parties?Nick Davies, peace activist and author of "Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion of Iraq," joins us to discuss Iran. Iran has been accepted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the invitation of Russia and China. Our expert guest explains how this new economic dynamic will work to shape the future of the Eurasian group and whether the US empire and its coalition have made a drastic mistake in dragging their feet on the JCPOA restoration.K. J. Noh, peace activist, writer, and teacher, joins us to discuss China. An Australian newspaper has taken the extraordinary step of recommending that the US empire and its coalition of vassals overthrow the government of China and replace it with a neoliberal group. Also, The Global Times argues that President Biden and former President Trump must both be held responsible for the disastrous new cold war against China and Russia.Robert Fantina, journalist and Palestine activist, joins us to discuss the Middle East. A new article in Responsible Statecraft about President Biden's foreign policy argues that "the administration remains entranced by the siren calls of defense industry profits, under cover of outdated claims of security imperatives to justify continuing billions in weapons and political support to repressive governments in the Middle East." The article examines Middle East policy and finds that massive amounts of weaponry are still being sold to autocratic leaders in the region.Dan Lazare, investigative journalist and author of "America's Undeclared War," joins us to discuss the AUKUS deal between the US and Australia. President Biden has torpedoed the US and French relations by stealing a submarine contract from Paris. Also, a former Australian prime minister argues that France has every right to be angry.Dan Cohen, filmmaker and writer for the Gray Zone Project, joins us to discuss artificial intelligence. Former CEO Eric Schmidt is at the center of a Pentagon drive to control the world using hi-tech arms. Dan Cohen argues that Silicon Valley's political ambitions could cause a devastating war.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com Truth 101 The rich love the way we keep rehashing the misery in problems, never bothering to get at the root cause and thereby making it impossible to organize the public toward a solution. 1 us Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Wilmer Leon https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/12/1082114047_0:-1:238:238_100x100_80_0_0_4e3adef3e334e381bffe19d388f4b776.jpg Wilmer Leon https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/12/1082114047_0:-1:238:238_100x100_80_0_0_4e3adef3e334e381bffe19d388f4b776.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Wilmer Leon https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/02/12/1082114047_0:-1:238:238_100x100_80_0_0_4e3adef3e334e381bffe19d388f4b776.jpg shanghai cooperation organization, eric schmidt, us, joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa), regime change, radio sputnik, jcpoa, the critical hour, aukus, , radio https://sputniknews.com/20210923/uks-claims-about-third-russian-involved-in-skripal-case-another-lie-foreign-intel-chief-says--1089323692.html UK's Claims About Third Russian Involved in Skripal Case 'Another Lie', Foreign Intel Chief Says UK's Claims About Third Russian Involved in Skripal Case 'Another Lie', Foreign Intel Chief Says Earlier this week, Scotland Yard announced that prosecutors had identified and indicted a third suspect in the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, who allegedly... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T06:53+0000 2021-09-23T06:53+0000 2021-09-23T07:42+0000 news world russia uk poisoning of sergei skripal /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/106139/49/1061394917_0:0:3077:1731_1920x0_80_0_0_dcf9b4b593463062e1d5b28bde048b2f.jpg Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin said on 23 September that Scotland Yard's statement about a third Russian citizen involved in the Skripal case is "another lie", adding that the new accusations are being used to divert attention away from NATO's "shameful" withdrawal from Afghanistan. On 21 September, the UK Counter Terrorism Policing network announced that prosecutors had identified and indicted a third suspect in the Skripal poisoning case. According to UK investigators, this is "GRU officer Denis Sergeev" who allegedly arrived in the UK as "Sergey Fedotov". Minister Counselor of the Russian Embassy in the UK Ivan Volodin was summoned to the Foreign Office in connection with the indictment of the third person involved in the case. Following the meeting, the Russian Embassy in the UK issued a statement, saying it expressed its categorical rejection of the methods used by British police in establishing the facts in the Skripal poisoning case.The embassy called attempts to use data on the entry and exit of a certain person into the UK as evidence of involvement in the poisoning of the Skripals ridiculous.Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted earlier this week that London refuses to investigate the Skripal case jointly with Russia, despite Moscow's calls to do so. She also accused the UK of using the case to put pressure on Moscow, further stirring up Russophobia.In March 2018, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia fell seriously ill in Salisbury, UK. According to a subsequent investigation, they were reportedly poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, and London claimed the attack had been carried out by two Russian intelligence officers at the behest of the Kremlin. Moscow categorically denied the accusations and called the evidence presented by the UK authorities "lies".The Kremlin accused Britain of anti-Russian hysteria and said London had refused to provide Moscow with samples of the nerve agent that was allegedly used as well as access to Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the UK of fabricating evidence and emphasised that neither Soviet nor Russian scientists had ever worked on the nerve agent Novichok. https://sputniknews.com/20210921/russian-embassy-in-uk-slams-scotland-yards-approach-to-fact-finding-in-skripal-case-1089276520.html wtfud The 3rd Man! Let's make it a 'cadre' sent by Putin to eliminate Skripal who's now working as a janitor at MI6 Bellingcat H/Q. 6 wtfud Where are the Skripals? Scotland Yard couldn't find a hooker in a knocking shop. 5 12 russia Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 news, world, russia, uk, poisoning of sergei skripal https://sputniknews.com/20210923/us-sanctions-suffocate-syrian-people-international-community-must-act-foreign-minister-says-1089322229.html US Sanctions Suffocating Syrian People, International Community Must Act, Foreign Minister Says US Sanctions Suffocating Syrian People, International Community Must Act, Foreign Minister Says WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Syrian President Bashar Assad earlier said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that sanctions against the Syrian people... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T05:29+0000 2021-09-23T05:29+0000 2021-09-23T06:19+0000 world russia us un syria us sanctions news syrian war /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/106355/91/1063559170_0:160:3073:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_0db3dc4ad37b62a558c3d1ffebbcf39e.jpg The international community should step up its assistance to Syria as the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate under US-imposed sanctions which are suffocating the people in the country, Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik.Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said he will hold "a very good meeting" with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the General Assembly and will convey that Damascus is anticipating better relations with the UN system.Mekdad also noted he is planning to meet with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session to discuss relations and coordination between the two countries.The Syrian diplomat added there are no plans yet for a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.Russian President Vladimir Putin earler said at a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that the illegitimately present foreign armed forces in Syria do not allow the country to move along the path of consolidation.In late 2019, then-US President Donald Trump signed the so-called Caesar Act that took effect the next year, targeting almost all areas of Syria's economy. The law has since sanctioned a number of domestic and foreign companies and individuals who do business with the government of President Bashar Assad, plunging the Middle Eastern country into its worst socioeconomic crisis since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.Damascus has repeatedly asked the international community to condemn the unilateral sanctions and take steps to lift them, pointing out that they have led to an increase in the number of Syrians in need and are violating basic human rights. https://sputniknews.com/20201030/us-is-methodically-ruining-syrian-economy-but-damascus-has-tools-to-avert-the-pressure-prof-says-1080917918.html armor Leave the Syrians to run their country, you are not welcome there, not wanted, not invited. Go home to N.A. 7 4Justice The Syrian Foreign Minister will talk to UN's Guterres about the sanctions. Might as well talk to Heinrich Himmler about Nazi treatment of Jews in concentration camps. The UN is complicit in the evil the US inflicts upon the world. They say nothing and do nothing. 6 16 russia us Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 world, russia, us, un, syria, us sanctions, news, syrian war https://sputniknews.com/20210923/us-to-find-ways-to-get-more-help-to-haitian-migrants-after-us-envoy-resigned-state-dept-says-1089340783.html US to Find Ways to Get More Help to Haitian Migrants After US Envoy Resigned, State Dept. Says US to Find Ways to Get More Help to Haitian Migrants After US Envoy Resigned, State Dept. Says WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States is working to identify ways to provide more comprehensive assistance to Haitian migrants following the resignation of... 23.09.2021, Sputnik International 2021-09-23T14:29+0000 2021-09-23T14:29+0000 2021-09-23T14:29+0000 us migrants migrant crisis /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/09/14/1089231079_0:225:3071:1952_1920x0_80_0_0_1c5c106f964c04ca4dd0da9f3b88938d.jpg The state department thanked Foote for his service in this role.Washington is now is working with the International Organisation on Migration to ensure that returning migrants from Haiti are met at the airport and provided with immediate assistance, according to the State Department.A letter of Foote's resignation saying that his move was made in protest of the deportation of thousands of Haitians apprehended at the southern US border was shared on social media. Foote said that he would not be associated with the United States' "inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti." Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 us, migrants, migrant crisis https://sputniknews.com/20210923/when-it-rains-it-pours-uk-defence-ministry-reportedly-allows-another-afghan-data-breach-1089330560.html When It Rains, It Pours: UK Defence Ministry Reportedly Allows Another Afghan Data Breach When It Rains, It Pours: UK Defence Ministry Reportedly Allows Another Afghan Data Breach Misfortunes Never Come Alone? UK Ministry Defence Reportedly Allows Another Afghans' Data Breach 2021-09-23T11:45+0000 2021-09-23T11:45+0000 2021-09-23T12:59+0000 afghanistan uk ministry of defence data breach leak uk /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/08/1b/1083731963_0:0:3071:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_61c08975e48d3fe268f459c1cc874254.jpg A new data breach has taken place at the UK Ministry of Defence involving the information of 55 Afghans seeking relocation, the BBC has reported. According to the broadcaster, the ministry emailed a group of Afghans saying it was unable to reach them and asking to update defence officials about their contact info.Yet, the said email reportedly included the email addresses and names of some 55 Afghans, which could be seen by all recipients creating a potential for leaks and possibly exposing the affected people to danger. The Ministry of Defence has already contacted the Afghans in question to advise them on managing these potential risks, the British broadcaster claimed.Two Data Breaches in a Row?The reports of the new data leak come on the heels of the UK government admitting to inadvertently leaking the email addresses, names, and profile pictures of around 250 Afghans seeking to relocate from Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power there. The data was available to be viewed and copied by all recipients of a letter sent by the team overseeing the work of the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). All of the recipients were later asked to delete the email and compromised personal data.Defence Secretary Ben Wallace labelled the mishap an "unacceptable breach" and criticised what he called "an unacceptable level of service". The minister also announced on 21 September that an investigation had been launched into the breach and that one official had already been suspended in connection with the case.These leaks are not the first time a piece of sensitive information from the Ministry of Defence has been leaked by mistake. In June 2021, a report emerged that a bundle of sensitive British defence documents regarding the provocative mission of the HMS Defender near the shores of the Crimean was found abandoned at a bus stop. Its contents were later made public by the media, revealing that London deliberately sent its warship through the waters of the Crimea, understanding that Moscow deems them as Russian territory and would strongly object to the act.According to one media report, the documents were forgotten at a bus stop by Angus Lapsley - director-general at the MoD responsible for defence policy on NATO and the Euro-Atlantic area. His security clearance has since been suspended and the man was transferred to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FDCO).*The Taliban is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other countries. https://sputniknews.com/20210627/sensitive-uk-mod-docs-reportedly-suggest-london-planned-hms-defender-provocation-as-media-stunt-1083252621.html See you in the ice those cowardly Germanic cow herders who fled from Central Asia and Islam have robbed, raped, poisoned and betrayed those they hide amongst. NO LONGER will you be protected from what you fled. 0 sharknbake21 the HAPLESS BRITS 0 2 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2021 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Tim Korso https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/02/1080648312_311:168:1773:1631_100x100_80_0_0_5eb98a42f89fd860368dcd2ae2d9e403.jpg uk ministry of defence, data breach, leak, uk In recognition of the 2021 edition of National Caretaker Appreciation Day events taking place between September 20-26, Standardbred Canada has been profiling caretakers from across the country in our Faces of Racing series. The series continues with a profile on Robert Smith. Remember, this is not a job, it's a lifestyle. It's not 9-5, five days a week. They are living, breathing animals and they need care. They're not machines and caretaking is about care, explained Robert Smith, who works as a caretaker for the Trevor Williams Stable based in Miami, Manitoba. Roberts journey to the Williams Stable has included a myriad of positions in the horse racing industry and not all were with standardbreds. One might say hes a jack of all trades having also worked with thoroughbreds and quarter horses, as a caretaker, trainer, assistant trainer, jocks agent, starter and blacksmith. Since he was old enough to walk, Robert started following his Dad (Bob Smith) to the barn and has been messing around with horses ever since. At the age of 12, his family moved from B.C. to Alberta. Fifteen years ago, Robert made the transition to the standardbred industry, and hes worked for several different trainers and lived and worked in many other different provinces and states, including Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and even ventured south of the border to Kentucky, Florida, Texas and Illinois. Trainer Harry Zeron was one of his biggest influencers. Harry and I worked together in Florida and he taught me a ton when he was shoeing at Woodbine thoroughbreds. He would shoe for me or watch me shoe my own and gave me invaluable advice on shoeing, training and rigging a horse up properly. He was one of my biggest supporters and still is to this day. He reminded me constantly how important being a good caretaker is. He and my father have been the two biggest influences in my life in many aspects of it, they're both amazing horsemen who don't get the credit they deserve. For just over the past year, Roberts been a caretaker for the Trevor Williams Stable, helping with the care of 18 horses and is also their resident farrier, shoeing every horse in the stable. The Williams Stables home base is Miami, Manitoba, but they are now stabled and racing at Marquis Downs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, for their meet. After that, the plan is to head to Century Downs in Alberta. Trevor Williams has taught me so much since I came to work for him too; he's hugely knowledgeable for his young age. As for the routine around the barn, Robert describes it as a team effort. We pitch in and do what needs to be done. For most of the time, I do the grooming and rubbing while the guys do the track work. It makes for long days, but we get it done and don't stop until the work is finished. There are lots of lunches and dinners being eaten at the barn while we're still grooming and feeding. This dedication goes hand in hand with good horsemanship. A good horseman is someone who loves their animal, who puts them before anything and everything, and will do whatever it takes to keep them happy, explained Smith. True horsemen know that the horse gets fed before they do, that there's no going for an afternoon nap while they're standing waiting to be groomed and bandaged, and that races are won and lost by the way you use your hands all week. Robert has his trainers license and someday would like to put that to good use. I would like to train and race because I think I would be the only person to train a standardbred, thoroughbred, quarter horse and a racing paint in North America. I would also really be interested in learning more on the bloodstock side. I'm always interested in learning about breeding, sire lines and foundation mare lines. Like many in the industry, stakes season is his favourite time of year when you get a chance to see what the work you've put in for the better part of a year turns out to be. One of the things he enjoys the most about working with standardbreds is how great they are to handle. What a feeling when you walk in the barn in the morning and every horse greets you. No win can compare to knowing every horse is happy to see you. Just walking in and seeing all those faces staring at you is all I need to feel energetic about the whole day. The Little Brown Jug tops the list of races hed like to win and theres no doubt hell be tuning in to watch the live stream of The Jug today, which coincidentally happens to be his birthday. Aside from his dads influence in the hands on aspect of racing, Robert has always had great support from his Mom (Linda) on his career choices. My mom watches every race were in and is always cheering, he said. I think it's great to see the people in the barns that normally no one would hear about get some recognition, said Robert of the National Caretaker initiative. I'm very fortunate that my trainer always thanks me in public in interviews and is very thankful every time we win a race, but not every barn is that way. The people who are in the shed row working their butts off deserve to have a day of being thanked and appreciated. Thank you for recognizing the hard work by all the grooms. I would also like to thank Trevor Williams for the opportunity to be a part of the barn, this has been the most enjoyable year I've ever had in racing. The Defense Ministry of Lithuania has urged its citizens not to buy China made smartphones. In fact, the government wants users of Chinese smartphones to throw away their phones. The report comes after diplomatic tension between Lithuania and China after Taiwan announced that its diplomatic mission in the Baltic nation would be called the Taiwan Representative Office. Lithuanias state-run cybersecurity body said on Tuesday that flagship Xiaomi phones have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms like Free Tibet, Long live Taiwan independence, or democracy movement. This ability is said to have been turned off for the European Union region on the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G but it still exists nonetheless. However, it can be turned on remotely, says the report. A total of 449 terms are possibly being censored by the system apps on Xiaomi devices including the default Internet browser. The list is said to be constantly updated. Xiaomi phones sending users data to foreign servers? Xiaomi was also found to be sending encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore. This is important not only to Lithuania but to all countries which use Xiaomi equipment, the Centre said in the report. On the other hand, Huawei isnt free from such flaws either. A security hole was found in the Huawei P40 5G as well. However, a Huawei representative in the Baltics told the BNS news wire that its phones do not send users data to external sources. The Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevicius told reporters that their recommendation is to not buy new Chinese phones, and to get rid of those already purchased as fast as reasonably possible. What does Xiaomi have to say about the allegations? "Xiaomis devices do not censor communications to or from its users," said a Xiaomi spokesperson. "Xiaomi has never and will never restrict or block any personal behaviours of our smartphone users, such as searching, calling, web browsing or the use of third-party communication software. "Xiaomi fully respects and protects the legal rights of all users. Xiaomi complies with the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)." In this image made from video, Scott Carpendale, managing director of Boeing Defence Australia, speaks during a press conference in Toowoomba, Australia, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. Credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. The announcement comes less than a week after the U.S., Britain and Australia announced a new security alliance that will supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. The deal was condemned by China and has heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific region. Scott Carpendale, managing director of Boeing Defence Australia, said development of the new aircraft is going to plan. He said it uses artificial intelligence to operate in tandem with manned aircraft and was conceived, designed and developed in Australia. It's the first military combat aircraft to be designed and manufactured in Australia in half a century. Boeing Australia is currently developing six of the aircraft in partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force. Carpendale said no orders have been confirmed but the Australian government seems confident and happy about the Loyal Wingman's capabilities. In this image made from video, Queensland State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk speaks during a press conference in Toowoomba, Australia, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. Credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP This Jan. 25, 2011, file photo, shows the Boeing Company logo on the property in El Segundo, Calif. Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021 it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. Credit: AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File In this July 13, 2021, file photo, the logo for Boeing appears on a screen above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021 it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew, File "There's a significant interest from other countries," Carpendale added. He said the drone will be built in a facility at Wellcamp Airport, which is owned by Wagner Corp. Wagner chairman John Wagner said he hopes a defense and aerospace precinct at the airport will attract more companies in similar fields. The project is expected to create 300 jobs during construction of the facility and 70 ongoing operational and production positions. Queensland State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the announcement was "fantastic news" and represents the first time Boeing has set up a facility of its type outside North America. Explore further US Navy uses drone to refuel plane during flight 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. In this Thursday, March 26, 2015, file photo, Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer talks about virtual reality while delivering a keynote address at the Facebook F8 Developers Conference, in San Francisco. Facebook's CTO Schroepfer is stepping down from the social media company, taking on a part time role while longtime executive Andrew Bosworth will replace him in 2022. Schroepfer, known as "Schrep," has been at Facebook for 13 years and is a close friend of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File Facebook's Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer is stepping down from the social media company, taking on a part-time role while longtime executive Andrew Bosworth will replace him next year. Schroepfer, known as "Schrep," has been at Facebook for 13 years and is a close friend of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He called his decision difficult "because of how much I love Facebook and how excited I am about the future we are building together" but added that his new role will let him focus on personal and philanthropic efforts while staying connected to Facebook. The transition will happen sometime in 2022. Bosworth, known as "Boz," is another longtime Facebook exec and a close friend of Zuckerberg's. He has most recently been in charge of Facebook's augmented reality and virtual reality efforts, as well as hardware products such as Oculus and Portal, Facebook's video calling gadget. "As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz's team as well," Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to Facebook staff that was posted online. "This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I'm excited about the future of this work under Boz's leadership." Schroepfer's transition comes amid relentless challenges for Facebook that have ranged from concerns about extremism, vaccine and election-related misinformation spreading on its platforms, regulatory pressure on competition, antitrust issues and user privacy among other issues. Another longtime executive, Fidji Simo, left Facebook over the summer to become CEO of Instacart. Explore further Facebook assembles team to build 'metaverse' 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The CEO and founder of Epic Games says Fortnite will continue to be "blacklisted" from Apple's App Store, the latest in a push-and-shove between the gaming company and the tech giant. Epic Games, creator of the immensely popular battle royale video game Fortnite, will continue to be barred from the App Store until the conclusion of the appeals process in the company's lawsuit against Apple, according to emails released on Epic Games CEO and founder Tim Sweeney's Twitter account. Sweeney said that could mean a ban as long as five years. "Apple spent a year telling the world, the court, and the press they'd 'welcome Epic's return to the App Store if they agree to play by the same rules as everyone else,'" Sweeney said in a tweet. "Epic agreed, and now Apple has reneged in another abuse of its monopoly power over a billion users." Apple said Epic Games committed a breach of contract and trust when it implemented an option for app-related purchases outside of Apple's system, shows an email released by Sweeney from what appears to be an Apple representative. "Apple has exercised its discretion not to reinstate Epic's developer program account at this time," the message says. Representatives from Apple declined comment to U.S. TODAY. "We'll fight on. The need for regulatory and legislative action is clearer than ever before," Sweeney tweeted. Epic Games filed suit against Apple when the tech giant pulled Fortnite from its App Store in 2020 after Epic added an option for players to directly pay them for in-app purchases without going through Apple's ecosystem. Earlier this month, a federal judge said Apple must let developers use payment options that funnel consumers out of the tech giant's App Store ecosystem, which bypasses Apple's 30% commission on most app transactions. The ruling said Apple will not be allowed to prevent "developers from including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing." Epic appealed the ruling after U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the company's allegations that Apple ran a monopoly. Despite the judge ruling in Epic's favor on App Store payment procedures, Sweeney said the ruling was not a "win" for developers or for consumers. "Epic is fighting for fair competition among in-app payment methods and app stores for a billion consumers," Sweeney said after the ruling. Explore further Epic Games to appeal US ruling in Apple app store fight (c)2021 U.S. Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Engineering researchers have developed a method to use signals broadcast by Starlink internet service satellites to accurately locate a position here on Earth, much like GPS does. It is the first time the Starlink system has been harnessed by researchers outside SpaceX for navigation. The Starlink satellites, sent into orbit by Elon Musk's SpaceX, are designed to provide broadband internet connections in remote locations around the world. The researchers used signals from six Starlink satellites to pinpoint a location on Earth within 8 meters of accuracy. Their findings, shared today (Sept. 22, 2021) at the Institute of Navigation GNSS annual meeting in St. Louis, may provide a promising alternative to GPS. Their results will be published in the upcoming issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. The researchers did not need assistance from SpaceX to use the satellite signals, and they emphasized that they had no access to the actual data being sent through the satellitesonly to information related to the satellite's location and movement. "We eavesdropped on the signal, and then we designed sophisticated algorithms to pinpoint our location, and we showed that it works with great accuracy," said Zak Kassas, director of the Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation (CARMEN), a multi-institution transportation center housed at The Ohio State University. "And even though Starlink wasn't designed for navigation purposes, we showed that it was possible to learn parts of the system well enough to use it for navigation." CARMEN is one of four recently awarded U.S. Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers. Kassas is an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. For this research, Kassas and his research team studied the Starlink system and analyzed signals being sent by the satellites. They developed an algorithm that could use the signals of multiple satellites to locate a position on Earth. Then, they set up an antenna on the campus of UCI and tried to use the network to pinpoint the antenna's location. Using Starlink, they identified the antenna's location within about 7.7 meters. GPS, by comparison, generally identifies a device's location within 0.3 and 5 meters. The team has used similar techniques with other low Earth orbit satellite constellations, but with less accuracy, pinpointing locations within about 23 meters, Kassas said. The team has also been working with the U.S. Air Force to pinpoint locations of high-altitude aircraft; they were able to come within 5 meters using land-based cellular signals, Kassas said. SpaceX has some 1,700 satellites in Earth's low orbit, meaning they circle the planet about 1,200 km from Earth's surface. SpaceX ultimately plans to launch more than 40,000 satellites. Kassas said as the Starlink constellation grows, so, too, will the accuracy of his team's navigation and geo-location technique with its signals. Their discovery could allow the government or other agencies to use Starlink's satellites as an alternative navigation systemand possibly, a more secure oneto GPS, which powers almost all navigation systems around the world, Kassas said. GPS has been in place for more than 30 years and its signals are well-known, akin to open-source software, Kassas said. That is an asset to companies that develop GPS receivers in smartphones, wearable fitness devices and vehicles, but it also makes the system vulnerable to attacks. GPS satellites are also farther away from Earth than low-Earth orbiting systems, making their signals weaker, and therefore more susceptible to interference. Jamming attacks on GPS signals can take down GPS signals altogether, which has been a growing problem for aviation. Spoofing attacks on GPS can manipulate where a given vehicle appears in systems designed to monitor locations and prevent vehicles from overlapping routes; attacks can also take over a vehicle's pathfor example, some attacks have overtaken military and civilian drones, maritime vessels, and even Tesla's autopilot. The Starlink system is appealing to navigation experts, Kassas said, because the signals, until now, have been privateSpaceX has not shared them with governments or researchers. Starlink satellites are closer to Earth than GPS satellites are, making their signals much stronger and less susceptible to interference. "The important catch here is that we are not 'listening' in on what is being sent over these satellites," Kassas said. "We learned the signals just well enough to harness them for navigation purposes." Explore further How many satellites are orbiting Earth? The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. Job Title: Public Engagement Assistant (Emerging Voices Exchanges and Alumni) Organisation: United States US Embassy in Kampala Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda Announcement Number: Kampala-2021-031 About US: The United States Embassy in Kampala, Uganda has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Uganda for over 30 years. Ambassador Natalie E. Brown currently heads the U.S Mission to Uganda. The Mission is composed of several offices and organizations all working under the auspices of the Embassy and at the direction of the Ambassador. Among the offices operating under the U.S Mission to Uganda are: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Peace Corps Job Summary: The Emerging Voices (EV) Exchanges and Alumni Coordinator works under the direct supervision of the Cultural Specialist and has no supervisory responsibilities. Coordinates the Missions exchange programs for youth and communities that are not included in traditional U.S. diplomatic engagement, such as civil society groups and populations vulnerable to extremist appeals. Designs, plans and implements a broad range of activities to maintain contact with alumni of all EV activities and initiatives. Qualifications, Skills and Experience: The applicant for the United States Embassy Public Engagement Assistant (Emerging Voices Exchanges and Alumni) job should hold a Bachelors Degree in International Relations, Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, American Studies, intercultural/multicultural studies or local equivalent is required At least three years of progressively responsible experience in a multilingual, multicultural, or multinational work environment is required, with project management, marketing, public relations, communication, or education duties as a significant part of the job. Detailed knowledge of U.S. foreign policy and American interests as they apply to the host country and especially to the EV sector is required. General knowledge of USG and DOS structures, as well as of PD bureaus within the Department, is required. Detailed understanding of the full range of PD tactics and tools designed to engage EV audiences, and general knowledge of cross-cultural communications, is required. Detailed understanding of USG exchange programs, regulations and practices is required. Full understanding of PD-specific funding authorities and their planning and reporting tools is required. Must have general knowledge of project management, including defining project objectives, outcomes, and assessment methods. A thorough understanding of the attitudes and preferences of the EV audience sector in host country, including the regional, ethnic, social, cultural, linguistic and other factors and institutions that shape those attitudes, is required. Detailed knowledge of host-country secondary education, exchanges, and youth programs is required. Knowledge of typical customer service and marketing tools designed to engage specific audience segments, particularly the EV sector, in the host country is required. Knowledge of latest trends in audience engagement in related public service institutions such as think tanks, museums, academic institutions, professional training institutes, as relevant for the EV sector, is required. Broad knowledge and understanding of the complex and changing nature of the information environment, including current trends in international and regional communications as they relate to the host-country communication landscape is required; must be familiar with digital practices and procedures used by or influential with the host-countrys EV sector. Language:(fluent) Speaking/Reading/Writing English is required. This may be tested Skills Analytic skills: Must have strong analytic skills and the ability to conceptualize how best to use PD tools to move host-country attitudes in positive ways. Must be able to advise senior leaders of opportunities to promote Mission objectives through exchanges to and from the U.S.; identify, analyze, predict and continually assess EV audience attitudes; and evaluate the impact of projects and modify approaches for best outcomes. Must be able to perceive the emergence of new influencers and adjust operations and programming accordingly. Communication / Interpersonal skills: Must have excellent customer relations, interpersonal cross-cultural communication skills, and be able to identify and engage key figures critical to shaping local public opinion. Must have excellent written and oral communication skills, including public speaking, interviewing for evaluation purposes, writing reports and contributing material for publication in both English and host-country language; must be able to tailor communications to fit formal and informal situations and different ethnic, religious and linguistic cultures. Must be able to brief on a variety of issues and interpret between English and the host-country language for public programs. Management skills: Strong management skills are required, including the ability to develop and oversee project budgets and to organize, run, and present professional and exchange projects such as workshops, seminars, digital and in-person conferences, panel discussions, lectures and camps. Must be able to negotiate agreements with partner institutions and manage their fulfillment. Technical skills: Good keyboarding and data entry skills and excellent familiarity with electronic discovery tools, in particular the Internet, and standard information retrieval practices and procedures are required. Thorough, detailed knowledge of various computer software programs, specifically Microsoft Word, Excel, graphic design and photo editing software, and PD-specific software, databases, and reporting tools is required. Must be able to use social media and mobile platforms, photo and video sharing sites, podcast creation, and basic photo and video tools. Must have good numerical skills to be able to develop and manage projects and monitor grant budgets; must be able to develop descriptive statistical analysis of target audience segments and impact of EV exchanges activities and initiatives. Availability: Must be available to travel throughout the host country to support EV projects and activities. How to Apply: All those interested in working with the US mission in Kampala should send their applications online at the link below. Click Here Deadline: 29th September 2021 For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline A national budget is, in one sense, no more than a snapshot in time of the fiscal condition of a country and a near term forecast of the future. It can also be viewed as an opportunity for national reflection on longer-term trends and a focal point for discourse about what it would entail to shape a better future. Ministry of Planning Trinidad and Tobago is leading the way in providing solutions to global environmental issues through multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). More here A state of emergency is the exceptional power of a government to suspend certain rights or freedoms where some eventusually war, disease or natural disasterthreatens to undermine the very fabric of the state in question. What is the legal basis for it? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those 65 and older, all people at high risk of severe disease, and others who are regularly exposed to the virus. The decision paves the way for a quick rollout of the booster shots as soon as this week for millions of people who had their second dose of the vaccine at least six months ago. The change to the vaccine's emergency use authorization will allow boosters for groups such as health-care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, FDA acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement. Pfizer had asked the FDA to expand its vaccine approval to include boosters for all people aged 16 and older and presented data last week to an outside FDA panel of advisers that it said showed waning immunity over time. The panel voted against the proposition that boosters were needed by everyone but said evidence showed they were helpful to older people and those at high risk. Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID), said the FDA's statement was more expansive in who it included as eligible for boosters when compared to the panel's recommendation. "Very broad indeed, especially that 'among others.' That could essentially give the green light for giving boosters to a very substantial proportion of the previously vaccinated adult population," said Schaffner, who serves as the NFID's liaison to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ACIP could vote Thursday on the use of a third shot of the vaccine, an agency official said at a public meeting of the panel on Wednesday. "Tomorrow's ACIP meeting at the CDC will be focused on turning this into an official recommendation for implementation," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. The FDA authorization was "generally in line" with the advisory panel vote, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington and former chief scientist at the FDA. "These are pretty broad categories that give a fair amount of latitude to the judgment of healthcare providers and people providing immunizations," he added. President Joe Biden and eight top health officials including Woodcock announced in August the government's intention to roll out booster shots for people aged 16 and older this week, pending approval by the FDA and CDC. But the advisory panel said there was not enough evidence to support booster shots for that population and also sought more safety data. The FDA does not have to follow the advisory panel's recommendation, but often does. The agency could revisit the issue for a broader authorization in the future. "This first FDA authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine booster is a critical milestone in the ongoing fight against this disease," said Pfizer chief Albert Bourla. The company had argued that boosters are needed for the general population. Top FDA members have been split on the need for boosters for the general population, with Woodcock backing them while some of the agency's senior scientists argued that current evidence does not support them. Some countries, including Israel and Britain, have already rolled out COVID-19 booster campaigns. The United States authorized extra shots for people with compromised immune systems last month and over 2 million people have already received a third shot, CDC data showed. Vietnamese State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called for the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to countries with low a vaccination rate during his speech at the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 76) in New York on Wednesday. President Phuc put forth specific proposals to promote multilateral cooperation with the UN as the center and take international law as the foundation to cope with complex global challenges, namely wars, conflicts, resource disputes, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The most urgent task at present is to control the COVID-19 pandemic through international cooperation, he said. Priority in vaccine allocation should be given to nations with a low vaccination rate, the Vietnamese leader continued, adding that developing countries should be enabled to engage in vaccine production and supply chains. The president stated that the key solution to contain the pandemic and foster economic recovery lies in each nations ability to strengthen its resilience. Resilience can only be sustained if it is based upon cooperation and connectivity among nations, particularly at a time when non-traditional security challenges do not know borders and can impact any nation, Phuc said. Vietnam is working closely with other ASEAN member nations to promote the blocs centrality in the maintenance of peace, security, and prosperity in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, he continued. Vietnam shares the international communitys common voice on the importance of peace, stability, maritime security and safety, and freedom of navigation and overflight in the East Vietnam Sea. The head of state asked relevant parties to refrain from unilateral actions that may further complicate the situation and to resolve disputes through peaceful means in line with the UN Charter and international law. Vietnam will work with countries and people around the world so that together we can prevail over the pandemic, and build a world of peace, prosperity and happiness for all," Phuc said. "And this will be a glorious victory for us all. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Two teachers and 18 students from various schools in the northern Vietnamese province of Ha Nam have tested positive for COVID-19. The Ha Nam Center for Disease Control confirmed on Wednesday evening it had detected 20 local COVID-19 infections in Phu Ly over a 24-hour period. These cases included a teacher at Tran Quoc Toan Elementary School, a homeroom teacher and 16 seventh-graders from the same class at Tran Quoc Toan Middle School, and two fifth-graders at Liem Chinh Elementary School. The patients are being treated at the provinces Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Hospital. Competent authorities have so far identified 120 direct contacts of the 20 cases, most of whom are students. They will be allowed to quarantine at home, according to Nguyen Duc Toan, secretary of Phu Ly Citys Party Committee. If their houses do not meet requirements, they will be quarantined at school or at local hotels, Toan added. Ha Nam has recorded 112 local coronavirus infections since the fourth wave hit Vietnam on April 27. As the province was at low risk of transmission, local students were allowed to attend school in person when the 2021-22 academic year began in early September. However, they were told to stay home from September 20 to 26 following the detection of more than 10 community-based cases, according to VnExpress. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Check out the news you should not miss today: Society -- Ho Chi Minh City is developing eleven strategies on healthcare, social welfare, business-production, and more in preparation for a new normal when COVID-19 is put under control in the southern city, secretary of the municipal Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen said at a working session on COVID-19 prevention with Binh Tan District on Wednesday. -- Local authorities have given approval to the southern province of Ba Ria Vung Tau to follow social distancing measures under the prime minister's Directive No. 15 from Thursday, with wet markets allowed to reopen for selling necessities only and required to meet epidemic prevention regulations. -- Ho Chi Minh City has so far allocated more than 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate pregnant women from 13 weeks, Nguyen Thi Huynh Mai, Chief of the Office of the local Department of Health, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Business -- Sales of Vietnamese cement products reached 70.7 million metric tons in January-August, up four percent year on year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which had negative impacts on many other industries, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Wednesday. -- Vietnams export revenue stood at US$213.52 billion in the first eight months of this year, up 21.8 percent year on year, the Vietnam News Agency quoted the General Department of Vietnam Customs on Wednesday. Lifestyle -- Vietnamese designer Nguyen Minh Cong has recently wowed local audiences with his fashion illustrations using southern traditional foods including banh xeo to create colorful patterns for the designs. -- The northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh and the Thai resort island of Phuket on Wednesday held a teleconference to discuss post-pandemic cooperation between the two sides as well as exchanging experience in reopening tourism. Education -- Kindergartens in Ha Tinh were allowed to reopen on Thursday as the north-central Vietnamese province has reported no local transmissions of COVID-19 in the past 20 days. World news -- Japan plans to give other countries 60 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Thursday, doubling the target from the previous pledge of 30 million doses, Reuters reported on Thursday. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Barbershops and hair salons across Hanoi are filling up following an announcement that, after a two-month prohibition, hair services will be allowed to reopen. At 5:30 am on Tuesday, Quang Huy, a Hanoian street barber, set up shop on Thai Thinh Street in Dong Da District. His first order of business: dusting off his array of clippers and shears which had been sitting idle for two months. Hanoi shuttered all hair services in mid-July as part of its effort to curb the fourth wave of COVID-19. Nearly two months after imposing intense social distancing measures, city officials say they have managed to contain the spread and non-essential businesses, including barbershops, can resume operations. I was delighted yesterday when I heard I could start working again, Huy said. I havent worked for two months and its been irritating not having a source of income. Residents get haircuts at a street barbershop on Thai Thinh Street, Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre A resident gets a haircut at a barbershop in Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre Across the city, other hair businesses welcomed throngs of customers on their first day of operation in two months. I came to this barbershop knowing it would be busy today, said Hai Nam, a customer at a crowded hair salon in Dong Da District. Its been two months since my last haircut and its getting so long that I have to borrow hairbands from my daughter to tie it up. Nearby, on Thai Thinh Street where Huy works, ten other street barbers were also welcoming customers. Each cut at a street barber takes 20 to 30 minutes and costs only VND50,000-60,000 ($2.2-2.6), equating to about VND1 million in revenue on high-demand days. Residents get haircuts at a barbershop in Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre A resident gets a haircut at a barbershop in Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre A resident gets a haircut at a street barbershop on Thai Thinh Street, Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre A street barber on Thai Thinh Street, Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre A resident gets a haircut at a street barbershop on Thai Thinh Street, Dong Da District, Hanoi, September 21, 2021. Photo: Mai Thuong / Tuoi Tre Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Health authorities in Ho Chi Minh City hope to reopen beauty clinics and cosmetic departments at hospitals from October 1, following months of closures under strict COVID-19 prevention rules. The plan was mentioned in an official letter sent by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health to the municipal Peoples Committee on Wednesday. According to the health authority, both beauty clinics and cosmetic services at hospitals in the city have been shuttered since May 31 to comply with local government orders. Additionally, practitioners working in hospitals cosmetic procedures have been supporting the citys epidemic prevention efforts by helping at vaccination and testing sites. Their contributions have played a part in the citys initial success in pushing back the spread of the virus, with caseloads and death rates on a downward trend over the past few weeks. In various districts within Ho Chi Minh City, including Can Gio District, District 7, and Thu Duc City, the epidemic has been deemed under control, allowing local authorities to ease the months-long ban on certain businesses and services. The Department of Health proposed that city leaders allow beauty clinics and hospital departments to reopen on the basis of COVID-19 prevention guidelines from October 1, considering that their staff have all received jabs against COVID-19 and the appointment-based operations of these facilities give less opportunity for the virus to spread between customers. Ho Chi Minh City has been in an extension of strict travel restrictions since mid-August, under the prime ministers Directive No. 16. The directive bans gatherings of more than two people in public and requires all residents to stay indoors and only go outside with appropriate reasons. The city had earlier imposed social distancing regulations at various levels since May 31. It remains the gravest COVID-19 epicenter in Vietnam with 353,655 local infections, accounting for approximately half of the countrys 714,548 community transmissions since the fourth virus waves emergence on April 27. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Medical authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have set out a plan to gradually close a number of field hospitals for COVID-19 treatment once socio-economic activities are resumed. Schools, dormitories, apartment buildings, cultural houses, and parts of hospitals that had been requisitioned for COVID-19 quarantine and treatment purposes will return to their original functions as approximately 40 percent of the citys active patients are under home treatment and the number of patients discharged from hospitals is increasing day by day. Fewer new inpatients The COVID-19 field hospital in District 8, which was set up at the districts Cultural Center in August and mobilized personnel from different major hospitals in the city, has seen its daily new cases drop from 25 to ten recently, according to Dr. Nguyen Thanh Phong, the hospitals director. It successfully treated and discharged about 70 out of its 170 COVID-19 patients. The daily counts of admissions into other COVID-19 field hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City have also been on a downward trend. The citys COVID-19 field hospital No. 1, which was transformed from the dormitory of the Center for National Defense and Security Training in Thu Duc City with a capacity of about 4,500 beds, has admitted a total of more than 19,000 patients. Some 16,000 of them recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged. The hospital currently receives about 200 to 300 new patients a day, just half of the daily number during its peak time, according to Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tam, head of the hospitals general planning department. The COVID-19 field hospital No. 9, which was converted from the second campus of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages - Information Technology in Hoc Mon District, currently admits about 300 to 400 new patients a day, down from 600 per day in previous months, according to Dr. Pham Thi Thu Van, who is in charge of managing the hospital. The mobilization of medics to focus on treating infected cases at home has brought about positive effects, helping to limit the number of serious cases requiring hospitalization, said Dr. Phong of the COVID-19 field hospital in District 8. When the number of new inpatients decreases, medical staff [at hospitals] can better care for and treat [existing] inpatients, thereby increasing the hospital discharge rate while reducing serious complications and deaths, the doctor explained. A medical worker visits a COVID-19 patient at his home in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Duyen Phan / Tuoi Tre Shutdown plan A total of 93 facilities are currently providing COVID-19 hospital treatment in Ho Chi Minh City, including ten resuscitation centers, 30 field hospitals, and 53 private, district-level, and city-level hospitals. They are divided into three levels based on the severity of patients. The 30 field hospitals are offering 42,000 beds, accounting for a majority of the combination of 64,600 beds of the 93 facilities. The citys medical sector administration plans to hand over schools converted to field hospitals back to their original management after September 30. Following that, each of the remaining resuscitation centers will treat both moderate and severe COVID-19 patients. Some field hospitals treating mild patients will be kept in place in Cu Chi and Can Gio Districts. It is necessary to maintain field hospitals for COVID-19 patients with a minimum capacity of 20-40 beds equipped with oxygen supply, a leader of the municipal Department of Health said. In addition, the infrastructure of the resuscitation centers managed by Bach Mai Hospital, Viet Duc University Hospital, and Hue Central Hospital shall be kept intact to be ready for resumption in case the COVID-19 pandemic resurges. Merger suggestion Medical experts showed their agreement on the citys plan to gradually restore COVID-19 field hospitals to their original functions. In particular, Dr. Phong suggested some with quality infrastructure only be suspended, instead of being dismantled, so that they can be ready for use when needed. The doctor also proposed moving COVID-19 inpatients from different field hospitals into certain ones to save costs once the numbers of their new cases reduce. A medical worker gives a rapid antigen COVID-19 test kit to a resident of Tan Binh District in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Duyen Phan / Tuoi Tre Elaborating on Dr. Phongs proposal, Dr. Tran Van Khanh, director of Le Van Thinh Hospital who manages the COVID-19 field hospital No. 3 in Thu Duc City, said the merger of COVID-19 field hospitals should only be carried out when the number of inpatients shrinks to about 40 percent of their capacities. Dr. Khanh suggested changing the focus of COVID-19 field hospitals to providing post-COVID-19 treatment courses, such as physical therapy, respiratory improvement, and nutrition. Focus on home treatment While planning to gradually close COVID-19 field hospitals, Ho Chi Minh City authorities also intend to give more assignments to over 500 mobile medical stations that have been established across the city after the model proved its efficiency in providing care for patients quarantined at home. The new tasks include conducting rapid coronavirus tests and administering COVID-19 vaccines to people. Authorities will mobilize personnel from private hospitals for the assignment of treating COVID-19 patients at home. Tang Chi Thuong, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, has approved the proposal to restore the Cu Chi Regional General Hospital in Cu Chi District and the District 7 Hospital to its original functions -- treating non-COVID-19 patients. New COVID-19 patients that require hospitalization in the two districts will be sent to field hospitals or resuscitation centers following the restoration. Ho Chi Minh City reported 5,435 local infections on Wednesday, down by 1,086 patients from the day before, according to the Ministry of Health's data. The city has recorded 354,175 coronavirus patients so far, the majority logged since late April, while almost 14,000 people have died of the respiratory disease. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The government of Vietnam has decided to purchase 20 million Vero Cell vaccine jabs developed by Chinas Sinopharm, according to a resolution issued on Wednesday. The government will select qualified bidders to sign deals with the Chinese side as per the Law on Bidding, the resolution said. It has accepted a disclaimer for claims related to the use of the Vero Cell vaccine as part of the deals with the vaccine developer, China National Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd. (Sinopharm). The signing, validity, interpretation, performance, and dispute settlement of the vaccine contract shall be governed by the laws of China. In case of failure to resolve any dispute, it will be resolved by China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission in Beijing. The Vietnamese government has also accepted the payment method set for the purchase. The Ministry of Health is required to promptly proceed with the procurement and to ensure the effective use of the vaccine in the fight against COVID-19. The ministry has approved eight COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use in the country, namely the UKs AstraZeneca, Chinas Sinopharm, Russias Sputnik V, the UAEs Hayat-Vax, Cubas Abdala, and three U.S. products including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. The government has so far approved the purchase of more than 51 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, over 30 million AstraZeneca jabs, 10 million Cuban-made shots, among others. Meanwhile, Vietnams Nano Covax vaccine is undergoing the procedures to be authorized for emergency use as the first made-in-Vietnam COVID-19 vaccine, having gone through successful trials. Vietnam has targeted to secure 150 million coronavirus doses to inoculate two-thirds of its 98-million population, and it has received around 50 million jabs from different sources, including COVAX Facility, contractual purchases, and donations. The country has administered some nearly 28.3 million first shots and almost 6.9 million second doses since the immunization commenced on March 8, the health ministry reported on Wednesday. Since the pandemic hit Vietnam in early 2020, the Southeast Asian country has registered 718,963 infection cases, including 487,262 recoveries and 17,781 fatalities, in 62 out of the countrys 63 cities and provinces, the ministry said. Cao Bang Province, where strict measures for COVID-19 prevention have been applied, is the only locality staying free from COVID-19 in Vietnam. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The Ministry of Health logged 9,472 COVID-19 infections in Vietnam on Thursday, together with 6,226 discharged patients and 236 deaths. Thirty-three provinces and cities recorded 9,465 domestic cases while the country reported another seven imported infections, the health ministry said. The ministry had documented 11,525 locally-infected patients on Wednesday. Above 5,300 of the latest domestic cases were found in the community, with the remaining detected in sectioned-off areas or centralized quarantine facilities. Ho Chi Minh City reported 5,052 local infections, down by 383 patients from yesterday; Binh Duong Province 2,764, down by 1,415; Dong Nai Province 760; Long An Province 190; Kien Giang Province 163; An Giang Province 109; Can Tho City 53; Hanoi five; and Da Nang three. Vietnam has confirmed 723,962 community transmissions in 62 out of its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth and worst virus wave emerged in the country on April 27. Ho Chi Minh City tops the list with 358,707 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 190,257, Dong Nai Province with 43,122, Long An Province with 31,231, Tien Giang Province with 13,531, Dong Thap Province with 8,155, Khanh Hoa Province with 7,601, Da Nang with 4,887, Hanoi with 4,190, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 4,099. By comparison, Vietnam detected a combined 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in the previous three waves. The health ministry announced 6,226 recoveries on Thursday, taking the total to 493,488. The toll has increased to 18,017 deaths after the ministry documented 236 fatalities on the same day, including 175 in Ho Chi Minh City and 37 in Binh Duong Province. Vietnam has recorded 728,435 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year. Health workers have given around 36 million vaccine doses, including 463,597 shots on Wednesday, since inoculation was rolled out on March 8. Over seven million people have been fully vaccinated. Health authorities aim to immunize at least two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! 9Now will screen Global Citizen Live the early time of 3.00am AEST Sunday morning, highlighting poverty, climate change and inequality. This is a 24 hour live stream from Sydney, New York, Paris, Lagos, LA, Rio, Seoul and London. Performers include Coldplay, Cyndi Lauper, Billie Eilish, Doja Cat, Duran Duran, Ed Sheeran, Elton John, Green Day, Jennifer Lopez, Lorde, Metallica, Ricky Martin and Stevie Wonder, along with Kylie Minogue, Keith Urban, 5 Seconds of Summer, while Delta Goodrem also performs before the Sydney Opera House. The broadcast will also feature remote appearances from Cathy Freeman, Celeste Barber and Hugh Jackman, who will host the event from London, with wife Deborra-Lee Furness presenting from New York. Across seven continents, the 24-hour event will call on citizens to defend the planet by demanding that governments and major corporations take urgent action on the most pressing issues crippling our world today: poverty, climate change and inequality. Its the event that brings the world together as these influential figures bare their souls in the fight for a true and just society. Coinciding with the UN General Assembly, the G20 Meeting in October and the COP26 Meeting in November, Global Citizen Live calls on Australia to commit to: Reducing domestic emissions by 74% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050, with a clear plan of achieving this, ahead of COP 26. Sign on to the Race to Zero and make new science-based targets in line with the Paris Agreement to avoid a greater than 1.5-degree temperature rise. Donate further funding and vaccines via COVAX to ensure equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine in the region. Sunday, September 26, from 3.00am AEST on 9Now and highlights on Friday, October 1, at 12.00pm on Nine. Television networks joined forces and went to court this morning over a ruling that prevented Live aerial pictures of Melbourne protests being broadcast. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority confirmed that Victoria Police had been granted a temporary restricted airspace order over the CBD as they face ongoing protests. Police had maintained protestors were able to avoid police by viewing Live aerial footage. Police backtracked on an outright ban but demanded a 60-minute delay on broadcasting any aerial images.. Media outlets will also be required to delay publishing any livestream footage from the air by 60 minutes or at the conclusion of the operation, a Victorian Police spokesperson said. This is because protestors were actively monitoring aerial livestreams, compromising the police operation and putting the safety of members at risk. The ban was challenged in the Federal Court this morning by networks Nine, Seven and ABC. Update: The Herald Sun reported Federal Court judge ruled in favour of three TV outlets, allowing them to fly over the CBD and broadcast footage live until a trial can be set down as early as next week. Justice Helen Rofe QC said there was a serious question to be tried and the balance of convenience was in staying, or delaying, police orders until a substantive hearing could go ahead. She said a judge could be made available to sit before a trial next week. .@VictoriaPolice Chief Shane Patton has told @3AW693 Tony Jones "I didn't think it was going to be such a big deal, honestly". https://t.co/z5Di9sWygb Pat Mitchell (@patty_mitchell) September 22, 2021 Meanwhile a Nine security guard was also released after being arrested by police near the CFMEU headquarters in Melbourne CBD. It is understood the security guard left a group of media before being intercepted by police and pinned down by officers. A man was seen walking across the road near Elizabeth and Victoria Street at about 9.30am this morning, the police statement read. Police stopped and spoke to him, to obtain his identity and confirm why he is in the area. The male was argumentative and did not provide his identification or credentials to police. He was subsequently arrested until his identification was sought. Victoria Police understands there are valid reasons people need to be in the city, and we do not want to stop people going about their usual business, so we ask that people provide the information to police at the first opportunity. This post updates. Source: Nine News This Sunday night is a dream come true for Toni Pearen almost. As host of Young Talent Time: Unmasked, it marks the next best thing to an unfulfilled childhood dream. If you had have told my 12 year old self, One day you will be hosting the Young Talent Time special on Channel 10, I just wouldnt have believed it, she tells TV Tonight. All my childhood, all my teen years, it wasnt just a dream. Young Talent Time was like family to me. Everything was based on my Saturday night. I would record it Saturday nights, so I could rewatch it on Sunday. Id watch my favourite songs and learn them. It was seriously an obsession! I still have the Christmas card Dannii Minogue wrote to me in 1984 I still have the Christmas card Dannii Minogue wrote to me in 1984 Its seriously one of my prized possessions. I remember receiving it that Christmas. It made all my Christmases! I still have it to this day! The special marks 50 years since Young Talent Time hit Australian television screens with names such as Jamie Redfern, Debbie Byrne, Phillip Gould, Jane Scali, Rod Kirkham and Vikki Broughton. It would run on 10 until 1988 with famed faces including Tina Arena, Karen Knowles, Dannii Minogue, John Bowles, Sally Boyden, Joey Perrone, Beven Addinsall, Mark Stevens, Vince Del Tito, Steven Zammit, Greg Mills and Katie Van Ree (the show was later revived with host Rob Mills). The special sees Tina Arena and Dannii Minogue reunite -both were only together on YTT across two years (Tina: 197783; Dannii: 198288). Pearen even admits to a moment of fan-girling after the stars responded to a social media post from her. Toni youve really got to calm down and be cool about this! Tina Arena commented on a post that Im hosting the show. She responded saying, Gorgeous woman to host his show! or something and I squealed. My husband said, Toni youve really got to calm down and be cool about this! she laughs. But these people were so important to my life growing up. While Pearen never got to join YTT, or even a Johnny Young Talent School, she did train and forge her own showbiz career with E Street, Home and Away, Australias Funniest Home Video Show, All Men Are Liars and pop hits In Your Room, I Want You and Walkaway Lover. I ended up at a talent school called the Keane Kids, which is not dissimilar to Young Talent Time. It just didnt have a national television show! she continues. My parents refused to move to Melbourne. I probably asked them every day, to move to Melbourne so I could join the Young Talent Time team. Im hosting and linking all of the footage and interviews Sundays special also features other exclusive interviews as well as archival footage and a recent reunion which took place prior to current lockdowns. Im hosting and linking all of the footage and interviews and so really Im just a big fan, talking about what it meant to me, reminiscing about the fashion, the dance routines, the locations they went to, the cast, Pearen explains. Because of the pandemic, with restrictions and borders, Im sure its not what they originally envisaged. But miraculously, they have pulled it all together. Pearen readily admits after such a long wait shes happy to be along for the ride however possible. Young Talent Time was obviously the dream. I never got there, but now here I am! Young Talent Time: Unmasked 8:40pm Sunday on 10. By Emma Kraft '22, School of Engineering marketing intern Every year, the School of Engineering presents four Vision Awards to faculty and staff that represent innovation, creativity, entrepreneurial thinking and outstanding performance. These awards include a plaque and monetary award in the amount of $2000. The four awards Community, Innovation, Scholarship, and Engagement and Service distributed relate to our Marianist values. This year, we would like to recognize the 2021 Vision Award recipients, as it is a great honor. Kevin Pierson, senior lab manager, Engineering Makerspace The recipient of the 2021 Vision Award for Excellence in Community is Kevin Pierson. This award recognizes faculty and staff who have made significant contributions to enhancing the climate for diversity and inclusion within the School of Engineering for students, faculty and staff. Piersons nomination included several letters of support, and in particular, highlighted his work that promotes an inclusive learning environment in the Makerspace. His nominators commented on his efforts to eliminate gender stereotypes with regards to the use of power tools. He also advocated for a womens restroom and a gender inclusive restroom in the basement of Kettering Labs. Additionally, Kevin met individually over Zoom with students in different time zones to accommodate them during COVID-19, recruited prospective students and supported adjunct faculty. Congratulations on this recognition Kevin Pierson, and thank you for your contributions to the School of Engineering! Stephanie McChesney, director, Engineering Safety and Facilities The recipient of the 2021 Vision Award for Excellence in Engagement and Service is Stephanie McChesney. This award recognizes faculty and staff who have demonstrated excellence as servant leaders. The recipient of this award demonstrates a commitment to engaging in activities that have made a significant contribution to the common good within the School of Engineering, the University, or in the local or global community. These activities should reflect the manifestations of Marianist charism: people of community, discipleship of equals and leaders in mission. McChesneys nomination letter specifically called out several key achievements that reflect those of a servant leader. In particular, her efforts to propose ideas and implement protocol to ensure a safer environment for our community during COVID-19, and her efforts to minimize the disruption to student learning, faculty research, and the work of all is to be commended. She additionally made many efforts to help with numerous on campus events, such as COVID testing and student check-in. Congratulations on this recognition Stephanie McChesney, and thank you for your contributions to the School of Engineering! Joshua Heyne, associate professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering The recipient of the 2021 Vision Award for Excellence in Scholarship is Joshua Heyne. This award recognizes faculty and staff who have made a significant contribution in the area of scholarship. This could include traditional research or other forms of knowledge generation or a demonstrated commitment to lifelong learning. Heyne received several nominations for this award, including nominations from research collaborators. One nominator described Heyne as being in the top 1 percent of the most talented young researchers they had ever worked with in their 55-year career. Heyne was also identified as a top expert in the design and optimization of alternative and sustainable jet fuels. His work has been recognized internationally and has resulted in numerous publications and over $3.7M in external funding. Aside from all this, Heyne has served as an excellent mentor to students and a great supporter of the research efforts of community partners through ETHOS. Congratulations on this recognition Joshua Heyne, and thank you for contributions to the School of Engineering! Julie Motz, senior lab manager, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The recipient of the 2021 Vision Award for Excellence in Innovation is Julie Motz. This award recognizes faculty and staff who have made significant contributions to the education of our students through innovative teaching strategies, providing unique experiential learning experiences for students, and continuing to demonstrate success in the classroom. Motz was selected for this award because of the numerous contributions she has made to the experiential learning of our students since coming to the University. Among these contributions is the way in which she helped identify laboratory skill gaps in our students and work to address these through innovative approaches to teaching. Her work to foster interdepartmental faculty collaborations to enhance experiential learning of UDs students is also noteworthy. In particular, Julies innovative approach by ideating and assembling kits for eight different lab courses ensured that our students had hands-on experiences while learning remotely. Congratulations on this recognition Julie, and thank you for your contributions to the School of Engineering! Congratulations to the four recipients of the School of Engineering 2021 Vision Awards. Your efforts and contributions to our community never go unnoticed! By Center for International Programs Internships continue to play an important role for University of Dayton (UD) students, providing benefits that allow for personal, professional and academic growth. Traveling abroad for an internship has the added value of providing students with the experience to increase cultural awareness, language skills and work experience in a different region of the world. While the 2020-2021 year put a halt on some students plans to intern abroad, it also opened opportunities for the possibility of virtual internships. This was particularly true for some of our UD students. Alexander Finney is a senior at UD, majoring in International Studies, with a minor in Spanish. This past year he was slated to participate in an internship in Manchester, UK when the pandemic precluded travel. Luckily, the Education Abroad Office had prepared in advance for this scenario, offering virtual internships in addition to on-site options. The same third party provider for the Manchester Program, CRCC Asia, eventually placed him in a virtual internship in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean companys focus is on sustainable travel and corporate social responsibility (CSR), an area of particular passion for him. Finney had to communicate across cultures and a 6 hour time zone difference. His primary focus was conducting research on companies in Zimbabwe that showed potential for partnerships focused on sustainable travel and tourism. In the process, he dove more deeply into researching CSR trends in Zimbabwe. I learned valuable research skills, built efficient communication and rapport with partners...I also learned about the impact of structural obstacles and a lack of resources can have on a developing country. I entered the internship with an open mind and gained invaluable skills, Finney says. Virtual internships have gained momentum throughout the past year, especially as conversations around equity and sustainability are influencing international educators' approach to programs. Zoe Krzywda, Programs Coordinator, Office of Education Abroad, shared Virtual internships are less expensive and more accessible opportunities for global engagement. We have to consider that some students face travel, mental health, or budgetary challenges. Erin Gahimer, Senior Programs Coordinator, Office of Education Abroad, agrees: Moving forward virtual programming will not be a replacement for on-site learning. It can be another option to produce meaningful intercultural experiences, especially for students that have not considered these programs otherwise. Jee Hee Han, an Associate Professor of Communications, has taught for 15 years at UD, and specializes in International Public Relations, including an area of focus on tourism PR. She intended to engage students on an in-person study abroad experience in Sydney, Australia to explore elements of public relations in Australian work culture through internships and on-the-ground experience. With the pandemic, the internship pivoted to a virtual platform. Seven students participated in the program, and were placed at a variety of companies in Sydney: a non-profit helping survivors of human trafficking and slavery, several PR and marketing agencies, a communications firm, and a school of copywriting. UD students assisted in marketing, education, social media campaigns, curating content, and more. The placements were made possible by the third-party provider, CAPA, which decided on the best fit for student interns through survey processing and resume evaluation. Han was pleasantly surprised at the highly effective adjustment of the students to the work culture in Australia, which she says was relaxed and laid-back, not very hierarchical and highly collaborative. Han further added, the virtual use of WhatsApp text messaging allowed quick communication between supervisors and the students, and Zoom meetings allowed the students to air their ideas in a supportive team-oriented environment. Students were able to acquire skills for the workplace and largely enjoyed working with their supervisors, who established goals and expectations from the outset and welcomed feedback. The students in Hans class had many opportunities to expand their global learning. As many of the students worked on social media content and public relations, they had to adjust key products and services to the cultural norms and preferences of an Australian audience. Doing so required significant research, communication with Australian co-workers, and intercultural sensitivity. On the surface, Australians and UD students spoke the same language, and may even have looked similar with no more than a different accent, Han reflects, but the experiences of the communications students proved otherwise. Curating content for Australian audiences showed them that the nuances of culture run much more than skin deep. The positive experiences of UD students on virtual internships abroad demonstrate that learning to be global citizens runs deeper than whether one is on-site or virtual. As UD and other institutions continue to adjust education abroad to new realities on the ground, virtual platforms will prove attractive alternatives to traditional, on-site approaches to international education and intercultural learning. Kelly Brannan Trail, Director of Education Abroad, affirms that though the technology was there before, it took a pandemic to more fully realize its potential. And while we do not see virtual platforms as a replacement for travel abroad, meaningful courses can also be created to provide some of the content often used for pre-departure, on-site and returning education. Zibaldones and the Dayton Art Institute Dr. Laura Humes Renaissance & Reformation Europe integrated an experiential learning activity at the Dayton Art Institute. There, Dr. Roger Crum gave a talk about the Renaissance artwork, which related it to the course themes of the Renaissance focus on self-awareness, self-consciousness, of discerning purpose and calling. This activity tied to subsequent reflection assignments in students' zibaldones. For this particular activity, reflection on vocation was the central outcome -- also known as the identification of one's gifts, talents, or skills, engaging in the act of becoming self-conscious, exploring how to connect what one feels inside with the practicalities of the outside world. By reflecting on the artwork at the Dayton Art Institute from the era when Europeans looked both within and beyond themselves in a process of conscious self-transformation, students engaged both within and beyond themselves. Through the entire course students kept zibaldones. Zibaldones date back to fourteenth-century Italy and are part journals, doodle books, scrapbooks, and diaries. Today in our digital world, they would likely be called them blogs. Students were asked to keep these books and write and draw in them frequently, if not every day, and were reminded with reflection prompts and reflections that connect to specific ideas and themes. Targeted prompts connected the artwork seen, the historical context, and the students' undergraduate careers and vocational development. The Zibaldones will document and assess students progress on the proposed learning outcomes. The ELIFF mini-grant was used to hire First Student Charter Bus Service to transport 35 students and two faculty to the Dayton Art Institute and to give Dr. Crum an honorarium for his talk. Students explored the question of what it means to be human through both the surface realism and psychological exploration of the Renaissance artists as they learn from Dr. Crum about the rise of artistic individuality, virtuosity, and even celebrity. Students reflected on vocation in the context of the artists of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance who struggled against tradition and convention to express themselves with their unique talents, skills, and gifts. Feminist Theory and Methodology Dr. David Fine drew inspiration from Virginia Woolf's classic Three Guineas essay for his experiential learning activity. In her feminist essay, the speaker had to decide how to spend her three guineas in order to promote peace. The Experiential Learning Innovation Fund for Faculty (ELIFF) grant of $500 served as the student's guineas. In Fine's class, Women and Gender Studies 310, his students determined how best to spend the money in order to promote feminism today. This was done through written reflection, classroom debate, and community-engaged research. There were three Units that helped to guide the student's progress. In Unit 1 they wrote individual proposals for programming or service where the goal was to advance a feminist cause on campus or in the local community. In Unit 2 the class, as a whole, assessed the proposals and identified the strongest. Unit 3 involved the collaborative implementation of the proposal, drawing on the funding from the grant. Fine has identified several learning outcomes for this activity. The first, and foremost, was for students to demonstrate their understanding of complex feminist theory through its hands-on application. The ELIFF grant brought a concrete realism to their actualization of theory because students will have to negotiate real-world concerns as they figured out how to properly allocate the money. The second learning outcome was for students to collaborate successfully on a project over which they have full autonomy. With this project, Fine aimed to create an interdisciplinary space in which students could exercise their varied skills. The idea of this experiential learning activity was to not only teach feminist theory, but also to practice feminist pedagogy. The third learning outcome was for students to exhibit awareness of intersectionality and its importance to feminist theory and practice. As students considered various proposals, they wrestled with the complexity of sex, gender, and sexuality. This project enabled active, hands-on, self-guided learning for the students. An important goal for the project was to take on the active implementation of a service, program, or initiative that would further feminist aims. Fine contributed actively in all the stages of the project as a mentor and teacher, but the final project's character and scope rested in the hands of the students. Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast Its got all the makings of a classic Italian mob moviemobsters running a criminal ring from an island, drug trafficking, kidnapping, homicides, 10 million euros, dozens of raids, and 106 arrests. Theres just one wrinkle: It was mostly happening online. After a year-long investigation, European law enforcement busted criminals with links to Italian Mafia groups for laundering 10 million euros through a flurry of hacking operations and violent coercion last year across Italy, Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Ireland, and the U.K. Spanish police, who worked on the takedown operation, say some of the individuals are allegedly linked to the Casamonica clana violent crime family based out of Rome that is known for drug traffickingwhich was determined to be Mafia in court earlier this week. The individuals are also linked with the Camorra napolitana, Nuvoletta, and Sacra Corona Unita clans, according to the police. Mafia Framed Nurse After Killing Doctor Who Treated Cosa Nostra Boss The criminals allegedly coordinated with computer experts to run spearphishing emails that duped victims into sending money to bank accounts. After the mobsters received the ill-gotten gains, they laundered the currency through front companies, money mules, and cryptocurrency assets, according to Spanish police. This large criminal network was very well organised in a pyramid structure, which included different specialised areas and roles, Europol said in a statement earlier this week. The gangsters and accomplices also used vishing, or voice phishing, in which criminals trick victims over the phone into coughing up personal information such as passwords or credit card details. And they also used SIM-swapping schemes, in which criminals convince phone service providers to transfer victims phone numbers to another device to access accounts. In the raidwhich law enforcement officials code-named Fontana-AlmabahiaEuropol and the Italian and Spanish national police forces searched 16 houses, froze 118 bank accounts, and made 106 arrests in all. Story continues Although Italian mobsters are the OG organized crime bosses, cybercrime and hacking is traditionally associated with Russian-speaking criminals, Nigerian gangs, or teams working for North Koreas government. Pandemic Puts the Screws to New Yorks Mafia. In Italy, the Mobs Are Thriving. The recent spate of arrests of individuals in Italy and Spain, however, shows Italian Mafia criminals squarely entering the 21st century of money laundering and organized crime, weaving together tried-and-true tactics of coercive money laundering schemes into the cyber realm. In addition to these more modern electronic crimes, the arrested individuals were also accused of more traditional and heinous crimes, such as kidnapping, assault, coercion, robbery with violence and force, illegal possession of weapons, and two counts of homicides. In one case, the mobsters kidnapped a woman, held her at gunpoint, took her to an ATM, and forced her to hand over all her money, according to Spanish police. These kinds of overlaps between cybercrimes and physical law-breaking are more common than one might think, Federico Varese, a professor of criminology at the University of Oxford, told The Daily Beast. There is a common misconception about cybercrimenamely that it happens only online. Instead there is an important, offline dimension, where people with some cyber expertise meet traditional organized crime, like in this story, Varese, who has studied and written on organized crime extensively, told The Daily Beast. In this story, it is notable that there were at least two murders and the use of violence. This isnt the first time criminals with links to Italian Mafia crime families have been caught using hacking and conducting credit card schemes. In 2015, European law enforcement wrapped up a Sicily-based crime ring with links to la Cosa Nostra that had worked with hackers in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania to steal credit card information, mostly from U.S. citizens, according to an Italian police alert from the time. Ndragheta, one of the most powerful Italian mob families in Europe, has links with a company, eSurv, that produced spyware that, while created to target criminal suspects and surveil their communications, has been abused to surveil innocent Italians encrypted chats, microphones, and cameras, according to Bloomberg. And although the police specified the 106 arrested in this most recent case were working for the Casamonica, Camorra napolitana, Nuvoletta, and Sacra Corona Unita clans, the news comes as Italian Mafia groups are increasingly coalescing and working together on various criminal operations, according to the Italian National Anti-Mafia and Counter-Terrorism Public Prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho. This distinction of Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta, Camorra as different and separate criminal entities hardly corresponds to reality anymore," Cafiero De Raho said earlier this year in an interview, which he said could point to mobs increasingly operating as one criminal syndicate. In Europols announcement about the raids, the police refer to the hackers and criminals as an organised crime group, and not multiple groups. But even if the groups themselves are coalescinga possibility that Varese finds implausiblethe criminals themselves are likely distinct from members of Italian Mafia clans. "Everything Ive seen points to a very clear division of labor. The traditional Mafia they would be separate, Varese told The Daily Beast. There would be someone doing the online fraudmaybe the [Mafia] would be clients, they would benefit from it, use them to launder their money. Italian Mafia groups turn to cybercrime may not be all that surprising, and could represent a lucrative channel for funding mobster business moving forward. Law enforcement operations have been making progress against various Italian Mafia groups in recent years, and mobsters have been increasingly wary of getting caught red-handed. In turn, these members of organized crime have increasingly resorted to cybercrime, cryptocurrencies, and the dark web as a way to fly under the radar, Italys Anti-Mafia Directorate said in a report last month. The Return of the Godfather: The Old Mafia Is New Again But the apparent willingness of Italian crime families to dip their toes in organized cybercrime in recent years doesnt mean Italian organized crime syndicates are giving up their old, violent ways. Italians still frequently turn to the Mafia to settle debts and competition and engage in fraud, according to the BBC. Mafiosos have also recently worked to take advantage of the economic difficulties of their fellow Italians during the pandemic and offered food and other support as COVID-19 ravaged the countryin a likely act meant to foster future favors and breed whole towns of indebted neighbors. And any moves to rely more on cyber-operations might be stunted by Italian Mafias tendency towards tradition and reliability, Varese said. These are very traditional people and they would find it a jump to entrust their hard-earned money to someone who tells them something [hard to understand], Varese said. The moment it starts to become bitcoin they start to think, how do I know the guy isnt going to cheat me? Imagine you entrust all your savings to a guy who does something you dont understand, Varese continued. And imagine the guy comes back to you and he says, Sorry, lost the money Thats why you want somebody you can trust, i.e. local, so you can kill him or kill all his family. Money laundering can only be sophisticated up to a point. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. Reuters VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Francis said on Wednesday he was saddened and ashamed by the Catholic Church's inability to deal with sexual abuse of children in France and that the Church must make itself a "safe home for everyone". "I would like to express to the victims my sadness, sorrow for the trauma they have suffered and also my shame, our shame, for the church's inability, for too long, to put them at the centre of its concerns," Francis said at his weekly general audience. Speaking a day after a major investigation revealed that French clergy had abused more than 200,000 children over 70 years, the pontiff invited Catholics in France to take responsibility for what had happened in order to make the Church a "safe home for everyone". Aluminum prices are hovering at a 13-year high as China, the world's biggest manufacturer of the base metal, reins in production to meet carbon emissions targets amid tight electricity supplies and high freight costs. Nikkei Asia reports that aluminum was trading at around $2,827 a ton on the London Metal Exchange as of Tuesday, up 43% from the start of the year, after hitting a 13-year-high of $2,916 on Sept. 10. Last year, early in the pandemic, aluminum hit a five-year low of $1,429 a ton. Aluminum is widely used in everyday life -- from car parts, to tins used for food and drink, to electrical components. A global push toward decarbonization in the short term will lead to soaring commodity prices, as manufacturers look for alternative, greener ways to generate the power needed for production. As economies slowly recover from last year's COVID shock, demand for aluminum is rising again, particularly from China, which accounts for 60% of global consumption. Yet, production from China has been hit by drought and a surge in thermal coal prices, as hydro and thermal power stations are finding it difficult to increase power generation, given President Xi Jinping's aim to reduce emissions. Xi has said that he expects China's emissions to peak before 2030 and trend downward until the country reaches carbon neutrality by 2060. The production of aluminum, which accounts for around 4% of China's total carbon emissions, is one of the industries, along with steel and cement, that are expected to rein in emissions. Beijing has said that it wants to cap the industry's annual smelting capacity and producers to reduce emissions, while shifting to secondary or recycled aluminum production. One of the challenges faced by the industry is rising energy prices. Before, aluminum smelters moved to Yunnan Province, where there are hydroelectric power stations, paid a so-called preferential price for power but now, the government is trying to stop attracting too many smelters to go to the Province and fewer smelters are benefiting from such low power costs. Other big consumers of power such as silicon and magnesium manufacturers are also expanding, further raising the risk of energy outages. "The impact of this will be of course to increase the cost of production for the smelters and the impact will be to further support the price," said Uday Patel, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie. A coup that happened in Guinea on Sept. 5 is another bullish factor for aluminum prices. The West African country is home to the world's largest reserves of bauxite and a major supplier of bauxite for China. Global aluminum demand is expected to grow gradually on "green" demand. Car manufacturers will use more aluminum to make lighter cars in order to be more fuel-efficient, while more aluminum electric wires will be needed to build offshore wind power stations. "On one side, the problem is the aluminum industry is not always very green, on the other side, you need aluminum to decarbonize your economy," said Patel. Amid the recent price surges, a trader said that Japanese buyers and Australian producers are in discussion on a premium of around $230 a ton on top of the LME price, the highest in the past six to seven years, for the October-December quarter. Such negotiations between sellers and buyers take place every quarter. The trader said that buyers in Europe and the U.S. are facing even higher premiums to get aluminum delivered to them from Malaysia or Singapore. This is in large part due to rising freight prices. Entry restrictions imposed by countries as COVID countermeasures have made it difficult to switch crew. There are now fewer dock workers also due to the pandemic, which has led to longer cargo handling times. At the same time, the pandemic has led to a surge in shipping demand as consumers go online and stay home, causing prices to surge. The Baltic Dry Index, a global indicator for bulk freight rates, stood at 4,304 points as of late September, the highest in 13 years. "At first, we expected that travel restriction will be lifted along with global vaccine rollout," said Ryo Ebihara, president of Trump Data Service, a maritime market research firm. "As long as there is no end to the restrictions in sight, the current tightening situation in the shipping market is likely to continue." On top of all those conditions, U.S. monetary easing has led to an influx of funds into commodity markets, said Tomomichi Akuta, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Research & Consulting. Benchmark oil prices have jumped 43% since the start of the year, while copper and nickel have risen 20% and 13% respectively, and coal is nearing an all-time high. In some commodities such as oil and coal, plans to reduce emissions will only tighten the markets more. "Shareholder pressure and the threat of future EV adoption is causing oil producers to dramatically reduce their capex plans," noted Andrew Sheets, chief cross-asset strategist at Morgan Stanley, adding that the development will limit supply and keep prices inflated. Akuta at Mitsubishi UFJ Research & Consulting said the focus on addressing climate change would mean an increase in demand for raw materials for electric vehicles and renewable energy and a fall in supply from industries that emit carbon dioxide. "The two sides of the impacts would mean higher commodity prices and the prices are more likely to stay in those level," Akuta said. The International Energy Agency has called on Russia to supply more natural gas to Europe to help alleviate soaring energy prices, CNN reports. The Paris-based group said in a statement that while Russia is fulfilling its long-term contracts to European customers, exports are down from their 2019 level. Russia is the European Union's largest supplier of natural gas. "The IEA believes that Russia could do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season," the energy watchdog said. "This is also an opportunity for Russia to underscore its credentials as a reliable supplier to the European market," it added. Established in 1974 by the world's richest economies in response to an oil embargo by major producers, the IEA monitors global supplies and the transition to sustainable energy sources. Gas prices have risen sharply across Europe as a result of depleted stocks, a strong recovery in demand, in particular from Asia, and low supplies from Russia. Other factors include a particularly cold and long heating season in Europe last winter, and lower wind energy in recent weeks, according to the IEA. Electricity prices are also soaring. In a statement to CNN Business, Gazprom (GZPFY), Russia's state-backed exporter of pipeline gas, said that the company has increased gas exports this year to a level "close to the historically recorded high," which was reached in 2018. "Gazprom supplies gas in accordance with the customers' requests in full compliance with the existing contractual obligations and seeks to satisfy the requests for additional supplies due to the available possibilities," it added. But the IEA said that the European gas market could face "further stress tests from unplanned outages and sharp cold spells, especially if they occur late in the winter." The surge in gas, coal and carbon prices in Europe have sent electricity prices to their highest levels in over a decade. In Germany and Spain, prices in September have been around three or four times the averages seen in in the past two years, according to the IEA. IEA executive director Fatih Birol said it would be "inaccurate and misleading" to blame the increase in natural gas prices on the clean energy transition. "Well-managed clean energy transitions are a solution to the issues that we are seeing in gas and electricity markets today not the cause of them," he added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with new British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for the first time, Russian Foreign Ministry announced on its website Thursday, adding Lavrov noted the lack of progress in solving problems on the track to restoration of a fully-fledged political dialogue between the two countries, TASS reports. "The top diplomats discussed the current state of the bilateral relations. The Russian side once again noted the lack of progress on solving problems that obstruct the restoration of a fully-fledged political dialogue, as well as Londons persistent unwillingness to build international ties based on equality and mutual respect of interests," the statement says. Lavrov particularly emphasized Londons persistent unwillingness to abolish provocative activities near Russian borders that pose a real threat to the regional security. He also called on London to embark on responsible cooperation and concrete action for creation of a positive agenda in bilateral cooperation. The ministers exchanged their opinions on a number of international and regional problems. 7,408,957 Kazakhstanis have so far been given the first jab of vaccine against the coronavirus infection, Kazinform cites the Telegram channel of the Interdepartmental Commission on prevention of the spread of COVID-19. Both jabs of anti-COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to 6,289,238 Kazakhstanis. Notably, the country has logged 2,693 cases of the coronavirus infection in the past 24 hours. 3,905 more Kazakhstanis have made full recoveries from the virus. A new round of Russian-American negotiations on strategic stability will take place next week in Geneva, US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said at the 21st Annual AmCham Business and Investment Conference in Russia, TASS reports. "The USA and Russia have engaged in several dialogues, the strategic-related dialogue," Sullivan said, referring to the new round of Russian-American negotiations to be held next week in Geneva. He stressed that the topic of cyberspace and a range of other issues will also be touched upon. Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, representing Moscow at these consultations, told TASS that the new round of negotiations will be held "in the last days of September". The first in-person round of Russian-US talks on strategic stability in 2021 was held in Geneva in July. Moscows delegation was headed by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, and the US one was led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Businesses from the Republic of Korea (RoK) poured over 2.43 billion USD into Vietnam in the first eight months of 2021, ranking third in terms of total registered capital after Singapore and Japan. According to the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, RoK firms invested in 251 new projects worth nearly 759 million USD and pumped an additional 1.18 trillion USD into 179 existing projects. Meanwhile, their capital contributions and share purchases reached 494.46 million USD. With 9,159 valid projects worth 72.34 billion USD, the RoK now is the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, the agency said. This proves that RoK businesses have great confidence in Vietnams investment environment, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign-Invested Enterprises Nguyen Van Toan told the Cong Thuong (Industry and Trade) newspaper. Despite the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of newly-registered and capital-added projects invested by Korean firms is still increasing. Nearly 60 Vietnamese localities nationwide have attracted investment from the RoK, led by the northern province of Bac Ninh with 957 projects worth 10.7 billion USD, accounting for 14.9 percent of the northeast Asian countrys total investment in Vietnam. The RoKs investment projects have been quickly disbursed, significantly contributing to socio-economic growth and development in the Southeast Asian country, Toan said. RoK firms projects mainly focus on the processing and manufacturing industry with 4,543 projects totaling 53.1 billion USD, making up 73.5 percent of the countrys investment total in Vietnam./. Source: VNA Dr Pham Van Phuc from the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases said that research shows that Covid-19 is less dangerous to children than adults and infected children have fewer complications. Children also have symptoms like adults, but few of them get severely ill. Recently, in countries witnessing strong outbreaks caused by Delta variant India and Indonesia the number of pediatric patients with severe progression and mortality has increased rapidly. And in southern provinces in Vietnam, especially in HCM City, children have become seriously ill and some have died. Phuc said the majority of children turning severe had underlying health conditions, such as congenital heart and lung disease, obesity, autoimmune diseases and or had an organ transplant. Also, infants less than one year old have high risk of turning severe because their immune system is not fully developed. Reports show relatively high numbers of children who turn severe in countries hit hard by Delta variant. However, we need to understand that when the numbers of Covid-19 cases in the community are high, the numbers of pediatric patients will also be high. And if there are more children infected with Covid-19, the number of seriously ill cases of this age will increase, Phuc explained. In Vietnam, infections in children were reported in previous outbreaks, but the figures were small and nearly no one turned severe. But during the fourth outbreak, as the number of infections is high, there are more infections among children, including seriously ill cases. Why not vaccinate children now? Parents have expressed concern about the possibility of their children getting infected with Covid-19 at school and want the children to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Most recently, 57 children in Thot Not district of Can Tho City received Pfizers Corminaty vaccine, the youngest is 12 years old, though the Ministry of Health (MOH) has not released guidance on vaccinating children aged below 18. The ministry on September 16 sent an urgent dispatch to local healthcare departments, asking them not to vaccinate children. If MOH finds it necessary to adjust the ages of people for vaccinations, it will release guidance later. Phuc said the proportion of seriously ill pediatric children is still much lower than adults. Amid short supply, vaccines should be reserved for people with high risks, including the elderly, people with underlying health conditions, and officers in the frontlines serving the fight against the pandemic and other priority groups. Only the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for children aged 12 and higher. The Ministry has a plan to buy millions of Pfizer vaccine doses to vaccinate children aged 12 and over in Vietnam. However, these vaccines have not arrived yet. Parents should not be too worried about vaccinations. When more Pfizer vaccines arrive, MOH will offer vaccinations for children, Phuc said. He said that while waiting for vaccinations for children aged 12 and over, parents should urge their children to practice the 5K (in Vietnamese: Khau trang facemask, Khu khuan disinfection, Khoang cach distance, Khong tu tap - no gathering, Khai bao y te - health declaration) principle. Meanwhile, adults who have contact with children regularly and take care of them also have to observe the principle and restrict going out to reduce the risks of transmitting the virus to children. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in August requested MOH and the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) vaccinate children so the new school year could begin safely. Meanwhile, Minister of MOH, at a conference in mid-September, Responding to the MOETs proposal on vaccinating high school students against Covid-19, said Vietnam prioritizes people aged from 18 because of the limited vaccine supply. When the country has more abundant vaccines, MOH will issue specific instructions on Covid-19 vaccination for people aged below 18. Nguyen Lien Details of two million COVID-19 shots not yet logged on vaccine portal The details of about two million shots of COVID-19 vaccines administered have not yet been logged on the national COVID-19 vaccination portal, as many people have complained of missing or erroneous vaccine records. Since the day Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh became the Head of the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control, there have been some fundamental changes made in the long march to fight the pandemic. Workers need to have tests First, Chinh allowed businesses to import vaccines, signing introduction documents for tens of businesses. Most recently, the encouragement of enterprises to import vaccines, buy equipment, machines, Covid-19 treatment drugs and materials for pandemic prevention and control, and the encouragement to produce vaccines and drugs domestically have been included in Resolution 105. This is a big step forward that calls on enterprises to join hands with the Government to fight the pandemic amid a global vaccine shortage, and as vaccine manufacturers only negotiate with Governments. As a result of the new policy, some businesses, including Van Thinh Phat, VNVC and Vimedimex, have recently brought millions of vaccine doses. Meanwhile, Vingroup has bought Covid-19 treatment drugs. Many enterprises have kicked off their vaccine and medicine production projects as per the spirit of the Resolution 105. With the spirit taking people as the root, the Prime Minister put forward a new policy turning every ward and commune into a fortress, and every person into a soldier in the battle against the pandemic. The worlds scientists affirm that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will last, so fighting the pandemic must be "the battle of the whole people", and "the people must be at the center" alongside with the Government to make prevention and control work effective, successful and sustainable. The Prime Ministers approach is consistent. In the newly released Resolution 105, he asked the Ministry of Health (MOH) to take one more step forward by issuing legal documents guiding enterprises, cooperatives and business households to buy biological and testing equipment, perform self-testing and recognize testing results in September. The move has met the expectations of many localities, enterprises and people. Many private medical establishments have been licensed to provide testing services after the removal of many obstacles. With the spirit taking people as the root, the Prime Minister put forward a new policy turning every ward and commune into a fortress, and every person into a soldier in the battle against the pandemic. Bac Giang has instructed its workers to do rapid antigen tests. HCM City has also allowed people to do tests themselves and use the testing results in pandemic prevention and control. No institution has been found trying to hide their health conditions and their workers. Cutting production costs The Logistics Enterprises Association complained that when vehicles from other provinces reach the Mong Cai international border gate in Quang Ninh province to deliver import/exports with China, drivers have to test three times, including two PCR and one rapid antigen tests. The regulation that drivers have to test three times for every shipment puts a heavy burden on enterprises and drivers in terms of financial conditions, operation and health. As drivers are required to have PCR test for the third time before leaving Mong Cai border gate area, they have to wait until late in the evening or early the next morning to get testing results, though they finished deliveries during the day. According to the estimates of 14 enterprise associations, the cost for a PCR test is VND700,000-800,000, or $35. As such, an enterprise with thousands of workers will have to pay billions of dong for every testing campaign. As a result, 14 associations have asked the Government to add the expenses on testing kits into the list of products subject to price stabilization, and to allow medical institutions to sell testing kits at competitive prices. This is believed to be one of the important solutions to force testing fees down, thus allowing people and enterprises to save money. Some analysts estimate that once the regulations in the Prime Ministers Resolution 105 are implemented, enterprises will be able to save 70 percent of testing costs. With 800,000 drivers transporting goods and millions of workers in key industrial production zones who have to have tests every three to five days, the policy will have special significance and it is no less valuable than any Covid-19 relief package the Government has launched so far. HCM City is considering allowing testing campaigns for workers with green cards to be implemented flexibly by institutions and business depending on their operations. As for workers with green cards (have at least one injection shot), it is advisable to arrange them to work in positions with lower risks. The workers need to have tests more regularly. Now more than ever, people and businesses need to be given the right to take initiative in fighting the pandemic and in doing tests. It would be better to sell testing kits at drugstores as other countries do to ease the burden on the Government. Tu Giang Hanoi ready to co-exist with COVID-19 pandemic Hanoi is ready to listen to recommendations and adjust plans for COVID-19 prevention and control as restrictions are eased in the capital city. On the first night of relaxed social distancing (September 21), which coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival, tens of thousands of people flocked to the streets to celebrate the festival. Many people did not meet the 5K regulations as recommended by the local authorities to prevent the epidemic. Dr. Nguyen Huy Nga, former director of the Department of Preventive Medicine (Ministry of Health), told VietNamNet this should not happen when the capital city has just re-opened and many people, including children, have not been vaccinated yet. "Hanoi should have waited until the Mid-Autumn Festival to decide to relax social distancing measures," he said. Dr. Nga said that Hanoi's health agency should strictly monitor epidemic situation from now until early October. According to Dr. Tran Dac Phu, former Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health, these actions are unacceptable, and risk affecting the overall good results that the city has achieved. People still need to maintain personal protection with the 5Ks (wear your masks, wash your hands, keep your distance, declare your health status, do not gather in groups), according to Dr. Phu. Dr Nguyen Thu Anh, director of the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Vietnam, expressed concern about the possibility of COVID-19 cases appearing after Tuesday night's crowd. The risk of infection is much greater as many families took their children to the street that night. Children are not vaccinated, so their risk of infection is very high, Anh said, adding that most people are only partly protected with one vaccine shot. VietNamNet captured crowded Hanoi streets on September 21 evening: browser not support iframe. From 6pm, thousands of people drove motorbikes to Hoan Kiem (Sword) Lake and Hang Ma Street (street for toys and decorative items) to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Hang Bai Street. Many people took their children to the street. Dinh Tien Hoang Street Trang Tien Street Hue Street. All roads in Hanoi centers were packed with vehicles. Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc Square Hang Ma Street. Many people ignored the rule on keeping distance from each other. Pham Hai Huong Quynh Nine component projects of the North-South Expressway Phase 2 will be invested in the form of public-private partnership (PPP), with total investment of about 124,619 billion VND (US$5.4 billion) during the 2021-2025 period. The Governments draft report seeks approval from the National Assembly for further investment in 9/12 component projects for the North-South Expressway from 2021 to 2025. According to the Government, the North-South expressway consists of 12 component projects with a total length of about 729 km and a total investment capital of 154,527 billion VND. Of which, about 73,495 billion VND comes from the state budget and about 81,032 billion VND from other sources. However, the Government says that due to limited state resources, if all 12 projects are implemented, funding for other national highway projects will be affected. Therefore, the Government proposes completing 9 of 12 component projects with a length of 552 km during 2021-2025, including: Hau Giang - Ca Mau, Can Tho - Hau Giang, Van Phong - Nha Trang, Chi Thanh - Van Phong, Quy Nhon - Chi Thanh, Hoai Nhon - Quy Nhon, Quang Ngai - Hoai Nhon, Van Ninh - Cam Lo. The three remaining component projects - Vung Ang - Bung, Bung - Van Ninh and Van Ninh - Cam Lo - site clearance and resettlement will be implemented in the period of 2021-2025, and construction will be conducted in 2026 - 2030. All nine component projects will be invested in the form of PPP (build-operate-transfer contract), with total capital of 124,619 billion VND, including 61,628 billion VND ($2.67 billion) from the state budget and 62,991 billion VND ($2.7 billion) of private capital. The North-South Expressway phase 2 has an average toll collection period of about 24.8 years. The three component projects of Quang Ngai - Hoai Nhon, Can Tho - Hau Giang, and Hau Giang - Ca Mau will have a toll collection period of 29-32 years. Vu Diep DEFENSE White House pushes back on efforts to restore program cuts in NDAA NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com. The White House is hoping to press House lawmakers to eliminate certain tech and personnel provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, which is being debated this week. In a policy statement issued Tuesday, the administration declared its opposition to the legislative restoration of funding to systems, "that limit DOD's ability to divest or retire lower priority platforms not relevant to tomorrow's battlefield." The administration also pushed back on a provision that establishes a minimum wage for Defense Department contractors because it is out of sync with an executive order that resets the minimum wage at $15. The administration noted that the legislative provision, "would lead to significant confusion by applying different requirements to many of the same contractors," who have contracts with DOD and civilian agencies. A proposal to create a Space National Guard was rebuffed. "Establishing a Space National Guard would not deliver new capabilities -- it would instead create new government bureaucracy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates could increase costs by up to $500 million annually." The administration feels the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units that are tasked with space missions can fulfill the roles envisioned for the Space National Guard. The administration also balked at several measures designed to support service members who don't wish to comply with the COVID-19 vaccination mandate. Protests push DOJ to rethink IT support contract A $117 million Justice Department contract is entering its third round after two sets of protests have pushed DOJ to rethink the solicitation. DOJ first awarded the contract to Hygeia Solutions Partners, a joint venture formed by six companies, to support the departments Executive Office of Immigration Review. ManTech International and NTT Data both filed protests with the Government Accountability Office. Justice agreed to re-evaluate the award so those protests were dismissed. But DOJ again selected Hygeia. That sparked another round of protests by ManTech and NTT Data. After seeing those protests, DOJ said it would cancel the award to Hygeia so it can make changes to the solicitation and then make new award. In other words, it is starting all over. The contract is being competed under the NIH CIO-SP3 contract. Hygeia was formed in 2012 by IntelliDyne, Govplace, ERT and Argentys Informatics. In 2020 it added Geocent and sometime later it added IPRO. Customers it has captured over the years include NIH, where it provides IT support services to the Division of Physical Security Management, and DOJ where it supports the Justice Consolidated Office Network. Peraton carves out ViON's as-a-service business Peraton has made its first acquisition since the series of mega-mergers saw the company go from $1 billion in revenue to $7 billion by adding Northrop Grummans IT business and folding in all of Perspecta. The deal announced this week for ViONs as-a-service business doesnt reach near that scale. The value of the transaction was not disclosed. But Peraton is adding a stable of capabilities to its cloud services business. ViON says it has over 25 IT-as-a-service offerings for federal and state government customers. One example from its website is artificial intelligence as-a-service. Some of the AI offerings that customers can buy as a service include speech recognition, data analysis, decision-making, visual perception and language translation. In the deal announcement, Peraton officials said the ViON business brings leaders, cleared employees, and contracts across the U.S. Department of Defense, civilian agencies, and state governments. The added capabilities will help Peraton meet the demand for IT infrastructure-as-a-service in areas such as storage, computing, and network capacity. Every day we undertake missions of consequence for our government customers, and that requires regularly adding skillsets and solutions, says Stu Shea, Peratons chairman, president, and CEO. Macquarie Capital acted as financial adviser to Peraton, while Houlihan Lokey acted in a similar capacity for ViON. Milbank LLP and Covington & Burling LLP served as legal counsel to Peraton. The two defining moments of the historic 20th anniversary Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan had to come from the keynote speeches of who else the leaders of the Russia-China strategic partnership.Xi Jinping: Today we will launch procedures to admit Iran as a full member of the SCO.Vladimir Putin: I would like to highlight the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed today between the SCO Secretariat and the Eurasian Economic Commission. It is clearly designed to further Russias idea of establishing a Greater Eurasia Partnership covering the SCO, the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Chinas Belt and Road initiative (BRI).In short, over the weekend, Iran was enshrined in its rightful, prime Eurasian role, and all Eurasian integration paths converged toward a new global geopolitical and geoeconomic paradigm, with a sonic boom bound to echo for the rest of the century. 2021 Annual Report Brisbane, Sep 23, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Having safely and seamlessly delivered Senex Energy Limited's ( ASX:SXY ) ( FRA:UDB ) ( OTCMKTS:VPTOF ) initial $400 million Surat Basin natural gas development projects in 2020, we more than doubled production and tripled EBITDA in 2021. We have strengthened our balance sheet, with more than $100 million in cash reserves, and we are generating significant free cashflow to pursue our production target of 60 petajoules equivalent (PJe) per year by the end of 2025.We are already well on our way to that target, having announced expansion projects at Roma North last October and at Atlas just after the end of the financial year, which will deliver material production growth in the year ahead.Underpinning decades of future production are our increased 2P and 3P reserves - 767 PJ and 1,016 PJ respectively - that highlight the intrinsic value of our portfolio. To put this into perspective, our 2P reserves represent more than six months of all energy consumed by each and every Australian household.The sale of our Cooper Basin business reinforced Senex's balance sheet and cashflow resilience; funded plans to accelerate the development of our low-cost, low-carbon, high-return business; and enabled the payment of our very first dividends to shareholders - a momentous achievement.We followed the 4 cents per share special dividend and 4 cents per share ordinary dividend with a full-year dividend of 5 cents per share, taking total dividends to 13 cents per share.These inaugural dividends were a significant achievement that we've been working hard towards for many years. Ordinary dividend payments reflected a dividend yield of 2.8 per cent, in line with our dividend policy of targeting a 20-30 per cent payout of free cashflow per year.It is an exciting time at Senex as we pursue our refreshed strategy, focused on delivery of our low-cost, low-carbon, high-return and long-life natural gas assets. Looking ahead, we will focus on ambitious gas marketing and trading, and progressive electrification and decarbonisation of our business in collaboration with our customers.We have extensive natural gas reserves with material uncontracted volumes to develop for a materially tightening southern gas market.Our hub-and-spoke infrastructure operating model is in place and is scalable to support future exploration, appraisal and development activity as we drive towards our 60 PJe/year by the end of FY25.We have a compelling business and the experienced team to deliver our strategy. We look forward to your continued support in 2022.TREVOR BOURNEChairmanIAN DAVIESManaging Director and Chief Executive OfficerTo view the Annual Report, please visit:About Senex Energy Limited Senex Energy Ltd (ASX:SXY) (OTCMKTS:VPTOF) (FRA:UDB) is an established, rapidly growing and low-carbon Australian natural gas producer. Our long life Surat Basin assets contribute around 20 petajoules of natural gas per year into the east coast gas market to support our customers. Senex is focused on sustainably delivering balance sheet strength, resilient cashflows, growing dividends to support Australia's energy needs as it transitions to a lower carbon future. AAT to sell Airlie PropertiesTour Sydney, Sep 23, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Adventure Tourism Group Limited ( NSX:AAT ) was listed on National Stock Exchange of Australia Ltd (NSX) on 17 September 2017, contemporaneously with its demerger from Trustees Australia Limited, its listed holding entity since 1988. Under its former name of Queensland Resorts Pty Ltd, the Company owned and continuously operated the Magnums property assets and businesses at Airlie Beach on the Whitsundays mainland since 1988.During that 33+year period, the Company also developed and facilitated others to develop much of the original site with a major local hotel, a shopping centre, a very successful Woolworths supermarket, and contributed land to facilitate the construction of the Waterson Way loop road, which opened up the hillside overlooking the Airlie Beach township and Coral Sea for premium residential accommodation.The remaining Magnums properties, comprising approximately 1.73 Hectares, makes up a significant proportion of the established Town Centre of Airlie Beach and is within 100 metres proximity to the foreshore of Airlie Bay and Coral Sea waterways. The Magnums properties are well positioned for high-density redevelopment to lead to a new expansion of the tourism and residential development potential of Airlie Beach as the Mainland tourism hub of the Whitsundays complementing the renowned Whitsunday Islands. Reliable market reports strongly indicate that real estate markets are reflecting strong buyer demand for prime and unique development property assets in the iconic Australian tourism and hospitality regions. The Magnums properties clearly fit that category.AAT Group will offer the iconic Magnums Properties for sale to prospective developers with interest in further developing its extensive tourism potential (via property agents Place Project's specialist and long-term former Airlie Beach resident and Property Agent, Mr Bruce Goddard) and the Company is prepared to provide an interim sale and lease-back or management arrangement for the existing property and business after a purchase completion.The AAT Group Board also has a strong future focus on bringing the Whitsunday Skyway Project to fruition.Whitsunday Skyway ProjectAs disclosed to shareholders, during the last 2-3 years, AAT Group has also been actively pursuing regulatory approval for the Whitsunday Skyway Project. This is the prospective development of a gondola cableway from the central Airlie Beach to the top of the nearby 430metre high un-named peak overlooking Airlie Beach and the Airlie Town Centre with panoramic vistas of the Whitsundays waterways and to adjacent islands.Whitsunday Skyway Project is a unique opportunity to accelerate the tourism appeal of the Whitsunday mainland by providing new and extensive tourism opportunities that will act as a significant drawcard to increase and diversify mainland tourism and materially increase visitor numbers.In October 2020 the Queensland Premier Hon Annastacia Palaszczuk MP publicly announced her Government's strong support for the Whitsunday Skyway Project and advised the Project's Engagement with the Queensland Government under its Exclusive transactions Framework.The Premier was quoted in a Queensland Government press release at the time that "Australian Adventure Tourism Group's Whitsundays Skyway cableway and ecotourism adventure proposal had the potential to support hundreds of jobs and create a brand-new tourism experience for the Whitsundays"."The Whitsundays is an iconic Queensland destination and with one in three jobs relying on tourism the region has been hit hard by COVID-19 and Tropical Cyclone Debbie in 2017," Ms Palaszczuk said."The region's attractions are heavily based on its stunning maritime environment however, a key priority for the local tourism industry is to diversify the region's offering to include more land-based experiences."The AAT Board has given extensive consideration to the decisions disclosed in this release and strongly believe these actions are very positive for the future of the Group and will facilitate its growth in assets and earnings.About Australian Adventure Tourism Group Limited Listed on the National Stock Exchange of Australia. Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal Cannon Air Force Base is starting work with nearby landowners to test their water and soil for a group of chemicals known as PFAS. Tests will help the military determine where an underground contamination plume migrated off the base. But complex federal legal requirements have made the cleanup process of toxic chemicals that leaked into the Ogallala Aquifer frustratingly slow, Clovis dairy farmers and residents told Cannon officials last week. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, leaked into the ground from firefighting foam used in military training exercises. Similar problems have been reported at military bases and industrial sites across the country. John Kern, director of the community group Clean Water Partnership at Cannon, said he is concerned that a short-term water treatment solution will not be operational until 2023. Much of the community considers that to be a woefully inadequate response to the problem, Kern said during Cannons quarterly virtual public meeting about PFAS last week. Chris Segura with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center said the $16.6 million on-base project of three wells and a filtration system is a necessary step. This is bounded by law, Segura said. Flexibility and our agility to be able to manage this under a different framework just is not there. So our hands are tied. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency links PFAS to cancers and low birth weights. Col. Terence Taylor, who became commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon in June, said he understands that Department of Defense project timelines dont always match up with the urgency the community wants. My family lives here on the installation, as well as over 500 military families, Taylor said. Were all interested in ensuring that we have clean, consumable water for the health and well-being of everyone. We are not looking for ways to halt progress. In fact, were trying to speed things up as best we can. The toxic plume spread in the aquifer from Cannons southeast corner. Art Schaap at nearby Highland Dairy euthanized at least 1,000 cows because of PFAS in the animals meat and milk. I know that you guys are going to get to the bottom of this, and were going to get to a resolution here someday, Schaap said. Im just wondering why we dont just have filters on all those contaminated wells that are being used right now to feed our animals, to water our crops, our homes. Weve had to pay for all that ourselves. Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE For many New Mexico students, getting caught up on pandemic-related learning losses could be a yearslong struggle. A report presented Wednesday to a key legislative panel said public school students have lost the equivalent of between 10 and 60 days of instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That could make some students fall even further behind academically and could take years to make up, even with summer school and more school days, legislative analysts said. Vera Trujillo, acting superintendent of Espanola Public Schools, said some students in the northern New Mexico district do not have internet access at home and had to use public WiFi hotspots to participate in remote learning while schools were closed last year. We certainly have some loss, not only academically, but also in the social/emotional realm, Trujillo said in a Wednesday interview. She also said Espanola schools have added 10 days to the current school year calendar five at the start of the year and five at the end but acknowledged that additional steps might be necessary. I believe were not going to be out of this any time soon and were going to have to be creative, Trujillo told the Journal. There are no bad ideas any more. While New Mexico received a federal waiver from statewide standardized testing last year, academic proficiency for younger elementary school students dropped from 37% at the end of the 2018-19 school year to 31% at the end of the 2020-21 school year, according to the report presented Wednesday to the Legislative Finance Committee. In addition, a survey of New Mexico teachers found 72%believed their students learned less during the 2020-21 academic year than during a typical year, compared to just 3% who said their students learned more. The learning loss, which previous studies have equated to roughly half a school year for some students, could renew a debate at the Roundhouse about whether to mandate additional school days in the coming years. An extended learning time program for the current school year was approved by the Legislature this year, but made voluntary and 43 of the states 89 school districts ultimately opted not to participate, according to the LFC. In addition, some districts did not provide a plan to otherwise target lost instructional time, despite being required by state law. Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, a retired teacher, warned that requiring educators to teach extra days could exacerbate an existing statewide teacher shortage. I think it was the right thing not to mandate for last year, Kernan said. However, Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, said requiring additional school days could be the only way to turn around New Mexicos chronically low ranking in national education studies. Its about time that we have some leadership at (the Public Education Department), Munoz said, while acknowledging the state will have to address issues of teacher burnout and resistance. Public Education Secretary-designate Kurt Steinhaus said during Wednesdays hearing at the state Capitol that studies have shown incentives work better than mandates when it comes to getting buy-in for a longer school year, but added the state needs to find additional time for high-quality learning. The debate over remedying pandemic learning loss comes after a landmark court ruling in 2018 that found New Mexico was not meeting its constitutional requirement to provide an adequate education to all students. Much of the case focused on students who are English language learners, Native American or from low-income families. One program touted by legislative analysts as an effective response to the court ruling is K-5 Plus, which extends the school year by 25 days for elementary students in low-income districts. But LFC data suggests few schools are participating in the program with some citing teacher exhaustion and just 7% of the student slots funded by the state are filled. Going forward, the legislative report recommended lawmakers consider requiring K-5 Plus and mandating other types of extended learning time for all districts and charter schools. Steinhaus, who was appointed as the states top education official in July by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, acknowledged record-high funding for public schools in this years $7.4 billion budget and vowed his agency and school officials around New Mexico will work diligently to try and get students caught up. Youve done your job and now its our time to do our job, Steinhaus said. Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE An uptick in the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations last week helped carry New Mexico to a new milestone Wednesday a 70.0% vaccination rate among adults. The state hit the mark after seeing its strongest seven-day period of growth in vaccines administered since late August, according to Department of Health data. New Mexico leads the region in adult vaccine doses administered per person and ranks fifth in the country among states. In a public briefing, Deputy Health Secretary Laura Parajon called the 70% figure an incredible milestone as New Mexico combats the late-summer surge in cases. Vaccination is our best way out of this pandemic, she said. Parajon and her colleagues also shared some grim news, reporting 19 more COVID-19 fatalities. Deaths are continuing to increase, they said, following the surge in cases fueled by the highly contagious delta variant. Acting Health Secretary David Scrase also said two patients died in New Mexico hospitals from overdoses of ivermectin, the anti-parasite drug that isnt authorized for COVID-19 treatment. He said he wasnt sure where the patients got the drug. But they were taking it, Scrase said, in lieu of federally approved treatments such as remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies that have proven to be effective. The state Poison Control Center has taken 17 calls this year about ivermectin exposure 14 of them since Aug. 6, according to the Department of Health. The uptick in vaccinations, meanwhile, comes as New Mexico imposes a mandate on hospital workers, and more employers require employees to get the shots. Parajon shared data showing the number of vaccine doses administered in the week ending Sept. 17 grew faster than in any week since Aug. 27. New Mexico has administered 156,576 doses for adults per 100,000 people a higher rate than any state but Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1.1 million adults in New Mexico have completed the COVID-19 vaccine series, or 70.0% of adult population. My deepest thanks to every New Mexican who has prioritized their health and the health of their community, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tweeted Wednesday. About 53.3% of New Mexicans 12 to 17 years old have completed their COVID-19 shots. Parajon said the vaccine could be approved for children 5 to 11 by Halloween. State Epidemiologist Christine Ross said New Mexico is seeing signs of a plateau or small decline in new cases, following a surge in late summer. But new cases are not sloping downward the last few days, Scrase said. Were still concerned about our hospitals. Transmission of COVID-19 remains high in 29 of 33 counties in New Mexico, Ross said, based on a Department of Health analysis. Los Alamos is classified as having moderate transmission, the lowest level in the state. Three counties Santa Fe, Harding and Catron have substantial transmission, the category between moderate and high. Overall, New Mexico reported 719 new cases of the disease on Wednesday and 19 deaths six of them adults from Bernalillo County. The official COVID-19 death toll is 4,719 state residents. In a recent four-week period, people who werent fully vaccinated made up 86% of the COVID-19 deaths, 87% of the hospitalizations and 78% of the cases, according to report by the Department of Health. Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have fallen 4% over the last week from 375 a week ago to 359 on Wednesday. Online For the latest news on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on New Mexico, go to ABQJournal.com/coronavirus. Its always pretty cool when they have one of those all-star, multigenerational sessions at the Kennedy Center Honors or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony or the Grammys, with pop/rock/soul pioneers from the 1960s and 1970s jamming with musicians half their age. They come from different generations and different worlds, but what they have in common is a love for what they do and of course they can all play. We get the acting equivalent of that in the 10-part Hulu comedy/drama crime series Only Murders in the Building, a whip-smart and wryly observational gem starring longtime amigos and frequent collaborators, the 76-year-old Steve Martin and the 71-year-old Martin Short, who are as sharp and funny and brilliant as wed expect them to be. The two comedic legends are joined by Selena Gomez in what turns out to be inspired casting. The 29-year-old Gomez is a true co-star in the series and does a superb job of meshing with Martin and Short to form one of the more entertaining albeit unlikely friendship trios in recent memory. Theyre just a ball to watch together. The tone is set for Only Murders in the opening credits sequence, which looks like a series of New Yorker covers turned to animation. Martin (who co-created the series with John Hoffman) plays Charles Hayden-Savage, who had a long and lucrative run as Detective Brazzos on a TV crime show in the 1990s but hasnt worked much since. Short is Oliver Putnam, a pompous theater director who had some hits back in the day but is best known for his notorious flop, Splash! The Musical, which had a disastrous opening when the hydraulics designed to open the stage and reveal a gigantic swimming pool failed and the unwitting chorus dancers wound up landing with one splat after another on the stage. (Chorus dancers tend to blindly follow one another, Oliver notes.) Gomez is Mabel, a quirky loner who is haunted by her past. They all live in the Arconia, a posh Manhattan co-op, but they dont really know one another until a fire alarm evacuates the building and they wind up sitting at the same table in a restaurant across the street and all three turn out to be huge fans of the sensational hit true-crime podcast All Is Not OK in Oklahoma (the host is played by Tina Fey in a fantastic extended cameo). When its revealed a young man named Tim Kono has been found shot dead in his apartment in the Arconia, the police quickly rule it a suicide but Charles, Oliver and Mabel think it could be murder, and they decide to team up to investigate the crime, and, of course, chronicle their adventures in their very own podcast. Let the high jinks begin, with twists and turns around every corner. Mabel is the best investigator of the bunch, coming up with some great clues and key pieces of evidence, while Oliver is more concerned with reviving his career as the producer of the podcast, with Charles as the narrator and Oliver giving him notes such as, (This sounds) like a Ken Burns documentary on the history of boredom. Meanwhile, the Arconia is filled with colorful characters who might also be suspects, including Sting in a wonderfully self-effacing turn as, well, Sting; Nathan Lane as a chicken-wrap mogul who has bankrolled a number of Olivers stage productions and is now the sponsor of the podcast, and Amy Ryan as a bassoonist and possible love interest for Charles, who has been alone for many years. The title of the series comes from an exchange when its learned theres been a murder in the park and perhaps the podcast should expand to include that crime, but the trio decides the series must be about only murders in the building. That kind of deadpan humor runs throughout the series, but there are also moments of genuine emotion and heart, as we learn the backstories of all three main characters. True, they didnt meet under the best circumstances, but these were three lonely souls who found each other at just the right time and now theyre podcast buddies, and maybe even crime-solvers as well. Copyright 2021 Albuquerque Journal The 2021 school year has brought a host of challenges for Albuquerque Public Schools as students and staff transition from nearly two years of online learning back into the classroom. But while issues around staffing shortages and masking remain, New Mexicos largest school district is also having to contend with increased violence and vandalism. In a letter posted to the APS website last week, Superintendent Scott Elder wrote that the pandemic has exacerbated normal mental health and behavioral challenges resulting in an uptick of violence at schools. There is no evidence or research yet to explain some of the discipline issues were experiencing in our schools, he wrote in the letter. Still, we believe the rise in violence and unacceptable behavior posted to social media and reported in the news can be attributed to school closures and strains at home like unemployment, illness, and other hardships so many are facing due to the pandemic. He said normal issues like arguments, fights, vandalism and inappropriate use of social media have surged since returning to the classroom. The district has dealt with two high-profile shootings including a fatal shooting at Washington Middle School since the semester began in early August. Both shootings resulted in students being charged. Elder said some of the issues are due to developmental struggles caused by limited access to peers. All students lost more than a year of socialization and growth skills, he wrote in an email. We also have students who rely on specialized counseling services that were hard to deliver during the pandemic, so they have been impacted. Some of the increased vandalism can be traced to an online social media trend, APS School Board President David Peercy said. The viral Devious Licks TikTok challenge, which began several weeks ago, has inspired students across the country to steal items like fire extinguishers and soap dispensers from schools or to vandalize restrooms. The antics are then recorded and posted on TikTok, a popular video sharing app. Peercy said that most, if not all, high schools in APS have been vandalized as a result of the challenge, as have some middle schools. TikTok has since announced that it will ban posts related to the challenge. Peercy said the rise in vandalism and violence is not isolated to just APS, but is instead part of a national trend. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is renewing a push to expand a U.S. compensation program for people who were exposed to radiation due to uranium mining and nuclear testing as America developed its nuclear arsenal. Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico, where the U.S. military detonated the first atomic bomb, and on the Navajo Nation, where more than 30 million tons of uranium ore was extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities. Under legislation introduced Wednesday by U.S. Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico, and Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, other sites across the West would be added to the list of places affected by fallout and radiation exposure. Eligibility also would be expanded to include certain workers in the industry after 1971, such as miners. The legislation also would increase the amount of compensation someone can receive to $150,000 and provide coverage for additional forms of cancer. A multibillion-dollar defense spending package approved last year included an apology to New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and other states affected by radiation from nuclear testing, but no action was taken on legislation that sought to broaden the compensation program. Advocates, including those who testified before Congress earlier this year, say its time to do so, especially because the existing provisions are scheduled to expire next July. The legislation would extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, another 19 years. Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said she has been working on the legislation for months with other residents of places affected by radiation, from Indigenous communities in New Mexico to Guam. We put forth language to make certain the bill went far enough to help as many people as possible, she said. This is a make-or-break time for all the downwinders and post-71 uranium workers that have been left out of the original RECA bill. Although efforts to expand the program have been years in the making, advocates say there is broader interest now because more people stand to lose access to compensation funds if the law expires. They also acknowledge that some members of Congress might argue that theres not enough money to bankroll the proposal. We wont settle for that answer any longer. Imagine the insult added to our injury of such a statement, Cordova said. There is always money when theres political will. This is a social, environmental and restorative justice issue that we, as a nation, can no longer look away from. On the Navajo Nation, uranium mining has left a legacy of death, disease and environmental contamination. That includes the largest spill of radioactive material in the United States, in which 94 million gallons of radioactive tailings and wastewater spewed onto tribal lands in the Church Rock area in western New Mexico in 1979. It happened just three months after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which got far more attention at the time. With hundreds of abandoned uranium mines and radioactive waste still to be cleaned up, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said residents of the nations largest Indigenous reservation have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation for years and have endured a wide range of illnesses as a result, with some dying prematurely. Nez called an expansion of the program and extension of the trust fund a matter of justice. We look forward to advocating for the advancement of this legislation and to encourage consideration of additional provisions that would advance the objectives of justice and fairness represented by this bill, he said. Democratic U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico is helping lead the push in the House. House Republicans who are co-sponsoring include Reps. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico and Burgess Owens of Utah. For Sen. Lujan, the fight for compensation started in 2010, when he was a congressman. While there can never be a price placed on ones health or the life of a loved one, Congress has an opportunity to do right by all of those who sacrificed in service of our national security by strengthening RECA, he said in a statement. DEL RIO, Texas Haitian migrants milled around makeshift shelters held up with giant reeds, as wind blew dust through the camp littered with plastic bottles and overflowing trash bags. Some migrants sat on plastic paint cans or the ground while others hung clothes to dry on the bamboo-like carrizo cane. All waited to learn their fate at a dramatically diminished Texas border encampment where almost 15,000 migrants had gathered just days ago under a bridge between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. About 4,000 remained on Thursday, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The number had peaked on Saturday, as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administrations policies and misinformation on social media converged at the crossing. But the United States and Mexico appeared eager to end the increasingly politicized humanitarian situation that prompted the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti and fresh condemnation from civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and UNICEF. DHS officials said about 1,400 migrants had been sent to Haiti on 13 flights, rapidly expelled under the pandemic public health authority known as Title 42. Another 3,200 were in U.S. custody and being processed, while several thousand have returned to Mexico, DHS officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief journalists about an ongoing operation. Mexicos immigration agency had estimated late Wednesday there were as many as 600 migrants in Ciudad Acuna. The riverside camp appeared to hold that many at its peak, while other migrants were scattered through the city in hotels and private homes. A city official said Wednesday that Mexican authorities had removed about 250 Haitian migrants from the city since Sunday evening. Still, several thousand migrants returning to Mexico from the Del Rio camp seemed an exaggeration. Haitians camped in Mexico awoke Thursday surrounded by security forces, with a helicopter thundering overhead and state police trucks spaced every 30 feet or so between their tents and the waters edge. After anxious minutes of indecision, dozens of families hurried into the river to cross at a point where there was only one municipal police vehicle, calculating it was better to take their chances with U.S. authorities. Guileme Paterson, a 36-year-old from Haiti, appeared dazed. It is a difficult moment, she said before beginning to cross the Rio Grande with her husband and their four children. Things are going badly, said Michou Petion, carrying her 2-year-old son in her arms toward the river. Her husband carried bags of belongings and several pairs of sneakers dangled around his neck. The U.S. is deporting a lot to Haiti, now I dont know if I can enter or leave, Petion said. Texas Department of Public Safety officials allowed journalists to visit the camp later Thursday but prevented them from talking to migrants. For those who remained, food, shelter and medical care was being provided to those who need it, U.S. officials said. At one point, two men riding in an ATV emblazoned with Homeland Security approached a group of women holding infants and said in Spanish: We have food for the baby. The women approached the men, who handed them a small container. A low dam that had been used to cross from Mexico into the U.S. was closed, and a worker picked up mounds of discarded belongings that included cellphone chargers, clothing and Styrofoam containers. Sharpton said Thursday that he toured the camp and witnessed a real catastrophic and human disgrace. A handful of protesters, some wearing camouflage hats from former President Donald Trumps 2020 campaign, shouted through the entirety of Sharptons remarks. Del Rio is not a racist city. Del Rio is a loving, caring community, one protester yelled while Sharpton spoke to reporters. Sharpton vowed to continue to come back and stand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner. Some Haitians are being allowed to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily to seek asylum or to stay under some other claim to residency, with notices to appear later before immigration authorities. DHS officials declined to specify the number but said they are people with particular vulnerabilities, which can mean they have young children or are pregnant, or because the U.S. doesnt have capacity to hold them in detention, especially during the pandemic. There are no plans to stop expelling other migrants under Title 42, despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago. The provision was put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the Biden administration has used Title 42 to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants. A federal judge late last week ruled the regulation was improper and gave the government two weeks to halt its use, but the Biden administration on Monday appealed the decision. Officials said Thursday that the U.S. State Department also is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided in those countries to return, but the issue is complicated because some no longer have legal status there. Meanwhile, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the inhumane large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants. Foote, who was appointed only in July, wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was stepping down immediately with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life, he wrote. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own. The career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti. State Department spokesman Ned Price disputed Footes assertions, saying his proposals had been fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process. Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false, Price said. UNICEF also condemned the expulsions, saying initial estimates show more than two out of three migrants expelled to Haiti are women and children, including newborns, and about 40% in Del Rio are children. Haiti is reeling from the triple tragedy of natural disasters, gang violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, said Henrietta Fore, UNICEFs executive director, who said those sent back without adequate protection find themselves even more vulnerable to violence, poverty and displacement factors that drove them to migrate in the first place. DHS officials said about two-thirds of those under the bridge are families and the rest are single adults. But even as the number of Haitian migrants gathered in Del Rio dwindled, a few groups of Cubans were seen walking along a dirt road toward the camp at the bridge on Thursday. As a group of three men approached, a DPS officer yelled out, We got migrants! One of the men said in Spanish: Were here. We made it to the country of liberty. __ Verza reported from Ciudad Acuna. AP journalists Julio Cortez in Del Rio, Texas, Joshua Goodman in Miami, Matthew Lee in New York, Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this story. BEIRUT There was a time not long ago when uprisings and wars in the Arab world topped the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York. With most of those conflicts in a stalemate, the worlds focus has shifted to more daunting global challenges such as the still raging coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as new crises in Ethiopias embattled Tigray region and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. But the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated significantly in more countries and in more ways in the last two years. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are teetering on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe, with skyrocketing poverty and an economic implosion that threatens to throw the region into even deeper turmoil. The regions been crowded out by other global crises, but theres also a sense of Western hopelessness after so many years of crisis, said Julien Barnes-Dacey, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. After more than a decade of bloodshed and turmoil sparked by Arab Spring uprisings and an Islamic State group onslaught, most of the regions Arab countries have settled into a military stalemate or frozen conflict, accompanied by worsening economies, rising poverty rates and heavier repression. In Yemen, an ongoing six-year-war has spawned the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, leaving the country on the brink of famine. The head of the U.N. food agency warned Wednesday that 16 million people there are marching towards starvation. Libya, torn apart for years by rival militias backed by foreign governments, is struggling to find unity. From its shores, more and more desperate people risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, once countries that made up the cultural heart of the Middle East, are all witnessing a significant economic unravelling, spurred among other things by corruption and political leaders focused on preserving their own interests rather than meeting their peoples basic needs. The most shocking fall in the past two years has been Lebanon, a tiny, multi-religious nation on the eastern Mediterranean with the highest per capita proportion of refugees in the world. The country has been in freefall since a financial crisis began in late 2019, plunging about three quarters of the population into poverty in the past months and triggering a brain drain not seen since the 1975-90 civil war days. That has been accelerated by the massive explosion at the port of Beirut in August 2020 that killed more than 200 people and destroyed parts of the city. Long proud of their entrepreneurial skills, Lebanese now struggle to get electricity, fuel or medicine, and most households can hardly scrape together enough for their next meal. If youre a Lebanese civilian, there is probably more likelihood to die from medicine shortages in 2021 than there was from a bullet in the 1970s and 1980s, said Joyce Karam, a Lebanese journalist and adjunct professor of political science at George Washington University. The economic devastation is eating at the pillars of the state in a way that is getting to a point of becoming irreversible. A complete collapse in Lebanon could send a new wave of refugees to Europe. In Iraq, gripped by poverty, poor infrastructure and an unresolved displacement issue, desperation could lead to renewed violence. Also getting little traction so far this year is this summers 11-day Gaza War, the latest round of fighting between Israel and the Hamas militant group that rules the territory. More than 4,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged and 250 people killed, most of them civilians. Thirteen people died in Israel. How many more homes will be lost? How many more children will die before the world wakes up? Jordans King Abdullah said in pre-recorded remarks to the U.N. General Assembly. While many U.N. General Assembly gatherings in the past 10 years were characterized by a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a political solution for crises in Mideast countries, none of them are expected to feature prominently, if at all, in this years meetings in New York. Western actors feel out of ideas and energy in terms of focusing high-level attention on putting the region on a better track, particularly given wider global challenges, Barnes-Dacey said. A combination of war weariness, donor fatigue and a long list of other world problems has forced Syria, Yemen and other Mideast conflicts into a back seat, with world leaders seemingly resigned to live with wrecked and divided nations for the foreseeable future. In his first address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, President Joe Biden did not mention the Arab worlds festering crises, focusing instead on global issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, tensions with China and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Karam, the Lebanese journalist, said the Biden team has its hands full between COVID-19, exiting Afghanistan and pivoting to Asia. But theyre running the risk of letting these crises fester and being forced to step in later when they become out of control or a threat to U.S. interests, she said. Still, analysts say neither Europe nor the West can afford to ignore the economic implosion happening in the Middle East. For Europe, having much of its eastern and southern border turning into one huge arc of crisis is first of all a lost opportunity of staggering magnitude, said Heiko Wimmen, project director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon at the International Crisis Group. He said destabilization will project itself into Europe and, to a lesser degree because of the distance, the U.S., by fueling desperation, migration and instability and at the same time giving momentum and credibility for far right ideological tendencies. He said while the U.S. may want to extract itself from the region, the Europeans dont have this luxury. You cant be safe if your neighbors house is on fire, Wimmen said. UNITED NATIONS Be realistic. Show patience. Engage. And above all, dont isolate. Those are the pillars of an approach emerging in Pakistan to deal with the fledgling government that is suddenly running the country next door once again Afghanistans resurgent, often-volatile Taliban. Pakistans government is proposing that the international community develop a road map that leads to diplomatic recognition of the Taliban with incentives if they fulfill its requirements and then sit down face to face and talk it out with the militias leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi outlined the idea Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assemblys meeting of world leaders. If they live up to those expectations, they would make it easier for themselves, they will get acceptability, which is required for recognition, Qureshi told the AP. At the same time, the international community has to realize: Whats the alternative? What are the options? This is the reality, and can they turn away from this reality? He said Pakistan is in sync with the international community in wanting to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan with no space for terrorist elements to increase their foothold, and for the Taliban to ensure that Afghan soil is never used again against any country. But we are saying, be more realistic in your approach, Qureshi said. Try an innovative way of engaging with them. The way that they were being dealt with has not worked. Expectations from the Taliban leadership could include an inclusive government and assurances for human rights, especially for women and girls, Qureshi said. In turn, he said, the Afghan government might be motivated by receiving development, economic and reconstruction aid to help recover from decades of war. He urged the United States, the International Monetary Fund and other countries that have frozen Afghan government funds to immediately release the money so it can be used for promoting normalcy in Afghanistan. And he pledged that Pakistan is ready to play a constructive, positive role in opening communications channels with the Taliban because it, too, benefits from peace and stability. This is the second time that the Taliban, who adhere to a strict version of Islam, have ruled Afghanistan. The first time, from 1996 to 2001, ended when they were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the 9/11 attacks, which were directed by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan. During that rule, Taliban leaders and police barred girls from school and prohibited women from working outside the home or leaving it without a male escort. After they were overthrown, Afghan women still faced challenges in the male-dominated society but increasingly stepped into powerful positions in government and numerous fields. But when the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan last month, the government collapsed and a new generation of the Taliban resurged, taking over almost immediately. In the weeks since, many countries have expressed disappointment that the Talibans interim government is not inclusive as its spokesman had promised. While the new government has allowed young girls to attend school, it has not yet allowed older girls to return to secondary school, and most women to return to work despite a promise in April that women can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab. The challenges ahead were evident Thursday, when one of the founders of the Taliban said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who was the chief enforcer of the Talibans harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan, dismissed outrage over the Talibans executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium. He warned the world against interfering with their rule. Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments, Turabi told The Associated Press, speaking in Kabul. No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran. Pakistan, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has a long and sometimes conflicted relationship with its neighbor that includes attempts to prevent terrorism there and, some say, also encouraging it. The Islamabad government has a fundamental vested interest in ensuring that whatever the new Afghanistan offers, it is not a threat to Pakistan. That, Qureshi says, requires a steady and calibrated approach. It has to be a realistic assessment, a pragmatic view on both sides, and that will set the tone for recognition eventually, the Pakistani minister said. The good news, he said: The Taliban are listening, and they are not insensitive to what is being said by neighbors and the international community. How does he know theyre listening? He says the interim government, drawn mostly from Afghanistans dominant Pashtun ethnic group, made some additions on Tuesday. It added representatives from the countrys ethnic minorities Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are Shiite Muslims in the majority Sunni Muslim country. Yes, there are no women yet, Qureshi said. But let us let the situation evolve. He stressed that the Taliban must make decisions in coming days and weeks that will enhance their acceptability. What the international community can do, in my view, is sit together and work out a roadmap, Qureshi said. And if they fulfill those expectations, this is what the international community can do to help them stabilize their economy. This is the humanitarian assistance that can be provided. This is how they can help rebuild Afghanistan, reconstruction and so on and so forth. He added: With this roadmap ahead, I think an international engagement can be more productive. On Wednesday night, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after a meeting of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that all five nations the United States, China, Britain, Russia and France want an Afghanistan at peace, stable, where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems or discrimination. He also described a hoped-for Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that wont be a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan where we have an inclusive government representing the different sectors of the population. And on Thursday, the top U.S. diplomat said it was critical that the international community remained united in ensuring that the Taliban meet all commitments they made including freedom for Afghans to travel, respect of human rights and barring terrorists from the country before granting legitimacy and support beyond humanitarian assistance. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he delivered that message both to the U.N. Security Council and foreign ministers of the 20 major economic powers. Japans Foreign Ministry said Thursday that at the closed G20 meeting, participants confirmed the importance of sending a unified message so that the Taliban takes steps in the right direction. Qureshi said there are different forums where the international community can work out how to approach the situation. In the meantime, he asserted, things seem to be stabilizing. Less than six weeks after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, he said, Pakistan has received information that the law-and-order situation has improved, fighting has stopped and many internally displaced Afghans are going home. Thats a positive sign, Qureshi said. He said Pakistan hasnt seen a new influx of Afghan refugees a sensitive issue for Pakistanis, who are highly motivated to prevent it. A humanitarian crisis, a foundering economy and workers who return to jobs and school but arent getting salaries and dont have money could cause Afghans to flee across the porous border into Pakistan, which has suffered economically from such arrivals over decades of conflict. Qureshi prescribed patience and realism. After all, he says, every previous attempt to stabilize Afghanistan has failed, so dont expect new efforts to produce immediate success with the Taliban. If the United States and its allies could not convince them or eliminate them in two decades, how will you do it in the next two months or the next two years? he wondered. Asked whether he had a prediction of what Afghanistan might be like in six months, Qureshi turned the question back on his AP interviewer, replying: Can you guarantee me U.S. behavior over the next six months? ___ Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has been reporting internationally for nearly 50 years. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EdithLedererAP CATCHES OF THE WEEK At Bluewater Lake, Robert Gutierrez of Sandia Park caught a 32-inch tiger muskie using a green and yellow crankbait Sept. 19. Eric Baros of Los Lunas caught and released a 41-inch tiger muskie using a silver spoon Sept. 18. Maria Baros of Albuquerque caught and released a 32-inch tiger muskie using a waterdog Sept. 18. Ernesto Pena of Jemez Springs caught an 18-inch rainbow trout at Fenton Lake using a black and yellow Stillerz by Character Lures on Sept. 19. At Navajo Lake, Michael Brown, 5, of Rio Rancho caught a bluegill using his Spiderman rod with a green grub Sept. 17. Jim McDonald of El Paso caught a 38-inch, 15-pound pike using a crankbait in 20 feet of water Sept. 12. Carter Gallegos, 6, of Santa Rosa caught a 16-inch rainbow trout on the Pecos River using a piece of bread Sept. 19. On the Rio Grande, Seth Hardy of Red River caught a 17-inch cutbow trout using a hand-tied white and grey streamer fly near Questa on Sept. 18. Sergio Prieto of El Paso caught a 24.5-pound catfish south of Caballo Lake using fresh-cut shad bait Sept. 17. Ashlyn Johnson of Aztec caught a 16-inch brown trout on the San Juan River using a red annelid fly Sept. 12. If you have a catch of the week story send it to funfishingnm@gmail.com. NOTES FROM GAME AND FISH Northeast fishing report Fishing for brook trout at Cabresto Lake was good using small dry flies. Fishing for trout at Charette Lakes was fair to good using homemade dough bait and PowerBait. Streamflow on the Cimarron River near Cimarron on Monday morning was 42.3 cubic feet per second. Fishing for trout was fair using orange PowerBait. Fishing for trout at Clayton Lake was fair using PowerBait. Fishing for catfish was fair using chicken liver. Conchas Lake State Park has closed access to all boat ramps due to dropping water levels. The boat ramps on the south side of the lake managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are open. Fishing for catfish was fair to good using yellow tube baits. At Costilla Creek, fishing for trout was good using caddis dry flies. The department has implemented the final phase of a project to expand Rio Grande cutthroat trout in 120 miles of the Costilla watershed in northern New Mexico. The final phase involved removal of fish within a designated area (Rio Costilla from Costilla Dam downstream to the Valle Vidal Boundary including all tributaries and Comanche Creek from the road culvert crossing on Forest Road 1950 downstream to its confluence with Rio Costilla and all tributaries) with a tentative restocking of Rio Grande cutthroat in spring 2022. Places to fish nearby include Costilla Creek below the fish barrier, Upper Comanche Creek, Shuree Ponds, Middle Ponil Creek, Upper Powderhouse Creek, Little Costilla Creek, Vidal Creek and McCrystal Creek. The department anticipates completion of this final phase in the fall of 2021. Please check the department website for additional information on the project and to identify alternative angling opportunities in the interim. Fishing for trout at Cowles Ponds was fair to good using chartreuse PowerBait. Coyote Creek had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for trout at Eagle Nest Lake was fair to good using silver spoons and streamer flies. Fishing for pike was good using jerkbaits and large Dardevle spoons. Fishing for trout at Eagle Rock Lake was good using rainbow and pink PowerBait. Fishing for trout on the Gallinas River was good using stimulator dry flies and dragon fly pattern dry flies. Fishing for trout at Hopewell Lake was fair to good using olive Pistol Pete spinner flies. Lake Alice had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for trout at Lake Maloya was fair to good using Pistol Pete spinner flies, PowerBait and dry flies. Los Pinos River had no reports from anglers this week. Maxwell Lake 13 had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for trout at Monastery Lake was fair to good using copper-colored spinners and black dry flies. Fishing for trout at Morphy Lake was good using Pistol Pete spinner flies and purple nymph PowerBait. Streamflow on the Pecos River near the town of Pecos on Monday morning was 45.5 cfs. Fishing for trout was fair using nightcrawler worms, PowerBait and salmon eggs. Streamflow on the Red River below the hatchery Monday morning was 20.6 cfs. Fishing for trout was fair to good using dry fly with dropper nymph fly setups. Streamflow on the Rio Grande at the Taos Junction Bridge on Monday morning was 216 cfs. Fishing for trout was good using tungsten beadhead nymph flies sizes 14-18. Streamflow on the Rio Hondo on Monday morning near Valdez was 13.9 cfs. Fishing for trout was good using attractor dry flies during mid-day. Streamflow on the Rio Mora on Monday morning near Tererro was 13.3 cfs. Streamflow on the Rio Pueblo near Penasco on Monday morning was 7.01 cfs. Fishing for trout was fair to good using Copper John nymph flies. Santa Cruz Reservoir had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for trout at Shuree Ponds was good using Parachute Adams dry flies. Springer Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Storrie Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Stubblefield Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for white bass at Ute Lake was fair using slab spoons targeting fish 30-feet deep. Fishing for walleye and crappie was slow. Fishing for bass was fair using drop shot or Ned rigs in 15 to 20 feet of water on main lake points. Fishing for catfish was fair. The water surface temperature was in the mid-70s and the main lake color was clear. Northwest fishing report Fishing for catfish at Abiquiu Lake was fair using nightcrawler worms and shrimp. Fishing for carp was fair using corn. Waterflow on the Animas River below Aztec on Monday morning was 37.5 cfs. Albuquerque Area Drains had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for tiger muskie at Bluewater Lake was good using green and yellow crankbait lures, waterdogs and silver spoons. Fishing for trout on the Brazos River was fair to good using gold Panther Martin spinners. Fishing for trout at Canjilon Lakes was fair to good using garlic-scented PowerBait and dry flies. On the Chama River, Monday-morning flows below El Vado and Abiquiu were 102 cfs and 120 cfs, respectively. Fishing for trout below El Vado Lake was good using nightcrawler worms and streamer flies. Fishing for trout below Abiquiu Lake was fair to good using beadhead nymph flies. Please remember, from the river-crossing bridge on U.S. Highway 84 at Abiquiu upstream 7 miles to the base of Abiquiu Dam is special trout waters with a bag limit of two trout only. Fishing for catfish at Cochiti Lake was good using cut bait and chicken liver on the east side of the lake. Fishing for trout at El Vado Lake was fair to good using PowerBait at the North El Vado Day Use Area off State Road 95. Fishing for smallmouth bass, perch and trout was fair to good near the Dam Day Use Area. Fishing for trout at Fenton Lake was good using salmon peach PowerBait and nightcrawler worms. Please remember, only two cutthroat trout are allowed to be harvested per day within the regular five-fish limit. Willow, Sierra Vista and La Laja boat launches are closed at Heron Lake. The primitive boat launch is open. Shoreline fishing is available between Sierra Vista and the spillway or in Rincon. Fishing for trout was slow. The Quality Waters of the Rio Chama can be accessed at the Rio Chama Trailhead. The stairs are closed so use the road to the spillway. Non-quality waters can be accessed at the North El Vado Day Use Area located on State Road 95, 13 miles west of U.S. Highway 84. At the Jemez Waters, streamflow on the Jemez near the village of Jemez Springs on Monday morning was 3.78. Fishing for trout was good on the Valles Caldera using grasshopper dry fly patterns. Laguna del Campo had no reports from anglers this week. Lagunitas Lakes had no reports from anglers this week. Lake Farmington had no reports from anglers this week. Due to extremely low water levels and unstable ground conditions, stocking efforts have been suspended at McGaffey Lake. Lake conditions will be monitored and stockings will resume once conditions improve. Fishing for bass at Navajo Lake was fair to good using crankbait lures and 5-inch green pumpkin Senko worms. Fishing for pike was good using crankbait lures. Fishing for kokanee salmon was good using Fire Tiger spinners, pink squid and orange spinners tipped with corn. Fishing for catfish on the Rio Grande was fair using worms and shrimp near Albuquerque. San Gregorio Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Streamflow on the San Juan River on Monday morning was 968 cfs. Fishing for trout in the quality waters was good using red annelid flies, black midge pattern flies, midge cluster flies, Griffiths Gnat flies and white leech pattern flies. Fishing for trout in the bait waters was good using Rapala lures and nightcrawler worms. Fishing for trout at Seven Springs Brood Pond was good using worms and green PowerBait. Fishing for catfish at Tingley Beach was fair to good using nightcrawler worms and hotdogs. Fishing for trout at Trout Lakes was slow. Southwest fishing report Fishing for catfish at Alumni Pond was fair using cut carp bait and hotdogs. Fishing for bluegill was good using worms. The water level is extremely low at Bear Canyon Lake and will remain low through October for dam repairs. Fishing for all species at Bill Evans Lake was slow. Fishing for white bass at Caballo Lake was good using 3-inch chartreuse curly tail grubs, live minnows, crankbaits and spinners. Fishing for catfish was good using nightcrawler worms, chicken liver, shrimp and shad. Fishing for white bass at Elephant Butte Lake was good using topwater lures, Whopper Ploppers, white slab spoons and chartreuse slab spoons. Fishing for largemouth bass and smallmouth bass was fair to good using topwater lures, swimbaits, crankbaits and joined lures. Fishing for walleye was slow. Fishing for crappie was fair to good using small spoons and live minnows. Fishing for catfish was fair to good using dough bait, cut carp, beef liver and shad. Escondida Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Streamflow on the Gila River on Monday morning was 34.3 cfs. Fishing for catfish was fair using cut bait. Glenwood Pond had no reports from anglers this week. Lake Roberts had no reports from anglers this week. Percha Dam had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for trout at Quemado Lake was good using yellow PowerBait. Rancho Grande Ponds had no reports from anglers this week. Streamflow on the Rio Grande below Elephant Butte on Monday morning was 0.03 cfs. Fishing for catfish north of Elephant Butte Lake was good using cut bait. Snow Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for catfish at Trees Lake was fair to good using worms and cut bluegill bait. Young Pond had no reports from anglers this week. Southeast fishing report Fishing for trout at Alto Lake was good using nightcrawler worms. Fishing for bass was good using nightcrawler worms. Bataan Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Please visit the Open Gate webpage for more information on Berrendo Creek. Fishing for bass was fair to good using Texas-rigged white paddle tail swimbaits and white creature baits. Streamflow on the Black River at Malaga on Monday morning was 3.77 cfs. Blue Hole Park Pond had no reports from anglers this week. Bonito Lake is closed until further notice by the city of Alamogordo due to fire damage. It appears that the lake will be out of commission until 2022. Bosque Redondo Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Bottomless Lakes had no reports from anglers this week. Brantley Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for catfish at Carlsbad Municipal Lake was fair to good using stink bait. Fishing for catfish at Chaparral Park Lake was fair to good using shrimp and hotdogs. Corona Pond had no reports from anglers this week. Eunice Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for largemouth bass at Green Meadow Lake was fair using watermelon red flake Senko worms. Fishing for catfish at Greene Acres Lake was good using red hotdogs and shrimp. Fishing for trout at Grindstone Reservoir was fair to good using nightcrawler worms and garlic PowerBait. Fishing for catfish was good using shrimp, nightcrawler worms and hotdogs. Jal Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Fishing for catfish at Lake Van was good using worms. Fishing for catfish at Oasis Park Lake was good using a combination of cut bait and worms. Streamflow on the Pecos River below Sumner Lake on Monday morning was 100 cfs. Fishing for white bass was good using live shiners south of Malaga. Fishing for catfish was good using cut carp bait south of Malaga. Perch Lake had no reports from anglers this week. Streamflow on the Ruidoso River on Monday morning at Hollywood was 12.8 cfs. The boat ramp has opened at Santa Rosa Lake as water levels have increased due to recent rains. Due to low lake levels, Santa Rosa Lake State Park will operate as a no-wake lake until conditions improve. Fishing for catfish at Sumner Lake was fair to good using chicken liver and cut bait. The University of New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque are partnering on a new Right to Start initiative to help boost entrepreneurship among local communities. UNM Rainforest Innovations and the citys Economic Development Department are jointly financing a new $100,000, yearlong contract with the Missouri-based Right to Start organization to advance entrepreneurial creativity and business development in New Mexico as a motor force for economic development. The city contributed $10,000, and UNM $90,000. The initiative promotes entrepreneurship as a fundamental right that needs to be encouraged and supported among everybody everywhere, said Lisa Kuuttila, CEO and chief economic development officer for Rainforest Innovations, which leads UNMs technology transfer, entrepreneurship and economic development programs. That includes marginalized rural and urban communities that often struggle for equal access to needed resources and assistance. We want to reach folks across the board, Kuuttila told the Journal. This will be an inclusive project that really draws local entrepreneurs in from all communities. New Mexico is the latest of six states and 18 communities across the country to embrace the initiative, which aims to rebuild the U.S. economy by making entrepreneurial opportunity a top priority for everyone, said Right to Start founder and CEO Victor Hwang. Thats critical following the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, Hwang said, because entrepreneurship is what creates jobs, improves living standards, allows for upward mobility and acts as a driver for innovation and change. The pandemic has shown the inequalities, the divides, in society, which makes this movement a path of necessity, Hwang told the Journal. Its vital for communities hurt by the pandemic to reopen businesses that were shut down, build new ones, and create jobs and entrepreneurship is critical to all of that. The movement aims to democratize entrepreneurial innovation, Hwang said. The right to be entrepreneurial to create value in the world is a fundamental right that should be included in public discourse and policy making, and it hasnt been, Hwang said. Its been neglected We must advance that fundamental understanding the human urge to create and make it available to everybody. New Mexico is especially ripe for such economic democratization, given the states significant progress in building a flourishing startup economy in recent years, Hwang added. Those efforts have encouraged local innovators and communities to embrace entrepreneurial activity, forging new opportunities. But like so many other places, there are lots of people here who havent benefited from entrepreneurship, Hwang said. We want to lift the needs of those left out, such as in tribal communities. Many havent had a seat at the table, and we need to bring them in, to hear those voices. To do that, the Right to Start initiative will promote policies, programs and community-based efforts to heighten awareness about the promise of entrepreneurship among local populations, while providing more support for people to start and grow businesses. Well have special emphasis on rural populations, which havent been well served in supporting entrepreneurial endeavors, Kuuttila said. That includes all types of businesses, from Main Street and Mom-and-Pop shops to high-tech startups and everything in between. Under the contract, Right to Start will hire a New Mexico advocate to engage people at every level to discuss challenges for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs and find ways to overcome hurdles. That could mean promoting new public policies and programs, while also better connecting individuals and communities with existing resources, mentors and technical assistance, said Albuquerques interim economic development director, Damian Lara. We expect to bring meaningful, substantial support to local businesses to create a more inclusive, diverse entrepreneurial startup ecosystem, Lara told the Journal. We want to make sure theres a level playing field for local entrepreneurs across the board, creating an environment where they can thrive. Right to Start will also highlight New Mexicos entrepreneurial success stories in the national media, including a special broadcast through the organizations online Start Show that features local communities, entrepreneurs, policymakers and civic leaders working to expand opportunities. We want to tell our story nationally to attract more entrepreneurial, innovative folks to New Mexico, Kuuttila said. That can bring more investment capital and help grow the ecosystem. Kuuttila will serve as a New Mexico ambassador in the Right to Start movement, participating in a national network of local leaders who meet monthly to share experiences and ideas, and to discuss strategies to help advance the grassroots initiative. UNM is already playing a leadership role in building the local startup ecosystem through development of the high-tech Innovate ABQ site Downtown, which unites Rainforest Innovations with other public and private entities in joint efforts to advance entrepreneurial activity in Albuquerque and beyond, said UNM President Garnett Stokes. Continuing to build the entrepreneurial ecosystem is key to future job creation and economic growth in New Mexico, Stokes said in a statement to the Journal. Victor Hwang himself has helped inspire a lot of those local efforts in recent years. Hwang is a longtime startup investor, entrepreneur and economic growth expert who co-authored The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley. That book has garnered broad national and international attention for advancing the concept that thriving business ecosystems are like rainforests where human creativity, business acumen, scientific discovery, investment capital and more come together to nurture budding ideas into flourishing and sustainable enterprises. That concept inspired the UNM Rainforest Innovations name, and its mission to foster a rainforest in the desert. Hwang, who served as keynote speaker at two UNM economic summits, said the Right to Start movement builds on the rainforest concept. Its a natural extension of the rainforest ideas, Hwang told the Journal. A rainforest of innovation and entrepreneurship only works if its sustainable, includes everybody, and lifts all communities. Kevin Robinson-Avila covers technology, energy, venture capital and utilities for the Journal. He can be reached at krobinson-avila@abqjournal.com. Detectives released the names of a robber killed by a Subway employee and a woman who was fatally shot and dropped at a hospital in recent incidents across Albuquerque. Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque police spokesman, said the death of Francisco Monroy, 26, is being investigated as a possible self-defense shooting and the death of Brittany Ramirez, 22, is being investigated as a homicide. On Tuesday morning, Ramirez was dropped off at Presbyterian Hospital. Police said she had been shot and was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital where she died. Gallegos said police are looking for the people who dropped Ramirez off and trying to figure out where and when she was shot. On Sept. 14 police said Monroy tried to rob a Subway near Gibson and Interstate 25 using an air pistol. A Subway employee shot and killed Monroy inside the restaurant. Gallegos said police interviewed the employee and he is not facing charges at this time. Detectives are leaning toward ruling Monroys death as a justifiable homicide. BILLINGS, Mont. The boyfriend of Gabby Petito, whose body was found at a national park in Wyoming after a cross-country trip with him, was charged with unauthorized use of a debit card as searchers continued looking for him Thursday in Florida swampland. A federal grand jury indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Wyoming alleges Brian Laundrie used a Capital One Bank card and someones personal identification number to make unauthorized withdrawals or charges worth more than $1,000 during the period in which Petito went missing. It does not say who the card belonged to. FBI spokeswoman Courtney Bernal declined to reveal the nature of the charges made to the debit card. FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider said an arrest warrant issued Wednesday over the alleged fraudulent use of the bank card will allow law enforcement across the country to continue pursuing Laundrie while the investigation continues into Petitos homicide. Laundrie has been named a person of interest in the 22-year-old womans death. The case has garnered enormous public interest but also raised uncomfortable questions over the unequal attention given to the hundreds of cases of Native American and other minority women missing or murdered across the United States. In Florida, searchers on Thursday spent a fifth unsuccessful day searching for Laundrie in the forbidding wilderness preserve near his parents home. The search at the Carlton Reserve park was set to resume Friday, said Joshua Tayler with the city of North Port, where the park is located. It began after Laundrie told his parents he was going there, several days after returning alone Sept. 1 from his trip out west with Petito. The indictment says the unauthorized use of the debit card occurred from about Aug. 30 to Sept. 1. Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino said it is his understanding that the arrest warrant was related to activities that occurred after the death of Petito, and not to her actual demise. The FBI is focused on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum, Bertolino said in a text message to The Associated Press. An attorney who has represented the Petito family also did not immediately respond for comment. Petito was reported missing Sept. 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West. Her body was discovered Sunday in the vicinity of a remote, undeveloped campground along the border of Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Petitos death as a homicide meaning her death was caused by another person but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results. Officials urged anyone with knowledge of Laundries role in Petitos death or his whereabouts to contact the FBI. With online sleuths and theories multiplying by the day, the FBI and police have been deluged with tips about possible Laundrie sightings. No piece of information is too small or inconsequential to support our efforts in this investigation, Schneider said in a statement. Petito and Laundrie grew up together on Long Island, New York, but they moved in recent years to North Port where his parents live. Their home, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Sarasota, was searched by investigators earlier this week, and a Ford Mustang driven by Laundries mother was towed from the driveway. Authorities believe Laundrie drove that car to the Carlton Reserve before disappearing. The couple documented online their trip in a white Ford Transit van converted into a camper, but they got into a physical altercation Aug. 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case. Ultimately, police there decided to separate the quarreling couple for the night. But no charges were filed, and no serious injuries were reported. The city of Moab said it will conduct a formal investigation into the handling of the dispute. City officials said they were not aware of any breach of department policies, but intend to make a thorough, informed evaluation based on the results of the investigation. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told reporters in Washington, D.C., that the extensive news media coverage of the case should be a reminder of missing or murdered Native American girls and women. Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, said that her heart goes out to Petitos family, but that she also grieves for so many Indigenous women whose families have endured similar heartache for the last 500 years. - Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Associated Press writers Sophia Eppolito contributed from Salt Lake and Matthew Daly from Washington. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed two laws aimed at protecting the privacy of abortion providers and their patients. One law makes it illegal to film people within 100 feet of an abortion clinic for the purpose of intimidating them. Another law makes it easier for people on their parents' health insurance plans to keep sensitive medical information secret, including abortions. Newsom said the laws stand in contrast to a new law in Texas that bans most abortions in that state. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to let the Texas law take effect for now. Updated 7:00 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021 - According to CAL FIRE, the Fawn Fire is 100% contained. --- Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021 - The Fawn Fire remains at 8,578 acres with 90% containment. CAL FIRE Shasta-Trinity Unit has resumed command of the Fawn Fire. --- SHASTA COUNTY, Calif. - The Fawn Fire increased to 90% containment as the fire has burned 8,578 acres, according to CAL FIRE. Fire crews said the fire is not anticipated to spread as they will continue to mop up and patrol the fire until it reaches full containment. Firefighters will be helping people return home. The evacuation center closed on Wednesday night. RELATED: Sifting kits available Thursday for Fawn Fire survivors 3 firefighters were injured fighting the Fawn Fire but the extent of their injuries is unknown. There have been 185 structures destroyed and 26 structures have been damaged. There are no more structures threatened. The fire broke out Wednesday at 4:45 p.m. in the area of Fawndale Rd. and Radcliff Rd. All evacuation orders have been lifted. Evacuation warnings CHICO, Calif. - Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church and Thrive School on Hawthorne Ave. in Chico were both vandalized on the evening of Sept. 22. The Chico Police Department has now arrested and cited a 13-year-old boy for the destruction. The shocking part was that he painted several swastikas on the Thrive homeschool and after-school program campus next door to the church. "My first reaction was shock and bewilderment, and then some anger and frustration, Pastor Donald Jordan at Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church said. Pastor Donald saw the graffiti when he arrived at the church on Tuesday morning. "Church's tend to be very vulnerable, the pastor said. We're open, we're accessible and people tend to take advantage of churches at times like this." The perpetrator was somehow able to climb on top of the church building, ripping the tiles off of the roof and throwing them onto the ground. The vandal then hopped the fence that separated Thrive from the church and tagged the homeschool campus painting several swastikas. The director at Thrive said they quickly removed the markings so the kids could return to school that same day. Chico PD is not calling it a hate crime because the swastikas were not on church property, but on Thrive's campus and the school has no religious, race, or ethnic ideology. "I think every crime is a hate crime in some sense, either hating God or hating your neighbor, not loving your God or your neighbor, Pastor Donald told Action News Now. Chico PD said the juvenile did admit to vandalizing the area, but did not know the meaning of the swastika and said he was bored. The FBI defines a hate crime as one motivated by bias against many things including race, religion, or gender identity. Weve noticed an uptick in vandalism, Pastor Donald said. It has been increasing in intensity and severity, so we are concerned about this and wed like to put a stop to it at this point. Despite the act feeling a whole lot like hate, the pastor is hoping God will work well out of this bad situation. "We are simply praying for the people who did this, Pastor Donald said. That God would have mercy on them and focusing on the ministry of this church to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people." After the death of one of our most iconic characters, Tokio, the gang was left in despair, broken. But even if they are broken in a thousand pieces, the Resistance will always come back as one. As per a Japanese tradition, Kintsugi: an art that consists of using liquid gold to put together broken pieces and make them even stronger, a Kintsugi artist puts together the broken pieces of a Dali mask. Nothing is truly broken. Tokio wants the gang to remember what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and their strength lies in being courageous and united. Gold has united them once and it will not separate them ever again because everytime they feel broken, they come back stronger. SCREENXX Awards 2021 - Digital Video Content and OTT Platform, Last Date for nomination extended - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - ENTRIES OPEN For Professor, Denver, Helsinki, Palermo, Bogota, Rio, Oslo, Moscow, Berlin, and Nairobi, this special video is a final goodbye from Tokio, and a leap of hope for the gang. They will always be the Resistance. Brace yourselves for Money Heist Part 5: Volume 2 releasing on December 3 - only on Netflix! BharatPe, Indias fastest growing Fintech company, today announced the appointment of Nehul Malhotra as Head- Consumer Lending. Nehul will work closely with the CEO, Suhail Sameer, to scale up the consumer focussed lending products at BharatPe. Nehuls appointment is the 5th senior level appointment for BharatPe in the year 2021. The company had earlier announced the appointment of Parth Joshi (CMO), Amit Jain (CRO), Gautam Kaushik (Group President) and Sumeet Singh (General Counsel and Head- Corporate Affairs and Corporate Strategy). Nehul is a post graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and an engineer from Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology (NSIT), New Delhi. Nehul is a seasoned leader with diverse experience across industries- including fintech, leadership advisory and search, and consulting. Prior to joining BharatPe, Nehul was Executive Director at Russell Reynolds Associates. He has an in-depth understanding of fintech, having spent 4.5 years at Paytm. During his stint at Paytm, Nehul held multiple roles including Head Customer Service, Head- Payments Merchant Management and Head- Seller Onboarding for Paytm Mall. Nehul started his career with McKinsey where he worked on projects across sectors, including BFSI. Nehul has been an entrepreneur and had co-founded Learnmicros, a startup dealing in electronic DIY projects in the field of embedded systems, in 2009. Commenting on the appointment, Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and Managing Director, BharatPe said, BharatPe, while being merchant centric business, is also a trusted consumer brand as our QR codes are all consumer facing. Our next focus area is consumer credit. Nehul will drive BharatPes BNPL offering to be launched in October and also strategize on how to evolve PAYBACK into a consumer lending product from a consumer loyalty one today. We continue to hire aggressively to grow our business and Nehul will be a valuable addition to the CXO group. Added Nehul, Fintech is a fast evolving industry that is rewriting the rules of banking and financial services in the country. In just 3 years, BharatPe has emerged as a pioneer in Indias fintech industry. It has been one of the flagbearers of UPI adoption in the country and has also emerged as the trusted partner for millions of offline merchants and kirana store owners in the country. If we look at consumer fintech- it has undergone a huge transformation, owing to events like demonetization and the pandemic last year. I believe that there is a huge opportunity ahead of us to build innovative credit products for consumers as digital payments and other financial services gain acceptance across the country. I am looking forward to this exciting role and building fintech products for the consumers of India as well as Bharat. BigMuscles Nutrition, along with the powerhouse of the nation, Ranveer Singh, portrays a gymmers true pehchaan (identity) in their latest campaign #PerformanceHiPehchaan. Ranveer has been seen getting actively fit for his upcoming projects. While he has been seen swearing by the brand many times, this film is one-of-a-kind that hits a fitness enthusiasts adrenaline on point. The lockdown pushed the country into a fitness frenzy, with the passion for it being observed even in small towns. Looking at this trend, Indias very own fitness brand, BigMuscles Nutrition, well known for their quality whey proteins and mass gainers, decided to reach out to a broader audience and leverage their nutrition power with the journey of every fitness enthusiast. The fitness brand has the biggest range of nutritional supplements available in the market. SCREENXX Awards 2021 - Digital Video Content and OTT Platform, Last Date for nomination extended - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - ENTRIES OPEN Medulla, the creative agency behind the campaign, along with Walkabout Films, decided to shoot the film at a 100-year old heritage gym with a desi vibe. Filmed completely at Vyayaam Mandir, in Mumbai, the film credits a fitness enthusiasts identity to his/her consistent performance with BigMuscles Nutrition playing an integral role of a nutritional partner to bolster the performance. Vinayak Shinde, Group Creative Director, Medulla Communications, says, For me, it's not a script, but a translation of a committed gymmers attitude to life. Each line is crafted on a philosophy of its own, inspiring you to create an identity for yourself with the brands Bada Promise of performance. Jitika Gupta, Marketing Head at BigMuscles Nutrition, adds, We wanted to be a part of the journey of the fitness enthusiasts across India. From the largest city to the smallest town, we wanted every serious gymmer to know about the visible performance of the products. The message that the brand wanted to send out is Your performance is our pehchaan and thats what we promise to deliver performance that helps build ones own pehchaan. The countrys largest bakery foods company, Britannia Industries Limited has launched a new Snacker Cracker campaign for its NutriChoice Sugar Free Cracker range, with Bengali superstar Abir Chatterjee. The lockdown has led to increased snacking at home. This not only resulted in a quest for heathy snacks but many first time cooks researching & experimenting with varied, tasty, healthy and easy to make snacks. In fact the word Recipe at one point was the most searched word online during the lockdown. SCREENXX Awards 2021 - Digital Video Content and OTT Platform, Last Date for nomination extended - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - ENTRIES OPEN Priced at Rs 35 for 300 grams, Britannia NutriChoice Cracker makes the quest for quick, easy snacks simpler. It is not only sugar free, but its neutral taste makes for a great accompaniment with a variety of delectable ingredients to make a quick and tasty snack. With increase in snacking occasions at home, this snacker-of-a-cracker can be consumed as a mid-meal snack any time of day. The brands new TVC features Abir Chatterjee in a never-before-seen avatar. An amateur cook himself, Abir has picked up a few culinary skills during the lockdown. A perfect time for Abir & Britannia NutriChoice to come together. NutriChoice Cracker as a key ingredient in ones delightful and healthy snacking schedule. The campaign highlights how the cracker is so versatile that it can be used in a variety of ways to create quick snacks throughout the day. Abir dons the hat of a chef, in the new Britannia NutriChoice Cracker campaign. Further all set with his cooking station, he will be seen preparing some spontaneous recipes using NutriChoice Sugar Free Crackers as the standard base ingredient. He will be judged by a special guest that is yet to unfold. Commenting on the NutriChoice Snacker Cracker campaign, Vinay Subramanyam, VP Marketing, Britannia Industries Limited said, We have observed that working from home, consumers have taken to snacking more than ever before. The lockdown has even changed the dynamics of cooking at home versus eating out, and it has instilled a need to make a conscious effort in choosing the healthy way, be it a full meal or a snack. With Britannia NutriChoice Sugar Free Cracker, we aim to provide our consumers with that healthy, delicious & DIY base ingredient that can be easily prepared by anyone, at any time. The Cracker is not only thin, light and crispy but also sugar free, thus adding value to the increasingly health conscious audiences. The campaign will amplify the offering with Abir Chatterjee spearheading the way. He is a right fit to help personify the proposition of making a healthier choice for all your snacking needs. Speaking on his association with the brand, Abir Chatterjee said, Being a quintessential Bengali, I love snacking and I make sure I dont skip my meals, but the shoot timings often make it difficult. Thanks to the lockdown, I have as picked up a few culinary skills. Britannia NutriChoice Sugar Free Crackers is the perfect snack whisperer & great to as experiment ones cooking skills. It makes for a delicious snack with the satisfaction of having made a healthier choice. I am glad to see how Britannia NutriChoice Cracker will soon be in every kitchen, playing the role of that versatile, must-have ingredient for every meal and snack. I think we are also in for a ride to discover some wonderful recipes from different households of our country with this campaign! Puneet Kapoor, Regional Creative Officer, Lowe Lintas has said Consumers are evolving and slowly coming to realise that their favourite cracker, while being a great teatime biscuit can also make for a healthy mid-meal snack! Stack it with fruits, nuts, or cheese, eat it anytime you like. Our creative challenge therefore was to amplify the versatility of these crackers through an exciting contest. By adding different consumption rituals and occasions for snacking without compromising on health, we enabled consumers to explore, experiment and as a result engage with us as a brand Britannia NutriChoice Snacker Cracker Contest Details The Britannia NutriChoice Snacker Cracker Contest is super simple to participate in. All you have to do is to give a missed call to 7829833333 and send your favorite snacker cracker recipes and stand a chance to challenge Abir in a cook off. Top 10 winners will also get their recipes featured on the packs. Not only this, you can also win exciting cookware prizes from Wonderchef, every hour. A total of 600 Wonderchef prizes to be won and the contest will be live for a period of 2 months. Participation through WhatsApp and the website is possible. The contest will run for a period of 2 months. Website - www.snackercrackercontest.com Campaign Credits: Agency: Lowe Lintas, Bangalore Creative: Puneet Kapoor, Arpan Bhattacharyya, Sukumaran N, Madhuparna Guha, Aswin A and Lohit Chengappa Account Management: Sonali Khanna, Ameya Lokhande, Shreya and Shabrish BM Planning: Kishore Subramanian, Prashanth Murthy and Saumya Chattopadhyay Production House: Lucifer Circus (Director: Deepak Thomas ; Producer: Gaurav Chanana) Brand Team: Sumita Rajan, Sobia Sahar Mondelez India, one of Indias leading snacking company, today announced that the countrys most loved Cadbury chocolate brands like Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk, Cadbury Bournville, Cadbury Dark Milk and Cadbury Temptations will now carry the Cocoa Life logo on the front of our packs. The Cocoa Life programme is the companys commitment and promise to be sourcing sustainable cocoa for chocolate in India. Cocoa Life is Mondelez Internationals cocoa sustainability program that helps communities thrive in six key cocoa-growing originsGhana, Cote d'Ivoire, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil, in addition to India. The company introduced cocoa farming in India, 55+ years ago in the four states of South India Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, & Tamil Nadu, and has reached 100,000 cocoa farmers over the years. Commenting on this milestone, Anil Viswanathan, Senior Director Marketing, Mondelez India, said, At Mondelez International, we are passionate about chocolates. Cocoa is the essence of our chocolate and vital to our business, so we ensure it is made right. Making it right means helping the cocoa farmers gain knowledge and skills to improve their livelihoods, strengthen their communities and inspire the next generation of cocoa farmers. Through the Cocoa Life programme, we are creating a movement for lasting change, rooted in deep understanding through sector-wide collaboration and partnership. We believe that consumers are looking for their most trusted brands to have a point of view on Sustainability. Cocoa Life will thus become another strong pillar for Cadbury to strengthen its purpose of Generosity. When our consumers choose chocolates with the Cocoa Life logo, they have contributed meaningfully to a sustainable future of our planet and our communities. The Cocoa Life programme in India has been active since 1965 and has already reached out to a community of more than 100,000 farmers, helping them understand and subsequently adopt the art of cocoa farming. The company today sources a large part of its cocoa requirements indigenously and is the single largest corporate organization to nurture and promote cocoa cultivation in India. The initiative roots from the companys global vision to transform the lives and livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their communities, and to inspire the next generation. Cocoa Life builds on our proud legacy and over five decades long relationship with Indias cocoa farming community, providing us with an opportunity to locally source cocoa beans in India. Through this program, we want to extend our relationship beyond being just a buyer to a fully committed partner for all our cocoa farmers and their communities. We also foresee India playing a very crucial role in the overall strategy of scaling the program even further, globally, so that by 2025, all chocolate brands are able source their cocoa from Cocoa Life. said Roopak Bhat, Cocoa Operations Lead India, Mondelez International. Globally, through its interventions so far, Cocoa Life has worked on the ground with the men and women who make their living from cocoa to turn cocoa farming into a resilient business, successfully supporting more than 188,000 farmers across the six key cocoa-growing countries, creating inclusive communities and conserving the environment. By 2025, all chocolate brands of Mondelez International, globally, will source their cocoa through Cocoa Life. Currently, 68% of the companys total cocoa volume for chocolate brands is sourced via Cocoa Life. For more information on the Cocoa Life program: https://www.cocoalife.org/ Committed to fostering an employee-centric workplace, Meesho, Indias largest social commerce platform, today, announced a 30-week gender-neutral parental leave policy. The industry-leading policy has been designed with an outlook to provide fulfilling employee experiences cognizant of the efforts in caregiving and growing a family. Since work is invariably tied to the personal identities of employees, Meeshos new policies also reflect evolving societal beliefs and ensure non-discriminatory benefits irrespective of employees gender or sexual identity. The 30-week leave policy applies equally to women, men, heterogenous or same-sex couples so they can stay present for their children and also does away with the differentiation between natural childbirth, adoption, and surrogacy. Highlights of the Parental Leave Policy: Ensures non-discrimination irrespective of gender, sexual identity, marital status, or the circumstance of parenthood (natural birth, surrogacy, or adoption) The parental policy also covers live-in partners If the employee is a primary caregiver, they are eligible for leaves up to 1 year (30 weeks fully paid leave + 25% pay for next 3 months) If the employee is a secondary caregiver, they can avail up to 30 days of leaves (applicable up to 1 year from adoption or childbirth) Commenting on the new policy, Ashish Kumar Singh, Chief HR Officer, Meesho, said, We are really excited about the future - because we are looking at the Policy not as a document alone but as a powerful resource that Meeshoites can tap into for help, assistance, and empathy as they navigate their careers and lives. Most significantly, we have used this policy revamp to simplify the benefits and flexibility based on the caregivers role, rather than gender so Meeshoites can be entirely present for their family. RBL Bank and Mastercard today announced the launch of a new festive campaign, #UseBefikar, which rewards existing cardholders with exciting shopping offers and rewards. Backed by renowned personalities including Riteish Deshmukh, Mirabai Chanu and Vikrant Massey, the campaign is running through a video series that aims to strike a chord with cardholders at the start of the festive season. These videos will highlight the cards versatile offerings for every family member, focusing on categories such as health and fitness, e-commerce, online bill payments and food delivery. The videos will be amplified through a series of social media and online promotions. Abhijit Somvanshi, Executive Vice President and Marketing & Communications Head, RBL Bank said, Our customers always look to us to come up with exciting deals and offers, especially during the festive season. We work to constantly reward them with these exclusive offers and facilitate a safe and secure payments experience. We are pleased to partner with Mastercard and these top influencers to convey our message of uninterrupted usage and build a stronger connection with the cardholders. Manasi Narasimhan, Vice President, Marketing and Communications, South Asia, Mastercard said, Mastercard has a longstanding and priceless relationship with RBL Bank. Be it online shopping or any retail adventure, through #UseBefikar we aim to resonate with the audience at a personal level. The celebrities bring a sense of credibility and authenticity with them, ensuring a wider audience reach. They will give that soft nudge to try these uninterrupted offerings backed by a safe and secure payments system, creating an aura of excitement around it. Talking about the festive season, Vikrant Massey, Actor said, I always love this time of the year as I and everyone in my family can easily use the festive season as an excuse to splurge. People are always on the lookout for great deals and offers. Whether its to buy anything for their family or their friends, they seek rewards to make the most out of their spending. With #UseBefikar, RBL Bank and Mastercard have made this easier for everyone as with just one tap of their RBL Banks Mastercard Credit Card they can avail these exclusive offers seamlessly while also being assured of safety and security. As the nation gears up for the festive season, consumers want the most competitive deals and rewards to get the most out of their spending. According to a recent study, 87 per cent of consumers are willing to spend more as they prioritise convenience over price. This collaboration will foster the consumers growing desire for great deals, both online and offline. To learn more about this campaign, visit https://www.instagram.com/mastercardindia/. In March 2021, Mars launched a new line of Orbit chewing gums across Indias capital, Delhi. Together with its agency partner Mediacom and GroupMs Outcome Media Company Xaxis, Mars wanted to encourage consumers to visit Orbit partner stores and purchase the chewing gum. The challenge lay in identifying the right target audience for the campaign, as well as strategy to deliver the most efficiency in a short duration. With the steep rise of COVID-19 cases in the country, more individuals are taking their health seriously. Mars therefore identified their target consumers as fitness enthusiasts and those that looked after their oral health and wanted to specifically reach out to consumers visiting fitness centres and dental clinics. With the lockdown being lifted in many areas of the country in March, Xaxis and Mediacom presented us with an opportunity to tap into consumers based on their recent offline behaviour and location data, combined with insights we developed using first party data at Mars. Among our fantastic product line-up, Orbit is popular among consumers that look for not just freshening but also clean teeth. Fitness consumers are among our primary audiences as they clearly have an interest in improving their health and well-being. Targeting these consumers helped us develop a growth model that can help scale Orbit. Moving forward, it is a viable solution we will consider within our media mix, said Varun Kandhari, CBU & Strategic Demand Director, Mars. Mars tapped Xaxiss programmatic location-based solution, Places to target their health enthusiasts. Places identified potential consumers as those visiting dental clinics and fitness centres and targeted them with ads that directed them to the nearest Orbit outlet Various orbit Stores were mapped and selected. Consumers who visited fitness centres and dental clinics in the past 30 days were shown the ad while in the vicinity of an Orbit store to encourage them to visit and buy the chewing gum. Throughout the month of March, Orbit sales at the targeted stores grew by 37% whereas the non-targeted stores grew by 27%, Hence the difference that the campaign has brought is to the tune of 10% of higher secondary sell-in to the outlets. So, the overall sales lift has been 10%. The campaign drove 30,000 visits to the targeted stores to purchase Orbit chewing gum. In addition there was an increase in Orbits website traffic by 400%. Location-based intelligent targeting is a win-win strategy for both brands and consumers. Brands can get the most out of their ad spend, as visitation patterns and offline data helps them target those who already have a genuine interest in their products. Consumers, on the other hand, would also enjoy a better experience interacting with ads, as these ads speak directly to their interests, said Atique Kazi, President - Data, Performance and Digital Products, GroupM India. We are thrilled about the impact that Xaxis Places has on Orbit sales, as the solution helps to target their ideal consumers, at the right place and at the right time. We are looking forward to greater collaboration with Xaxis and their programmatic technologies in the future, said Naveen Khemka, CEO of Mediacom, South Asia. Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Berne/Zurich, 23.09.2021 - At its meeting on 22/23 September the ETH Board welcomed the Federal Councils planned transitional measures for Horizon Europe. They represent a first step towards alleviating the adverse effects of non-association. However, they are no substitute for Switzerlands full association. The ETH Board therefore remains committed to Switzerland's rapid and full participation in the EUs framework programme for research and innovation. The ETH Board has also launched the procedure for appointing the successor to the Director of Eawag, Janet Hering. This post will be advertised at the end of 2021. Owing to Switzerland's current status as a non-associated third country, our researchers are no longer able to participate in prestigious individual projects such as the ERC grants scheme under Horizon Europe. Furthermore, they are no longer allowed to lead any EU projects. Switzerland is therefore losing the opportunity to contribute to the development of the European research and innovation area or define priorities. Aside from that, Switzerland is excluded from tenders relating to space and quantum technology research. There is a risk that leading researchers will emigrate to other countries or no longer come to Switzerland at all, resulting in our country losing out on international cooperation. This has negative consequences for the ETH Domain's considerable innovative capacity and appeal, as well as for Switzerland overall. It is not only research that benefits from EU support: innovative companies and spin-offs also benefit directly from EU funding. Universities, research institutions and companies in the EU are the key international partners of the ETH Domain. This close relationship cannot be compensated by increased cooperation with Asia or the USA. In fact, more than half of all the international cooperation schemes in which the two Federal Institutes of Technology participate are with partners in the EU. At Empa, 90% of international contractual partners are in the EU. ETH Board supports full association with Erasmus The ETH Board also firmly believes that Switzerland should be a full participant in the Erasmus programme as well as in Horizon Europe. Erasmus brings significant added value to our country. It is more than just a student exchange programme: its scope also extends to the promotion of vocational training, education and professional development. Its declared aim is to forge links between people in the fields of education, research and industry, and to promote cooperation. The Swiss universities rely on these networks in order to continue improving the quality and attractiveness of their educational offerings and position themselves successfully at international level. Revised ETH Law comes into force on 1 November 2021 In March 2021, Parliament approved a partial revision of the ETH Law. This will enter into force on 1 November 2021. Among other matters, it sets out the rules on voting rights and recusal for the institutional members of the ETH Board (the presidents of the two Federal Institutes of Technology, a representative of the research institutes and a representative of the University Assemblies) and clarifies the supervisory powers of the ETH Board and the appeal possibilities for the institutions of the ETH Domain. Furthermore, the revision of the Law includes amendments to personnel law and the legal framework for the sale of surplus energy, for security services and for video surveillance. The revision of the ETH Law means that other regulations need to be amended. For example, the rules of procedure of the ETH Appeals Commission are now the Federal Council's responsibility. These regulations are expected to enter into force over the next year. Appointment committee for a successor to the Director of Eawag Janet Hering, who has been Director of Eawag since 2007, is to retire on 31 December 2022. The ETH Board has launched the procedure for appointing a new Director and has decided on the composition of the appointment committee. The post will be advertised nationally and internationally towards the end of 2021. Janet Hering's successor will be appointed by the Federal Council following an application by the ETH Board. Address for enquiries Christoph Leuenberger Deputy Head of Communications of the ETH Board Hirschengraben 3, CH-3011 Bern christoph.leuenberger@ethrat.ch +41 58 856 86 24 Publisher Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology https://www.ethrat.ch/en If you read the North American and European press, you will get the impression that the Chinese have, geopolitically, reached their westernmost geographical limit in offering themselves as the new patrons of Afghanistan. It's a bold strike against China's NATO competitors, who have left, or who have been driven out of Afghanistan by the Taliban. And so, China is making the new government of Taliban rulers in Afghanistan its tributary, or client state. The Taliban do not have money and look to the Chinese for aid and investment because the only shrewd and right thing the U.S. government did before its panicked retreat from Afghanistan was to ensure that the gold of Afghanistan and its currency reserves were safely in a vault in or around New York City. From these funds, no doubt, the Biden administration is now offering its first sixty-four million dollars of "development assistance," or perhaps ransom money, to that self-declared Islamic dictatorship. We can be sure that the Taliban will use these funds to empower women and protect ethnic minorities. Despite the hybrid and contorted Marxism of today's ruling Communist Party of China, the Chinese and their leaders are a country and people with a long historical memory, at least 2,500 years of it. It is common Chinese practice to look at the present through the lens of the past. And so, Chinese people are well aware that they once ruled or at least lorded it over Afghanistan, for at least about one hundred years. This was during the period of the Tang Dynasty, whose imperial rulers of the Tang Empire (618907) controlled a landmass that began in the Pacific and reached the Hindu Kush in the west. During that time, what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, and much of Northern India was part of a series of sophisticated, urbane, and literate Buddhist cultures. At the time, the area was a world center of Buddhist scholarship and teaching. Its artisans and sculptors were the creators of the massive Buddhist rock sculptures of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan, which were blown up by the iconoclastic Afghan Taliban on the 21st of February, 2001. During the seventh century A.D., a traveling monk from China knew that the texts and the teaching of Buddhism were purer in the Afghan and Indian monasteries, and so Chinese Buddhist monk and pilgrim Xuan Zang (602664) walked from China to Afghanistan, India, and back, after having spent years studying Sanskrit and collecting Buddhist manuscripts, which he then brought back to China. The emperor of China at the time welcomed him home, subsidized his translation work, rewarded him highly, and thus triggered yet another and one of the more substantial waves of Buddhist influence on the Chinese people, an imported religion that has waxed and waned there until the present day. All literate Chinese know about Xuan Zang, and he is still a national hero. So, from a Chinese historical and political perspective, they are not replacing the Americans in today's Afghanistan. They actually feel that they are simply and justly re-asserting their manifest destiny in a land they once ruled, just before the rise of Islam destroyed every vestige of Buddhist civilization in and around the Hindu Kush. During the sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen hundreds, the Chinese empire began to shrink. It suffered losses against the Russians to the west and northeast and to the Western Europeans, who occupied its eastern coast, where they created independent enclaves. Nevertheless, in the late nineteenth century, the Chinese empire reasserted itself in eastern central Asia and conquered the Uighur Turkish-speaking Muslims who have dominated the Sinkiang region for centuries. This became China's unruly "Muslim wild west" and is a sore spot in the national consciousness and the foreign policy establishment in China. The Uighurs of Sinkiang have witnessed the successful disengagement from the Soviet Union (since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991) of most Central Asian peoples and republics, who comprise Turkish- and Persian-speaking Muslim townspeople, farmers, and nomads. They reasserted their Muslim identities and religious practices after the enforcement of Russian-dominated Marxist secular governments during the previous seventy years (that is, from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990). They are therefore sympathetic to their ethnic, linguistic, and religious Turkish-speaking cousins and co-religionists, the Uighurs of Sinkiang, who would like to break away from China and create an additional Central Asian Turkish-speaking state based on Islam. At least four hundred thousand Uighurs have fled persecution in Sinkiang and have crossed over to neighbouring Kazakhstan so that they can live more freely. The Chinese will have none of this. The first thing the Chinese have done is drown the Turkish-speaking Uighur Muslims with secular, Christian, Buddhist, Confucian, or Taoist Chinese Han immigrants, which is the dominant Chinese ethnic group. After the communist revolution in China in 1948, one year later, the Han population of Sinkiang numbered 300,000 people. By the year 2000, of the 7.8 million people living in Sinkiang, more than 40% were Han Chinese, an increase of 2,200% over a mere half-century. The local Uighurs have been treated to a carrot-and-stick approach by their Chinese overlords: increased investment in infrastructure, linking Sinkiang with its "Silk Road" initiative, alongside merciless persecution of any political resistance to Chinese domination. In 2018, Human Rights Watch published a report on Chinese behavior in Sinkiang. This paragraph distills the report: Inside political education camps, detainees are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, sing praises of the Chinese Communist Party, and memorize rules applicable primarily to Turkic Muslims. Those outside the camps are required to attend weekly, or even daily, Chinese flag-raising ceremonies, political indoctrination meetings, and at times Mandarin classes. Detainees are told they may not be allowed to leave the camps unless they have learned over 1,000 Chinese characters or are otherwise deemed to have become loyal Chinese subjects; Turkic Muslims living outside are subjected to movement restrictions ranging from house arrest, to being barred from leaving their locales, to being prevented from leaving the country. Inside, people are punished for peacefully practicing religion; outside, the government's religious restrictions are so stringent that it has effectively outlawed Islam. Inside, people are closely watched by guards and are barred from contacting their families and friends. Those living in their homes are watched by their neighbors, officials, and tech-enabled mass surveillance systems, and are not allowed to contact those in foreign countries. At the same time, the Chinese have established working groups such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which comprise China and most of the newly independent states of Central Asia. The SCO has become one vehicle for aid, investment, diplomacy, and security, linking China's stand against radical Islam in central Asia with its anti-terror metaphor for its suppression of the Uighurs. This has, for example, included the Chinese National Petroleum company gaining ownership of 60% of gas-producing companies like Aktobemunaygaz in Kazakhstan. Simply put, China is building roads, creating air links, flooding the central Asian markets with Chinese manufactured goods, and creating a security and intelligence network that ensures that its Central Asian neighbors will not challenge it in Sinkiang. This is close to the kind of thinking of the Tang emperors who through trade (gifts/bribes), luxury goods, and military domination ensured Han dominance of Central Asia for a period. The Chinese have done and continue to do all they can to offset the influence that NATO has created with the central Asian republics, slowly bringing them within the NATO umbrella, a policy until recently pushed most aggressively by the U.S., while also keeping Russia at bay, which conquered Central Asia during the 19th century until driven out in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. And so, we must conclude that despite the new Afghanistan's radical Islamic agenda, it is unlikely that the Taliban will engage in a jihad to free their "Muslim brothers in Sinkiang." Like the rest of their "brothers" in the Islamic world, they will gladly ignore the destruction of the Uyghur people and nation so that they may feather their own nests and increase their share in the China-driven Silk Road initiative. The Chinese, who have been the off-and-on imperialists of Central Asia for centuries, will know how to insulate themselves from the Taliban through their Central Asian quid pro quo. The Chinese Communist Party cadres are laughing all the way to the mineral riches of Afghanistan, which they will exploit mercilessly while sticking it to Russia and the West. The empire strikes back. Image via Max Pixel. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. If youre thinking that Bidens policies are destroying America, youre right. And the worst part is that this is exactly what Democrats want. Richard Andrew Cloward and Francis Fox Piven were both Columbia University professors and long-time members of the Democrat Socialist Party. They were the authors of the Cloward-Piven strategy (paraphrased from ClowardPiven strategy - Wikipedia): Overload the American public welfare system and create a crisis that will bankrupt the nation, leaving no choice but to adopt a socialist/communist system of government. In addition: The ultimate objective of this strategy is to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income. There is ample information available via internet searches to validate the Cloward-Piven strategy as I have characterized it above. The essential takeaway is that the goal is to collapse the government and financial systems of the United States and then rebuild the United States into the ever-sought but never-achieved socialist utopia. Perhaps the best thing about Barack Obama being elected President and serving two terms, along with Democrats deranged reaction to Donald Trumps election is the radicals are no longer in hiding. They are now saying out loud, in public and in broad daylight, things that nobody in Bill Clintons administration would ever have said or admitted. Now, we can clearly identify the enemy in plain sight, who is not just inside the gate but entrenched throughout our vital national institutions. These radicals are not slowing down, they are pedal to the metal and accelerating. Time is critical. We must resist them at every opportunity, locally and nationally, and let them know we will not shirk our duty to stand for Freedom. Here is a short list of what they are doing to wreck the country (keep looking, and you will find there are more). Big-Government Socialized Healthcare Nearly every network evening news and local news broadcast begins with a COVID-19 Update and another sales pitch to get the vaccine or to scare and shame the unvaccinated. Government health agencies and bureaucracies focus only on vaccines of waning effectiveness, and that is killing people. Still, they insist we must get vaccinated or well get lockdowns, masks, and every other mandated measure they can think of. The installed administration is now exerting top-down control of preventative medicines and is aggressively seizing monoclonal antibody treatments from states that use them to distribute equitably to states that dont. Its all meant to make us do as we are told, and it proves the long-held assertions among conservatives that socialized medicine equals rationing of medicine and care, and lets the government decide who lives or dies. Resist. Politicizing the Military The United States Armed Forces and those who currently serve (or have served in the past) have been a perennial source of pride for Americans. The military has been one of Americas most well-respected institutions. In less than seven months, the installed regime has revealed just how politicized the military leadership has become. It is an understatement to say that the retired military community views with grave concern the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the reports of the back channel communications General Milley had with his Chinese counterpart, and the purge of any officer in leadership who expresses a sincere concern for the social justice initiatives currently being taught. Mr. Douglas Murray, a British political consultant commented on Tucker Carlsons show recently that once you begin to politicize an agency thats meant to represent the whole country, thats a terribly self-destructive move. Bingo! Thats exactly what Democrats intend: destroy the country by making its citizens unwilling to serve and unwilling to defend it. Resist. The entire retired Veteran community needs to be heard on all of this as well. Open Borders Since the installed regimes illogical, reflexive, and disastrous (some say illegal) repeal of every measure the Trump administration enacted to secure the border, the situation has continually degraded before our eyes (at least when the news media honestly reports what is happening). The evidence of the humanitarian crisis is overwhelming: the number of illegal aliens found dead on South Texas brush country ranches has increased; fatalities on the border states roads and highways have also risen from illicit human traffickers attempts to evade border protection or law enforcement officers and the human toll exacted on those who cross the border, endure the elements, and face over-crowded processing facilities is impossible to calculate. None of it is compassionate, and none of it is for the illegal aliens welfare because unknown numbers have become indentured servants to the criminal enterprises that brought them to the United States. They will likely never know freedom. The Democrat party, its apparatus, and the installed administration all want to change Americas demographics to have more voters who are dependent on government largesse and will vote Democrat, cementing its permanent political power. It is a sickening subjugation of the rightful, legal citizens of the United States. Resist. Politicizing and packing the Court What leftists have never been able to do is legislate a radical transformation of the United States. Their strategy has been to infiltrate the legal/judicial system and to seat as many anti-American activist jurists in the judicial branch of our government. These activist judges, once in place, legislate from the bench to support Americas radical transformation, enabling the government to intercede where the Constitution draws specific limits, stripping citizens of their constitutional rights, and granting rights unknown in centuries of Anglo-American legal precedent. These activist judges will be sure any legal challenge to the constitutionality of their agenda will fail. Their attempts to pack the court are an attempt to legislatively re-structure the court system in a manner that enables them to install new judges or replace active judges with those who support their leftist transformation of America. Resist. Voting Rights Legislation The inestimable, inimitable, and transformative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said of the Democrat party (and Im paraphrasing from memory): Democrats do not want to have to win your vote. They do not want to have to compete in the arena of ideas nor do they want to have to win elections. Keep a sharp eye, because they want to eliminate elections as they are currently held in the United States, and they want to remove any chance they will not win elections. They only want the political power necessary to be able to exert as much control of you as they see fit. Rush would tell his listeners, Dont doubt me. Do not doubt that Rush was right about the Democrats radicalization and their aim to secure for themselves a permanent majority and permanent power in our government. Their Voter Rights bill currently making its way through Congress has nothing to do with voter rights; its about legalizing every method of cheating they used in the 2020 election. The current bill is an attempt to thwart the Constitution and the fifty states constitutionally derived powers to oversee their own elections. Nothing the Democrat party or its leftist, social democrat politicians want to do is good for America. They run to the same old playbook, and none of it has ever worked, anywhere, or any time it has been tried. We are at a turning point. Dont let them win. Resist! Jeff M. Lewis is a Christian, a husband and father, a Veteran, and a self-employed small business owner who resides in South Texas. Image: The revolution will be televised by Shelly Prevost. CC BY 2.0. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. I am so old that I remember when the American Civil Liberties Union actually defended civil liberties instead of being just another left-wing shill. Apparently, the fundraising bonanza it reaped from fanatical haters of Donald Trump during his presidency was enough to erase the last vestiges of principle in the group. Now it seems to exist to reinforce whatever fads of the left generate social media attention and donations. Things have gotten so bad that a year after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the organization marked the anniversary by censoring her words spoken during her confirmation hearings in 1993 because she mentioned "women," and among today's leftists, the biological reality of X and Y chromosomes and the sex they determine is politically verboten. Here is the anniversary tweet the group put out, updating the former justice's words to suit modern derangement: With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs death, we lost a champion for abortion and gender equality. And on the anniversary of her death, the fight to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever. pic.twitter.com/vIKadIHouN ACLU (@ACLU) September 18, 2021 At least they had the decency to acknowledge the editing. Here is the original quote as spoken: The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices. I can only see this as craven, changing historic language because some fanatics might not donate if they see "gendered language" like "woman" and "herself." In doing so, they diminish Ginsburg's standing as a leftist icon, which is a dramatic reversal of the reverence with which she was treated during the last years of her life. Both RedState and Twitchy have compendiums of Twitter responses to the ACLU. The ACLU is editing RBGs quote to be gender neutral. Im not surprised, but in a sane world the ACLU would be blasted for its erasure of women in addition to the baby killing. https://t.co/JUtjFyTWaM Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) September 22, 2021 Using [ ] to paraphrase what someone said is one thing. Using it to edit someones words to fit an ideological agenda - especially when the original speaker is dead and cant protest - is another. Its despicable and disrespectful. Lilac (@Lilac473822) September 22, 2021 I love this one, taking the ACLUs logic one step farther: Why is ACLU quoting a transphobe? Boomieleaks (@Boomieleaks) September 22, 2021 The fanaticism is explored here: How many non-female identifying but biologically female people get abortions in a given year? Imagine editing out certain pronouns and deconstructing every aspect of your language in order to placate constituency that numbers in the tens of people, at best. Le Dr Rieux (@AliBaba53301483) September 22, 2021 But what about female-identifying but biologically male people? I am rather certain the number having abortions is zero. Once the ACLU shoves reality and principle aside, why would a leftist donate to it as opposed to any of the other left-wing groups? The "notorious RBG," as she was celebrated during her lifetime, was justly praised for her exercise routine at an advanced age. I have the feeling she is continuing the practice, this time rolling in her grave. Graphic credit: Coreypkolb, CC BY-SA 4.0 license. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. The week of the autumnal equinox in New York City is Gridlock Week because of all the nonstop, non-moving traffic jams caused by the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. American presidents have long given speeches there during opening week, and this year was no exception when President Biden dropped in to show the entire world what we have long known inside the United States that he is suffering from dementia and diminishing mental capacity. New York's clogged traffic woes reflect the mental state of New York's and America's president. Biden cannot function without either a teleprompter or pre-printed cheat sheets, which tell him how to meet and greet his peers. As Andrea Widburg noted, Biden cannot even so much as say "hello" to Boris Johnson without reading it first from his cheat sheet. This was likewise evident the day before when Biden met with the U.N. secretary-general. Biden had a televised meet 'n' greet session with the secretary-general during which he only spoke for about two minutes on general themes, and couldn't get through it without his cheat sheets. Naturally, the secretary-general, being of sound mind and reasonably lucid, needed no such notes at all to make his own reply. Biden made an incredible claim about climate change. 0:41 ... And dealing with the gravest threat to humanity we've ever seen which is the whole climate crisis we're gonna we're un we're undergoing that can only be met with global solutions ... The remark is so stupid that it is actually obscene. "Climate change" is supposedly a greater threat than Nazism. Or Genghis Khan. Or the Black Death of 1350, which killed off half the world. The climate crisis of 536540 when a volcanic eruption in the East Indies caused a global nuclear winter with mass famine and disease, that's not sufficient for what Biden claims now, either. It only went downhill from there the following day, when Biden literally addressed the world assembled at the opening meeting of the General Assembly, figuratively pulling down his own pants and exposing his shortcomings to all nations. Before Biden got to the ultimate, killer Bidenism, as the master funnyman that he is, he warmed up the world with these choice Bidenisms: 8:21 ... To finance global health security, that builds on our existing development assistance, and global health tre es an and and the global health threat kownkill council, that is armed ... 16:31 ... But we're not seeking say it again, we are not seeking a new coal war ... This isn't the first time BiteMe has made this Bidenism. On August 12, BiteMe made a reference to a "coal reality." 17:02 ...To address the urgent threats, like COVID 19, and climate change, or enduring threats, like nuclear poliferation ... It's not the first time he mangled that word, either. He then proceeded to outdo himself. 17:12 ... The United States remains committed, to perventing the right to preventing Iran, from graining a nuclear weapon ... 18:13 ... We know the bitter string of terrorism. The bitter sting of terrorism is is real...we've momost all experienced it ... 24:40 ... We cannot give up on solving, raging, civil conflicts including in Ethiopia and Yemen, where fighting between war warring parties, is driving famine, heroic, horrific violence, human rights vilalations against civilians ... The clip from which I culled the Bidenisms above ran out, and I had to find the conclusion of the speech here. The time footage indicated from this point is from the second clip. BiteMe came up with this beauty of a Bidenism: 26:08 ... And a belief in the u-universal rights of all people. It's stamped into the DNA of our nation, and, critically, it's stamped into the DNA of this institution (meaning, of course, the United Nations) ... Biden should have quit at this point, while he was still behind since it was already clear he was talking about the U.N. But then drum roll, please Biden tried to gild this lily, to make his good compliment about the U.N. even gooder, to make sure the U.N. understood he was talking about this institution, the U.N. itself but amazingly Biden said... ..."the United States" (!). Bada-bing! Way to go, Brainless One! Make sure you place your dementia on stage literally for the entire world to see! Image: Screen shot from a camera aimed at a television broadcast, filtered. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Should breaking into the U.S. illegally be a sure-thing win for the lawbreakers? It is, with Joe Biden in the saddle. So much for "do not come, do not come," as Kamala Harris once said. Migrants are not fools and pay attention to what the Biden administration proceeds to do and respond accordingly. Two things are going on that show the extent of this new "catch and release" farce. One: As I noted the other day, Biden is releasing the vast community of 16,000 illegals, mostly from Haiti, camped out under a bridge near the Del Rio, Texas border into the country without so much as a court date. His claims of mass deportations are just a few for show. According to Fox News: The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday confirmed that some Haitian migrants are being released into the interior of the United States despite a stern warning to migrants from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday that their efforts "will not succeed." In response to the surge in Haitian migrants, which has seen more than 14,000 migrants camped under the bridge in Del Rio, with reports of tens of thousands more on the way, DHS has emphasized that migrants are being removed on removal flights under Title 42 public health protections. DHS has ramped up deportation flights to Haiti as part of its strategy to combat the crisis. "DHS continues to expel migrants under CDCs Title 42 authority," a spokesperson said. "Those who cannot be expelled under Title 42 and do not have a legal basis to remain are placed in expedited or full removal proceedings." That "some" is Biden-spin meaning "thousands." Only a precious few some 300 who have broken into the U.S. illegally have been deported back to Haiti. Most are being sent to their destinations of choice in the U.S. at taxpayer expense, unvetted, and unvaxxed, with just a "notice to report" to the local ICE office papers instead of so much as a "notice to appear" with a fixed court date to adjudicate their phony asylum-claim status. Either paper is easily ignored and usually is by such lawbreakers, and Biden refuses to allow interior enforcement of immigration law, so the migrants know they've gotten here scot-free. Applying legally, you see, is for suckers. And don't think they won't tell their friends. Why the speed? Because the Bidenites have public relations as their prime priority, same as they did with the Afghanistan pullout. Given that photos of the vast, squalid Del Rio migrant camp are a political liability, Biden has his priorities. Too bad about the country, let alone what the American people want. Here's another issue well worth noting. Migrants, not being stupid, are gaming the system in an additional way they're throwing away their identification papers. So the Haitians had been in Chile and Brazil long enough to have ID cards...for years you say... https://t.co/d7w9lrFz8l Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) September 22, 2021 Virtually all of them are previously resettled refugees in third-world countries such as Chile and Brazil. They took those deals as long as a decade ago but decided they wanted to upgrade, so they came to the States, knowing that Biden was inviting them in and had halted deportations. It costs a lot of money to migrate, and, being no fools, they shelled it out only because they were sure. The ID cards from Chile and Brazil made them ineligible for asylum right off the bat. No ID, no problem without those cards, they can then claim to be anyone and get the asylum upgrade they're looking for. Country-shopping for the best package deal of benefits is getting to be pretty common under Biden. He created that situation. How the immigration officials sort that out is anyone's guess. The reality on the ground says the Bidenites won't even try. So once again, the migrants win, and the illegals will get in. That won't be where it ends, though; the illegal migrants will also tell their friends and relatives that it's all so very easy. Guess what the friends and relatives are going to do! And Biden here thinks he's got the problem solved by sweeping it under the rug to get the cameras off. What he's done with this catch-and-release idiocy is only make the problem get bigger. He's like a foolish homeowner who thinks he can get rid of a bee's nest in his rafters by shutting the hole down. Bees don't work that way, and leaving the honey in the attic will only bring more bees, in bigger numbers than ever. People, like bees, respond to honeyed incentives, and Joe's solutions will only bring in more illegal aliens as if two million new ones this year aren't enough. Congress, the courts, the states, and anyone else out there have got to get tough with this lunacy. And since Biden responds only to cameras, anyone else out there must keep the cameras on. Image: Screen shot from Fox Business video via shareable YouTube. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Biden, despite his endless self-serving paeans to his son Beau Biden's military service, must really hate the military and wish to destroy it. It's not just his imposing Critical Race Theory on the institution (including the academies) or pushing out conservatives, Christians, and others who refuse to get with the socialist program. It's also that he's so insistent on forcing vaccines onto the young men and women who serve that he wants to court-martial or dishonorably discharge them for refusing a dangerous (especially for them) experimental vaccine. We know a few things for sure about the COVID and the vaccine: Healthy young people are at minimal risk from COVID; Healthy young men are at maximum risk from the vaccine; The vaccine doesn't actually prevent COVID (although it may lessen symptoms); The vaccine may leave people more vulnerable to variants, which could disable the entire military simultaneously; and We have no idea of the long-term effects of experimental mRNA vaccines on young men and women. With that in mind, few things seem more stupid than mandating vaccines for America's military, which disproportionately consists of healthy young men and women. Yet that's what the Biden administration is doing. And vicious, corrupt Joe Biden wants to put a real sting in it for those who resist no religious or medical exemptions, plus dishonorable discharges: The White House said it "strongly opposes" a provision in the 2022 defense spending bill that would block the Pentagon from dishonorably discharging a service member who refuses to get the COVID-19 vaccine. A section in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act would limit military commanders' options for disciplining those who fail to comply with the vaccination mandate, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of administration policy Wednesday. Section 716 of the NDAA would prohibit service members who are discharged over vaccine refusal from receiving anything other than an honorable discharge, noting that "many Americans have reservations about taking a vaccine that has only been available for less than a year." The Pentagon has described the vaccine mandate as a "lawful order" that must be obeyed. "To enable a uniformed force to fight with discipline, commanders must have the ability to give orders and take appropriate disciplinary measures," the White House said in a statement. The White House also said it opposes Section 720 of the NDAA, which would establish procedures for which members may be exempted from receiving the mandated COVID-19 vaccine for "administrative, medical or religious reasons, including on the basis of possessing an antibody test result demonstrating previous COVID-19 infection." There's a viciousness to Biden's approach that is completely inconsistent with seeking to protect our troops. This is a man and an administration that revel in power and wants to squash all dissent especially reasoned dissent. One person who is very worried about what Biden's mandate portends for the military's future is Commander J.H. Furman, who posted a formal memo online outlining his concerns about how the command will affect military readiness. According to Revolver News: "The forced vaccination of all military personnel with the present COVID-19 vaccines may compromise U.S. national security due to the unknown extent of serious vaccine complications," writes Furman. "Further study is needed before committing the Total Force to one irreversible experimental group. Initial reports leave more concern for the COVID-19 vaccinations than the virus itself for the (at present) exceptionally healthy military population." Revolver News sums of Furman's key points: The average member of the U.S. military is young and in excellent physical fitness, two categories that are nearly immune to the dangers of COVID. So far, only 24 people out of 2.2 million military personnel have died of COVID-19, a rate of less than one per 91,000. There is reason to believe severe or even fatal side-effects from existing COVID-19 vaccines are more common than reported, and could even prove deadlier to otherwise-healthy servicemen than COVID-19. There is also the outlier possibility that mRNA vaccines (the kind used by the Moderna and Pfizer shots) may have unanticipated negative effects on the immune systems of recipients. Currently, the U.S. military has proven completely capable of weathering COVID-19 without any loss of effectiveness, so forcibly making the entire service a test case for a novel type of vaccine is a pointless risk. Exactly. That's why it appears that Biden's actions are done not out of love for the American military, but out of a desire to continue its destruction. He started with destroying it ideologically with the attack on imaginary "White supremacists," moved to demoralizing it with the shameful and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and is now engaged in a brute-force physical attack on our military from within. All of this, needless to say, is very un-American and concerning. Image: Joe Biden checks his watch at Dover. YouTube screen grab. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Project Veritas has a new series of videos about the COVID vaccine. The latest provides an excellent microcosm of the control fantasies many leftists have about Blacks. On Monday, Project Veritas released a video showing a government whistleblower revealing that the government knows but is trying to hide that the COVID vaccine has huge problems. On Wednesday, Project Veritas released another video, this time of an FDA economist saying blow darts should be used to vaccinate reluctant people, especially African-Americans. In a way, that video struck me even more strongly than the first, because the economist perfectly represents today's leftists. Taylor Lee is not an inherently interesting person. He works at the FDA as an economist, so he's not making policy decisions about medicines or how they should be used. He's a generic young man of the modern era. He seems to be about thirty years old; he's credentialed; and, even if not gay, he's very effeminate. He's probably a photocopy of thousands of young leftist college graduates populating government and corporate jobs. That's why his opinions are so important. Lee's defining quality is a preening arrogance. He's got a little shtick about forcing reluctant people to get vaccinated, and he's incredibly proud of it. "Blow darts!" That's his answer. Go door to door and, using blow darts, forcibly vaccinate everyone. And how will the government find those people who need vaccines? "I think there needs to be a registry of people who aren't vaccinated. Although that's sounding very [much like Nazi] Germany." We're all familiar with the passive-aggressive trick of saying something we know is wrong and then claiming it's a joke when called out on it. That's what Lee is doing and the Project Veritas undercover person, by feigning fascination, draws him out. What's even more striking than Lee's snarky, fascist cleverness is the real disgust he feels for Blacks. They need to get with his program, and he feels, in a totally Tuskegee experiment kind of way, that he and his fellows in the government should have the power to force them to bend to his will: Taylor Lee, FDA Economist: "I think that a lot of the time so there's also this issue of I remember reading about how with COVID [vaccine] trials, they were having an issue recruiting African American people. It was because of a different medication the government tried to do that was specifically designed to kill African Americans." Veritas Journalist: "Oh, so like a mistrust thing." Lee: "Yeah." Veritas Journalist: "But this thing [COVID vaccine] is safe, though." Lee: "We know that now, but like again, I think there is still this big mistrust and like it's deep-rooted." Veritas Journalist: "Yeah. Can't blame them [African Americans]." Lee: "I can't. But at the same time, like, blow dart. That's where we're going." And lest you think I'm making up his targeted condescension toward and desire for control over Blacks, I'm not. You see, Lee has very clear ideas about how Blacks and Whites rate in America: "All of the wealthy White people are getting vaccinated because they're educated." Given enough time, Lee's going to put those uneducated Blacks into the back of a bus, or maybe into a cattle car, and force all sorts of things upon them...for their own good, of course, because this effete ignorant-but-credentialed government drone knows more about what's good for Blacks than anything they know about themselves. Jonah Goldberg and I have gone down different political paths since Trump's election, but I firmly believe that Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, which he published in 2008, is still one of the best books explaining how America's leftists would bring America into the socialist, totalitarian fold: we'd be killed with kindness, he wrote. Ours would not start as a brutal political takeover. Everything would be for our own good especially for the good of our physical health and well-being. Lee, with his blow darts and condescension, is the scary person Goldberg was writing about. Here's the Taylor Lee video: And here's the first video in the Project Veritas series about the vaccine: Image: Taylor Lee. YouTube screen grab. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Hatred for Donald Trump is reuniting the Bush and Cheney political clans and letting the voters of Wyoming deliver a verdict on the contest between the GOP establishment and the Trump populists. The split in the Republican Party between pro- and anti-Trump factions is on display with the plan for former president George W. Bush to headline a fundraiser for Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump and is his vocal opponent. Oddly enough, the fundraiser will not be in Cheney's Wyoming constituency, but rather in Dallas. Politico reporter Olivia Beavers broke the story: SCOOP: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is slated to have a fundraiser w/ President George W. Bush next month. Signals Cheney is hugging Bush-world ties amid exile from the Trump-wing of the party. Event will be held in Dallas on Oct. 18 w/ some other familiar names... Rove, Miers... pic.twitter.com/aDAKyUKmKO Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) September 22, 2021 President Trump has endorsed Cheney's primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, and is now at war with much of the Bush/Cheney faction of the GOP. His comments on the fundraiser, as reported by the New York Post: Former President Donald Trump attacked George W. Bush and his longtime consigliere Karl Rove Wednesday after it emerged the pair would headline a Texas fundraiser for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) next month. "RINO former President George 'Dubya' Bush and his flunky Karl Rove are endorsing warmongering and very low polling, Liz Cheney," Trump's emailed statement began. The 45th president reiterated earlier statements about the 43rd president being "the one who got us into the quicksand of the Middle East and, after spending trillions of dollars and killing nearly a million people, the Middle East was left in worse shape after 21 years than it was when he started his stupidity. "It ended with Biden's most embarrassing in history withdrawal from Afghanistan, a total surrender, leaving $85 Billion dollars [sic] of equipment and many young Warriors lives behind," Trump continued. Politico first reported on the Oct. 18 fundraiser in Dallas, which will also feature former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and former Bush White House counsel (and ill-fated Supreme Court nominee) Harriet Miers. The word "former" applies to many of the featured players here, but Texas has many Bush family loyalists, and Halliburton, which Dick Cheney formerly headed, is headquartered in Dallas. No doubt a substantial amount of money will be raised, and Cheney already has a sizable war chest, according to the Wall Street Journal: Ms. Cheney, meanwhile, has responded to Mr. Trump's attacks with the two best fundraising quarters of her political career. She raised $1.5 million in the first three months of the year and $1.9 million in the following three. John Boehner and Paul Ryan, both former GOP House speakers, have helped raise money for her, and Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mitt Romney of Utah have all contributed to her campaign from their respective political committees. That cast of characters pretty well defines the GOPe, against which Trump fought. I think the voters of Wyoming probably understand the stakes very well. We'll see if Trump's appeal to them tops Cheney's. A key factor mentioned by Don Surber and others is that this anti-Trump Bush-Cheney solidarity apparently has healed the rift between the two families from when Bush failed to pardon Scooter Libby, V.P. Cheney's chief of staff, who was railroaded into a conviction by a D.C. jury for having a different recollection of a conversation from that of the other party to it, the late Tim Russert. Clarice Feldman covered that judicial abomination on these pages. That W failed to pardon Libby is (forgive the pun) unpardonable. But evidently, the need to unite to support global interventionism has overcome this personal betrayal. Photo credit: Milonica (cropped), CC BY-SA 3.0 license. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. So is Joe Biden ready to lose the U.S. Navy SEALs? Sure looks like it, based on this JustTheNews report: Several hundred elite Navy SEALs are in danger of being blocked from deploying with their special operator teams by the Pentagon after failing to get a mandatory COVID vaccine, according to a lawyer and pastor counseling them. The number involved in the dispute with the Pentagon amounts to as many as a quarter or more of all active duty SEALs, a loss that could impact military readiness since SEAL teams play an outsized role in modern military operations, their advocates told Just the News. If so, that's bad news for military readiness. We all know what happens to military readiness when the Navy loses a ship imagine the impact of losing a huge chunk of the elite fighting force. And in the wake of Biden's failed Afghanistan pullout, with terrorists the world over regrouping, there could be consequences for the U.S. JustTheNews notes that it costs $500,000 to train a SEAL. There's also the reality that only one out of four SEAL applicants actually makes it through training to get the title of SEAL; the rest wash out. They're not called an elite fighting force for nothing. What's more, they are very popular with the public, having taken down Osama bin Laden and other terrorist monsters to protect our country. Biden wants to get rid of that? Now, to be fair, there are sound reasons for asking troops to get vaxxed. One unvaxxed troop spreading disease to the others on the tightly packed Navy ship or submarine is no laughing matter, particularly since the vaccine itself isn't preventing breakthrough infections. But there are valid reasons for objecting, too. Taking the vaccine, for one, might actually be making troops more vulnerable, if the example of hyper-vaxxed Israel is taken into account. Some troops may object to taking the vaccine based on that, and others may object based on the record these vaccines have of triggering heart problems in young people, particularly healthy young men such as themselves. Compared to the low lethality of having COVID among the healthy young, taking a vaccine with those life-altering potential results seems stupid. Others may have a history of bad reactions to vaccines, which is a valid medical reason, too. The religious objection described by JustTheNews seems to be a bit of a stretch, given that most of the Catholic bishops have already given the go-ahead to get the vaccine, asking their faithful to avoid only the highly fetal stem cellderived Johnson & Johnson vaccine, if feasible, and if not, just take it. There are other vaccines, though, and the FDA has officially approved the Pfizer, with more distantly derived fetal stem cell lines, so it seems reasonable that religious objections at least among a large group of people are improbable. Other faiths may say something different or hold religious exemptions based on other grounds, so there's that, but, again, numbers are small. Still, it's odd that religious exemptions to troops dedicated to giving their lives for America and its freedoms, including religious freedoms, can't be somehow accommodated inside the ranks. The big and very valid reason is natural immunity. People who have had COVID are far more likely to be completely protected and less likely to spread COVID than people who have had the vaccine. That's science, and Biden's ignoring it. Why can't a SEAL who can demonstrate anti-COVID antibodies through a test be able to use that? The vax mandate for these SEALS makes zero sense. But the potential for mass refusals and firings is perfectly real, and many SEALS, for good reasons and bad, are refusing it. Is Biden really up for losing a big chunk of America's top fighting force in this day and again with the Taliban rampant? All to get his "numbers"? It's garbage. For the longest time, the White House, the CDC, the FDA, and the big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna, not to mention many hospitals, have refused to require their employees to take the vaccine, and a very large number of them didn't. They've put out mandates now, but each one has a few carve-outs in order not to lose valuable talent or, in the case of the White House, trusted employees. The fact-check on that can be read here. But the SEALs? Just cookie-cutter requirements without reasonable exemptions? Against a very strong pushback among large numbers of them who are willing to leave the service instead of being forced to take the vaccine? It has to be a bid to get rid of the military and leave America defenseless. It's one more reason why our commander-in-chief is unfit and in need of a reality check. Drew Belsky adds: The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest authority yet in the Catholic Church to officially weigh in on the matter of COVID shots, declared that "vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary." The document, along with the Vatican, is extremely proCOVID shot generally, but the language quoted here shows that Catholics, at least, are justified in seeking a religious exemption. Monica Showalter adds: If they do seek that religious exemption, which in any case, many bishops and priests won't give them, they have some tough conditionalities, according to that body: "Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable." ... which would pretty well mean it would be hard to do one's duties as a SEAL. It also would justify Biden's decision to kick them out of the SEALs since they would not be able to isolate in combat situations or on ships, and may not always be able to wear masks. It's not an easy exemption for the SEALS or anyone to seek, based on the heavy responsibilities this Vatican body has attached. So, I remain a little skeptical. Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, early on distinguished herself as a pandemic hypocrite, demanding severe lockdowns of her citizens subjects while exempting her family and herself. Her husband was caught boating when she had forbidden ordinary Michiganders to do the same, and she was caught traveling to Florida, violating her own proclamations. Resentment has grown, and not even an FBI informantled bogus kidnapping plot has been enough to keep her polls strong as she faces re-election in November 2022. Mary Chastain of Legal Insurrection spotted Whitmer signing legislation that specifically banned the state from enforcing mask mandates and vaccine passports: Whitmer and the Michigan state legislature agreed on a budget. This is no ordinary budget because it bans mask mandates and vaccine passports: Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state legislature have agreed on a budget proposal that includes language banning health officials from enforcing mask mandates in schools and preventing state public agencies from enforcing vaccines on employees or customers. "The director or local health officer shall not issue or enforce any orders or other directives that require an individual in this state who is under the age of 18 to wear a face mask or face covering," the 1,000-page budget states in one section. Chastain notes that school districts are still free to enforce mask mandates. The reason for Whitmer's reversal is not hard to figure out. Her polls stink. The Hill reports on a Trafalgar Group poll that shows her six points behind former Detroit police chief James Craig (who notably kept the peace there as Minneapolis and other cities were burning): Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) trails former Detroit Police Chief James Craig by 6 points in a hypothetical general election match-up, according to a poll released this week. The survey from the GOP-leaning Trafalgar Group shows Craig, a Republican, leading Whitmer 50.4 percent to 44.4 percent among likely general election voters. Another 5.2 percent of respondents remain undecided. Craig, who retired as Detroit police chief in June after nearly eight years on the job, announced his campaign for governor earlier this month at the urging of top Michigan Republicans. Trafalgar may be right-leaning, but other polls also indicate trouble. The Detroit News: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's job approval has fallen to a point where Michigan voters are nearly split about how she is doing, according to a new poll released Monday, marking a large decline from prior surveys. The decrease has occurred as the Aug. 31-Sept. 3 survey by the Glengariff Group found that a majority of 600 registered voters said the state is on the wrong track and that they disapprove by a wide margin of the job that President Joe Biden is doing. About 48% of voters approve of the Democratic governor's performance and 46% disapprove, according to the poll commissioned by the Detroit Regional Chamber, whose political action committee in 2018 endorsed Whitmer over Republican Bill Schuette for governor. The latest numbers are a marked shift from September 2020, when 59% of voters approved of Whitmer's performance and 38% disapproved (snip) Much of Whitmer's approval decline has occurred among independent voters, 39% of whom approved of her performance and 51% of whom disapproved, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. "Michigan elections are decided by independent voters and how she does with these independent voters moving forward will really dictate" her performance in the 2022 election, said Richard Czuba, a pollster with the Lansing-based Glengariff Group. It looks as though, worldwide, resentment and rebellion against lockdowns and other severe restrictions are on the rise. The fact that so many politicians exempt themselves and their families from the masking and other restrictions they place on those they regard as inferiors isn't helping. Photo credit: Thomas Hawk, CC BY-NC 2.0 license. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Popstar Nikki Minaj got into hot water for claiming unusual side effects to the COVID vaccine and got shut down on Twitter. Social media barons claim she's the problem. But let's look at who the problem is on the misinformation front. Take a lot at the "experts" considered her "betters." In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated the Chinese propaganda that COVID wouldn't spread human to human, yet it has never been silenced. How many deaths did that misinformation cause? In February 2020, NIH bureaucrat Dr. Anthony Fauci essentially said COVID-19 was nothing to worry about. Why hasn't he been silenced for that misinformation since it caused so much harm? Why do most of the media continue to treat whatever Fauci says as gospel? Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands Where are the scientific reports that say masks in schools provided better results than schools with no masks? The answer is that there are no facts to support the masks. Today, even people with vaccines are told to wear masks indoors, except if you go to the Met Gala or the Emmys. Then you are special. In March 2020, the CDC, without scientific evidence, claimed that the virus not only easily spreads off surfaces but had claims about how long it lasts on each surface. In May, they admitted that they made that up. Coronavirus 'does not spread easily' by touching surfaces or objects, CDC says. But it still 'may be possible.' How much has that initial lie cost everyone? How many people continue to believe the original lie? "Experts," without scientific evidence, required grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses to put up Plexiglas to stop the spread. How much did that misinformation cost? We now read news like this: Here's why experts say plastic barriers could be doing more harm than good New research suggests that plastic barriers are not that effective at stopping COVID-19. In fact, they may be making some situations worse. The CDC pulled the six-foot social distancing requirement out of thin air (without any scientific evidence). Former FDA Commissioner: Six Foot Social Distancing Rule Was 'Arbitrary Nobody Knows Where It Came From' "So the single reason why most schools remained shut was because the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) was telling them they had to keep kids six feet apart," he said. "If- if CDC has said you can only- you have to keep kids three feet apart, then a lot of schools would have been able open." How many people still believe that that made-up number is important? How many businesses and children has that piece of misinformation destroyed or harmed? Throughout the last 18 months, the public has been given dire warnings of super-spreader crowded events, yet few have come to pass. Aren't facts important? In March 2020, the CDC, without a scientific reason, decided that deaths from COVID should be counted differently from how deaths from viruses in the past were. There is absolutely no reason deaths remotely associated or assumed to be associated with COVID should be classified as deaths caused by COVID, yet that is what we do. Sharyl Attkisson: Serious Questions About the Way Covid Deaths Have Been Counted During our visit to Colorado, the state's total Covid-related death tally was 13,845. Separating out the deaths not directly caused by Covid cuts that number by about half with the rest dying "among" or "with" Covid not because of it. The public is constantly told how dire it is that numerous children are going to the hospital and that hospitals are overcrowded. I have heard that the high is 1,900 per day at the hospital. That sounds high unless you look at it as 40 per state. Or maybe the media should put it in perspective that in a normal year, three million children end up in the hospital. Each year more than 3 million children are hospitalized in the United States. It appears that the reason was purely to goose the numbers to scare the public. Other than Sharyl Attkisson and a few others, why don't the media want an accurate count instead of an inflated count? Dr. Fauci is lying about the number of kids dying from COVID in comparison to the flu. Why Can't Dr. Anthony Fauci Stop Lying? He lied about masks early on, claiming that he did so in order to protect supplies, but it's his more recent lies that have really exposed his brazen nature. Recently, he told another whopper involving kids and COVID, asserting that we've never lost as many kids to the flu as we have the coronavirus. That, as Guy Benson points out with CDC data, is just completely false. Maybe we should look at all the kids dying from suicide and drug overdoses because of the tyrannical measures supported by Fauci and other government officials. The media are really pushing the vaccine despite little scientific evidence. Wouldn't it be safer for kids to get the virus and get natural immunity? There are many breakthrough cases of people who are vaccinated and few cases of people getting COVID twice, so why are people with natural immunity being threatened that they can't go to concerts, travel, or go to work if they don't get the vaccine? New York Times Buries Pfizer Report on Vaccinating Children In Article Attempting to Fearmonger People Into It For instance, the Old Gray Lady stuffed Pfizer's recent reports that children don't exhibit enough symptoms from the COVID-19 virus to draw enough info on how the vaccine might affect them, yet the NYT reported that the vaccine was a powerful ally for children in the fight against the virus. It's not until a whopping16 paragraphs down that the real findings that Pfizer put forward in regards to children and the vaccine are even mentioned. What did Pfizer find in terms of how the vaccine affects children? They found nothing because kids weren't getting sick enough from the virus to show how the vaccine had any meaningful impact on them: Given how rarely children become severely ill, the trial was not big enough to draw meaningful conclusions about the vaccine's ability to prevent Covid or hospitalization. Instead, the researchers relied on measurements of the youngsters' immune response, on the assumption that the protective levels of antibodies seen in older people would be as protective in younger children. Biggest lie of all: when the media, Fauci, and others said that anyone claiming the Wuhan lab was the origin of the virus was a conspiracy nut. Fauci is obviously trying to hide the truth since he helped fund the Wuhan lab that did gain of function research. It is sad that the Democrats, including Fauci, wouldn't even show up for a hearing on the origins of the virus since they pretend to care. Why would anyone trust the social media giants to determine what is misinformation and what is not when they willingly spread so much misinformation from people pushing government control and the leftist agenda? And Nikki Manaj is the problem? Image: Eva Rinaldi via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Finally, "progressive" chickens have come home to roost. Whatever the rhetoric I read in the past, I did not expect to read the headline "Democratic party leadership in the US House of representatives blocked $1 billion for the Iron Dome." This is a big deal, a matter of life and death, because the Iron Dome shoots down incoming Hamas rockets and is indispensable for saving Israeli lives. While the report concluded on a cautiously optimistic note ("The White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised the Israeli government aid budgets for the Iron Dome in the near future"), the strong implication remains: the so-called "progressives" support terrorists rather than those fighting terrorism, and they root for Hamas and are dead-set against Israel. "The progressive Democrats blocking the Iron Dome funding are among those who pushed to block arms to Israel during Operation Guardian of the Wall in May, according to Politico. That move was led by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of NY, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan." This brings home the simple point: elections matter and setting one's priorities carefully, unsentimentally, and rationally when choosing whom to vote for matters, too. Or does it? By a majority of three to one, American Jews vote for Democrats. If any loud honking can awaken those three-quarters of American Jews to the fact that they are driving in a wrong political lane, this should be it but I suspect they are unlikely to follow the news from the Middle East, or even if they do, to put Israel's security, and lives of Israelis, higher on the totem pole of their priorities than transgender rights and suchlike. Political choices are unfortunately irrational, influenced by identity rather than clear thinking. Still, this is a moment like no other a moment when voting can be actually murderous. Any American Jew voting for "Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of NY, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan" and their ilk, or contributing to their campaigns, will have the blood of Israelis on his hands. This is deadly serious, guys. This is the time to sit up and think. This is the time for American Jews to change the course. Since Israel has become a partisan issue, the Democrats abandoning, and the Republicans championing it, those who routinely vote Democratic should do the right thing and vote Republican in 2022. Don't support "progressive" murderers. Stop your noses if you really need to vote Republican, but do vote Republican. And make a habit of it, so the next time you vote Republican, you don't have to stop your noses. Human lives depend on it. Image via Max Pixel. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. New Yorkers suffered through the same months of lockdowns, fear, and sickness as the rest of the country. Images and reports of the suffering have been endless. Yet there were countless moments of people helping others, of caring, of reaching out and offering hope. Moments of courage and moments of trust in God. Moments of transcendence and prayer. Now the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, Manhattan, is presenting a photographic exhibit that highlights and honors that spirit. Portraits of Grace: Honoring Heroes of the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic showcases the human and the divine present in the pandemic experience. From September 14 to October 4, the Sheen gallery, in collaboration with America Media and the National Review Institute's Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society, with support from the Anglosphere Society and the Knights of Columbus, will host the exhibit. The presentation is intended to capture New Yorkers challenged in ways no one expected while offering the living witness of the Gospel message in action. Board member of the Sheen Center Amanda Bowman had the idea of a photographic project to bring the positive and the heroism of the pandemic in New York. It would prominently feature the Catholic response but not be limited to it. It would present the Church's outreach alongside others and present a picture of how coming together worked to bring grace, healing, and hope to a suffering city. When photojournalist Jeffrey Bruno was asked to be the curator, he didn't realize how few pictures had been taken during the peak of the pandemic. He found that few photographers had taken pictures of how the coronavirus was impacting the city. In addition to many photographers being out of work, hospitals and other venues were not allowing anyone in, many churches were closed, and some photographers didn't want to be out and about during the coronavirus. His role involved countless hours of photo research, speaking with photographers, and combing galleries to compile the photos needed. Bruno found one photographer who did have hospital access because he worked for a medical company, Northwell. Lee Weissman's photos gave a glimpse of what it was like emotionally for health care workers who kept showing up, not knowing what toll the virus could take on them or their families if exposed. "A portrait of courage emerges," Bruno says. "That's selfless heroism. I developed a richer understanding and appreciation for those who showed up on the battle lines." Heroes of the pandemic were not only medical personnel. Priests, consecrated women and men, and dedicated laypeople stepped forward to bring the Gospel's message of hope. The images honor those who were there to meet the physical and spiritual needs of a people in crisis. The words of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, are intertwined among the photos. No matter how dark some days seemed, we remained united in our unwavering faith in God, knowing that He would bring light out of the darkness, hope from despair, life from death. The exhibition is free of charge and marks the grand reopening of the Sheen Center. 'Re-entering His Presence'- A young man from St. Francis House in Brooklyn prays quietly on May 26, 2020; the first day that churches in NYC reopened after being closed for a year. 'Portrait of Grace'-A nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in Manhattan brings hope and encouragement to a patient suffering from complications due to COVID-19. by Lee Weissman/Northwell 'A World Mourns'- Jorge Islas Lopez, consul general of Mexico in New York, joins his staff in carrying the cremated remains of 250 Mexicans who had died from COVID-19, from St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC. The ashes were blessed by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. by Gregory Shemitz Images courtesy the Sheen Center. Used by permission. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. (ANSA) - ROME, SEP 22 - Italy on Wednesday stepped up its fight to stop the European Union recognising Croatian Prosek wine after the application for the alleged inferior clone to Italy's famed prosecco was published in the EU's Official Gazette. Farm Minister Stefano Patuanelli told the Senate that a task force had already been set up to combat the registration of Prosek was a recognised denomination. "It seems indubitable to me that the term Prosek would evoke in the average European consumer Italian Prosecco due to its phonetic resemblance," he said. Patunaelli said he did not think "the conditions exist" for the EU to put Prosek on a par with prosecco. Italy has two months from Wednesday's publication of the application to file its objections to the Croatian wine becoming one of the EU's protected products. Patuanelli stressed that "no definitive decision has yet been taken on the registration". But farm group Coldiretti said that "the EU's green light to the publication of the application for Croatian Prosek ruins the historic record for world prosecco exports, which rose 35% in the first six months of 2021." The group said the publication also "blatantly contradicts the recent sentence of the European Court of Justice that declared illegitimate all the fraudulent Italian sounding names which deceptively evoke products recognised and protected by the European Union like the star of Italian bubbly which this year should reach a record of 700 million bottles produced, the biggest wine brand in the world". (ANSA). Archaeology: new look for Roman Punic necropolis in Cagliari Paths among squares and palaces to rediscover Tuvixeddu park (ANSAmed) - CAGLIARI, SEPT 23 - The regional secretariat of the Italian Culture Ministry has allocated 800,000 euros to enhance the archaeological area of Tuvixeddu, the largest Roman Punic necropolis in the Mediterranean, located in Cagliari on the island of Sardinia. The Punic and Roman tombs there are just steps away from buildings, parking lots and courtyards. Sometimes to visit the archaeological site and artifacts it was necessary to ask for authorisation from private individuals and even for keys from apartment building administrators. Now, however, with the funding from the culture ministry, squares and paths can be built to make the city's historic artifacts accessible even when passing through or next to buildings. In a press conference held in front of the tomb known as "Tomba delle Spighe e dei Pesci", organisers said the first phase of the work involves the excavation, restoration and maintenance of the necropolis for the restoration, where possible, of the original funerary landscape. Also planned is the creation of a path for visitors between the Roman tomb of Rubellio, probably a Roman aristocrat, and the tomb "Tomba delle Spighe e dei Pesci", the one closest to the road. A protective climate-controlled box entrance to house a multimedia communication system will also be created, said Elena Romoli, representing the superintendency. This piece of history had been neglected for decades: it had become a mechanic's office, and up through the 1980s its neighbours were people who illegally used the other tombs as makeshift shelters. After that, however, pending funding, the superintendency managed to isolate and wall off the tomb, to allow for future renovation and opening to the public. In the area in front, which was for years used as a rubbish dump and then a controversial worksite for the construction of an apartment building (in the span of just a few days the first bricks were laid then removed after the regional government intervened), a small square will be built that could become a sort of entrance door to the Roman Punic necropolis. "We would like for it to become a regular place for taking walks, an area for crossing that allows for truly taking advantage of these artifacts," Romoli said.(ANSAmed). NAPLES - Business France, the French government agency dedicated to internationalisation and exports, will bring a full programme of events to the France pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, kicking off on 1 October. The agency has prepared a programme of meetings that focus in particular on Arab and Middle Eastern markets, starting on 4 October with one of the country's most classic products: cosmetics. A delegation from the cosmetics sector will be at the event BeautyWorld Middle East 2021 with distributors, importers and journalists for showing new products. In early November the agency will bring the topics of cities, design and technology to Dubai, starting with five days dedicated to the "French Tech Tour Middle East", which will present all the new innovations in the French tech market. Starting 2 November AFEX, the association of French architects for exports, will meet at the French pavilion with large investors from the UAE to present projects and network, while on 5 November the design sector will present recent trends of French creativity in the field. Food will be featured on 8 November with an event in which participants will include entrepreneurs in agriculture, production of French cooking ingredients, storage and logistics. On 23 November the focus will be on poultry and cattle breeders and farming machines. From 15 to 21 January, an entire week will be dedicated to French SMEs including a focus event organised with Emirati colleagues on the security sector. BELGRADE - The situation at the border between Kosovo and Serbia is relatively calm but full of tension on the fourth day in which demonstrations by Serbians are blocking the border crossings of Jarinje and Brnjak to protest the licence plate change requirement for vehicles entering from Serbia. The two border crossings are blocked by a long line of lorries, bulldozers, tyres and other material preventing the regular passage of vehicles, making it possible to cross the border only on foot. The Merdare border crossing is currently the only one open to cars and lorries. The demonstrators are being held at bay by a massive deployment of armed Kosovar special forces police backed by armoured trucks. The protesters spent another night sleeping in tents to hold their positions and demonstrate against what they consider a unilateral and provocatory decision by Pristina. Since 20 September, all vehicles entering from Serbia and circulating in Kosovo have been required to change their Serbian licence plates to temporary Kosovar ones valid for two months at a cost of five euros. Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti said the decision was made under the "principle of reciprocity" in response to a similar requirement that Kosovar vehicles entering Serbia must abide by. The situation has further cemented the positions of the two already distant parties, placing new doubts on the possibility for continuing the EU-facilitated dialogue between the governments. Numerous appeals for moderation and a return to the negotiating table have come from the EU in Brussels, but Belgrade said it will allow the dialogue to resume only if the situation goes back to the way it was before 20 September, with a revocation of the licence plate requirement and the withdrawal from majority-Serb North Kosovo of the armed units of the Kosovar police. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia is a sovereign country and Kosovo is not and cannot impose its own vehicle licence plates with the initials RKS - Republic of Kosovo. Borrell says no unilateral move, work through EU-facilitated dialogue BRUSSELS - EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU is calling for an "immediate de-escalation in North Kosovo". "Any provocations or unilateral actions must be avoided as they would go directly against the interest of the people of the region," Borrell said in a statement on the crisis that erupted between Serbia and Kosovo after the decision by authorities in Pristina to require vehicles entering from Serbia to replace their vehicle license plates with temporary Kosovar plates bearing the initials RKS (Republic of Kosovo). "We urge the leadership in Belgrade and Pristina to take a responsible approach and to work through the EU facilitated Dialogue to avoid any further escalation, restore a peaceful atmosphere and to work on viable solutions. It is in the interests of all to look for a way forward that enables freedom of movement and which improves people's daily lives," he said. The statement also highlighted how all agreements reached in the process of the EU-facilitated Dialogue since its inception in 2011 "remain valid and binding for both parties" and constitute "an important element for comprehensive normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia". "The EU and its Member States urge Kosovo and Serbia to fully respect and implement all their Dialogue obligations with no further delay". Kosovo: Borrell says no unilateral moves on car plate change Work on viable solutions with EU-facilitated dialogue (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, SEPT 23 - EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU is calling for an "immediate de-escalation in North Kosovo". "Any provocations or unilateral actions must be avoided as they would go directly against the interest of the people of the region," Borrell said in a statement on the crisis that erupted between Serbia and Kosovo after the decision by authorities in Pristina to require vehicles entering from Serbia to replace their vehicle license plates with temporary Kosovar plates bearing the initials RKS (Republic of Kosovo). "We urge the leadership in Belgrade and Pristina to take a responsible approach and to work through the EU facilitated Dialogue to avoid any further escalation, restore a peaceful atmosphere and to work on viable solutions. It is in the interests of all to look for a way forward that enables freedom of movement and which improves people's daily lives," he said. The statement also highlighted how all agreements reached in the process of the EU-facilitated Dialogue since its inception in 2011 "remain valid and binding for both parties" and constitute "an important element for comprehensive normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia". "The EU and its Member States urge Kosovo and Serbia to fully respect and implement all their Dialogue obligations with no further delay". (ANSAmed). TUNIS - With the most recent measures published on Wednesday in the Tunisian Official Gazzette, Tunisian President Kais Saied seems to want to definitively change the hybrid system of government in Tunisia to a true presidential regime. The new measures strengthen presidential power at the expense of the government and the Tunisian Parliament, which would be effectively sidestepped by legislating by decree. Among the measures adopted were the extension of the suspension of Parliament, the revocation of parliamentary immunity, and the enactment of "exceptional measures" for "the exercise of legislative power" and for "the exercise of executive power". The measures effectively suspend two chapters of the Tunisian Constitution that regulate legislative and executive powers. Politicians and experts, who thus far have expressed themselves individually and haphazardly regarding Saied's decisions, had harsh reactions to the new measures. The most upset reaction came, predictably, from the speaker of parliament, as well as the leader of the Islamic Ennadha party, Rached Ghannouchi. As a result of the new measures, starting Thursday Ghannouchi will no longer have a State-issued personal protective detail. He said that Saied has "by now passed the mark and has effectively suspended the Constitution, a circumstance that he will categorically oppose". Noamane El Euch, MP with the Democratic Current party, said Saied "conducted a true coup against the Constitution and that "September 22 is a sad date for Tunisia and Tunisians". The secretary-general of Attayar, Ghazi Chaouachi, said "we must fight against the overthrow of the Constitution". The president of the parliamentary group of Qalb Tounes, Oussama Khelifi, described the decrees of Saied as "tailor-made" and "smuggling", designed "to consecrate a dictatorship", and he called to "fight against the coup". Ali Laarayedh, leader of Ennadha, spoke of "an overthrow of the Constitution that deprives Saied of his legitimacy and calls for fighting against him, who carried out a coup d'etat to seize the three powers". Former Health Minister Abdellatif Mekki said the measures announced by the president confirm that 25 July was not an opportunity to avert an imminent danger or respond to economic emergencies, but that Saied's only goal was to change the political system and seize all powers. "It is becoming clear that his only goal is to change the system and since he intends to do so, he can only go from bad to worse," Mekki said in a statement to Al Jazeera. A 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of teacher Sabina Nessa, the Metropolitan Police said. The suspect was arrested at an address in Lewisham on Thursday and is being held in custody. The force issued CCTV images of a man walking in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke, on the evening Ms Nessa was attacked as well as an image of a silver vehicle they believe he has access to. Detective Chief Inspector Neil John, from the Mets Specialist Crime Command, said: Our team have been working tirelessly to find the person responsible for Sabinas murder and this has included an extensive trawl of CCTV, work which remains ongoing. We would ask anyone especially those in Kidbrooke and the wider area of Lewisham and Greenwich to take a careful look at these images to check whether you know who this man is or have seen him over recent days. Any information as to his identity or whereabouts could be vital for our investigation so we are asking you to share this image far and wide to ensure as many people as possible see it. Ms Nessa, 28, had been walking to meet a friend at a pub in Kidbrooke, south east London, on Friday on a journey that should have taken just five minutes when she was fatally attacked near Cator Park. Her body was found near the OneSpace community centre at Kidbrooke Park Road in the Royal Borough of Greenwich at around 5.30pm on Saturday. This is the second arrest the Metropolitan Police has made in connection with the attack. On Saturday, detectives arrested a man in his 40s on suspicion of murder, who was then released under further investigation. Ms Nessas cousin Zubel Ahmed said previously her parents are inconsolable after their loss. In an interview with the BBC, he said: We are all truly devastated. Her parents are absolutely shocked, theyre inconsolable still and understandably so, to hear of their daughter being taken away from them by some cowardly man is just horrific. She honestly was the most caring person, kindest, sweetest girl you could meet. Sabinas heart was as good as gold, she never had a bad word to say about anyone. Her sister is going to miss her so much. An unusual fossil with a series of spikes has been revealed to be the remains of a new species of dinosaur. The fossil of an ankylosaur rib, found at the Boulahfa site in the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco, is believed to be at least 20 million years older than any of that species found before, scientists said, while its shape is also unusual. Ankylosaurs were a herbivorous group of dinosaurs known for their armoured tank-like bodies and a club-shaped tail tip. Palaeontologist Dr Susannah Maidment, a researcher at the Natural History Museum, told the PA news agency existing fossils of ankylosaurs are from the Cretaceous period, roughly between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago, but this bone is around 165 million years old, dating to the Jurassic era. She said: Ankylosaurs are well known from the Cretaceous period, particularly from North America and from Asia, and we know a whole bunch of different species but this is completely different from all of those. This is a new species of ankylosaur, its much older than any other ankylosaur that weve found but also it has this really, really strange morphology. This fossil is about 165 million years old. Its from the Middle Jurassic, a time period where we have really hardly any evidence of ankylosaurs at all. EMBARGOED TO 1600 THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23 A specimen of the oldest ankylosaur ever discovered and the first from the African continent at the Natural History Museum in London. The specimen is a fossil of armour spikes, that once protruded from the ankylosaur's ribs. Contrary to Dr. Maidment's original suspicion that the specimen could be fake, the specimen is genuine and, therefore, new to science. Picture date: Thursday September 9, 2021. Ankylosaurs have been characterised by their series of bony plates and spikes that are embedded in their skin. However, the new fossil the first from the African continent shows long spikes directly attached to the bone, which Dr Maidment described as unusual. This specimen actually has spikes and an osteodermal plate fused to a rib so its attached firmly to the rib and couldnt have come apart. That is really weird. We dont see that in any other ankylosaur and in fact we dont see that in any other vertebra that we know of, living or dead, she said. The specimen is so unusual that at first the researchers wondered if it could be a fake. Dr Maidment acquired the rib from a fossil dealer in Cambridge in 2019, and has named the species Spicomellus afer: Spicomellus meaning collar of spikes, and afer meaning of Africa. She had earlier led the study on a new species of stegosaurian dinosaur the oldest definite stegosaur ever found which had been found at the same site. We thought it (the ankylosaur fossil) was a stegosaur because it was from a site in Morocco where we named a stegosaur last year and we saw that this fossil comprised a series of spines, and stegosaurs do have some spines on their body, she said. EMBARGOED TO 1600 THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23 Dr. Susannah Maidment at the Natural History Museum in London with a specimen of the oldest ankylosaur ever discovered and the first from the African continent. The specimen is a fossil of armour spikes, that once protruded from the ankylosaur's ribs. Contrary to Dr. Maidment's original suspicion that the specimen could be fake, the specimen is genuine and, therefore, new to science. Picture date: Thursday September 9, 2021. Further inspection of the fossil showed a particular texture of the bone, which forms a cross-hatch type pattern, that is unique to ankylosaurs. Dr Maidment, honorary senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, hopes to visit the site in the future and learn more about why there has only been one ankylosaur fossil found in Africa so far. She added: Prior to this find weve had no ankylosaur fossils from Africa at all from any time period in the Mesozoic and we dont know why that is. It could be because they werent a very common part of ecosystems in Africa or it could be that we just havent found their fossils yet. This is a new site where these dinosaurs are coming from so perhaps if we keep looking there well be able to find more of this skeleton because it is rather fragmented at the moment. The findings are published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. The Foreign Secretary will push for Mexicos support for the UK to join an international trade pact as she visits the country on Thursday. Liz Truss will travel to Mexico from the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where she has represented the UK with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It comes after Mr Johnson conceded an agreement with the US was not about to be struck, following meetings with President Joe Biden. But Ms Truss will focus on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and discuss plans to develop a new and updated deal between the UK and Mexico. The CPTPP is a free trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss arrive in Washington DC (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The UK applied to join in February, and in June the CPTPP announced that the accession process would begin. Ms Truss said: Closer ties with Mexico are a key part of our plan to strengthen economic, security and diplomatic links with like-minded allies who share our belief in free enterprise and free trade. A trade deal with Mexico, for example, will pave the way for us to join the CPTPP, one of the worlds biggest free trade areas. Our relationship with Mexico has huge potential. It could open vast new opportunities for businesses, support jobs across Britain, and help ensure we play a key role in an open and dynamic Indo-Pacific. Ms Truss will also formally open the new British Embassy building in Mexico City, after the previous one was damaged in the 2017 earthquake. She will also attend a dinner with celebrity British-Mexican chef Fernando Stovell, who has held three Michelin stars and cooked for the Queen. Police in Quebec are searching for a man who allegedly punched a female nurse after she administered the COVID-19 vaccine to the mans wife. The incident occurred Monday morning in Sherbrooke, about 95 miles southeast of Montreal, at the office of a pharmacy where the nurse had been assigned. A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at Olympic Stadium in Montreal on March 1. A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at Olympic Stadium in Montreal on March 1. (Paul Chiasson/) Our suspect went directly into the office and began to yell at the nurse, Sherbrooke police spokesperson Martin Carrier said. The man claimed his wife had been vaccinated without his authorization before striking the nurse in the face. The suspect was described as having short dark hair, dark eyes, thick eyebrows and a cross tattoo on one of his hands. People take part in a demonstration to oppose government restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Montreal, Saturday, March 13. People take part in a demonstration to oppose government restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Montreal, Saturday, March 13. (Graham Hughes/) Police said it was unknown whether or not the man was in fact married and whether or not she had been vaccinated at the pharmacy. During the recent Canadian election campaign, prime minister Justin Trudeau decried anti-vaccine protesters who had targeted hospitals and health care workers. Quebec premier Francois Legault said Wednesday that the provinces legislature was moving to pass a special law that restricted how closely anti-vaccine protests could be staged to schools or hospitals. (Reuters) - Two weeks after Richmond, Virginia, removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had prompted protests over racial injustice, the city unveiled a new monument on Wednesday commemorating the end of slavery. The Emancipation and Freedom Monument, designed by Oregon sculptor Thomas Jay Warren, comprises two 12-foot bronze statues depicting a man and a woman carrying an infant, newly freed from slavery. "The enslaved built this city with their hands," Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said at a ceremony to mark the occasion. "We will rebuild this city with our hearts." The new monument is located less than two miles from the site where the towering 61-foot Lee statue had stood for more than a century. Statues honoring the leaders of the Confederacy, the pro-slavery group of Southern states that seceded from the United States and fought in the 1861-65 Civil War, have become targets of anti-racism protests. Richmond was the Confederate capital during the war. Governor Ralph Northam announced the Lee statue's removal in June 2020, days after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide demonstrations. "Just a couple of weeks ago, one of my proudest days, we took down a statue of a man who led an army to stop the emancipation and freedom these figures symbolize," Northam said at Wednesday's ceremony. The pedestal features the names and biographies of 10 Black Virginians who contributed to the fight for liberty before and after emancipation, including Nat Turner, who led a briefly successful slave revolt in 1831 in the state, and Dred Scott, a slave whose unsuccessful lawsuit seeking his freedom led to the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1857 that people of African descent were not entitled to citizenship. The project began a decade ago as part of the state's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in the United States. YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of Parliament of Armenia Alen Simonyan will pay an official visit to the Russian Federation. The agenda of the upcoming visit, as well as a number of other issues were discussed today during Simonyans meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin, the Parliaments press service said. At the beginning of the meeting Speaker Simonyan touched upon the recent fatal attack in the city of Perm, offering his condolences to the families of the victims and wishing a recovery to the injured. Coming to the relations between the two countries, Alen Simonyan highlighted the constant development of the Armenian-Russian inter-parliamentary ties. The Russian Ambassador in turn highly valued the bilateral partnering relations at regional and international levels. He called the productive operation of inter-parliamentary groups as a parliamentary achievement and emphasized the importance of constant development of multi-polar cooperation bridges. Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, 23 SEPTEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 23 September, USD exchange rate down by 0.48 drams to 483.75 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.90 drams to 567.05 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.01 drams to 6.66 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 1.33 drams to 661.53 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price down by 43.72 drams to 27581.55 drams. Silver price up by 2.46 drams to 353.6 drams. Platinum price up by 794.31 drams to 15366.29 drams. He also lashed out at the Gandhi siblings advisers specifically K.C. Venugopal, Ajay Maken and Randeep Singh Surjewala New Delhi: Feeling hurt, Punjabs former Congress CM Capt. Amarinder Singh opened up on Wednesday on his resignation and the Punjab Congress. Attacking state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, Capt. Amarinder Singh said Mr Sidhu was dangerous for the country and that the party will not win even 10 seats in Punjab under his leadership in the upcoming Assembly elections. The old warhorse further added that he was ready to make any sacrifice to stop Navjot Singh Sidhu from becoming Punjab CM, and vowed to pit a strong person against him to ensure his defeat in the 2022 Assembly polls. Capt. Singh said he had offered his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi three weeks earlier, but she had asked him to continue. If she had just called me and asked me to step down, I would have, he said, adding: As a soldier, I know how to do my task and leave once I am called back. The former CM said he didnt like how the Congress had called a CLP meeting stealthily at night. He said: I would not have taken the MLAs on a flight to Goa or someplace. That is not how I operate. I dont do gimmicks, and the Gandhi siblings know that is not my way, he said. Capt. Singh said that Priyanka and Rahul (Gandhi siblings) are like my children this should not have ended like this. I am hurt, and went on to add that the brother-sister duo were quite inexperienced and their advisers were clearly misguiding them. He also lashed out at the Gandhi siblings advisers specifically K.C. Venugopal, Ajay Maken and Randeep Singh Surjewala and wondered how these leaders could decide who was good for which ministry. Interestingly, Capt. Singh did not attack the AICC general secretary in charge of Punjab, Mr Harish Rawat. Accusing Mr Sidhu of trying to act like a super chief minister, Capt. Singh said it was a sad situation for Punjab that Mr Sidhu, who could not handle his own ministry, should be managing the Cabinet. If Sidhu behaves as the super CM, the party wont function, he said, adding that under this drama masters leadership, it would be a big thing if the Congress managed to even touch double digits in the Punjab polls. On the financial subsidies announced by the new CM, Capt. Singh said he just hoped that these dont bankrupt the state. He said Charanjit Singh Channi was a good minister, an intelligent man. He then added: As long as he doesnt come under the influence of Navjot Singh Sidhu, he will be able to run the government. Its been known for a while now that the Wingman will be assembled somewhere Down Under, but it was only this week that the American aerospace company announced the exact location: Toowoomba, in Queensland, Australia.Boeing says it will establish the production facility, the companys first aircraft assembly facility of its kind outside of North America, in the Wellcamp Aerospace and Defence Precinct at the local Wellcamp Airport. Some 300 people will be needed for the production efforts, and the parties involved estimate the project could generate up to $1 billion for the local economy over the next ten years.The Loyal Wingman has been designed to fly alongside military planes and provide support with surveillance, reconnaissance, or electronic warfare. It can fly either under control from a pilot on the ground, or by itself thanks to the AI system that powers it. The publicly available details reveal the machine is 38-feet (11.7 meters) long, and can fly for as much as 2,000 nautical miles (2,300 miles or 3,700 km) in a single mission.Unlike most other drones currently in use, this one can team up with others (hence the Airpower Teaming System name of the project) and perform more complex tasks.Back in March, Boeing received a $115 million contract from the Australian government to complete the drones design, the evolution of payloads, and a sustainment system for the aircraft during operation. At least six Wingmen are slotted for production in the mid-term future. Ghosn talked with Maria Bartiromo (yes, that one from the Ramones song) about his new book. The executive wrote Broken Alliances: Inside the Rise and Fall of a Global Automotive Empire to tell the whole story as he lived it and the reasons why he believes that he was arrested.The corporate conspiracy would have emerged after Ghosn tried to create a more stable structure than the Alliance he built to keep Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi together as one of the major car manufacturers in the world. The three companies were independent, and Ghosn was the main link among them. If he decided to retire, for example, the Alliance would be in jeopardy. At the same time, taking care of three different carmakers at the same time was complex, to say the least.A simple merger would not be acceptable. Renaults major shareholder is France. The Japanese government did not want a foreign country controlling one of its major companies. When he was arrested on November 19, 2018, Ghosn was trying to engineer a deal that would suit all the shareholders and interests involved. That was the main target of his then recently renewed contract as Renaults CEO: to make the merger irreversible. Ghosn talked about that in some interviews at the time, which made these intentions public.Later reports about the whole situation show that Ghosn has his reasons to believe in a plot. Automotive News wrote about Hitoshi Kawaguchis statement to Japanese courts during Greg Kellys trial. Kelly was Nissans human resources officer, and he was arrested with Ghosn. Kawaguchi is the former Nissan senior vice president for government relations.According to Kawaguchi, he and two other Nissan executives were against the merger: Hidetoshi Imazu, Nissans Statutory Auditor, and Hari Nada, head of the CEO office at the company. By then, Ghosn was not in charge of Nissan anymore: he named Hiroto Saikawa Nissans new CEO starting on April 1, 2017.Kawaguchi, Imazu, and Nada decided to start investigating alleged misconducts from Ghosn and met two or three times a week to discuss their findings. In July 2018, Imazu took the information they gathered to Japanese prosecutors.According to Kawaguchi, who retired in 2020, none of the allegations against Ghosn was fabricated. He also told the judges that they were not meant to stop the merger. The fact that they did would have been just a coincidence.Thats not what Ravinder Passis statement suggests. The British lawyer was working at Nissan's global general counsel, leading a team of 250 people. In an interview published by BBC on August 4 , he said that Nada called him to his office and warned him that Ghosn would be arrested in a rather public way, conceived for maximum publicity. Ghosn and Kelly Nissans only American director at the time had been called back to Japan for an urgent meeting with high-level executives that would never happen.Nada had already struck a deal with prosecutors to grant him immunity. Passi said that the Japanese executive had conceived the financial arrangements that Japanese prosecutors deemed as illegal. That was a massive red flag for the British lawyer: people involved with crimes should not be part of the investigation process but their very object. Saikawa had also signed documents authorizing the alleged illegal payments to Ghosn.Passi tried to warn Nissans head of audit committee possibly Imazu then the companys independent directors about what happened. He was then removed from the investigation about Ghosn and relieved of his duties. After a while, Passi and his family were forced to leave Japan, not before having his house raided by court officials and Nissan staff. They got back a laptop and a telephone that contained evidence against Nissan executives.After Ghosn ended up in jail, Passi said multiple foreign executives left Nissan. In his interview with Fox Business , Ghosn mentioned some of them, saying they left soon after his arrest. Regarding his escape, Ghosn said he tried it after he realized he would not have a fair trial. He felt that the prosecutors were ruling everything. Japanese criminal courts are notorious for conviction rates of 99%. In other words, prosecutors almost never lose.For Ghosn, it was clear that the Japanese government wanted to keep him awayto ensure Nissan would still be a Japanese company. He would not have even been authorized to hire an independent translator so that he could follow the hearings. The one Ghosn had was hired by the prosecutors.When he said that Nissan was back to being thefrom 1999, Ghosn said that with evident frustration. For him, everybody involved is losing: the Japanese government and the country's legal systems reputation, France, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Renault, and the shareholders.Instead of strategic plans, these companies would now be organizing their retreat, lowering production volumes, and focusing on more profitable vehicles solely to stay alive. For companies that united once were one of the major car manufacturing groups in the world, that's more than a frustrating conclusion: it's melancholic. During the Air Force Associations Air, Space and Cyber Conference held in Maryland earlier this week, the new Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, revealed the fact that there are now five test aircraft being manufactured on the B-21 production line at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.The new piece of info comes after back in January the Program Executive Officer of the B-21 Raider Program, Randall Walden, confirmed two test aircraft were already in the final stages of assembly.At the time of writing, not much is officially known about the airplane, and thats understandable, given how its one of the few new airborne machines the American military is currently developing.We do know its number designation, 21, is supposed to be a nod to the fact this plane is the 21st century's first new bomber. Its based on the fifth-generation global precision attack platform, kind of like the one used for the production of the F-35 There is no info on the specs of the machine, but judging by the partner companies brought onboard, we can tell at least that the engines will probably be of Pratt & Whitney make (its unclear if the B-21 will have two or four of them). We dont know when the first flight of the B-21 will take place either, but some sources claim the bomber will take to the sky by the end of this year.Once ready, some 100 B-21s should enter service (probably in the second half of the decade) with the U.S. Air Force, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons. Boeing, a long-time partner of China, shared its forecast during the 2021 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), and it looks like, by 2030, the countrys domestic passenger market will exceed intra-European air traffic. By 2040, Chinas airlines will need 8,700 new airplanes, an investment that is valued at $1.47 trillion. By then, its domestic traffic will also exceed air travel within North America.According to the same estimates, over 400,000 pilots, technicians, and other aviation personnel will be required to sustain that growth, with over 2,500 being Boeing employees.The CMO predicts an annual passenger traffic growth of 5.4 percent, and overall, sees a $1.8 trillion commercial aviation services market opportunity in the region, with single-aisle jets accounting for approximately 6,500 deliveries.According to Richard Wynne, managing director of China Marketing for Boeing Commercial airplanes, the rapid recovery of China s domestic traffic during the global health crisis is proof of the markets strength, and international long-haul routes and air freight capacity have a good chance of expanding. Boeing boasts of its half-century collaboration with China, for which it claims to provide the most advanced freighters, services, as well as passenger airplanes. As for the other partner involved, it brings its contribution by building the parts for Boeings airplanes, more than 10,000 in use throughout the world.In addition to contributing to Chinas growth in this sector, Boeing claims it also focuses on decarbonizing aviation globally, by developing worldwide partnerships and designing aircraft that use sustainable aviation fuels. The long-haul segment is where the manufacturer sees great potential for carriers to replace older, less efficient airplanes with new ones that can reduce CO2 emissions. In a short chat with MuscleCars&Trucks , the companys chief product platform and operations officer, Hau Thai-Tang, explained why they wont build one. And it isnt because they simply dont see it as a viable product in todays market, but rather due to platform limitations. Thats right, the architecture of the current Mustang isnt strong enough to support such a model.When we designed the (S550 platform), we really looked at the high-end and projected what weve historically been able to do, Hau Thai-Tang told the quoted website. The GT500 I think we projected for. Its towards the top end capabilities of (the platform) one of the things we didnt do was a convertible variant for that reason. You have to find the bandwidth of the architecture.Those who simply need a V8-powered Mustang Convertible in their lives will thus have to settle for the GT. Its 5.0-liter engine can be mated to a six-speed manual or optional ten-speed automatic transmission, and it produces 460 hp at 7,000 rpm and 420 lb-ft (570 Nm) of torque 4,600 rpm, returning 15/24/18 mpg (15.7/9.8/13.1 l/100 km) in city/highway/combined.The GT Premium Convertible has an MSRP of $45,785, $5,500 more than the GT Premium Fastback, whereas the regular GT Fastback will set you back at least $36,285.A $72,900 affair, before destination, dealer fees, and options, the Mustang Shelby GT500 is Fords most powerful street-legal car. It has 760 hp and 625 lb-ft (847 Nm) of torque available on tap, and a supercharged 5.2-liter V8 engine under the hood. The range-topper of the current-gen Mustang lineup takes 3.1 seconds to hit the 62 mph (100 kph) mark from a standstill.On a slightly different note, Ford is currently prepping a new generation of its ultra-popular pony car. Its unknown when it will premiere, but it is expected to be built around a revised version of its predecessors platform, potentially dubbed the S560. Despite the familiar foundation stone, it will feature a new design inside and out, and additional technology and safety systems. AMG Philipp Schiemer didnt pinpoint whats the reason behind this problem. We are updating our vehicles every year, and we are not satisfied with the quality. Speaking to Road & Track , the head of the Top End Vehicle Group further stated that Merc is currently retesting the force-fed V8 powerplant.In other words, the Stuttgart-based automaker prefers to bid farewell to a handful of sales instead of recalling vehicles over the mysterious quality issue. Its the most sensible course of action, but nevertheless, this doesnt explain why Mercedes has originally given the chip shortage as the reason.Schiemer did sweeten the deal for prospective customers, highlighting that V8s will stick around for a decade or so. He cites the GT3 and GT4 racing cars - which use V8s - as well as the high demand for V8s in pretty much every corner of the globe. But nevertheless, Mercedes and the Affalterbach-based performance division have set a course for complete electrification.All-new vehicle architectures will be exclusively electric from 2025 when three such platforms will be rolled out. These are the MB.EQ for medium to large vehicles,.EA for performance vehicles, and VAN.EA for light commercial vehicles. Going forward, Merc intends to switch to all-electric vehicles in markets where this 180-degree turn is possible. Reading between the lines, certain European markets such as the UK, as well as the United States of America, may get their final taste of combustion-engined Mercs by 2030.Over 40 billion euros, which translates to $47 billion at current exchange rates, will be committed to battery-electric vehicles from 2022 to 2030. Not long ago, the space agency released a time-lapse video covering in under a minute more than a year of hard work at Lockheed Martins Skunk Works. That's the same group that brought us over the years hits like the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and, of course, the F-22 Raptor.The QueSST in itself is a demonstrator, one NASA will be using to show the world and the big bad FAA that supersonic flight over land is possible, and will not make sensitive civilians ears bleed when passing through the sound barrier.Coming to the world in a delta-wing configuration, the airplane is supposed to validate the technologies needed to make a supersonic aircraft quiet enough to be used over populated areas.The prototype comes with no windows, not even a front one through which the pilot to look through, and thats because of the 30-foot-long (9-meter) nose needed for the machine to do its thing.You can see how massive the nose is in the main photo of this piece, released this week by NASA. The body part is presently being removed from the rest of the aircraft, as it will have to be shipped to Fort Worth, Texas, where it will undergo additional testing.Engineers plan to have the X-59 ready sometime soon, as they plan to have it flying over American cities and see how much noise it makes when going supersonic. The pilot will see the exterior of the airplane through a 4K monitor thats being fed images captured with exterior cameras.The plane is supposed to fly at Mach 1.4 (1,100 mph/1,770 km/h), twice the speed of todays commercial airliners and close to the maximum speed achieved by the Concorde. All while reducing to sonic boom to 60 dB (the volume you get in an average conversation), from the 90 dB the Concorde hit. kWh According to NIO, the new battery pack puts the best of both worlds together in a single unit. The LFP cells allow a CTP (cell-to-pack) construction, increasing energy density and possibly working as a structural component. In NIOs new battery pack, that does not seem to be the case: the pictures reveal six battery modules inserted in a metal structure (possibly aluminum).NIOs CTP seems to focus solely on an energy density improvement. The company stated that it achieved a 14% increase, making its LFP cells present 142 Wh/kg. Volume utilization was also increased by 5%, and manufacturing was simplified by 10%.The ternary batteries (NMC or NCA, NIO did not disclose which chemistry) improve the cold-weather performance and make the battery pack more accurate in determining the units' SoC (state of charge).NIO says that mixing the two kinds of cells in the hybrid battery pack reduced range loss in low temperatures by 25% compared to a unit that worked solely with LFP cells. The mix itself is not the secret sauce but rather how NIO did it.The company developed a dual chemistry control algorithm that regulates both groups of cells so that the advantage of ternary batteries in cold weather improves the low-temperature energy efficiency of LFP cells. The company did not reveal how the batteries are arranged, but it seems that engineers chose to intercalate bricks of each of these cells.The environment shielder prevents heat loss with low-thermal conductivity materials and innovative structural design. NIOs thermal management tries to use the heat the batteries naturally generate to keep the system at the ideal temperature without spending much energy. Parasitic losses can compromise range in multiple EVs.If the idea proves to be successful, NIO will have a unique battery pack that can still be swapped in 3 to 6 minutes. It will also cost less than ternary battery packs, but the Chinese automaker made a very clever move here. Cars with the 75-battery pack cost as much as those that used to have the 70-kWh ternary battery pack. That said, and although it is cheaper, the extra energy can help explain why these vehicles are not more affordable.Starting this September 23, customers can order NIO vehicles either with the new 75-kWh hybrid battery pack or with the 100-kWh ternary component. The prices for BaaS with the 75-kWh battery pack will remain the same: RMB980 ($152 at the current exchange rate) per month. The manufacturer did not provide any date on the range the new solution will offer to its vehicles, but it certainly is a little higher than before. Old-school BMWs are a lot like Converse's beloved Chuck Taylor All-Stars; we'll probably never see them go out of fashion. The House of Munich gave us a plethora of iconic motorcycles during the 20th century, among which youll find the magnificent R90/6 a timeless artifact thatll hit any petrolhead right in the nostalgia.What you see above is a tidy 1974 variant of Motorrads lineup, featuring a refurbished powerplant, hard-sided panniers and 31k miles (50,000 km) on the clock. As youre reading this, the numbers-matching Bavarian is searching for a new home at no reserve, with a current bid of $9,000! If this whole ordeal is starting to make your heart race, be sure to pay the BaT ( Bring A Trailer ) website a visit before Saturday, September 25.To get a clear idea about what were dealing with here, we invite you to stick around for a quick analysis of this Beemers technical specifications. The 74 MY BMW R90/6 comes to life thanks to an air-cooled 898cc boxer-twin engine that packs dual Bing carburetors and two valves per cylinder head.When the four-stroke mill purrs at 6,500 rpm, a maximum power output figure of 60 ponies will be delivered to a five-speed gearbox, which spins the rear wheel through an enclosed driveshaft. On the other hand, the horizontally-opposed fiend will be more than happy to produce 53 pound-feet (73 Nm) of twisting force at approximately 5,500 revs.The German legend will go from zero to 62 mph (100 kph) in a respectable 5.2 seconds and continue accelerating to a top speed of 116 mph (188 kph). After a copious cocktail of vital liquids, BMW s two-wheeled phenom will tip the scales at 462 pounds (210 kg). Lastly, the bikes wheelbase measures 1,465 mm (57.7 inches), while its hoops flex a diameter of 19 inches up front and 18 inches at the rear. The Winter Water Wolf name suits this Land Rover Defender perfectly. Built in 1999 for the Royal Marines, it was meant to withstand temperatures as low as minus 46 degrees Celsius (-50.8 degrees Fahrenheit), and make its way through 1.5-meter (4.9-feet) deep water. It had one job to do: make the trip from the shoreline to a landing craft at sea, and back.According to Car and Classic, it seems that less than 50 Wolves were ever made, and theyre so rare that the Dunsfold Land Rover Heritage Collection doesnt have one. The former owner of this 1999 model purchased it directly from the Ministry of Defense (MOD). After being used for regular transport, the rugged Wolf underwent a complete restoration this year.Since it was a concours rebuild, the Wolfs exterior looks incredible, with perfect military green paint, straight panels and all authentic details based on the original specifications, including the roof rack, the military grade tow bar and the spare wheel on the side.The original steel chassis was refurbished, and the interior features most of the equipment that would have present in the original vehicle, from a first aid kit to a MOD-issued torch. As a Winter model, the Wolf also comes with under-seat heaters.The MOD stuck to the 300 TDi engine for the Winter Water Wolf, because the new Td5 five-cylinder diesel engine that most Land Rovers had by 1999 wasnt compatible with the wading character of this vehicle meant for amphibious operation. Other than that, the brakes, suspension and steering were overhauled during the restoration process.This ultra-rare ex-Royal Marines vehicle was recently auctioned off for 35,000 ($47,816). With initially only about 700 miles (1,159 km) on the clock, this Wolf registered 3,400 miles (5,500 km) at the moment of the auction. Space service provider Rocket Lab announced it has signed a dedicated launch contract with Astroscale Japan, a subsidiary of satellite services company Astroscale Holdings. The company also develops space debris removal technologies that monitor and track space junk.Recently, Astroscale has successfully tested for the first time its ELSA-d orbital debris removal satellite ability to capture a spacecraft in space. In a demo performed on August 25th, ELSA-d used a magnetic capture system. In addition, this test demo proved the satellites' capability to dock with a spacecraft, such as an inactive satellite.Now, Astroscale is planning to send another satellite into orbit called the Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J), which has been selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for its Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration Project.The satellite will be carried by Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, which will take off from the company's Launch Complex 1. Once deployed into a precise orbit by Electron's Kick Stage, the ADRAS-J satellite is planned to rendezvous with a spent upper stage rocket body.ADRAS-J is designed to demonstrate proximity operations and take pictures of the rocket body while also providing observational data to help researchers better understand the debris environment. The mission's intended second phase, which has yet to be completed, aims to show the debris' de-orbit.It will be a challenging mission, as it requires precise orbital insertion to allow the spacecraft to reach the rocket stage. "Rendezvousing with a piece of debris on orbit, traveling at around 27,000 km per hour, is a highly complex task that requires absolute precision when it comes to orbital deployment," explains Rocket Lab Chief Executive Peter Beck.However, he's confident that Rocket Lab will perform accordingly as the company's Electron's Kick Stage has shown the ability to deploy satellites precisely where they needed to go across 18 missions. The launch of ADRAS-J is scheduled to take place in 2023. Sea Machines Robotics is already experienced in building these kinds of systems for remotely-operated vessels, while Rolls-Royce brings to the table its own propulsion and automation solutions. This combination will be beneficial for customers in terms of efficiency, safety, as well as environmental impact, with the two companies planning to primarily focus on yachts , commercial, and government vessels.Rolls-Royce will therefore receive sales and service rights for existing and future products released by Sea Machines.According to Denise Kurtulus, Vice President Global Marine at Rolls-Royce Power Systems, the company plans to deliver customers complete solutions from bridge to propeller, evolving from a propulsion supplier to a sustainable solutions provider. Sea Machines adds that autonomous systems increase productivity, by reducing stress for the ships crew.Sea Machines is about to kick off a one-of-a-kind marine journey at the end of this month, by sending its SM300 autonomous self-piloting system into the worlds first 1,000-nautical mile autonomous voyage. It will happen via the Nellie Bly , a vessel built by Damen Shipyards, which will be equipped with the SM300 system.Nellie Blys voyage will begin on September 30th in Hamburg, Germany and the ship will visit over a dozen ports, advertising and demonstrating the capabilities of the self-piloting system. The SM300 will be at the helm of the ship, while a remote team will monitor the vessel all the way from a shoreside station in Boston, Massachusetts.The SM300 features computer vision, obstacle detection, collision avoidance, and you can integrate the system with your vessels onboard equipment such as GPS, radar, AIS ENC charts, specialized cameras, and others. If you follow whats going on in the auto industry right now, were sure youre despairing at the rising prices of used cars. Luckily for us off-roading fans, there are, in fact, still deals to be found to make your own off-roading project a reality. In its day, the Ford Bronco II was somewhat of a laughing stock, being lauded as everything from underpowered to downright dangerous in tight corners. Any tall and heavy vehicle has a risk of rolling over, but the Bronco II took that criticism in droves. Today though, this little SUV could be yours for as little as $800 on websites like Today though, this littlecould be yours for as little as $800 on websites like craigslist. With a little DIY know-how and a little bit of money, it could be one sick off-roading toy for the right buyer. According to this Bronco IIs official private craigslist ad, the car has been off the road for at least four years, its New York registration tag having expired in October 2018. In its day, the Bronco II either sported a 2.9 liter According to this Bronco IIs official private craigslist ad, the car has been off the road for at least four years, its New York registration tag having expired in October 2018. In its day, the Bronco II either sported a 2.9 liter Ford V6 or a Mitsubishi-derived turbo-diesel engine. Listing photos appear to indicate this Bronco II is equipped with the Ford powerplant. For how rough and rusty this cars exterior looks, the red cloth interior is in surprisingly solid shape. The cloth upholstery and black plastic trim components having faired much better than the paint-job. With 150 thousand miles (241,400 km) indicated on the odometer, itd likely take a fair bit of mechanical know-how to get the car running. Once it is though, youll have yourself an $800 off-road toy you dont mind thrashing around a bit. Its not like youre going to care about scratching the paint. So perhaps its time for one of us to break out the trusty tool kit and bring this off-roading project to life. Do you think you have the skills to get it running? Elon Musk is planning to throw a party on October 9 at Giga Grunheide. Called Giga Fest on the page address that announces it and County Fair on the page itself, it would present the factory to residents. Thats a very diverse attitude compared to what Tesla is doing with its new Megafactory in Lathrop, California. After the mayor Sonny Dhaliwal announced it, he took his Facebook post down and did not explain why so far. 16 photos Toyota plans to purchase the majority of the power the solar farm will generate, approximately 80 MW, to replace the high emission electricity used in its operations with zero-emission renewable electricity.The plan is to create a local energy grid that ensures green cars like the Mirai and the Prius are manufactured with as few harmful energy sources as possible.The Mississippi solar farm project is the second collaboration between Toyota and Clearway Energy in as many years, coming off the construction of the Black Rock wind farm now nearing completion in Grant County, West Virginia. Like the Mississippi project, the solar plant is located nearby another Toyota production facility.This project is another step in Toyotas plans to complete one of its global Environmental Challenge 2050 goals, that being to eliminate all carbon emissions from its operations. Toyotas laid out a challenge of six objectives for environmental sustainability, which they hope will result in positive changes in society and the surrounding environment.said Valerie Wooley, vice president of origination at Clearway. Additionally, were as equally excited to be partnering with them again in the local communities where we work and live, helping create healthier communities and growing the local economy."Wildflower is expected to commence operations in 2023, at which time it will immediately begin replacing energy supplies coming from environmentally unsustainable sources like natural gas other petrochemicals. The project is hoped to generate enough clean energy to power nearly 16,500 homes each year. Thousands of Haitian migrants are living in a temporary encampment at the southern border in Del Rio, Texas. The Biden administration recently announced it was going to start deporting many of these people back to Haiti. Plus, Airbnbs hopes for housing Afghan refugees. And, Democrats' plan to tax the rich. Guests: U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Airbnb's Joe Gebbia, Axios' Stef Kight and Mike Allen. Credits: Axios Today is produced in partnership with Pushkin Industries. The team includes Niala Boodhoo, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Dan Bobkoff, Alexandra Botti, Nuria Marquez Martinez, Sabeena Singhani, and Alex Sugiura. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893. Go deeper: Transcript NIALA BOODHOO: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today! Its Thursday, September 23rd. Im Niala Boodhoo. Heres how were making you smarter today: Democrats plan to tax the rich. Plus, AirBnBs hopes of housing Afghan refugees. But first, Haitian migrants at the southern border is todays One Big Thing. Thousands of Haitian migrants are living in a temporary encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge at the Southern border in Texas. A lot has happened this week, since the Biden administration announced it would start deporting many of these people back to Haiti. Axios politics reporter Stef Kight has what we need to know right now -- Hi Stef. STEF KIGHT: Good morning. NIALA: Let's start with the numbers - How many people have been deported back to Haiti? STEF KIGHT: As of the end of Tuesday, there were around 1,100 Haitians who had arrived in Haiti who had been deported by the U.S., and that number is obviously going to change very quickly. Administration has said that they are upping the number of flights that they're sending out each day. So we're going to see that number continue to rise. NIALA: And do we know how many are still in Del Rio? STEF: I actually spoke with Congressman Gonzales whose district includes Del Rio and as of Wednesday afternoon, there were around 5,700 migrants who are still under the bridge, most of those have been Haitians. NIALA: Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. was letting some people go instead of deporting them. What do we know about who's being released into the U.S.? STEF: We don't have a lot of information about who is being released at this point. It is something that I've heard from other sources that Haitians are being released. And I think, you know, it makes sense that they're not going to be able to deport everyone in a timely fashion, that they're going to have to release some people into communities like they have been doing for some Central American migrants, but the administration has been pretty clear that their goal is to deport as many Haitians as possible where they're not, you know, qualified to stay in the U.S., where they don't qualify for asylum or other pathways. But this is all moving really quickly and so we'll have to wait and see whether they start to create more reasons for Haitians to be able to stay who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. NIALA: President Biden is using a Trump-era rule, Title 42, to deport migrants. Can you explain how he's doing that and what the White House has said about his strategy here? STEF: So Title 42, as you mentioned, is a Trump-era policy that was put in place because of the pandemic. It cites the pandemic as a reason to turn back migrants who crossed the border quickly, without allowing them to apply for asylum. And the Biden administration has controversially continued using this policy saying that, you know, they need it because the coronavirus continues to be an issue. NIALA: Stef, as you said, the story is moving really fast. What are you watching for now? STEF: One thing that I'm watching is whether we see future waves of Haitians who continue to come to the U.S.-Mexico border. There has been reporting, and I've heard from sources, that the administration is watching already groups of tens of thousands of patients who are in Panama and other countries in the region who could be headed north. So we'll have to wait and see whether this is just an initial group of Haitians and we're able to kind of find a solution. NIALA: Axios political reporter Stef Kight. Thanks, Stef. STEF: Thanks, Niala. NIALA: Well be back in 15 seconds with news about another group of immigrants: Afghan refugees, and one plan to provide shelter for those coming to the U.S. [AD] NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today. I'm Niala Boodhoo. We just spoke with Axios political reporter, Stef Kight, about the thousands of Haitian migrants who are trying to come into the U.S. Well, today, Airbnb announced it will provide temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees. JOE GEBBIA: And that same heart and the same generosity that has allowed people to open their homes in the first place, can be extended to people in time of need. NIALA: That's Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia -- who spoke, along with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky to Axios co-founder Mike Allen, who's with me now. Hey, Mike. MIKE ALLEN: Niala, welcome back. NIALA: Thank you. Mike, how exactly is Airbnb doing this? MIKE: So Airbnb is going to be subsidizing stays from a couple of days to a couple of weeks for our new neighbors who are coming in from Afghanistan. In some cases, the hosts are going to host them free, and in some cases, Airbnb will pay, but they're making it possible for up to 40,000 Afghan refugees to stay in their communities. NIALA: Airbnb is working with resettlement agencies to make this work, and heres what Airbnb co founder Joe Gebbia said when you spoke to him, Mike: JOE GEBBIA: They do the screening and the vetting of refugee families as they come in. They assess their needs so that, by the time they get to the Airbnb.org platform, they can find the right home and the right location for the needs of that family. NIALA: What's your assessment of how this effort is going here? MIKE: Well, Niala, this is an example of how companies, increasingly, are talking more, thinking more, acting more on the big picture. And we're going to see this from more and more companies because young workers are demanding it. NIALA: And can I ask you about the bigger picture when it comes to supporting Afghan refugees? Because I imagine this is a pretty tiny piece of the puzzle. MIKE: Niala, you're right. At least 37,000 refugees in one wave coming to the United States, and ripple effects, of course, around the world from the fall of the Afghan government. Just the other night, I was at an event for the American University of Afghanistan. Some of the students who are in Afghanistan and fear the Taliban are still doing their lessons, but they've been told to erase the lesson after they're done from their device. These are some of the ways that the world has changed. NIALA: Axios co-founder Mike Allen. Thank you, Mike. MIKE: Niala, thank you for the conversation. NIALA: President Joe Biden met yesterday with top Democrats, as negotiations continue on the Hill over infrastructure and budget. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has been a key voice behind the Democrats $3.5 trillion budget package, and how to pay for its climate investments and social programs...including through taxes on America's wealthiest. I spoke to Senator Wyden yesterday for an Axios Event and asked him what average Americans need to understand about this: RON WYDEN: What I want them to know as they follow this discussion is that I think moderates have a very valid point with respect to how government does its business. It ought to pay for things that we really care about. I also think when we talk about paying for these investments, whether it's paid leave or childcare or, um, home and community-based services, we ought to say everybody should pay their fair share. And that's why I hope that they'll take away from this discussion. Then I said, look, I'm on to how billionaires are getting out of paying any income taxes or not much, they're not taking a wage, but on my watch, is chairman of the finance committee. Everybody is going to pay their fair share, and that means billionaires. NIALA: You can hear the rest of my conversation with Senator Wyden later this afternoon - where we also spoke in detail about climate infrastructure at a free Axios event - Ill tweet the link out, and it will also be in our show notes. And one last headline before we go today: the FDA yesterday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID booster shot for people 65 and older, and those at high risk for severe COVID-19. Well keep you posted on boosters...but that brings us now to another pandemic topic the Axios Today team has been hearing about. Service industry workers -- especially people working in restaurants -- have been telling us that customer behavior is hitting a new low. Requests to show vaccine cards or wear masks - which are usually following local laws - are being met with anger and sometimes violence. And its got us thinking -- how widespread is this phenomenon? Are we hitting another pandemic wall, where exhaustion and fear is really getting to people? If you work in a customer-facing role, whether behind a bar or at a ticket counter...we want to know: how is it going? What is it like working, right now? You can record a brief voice memo and text it to me at (202) 918-4893. Thats all for us today. Im Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and well see you back here tomorrow morning. Axios on facebook Axios on twitter Axios on linkedin Axios on email Colorado is spending $16 million to purchase 2 million rapid COVID-19 tests and plans to start sending them to residents for free starting this week. Why it matters: The new effort is designed to curb the spread of the Delta variant amid a fifth wave of infections that is threatening hospital bed capacity in some areas of the state. But the Polis administration's poor track record on testing raises questions about whether this strategy will prove effective. What to know: The Abbott BinaxNow rapid antigen test shows results within 15 minutes. To obtain a test, residents must complete an online form and await instructions via email. The state will send eight tests at a time with more available in subsequent orders. residents must complete an online form and await instructions via email. The state will send eight tests at a time with more available in subsequent orders. For school-age children, officials suggest twice-per-week testing. officials suggest twice-per-week testing. A caveat: At-home rapid tests may not qualify as proof to return to school or work, officials say. Of note: 100 free testing sites are scattered across the state. What hes saying: "The sooner that somebody knows that they have COVID and they are contagious the sooner they can take the steps to self-isolate," Gov. Jared Polis said Tuesday. Yes, but: Whether tests are easily available remains unknown as manufacturers warn of delays nationwide and President Biden pushes a mass-scale at-home testing strategy. State health officials tell Axios Denver the tests will arrive in incremental shipments. The big picture: The governor's previous at-home testing effort encountered huge problems as the provider accused the state of botching the rollout and fewer people than expected requested the tests. The state is still seeking reimbursement from the federal government for the initial cost of the at-home tests. The new program is funded with federal dollars. The Polis administration's other effort to boost testing in schools is also struggling to get off the ground. The Sudanese government announced on Tuesday morning that its military and security services had foiled an attempted coup from within the countrys armed forces. Why it matters: The apparent coup attempt comes with Sudans transitional government in which power is shared between civilians and generals facing crises on several fronts two years after dictator Omar al-Bashir was toppled in a popular uprising. Driving the news: According to the Sudanese military, the coup attempt began at 3am local time on Tuesday, with several military units trying to take control of the national radio and television stations and other strategic locations in Khartoum. The perpetrators reportedly came mainly from armored units of the Sudanese military and patrolled the capital with dozens of tanks. Several hours after the alleged coup started, the Sudanese government called for the public to go out to the streets to defend the gains of the revolution. But soon after that, the government announced the coup was foiled. Sudanese officials said around 50 senior military officers and civilians were arrested for their alleged roles in the coup. Sudanese military officials told several Arab media outlets that the perpetrators were supporters of the Bashir regime and were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The latest: The government announced that the situation was under control and that the cabinet had convened to discuss next steps. Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdook said during the cabinet meeting, which was aired live on Sudanese TV, that the government would take steps to reform the military and security services and dismantle the last elements of the Bashir regime. The big picture: Even before the alleged coup attempt, the Sudanese government had been contending with internal divisions, extreme economic difficulties, security challenges tied to disputes with neighboring Ethiopia and rising public discontent. What next: Bashir is expected to be extradited soon to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for war crimes. Potato, potahtoh. Tomato, tomahtoh. Its a debate we owe to Peru, the third-largest country in South America, which gave the world its native potatoes and tomatoes among other foods. Why it matters: Ancient Peruvians developed and planted thousands of crops, including quinoa, tomatoes, corn and potatoes which are only indigenous to the Andes in South America. The Spanish then exported these crops around the world at a time when famine was common from Europe to Russia. Smithsonian Magazine credits Peru's potatoes with making the rise of the West possible. History: The Spanish, led by conquistador Francisco Pizarro, first arrived in Peru in 1526. When Pizarro and his men came in contact with the Inca Empire, around 40,000 Incas governed a territory of 10 million subjects who spoke more than 30 different languages. The end of the Inca civilization came in 1533 with the execution of Atahualpa, the last free reigning emperor. Peru ultimately gained its independence from Spanish rule in July 1821. Although Peruvian food only recently has gained tremendous popularity around the world, the country has been feeding the world for centuries. Peru has more than 4,000 types of potatoes. Historian Rebecca Earle refers to the tuber as the "world's most successful immigrant," since producers and consumers around the world claim it as their own. The exportation of the potato led the way to modern agriculture. As it was carried across the Atlantic, the world's first fertilizer, Peruvian guano, went with it, per the Smithsonian Magazine. Of note: Some researchers believe that the potato's arrival to northern Europe ended famine, per the Smithsonian. Besides potatoes, Peruvian staples include quinoa, maca (a plant mainly consumed as a powder), lucuma (a fruit that once referred as the Gold of the Incas) and kiwicha (known as amaranth) all of which today are considered "superfoods" for their health benefits. While meats were introduced by the Spaniards, Incas would freeze-dry it, calling it ch'arki (meaning "to burn meat"), which led to the English word for the meat commonly found in convenience stores worldwide: beef jerky. Zoom in: Peru encompasses a variety of climates, from mountains to jungles to coastlines. Each region offers culinary diversity within Peruvian cuisine. In the Andes, meals revolve around corn, potatoes and other tubers, along with meats like alpaca and guinea pig (known as cuy in the country). meals revolve around corn, potatoes and other tubers, along with meats like alpaca and guinea pig (known as cuy in the country). In the Amazon, fish is a staple, and dishes often include fruit like pitahaya (dragon fruit), guava, maracuya (sour dragon fruit), cacao pods (which contain cacao beans) or cocona (a tomato found in the Amazon). fish is a staple, and dishes often include fruit like pitahaya (dragon fruit), guava, maracuya (sour dragon fruit), cacao pods (which contain cacao beans) or cocona (a tomato found in the Amazon). Along Peru's coast, the most famous dish is ceviche a raw fish with onions and peppers marinated in lime juice served with sweet potatoes and fried corn. The bottom line: Peru's cuisine is considered the "original fusion food," as it adapted the foods of different cultures and nationalities, including Spanish colonizers, enslaved Africans, Chinese laborers and Italian settlers, as they arrived. Get more news that matters about Latinos in the hemisphere, delivered right to your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sign up for the Axios Latino newsletter. The International Criminal Court (ICC) formally authorized on Wednesday an official investigation into alleged crimes against humanity during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Why it matters: Tens of thousands of people may have been killed in police drug operations in the Philippines since 2016, a United Nations report found last year. Campaigners say they hope the probe will mark the "beginning of the end to impunity" in a crackdown that rights groups say has killed dozens of children. Details: The ICC said in a statement on Wednesday that after considering the evidence of at least 204 victims, there's "reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation, noting that specific legal element of the crime against humanity of murder" had been met. The Hague-based tribunal added that "the so-called 'war on drugs' campaign cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation." The evidence suggests that a "widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a state policy," the ICC added. The big picture: The ICC launched a preliminary inquiry in 2018 into Duterte and his war on drugs following allegations of crimes against humanity. Former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda recommended a full investigation into the allegations just before stepping down last June. What they're saying: Officials reiterated on Thursday that Duterte wouldn't cooperate because the Philippines was no longer a member of the ICC. The road runs from Goris, a town in Armenias Syunik province, to the provincial capital Kapan and further south to the Armenian-Iranian border. The Armenian government controversially ceded a 21-kilometer section of it to Azerbaijan last December, saying that it is located on the Azerbaijani side of the Soviet-era Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The government said at the time that travellers in Armenia will continue to use the strategic highway without any road checks. Russian border guards deployed in Syunik following last years Armenian-Azerbaijani war were supposed to guarantee their safety. They reportedly began escorting Armenian cars driving along the Azerbaijani-controlled stretch one week after Azerbaijani authorities set up the checkpoint on September 12 to stop and tax Iranian trucks. Many of the truck drivers have refused to pay hefty road taxes. The disruption was on the agenda of Papikians meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin which the government said focused on a wide range of issues of mutual interest, including defense, security and energy. We also discussed the situation at the Goris-Kapan highway section, emphasizing Russias important and constructive role in terms of reducing tensions and finding solutions to arising problems, Papikian wrote on his Facebook page. He did not elaborate. The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said last week that the road crisis underscores the need to demarcate the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. She said Moscow submitted relevant proposals to Baku and Yerevan and is awaiting their responses. In the meantime, we will continue joint efforts to unblock transport and economic links in the region in line with the implementation of [Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani] agreements reached at the highest level, added Zakharova. Tensions have run high in recent months at several sections of the border where Azerbaijani troops reportedly advanced a few kilometers into Armenian territory in mid-May. Responding to a continuing military standoff there, Russia, the United States and the European Union have repeatedly called on Baku and Yerevan to start delimiting and demarcating the frontier. Moscow has offered to act as a mediator in such talks. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated later in May that the talks are conditional on an Azerbaijani withdrawal from Armenias sovereign territory and the release of dozens of Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan one year after the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. But he indicated in early August that his government is ready to negotiate without any preconditions. Eduard Aghajanian, the pro-government chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on foreign relations, confirmed that Yerevan now stands for the unconditional start of demarcation talks. He said the Azerbaijani troop withdrawal and release of the Armenian prisoners would create a positive background for them. Aghajanian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service that the talks have not started yet. He said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is linking them to a peace treaty that would commit Armenia to recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. Naturally, this cannot be acceptable to us, added the former chief of Pashinians staff. Tigran Abrahamian, a lawmaker representing the opposition Pativ Unem bloc, criticized the Armenian governments negotiating strategy. They are trying to make people believe that the demarcation process will quickly solve all contentious issues, said Abrahamian. In fact, it will never solve those issues. We are well aware what the negotiations conducted by these authorities for the past three years led to and what tragic consequences they had. Opposition politicians and other critics of the government have for months been alleging that Pashinian is ready to cede more Armenian territory to Baku as a result of the planned demarcation process. The prime minister and his allies deny that. Bakersfield, CA (93308) Today Lots of sunshine. High 79F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 59F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. What It's Like to Commute Over 100 Miles of Oregon Coast, Part II Published 09/18/21 at 11:16 PM PDT By Andre' GW Hagestedt (Oregon Coast) As editor and owner of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, and editor of another publication previous to that, I have been an actual beach bum. Professionally so. People pay me to go to the beaches. (Above: the mists of Tillamook Bay) This resulted in years of wild and scenic commutes along some 120 miles of Oregon coast, often from Manzanita down to Newport, two towns I lived part time in for a few years. Some of the captivating sights along this slow drive were documented in part one of this, Wild to Magical Moments on 120 Miles of Oregon Coast Commuting, describing the drives northward from Newport. In part two, this explores the meandering but never-tiresome drive coming from the north. These were mostly nocturnal runs, long after dark, where the beaches and vistas took on whole new and different looks, just as engaging as during the day. If my trips meant heading south, they sometimes started with a quick walk on the beach at Seaside. The beaches here are always fairly lit because of one kind of ambient light or another, usually from the line of hotels on the shoreline. It didn't make the beach feel very private as walking on Oregon coast sands after dark usually does - but often I could find a stretch of beach where no one else wandered. I always had to psych myself up for my journey south by getting in a little sand and sea contact with my skin. Sometimes I would start out with a quick walk on a secret beach at the southern end of Cannon Beach the same one where I almost always stop at before I head inland back to Portland. It's like my own private ritual or something: my last moment of beach worship before returning to my life as a land lubber. Southern, semi-secret beach at Cannon Beach But mostly, I'd start out from Manzanita at night, which often meant a brief stroll on that beach. On the way south, I'd also encounter the thrill of the weird ghosts at Tillamook Bay, but they weren't as easy to ogle if you're going south than if you're heading north. The beach of course disappeared for about an hour, and then would reappear in an explosive fashion at Tierra Del Mar, a sight I never tired of. These dense forests at night never lost their beauty in the darkness. Sure, they weren't as colorful as during a bright, sunlit day. But there was a different beauty about them, akin to a black and white photograph, in some ways. If nothing else, you could extrapolate the shades of green from the dark monotone of greens visible to the naked eye. Depoe Bay in a storm at night During the winter, these drives got especially exciting with trees battered by winds and rain that began to hang threateningly over the highway. This was a good way to stay awake. Lincoln City Heading south, it was past Cascade Head, through Lincoln City, and eventually over the bridge at Depoe Bay, which consistently rumbled in a muted manner beyond the confines of my car windows, sometimes augmented by wild storm action that caused sprays of ocean to wash over the streets of the village and then over me. Many times did this cause me to pull over and gawk for a while. Nye Beach at night Getting into Newport and Nye Beach was always the same thrill as the northward trek to Manzanita: I could see and hear the ocean, as if it too welcomed me waiting for me and me alone. It wasn't hard to imagine the beach was keeping its eye out for just my return, as egocentric as this thought was. Oregon Coast Hotels in this area - South Coast Hotels - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours MORE PHOTOS BELOW More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees nearly 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast. LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted First Financial Bank has named Will Leonard as the president of its Jefferson County market. Leonard is a Lamar University graduate and has spent more than 35 years in the banking industry in Southeast Texas. Leonard most recently served as a senior vice president of commercial lending at BBVA Compass. Governor Abbott has reappointed Lonnie Grissom, Jr., Ivy Pate and Jeanie Turk to the Lower Neches Valley Authority (LNVA) Board of Directors for terms set to expire on July 28, 2027. Lonnie Grissom, Jr. of Woodville is the owner and president of Golden Pine, Inc. He is a former board member for the Texas Forestry Association and former president of the Woodville Rotary Club. Grissom formally served on the Woodville Independent School District School Board. He joined the United States Army after graduation from Kirby High School and received an honorable discharge after 4 years of service. Ivy Pate of Beaumont was a regional vice president of Christus Southeast Texas Health System until she retired last year. She is a former member of the American Hospital Association, Texas Hospital Association, Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, and the Planned Giving Council of Houston. Additionally, she is a former member of the Rotary Club of Beaumont and the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce, and is the 2015 Athena Leadership Award Recipient for Excellence in Leadership. Pate received a Bachelors Degree of Arts from Lamar University. Jeanie Turk of Sour Lake is the owner and broker of two REMAX offices. She is a member of the Houston Association of Realtors, Texas Association of Realtors, National Association of Realtors, and the Graduate Realtor Institute. Additionally, she is a graduate of Leadership Southeast Texas and current chair of the Hardin County W.C.I.D #1 Flood and Drainage Committee. Turk attended Louisiana State University and Lamar University. jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/jd_journalism DEL RIO, Texas (AP) For the final leg of his journey from Chile to the United States, Haitian migrant Fabricio Jean followed detailed instructions sent to him via WhatsApp from his brother in New Jersey who had recently taken the route to the Texas border. His brother wired him money for the trip, then meticulously mapped it out, warning him of areas heavy with Mexican immigration officials. You will need about 20,000 pesos (about $1,000 U.S. dollars) for the buses. You need to take this bus to this location and then take another bus, recounted Jean, who spoke to The Associated Press after reaching the border town of Del Rio. What Jean didnt expect was to find thousands of Haitian migrants like himself crossing at the same remote spot. The 38-year-old, his wife and two young children earlier this month joined as many as 14,000 mostly Haitian migrants camped under a Del Rio bridge. A confluence of factors caused the sudden sharp increase at the Texas town of about 35,000 residents. Interviews with dozens of Haitian migrants, immigration attorneys and advocates reveal a phenomenon produced partly by confusion over the Biden administrations policies after authorities recently extended protections for the more than 100,000 Haitians living in the United States. It also reflects the power of Facebook, YouTube and platforms like WhatsApp, which migrants use to share information that can get distorted as it speeds through immigrant communities, directing migration flows. That's especially true for tight-knit groups like the Creole-and-French-speaking Haitians, many of whom left their homeland after its devastating 2010 earthquake and have been living in Latin America, drawn by Brazil and Chile's once-booming economies. In extending protections for Haitians this spring, the Biden administration cited security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemispheres poorest country. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the temporary protections were limited to those residing in the U.S. before July 29 but that condition was often missing in posts, leading Haitians outside the United States to believe they, too, were eligible. Mayorkas acknowledged that this week, saying we are very concerned that Haitians who are taking the irregular migration path are receiving misinformation that the border is open," or that they qualify for protected status despite the expired deadline. I want to make sure it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States," he said. Thousands of Haitians have been stuck in Mexican border towns since 2016, when the Obama administration abruptly halted a policy that initially allowed them in on humanitarian grounds. Online messages touting the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuna, across from Del Rio, started after President Joe Biden took office and began reversing some of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Ciudad Acuna has been spared the drug and gang violence seen elsewhere along the border. Some of the social media posts recommending it appear to have come from human smugglers seeking to drum up business, according to immigrant advocates. Haitians began crossing there this year, but their numbers ballooned after a Biden administration program that briefly opened the door to some asylum seekers ended, said Nicole Phillips, of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian migrants. The program allowed in a select number of people deemed by humanitarian groups to be at high risk in Mexico. Once it ceased in August, people panicked, and the messages recommending Ciudad Acuna went viral," Phillips said. Thats why they rushed at this time to get in," she said. They realized they wouldn't be able to get in legally through a port-of-entry like they were hoping." Del Rio is just one example of how technology that has put a smartphone in the hands of nearly every migrant is transforming migration flows, according to advocates. Migrants often monitor the news and share information on routes. The most popular platform is WhatsApp, which connects 2 billion people worldwide. In 2020, after Turkey announced that the land border with Greece was open, thousands of migrants headed there only to find the gates closed on the Greek side. Similar sudden mass migrations have happened elsewhere in Europe. In 2018, social media posts and WhatsApp messages fueled caravans that swelled to 10,000 mostly Central American migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. Last week, in a Facebook group for Haitians in Chile with 26,000 members, one member posted specific instructions on routes through Mexico. It included paths to avoid and recommended certain bus companies. Good luck and be careful, said the post, written in Haitian Creole. Another member shared a different route in the comments. The group's members have since relayed stories of horrific conditions in Del Rio and risks of being deported. The International Organization for Migration found most of the 238 Haitians who were surveyed in March after passing through a 60-mile (100-kilometer) stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap received route information from family or friends who had made the dangerous trek. About 15% said they saw instructions on the internet. Agency spokesman Jorge Gallo said the instructions led the migrants to believe crossing the gap was "difficult but not impossible. But just as similar messages drew many Haitians to Del Rio, news of the Biden administration deporting hundreds on the Texas border caused some to change their plans. A 32-year-old Haitian woman who made it to Del Rio with her two teenage children bought bus tickets to Mexico City after receiving a cousin's audio message via WhatsApp. She previously lived in Chile for four years. Wait in Mexico until this month is over. They will pick up everyone under the bridge. After that, they will give me the contact to enter Miami, said the recording in Creole, which she played for an AP reporter. The AP is withholding the woman's name to protect her safety. Facebook Inc., which owns WhatsApp, allows people to exchange information about crossing borders, even illegally, but its policy bars posts that ask for money for services that facilitate human smuggling. Robins Exile said he and his pregnant wife, who left Brazil after he lost his job amid the pandemic-wracked economy, headed to Tijuana, Mexico, instead after seeing warnings via YouTube and WhatsApp from fellow Haitian migrants. A lot of Haitians are advising now not to come to Acuna. They say its no longer a good place, he said. On Wednesday, Antonio Pierre, 33, who was camped in Del Rio with his wife and daughter, listened to the news on his friends cellphone. The U.S. is releasing some but just a few, he said, referring to U.S. officials who told the AP on Tuesday that thousands of Haitians in custody were being let go and ordered to report to an immigration office, contradicting the Biden administrations announcement that all Haitians camped in the town would be expelled to Haiti. Nelson Saintil and his wife and four children had been camped in Texas but moved back to Mexico as they awaited word on where to go next to avoid deportation. I do not want to be like mice who do not find out that they are falling into a trap," he said. Because returning to Haiti is to bury a person alive." _____ Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Columbus, Ohio, and researchers at the University of California, Berkeleys Human Rights Center Investigations Lab and the Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this report. Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon -- a key step toward beginning vaccinations for youngsters. The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech already is available for anyone 12 and older. But with kids now back in school and the extra-contagious delta variant causing a huge jump in pediatric infections, many parents are anxiously awaiting vaccinations for their younger children. For elementary school-aged kids, Pfizer tested a much lower dose -- a third of the amount thats in each shot given now. Yet after their second dose, children ages 5 to 11 developed coronavirus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teenagers and young adults, Dr. Bill Gruber, a Pfizer senior vice president, told The Associated Press. The kid dosage also proved safe, with similar or fewer temporary side effects -- such as sore arms, fever or achiness -- that teens experience, he said. I think we really hit the sweet spot, said Gruber, whos also a pediatrician. Gruber said the companies aim to apply to the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the month for emergency use in this age group, followed shortly afterward with applications to European and British regulators. Earlier this month, FDA chief Dr. Peter Marks told the AP that once Pfizer turns over its study results, his agency would evaluate the data hopefully in a matter of weeks to decide if the shots are safe and effective enough for younger kids. Many Western countries so far have vaccinated no younger than age 12, awaiting evidence of what's the right dose and that it works safely in smaller tots. But Cuba last week began immunizing children as young as 2 with its homegrown vaccines and Chinese regulators have cleared two of its brands down to age 3. While kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death than older people, more than 5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began and at least 460 have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Cases in children have risen dramatically as the delta variant swept through the country. I feel a great sense of urgency in making the vaccine available to children under 12, Gruber said. Theres pent-up demand for parents to be able to have their children returned to a normal life. In New Jersey, 10-year-old Maya Huber asked why she couldnt get vaccinated like her parents and both teen brothers have. Her mother, Dr. Nisha Gandhi, a critical care physician at Englewood Hospital, enrolled Maya in the Pfizer study at Rutgers University. But the family hasnt eased up on their masking and other virus precautions until they learn if Maya received the real vaccine or a dummy shot. Once she knows shes protected, Mayas first goal: a huge sleepover with all my friends. Maya said it was exciting to be part of the study even though she was super scared about getting jabbed. But after you get it, at least you feel like happy that you did it and relieved that it didnt hurt," she told the AP. Pfizer said it studied the lower dose in 2,268 kindergartners and elementary school-aged kids. The FDA required what is called an immune bridging" study: evidence that the younger children developed antibody levels already proven to be protective in teens and adults. That's what Pfizer reported Monday in a press release, not a scientific publication. The study still is ongoing, and there haven't yet been enough COVID-19 cases to compare rates between the vaccinated and those given a placebo something that might offer additional evidence. The study isnt large enough to detect any extremely rare side effects, such as the heart inflammation that sometimes occurs after the second dose, mostly in young men. The FDAs Marks said the pediatric studies should be large enough to rule out any higher risk to young children. Pfizers Gruber said once the vaccine is authorized for younger children, theyll be carefully monitored for rare risks just like everyone else. A second U.S. vaccine maker, Moderna, also is studying its shots in elementary school-aged children. Pfizer and Moderna are studying even younger tots as well, down to 6-month-olds. Results are expected later in the year. ___ AP journalist Emma Tobin contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. The Southern Baptist Convention's organization that sends thousands of missionaries overseas announced last week that it will require missionaries and their children ages 16 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The SBC's International Mission Board said in its announcement that it has been requiring various vaccines since the 1980s, but the new mandate came on Sept. 8, a day before President Joe Biden issued his mandate that businesses with 100 or more employees are required to have them vaccinated or tested weekly. Southern Baptist leaders quickly condemned Biden, with some calling it an overreach and divisive in statements to the Baptist Press. Leaders said they are evaluating the new mandate through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to see if it applies to religious ministries. The new policy for Southern Baptist missionaries is not unusual, several experts on missions said. But the timing so close to Biden's announcement has been awkward for Southern Baptists, especially since White evangelicals are less likely to get vaccinated than other religious groups. Observers said it is too soon to tell whether the IMB's mandate for missionaries will alienate people from serving with the SBC. The IMB, which is based in Richmond, often provides its missionaries with full funding instead of requiring people to raise their own money, a major financial incentive for those aspiring to go overseas. Michael VanHuis, vice president of Missio Nexus, which serves as an umbrella-like association for missionary agencies, says he expects some people to be cautious in getting the coronavirus vaccine, but that many people will want to go overseas no matter what and will comply with IMB's policies. Mission agencies are generally reporting higher missionary recruitment numbers than in the past, he said, something that often happens after a major national or international event like Sept. 11, 2001. "The missions world is similar to the Marines," VanHuis said. "People are willing to do all kinds of things to go." The United States sends the most overseas missionaries in the world, about 135,000 people, according to a 2019 article in the International Bulletin of Mission Research. Missionaries typically fan out across the globe for limited amounts of time, but thousands reside on a long-term basis in some countries, including Russia, Brazil and South Africa. The question of vaccination came up during the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Nashville in June. After Paul Chitwood, president of the IMB, gave a report on June 15, a pastor confronted him during the question-and-answer period to complain about the organization's vaccine policy, which at the time did not include coronavirus vaccines. John Jones, pastor of Cadet Baptist Church in Cadet, Mo., said he did not want his children to receive other vaccines required of missionary families and asked Chitwood to investigate changing the policy. Chitwood said the organization has wrestled with vaccine policy, but he said they send people "to places where vaccines are literally a matter of life and death." Jones did not respond to requests for an interview. An IMB spokeswoman declined to respond to further questions about its new policy and said leaders were unavailable for an interview. Nathaniel Jolly, pastor of Homer Reformed Baptist Church in Alaska, said he plans to write a letter to the IMB opposing the new rule because he thinks the IMB is adding to scripture something that should be up to each person's individual choice. "We shouldn't be demonizing people who want it or don't want it," said Jolly, who has not been vaccinated because he believes he already had the virus. "We should respect the choice of each individual. What they're doing is playing with people's livelihoods and demanding something they don't have the authority biblically." In a recent survey, the Pew Research Center found that the vaccination rate among White evangelicals lags behind other major religious groups: 57% of White evangelicals say they have at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, compared with 73% of White Protestants, 75% of religiously unaffiliated people and 82% of Catholics. Joshua J. Heidelman, a lawyer based in the Chicago area whose clients have included missionary agencies, said that many agencies like IMB must consider the risk of not requiring vaccination for their missionaries. "Part of what they have to deal with is, if their staff gets sick overseas, the burden and cost are really high," he said. "They know no matter what you decide, some people will be upset. That's been the life of every pastor or priest since the pandemic started." Issuing a sweeping mandate also spares them from having to evaluate individual countries' transmission levels or public health responses and tailor vaccine requirements for each one. Crafting a vaccine policy is one of many steps agencies have had to take to get more missionaries back out in the field after the disruption of the pandemic. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recalled tens of thousands of missionaries in 2020, and has been sending missionaries overseas again for about a year. Earlier this year, it said missionaries who are not fully vaccinated are unable to receive an assignment outside their home country. The leadership of the LDS Church has been following the guidelines from public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the beginning of the pandemic. LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson, a former heart surgeon, got the vaccine in January and encouraged members to follow his example. Last month, church leaders renewed calls for vaccines and masking in public settings. Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who studies Mormons, said that when he served his mission in the 1990s, getting vaccines was simply part of preparing to go overseas. He said that the vast majority of Mormon missionaries expect to get the shots, but given that vaccines have been politicized more recently, it is possible that a few will weigh their desire to serve against the requirement to get a vaccine. "The social pressure to serve a mission is really high," he said. "You'd be staking your eternal salvation on the idea that vaccines are problematic. That's a big deal." According to polls conducted this year by the Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core, Mormons have shifted their views on coronavirus vaccines. In March, 50 percent of Mormons were hesitant or refused the vaccines. In June, 34 percent of Mormons expressed the same, a similar decrease to Black Protestants, who also dropped significantly in their skepticism and hesitancy toward the vaccine. NEW YORK (AP) Michaela Jae Mj Rodriguez wore vintage Versace Atelier in teal in an homage to Old Hollywood, her hair flowing down her back, and Billy Porter worked large wings on his black trouser look Sunday at the slimmed-down Emmy Awards. Coming less than a week after the wild and sometimes wacky fashion of the Met Gala, glamour was back at the Emmys. There were looks of soft pink and yellow, statement minis in bright sequins and Nicole Byer in a stunning off-shoulder orchid purple tulle gown that was sure to land her a best-dressed spot. Many, including Kate Winslet, Jean Smart and Cecily Strong, went for classic black, the latter with a high slit and low plunge. Black isnt Cedric the Entertainers style. The evenings host walked the red carpet in color-blocked shades of blue. Porter worked the poses for the cameras, showing off his wings. I AM the fairy godmother. There is a theme going on, Porter said of his recent turn in Cinderella. O-T Fagbenle, meanwhile, wore a traditional Nigerian look in red with black accents by a Lagos brand, Sofisticat. Byer wore custom Christian Siriano. She thanked all the women who came before her to break the couture barrier for plus-size women, and she went for it in the strapless look with sheer layers that flowed to the ground. And what did Ted Lasso himself wear? Jason Sudeikis, without his characters signature porn stache, showed off his Eazy-E socks tucked under a velvet suit of blue by Tom Ford. Its kind of like keeping everything in perspective, he said. Sudeikis co-star, Hannah Waddingham, was a goddess in a one-shoulder gown in soft peach. Rodriguez paired her gown with 71 carats of Bulgari diamonds with the goal of mixing old Hollywood with the new, she said. The pandemic put a damper on the Emmys last year, but fashion was back with a far smaller in-person crowd. Keri Russell dressed all the way up in a Zuhair Murad couture gown in rose mauve with feathers surrounding the hem of a caped back. Anya Taylor-Joy, always a red carpet star from another era, wore a backless pale yellow Dior couture dress in satin with a dramatic yellow opera coat, her hair in a carefully curled updo. Shes like a painting, said Andrea Lavinthal, style and beauty director for People. Everything about her is so glamorous and elegant. Kathryn Hahn paired her strapless black Lanvin trouser look with an ultra-wide leather belt and statement neckless of white and green jewels. Taraji P. Henson didnt disappoint in a black and white sequin embroidered tulle look by Elie Saab, her hair in a top knot. I have pockets, she noted. It always helps. Known for his loudly colored and patterned suits, RuPaul wore a black double-breasted jacket with a white swirl pattern on his pants, while Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live rocked a pair of towering silver boots. But the trend of the evening was color, color and more color. Yara Shahidi wore a Cartier necklace of yellow gold, emeralds and diamonds as she twirled in a princess gown of kelly green by Dior, while Kaley Cuoco brought the color in a neon yellow look by Vera Wang. Another standout: Michaela Coel in a bright yellow bandeaux top and matching skirt as she raced inside after closing down the carpet. Issa Rae wore a custom mesh look in white from Aliette. It was a simple, sporty silhouette, with impact. In London, where most of the cast of The Crown gathered, Emma Corrin made a statement far from Los Angeles in a pale yellow custom Miu Miu dress with a helmet-like head piece. There were other looks of note: Cynthia Erivo in white leather Louis Vuitton mermaid gown with a feathered hem of blue and green; Angela Bassett in body-hugging Greta Constantine in black with a bright pink ruffle traveling from top to floor; and Elizabeth Olsen with the unique privilege of wearing a white look designed by The Row, the brand of her twin sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley. We really loved all the bright and bold colors, Lavinthal said. It felt like a fun Crayola box. It certainly felt celebratory. Its nice that it wasnt this subdued and timid return to the red carpet. People seemed excited about it. Lavinthal also praised the men: Dan Levy in cobalt blue Valentino with a tie enclosure instead of buttons and Kenan Thompson in pink joining Sudeikis, Cedric and others who gave up the idea of a black tuxedo. Seth Rogan was in orange, she said. He looked like autumn. It just needed some leaves. Julee Wilson, beauty director for Cosmopolitan, said she gasped when she saw Coel in her Christopher John Rogers yellow look, but then the matching eyeliner just took it to another level. She added: Her sharp buzz cut was the exclamation point. I think its so powerful to see stars like her and Cynthia Erivo rock basically no hair on the red carpet and still slay. Erivo is known for her nail designs, and of course she brought it in a set of long white claws. They werent super embellished, but I loved that they matched her platinum buzz cut hair, which in turn all coordinated with her white gown. Wilson said of Taylor-Joys look: Holy Hollywood! She nailed the quintessential Old Hollywood look from head to toe. Everything is perfection. I cant stop staring at her bold crimson lip. Its the perfect pop against her monochromatic skin and dress. Samantha Sutton, senior fashion editor for InStyle.com, was on board with another trend. One trend that stood out to me were all the long trains, she said. Anya Taylor-Joy, Michaela Coel, Catherine OHara and more wore looks that trailed behind them and seemed to sweep the red carpet. Sutton also loved the highlighter colors, including Cuoco and Bassetts pink, fun ruffled detail. Belts, she said, got one huge boost. Everyone will be talking about Kathryn Hahns extra-large version, Sutton said. Siriano had a huge red carpet night. In addition to Byer, he put Waddingham in her custom coral pink pleated chiffon gown, Moses Ingram in a silk charmeuse and chiffon wrap slip gown, Jennifer Coolidge in custom navy silk crepe with a cape sleeve and Carl Clemons-Hopkins in a custom silk trouser and skirt with a non-binary waist belt. Sutton concurred with Lavinthal on the men: They really went above and beyond the basic black tux this year. Adam Glassman, creative director of Oprah Daily and special correspondent for Extra TV, said there wasn't just one or two major standouts but plenty of joy and exuberance and color and life. He called Siriano the "most inclusive, embracing designer out there. He's the least snobbiest designer when it comes to age and size and everything else. While some of the celebs are ambassadors for the brands they wore (Taylor-Joy and Shahidi for Dior), Siriano welcomes everybody, Glassman said. The pinks took it in terms of color, but so did the reds on Tracee Ellis Ross, Sarah Paulson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, he said. And the outfit of the moment stepping back into the light after months of seclusion Glassman picked Olsen in her sisters' white caftan. A dress up, home entertaining caftan, he said. Perfect for the times. Beaumont residents utility rates will go up in October after the City Council passed the 2022 budget on Tuesday. The budget was approved by a unanimous vote. However, Councilman Mike Getz voted against the utility rate increases. The council also adopted a property tax of just under $0.71 per $100 of valuation. Wastewater service rates will increase by 5%, and garbage rates will increase by $1.00. Individuals 65 and older still could be eligible for a 10% discount on their utility rates. Water Customer Service Manager Danette Mickens said she will put a message about the discount in customers bill. Interested seniors can then call the city for a mailed form to receive the discount. The usually-routine annual meeting took longer than expected, largely because Councilmember Mike Getz proposed several changes to the budget, which originally was presented to the council in August. Changes Getz proposed including lowering the property tax by $0.005, that a decision be made concerning The Battleship Texas and that the council officially prioritize the addition of three new dog parks. He also asked the council designate a campsite for unhoused people and use a building owned by Family Services of Southeast Texas, which currently is seeking a new building, as a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. I was asking that (the dog parks) be moved out of just the nebulous consideration phase, where it could last for years and years and years just like the Dowlen extension that's been there for 20 years or more into the planning and construction phase, which would require us to make a decision on actually funding it, Getz said after the meeting. This, which I've been trying to get passed for four years, just continues to get kicked down the road. There's a lot of people dancing around this, because, frankly, I don't think some of them are too interested in it. None of Getzs suggestions were actualized, but he was encouraged to bring his concerns to another city council meeting after the start of the new fiscal year on October 1. It's kind of too late in the process to add that to the budget right now, since we were adopting the capital plan today, said Beaumont Chief Financial Officer Todd Simoneaux. I think after October 1, when the new budget takes effect, they're going to come back to council and may be asked to amend the capital plan to include those dog parks. As for The Battleship Texas, Getz believes this should be a priority. Several groups support the exhibit becoming a centerpiece of Beaumonts downtown, including many veterans, the Beaumont Chamber of Commerce, Beaumont Main Street and the Sabine Area Restaurant Association. We have a fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves: Do we want The Battleship Texas here? Getz said. Today is not the day to answer that question, but I'm going to talk about it and continue to talk about it, just like I'm going to continue to talk about the dog parks until (they) give me an answer. rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/ontheREKord Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag HONOLULU (AP) Hawaiian Airlines said Thursday a passenger assaulted one of its flight attendants in an unprovoked attack during a flight. The airline said the incident occurred shortly after flight HA152 left Honolulu for Hilo at 7:30 a.m. The flight attendant was walking down the aisle at the time. An Ohio man accused of slaying a Beaumont teacher in a 1995 cold case has been indicted for capital murder. The Jefferson County District Attorneys Office, Beaumont Police Department, Texas Rangers, genealogists and others gathered Wednesday afternoon for a news conference regarding the case shortly following announcement of a grand jurys decision to indict Clayton Bernard Foreman, 61, for a crime committed more than two decades ago. This is a great day for Southeast Texas law enforcement and a great day for the family, Beaumont Police Chief Jimmy Singletary said at the departments training center. We are not going to give up (on a case no matter how old it is). We dont care what victim it is. We are going to keep working on a regular basis. Using technological advances and following an intensive investigation by local, state and federal agencies, Foreman has been connected to the crime scene where the late Mary Catherine Edwards was found dead. Related: Arrest made in connection with 1995 Beaumont slaying Edwards, a high school classmate and acquaintance of Foreman, was a well-loved teacher who lived alone in a Beaumont townhouse. According to Enterprise coverage at the time, the 31-year-old was last seen on the evening of Jan. 13, 1995. The next day, when she didnt respond to phone calls, her parents went to her house on Park Meadow Street to check on her, The Enterprise previously reported. When they arrived, they found Edwards drowned in her bathroom, a Department of Public Safety Release previously said. She had been sexually assaulted and killed. Ultimately, officials used DNA evidence from the scene to create a family tree and traced the crime back to Foreman, who was living in Ohio at the time of his arrest. He has since been transferred to Jefferson County to face trial. Related: How genealogy helped solve a Beaumont cold case Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Wortham noted that the contributions made by the original investigators chiefly preserving the DNA evidence at the scene was key to this discovery. Without that DNA evidence put in the freezer, we wouldnt be where we are today because it wouldnt have been valid, he said. I cant tell you how much I appreciate everything the Beaumont Police Department has done. They have jumped through hoops forever. Wortham said the day he was sworn in as district attorney, in January 2015, he met and spoke with Singletary and asked him to put his best agents on the Edwards case. I really want to make that case, Wortham recalled telling Singletary. And here we are today, we have indicted it, and we are ready to roll. The case will be led by First Assistant District Attorney Pat Knauth. Now that Foreman has been indicted, the team will begin reviewing the evidence to determine whether it supports seeking the death penalty or life in prison. The defense is included in this review to determine if theres factors that should take the death penalty off the table. The first part (of the trial) is the guilty or innocence and the second part is whether or not we can sentence the person to death, Knauth said. There are certain questions that have to be answered in such a way that the death penalty is imposed. So, we have to assess that, first of all do we have the evidence for that. He said seeking the death penalty has to be a deliberate process because it is costly and time consuming. During the next few months, we are going to make that assessment and at that particular time we will inform the court whether or not we intend to seek or waive the death penalty, Knauth said. Due to the pandemic, Wortham and Knauth said they did not know when the case would go to trial. There is a backlog of criminal cases in Jefferson County, which has more than 50 murder cases in one court alone. We are going to try to get it because this family, this community has been waiting so long for this day of justice and we would really like to bring that to them as soon as possible, Knauth said. Wortham, who does not plan to seek re-election, added that hed like to get it tried while hes still district attorney. Related: Jefferson County DA not seeking re-election, Giblin joins office in seek of seat Singletary said numerous investigators and agencies devoted more than 1,000 hours across nearly 25 years to close the case. Among them were Beaumont PD Detectives Aaron and Tina Lewallen; Genetic Genealogist and Gene Hunter Shera LaPoint, of Louisiana; Texas Department of Public Safety Ranger Brandon Bess; and others. About 10 years ago, Detective Tina Lewallen, who has worked with BPD for 26 years, began thumbing through the case to follow up on any lose ends. She didnt get any momentum with the case. After her husband Aaron Lewallen, who also is temporarily assigned to the FBI, reopened the case, he told her that law enforcement could utilize the DNA evidence and genealogy tools to find distant family members of a suspect. The conversation led her to work with LaPoint, who worked with Tina Lewallen to build a family tree using DNA. The (investigations) targets were found when I built a tree that had 7,209 people, LaPoint said. Related: Ohio man accused in Beaumont cold case brought to Jefferson County Tina Lewallen worked with LaPoint about five hours a day, seven days a week, on the family tree. Singletary said Beaumont PD plans to share what Lewallen has learned with other agencies. We will definitely share what we know and that will make the whole southeast Texas law enforcement better, he continued. This is the only case where Beaumont PD has used the genealogy tools to connect DNA evidence to the crime. It also is one of very few across the nation, Singletary said. Other agencies and individuals with knowledge about some 250 cases in the Texas Rangers Cold Case program are encouraged to reach out through an email on the website. There are approximately 250 cases listed on the website. meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/megzmagpie MADISONVILLE, La. (AP) A 16-year-old girl has been arrested in connection with a single-vehicle crash in Louisiana that killed two passengers and hospitalized a third, authorities said. A Honda civic occupied by four 16-year-old girls ran off the road at a high speed near Madisonville just after midnight on Aug. 4, according to a news release from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office. BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP) The state of Michigan will provide bottled water and water filters in Benton Harbor, where tests have revealed elevated levels of lead, a spokesman said Wednesday. The action comes less than two weeks after about 20 groups urged the Biden administration to immediately step in. They said local and state officials have not adequately responded since the contamination was discovered three years ago in the Black, mostly low income community. The Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy will provide bottled water and go door-to-door to ensure proper installation of faucet filters, spokesman Scott Dean told the Detroit Free Press. Testing children is also part of the plan. Free water will be available until the filter distribution is completed. The target is Oct. 8. The state of Michigan remains committed to ensuring every Michigander has access to safe drinking water, Dean said. A local activist, the Rev. Edward Pinkney, praised the moves but noted that three years have passed since elevated lead levels were revealed. The Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said the free water should continue beyond early October. Theres this ongoing issue as we all saw in Flint of filter maintenance, and of ensuring that the filters are being used properly," Cyndi Roper of the NRDC said. It shouldn't end "with a swing through the community, dropping off filters and having a conversation about filter use. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has called for spending $20 million in Benton Harbor to replace nearly 6,000 service lines, most suspected of containing lead, within five years. Benton Harbor is in the southwestern corner of Michigan, roughly 200 miles from Flint, where lead flowed through old pipes in 2014-15 because water pulled from a river wasn't properly treated to reduce corrosion. Rose City, which has endured natural disasters, fires and frauds way out of proportion to its size of perhaps 600 souls, lost one of its greatest champions on Monday with the death of former Mayor David Bush. He was 71. Bush, also a former member of Rose City's council and the son-in-law of two previous mayors, outfought hurricanes, floods and in-house dishonesty that cost his citizens hundreds of thousands of dollars. But he never lost faith in his small portion of Texas, God or family. And he enjoyed the confidence of his friends through it all, said his pastor, Tony Wilcoxson of Rose City Baptist Church who also is a member of the Rose City council. "He is one of the reasons I am on council now," Wilcoxson told The Enterprise Wednesday. "He was someone you could count on. He was a man who cared about everything and everyone, not as a duty, but as a privilege." Wilcoxson remembers Bush as a "man's man," a person who was honest, humble, quiet and who "loved the Lord." Rose City, which stands maybe 10 feet above sea level, suffered along with the rest of Southeast Texas on Sept. 24, 2005, when Hurricane Rita struck, 16 years ago this week, and when Hurricane Ike flooded through low-lying parts of Orange County on Sept. 13, 2008 rushing as far inland as the city of Orange and the floods of Tropical Storm Harvey in 2017 and Tropical Depression Imelda in 2019. Bush worked tirelessly to win recovery grants from the depredations of Ike only to see repairs dashed to bits by Harvey and then start over again. "He helped rebuild our church after it burned down in August 2016, and then helped give out sheetrock a year later from the church after Harvey," Wilcoxson said. "He loved his community." In a small community, where most people know each other, a wolf within devoured the tiny city's finances, ultimately discovered in August 2012. The then-city secretary was arrested for fleecing up to $200,000 in its revenues. That city secretary was tried, convicted and sent to state prison until paroled in April 2017. More Information In memoriam: Services for David Bush will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday with visitation at Memorial Funeral Home, 1750 Texas 12 in Vidor. A funeral service will follow at 2 p.m. at the funeral home. Burial, after a graveside service, will be at Restlawn Cemetery. See More Collapse Bush resigned as mayor in October 2013, perhaps exhausted by the struggles he and Rose City resolutely faced. He'd been re-elected that May, running unopposed. He was replaced in January 2014 by current Mayor Bonnie Stephenson. Under Bush's leadership, Rose City installed new accounting controls to ensure only the council, in formal meetings, would write checks to pay its bills. "David Bush was a good man," Stephenson said. His father-in-law, H.P. "Shorty" Dubuisson, and his mother-in law, Ruth Vee Dubuisson, also had served as Rose City mayors. Bush succeeded his mother-in-law as mayor. "They really cared about the city," Stephenson said of all three. In 2019, long after Bush had resigned, Rose City again was victimized, causing another city secretary to exit the city's employ. The case has not resulted in any indictment and is still under investigation by the Texas Rangers of the state Department of Public Safety and the Orange County District Attorney's Office. Stephenson said she could not relate any details. Of Bush, Stephenson emphasized his achievements in recoveries from the disasters. "He was the one who got the grants to rebuild the roads and bridges," she said. "He did a lot for the city. He was a good, Christian man." Dan Wallach is a freelance writer. MADISON, Wis. (AP) A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear a redistricting lawsuit supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, a move that comes as a Democratic-backed lawsuit progresses in federal court. In a 4-3 ruling, the Supreme Court's conservative majority sided with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in agreeing to take the case, with its three liberal justices dissenting. The Legislature supports having the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court take the case rather than have it play out in federal court. A three-judge federal court panel on Tuesday said it wanted to prepare for a trial in that case to conclude by the end of January in order for the court to issue a ruling by March. Both cases are now proceeding even though the Legislature hasn't yet introduced a map, let alone sent one to Gov. Tony Evers to consider. Rick Esenberg, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which brought the case, praised the ruling. Adopting new state legislative and congressional maps is a state responsibility," he said. "We are pleased the Wisconsin Supreme Court reaffirmed this longstanding principle and accepted jurisdiction in the event the courts have to act. But Sachin Chheda, director of the Fair Elections Project, said the ruling ignores both the law and practical considerations. It unfortunately looks like a politicization of the process, and that gives the people of Wisconsin even less confidence in the state high court," he said. No matter what the Supreme Court does, it will ultimately be reviewed in federal court, Chheda said. Redistricting is the once-a-decade process of redrawing the state's political boundaries based on the latest census showing how populations have changed in neighborhoods, cities and counties since 2010. Mapmakers can create an advantage for their political party in future elections by packing opponents voters into a few districts or spreading them thin among multiple districts a process known as gerrymandering. The Legislature is in charge of drawing the lines for the states eight congressional districts and 132 legislative districts. Local governments also must draw new lines for local offices. Both the Republican and Democratic lawsuits argue that the current maps for legislative and congressional boundary lines, adopted in 2011, are unconstitutional now because of population changes. The lawsuits ask that courts establish a plan to draw new lines in the likely event that the GOP-controlled Legislature and Evers, a Democrat, don't agree on new maps. Republicans think their chances are best in the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court Democrats are putting their hopes in federal court, arguing that makes more sense because thats where past redistricting disputes under divided governments in 1982, 1992 and 2002 were resolved. The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed with WILL and said state courts have a role to play. This court has long deemed redistricting challenges a proper subject for the court's exercise of original jurisdiction, the majority wrote. The lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to put the case on hold after agreeing to take it, pending action by the Legislature and governor. It asked the court to draw a new map based on the current one if the Legislature and governor fail to reach an agreement. The Supreme Court declined to put the case on hold. It asked the Legislature and all other parties to tell it by Oct. 6 when a new redistricting plan must be in place. It declined to declare the current maps unconstitutional, saying the record was inadequate for such a determination. The date by which redistricting must be completed is at issue in the federal lawsuit, with the state elections commission saying it needs to know the new boundaries by March 1 in order for clerks to prepare for the August primary. Nomination papers can be circulated starting April 15. The Legislature says that date can be pushed back. Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and fellow conservative justices Brian Hagedorn, Rebecca Bradley and Patience Roggensack agreed to take the case, while liberal justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky objected. Dallet, writing for the dissent, said the Supreme Court may have a role to play after the Legislature does its job, but now is not the time. The majoritys order prematurely injects the court into the political process, risks undermining the courts independence, and circumvents the statutory process for addressing redistricting challenges, Dallet wrote. The current maps were drawn by Republicans and enacted by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011. Republicans who strengthened their legislative majorities under the maps want to use them as the starting point for redistricting this year. The federal lawsuit combines a pair of cases first brought by the attorney leading the Democratic Partys legal fight against new voting restrictions and by Democratic-supported groups including Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, Voces de la Frontera and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. Marvel proves it likes to party in the latest episode in which Thor becomes the god of celebration. This weeks episode of Marvels animated series What If? introduces us to a world where Thor was an only child. Equal parts The Hangover, Looney Tunes, and Farris Buellers Day Off, the show was full of laughs, but also connects to the greater story arc of the show. This article is nothing but spoilers for What If? episode 7 and adorable Thor gifs. Dont read past here until youve seen the episode! The 7th installment of the What If? series is 36 minutes of ridiculous fun. After another glimpse into a more unfortunate universe, a universe in which Odin didnt adopt Loki actually comes up mostly roses. As Odin rests his eyes and falls into the Odinsleep (right about the time of the first Thor movie), Friga goes to celebrate the Solstice with her sisters. She leaves Thor in charge and warns him to behave himself. For good measure, she reminds him that Heimdall is watching. But of course, Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three know of a place even Heimdall wont check. A backwater planet, a little piece of nowhere called Midgard. Meanwhile, Jane and Darcy are parked in the Nevada desert just waitin for some science to happen when there is a beep! And now just any beep! The beep signals the arrival of an extra-terrestrial force. Darcy alerts Jane, who immediately calls SHIELD. Thor and his partygoers touch down in Las Vegas, where Jane tracks a signal to Thor. This Thor has apparently partied everywhere since hes got a whole cast of friends. The episode features cameos from the Skrulls, Nebula (sans Thanos horrific upgrades), Drax, Rocket Raccoon, even Valkyrie, and the Grandmaster. We even see Surtur (voiced by the incredible Clancy Brown) accidentally melt an arm off the Statue of Liberty. But the most exciting party guest was a big, blue surprise: none other than Loki himself! Because he grew up on his homeworld, Loki looks like a Frost Giant. Its understood that Loki learns his magic from his adoptive mother, Friga. It doesnt appear he has any magic in this universe but its clear he still gets up to plenty of mischief as Thors brother from another mother. Thors party rages through the night. He and Jane get matching tattoos that say magic and science, while Darcey and Howard the Duck tie the knot in a Vegas chapel. But the next morning, Janes hangover sets in. When Jane first called SHIELD the day before, she mentioned that another planet experienced the same alien contact and was destroyed. So when Maria Hill shows up at her apartment the next morning, shes in red-alert mode. Jane and Darcy accompany the agents to SHIELD headquarters, where Agent Coulson reports that the party atmosphere started by Thor is spreading across the world. It seems to imply that Thors power extends to his personality, and its influencing the people of Midgard. I guess that makes this Thor the God of Party? Fearing the worst, SHIELD calls in Nick Furys hail Mary the beeper used to contact Captain Marvel. Carol arrives to take Thor down, and the ensuing battle is the most gleeful tribute to old Looney Tunes cartoons. After the two punch each other across the map a few times, Captain Marvel returns to SHIELD. She tells them that shes unable to defeat Thor without taking a chunk of the planets population with her, so Maria and Carol decide to confront him in the middle of the Mojave desert. But Jane is unsure Thors not really malicious, is he? She worries that SHIELD is overdoing the response. Thanks to Darcy, Jane gets an idea. Shell use her science to contact Heimdall, who will in turn, call Thors mommy. Meanwhile, Carol and Thor are beating the heck out of each other all across the desert landscape. Just as Captain Marvel ramps up to deliver the big blow to the party god, the Allmother appears to give her son a good telling off. But Thor assures her that hes been studying on Earth with his friends in a cultural exchange program. And like any classic teen comedy movie, Friga cuts her trip short to come home early, leaving Thor to race against the clock as he has to clean up his worldwide party mess. But of course, like any teen hero, Thor manages to get things together just in time for Frigas arrival. Captain Marvel even flies down to help validate his cover story and provide him with some useful information about Earth. And all is well that ends well except oops! Thor summons Mjolnir and as it returns to him, its covered in Mardi Gras beads and someones underwear. And much like Uata the Watcher we believe it will all be a happy ending. Thor asks Jane on a date, and through this experience, appears to have learned some of the responsibility he acquired in the original Thor. But then, as we see the Watchers face coming closer than weve yet seen it, a look of shock crosses his face! This quintessential rom-com ending is interrupted by Ultra-Vision! Infinite Ultron! Ultron with his consciousness loaded into the synthezoid that would have otherwise become Vision! Marvel now has released enough trailer footage of the show to let us know two things, the first being that a form of Ultron gets the Infinity Stones. We also know that a group of Multiversal Avengers forms to stop a cross-dimensional threat, and I feel pretty confident in saying that this is it. Other members of the team have appeared in episodes. TChalla as Star-Lord, Captain Britain Peggy Carter, a couple of Doctor Stranges, and few Black Panthers have all made appearances. Its nice to see the stories coming together. And as far as the series goes, this episode is easily a favorite. The studio took full advantage of animation with its cheeky fight scenes, memorable one-liners, and destruction of certain worldwide landmarks. Make sure to check out more of my break down with Matt on Youtube! What did you think of episode 7? Did it put you in the party mood? Unidentified men armed with knives and slingshots walk past the ruins of a burning house in Myanmars Rakhine state where thousands of Rohingya fled following a military crackdown, Sept. 7, 2017. A U.S. magistrate has ordered Facebook to release records and deleted content which, he said, helped stoke attacks against Rohingya by Myanmars military including during a 2017 offensive that unleashed a massive exodus of refugees into Bangladesh. Zia M. Faruqui, a federal judge in Washington, ruled in favor of The Gambia, which is seeking evidence of genocidal intent for its lawsuit filed against Myanmar at the International Criminal of Justice. In his ruling on Wednesday, Faruqui declared that the social media powerhouse, by its own admission, was too slow to respond to concerns about how the online platform played a role in Myanmars persecution of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority. Facebook has admitted that Myanmar authorities used Facebook as part of a coordinated campaign of hate against the Rohingya. Yet the scope and underlying proof of this conclusion is unknown to The Gambia, Faruqui wrote in his ruling. The investigation records will illuminate how Facebook connected the seemingly unrelated inauthentic accounts to Myanmar government officials. Specifically, these records may show which accounts or pages were operated by the same officials or from the same government locations. He noted that in 2018, Facebook began deleting accounts and other content used by Myanmar government agents. The Gambia seeks these records for evidence of genocidal intent necessary to support a finding of responsibility for genocide of the Rohingya, Faruqui ruled. Finishing his 32-page order, Faruqui noted that Facebook took a first step by deleting content that, in his words, fueled a genocide, but then did not share the content. Facebook can act now, he said, adding, Failing to do so here would compound the tragedy that has befallen the Rohingya. Locking away the requested content would be throwing away the opportunity to understand how disinformation begat genocide of the Rohingya and would foreclose a reckoning at the ICJ. Paul Reichler, a Washington-based attorney representing the tiny West African nation of The Gambia in the ICJ lawsuit, praised the ruling. It enables us to obtain from Facebook the deleted messages, he told BenarNews on Thursday, noting that the platform was used to deliver information to military units regarding attacks on the Rohingya. Facebook was one of the main weapons, he said. I am disappointed that Facebook was not willing to produce the messages voluntarily. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request from BenarNews for comment, but Agence France-Presse obtained a statement from the company. Were reviewing this decision. We remain appalled by the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people in Myanmar and support justice for international crimes, a Facebook spokesperson said in the statement. Weve committed to disclose relevant information to authorities, and over the past year weve made voluntary, lawful disclosures to the IIMM and will continue to do so as the case against Myanmar proceeds, it said, referring to the U.N. Human Rights Councils Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. In January 2020, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Myanmar to protect Rohingya from genocidal acts, in response to the lawsuit filed by The Gambia two months earlier. The 17-judge panel based in The Hague unanimously supported the imposition of measures to force Myanmar to refrain from destroying evidence of alleged crimes that could be used in future hearings. One month later, a senior International Criminal Court prosecutor told reporters in Dhaka that those responsible for committing genocide against Rohingya would be prosecuted. Reichler said he did not know when the Facebook content would be turned over, noting the company has the right to appeal the magistrate judges ruling to a higher court. I dont think that would be worth their time, he said. A vehicle carrying Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi drives past protesters after a hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, for a case filed by Gambia alleging genocide against the Rohingya population, Dec. 10, 2019. [Reuters] The judge issued his ruling days after The Wall Street Journal released an investigative series, The Facebook Files. The fourth part of the series included reporting that shed light on how the company did not do enough to stop incitements to violence while hate speech in Myanmar proliferated in 2018. Facebook executives described the Myanmar violence as a wake-up call to the companys responsibilities in the developing world, the report said. In Dhaka, Munshi Faiz Ahmad, former chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, said he believed Faruquis ruling would assist in efforts to prove allegations against Myanmar officials. We have seen a huge amount of anti-Rohingya posts and comments in Facebook when the Myanmar military and the vigilante groups in the country carried out genocide and crimes against humanity, he told BenarNews. But whatever Facebook releases about the anti-Rohingya posts and contents would definitely corroborate the charges brought against Myanmar and the individuals involved in and responsible for the genocide and crimes against humanity at the international courts, said Ahmad, a former ambassador to China. $180 million for Rohingya The ruling came on the same day that Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, announced that Washington was donating another $180 million to assist Rohingya refuges in Bangladesh, Myanmar and elsewhere. The funding brings the total committed by the U.S. government since 2017 to $1.5 billion, of which, $1.2 billion has gone to support 900,000 Rohingya refugees in southeastern Bangladesh, the U.S. State Department said. That includes the 740,000 Rohingya who crossed the border seeking shelter after Myanmars military launched its offensive in Rakhine state in August 2017. The funds also provide support to 472,000 Bangladeshis affected by the influx. We commend the people and Government of Bangladesh, who have responded generously to the refugees who have arrived in Bangladesh. However, more assistance is required, said Ned Price, the departments spokesman. We urge other donors to come forward now with additional funds to sustain and increase support for the Rakhine state/Rohingya refugee crisis. In addition, the State Department reiterated its support for the citizens of Myanmar. In the aftermath of Burmas Feb. 1 military coup detat and brutal military crackdown, our commitment to the people of Burma, including Rohingya refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as members of other ethnic and religious minority groups, remains unwavering, Price said referring to Myanmar by its former name. The donation follows a U.S. pledge in May of $155 million toward the nearly $1 billion goal set by the UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, for its 2021 Joint Response Effort to support Rohingya in Bangladesh. It also came days after the Biden administration announced plans to allow 125,000 refugees to enter the country beginning in the Oct. 1 fiscal year, including 35,000 from the Near East and South Asia. A State Department spokesman said the United States would not discriminate based on country of origin. Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report. Forest and land fire task force officers try to douse a fire with water pipes at a palm oil plantation in Pekanbaru, in Riau province, Indonesia, July 20, 2019. Environmental experts and activists are urging Indonesias government to extend a ban on new palm oil plantations that just expired, warning the new rules to regulate the sector seen as pro-business may undermine efforts to limit deforestation. After a three-year moratorium on permits for new plantations ended Sunday, the palm-oil industry will now be regulated under a controversial jobs-related law, which will promote the expansion of plantations, according to an Indonesian forestry policy expert. Im worried that regulators will churn out permits and theres little supervision on the ground, Hariadi Kartodihardjo, a professor of forestry policy at the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), told BenarNews. Six new forestry regulations pave the way for plantation expansion, legalization of plantations in native forests, and clearing of forests for infrastructure projects, he said. This is why it is imperative that the moratorium be extended, he added. In late 2020, parliament passed the so-called Jobs Creation Law that slashed dozens of regulations seen as discouraging investment, including in the forestry sector. Critics said the revisions favor businesses at the expense of the environment. Musdhalifah Machmud, deputy minister for food and agribusiness at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, said this week that the forestry sector, including palm oil plantations, would be regulated by the jobs law after the moratorium expired. The end of the moratorium would not impede the governments efforts to achieve environmental sustainability in the palm oil sector, Musdhalifah said. We have passed the Jobs Creation Law and Government Regulations that support it, she told BenarNews. For the moratorium, we are still waiting for a direction [from the president], Musdhalifah said when asked whether President Joko Jokowi Widodo would order an extension to the moratorium he decreed in 2018. Musdhalifah did not explain how the law and the rules that it spawned could support sustainable palm oil management. Earlier on, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar had said that the new legislation provided for stricter requirements for minimum forest cover. For instance, the new regulations restrict to 100,000 hectares the plantation area that a company of a corporate group can manage across Indonesia. The previous law allowed a company up to 100,000 hectares within a province. At the same time, though, the new law removes a stipulation that the government maintain forest cover of at least 30 percent of a land area or an island. Back in 2018, the moratorium on new palm oil plantations as well as the expansion of existing ones was instituted to improve the sustainability of plantations, protect the environment and support the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the government said then. The moratorium, among other things, aimed to end the practice of clearing land by burning vegetation in order to set up lucrative palm oil and paper and pulp plantations. Experts had told BenarNews that the economic incentive to use fires was huge. As it is, the thousands upon thousands of acres of Indonesian rainforest already converted into giant palm oil plantations depleted not only biodiversity, they reduced a crucial source of oxygen. On top of that, huge blazes emitted toxic greenhouse gases and even spread to protected forestlands. The resulting heavy haze often crosses national boundaries and engulfs other Southeast Asian countries. A worker clears a tree at a palm oil plantation in Sampoiniet, Aceh province, Indonesia, March 7, 2021. On Thursday morning (local time), Jokowi took to the world stage where he proclaimed that Indonesia had succeeded in reducing the number of forest fires by 82 percent throughout 2020. At the same time, the rate of deforestation fell by 75 percent, the lowest in 20 years, he said in a pre-recorded speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Indonesia is aware of our strategic place on climate change. Thus, we will continue to work hard to fulfill our commitments, the Indonesian president said. In March, the government said Indonesia had lost 115,000 hectares of forest during 2019-2020, down from 462,000 hectares the previous year. In his speech at the virtual G20 Summit last November, Jokowi said the Jobs Creation Law would have a positive impact on the environment. The law also provides protection for tropical forests, as a bulwark against climate change, he said then. That was incorrect, according to Adrianus Eryan, the head of forestry division at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL). The Jobs Creation Law paves the way for the legalization of business activities in forest areas, including oil palm. This contradicts the goal of the moratorium [on permits for new palm oil plantations], Adrianus told BenarNews. As of last year, 3.4 million hectares of oil palm trees were planted in designated native forests, where agriculture is forbidden, data from the Ministry of Agriculture shows. According to an environmental non-profit group, the Kehati Foundation, operators who illegally encroached on about half that land had been issued permits by local governments to do so. Under the new regulations, they may now become fully legal. Indonesia has set the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 41 percent by 2030 with international support. That will not be possible without the palm oil moratorium, said Teguh Surya, founder of the Sustainable Madani Foundation. Around 1.4 million hectares of natural forest could be converted into palm oil plantations in the coming years, he said. Aggressive palm oil expansion is a major contributor to carbon emissions, he told BenarNews. Tria Dianti in Jakarta and Ika Inggas in Washington contributed to this report. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered police and military forces to assist hospitals overwhelmed by a steady stream of COVID-19 patients in recent months. During a late-night cabinet meeting Wednesday, Duterte also appealed to opposition politicians, who have accused the government of corruption related to equipment purchases during the pandemic, to set aside differences so his administration could solve the health crisis straining hospitals in the Philippine capital. While the Senate continues with its corruption investigation, Duterte said, our healthcare workers are getting sick, our hospitals are being filled to the brim, and more and more people are getting sick and dying from COVID-19. We have a dearth of supply of the human resource, Duterte said. Thats why I am ordering the medical corps of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police please place your human resources ready on deck because thats who I can quickly rely on. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has one of the highest rates of infection and fatality stemming from the coronavirus disease, with more than 2.4 million cases and more than 37,000 deaths recorded to date. On Thursday, the health department said 177 new deaths were recorded overnight, along with 17,411 new cases. A wave of infections driven by the very contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 has hit the country hard in recent months, particularly in Metro Manila. Many of the most prominent hospitals in the crowded Philippine capital region are running at full capacity, Duterte said, naming at least seven of the biggest hospitals that had recently reported being over capacity. Their health workers are now in quarantine, so they cannot accept COVID admissions anymore. Some 400 staff at five of the biggest hospitals have contracted the disease while at work, Duterte said, citing a report that his office had received about the public health crisis. The country, in the meantime, has received some 66 million vaccine doses, he also said. But the country is lagging far behind its target of fully vaccinating 70 percent of its nearly 110 million people by years end. According to the Department of Health, some 18.8 million Filipinos have received both doses of coronavirus vaccine. COVID-19 patients are seen at a Catholic chapel converted into an emergency wing for the Quezon City General Hospital, in Quezon City, Philippines, Aug 20, 2021. [Dante Diosina Jr./BenarNews] A day earlier, Duterte had slammed rich countries for creating a man-made drought of vaccines ravaging poor countries. Rich countries hoard lifesaving vaccines while poor nations wait for trickles. They now talk of booster shots, while developing countries consider half-doses just to get by, Duterte said in a pre-recorded address to the United Nations General Assembly. The plain fact is, this pandemic will not end unless the virus is defeated everywhere. Vaccines are key to achieving this, Duterte said. Military already being deployed The armed forces have already started dispatching nurses to at least one Manila hospital, and more will likely be sent, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said during the cabinet meeting. He said the militarys surgeon-general would immediately dispatch additional nurses to St. Lukes, one of Manilas more prominent hospitals, which had shut one of its wings due to the surge in COVID-19 patients. "We are continuously looking for health workers from our services in the provinces, from the army, navy, air force. In the following days, we would deploy more nurses to hospitals in Manila, Lorenzana said. The disease has also hit military personnel, and it is a matter of prioritizing personnel to the more essential deployments, armed forces spokesman Col. Ramon Zagala said. We, too, have some affected (personnel), but we will allocate nurses and health workers the soonest, Zagala told BenarNews on Thursday. The president, who is known for his brash comments, devoted a considerable chunk of his remarks on Wednesday evening to attacking opposition senators investigating alleged corruption linked to the health department's COVID-19 program. Duterte accused his opponents of unnecessarily bothering his officials from adequately doing their jobs amid a pandemic. The corruption allegations blew up earlier this month after the Commission on Audit (COA), an influential independent constitutional body that scrutinizes government expenditures, flagged alleged financial discrepancies in the handling of public funds meant to address the health crisis. Following the COA release, the Senate launched an investigation into billions of pesos spent on personal protective equipment, COVID-19 test kits, and other medical supplies from private contractors. A Y-20, Chinas largest type of transport plane, is seen in a screen grab of a video on a Chinese state-run television channel, July 15, 2021. Vietnam protested against a Chinese military transport mission in the disputed South China Sea last week, calling it a violation of Vietnams sovereignty, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Chinese state media reported that on Sept. 16, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) deployed a number of Y-20 large transport aircraft to return troops from three outposts in the Spratly Islands which China calls Nansha -- to the mainland. This was the first time the PLA confirmed that this new type of aircraft had been operating on islands and reefs in the South China Sea, according to the Global Times, part of the Chinese Communist Partys mouthpiece, the Peoples Daily. Vietnamese Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a regular press briefing in Hanoi on Thursday that Vietnam demands that China respect its sovereignty over the Paracel archipelago which Vietnam calls Hoang Sa and the Spratlys (Truong Sa), and immediately stop and not repeat similar activities. Hang added that China should respect international law as well as the common understanding shared by Vietnamese and Chinese leaders of remaining issues related to the waterway. Global Times quoted the PLA South Sea Fleet as saying that several Y-20 transport aircraft of the PLA Air Force took off from airfields on Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef last Thursday, carrying veterans who were garrisoned there to the Chinese mainland. Previously, such missions were done by ships, it noted. The three reefs are controlled by China but also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China, which claims most of the South China Sea, has extensively developed the three features with military facilities and airstrips despite the unresolved territorial disputes. The Chinese newspaper quoted an unnamed military expert who said that the latest mission meant that the PLA airfields in the South China Sea can host large transport aircraft, which can transport a relatively large number of troops and numerous pieces of equipment between the islands and reefs and the mainland very fast. The Chinese-built base at Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands is pictured in a satellite image on Aug. 20, 2021. [Courtesy Planet Labs Inc.] Suspicious activities Foreign media reported that a Y-20 cargo plane was spotted landing on Fiery Cross Reef in December last year but it was not confirmed until now. Malaysia in June accused China of breaching its airspace after detecting suspicious activity by 16 Chinese military aircraft including Il-76 and Y-20 transporters over disputed waters off its state of Sarawak. Malaysia dispatched fighter jets to intercept the Chinese planes, calling the maneuver a serious threat to national sovereignty and threatened to summon the Chinese ambassador in a diplomatic protest. China insisted that the Chinese air force strictly abided by international law without entering the airspace of other countries. The Xian Y-20 is Chinas first indigenously developed heavy military transport aircraft. It has a payload capacity of over 60 tons and can carry up to 300 troops. The PLA Air Force is believed to have 20 such aircraft in service. In another development, Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said on Twitter that 24 Chinese air force aircraft entered the islands air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Thursday. Beijing has yet to comment on this. This is the second-highest number of daily incursions by Chinese military airplanes into Taiwans ADIZ. The highest was 28 on June 15. If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The inequity of COVID-19 vaccine distribution came into sharp focus Thursday as many of the African countries whose populations have little to no access to the life-saving shots stepped to the podium to speak at the U.N.s annual meeting of world leaders Floridas new surgeon general has signed new protocols allowing parents to decide whether their children should quarantine or stay in school if they are asymptomatic after being exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 FILE Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, waves while marching in the State of Maine Bicentennial Parade, in this Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021 file photo, in Lewiston, Maine. LePage is to hold a campaign kickoff rally in his run for governor of Maine in the evening, Wednesday, Sept. 22, in Augusta. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Activists who support a proposed ballot question that would require all reasonable medical steps be taken to preserve the life of a child born alive in Massachusetts are getting a second chance to begin collecting signatures to put the proposal before voters next year An employee of a Massachusetts hospital was stabbed during an unprovoked attack and the alleged assailant remains on the loose Every ounce of the imaginative work and thought director-choreographer Joshua Bergasse and co-choreographer Alberto Lopez have put into this highly theatrical piece shows in the solidly crafted, expertly performed production that is having its world premiere at BSCs theater on Union Street. Business writer Tony Dobrowolski's main focus is on business reporting. He came to The Eagle in 1992 after previously working for newspapers in Connecticut and Montreal. He can be reached at tdobrowolski@berkshireeagle.com or 413-496-6224. Anthony D. Chambers, who is accused of stabbing a man in Adams in 2019, testified in Berkshire Superior Court in his own defense on Wednesday. He denied the charges and said he was the victim of an attempted robbery plotted by his girlfriend and a man she previously dated. Pittsfield Police are investigating an armed invasion Wednesday night, during which a resident of a Mohawk Street residence was shot and seriously wounded. Police say three people thought to be involved still are on the loose. Opening arguments and testimony Tuesday in the stabbing trial of Anthony D. Chambers, the first criminal prosecution to be tried before a jury in Berkshire Superior Court during the pandemic. PITTSFIELD A new zoning district that planners developed to help revitalize the citys core passed the muster of a City Council subcommittee Clarksburgs bookkeeping issues have made it difficult for the Northern Berkshire School Union to purchase equipment, among other impacts. But, the town says it has the money and is on the right path to resolve those issues. Reporter Greta Jochem, a Report for America Corps member, joined the Eagle in 2021. Previously, she was a reporter at the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She is also a member of the investigations team. Drive down Main Street in Great Barrington, and you will see the overwhelmingly positive impact the cannabis industry has had creating hundreds of jobs, investing in people and real estate, bolstering property values and attracting more regional visitors, said Charlotte Hanna, the founder of Rebelle, on South Main Street. Part of a shrimp boat, one of several that caught fire and burned during Hurricane Ida, lies in the channel of the Delta Marina in Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana this month. The author says that weather-related events significantly increase the price of production, no matter the product, while reducing the speed with which supplies can be delivered. The quality of goods and services also suffers. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they introduced sin into the world; they understood evil and could choose to engage with it. From then on, each person to exist entertained and engaged with the sinful side of their nature. These sins created a debt in the ledgers of peoples lives; for a while God instituted a sacrificial system, but every sin required a new sacrifice. To pay for these debts once and for all, Jesus Christ came to earth, lived as a man, and died on the cross, paying for them in full. He rose again three days later. While on earth, Jesus was fully God, and fully man. He was still one with the Father, but experienced human frailty. For some, they wonder if that means He sinned, failing to live a perfect life. However, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus did not sin, or He could not have served as the perfect lamb, innocent of the sin committed for which He gave His blood. Jesus did not sin during His life on earth, and because of this truth anyone who repents and follows Him can be forgiven, forever. Did Jesus Ever Sin? Jesus existed before His birth on earth, in perfect harmony with the Father and the Spirit. He was at, and participated in, Creation; In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14). When He did come to earth, He gave up some of His divine nature. He could be harmed, existed in time, and needed food and water to stay physically strong. He got sick, needed sleep, and needed Mary and Joseph to help Him grow up. He was fully human. However, the Bible also makes it clear He knew who He was, and that He still maintained attributes of God. The Apostle Paul expressed it succinctly, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people...waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11, 13). Jesus is God, and did not cease to be God, even when He lived on earth. He even got in trouble with the religious leaders when He said, I and the Father are one, to which the Jews responded, ...you, being a man, make yourself God (John 10:30, 33b). While He had human frailty, Jesus still maintained His connection to the Father and the Spirit, and God cannot sin. What Does It Mean That Jesus Was "without Sin"? When the Bible says that Jesus was without sin, it means that He did not commit any sins; but it also means that He did not carry a sin nature the same way other people do. Paul wrote, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Even when examining the temptation of Jesus Christ in the desert, Satan did not tempt Him with regular, fleshly behaviors or lusts. He was tempted to turn stones to bread, to throw himself down so as to bring the angelic hosts to him, and to bow before Satan who would then hand over the kingdoms of the world. None of these things are true temptations for Jesus, as they are things that were already, or will be, His. The ability to exert power over the natural world, to command the hosts, and to rule the kingdoms of the earth were and always will be His. He even stated this fact at His return to Heaven after the resurrection, And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me (Matthew 28:18a). Satan could not tempt Jesus with earthly delights, but only with things that would become Jesus in the fullness of Gods timing. Photo credit: Getty Images/GordonImages Was Jesus' Anger at the Merchants in the Temple Sinful? One passage that can seem like an instance of Jesus being in sin is His moment of anger at the temple. In the week leading up to His crucifixion, the Lord came into Jerusalem, and went to the temple that was the center of worship for the Jewish religion. People made pilgrimages there, journeying great distances to make sacrifices to the Lord. Often people could not bring the animals needed to appropriately sacrifice to the Lord, whether because of distance or cost. It became common practice for there to be markets around the temple so people could buy what they needed. Over time, these markets became increasingly exploitative. They charged a premium, particularly if they knew the person did not have options. They also conducted this business within the temple grounds. While the practice of selling inside the walls had happened a long time, this meant they were abusing their power and draining the poor and the believing gentiles of their resources. Sometimes they would ask for so much the individuals could not pay. Another exploitative practice employed at the temple was the selling of animals that were not up to the requirements outlined in the Levitical law. Jesus was angered at the deceitful practices in His Fathers house; He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers (Matthew 21:13). What Jesus felt here was righteous anger. This emotion is driven by correctly identifying a sin or a wrong, understanding its offense against God, and responding appropriately, if with firmness or even a harshness. Throughout the Bible, God expresses righteous anger at sin, particularly when it hurts the down-trodden. Jesus actions here are in line with that part of Gods nature, and are not sinful. Why Is It Important That Jesus Never Sinned? In order for the sins of the Israelites to be atoned, a spotless lamb had to be sacrificed. In order for the sins of all humanity to be cleansed, an even more perfect lamb was required. Jesus needed to be perfect, and without sin, because then He would have needed saving redemption as well. Even more significant though, He did not come and spend a few moments without sin, and then die. Instead, He came and lived a full price, so that He could stand before the Father as an advocate who understands the struggles of humanity. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He endured the same things as others but overcame them. Because our Redeemer lived an ordinary life, humanity can have hope, because there is nothing this fallen world, or Satan, or others can beset upon believers that Jesus did not conquer up to and including death. No matter how great the sin, Jesus sacrifice was fully sufficient because He was sinless. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). If Jesus sinned, He would not be God, nor could He be the Savior. It can seem impossible to believe that anyone lived a perfect life, or that someone capable of doing it would allow their perfect life to be ended for the sake of billions of imperfect ones. Jesus love and compassion for others, as well as His submission to the will of the Father, is what led Him to be willing to be the perfect lamb. Just as the Hebrews sacrificed perfect lambs to atone for their sins, the sacrifice to atone for humanity needed to be perfectly sinless, lest that individual also need redemption. If Jesus had not lived a perfect life, His death would have been in vain. Instead, He lived without sin, rose from the grave after His sacrifice, and paved the way for all who put their faith and trust in Him to go to be resurrected one day alongside Him. Sources Bloesch, Donalg. Jesus Christ Savior & Lord. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1997. Piper, John. Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006. Sanders, Fred and Klaus Issler. Jesus in the Trinitarian Perspective. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2007. Related articles Why Was Jesus Baptized and Did He Need to Be? Why Did Jesus Have to Die Alone? How Is Jesus Both the Lion and the Lamb? Photo credit: Getty Images/fstop123 Bethany Verrett is a freelance writer and editor. She maintains a faith and lifestyle blog graceandgrowing.com, where she muses about the Lord, life, culture, and ministry. Moses was a man who understood the great mercy and forgiveness of God. The Lord called Moses into a relationship with Him, to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt, and even let Moses see a glimpse of His full glory. Despite his flaws, Moses grew closer to the Lord over the course of his life, and God empowered him to write the Pentateuch--the first five books of the Bible. Moses wrote a song about Gods power, mans rebellion, and the Lords love and victory. He gave the song to Israel as a way of warning them about straying from God. He encouraged love, fidelity, and obedience to the God who delivered them from Egypt, helped them through the wilderness, and was about to give them their own land. Its reminders about Gods character, and warnings about human nature are as true today as they were in Moses time, and the poem is worth understanding. The Lord loves his people, and will do much for them, but He is also just and righteous and will have victory over evil. What Is the Song of Moses? As recorded in his last book, Deuteronomy, towards the end of his life, Moses composed a song, inspired by God, to give to the people of Israel. He wrote it after the giving of the law at Sinai, the worship of the golden calf, the wandering in the wilderness, and the miracles of manna and quail. Moses was 120 years old, and announced Joshua as his God-chosen successor; he was commissioned to lead. The Song of Moses was his final speech to Israel, though he would give them one more blessing tribe by tribe before he separated from them. It was after he gave the song to the people that, "...the Lord spoke to Moses, 'Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab... And die on the mountain which you go up, and be gathered to your people as Aaron your brother died in Mount Hor and was gathered to his people, because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh...'" (Deuteronomy 32:58b-51a). Moses would never get to enter the promised land because of his temper, though God did let him see it. Why Does Moses Say/Sing This? The song touches on a consistent pattern of behavior from both God and Israel. Heaven and earth are called to hear the song, and then Moses gives a few lines that could be seen as the thesis statement: God is just and loves His people, but they defy and disobey Him. Verses 7-14 specifically touch on the exodus from Egypt, and Gods guidance. The following verses outline Israels fall into idolatry. God through his prophet Moses then gives dire warnings about the consequences of giving into the temptation to turn away from Him again. He warns And I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend my arrows on them; they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust (Exodus 32:23-24). Moses prophetic warnings served as his final reminder to the people about the importance of loving and obeying the Lord whole-heartedly. God did not want to see Israel suffer. Like a loving parent disciplines a stubborn child, God would rather discipline his children than wipe them out in wrath. What the Old Testament shows instead is that God--in order to discipline Israel--removed His hands of protection, and sent or allowed bad things to happen to them. Unfortunately, it usually took extreme situations such as plague, conquest, and exile, for Israel to turn back to Him. 7 Things We Learn from the Song of Moses The songs and poems that made it into the Bible are the ones inspired by the Holy Spirit. They communicate truths about God and man, their nature, and their complicated relationship. The Song of Moses has much to say about these subjects. Some of the ideas communicated about God and man in Moses work include: 1. God Is Just The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. Deuteronomy 32:4 He repays those who hate him and cleanses his peoples land. Deuteronomy 32:43b 2. God Provides When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. Deuteronomy 32:8 Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, with the very finest of the wheat - and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape. Deuteronomy 32:14 3. People Are Fickle and Will Often Return to Sinful Behaviors But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation. Deuteronomy 32:15 "You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth. Deuteronomy 32:18 4. Disobedience Hurts God They have made me jealous with what is no god; they have provoked me to anger with their idols. Deuteronomy 32:21a "For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. Deuteronomy 32:22 5. People Who Do Not Seek Gods Wisdom Make Bad Decisions For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them. Deuteronomy 32:28 For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison; their clusters are bitter; Deuteronomy 32:32 6. God Is Powerful For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! Deuteronomy 32:3 See now that, I, even I, am he and there is no good beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. Deuteronomy 32:39 7. God Will Have the Final Victory of Evil ...As I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and my and takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. Deuteronomy 32:40b-41 Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his peoples land. Deuteronomy 32:43 Even though it was written for the Israelites thousands of years ago, the Song of Moses reminds believers today about the long-suffering nature of God. No matter how hard Christians try, they always stumble and fall. Others walk away from the faith for periods of time in their life, but God still loves them, and wants to see them return to Him. It also means that certain trials come, not because God wants to violently punish people, but because God uses difficult circumstances to discipline those who know Him, and bring those who do not to Him. Moses focuses on the sovereign power of the Lord, a good reminder to be humble before the one who judges, but also the one who would ultimately come to provide redemption, rather than condemnation. Sources Driver, S.R. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy. New York: Charles Scribers Sons, 1895. Levy, Abraham Juda. The Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1930. Rogerson, John W. Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible Deuteronomy. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003. Photo Credit: Pixabay/jeffjacobs1990 Bethany Verrett is a freelance writer and editor. She maintains a faith and lifestyle blog graceandgrowing.com, where she muses about the Lord, life, culture, and ministry. OLYMPIA - On Wednesday, September 22, Washington State Secretary of Health Umair A. Shah, MD, MPH, submitted a request to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra calling for additional medical staff and other resources to support hospitals and long-term care facilities statewide. This move aligns with a request from Governor Jay Inslee last Friday requesting 1,200 clinical and non-clinical staff. Last Friday, Inslee sent a letter to Jeffrey Zients, the COVID-19 coordinator for President Joe Biden, requesting 1,200 clinical and non-clinical staff and asking the Department of Defense to provide medical personnel to assist at both hospitals and long-term care facilities. These resources requested by Dr. Shah on Wednesday would be in addition to contracted staffing resources that may become available through a General Services Administration (GSA) contracting process, initiated by the Department of Health (DOH) earlier this month. At the state level, we have taken aggressive steps to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and to support our healthcare system, said Umair A. Shah, MD, MPH, Secretary of Health. We know that COVID-19 patients, those seeking care for other medical reasons, along with staff shortages, have all put stress on our current hospital system. DOH is seeking additional federal resources to support our healthcare providers and remains hopeful that the federal government will support our community through this difficult time. DOH has also sent out notice seeking licensed healthcare practitioners and retired medical professionals to consider volunteering to support hospital surge and COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Licensed healthcare practitioners, from either in or out-of-state, can register in Washington as emergency volunteers. Retired medical professionals can volunteer to administer COVID-19 vaccines under the PREP Act. DOH is currently working to fill more than 900 requests for volunteers in 15 counties. Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, the truth about the harms of marijuana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Launches Practo Care Surgeries, plans to expand its network to 30+ cities Bengaluru-based health platform Practo has unveiled 50+ Practo Care Surgery Experience Centres in six cities (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad), marking its foray into secondary care in India. Practo is building an omnichannel healthcare ecosystem for secondary care procedures, that will enable users to seamlessly cross over between digital and physical, and out-patient to in-patient environments. Currently, Practo Care Surgeries is helping fulfill 50+ surgical procedures across three specialities viz. general surgery, urology and ENT, in six cities. The company plans to expand its network to 30+ cities, launch 300+ centres, add more specialities (viz. orthopaedic, gynaecology, ophthalmology, to name a few), and onboard hundreds of surgeons by the end of next year. Each Practo Care surgeon comes with at least 10+ years of experience. The model places an equal emphasis on audit as a tool to improve the quality and efficiency of care provided to the patients. The company plans to facilitate Rs 1000 cr worth of healthcare financing in India over the next three years. Additionally, its partnership with insurance companies is bringing in the much-needed convenience in paperwork support. How Academic-Industry Synergy Assuages Rising Brain Disorders With an ageing population globally, the burden of neurological disorders is rapidly increasing, posing a challenge to the sustainability of health systems. The burden of neurological disorders such as stroke, headache disorders, epilepsy, Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, multiple sclerosis, encephalitis, meningitis, traumatic brain injuries, among others, is also expected to increase in India due to the rapid demographic and epidemiological transition occurring in the country. To add to it, factors such as shortages in the neurology workforce, inadequate research funding, limited supply of drugs, and scarcity of basic healthcare amenities, are making the situation worse. Lets try to unearth the practicable solutions and innovations stemming from the industry and academia. Programming Manager Remuneration: negotiable tctc Benefits: Medical aid and Provident Fund Location: Johannesburg, Sandton Education level: Diploma Job level: Senior Job policy: Employment Equity position Type: Permanent Reference: #Programming Manager Company: Primedia Broadcasting Recruiter Job description Providing guidance and regular feedback to presenters and producers Facilitating sharing of information between producers Conduct regular air checks with various programming teams Building and growing the audience within target market Developing new on-air talent Monitoring adherence to programming disciplines and programming management framework Works with radio consultant to improve output Use data and other insights to inform programming direction Implement station plans including action plans as well as show plans Ensure the station produces and delivers good quality content Ensure the station connects with the target audience Listen to the station to ensure quality product Guiding the programming teams on a day-to-day basis Take part in annual strategy sessions and assist in facilitating development of annual strategy for 702 Ensuring editorial integrity of the station Implement 702 strategy across all its platforms Liaising with digital and EWN Support implementation of stations digital strategy Collaborate with programming and digital on content innovation Representing the station where necessary Assist the sales team in co-creating solutions for clients Contribute to the business through the relevant forums (Opco) Provide support to HC by identifying training needs of presenters, content producers and technical producers Assist the commercial manager in conjunction with CS in the development client solutions. Support and assist in the execution of commercial campaign to the highest standards, exceeding client expectations. Assist with trade marketing through trade roadshows representation and key engagements with clients. Requirements Tertiary qualification (Media studies/Journalism) 5 - 8 Years related experience Strong background in radio with first-hand knowledge of the broadcast industry, including the interplay between content and commercial Managing the process of content production between programming, news and digital Managing the execution and implementation of key content sales drives Ensure alignment and integration of programming and digital strategies Ensuring good on-air call screening discipline Execution of client campaigns in line with programming framework Oversight of simulcast shows Good knowledge of talk radio format and 702s format Knowledge and understanding of commercial environment Programming experience Leading and inspiring People: Leads by example and acts as role model while instilling trust in leadership and the organisation. Inspires and motivates people to exceed expectations and commitments. Living the organisation's values and behaviours: Acts as brand custodian and makes decisions in line with organisational values. Empowering and involving people: Accepts responsibility to achieve results through other people. Works collaboratively and allows others to challenge the status quo. Recognising and rewarding high performance: Creates a culture where people feel valued and recognised for their efforts and performance. Building capacity: Embeds continuous professional development/learning as part of the organisational culture in order to support the organisation's vision Delivering continuous improvement: Identifies and develops strategic solutions in order to improve organisational efficiency Creating sustainable success: Encourages and nurtures innovative solutions in order to maintain a competitive edge within the broadcasting industry Proactive and able to take initiative against sound business risk management principles Accountable and responsible for actions and delivery of projects Comfortable to work independently with limited supervision Deadline driven and punctual to over-exceed delivery timelines Passionate about learning and implementing innovative marketing ideas Mature and able to receive and give constructive feedback Team player: willing to work cooperatively with others, within the team and across departments, towards a common objective Planning, organising and prioritising skills Strong communication skills Problem-solving ability Emotional intelligence Presentation skills/ articulate Ability to multi-task in a high-pressure environment, with a result-driven attitude. Ability to foster working relationships, both within the external and internal environment. Assisting the station manager with looking after the sound of the station. To help provide a productive environment where on-air talent and those responsible for the sound of the station create excellent programming which attracts suitable prospects that can be delivered to advertisersManaging Performance: Sets challenging goals in line with the organisation's vision. Expects others to perform and mentors them to enable high performance.Posted on 23 Sep 09:17, Closing date 21 Nov Less than an hour after the Brandon Police Service was called to the fire at 1400 Pacific Ave. on Tuesday evening, the City of Brandon was notified and its emergency response plan was initiated. Advertisement Advertise With Us KYLE DARBYSON/THE BRANDON SUN A snapshot of Valley View Condominiums in Brandon Wednesday morning, roughly 12 hours after a massive fire ripped through the upper half of the building. Less than an hour after the Brandon Police Service was called to the fire at 1400 Pacific Ave. on Tuesday evening, the City of Brandon was notified and its emergency response plan was initiated. "In general, if theres an emergency within the city, we have the emergency manager [Tobin Praznik] assembling the emergency response control group," said Dean Hammond, city treasurer and general manager of corporate services for the City of Brandon. Hammond is also the volunteer director of emergency social services and was one of the city volunteers called upon during Tuesdays fire, which displaced dozens of residents. Part of his role is to ensure support for displaced persons occurs in a timely manner after a catastrophe within city limits happens. Yesterday, Hammond and his team assessed the situation and identified the needs of the people impacted by the fire. "When it became apparent no one was going back to that building that night, we prepared for evacuees," he said. "Last night, we phoned around hotels for which ones would have enough room for potential evacuees." His team secured lodging for 38 of the 48 evacuees at the Victoria Inn, where an extra room was secured for registration of the displaced people, regardless of their emergency housing arrangements. Hammond explained 10 people had alternate arrangements made. The city provided three city buses to transport people to the Victoria Inn, while some drove their cars. "All we care about is that they have a place to go. Oftentimes people dont have alternative arrangements," Hammond said. Registration is a crucial piece of the process of keeping track of evacuees. "At the end of the day, were trying to reconcile owners and tenants of the building versus who we know are evacuees." Securing lodging for 38 displaced people after a fire is a smaller, more manageable crisis at the city level compared to evacuating and housing large groups of people in the event of a tornado or flood. Then the provincial and federal governments get involved and the City of Brandons emergency preparedness plan is part of the overall emergency support, Hammond said. Community partners during these types of disasters are relied upon heavily by the city, especially during a response with the evacuation of people, he explained. Those organizations the city relies upon include the St. John Ambulance, the Brandon Bear Clan, the Wijjiwan Bear Clan, the Brandon Ministerial Association, the Canadian Red Cross, 7th Street Health Access Centre, the Brandon Humane Society and the Salvation Army Brandon Corps, he said. "Once received and registered, typically we ask what their needs are. [For example], do you have the ability to lodge with family and friends? Again, we want them registered and [to] know theyre safe. "If they dont have the ability to lodge, we can provide short-term lodging." A time limit on the length of stay at a facility is fluid, with no set deadline for vacating. The next piece of the puzzle is the recovery phase, and the city is already in discussions with community partners on how they can help organize and arrange support for those displaced people. Hammond and his team are working as quickly as they can. With generous Brandonites anxious to help, Hammond suggested monitoring the citys Facebook and Twitter feeds as to what the needs of those 48 people are. Supplies, as well intentioned as they are, may not be what is needed at that time, and unnecessary items can be overwhelming. "We realize everyone wants to help. But we need a plan," he said. "We appreciate the publics help. Oftentimes its better to wait and see." The City of Brandon will be providing regular updates on their social media accounts on their website, Twitter and Facebook accounts and will use those avenues to post updates of any needs they may have to support the evacuees, Hammond said. kkielley@brandonsun.com Dauphin Mayor Allen Dowhan has died at the age of 74, the City of Dauphin announced Tuesday. Advertisement Advertise With Us Dauphin Mayor Allen Dowhan has died at the age of 74, the City of Dauphin announced Tuesday. "He was battling several illnesses for the last few years," a post on the citys Facebook page reads. FACEBOOK Dauphin Mayor Allen Dowhan died Tuesday afternoon. "Many of us didnt know the full extent of his health challenges because he was an eternal optimist and always believed that together we could do anything. And under his leadership council accomplished many great things! "The City of Dauphin extends their sincere condolences to Mayor Allen Dowhans family and appreciates his dedication to the community for his near 23 years of service on [c]ouncil." The Dauphin Herald reported on Tuesday that council had accepted Dowhans resignation at its regular meeting on Monday so he could focus on his health. The resignation was due to take effect Oct. 1. After Dowhans resignation had been submitted, the plan was for deputy Mayor Christian Laughland to take charge of the mayors duties while the city investigated if a byelection would be held. Speaking to the Sun Wednesday afternoon, Laughland said because of the COVID-19 pandemic, municipalities have a little more leeway when deciding to hold byelections. Under Manitoba law, byelections to fill vacancies must be held as soon as reasonably possible unless its either six months before the next set of municipal elections or within 12 months of the next set of municipal elections and the majority of council members decide not to hold one. Under those circumstances, council may appoint one of their members to be the new mayor or head of council. Manitoba is set to head to the polls for municipal council and school board elections on Oct. 26, 2022. Dowhan became mayor after previous mayor Eric Irwin died in 2017. A month after Irwins passing, council voted to appoint Dowhan, then deputy mayor, as the full-time replacement with less than a year until the next municipal election, in which he was re-elected. "Cities always have their main characters," Laughland said about Dowhan. "Brandons got Kelly McCrimmon. Al Dowhans kinda like that in Dauphin. Everyone knows Al. He spent time teaching at Assiniboine Community College. Everyone talks about how, when he started every class, hed walk in with a broom. "He spent 23 years on council. He spent time as everything from councillor, to deputy mayor and mayor from 2017 to 2021. Hes had a major impact on Dauphin and hes no doubt a significant loss to the community." Laughland only worked with Dowhan for the last three years on council, but he said hed known the man since he came to town through his work with CKDM radio and the Dauphin Herald. "Hes a really good guy with a heart of gold, a really good person inside and out," Laughland said. "He only wanted to see Dauphin succeed and grow and improve every day, and I think thatll be part of his legacy moving forward." An online obituary for Dowhan said his funeral will be held Saturday at the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Resurrection in Dauphin at 10 a.m., by invitation only. A livestream of his funeral will be aired on the Pathways Funeral Services Facebook page beginning at 9:50 a.m. Friends of Dowhans are asked to commemorate his legacy if they desire by making a donation to the Dauphin & District Community Foundation or planting a tree in his memory. cslark@brandonsun.com Twitter: @ColinSlark Sioux Valley Dakota Nation hosted the Manitoba NDP caucus for an afternoon of learning and reflecting at the former Brandon Indian Residential School site Wednesday. Advertisement Advertise With Us CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN The Manitoba NDP caucus visited the former Brandon Indian Residential School site Wednesday. Sioux Valley Dakota Nation hosted the Manitoba NDP caucus for an afternoon of learning and reflecting at the former Brandon Indian Residential School site Wednesday. Sioux Valley Chief Jennifer Bone said they were honoured to host the NDP for the first day of its retreat in Brandon. Her hope, she said, is that the caucus gained a better understanding of the lasting impact of residential schools in First Nations and the need to investigate unmarked graves. Its believed there are 104 graves at the former Brandon Indian Residential School. "Sioux Valley has been carrying on with our own project in relation to the residential schools since 2012," Bone said. "It makes people aware of the history of residential schools and how it has brought us to where we are to today." It was powerful bearing witness to Dakota elders sharing stories of their experience at the institutions, she said. Their stories brought the impact of residential schools to life for guests and drove home the urgency of identifying and preserving unmarked graves. "They [the NDP caucus] have a better understanding of what we have gone through as Indigenous people, and what we continue to go through," Bone said. Healing is needed in communities, she said, and the Calls to Actions cited by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission show unfinished work remains in Canada. She added many issues must be addressed to see true reconciliation take place. "Weve come a long way but theres still a lot of work that needs to be done," Bone said. Sioux Valley has hosted other groups at the site, including Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and Southern Chiefs Organization. Bone said Sioux Valley wants to see these groups work together to ensure students buried at former residential schools can find their way home. NDP Leader Wab Kinew said given the conversations surrounding former residential schools and unmarked graves in Canada this year, it was important to reach out to Sioux Valley because they have stepped up as caretaker for the Brandon residential school site. "I am the son of a residential school survivor. Ive heard many recollections and memories and it never fails to have an emotional impact, even though Ive probably heard from residential school survivors more than the average person," Kinew said. "Listening to the people talk today about some very painful memories from their childhood and how it affected their family relationships for years afterwards, it really affects you on an emotional level." He added as someone in a position of leadership, it is important to hear these stories, and as a team vying to form a majority government in Manitoba, it is critical to unpack these accounts to ensure the NDP remains grounded in compassion, empathy and doing what is right. Kinew said there is a pressing need to take action because there is a short window of time to preserve the stories and oral histories of survivors. He expects that within the next two decades or so, the voices of those who attended residential schools will be lost. Kinew would like to see work done to commemorate and honour survivors while they are still here. This can be in the form of dates like the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30 or through installations commemorating survivors and victims at the former Brandon Indian Residential School site. These actions show survivors they are remembered and their experiences are valued. "You have to have people dedicated to it, people whose job it is to move the work of commemorations and education forward," Kinew said. "As people involved in the provincial system, I think thats what well be pushing for a dedicated task force, dedicated resources to help make this work happen." Sioux Valley Coun. Elton Taylor and Simon Fraser University PhD candidate Katherine Nichols spoke to guests about the potential unmarked graves at the former Brandon residential school site. Nichols is originally from the Brandon area, and Sioux Valley chief and council and other landowners have collaborated with her to identify graves in the area. "These children need the respect and the honour that they deserve. We honour and respect all other cemeteries and all other graves. Why are these ones being left out and unattended? Why arent these ones protected in the same manner as all others? It is an injustice that these kids are left out," Taylor said. Each site with potential unmarked graves is unique, and its important to use all available evidence, including survivors stories, archival records, archeology and forensic anthropology, to identify potential areas of interest. The duo provided a tour of the area, highlighting the site of the former school and potential unmarked graves. They are currently working to confirm locations and figure out how to best protect and honour the children found in a way desired by their communities. The project to have the graves recognized has been underway for more than a decade, Taylor said, and it can be a challenging task when the changes and answers needed are at the institutional level provincially and nationally. Governments need to step in and change policies and legislation, Taylor said, while ensuring funding is secured so work can continue. Having the NDP caucus come to the former residential school site was a step in the right direction, Taylor said, because they were willing to sit, listen and learn. He called on people to keep these experiences on their minds and share stories with those who are unaware of the legacy of residential schools. "At the end of the day, a lot of history gets forgotten and we dont want this to be one of those topics," Taylor said. "Whether its social media, whether its Truth and Reconciliation Day keep those things in your mind and understand why there is a day." For those affected by the recent discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available 24-7 at 1-866-925-4419. ckemp@brandonsun.com Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp Matthew West, Cory Asbury, More Chart-Topping Christian Songwriters Honored at 2021 Virtual ASCAP Christian Music Awards Kicking off its fall awards season, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) celebrates its annual ASCAP Christian Music Awards across all social media platforms today through Thursday, September 23. Honoring the most performed Christian music of the past year, the social media event will feature exclusive photos, videos, performances, acceptance speeches and more from some of the winning songwriters and publishers posted with the hashtags #ASCAPAwards to @ASCAP on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For the fourth time in his career, Matthew West is named ASCAP Christian Songwriter of the Year, honoring his work on hit songs including Jeremy Camps Keep Me in the Moment and Casting Crowns Love Moved First and Start Right Here. With over 130 songwriting credits for artists including Rascal Flatts, Scotty McCreery and Amy Grant and an equally impressive solo career, West was also recognized as ASCAP Christian Songwriter-Artist of the Year in 2013, 2015 and 2016. He is a five-time Grammy nominee and currently on tour with Casting Crowns through the end of October. As part of the awards, @ASCAP will feature Wests acceptance speech and a performance of another of his ASCAP Award-winning songs, Truth Be Told with country star Carly Pearce. Grammy-nominated songwriter, artist and worship leader Cory Asbury takes home ASCAP Christian Songwriter-Artist of the Year for the first time. After winning ASCAP Song of the Year in 2019 for his chart-topping hit Reckless Love, he now adds two ASCAP most-performed song awards for The Fathers House and Sparrows. The Grammy and Dove Award-nominated, and now ASCAP Award-winning, Famous For (I Believe) wins ASCAP Christian Song of the Year. Co-written by ASCAP member Alexis Slifer and published by All Essential Music and Buddybabe Music, the Tauren Wells and Jenn Johnson hit spent 54 weeks on the charts. In celebration of the award, Slifer performs the song in an exclusive video to be shared on all @ASCAP social media platforms. Capitol CMG Publishing receives ASCAP Christian Music Publisher of the Year for the 19th consecutive year for songs including Good God Almighty, Out Of My Hands and Peace Be Still. To celebrate the honor, the Capitol CMG publishing team gathered virtually to accept the award. ASCAP Chairman of the Board and President Paul Williams introduced the festivities with a congratulatory video message, saying, My heart is full of gratitude for you, ASCAPs family of songwriters, composers and music publishers. Your beautiful music shines a light in both hard and joyful times, guiding us forward with messages of love, hope, faith and mercy Congratulations to all of this years winners for your achievements. The social media celebration will also feature an exclusive performance of Rise Up (Lazarus) from chart-topping newcomers CAIN (composed of siblings Madison, Taylor and Logan Cain) and an acceptance speech from Dave Haywood of Lady A for their winning song Who You Are to Me. New Radio Single Out 'Do You Know Who You Are' by Randy & Jade Fischer Do You Know Who You Are, a new single from Randy and Jade Fisher, a husband and wife Christian duo, goes for adds to Christian Rock-formatted radio outlets today. The song, which is about finding your true identify, was inspired by a conversation with the couples 12-year-old daughter, Jayla. After talking to Jayla about the subject, the Fishers asked their daughter to write down who Jesus is to her. This, we explained, is your true identity, they share. Imitate this, not the culture around you. Mirror this. Mirror Jesus. Jayla wrote a list that included Creator, dreamer, someone to talk to; Royalty, child of God; Purity and light shining in the night; confident and bright; the way, the truth, the light; Heaven come down to this earth. Some of the lines made it into the song, earning Jayla a co-songwriters credit, which she shares with her dad, Randy Fisher. This song has become foundational for our whole family and ministry, the Fishers say. It has opened up a whole new world to us, discovering who God made us to be as mirror imagers. Our heart and passion is helping people understand who they were made to be as mirror imagers of Christ. Its exciting! Do You Know Who You Are, which was produced by Austin Miller of 7eventh Time Down, is available for download and streaming at all digital outlets. The Fishers began singing together soon after they started dating in 2002. Their ministry continued after they married in 2005 and they have toured across all 50 states and have been honored with three IMEA awards. They have served in worship and youth ministry at multiple churches and have been judges of the Get Real youth singing competition. In addition to judging, they also have mentored contestants through multiple levels of the competition. Check out the duo's official video "I Still Do"! Platinum-Selling StowTown Artist, David Phelps, Celebrate Milestone Debut in Grand Ole Opry with Single 'Hello Beautiful' Platinum-selling StowTown recording artist David Phelps marked another milestone in an acclaimed career with his recent debut on the iconic Grand Ole Opry. The award-winning vocalist received a standing ovation at the close of his set, which included Hello Beautiful, the debut single from his latest release, GameChanger; the bluegrass-tinged Come To Jesus; and the concert favorite No More Night. The evenings star-studded lineup also featured Grand Ole Opry member and the Queen of Bluegrass Rhonda Vincent; country chart-topper Chris Janson; multi-GRAMMY-winning instrumentalist Bela Fleck; and Grand Ole Opry member Jeannie Seely, among other performers. A childhood musical prodigy from Tomball, Texas, David Phelps is now a Platinum-selling vocalist with three #1 releases on Billboards Music Video chart, 14 solo albums and a PBS television special to his credit. A member of the GRAMMY and Dove Award-winning Gaither Vocal Band from 1997 to 2005 and again from 2009 to 2017, Phelps has performed at numerous prestigious venues around the globe, including the White House, Carnegie Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. With a vocal range spanning more than three octaves, Phelps artistry crosses generational and stylistic barriers, making him one of the most beloved voices in American music today. The corporate watchdog has issued a stern warning to companies, brokers and traders about social media users coordinating illegal pump and dump activities in listed stocks to pocket big profits. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said on Thursday it had seen a spike in so-called pump and dump activity in recent times, and there was an onus on brokers to file suspicious activity reports if they detected such activity. Companies were also expected to report any unusual trading, ASIC said. Twitter was awash on Thursday before the market opened with heavily promotional posts of Aura Energy, a small uranium prospector that was spruiked to become the next big thing, posting a strong rise in its share price. A Telegram group focused on ASX pump and dumps also nominated Aura Energy as its target for the day. By 10am the stock had opened up 7800 per cent at 33 cents, having recently traded at .03 of a cent before a 13 for 1 share consolidation that shouldve pumped up its price to 4 or 5 cents a share. It closed at 26 cents. ASIC is homing in on suspicious trading activity. Credit:Jim Rice The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are not implying the company was aware it would be targeted in such a way, or that it has engaged in any inappropriate conduct. Aura Energy has been contacted for comment. Trip hop isnt dead. After an almost 20-year hiatus, Sneaker Pimps have returned with a double album, following individual breakdowns and breakthroughs of both founding members. Decades after their 1996 debut album Becoming X, founding members Chris Corner and Liam Howe are releasing Squaring The Circle. The double-album is a Frankenstein, says Corner, combining songs that remained incomplete for decades with new tracks featuring vocalist Simonne Jones. Sneaker Pimps founder Chris Corner. Credit:Gretchen Lanham Its like exorcising the ghost of 20 years of music that we never released, says Corner from his home in Pioneertown, two hours from Los Angeles in the high Mojave Desert. For the nomadic Corner, it is a far cry from his childhood home, the crappy little Northern town of Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire. After the release of Sneaker Pimps third album, Blood Sport, in 2002, he left London for Berlin, later moving to Los Angeles before discovering the alien beauty of the Joshua Tree National Park. From his modular studio, Corner works alone but is in constant communication with London-based Howe via online chat. I love working by myself, he says. I am terribly socially awkward. I thrive on being able to experiment alone ... I can f--- up and make all the mistakes and not be judged until its done. I have a big X on the ceiling which reminds me that I am X. Apart from being my solo project name [IAMX], its a reference to the first Sneaker album. The federal governments appointment of Lorraine Finlay to the Australian Human Rights Commission drew no end of criticism from progressives. But CBDs favourite response came from opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus whose top-ranked criticism was that in 2017 the Institute of Public Affairs had advocated Finlays appointment, describing the legal academic as a reliably conservative appointment. Dr Bella dAbrera is the governments pick to join the advisory council of the decaying National Archives. Credit:YouTube No doubt there will be plenty more blanching over another reliably conservative appointment which quietly occurred this month. Step forward Dr Bella dAbrera, who is the governments pick to join the advisory council of the decaying National Archives. She comes with the sort of heavyweight conservative credentials to make Finlay look like a gender studies graduate. Keen observers of the culture wars would know dAbrera well, considering the photogenic proselytiser recently slammed a revision of the national curriculum as pushing radical racial theory. Imagine telling someone from last century about this weeks construction industry protests. Imagine telling them that theyd last for days, targeting not employers or a Liberal government, but a Labor government and the construction union. Imagine explaining that theyd be met by unified condemnation in the strongest possible terms by the leaders of the union movement, who would then pressure employers to sack protesters from work sites. Then imagine getting to the part where the politicians seemingly most sympathetic to the protesters would be almost exclusively from the Coalition, like George Christensen and Alan Tudge. People inside the CFMEU office fend off protesters with fire extinguishers on Monday. Credit:Justin McManus This is a genuine shift in the tectonic plates of politics. It cannot be explained away by the language of pretend protesters or fake tradies who are really far-right or anti-vax conspiracy theorists in hi-vis vests. To be clear, its obvious those elements are present here, and have managed to recruit from among disillusioned construction workers. But the protests cannot be reduced to mere cosplay. There is simply no denying the presence of many genuine construction workers in the crowd something in the order of 80-90 per cent on Monday, according to what those well-placed to know have told this newspaper including the ones the CFMEU has gotten sacked. Its no secret: the more of us vaccinated, the further away we edge from being in a never-ending spiral of lockdowns. Bringing people back into the workplace safely lies at the heart of us returning to a sense of normality and hopefully avoiding childish riots by Victorian construction workers. Compulsory vaccination for the building industry enraged those workers. No excuses for them, but there is another path to encourage mass vaccination: incentives. Now bosses are offering incentives for workers to get vaccinated. Credit: Eddie Jim Just this week, Flinders University in South Australia offered staff who are fully vaccinated an additional two days annual leave. Monash University also just announced additional pay for fully vaccinated staff. Money for jabs. And if being protected against COVID-19 as well as having an extra two days holiday or some extra cash doesnt excite you, then it may be time to reassess your priorities. Hundreds of international students will start returning to NSW by the end of this year, although vaccine restrictions will mean students from key markets in China and Nepal are not likely to be among them. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet confirmed the plan to restart the states critical international higher education sector had been finalised and would form part of the states road map to reopening after the Delta outbreak. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet wants international students to return to his state. Credit:James Brickwood NSW will have first mover advantage compared to the rest of the country, Mr Perrottet said. We have the best universities in Australia, and now we are going to be the sole market for international students. Brisbane Broncos forward Teui TC Robati has pleaded guilty to grabbing the steering wheel of a car while he was a passenger, causing it to swerve across two lanes of traffic. Robati, 19, appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Thursday charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle in the inner-Brisbane suburb of Bowen Hills on Sunday, September 5. Brisbane Broncos player Teui Robati leaves court with his lawyer Dave Garratt. Credit:Jocelyn Garcia The court heard Robati called his girlfriend to drive him home from a function. He was directing his girlfriend, who was driving, while holding his phone and looking at a maps application in the passenger seat of the Ford Focus. Queenslands Premier has held a press conference in the virtually unused Brisbane International Cruise Terminal to announce that the states shut-down cruising industry could be brought back to life. Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Thursday the terminal, in Pinkenba near the airport, would host a new vaccination centre, which would open seven days a week and cater particularly to port, airline and other employees of industries in the area, although it would also be open to the public. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk updates the state on the coronavirus pandemic at a conference at the International Cruise Terminal at Pinkenba. Credit:Matt Dennien She also revealed the state recorded one new local case of COVID-19 overnight, a student at St Thomas More College at Sunnybank, who tested positive on day nine of home quarantine, where she had been during her entire infectious period. There was also an overseas-acquired case detected and reported in hotel quarantine. Viv Malo has been a voice of opposition against an angry group of protesters as they roamed Melbournes CBD and occupied the Shrine of Remembrance this week. For several days, the Aboriginal healthcare worker engaged in several heated clashes with members of the mob, asking them to explain their rationale for attending the protests and imploring them to consider the broader community. Aboriginal healthcare worker Viv Malo has engaged in several heated exchanges with protesters this week. I wanted them to think about why they were there. There were one or two who said they wanted to express their frustration. I dont want to encroach on anyones right to protest, but were in unprecedented times, and we need to think differently for the time being, she said. Im aware of the rise of the right wing in Australia and the privilege and self-righteousness of this group who seem to think their right to a lunchroom, or to oppose the vaccine, should come ahead of everything else. Former school principal Malka Leifer has been committed to stand trial over alleged sex offences. Ms Leifer, 55, is accused of sexually abusing three of her students between 2004 and 2008. In the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday, she entered a plea of not guilty and was committed to stand trial on 70 charges. Four other charges were dismissed. A court sketch of Malka Leifer last week. Credit:Paul Tyquin The complainants sisters Elly Sapper, Dassi Erlich and Nicole Meyer have been granted a court order that allows them to publicly identify themselves. There has been no significant protest action today, with demonstrators failing to gather in significant numbers in the city. Police were out in force, at first near the CFMEU headquarters on Elizabeth Street in the city this morning, checking the identities and permits of people coming through. Police from the mounted branch outside the Queen Victoria market this morning. Credit:Wayne Taylor On encrypted social media platforms, demonstrators kept changing the meeting points to no avail. Dozens of police arrived at the vaccination hub at the Melbourne Museum in Carlton Gardens this afternoon to line the entrance, following talk that protesters were going to go there. Police have also been keeping an eye on St Kilda for protest activity. Among the most significant news of the day was community organisation cohealth were forced to temporarily close its vaccination centre at the Town Hall because workers were abused and spat on yesterday. Premier Daniel Andrews said workers were treated appallingly. These people are doing the very best of work. Theyre vaccinating people for heavens sake, he said. Police line the entrances of the vaccination hub at the Melbourne Museum. Credit:Paul Jeffers The use of force, by police and against police, has also been a topic of conversation today. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said several officers were attacked while doing their job yesterday, including one officer who was bitten. Mr Patton also confirmed that Victoria Police were reviewing footage taken yesterday that appeared to show a civilian being body-slammed by a police officer in Flinders Street station while protests were taking place outside. In a statement released a short time ago, Victoria Police said professional standards command and the transit safety division were investigating and called for witnesses, and the person who took the footage, to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Despite today being a fizzer, protests may still occur tomorrow. With that, well close the blog out for the day with more messages of support for cohealth staff from readers. Health workers are doing it really tough at the moment, and they need all the support they can get from all of us, Eric van der Wal, from Bendigo, wrote. Joel Karanikas said healthcare workers were profoundly strong for putting themselves on the line. Their endurance, hard work and deep sense of social responsibility deserve the utmost public attention and sympathy, Joel said. Jack Steiner said: Thank you cohealth workers for the amazing work youre doing protecting the vulnerable and in turn, Melbourne as a whole, while Michelle sent: Thank you for your wonderful work...we stand by you and are so grateful for the work you do every day. West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has urged anyone from his state who is in Victoria to get a COVID-19 vaccine jab and come home with the jurisdiction in danger of being classified as an extreme risk. The warning comes as WA avoided any new cases of the virus following a truck driver in New South Wales who had recently visited the state returning a positive COVID test on Wednesday. WA Premier Mark McGowan has urged West Australians in Victoria to get a jab and come home. So far, six close and 16 casual contacts of the truck driver who travelled through WA last Thursday and Friday have been identified, with one close contact in the Goldfields returning a negative test. Two close contacts were in Perth, one in the Wheatbelt, and three in the Goldfields. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has backed the case to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 in a warning that Australia must not be left behind in a mammoth economic shift that will impose sweeping costs on countries that do not act on climate change. Mr Frydenberg will point to powerful decisions by global investors to outline the need for the more ambitious target, in the strongest endorsement to date from a senior cabinet minister on a question that has divided Liberals and Nationals. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says global markets are already pricing in net zero targets by 2050 and Australia cannot be left behind. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen His call is likely to strengthen support for the goal within the government as Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce holds out against the target, while Prime Minister Scott Morrison tries to settle the issue after returning this weekend from meetings in the United States. The government is working on ways to address the Nationals concerns about the cost of the transition for the farming and resources industries, in the hope of outlining further plans to cut emissions ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, which starts on November 1. Brussels: The European Union will produce a toolbox of measures countries can use to tackle energy price spikes, with consumers facing sharp rises in bills with winter approaching and even shortages of fast foods, fizzy drinks and lager. European power prices have rocketed this year, more than trebling in Spain and elsewhere, mainly fuelled by the rising price of natural gas used for power generation and heating, in addition to low renewable energy output and higher EU carbon prices. Rising pressure. Soaring gas prices have put the squeeze on European consumers. Credit:Getty Britain has warned its food producers to prepare for a 400 per cent rise in carbon dioxide prices after extending emergency state support to avert a shortage of poultry and meat triggered by soaring costs of wholesale natural gas. More than 1.5 million households in Britain are being forced to switch energy suppliers after two more retailers collapsed on Wednesday, bringing the tally of companies going out of business to seven since early August. Moscow: A top Ukrainian presidential aide, Serhiy Shefir, narrowly survived assassination on (Thursday AEST) when one or more attackers opened fire on his car with a barrage of at least 18 bullets. The attack took place in a forested stretch of road near Lesnyky village, outside Kiev the capital. President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in New York at the time of the attack, announced he would return to Kyiv after addressing the United Nations General Assembly. Dozens of police fanned out to comb the area of the attacks for clues. Police examine the car after an apparent assassination attempt against Serhiy Shefir, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, on September 22, 2021 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit:Getty Shefir, 57, who is very close to the President, was the producer on Zelenskys TV comedy show, Servant of the People, in which he starred before being elected president in 2019. DOYLESTOWN >> A Middletown Township couple was convicted in absentia Wednesday, Oct. 6 in a case of child neglect one doctor described as the worst hes ever seen. Albert Dunkowski, 54, and Christine Dunkowski, 47, were convicted by a Bucks County jury of three counts each of endangering the welfare of a child. The Dunkowskis appeared for the first two... Biz2Credit, an online marketplace for small business funding, plans to strengthen its tech team by adding over 150 new employees in 2021 across various positions, including entry, mid- and senior-level positions. The company said in a press release that it has recorded strong growth of business in the first half of the year and likely to have 500 per cent increase in revenue for 2021 over 2020. The company has added 15-plus new banks in their clientele, and hopes to build on that growth over the next 10-12 months. Biz2Credit is the company behind Biz2X, a global SaaS platform that enables financial institutions to provide a customised online lending experience for their small and midsize business customers. The skill sets company is over the next six months to support the ongoing advancement of its products and platform include MEAN/MERN Stack, Python, BI, PHP, DevOps, QA, Compliance, Data Scientist, Product Manager, Scrum Master, and DBA. With new hiring, the firm looks to meet the growing demand for its white-labeled solution. At present, this US-headquartered firm has 200 employees in its tech team in India and by the year-end, it plans to increase this number to 350-plus. Vineet Tyagi, CTO & Head of Operations, Biz2Credit India, was quoted in the press release as saying, We are currently over 150 employees in our tech team to meet the demands of existing as well as new business wins and to accelerate our product roadmap. Despite the uncertainties caused by the pandemic, we have recorded massive growth, thus we need a skilled pool of talent who can deliver to the clients and be a part of our growth journey. Tyagi added, This is very crucial for our next growth phase. We are seeking passionate employees, who will help us to advance our white-labeled platform and strengthen us as a leading digital lending platform. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor will get an additional time of two months beyond September to conduct their for the fiscal year ended March 2021. The corporate affairs ministry has asked Registrars of (RoCs) to give two more months to for holding their (AGMs). Under the companies law, corporates are required to hold within six months from the end of a financial year. For the fiscal year ended March 2021, were to be conducted by September 30 and now that deadline has been extended. The ministry has advised RoCs to accord approval for extending time by two months beyond the due date by which companies are required to conduct for 2020-21, according to a communication dated September 23. The ministry has received representations seeking extension of time for holding AGMs for the last fiscal year, "citing many difficulties due to second wave of COVID-19 and consequent lockdown". The communication is addressed to all the Regional Directors and RoCs under the ministry, which is implementing the Companies Act, 2013. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the ministry had provided various relaxations, including in deadlines for submission of filings. (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.) Conversational messaging unicorn Gupshup has acquired New Jersey-based Dotgo, a rich communications system (RCS) business messaging (RBM) player, for geographical and business expansion. A strong partner of Google, Mavenir, Synchronoss, Vodafone, and Orange, Dotgo manages RBM in several markets, and operates the worlds largest RBM Hub with global connectivity to RCS users across the world. Dotgo is well positioned to help brands integrate, with simple APIs, the RCS channel into their customer communications, whether for sales, support, services, or other business processes. The transaction value was not disclosed. According to Google Jibe, the RCS communications team at the tech giant, RCS "upgrades SMS with branding, rich media, interactivity and analytics. With RCS, businesses can bring branded, interactive mobile experiences, right to the default messaging app". Dotgo, a Cohort-6 graduate of the IIT accelerator, has a Messaging-as-a-Platform (MaaP), offered in partnership with, and pre-integrated with, Google Jibe platform, has been selected to operate RCS business messaging at several mobile operators. The company grew rapidly in 2021 as RCS gained traction in North America, Europe, India, Brazil, and Nigeria. Dotgo will significantly strengthen Gupshups conversational messaging platform that enables businesses and developers to build rich customer experiences. Gupshup also plans to leverage Dotgos strong experience and presence in Africa to expand there. Conversational experiences are becoming the key to business-customer interactions, and the RCS messaging channel is a critical enabler. said Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO, Gupshup. Dotgos product innovation, market traction and thought leadership in the RCS ecosystem is truly impressive. Together, well be able to offer a broader range of conversational messaging solutions to businesses and developers. We are excited to welcome them to the Gupshup family. Inderpal Singh Mumick, co-founder and CEO of Dotgo said RCS business messaging is destined to change the way businesses communicate with their customers. We started Dotgo to create APIs that make it easy for brands and other players in the ecosystem to adopt RCS, while taking care of and hiding all the backend complexity from our customers. With the addition of RCS, Gupshup will undoubtedly be the strongest IP messaging company, and thus helps us accelerate our mission. RCS will be a key messaging channel in Gupshups Conversational Messaging Platform, supplementing 30 other messaging channels available to customers via Gupshups Single API for messaging. RCS, a part of the 5G standard, is the next generation of SMS that includes pictures, audio, video, and presence, combined with enhanced security and encryption. RCS messages are delivered to native messaging apps such as Google Business Messages and Samsung Messages on Android phones. Johanna Kollar, Partnerships Lead, Communication Products, Google said We congratulate Dotgo and Gupshup on this acquisition. We have worked closely with Dotgo, and are very impressed by the quality of their products and services. We look forward to growing our relationship as the Dotgo team becomes a part of Gupshup." RCS Business Messaging uses the rich and interactive features of RCS to enable branded and secure business messaging. RCS is available globally with over 600 million monthly active users, including about 20 per cent of Indias smartphone users. By Aditi Shah NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's top group has asked the Indian government to draft rules to safeguard their interests when global automakers decide to leave the market as Ford has said it will do. The U.S. company this month said it will stop making cars in the country and end its over two-decades long presence. It took a $2 billion hit and said it does not see a path to profitability, but the group said this has left dealers in the lurch. The Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) said in a letter to India's industries ministry, sudden exits by global "cause great distress." Reuters has seen a copy of the letter dated Sept. 21. India's industries ministry could not be reached for comment outside regular business hours. "We have a plan that ensures continued viable business for our dealer partners," Ford said in a statement, adding that it is also working with them to support existing customers. "We are very confident that they (Ford) will conduct the discussions with utmost trust and transparency," Rajesh Shah, president of Ford's dealer council said. Ford is the fifth major automaker to cease manufacturing in India since 2017, following exits by General Motors and Harley Davidson. FADA's letter asked the ministry to draft a law to "safeguard the dealers' and customers' interests in India." The group also called for legislation that would ensure adequate information is available to customers and dealers about unfair termination of dealership agreements. Dealers invested about 24.85 billion rupees ($337 million) in retail outlets of the five brands whose exit has lead to a loss of about 64,000 jobs, FADA said. (Reporting by Aditi Shah. Editing by Jane Merriman) (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.) Regulatory oversight should be regularly fine-tuned with changing times to suit the dynamic business environment, especially in the present digital world, Ashok Gupta, chairman of Competition Commission of India said on Thursday. Gupta said that data hegemony by some digital may lead to an attention economy, in which big tech players work to capture user attention, build profiles of their choices and habits and then sell those profiles to advertisers. The has a very important role in ensuring that these platforms remain neutral, offer a level playing field and allow enterprises, big and small, that access consumers through these platforms, to compete on the basis of merits, the chairman said during an address at a conference by Associated Chamber of Industry and Commerce. He said that in these fast-evolving and dynamic markets, a regulators task is much like hitting at moving targets. The regulatory stance needs to be nuanced, and the enforcement toolbox needs to be adapted to these changes so that the instrumentality remains fit for purpose. The challenge is to keep abreast of the developments in these markets and continue to evolve and refine the tools, Gupta said. Also read: Big Tech under the scanner in India after South Korea slaps fine on Google head said competition is the life force of markets that creates the best incentives for businesses to increase efficiency, drives their productivity and fuels innovation. Despite its all-encompassing benefits, healthy competition may not emerge on its own. Even the most ardent votaries of a market economy recognise that liberalised markets cannot be presumed to be competitive and efficient, he said. Gupta said that Without oversight and necessary intervention, we could witness a chaotic environment, where dominant firms misuse their market power to fence out competition. He said cartels could drive up prices or anti-competitive mergers could weaken the competitive structure of markets, resulting in businesses getting affected and consumers being deprived of value for money. The objective of CCI is to bring about market corrections where fair competition is found to be hindered due to anti-competitive conduct, he said. The Congress on Thursday demanded a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for every victim after a fresh survey and said the amount of Rs 50,000 promised by the Centre is a "cruel joke" as the crisis in the country is clearly "man-made". Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate alleged that the Centre has been dragging its feet on compensation from day one and said her party leadership has stated that there needs to be proper and adequate compensation for deaths. "We demand a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for every life lost during corona, because corona in India is a man-made crisis," she told reporters. "The double speak and hypocrisy of the (Narendra) Modi government is out for everyone to see," Shrinate said, asserting that the Centre cannot get away with this "cruel joke" of Rs 50,000. "The shameful attempts to mask deaths have to be stopped immediately. There should be a fresh survey of deaths in every state, adequate compensation should be given and fresh claims should be accepted," she demanded. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that the compensation on account of deaths is going to be only Rs 50,000. "How are they calculating that, on what basis Rs 50,000, is beyond our mortal imagination, we do not comprehend that, but the reality is that this government has been dragging its feet on compensation from day one," Shrinate said. She alleged that instead of providing oxygen cylinders, beds, vaccines and medicines, the government was too busy electioneering when the virus was spreading during the second wave of the pandemic and people were dying due to a lack of these essentials. The Congress leader recalled that the Centre had told the Supreme Court that under the National Disaster Management Act Rules, 2005, the coronavirus is not a disaster, which was rejected by the court. The government kept taking adjournments and dragging its feet, and eventually, on September 22, it said through the SDRF, a compensation of Rs 50,000 will be released to every family, every life that has been lost due to the coronavirus, she said. Shrinate said the law clearly states that every life lost during a disaster will be compensated for by Rs 4 lakh. "Why is the government going back on the written law, on the written words? It is absolutely true that at a time when the government should have prioritised corona management, it failed to do so, it was too busy in electioneering and which is why, we saw the worst impact of corona," she alleged. The Congress leader said people lost jobs due to the coronavirus crisis and were forced to withdraw almost Rs 60,000 crore from the EPF. She also alleged that the Centre has collected nearly Rs 4.54 lakh crore from taxes on petrol and diesel in the last one year and wondered why it cannot give only 4.8 per cent from the excise duty collected on fuel. "It is also a good day to ask, where is the PM Cares fund? What is happening with that? Where is that money being put to use? Why is such a shroud of secrecy around there? Why is nobody talking about the PM Cares fund in the government?" Shrinate asked. She said it is not a private fund of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it has the money that the common people have contributed in the name of the Prime Minister of India. "Why is this money not being put to use?" the Congress leader asked. (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.) Under the deal, VaxEquity, a start-up founded by Imperial vaccinologist Robin Shattock, could receive up to $195 million if certain milestones are met, in addition to royalties on approved drugs and equity investment from on Thursday struck a deal with the firm behind Imperial College London's experimental Covid-19 to develop and sell drugs based on its self-amplifying RNA technology platform in other disease areas. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government Thursday announced that differently-abled people and those with restricted mobility will be given Covid vaccine doses at their homes. Addressing a press conference here, Union Health Ministry officials also said the country is still in the midst of the second wave of COVID-19 even though the number of daily new cases are declining. However, they added, 62.73% of total infections reported last week were from Kerala alone, which is also the only state with over 1 lakh active Covid cases. Thirty-three districts in the country are now reporting over 10 per cent weekly positivity rate, while 23 are recording between 5-10 per cent, the officials said. "I am pleased to inform that an advisory has been issued to make arrangements for 'vaccination at home' for those who have disabilities or are differently challenged, in line with Covid SOPs," said Dr V K Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog. Under Covid guidelines for the upcoming festival season, mass gatherings has to be avoided in containment zones and in districts with over 5 per cent positivity rate, they said. On the ongoing vaccination drive, they said that 66 per cent of the country's adult population has been given at least one jab while 23 per cent is fully vaccinated. They also said that 63.7 per cent doses of COVID-19 vaccine has been administered at centres in rural areas and 35.4 per cent in urban areas. A total of 68.2 lakh doses (approximately 0.95 per cent) has been administered at Covid vaccination centres not tagged as rural or urban, they said. On the UK rule of 10-day quarantine for those vaccinated in India, the ministry officials said it was a discriminatory practice. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said both the countries are in dialogue on the matter. "We believe that the dispensation that is proposed to be implemented from October 4 is a discriminatory practice. Both the sides are in dialogue and we believe a resolution will be found. We do reserve the right to reciprocate in a similar manner," Bhushan 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.) India on Thursday reported a net decrease of 349 in active cases to take its count to 301,640. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 1.62 per cent (one in 60). The country is eighth among the most affected countries by active cases. On Wednesday, it added 31,923 cases to take its total caseload to 33,563,421 from 33,531,498 an increase of 0.1%. And, with 282 new fatalities, its Covid-19 reached 446,050, or 1.33 per cent of total confirmed infections. With 7,138,205 more Covid-19 vaccine doses being administered on Wednesday, Indias total count of vaccine shots so far reached 833,990,049. The count of recovered cases across India, meanwhile, reached 32,815,731 or 97.77 per cent of total caseload with 31,990 new cured cases being reported on Thursday. Now the eighth-most-affected country by active cases, third by deaths, second by total cases, and first by recoveries, India has added 216,096 cases in the past 7 days. India now accounts for 1.62% of all active cases globally (one in every 60 active cases), and 9.43% of all deaths (one in every 10 deaths). India has so far administered 833,990,049 vaccine doses. That is 2484.81 per cent of its total caseload, and 59.77 per cent of its population. Among Indian states, the top 5 in terms of number of vaccine shots administered are Uttar Pradesh (102347723), Maharashtra (80830155), Madhya Pradesh (61749827), Gujarat (61589724), and Rajasthan (58649640). Among states with more than 10 million population, the top 5 in number of vaccine shots per one million population are Kerala (1037112), Gujarat (964262), Uttarakhand (952417), Delhi (941837), and Karnataka (834525). Backwards from here, the last 1 million cases for India have come in 28 days. The count of active cases across India on Thursday saw a net reduction of 349, compared with 7,586 on Wednesday. States and UTs hat have seen the biggest daily net increase in active cases are Odisha (285), Mizoram (275), Himachal Pradesh (108), Jammu and Kashmir (86), and Goa (64). With 31,990 new daily recoveries, Indias recovery rate stands at 97.77%, while fatality rate remained unchanged at 1.33%. The Indian states and UTs with the worst case fatality rates at present are Punjab (2.74%), Uttarakhand (2.15%), and Maharashtra (2.12%). The rate in as many as 16 is higher than the national average. Indias new daily closed cases stand at 32,272 282 deaths and 31,990 recoveries. The share of deaths in total closed cases stands at 0.87%. Indias 5-day moving average of daily rate of addition to total cases stands at 0.1%. Indias doubling time for total cases stands at 728.4 days, and for deaths at 1096 days. Overall, five states with the biggest 24-hour jump in total cases are Kerala (19675), Maharashtra (3608), Tamil Nadu (1682), Andhra Pradesh (1365), and Mizoram (1294). Among states with more than 100,000 cases, the five with worst recovery rates at present are Kerala (95.93%). India on Wednesday conducted 1,527,443 to take the total count of tests conducted so far in the country to 558,367,013. The test positivity rate recorded was 2.1%. Five states with the highest test positivity rate (TPR) percentage of tested people turning out to be positive for Covid-19 infection (by cumulative data for tests and cases are Dadra & Nagar Haveli-Daman & Diu (14.74%), Goa (13.38%), Kerala (13.24%), Sikkim (12.49%), and Maharashtra (11.36%). Five states with the highest TPR by daily numbers for tests and cases added are Kerala (16.45%), Mizoram (14.7%), Sikkim (8.68%), Manipur (4.83%), and Meghalaya (4.63%). Among states and UTs with more than 10 million population, five that have carried out the highest number of tests (per million population) are Delhi (1446270), J&K (1059030), Kerala (960966), Karnataka (688050), and Telangana (659163). The five most affected states by total cases are Maharashtra (6531237), Kerala (4559601), Karnataka (2970208), Tamil Nadu (2650370), and Andhra Pradesh (2042073). Maharashtra, the most affected state overall, has reported 3608 new cases to take its tally to 6531237. Kerala, the second-most-affected state by total tally, has added 19675 cases to take its tally to 4559601. Karnataka, the third-most-affected state, has reported 847 cases to take its tally to 2970208. Tamil Nadu has added 1682 cases to take its tally to 2650370. Andhra Pradesh has seen its tally going up by 1365 to 2042073. Uttar Pradesh has added 15 cases to take its tally to 1709708. Delhi has added 30 cases to take its tally to 1438586. The CBI, which is probing the death case of Dhanbad judge Uttam Anand, told the Jharkhand High Court on Thursday that the autorickshaw driver, who has been apprehended in this connection, intentionally hit him with his three-wheeler. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), during the hearing of the case on a virtual platform, said a probe is underway to find out who all are involved in the conspiracy. The 49-year-old district judge was allegedly mowed down by a heavy autorickshaw while he was out jogging near Randhir Verma Chowk in Dhanbad on the morning of July 28. zonal joint director Sharad Agarwal submitted before the court that his death was not a case of accident. Agarwal appeared before the division bench of Chief Justice Ravi Ranjan and Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad and said that officers of the agency are working round the clock to uncover the truth behind the incident. The bench observed that the case has shaken the morale of the judiciary. Time is the essence of this investigation, it said. The more time is spent, harder it will be to ascertain the truth, the bench stated. Agarwal further said that the autorickshaw driver, Lakhan Verma, had earlier committed mobile thefts. Verma has been changing his statements every now and then, but the agency is doing everything to reach to the depth of the matter, the zonal joint director said. The police had initially taken up the investigation into the death case, with the Dhanbad SSP and DGP assuring the court of a speedy inquiry. The government later decided to recommend a probe into the matter. The CBI then took up the matter on August 4, with the high court monitoring the progress in its investigation. The central agency had been submitting sealed reports to the court on the status of the probe into the case. (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.) is India's real strength, said Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways on Wednesday, adding the government intends to diversify it into the energy and power sector. "India's fuel energy security can be well supported by as it provides opportunities for concepts such as waste to wealth and waste to energy and ultimately leading to the benefit of all," said Gadkari while virtually addressing Bio-Energy Summit 2021 'Farm-2-Fuel: Sustainable Bioenergy Solutions for Aatmanirbhar Bharat'. The Minister said these targets will be achieved through a five-phased strategy which includes adopting biofuels and renewables, implementing energy efficiency norms, improving refinery processes, increasing domestic production and achieving demand substitution. Gadkari said this strategy uses a strategic role for biofuels in the Indian energy basket. The Minister said the announcements on advancing of the target year for 20 per cent ethanol-blending by five years to 2025, 5 per cent blending of biodiesel in a diesel by 2030, directing Oil companies to sell 20 per cent ethanol-blended petrol from April 1, 2023, and BIS specifications for higher ethanol blends - E12 and E15 gives an indication the importance that government gives to biofuels and alternative source of energy. Gadkari said both Brazil and India are stepping ahead on the sustainable energy roadmap. He further said, "Through technology transfer and sharing our experiences, we can surely establish a self-reliant energy ecosystem in our countries. India is one of the fastest-growing economy leading through sustainable and climate-neutral development. Society should be livable, workable, and sustainable for all with an important focus on ethics, ecology, and the environment." India is committed to meet the Paris Climate Agreement, where efforts are centered to reduce carbon emissions by 33 to 35 per cent by 2030, he added. He assured that necessary steps are being taken to decarbonize the transport sector by reducing the harmful Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. He said we are committed to adopt import-substitute, cost-effective, indigenous, and pollution-free modes of transport in the country. "India is committed to an eminently achievable clean energy-based economy, through an annual road-map for production, supply of ethanol till 2025-26, and systems for its countrywide marketing," he emphasised. (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.) British High Commissioner Alex Ellis and Health Authority Chairman on Thursday held discussions on vaccine certification for Indian travellers with the UK envoy describing the deliberations as "excellent" and "important step forward". In a tweet, Ellis said neither side raised technical concerns with each other's certification process in the technical discussions. The talks came a day after the UK amended its new travel guidelines to include the Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine in its updated list of approved COVID-19 vaccines. "Excellent technical discussions with @rssharma3 @AyushmanNHA. Neither side raised technical concerns with each other's certification process. An important step forward in our joint aim to facilitate travel and fully protect public health of UK and India," he tweeted following the talks. In his reply to the envoy's comments, Sharma echoed Ellis's views and talked about deepening of ties between health authorities of the two sides. "Echoing his excellency @AlexWEllis's views, this will be instrumental in resuming socio-economic activities between India and UK. We also look forward to deepening ties between @AyushmanNHA and @NHSX, as we collaborate to build a digital continuum of healthcare services," Sharma tweeted. Following India's strong criticism over the UK's refusal to recognise Covishield, London on Wednesday included the vaccine in its updated international travel advisory. However, Indian travellers vaccinated with two doses of Covishield will still have to undergo 10 days of quarantine in the UK notwithstanding the amendment, UK officials clarified on Wednesday saying the inclusion of the vaccine will not make much of a difference. "We're clear Covishield is not a problem. The UK is open to travel and we're already seeing a lot of people going from India to the UK, be it tourists, business people or students," Ellis said in a statement on Wednesday. "We have been having detailed technical discussions regarding certification, with the builders of the CoWIN app and the NHS app, about both apps. They're happening at a rapid pace, to ensure that both countries mutually recognise the vaccine certificates issued by each other," he had said. According to new rules, Indian travellers who received both doses of the Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India will be considered unvaccinated and will have to undergo self-isolation for 10 days. In a strong reaction, India had on Tuesday warned of "reciprocal measures" if the UK does not address its concerns over the new travel rules relating to COVID-19 vaccine certification with Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla describing these norms as "discriminatory". The new British rules have triggered massive criticism in India. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also took up the issue of Covishield-vaccinated travellers being required to quarantine in the UK with newly-appointed British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss at a meeting in New York on Tuesday. (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.) Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday released guidelines on the treatment of sequelae of COVID-19 which will help in building the capacity of doctors, nurses, paramedics and community health workers across India to deal with long-term effects of the infection. The minister said that the modules have been prepared to provide guidance to doctors and healthcare workers to deal with the issue of long-term effects of COVID-19, the Health Ministry said in a statement. He said that proactive and comprehensive treatment of COVID-19 is required to ensure minimum side effects and no negative effect of the treatment. "We have witnessed the consequences of post-Covid effect in patients due to taking higher doses of steroids like cases of Mucormycosis. It is important to take medicines, with less or negligible side effects. If we are alert beforehand, it will be fruitful in tackling the future consequences of Covid," he was quoted as saying in the statement. "The perceptions related to post-Covid that are perpetuating in our society like fears, mental health issues resulting due to Covid are important to be tackled. So, it's important to understand these post-Covid issues and resolve them," Mandaviya stated. Efforts have been made by the resource persons across the country for the management of these post-COVID-19 complications to prepare the sequelae modules. These are very specialised modules prepared keeping in mind various fields of healthcare professionals, he said. Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar emphasised on the need to tackle mental health issues and to reach the last mile, the statement said. "This pandemic has put an unprecedented challenge on our health and healthcare system. Mental health care is a big challenge for a country with such a large population. We need to build our capacity to tackle this challenge of mental health," Pawar was quoted as saying in the statement. If the frontline workers are equipped with proper knowledge and training, they can become a valuable resource in the fight against these post-COVID-19 challenges. "When we are trying to equip ourselves to fight against post-Covid consequences, it's also important to take these to the last mile. The training modules for mental health and other issues have been prepared based on the needs expressed by state health experts," she said, adding that all should work together to ensure that COVID-19 becomes the last human pandemic. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The (MoD) announced on Thursday that it has placed an order with the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) for 118 indigenous Arjun Mark 1A main battle tanks (MBTs) for the army. The Arjun Mark 1A has been developed by the Central Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) in Chennai a Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratory and will be manufactured in the OFBs Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF), Avadi. This production order to HVF, Avadi opens up a large avenue in defence manufacturing for over 200 Indian vendors including MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), with employment opportunities to around 8,000 people, an MoD statement said. The order, worth Rs 7,523 crore, will provide a further boost to the Make in India initiative in the defence sector and is a big step towards achieving Aatmanirbhar Bharat, envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the MoD. The army already operates 124 Arjun Mark 1 MBTs, which amounts to two tank regiments. It has stoutly resisted ordering more, arguing that the 62.5-tonne tank was too heavy to be transported over bridges and culverts near the border. Eventually, in a tank-versus-tank face-off in the Rajasthan desert in March 2010, one squadron (14 tanks) of Arjuns was pitted against an equal number of Russian T-90 tanks, which the army wants to buy more of. Top army generals who witnessed the trial admitted the Arjun performed superbly. Whether driving cross-country over rugged sand dunes or accurately hitting targets with its powerful main gun, the Arjun matched and outdid the T-90. Yet, the army refused to order more Arjuns, beyond the 124 already in service. At a meeting of the MoD-led Arjun Steering Committee in 2010, the army demanded 72 capability enhancements to improve the Arjun Mark 1 into what would be called the Arjun Mark 2. ALSO READ: Make in India, go global: Rolls-Royce, HAL pact for Adour engine parts Incredibly, given the armys complaint that the Arjun Mark 1 was too heavy, these 72 enhancements would make it 6 tonnes heavier. These included the fitment of mine ploughs (1.6 tonnes extra), explosive reactive armour (1.5 tonnes extra), suspension improvements (one tonne extra) and two more tonnes in other areas. The 62.5 tonne Arjun Mark 1 was to be translated into a 68.5 tonne Mark 2. In June 2012, the offered the Arjun for trials with all the enhancements, except one: a cannon-launched guided missile (CLGM) that the army wanted to fire through the Arjuns main gun. The Israeli Lahat CLGM that equipped the Arjun could strike targets two-to-five km away. However, the army insisted the CLGM must strike targets as close as 1.2 km, even though the Arjuns powerful main gun was adequate to destroy such targets. By 2015, a series of trials had validated the improvements the army demanded. However, the army dilly-dallied for three years, until March 2018, when it was agreed that the next batch of Arjuns, which would be supplied without missile firing capability. They would be designated Arjun Mark 1A. After several months of delay, Arjun Mark 1A trials were held in December 2018 and the tank found fit in all respects. The armys trial team recommended the Arjun Mark 1A be inducted into service. Yet, it has taken almost three more years for an order to be placed. The state-of-the-art (Arjun Mark-1A) is infused with 72 new features and more indigenous content from the Mark-1 variant By virtue of these capabilities, this indigenous MBT proves to be at par with any contemporary in its class across the globe. This tank is particularly configured and designed for Indian conditions and hence it is suitable for deployment to protect the frontiers in an effective manner, said the MoD. From the time the indent is placed, it would still take HVF 36 months to start delivering the first Arjun tanks. Since the is confident it would develop and prove the CLGM by then, the 118 Arjun Mark 1A tanks ordered today will actually be delivered as Arjun Mark 2, with full CLGM capability. Prime Minister has said he would highlight economic opportunities in India during his meetings with here. On Thursday, the prime minister is scheduled to hold one-o-one meetings with top five American Two of them are Indian Americans -- Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Vivek Lall from General Atomics. The three others being Cristiano E Amon from Qualcomm, Mark Widmar from First Solar, and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. Landed in Washington DC. Over the next two days, will be meeting President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Prime Ministers Scott Morrison from Australia and Yoshihide Suga from Japan," he tweeted. Will attend the Quad meeting and would also interact with leading to highlight economic opportunities in India, he said. The prime minister's meeting with American CEOs from five different key areas is reflective of the priorities of his government. While Narayen reflects the IT and digital priority that the Indian government is pushing for, Modi's meeting with Lall is significant as General Atomics is not only the pioneer in military drone technologies but also the world's top manufacturer of state-of-the-art military drones, which the US shares only with its key allies and partners. India is in the process of procuring a significant number of drones for the three branches of its armed forces. It has also leased a few drones from General Atomics. Jakarta-born Vivek Lall, now based out of California, for over a decade has been instrumental in major bilateral defence deals worth around USD18 billion, as India and the US take steps to forge a new relationship in which defence trade is a key pillar. The meeting with chip giant Cristiano Amon assumes significance, given India's push for the 5G technology to be safe and secure. The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. A world leader in 3G, 4G, and next-generation wireless technology innovations for more than 30 years, Qualcomm is now pioneering its way to 5G with a new era of intelligent products that are revolutionising industries, including automotive, computing, and IoT. India is looking for a major investment from Qualcomm. As India is taking gigantic steps in the use of solar power to meet its energy needs, the meeting with Mark Widmar is important as First Solar is a leading global provider of comprehensive photovoltaic (PV) solar solutions, which use its advanced module and system technology. Early this summer, the Arizona-based company announced to add 3.3 GW of capacity in a new facility in India at an estimated cost of USD684 million. Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, one of the world's leading investment firms investing capital on behalf of pension funds, large institutions and individuals. In March this year, Blackstone announced that funds managed by Blackstone Real Estate have acquired Embassy Industrial Parks from Warburg Pincus and Embassy Group, in one of India's largest logistics transactions. (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.) Growing numbers of in the G20 are setting climate targets but most fail to align with climate science, a new research by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the global body enabling businesses to set emissions reduction targets in line with science, said on Thursday. Across the G20, 4,215 have disclosed climate targets to the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP)'s database but just 20 per cent of these are science-based targets in line with Paris Agreement goals. This is made up of 2,999 in the G7 and 1,216 companies in the G13. In the G7, 25 per cent of targets are science-based, compared to just six per cent in the G13. G7 countries are led by the UK and France, with 41 per cent and 33 per cent of disclosed climate targets being science-based. Meanwhile some of the world's heaviest emitters, which are found in the G13 group of countries -- such as Indonesia, Russia and Saudi Arabia -- do not contain a single company to have submitted an approved science-based target. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on (IPCC) report in August stated that global temperatures were 'likely' to rise above the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set at the Paris Agreement by 2040. Global emissions must be halved by 2030 in order to keep warming at Paris-agreed levels. Across all G7 corporate indexes, 10 per cent of companies are responsible for at least 48 per cent of total index emissions. Science-based targets cut corporate emissions by 25 per cent on average over the last five years. SBTi companies are on track to reduce emissions by half between 2020 and 2030 on average, if they continue at the same rate. Lila Karbassi, Chief of Programmes, UN Global Compact and SBTi Board Chair, said: "Last month's IPCC report was 'code red' for humanity. Urgent climate action must now be a top priority for those in power. Science-based targets are proven to cut corporate emissions at the pace and scale required -- they are a vital part of the puzzle for governments and companies worldwide. "Ahead of the G20 Summit and COP26, our world leaders must put their full support behind science-based targets as an effective way to slash emissions." The research is an update to the Taking the Temperature report, prepared by CDP and the UN Global Compact on behalf of the SBTi in June. The report analysed the emissions reduction targets of companies in G7 indexes and produced a temperature rating per index, showing the level of global warming that would be reached if companies in the index met their targets. It found that 71 per cent of Germany's DAX 30 companies' emissions are covered by science-based targets (SBTs), resulting in the lowest index temperature rating of 2.2 degrees, while just one per cent of Canada's SPTSX 60 companies are covered by SBTs, resulting in the joint-highest temperature rating of 3.1 degrees. The new research unveiled includes G7 index temperature ratings alongside key insights into emission target setting in G13 nations. It finds that G7 indexes with a higher share of emissions covered by SBTs result in lower overall temperature ratings. The factsheet highlights a trend of increasing uptake in SBTs since the G20 Summit in June. Heavy emitters including American Express (US) Heidelberg Cement (Germany) and Yutong Bus (China) have committed to set 1.5 degrees-aligned targets through the SBTi Business Ambition for 1.5C campaign. However, the leading G7 Index temperature scores have not changed due to few heavy emitting companies advancing emissions reductions. For instance, Canada's index has seen a five per cent rise in science-based targets but the temperature rating is still the joint highest with the UK. No G7 index is aligned with 1.5 degrees. Alberto Carrillo Pineda, Managing Director and Co-Founder of the SBTi, said: "Our G7 world leaders must introduce ambitious national commitments, and other measures, that incentivise companies to set robust decarbonisation targets while encouraging G13 nations to follow suit." --IANS vg/shs (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 is not a Government of India fund and the amount collected by it does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India, the Delhi High Court has been informed. An affidavit filed by an Under Secretary at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) who is discharging his functions in the PM Cares Trust on honorary basis, has said the trust functions with transparency and its funds are audited by an auditor -- a chartered accountant drawn from the panel prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The affidavit was filed in response to a petition seeking a direction to declare the a 'State' under the Constitution to ensure transparency in its functioning. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Amit Bansal has fixed the matter for further hearing on September 27. "To ensure transparency, the audited report is put on the official website of the trust along with the details of utilisation of funds received by the trust, says the affidavit filed by Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, Under Secretary at the PMO. I state that when the petitioner is claiming to be a public-spirited person and seeking to pray for various reliefs only for transparency, it does not matter whether PM Cares is a State' within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution of India, the officer said in the affidavit. Irrespective of whether the trust is a State' or other authority within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution or whether it is a public authority' within the meaning of provisions of the Right to Information Act (RTI), it is not permissible to disclose third party information,. It said that all donations received by the trust are received via online payments, cheques or Demand Drafts and the amount received is audited with the audited report and the expenditure of trust fund displayed on the website. The trust functions on the principles of transparency and public good in larger public interest like any other charitable trust and, therefore, cannot have any objection in uploading all its resolutions on its website to ensure transparency, it said, while reiterating that the trust's fund is not a fund of Government of India and the amount does not go in the Consolidated Fund of India. The officer said he is discharging his functions in the PM Cares Trust on honorary basis which is a charitable trust not created by or under the Constitution or by any law made by the Parliament or by any State legislature. Despite being an officer of the Central government, I am permitted to discharge my functions in PM Care Trust on an honorary basis, he said. The court was hearing a petition filed by Samyak Gangwal who has said that the is a 'State' as it was formed by the Prime Minister on March 27, 2020 to extend assistance to the citizens of India in the wake of the public health emergency -- the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic. His counsel had told the court that if it is found that the PM CARES Fund is not 'State' under the Constitution, usage of the domain name 'gov', the Prime Minister's photograph, state emblem etc has to be stopped. The petition said that the Trustees of the fund are the Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Home Minister and the Finance Minister and immediately after the formation of the fund, the Centre through its high government functionaries represented that the fund was set up and operated by the Government of India. To ensure transparency and accountability, the plea has sought a direction for periodic auditing of PM CARES website and disclosure of the details of donations received by it. In his alterative prayers, Gangwal has sought to direct the Centre to publicise that the PM CARES Fund is not a fund of the Government of India and to restrain PM CARES from using 'Prime Minister of India' or 'Prime Minister', including its abbreviations its name, on its website, Trust Deed and other official or unofficial communications and advertisements. On March 9, the court had said it was not inclined to issue notice on the plea as the Centre was already represented through counsel who may file their written submissions. The petitioner has also filed another petition to declare PM CARES as a 'public authority' under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which is being heard together with the first plea. This petition challenges a June 2, 2020 order of the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), PMO, refusing to provide documents sought by him on the ground that PM Cares Fund is not a public authority under the RTI Act. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who represented PMO, had opposed the petition, stating that it was not maintainable and that he would file a response explaining why it should not be entertained. (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.) Prime Minister on Thursday began his engagements in the US with a "productive interaction" with President and CEO of Qualcomm Cristiano E Amon during which he highlighted the vast business opportunities in India. Modi, who arrived here on Wednesday on an official visit to the US during which he will hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, held a one-on-one meeting with Amon. "Talking technology... @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts," the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) tweeted. "It was a great meeting. We're so proud of a partnership with India.We talked about 5G and its acceleration. We talked about an incredible opportunity to advance the industry not only domestically in India but India as export of technology. We spoke on semiconductors which is an important topic of conversation. We spoke on opportunity to continue to build an incredible mobile ecosystem developing in India. We're happy with everything we're doing together with India. I think the approach to driving economic growth in making India a destination for investment has been very successful and we welcome that," said Amon. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that they discussed recent electronics and telecom manufacturing Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes; and measures to strengthen the innovation ecosystem. #WATCH "We're so proud of our partnership with India...We're happy with everything we're doing together with India," says Cristiano R Amon, President & CEO of Qualcomm on his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US pic.twitter.com/XtGyGw55FX ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 "Toward making a global innovation hub! PM @narendramodi in conversation with @cristianoamon, CEO @Qualcomm on investment opportunities in hi-tech sectors in India. Discussed recent electronics & telecom manufacturing PLI schemes; & measures to strengthen innovation ecosystem, he tweeted. The meeting with chip giant assumes significance, given India's push for the 5G technology to be safe and secure. Prime Minister holds a meeting with Vivek Lall, CEO of General Atomics in Washington DC, the US. pic.twitter.com/yc10EW3HYi ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. A world leader in 3G, 4G, and next-generation wireless technology innovations for more than 30 years, Qualcomm is now pioneering its way to 5G with a new era of intelligent products that are revolutionising industries, including automotive, computing, and Internet of Things (IoT). India is looking for a major investment from Qualcomm. Ahead of his meeting with the business leaders, Modi had said he would interact with leading CEOs to highlight economic opportunities in India. PM Modi and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen held discussions over leveraging technology to provide smart education to youngsters, enhance research and the vibrant start-up sector in India, powered by the Indian youth, said PMO. #WATCH | "For us, our biggest asset is people. Anything that happens with respect to encouraging education, having digital literacy helps Adobe. We're very supportive of more emphasis&interest in education," says Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Chairman on NEP after meeting with PM in US pic.twitter.com/FBQX50k4oD ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 "It's always been such a pleasure to hear about his vision for how he wants to expand India. Among the key topics we talked about was continued investment in innovation, he said he believes that technology is the way to help move things forward," said Narayen after the meeting. "For us, our biggest asset is people. Anything that happens with respect to encouraging education, having digital literacy helps Adobe. We're very supportive of more emphasis and interest in education," Narayen added. PM Modi discussed Indias renewable energy landscape with Mark Widmar, CEO, First Solar. The CEO shared plans to use PLI scheme for manufacturing solar power equipment with unique thin-film technology and integrating India into global supply chains, said Ministry of External Affairs. Prime Minister on Thursday met his Australian counterpart here ahead of the first in-person Quad meeting to be hosted by US President Joe Biden. The meeting between Modi and Morrison came a week after they spoke over phone and reviewed the rapid progress in the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, including through the recent 'two-plus-two' dialogue, and exchanged views on regional developments and the forthcoming Quad meeting. The meeting assumes significance as External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on September 11 held the 'two-plus-two' talks in New Delhi with their Australian counterparts Marise Payne and Peter Dutton. It was the first meeting between the prime ministers of India and Australia since the AUKUS (Australia, the UK and the US) security partnership was unveiled last week by US President Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Morrison. The AUKUS partnership, seen as an effort to counter China in the Indo-Pacific, will allow the US and the UK to provide Australia with the technology to develop nuclear-powered submarines for the first time. Australia said its decision to join a security alliance with the US and the UK is aimed at developing capabilities that can contribute along with India and other countries in deterring behaviour that threatens the peace and security in the Indo-Pacific. In the first reaction from India on the contentious alliance, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Tuesday said that the new security agreement among the US, the UK and Australia is neither relevant to the Quad nor will have any impact on its functioning, and they are not groupings of a similar nature. Shringla said while the AUKUS is a security alliance among the three countries, the Quad is a plurilateral grouping with a vision for a free, open, transparent and inclusive Indo-Pacific. The Quad comprises India, the US, Japan and Australia. US President Biden is hosting the first in-person Quad summit at the White House on September 24 to be attended by Modi, Morrison and Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Developments in Afghanistan, the COVID-19 pandemic and ways to expand cooperation for a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific are set to be the central focus of the four-nation grouping Quad. France reacted angrily to the formation of the new AUKUS alliance as it resulted in Paris effectively losing a multi-billion dollar deal to build 12 conventional submarines for Australia. France is also upset over its exclusion from the alliance. China has also slammed the formation of the AUKUS. (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.) Prime Minister on Thursday met a group of five top American corporate leaders on a one-on-one basis from a range of diverse sectors ranging from drones to 5G, semiconductor, and solar and encouraged them to step up their investments by highlighting the vast opportunities in India. "Talking technology...," the Prime Minister's Office said in a Twitter post after Modi's meeting with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and First Solar CEO Mark Widmar. They had a productive interaction, it said. "PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other" Digital India efforts, it added. Qualcomm, which started its operations in 1996, has operations specialising in wireless modem and multimedia software, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and embedded applications, and digital media networking solutions. In India, Qualcomm Ventures has invested in companies that address key domestic issues from dairy, transportation to defence. "Toward making India a global innovation hub!" Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted. The Prime Minister had a conversation with Amon on investment opportunities in hi-tech sectors in India. "Discussed recent electronics and telecom manufacturing PLI schemes; and measures to strengthen innovation ecosystem," he added. ALSO READ: Modi discusses boosting defence tech with General Atomics chief executive They discussed investment opportunities offered in India's telecommunications and electronics sector. This included the recently launched Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) as well as developments in the semiconductor supply chain in India, the MEA said in a release. "Strategies for building the local innovation ecosystem in India were also discussed, the ministry added. "Powering India's Solar Potential!" Bagchi said after Modi's meeting with Widmar. They discussed India's renewable energy landscape. Widmar shared plans to use the PLI scheme for manufacturing solar power equipment with unique thin-film technology; and integrating India into global supply chains, Bagchi said in a tweet. First Solar has successfully commissioned 150 MW of Utility-Scale Solar Power to the Grid in India and has installed 1.8 GW of solar capacity in the country. Early this year, it announced its intention to set up a new 3.3 GW Facility in India. As such First Solar is contributing to India's plans to ramp up solar power generation to 100 GW by 2022. During the meeting, the prime minister elaborated on India's efforts to harness solar energy, including the 'One world, One sun and One grid' initiative and investment opportunities in the sector, his office said in a tweet. "They talked about India's renewable energy landscape, particularly solar energy potential, and our target of 450 GW electricity generation from renewable sources by 2030, the ministry said. Discussions also took place about First Solar's interest in setting up manufacturing facilities in India using their unique thin-film technology by availing the recently launched Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme, as well integrating India into global supply chains, it added. In his meeting with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Prime Minister Modi discussed Adobe's ongoing activities in India and future investment plans, according to Bagchi. "Ideas to leverage Digital India flagship programme in sectors like health, education and R&D were also discussed, he said. "Deepening Knowledge Partnerships! he tweeted. After North America, India represents Adobe's biggest operations with over 6,000 employees across its campuses in Noida and Bengaluru. India also serves as an innovation hub for Adobe, with the Indian R&D team contributing to development of every Adobe product. Moreover, initiatives such as Adobe's Grassroots Innovation Challenge and Women-in-Technology Scholarship are fueling the ongoing digital revolution in India. Modi also met Vivek Lall, chief executive of General Atomics, and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. The Prime Minister and Lall discussed India's strides in drone technology, including the path-breaking reforms and PLI scheme, the PMO said in a tweet. "They spoke about strengthening the defence technology sector in India. Lall appreciated the recent policy changes to accelerate defence and emerging technology manufacturing and augment capacity building in India, the MEA said. General Atomics, which opened its first office in India in 2018, is making significant contributions to deepen India-US defence and security cooperation. It is working with both governments in an effort to provide India with the latest systems and technologies supporting defence. General Atomics has also partnered with Indian companies to develop solutions for Indian defence as well as capacity building. "India remains an attractive investment destination! PM @narendramodi met Mr. Stephen Schwarzman, CEO @blackstone. Discussed ongoing projects and further investment opportunities in India, including under the Infrastructure Pipeline and Monetisation Pipeline," Bagchi tweeted. Blackstone, which started its operations in India in 2006 and has so far invested around USD 15 billion in various sectors including private equity, real estate, education, fashion, packaging and housing finance. Blackstone Real Estate Fund is said to be the largest owner of commercial real estate in India. The company played a key role in launching India's first real estate investment trust (REIT) along with its partner Embassy Group in 2019 and has since then launched two REITs 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.) Washington [US], September 23 (ANI): On the itinerary-packed first day of his US visit, Prime Minister will hold meetings with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison, US Vice President and the select heads of corporates that have the potential to invest significantly in India. According to sources, Prime Minister Modi will start his day by meeting with select heads of corporates in the The will include the heads of Qualcomm, Adobe, Blackstone, General Atomics and First Solar. The Prime Minister reached Washington on Wednesday local time. "Prime Minister will start the day with meetings with select heads of corporates in the I think these are that represent fairly large corporate interests, companies that have particular expertise and invested in India and has the potential to invest significantly in India," the source added. "They represent diverse areas from technology, the IT sector to finance to defence to renewable energy. I think it is a very good mix of CEOs, that would be meeting Prime Minister Modi on a one to one basis, investments in the have been very important and very significant in India's recent development activities in line with our major economic initiatives, the flagship program. In particular what we call Make in India," the source further added. On Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet Australian Prime Minister The official said that Prime Minister Modi is looking forward to meeting Prime Minister Morrison on a range of issues. "In the afternoon, Prime Minister will meet Australian counterpart They have met on a number of occasions on the sidelines of various international conferences, Prime Minister Morrison recently called Prime Minister Modi to brief him about the plan to go ahead with the AUKUS Alliance," he said. "And I think, you know this meeting has been long overdue because Prime Minister Morrison was to visit India in January last year but he couldn't be here, he could not make it because of the fairly severe fires at that time in parts of Australia. He was then supposed to come in May last year but because of the COVID situation he could not make it," the source added. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24, this is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Ahead of leaving for the US to participate in Quad Leaders' Summit, Prime Minister on Wednesday said his visit will be an occasion to strengthen the strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia. He will then come to the White House where he will meet Vice President in her ceremonial office. The discussion on issues is expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides. . (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 Tamil Nadu government would hold its third edition of the Mega Covid Camp on September 26, targeting to inoculate 15 lakh people, state minister Ma Subramanian said on Thursday. The decision to hold the third camp follows the success of the first and second camps, which surpassed the targeted number of people receiving the jabs set by the health department. Talking to reporters, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian said on September 12 the department conducted the first camp targeting 20 lakh people. However it surpassed the target by vaccinating 21.98 lakh people. Similarly on September 19, during the second camp 16.43 lakh people were administered the covid vaccine as against the projected 15 lakh, he said. Claiming that the Centre did not release vaccine doses to Tamil Nadu over the last few days, Subramanian said through efforts made by Chief Minister M K Stalin in the form of letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and health department principal secretary J Radhakrishnan calling on Union health ministry officials to enhance the doses to the state, five lakh vaccines were received yesterday. "Following the meeting of DMK Parliamentary party leader T R Baalu with Union Health Minister (Mansukh Mandaviya), we are expecting 14 lakh vaccines to be released to the state. With the arrival of these vaccines, we will be holding third mega camp coming Sunday targeting to inoculate 15 lakh people through 20,000 vaccination camps," he said. "Along with senior health department officials, I would be visiting Tiruchirappalli, Thanjavur, Nagapattinam, and Cuddalore to monitor the vaccination exercise that day," he added. On prevalence of dengue fever, the minister said in 2020, 2,410 people in Tamil Nadu were identified to be affected, while till September 2021, the number of those affected was at 2,733. "We have enhanced the testing to identify dengue fever with 76,000 tests being conducted. The department along with local administration have stepped up efforts to control the mosquito menace," 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.) Finmin officials to meet global next week, may seek upgrade The finance ministry officials will meet global next week and may pitch for sovereign ratings upgrade for India, sources said. The meetings will begin with representatives from Moody's Investors Service on September 28 , they added. The ministry plans to present the economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic in support of its demand for rating upgrade. It would also stress on the fiscal position and how it has shown improvements despite the havoc created by the second wave of Covid. Read more Infosys, I-T Dept working to fix e-filing glitches, 30 mn transactions done acknowledges the difficulties some users continue to experience and is working "expeditiously" with the Income Tax Department, to further streamline end-user experience on the Income Tax e-filing portal. The Bengaluru-based technology services giant said over 30 million taxpayers have so far logged into the portal and successfully completed various transactions. Read more... China preparing for potential downfall of Evergrande: Report Chinese authorities are asking local governments to prepare for the potential downfall of debt-ridden China Group, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing officials familiar with the discussions. The move has been characterised as "getting ready for the possible storm" by the officials, according to the report. Read more files writ in Delhi HC against CCI alleging confidential report leak has filed a writ with the Delhi High Court against the Competition Commission of India following the alleged leak of a confidential report that relates to the competition regulator's ongoing investigation into the dominance of Google's Android operating system. On September 18, a confidential interim fact-finding report submitted by the CCI Director Generals office to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) relating to an ongoing investigation into Googles Android smartphone agreements was leaked to the press, the technology giant has said. Read more The Dedicated Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has proposed de-risking the private concessionaire that develops the Sonnagar (New Chirailapauthu) to Andal section of the Eastern Dedicated Corridor (DFC). DFCCIL intends to develop this portion of the DFC through a Design, Finance, Build, Operate and Maintain & Transfer (DFBOT) model on Public Private Participation (PPP) basis. Private players said they were skeptical of the projected traffic at the proposed section of the corridor over the 30 year contract period, said R K Jain, Managing Director at DFCCIL. To address this issue, the Indian Railways and DFCCIL shall take over the traffic and tariff risk which will largely reduce the quantum of risk on the part of the Concessionaire. The Concessionaire shall be responsible for Design, Construction, Finance and Operations and Maintenance of the project, Jain added. This section is expected to serve major power houses, industrial corridors and Multi-Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs) in Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh. Increasing trends in finished steel consumption and production will drive growth of steel traffic on the route. Further, to attract more traffic and achieve targeted rail share of freight, DFCCIL plans to develop MMLPs, sidings and feeder routes for last mile connectivity along the section alignment, an official statement said. DFCCIL has been holding consultations with private players on how to go ahead with the project. Probable bidders are worried that a lower demand for coal in the future, as more renewable energy projects come up, can hamper viability of freight operations on this route. Another concern is that since train operations are ultimately a prerogative of the railways, there could be lesser number of trains on the freight corridor in a bid to cut costs. A third concern that was flagged was of a possible alternative route, like a parallel road route that could eat into rail freight traffic. It is being proposed that the concessionaire will be paid a fixed amount for operation and maintenance (O&M) charges irrespective of the amount of traffic on the route. The bidders will compete on the amount of money sought in return for their services, Jain told Business Standard. Currently, annual O&M charges on the freight corridor vary between 10 to 20 per cent of the total project cost. It will be the concessionaires responsibility to ensure uptime of 20 hours per day. They will be free to hire manpower at their own terms, he added. In another bid to sweeten the deal for the prospective bidders, DFCCIL will be investing 25 per cent of the Rs 12,000 crores estimated cost of the project as equity. This lowers the cost to the concessionaire. These proposals will be floated for further consultation after which they will be vetted by the Railway Ministry and DFCCIL. They will then be sent to the Union Cabinet for a nod, after which the bids will be called. DFCCIL officials expect these approvals to come by December 2021 and bids to be opened by March 2021. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has imposed a cap on the total entitlement under the from India Scheme (SEIS) at Rs 5 crore per exporter for shipments done in 2019-20 (FY20). The move is expected to benefit small businesses in the A limit of total entitlement under SEIS has been imposed for rendered in the period between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020, and capped at Rs 5 crore import-export code (IEC), stated a notification. SEIS was rolled out six years ago, as part of the foreign trade policy 2015-2020, to promote export of services from India. Under the scheme, the government gives 3-5 per cent incentive on net foreign exchange earned in the form of duty-credit scrips. Scrips can be used for payment of basic and additional Customs duties on goods imported. The facility to claim benefits under SEIS on payments in Indian currency will not be available for services rendered in FY20. The deadline for submission of SEIS for FY20 will be December 31. We are glad our efforts to impress upon the government the need to support large sections of services exporters with this incentive, especially travel and tourism, medical tourism, and education, has been successful. This will benefit small and medium-sized enterprises in the We welcome the inclusion of almost all services within the ambit of SEIS, said Maneck Davar, chairman, Services Export Promotion Council. Professional services, such as legal and taxation, engineering, veterinary, urban planning, research and development, radio and television, sound recording, among others, fall under the 5 per cent rate. Advertising, investigation and security, packaging, and printing fall under the 3 per cent rate. also said that an additional option is provided to exporters to avail of extension in export obligation till December 31 in case of specified advance authorisations and export promotion capital goods authorisations without any composition fee. The benefit will be subject to a 5 per cent additional export obligation on balance exports to be fulfilled. World trade in services is recovering but is yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, said the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday. This implies that the impact on Indias exports may see only marginal improvement. The services trade barometer showed a reading of 102.5, suggesting that the volume of services trade during April-September will continue to recover, once official statistics are available. However, the fact that the indicator has recently turned downwards suggests that the expansion may proceed along a new, lower trajectory if the Covid-19 pandemic turns out to have a persistent impact on services trade, said an official statement. A reading of 100 indicates growth in line with medium-term trends. Readings greater than and below 100 indicate above-trend and below-trend growth, respectively. Even as most component indices are on or above trend, the overall picture is mixed. The construction index (97.4) fell below the trend, while the index of information and communications technology services (100.0) and passenger air transport (105.6) picked up recently, but remained well below pre-pandemic levels. Global services purchasing managers index (102.7) and financial services (100.2) indices indicated that the pace of growth has slowed down. Growth in container shipping (106.8) has eased, even as throughput hit record highs. The recent surge in shipping costs appears to be more due to strong demand for traded goods than supply constraints, said the The recent performance of services trade differs from the financial crisis of 2008-09, when services trade was more resilient than goods trade. Year-on-year growth in services trade should turn strongly positive in the second quarter due to a low base value in the previous year, said the Indias services exports, focused on information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services, have managed to fare better than global peers. According to the Department of Commerce data, in August, services exports stood at $18.92 billion, a 17.22 per cent rise on-year and 7.83 per cent jump, compared to the same period in 2019. Cumulative services exports have managed to fare better than global peers at $92.08 billion in the first five months of the current fiscal year. The barometer is part of the WTOs efforts to develop new insights into services trade and will be released twice annually. According to the goods trade barometer, global merchandise trade in August continued its robust recovery from the shock of the pandemic, and hit a reading of 110.4, the highest on record since the indicator was first released in July 2016. By Rajendra Jadhav PANAJI, India (Reuters) - India's imports in 2021/22 are likely to drop 9% from a year earlier on a rise in domestic supplies, as farmers expand the area planted with oilseeds in response to record high prices, a leading industry analyst told Reuters. The lower imports by the world's biggest buyer could limit a rally in benchmark Malaysian prices, which are trading near record highs hit in August. in the new marketing year starting on Nov. 1 could fall to 7.6 million tonnes from 8.35 million this year, Govindbhai Patel, managing director of trading firm G.G. Patel & Nikhil Research Company, said on Thursday. Lower would pull down total edible oil imports to 13.3 million tonnes in 2021/22 from 13.7 million tonnes, said Patel, who has been trading edible oils for more than five decades. India buys palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, with its soyoil mainly imported from Argentina and Brazil. It purchases sunflower oil from Ukraine. Edible oil supplies are likely to rise nearly 6% to 8.5 million tonnes as domestic soybean and rapeseed production rises, Patel said. Soybean and rapeseed prices hit a record high earlier this year, prompting farmers to switch to oilseeds from other crops. The country's edible oil consumption, which was depressed by coronavirus-led lockdowns, could rise 2% to 21.8 million tonnes next year, Patel said. "Demand has been improving from hotels and restaurants as lockdown restrictions are lifted," he said. India's sunflower oil imports, which are set to fall 22% in the current year because of record high prices, could rebound 28% to 2.5 million tonnes as prices are now softening, he said. Soyoil imports could remain steady at around 3.3 million tonnes, including 300,000 tonnes of duty-free shipments from neighbouring Nepal, he said. (Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jan Harvey) (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.) Prime Minister on Thursday met President and CEO of and discussed the California-based giant's collaboration and future investment plans in India. The discussions between prime minister Modi and Narayen also focused on India's flagship programme Digital India, and the use of emerging technologies in sectors like health, education and R&D. Modi and Narayen both emphasised on creating few centres of excellence of Artificial Intelligence in India. They discussed Adobe's ongoing collaboration and future investment plans in India. Discussions also focused on India's flagship programme Digital India, and use of emerging technologies in sectors like health, education and R&D, External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. Modi, who arrived here on Wednesday on an official visit to the US during which he will hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, held one-on-one meetings with CEOs of Qualcomm, Adobe, First Solar, General Atomics and Blackstone here. The prime minister in his meeting with the Indian-origin CEO said that bringing smart education to every child is important and that makes the technology very important, asserting that in the COVID-19 era, the ground for digital education has been laid. Narayen appreciated the efforts of India towards fighting COVID -19, particularly in the rapid vaccination, and expressed desire to bring video, animation to every child in India. We're very supportive of more emphasis and interest in education. It (investment) has been outstanding in India, it is actually our secret weapon. We started in India well before it was fashionable to have an Indian facility. But we also said right from the beginning that we want the best and we want to be able and actually do fundamental innovation so, we have multiple centres in India, we have in Noida, Bengaluru and Hyderabad and in addition to our sales offices all around the country. It has been a home run, he told reporters. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Petrol prices in the country are not coming down as the states do not want to bring fuel under the ambit of the GST, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said. In an interview to PTI here, Puri said petrol prices crossed the Rs 100-mark in West Bengal as the TMC government is levying heavy taxes. "If your question is do you want the petrol prices to come down then the answer is yes. Now, if your question is why the petrol prices are not coming down, then the answer is because the states don't want to bring it under GST," he said. "The Centre charges Rs 32 per litre (as taxes on petrol). We charged Rs 32 per litre when the fuel price was USD 19 per barrel, and we are still charging the same even when the price rose to USD 75 per barrel. With this Rs 32 per litre, we provide free ration, free housing and Ujjawala, among several other schemes, to the people," he said. Puri said the West Bengal government increased prices by Rs 3.51 per litre in July, resulting in the petrol crossing the century-mark. "The combined taxation is around 40 per cent here (West Bengal). It is very easy to make statements. Had you (TMC government) not increased the price by Rs 3.51, then it would have been still under Rs 100 per litre," he said. Puri was in Kolkata on Wednesday to campaign for the Bhabanipur bypoll in which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the TMC candidate against BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal and CPI(M)'s Srijib Biswas. "If the result of the Bhabanipur by-election is a foregone conclusion, then why is the entire state cabinet campaigning there? We are confident about a victory, and post-poll violence is a major issue in this poll," he claimed. On the political developments in Punjab, Puri said it reflects the "terminal decline" of the Congress. "Definitely it is an indication of Congress party's terminal decline. I am choosing my words very carefully. In Bengal, they fought with one set of allies. In Kerala, they fought with a different set of allies. They are drawing almost blank everywhere. In UP, where the Congress party grew up, I don't know who wants to partner them," he said. "What is going with the Congress in Punjab is a comedy and theatre of the absurd," Puri added. Pitching for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the minister said the Afghanistan crisis proved why it was necessary. "When the legislation was conceptualised, it was very clear that minority community in our neighbourhood would be facing a challenging situation," he said. "In CAA, the cut-off date is 2014, and those who had opposed it are now saying that the cut-off date should be made 2021. CAA is to deal with persecuted minorities who fear for their life. As part of our overall philosophy, India as a country has accepted refugees. Those who had opposed CAA then are now looking silly," 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.) Prime Minister on Thursday discussed India's landscape with the head of a prominent US-based manufacturer of solar panels. India currently has the world's fastest-growing solar energy programme and has expanded access to clean cooking fuel to cover over 80 million households, making it one of the largest clean energy drives globally. "Powering India's Solar Potential! PM @narendramodi discusses India's landscape with Mark Widmar, CEO @FirstSolar," the Ministry of External Affairs tweeted. Widmar shared plans to use the Indian government's ambitious production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for manufacturing solar power equipment with unique thin-film technology and integrating India into global supply chains, the ministry said further. The Rs 4,500-crore PLI scheme for solar photovoltaic modules is expected to help India ramp up its domestic manufacturing capacity. The scheme is expected to add 10-gigawatt (GW) capacity of integrated solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing plants. Prime Minister Modi in February had invited global firms to take advantage of the PLI schemes and expand their manufacturing in India. During his interaction with Widmar, Modi spoke about the one world, one sun and one grid initiative and its potential, sources said. The prime minister referred to India's ambitious target of 450 GW of He also emphasized on India's focus on manufacturing for solar energy and said that companies in the field of solar energy can take maximum advantage of the PLI schemes, they said. Modi also spoke about India's green hydrogen mission. According to the sources, Widmar praised India's policies for climate change and related industries. The First Solar CEO said all countries should emulate what India has done in climate change. Both Modi and Widmar agreed on enhancement of the manufacturing of solar panels in India, the sources said, adding that the move will also benefit the countries in the region. (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.) Yet, the 25-year-old mechanical engineer was surprised to find his application rejected by Canada. "I also found that several of my friends also had their applications and visas rejected ahead of the Fall semester. And in almost all cases, the reason cited was that Canada doubted whether we would leave the country after studies," Sajin told Business Standard, adding that he is now applying for the UK for the ... Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. 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Digital Editor The Bombay High Court on Thursday reserved the orders on bail applications of founder Rana Kapoor's wife Bindu Kapoor and daughters Radha and Roshini Kapoor in an alleged corruption case involving housing company They have challenged a special CBI court's orders denying them bail. Justice Bharati Dangre is likely to pronounce the orders on September 28. The CBI court here last week rejected the three women's bail pleas and remanded them in judicial custody till September 23. The applicants' lawyers argued before the high court that accused are required to be arrested and remanded in custody only when there is a danger that they would abscond. Advocate Hiten Venegaokar, who appeared for the CBI, opposed the bail pleas. By remanding the applicants in judicial custody, the special court was securing their presence for trial, he contended. As per the CBI, -- presently in jail in connection with a related case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate -- entered into a criminal conspiracy with DHFL's Kapil Wadhawan. Between April and June 2018, invested Rs 3,700 crore in short-term debentures of In return, paid a kickback of Rs 900 crore to Kapoor in the form of loans to DoIT Urban Ventures, a firm controlled by Kapoor's wife and daughters, the central agency alleged. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Inc. may have to redesign its iPhones to use USB-C charging ports under draft rules from the European Union aimed at cutting waste and simplifying life for consumers owning multiple devices. The European Commission said Thursday it wants a single type of charging port to be used for all smartphones and tablets as well as equipment such as cameras, some headphones, portable speakers and handheld video consoles. With more and more devices, more and more chargers are sold that are not interchangeable or not necessary, said Thierry Breton, the EUs industry chief, in an emailed statement. We are putting an end to that. opposes a standard connector, saying it risks hurting innovation that can bring more energy efficient products to the market. The draft legislation adds to intense pressure from the EU in recent years with antitrust probes into its app store and payment system adding to a legal row over a massive back-tax order. is concerned that strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, according to an emailed statement. The Cupertino, California-based company said it deeply cares about the customer experience and shares the commissions commitment to protecting the environment. The maker started removing adapters from packaging last year to reduce waste. While the company uses USB-C for some devices, it has its own Lightning cable and magnetic chargers for iPhones and some accessories. Not Aimed at Apple Breton told reporters in Brussels that Apple wasnt necessarily worried about the draft rules. He said hes in regular contact with Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook who has never mentioned the issue. Its not aimed at Apple or anyone else, he said at a press conference. We are thinking about the 15 to 20 years to come. Apple already uses USB-C in other devices and I dont think its going to cause anyone any problems. People spend around 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) annually on standalone chargers not supplied with devices, the EU said. It forecasts a 250 million euro saving every year as consumers avoid buying new chargers. People tend to own as many as three chargers each and find incompatible chargers annoying, it said. The rules would see all chargers offer the same speed of charging. Phone makers could still be able to sell phones with a charger as long as they also offer models without. They can also sell devices with a cable in the box and without the electric plug. Devices could potentially have multiple ports so long as one was USB-C. The EU throws away some 11,000 tonnes of chargers every year, some unused, according to the commission. It expects the proposal to reduce that by almost 1,000 tonnes. The rules could come into force two years after they are agreed by EU lawmakers and governments who can make changes to the draft text. The EU proposal doesnt touch on wireless charging. Regulators said they decided not to include earbuds, smartwatches and fitness trackers due to their smaller size. Indebted property giant will make it a top priority to help wealth investors redeem their products, its chairman said, as investors await a key deadline for a dollar-bond coupon payment on Thursday. Hui Ka Yan said the company was striving to ensure quality delivery of properties and stressed the importance to resume construction on developments where building had been halted. His comments come as Evergrande, which was founded in 1996, faces mounting pressure to quell anger among homebuyers and retail investors who have sunk their money into the group's properties or its wealth management products. shares, which have plunged around 85% this year, jumped as much as 32% in resumed trade on Thursday after a public holiday, marking their biggest single-day percentage rise since its listing in 2009. The bounce was seen mainly as a reaction to Wednesday's news that an unit had resolved a coupon payment with creditors, although this was just one of the hurdles the company faces as it labours under a $305 billion mountain of debt. The group's electric vehicle and property services units climbed around 3% and 9%, respectively. The chairman's comments late on Wednesday were "clearly aimed at stabilising markets but there seems to be not much information for bond holders," said a source familiar with the situation. "There's no clear plan as yet but we expect the debt to be restructured at some point," said the source, who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to the media. Global investors have been on tenterhooks as the deadline looms, worried that the company's malaise could spread beyond the country's property sector and pose systemic risks to China's financial system. Chinese Estates Holdings, the second-biggest shareholder of Evergrande, said on Thursday it had sold $32 million worth of its Evergrande stake and planned to exit the holding completely. On Wednesday, reacted with relief when the People's Bank of China's injected 90 billion yuan ($13.9 billion) into the banking system and an Evergrande unit said it had "resolved" a coupon payment on an onshore bond. But it faces $83.5 million in dollar-bond interest payments due on Thursday on a $2 billion offshore bond. And more payments are coming due next week, with a $47.5 million dollar-bond interest payment due. Evergrande, China's biggest property developer, ran into trouble over the past few months as Beijing tightened regulations in its property sector to rein back too much debt and speculation. It has found itself struggling to meet its debt obligations and investors worry that the rot could spread to creditors including banks in and abroad. Some analysts say it could take weeks for investors to have any clarity about how the situation will resolve. "The company could restructure its debts but continue in operation, or it could liquidate," wrote Paul Christopher, head of global market strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. In either case, investors in the company's financial instruments likely would suffer some losses, he wrote. "In the event of a liquidation, however, Chinese and global investors could decide that the contagion could spread beyond China," he added. A group of Evergrande bondholders recently selected investment bank Moelis & Co and law firm Kirkland & Ellis as advisers on a potential restructuring of a tranche of bonds, two sources close to the matter previously said. The advice focuses on around $20 billion in outstanding offshore bonds in the event of non-payment, one of the sources said at the time. Analysts have been downplaying the risk that a collapse threatens a "Lehman moment", or liquidity crunch, which freezes the financial system and spreads globally. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that Evergrande's problems seem particular to and that he did not see a parallel with the U.S. corporate sector. "In terms of the implications for us, there's not a lot of direct United States exposure. The big Chinese banks are not tremendously exposed, but you would worry it would affect global financial conditions through global confidence channels and that kind of thing," Powell told reporters after the Fed's policy meeting. ($1 = 6.4583 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago, Anshuman Daga in Singapore, Andrew Galbraith and Samuel Shen in Shanghai. Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo, Clare Jim in Hong Kong and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing and Ira Iosebashvili in New York. Writing by Megan Davies and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Stephen Coates) (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China's embattled property developer faced a Thursday deadline to pay interest on one of its dollar bonds, in a crucial moment for global investors worried that its malaise could spread beyond the country's property sector. Global markets reacted with relief on Wednesday when the People's Bank of China's injected 90 billion yuan ($13.9 billion) into the banking system and an unit said it had "resolved" a coupon payment on an onshore bond. But it faces $83.5 million in dollar-bond interest payments due on Thursday on a $2 billion offshore bond. And more payments are coming due next week, with a $47.5 million dollar-bond interest payment due. Evergrande, China's biggest property developer, ran into trouble over the past few months as Beijing tightened regulations in its property sector to rein back too much debt and speculation. With $305 billion in liabilities, has found itself struggling to meet its debt obligations and investors worry that the rot could spread to creditors including banks in China and abroad. Some analysts say it could take weeks for investors to have any clarity about how the situation will resolve. ALSO READ: Evergrande domestic debt deal calms immediate contagion concern "The company could restructure its debts but continue in operation, or it could liquidate," wrote Paul Christopher, head of global market strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. In either case, investors in the company's financial instruments likely would suffer some losses, he wrote. "In the event of a liquidation, however, Chinese and global investors could decide that the contagion could spread beyond China," he added. A group of Evergrande bondholders recently selected investment bank Moelis & Co and law firm Kirkland & Ellis as advisers on a potential restructuring of a tranche of bonds, two sources close to the matter previously said. The advice focuses on around $20 billion in outstanding offshore bonds in the event of non-payment, one of the sources said at the time. Analysts have been downplaying the risk that a collapse threatens a "Lehman moment", or liquidity crunch, which freezes the financial system and spreads globally. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that Evergrande's problems seem particular to China and that he did not see a parallel with the U.S. corporate sector. "In terms of the implications for us, there's not a lot of direct United States exposure. The big Chinese banks are not tremendously exposed, but you would worry it would affect global financial conditions through global confidence channels and that kind of thing," Powell told reporters after the Fed's policy meeting. ($1 = 6.4583 Chinese yuan renminbi) (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.) People over age 65 and adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 can receive a booster dose of the Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration said, opening a new and more controversial phase of the U.S. immunization campaign. The emergency-use authorization also allows boosters for people 18 and older whose occupational exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus puts them at elevated risk of serious complications. Booster doses can be given any time at least six months after a person received their second shot, the FDA said in a statement. Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said the authorization would allow people such as teachers and day-care staff, as well as health-care and grocery workers, to get the third shot. The authorization applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, the agency said. The emergency clearance is in line with a recommendation last week from FDA advisers but narrower than the full approval that and its German partner had sought. It means that the Biden administration will have to move more slowly on its planned wider rollout of boosters proposed last month. Third doses were previously authorized for certain people with compromised immune systems. We believe boosters have an important role to play in addressing the continued threat of this disease, alongside efforts to increase global access and uptake among the unvaccinated, Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a statement. Todays FDA action is an important step in helping the most vulnerable among us remain protected from Covid-19. While less broad than some had hoped, the authorization leaves the door open for the FDA to consider broader use of boosters, including in younger adults, as more data on their safety and efficacy become available. And it assures that many of the older Americans who were first in line for the initial shots will be among the earliest to get additional protection. A surge in virus infections caused by the delta variant has coincided with fears that vaccine potency will fade as the weather turns colder. Scientists have been divided on the need for boosters. Real-world studies suggested that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine diminished somewhat this summer, especially in preventing mild breakthrough cases, though it is hard to distinguish waning immunity from the effects of the highly infectious delta variant. But other data have suggested that the shot provides lasting protection against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death, and some researchers have said that boosters for most people could be put off for some time. Pfizer shares rose 0.8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, while shares of BioNTech gained 0.5%. Waning efficacy The FDA said it authorized the booster in part because of an analysis from Pfizer showing that people who got the vaccine earlier in a clinical trial showed a modest decrease in the efficacy in July and August, compared with those who had received the vaccines later. In addition, the agency considered real-world effectiveness data on the vaccines efficacy from the U.K., U.S. and Israel. Safety of the booster doses was studied in over 300 people, most of them ages 18 to 55. The most common side effects were pain and swelling at the injection site, fatigue, headache and muscle pain. Swollen lymph nodes in the armpit were more common after the booster dose than the first two doses, the agency said. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is expected to meet Thursday to make its own recommendations about who should receive the additional dose. The panel, made up of outside vaccine experts, met Wednesday for a general review of vaccine efficacy over time and booster-shot science. Some members raised the question of whether people who had received a Moderna Inc. or Johnson & Johnson vaccine for their primary immunization should receive the Pfizer booster, or whether they should wait to match with a supplemental dose of the shot they first received. FDA vaccine official Doran Fink told the panel on Wednesday that the agency is working as rapidly as possible to review Modernas booster submission. Since the FDA said Aug. 13 that people with weakened immune systems can receive a third shot, more than two million Americans have gotten one, according to CDC data. The clearance for now leaves booster shots off the table for younger recipients of the Pfizer shot, which was approved for ages 16 and up earlier this year and can be given to adolescents from 12 to 15 under an emergency authorization. There has been concern among some scientists, including members of the FDAs vaccine advisory panel, about the risk of heart-related side effects from the vaccine, particularly in younger males. Dosing debate Use of a third shot to protect vulnerable people was backed by recent evidence from other countries. An Israeli study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine can dramatically cut rates of Covid-related illness in people 60 and older. Additionally, a Pfizer study suggested that the efficacy of its first two shots waned in a matter of months, and that booster doses are an effective way to combat the spread of the virus and new variants. Some critics have said that booster shots should wait until immunizations are more widespread globally. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has argued that uneven vaccine distribution will be the worlds biggest obstacle to ending the pandemic and recovering. Prior to last weeks meeting of the vaccine advisory panel, top scientists and two FDA officials, in a review published in The Lancet, questioned the scientific support for a third shot, saying available doses would be better used to immunize the unvaccinated. Nearly 17 years after the deadly 2004 tsunami, when outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and US president Joe Biden meet September 24 for the first ever in-person leader level summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, it will mark a high point in a steady year-long elevation against the backdrop of China's growing economic and military strength and Covid-19. Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution, supply chain resilience in critical and emerging technologies like semiconductors and 5G telecom networks are tipped to be top of the agenda. For India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the meeting will be bookended by a Covid-19 summit convened by Biden and Modi's own speech at the United Nations General Assembly, on Saturday. The Covid-19 summit taps into the heart of Quad's most urgent priorities - and India's strengths in vaccine production. In the last 17 years, the has taken a meandering path to its current prominence, with China's shadow being a central theme. In early 2021, returned to the big stage after a nearly 10 year lull. Beginning from its roots in crisis, here is a timeline that captures some of the key moments that have nudged the Quad into a closer embrace: 2004: The earliest framework for the Quad surfaced when the US, Japan, India and Australia formed a "core group" during their joint response to the 2004 2006: While in Tokyo, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that Japan and India wanted to begin a dialogue with other "like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific region". In the same year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed an "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity". 2007: In August, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Confluence of the Two Seas" speech sparked the ideological foundations for the Quad. Speaking in the Indian Parliament, he said, "The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A 'broader Asia' that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form. Our two countries have the ability -- and the responsibility -- to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become seas of clearest transparence." 2007: Quad countries held their first official meeting, in Manila. The Prime Ministers of India, Japan, and Australia met with then US Vice President Dick Cheney on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In the same year, within four months of the first meeting, Quad countries, alongwith Singapore, held an ambitious naval exercise in the Indian Ocean. But the downplaying went in parallel. Australia framed the Quad as a construct limited to trade and culture, India said the Quad had "no security implication." 2007: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a champion of the Quad grouping, resigned in September 2007. The Quad lost its most vocal champion. 2008: Soon after the 2007 Malabar exercise, Australia pulled out of the Quad. Subsequently, Australia was dropped from the 2008 Malabar exercise. More than a decade later, in a 2019 article, former Aussie PM Kevin Rudd recounted that in a full day of meetings with President George W. Bush and senior members of his cabinet in 2008, Quad wasn't raised even once by the American side. The grouping came apart. Between Quad 1.0 and its revival 10 years on, the four countries realigned with minilaterals. Japan and India became important fixtures in two such arrangements. A steady string of "2+2" bilaterals and trilaterals among foreign and defence ministers took off. 2011: After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan received massive support from the US, Australia, and India. 2012: Shinzo Abe returned to office and wasted no time in calling for a "democratic security diamond." 2013-2020: During this period, each of the Quad countries saw their share of China aggression. India dealt with four Chinese border agressions in 2103, 2014, 2017 and 2020. 2017: Japan announced plans to propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India and Australia. The stated intention was to counter Chinese aggression. 2017: Late this year, Australia began re-engaging with Quad partners. Senior officials met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Biannual meetings continued at the "senior official" level. Also happening this year, a Japan-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement. 2019: First ministerial-level meeting of Quad 2.0. 2020: All four navies participated in their first joint exercise in over a decade, in November. 2021: In March, US President Joe Biden convened a virtual Quad meeting attended by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. They formed working groups on Covid-19 vaccines, climate change, and technological innovation and supply-chain resilience. 2021: First leader level in-person summit, scheduled for September 24 at the White House. (Nikhila Natarajan is on Twitter @byniknat) --IANS niki/shs (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.) Secretary called the leaders of Wall Streets largest financial firms in recent days to enlist their help in her campaign to pressure Republicans to support raising or suspending the debt ceiling, according to people familiar with the matter. Yellen reached out to chief executive officers including JPMorgan Chases Jamie Dimon, Citigroups Jane Fraser, Wells Fargos Charlie Scharf, Bank of Americas Brian Moynihan and a senior official at Goldman Sachs Group, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information. The calls are the latest sign of mounting pressure on the to avert a potential crisis if its no longer able to borrow money to pay its bills. The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a Bill that would suspend the debt ceiling for more than a year, but the measure is almost certain to fail in the Senate. The United States has earmarked an additional USD 180 million to aid more than 700,000 from Myanmar. US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced nearly USD 180 million in additional humanitarian assistance for those affected by the Rakhine State/Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma, Bangladesh, and elsewhere in the region. "With this new funding, our total humanitarian assistance for this response reaches more than USD 1.5 billion since August 2017, when more than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee ethnic cleansing and other horrific atrocities and abuses in Burma's [Myanmar's] Rakhine State to safety in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh," Price said in a press release on Wednesday. The state department lauded humanitarian actors for a strong and well-coordinated humanitarian response, which includes preventing and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup on February 1, when the Myanmar military led by Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing overthrew the civilian government and declared a year-long state of emergency. The coup triggered mass protests and was met by deadly violence. US state department said that the military junta must immediately stop the violence, release all those unjustly detained, restore Burma's path to democracy, and implement ASEAN's Five Point Consensus. "We also call on the regime to allow immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to people in need --including for the delivery of critical COVID-19 assistance," the spokesperson 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.) For the final leg of his journey from Chile to the United States, Haitian migrant Fabricio Jean followed detailed instructions sent to him via from his brother in New Jersey who had recently taken the route to the Texas border. His brother wired him money for the trip, then meticulously mapped it out, warning him of areas heavy with Mexican immigration officials. You will need about 20,000 pesos (about $1,000 U.S. dollars) for the buses. You need to take this bus to this location and then take another bus, recounted Jean, who spoke to The Associated Press after reaching the border town of Del Rio. What Jean didn't expect was to find thousands of Haitian migrants like himself crossing at the same remote spot. The 38-year-old, his wife and two young children earlier this month joined as many as 14,000 mostly Haitian migrants camped under a Del Rio bridge. A confluence of factors caused the sudden sharp increase at the Texas town of about 35,000 residents. Interviews with dozens of Haitian migrants, immigration attorneys and advocates reveal a phenomenon produced partly by confusion over the Biden administration's policies after authorities recently extended protections for the more than 100,000 Haitians living in the United States. It also reflects the power of Facebook, YouTube and platforms like WhatsApp, which migrants use to share information that can get distorted as it speeds through immigrant communities, directing migration flows. That's especially true for tight-knit groups like the Creole-and-French-speaking Haitians, many of whom left their homeland after its devastating 2010 earthquake and have been living in Latin America, drawn by Brazil and Chile's once-booming economies. In extending protections for Haitians this spring, the Biden administration cited security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the temporary protections were limited to those residing in the U.S. before July 29 but that condition was often missing in posts, leading Haitians outside the United States to believe they, too, were eligible. Mayorkas acknowledged that this week, saying we are very concerned that Haitians who are taking the irregular migration path are receiving misinformation that the border is open," or that they qualify for protected status despite the expired deadline. I want to make sure it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States," he said. Thousands of Haitians have been stuck in Mexican border towns since 2016, when the Obama administration abruptly halted a policy that initially allowed them in on humanitarian grounds. Online messages touting the Mexican town of Ciudad Acua, across from Del Rio, started after President Joe Biden took office and began reversing some of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Ciudad Acua has been spared the drug and gang violence seen elsewhere along the border. Some of the social media posts recommending it appear to have come from human smugglers seeking to drum up business, according to immigrant advocates. Haitians began crossing there this year, but their numbers ballooned after a Biden administration program that briefly opened the door to some asylum seekers ended, said Nicole Phillips, of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian migrants. The program allowed in a select number of people deemed by humanitarian groups to be at high risk in Mexico. Once it ceased in August, people panicked, and the messages recommending Ciudad Acua went viral," Phillips said. That's why they rushed at this time to get in," she said. They realized they wouldn't be able to get in legally through a port-of-entry like they were hoping." Del Rio is just one example of how technology that has put a smartphone in the hands of nearly every migrant is transforming migration flows, according to advocates. Migrants often monitor the news and share information on routes. The most popular platform is WhatsApp, which connects 2 billion people worldwide. In 2020, after Turkey announced that the land border with Greece was open, thousands of migrants headed there only to find the gates closed on the Greek side. Something similar happened this spring in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in North Africa, when thousands of people were allowed to cross from Morocco into Spain, which promptly sent most of them back. Last week, in a Facebook group for Haitians in Chile with 26,000 members, one member posted specific instructions on routes through Mexico. It included paths to avoid and recommended certain bus companies. Good luck and be careful, said the post, written in Haitian Creole. Another member shared a different route in the comments. The group's members have since relayed stories of horrific conditions in Del Rio and risks of being deported. The Organization for Migration found most of the 238 Haitians who were surveyed in March after passing through a 60-mile (100-kilometer) stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap received route information from family or friends who had made the dangerous trek. About 15% said they saw instructions on the internet. Agency spokesman Jorge Gallo said the instructions led the migrants to believe crossing the gap was "difficult but not impossible. But just as similar messages drew many Haitians to Del Rio, news of the Biden administration deporting hundreds on the Texas border caused some to change their plans. A 32-year-old Haitian woman who made it to Del Rio with her two teenage children bought bus tickets to Mexico City after receiving a cousin's audio message via She previously lived in Chile for four years. Wait in Mexico until this month is over. They will pick up everyone under the bridge. After that, they will give me the contact to enter Miami, said the recording in Creole, which she played for an AP reporter. The AP is withholding the woman's name to protect her safety. Facebook Inc., which owns WhatsApp, allows people to exchange information about crossing borders, even illegally, but its policy bars posts that ask for money for services that facilitate human smuggling. Robins Exile said he and his pregnant wife, who left Brazil after he lost his job amid the pandemic-wracked economy, headed to Tijuana, Mexico, instead after seeing warnings via YouTube and from fellow Haitian migrants. A lot of Haitians are advising now not to come to Acua. They say it's no longer a good place, he said. On Wednesday, Antonio Pierre, 33, who was camped in Del Rio with his wife and daughter, listened to the news on his friend's cellphone. The U.S. is releasing some but just a few, he said, referring to U.S. officials who told the AP on Tuesday that thousands of Haitians in custody were being let go and ordered to report to an immigration office, contradicting the Biden administration's announcement that all Haitians camped in the town would be expelled to Nelson Saintil and his wife and four children had been camped in Texas but moved back to Mexico as they awaited word on where to go next to avoid deportation. I do not want to be like mice who do not find out that they are falling into a trap," he said. Because returning to is to bury a person alive." _____Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Columbus, Ohio, and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center Investigations Lab and the Investigative Reporting Program contributed to this report. (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.) Funds which bet on the market going up outperformed those which also profit from falling last month. Category III (AIFs) include hedge funds which use complex trading strategies or use leverage to increase returns. They are for the very wealthy and typically involve a minimum investment of at least Rs 1 crore. This is twice the limit for portfolio management service (PMS) providers. Some of these AIFs follow an investment strategy of making money when the go up. These are called long-only funds. Those which can also bet on downsides are called long/short funds. Long-only funds gave median returns of 3.24 per cent, shows an analysis of returns from 31 funds from industry tracker PMS Bazaar. Long/short funds (of which data is available for 13) gave median returns of 2.73 per cent. The August returns come during a month when the S&P BSE Sensex hit all-time highs, ending up 9.4 per cent. This performance gains significance in light of subsequent gains. The S&P BSE Sensex touched 59,737.32 on September 17, another all-time high. Some have called for caution as rise. With valuations peaking, we expect a tactical market correction, said a September 16, India Flow Trails report from global broking and financial major Bank of America. The report pointed to an earlier index target which suggests a decline of nearly 17 per cent from current market levels. The report suggested that the industrial sector could continue to do well. A multi-year capital expenditure cycle is expected to benefit the segment. Financials were also expected to do well, according to the report authored by research analyst Amish Shah. ALSO READ: Market yet to respond to rate cuts on home loans, share prices unaffected A large number of new companies soaking up liquidity is expected to be one of the risks to watch, according to a strategy report (September 16) from Jefferies India, the local arm of the global broking and financial group. It noted that there have been $12 billion worth of shares sold by companies so far in the current financial year. The (FPI) since March 2021 has only been $0.6 billion noted the report. It estimated that a record of over 160 new companies could hit the market this year. Given even higher equity supply anticipated(in the second half compared to the first)FPI flow uptick will become important for market performance, said the report authored by equity analysts Mahesh Nandurkar and Abhinav Sinha. Such risks could act as a tailwind for long/short funds. Research has shown that funds which have the ability to bet on market downsides have an advantage. Theory suggests that long/short (L/S) equity hedge funds' returns come from directional as well as spread bets on the stock market. non-factor related returns, or alpha, are positively correlated to market activity and negatively correlated to aggregate short interest, said a September 2011 work from authors William Fung and David A Hsieh published in the Journal of Empirical Finance. Expressed differently, L/S equity hedge funds, as the name suggests, do benefit from shorting. Besides differences in risk taking behavior, this is a key feature distinguishing L/S funds from long-bias funds, it added. Source: PMS Bazaar, Business Standard calculations | Note: Based on 31 long-only funds and 13 long/short funds for which data is available Chennai-based residential property major Casagrand said that the company is planning to go for an initial public offering by December 2022, the companys managing director, Arun MN said on Thursday. This comes on the heels of the company raising around Rs 1,200 crore from international investors including KKR and Apollo Global. The company is also planning to invest around Rs 5,000 crore in residential development in the next one year, including Rs 3,000 crore in Chennai, Rs 1,250 crore in Bengaluru and Rs 750 crore in other It has already raised Rs 400-500 crore from KKR for land acquisition in Chennai and Bengaluru. The initial public offering is also being planned mainly to fund its land acquisition plans. It has already lined up plans to acquire around Rs 10,000 crore worth of land and has already acquired Rs 6,000 crore worth of land last fiscal. Motilal Oswal and JM jointly were appointed as bankers for the The company is expected to dilute up to 15 per cent of its holdings in the proposed Also read: IPO frenzy can dent secondary market liquidity, cap market upside, say analysts We are looking at a valuation of upwards of Rs 6,000 crore, up to Rs 8,000 crore. The is likely to happen by December 2022, Arun said. After Chennai, Coimbatore and Bengaluru, the company plans to expand its presence in the Hyderabad market this year. The company has set a target to achieve sales of Rs 3,750 crore in comparison to last years Rs 2,300 crore and plans to establish a sales office in the US and Dubai. Casagrand said that it is going to strengthen its presence in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, as these two will contribute 35 per cent while Chennai will contribute 65 per cent of total revenue. Adani Enterprises said that Adani Airport Holdings has signed a share subscription agreement with Flemingo Travel Retail and Mumbai Travel Retail for the purpose of strategic partnership to operate duty free outlets in airports and seaports. Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL) is the flagship holding company of Adani Group for its airports business and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises. Through the strategic partnership, AAHL aims to operate duty free outlets in airports and seaports. On completion of the transaction, AAHL will subscribe to 28,49,000 equity shares, constituting 74% of share capital of Mumbai Travel Retail on fully diluted basis for an aggregate investment of Rs 2.84 crore. Adani Enterprises (AEL) is the flagship company of Adani Group, one of India's largest business conglomerates. The company's business investments are centred on the fields of airport management, technology parks, roads, data centre and water infrastructure. AEL's consolidated net profit stood at Rs 265.60 crore in Q1 June 2021 compared with net loss of Rs 65.67 crore in Q1 June 2020. Revenue from operations soared 138.90% to Rs 12,578.77 crore in Q1 FY22 from Rs 5,265.19 crore in Q1 FY21. The AEL scrip rose 2.39% to currently trade at Rs 1472.55 on the BSE. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Adani Ports rose 1.07% to Rs 752.70 after the company said that it has signed the appropriate transaction documents and simultaneously completed the acquisition of 10.4% stake of Gangavaram Port from Government of Andhra Pradesh. Gangavaram Port (GPL) is engaged in the business of handling various types of dry bulk and break bulk cargo. GPL is a multi-cargo facility and handled 32.81 MMT of cargo in FY21. It has a capacity of 64 MMT. The operational revenue for financial year 2020-21 was Rs 1,057 crore. The acquisition is in line with company's strategy of east coast to west coast parity and will provide an access to growth from new hinterland markets as it has coverage in resource rich and industrial belt in Eastern, Central & Southern India. The acquisition has been made for a cash consideration of Rs 644.78 crore. In March this year, the company had announced the acquisition of Windy Lakeside Investment's (an affiliate of Warburg Pincus) 31.5% stake in GPL. In last week of March 2021, the company had announced the acquisition of 58.1% stake held by DVS Raju and family in GPL. The acquisition was valued at Rs 3,604 crore. Last month, Adani Ports said that its proposal to acquire 10.4% stake for Rs 644.78 crore of Gangavaram Port from the Andhra Pradesh government has received approval from the Andhra Pradesh Maritime Board. On 20 September 2021, Adani Ports received approval of Competition Commission of India for the said acquisition. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), a part of globally diversified Adani Group, has evolved from a port company to ports and logistics platform for India. The company reported 77% jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 1,342 crore on a 99% increase in consolidated revenue to Rs 4,557 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q1 FY21. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Computer Age Management Services (CAMS) on Thursday announced the launch of MF Central, an interoperable Investment Management platform for enhanced service experience for mutual fund investors. MFCentral is a collaborative effort of the registrar and transfer agents - CAMS with Kfintech in association with AMFI. MFCentral offers digital access to investor lifecycle engagement with the entire MF industry under one roof. The platform expects to transform investor experience with the mutual fund industtry through its single window view across all mutual funds. The platform aims to render all conceivable transaction types across the industry participants in a highly automated and digitized manner. The platform's underlying strengths include standardized and uniform processes, inter-operability and future ready architecture for scale and speed. The platform also offers investors the added convenience of generating reports on unclaimed payments and raising service requests for non-commercial transactions (Digital and Scan based), such as nominee change and address update. CAMS further said the platform is conceptualized to go live in three distinct phases, all of which are planned to go live by the end of this calendar year. The first phase that has gone live today, covers noncommercial transactions (service requests of investors), financial portfolio view, and consolidated account statement amongst other features. The next two phases will see the launch of a mobility platform, financial transactions, and integration with ecosystem partners for several value-added services. Anuj Kumar, MD of CAMS said, We are pleased to bring the MF Central platform to the investor community. The platform will bring about simplification in mutual funds services and reduce turnaround times, while providing safe access. Leveraging the power of digital, MF Central provides a unified gateway for friction-less services across all mutual funds. CAMS is a technology-driven financial infrastructure and services provider to mutual funds and other financial institutions with over two decades of experience. The company posted a 58.9% increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 63.24 crore on 35.4% rise in net sales to Rs 201.18 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q1 FY21. Shares of CAMS were trading 0.86% higher at Rs 3,459.95 on BSE. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hindalco Industries Ltd is quoting at Rs 471.6, up 1.86% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The stock is up 196.42% in last one year as compared to a 64.52% gain in NIFTY and a 164.42% gain in the Nifty Metal index. Hindalco Industries Ltd rose for a third straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 471.6, up 1.86% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 1.31% on the day, quoting at 17776.85. The Sensex is at 59761.68, up 1.42%. Hindalco Industries Ltd has added around 12.06% in last one month. Meanwhile, Nifty Metal index of which Hindalco Industries Ltd is a constituent, has added around 2.56% in last one month and is currently quoting at 5524.65, up 1.08% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 60.19 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 123.37 lakh shares in last one month. The benchmark September futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 472.85, up 2.05% on the day. Hindalco Industries Ltd is up 196.42% in last one year as compared to a 64.52% gain in NIFTY and a 164.42% gain in the Nifty Metal index. The PE of the stock is 54.27 based on TTM earnings ending June 21. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Infosys announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Bharti Airtel said that the 'Record Date' for the purpose of determining the shareholders who shall be eligible to receive the rights entitlement in the issue is September 28. The rights issue will open on 5 October 2021 and closes on 21 October 2021. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) has concluded acquisition of Government of Andhra Pradesh's (GoAP) stake of 10.4% with a consideration of Rs 645 crore. Jubilant Ingrevia said that Jubilant Life Sciences International Pte., Singapore, a wholly owned subsidiary of the company has divested its entire 10% stake, consisting of 5,40,463 shares, held in Safe Foods Corporation for a consideration of US $ 18.2 Million (approx. Rs 134.2 crore). Sarda Energy & Minerals has approved a provisional tariff for the 113 MW hydropower project of subsidiary Madhya Bharat Power Corporation, considering 85% of the cost of the project incurred as of March 2021 with return on equity of 15.5% per annum. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Infosys announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Amazon Braket is a fully managed quantum computing service that helps scientists and developers get started with the technology and accelerate research and discovery. Infosys will look to build, test, and evaluate quantum applications on circuit simulators and quantum hardware technologies using Amazon Braket. This will enable researchers and developers to experiment and study complex computational problems as quantum technologies continue to evolve. Enterprises will get access to use cases for rapid experimentation and can explore how quantum computing can potentially help them in the future in a variety of areas, assess new ideas and plan adoption strategies to drive innovation. The use of Amazon Braket by Infosys aims at getting businesses ready for a future where quantum computers will impact business. Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys, said, Through our use of AWS in this space, we are bringing together the power of Amazon Braket and Infosys Cobalt to help enterprises build quantum computing capabilities and use cases to accelerate their cloud-powered transformation." Shares of Infosys slipped 0.06% to settle at Rs 1,716.65 yesterday, 22 September 2021. Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The IT major informed that over three crore taxpayers have logged into the new Income Tax portal and over 1.5 crore returns have been filed till date. "Infosys is committed to making rapid progress in further streamlining end-user experience," the company said today while updating on the progress it is making on the Income Tax E-Filing Portal (IT portal). The company said that over the last few weeks, the IT portal has seen steady increase in usage with taxpayers' concerns being progressively addressed. Thus far, over 3 crore taxpayers have logged into the portal and successfully completed various transactions. In September, on average, more than 15 lakh unique taxpayers have logged into the portal, daily, and over 1.5 crore returns have been filed till date. Over 85% of taxpayers who have filed their returns have also completed their e-verification, largely through Aadhaar OTP authentication. "The portal is facilitating over 2.5 lakh returns filing on a daily basis and ITR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 are now available for filing. A majority of the statutory forms have also been made available online. Several critical statutory forms like 15G, 15H, EQ1, 10A, 10E, 10IE, DTVSV, 15CA, 15CB, 35 as well as TDS Returns are being filed in large numbers. More than 11.5 lakh statutory forms and over 8 lakh TDS returns have already been filed. Taxpayer services such as e-proceedings, response to notices and demands, e-PAN services, DSC registrations, and functionality for legal heir, have also been enabled. Over 16.6 lakh e-PANs have been allocated. 4.3 lakh DSC registrations and over 3.44 lakh e-proceeding responses to notices have also been completed," the company added. Despite the steady progress, Infosys said it recognizes the ongoing challenges faced by some users and has engaged with more than 1200 taxpayers directly to better understand their concerns. The company said it is focused on rapidly resolving these challenges while working closely with the Chartered Accountant community to ensure that a comprehensive set of user scenarios are supported and thoroughly tested before deployment. Infosys was awarded a contract in 2019 to develop the new e-filing portal, www.incometax.gov.in. The project was aimed at developing the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and to expedite refunds. The new portal, however, faced tech glitches from day one with users complaining that certain functionalities were either unavailable or working slow. Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. The company's board will meet on 12 and 13 October 2021 to approve and take on record the audited consolidated financial results for the quarter and half year ending 30 September 2021. The company's consolidated net profit grew 2.3% to Rs 5,195 crore on 6% increase in revenue to Rs 27,896 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q4 FY21. Revenues in constant currency (CC) terms grew by 16.9% YoY and 4.8% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). While announcing its April-June quarter (Q1FY22) results, Infosys said it expects its revenue to grow by 14-16% in FY22, up from the earlier estimate of 12-14%. Infosys on Wednesday (22 September 2021) announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Shares of Infosys were up 0.67% to Rs 1728.20. The stock hit a high of Rs 1734.30 and a low of Rs 1722.30 so far. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shareholders of RBL bank approved the reappointment of Vishwavir Ahuja as the managing director and chief executive for the fourth term. According to the results of the voting held at the 21 September 2021 annual general meeting, as much as 99.94% of shareholders who participated in the voting favoured the reappointment of Vishwavir Ahuja as the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) for the fourth term beginning June this year. Ahuja joined the bank in 2010 from Bank of America and has been the force behind the successful listing of the lender in August 2016. The 78th AGM of the bank was held on Tuesday, 21 September 2021, through video conferencing or other audio-visual means along with Scrutinizer's Report dated 21 September 2021. In January 2021, the board of RBL Bank had approved a three-year extension for Ahuja from 30 June 2021 to 29 June 2024. However, in June this year the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved only a one-year extension for Ahuja as MD & CEO of the bank with effect from 30 June 2021. On a standalone basis, RBL Bank's net loss stood at Rs 459.47 crore in Q1 June 2021 (Q1 FY22) compared with net profit of Rs 141.22 crore in Q1 June 2020 (Q1 FY21). Total income rose 4.92% to Rs 2,720.50 crore in Q1 FY22 from Rs 2,592.73 crore in Q1 FY21. RBL Bank offers specialized services under five business verticals namely: corporate & institutional banking, commercial banking, branch & business banking, retail assets and treasury and financial markets operations. It currently services over 9.83 million customers through a network of 435 branches, 1,422 business correspondent branches (of which 271 banking outlets) and 380 ATMs spread across 28 Indian states and Union Territories. Shares of RBL Bank rose 2.06% to Rs 182.90. The stock hit a high of Rs 183.90 and a low of Rs 180.05 so far. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sarda Energy & Minerals was locked in an upper-circuit of 5% at Rs 708.40 after the Chhattisgarh State Electricity Regulatory Commission approved provisional tariff for its subsidiary, a 113 MW Hydropower project of Madhya Bharat Power Corporation. The Chhattisgarh State Electricity Regulatory Commission on Wednesday, 22 September 2021, approved provisional tariff for a 113 MW Hydropower project of Madhya Bharat Power Corporation, a subsidiary of the company, considering 85% of the cost of the project incurred as per audited accounts of the company as of 31 March 2021 with return on equity of 15.5% p.a. as per relevant regulations under the Electricity Act. "The final tariff will be determined based on the cost incurred up to the date of COD, as may be approved by the Commission, following the due process of law in due course," the press release stated. Meanwhile, CRISIL revised the ratings on total bank facilities worth Rs 580 crore. Long Term Ratings has been given a "CRISIL BBB+/Positive" rating as compared to its previous "CRISIL BBB/Stable" rating. Short Term Rating was given a "CRISIL A2" rating as against its previous "CRISIL A3+." Sarda Energy & Minerals' consolidated net profit soared 335.1% to Rs 169.86 crore on a 138.9% jump in net sales to Rs 823.33 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q1 FY21. Sarda Energy & Minerals is a vertically integrated producer of steel with captive iron ore. The company is manufacturer and exporter of niche grade manganese based ferro alloys. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vedanta Ltd is quoting at Rs 299.9, up 1.7% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The stock is up 127.63% in last one year as compared to a 64.52% spurt in NIFTY and a 164.42% spurt in the Nifty Metal index. Vedanta Ltd gained for a third straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 299.9, up 1.7% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 1.31% on the day, quoting at 17776.85. The Sensex is at 59761.68, up 1.42%. Vedanta Ltd has risen around 4.71% in last one month. Meanwhile, Nifty Metal index of which Vedanta Ltd is a constituent, has risen around 2.56% in last one month and is currently quoting at 5524.65, up 1.08% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 49.42 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 162.56 lakh shares in last one month. The benchmark September futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 300.75, up 1.86% on the day. Vedanta Ltd is up 127.63% in last one year as compared to a 64.52% spurt in NIFTY and a 164.42% spurt in the Nifty Metal index. The PE of the stock is 9.93 based on TTM earnings ending June 21. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Bihar Chief Minister on Thursday lashed out at dharm ke thekedaar self-appointed guardians of faith whom he squarely blamed for Dalits being deprived of a life of dignity. Manjhi, whose Hindustani Awam Morcha is a part of the ruling alliance in the state, expressed his anguish on his Twitter handle, sharing a heart-wrenching news report of a Dalit couple in Karnataka being penalized after their two-year-old child inadvertently stepped into a temple. Incidentally, Karnataka is ruled by the BJP, which is also the largest partner in the ruling coalition in Bihar. I am giving voice to the pain that has been experienced for centuries. So far, I have been shy of expressing the anguish. Now nobody will say a word. The dharm ke thekedaar go silent on such matters...... they cannot brook Dalits entering the temples or offering their views on religious works (dharmik kavya), Manjhi tweeted. For the politically savvy citizens of the state, which Manjhi ruled for a little less than a year, the context was hard to miss. His outcry came close on the heels of a barrage of insults from the BJP after he made a statement suggesting that he believed Lord Ram was a fictional and not historical figure. The controversy had erupted a couple of days ago when his views were sought about demands by BJP leaders here that Ramayana be included in school syllabus, following a similar move by the saffron party's government in Madhya Pradesh. Manjhi had said he was very much in favour of the epic being taught in schools though he was of the view that Lord Ram was not a man who lived on this earth at any point of time. This evoked predictable outrage from the BJP, which owes its rise, in no small measure, to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in Ayodhya. Several BJP leaders came out with statements berating Manjhi. Its MLA Hari Bhushan Thakur, who is fast emerging as an outspoken hardliner, went to the extent of asking why the former CM, a septuagenarian and more than 20 years his senior, was named and not Jitan Rakshas (demon) Manjhi. Manjhi, whose political career spans over several decades, chose not to reply to the vituperation but stuck to his guns on Wednesday when he reiterated, I do not believe Lord Rama was a great man. He is a work of fiction. I believe Valmiki and Goswami Tulsidas were great men who came out with such an inspiring character. Ironically, it was the BJP to which Manjhi owed his rise as an independent Dalit leader in Bihar. He became the Chief Minister in 2014 when his political mentor Nitish Kumar stepped down and parted ways with the latter when he was asked to step down several months later. The BJP, which was then sore over Nitish Kumar snapping ties with it, had backed Manjhi to the hilt when he broke away from the JD(U) and floated his own party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's infamous DNA jibe at Kumar was also made in the context of unceremonious removal of Manjhi, a Mahadalit. After remaining with the NDA for some time, Manjhi quit the BJP-led alliance in 2018 when he was promptly rewarded by the opposition RJD with a berth in the legislative council for his son. Shifting sands of have led Manjhi to realign with Kumar, with his son as a member of the cabinet. (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 told the that of Backward Classes is administratively difficult and cumbersome" and excluding such information from the purview of is a "conscious policy decision". The Centre's stand assumes significance as recently, a 10-party delegation from Bihar, which was led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding In an affidavit filed in the apex court, the government has said that enumeration in Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 was fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies. The affidavit was filed in the top court in response to a plea by Maharashtra seeking a direction to the Centre and other concerned authorities to disclose to the state the SECC 2011 raw caste data of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) which is not made available to them on repeated demand. The affidavit, filed by the secretary of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, said the Centre has already issued a notification in January last year prescribing the series of information to be collected during Census 2021 and it covers many areas including the information relating to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but does not refer to any other category of caste. It said the exclusion of information regarding any other caste from the purview of Census is a "conscious policy decision" taken by the Central government. It said enumeration of OBCs/BCCs (Backward Class of Citizens) has been always adjudged to be administratively extremely complex and even when Census of castes were taken in the pre-independence period, the data suffered in respect of completeness and accuracy. The issue has been examined at length in the past at different points of time. Each time, the view has consistently been that the caste Census of Backward Classes is administratively difficult and cumbersome; it has suffered and will suffer both on account of completeness and accuracy of the data, as also evident from the infirmities of the SCEE, 2011 data mentioned hereinabove making it unusable for any official purposes and cannot be mentioned as a source of information for population data in any official document, the affidavit said. The government said that SECC 2011 survey was not on the OBC survey' as alleged, but a comprehensive exercise to enumerate the caste status of all households in the country, as per their statement. It said socio-economic data of households, including their deprivations were used to identify the poor households based on the multi-dimensional nature of poverty and used in the implementation of the anti-poverty programmes by the Central Government ministries. It said, the caste data has not been disclosed and has been kept with the Office of the Registrar General, India (ORGI) for various reasons, but primarily for the technical flaws that were noticed in the raw caste/tribe SECC data which makes it unusable as explained hereinafter. The matter came up for hearing on Thursday before a bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar which posted it for October 26. In the affidavit, the government has said that so far as caste data is concerned, a caste-wise enumeration in the Census has been given up as a matter of policy from 1951 onwards and thus, the castes other than the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes have not been enumerated in any of the Census since 1951 till today. It said demands from various sections, including members of Parliament, for enumeration of castes in Census 2011 was received during the year 2010 and the matter was discussed in Lok Sabha and subsequently, the government referred it to a Group of Ministers (GoM) chaired by the then Union Finance Minister. The affidavit said the Union Cabinet in 2011 decided to conduct the SECC 2011 wherein the caste of the household along with social-economic status on the identified parameters was directed to be collected. It said as per the decision of the Cabinet, the data has been shared with the ministry of social justice and empowerment by the ORGI in a hard disk for taking the suitable decision on its use. Pertinently, due to several infirmities found in the aforesaid data as explained hereinafter, it was decided by the Cabinet to constitute an expert committee under the chairmanship of the then Vice-Chairman NITI Aayog Prof Arvind Panagariya, it said. It said other members of the committee were not named and the panel never met. As a result, no action has been taken on the data in the past five years, it said. The affidavit said as against more than 4.28 lakh castes which have been enumerated in the SECC 2011 in the state, the existing castes which are published in Maharashtra in SC, ST, and OBC categories are only 494. For the above referred various reasons either due to the mistakes committed by the enumerators, inherent flaws in the manner of conducting Census and several such other factors, there is no reliable or dependable castes based Census data available which can be the basis of any constitutional or statutory exercise like reservations in admission, promotion or local body elections, the affidavit said. The government said that the population Census is not the ideal instrument for the collection of details on castes and the operational difficulties are so many that there is a grave danger that the basic integrity of the Census data may be compromised and the fundamental population count itself could get distorted. (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.) Longtime executive Mike Schroepfer said on Wednesday that he was stepping down as the company's chief technology officer. Schroepfer said in a post that veteran leader Andrew Bosworth, who heads up the company's augmented reality and virtual reality efforts, including products like its Oculus Quest VR headset, will take over the role in 2022. Schroepfer, who is known as "Schrep" and spent 13 years at Facebook, said he would transition to a part-time role as the company's first Senior Fellow sometime next year. Bosworth, or "Boz," created Facebook's AR/VR organization, which was renamed Reality Labs (FRL) in 2020. "As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz's team as well," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to employees that was posted on Facebook's blog. "This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I'm excited about the future of this work under Boz's leadership," he said, referring to the Silicon Valley idea of shared spaces that merge the digital and physical worlds and can be accessed through different devices. Facebook is under pressure from global regulators, lawmakers and civil society groups who have criticized it over abuses on its platform such as extremism and misinformation and want it to improve on a slew of issues including transparency, its content moderation and recommendation systems, and its approaches to user privacy and safety. The company has been pushing its role in building an embodied internet, or "metaverse," which Zuckerberg is betting will be the next big computing platform. In July, the company said it was creating a new product team to work on these ambitions, as part of Facebook Reality Labs. Zuckerberg said Schroepfer's new role would include helping the company recruit and develop technical talent and foster investments in artificial intelligence. Other central leaders who have left the company in recent months include the head of Facebook's main app, Fidji Simo, who left to become Instacart CEO, and global ads chief Carolyn Everson, who was hired as the start-up's president. (Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in London and Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Sonya Hepinstall) (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi [India], September 23 (ANI/Mediawire): We know Term 1 Board Exams for Class 10 and class 12 will be starting from November 15th, 2021. This gives students only 7 weeks to prepare based on the pattern of CBSE Sample Paper (released on 2nd September 2021). Students now have to answer 40-50 questions in under 90 minutes, which could be a challenge if they are under-prepared. Cognizant of the fact that still many students in various parts of the country have no access to quality teaching and offline teaching has been largely unavailable in this academic year, two major announcements are made today. Firstly, just like the CBSE Question Bank that was uploaded on (http://cbseacademic.nic.in) a few months ago, a new Practice Book of sample papers of each subject has been made available specifically for CBSE Class 10 & Class 12 students. This practice book includes OMR sheets to help students understand the look and process of filling them. Secondly, a Time Management Chart is provided to help students understand how to structure the different 'Sections' of the MCQ paper (40+ MCQs to do) in just 1.5 hours. These are two very useful updates for all teachers and students. Let's see in detail. 1. Sample Paper Practice Book The CBSE Sample Paper Book is prepared with the help of Kendriya Vidyalaya Teachers and in collaboration with CBSE experts at Educart, for all Subjects of (https://amzn.to/3kvsuCi) Class 10 and (https://amzn.to/3lRCjdd) Class 12. Some of the important things we found in these books are: The books have upto 13 (https://amzn.to/39AuRxa) Sample Papers with detailed solutions on 100% CBSE pattern of upcoming November Term 1 Boards. This is made available so students can practice lots of sample papers easily at minimal cost. CBSE Self Evaluation Sheets are added after papers to help students understand their weak topics and study NCERT accordingly. OMR Sheets that will be given in Boards along with tips to fill them. Mind Maps and all the important points are given Chapter-wise to answer any MCQ as an extra feature in each Book. These features make the books the most useful resource for the final practice of Term 1 paper pattern. Especially, when they are the only books 100% based on CBSE Sample Paper released on 2nd September 2021. Links to these above mentioned practice books for Term 1 are given below for ease of access: Class 10: (https://amzn.to/3CHJZ8u) Term 1 Sample Paper Practice Book Class 12: (https://amzn.to/3u6CaGz) Term 1 Sample Paper Practice Book It has been made clear that NCERT books and Exemplars are a must to keep in mind as well to prepare. Now, let's take a look at the Time Management charts provided to help CBSE students. 2. Time Management Chart Below are screenshots of two Time Management charts for CBSE Class 10 Science and Class 10 Maths. Very useful Time Management Chart Provided for Class 10 Mathematics and Science Term 1 Key Points Suggested from these Charts: Students are advised to focus not more than 3-4 minutes per MCQ to complete the paper on time Section-wise breakdown is given so students can focus on completing the sections one by one The OMR sheet should be filled at the end in 'revision time' to account for last-minute change of mind and revisiting not answered questions. All these Time Management Charts prepared by KV experts are available in the above uploaded Educart Sample Paper practice books for Term 1 Boards of CBSE Class 10 and 12. This story is provided by Mediawire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article (ANI/Mediawire) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], September 23 (ANI/PNN): Co-Convenor of Gujarat BJP's social media department, Manan Dani, has initiated the organization's drive to spread the word for the NAMO App. The honest youth will directly visit people's homes in the Gujarat region to encourage and download the NAMO app on their smartphones. Dani will himself be downloading the NAMO app on their mobile phones. He will then paste a sticker at the entrance of their homes saying "GharGhar Modi" along with PM Narendra Modi's picture. "Ideas and politicians will always lead the world," says Dani. With this philosophy in mind, Dani and Gujarat BJP's social media department are on a mission to expand the reach of the NAMO app to thousands of people by the end of the 'GharGhar Modi' campaign. "The campaign began on 17th September 2021, on the birthday of our honourable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, and would be running fiercely till 7th October 2021," he adds. Dani would be visiting all homes in Sardar Patel Stadium, Naranpura, and Navrangpura areas to spread the word for the NAMO app. He will also be visiting the Income Tax Building areas in Ahmedabad to propose people to download as well as himself download the app on their smartphones. "We are visiting each and every home in selective regions of Gujarat. We are having a conversation with all the family members of every home who have access to a smartphone to download the NAMO app. So, they can always stay up-to-date about various Government Schemes and other benefits," Dani adds. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the NAMO app on June 17, 2015, and while launching it, the Prime Minister himself had tweeted, saying, "Come, let's stay connected on the mobile!" on that very day. The main objective of launching the NAMO app was to keep all the Indian citizens informed about the Indian government and its leaders. Micro Donations were also a part of this launch to widen BJP's outreach. From expressing one's honest views and opinions directly to the PM, listening to all on-air PM addresses and 'Mann Ki Baat' to keeping track of PM's day-to-day activities, the NAMO app makes the one-stop destination for all the common people of India. Dani, a social media content management expert, has visited as many as 1,000 homes between 17th September and 19th September 2021. Within a short period of just three days, he has successfully installed the incredible NAMO app on the smartphones of almost 1,000 people in different areas of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat. He definitely will achieve great success in spreading the word for the NAMO app till 7th October 2021. BJP has launched many drives apart from Manan Dani's 'GharGhar Modi' drive in the past few years, aiming to promote the party, spread the word for Good Governance, and much more. Government of India's Central Home Minister Amit Shah's 'Mera Parivar, BJP Parivar' in 2019 and BJP's Corona Virus vaccination drive 2020 have received a lot of accreditation from Indian citizens. This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], September 23 (ANI/PRNewswire): JAIN (Deemed-to-be-University), India's leading NAAC "A+" Graded University (as per the revised framework), announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ASC Center and College, Bengaluru. The MoU enables the army personnel and their families to enroll in both on-campus and online courses offered by JAIN (Deemed-to-be-University). The candidates can choose programs from various disciplines such as Management, Commerce, Sciences, and Technology from JAIN (Deemed-to-be-University). They can enroll in on-campus learning Programs such as MBA, MCA, M.Sc., PG Diploma, Ph.D., and Certification Programs at the University Campus in Bengaluru. The on-campus Degree Programs can be pursued by the Army Personnel during the Study Leave offered during their tenure by the Indian Army. UGC (University Grants Commission) Entitled Online Degree Programs such as MBA, MCA, M.A, B.Com, and BBA are also offered to the Army Personnel and their dependents. The candidates can choose from programs of their interest from the diverse range of 70+ electives offered. (https://online.jainuniversity.ac.in/?utm_source=pr+newswire & utm_medium=referral & utm_campaign=JAIN+%28Deemed-to-be-University%29+signs+MoU+with+Indian+Army)Online degree programs provide greater flexibility for the candidates to pursue their degree as they can learn anytime, anywhere, and also write exams online. Learning materials can also be downloaded onto their devices and accessed from remote locations with low connectivity. So, their dream of acquiring a Degree is impended by transfers and accessibility to the Internet. The MoU was signed in an event held in Bengaluru and was jointly chaired by Lt. Gen. B.K. Repswal, VSM, the Commandant of the ASC (The Army Service Corps) Centre and College, Bengaluru, and Dr. Chenraj Roychand, Chancellor, JAIN (Deemed-to-be University). Other officials from ASC Centre and College, Bengaluru, and JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) were also present during the event. Commenting on this partnership, Lt. Gen. B.K. Repswal, VSM the Commandant of the ASC Centre and College, Bengaluru, said, "We are happy to join hands with JAIN (Deemed-to-be University). It's a step towards setting a new dimension in our journey with one of the reputed institutions in the country. There is a great scope of building bridges for knowledge sharing, and we can benefit from the partnership in giving proper accreditation to our men and enhancing their skill-sets. Online degree programs will help the army personnel to pursue their degree during their service as it gives the flexibility to study from anywhere." Speaking on occasion, Dr. Chenraj Roychand, Chancellor - JAIN (Deemed-to-be University), said, "It is a great pride for us to join hands with the Indian Army. This marks a new milestone in the history of the JAIN Group. Through this partnership, we will be honored to contribute our part in empowering army personnel and their families by offering them quality education and courses that have been knitted through our experience and expertise over the last 30 years. We believe that education opens new doors for anyone who aspires to grow and learn. We will be privileged to further empower the dreams of servicemen and servicewomen of our Army who dedicate their lives to the defense of this nation." During the session, Dr. Roychand also briefed Lt. Gen. B.K. Repswal on the preparation happening in full swing at its campuses for the second edition of the Khelo India University Games (KIUG), to be held in Karnataka in 2022. KIUG is the largest University game in the country and is aimed at tapping sporting talent, who can represent India in international events, including the Olympics. JAIN (Deemed-to-be University) is the host University for Khelo India University Games in Karnataka. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jodhpur (Rajasthan) [India], September 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): Marwari Catalysts strengthens wealth management and financial domain expertise with its new investment from Kumbhat Advisors enabling a stronger platform and mentorship for Fintech start-ups to acquire first-hand knowledge and expertise from the top brand. This investment aligns with Marwari Catalysts' vision of contributing to the growth of India's startup community, especially in tier-II and tier-III cities. Kumbhat Advisors Pvt. Ltd., an established name since 1992 in the area of Project Finance, Debt Syndication, Private Equity and Financial Advisory Services, has invested an undisclosed sum into startup accelerator platform, Marwari Catalysts. Marwari Catalysts said in a statement that it aims to leverage Kumbhat Advisors' expertise to evaluate its investments in the segment and achieve a much stronger foothold in evaluation, industry-relevant mentoring and identifying market opportunities. Together, the aim is to invest in and grow potential businesses/startups across various verticals. Sharing the rationale, CA Neeraj Kumbhat, Chairman, Kumbhat Advisors, said, "Investors have been getting moderate returns across asset classes, i.e. equity, debt, real estate and so on. In today's date the investors should look beyond traditional options and also understands the likes of startup funding to accelerate their investment portfolio returns. As an emerging asset class, startup investing is finding increased acceptance and allocation in the investment portfolios of HNIs and family offices. This asset class is increasingly being recognized for higher returns by fostering innovative businesses with unique and disruptive ideas." Kumbhat Advisors has been advising clients and arranging finance for their projects across India for the past three decades. More than a thousand projects/promoters across various industries like Textiles, Chemicals, Engineering, Gems & Jewellery, Real Estate, Medical, Education, Paper and many other industries have benefited from their services. With a large and ever expanding client base, Kumbhat Advisors is one of the largest players in its segment. Kumbhat Advisors P. L. is headed by CA Neeraj Kumbhat (Chairman), CA Mukesh Bothra (Director) and CA Mohit Kapoor (Director). Kumbhat Advisors is also involved in various other related business verticals like Mortgage & Housing Loans and Wealth/Portfolio Management & Equity Research Services. Now with the active foray in the Startup Ecosystem, the Company is working on the concept of a one stop solution for clients and businesses. The company works closely with its clients to understand their actual requirements and to apply innovative and tailor made solutions to meet their financial objectives, which could be for business improvement, consolidation, foreign expansion, diversification or investment. MCats' clever model of leveraging its strong and vast network of investors, to grow its portfolio companies, has demonstrated a fast-paced growth trajectory to its existing portfolio companies while providing good investor returns. Commenting on the investment CA Mohit Kapoor (Ex. Goldman Sachs) said, "We, at Kumbhat Advisors, are truly excited with our investment in and association with Marwari Catalysts. Our objective is to firmly establish Surat and Gujarat on the Startup map of India, both in terms of investors and homegrown startups. Gujarat has been the leader in terms of industrial development and FDI in the country for the past many years and we feel the time is right for Gujarat to establish its name in the Startup Ecosystem also. Further Marwari Catalysts being an 'Accelerator' gives the right platform for our clients to make their investments in the Startup world." "As we engage with Marwari Catalysts, we are continuingly being impressed with the deal flow of exciting start-ups and the vibrant team of Marwari Catalysts that is enabling the same. Such a vibrant ecosystem is highly desirable for investors, and is essential for building a sizable portfolio of startup investments. We believe that Marwari Catalysts would be the right enabler for our clients, and look forward to selective investments, collaborative growth, and remunerative exits for our startup investors," says CA Mukesh Bothra. With a dedicated focus on startups from Bharat or tier-II and tier-III cities in India, Marwari Catalysts offers a 360-degree support to budding entrepreneurs, empowering them with access to capital, expert guidance on the technical know-how's, and networking opportunities with startup investors, HNIs and industry stalwarts. "We are delighted to be associated with Kumbhat Advisors, as we look forward to playing our part as the Startup Ecosystem Advisor and leverage our expertise on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India to find the next-generation of startups that have the potential to bring large-scale disruptions. The vision of MCats & Kumbhat Advisors combined with the thriving startup environment can only result in great opportunities for the startup ecosystems across borders. We aim to be a global player and our next goal is to activate potential global partners to be part of India's successful startup ecosystem," said, Sushil Sharma, Founder & CEO, Marwari Catalysts. Devesh Rakhecha, Founder & Director, Marwari Catalysts, added, "At Marwari Catalysts, our goal is to create the maximum entrepreneurial value by providing end-to-end support to both startups and investors, thus building India's most founder-friendly and investor-friendly startup eco-system. Through our association with Kumbhat Advisors, one of the leading players in its domain in India, we are confident that we can establish startup investments as a viable and lucrative asset class for established corporate entities and maximize the entrepreneurial value created across the board." Marwari Catalysts' People: We are a closed knit group of professionals and successful startup founders with strong professional and academic credentials. Our team comprises people with collective fundraise of $75mn+, exits of $500mn & rich cumulative professional experience of 500+ years working with world's top corporates. Apart from being a family of 80 Co-founders, the vastly experienced team at Marwari Catalysts include 10+ Startup founders, 15+ Chartered Accountants, 7 IIT Graduates, 5 IIM Graduates, and 300+ Angel Investors. Existing Investors are from US-Silicon Valley, UK, Muscat, Abu-Dhabi, UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan & India. Marwari Catalysts strongly supports the fact that their partnerships with startups are about discovery as well as execution and believes in value creation. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi [India], September 23 (ANI/Oswaal Books): Chemistry is one of the most interesting subjects in the entire science spectrum. Closely related to our day-to-day life, the magic of Chemistry can be witnessed from classroom to real life. However, many students still face exam anxiety for Chemistry. With just a few months left for the Term 1 examinations, you can follow the below mentioned score booster tips to score maximum in the examinations. 1. Creating a winning exam strategy The first step towards securing high marks is creating a winning exam strategy. A winning exam strategy takes into account the syllabus, unit wise weightage, your personal strengths and weaknesses. To create a winning exam strategy, map out the syllabus fully, along with the unit wise weightage and chart out the number of days in which you can comfortably complete the syllabus, including time for revision. Your strategy should incorporate hours of learning, time of learning and leave enough time for revision. The Chemistry syllabus is divided into 3 parts: Physical Chemistry, Organic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry. In Term 1, the maximum weightage is for organic chemistry followed by the other topics. The unit wise weightage is as follows: Haloalkanes and Haloarenes, Alcohols, Phenols and Ethers, Biomolecules have a weightage of 15 marks, followed by Solid State, and Solutions and p-Block Elements which have a weightage of 10 marks each. Students need to identify what are their strengths and weaknesses. If organic chemistry is your weakness, then you need to devote a lot of time to ensure that you prepare for organic chemistry topics well. Almost 15 marks are allotted to organic chemistry and to score well, you need to be conversant with reactions, reagents and formulae. Solid state and solutions require conceptual clarity and p-block elements requires rigorous practice. 2. Syllabus coverage + revision It is important that students not only complete the syllabus but also keep aside enough time for revision. Students should refer to the NCERT books for checking and completing the syllabus. MCQ examinations can be quite comprehensive and test students' understanding from any part of the syllabus. Hence, syllabus completion is a must. Revision of concepts ensures reinforcement. Revision ensures students have enough retention at the time of examination. 3. Know Chapter-wise Topic-wise Weightage & Prepare With MCQ Question Bank Here's the mark weightage for CBSE MCQs Based Chemistry Board Exams For Term 1 2021-22:- Solid State, Solutions Comprises Of 10 Marks; p-Block Elements Comprises Of 10 Marks; Haloalkanes and Haloarenes, Alcohols, Phenols and Ethers, Biomolecules Comprises Of 15 Marks. So overall 12th Chemistry External Term 1 Board Exam for Chemistry Comprised Of 35 Marks. The key to cracking an MCQ examination is rigorous practice. As per the revised assessment guidelines, this time, the entire question paper will be MCQ based. Hence it is essential to not only to have subject knowledge, but also knowledge about how to attempt MCQ questions. MCQs have a number of answering strategies such as elimination, best fit, most probable and so on, and students need to be aware of these strategies. The Best Seller, Chapter-wise Topic-wise Oswaal CBSE MCQs Question Bank Class 12 Chemistry For Term 1 Board Exams 2021-22, provides the largest MCQs question pool for MCQ based Term 1 board examinations. It also contains MCQs based on new typologies introduced by the board such as stand- alone MCQs, MCQs based on assertion-reason and case-based MCQs. It includes revision notes, cognitive exam preparation tools (mind maps, mnemonics to get concept ready), along with video-based hybrid learning edition. It also includes questions from CBSE official question bank released in April 2021, giving students ample opportunities to practice and learn. Here's the recommended link For Oswaal CBSE MCQs Question Bank Class 12 Chemistry For Term 1 Board Exams 2021-22: (https://bit.ly/3u085Iy) 3. Create notes For securing high scores in Chemistry, students need to be fully conversant with reactions, IUPAC naming of compounds, use of reagents. They also need to be familiar with all the name reactions such as Williamson, Wolff-Kishner, Hell-Volhard-Zelinsky, Clemmensen Reduction. Students must also be able to recall with periodic table and know the properties of p-Block, d-Block and f-Block element. To enable them top-of-mind recall for all this, it is important that students take notes and create a handy reference for all reactions, reagents and periodic table summaries. 4. MCQs Questions Likely To Get Reframed From Previous years question papers Solving the previous years' question papers gives students the visibility into most frequently asked questions and the understanding of the relative importance of questions. In MCQs based Chemistry Term 1 Board Exams For Class 12, MCQs questions are likely to get reframed from previous years solved papers, NCERT Questions, NCERT Exemplar. Practicing question papers will help you to track your preparation level, and analyse where you are going wrong. It will also help you to address learning gaps, conceptual misalignments and overall boost up your preparation. 5. Decode The Exam Pattern Solving CBSE sample papers is very important this year as the examination pattern has completely changed. Solving CBSE sample papers will give students the visibility into what is the examination structure, pattern, and marking scheme. Oswaal CBSE MCQs Sample Question Paper Class 12 ChemistryFor Term 1 Board Exams 2021-22 has a veritable universe of all sample papers, featuring around 15 sample papers. Practicing with sample papers from CBSE will enable students to learn, correct and align their learning to a more exam-oriented preparation. It includes cognitive & blended learning exam tools to get concept ready & improve your memorization. Here's the recommended link For CBSE MCQs Sample Question Paper Class 12 Chemistry For Term 1 Board Exams 2021-22: (https://bit.ly/39tMChW) Conclusion The key to getting high scores in Term 1 examination is a mix of discipline, the right resources and the right examination strategy. With the above pointers in mind, anyone can architect a high scoring strategy in the upcoming examinations. This story is provided by Oswaal Books. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Oswaal Books) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], September 23 (ANI/PRNewswire): "India and Poland share a long-standing friendly relationship, marked by high level Government to Government contacts, vibrant economic engagement and traditional cultural links," said Prof. Adam Burakowski, Polish Ambassador to India. He was speaking during his visit to Chandigarh University Gharuan campus. The ambassador met the top officials of Chandigarh University, including Pro-Chancellor Dr. R.S.Bawa, and Vice-Chancellor Dr. H.B.Raghavendra, to explore and discuss the possible areas of collaboration, such as Joint Research between Indian and Polish Universities, Student & Faculty Exchange programs and cultural exchange between the two countries. While delivering his address, Prof. Adam Burakowski said, "Poland is India's largest trade partner in Central Europe. The bilateral trade between India and Poland is currently valued at US USD 2.36 billion and it has grown seven-fold over the last 10 years. Indian investments in Poland are valued at over US$3 billion, which comprises companies such as ArcelorMittal, Videocon, Escorts, Strides Arcolab, Ranbaxy, Essel, Propack, KPIT Cummins, Zensar Technologies Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services, HCL Technologies Ltd, Infosys and Wipro." The ambassador further added that, "There is a sizeable number of Indian diaspora (40,000) in Poland and Indians are contributing big time in the economic development of our country. In addition, the number of Indian students studying in Poland have been growing over the years, and in 2019, 2987 students from various parts of India took admissions in Polish Universities, which is an increase of more than 20%." Dr. Bawa, Pro-Chancellor, said, "Chandigarh University is working on the vision of our Prime Minister, which is Internationalization of Education through tie-ups with top ranked foreign universities so that students can get global exposure." The ambassador visited the Technology Business Incubator and Research facilities of Chandigarh University. While intearcting with the research scholars of university, Prof. Adam Burakowski said, "The quality of research done by students and faculty of Chandigarh University is praise-worthy and we would like that Universities from Poland to jointly work with the university in different areas like Engineering, Management, Science and Technology which can mutually beenfit the students of both the countries." This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], September 23 (ANI/NewsVoir): Technical textiles industry is expected to be the next sunshine industry for India Inc post announcement of production linked incentive schemes by the Government. The industry is expected to see a quantum jump and could reach the size of USD 5 billion in the next 3-5 years. The industry is working in partnership with different Ministries, Research institutions and focuses on Quality, Cost, Economies of Scale to excel in exports by creating economies of scale. The government on September 8 announced an incentive scheme for attracting private investments into the labour-intensive textiles sector including 10 technical textile products. Under the production-linked incentive scheme - the government will offer incentives of around Rs. 7,000 crore to man-made fibres and around Rs. 4,000 crore to technical textiles. "Technical textile is a capital-intensive, high-technology, R & D and Innovation driven industry. The industry is steadily gaining ground in India and we expect a quantum jump in the coming years post the government announcement. This will make Indian Technical Textiles globally competitive by creating economies of scale and ensuring efficiencies. The government has also launched a National Technical Textiles Mission in the past for promoting R & D efforts in the sector. PLI will help further, in attracting investment in this segment," said Shailesh Mehta, Managing Director, Texel Industries Ltd. Government announcement is expected to cover around 10 product categories in the technical textile category. An incentive of 3 percent to 11 percent of the annual incremental revenues' for five years will be provided to existing as well as proposed investments in the sector. Established in 1989, Texel Industries Ltd. is the pioneer of tarpaulins and geomembranes in India. The Company manufacture a wide range of geosynthetic textile products which includes tarpaulins and geomembranes. The company's manufacturing facility is located at Santej, Gandhinagar, Gujarat having an installed capacity of 9,000 MT per annum. The management has successfully turned around the company and was able to rebuild stakeholder confidence with higher sales and profits, resulting in it getting deregistered from BIFR in November 2016. For the quarter ended June 2021 promoter holding stands at 40.77% - a rise of 647 basis points from 34.3% from June 2020. The Company is further investing Rs. 29.92 crore in setting up a 10,080 MT facility for geosynthetics products at Kheda, Gujarat. Company has already deployed Rs. 14.73 crore from internal accruals and borrowings. Post completion of the expansion, installed capacity of the company will double to more than 19,000 MT per annum. Company plans to raise up to Rs. 12.49 crore from the rights issue which is open for subscription from 31 August to September 29. Proceeds of the rights issue will be utilised to fund the proposed expansion in Kheda facility. "The company is further adding six new products to its product mix to include metal wrap, lumber wrap, roof tile underlay, geotextiles, floating pond covers and a product to replace billboard flex. These products will contribute significantly to the growth of not only sales but profits of the company." Geotextiles are going to be widely used in the construction of roadways and other infrastructure in the near future as it reduces initial construction costs and brings down frequent repair and maintenance work. The Ministry of Textiles has also endorsed and advised State Governments to use geotextiles in the construction of roads and highways. "Additionally, the flex currently used on billboards and hoardings is non-recyclable. Texel's innovative product is a 100% recyclable alternative, which will replace the current flex used on hoardings across the country. The floating top cover is a cover for farm ponds and water reservoirs, which prevents 30% loss of water through evaporation. Texel has already installed 100,000 farm ponds across the country to whom this product can prove to be extremely beneficial," said Mehta. The Indian Technical Textile sector has bounced back very strongly post unlock from COVID-19 slump. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], September 23 (ANI/Heylin Spark): You, I & Humm- an anecdotal novel written by Chaithanya and Lavanya is keeping the readers glued through its storyline. Published by Raindrops Publishers on August 27, 2021, the novel is based on modern relations. Ranked at 1256 in India, this novella is racing towards the best seller category. Available both in print and digital format, You, I & Humm has already intrigued book lovers. The story revolves around the protagonists Meera and Arjun, who are in their mid-30s and live life on their terms. Trapped in the rat race and to accomplish something significant in life, these two strangers cross their path frequently. Yet, they remain strangers for quite a while. Are they self-obsessed? Do they enjoy their own company or are they too scared to get closer to each other? Well, the plot is weaved in a manner that describes modern-day love stories. The novel is about the journey of Meera and Arjun who turn into acquaintances from strangers, from acquaintances to friends, and then to lovers. The insecurities that they go through and the way they overcome them make the book, the readers' preferred choice in the fantasy category. Co-authored by two independent women Chaithanya and Lavanya, the story covers different aspects of relations. It's a book that keeps you curious with its storyline yet makes you pause and ponder on the current definition of love and relationship. Chaithanya is an award-winning short movie director who is passionate about stories. She won the People Media Factory (Telugu Film Industry Production Company) short film contest for her Telugu short film called "Nela". Her story "Raagam" was also nominated for SIIMA. She holds a Master's in Information Technology and is a successful corporate professional. She inherited writing from her mother who also was a writer. Lavanya is an unconventional researcher, innovator, and Ph.D. grad from UPV Spain. Writing came as a hobby from her travel stories. She is a backpacker and her stories are inspired by her solo travel experiences in India and Abroad. Their favorite quote from the book is "There is a thin line between loneliness and solitude .... Those who understand how delicious unlonely tastes, they stop looking for unappetizing company." Priced at Rs. 99 (kindle) and INR 225 (paperback), You, I & Humm is a compelling read. It's a book for every individual who believes in love, life, and destiny. Visit (https://www.amazon.in/You-I-Humm-Chaithanya-Lavanya-ebook/dp/B09DVJ7MXQ) to find out more. This story is provided by Heylin Spark. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Heylin Spark) DISCLAIMER (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) PM and President are expected to deliberate on ways to bolster bilateral ties in trade, investment, and defence and security in their in-person talks in Washington. Modi left for the on Wednesday and will return on Sunday. The bilateral talks between Modi and Biden are expected to figure ways to deal with radicalisation and terrorism besides major regional issues. The developments in Afghanistan are also likely to come up during the meeting. The last time Modi visited the was in September 2019, when he and the then US President Donald Trump addressed the Howdy-Modi event in Houston. Well, beside holding bilateral talks with US leaders, the first in-person meeting of leaders on September 24 will be the highlight of Prime Minister Modi's three day trip to the US. What is So, is basically known as the 'Quadrilateral Security Dialogue' (QSD). It is an informal strategic forum comprised of four nations--The United States of America, India, Australia and Japan. In this podcast, we talked about the primary objectives of Quad, how does it work and agenda of the upcoming Quad summit Two Chinese drugmakers have been blacklisted as seriously dishonest by local regulators, one due to corruption and the other over offenses related to the countrys drug bulk-buying program. Yichang Humanwell Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. had engaged in commercial bribery related to four drugs in the central province of Henan, according to a notice published (link in Chinese) on Saturday by the Henan Province Public Resources Trading Center. Hubei province-based Yichang Humanwell mainly engages in the development, production and sales of anesthetics and other active ingredients. The notice offered no precise details of the bribery, other than mentioning it came before a court in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. An employee at the companys parent, Shanghai-listed Humanwell Healthcare Group Co. Ltd. (600079.SH), told Caixin that the bribes were paid by a former employee. The person said the company is actively communicating with the National Healthcare Security Administration to rectify and contain the blacklistings impact. The other company, Beijing Baiao Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., violated its contract under the countrys centralized drug procurement scheme as it had failed to deliver sufficient supply of entecavir, a medication used to treat hepatitis B. Under the bulk-buying initiative that was rolled out nationwide in 2019 to lower medicine prices, a company that has won a supply tender is responsible for delivering a promised quantity at an agreed price. However, according to the notice, Beijing Baiao had repeatedly failed to provide enough entecavir to Henan. It had a low distribution rate in the province and had stopped production and supplies from May to June this year, without alerting the relevant stakeholders. This has seriously affected the order of clinical treatment in the province, the notice stated. The company has not explained the supply issues. It also supplies entecavir to seven other provincial-level regions including Ningxia, Hainan, Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia. It is unclear whether these areas have been affected. The two companies could face penalties such as restriction or suspension of listing their drugs on procurement platforms, as stipulated in a guiding opinion (link in Chinese) released by the National Medical Security Administration in August 2020 targeting violations related to drug procurement in the medical industry. The latest round of scrutiny over the countrys pharmaceutical companies follows a similar incident with major drugmaker North China Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (600812.SH), which became the first company to get booted from the bulk-buying program in August. The Shanghai-listed company, which began delivering ibuprofen sustained release capsules to seven regions in November under a three-year supply contract, had only fulfilled 20% of the agreed order as of Aug. 20. As a result, it was banned from bidding in the bulk purchasing scheme until next May. The company, based in North Chinas Hebei province, said in a statement (link in Chinese) that production of the painkiller was affected by insufficient production capacity, lack of prioritization from its responsible units and Covid-19 related work suspensions. In January, its home city of Shijiazhuang faced an outbreak of the disease, leading to a strict lockdown that affected production between Jan. 6 to March 8. Contact reporter Kelsey Cheng (kelseycheng@caixin.com) and editor Joshua Dummer (joshuadummer@caixin.com) Download our app to receive breaking news alerts and read the news on the go. Get our weekly free Must-Read newsletter. Here is todays ranking of the 10 most-read news stories in China, in economics, finance and current affairs, to help give you a sense of whats trending in the Chinese language sphere. Chinese social media users have been paying close attention to Nobel laureate Yang Chen-ning turning 100 years old. They are also following embattled Luckins Tuesday statement that it has offered $187.5 million to settle all claims in a U.S. securities class action lawsuit. 1. Alipays Huabei integrated into central banks credit reporting system Alipays consumer credit platform Huabei (external source, in Chinese) said Wednesday that it will be integrated into the central banks credit reporting system. 2. Luckin offers millions to settle lawsuit Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee Inc. said Tuesday that it has offered $187.5 million to settle all claims in a U.S. securities class action lawsuit filed last year over its accounting fraud. 3. President Xi Jinping sends birthday wishes to physicist Yang Chen-ning who turns 100 Chinese President Xi Jinping sent birthday greetings (external source) to renowned physicist Yang Chen-ning on his 100th birthday Wednesday, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency. Yang was born in 1922 in the eastern province of Anhui and, together with a colleague, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. Photo: tsinghua.org.cn 4. China to commemorate 50th anniversary of restoration of its lawful seat in U.N. This year 2021 is a truly remarkable one for the Chinese people, as it marks the centenary of the Communist Party of China and the 50th anniversary of the restoration of Chinas lawful seat (external source) in the United Nations, President Xi Jinping said Tuesday during a virtual address to the U.N. General Assembly, adding that China will solemnly commemorate the latter historic event. 5. U.S. death toll from Covid-19 exceeds that of 1918 flu pandemic In the U.S., the number of deaths from Covid-19 exceeded the estimated death toll of 675,000 from influenza during the 1918 pandemic, local media reported. The countrys population is more than three times larger now. The coronavirus had killed more than 678,000 Americans (external source) as of Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 6. U.S. patient zero of Covid-19 probably appeared between August and October 2019, paper says Chinese university researchers claimed in a paper posted on ChinaXiv, a pre-publishing platform hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, that the first case of Covid-19 infection (external source) could have emerged between August and October in 2019, which is earlier than the officially announced date of the first confirmed case in the U.S. on Jan. 20, 2020. 7. U.S. to relax travel restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers from 33 countries The White House said Monday that starting November, it will grant entry to fully vaccinated travelers (external source, in Chinese) from 33 countries including 26 European Schengen Area states and seven additional countries including China, the U.K., Ireland, South Africa, Iran and India. 8. Envoys from China, Russia and Pakistan on joint visit to Afghanistan Special envoys on Afghan affairs from China, Russia and Pakistan visited Kabul early this week (external source) and held discussions on recent developments in the country with their local counterparts, including acting Prime Minister Mohammad Hasan Akhund, acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, and acting Finance Minister Hidayatullah Badri, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. 9. Local Covid-19 outbreak in East China province could be contained in a month, expert says Zhang Boli, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in an interview with Chinese media that he believed the Covid-19 outbreak in East Chinas Fujian province could be contained in about a month (external source, in Chinese). But he also warned it is still possible that the outbreak could spread to other regions in the short term. 10. Chinese biopharmaceutical firm develops Covid vaccine against multiple variants Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Clover Biopharma released clinical results of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate called SCB-2019, showing 79% efficacy against delta variant, 92% against gamma variant, and 59% against mu variant, according to Peoples Daily (external source, in Chinese). Translated by reporters Wang Xintong and Lu Zhenhua Caixin has not independently verified the veracity or accuracy of all of the headlines or stories. The daily ranking of most-read news stories among Chinese people, about China and global affairs, is jointly provided to you by Caixin Insight and HANA Data, an artificial intelligence technology team. The key indicators calculated on the list are based on mass data sourced from Chinas mainstream social media platforms and online news websites. Click here for a detailed introduction of our methodology. Travelers crowded Chinas transportation hubs as the weeklong National Day holiday came to an end Thursday. Railway stations and highways were packed with passengers and vehicles as people headed home. This year, rains and snow in some parts of the country have also caused train delays and road traffic Oct 07, 2021 05:35 PM When Louis first suggested I come to work with the team on Iron Man, I never could have imagined the adventure ahead, and as far as Im concerned, it has only just begun! We have an absolutely incredible group of people who are bringing their many talents to the exciting slate of films and series we have on the horizon, and Im especially thrilled about ramping up our studios animation efforts, which is a personal passion of mine. Look forward to more singing! August saw the Disney+ release of What If?, the first animated series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It was released by Marvel Studios, not Marvel Animation, the unit that had produced animated series and films in the past. After a stint at vfx studio Digital Domain, Alonso joined Marvel Studios in 2006 as executive vp of visual effects and post-production. She co-produced the early films in the MCU, starting with 2008s Iron Man, before being bumped up to executive producer on 2012s The Avengers. She has retained that title on all subsequent MCU releases. In 2016, Cartoon Brew spoke to Alonso about her role at the studio. Im involved from the very beginning to the very end, she said. We are there prevising the show and doing visual development on shows, sometimes a year before a director comes on board. And I am the one that sees the final frame of every shot of every format. A native of Buenos Aires, Alonso is unusual among senior executives in the industry in being a woman of color. She is a vocal advocate of diversity onscreen and behind the scenes, and has twice made People en Espanols list of most influential hispanic women. Other accolades include a Visual Effects Society (VES) award for her vfx work on Kingdom of Heaven, a VES Visionary Award for storytelling through visual effects, and an Emmy nomination for producing Marvels Wandavision. Photo: Contributed My last report to you as your Member of Parliament was Aug. 12. While that was just six weeks ago it is remarkable what has happened in that time. Locally we have witnessed unprecedented wildfire activity, both here in the Okanagan, as well as across British Columbia. Smoke and even ash filled our valley bottoms in ways not previously experienced. Internationally we witnessed the Taliban take over Afghanistan, leaving many citizens, who had helped Canadians, behind. Vaccine passports are now in use in British Columbia and in other parts of Canada, while our intensive care unit beds are fast filling up with residents infected with Covid-19 as the Delta variant spreads in this fourth wave of the pandemic. Despite all of these things going on, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also decided it would be a good time to call an election in his quest for a majority government. As we now know, six weeks and $610 million later, Trudeaus gamble for a majority was unsuccessful. On that note, I would like to sincerely thank the many residents of the Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola riding for their vote and support in this pandemic election. I would also like to thank the other candidates, as well as the many volunteers who help run our campaigns and do their part for our Canadian democracy. While the election at the federal level was described as being very divisive and even angry, at the local level our online debates were always civil and constructive. Where do we go from here? Parliament will need to be recalled, a new Speaker elected and a new Throne speech delivered. The Throne speech will be of particular interest given that this new Parliament will be a strong minority in favour of the Liberal government. A strong minority means the Liberals only need the support of one of the opposition parties to pass legislation, while all three of the opposition parties would need to be untied to oppose government legislation they did not support. This is fundamentally the same situation that existed in the previous Parliament. It means that the upcoming throne speech only needs to accommodate the interests of one opposition party, although there is nothing preventing the prime minister from offering up potential legislation that may be supported by the other parties. At this point we do not have a date when the prime minister intends to recall Parliament. My question this week: Are you satisfied with the results of this pandemic election? I can be reached at [email protected] or call toll free 1-800-665-8711 Photo: The Canadian Press Alberta Premier Jason Kenney gives a COVID-19 update in Edmonton, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has faced down a restive and divided United Conservative Party caucus, focusing on COVID-19 while managing to avoid a straw vote on his leadership. Kenney has been challenged by some of his legislature members for some of his decisions on COVID, which has escalated into a crisis that has overwhelmed the provincial health system and forced Alberta to seek outside help. UCP backbencher Searle Turton says it was a wide-ranging caucus meeting, but there was no vote of confidence on Kenneys leadership. He says the focus of the debate was about the pandemic. Some of Kenneys caucus members have criticized his health measures as being too little too late, while others say he has gone too far and violated individual rights by imposing a form of voluntary vaccine passports. The partys vice-president of policy has already called for Kenney to resign and says enough constituency associations have signed on to force an early party review and vote on Kenneys leadership. Photo: pixabay Canadians looking to travel abroad next year should consider that vaccination requirements for countries may change significantly. Many countries around the world now allow fully vaccinated Canadians to skip quarantine but some are entertaining the idea of implementing an expiration date on when travellers received their vaccines. Two popular European vacation destinations have already changed their travel requirements: Austria and Croatia. Now, Canadians looking to visit either destination must have received their first dose of an approved coronavirus vaccine no more than 270 days or nine months prior to their trip. A booster shot may allow some travellers to enter countries that implement the rule, however. A booster shot is an extra administration of a vaccine after an earlier dose. In other words, travellers who don't meet the requirement as their first dose falls outside of the 270-day expiration date may receive an extra dose to gain entry. For now, B.C.'s top doctor says some immunocompromised British Columbians will be prioritized for a third coronavirus vaccine dose this fall. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry told reporters on Sept. 13 that a third dose of vaccine is recommended for people who are severely immunocompromised. Data shows that people who have certain immune compromising conditions may not necessarily develop a response after two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Health officials haven't provided an update on when or if B.C. residents who are not immunocompromised may receive a booster shot but Henry added that a third dose "would increase our response and prolong our response." But even if B.C. residents receive booster shots, the timing may complicate matters. For example, the Government of Austria states that booster doses must be received "at least 120 days after the second inoculation (or single inoculation with J&J/Janssen) to extend the validity." No matter where you plan to travel, make sure you check the Travel Advice and Advisories page for your destination twice: once when you are planning your trip, and again shortly before you leave. Photo: Twitter/The Nobel Prize The Nobel Prize ceremonies will be reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, the foundation behind the coveted prizes said Thursday. The winners of this year's prizes in chemistry, literature, physics, medicine and economics, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, are set to be announced between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. It is now also clear that this years Nobel festivities in December when the laureates are honoured in Stockholm and Oslo will be a mixture of digital and physical events, the Nobel Foundation said. The laureates will receive their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries, the foundation said. It said the presentation events will be woven together with an awards ceremony at Stockholm City Hall on Dec. 10, which is the anniversary of the death of prize founder Albert Nobel. The peace prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, because Nobel wanted it that way for reasons he kept to himself. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is keeping open the possibility of welcoming the Nobel Peace Prize winner or winners to Oslo, the foundation said. The committee plans to announce the format of its festivities in mid-October. I think everybody would like the COVID-19 pandemic to be over, but we are not there yet, Nobel Foundation Executive Director Vidar Helgesen said in a statement. Uncertainty about the course of the pandemic and international travel possibilities is the reason why the 2021 laureates will receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries. Helgesen said the foundation is looking forward to reaching even more people around the world by using new formats and digital solutions. It is clear that in Stockholm and Sweden, there will be less attention around the award ceremony and banquet, but globally we try to arrange a really nice celebration of the award winners, he was quoted as saying by Swedish news agency TT. The pandemic curtailed the celebrations to honor the 12 laureates named in 2020. No formal banquet was held to honor the winners. Instead, their achievements were recognized and rewarded at low-key ceremonies in Europe and the United States. Looking at last years events, some of the digital production gained greater global reach than we have seen before, Helgensen told TT. A Nobel Prize comes with a 10-milion krona ($1.15 million) cash award to be shared in some cases diplomas and gold medals. The six awards are handed out by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Academy and the Norwegian Nobel Committee. On the surface, the principles of majority rule and the protection of individual and minority rights would seem contradictory. In fact, however, these principles are twin pillars holding up the very foundation of what we mean by democratic government. Majority rule is a means for organizing government and deciding public issues; it is not another road to oppression. Just as no self-appointed group has the right to oppress others, so no majority, even in a democracy, should take away the basic rights and freedoms of a minority group or individual. Minorities -- whether as a result of ethnic background, religious belief, geographic location, income level, or simply as the losers in elections or political debate -- enjoy guaranteed basic human rights that no government, and no majority, elected or not, should remove. Minorities need to trust that the government will protect their rights and self-identity. Once this is accomplished, such groups can participate in, and contribute to their country's democratic institutions. Among the basic human rights that any democratic government must protect are freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion and belief; due process and equal protection under the law; and freedom to organize, speak out, dissent, and participate fully in the public life of their society. Democracies understand that protecting the rights of minorities to uphold cultural identity, social practices, individual consciences, and religious activities is one of their primary tasks. Acceptance of ethnic and cultural groups that seem strange if not alien to the majority can represent one of the greatest challenges that any democratic government can face. But democracies recognize that diversity can be an enormous asset. They treat these differences in identity, culture, and values as a challenge that can strengthen and enrich them, not as a threat. There can be no single answer to how minority-group differences in views and values are resolved -- only the sure knowledge that only through the democratic process of tolerance, debate, and willingness to compromise can free societies reach agreements that embrace the twin pillars of majority rule and minority rights. Out of all the vaccines I have taken in my life, for Tetanus, rubella, measles, mumps, polio hepititis, and TB, I: Have never been coerced by a government in an attempt to have me comply Never before saw so much confusion over a vaccine that says I have to wear a mask, and socially distance even when fully vaccinated Have never had a vaccine where post injection data was obtained on an impromptu basis where it should have been discovered in trial stage Could still contract or spread the virus even when fully vaccinated Never had to have a double shot and have never been bribed by establishments to take the vaccine in order to win a car, cash, or other prizes Never thought I would live in a segregated country because of my freedom of choice Was never judged if I didnt take it Was never discriminated against for travel or other regular services With the vaccines I listed above it was never suggested I was a selfish person for not taking them. I have never seen a vaccine that threatened the relationship between a family member or a close friend. I have never seen it used for political gain and have never seen it used to persuade kids in favour of free ice cream (UK). I have never seen a vaccine threaten someones livelihood, job, school, etc. and I have never seen a vaccine that allows a 12-year-olds consent supersede his or her parents consent. So after all I have said, can someone tell me how I am a conspiracy theorist, uneducated and non-researched because I am not willing to take this vaccine. Finally, after all the vaccines (shots) I listed above, I have never seen a vaccine like this one that discriminates, divides, and judges a society such as this one. So much information is censored, deleted and removed from the internet due to non-conformation to mainstream media narrative. So many accredited doctors and scientists are censored and forbidden to speak, out or ask legitimate questions, which is the cornerstone scientific debate. Are we all not equal? Or is it that some are more equal than others? RH Thompson Photo: Glacier Media The Port of Vancouver smashed cargo records for the first half of 2021 with overall cargo volumes through Canadas largest port hitting a record high of 76.4 million tonnes. That is up 7% from 2020 mid-year and 5% above 2019s previous record. Vancouver Fraser Port Authority president Robin Silvester said record grain volumes in the first half of the year demonstrate the continued growth in the global demand for Canadian agricultural products. Silvester said he expected the surge after the slowdown early in the pandemic would have slowed by now. It really has just kept on going, he said. Over many years, we have worked with partners to support the growth of the agricultural sector, and over the last decade there has been a very significant amount of investment in the port and the surrounding gateway by grain terminals, governments, railways, port customers and the port authority, with much of that investment." Sectors experiencing strong growth included grain and containers, both hitting record highs in 2021. Strong foreign demand for Canadian grain products resulted in record mid-year volumes of bulk grain, up 20% to 16.5 MMT compared with mid-year 2020 and up 35% from 2019. Total foreign tonnage and foreign exports resulted in 60.3 MMT and 52.0 MMT, up 4%, respectively, compared with mid-year 2020 volumes, due to strong increases in grain and coal shipments. Metallurgical coal increased 11%; thermal coal remained flat. In fertilizers, potash exports increased by 0.3% from last year and sulphur decreased by 20%. Container quantities (measured by TEUs or 20-foot equivalent units) in 2021s first half increased by 24% compared with mid-year 2020 to a record 1.9 million TEUs, 15% above the previous 2019 record set in 2019. The port attributed that rise to the strengthening economy and the continued growth in global demand for Canadian products shipped in containers, and increased Canadian demand for Asian consumer and manufacturing goods. However, the port has also seen a 115.3% increase in the number of empty containers leaving the port. Thats compared to an 81.7% drop in inbound TEUs. Silvester said with holidays not an option during the pandemic, people have been spending on other goods, thus creating consumer demand for goods. I'm again amazed by headlines of labour shortages causing businesses much distress. What exists is a shortage of businesses offering a satisfactory compensation and work environment. The only power that employees have, especially those in the lower echelons of the economic ladder, is the demand for employees that is greater than the supply. Govt usually implements policies catering to employers to continue offering cheap labour. If there exists a labour supply shortage of 5% per se in a specific sector, government policies tend fill this gap without employers raising wages, then 100% of the employees are adversely affected. The use of temporary foreign workers in agriculture is a prime example. Those of the political stripe know that a majority of the 40% of the electorate that never votes are in the low income demographic, and therefore cater to higher income individuals who do vote. I believe that there are too many restaurants in existence today, and they do not all deserve to exist due only to the continued use of modern day slave labour. Ironically, let supply and demand free market doctrine rule the day for employees, just like Conservatives themselves espouse. Rob Hopkins, Osoyoos California Department of Education News Release California Department of Education News Release State Superintendent Thurmond Names Betty Reid Soskin Newest California Education Ambassador SACRAMENTOState Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond proudly recognized Betty Reid Soskin, a pioneering Bay Area civil rights activist and the oldest living National Park Ranger serving in the United States, as an Ambassador to California Education on her 100th birthday. Soskin was honored Wednesday with the distinction during a renaming ceremony of the formerly named Crespi Middle School in the West Contra Costa Unified School District that now bears her name, Betty Reid Soskin Middle School. Soskin joins distinguished Education Ambassadors Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Dolores Huerta , and Dr. Karen Korematsu for demonstrating outstanding dedication and contributions to support the education of Californias students. We all have personal experience with overcoming adversity, and I am grateful to have role models like Betty Reid Soskin to inspire us along the way, Thurmond said. She lived through times that many of us have only read about and then tried to comprehend. She is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and a treasure to this community. Ms. Soskin is living proof that your journey, no matter how challenging it has been so far, is just beginning. The future holds incredible opportunities. Always remember that. An East Bay-based civil rights activist, musician, pioneering businesswoman, and park ranger at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Soskin has also become a leading spokesperson for the diverse experiences of domestic war-effort workers during World War II. Born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit, Michigan, Soskins family relocated to Oakland in 1927, joining thousands of Black families who moved west during what came to be called the Great Migration. In 1945, she founded Reids Records in Berkeley, one of the first Black-owned record stores in the Bay Area. As a lifelong musician and accomplished songwriter, Soskin penned Your Hand in Mine in 1964 after being inspired by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. During the 1960s, Soskin marched with and fundraised for the Black Panthers. Soskin officially joined the National Park Service as a ranger in 2004 after attending a presentation on the development of Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, where she continues to conduct park tours and serves as an interpreter, explaining the park's purpose, history, various sites, and museum collections to park visitors. She was presented with a presidential commemorative coin by President Barack Obama at the National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in 2015 as well as being honored with an entry into the Congressional Record, the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. # # # # Tony Thurmond State Superintendent of Public Instruction Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100 Last Reviewed: Wednesday, September 29, 2021 Peru's cement market expands 18% in August ICR Newsroom By 23 September 2021 Cement dispatches in Peru advanced 18 per cent to 1.202Mt in August 2021 when compared with 1.018Mt in August 2020, according to Asocem, the countrys cement association. When compared with July 2021, dispatches increased by six per cent. Asocem members dispatched 1.112Mt, up 19 per cent YoY and six per cent MoM. Output from Asocem member companies increased 15 per cent to 1.126Mt from 0.977Mt in the year-ago period and by six per cent when compared with July 2021. Of this total, 18,500t of cement were exported, up 65 per cent YoY and two per cent MoM. In addition, 123,500t of clinker were exported, representing an 87 per cent surge MoM and up from 15,600t in August 2020. To supplement domestic production, 62,700t of cement were imported in August 2021, representing a 30 per cent drop YoY. Of the total, 90 per cent was exported from Vietnam. Furthermore, 70,600t of clinker was imported in August 2021 54 per cent from South Korea and 46 per cent from Ecuador. January-August 2021 In the first eight months of 2021 total dispatches saw a 46 per cent YoY hike to 13.31Mt from 9.14Mt in the 8M20. Output by Asocem-associated cement producers was up 47 per cent YoY to 12.56Mt from 8.54Mt in the equivalent period of 2020. Market supply was improved by the import of 614,000t of cement (8M20: 398,000t) and 1.115Mt of clinker (8M20: 225,000t). Cement exports advanced 37.5 per cent to 121,000t in the 8M21, from 88,000t in the 8M20, while clinker exports surged to 503,000t from 119,000t over the same period. Published under Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee Department of Education on Wednesday shared data around the states more than $160 million investment in academic summer camps to address learning loss and accelerate achievement for Tennessee students. Tennessee has led the nation in getting students back in the classroom and swiftly addressing learning loss, said Governor Lee. As we continue to prioritize our students, Im encouraged to share positive outcomes of priorities established in our historic special session. I am hopeful for our state and thank the legislature for their partnership to turn the tide for Tennessee students. Throughout the pandemic, Tennessee has led the nation in providing academic supports for students. In January 2021, Governor Lee convened the Tennessee General Assembly for a special legislative session to pass policies to mitigate COVID-19 disruptions and support Tennessee students. This past summer, Tennessee school districts launched rich academic programs and thoughtfully prioritized student and family engagement to help their students get extra learning time and recover from a very tough school year. In doing so, they built tremendous momentum for students and staff heading into a brand new and still very tough school year, said Commissioner Penny Schwinn. There is a lot of work that lies ahead, but after seeing what Tennessee accomplished this summer for its students, I believe our public schools are proving whats possible. Interventions for Summer Learning The Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act passed in special session provided funding to local school districts for K-8 academic summer camps across the state. New data from summer camps will further inform how the state, schools, teachers and families can support student success. Results Include: Strong Student Participation This summer, both summer learning camps and after school STREAM camps had higher attendance in elementary grades compared to middle school grades. Overall, more than 120,000 Tennessee students enrolled in summer programming across the state. English and Language Arts: Overall, data showed an improvement of 5.97 percentage points Elementary grades saw an improvement of 7.34 percentage points Middle school grades saw an improvement of 0.66 percentage points Math: Overall, data showed an improvement of 10.49 percentage points Elementary grades saw an improvement of 11.66 percentage points Middle school grades saw an improvement of 6 percentage points Details for the departments presentation to the Tennessee General Assembly on Wednesday can be found here. Police spoke with the LP manager at Home Depot, 1944 Northpoint Blvd. She said a white male came into the store with a backpack on his shoulder. She said he concealed items in the bag and then fled out the door. She followed the man as he ran towards Northpoint Boulevard and Highway 153. The man was dropped off in a 2005 White Toyota with a TN tag. After he ran off, the Toyota went in the direction he did to pick him up. This is the same man that stole from the store in the past, she said. In the last shoplifting, the same man got into a Red Honda with a TN tag. Police had officers go by the address that the vehicle was registered to, but the vehicle was not there. * * * A woman on 6th Avenue Court told police that sometime between noon the day before and 6 a.m. that morning someone entered her unlocked 2005 Chrysler 300 and stole her matching Michael Kors purse and wallet. She said it also held her state issued ID. She said there was nothing else in her purse. * * * A woman told police she put eight envelopes addressed to various places in the mail receptacle at her apartment complex on Pineville Road. She said the apartment management just recently told her that the receptacle had been "crow bar opened." She said that a man had stolen her checks, put his name on them and deposited them to his Chase bank account by a mobile app. She said SunTrust Bank gave her his name and the fact that the checks were deposited electronically. She said SunTrust told her they will not be putting the money back into her account until they conduct their investigation. She said it was checks totaling $907.34. * * * A woman on E. 13th Street told police that her 2001 Mazda MZ3 was stolen from in front of her residence overnight. There is no suspect information and the vehicle was entered into NCIC. It was later discovered the vehicle was crashed in the East Ridge tunnels, where no driver or passengers were discovered at the wreck. While trying to complete the recovery report, it was discovered that ERPD hadn't removed the vehicle from NCIC as of the call being sent to CPD. Dispatch transferred the call back to ERPD, and once the vehicle is cleared from NCIC and the owner is notified, the call will be transferred back to CPD to do the recovery. ERPD recovered the vehicle at 3000 Ringgold Road after it was involved in the crash. ERPD report was generated. Vehicle was towed by Broomes Wrecker Service and the owner was notified. Vehicle was removed from NCIC. * * * Police discovered a woman sitting on the sidewalk at 2010 McCallie Ave. Police asked her if she was okay and she asked for a ride to the Community Kitchen. * * * A woman on Northpoint Boulevard told police that morning she got an email from who she thought was a vendor, an employee with Hayes Shutters, saying that they will start charging three percent for using a credit card to pay. She said she then got another email from the same person saying to wire payment via ACH. She said she sent the emails back to Hayes Shutters, then called the employee. She said the employee told her she did not send those emails and did not receive any emails she had sent her. The woman felt like she was being led to give banking information to an unknown person who was sending fraudulent emails to her. She said she has not sent any information or wired any money. She said she wants a report made of this incident. Police suggested she have her computers checked for spyware and to have Hayes Shutters do the same. * * * A man contacted police about a property on English Avenue. He said he works for the real estate company that owns this property. He said that he did not want any homeless people on the property, and he keeps putting up no trespassing signs. He said he understands that it has been an issue in the past because police have not been able to get in touch with the property owner. The man explicitly stated that he does not want anyone on the property. * * * A woman on Arrowhead Trail called for police. Police found her sitting on her porch and she said she had a verbal argument with her son inside her home. After the verbal argument began to escalate, she said she told her son that she was going to call the police on him, which caused him to leave the residence. Police asked if there was any physical harm that took place, and she stated no. * * * A caller reported a suspicious van on May Street. Police found the van was unoccupied and the tag was confirmed stolen. While on scene, a woman walked up stating that the van was hers. She said that she bought the van on Tuesday and provided the title and bill of sale. She said that the TVA tag was already on the van when she bought it from two Hispanic males. The tag was removed from NCIC as stolen and taken to CPD Property Division. * * * A man on N. Germantown Road called police and said he wanted to document an incident in case his friend calls in telling another story. He said he was driving his friend around and they got into a verbal disorder. He said when they pulled up to a stop, she got out of the vehicle and threw a Gatorade at the car and the Gatorade got all over the vehicle. After this, he said left the scene and called the police. * * * A woman told police that while driving on Highway 27, a rock flew up and hit her windshield, causing a large amount of damage. Police observed significant damage to her windshield. She said she needed a report for insurance. * * * A shell casing was reported near the dumpster behind Nothing Bundt Cakes, 2321 Lifestyle Way. Police collected the casing and turned into CPD Property for processing. * * * The owner of the coin laundromat at 6901 Lee Hwy. told police a black male was causing a disorder in her business and she wanted him trespassed. Police found and identified the man and informed him that he was trespassed and would have to leave the property. The man left the property. * * * A man on S. Kelley Street told police that two or three weeks ago his wallet, which held his work permit, was stolen out of his cousin's 2018 Mustang. He said a report was not made at that time. He said he needs a report in order to get a replacement for his work permit. * * * A shoplifting was reported at the Walmart, 3550 Cummings Hwy. Police were already in the Walmart parking lot when they were dispatched to the theft that occurred at that same Walmart. The suspect was seen in the parking lot driving away. Officers checked the area and did not locate him. Police spoke to the loss prevention employee for Walmart. She said that a skinny white male with curly brown hair was observed stealing. She said he left the store, passing all points of sale without offering payment. The item taken was an ONN Groove Bluetooth speaker, valued at $35. The man was not located and there is no other information regarding leads, witnesses or the man's identity. * * * A manager of Chattanooga Roofing Contractors, 2539 McCallie Ave., told police that an employee that had been fired the prior week was picking up his final paycheck, and after receiving his check, the former employee would not leave and he had to "get loud with him" so that he would leave. Police were not able to locate the former employee and the manager did not have enough information to positively identify him. * * * An employee of the Chattanooga Rescue Mission, 1512 S Holtzclaw Ave., told police that a man was not listening to him and he wanted him removed. Police spoke to the man, who said that people were going to eat and so he followed suit. The employee said that when he saw the man going to eat, he stopped him, due to the fact that too many people were in the cafeteria. When police observed the man eating in the cafeteria, there seemed to be plenty of room, however, due to the caller being the employee, police walked the man outside and informed him that the employee said he could come back in a week or so. * * * A man on Jackson Street told police he was mowing his mother's lawn when she called him, saying that someone was in his truck. He said the person left with a bag containing his checkbook, a few tools and various other items. He had not completed an inventory of his vehicle. The said the thief was a young black male, approximately 16, wearing gray shorts and a gray t-shirt. He said he left the area going west on Walker Avenue towards N. Orchard Knob. Police were not able to locate the man. * * * A suspicious man was reported at Aldi's, 5706 Lee Hwy. Police found a man who was sitting in his vehicle at the Aldi's. Police were told the man had gotten out of his car and was urinating in the parking lot. Police told the man he needed to leave the property and was not to return per Aldi's request. Police checked the man for warrants and released him. * * * A woman told police that someone stole her Bluetooth speaker which she had sat down outside, near the main entrance of the Salvation Army, 800 McCallie Ave. She said she walked down to the road to dance and upon coming back she realized someone stole the speaker and turned it off. The incident occurred between the hours of 11-11:25 a.m. Police notified Salvation Army employees about the matter and they said they would check CCTV footage of the theft. There is no suspect information. The value of the Bluetooth speaker is approximately $100. During my 34-year legal career, I have had the privilege to practice and to appear before Chattanooga City Council and before Chattanooga City Court Judge Sherry Paty, who has served on the bench for 17 years. Over the years, I have watched our City Council consistently demonstrate both strong leadership and a sincere focus on doing what is best for our city. Accordingly, I trust ... (click for more) JLL Capital Markets announced Thursday that it has closed the $1.7 million sale of a new, 2,500-square-foot, single-tenant retail building ground leased to Del Taco at Fort Oglethorpe."Del Taco is a rapidly expanding national operator and franchisor of restaurants featuring Mexican-inspired foods and American classic dishes," officials said. "Completed in 2020, the Fort Oglethorpe Del Taco is the most visited Del Taco location in the state of Georgia."The Del Taco building is situated on .81 acres at 564 Battlefield Parkway in Fort Oglethorpe.The property is adjacent to the citys busiest intersection and visible to about 50,600 vehicles per day. It is also positioned on the going home side of Battlefield Parkway and along a major retail corridor and surrounded by more than 100,000 residents within a five-mile radius, it was stated.The JLL Capital Markets Investment Sales Advisory team representing the seller was led by Director Michael Brewster, Senior Managing Director Brad Peterson and Analyst Wyatt Andrews.Every net-lease transaction strikes a balance of yield versus tenant credit, Mr. Brewster said. The market created for this Del Taco signals the power of having a strong, hands-on local operator with transparency into financials. The Conservation Fund, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency have announced the protection of 11,723 acres of ecologically important forestland, completing a multi-year effort to conserve more than 14,700 acres in the Cumberland Plateau. Located adjacent to the states Skinner Mountain Wildlife Management Area (WMA), the newly conserved property will remain privately owned and sustainably managed for timber production while preserving biodiverse habitat and allowing public access for hunting, hiking, and other recreational activities.A priority for conservation because of its ecological and economic importance, this dramatic landscape of gorges, cliffs and waterfalls near the East Fork Obey River provides significant habitat for a variety of endangered and threatened species of mussels, migratory songbirds and plants.More than 50 caves are now fully conserved as part of this conservation effort, including the fifth longest cave in the state. These caves provide critical winter habitat for the most endangered mammal in the statethe Indiana batand six additional species of concern.The Conservation Funda nonprofit organization dedicated to providing conservation solutions that deliver both economic and environmental benefitspurchased 14,770 acres, including this property, in 2017 through its Working Forest Fund as an initial step to protect it from development and conversion to non-forest uses. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency acquired 3,041 acres in 2019 and added them to Skinner Mountain WMA. This week, the remaining 11,723 acres have been permanently protected with conservation easements, which limit development, provide public access as part of Skinner Mountain WMA, and permit sustainable timber harvesting under private ownership.This project completes a three-phase effort to conserve wildlife and expand public access for outdoor recreation, said State Forester David Arnold. Protecting environmentally important, working private forestlands threatened with conversion to non-forest uses while enhancing forest benefits such as wildlife habitat, clean water, and timber products through active forest management demonstrates a commitment to conservation by all involved.Being able to conserve and protect the number of aquatic and terrestrial species that exist in this area is a big deal in itself, said Bobby Wilson, TWRA executive director. But being able to allow the continued harvest of timber as well as allowing access to hunters, fishermen, and wildlife watchers makes it even more special.The significance of this conservation effort was nationally recognized when it was ranked third in Fiscal Year 2019 by the U.S. Forest Service and awarded $5.6 million from the Forest Legacy Program through the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund enabling, in part, the states purchase of the conservation easements.The Forest Service is pleased to collaborate with state and nonprofit partners to deliver the Forest Legacy Program in Tennessee and conserve places like Skinner Mountain WMA for future generations to enjoy. The process of applying for, being selected, receiving funding, and conducting due diligence can take several years and requires a high degree of commitment from partners and landowners. We applaud the amount of work that goes into making this happen, said Ken Arney, regional forester.Conservation works best when it provides positive outcomes for both nature and communities. Here in the Cumberland Plateau, working together with the state, we were able to strike a successful balance between securing ecologically sensitive forestland and continued private management that supports the states timber industry, more than 100 jobs and the local economy, said Ralph Knoll, The Conservation Funds Tennessee state director. We are grateful to our partners at the U.S. Forest Service and funding from the LWCF that have once again helped protect a critical working forest landscape so it can continue to provide important climate, economic and ecological benefits.Tennessees U.S. Congressional delegation representing Fentress and Overton countiesU.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty, and U.S. Representative John W. Rosesupported the use of federal LWCF funding for this project.Additional support for the completion of this conservation effort at Skinner Mountain was provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation; the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through both Walmarts Acres for America Program and through the Cumberland Plateau Stewardship Fund, with funding from International Papers Forestland Stewards Partnership and Altria Group; the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee; and U-Haul. The Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy will annually monitor the property to ensure the terms of the easements are met.Skinner Mountain represents some of the most important wildlife habitat in Tennessee for a significant number of species, in addition to including important forestlands that support local jobs and communities, said Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is proud that two of our partnerships were able to support this amazing project, and we know that Skinner Mountain will be treasured by future generations of visitors.U-Haul Company proudly partners with The Conservation Fund to create lasting, positive environmental impacts in communities across America such as this one at Skinner Mountain, said John JT Taylor, president, U-Haul International. Since 2007, U-Haul and more than 2.5 million customers have generously donated to The Fund, demonstrating shared values in protecting our forests and preserving our environment for future generations. U-Haul is grateful for our customers continued support and to The Fund for their exceptional ongoing stewardship of those donations in the communities where we live, work and play.Working forests are often the lifeblood of local economies supporting jobs and local mills, while sustaining vulnerable wildlife and giving us opportunities to experience the natural beauty of places like the Cumberland Plateau, added Mr. Knoll. Were grateful for the Richard King Mellon Foundation, which provided a generous loan to enable our initial purchase of Skinner Mountain Forest and a grant to implement the conservation easements. The foundation continues to be a national leader and advocate for the protection of environmentally sensitive areas through the financing of land acquisition. Cleveland State Community College has added an individual to the Advancement team that has years of experience supporting and leading the Bradley County community. Lee McChesney started his role as the director of Development in August of this year. In his role, he will provide leadership for developing and implementing fundraising programs, including major gifts and planned giving. Mr. McChesneys background stems from holding many leadership positions with the YMCA. He has held several titles with the YMCA from program director, to district vice president, and executive director. In his role, Mr. McChesney has raised and managed millions of dollars for the company, while implementing strategies for local marketing, community relations and partnerships with local businesses. Lee McChesney has served families in the community for many years as a leader in the YMCA organization, and we are excited to bring him to Cleveland State Community College as the director of Development, stated John Squires, executive director of Advancement and Planning at CSCC. Lee's experience and knowledge will make him an asset to the college as it continues to offer high-quality education and training programs, impacting lives throughout the region. Mr. McChesney graduated from Emory and Henry College in Emory, Va. with a bachelors in health and physical education. Over the years, hes grown active within the community, being a member of the Cleveland Rotary Club and Cleveland Bradley Chamber of Commerce Board. In his free time, he volunteers at the Cleveland Empty Stocking Fund and attends First Presbyterian Church. I am excited to be part of the Cleveland State Community College family and look forward to working with the Advancement Department, stated Mr. McChesney. As the director of Development I will be focused on major gifts, planned giving and fundraising programs. After summertime runs with Shang-Chi and Black Widow, the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater is continuing its slate of feature films this fall with three of the most anticipated action titles of the year. As a bonus, two of the movies offer exclusive content enhancements available only to IMAX viewers.The theaters action-filled fall slate begins on Thursday, Sept. 30, with a limited run of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. No Time To Die, the latest installment of the James Bond franchise starring Daniel Craig as famed British secret agent 007, follows less than a week later on Wednesday, Oct.6. Denis Villeneuves epic adaptation of Frank Herberts sci-fi novel Dune will wrap up the blockbuster hat trick when it arrives on the theaters giant, six-story screen on Thursday, Oct. 21.Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the sequel to 2018s Venom, which focused on the titular Spider-Man villain/rival. In Let There Be Carnage, Hardy reprises his role as reporter Eddie Brock, who serves as the host for the symbiote, an alien parasite that gives him a suite (and suit) of powerful, violent abilities. This time, Brock finds himself inadvertently responsible for birthing Carnage, an even more deadly, super-villainous foe portrayed by Woody Harrelson. The film is directed by Golden Globe nominee Andy Serkis and co-stars Naomie Harris, Stephen Graham and Michelle Williams.In No Time to Die, Bond has left active duty for a relaxing retirement in Jamaica. After a surprise visit by CIA operative Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), however, 007 finds himself pulled, once more, into Her Majestys Secret Service to track down a kidnapped scientist and a dangerous villain named Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek).Craigs final film playing the starring role of Bond, No Time To Die also features Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch and Ben Whishaw.Sci-fi fans will find much to salivate over when the epic adaptation of Frank Herberts sci-fi novel, Dune, hits Chattanoogas largest cinema screen. Viewers are introduced to the untamed desert planet Arrakis, where the family of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) have been entrusted with safeguarding the most valuable resource in the galaxy: spice. When the deadly political machinations of a rival house plunge his empire into chaos, Paul and his mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), must learn to survive the inhospitable world around them.Dune features an all-star cast that also includes Oscar Isaac and Zendaya as well as action movie veterans Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista and Josh Brolin.No Time to Die and Dune incorporate exclusive content created with the latest IMAX cameras and designed to be viewed on a giant screen.Thanks to these thoughtful nods to the IMAX viewing experience, viewers will see dynamic sequences with expanded-aspect-ratio content that fill more of the screen. These moments offer audiences an even more immersive viewing experience than a traditional theater and shine even brighter literally thanks to the theaters state-of-the-art IMAX with Laser projection system.[Dune] has been dreamed, designed, and shot thinking about IMAX, Villeneuve says in an interview with Deadline. When you watch this movie on the big screen, its almost a physical experience. We designed the movie to be as immersive as possible, and for me, the big screen is part of the language.The Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theaters IMAX with Laser projection system features two razor-sharp 4K projectors and titanic 12-channel audio. Thanks to this peerless cinematic technology, the theater can present films with room-shaking audio and levels of contrast, color and brightness available in only a handful of giant screen theaters nationwide.The theaters run of Venom: Let There Be Carnage will comprise six evening showings between Thursday, Sept. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 3.Tickets for Venom and No Time To Die are on sale now. Tickets for Dune will be available on Monday, Sept. 27. To purchase tickets in advance or learn more about each film, visit tnaqua.org/imax/.Dates for upcoming films at the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX Theater:Venom: Let There Be Carnage Sept. 30 Oct. 3James Bond: No Time to Die Oct. 6 Oct. 20Dune Oct. 21 Oct. 31For information about the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theaters health and safety guidelines, visit tnaqua.org/welcomeback/. When Andrew Garfield signed on for Lin Manuel-Mirandas Tick Tick Boom! his biggest challenge was to sing in the film. But by the time he began filming for the movie musical, Garfields understanding of his character had changed. The Amazing Spider-Man actor began filming for Lin-Manuel Mirandas film sometime after he lost his mother. For Garfield, Tick Tick Boom! became a way to honor his mother. Andrew Garfield | Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Garfield learned of his mothers cancer before he began filming The Eyes of Tammy Faye In a recent interview with Variety, Garfield revealed he didnt want to leave his mother in England to film Michael Showalters The Eyes of Tammy Faye in North Carolina. She said, I would struggle with you not doing it on account of me. I told her, Ok, but promise me when its time to come home youll let me know, Garfield said. Her condition worsened while Garfield was filming. After hearing of it, Garfield returned to England to spend time with her. The good news about me and her is that we left nothing unsaid, Garfield said. We had all the quality time we could possibly have while she was here. And those last two weeks I got to be with her were probably the most profound two weeks of my life. To be with her and my dad and my brother, all of her friends, my nephews. It was full of grace in the midst of the terrible tragedy. As Garfield began shooting for Tick Tick Boom! he says, his perspective of his role in the movie was colored by the loss of his mother and the preciousness of life. Tick Tick Boom! is about music composer and playwright Jonathan Larson who died at the age of 35 Jonathan Larson, the Tony Award-winning composer unexpectedly died the morning of his Broadway musical Rents first preview performance in 1996. The musical went on to win Larson multiple Tony Awards posthumously. In Tick Tick Boom! Garfield plays Larson five years before Rents debut. As a 30-year-old composer, Larson is bogged down with his struggles and the problems he sees around him. Yet he strives to write and compose music that he hopes one day he gets to share with the world. The deaths of these two seemingly unrelated people made all the difference for Garfield. For me, I was able to continue her son on the ocean and the wave of Jonathans[Larson] songs, Garfield told The New York Times. It was an attempt to honor him in his unfinished song, and her in her unfinished song and have them meet. Garfield found a way to channel his grief into art The ability to understand Larsons character better through the lens of his personal tragedy gave Garfield a different way to channel his pain. The privilege of my life has been being there for my mother, being the person that gave her permission when she was ready, Garfield said. We had a very amazing connection, and now an audience will know her spirit in an unconscious way through Jon[Larson], which I just find so magical and beautiful. RELATED: Tick Tick Boom!: How Lin-Manuel Miranda Got Andrew Garfield to Play the Role of Jonathan Larson The Academy Award-nominated star Andrew Garfield found himself a little out of his element while preparing and filming Lin-Manuel Mirandas Tick Tick Boom! The Social Network actor is known for a varied range of roles. From Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man to combat medic Desmond Doss who refused to carry or use a weapon in World War II in Hacksaw Ridge, Garfield has played versatile roles. Yet when it came to Mirandas Tick Tick Boom! Garfield was more nervous than before. Andrew Garfield | Walter McBride/WireImage Lin-Manuel Mirandas Tick Tick Boom! is a movie musical The actor felt the pressure when told he would have to both sing and dance in the movie. Further, the movie is based on a semi-autobiographical musical written by Jonathan Larson, a music composer and playwright himself. As Garfield plays Jonathan Larson, who wrote the famous Broadway musical Rent, he not only had to know how to sing, he had to be great at it. In preparation for his role as Larson, Garfield took vocal and piano lessons. In the movie, Garfield plays Larson six years before he created his Tony Award-winning musical Rent. Struggling to make enough money and desperate to catch a break as a playwright, Larson in the movie is passionate but frustrated, motivated but discontent. To bring a mixture of complicated emotions to a character, along with technical brilliance in a previously unmastered field is no easy task. And Garfield had to do that. In his cast members Garfield found allies In a recent interview with The New York Times, Garfield detailed his journey on Tick Tick Boom! He said the movies cast which includes Robin de Jesus, Vanessa Hudgens, Josh Henry, Alexandra Shipp, and Jordan are all well-rounded stage actors. He had music rehearsals with the cast and Alex Lacamoire, who is Mirandas musical arranger and producer. Talking about a specific day during the music rehearsal Garfield mentioned he had de Jesus, Hudgens, Henry, and Ship in the room with him. You can imagine how Im feeling! Garfield said. Theyre all just pros, they know exactly what theyre doing, theyre making notes. Im like, Oh my God, Im going to die. A nervous Garfield began singing his part, attempting to make his way through the entire song. Then, he got an unexpected reaction. I remember Alex Lacamoire going, Woo, Andrew! And then everyone behind him, like Josh[Henry] and Vanessa [Hudgens] and Alex [Shipp] and Robin [de Jesus], were like, Yeah baby, thats it, baby! You got it, baby! Garfield said. Unable to hide his reaction and overwhelmed with the encouragement, Garfield said he went beet red. Five minutes pass and Im just like, Hey guys, sorry. I start crying, Garfield revealed. I say, I dont know if Ive ever been this happy in my entire life, to be surrounded by the most supportive liars I have ever known. Tick Tick Boom! will be the first time Garfield will hum along to the lyrics of a Broadway musical. But the Silence actor has already acted in Broadway productions Garfields stage performance convinced Miranda to cast him as Larson In 2012, Garfield starred in the Broadway revival of Arthur Millers play Death of a Salesman. But in 2017, Garfield acted in a production of Angels in America, first in London and then on Broadway in 2018. For his role, he also won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a play. Miranda saw Garfield in London. Ever since he watched Garfield on stage, he knew he wanted him to play Larson in his movie. Tick Tick Boom! will release in limited theaters on Nov. 12. It will debut on Netflix on Nov. 19. RELATED: The Eyes of Tammy Faye: Andrew Garfield Had This Concern Before He Signed on For the Movie [Correction: An earlier version mistakenly said Jonathan Larson directed Rent, rather than wrote it.] It would be difficult to name another rock n roller as irrelevant and reviled as Eric Clapton. Since the breakup of Cream and Blind Faith, Claptons egregious behavior has alienated his peers and fans alike. Recently, the 76-year-old guitarist released a song that is tanking his reputation even further within the music. Whats the hubbub all about? Eric Clapton | Getty Images A rock god no more In the 1960s, someone tagged a wall in London with graffiti that touted Clapton is God. Today, the former guitar great is more deserving of a tag that says, Clapton is a public health disaster. According to the Independent, Clapton, along with aging irresponsible crank Van Morrison, have been undermining medical experts since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Last November, Clapton and Morrison teamed up on an anti-lockdown single called Stand and Deliver. Two months later, Clapton got vaccinated. His recently released single, This Has Gotta Stop, is a musical tirade against vaccines, pandemic restrictions, and common-sense public safety measures. In one verse, Clapton sings about adverse reactions he supposedly experienced after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine: I knew that something was going on wrong / When you started laying down the law / I cant move my hands / I break out in sweat explains Huffington Post. In May 2021, the Los Angeles Times reported Clapton saying that his post-vax side effects included numbness and burning in his hands that was so severe, he feared hed never play guitar again. Interestingly, Clapton said the same thing in 2018 when he spoke with BBC Radio about his peripheral neuropathy, reveals LTC News. "This Has Gotta Stop," the new single is out now! Go stream, download, and watch the video https://t.co/RONBcmJNeM pic.twitter.com/M08IwstbDq Eric Clapton (@EricClapton) August 27, 2021 Eric Clapton fans clap back Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered all U.K. nightclubs and concert venues to require proof of inoculation status. Clapton immediately stated, I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present. Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show. When The Guardian tweeted Claptons statement, his former fans clapped back, replying with messages such as I also refuse to go to venues that have Eric Clapton in them, Anyone willing to endanger the public health should be avoided like the contagion he/she encourages, and Eric Clapton good with a guitar, very poor with science. Actor Ellen Barkin went as far as to call Clapton an assh*le on her own Twitter page. That Clapton would say a peep about discrimination is a bit strange, especially because he himself has made discriminatory and even racist statements in the past. Snopes confirms Claptons racist rant at a 1976 concert in Birmingham during which he asked if there were any foreigners in the audience. Hands were raised, and the Tears in Heaven songster said, I dont want you here, in the room, or in the country. And it only got worse from there. Eric Clapton refuses to play venues that require proof of vaccination https://t.co/WW8dTXGYXp The Guardian (@guardian) July 22, 2021 Eric Claptons high-profile friends are abandoning him, too Noting plenty of evidence to show that vaccination helps, Queen guitarist and Doctor of Astrophysics, Brian May, called Clapton and other anti-vaxxers fruitcakes, reports Society of Rock. Veteran musician David Crosby called Clapton a bit dim in the bulb, says Junkee. Good Men Project writer Chris Zappa called Clapton a first-class, Grade A assh*ole who promotes an ignorant and deadly anti-vax agenda which, in the midst of a global pandemic is tantamount to manslaughter. Zappa elaborated his distaste for Clapton when he said, For those who just now are realizing that Eric Clapton is an uncaring narcissist- I think the jig was up when he stole his best friends wife, and then wrote a song about it. Mogwai frontman Stuart Braithwaite chimed in at Guitar: Im surprised anyone listens to what Eric Clapton says anyway. Hes a complete joker of a guy thats made his career from copying Black musicians. According to Claptons tour site, the racist science denier has scheduled eight no-vax-required 2021 concert dates in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. Not surprisingly, these states are among the hardest bit by the Covid pandemic. RELATED: Is The Masked Singer Judge Jenny McCarthy Still an Anti-Vaxxer Since COVID-19? George Harrison was the first Beatle to do many things. He was the first Beatle to score a No. 1 hit as a solo artist, and he was technically the first Beatle to quit the band. But most fans dont know that George was also the first Beatle to travel to America. Hed already been to the States a year before The Beatles started the British Invasion and played on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. The Beatles | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images The Beatles came to America in 1964 One of the most significant dates in Beatles history is Feb. 7, 1964. Thats the date that The Beatles first landed in America. They left 4,000 screaming fans at Heathrow Airport in the U.K. and were greeted by 3,000 screaming American fans when they arrived at J.F.K. Airport. Two days later, on Feb. 9, they played on The Ed Sullivan Show to a screaming live audience and 73 million viewers at home, 34 percent of the American popular at the time. During their visit, they also performed at the Washington Coliseum and then back to New York for a couple of gigs at Carnegie Hall. On Feb. 22, they played on The Ed Sullivan Show again, this time in Florida. The Beatles success on their first American tour ultimately influenced other British bands to come over to the States in what has come to be known as the British Invasion. But most of the screaming fans who greeted The Beatles on their first American tour didnt know that the British Invasion technically started the year before. RELATED: George Harrisons Wife Olivia Cherishes the Song Written About Her But It Isnt Her Favorite George Harrison visited America in 1963 A year before The Beatles touched down at J.F.K. Airport in 1964, George landed in America for the first time. He was going to visit his sister, who was living in Illinois. Id been to America before, being the experienced Beatle that I was, George recalled in the 1995 Beatles Anthology documentary (per Rolling Stone). I went to New York and St. Louis in 1963, to look around, and to the countryside in Illinois, where my sister was living at the time. By September 1963, The Beatles had already had three No. 1 singles in the U.K. and had released their album Please Please Me. Their popularity was skyrocketing by the hour. So the band agreed that after all their hard work, they needed a much-needed vacation. So, John Lennon took his wife Cynthia to Paris, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr went to Greece, and on Sept. 16, George flew to America with his older brother, Peter, becoming the first Beatle to do so. The Harrison brothers stayed with their eldest sister Louise Lou Caldwells home at 113 McCann Street in Benton, Illinois. Lou had recently immigrated there with her husband Gordon, an engineer at a nearby coal mine. Benton, Illinois, is a small town, but George welcomed the quiet because of Beatlemania. No one recognized him, and he was able to experience some American staples without hassle. The siblings camped for a few nights in the Shawnee National Forest and ate at a burger joint, where George was shocked to see the waitresses on roller skates. But while George was getting the R&R that he very much needed, his visit quickly turned into a missionary trip, as he brought The Beatles to Illinois. RELATED: George Harrison Wrote a Heart-Breaking Song About Breaking up With Pattie Boyd George Harrison played with another band during his trip to America During Georges visit, Louise introduced him to Gabe McCarty, a local dry cleaner who also played with a band called the Four Vests. McCarty became Georges tour guide, but one of the biggest places he took George was the record store. George bought many records and singles. However, when he asked an employee if they had any Beatles records, she gave him a confused look. So George went over to the WFRX-AM radio station in West Frankfort and gave them his copy of She Loves You. They gladly played the song, which theyd never heard before. While Stateside, George also bought a 400 dollar Rickenbacker 425 solid body and had it painted black. George agreed to play a gig with the Four Vests at a VFW Hall in Eldorado, Illinois, to show off the new instrument. They announced him as the Elvis of England. This was the first time any of The Beatles played a show in America. RELATED: George Harrison Wrote a Tribute Song to John Lennon After He Died George and the band played Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins Matchbox, and Hank Williams Your Cheatin Heart. A man in the audience approached George at the end to tell him: With the right breaks, you could really go places. Georges next stop was St. Louis and New York City. In the Big Apple, George was like any other sightseer. He had no idea that in the next year, hed be in the same city with thousands of fans chasing him. That was probably his last vacation in peace, where he could go where he pleased without being recognized. ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS Meredith has struggled to find love since Dereks death on Greys Anatomy Are the writers setting up a romance between Meredith and McWidow? Can Meredith find happiness with Hayes in Greys Anatomy season 18? Ellen Pompeo and Richard Flood on Greys Anatomy | Kelsey McNeal via Getty Images Greys Anatomy had Meredith Grey in a hospital bed for the majority of season 17, thanks to the pandemic. Fans did get a treat during the traumatic experience via Merediths hallucination dreams, with the brief return of Patrick Dempsey as Derek Shepherd. But before she got sick, something seemed to be brewing between her and Dr. Cormac Hayes (Richard Flood). According to Greys Anatomy executive producer Meg Marinis, its time for Meredith and Hayes to have an official drink, if you will. Meredith has struggled to find love since Dereks death on Greys Anatomy When Derek died in Season 11, Episode 21 How To Save A Life, it was the end of a long romance between him and Meredith that started in the pilot episode. He was the love of her life, and it hasnt been easy for Meredith to move on. The award-winning surgeon has struggled to find love since losing Derek. She had a brief fling with William Thorpe in season 12, and attempted to start something with Nathan Riggs. Meredith was involved in a bit of a love triangle with Atticus Lincoln and Andrew DeLuca. She even attempted a relationship with DeLuca, but it didnt last. Merediths most promising post-Derek interaction came in season 16 when she met Hayes, the new Irish surgeon sent to her by her person. Are the writers setting up a romance between Meredith and McWidow? Meredith and Hayes clashed when they first met. He couldnt care less about her Harper Avery Award, and often challenged Merediths medical opinions. But Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) knew this relationship had some potential. Hayes transferred to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital after working with Yang in Switzerland. And he ended becoming the Head of Pediatric Surgery after Alex Karevs (Justin Chambers) abrupt exit from the series. As Greys Anatomy fans and Meredith got to know Hayes, they discovered that he recently became a single father after the tragic death of his wife, Abigail. Through flashbacks, fans have learned of Hayes backstory. They no longer see him as the cold surgeon that Meredith first met. Now knowing that his personal loss reflects Merediths fans have labeled him McWidow. Greys Anatomy EP says theres hope for Meredith and Hayes Just when Meredith and Hayes were starting to get to know each other, the pandemic hit. As executive producer Meg Marinis explained to TV Line, time has not been on their side. He asked her for a drink, and then he found her outside having collapsed from COVID, Marinis noted. We saw Hayes being more drawn to her even as she was in a hospital bed all season. If you read between the lines of that comment, its clear that there is still hope for a romance to truly blossom between Meredith and Hayes on Greys Anatomy. They did get the chance to enjoy a half-empty bottle of whiskey together in the doctors lounge. But Marinis says that its time for the duo to have an official drink, if you will. Will fans accept Meredith ending up with someone else? Going into season 18 seven seasons after his death Dempseys Dr. Shepherd still looms large on the show. Greys Anatomy has been all about Derek and Meredith since day one. From their seasons-long will they/wont they drama to their professional competition, its always been about MerDer. Even after Dereks death, a large part of Merediths storyline has been her grappling with the loss. Its not clear exactly how much longer Greys Anatomy will be on the air. But if the ABC medical drama does end with Meredith coupling up with Cormac, will fans accept a series conclusion that sees Meredith with someone else? Can Meredith find happiness with Hayes in Greys Anatomy season 18? Since Hayes has his own history of losing a spouse, its possible there is a connection between him and Meredith that could grow into a happy relationship. Hayes knows he cant replace Derek, and Meredith knows she cant replace Abigail. But, they could still find happiness together while honoring their former partners. But, theres no guarantee that Dr. Meredith Grey highly accomplished surgeon will end up with a man when the series comes to an end. But the early seasons of Greys Anatomy made it clear she doesnt want to end up alone like her mother Ellis. Finding happiness with Hayes after losing Derek just might be proof that Meredith, unlike her mother, is indeed capable of having it all. Season 18 of Greys Anatomy premieres Sept. 30 on ABC. RELATED: The Best Greys Anatomy Episode From Every Season Get your hot chocolate and Christmas cookies ready. Hallmark Channels preliminary Countdown to Christmas schedule for 2021 is here, and its jam-packed with holiday goodness. This years lineup features new movies starring Hallmark regulars such as Danica McKellar and Candace Cameron Bure, as well as a sequel to 2020s The Christmas House, the networks first holiday movie with an LGBTQ couple. Hallmark Channels Countdown to Christmas kicks off on Oct. 22 The Christmas House | 2020 Crown Media United States LLC/Photographer: Luba Popovic Hallmark is doing things a bit differently this year, revealing titles and premiere dates for its first few weeks of 2021 holiday movies rather than unveiling the entire schedule all at once. This years Countdown to Christmas begins Friday, Oct. 22 with You, Me & The Christmas Trees starring Danica McKellar, Benjamin Ayres, and Jason Hervey. McKellar is Olivia, an expert on evergreens who steps in to help out Jack (Ayres) when a mysterious disease starts killing the trees on his familys Christmas tree farm. Other movies in this years Countdown to Christmas lineup include: Oct. 23: Boyfriends of Christmas Past, starring Catherine Haena Kim, Raymond Ablack, and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Its about a marketing executive who receives visits from the ghosts of four ex-boyfriends. Oct. 24: The Santa Stakeout, about a police detective (Tamera Mowry-Housley) who must work with another detective (Paul Campbell) to solve a string of holiday season heists. Oct. 29: Christmas in Harmony, about a woman named Harmony (Ashleigh Murray) who is tricked into auditioning for the holiday chorus, which is directed by her ex-boyfriend. Luke James, Loretta Devine, Michelle Williams, and Basil Wallace also star. Oct. 30: Coyote Creek Christmas, which features Janel Parrish and Ryan Paevey as two people who find love thanks to a Christmas Around the World party. Oct. 31: Christmas Sail, which stars Katee Sackhoff as a woman who returns home to care for her estranged father and then reconnects with her best friend. Patrick Sabongui and Terry OQuinn also star. Hallmark Christmas movies premiering in November 2021 #CountdowntoChristmas arrives Oct 22 with all new holiday movies EVERY Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at 8/7c! Retweet if you're ready for the holidays to officially begin! Check back here for exciting movie updates & download the Hallmark Checklist App to set reminders! pic.twitter.com/AKvPDcMCVE Hallmark Channel (@hallmarkchannel) September 22, 2021 Nov. 5: Open By Christmas, starring Alison Sweeney, Erica Durance, and Brennan Elliott. Sweeney plays Nicky, who discovers an opened Christmas card from her high school secret admirer. She and her best friend team up to find out the senders identity. Nov. 6: Back to the Future stars Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd reunite in Next Stop Christmas. It also features Lyndsy Fonseca as a woman named Angie who wonders how her life would have been different if shed married her ex who became a famous sportscaster. Nov. 7: A Christmas Treasure, which stars Jordin Sparks as Lou, a woman who is wondering whether she should move to New York after the holidays in order to further her writing career after she meets a charming chef (Michael Xavier). Other Hallmark holiday movies for 2021 Brandon Routh in The Nine Lives of Christmas | Copyright 2014 Crown Media United States, LLC/Photographer:David Owen Strongman Hallmark has also revealed titles for several other upcoming holiday movies, though premiere dates havent yet been announced. The Nine Kittens of Christmas is about two cat lovers named Zachary (Brandon Routh) and Marilee (Kimberley Sustad) who must find homes for an adorable litter of kittens at Christmastime. Its a follow-up to 2014s The Nine Lives of Christmas. Christmas at Castle Hart stars Lacey Chabert. She plays a woman named Brooke who heads to Ireland for Christmas to learn more about her Irish roots. While there, she meets Aiden Hart, Earl of Glaslough (Stuart Townsend) and is hired to host his castles epic Christmas event. The Christmas Contest features Hallmarks Christmas queen Candace Cameron Bure, as well as John Brotherton and Barbara Niven. Its about exes who compete in a Christmas contest to win money for their favorite charity. The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls is a sequel to 2020s The Christmas House. In the follow-up film, the Mitchell brothers (Robert Buckley and Jonathan Bennett) compete to see who can create the best Christmas house. Finally, there are Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday and Sister Swap: Christmas in the City, a pair of holiday movies starring real-life sisters Ashley Williams and Kimberly Williams-Paisley. They play siblings who switch cities leading up to the Christmas holiday. All movies premiere at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel. Check out the Hallmark Channel website for the latest on premiere dates as they are announced. RELATED: General Hospital Alum Ryan Paevey to Star With Janel Parrish in New Hallmark Christmas Movie George Harrison had friends in strange places. He was friends with Formula One race car drivers and the comedians in Monty Python. It just proves how charismatic George was. But another group welcomed George that many fans probably dont know about, the Hells Angels. Can you picture George Harrison hanging out with one of the most intimidating biker gangs? However, George was friendly with them and told them to visit him if they ever visited England. He probably didnt expect to be taken up on the offer. He also probably didnt think the gang would set up camp at Apple Records either. George Harrison | Chapman/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images George Harrison met the Hells Angels in 1968 During a trip to San Francisco in 1968, George met the Hells Angels. In The Beatles Anthology documentary, Neil Aspinall, later Apple Corps president, explained that George had told the gang that if they ever came to England, look us up. After George met the gang, Rolling Stone writes that the staff at The Beatles Apple Records headquarters in London received a puzzling memo. It read: Hells Angels will be in London within the next week, on the way to straighten out Czechoslovakia [a reference to the current political upheaval]. There will be 12 in number complete with black leather jackets and motorcycles. They will undoubtedly arrive at Apple and I have heard they may try to make full use of Apples facilities. They may look as though they are going to do you in but are very straight and do good things, so dont fear them or up-tight them. Try to assist them without neglecting your Apple business and without letting them take control of Savile Row. George Harrison Richard DiLello, Apples house hippie, was not surprised. Not a day went by that there was not some totally tripped-out crisis and/or triumph to deal with, he told Mojo in 2004. RELATED: George Harrison Was the First Beatle to Visit America The Hells Angels set up camp at Apple Records The way Aspinall tells it, the Hells Angels showed up randomly and said, Well, George said it was OK, and ended up living at Apple and terrifying everybody. George explained, [Press officer] Derek [Taylor] got a phone call one morning from Customs and Excise saying, Is this right: weve got 17 Harley Davidsons that youre going to pay the freight duty on?' Thats when George sent his letter of warning. Luckily, most of the gang couldnt secure visas due to pending criminal charges or prison probation. Only two arrived: Frisco Pete and Billy Tumbleweed. In his memoir The Love You Make, Apple Records executive Peter Brown wrote that the gangs arrival stopped all activity dead at Apple. The employees gathered in doorways and corners and tried not to stare as the contingent marched up the green-carpeted stairs, past the vulnerable gold records on the walls, and into the press office, where I waited with Derek Taylor. After a slightly horrified pause, I extended my hand to Frisco Pete and said as pleasantly as possible, Its a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Im sure, and promptly left the room. In Anthology, Taylor said, I would arrive and find the Hells Angels sitting around on the floor doing those physical things they did a lot of scratching and farting and generally being awful, he said. The staff referred to them as the California Pleasure Crew. RELATED: George Harrison Wrote a Heart-Breaking Song About Breaking up With Pattie Boyd The aftermath of Apple Records Christmas party forced George to kick them out There was a lush Christmas party during the gangs stay that promised a banquet of food, including a 43-pound turkey. However, in the middle of the festivities, Frisco Pete yelled, Theres a 43-pound turkey in that kitchen and I want some of it now! When they brought the turkey out, Frisco Pete pounced. It was about 10 yards from the door to the table where they were going to put the turkey down, but it never made it. The Hells Angels just went Woof! and everything disappeared: arms, legs, breast, everything. By the time it got to the table there was nothing there. They ripped the turkey to pieces, trampling young children underfoot to get to it. Ive never seen anything like it, Aspinall said. George didnt even attend the party because he knew there was going to be trouble. Following the turkey incident, Aspinall told them to leave, but it didnt work. They said, Well, you didnt invite us, so you cant ask us to leave. Meaning George invited them, so George had to uninvite them. Well, are you moving all of your stuff out of here tonight? he asked the gang. Confused silence followed until one said, Hey, man, I just wanna ask you one question: Do you dig us or dont you? George answered, Yin and yang, heads and tails, yes and no. More confused silence followed, so Aspinall said, You know Bugger off! And they said, Well, if you put it that way, George, of course, and left. George meant well by extending an invitation to the gang to visit, but he probably didnt expect them to take him up on it. He certainly couldnt have expected that theyd move in. George could have used the Hells Angels when he was almost fatally stabbed in 1999. All it took was one question, and a press event with Johnny Depp turned uncomfortable. At the San Sebastian Film Festival, Depp received an honorary Donostia Award. But the focus quickly changed to Depps private life instead of his movie career. Depp commented on how a cancel culture is getting out of hand and asked people to stand up against injustice. Press goes on the attack vs Johnny Depp Johnny Depp | Photo by JB Lacroix/WireImage Depp received a Donostia at the San Sebastian Film Festival, as reported by Deadline. He was at a press conference when a question asked why the festival gave an award to him. Before the actor could respond, the conference host told the press in the room to ask questions about Depps career. Before attending the festival, Depp was concerned that his presence would offend people, which he did not want to do. The Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media from Spain stated that the award transmits a terrible message to the public. Depp praised the festivals director Jose Luis Rebordinos and the mayor of San Sebastian for their undying support (and) not buying what has been, for far too long, some notion of me that doesnt exist, said Depp. I havent done anything; I just make movies. The effects of cancel culture It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgment based on what essentially amounts to polluted air, said Depp. Its so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe. It takes one sentence, and theres no more ground. The carpet has been pulled, continued Depp. Its not just me that this has happened to. Its happened to a lot of people. This type of thing has happened to women, men. Sadly, at a certain point, they begin to think that its normal. Or that its them. When its not. Depps time in court Depp has been spending more time in courts than on movie sets. He lost a libel case against The Sun newspaper, which described him as a wife-beater, and Warner Bros. dropped him from the next Fantastic Beasts movie. Depp is currently involved in a $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, pursuing a $100 million counterclaim. It doesnt matter if a judgment, per se, has taken some artistic license, said Depp. When theres an injustice, whether its against you or someone you love, or someone you believe in stand up, dont sit down. Cause they need you. Fans want more Captain Jack Sparrow Hollywood is certainly not what it was, said Depp. The studio system, the grudge matches, the pandemonium and chaos of cinematic releases to streaming it is a case of, no matter what, Im going to get mine. They realize theyre just a disposable as I am. Some more so. I think that Hollywood has grotesquely underestimated the audience, added Depp. Some fans attending the festival cheered when he delivered a rendition of his famous character. When asked about playing Captain Jack Sparrow again, Depp said the character will always be a part of his life. RELATED: Johnny Depp Was Allergic to Chocolate Before Filming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory When the world first slowed down in March 2020 due to COVID-19, the Contagion movie resurfaced in the publics consciousness. People were trying to understand what was happening, and many found parallels between the crisis in the film and what was going on in real life. Matt Damon also rediscovered the movie as he and his family hunkered down during quarantine. Matt Damon | Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images Contagion caught Matt Damons attention too In a new interview with GQ, Damon discussed his friendship with Ben Affleck, his upcoming film The Last Duel, and his quarantine experience abroad. While many stayed at home, Damon and his family were onsite at a filming location and spent lockdown between Ireland and Australia. During the early weeks of the pandemic in 2020, he too turned on the TV and reacquainted himself with Contagion. Damon was part of an ensemble cast in the 2011 film which included Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Jude Law. He and his family happened across it on TV and dove in. People were kind of hungry for more information, and the information was kind of scarce at the beginning. And so, I dont know, I think we probably went through the same kind of subconscious or conscious process that everyone did, and just pressed play, Damon told GQ. I remember thinking: This is better than I remember! Because when we released it, I think it felt more like a science fiction movie. It felt a lot more far-fetched than it actually was, he said. Matt Damon for the October issue of GQ, photographed by Lachlan Bailey and styled by George Cortina https://t.co/JA9cS3ORnt pic.twitter.com/xHiUIiYXLT GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) September 8, 2021 Contagion literally went viral in 2020 Praised for its scientific accuracies, Contagion was a frightening depiction of what could happen in a worldwide pandemic. Damon played Mitch Emhoff, husband to Paltrows patient zero. People watched the movie either again or for the first time. It rocketed up streaming/digital rental charts on iTunes, Fandango, and more. Contagion ranked in multiple top 10 lists between March and May 2020. The film sparked discussions on social media and among its cast members. During Damons interview with Irelands Spin 1038, he mentioned that hed spoken to the virologists, screenwriter, and other science experts who worked on Contagion when the pandemic began. Anybody who says you couldnt predict this Just look at Contagion, he said. He also told GQ that it felt eerie watching things unfold in real life, but in his opinion, its fortunate that COVID is not as deadly as the virus in the film. Damon and his co-stars launched a Contagion campaign In the interest of promoting social distancing and other safety protocols, the Contagion cast joined forces with scientists and public health experts from Columbia University. Damon, Winslet, and Fishburne debuted a series of online PSAs in 2020 to discuss what measures people can take to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. Though the films popularity has since died down, Damon recognized that the things he learned about viruses while making the movie could come to fruition again. Fans interested in re-watching the movie can stream it on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, or Hulu. RELATED: Matt Damon and Other Contagion Cast Members Post PSAs About Coronavrius Safe House is trending in Netflixs Top 10, and that fact has not gone unnoticed by one of its stars. Ryan Reynolds co-starred with Denzel Washington in the 2012 action flick, and the Deadpool actor shared a behind-the-scenes story about the film. Apparently, he accidentally hit Washington the face while shooting a hectic scene, and still feels bad about it. Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds | Jim Spellman/WireImage/Getty Images Ryan Reynolds recalls smashing Denzel Washingtons eye in Safe House Safe House is almost 10 years old, but its finding new life on Netflix. In it, Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a CIA agent in charge of overseeing a safe house in South Africa. Washingtons character is a rogue CIA vet named Tobin Frost whos carrying detrimental state secrets. When Frost is apprehended and arrives at Westons action-less site, action finally commences. Theres a car chase in the film where Frost breaks out of the trunk through the back seat. He tries to fight Weston in the drivers seat. In a new Instagram post, Reynolds recalled how he accidentally hit Washington in the eye twice while shooting the scene. Fun fact in honour of SAFE HOUSE trending on @netflix The second day shooting, we were filming a fight scene inside a speeding, out of control car when my head smashed into Denzel Washingtons eye. I couldnt stop apologizing. In the next take, it happened again. This time I got the other eye. He was fine because hes Denzel Washington. But I still havent recovered. I never will, Reynolds wrote. Washington spoke about the black eye incident too Back in 2012, Reynolds and Washington spoke with IndieWire to promote the film. They joked about how Washington received his first black eye thanks to Reynolds stunt gone wrong. I reach over, were flying around in the car, and just as I was reaching forward, he was flying back, said Washington, describing the scene. And then pow! He gave me a black eye. Reynolds was mortified and explained to IndieWire how he already felt intimidated after seeing his co-star in Hurricane. He was waiting for Washingtons reaction. I tried to make him feel bad about it, Washington teased. I was like, What the ! Ive never had a black eye in my life, but I cant say that anymore. And Reynolds laughed and quipped that at least his first one came courtesy of an apologetic Canadian. Washington endured waterboarding in Safe House Another little known factoid about Safe House is that Washington underwent waterboarding in the movies torture scene. He talked about it in an interview with ScreenSlam, and said he endured as much as he possibly could for his character. I did it to the degree that I was able to, and I tried it for real, he said. Its very confusing and disorienting choking. But I really wanted to go for it to see what it felt like. And you think, Oh, I can hold my breath and itll be fine. But they just keep pouring the water. Safe House arrived on Netflix on Sept. 16 so fans can watch Reynolds and Washington run, shoot, and bleed while visualizing Reynolds black eye blunder. RELATED: How Many Oscars Has Denzel Washington Won? Several studies have already shown: Concentrations of typical air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter have decreased worldwide during corona-related lockdowns. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have now calculated in a comprehensive study for whole Central Europe how strong this effect was during the first lockdowns and to what extent the weather conditions were responsible for the better air. One result: the amount of nitrogen oxides fell by more than half in some cases due to the lockdown. The work has now been published in the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Corona has indirectly ensured better air. During the year 2020, researchers actually measured a decline in pollutant concentrations in the air worldwide. What do these values actually look like for Central Europe? And to what extent was the lockdown really the cause - and not weather conditions? Scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have been working on these questions. The team led by Dr. Volker Matthias focused on nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter and ozone. Comparison with the past five years First, the scientists looked at concrete data from 13 measuring stations in seven countries, such as the Sternschanze in Hamburg. Since the first lockdown went from March to May (exact dates vary to some extent in different European countries), they looked at data from January to June for the years 2015 to 2020. For their calculations, they also included the respective weather conditions in their model simulations. After all, the less it rains, the worse the air. "During longer dry periods, pollutants can accumulate better in the air. A lot of precipitation literally washes the air clean," says Volker Matthias, head of the Chemistry Transport Modeling Department at Hereon's Institute for Coastal Environmental Chemistry and first author of the study. It turns out that "February 2020 was extremely wet, with relatively low pollutant concentrations. The following March and especially April were quite dry, which normally leads to an increase in concentrations. But since we saw less nitrogen oxides here as well, the cause must be different," explains co-author Ronny Badeke, a PhD student in chemical transport modeling. In principle, various sources come into question for the emissions. That's why the researchers looked at different sectors in their study: industry, road transport, air transport, ocean shipping, power generation and building heating, among others. This is because the lockdown was shown to have a major impact on some sectors, such as road and air transport. Calculations with and without lockdown The team then ran the simulation once with and once without lockdown influences. Other weather conditions, such as those experienced in previous years, were also included. "In comparison, we see that in France and Italy, for example, where the lockdown was implemented much more strictly than in Germany, we have reductions in nitrogen oxide concentrations of up to 55 percent. In Germany, the difference is up to 20 percent. Because we have taken a very high-resolution model, we can map differences between urban and rural areas, but also shipping routes and major roads well. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which is very quiet and not very populous in terms of traffic, the effect can only be seen at 5 to 10 percent," says Volker Matthias. Here, however, the weather conditions in April also contribute significantly to the low pollutant concentrations. The prevailing northeasterly winds brought very clean air to northern Germany. Volker Matthias explains: "This led especially for particulate matter to very low concentrations. The lockdown had only a minor influence on this." The study shows how sharply nitrogen dioxide concentrations would fall, especially in cities, if road traffic emissions were reduced - and if significantly more people were allowed to continue working from home. However, other pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter depend so much on weather that long-term changes due to climate change could play a bigger role than changes in emissions from traffic. This month marks the seventh anniversary of the Umbrella Movement and the second anniversary of the Hong Kong governments official withdrawal of its controversial extradition bill. For many Hong Kongese, these are bittersweet memories. On the one hand, the series of pro-democratic movements since 2014 show the Hong Kongeses urge for a better society that goes beyond the capitalistic ethos of the city; on the other, those movements became a Pandoras box of civil unrest. Two years ago, 2 million people protested against the extradition law in June, and the implementation of the national security law the year after led to mass arrests and a crackdown on democratic parties. Hong Kong Christians famously took to the streets in prayer and in song as part of the demonstrations. But what international audiences may have not seen is how the political developments in Hong Kong launched the church into the digital public sphere too. Facing tighter religious freedoms, Christian leaders have grown their presence online and on social media. Even as the Hong Kong diaspora has scattered across the globe, leaders have taken to the digital space as a platform to show solidarity to the persecuted and to instruct followers to persevere through difficult times. The digital public theology theyve developed over the past seven years has grown into a witness for the global church. Writing on the Mid-Autumn Festival, the day Hong Kong families tend to reunite (tuan yuan) to see the full moon (yue yuan, a play on words for reunion), I think of the persistent prayers for our brothers and sisters are suffering on the other side of the world and our compassion for those who cannot see their families due to exile or imprisonment. The Umbrella Movement (20142019) In the mid-2010s, protestors in Hong Kong relied on online platforms such as Facebook, Firechat, and Golden Forum to communicate their strategies, which required immediate response during the movement; half of those involved in demonstrations were under 25. The move inspired a shift among pastors and Christian leaders as well, as they intentionally began to develop a digital public theology for the first time. They addressed what was happening around them from a Christian perspective. Many reflected on the meaning of the separation of church and state, which is stressed in most evangelical denominations in Hong Kong. Because of the wide access online, their teachings extended to reach those who wouldnt usually read Christian articles in traditional media. Like the chasm during the 2016 US election, factions formed online during and after the movement, with Christians on both sides. The pro-democratic activists became the yellow team because of their frequent use of a yellow umbrella as a symbolumbrellas being a tool for self-defense when protestors were attacked by tear gas. The blue team was composed of those who supported police, who wore blue uniforms and tried to suppress violence through tear gas. Both sides frequently received memes and news in their WhatsApp chat groups, but the yellow team tended to be digital natives who generated content on the pro-Umbrella Movement Facebook groups. The Umbrella Movement had an immediate effect in churches. Many protestors struggled to stay at congregations that maintained silence in an effort to uphold the separation of church and state. This inspired the establishment of parachurches, such as Umbrella City Cyberchurch (UCC), which launched in 2014, and Flow Church, which began in 2018. The advantage of establishing these parachurches is that they provide flexibility for pastoral leaders to work alongside other local churches without being bound by existing denominations with fixed political ideologies. The Umbrella City Cyberchurch intends to construct, reflect, and practise a Umbrella Theology, UCC writes on its Facebook page. The UCC aims to improve and deepen the Umbrella Revolution as a valued revolution, to reconstruct Hong Kongs core values. These parachurches tend to be more tech savvy and are active on social media, providing live-streamed services for young Christians who question the role of churches in the movement. The Umbrella Movement also raised the issue of decentralization, criticizing authority figures who dominated the direction of the movement. While this is true for political ideologies, it is arguable whether Christian communities embrace the concept of decentralization wholeheartedly. Digital theologian Heidi Campbell has highlighted the importance of charisma among pastoral figures online; those who emerged as key opinion leaders after the movement were usually pastors or theologians that already held some sort of authority among their communities. I do not perceive digital media and especially dynamics among Christian groups as a total decentralization, but the shift of public theology online was observable. For example, the lead pastor of Flow Church, John Chan, continues to use his personal Facebook page, theologia autumnitas rosea est (theology is pink autumn), as well as Flow Churchs Facebook page to narrate his struggle to be a pastoral leader after the Umbrella Movement. His reflections online resonated with church leavers who could not express their political views freely in physical churches, where politics became a taboo subject. In some ways, the shift helped create a platform for protestors to reflect on a theology that engages with public issues after the movement. The Anti-Extradition Law Protests (20192020) June 2019 became the kairos for Christian leaders to speak out, due to the proposal of extradition laws in Hong Kong that would have imposed Chinas laws on the city and affected religious freedoms. Outdoor prayer meetings were promoted on social media, which attracted both Christians and non-Christians. Since religious assembly was exempted as legal gatherings under Hong Kong laws, protestors joined Christians to perform Sing Hallelujah to the Lord near the Hong Kong government complex as an act of resistance. The public presence of Christians was amplified at the protest site, as well as through livestreams on Facebook. Moreover, digital media has become a platform for Christian groups to express their public theology, not only because of the frequent usage of social media during the social movements but also because of the restrictions on in-person activities due to COVID-19 since January 2020. For example, the Hong Kong Pastors Network, comprising pastoral leaders of different denominations, issued the statement Hong Kong 2020 Gospel Declaration online to challenge authoritarianism in May 2020, which highlighted the importance of justice as well as the proclamation of gospel. The statement can be compared to the 1934 Barmen Declaration from German pastors against Nazis ideology. In the face of a totalitarian regime that distorts facts, controls the media, and buries the Truth, the Church courageously rejects all falsehood, and points out what the regime has done wrong, read one point. Protestants become more vocal about Christian engagement with the social movements. Sun Fuk Channel (Bitterly Blessed Channel), an online Christian show, invited Protestant leaders from different denominations to discuss the Hong Kong protests. Mission Citizens, a campaign consisting of pastoral leaders, laypersons, and academics, also initiated a series of prayer movements and online talks to bridge the gap between the blue and yellow teams. While the Umbrella Movement had already caught media attention globally, the campaigns in the following years focused much more on international attention, with several crowdfunding advertisements placed in major newspapers. Originally these were created by protestors who wished to raise concerns to those who support democracy all around the world. But as the protests proceeded, Christians also followed this kind of digital outreach to raise prayer support for both the Hong Kong diaspora and, through translated prayers, for Christians who speak other languages. This led to a more global outlook of Hong Kong public theology, where the Hong Kong diaspora also helped to advance the Hong Kong protests and construct the pro-democratic discourses. Post-National Security Law (2020Present) Democratic campaigns in Hong Kong quieted after the national security law began being enforced last July. Participants feared getting arrested. Activists had moved overseas due to political persecution. However, because of the emphasis on international attention, the social movements about Hong Kong have become more transnational, such as the continuous campaign of democracy in Hong Kong by Nathan Law, the youngest elected lawmaker in Hong Kong history and an asylum seeker in the United Kingdom. Several Protestant leaders, after moving overseas, continue to build on the existing theological dialogue to nurture Christians online. For these leaders, such as Rev. Roy Chan of England Good Neighbour Church and Rev. Yeung Kin-keung (d. September 15, 2021) of Hong Kong Christian Church in Edinburgh, it is more about telling the truth of the gospel than about highlighting the superiority of their identity as yellow team Christians. Rather than saying that the protests are over, I think of the way they have scattered Hong Kongese all around the world. In my current city, Edinburgh, I see that half of the protestors who join the in-person rallies about the situation in Hong Kong are Protestants or at least associated with the Chinese churches here. While English media tends to report the development of pro-democratic activists, it should be stressed that the blue team is also quite active. Vancouver-based Christian philosopher Leung Yin-shing is a popular guest speaker among Chinese media in the diaspora such as the Media Evangelism, despite his comments that protestors were too violent when they fought back against the triads during the 721 mob attack in July 2019. On YouTube, at least half of the results covering the protests in Chinese condemn the participants as rioters or cockroaches. Whether or not one perceives those videos against the protests as propaganda, the digital sphere is not as pro-democratic as one may think. As Christians, we are blessed with free will granted by God, as well as the freedom of speech online. We may also discern how we can use them sensibly to be the witness of God. While I am not a huge fan of the phrase silence is golden, which has damaged Hong Kong churches since the Umbrella Movement, we may ponder whether our online speech is useful for building others up (Eph. 4:29). We may also wonder whether sharing particular news stories online is beneficial for our followers, especially since some of those can be fake news or with false condemnation. This will be a continuous lesson for Hong Kong Christians, as well as my friends in the UK or the US where the digital space is further dichotomized due to political differences. The Post-1984 Life of Hong Kong Christians Indeed, Hong Kong Christians will face further persecution, which is already built up by the attack of Ta Kung Po, the state-owned newspaper in Hong Kong. For many, life in the present is much worse than 1984 Hong Kong, the year Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping signed the Sino-British Declaration to confirm Hong Kongs return to China in 1997for the latter faced only imaginary fear, but the formers fear is immediate. Following the cross removal of Zhejiang churches in the mid-2010s, Hong Kong Christians often wonder when they will be the next, especially as Xia Baolong, a figure who is instrumental in the removal campaign in Zhejiang, has been Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office since February 2020. The pursuit of peace in Christians hearts, as well as the work produced by this mentality, will differentiate their witness from people with other beliefs. In the Hong Kong protests, the phrase fear, then you will lose your whole life (qie, ni jiu shu cheng shi), from a 2013 movie Unbeatable, is often quoted to express the urgency of protesting for Hong Kongs future. I find this phrase to be rather Christian: If fear dominates your life, it seems to contradict the belief that God provides guidance and peace. Living up to this motto will not be easy, but it will become essential as events develop in Hong Kong. When traditional media in Hong Kong fails to provide comprehensive views on certain news, the shift to digital media will become more evident in the coming months and will be accelerated due to the mass migration of Hong Kongese to other parts of the world. Online engagement by Christians will become more significant to further develop a digital public theology for Hong Kong, whether it is for evangelism or for providing a space for those who are traumatized by the social events in Hong Kong. To be the channel of peace, while continuously speaking the truth, will be the foremost responsibility for all Christians in the digital space. I welcome brothers and sisters all over the world to pray for Hong Kong Christians for their witness online and offline. Calida Chu is a Hong Kongese theologian and Teaching Fellow at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. She can be found on Twitter at @calidachu. Best-selling Christian author and speaker Josh McDowell is stepping back from ministry following comments he made at a recent meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors. On Saturday, he had denounced the idea of systemic racism at the national gathering, saying Black Americans and other minorities were not raised to value hard work or education. The talk, entitled The Five Greatest Global Epidemics, identified a series of threats McDowell claims face the Christian church. The first, he said, was critical race theory, an academic field of study on the nature of systemic racism. Known by the acronym CRT, critical race theory has become controversial among Christian conservatives and political conservatives alike. McDowell told Christian counselors that CRT negates all the biblical teaching about racismbecause it focuses on systems rather than the sins of the human heart and said todays definition of social justice is not biblical. Theres no comparison to what is known today as social justice with what the Bible speaks of as justice, he said. With CRT they speak structurally. The Bible speaks individually. Make sure you get that. Thats a big difference. He went on to say not all Americans have equal opportunities to succeed. They dont, folks, he said in his speech. I do not believe Blacks, African Americans, and many other minorities have equal opportunity. Why? Most of them grew up in families where there is not a big emphasis on education, securityyou can do anything you want. You can change the world. If you work hard, you will make it. So many African Americans dont have those privileges like I was brought up with. He added that the Bible only focuses on individual sin, not structural sin. McDowells comments were first noted on social media by Christian college professor Aaron New. After New drew attention to those comments, a recording of McDowells speech was removed from the AACC website, where all the speeches and presentations at the conference are offered for sale. Religion News Service obtained a copy of the recording and verified McDowells remarks. After being contacted by Religion News Service, McDowell issued a statement on social media apologizing for his remarks, saying they do not reflect his own beliefs. He said his comment about minority families does not reflect reality. Racism has kept equality from being achieved in our nation, he said. McDowells ministry is affiliated with Cru, a national campus ministry founded by the late Bill Bright, a legendary figure among evangelicals. Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, has faced criticism by some long-term staff because of its recent focus on issues of race and diversity. A group of staff has accused Cru of embracing a secular system of ideas that divides humans into victims and oppressors. On Wednesday, McDowell, 82, announced that he was stepping back from ministry and speaking engagements in the aftermath of his comments at the conference to enter a season of listening. At a recent conference, I made comments about race, the Black family, and minorities that were wrong and hurt many people, he said. It breaks my heart to know what deep pain I have caused. Fierce debates over critical race theory and social justice have become commonplace among American evangelicals in recent years. The presidents of the Southern Baptist Conventions seminaries have denounced CRT as incompatible with the denominations statement of faitha claim that led a number of high-profile Black pastors to leave the denominationand the debate over CRT was a key topic at the SBCs 2021 annual meeting. A nonprofit founded by former Trump official and Wheaton College graduate Russ Vought has published a handbook labeling CRT as unAmerican and outlining steps for barring its use in local schools. A fireball exploded over the northern shore of the Dead Sea around 1650 BC, according to the findings of a multidiscipline team of 21 scientists. The explosion laid waste to the entire lower Jordan River Valley, sowing Dead Sea saltiness that ruined agriculture for several hundred years. The huge 100-acre city located at what is today called Tall el-Hammam east of the Jordan River was destroyed, along with a dozen other smaller cities and multiple small villages. They were abandoned and uninhabited for hundreds of years. The highly technical reportpublished this week in Scientific Reports, an online peer-reviewed journal, and already accessed more than 100,000 timesnoted in conclusion the similarity to the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: There are no known ancient writings or books of the Bible, other than Genesis, that describe what could be construed as the destruction of a city by an airburst/impact event. However, amid the wave of headlines, the unofficial peer reviews on social media from a number of archaeologists with varying degrees of familiarity with the Tall el-Hammam excavation were highly skeptical. As Christianity Today reported seven years ago, few archaeologists outside of those working on the excavation team believe that Tall el-Hammam is Sodom. In my opinion, this is an example of evidence being marshaled to support the identification of the site as Sodom, as opposed to letting the site speak for itself and thenif the evidence supports itput forth a proposal of it as Sodom," archaeologist Robert Mullins told CT. Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies at Azusa Pacific University, he currently codirects the excavation at Abel Beth Maacah, a site in northern Israel. He is also listed on the Tall el-Hammam excavation website as a ceramic consultant. Mullins, along with other evangelical archaeologists and Bible scholars, cite chronology as a major issue with the Sodom identification. The Bibles internal chronology places Abraham and the events in his life, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, three to four centuries earlier. At 1650 BC, the Israelites were in Egypt, with the Exodus still 200 years in the future. Pottery is a key tool for archaeological dating. Mullins, reviewing Tall el-Hammam pottery, saw a lot of 16th-century BC pieces, which seems to indicate the city was destroyed after the date of the airburst fireball described in the article. Archaeologists Steve Ortiz, director of Lipscomb Universitys Lanier Center of Archaeology, agreed that while Tall el-Hammam is an important site, its destruction date is too late to fit the Sodom scenario. He dismissed the fireball hoopla to CT. [Their] destruction does not look any different than any other destruction, he said. We have Assyrian and Egyptian destructions at Gezer that looks just as dramatic. Israeli archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University noted a lack of citations to other studies of the archaeology of destruction and thought the destruction the report described was not that unusual. I see some things that remind me of phenomena that we have in the Iron Age IIA (1000925 BC) destruction at Tell es-Safi/Gath (e.g. vitrified or melted bricks, ultra-high temperatures, and other things)a destruction that is most likely caused by the conquest and destruction of the site by Hazael of Aram, he said. Hazaels attack on Gath is reported in 2 Kings 12:17. The archaeological disagreement over Sodom centers not only on the chronology but also on the location. Sodom is conventionally located more to the south end of the Dead Sea. Steven Collins, the codirector of the Tall el-Hammam excavation, often quotes Genesis 13, where Abraham and Lot camped between Bethel and Ai and looked down on Sodom, which seems to favor its location north of the Dead Sea. But Mullins said Collins dismisses Genesis 18:16. Abraham is at Mamre looking down at Sodom; one cannot see Hammam from the Hebron area, he observed. Whether its a fireball that destroys a city, a mighty wind that holds back the waves of the Red Sea, an ark that landed on a mountain after a global flood, or celestial events that herald a royal babys birth, theres a tendency to look for naturalistic explanations for biblical miraclesas if that would prove the Bible to skeptics. The scientists who wrote this report on the Jordan River Valley fireball state, An eyewitness description of this 3600-year-old catastrophic event may have been passed down as an oral tradition that eventually became the written biblical account about the destruction of Sodom. If the Bible is just a collection of oral traditions that were puzzled together centuries later, perhaps the fireball would fit. But a century and a half of increasingly detailed archaeological investigation shows time and again that the historical framework of the biblical story holds up back to the time of Abraham. There is no question that this is an amazing site, Mullins concluded. All of the archaeologists would agree with that. But they are going to have to put forth more evidence that its Sodom. Gordon Govier is host of The Book and The Spade podcast and editor of ARTIFAX magazine. Charter, private schools see growth during pandemic as 1.4 million kids taken out of public schools: study Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Approximately 1.4 million students were taken out of public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and transferred to alternative educational systems such as charter and private schools, according to a recent report. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a report Wednesday analyzing student enrollment trends in 41 states and the District of Columbia during the 2020-2021 school year. The report noted that approximately 240,000 students were newly enrolled in public charter schools, representing a 7% increase, while 1.4 million students were taken out of traditional public schools. Regarding charter schools, the report found that 39 of the 41 states plus Washington, D.C., saw increases in charter school enrollment. Only Illinois, Iowa and Wyoming saw declines in charter enrollment. For their data, the National Alliance report used state educational agency websites to accrue enrollment statistics for the states analyzed, as well as interviews with parents, students and school staff. It is premature to draw any conclusions about why charter school enrollment grew while enrollment in district public schools declined. And yet the pattern among states in this report is undeniable, stated the report, noting that the trend of decline in public school enrollment began before the pandemic. There is much to learn from families who made the switch, and perhaps the biggest lesson for everyone is how critically important charter schools are to public education. In response to the coronavirus pandemic last year, public schools across the country halted in-person classes, switching to virtual learning at all levels to curb the spread of COVID-19. Based in Washington, D.C., The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of public charter schools, especially at the federal level. The lockdowns on public education prompted many parents to consider alternatives, as many states exempted private schools and other venues from government lockdown mandates. In March, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the percentage of households that were homeschooling had increased from 5.4% in the 2019-2020 school year to 11.1% for the 2020-2021 school year. A clarification was added to the school enrollment question to make sure households were reporting true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school, explained the Census Bureau. Its clear that in an unprecedented environment, families are seeking solutions that will reliably meet their health and safety needs, their childcare needs and the learning and socio-emotional needs of their children. Josh McDowell steps back from ministry after controversial remarks on black families Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Prominent Christian author and apologist Josh McDowell announced that he will step away from his ministry work and speaking events for the time being after making controversial remarks about minorities and education. In a statement posted Wednesday afternoon to his Twitter account, the 82-year-old said that the backlash from his recent comments at the American Association of Christian Counselors conference on Saturday led him to conclude that he had to step away from his ministry efforts for a time. "It has become clear to me, along with Cru leadership, that I need to step back from my ministry and speaking engagements to enter a season of listening and addressing the growth areas that I have become aware of through this," stated McDowell, who has authored and co-authored over 150 books. "During this time of meeting with others and learning, I hope to personally grow and better understand how I can help contribute to the reconciliation and unity that God desires for us all." McDowell added that his organization, Josh McDowell Ministry, will continue to operate, but its daily work will be overseen by CEO Duane Zook. While speaking at the conference, he criticized critical race theory. McDowell claimed that the majority of African American and other racial minority families do not emphasize the importance of education to their children. "I do not believe blacks, African Americans, and many other minorities have equal opportunity. Why? Most of them grew up in families where there is not a big emphasis on education," stated McDowell at the weekend gathering. "You can change the world. If you work hard, you will make it. So many African Americans don't have those privileges like I was brought up with." In his statement Wednesday, McDowell called his remarks "wrong" and caused "deep pain." Central Baptist College Professor Aaron New was among those outraged by the comments, taking to Twitter to note that he was "kinda stunned" by McDowell's remarks. "Apparently he also claims 'social justice is our next epidemic,'" tweeted New. "[McDowell, can] you confirm and/or explain? Because this is [] absolutely horrible." "I'm not anyone of much significance. So he doesn't owe *me* anything," he added. "But I do think [McDowell] should clarify or explain or apologize - just for starters." Grove City College Professor Warren Throckmorton wrote in a blog entry Sunday that McDowell "completely ignored the actual reasons for lack of equity in opportunity." "He spent the first 10 minutes of his AACC speech blasting the concept of structural impediments to equity. So Mr. McDowell, what is the reason for lack of equal opportunity?" stated Throckmorton. "I hope this incident will be a teachable moment for white evangelicals who have mindlessly accepted the word of their talking heads about CRT." McDowell issued an apology soon after his Saturday speech in which he admitted that his comments were a "generalized statement that does not reflect reality." "I apologize and reiterate my Christian love for all races, nationalities and people groups," he stated. "My desire is that we as Christians would deal with both racism and inequality as the sins that they are in order to restore the unity that God desires for all." Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Tax the rich reads a dress worn by a socialist congresswoman at an exclusive New York City gala that typically costs $35,000 to get into. The now infamous dress worn by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who appears not to understand the irony or really even the definition of irony, was made by a company deep in tax debt in three states (in part for not paying out workers compensation insurance to employees). Being aligned with socialists in 2021 apparently means looking like the decadent elite in The Hunger Games, dodging taxes, and stiffing workers. In response to criticism, Ocasio-Cortez said that politicians have to attend the event due to our responsibilities in overseeing our citys cultural institutions that serve the public. She added that the criticisms are just the latest example of how her body is policed from all corners politically. Were to believe that Ocasio-Cortezs appearance at the Met Gala was just being done for you, the people. And by the way, anyone who criticizes this decision is a sexist. As absurd as her comments may seem and as hypocritical as it may look like on the surface, there is a certain kind of logic to it if you separate what the new socialists say they are for and what they are really about. Confused as to why someone who presents as a for the people socialist demands all the opulent privileges of a Politburo member? Welcome to champagne socialism. "The most odious, cynical and hypocritical kind of champagne socialism. At least the ones of old were more eloquent, somewhat more mature and from a more admirable generation. This is like the person everyone hated at college English lit laughing in your face." https://t.co/0V1DOkgU61 Boris Ryvkin (@BRyvkin) September 14, 2021 This perfectly illustrates the cultural and political trends of American society. Left-wing, woke sloganeering is the social capital of the cultural elite. Its the currency by which they maintain their status and shield themselves from criticism. Tax the rich is a perfectly acceptable and, in fact, an approved message, just as protect unborn life wouldnt be. John Gibson, the executive officer of Tripwire Interactive, a video game studio, resigned after tweeting out support of a Texas law prohibiting the abortion of babies with a heartbeat. He was literally denounced by the company as he left. Solidarity to the cause is the only quality that now matters in our increasingly mediocre meritocracy. Join the cause and you can do no wrong; go against it and youll be unpersoned. By demonstrating their commitment to various left-wing causes especially diversity, equity, and inclusionno manner of hypocrisy, incompetence, or failure can derail this elites access to power. Remember when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, basically endorsed infanticide and then admitted to wearing blackface or maybe it was a Ku Klux Klan hood in a college yearbook photo? One would think that would have been a career-ender for the Democrat politician, but he got a pass after doubling down his commitment to wokeness and tearing down historical statues. Racism is just fine as long as you join the crusade of anti-racism. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has been praised widely by the left for being at the forefront of creating new, equitable American cities. How has she demonstrated that commitment? Breed was caught dining at the exclusive Napa restaurant French Laundry clearly a popular spot for California Democrat politicos in November when she and so many other politicians were insisting that we all must socially distance and avoid gatherings. At the time, she called the criticism fair. A year later and we see what that fair criticism really meant to the San Francisco mayor. She was once again caught at a large social gathering in a San Francisco nightclub, this time dancing and singing without a mask among a party of maskless people, violating her own citys rules. "I chose to go to @sfblackcat last night for my first indoor concert since the pandemic and this happened ????" pic.twitter.com/x68lRya0Wh Mariecar Mendoza (@SFMarMendoza) September 16, 2021 Breeds initial excuse was that she was vaccinated, but San Franciscos rules dont make distinctions for mask-wearing between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. She then followed up with excuse No. 2. I was feeling the spirit and I wasnt thinking about a mask, Breed said while laughing and smiling in an interview. "San Francisco Mayor @LondonBreed defends violating her indoor mask mandate while partying at a club: I was feeling the spirit and I wasnt thinking about a mask." pic.twitter.com/lFTFCgzihZ Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 20, 2021 Taking the mask on and off to follow a ridiculous rule is tedious, you see. This is basically the equivalent of whatever, Im the mayor, stop killing the vibe while I break my own dumb rules that you have to follow at the risk of a hefty fine. Another great victory for equity and science. Will Breed face any consequences from this? Of course not. Shes committed to the revolution. The lesson is that under our new cultural hierarchy, blatant hypocrisy and double standards from the elite should be expected. You stay within those ranks and in the good graces of the regime by paying constant homage to its cultural tastes and making it clear that in this new world of tolerance and inclusion, those who disagree or differ are justly and ruthlessly excluded. The only flaw in this system is it will crumble if the people truly turn against them. If the people decide that theyve had enough of the hypocrisy, enough of the vapid sloganeering, and begin to demand competence and accountability from leaders, maybe there will be consequences to this nonsense. Until then, expect more absurdities. Originally published at The Daily Signal. Ed Litton warns against 'tribal hostility' in SBC: 'Our convention is struggling' Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton warned against the tribal hostility, ungraciousness and suspicion within the denomination, reminding Southern Baptists that the world is watching the way they handle issues like sexual abuse and racial reconciliation. In the toxicity of the conversation and lack of civility, we do the opposite, Litton, pastor of Redemption Church near Mobile, Alabama, said during the SBCs Executive Committee meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday night. We should honor one another [and] those who are struggling. The mood of our times is to attack, demonize, make allegations and threaten. We are seldom slow to speak and slow to anger. Why not come and reason together instead of promoting tribal hostility, ungraciousness and suspicion of one another? Litton spoke hours after members of the Executive Committee debated whether waiving attorney-client privilege as requested by the sexual abuse task force would violate SBC bylaws. In June, SBC messengers voted for Litton to appoint a task force to oversee a third-party investigation of allegations SBC leaders mishandled a crisis of sexual abuse in the denomination. Guidepost Solutions was commissioned to "review and enhance training provided to SBC Executive Committee staff and its board of trustees" as it relates to sex abuse and the organizations "communications to cooperating churches and congregants in cooperating churches." The task force subsequently asked the Executive Committee to waive attorney-client privilege for the investigation. The motion called for the Executive Committee to agree to the accepted best-standards and practices as recommended by the commissioned third-party, including but not limited to the Executive Committee staff and members waiving attorney client privilege in order to ensure full access to information and accuracy in the review. Speaking on Monday night, Litton said his heart was heavy about the gathering. I think all of us feel the weight of it, and we need to find a way forward for the glory of God together," he said. Our convention is struggling right now, he continued, and its a crisis of trust. However you label it, theres a solution and that solution is with us. Our churches want to see our entities working together in harmony, and they want to see the EC leading the way. Southern Baptists, Litton said, have genuine concerns for how abuse cases will be handled. The people are watching, and what theyre looking for is openness and transparency," he said. The world is watching, he added. Theyll watch to see what we do here this week about abuse. Theyll watch to see how sincere we will be about racial reconciliation. They'll watch us in every turn and they'll make decisions. Litton also highlighted the weightiness of the EC's decisions. Our actions will either trouble Southern Baptists and their mission to take this Gospel to the ends of the earth or well do what is right, he said. Well do whatever is possible to lift high the trust that has been given to us. The Southern Baptist Convention is not a child that we hold their hand. We hold the trust of the Southern Baptist Convention in our hands. Earlier in his message, Litton said that during the short time hes served as president of the second-largest Christian denomination in the U.S., hes been struck by the good Southern Baptists are doing around the world from feeding the poor and participating in disaster relief to planting churches. But the pastor said hes also met with victims of sexual abuse and seen their pain firsthand. He stressed that the SBC wants to address sexual abuse and racial reconciliation and desperately wants to become unified. The cross of Jesus Christ unites us like no other people can be united, Litton said. The only way the Gospel remains above all else is if Jesus remains at the center of it all. Primarily due to the secularization of culture, the SBC has lost both power and influence in society, the pastor said. Instead of succumbing to fear, Litton urged listeners to trust God for deliverance. He warned that failing to do so will lead to the kind of fundamentalism that fosters fear. I have always believed that the word fundamentalist was a good word, he said. Those are people who believe in the fundamentals. But theres a danger for fundamentalists. [Evangelist] Del Fehsenfeld Jr. said, Fundamentalism thrives on fear, force and intimidation. The theme of next years SBC annual meeting will be Christ at the center of it all, Litton said. He stressed that the SBC has a disease that can only be cured by Jesus Christ. He reminded Southern Baptists that regardless of their differences, Christ is preeminent in everything. The most common question I am asked as your president is, How in the world will you unite Southern Baptists? My answer is, I can't. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. But we are all called to unity, he said. Josh McDowell apologizes for claiming most black families dont emphasize education Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Christian author Josh McDowell has apologized for comments he made at a recent national meeting of Christian counselors wherein he suggested that most black Americans have not been raised to value hard work or education. In remarks on Saturday at the gathering of the American Association of Christian Counselors, the acclaimed writer and apologist spoke of critical race theory known by the acronym CRT as a grave threat to the Church because it negates the Bibles teaching about racism. Some have argued that CRT contradicts the Gospel since it focuses on social systems and not the condition of the human heart. In his speech, McDowell, who has authored and co-authored over 150 books, asserted that not every American, particularly racial minorities, enjoys equal opportunity because of differences in values. I do not believe blacks, African Americans, and many other minorities have equal opportunity. Why? Most of them grew up in families where there is not a big emphasis on education, security you can do anything you want. You can change the world. If you work hard, you will make it. So many African Americans dont have those privileges like I was brought up with, McDowell was quoted as saying. The author posted a statement Sunday clarifying his words. He apologized by saying that his statement about racial minorities carried some unfortunate implications. Racism has kept equality from being achieved within our nation, McDowell's statement reads. He added that when he said most minorities grew up in families that did not prioritize education and security, it was a generalized statement that does not reflect reality. "I apologize and reiterate my Christian love for all races, nationalities and people groups," he wrote. My desire is that we as Christians would deal with both racism and inequality as the sins that they are in order to restore the unity that God desires for all. His words come amid ongoing friction over critical race theory nationwide. Tension over the issue has struck the nations largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as influential and large school districts. At the SBC's annual meeting in Nashville back in June, CRT was a much-debated subject that brought about several resolutions from the floor following two years of considerable consternation among some within the convention after the passage of Resolution 9 at the 2019 annual meeting. Resolution 9 described the theory as a useful analytical tool. Opposition to the resolution was one of the key aspects that led to the formation of the Conservative Baptist Network. The network of Southern Baptist congregations contests what they see as a drift from their theological commitments and aims to reinvigorate the denomination's historic emphasis on evangelism. Earlier this summer, Loudoun County, Virginia, became a flashpoint in the nationwide debate on critical race theory. Hundreds of parents flooded school board meetings in the suburban Washington, D.C., county to voice their objections to what they believe is the indoctrination of their children into a Marxist ideology that further foments racial hostility. Local proponents of CRT say that such training is needed in the district, given that teachers in the school system are primarily white and that the surrounding community is increasingly racially diverse. SBC's IMB requiring all missionaries, staff to get COVID-19 vaccinations Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention announced that its missionaries must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and strongly recommends that their children who are at least 12 years old be vaccinated as well. The IMB posted a statement online earlier this month noting that missionaries planning to attend the Field Personnel Orientation before undertaking longterm missions must be vaccinated, while missionaries attending the Stateside Conference during a return to the United States must also be vaccinated. Both conferences are mandatory events. Additionally, IMB is requiring staff who have to interact with field personnel at the conferences to be vaccinated. Volunteers serving with IMB field teams must follow the recommendations and requirements of the government of the hosting country for the volunteer trip, stated the IMB. IMB does, however, recommend those who are not required to be vaccinated by the host country to consider being vaccinated, given the risks associated with travel. The recommendation for volunteers is designed to protect not only the volunteer, but also the field personnel, national partners and ongoing field ministries. The missions body went on to explain that, in the past, the IMB has required staff and missionaries to be vaccinated against other diseases, going at least as far back as the 1980s. We must make every wise decision, even when a decision is exceptionally difficult, that maintains our team members access to the growing number of unreached peoples and places around the world where vaccines are required for entry, explained IMB President Paul Chitwood, in remarks included in the statement. We also want to do all we can to undergird our team members spiritual and physical health to maximize our effectiveness as we serve Southern Baptists in our global gospel endeavors. In recent months, multiple religious bodies and prominent American pastors have called on their members to get vaccinated against COVID-19, rejecting the idea of religious exemptions. Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress of the Texas-based megachurch First Baptist Dallas, for example, recently told The Associated Press that there were no valid religious objections to the vaccine. There is no credible religious argument against the vaccines, Jeffress told the AP, adding that Christians who are troubled by the use of a fetal cell line for the testing of the vaccines would also have to abstain from the use of Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Ibuprofen, and other products that used the same cell line if they are sincere in their objection. Others, however, have taken issue with the COVID-19 vaccine, including the use of aborted fetal cells as part of its research and development, and have sought to be exempted. In August, for example, Pastor Greg Fairrington of Destiny Christian Church in Rocklin, California, announced that his church would provide letters of exemption to anyone opposed to the vaccine. "America is a free country. We have freedom of religion, and if a person has a moral objection to taking the vaccine, we want to come alongside of them," stated Fairrington at the time. Sadie Robertson Huff thanks God after daughter is released from hospital Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Author, speaker and Duck Dynasty star Sadie Robertson Huff thanked God for the release of her four-month-old daughter, Honey, from the hospital following a four-day stay sparked by a respiratory infection. She is still very congested with a bad cough, but her oxygen was good enough to get better from home :), Robertson Huff wrote on Instagram Saturday. We are so so grateful! Thank you for everyone who prayed for us we truly did feel your prayers! We didnt expect to come home today and so we are very happy. Thank you God! the Live Fearless author, who has struggled with anxiety, continued. Also, to the parents who have kids in the hospital I am praying that your grieving heart would feel held, your anxious heart would find a deep peace, and your sad heart would find joy in the little moments, she added. A day earlier, Robertson Huff informed her Instagram followers of her child's health condition. "Watching your child sick is one of the most heart breaking things. Seeing her little struggle brings me to tears like I have never cried, but seeing her strength has given me smiles I have never smiled," he wrote. "The love I have for this girl is unmatched. She makes us laugh when we want to be crying, because of her wild and sweet fighter spirit." "Seeing the nurses and doctors love her and laugh at her silliness in the midst of sickness has brought joy to a dark room," she added. In May, Robertson Huff called the birth of her baby girl a "miracle." We saw a million little miracles yesterday - the best one being this girl right here... Honey, she wrote in a post sharing photos of her and her husband, Christian Huff, holding their little girl. The pure goodness of God. story to come, but I'm way too occupied right now by cuteness. The 24-year-old and her husband announced the pregnancy last October. During her pregnancy, the Christian speaker was very vocal about her difficulties, including a battle with COVID-19. In early December, she reported having some pretty crazy morning sickness. The hardest thing was I did get COVID while I was pregnant, and I was so sick from that, and so sick still in the morning sickness, so that was a challenge, the reality star told People at the time. Seriously, my heart goes out to every single pregnant person with COVID and everybody with COVID. They were telling me at the hospital, they were like, Man, people have to deliver with it. I can't even imagine. So that was challenging in and of itself. The Huffs got married in 2019. The ceremony was officiated by the founding pastor of Passion City Church, Louie Giglio, who described the event as a God-breathed moment. Over 600 guests attended the ceremony. Just a few days before her engagement in May 2019, the reality star professed her love for Huff. Of course there are a lot of things that I love about this man, she wrote on Instagram. Hes strong and kind. Hes handsome and humble. He is hilarious. Hes my best friend and the best one to have. FaithMeet, social media platform with solely Christian content, will launch in 2022 Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment FaithMeet, a new Christian social networking platform, is slated for launch in 2022 and will allow users worldwide to connect with faith-based Christian content in just a few clicks. The creator and founder of the FaithMeet platform, Godwin Rose Samuel, told The Christian Post that although platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter provide some Christian content, it's often not enough. He created FaithMeet in 2021 as a way to give Christians access to a virtual space for only faith-based, Christian content without any "secular distractions." "Christians have to spend long amounts of time sifting through other non-Christian and secular content to find the Christian content on these other apps," Samuel said. "The Christian content is often not even God-centered because it distracts from the focus of the Jesus-focused gospels. Whenever I would search social media apps for Christian content, it was always a struggle to find quality content. So, I created my app that will contain mostly everything that these other apps have, but it will be diluted in faith, which I think will help Christians to focus on God more." Samuel said that although he made the platform with Christians in mind, he hopes it will be a platform for non-Christians to be introduced to Christianity. On FaithMeet, Christians and people of all faith backgrounds will be able to post about Christianity and will have access to Christian-based posts, pictures, videos, music and worship content. Christians will have the ability to give donations, offerings and tithes to ministries and various churches of their choice. There will also be a chatting feature to allow people to communicate with one another on the platform and spread the Word of God. "I wanted to live out the faith by creating this social networking platform. I wanted to inspire those who don't know the Lord while even helping those who are already Christians to keep their eyes on the Lord and not on lusting and coveting over secular content," Samuel added. "Other non-Christian content always pops up on these other apps. And currently, we are combining Facebook, YouTube and Instagram because we have posts, videos and pictures. So now, people don't have to go to these other platforms. It's all in one place." FaithMeet will have a set of community standards and guidelines that aim to keep all content "appropriate" and "God-centered," according to Samuel. A team will monitor content and remove any posts deemed "inappropriate" or "non-Christian." "The platform team will keep it faith-based by being an extra set of eyes," Samuel explained. FaithMeet was initially called "Rovinsa," but the name changed over time as the platform was developed. The platform was created with the hope of combining religion, the Gospel and technology in one place. To achieve this goal, FaithMeet will offer digital interactions as a major component by providing fast responses for prayer requests, real-time updates of events, activities and announcements from churches around the world. Samuel said that through FaithMeet, he hopes to help Christians form an online community. "They can meet each other and glorify God through the app. I think this will help people move away from porn and other secular things that negatively influence the youth," Samuel said. FaithMeet is not the first social media platform aimed at attracting Christians. The Chrisitan Post has reported on other platforms that have provided an alternative for Christians and conservatives, including Social Cross, Instant Christ and USA.Life. Feed my sheep: Denzel Washington reveals what God's been telling him to do Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington recently revealed what the Lord has been telling him to do when he prays in this season. Washington was among the featured speakers at "The Better Man Event" hosted by First Baptist Orlando in Florida on Saturday, where he revealed to his spiritual mentor, Pastor A.R. Bernard, the senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, the message he's consistently been hearing from God. At 66, getting ready to be 67, having just buried my mother, I made a promise to her and to God, not just to do good the right way, but to honor my mother and my father by the way I live my life, the rest of my days on this Earth. I'm here to serve, to help, to provide, Washington shared at the Christian mens conference. During the nearly 30-minute sit-down discussion, Washington told Bernard what God has been telling him every time he prays. "In every prayer, all I hear is: 'Feed my sheep.' That's what God wants me to do, the Fences actor shared. Washington admitted that often his response is, What's that mean? But, he added, "What I found out in the last couple of years is there are all kinds of sheep. So that's why I talk to experienced shepherds to help guide me. The world has changed. What is our role as a man? The John Wayne formula is not quite a fit right now. But strength, leadership, power, authority, guidance, patience are God's gift to us as men. We have to cherish that, not abuse it, the actor advised. During the discussion, Washington wanted the audience to know that despite his redemptive characters on screen, hes endured his own battles in choosing to live for God. "What I played in the movies is not who I am, it's what I played," he stressed. "I'm not going to sit or stand on any pedestal and tell you about what I had in mind for you or your soul. Because the fact of the matter is, in the whole 40-year process, I was struggling for my own soul. "It [the Bible] says in the last days we'll become lovers of ourselves. The number one photograph now is a selfie. So we all want to lead. We're willing to do anything ladies and young men to be influential. ... Fame is a monster and we all have these ladders and battles, roads we have to walk in our given lives. Be you famous or whoever's out there listening, we all have our individual challenges. It's cliche [but] money, don't make it better. It doesn't. Fame just magnifies the problems and the opportunities, Washington continued. The New York native went on to share guidance for men who are looking for success. "Stay on your knees. Watch me, but listen to God, he added. I hope that the words in my mouth and the meditation of my heart are pleasing in God's sight, but I'm human. I'm just like you. What I have will not keep me on this Earth for one more day. Share what you know, inspire who you can, seek advice. If you want to talk to one someone, talk to the one that can do something about it. Constantly develop those habits. Throughout his discussion, Washington frequently quoted things he learned about God from Bernard. "Fear is nothing but contaminated faith, Washington said, echoing an earlier comment by Bernard. He then added: My chest is sagging right now because I haven't been lifting weights. I'm losing weight first. So you got to lift them faith weights. You got to do your curls and your squats daily. You may get injured; you may want to throw them down, you may want to give up, you may never be big ... you have to refill your bucket every night. You have to refill your bucket every morning. Washington concluded his faith-filled talk by noting that although he has money and stardom, what hes discovered is that one always needs to leave room to learn. In an interview with The Christian Post back in 2017, Washington shared part of his Christian testimony, saying that when he was 20 years old, "it was prophesied that I would travel the world and preach to millions of people. I thought it was through my work and it has been." "My mother said to me, when I was 59, she said, 'Denzel, you do a lot of good. You have to do good the right way and you know what I'm talking about,'" Washington continued. "I don't drink anymore; I don't do any of those things. I'm all about the message, to the degree that I know it, and I'm unashamed and unafraid to share it! "So you have to be unafraid and unashamed to share it in the way your millennial generation knows how," he told this CP reporter at the time. The Oscar winner now regularly uses his platform to inspire others. How should Christians think about Bidens vaccine mandate? Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment On September 9, President Joe Biden announced new executive action concerning COVID-19 vaccines. According to the presidents plan, all employers with more than 100 employees must require their workers to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Businesses that do not comply with the rule can be fined up to $14,000 per violation. The new mandate follows a recent mandate that all federal employees receive the vaccine, get tested weekly, or face dismissal from their job. The new regulation is supposed to be drafted and implemented by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor (although some think this is without legal authority). Currently, it is unclear what type of medical, religious, or conscience exemptions will be granted concerning the vaccine mandate. How should Christians respond to President Bidens sweeping vaccine mandate? Specifically, how should Christians think about religious exemptions and accommodations? Admittedly, these are complex questions on which many biblically grounded Christians differ. But given the scope and far-reaching consequences for civil liberties, conscience rights, religious freedom, and the ability of families to make health decisions, these questions deserve careful consideration and reflection. Legal concerns First, there are serious concerns that President Bidens vaccine mandate is illegal and unconstitutional. No federal statute or constitutional provision expressly gives the president the authority to impose a sweeping vaccine mandate on private businesses and their employees in this manner, and the Biden administration has an extremely questionable reading of the statute they claim gives him this authority. Some states have already threatened to sue. At the very least, Christians should be aware of the legal and constitutional concerns related to the presidents order. Once the new rule goes into effect, the mandate might not withstand the likely barrage of lawsuits challenging its legality. Role of government Second, questions about the legality and constitutionality of President Bidens vaccine mandate should prompt Christians to think about the proper role of government. The Bible teaches that government has been ordained by God. According to Paul, Whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment (Rom. 13:2, ESV). In the United States, the primary governing authority is the U.S. Constitution. This means that when a president or any government official pursues a policy that oversteps their prescribed realm of authority, they are acting unlawfully. Of course, when our elected officials issue directives within their rightful scope of authority, Christians are bound to comply, so long as obeying does not require us to sin against God, a Christians highest authority (Acts 5:29). But do we have an obligation to automatically and always obey the government? Similarly, how should Christians respond if a mandate or law is not illegal, but they personally dont like the law or find it inconvenient? For example, whats the proper Christian response if the government were to mandate a weekly exercise routine or require its citizens to wear pink hats on Thursday? On these questions, Christians should be humble and willing to learn from one another. We should also endeavor to think biblically about the role and purpose of government. One helpful way to think biblically about the role of government is through the concept of sphere sovereignty, a philosophy of society developed by Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). According to Kuyper, life is divided into distinct, autonomous jurisdictions such as the state, family, church, and the individual. Although these spheres interact and may even overlap at points, there are clear lines of demarcation related to sovereignty that should not be crossed. For Kuyper, the state is empowered with limited oversight responsibility over the other spheres. However, the states authority is derivative and dependent on God. Thus, the state must never attempt to monopolize power. Moreover, the state should respect the sovereignty of the individual. The state may intervene when a dispute arises between individuals and other spheres, but the state must never assume an outsized role and take over the tasks of society. In short, sphere sovereignty is a model of diffused power that Kuyper believed was rooted in the structure of nature. Because authority is distributed across societys vast array of institutions, no single entity or sphere accumulates ultimate sovereignty. Consequently, Gods position as supreme sovereign is preserved. Kuypers reflections are helpful when applied to the role of government. In fact, Kuypers thought follows the logic of Romans 13 which teaches that the state exists to punish evildoers and exact Gods wrath on those who do wrong (v. 4). Romans 13 does not teach that Christians should uncritically comply with the state no matter what is being demanded. As theologian Thomas Schreiner explains, [Romans 13] is a general exhortation that delineates what is usually the case: people should normally obey the governing authorities. In other words, the God-delegated purpose of the governing authorities is to punish evildoers and reward those who do good. An implication of these principles is that when the government goes beyond its prescribed limits, it is acting unjustly and loses legitimacy. Applying the logic of sphere sovereignty to the vaccine mandate, the government does not have the authority to force us to inject a substance into our bodies that we do not consent to. This is outside the governments jurisdiction, so it is appropriate for individuals to be wary about forced vaccination. The issue of bodily integrity is important, and Christians should be very concerned when the government oversteps its jurisdiction into the realm of the family and individual. Of course, it is important to note that this appeal to bodily integrity is different than the popular but logically flawed pro-abortion slogan my body, my choice. For one, abortion deals with two bodies: the mothers and her childs. The mother and child are two separate people; they are genetically distinct. Abortion violently destroys the body of the unborn child and interrupts the natural process of pregnancy, permanently severing the relationship between mother and child. Political concerns Third, there are relevant political considerations related to the presidents mandate. In short, if Joe Biden can enact a mandate as broad and sweeping as this one, is there a mandate that this president or a future president cant hand down in the name of public health? Whats the limit to what the president can compel American families and private companies to do? As it stands, the presidents mandate would affect about 100 million people. This fact alone necessitates careful consideration of the scope of presidential authority and power. It is worth noting that the presidents directive is far more extreme than the orders handed down by Democrat governors and mayors. Throughout the pandemic, Democrat leaders have embraced measures such as mask mandates, lockdowns, and school closures. But the presidents mandate goes even further. In fact, Bidens heavy-handed action threatens to increase vaccine hesitancy rather than persuade the unvaccinated to comply with the order. Conscience concerns Fourth, questions about religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate have prompted debate in the wider society, including among Christians. Notably, there is nothing in the Bible that forbids Christians from getting vaccinated. Many Christians, citing verses like Philippians 2:4 (Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.), have cheerfully received COVID-19 vaccines out of a desire to protect not only their own health but also the health of their loved ones and neighbors. Meanwhile, other believers have reservations or sincerely held conscience objections to receiving the vaccine, believing it is morally impermissible or not right for them. If there are no clear biblical admonitions against receiving a vaccine, are there any grounds for a religious exemption? On this question, Alliance Defending Freedom, an influential Christian legal group, provides the following advice: "You must first determine if your objection is based on a sincerely held religious belief against taking any of the available vaccines (since they are different), or whether your objections are based on other medical, health, cultural, or political, but not religious, concerns. Many people have medical or other concerns which do not rise to the level of an actual religious belief. A belief that taking a vaccine is unwise or could be harmful will normally be considered a medical or health objection, not a religious objection." While the objections of some Christians to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine are rooted in medical, personal, and political concerns, the concerns of others qualify for what might be called conscience objections. Like religious beliefs, conscience claims are deeply personal and connected to the core of a person. Now, when talking about conscience, as with anything, it is important to define our terms. In short, Christians believe conscience is a God-given internal faculty that guides moral decision-making. Our conscience convicts us when we do something wrong. A rightly functioning conscience inflicts distress, in the form of guilt, shame, or remorse, whenever we violate what we believe is a morally appropriate course of action. Significantly, Christians believe that to willfully act against ones conscience is sinful. Romans 14:23 teaches that For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. This admonition seems especially pertinent when the action involves something as personal as injecting something into ones body which, according to Scripture, is a temple of the Lord (1 Cor. 6:19). In other words, Christians believe it is sinful to do something that goes against their conscience; therefore, it is morally wrong to force anyone to do something that violates their conscience. In the context of the vaccine mandate, it seems appropriate to honor and respect those who have legitimate, morally informed reasons for receiving or not receiving a vaccine. Abortion concerns Fifth, when it comes to religious freedom concerns and the vaccine, concern about complicity with abortion has been raised. On this front, it is worth noting that for 2,000 years, Christians have been clear on their convictions about abortion (i.e., the intentional killing of unborn children in the womb). According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, fetal cell lines were used in the development and production of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, and fetal cell lines were used in the testing of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines (but not in the vaccines themselves). Passages from the Bible including Exodus 21:22-25; Psalm 51:5-6, 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:4-5; and Luke 1:39-45 affirm the personhood of the unborn. Many who believe in the sanctity of life sincerely believe it is inappropriate to have even the slightest connection with abortion, even if that connection is remote. For that reason, some have chosen to forego a vaccine. Finally, as a general note, when abortion-derived cell lines are used in the development, production, or testing of vaccines, the Christian community including those who chose to get vaccines should express disapproval about the continued use of these cell lines and request that laboratories and pharmaceutical companies not use these cell lines in the future. Final reflections In short, President Bidens vaccine mandate has proven to be divisive and frustrating to millions of Americans. After months of promising that his administration would not mandate vaccines, Biden has done an about-face. (As recently as July, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about vaccine mandates and responded, Can we mandate vaccines across the country? No. Thats not a role that the federal government, I think, even has the power to make.) Many Americans are understandably outraged. As those called to take every thought captive (2 Cor. 10:5), Christians cannot respond to the vaccine mandate simply out of emotion but must think carefully and biblically about the announcement. Legal challenges will determine whether the order is constitutional and therefore enforceable. But beyond the specifics of the mandate, Christians should think biblically about the role and authority of government as well as the propriety and wisdom of appealing to religious freedom exemptions. Religious freedom is a precious right afforded to those who live in this country and should never be abused. Although some Christians think it is unwise to appeal to religious freedom exemptions when the Bible does not prohibit vaccines, it is nonetheless the case that millions of Christians believe taking a COVID-19 vaccine is not the right decision for their health or have sincere conscience objections to being forced to do something they deem even remotely connected to an immoral practice such as abortion. Therefore, rather than bully, cajole, or coerce our fellow Americans, it seems prudent to respect each others religious beliefs, consciences, and moral convictions concerning vaccines. Originally published at the Family Research Council. LDS Church leaders urge mask wearing at all times while inside sacred temples Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment In a bid to keep their sacred temples open amid the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have asked all visitors and workers to wear masks "at all times" while inside as a temporary safety measure. "We are grateful that in recent months, some level of ordinance work has resumed in every temple. Our desire is to keep temples open. As cases of COVID-19 increase in many areas, we want to do everything possible to allow temples to remain open," the denomination's president, Russell M. Nelson, and his two top counselors, Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring, wrote in a letter to the church Wednesday. "Therefore, effective immediately, all temple patrons and workers are asked to wear face masks at all times while in the temple. These safety protocols are temporary, based on COVID-19 conditions, and will be rescinded as soon as circumstances permit." This summer, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated guidance on the need for urgently increasing COVID-19 vaccinations. The CDC recommended that everyone wear a mask in public indoor places, even if they are fully vaccinated, in areas of substantial or high transmission. The CDC said this guidance was due to a "rapid and alarming rise in the COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates around the country." New data also showed that the delta variant was more infectious and led to increased transmissibility compared with other variants, even in some vaccinated individuals. In addition to regular Sunday worship in some 18,000 chapels, members of the denomination worship in temples they consider to be "the world's most sacred spaces, places where heaven and earth meet." The church lists 252 temples worldwide, but only 161 of them were reportedly operating last month. Carole M. Stephens of the church's general Relief Society Presidency said the spiritual strength members receive from worshipping in a temple increases their "faith and determination to face the trials" of life. The LDS Church also performs temple ceremonies on behalf of those who have died, a practice they argue comes from 1 Corinthians 15:29. "This practice enables Latter-day Saints to form eternal connections between family members in heaven and on earth," the church says. While anyone can visit a temple during an open house, access is generally restricted to members who have a current "temple recommend" card. The card verifies members believe in the Latter-day Saints doctrines and obey certain rules like tithing and abstaining from alcohol, The New York Times reports. In urging visitors to their sacred temples to mask up during visits, Latter-day Saint leaders explained that they have previously taken similar protective steps to prevent the spread of disease. "Our urging Church members to be vaccinated and to protect themselves and others from the spread of disease has precedent," they noted. "Prior First Presidencies shared similar messages in 1900 about smallpox and in 1957 regarding polio. Please do all you can to protect yourself and others so the work of the Lord on both sides of the veil can move forward." Oxford college apologizes for hosting Christian conference after students complain Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment An Oxford college in England has apologized after the school hosted a conference sponsored by an evangelical conservative advocacy organization, which students claimed was "hateful and invalidating." Worcester College in Oxford, England, has issued a public apology after the school hosted a Christian Concern training camp on its campus from Sep. 6 to Sept. 10. The Christian Concern conference featured many guest speakers, including Mike Davidson, the CEO of Core Issues Trust and X-Out Loud. Core Issues Trust seeks to support individuals experiencing unwanted same-sex attractions "voluntarily seeking to leave homosexual behaviours and feelings." Davidson was one of many guest speakers with Wilberforce Academy, an initiative of Christian Concern. The Academy is a weeklong "intensive residential programme aimed at students and young professionals with a passion to serve Jesus Christ in a variety of vocations." Davidson has called for "professional assistance" to "leave behind unwanted homosexual practices," according to the college's student news publication, The Oxford Tab. Davidson is recognized for being outspoken about his stance against bans on conversion therapy. His organization has also been vocal about its "dissatisfaction with the encroaching politico-religious identity of Islam." One session at the conference was titled "The nature of Islam." Multiple students who found out about the conference reportedly said the event used language that was "inflammatory," and others claimed the event was "hateful and invalidating." An email written by a group of students was sent to Worcester's JCR President, LGBT representative and ethnic and religious minorities representative. "Many of us come to uni hoping to be allowed to be ourselves and know we can trust our new community and home," the email stated, according to The Tab. "But how are we expected to place our trust in somewhere that, if it weren't for a leaflet being left behind at breakfast, would have left us unaware that they had hosted a group that has consistently aimed to persecute and strip us of our rights for our sexuality, gender and or religion?" A co-chair of the SU LGBTQ+ Campaign reportedly responded to the email: "We stand in full solidarity with you and will do our best to take the necessary action to prevent this from being an issue again in the future." A school spokesperson issued an apology on behalf of the school. "We deeply regret the distress caused to students, staff and other members of the college community by the presence of the Wilberforce Academy conference," the spokesperson saidin the public apology published by The Tab. The chief executive of the Christian Concern, Andrea Minichiello Williams, called the school's apology an example of "cancel culture." Despite reaching out to Worcester College on multiple occasions to discuss what has been "alleged," Williams said the school has not responded to the organization for comment. "But if the college has turned its back on us, it seems that cancel culture has once again demonstrated the power of its grip in one of our top universities, fuelled by a small group of activists who won't tolerate any view that departs from their own narrow ideology and who will resort to tactics of misrepresentation and sweeping allegations to get their way, seemingly frightening nearly everyone into submission," Williams said in a statement. Provost David Isaac, who has been the head of Worcester College since July 2021, was previously the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in England and Wales. Under his leadership, the commission posted guidance in 2019 calling for free speech to be protected on college campuses, stating that "The free expression and exchange of different views without persecution or interference." "That a college now led by someone who has so often claimed to be a defender of freedom of expression in higher education is rumoured to have capitulated to this aggressive movement is even more concerning," Williams added. "We very much enjoyed our week at the college, were very warmly welcomed, including by the Provost, received many compliments from the staff and were not aware of any complaints or concerns being raised with us at the time. Yet now we hear it alleged that the college has 'apologised' for hosting us." The Christian Concern website states that the organization's mission is to accomplish the goals of preparing others for "servant-hearted, Christ-centred leadership in public life, by equipping people with a robust biblical framework that guides thinking, prayers and activity in addressing the issues facing society." "We will be seeking urgent clarification," Williams concluded in her statement. "Whatever happens, we will continue to speak of Jesus Christ who was himself an 'outsider' and by his words and actions demonstrated his commitment to reaching the marginalised, excluded and vulnerable so that they could discover true hope and everlasting love through him, even sacrificing his own life to do so." Williams calls on Oxford to "stand for free speech and free expression and allow its students to have the intellectual ability to decide whether they wish to attend external events, and to make up their own minds on what they hear." UK High Court upholds law allowing Down syndrome abortions after 24 weeks Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A high court in the United Kingdom has ruled against a challenge by a political activist with Down syndrome to overturn the country's laws permitting late-term abortions based on disability. Two justices representing the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division issued a ruling on Thursday upholding the legality of terminating pregnancies after 24 weeks if the child is at risk of being born with a "serious handicap." The justices rejected the claim that the law violates international human rights law. "The fundamental difficulty is that the European Court has never decided that a foetus, even one post-viability, is the bearer of Convention rights," concluded the High Court. "The fact that both domestic legislation and courts, and the European Court itself, have recognised that there may be circumstances in which the foetus has interests which the State is entitled to protect does not lead to the proposition that it enjoys rights under Article 2." Last year, Heidi Crowter filed a lawsuit against the U.K. National Health Service for allowing the abortion of babies up to birth if they're diagnosed as having Down syndrome. Crowter and two other plaintiffs argued that the abortion law violated the European Convention on Human Rights, especially Article 2, which declares that "Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law." The justices reasoned that the issues brought in the lawsuit are "highly sensitive and sometimes controversial" because they "generate strong feelings, on all sides of the debate, including sincere differences of view about ethical and religious matters." "This Court cannot enter into those controversies," the ruling states. "[I]t must decide the case only in accordance with the law." The justices further argued that some families are not capable of caring for children with severe disabilities. "[T]he ability of families to provide a disabled child with a nurturing and supportive environment will vary significantly," they stated, adding that banning such abortions would compel women "by the fear of the criminal law to give birth to children who will not be loved or wanted." After the court's decision was released, Crowter called it a "sad day" but said she intends to continue the legal fight against the abortion law. "The judges might not think it discriminates against me, the government might not think it discriminates against me, but I'm telling you that I do feel discriminated against," she said in a statement. At issue was the Abortion Act of 1967, which largely restricts abortions after 24 weeks into a pregnancy but allows them if an unborn child has a "substantial risk" of being "seriously handicapped." "The current law is unfair. It makes me feel like I shouldn't exist, and that I'd be better off dead in the eyes of the law," Crowter told The Sunday Telegraph last year. "The policy basically says that it's normal for a baby with Down's syndrome to be terminated right up until birth I feel amazing knowing that the case is going to be heard in the High Court." Last October, Crowter was joined in filing the legal complaint by Maire Lea-Wilson, the mother of a child with Down syndrome and the child, identified only as "A" in legal documents. "Today's High Court judgement effectively says that my two sons are not viewed as equals in the eyes of the law and I am incredibly sad and disappointed that the court has chosen not to recognise the value and worth of people with Down syndrome, like my son Aidan," Lea-Wilson said in a statement. Arguments in the case were heard in July before Lord Justice Rabinder Singh and Justice Nathalie Lieven of the High Court. Paul Conrathe, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said that his clients will seek permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal. "The judgement fails to recognise the damaging impact U.K. abortion legislation has upon the mental health and wellbeing of people with downs syndrome," he said in a statement shared by the advocacy organization Don't Screen Us Out. "By allowing babies with Downs Syndrome to be aborted up to birth, unlike neurotypical babies, the law sends a powerful message that the lives of people with Downs Syndrome are of lesser value." Woman who would have aborted Down syndrome baby wins suit against British health service Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The United Kingdoms National Health Service will have to pay a woman who did not want to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome after a court ruled in her favor. Edyta Mordel, a 33-year-old woman who gave birth to a child with Down syndrome in 2015, sued the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust for failing to properly screen the unborn baby. Mordel and her partner would have aborted the baby had they known it had the genetic condition, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation. According to the legal arguments, Mordel asked for a Down syndrome screening at first, but when later asked by a sonographer, she declined a screening and thus did not get one. The High Court in London ruled on Tuesday that the medical officials, including the sonographer, failed to discharge their duty by not seeking better clarification over whether Mordel, in fact, wanted a screening. The claimant probably would have proceeded to invasive testing had she been told that there was a high risk of Down's syndrome, ruled the court, as reported by the BBC. [She] was a relatively young mother and I think that at the end of the day the fear that she might be carrying a child with Down's syndrome would, at least for her, have tipped the balance. The National Health Service may have to pay a sum as high as the equivalent of $245,000 to Mordel for failure to give the screening. In comments made to the court, Mordel stated that she would have planned to have the abortion because she had worked with someone with Down syndrome and did not want a child with similar challenges. I saw how difficult his life is, and I would not have continued my pregnancy, stated Mordel, as reported by the New York Post on Wednesday. I would not have wanted a disabled child, and I would not have wanted my child to suffer the way disabled people suffer. I wouldnt want to have brought my child into the world like that. It is common practice in the United States and Western Europe for women pregnant with children diagnosed with Down syndrome to terminate their pregnancies. According to a 2017 CBS News report, 67 percent of Down syndrome babies in the United States are aborted. In Iceland, nearly 100 percent of such pregnancies end in abortion. Pro-life groups, among them the American Center for Law & Justice, have denounced these practices as examples of evil eugenics. "The abortion industry is once again using abortion to accomplish an evil eugenics agenda worldwide. One nation even claims to have used abortion to eradicate Down syndrome proudly slaughtering innocent babies," stated the ACLJ in 2017. Biden admin. takes new steps to combat Texas abortion law, tells abortionists 'we have your back' Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment As litigation surrounding Texas' controversial heartbeat abortion law continues, the Biden administration has unveiled new actions it is taking to ensure that women in the Lone Star state can obtain safe and legal abortions. The Biden administration continues its efforts to nullify Texas Senate Bill 8 bill after a federal judge rejected the U.S. Department of Justices request to block the law as legal challenges to the measure move forward. The law, which took effect Sept. 1, bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks gestation. Additionally, the law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and those who help women obtain illegal abortions. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services introduced a three-pronged Department-wide response to Senate Bill 8 designed to protect reproductive health care for Texans and bolster access to safe and legal abortions in Texas. In a statement, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared that every American deserves access to health care no matter where they live including access to safe and legal abortions. Critics of the bill maintain that Senate Bill 8 violates the central holding of the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, where the justices ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy before viability. HHS is taking actions to support and protect both patients and providers from this dangerous attack on Texans health care," Becerra stated. "Today we are making clear that doctors and hospitals have an obligation under federal law to make medical decisions regarding when its appropriate to treat their patients. And we are telling doctors and others involved in the provision of abortion care, that we have your back." The first part of HHS three-pronged approach to Senate Bill 8 consists of increased funding for family planning services. Specifically, the HHS Office for Population Affairs plans to award additional funding to Every Body Texas, a current Title X family planning grantee, to respond to the anticipated increase in clients needs for emergency contraception and family planning services. HHS also vowed to enforce the Church Amendments, protecting health care personnel from discrimination related to their employment because they performed or assisted with a lawful abortion. The Church Amendments also protect health care personnel from discrimination who object to performing abortion, sterilization, and biomedical or behavioral research activities because of their religious beliefs or moral convictions." Todays guidance outlines protections that prohibit recipients of grants, loans, contracts, or loan guarantees under the Public Health Service Act from discriminating in the employment, promotion, or termination of employment of any physician or other health care personnel because the individual performed or assisted in the performance of an abortion," the statement reads. The third aspect of the HHS strategy to bolster access to safe and legal abortions in Texas involves the enforcement of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. In response to the Texas law, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid issued a memorandum explaining the medical communitys obligations to patients who are pregnant or experiencing pregnancy loss under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. A physicians professional and legal duty to provide stabilizing medical treatment to a patient who presents to the emergency department and is found to have an emergency medical condition preempts any directly conflicting state law or mandate that might otherwise prohibit or prevent such treatment, the memorandum states. The memo stated that ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders" meet the standard for emergency medical condition," while "dilation and curettage (D&C), removal of one or both fallopian tubes, [and] anti-hypertension therapy" qualify as stabilizing medical treatment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that legal experts say that the Justice Department could attempt to strip federal funding and determine if there are federal facilities in Texas that could provide abortions. Pro-life lobbying organizations criticized the Biden administrations efforts to undermine the Texas law. There are no lengths the Biden administration wont go to in their drive to prop up the abortion industry and impose abortion on demand up to birth nationwide, on a public that resoundingly rejects their agenda, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. Texas is not California, no matter how hard Xavier Becerra tries to export his pro-abortion legacy. All Americans deserve the right to debate, find consensus and enact laws that reflect their values thats how democracy works. Yet for almost fifty years, the Supreme Court has tied the hands of state legislators, and now Joe Biden and his radical allies want to shut down the debate permanently." As the executive branch continues to evaluate its options for defeating Senate Bill 8, the U.S. House of Representatives is working to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law. Shortly after the Supreme Court declined to block Senate Bill 8 from going into effect, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced that the House will bring up Congresswoman Judy Chus Womens Health Protection Act to enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America. A federal judge in Texas has scheduled arguments in the challenge to Senate Bill 8 for Oct. 1. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of Mississippis 15-week abortion ban. The justices decision in the Mississippi case could have significant implications for abortion law in the U.S. A ruling in favor of Mississippi, which seeks to uphold the ban, could weaken the precedent set by Roe v. Wade and give states more freedom to enact abortion restrictions. Texas doctor violates state abortion law days after it goes into effect Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A Texas obstetrician and gynecologist who began his career before abortion became a constitutional right through Roe v. Wade in 1973 announced Saturday that he violated the states new law banning most abortions in the state after six weeks gestation, just days after it became effective on Sept. 1. On the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the states new limit," Dr. Alan Braid wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care." Texas S.B. 8 law, which prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, was signed into law in May and was enacted on Sept. 1 after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant an emergency injunction to block the law from taking effect. In addition to banning most abortions after six weeks, the new law also allows individuals to take civil action against anyone who performs and induces an abortion or knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of abortion through insurance or otherwise. I fully understood that there could be legal consequences but I wanted to make sure that Texas didnt get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested, wrote Braid. I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but its something I believe in strongly, he wrote. Braid operates abortion clinics in Texas and is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights in an ongoing federal lawsuit to stop S.B. 8. He started his career with an obstetrics and gynecology residency at a San Antonio hospital on July 1, 1972. He explained that beforethe U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade, he saw three teenagers die from illegal abortions. He stated that he is resisting the new Texas law because he doesnt want to return to that era. It [the law] shut down about 80 percent of the abortion services we provide," he noted. "Anyone who suspects I have violated the new law can sue me for at least $10,000. They could also sue anybody who helps a person obtain an abortion past the new limit, including, apparently, the driver who brings a patient to my clinic. For me, it is 1972 all over again." Since Sept. 1, he said, most of our patients have been too far along in their pregnancies to qualify for abortion care. I tell them that we can offer services only if we cannot see the presence of cardiac activity on an ultrasound, which usually occurs at about six weeks, before most people know they are pregnant. The tension is unbearable as they lie there, waiting to hear their fate, Braid continued. I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care. I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients. I cant just sit back and watch us return to 1972, he added. John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, a pro-life group that supports the new law, told The Wall Street Journal that the organization is looking into whether Braid's claims are anything more than a "legal stunt." He said that the new law provides a four-year statute of limitations for people to sue violators. It definitely seems like a legal stunt and we are looking into whether it is more than that, Seago was quoted as saying. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, a student at my alma mater, Cedarville University, faced a challenge. Gabe Woodruff, who was enrolled in Cedarvilles nursing program, was called up by his US Army Reserves medical unit and was sent to Detroit to serve COVID patients in that city. Despite the danger and disruption of the deployment, he and his wife, Kayla, found direction in the power of Scripture. Gabe said, One of the things my wife and I would tell each other is if we trust God with our eternal security, why wouldnt we trust him with our present circumstance? That sentence perfectly sums up what many of us learned during the worst days of the pandemic. If youre a follower of Christ, you dont have to live at the mercy of present problems and future fears. Instead, you can evaluate global events in terms of scriptural prophecy, world history, and the biblical agenda leading to the return of Christ. So what exactly does the Bible say about pandemics? Throughout the Bible, we see repeated examples of God using diseases to accomplish His divine and sovereign purposes. In the Old Testament, God warned His people that disobedience would bring wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart (Lev. 26:16). This isnt to say all illnesses are God-initiated or that He sent COVID- 19 to the earth. We live in a world corrupted by sin, and diseases of all kinds are one of the consequences of that corruption. Still, the Lord is not ignorant of whats happening in our world. Lets face it, the pandemic feels like something weve read about in the Bible. After all, its the most apocalyptic thing that has ever happened to most of us. Does COVID-19 mean anything set against the larger scale of history? And if so, what? In the Gospels, the Lord Jesus Christ warned His disciples that pestilences will be one of the signs of the last days of human history. During the last week of His life, the Lord Jesus said this, For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.(Matt. 24:78) So, while we may not know if the coronavirus is the eminent sign, of the Second Coming, it is nonetheless a sign. Its hard to see the world so convulsed by an event without looking at it through the lens of Scripture and learning its lessons. Even if COVID-19 is not a sign of the future, it is a sign for today. It is a reminder of things we too easily forget. Four lessons have been foremost in my mind. First, were all more vulnerable than we like to think. According to most reports, the elderly and those with an underlying health condition were the most vulnerable to the virus. But as time progressed, we discovered that everyone was vulnerable. Second, the Bible has undeniable credibility. For more than fifty years I have been seriously studying the Bible. Ive never failed to be astounded by the events of the tribulation as they unfold in the book of Revelation and elsewhere in Scripture. Ive believed them not because I understood how they could happen, but because they were in the Bible. Now, these apocalyptic events seem to be knocking on the door. Third, contagions remind us of the uncertainty of life. How uncertain and precious are our days! I hope youve used some of this mandated quiet time to reflect on life and give thanks to God for the days and months and years He has given to you. Last, the virus points us to Jesus sufficiency. As He was preparing to finish His earthly work and return to Heaven, He told His disciples: These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Yes, the reality of an apocalyptic virus is troubling. Even alarming. But we can avoid the distress of such events when we place our peace not in this world, but in the promise of Jesus Christ. The above is an adaptation of Dr. Jeremiahs upcoming book, Where Do We Go From Here? Trudeau wins third term as Canada's PM, but fails to get party majority Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to remain in office after he called a snap election, but his Liberal Party will not have a parliamentary majority. According to official election results updated on Tuesday morning, Trudeaus Liberal Party was leading in 158 Electoral Districts, or 46.8% of all districts. The Conservative Party held 119 Electoral Districts, or 35.2% of the districts, while the Bloc Quebecois held 35 Electoral Districts, or 10.1%, and the New Democratic Party held 25 Electoral Districts, or 7.4%. Trudeau won a third term as prime minister Monday night, with the Liberal Party leader taking to his official Facebook account to thank the country for the electoral victory. Thank you, Canada for casting your vote, for putting your trust in the Liberal team, for choosing a brighter future. We're going to finish the fight against COVID. And we're going to move Canada forward, Trudeau said. While the victory came after a 36-day campaign that cost approximately $600 million, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, little change ensued for the makeup of Canadas House of Commons. As of 2:30 a.m. ET, Liberal candidates were leading or elected in 157 ridings, the exact same number of seats that party won in the 2019 contest, the CBC reported. [Trudeau] launched this campaign with a sizeable lead in the polls only to see his support crater days later as many voters expressed anger with his decision to call an election during this health crisis. Two middling debate performances by Trudeau and renewed questions about past scandals also put a Liberal victory in question. Elected prime minister in 2015, Trudeau called for an election on Aug. 15 to take place on Sept. 20, well before the next scheduled election in October 2023. According to Canadian election law, a prime minister can give a formal request that the governor general dissolve Parliament, which automatically triggers a national election. At a press conference held in Ottawa at the time, Trudeau explained that the election was meant to give his government a mandate on fighting the pandemic and organizing economic recovery. Canadians need to choose how we finish the fight against COVID-19 and build back better, from getting the job done on vaccines to having peoples backs all the way to and through the end of this crisis, said Trudeau, as reported by The Washington Post last month. The decisions that your government makes now will define the future that your children and grandchildren grow up in. Time flies when youre having fun. For many stock investors 2021 has been another year to remember with the major indices up yet again. Its hard to believe we are a week away from entering the fourth quarter. Time to start getting ready for the holiday season. For investors its also time to start thinking about tax loss harvesting and getting the portfolio spruced up for the new year. Among the things to be thankful for this time of year are family, friends, healthand earnings outlooks. While consensus earnings estimates may rank lower on the list, if youre an investor interested in where companies are headed in 2022, analysts forecasts are one of the best guides we have. Here are three stocks that the Street has high hopes for in the coming year. Is Hilton Worldwide Holdings Still a Good Reopening Play? Hilton Worldwide Holdings (NYSE: HLT) has rebounded nicely this year after barely eking out a profit in 2020. Loosened COVID-19 restrictions and vaccination progress have revived the hospitality industry and with it Hiltons financial results. After posting EPS of $0.58 in the first half of 2021, analysts are expecting profitability to accelerate in the second half as pent-up demand for leisure travel continues to unfurl. As one of the worlds leading hotel operators, Hilton offers a range of hotel brands that cater to the budget-conscious, the luxury seekers and everyone in between. This allows it to capture a large chunk of consumer and corporate spending on vacations, business conferences, and other group events. In 2022, the Street is forecasting that Hilton will generate EPS of $4.21. This represents 91% bottom-line growth compared to the estimate for this year. This bullish outlook hinges greatly on vaccine rollouts and progress in the fight against COVID-19. Simply put, higher demand for Hiltons nearly 900,000 rooms translates to higher earnings. Of course, a slowdown on the pandemic front would be devastating for a hotel industry that has finally gained traction in 2021. But with virtually all of its properties reopened, Hilton is in a strong position to see the no vacancy signs and its earnings go up in 2022. What is General Electrics 2022 Earnings Forecast? A rebound in industrial activity has General Electric (NYSE: GE) on the comeback trail. The S&P 500 mainstay is reaping the benefits of conservative fiscal management during the pandemic and increasing demand from its diverse end markets. Following an unusual 1-for-8 reverse stock split last month, the stock is trading around $100 for the first time since the dot com bubble. While investors shouldnt be fooled by the recent share price shenanigans that make the stock look more robust, they should pay attention to where GE is headed. Earnings are forecast to more than double to $4.22 next year based on the opinions of 16 Wall Street analysts. Much of the growth is expected to come from the Renewable Energy business which will likely continue to see strong order flow for wind turbines as the world advances its green energy plans. The recovery in air travel also has the Aviation business humming again. And even the battered Power segment is expected to build off a solid 2021. Much work remains for GEs new management team, but it has made progress with its turnaround plan and has the wind at its back heading into 2022. Broad-based growth and a healthier balance have analysts re-energized about the companys earnings prospects in 2022. This along with the steady dividend make GE a solid investment for a long-term growth and income portfolio. Is Pioneer Natural Resources a Good E&P Pure Play? Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD) stock has tripled off its March 2020 bottom but appears to have a return to the $200 level in its plans. Amid a sharp rebound in commodity prices, the Dallas-based oil and gas producer has returned to profitability in a big way. This years EPS is forecast to come in at $12.35, more than sevens times the amount recorded in 2020. As a leading player in the resource-rich Permian Basin, Pioneer Natural Resources is one of the lower cost producers in the region. So, with production rates expected to ramp higher in 2022 and crude and natural gas pricing expected to remain elevated, profits are expected to take another big leap. The current sell-side consensus for next years EPS implies 50% growth off a good base. Aside from the more favorable energy environment, Pioneer has another growth catalyst up its sleeve. Its $7.6 billion acquisition of Parsley Energy will give a greater presence in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian region and more diversified revenue streams. The company took on $3.1 billion in debt to acquire Parsley but has the balance sheet strength to handle the added debt load. When comes to large-cap pure plays in the exploration and production space, it doesnt get any better than Pioneer Natural Resources. Its low breakeven rate, industry-leading balance sheet, and diversified business model make it a slick way to invest in the energy sector rally. The 8x P/E ratio for 2022 and rising dividend arent too shabby either. Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG) closed the most recent trading day at $1,028.47, moving +1.42% from the previous trading session. This move outpaced the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.95%. Coming into today, shares of the company had lost 3.12% in the past month. In that same time, the Medical sector lost 1.9%, while the S&P 500 lost 1.87%. Wall Street will be looking for positivity from ISRG as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be October 19, 2021. In that report, analysts expect ISRG to post earnings of $3.60 per share. This would mark year-over-year growth of 29.96%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $1.4 billion, up 29.88% from the year-ago period. ISRG's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $14.80 per share and revenue of $5.65 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +45.67% and +29.53%, respectively. It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for ISRG. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook. Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model. The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. ISRG currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold). Investors should also note ISRG's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 68.54. This valuation marks a premium compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 42.81. Investors should also note that ISRG has a PEG ratio of 7.09 right now. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. Medical - Instruments stocks are, on average, holding a PEG ratio of 3.33 based on yesterday's closing prices. The Medical - Instruments industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 174, which puts it in the bottom 32% of all 250+ industries. The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1. Make sure to utilize Zacks. Com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions. Infrastructure Stock Boom to Sweep America A massive push to rebuild the crumbling U.S. infrastructure will soon be underway. Its bipartisan, urgent, and inevitable. Trillions will be spent. Fortunes will be made. The only question is Will you get into the right stocks early when their growth potential is greatest? Zacks has released a Special Report to help you do just that, and today its free. Discover 7 special companies that look to gain the most from construction and repair to roads, bridges, and buildings, plus cargo hauling and energy transformation on an almost unimaginable scale. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved A Florida school district began collecting federal funding on Thursday after Floridas government withheld state funding to punish the school for implementing a mask mandate and other precautions aimed at reducing the spread of Covid-19. Alachua County Public Schools, the first district in the country to receive federal funds, is getting $147,719 to compensate school board members whose salaries are being withheld by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor is withholding money from members of the board who voted for the mask mandate, which DeSantis banned via an executive order this summer. The federal funding comes from a Biden administration anti-Covid grant program thats funded by legislation Congress passed this spring. We should be thanking districts for using proven strategies that will keep schools open and safe, not punishing them, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, adding, Every student across the country deserves the opportunity to return to school in person safely this fall, and every family should be confident that their school is implementing policies that keep their children safe. Strong leaders deserve support. Today, we awarded the first Project SAFE grant to @AlachuaSchools to cover financial penalties imposed on them for using policies that keep students safe. I spoke with @DrCarleeSimon to let her know: we have her back. pic.twitter.com/CpkJKq2xER Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) September 23, 2021 Dr. Carlee Simon, the Alameda County superintendent, said in a statement that she is grateful to the administration for the funding. But Im even more grateful for their continued support and encouragement of our efforts to protect students and staff and to keep our schools open for in-person learning, she said. The fight over DeSantiss opposition to mask mandates in public schools is now playing out in court. DeSantis has also recently held events where he invited anti-vaxxers to speak and then stood by while they spread misinformation about vaccines. And he has fought preventative measures to quell the spread of the virus, even banning businesses from asking customers to reveal their vaccination status. According to Alachua County Public Schools, DeSantiss Department of Education has held back two months worth of salaries for the four school board members who dared implement precautions to keep students safe, totaling $27,000 so far. The state government has withheld school board members salaries from Broward County, which also has a mask requirement. "Top Chef"'s Padma Lakshmi has words for the naysayers lamenting Bravo TV's decision to film the cooking competition show in the Bayou City. The long-running host took to Twitter expressing support for Houston despite calls for the show to boycott Texas over its new restrictive abortion law, which outlaws the medical procedure six weeks after a pregnancy begins. Bravo announced Houston as the host city earlier this week. Some immediately balked at the network: The day after the announcement (and backlash), Lakshmi posted a few thoughts on the matter: She went on to urge people to donate to organizations fighting for abortion access. Houston's diversity and culinary offerings will be highlighted in the show and challenged by a new slate of chefs, who will all compete week-by-week. Details of when and where the competitions will take place are scarce, although the network said filming has already commenced. Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images "I cannot think of a more perfect pairing than 'Top Chef' and the city of Houston," Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement from Houston First. "Both represent a celebration of cuisine, culture and innovation." Still, some weren't happy with Lakshmi's response. Others pointed out that Lakshmi, along with scores of celebrities, signed an open letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 threatening to pull out of the Peach State. Here's what that looked like: Season 19 of "Top Chef" premieres in spring 2022. What do you think of the decision to film in Houston? Let me know on Twitter: @jayrjordan Restaurants and other businesses have had to enforce mask rules across the country over the past year and a half. But at this Texas restaurant, one couple was asked to leave for wearing their masks. Natalie Wester and her husband visited Hang Time Sports Grill & Bar in Rowlett, east of Dallas, to meet with friends, CBS DFW's Nicole Nielsen reports. Wester said she and her husband were wearing masks when they came in and the hostess asked them to remove them. She assumed it was just for the ID check until a waitress came over to their table. "About half an hour passes and our waitress comes, sits down next to me, and says 'Our manager sent me over because Im nicer than he is. And yes, this is political,'" Wester wrote on Facebook. "She then told me that masks are not allowed in their building, and they can make the rules because they are private business." Wester and her husband were asked to leave when they didn't want to remove their masks. According to Wester's Facebook post, their 4-month-old son has cystic fibrosis so the couple has continued wearing masks while in public. Hang Time's owner, identified as Tom, told CBS DFW he has the right to refuse service to anyone who wears a mask, which he considers against the restaurant's dress code. I have spent my money on the business, my blood sweat and tears in this business, and I dont want masks in here, Tom said. I feel the overall reaction with masks is ridiculous in the United States right now." Houston, like the rest of the nation, experienced a surge in pet adoptions at the beginning of the pandemic. Now, many of those animals are being returned or abandoned. According to the Houston Humane Society, the most common reasons provided by families returning dogs are lack of time, not being housetrained, change of schedule, relocation, allergies (someone else in the household), or the dog not getting along with other pets in the household. HHS Executive Director Gary Poon says the organization has not heard the end of lockdown cited as a reason for returns, but has noticed an increase in 2021 returns consistent with the widespread return of travel and schools reopening. In 2020 (from January 1 - August 25), 289 adopted animals were returned," Poon said. "Over the same period in 2021, 408 adopted animals were returned, marking an increase of 119 cases. Many of these cases have involved people going back to work or increasing travel as restrictions have lifted. BARC Animal Shelter and Adoptions Public Information Officer Cory Stottlemyer doesnt believe its an awareness issue. We are very transparent with our adopters: by becoming a pet owner, you are committing to care for an animal during its entire life. Surrendering your pet should be last on your list of options when facing difficulties and considered only under the direst of circumstances," Stottlemyer said. "Pets who return to the shelter may experience high levels of stress due to the change in environment, and it may make pets who have grown from young puppies and kittens to full-grown animals more difficult to adopt. And, any returned animals risk being placed on our euthanasia list. Poon says HHS has encountered animals left on its property overnight without any food and water. We have seen animals tied to the door, trees, or bushes, while others have been left loose on the grounds. Unfortunately, we have encountered animals who have been abandoned in our adoption center, wellness clinic and restrooms during open hours. Currently, we have Dallas in the shelter, a border collie mix who was adopted from the shelter as a puppy in 2017 and rescued in June 2021 from an abandoned house out of Brazoria. This is an extreme case of abandonment, and poor Dallas experienced neglect that has made him incredibly timid when meeting new people. As Houston-area shelters reach critical capacity due to COVID-19 surrenders, some community members have taken to social media to save animals from being returned. Caitie Evers is a biology teacher and one of three moderators of the Facebook page Houston Area Dogs, which boasts over 10,300 members united in an attempt to find homes for dogs (and cats) in need, whether by rescuing, fostering or simply liking and reposting for visibility. Since 2014, Evers has personally fostered over 200 dogs and cats, focusing on abandoned pets with medical issues. She finally launched Caities Foster Farm this summer, a nonprofit rescue organization specializing in medical need cases. I would not have been able to start my rescue if it was not for social media, Evers said. Before I gained supporters online, it tended to be through friends, family or events I was able to get pets adopted. Once I could get posts to go viral, I connected with countless people in Houston or other states interested in rescuing. I probably now receive about 100 dogs a week in need. The goal with my social media was always to open up the world to foster or rescue. Evers uses her 60,700 followers on Instagram to spread awareness and create an online public space for these animals to be found by their future families. For those who are curious about having a pet, she suggests fostering as a first step that can help adopters avoid having to return a pet. I love fostering adult dogs, and I think everyone should consider adopting an adult dog. They are a lot easier than puppies in many ways. When you look at adult dogs in foster homes, what you see is what you get. Youll see how they are with other dogs, cats or kids, and that gives you a nice starting point of understanding the dog. Evers adds that researching the specific breed of your prospective pet prior to finalizing the adoption will prevent any surprises down the road. Ultimately, the pandemic demonstrated the resiliency of not just humans, but animals. As abandoned pets depend on the kindness of strangers like never before, the best of Houston is working to ensure they are not left alone. The Westport Library has resumed its full operating hours as of Sept. 13. The library is now open from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., Mondays, through Fridays, from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., on Saturdays, and from 1 until 5 p.m. on Sundays. The Library Cafe is also open from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., on Saturdays, and 1 to 4:30 p.m., on Sundays. The library at 20 Jesup Road. The cafe has partnered with the business Gruel Britannia from Southport in addition to the librarys existing vendors, the Sono Baking Company, and the Cloudy Lane Bakery. The food place serve salads, sandwiches, pastries, cookies, and quiche pie. Gluten free options are also available. New items will be added in the coming weeks. Human services announces energy assistance program Westport Department of Human Services Director Elaine Daignault encourages residents of the town, who are income-eligible, to apply for Connecticuts federally Energy Assistance Program through the department, DHS. Contactless applications for home heating assistance will become available starting Oct. 1 and run through April 30, 2022. The program helps low-income households pay winter heating bills. Individuals and families qualify for the program based on their gross total annual income, and household size. Homes with a gross yearly income, for example, that is at or below 60 percent of the states median income, which is $39,027 for a family of one, and $51,035, for a family of two, and liquid assets below $15,000, must provide all documentation that is required to determine their eligibility for the program. A full explanation of guidelines for the program can be found on the states website at https://portal.ct.gov/DSS/Economic-Security/Winter-Heating-Assistance/Energy-Assistance---Winter-Heating/Eligibility. Income-qualified households with previous applications for the program on file with the state will receive mailed application instructions in the coming weeks. New residents of the state may contact the human services department for application information at 203-341-1050 or email humansrv@westportct.gov. Eligibility for the program is determined based on the gross income, liquid assets, and each persons tax return from 2020, after they supply the required documentation. Residents can find additional information about Energy Assistance at the towns website for the program at https://www.westportct.gov/government/departments-a-z/human-services/social-services/energy-assistance. No walk-in appointments will be accepted because of the coronavirus pandemic. The applications will be processed electronically, or via mail. New location for Westport public shred day Westports 12th annual and community Public Shred Day from 9 a.m. until noon, Sept. 25, has a new location at the Greens Farms train station in town. Residents may shred up to eight paper bags, or three boxes that are 12 inches by 19 inches per household. Bags are also recyclable. Each car that is driven to the event will be charged $5. Proof of Westport residency is required. Contact Westport Town Clerk Jeffrey Dunkerton at 203-341-1110, or jdunkerton@westportct.gov for more information. The event used to take place at the Westport Weston Health District, at 180 Bayberry Lane in Westport. Zumba fundraiser, happy hour set Anna Zap is having a Zumba fundraiser, and happy hour, with the Bartaco restaurant, in the courtyard of the companys 20 Wilton Road, Westport location, at 3 p.m., Oct. 5. Zap is a co-host of The Anna & Raven radio show, with the co-host Raven, from 5 to 10 a.m., in the morning, on the STAR 99.9 radio station in Connecticut. The cost for Zumba at the event is $25 a person. Sign up at organizer for the event, the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties real estate companys website at https://www.bhhsneproperties.com/. All proceeds will benefit the nonprofit organization, Sunshine Kids. Attendees are asked to follow the rules of social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic, and bring their mask. Music will be provided by DJ Jessy. Executive leadership summits happening The worlds number one digital platform for enabling technology executives to re-imagine the enterprise, and re-shape the business world, HMG Strategy, is hosting its 2021 HMG Live! Minneapolis CIO Executive Leadership Summit, virtually, from 2 to 4:30 p.m., Sept. 28. Register, and find out more information about the event at the website for the happening, which is: https://hmgstrategy.com/events/upcoming-summits/2021/09/28/default-calendar/2021-minneapolis-cio-executive-leadership-summit-2. The platform is having its 2021 HMG Live! New Jersey CIO Executive Leadership Summit, virtually, from 1 to 3:30 p.m., Sept. 30. Register, and find out more information about the event at https://hmgstrategy.com/events/upcoming-summits/2021/09/30/default-calendar/2021-new-jersey-cio-executive-leadership-summit-2. Janese Sokulski believes the old adage If you build it, they will come. Sokulski and her husband, Robert, own several buildings and businesses in downtown Conroe. Theyll soon add one more to the downtown mix MoCo Food Hall. She thinks the more food options that are available in downtown, the more people will be drawn to the downtown square area. MoCo Food Hall will be located at 109 Metcalf Street adjacent to and running along the back side of Pacific Yard House. Ashley McIntyre, owner of Breakroom Bagels, is the manager and a partner in MoCo Food Hall. On HoustonChronicle.com: Courtyard coming to downtown Conroe's 202 Main They are in the process of remodeling the building into a food hall a food-court type area. MoCo Food Hall will feature a coffee bar, five food vendors and two bars one being a speakeasy with secret entrances. There will be common areas to eat and gather in the space. The project will also feature live music and outdoor dining on a patio and a balcony, the first balcony space in downtown Conroe. MoCo Food Hall will come about in two buildings that have been joined as one. According to Sokulski, the building has been a part of Sparkle Ice House, a glass factory and a place to store money coming off of trains that stopped on the nearby tracks in early Conroe. Although the building did need updates, they have tried to keep historic touches like the iron windows, iron trusses in the ceiling and safes in the speakeasy area. Were trying to keep as much of the old historic elements of the building as we can, but with improvements, Sokulski said. The McIntyres grew up in Southern Illinois. Ashley McIntyre and her husband, Seth, were teachers before moving to Montgomery County for his job shift into sales. Theyve been in the area about six years and currently operate Breakroom Bagels food truck. Currently the truck is featured on Saturdays at the Main Street Market in downtown Conroe. On HoustonChronicle.com: Downtown Conroe evolves as new busineses open Originally, the McIntyres were going to just be a vendor in the MoCo Food Hall, but they hit it off with the Sokulskis. We thought theyd be wonderful to run it, Sokulski said. Sokulski said the age-old problem of whats for dinner could be solved with the food hall because there will be five different types of food in one location. She also thinks the spot will be popular with downtown workers who can either get their food and sit a spell in the common area or they can grab something quick to take with them. They are also excited about the additional spot for downtown nightlife as well as the opportunities for live music and weekend events. They wont be duplicating any of the establishments that are already in downtown Conroe. These are places that already exist and they know what theyre doing, she said. They hope to open MoCo Food Hall by the end of the year or in early 2022. Visit https://www.mocofoodhall.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/mocofoodhall/. shernandez@hcnonline.com A 17-year-old Porter High School student has been arrested in connection to the Monday night shooting in Kingwood that took the life of a Houston Police Department officers 14-year-old son. Bryan Deon Smith Jr., of Kingwood, is being charged with capital murder, according to the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office. BROOKWOOD, Ala. (AP) An Alabama community marked the 20th anniversary Thursday of an underground explosion that killed more than a dozen coal miners in one of the state's worst mining disasters in generations. The Alabama Miner's Memorial Foundation planned a memorial service at a church in Brookwood, where the blast at Jim Walters Resources Mine No. 5 claimed 13 lives on Sept. 23, 2001. A monument to the victims was erected at the church in 2002. WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) Doctors at a Massachusetts hospital where hundreds of nurses have been on strike since early March are asking them to return to work to help deal with a surge of COVID-19 patients that has led to longer wait times at all the region's medical facilities. Physicians affiliated with St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester sent a letter to the nurses' union Wednesday, the day before the strike reached its 200th day, The Telegram & Gazette reported. With the recent elevation of the COVID-19 status in our area to Level 3, long wait times at all area hospitals, and the need to have all beds staffed and open, we all need to be there for our patients, now more than ever, wrote Dr. Bogdan Nedelescu, president of St. Vincent Hospital Medical Staff, which represents all of the more than 600 physicians affiliated with the hospital. St. Vincent, owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, reduced its bed capacity in August in response to the strike, which started March 8 over staffing levels. The sticking point now is over whether striking nurses can get their jobs back. The hospital said it does not want to displace the permanent replacements it has hired. We need your skills, compassion, camaraderie, and renewed commitment to provide the high quality care we have always delivered and is expected from our patients, the doctors' letter said. A resolution is so close at hand, and we know you share our common goal of serving the greater good in this community. Marie Ritacco, a St. Vincent nurse and vice president of the union, said that the roughly 700 striking nurses want to return to work but that the doctors should be appealing to St. Vincent CEO Carolyn Jackson. Jackson placed blame on the Massachusetts Nurses Association union. Its no surprise that the MNA would rather deflect than take responsibility for their role in prolonging this strike," she said in a statement. Here are the facts: The MNA essentially agreed to our last, best and final offer, but they walked out of our last meeting when we refused to displace nurses that were hired for permanent replacement roles." The hospital has reached out to the union several times, to no avail, she said. The doctors' plea came just days after the president of UMass Memorial Health also based in Worcester urged a resolution to the strike because of a crisis situation due to the coronavirus and reduced bed capacity. LONDON (AP) The husband of detained U.K. charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appealed to the British government on Thursday to be brave in its dealings with Iran as the family marked 2,000 days since her arrest there. Richard Ratcliffe and the couples 7-year-old daughter Gabriella stood on top of a snakes and ladders game board in Parliament Square, symbolizing the dilemma of being caught between two governments. Nazanin Zaghari-Racliffe is one of several people with British or dual-British nationality now being held there. BEIJING (AP) Fears that a Chinese real estate developers possible default on multibillion-dollar debts might send shockwaves through global financial markets appeared to ease Thursday as creditors waited to see how much they might recover. Shares of Evergrande Group, one of Chinas biggest private sector conglomerates, rose 18% in Hong Kong after the company said it would pay interest to bondholders in China. The company gave no sign whether it would make a payment due Thursday on a separate bond abroad. Evergrandes struggle has raised fears it might destabilize Chinas financial system and set off a global chain reaction. But economists said while banks and other creditors would lose money, there appeared to be little way a default on its 2 trillion yuan ($310 billion) in debt would hurt the Chinese system or feed through to markets abroad. Its definitely a local problem in China, said Robert Carnell, head of Asian research for ING. There will be some suppliers and others who will go bust, Carnell said. But its not systemic in a sense that I can put my finger on. Chinese regulators have yet to announce what Beijing might do. But despite that, plus uncertainty about how much banks and individual buyers of Evergrandes bonds might lose, stock markets appeared to recover from anxiety that caused Chinese stocks to tumble on Monday. Chinas benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed 0.4% higher on Thursday. Hong Kongs Hang Seng rose 1.2%. Markets in Australia and Southeast Asia, where economies depend heavily on trade with China, also rose. Markets are in a worst is over frenzy after Evergrandes promise to pay bondholders, said Jeffrey Halley of Oanda, in a report. Meanwhile, local governments were told to prepare for Evergrande's possible collapse by talking with other developers about taking over its real estate projects and monitoring public anger and possible protests, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources. Officials were told to intervene only at the last minute if Evergrande is unable to manage its affairs, the Journal said. Evergrande was caught by tighter restrictions on borrowing imposed by Chinese regulators last year in a campaign to reduce the economys reliance on surging debt. The company has sold billions of dollars of assets to meet government limits. Evergrande's billionaire founder, Xu Jiayin, has expressed confidence the company will survive, but it has yet to announce a plan for repaying debtors. That includes an $83.5 million payment due Thursday to buyers abroad of a U.S. dollar-denominated bond. The company has a month to pay before it would be declared in default. Economists say any government action is likely to focus on protecting Chinese families that paid for apartments that are yet to built, rather than on bailing out banks or other creditors. Beijing has resources to prevent a Chinese credit crunch if Evergrande defaults. But it doesnt want to appear to organize a bailout while it tries to force others to cut debt, economists say. The ruling Communist Party worries surging debt that piled up during Chinas boom years might cause problems as economic growth slows. On Thursday, one of Evergrandes biggest shareholders, Chinese Estates Holdings Ltd., announced it sold part of its stake at a loss and might sell its remaining 5.66% of the company. Chinese Estates said it took a 1.4 billion Hong Kong dollar ($177 million) loss. Evergrandes debt problems come at a time when Chinese economic growth is forecast to weaken due to a slowdown in construction and home sales due to government pressure on the real estate industry to reduce reliance on borrowed money. On Thursday, Fitch Ratings cut its growth forecast for China this year to 8.1% still among the worlds strongest from 8.4%, citing the real estate slowdown. Meanwhile, S&P Global Ratings downgraded the debt of a smaller Chinese developer, Xinyuan Real Estate Co., which has delayed releasing 2020 results. S&P said Xinyuan, which has shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, faces refinancing difficulty that will make it harder to service $229 million in debt due to lenders abroad in October. Hundreds of smaller Chinese developers have gone bankrupt since Beijing started tightening financial controls on the industry in 2017. Some commentators suggested Evergrande might become a Lehman moment, invoking the 2008 collapse of Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers ahead of the global crisis. But economists say Evergrandes debts are relatively simple compared with those of a Wall Street bank and appear unlikely to set off a chain reaction. Evergrandes debt is the equivalent of as much as 2% of Chinas annual economic output, but economists say the state-owned banking industry can absorb a possible default. There will be some banks exposed, said INGs Carnell. The big ones can cope. The small ones dont matter. ELY, Nev. (AP) Nevada authorities say a food service worker at the state prison in Ely is accused of attempting to smuggle methamphetamine into the facility. The Department of Public Safety said 25-year-old Angelica Aguilar's arrest Tuesday resulted from an investigation by the department, the Eastern Nevada Narcotic Task Force and the Department of Corrections. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday released a list of executive orders he hopes top legislative leaders will agree to extend through Feb. 15. The orders include required COVID-19 vaccinations for nursing home workers, required vaccination or testing for school workers and certain state employees, and required mask-wearing in schools and elsewhere. Earlier this summer, a law was passed which empowers the top six Democratic and Republican legislative leaders to disapprove any of the executive orders issued under the state's emergency public health declarations. We have unfortunately seen the risks of the Delta variant realized, with a prolonged surge in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from this new and more contagious variant, Lamont wrote in a letter to legislative leaders. He noted how its critical the state continue its vaccination campaign and masking requirements in schools and certain high-risk settings to prevent the emergence of even more contagious and more dangerous COVID-19 strains. Also Wednesday, Lamont issued a proclamation calling the General Assembly back to Hartford for a special legislative session next week to approve the 6th renewal of the Democrat's declaration of public health and civil preparedness emergencies. Republican lawmakers have voiced opposition to the move, arguing it's time for the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to make these decisions. In other coronavirus-related news in Connecticut: VACCINE MANDATE OPPOSITION Teachers, school bus drivers, and health care workers were among the dozens of people who testified before a group of state legislators Wednesday, arguing they unfairly face the possibility of losing their jobs because state and federal mandates require them to get vaccinated or tested regularly for COVID-19. Some said they're willing to risk their jobs rather than get the shot. I may lose my job next week, but my choice and every parent's choice for what we put in our bodies is more important than my job, said Linda Machorro, a veteran elementary school teacher in the Danbury Public Schools. Some people who appeared before the General Assemblys Conservative Caucus, which organized the hearing, said they've been shunned at work and experienced discrimination because of their resistance to getting the shot. Some questioned why vaccinated workers werent also required to get tested regularly while others complained about having to answer invasive questions about their medical histories and religious beliefs in order to obtain an exemption. Ashley Madore, one of several school bus drivers in Bristol who attended the hearing, said people who kept working during the pandemic are now scoffed at by politicians and others because of their personal concerns about the vaccine and their reluctance to get tested weekly. Those of us who were once heroes are now nothing because we believe in the right to choice, she said. An executive order signed by the governor requires staff at childcare facilities and pre-K-12 schools statewide to have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 27. Those who don't get vaccinated due to certain exemptions will have to get tested weekly. State hospital and long-term care employees will not have the option of testing in lieu of vaccination. Every action Gov. Lamont has taken in response to the pandemic has been aimed at reducing the spread of the virus," said Max Reiss, a spokesperson for Lamont. Last month, President Joe Biden ordered all employers with more than 100 workers to require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly. Also, he required workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid to be fully vaccinated. Wednesday's hearing at the Legislative Office Building marked the first such in-person public event since last year. Most members of the Conservative Caucus, people who testified and many who sat inside the hearing room did not wear face masks. The executive director of the Office of Legislative Management issued a rule on Aug. 2 requiring vaccinated and unvaccinated people entering the complex to wear face coverings when in common areas. House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, accused the legislators of putting Capitol Police, members of the public, staff and elected officials at risk and urged House Republican leaders to take action against these elected officials who blatantly and purposefully broke our building's public health policy. House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, called Ritter's statement hyperbolic and inaccurate given the guidance legislators received from Capitol Police on Wednesday. This manufactured controversy is the latest evidence of his partys desire to conduct as much business as possible outside the public eye," he said in a statement. "Make no mistake, Democrats want to keep the Capitol closed and continue the charade that virtual government is serving residents well. WASHINGTON (AP) Speaking in personal terms, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said extensive news media coverage of the disappearance and death of 22-year-old Gabby Petito while on a cross-country trip should be a reminder of hundreds of Native American girls and women who are missing or murdered in the United States. Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, said that her heart goes out to Petito's family, but that she also grieves for so many Indigenous women'' whose families have endured similar heartache for the last 500 years.'' The search for Petito generated a whirlwind of news coverage, especially on cable television, as well as a frenzy of online sleuthing, with tips, possible sightings and theories shared by the hundreds of thousands on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The Florida woman, who disappeared while on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, was found dead at the edge of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Authorities have determined she was a homicide victim. A report prepared for the state of Wyoming found that at least 710 Native Americans were reported missing between 2011 and late 2020. Between 2010 and 2019, the homicide rate per 100,000 for Indigenous people was 26.8, eight times higher than the homicide rate for white people, the report said. Haaland, a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe, said she has frequently seen Native American family members posting pictures on fences and the sides of buildings to help locate missing girls or women. When that happens, you know I see my sisters,'' she told reporters Thursday at a news conference. I see my mother. I see my aunties or my nieces or even my own child. So I feel that every woman and every person who is in this victimized place deserves attention and deserves to be cared about.'' A former New Mexico congresswoman, Haaland pushed for a law signed last year to address the crisis of missing, murdered and trafficked Indigenous women. The law, known as Savannas Act, is intended to help law enforcement track, solve and prevent crimes against Native Americans, especially women and girls. The law is named for Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Spirit Lake tribe who was abducted and killed in 2017 near Fargo, North Dakota. Greywind, 22, was pregnant, and her unborn baby was cut from her body. Her remains were found in the Red River. Haaland said she sees her mission as interior secretary in part as a way to elevate attention on Native American issues. I feel like its my job to lift up this issue as best I can. And hopefully, the folks who are writing the news, and broadcasting the news will understand that these women are also friends, neighbors, classmates and work colleagues,'' she said. Haaland stressed that her comments were not intended to downplay the pain suffered by Petito's family. Anytime a woman faces assault, rape, murder, kidnapping any of those things its very difficult and my heart goes out to any family who has to endure that type of pain,'' she said. And so, of course, my heart goes out to the young woman who was found in Wyoming.'' Everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities, Haaland said, but "where I can make a difference in particular is in addressing the missing and murdered Indigenous peoples crisis, which has occurred since the beginning of colonization of Indigenous people on this continent for about the last 500 years and it continues.'' Haaland created a Missing & Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services earlier this year and has established a joint commission of national tribal leaders and experts, led by the Interior and Justice departments, to reduce violent crime against American Indians and Alaska Natives. Haaland also ordered Interior to investigate its past oversight of Native American boarding schools that forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities. The primary goal of this work is to share the truth of this dark chapter in our nations history, so that we can begin to heal,'' Haaland said. A written report is expected next year. MIAMI - The viral images of border agents on horseback rounding up migrants on the Texas line over the weekend triggered disturbing memories for Marleine Bastien. As an immigrant from Haiti in the early 1980s, she had watched similar encounters with law enforcement at the Miami federal detention center, where she protested fellow Haitian immigrants being locked up or deported while Cuban refugees were released. Miami police would show up "on big horses trying to trample" demonstrators to break up the crowds. Now, 40 years later, "history is repeating itself," she said. Uproar over treatment of thousands of Haitian immigrants who have encamped at the U.S.-Mexico border is echoing from the streets of U.S. cities to the halls of the Capitol as people mobilize over what they believe is a racist and unequal U.S. immigration system. While the outcry was sparked by the current border crisis, it is a culmination of years of frustration over what is perceived as harsher treatment and extra hurdles faced by Black immigrants coming to the United States vs. lighter-skinned counterparts. "This is cruel, un-American and inarticulable," said Bastien, executive director of the Miami-based Family Action Network Movement, which advocates for immigrant causes. "I am getting so many calls from people asking why? What have Haitians ever done to America? All we have done is try to help America, and we are treated like this?" On Tuesday, about 200 Haitian Americans shut down a major thoroughfare in Miami as they demonstrated in front of a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office. Demonstrators held signs that read "End Racism at the Border" and "Treat All the People the Same" while chanting "Let them breathe," an effort to link the squalid conditions migrants are facing to George Floyd's infamous final words before he was killed by a Minneapolis police officer last year. Nana Gyamfi, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants and executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), has long spoken out about what she called "two levels of discrimination" - for being immigrants, and for being Black. "Black migrants are disproportionately being criminalized just as African Americans are because of their Blackness," Gyamfi said. "Our Blackness leads us to be racially profiled and puts us in the police-to-deportation pipeline." She said the proof that the handling of the Haitian asylum seekers - from being charged at by Border Patrol agents on horseback to their mass deportations, many in shackles - is a product of anti-Black racism is clear in the comparison with how Afghan refugees have been received in recent weeks. "One group is being met with food, cheers, places to live, etc. - which is what welcoming looks like. And the other group is being met with cowboys with leather straps or ropes and detention by force," Gyamfi said. For decades, many Haitian Americans say, they have felt that Black asylum seekers have not been granted the same chance as other groups, a feeling that has only intensified in recent weeks amid bipartisan calls for the United States to admit more refugees from Afghanistan. Many in the Haitian American community also blame U.S. foreign policy for spurring Haiti's humanitarian crisis, saying successive administrations have failed to nurture stable Haitian governments willing to embrace human rights and fight corruption, poverty and criminal gangs. Civil rights leaders said they are appalled - not only by the rough treatment of Haitian migrants by U.S. border agents, which they say harks back to dark times in U.S. history, but by the administration's continued efforts to use a public health order to deport them during a pandemic. In a sign of the sensitivities surrounding race, a trio of White House officials - all of whom are Black - met with nine members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday to talk about the situation in Del Rio, Texas, where the migrants have gathered. In an interview after the White House meeting, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said she urged the officials to halt deportations of Haitian migrants. "We know the administration heard us and, in fact, they understand these issues very well," she said. In addition to protests, Bastien and other activists say the level of anger within the Haitian American community is so intense that some residents have been marching into county offices to sever their affiliation with affiliation with the Democratic Party and registering as independents. Bastien said her own brother, who also lives in Miami, told her Tuesday that he plans to leave the Democratic Party this week. "The betrayal is deep, and this week has shown that the Democratic Party, and its leader Joe Biden, does not care about Black people," said Leonie Hermantin, an activist who works with the Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami, where many refugees initially go for services when they arrive in South Florida. "Black lives do matter, even at the border." Fewer than 6,000 migrants remained in the Del Rio camp Wednesday, down from a peak of more than 15,000, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday the that camp would be emptied within 10 days, but department officials have not said how many migrants they plan to send back to Haiti and how many are likely to be released into the United States and afforded a chance to seek humanitarian protection under U.S. law. Authorities sent four more planeloads of returnees to Haiti on Wednesday and have sent 13 since the Biden administration announced it would ramp up the return flights, part of an effort to deter more border-crossers from coming. Haitians make up one of the largest Caribbean immigrant populations in the United States, after Cubans, Dominicans and Jamaicans, according to census data. And roughly two-thirds of the Haitian immigrant community is concentrated in Florida - where a neighborhood of Miami has long been known as Little Haiti - and in New York. Nearly a quarter-million live in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area. The Haitian immigrant community in the United States grew in just under four decades from 92,000 in 1980 to 687,000 in 2018, according to an analysis of census data by the Migration Policy Institute, a pro-immigration think tank. Immigration experts say the current flow represents one of the largest waves of Haitian migrants to the United States since the 1990s, fueled by a mix of desperate circumstances, economic pressures and U.S. policy. Haiti has been plagued by decades of political upheaval, exacerbated by natural disasters and epidemics. And remittances sent home by the Haitian diaspora makes up more than a third of the country's gross domestic product. The brutal, three-decade-long dictatorship of the Duvaliers fueled some of the first major waves of Haitian refugees and migrants to the United States. The 2010 earthquake also devastated the island nation, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing 1.5 million, and prompted the U.S. government to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians, thereby temporarily shielding undocumented Haitian immigrants from deportation. Earlier this month, the Biden administration extended TPS benefits by 15 months to Haitians, Nicaraguans and Hondurans in the United States, which immigration analysts say might have also spurred false hopes among newly arriving migrants they would be granted leniency to stay. BAJI, which was formed to address the intersection of racial justice and immigration rights, has sent a letter to the Biden administration with other Black leaders demanding that the Haitians be granted humanitarian parole or asylum. Gyamfi, the BAJI executive director, said they're also demanding that the administration incorporate the racial equity executive order it signed on Biden's first day in office into immigration policy. "There's this tendency to marginalize those people who don't have big numbers," she said of the Black immigrant population. "But as the experience of African Americans teach us, you don't have to have big numbers to have big impact, and you don't have to have big numbers to deserve to be free." In Miami, Haitian Americans say they have felt especially marginalized compared with Cuban Americans, who for generations have been had a faster path to American residency. Haitian Americans say that disparate treatment has allowed Cuban Americans in South Florida to more quickly accumulate wealth and political power. "In the '70s and '80s, there were both Cubans and Haitians arriving [in Florida] at the same time by boat, and they were treated very differently," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University School of Law. "Haitians were denied asylum, while Cubans were granted green cards. . . . The fact Cubans were not Black made it stark." The policy affected a "huge decline" in the number of Haitians reaching the United States, he said. In 1981, there were about 1,000 Haitians arriving per month, he said. By 1982, the monthly arrivals had dropped to below 200. "All we are asking for is due process," said Santra Denis, 36, founder of Avanse Ansam, a Miami-based group of millennial South Florida Haitian Americans. "We know that is the case for some, but for us, that has never felt like the case." - - - The Washington Post's Nick Miroff contributed to this report. HAVRE, Mont. (AP) The public health officer in a small northern Montana county is resigning because of the constant negativity, pushback, disregard and lack of support that health officials have faced throughout the coronavirus pandemic, she said. Blaine County public health nurse Jana McPherson-Hauser said her resignation would take effect Oct. 15, KOJM-AM reported. The county's health board accepted her resignation Wednesday. McPherson-Hauer said recent legislation that limited the power of public health departments to enforce guidelines to slow the spread of COVID-19 contributed to her decision, along with constantly having to defend public health measures such as masking and vaccinations. Unfortunately, the politicization of the current pandemic has had a detrimental effect on my beloved profession of public health, McPherson-Hauser wrote in her resignation letter. She said the pushback included actions to undermine, question and constantly challenge established public health measures. The Legislature passed legislation that prevented her from doing her job the way she has for years and gave members of the public permission to dismiss her office and its recommendations, McPherson-Hauser said. Personally, I do not fit in a system where I constantly must defend evidence-based best practices to those they are designed to protect," she wrote. Montana's Legislature also passed the nation's only law banning employers from requiring vaccines as a condition of employment. Medical providers filed a complaint in federal court Wednesday challenging that law. McPherson-Hauser joined at least 17 other public health officers in Montana who have resigned, been fired or retired since the beginning of the pandemic, including State Medical Officer Greg Holzman. He announced his resignation in February, a day after Gov. Greg Gianforte said he would be lifting a statewide mask mandate, and left the post in April. Last week, Sanders County health officer Nick Lawyer resigned amid an organized effort by residents who oppose vaccines and other public health guidelines and after a man blamed county health policies for his wife's death from COVID-19. The health board has no say in medical treatment. Butte-Silver Bow County health officer Karen Sullivan announced this week that she was going to retire Nov. 19 after eight years in the post, The Montana Standard reported. This work has been challenging and invigorating, but with the COVID-19 event, it has also become very fatiguing, Sullivan said. First off, I intend to rest. RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) In a bizarre speech to the UN General Assembly, Honduras president defended his crimefighting chops and hinted that convicted drug traffickers testifying against him in the U.S. were doing so in exchange for favorable treatment. President Juan Orlando Hernandez touted his nations falling homicides rates in recent years and crackdown on organized crime, as well his government's collaboration with the D.E.A., F.B.I., U.S. Justice department, and U.S. Southern Command. He also highlighted the surreptitious recording of drug traffickers following his 2013 election, that he said was worthy of the Netflix show Narcos and proved he was not in cahoots with them. Speaking among themselves, they described their reality: the narcos complain in those recordings that despite their efforts they couldnt arrange anything with me; that Im not someone with whom they can work nor negotiate, he said. On the contrary, they know I would be implacable with organized crime. They even discuss how to try to kill me. The nearly half-hour address in New York marked the first time since his brother's sentencing that Hernandez addressed allegations in a global forum that he took bribes from drug traffickers. His brother, a former Honduran congressman, was sentenced to life in prison in a Manhattan federal court in March after prosecutors argued Juan Antonio Tony Hernandez was a central figure in one of the worlds largest and most violent drug conspiracies. U.S. prosecutors in New York have signaled the president took bribes from drug traffickers to fund his political ascent, including as recently as 2019, but he has not been formally charged. The president has denied any wrongdoing or having any ties to drug traffickers. And in July, when the U.S. State Department released a list of 50 current and former Central American officials suspected of corruption or undermining democracy, Hernandezs name was not among them. Hernandez told assembled diplomats at the U.N. that the drug traffickers, when first arrested by U.S. authorities, mentioned no connection with him, but later testified to the contrary. While he didn't say outright that prosecutors had offered them benefits in exchange for their testimony, Hernandez questioned whether they might receive favorable treatment for changing their stories. If perjury is recompensed by the United States, if criminals have impunity to use false testimony in the federal court of the United States, that puts dangerous weapons in the hands of a mortal enemy confessed assassins weapons to be used against the people most effective in the alliance against transnational crime, he said. Hernandez said he had worked with President Joe Biden when he was vice president, and expressed hope that U.S. authorities ultimately wouldnt reward perjury. LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) A Kentucky high school was evacuated Thursday and police detained a former student who unlawfully entered the building. The incident in Louisville flared tensions a day after a high school student was fatally shot at a bus stop across town. Several police vehicles responded to Jeffersontown High School around 12:30 p.m. Police initially said there was a report that a person with a gun entered the school, but officials have not confirmed that, according to media reports. No one was hurt. The former student is a juvenile, and police have not said what charges the juvenile would be facing. School officials said the campus was placed on a heightened security alert and students were moved out of the buildings. On Wednesday a 16-year-old student waiting at a bus stop was killed in a drive-by shooting near downtown Louisville. Police found a Jeep SUV that they believe was captured on video near the scene of the shooting. It had been stolen and was abandoned, police said. LOS ANGELES (AP) A guard at the federal jail in downtown Los Angeles was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of lying to investigators about having sex with an inmate, prosecutors said. A federal grand jury indictment charges Abel Concho, of East Los Angeles, with one count of making false statements, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement. He was scheduled to make an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't immediately known if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. During interviews with investigators, Concho allegedly made a series of false statements, including that he never had sexual contact with the inmate who was under his care at the Metropolitan Detention Center from June 2010 to February 2011, the statement said. Concho then falsely stated that he had sexual intercourse and engaged in oral sex with the victim just once (or) twice that he could recall, the indictment alleges. Concho is also accused of smuggling a cellphone into the facility to the victim to take nude photographs for him. According to the indictment, Concho was the target of a criminal investigation that he had sexual contact with multiple inmates at the jail, which houses a total of 635 male and female inmates. If convicted of the charge in the indictment, Concho, 53, would face a statutory maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) A man who was paralyzed when an Iowa police officer shot him in April filed a lawsuit Thursday contending the use of force was excessive and has been shrouded by secrecy. Authorities say the Waterloo police officer shot Marcelino Alvarez-Victoriano on April 7 after he pointed a pellet gun that looked like a shotgun at two Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies. But the lawsuit filed by Alvarez-Victoriano, 44, questions the official narrative and notes that few details have been released months after the shooting. Authorities have not identified the officers involved, released body camera footage or reports related to the shooting, or determined whether the shooting was legally justified. There has been no transparency and accountability. Thats a problem, said attorney Molly Hamilton, who filed the suit against Officer John Doe, and the city of Waterloo on behalf of Alvarez-Victoriano. Black Hawk County Attorney Brian Williams said Thursday that he was still reviewing whether the officer acted appropriately or should face charges. Williams said he would also forward his findings to the attorney general's office for a potential second review. We want to be very careful and make sure we have everything, we see everything and we read everything, he said. Waterloo Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald said the officer has been cleared internally, citing video that he said shows the shooting was appropriate. Alvarez-Victoriano was charged in April with misdemeanors for allegedly threatening deputies during the encounter. In an unusual twist, investigators have declined to arrest him since his July 10 release from the hospital due to the care his paralysis would require. The jail is simply not equipped to handle him right now, said Williams, who added that he was also reviewing whether to pursue those charges. Alvarez-Victoriano is paralyzed from the waist down with a spinal cord injury, unable to work and relying on friends for care and housing, Hamilton said. A bullet remains lodged in his back. The lawsuit comes as Waterloo has faced upheaval in recent months as Fitzgerald takes steps to reform a department that has struggled with allegations of excessive force and tensions with persons of color. The lawsuit alleges Waterloo has been aware for years that it has deficient policies and practices surrounding the use of force but failed to fix them. The confrontation began after someone saw Alvarez-Victoriano walking near downtown Waterloo at 12:45 a.m. with what appeared to be a rifle or shotgun and called police. Alvarez-Victoriano, who worked as a maintenance man, was out for a walk and mourning the recent deaths of his parents in Mexico, Hamilton said. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation says Alvarez-Victoriano pointed the weapon at a Black Hawk County sheriffs deputy who responded to the call and that he chased the deputy, causing him to retreat to his patrol vehicle to take cover and draw his weapon. A second deputy arrived and tried to ram Alvarez-Victoriano with his squad car, but Alvarez-Victoriano got out of the way, according to the DCI. He then advanced toward that vehicle with the weapon before pursuing the first deputy, refusing calls to drop what turned out to be an air gun, the DCI says. Within seconds of arriving, a Waterloo officer fired at him multiple times, striking him in the back, hand and foot, Hamilton said. The lawsuit alleges the shooting was excessive force that violated Alvarez-Victoriano's constitutional rights. Hamilton questioned why the review is taking so long, noting that other police shootings in Iowa have been ruled justified within a matter of days or weeks. I cant imagine it happening the way they say it happened," she said. DEL RIO, Texas (AP) Haitian migrants milled around makeshift shelters held up with giant reeds, as wind blew dust through the camp littered with plastic bottles and overflowing trash bags. Some migrants sat on plastic paint cans or the ground while others hung clothes to dry on the bamboo-like carrizo cane. All waited to learn their fate at a dramatically diminished Texas border encampment where almost 15,000 migrants had gathered just days ago under a bridge between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. About 4,000 remained on Thursday, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The number had peaked on Saturday, as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administrations policies and misinformation on social media converged at the crossing. But the United States and Mexico appeared eager to end the increasingly politicized humanitarian situation that prompted the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti and fresh condemnation from civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and UNICEF. DHS officials said about 1,400 migrants had been sent to Haiti on 13 flights, rapidly expelled under the pandemic public health authority known as Title 42. Another 3,200 were in U.S. custody and being processed, while several thousand have returned to Mexico, DHS officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief journalists about an ongoing operation. Mexicos immigration agency had estimated late Wednesday there were as many as 600 migrants in Ciudad Acuna. The riverside camp appeared to hold that many at its peak, while other migrants were scattered through the city in hotels and private homes. A city official said Wednesday that Mexican authorities had removed about 250 Haitian migrants from the city since Sunday evening. Still, several thousand migrants returning to Mexico from the Del Rio camp seemed an exaggeration. Haitians camped in Mexico awoke Thursday surrounded by security forces, with a helicopter thundering overhead and state police trucks spaced every 30 feet or so between their tents and the waters edge. After anxious minutes of indecision, dozens of families hurried into the river to cross at a point where there was only one municipal police vehicle, calculating it was better to take their chances with U.S. authorities. Guileme Paterson, a 36-year-old from Haiti, appeared dazed. It is a difficult moment, she said before beginning to cross the Rio Grande with her husband and their four children. Things are going badly, said Michou Petion, carrying her 2-year-old son in her arms toward the river. Her husband carried bags of belongings and several pairs of sneakers dangled around his neck. The U.S. is deporting a lot to Haiti, now I dont know if I can enter or leave, Petion said. Texas Department of Public Safety officials allowed journalists to visit the camp later Thursday but prevented them from talking to migrants. For those who remained, food, shelter and medical care was being provided to those who need it, U.S. officials said. At one point, two men riding in an ATV emblazoned with Homeland Security approached a group of women holding infants and said in Spanish: We have food for the baby. The women approached the men, who handed them a small container. A low dam that had been used to cross from Mexico into the U.S. was closed, and a worker picked up mounds of discarded belongings that included cellphone chargers, clothing and Styrofoam containers. Sharpton said Thursday that he toured the camp and witnessed a real catastrophic and human disgrace. A handful of protesters, some wearing camouflage hats from former President Donald Trumps 2020 campaign, shouted through the entirety of Sharptons remarks. Del Rio is not a racist city. Del Rio is a loving, caring community, one protester yelled while Sharpton spoke to reporters. Sharpton vowed to continue to come back... and stand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner. Some Haitians are being allowed to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily to seek asylum or to stay under some other claim to residency, with notices to appear later before immigration authorities. DHS officials declined to specify the number but said they are people with particular vulnerabilities, which can mean they have young children or are pregnant, or because the U.S. doesnt have capacity to hold them in detention, especially during the pandemic. There are no plans to stop expelling other migrants under Title 42, despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago. The provision was put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the Biden administration has used Title 42 to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants. A federal judge late last week ruled the regulation was improper and gave the government two weeks to halt its use, but the Biden administration on Monday appealed the decision. Officials said Thursday that the U.S. State Department also is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided in those countries to return, but the issue is complicated because some no longer have legal status there. Meanwhile, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the inhumane large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants. Foote, who was appointed only in July, wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was stepping down immediately with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life, he wrote. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own. The career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti. State Department spokesman Ned Price disputed Footes assertions, saying his proposals had been fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process. Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false, Price said. UNICEF also condemned the expulsions, saying initial estimates show more than two out of three migrants expelled to Haiti are women and children, including newborns, and about 40% in Del Rio are children. Haiti is reeling from the triple tragedy of natural disasters, gang violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, said Henrietta Fore, UNICEFs executive director, who said those sent back without adequate protection find themselves even more vulnerable to violence, poverty and displacement factors that drove them to migrate in the first place. DHS officials said about two-thirds of those under the bridge are families and the rest are single adults. But even as the number of Haitian migrants gathered in Del Rio dwindled, a few groups of Cubans were seen walking along a dirt road toward the camp at the bridge on Thursday. As a group of three men approached, a DPS officer yelled out, We got migrants! One of the men said in Spanish: Were here. We made it to the country of liberty. __ Verza reported from Ciudad Acuna. AP journalists Julio Cortez in Del Rio, Texas, Joshua Goodman in Miami, Matthew Lee in New York, Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this story. EASTPOINTE, Mich. (AP) The Michigan Supreme Court will look at the life sentence of a man who was a teenager in 2009 when he was charged with a notorious kidnapping and murder in suburban Detroit. Robert Taylor, now 29, is serving a life sentence with no chance for parole for his role in the death of Matt Landry, who was kidnapped from outside a sandwich shop in Eastpointe. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Mississippi House and Senate negotiators said Thursday that they have agreed on a proposed medical marijuana program. Leaders are expected to ask Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to call the Legislature into session to put the plan into law. The step comes months after the Mississippi Supreme Court tossed out a medical marijuana initiative that voters approved last November. Justices ruled in May that Mississippi's initiative process was out of date and the medical marijuana proposal was not properly on the ballot. The legislative proposal is not identical to the voter-approved initiative. The proposal would allow local governments to limit where the marijuana could be grown, processed or sold. That was not in Initiative 65. The two lead negotiators Republican Sen. Kevin Blackwell of Southaven and Republican Rep. Lee Yancey of Brandon said Thursday that passing a bill would take a three-fifths majority because of tax provisions, and leaders of the House and Senate believe they have have enough votes lined up. Yancey said the proposed program would help people with debilitating illnesses such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis or cancer. This is compassionate relief, Yancey said. This is not a recreational thing. Yancey said that if the bill becomes law, cities and counties would be have 90 days to opt out of allowing medical marijuana growing sites, processing facilities and dispensaries. But if local governing boards decide to do so, voters could petition for an election to overturn that decision. Blackwell said if a city or county opts out of allowing facilities, people who live in those places would still be able to possess and use medical marijuana. Blackwell said negotiating details of the bill was a long process. It's not a perfect bill, by any stretch of the imagination, he said. Some details: Marijuana for medicinal use could only be grown indoors. The state Department of Agriculture would be in charge of licensing and regulating businesses that grow, process or transport the products. Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson has said he does not want the department to have that role as long as marijuana is illegal under federal law. Yancey said the Agriculture Department could set a contract with another entity, such as the Board of Pharmacy, to handle the duties. The state Department of Health would regulate medical marijuana testing facilities and research facilities. It also would license the physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and optometrists who recommend medical marijuana for patients. The Health Department also would license patients who receive medical marijuana and the caregivers who might need to buy it for them. The license for a patient or caregiver would cost $25 a year, and each caregiver also would pay $37 for an annual criminal background check. The Department of Revenue would regulate dispensaries. Cultivation businesses, where the plants are grown, would have to have at least some owners who are Mississippi residents. One person or business could own no more than one cultivation site, one processing site and five dispensaries. Medical marijuana could be smoked, used in products such as creams or drops or used in food products such as gummies or drinks. Limits would be set on how many one person could obtain in a month. ____ Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus. WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) The Navajo Nation on Wednesday reported 52 more COVID-19 cases and five additional deaths. The latest numbers pushed the tribes totals to 33,637 confirmed COVID-19 cases from the virus since the pandemic began more than a year ago. The known death toll now is at 1,436. Navajo officials are urging people to get vaccinated, wear masks while in public and minimize their travel. Based on cases from Sept. 3-16, the Navajo Department of Health issued an advisory for 36 communities due to uncontrolled spread of COVID-19. Officials said all Navajo Nation executive branch employees will need to be fully vaccinated against the virus by the end of this month or submit to regular testing. The new rules apply to full, part-time and temporary employees, including those working for tribal enterprises like utilities, shopping centers and casinos. Any worker who does not show proof of vaccination by Sept. 29 must be tested every two weeks or face discipline. The tribes reservation is the countrys largest at 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. PRINCETON, W.Va. (AP) A southern West Virginia health department has stopped its needle exchange program due to strict requirements under a new state law, officials said. The Mercer County Health Department voted Wednesday to discontinue its program, saying the new regulations are so strict that compliance is not possible, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported. NEW YORK (AP) A vaccine mandate for New York City's public school teachers and other staffers can go forward as planned next week, after a state judge on Wednesday lifted a temporary restraining order. The city had announced last month that school employees would have to get at least a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27, impacting about 148,000 school workers and contractors. A coalition of city unions had filed a lawsuit against the mandate and had asked for the injunction against its implementation. State Supreme Court Justice Laurence Love put the TRO in place last week, but removed it in his ruling on Wednesday. In a statement, the Department of Education said the ruling was a big win for New York City children and Department of Education employees. Their health and safety is at the very core of this vaccine mandate, and we are pleased the court recognized the citys legal authority. The officials with the unions said they intended to continue the legal action. We are deeply disappointed that the temporary injunction has been lifted," Henry Garrido, executive director of DC 37, said in a statement. This is not the end of the road and we will continue to fight for the right of workers to make their own healthcare decisions." Love said he had initially ordered the injunction because the city's original mandate didn't say anything about medical or religious exemptions, but said the city subsequently put out language saying nothing in the mandate would prohibit accommodations that are legally required. He said that removed the need for the injunction, and also doubted the unions' ultimately being able to succeed in their claim that their due process rights were being violated. The state and federal courts have consistently held that a mandatory vaccine requirement does not violate substantive due process rights and properly fall within the states police power," Love wrote. BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) A body discovered in a river nearly three weeks ago has been confirmed as a graduate student missing from Illinois State University, authorities said Thursday. Jelani Day's identity was confirmed through DNA and dental records, the LaSalle County coroner's office said. Day, 25, was last seen at the Illinois State campus on Aug. 24. His car was found in Peru two days later. The body was discovered in the Illinois River in the LaSalle-Peru area on Sept. 4. "There are no words to clearly communicate our devastation. ... Our hearts are broken," Day's family said on Facebook. As of this moment, we do not know what happened to Jelani and we will not stop until we do, the family said. Investigators are trying to determine if Day was a victim of foul play, said John Fermon, a Bloomington police spokesman. Over time, that's where we'll get that answer, he said of the investigation. Day wanted to become a doctor and was pursuing a masters degree in speech pathology at Illinois State, said his mother, Carmen Bolden Day. llinois State President Terri Goss Kinzy described Day as kind, intelligent and caring. He joined his graduate program this summer and his impact on the campus community was immediate. ... Details regarding how our community will come together to celebrate Jelanis life and honor his memory will be forthcoming, Kinzy said. Days cousin, Eriel Davis, said his disappearance didn't make sense. His dad actually has cancer and Jelani is the bone marrow match for his dad, and he would never abandon his father like that, Davis said. RICHMOND, Va. (AP) A major U.S. port was the target last month of suspected nation-state hackers, according to officials. The Port of Houston, a critical piece of infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, issued a statement Thursday saying it had successfully defended against an attempted hack in August and no operational data or systems were impacted. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly initially disclosed that the port was the target of an attack at a Senate committee hearing Thursday morning. She said she believed a nation-state actor was behind the hack, but did not say which one. We are working very closely with our interagency partners and the intelligence community to better understand this threat actor so that we can ensure that we are not only able to protect systems, but ultimately to be able to hold these actors accountable, she said. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said the hack was concerning and said the U.S. needed to push back against these nation-state actors who continue to probe and to commit these crimes against our public and private sector entities." The hack involved ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus, a password management program. Easterly's agency, the FBI and the U.S. Coast Guard issued a joint advisory last week warning that the vulnerability in the software poses a serious risk to critical infrastructure companies, defense contractors and others. Cybersecurity has become a key focus of the Biden administration. A devastating wave of cyberattacks has compromised sensitive government records and at times led to the shutdown of the operations of energy companies, hospitals and schools. The SolarWinds espionage campaign, which the U.S. government said was conducted by Russian hackers, exposed the emails of 80% of the accounts used by the U.S. attorneys offices in New York and affected several other departments. The Associated Press reported in June that suspected Chinese state hackers had recently targeted telecommunications giant Verizon and the countrys largest water agency. HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Robert Gentile, a mobster who for years denied suspicions from authorities that he knew anything about a trove of artwork valued in the millions that was stolen in a 1990 museum heist and remains missing, has died. He was 85. His attorney, Ryan McGuigan, said Gentile died Sept. 17 after a stroke. Investigators had suspected that Gentile may at one time have had in his possession at least some of the artwork taken in March 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In that theft, two men showed up at the museum in the overnight hours dressed as police officers. They restrained the security guards and left soon after with 13 pieces from the collection, including works from Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas. The art has never been found. Gentile, who had an extensive criminal record and served time in prison, was believed to have connections with those suspected of getting the art after it had been stolen, but he denied he ever had any of the works. I had nothing to do with the paintings. Its a big joke, Gentile said in a phone interview with The Associated Press in 2019 after being released from prison. Authorities didn't think so. They said the widow of another mobster said her husband gave Gentile two of the paintings, and that Gentile talked about the stolen work while in prison. In a search of his home that led to his 2013 conviction for illegally selling prescription drugs and possessing guns, silencers and ammunition, prosecutors said federal agents found a handwritten list of the stolen paintings and their estimated worth, along with a newspaper article about the museum heist a day after it happened. BANGOR, Maine (AP) The highest rates of coronavirus infections in recent months have been in places with lower vaccination rates, demonstrating a divide between rural and urban centers in the state, a newspaper reported. Communities with the lowest vaccination rates have seen the highest rates of new COVID-19 cases over the past 4 1/2 months amid the onset of the delta variant, according to the Bangor Daily News. Communities where more than 90% of eligible residents are vaccinated experienced nearly 40% lower infections than in communities with inoculation rates below 70%, the newspaper reported. The highest infection rates were previously centered in ZIP codes containing cities like Portland, Lewiston, Biddeford and Kittery, the newspaper said, but they are now in communities like Guilford, Levant, Houlton and Madison. Dr. Noah Nesin, chief medical officer at Penobscot Community Health Care in Bangor, said the good news is that more people are getting vaccinated as they see the damage inflicted by the delta variant. It is now a choice between getting vaccinated or getting delta, Nesin said. They see this as a very serious disease that isnt just going to go away. In other pandemic news in Maine: ___ THE NUMBERS The number of daily new cases of the coronavirus in the state increased once again. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Maine has risen over the past two weeks from 359.00 on Sept. 7 to 457.29 on Sept. 21. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Maine has risen over the past two weeks from 1.71 on Sept. 7 to 4.43 on Sept. 21. The AP is using data collected by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering to measure outbreak caseloads and deaths across the United States. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday that there have been 1,009 deaths and more than 85,000 positive cases of the virus in the state since the start of the pandemic. Federal authorities are recommending indoor mask use everywhere in the state. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) The Missouri Attorney Generals Office on Wednesday asked a state appeals court to intervene in the case of a Kansas City man who Jackson County prosecutors have said was wrongfully convicted of a triple murder more than 40 years ago. Last week, Judge Kevin Harrell denied a motion from Schmitt's office asking that he and other Jackson County judges be removed from presiding over a hearing that would determine if Kevin Strickland will be exonerated of the 1998 murders in Kansas City. WASHINGTON (AP) Bipartisan congressional talks on overhauling policing practices have ended without an agreement, top bargainers from both parties said, marking the collapse of an effort that began after killings of unarmed Black people by officers sparked protests across the U.S. It was clear that we were not making the progress that we needed to make, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told reporters Wednesday. He cited continued disagreements over Democrats' efforts to make officers personally liable for abuses, raising professional standards and collecting national data on police agencies' use of force. Talks had moved slowly for months, and it had became clear over the summer that the chances for a breakthrough were all but hopeless. Booker said hed told South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the lead Republican negotiator, of his decision earlier Wednesday. Repeated visits to Washington by victims' relatives helped keep pressure on the issue. But in the end, Booker said, I couldnt get to a point where I can meet with families and tell them that we were going to address the specific issues that were putting your family member in harms way. Scott said he was deeply disappointed" that Democrats had walked away from accords reached on several issues, including banning chokeholds, curbing the transfer of military equipment to police and increased funds for mental health programs, which address problems that often lead to encounters with law enforcement officers. Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table, Scott said in a statement. Democrats rejected a deal because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement, said Scott, using a catchphrase of progressives from which most Democrats in Congress have disassociated themselves. Once again, the Left let their misguided idea of perfect be the enemy of good, impactful legislation. The failed congressional effort followed high-profile police killings last year of Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Those killings and protest demonstrations in scores of cities that followed called attention to abusive police behavior and the disproportionately high number of Blacks who are victims of fatal encounters with law enforcement. In a written statement Wednesday, President Joe Biden called Floyds killing a stain on the soul of America, adding, We will be remembered for how we responded to the call. He said Senate Republicans had rejected enacting modest reforms that then-President Donald Trump had backed and some law enforcement organizations were open to. He cited new Justice Department policies on chokeholds and other practices, and said his administration would seek ways, including with executive orders he could issue, to live up to the American ideal of equal justice under law. Booker cited support parts of the effort had won from police organizations, and said he was talking to the White House, other congressional Democrats and civil rights and other outside groups about still making some progress on the issue. But he avoided specifics. I just want to make it clear that this is not an end, he said. Attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who have represented shooting victims' families, expressed extreme disappointment" in the talks' outcome. We can not let this be a tragic, lost opportunity to regain trust between citizens and police," they said. They said the Senate should vote anyway on Democrats' policing bill which Republicans would be certain to defeat with a filibuster, or procedural delays, but would let voters see who is looking out for their communities best interests." The police killings and the public reaction quickly caught the attention of both political parties, and work began in Congress to write legislation that would curb and monitor the police use of force. But from the beginning, some from each party voiced suspicions that their rivals would make few concessions in hopes of retaining an issue crime for Republicans, restraining police for Democrats that they could use to appeal to voters in election campaigns. Political roadblocks soon emerged. Democrats blocked a Republican Senate bill last year that they said was too weak, while a tougher House-approved bill this year was derailed in the Senate by the GOP. Lobbying trips to Washington by victims families and Bidens call this spring for a bipartisan deal by May 25, the anniversary of Floyds death, seemed to provide momentum for the effort. But May 25 came and went without an agreement. Booker and Scott, among only three Black senators, refrained from criticizing each other throughout the talks and held to that on Wednesday. The two have said they are friends and have cited similar experiences of being challenged by officers. We disagree on a lot of issues, and in this case, Im disappointed that we have those disagreements," Booker said. But we both share the humiliation of being stopped by police officers." 3 1 of 3 Brian J. Wilson / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Ivoryton Playhouse / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3 ESSEX Sanne Zwikker, a 14-year-old Dutch-American violinist from New York City, will give a free solo concert at the Ivoryton Playhouse Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. The repertoire will include works from Bach, Partita No. 1 in B minor and Sonata No.1 in G minor; as well as technical compositions from Paganini, Caprice No. 11 and No. 20. SALINA, Kan. (AP) A man is in custody after Salina police said a man's body was found earlier this week in rural Saline County. The case began on Friday, when Manuel Medina-Castro and some family members reported to Saline County authorities that a car that he had borrowed appeared to have a substantial amount of blood in it, along with a spent shell casing, police said. The Latest on the UN General Assembly: ___ After a no-confidence vote in Libyas transitional government this week added to uncertainty ahead of key elections in December, one of its leaders said Thursday the government would hold an international conference next month on trying to keep the political process on track. Mohammad Younes Menfi, who chairs Libyas three-member Presidential Council, announced the plan but gave few specifics at the U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders. He said the conference would involve relevant national bodies and institutions, plus regional and international voices. The aim: maintaining the political process, keeping unified, consistent, coherent international support, and conducting safe, transparent, fair elections, Menfi said. He didnt give a location or exact date. Libya is at a critical juncture indeed, a defining moment, said Menfi, a diplomat from the countrys east. We either succeed in the democratic transition by means of fair and free and transparent elections, the results of which are acceptable to all, then move towards a sustained stability and prosperity -- or we fail and relapse into division and armed conflict, he said. Libya has endured a decade of chaos since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In the aftermath, the oil-rich nation was split between a government in the east, backed by commander Khalifa Hifter, and a U.N.-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli. Each side has also had the support of different regional powers, militias and mercenaries from countries such as Russia and Syria. All mercenaries and foreign forces were supposed to withdraw after last Octobers cease-fire agreement, but they remain in the country and Menfi said this issue remains a real challenge. The current transitional government replaced the two rival administrations and was intended to prepare the country for elections on Dec. 24. But Libyan lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in the transitional government on Tuesday, adding to questions about the planned elections. Still, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said the government would keep pushing ahead. (edited) ___ Panamas President Laurentino Cortizo has requested support to address the flood of migrants passing through his nation. He told the U.N. General Assembly that, this year alone, already 80,000 migrants have traversed Panama. Its been an exponential rise, from 800 in January to 30,000 last month, and Panama dedicates some of its limited resources to providing them with food and shelter. Panama does its part. Now we appeal to the international community to, as soon as possible, make a joint effort, with coordinated strategies and resources, he said. Cortizo said the migrants largely originate in Africa and the Caribbean. The crisis is centered in the deep forest of the Darien Gap at Panamas border with Colombia, which migrants attempt to cross en route to the U.S. Panamas foreign minister Erika Mouynes said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday that the nation hasnt received a cent of international cooperation to face up to the flow of migrants. This is everyones responsibility, Cortizo said. ___ UNITED NATIONS Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel seized on the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan to blast the United States for what he said is a history of foreign policy disasters. Occupation only leaves destruction, and no country has the right to impose its will on sovereign nations, Dias Canel said in a pre-recorded video shown at the U.N. General Assembly. Afghanistan is not an isolated case. It has been evidence that where the United States intervenes, there is an increase in instability, deaths, suffering and enduring scars. Afghanistan was just one example the Cuban president used to attack U.S. foreign policy, which he said relied on the pernicious use and abuse of measures of economic coercion. He scolded U.S. President Joe Biden for maintaining more than 200 measures adopted by his predecessor, Donald Trump, particularly the addition of Cuba to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism. Trump added Cuba to the list just days before leaving office in January. Diaz-Canel also expressed support for regional allies Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Venezuelas Nicolas Maduro, and said the South American nation will always be able to count on Cubas solidarity. In Maduros video speech broadcast at the U.N. yesterday, he railed against U.S.s fierce campaign of sanctions and demanded they be lifted. TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) Tunisian President Kais Saied issued presidential decrees bolstering the already near-total power he granted himself two months ago. Wednesday's decrees include the continuing suspension of the Parliaments powers and the suspension of all lawmakers immunity from prosecution. But the text published in the official gazette went even further now freezing lawmakers salaries. They also state Saied's intention from now on to rule by presidential decree alone and ignore parts of the constitution. Laws will not go through the parliament, whose powers are frozen, granting him near-unlimited power. On July 25, Saied sacked Tunisias prime minister, suspended parliament and assumed executive authority, saying it was because of a national emergency. His critics called it a coup. For law professor Mouna Kraiem, the new emergency measures amount to the establishment of a dictatorship in the full sense of the word. Saied has denied wanting to be a dictator, saying that he eventually aims to put his political reforms to the public in the form of a nationwide referendum. But his political critics remain skeptical of this intention. The July event came after years of economic sluggishness, but were triggered by a day of violent protest and a rise in coronavirus cases. LONDON (AP) British police investigating the killing of a 28-year-old woman in London said Thursday they are probing whether she was attacked by a stranger, in a case that sparked new concerns for the safety of women walking the capital's streets. The Metropolitan Police are calling for information over the killing of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa on Sept. 17 in Kidbrooke, southeast London. Detectives believe she was attacked during what would have been a five-minute walk through a local park on her way to meet a friend at a pub. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said authorities are recruiting more police officers and had introduced a strategy to tackle violence against women and girls earlier this year. London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Thursday described the violence against women as a national epidemic." We have to got give this issue the same seriousness we give other issues, he told ITV. More than 180 women have been killed by men across England from March 2020, he added. Nessas body was discovered almost 24 hours after her death in a local park by a member of the public. A man in his 40s was arrested on suspicion of murder but he has been released under further investigation. Results from a post-mortem examination carried out on Monday were inconclusive. Sabinas journey should have taken just over five minutes but she never made it to her destination," Detective Inspector Joe Garrity said. We know the community are rightly shocked by this murder as are we and we are using every resource available to us to find the individual responsible. A vigil is due to be held in Nessa's memory on Friday. A cousin of Nessa told the BBC that the 28-year-olds parents are inconsolable. Lisa Williams, the headteacher of Rushley Green Primary School where she worked, remembered Nessa as brilliant, kind and caring. The case came just a few months after the abduction, rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in south London by a serving police officer. The Everard case shocked the country and saw thousands take to the streets to denounce violence against women. Khan stressed he believed that violence against women and girls should be treated more seriously. I think this deserves the same priority as counterterrorism. I agree with the inspector who called this an epidemic," he said. The mayor also mourned the deaths of sisters Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, who were both murdered in a park in Wembley, north London, by 19-year-old Danyal Hussein in June 2020. Safeguarding minister Rachel Maclean told the House of Commons on Wednesday: This is a government that is passing legislation, setting out actions and tackling these horrific crimes and we are determined to see a reduction in them. NEW YORK (AP) The Biden administration is imploring Iran to quickly return to talks on its nuclear program after a three-month hiatus caused by its government transition, warning that the window for negotiations may soon close. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a senior administration official said Thursday that U.S. patience is wearing thin and that further delays while Iran continues to expand its atomic capabilities could lead Washington and its partners to conclude a return to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal is no longer worthwhile. We dont have yet an agreement by Iran to return to the talks in Vienna, Blinken said. We are very much prepared to return to Vienna and continue the talks. The question is whether, and if so when, Iran is prepared to do that. Blinken and the senior official, who briefed reporters on condition that he not be identified by name, spoke as diplomats from the remaining parties to the agreement have been meeting Irans foreign minister on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly to gauge Tehrans willingness to return to the talks. While Iran has said it is ready to rejoin the talks, it has not yet offered a date for a resumption, named a negotiating team or indicated that it is willing to pick up where the negotiations left off in June, according to the officials. In discussions with representatives from the remaining parties to the deal Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union the officials said all of them had agreed on the importance of resuming the talks as soon as possible. If the talks don't resume, the officials said the U.S. would at some point determine that Iran was no longer interested in the benefits that the accord offered or that its recent technological advances could not be undone by the limits it imposed. The possibility of getting back to mutual compliance is not indefinite, Blinken said. And the challenge right now is that with every passing day, as Iran continues to take actions that are not in compliance with the agreement ... we will get to a point at some point in the future at which simply returning to mutual compliance with the JCPOA will not recapture the benefits. The UN's atomic watchdog has said Iran is increasingly in violation of the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, which former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018. The U.S. has participated indirectly in the Vienna talks, which were aimed at bringing both Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the deal. The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, met Tuesday with Iran's new foreign minister, who reiterated Tehrans willingness to resume negotiations at an early date," the EU said. Borrell then met Wednesday with Blinken. Borrell stressed the need for full cooperation from Iran and reiterated his concern about the overall trajectory of the Iranian nuclear program, the EU statement said. The last round of talks in Vienna ended in June, ahead of Irans elections that boosted the ranks of hard-liners. There had been speculation that the remaining parties to the deal would meet on the sidelines of this weeks U.N. General Assembly. But the U.S. official said Iran had declined the opportunity to meet. FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) The U.S. government released projections Wednesday that indicate an even more troubling outlook for a river that serves 40 million people in the American West. The Bureau of Reclamation recently declared the first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, which means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will get less water than normal next year. By 2025, there's a 66% chance Lake Mead, a barometer for how much river water some states get, will reach a level where California would be in its second phase of cuts. The nation's most populated state has the most senior rights to river water. While the reservoir on the Nevada-Arizona border is key for those three lower Colorado River basin states, Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border is the guide for Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah in the upper basin. Smaller reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell have been releasing water into the massive lake so it can continue producing hydropower. But any bump from the releases that started this summer isn't factored into the five-year projections, the Bureau of Reclamation said. The agency's projections show a 3% chance Lake Powell will hit a level where Glen Canyon Dam that holds it back cannot produce hydropower as early as July 2022 if the region has another dry winter. The latest outlook for Lake Powell is troubling, Wayne Pullan, the bureaus director for the upper basin, said in a statement. This highlights the importance of continuing to work collaboratively with the basin states, tribes and other partners toward solutions. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoirs in the U.S., largely rely on melted snow. They have been hard hit by persistent drought amid climate change, characterized by a warming and drying trend in the past 30 years. Both have dipped to historic lows. The lakes had a combined capacity of 39% on Wednesday, down from 49% at this time last year, the Bureau of Reclamation said. The seven states that rely on the Colorado River signed off on a drought plan in 2019 to help prop up the lakes by voluntarily contributing water. All agree more needs to be done and are discussing what will replace a set of guidelines for the river and the overlapping drought plan when they both expire in 2026. The federal government also has formed a working group. The Bureau of Reclamation's five-year projections are meant to help water managers better plan for the future using the best available data, said Jacklynn Gould, who oversees the lower basin for the agency. Its August projections are what determine water deliveries to the states. The agency says there's a 22% chance that Lake Mead will drop to an elevation of 1,000 feet (304 meters) above sea level in 2025. Federal officials have said water would become inaccessible to states downstream at 895 feet (272 meters) feet, often referred to as dead pool. The agency that supplies water to most people in Nevada has constructed straws to draw water from further down in Lake Mead as its levels fall. ___ This story has been corrected to show Lake Powell has a 3% chance of reaching a point where hydropower from Glen Canyon Dam would be impacted in 2022, not 90%. ___ See APs complete coverage of the drought: https://apnews.com/hub/droughts MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department is monitoring the spread of a deadly viral disease in deer in a neighboring state and investigating possible cases in Vermont. New York has documented cases of epizootic hemorrhagic disease in several counties in the Hudson Valley, including some that border Vermont, the department said Thursday. The disease is spread to deer by biting midges, sometimes called no-see-ums. It does not spread from deer to deer and humans cannot get infected from deer or bites of midges, the department said. STILLWATER, N.Y. (AP) Military veterans who carefully dug and sifted through clumps of dirt this month at a Revolutionary War battlefield in New York did more than uncover artifacts fired from muskets and cannons. The meticulous field work gave the veterans some dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries a familiar sense of camaraderie and mission. So while the archaeological dig at the Saratoga National Historical Park produced evidence from the tide-turning Second Battle of Saratoga, the teamwork behind the finds also benefited the veterans. We can all come together, share your battle stories, your deployment stories, and share your love for the history of what youre digging," said Bjorn Bruckshaw, of Laconia, New Hampshire, during a break on a recent hazy morning. Bruckshaw, 38, was part of a three-person crew that spent the morning digging small holes at spots that set off metal detectors, then searching though the damp clumps to uncover ... old nails, mostly. But the self-described Revolutionary War buff was loving it. Bruckshaw, an Army veteran injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq, is among 15 veterans taking part in the dig through American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, an organization that helps service members transition into the civilian world. While the group deals mostly with vets with disabilities, their focus is on what participants can do in the field instead of any injuries, said AVAR's Stephen Humphreys. In the military you're trained to be on time for everything," Bruckshaw said. So transitioning into the civilian world is a little bit harder for a lot of people. For me, it was a little bit difficult suffering from TBI (traumatic brain injury) and PTSD from my combat injuries. But you have support groups like these. National Park Service archaeologist William Griswold said the team is looking for artifacts that shed more light on the Battle of Bemis Heights, or the Second Battle of Saratoga, on Oct. 7, 1777. The American victory over British and German soldiers is credited with persuading France to lend crucial support the fight for independence. The battle also burnished the heroic resume of future traitor Benedict Arnold, who was wounded in the leg and is memorialized here with a monument to his boot. While maps and journal accounts from the time describe troop movements during that fateful battle, artifacts can pinpoint movements and provide a reality check. For instance, historians know the British at Saratoga loaded their cannons with tin canisters packed with iron balls, or case shot, that spread out like shotgun blasts. Locations of the buried iron balls found here are being used to deduce more precisely where the cannons fired from. Its a good way to check a lot of these textual sources because in the fog of battle, people often make mistakes or embellish things, Griswold said. Field work was first conducted here in 2019, with supervision from the National Park Service's regional archaeology program. The American Battlefield Trust is a sponsor. Work was interrupted by the pandemic last year, but crews with shovels and metal detectors were back this month and wrapping up this week. Its partially about the chase, said veteran Megan Lukaszeski. You never know what youre going to find. You could dig and you could find nothing, or you could dig and find the most amazing things. After retiring from the Air Force, Lukaszeski went to school to study archaeology. The 36-year-old from New York has already taken part in AVAR excavations to recover remains at WWII crash sites in England and Sicily through the group's partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. She plans to get her master's degree and pursue archaeology professionally. For others, the work is more a chance to learn about archaeology while having some fun. Former Army Col. Tim Madere once hunted for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This month, the 68-year-old sifted dirt through a screen in a hunt for artifacts and shared laughs with other workers. The Savannah, Georgia-area resident said he has gotten over most of his PTSD, but believes you can never totally get rid of it. He sees this sort of field work as a good way for people to manage it. You hear their stories and then you tell yours so that we kind of get a better appreciation of what all these Americans did to protect the United States, he said. So its good to see other people, and theyre doing well. A stranded dolphin needed all the help it could get over the weekend near Port Aransas. Several nonprofit organizations and volunteers responded to a report of a stranded dolphin trapped in shallow water in Lighthouse Lakes, according to a Facebook post by the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. A dolphin is considered stranded if it is beached or is stuck in shallow water and can't swim on its own, the network said. Once it was reported that the dolphin was stranded, the network said several groups, including the Texas State Aquarium and SeaWorld San Antonio, rallied together to help free the marine mammal. "We could not have successfully rescued and returned this dolphin to deeper water without all involved," the network said in its Facebook post. "It was truly incredible to see everyone pulling together and mobilizing so quickly in order to save this dolphin, not to mention the physical nature of the work and overcoming logistical challenges." Dolphins are protected from harassment by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It is illegal to approach, swim with, feed, touch or chase wild dolphins. In Texas, you can report all injured, stranded or entangled marine mammals by calling 800-962-6625 or through DolphinRescue.org. The network is a nonprofit organization dedicated to marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation. WASHINGTON Lizzie Pannill Fletcher's political career became something of a trophy to Washington Democrats in 2018 after she won the Houston-based 7th Congressional District long a bastion of Texas Republican leadership. The seat was once held by the late President George H. W. Bush, and one of Fletcher's most prominent constituents is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. The 7th was designed to be a safe Republican stronghold, but the 46-year-old former trial attorney snatched it away three years ago. And while many of her classmates from the 2018 Democratic wave lost reelection in 2020, she held on against a formidable Republican opponent. Any day now, she'll find out how intent Texas Republicans are on taking the seat back. The Texas Legislature is poised to unveil its proposed maps for new Texas Congressional districts, and some expect they'll redraw the 7th in a way that dooms Fletcher's chances of winning there again. Fletcher is well aware she is in political purgatory. Ive always known that this is just part of the process and theres so much happening here, that perhaps its good that its not my focus, she said in an interview. Its on my radar that my job is to represent my constituents and certainly hearing what Ive heard, knowing what I know, I do feel a responsibility to try to protect the district and to protect them. During two terms in the U.S. House, Fletcher has been a somewhat overshadowed presence, a quietly loyal party member among the boisterous pack of Democrats who took back the chamber in 2018. She is a strong fundraiser amassing more money this cycle than any Texas other Democratic member. She does not create headaches for party leadership and avoids the bombast of modern social media politicking. But redistricting is blood sport, and Republicans this time around have an even freer hand to carve up the state for partisan advantage after the U.S. Supreme Courts 2013 decision gutting key provisions of federal laws that protected voters of color. No Texas Democrat is more often cited as a likely victim of the redistricting pen than Fletcher. Whether or not Republicans take an aggressive posture toward her could set the stage for the next decade in the Texas congressional delegation. Much of the animus toward her in the Republican consultant class is rooted in geography: Fletcher represents a seat that was never meant to be competitive, let alone held by a Democrat. Two of the previous congressmen elected there are Republican legends: the elder Bush and former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer. Fletcher does not run from that history. Shes loosely in touch with the Bush camp, and when she met this week with one of her interns from the University of Texas who is part of a program named for Archer, Fletcher was quick to point out that he once represented the district. While some Republicans take umbrage with this, she is a creature of her hometown. Reared in the Afton Oaks neighborhood during the 1980s oil bust, she attended the citys most elite private school. She left the state for her undergraduate degree and law school, but returned in 2006 to work for Vinson & Elkins, one of the most politically wired firms in town. Prior to her run, she was a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing law firm. Now, as the congresswoman, she has two grown stepchildren and lives with her attorney husband near the area where she grew up. She came to this political place in early 2017. Fletcher joined the wave of political neophytes who ran for Congress in a backlash to the election of former President Donald Trump. She ultimately defeated U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a longtime Republican who had mostly faced nominal Democratic opponents in the past. Her first election was so crucial to national Democrats that they sent one of their most effective surrogates the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis to campaign with her at African American worship services the weekend before the election. That day still imbues her Washington office, where she displays several framed photos of herself with Lewis from that day, and another from a pre-pandemic 2020 march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where the civil rights icon was nearly beaten to death by police decades earlier. Houston iconography also abounds coasters with one of the local area codes, 713 and her older sisters art work celebrating the city. There are two framed maps of the 7th Congressional District which includes much of west Houston and its suburbs. What that district will look like after the Legislature is done drawing new maps is now one of the most debated questions in Texas politics, and the merciful scenarios for Fletcher are limited. Its an open secret that House GOP leadership wants to elevate her 2020 rival, retired veteran Wesley Hunt. And after Republicans held onto the Legislature last year, speculation began about how to draw maps in a way that would make it impossible for her, and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat also elected in 2018, to win reelection. Given that House Democrats only have an eight-vote margin, it was easy to see early this year how the road to a majority for Republicans must pass through Texas, and through Fletcher's district. When youre looking at the big picture ... You definitely have heard people saying there is an effort to take back the House through redistricting, she said. I dont think its a good idea to take back the House by not letting people vote, she said, referencing the recently passed state voter access bill. I also dont think its good to take back the House by dismantling districts that are effectively performing for their constituents. Theres also a frustration in GOP circles that Fletcher has a Teflon shield. She tends to vote with her party but is perceived locally as a moderate. They argue she is weak on the districts main economic sector fossil fuels. The 7th Congressional District has long been home to many of the great oil barons. Its a charge that can bring flashes of subtle ire to Fletchers normally cheerful disposition. Already, a Republican group aligned with national GOP leaders called American Action Network has made a small television buy tying her to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The House GOP campaign committee is also keeping an eye on Fletcher. Texans are paying more for gas and groceries because Lizzie Fletcher keeps supporting Democrats socialist spending sprees, said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Torunn Sinclair. It will cost her reelection. But eight state and national Republican operatives with direct ties to the Texas delegation warned in interviews that an aggressive effort to unseat Fletcher could endanger the Republican incumbents who surround her district: U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul of Austin, Dan Crenshaw of Houston and Troy Nehls of Richmond. Historically, the Legislature listens to the sitting Congressional Republicans when they redraw maps, and McCaul, as a senior Republican, is serving as a point person between the state lawmakers and his GOP colleagues. While early details of the new districts remain closely held, some Republican sources said they sense survival instincts are setting in among the federal Republicans. Meaning, few are excited about the notion of pulling conservative voters from nearby Republican incumbents districts to take out Fletcher. Instead, the map drawers could decide to leave Fletcher alone, and siphon Republicans from her district to bolster the long term reelection chances of Republicans in neighboring districts. But that might hurt Fletcher in a different way: Her district could end up including many new Democratic voters unfamiliar with her, leaving her vulnerable to a primary challenge from an established Houston Democrat. While incumbents across the country carried a bit of anxiety around the Capitol this week, Fletcher's fate remains the focus in Texas. By all appearances, Fletcher likes serving in Congress. She has a coveted seat on the U.S. House and Energy Committee, which has oversight of the oil and gas industry, and shes begun branching out on national television to discuss a key issue she ran on as a candidate, abortion rights. But if the maps bring bad news her way, she will have some difficult choices to make. I dont know that Ive thought through my process, she said, describing how she will sort out her political future. But Im generally most concerned about making sure that my constituents get the representation they deserve." At this point, all options are on the table, she said. When asked if that included retirement, she laughed: Im too young to retire, right? But there is another option. The 2018 wave was consequential in Texas partly because it gave Democrats a farm team for the first time in decades. Fletcher could run for a different office. If I think I have something to offer, or if I think I can contribute ... I have to kick the tires for a long time before I feel confident that I can do a job here, but I think Ive done a good job here, she said. As for the psychology of this strange, once-in-a-decade political dance, she said the sheer volume of legislation before the congress this week an abortion bill, a potential government shutdown, House Democratic efforts to convince the Senate to take up a voting bill has kept her too busy to dwell. I cant control everything, so Im in a pretty good place, and Im going to see what my options are and make my decisions, she said. Its not much of a process. But you know, Im going to see what my options are, and I tend to be pretty analytical, and so Im sure Ill think for a long time, and well see. You never know, right? 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 certain Texas celebrity is not out of the race yet. Matthew McConaughey, the potential gubernatorial candidate on everyone's minds lately, has more to say about running for office. In an appearance on the "Set it Straight: Myths and Legends" podcast, members of the Texas-based band Midland urged the actor to enter politics. "Im measuring it. Look, its going to be in some capacity. ... I just Im more of a folksy and philosopher poet statesman than I am a, per se, definitive politician, McConaughey told Midland, the podcast hosts. So I go, well, thats a reason not to, but then I go, no, thats exactly why you should, because politics needs redefinition, but Im measuring, you know, what is my category? Whats my embassy? But McConaughey also said he's unwilling to part with the more creative parts of his life if he took up residence in the Governor's Mansion. I have to remain an artist. Ive earned my right to enjoy that Saturday night part of life, that music part of life. It has to have music to it," McConaughey said on the podcast. "Im very good at being diligent, Monday morning, practical, structure, Im all of that. But I gotta continue to be an artist in what I do. Signs point to McConaughey being a "formidable" opponent to Gov. Greg Abbott, as Sen. Ted Cruz put it. The Oscar winner is polling well in a hypothetical match-up against Abbott and seems to have a better shot at turning Texas blue than probable candidate Beto O'Rourke. That's all assuming he would run as a Democrat, of course. McConaughey has been very clear in his own way that he considers himself a centrist more than anything. "Ive said this analogy a few times before, but someone told me, 'There aint nothing in the middle but dead armadillos and yellow lines,'" McConaughey told the Longview News-Journal in March, John Anderson reports. "I said, 'Well, Im walking right down the yellow lines, right in the middle of the highway right now. And the armadillos are free having a great time because right now, both sides are so far to the right or the left, there arent even tires on the pavement.' "So I think, going in, to think Democrat or Republican or one of the other, is small thinking now and even becoming unconstitutional because youre supposed to serve the American people or the people of your state." McConaughey will need to make a definitive decision soon if he wants to be in the 2022 election. Candidates have to file by Dec. 13. The Gulf Coast Ike Dike is a large, often controversial topic throughout Texas. But given the longstanding confusion around the project, its plans, timeline and funding, many no longer understand everything it entails. In broad terms, the "Ike Dike" refers to a longstanding proposal to shore up dunes on Galveston and High islands, raise the seawall and construct a large, moveable gate at the mouth of Galveston Bay to protect the Texas coastline from the worst swells and storms. Proponents of the project say it's a vitally important piece of infrastructure for Texas, one that could curb the billions of dollars in damage and lost wages anticipated when the next catastrophic hurricane forms in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Here's a breakdown of what you need to know: Why it's called the "Ike Dike" One favored "Ike Dike" concept was developed by Bill Merrell, a marine sciences expert at Texas A&M University at Galveston. Merrell began crafting his plans for the protective barrier in 2008 after Hurricane Ike slammed into the East Texas coast, narrowly sparing the Houston Ship Channel and greater region from widespread disaster. Popular grassroots support for Merrell's Ike Dike grew in the following years, making him a important voice for the project. Melissa Phillip/Staff But will it work? That depends on what you mean by "work." While Merrell's Ike Dike plan is merely conceptual, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is pushing its own detailed plan for the barrier through official channels in Washington, D.C. Dubbed the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Study (or Texas Coastal Study for short), the fruits of this survey will form the concept most likely to be implemented if Congress offers approval. The Texas Coastal Study's dike design, however, could fall short of total protection of the coastline. As the plans stands, the gate between Galveston and Bolivar is only designed to withstand 22 feet of storm surge. Army Corps project manager Kelly Burks-Cope told the Houston Chronicle's Emily Foxhall earlier this month that this level of defense could still lead to "over-topping" and "spillage" into Galveston Bay in extreme instances. Not exactly words you want to hear associated with a levee. Johnny Hanson/Chronicle "We have to assess and trade off the return on investment for building bigger and bigger and bigger," Burks-Copes said. Merrell echoed beliefs that the Corps' plans need be improved in a letter written in the Galveston Daily News, in which he advocated for a gate with specifications large enough to hold back waves higher than 22 feet, as well as another equally impenetrable barrier at San Luis Pass. Foxhall's story outlines several other officials skeptical of how well the Corps' plan will work. What's next? The Texas Coastal Study is currently under Congressional review. It could receive approval and funding any time between now and 2023, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Projected costs put the price tag of the Galveston barrier around $23 billion, according to Foxhall, of which 65 percent would be footed by the federal government. For the rest, the state of Texas has commissioned a board under the moniker "Gulf Coast Protection District" to levy local taxes dedicated to its construction, according to reporters Savannah Kuchar and Jake Magee at Community Impact. Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Once funding for the Ike Dike is secured, it will take up to five years to design and another 15 years to build, according to the Corps. Now is as good of time as ever to shore up the coast and protect Houston and its port from destruction. Let's just hope there isn't a major hurricane in the next two decades. What are your thoughts on the project? Do plans go too far, or not far enough? Let me know on Twitter: @jayrjordan We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Knowing your CRS before going into the Express Entry pool can help you plan your Canadian immigration strategy. How to calculate your Express Entry CRS score Knowing your CRS before going into the Express Entry pool can help you plan your Canadian immigration strategy. How to calculate your Express Entry CRS score Knowing your CRS before going into the Express Entry pool can help you plan your Canadian immigration strategy. How to calculate your Express Entry CRS score Knowing your CRS before going into the Express Entry pool can help you plan your Canadian immigration strategy. Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Getting a high Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score gives you a better chance of immigrating to Canada through Express Entry. The CRS is the points-based ranking system that Canada uses to assess immigration applications in the Express Entry system. Express Entry is an application management system for three economic-class immigration programs. It is not an immigration program itself. Calculate your CRS score The Express Entry-managed programs are: the Canadian Experience Class, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program. Certain Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) pull candidates from the Express Entry pool, but these candidates have to already be eligible for one of these programs. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses the CRS to assess your profile as a candidate for immigration. Basically, the more points you get, the more likely you are to be invited to apply for Canadian permanent residence. You get points based off of factors that the Canadian government has determined will help you succeed in the labour market. Namely, your education, work experience in a skilled occupation, official language proficiency, and age. You also get scored differently depending on if you are including a spouse on your application. The CRS is out of a total of 1,200 points, though most people fall somewhere under 500 points. You can get a pretty good idea of what your score will be in the Express Entry system before you submit your profile. There are a number of online tools that allow you to easily estimate what your Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score may be, although you will only get your official score once you upload all of your documents to the online system. Understanding how the CRS is calculated can help you to make the most of the Express Entry system and improve your chances of getting an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for permanent residency. The ranking system The first consideration when it comes to calculating points is whether or not you are including your spouse. You do not have to include your spouse if they are already a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Including a spouse on your application means that you will be eligible for 40 fewer points than single applicants in the core human capital factors, but you get to make them up in a special section for your partners human capital. This is supposed to make it so couples do not necessarily have an advantage in the pool over single applicants. The core human capital factors are age, education, official language proficiency, and Canadian work experience. Beyond that, you can get points for skills transferability, such as your foreign work experience or education. There are a few other miscellaneous factors that can add points to your score, such as: having a sibling in Canada, French-language skills, Canadian education, arranged employment, and a provincial nomination. Here are those three CRS components broken down further. Core Human Capital Factors For your core human capital score, you can get a maximum of 100 points if you are applying solo, and 110 if you are applying with a spouse. These factors include your age, education, language ability, and Canadian work experience. IRCC uses the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) to measure language proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. To determine if work experience is skilled, IRCC refers to the National Occupational Classification (NOC). Occupations that are classified as skill level 0, A, and B are eligible for CRS points. Self Employed work in Canada cannot be used toward your overall score. Age Age With an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 100 Without an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 110 under 18 0 0 18 90 99 19 95 105 20-29 100 110 30 95 105 31 90 99 32 85 94 33 80 88 34 75 83 35 70 77 36 65 72 37 60 66 38 55 61 39 50 55 40 45 50 41 35 39 42 25 28 43 15 17 44 5 6 45 or older 0 0 Level of education Level of education With an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 140 for principal applicant (PA), 10 for spouse Without an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 150 Less than secondary school credential 0 0 Secondary school credential 28 for PA; 2 for spouse 30 One-year post-secondary program 84 for PA; 6 for spouse 90 Two-year post-secondary program 91 for PA; 7 for spouse 98 Post-secondary program of 3 or more years 112 for PA; 8 for spouse 120 Two or more post-secondary programs, of which at least one was completed after a post-secondary program of three or more years 119 for PA; 9 for spouse 128 Masters or entry-to-practice professional degree 126 for PA; 10 for spouse 135 Doctoral Degree (PhD) 140 for PA; 10 for spouse 150 First language ability (English or French) Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) With an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 128 for principal applicant; 20 for spouse Without an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 136 For each language ability 32 for PA; 5 for spouse 34 CLB 3 or lower 0 0 CLB 4 6 for PA; 0 for spouse 6 CLB 5 6 for PA; 1 for spouse 6 CLB 6 8 for PA; 1 for spouse 9 CLB 7 16 for PA; 3 for spouse 17 CLB 8 22 for PA; 3 for spouse 23 CLB 9 29 for PA; 5 for spouse 31 CLB 10 or higher 32 for PA; 5 for spouse 34 Second language ability (English or French) Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) With an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 22 Without an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 24 For each language ability 6 6 CLB 4 or lower 0 0 CLB 5 or 6 1 1 CLB 7 or 8 3 3 CLB 9 or higher 6 6 Canadian Work Experience Number of years With an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 70 for principal applicant (PA); 10 for spouse Without an accompanying spouse maximum points available: 80 Less than 1 0 0 1 year 35 for PA; 5 for spouse 40 2 years 46 for PA; 7 for spouse 53 3 years 56 for PA; 8 for spouse 64 4 years 63 for PA; 9 for spouse 72 5 years or more 70 for PA; 10 for spouse 80 Skill Transferability Factors A maximum of 100 points are available for a candidates skill transferability factors. There are five combinations of such skill transferability, with a maximum of 50 points awarded for each combination. Even if a candidate scores more than 100 points in total, only 100 points will be awarded under the CRS. Candidates with or without an accompanying spouse or common-law partner are awarded points for skill transferability in exactly the same way. There are no points available for the skill transferability of a candidates spouse or common-law partner. Education and Canadian work experience Education 1 year of Canadian work experience 2 or more years of Canadian work experience No post-secondary education 0 0 Post-secondary education of 1 year or longer 13 25 Two or more post-secondary credentials, the first of which was 3 or more years in duration 25 50 A university-level credential at the masters level or at the level of an entry-to-practice professional degree for an occupation listed in the National Occupational Classification matrix at Skill Level A for which licensing by a provincial regulatory body is required 25 50 A university-level credential at the doctoral level 25 50 Education and language ability Education CLB 7 or higher on all language abilities, with at least one CLB 8 CLB 9 or higher for all language abilities No post-secondary education 0 0 Post-secondary education of 1 year or longer 13 25 Two or more post-secondary credentials, the first of which was 3 or more years in duration 25 50 A university-level credential at the masters level or at the level of an entry-to-practice professional degree for an occupation listed in the National Occupational Classification matrix at Skill Level A for which licensing by a provincial regulatory body is required 25 50 A university-level credential at the doctoral level 25 50 Language ability and non-Canadian work experience Non-Canadian Work Experience CLB 7 or higher on all language abilities, with at least one of these CLB 8 CLB 9 or higher for all language abilities No non-Canadian work experience 0 0 1 or 2 years of non-Canadian work experience 13 25 3 or more years of non-Canadian work experience 25 50 Canadian and non-Canadian work experience Experience 1 year of Canadian work experience 2 or more years of Canadian work experience No non-Canadian work experience 0 0 1 or 2 years of non-Canadian work experience 13 25 3 or more years of non-Canadian work experience 25 50 Certificate of qualification in a trade and language ability Certificate of qualification CLB 5 or higher on all language abilities, with at least one CLB 5 or 6 CLB 7 or higher on all language abilities Certificate of qualification in a trade occupation issued by a province 25 50 Additional Factors The maximum number of points for these additional factors for any one candidate is 600 points. So for example, if you get a provincial nomination plus have a sibling in Canada, you do not get 615 additional points. Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) nomination certificate Points For an enhanced nomination certificate from a Canadian province (except Quebec) 600 Qualifying offer of arranged employment Points For a qualifying job offer of arranged employment from a Canadian employer if the offer is in an occupation contained in Major Group 00 Senior Management Occupations 200 For a qualifying job offer of arranged employment from a Canadian employer if the offer is any other qualifying offer of arranged employment 50 Canadian study experience Points If the candidate has an eligible credential from a one-year or two-year post-secondary program in Canada 15 If the candidate has either: an eligible credential from a post-secondary program of three years or more, or an eligible credential from a university-level program at the masters level or at the level of an entry-to-practice professional degree for an occupation listed in the National Occupational Classification matrix at Skill Level A for which licensing by a provincial regulatory body is required, or an eligible credential from a university-level program at the doctoral level. 30 French language ability Points If the candidate proves adequate intermediate (equivalent to CLB 7) or better French ability, and English ability of CLB 4 or lower (or no English language test result) 25 If the candidate proves adequate intermediate (equivalent to CLB 7) or better French ability, and English ability of CLB 5 or better 50 Sibling in Canada Points If the candidate, or the accompanying spouse/common-law partner, has a sibling in Canada who is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of at least 18 years of age, related through blood, adoption, marriage, or common-law partnership. 15 Calculate your CRS score CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options. Over the next two weeks IRCC will issue 30,000 invitations to Canadian citizens and permanent residents looking to sponsor their parents and grandparents. IRCC holds Parents and Grandparents Program 2021 sponsorship lottery Over the next two weeks IRCC will issue 30,000 invitations to Canadian citizens and permanent residents looking to sponsor their parents and grandparents. IRCC holds Parents and Grandparents Program 2021 sponsorship lottery Over the next two weeks IRCC will issue 30,000 invitations to Canadian citizens and permanent residents looking to sponsor their parents and grandparents. IRCC holds Parents and Grandparents Program 2021 sponsorship lottery Over the next two weeks IRCC will issue 30,000 invitations to Canadian citizens and permanent residents looking to sponsor their parents and grandparents. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A IRCC has just announced it is beginning to issue Parents and Grandparents Program 2021 invitations. A total of 30,000 Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be invited to sponsor their parents and grandparents. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will issue the invitations over the coming two weeks, between today and October 7. Invited sponsors have 60 days to submit their completed sponsorship applications to IRCC. Get a Free Legal Consultation if you Receive a PGP 2021 Invitation Invitations come from CIC.CPCMississaugaDoNotReply-CTDMississaugaNePasRepondre.CIC@cic.gc.ca The email subject is Parents and Grandparents Program Invitation / Linvitation a presenter une demande dans le cadre du Programme des parents et des grands-parents CPCM / CTDM. Sponsored parents and grandparents will become Canadian permanent residents and enjoy all the associated benefits including free health care. Receiving a PGP invitation is difficult given the strong demand among Canadian citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their loved ones. In the past IRCC has had around 100,000 sponsors visit its website to submit interest to sponsor forms within minutes of launching the forms. This time around, IRCC allowed sponsors to submit interest to sponsor forms on its website between October and November 2020. It then held a lottery in January 2021 to invite 10,000 sponsors. It is drawing from the same pool of 2020 candidates to issue the 30,000 invitations in this round. IRCC has not yet specified how it will manage the PGP in 2022. Get a Free Legal Consultation if you Receive a PGP 2021 Invitation What should I do if I receive a PGP 2021 invitation? It is crucial you ensure you meet the eligibility criteria for the PGP 2021. You must be at least 18 years old, and a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or be status First Nations. You must also demonstrate to IRCC you meet the Minimum Necessary Income (MNI). You will need to submit your Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) notices of assessment for the 2020, 2019, and 2018 tax years. Assuming you meet the criteria and wish to go ahead with the process, you will have 60 days to submit your completed sponsorship application including fees to IRCC. Residents of Quebec are required to demonstrate they meet the provinces sponsorship income requirements over the past 12 months. IRCC and Quebec both require that sponsors sign an undertaking agreement. Sponsors are legally obliged to repay any social assistance claimed by their parents or grandparents during the undertaking period. The period is 20 years for non-Quebec residents and 10 years for residents of Quebec. Get a Free Legal Consultation if you Receive a PGP 2021 Invitation Sponsor your parents and grandparents to come to Canada PGP 2021 Canada is holding the PGP 2021 lottery beginning the week of September 20.Have you been invited by IRCC to sponsor your parents and grandparents to come to C What if I dont get invited? The Super Visa is an alternative to those who want to bring their parents and grandparents to Canada. Canadian citizens and permanent residents can submit a Super Visa application to IRCC. The Super Visa allows multiple entries into Canada over a 10 year period. Learn More about the Parents and Grandparents Super Visa CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options. By Shahar Bar-Or, Chief Product Officer at Infinidat In our new digital economy, the majority of businesses rely on their data to be available all the time. It is little surprise that, according to the World Economic Forum, cyber security failure and IT infrastructure breakdowns are now two of the top global risks facing business leaders today. It sits alongside the more existential threats of another global pandemic, environmental damage, and natural weather disasters. Currently many enterprises are challenged by how to effectively manage cyber-attacks, including suffering business data downtime. Maintaining customer loyalty and trust with their data is also critical to businesses. Unsurprisingly, the continued growth of enterprise storage and real-time data demands, mirror the exponential rise in the amount of data currently generated. IDC predicts that the Global Datasphere will quadruple from 45 Zettabytes in 2019 to 175 Zettabytes by 2025. In the same IDC estimates that the cost of ransomware attacks on businesses will top $20 billion this year. Global damages related to cybercrime will reach $6 trillion, which are sobering figures for any CIO or CISO - enterprises would do well to consider these costs when budgeting for the next few years. A Clear and Present Danger Each element within a companys ecosystem faces the real risk of a significant data breach; from employees and customers who work remotely, to its evolving cloud strategy and IoT devices. Clearly, an optimal cyber recovery solution needs to be at the core of every organizations cyber defense strategy and integral to all business processes. All organizations must prepare for the unexpected by ensuring their infrastructure can deliver the fastest possible recovery time to deliver uninterrupted access and availability to data. Cyber-attacks and ransomware target backup solutions and storage with an ease never before seen and backup is no longer viewed as the last line of defense! When cyber-attackers plan their assaults, they learn the weaknesses in all our fortifications, including any backup and data protection strategies. It is imperative that enterprises defend their backup with immutable snapshots, which, when used consistently, protect data from the harmful effects of malware and ransomware, as well as having the capability to begin the recovery process near-instantaneously. As a result, the informed CIO can be confident that the business will recover from cyber terrorists, technical malfunctions, or frequent human error, without any compromise and with full data integrity. It Pays to be Prepared IT security teams need to heighten their response plans and awareness of increasingly sophisticated ransomware threats. Cyber protection and business continuity are primary considerations in defining the quality of information systems and the businesses they support. With the primary storage global footprint expanding exponentially, cyber protection and recovery solutions are struggling to keep up economically and technically. The capability of quickly restoring data systems and applications from trusted sources is now integral to a companys successful cyber defense strategy. However, its simply not enough to run daily backups on whatever storage is lying around in the data center. To address these challenges, companies need to ask themselves; how technologically vulnerable are the systems to malfeasance and can the enterprise fight off any ransomware attacks with efficient data recovery capabilities? The smart CIO will demand petabyte-scale data protection, with lightning-fast recovery for their mission critical operations, uninterrupted data access, and application availability. Malicious ransomware has destroyed backups, stolen authorizations, leaked stolen information, and caused businesses of all sizes to shut down operations overnight. Cybersecurity firm, Cybersecurity Ventures, predicts that ransomware is expected to attack a business every 11 seconds by the end of 2021. Effective cyber recovery solutions need availability, and a fully scaled data restoration is required for business continuation. Many solutions are lacking in performance and speed, unable at the crucial moment to make a full restoration when needed. To make matters worse, many systems are overwhelmingly expensive to buy, operate, and maintain. Consolidate, Protect and Fight Back As we have discussed, protecting your entire backup environment is an essential part of any organizations cyber defense strategy. In an ideal future there should be fewer and fewer attacks that breach enterprise defenses, as the financial rewards of cybercrime reduce, and the punishments for such terrorists become increasingly more punitive on the global stage. Threats to the worlds data and critical infrastructure are grave but the future is brightening as the next generation of data protection solutions provide best-in-class safeguards for the entire backup environment with at scale recovery. The most robust cyber recovery strategies will ensure that copies of data cannot be deleted, encrypted, or changed. These will be key features alongside air gap protection, and flexible, granular, and near-instantaneous recovery back to any point in the history of the data. A sensible, focused strategy and long-term investment in IT infrastructure will mean that any business or government body under attack has the tools to protect its core value, reputation, and customer data. Learn how to bolster your defenses at Infinidat.com About Shahar Bar-Or Shahar Bar-Or is the Chief Product Officer and General Manager of Israeli operations at Infinidat. Previously, he was VP of Embedded Engineering and Israel Site Leader at Western Digital, and prior to that, he was at SanDisk. He has over two decades of leadership experience in the technology industry. As the economy picks up, demand for many inputs is outstripping supply, driving up prices for things as diverse as construction materials, energy, food ingredients, and semiconductors. Soon, that list will include Office 365 subscriptions. You might not have heard about it from your sales rep yet, but Microsoft quietly announced that starting March 1, 2022, it will hike the price of many of its enterprise Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. (Consumer and education subscription prices arent changing for now.) Even if you spotted the companys Aug. 19 blog post, New pricing for Microsoft 365, you would still have had to wade through over 800 words about all the features the company has added to the package since its launch 10 years ago before getting to the bottom line: a 25% increase in the per-seat price of Office 365 at the E1 support level and a 20% increase in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, with smaller increases in other subscription levels. Pricing for the many similarly named subscriptions is confusing. Theres Office 365, with just the basic apps, or Microsoft 365, which adds a Windows license and enterprise mobility and security tools, each with two categories of support, E (for enterprise) and F (for frontline workers), and each of those can come in different levels (E1, E3, and E5, or F1 and F3). But some combinations of those attributes dont exist: Theres no Office 365 F1, or Microsoft 365 E1, for example. One thing is clear: Microsoft is trying to entice enterprises to spend more to save more, as the percentage price increases will be smaller on fuller-featured (and more expensive) bundles, closing the price gap between Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and making the higher support levels more attractive. They didnt touch the price of Microsoft 365 E5, the holy grail for them, says Adam Mansfield, a practice leader at UpperEdge, a consultancy that advises enterprises on IT sourcing. Start preparing now Enterprise CIOs need to pay attention to these increases right now: If you have a renewal in June or December next year, you better be on top of this right now, Mansfield says. June is a popular month to renew Microsoft contracts, because buyers can often get good deals out of sales staff just before the close of Microsofts financial year. But if CIOs leave it until the price list changes on March 1 to begin negotiations, then they may run out of time. Even companies that have just renewed on a three-year deal should put the price increase on the agenda for their next meeting with Microsoft, to put the company on notice that they will be looking for a better deal, he says. Renewal price protection Some companies have negotiated renewal term price protections into their contracts, limiting how much vendors can increase prices. Thats the gold standard, Mansfield says, something he and his colleagues aim for in the deals they help their clients negotiate. Unfortunately, says Mansfield, most companies dont have that protection so when their current negotiated discount ends, theyre exposing themselves to the double whammy of a return to list price and that list price rising too. Pricing wont be the first thing discussed, though. Microsoft will likely begin as it began its blog post about the changes by talking about all the extra applications and value it has added to Microsoft 365 over the years. But ask yourself, do you and your colleagues use included applications such as Stream, Planner, Delve, Kaizala, Sway, and Yammer every day or ever? Having detailed, granular information about the features your organization uses is essential for pushback in negotiations. Push your organization to really look, employee by employee, at what they are using at a feature level in each subscription, Mansfield says. But its a slow process, with many organizations starting on it a year before their contract expires. Get your house in order Thats what Joseph Cevetello, CIO of the City of Santa Monica, Calif., did. Knowing that the contract was running out, we assessed all of our licenses in the city, and we tried to really right-size our licensing. Gone are the days when you have the most expensive license with the fullest functionality for everyone, says Cevetello. You need to get your house in order and not just accept what Microsoft says you need, he says. We set about defining profiles for the different types of workers in the city, and what type of Microsoft Office license they would need. That was the first step in trying to get a handle on the cost, he says. Santa Monica, like many other cities in Southern California, gets its Microsoft products through the County of Riverside Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. With a population of over 2 million, Riverside used its vast buying power to negotiate and pass on some great discounts although the discounts are not as great as they used to be, according to a 2020 report by the City of Palo Alto, which also benefits from the deal. Cities and other governments cant purchase directly from Microsoft, but have to go through a reseller, and resellers vary widely, Cevetello says. We had one when I first came on board that was not providing great value to us. We found a different one who is. While that adds another layer of complication, its also another opportunity to get a better deal, he says. Threatening behavior CIOs need to have a credible threat of defection to bring up in negotiations with Microsoft and while theres a feeling in some circles that Microsoft Office is an unavoidable cost of doing business, there are alternatives. There are plenty of desktop clones out there, including open-source suites such as Libre Office for which businesses can choose their own support provider. There are cloud-based alternatives too: Google Workplace (formerly Google Docs, then G-Suite) is perhaps the best known, but there are others. Zoho offers cloud-based productivity apps, email, CRM, service desk, bookkeeping, and other business tools. Salesforce, too, plays in this area: It has embedded the functionality of Quip, an office productivity platform it acquired in 2016, into its CRM offering, meaning sales staff may not need a separate productivity suite at all. For now, Mansfield sees Google mostly winning market share on front-line or deskless workers, who need a productivity suite only occasionally. Enterprises are willing to try Google there, he says, and it provides a bridgehead within the company from which Google can seek to win contracts for corporate desktops, too. The biggest threat CIOs have, though, is not taking their desktop spend away from Microsoft, but taking away their other spending switching clouds, for example, or playing off Microsofts Power BI against Salesforces Tableau. Tell them, Do this, and you may never get that. Thats where you start creating leverage, says Mansfield, noting that this is one area in which Microsofts broad portfolio works against it. In November, world leaders will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for a summit that will go a long way toward determining whether humanity preserves a liveable planet. At COP26, the follow-up to the 2015 climate summit that gave us the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to revisit and update plans to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Together, leaders will either agree to dramatically reduce fossil fuel use, or they will fail, further exposing humanity to the rising tide of climate destruction. Given the monumental importance of COP26, its not unreasonable to imagine journalists covering the runup to the summit as they would the runup to a major election: reporters everywhere pressing leaders on their diplomatic preparations; commentators trading predictions on nightly news programs; newsrooms retooling their entire staffs to support wall-to-wall coverage. None of that is happening, and thats a problem. But this article is about a different omission by the press. Whether or not COP26 ends in success depends in large part on whether the United States delegation arrives in Glasgow with a credible plan. As the worlds largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, the US is reasonably expected to enact its share of transformational climate action. America is also the worlds largest economy; with other large economies, including China and India, still reliant on fossil fuels to drive growth, the world is unlikely to strengthen emissions-reduction targets to the levels necessary unless the US is in a position to cajole, compel, and barter with its peers, as nations must at meetings like this. That, in turn, depends almost entirely on whether the US Congress passes effective climate legislation. Enter Democrats omnibus budget reconciliation plan. The measure, which bears a provisional price tag of $3.5 trillion, is the promised complement to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in August by the Senate, now pending House approval. The $3.5 trillion plan is also the largest climate-change bill in US history, and it comes not a moment too soon. American politics dont exist in a vacuum, of course. The reconciliation bill, a current fixture of our political news cycle, is not just a story about partisan gamesmanship or the intransigence of a certain West Virginia senator. Its a story about all of humanitys survival and prosperity in the face of catastrophe. Passed, the bill will enable Americans to put their best foot forward at COP26. Delayed, watered down, or scuttled altogether, it will instead bind their feet. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Joe Biden knows this. As the president said Tuesday in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, To keep within our reach the vital goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, every nation needs to bring their highest-possible ambitions to the table when we meet in Glasgow for COP26. And yet the importance of the reconciliation bill vis-a-vis COP26 is all but absent from the news. In many stories about the bill, in fact, the word climate does not appear at all. Perhaps reporters or editors imagine the summit doesnt interest their audiences. But that undervalues COP26: At a time when scientists agree time is short for humanity to pull back from the brink, its no exaggeration to say the meetings outcomes concern every living person on Planet Earth. To be fair, Democrats and the Biden administrations messaging about the reconciliation bill has not been laser focused. Is it an infrastructure bill? A jobs bill? The Build Back Better plan? On Pod Save America, show hosts who are former staffers of the Obama administration have observed that shifting talking points have likely hindered Democrats in selling the plan to the American public, confusing all but the most insulated politics junkies. Perhaps journalists cant be faulted for failing to explain the implications of this plan, then. But isnt it our job to rise above the fray? Inconsistent messaging by the administration and the Center for Disease Control on Covid-19, for example, has prompted fierce criticism from journalists, who rightly push leaders to get their stories straight as a matter of public interest. If we dont similarly hold politicians feet to the fire on the reconciliation bill, and connect the dots between it and COP26s outcomes, our audiences will fail to grasp the enormity of whats at stake. And without that popular awareness, there cant be the public pressure necessary to make leaders get the job done. There are some journalists getting this right. An August piece in the environmental publication E&E News, for example, ran under the headline U.S. global climate promises hang on reconciliation battle. And, in an article previewing the UN General Assembly, The Washington Post drew a clear line between the $3.5 trillion package and Americas global commitments as they relate to COP26. But most coverage has predictably focused instead on intra-party squabblesspecifically between centrist senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, and the majority of the Democratic party. Republicans, who unanimously oppose the reconciliation bill and regularly traffic in climate denial and disinformation, have been given a relative pass. And, of course, no shortage of coverage has attempted to divine the bearings of these proceedings on the 2022 and 2024 elections. Last Sunday, on NBCs Meet the Press, Manchin, who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from fossil-fuel stocks, said there was no rush or deadline to pass the reconciliation measure. Host Chuck Todd declined to challenge Manchin on this point. Instead, he asked the senator what the bill would look like if he were to write it from scratch. But there is a deadline: A world-historic summit less than six weeks from now which COP26 president Alok Sharma, of the United Kingdom, has called humanitys last best chance to tackle the climate emergency. The reconciliation bill will affect many aspects of Americans lives, yes. But that is foremost because the threat of climate change necessitates a rethinking of how humanity conducts its business on this earth: A strong climate bill is also a strong infrastructure bill, with funding to rebuild roads and lift communities out of poverty. The bill is also a contract with the world, a statement that, after four years of going backwards under the Trump administration, the US is able and willing to act on climate. The stronger the reconciliation bill, the better the chances are of success at COP26. And, as record-setting wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes have demonstrated so vividly this year, humanity cannot afford failure. To the extent that Congresss bill squares with climate science and reckons with the legacy of the fossil fuel industry, or else throws Big Oil an eleventh-hour lifeline, America will be judged. Whatever other stories journalists want to tell about the reconciliation bill, however juicy they might seem through the lens of modern American political reportage, must be thought of in the context of climate change. Weve got to zoom out. We have to see, and tell, the bigger story. This column is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration co-founded by CJR and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story. The author is CCNows deputy director. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Andrew McCormick is an independent journalist and former CJR Delacorte Fellow. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the South China Morning Post, and more. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewMcCormck. In 2007, at the age of twenty-four, I went to the Mayflower Hotel, in Washington, DC, to attend the fiftieth annual gathering of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. It was my first time there; Id been invited as part of a cohort of about ten young people, an outreach by old-timers to the next generation. Newspapers were declining, and the AAEC was interested in how our profession could make money on the internet. A panel posed the question, What is the future of editorial cartoons? At the time, the answer was me. Id been cartooning professionally for four years, and Id recently signed a syndication deal with United Mediahome of Garfield and Nancythat made me the youngest syndicated cartoonist in the country. I had nearly full-time employment drawing three editorial cartoons a week, and I filled every other waking hour with freelance illustration and work on a graphic novel. Roaming through the convention, feeling awkward in a borrowed blazer amid the chandeliers and Pulitzer winners, I felt that perhaps I had chosen something of a real professionone that could garner respect, or enough of a living that I could toast myself and my colleagues in a ballroom once a year. Later, I would come to see that convention and its open bar as a last hurrah. The event was a financial disaster for the AAEC, leaving it mired in debt. Over the next decade-plus, the organizations venues became smaller and humbler, and the number of attendees dwindled and aged. I watched my peers move into other careers like graphic design and animation, which came with higher and steadier paychecks. Meanwhile, my promising start in syndication never paid me more than twenty thousand dollars a year. It turned out I wasnt the future of editorial cartoons; I was one of the last people making a go at it. Cartoonists often blame editors for their lack of interest and visual illiteracywords people, we call them. Ask a political cartoonist when the profession began, and youre likely to hear that it all started with cave drawingsan answer that casts us as a fundamental part of society. In fact, Benjamin Franklin is credited with one of the first official political cartoonsJoin, or Die, a commentary on the disunity of the coloniesin 1754 for his newspaper the Pennsylvania Gazette. In Great Britain, around the same time, William Hogarth, an artist and social critic, drew satirical illustrations. But the field didnt coalesce into something with a name until 1841, with the arrival of a British humor magazine, Punch, which would soon coin the term cartoon. Political cartoons took off in popularity in tandem with the explosion in newspaper publishing facilitated by mass printing technology; illustrations were a convenient means to break up text-heavy pages. The godfather of the field, Thomas Nast, popularized such figures as the Democratic donkey and Uncle Sam. Cartooning in the second half of the nineteenth century for Harpers Weekly, Nast devised intricate ink drawings that were painstakingly etched into engraving plates by assistants; his claim to fame was helping usher in the downfall of William Boss Tweed, a corrupt New York City politician convicted of stealing millions of dollars. Those were the glory years, when printed matter ruled the cultural conversation and political cartoons often appeared on newspapers front pages. According to the Herb Block Foundationa nonprofit established in 2001 by the bequest of Block, who had been a Washington Post cartoonistby the start of the twentieth century there were an estimated two thousand editorial cartoonists employed by American newspapers. With the advent of radio, television, and other media, newspapers began a long, slow declineand with them went the cartoonists. In 1957, the year the AAEC was formed, the association counted two hundred seventy-five staff cartoonists. Today, fewer than thirty political cartoonists are employed full-time, and every year the survivors are winnowed further by buyouts, layoffs, and age. In 2020, Pulitzer Prize winners Signe Wilkinson and Tom Toles retired from the Philadelphia Daily News and Washington Post, respectively; their jobs were not filled. Even as the cartooning profession faded, the art of political cartooning grew sharper. Starting in the seventies, cartoonists experimented with new styles and modes of storytelling in the alt-weekly press. Jules Feiffers comics in the Village Voice, for which he eventually earned an annual salary of seventy-five thousand dollars, filled full pages with dialogue-heavy panels that reflected the rhythms of everyday life; in 1986, he became the first and only alternative cartoonist to win a Pulitzer. Matt Groenings Life in Hell, which first appeared regularly in the Los Angeles Reader in 1980, wasnt exactly a political cartoon, but when he took shots at Reaganomics, his work had more teeth than what was appearing in the daily papers. In the nineties, artists such as Derf and Tom Tomorrow infused political cartoons with more idiosyncratic artwork and cutting jokes. I discovered these nineties cartoonists in the run-up to the Iraq War, when I was nineteen, after having spent my childhood reading superhero fare. Suddenly my interests were political, and I found myself drawing editorial cartoons. My peerspeople like David Rees, whose Get Your War On strip in Rolling Stone was thrilling and deceivingly simple, nothing more than clip art of office workers cursing about the war on terrorchallenged the presumption that cartoonists needed to be trained artists to make political points. I started my career just in time to catch the tail end of the alt-weekly era, landing work in the Boston Phoenix and Seattles The Stranger. Cartooning in the Bush era felt important; wars without end and abuses of civil liberties were rolling out with high public approval, and reporters seemed to have abandoned their role as critics. More than a hundred years after Nast, the political cartoonists of this era made a strong argument for the fields relevance by being right about the most consequential issues of the day. But it was during the same period that alt-weeklies got swallowed by chains and revenues tanked across the newspaper industry. The idea that every newsroom should employ a cartoonist quickly dissolved. Without stable jobs, we met our audiences directly, on social media; many of my cartoons took off with tens of thousands of shares and millions of views. There was no money in posting online, but we learned to turn follower counts into merch sales and commercial gigs; eventually, some of us signed up for Patreon and Substack. Cartoonists have in recent years gravitated more toward memoir and essay, freeing them from reacting to the news of the day. Along with the fire hose of social media attention came corporate capital. In 2013, I got my first staff job, as a cartoonist and editor at Medium. The role was vague and in constant flux, but the company was willing to experiment on an idea for an all-comics publication: The Nib. Id edit it, Medium would fund it, and wed make a new online home for political cartoons and nonfiction comics of all kinds. The Nib was popular, reaching millions of readers every month. But Medium was not there to serve cartooning; cartooning was there to serve it. Not quite two years after it started, almost all the editorial staff was laid off. I took a buyout and retained The Nib. For a few years, I took The Nib to First Look Mediaand then was laid off again. Some online media companies are figuring out the future better than others. Its become clear by now, though, that political cartoons wont be along for the ride. They never really were. From the beginning, digital outlets rarely made space for political cartoonists as staffers or even as freelance contributorsand so the move away from print has permanently decoupled political cartoons from news journalism. Cartoonists often blame editors for their lack of interest and visual illiteracywords people, we call them. I have often marveled that The Nib was ever able to exist at all. Surely, I thought, my top talent would be poached by media companies with deeper pockets. But it never happened. In April, I quit political cartooning. I was thirty-seven, and Id drawn about sixteen hundred cartoons over eighteen years. Deep burnout had set in over the course of the pandemic, and I decided to devote time to other kinds of workgenre comics, nonfiction graphic novels. It was mostly a creative decision, but there was also a financial incentive: while the market for political cartoons is shrinking, graphic novels are booming. Last year, graphic novels and comic books accounted for $1.28 billion in sales in North America. (The revenue from political cartooning, meanwhile, must be the combined income of the last thirty people doing it.) I am still running The Niban awkward perch for a retired political cartoonist. The magazine is small and completely independent, funded by subscribers. Many of the comics we publish arent political cartoons in the traditional sense, as many cartoonists have in recent years gravitated more toward memoir and essay, freeing them from reacting to the news of the day and giving them more space to make an argument. (Kendra Wells, a thirty-year-old Nib contributor, told me they view political cartoons as stuffy old guys whose one-panel strips get into newspapers or Time magazine.) Yet the comics scene as a whole is more fiercely political than everfar more than when I started drawing. Navel-gazing indie comics, once dominated by white men, have given way to nonfiction work by artists such as Niccolo Pizarro, Ben Passmore, Mattie Lubchansky, and Whit Taylor, who employ a variety of styles to comment on the state of the world. A perusal of my Instagram feed in May showed comic essays on queer identity, illustrations in support of Palestine, and an instructional comic from NPR on how bystanders can intervene in racist attacks on Asians. These comics are politicalthey just arent what we would call political cartoons. In June, many of us in the field were dismayed to find that, for the first time since 1973and in one of the most politically tumultuous years of our lifetimesthe Pulitzer Prize board declined to issue an award for editorial cartooning. The AAEC issued a fiery statement to urge radical structural reform of the award to evaluate modern opinion cartoons by 21st century standards. As far as I was concerned, the decision confirmed that the stewards of old media just arent that into us anymore. I had left at the right moment. I might dip into political cartoons again someday. Maybe Im done for good. Maybe The Nib will collapse. Maybe my stress-induced chest pains will kill me. All I know is that, even if political cartoons are disappearing, comics with politics in them are everywhere. Ive stopped caring what people call them. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Matt Bors is a cartoonist, writer, editor, and founder of The Nib. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his political cartoons in 2012 and 2020 and drew the graphic novel War Is Boring, written by David Axe. His cartoons have appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, CNN, and The Intercept and are collected in the book We Should Improve Society Somewhat. He lives in Canada with his wife and children. TODOQUE, Canary Islands (AP) A wall of lava up to 12 meters (40 feet) high bore down on a Spanish island village Wednesday, as residents scrambled to save what they could before the molten rock swallowed up their homes following a volcanic eruption. The lava still spewing from last Sundays eruption in the Canary Islands off northwest Africa advanced slowly down hillsides to the coast, where Todoque was the last village between the molten rock and the Atlantic Ocean. Residents hoping to save some of their belongings queued up at two areas designated by authorities so they could be escorted into the village. The lava was advancing slowly in the distance, at around 120 meters (400 feet) an hour, with smoke coming from its leading edge as it destroyed everything in its path. Javier Lopez said his house for the past three decades appeared to be in the lavas path. He and his relatives had been staying at a friends house with the few documents, family memories and basic belongings they had been able to take when they were evacuated on Monday. Ive put my whole life in a van, Lopez told The Associated Press while waiting for his turn to try to recover a vehicle he had left behind and other valuables. This is probably going to be the last time I see my home, he said. Or, in the best-case scenario, the house will remain isolated by the lava and inaccessible for who knows how long. Firefighting crews trying to save as many houses as possible from being entombed by lava worked nonstop overnight to open a trench to divert the lava flow. Melisa Rodriguez, another Todoque resident, said that she was trying to stay positive and calm. Its hard to think straight about what you want to save, but we are only allowed in for one hour and you dont want to take longer because that would be taking time away from others, she said. As the lava headed downhill toward the islands more densely populated coast, some 1,000 people were evacuated late Tuesday from Todoque, bringing the total number of evacuated people on the island of La Palma to around 6,000. The meeting of the lava, whose temperature exceeds 1,000 degrees Celsius (more than 1,800 F), with a body of water could cause explosions, trigger landslides and produce clouds of toxic gas. The volcanic eruption and its aftermath could last for up to 84 days, experts said. The Canary Island Volcanology Institute said it based its calculation on the length of previous eruptions on the archipelago, which like the latest eruption were followed by heavy lava flows and lasting seismic activity. The institute reported that Tuesday night saw a strong increase in the number of smaller eruptions that hurl rocks and cinders high into the air on the island of La Palma, one of the Canary Islands off northwest Africa. Authorities say that dangers still lie ahead for residents, including earthquakes, lava flows, toxic gases, volcanic ash and acid rain. Since last Sundays eruption, powerful rivers of unstoppable lava _ up to six meters (nearly 20 feet) high _ have swallowed up 320 buildings, mostly homes in the countryside. The lava now covers 154 hectares, according to the Volcanology Institute. Prompt evacuations have helped avoid any casualties from the eruption, though damage to homes, infrastructure and farmland is significant, officials say. The volcano has also been spewing out between 8,000 and 10,500 tons of sulfur dioxide _ which also affects the lungs _ every day, the Volcanology Institute said. Barry Hatton contributed from Lisbon, Portugal. About the photo: Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. The volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. The Canary Island Volcanology Institute said Wednesday it based its calculation on the length of previous eruptions on the archipelago. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A federal judge in Kansas City has cleared a restaurant groups COVID-related business interruption claim for jury trial, finding that an 8th Circuit Court decision that found no coverage was owed in a separate case does not apply to a lawsuit that alleges SARS-CoV-2 was physically present. US District Judge Stephen R. Bough on Tuesday granted summary judgment dismissing claims against Cincinnati Insurance Co. for civil authority and ingress and egress coverages, but allowed K.C. Hopps claim that coverage was owed because the virus was physically present at its bars and restaurants to proceed to trial. Whether the virus was present on plaintiffs premises, whether it actually caused a physical loss or physical damage to plaintiffs premises, and the extent of plaintiffs damages due to that loss is a question of fact best left for a jury to decide, Bough wrote in his order. Bough is among a small minority of federal judges who have denied insurer motions to dismiss lawsuits seeking coverage for income lost because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the Barack Obama appointee issued three of the 22 orders by federal judges that rejected insurer motions to dismiss such claims. K.C. Hopps owns nine restaurants, bars, catering services and event spaces in the Kansas City metropolitan area, which spans both Missouri and Kansas. The company filed suit after Cincinnati denied its claim to recoup income lost after it was forced to curtail operations because of the coronavirus pandemic. Most federal and state judges have dismissed similar lawsuits. Whats more, the 8th Circuit whose jurisdiction includes Missouri on July 2 affirmed a ruling that a dental surgery practice could not recover income lost because of government orders that forced it to restrict operations because of the coronavirus. Boughs order, however, notes that the 8th Circuit did not address whether the physical presence of the virus on properties could cause a direct physical loss that is covered by an insurance policy. Oral Surgeons alleged in its lawsuit against Cincinnati Insurance that it lost income because of civil authority orders that restricted its practice to emergency care. However, the 8th Circuit did not determine that SARS-CoV-2 can never cause physical loss or physical damage,' Boughs order says. Bough also rejected Cincinnatis argument that no coverage would be owed even if there had been a physical loss because the restaurant group received more in forgiven Paycheck Protection Loans than its alleged losses. The judge said the PPP program was intended to ensure that employees continued to receive paychecks, not to reimburse business owners for lost income. On the other hand, Bough granted Cincinnatis motion to dismiss K.C. Hopps claims for coverage under civil authority and ingress and egress coverages because the government orders did not restrict the owners access to their properties. Insurance defense attorney Roy A. Mura told the Claims Journal after the 8th Circuit ruled that its decision would have limited impact because the appellate panel did not address the question of whether the physical presence of a virus can cause a physical loss or damage. On Tuesday, he posted a brief analysis of Boughs opinion on his Linkedin page. To my knowledge, this is the first reported decision addressing the PPP loan argument, he wrote. Judge Boughs sidestepping of the 8th Circuits decision in Oral Surgeons is also interesting. Bough also allowed Studio 417 Inc. to proceed with a separate lawsuit against Cincinnati Insurance. That case has been consolidated with a lawsuit filed by another group of business owners who are pursuing coverage from Cincinnati Insurance for COVID-related income losses. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status. About the photo: Barleys Brewhouse in Shawnee, Kansas, shown here in a photo posted on its website, is one in a group of restaurants and other Kanas City-area businesses that have filed suit seeking coverage from Cincinnati Insurance Co. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A home health nurse who discovered the bodies of a prominent Minnesota businessman and his wife in a murder-suicide case is suing their estate and seeking damages for emotional trauma. Lisa Ann Hayes walked in on a grisly scene in April 2019 at the Lake Minnetonka mansion of Irwin and Alexandra Jacobs. Irwin Jacobs had fatally shot his wife and then himself amid health and financial troubles, according to investigators. Irwin once held a stake in the Minnesota Vikings and was a nationally known investor who made a fortune as a corporate raider in the 1980s and 1990s. Hayes is seeking unspecified damages in her lawsuit, claiming Irwin Jacobs actions were injurious to her health and constituted willful, wanton and malicious conduct. Jacobs family lawyer Steven Sitek called the lawsuit a grotesque betrayal by a once trusted caregiver who was treated like family. Sitek plans to seek dismissal of the lawsuit, the Star Tribune reported. This is simply the latest baseless effort to extort the Jacobs family and Irwins estate, Sitek said in a statement. Ms. Hayes threatened to publicly file her lawsuit filled with unnecessarily lurid and sensationalized details unless the estate paid her $12.5 million. Hayes attorney, Brian Stofferahn said Hayes has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by two doctors and has been unable to work since the incident. Stofferahn declined to comment on whether Hayes had asked for $12.5 million, but said there has been a demand against the insurance company. And hopefully at some point (the company) will make a good-faith offer. And they have not to date, he said. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. WASHINGTON (AP) The Biden administration sought Tuesday to choke the finances of criminal ransomware gangs, announcing sanctions against a Russia-based virtual currency brokerage that officials say helped at least eight ransomware gangs launder virtual currency. The Treasury Department sanctions are aimed at kneecapping the economic infrastructure of a ransomware threat that has surged over the last year, crippling corporations, schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure, including a major fuel pipeline. Ransomware payments reached more than $400 million in 2020, the costliest year on record. The goal is to go after the financial enablers of ransomware gangs, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters. Todays action is a signal of our intention to expose and disrupt the illicit infrastructure using these attacks. The blacklisted brokerage is SUEX OTC, a so-called nested exchange that conducted transactions from accounts on major, legal global cryptocurrency exchanges. Such operations process a disproportionate amount of illicit transactions, Adeyemo said. In the case of SUEX, officials said, more than 40% of its known transactions have been associated with illicit actors. Thats more than $370 million, according to the cryptocurrency-tracking firm Elliptic. Through its Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department has previously sanctioned ransomware developers and distributors though periodic retirements and rebrandings of ransomware strains have complicated those efforts. Officials say more such designations are possible. SUEX is among the biggest and most active of a small group of illicit services that handle most money laundering for cybercriminals including scammers and darknet market operators, another crypto transaction-tracking firm, Chainalysis, said in a blog post. Such firms work closely with law enforcement to track criminal money laundering online. Although legally registered in the Czech Republic, SUEX has no known physical presence there and operates out of branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, where users can cash out their virtual currency, said Chainalysis, adding that it also has operations in the Middle East. Chainalysis said SUEX claims it can convert cryptocurrency holdings into cash and even real estate, cars and yachts. Most ransomware gangs operate out of reach of Western law enforcement in Russia and allied states. President Joe Biden has repeatedly told Vladimir Putin that he expects the Russian president to crack down on the gangs, but administration officials say they have seen no signs that Moscow is cooperating. Chainalysis said SUEX was laundering money from the illicit cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, which U.S. authorities shut down, perhaps on behalf of administrators, associates or former users. BTC-es operator, arrested on holiday in Greece, was sentenced to five years in prison by a French court in December. SUEX largely communicated with its clients on the Telegram app and accepted new customers on a system of referrals from trusted intermediaries. This was not the kind of business where a random person on the internet could open an account, another crypto-tracking firm, TRM Labs, said in a blog post. Transactions were only completed in-person at SUEXs offices. TRM Labs CEO Esteban Castano said SUEX is what is known as a parasite exchange. They are difficult to detect by the legitimate exchanges whose infrastructure they exploit because they open accounts using fraudulent or stolen credentials to meet know-thy-customer requirements and then fly under the radar. Chainalysis said SUEX deposit addresses hosted at large exchanges have received over $160 million in Bitcoin alone from cybercriminals since the brokerage opened in early 2018, including nearly $13 million from ransomware operators including Ryuk, Conti and Maze. Ethereum and Tether are among other cryptoassets SUEX handled. The Treasury Department said it is also updating guidance for ransomware victims that it first issued last year. The advisory strongly discourages victims from paying ransomware, reminding them that some transactions are against the law, and urges victims to report attacks to law enforcement. The reality is that the thing we know about this ecosystem is the way that we prevent ransomware attacks is by making sure that we get law enforcement engaged as soon as possible, Adeyemo said. Bajak reported from Boston. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Clifford Chance advises on world's first sustainable Tier 2 Sukuk issuance Leading international law firm Clifford Chance has advised the joint lead managers on Kuveyt Turk's ground-breaking US$350 million Fixed Rate Resettable Sustainability Tier 2 Sukuk due 2031 (the "Sukuk"). KFH Capital acted as sole global coordinator and Bank ABC, Citigroup, Dubai Islamic Bank, Emirates NBD Capital, HSBC and KFH Capital acted as joint lead managers. The Sukuk is listed on the official list and admitted to trading on the regulated market of Euronext Dublin. The Sukuk adopted a Wakala/Murabaha structure and is the world's first Sustainable Tier 2 Sukuk issuance. The net proceeds from the issuance will be applied by Kuveyt Turk towards the financing and/or refinancing of certain sustainable projects in accordance with Kuveyt Turk's Sustainable Finance Framework. Clifford Chance's team was led by Qudeer Latif, Global Head of Islamic Finance, and Ciftci Attorney Partnership's team was led by Sait Erylmaz, Partner heading the Finance Practice of the Turkish associated firm. Qudeer comments "We are proud to have advised on this landmark transaction which once again demonstrates the strong international demand for investing on sustainable principles. Qudeer was supported by a multijurisdictional team comprising Rafe Khokhar (Senior Associate, Dubai), Sarah Cheng (Senior Associate, London), Anthony Matsis (Senior Associate, Dubai), Ilaria Ribis, (Associate, Abu Dhabi), Megan Hodges (Trainee Solicitor, Dubai), and from Ciftci Attorney Partnership - Basar Krka (Associate, Istanbul), Ali Can Altparmak (Associate, Istanbul), and Zana Oztarhan (Associate, Istanbul). Stuart Mason (Senior Associate, London) advised HSBC Corporate Trustee Company (UK) Limited as Delegate. Consistently ranked Band 1 in legal directories, Clifford Chance was named Banking Legal Adviser of the Year at the Bonds, Loans & Sukuk Middle East Awards 2021, and Middle East International Law Firm of the Year at the Chambers Middle East Awards 2021. The firm's Middle East banking and finance practice has a strong track record of advising on some of the most innovative and ground-breaking transactions from sovereign, corporate and financial institution issuers and borrowers in the Middle East. This recently includes advising the Government of the Maldives on the establishment of its Reg S/144a US$1 billion sukuk programme and debut issuance of US$200 million, the UK Government (HM Treasury and Debt Management Office) on its 500 million five-year sukuk issuance, and Standard Chartered Bank as bookrunner on Qatar Investment Bank's US$800 million RegS Senior Unsecured Formosa Sukuk Al-Wakala/Mudarab - the first Formosa Sukuk issuance by QIB and also the first by a GCC financial institution. On most days I feel like Im at my absolute limit. Actually, thats not quite true. Every day, I am at my absolute limit. Theres no point trying to illustrate to you just how terrible I feel each day you, dear reader, probably feel the exact same way, if not more acutely. Living in the Philippines and witnessing how the rest of the world has managed to exist through a pandemic is such a sad and frustrating experience. Seeing friends on Instagram having a semblance of a normal life pretty much anywhere else abroad going to bars (!), concerts (!), having a life (!!!) is such a disconcerting experience. And like the bridesmaid who says, Im really happy for you guys, commenting with a heart emoji on these friends Stories always boomerangs to you with a Were all vaccinated, we wear masks indoors, and promise, were being super super safe. Like I said, Im really happy for you guys. At this point, all I can do is cope. Ive never been much of a social person, but if theres anything about life pre-March 2020 that I long for, its the ability to dress up everyday that I miss the most. For the past two years, my uniform has consisted of some hybrid form of activewear and sleepwear: ready to rise, ready to rest (in peace). I often daydream of scenarios where I can wear all the clothes and shoes that have been languishing in my closet sans purpose, with the hope that it encourages me to stay creative. In my head, I am a K-pop idol being pursued by rabid fans after I perform my new comeback on Inkigayo. Maybe Im in light wash jeans, a white ribbed tank top, and a pink tweed jacket. Maybe my secret idol lover will pick me up in their Maserati in the evening. The paparazzi will pursue us, and the full story will be published on Koreaboo the next morning. But know this, I look fabulous. I write all of this as I sit on the couch in a floral daster and period-friendly underwear. This is the best it will get in a long time. I wish clothes could be decorative again, not just scraps of cloth to cover my modesty when I have to run out to an ATM. Where does one seek out silly comforts while facing the harsh realities of every day? We all cope differently, but these days I find them by spending my free and not-so free time online thrifting. READ: Which lockdown hobby took over your life? Ive been thrift shopping for many years now, when going to the ukay ukay was the best way to stretch your budget and avoid being a *cough* outfit repeater in school. Back then, sustainable fashion wasnt even a concept yet; we just wanted cheap, nice clothes . Now that people have been unable to venture to their old thrifting haunts to seek out gems, social media platform Instagram has fully transformed into an informal marketplace for secondhand goods. Vintage furniture, homewear, collectible toys, and clothes if it exists, theres probably someone on Instagram selling it. Online marketplace Carousell is also another option for anyone looking to shop secondhand; I find that its the ideal option if you already have a specific item in mind, because you can easily search for your keywords. (Unlike on Instagram, where your best bet is to follow accounts that will likely stock the item youre looking for.) Buying thrifted or vintage clothing online isnt quite the same experience as shopping at your favorite ukay ukay. On Carousell, buying secondhand is usually a personal transaction between you and the seller. If theyre willing to let it go at the price you offer, then you get it. More often than not, these are personal items that people are letting go of, though there are several microbusinesses on the platform too. Instagram stores invest more in marketing: they have better quality photos, they post teasers of their next collections, and write enticing captions think most favorite vintage heather gray pullover, personal fave! to describe a Fruit of the Loom sweater from the 90s. I admit that this isnt the healthiest way to cope what is the point of buying all these clothes except to feed into the delusion that one day, Ill be able to wear them again? Do I save up for the apocalyptic future, or do I lean into the moments of joy I can find in the present? Instagram thrifting also involves a level of mania, because when a store drops a collection, the fastest fingers will win. You are at the chokehold of three words: mine, steal, or grab. Each word has a corresponding price, so you can take a chance at bidding for an item at mine (a.k.a. regular) price (and claim it if no one outbids you within a certain time period), but another buyer can nab it from you if theyre willing to pay more. Ive sat through hours-long drops on my favorite Instagram stores, constantly pulling down to refresh while I wait for a specific dress or skirt that I feel I absolutely, definitely do not need to buy. These drops usually last so long because Instagram limits the number of posts you can upload in an hour, so they space out their posts to avoid getting banned on the app. Far too many times have I held my breath as I typed GRAB!!! maniacally just to make sure I secured the bag. Or the dress. Or the shoes. Then I wait for my silly little package to arrive in a few days, and pretend that all the worlds problems have been solved by buying myself this most favorite vintage heather gray pullover. I admit that this isnt the healthiest way to cope what is the point of buying all these clothes except to feed into the delusion that one day, Ill be able to wear them again? Do I save up for the apocalyptic future, or do I lean into the moments of joy I can find in the present? I think right now, Id rather offset some of what Ive saved up for rainy days to find comfort in this tempest. When hope is hard to come by lately, I think Ill take what I can get. Instagram thrifting also involves a level of mania, because when a store drops a collection, the fastest fingers will win. You are at the chokehold of three words: mine, steal, or grab. Photo courtesy of ABIJAHSKASUOTAN And while I can claim the moral high ground by shopping sustainable, the truth is that mindless consumption has become part of the human psyche. Secondhand or not, its hard to remove the compulsion to find fulfillment in consuming. In wanting. In a perfect world, we would be able to collectively stop acquiring things just to throw them out again. I think that habit is going to stay with us for a while to me, the closest thing that I can do to break that cycle is to at least discourage more stuff from being made into crap we dont need. Textile waste is a huge polluter in landfills all over the world, especially in developing nations like the Philippines, where wealthy countries send unsold secondhand clothing for us to resell or dispose of. Even with thrifting become a more viable option for buyers, weve been outrun by the waste weve accumulated. In less than a decade, the world is expected to have discarded more than 134 million tons of textiles per year. Each item of clothing we buy secondhand can be another piece of textile waste we save from a landfill. Online thrifting is not only sustainable, but to me, feels a lot like the real community that bigger brands are attempting to espouse. On Instagram, thrift stores are not just sellers, theyre also frequent buyers of their other secondhand businesses. They use their Instagram Stories to post about other shops new collections, to help amplify other voices. When one store needs more engagement to push themselves up the algorithm, youll notice other stores commenting to show their support. Many of them are generous with freebies; they remember your size and what kinds of clothing you like. Ive never witnessed a virtual marketplace commune this way, and Im more than happy to help keep it alive even if I have to mine, steal, or grab. Though Im still at my limit each cursed day, the moments of secondhand joy that thrifing makes me feel is enough to help me hold on even for the meantime. For anyone looking to start on their online thrifting journey, here are a few Instagram thrift stores I frequent: Thriftedbygray I find myself buying something from Thriftedbygray in her weekly collection. The owner has a great eye for vintage pieces, funky prints, and coordinates. I find myself holding my breath every time she drops new pieces. Sweetrepeatt A masterclass in captions Sweetrepeatt posts a lot of pieces with great textures, from puffy jackets to Issey Miyake-esque micropleats. Clothes go for a little higher than most thrift stores, but I find the quality worth the price. Morena.thrifts For basics that dont feel basic, Morena.thrifts can be a great place to start if you want to create a sustainable capsule wardrobe. Hot tip: she gives you 10% off on your next purchase if you post an outfit and tag the store. Abijahskasuotan They say it all in the bio: this Instagram store is a study on caption comedy. Its a store that isnt afraid to celebrate the good, bad, and humorous about fashion. With no scheduled drops, you can expect this store to upload new finds from the owners favorite ukay haunts in Olongapo every day. Glorious Dias Part vintage store and part fashion archive, Glorious Dias is a treasure trove for clothes and history lovers. Their Instagram feed provides a great education on Pinoy pop culture and the clothes that feature heavily throughout our history. They also have regular drops of upcycled pieces like their often-sold out pinafore tops. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 22) Climate Change Commission (CCC) officials on Wednesday admitted the technicality of proposals hinder local government units from accessing the Peoples Survival Fund (PSF). Under Republic Act No. 10174, the PSF is an annual fund of at least 1 billion that will finance climate change adaptation projects of LGUs and community organizations. CCC deputy executive director Rommell Cuenca told a Senate finance subcommittee hearing there were years when no allocations were made. According to Cuenca, 164 million of the total 1 billion has been disbursed to LGUs since 2016. Funds are being released continuously on a milestone or progress basis. The roughly 600 million balance is for upcoming projects. To date, only six climate adaptation projects have been approved by the board. Senator Imee Marcos questioned what she called the low output despite the hefty PSF allocation. Cuenca cited stringent requirements for the approval of proposals. The PSF board composed of the CCC, economic managers, as well as representatives from the business sector, civil society, and the academe reviews the applications. Ang batas po kasi maam ini-specify kung paano natin i-approve yung projectsHindi po pwedeng basta na lang magbigay ng pera, dapat may koneksyon sa klima at adaptation intervention po ito, he said in the hearing. [Translation: The law specifies how we approve the projects. We cannot just give money, there should be a connection to climate and adaptation intervention.] He added that the COVID-19 pandemic made it more challenging for LGUs to focus on creating proposals. Marcos urged CCC officials to review the requirements to encourage more LGUs to apply and to highlight climate change issues. CCC vice chairperson Emmanuel de Guzman vowed to revisit the process and the provisions in RA 10174. We could find ways to ease the requirements for the LGUs to access the Peoples Survival Fund. Kasi po medyo technical po yung proposal development, he told Marcos. De Guzman vowed to strengthen the CCC's evaluation and monitoring system for approved proposals under PSF. PH awaits financing for climate change projects The CCC said the country is expecting $75.6 million from the Green Climate Fund (GCF). It was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support global response to climate change. The UN Environment Programme said the GCF allocates resources for low-emission and climate resilient projects in developing countries. The GCF approved three funding proposals from the Philippines, including projects focused on multi-hazard, impact-based forecasting, and renewable energy. CCC Commissioner Rachel Herrera said negotiations and legal processes are ongoing before funds are released to the country. The proposals will be done in coordination with Land Bank of the Philippines, the Dutch development bank FMO, and the Asian Development Bank. Climate change took the spotlight at the UN General Assembly, where President Duterte called on developed nations to fulfill their long-standing commitment. He reiterated the Philippines goal to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 75% in 2030. In 2020, the country emitted an average of 1.98 metric tons of carbon dioxide, way below the global average of 4 metric tons. RELATED: Duterte asks rich countries to fulfill pledged climate finance for developing nations Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Thursday concluded a second autopsy on painter Bree Jonson to shed light on her sudden death after the police said initial investigation showed no signs of foul play. NBI spokesperson Ferdinand Lavin said their forensic team conducted the autopsy on Jonson upon the request of her family. There were no immediate details on the findings. The lawyers of Jonson's family noted that the initial medicolegal report stated that bruises were found on her neck and body. They also said security footage showed she had an altercation with her boyfriend Julian Ongpin, who comes from a powerful clan, before she was found unconscious in a hostel room in San Juan, La Union on September 18. Philippine National Police Chief PGen. Guillermo Eleazar said there was no evidence of struggle found on her body during the initial investigation, but he stressed they are not yet ruling out foul play since the probe is not yet complete. He confirmed she died of asphyxia or lack of oxygen due to strangulation. He said investigators only saw ligature marks under her chin, but there is no conclusion yet if it was due to a person strangling her or if it was self-inflicted. The police chief also said Ongpin's story on how he found Jonson in the bathroom matched with the scratches found on his arms. He explained that a reenactment was conducted by police investigators. "Tinignan ang galos sa katawan. Tumutugma sa sinasabi niyang claim na winasak niya 'yung pinto para pumasok doon at sumabit ang kaniyang katawan sa mga nails, pako na dinaanan niya," he said in a media briefing. [Translation: They checked the scratches on his body. It matched his claim that he broke the door to enter and his body got scraped by nails.] Eleazar assured they are not giving favors to Ongpin, who is the son of former Trade Secretary and prominent businessman Roberto Ongpin. "Wala tayong sinisino pagdating sa imbestigasyon. Kapag merong pagkakamali, at lalong merong namatay, may mananagot," he said. [Translation: We do not give undue favors to anyone when it comes to investigations. If someone committed a crime, especially if someone died, someone has to pay.] The police filed drug complaints against Ongpin after he tested positive for cocaine and sachets of the illegal drug were found in their hostel room. Eleazar said cocaine was also detected in Jonson's urine sample. Ongpin was released from detention, but immigration officers are monitoring his movement. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) The Commission on Elections said it wants to look beyond classrooms as voting precincts in the May 2022 polls. Comelec director for operations Teopisto Elnas, Jr. bared that the poll body is looking to use more alternative venues to better protect voters from COVID-19 during election day. May directive na [There is already a directive] to our election officers for the decongestion of our voting centers catering to two to three or more barangays, he told members of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Automated Election System. We are looking at yung mga covered court ng barangay. Ongoing yung paglilipat kung may malilipatan [The process of transferring is ongoing, if they can find better locations]. READ: Lawmakers fear voting day could become superspreader event He added that the main criteria for choosing new venues, such as courts and multi-purpose halls, are those which are more convenient, more spacious and compliant with minimum health standards set by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Public school classrooms are mostly used as voting centers nationwide. As a rule, there must be proper ventilation and adequate physical distancing in any area where people will congregate. All should be wearing face masks to reduce the risk of triggering superspreader events. The Comelecs rental of 10,000 additional vote counting machines has also been delayed, putting into question the plan to reduce the number of voters per precinct to 800 from 1,000 in the 2019 elections. RELATED: Comelec to allot isolation polling areas, COVID-19 testing for voters with symptoms Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Presidential aspirant and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno on Thursday addressed criticisms on what others call as a "rushed" decision to seek the highest post. "That's a good point, I respect that opinion," Moreno told CNN Philippines' The Source, just a day after formally declaring his presidential bid in 2022. "But let me refresh your memory that I have been serving the city and the government for 23 years of my life," he said. "I am 46 years old. Half of my life is dedicated to public service," he added. READ: Isko Moreno-Willie Ong launch 2022 bid, neutral on political color Moreno also reasoned that even Filipinos vouched for someone like former president Cory Aquino in the past, who was elected in 1986 despite having remained a "plain housewife" prior to her presidency. "Remember, marami rin namang taong nahalal na by nature or destiny, in the likes of sumalangit nawa, si Tita Cory," he said. [Translation: Remember, there are many people who sat in office by nature or destiny, in the likes of Tita Cory.] "Kasi yun naman yung importante muna, yung tiwala sa iyo yung tao (because what really matters is that people trust you)," he said, noting that there are other politicians who also secured their posts despite having zero political experience. Moreno started his political career as councilor of Manila's first district in 1998 before serving as vice mayor of the city in 2007 and 2013. He also previously served as chairman of the board of the North Luzon Railways Corporation and as undersecretary for Luzon Affairs at the Department of Social Welfare and Development under the Duterte administration before getting elected as mayor in 2019. Moreno will be the standard bearer of Aksyon Demokratiko Party, in tandem with Dr. Willie Ong, who is currently under the Lakas Christian Muslim Democrats Party. Moreno will face Senators Ping Lacson and Manny Pacquiao in the upcoming elections, while Ong will battle it out with President Rodrigo Duterte and Senate President Tito Sotto in the May 2022 polls. The official filing of candidacy for all elective positions is set from October 1 to 8. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) The COVID-19 reproduction number (R0) in several areas including Metro Manila improved, a group of researchers monitoring the country's pandemic trends noted on Thursday, but cautioned this is just the beginning of the "recovery process." The R0 in Metro Manila dropped to 0.99, from 1.03 recorded on Tuesday, OCTA Research fellow Guido David said. R0 refers to the average number of people that a single COVID-19 case will likely infect. Meanwhile, Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan and Cebu City have also posted reproductions numbers that are currently less than one. "Hindi lang sa NCR (National Capital Region) ang nakita nating improvement. Pati narin sa ibang regions, metropolitan areas sa buong Pilipinas," David said in a Laging Handa briefing. [Translation: We saw improvements not just in NCR (National Capital Region), but also in other regions, and metropolitan areas as well.] "Iyong pagbaba ng reproduction number ibig sabihin umpisa pa lang iyan sa recovery process natin," he pointed out. [Translation: The decrease in reproduction number means our recovery process is just starting.] Medical experts say the ideal R0 should be one or less, as anything higher means there is still significant community transmission. David also said the granular lockdowns, which are being maximized under the new alert level system being pilot-tested in Metro Manila, are working so far in terms of slowing the spread of the coronavirus. "May nakikita narin tayo na epekto ng granular lockdown. At wala pa tayong nakikita na spike ng cases sa ngayon," he said. [Translation: We are already seeing the effects of the granular lockdown. We have not seen a spike in cases yet.] "Ibig sabihin, patuloy paring nagiging epektibo ang ginagawa nating mga interventions para mapababa ang bilang ng kaso," he added. [Translation: This means, our interventions that aim to bring down the number of cases continue to be effective.] But the OCTA fellow advised people not to let their guard down and continue to take precautions as many people are still getting hospitalized due to COVID-19 . Some regions, including Cagayan Valley and Bicol Region, are also seeing an uptick in new cases. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) The Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM) said there's a huge possibility of a 'baby boom' scenario once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. This will be fueled by increased mobility and interaction after a long period of lockdowns and quarantines that limited physical and social interactions, according to government officials. Baby boom is a period when there is a significant increase in the birth rate. "Ang dapat ingatan natin pagkatapos ng COVID-19, by experience doon nagkakaroon ng baby boom like in World War 2. It's been observed that after a crisis, there's a baby boom at mukhang papasok tayo sa ganoong era," POPCOM head Juan Antonio Perez said in a virtual briefing for the World Contraceptive Day on Thursday. [Translation: We should be careful that after COVID-19, a possible baby boom will happen just like in World War 2. It's been observed that after a crisis, there's a baby boom and it appears we're headed to that era.] Dr. Diego Danila of the Health department supported the POPCOM's observation. "Asahan na po natin iyan, kapag nag face-to-face na iyan, socialization, maaring tumaas ang teenage pregnancy," Danila said. [Translation: We should expect that. When people are finally allowed to see each other face-to-face, teenage pregnancies could rise.] The health official said government services should also get a head start once restrictions are lifted, including family planning services and programs. In 2020, there were an estimated 102,000 unintended pregnancies of women 15 to 19 years old, triggered by the prolonged COVID-19 restrictions. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Former Senator Sonny Trillanes on Thursday pressed Vice President Leni Robredo to announce her plans for the upcoming 2022 elections now that talks of a "unified opposition" has fallen through. Robredo earlier bared plans to meet with Senator Manny Pacquiao and Mayor Isko Moreno as part of her plans to create a united opposition slate. But Trillanes, who serves as the chairman of the Magdalo Group, said their recent declarations to run for president show they were set on gunning for the highest post regardless of Robredo's plans. He added Pacquiao and Moreno are not genuine opposition members, persuading Robredo to finally issue her decision. He said the public is eagerly awaiting if she will lead the "true opposition" by running for president. "Sa nakaraang buwan, ang buong oposisyon ay hinayaan si VP Leni na pagdaanan ang kanyang masusing decision-making process... Subalit ngayong isang linggo na lang ang nalalabi bago ang filing of certificate of candidacy, naniniwala kami na sapat na panahon na ang nagdaan para sa kaniyang masusing pagsusuri sa kung ano ang makakabuti sa ating bansa," he said in a statement. [Translation: In the past month, the entire opposition gave VP Leni time to go through her rigorous decision-making process. But now that the filing of certificate of candidacy is only one week away, we believe she was given enough time to decide what's best for her country.] Trillanes said they are offering their full support if she will run. If not, he said Magdalo is "prepared." He previously submitted his name for consideration by opposition coalition 1Sambayan as a possible presidential bet in the upcoming polls, but he said he is willing to step aside if Robredo will file her candidacy. Magdalo's appeal comes at a time when #LabanLeni2022 is trending, with netizens calling for Robredo to succeed President Rodrigo Duterte. Robredo's spokesperson Barry Gutierrez on Wednesday said she will make her announcement in "due time." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) St. Luke's Medical Center clarified its decision to close some of its wards was not due to a COVID-19 outbreak among its personnel but due to decreased manpower caused by several factors, including the resignation of some staff. "Mali naman 'yung perception na outbreak [To say there is an outbreak is a wrong perception]," Dr. Benjamin Campomanes, St. Luke's Executive Vice President & Chief Medical Officer, told CNN Philippines' News. PH Thursday. "This is really a gradual decrease in manpower caused by a combination of things." He said although there may have been some healthcare workers who tested positive for the coronavirus and had to be quarantined, there were also several who left their jobs to work abroad, and others who had taken leaves of absence to rest. "That is why we decided to close some wards. We don't compromise patients' safety. There are certain rooms na di bubuksan muna hanggang may [that will stay closed until there is] complementary manpower," Campomanes added. He also maintained that the transmission of the virus did not originate in the facilities. "The transmission is not through the hospital but through the community," Campomanes said. "No single infection from the hospital itself." On Tuesday, St. Luke's announced its COVID-19 wards and critical care units in both Taguig and Quezon City branches had reached full capacity, with some patients even waiting for admission in emergency rooms. The dilemma caught President Rodrigo Duterte's attention, prompting him to request the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police to step in and send over their medical staff. During Duterte's Talk to the People address Wednesday night, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the surgeon general had already deployed two nurses to assist St. Luke's. However, Campomanes said they have yet to receive their help. "Yesterday we communicated with the AFP and nagbigay sila ng [they showed their] intention to send some nurses to us but as of now it has not materialized yet," he said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 23) Vice presidential aspirant Willie Ong stressed the need for a better COVID-19 response and vaccine access in the country, but maintains his stand against the controversial anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia. Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday, Ong said there is "no conflict" in his stand, even if he advocates for the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. "Walang conflict sa sinabi ko [There is no conflict in what I said before]. Dengvaxia is very different from these vaccines," Ong said. "Ang Sanofi mismo ang nagsabi, 'pag wala ka pang dengue dati, hindi pwede ang Dengvaxia...mawawala yung protection mo sa unang dengue na mild, eh," he said. "Pero kung meron ka nang dengue dati, pwede yun." [Translation: Sanofi itself said that if you have not had dengue before, you can't have Dengvaxia...you will lose your protection from a mild dengue infection. But if you contracted dengue before, you can get inoculated.] Ong said members of the medical community also understand that kind of reasoning, and that the issue was only "politicized." RELATED: TIMELINE: The Dengvaxia controversy In 2017, French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur announced the results of a clinical data analysis which found that Dengvaxia is riskier for people not previously infected by the virus. It added that around 10% of over 800,000 students who were immunized with Dengvaxia, but did not have a prior dengue infection, were in danger of contracting a "severe disease." The controversy prompted the Department of Health to stop its nationwide dengue immunization program and demand billions in pesos as a refund for the vaccines. Ong, a cardiologist, has been vocal against the dengue vaccine, and had previously said that the issue prompted him to seek a Senate seat back in 2019. He lost in the polls, placing 18th out of 62 bets. Some public officials previously warned about unsubstantiated stories brought about by the Dengvaxia controversy, which may have caused vaccine hesitancy at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. RELATED: 'Irresponsible noise-making' behind Dengvaxia scare should be avoided during COVID-19 vaccination Robredo Ong said if ever he becomes vice president, he will help choose a competent Health chief and other heads of government agencies who can better address the needs of Filipinos in the next six years. He said he will also push for an additional PhilHealth budget, expanded outpatient coverage, and a faster distribution of second generation COVID-19 vaccines to protect people against the Delta variant. Ong will run in tandem with presidential aspirant Manila Mayor Isko Moreno in the 2022 elections. RELATED: Isko Moreno-Willie Ong launch 2022 bid, neutral on political color Manila (CNN Philippines, September 24) Seventeen years after it last fielded a presidential candidate, Aksyon Demokratiko is once again flexing its political muscle as local officials from Luzon join the party led by its president and standard bearer, Manila mayor Isko Moreno. A total of 22 local officials - three vice governors, five board members, two mayors, ten vice mayors, and two councilors - have taken their oaths before Moreno. This came a day after Moreno kicked off his presidential bid alongside Dr. Willie Ong, and after the tandem was endorsed by prominent politicians like Sen. Ralph Recto, Rep. Vilma Santos-Recto, and former Senator Serge Osmena. Of the 22, six came from the Nacionalista Party, five from the ruling PDP-Laban party, three are independents, two from the National Unity Party, and one each from Lakas-CMD, Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, the Liberal Party, and the Nationalist People's Coalition. The other two are from the Sangguniang Kabataan. The most prominent among this new Aksyon Demokratiko members is Marinduque Vice Governor Romulo Bacorro, Jr., who is expected to challenge incumbent governor Presbitero Velasco, the father of House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco. "We have different principles with the governor. I cannot dissect more. But I think Aksyon Demokratiko...will give solutions to our problems, especially COVID-19," Bacorro said. "Naniniwala ako sa prinsipyo nila (I believe in their principles)," he added. Moreno said he was overwhelmed by the party's new members. "Mukhang nakatsamba ang Aksyon, puro giant killer dito. Manila, Pasig, diba?" [Translation: It looks like luck is on Aksyon's side. We have giant killers. Look at Manila and Pasig!] Moreno was referring to the mayoral races in Manila and Pasig in 2019, when he and Aksyon Demokratiko executive vice president Vico Sotto defeated two political giants: former president and Manila mayor Joseph Estrada, and Bobby Eusebio - who ruled Pasig for several years. Aksyon Demokratiko secretary general Ernest Ramel said all those who joined the party were screened and oriented. "Sila po, bago namin tinanggap (Before they were accepted), we made sure that they know the principles of the party they are standing on and our core values," Ramel said. Ramel also claimed more are expected to join Aksyon Demokratiko in the coming days. The party will welcome applicants from Visayas and Mindanao, according to Moreno. Aksyon Demokratiko was founded by the late Senator Raul Roco in 1997. Roco ran for president in 2004 but lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The party regained prominence in the 2019 midterm elections after Sotto's victory, and after Moreno became party president in August 2021. Ryan Call, an attorney and former two-term chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, will lose his license to practice law after admitting he lied to members of his former law firm and concealed information about nearly $280,000 he transferred to himself from a political committee formed to support Donald Trump during the three years Call served as the committee's treasurer. Presiding Disciplinary Judge William R. Lucero handed down the rare disbarment earlier this month after Call admitted to many of the claims contained in a disciplinary complaint filed in June by the state Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel alleging Call mishandled funds that belonged to the the Rebuilding America Now PAC. Call's disbarment takes effect Oct. 14. The ruling marks the end of a lengthy political and legal career that saw Call preside over the state GOP from early 2011 to early 2015, the last period when Republicans won major statewide offices in Colorado, including unseating an incumbent U.S. senator and taking control of the state Senate after a decade in the minority. Before winning election twice as state chairman, Call served a term running the Denver GOP and worked as the state party's legal counsel. He also headed the College Republicans when he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and was a national co-chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Call, who endorsed Democrat Joe Biden in last year's presidential election, moved to Utah in 2019 after parting ways with Hale Westfall, a Denver-based law firm that has since dissolved, where Call handled legal work involving elections and campaigns, mostly for Republican clients. In a negotiated settlement dated Sept. 8, Call admitted to transferring $278,169 from the pro-Trump PAC to himself "via wire transfer, check, cashier's check, or ATM withdrawal" in 37 separate transactions over a 29-month period from late 2016 to early 2019. Call also admitted to entering the PAC into a secret contract to pay himself $5,000 a month for "political strategy and fundraising support and assistance." Among a laundry list of admissions, Call also said he paid himself $10,000 in December 2016 as a "bonus for the election results" and two years later used the PAC's debit card to make four separate withdrawals totaling $1,400, though Call contended he thought he was using his own debit card. He also said he made a mistake waiting more than two years to notify the Federal Election Commission about a $1 million donation to the PAC, claiming he thought the check had already been reported. The PAC, formed in 2016 by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and real estate investor Tom Barrack, a prominent Trump supporter, raised and spent around $23 million in 2016, according to FEC reports. Most of its money went to media buys opposing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Under the deal, Call waived his right to a formal hearing before a three-judge panel, instead agreeing to a list of infractions he said he committed with a "dishonest or selfish motive" displaying a "pattern of misconduct." The document noted that Call hadn't faced prior disciplinary action from the bar. "Respondent violated his duties to (the PAC) and Hale Westfall LLP, including to not engage in a conflict of interest and to act with candor and integrity, including when acting as a fiduciary. Similarly, Respondent violated his duties to the public and legal profession to act with honesty and maintain his personal integrity," according to the stipulation Call signed admitting misconduct. In addition, the stipulation said, Call "caused actual or potential harm to the reputation of lawyers and the legal profession." The document went on to cite a statement made by the Colorado Supreme Court: "If lawyers are dishonest, then there is a perception that the system, too, must be dishonest." Lucero's order dismissed elements of the initial disciplinary complaint that claimed Call committed "the crime of theft" and "knowingly" misappropriated the funds from the PAC. Neither Call nor the attorney who represented him in the disciplinary proceeding responded to requests for comment. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Windows 10, originally pitched as a revolutionary break from Windows' past in how it was serviced, may well end its career in the next few years as a Windows 7 act-alike. Yes, Windows 7 the spitting image of "tradition" in Redmond's history of operating systems. Enter Windows 11 The catalyst for the change to Windows 10 is its successor, Windows 11, slated to debut Oct. 5. Windows 11, which will have its own tweaked servicing model one feature upgrade annually with 36 months of support due those running the Enterprise or Education SKUs will replace the older Windows 10 as the repository of the new. When it introduced Windows 11 in June, Microsoft made a point to tell customers it would still release a Windows 10 feature upgrade labeled 21H2 this fall. "We will continue to support you as you use Windows 10," wrote Wangui McKelvey, general manager, Microsoft 365, in a June 24 post to a company blog. The company also told customers that Windows 10 will continue to receive support until October 2025. Windows 10 21H2 will share attributes of the last two second-half-of-the-year updates Microsoft has issued, in that it will include few new features or functionalities, so few that it will be serviced using the monthly update mechanisms rather than require a full OS replacement. Beyond these indicators of continuity, Microsoft has been close-mouthed about how it will service Windows 10 for the next four years. Will it limit updates to the monthly security fixes? Will any new features appear in future updates after 21H2? We don't know. It will have to do something because the remaining support due customers extends beyond the support provided by any released or announced upgrades. Windows 10 21H2 Enterprise will, barring any changes to 10's support policies, retire sometime in May 2024. Windows 10 21H2 Home and 21H2 Pro will run through their support by May 2023. The 18-month (Enterprise) or 30-month (Home & Pro) shortfalls will have to be made up somehow. Of course, Microsoft can do that with a few strokes on a keyboard. If it doesn't want to release feature updates after this year's 21H2 all it has to do is move the support deadlines for the various SKUs to October 2025. Boom. Done. Nor is there anything stopping Microsoft from continuing to issue upgrades, even if those upgrades offer only a handful (or less) of new functionalities or features, to close that support gap. If it did so, the final Enterprise/Education upgrade would be 23H1, the last Home/Pro upgrade 24H1, both which would end support in the fall of 2025. Hello, Windows 7! But that's not what Computerworld expects Microsoft to do. Frankly, that would go against the company's grain. When it deprecates a product, Microsoft typically ends development on that product. (Operating systems make poor examples here as until Windows 10, Microsoft developed once and released, rarely to bother developing anew.) When Microsoft launched a new Internet Explorer (IE), for instance, it would continue to patch the prior version(s), but it would not keep adding features to the old, now-sad-sack edition. Customers were expected to upgrade to the newer version. That's what will almost certainly happen to Windows 10. Why would Microsoft do it any differently? As of Windows 11's summer unveiling, Windows 10 was dead, or at least a dead end. It was as feature-rich as it was ever going to get. Any development effort would be poured into 11, not 10 (even though 11 is, absent the new hardware requirements, mislabeled and should have been cast as 10+ if not just 10 21H2). For the next four years, Windows 10 will be served with security updates on the second Tuesday of every month. But feature or functionality additions? Highly unlikely. That's exactly the model Windows 7 used during its late-2009 to early-2020 run, that's the historical OS servicing model Microsoft applied until Windows 10's mid-2015 debut. Ironically, it will be these upcoming years that Windows 10's servicing behavior becomes what some commercial users demanded even before the operating system's launch six years ago. Microsoft gave them what they wanted in the form of the LTSB (Long-term Servicing Branch) edition, later changed to LTSC, with Channel replacing Branch. A few years on, Microsoft snatched LSTB/LTSC away from customers, mostly. With the launch of Windows 11, Microsoft bent about as far as it can to commercial pressures, by reducing feature upgrade releases to one per year and extending Enterprise/Education support to 36 months so IT admins could retreat to a once-every-two-years upgrade cadence. For those still dissatisfied with how Windows servicing as worked out, the simple solution will be to stick with Windows 10 and its new Windows 7-esque maintenance through the fall of 2025, and if Microsoft provides extended support, as Computerworld expects it will, until 2028. There's no telling how Windows 12 will be serviced when that rolls around. If your employees want to use iPhones and Macs, you really should let them. Thats the main message today coming from a Vanson Bourne survey commissioned by Jamf. Employee choice remains an HR issue The international survey asked 2,000 employees and 500 IT decision-makers how they felt about employee choice and the future of work. It found that as many as nine in 10 employees (89%) would take a pay cut to use their choice of device and suggests that for many, the desire to have that choice may prompt them to seek work elsewhere. Staff retention post-pandemic is critical. Microsoft recently warned that more than 40% of employees are considering leaving their jobs. In this context, anything that makes it easier to recruit or keep good people should be a key consideration. The Vanson Bourne data suggests choice schemes may help. The survey also found 70% of respondents said they would be more likely to join a company given technology choice, while 75% are more likely to stay with a company that offers such choice. An earlier Dice 2021 report confirmed these trends. Apple grows in the enterprise Apples bid for enterprise IT remains solid, as when given that choice, 62% of employees would opt for Apple, the research said. This likely reflects the companys consistently high customer-satisfaction ratings. Employee experience is impacted by the technology they use more than ever before, said Jamf CEO Dean Hager. Giving employees the choice of what technology they work on has incredible value, not only to workers, but to their organizations as well. Establishing a choice program with the right technology partners can help employers attract and retain talent, while boosting employee creativity and productivity. The survey considered the platform experiences of Apple and non-Apple devices. It claims Apple users had a better experience with their chosen platform, reporting improvements in productivity (87%), self-sufficiency (87%), and creativity (86%) when using them. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents said that being forced to use a device that they did not choose would negatively impact their perception of the organization. These trends seem to have caused Apple to become more aggressive in its bid for business from within the enterprise. Reliable tech for remote teams Looking to 2022, 62% of employees now expect to work from home and from the office, and just under half (47%) expect that to be how they work into 2025. The need to provide remote support for these teams stretched many early in the COVID-19 pandemic. MDM solutions such as those from Jamf can help, but it is interesting how Apples reputation for reliability supports the effort: More than half (55%) the IT decision-makers surveyed reported fewer issues managing Apple compared to non-Apple devices. Most (58%) described Apple devices as easier to secure, compared to 42% who felt the same about non-Apple devices. This very much reflects a recent Apple-sponsored survey that claimed youll save hundreds of dollars deploying Macs across a business in comparison to PCs. Of course, enterprise leaders must understand that technology deployment is not merely a matter of throwing equipment at people. For best results, consideration must also extend to software compatibility, security protocols and cultural fit. Emerging solutions for digital community A sense of community is one of the biggest challenges to deliver in a hybrid/remote environment, which is where solutions such as Teamflow can help. Irish non-profit Grow Remote has created local hubs where remote employees can meet other remote workers to find some sense of community, while some Silicon Valley firms encourage staff to speak with others from beyond their team in virtual coffee chats. While it may be challenging, serendipity through random connection remains possible. A copy of the Jamf-sponsored report is available here Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Singapore's third Slingology series features special Sling-inspired ATLAS cocktails at Long Bar Highlighting the heritage of the iconic Singapore Sling and the history of the Raffles Hotel Long Bar in the city-state, the Slingology campaign features guest bartenders who create and present their own Sling-inspired concoctions at Long Bar. On Sunday from 3 pm to 9 pm, bartenders of ATLAS Lauren Sosnowsky and Lee Rosli (right) will take centre-stage. Photo courtesy: ATLAS Launched on the inaugural Singapore Sling Day, June 27, the third Slingology series is kicking off next Sunday with exquisite cocktail creations from ATLAS - one of Singapores grand cocktail bars located in the rich-heritage neighbourhood of Bugis and ranked No 7 on Asias 50 Best Bars 2021. On Sunday from 3 pm to 9 pm, bartenders of ATLAS Lauren Sosnowsky and Lee Rosli will take centre-stage in a special appearance behind the bar as they celebrate the launch of this exciting month-long collaboration. The ATLAS will present its own rendition of the iconic Singapore Sling; Green Perruches, featuring an elegant concoction of Raffles 1915 Gin, Green Chartreuse and Elderflower. Originally created in 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainanese bartender at Raffles Hotel Singapore, the Singapore Sling cleverly disguised a cocktail as fruit juice. Photo courtesy: Raffles Hotel Two signature cocktails from the bars carefully curated collection, ATLAS Martini and Baroque Pearl, will also be on the menu in homage to the iconic Long Bar. Amid the pandemic, Raffles Hotel Singapore will maintain the highest hygiene standards to safeguard the health and wellbeing of all their guests and staff. Guests can be reassured that all public spaces and restaurants have been reconfigured to facilitate safe distancing and there is a strict adherence policy in place to HACCP principles for food preparation and hygiene, an official statement read. The Slingology series will continue with award-winning local bars like Studio 1939 at Potato Head from October 31 to November 27 and Junior The Pocket Bar from November 28 to December 25. Green Perruches, featuring an elegant concoction of Raffles 1915 Gin, Green Chartreuse and Elderflower. Photo courtesy: ATLAS Opened in 1887, Raffles Singapore is one of the few remaining great 19th century hotels in the world. It recently underwent a careful and sensitive restoration and has fully reopened on August 1, 2019. It is part of Accor, a world-leading augmented hospitality group with almost 4,800 hotels, resorts and residences across the globe. 09/23/2021 Photo (c) Brankospejs - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.) Total U.S. confirmed cases: 42,553,299 (42,416,012) Total U.S. deaths: 681,259 (678,522) Total global cases: 230,242,861 (229,665,913) Total global deaths: 4,721,803 (4,711.253) FDA clears Pfizer booster for those 65 and older The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given its approval to Pfizers booster shot. The boosters are authorized for people age 65 and older who received their last vaccination at least six months ago. In issuing the clearance, the FDA made some exceptions to the age requirements. Vaccinated adults with underlying health conditions can also get the booster. It will also be provided to health care workers, teachers, grocery store employees, prison inmates, and people living in homeless shelters. Originally, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed boosters for the entire population. But in a meeting last week an FDA advisory committee proposed the shot only for at-risk Americans, saying the evidence did not support its wider distribution. Vaccination pace continues to slow A wave of new COVID-19 cases across the country has done nothing to increase vaccinations. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the current rate at which people are getting vaccinated is the slowest since July. More than 312,000 people started the vaccination process by getting their first shot during the last week. The CDC data shows that's a decline of 7% from the previous week and a 35% decline over the last 30 days. "We are bracing ourselves for an awfully busy winter ahead," Dr. Megan Ranney, associate dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, told CNN. Florida lifts still more COVID-19 restrictions Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made his views on pandemic mandates well known. Through executive orders, he has banned school districts from requiring children and teachers to wear masks. Early in the vaccine rollout, he signed legislation banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination. Taking it one step further, this week his newly appointed surgeon general announced that children who are exposed to someone who tests positive, but who dont have symptoms, will no longer be required to quarantine before returning to the classroom. "Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging for their educational advancement," DeSantis said at a news conference. "It's also disruptive for families. We are going to be following a symptoms-based approach." Around the nation UNITED NATIONS (AP) Be realistic. Show patience. Engage. And above all, don't isolate. Those are the pillars of an approach emerging in Pakistan to deal with the fledgling government that is suddenly running the country next door once again Afghanistan's resurgent, often-volatile Taliban. Pakistan's government is proposing that the international community develop a road map that leads to diplomatic recognition of the Taliban with incentives if they fulfill its requirements and then sit down face to face and talk it out with the militia's leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi outlined the idea Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's meeting of world leaders. If they live up to those expectations, they would make it easier for themselves, they will get acceptability, which is required for recognition, Qureshi told the AP. At the same time, the international community has to realize: Whats the alternative? What are the options? This is the reality, and can they turn away from this reality? He said Pakistan is in sync with the international community in wanting to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan with no space for terrorist elements to increase their foothold, and for the Taliban to ensure that Afghan soil is never used again against any country. But we are saying, be more realistic in your approach, Qureshi said. Try an innovative way of engaging with them. The way that they were being dealt with has not worked. Expectations from the Taliban leadership could include an inclusive government and assurances for human rights, especially for women and girls, Qureshi said. In turn, he said, the Afghan government might be motivated by receiving development, economic and reconstruction aid to help recover from decades of war. He urged the United States, the International Monetary Fund and other countries that have frozen Afghan government funds to immediately release the money so it can be used for promoting normalcy in Afghanistan. And he pledged that Pakistan is ready to play a constructive, positive role in opening communications channels with the Taliban because it, too, benefits from peace and stability. This is the second time that the Taliban, who adhere to a strict version of Islam, have ruled Afghanistan. The first time, from 1996 to 2001, ended when they were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the 9/11 attacks, which were directed by Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan. During that rule, Taliban leaders and police barred girls from school and prohibited women from working outside the home or leaving it without a male escort. After they were overthrown, Afghan women still faced challenges in the male-dominated society but increasingly stepped into powerful positions in government and numerous fields. But when the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan last month, the government collapsed and a new generation of the Taliban resurged, taking over almost immediately. In the weeks since, many countries have expressed disappointment that the Talibans interim government is not inclusive as its spokesman had promised. While the new government has allowed young girls to attend school, it has not yet allowed older girls to return to secondary school, and most women to return to work despite a promise in April that women can serve their society in the education, business, health and social fields while maintaining correct Islamic hijab. The challenges ahead were evident Thursday, when one of the founders of the Taliban said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who was the chief enforcer of the Taliban's harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan, dismissed outrage over the Talibans executions in the past, which sometimes took place in front of crowds at a stadium. He warned the world against interfering with their rule. Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments, Turabi told The Associated Press, speaking in Kabul. No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran. Pakistan, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has a long and sometimes conflicted relationship with its neighbor that includes attempts to prevent terrorism there and, some say, also encouraging it. The Islamabad government has a fundamental vested interest in ensuring that whatever the new Afghanistan offers, it is not a threat to Pakistan. That, Qureshi says, requires a steady and calibrated approach. It has to be a realistic assessment, a pragmatic view on both sides, and that will set the tone for recognition eventually, the Pakistani minister said. The good news, he said: The Taliban are listening, and they are not insensitive to what is being said by neighbors and the international community. How does he know they're listening? He says the interim government, drawn mostly from Afghanistans dominant Pashtun ethnic group, made some additions on Tuesday. It added representatives from the country's ethnic minorities Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are Shiite Muslims in the majority Sunni Muslim country. Yes, there are no women yet, Qureshi said. But let us let the situation evolve. He stressed that the Taliban must make decisions in coming days and weeks that will enhance their acceptability. What the international community can do, in my view, is sit together and work out a roadmap, Qureshi said. And if they fulfill those expectations, this is what the international community can do to help them stabilize their economy. This is the humanitarian assistance that can be provided. This is how they can help rebuild Afghanistan, reconstruction and so on and so forth. He added: With this roadmap ahead, I think an international engagement can be more productive. On Wednesday night, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after a meeting of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council that all five nations the United States, China, Britain, Russia and France want an Afghanistan at peace, stable, where humanitarian aid can be distributed without problems or discrimination. He also described a hoped-for Afghanistan where the rights of women and girls are respected, an Afghanistan that wont be a sanctuary for terrorism, an Afghanistan where we have an inclusive government representing the different sectors of the population. And on Thursday, the top U.S. diplomat said it was critical that the international community remained united in ensuring that the Taliban meet all commitments they made including freedom for Afghans to travel, respect of human rights and barring terrorists from the country before granting legitimacy and support beyond humanitarian assistance. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he delivered that message both to the U.N. Security Council and foreign ministers of the 20 major economic powers. Japans Foreign Ministry said Thursday that at the closed G20 meeting, participants confirmed the importance of ... sending a unified message so that the Taliban takes steps in the right direction. Qureshi said there are different forums where the international community can work out how to approach the situation. In the meantime, he asserted, things seem to be stabilizing. Less than six weeks after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, he said, Pakistan has received information that the law-and-order situation has improved, fighting has stopped and many internally displaced Afghans are going home. Thats a positive sign, Qureshi said. He said Pakistan hasnt seen a new influx of Afghan refugees a sensitive issue for Pakistanis, who are highly motivated to prevent it. A humanitarian crisis, a foundering economy and workers who return to jobs and school but aren't getting salaries and don't have money could cause Afghans to flee across the porous border into Pakistan, which has suffered economically from such arrivals over decades of conflict. Qureshi prescribed patience and realism. After all, he says, every previous attempt to stabilize Afghanistan has failed, so don't expect new efforts to produce immediate success with the Taliban. If the United States and its allies could not convince them or eliminate them in two decades, how will you do it in the next two months or the next two years? he wondered. Asked whether he had a prediction of what Afghanistan might be like in six months, Qureshi turned the question back on his AP interviewer, replying: Can you guarantee me U.S. behavior over the next six months? ___ Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has been reporting internationally for nearly 50 years. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EdithLedererAP NEWTON, Mass. (AP) She was orphaned during Rwandas genocide and lost much of one of her legs to childhood cancer, but Claudine Humure has dreams of giving back to her once war-torn homeland. First, though, she needed a new leg to propel her on the next part of her journey. The 29-year-old, who spent some of her formative years in Massachusetts, including receiving cancer treatment and her first artificial limb, recently returned to the state to get fitted with a new prosthesis. At Next Step Bionics and Prosthetics in the Boston suburb of Newton on Monday, she strode purposely up and down the spacious facility and on the courtyard outside, giving it a final test run. It feels easier to walk on. I dont know if its natural. Its been so long I dont remember what natural feels like, Humure said to laughs. The artificial leg shes had the last four years took a beating on Rwandas hilly terrain. The knee joint no longer moved smoothly. Duct tape held together the socket connecting the artificial appendage to her surviving limb. Humure's new prosthetic provided free by the clinic features the latest in artificial leg technology, her longtime prosthetist said as he monitored and tweaked the devices performance remotely. The microprocessor-driven knee can quickly sense and respond as Humure shifts her body weight from one leg to the other, creating a more natural gait, Arthur Graham said. The devices foot is also adjustable so she can easily transition from sneakers to high heels and other shoe styles. There arent many places in the East African nation that can handle such technology, which costs more than $40,000 per unit. So Graham has provided Humure advice on how to maintain her prosthetics on her own over the years. Humure said the experience inspired her to pursue a career in prosthetics. Shell soon be enrolling in a graduate program at the University of Washington in Seattle, and hopes to eventually open a nonprofit clinic providing affordable prosthetics to fellow Rwandans. The 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered by extremist Hutus, left a large number of people handicapped, she said. Theres also been an increasing number of severe road accidents in the country of nearly 13 million people. Yet many amputees are still making do with improperly fitting devices or self-made systems because of the high cost of quality prosthetics, Humure said. I have been privileged to wear some of the most advanced prosthetics that a lot of Rwandans do not have access to, she said. No one should be denied the right to stand on two feet and the ability to move around independently." Boston has played an outsized role in Humures life after her father was killed in the genocide and her mother died in childbirth shortly after. When Humure first came to the city, she was 12 years old, using a wheelchair for independent mobility and living in an orphanage. She had most of her right leg removed to treat bone cancer, but needed further treatments as the cancer spread. Partners In Health, the global health care organization founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, arranged to have her flown to Massachusetts General Hospital for chemotherapy. Doctors at the Boston institution also reconstructed her amputated leg so it could better fit into a prosthetic. A Boston couple soon became Humures legal guardians, and she returned to attend high school and then Wheaton College in Norton, where she graduated in 2017 with a biology degree. While at college, she interned at MITs Media Lab, helping with its research on advanced prosthetics. She also interned at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, working with recent amputees, including some of the survivors of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Long since cancer-free, Humure has been living in Kigali, Rwandas capital, and working at the University of Global Health Equity. Yes, I went through a lot, she says. But I would not have gotten through anything without all the people who have supported me along the way. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Humure used a wheelchair for independent mobility. She was not dependent upon one. PAGE, Ariz. (AP) A single-engine plane has crashed in far northern Arizona, killing the pilot and injuring the lone passenger, authorities said Thursday. Coconino County Sheriffs officials say there received a call Wednesday evening from the Page Airport that a plane originating from San Martin, Calif., had crashed while on approach. BRIDGEPORT Restorations at the shuttered Barnum Museum are still in progress, but a federal grant to the tune of $500,000 could pick up the pace. Famed showman P.T. Barnums eponymous museum announced recently that it received a Save Americas Treasures grant from the National Park Service to fix the buildings 79 unique windows. Kathleen Maher, the museums executive director, estimated the current phase could take a year and a half but will be well worth the wait. Of the historic Main Street museums collections, The building is the most significant artifact, Maher said. The Barnum Museum is a repository for letters, rare documents and other artifacts related to the circus founder. Built in 1893, the brownstone and terracotta structure was marred by a tornado on June 24, 2010 12 days before P.T. Barnums 200th birthday. More than 20,000 pieces were on site that day, and financial estimates of the damage were in excess of $6 million. Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy added insult to injury, and COVID-19 further slowed the repair. Maher said Barnum Museum qualified for the grant as a nationally significant site listed in the National Register of Historic Places. She submitted a detailed application for federal funds in January that she said, in hard copy, stood at 4 inches on her desk. Every single one of the 79 windows was inventoried, and every single one was isolated according to a schedule of condition, said Maher. Because this is an 1890s house, its not like these windows came off the inventory belt: Every single window is different. The award, which is a matching grant, aligns with a Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development grant-in-aid to support the restoration and repair work. In the years since the damage, Maher said the museum has conserved and relocated artifacts, completed studies and forensic reports and done emergency work to stabilize the building. Historic preservation architects and engineers have also rebuilt the east wall and stabilized the structures iconic dome. We have got amazing, full-scope drawings that really look at everything, said Maher from fixing the roof, terracotta tiles and decorative friezes, to plans for the interior and structural engineering. Along the way, Maher said her team also found problematic work done in the 1980s that will be fixed, too. Each step gets reviewed and approved by the state historic preservation office, she added, which can tack on time to the process. Barnum Museum has operated a gallery from the Peoples United Bank, but mostly pivoted online during the pandemic with enrichment programs and activities, and directed visitors to its digital archive. At first COVID-19 did not delay repairs, which were in the design phase, but Maher said public health and supply chain issues, and subsequent rising costs, slowed us down a couple of months. And funding, too, was strained by the pandemic. The tourism industry has not rebounded back, so our fundraising stalled that way, said Maher. But the show must go on. At a press conference last week, Bridgeport leaders joined by P.T. Barnums family celebrated next steps for the local institution. The restoration of these windows is not the most important thing about this award, said Elinor Biggs, Barnums great, great, great granddaughter. The most important thing to me is preserving the legacy of this American icon. Id like us to make a stronger commitment to partner in every way we can, said Mayor Joe Ganim, who recalled his own visit to the museum as a child. I want to see your work continue so that those doors open again for young people in the city of Bridgeport and beyond can experience this treasure, this jewel, this history in the center of Bridgeport for decades to come, he said. Meanwhile a small but committed museum team hopes to make that vision a reality. The point is to create an immersive museum experience, where you can take multiple journeys through the museum, said Maher. The other objective is to get people off I-95, she added. Bridgeport will be the gateway to New England, and the last stop on your way to New York. Anything less would fall short of honoring P.T. Barnum, the greatest showman, his fans and family agree. Hes the author of the attractions industry, Maher said. What would he have done? Thats what we have to do. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) A man accused of massacring a Florida family under the delusion that they were child sex traffickers has been formally charged with four counts of first-degree murder. Court documents show a grand jury's 22-count indictment was filed Tuesday in Polk County Circuit Court against Bryan Riley. Other charges included attempted murder one 11-year-old girl survived the Sept. 5 rampage and Riley got into a gunfight with police kidnapping, arson, burglary and animal cruelty for killing the family dog. Riley, a 33-year-old former Marine, could ultimately face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted of the killings. Prosecutors have not announced a decision on whether they will seek the death penalty. Riley is being held without bail and has not yet entered a plea to the charges. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd previously said Riley falsely believed the family was involved in child sex trafficking and that he had been told by God to rescue a purported child victim named Amber. There was no child by that name at the home. Riley chanced upon the family after seeing a man mowing his lawn with a young girl out in the yard that he thought might be the trafficking victim, Judd said. Officials say Riley, wearing body armor, had three weapons with him and fired at least 100 shots in the main home and a smaller one in back where Catherine Delgado, 62, was the first to be killed. Law enforcement officers fired about 60 shots in a gun battle that left Riley with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Riley surrendered after that. The victims are Justice Gleason, 40; his 33-year-old girlfriend, Theresa Lanham; their baby boy, Jody, who was born in May; and Delgado, who was Lanhams mother and owned the property. Gleason's daughter survived despite several gunshot wounds. Riley served as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan and was working as a security guard in the Lakeland area, including at a church. After that recent job, his girlfriend of four years told investigators Riley began talking about communication with God but not about violence. MADISON, Wis. (AP) The latest surge of COVID-19 infections due to the highly contagious delta variant has not yet peaked in Wisconsin, state health officials said Wednesday. The seven-day average of new cases as of Tuesday was 2,857, nearly double what it was two weeks ago and at a level not seen since early January before the vaccine was widely available. We are not at a plateau yet, we are not at a leveling off, said Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake at a news conference. We are still seeing a concerning rate of growth. Dr. Ryan Westergaard, the states chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for communicable diseases, said the current surge is about half as bad as the worst surge in November. But he said there's no indication yet that it is leveling off. We have not seen a turning of the corner, Westergaard said. The 1,085 people hospitalized as of Tuesday was down slightly from the previous three days. The seven-day average of daily deaths from COVID-19 was 11 as of Tuesday, down from the average daily high of 15 on Sept. 14 during the current surge. Timberlake attributed the surge in cases and hospitalizations to the delta variant. Only 5% of intensive care beds and 5% of medical/surgical beds statewide are available, she said. As of Wednesday, just over 56% of the population was fully vaccinated and nearly 64% of adults over age 18 were vaccinated. Also on Wednesday, Fort McCoy announced that 97% of Afghan refugees being temporarily housed at the military base in western Wisconsin had been vaccinated for COVID-19 as well as measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. The U.S. on Sept. 10 halted U.S.-bound flights of Afghan evacuees after discovering a few cases of measles among new arrivals in the United States, including at Fort McCoy. The Afghan refugees at Fort McCoy, where roughly 12,700 evacuees were staying as of Wednesday, are being resettled across the country. The immigration process includes completing the required vaccinations. More than 200 resettlement partners nationwide are working with local communities to find homes for the refugees, said Skye Justice, team lead for the Department of State for the Fort McCoy operation. MOUNDS VIEW, Minn. (AP) A Ramsey County sheriff's deputy used an SUV to hit a male suspect on Wednesday after he began shooting at officers who were investigating a domestic assault in Mounds View, authorities said. The Ramsey County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that deputies and Mounds View police officers were investigating a felony domestic assault that involved a gun being fired at an AmericInn by Wyndham. Authorities made sure the female victim was safe and got the suspect's description, the sheriff's office said. When officers found him, he raised a handgun and fired at the approaching squads ... narrowly missing both officers," the sheriff's office said. The Mounds View squad car was hit above the drivers side windshield and a Ramsey County squad was hit below the drivers side windshield. Fearing for his life and the life of others, the Ramsey County Sheriffs Deputy who was fired upon used his vehicle to stop the threat, the sheriff's office said. After the suspect, who is white, was hit, authorities provided first aid and called an ambulance. He was taken to a Minneapolis hospital. His condition was not immediately known. The sheriff's office said a cocked handgun was found at the scene. Authorities are investigating the alleged domestic assault and the alleged attempted homicides of police officers. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which was at the scene, will investigate the deputy's use of force. The sheriff's office said there is video of the incident, but it is not yet being released. RED LAKE, Minn. (AP) The Red Lake Nation in northern Minnesota is requiring all people who come to the reservation for work or other business purposes to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or show weekly test results. The Red Lake Tribal Council said the mandate does not apply to pregnant women, people with documented medical conditions, children under 12 and those with certain religious beliefs and practices, according to a resolution that passed on a 9-0 vote. The Biden administrations special envoy to Haiti resigned in protest of "inhumane" large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants to their homeland as it is wracked by civil strife and natural disaster, U.S. officials said Thursday. Daniel Foote was appointed to the position only in July, following the assassination of Haitis President Jovenel Moise. Even before the migrant expulsions from the small Texas border town of Del Rio, the career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti. Foote wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was stepping down immediately with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life, he wrote. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own. The State Department criticized Foote for resigning at a critical juncture and pushed back against suggestions that his policy prescriptions were overlooked. This is a challenging moment that requires leadership, spokesman Ned Price said in a written statement. It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation. He added that the role of the president's advisers is to provide him with the best possible advice. No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas, Price said. Footes sudden departure leaves a void in U.S. policy toward Haiti U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison is expected to depart soon after being nominated to serve in another State Department post and adds another critical voice to the administrations response to Haitians camped on the Texas border. Criticism has been fueled by images that went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. Democrats and many pro-immigration groups say efforts to expel thousands of Haitians without giving them a chance to seek asylum violates American principles. The migrant camp has shrunk considerably since surpassing more than 14,000 people on Saturday, with many of them expelled and many others released in the U.S. with notices to report to immigration authorities. The expulsion flights to Haiti began Sunday and there were 10 by the end of Tuesday, according to Haitian officials. U.S. officials say they are ramping up to seven flights a day, which would make it one of the swiftest, large-scale expulsions from the U.S. in decades. At least one top official in Haiti cheered Footes resignation while accusing the Biden administration of violating the rights of Haitian migrants. This is the first time we see a U.S. diplomat who has decided to go against the will of the U.S. government, Mathias Pierre, Haitis election minister, told The Associated Press. We salute that. Pierre also criticized Haitis elite, saying they have turned a blind eye because migration fuels the economy. He noted that 35% of Haitis gross domestic product is remittances, with the diaspora, much of it in the U.S., sending roughly $3.8 billion a year. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has barely discussed the expulsions in public, saying only that his government is worried about conditions that migrants face on the U.S. border and that it will help those sent back to Haiti. Pierre was far more critical of the U.S. While theyre receiving (thousands) of Afghan people, theyre rejecting Haitians while Haiti is in the middle of a crisis: a crisis with the earthquake, a crisis with the assassination of the president and a poverty crisis that is clearly one of the major issues why people are leaving, Pierre said. Foote served previously in Haiti as deputy chief of mission and is a former ambassador to Zambia. In his new position, he worked with the U.S. ambassador to support Haiti after the president's assassination. For weeks, he had been quietly pushing in Washington a plan to boost U.S. security assistance to Haiti to pave the way for new presidential elections. But Haiti watchers said he became increasingly disappointed with the pace of decision-making in the administration. When someone who is tasked with Haiti policy at the highest level resigns because 'recommendations are ignored and dismissed its not only troubling, but shows you this administration does not tolerate anyone who wont go along with their distorted view of the facts, said Damian Merlo, a Republican strategist who has worked for years on Haiti policy and is now a registered lobbyist for the countrys government. Dan Foote is a world class diplomat who refuses to be told what do. I wish more foreign service officers had his courage to stand up and call out their bosses. ___ Goodman reported from Miami, Lee from New York on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly meetings, Coto from San Juan, Puerto Rico and Spagat from San Diego LAS VEGAS (AP) The elected board with oversight of the Las Vegas Strip has joined at least one other jurisdiction declaring COVID-19 misinformation a public health crisis creating a culture of mistrust and prolonging the coronavirus pandemic. A divided vote by the seven-member Clark County Commission came during a contentious Tuesday meeting that saw the forceful removal by security officers of a man running for state lieutenant governor; complaints that free speech rights were being limited; and a reference by a speaker at the podium to bloodshed on the streets of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Sun reported. Bystander video circulated online showed Mack Miller being pushed backward by two officers through a metal detector and falling to the floor of the Clark County Government Center. Miller, a frequent candidate for public offices and regular speaker at meetings, was not arrested. A county statement said Wednesday the matter was under review. Misinformation has caused confusion, said the nonbinding resolution adopted on a 5-2 vote, and nationally has led to eligible people declining COVID-19 vaccines, rejecting public health measures such as masking and physical distancing, and using unproven treatments. Unlike a measure approved Sept. 1 by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the Clark County vote was advisory and did not include recommendations to combat misinformation. Commissioner Justin Jones, sponsor of the Clark County measure, called it important to "commit to doing all we can to combat the falsehoods that continue to jeopardize the lives of our citizens. Commission attorney Mary-Anne Miller said the document didnt limit speech and contained no punishment for anyone holding or exercising different views, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Dr. Fermin Leguen, chief health officer for the regional Southern Nevada Health District, issued a statement supporting the resolution. He said misinformation and vaccine hesitancy have led people to try unproven and unsafe treatments. Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick and Commissioner Jim Gibson voted against the measure. They said they feared it could further divide people and be interpreted as limiting what Gibson called the right to speak, to dissent, to express opinion, to get into even a real significant public discourse or an argument. When we have to tell them that those rights are not impaired by something were doing ... weve almost already lost the battle, Gibson said. Kirkpatrick, a leader of the coronavirus fight in the Las Vegas area, said she wished the debate about masks, vaccines and distancing wasnt divisive and personal. She said she hoped respectful dialogue could return to the U.S. and the Las Vegas area. But now were just angry on both sides, Kirkpatrick said. Were angry all the way around. After a year and a half of pandemic policies that kept children out of school in many communities disproportionately burdening the states highest-need students with illness, isolation and economic uncertainty this is a time to set children up for success, rather than punishing them further. Despite these challenges, a likely GOP candidate for governor has called for harsher discipline for youths who commit crimes, claiming we had a long summer of teenagers wielding weapons, stealing cars and increasing homicide rates. In reality, as the data make clear, incidents like these have actually been on a steep decline over the last 30 years. The Connecticut GOPs heavy-handed rhetoric on children and crime is a false flag an excuse for the systemic issues that leaders of both parties too often lack the will, resources or moral compass to address. Harsh legal consequences for minors have a long history of discriminatory impact on the students who have already been underserved by Connecticuts society and schools. According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity, Black students and students with disabilities are referred to law enforcement at twice the rate of all students 7.8 of every 1,000 Black students and 8.9 of every 1,000 students with disabilities, compared to 3.9 out of every 1,000 students. Instead of punishing children, why not invest upfront in early strategies that will set them up for success? We must find research-based ways to meet their academic needs; provide wraparound services to promote their mental, physical and emotional health; and pay for it by removing school resource officers, whose actions merely compound inequities inside of schools. Just this year, Connecticut took positive steps when it committed to using federal funding from the American Rescue Plan to launch an early literacy effort called, Right to Read. The new legislation utilizes the science of reading, requiring a research-based approach in every K-3 classroom in Connecticut and increased interventions. This has never before been monitored statewide, although over half of all fourth-graders read below grade level for decades. Nationally, 85 percent of teenagers in the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate. But this new legislation, and proven initiatives like it, will provide students with a foundation to reach their fullest potential. Likewise, Connecticuts education system should invest in solutions that begin to redress signs of trauma. A 2019 report from the state Office of the Child Advocate notes that a significant percentage of incarcerated youth and adults have behavioral and mental health needs associated with experiencing trauma. Lets increase the number of social workers and guidance counselors; amp up mental health services; and provide strong behavioral support. This work, underway in many communities, has been accelerated with pandemic relief resources in some places. We can give students the support they need to succeed by redirecting funds being spent on school resource officers. According to the Center for Childrens Advocacy, research shows that there are clear negative impacts of police presence in schools. It increases the likelihood of student arrests and decreases students feelings of safety. There were several bills this year aimed at studying and reducing the presence of police in schools. Regrettably, they didnt pass, but its time they did. This has been a particularly challenging time for children. Both parties are responsible for student success in Connecticut. While the punitive proposals highlighted here are GOP priorities, weve also seen Democrats abdicate leadership on critical in-person learning and stand in the way of a state-approved charter schools opening in overcrowded Danbury all of which demonstrate that no party is always on the right side of student interests. Adult fears and biases should never be a guiding light on policies related to kids. For our future, lets focus on potential in the classroom, not consequences in the courtroom. Amy Dowell is the state director of Democrats for Education Reform CT . STAMFORD An attorney representing a former Westport immigration attorney accused of bilking her clients out of more than $200,000 is asking a judge to consider granting his client a probation program on the condition she pay restitution. Attorney Darnell Crosland asked Judge Gary White to consider an arrangement where his client, 69-year-old Judith Sporn, would enter conditional guilty pleas on two counts of first-degree larceny in return for her acceptance into accelerated rehabilitation, a pretrial program available to people accused of nonviolent crimes. As a part of the program, Sporn would be required to pay back about $164,000 that she is accused of stealing from 80 clients. If Sporn were able to pay restitution and comply with any other terms set out by probation, the court would nullify the conditional guilty pleas. If she failed to meet the terms of the agreement, however, her guilty pleas would stick. Assistant States Attorney Joseph Valdes said that typically substantial restitution must be made by a defendant like Sporn before such an offer can be made. However, Crosland asked the court to consider doing so anyway based on the 70-year-old womans extreme health issues and financial struggles since she resigned from the Connecticut bar in 2017 following her suspension a year earlier. Valdes said Crosland needs to show the state proof of Sporns financial situation or a note from her doctor regarding her health first. All of that is going to be necessary for your honor to decide, he said. While Crosland has yet to submit an application for the accelerated rehabilitation program, he is scheduled to have a pretrial discussion with White and Valdes about a possible plea deal in coming weeks. Sporns case dates back to her arrest in November 2019 on a referral from the Stamford States Attorneys office, which investigated allegations that she took $169,456 from 80 clients. A second warrant said she refused to pay a $43,000 settlement to a former client. Sporn was suspended from practicing law by a state judge for two years in 2015. According to her current arrest warrants, Sporns recent troubles with the law began when the Statewide Grievance Committee, which investigates and adjudicates complaints made by clients against their attorneys, referred their investigation into Sporn to the Stamford States Attorneys office. The Grievance Committee investigation led to her being suspended from the bar in October 2016. In November 2017, Sporn resigned from the Connecticut bar and waived her right to ever apply for reinstatement as an attorney. According to the affidavit, Sporn was the subject of dozens of grievance complaints over the past few years. Many of her former immigration clients said she took their money to represent them, but did not do anything to help them legally and did not return their money. Working in the credit union industry for the last decade, Ive been so inspired by the level of collaboration Ive witnessed at every turn. Time and time again, credit unions come together to leverage their cooperative strengths and strategize ways to improve the lives of those they serve. Thats exactly what I saw firsthand when the Northwest Credit Union Association and Northwest Credit Union Foundation convened a diversity, equity, and inclusion task force last fall. We put out the call, and the response was overwhelming. Twenty-six credit unions from a broad range of asset sizes and all corners of the Northwest joined proverbial hands, calling on their collective strengths and diverse perspectives to set the tone for this important work. Credit unions were built for this. When you think back to when they were first created, it was to provide equitable financial services to underserved people and communities. Serving all people regardless of race, ethnicity, age, sex, or gender identity is ingrained in credit unions DNA. Its the foundation of the People Helping People philosophy that non-for-profit cooperatives live and breathe. Through the task force, Northwest credit unions closely examined how their peers and other organizations are approaching DEI. Some credit unions have cross-functional teams or committees dedicated to championing diversity and inclusion; others have entire positions devoted to furthering this effort, including OnPoint Community Credit Union in Portland. Many have DEI-focused programs and services in place for members, like WECUs Diversity Loan Program, or have earned Juntos Avanzamos designations for their commitment to serving minority populations, such as Idaho Central Credit Union. And several offer ITIN lending to immigrant communities in rural areas, including Wauna Credit Union. Several are heavily involved in local projects and organizations focused on uplifting diverse communities for example, Seattle Credit Unions partnership with El Centro de la Raza (The Center for People of All Races) and Olympia Credit Unions work to support the LGBTQ+ movement through Capital City Pride. These are just a few of the many, many ways credit unions in the Northwest are taking action. After nearly a year of listening, learning, and collaborating, the Northwest Credit Unions Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force developed a series of actionable steps credit unions can take to advance DEI as employers, financial institutions, and community partners. Those recommendations were released last month as part of a robust DEI resource library, which also includes helpful toolkits, case studies, articles, and other information that is available to all. And this is just the beginning. Cultivating a world that is truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive is a long-term commitment, an ongoing process that requires patience, dedication, and understanding. Every credit union is different and must undertake this important journey at its own pace. Working together in collaborative ways will help further this mission, and all of the hard work done along the way will be meaningful and improve peoples lives. I truly believe everyone has the potential to be a leader, to recognize when something isnt right and step up to change it. You dont have to be an expert to make a difference, but it takes a willingness to learn and use our collective resources to pave a smoother path for future generations. Im inspired by Northwest credit unions efforts to advance this important work, and I urge credit unions across the nation, and around the world, to tell their individual, unique, and diverse stories. Keep listening, keep creating space for everyones voices at the table, and then elevate those voices. By building on the founding cooperative principles of the Credit Union Movement, Im confident that credit unions will find even more ways to deepen their commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, and drive real impact in our communities. Advertisement Silver Price Outlook: The FOMCs strongest hint yet that a taper announcement will be made soon has silver prices reeling. Rising Fed rate hike odds and firmer intermediate US Treasury yields provoked a sharp turnaround in silver prices at a key technical level. Recent changes in sentiment suggest that silver prices have a mixed bias in the near-term. Losing Luster, Again Silver prices wiped out to their August low at the start of the week, in line with the forecast discussed less than a week ago. Bolstered by declining US Treasury yields and fears of financial contagion emanating from Chinas Evergrande, safe havens like silver saw significant bidding. But the shine has worn off quickly. With news that China has stepped into the market to provide liquidity and Evergrande may avoid a default, the need for safe havens in the short-term has dissipated. Now, with the Federal Reserves September meeting in the rearview mirror and the FOMC offering its strongest hint yet that a taper announcement will be made as early as their next meeting, silver prices have struggled. If the situation out of China continues to subside while Fed rate hike odds climb and the US Treasury yield curve acts in a manner consistent with historical precedent established in 2014, then the bearish price action today may be an appetizer for more losses by silver prices through the remainder of September. Silver Prices and Silver Volatility Relationship Normal Again 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. Declining volatility in a period of tight correlations suggests more downside may be ahead for silver prices. VXSLV (SILVER VOLATILITY) TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: DAILY PRICE CHART (September 2020 to September 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 29.96 at the time this report was written. The 5-day correlation between VXSLV and silver prices is +0.95 and the 20-day correlation is +0.88. One week ago, on September 15, the 5-day correlation was +0.11 and the 20-day correlation was +0.84. SILVER PRICE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: DAILY CHART (February 2020 to September 2021) (CHART 2) Last week it was noted that the latest drop in silver prices has seen a return to the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the 2020 low/2021 high range at 23.0713, setting up the potential for its lowest close of the yeara return to the August low at 22.1020 appears likely in the near-term. Silver prices briefly touched the August low at the start of this week. However, more of a concern in the near-term is price action around the September Fed meeting today. The rally off the August low saw silver prices climb back to the aforementioned 38.2% Fibonacci retracement at 23.0713, only to be rejected. The daily candlestick appears to be a shooting star, a reversal signal. As a result of price action today, silver prices are back below their daily 5-, 8-, 13-, and 21-EMA envelope, which remains in bearish sequential order. Daily MACD continues to trend lower while below its signal line, while daily Slow Stochastics are holding in oversold territory. SILVER PRICE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: WEEKLY CHART (November 2010 to September 2021) (CHART 3) It was also observed last week that a failure to return into the ascending triangle this week would increase the likelihood of a deeper setback, potentially as far as the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the 2011 high/2020 low range at 20.6500. A loss of the August low at 22.1020 would increase the odds of a return to the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement. Having briefly touched the August low earlier this week, the odds of a deeper setback for silver prices is increasing. IG CLIENT SENTIMENT INDEX: SILVER PRICE FORECAST (September 22, 2021) (CHART 4) Silver: Retail trader data shows 92.66% of traders are net-long with the ratio of traders long to short at 12.63 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 2.47% lower than yesterday and 8.87% higher from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 4.04% higher than yesterday and 10.43% lower 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 less net-long than yesterday but more 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 Strategist Blimey, they werent joking about the 70s being back, were they? Fuel shortages, threatened blackouts and a possible return to the three-day week are all in the news. Meanwhile, at PMQs, Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner was single-handedly resurrecting the class war. She was giving Dominic Raab a proper shin-kicking yesterday over his recent infamous holiday to Crete. But not because he wasnt back here leading crucial Afghanistan evacuation plans as he should have been. No, no, it was the cost of the darn thing that was getting Ange all riled. It was disgusting! An insult to working class people! Etc. I know, I know, not exactly a rapier thrust from the Opposition front bench but then, Ms Rayners attacks always do tend to be as subtle as a blunderbuss. Behind her, Labour backbenchers cheered her to the rafters. Meanwhile, at PMQs, Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner (pictured above) was single-handedly resurrecting the class war By jingo, they loved it I havent heard them so happy since Boris was forced to delay Freedom Day. Rayner was on duty because, with the PM in Washington, Sir Keir took the opportunity to stand down for the week. Probably adding polish to that must-read essay hes composed ahead of party conference. All 12,000 words of it, gawd help us. Anges rage was over the Governments end to the temporary uplift in Universal Credit. She or more likely her office had done the sums and worked out it would take someone on minimum wage 50 days to earn enough for just a single night at the luxury hotel where Raab had decamped. Dom seemed bemused by this line of attack. The grammar school-educated son of Jewish refugees, hes hardly one of lifes honking hoorays. He grinned nervously, resisting the temptation to respond with any flashy shots. Its possible he was still stunned by last weeks humiliating exit from the Foreign Office. Intriguingly or not, as he stood behind the Speakers chair before the off, his Cabinet colleagues all had their backs turned to him. Still, he took pleasure in ordering Chancellor Rishi Sunak to fetch him a glass of water. Ha, thatll show who wags the dog! We waited (and waited) for a proper question from Rayner but bilious class warfare was all she had. The Deputy Prime Minister should go back to his sunlounger and let me take over! she snarled. This is a Conservative Party that does not care about working people! Meanwhile, the Government benches hee-hawed and tapped their ears a reference to those 249 Apple headphones the socialist firebrand was revealed to have bought on expenses earlier this year. Rayner brought up Raabs run-in with his new successor Liz Truss over the use of Chevening (the Foreign Secs country retreat), which she referred to as a taxpayer-funded mansion. Dom seemed bemused by this line of attack. The grammar school-educated son of Jewish refugees, hes hardly one of lifes honking hoorays. He grinned nervously, resisting the temptation to respond with any flashy shots. Raab cleared his throat and pointed out Chevening was funded by a charity. Not a penny of taxpayer cash. Whats more, should Labour find itself in power, presumably Rayner could be entitled to the pleasures of Chevening. Would she pass up the chance? Would she ever! Suspect she yearns at the prospect of yanking on her poshest frock and playing a bovver-booted Lady of the Manor. Once her turn passed, the session fell flat. After all the shrieking and finger-wagging, Labour backbenchers were left wanting more. Theyd loved all this class divide stuff. Not that itll get them anywhere of course. Most people respect the desire to get on in life. Tony Blair got this and won three elections at a canter. Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn didnt. Read into that what you will. Sir Keir Starmer seems a cautious fellow, and has been much mocked for it. In fact, know-alls of every political persuasion have made up their minds that the Labour leader hasnt the faintest chance of ever being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Hes wooden and uninspiring, they say. Its far from clear what he believes in. And he darent purge Labour of its Hard Left elements which at the last general election helped the party post its worst results since 1935. The same political wiseacres make fun of Sir Keirs 12,000 word essay The Road Ahead, which appeared yesterday. It has been said that it contains no new policies and is full of waffly pieties. Well, maybe. But in the essay, Sir Keir declares the role of government is to be a partner to private enterprise, not stifle it. It is hard to imagine a more emphatic departure from his Marxist predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Across the documents 35 pages, the word socialism doesnt appear once while business is mentioned 29 times. Sir Keir Starmer seems a cautious fellow, and has been much mocked for it. In fact, know-alls of every political persuasion have made up their minds that the Labour leader hasnt the faintest chance of ever being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom I believe he is trying to take his party back to the centre ground. I also think people would be foolish to assume that Sir Keir is a no-hoper who will never make the bold decisions that define all successful leaders. At the Labour conference in Brighton, which begins on Sunday, he could make his biggest gamble since becoming leader 18 months ago. I hope he has the courage to do so. To the dismay of the Hard Left, he wants to change the way in which Labour leaders are elected. In 2014, the then Labour leader Ed Miliband recklessly introduced the system of one member, one vote. It sounds democratic and fair, of course, but it isnt. For the payment of a small fee, tens of thousands of people have been able to join the party, and vote for a leader who may not stand for its core values. Enter Corbyn and his claque, not a few of whom turned out to have anti-Semitic leanings. He came uncomfortably close to leading the party to victory in 2017. Enter Corbyn (pictured with Starmer in 207) and his claque, not a few of whom turned out to have anti-Semitic leanings. He came uncomfortably close to leading the party to victory in 2017 Fortunately the country, including many traditional Labour voters, saw through him by the time of the December 2019 election, and so Corbyn was history. But with Milibands daft arrangement still in place, another Hard Left nutcase could be elected leader by members who dont reflect the values of the partys traditional supporters. There is always a remote chance that, by hook or by crook, such a person could be finagled into No10. Under Sir Keirs system which is the old one Labour leaders would be elected with a third of the vote coming from MPs, a third coming from trade unions and a third coming from members. The Hard Left is in uproar because it sees its path to power forever blocked. Former shadow chancellor and loyal Corbynite John McDonnell preposterously claims that Sir Keir is opening himself to charges of dishonesty. The big question is whether the less extreme trade union leaders will line up with the Labour leader. At a meeting on Wednesday evening, things did not go his way. Its possible he wont put his proposal to a vote in Brighton, or that the issue will be postponed to a special conference to be held far in the future. Last night there were rumours of an unsatisfactory compromise. Sir Keir should take a leaf out of Tony Blairs book. At the 1994 Labour Party conference in Blackpool, less than three months after becoming Labour leader, Mr Blair dared to persuade sceptical delegates that the party should jettison Clause Four, which committed it to the common ownership of industry. Blair certainly had cold feet before his speech about Clause Four, asking his press sidekick Alastair Campbell: Is this madness were even considering it? Nonetheless, he summoned the courage to go ahead and won. At the 1994 Labour Party conference in Blackpool, less than three months after becoming Labour leader, Mr Blair dared to persuade sceptical delegates that the party should jettison Clause Four, which committed it to the common ownership of industry Fortune favours the brave. If Sir Keir runs away from the issue, he will confirm his image as a leader who lacks the courage to take on the Left. It would be better for him to push for a vote and lose it than never to have tried at all. I pray for the sake of the country that he succeeds. To remove Labour from the grip of the Hard Left, so that its luminaries could never have even the slightest chance of holding sway in No 10, would be a magnificent achievement. More than that, I believe our democratic system depends on there being a credible Opposition. Only the most blinkered Tory could hope for one-party rule by the Conservatives for the rest of time. The Road Ahead can be mocked for its length and generalities but it should also be celebrated for its moderation and good sense. It is really an essay aimed at the rotten heart of the Hard Left. Sir Keir writes that Labour is proudly patriotic a dig at Corbyn, as well as an appeal to former Labour Red Wall voters who have defected in their tens of thousands to the Tories. Twice in the essay he refers to hard-working families and twice to hard-working people. Sir Keir writes that Labour is proudly patriotic a dig at Corbyn, as well as an appeal to former Labour Red Wall voters who have defected in their tens of thousands to the Tories In one of what he describes as ten simple key principles, he writes: We will always put hard-working families and their priorities first. He will have struck a note even with many Tories when he writes: The Government must play its role in restoring honesty, decency and transparency in public life. That will resonate with most people. Some will say that these are only words, but they are words which seek to establish the huge gulf that separates the Labour leader from the Hard Left, though one cant forget that he once served under Jeremy Corbyn in the Shadow Cabinet. In the end, though, actions do speak louder. He must be prepared to take on the Corbynistas over the issue of how the Labour leader is elected. One member, one vote, as it was delivered by the hapless Ed Miliband, has produced the antithesis of democracy. This Labour conference really is a fork in the road for Sir Keir Starmer. He can choose to succumb to the Hard Left, in which case he and his party wont be taken seriously by the majority of voters. Or, in his dullish but determined and decent way, he can persevere, and so one day make Labour electable again. From sending an email to the wrong person to shattering a priceless historical artefact, people have shared their biggest workplace errors in toe-curling online confessions. The thread on UK-based parenting website Mumsnet was kickstarted when a woman revealed: 'Today I was b******g about a colleague and accidentally sent him the messages I meant to send to the colleague I was b******g with. I referred to him as a "mofo" in the messages. 'Yes, it was incredibly childish and unprofessional and I'm mortified. I know, there's no need to tell me. I'm also very worried about the consequences. I can't sleep because of it, so please cheer me up with your embarrassing work stories.' Users were quick to oblige, offering up their own embarrassing tales. From sending an email to the wrong person to shattering a priceless historical artefact, people have shared their biggest workplace errors in toe-curling online confessions. Stock image An anonymous poster on Mumsnet wrote a post about accidentally sending a rude message to a colleague - and asked other forum users to share mistakes they had made at work One wrote: 'I opened an attachment that downloaded ransomware and took out our whole server. Small business, no IT department, boss on holiday at the time. 'Thankfully I was also in charge of the off site back up that wasnt scrambled so we didnt loose too much work. But it was all together quite horrific.' Another said: 'A long long time ago I managed to delete the contents of a client's hard drive on their main server. They were a firm of solicitors.. I know exactly how I did it (by mistake) and blame the old Subst command in dos. 'It can still bring me out in a cold sweat when I think about it. I remember phoning my boss from the phone box on clapham junction station to tell him the bad news. Amazingly I didn't get fired and the client was sympathetic!' Many people admitted they'd made mistakes with tech over the years - from sending messages to the wrong people, to inputting data incorrectly One revealed how an error could have led to a major financial catastrophe, revealing: 'I was a very junior worker and I worked in corporate banking. 'I was making high value transfers and managed to invest half a million pounds into the wrong person's account by transposing the account number. 'Luckily the bank were able to recall the amount.' Some of the errors involved foreign travel nightmares. One employee wrote: 'As a PA I once got my boss extradited from China during his work trip because I arranged the wrong kind of visa for the trip. Some forum users had made mistakes involving foreign travel with one former PA even getting their boss extradited from China 'I would have died of shame and anxiety except I was on holiday myself when it all happened and only found out when I got back and it had been mostly resolved by then, by another colleague. Couldn't believe I wasn't fired though.' In another travel related mistake, one Mumsnetter said: 'I was a travel agent in a country that required a visa to visit Spain. 'I sold a client a multi stop ticket and he had so many stops he needed to pay a surcharge for the Spain stop. But I forgot to tell him he needed a visa. So he paid extra on his ticket to go there and was refused entry. 'He was so laid back he forgave me and continued booking with me for the next 20 years.' Some commentators had worked in the medical field, and had made a range of errors affecting patients - or even themselves Some working in the medical field - whose work often has higher stakes when it comes to getting things wrong - shared their mishaps. One wrote: 'I was changing a man's catheter and missed the bin when disposing of the old one. It ricocheted into my face and I got urine in my mouth.' Another added: 'Yep did that emptying a commode and urine in my eye. Spent hours sat at the hospital only to be told urine is sterile and I'd be ok. Rinsing a commode with [faeces] inside it I scrubbed a bit too vigorously and shot a load straight into my face and yep also my eye again. Thankfully I had my face mask on otherwise I'd have got a mouthful too.' And a third said: 'Sent a shipment of medications all over the world - they had to be recalled as they hadnt been approved yet - I left weeks later (before I was pushed).' A modern slavery survivor has revealed how she was sold to a criminal gang for sex and became addicted to drugs after being groomed when aged 13 by a 70-year-old neighbour. Jenny, whose name has been changed, was in primary school when she first chatted with Keith, who lived nearby. He would soon invite her round his house, give her lifts to school, and buy her gifts. Eventually, he demanded sex in return for these favours and as the months went on, he introduced more men to Jenny to have intercourse with, who would be 'more forceful and violent' and offer drugs and alcohol to the teenager. After being sold to a criminal gang who sexually exploited her for years, Jenny reached out for help and was told to call The Salvation Army; within two hours she had been taken to a safe house, where specialist workers helped her get the support she needed. Jenny is now doing a skydive alongside another survivor of modern slavery to raise money for the charitable organisation. Jenny (pictured), whose name has been changed, was in primary school when she first chatted with Keith, who lived nearby. He would soon invite her round his house, give her lifts to school, and buy her gifts Speaking in a video for the campaign, Jenny, who spent a lot of time on her own as a child, recalled: 'I got to know Keith when I went to primary school. I was in Year Six, and he had a dog so on the way to school you'd pet the dog. 'He was always around so it was just a good morning and a friendly face. It was just nice to have someone so interested. 'He'd invite you in the house for a drink and he'd put his hand on your knee and it was uncomfortable but it was, it sort of progressed from there.' Jenny is the youngest of three girls. Her father walked out when she was young, while her mother worked long hours to make ends meet. She was 13-years-old when 70-year-old Keith started giving her lifts to school and buying her gifts. 'I realised it was wrong when he started to say "I've done this for you, what are you going to do for me?", recalled Jenny. 'I said I didn't want to. 'He said: "It'll only take a couple of seconds and I was special to him and if he was special to me and I appreciated what he did I'd have sex". I think from the first time that's when he felt he owned you or made his mark on you.' As the months went on, Keith demanded more from Jenny, but the teenager was too scared to tell her family. She admitted: 'I didn't tell them because Keith had always said it was a secret, and I didn't tell them because I was ashamed. The background that I come, from sex before marriage or sex itself is quiet a hidden subject and shameful to speak about.' Eventually, Keith started inviting other men to the house, explaining to Jenny that he would need her to do him a 'favour' because he was indebted to them. 'They'd offer you weed, they'd offer you drugs, they'd offer you alcohol, and they were a lot more forceful and violent,' said Jenny. 'They'd pass you around. The men would then bring their friends in and then the network got bigger.' When she was 17 she left home and found a place at a women's refuge; it was the first of many attempts to get help and to escape. But by now she had an addiction to the drug diazepam, explaining: 'I kept going back. You can try and run away but trafficking almost steals your identity. 'So you become what they've made you become. That's all you feel worth so you go back because that's the only thing giving you purpose.' However, one day, the police put her in touch with Victim Support who recommended she ring The Salvation Army. Within two hours of calling the organisation she had been picked up and taken to a safe house, where specialist support workers assisted her in getting the support she needed. 'If it wasn't for that phone call, and if it wasn't for The Salvation Army, I would've been dead by now,' insisted Jenny. 'They didn't ask questions, they didn't judge you, they didn't put any pressure on you. You just felt free and safe.' Jenny is one of two survivors of modern slavery who are preparing to leap from a plane to raise money for The Salvation Army after receiving support from the church and charity. Dan (pictured), whose name has been changed, alongside Jenny, are planning their jump for Sunday 17 October, the day before Anti-Slavery day Jenny is one of two survivors of modern slavery who are preparing to leap from a plane to raise money for The Salvation Army after receiving support from the church and charity. Dan, whose name has been changed, alongside Jenny, are planning their jump for Sunday 17 October, the day before Anti-Slavery day which aims to raise awareness of the plight of slavery survivors and the warning signs people can look out for. Jenny and Dan are also hoping their skydive will encourage others to sign up to take the leap for The Salvation Army so that more funds can be raised to help support the organisation's work with modern slavery survivors. The Salvation Army provides specialist support for all adult victims of modern slavery in England and Wales, working with a network of partners running safe houses and outreach support. Jenny said: 'The Salvation Army was by my side in the scariest moments of my life. They gave me hope and helped me find my wings and a confidence to face my fears. 'I want to do this skydive to raise money for The Salvation Army so they can continue to be by the side of those who need them most and walk with people during the scariest times of their lives. Also, I want to fly!' Dan was taken to a Salvation Army safehouse after his warehouse bosses started forcing him to sell drugs. They threatened him and his family and didn't pay him for the long hours he worked. When the police raided the warehouse, they realised he was a victim and took him to a safe house where The Salvation Army and its partners helped him to recover from his ordeal. Speaking about The Salvation Army's support, Dan said: 'I was always treated with respect, honesty and integrity. I learned so much - from cooking skills to languages and other cultures - and their positive energy would instantly cheer me up whenever I felt down. 'They also helped me apply for work and my confidence grew under their care. Amazing people who deserve recognition. What an amazing service. I will forever be in their debt.' Kathy Betteridge, Director of Anti Trafficking & Modern Slavery for The Salvation Army, said: 'We are so grateful to Jenny and Dan and in awe of their bravery in skydiving to raise vital funds for our work with modern slavery survivors. To donate to the work of The Salvation Army support with modern slavery survivors and support Jenny and Dan in their skydive click here. Its the last tolerated prejudice. But Femails had enough. Its time we called out those day-to-day moments when were patronised for no longer being young... I sat next to a well-known British character actor over the weekend. He was telling me about a part he had landed in some big-budget historical TV drama. The real-life person he was playing was, in fact, about 20 years younger than my friend, who is somewhere in his late 50s if not early 60s which surprised him because its usually the other way round (the actor being 20 years younger than the real-life character, that is). There were two reasons for this, he figured. One was that the producers hadnt bothered to research their facts properly. The other was that they didnt care they just thought my friend would be perfect for the part. A case of reverse age discrimination? I hope so. Netflix hit Bridgerton is ploughing new territory in terms of reverse race discrimination. Surely thats the point of being a good actor? Getting to the essence of a character rather than looking the part. Im not saying I loved Bridgerton it was far too saucy for my tastes. But it set a precedent. Let that precedent extend to the oldies, my actor friend and I say. 'Immature' Amy Christophers was slammed by viewers as a 'spoilt brat' after snapping at her husband Josh Christie on Married at First Sight UK tonight. In tonight's episode of the E4 show, Amy, 34, from Cornwall, and husband Joshua, 26, from West London, got a taste of the future as they embarked on their homestays and rented a property in the city. But while immersing themselves in each other's worlds, Amy and Josh immediately clashed over household tasks, including putting their groceries away. Reaching breaking point after bickering with Josh in the kitchen, Amy raged: 'I'm not f**king doing this,' before walking off camera. However viewers were shocked by her behaviour, with one commenting: 'Amy is the most immature 34-year-old I've ever seen. Josh is immature as well but she's 8 years older and acts like a whiny spoilt brat.' 'Immature' Amy Christophers was slammed by viewers as a 'spoilt brat' after snapping at her husband Josh Christie on Married at First Sight UK tonight Another wrote: 'Amy is really starting to annoy me, poor Josh can't do anything right.' As Amy arrived at the homestay she was unimpressed, saying: 'I really don't like wood, there's just so much wood. 'I would just tear everything out, have bifold doors. This was modern in 2000.' Josh said: 'Some days she's fine and other days she'd switch. Looking back I've seen weird tantrums and weird mood swings.' Many of those watching were left shocked by Amy's behaviour during the programme, branding her 'spoilt' In a couple of hours, Amy friend's were due to arrive to meet Josh for a Mexican themed night. But as soon as the couple began cooking, they clashed over where the groceries had been stored. Amy told her husband: 'Stop being annoying. Shut up and be quiet.' During the show, the couple could be seen exchanging some heated words, with Amy asking Josh to put a bottle of wine in the fridge. Tensions ran high between Amy and Josh as they embark on their homestay in a rented property on the show tonight But when he put it down on the side instead, she immediately picked it up and put it in back in the fridge - resulting in him accusing her of being 'childish.' He added: 'You are pushing me over my limit,' to which Amy snaps back: 'Shhhh be quiet!' And when Josh admitted: 'I'm actually reaching the end of my tether,' Amy stormed off out of the door. 'Looks like we're done then!' he muttered. Josh admitted he was 'reaching the end of his tether' with Amy's shocking behaviour this evening Speaking to the camera outside, Josh said: 'I don't think anyone should have to put up with mood swings or anything. It's not fair on the other person - especially when they've done nothing to cause it.' Later Amy insisted she just wanted Josh to offer her a hug, saying her love language was touch. She admitted she turned into 'a bit of a b****' when they hadn't had the contact. Amy told her friends the experiment was 'really hard', adding: 'It's just super difficult.' Amy later told her friends she had spent the day crying, adding the experiment had been 'really hard' She added: 'My girls are super protective of me.' Later, Josh told her friends: 'I'm not in love with Amy, I don't fall in love overnight.' However many of those watching were left horrified by her attitude, with one writing: 'Amy is so miserable and annoying, how is she 34-years-old please?' Another wrote: 'Amy's attitude actually stinks!' 'I actually did like Amy but she does have psycho tendencies,' another added. Ever since The Rachel became one of the most requested haircuts of the 1990s, Jennifer Aniston has been a beauty icon. So its little wonder women the world over are excited by this months announcement that shes launching her own haircare brand. Thus far her LolaVie range only has one product Glossing Detangler, which costs $25 (18) but it does offer a promise that well finally discover the key to her much-envied style. When it comes to beauty, theres no doubt that Jen knows her stuff. She was an early investor in, and co-owner of, super-sciencey haircare range, Living Proof, and is also said to be a fan of the critically-acclaimed Drunk Elephant haircare products. But its not just her hair shes known for. At 52, her skin is the envy of women half her age, and while shes always insisted that wearing SPF daily, drinking water and getting plenty of sleep are the keys to her healthy skin, theres a bit more to it than that. Ever since The Rachel became one of the most requested haircuts of the 1990s, Jennifer Aniston has been a beauty icon. Thanks to the hints and snippets shes revealed over the years, we have a good idea of what else she relies on. The catch? Given that shes a Hollywood superstar, its all expensive. But it doesnt have to be. After decades of working in the beauty industry, I know how, and where, to get the budget versions of the products and treatments she swears by. You might not have a private chef, dermatologist or her genes (she credits her Greek father for her wrinkle-free skin), but heres how you can have what shes having at a fraction of the price. EYES WITHOUT THE BAGS JEN'S CHOICE These hydrogel masks are infused with hydrating and firming ingredients to smooth and brighten the delicate skin under the eyes. 111skin.co.uk 111Skin Rose Gold Illuminating Eye Mask75 for4 Shop THE BUDGET OPTION Keep these under-eye gel patches in the fridge for maximum impact. Lay them onto clean dry skin and leave for ten minutes so that the line-reducing peptides and skin-brightening ginkgo biloba extract can be absorbed and start de-puffing your peepers. feelunique.co.uk Skyn Iceland Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels28 for 8 Shop PERFECT BROWS JEN'S CHOICE Anastasia Beverly Hills Jen has appointments with Anastasia Soare, the eyebrow queen of Hollywood, who keeps celebrity brows in check with her treatments, shaping and tinting (salon appointments cost from around 45). Anastasia also has her own range of home-use products, Anastasia Beverly Hills, so its a fair assumption that Jen uses the cult Brow Wiz pencil from the collection spacenk.com Shop BUDGET OPTION Product title Invest in a good pair of tweezers (from 22, tweezerman.co.uk) for shaping, and a Maybelline Tattoo Brow eyebrow pencil (7.99, boots.com) which gives you thicker-looking brows for up to 36 hours. tweezerman.co.uk Shop SCULTPED JAWLINE Jens choice Jillian Dempseys 24-carat gold-plated Beauty Wand Jen is a fan of Jillian Dempseys 24-carat gold-plated Beauty Wand This cylinder with a T-bar on the end is battery powered and vibrates. Apply a cream, then work the wand over your face to help de-puff it. oxygenboutique.com Shop The budget option I dont normally advocate copies from the internet, but the Beauty Bar 24k Golden Pulse Facial Face Massager is a dead ringer. Perhaps it has less gold (which has no beauty benefits) and less power, but it will do the job. Keep it in the fridge to aid de-puffing. amazon.co.uK Beauty Bar 24k Golden Pulse Facial Face Massage11.99 Shop PLUMPED UP SKIN Jens choice Vital Proteins As chief creative officer of a supplement firm called Vital Proteins, Jen takes its collagen supplement daily to improve her wellness from within. A months supply costs 40 which sounds a steal, although the website doesnt offer any data to show their product actually works. The budget option: Sorry, Jens pick is inexpensive, so its hard to find a cheaper one, but some have more evidence behind them. While the value of collagen supplements has been debated, they can bolster skin, hair, and nails. But you need a product containing hydrolysed collagen where the molecule, which is too big for the body to absorb, has been smashed into pieces. Decent products, containing 6,000 to 10,000 mg of collagen per daily dose, should show results after three months. Pure Gold Collagen (62.70 a month, gold-collagen.com) and Ingenious Collagen (54.99, feelingenious.com) have studies showing how effective they are vitalproteins.co.uk Shop YOUNG LOOKING FACE Jens choice Unlike Courteney Cox (who has talked about having the filler in her face dissolved), Jen hasnt spoken about needle-based treatments apart from microneedling, which she took up a few years ago. Its a wheel that has pins. You roll it and it stimulates your collagen, she says. The budget option: Compared to clinical versions, which can cost from 150, the cheap option is a 10 roller. Jennifer is pictured with her vital proteins But should you do it at home? In a clinic, a practitioner uses a roller to create minute punctures. This stimulates collagen production as your face races to fix the damage, creating stronger skin. At-home versions dont penetrate deep enough; they just make holes that allow skincare products to penetrate faster. Clinicians dont advise at-home versions as your skin may end up looking like a scratched CD, and because most over-the-counter skincare isnt designed to go deep into the skin so may cause irritation. The sensible option: If you want to do home needling, do it as part of a supervised regime that uses products such as Environ, with a roller with 0.2 mm needles. An Environ skincare consultation costs about 25 that is usually redeemable against products. Go to environskincare.com to find local stockists. NO MORE AGE SPOTS Jens choice: Jen is not beyond trying stronger tweakments for better skin. I became obsessed with laser porn. I did this thing called a peel, she revealed on a chat show, adding that she had sun spots to deal with because, as a California girl, I like the sun, and its a hard habit to break. So I had these things zapped, and its intense and then it [the dead skin] just falls off. A treatment like this would start from around 500, depending on the size of the area being treated. The budget option: Laser skin resurfacing is effective, but it comes with a week of downtime. A gentler, cheaper way to improve the surface texture of your skin is to use an overnight skin-resurfacing product such as Alpha-H Midnight Reboot (70, asos.com). Apply it instead of night cream twice a week and youll soon see a new radiance. Jen is not beyond trying stronger tweakments for better skin. I became obsessed with laser porn. I did this thing called a peel, she revealed on a chat show, adding that she had sun spots to deal with because, as a California girl, I like the sun, and its a hard habit to break GREAT SKIN TONES Jens choice ZIIP Nano Current too Melanie Simon and Joanna Czech are the superstars facialists. Simon uses electrical microcurrents to push the skins cells into repair mode for younger-looking skin. Jen also uses the ZIIP Nano Current tool created by Simon ( Ive never seen such results from a little machine, shes said. The device sends pulses of microcurrents into the skin, which stimulate collagen production while toning muscles and improving circulation and lymphatic drainage. The device is used with a conductive gel, so the electricity can pass through; the ZIIP Gold Conductive Gel will set you back 100. cultbeauty.co.uK Shop The budget option A mum known for sharing household and cleaning tips has revealed her simple method for cleaning grubby suede shoes in order to make them look brand new. Carolina McCauley, from Perth, is frequently annoyed when her children return home from school or playing at a friend's house with their shoes covered in dirt and grime. To replicate her trick at home, all you'll need is some dish soap, a microfibre cloth, some white vinegar and a hairdryer. Scroll down for video BEFORE AND AFTER: A mum known for sharing household and cleaning tips has shared her simple method for cleaning grubby suede shoes in order to make them look brand new Carolina McCauley, from Perth, is frequently annoyed when her children return home from school or playing at a friend's house with their shoes covered in dirt (process pictured) 'This is exactly how I clean suede shoes,' Carolina captioned a video shared on her Instagram page. 'Simply mix white vinegar with two squirts of dish soap in a glass bowl and dip a microfibre cloth inside it.' Once this is done, use the microfibre cloth to 'lightly scrub at the dirt and scuffing areas'. Concentrate on the spots that need more attention, and just wipe over the others. When you've finished this, Carolina said you need to 'use a hairdryer on a low setting' to remove any excess dirt and dry out the shoes. 'Watch the magic happen, they're as good as new!' she said. Thousands of people who saw the clip were impressed and said they would certainly be trying it on their old suede shoes (process pictured) Thousands of people who saw the clip were impressed and said they would certainly be trying it on their old suede shoes. 'I'm saving this video now,' one commenter wrote. Another asked whether the trick would work on suede shoes that aren't white, and Carolina said it definitely would. 'Love this - it has worked so well!' another added. Just last month, another busy mum revealed the exact method she uses to make filthy white sneakers look brand new - and there are just three simple steps (sneakers pictured before) To clean your sneakers at home, simply spray stain remover on the shoes and then rub bicarb soda into the sneakers with a scourer, focusing on the heavily-stained areas (pictured after) This isn't the first method for cleaning shoes that has gone viral. Just last month, another busy mum revealed the exact method she uses to make filthy white material sneakers look brand new - and there are just three simple steps. To clean your sneakers at home, simply spray stain remover on the shoes and then rub bicarb soda into the sneakers with a scourer, focusing on the heavily-stained areas. Following this, let the shoes dry for an hour before wrapping them in a bath towel and throwing them in the wash. 'Put on a normal wash cycle,' she said, demonstrating in her TikTok video. She added laundry detergent to the wash as usual. The shoes were then left to air dry. The mum's after photos show a pair of shoes that look brand new. KitKat has finally settled the hotly-contested debate over the 'correct' way to eat the iconic chocolate bar. Viral videos have surfaced on TikTok showing KitKats being eaten in 'unmentionable' ways, with many controversially chomping the block 'like an animal' without breaking apart the fingers. And the confectionery brand has stepped in to let Australia know once and for all - that as long as you 'have a break' to enjoy your KitKat, then you're doing it right. Scroll down for video The Rybka Twins - Sam and Teagan - shared a TikTok video showing how they eat KitKat differently. Sam took a big bite out of the block (right) while Teagan snapped off a finger first before eating (left) Poll How do you normally eat a KitKat? Snap finger Chomp block Nibble around wafer How do you normally eat a KitKat? Snap finger 926 votes Chomp block 39 votes Nibble around wafer 131 votes Now share your opinion From savouring the crispy wafer to taking one big honking bite out of the corner, fans are outraged by some of the ways people take on a KitKat. The contentious topic has long been debated, with plenty of table-flipping passion no less, but this week a new point has been unearthed - is there even a 'wrong way' to enjoy a KitKat? 'We know Aussies are extremely passionate about how they eat their KitKat, and fans across the country are stepping up to defend their technique,' Nestle head of marketing confectionery Joyce Tan said. 'Whether you snap, nibble or chomp, what really matters is that you take a break from your day to enjoy your KitKat your way.' The Rybka Twins - Sam and Teagan - shared a TikTok video showing how they eat KitKat differently. Sam took a big bite out of the block while Teagan snapped off a finger first before eating. 'No Sam, not that like. Poor KitKat,' one wrote, while another pair of twins said: 'This is like my and my sister.' Millie Ford left her followers outraged after she shared an amusing video of herself reenacting a school teacher munching on the chocolate bar without snapping off a finger Veronica also shared an amusing video showing the two different ways Aussies eat KitKat TikTok star Millie Ford, from Sydney, left her followers outraged after she shared an amusing video of herself reenacting a school teacher munching on the chocolate bar without snapping off a finger. 'What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost,' she said. Her video has been viewed more than 1.5million times, with one saying: 'The KitKat did nothing to you why have you forsaken it like this?' Another wrote: 'You did not just bite into a KitKat like that.' While one said: 'She ate the KitKat like that because the teachers did that... in my school at least.' A Woolworths shopper has sparked a debate on social media after she spotted a random detail inside a divider at checkout. Mum Jennifer Kingi, from Queensland, shared a viral TikTok video after she noticed a catalogue inside the divider while she was waiting in line to pay for her groceries. 'I was today years old when I realised this. Do you ever know noticed there was a pamphlet inside?' she said as she pointed out the rolled up catalogue inside the clear divider. 'Why have I never noticed this before?' A Woolworths spokesman said a cardboard insert usually goes inside a divider - but a team member had likely used a catalogue just to make it 'noticeable' at checkout. 'These dividers are used to separate customer groceries from one another,' the Woolworths spokesman told Daily Mail Australia. 'As the divider is transparent, placing an insert or catalogue inside makes it easily visible to our team members and customers.' Her video has been viewed more than 460,000 times, with many offering their own explanation about why there was something inside the divider. A Woolworths shopper has sparked a debate on social media after she spotted a catalogue inside a divider at checkout 'It's because if there's nothing inside (if the cardboard inside was lost) the scanner won't recognise it and the conveyor belt will keep moving,' one wrote. While another said: 'If there's nothing in there, sometimes the sensor that stops the conveyor belt doesn't pick up on it.' However, one woman suggested an employee might have placed a catalogue inside the divider 'for funsies' so it had nothing to do with the conveyor belt. 'They were probably just in the process of a new promotion and not received the little cardboard insert,' she said. A mother has wowed TikTok with her brilliant hack for easily turning a ketchup packet into a mess-free dipping container while on the go. TikTok star Erica Kuiper, who is known as @cookiterica, demonstrated how to open a condiment packet without making a mess in her viral video, which has been viewed more than 4.4 million times. Instead of ripping open the corner and squeezing the ketchup out, the 42-year-old New York native explained that the packet should be torn down the entirety of the long side. Scroll down for video Incredible: TikTok star Erica Kuiper, who is known as @cookiterica, demonstrated how to turn a ketchup packet into a dipping pouch in her viral video This is news! Instead of ripping open the corner and squeezing the ketchup out, the 42-year-old explained that the packet should be torn down the entirety of the long side She then pushed the ends of the packet towards each other to make a pouch that she could easily dip her fries into. Kuiper said she taught her daughter, Morgan, the trick years ago when she would take her through the drive-thru for food. Thousands of people commented on the video, many of whom called the hack 'brilliant' and 'smart.' 'This video changed my whole life,' one person wrote, while another joked: 'TikTok really is just a list of things I've been doing incorrectly my entire life.' Other TikTokers who live outside of the US were admittedly confused, saying their to-go ketchup comes in pots. Life lesson: Kuiper said she taught her daughter, Morgan, the trick years ago when she would take her through the drive-thru for food Clever: Once the packet was open, she pushed the short ends towards each other to make a pouch that she could easily dip her fries into 'What is wrong with the US???' one person asked. 'UK McDonald's have sauces in plastic pots.' The video was posted over the summer, and fans still can't get enough. Kuiper spoke to Good Morning America about the hack this week, explaining that she and her friend came up with the idea in high school while trying to figure out how they could drive and dip her fries at the same time. The mom said the technique has become somewhat of a family tradition. 'My husband Eric and I always opened the ketchup packets on the way home from McDonalds so that our kiddo could have nice hot salty fries dipped in ketchup, and now shes 22 and still opens ketchup that way,' Kuiper said. 'It always seems that the most simple things blow up on social media. I create all the amazing recipes, but the ketchup packet was the one thats exploded.' A TikTok comedian has offered a glimpse at what it was really like going to school in Australia for 90s kids after sharing 'relatable' videos about students and teachers. Millie Ford, from Sydney, has more than 39million 'likes' on TikTok for her amusing videos highlighting the various types of quirky teachers and student cliques most schoolkids from the 90s and early 2000s could relate to. Her 'spot-on' impressions include a teacher staring at a student until they stop talking during a lesson and a millennial schoolgirl listening to pirated LimeWire music on her iPod Nano while waiting for the bus. The 25-year-old has been praised for accurately portraying school life Down Under, including a primary school kid drawing a 2cm margin on every new page and students watching Round the Twist on a projector screen in class. Scroll down for videos Millie Ford, from Sydney, has more than 39million 'likes' on TikTok for her amusing videos highlighting the various types of quirky teachers and student cliques (left of a teacher looking at a student interrupting a class and right of a millennial listening to pirated music) The 25-year-old has been praised for accurately portraying school life Down Under, ranging from a substitute teacher who 'can't control the class' to a primary school kid drawing a 2cm margin on every new page In one video with more than one million views, she reenacted a teacher who was in the middle of answering a student's question when she noticed two girls at the back of the room having a conversation. The video shows the teacher intensely looking at her watch as she waited for the girls to realise they were interrupting the class. 'Have we finished the conversation ladies? Sorry are we interrupting something? Perhaps one of you ladies like to answer the question for everyone?' the teacher said. 'You have no idea what we're talking about because you're too busy having a conversation... I'm trying to teach a lesson here. So Tara, stand up, pack up your things and come and sit next to me.' In another video, she pretended to be a teacher putting Round the Twist on a projector screen so her students can watch while they enjoy free pizzas. Millie's best Aussie school impressions 1. Teacher staring intensely at a student who's talking until they stop 2. Substitute teacher struggling to 'control' a noisy class while their teacher is away 3. Student listening to pirated music on their iPod Nano while waiting for bus 4. Student cries in their bedroom while listening to pirated LimeWire music 5. Teacher struggling to write on a whiteboard after marker dries out 6. Teacher makes students pick up rubbish before they're allowed to go to recess 7. Students being treated to pizza as teacher puts on Round the Twist on a projector to watch 8. Teachers that love to interrupt classrooms to speak to other staff and wave to students 9. Teachers who whenever they're sick make their class read or watch movies 10. Teachers who stand too close when helping student with their work Advertisement Millie also reenacted a primary school kid drawing a perfect 2cm margin in the page of her notebook In other clips she mocked a school teacher who would stare at a student who's talking in the middle of a lesson until they stopped, while she pretended to be a substitute teacher In other clips, Millie mocked a schoolgirl from 2009 obsessing over pirated music. 'It's 2009, you lock yourself in your room and listen to your pirated LimeWire music because no one gets you,' she wrote. She also mocks a substitute teacher who's struggling to 'control' the noisy kids. 'Settle down. Boys at the back, this is the fifth time I've asked you to be quiet. What's your name? Luke? Alright Luke come here please, you come sit next to me so I can keep an eye on you. Guys stop laughing please,' she said. Millie also reenacted a primary school kid drawing a perfect 2cm margin in the page of her notebook. Millie has gone viral on TikTok for her hilarious portrayals of Australian school teachers In one TikTok, Millie portrayed how there was always one teacher so loud that students could always hear coming down the hallway - no matter how far away she was. She can be seen stomping down the stairwell and laughing hysterically as she pretends to chat with another teacher whilst her lanyard full of various keys sways from side to side. In another video she mimicked the quirky but beloved art teacher nearly all Aussies found themselves in a class with. Speaking in a high-pitched voice and wearing a bizarre array of clothing, she filmed herself complaining about students who left dirty paintbrushes in the sink - all while having splashes of paint on her face. She is seen pretending to be the teacher that always interrupts classes while students are in the middle of a test The 25-year-old hilariously mocked teachers and students at Aussie schools and now has more than 350,000 followers on TikTok 'Boys and girls I've just been down the back and I've found these paintbrushes left in the sink. Someone hasn't cleaned these properly, there's paint on the ends,' the teacher dubbed 'Bronwyn' said. 'Who did that? Who left them in the sink?' She also filmed a parody of a teacher who loved to interrupt a class in the midst of an exam. Popping her head around the doorway and winking to the students working, Millie knocked on the door as she asked a fellow teacher how they were running their test. 'Sorry Ms Simpson I can see you guys are doing your test, we're about to do ours,' she says as she grins guiltily and waves to the students. Some of Ms Ford's viral videos show her mocking art teachers, staff who are sick and students fighting over formal dresses Ms Ford is seen depicting the odd art teacher students often found themselves being taught by She then covers her face with her folder as she asks the teacher a question about the test before jokingly instructing the students to 'get back to work!'. In another relatable video Millie forced all her students to stay behind until they'd picked up ten pieces of rubbish - a type of teacher most Aussies know too well. Millie, while pretending to be a student, then picked up one piece of rubbish before tearing it into ten smaller bits. One of her most popular videos depicts a cringeworthy conversation between a student and the year's 'popular girl' regarding their formal dresses. 'I just find it weird because I was thinking of wearing a strapless green dress and suddenly you post about wearing one,' the supposed popular girl said. 'I'm just really weird about people copying me. So just in case I do think of wearing it do you think you could possibly return yours?'. Many have applauded her for her accurate portrayal of school in Australia. 'You are the funniest and most relatable girl I've ever seen,' one wrote., while another added: 'How are you spot on with every detail?' A Bondi cafe that launched its popular cookie dough mix in Woolworths stores has sold out of stock in only one day. Bennett St Dairy is known for serving specialty coffee and fresh food, but the pre-packaged cookie dough has become the cafe's cult favourite among customers. Co-founder James Meek, 38, told Daily Mail Australia he received the 'unexpected' call from Woolworths earlier this year to discuss a possible partnership trial. He said the interest likely sparked after the cafe started stocking the 500g packs of cookie dough in smaller retailers - including Romeo's IGA. Customers can choose from the original cookie dough or white chocolate and macadamia dookie cough for $13 for 500g. Bennett St Dairy is known for serving specialty coffee and fresh food, but the pre-packaged cookie dough has become the cafe's cult favourite among customers Customers can choose from the original cookie dough or white chocolate and macadamia dookie cough for $13 for 500g (pictured) Co-founder James Meek, 38, told Daily Mail Australia he received the 'unexpected' call from Woolworths earlier this year to discuss a possible partnership trial. Within one week of launching the cookie dough sold out The huge chunk of cookie dough makes between eight small to one giant cookie, allowing customers to decide for themselves how big or small they'd like the cookies to be. Across participating Woolworths stores James said the cafe was selling 300 packets of the cookie dough per week. 'We were surprised from the response because we're not a huge marketing machine, simply a small business,' James said. 'But we're thankful for the support from our loyal Sydney customers.' Last year the business introduced a delivery service at the start of the Covid-19 crisis after James and his business partner Cliff Baskin, 34, shared a post on Instagram stating they are selling excess cookie dough. The business sold 100 kilograms of dough in only two hours and soon decided to offer the new delivery service to customers. The huge chunk of cookie dough makes between eight small to one giant cookie, allowing customers to decide for themselves how big or small they'd like the cookies to be Across participating Woolworths stores James said the cafe was selling 300 packets of the cookie dough per week The popular cookie dough is only available in certain suburbs across Sydney, including Neutral Bay, Dee Why, Alexandria, Gordon, Lane Cove, Hornsby and Bondi Junction The popular cookie dough is only available in certain suburbs across Sydney, including Neutral Bay, Dee Why, Alexandria, Gordon, Lane Cove, Hornsby and Bondi Junction. The cookie dough comes with easy-to-follow cooking instructions and will take no longer than 15 minutes to bake in the oven. It's recommended to remove the cookie dough from the fridge 45 minutes before baking in the oven. Those who don't live close to participating Woolworths' stores can purchase the cookie dough via the Bennett St Dairy for $12 with an added service fee. The cookie dough comes with easy-to-follow cooking instructions and will take no longer than 15 minutes to bake in the oven The popular cookie dough is only available in certain suburbs across Sydney, including Neutral Bay, Dee Why, Alexandria, Gordon, Lane Cove, Hornsby and Bondi Junction Where can you purchase the cookie dough? The cookie dough can be bought for $13 from the following Woolworths' supermarket store locations Gordon Alexandria Beecroft Glenrose Leichhardt Marketplace Marrickville Metro Miranda Neutral Bay Village Thornleigh Warriewood Mona Vale Dee Why East gardens Hornsby Caringbah Balgowlah (Manly Vale) Frenchs Forest Woden Neutral Bay Warringah Mall Bondi Junction St Ives Double Bay Dickson Narrabeen Lane Cove Advertisement After sharing the news on social media, customers flooded the comments with words of praise and support. 'Good on you legends!' one person wrote, another added: 'No way, the cookies are the best!' 'Come on, we need this in Melbourne,' a third added. McDonald's Australia is now offering five-cent menu items - including a Cheeseburger, large fries or a small McCafe drink. Diners can get their hands on the bargain buys when they order and pay for the item via the MyMacca's app using a Visa card. However, the deal works at participating stores for new app users only - as the limited edition promotion runs until Thursday, October 14. McDonald's Australia is now offering five-cent menu items - including a Cheeseburger, large fries or a small McCafe drink Diners can get their hands on the bargain buys when they order and pay for the item via the MyMacca's app using a Visa card For just five cents, customers can choose between a Cheeseburger, large fries or a small McCafe beverage, including a coffee or a frappe. The rare deal comes just a week after the fast food restaurant brought back its fancy wagyu beef burgers after disappearing from its menu two years ago. Diners can now enjoy a fancy take on a classic Macca's burger, made from 100 per cent Australian wagyu beef. The deluxe burger features wagyu beef, a tasty rasher of bacon, grilled onions, signature sauce and homegrown produce including tomato slices, crisp lettuce and Aussie Jack cheese. The fast food restaurant has sourced more than 170,000kg of premium wagyu beef from farms across Australia. The rare deal comes just a week after the fast food restaurant brought back its fancy wagyu beef burgers after disappearing from its menu two years ago 'We are thrilled to be bringing back our much-loved Wagyu Beef Burger,' Amanda Milios, McDonald's Australia's brand manager, said. 'We know this is a favourite for many of our customers who are looking for a delicious, more premium lunch or dinner option. 'As part of our continued support for the local agriculture industry, Macca's is proud to have sourced over 170,000 kilograms of premium F1 Wagyu beef from more than 100 Aussie farms. 'We've been celebrating and serving great-tasting, home-grown ingredients to our customers from farms across the country for 50 years and know there's huge demand for the taste of Wagyu beef.' The Wagyu Beef Burger is available until Tuesday, October 19 in McDonald's restaurants nationwide, including via Drive-Thru, McDelivery or the app. The burger comes just days after Macca's launched its much anticipated Pokemon Happy Meal range, with 25 brand new trading cards to collect (picture of what the Happy Meal looks like overseas) The burger comes just days after Macca's launched its much anticipated Pokemon Happy Meal range, with 25 brand new trading cards to collect. The fast food restaurant has brought its 'most requested' Happy Meal collaboration to Australian shores after its launch proved to be a huge hit overseas. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the gaming franchise, fans will be treated to four official Pokemon Trading Card Game cards with every Happy Meal purchase. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be in New York today to hold a meeting with the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are making their first public trip since moving to California last year, will join the mayor and the Governor of New York Kathy Hochul at the One World Observatory. The observatory is located on floors 100-102 of the One World Trade Center, which is America's tallest building and the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. When in New York, Harry, 37, and Meghan, 40, will also broadcast from Central Park for the Global Citizen Live event on Saturday, as they 'continue their urgent work with world leaders in the pursuit of global vaccine equity to end the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere,' said the organisation's website. The outing marks the first occasion the duo have appeared in public together since stepping back from royal duties and moving to California last year. Its thought they won't be taking their children, Archie, two, and Lilibet, three months, to the events. It comes as Harry today welcomed Google into his Travalyst sustainable travel initiative in a move that will raise eyebrows given his vocal criticism of big tech. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (pictured) will be in New York today to hold a meeting with the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio Finding Freedom author Omid Scobie said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are making their first public trip since moving to California, will join the mayor (pictured) and the Governor of New York Kathy Hochul at the One World Observatory The Duke of Sussex has previously slammed US technology giants as 'incredibly powerful and consolidated gatekeepers' and criticised disinformation being spread on social media about issues like climate change. Travalyst said partnering with Google, which also owns video sharing site YouTube, was a 'significant step forward' as it praised the firm for its 'commitment to helping consumers make more sustainable travel choices'. Now Harry partners with Google: Prince's eco-travel firm Travalyst joins forces with global tech giant ByRory Tingle, Home Affairs Correspondent Prince Harry today welcomed Google into his Travalyst sustainable travel initiative in a move that will raise eyebrows given his vocal criticism of big tech. The Duke of Sussex has previously slammed US technology giants as 'incredibly powerful and consolidated gatekeepers' and criticised disinformation being spread on social media about issues like climate change. Travalyst said partnering with Google, which also owns video sharing site YouTube, was a 'significant step forward' as it praised the firm for its 'commitment to helping consumers make more sustainable travel choices'. Following the storming of the US Capitol in January, Harry criticised social media companies for their 'hands-off' towards disinformation. YouTube itself has repeatedly come in for direct criticism from researchers for hosting falsehoods. Harry told Harpers Bazaar: 'It is widely acknowledged that social media played a role in the genocide in Myanmar and was used as a vehicle to incite violence against the Rohingya people, which is a human rights issue. 'And in Brazil, social media provided a conduit for misinformation which ultimately brought destruction to the Amazon, which is an environmental and global health issue. 'In a way, taking a predominately hands-off approach to problems for so long is itself an exercise in power.' In January last year, US non-profit Avaaz found that YouTube's algorithm was promoting videos refuting the reality of man-made climate change. Many of these videos were accompanied by adverts, meaning the site was effectively 'monetising' global warming denialism, the report said. YouTube was also among the platforms blamed for spreading false claims of fraud prior to the US election. It attracted similar criticism during the 2020 elections in Myanmar after videos spread on the platform claiming election interference. YouTube was slammed for its light-touch approach and only appeared to block false election claims that people complained about, or if the material otherwise violated its broader guidelines on hate speech and harassment, researchers said. 'When it comes to hate speech and disinformation in Myanmar, YouTube is the new frontier,' said Victoire Rio, an adviser at a civil society group studying social media, said at the time. YouTube did not respond to those criticisms but said it consistently enforced its guidelines and had deleted more than 1.8 million channels for policy violations in the third quarter of 2020, including more than 54,000 for hate speech. Advertisement Following the storming of the US Capitol in January, Harry criticised social media companies for their 'hands-off' towards disinformation. YouTube itself has repeatedly come in for direct criticism from researchers for hosting falsehoods. During today's visit, Harry and Meghan will meet Mr de Blasio and his wife, the first lady of New York, writer and activist Chirlane McCray, and their son Dante de Blasio. One World Trade Centre was built on the site of the original twin towers and the trip comes just two weeks after the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In May, the Sussexes acted as Campaign Chairs of Vax Live, which 'aims to inspire vaccine confidence worldwide and help get the COVID-19 vaccines to everyone, everywhere' - according to Global Citizen. Saturday's event will be part of a number of shows being held in cities as varied as London to Lagos by the organisation, with artists like Ed Sheeran, Sir Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Metallica and Coldplay scheduled to perform. The Global Citizen Live campaign is calling on G7 countries and the European Union to share at least one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses with those most in need and support calls for a waiver on vaccine intellectual property rights. It also marks the return to work for the Duke and Duchess, who have taken several months off following the birth of their daughter Lilibet in May. Meghan has previously made several high profile trips to New York to visit friends in recent years. The Duchess celebrated the impending birth of her firstborn son Archie by flying to the Big Apple by private jet in 2019, provoking outcry with the five-day baby shower celebration. Around 20 friends attended, including Serena Williams and Amal Clooney. Months later, she visited the state again for a flying trip away to support her close friend Serena Williams in the US Open final. It's far from the first time that the couple have spoken out about vaccine equity. Harry had his name in lights as he was greeted with wild cheers and a standing ovation by a rapturous crowd during a speech at a Global Citizen star-studded concert in Los Angeles in May, while his then heavily pregnant wife Meghan stayed at home. The royal told the audience of vaccinated frontline workers 'every single one of you are awesome' before urging them to 'look beyond ourselves' as he joined A-list Hollywood celebrities at Vax Live - an initiative to encourage rich countries to share vaccines. Harry delivered a five-minute address calling for vaccines to be shared with poorer countries, which was regularly punctuated by more rapturous cheers. Speaking in a markedly different accent than his previous Queen's English, Harry said: 'We must look beyond ourselves with empathy and compassion for those we know, and those we don't. We need to lift up all of humanity and make sure that no person or community is left behind.' To mark their son Archie's second birthday in May the couple appealed to well-wishers wanting to celebrate the anniversary to donate money to pay for Covid vaccinations in disadvantaged countries. The Sussexes said in a statement earlier this year: 'Over the past year, our world has experienced pain, loss and struggle together. Now we need to recover and heal together. We can't leave anyone behind. 'We will all benefit, we will all be safer, when everyone everywhere has equal access to the vaccine. When in New York, Harry, 37, and Meghan (pictured together in March 2019), 40, will also broadcast from Central Park for the Global Citizen Live event on Saturday 'We must pursue equitable vaccine distribution, and in that, restore faith in our common humanity. This mission couldn't be more critical or important.' Global Citizen describes itself as a movement of 'engaged citizens who are using their collective voice to end extreme poverty by 2030'. Its website states: 'Global Citizens learn about the systemic causes of extreme poverty, take action on those issues, and earn rewards for their actions as part of a global community committed to lasting change.' 'Their mission is to build a movement of 100M action-taking Global Citizens to help achieve our vision of ending extreme poverty by 2030.' The appearance from the royal couple comes after they graced the cover of Time magazine as they were named among the world's 100 most influential people. Prince Harry had his name in lights as he was greeted with wild cheers and a standing ovation by a rapturous crowd during a speech at a Global Citizen star-studded concert in Los Angeles in May (pictured) Prince Harry and Meghan said they were 'humbled' to be the cover stars of Time magazine's 2021 list in a feature that includes an 'awkward' photoshoot and a gushing tribute from a friend who praises them for 'giving a voice to the voiceless' and 'running toward the struggle' rather than living a quiet life in their California mansion. The US publication released a glossy and heavily-airbrushed cover on Harry's 37th birthday showing the Duke of Sussex stood behind his wife with his arms on her right shoulder in the 'icons' section of the annual line-up alongside Naomi Osaka, Dolly Parton, Britney Spears and Alexei Navalny. One critic claimed the cover photo reflected the power dynamic in the relationship, because Meghan is in front of her husband, tweeting: 'Wow, this photo speaks volumes. There is no hiding who's in control'. But Time's picture editor, Dilys Ng, who made the final decision on the cover image, said the portrait captures the Sussexes' 'powerful dynamic as equal partners'. The couple responded to being named on the list of the world's most distinguished people with a post on their Archewell website that read: 'Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are not only humbled to be part of this years TIME 100 through the words of friend and partner Jose Andres, but to also write in praise of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the publications annual list of Most Influential People.' Meghan has previously made several high profile trips to New York to visit friends in recent years, including her $500,000 baby shower The glossy photos of the Sussexes are accompanied by a profile, branded sycophantic by critics, written by their friend and chef Mr Andres, whose charity World Central Kitchen is loved by the Sussexes and supported financially by their Archewell foundation in India and the Caribbean. He wrote: 'In a world where everyone has an opinion about people they don't know, the duke and duchess have compassion for the people they don't know. They don't just opine. They run toward the struggle.' Mr Andres said the couple are 'blessed through birth and talent, and burned by fame', adding: 'It would be much safer to enjoy their good fortune and stay silent. That's not what Harry and Meghan do, or who they are'. On the cover Harry is dressed in all black and Meghan in all white on a terrace at their $14.65million mansion and then in green smiling at eachother and holding hands while walking through their estate in Montecito, California. In another image they are in matching grey office-style clothes next to a window in outfits chosen by celebrity stylists Clare and Nina Hallwroth, who have recently dressed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, in pictures taken by Serbian Pari Dukovic. But one critic, a fellow photographer, tweeted: 'Terrible retouching job. They look CGI'. Others wrote: 'This photo looks photoshopped. Also, the way they are positioned is very revealing: it's the Meghan show and Harry is just the supporting actor'. One critic said: 'Harry looks completely awkward peering behind his wife like this'. A disciplinarian education at Gordonstoun offered a rudderless young Prince Philip routine and fired his entrepreneurial spirit, a new film about his life suggests. In Wednesday's BBC One film Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers, members of the Windsor family and European royals share anecdotes about the Duke of Edinburgh's life including his early years at the tough boarding school in Moray. Philip attended the independent school, which still exists today, in the 1930s after his mother was sent to a sanatorium and he was exiled to the UK. Among the memories shared were those of Prince Bernhard of Baden, Prince Philips great nephew, who revealed his grandfather Berthold, who was married to the Dukes second sister Theodora, had received letters from a teenage Philip encouraging him to help him make money from selling matches. Scroll down for video Prince Bernhard of Baden appeared in Wednesday's BBC One film Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers discussing the Duke's school years at Gordonstoun. The European royal, Prince Philip's great nephew, said the strict Scottish boarding school offered the Duke stability because he 'was in exile, he had no home and was penniless' when he arrived there Prince Bernhard, who was born in Germany, and is the eldest son of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, reveals how his grandfather - the Duke of Edinburgh's brother-in-law - received letters discussing a deal he'd struck with the school's barber to buy matches The letters saw the teenage prince outlining plans to import 5,000 matches. Pictured: stamps on the letter sent to Prince Bernhard's grandfather, Berthold in the late 30s One of the two letters shown in the documentary, which show Philip's schoolboy signature. Clearly keen to get his business deal off the ground he signs off with a PS, saying the barber visits 'every Tuesday' The three-page letter outlines the Duke's plans to sell matches after sparking the interest of the Gordonstoun hairdresser Prince Bernhard discusses how the Scottish school offered stability to the consort-to-be, saying: 'Prince Philip was in exile, he had no home and was penniless.' In the film, Prince Charles, who also attended the school along with other male royals and is widely thought to have 'detested' its strict discipline, also sheds light on how hard his father's formative years were, saying: 'My father didn't talk about it a lot. It couldn't have been easy. I mean, his sisters did tell me a little bit but it must have been very difficult. 'He had to become very self reliant and it must have shaped his outlook on life.' Prince Edward, said his education had moulded his father's life, adding the establishment offered the young Duke of Edinburgh an outlet for his adventurous side. The royal explained: That was Gordonstoun - unless you got involved with different things, you never know where your passion really lies.' 'The idea of being able to go off and do all sorts of adventures while you're at school and be able to build up those experiences - that would appeal to him. If you look at all the other activities he has got involved in, he was always taking up new things.' Princess Anne's son Peter Phillips, who also a student at the school, added: 'I know he certainly would have taken up any opportunities that school would have thrown to him. His formative years spent at Gordonstoun, where many other male royals including Prince Charles and Prince Edward, shaped the life of the Duke of Edinburgh, say his family Difficult start: Prince Charles said childhood hadn't been always a positive experience for his father, saying: 'My father didn't talk about it a lot. It couldn't have been easy. I mean, his sisters did tell me a little bit but it must have been very difficult.' Prince Edward told the film's makers that the school had encouraged the Duke's sense of exploration, saying: 'The idea of being able to go off and do all sorts of adventures while you're at school and be able to build up those experiences - that would appeal to him.' 'We went to Gordonstoun so he was always very engaged with how we were enjoying school.' Revealing an insight into the Duke of Edinburgh's interests during his time there, Germany's Prince Bernhard shared two letters in the Prince's hand that were trying to persuade his grandfather, the Prince's brother-in-law, to sell matches to the school's barber. The light-hearted letters read: 'Dear Berthold, I hope I'm not disturbing you but I bring you quite good news. The hairdresser who comes to cut our hair heard about your matches from me and said he could order 5,000 of them. The letters give you the Duke's character 'in a nutshell', says Prince Bernhard, pictured 'He would like to know if you could send him, all prices underlined, and I will give them to him when he comes.' Prince Bernhard, who was born in Germany, and is the eldest son of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, and Archduchess Valerie of Austria, concludes that the letters offer a strong sense of who Prince Philip was during his adolescence: '[The letter] shows his sense of family, his curiosity, and his entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, it gives you the character of the Duke as a teenager.' While Prince Philip thrived at the Scottish independent school, Prince Charles famously hated his time at Gordonstoun. The Queen and Prince Philip's decision to send him there - and keep him at the school when he begged his mother to bring him home - is widely known to have scarred the Prince of Wales and featured heavily in Season 2 of The Crown. A prison sentence, was how Charles later described it, as well as Colditz with kilts. While William Boyd, the best-selling novelist and screenwriter and a Gordonstoun contemporary of Charles, called it Like penal servitude', adding: 'I happen to know, from his own lips, that Prince Charles utterly detested it.' Lady Louise steps into the spotlight! Prince Edward's daughter, 17, takes centre stage in Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers as she leads The Firm in paying tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh Lady Louise Windsor took centre stage in a television documentary tonight as the teenager lead The Firm in paying tribute to her grandfather Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers, which aired tonight at 9pm on BBC One, featured interviews from all of the Queen, 95, and Philip's children - the Prince of Wales, 72, the Princess Royal, 71, the Duke of York, 61, and the Earl of Wessex, 57. The Duke's adult grandchildren, the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, also provided their personal memories of the royal during the film. It marked the first time Lady Louise, 17, had taken part in such a film, and a step into the spotlight for the daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex. Lady Louise Windsor, 17, took centre stage in a television documentary tonight the teenager lead The Firm in paying tribute to her grandfather Duke of Edinburgh It marked the first time Lady Louise had taken part in such a film, and a step into the spotlight for the daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex (pictured with her parents in the documentary) During the film, she recalled her close bond with the Duke and their shared-love of carriage driving, as well as her decision to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. She confidently told the camera: 'There was certainly an element of making my grandfather proud and honouring him by taking part in the award that has been so much of his life's work. I definitely hope I have made him proud.' Interviews were filmed before and after Prince Philip's death in April, and were conducted separately, with Prince Harry's tribute filmed in the US where he lives having stepped back from royal duty. During the film, the royals discussed the Duke of Edinburgh's love for carriage driving, with Sophie saying: 'My daughter has also got involved in carriage driving. it wasn't something that was fousted on her. She showed an interest.' Lady Louise, is a keen equestrian and, like her late grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh, has competed in carriage-driving competitions. The duke was synonymous with carriage-driving and had been designing the vehicles since the 1970s. Reports have said Lady Louise inherited the carriage after the duke's death, although this has not been confirmed by Buckingham Palace. Advertisement A documentary on the life of Prince Philip, aired on BBC One on Wednesday, offers a rare glimpse inside the Duke of Edinburgh's private library at Buckingham Palace - which remains exactly as he left it before his death. In Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers, members of staff and senior royals paid tribute to the Duke - who died in April at the age of 99 - and gave an insight into his private quarters. The footage revealed a library boasting an impressive collection of literature, from cookery books to political memoirs and a biography of his beloved mother Princess Alice of Battenberg. Prince Philip also adorned his study with artwork and mementos from his travels around the world, keeping in it a photograph of the Queen and a model of HMS Magpie, the only vessel he commanded. Last night's documentary saw royal archivist Alexandra Mccreary offer a tour of his library at the palace, saying: 'I think he read a lot so that he could converse with other people. He liked to engage, he liked to challenge.' Scroll down for video In BBC documentary Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers, which aired last night at 9pm, members of staff and senior royals paid tribute to the Duke - who died in April at the age of 99 - and gave an insight into his private quarters. Pictured: 1) Biography of his mother; 2) Books on birds and wildlife; 3) Books on the royal family; 4) His own writing; 5) Side table with treasures from his travels; 6) Hexagonal desk to foster discussion; 7) Cookery books; 8) World War Two books; 9) Political books; 10) Model of HMS Magpie; 11) Side table with portrait of the Queen; 12) Figurines of political figures from the 40s and 50s An upcoming documentary on the life of Prince Philip gives a rare glimpse inside the Duke's private study at Buckingham Palace, which remains exactly as he left it before his death. The Duke of Edinburgh, who died in April at the age of 99, conducted his affairs from a private office that connects to the office of his private secretary. In the BBC documentary Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers, airing tomorrow at 9pm, members of staff and senior royals pay tribute to the Duke and give an insight into his private quarters. 1) A biography of his mother Philip, who was born Prince of Greece and Denmark, kept a book about his beloved mother Princess Alice of Battenberg, alongside other royal biographies. The Duke was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who welcomed her son on the dining table of a villa in Corfu. Shortly after Prince Philip's arrival, the royal family were exiled and, aged just 18 months, the future Duke of Edinburgh was bundled into a makeshift cot an orange crate as the family escaped on a British warship. Owing to his age, and status as the only son, Philip grew up apart from his sisters and his mother Princess Alice was largely absent from Prince Philip's childhood. She survived revolution and exile, mental breakdown and religious mania, evincing great personal courage to protect a Jewish family during the war before turning her back on the trappings of royal life to become a nun. Alice was a loving mother but enforced separation from her young son helped to forge Prince Philip's self-reliant, sometimes cussedly independent spirit. 2) Books on birds and wildlife Stacked on the shelves of Philip's library are books on wildlife and birds, a keen interest of the royal throughout his entire life. Prince Philip's fascination with birdwatching began in 1956 during a voyage on the Royal Yacht Britannia between New Zealand and Antarctica when he started to photograph and identify native seabirds Stacked on the shelves of Philip's library are books on wildlife and birds, one of the royal's most enduring interests. In 2020, Prince William took over from the Duke as Patron for the British Trust for Ornithology, which aims to empower communities to protect local bird species and their natural habitats. The Duke of Edinburgh was Patron of the BTO - which aims to ensure wildlife is preserved for generations to come - for over thirty years, and was a lifelong ornithology enthusiast. Prince Philip's fascination with bird-watching began in 1956 during a voyage on the Royal Yacht Britannia between New Zealand and Antarctica when he started to photograph and identify native seabirds. 3) Books on the royal family Philip, who was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, read histories of the British Royal Family - which he joined when he married the Queen in 1947. A staff member is pictured pointing out Philip's histories of the royals Philip, who was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, also read histories of the British Royal Family - which he joined when he married the Queen in 1947. In the February before his marriage, Philip renounced his right to the Greek and Danish thrones to become a British subject, taking his mother's surname Mountbatten. On the eve of his wedding at Westminster Abbey, he was designated a royal highness and was created a Knight of the Garter, Baron Greenwich, Earl of Merioneth, and Duke of Edinburgh. The couple's first child and the future king of England, Prince Charles, was born in 1948, shortly joined by The Princess Royal - thought to be Philip's favourite child - Prince Andrew and, later, Prince Edward. 4) His own writing The Duke of Edinburgh published 14 books on various subjects from birds and conservation, philosophy and carriage-driving throughout his life - many of which featured on his library shelves The Duke of Edinburgh published 14 books on various subjects from birds and conservation, philosophy and carriage-driving throughout his life - many of which featured on his library shelves. In 1983, he published a series of essays in a book titled In A Question of Balance, sharing his take on issues from religion to nuclear power, and Marxism to social responsibility. Covering one of his favourite subjects - carriage driving - the Duke released a book titled Competition Carriage Driving in 1992, detailing rules of combined driving events. Four years later, he penned another book on dressage, this time discussing and explaining explain the meaning of the FEI rules for driven dressage. 5) Side table with treasures from his travels On a side table in his library are various gifts and mementos from engagements across the globe, including 229 visits to 67 Commonwealth countries on solo visits without The Queen over a 67-year period between 1949 and 2016 Philip, who completed a total of 22,219 solo engagements and thousands more by the side of his wife, became the Queen's consort when she acceded to the throne in 1952 and completed his last public event in August 2017. On a side table in his library are various gifts and mementos from engagements across the globe, including 229 visits to 67 Commonwealth countries on solo visits without The Queen over a 67-year period between 1949 and 2016. Among Philip's various travel destinations was Vanuatu, a remote South Pacific village that worshipped the Duke as the reincarnation of an ancient warrior. People from the Yakel village on the Vanuatu island of Tanna have for decades venerated Philip. The Prince Philip Movement is believed to have started in the late 1970s following a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh to Vanuatu in 1974. 6) Hexagonal desk to foster discussion In the middle of the duke's impressive library is a hexagonal desk, used to discuss the various works of literature that filled his book shelves In the middle of the Duke's impressive library is a hexagonal desk, used to discuss the various works of literature that filled his book shelves. According to the BBC documentary last night, the duke 'read a lot so he could converse with other people. He liked to engage, he liked to challenge'. The Duke had a love of literature and upon his death the Duchess of Cornwall shared a tribute with 'great fellow reader' Prince Philip as she launched the second season of her online book club. The Duke of Edinburgh, an avid reader, was the proud patron of Booktrust, the UK's largest children reading charity, for several years before passing the role on to Camilla in 2011. 7) Cookery books In Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers the Countess of Wessex revealed that the royal loved the Hairy Bikers cookery show and spoke about his love of barbecuing. On the left side of his book shelf, the duke kept cookery books In last night's documentary, senior members of the Royal Family came together to share memories that reveal Prince Philip's domestic side including his keen interest in cookery shows. So it's no surprise that his library features various cookery books including one by Observer food columnist Nigel Slater. In Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers the Countess of Wessex revealed that the royal also loved the Hairy Bikers cookery show and spoke about his love of barbecuing. 'Cooking is something that I love talking to him about and he loves watching cookery programmes. Hairy Bikers I think is one of his favourites.' 'He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,' said Prince Charles. 'And if I ever tried to do it, he I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly so [he'd say] 'Go away.' ' 'Every barbecue I've ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,' added William. 'We go on barbecues and there's no chef, there's not anyone else He's definitely a dab hand at the barbecue. 8) World War Two books Prince Philip's attachment to the Armed Forces predated even his 73-year marriage to his beloved wife the Queen and it's no surprise that his library is littered with books about the Second World War. The duke had a collection of political figurines including L-R; Neville Chamberlain; Earl of Kilmuir; Churchill and Clement Attlee Prince Philip's attachment to the Armed Forces pre-dated even his 73-year marriage to his beloved wife and it's no surprise that his library is littered with books about the Second World War. The Duke joined the Royal Navy in 1939 the year the Second World War broke out - when he was still a teenager. By 1942, he had risen to the rank of First Lieutenant after bravely fighting in the Battle of Crete and the conflict at Cape Matapan. His glittering career saw him amass a chestful of medals which he proudly displayed at numerous functions. The awards included decorations for bravery in the 1939-45 war, where he distracted Nazi pilots during a 1943 bombing raid by launching a raft with smoke floats. He was also Mentioned in Dispatches for his 'alertness' in helping to spot enemy ships. And in 1945, Philip helped to rescue servicemen who had to ditch into the ocean after their Avenger bomber was hit by enemy fire. But after the Queen acceded to the throne in 1952, four years after their wedding, Philip had to painfully give up his career in the Navy. 9) Political books Demonstrated by his collection of political figurines (L-R; Geoffrey Howe, Nye Bevan, Rab Butler, General Montgomery) the duke had a keen interest in politics and has been outspoken throughout the years and read widely on the subject Demonstrated by his collection of Prime Minister figurines, the Duke had a keen interest in politics and has been outspoken throughout the years and read widely on the subject. 'He's spoken frankly that the purpose of monarchy is to serve the people, not the other way around,' royal expert Carolyn Harris told Town and Country magazine. While he had an interest in politics, the duke was not always politically correct - and he was known to the public for his unashamedly non-PC comments. The Duke realised his own capacity for making gaffes, and even had a word for it, Dontopedalogy'. This he described as, 'The science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practised for a good many years . . . 10) Model of HMS Magpie On his bookcase sits a model of the HMS Magpie, the only vessel commanded by Prince Philip, who took command at the age of just 29 and was nicknamed 'Dukey' by his men On his bookcase sits a model of the HMS Magpie, the only vessel commanded by Prince Philip, who took command at the age of just 29 and was nicknamed 'Dukey' by his men. Following his marriage in 1947 he was stationed in Malta and given command of the frigate HMS Magpie three years later. He was promoted to commander in 1952, though his naval career ended in 1951. Philip had gone from naval college to his own command in just 12 years, but by 1951 George VI was so ill that it was clear Princess Elizabeth's life was about to undergo a fundamental change. She would need her husband's full-time support. But Philip couldn't bring himself to quit the Navy completely. When he gave up active service in July, 1951, it was called 'indefinite leave'. He was still on it at his death. 11) Side table with portrait of the Queen The duke kept a photograph of his wife, whom he enjoyed 74 years of marriage with, Her Majesty The Queen on a side table in his library The Duke kept a photograph of his wife, whom he enjoyed 74 years of marriage with, Her Majesty The Queen on a side table in his library. Princess Elizabeth and Philip reportedly first met in 1934 at the wedding of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark and Prince George, the Duke of Kent, and fell in love five years later, at a pivotal meeting at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited with their two daughters. Their engagement of was officially announced on July 9, 1947 and the wedding took place just four months later on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey. In a letter to her cousin and lifelong friend the Honourable Margaret Rhodes, the Queen said of her life as a newlywed: 'I'm blissfully happy, in case you weren't aware of the fact and I'm enjoying being married to the best and nicest man in the world.' 12) Figurines of political figures from the 40s and 50s In typical humorous fashion, the Duke owned large figurines of politicians and other high-profile figures, from the 1940s and 1950s, with large oversized heads including L-R; Neville Chamberlain; Earl of Kilmuir; Churchill and Clement Attlee In typical humorous fashion, the Duke owned large figurines of politicians and other high-profile figures, from the 1940s and 1950s, with large oversized heads. The figures, which can also be found in the Duke's private study, include Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain and Clement Attlee. The Duke was known for his cheeky sense of humour, and in his 70 years of public duty always brought a sense of fun, making members of the public, foreign dignitaries and his own family laugh and smile during outings. Even as his health worsened, His Royal Highness never lost his sense of humour and was often pictured pulling very expressive faces and laughing and joking with his wife, children and grandchildren. Prince William recalled a hilarious moment when Prince Philip was told to 'jog on, grandpa' by schoolchildren on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition. The Duke of Cambridge, 39, shared the funny anecdote in Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers on BBC One last night, saying how the cheeky students left his grandfather chuckling. Speaking on the show, William explained he was driving through the countryside with Prince Philip and other family members on a visit to Balmoral when they bumped into the schoolchildren. Prince William recalled a hilarious moment when Prince Philip was told to 'jog on, grandpa' by schoolchildren on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition. Pictured in 2004 in Crimea He said: 'We were travelling together as a family driving out in Scotland. And we came across what very obviously was some Duke of Edinburgh people, with rucksacks on, and he spotted them and stopped and wound down his window. 'He said, "Good morning how are you getting on?" To which the smallest young chap at the back effectively said, "Jog on grandpa!" 'To which my grandfather wound the window back up, drove off smiling and said to everyone in the car, "The youths of today!". 'For the purposes of this film, I thought jog on was a more appropriate way of saying it.' He added: My grandfather has a very good sense of humour.' Speaking in the BBC documentary Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers last night, Prince William, 39, recalled how Duke of Edinburgh Award participants told his grandfather to 'jog on' when he stopped to asked them how they were getting on Prince Philip created the Duke of Edinburgh's award in 1956 with the aim of encouraging young people's development through volunteering, going on adventures, learning new skills and practicing physical activities. His grand-daughter Lady Louise Windsor, 17, who also spoke in the documentary, revealed she took part in the programme to make Philip proud. What is the Duke of Edinburgh awards? The Duke of Edinburgh awards, also known as DofE, is a youth programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by Prince Philip. Over the last 65 years, the programme has expanded into 144 nations. It's aimed at self-improvements with the royal basing the programme on 'Six Declines of Modern Youth' by Kurt Hahn. At first, it was designed to attract boys who had not been interested in joining youth movements, such as Scouts, but in 1958 it was extended to include girls. The Duke of Edinburgh's Award programmes take between one and four years to complete, and they must be completed by the participant's twenty-fifth birthday. Participants must take part in the following: Volunteering: undertaking service to individuals or the community. Physical: improving in an area of sport, dance or fitness activities. Skills: developing practical and social skills and personal interests. Expedition: planning, training for, and completion of an adventurous journey in the UK or abroad. At Gold level, participants must do an additional fifth Residential section, which involves staying and working away from home for five days, doing a shared activity. Advertisement During the film, she recalled her close bond with the Duke and their shared-love of carriage driving, as well as her decision to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. She confidently told the camera: 'There was certainly an element of making my grandfather proud and honouring him by taking part in the award that has been so much of his life's work. I definitely hope I have made him proud.' 'I'd always wanted to do it because of the skills you develop as a result.' She continued: 'My favourite part was my expeditions. Just having that level of independence and self sufficiency and having that sense of achievement when it was finished. The appearance from the young royal comes mere weeks ahead of Lady Louise's 18th birthday, when she can decide whether to legally entitled to style herself Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, in the same way as her cousins are known as HRH Princess Beatrice and HRH Princess Eugenie. In the documentary, the second-in-line for the throne called his late grandfather the 'heart of the royal family,' and recalled some of the pranks the Duke of Edinburgh pulled on his family members. William revealed how the Duke of Edinburgh would get his grandchildren to hold a tube of mustard in their hands and then take the lid off when they were BBQ-ing at Balmoral. William laughingly recalled: He would squish your hands together to fire the mustard up into the ceiling. 'He used to get into a lot of trouble with my grandmother for covering most of the places where we had lunch with mustard on the ceiling. His cousin, Peter Phillips, added that the marks are still there. Charles said: 'He was always arranging silly games, the fun of having young parents was there was lots of chasing around and mad things.' Meanwhile Prince William and Harry recalled how both the Queen and Prince Philip 'love when things go wrong'. The Duke of Cambridge said: 'He enjoys playing practical jokes and foolery. He loved when things go wrong. 'My grandparents love when things go wrong. You can imagine, they have lived a life where everything has to go right the whole time, so when things go wrong, theory both chuckle. Everyone else is mortified embarrassed. They love it.' Harry said: 'I think there is an imbalance of there is everyone doing everything like, "The Duke of Edinburgh is coming, let's make sure we get everything absolutely right. Remember every single year we've got it right, let's do that." Lady Louise said she took part in the Duke of Edinburgh Award to make her grandfather proud and said she liked the expedition parts best Louise, pictured, is a keen equestrian and inherited the Duke of Edinburgh's love for carriage riding 'But the two of them are going, "I wonder if something is going to go wrong this year. How exciting." 'What I remember now is the expressions on his face to the things that went wrong. He would just sit there completely calmly and just watch us run by.' Princess Beatrice added: 'I think he has a very good observational humour but you've really got to be quick, you've really got to be paying attention. 'I think he uses humour to make people feel at ease. He is always there to break the ice as well. Meanwhile William commented: 'He's brilliant at finding amusing moments and teasing people. if you try to be too clever with him and say something a bit silly, he will jump on it.' William went on to call him 'the heart of the family', adding: 'He's always been a huge presence behind everything we've done really.' William added: 'He would always make everyone very clear where they stand. I think people find that refreshing that they know nothing else is going on. There's no games played. 'He's very honest, he's very upfront and he's very matter of fact.' Anne said her father was 'fundamentally a problem solver', adding: 'A lot of that stemmed from his early experiences and the problems of his early life.' It's probably not quite the end to their evening out that they had been expecting. Princess Michael of Kent and her husband Prince Michael, who is the Queens cousin, had dined at one of Mayfair's most exclusive private clubs yesterday. But as they were spotted leaving Oswald's on Albemarle Street in central London, the couple were approached by a beggar asking for money. It's unclear if the royal duo offered any money to the woman, who proceeded to knock on Prince Michael's car window while the couple were in their vehicle. Princess Michael of Kent and her husband Prince Michael (pictured together, centre), who is the Queens cousin, had dined at one of Mayfair's most exclusive private clubs yesterday But as they were spotted leaving Oswald's on Albemarle Street in central London, the couple (pictured left) were approached by a beggar asking for money Prince and Princess Michael, who married in 1978, were dressed in all their finery for their evening out. The Czech-born princess sported a white shirt with a black top, teamed with a matching jacket for her outfit. Adding a touch of glitz to her ensemble, the royal sported an extravagant long necklace and bold pearl earrings. She styled her curly locks into a half-up half down 'do, while wearing a smattering of glamorous makeup. Holding onto a friend with one hand, she held a grey and black patterned scarf in her other. Prince and Princess Michael (pictured centre), who married in 1978, were dressed in all their finery for their evening out Prince Michael of Kent (pictured during his evening out), 76, is a paternal cousin of the Queen Her husband - who is 53rd in the line of succession to the British throne - looked equally smart in a navy suit with an eye-catching red tie. Earlier this year, Princess Michael of Kent was reported to have fallen ill for nearly a month with blood clots. A source close to the princess claimed she had 'sought medical attention' after concerns for her health. In May, the insider told The Sun: 'It has been a worrying time for those around her. It has been difficult for those close to her to see her suffering. She's really been through it.' Princess Michael's spokesman Simon Astaire told the publication: 'I cannot comment on health issues.' It's unclear if the royal duo offered any money to the woman, who proceeded to knock on Prince Michael's car window while the couple were in their vehicle (pictured) The Czech-born princess sported a white shirt with a black top, teamed with a matching jacket for her outfit. Pictured, Prince Michael (pictured right) Adding a touch of glitz to her ensemble, the princess (pictured left) sported an extravagant long necklace and bold pearl earrings MailOnline contacted Princess Michael's representatives for comment at the time. She is understood to have had both of her Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccinations earlier this year. Earlier this year, it was decided that Britons under-30 would be offered an alternative vaccine to AstraZeneca because of the higher incidence of blood clots in recipients. However the benefits of getting the vaccine for older people still outweighed the risks because the incidence of blood clots was so low and the risk posed by coronavirus so much higher for older age groups. The princess (pictured left) styled her curly locks into a half-up half down 'do, while wearing a smattering of glamorous makeup It comes after the royal was diagnosed with coronavirus last November and suffered from 'extreme fatigue and terrible fevers'. Simon Astaire said Princess Michael tested positive for the virus after her housekeeper 'fell ill three weeks' previously, and she and her husband remained in isolation at Kensington Palace. Prince Michael of Kent, 76, is the paternal cousin of the Queen. His father, Prince George, Duke of Kent, was the younger brother of King Edward VIII and the Queen's father, King George VI. In 1978 Prince Michael married divorcee Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz in Vienna. She was then given the title Princess Michael of Kent. A climate change protester who appeared naked on This Morning today to raise awareness for environmental causes left daytime telly viewers more than a little distracted by the sight of her 'bare bottom' on the famous TV sofa. Laura Amherst, an activist for Extinction Rebellion, who dubs herself the 'topless protester' and has the twitter handle @climatet***, appeared fully naked during the interview with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby just before 11am. Preserving her modesty was a large sign that read 'No more empty target' but many of those tuning in seemed preoccupied with the fact Amherst didn't have 'a stitch on' for the appearance. Activist Laura Amherst has regularly been spotted topless at climate change protests and today she appeared on This Morning today to explain why she protests in the nude, pictured with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby The Extinction Rebellion activist makes thousands of pounds for the campaign group by showing her breasts on OnlyFans The presenters chatted to the passionate climate change protester about her unique method of raising awareness. Amherst, a Politics student, regularly shares photos of herself on OnlyFans to raise funds for Extinction Rebellion. She told the duo: 'I protest topless to help save the planet' and said she'd rather not be naked but people don't listen to her and so she's chosen a bolder way of getting their attention. On Twitter, many said the tactic hadn't worked: @NewFoundWings wrote: 'Climate change is a major issue and one that needs to be tackled, and people need to make changes and wake up...but...the main issue I am having right now, please tell me shes sitting on something on that sofa.' @ChantalMascoe asked: 'Is her bare bottom on that sofa?' One viewer said they welcomed a climate change discussion but 'the main issue I am having right now, please tell me shes sitting on something on that sofa...' The Politics student said she wished to remain 'neutral' when asked for her views on Insulate Britain, saying she was a member of Extinction Rebellion, a separate organisation Amherst told the show she'd rather not be naked but said people don't listen to her and so she's chosen a bolder way of getting their attention @Grah841 suggested topless might not be the right description, saying: 'Topless? Looks like she aint got a stitch on. Hopefully they have a towel on that sofa.' @sanspeurscot put it all rather more succinctly: 'Sweaty cheeks on the sofa this morning.' Phillip Schofield asked Amherst what she thought about Insulate Britain, who've brought the M25 to a standstill on multiple occasions in recent weeks during climate change protests. She said she wished to remain 'neutral' and highlighted her allegiance to Extinction Rebellion, a separate organisation to Insulate Britain, saying the latter 'should be held responsible for their actions'. This week, Edmund King, AA president, slammed the group's actions. He told MailOnline: 'The actions of some of these protestors storming live lanes of motorway traffic are suicidal. It appears that some of these people have a death wish. 'Their actions not only put themselves at risk but also threaten to cause multiple pile-ups and fatalities. 'We applaud the police for taking fast action against these counter-productive protests which are alienating the public, causing more emissions and putting lives at risk.' RAC road safety spokesman Simon Williams also criticised the protest as 'incredibly dangerous'. He told MailOnline: 'However well-intentioned the cause might be, blocking motorways is incredibly dangerous both to the protesters and those inside their vehicles. 'Not only will this cause disruption to commuters on their way to work, but there may be people who miss hospital appointments or worse still emergency vehicles will be delayed which could pose a threat to life.' Meghan Markle wrapped up in a black coat, polo neck and wide-legged trousers as she joined Prince Harry in New York today - despite the weather being a humid 80F in the city. The Duchess of Sussex, 40, who is living in her $14 million mansion in California, appears to have forgotten how to dress for fall on the East Coast and stepped out in a heavy outfit better suited to winter. Meghan, who is making her first official public outing with Harry since quitting the royal family, wore the heavy layers with a favourite pair of 450 Aquazzura pumps and sparkling diamond jewellery. Social media users were left baffled by Meghan's wardrobe, with one writing: 'Does she never learn how to wear clothes that suit the occasion and weather? 'It's a hot and humid day in New York and she is wearing a high collar and coat.' The Duke and Duchess of Sussex began their whirlwind New York City weekend on a somber note on Thursday Meghan Markle, 40, was elegant in a black turtleneck and wide-legged trousers as she joined Prince Harry in New York for their first joint public appearance since Megxit today She donned a smart wool coat, popping the collar around her neck Many of those on social media were left stunned by the royals decision to wear such a warm outfit on a hot and humid day in the city Another posted: 'It's a hot day here in New York. Why is she dressing like this?' A third added: 'She looks bitter, also this morning in New York city is 80 per cent humidity and hot! Why doe she wear a dark heavy coat?' 'It's tremendously hot and humidity today in New York and she's wearing a black heavy coat??? She's so ridiculous. Please check the forecast,' another commented. Meghan donned a smart smart wool coat, popping the collar around her neck, with a matching turtleneck, black wide legged trousers and her favourite black suede Aquazzura Purist pumps as she joined Harry at One World Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, she added a little glamour to her outfit by wearing a new diamond ring, which she paired alongside her new mysterious pinky ring. It is believed the ring, made by celebrity jeweler Lorraine Schwartz and reportedly worth an estimated 45,000, was fashioned with diamonds gifted to the couple by a mystery donor in the Middle East. The Duchess kept her makeup natural for the occasion, sweeping a dark eyeshadow across her lids and pairing it with a nude lipstick. She swept her hair into a slicked back low bun, showing off a pair of diamond stud earrings Meanwhile, she swept her hair into a slicked back low bun, showing off her diamond stud earrings from Cartier. Before she entered the building with the Duke, she could be seen holding a dark face mask in her hands. Harry wore a complementary dark suit and tie. She added a little glamour to her outfit with a new diamond ring, which she paired alongside her new mysterious pinky ring Meghan could be seen putting on a black face mask before entering the building with Harry The couple later took the masks off inside to pose for photos with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, 60, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, 63 She and Harry were all smiles as they posed for pictures from the observation area The couple arrived at One World Trade Center 14 minutes late for an 8am meeting Thursday in somber dark outfits. They arrived in a black SUV, and were whisked up to the skyscraper's viewing deck - which sits between floors 100 and 102 - to meet NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, 60, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, 63, who arrived minutes before them. The couple held hands as the walked up the steps of the building, with Harry giving a wave to watching fans who shouted his name on seeing him. No details on why the royals are meeting with the Democrat lawmakers and what they plan to discuss were shared in advance. The matching pair smiled inside as they enjoyed their first trip to New York in years Meghan was last in New York for her baby shower at the Mark Hotel in February 2019 The Duke and Duchess appeared to coordinate their outfits for their outing in New York this morning De Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray, 66, and the mayoral couple's son Dante, 24, were also there to welcome the royal couple, who are visiting from their home in Montecito, California. A small group of taxi drivers protested the event to call on Mayor de Blasio to offer additional protection for elderly yellow cab drivers who've been hit by the rise in popularity of ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft, with security also present to guard the royals and politicians. Thursday's visit is the Sussexes' first public trip to New York City since their permanent move from England to Meghan's native California in March 2020. One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, opened in 2014 after the original World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed in the 9/11 terror attacks in September 2001. The Duchess appeared to be wearing a collection of gold bracelets beneath the sleeve of her coat as she stepped out in New York today Harry and Meghan are also set to visit the memorial to the terror attacks after leaving the observatory. Were diamonds from Middle Eastern gift that used for Meghan's mysterious pinky ring? Interest in the jewellery continues to overshadow the Duchess of Sussex's appearance on the cover of Time magazine earlier this week. Many were intrigued by a growing mystery surrounding the ring on her right pinky finger. Initially, Harry and Meghan denied claims that the ring, made by celebrity jeweler Lorraine Schwartz and reportedly worth an estimated 45,000 ($62,000), was fashioned with diamonds gifted to the couple by a mystery donor in the Middle East. They said the ring was sourced by a stylist on the shoot directly from the designer and that there was no link to a mystery donor in the Middle East. But in a spectacular U-turn, they later rolled back the denial, and clarified that they were referring only to a ring on Meghan's left hand - a 380 ($525) pinky ring from Shiffon, which is meant to represent women's empowerment. There was no further mention made of the Lorraine Schwartz ring in question on her right hand, begging the question of whether Meghan has something to hide about the provenance of the diamond, which was first seen on her finger in October 2020. Advertisement Its two giant sunken pools and cascading waterfalls have been constructed on the footprints of the original Twin Towers. The sides of the pools, which have been constructed from black stone, are inscribed with the names of the 2,977 people murdered in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. The Sussexes' itinerary will also see them attend the Global Citizen Live concert in Central Park Saturday. That will feature performances from artists including Coldplay, Lizzo and Jennifer Lopez, and will take place on the Manhattan park's Great Lawn. Harry, Meghan and other dignitaries are attending to draw attention to Global Citizen's call for the G7 group of countries and EU to share at least 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines with developing countries. The music event will form part of a 24-hour broadcast from cities around the world, which also calls for vaccine manufacturers to waive their intellectual property rights on COVID shots. Global Citizen Live and its supporters have further called for pharmaceutical firms to share mRNA technology used to develop the vaccines with a World Health Organization-backed medical hub based in South Africa. Harry and Meghan have become heavily-involved in philanthropy since sensationally quitting the Royal Family in January 2020, after complaining of the pressure-cooker environment and life in the spotlight. The couple have also signed huge deals with Netflix and Spotify, rumored to be worth a combined $125 million, to produce content for the streaming and podcasting giants. Today's event also marks the return to work for the Duke and Duchess, who have taken several months off following the birth of their daughter Lilibet in May. Meghan has previously made several high profile trips to New York to visit friends in recent years. The Duchess celebrated the impending birth of her firstborn son Archie by flying to the Big Apple by private jet in 2019, provoking outcry with the five-day baby shower celebration. Around 20 friends attended, including Serena Williams and Amal Clooney. Months later, she visited the state again for a flying trip away to support her close friend Serena Williams in the US Open final. Queen Letizia and King Felipe of Spain flew to La Palma to meet locals who were evacuated after a volcanic eruption swallowed hundreds of homes. The Spanish royals chatted with some of the 6,000 people who were evacuated from hotels and houses on the island and have since been placed at the El Fuerte military barracks in Brena Baja village. Letizia, 49, was shocked as she discussed the trauma with the residents and visitors. Mount Cumbre Vieja continued to spew out lava and poisonous gases overnight after entering an 'explosive new phase' of eruption, blanketing parts of the island with toxic ash today. Queen Letizia of Spain and her husband King Felipe met those who were evacuated after a volcanic eruption on Le Palma swallowed hundreds of homes Letizia, 49, was shocked as she discussed the erupting volcano, which yesterday entered a 'new explosive phase' La Palma's volcano continued spewing lava, ash and toxic gases overnight after scientists warned it has entered a 'new explosive phase' Letizia and Felipe, 53, met with some of the Guardia Civil involved in the operation and thanked members of the Spanish emergency rescue service for their work in the evacuation. The El Fuerte barracks are being used by Spanish authorities to support their response to the volcanic eruption and later the royals will visit the La Palma council headquarters. Letizia and Felipe met with the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who flew in from New York after addressing the UN General Assembly. Letizia was seen waving to royal fans ahead of the visit, where she was seen deep in conversation with victims and viewed photographs of the destruction caused by the volcanic eruption. Queen Letizia and King Felipe were swarmed by reporters as they offered statements during their visit to the area Queen Letizia could be seen leaning in to comfort a woman affected by the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano King Felipe placed his hand on the arm of one woman as she cried to him after the volcano eruption Letizia and Felipe, 53, met with some of the Guardia Civil involved in the operation and thanked members of the Spanish emergency rescue service for their work in the evacuation. Today, locals have been warned to wash their vegetables and clothes to avoid ingesting the ash, as the eruption shows no sign of slowing down five days after it started. A river of lava spewed from the crater is still inching its way towards the ocean, burning up homes and farms in its path. Meanwhile effects are also being felt further afield, with a large plume of sulphur dioxide gas due to blow into Europe today, possibly falling as acid rain. The Spanish royals chatted with some of the 6,000 people who were evacuated from hotels and houses on the island Letizia was seen waving to royal fans upon their arrival to Santa Cruz de La Palma ahead of the visit today Letizia was seen chatting with a victim of the volcanic eruption who has since been placed at the El Fuerte military barracks in Brena Baja village The Spanish royals were seen deep in conversation with victims and viewed photographs of the destruction caused by the volcanic eruption The same cloud will reach the UK by Sunday, though observers say by that point the chances of it affecting the weather will be 'very small.' Some 350 buildings and 410 acres have already been swallowed up by the lava in La Palma, with officials warning 1,000 homes and 1,000 acres are still at risk. Angel Victor Torres, the president of La Palma island, warned the final bill for damages is likely to exceed 340million. Scientists monitoring the lava flow on land warned it might never reach the sea - having previously forecast it to do so on Tuesday - and may instead pool on land, destroying more homes and farmland. Spanish King Felipe and Queen Letizia met with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who flew in from New York for the visit Letizia and Felipe chatted with victims of the volcanic eruption, which began on Sunday, about their experiences The Spanish royals are pictured speaking to a man who was evacuated from his home from window at the El Fuerte barracks To the barracks she wore a simple white t-shirt paired with camel trousers and a brown belt, with her brown tresses tied back in a low ponytail. She is pictured speaking with a couple who were evacuated from their home Sunday's eruption took place on a ridge known as Cumbre Vieja, which is notorious as an area of high volcanic activity and has played host to every eruption on the island since the 1600s. It began around 3pm when a cluster of earthquakes split the ground in an area known as Cabeza de Vaca on the western slope of the volcanic ridge as it descends to the coast, with three fissures spewing out lava. As of yesterday, 6,000 of the island's 80,000 inhabitants have so-far been evacuated from their homes, with 35,000 under emergency warning orders. The lava stream is also threatening vast areas of farmland that crews can do little to save, with La Vanguardia reporting that some 1,000 acres could be destroyed by the time the eruption finishes - which volcanologists say may not happen for several weeks or months. Letizia and Felipe, 53, thanked members of the Spanish emergency rescue service for their work in the evacuation The Spanish royals are seen chatting with the emergency services members who helped in the evacuation due to the volcanic eruption Letizia, donning a white face covering, is seen deep in conversation with a woman who was evacuated from her home The Spanish royals also met with some of the Guardia Civil involved in the operation this afternoon Seismic activity in the south of the island of La Palma has been 'anomalous' since 2017, with eight earthquake swarms recorded since the summer of 2020. La Palma is one of the westernmost and youngest islands of the Canary archipelago along with El Hierro. The island, the first largest of the Canary Islands, is regarded as one of the highest potential risks in the volcanic archipelago and therefore in-depth studies to define its state of unrest are seen as vital. La Palma is said to be at potential risk of undergoing a large landslide which could cause a tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean. The Duchess of Sussex was glittering in jewels worth over 300,000 as she stepped out in New York today with Prince Harry. Meghan Markle, 40, who is currently living in her $14 million mansion in California having stepped back from royal duty last year, joined the Duke to visit One World Trade Center this morning. And while the royal kept her outfit understated, she wore a staggering amount of jewellery, including her 271,000 engagement ring and Princess Diana's Cartier 17,800 tank watch. The Duchess, who is known for her love of symbolic jewellery, also showed off her new mysterious pinky ring, which is believed to have been made with 'gifted diamonds from the Middle East'. The Duchess of Sussex, 40, was glittering in jewels worth over 300,000 as she stepped out in New York today with Prince Harry, 37 And while the royal kept her outfit understated, she wore a staggering amount of jewellery, including her 12,000 Cartier wedding earrings A CUSTOM PIECE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST? PINKY RING 'DESIGNED BY LORRAINE SCHWARTZ' Interest in the Meghan's pinky ring continues to overshadow the Duchess of Sussex's appearance on the cover of Time magazine earlier this week. Unique: On her right hand, Meghan wore what is believed to be a custom-made pinky ring that was reportedly designed by jeweler Lorraine Schwartz, according to Page Six Many were intrigued by a growing mystery surrounding the ring on her right pinky finger. Initially, Harry and Meghan denied claims that the ring, made by celebrity jeweler Lorraine Schwartz and reportedly worth an estimated 45,000 ($62,000), was fashioned with diamonds gifted to the couple by a mystery donor in the Middle East. They said the ring was sourced by a stylist on the shoot directly from the designer and that there was no link to a mystery donor in the Middle East. But in a spectacular U-turn, they later rolled back the denial, and clarified that they were referring only to a ring on Meghan's left hand - a 380 ($525) pinky ring from Shiffon, which is meant to represent women's empowerment. There was no further mention made of the Lorraine Schwartz ring in question on her right hand, begging the question of whether Meghan has something to hide about the provenance of the diamond, which was first seen on her finger in October 2020. Now it has been claimed Schwartz used the same set of diamonds to create earrings, which the Duchess wore at Trooping the Colour in 2019, and then again at a premiere of the Lion King a month later, according to Page Six. If the diamonds did indeed come from the Middle East, it's not clear if Meghan received the gift while she was still a working royal, or after she performed her final official duties in early March 2021. She did not visit the region officially, but there's always the possibility she made a private trip. Buckingham Palace only publishes a list of gifts received by royals while on duty in the UK or overseas, and there is no public record of Meghan being given any diamonds. Gifts sent to the royals outside of official engagements are recorded but not made public. The palace have previously directed inquiries about the diamonds back to the Sussexes' representatives in the US, who have also been approached for comment. 3,300 DIAMOND RING FROM HER FIRST ENGAGEMENT WITH PRINCE HARRY AS HIS FIANCE During the outing in New York today, eagle-eyed viewers spotted a third, previously unseen, ring on Meghan's ring finger For one of her first outings as Harry's fiancee, in Edinburgh she wore a Birks Diamond Snowflake Ring, worth 3,300. She has since worn pieces from the jewellery brand worth tens of thousands, including Diamond Swirl earrings and countless gold rings. Birks has also worked with Meghan's close friend, the well-connected stylist Jessica Mulroney, who helped curate her an outfit for her engagement photo call - Birks earrings included - and will almost certainly have brought the jeweller to her friend's attention. The jewellers were approached by Meghan's 'entourage' to dress her mother Doria Ragland for the royal wedding, according to the article. Meghan has worn pieces by Birks on at least ten occasions since stepping onto the royal stage, with her jewellery bill running into the tens of thousands. But it seems she has not been afraid to splash out on her nearest and dearest either, with Maclean's revealing she approached public relations firm NKPR in 2018 while on the hunt for a bracelet to give Harry for Christmas. THE 12,000 CARTIER EARRINGS SHE WORE FOR HER WEDDING AND ARCHIE'S CHRISTENING For the occasion, Meghan recycled the same pair of 12,000 Cartier earrings previously worn as she married Prince Harry at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in May 2018 For the occasion, Meghan recycled the same pair of 12,000 Cartier earrings previously worn as she married Prince Harry at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in May 2018, when she walked down the aisle in a stunning custom-made 200,000 Givenchy gown. The Duchess wore the same set of jewels for her son Archie's secret christening in 2019. Speaking to Femail at the time, stylist Rochelle White highlighted the similarities between Meghan's christening and wedding look, revealing how the looks 'linked the two meaningful events together'. She explained: 'Meghan played homage to her wedding day with her earrings.' THE 271,000 ENGAGEMENT RING MEGHAN RE-DESIGNED AFTER HER PROPOSAL FROM PRINCE HARRY Prince Harry proposed to Meghan in November 2017 with a glittering ring comprising of a solid yellow gold band set with three diamonds, pictured Next to her pinky rings, Meghan sported her 271,000 engagement ring, which was originally designed by Prince Harry and court jewelers Cleave and Company using one stone from Botswana and two smaller stones from Diana's collection. Harry proposed to Meghan in November 2017 with the glittering ring comprising of a solid yellow gold band - however in 2019, images revealed that the design had been changed in order to incorporate a thinner band that was set with several pave diamonds all around it. Shortly after their engagement, Prince Harry spoke out about the design process behind the ring, explaining that he had chosen each element in order to ensure that it fit his future bride's tastes perfectly. 'The ring is obviously yellow gold because that's [Meghan's] favorite and the main stone itself I sourced from Botswana and the little diamonds either side are from my mother's jewelry collection, to make sure that she's with us on this crazy journey together,' he said. Meghan called it 'incredible', explaining: 'Everything about Harry's thoughtfulness and the inclusion of [Princess Diana's stones] and obviously not being able to meet his mum, it's so important to me to know that she's a part of this with us.' 'It's incredibly special to be able to have this [ring], which sort of links where you come form and Botswana, which is important to us. It's perfect.' PRINCESS DIANA'S GOLD 17,800 CARTIER TANK FRANCAISE WATCH Meghan's elegant timepiece was originally owned by Diana, who is seen wearing it on her left write at an engagement at the British Lung Foundation in 1997 She also wore a Cartier Tank Francaise watch, as pictured, gifted by Harry that once belonged to Princess Diana. The watch was worth $23,000 (17,800) but this once has a special history The watch, thought to be a present from Harry, was worth 17,800 at the time but is now likely worth a lot more given its history. The elegant timepiece was worn by Diana at a number of occasions, including a 1997 visit to London's Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu Temple and an engagement at the British Lung Foundation that same year. Meghan is known to be a fan of the Tank watch and splurged on her own two-tone version back in 2015 when 'Suits' was picked up for a third season. At the time, she told Hello Magazine, 'I've always coveted the Cartier French Tank watch. When I found out Suits had been picked up for our third seasonwhich, at the time, felt like such a milestoneI totally splurged and bought the two-tone version 'I had it engraved on the back, 'To M.M. From M.M.' and I plan to give it to my daughter one day. That's what makes pieces special, the connection you have to them.' Meghan has been gifted several items from Diana's collection. They include Diana's butterfly earrings and gold bracelet which she wore on their Australian tour in 2018. Yet the watch is a favorite and she has been spotted wearing it often. The watch had been gifted to Diana by her father on her 21st birthday. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have left their young children Archie and Lilibet at home in Los Angeles as they jetted off to New York for a long weekend. The Duke, 37, and Duchess of Sussex, 40, are currently living in their $14 million mansion in California with their two-year-old son and three-month-old daughter, having stepped back from royal duty last year. The royal couple's break in New York, which is believed to be at least three days, is the longest time the Duke and Duchess have spent away from their daughter Lilibet since she was born in June. It is unknown who is caring for Archie and Lilibet while Prince Harry and Meghan visit New York, although the Duchess' mother Doria has been helping out the couple with childcare in recent months. Prince Harry, 37, and Meghan Markle, 40, have left their young children Archie and Lilibet at home in Los Angeles as they visited New York for a long weekend The break in New York is the longest either Prince Harry or Meghan has been able from their daughter Lilibet. The couple welcomed their baby in June, with the Duke flying back to the UK for a flying visit to unveil his mother Princess Diana's statue at Kensington Palace just a month later. However before Lilibet was born, Prince Harry and Meghan had left their son Archie on several occasions. Three days after Archie was born in 2019, the Duke travelled to The Hague to launch the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games 2020. And when the couple travelled to London for their farewell tour in January 2020, they left then one-year-old Archie in Canada in the care of Meghan's BFF Jessica Mulroney. Archie has also rarely been seen since the couple stepped back as senior royals in March last year (pictured with his mother Meghan in a screenshot from Harry's mental health series with Oprah) Meghan is thought to have revealed a grainy first photograph of her second child Lilibet in August after a framed picture of Prince Harry kissing a newborn baby took pride of place on her desk in a video At the time, they were away from their son in the UK for at least five days. It is now unknown who the couple will have left their son and daughter with, or whether they have a nanny who helps them care for the children. In June, it was reported Doria was helping out her daughter and Prince Harry in their $14M Montecito mansion. Meghan is thought to have revealed a grainy first photograph of her second child Lilibet in August after a framed picture of Prince Harry kissing a newborn baby took pride of place on her desk in a video. Four images could be seen next to the Duchess of Sussex during the clip to mark her 40th birthday, with the biggest one appearing to show their first son Archie who is now aged two. Three further black and white photos could be seen in a connected frame in front of this, with the central one seeming to show Harry kissing a baby and one on the right potentially showing Meghan holding a young child. The Duke, and Duchess are currently living in their $14 million mansion in California with their two-year-old son and three-month-old daughter, having stepped back from royal duty last year. The Sussexes have not yet released any photographs of Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor who was born exactly two months ago on June 4 at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and is eighth in line to the throne. Archie has also rarely been seen since the couple stepped back as senior royals in March last year, with the most recent picture of him released to mark his second birthday this May showing him with his back to the camera. Earlier today, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made their first public trip since moving to California last year, joining the mayor and the Governor of New York Kathy Hochul at the One World Observatory. The observatory is located on floors 100-102 of the One World Trade Center, which is America's tallest building and the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. When in New York, Harry and Meghan will also broadcast from Central Park for the Global Citizen Live event on Saturday, as they 'continue their urgent work with world leaders in the pursuit of global vaccine equity to end the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere,' said the organisation's website. The outing marks the first occasion the duo have appeared in public together since stepping back from royal duties and moving to California last year. It comes as Harry today welcomed Google into his Travalyst sustainable travel initiative in a move that will raise eyebrows given his vocal criticism of big tech. With autumn underway, 2021's unnecessarily 'sexy' Halloween costumes are hitting online stores and this year's fist and likely most bizarre iteration is a 'sexy' Bernie Sanders. Dollz Kill, and online bouqute, is selling the 'Once Again Asking Costume Set' for $85, modeled after the Vermont senator's 2021 Inauguration Day outfit. The costume includes a grey coat, a face mask, and a version of Sanders' viral mittens. When asked for comment about the unlikely costume, Mike Casca, a spokesperson for Sanders, told Vice: 'If fans of Sen. Sanders mittens are looking for a real scare this Halloween, they should see how hard the wealthy and worlds biggest corporations are fighting to stop Congress from finally addressing the long-neglected needs of the working class.' 'Im shuddering at my desk just thinking about it.,' he added. Dollz Kill , and online bouqute, is selling the 'Once Again Asking Costume Set' for $85, modeled after the Senator Bernie Sanders' 2021 Inauguration Day outfit At this year's inaguration, the Senator bundled up in a large parka and a pair of large hand-knit mittens, and sad alone in a folding chair The costume hit the boutique's website this month and gets its name from a line used by Sanders in a fundraising video for his 2020 presidential campaign. 'I am once again asking for your financial support,' he said in the video, with the beginning of the line taking off as a meme on social media. The costume, though, is inspired by another Sanders meme: At this year's inaguration, the Senator bundled up in a large parka and a pair of large hand-knit mittens, and sad alone in a folding chair with the look of someone who preferred to be elsewhere. Images of Sanders went viral and became a meme of their own, as internet users edited him into various scenes and situations. Dollz Kill's costume doesn't come with a folding chair, but it does include most of the politician's outfit. The costume includes a grey coat, a face mask, and a version of Sanders' viral mittens When asked for comment about the unlikely costume, a spokesperson for Sanders said: 'If fans of Sen. Sanders mittens are looking for a real scare this Halloween, they should see how hard the wealthy and worlds biggest corporations are fighting to stop Congress from finally addressing the long-neglected needs of the working class' 'Trickz N' Treatz Once Again Asking Costume Set for you to be a viral internet meme!' reads the description. 'This political chairman costume comes with a grey coat, cozy mittens, and a face mask for a total insta-worthy moment.' Dana Rosenburg, director of marketing at Dolls Kill, told Vice that the 'virality of the Bernie meme' inspired the costume. 'Plus, Bernie is cool!' she said, adding that the costume is 'trending like crazy.' 'It may not seem it but the costume is legit it's made of fleece, has super cozy mittens and comes with a face mask. Wear it for Halloween or as your next winter fit!' she continued. Social media users are certainly going wild for the costume, though not everyone is sold on actually wearing it or whether the world even needed it. Social media users are certainly going wild for the costume, though not everyone is sold on actually wearing it or whether the world even needed it 'Why did they make bernie as a hot got e-girl costume I'm wheezing,' wrote one Twitter user. 'I LOVE Halloween, but the "sexy" Bernie Sanders is a bit disturbing,' tweeted another. 'This only matters to me if Bernie Sanders himself dresses up like sexy Bernie Sanders this Halloween for $85,' said a third. 'We've hit peak 2021,' said yet another, while one more said: 'Well I saw a sexy Bernie Sanders Meme costume, and that's it. Halloween is cancelled this year.' Another chimed in: 'I did NOT have sexy Bernie Sanders in mittens as a Halloween costume on my 2021 bingo card and im ashamed of myself.' And on wondered: 'We spent so much time asking HOW to be h**ny that we forgot to ask if we SHOULD be h**ny.' Four children aged six to 14 have been orphaned after their firefighter father and stay-at-home mother died of COVID-19. Jeffrey Hager, who served 24 years in the Charlotte Fire Department and the Huntersville Fire Department in North Carolina, died due to complications of COVID on September 10. On September 18, his wife Amee also succumbed to the virus. Both were 'anti-vaccine,' and Amee had spoken out against vaccine mandates on Facebook. The couple has left behind four children, with Amee's mother writing online: 'I only pray that we can find the right words to tell Amee and Jeffs precious children that now, both their parents are gone.' Four children aged six to 14 have been orphaned after their firefighter father and stay-at-home mother died of COVID-19 Jeffrey Hager, who served 24 years in the Charlotte Fire Department and the Huntersville Fire Department in North Carolina, died due to complications of COVID on September 10 Neither Jeff nor Amee appear to have been vaccinated, and both had been outspoken in their opposition to the jab. Amee's cousin wrote on Facebook that 'Jeff was an anti vaccine person as was Amee.' Amee had also used a Facebook border that read 'I Stand For Medical Freedom' and '#StopTheMandate.' So when they were both infected last month, the virus did its worst. According to a Caring Bridge journal maintained by Amee's parents, Tina and Randy, both Jeffrey and Amee were admitted to a local hospital on August 28 with breathing issues. They were given oxygen and other treatment until being moved to the ICU and being put on ventilators on September 3. Meanwhile, two of three of their four children who are aged six, seven, 13, and 14 tested positive for COVID at home, though they all recovered. Amee, who had posted anti-vaccine content online, died on September 18 Amee had used a Facebook border that read 'I Stand For Medical Freedom' and '#StopTheMandate' Cared for by family, the kids were left in the dark about their parents' worsening condition, being told at first only that they were hospitalized with trouble breathing. 'When we picked the kids up after school we were greeted with big smiles and the lots of excitement for their first day of school after quarantine,' Tina and Randy wrote on September 7. On September 10, just hours before Jeff's passing, Amee's parents visited him and Amee at the hospital. 'We were able to touch and hold their hands as we told them how much they are loved. We told them all about the kids and the funny things they say and do, and that they missed them and want them to get well and come home,' they said. 'We told them to be strong and to not give up because their lives were not finished. 'We shared all the love, prayers and support they were getting from family, friends, the fire departments, and the community. We told them to focus only on themselves getting well, that all of you had their backs. We cried and we prayed for their healing.' But hours later, Jeff's conditioned worsened and he died. Jeffrey and Amee Hager were admitted to a local hospital on August 28, and within days were put on ventilators Amee's parents have shared heartbreaking details of their battle and have urged others who are unvaccianted to get the shot 'I only pray that we can find the right words to tell Amee and Jeffs precious children that now, both their parents are gone,' Amee's parents wrote Amee's parents admitted that were struggling with how to tell the kids, and just a week later, Amee had also died. Her parents wrote that 'it is with broken hearts that we share this with you. Our precious Amee has lost the battle with this horrible Covid. She is no longer in pain or struggling to breathe. Her lungs are filled with the sweet breath of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.' 'I know that Jeff was standing at the gates of Heaven with a sly smile, waiting to give her a big hug and a kiss!' they went on. 'Our hearts are shattered and there are no words to explain the pain and grief we are feeling. I only pray that we can find the right words to tell Amee and Jeffs precious children that now, both their parents are gone.' The couple also urged others who are unvaccinated to 'please go and get it.' 'You cannot be replaced! Dont leave your families behind to deal with this kind of pain and grief!' they said. A funeral was held for Jeff on September 23 and was attended by the Huntersville Fire Department In their most recent update, Tina and Randy said that their seven-year-old grandson, Jack, has been 'eager to help' since his parents took ill A funeral was held for Jeff on September 23 and was attended by the Huntersville Fire Department. In their most recent update, Tina and Randy said that their seven-year-old grandson, Jack, has been 'eager to help' since his parents took ill. 'He opens car doors, offers to carry things, and even helps his siblings,' they wrote. 'But the ultimate example occurred yesterday as we sat listening to the graveside service. 'When we arrived at the cemetery, before we got out of the car, I ask who needed a tissue to carry with them. Jack asked for one to carry in his pocket. 'Later during the service as tears rolled down my cheeks, Jack looked up at me and reached in his pocket. Out came a small balled up tissue and he handed it up to me with the sweet smile of an angel. 'At that moment I saw his mom and dad so clearly in his eyes. So I took it from his sweet hand and wiped away my tears.' Prince Harry showed 'noticeably' thinner hair during his outing in New York today, after 'clever retouching skills' gave him a 'full body' of locks to match Meghan Markle's on their recent Time 100 cover, a celebrity hairstylist has claimed. The Duke, 37, and Duchess of Sussex, 40, who are currently living in her $14 million mansion in California having stepped back from royal duty last year, began a whirlwind trip to New York today by visiting One World Trade Center this morning. The appearance comes days after the couple appeared on the cover of Time 100 magazine, which was ruthlessly mocked on social media for its excessive use of Photoshop. Much of the commentary focused on Harry's locks, which appeared thicker than usual - perhaps due to some generous Photoshopping. Celebrity hairstylist Tom Smith told FEMAIL Harry's image appeared to be 'noticeably different' today, adding: 'It seems to look like Prince Harrys hair is fuller in the TIME picture and it would not surprise me if clever retouching skills helped play a part in defining his hair line and given him a fuller body of hair to match Meghans. ' Prince Harry showed 'noticeably' thinner hair during his outing in New York today, after 'clever retouching skills' gave him a 'full body' of locks to match Meghan Markle's on their recent Time 100 cover, a celebrity hairstylist has claimed (left, today, and right, on the Time 100 shoot) Tom said: In certain lights he does look as though he is thinning on top, and this most certainly may be the case considering his hair genes. 'However, as a natural redhead, his hair will be far more susceptible to lightening in the sun. 'With their new life on the west coast of the United States, there is no shortage of sunny weather and so the lighter, and therefore thinner appearance of the top of his hair, could be down to the Californian sun lightening the top of his hair more than we are used to seeing.' However he added: 'Although there is a noticeable difference at first glance when you compare todays appearance to his TIME magazine photoshoot.' Celebrity hairstylist Tom Smith told FEMAIL Harry's image appeared to be 'noticeably different' today The stylist suggested Harry's hair might look ' lighter, and therefore thinner' because of the Californian sun lightening it The celebrity hairstylist continued: 'If it is thinning that we are seeing in his latest appearance Prince Harry will be well positioned in California to find an expert who can tackle the problem before it gets too much worse. 'Having broken free from his royal duties, he may be more open-minded to seeking cosmetic treatment to re-densify his hair if needed.' The Time 100 cover was mocked by fans earlier this week, with some ridiculing the awkward positioning of the photo as the Duke of Sussex appeared to be hiding behind his wife as he clutched her shoulders. Many joked that Prince Harry looked like the Duchess' hairdresser as he proudly stood behind her and she presented her voluminous hair. Much of the mocking commentary about the couple's Time 100 photoshoot focused on Harry's locks, which appeared thicker than usual - perhaps due to some generous Photoshopping Though Prince Charles is still hanging on to his hair, Harry's brother Prince William has long battled against baldness, and began losing his hair in his twenties. The royal famously shaved his head in January 2018 in order to hide the worst impact of the hair loss. Harry always loved mocking his brother for his hair loss, once quipping: 'I think he definitely is brainier than I am, but we established that at school, along with his baldness.' And it's believed while on the royal's recent tour of New Zealand a fan told him, 'you look just like your father' to which quick-witted Harry quipped, 'I'm losing my hair like him too'. Meanwhile Prince Philip was also bald. But unlike his relatives, Harry has reportedly taken steps to reverse the issue by visiting a London hair-loss clinic in late 2019. He is said to have undergone hair-thickening treatment at the prestigious Philip Kingsley Trichological Clinic, according to The Sun on Sunday. The treatment has seen an improvement in the length and thickness of his hair. Meghan Markle appears to have ignored weather reports when she packed for her trip to New York City this weekend, and has so far stepped out in two unseasonably warm coats despite hot, humid temperatures in the city. This afternoon, the mother-of-two left the The Carlyle hotel and headed to 50 United Nations Plaza dressed in a heavy, soft-looking camel-colored Max Mara coat, which she wore open but layered over a long-sleeve black turtleneck top. She added a $3,350 Valextra bag to match. It was a small outfit change from her trip with Prince Harry to One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial this morning, where she wore the same long-sleeve top with a heavy black coat on top. The coats were an unexpected and bizarre choice given New York's high temperature of 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degress Celcius) today, as well as a humidity hovering above 70 per cent. Meghan Markle visited the UN today in an unseasonably warm-looking camel-colored coat She was pictured leaving the The Carlyle hotel and heading to 50 United Nations Plaza this afternoon in the heavy, soft-looking jacket Underneath, she wore a long-sleeve turtleneck top and a knee-length skirt Meghan looked unruffled and certainly, sweat-free despite bundling up in clothes that would be more appropriate on a much cooler day. In fact, New York City's forecast is for warm weather all weekend while she and Harry are in down with highs between 72 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit yet the Duchess has packed at least two coats for her visit. Earlier on Thursday, she and Harry had visited One World Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. Meghan wore the same black slacks and long-sleeve turtleneck top, but had layered them with a cozy black wool coat. She added a pair of Aquazzura pumps and sparkling diamond jewelery The coat was a bizarre choice given New York's high temperature of 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degress Celcius) today, as well as a humidity hovering above 70% She wore the coat open but layered over a long-sleeve black turtleneck top Oddly enough, Meghan was mostly less bundled-up today than she was the last time she came to New York City though that was in February of 2019 in the middle of a snow storm. At the time, she was pictured arriving at and leaving the Mark Hotel, where her baby shower was being held, on several occasions. On February 20, a then-seven-months-pregnant Meghan wore a short-sleeve coat that left her arms from her elbows down bare. By the time snow actually began coming down, she'd swithced to a more sensible beige coat, which she wore open in front. Earlier on Thursday, she and Harry had visited One World Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center Meghan wore the same black slacks and long-sleeve turtleneck top, but had layered them with a cozy black wool coat She added a pair of Aquazzura pumps and sparkling diamond jewelery Many people on social media were left stunned by the royal's decision to wear such a warm outfit on a hot and humid day in the city Today, social media users have been left baffled by Meghan's wardrobe, with one writing: 'Does she never learn how to wear clothes that suit the occasion and weather? 'It's a hot and humid day in New York and she is wearing a high collar and coat.' Another posted: 'It's a hot day here in New York. Why is she dressing like this?' A third added: 'I just don't get why meghan markle is wearing a coat to her NYC trip. It is NOT sweater weather.' 'It's tremendously hot and humidity today in New York and she's wearing a black heavy coat??? She's so ridiculous. Please check the forecast,' another commented. 'Dont get me wrong, the coats/outfits are STUNNING and Meghan is getting these fits AWF and her and Harry look good AF and I *love* to see it, but is it cold in NYC?' said one more. 'You can tell Meghan is from California. I'm sweating just looking at this coat and sweater combo. She's still fly though. It's giving!' added yet another. Oddly enough, Meghan was mostly less bundled-up today than she was the last time she came to New York City though that was in February of 2019 in the middle of a snow storm On February 20, a then-seven-months-pregnant Meghan wore a short-sleeve coat that left her arms from her elbows down bare Prince Albert of Monaco attended the Planetary Health gala in Monte Carlo with Princess Caroline of Hanover tonight - while his wife Princess Charlene remained in South Africa as rumours of rift continue to swirl. The Olympian, 43, has spent the past several months in South Africa being treated for an ear and throat infection she contracted in May, following a sinus lift and bone graft procedure she'd undergone prior to her arrival in preparation for dental implants. As a result, the mother-of-two missed her 10 year wedding anniversary and is not expected to return to the principality until October, after undergoing a 'four-hour operation under general anaesthesia' in August - although it was not made clear whether this was linked to the sinus infection. Despite Charlene being admitted to hospital earlier this month after a 'sudden collapse' rumours are rife that a rift with Prince Albert, rather than health issues, is what's keeping her away from Monaco. The father-of-two walked the red carpet with Sharon Stone and Princess Caroline of Hanover. Prince Albert of Monaco attended the Planetary Health gala in Monte Carlo with Princess Caroline of Hanover tonight (pictured with Caroline and director Sharon Stone on the white carpet) Albert appeared in good spirits as he joined a host of celebrities, including Orlando Bloom (pictured) at the event tonight Despite Charlene being admitted to hospital earlier this month after a 'sudden collapse' rumours are rife that a rift with Prince Albert, rather than health issues, is what's keeping her away from Monaco Hosted by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the annual event gathers leading philanthropists, talents and scientists to join forces and launch the charity's initiatives to bridge the widening gap between health and the environment. The 2021 Monte-Carlo Gala for Planetary Health aims to highlight the idea that our future is dependent on healthy ecosystems. Hosted by the Princes foundation, it has gathered talents, philanthropists, decision makers and scientists to discuss the challenges the planets environment faces. The night is usually auction filled with many collectables, memorabilia and fine art from some of the most high-profile artists across the globe going on sale. The father-of-two linked arms with Sharon as they posed together on the white carpet at the prestigious event Pictured: Pom Klementieff, Princess of Hanover Caroline, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Sharon Stone, Orlando Bloom, Melanie Laurent, Gaspard Ulliel and guests pose on the red carpet ahead of the 2021 Monte-Carlo Gala Proceeds will be used to help the Foundation's initiatives, which includes the development of marine protected areas, protection of threatened marine species, the mitigation of the impact of climate change and acidification on the ocean, as well as the fight against plastic pollution. The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation was set up in 2006 with the aim to protect the environment and promote sustainable development at a local and global scale. It has 10 international branches across the globe, including in France, America, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Spain and China. It comes as a friend said Charlene, who hasn't been seen in Monaco since January, sees herself as a 'protector of the heirs' and not a royal. Princess Charlene of Monaco shared this quote promoting the event, which was held in honour of her own foundation Speaking to People Magazine, a source close to the former Olympic swimmer said: 'She sees herself as the protector of the heirs, as opposed to the princess of Monaco'. The friend added Charlene 'only felt fully part of the family' after welcoming the twins which gave her 'a kind of security'. 'She's incredibly involved and protective ... in a very loving and providing kind of way, shunning other activities to be with them and making sure that they're kind of living a semi-normal life,' they added. Meanwhile, Prince Albert has been preparing for his wife's return home after spending most of 2021 apart. In a previous interview with People, he said Charlene was ready to come home and has been joking that she wants to clandestinely hop on a ship to make her way to Monaco. How Charlene and Albert made solo outings in South Africa and Monaco during seven months apart January 27 - Charlene is pictured with Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. March 18 - Charlene is pictured at the memorial for the late Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini at the KwaKhethomthandayo Royal Palace in Nongoma, South Africa April 2 - Charlene posts an Instagram picture of herself, Albert and their twins Jacques and Gabriella for Easter. It is unknown where the image was taken. May 8 - Albert, Jacques and Gabriella attend a Grand Prix event in Monaco without Charlene May 10 - Albert attends Monaco Gala Awards in Monaco without Charlene May 18 - Charlene shares her first picture from her conservation trip in South Africa June 1 - Prince Albert II, Jacques and Gabriella attend event at Oceanic Museum in Monaco June 3 - New photos emerge of Charlene on her conservation trip June 5- Charlene puts on a united front as she shares a photo with her family to mark her niece's fifth birthday with her brother's family and Albert and the twins in South Africa June 7 - Albert and the twins attend the World Rugby Sevens without Charlene June 17 - Prince Albert attends Red Cross Summer concert in Monte Carlo with his sister Princess Caroline of Hanover June 18 - Prince Albert appears alone Monte Carlo TV Festival June 24 - Charlene's foundation releases a statement saying the royal is unable to travel and is undergoing procedures for an ear, nose and throat infection July 2 - Charlene and Albert mark their 10th anniversary separately. 'This year will be the first time that I'm not with my husband on our anniversary in July, which is difficult, and it saddens me,' Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene said in a statement. July 3 - Albert appears with glamorous niece Charlotte Casiraghi at the 15th international Monte-Carlo Jumping event, which is part of the Longines Global Champions Tour of Monaco, July 27 - Prince Albert attends Olympics alone in Tokyo August 13 - Charlene undergoes a four-hour operation. The reason is not announced August 25 - Charlene shares photos of Prince Albert, Gabriella and Jacques visiting her in South Africa August 31 - Speculation mounts in the media about couple's relationship Advertisement Earlier this month, he told the magazine: 'She didn't leave Monaco in a huff! She didn't leave because she was mad at me or at anybody else She didn't go into exile. It was absolutely just a medical problem which had to be treated.' He added that his wife had planned to travel to South Africa to reassess her foundation's work and to spend time with her brother and friends. Albert admitted he 'probably should have addressed' the rumours sooner, but was 'concentrating on taking care of the kids' and believed they would just 'go away'. 'Of course it affects her, of course it affects me,' he told the magazine. 'Misreading events is always detrimental... We're an easy target, easily hit, because we're in the public eye a lot.' The Princess has missed out on countless public engagements and family events due to her extended stay in South Africa, including her children's return to school this week. Last week, after a trip to Ireland with their father, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella joined the 5715 pupils starting their school year at FANB. Sporting the school's red polo shirts, the twins wore face coverings as they entered the building ahead of their 10am start. And earlier this month, it was announced that the royal had been admitted to hospital in in the port city of Durban in the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal province after collapsing at home. 'Her Serene Highness (HSH) Princess Charlene of Monaco was rushed to hospital by ambulance late Wednesday night after collapsing due to complications from the severe ear, nose, and throat infection she contracted in May,' her foundation said in a statement. 'The Princess' medical team is currently evaluating her but have confirmed that the Princess is stable,' it said. Chantell Wittstock, director of the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation and Charlene's sister-in-law, later said that 'she has been released. She was released this morning'. 'Doctors are still establishing exactly what happened,' she said. Her latest health scare was 'part of the recovery,' Wittstock said. 'She has been in a lot of pain.' Charlene and Albert reunited last month for the first time in months after the monarch and their children flew to South Africa, but photographs of the pair embracing were branded 'awkward' by a body language expert. In recent weeks, lifestyle magazines across Europe have speculated feverishly that the royal couple could be headed for divorce. French magazine Madame Figaro stated the images 'failed to convince the Monegasques' amid reports Charlene is looking for a house in Johannesburg. According to The Telegraph, the magazine asked: 'How long can she remain away from her children, her duties?' 'How long will the fight against rhinoceros poaching remain the Princess of Monaco's top priority? 'How long will Albert II of Monaco go on bearing this affront, which is becoming ridiculous?' Historian Philippe Delorme said that 'lots of people got the impression it was an arranged marriage' between Charlene and Albert, adding: 'Albert chose a wife who resembled his mother, and Charlene clearly felt very ill at ease in this Grace Kelly role they wanted her to play' The mounting speculation about the couple's marriage comes after Charlene shared professional photographs of her reunion with Prince Albert online, saying she was 'thrilled' to have her family back. She shared a series of photos cuddled up with her kids in South Africa with the caption: 'I am so thrilled to have my family back with me (Gabriella decided to give herself a haircut!!!) Sorry my Bella I tried my best to fix it,' referring to her daughter's choppy fringe. However a body language expert told FEMAIL Charlene showed 'no emotional bond' towards her husband Prince Albert in the images. Judi James said that rather than being the loved-up reunion photo one would expect of a couple surrounded by split rumours, the royals' poses suggested 'no signs of connection between awkward-looking Albert and Charlene'. Last Monaco outing together: Charlene and Albert were last pictured together at an official event together in January at the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. Albert has made a few visits to South Africa since Charlene has been in South Africa since at least March, with media reports suggesting she is looking for a house there. The prince, who already supports two illegitimate children, is alleged to have been in a relationship with a Brazilian woman which resulted in a daughter in 2005. Princess Charlene's trials and tribulations in the Monaco royal family 1987 - Bea Fiedler, a German topless model, claims her son Daniel was the prince's son. 1992 - An American national files a paternity lawsuit against the Prince, claiming that he was the father of her daughter, Jazmin Grace. 2000 - Princess Charlene meets Prince Albert at the Mare Nostrum swimming competition in Monte Carlo 2005 - In May, a former flight attendant claims that her youngest son, whom she named Alexandre Grimaldi-Coste, was Prince Albert's child. She states that his parentage had been proven by DNA tests requested by the Monegasque government. On 6 July, a few days before he was enthroned on 12 July, the Prince officially confirms via his lawyer Lacoste that Alexandre was his biological son. 2006 - After a DNA test confirmed the child's parentage, Albert admitted, via statement from his lawyer, that he is Jazmin Grace's father. 2010 - Princess Charlene and Prince Albert announce their engagement 2011 - Princess Charlene was said to have bolted two days before the royal wedding after hearing Prince Albert had a third love child during their relationship. It was alleged that Charlene tried to flee home to South Africa three times before her 'arranged marriage', at one point taking refuge inside her country's embassy in Paris. Monaco officials were said to have coaxed her back by brokering a deal between the Prince and his reluctant bride that she provide him with a legitimate heir. After that she would be free to leave of her own free will. During the wedding, Charlene was in floods of tears, while her husband looked on impassively. Later in the year, Princess Charlene confessed she felt 'very lonely' in Monaco 2012 - Princess Charlene was reported to be 'depressed' at her failure to provide her husband with a legitimate heir. 2014 - Pregnancy was announced in May. In December Charlene gave birth to twins Princess Gabriella and heir to the throne Prince Jacques. 2017 - Princess Charlene visits Africa, tells media: 'I am African and this is my heritage. It will always be. It's in my heart and in my veins.' 2019 - In a rare interview, Princess Charlene confessed it is 'sometimes hard to smile' and said the year had been 'very painful'In another interview, she said she found motherhood 'exhausting' 2020 - Charlene debuts a shocking half-shaved hairstyle. It is announced Prince Albert of Monaco will appear in court in the new year to fight explosive claims he fathered a third love child with a secret girlfriend before marrying his now wife Princess Charlene. 2021 - January 27 - Charlene is pictured with Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. It is the last time she has been seen in Monaco this year. Advertisement The claim, which his lawyers dismissed as a 'hoax', is particularly painful as he was dating Charlene at the time, having met in 2000. However, Charlene has publicly supported her husband, and the palace have reiterated she is only in South Africa because she's unable to fly. On August 13, the Monaco palace released a statement saying Charlene was to undergo surgery. It read: 'Princess Charlene will undergo an operation today, Friday, August 13, for four hours under general anaesthesia.' The princess will not return to Monaco until at least the end of October. Princess Charlene, who has been well enough to conduct interviews from South Africa and has been seen out and about, has used the time to promote her anti-poaching initiative, Chasing Zero. Charlene's last formal engagement was on January 27 when she joined Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monte Carlo. She has not been seen at home since. Instead she has been keeping followers updated through social media posts and media interviews, in which she has spoken candidly about missing her children and described her husband as 'her rock'. Speaking to South Africa Radio 702's host Mandy Wiener, the royal said: '[It's] very frustrating, terribly frustrating. I can't wait to get back to them, I can't wait to see my children.' Charlene revealed: 'It's the longest period I've actually been away from Europe, let alone my children, but I'm FaceTiming them most days and they've been here and will be returning to see me again after my procedure. 'It's an amazing opportunity [to be here] but I'm very sad I can't be with my children this summer in Europe.' She added that she was initially only supposed to be in her native South Africa for ten to 12 days for a conservation trip with her Princess Charlene of Monaco foundation. However, the royal had a problem 'equalising her ears' and was told by a doctor that she was suffering from a serious sinus infection. 'It's taken time to address the problem that I'm having,' explained Charlene. 'I cannot go into full detail, but I cannot force healing so I will be grounded in South Africa until the end of October. 'The reason being I cannot fly above 3,000 metres otherwise I'll have a problem with my ears. 'I feel well, I feel good, it's just obviously a waiting game for me, but I've had a great opportunity to understand a little bit more about South Africa, the environment, the needs and it's been wonderful to be back in South Africa, and I think at this time it's crucial that people are aware of certain things via my foundation.' Charlene joined the video interview from bush country in the KwaZulu-Natal region. She has also shared videos released by the Monaco royal palace to mark her and Albert's 10th wedding anniversary, which took place in July. The couple spent the milestone thousands of miles apart. But royal sources have suggested the princess has 'no plans' to return soon. A palace source told Paris Match: 'The Princess has, for the time being, in reality, no intention of returning.' The separation is also affecting Charlene's relationship with the people of Monaco. Stephane Bearn uses an impeccably sourced piece in the latest Paris Match to discuss the torturous separation. He describes subjects in Monaco becoming increasingly angry about their runaway Princess, as they criticise everything from Charlene's mood swings to her appearance. 'In Monaco, since the departure of Charlene, tongues have loosened,' Mr Bearn writes. 'In the whirlwind of a hard-nosed court, her fine shine is rubbing off. Her sad looks are regarded as haggard. 'Disappointed Monegasques talk about her anger, her whimsical moods, which are as changeable as her hair.' He added: 'The Palace had to invoke a suffering Princess so often that the Monegasques today find it hard to believe. By crying wolf, the mother of Jacques and Gabriella would have discredited and isolated herself.' During her trip, Charlene also debuted a dramatic new shaved hairstyle. She showcased the 'French crop' hairdo - featuring a longer strip on top of the head and dramatically shaved back and sides - in snaps shared on her charity's Instagram page in late May. The royal first stepped out with a dramatic half-shaved head in December 2020 but has since gone even shorter and bolder with the cut. Charlene and Albert's marriage has been plagued with rumours from the start. The couple met at the Mare Nostrum swimming competition in Monte Carlo in 2000, announced their engagement in 2010. Former Olympic swimmer Charlene reportedly tried to flee Monaco for her native South Africa on three separate occasions before the royal wedding after discovering Albert had allegedly fathered a love child - his third - while they were together. Monaco officials were said to have coaxed her back by brokering a deal between the Prince and his reluctant bride, saying she could leave once she had provided him with a legitimate heir. One source said at the time: 'Charlene will provide an heir, then if things don't go well, she will receive a generous divorce settlement once she's served a decent amount of time.' Charlene was seen in floods of tears on her wedding day in 2011. Just one year after their wedding, it was reported that Charlene was 'depressed' at her failure to provide her husband with a legitimate heir. Her pregnancy was announced in May 2014, and in December that year she gave birth to twins Princess Gabriella and heir to the throne Prince Jacques. In the 10 years since, Charlene has rarely spoken publicly of her experience. In 2017, the Princess made an emotional return to Africa, where she spoke about how much the continent means to her. 'I am African and this is my heritage. It will always be. Its in my heart and in my veins,' she told Eyewitness News. Last year she admitted life was 'very painful', saying: 'I have the privilege of having this life, but I miss my family and my friends in South Africa and I'm often sad because I cannot always be there for them.' It's been a tumultuous start to the year for the royal, after news emerged that her husband is facing a paternity suit over a love child born in the early years of their relationship. The 34-year-old claimant who cannot be named for legal reasons says she had a passionate affair with Albert, leading to the birth of their daughter whose name is also classified on July 4, 2005. Albert received a handwritten letter from the child, who is now 15, in September last year reading: I don't understand why I grew up without a father, and now that I have found you, you don't want to see me. Legal papers were also filed, as lawyers for the claimant called on Albert to undergo a DNA test just as he did before finally being identified as the father of two illegitimate children born in the 1990s and early 2000s. In January, Charlene spoke publicly for the first time since the allegations, telling Point de Vue: 'When my husband has problems, he tells me about it. I often tell him, "No matter what, no matter what, I'm a thousand percent behind you. I'll stand by you whatever you do, in good times or in bad." The mother-of-two went on to say she also often tells her husband she will 'protect him' and will 'always be by his side.' Charlene, who was raised in South Africa and represented the country at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, travelled to Thanda Safari in KwaZulu-Natal in January to learn more about being done by the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation South Africa to help save rhinos from poachers. The princess took part in conservation operations including rhino monitoring and tracking, deployment with the Anti-Poaching Unit, educational wildlife photography sessions, and a White Rhino dart and dehorning exercise. Minutes after I hailed the new Strictly Come Dancing as a potentially vintage series, the wheels waltzed right off the wagon and the sequins melted back into the swamp. Lets call it The Curse Of Jan. For amid increasingly rancorous backstage rows, the future of the entire series is in jeopardy because three of the professional dancers are refusing to have the Covid vaccine. There may even be more: nobody knows for sure. At the moment, Strictly bosses have no clue as to which pro dancers have been vaccinated or which of the celebrities either, for that matter. As vaccine status is classed as a medical matter, BBC rules mean the show runners are not legally permitted to ask who has been jabbed. For Gods sake. We are in the middle of a national public-health emergency. Is there no room in this ballroom of confusion for a drop of common sense and some personal responsibility to prevail? Last year, vaccine status on the show was not an issue, as the dancers and celebrities, once they had tested negative, selflessly lived and worked in strictly controlled bubbles throughout the series. This year, more lax measures mean everyone is potentially at risk from the Covid threat, particularly considering the close conditions in which they work and rehearse. No amount of mask-wearing and hand-sanitising can guard against dancing cheek to cheek or the boa-constrictor strictures of the Argentine tango. Remarkable as it may seem, the unnamed trio would rather lose their jobs than have the jab. This means they are willing to give up the maximum exposure that comes with a role on Strictly, including three months of prime-time appearances on one of the most popular shows in the country. Not to mention probable earnings of around 50,000. Many might find it odd that anyone would refuse a potentially lifesaving dose of medicine, delivered free of charge, in a developed country that is finally on the front foot in the Covid wars. But no, they dont want it, thanks very much. In vast areas of the developing world, where vaccines are not readily available, desperate people are dying for want of a jab. Here in the First World, there is the disgraceful luxury of refusal. This rumba of discontent rumbling on under the glitterball is a microcosm of what is going on elsewhere in the country. It is not just anti-vaxxer nutters who refuse the jab; there are still pockets of resistance everywhere, particularly among the young. Some health workers dont want to be vaccinated. There is more hesitancy among members of ethnic minorities. But why the reluctance? It seems mad and blinkered to those of us who appreciate that Covid vaccines have saved millions of lives already, and that vaccines in general are the greatest health achievement of the modern world. Yet some, like the Strictly dancers, worry about the speedy development of vaccines and fret about their safety. Maybe they read on the internet somewhere that the jab might be risky! Better have a vodka shot and a ciggy to calm down, eh? In addition, refuseniks perhaps feel it is not the job of the unvaccinated to protect the vaccinated without realising it is they who are most at risk. No vaccine gives 100 per cent immunity. Transmission can and will continue between people who havent been vaccinated, who can then spread Covid to the vulnerable and also to those who have been vaccinated but havent formed a fully protective immune response. Jabbed or not, we are all in this together. Except when we are not. I suspect many of the young feel they are in no danger of catching Covid because they are fitter, healthier and less likely to develop serious symptoms. And who is fitter or healthier than professional dancers, men and women who have trained like Olympians since they took their first tap class at the age of six? Like elite athletes, they are highly aware of their bodies and their health. If you spend your whole life in a slog of discipline and denial, as dancers must, then a highly developed sense of physical self is to be expected. So in many ways, I understand. And despite the mounting pressure on them to get jabbed, including a plea from Boris himself, ultimately it has to be their choice. In a civilised society, no one can force anyone to get vaccinated, Strictly dancer or otherwise. However, if you dont have the vaccination, I dont think you also have the right to carry on with your life as normal, exposing others to increased threat as you do so. Health workers cant expect to keep their jobs, carers who dont care enough cant expect to keep their jobs, dancers cant keep on dancing. It is a great shame, but perhaps now is the time to prepare them for their last waltz? And to green-light those dutifully vaccinated understudies and Cinderellas waiting in the wings to take their place in the Strictly line-up, perchance to surprise and delight millions. Maybe it will be a vintage season after all, so proving me right. Which is all that matters in the end. Holly's on the wellness wagon Holly Willoughby is launching a new lifestyle website which she promises will be a space full of things I love and people who inspire me, from beauty and fashion to energy and healing. Oh no. From Amanda Holdens cushions to Gwyneths vagina candles to Rita Oras pillowcases, everyone wants to be a living brand these days. You cant blame them. There is a fortune to be made in this business, which is basically rich women flogging stuff to poorer women in an effort to get richer while they get poorer, if you follow my drift. Holly Willoughby is launching a new lifestyle website which she promises will be a space full of things I love and people who inspire me' Holly is launching Wylde Moon an online space to empower women, explore crystal energies and offer fashion and beauty tips. Excuse me. Did someone mention crystals? I know people like them, but is there is a bigger waste of money on the planet? We have barely moved on from the times of Norse mythology, when acorns were exchanged between two witches as a sign they were in safe company. In fact, give or take 30 quid and a chakra spray, nothing has changed. Ive had a lot of experience but I still dont know who I am, said the This Morning star, who is a 40-year-old mother of three. Holly, if not now, WHEN? In the meantime, please buy her calming candle, scented with thyme and teardrops shed by real elves. Called Away With The Fairies, its yours for 34. It isn't just GPs who dont want to see patients face to face. Other health professionals are following their lead. A friend has just been told he has oesophageal cancer a devastating diagnosis. Right now, he is at his most vulnerable; unsure of what the future holds for him, only that whatever lies ahead is going to be difficult. Next week, he meets his multi-disciplinary team to be told what the next stage is and receive his definitive diagnosis. Except he wont meet them face to face, as it is going to be a video conference call instead. He has been sent a two-page letter containing instructions on how to set it up, which he and his wife have ploughed through with confusion and worry. Right now, my friend needs reassurance, professionalism, care and the feeling that he matters. He needs hope. And faith in the system into which he now entrusts his health and his life. Is he going to get all that at the end of a telephone line? I doubt it. It has barely been two weeks since Emma Raducanu won the U.S. Open, yet the 18-year old is already the star of a glamorous jewellery campaign. I wish her all the best, but worry that her youthful joy and innocence will soon be extinguished, spark by spark, Tiffany diamond by Tiffany diamond. Emma's in a binary bind For someone who has said she isnt sure where she/they are when it comes to gender identity, Emma Corrin didnt seem to mind being classified as a woman and nominated in the Best Actress In A Drama category in the Emmys this week. She turned up in an outfit consisting of a shapeless dress, cap and gloves, all artfully tailored. She looked sweet; Caspar the Ghostly, a Little Beige Riding Hood, this elegant creature of no fixed gender abode. But if gender is such a big deal for Emma, why did she turn up to be judged as an actress? Emma Corrin didnt seem to mind being classified as a woman and nominated in the Best Actress In A Drama category in the Emmys this week One can wish her every happiness on her gender journey and feel sad that she has faced trouble in trying to locate the essence of herself, while still wondering about the hypocrisy of it all. Should she not, in principle at least, be against such outrageous genderism as a best actress classification? Still, until there is a category for the Best Performance By A Non- Binary Performer, what are she/they to do? Letters just published by Prince Albert reveal that Queen Victoria was a right old nag. He complains that she would follow him from room to room, continuing to scold him during their rows. Now, there is a woman after my own heart. Victoria may have built Albert a museum to play with, put up a gilt bronze statue to him after he died and mourned him for the rest of her life, but rules are rules and rows are rows. Sometimes husbands just have to listen to wives, especially if they have been found lacking in any tiny way that irritates her indoors. Remember Phyllis Dillers advice, which was: Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. That was in the American comediennes Housekeeping Hints book, first published in 1966 and still my bible. Just the other day, she wrote, I said to my husband, dont you think weve got a storybook romance? And he said yes, every page is ripped. Victoria would understand. So would Albert, it seems. Insulate us from hypocrites! An Insulate Britain activist stormed off ITVs Good Morning Britain after being accused of hypocrisy. Liam Norton was frothing about people who dont insulate their homes, when it was discovered his own home was not insulated. But Liam, who was one of the protesters on the M25, did not see it as a problem: Whether my home is insulated or not doesnt change the fact that millions of peoples homes arent insulated and arent going to be. Insulate Britain activist Liam Norton (right, opposite Richard Madeley) stormed off ITVs Good Morning Britain after being accused of hypocrisy He went on to compare the struggle of climate protesters to that of Winston Churchills fight against Nazi Germany. Do you know how many MPs supported Churchill in 1937? he demanded. Six MPs, and Churchill was right, wasnt he? But only six supported him. Oh, God. Rick from The Young Ones is alive and well. Another M25 protester his house isnt insulated, either had a placard that read: Arrested 4 Times For Mourning Life on Earth. This ghastly band of hypocrites want to hold others to standards they will not keep themselves. Like the fossil fuels they profess to hate, they are doing more harm than good. Patients from disadvantaged communities were less likely to have access to telemedicine during the pandemic, a new study shows. Ophthalmologists at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear clinic in Boston analyzed patient demographics in 2020, finding that black patients, non-English speakers, and those who didn't attend college were less likely to access care through telemedicine. In addition, patients who were older, less educated, unemployed, retired, or had a disability were more likely to seek telephone-based visits rather than video-based visits. 'Implementation of telemedical care does not necessarily improve access to care for all populations, and overreliance on telemedicine using current approaches may inadvertently increase health disparities,' the team said. Black patients and those from other disadvantaged communities were less likely to use telemedicine during the pandemic, a new study shows Telemedicine visits spiked in May 2020, then declined as the clinic reopened in the summer Telemedicine has become popular during the pandemic as a way for doctors to see patients without putting them at risk for COVID-19. In a telemedicine visit, a patient talks to their doctor through a video or phone call instead of going to the doctor's office in person. This practice was particularly well-utilized in spring 2020, when many state and local leaders instituted stay-at-home orders and health clinics cancelled nonessential medical services. But telemedicine was easier to access for some patients than others. Low-income, minority and other disadvantaged populations may be less likely to have a smartphone, computer, Wi-Fi, or the technological knowledge needed to attend a telemedicine appointment. A new study from ophthalmologists provides additional evidence for this trend. The study - published Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology - also included contributions from eye doctors at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and New York University. The ophthalmologists analyzed all patient appointments at the Massachusetts clinic between January 1 and December 31, 2020. As the state went on lockdown in spring 2020, the clinic's policy was to use video visits whenever possible and to talk to patients over the phone if video wasn't available. In total, the clinic had about 2,300 telemedicine visits in 2020, including 1,900 patients. Demographics of the telemedicine patients reflected disparities in access to this service, the researchers found. For example: black patients were 0.69 times as likely to have a telemedicine visit as white patients. Non-English speakers were 0.63 times as likely to have a telemedicine visit as those who spoke English as their first language. Patients who didn't go to college were 0.83 times as likely to have a telemedicine appointment as those with postgraduate education. And men were less likely to have telemedicine appointments compared to women - 0.86 times as likely. Older patients were more likely to conduct telemedicine appointments over the phone as opposed to on a computer, compared to younger patients, the researchers found The researchers also found that older patients were less likely to receive telemedicine care. The median age for telemedicine patients was 61, compared to a median of 63 for patients who received care in-person. If an older patient did have a telemedicine appointment, they were more likely to do it over the phone, the analysis showed. Patients who didn't go to college were also more likely to have telemedicine visits over the phone - compared to over video - as well as those who were retired, unemployed, and disabled. Most of the telemedicine patients had received care at the clinic before - just 22.3 percent of the patients were new to the clinic. Established patients were more likely to be older adults, suggesting that older patients might be less likely to seek out a new doctor or new diagnosis via telemedicine. Telemedicine was most popular in spring 2020, aligning with stay-at-home policies in Massachusetts. The clinic saw its highest number of telemedicine visits in May: 181 visits in the week of May 10. In early June, the clinic announced its reopening plan - leading to a decline in telemedicine visits, followed by a plateau at the end of August. Some patients opted to continue using telemedicine through the end of 2020. This study aligns with other research showing that telemedicine can make it harder for already-disadvantaged populations to access healthcare. 'Our findings highlight the fact that implementation of telemedical care does not necessarily improve access to care for all populations, and overreliance on telemedicine using current approaches may inadvertently increase health disparities for historically marginalized populations,' the researchers wrote. Other studies show that black patients, low-income patients, and those who live in rural areas are less likely to utilize telemedicine. The barriers for these patients may include a lack of internet access or access to electronic devices, as well as lower technology and health literacy, the researchers said. This trend may also be seen in disadvantaged patients' preference for phone over video visits - as phone visits are easier to attend and don't require internet access. This study was retrospective - looking back at patients' medical records - and focused on one clinic in Massachusetts. Clinics in other parts of the country may have had different trends, the researchers said. Yet another study has found that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine may be more effective against infection that the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. Researchers, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared the two vaccines in a real-world study of 5,000 healthcare workers in 25 states. They found that the Moderna vaccine was 96 percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid while the Pfizer jab was 89 percent effective. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that while both vaccines are still highly protective, one may be more so than the other - and could have impacts on the conversation surrounding booster shots. Health experts have some theories about why there is a difference including that Moderna's vaccine dose is larger and that the larger time period between two doses for the Moderna vaccine allow more time for immune cells and antibodies to be generated. A new study led by the CDC compared 5,000 healthcare workers in 25 states who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine or the Moderna vaccine After two doses, the Moderna jab was 96.3% effective against symptomatic illness while the Pfizer shot was 88.9% effective - and the Moderna jab was also more effective after one dose Since the vaccines were authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020, health officials and experts had that Americans received whichever one they could because they ere all just as effective against the virus. Both, which use new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, were found to be around 95 percent effective at preventing illness in clinical trial last year. As of Thursday morning, 221.9 million people have received at least one dose of Pfizer and 150.2 million have gotten at least one dose of Moderna, CDC data show. However, several studies released in the last month have shown over the last few months that while both are highly protective against Covid - one may be more protective than the other. A Canadian study from August looking at long-term care home residents in Ontario found that four weeks after dose 2, seniors who received the Pfizer vaccine had 3.89-fold fewer neutralizing antibodies than those who received the Moderna jab. Additionally, a Belgian study, also published last month, examining 1,600 workers at a major Belgium hospital system found that recipients of the Moderna shot had antibody levels 2.65 times higher than those given the Pfizer inoculation. What's more, a CDC report issued last week, found the Moderna vaccine was 93 percent effective against hospitalization compared to 88 percent for the Pfizer vaccine and 71 percent for the Johnson & Johnson jab. The report also found that antibody levels in blood samples were highest among Moderna recipients in a separate group of healthy volunteers compared to levels for Pfizer and J&J recipients The new study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, is the latest to report similar findings. 'Our baseline assumption is that the mRNA vaccines are functioning similarly, but then you start to see a separation,' Dr Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta, told The New York Times. 'It's not a huge difference, but at least it's consistent.' A CDC report last week looked at antibody levels in blood samples were highest among Moderna recipients in a separate group of healthy volunteers compared to levels for Pfizer and J&J recipients More than 221.9 million people have received at least one dose of Pfizer and 150.2 million have gotten at least one dose of Moderna For the study, researchers looked at more than 5,000 healthcare workers in 25 states who were enrolled between December 28, 2020, and May 19, 2021. Of the staff members, 1,482 had tested positive for COVID-19 with at least one symptom while the remaining 3,449 had tested negative. Vaccine effectiveness was evaluated both after partial vaccination and after full vaccination, meaning 14 days after the second dose. After one dose, the Pfizer vaccine was 77.6 percent effective against symptomatic infection while the Moderna vaccine was 88.8 percent effective. After both doses, Pfizer's shot was 88.9 percent effective while the Moderna jab was 96.3 percent effective. These rates were comparable regardless of age, race, sex, or having pre-existing conditions. There are some theories about why there is a difference. One theory is that one dose of the Moderna vaccine is 100 micrograms (g) compared to 30 g for Pfizer. Another is that because four weeks pass between the two Moderna shots compared to three weeks for the two Pfizer shots, it may allow more time for antibodies to generate. 'At the end of the day, I do think there are subtle but real differences between Moderna and Pfizer,' Dr Jeffrey Wilson, an immunologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who was not involved in the study, told The Times. 'In high-risk populations, it might be relevant. It'd be good if people took a close look. Pfizer is a big hammer, but Moderna is a sledgehammer.' If more studies continue to show similar findings, there may be impacts the conversation surrounding booster shots. On Wednesday evening, a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine was approved by the FDA for those aged 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness. Moderna has submitted data to the FDA on its booster shot and is waiting for officials to review the application. After a spike in COVID-19 vaccinations during the Delta surge, vaccinations in the U.S. are now dropping again. Under 300,000 Americans got their first doses each day in the last week - the lowest daily average since mid-July, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Additionally, about 750,000 total shots were administered per day, which has not been since early August. Some leaders, including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine are ramping up vaccine incentives once more - but it's unclear whether such initiatives can make a dent. Public health experts are also concerned that the flu could put additional pressure on the U.S. healthcare system as winter approaches. The pace of Covid vaccinations in the U.S. is slowing once again. After an increase in July and August, vaccinations are now down to 750,000 new shots a day Under 300,000 people got their first doses each day in the last week - the lowest average since mid-July, according to CDC data. Pictured: A healthcare worker administers a vaccine at a clinic for individuals experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, California, September 2021 As Delta drove a new Covid surge in July and August, many Americans who weren't yet vaccinated decided to get their shots. The highly-contagious variant swept across the country, driving record cases and hospitalizations in states such as Florida and Louisiana. The Covid vaccines are highly effective at protecting people from severe disease and death caused by the virus - leaving unvaccinated people unprotected. As Delta surged, the country finally hit President Biden's vaccination goal - 70 percent of American adults receiving at least one dose - in early August, and numbers continued to rise from there. According to one Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in July, about 22 percent of unvaccinated adults said that news of variants made them more likely to get vaccinated. Many Americans also began to face vaccine requirements, due to a rising number of mandates from employers, school districts, and other institutions. Following Labor Day, vaccination numbers are now dropping again - even though the Delta surge is not completely over. Every state except for California is currently classified as 'high transmission' by the CDC, with at least 100 new cases for every 100,000 people in the past week. Yet vaccinations are falling with the U.S. is now administering about 750,000 new doses a day. The country was administering more than 800,000 new doses a day throughout August, sometimes reporting over one million new doses a day. This drop in vaccinations is driven, in part, by fewer people seeking a first shot. In the last week, under 300,000 Americans got their first vaccine doses each day - the lowest daily average since mid-July, when the Delta surge was starting to drive concern. 'Every day we chip away at the unvaccinated. Now 71 [million] are eligible but haven't yet gotten a dose. Let's try to reach them,' Cyrus Shahpar, the White House Covid Data Director, tweeted on Wednesday. West Virginia has reported 1,000 new vaccinations each day - or fewer - in recent weeks, with little increase during the Delta surge. The state is now facing overwhelmed hospitals Those unvaccinated Americans continue to be at higher risk for Covid infection, severe disease, and death. This risk is clear in states with lower vaccination rates, such as West Virginia and Idaho. In West Virginia, just 40 percent of the state's population is fully vaccinated - the lowest vaccination rate in the country. While state officials said this week that the surge might be reaching its peak, it will be weeks before hospitalization and death numbers come down. Idaho also has a low vaccination rate, with just 41 percent of state residents fully vaccinated. Earlier this month, the state instituted crisis care standards for hospitals, as facilities were seeing so many Covid patients that healthcare staff had to prioritize those patients most likely to recover. Ohio did not see a significant jump in vaccinations following its vaccine lottery. The state is currently reporting about 20,000 new doses administered a day In response to high cases and low vaccination rates, some state leaders are introducing new initiatives in an effort to convince more people to get their shots. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine intends to announce a new incentive aimed at young people on Thursday, for example. 'I've worked with children's hospitals in Ohio for 30 years and I've never seen them as concerned as they are today,' DeWine said at a recent press conference. It's unclear how much impact the new incentive may have, however, as past research has shown that Ohio's famous Vax-a-Million lottery did not lead to any significant increase in state vaccination rates. In other states, leaders are focusing less on incentives and more on clear communication. Rob Ator, who leads Arkansas' vaccination effort, told Bloomberg that his goal is persuading the 'moveable middle' - in part by focusing on the risk of hospitalization for unvaccinated people. 'When you talk to a rural state, they are used to operating without the federal government telling them what to do,' Ator said. 'When you force somebody, that's when you're going to get the biggest resistance.' Some public health experts are also concerned about the flu, as flu season starts in September. A bad flu season paired with continued Covid cases could be incredibly tough for the U.S. healthcare system. 'Flu is still a killer, not as much as Covid-19, but between 12,000 and 50,000 Americans lose their lives every year from flu,' Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN. In many health clinics around the country, Americans can now get both their Covid shot and their flu shot at the same time. Asymptomatic children in Florida will no longer be forced to quarantine after being exposed to a Covid-positive kid and will instead be allowed to go back to school. The updated rules were announced at a press briefing on Wednesday by the state's new Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo, who was sworn in this week by Gov Ron DeSantis. Previously, students who were close contacts of COVID-19 patients were required to quarantine at home for at least four days. But, under the new guidance, kids will be allowed to continue classes as long as they don't develop symptoms, such as cough, fever or shortness of breath. Parents can choose to keep their children at home if they wish, but for no more than seven days. The new rules are at odds with those recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but Ladapo says he trust parents to make decisions that are best for them and their families. It is the latest in a series of controversial moves by the new Surgeon General who has previously called COVID-19 vaccines 'nothing special.' Florida's new Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo announced on Wednesday (above) new rules for students who are exposed to someone who tests positive for COVID-19 Asymptomatic children will be allowed to continue classes as long as they don't develop symptoms and don't have to quarantine at home for four days. Pictured: Students sit in an algebra class at Barbara Coleman Senior High School in Miami Lakes, Florida, August 2021 Currently, the CDC recommends that students who are unvaccinated but exposed to someone infected with COVID-19 to gest tested and quarantine for 14 days. Fully vaccinated students don't need to quarantine but are still recommended to get tested, the agency states. However, at the press briefing, Ladapo described Florida's new rules as a result of health officials performing a cost-benefit analysis. 'If you look at the data, if we talk about the data about what the benefits are of taking healthy children who've happened to be exposed to another child or adult who's tested positive for COVID-19 and taking that a child out of school for a week or longer than the quarantine, well what are the data about benefits?' he said. 'So basically, there is no high-quality data about benefits and we're about 18 months into this pandemic.' Several studies have shown that when schools closed and children were forced into remote learning last year, it came with several harms. For many kids - including those didn't have access to phones, computers or even WiFi to participate in virtual learning - this meant limited or no education at all, increasing the risk of falling behind their peers. One analysis from Harvard University and Brown University found that progress in math in March 2020 - and again in December 2020 - fell by half in schools in low-income ZIP codes and by one-third in middle-income ZIP codes compared to not all in high-income ZIP codes. Another paper from Brown University found that students entering the new school year were expected to have lost one-third of the expected progress in reading and half of the expected progress in math from not being in classrooms. 'There's a policy in place in many parts of this country that basically has no provable benefit but demonstrable and considerable harm to children not to even mention the parents and the disruption that creates when they have got to figure out to sort of reorganize things,' Ladapo said. He added that the new guidance would also respect the rights of parents and allow for them to send their kids to school or keep them home based on level of comfort. DeSantis echoed Ladapo's comments at the briefing and said that keeping kids in schools was important to their social and emotional development. 'I trust parents and families, and I don't think they are going to go around lying,' he said. 'Parents have the right to have their healthy kids in school. In-person education is important for a students' wellbeing, their educational advancement, and their social development. 'The idea that schools are somehow a big problem when it comes to spread of the virus has been refuted yet again.' COVID-19 patients who require intensive care are likely to have delirium and other neurological symptoms, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Michigan identified delirium in 73 percent of patients admitted to the Michigan Medicine intensive care unit (ICU) between March 2020 and May 2020. The patients had the condition for at least four days with some experiencing the symptom for as long as 17 days. Some of the patients also reported delirium, dementia, depression, and other cognitive issues in the months after they returned home from the hospital. The findings adds additional evidence to past studies and experiences from long Covid patients, who say that neurological issues are a common - yet under-studied - facet of the disease. Covid patients hospitalized in an ICU are very likely to have delirium and other neurological symptoms, a recent study shows. Pictured: Nurses care for a Covid patient at an ICU at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, California, May 2020 Covid is commonly seen as a respiratory disease, but in the past year and a half, researchers have catalogued its potential to impact many other parts of the body. The disease can cause long-term loss of smell and taste, cardiovascular issues, gastrointestinal complications, neurological symptoms, autoimmune issues and more. Neurological symptoms may be one of the most concerning categories. Covid has been documented as a cause of prolonged fatigue, 'brain fog' and other related challenges for long Covid patients, who suffer from symptoms for weeks or months after their initial infection. And in patients hospitalized with severe Covid cases, clinicians have found that delirium may be a common symptom. Delirium is a confused mental state, in which patients have a limited ability to navigate their environment. A recent study further demonstrates that delirium is common in patients who require intensive care in the hospital. Clinicians at Michigan Medicine, a hospital in the University of Michigan system, followed Covid patients who were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with dementia early in the pandemic. Their study was published on September 17 in the journal BMJ Open. In total, Michigan Medicine saw 148 Covid patients in its ICU between March 1 and May 31, 2020. Of those 148 patients, 108 experienced delirium during their ICU stay. That's 73 percent - almost three-quarters - of all ICU patients. These patients experienced delirium for at least four days - some as long as 17 days - and the median symptom duration was 10 days. Half of the patients who experienced delirium were black, following a trend - the majority of ICU patients at the hospital were black. Scientists are still working to understand how Covid causes delirium, but it may be linked to inflammation in the brain - shown in patient D's brain scan here The researchers noted, however, that this number of black patients was 'disproportionately high' compared with overall demographics at the hospital. 'COVID is also associated with a number of other adverse outcomes that tend to prolong hospitalization and make recovery difficult,' said study author Dr Phillip Vliside in a statement. The delirium patients also tended to have other comorbidities such as hypertension and diabetes. In a further signal that delirium was associated with more severe Covid disease, the delirium patients had longer hospital stays - and longer stays in the ICU - than those patients who didn't experience this symptom. Upon leaving the hospital, about one-third of the delirium patients had not recovered from this symptom. Many patients - 40 percent - needed assistance from a skilled nurse after leaving the hospital. Along with recording the patients' experiences with delirium in the hospital, the researchers also surveyed them after they returned home from the hospital. The researchers were able to survey about 20 patients and their families, two to three months after they returned home. About a quarter of those patients still had delirium symptoms, two to three months later. Some of the delirium patients also reported dementia, depression, and other cognitive issues that were not resolved, months after they returned home from the hospital. 'A family member who is confused has limited ability to care for themselves and will require additional caretaking support, which is certainly a big challenge,' Vlisides said. Scientists have not yet determined how a coronavirus infection may lead to delirium, but the Michigan Medicine researchers say that multiple factors may play a role. The coronavirus might infect nervous system cells, and might also lead to an inflammatory response that causes the immune system to attack itself. The researchers performed brain scans for some patients - and noted that a couple of the delirium patients had abnormal fluid or signs of inflammation in their brains. The Michigan Medicine findings aligned with other research on delirium in Covid patients, showing that between 65 and 80 percent of ICU patients may have this symptom. However, Vlisides noted that the study's timeframe - during the pandemic's first wave - may have made it possible that some patients experienced delirium due to the conditions of their hospital stays, rather than thanks to the virus itself. 'Early on in the pandemic, we weren't performing standard delirium prevention protocols like we usually do,' he said. Patients with delirium were also more likely to have sedatives prescribed to them. Still, Vlisides said that this study presents a warning about Covid's long-term impacts. 'Overall, this study highlights another reason why getting vaccinated and preventing severe illness is so important,' he said. 'There can be long term neurological complications that perhaps we don't talk about as much as we should.' The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) advisory committee has officially recommended the use of boosters doses for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in specific groups. The members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to give the shot to people aged 65 and older and long-term care facility residents and 13-2 for Americans between ages 50 and 64 with underlying medical conditions. Boosters were also recommended for those aged 18 to 49 with pre-existing conditions, but the vote was much closer with the recommendation passing 9-6. However, the committee voted against recommended use for those are at risk due to an 'occupational or institutional setting' including healthcare workers, grocery store employees, teachers and grocery store staffers, as well as those in prisons or homeless shelters. The vote comes less than 24 hours after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized third Pfizer doses for these groups. Until the FDA announced its decision, ACIP was unable to recommend third doses, a necessary step before pharmacists or clinicians can immunize patients. And it marks the first time that the ACIP has voted against an FDA authorization regarding COVID-19-related issues. The CDC is not bound to follow the advisory group's recommendations, but the agency rarely goes against the guidance of ACIP. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted on Thursday to recommend boosters for those aged 65 and older, long-term care facility residents and those at high risk of severe Covid due to underlying conditions. Pictured: A healthcare worker administers a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a senior living facility in Worcester, Pennsylvania, August 2021 The committee voted against recommending third doses for people at high risk due to their jobs or those in prisons or homeless shelters. Pictured: CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia Last month, boosters were approved for immunocompromised Americans who had received either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine after data showed they were less likely to develop high antibody levels after two doses. At least 2.3 million people in the U.S. have received booster doses as of Friday, according to data from the CDC. The White House also announced last month booster shots would become available for all Americans starting on September 20 due to data suggesting waning efficacy of the initial shots. At the time, Pfizer said its early data suggested people who received booster doses between six and 12 months after their final dose had high levels of protection. The company filed for emergency use authorization for booster doses in late August and submitted data to the FDA, which was made public last week. The documents suggest that protection from two doses of the Pfizer vaccine declines from 96.2 percent at seven days after dose 2 to 90.1 percent two months later to 83.7 percent up to six months later. Pfizer said data suggested efficacy of two doses declines from 96.2% to 83.7% after six months but that a third dose boosts antibody levels (above) What's more, they cited data from Israel showing people fully vaccinated in January 2021 had a 2.26-fold increased risk for breakthrough infections compared to those fully vaccinated in April 2021. Another Israeli study discussed in the documents showed that effectiveness against infection was 39 percent and against symptomatic disease was 40 percent from June 20, 2021 to July 17, 2021, when the Delta variant was the dominant strain. Comparatively, between January and April, these rates were at 95 percent or higher. The team also released data from a clinical trial involving 23 participants who participated in Pfizer's early-stage trials last year. Each had received two doses of the vaccine and were given a booster dose at least six months later. Of the participants, 11 were in the younger adults group of those aged 18 to 55 and 12 were aged 65 to 85. After the third dose, neutralizing antibodies against the original strain of the virus rose five-fold in the 18-to-55 age group and seven-fold in the 65-to-85 group. Against the Delta variant, antibody levels after a booster shot rose five-fold in the younger adult group and 12-fold in the older adult group. But many scientists, including senior officials at the FDA, disagree and argue that the vaccines are still highly effective at preventing severe illness and death. FDA officials also expressed concern over a lack of data on the potential side effects of a third dose, especially for younger adults who may be at risk for heart inflammation. In a separate briefing document also published last week, FDA scientists wrote with a skeptical tone about the need for booster shots. 'Overall, data indicate that currently US-licensed or authorized COVID-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe COVID-19 disease and death in the United States,' the scientists wrote. They added that studies on booster doses have presented conflicting findings and that 'known and unknown biases that can affect their reliability.' BOOK OF THE WEEK GEORGE III: THE LIFE AND REIGN OF BRITAIN'S MOST MISUNDERSTOOD MONARCH by Andrew Roberts (Allen Lane 35, 784pp) Andrew Roberts is our most prodigious biographer. It seems only the other day (in fact three years ago) that he produced his monumental life of Winston Churchill, widely acclaimed as the best of the innumerable volumes on the triumphant war leader. Now here he is again with a 784-page biography of the man whose name is above all associated with this countrys most chastening military defeat, the American war of Independence: King George III. Andrew Roberts reflects on the life of King George III in a new 784-page biography. Pictured: George III (Nigel Hawthorne) and Queen Charlotte (Helen Mirren) Churchill crops up in a note on page 660 of this beautifully produced volume, with his remarks in 1919 at a dinner held by the English-Speaking Union in honour of George Washingtons birthday: George Washington was an English gentleman, who fought against a German king. As the author observes, this is nonsense: George III was the most determinedly British of the Hanoverian kings. On the occasion of his accession speech to Parliament, the 22-year-old monarch declared, in words he added to those already prepared for him: Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain. Roberts notes: Although George actually wrote Britain, it was reported as Briton, which makes much more sense in the context as he was speaking about himself and was attempting to tell his people that their new King gloried in his Britishness, thus differentiating himself from his German grandfather [George II] and great-grandfather [George I]. He was, in fact, strikingly insular, not only never setting foot in his familys ancestral homeland of Hanover, but none of his own dominions, including Scotland and Wales: not even Manchester, heartland of the industrial revolution then transforming his country. This is one of the paradoxes in this book: for George was a man of great intellectual curiosity, building up a remarkable collection of scientific instruments (which fascinated him) while, in the field of arts, founding the Royal Academy. And he welcomed scholars from overseas to visit the magnificent library he established at Buckingham Palace the home he had bought as a wedding gift for his wife Charlotte. Yet it follows that, as he never himself ventured west of Plymouth, Georges understanding of his American subjects was entirely without personal acquaintance. Perhaps such an encounter would have not changed anything either in his view of their rebelliousness, or theirs of his alleged tyranny but still, it might have done, in one of the most tantalising what-ifs of history. Roberts begins his book quoting the most fashionable modern depiction of his subject in Hamilton: An American Musical. Singing three show-stopping numbers, King George III somehow manages to be comic, yet cruel, camp yet sinister . . . Youll remember you belong to me, a sardonic, preening, pompous monarch sings . . . and I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love. This depiction derives from the Declaration of Independence which, while best known for its inspirational opening passages on liberty and self-government, has a second section consisting of 28 charges against the person of George III, seeking to prove him a tyrant of almost unparalleled heinousness. King George III (pictured) personally backed repeal of the Stamp Act the imposition of taxes to fund a defensive army in North America Roberts systematically refutes these accusations. He is not the first to have done so, but his demolition of the authors of the Declarations case against George III is elegant and comprehensive. Other monarchs of the age did put down rebellions for example the Spanish in their colony of Louisiana savagely and with executions, but George did no such thing. As Roberts writes: During his reign, no American newspapers were closed, no popular meetings were banned, no arrests were made without trial. The fiscal measures to which the rebels had taken such exception (the tax on tea, notably) were not the monarchs invention, but the will of the British parliament, whose constitutional rights, rather than his own personal power, George sought to defend. Indeed, the King personally backed repeal of the Stamp Act the imposition of taxes to fund a defensive army (against the French) in North America which had been the initial cause of the American rebellion. What Thomas Jefferson, the Declarations principal author, had wanted was for the King to reject the approach of his own ministers in other words, to behave more like an absolute monarch. King George III (pictured) had penned his thoughts about the slave trade as a teenager in the 1750s under the tutelage of the Earl of Bute And I had not realised, until reading Roberts, that the original draft of the Declaration, with breath-taking gall, had even blamed the slave trade on George: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery. In fact, 41 of the 56 signatories of the Declaration had been slaveowners, so this part of the charge against George was removed. Perhaps Robertss most interesting discovery having become the first historian to gain access to the essays of the future King in the Windsor archives is that as a teenager in the 1750s under the tutelage of the Earl of Bute (later Georges Prime Minister), he wrote: What shall we say to the European traffic of black slaves: the very reasons urged for it will be perhaps sufficient to make us hold this practice in execration. However, although half a century later he gave royal assent to the parliamentary Act making the slave trade illegal, as monarch George III said nothing about the practice, apparently believing that the abolition of slavery would lead to the collapse of the economies of the Caribbean colonies. Therefore, he had been, as Roberts points out despite his devout Christianity in reality a supporter of the iniquitous status quo. Seen through modern eyes, that is the single thing which stands in the way of his rehabilitation as a great man and great monarch which is the principal purpose of this epic work. GEORGE III: THE LIFE AND REIGN OF BRITAIN'S MOST MISUNDERSTOOD MONARCH by Andrew Roberts (Allen Lane 35, 784pp) The case for his good character is certainly convincing, especially in contrast to all the other Hanoverians, who were vicious in their family feuding, cruel to their children, profligate in their exploitation of the public purse and consistently faithless to their unfortunate spouses. George III was none of these things. This makes Robertss accounts of the Kings episodes of insanity all the more sad to read, and especially his final ten years, when his son became regent during George IIIs final psychosis, which appears to have been set off by the fatal illness of his beloved daughter Amelia. The film The Madness Of King George popularised the line that he was not really mad but suffering from the effects of porphyria, a rare metabolic disorder. But in 2017 this was refuted by Sir Simon Wessely, then president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who was given access by the Queen to royal archives covering Georges care during these episodes. Roberts follows this, agreeing that the King was a manic-depressive, with psychotic episodes. I raised this with Sir Simon, who told me the final ten years madness in which the intensely musical George also went completely blind and gained his only solace by playing on his harpsichord was perhaps caused by all the dreadful treatments he had over the years. Everything he was given would either have had no effect, or more likely made him worse. Thats the tragedy of the whole thing. Read it and weep. . . . are you reading now? William Blake vs The World by John Higgs. A while ago I decided to read anything Higgs writes. He seems to be able to take any subject pop music, Watling Street, conspiracy theories, robotics and poke at it until it yields up its secrets. The simplicity of some of Blakes poems hides profound complexity and in some of the longer poems that complexity explodes into stark staring craziness. The shrapnel of that explosion has lodged in our culture influencing everyone from imperialists to hippies. Higgss book is sometimes wayward and you wont agree with all he says, but its great to spend time in the company of such a big, excitable and nimble brain. And to think about how exactly we might build Jerusalem. Frank Cottrell Boyce (pictured) would take H. G. Wells's The History Of Mr Polly and The Wheels Of Chance to a desert island . . . would you take to a desert island? During these last months of lockdown and restriction, we have all had to create our own little islands. My own desert island was my parents house. I spent time there because they were both ill, and sadly both died a few months ago. There were a lot of old Everyman Classics that Dad read when he was a teenager studying at night school after work. Two of them well-thumbed copies of H. G. Wellss The History Of Mr Polly and The Wheels Of Chance were like the buried treasure you might hope to find on a desert island. Theyre about young men with huge aspirations and limited opportunities and I could feel exactly how much they became part of Dad. I also found a much more recent book The Habit Of Being: Letters Of Flannery OConnor. Like all good companions, she knows how to be alone. . . . first gave you the reading bug? During my time on the island of my parents house I found my old I-Spy books all filled in. These were little guide books to the birds, hedgerows, cars and even people that were published by the Daily Mail. You got points for spotting rare and unusual things. Theyre now a kind of catalogue of a lost Britain but at the time they encouraged me to notice things, which is surely the key to building up resources of happiness. So Ill always be grateful to their author a retired head teacher named Charles Warrell, whose pseudonym was Big Chief I-Spy and whose address was Wigwam-by-the-Water, London EC4. . . . left you cold? The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Hes a great writer but this book like Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding is based on the adolescent notion that if things go wrong well all end up eating each other. This past year has surely proved that the opposite is true. Neighbour reached out to neighbour and asked if they wanted some shopping. Toilet-roll bandits were the exception. Life is not a game of Fortnite. Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Noahs Gold, will be talking at the Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils conference at Cheltenham Literature Festival (October 8 to 17). THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET by Catriona Ward (Viper 8.99, 400pp) THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET by Catriona Ward (Viper 8.99, 400pp) For 11 years, Ted Bannerman has been thinking about the disappearance of the six-year-old girl he calls the Little Girl With Popsicle. When the childs body was eventually found by a lake near Teds home, the police searched the houses of everyone in the county who might hurt children including the house where Ted grew up, and where he now lives as a near-recluse with a disturbed teenager, Lauren, whom he calls his daughter, and a comically arrogant cat, Olivia, whose narration of events alternates with Teds. The third voice in the novel belongs to Dee, the elder sister of Lulu, the lost girl. Tormented by guilt at her sisters unsolved death, Dee is convinced that Ted holds the secret to Lulus fate. With its blend of slow-burn horror and compassion for damaged lives, Wards gothic thriller unfolds secrets within secrets until its devastating denouement. WALKING WITH GHOSTS by Gabriel Byrne (Picador 9.99, 224pp) WALKING WITH GHOSTS by Gabriel Byrne (Picador 9.99, 224pp) Visiting his childhood home on the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne finds a motorway where fields of barley once grew, and feels an intruder in my own past. As his lyrical memoir reveals, he has spent much of his life feeling out of place: as a boy from an Irish Catholic family, he began training for the priesthood; spells as a failed plumber and dish-washer followed, until he discovered his true vocation of acting. A role in a TV soap opera earned him a reputation as an Irish Heathcliff, and Hollywood beckoned, but Byrne is a reluctant celebrity. Vignettes of the stars spangle his recollections riding in Hyde Park with Ava Gardner; a brusque Laurence Olivier; a convivial Richard Burton but beneath the showbiz glamour lies a deeper sense of belonging: his love for his family and the lost landscapes of his past, poetically evoked in this heartfelt memoir. SLOUGH HOUSE by Mick Herron (John Murray 8.99, 320pp) SLOUGH HOUSE by Mick Herron (John Murray 8.99, 320pp) In Slough House, the dingy office building to which those MI5 agents whose careers have taken a wrong turning are relegated, its collection of oddballs are under attack. Led by the pungently offensive Jackson Lamb (to be played by Gary Oldman in a TV series), they are being terminated, one by one, apparently in revenge for the execution of a Russian agent responsible for a Novichok poisoning on British soil. Darkly funny and dangerously twisty, Slough House is a shockingly readable story of bad choices and worse outcomes. I run a small B&B in Devon and have been using Booking.com since October 2020. In order to encourage guests to book, and for hosts to supposedly make more money, Booking opt hosts in to what they call 'opportunites', one of which is the virtual credit card scheme. On booking, the guest pays Booking and the host is able to collect the money a day after they arrive. Unfortunately, I and many other hosts are unable to take payments this way and only discovered this after travellers had booked. A B&B owner is owed thousands by Booking.com after the website held onto her guests funds I had eight customers book via this method before I realised I couldn't get the money. I am now owed over 2,459 by Booking.com and I seem to have no way of getting hold of it. The website keeps putting me off and it's now been months without the funds. How can I get my money? S.F., via email Grace Gausden, consumer expert at This is Money, replies: While your guests might be going on a summer holiday, your experience with Booking has been a bumpy ride. You added your B&B onto Booking last year to advertise your property more widely during the pandemic. The online travel site set up your profile with a virtual credit card scheme which are temporary, digital Mastercards that it uses to pay hosts for bookings that guests pay for on its platform. GRACE ON THE CASE Our weekly column sees This is Money consumer expert Grace Gausden tackles reader problems and shines the light on companies doing both good and bad. Want her to investigate a problem, or do you want to praise a firm for going that extra mile? Get in touch: grace.gausden@thisismoney.co.uk These function like regular credit cards and Booking said they 'give hosts guaranteed payouts' from the company. However, the site holds onto the money and passes it on to the hosts only a day after the guest arrives at the property. As soon as your property went live, you received eight bookings via the website with customers paying upfront. The total cost of these reservations came to 2,459. After you tried to take payment on the first one, you found that Zettle by PayPal, the payment system you use, doesn't allow virtual credit card payments. You got in touch with Booking in June and were told it was a simple task to transfer the money that Booking had collected on your behalf back to you. However, the firm said you had missed the payment date and advised you would have to wait until 17 July to receive the funds. This date came and went but no money was received. Similarly, 17 August and 17 September passed with no money being transferred to you. Throughout this time you have been paying 15 per cent commission to Booking for these and other reservations as if you do not, you say you have been threatened with your account being suspended and guests not being able to book. Booking holds onto funds from hosts until the guest has arrived at the accommodation While you have tried to contact the firm, you say emails go unanswered or are answered by automatically generated messages. Meanwhile, when phones are answered it is by someone with no power to help. You add you now contact them daily pointing out you have made 16 phone calls and written 15 emails over three months, updating the figures every day. I contacted Booking to find out what was causing the delay to your payment as you have had no information from the company and have been waiting months for a payment. A spokesperson said: 'Our primary aim at Booking.com is to provide an easy-to-use platform that enables our accommodation partners to seamlessly manage and grow their business with us, and we strive to address any potential challenges that may arise as quickly as possible. 'This means enabling travelers to pay for their trips with their preferred local payment methods and in turn providing that payment to our partners in a way they can easily manage. 'All of our partners have the option to manage payments themselves, but many make the decision for us to manage it on their behalf, whether that's a reservation with an upfront deposit or with payment due at the time of stay. 'Unfortunately, due to a technical issue we were unable to process this partner's payout on time. We have apologised for the inconvenience and are ensuring that they receive this outstanding payment shortly.' Fortunately, you have been promised the funds by the end of this week and can hopefully receive more reservations - albeit through a different method - without having to keep wasting your time chasing your money. Tui customers were frustrated after being told they would not get a full refund from the firm Tui not refunding despite cancer diagnosis My friend who I'm booked to go abroad with via Tui has been diagnosed with breast cancer at just 25. She is having to have chemotherapy which means she won't be able to go on the holiday. I called two different lines for the travel firm but both gave conflicting information regarding the refund. One said we can have full refund whilst the other said we can but will lose 250 each. Which is correct? J.M., via email Grace Gausden, consumer expert at This is Money, replies: Firstly, I'm very sorry to hear about your friend's diagnosis and wish her all the best. Secondly, Tui is no stranger to this column. You were both originally meant to travel to Morocco in July but your holiday was cancelled by Tui mid-June. You were given a 20 per cent incentive to rebook so you booked to go to Mexico on 26 January 2022, returning on 3 February. You originally paid 601.90 each for the Morocco holiday which was then uplifted by 20 per cent with your new Mexico holiday costing 882.60 with 160 each left to settle. However, due to the unfortunate circumstances, you had to cancel the trip. At first, TUI said you could rebook but, as a result of cancellation, you would lose the incentive with the firm advising it would not be able to issue another discount code or voucher. Another alternative put forward by the travel company was to take a refund but this came with the stipulation that Tui would keep 250 per passenger, again, as a result of the cancellation. This conflicting information was adding stress to you and your friend who needs to focus on her health therefore you got in touch with me. I spoke to Tui to ask why a full refund has not been offered - and why so much differing advise was being handed out. A Tui spokesperson said: 'We're very sorry for the confusion over this booking. We have apologised for the mistake that was made and have now issued a full refund.' You and your friend have both now received the 761.90 each which will hopefully go some small way to easing your friends mind in this difficult time and I hope one day in the near future you will be able to have a fantastic holiday together. Hit and miss: This week's naughty and nice list Each week, I look at some of the companies that have fallen short of expected standards as well as those that have gone that extra mile for customers. Miss: Netflix are under the microscope this week after reader, Andrea, complained about the streaming service. She said: 'I have just had a horrendous experience with Netflix which I have had since 2016. I noticed two payments had gone out through Paypal this month for two different amounts to Netflix so queried it. A Netflix customer has complained after her account was hacked and she was charged twice 'When I contacted Netflix, it told me my account was compromised in January 2020 but it did not advise me at the time. A secondary account was set up with the same email and password but I didn't know. 'Since then, two payments have been claimed every month but I have only just noticed which, whilst an oversight on my part, still shouldn't have been happening. I would have expected Netflix to refund the double charged payments but it has refused. 'It has only refunded the second payment for July. I am out of pocket by 134.82 and the customer service I received was appalling. Any help would be much appreciated.' I contacted Netflix about this as it seemed unfair you had been paying for two accounts after being hacked - and that it would only refund one month. Fortunately, it agreed to refund you the full amount. However, the streaming site said it advises against password reuse on multiple websites as it can be risky. It added, if a member notices any unusual activity on their account, they should contact Netflix immediately. Hit: In better news, this week, reader Ali, praised the service from her home insurance company, Homelet. She said: 'I just rang to cancel my home insurance policy as I am moving house. It was literally the least painful interaction with customer service I have ever had. 'They let me leave the policy with no pressure and the whole thing only took two minutes from ringing to cancellation.' It seems Homelet have the key to success when it comes to customer service. Investors' appetite for backing funds holding UK shares has continued to fall as they favour global equities and bonds instead, according to a new report. The shunning of UK shares came despite a stellar year for the funds industry and analysts flagging them as an opportunity in the Covid recovery. British investors assets in UK equities fell to a record low of 26 per cent by the end of 2020, according to new figures from trade body, the Investment Association (IA). The fall is partly down to pandemic uncertainty and the effects of Brexit but also reflects a long-term trend of higher allocation to global equities and bond strategies. Despite the pandemic, retail fund sales jumped to 30.8bn but investors are continuing to look abroad Three quarters of equity assets are now invested overseas compared with just over 50 per cent a decade ago, while assets in overseas bonds are 55 per cent of all bond AUM in 2020. Last year, net inflows into the IA Global sector hit 6.1billion, three times higher than the next highest selling region, North America. Despite the crippling effects of the pandemic, the UK funds industry has enjoyed one of its best years, according to the IAs latest Investment Management Survey. Retail fund sales jumped to 30.8billion, making it the second highest year on record for net sales after 2017. Despite steep falls in March 2020, total investor funds under management (FUM) reached a record 1.44trillion by the end of the year, up nine per cent from 1.32trillion in 2019. Elsewhere, demand for greener investments has been a standout development over the past year. Net retail sales into responsible investment funds reached 11.7billion, accounting for 38 per cent of total net retail sales. Investor appetite for environmentally conscious funds has been building over recent years but the pandemic brought social concerns to the fore, the IA said. The UK remains the second largest investment management centre in the world behind the US and leads in Europe with a market share of 37 per cent - larger than the combined total of France, Germany and Switzerland. AUM held by IA members grew 11 per cent to 9.4 trillion in the UK by the end of 2020, helped by decisive actions by central banks. The investment management industry demonstrated its long termism through the pandemic by supporting the companies it invests in. The swift action of the central banks supported the global economy and the industry rallied to the cause, injecting over 22bn into businesses to help them ride out the storm, said IA chief executive Chris Cummings. The UK also continues to be an attractive hub for overseas investment. By the end of 2020, overseas client assets accounted for 44 per cent of total AUM, equivalent to 4.2trillion. With the final transition out of the EU completed, the industry is well-set to build on its world class reputation which has already led to it managing 9.4trn of international clients funds, said Cummings. A California poll worker fired for wearing a Donald Trump outfit at the Gavin Newsom recall election says he didn't break any rules and that his civil rights have been violated. In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Dmitriy Belyavskiy claimed Los Angeles County staff were politically biased and acted unconstitutionally when they kicked him out of a polling center where he was volunteering last week. He said he was singled out while the county failed to take action against other election workers with left-wing or liberal political clothing, including a county staffer with a Black Lives Matter mask. The 45-year-old Uzbekistan-born US citizen said he has volunteered as a poll worker in elections since 2007 and has been a diehard Trump fan for just as long. Belyavskiy worked as an elections reservist last week, manning polling stations and helping voters cast their ballots in the gubernatorial recall election while dressed head to toe in Trump memorabilia. Dmitriy Belyavskiy, 45, is the California poll worker who was fired last week for wearing a pro-Trump outfit at the Gavin Newsom recall election Belyavskiy told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview that Los Angeles County staff were politically biased and acted unconstitutionally One voter posted a photo of him on Twitter and several others took offense to his outlandish outfit and complained to the county, which fired him last Tuesday. But Belyavskiy says he acted within California rules, which ban 'electioneering' within 100 feet of a polling station, defined as 'the visible display or audible dissemination of information that advocates for or against any candidate or measure on the ballot.' 'I was wearing the Donald Trump outfit in every place I was assigned. People complained but I was cleared by the county representatives,' the 45-year-old high school tutor said. 'It's absolutely and perfectly legal. The vote.net site clearly states according to California law electioneering has to involve a person on the ballot, or a measure. Donald Trump is not on the ballot and obviously he's not a measure. So that's what I call an infringement of civil rights. 'I pretty much knew it was going to happen but I said I'm not going to back down. It's my personal right to express myself.' Belyavskiy, who grew up in Soviet Russia, said the incident left him feeling like he was back in the USSR. 'Like Joseph Stalin said, it's not who's voting that matters, it's the one who's counting the votes,' he told DailyMail.com. 'People are scared. If you're Republican you've got to be in the closet, let alone wearing a Trump outfit. It's the same thing as the old Soviet Union. It's like being gay 30 years ago.' Belyavskiy said he left his home city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan age 19, fleeing communist oppression and anti-Semitism. 'When I graduated I hated the country, I hated the system, so I left. I hated how they treated Jews, the anti-Semitism. I was called a k*ke ever since I was seven years old. 'When I was a little kid during the Soviet-Afghan war I saw Russian troops rolling through with tanks,' he added. 'A distant uncle was a red army colonel. He told me how the Soviets used their soldiers like livestock, like they were expendable.' Belyavskiy said he threw himself into American life after emigrating and even served in the U.S. Army. A Twitter user posted the photo last Tuesday. By the end of the day, the viral photo had prompted the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk to pull the poll worker from the job The 45-year-old Uzbekistan-born US citizen said he has volunteered as a poll worker in elections since 2007 and has been a diehard Trump fan for just as long. Belyavskiy said he is the former president's biggest fan, and regularly wears his full closet of MAGA memorabilia when out hiking in Los Angeles Belyavskiy provided DailyMail.com parking passes issued by LA County for his work volunteering at poll centers in previous elections. Belyavskiy said he has volunteered in dozens of elections for the county Belyavskiy began volunteering in elections around 2007 and he was later promoted to the role of 'reservist' in his voluntary role for the county. His parking passes are pictured He began volunteering in elections around 2007 through a program at a West Hollywood private school where he taught K-12 children chess and various academic subjects. He was later promoted to the role of 'reservist' in his voluntary role for the county, and was paid a stipend to help process voters at polling stations during elections over the past 14 years. Belyavskiy, who grew up in Soviet Russia, said the incident left him feeling like he was back in the USSR. He's pictured in a much younger, undated photo It was also back in 2007 that Trump won Belyavskiy's heart when he first stumbled across the reality show The Apprentice. 'I've loved Trump ever since The Apprentice in 2007,' he said. 'I've had Trump neckties since they came out. I love his style, the way he talks. None of this sugar-coating crap, he's straightforward 'you're fired'. 'When he was talking about illegals, calling a spade a spade, the economy and China stealing our property, it was all stuff I was thinking. He talks about stuff that's dear to my heart. 'He's a very nice guy, a generous guy. He's a little bit soft for me, but he's the best that we've had since Ronald Reagan.' Belyavskiy said he is the former president's biggest fan, and regularly wears his full closet of MAGA memorabilia when out hiking in Los Angeles. So when it came to the election to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom, the former teacher said it was only natural for him to don his Trump t-shirt, hat, socks, and bracelet. Belyavskiy told DailyMail.com he specifically asked county workers during poll workers' eight-hour training for the recall whether his politically-charged attire would be acceptable in his role. 'I asked, can you be specific what electioneering is?' he said. 'The great Ronald Reagan is not with us any more sadly, he was the president, or Bill Clinton, he barely moves but he's still alive, he used to be president but he's not running for anything else. Can it be electioneering if I wear a Ronald Reagan t-shirt? 'The person who was doing the training said if I want to come tomorrow wearing a Hillary Clinton t-shirt, or Obama, sure go ahead. They redirected it to Hillary and Obama. But in any case it was a green light if the person is not on the ballot, if the person is not running for anything, go ahead. 'I asked them, what about political organizations like Antifa, Proud Boys, Black Lives Matter, they said yeah sure.' His MAGA outfits sparked comments at the stations he worked at in Pacific Palisades, Burbank, and Woodland Hills for four days of early voting, but no official crackdown. He said he drew the ire of some voters when he wore a stars and stripes-themed costume on 9/11 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Twin Towers terror attack, and when he wore a blue and white 'I stand with Israel' t-shirt during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. But on the last day of voting in West Hollywood last Tuesday morning, Belyavskiy said a senior county staffer arrived and told him his job was over and he had to leave or she would call the police. 'I was wearing my black Trump hat, a MAGA t-shirt and on the back it has Trump's quote that 'America will never be a socialist country', and I was wearing Trump socks,' he said. 'They told me to leave. I told her it's unconstitutional, you're abusing power, it's unconstitutional and it's an infringement of my civil rights. 'She said we'll call the Sheriff, they're going to remove you. I said if you remove me from my duties, I'm not representing the county any more, I'm a regular citizen and how can you remove me from the polling place as a citizen?' He said he was singled out while no action was taken against other election workers with left-wing or liberal political clothing. Belyavskiy works as a high school tutor Tuesday was the final day Californians could vote in a recall election to see if Gov. Gavin Newsom should be removed. The Democrat held office in a landslide Eventually Belyavskiy backed down and left, he said, but is still fuming and wants to find a civil rights attorney to sue the county. The tutor added that he believes county staffers showed favoritism by failing to also police other clothing he described as political, including another poll worker wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask. 'She was wearing a collage photos mask with the photos of everyone who resisted the arrest, including George Floyd in the middle of the collage,' he said. 'I never had a problem with her wearing it despite that I strongly and factually consider BLM as terrorists, Marxists and anti-Semitic. But if you stand for the First Amendment and defend free speech, you don't just defend the speech that you like but the speech that you don't like or even hate as well. 'Having said that, if her Black Lives Matter mask with Floyd in the middle is not political, then how is my Trump attire?' After the firing, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk issued a statement on Twitter. 'The election worker was contacted and advised that the attire was inappropriate and unacceptable,' the county clerk's office tweeted Tuesday. 'Based on his response and reports that other workers had previously counseled him on this, he was released and is no longer working at the vote center.' The county did not respond to a request for comment by DailyMail.com. The firing was seemingly prompted by Twitter user Frank K. Santoyo's viral picture of Belyavskiy on Monday wearing a Trump 2020 hat and a Trump campaign t-shirt with the slogan 'Where's Hunter?' a reference to President Joe Biden's troubled son Hunter. The man who took the photo told FOX 11 the picture was taken at Plummer Park in West Hollywood a little before 6.15 p.m. Monday. Tuesday was the final day Californians could vote in a recall election to see if Governor Gavin Newsom should be removed. The Democrat held office in a landslide. Gang rapist Mohammed Skaf will leave prison next month after 21 years in jail. His mother and sister have now tested positive to Covid The imminent release from prison of notorious pack rapist Mohammed Skaf has been complicated by his mother and sister testing positive to Covid. But the family is still 'excited and happy' about him coming home, breaking their silence about his return for the first time on Thursday. Skaf is due to be freed early next month after more than 20 years behind bars and it was planned he live with his family in Sydney's south-western suburbs. Daily Mail Australia can reveal his mother and younger sister were diagnosed with Covid-19 last week and are self-isolating at their Greenacre home. Skaf's father and younger brother Hadi are also self-isolating in the recently renovated house but have not contracted the virus. Oldest brother Bilal, who led a gang of Lebanese-Australian teenagers including Mohammed on a spree of pack rapes shortly before the 2000 Olympics, remains in custody. The Skafs expect to be in isolation for the next week and a half and are unsure if Mohammed will be able to join them as soon as he leaves jail. Skaf's sister said despite the late hurdle the family was excited ahead of her reviled 38-year-old brother's release on parole. 'We're looking forward to him coming home and hopefully he'll start a life that we've never experienced before,' she said. 'We're pretty excited and happy for him to come home.' Mohammed Skaf's father Mustapha, mother Baria and brother Hadi (all pictured) are self-isolating at home after Mrs Skaf and her daughter contracted Covid-19. The Skafs expect to be are unsure when second eldest son Mohammed will be able to join them after he is paroled Skaf's sister said despite the late hurdle the family was excited about 38-year-old Mohammed's release on parole. 'We're looking forward to him coming home and hopefully he'll start a life that we've never experienced before,' she said. The Skaf family home is pictured The sister, who is in her mid 20s, said her family would discuss where Mohammed should stay when he gets out with Community Corrections, which supervises paroled prisoners. 'We're in the process of working on things,' she said. 'We don't actually know what's going to happen. 'We also don't even know whether he'll be coming home or not or going somewhere else; we're not too sure about that.' Community Corrections will also review Mohammed living at the Greenacre address after youngest sibling Hadi pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine and dealing with the proceeds of crime. A Corrective Services New South Wales spokeswoman said: 'Community Corrections conduct a thorough risk assessment of an offender's accommodation as part of release planning and this continues throughout the period of parole supervision.' 'If circumstances change, we can take measures to ensure a parolee is appropriately housed to meet the conditions of their supervision.' Mohammed was granted parole on September 17 under strict conditions including that he be electronically monitored 24 hours a day. His family home sits on a quiet bottlebrush-lined street and is about 1.7km from Gosling Park where one of the Skaf gang's pack rapes occurred on August 12, 2000. Mohammed Skaf (right) will be released no later than October 8. Bilal Skaf (left) will be eligible for parole in 2033. He is serving a minimum term of 28 years with a maximum of 31 The Skaf family home is about 1.7km from Gosling Park (above) where one of the Skaf gang's pack rapes occurred on August 12, 2000. Mohammed lured a 16-year-old girl to the park where Bilal and another gang member raped her while a dozen others stood around laughing. The gang, led by Bilal Skaf, took two teenagers aged 17 and 18 to a toilet block at Northcote Park, Greenacre, where they were raped by eight men on August 10, 2000. The park, which is 750m from the Skaf family home, is pictured Mohammed, then 17, had lured a 16-year-old girl to the park where Bilal and another gang member raped her while a dozen more young men stood around laughing. The second gang member held a gun to the teen's head and kicked her in the stomach before she was able to escape. The girl had believed Mohammed was her friend. Two days earlier members of the gang, led by Bilal, took two teenagers aged 17 and 18 to a toilet block at Northcote Park where they were forced to perform oral sex on eight males over two hours. That park is 750m from the Skaf family home. Less than three weeks after the Gosling Park attack, on August 30, 2000, Mohammed was the leader of four young men who approached an 18-year-old woman at Bankstown train station. Skaf took the young woman's phone and led her to public toilets in nearby Marion Street where he pushed her face against a wall and asked if she liked it 'Leb style'. Skaf's mother and younger sister were diagnosed with Covid last week and are self-isolating at their Greenacre home (pictured) along with his father and younger brother The woman was raped 25 times by 14 attackers at three locations in an ordeal that lasted six hours. She was called an 'Aussie pig' and asked if 'Leb c*** tasted better than Aussie c***' before being sprayed with a fire hose. Hadi Skaf was just 11 months old at the time of those outrages. He has lived in the same street near the Gosling and Northcote Park rapes for most of his life. Over the past year Hadi has been in and out of Sydney courts on a string of drug-related and driving offences. His most recent case was mentioned on Monday. The 22-year-old labourer came to the attention of police on June 12 when officers were conducting an operation targeting drug suppliers near Surry Hills pubs. About 7.20pm police saw Hadi using a navigation app on his mobile phone while in the front passenger seat of a silver Toyota Corolla being driven by another man near the Dolphin Hotel. While police watched from an unmarked car parked on the corner of Crown and Fitzroy Streets, a woman tried three times to open the locked passenger-side back door. Bilal Skaf led a gang of young Lebanese-Australian males on a pack rape spree across Sydney's south west in 2000. He is pictured outside the NSW Supreme Court in July 2006 The driver of the Corolla, which looked similar to the police vehicle, sounded his horn and the woman and her female friend followed the Toyota until it parked in a nearby bus lane. According to a statement of facts tendered to court, Skaf wound down his window and the two women stood beside the door for less than two minutes before walking away. Hadi Skaf, whose older brothers are notorious pack rapists Bilal and Mohammed Skaf, has been caught supplying cocaine in Sydney When police pulled over the Corolla, Skaf told them the women were friends and one of them was paying him $70 she owed for an Uber fare. Police then saw two phones hidden under Skaf's leg and asked him how many phones were in the vehicle. He replied: 'I don't know, it's my mum's car.' During a search the officers found $750 in the front pocket of Skaf's hoodie along with small clear freezer-style plastic bags. While this was happening other police stopped the two women and found four similar plastic bags containing white powder in the possession of one of them. That woman's phone contained a text message exchange which began, 'Hello are you around Surry tonight? 3 please.' That got the response: 'yes send full address'. Woman: '412 Crown St Surry Hills, the dolphin eta?' Dealer: 'yeah done see you in 24.' Woman: 'Getting 750 now.' Skaf pleaded guilty in Downing Centre Local Court on June 24 to supplying cocaine and dealing with the proceeds of crime and the matter has been was put over to October for sentencing. Another charge related to an earlier incident in Sydney's inner-south is still working its way through the courts. Police found a text message exchange when they examined the phone of a woman to whom Hadi Skaf sold cocaine for $750. 'Hello are you around Surry tonight? 3 please,' the woman asked. 'Yes send full address,' was the response Skaf was detected driving at 116km/h on the M5 East Motorway at Mascot at 11.23pm on May 10 last year. Police allege cocaine was detected in his system at the time. On November 3 last year Skaf was convicted in his absence of driving more than 30km/h over the speed limit and fined $1,000 at Downing Centre Local Court. He was disqualified from driving for three months from that date and convicted on April 15 at Burwood Local Court - again in his absence - of driving during that disqualification period, receiving a $1,000 fine. Skaf, who was still disqualified from driving when caught supplying cocaine, has pleaded not guilty to driving with cocaine in his saliva last year and will face a hearing at Downing Centre Local Court in December. The State Parole Authority has allowed Mohammed Skaf's release under strict conditions including 24-hour electronic monitoring. Mohammed has been offered post-release employment and his family home was previously assessed as suitable by Community Corrections. It is understood the difference between the nature of Mohammed and Hadi's offending would not stop the former living in the family home. An artist's impression of Mohammed Skaf at a hearing before the State Parole Authority in February. The SPA determined freeing Mohammed at the end of his 23-year sentence in early 2024 without any conditions would have posed an unacceptable risk to society Mohammed is considered a low/medium risk of general re-offending but one Corrective Services psychologist assessed him as in the 'well above average' range of committing further sex offences. He has been in custody for 20 years and 10 months of a maximum sentence of 22 years 11 months and 30 days. Original sentencing judge, Michael Finnane, compared the Skaf gang's depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war and said their crimes were 'worse than murder'. 'These were not random attacks and, in my view, they were aimed at creating terror in the community, Judge Finnane said. He specifically described Mohammed as a menace to civilised society. 'As the facts show, he, although quite young, is a vicious, cowardly bully, arrogant and a liar, as well as being a rapist,' Judge Finnane found. The SPA had no legislative power to hold Skaf in prison beyond the end of his full 23-year sentence but could keep him under supervision by granting parole. Original sentencing judge, Michael Finnane, compared the Skaf gang's depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war and said their crimes were 'worse than murder' While acknowledging the distress that decision might cause Skaf's victims and the wider community, careful consideration had to be given to reintegrating him into the community. SPA chairman David Frearson SC said intensive supervision for the last two years and two months of Skaf's maximum sentence was the safest available option. 'This is the only opportunity to supervise a safe transition into the community in the small window of time that we have left,' Judge Frearson said. 'Release without structure or supervision makes little sense for community protection.' As well as 24-hour electronic monitoring, Skaf will have to keep to a daily schedule and comply with ongoing psychological intervention. He is banned from any form of contact with his victims or co-offenders and cannot visit the Liverpool, Fairfield, Blacktown and Parramatta council areas. The Skaf family home is within the nearby Canterbury-Bankstown local government boundaries. Community Corrections pre-release reports confirmed there had been a 'significant improvement' in Skaf's behaviour and attitude towards his offending. Skaf had been eligible for parole since 2018 and served three and a half years beyond his first possible release date. His parole will expire on January 1, 2024. He will be released no earlier than October 1 and no later than October 8. Bilal Skaf, now 40, will be eligible for parole in 2033. Covid could be an occasional trigger of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a study has claimed. The auto-immune disease, which can leave patients paralysed and in crippling pain, has also been linked to coronavirus vaccines in extremely rare cases. Coronavirus itself is not listed as a known trigger of the condition by the National Health Service, even though other infections are named. But research of patients struck down with GBS in China, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK suggests there is a correlation between infection and the condition. The study's authors emphasised that a strong association with GBS and Covid is not likely. However, the University of Rotterdam team claimed the virus may cause a handful of infected people to develop the condition. It did not give any rates of how rare the condition is after Covid but it is thought to strike just one in 10,000 people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. The study, published in the journal Brain, analysed profiles of 49 GBS patients who were struck down between January and May last year. The condition, which can be triggered by flu and glandular fever, sees the immune system go haywire and start to attack nerve cells. Covid could be an occasional trigger of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a study has claimed. Pictured: Father-of-three William Marsh, 57, was left paralysed by the condition last year but is not thought to be one of the 22 sufferers who had Covid first 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 paralysed. 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 Most people who suffer the condition make a full recovery but one in five can be left with long-term problems such as difficulty walking. In rare cases, it can kill. The study showed 22 per cent of the GBS patients or 11 them had been infected with the virus. These patients were all over 50 and most suffered facial palsy a weakness of the facial muscles. All the patients fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for both Guillain-Barre syndrome and Covid. But the researchers said they did not find a greater number of GBS patients for the time of year compared to previous years, despite the onset of the pandemic. Neurologist Dr Bart Jacobs, the study's lead author said: 'Our study shows Covid may precede Guillain-Barre syndrome in rare case. But he added: 'The existence of a true association or causal relation still needs to be established.' It comes after the EU's health watchdog said that AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine may trigger GBS in 'very rare' cases. The European Medicines Agency earlier this month said 833 cases of GBS had been reported worldwide out of 592million doses dished out. It concluded the overall risk of suffering the syndrome after being vaccinated with the UK-made jab was less than one in 10,000. Experts stress that the risk of severe illness or long-term complications from Covid infection is much higher, and that vaccination is still the best option. The EMA said they considered it 'at least a reasonable possibility' that Guillain-Barre is a side effect of the Oxford-made jab. The regulator has already listed the condition to the single-shot dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which uses the same technology as the AZ jab. There have been 393 UK cases after vaccination with the jab but the watchdog is not certain the condition is occurring more often than it normally would. The European Medicines Agency earlier this month today 833 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome had been reported worldwide out of 592million doses dished out. It found the overall risk of suffering the syndrome after being vaccinated with AstraZeneca was less than one in 10,000 The thousands of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio, Texas didn't migrate from Haiti at all but from Chile, where they had been granted asylum and were working and living comfortably as refugees. The dozens of Chilean identity cards that litter the ground in Ciudad Acuna, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, all bear distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. But they haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These have mainly come from Santiago, the glittering capital of relatively prosperous Chile. Many had jobs there. 'As one put it to me, "I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti," migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' These are the discarded ID cards of the Haitian migrants who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousand after leaving Chile, where they were living as refugees Tens of thousands of Haitian migrants flocked to Del Rio, Texas because they heard the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel lets them cross the Rio Grande for free DailyMail.com has learned that the majority of Haitians in Del Rio have actually come from Chile or Brazil, where they have been living as refugees for years, and only set off for the US after Biden opened the borders. The migrants were stopped in Tapachula, Mexico after the Biden administration pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north, but were suddenly released on September 12. They headed to Ciudad Acuna, where they crossed the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas The majority of the Haitian migrants have come from Chile - the wealthiest country in Latin America - and Brazil - the fifth wealthiest - where they have been living in modest comfort in Santiago and Sao Paulo for the past five or six years. There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. Migrants wait on the Rio Grande to cross to the United States, in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on September 18 Thousands of Haitian migrants are seen in the makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday awaiting processing The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. As a result, 15,000 Haitian migrants were encamped under the Del Rio International Bridge by last weekend - overwhelming the tiny Texas city of just 35,000 people Migrants, many of them Haitian, cross the Rio Grande river back and forth from the United States and Mexico, to camp after a lack of supplies are given to them in the USA in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, 21 September 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. President Joe Biden suspended Trump's border program on his first day of office and the Homeland Security Department ended it in June, drawing an influx of migrants to the border over the past few months Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence 'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. Footage emerged Monday of scores of mostly Haitian migrants returning to the Mexico side of the Rio Grande River crossing as DHS accelerates deportations Migrants are guided by Border Patrol agents as they prepare to board a bus from the migrant camp in Del Rio to be taken to other parts of the US for processing A bus to transport migrants to other parts of the US for processing is seen by the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday night 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' Three assisted living facility workers are being charged in the death of an 86-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease who was allegedly was left outside in 102-degree heat for six hours. Jamie Johnston, 30, Jenny Logan, 50, and Letticia Martinez, 27, were charged with negligent death of an at-risk person and criminally negligent homicide, both felonies, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Tuesday. Johnston and Martinez were also charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly forging patient records, according to court documents describing the charges. Investigators found that Hazel Place died after being left outside Cappella Assisted Living and Memory in Grand Junction on June 14. Data from the National Weather Service data shows that the high temperature in Grand Junction that day was 102 degrees Fahrenheit that day. Weiser's office, which investigated Place's death through its Medicaid fraud unit in conjunction with Grand Junction police, did not confirm details about how Place died. Hazel Place, 86, died on June 14 after she was left out in the heat for six hours at an assisted living facility in Grand Rapids, Colorado Place had been a resident of the Cappella Assisted Living and Memory for three years, and staff members were reportedly supposed to check on her every hour But Place's family say the death was avoidable. Place liked to be outside, but suffered from Alzheimer's and dementia and was supposed to be checked on every hour due to her risk of falling, her daughter Donna Golden told KKCO Place had been at the facility for almost three years, and the staff were supposed to know her routine. But, Golden said, the director of the assisted living facility told the family after her death that she went outside to the courtyard between 2 and 2.30 p.m. that day, and was not found until 8.30 that evening. 'She sat out there for six hours in 100-degree temperatures without one person checking on her,' Place's daughter, Donna Golden, told KKCO. 'They knew her routine, knew what she did - and not one of them decided to check on her the whole time. So she sits out there, and passes away.' Dave Place, her brother, added that the staff did not provide her with water during that time period. 'She died because of neglect, she didn't need to,' Golden said. She was 86 years old with dementia, they needed to watch her. Every hour, she should've been checked, and she wasn't. 'So now, not only to deal with the loss of her, but knowing how she suffered and it could've been prevented - she did not have to die that day.' Place's daughter, Donna Golden, told KCCO the director of the assisted living facility told the family that she went outside to the courtyard between 2 and 2.30 p.m. that day, and was not found until 8.30 that evening During that time period, Dave Place, her son, said she was not given any water as temperatures reached 102-degrees Johnston's lawyer, Havilah Lilly, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that Johnston is presumed innocent. Lilly also said Johnston was concerned that the assisted living center has not been held accountable, but declined further comment since she has not yet received evidence in the case. Court records did not list a lawyer representing Logan, and Martinez is represented by a lawyer from the public defender's office, which does not comment on cases. When asked if the facility's operators could also possibly face charges, Weiser's spokesman, Lawrence Pacheco, said he could not comment beyond what the office has released because the case is active. The court documents detailing the evidence gathered against the workers have been sealed, he said. Cappella Assisted Living and Memory said in a statement that it reported the circumstances surrounding Place's death to regulators and conducted an internal investigation which led to the dismissal of two of the workers. The third worker was placed on 'investigatory leave,' the statement said. 'We are very saddened by the passing of this beloved resident, and we continue to send our sincerest sympathy to this residents family and friends,' the statement said. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement: 'When our loved ones are vulnerable and in need of care, Colorado residents should be able to trust their caregivers implicitly. My department is committed to holding accountable those who take advantage of, and cause harm to our state's older population.' Eleven men who tortured and gang raped a 17-year-old Moroccan girl for two months have each been sentenced to 20 years in prison in a case that sparked global outrage. Khadija Okkarou was kidnapped and sold to a gang who raped and forcibly tattooed her before she was dumped back at her family home near Beni Melal after two months. The case sparked outrage in Morocco and across the world as it emerged she endured extreme violence during the ordeal with a video posted online in 2018 showing her arms, legs and neck covered in tattoos and cigarette burns. Okkarou, who bravely revealed the extent of her abuse in the video in a rare move in the conservative North African country, said members of a 'dangerous gang' had gang-raped and tortured her for months. Okkarou's lawyer, Ibrahim Hachane, said the criminal chamber of the appeal court in the central town of Beni Mellal found the accused guilty on various charges including rape, and kidnapping and forcible confinement. The extreme violence against the 17-year-old, called Khadija (pictured), has sparked outrage in Morocco since a video was posted online showing her arms, leg and neck covered in tattoo Tattoo marks the hand on a 17-year-old Moroccan girl who told police she was gang-raped, forcibly tattooed and held against her will for two months, in Oulad Ayad Two other accused were sentenced to two years' prison and one year suspended, respectively, he added. Hachane said the attackers were also fined 200,000 dirhams (39,846) But to him, the verdicts seemed 'not tough', since a trafficking charge can be punishable by up to 30 years in prison. He said he would appeal. 'The victim is still undergoing treatment and what she went through is going to be with her for the rest of her life,' the lawyer said. After the footage emerged of Okkarou detailing her abuse in 2018, the parents of two of the men who raped and tortured the teenager accused her of having a 'bad reputation' in the area. At the time, the parents claimed the girl is 'lying', had been living promiscuously and 'wanted this'. Doctors said she was badly affected by such accusations. 'Unfortunately, the machismo culture makes some people blame her for what happened to her,' said Hachane, a member of Morocco's Association for Human Rights. Tattoo marks on the girl's leg, after she was held against her will for two months, near Beni Melal, central Morocco Video released in 2018 shows the tattoos carved into the teen's arm and neck Speaking at the family home in Oulad Ayad, near Beni Melal, central Morocco, her mother said she fainted when she saw her daughter's desecrated body. She said: 'I was caught off guard when those criminals brought my daughter and I saw her in this condition. 'I fainted... I collapsed, seeing her like that, the tattoos, the burns, her honor lost.' The mother, who asked to remain anonymous, said: 'Why did they do this to my child? Are they beasts? Will my daughter ever return to the way she was?'. The girl's parents initially refused to report her case to authorities, fearing the social stigma of sexual abuse in a Muslim country. 'But she insisted,' her mother said. 'She picked up the family records and just went to the gendarmes. I followed her.' In an interview with Moroccan TV in 2018, the girl said her kidnappers 'would assault me one by one,' burned her and didn't feed her or let her shower. She displayed crude swastikas and other tattoos as well as cigarette burns on her hands and legs. A general view of Oulad Ayad town, near Beni Melal, central Morocco where the 17-year-old Moroccan girl told police she was gang-raped, forcibly tattooed and held against her will The teen said that two men kidnapped her at knife-point when she was visiting her aunt during the May-June holy month of Ramadan, before selling her to other men in exchange for money or drugs. She said her captors gave her drugs that knocked her out for days at a time. The horrific account has sparked calls for an end to a culture that turns a blind eye to sexual assault and other violence against women, with nearly 75,000 people signing a petition urging action. Oulad Ayyad, which makes most of its money selling sweet beets and sugar, is part of the country's poorest region. Young people have little access to education and services, according to a recent study published by Morocco's statistics institute. Like many girls her age, Khadija left school when she was 12 because her family was too poor to pay the costs, residents told AFP. '(She) was a bit free, her father allowed her to leave the house and lead her life as she wanted,' said Mustafa, who claimed to know the family well. 'This is not the case for most girls here,' he added. Hassan, a coffee shop owner, said most of the town was 'upset' over what happened to Khadija. 'Most people have compassion for her because it can happen to anyone.' Okkarou's lawyer, Ibrahim Hachane (pictured), said the criminal chamber of the appeal court in the central town of Beni Mellal found the accused guilty on various charges including rape, and kidnapping and forcible confinement In an article titled 'We are all Khadija,' Moroccan author and filmmaker Abdellah Taia, criticized what he called Morocco's rape culture and called on the government and King Mohammed VI to intervene. It was signed by dozens of Moroccan intellectuals. 'We will move on. A new source of collective excitement. Nothing will be done,' he wrote. 'And as always, it is women who pay the price of all the dysfunctions of a society that still does not want to grow.' Abdelwahed Saadi, a social worker and neighbor of the teen's family, said no circumstances could excuse the assault. 'This girl is a minor. She says she has been abused and raped. Her words must be taken seriously,' he said. Concern about sexual violence gained momentum in 2017 when video footage circulated online of boys on a bus ripping the clothes off a girl and groping her breasts, among other abuse. Neither the passengers nor the bus driver intervened. In February 2018, parliament passed a long-sought law recognizing some forms of abuse for the first time and criminalizing some forms of domestic violence. But critics say it doesn't go nearly far enough. A survey by U.N. Women, a United Nations agency for the empowerment of women, carried out in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, and in some neighboring cities found that 41 per cent of the men surveyed believe that financial support justified marital rape. Over 50 per cent reported having been emotionally abusive to their wives, and 15 percent acknowledged using physical violence against women. The survey, conducted in 2016 and released in February, found that 62 per cent of the men interviewed believe women must tolerate violence to preserve family unity. The study questioned 2,400 men and women over three months. No margin of error was given. Rape victims in Morocco are often subject to a double trauma as the conservative Muslim society blames them for their ordeal. But the country's media and rights groups regularly raise the alarm about endemic violence against women. In 2018 a law to combat the abuse took effect, for the first time giving women in Morocco legal protection from 'acts considered forms of harassment, aggression, sexual exploitation or ill treatment'. The new law also paved the way for victims of violence to be offered support. The US saw the biggest rise in murders last year since national records began in 1960, according to preliminary data from the FBI. The US murder rate rose by an unprecedented 30 percent in 2020, according to the FBI's preliminary Uniform Crime Report. Last year there were 6.55 murders per 100,000 people in the US, compared to just 5.0 murders per 100,000 in 2019, the FBI reported. The previous biggest increase was in 1968, when homicides rose 12.7 percent in a year. But the actual number of murders per capita remains well below the peak recorded in the 1980s and early 90s. The 2020 murder rate is around a third less than the peak of 10.2 murders per 100,000 in 1980. The finalized data about homicides in the US is set to be released by the FBI on Monday, but preliminary numbers appeared on the bureau's website on Wednesday, the New York Times reports. The US murder rate rose by an unprecedented 30 percent in 2020, according to the FBI's preliminary Uniform Crime Report. The previous biggest increase was in 1968, when homicides rose 12.7 percent in a year Last year there were 6.55 murders per 100,000 people in the US, compared to just 5.0 murders per 100,000 in 2019, the FBI reported. The 2020 murder rate is around a third less than the peak of 10.2 murders per 100,000 in 1980 The FBI said the official report could include slightly updated numbers, but the main conclusions are unlikely to change. Alongside the increase in murders, violent crime also increased by around five percent, the Times reports. But overall major crime fell by between four and five percent - the 18th straight year of declining overall crime, the FBI numbers revealed. Gun violence was a contributing factor to the murder surge. Around 77 percent of 2020's murders were gun-related - the highest share ever reported - according to the Times. A decline in the number of cops could also have added to the 2020 murder surge, police chiefs have said. Former Baltimore Police Department Deputy Commissioner Jason Johnson argued in April that the decrease in police officers is the root cause. 'Policing is to blame, or rather the lack of it,' he wrote in a USA Today opinion piece. He cited that New York City logged fewer than 45,000 arrests (down 38 per cent) from June to December last year, resulting in more than 100 additional homicides - a 58 per cent increase. Similar results popped up in Chicago, where police made 31,000 fewer arrests (53 per cent decrease), resulting in murder rising to 65 per cent. The Midwest saw the highest increase in murders at almost 31 per cent increase, according to Vox. The South recorded the lowest increase at 20.8, despite Louisiana reporting the highest number of homicides for the past 32 years. Murder rose 35 per cent in cities with populations more than 250,000 and 40 per cent in cities fewer than 250,000, according to The New York Times. With lower arrest averages, comes higher gun percentages on the streets. The US has seen more gun violence in 2020 than ever before, killing at least 20,000 people last year alone. The Midwest has seen the highest number of homicides, while the South was the lowest Gun violence killed nearly 20,000 people in the US, according to the Washington Post, resulting in the highest number of deaths by guns in the last two decades. In 2020, 23million Americans purchased a gun, up 64 per cent from 2019. About 77 per cent of reported murders were committed with a firearm in 2020, up 10 per cent from a decade ago, according to The New York Times. The number of children killed by gunshot also would rose over 50 per cent since 2019, making it the highest percentage ever recorded. Nearly 300 children died and 5,000 suffered gunshot wounds, according to the Washington Post. Chicago suffered the highest number of children injured by gunshot, with more being shot than those have who gotten COVID-19. A total of 214 children, under the age of 17, have died from the virus while a total of 261 have been shot in the liberal city this year alone, according to data from police and the Center for Disease Control. Of those 261 minors who were shot, 41 were fatally wounded. Although COVID-19 cases among children spiked over the summer, the death rates in the demographic remain low, accounting for just 0-0.27 percent of pandemic fatalities nationwide. That equals out to six minor deaths in every 100,000 people under 18 in the state. A California man who has spent 15 years living on Death Row for the murder of his pregnant wife will be resentenced in November to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, a judge said Wednesday. Scott Peterson, 48, was sentenced to death in 2005 for the 2002 murder of his wife, Laci, and unborn son, Connor. The California State Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2020, and Peterson has been living on death row without a sentence ever since. Peterson's lawyers are seeking a new trial rather than a resentencing, claiming a juror committed misconduct by falsely answering questions during the selection process. But Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said she wants to sentence Peterson in November before deciding whether he deserves a new trial over alleged juror misconduct The court ordered for Peterson to be formally sentenced once again on Wednesday in order for the state to keep him locked up at San Quentin State Prison. 'This case has become more complicated. Sentencing Mr. Peterson should not be delayed,' the judge said. Peterson will be re-sentenced in November regardless of all other legal battles currently underway pertaining to the case, KRON 4 reported. Scott Peterson was sentenced to death in 2005, pictured, for the murder of his pregnant wife, Laci, in 2002, whose body was found in the San Francisco Bay. The body of their unborn son, Connor, was also found mutilated in the bay Laci and Scott Peterson married in 1997. Peterson allegedly had an affair and was said to have been angry when he found out Laci was pregnant Peterson, center, with his lawyers Mark Geragos, left, and Pat Harris during court in 2004 Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager had previously announced that she would not be seeking the death penalty against Peterson after Laci's family said another trial would be too painful to go through. Laci had vanished from their home in Modesto while pregnant on Christmas Eve 2002. The 27-year-old's corpse was found floating in San Francisco Bay in April 2003, with Conner's fetus found to have been mutilated. Investigators said Peterson took the bodies from their home and dumped them from his fishing boat. Peterson was convicted of his wife's murder in 2005 after jurors were told how he had a masseuse mistress called Amber Frey. Frey did not realize Peterson was married when they first began dating. He is also said to have dreaded becoming a father. Peterson maintains his innocence, and claims Laci was killed after disturbing a burglary. 'He's innocent. It's time to get him out,' said defense attorney Pat Harris. Peterson was said to have had an affair with masseuse Amber Frey Richelle Nice, second from the right, was said to have not disclosed that she was a victim of domestic abuse while pregnant during the jury selection process Defense attorneys claimed Nice, known as 'Strawberry Shortcake' had a bias against Peterson The defense has also mounted a case against one of the jurors in the case, Richelle Nice, who is known as 'Strawberry Shortcake' due to her bright red hair. The defense alleges Nice committed juror misconduct by failing to mention that she was a victim of abuse while pregnant during the jury selection process and may have had a bias against Peterson. Nice also allegedly wrote letters to Peterson while he was in jail, asking him to confess to the murder of his pregnant wife. Fladager called the move a 'witch hunt' to try and discredit the juror in an attempts to throw out the original case against Peterson and trigger a retrial. Superior Court Judge Christine Massullo will rule on whether or not Nice performed juror misconduct. Nice has asked for immunity from testifying in Peterson's trial and plans to plead the fifth, KRON 4 reported. Peterson will return to court on October 6 to set a precise date for the re-sentencing, which is expected in November. Sixteen migrants were found hiding in a hotel room in Edinburg, Texas, after they walked through a storm drain to enter the country illegally from Mexico. Border Patrol agents found the crowded two-bed room at the hotel on September 17 after responding to a tip that it was being used to shelter illegal immigrants. When Rio Grande Valley agents arrived on the scene, they observed two people bringing back several jugs of water and groceries bags to a room. They surveilled the area before Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office conducted a welfare check. Agents identified ten of the subjects as citizens of Honduras, five as citizens of El Salvador, and one from Mexico. The illegal migrants claimed that they had already been in the US for more than 30 days and that they were waiting to be moved further into the country. Border Patrol Agents found 16 migrants hiding in a two-bed hotel room for more than 30 days after using a storm drain to enter Texas illegally The illegal migrants claimed that they had already been in the US for more than 30 days and that they were waiting to be moved further into the country In the early morning of the next day, McAllen Border Patrol Station agents found people in a storm drain in Hidalgo, a town 15.22 miles away from Edinburg. Agents and Hidalgo Police Department officers established a perimeter and arrested three illegal migrants who were exiting the storm drain. An hour later, three more subjects were caught exiting the same drain, including one unaccompanied child. The group of six people were apprehended before being later identified as citizens of Honduras and Mexico. Later at night, more migrants were seen walking in the same storm drain. Hidalgo police officers and border patrol agents found shoe prints of at least three people leaving the sewage system before finally finding four people two hours later after exiting the storm drain. They were also citizens of Mexico and Honduras. Using water drainage systems to illegally enter into the United States is extremely dangerous, officials said in a statement on September 20th. 'Transnational Criminal Organizations using municipal water drainage systems to illegally smuggle migrants into the United States, for monetary profit, is extremely dangerous,' a statement from CBP said. In September, smugglers in Brownsville and Hidalgo, Texas, utilized the same dangerous smuggling tactic as US Customs and Border Protection said the common practice is known to be 'extremely dangerous' Migrants, led into the country by smugglers, were found in drainage pipes in Hidalgo and Brownsville on September 14, according to US Customs and Border Protection officials. Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings of Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol tweeted a picture of migrants lined up after being found in a sewage system 'Drainage systems can be filled by rain waters unexpectedly. Toxic gas, some that are odorless, pose a significant health risk. Sewage water contains bacteria, parasites, and viruses that can almost immediately infect an open sore or have devastating health related effects down the road. Drainage systems are designed to move water rapidly and not to be occupied by humans. Thus, air flow and oxygen may be restrictive, causing one to be easily disoriented or faint.' Other migrants, led into the country by smugglers, were also found in drainage pipes in Hidalgo and Brownsville on September 14, according to US Customs and Border Protection officials. Migrants found in Brownsville needed assistance from border patrol agents and the local Fire Department to get out of the sewage pipe, officials said. It even took about two hours for to help one person get out of a manhole. Everyone in the group came out safely before they were apprehended, officials said. Rio Grande Valley Border Protection have rescued over 1,000 migrants so far in 2021, officials said. They urge migrants not to risk their lives by illegally entering the United States. Dr Anthony Fauci has revealed he is making notes for his memoir, but insisted that he was fully focused on combating the COVID-19 pandemic despite a new documentary being made of his work. Fauci, the nation's top public health official, who has advised seven presidents, told The New York Times that he had no time to actually sit and write his memoir. The book is not imminent: As a federal official, he will be barred from entering discussions about publishing his memoirs until he quits. 'I'm not completely crazy to think that I'm going to be doing this when I'm 92,' he said. Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, is the subject of a new documentary. In an interview to promote it, he revealed he is also writing his memoirs The documentary shows Fauci as a young clinician, and features him talking about his love of medicine and public health Fauci is seen testifying before a Senate committee on July 20. His hearings have become increasingly contentious He told the paper he is focused on 'ending this pandemic, you know, putting it in the rearview mirror, and then maybe taking a deep breath and thinking about retiring.' His wife, Christine Grady, said that the 80-year-old has not had a single full day off in 18 months and was 'exhausted'. Fauci spoke to the paper to promote the new documentary, which will air on Disney+ in October. He said he was a 'modest, humble person' who only agreed to media requests when he thought it might help promote a public health goal. He conceded, however, that his critics would not believe him. Fauci said that he told the documentary makers that their following him could not impede his work. The filming started before the pandemic, in 2019, when Janet Tobias became interested 'in this idea of him as a long-serving public servant in an era when public servants aren't particularly valued.' Fauci said he told her: 'This is not going to be, take one, take two, take three on a movie set.' The new documentary features home videos showing Fauci fooling around and dancing with his young daughters - who are now adults Fauci is shown with his family in the film, which he described as 'honest' and 'down-to-earth' He said he was pleased with the result, describing it as 'an honest, down-to-earth documentary.' Carolyn Bernstein, the executive who oversaw the project for National Geographic, said the filmmakers 'didn't want this to be a hagiography,' and 'wanted to make sure that we were telling the warts and all story.' But little time is given to Fauci's critics, who have accused him of a heavy-handed approach to the pandemic and of 'flip-flopping' over mask wearing. The documentary looks at Fauci's groundbreaking work on the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, and the anger directed at him at the time - contrasting it with attacks on him during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci said on camera that there was no comparison between the two groups of critics. 'I cared about them, and they were fighting for a good cause,' he told the paper, of the AIDS activists. 'They weren't fighting for a conspiracy theory.' Fauci has become one of the most divisive public health officials in the United States Fauci has been the subject of attacks before, with AIDS activists in the 1980s demanding he do more to help them. He did, and many of his critics from the era now praise him Fauci is shown in the documentary at home with his wife, Christine Grady Fauci was strongly criticized for his July 2020 magazine cover, but he dismissed the condemnation as 'a firestorm of the crazy far right' The Brooklyn-born doctor said that he had little time for 'extreme far right QAnon jerks,' and was angered by threats made against him, his wife and two daughters. 'These people are really getting bad. They're harassing my daughters constantly, which bothers me more than anything else,' he says in the documentary. He has previously said he found the fame and adoration equally bizarre, and noted that a photo of him by his swimming pool, for InStyle magazine, sparked 'a firestorm of the crazy far right' accusing him of 'trying to be a movie star.' Fauci's wife said she does not expect the documentary will change anyone's opinion of her husband - despite footage of him at home, with his family, goofing around. At one point he wells up talking about AIDS patients, and said it was a response to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from dealing with such death and tragedy. Grady said she did not expect anyone to be swayed. 'I think there are fans, and there are haters,' she said. 'I don't think there's anybody in the middle.' Boris Johnson last night said people were entitled to see their GP in person as he warned that thousands would suffer unless face-to-face consultations were reinstated. Speaking to reporters in the US, the Prime Minister said in-person appointments were vital in ensuring life-threatening conditions were picked up early. And he firmly rejected a warning from the head of the Royal College of GPs that face-to-face appointments may never return to pre-pandemic level. Before the pandemic, about 80 per cent of consultations took place in a doctors surgery but as of July, the figure stood at just 57 per cent. Boris Johnson last night said people were entitled to see their GP in person as he warned that thousands would suffer unless face-to-face consultations were reinstated A poll for the Daily Mail today shows 85 per cent of people believe they should be able to have a face-to-face consultations if they want one. It follows the launch of this newspapers five-point manifesto, calling for greater access to doctors, and demanding the Government to make good on its manifesto pledge for 6,000 more GPs. Mr Johnsons intervention came a day after Britains top GP rejected calls to give all patients the right to in-person consultations. Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, told MPs on Tuesday that Covid safety measures and high demand mean it is not possible to offer in-person consultations to people simply because they would like one. A poll for the Daily Mail today shows 85 per cent of people believe they should be able to have a face-to-face consultations if they want one Asked about Professor Marshalls comments, Mr Johnson said: People should see their GPs in person if thats what they need. 'Some people will be happy with other contact or reassurance, but a lot of people will need a face-to-face appointments and all the reassurance that gives. I want to see GPs seeing the right people at the right time and the right place. He added: We are pledged to deliver another 50 million GP appointments. People need the security and confidence that they will be treated in person by a GP who can have proper hands-on understanding of the problem they have got. That is only reasonable. I am absolutely certain that unless we can deliver that there will be people sadly whose symptoms are not picked up and who will suffer as a result. Last night oncologist Professor Karol Sikora said the value of face-to-face appointments cannot be overstated. Mr Johnson also firmly rejected a warning from Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, that face-to-face appointments may never return to pre-pandemic level This is really important because cancer starts in organs that is stage one, and if cancers are found at this stage there is a 90 per cent chance of a cure, he said. Once cancers get to stage three, its less than 20 per cent so its very important to get it at stage one. By not seeing patients face to face earlier, we will see more patients developing stage three cancer. Lisa Cameron, chairman of the all-party health group in Westminster, said: The Daily Mails campaign is really important and giving a voice to vulnerable patients with nowhere to turn. Its very important patients get back to seeing GPs face to face, so we can identify issues such as cancer at the earliest opportunity. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: The NHS has been clear GP practices must provide face-to-face appointments, alongside remote consultations, and over half of all appointments in July were face to face. The Biden administration is looking to hire a private contractor to operate a little-known migrant detention facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that will be able to temporarily house up to 400 illegal immigrants. The government's contract opportunity reveals that a minimum of '10% of the augmented personnel must be fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole' indicating they are planning to send some of the massive influx in Haitian migrants to the island U.S. Naval base. Upon hearing news of the contract request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was furious. 'Utterly shameful,' she slammed on Twitter. But the Department of Homeland Security defended itself in a statement pointing out that the migrant facility has been operating for nearly two decades, and won't be taking in migrants encountered at the border. DHS 'is not [sending] and will not send Haitian nationals being encountered at the southwest border to the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay. The MOC has been used for decades to process migrants interdicted at sea for third-country resettlement,' the department said in a statement to NBC. It revealed that the current, expiring contract to run the facility was begun in 2002 and ends on May 31, 2022. President Joe Biden's administration is seeking private contractors to run a migrant detention facility in Guantanamo Bay a facility meant for 120 people that he hopes will temporarily be able to house 400 people Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the move as 'utterly shameful' DHS said the callout for a contractor is a 'typical, routine first step' in renewing that contract and isn't related to the crisis at the southern border, which spurred new outrage recently over border agents' treatment of Haitian migrants. Progressives lashed out at images that emerged over the weekend of Border Patrol officials and agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips to deter a massive group of migrants gathering on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. The images were slammed as 'inhumane' and 'horrific,' despite the Texas Border Patrol agents vehemently denying that they whipped migrants. The contract opportunity document was first posted on September 17 as an influx of mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge The migrant detention facility on Guantanamo Bay has a capacity of 120 people, but the government document is requesting that the site maintain the equipment to house up to 400. According to the document, the facility 'will have an estimated daily population of 20 people, however the service provider shall be responsible to maintain on site the necessary equipment to erect temporary housing facilities for populations that exceed 120 and up to 400 migrants in a surge event.' The opportunity was first posted on September 17 days before news erupted of a massive mostly Haitian migrant encampment popping up over the course of three weeks near the Del Rio International Bridge. At the height, nearly 15,000 migrants set up a makeshift camp in the Texas town. As of Tuesday, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the number shrunk to 'well below 10,000.' The decrease comes amid a massive deportation effort from DHS to finally address the growing southern border crisis. Removal flights began departing from the U.S. on Sunday for the migrants' homeland. This caused thousands of mostly Haitian migrants to begin returning to Mexico from the Del Rio encampment to avoid deportation back to Haiti. Considering DHS is looking for people who speak Haitian Creole to be stationed at the Guantanamo Bay migrant detention center, it appears the administration could be prepared to send some of the group of Haiti nationals there. The contract opportunity says they need to provide tents, cots, the ability to set them up with little notice and a staff of at least 50 people who meet the job classification requirements of an unarmed custody officer. Guantanamo Bay, commonly referred to as Gitmo, is most known for its prison facility for known or suspected terrorists. Taliban and al Qaeda detainees are pictured January 11 at Gitmo in a holding area before undergoing a physical exam An aerial view of migrants, many from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge on Wednesday This is the latest effort by the administration to mitigate the migration crisis at the southern border, especially in the ever-evolving and fluctuating landscape. Any of the employees for this contract must be able to deploy to location 'within 24 hours of notification.' Gitmo, as the U.S. Naval base on Cuba is commonly referred to as, is mostly known for its imprisonment of Middle-Eastern based terrorists who posed a threat to U.S. national security. The camp, known for indefinite imprisonment without a trial, was established by President George W. Bush's administration in January 2002 during the War on Terror following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Of the 780 people detained there since then, 731 have been transferred elsewhere, 39 remain there, and 9 have died while in custody. Anti-vaxxer protesters involved in Melbourne's chaotic demonstrations appalled diggers by leaving piles of rubbish on the city's Shrine of Remembrance and urinating on the memorial. More than 400 protesters stormed the monument on Wednesday to rally against Covid-19 vaccine mandates for the construction industry, in the hope Victoria Police would not pursue them on the sacred site. Some chanted 'lest we forget' and the national anthem - before throwing rocks at the cops, leading riot police to clear the site by firing rubber bullets and firing gas grenades. Shrine of Remembrance CEO Dean Lee said he was 'appalled' after footage shared online showed police removing rubbish bags from the monument in the hours after the protesters decamped. A protestor is seen being taken away by police at the Shrine of Remembrance on Wednesday. More than 400 protesters stormed the monument to rally against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and the construction industry shutdown Pictured: Protesters at the shrine. 'I just cant believe these people thought it was right to go to a place like the shrine and carry on that,' Vietnam Veterans Association Victorian state president Bob Elworthy said The memorial boss also claimed protesters urinated on the shrine during the rally. 'I was appalled at their behaviour,' Mr Lee told the Today show. 'I saw it as entirely selfish and disrespectful to the memory of what our Australian men and women have done for our Defence Force.' Mr Lee said his first instinct after the crowd dispersed was to inspect the memorial for damage. 'I will acknowledge the protestors caused no damage to the memorial and for that I am grateful,' he said. 'But there was broken glass, there was rubbish, there was urination, there was beer cans, it was just everything that this place does not represent and should not be.' Vietnam Veterans Association Victorian state president Bob Elworthy said the 'unedifying' protest that unfolded was 'one of the most un-Australian things' he'd ever seen. 'I just cant believe these people thought it was right to go to a place like the shrine and carry on that,' he told 3AW. 'I wonder if they would go to their own grandparent's grave and drink beer on it. 'This mob of idiots have no moral fiber at all. If they're going to do that on the shrine, goodness knows where else they're going to do it.' Former Australian Army veteran Senator Jaquie Lambie also on Thursday morning launched into an angry tirade at the protesters, who she described as an embarrassment. Protesters descended on Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance on Wednesday, sparking nationwide anger 'I can tell you now for those who have served, for those who have serving they are absolutely disgusted,' the outspoken federal senator fumed on the Today show on Thursday. 'To walk on that Shrine, to walk on that sacred ground and drop your cigarettes and your beer cans all over the place and to do what you did is absolutely a whole new low for you people and I can tell you now if you think this is giving you more support and you are building you've got to be kidding yourself because it is not just veterans that see what is going on.' 'I remind you people as well through blood, sweat and tears is the reason you have your freedoms because all these people have fought for this country to have that and to stand there and say, 'Lest we forget,' 'I tell you, we're not forgetting your performance yesterday.' The protests initially began in opposition to mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for the construction sector and the closure of building site tea rooms, but have since turned into wider unrest after the state government shut doen the industry for two weeks. Chanting 'every day' from the Shrine of Remembrance, hundreds without masks - some still wearing high-visibility clothing - marched through the city to the war memorial. Police made 215 arrests while two officers suffered head injuries after bottles were thrown at them. 'It was completely disrespectful that the crowd ended up at the shrine, which is such hallowed ground in this great city,' Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Guenther. 'Our general observation from the people on the ground was that there weren't as many tradies involved,' Mr Guenther said. 'We will vary our tactics tomorrow. But, of course, my message is don't come into the city,' the deputy commissioner said. Senator Lambie defended the actions of riot police (pictured) forced to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters who refused to leave RSL Victoria said the mob had disrespected the sanctity of the sacred site, while Shrine of Remembrance chair Stephen Bowater called it 'disgraceful'. Veterans' Affairs Minister Andrew Gee said the protesters should be condemned in the strongest possible terms and should apologise. 'To use it as a protest site violates this sanctity and denigrates and disrespects the memory of those who have served and sacrificed so much for our nation,' he said. 'There can be no justification for this outrage.' Victoria recorded 628 new coronavirus cases and three more deaths on Wednesday, the highest daily tally of the state's current outbreak. Jacqui Lambie described protesters at Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance as 'a whole new low' Protesters are seen marching through the streets of Melbourne with one holding a lit flare A man who later begged protesters to get off the war memorial is seen wearing war medals outside the Shrine of Remembrance Police opened fire at protests with rubber bullets after being pelted with rocks an bottles Prime Minister Scott Morrison said those involved should be ashamed of their 'disgraceful' behaviour. 'Those scenes were disgraceful and the conduct was disgraceful,' he told reporters in Washington. 'This is a sacred place, it is not a place of protest. It dishonoured those Australians who've made the ultimate sacrifice. 'I would hope all who engaged in that disgraceful behaviour would be ashamed.' The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 65 and older and some high-risk Americans. The authorization includes people most susceptible to severe disease and those who are between the ages of 18 to 64 'whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure... puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19.' 'After considering the totality of the available scientific evidence and the deliberations of our advisory committee of independent, external experts, the FDA amended the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for a booster dose in certain populations such as health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others,' said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock in a statement. 'As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed.' The move paves the way for a quick rollout of the shots, which could be administered to those in the eligible groups six months after they receive their second Pfizer dose. It is not recommended for those who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. But the Pfizer boosters will not be made available until after a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Committee meets Thursday, and decides who should get them, according to USA Today. The FDA is expected to authorize a Pfizer booster shot for Americans aged 65 and older The decision comes almost six weeks after the FDA authorized extra doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccines for people who are severely immunocompromised. 'We believe boosters have an important role to play in addressing the continued threat of this disease, alongside efforts to increase global access and uptake among the unvaccinated,' said Albert Bourla, the Pfizer chairman and CEO. An independent panel at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted on Friday to recommend COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for Americans 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness, after overwhelmingly rejecting a call for broader approval. The advisory panel said there was not enough evidence to support booster shots for all those aged 16 and older who had received a second dose at least six months earlier and also sought more safety data. The agency could revisit the issue of additional shots for a broader authorization in the future. Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, could vote on the use of a third shot of the vaccine on Thursday, an agency official said at a public meeting of the panel on Wednesday. The agency has already said it is considering boosters for older people, nursing home residents and front-line healthcare workers, rather than all adults. Registered Nurse Darian Sumbingco administers the first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic for homeless people, hosted by the Los Angeles on Wednesday The White House also announced last month booster shots would become available for all Americans starting on September 20 due to data suggesting waning efficacy of the initial shots. At the time, Pfizer said its early data suggested people who received booster doses between six and 12 months after their final dose had high levels of protection. The company filed for emergency use authorization for booster doses in late August and submitted data to the FDA, which made public last week. The documents suggest that protection from two doses of the Pfizer vaccine declines from 96.2 percent at seven days after dose 2 to 90.1 percent two months later to 83.7 percent up to six months later. What's more, they cited data from Israel showing people fully vaccinated in January 2021 had a 2.26-fold increased risk for breakthrough infections compared to those fully vaccinated in April 2021. Another Israeli study discussed in the documents showed that effectiveness against infection was 39 percent and against symptomatic disease was 40 percent from June 20, 2021 to July 17, 2021, when the Delta variant was the dominant strain. Comparatively, between January and April, these rates were at 95 percent or higher. The team also released data from a clinical trial involving 23 participants who participated in Pfizer's early-stage trials last year. Each had received two doses of the vaccine and were given a booster dose at least six months later. Of the participants, 11 were in the younger adults group of those aged 18 to 55 and 12 were aged 65 to 85. After the third dose, neutralizing antibodies against the original strain of the virus rose five-fold in the 18-to-55 age group and seven-fold in the 65-to-85 group. Against the Delta variant, antibody levels after a booster shot rose five-fold in the younger adult group and 12-fold in the older adult group. Pfizer said data suggested efficacy of two doses declines from 96.2% to 83.7% after six months but that a third dose boosts antibody levels (above) Top FDA members have been split on the need for boosters for the general population, though, with interim head Janet Woodcock backing them and some of the agency's senior scientists arguing current evidence does not support them. But studies have suggested that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine diminished over the summer, especially in preventing mild breakthrough cases, according to Bloomberg. In deciding to approve the Pfizer booster shot, the FDA reports, it studied the immune responses of about 200 people between the ages of 18 to 55 who received a single booster dose. The study concluded that the participants' antibody response against COVID one month after a booster dose was higher than the antibody response one month after the second shot. Data from Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine on booster doses is just weeks away, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday. Johnson & Johnson officials also said on Tuesday a second shot of its COVID-19 vaccine increased its effectiveness in the United States against moderate to severe forms of the disease. Some countries, including Israel and Britain, have already rolled out COVID-19 booster campaigns. The United States authorized extra shots for people with compromised immune systems last month and over 2 million people had already received a third shot, CDC data showed. As the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reviewed data on the Pfizer booster Wednesday, Buzzfeed reports, several members expressed concerns about the situation for people who were given the Moderna or Johnson and Johnson vaccines. A CDC study released last Friday revealed there were only slight drops in effectiveness against hospitalizations in all three vaccinations offered in the United States from March through August, down to 93 percent for the Moderna shots, 88 percent for the Pfizer vaccine and to 71 percent for the Johnson and Johnson shot. Meanwhile, the number of new COVID cases has gone down in recent days, according to data from the CDC. On Tuesday, there were 121,918 new cases, down from one week prior, when there were 150,466 new cases. The death rate from the virus, though, has increased, with 1,972 new deaths reported on Tuesday, as 64 percent of the total population received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine and 54.9 percent are fully vaccinated. A kangaroo that was rescued from certain death in freezing cold lake waters by two kind gentleman walking past has shown its true colours in new footage where it can be seen attacking a cyclist on his morning ride. Francesco Collodi shared the slightly more aggressive video to TikTok on Tuesday of the fiery kangaroo approaching a cyclist wearing hi-vis at Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. The marsupial had earlier that morning been pulled to safety by two men willing to wade into the chilly waters of the lake at dawn in what was deemed a heartwarming rescue by witnesses. But shortly after its miracle escape, the kangaroo was caught staring down a cyclist in a hi-visibility jacket as he tried to cycle along the promenade by the lake. The roo began to hit the bicycle, which caused the cyclist to step off the bike and use it as a shield against the animal. Francesco Collodi shared the video to TikTok on Tuesday of the fiery kangaroo approaching the cyclist at Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra As the cyclist shielded himself with his bike, the kangaroo continued to circle and throw punches. While the cyclist appeared to remain calm, he also attempted to redirect the kangaroo by pointing his hand to the grass in the opposite direction. But the feisty roo didn't have any plans to stop its attack as the video ended. Many users of the social media platform were quick to point out the kangaroo rescue at the same lake earlier in the morning. One user wrote: 'WAIT WAIT WAIT isn't that the same kangaroo that was going in the water and two guys went in to rescue him?' Another wrote: 'Is that the same one that needed help getting out of the water earlier?' A third said: 'Is this the prequel or the sequel?' Many users of the social media platform were quick to point out the kangaroo had been rescued at the same location in the morning On Tuesday morning, David Boyd had seen the kangaroo stuck in the freezing waters of Lake Burley Griffin and posted footage to Facebook of two men who jumped in to save the frightened and exhausted roo. The video showed two men slowly move their way towards the frightened roo in the water with their arms out, calling for it to come closer. The little roo could be seen shivering while looking at both men who were carefully approaching. As soon as the man on the left of the video reached out to grab the kangaroo, it began to throw its arms around in fear. Luckily, the two men were able to grab a hold of the worried roo and lift it to safety onto the promenade, where a third man was waiting to assist. The three men managed to calm the kangaroo as it extended its arm to one of them in what Mr Boyd thought was a way of showing appreciation. 'Aw, he's thanking ya,' Mr Boyd can be heard saying behind the camera. Mr Boyd wrote on the social media platform that the kangaroo was in a bit of shock, and it took about 30 minutes for the animal to perk up again. French President Emmanuel Macron has rejected Scott Morrison's request to talk over the phone as France seethes over the tearing up of a $90 billion submarine deal. The Australian Prime Minister tried to reach out to Mr Macron to patch up relations after France agreed to send its ambassador back to the US after a conciliatory phone call with US President Joe Biden. But the French president told Mr Morrison it was 'not yet' time to speak as his country remains bitter over Australia dumping their contract in favour of a nuclear submarine partnership with the US and UK. 'The opportunity for that call is not yet. But we'll be patient,' the prime minister told reporters in Washington DC on Thursday morning, Australian time. 'We understand their disappointment and that is the way that you manage difficult issues. It's a difficult decision.' Scott Morrison is yet to speak to French President Emmanuel Macron to patch up the fallout over Australia dumping a $90billion French submarine deal in favour of a nuclear submarine partnership with the US and UK. They are pictured together at the Elysee Palace in Paris in June Australia was accused of blindsiding Europe over the decision to ditch a deal to acquire conventional submarines from French company Naval Group. France recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the US in retaliation to the AUKUS announcement. In a subsequent call with France, US President Joe Biden agreed consulting that country ahead of the announcement could have prevented the diplomatic row. Mr Biden and Mr Macron have also agreed to meet in October. Mr Morrison said Australia was in a different position to the US because it is not part of the a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The prime minister said he is hopeful of re-engaging with his French counterpart but expects to wait for a while. 'I know that will be some time before that occurs, but we will patiently pursue those opportunities because we want to work together,' he said. 'I look forward when the time is right and when the opportunity presents that we will have a similar discussion.' Mr Morrison said he tried to contact Mr Macron after France held conciliatory talks with the US, but he was told 'not yet' France has agreed to send its ambassador back to the US after Mr Macron spoke with Mr Biden (Mr Biden is pictured with Scott Morrison in New York on Tuesday) Mr Morrison is also confident of securing the necessary political backing from US politicians for any laws needed to share nuclear submarine secrets with Australia. The prime minister is in the US for meetings with world leaders and welcomed great US and UK great enthusiasm for the project. 'The support on the Hill, of course, in the US system of government, will be absolutely necessary as we progress this important partnership,' Mr Morrison said. Australia has for years been planning to build a fleet of 12 diesel-powered submarines in Adelaide via French company Naval Group, with a deal made in 2016 valued at $90billion. News of the contract being dumped outraged France, with a former top diplomatic official saying the country felt 'stabbed in the back' by the Australian nuclear submarine deal. 'The world is a jungle,' ex-ambassador to the US Gerard Araud tweeted last Thursday. 'France has just been reminded this bitter truth by the way the US and the UK have stabbed her in the back in Australia. Cest la vie.' The French government later that day said Australia's decision to ditch the agreement was 'contrary to the spirit of cooperation which prevailed' between the two countries. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said the change in plan 'marks an absence of coherence that France can only observe and regret'. Australia will follow its allies the US and UK, which both use nuclear technology, by building its own nuclear-powered submarine fleet China has inflamed tensions in the South China Sea in recent years by expanding its claimed territory, to the objection of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific Mr Morrison reportedly held concerns Naval Group would be unable to deliver submarines until 2030 with deadline and price disputes. Defence officials have openly discussed abandoning the deal since June and told a Senate estimates hearing in June there were 'challenges' with the agreement. Australia will instead embrace nuclear power after decades of debate - marking the first time the US and UK have shared their nuclear submarine technology with another nation. A working group known as AUKUS will allow the three allies to share the latest technology in artificial intelligence, underwater systems and long-range strike capabilities. Australia has at least 40 per cent of the world's uranium supplies and the new submarine deal could pave the way for the country to embrace nuclear power to drastically reduce carbon emissions. The move towards a nuclear Australia has been described as 'China's Worst Nightmare' in a strategic bid to counter its influence in the region - especially in the South China Sea. 'Our world is becoming more complex, especially here in our region the Indo-Pacific. This affects us all. The future of the Indo-Pacific will impact all our futures,' Mr Morrison said. 'To meet these challenges, to help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level. 'So AUKUS is born a partnership where our technology, our scientists, our industry, our Defence Forces, are all working together to deliver a safer and more secure region that ultimately benefits all.' Mr Morrison said the submarines would be developed over the next 18 months and built in Adelaide in co-operation with the US and the UK. Officials have said the vessels will be quieter and more capable than Australia's existing fleet and will 'deter' China's ambitions in the far East. A 'fake tradie' marching in Melbourne's violent anti-vaxxer protests has been exposed after a plasterer was shocked to see him on the TV wearing his company uniform. Father-of-four Adam Warne, who runs AWP Plastering and Rendering in Morwell, was stunned when Nine News pictured a protester wearing his company's hi-vis during the chaos this week. Mr Warne - who says he and his workers are vaccinated and haven't attended the rallies - told Daily Mail Australia the man had never worked for him and isn't even a tradie. The businessman later found out a subcontractor he sacked in 2020 had lent the shirt to one of his friends after protest organisers called for marchers to wear hi-vis. But the protester's decision to wear the hi-vis shirt has led Mr Warne to be bombarded with threatening phone calls over his company logo being incorrectly associated with the anti-lockdown movement. 'Adam Warne (pictured with wife Fiona) says his wife was very unhappy about the fake tradie wearing his company shirt and logo to the violent protest Plasterer Adam Warne is 'devastated' and angry that a man he doesn't know who has never worked for him wore his company shirt to one of Melbourne's violent anti-lockdown rallies Adam Warne (pictured right), who is vaccinated and wouldn't attend a rally, says he doesn't know any tradies who attended the protests. He is pictured with an award-winning apprentice Taufiq Tolsma and a supervisor, Simon Beaty 'I was literally in the doctor's waiting room about to have my first jab when it came up on the news,' Mr Warne told Daily Mail Australia. The protests have seen thousands of mostly men in hi-viz clothing, Covid conspiracy theorists and laid-off workers flooding the streets over four days - on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - They have brawled with police, smashed windows, thrown urine at reporters and even occupied the city's Shrine of Remembrance - leaving behind piles of rubbish and urinating on the sacred site. Outraged construction union boss John Setka blamed Monday's destruction on 'neo-Nazis' hijacking the cause of construction workers unhappy with industry-wide Covid vaccine mandates. Plasterer Adam Warne (pictured) has been in damage control since a fake tradie he didn't know, who never worked for him, wore his company shirt to a protest 'To have my name associated with someone like that, I was devastated,' Mr Warne said. 'It has absolutely nothing to with us - I've never met the guy wearing it.' 'My wife wasn't very impressed, she is a lawyer so she had a very big opinion on it. But there's not much we can do about.' 'From what we've found out, the connection is one of our subcontractors we had late last year, a guy from Pakenham who was no good, so we had to let him go.' 'A couple of his mates have gone to his house yesterday and borrowed his shirts and gone to the protest. From what I've been told the guy wearing our shirt isn't a tradie.' 'Unfortunately it put my name out there.' When Daily Mail Australia asked what he would say if he confronted the man wearing the shirt, Mr Warne responded: 'You don't want to know, it wouldn't be polite, but it would include 'give me my shirt back'. The adverse publicity has come as a shock since 'I hand out shirts on site so we look professional.' Melbourne residents furious with the protests jumped on the footage of his logo appearing on the news and began sending him abusive messages. 'We've had threats, messages on my voice mail saying they've got my address and they're gonna hunt me down.' Mr Warne, who works up to 100 hours a week to support his family - he has four children aged between 7 and 17 - has been in damage control mode since. 'We cannot stress enough that we do not support the current protesting, especially at the Shrine of Remembrance,' he posted on the AWP Facebook page. 'We are a small family business in regional Victoria doing our best to comply with all of the government directions in regard to Covid-19 and the construction industry, including mandatory vaccination, so that we can continue to operate our plastering business that we love.' 'We do not appreciate receiving threats and death threats against our business and young family.' AWP employs around 40 workers, including some from Melbourne's outer suburbs. Mr Warne said the incident has backed up his own speculation many of the protesters are not tradies. 'I personally don't know of one person that's gone to any of the protests and we deal with hundreds and hundreds of tradesmen,' he said. Adam Warne says none of his employees (who are pictured above) support the anti-vax, anti-Mr Warne said he 'understands' why people are protesting but he prefers to concentrate on getting back to work.lockdown protests Mr Warne said he 'understands' why people are protesting but he prefers to concentrate on getting back to work. 'I would back genuine tradies' right to protest,' he said, but he was opposed to violence, rallying at the Shrine of Remembrance and the lunchroom protests. 'We had a good laugh about that, those guys dragging tables out to block the street, yahooing and carrying on because you lost lunchrooms. Seriously, come out to a domestic site mate - we sit on a bucket to eat our lunch.' 'You look at shops shut in the background, business owners with no income and these guys complaining about not having a lunchroom, it's a bit pathetic.' 'You can just look at some of these guys and tell they're not all real tradies.' 'I've certainly learned a lesson. When I get rid of people, they've got to hand their shirt back.' Boris Johnson appeared to liken Emmanuel Macron to a jilted lover last night amid an extraordinary diplomatic spat over a new security deal. The Prime Minister admitted that he and Joe Biden had been taken aback by the strength of the French reaction to being cut out of the Aukus pact with the US and Australia. But he risked pouring fresh fuel on the fire by breaking into Franglais jibes and appearing to liken President Macron to a romantic partner who learned they were being dumped at the last minute. Speaking to reporters while travelling in the US, the Prime Minister acknowledged that France may have learned of the deal late on. There are no easy ways of having these conversations, he said. Its a very human thing to delay the frank conversation until the last possible moment. I dont know if anyone has been in that situation in their emotional life but its very human to put it off. Boris Johnson risked pouring fresh fuel on the fire by breaking into Franglais jibes and appearing to liken President Macron to a romantic partner who learned they were being dumped at the last minute What would Churchill do?: Speaking to reporters while travelling in the US, the Prime Minister acknowledged that France may have learned of the Aukus submarine deal late on Everybody has been a bit taken aback by the strength of the French reaction and we all want to reach out to Paris and sort something out. However, Mr Johnson appeared to mock Mr Macron, saying it was time for some of our dearest friends to prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break get a grip and give me a break. It emerged yesterday that despite the row, the three Aukus partners are hoping to use the security deal to deepen ties further. It is understood France will not be invited to join the group. Mr Johnson appeared to mock Mr Macron, saying it was time for some of our dearest friends to prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break get a grip and give me a break Paris was infuriated by the secret Aukus deal, which has cost it a 50billion contract to supply diesel-powered submarines to Australia. Australia is thought to have informed Paris shortly beforehand that it was switching to nuclear-powered submarines offered by the US and UK. Some Whitehall sources believe the French outrage is designed to try to extract more compensation from Australia. Yesterday, the PM said he was keen to build bridges with the French after they claimed they had been stabbed in the back by allies. Defending the deal, he told reporters in Washington DC: This is fundamentally a great step forward for global security. Its three very like-minded allies standing shoulder to shoulder creating a new partnership for the sharing of technology. 'Its not exclusive. Its not trying to shoulder anybody out. Its not adversarial towards China for instance. It is understood that Mr Johnson discussed deepening the deal during separate talks in Washington with Mr Biden and Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison. All three men are said to be keen to expand the deal to other areas, such as defending human rights and open markets. President Biden and Mr Johnson are said to have discussed their astonishment at the scale of the French anger. Mr Morrison has assured them both that he informed Paris of the deal in advance. The agreement between Australia, the US and the UK will see the former secure its first ever fleet of nuclear-powered submarines Senior diplomats believe the French government is furious with its security agencies for missing the signals that the Aukus deal was being struck. But some believe the French outrage is synthetic. One Whitehall source said: They are still going it is incredible. Ultimately, this is a sovereign decision for Australia about who they want to supply their submarine capability. The deal comes just months before Frances presidential elections, in which Mr Macron is seeking to extend his term. Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the agreement as a stab in the back. The French government has taken the unprecedented step of withdrawing its ambassadors from the US and Australia in protest. Mr Le Drian said Britain was guilty of permanent opportunism but was only a fifth wheel on the carriage of the deal. Until now, Mr Johnson has tried to soothe Mr Macrons wounded pride. Speaking to reporters en route to the US on Sunday, he said: Our love of France is ineradicable. A furious mum is demanding change to building regulations after her severely disabled daughter's brand new custom-built home was knocked down after it was deemed unsafe. Paige Nicotra, 24, spent less than a year living in her $770,000 home riddled with so much mould that the dwelling had to be demolished, including the concrete slab. A dusty and vacant lot of land in Redcliffe on Brisbane's outskirts is all that's left of the home specifically built for Paige, who now must wait for her house to be rebuilt. The ongoing saga has caused much stress for the family who have called for a building regulation overhaul and intervention from the state government. Linda Hartman is demanding answers after her disabled daughter's unsafe home had to be knocked down and demolished 'It's just been a nightmare,' Paige mum's Linda Hartman told A Current Affair. 'It's very surreal, like you would never believe this would happen to someone and it's happened to us.' 'We've got a double whammy. With Paige, what we've already been through and now with this house.' The house was custom built to meet Paige's extensive needs after she was awarded $5.5 million compensation from Queensland Health for a hospital error which left her with severe brain damage when she was a toddler. The hunt for another builder is underway in the hope Paige can move in her new home by Christmas 2022. 'I'm quite relieved because now I don't have to deal with the builder,' Ms Hartman said. A vacant lot is all that's left of Paige's home which had to be knocked down due to the mould Perpetual, the trustee of her daughter's money has launched legal proceedings against PJ Burns, which built the original home. 'The builder has to be held accountable for what he has done to us and I don't want this to happen to anybody else,' Ms Hartman said. Earlier this year, regulator Queensland Building and Construction Commission ruled PJ Burns Builder failed to rectify structural defects and slapped the building company with 10 demerit points. The damage was so extensive even the concrete slab had to be demolished. The regulator ruled the mould was caused by 'rising damp through the slab due to faulty installation of the damp proof membrane' and decided the 'demolition and rebuilding' of Paige's house was 'reasonable and necessary'. Daily Mail Australia has contacted PJ Burns Builder for comment. The company told A Current Affair it couldn't comment on the matter due to ongoing court proceedings. Linda Hartman (pictured) described the saga with her daughter's home as a nightmare Ms Hartman also slammed the building regulator over she claims a lack of action. She believes the home should have been listed as Tier 1 defective work, which would have resulted in a automatic three-year ban for the builder. 'How can they say it's not and I've been waiting for a response and it's just never coming, it's like the QBCC are protecting the builder,' she said. 'These people affect so many people's lives. They ruin people's lives' Ms Hartman also claimed requests of a meeting with minister Mick De Brenni fell have fallen on deaf ears. Paige's home was originally built by PJ Burns Builder (headquarters pictured) The minister says the QBCC has been in regular contact with Paige's family during the process and that matters involving the builder are ongoing. A QBCC spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the family filed for a claim under Queensland Home Warranty Scheme, which was approved and paid out. 'Whilst there are a number of court proceedings underway, and due to privacy laws, the QBCC is unable to provide certain details of the case,' he said. 'The QBCC administers the countrys only first-resort home warranty insurance scheme, which means if theres a builder insolvency or defective work, Queenslands statutory insurance is available much earlier in the process than any of the other states. Queenslands insurance also covers a lower dollar value threshold than any of the other states. 'In the last financial year, the QBCC processed 168,468 insurance policies for residential construction work, and approved $31.3 million in insurance claim costs. 'The home warranty scheme provides protection to thousands of Queenslanders who are having building work done.' Jess Giczey (pictured) from Perth after her operation in 2019 A young bride has revealed how she was working at Disneyworld on a six-month overseas holiday when she began to experience strange symptoms that led to a devastating diagnosis. Jessica Giczey, 24, from Perth, was living out a childhood dream working in America at the 'happiest place on earth' in 2018 as a well-earned break from her master's degree in tax law when her symptoms started. She thought she was just exhausted. 'I was vomiting, I was tired all the time. My hearing and eyesight started getting really dim, which was probably the scariest part,' Ms Giczey said. She said at first she assumed the symptoms were because of stress as money was so tight on her $10-an-hour job. She was also feeling homesick. When she returned to Australia the severity of her symptoms became more pronounced, even as she stepped off the plane. 'You have to sign a [customs] declaration form and my handwriting was atrocious. My coordination was gone. This was the point when [my partner] Kilian started getting really concerned,' she said. 'We walked out the gates and my parents were picking us up, but I couldn't see them they were right in front of me and I couldn't see them.' Jess and her partner Kilian (pictured) were married last month and she is participating in a fundraising walk for cancer research this month Ms Giczey was on a break from studying tax law at university and was working at Disneyworld when she began to feel unwell The next morning she went and visited her GP assuming she would just be given some antibiotics. 'Kilian came into the appointment with me. My doctor was speaking to me across the desk and he's having to retell it literally straight into my ear.' Her doctor immediately sent her for an MRI at hospital. 'This is the part I don't really remember because it all happened so fast. My head was so unwell that I didn't have a feeling. They talk about brain fog, it was very much like that. I didn't think it was anything serious.' The scan revealed a mass on Jess brain with the surgeon putting in a shunt and performing a biopsy which confirmed a stage 4 glioblastoma. 'Mum and Dad start crying and we just kind of had a family breakdown.' 'At this point, the tumor is the size of my fist and was right at the top of my brain stem so it was too dangerous to operate.' Jess was given about 12-months to live but two-and-a-half years later is still fighting. Radiation therapy throughout 2019 shrunk the tumour to about half its size where it remained stable through 2020. Jess and Kilian Giczey celebrated their wedding day last month (pictured) Jess is still fighting on three years later after receiving the devastating diagnosis and wants to attend her brother's 21st However, in 2021 after suffering a severe migraine that affected her ability to speak she went back to hospital for more tests. More MRI scans revealed a second tumor below the first and, devastatingly, tumors on her spine - too many to do radiation on. 'I didn't want to name that I had passed that 12-month timeline. I'm very aware of it but I just want to keep going,' she said. 'Now I want to get to five years or I want to get to my brother's 21st. At first, it was his 18th but now I want to get to his 21st and I want to get to my sister's 25th.' Jess and Kilian were married last month and the newlywed is now raising money for cancer research. She is participating in the Walk 4 Brain Cancer fundraiser on September 26, praising researchers and those raising money. 'I can't put it into words, that's literally my life. There's a whole community out there that I don't even know who are literally raising money so that people stay alive.' 'After the 18 months we've all had, that's our human spirit coming through,' she said. Ms Giczey is raising funds for cancer research in her hometown of Perth (pictured) Boris Johnson told UN leaders overnight they must 'blow out the candles of a world on fire' and tackle climate change together in a powerful speech in New York. The Prime Minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly with an agenda-setting address that warned the world is running out of time to tackle the climate crisis. And he took Muppets favourite Kermit The Frog to task, insisting that it is in fact 'easy being green'. Mr Johnson acknowledged that it was too late to stop global temperatures rising, but said there is still hope to 'restrain that growth' and 'achieve carbon neutrality - net zero - by the middle of the century'. The Prime Minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly with an agenda-setting address that warned the world is running out of time to tackle the climate crisis British Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to the United Nations to give a speech on global warming And ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, he told other world leaders the planet is 'not some indestructible toy' He took Muppets favourite Kermit The Frog to task, insisting that it is in fact 'easy being green' The climate emergency has been one of the key points of agreement Mr Johnson and US president Joe Biden have reached during the PM's trip to the US this week. Mr Johnson earlier presented the president with a signed copy of Tim Peake's Hello, Is This Planet Earth? with an inscription reading: 'I hope this book provides a reminder of what we're fighting to save as our countries tackle climate change together.' And ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, he told other world leaders the planet is 'not some indestructible toy'. He insisted it is not 'some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart's content'. And he added that: 'Daily, weekly, we are doing such irreversible damage that long before a million years are up we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable - not just for us but for many other species. 'Our grandchildren will know that we are the culprits and that we were warned, and they will know that it was this generation that came centre stage to speak and act on behalf of posterity and that we missed our cue. 'And they will ask what kind of people we were to be so selfish and so short-sighted.' Mr Johnson's eco focus is a far cry from his past climate-sceptic views. He admitted on Monday that 'if you were to excavate some of my articles from 20 years ago you might find comments I made, obiter dicta, about climate change that weren't entirely supportive of the current struggle, but the facts change and people change their minds and change their views and that's very important too'. Mr Johnson acknowledged that it was too late to stop global temperatures rising, but said there is still hope to 'restrain that growth' and 'achieve carbon neutrality - net zero - by the middle of the century' Prime Minister Boris Johnson (right) is given a set of referees cards by FIFA President, Gianni Infantino (left) before their meeting in New York The Prime Minister gave his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday morning But in his speech, he claimed now that while he is 'not one of those environmentalists who takes a moral pleasure in excoriating humanity for its excess', who sees 'the green movement as a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism', that it is imperative that countries work together to bring down emissions. Mr Johnson added: 'An inspection of the fossil record over the last 178 million years, since mammals first appeared, reveals that the average mammalian species exists for about a million years before it evolves into something else or vanishes into extinction. 'Of our allotted lifespan of a million, humanity has been around for about 200,000. In other words, we are still collectively a youngster. 'If you imagine that million years as the lifespan of an individual human being, about 80 years, then we are now sweet 16. 'We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal. 'In the words of the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord 'we are just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble'. 'We still cling with part of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our gratification and pleasure and we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality. 'We believe that someone else will clear up the mess we make, because that is what someone else has always done. 'We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again. 'My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end. 'We are approaching that critical turning point, in less than two months, when we must show that we are capable of learning, and maturing, and finally taking responsibility for the destruction we are inflicting, not just upon our planet but ourselves.' Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speak during a bilateral meeting at the UK diplomatic residence in New York The PM urged leaders to prioritise four areas - coal, cars, cash, and trees, adding: 'It is time for us to listen to the warnings of the scientists - and look at Covid, if you want an example of gloomy scientists being proved right - and to understand who we are and what we are doing.' He insisted that TV character Kermit, who he said was also 'rather rude to Miss Piggy', was 'wrong' when he sang 'It's Not Easy Bein' Green', adding: 'We have the technology; we have the choice before us.' Mr Johnson called on countries to cut their carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, praised the end of China's international financing of coal, and congratulated Pakistan's pledge to plant 10 billion trees. Mr Johnson previously said he thought there was a six out of 10 chance of getting developed nations to agree to give 100 billion dollars (72 billion) a year in climate finance to developed countries - a key target for Cop26. But speaking to reporters on Wednesday he said: 'When I said six out of 10, it was more than 50/50. I thought we were in with a good chance. The worst thing now would be any kind of complacency. There are lots of things that now have to go right. Some things are starting to go a bit better now.' Mr Johnson is expected to tell the UN General Assembly: 'Sophocles is often quoted as saying that there are many terrifying things in the world, but none is more terrifying than man, and it is certainly true that we are uniquely capable of our own destruction, and the destruction of everything around us. 'But what Sophocles actually said was that man is deinos and that means not just scary but awesome - and he was right.' He concluded: 'In the next 40 days we must choose what kind of awesome we are going to be.' The Magic Circle has elected the first female president in its 116-year history. Megan Swann, 28, is also the youngest magician to take on the role, having joined its childrens club at the age of ten. Miss Swann (real name Megan Knowles-Bacon) said she was proud and honoured to take on the role. Megan Swann, 28, has been elected the first female president of the Magic Circle. She is also the youngest magician to take on the role, having joined its childrens club at the age of ten The organisations most famous member is Prince Charles, who joined in 1975 after performing a cups-and-balls trick. Its 1,300 members pledge not to share magical secrets with anyone except bona fide students and historians of magic on pain of being expelled. Miss Swann, from Eltham in south-east London, said that she creates environmentally themed tricks and teaches children about climate change. She said: I tear up a newspaper to represent forests being cut down, and then restore it to show that we can hopefully restore our forests in the future. A Whitehall chief told ministers to panic buy lager after a summit on the CO2 crisis, it was claimed yesterday. Roger Hargreaves, director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat the Cabinet Office unit responsible for responding to major emergencies allegedly made the comments as he ended the call. Mr Hargreaves said: Ill leave you to your evenings go and panic buy lager or whatever, website Politico reported. A Whitehall chief told ministers to panic buy lager after a summit on the CO2 crisis, it was claimed yesterday (stock image) Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay convened the meeting as soaring energy prices sparked fears of food shortages. The Cabinet Office did not respond to a request for comment. It comes as Tesco bosses warn that the sight of empty shelves could get ten times worse before Christmas and trigger panic buying. Britains biggest retailer said a chronic shortage of delivery drivers will make it impossible to move goods to stores during the busy festive season. Gaps have been seen on shelves for months as a result of the delivery crisis, while big chains including McDonalds and Wetherspoons have apologised to customers for shortages. Meeting was convened as soaring energy prices sparked fears of food shortages and as Tesco bosses warn that the sight of empty shelves could get ten times worse before Christmas Poultry industry bosses have warned of a lack of fresh turkeys and others have suggested problems with deliveries of toys and many other goods. Now Tescos UK distribution chief Andrew Woolfenden has said the situation is set to escalate. Our concern is that the pictures of empty shelves will get ten times worse by Christmas and then well get panic buying, he added. The road haulage industry says there is a shortage of more than 90,000 skilled HGV drivers. Industry leaders say the only solution is to create an emergency visa to allow thousands of truck drivers from EU countries into Britain to make sure the economy does not grind to a halt. The US yesterday vowed to back European countries suffering from soaring energy prices as blame for the crisis shifted to supply restrictions from Russia. US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said America would stand up to market players manipulating supply to benefit themselves. She said: We want to all have our eye on the issue of any manipulation of gas prices by hoarding or the failure to produce adequate supply. US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm (pictured) vowed that America would 'stand up' to market players 'manipulating supply to benefit themselves During a visit to Warsaw, she stressed: We are united with our European allies in making sure you get adequate, affordable gas supply this winter. Fears of an energy crisis across Europe have been ratcheted up by moves by Russian gas giant Gazprom to limit supplies. These moves, combined with low stocks, have sent natural gas prices rocketing in recent months. Russia is the biggest supplier of gas to Europe, accounting for 40 per cent of imports a fact that has led to calls for less reliance on Russian energy. Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency called on Russia to do more to increase gas availability to Europe. Aggressive ravens have grounded a drone delivery service in Australia after bizarre footage of freak bird attacks emerged. Wing, run in collaboration with Google, operates in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory delivering coffee, food, medicine and hardware supplies. The drones drop off each package to the door but lately customers eagerly awaiting their morning lattes in the northern suburb of Harrison have instead been greeted by vicious ravens swooping and pecking the aircraft. Wing has now temporarily halted flights in parts of the suburb as local bird experts investigate the behaviour of the territorial animals. Ravens have been terrorising drones delivering food and other supplies to locked down residents in Canberra this week Ben Roberts was waiting for his daily coffee this week when he suddenly noticed the his drone was under attack. He managed to film the raven hanging onto the back of the aircraft and furiously pecking it with its beak. The drone struggled to fly under the weight of the large bird but fortunately for Mr Roberts was able to deliver his breakfast before taking flight again. 'They are certainly very territorial at the moment,' he told the ABC. 'From their point of view, they're very intelligent birds, what must a drone look like to them? It would be like a flying saucer landing in our front yard to us.' Ornithologist Neil Hermes, who studies birds, advised Wing to temporarily suspend flights and said nesting season was likely exacerbating their aggression. Wing, which operates the drones, has been forced to temporarily pause flights in parts of the Canberra suburb of Harrison due to vicious ravens attacking the aircraft (pictured is one Wing drone delivering a package to a family) 'The bird appears to be perfectly unharmed by the fact it's attacked this drone, and given that Wing are not currently flying in the area, the bird probably feels it has been successful in driving it away,' he said. Wing said its operations were not impacted elsewhere and that they were unaware of any birds being injured by their aircrafts. 'As is common during nesting season, certain bird species demonstrate territorial behaviour and swoop at moving objects,' a spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia. 'In the unlikely event that a bird makes direct contact with our drone, we have multiple levels of redundancy built into our operations to ensure we can continue to fly safely. 'Consistent with those procedures, the drone completes its delivery safely, including delivery of food and drink that remains untouched in our delivery package, and then returns to our facility.' The spokesperson said there had also been reports of ravens attacking garbage trucks, cars and even pedestrians. Wing was first launched in the ACT in 2019 and has become widely popular during the recent Covid-19 lockdown with 10,000 deliveries carried out 'We have identified some birds demonstrating territorial behaviour in a small part of our delivery area in the suburb of Harrison, and we've asked local ornithological experts to investigate this further to ensure we continue to have minimal impact on birdlife in our service locations,' they said. Wing was first launched in the ACT in 2019 and has become widely popular during the recent Covid-19 lockdown with 10,000 deliveries carried out. The service is available in the Canberra suburbs of Crace, Palmerston, Franklin, Harrison and Mitchell with food, medicine, office supplies and hardware tools all on offer. Keir Starmer is facing a Labour conference storm after Sadiq Khan refused three times to back his overhaul of party rules - and a 12,000-word pamphlet setting out his 'vision' was derided. Sir Keir has enraged left-wingers and unions by pushing to scrap the current 'one member, one vote' system for electing leaders. Instead he wants to return to a version of the old arrangements, where trade unions, MPs and party members each get a third of the voting power. Critics complain that probably would have meant Jeremy Corbyn losing in 2015. Shadow communities secretary Steve Reed suggested in interviews this morning that the proposals will be put to conference, which starts this weekend, despite the opposition. But Sir Keir suffered another blow when London mayor Mr Khan dodged saying if he supported the changes, swiping that 'internal party rules isn't at the fore of my mind'. Meanwhile, there has been a less-than enthusiastic response to the leader's decision to pen a long-winded essay for the Fabian Society in an attempt to say what Labour should stand for. One party figure from the moderate wing told MailOnline the 35-page pamphlet - which was earlier described as being 14,000 words long but is in fact weighs in at 11,930 in terms of words by Sir Keir himself - was a 'waste of time' and normal people would not engage with the content. 'If ordinary voters suspected he was a weirdo before, now they know he is,' they said, adding gloomily: 'He'd be gone if he was leading the Tories, but there's no-one else.' Former Cabinet minister Lord Adonis said: 'When you haven't got anything new to say, it's best not to say it in 14,000 words.' Sir Keir Starmer said he plans to turn Labour into 'Britain's bricks and mortar' as he set out his future vision for the party in a 14,000 word statement ahead of the party's conference Pressed repeatedly on whether he supported Sir Keir's rule changes during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Mr Khan said: 'I've got to be frank; as the mayor of London, internal party rules isn't at the fore of my mind. I haven't had a chance to look into the changes being considered.' He added: 'Well, it's not something that is at the fore of my mind as mayor. What's at the fore of my mind is taking bold action to address the twin challenges of air pollution and climate change.' In his essay, Sir Keir said he plans to turn Labour into 'Britain's bricks and mortar' as he set out his future vision for the party in a lengthy statement ahead of the party's conference. Despite an internal civil war over the left-wing party's political leaning, Sir Keir laid out a clear roadmap towards the centre and away from radical Corbynite policies in his 35-page essay, 'The Road Ahead'. The Labour leader insisted the party cannot 'wait around for the public to decide we are right' and must instead grasp the opportunities the current political atmosphere provides. The long-winded essay, published by The Fabian Society, has been seen as a bid to reset his leadership and craft an ambition for what Labour would look like in Government ahead of his first in-person appearance at a party conference as leader. Cutting ties with the broad nationalisation policies that belittled ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's previous election bids, Sir Keir explained he wants his party to 'once again be Britain's bricks and mortar'. Sir Keir wrote: 'People are no longer prepared to sit back while politicians shrug their shoulders. 'The future will belong to those who do not just mitigate against change but grasp the opportunities it provides. 'I want Labour to once again be Britain's bricks and mortar - a symbol of solidity, reliability, shelter and the prospect of building something new and better. 'To do that, our party must have a relentless focus on the challenges and opportunities of the future and how they can be shaped to the interest of working people.' A Labour source told the Guardian they believed the public 'were now willing to give Starmer a hearing', but warned his vision 'must be credible'. They said: 'People believe Keir could be prime minister. It's the first time people have believed that about a Labour leader in a decade. 'Now it's about showing them why he should be prime minister. In the essay, seen as an opportunity to dispel criticism that he has no political ideology, Sir Keir sets out 10 principles which he claims would form the basis of a new contract between Labour and the British people. Cutting ties with the broad nationalisation policies that belittled ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's previous election bids, Sir Keir explained he wants his party to 'once again be Britain's bricks and mortar' At its heart is what he has dubbed a 'contribution society', where everyone has a part to play. And Sir Keir appears to show a greater commitment to helping to energise the private sector, with his prospective government promising to 'be a partner to private enterprise, not stifle it.' But despite the posturing, there are few if any references to any tangible policies the electorate could pin their hopes to in any future election. He wrote: 'People want to emerge from lockdown into something better. 'Our country is now at a crossroads: down one path is the same inequality of opportunity and insecurity. 'It is impossible to live in this moment and not feel the winds of changes blowing, just as they did in 1945 and 1997. 'The Labour path is about building a better future for working people. 'Labour will build a society that prizes the contributions people make, providing security and opportunity across Britain.' Oliver Dowden, Conservative Party co-chairman, said: 'If this is Starmer's 'big vision' then he should have gone to Specsavers. They're all essays and no action' But his comments come at a time where Labour is again gripped in an internal civil war over potential changes to leadership rules. Sir Keir faced criticism from party's left-wing hardliners over plans to scrap the current 'one member, one vote' system and replace it with a previous version of the electoral college system. The proposals would see a return to trade unions, MPs and party members being split into respective categories, with each being responsible for one third of the result. However Oliver Dowden, Conservative Party co-chairman, said: 'If this is Starmer's 'big vision' then he should have gone to Specsavers. 'Labour are talking to themselves about themselves. They're all essays and no action.' Advertisement Gabby Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where her body was found in Wyoming, and created a memorial to the 22-year-old New Yorker. Schmidt, who is married to Petito's mother Nichole, traveled from New York to Wyoming last week to help with the search for the missing 'van life' traveler. She had been reported missing on September 11, and he set out on September 14. Her body was found on September 19. On Wednesday Schmidt made a stone cross at the site where Petito was discovered, Fox News confirmed. He left yellow and white flowers on the site, beneath the trees. Gabby Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where she was killed, and created a stone cross. He laid a floral tribute James Schmidt, Gabby Petito's stepfather, traveled to Wyoming on September 14 to help the search for the 22-year-old. Four days later her body was found Schmidt is pictured with his wife Nichole, Gabby's mother, at a press conference on September 14 - shortly before he set out for Wyoming Petito saved money for her road trip by working in a pharmacy and then set out on July 2 Gabby Petito, 22, is pictured with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, in a YouTube video made to document their 'van life' road trip. Petito's body was found on Sunday and Laundrie has disappeared A memorial of stones arranged in a cross pattern was spotted Monday evening at the Spread Creek Dispersed Campsite east of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. On Wednesday Petito's stepfather made a similar tribute at the exact spot where her body was found A similar memorial had been made on Monday, on an open patch of muddy land on the banks of a river near the campsite. Gary Rider, a friend of Schmidt, said the pair had visited the site on Wednesday and that they had left some flowers next to the other cross. 'We did go the small cross with flowers was made by Jim and myself,' he told The Independent. 'That larger cross was not done by anyone connected with the search or recovery of Gabby.' A memorial for Petito will be held on Sunday in New York, the Long Island funeral home confirmed on Wednesday. Moloney's Holbrook Funeral Home, in Holbrook, 50 miles east of Manhattan, announced the memorial on their website. The event will be held from noon until 5pm. No details were given about a funeral or service. The funeral home on Long Island, New York, has published details of her memorial Sunday's memorial will be held at the Holbrook funeral home near her family's house Petito and Laundrie are seen on July 4 in Utah. They had set out two days previously on a road trip, planning to document their journey on social media The pair had been travelling on a cross-country trip together since July 2, when they left New York. Petito was reported missing on September 11 A mural of Gabby Petito with wings was placed at Nicholls Road and Montauk Highway, in Blue Point, New York Petito was originally from New York with her family saying they will release a statement when her body is returned there A makeshift memorial for Gabby Petito is seen near North Port City Hall in North Port, Florida, where she used to live Petito's family - from Blue Point, New York - have not spoken since a coroner on Tuesday confirmed that the body discovered on Sunday was indeed her. They said that they would speak once her remains were returned to them. The hunt for the sole 'person of interest' in her case continues. Her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, was reported missing by his parents on September 17, three days after telling them he was setting off on a hike. Laundrie's family lawyer issued a five-word statement when Gabby's body was found, saying: 'May she rest in peace.' The search for Laundrie has since Sunday been concentrated on the Carlton Reserve - a swampy, alligator-filled 25,000 acre site where Laundrie's abandoned car was found. The silver Ford Mustang contained a note, requesting it be towed away. North Port Police Department on Wednesday evening at around 7pm tweeted that the search had concluded for the day, and would resume in the morning. 'The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found,' they said. 'We will be back out Thursday, similar operation.' Search teams are pictured on Wednesday heading into the Carlton Reserve in Florida The Carlton Reserve has been the focus of a search for Laundrie since his car was found at the site on Sunday Laundrie was apparently an avid reader, with some pointing to a video on the couple's YouTube page showing him reading a book about a missing woman. He is seen here camping on the Appalachian trail with Petito in March for her birthday Brian Laundrie mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from cross-country trip alone, says neighbor Brian Laundrie's neighbor has revealed that the 23-year-old mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from the cross-country trip alone. Charlene Guthrie, who lives across the street from the Laundrie family in North Port, Florida, told Fox News she saw Laundrie return to 'normal life' - all the while his girlfriend Gabby Petito was missing, possibly already dead. 'He mowed the lawn. Him and his mother went for a bicycle ride around the block,' Guthrie said. 'I mean, everything was just normal life once he came back. 'And I just can't get over the fact that they it seemed like nothing bothered him. How can you do that?' Laundrie returned to North Port without Petito in the couple's campervan on September 1. Authorities were then alerted to her disappearance on September 11. Guthrie said the discovery of Petito's body and Laundrie's disappearance look 'really, really bad for him' and that she believes he 'should be a suspect.' The neighbor also hit out at Laundrie's parents for not coming forward when their son went missing and that they 'let him go' in the first place. 'I have children, and I know that you do what you can to protect your child, but, you know, that can go so far, and you gotta do the right thing eventually. You have to,' Guthrie said. '[The Laundries] should have absolutely come forward now. I mean, I just can't believe they didn't do something. I'm really angry now that they let this go. 'And that everything was so natural and they remained so normal through the whole thing, you know, while they were here, till he went on the run.' Advertisement Earlier on Wednesday there was a flurry of activity as divers were brought to the site, but it later emerged that there was no connection to the case. The team, made up of about 10 divers, was requested by North Port Police on Wednesday morning, said Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez. 'These divers are specifically trained and very talented in low visibility bodies of water,' Perez said. 'They dive down where you and I can't see anything at all. They utilize technology and other special equipment to help them get down deep into really deep bodies of water, so they're out there right now to recover whatever it is that they might find.' The Laundrie family were initially reluctant to cooperate with the investigation. Their house was searched on Monday, and Brian's parents Christopher and Roberta were questioned. On Wednesday the Laundrie's neighbors, William and Charlene Guthrie, said that they saw the Laundrie family leaving the house with a camper van about a week after Brian's September 1 solo return to Florida. William Guthrie told Fox News that he was working in his yard when he saw the Laundries attach what looked like a new camper to the back of their pickup truck. 'I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper,' he said. The couple told Fox that the Laundries were gone 'for the weekend' after packing up the new camper. At that point, Petito had not been officially reported missing: her family did not raise the issue with the police until September 11. The Guthries said they found it 'odd' that Christopher, Roberta and Brian Laundrie would all spend the weekend together in one small vehicle. It also emerged on Wednesday that Petito and Laundrie were seen on August 27 at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson Hole - where an 'aggressive' Laundrie berated wait staff during an argument over the bill. Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans was at the restaurant with her boyfriend Matthew England and noted the blazing argument, sometime between 1 and 2pm. Their account provides what is believed to be the last sighting of Petito. While dining at the restaurant, they overheard a loud conversation in which another customer - believed to be Laundrie - was heard screaming at wait staff in what appeared to be an argument over the check. Angelo said that the man involved in the dispute displayed 'aggressive' body language. The man left the restaurant and then returned around four times, she said. Afterward, a young woman who was with the man - believed to be Petito - came into the restaurant and apologized to wait staff for his behavior. Merry Piglets officials later posted on Instagram: 'Yes, we can confirm Gabby and Brian were in Merry Piglets. 'We have already notified the FBI and they are aware. We are letting them do their jobs and we are respecting Gabby's family and have nothing further to comment.' As England watched the images of Petito and Laundrie in the body cam footage, it began to dawn on him early on Wednesday morning that they looked familiar. Nina Celie Angelo (left) of New Orleans recalled the August 27 incident in Jackson Hole, Wyoming involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie (right) Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they stopped to have lunch at Merry Piglets sometime between 1 and 2pm. The couple was in Wyoming in late August to attend a wedding. While dining at the restaurant, they overheard a loud conversation in which another customer, Laundrie, was heard screaming at wait staff in what appeared to be an argument over the check Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they traveled to Wyoming for a wedding in late August 'He goes, 'Nina, that was the couple fighting at the restaurant',' Angelo said. 'And it stopped me in my tracks. I felt like the blood left my body. 'I was like, 'Oh my God, I completely forgot about that incident'.' Their account is yet another crucial piece of the puzzle, as police and FBI try to understand Petito and Laundrie's movements. They have been helped by intense public interest in the case. A huge manhunt was launched on September 11 to find the missing woman, and police said that they eventually received more than 1,000 tips. As of Tuesday, the hashtag #GabbyPetito has received more than 650 million views on the social media platform TikTok, according to the Associated Press. Petito and Laundrie had cultivated a following on social media as the traversed the West in their van, and fellow social media users jumped into the hunt for clues. The van was spotted in footage made by YouTubers, a TikTok user said that she had given an 'antsy' Laundrie a lift when he was hitchhiking on August 29, and an Idaho woman who owns a shop in the town of Victor said that she had seen the pair around that time. A graphic designer who has spent the past four years living in her Airstream trailer said that she believes she is the one that led the FBI to Petito's body, after agents told her: 'you guys are the ones that really tipped us off to the right place'. Jessica Schultz told law enforcement that she spotted Laundrie near the Spread Creek campsite in Wyoming on August 26, 27 and possibly 28. Schultz, 38, said that the publicity surrounding the missing New Yorker encouraged her to come forward, and she spoke to the FBI on September 16. She said in a TikTok that she and a group of friends were camped at Spread Creek from August 22 to 29. 'In that time frame, we all independently noticed that van,' she said. Schultz said that she noticed the van because it was trying to park, and blocking her way. She very clearly recalled seeing a man alone - who she now believes was Laundrie. She said she was '100 per cent certain' that it was him. 'He was very... kind of awkward and confused,' she said on TikTok. 'It was just him, there was no Gabby.' Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito had been traveling since early July. Petito was reported missing on September 11, and on September 16 a fellow 'van life' traveler told the FBI she believed she had spotted Laundrie 'He was very kind of awkward and confused. And it was just him. There was no Gabby': Jessica Schultz describes on TikTok seeing Laundrie 'So I saw Brian Laundrie parking his van August 26 at Spread Creek. 'So I had already reported to the FBI what I had seen. 'And I wasn't 100 per cent sure, but now that there is dashcam footage of the van where I saw it, I'm 100 per cent certain that I did see him parking his van. 'And he was very kind of awkward and confused. And it was just him. There was no Gabby. 'But that's only because, as a van lifer, I was checking out their van and I was checking out to see if it was a couple or a solo dude. 'So it was a solo dude, as far as I could see. Unless she was in the back somewhere. But when I pulled up he was driving still and hadn't yet pulled over. 'So I was like, hey, what are you going to do? Are you going to let me pass because it's only one car width of a road. 'And he kind of pulled over like half way, and made me drive half out into the road to go around him. 'So I thought it was just really weird. And for a timeline, it was parked on the 26th, I believe.' 'Sorry my last video cut off. I guess I only get 60 seconds. 'It's probably a good thing as the FBI actually called me back. Not as a result of my TikTok. 'So a group of friends and I were camping at Spread Creek from the 22nd to the 29th. 'And in that time frame we all independently noticed that van parked there. And I noticed it particularly because I had seen that van trying to park. And also because it wasn't actually parked in a designated spot. 'The Spread Creek camping area is a series of designated spots and you're not supposed to camp outside those spots. 'This van was not in a real spot so I figured that he would get booted by the people who patrol the area. But the van was there for several days and nights and it did not get booted. The weirdest part was that there was no indication that there was anybody at the van. 'Usually small van people have their doors open, they're outside, they have a hammock, something. But we didn't see any signs of actual life at the van.' Advertisement The van that Petito and Laundrie were traveling in was spotted by multiple travelers, including Schultz Schultz approached the van to see if the man wanted to join their group, but saw that he was much younger than them so decided against extending the invite. 'He was just acting weird,' she told The San Francisco Chronicle. 'You know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, your hackles go up when you see something that's out of the ordinary.' She added: 'I'm pretty sure he got out of the van to like look around or something. 'There's definitely nobody in that passenger seat; like he definitely doesn't have a girl in there.' On August 27, Schultz saw the van again. This time, she was traveling as a passenger in her friend's vehicle, and noticed that the van belonging to Petito and used by her and Laundrie was in the same area. 'I was like, 'Oh, that guy stayed the night,' Schultz recalled telling her friend. She remembered it clearly, she said, because it was not a designated parking spot. Schultz also believes she saw the van on August 28, because she recalled thinking it was surprising the owners had not been asked to move on to an actual parking place. 'The weirdest part of it was that there was no indication there was anybody at the van,' Schultz recounted on TikTok. When footage of the missing couple began circulating, Schultz noticed the distinctive hat that was on the dashboard - which she had seen. 'My friend texted me a picture of the hat on the dashboard and I just lost my s***,' Schultz said. 'And that's when I called the FBI and said, 'Guys, look at Spread Creek.' Lupe Alvarez, a friend of Schultz's who was camping at the site, said he and his partner first saw teams of police crews looking for Petito arrive on Friday evening. On Saturday a forest ranger approached them as they were about to set off on a hike and asked them not to destroy any evidence. 'She told us, 'You've probably heard about the missing girl and the van,' Alvarez said. Schultz said someone with the FBI called her and her friends back for an interview just before 10am on Sunday - before it was announced that Petito's remains had been found. Schultz recalled that the FBI agent said: 'I've talked to hundreds of people, but you guys are the ones that really tipped us off to the right place, so thank you.' She added: 'We're triumphant we were right and we led them in the right direction. 'But then, of course, it's not something you like to be right about. It's been emotionally exhausting for sure.' A fearless man has saved a highly venomous sea snake from the harsh sun with the aid of a Woolworths shopping basket. In a video shared by NewsFlare the true-blue Aussie man can be seen dragging the green basket on the sand before making his way to the edge of the ocean at Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia. He then carefully flips the basket, allowing the serpent to safely make its way back into the water. As the snake slithers away the anonymous man can be heard saying 'see you buddy.' The man, whose identity is unknown, used a Woolworths shopping basket to scoop up the venomous sea snake (pictured) Sea snakes have a highly venomous bite and are cousins of taipans and tiger snakes. In 2018 UK man Harry Evans was bitten and killed by a sea snake as he pulled a net onto a trawler, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The 23-year-old from Poole, Dorset had been working for Darwin-based prawn trawler Ocean Exporter. Mr Evans was the first person to be killed by a sea snake bite in Australia in more than 80 years. In the same year, Darwin fisherman Peter Davis was fortunate not to have one of his fingers amputated following a close encounter with a sea snake. In the video shared by NewsFlare, the man then carefully released the snake back into the ocean The venomous sea snake (pictured) then make its way back out into the ocean at Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia Bitten at the start of a fishing trip in the Top End, Mr Davis wasn't prepared to cut his time in the boat short chasing barramundi. The next day he realised the error of his ways when his hand started to throb. 'Turns out it (snake) did bite me,' Mr Davis told the ABC at the time. Two days later he went to hospital, and was kept on a drip for 48 hours. 'They reckon the teeth on them can be just as dangerous as the venom, just from the infection, which is what I got. I didn't get any venom,' Davis said. A surgeon told the keen angler he would lose his finger if the infection didn't stop spreading - but thankfully it was saved. Coca-Cola Amatil urgently recalled Appletiser in a 750ml size with the best before dates of June 1 and June 2, 2022 on Wednesday Coca-Cola Amatil has urgently recalled a popular drink from selected supermarkets over contamination fears. Food Standards Australia and New Zealand announced on Wednesday that Appletiser, a sparkling apple juice, in a 750ml size with the best before dates of June 1 and June 2, 2022, had been listed for a recall. The juice has been available for sale at selected Woolworths stores in Victoria and Coles supermarkets in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. The product was found to have an elevated level of microbial mycotoxin-patulin contamination, which Food Standards Australia and New Zealand said can cause illness if consumed. The World Health Organisation states mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins created by certain moulds that can be found in apples. Those who purchased the apple juice have been urged to return it to the place of purchase for a full refund. Anyone who consumed the product and is worried about their health should 'seek medical advice.' The product has been available at selected Coles supermarkets in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania A man photographed by a wildlife camera in the Florida panhandle is not missing Brian Laundrie, police have confirmed. Cops scrambled to investigate the potential sighting in Baker, Florida - 500 miles from the home of Laundrie, who is a 'person of interest' in the homicide of his van life girlfriend Gabby Petito. The man in the photograph appears to have similar physical features as Laundrie, including a slim build and a bald head. But the Okaloosa County Sheriffs Office said the man was not Laundrie after tracking him down. Deputies were able to identify the local from his neck tattoo, and contacted him to confirm he had been walking in the woods with a backpack. Multiple sightings of Laundrie have been reported after he vanished from his parents' Florida home just days before Petito's body was found in Wyoming. Police confirmed on Wednesday the man who resembled Brian Laundrie was a local A man photographed by a wildlife camera in the Florida panhandle is not missing Brian Laundrie (right), police have confirmed. The man appeared to have the same physical features as Laundrie, including a slim build and a bald head Sam Bass told police that he spotted a man (above) while he set up his deer camera in the wilderness in Baker, Florida early on Monday morning The owner of the wildlife camera, Sam Bass, had noticed the man on September 20 and reported him to authorities after noticing the similar characteristics to Laundrie. Bass told police that he spotted the man as he set up his deer camera in the wilderness early on Monday morning. 'I'm not saying this is the guy but whoever was on my trail camera this morning in Baker, Fl strongly fits the description of Brian Laundrie, authorities have been contacted but people in the North West Florida area be on the look out,' Bass wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday. But the local sheriff's office said that it followed up on the report and 'no one - and nothing - of note was located.' 'The OCSO did its due diligence in response to this report and is wrapping up an extensive search that took place in this area to include nearby farmlands,' the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post. 'No one - and nothing - of note was located. The individual referenced in the post below has no known ties to our area.' The photo image provided to police by Bass shows a man with a backpack as he is walking through the woods in the Florida Panhandle. 'I'm not saying this is the guy but whoever was on my trail camera this morning in Baker, Fl strongly fits the description of Brian Laundrie, authorites have been contacted but people in the North West Florida area be on the look out,' Bass wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday Although the man had a backpack (left), the color did not resemble the dark one Laundrie has been seen with on August 12 in Utah. The men also shared similar features including a bald head and a slim figure Laundrie is being sought for questioning by federal and local authorities in the disappearance of Long Island van-lifer Gabby Petito (pictured) The alleged sighting took place some 500 miles from Laundrie's North Port, Florida home. North Port Police on Wednesday resumed a search for Laundrie at the Carlton Reserve, a swampy region where he is last believed to have visited before his disappearance last week Authorities renewed their search on Wednesday of a swampy preserve area near Laundrie's home. Police in North Port, Florida, continue to search the Carlton Reserve to look for Laundrie, 23. Investigators searched the 24,000-acre Florida nature preserve over the weekend without success. They focused on the area after Laundrie's parents told police he may have gone there. Florida police deployed ATVs and drones to the snake and alligator-infested swampland. Commander Joe Fussell said on the video: The terrain is very difficult. Essentially 75 per cent of it is under water. And other areas that are dry, were trying to clear. So were expecting to get wet by the end of the day and check the entire area for Brian Laundrie. He also revealed the searchers have multiple drone operators that have been sent out in numerous teams. We also have drones that operate as higher altitude that has more advanced technology to zoom in and to see areas that are difficult to access on foot or in wheeled vehicles as well. Gabby Petito, 22, is pictured with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, in a YouTube video made to document their 'van life' trip Petito was last seen alive on August 24 leaving a hotel with Laundrie in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the couple's cross-country campervan trip The pair had been travelling on a cross-country trip together since July 2, when they left New York. Petito was reported missing on September 11 The Florida sighting was not the first reported to police and federal investigators. Multiple people have reported sightings of a man fitting Laundrie's description in the Mobile, Alabama area, with many posting about their suspicions online. The city is more than 600 miles northwest of his home in North Port, Florida. Mobile County Sheriff's Office Captain Paul Burch told Fox 10 News he does not believe Laundrie had any connections to the area. Rumors of Laundrie's whereabouts have since flooded social media, with some speculating he may have been a body which was found in a dumpster outside of a Walmart in Mobile over the weekend. But police on Monday said they have been investigating the reports, but none have turned up anything of substance. The body in the dumpster, they said, belonged to an unidentified homeless man. Florida police have deployed ATVs and drones to a snake and alligator-infested swampland as they resumed their search for van-life woman Gabby Petito's boyfriend Brian Laundrie Cops in ATVs were seen heading into the 25,000 acre Carlton Reserve in Florida to search for Laundrie on Tuesday Four ATVs were seen heading to the swampy area in this photo, as part of the huge search operation to try and find Laundrie North Port Police shared these images showing officers sending drones operated by remote controls up in the air On Tuesday, a coroner in Wyoming confirmed that a body found on Sunday is that of Petito, and that her death was a homicide. The 22-year-old from New York was last seen alive on August 24, checking out of a hotel in Utah during her road trip across the U.S. with boyfriend Brian Laundrie. Laundrie returned to his family home in Florida without her on September 1, and on September 14 police were alerted to his disappearance. He has not been seen since, and remains a 'person of interest' in the case. On Tuesday night, sources told TMZ that he is viewed by prosecutors as the prime suspect, but they are waiting to see if he is found alive, and if there is evidence that he killed her before charges are filed. On Monday, the FBI went to Laundrie's parents' home in North Port and removed several boxes and towed away a car neighbors said Laundrie's mother typically used. Police announced Tuesday its officers had returned to the 'vast and unforgiving' Carlton Reserve to continue the search A brave beagle has been filmed in a tense standoff with a buff kangaroo after stumbling across the uninvited guest. Natasha Robinson, 44, witnessed the unique encounter in her backyard in Victoria. She was alerted to to the standoff by her dog barking and was shocked to find the massive roo towering above her ten-year-old beagle Dodger. Footage shows the buff kangaroo stand tall as the stubborn beagle continued to bark at the stranger. An elderly beagle and a buff kangaroo have had a heated stand-off at a backyard fence in Victoria (pictured) Ms Robinson tried to call her pooch back into the house but he refused. Deciding there was no chance she would go anywhere near the roo, Ms Robinson continued to watch the tense standoff before witnessing something bizarre. After a 20-minute stalemate and to the shock of Ms Robinson, the kangaroo began to urinate without breaking his intimidating stance. 'Watch out dodge,' she screamed. The kangaroo stood tall and began to urinate towards the dog, much to shock of its owner Dodger, who appears unfazed, eventually begins to lose interest in the intruder with the pair walking away in a peaceful truce. Generally, kangaroos fight to see who wins a mate. The most dominant male is the prime partner for the female. A dominant male kangaroo will usually show other males who's boss in a number of ways such as standing erect on its tail and hind-feet, and urinating. Other signs include rubbing its chest from side to side, walking slowly on all fours with an arched back, grabbing tufts of grass and sparring. Queensland's Department of Environment and Science advises residents to move away if they encounter a kangaroo exhibiting that type of behaviour. An Afghan refugee being housed at a United States Air Force base is being federally charged with sexually assaulting minors, while another faces assault charges for allegedly choking his wife. On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced that Bahrullah Noori, 20, is being charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor, using force against that person, along with three other counts of engaging in sex with a minor. Meanwhile, Mohammed Haroon Imaad, 32, is facing domestic assault charges after allegedly choking and suffocating his wife on September 17. Both acts reportedly happened while the two were staying at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin - where they were taken to following their evacuation from Afghanistan. They were both taken off of the base and are now being held at Dane County Jail. They are scheduled to be arraigned at a federal court in Madison tomorrow. Bahrullah Noori, left, is being charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Mohammed Haroon Imaad, right, is facing domestic assault charges after allegedly choking his wife Noori is accused of attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force. The alleged victims were not yet over 16 years of age and were at least four years younger than the defendant, according to the indictment. If convicted, Noori faces a minimum of 30 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison for the use of force charge alone, with a maximum of 15 years on the other charges. Meanwhile Imaad's alleged victim told investigators he choked her, and 'threatened to send her back to Afghanistan where the Taliban could deal with her,' according to a criminal complaint obtained by WISN. Imaad faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison The two suspects made initial appearances in court on September 16 and are due back in federal court tomorrow for their arraignment. Fort McCoy in Wisconsin is one of only eight United States military bases tasked with housing the more than 50,000 Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban There are currently about 12,500 Afghans residing at the fort They are among the roughly 12,500 Afghans that are being housed at Fort McCoy after being airlifted out of their country last month, according to MPR News. It is one of only eight United States military bases tasked with housing the more than 50,000 Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban. The evacuees are seeking special immigration status, and will be aided by a group of nine federal agencies to help them settle in 150 different communities in the United States, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. Last week, the Department of Justice said they were investigating child welfare complaints and rumors that adult male refugees with child brides were brought into the United States as part of the country's evacuation efforts. U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the 'wives' of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don't crack down on it. The State Department had no immediate comment on the documents or the veracity of the details in them. Officials say that they take all such allegations seriously but that many of them are anecdotal and difficult to prove, particularly amid the crush of Afghan evacuees at multiple locations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. Annastacia Palaszczuk has again lost her cool under pressure about when she will finally open the border, saying she was 'sick of being attacked'. The Queensland premier repeated unverified claims that her state would be hit with a deadly Covid outbreak if its opened up at 80 per cent vaccination. She then played the victim when this was put under scrutiny and and she was pressed for detail on when she would actually allow NSW and Victoria in. 'Let me say this to you, if we get a Delta outbreak here, we'll all be in lockdown and no business will be operating,' Ms Palaszczuk said at at a new vaccination hub in Brisbane on Thursday. 'Do you want that? Do you want that?' 'I don't understand this constant criticism of Queensland doing well. I will always stand up for this state, I am sick of being attacked for Queensland doing a great job, and Queenslanders doing a great job.' Ms Palaszczuk implied Queensland health system would be in crisis like NSW if the border was opened. This was despite the issues with NSW's hospitals being caused by an outbreak that was caused by barely anyone being vaccinated three months ago. 'There are very serious issues here, the hospitals in NSW are going to be overwhelmed next month,' the premier said. 'I don't want that for Queensland, that is why we have tough border measures in place and that is why I want people to get vaccinated, to protect our freedoms.' 'I'm sick of constantly being attacked for doing the right thing,' Ms Palaszczuk told reporters at Thursday's Covid update press conference Ms Palaszczuk repeated her mantra that the 80 per cent threshold would be different for different states, despite her agreeing to the national plan. 'In Victoria, at 80 per cent, they will be allowed 30 people to visit for Christmas dinner. Here, Queenslanders can have 100 people over,' she said. 'I'm sick of constantly being attacked for doing the right thing.' The press conference started with Ms Palaszczuk announcing two new Covid cases in Queensland. One is a St Thomas More College student from the cluster at Sunnybank identified two weeks ago who is in home quarantine, the other in hotel quarantine. She directed reporters to ask the federal government about the national plan for re-opening ahead of tomorrow's national cabinet meeting. 'You don't understand it, I'm sorry,' she chided one reporter who referred to what NSW residents would be free to do once the 80 per cent target was reached. Ms Palaszczuk defended her decision to maintain strict border controls because of the current Delta outbreaks in NSW and Victoria 'You tell me what they can do at 80 per cent? Where's their roadmap? Where's their roadmap? 'At the moment Queenslanders have more freedoms than NSW will have at 80 percent and more than Victorians will have at 80 percent.' Ms Palaszczuk said a lot of the attacks on her state were coming from the federal government. 'Everyone needs to take a deep breath here because what we are trying to do is keep Queenslanders safe,' she said. Queensland's vaccination rate is 61.53 per cent of the eligible population having received a first dose and 42.78 per cent now fully vaccinated - the worst in Australia. It is not expected to reach the 80 per cent full vaccination target until early December. A man who was filmed being thrown headfirst into the ground at a Melbourne train station called for his mum after he woke up 'with his own blood and urine everywhere', according to a witness. Video filmed at Flinders Street Station in the city's CBD showed the man talking to other officers when another policeman approached from behind. The officer then grabbed the man by the shoulders before throwing him against the hard tile floor, sending his headphones flying across the station concourse. The woman who posted the footage online said it had gained global attention and that she had been contacted by people around the world who wanted to know if the man was OK. 'This poor guy was calm, he was just talking to the police,' her video caption read. 'You can see it it in the video then he gets thrown to the ground. You can hear his face hit the tiles. He was unconscious, blood and urine everywhere.' The witness said police then handcuffed the man, who was unconscious 'for a while' before being treated by paramedics. 'When he woke up he was calling for his mum,' the witness told news.com.au. 'We are all very disturbed by this and Ive been inundated with people worldwide wanting to know if this man is alright. 'We understand the paramedics looked at him but not sure what happened after that.' The video, which has been widely shared on Facebook and Twitter, emerged online as thousands of protesters staged four consecutive days of anti-vaxxer demonstrations on the streets of the city. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said police were aware of the footage and investigating whether the officer's actions were appropriate. 'We'll investigate it with an open mind and look at it to determine whether they've acted appropriately,' he told 3AW. 'I don't know what the full circumstances are. Confronting footage has shown a police officer throwing a man headfirst into the ground at a Melbourne train station The video's caption claimed the man was calm before he was thrown to the ground by the officer 'There is always a before and after with these matters, and context, and I think that's important.' Mr Patton said police had been dealing with a 'dynamic, threatening and frightening' environment in recent days as officers battled to contain the violent rallies on the streets of the Victorian capital. 'They have been brilliant - I couldn't be prouder of them,' he said. A Victoria Police spokesman said on Thursday afternoon the force was still investigating the context behind the video. 'The exact circumstances around the incident are yet to be determined and are under investigation by both Transit Safety Division and Professional Standards Command,' the spokesman said. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said police were aware of the footage and investigating the circumstances 'Anyone who witnessed the incident, including the person who took the footage and the person depicted in the vision, are urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.' On Wednesday 400 protesters stormed Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance to rally against vaccine mandates and the shutdown of the construction industry. The mob chanted 'lest we forget' as they stood in front of the monument built to honour the state's men and women who served in World War I during in a tense stand off with police. The video emerged online after thousands of protesters staged three consecutive days of anti-vaxxer demonstrations on the streets of Melbourne. Pictured are demonstrators at the city's Shine of Remembrance Chanting 'every day' from the Shrine of Remembrance, hundreds without masks - some still wearing high-visibility clothing - marched through the city to the war memorial. Police made 215 arrests while two officers suffered head injuries after bottles were thrown at them. 'It was completely disrespectful that the crowd ended up at the shrine, which is such hallowed ground in this great city,' Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Guenther. 'Our general observation from the people on the ground was that there weren't as many tradies involved,' Mr Guenther said. A mother-of-eight who was tragically killed alongside two of her children had contemplated moving to Queensland to be with her parents prior to her death. Samantha Lee Smith died alongside her six-year-old daughter Emanuella and 10-year-old son Bradley in a crash reportedly so devastating even hardened officers first on the scene were 'shaken and unsettled'. She was driving along Wisemans Ferry Road on the NSW Central Coast with five of her children on Tuesday night when she veered off the road and crashed into an embankment just before 10pm. Ms Smith and the two children died at the scene, while the three other kids who were in the car - the youngest being just 16 months - were rushed to hospital. Her father Doug and stepmother Wendy both shared moving tributes to the trio on Thursday, revealing Ms Smith planned to relocate her family to the Sunshine State. Samantha Lee Smith was travelling along Wisemans Ferry Road in Central Mangrove on the Central Coast with her children on Tuesday night when she veered off the road and crashed into an embankment just before 10pm Ms Smith and the two children died at the scene, while the three other kids who were in the car - the youngest being just 16 months - were rushed to hospital 'You weren't just my stepdaughter you were my daughter just like my other kids were,' Wendy said. 'How I wish we could turn back time and have you up here with us like we were planning.' It's unclear why Ms Smith opted to stay in NSW on the Central Coast instead of travelling to North Queensland as once planned. Doug, meanwhile, said Ms Smith would 'always be [his] baby girl' and vowed to 'miss and grieve you and the kids every day for the rest of my life'. Ms Smith's boyfriend Dean Holmes rushed from his home in Laguna to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle as soon as he learned of a fatal crash involving his family. His biological children, Jack and Eli, both survived the horror accident and remain in stable conditions in hospital. Ms Smith's boyfriend Dean Holmes (pictured together) rushed from his home in Laguna to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle as soon as he learned of a fatal crash involving his family Ms Smith died at the scene, along with her six-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son 'Her partner is distraught,' Ms Smith's close friend Adele Pate told Daily Mail Australia. 'Dean's lost his whole world. He's been trying to find out what happened, we don't know if it was her heart condition or what. It's all very unclear.' Ms Smith was reportedly waiting for a heart transplant due to the condition, and authorities have indicated they are keeping an open mind as they investigate the tragedy. 'And now six children don't have a mum,' Ms Pate said. As of Thursday, all three children remain in hospital with Mr Holmes at their side, Ms Pate said. 'She loved her children and would do anything for them... The best way to explain Sam is that the world is now missing an angel.' There are concerns one of those children may have stumbled out of the wreckage only to be hit and killed by a passing car in the dead of night on Tuesday. Police are investigating whether or not the child was already deceased when they were struck, potentially after being ejected from the car. Ms Smith had only recently been reunited with some of her children after a tedious custody battle which impacted her mental health Distraught friends identified Ms Smith after the horror crash, with one expressing disbelief because she'd spoken to the mother just hours earlier. 'I'm so sorry this happened to you and your babies Sam,' one friend said. 'I still can't believe it,' another added... 'Forever rest in peace with your babies.' The three surviving children were cut from the wreckage of the overturned Toyota Prado late on Tuesday night. Superintendent Darryl Jobson said it was a harrowing scene for first responders. 'There is no doubt they are shaken and unsettled by this,' he said. 'Those on scene in what is a challenging and confronting situation have gone beyond the call of duty. I couldn't be more proud of the work our first responders have done.' Investigations are also underway to determine why the woman was 45km away from her Laguna home so late at night. Distraught friends identified Ms Smith after the horror crash, with one expressing disbelief because she'd spoken to the mother just hours earlier Ms Smith's car crashed shortly before 10pm on Tuesday while travelling on Wisemans Ferry Road in Central Mangrove on the NSW Central Coast The man who first called in the accident, a 37-year-old motorist who is believed to have struck one of the children after the crash, is at the hospital for mandatory testing. 'This driver has come into contact with one of the children and that impact will be part of our investigation,' Mr Jobson said. 'Anyone who was in that man's situation, coming across the scene, doing the right thing by contacting Triple-0, it would be an absolute harrowing and devastating experience for any person.' A GoFundMe has been set up on behalf of the family to cover funeral expenses. A lonely father-of-five was only in a shopping mall because he was desperate for company when he was allegedly attacked by a stranger who slit his throat. Car fanatic Michael Eaton, 51, had recently split with his wife and was an early morning regular at Cairns Central Shopping Centre to chat with shop staff. He was allegedly attacked on the ground floor about 8am Wednesday before businesses had even opened for the day. The 'laidback and easy going' man was allegedly confronted by a 38 year old stranger who moments later came up behind him and slashed his throat. Mr Eaton died in a pool of blood 20 minutes later. Car fanatic Michael Eaton, 51, (pictured) had recently split with his wife and was an early morning regular at Cairns Central Shopping Centre to chat with shop staff The alleged killer is said to be former Australian Defence Force reservist, Nick Boak (pictured) The alleged killer is said to be former Australian Defence Force reservist, Nick Boak. He is believed to have been living on Fitzroy Island for the last three months before flying into Cairns earlier this week. Boak, 38, did not appear in Cairns Magistrates Court on Thursday to face one count of murder after court staff were told he posed a safety risk. His duty lawyer Natasha Jackson said Boak told her from the watch house that he wanted to attend court in person for the hearing But court watch house staff had concerns about moving Mr Boak to the courtroom, said police prosecutor Codi Dalley. Detective Acting Inspector Kev Goan (pictured) said victim Michael Eaton, whose five children are all adults, was at the mall because he was unable to work for health reasons A lonely father-of-five was only in Cairns Central Shopping Centre (pictured) because he was desperate for company when he was allegedly attacked by a stranger who slit his throat 'He presents an extreme risk to watch house staff,' she told the court, reported the ABC. 'We would require extra time and a specialised team to move him.' Detective Acting Inspector Kev Goan said Mr Eaton, whose five children are all adults, was at the mall because he was unable to work for health reasons. With no-one at home, police said the former dog breeder went to shopping centre to 'engage with others.' Mall staff told detectives he always 'polite and pleasant'. 'He was known by sight to many and communicated with many through his visits there,' said DI Goan. 'He readily engages with others and is described as a fairly laid-back, easygoing nice gentleman. Police officers and detectives are pictured at the scene after the man was allegedly attacked about 8am on Wednesday Police are speaking to witnesses and are going through CCTV footage of the scene (pictured) to determine the movements of both of the men prior to the alleged attack 'There has been nothing but condolences relayed to the family because of the way he was viewed by members of the public and the proprietors within the centre. 'His untimely death is mourned by many.' He added: 'His family are local to Cairns and they have been engaged as a part of our investigation. 'This is obviously a very difficult time for them and they have expressed to police that they wish for privacy for them to be able to deal with their grief and to make the necessary arrangements. 'He also has an aged mother who is doing it tough at this time because of this loss.' Police cordoned off a section of the centre with tape, seen here while the mall was closed DI Goan said the alleged incident escalated rapidly from a confrontation to the alleged savage bloody killing. He said the alleged killer had ranted at the victim who had not responded, before he was allegedly attacked from behind and slashed across the throat. DI Goan added: 'We can say it was a considered approach where the [alleged] offender has come up behind the victim and the assault has led to the victim's death.' Police are working with staff and witnesses and combing through CCTV footage to determine the movements of the deceased and accused. Boak will return to court on December 15. Robert Gentile, a mobster who repeatedly denied involvement in a 1990 art heist that saw paintings worth millions by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas lifted from the walls of a Boston gallery, has died aged 85. Investigators had long suspected that Gentile may at one time have had in his possession at least some of the artwork, valued at $500million by the FBI, taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In the theft, two men showed up at the museum in the overnight hours dressed as police officers. They restrained the security guards and left soon after with 13 pieces from the collection, which has never been recovered. Gentile, died after a stroke on Friday, had an extensive criminal record and served time in prison for separate charges. Robert Gentile, a mobster who repeatedly denied involvement in a 1990 art heist that saw paintings worth millions lifted from the walls of a Boston gallery, has died aged 85 An empty frame hangs in the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum, where a painting was stolen in a 1990 heist He was believed to have connections with those suspected of getting the art after it had been stolen, but he denied he ever had any of the works. Gentile is not believed to be one of the two suspects who stole the artwork but agents believe he had knowledge of where the 13 masterpieces were hidden. 'I had nothing to do with the paintings. Its a big joke,' Gentile said in a phone interview with The Associated Press in 2019 after being released from prison. Authorities didn't believe him and said the widow of another mobster said her husband gave Gentile two of the paintings, and that Gentile talked about the stolen work while in prison. In a search of his home that led to his 2013 conviction for illegally selling prescription drugs and possessing guns, silencers and ammunition, prosecutors said federal agents found a handwritten list of the stolen paintings and their estimated worth, along with a newspaper article about the museum heist a day after it happened. One of the 13 artworks stolen was a self-etching by Rembrandt (pictured), with the total hoard worth $500million 'The Storm on the Sea of Galilee' (pictured), Rembrandt's only known seascape, remains missing today Missing pieces include Rembrandt's only known seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Vermeer's The Concert, one of fewer than 40 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch painter. The FBI told The Associated Press in 2015 that two suspects - both Boston criminals with ties to organized crime - were deceased. Investigators believe the paintings moved through mob circles to Connecticut and Philadelphia, where the trail went cold. FBI agents first searched Gentile's home in 2012, discovering police hats, badges, $20,000 in cash hidden inside a grandfather clock, and a 'veritable arsenal' of weapons, according to the Hartford Courant. Vermeer's 'The Concert,' one of fewer than 40 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch painter, was also stolen They also found a list of pieces that had been stolen from the Gardner, along with their estimated worth on the black market. Gentile claimed at the time that the list was likely from an associate and that he had planned to trick two people who were attempting to buy art stolen from the museum. But another gangster's widow then claimed that she had seen her husband give Gentile two paintings from the Gardner. A polygraph test also found that there was a 99.9 percent probability that Gentile was lying when he denied he had ever possessed a painting from the museum or knew where the stolen paintings were hidden. Federal agents searched Gentile's home three times, including with ground-penetrating radar. A. Ryan McGuigan, Gentile's lawyer, believes the searches were all actually efforts to find the paintings and other evidence of the heist. FBI agents first searched Gentile's home (pictured) in 2012, discovering police hats, badges, $20,000 in cash hidden inside a grandfather clock, and a 'veritable arsenal' of weapons Federal agents searched Gentile's home three times, including with ground-penetrating radar The weapons charges were filed after authorities found several firearms at Gentile's home, which he was prohibited from possessing as a previously convicted felon. Gentile pleaded guilty in 2015 to possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. He was sentenced last year to four years and was credited with time served. The mobster has claimed his sentence was part of a long-running strategy by the FBI to threaten him with prison time so that he would offer information about the heist. But authorities said that Gentile talked about the stolen paintings with fellow prisoners and once told an undercover FBI agent he had access to two of the paintings and could negotiate the sale of each for $500,000. The first six months of Gentile's supervised release must be spent under electronically monitored house arrest. A $10million reward offered by the museum for all 13 paintings' safe return remains unclaimed. A Filipino nurse has showed off her staggering fortnightly earnings for treating Covid patients in Australia amid a chronic shortage of healthcare stuff. The migrant mum of two posted her payslip to TikTok, showing she made $24,420 gross because of overtime and pay loadings from just two weeks' work as a casual registered nurse in Sydney, In New South Wales hospitals, there is such a shortage of nurses that student dentists, podiatrists and speech pathologists have been recruited to help nurses cope with various Covid-related healthcare tasks. Over just one 11.5 hour shift calculated at her double time rate of over $85 an hour the nurse earned a massive $978. A Filipino nurse has showed off her staggering fortnightly earnings for treating Covid patients in Australia during a chronic shortage of nurses A chronic shortage of nurses is leading to staff working long hours - and one payslip shared to TikTok showed the huge number of hours one registered nurse worked in one fortnight. She earned a huge $24,420 before tax for her hard work After tax the nurse ended up with $12,582 having paid a whopping $8,600 in tax. Despite the heavy hit she took from the tax man, in one two week period she earned what it would take the average annual Filippino nearly four years to earn, based on that country's average wage of $3,218 a year. She posted the clip with the title 'My two weekly salary in Australia for looking after Covid patients'. While it wasn't exactly clear how many hours the woman had worked in total, it appeared to be close to 200 hours over the 14 days. The woman shared her payslip on TikTok, which detailed a huge number of hours worked with extra loadings to compensate. She proudly displayed her payslip but it's likely over the two weeks the mum of two didn't see much of her family The woman, who is living in Sydney with her husband and two young children, is a casual registered nurse at a Catholic aged care hospital. She eventually removed the post from TikTok after it got a large amount of attention and Daily Mail Australia has chosen not to identify her. With the huge mental and emotional toll on nurses currently working with Covid patients, and the physical demands of wearing full PPE, the wages seem a fair reward. Recently an intensive care nurse working in one of Sydney's worst hotspots says the virus is 'ripping families apart' and taking an enormous physical and emotional toll on healthcare workers. The emotional toll is huge, but looking after COVID patients is physically very hard work too, Liverpool Hospital nurse manager Michelle Dowd said. 'They require so much support and monitoring and physical care. We're in layers of PPE, sometimes for hours at a time,' she said. A senior nurse manager said working with Covid patients takes a huge mental, physical and emotional toll on nurses Healthcare workers are doing their best to help those who contract the virus, but the community must help them by getting vaccinated, Ms Dowd said. 'Help us as your frontline healthcare workers to keep patients out of hospital,' she pleaded. 'By getting vaccinated you don't just protect yourself, you protect your family, your friends, strangers ... you will help us to save lives.' Australia has confirmed its commitment to restart international travel once 80 per cent of people aged 16 and above receive two coronavirus jabs. Despite some state premiers maintaining a hardline on internal borders, the federal government is increasingly adamant overseas travel restrictions will ease when the target is hit. Projections suggest national 80 per cent double-dose coverage could be achieved before the end of the year. The federal government has confirmed that international travel will be possible again by Christmas, once 80 per cent of people aged 16 and above receive two coronavirus jabs Quarantine-free travel bubbles are being discussed with the UK, US, South Korea, Singapore and Pacific islands such as Fiji for the fully vaccinated Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed he would forge ahead with relaxing tough border measures in line with the national reopening plan. 'That's certainly what we intend to facilitate - for vaccinated people to travel,' he told reporters in Washington DC on Thursday. Mr Morrison said he was looking forward to welcoming back students and skilled migrants when borders ease. 'Those vaccination numbers will continue to rise,' he said. 'As they rise, the opportunities to get back to life as normal as it can be, and living with the virus, will just be coming closer each and every day.' Australia is in talks to set up quarantine-free travel bubbles with the UK, US, South Korea, Singapore and Pacific islands such as Fiji for the fully vaccinated. Qantas and Virgin are preparing for more overseas flights to restart in December with vaccination expected to be a condition for travellers 'Hopefully we'll be able to have home quarantine, we'll be able to limit the time of quarantine and, ultimately, quarantine-free travel,' Tourism Minister Dan Tehan said Tourism Minister Dan Tehan said discussions were ongoing with several countries with high vaccination rates to determine what kind of quarantine arrangements would be needed. 'Hopefully we'll be able to have home quarantine, we'll be able to limit the time of quarantine and, ultimately, quarantine-free travel. It could require some testing. All those discussions are in place,' he said. Mr Tehan declared Australia's international border will reopen at Christmas at the latest. The plan would start with allowing people to leave the country more freely before establishing more travel bubbles like the paused New Zealand arrangement. NSW is trialling seven days home quarantine for 175 fully vaccinated overseas arrivals using location and facial-recognition technology also employed during a South Australian pilot. Mr Tehan is hopeful the halved isolation period with testing either side can be a future model around the nation. 'The more we can limit that time in quarantine, obviously the better, the better for bringing returning Australians home, the better for international students to be able to return,' he said. Australia is expected to pass 50 per cent full vaccination coverage for over-16s and 75 per cent first-dose protection this week. Qantas and Virgin are preparing for more overseas flights to restart in December with vaccination expected to be a condition for travellers. More than 45,000 Australians are stranded overseas with the figure rising in recent months due to reduced passenger arrival caps. More than 45,000 Australians remain stranded overseas with the figure rising in recent months due to reduced passenger arrival caps Labor continues to blame the government's failure to establish multiple quarantine hubs for the backlog. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese also wants a plan for booster shots, jab incentives and a working national contact tracing app. 'There's always been a huge gap between what this government promises and what they actually deliver,' he told 5AA radio. Victoria recorded 766 new local cases on Thursday, the state's highest tally of the pandemic. NSW continues to record about 1,000 new infections a day. Brian Laundrie's neighbors said they spotted him and his parents packing an 'attached camper' used for their long-weekend camping trips after he returned to the North Port, Florida, residence without girlfriend Gabby Petito. Laundrie is a 'person of interest' in the homicide of Petito, whose body was found near a camp site in Wyoming where the couple had stayed during a driving trip across America. She was last seen alive on August 24, and he returned home to Florida alone on September 1. Laundrie vanished from his parents home before Gabby's body was found, and remains missing. Neighbors Charlene and William Guthrie said they saw the Laundries hook up the camper to the back of their pickup truck for a weekend trip away about a week after their son's return, on September 11 - the same day Gabby was reported missing. The family would have returned about two days later as DailyMail.com photos show the camper back in the driveway on September 13. When police contacted the Guthries over the disappearance of Petito, William told them about the family's trip, noting that it was unusual for Christopher and Roberta Laundrie to go off in such a small camper with their 23-year-old son. 'I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper,' William told Fox News. Charlene and William Guthrie told Fox they spotted the Laundries leaving for a camping trip just days after Brian Laundrie returned home alone without the missing Gabby Petito Gabby Petito, 22, is pictured with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, as they made their 'van life' road trip. Petito's body was found on Sunday and Laundrie has disappeared The Gunthries added that living next to the Laundries has become a nightmare since Petito and later Laundrie went missing with police and reporters roaming the neighborhood for nearly a month investigating the case. The Laundrie family were initially reluctant to cooperate with the investigation regarding the missing Petito until Brian went missing last week. Their house was searched on Monday, and Brian's parents Christopher and Roberta were questioned. Law enforcement continue to comb the nearby alligator-infested Carlton Reserve in search of Laundrie. A DailyMail.com image taken on September 13 shows the Laundrie's camper in their driveway. Neighbors said they hooked it up to the red pickup truck in front of it for a weekend camping trip on September 11 - the day Gabby was reported missing The attached camper is seen on the driveway of Brian Laundrie's parents home on September 20 while FBI Agents talk with North Port police officers outside FBI Agents take away boxes from the home of Brian Laundrie with the attached camper visible on the driveway - it's not clear if police searched the camper Christopher Laundrie, Brian's father, pictured on September 21, with the camper still visible in the driveway Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where her body was found in Wyoming, and created a memorial to the 22-year-old New Yorker. Schmidt, who is married to Petito's mother Nichole, traveled from New York to Wyoming last week to help with the search for the missing 'van life' traveler. She had been reported missing on September 11, and his parents said he left their home to go hiking in a nearby reserve on September 14. Her body was found on September 19, and two days later a coroner ruled her death a homicide. Her cause of death is still being investigated. On Wednesday Schmidt made a stone cross at the site where Petito was discovered, Fox News confirmed. He left yellow and white flowers on the site, beneath the trees. Gabby Petito's father James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where she was killed, and created a stone cross. He laid a floral tribute James Schmidt, Gabby Petito's stepfather, traveled to Wyoming on September 14 to help the search for the 22-year-old. Four days later her body was found Schmidt is pictured with his wife Nichole, Gabby's mother, at a press conference on September 14 - shortly before he set out for Wyoming Petito saved money for her road trip by working in a pharmacy and then set out on July 2 Another memorial of stones arranged in a cross pattern was spotted Monday evening at the Spread Creek Dispersed Campsite east of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. On Wednesday Petito's stepfather made a similar tribute at the exact spot where her body was found A similar memorial had been made on Monday, on an open patch of muddy land on the banks of a river near the campsite. A memorial for Petito will be held on Sunday in New York, the Long Island funeral home confirmed on Wednesday. Moloney's Holbrook Funeral Home, in Holbrook, 50 miles east of Manhattan, announced the memorial on their website. The event will be held from noon until 5pm. No details were given about a funeral or service. The funeral home on Long Island, New York, has published details of her memorial Sunday's memorial will be held at the Holbrook funeral home near her family's house Petito and Laundrie are seen on July 4 in Utah. They had set out two days previously on a road trip, planning to document their journey on social media The pair had been travelling on a cross-country trip together since July 2, when they left New York. Petito was reported missing on September 11 Petito's family have not spoken since a coroner on Tuesday confirmed that the body discovered on Sunday was indeed her. They said that they would speak once her remains were returned to them. The hunt for the sole 'person of interest' in her case continues. Her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, was reported missing by his parents on September 17, three days after telling them he was setting off on a hike. Laundrie's family lawyer said: 'May she rest in peace.' The search for Laundrie has since Sunday been concentrated on the Carlton Reserve - a swampy, alligator-filled 25,000 acre site where Laundrie's abandoned car was found. The silver Ford Mustang contained a note, requesting it be towed away. North Port Police Department on Wednesday evening at around 7pm tweeted that the search had concluded for the day, and would resume in the morning. 'The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found,' they said. 'We will be back out Thursday, similar operation.' Search teams are pictured on Wednesday heading into the Carlton Reserve in Florida The Carlton Reserve has been the focus of a search for Laundrie since his car was found at the site on Sunday Laundrie was apparently an avid reader, with some pointing to a video on the couple's YouTube page showing him reading a book about a missing woman. He is seen here camping on the Appalachian trail with Petito in March for her birthday Earlier on Wednesday there was a flurry of activity as divers were brought to the site, but it later emerged that there was no connection to the case. The team, made up of about 10 divers, was requested by North Port Police on Wednesday morning, said Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez. 'These divers are specifically trained and very talented in low visibility bodies of water,' Perez said. 'They dive down where you and I can't see anything at all. They utilize technology and other special equipment to help them get down deep into really deep bodies of water, so they're out there right now to recover whatever it is that they might find.' Advertisement Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas were so concerned about the escalating situation at the U.S.-Mexico border that they requested additional resources three months ago - but their concerns were not acted on by superiors. Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president told CNN that the union on June 1 suggested improvements to the system. Anfinsen said that they wanted agents to be sent to the border with tablets to start the intake process when a large group crosses the river, instead of having the group wait there while space is cleared in the station. 'This way, we can at least get part of the process finished before they even get to the station instead of wasting that time,' said the email. The union followed up on June 3, and also suggested placing a trailer in the area for additional staff, to deal with a predicted surge. On June 17, the union received a one-sentence response: 'This is being explored, several other platforms are being considered which are more efficient.' The revelation came as Jen Psaki, the White House spokesman, promised to provide precise data on the number of Haitian arrivals released into the country - yet by 10pm had failed to do so. Migrants, many of them from Haiti, are pictured wading back and forth between Texas and Mexico on Wednesday. At the weekend an estimated 14,000 migrants were sheltering in Del Rio A photo from September 22 shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released Migrants exit a Border Patrol bus and prepare to be received by the Val Verde Humanitarian Coalition after crossing the Rio Grande on Wednesday Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president, pictured testifying before Congress, said on Wednesday that they had warned back in June about the need for more resources on the U.S.-Mexico border At her daily press briefing on Wednesday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy confronted Psaki on the numbers - which he said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas didn't know. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When Psaki attempted to direct him back to DHS, an incredulous Doocy replied: 'He says he doesn't know.' She replied: 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those - I promise, this afternoon.' Doocy told Sean Hannity on his 9-10pm show on Fox that Psaki was yet to provide the figures. Mayorkas, meanwhile, was at the Capitol on Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back Congressional hearings. Republican Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Press Secretary Jen Psaki told a Fox News reporter that he'll get updated numbers on the migrant crisis this afternoon Peter Doocy grilled Psaki on the Biden administration's perceived inaction on immigration reform Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here,' said Ron Johnson, a Republican senator for Wisconsin. 'Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was at the border on Monday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. On Wednesday, Johnson wrote to Mayorkas formally requesting the figures. 'At yesterday's Senate hearing you failed to answer my questions about basic information on apprehensions at the U.S. border,' he wrote. 'Of the approximately 1.3 million apprehensions, how many people have been returned, how many people have been detained, and how many people have been dispersed into the U.S.?' Johnson said he would like a response within a week. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge, as the Department of Homeland Security launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added. It was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Migrants stand in line while awaiting transport out of a border makeshift camp along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 U.S. Border Patrol agents ride near a migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 Kamala Harris tells Mayorkas to order Border Patrol to treat migrants with 'dignity' Kamala Harris demanded that Border Patrol agents treat the thousands of mostly Haitian migrants gathered in Del Rio, Texas with 'dignity' after images emerged of officers on horseback using what appeared to be a whip to wrangle the illegal border hoppers. 'Yesterday, Vice President Harris spoke to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to receive an update about his trip to Del Rio,' Harris' chief spokesperson Symone Sanders said in a statement on Wednesday. 'During that call, the Vice President raised her grave concerns about the mistreatment of Haitian migrants by border patrol agents on horses, and the need of all CBP agents to treat people with dignity, humanely and consistent with our laws and our values.' However the VP failed to come up with a solution to the migrant crisis and simply heaped blame on overstretched Border Patrol agents. Advertisement Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation. Republicans say Biden administration policies led Haitians to believe they would get asylum. Democrats are expressing outrage after images went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. Many of the 8,600 who remain there have resorted to fashioning makeshift tents using discarded clothing and tree branches in order to provide at least some shelter from the elements. The heat has been punishing over the last week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s. Families have resorted to bathing in the grimy water of the Rio Grande river to cool off. The squalor is more reminiscent of a Developing World country than the land of the American dream, which thousands of migrants have fled to in the hopes of claiming asylum and building a better life. Empty water bottles, food containers and other litter is strewn around while mountains of garbage tower up high into the air. An aerial photo shows the huge piles of garbage from above, which are seen just steps away from the places young children call home. In another image, women and young children are seen lying among plastic bottles and an empty Oreo packet, on the ground which is covered in the remnants of trees that have been used to fashion the shelters. Another photo shows a Haitian passport in a pile of trash including empty aluminum cans, an old shoe and discarded clothing. The cramped conditions have also fueled fears of a COVID-19 outbreak - especially given that the migrants crossing the border are not required to be vaccinated before entering the US. Women and young children are seen lying on the ground of the camp among plastic bottles, empty Oreo packets and food containers A young girl stands in the place that she currently calls home in a makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas A Haitian passport is seen in a pile of trash near the International Bridge between Mexico and the US Tuesday night A migrant walks past a pile of garbage at the camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas on the US-Mexico border Tuesday night An aerial photo shows the huge piles of garbage which lie just steps away from the places young children sleep HAITIAN MIGRANT CRISIS IN NUMBERS: Number of migrants in Del Rio at peak of crisis: 14,600 Number of migrants as of Tuesday evening: 8,600 Number deported to Haiti Sunday: 327 Number deported Monday: 233 Number deported Tuesday: 523 Total deported since flights began Sunday: 1,083 Number of deportation flights scheduled for Wednesday: 7 Advertisement Almost 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under the bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico. Many fled Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and have been living in South American countries including Brazil and Chile. But since these nations have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, many Haitians have traveled up through South America and Mexico to seek asylum in the US. Biden has been blamed after a May proclamation that Haitians in the US would not be deported for 18 months because of instability in their home country, and could apply for documentation to work in the US. That only applied to Haitians already in the US at the time, but thousands have since made the trip to the border in a bid to take advantage of it. Most of them live in Chile and Brazil, having moved there after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000. Border Patrol agents struggling to process the vast numbers of people quickly enough set up the makeshift camp under the bridge as a temporary home. Last week, concerns rose that there would not be enough food, water and basic supplies to provide for the thousands of migrants living at the site. Meanwhile, Mexico has begun busing and flying Haitian migrants away from the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday, signaling a new level of support for the United States. Mexico has helped at key moments before. It intensified patrols to stop unaccompanied Central American children from reaching the Texas border in 2014, allowed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts in 2019 and, just last month, began deporting Central American migrants to Guatemala after the Biden administration flew them to southern Mexico. Thousands are forced to sleep on the bare ground or on rugs laid among the debris of trees cut down to be used as shelter Shocking images have emerged of the squalid and fetid migrant camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas that is currently home to thousands of Haitian migrants Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's foreign relations secretary, said Tuesday he had spoken with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about the Haitians' situation. Ebrard said most of the Haitians already had refugee status in Chile or Brazil and weren't seeking it in Mexico. 'What they are asking for is to be allowed to pass freely through Mexico to the United States,' Ebrard said. In Haiti, dozens of migrants upset about being deported from the U.S. tried to rush back into a plane that landed Tuesday afternoon in Port-au-Prince as they yelled at authorities. A security guard closed the plane door in time as some deportees began throwing rocks and shoes at the plane. Several of them lost their belongings in the scuffle as police arrived. The group was disembarking from one of three flights scheduled for the day. A prison guard is being treated in hospital after being bitten on the hand by a 'highly agitated and volatile' inmate in Brisbane. Queensland Corrective Services says the officer had rushed to help a prisoner suffering a medical emergency at Brisbane Correctional Centre about 5am on Thursday. The prisoner allegedly bit the officer on the hand, QCS said. A guard from Brisbane Correctional Centre (pictured) has been rushed to hospital after being bitten on his hand by an inmate The guard needed treatment at the scene before he was rushed to hospital. The prisoner was restrained and treated at the scene before being taken hospital under escort. Other guards at the scene were also assessed after getting blood on their clothing and skin. The QCS says it doesn't yet know how serious the guard's hand injury is. It said the incident will be referred to the Corrective Services Investigation Unit for investigation. Brisbane Correctional Centre general manager Chief Superintendent Rob Wood said the prisoner had been 'highly agitated and volatile'. The officer went to assist an inmate suffering from a medical episode on Thursday 'This was a very difficult situation to manage, and our officers did a remarkable job to bring the prisoner under control and support their injured colleague,' Chief Supt Wood said. 'Every day our officers deal with complex and challenging individuals, and this incident shows the challenges faced by officers every day.' Chief Supt Wood said the officers involved in the incident would be provided 'with every possible support'. High-profile ABC News presenter Patricia Karvelas has revealed the sickening abuse she has been bombarded with online - forcing her to take a step back from social media. The radio and TV host is the latest of a growing number of female stars at the public broadcaster who have lifted the lid on the misogynist trolling they experience day after day. Karvelas on Thursday announced she was turning off direct messages on her Twitter account due to the abuse she was facing on the platform. 'I've had open DMs because I like Twitter connectivity but I'm sad to say after the personal threats I have received I must close that now,' she wrote. The broadcaster called out online bullies just a week after award-winning political reporter Leigh Sales wrote of the 'unhinged' personal attacks she and her colleagues receive on a daily basis. News presenter Patricia Karvelas has revealed she is turning off direct messages on her Twitter account because of the relentless social media abuse she receives 'I've had open DMs because I like Twitter connectivity but I'm sad to say after the personal threats I have received I must close that now,' she wrote Breakfast presenter Lisa Millar has also recently quit Twitter after being targeted by online commenters who accused her of showing bias towards the Morrison government. Karvelas shared a string of abusive messages she had received online as she announced she was deactivating her DMs, which included trolls insulting her children. 'This is just a taste of the vile stuff I've received where they have found me now on Instagram,' she wrote. 'I think its important that people know that female journalists are being targeted in the most aggressive misogynistic ways. 'Throw in homophobia and it really is next level toxic.' Karvelas shared a string of abusive messages she had received online as she announced she was deactivating her DMs ABC News Breakfast presenter Lisa Millar was recently forced off Twitter as a result of relentless trolls Her stand against online abuse follows Millar speaking out about the unrelenting attacks she has received on social media. She said critics had become incensed after she was accused of smiling before a segment about former PM John Howard. 'It reached new heights of ridiculousness in the fortnight before I quit, when I came in for criticism for allegedly smiling while introducing a 20-second clip of John Howard speaking about Afghanistan,' she told The Australian's Media Diary. ABC journalist Leigh Sales has called out the trolls that she and many of her colleagues have been abused by online 'Soon after, I quietly deactivated my account for 30 days. I wasn't making a big deal of this. I wasn't aggro against the trolls. 'I decided to take control of a worsening situation, and minimise my exposure by removing myself from the platform altogether.' Millar initially planned to take a 30 day break from the site, but has since said she will not return until it is 'safe for women'. In the wake of Millar's Twitter boycott, Sales called out those who felt the need to repeatedly attack journalists, adding the online bullying is becoming 'increasingly more challenging to bear'. 'It is non-stop, personal, often vile, frequently unhinged and regularly based on fabrications,' the 7.30 host wrote for the ABC. 'It has the effect of an angry phone call from a politician magnified thousands of times over.' She reported that Insiders host David Speers is also abused both before and after almost every program. Hamish MacDonald, who used to host Q+A before leaving the ABC, said one of his reasons for changing networks was the amount of abuse he copped online. The 7.30 host (pictured with Laura Tingle) said female journalists were sent sexual insults while those of colour were racially abused Sales said women were no stranger to sexual insults in her field and there was a 'corresponding pattern' of racism for reporters of colour. 'Anyone who can stomach wading into mentions of @leighsales will find that virtually hourly, I am abused for doing my job, with a stream of tweets goading me to quit, demanding the ABC sack me, telling me I'm useless, stupid, biased and incompetent,' Sales said. She said the majority came from left-wing trolls who couldn't handle journalists asking questions of Labor ministers especially Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. This was 'unusual' for ABC reporters who are usually targeted by even Prime Minister Scott Morrison as having a 'Labor/Green bias', Sales said. Sales who has won three Walkley Awards and an Order of Australia for services to broadcast journalism said she would not be 'bullied' into reporting on one side of a story 'In the Australian corner of Twitter, the space is dominated by views that are militantly pro-lockdown, pro-Covid zero and pro-Labor premiers, and even the tamest of questions in those directions prompts an onslaught,' she said. She said while journalists expected their reporting to be discussed and occasionally criticised, the 'Twitterati' wanted to scare them from asking questions about Labor altogether. Touching on Millar's recent choice to abandon Twitter, Sales said throughout her extensive career she'd been tasking with reporting on violent and tragic events around the globe. 'For her to be so bothered by abuse on Twitter that she has de-activated her account should tell you something about the relentless and disgusting nature of the attacks,' she said. Former President Donald Trump railed against members of his own party in a series of statements to his supporters Wednesday night, blasting Senators Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee for 'not putting up the fight necessary to win.' The former president reiterated his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and lambasted Republican leadership for not supporting him in his claims. He also chastised former President George W. Bush for supporting Representative Liz Cheney in her re-election bid, bemoaned mainstream media's coverage of his election claims and said Republicans should focus their efforts on the debt ceiling. Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a series of statements blasting members of the Republican party for not supporting his claims that the 2020 presidential election was 'stolen' In the statements, emailed out to his supporters, Trump took aim at Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee as well as former President George W. Bush and the mainstream media, as he also suggested Republicans focus on the debt ceiling In the series of statements, Trump doubled down on his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, and criticized members of his own party for not supporting his efforts to investigate claims of voter fraud. He specifically took aim at Republican Senators Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham, who reportedly investigated the claims and found they 'added up to nothing,' according to the new book Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. 'I spent virtually no time with Senators Mike Lee of Utah, or Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, talking about the 2020 Presidential Election Scam or, as it is viewed by many the "Crime of the Century,"' Trump wrote. 'Lindsey and Mike should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win. 'If this were Schumer and the Democrats, with the evidence we have of Election Fraud (especially newly-released evidence), they would have never voted to approve Biden as president, and had they not, all of the mistakes that were made over the last month, which are destroying our country, would not have happened. 'Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham and all the other Republicans who were unwilling to fight for the presidency of the United States, which would have included at least an additional four Republican senators - two in Georgia, one in Michigan, one in Arizona, are letting the Democrats get away with the greatest Election Hoax in History - a total con job. 'The Democrats are vicious and fight like hell, and the Republicans do nothing about it,' he continued. 'RINOs fight harder against Republicans than they do against Democrats. They want to be so politically correct, even if that means losing our country, which is happening now.' 'Your Republican Presidential candidate won in a landslide, but has so little backing from Republican leadership,' Trump wrote, noting that he wished the Republicans in Congress would hold hearings or had open public sessions about his claims. Trump also took digs at the mainstream media, saying that it has seen evidence of election fraud. 'Why is the Fake News Media continuing on their path of saying "baseless and disproven lies" concerning the Presidential Election of 2020, no matter how much evidence they see,' he began. 'The proof is massive and staggering. The presidential election of 2020 was rigged! When the information becomes public, people will see that it wasn't even close.' Trump specifically called out GOP Senators Mike Lee, of Utah, and Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina saying he rarely spoke to them about the '2020 Presidential Election Scam' despite a new book claiming the two senators investigated the claims of voter fraud and found they 'added up to nothing' The former president also railed against former President George W. Bush, who is reportedly planning to hold a fundraiser for embattled Republican Rep. Liz Cheney The former president also railed against former President George W. Bush, who is planning to hold a fundraiser for embattled Republican Rep. Liz Cheney - who has been critical of Trump in the past, according to the Wall Street Journal. 'RINO former President George "Dubya" Bush and his flunky Karl Rove are endorsing warmongering and very low-polling Liz Cheney,' Trump began in his statements Wednesday night. 'Bush is the one who got us into the quicksand of the Middle East and, after spending trillions of dollars and killing nearly a million people, the Middle East was left in worse shape after 21 years than it was when he started his stupidity. 'It ended with Biden's most embarrassing in history withdrawal from Afghanistan, a total surrender, leaving $85 billion dollars of equipment and many young warriors' lives behind.' Cheney has voted for his impeachment following the siege on the Capitol, and has pushed back against Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Earlier this month, Trump announced he endorsed a Wyoming attorney, Harriet Hageman, in her primary bid against Cheney. 'Unlike RINO Liz Cheney, Harriet is all in for America first,' he wrote in an emailed statement at the time. 'Harriet has my complete and total endorsement in replacing the Democrats' number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney.' In response, Cheney tweeted, 'Here's a sound bite for you: Bring it.' Following Trump's announcement that he was endorsing Cheney's opponent in the primary, saying she is the 'Democrats' number one provider of sound bites,' Cheney tweeted, 'Here's a sound bite for you: Bring it' But Trump also offered some advice to Republicans - telling them to campaign on the debt ceiling. 'The only powerful tool that Republicans have to negotiate with is the debt ceiling, and they would be foolish and unpatriotic not to use it now,' he wrote in another statement Wednesday night. 'The way I look at it, what Democrats are proposing, on so many different levels, will destroy our country. Therefore Republicans have no choice but to concede all the horror they are trying to inflict upon the future of the United States.' Trump was removed from Twitter following the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, and has instead been keeping his supporters informed with a mailing list. Prominent cryptocurrency website Bitcoin.org was hacked on Wednesday night, with attackers posting a pop-up message promising visitors could 'double' any money sent to them. The scam message listed a digital wallet address which collected $17,700 in small transactions before the entire website appeared to be taken offline in the early hours of Thursday morning. Visitors weren't able to skirt around the pop-up to use the site's other functionalities. The message read: 'The Bitcoin Foundation is giving back to the community! Send Bitcoin to this address, and we will send double the amount in return.' Bitcoin.org is not affiliated with the Bitcoin Foundation - a non-profit trade group which promotes the adoption of the digital currency and uses the web address bitcoinfoundation.org. Bitcoin.org was registered in 2008, in the early days of the cryptocurrency, and is an open-source project aiming to further development of bitcoin, according to tech site beincrypto. A 'giveaway scam' pop-up appeared on Bitcoin.org on Wednesday asking people to send money with a promise of doubling it. By Thursday morning, the website appeared to be offline Such scams have been a problem for the cryptocurrency world since at least 2017 The apparent 'giveaway scam' was first reported by cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk. Such scams are a form of social engineering that manipulate people into giving away money or personal information, and they've been a problem in the cryptocurrency world for years. 'The catch here is that in order to participate in the giveaway, you must first send a certain amount of cryptocurrency to a giveaway address so that you can verify your wallet address and receive your share of the giveaway,' according to the cryptocurrency exchange platform CoinBase. 'However, because cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible, once a victim sends money to the scammer's address, there is nothing anyone can do to get it back and the scammer has made a profit.' One bitcoin is worth $44,174.68 as of Thursday morning, down from an all-time high of $64,899 on April 13. So-called 'giveaway gangs' made $18 million from the scams in the first three-and-a-half months of the year, up from $16 million in 2020, according to the BBC. One bitcoin is worth $44,174.68, down from an all-time high of $64,899 on April 13 Last year, the real Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian were hacked by scammers who offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address, according to the Associated Press. The hackers eventually made out with more than $118,000 worth of Bitcoin and three people were arrested. Bitcoin allows users to send and receive money anonymously and without the use of traditionally regulated institutions and banks. Transactions are made public on a ledger, but the identity of those handling the money is rarely known. They've been used to request ransom payments from hackers who have gained access to huge networks, such as the Irish health care system or the Colonial Pipeline in the US. In June, London's High Court ordered Bitcoin.org to pay $48,000 and to stop hosting the Bitcoin 'white paper,' the first document to outline the principles of cryptocurrency written by the unknown person, or persons, Satoshi Nakamoto. The website was ordered to pay the money to Craig Wright, who owns the copyright to the white paper. It was also ordered to host a disclosure on its website about the default judgement, decided after the website's anonymous operator, Cobra, didn't show up to court. For the final leg of his journey from Chile to the United States, Haitian migrant Fabricio Jean followed detailed instructions sent to him via WhatsApp from his brother in New Jersey who had recently taken the route to the Texas border. His brother wired him money for the trip, then meticulously mapped it out, warning him of areas heavy with Mexican immigration officials. 'You will need about 20,000 pesos (about $1,000 U.S. dollars) for the buses. You need to take this bus to this location and then take another bus,' recounted Jean, who spoke to The Associated Press after reaching the border town of Del Rio. What Jean didn't expect was to find thousands of Haitian migrants like himself crossing at the same remote spot. The 38-year-old, his wife and two young children earlier this month joined as many as 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants camped under a Del Rio bridge. Some Whatsapp text messages were shared by Haitian migrants (left and right) on how to get to Del Rio, Texas., detailing bus stops and that they needed 20,000 pesos for travel expenses A Haitian immigrant charges his smart phone after connecting it directly to a live electricity wire in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, just two miles from the Del Rio bridge. Many migrants from Haiti have been arriving at the US-Mexico border by busloads and with specific instructions sent through Whatsapp Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas A confluence of factors caused the sudden sharp increase at the Texas town of about 35,000 residents. Interviews with dozens of Haitian migrants, immigration attorneys and advocates reveal a phenomenon produced partly by confusion over the Biden administration's policies after authorities recently extended protections for the more than 100,000 Haitians living in the United States. It also reflects the power of Facebook, YouTube and platforms like WhatsApp, which migrants use to share information that can get distorted as it speeds through immigrant communities, directing migration flows. That's especially true for tight-knit groups like the Creole-and-French-speaking Haitians, many of whom left their homeland after its devastating 2010 earthquake and have been living in Latin America, drawn by Brazil and Chile's once-booming economies. In extending protections for Haitians this spring, the Biden administration cited security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the temporary protections were limited to those residing in the U.S. before July 29 - but that condition was often missing in posts, leading Haitians outside the United States to believe they, too, were eligible. Mayorkas acknowledged that this week, saying 'we are very concerned that Haitians who are taking the irregular migration path are receiving misinformation that the border is open,' or that they qualify for protected status despite the expired deadline. A man carries a little girl, who is clutching her Barbie doll, over the Rio Grande river toward Del Rio, Texas, early Wednesday, September 22, 2021, as other migrants return to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, some to avoid possible deportation from the U.S. and others to load up with supplies Migrants, many from Haiti, wade back and forth between Texas and Mexico across the Rio Grande, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas 'I want to make sure it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States,' he said. Thousands of Haitians have been stuck in Mexican border towns since 2016, when the Obama administration abruptly halted a policy that initially allowed them in on humanitarian grounds. Online messages touting the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuna, across from Del Rio, started after President Joe Biden took office and began reversing some of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Ciudad Acuna has been spared the drug and gang violence seen elsewhere along the border. Some of the social media posts recommending it appear to have come from human smugglers seeking to drum up business, according to immigrant advocates. Haitians began crossing there this year, but their numbers ballooned after a Biden administration program that briefly opened the door to some asylum seekers ended, said Nicole Phillips, of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, which advocates for Haitian migrants. The program allowed in a select number of people deemed by humanitarian groups to be at high risk in Mexico. Once it ceased in August, people panicked, and the messages recommending Ciudad Acuna 'went viral,' Phillips said. 'That's why they rushed at this time to get in,' she said. 'They realized they wouldn't be able to get in legally through a port-of-entry like they were hoping.' Del Rio is just one example of how technology that has put a smartphone in the hands of nearly every migrant is transforming migration flows, according to advocates. Migrants often monitor the news and share information on routes. The most popular platform is WhatsApp, which connects 2 billion people worldwide. In 2020, after Turkey announced that the land border with Greece was open, thousands of migrants headed there - only to find the gates closed on the Greek side. Something similar happened this spring in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in North Africa, when thousands of people were allowed to cross from Morocco into Spain, which promptly sent most of them back. Last week, in a Facebook group for Haitians in Chile with 26,000 members, one member posted specific instructions on routes through Mexico. It included paths to avoid and recommended certain bus companies. 'Good luck and be careful,' said the post, written in Haitian Creole. Migrants are released from United States Border Patrol custody at a humanitarian center, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas A migrant holds a baby while boarding a bus to Houston at a humanitarian center after they were released from United States Border Patrol upon crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in seeking asylum, Wednesday, September 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas Migrants, many from Haiti, wait to board a bus to Houston at a humanitarian center after they were released from United States Border Patrol upon crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in seeking asylum, Wednesday, September 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas Another member shared a different route in the comments. The group's members have since relayed stories of horrific conditions in Del Rio and risks of being deported. The International Organization for Migration found most of the 238 Haitians who were surveyed in March after passing through a 60-mile (100-kilometer) stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap received route information from family or friends who had made the dangerous trek. About 15 percent said they saw instructions on the internet. Agency spokesman Jorge Gallo said the instructions led the migrants to believe crossing the gap was 'difficult but not impossible.' But just as similar messages drew many Haitians to Del Rio, news of the Biden administration deporting hundreds on the Texas border caused some to change their plans. A 32-year-old Haitian woman who made it to Del Rio with her two teenage children bought bus tickets to Mexico City after receiving a cousin's audio message via WhatsApp. She previously lived in Chile for four years. 'Wait in Mexico until this month is over. They will pick up everyone under the bridge. After that, they will give me the contact to enter Miami,' said the recording in Creole, which she played for an AP reporter. The AP is withholding the woman's name to protect her safety. Facebook Inc., which owns WhatsApp, allows people to exchange information about crossing borders, even illegally, but its policy bars posts that ask for money for services that facilitate human smuggling. Migrants check in with a volunteer before boarding a bus to Houston at a humanitarian center after they were released from United States Border Patrol upon crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in seeking asylum, Wednesday, September 22, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas Robins Exile said he and his pregnant wife, who left Brazil after he lost his job amid the pandemic-wracked economy, headed to Tijuana, Mexico, instead after seeing warnings via YouTube and WhatsApp from fellow Haitian migrants. 'A lot of Haitians are advising now not to come to Acuna. They say it's no longer a good place,' he said. On Wednesday, Antonio Pierre, 33, who was camped in Del Rio with his wife and daughter, listened to the news on his friend's cell phone. 'The U.S. is releasing some but just a few,' he said, referring to U.S. officials who told the AP on Tuesday that thousands of Haitians in custody were being let go and ordered to report to an immigration office, contradicting the Biden administration's announcement that all Haitians camped in the town would be expelled to Haiti. Nelson Saintil and his wife and four children had been camped in Texas but moved back to Mexico as they awaited word on where to go next to avoid deportation. 'I do not want to be like mice who do not find out that they are falling into a trap,' he said. 'Because returning to Haiti is to bury a person alive.' Head office staff at a large department store have been told they need to return to the office or they will get just 80 per cent of their pay. A letter sent to support staff, who work for Auckland-based chain Farmers, on August 27 detailed working from home arrangements at various lockdown alert levels. 'At level 3 you will be paid your normal salary if you attend work,' the letter seen by Stuff reads. Farmers wrote to staff informing them they need to return to the office as Auckland moved to level 3 alert or only be paid 80 per cent of their salary Auckland was downgraded from level 4 to level 3 restrictions on Wednesday after an outbreak in the New Zealand city of about 1.5million residents appeared to be stabilising. Farmers told employees they should speak to their manager if they are unable to return to the office and they would 'consider' continuing to allow remote working. 'I have young children and both my husband and I work full time. I cannot go into work as then my husband would be unable to work, so I am on reduced salary,' one worker who asked not to be named said. 'We agreed to this, but we all felt we had no option,' they added. First Union, which has members from the retail industry, claimed in early September Farmers had already reduced staff's pay to 80 per cent during level 4. This is despite Farmers Trading Group previously receiving more than $28million in wage subsidies from the government. One worker said she found returning to the office difficult as she had two young children and many childcare centres remained closed (stock image) The letter sent to Farmers staff explaining their work from home policy for lockdowns The worker said those wanting to get back to 100 per cent pay but had difficulties in returning to the office were too scared to speak up because 'no one wants to be discriminated or questioned over the lack of work output, a consequence of parenting and working at the same time' First Union organiser Ben Peterson said Farmers were a difficult employer for him to liaise with and consistently found workarounds or grey areas to minimise costs. Employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk said if workers were prepared and willing to work but were prevented from returning to the office due to government rules, the Employment Relations Authority indicated they should be paid in full. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Farmers for comment. Victoria Police could be next in line for mandatory vaccination in order to continue working as anti-lockdown protests continue in Melbourne. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton revealed he was 'seriously considering' the jab mandate as officers were routinely exposed to Covid-19 amid mass demonstrations. Police are also required for hotel quarantine, border patrol and various other scenarios which include engaging with the public. Victoria Police (pictured) could be the next workforce with Covid-19 vaccination mandates after mass demonstrations this week 'The final determination hasn't been made but that's where I'm heading towards,' Mr Patton said. Hundreds of police officers were deployed during the week to contain violence as 2,000 demonstrators stormed the city, with few wearing masks and social distancing. Busloads of officers arrived at the boarded-up CFMEU offices on Elizabeth Street, where protests have continued since Monday. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton (pictured) revealed he was 'seriously considering' the jab mandate Anti-vax protesters ambushed riot cops and smashed up police squad cars as construction worker rallies sent the streets of Melbourne into chaos. A fourth protest was organised for Thursday with leaders asking demonstrators gathering for anti-vaxxer rallies to look 'smart' and 'sophisticated'. Nurses and teachers reportedly planned to join the protests, with workers from the two professions vowing to join tradesmen rallying against vaccine mandates according to organisers on Telegram. The Victorian government on Wednesday announced all teachers and early-childhood workers will need to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 if they want to keep their job. '[Premier] Dan Andrews will eventually mandate the vaccine for every worker - is that what you want,' another member of the group wrote. Protesters also suggested undermining the state's efforts to get jabs into arms by gathering outside vaccination centres to 'slow it down'. On Wednesday 400 protesters stormed Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance to rally against vaccine mandates and the shutdown of the construction industry (pictured) Anti-vax protesters ambushed riot cops and smashed up police squad cars as construction workers held rallies since Monday 'Youre allowed to legally be there. Just stand in the massive line until the numbers are there,' one said. Victoria Police though are going to new lengths to stop protesters from assembling in Melbourne's CBD. On Wednesday 400 protesters stormed Victoria's Shrine of Remembrance to rally against vaccine mandates and the shutdown of the construction industry. Police made 215 arrests on Wednesday while two officers suffered head injuries after bottles were thrown The mob chanted 'lest we forget' as they stood in front of the monument built to honour the state's men and women who served in World War I during in a tense stand off with police. Chanting 'every day' from the Shrine of Remembrance, hundreds without masks - some still wearing high-visibility clothing - marched through the city to the war memorial. Police made 215 arrests while two officers suffered head injuries after bottles were thrown at them. An Army veteran who organizes annual clean-ups of American cities has told of his shock at the squalid conditions along the U.S.-Mexico border, as thousands of mainly Haitian migrants gathered in the town of Del Rio. John Rourke, founder of the Great American Clean-Up, said that he and his team were taken aback at the scenes. Del Rio has seen a surge in migrant arrivals, with the city of 35,000 people seeing an estimated 14,000 mainly Haitian migrants reaching their district this weekend. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, was in the city on Monday but Rourke told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that more needed to be done. 'Let me tell you what I saw,' Rourke said. John Rourke on Wednesday night told of the distressing scenes he saw in Del Rio, Texas A makeshift migrant camp is seen in Del Rio, Texas on Wednesday Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge The migrants waded back and forth between Texas and Mexico, across the Rio Grande A young child clings to their father as he wades across the river into the United States 'I saw people washing babies in the Rio Grande. 'I saw ladies breastfeeding babies, sleeping in dirt, 107 degrees outside, red ants everywhere, real coyotes - the ones that have four legs walking around. 'It's like Naked And Afraid: the southern border edition, out there. 'People are literally knocking down trees and setting up lean-tos and teepees and sleeping under those.' He said he and his colleagues 'picked up thousands of pounds of garbage along the southern border.' Photos of the distressing scenes have caused widespread anger. Women and young children are seen lying on the ground of the camp among plastic bottles, empty Oreo packets and food containers A young girl stands in the place that she currently calls home in a makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas A Haitian passport is seen in a pile of trash near the International Bridge between Mexico and the US Tuesday night Desperate migrants, many of them families with young children, are being forced to sleep on the dirty ground or - if they're fortunate - on cardboard boxes folded out flat. Many of the 8,600 who remain there have resorted to fashioning makeshift tents using discarded clothing and tree branches in order to provide at least some shelter from the elements. The heat has been punishing over the last week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s. Families have resorted to bathing in the grimy water of the Rio Grande river to cool off. The squalor is more reminiscent of a Developing World country than the land of the American dream, which thousands of migrants have fled to in the hopes of claiming asylum and building a better life. A migrant walks past a pile of garbage at the camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas on the US-Mexico border Tuesday night An aerial photo shows the huge piles of garbage which lie just steps away from the places young children sleep Empty water bottles, food containers and other litter is strewn around while mountains of garbage tower up high into the air. An aerial photo shows the huge piles of garbage from above, which are seen just steps away from the places young children call home. In another image, women and young children are seen lying among plastic bottles and an empty Oreo packet, on the ground which is covered in the remnants of trees that have been used to fashion the shelters. HAITIAN MIGRANT CRISIS IN NUMBERS: Number of migrants in Del Rio at peak of crisis: 14,600 Number of migrants as of Tuesday evening: 8,600 Number deported to Haiti Sunday: 327 Number deported Monday: 233 Number deported Tuesday: 523 Total deported since flights began Sunday: 1,083 Number of deportation flights scheduled for Wednesday: 7 Advertisement Another photo shows a Haitian passport in a pile of trash including empty aluminum cans, an old shoe and discarded clothing. Rourke said that, as soon as he arrived, he and his team rescued struggling migrants from the river. 'In 15 minutes we pulled three people out of the river,' he told Carlson. 'We went from picking up trash to pulling people from the river from Venezuela.' He continued: 'They come and go back and forth from Mexico just as me or you walk across the street. There's nobody there to stop them. We spoke to a ton of them. 'About 85 per cent of the people underneath that bridge were Haitian. The majority of them were coming to south Florida. 'A lot of them are going to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando.' The cramped conditions have also fueled fears of a COVID-19 outbreak - especially given that the migrants crossing the border are not required to be vaccinated before entering the US. Rourke said that he asked them about their vaccination status, and many said they did not want to take it. 'I asked them about COVID-19,' he said. 'I was there. I was asking them about whether or not they had been vaccinated, and if there was a vaccine available would you take it. 'Emphatically said no, they would not take it. 'A lot of them cited religious beliefs on the reason why they wouldn't take it.' And he said the migrants told him they were coming because Joe Biden made them feel more welcome than Donald Trump. 'They're coming here because where they're coming from is so poor and they want the opportunity - they feel like this is the opportunity, now that the Biden administration is here, to leave the country they've been living in, Central America, places like Chile, and come here now. 'And they told me to my face the reason why they're here is because Joe Biden is allowing us to come here. 'He's a very humble man, he has a big heart, he loves the Haitian people, and we love him. 'It was almost like the biggest Biden rally I've ever been to. Everybody that was there speaking about Joe Biden. They love him.' Thousands are forced to sleep on the bare ground or on rugs laid among the debris of trees cut down to be used as shelter Shocking images have emerged of the squalid and fetid migrant camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas that is currently home to thousands of Haitian migrants Almost 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under the bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico. Many fled Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and have been living in South American countries including Brazil and Chile. But since these nations have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, many Haitians have traveled up through South America and Mexico to seek asylum in the US. Biden has been blamed after a May proclamation that Haitians in the US would not be deported for 18 months because of instability in their home country, and could apply for documentation to work in the US. That only applied to Haitians already in the US at the time, but thousands have since made the trip to the border in a bid to take advantage of it. Most of them live in Chile and Brazil, having moved there after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000. Border Patrol agents struggling to process the vast numbers of people quickly enough set up the makeshift camp under the bridge as a temporary home. Last week, concerns rose that there would not be enough food, water and basic supplies to provide for the thousands of migrants living at the site. A doting Australian mother of five with a tragic recent past will remain behind bars to avoid returning to the stress of home-schooling her children because it ignited a spiral into drugs and crime. Zara Xenitopoulos, 40, of Kingsville, Melbourne, told Heidelberg Magistrates Court that in early 2020 she 'relapsed' on meth and committed several property crimes to fund her revived habit. Her defence lawyer Sam Norton reportedly told the court her desperate decline into drugs and selling stolen goods was due to the pressures of home-schooling four of her children. The court heard Xenitopoulos criminal behaviour was only 'recent'. Her brother died at just 34 in 2016, only two years after her father passed away at 57. Zara Xenitopoulos, 40, of Kingsville, Melbourne, told Heidelberg Magistrates Court that in early 2020 she 'relapsed' on meth and committed several property crimes to fund her revived habit Xenitopoulos's lawyer cited the pressure of home-schooling four of her children as a reason for her desperate spiral into drug abuse and property crime to pay for it. She opted to remain in jail rather than apply for bail and return to home-schooling duties For that reason she had opted to not to apply for bail and remain in jail, the Herald-Sun reported. Xenitopoulos, who pleaded guilty to several property offences, sold 21 Asus laptops to a pawnbroker at Prahan last March, the court heard. Five days earlier the computers were stolen from St Charles Borromeo Catholic Primary School in Templestowe. When she was questioned by police, Xenitopoulos said she took the laptops to the pawn shop in a deal with a contact that allowed her to keep three of them for her own kids. She also admitted being involved in the fraudulent purchase of a $10,000 mountain bike from Yarra Valley Cycles at Lilydale. 'The offending all has that look of drug-type offending obtaining finances to put towards the purchase of drugs,' Mr Norton said, according to the Herald Sun. Xenitopoulos pleaded guilty in Heidelberg Magistrates Court to string of property offences and will be sentenced later this month Heidelberg Magistrate Dominic Lennon said Xenitopoulos's case was unusual has she only had a recent history of being in trouble with the law He said Xenitopoulos, who has been in jail for one month, was using the time locked up to get clean and plan for her future. Magistrate Dominic Lennon said Xenitopoulos has an 'unusual criminal history' referring to her trouble with the law in recent years. He said she had been locked up for several short stints before now but reoffended soon after being released each time. Xenitopoulos suffered consecutive family tragedies in 2014 and 2016. Her brother Archie (pictured right) died at 34 in 2016, following the death of her father, Nick, (pictured left) two years earlier Xenitopoulos suffered consecutive family tragedies in 2014 and 2016. Her brother Archie died at 34 in 2016, following the death of her father, Nick, two years earlier. In a social media tribute to them both she wrote: 'Life is unfair and I will never understand why these two beautiful men, my dad and my brother have been taken away from me! RIP beautiful souls I am missing you both each and every single day.' She will be sentenced at the end of September. The daughter of the couple who created Thunderbirds is threatening legal action against ITV over millions of pounds in lost royalties. Dee Anderson claims her stepfather Gerry Anderson woefully undervalued the hugely-popular puppet series when he sold the TV rights in 1962. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline Dee, 68, says the deal made the TV company 'millions of pounds', but left her family, including her mother and co-creator Sylvia, seriously out of pocket. Dee said: 'I want retrospective action over the deal. ITV made millions of pounds from something my mother helped create but she's received barely anything. 'She was kept out of any negotiations purely because she was female and never got the recognition she deserved.' Sylvia Anderson and her husband Gerry Anderson were the original creators of Thunderbirds Gerry (pictured in 2005) died in 2012 aged 83. He sold the TV rights to Thunderbirds in 1962 for 110,000. His stepdaughter Dee Anderson, 68, claims he woefully undervalued it Dee's mother Sylvia Anderson, who produced the series and was the voice of Lady Penelope, was cut out of the deal before her acrimonious divorce from Gerry, according to Dee The classic British series centred around the missions of the International Rescue team who were based on the fictional Tracey Island, where they kept their fleet of Thunderbird machines Gerry and Sylvia Anderson turned Thunderbirds into a global phenomenon which spawned spin-offs including Captain Scarlet. The classic British series centred around the missions of the International Rescue team who were based on the fictional Tracey Island, where they kept their fleet of Thunderbird machines. Sylvia, who voiced the show's legendary character Lady Penelope, was the creative force, while Gerry was known for his technical brilliance and also looked after the business side. Despite Thunderbirds' huge popularity, Gerry sold the rights to ATV, which later became ITV, in 1962 for a paltry 110,000, despite receiving bigger and more lucrative offers elsewhere. Dee Anderson is fighting ITV over the deal to sell the Thunderbirds' TV rights in 1962 He later sold the rest of their production firm AP Films to British production company ITC and ATV for just under 15,000 in 1975 - shortly after his bitter split from Sylvia, without her consent. The former couple finalised their divorce in 1981 and while Sylvia spent the rest of her life struggling with money, even remortgaging her house in Bray, Berks, Gerry lived comfortably in his Oxfordshire cottage with third wife. She also claims Sylvia was not credited on any further Thunderbirds-related material in a bid to 'airbrush' her from the show's history. In her complaint, Dee's lawyer told MailOnline that they want the deals investigated because, they say, Gerry didn't have the authority to sell the TV rights without Sylvia's consent. Dee revealed MP Lisa Cameron is set to raise her complaints against ITV in Parliament in a bid to gather support and encourage ITV to look into the origins and morality of the deals, as so far, her calls have been ignored. Dee said: 'I first came across this when the 1975 contract surfaced in 2013 and my mother's name had a line through it which Gerry's had marked with his initials. That's when I suspected something wasn't right. 'She was the creative force and most people know that in the industry, and now suddenly she's not there. 'People come up to me and say you're Gerry Anderson's daughter but they don't mention her.' Dee believes Sylvia was a victim of 'sexism' in the TV industry back in the 1960s, whose rights were totally ignored by bigwigs. She explained: 'My mother was a pioneer of women in television, she was one of the first and yet, they're not valuing that. The whole deal was set up for Gerry who was part of an old boys' network. 'My mother was totally creative so she didn't really have a business head and wasn't included in any of the conversations, but she could have been. The show made character Aloysius 'Nosey' Parker (left) Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward (centre) and Virgil Tracy (right) from the Thunderbirds team Sylvia, who passed away in 2016, four years after her ex-husband, saw out her days struggling financially, having to re-mortgage her house and not benefitting from the Thunderbirds deal 'I believe this sort of behavior was rife in the industry back then and I hope this will encourage other women, who worked on the creative side, to come out and make a stand against being mistreated.' Dee recalls how Sylvia, who passed away in 2016 four years after Gerry died, lived out the rest of her life in sadness that her Thunderbirds legacy was never fully recognised, and how her former husband's name is solely synonymous with the brand. As well as having her name missing from the credits of Thunderbirds' DVDs, she was also ignored by the Royal Mail who released a special 2010 stamp collection to mark the 50th Anniversary of 'Gerry Anderson creations'. Dee alleges Sylvia's face was on one of the stamps, having seen the original illustrations, but she did not make the final cut. She added: 'Since the split, I saw her go downhill. That's when she realised she wasn't going to get anything at all. 'It affected her career. She tried to do movies but it was difficult to get them off the ground because she was stonewalled again. And she wanted to fight ITV but she didn't have the money. 'I look back now and I can see exactly what she was going through because it must have been devastating for her. That's why I'm not going away, I will stay until something is resolved. I think about her every day. 'She had no help, she was mistreated and it was total abuse. It was bullying and because she was female. The whole thing stinks about that time.' An ITV spokesman said: 'ITV has been engaged in a prolonged dialogue with Dee Anderson and her legal advisors over the course of the last three years or so. 'At all times we have sought to understand the basis for Dee's concerns and provided responses to her and her legal advisors, and we remain open to continuing this dialogue.' Gerry's estate has been contacted by MailOnline. Heavily armed police have arrested a couple after swarming their house in what was labelled a 'high risk' incident - as mysterious signs are spotted on the front fence. Officers arrived at the property in Sandy Creek, about an hour north of Adelaide, on Thursday morning for a routine firearms audit. But things escalated when a man, 41, and a woman, 42, allegedly made threats to police forcing officers to fall back from the home on Mugge Road and call in members from the Special Tasks And Rescue (STAR) Group. The couple have since been charged with threatening police and firearms offences and are due to face court on Friday. Officers had arrived at the property in Sandy Creek, about an hour north of Adelaide, on Thursday morning for a routine firearms audit before a couple allegedly threatened police Chief Inspector Lauren Leverington said STAR officers were called to the property following the threats where a two-hour standoff ensued. 'When the patrol arrived, the occupants of the property became hostile towards police and as a result police withdrew from the premises,' Inspector Leverington said. While police were unable to comment on the threats made, officers said they spoke to two other people at the property, but they were released without any charges. Barossa Valley Way was closed between Williamstown Road and Kalperri Road earlier on Thursday with residents warned to 'avoid the area'. The roads have since reopened. Inspector Leverington said there was no risk to the community but police remain at the scene and are searching the house. Mysterious signs were seen outside the front of the property including one which read: 'People's peace alliance'. 'We had a lot of police in the area this morning and there's no further threats,' she said. Mysterious signs were seen outside the front of the property including one which read: 'People's peace alliance'. Three more signs hung up on a wooden fence warned those apart of the 'Satanic State' and 'loyal to criminal banking organisations' would not be allowed inside. 'Welcome to our fellow free and sovereign living brothers and sisters in our human family, who come in peace, truth and genuine good will to we who live here,' one sign read. 'This Living Land and all Divine Creation that lives here and all human creation that exists here, forms part of Our Divine Creators Kingdom under Divine Domain and lives under Divine Protection,' said another. Queensland's premier won't commit to a date when residents can travel overseas again but does want cruises to restart next year. Annastacia Palaszczuk says it's not up to her when Queenslanders will be allowed to go overseas, unlike other states like NSW which wants to restart international travel once double dose vaccination coverage hits 80 per cent. Queensland has fully vaccinated 42.78 per cent of eligible residents and 61.53 per cent have had one dose of a vaccine. Ms Palaszczuk says nothing has been agreed by national cabinet on international travel, but when it does restart it won't be as free and easy as it was before the pandemic. Annastacia Palaszczuk wants to restart cruises around Queensland for fully vaccinated passengers (pictured Navigator of the Seas cruise ship) 'I look forward to the day when we can freely travel across the world again, I mean everyone's talking about that. Ok, but it is not the way we used to travel, I've done it, I've worn the P95 masks, I've done the hotel quarantine,' she told reporters on Thursday. 'I've looked at how they've managed it, they were in a state of emergency in Tokyo, it is not the world we used to know. 'So the federal government needs to identify where Australians and Queenslanders can travel in the bubbles of the countries that they put together, and that is a federal government issue to deal with.' In the meantime, Ms Palaszczuk will put forward a proposal to restart smaller cruises with fully vaccinated passengers within Queensland next year. 'That's a great option for Queenslanders who are fully vaccinated to actually trial some smaller cruises, up and down the Queensland coast,' she said. 'We're a few months off that, of course, but you know we need to start the planning and I know how much Queenslanders love their cruises.' Queensland recorded just one new locally-acquired case of COVID-19 on Thursday, linked to the Sunnybank cluster, who was in home quarantine for their entire infectious period. Ms Palaszczuk says nothing has been agreed by national cabinet on international travel but warned when it does resume restrictions will remain Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the new case was a student from St Thomas More College, who tested positive on day nine of home quarantine. 'So this just shows here again how important it is that when people are asked to go into quarantine, they need to remain in quarantine for 14 days,' she said. Dr Young again urged people to get jab, with the government offering free double-passes to the NRL finals for people who get vaccinated in Boondall and Pinkenba or in Logan and Mt Warren Park on Thursday and Friday. She warned it wasn't worth waiting until there's a Delta outbreak in Queensland to get vaccinated. 'We always prepare for our cyclone season, we do it ahead of time we don't wait for the cyclone, here again, we need to get vaccinated ahead of time,' Dr Young said. Smoke from hazard reduction fires around Sydney caused a thick haze to blanket the CBD on Thursday, with officials saying air quality could get even worse over the coming days. NSW Rural Fire Service are using hazard reduction fires to burn off areas in Sydney's east and around the Northern Beaches to prepare for the looming 2021 bush fire season. Smoke was seen setting throughout the city on Thursday afternoon, with air quality in Rozelle dropping from 'good' to 'fair' between 2pm and 3pm. It has since dropped to 'very poor' due to fine particles in the air coming from forest fires. A blanket of smoke descended on Sydney's CBD on Thursday afternoon after hazard reduction fires were utilised in the area to prepare for the 2021 bush fire season While the Harbour Bridge could just still be seen through the haze, tops of skyscrapers in the CBD became invisible as the smoke blanket descended on the city. In the late afternoon on Thursday, the smoke was seen thickening over the inner city as the fires continued to burn. The haze is expected to get worse with more areas being burnt off this week. NSW Rural Fire Service released information on the burns occurring across the city, warning residents about the possibility of smoke clouds. 'Hazard reduction work across NSW, including burns in Sydney's east and northern beaches continue while conditions remain favourable,' the NSW Rural Fire Service said. Air quality in the CBD is forecast to reduce to 'fair' over the coming days as more reduction fires are undertaken across eastern Sydney and the Northern Beaches (pictured skyscrapers in Sydney's CBD disappearing under the haze of smoke) 'Localised smoke may be experienced. Please only call triple zero to report unattended fires.' Locations of these hazard reduction fires include 16.26 hectares at Little Congwong in La Perouse, south of the CBD, 7 hectares at Grotto Point, north of Sydney Harbour and 5.67 hectares in Ku-ring-gai around the Lane Cove National Park. Friday will see hazard reduction fires commence on the Northern Beaches in Cicada Glen where 55.13 hectares of bushland will be burnt off. Hazard reduction burning is one way to prepare for bush fires and reduce their severity. Types of hazard reduction includes controlled burning, mechanical cleaning such as cutting down undergrowth or reducing foliage by hand. Communities around NSW are being told to get ready for bush fire season, with 27 LGAs around the state already entering their bush fire danger period. The remaining areas of NSW are set to enter begin the bush fire period on October 1. NSW Rural Fire Service burn off areas of concern (pictured) early in the year in order to prepare for the upcoming bush fire season to help reduce the severity of possible fires Commissioner for the NSW RFS Rob Rogers has warned the 2021/22 bush fire season could be active due to the increased amount of rainfall during autumn and winter, increasing foliage growth throughout the year. He said grass fires can be extremely volatile and their threat will increase as the grass dries out as temperatures begin to rise. Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council has detected areas around Australia that may be more susceptible to bush fires during this spring due to the increased rainfall. This includes coastal areas of Queensland and northern NSW as well as regions in north-west Western Australia that are warned to be vigilant and prepare for the upcoming season. Areas in QLD, NSW and WA have been detected as regions that have a higher risk of bush fires this spring (pictured) Liz Truss will push for Mexico to back the UK joining a major international trade pact today as she visits the country. The new Foreign Secretary is continuing her travels after attending the UN General Assembly in New York alongside Boris Johnson. She will be hoping for better news in Mexico City, after Joe Biden poured cold water on the UK's hopes of a quick trade deal with the US. Briefing from senior government figures over a fallback option of joining the US-Mexico-Canada trade area was also humiliatingly derided by experts. Instead Ms Truss is expected to use her latest trip to focus on the snappily-named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). She will also discuss plans to improve the existing bilateral deal between the UK and Mexico, which was rolled over after Brexit. New Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (pictured boarding the RAF Voyager plane earlier this week) is continuing her travels after attending the UN General Assembly in New York alongside Boris Johnson Ms Truss will be hoping for better news in Mexico City, after Joe Biden (pictured in the Oval Office with Boris Johnson) poured cold water on the UK's hopes of a quick trade deal with the US The CPTPP is a free trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The UK applied to join in February, and in June the CPTPP announced that the accession process would begin. Ms Truss said: 'Closer ties with Mexico are a key part of our plan to strengthen economic, security and diplomatic links with like-minded allies who share our belief in free enterprise and free trade. 'A trade deal with Mexico, for example, will pave the way for us to join the CPTPP, one of the world's biggest free trade areas. 'Our relationship with Mexico has huge potential. It could open vast new opportunities for businesses, support jobs across Britain, and help ensure we play a key role in an open and dynamic Indo-Pacific.' Ms Truss will also formally open the new British Embassy building in Mexico City, after the previous one was damaged in the 2017 earthquake. She will also attend a dinner with celebrity British-Mexican chef Fernando Stovell, who has held three Michelin stars and cooked for the Queen. Mr Biden dealt a blow to the idea when the leaders met at the White House for the first time earlier this week, saying vaguely: 'We're going to have to work that through.' The commander-in-chief, who is proud of his Irish heritage, also infuriated ministers by delivering another stark warning about wrangling with the EU over Northern Ireland's post-Brexit trade rules, saying changes must not hit the peace process. Mr Johnson has insisted he still wants a trade deal with the US, but the focus at the moment is on 'practical steps to help our exporters' - like easing restrictions on British lamb. Mr Biden appeared to slam the door shut on any lingering hopes of a speedy Transatlantic trade deal earlier this week saying it was something that needed to be 'worked through' As Mr Biden rebutted the UK overtures, it emerged that ministers were looking at getting a backdoor into American markets via the existing USMCA. But trade experts pointed out that the UK already has trade deals with both Canada and Mexico, and adding another layer of complexity could cause problems for limited benefits. The US authorities also seemed bewildered by the idea, highlighting that there is no mechanism for joining the USMCA. Shadow Trade Secretary Emily Thornberry said the situation was 'farcical'. Sydney construction workers have received the green light to return to work from Monday, as 300,000 Melbourne tradies remain forced out of their shutdown sector. The NSW government announced the welcome news, saying that worksites can return to full capacity with Covid-safe plans. While occupied sites will not have a cap on the number of outdoor workers from Monday, workers from Sydney's 12 LGAs of concern must be vaccinated. In contrast, hundreds of thousands of tradies are out of work in Melbourne and its surrounding areas after Dan Andrews brought in a ban on construction sites, with Covid cases reportedly having surged among workers. Sydney's construction workers have been given the green light to return to unoccupied worksites at full capacity from Monday (pictured, a Sydney tradie on September 6) But after a surge in vaccine uptake in NSW, government officials don't see this will be a problem in Sydney. 'Construction is going to play a key role in our economic recovery and it's vital we get tradies back on the tools as quickly and safely as possible,' Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said in a statement. 'The industry has shown the way when it comes to getting back to work and is a prime example of how our workplaces will progressively reopen as we reach vaccination targets and will provide a much-needed boost to the State's economy.' One of the driving forces of the change is understood to be that many fully-vaccinated Sydney tradies have been prevented from returning to work, in an unintended effect of the capacity caps on workforces. Workers in LGAs of concern who meet vaccination requirements are already able to attend unoccupied sites, but from Monday can work on occupied sites outdoors. Stuart Ayres thanked the industry for going out and doing the right thing, getting vaccinated so tradies can return to work (pictured, a vaccine is delivered on 'Tradie Sunday') 'Today's announcement comes in recognition of the effort made by the construction industry to put Covid safe practices in place and to get workers vaccinated in large numbers. Those other measures will remain in place even once the cap is lifted,' Minister for Jobs, Investment, Tourism and Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres said. 'We would like to thank the industry for the work they have put in to get the right outcome for the industry and for the wider community.' 'Getting vaccinated workers back on the tools as soon as possible is our priority, but we need to ensure it is done in a safe way to protect both workers and the community.' It comes as thousands attended violent protests in Melbourne over the last few days, rallying against mandatory vaccines for the city's tradies as well as the total shutdown of the construction industry. Crowds on Thursday, however, were noticeably smaller. Meanwhile, Melbourne's CBD had descended into chaos as protestors demonstrate against mandatory vaccination for construction workers (pictured, demonstrators in Melbourne) Many NSW worksites began to struggle with capacity constraints introduced in August that effectively restricted workforces to 50 per cent of their required size. The cap slowed workflows on almost all sites, and on big sites forced suppliers to stagger the arrival of crucial building supplies. The NSW building industry's generally strong take-up of the government's message to get vaccinated is also believed to be behind the easing of restrictions that have hampered the industry for over two months. While some Sydney tradies were reluctant, thousands accepted the direction seeing it as the logical means to return to work. NSW has had restrictions eased due to the uptake of the vaccine, while Melbourne workers have been left behind (pictured, protestors in Melbourne) The NSW industry's response to requests to vaccinate stands in stark contrast to the high profile public disorder caused in Melbourne by hundreds of defiant in the past two weeks. The NSW CFMEU also heavily promoted vaccination, which included an invite to construction workers to attend a 12 hour 'super Sunday' event on August 15 where Pfizer would be available for anyone aged between 16 and 39. The NSW building industry has been subject to restrictions since the total shut-down of industry in mid-July and despite being allowed to restart with capacity constraints in August, workers were increasingly frustrated. That change allowed work to recommence at Sydney sites with one person per four square metres or at '50 per cent of the maximum daily workforce' on a site. The restrictions still limits some tradies from working apply to unvaccinated people working in or travelling from the state's 12 LGAs of concern. Protesters have vowed to join tradesmen rallying against vaccine mandates on Thursday in the Melbourne Freedom Rally group on Telegram Boris Johnson has insisted he wants to 'reach out' to France over the AUKUS security pact row, despite ridiculing Emanuel Macron's reaction in 'Franglais'. The PM said he is determined to 'sort something out' after admitting he and Joe Biden had been 'taken aback' by the extent of French fury. However, it is unclear whether Mr Macron will feel the same way after Mr Johnson's extraordinary outburst yesterday in which he swiped that the president should 'prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break' get a grip and give me a break. The jibes could hamper efforts to cool cross-Channel tensions, even though Mr Macron and Mr Biden appear to have repaired their relations somewhat in a call last night. It emerged yesterday that despite the row, the US, UK and Australia are hoping to deepen security ties further - and France will not be invited to join the group. Paris was infuriated by the secret AUKUS deal, which has cost it a 50billion contract to supply diesel-powered submarines to Australia. Boris Johnson (pictured right in New York yesterday) has insisted he wants to 'reach out' to France over the AUKUS security pact row, despite ridiculing Emanuel Macron's (left) reaction in 'Franglais' Mr Macron and US President Joe Biden appear to have repaired their relations somewhat in a call last night (pictured) Australia is thought to have informed Paris shortly beforehand that it was switching to nuclear-powered submarines offered by the US and UK. Some Whitehall sources believe the French outrage is designed to try to extract more compensation from Australia. Speaking to reporters while travelling in the US, the Prime Minister acknowledged that France may have learned of the deal late on. 'There are no easy ways of having these conversations,' he said. 'It's a very human thing to delay the frank conversation until the last possible moment. 'I don't know if anyone has been in that situation in their emotional life but it's very human to put it off. 'Everybody has been a bit taken aback by the strength of the French reaction and we all want to reach out to Paris and sort something out.' Yesterday, the PM said he was keen to build bridges with the French after they claimed they had been 'stabbed in the back' by allies. Defending the deal, he told reporters in Washington DC: 'This is fundamentally a great step forward for global security. 'It's three very like-minded allies standing shoulder to shoulder creating a new partnership for the sharing of technology. It's not exclusive. It's not trying to shoulder anybody out. It's not adversarial towards China for instance.' It is understood that Mr Johnson discussed deepening the deal during separate talks in Washington with Mr Biden and Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison. All three men are said to be keen to expand the deal to other areas, such as defending human rights and open markets. President Biden and Mr Johnson are said to have discussed their 'astonishment' at the scale of the French anger. Mr Morrison has assured them both that he informed Paris of the deal in advance. Senior diplomats believe the French government is furious with its security agencies for missing the signals that the Aukus deal was being struck. But some believe the French outrage is synthetic. One Whitehall source said: 'They are still going it is incredible. Mr Johnson and Australian PM Scott Morrison burnished their alliance over dinner in New York this week 'Ultimately, this is a sovereign decision for Australia about who they want to supply their submarine capability.' The French government took the unprecedented step of withdrawing its ambassadors from the US and Australia in protest. But last night Mr Biden sought to make amends with a 'friendly' 30-minute phone call with Mr Macron their first since the deal. France agreed to send its ambassador back to Washington next week and the leaders will launch 'in-depth consultations' to rebuild trust. They will also meet in Europe at the end of October. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Mr Biden was 'hopeful this was a step in returning to normal'. The deal comes just months before France's presidential elections, in which Mr Macron is seeking to extend his term. Workers are to be given two days' paid leave if their pets die under new legislation being considered in Colombia. Liberal Party congressman Alejandro Carlos Chacon, 48, brought forward a bill that would oblige employers to provide two days of paid leave following the death of an employee's pet. '...There exists a familial relation not only between humans, but also a degree of 'multispecies' familiarity,' El Tiempo quoted Chacon as saying. 'Some people do not have children, but they do have a much-loved pet with which they develop a deep and brotherly bond,' news site El Tiempo quoted Chacon as saying. He added that the proposed paid leave would help people 'overcome their grief and pain of losing these beloved animals without being preoccupied by their jobs.' Workers are to be given two days' paid leave if their pets die under new legislation being considered in Colombia [Stock image] The politician said the bill will be relevant to the majority of Colombian families, as six out of 10 households have a domesticated animal. The bill does not specify which animals are considered pets, however El Tiempo reported that the proposed legislation described a pet as an animal with which the owner had a 'strong sentimental bond'. It also stated that paid days off do not apply in the case of the death of a wildlife or 'exotic' animals. The document also states that an employee would only have access to the paid leave if they told their employer about the pet before its death and can provide evidence of the death. The politician bringing forward the bill said the proposed paid leave would help people 'overcome their grief and pain of losing these beloved animals without being preoccupied by their jobs' [Stock image] It says the worker should inform their employer that they have a pet at the beginning of their employment or no more than two days after getting the pet. There are some concerns about employees lying about the death of their pets, but the bill aims to discourage this by issuing fines of an unspecified amount. For the bill to be written into law, it will have to pass four debates in the Senate and the House of Representatives. These debates can be lengthy, so an exact schedule for when the bill might meet a final vote is unclear, El Tiempo reported. Brits are facing a barren Christmas with a perfect storm of gas and lorry driver shortages threatening to make festive dinner favourites unavailable - alongside toys, vinyl, books and even Christmas trees. Food supply chains have been placed under intense stress in recent weeks because of a shortage of around 100,000 HGV drivers - with empty shelves across some UK supermarkets as a result. They were further damaged after two plants that produce 60 per cent of the UK's CO2 were shut down amid rising gas prices. CO2 is used for everything from the humane slaughter of chickens and pigs, to putting the fizz in soft drinks and creating packaging that keeps foods fresh. Now, there are fears that shortages could bite households in the run-up to Christmas. The classic Christmas dinner could be decimated, with turkey, pigs in blankets, potatoes and brussel sprouts all at risk. Meanwhile, toys, vinyl and books could also experience shortages - with experts even warning of Christmas tree issues. Despite the government agreeing a deal to restart production at the CO2 plants, industry bodies have warned that consumers may still see a hike in food prices, particularly if the cost of carbon dioxide rises. The government's deal with CF Industries is only in place for three weeks - leading to fears that the issues could start up again in the run-up to the festive period. The boss of Tesco warned last night that shoppers are facing a five per cent hike in food prices amid the lorry driver and gas shortages. Christmas at risk: Food supply struggles as shortage of 100,000 lorry drivers means supply chains have been under stress, leading to empty shelves; Meat supply damaged by lack of drivers - as well as CO2 crisis, with the gas used in slaughter and storage; Fruits and vegetables also damaged by CO2 crisis with the gas used to store vegetables and extend shelf life; Christmas trees could be in short supply with driver shortage in Denmark affecting firms being able to bring them to the UK; Toy shortage caused by supply issues with firms struggling to import from Asia; Soaring demand for vinyl, coupled with logistic and supply issues; Waterstones and other booksellers have warned of shortages caused by lack of delivery drivers. Supply issue threatens Christmas: The classic Christmas dinner could be decimated, with turkey, pigs in blankets, potatoes and brussel sprouts all at risk by ongoing supply and distributions issues, as well as a potential CO2 crisis. Meanwhile, toys, vinyl and books could also experience shortages - with experts even warning of Christmas trees not being available A graphic illustrating how the three issues are currently affecting the UK and the problems it is causing. The People's Energy Company (bottom, middle) is one of the energy suppliers that have already gone bust Consumers have been warned of a potential shortage of Christmas trees by Mark Rofe (pictured), owner of ChristmasTrees.co.uk Speaking to ITV's Robert Peston last night, the supermarket's chairman John Allan warned of a perfect storm of issues and said efforts were being made to avert a 'horrendous crisis at Christmas'. He said: 'I think it's almost impossible to forecast, but I mean I think we're probably looking at, for food overall, you know, mid-single digit increases which is much higher than we've had in recent years. 'I think certainly while we get through this particular set of issues that we're contending with, which include shortage of labour in a number of important areas of food manufacturing, shortage of HGV drivers, which can be fixed, and we're all working very hard to fix.' Leading turkey farmer Paul Kelly, who hatches 2 million of his own breed KellyBronze birds a year, accounting for 27% of all turkeys sold at Christmas, said CO2 was used in the slaughter process and more importantly to keep the product fresh. 'Carbon dioxide is used to extend shelf life, so when you put a turkey in a bag, you suck the air out and you blow carbon dioxide in and that stops the bugs growing, ' he said. 'We can't create millions and millions of turkeys all in the week before Christmas, it has to be spread over a few weeks so if (CO2 production) really wasn't back up and running, it would be another car crash.' Iceland boss Richard Walker warned earlier this week: 'This is no longer about whether Christmas will be OK. This is more about keeping the wheels turning and the lights on so we can actually get to Christmas.' He said today: "If the food industry was just facing a CO2 crisis we could probably weather it and muddle through, but of course it's compounded by a whole array of other issues, not least the HGV driver shortage. "We have 100,000 short in this country, my business has about 100 HGV drivers short, and that is making it increasingly very, very difficult to service our shops. "We never had to cancel a single delivery throughout the pandemic, and yet now we're having to because of this shortage, so I think it is a concern. "And as we look to build stock as an industry to work towards our bumper time of year, Christmas, we're now facing this shortage at the worst possible time. "In the short term I'm more confident that supply chains will be more uninterrupted. However I think we've now got to think longer-term. This loan is only three weeks: what happens after that, or what happens the next time the gas prices spike? "So we need a broader, more diverse and therefore more sustainable energy mix so we're not so reliant on gas. We also need to look as a food industry, but also further up the supply chains, at different, better ways of capturing CO2 and potentially using alternative gases as well." Tesco chairman John Allan admitted that food prices could rise in the run-up to Christmas Shelves in a supermarket look sparse yesterday as supply chain issues continue in Northwitch Nick Allen of the British Meat Processors Association said that CO2 problems could decimate the food industry. He said this week: 'The animals [would] have to stay on farm, they'll cause farmers on the farm huge animal welfare problems and British pork and British poultry will disappear off the shelves.' The chairman of the National Pig Association also previously warned that if the situation facing the pork industry does not change, farmers will be forced to 'slaughter their own animals' due to a lack of space and feed. Rob Mutimer, chairman of the National Pig Association, said: 'The only end game there is we as farmers are going to end up slaughtering our livestock - not for the food chain but to put them into rendering, to dispose of carcasses like what happened in foot and mouth. And that's a terrible situation to be in.' Ranjit Singh Boparan, the owner of Great Witchingham-based Bernard Matthews and 2 Sisters Food Group, said: 'There are less than 100 days left until Christmas and Bernard Matthews and my other poultry businesses are working harder than ever before to try and recruit people to maintain food supplies. 'Nothing has fundamentally changed since I spoke about this issue in July. In fact, I take no pleasure in pointing out that the gaps on the shelves I warned about then are getting bigger by the day. 'The supply of Bernard Matthews turkeys this Christmas was already compromised as I need to find 1,000 extra workers to process supplies. Now with no CO2 supply, Christmas will be cancelled. 'The CO2 issue is a massive body blow and puts us at breaking point, it really does - that's poultry, beef, pork, as well as the wider food industry.' Fruit and vegetables will also be affected if the CO2 issues continue - particularly amid the well publicised shortage in fruit pickers following the pandemic. The potential shortages mean that Brits could be faced with a very different Christmas dinner to usual. Gifts may also have to change with several industries also admitting shortage fears as supply and driver issues hit. Chris Bonnett, the founder of GardeningExpress.co.uk, warned that Christmas trees could also see a shortage. Lorry driver shortages in Denmark are expected to impact imports to the UK with any Covid related restrictions further adding to the problems. He's also expecting a surge in demand after last year's muted celebrations as families and friends celebrate the festivities together. Denmark is a major producer of live Christmas trees with around 90% of its crop exported to other European nations. Mr Bonnett said: 'The last few years have played havoc with the Christmas tree market. Mild winters in Scandinavian countries have made it more complicated to fell trees. Add in the Covid restrictions in place last year and the current shortage of lorry drivers and you can see why we're concerned that there could be a shortage of trees. 'A Christmas tree is an essential part of the festivities, not just on Christmas Day but in the run up - picking the tree, squeezing it into the car and decorating ahead of the celebrations. 'This year it'll mean even more after the locked down restrictions of last year which is why we're already seeing a surge in the number of customers searching for Christmas trees. 'Hopefully between now and December, things will improve.' Empty shelves are seen in the meat aisle of a Co-Op supermarket branch in Harpenden Meat manufacturers have warned that shoppers are likely to face higher prices as a result of the surge in CO2 costs Bonnett added: 'We are seeing issues with disruption across the retail sector, from food and drink to gifts and clothing. 'For Britons really wanting to go all out to celebrate this year, the best advice is to plan ahead and get all the essentials pre-ordered so you can enjoy the festivities without the stress.' Meanwhile, industry body the Toy Retailers' Association said there would be less choice than previous years for parents wanting to buy toys for their children over Christmas. Suppliers blamed rising shipping costs and the ongoing shortage of HGV drivers for potential shortages. TRA chair Alan Simpson said to parents: 'If you see it, buy it.' 'If you think you are going to go into toy stores in December as you normally would do... and you are going to get what you want, you will be very disappointed,' he added. Barry Hughes, managing director of Golden Bear Toys, based in Telford, described it as 'a perfect storm'. He said: 'Undoubtedly we are going to see prices rising. It is not just going to be toys, it will be everything.' Demand for vinyl is at record levels in the UK, however, a lack of producers and distribution issues means shortages could be ahead. Artists have been forced to push back release dates for new music while awaiting vinyl production, while sellers have reported delays of up to a year for records to be created. The pandemic, they say, has exacerbated the situation, something that major booksellers in the UK, including Waterstones, have also reported. Foyles and Daunt Books founder James Daunt said. 'We will have shops fuller than ever before to make sure we don't get caught by logistics problems as we did last year. 'My concern is that at the beginning of December if we need 50,000 copies of whatever unforeseen literary hit and it's not there' However, Tesco boss Mr Allan insisted there was no need to panic buy and that Christmas would not be 'terrible'. He said: 'I don't think the end result will be a horrendous crisis at Christmas. I would hate for people to get the impression that we are going to have a terrible Christmas and they've got to go out and panic buy.' Average household bills in the UK are set to rise for 'standard variable' customers when the new price cap comes into force next month. The price cap, set by regulator Ofgem, will stop bills rising above 1,277 a year. Ofgem has already announced a further price cap rise for April next year, and this will see prices capped at 1,455. It is unclear whether the price cap will rise again the following October. Given the global uncertainty with wholesale gas prices, UK energy firms have today introduced 'fixed rate' deals up to 600 more than the 1,455 April cap, hoping customers fearful of ever-changing prices may prefer to a higher monthly tarriff, but one they are guaranteed will not fluctuate due to market forces - meaning families can accurately factor in energy costs into their household expenses. Setting the cost of a product way above the expected market value is known as 'price gouging'. Yesterday, Tesco revealed it was currently suffering a shortfall of approximately 800 HGV drivers as it urged the Government to ease restrictions on foreign workers to help alleviate the supply chain crisis. Despite being the UK's largest supermarket chain, and offering new employees a 1,000 bonus since July, Andrew Woolfenden, Tesco's distribution and fulfilment director, warned they were still unable to make up the lost numbers. Slamming the problem as 'industry-wide', Mr Woolfenden compared companies desperately trying to recruit from a limited pool of expert drivers to 'moving deckchairs around'. He warned ITV News: 'Our concern is that the pictures of empty shelves will get ten times worse by Christmas and then we'll get panic-buying.' Despite gaps appearing on supermarket shelves across the country this summer, consumers are yet to see a return of full-scale panic buying that was endured at the start of the pandemic. But concerns are continuing to grow should demand suddenly surge again - with replenishing empty shelves already an issue for most major UK retailers. Trade association Logistics UK has called on ministers to provide up to 10,000 temporary work visas for trained EU drivers to paper over the cracks. The Government has so far rejected these calls, instead insisting firms recruit from a pool of British workers. It comes as shorter, fast-track HGV tests have been mooted as a potential solution to help plug the spiralling vacancies in the haulier industry. Industry experts say better pay and improved working conditions are needed to help improve staffing levels - and put the shortage largely down to Brexit and the pandemic, which led to 14,000 European drivers going home and just 600 of those returning. The Road Haulage Association said the total number of people in the UK with HGV licences this summer is 516,000. But the latest Department for Transport data shows 278,700 HGV drivers were employed in 2020, equivalent to 54 per cent of the total. The crisis, which has also been made worse by Covid-related delays to testing new drivers, has seen supermarket shelves across the country go empty as companies struggle to restock their products. But Tesco's chief Mr Woolfenden issued the stark warning that consumers could see even more barren shelves by December - alongside a return of panic buying. A spokesperson for the supermarket said: 'We have good availability, with deliveries arriving at our stores and distribution centres across the UK every day. 'While the industry-wide shortage of HGV drivers has led to some distribution challenges, we're working hard to address these and to plan for the months ahead, so that customers can get everything they need.' Exacerbating the issue is a roaring debate over limited nationwide supplies of CO2, commonly used in the food and drink industry, and how the Government plans to ensure families don't have to choose between 'heating' and 'eating' this Christmas. Prime Minister Boris Johnson triumphantly declared yesterday that 'Christmas is on', after the Government struck a short-term, taxpayer-funded deal with CO2 producers to avert food shortages. A former V8 Supercars driver turned nightclub owner has been charged with trafficking 106kg of cocaine, with his lawyer saying he is 'spiralling out of control'. Wayne Wakefield, who had one Supercars win in a nine-year career that also saw him compete in the Bathurst 1000, is facing at least four years in jail for trafficking the illicit drug as he deals with an 'ongoing struggle' with addiction. The 51-year-old, former owner of the Electric Playground nightclub in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, faced the Supreme Court on Thursday with Justice David Jackson saying there is a 'relatively strong' change he would be convicted and spend years behind bars, the Courier Mail reported. Nightclub owner and former professional racing car driver Wayne Wakefield (pictured) is facing at least four years in jail for trafficking 106kilograms of cocaine Wakefield had one Supercars win in a nine-year career that also saw him compete in the Bathurst 1000 Wakefield, who competed in professional car racing for more than 18 years including nine in the V8 Supercars circuit, opened Electric Playground in 2002. The former club promoter brought in acts including Red Foo and Roger Sanchez, while DJing at the venue himself. In the years since retiring he developed a drug addiction and 'spiralled out of control', according to his lawyer Jim Coburn. 'Because of his addiction (he has) committed further offences in about May 2021 which are of a less serious nature,' Mr Coburn told the court Thursday. 'He has now experienced his first taste of custody... for a period slightly in excess of four months.' In the years since retiring he has developed a drug addiction and 'spiralled out of control', according to his lawyer Jim Coburn The court heard details of Wakefield's alleged communications with a drug trafficking ring. His lawyer said he had been charged with trafficking cocaine in 2019 and was freed on bail, but had offended twice more. He was arrested again in May for drug possession, and has been remanded in custody ever since. Mr Coburn submitted to court that if Wakefield were to be granted bail he would spend a month in a drug rehabilitation centre in rural NSW which offers kayaking and vegetable growing as therapy, paid for with his superannuation. Crown Prosecutor Rebecca Guppy-Coles argued he should serve a more intensive six-month rehabilitation program in a local clinic which would lessen the risk of him re-offending while on bail. Wakefield is due back in Brisbane Supreme Court on October 8. Advertisement Ted Cruz has slammed Joe Biden's chaotic management of the migrant border crisis, saying thousands of desperate Haitians rushed to Texas after the president canceled deportation flights. Up to 15,000 migrants have been living in squalid conditions in an impromptu camp that sprang up under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande from the Texas town Del Rio to Mexico's Ciudad Acuna. The Department of Homeland Security say they have removed 4,600 people in recent days from the site but have not revealed how many have been released into the US. The White House has also refused to answer when, if ever, Biden has visited the border, even in his previous roles as vice president and senator. Following the recent crackdown in response to the huge influx, hundreds of migrants have instead headed to Mexico's refugee agencies and shelters amid the chaotic scenes. Speaking to Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Cruz, a Republican Texas senator, said: 'What's happening in Del Rio really illustrates the cause-and-effect of the Biden border disaster. To really understand it, you have to go back to September 8. Up to 15,000 migrants have been living in squalid conditions in an impromptu camp that sprang up under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande Migrants seeking refuge in the US wade through the Rio Grande river from Ciudad Acuna in Mexico This overhead photo shows some of the hundreds of Texas state SUVs used to form a de-facto steel barrier along the United States-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas Ted Cruz has slammed Joe Biden's management of the migrant border crisis, saying thousands of Haitians rushed to Texas after the president canceled deportation flights 'On September 8, under that bridge, there were, on any given day, between 700 and 1,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Haiti. 'On September 8 there were roughly 900 Haitians that were scheduled to be on airplanes to go back to Haiti and the Biden administration canceled those flights. 'They said, 'We're not gonna deport you. You can stay here. You can remain in America.' 'And what happened was simple. Those 900 Haitians, they pulled out their phones. And they got their phone and they called their families, they called their friends. They texted their family and friends.' Migrants have been using Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp to share detailed instructions with friends and family back home on how to cross the border into the US, it was recently revealed. Migrants, many of them from Haiti, are pictured wading back and forth between Texas and Mexico on Wednesday. At the weekend an estimated 14,000 migrants were sheltering in Del Rio The White House has refused to answer when, if ever, Biden has visited the border, even in his previous roles as vice president and senator A photo from September 22 shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released How migrant crisis on Texas border developed in just a few weeks There has been a stream of migrants flooding into the US since the start of Joe Biden's presidency. But recent weeks have seen a huge uptick of people trying to enter Texas via the Rio Grande, mostly from Haiti. The island nation has been dogged by crime, poverty and natural disasters, with a recent earthquake displacing thousands, fuelling a further rush to the US. The Biden administration put a hold on deportation flights in response to the earthquake, allowing thousands to gather in camps in Del Rio. The suspension has since been reversed, with flights recommencing Sunday. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertisement Cruz continued: 'You had 700 people on September 8. I was down in Del Rio eight days later on September 16. The day I was there, 700 people had become 10,503. It took eight days for that to happen. 'Within a couple of days that 10,000 had become 15,000 and it was straight cause-and-effect. The word went out that the Biden administration is not going to enforce the law. 'And if you're from Haiti, come to Del Rio because that means you get to stay, and that's what's produced this disaster.' Biden initially suspended repatriation flights to Haiti after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people and damaged more than 100,000 homes. But he has since stepped up the deportation blitz in order to curb the number of undocumented migrants flooding into Del Rio as thousands continued to arrive. The official line is that Haitians are being expelled from the US back to the crisis-stricken Caribbean nation under a Donald Trump-era rule. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 523 Haitians have since been deported to their homeland on four flights, with repatriations set to continue on a regular basis, the Department of Homeland Security said. But thousands of migrants have also been freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out as the Biden administration promised, according to officials. It's estimated as many as 5,000 migrants have been allowed in. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been forced to use 'unprecedented' methods to prevent more from entering his state by creating a 'steel barrier' of hundreds of vehicles at the border. Migrants exit a Border Patrol bus and prepare to be received by the Val Verde Humanitarian Coalition after crossing the Rio Grande on Wednesday A young child clings to their father as he wades across the river into the United States They are lined up outside Del Rio in Texas, which has seen an influx of 14,600 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US. An estimated 8,600 remained in the town of 35,000 people as of Tuesday night, with 1,083 so far deported back to Haiti Abbott visited the site on Tuesday and praised DPS and Texas National Guard for creating the barrier by using hundreds of state-owned vehicles, almost all of which appear to be bulky SUVs. Unlike Abbott, Biden is yet to witness the scenes of chaos firsthand, where migrants are living in squalid conditions and forced to sleep on the ground under makeshift tents from discarded clothing and tree branches in searing heat. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed on whether Biden had visited the southern border at all in his life but she said she could not provide a date. The president has frequently visited areas affected by natural disasters but is yet to make a trip to the current crisis emerging in Texas. The makeshift border camp at one point swelled to more than 14,000 migrants, with this photo emphasizing just how large the encampment has become Del Rio in Texas, which has seen an influx of 14,600 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US. An estimated 8,600 remained in the town of 35,000 people as of Tuesday night, with 1,083 so far deported back to Haiti. Thousands more have been released into the US Timeline of a border crisis that caught Biden by surprise May 22 2021: Department of Homeland Security announces Haitians in US will be granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS), meaning they can't be deported and can apply for documentation that allows them to work July 7: Haitian President Jovenel Moise is assassinated at his presidential palace in Port-au-Prince August 14: Haiti is hit by magnitude 7.2 earthquake, killing at least 2,000 September 17: An estimated 12,000 migrants suddenly arrive in Del Rio, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico. Many had been granted refugee status in Brazil and Chile after an earlier quake in 2010 September 18: Biden administration announces it will swiftly deport Haitians who cross into the US from Mexico September 19: The number of migrants in Del Rio swells to an estimated 14,600. Deportation flights to Haiti begin, with 327 people flown out of the US September 20: Border Patrol officials continue bussing Haitians away from Del Rio, with a further 233 deported. Photos of migrants being confronted by agents on horseback cracking their reigns emerge September 21: Another 523 people are deported via plane, with the number of Haitians remaining in Del Rio estimated at 8,600. Texas Governor Greg Abbott arranges for hundreds of state vehicles to form a makeshift border wall in Del Rio September 22: Unnamed sources tell AP thousands of Haitians apprehended in Del Rio have been released into the US rather than deported. Seven flights have been scheduled to continue the deportation effort. Advertisement Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: 'Has Joe Biden ever been to the border? Its a question that needs to be answered by the president, who is presiding over the most disastrous border crisis in decades. 'The RNC Research team investigated and has been unable to find a single example of Biden visiting the border in at least a decade, even when he was Obamas border czar. Biden created a humanitarian crisis at the border and refuses to take responsibility for it. 'The buck stops with him, and it is long past time for Biden to make the trip, see the devastating impacts of his open border policies for himself, and address the crises his failed policies created.' Filippo Grandi, the head of the UN refugee agency, has warned that US expulsions to such a volatile situation might violate international law. The chaotic scenes at the border and news of the expulsion flights convinced some Haitian migrants transiting through Mexico that it would be better to petition for legal status there, rather than risk crossing the U.S. border. 'My thinking is to find a better life, wherever I find it... I never said it had to be in the United States,' said Wilner Plaisir, a Haitian asylum seeker waiting outside the offices of the Mexican refugee agency COMAR in Mexico City on Wednesday. 'If I can find work, I'll stay here with my family,' said the construction worker. Statistics published by COMAR show that 18,883 Haitians applied for asylum in Mexico in the first eight months of this year, the second-highest nationality after Hondurans. Border Patrol agents were so concerned about the escalating situation at the border that they requested additional resources three months ago - but their concerns were not acted on by superiors. Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president told CNN that the union on June 1 suggested improvements to the system. Anfinsen said that they wanted agents to be sent to the border with tablets to start the intake process when a large group crosses the river, instead of having the group wait there while space is cleared in the station. 'This way, we can at least get part of the process finished before they even get to the station instead of wasting that time,' said the email. John Rourke on Wednesday night told of the distressing scenes he saw in Del Rio, Texas The union followed up on June 3, and also suggested placing a trailer in the area for additional staff, to deal with a predicted surge. On June 17, the union received a one-sentence response: 'This is being explored, several other platforms are being considered which are more efficient.' Meanwhile an Army veteran who organizes annual clean-ups of American cities has told of his shock at the squalid conditions along the border. John Rourke, founder of the Great American Clean-Up, said that he and his team were taken aback at the scenes. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, was in the city on Monday but Rourke told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that more needed to be done. 'Let me tell you what I saw,' Rourke said. 'I saw people washing babies in the Rio Grande. 'I saw ladies breastfeeding babies, sleeping in dirt, 107 degrees outside, red ants everywhere, real coyotes - the ones that have four legs walking around. 'It's like Naked And Afraid: the southern border edition, out there. 'People are literally knocking down trees and setting up lean-tos and teepees and sleeping under those.' He said he and his colleagues 'picked up thousands of pounds of garbage along the southern border.' An Army soldier stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky was recovered Wednesday, just a day after he was reported missing during a training exercise. Emergency crews began searching for the soldier after they were reported missing Tuesday but were unable to recover the body until a day later. The soldier, who has yet to be identified pending notification of family members, is the fifth fatality to happen during training exercises at Fort Campbell since 2015. All activities at the reservoir where the soldier went missing were canceled and the area was place off limits until further notice. Crews from Fort Campbell Fire and Emergency Services, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Montgomery County Emergency Medical Services were unable to recover the body was not recovered until Wednesday morning. The incident is under investigation. Fort Campbell is home to the Armys fifth largest military population, including members of the 101st Airborne Division known as the Screaming Eagles. Its 105,000 acres are partly in Tennessee and partly in Kentucky. The fort prides itself on 'tough realistic military exercises conducted regularly to provide the unit a unique edge for real-world missions.' However, WSTV reports that five soldiers have died during training exercises in the past six years. They include Jeremy J. Wells, an electrician that was killed during live-fire training in 2018; another live-fire training death in May 2016; and a private who died during a six mile road march in June 2015; and another who was shot and killed during an exercise in October 2015. The director of the FBI has voiced concerns that Afghanistan could become a safe-haven for terrorist organisations to launch operations from following the Taliban's takeover. Christopher Wray, 54, was speaking at a House Homeland Security Committee briefing yesterday when he revealed the concerns. The final flight bringing US citizens and their allies out of Afghanistan left Kabul airport on August 30. However, during the mass evacuations, which started on August 14, terror group ISIS-K - a splinter organisation from IS - left 13 Americans dead in a suicide attack. Christopher Wray, 54, (pictured) was speaking at a House Homeland Security Committee briefing yesterday when he voiced concerns that Afghanistan could become a safe-haven for terrorist organisations to launch operations from following the Taliban's takeover And now, Wray has raised the possibility that reduced security in the country since the Taliban's takeover may provide the opportunity for other terror groups to use it as a base, according to Fox News. Speaking at the hearing, he said: 'We are, of course, concerned that there will be an opportunity for a safe haven to be re-created there, which is certainly something we've seen in the past, and allow a foreign terrorist organization to operate more freely in the region.' Wray also said that American security services are concerned that ISIS-K may take the opportunity that instability in Afghanistan provides, to operate more freely. He also voiced concerns that the events the unfolded in the country could act as a catalyst for other terrorists. The final flight bringing US citizens and their allies out of Afghanistan left Kabul airport on August 30. However, during the mass evacuations, which started on August 14, terror group ISIS-K - a splinter organisation from IS - left 13 Americans dead in a suicide attack. Pictured: Smoke rises after the two explosions outside Kabul airport 'Most importantly, we're concerned that foreign terrorist organizations will have an opportunity to re-constitute, to plot, conspire in a space that's much harder for us to collect intelligence and operate against than was the case previously,' he added. It comes after the Taliban has asked to speak to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. The terror group nominated Suhail Shaheen, their spokesman based in Doha, as Afghanistan's new ambassador to the UN. The Islamists said the envoy for the former government no longer represented Afghanistan. Pictured: A Taliban fighter stands guard on August 27 at the site of two explosions outside Kabul airport A UN committee will rule on the request but it is unlikely to take place during the current session, which ends on Monday. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres received a communication on September 15 from the currently accredited Afghan Ambassador, Ghulam Isaczai, with the list of Afghanistan's delegation for the assembly's 76th annual session. Five days later, Guterres received another communication with the letterhead 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,' signed by 'Ameer Khan Muttaqi' as 'Minister of Foreign Affairs,' requesting to participate in the gathering of world leaders. Muttaqi said in the letter that former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani was 'ousted' as of August 15 and that countries across the world 'no longer recognise him as president,' and therefore Isaczai no longer represents Afghanistan, Dujarric said. The terror group nominated Suhail Shaheen (pictured), their spokesman based in Doha, as Afghanistan's new ambassador to the UN Senior US State Department officials said they were aware of the Taliban's request - the United States is a member of the UN credentials committee - but they would not predict how that panel might rule. But one of the officials said the committee 'would take some time to deliberate,' suggesting the Taliban's envoy would not be able to speak at the General Assembly at this session at least during the high-level leaders' week. In cases of disputes over seats at the United Nations, the General Assembly's nine-member credentials committee must meet to make a decision. Both letters have been sent to the committee after consultations with General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid's office. The committee's members are the United States, Russia, China, Bahama, Bhutan, Chile, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Sweden. CCTV captured the moment a brave pensioner managed to fight off a would-be mugger who tried to snatch her handbag on a deserted street in Russia. The dramatic footage shows the woman, believed to be 70 years old, fending off the man in Ostozhenka, central Moscow. A 22-year-old man was arrested shortly afterwards and told police he had tried to take the bag for a 'dare'. CCTV footage shows the moment the man tries to snatch a handbag off a woman, believed to be 70 years old, in Ostozhenka, Moscow The clip begins with the woman walking along an empty pavement when a man runs up behind her and grabs her bag, before attempting to make a run for it. But the determined pensioner refuses to let go and staggers after the street robber, who tries to shake the bag out of her vice-like grip. The woman loses her footing and is dragged along the road on her back for several feet - but still she refuses to give up her bag. A brief struggle ensues, with the elderly woman unable to get up from the road. She then manages to push the man off her as a pedestrian sprints across from the other side of the road. The pedestrian chases the thief down the pavement and away from the pensioner, who slowly manages to get back up on her feet after the shocking attack. The 22-year-old man claimed he had tried to let go after the woman fell off the kerb, but the woman had 'twisted' his hand together with the bag. He said he had not taken anything and just ran away after freeing his hand, Reuters reported. In the clip, a thief is seen grabbing the woman's handbag and attempting to run away with it, but the woman refuses to let go and is dragged along the road for several feet After a brief struggle, with the elderly woman unable to get up from the road, she manages to push the man off her before a pedestrian runs across from the other side of the road and chases the thief Moscow police said the elderly woman sought medical help afterwards. The suspect faces criminal charges of attempted robbery, officers confirmed. The suspect claimed his friends had dared him to try and 'pull out' things from a pedestrian's bag and escape. In footage shared by Reuters, he said: 'I was walking with my friends, they dared me whether I could take it away or not. I pulled it, the woman fell of the kerb. 'I tried to pull my hand out but she twisted my hand together with the bag. I tried to pull my hand out. 'I dragged her across the ground, when I freed my hand I ran away. I didn't take anything, I just ran away.' The suspect told police he went to a shop and bought a bottle of whiskey, before returning to the scene in a bid to give the bottle to the victim as an apology. Aged care staff who have refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19 have been forced out of their jobs, as regional facilities struggle to cope in the already overstretched industry. National Cabinet at the end of June agreed that the vulnerable workplace setting would be required to introduce vaccination mandates, forcing all staff to get the jab by September 17. The vast majority - some 60 per cent - of Australia's coronavirus deaths have been in care homes. With the deadline date now passed those who refused to roll up their sleeves find themselves out of a job, as aged care bosses scramble to replace workers who in many cases have decades of experience. Anti-vaxxer aged care staff who have refused to get immunised against Covid-19 have been forced out of their jobs as regional facilities struggle to cope in the already overstretched industry (pictured, aged care staff at a different facility in Sydney) National Cabinet at the end of June agreed that the vulnerable workplace setting would be required to introduce vaccination mandates requiring all staff to get the jab by September 17 (pictured, aged care staff at a different facility in Melbourne) Poll SHOULD COVID VACCINES BE MANDATORY FOR AGED CARE WORKERS? Yes - it keeps residents safe No - it should be their choice SHOULD COVID VACCINES BE MANDATORY FOR AGED CARE WORKERS? Yes - it keeps residents safe 1146 votes No - it should be their choice 919 votes Now share your opinion Southern Cross Care Broken Hill chief executive Zoe Tonkin said the industry has prepared for the changes as best as they could, but it's bound to have a 'significant impact'. 'It's like losing part of your family... Everybody feels it, the residents and the staff all feel it and of course that poor person that's worked in a job, some for many, many years now, having to start a new chapter of their life sort of forcibly,' she told the ABC. 'Anyone that works in aged care does it because they're passionate about it, and it's a special person that works in our industry,' she said. 'To lose anyone with a situation like this, I think, is really sad, it's quite heartbreaking really.' Those who refused to roll up their sleeves now find themselves out of a job, as aged care bosses scramble to replace workers who in many cases have decades of experience Southern Cross Care lost four employees from three locations in Broken Hill (one pictured) this week AGED CARE DEATHS There have been 1186 Covid-related fatalities in Australia with 714 in aged care facilities. With 60 per cent of all deaths stemming from vulnerable aged care settings, the federal government introduced the vaccination mandate for all workers. Despite the alarming statistic many staff are still refusing to get the jab, leaving the overstretched industry under even more pressure. Advertisement In the past few days Southern Cross Care has lost four employees from three locations in Broken Hill and a further two staff at a facility in Mildura. With a workforce of 375 people, the walk-out represents about 1.5 per cent of their total staff. While it's only a small percentage, filling the gap is likely to prove difficult. Ms Tonkin said it's a tough industry to recruit to because workers must 'have a passion' for the challenging environment. Of the 1186 Covid-related fatalities in Australia, 714 have been in aged care facilities, prompting the federal government to introduce the jab mandate and protect the vulnerable elderly group. But despite the alarming statistic that 60 per cent of all coronavirus fatalities occur in aged care, there are still a many workers that refuse to get vaccinated. One aged care worker with 30 years experience known only as Drew, recently said he and many others in the industry are fiercely opposed to the move to mandate jabs, as they feel 'coerced' by the policy. The aged care worker known only as Drew (pictured) said he and many others are fiercely opposed to the federal government's move to mandate Covid vaccinations 'I'm aware of many of my colleagues who are now fearful of getting the vaccine and feel coerced and pressured that if they don't, they will be unemployed,' the aged care worker told A Current Affair. 'There are many, many people like that'. 'I find it scary that we can develop a vaccine and say that it's going to be effective in such a short period of time without having a good study trial and reviewing the side effects people have had, including death.' But the Councils on the Ageing CEO Ian Yates says vaccinations in the at-risk industry are a 'no-brainer' with all of Australia's approved vaccines rigorously tested and proven safe. 'We are dealing with the most vulnerable section of our community. There is no reason if you are working with them that you should not be vaccinated,' he said. 'Asking people to have the flu and Covid vaccinations to work in aged care is a no-brainer.' Sabina Nessa's suspected murder has triggered a furious backlash at yet another woman killed on the streets. Campaigners and politicians have been left outraged by the primary school teacher's death in Cator Park, south-east London, on Friday. Some branded violence against women an 'epidemic' while others called for men to become 'allies' in the fight against misogynistic hate crime. Ms Nessa, 28, is believed to have been killed while on a five-minute walk to meet a friend at a pub at around 8.30pm last Friday. Her body was found a day later near the OneSpace community centre hidden under a pile of leaves. It comes after a series of high profile female murders, including Sarah Everard, 33, who was snatched in London and killed by policeman Wayne Couzens on March 3. Meanwhile sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were stabbed to death in a Wembley park by 19-year-old Danyal Hussein on June 6 last year. Sabina Nessa's suspected murder has triggered a furious backlash at yet another woman killed on the streets It comes after a series of high profile female murders, including Sarah Everard (pictured), 33, who was snatched in London and killed by policeman Wayne Couzens on March 3 Meanwhile sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were stabbed to death in a Wembley park by 19-year-old Danyal Hussein on June 6 last year Reclaim These Streets, which campaigns for the safety of women and girls and planned a vigil for Ms Everard in March, led the outrage at Ms Nessa's death. It said in a statement: 'We are angry and heartbroken to hear about the loss of yet another woman. 'This is an epidemic of violence against women. Enough with reports, what is the actual plan to keep us safe and alive?' The group will hold a candlelit vigil in memory of Ms Nessa on Friday night at Peglar Square. A similar event in memory of Ms Everard was broken up by Met officers enforcing Covid rules, prompting widespread anger. The police watchdog found officers had used proportionate force but critics said their approach was inappropriate given the purpose of the event. EVAW Coalition, which campaigns against violence against women, tweeted: 'We demand justice for Sabina and meaningful action to address violence against women and girls. #SayHerName #SaySabinasName.' It earlier posted: 'Violence against Black and minoritised women is so often minimised and victims ignored. We will not accept this. 'All women should have the right to live free from the threat of violence. All victims should receive equal support, attention and justice.' A similar group called Womans Place UK simply posted on social media: '#sayhername.' Women's Aid said: 'All women should be safe both on the streets and in their own homes. 'In solidarity and sisterhood, let's remember Sabina Nessa another life lost to violence against women.' Young Women's Trust added: 'We are devastated to hear about the death of Sabina Nessa. 'Violence against women and girls is unacceptable for all women and girls, in all their diversity.' Ms Nessa was attacked in the park at around 8.30pm, and her body found on Saturday near the OneSpace community centre hidden under a pile of leaves A forensics tent in Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south east London, where the teacher was found dead The primary school teacher, originally from Bedfordshire, is understood to have been just minutes from her home when she was attacked. Her body lay undiscovered for several hours because it was 'off the main park walkway'. Officers fear she may have been murdered by a stranger. Police are treating the case as a murder investigation and believe a stranger may have targeted Ms Nessa before dumping her body in a meadow. A man in his forties was arrested on suspicion of murder a few hours after her body was found by a dog walker. But yesterday the suspect was released under investigation pending further inquiries. A post-mortem examination was inconclusive and further tests will now be carried out to establish a cause of death. Politicians such as London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Labour MP David Lammy and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey were among those horrified by another killing. Mr Khan called violence against women and girls an 'epidemic' and called on men to be 'allies'. He said misogyny should be made a hate crime and harassment in a public space against women should be a criminal offence. He told GMB: 'Between last year's International Women's Day and this year's International Women's Day, 180 women were killed at the hands of men across the country. 'We do have an epidemic when it comes to violence against women and girls. I think us men have got to be allies in addressing this issue.' Mr Lammy tweeted: 'Sabina Nessa was attacked and killed while walking home through a London park. 'This is a devastating tragedy. Enough is enough. The government needs to do so much more to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and girls.' Mr Davey said : 'A brilliant teacher with her whole life ahead of her. My thoughts are with the friends, family and pupils of Sabina Nessa. 'We cannot let her life be another statistic, we need action to address the epidemic of violence against women and girls.' Mr Khan called violence against women and girls an 'epidemic' and called on men to be 'allies' Tributes from family and peers flooded in for 28-year-old primary school teacher. Above: Three of Sabina's friends lay flowers at the entrance to Cator Park Forensics teams dressed in blue overalls are pictured combing through the grassy murder scene in Cator Park, south east London Ms Hobhouse put: 'This is a devastating case and my heart goes out to the family of Sabina Nessa. 'It is yet another tragic case of violence against women - there must be action to tackle the root cause.' Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East, said: ''Her murder is not a one-off but part of an epidemic of gendered violence. 'We demand justice for Sabina and safety for all women, on the streets and in our homes.' Sarah Owen, Labour MP for Luton North, said online: 'Under this government, the safety of statues are prioritised more than the safety of women. 'How many more women like Sabina Nessa have to die before the sorry excuse for a Home Sec does something?' She added: 'Keeping us safe and providing justice is the very least any state should do.' Claudia Webbe. Labour MP for Leicester East, said: 'Women should not have to fear for their safety, walking alone at night. 'Sabina Nessa did not make it home. Her murder is a reminder of how our lives are controlled daily - violence against women must end.' She added: 'My thoughts are with the family and friends of Sabina Nessa #SayHerName.' A heavy police presence remains in the area days after the body was recovered as increased patrols have been promised. Pictured: Police stand watch at the crime scene in Cator Park Flowers left at the edge of the park where police have sealed off an area of meadow On Friday, officers sealed off the area and were seen standing guard while investigators collected evidence The case has chilling similarities to the killing of Ms Everard, who was snatched off the street as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham, south London. Her body was found a week later in woodland near Ashford, Kent, just yards from land owned by Couzens, 48. She had been raped and strangled. Women are continuing to speak out about their lack of safety on the streets, with a recent poll finding as many as 48 per cent of women do not feel safe walking alone. Celebrities also weighed in on Ms Nessa's death, with Jameela Jamil, Emma Barnett and Tracy-Ann Oberman among them. Jamil posted: 'I don't want to hear more public warnings about women not walking in parks in the evening. 'I am tired of women being burdened with treating the symptoms of men's violence against women. 'TREAT THE DAMN CAUSE. Men's violence. This is a Man problem that women pay the price for.' Barnett put: 'Sabina Nessa - the 28 year old school teacher killed in a park. A vigil will be held tomorrow.' She added online: 'Six months on from the murder of Sarah Everard- what has to change?' Actress Ms Oberman said: 'Let's never forget #SabinaNessa - news channels keep the pressure on and the story up. So close after #SarahEverard. 'We need to reclaim the streets. Women have to be safe and feel safe. Tragic and sickening. Thoughts with her family.' Diana Award CEO Tessy Ojo CBE tweeted: 'Her name is Sabina Nessa. She was 28 years old. Like #SarahEverard she was murdered in London. 'Please be outraged because violence against one is violence against all women. Our girls and daughters deserve safety, anywhere and everywhere.' Mandu Reid: 'Another woman murdered in a senseless act of brutal violence. Sabina Nessa: say her name. 'She lived, worked and was murdered within a short radius of where I live in Lewisham. This could've been me or my sister.' 'Sabina Nessa's murder in a park at 8.30pm is devastating. Her murder is not a one-off but part of an epidemic of gendered violence. 'We demand justice for Sabina and safety for all women, on the streets and in our homes. The Year 1 teacher had worked for just over a year at Rushey Green Primary School, three miles away in Catford. She studied sociology at Greenwich University in south-east London and went on to complete a teaching postgraduate degree at the Bedfordshire University. Miss Nessa also had a qualification from Cambridge to teach English as a foreign language. A candlelit vigil in memory of Sabina Nessa is set to take place on Friday evening at Peglar Square. Organisers are encouraging people to bring their own candles to light as they pay respects to Ms Nessa. Detective Inspector Joe Garrity said: 'Sabina's journey should have taken just over five minutes but she never made it to her destination. 'We know the community are rightly shocked by this murder - as are we - and we are using every resource available to us to find the individual responsible.' He said the investigation was making good progress and appealed for anyone with information to get in touch. He added: 'We believe there are still others out there who may have information that could help.' Dominic Raab was branded 'ridiculous' today in a squabble over attempts to cling on to use of a Kent mansion despite being axed as Foreign Secretary. The 115-room Chevening House is traditionally the grace-and-favour country residence of the UK's top diplomat. Liz Truss replaced Mr Raab in last week's Cabinet reshuffle after he was roundly criticised for going on holiday during the fall of Afghanistan. However Raab, who became Justice Secretary, is said to attempting to keep hold of the plush pad because he has also been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister. He is said to believe that should give him the right to use the house for official visits but Ms Truss believes the property should be hers to use. It prompted an ally of the new Foreign Secretary to lash out at her predecessor, telling the Times: 'Liz thinks Dom's claim is completely spurious, that he's being ridiculous. 'Chevening is for the use of the foreign secretary.' A second source added: 'Chevening isn't a priority for her ... We've got an incredibly busy week of meetings in the States and she is focused on getting on with the job.' The 115-room Chevening House is traditionally the grace-and-favour country residence of the UK's top diplomat. Liz Truss replaced Mr Raab in last week's Cabinet reshuffle after he was roundly criticised for going on holiday during the fall of Afghanistan. However Raab, who became Justice Secretary, is said to attempting to keep hold of the plush pad because he has also been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister. 'Brexit Towers' estate is plush ministerial prize The Prime minister's country estate Chequers may get the most publicity, but it is Chevening that causes the most ministerial angst. Built in the 1620s, reputedly to a design by Inigo Jones, Chevening is surrounded by a 3,500-acre estate with lake and maze. It was bequeathed to the nation on the death of Lord Stanhope in 1967, as a residence for a senior government minister or a royal. Prince Charles had use of Chevening for six years in the 1970s but did not live there. Since 1980, it has been the home of foreign secretaries. However, that has not stopped over ministers attempting to wrestle it from them. During the Coalition government both William Hague and his successor Philip Hammond had to share it with Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Later, after the Tories won a majority in 2015, it was labelled Brexit Towers after it was shared between a trio of ministers. Boris Johnson was forced to timeshare with David Davis and Liam Fox when Theresa May was his boss. Downing Street said that to reflect their status in Cabinet, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis and International Trade Secretary Mr Fox would have the same rights of access to the mansion near Sevenoaks as he did as foreign secretary. The then Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron likened the situation to the sitcom Fawlty Towers, saying: 'The three Brexiteers sharing Chevening is a bit like Brexit Towers. 'The next question is which of the trio is going to mention the war and will they get away with it and is David Davis going to make Manuel get a visa.' Advertisement A final decision on the use of the property will ultimately be made by Mr Johnson. In an awkward first meeting of Mr Johnson's new-look Cabinet last week, Ms Truss and Mr Raab had to sit next to each other. And he endured a tough Prime Minister's Questions on the subject yesterday, when he stood in for Mr Johnson, who was in the United States. His Labour counterpart Angela Rayner delivered a series of vicious attacks, including that he was busy squabbling with his colleague. She said: 'Families across the country are worried about heating their homes while he's complaining about having to share his 115-room taxpayer-funded mansion with the Foreign Secretary the truth hurts, doesn't it? 'Just as his Government are making choices that are making working families' lives harder. 'A typical family is facing a tough winter this year: Universal Credit down a thousand quid; rent up 150 quid; gas bills up 150 quid; taxes up and food prices are soaring. Working people will have to choose whether to feed their kids or heat their homes. 'The choice for the Deputy Prime Minister is will he make their lives easier or harder? So what will he choose will the Government cancel the Universal Credit cut?' But Mr Raab replied: 'She should check her facts as Chevening is funded by a charity, not a penny of taxpayers' money.' Ms Truss will today push for Mexico's support for the UK to join an international trade pact as she visits the country on Thursday. Liz Truss will travel to Mexico from the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where she has represented the UK with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It comes after Mr Johnson conceded an agreement with the US was not about to be struck, following meetings with President Joe Biden. But Ms Truss will focus on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and discuss plans to develop a new and updated deal between the UK and Mexico. In an awkward first meeting of Mr Johnson's new-look Cabinet last week, Ms Truss and Mr Raab had to sit next to each other. Boris Johnson is helped into a rowing boat by then wife Marina Wheeler in 2017 as he hosts Czech Republic's Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sramek at Chevening Jeremy Hunt (and his son Jack, then 8) hosted eastern European foreign ministers at the estate when he replaced Mr Johnson the following year Mr Raab (second left) with South Africa's minister of international relations and co-operation, Naledi Pandorn (second row, right) at Chevening in May The CPTPP is a free trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The UK applied to join in February, and in June the CPTPP announced that the accession process would begin. Ms Truss said: 'Closer ties with Mexico are a key part of our plan to strengthen economic, security and diplomatic links with like-minded allies who share our belief in free enterprise and free trade. 'A trade deal with Mexico, for example, will pave the way for us to join the CPTPP, one of the world's biggest free trade areas. 'Our relationship with Mexico has huge potential. It could open vast new opportunities for businesses, support jobs across Britain, and help ensure we play a key role in an open and dynamic Indo-Pacific.' Ms Truss will also formally open the new British Embassy building in Mexico City, after the previous one was damaged in the 2017 earthquake. She will also attend a dinner with celebrity British-Mexican chef Fernando Stovell, who has held three Michelin stars and cooked for the Queen. Advertisement Authorities in California have issued air quality warnings as two wildfires continue to rage in the state, threatening the world famous Trail of 100 Giants. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District issued a statement this week urging residents near to the plumes of smoke being produced to stay indoors. Yesterday, The Tulare County Sheriff's Office issued an evacuation order for communities in the Camp Nelson area, urging them to seek a safer location. And only hours earlier, they had issued another evacuation order to residents of the Eshom and Hartland Camp areas - which are located just 80 miles north of Camp Nelson. Authorities in California have issued air quality warnings as two wildfires continue to rage in the state, threatening the world famous Trail of 100 Giants Pictured: Two firefighters stood in the middle of a road near Johnsondale, California, are seen attempting to fight back the wildfire flames yesterday Improvising: This firefighter tested out an alternative style of flame control as he launched water at the fire from his mouth The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District issued a statement this week urging residents near to the plumes of smoke being produced to stay indoors Pictured: A spot fire is extinguished by a team of firefighters who are operating a water hose at a safe distance from the flames Yesterday, The Tulare County Sheriff's Office issued an evacuation order for communities in the Camp Nelson area, urging them to seek a safer location Pictured: A team of firefighters and their firetruck stand in the middle of a road, battling the flames which threatened to surround them It comes after the two wildfires raging through Sequoia National Park in California scorched the famed Bench Tree and are threatening the ancient groves as firefighters race to contain the encroaching blazes. Incident commanders said the Windy Fire, which has already charred 25,191 acres and is only 4% contained, burned into Long Meadow Grove along the Trail of 100 Giants. The area is home to 1,500-year-old sequoias. Thanh Nguyen, a spokesman for the fire command, told the Los Angeles Times that a portion of the Bench Tree - which gets its name because of the shape of its base - was confirmed to have burned Sunday. The extent of any further damage has yet to be assessed, officials said. Firefighters walk past sequoia along the famed Trail of 100 Giants in California's Sequoia National Park where the Windy Fire has charred 25,191 acres and is only 4% contained Incident commanders said the Windy Fire, which has already charred 25,191 acres and is only 4% contained, burned into Long Meadow Grove along the Trail of 100 Giants Sunday night Wildfires that spread to the tops of trees - especially very tall trees - can move quickly through the forest, as the tops of the trees explode, showering embers over a large area below them. 'It was running toward multiple trees and firefighters were able to get it out, but it did get into the crown of one of the sequoias,' Windy fire incident spokeswoman Amanda Munsey told the Los Angeles Times. Images captured on Tuesday showcased the glowing blaze at it engulfed Long Meadow Grove, continuing to swirl around tree trunks and branches. The Windy Fire blazes through the Long Meadow Grove of giant sequoia trees near The Trail of 100 Giants overnight in Sequoia National Park on September 21, 2021 As climate change and years of drought push wildfires to become bigger and hotter, many of the worlds biggest and oldest trees, the ancient sequoias, have been killed The giant trees are among the worlds biggest and live to more than 3,000 years, surviving hundreds of wildfires throughout their lifespans Flames engulfed the Long Meadow Grove of giant sequoia trees near The Trail of 100 Giants While Sequoias have adapted to wildfires, the colossal trees are struggling to withstand the intensity of recent fires Several wildfires surrounding Sequoia National Park are threatening groves of giant sequoias, as firefighters scurry to contain the encroaching blazes Farther north, the KNP Complex fire continued to threaten the renowned Giant Forest, home to General Sherman standing at 275 feet. General Sherman, which is estimated by the National Parks Service to be 2,200 years old, was wrapped in fireproof foil blankets last week. Although the tree is located 36 miles from the Windy fire, it sits 7.9 miles from the Paradise fire and 9.5 miles from the Colony fire. Incident commanders said they believed they could protect the tree from the 24,000-acre blaze, which was sparked by lightning just over a week ago. A big increase in personnel put more than 1,400 firefighters on the lines of the KNP Complex fire, information officer Ana Beatriz Cholo said. The weather was expected to clear out smoke and allow aircraft to begin operations against the flames. 'The fires active, but weve got a good number of staff out there,' information officer Kate Kramer said. General Sherman, which is estimated by the National Parks Service to be 2,200 years old, was wrapped in fireproof foil blankets last week Firefighters posing next to The General Sherman Tree after wrapping it in fire-resistant structural wrap amid the KNP Complex Fire within the Sequoia National Forest near Three Rivers, California on September 17, 2021 As climate change and years of drought push wildfires to become bigger and hotter, many of the worlds biggest and oldest trees, the ancient sequoias, have been killed Wildfires that spread to the tops of trees -- especially very tall trees -- can move quickly through the forest While sequoias have adapted to wildfires, the colossal trees are struggling to withstand the intensity of recent fires. Heat from normal wildfires in the past was considered beneficial for sequoia reproduction, but increasing fire intensity now can very likely kill them. In 2020, the Castle fire destroyed as much as 14 percent of all the worlds giant sequoias. Images captured on Tuesday showcased the glowing blaze at it engulfed around long Meadow Grove, continuing to swirl around tree trunks and branches The Windy Fire blazes through the Long Meadow Grove of giant sequoia trees near The Trail of 100 Giants overnight in Sequoia National Park on September 21, 2021 The giant trees are among the worlds biggest and live to more than 3,000 years, surviving hundreds of wildfires throughout their lifespans The heat of normal wildfire of the past helped the trees reproduce but increasing fire intensity can now kill them Prince Harry today welcomed Google into his Travalyst sustainable travel initiative in a move that will raise eyebrows given his vocal criticism of big tech. The Duke of Sussex has previously slammed US technology giants as 'incredibly powerful and consolidated gatekeepers' and criticised disinformation being spread on social media about issues like climate change. Travalyst said partnering with Google, which also owns video sharing site YouTube, was a 'significant step forward' as it praised the firm for its 'commitment to helping consumers make more sustainable travel choices'. Google will help Travelyst promote sustainable travel, including green transport options and destinations that are designed to have a lower impact on the environment. Following the storming of the US Capitol in January, Harry criticised social media companies for their 'hands-off' towards disinformation. YouTube itself has repeatedly come in for direct criticism from researchers for hosting falsehoods. Prince Harry's Travalyst organisation has now welcomed Google as a partner. Pictured: Harry at a launch event for the organisation in 2019 Harry told Harpers Bazaar in January: 'It is widely acknowledged that social media played a role in the genocide in Myanmar and was used as a vehicle to incite violence against the Rohingya people, which is a human rights issue. 'And in Brazil, social media provided a conduit for misinformation which ultimately brought destruction to the Amazon, which is an environmental and global health issue. 'In a way, taking a predominately hands-off approach to problems for so long is itself an exercise in power.' In January last year, US non-profit Avaaz found that YouTube's algorithm was promoting videos refuting the reality of man-made climate change. Many of these videos were accompanied by adverts, meaning the site was effectively 'monetising' global warming denialism, the report said. YouTube was also among the platforms blamed for spreading false claims of fraud prior to the US election. It attracted similar criticism during the 2020 elections in Myanmar after videos spread on the platform claiming election interference. YouTube was slammed for its light-touch approach and only appeared to block false election claims that people complained about, or if the material otherwise violated its broader guidelines on hate speech and harassment, researchers said. 'When it comes to hate speech and disinformation in Myanmar, YouTube is the new frontier,' said Victoire Rio, an adviser at a civil society group studying social media, said at the time. YouTube did not respond to those criticisms but said it consistently enforced its guidelines and had deleted more than 1.8 million channels for policy violations in the third quarter of 2020, including more than 54,000 for hate speech. Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Google, said after today's announcement: 'Addressing the challenge of climate change requires us to find solutions at scale, and this is especially true when it comes to travel and tourism. 'By working with Travalyst and our industry partners, we aim to build tools and technology that enable travelers and businesses around the world to prioritize sustainability.' MailOnline has contacted Google for comment about its approach to misinformation. The statement accompanying Travalyst's announcement of the partnership today This is not the first time Harry has found himself working with Silicon Valley giants. Two years ago, he gave a barefoot speech at a secretive Google Camp climate change conference in Italy in front of an A-List crowd who flew in on 114 private jets, according to reports at the time. Harry and Meghan's ventures post-Megxit Spotify - 18m deal to produce podcasts. 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. Netflix - Multi-million pound documentary deal, including producing a programme about the Invictus Games. Heart of Invictus will be directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Joanna Natasegara. Harry's four books - Harry clinched a lucrative four-book deal with the second due out only after the Queen has died. In news sure to alarm Buckingham Palace, industry insiders said the 'tell-all' tome unveiled by Harry earlier this week is only the 'tip of the iceberg'. The Bench - Meghan released her picture book for children this summer to mixed reviews. It tells the story of the relationship between a father and son through the medium of a bench. 'Chief impact officer' - The Duke will be 'chief impact officer' at the mental health services business, where he will help promote an app used by corporate giants including Hilton, Facebook and oil firm Chevron to improve the wellbeing of their staff. Advertisement The Duke of Sussex was said to have given a passionate speech about saving the planet while being watched by Naomi Campbell and Leonardo DiCaprio, among other celebrities and power brokers. Travalyst's stated mission is to make the tourism industry more sustainable make it easier for travellers to make eco-friendly choices. It has brought together some of the biggest operators in the travel industry - including Visa, Booking.com and Skyscanner - to help tourists pick low carbon options more easily and chose destinations that will have more benefit to local communities. The name is a mixture of the words 'travel' and 'catalyst', with Harry explaining when he launched it in September 2019 that it came from 'viewing our role in sustainable travel as catalysts to accelerate positive changes in travel'. Last year it emerged Travalyst altered the wording of it's website to reflect the step back that Prince Harry took from royal life, replacing that Travalyst is 'led by HRH The Duke of Sussex' on its homepage with simply 'led by The Duke of Sussex'. Its work has taken a hit after the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic halted the majority of international leisure travel, causing what Harry dubbed a crisis of 'no tourists and therefore no income'. At a global summit in July, the Duke said: 'None of us here could have predicted the global shock and impact that Covid-19 is having on the world, especially on travel and the local communities who depend on tourism. 'Many of you joining us today rely on visitors for your livelihoods. Businesses are hurting significantly, and I've heard from some of you who are currently struggling to put food on your family's tables and make ends meet because there are no tourists and therefore no income. We need to build back, but we need to build back better.' Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be in New York today to hold a meeting with the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, their biographer Omid Scobie has claimed Today, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be in New York to hold a meeting with the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. Finding Freedom author Omid Scobie said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are making their first public trip since moving to California, will join the mayor and the Governor of New York Kathy Hochul at the One World Observatory. He wrote on Twitter: 'Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan will begin their New York adventure tomorrow morning, September 23, when they join NYC Mayor @BilldeBlasio and @GovKathyHochul for an 8am visit to the @OneWorldNYC Observatory.' The observatory is located on floors 100-102 of the One World Trade Center, which is America's tallest building and the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. When in New York, Harry, 37, and Meghan, 40, will also broadcast from Central Park for the Global Citizen Live event on Saturday, as they 'continue their urgent work with world leaders in the pursuit of global vaccine equity to end the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere,' said the organisation's website. It marks the first occasion the duo have appeared in public together since stepping back from royal duties and moving to California last year. In May, Harry and Meghan acted as Campaign Chairs of Vax Live, which 'aims to inspire vaccine confidence worldwide and help get the COVID-19 vaccines to everyone, everywhere' - according to Global Citizen. Saturday's event will be part of a number of shows being held in cities as varied as London to Lagos by the organisation, with artists like Ed Sheeran, Sir Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Metallica and Coldplay scheduled to perform. The Global Citizen Live campaign is calling on G7 countries and the European Union to share at least one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses with those most in need and support calls for a waiver on vaccine intellectual property rights. It also marks the return to work for the Duke and Duchess, who have taken several months off following the birth of their daughter Lilibet in May. The Sussexes appeared on the cover of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People issue this month Meghan has previously made several high profile trips to New York to visit friends in recent years. The Duchess celebrated the impending birth of her firstborn son Archie by flying to the Big Apple by private jet in 2019, provoking outcry with the five-day baby shower celebration. Around 20 friends attended, including Serena Williams and Amal Clooney. Months later, she visited the state again for a flying trip away to support her close friend Serena Williams in the US Open final. The appearance from the royal couple comes after they graced the cover of Time magazine as they were named among the world's 100 most influential people. Prince Harry and Meghan said they were 'humbled' to be the cover stars of Time magazine's 2021 list in a feature that includes an 'awkward' photoshoot and a gushing tribute from a friend who praises them for 'giving a voice to the voiceless' and 'running toward the struggle' rather than living a quiet life in their California mansion. The US publication released a glossy and heavily-airbrushed cover on Harry's 37th birthday showing the Duke of Sussex stood behind his wife with his arms on her right shoulder in the 'icons' section of the annual line-up alongside Naomi Osaka, Dolly Parton, Britney Spears and Alexei Navalny. One critic claimed the cover photo reflected the power dynamic in the relationship, because Meghan is in front of her husband, tweeting: 'Wow, this photo speaks volumes. There is no hiding who's in control'. But Time's picture editor, Dilys Ng, who made the final decision on the cover image, said the portrait captures the Sussexes' 'powerful dynamic as equal partners'. When in New York, Harry, 37, and Meghan (pictured together in March 2019), 40, will also broadcast from Central Park for the Global Citizen Live event on Saturday The couple responded to being named on the list of the world's most distinguished people with a post on their Archewell website that read: 'Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are not only humbled to be part of this years TIME 100 through the words of friend and partner Jose Andres, but to also write in praise of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the publications annual list of Most Influential People.' The glossy photos of the Sussexes are accompanied by a profile, branded sycophantic by critics, written by their friend and chef Mr Andres, whose charity World Central Kitchen is loved by the Sussexes and supported financially by their Archewell foundation in India and the Caribbean. He wrote: 'In a world where everyone has an opinion about people they don't know, the duke and duchess have compassion for the people they don't know. They don't just opine. They run toward the struggle.' Mr Andres said the couple are 'blessed through birth and talent, and burned by fame', adding: 'It would be much safer to enjoy their good fortune and stay silent. That's not what Harry and Meghan do, or who they are'. On the cover Harry is dressed in all black and Meghan in all white on a terrace at their $14.65million mansion and then in green smiling at eachother and holding hands while walking through their estate in Montecito, California. In another image they are in matching grey office-style clothes next to a window in outfits chosen by celebrity stylists Clare and Nina Hallwroth, who have recently dressed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, in pictures taken by Serbian Pari Dukovic. But one critic, a fellow photographer, tweeted: 'Terrible retouching job. They look CGI'. Others wrote: 'This photo looks photoshopped. Also, the way they are positioned is very revealing: it's the Meghan show and Harry is just the supporting actor'. One critic said: 'Harry looks completely awkward peering behind his wife like this'. 'Harry is so insincere': Duke of Sussex is slammed over gushing tribute to the Queen and Prince Philip's 'adorable' relationship - after repeatedly 'trashing' his family in interviews By Jessica Green for MailOnline Prince Harry was slammed as 'insincere' by viewers after he hailed the Queen and Prince Philip 'the most adorable couple' in last night's BBC tribute - after months of publicly criticising the Firm. The Duke of Sussex, 37, who is joining wife Meghan Markle in New York today for their first public trip since moving to California, made the remarks about his grandparents in Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers. The film, Harry's first 'family project' since moving to the US, saw the prince gush over his grandparents' relationship and pay tribute to their 73-year marriage. But he was blasted a hypocrite by viewers, with one tweeting: 'Having a hard time believing Harry's words in this programme. If he loved his grandfather so much, would he have released that hatchet job of an interview while he was so ill in hospital?' Another wrote: 'I know they had to include Harry but it felt weird after he trashed them on primetime TV.' Prince Harry (pictured) labelled the Queen and Prince Philip 'the most adorable couple' in last night's BBC documentary remembering the late Duke of Edinburgh The Duke of Sussex, 37, who is joining wife Meghan Markle in New York tomorrow for their first public trip since moving to California, made the remarks about his grandparents (pictured) in Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers A third wrote: 'Why is Harry even on it when he showed such disrespect to his grandfather?' Interviews were filmed before and after Prince Philip's death in April, and were conducted separately, with Harry's tribute filmed in the US where he lives with Meghan and their two children Archie, two, and three-month-old Lilibet. The Duke of Sussex said: More than anything I miss his sense of humour. But I miss him more for my grandmother because I know how incredibly strong she was with him there. I also know she will be ok without him. He added: The two of them together were just the most adorable couple. To me knowing the cheekiness of him and knowing that behind what the world sees you have two individuals who were very much in love and both, from a very young age, have dedicated their life to service... that is an incredible bond between two people. It marked a dramatic change of tone from his recent TV appearances, in which he has spoken of the 'generational trauma' he experienced as a member of the royal family. In appearances including his bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview with wife Meghan and The Me You Cant See series on mental health for Apple TV+, the former royal has shared numerous shocking accusations. He suggested his father, Prince Charles, had allowed his children to suffer when it came to the media because of his own negative experiences. Social media users branded Prince Harry 'insincere' after he joined the royal family in paying tribute to the late Duke of Edinburgh The prince then claimed the Royal Family treated Meghan with total neglect while she was suicidal and said they had felt bullied into silence. He also accused the monarchy and the media of attempting to smear his wife in the run-up to the couples bombshell interview with Oprah. Meanwhile, he has announced his upcoming memoir, promising to give an 'accurate and wholly truthful' account of his life, writing as 'the man he has become.' But Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty Magazine, warned that Princess Diana's youngest son could say 'inappropriate things' about the Firm in his book, with terrible consequences for Prince William, 39, the Express reported. Reaction: Not all viewers took issue with Prince Harry appearing in the documentary, with one Twitter user writing 'he has done absolutely nothing wrong'. During last night's documentary, Harry was seen looking through flight logs from his grandfather - a qualified pilot - from a 1983 trip to Africa. Harry said: 'He was doing all the flying himself, or certainly chunks of it. When youre flying, you dont get an easy pass just for being the Duke of Edinburgh. You very much have to put in the work and prove your skill. 'But also he had an amazing privilege to get behind the controls and fly aircraft all around the world. 'I can just imagine my grandmother sitting in the back of a plane having a cup of tea, going through turbulence and going "Oh Philip! What are you doing?"' Interviews were filmed before and after Prince Philip's death in April, and were conducted separately, with Harry's tribute filmed in the US where he lives with Meghan and their two children Archie, two, and three-month-old Lilibet. Pictured, Harry and Philip in 2014 Elsewhere, the Duke of Sussex also spoke for the first time about how the Duke of Edinburgh gave him the space to talk about serving in Afghanistan. Harry was twice deployed to Helmand province during the UK's military operations, and he described in the BBC tribute programme how his grandfather would 'never probe' but listen. Harry said: 'Going off to Afghanistan he was very matter of fact and just said, "Make sure you come back alive"... then when I came back, there wasn't a deep level of discussion, more a case of, "Well you made it. How was it?" That's how he was. 'He was very much a listener, he sort of set the scene for you to be able to share as much as you wanted to share but he would never probe.' Meanwhile, in the programme, William revealed how the Duke of Edinburgh would get his grandchildren to hold a tube of mustard in their hands and then take the lid off when they were BBQ-ing at Balmoral. William laughingly recalled: He would squish your hands together to fire the mustard up into the ceiling. 'He used to get into a lot of trouble with my grandmother for covering most of the places where we had lunch with mustard on the ceiling. His cousin, Peter Phillips, added that the marks are still there. Interviews began in early 2021 to celebrate Philips 100th birthday in June, but the programme has since become a moving tribute to the Queens husband after he slipped away peacefully on April 9, two months before his big day. All of those interviewed admitted that Philip was a man of his generation and upbringing - and didnt suffer fools gladly. Prince Charles described how his father would watching him play football as a child and shout from the sidelines: Stop scratching your backside and do something! But all agreed that he was a man like no other and one that has left a huge void in their lives. William added: Hes always been the heart of the family and hes always been a huge presence behind everything we have done, really. It was very much a man worlds back then, so for a man to give up his career to support a woman, albeit the Queen, was still quite a big step. Pregnant women should only take paracetamol when told to by a doctor, scientists ruled today. Experts fear the cheap painkiller could hamper a baby's development in the womb. Dozens of studies have linked it to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, language delay in girls and decreased IQ. Danish researchers reviewing the evidence argued there was an 'increasing amount of research' about fears paracetamol may hamper foetal development. In a call to action, they insisted mothers-to-be only get the 'lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time'. Further studies are needed to thoroughly examine exactly how the drug, known as acetaminophen in the US, may affect babies in the womb. But other scientists today dismissed the claims, saying the collection of papers that were reviewed were 'not robust enough to draw any conclusions'. And one claimed raising pregnant mothers' anxiety about the unborn child is 'often itself unnecessary and has obvious adverse consequences'. The NHS says paracetamol is paracetamol is safe to take in pregnancy, describing it as the 'first choice' painkiller for mothers-to-be. Around half of expectant mothers report taking paracetamol during pregnancy, and the figure is as high as 65 per cent in the US. Health chiefs say only certain people need to take 'extra care', such as patients with liver or kidney problems and those on epilepsy drugs. Around half of expectant mothers report taking paracetamol during pregnancy, and the figure is as high as 65 per cent in the US Experts said an 'increasing amount of research' suggests if paracetamol is taken during pregnancy, it affects fetal development, which could increase the risk of brain, reproductive and urogenital disorders in the child once it is born. These include increased incidences of ADHD and autism, as well as early puberty onset Studies in animals have found that paracetamol may cause reproductive orders for men, such as abnormalities in testicular function and sperm, and women, such as disruption to ovarian development, causing a reduced egg numbers, leading to reduced fertility The warning on paracetamol in pregnancy was published today in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology. It was supported by a group of 91 international experts. The paper claimed an 'increasing amount of research' was linking paracetamol to some neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders. Dr David Kristensen and experts at the University of Copenhagen reviewed human and animal studies that examined paracetamol use in pregnancy. The research projects were all published between 1995 and 2020. Writing in the journal, they claimed studies have linked the widespread use of paracetamol to a 'disturbing rise' in the number of children with cognitive, learning or behavioural disabilities. Research has also found that the painkiller is linked with reproductive and urogenital disorders, such as cryptorchidism (undescended testicles) hypospadias (when the opening of the urethra is not located at the tip of the penis) and testicular cancer. What is the NHS advice on taking paracetamol when pregnant? Paracetamol has been used by pregnant women for years without causing any obvious harmful effects on the developing baby, the NHS says. So the drug is usually recommended as 'the first choice of painkiller for pregnant women', it said. Other painkillers have not been shown to be any safer than paracetamol and some are not suitable for use during certain stages of pregnancy, according to the health service. It is not possible to say that any medicine is absolutely safe to use in pregnancy, but there is 'currently no good evidence that paracetamol will harm your baby', the NHS said. However, expectant mothers are advised to use the lowest dose of paracetamol that works and only for as long as they need to take it. The pain killer is sold on its own as well as in combination with other drugs, such as in cold and flu medicines. The NHS said it is important that any medicines taken together are combinations that are suitable for pregnancy and expectant mothers do not exceed the daily recommended dose of paracetamol. Advertisement Rates of early puberty, decreased sperm counts, and decreased fertility have also been linked with the painkiller, they said. And being exposed to paracetamol before birth is also associated with girls starting puberty earlier. Meanwhile, studies in animals have found that the drug may also cause reproductive orders for men, such as abnormalities in testicular function and sperm. Animal studies have also associated paracetamol in pregnancy with disruption to women's ovarian development, causing reduced egg numbers, leading to reduced fertility. Other affects in women that have been recorded in animal studies include altered brain function and behaviour. And any negative effects from a mother taking paracetamol in pregnancy increased if the drug was taken in higher doses and for longer periods, the scientists said. Therefore, expectant mothers should be told in their pregnancy how to limit its use and dosage, according to their report. They said pregnant women should be told to 'forego paracetamol unless its use is medically indicated; consult with a physician or pharmacist if they are uncertain whether use is indicated and before using on a long-term basis; and minimise exposure by using the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time.' Medics also called for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and US Food and Drug (FDA) Administration to 'review all available data' so their advice is up-to-date. The FDA and EMA said studies have failed to demonstrate any risks of birth defects from paracetamol. Dr Sarah Stock, a fetal medicine expert at the University of Edinburgh, said: 'This paper doesn't change recommendations on paracetamol use in pregnancy.' She said the team had 'done a good job of bringing together existing evidence'. But Dr Stock added: 'Unfortunately, much of that evidence is not robust enough to draw any conclusions that paracetamol use in pregnancy, especially occasional use, causes developmental problems in humans. 'Paracetamol is effective at reducing pain and fever, and so continues to be an important medicine that pregnant people should use if needed. 'Of course, pregnant or not, no-one should take a medication unnecessarily, for longer than necessary or at a higher dose than needed.' Professor Stephen Evans, an experts in pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: 'Avoidance of unnecessary drugs is to be encouraged at all times, and most pregnant women are aware of this. 'At the same time raising anxiety about their unborn child is often itself unnecessary and has obvious adverse consequences. 'This paper and the consensus statement could be used to raise anxiety, almost undoubtedly unnecessarily.' Larger studies tend to find 'no adverse effect' on a child from their mothers taking paracetamol and those that do find some links are inconsistent, so 'their findings may be due to chance or bias, he said. And there is no 'obvious drug' that could be suggested as an alternative to paracetamol, so the report is 'not very helpful'. Professor Evans added: 'It might be reasonable to suggest that regulatory authorities re-examine the issues, but it is not a message for current or prospective pregnant mothers.' Living in Australia's most famous and popular beach towns will mean forking out a pretty penny for a home, but beachside paradises can still be found on a budget. For those looking for Byron Bay views with a Bundaberg bank balance, there are plenty of options despite demand in popular areas rocketing during the pandemic, with thousands moving out of urban centres to work from home. But prospective buyers can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by opting for suburbs just a few kilometres away. Here are the best areas that boast just as flashy scenery as the big hitters, but for a fraction of the price. Lennox Head, NSW Lennox Head is a brilliant alternative to Byron Bay, providing the same laid-back lifestyle for a fraction of the cost (pictured, an aerial view of Lennox Head) As nearby Byron Bay's median house prices have surged by 51 per cent over the last year, savvy homebuyers are looking for a town with a similar vibe but without the flashy billionaire types. For a home in Byron Bay buyers are looking at an all-time high price of $1.96million. Lennox Head, only 20 minutes south of Byron Bay, has a median price of $1.14 million, rising by 38 per cent over the last year - a fraction of the rise seen as its more famous neighbour. The town has the same surf lifestyle and laid-back vibes that Byron was famous for years ago. With less traffic and crowds but with restaurants and bars that rival those Byron has to offer, buyers should consider Lennox Head as a cheaper alternative for a beachside oasis. Mooloolaba, NSW Mooloolaba boasts the countries sixth-best beach, and is only 50 kilometres south of the Sunshine Coast (pictured, Mooloolaba beach) Nearby Noosa is famous for Sunshine Beach, boasting a median house price of $2.2million, increasing by 161.1 per cent in the last five years. But Mooloolaba, another beautiful suburb on the Sunshine Coast, is only 50km south and boasts a beach rated the sixth-best in the country. Mooloolaba beach is home to famous restaurants and more than 100 cafes, and is only an hour drive to the nearby city of Brisbane. The median house price is also half of what Noosa is offering, sitting at $1.075million. Mooloolaba also has a median house price which is less than half that of nearby Noosa, sitting at $1.075million (pictured, Mooloolaba beach) Kingsford, VIC For those who don't want to spend all day at the beach, Daylesford at the foot of the Great Dividing Range of Victoria is a beautiful quaint town which has seen a 42.7 per cent increase in median house prices to $800,000. But Kingsford, only 10 minutes away is a more affordable option for homes with lovely views of the hillsides and surrounding lands. Kingston is a tiny town with beautiful views of the nearby hills and land close to the foot of the Great Dividing Range of Victoria (pictured, the Commercial Hotel in Kingston) For comparison, Kim McQueen of McQueen Real Estate has a two-bedroom cottage listed for between $720,000 and $760,000. 'But if the same cottage was in Daylesford it could easily be $900,000,' Ms MsQueen said to Domain. Mount Pleasant, NSW Kiama, a beautiful picturesque beach town in the south-coast of NSW has seen an incredible rise, with the median house price increasing 44.1 per cent in the last year to a pricey $1.305million. Mount Pleasant is a brilliant alternative to the upper market suburb of Kiama, with a much more affordable price tag (pictured, a Mount Pleasant home) Instead of staying away from the city, why not travel 40 minutes north towards Sydney and find a haven close to the beach, Mount Pleasant. The median house price in the secluded area is only $900,000 and gives homeowners a very short drive to Wollongong CBD and the picturesque Towradgi Beach. The suburb is described as a perfect area for new families, with a lovely relaxed feel. Victor Harbor, SA The sought-after Fleurieu Peninsula is home to Port Elliot, a famous suburb on the south-coast of the region. The perfect seaside town's median price is sitting at $575,000 but homes closer to the waterfront are attracting sums upwards of $2million. Victor Harbor serves as a brilliant alternative to the seaside town of Port Elliot, boasting small beaches and bike paths and walking tracks for the adventurous types (pictured, a Victor Harbor home) But a small town only a short drive away might be a better option. Victor Harbor has a median house price of $475,000 and has seen steady growth over the past years. Small beaches, outdoor activities including bike riding and walks, and wineries nearby make it a brilliant alternative. Victor Harbor is still only a short drive from Port Elliot and the famous Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia (pictured, Victor Harbor causeway) Derby, WA Derby is close to Western Australia's tourist hub of Broome, which has seen a 33.6 per cent increase to median house prices, landing at $581,000. But, the town dubbed the Kimberley gateway to Derby has a much more affordable price, at only $264,500. The town offers brilliant barramundi fishing and is close enough to Broome to visit and still take part in the tourist locations activities, while providing its own as well. Though the town cannot compete in one aspect, boasting mudflats as opposed to Broome's beaches the price tag can't be overlooked. Derby offers an inland option to Western Australia's prime tourist town, Broome (pictured, a home in Derby, WA) Homeless British Army veterans have demanded the government fund mental health services at the UK's biggest military base as they are set to be axed. Former squaddies warned stopping services at The Beacon in Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, would be 'devastating' for those battling PTSD and substance abuse. They said the centre gives them a chance to turn their lives around after leaving the Armed Forces and struggling to cope with civilian life. MPs from across the House of Commons backed their calls, saying they were 'concerned' mental health services face being cut. They lashed out at the government for decreasing funds for veteran supported housing in recent years. The Beacon is a specialist supported housing service for veterans but it is set to run out of funding for those with complex needs. It has helped more than 340 British soldiers since it opened in September 2011 yet faces closing down its services on September 30. Government funding has ended and local government funding has dried up in recent years - with experts predicting it would cost 2.75million a year to save. Private Dave Karan, 33, who spent 12 in the military and did two tours of Afghanistan, has lived at the site since 2018 after he was medically discharged Former squaddies warned stopping services at The Beacon in Catterick Garrison (pictured), North Yorkshire, would be 'devastating' for those battling PTSD and substance abuse Veterans living at the Beacon Centre told MailOnline they were 'devastated' it could shut and were fearing for their futures. Private Dave Karan, 33, who spent 12 in the military and did two tours of Afghanistan, has lived at the site since 2018 after he was medically discharged. He said: 'I joined the military in 2007 and since then I've been in Afghan twice and done various other exercises. 'I basically went straight out of training to go on tour and you had to grow up quickly. It takes a lot of adjusting when you come back because when you're on tour you're always alert. 'I still have to sleep with my light on in because I need a sense of comfort if I'm alone. I moved into the Beacon after a period of sofa surfing. 'The staff have helped me with lots of things such as setting up with local doctors and dentists. 'I also got to volunteer with Veterans' Woodcraft and I now teach woodwork to others. 'It's been really good for me and I've found a hidden talent which I wouldn't have had if it wasn't for here. 'It's devastating that other veterans might not be able to take advantage of these opportunities. This place is a safety net which will disappear if funds are cut. 'I want to let the Government know that this is an important place. It caters for a lot of veterans with various issues. 'No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes in life but this service allows veterans to sort their lives out. 'In the army you're spoon-fed but once you're out you have to fend for yourself. Places like this are vital and teach you life skills. 'I really don't know what will happen if these services are lost. It's a worrying time for everyone.' Private Karan said: 'I still have to sleep with my light on in because I need a sense of comfort if I'm alone. I moved into the Beacon after a period of sofa surfing' Mr Karan said: 'The staff have helped me with lots of things such as setting up with local doctors and dentists' Lee Buss-Blair, Director of Operations and Veteran's Lead at Riverside, spent six years in the 17th/21st Lancers where he saw active service in the first Gulf War. The 51-year-old said: 'The entire veterans supported housing sector is in a crisis. 'We work with people who have physical health needs, substance mis-use issues and help them acquire independent living skills. 'Often veterans don't get taught how to budget or cook or pay bills and we work with them to address these issues so they can better adapt to civilian life. 'The funding we have received fuels the support aspect and without that can't provide staff. 'That means we can't work with the veterans who have any of those various support needs. 'The Beacon is not closing its doors and it will still be able to house veterans, but it is closing its doors to the support needs of veterans. We won't be able to work with those most in need and this is a concern. 'Speaking from personal experience, I waited a good 10-15 years to get the help I needed that has turned my life around. 'I used the 'they wouldn't understand' excuse for not engaging in the mainstream services available to me. 'I worry that veterans faced with living on the streets will be reluctant to engage with mainstream homeless groups. 'The fear is that will lead to a rise in the number of veterans rough sleeping. 'The recent situation in Afghanistan has really highlighted that no matter how long ago you served, PTSD can still be triggered. 'I don't think there's enough recognition of the key role supported housing plays in helping veterans to access these types of services.' He added that it would cost 2,781,985 per year or 5,563,970 over the next two years to to provide specialist supported housing to every veteran in the UK. Riverside has joined forces with the three other main providers for homeless veterans in Britain to warn of the collapse of services. Pictured: The Beacon Riverside has joined forces with the three other main providers for homeless veterans in Britain to warn of the collapse of services. Riverside, Launchpad, Alabare, and Stoll wrote to Chancellor Rishi Sunak to ask for financial support from the Government. The four charities provide 558 flats or bed spaces across 19 locations for veterans with medium or high support needs. The government is also under pressure from MPs from across the House of Commons, who have backed the veterans calls. Tory MP Steve Baker, who served seven years in the RAF, said: 'I am grateful to Riverside and partners for the work they are doing to support veterans facing homelessness. 'I know that Veterans can find it difficult to engage with mainstream services and avoid seeking help as a result. 'I am concerned to be told, over the past few years, government funding for veteran supported housing has decreased and Riverside and partners are now far less able to house veterans with higher needs, addictions, poor mental health or disability. 'The obvious continuing physical, mental and emotional impact of Afghanistan on our forces has shown us again the imperative of caring for our veterans. 'No veteran should ever have to experience sleeping rough and that is why I am supporting Riverside's campaign to provide specialist supported housing to every veteran in the UK who needs it.' Tory MP Steve Baker (pictured), who served seven years in the RAF, said: 'I am grateful to Riverside and partners for the work they are doing to support veterans facing homelessness Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who is the South Yorkshire Mayor and a former British Army Major, also weighed in. He said: 'The professionalism and dedication shown by our Armed Forces during the evacuation of Afghanistan underlines the debt we owe those who put their lives on the line for us. 'If we can afford to send our troops on operations, then we can afford to look after them when they come home. 'The government has a moral obligation to support our veterans that means ensuring everyone who chose to put on uniform has a roof over their heads. Warm words aren't going to cut it.' Meanwhile Labour's Shadow Housing Minister Mike Amesbury said: 'Nobody should be sleeping rough in the UK, but homelessness is an especially cruel fate for those who have served in our armed forces. 'At the very moment troops return from Afghanistan, the Government risks breaking their promise to the most vulnerable veterans. 'Rough sleeping can and must end, as shown in the pandemic political will makes all the difference.' There are estimated to be between 100 and 400 veterans sleeping rough every year, with up to 4,000 more in temporary accommodation or sofa surfing. The Office for Veterans Affairs was established in 2019 with a mission 'to make sure the United Kingdom is the best place to be a veteran anywhere in the world.' But Johnny Mercer quit the role as veterans minister in April in disgust at what he says was a lack of action from the government. A British private school girl has been found 'safe and well' in a Majorcan park after she vanished three weeks ago. Emina Ilora Alice Winterbottom was discovered in the WiFi park in central Palma on Wednesday, not far from the Civil Guard's headquarters, after her parents reported she had last been seen on August 31. Her discovery comes just hours after an alert was issued over her disappearance, with police describing her case as 'disturbing and of the highest priority.' Missing persons' charity SOS Desaparecidos told MailOnline on Thursday: 'Emina was located in good condition and her disappearance alert deactivated ... She is safe and well.' The National Police have taken on the case and she is being interviewed by specialist officers about where she spent the last three weeks. Emina Ilora Alice Winterbottom was last seen in Palma on August 31, with her parents reporting that she never returned home (pictured: a Facebook post dated April 4) A photo handout from the Spanish police, left, and a photo from her Facebook, right. Emina is described as being 5ft7ins tall with 'long chestnut hair and large green eyes', according to a missing person's notice issued by officials A spokesman for Majorca's National Police confirmed: 'The girl that went missing in Majorca was found on Wednesday afternoon and the search has been called. 'Officers are still continuing to make inquires about the circumstances surrounding her disappearance but no arrests have been made in connection with this incident so far.' Emina is originally from Manchester but moved to Majorca where she is a pupil at the 5,700-per-year Escola Global international school, according to her Facebook. Majorca is home to more than 16,000 British expats and the island is a popular holiday destination for people from the UK. The Balearic Islands - which also include Formentera, Ibiza and Menorca - have the highest crime rate of any Spanish region. Emina was discovered in the WiFi park in central Palma which is just a stone's throw from the Civil Guard's headquarters Majorca is home to more than 16,000 British expats and the island is a popular holiday destination for people from the UK. The Balearic Islands - which also include Formentera, Ibiza and Menorca - have the highest crime rate of any Spanish region. Earlier this year, another British girl, Taya O'Loughlin, went missing outside her school. The 14-year-old's disappearance sparked a massive search effort by police and volunteers. Fortunately she was found after three days and returned home to her mother. Advertisement The slaughter of dolphins in the Faroe Islands has continued after 53 more were butchered, just days after more than 1,400 were killed in a beach bloodbath that sparked global outrage. Haunting photographs show slain pilot whales, among the largest of the oceanic dolphins, laying with their guts sprawled across the bloodied ground of Kollafjrur port on the south of the island. Among the dead dolphins, which were lined up at the port to be distributed around the area, appear to be calves due to their smaller sizes. The killings come just days after horrifying video emerged showing the sea turning red with blood as Faroe Islanders slaughtered 1,428 dolphins during a 'rogue hunt'. Haunting photographs have shown slain pilot whales, among the largest of the oceanic dolphins, laying with their guts sprawled across the bloodied ground of Kollafjrur port in the south of the island The slain dolphins seen with huge cuts on the heads as they are laid out in rows amongst shipping containers at a port in Kollafjrur in the Faroe Islands The latest hunt saw 53 dolphins killed in the village of Kollafjrur, just 10km away from where the 1,428 were slaughtered Among the dead dolphins, which were lined up at the port to be distributed around the area, appear to be calves (left of picture) due to their smaller sizes The killings come just days after horrifying video emerged showing the sea turning red with blood as Faroe Islanders slaughtered 1,428 dolphins during a 'rogue hunt' Footage showed men appearing to butcher the animals with some of the dolphins seen writhing around on the shoreline. It was one of the largest massacres ever recorded during the traditional centuries-old annual hunt known as the Grindadrap, or Grind, in Faroese. During the hunt, the whales are herded into a bay by local boats before having their spinal chords severed. But the scale of the slaughter has turned even some of the most traditional islanders against the annual hunt with some calling it 'cruel and unnecessary'. The latest hunt saw 53 dolphins killed in the village of Kollafjrur, just 10km away from where the 1,428 were slaughtered. Their slain bodies were seen lined up in rows at a shipping port as their blood pooled on the wet ground. Islanders usually kill up to 1,000 sea mammals a year, with pilot whales being the main target according to data kept by the Faroe Islands, but now the figure has reached 1,461. But this year's eye-watering death toll of white sided dolphins has angered many islanders, who despite the traditions have condemned the mass-slaughter. 'I get nauseous seeing this kind of thing,' said one islander on local broadcaster Kringvarp Foroya's Facebook page, while another exclaimed, 'I'm embarrassed to be Faroese.' Their slain bodies were seen lined up in rows at a shipping port as their blood pooled on the wet ground Horrific images show the bloody scene at the port where the slain dolphins had their stomachs cut to reveal their guts Marine conservation charity Sea Shepherd UK has been campaigning against the routine massacres for many years, headed up by Chief Operating Officer Rob Read, 47. Mr Read said: 'Many people aren't even aware of this practice - it is such a cruel thing to do. 'In these killings, no animal is spared - adults, calves, and even pregnant mothers.' In the hunt, pods of dolphins and whales are forced up onto a beach before being killed - and the activity can see an entire genetic group wiped out. Mr Read added: 'There is no need for the meat in Faroe Islands nowadays and it shouldn't be happening.' 'Now, it is little more than sport, using tradition as justification, and that's why we campaign against it. 'This is why we will never give up opposing it and we're determined to raise awareness to make change.' Speaking about the slaughter of the 1,428 dolphins two weeks ago, Olavur Sjurdarberg, chairman of the Faroese Pilot Whale Hunt Association, admitted his hunters had made mistakes when carrying out the killings. But he went onto suggest that the use of smartphones and social media is putting a negative spin on an important island tradition. 'It was a big mistake, somebody should have known better,' said Mr Sjurdarberg. 'When the pod was found, they estimated it to be only 200 dolphins. Most people are in shock about what happened.' He added: 'The world has become much smaller today, with everyone walking around with a camera in their pocket. 'This is a fabulous treat for those who want us badly when it comes to the Grind.' Horrifying new video has emerged showing the sea turning red with blood as Faroe Islanders slaughtered 1,438 dolphins during a 'rogue' hunt Footage shows men appearing to butcher the animals with some of the dolphins seen writhing around on the shoreline The footage showed hundreds of slaughtered dolphins lined up on the shore after they were butchered by islanders Boats drove the animals towards the shore of Skalafjrur where men waited in the shallows with hooks, knives and spears as part of the local tradition Faroese are divided on the Grind but many urge foreign media and NGOs to respect their traditional island culture where fishing retains a central place and the meat is kept for food Heri Petersen, the foreman of one of the local Grind associations responsible for the hunt, said he was not informed of the drive and 'strongly dissociated' himself what appeared to be a poorly organised and unusual hunt. 'I'm appalled at what happened,' he told local web-based In.fo news site. 'The dolphins lay on the beach writhing for far too long before they were killed.' However, much the anger expressed by locals appears to be directed towards the killing of dolphins specifically rather than the tradition of the Grind itself, which provides meat for families on the islands year-round. Trondur Olsen, a journalist for Kringvarp Foroya said: 'We did a quick poll yesterday asking whether we should continue to kill these dolphins. Just over 50% said no, and just over 30% said yes.' He added that in contrast, a separate poll suggested that 80% said they wanted to continue with the killing of pilot whales. Heri Petersen, the foreman of one of the local Grind associations responsible for the hunt, said he was not informed of the drive and 'strongly dissociated' himself what appeared to be a poorly organised and unusual hunt But the scale of the slaughter has turned even some of the most traditional islanders against the annual hunt with some calling it 'cruel and unnecessary' Springwatch star Chris Packham joined criticism of the horrifying scenes, saying he was 'struggling to process' the massacre Other islanders took to social media to respond to the outcry and clarify their sentiments to outlets reporting on the massacre. 'The reason some Faroe Islanders are criticising is because that one hunt had several errors,' said one user in response to Euro News. 'Firstly, it was white-sided dolphins and not pilot whales, the former of which we're not used to. Secondly, our equipment isn't designed for them. It's not about the grind as a whole. 'I expect either a moratorium on the hunt of these dolphins, or the creation of new equipment specifically for them to make it as humane as the pilot whale hunt.' Faroese Fishery Minister Jacob Vestergaard meanwhile told Kringvarp Foroya that everything was done by the book in the dolphin hunt. Boats drove the Atlantic white sided dolphins towards a bay on the shore where hunters had waded into the shallows to kill the animals with hooks, knives and spears. This year's hunt divided opinion even among some of the more traditional Faroese, but images and videos of the hunt circulated on social media and quickly drew a torrent of criticism from animal rights activists, news associations and foreign users not used to the hunt. Some users described the hunt as 'senseless', 'pointless' and 'evil', while others went as far to label the islanders a 'subhuman species' for the killings. This year's hunt divided opinion even among some of the more traditional Faroese, but images and videos of the hunt circulated on social media and quickly drew a torrent of criticism from animal rights activists, news associations and foreign users not used to the hunt Whaling is governed by Faroese authorities directly and is not regulated by the International Whaling Commission because of disagreements over the body's power to control the cetacean hunts The Grindadrap dates back to the 9th century when Norsemen first settled on the North Atlantic islands, and it remains the only form of aboriginal whaling still in existence in Western Europe. According to Faroese law, pilot whales, bottlenose dolphins, white-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises can also be hunted, though pilot whales are the main target of the hunts. The meat and blubber from the animals is used for food and dates back to a time when locals were reliant on whale and dolphin meet to survive. But a recent study found the meat contains mercury and is not recommended for regular consumption. Whaling is governed by Faroese authorities directly and is not regulated by the International Whaling Commission because of disagreements over the body's power to control the cetacean hunts. Falling whale numbers led to an international moratorium on whaling in 1986 but the International Whaling Commission still allows some 'subsistence' whaling. The Faroe islands are semi-independent and part of the Danish realm. The latest mass killing is the biggest ever documented in the Faroe Islands where locals take part in the carnage, known as the Grindadrap or Grind in Faroese Zero catch limits were established for all whaling but made an exception for aboriginal whaling because of its cultural importance and how the food is used exclusively by locals rather than being a commercial hunt. There is also disagreement about whether smaller whales, among them pilot whales, should be covered by the ban. Faroese law states the animals must die quickly and without suffering but that is not often the case. Following mounting concerns over the practice, in 2015 the law was updated and hunters now have to attend a course where they learn how to properly slaughter animals with the spinal-cord lance. Environmental charity Sea Shepherd regularly documents the killings which have resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 whales and dolphins over the last decade. The animal rights activists have been operating in the Faroes since the early 1980s, taking direct action against the Grind with their own boats. Animal rights activists have condemned the 'barbaric' practice but others say it is an important part of their local tradition The Grindadrap dates back to the 9th century when Norsemen first settled on the North Atlantic islands The organisation's chief operating officer Rob Read, 47, said: 'This killing is of a whole other scale entirely - it is mind-blowingly unprecedented. 'There is no need for the meat in Faroe Islands nowadays and it shouldn't be happening, never mind in these numbers. 'There were too many to kill humanely, if that's even possible. These days it is little more than sport, using tradition as justification, and that's why we campaign against it.' Part of the kingdom of Denmark, the Faroe Islands are an archipelago which are situated 230 miles north-west of mainland Scotland. Similar hunts are known to take place in Peru, Japan and the Soloman Islands. Over the past three centuries, the Faroese have taken an average of 838 pilot whales each year, according to a 2012 study. Rob said: 'Many people aren't even aware of this practice - it is such a cruel thing to do. In these killings, no animal is spared - adults, calves, and even pregnant mothers. 'But this particular hunt is completely unprecedented on a scale never seen before in recent hunting history all over the world.' 'It may well be the largest hunt ever, which is awful. 'This is why we will never give up opposing it and we're determined to raise awareness to make change.' THIS NEEDS TO BE EXPOSED! This happens at every #grindadrap on the #FaroeIslands. The hunters desperately try to hide away the fetuses, as images of them gives a very bad image. So... please share! I filmed this June 27th 2021#dkpol #seashepherd #seaspiracy #visitfaroeislands pic.twitter.com/wJMMqLAyUg Casper Hilt - Animal Rights (@casperhilt) September 8, 2021 Environmental charity Sea Shepherd regularly documents the killings which have resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 whales and dolphins over the last decade The animal rights activists have been operating in the Faroes since the early 1980s, taking direct action against the Grind with their own boats In 2015, changes to legislation prevented any Sea Shepherd boats from interrupting the hunt and so it launched a land-based crew to tackle the Grind by documenting it with photographers stationed on the shore and drones in the air. Robert Read, chief operating officer at Sea Shepherd, said: 'The grindadrap is a barbaric relic of a bygone age. A needless hunt of hundreds of pilot whales and dolphins which should have ended a century ago which is not needed to feed anyone on the islands.' After a pod is located, the Faroese drive the animals often for many hours with recreational boats, fishing boats and sometimes even jet-skis together creating a 'wall of sound' from their boat engines to force the pod towards the nearest designated killing bay. Men waiting in shallow waters rush into the sea, dragging the whales alive with ropes attached to gaff-hooks which they ram through the whale's blowhole. In 2015, changes to legislation prevented any Sea Shepherd boats from interrupting the hunt and so it launched a land-based crew to tackle the Grind After a pod is located, the Faroese drive the animals often for many hours with recreational boats, fishing boats and sometimes even jet-skis Men waiting in shallow waters rush into the sea, dragging the whales alive with ropes attached to gaff-hooks which they ram through the whale's blowhole Killers closer to shore then attempt to sever the whale's spinal cord with a lance and then use a knife to cut down through the animal's neck It can take a long time before the last of the whales and dolphins are killed, left thrashing around in blood-filled waters while boats block any escape The Faroe Veterinary Service calculated the average duration of killing during grindadrap hunts at 12.7 minutes, though Sea Shepherd crew often record killing taking well over 20 minutes Killers closer to shore then attempt to sever the whale's spinal cord with a lance and then use a knife to cut down through the animal's neck. It can take a long time before the last of the whales and dolphins are killed, left thrashing around in blood-filled waters while boats block any escape. The Faroe Veterinary Service calculated the average duration of killing during grindadrap hunts at 12.7 minutes, though Sea Shepherd crew often record killing taking well over 20 minutes. Despite calls for the hunt to end, the Faroese insist that it is sustainable and regulated by law. In September 2018, Sea Shepherd even offered the islanders one million Euros for 10 consecutive years with no whale hunts. The carcass of a 32-foot fin whale has been found wedged on the bow of a Japanese tanker as it pulled into harbour. Shocking images show the huge creature sprawled over the vessel in the port of Mizushima in Kurashiki city on Tuesday. The coast guard was called out to the harbour after locals caught sight of the whale. Local news site Yomiuri reported that the tanker had sailed through the Pacific Ocean on its way to Mizushima port and the crew claimed they had no idea that they had hit a whale. 'I've been fishing here for decades, but it's the first time I've seen a whale,' a fisherman who witnessed the tanker pulling into the harbour told local media. 'I've lived for more than eighty years, but it's my first time [seeing a whale],' another witness said. Shocking images show the huge whale sprawled over the vessel in the port of Mizushima in Kurashiki city on Tuesday The coast guard was called out to the harbour after locals caught sight of the dead whale Local news site Yomiuri reported that the tanker had sailed through the Pacific Ocean on its way to Mizushima port and the crew claimed they had no idea that they had hit a whale A spokesperson from the Mizushima Coast Guard Department said that they had never witnessed anything like this and measures to prevent such an incident from happening again were being reviewed. The whale's species is yet to be confirmed but the Institute of Cetacean Research told Yomiuri that it appeared to be a fin whale. Riki Tamura, director of the Resources and Biology Division of the Institute of Cetacean Research, told Japanese media that the whale appeared to be of the Rorqual family, which includes fin whales. The fin whale, otherwise known as the finback whale, is ranked as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It is the second-longest species of cetacea on Earth after the blue whale, reaching lengths of 27.3 metres (89.6 feet) and a weight of 74 tonnes. It is found in all the world's major oceans and in waters ranging from the polar to the tropical. No information was released on whether the company that owns the tanker or the crew will be investigated. The company has not been named The whale's species is yet to be confirmed but the Institute of Cetacean Research told Yomiuri that it appeared to be a fin whale Like all whales, the finback was intensely hunted during the 20th century, with an estimated 725,000 of them being killed in the Southern Hemisphere between 1905 and 1976. Today approximately 100,000 to 119,000 wild fin whales remain in the wild. Another Japanese news site suggested the whale might be a humpback, because of its 'chin pattern' No information was released on whether the company that owns the tanker or the crew will be investigated. The company has not been named. Mourners in Salt Lake City, Utah held a vigil for murdered van-life woman Gabby Petito Wednesday evening. Interest in Petito's disappearance and death grows by the day, as her Instagram page last updated August 26 reached 1 million followers. Petito, 22, was reported missing on September 11 after being last seen on August 24. Her fiance Brian Laundrie returned home to Florida on September 1 without her, and refused to cooperate with authorities and was reported missing himself on Friday. On Sunday, FBI agents found the remains of the missing 22-year-old near the campground in Bethune's video. Around 40 people came out to Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City -- Utah's largest city and about 38 miles from the site of her last Instagram post -- to celebrate Petito's life and mourn her death, which remains under investigation. Around 40 people came out to Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City -- Utah's largest city and about 38 miles from the site of her last Instagram post-- to celebrate Petito's life and mourn her death Petito, 22, was reported missing on September 11 after being last seen on August 24. Her fiance Brian Laundrie returned home to Florida on September 1 without her, and refused to cooperate with authorities and was reported missing himself on Friday Those that came out lit candles, prayed and spoke about how they feel Gabby represents any young woman just starting out in life. 'There's still a lot of people out there that really care,' said Ashley Nielsen, a woman who has followed the case with interest. Those that came out lit candles, prayed and spoke about how they feel Gabby represents any young woman just starting out in life 'I hope that the family can appreciate all the different places that are coming and uniting together for their beautiful daughter,' she added. Petito reached over one million followers on her Instagram platform as of Wednesday. Petito's last post on the app -- her standing in front of a butterfly mural holding a petite pumpkin at The Monarch, an event venue -- inspired a real life memorial in Ogden, Utah. Petito's last post on the app -- her standing in front of a butterfly mural holding a petite pumpkin at The Monarch, an event venue -- inspired a real life memorial in Ogden, Utah The Monarch Mural memorial has since been visited by strangers who left flowers, lit candles and wrote messages. Reality TV bail bondsman Dog the Bounty Hunter has chimed in on how he'd locate Laundrie. Dog, who's real name is Duane Chapman, told Newsweek that authorities need to look into Laundrie's background. 'We need to run his record,' Chapman said. 'We need to see what his background is, as far as domestic violence or anything else.' Reality TV bail bondsman Dog the Bounty Hunter has chimed in on how he'd locate Laundrie Chapman said that investigators need to look into Laundrie's family and friends about what they know of him. 'To look at the case, so far, I haven't got any info yet inside info. But it seemed like she was very verbal when they got into arguments, because there was people that heard her screaming at him,' he said. Chapman also added that Laundrie may have taken his own life. 'He went straight home to tell his parents what happened. And then he took off. So we got to look at his background, look at his record, know, his friends, his family. He's not an experienced runner or criminal. Suicide is a very likely possibilityand it seems like he's kind of an outdoors kid,' he said. Laundrie hasn't been seen since leaving his family's home on September 14, after telling them he was going to hike at the nearby Carlton Reserve. Dog, who's real name is Duane Chapman, told Newsweek that authorities need to look into Laundrie's background He traveled to the North Port, Florida house in the white 2012 Ford Transit van that the couple were riding in. 'He seems like an outdoors kid, you know, a camper,' Chapman said. 'What's his connection to the reserve? There's got to be a family member there. You know, why did he all of a sudden just go there?' Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where her body was found in Wyoming, and created a memorial of his own to the 22-year-old New Yorker. Schmidt, who is married to Petito's mother Nichole, traveled from New York to Wyoming last week to help with the search for the missing 'van life' traveler. She had been reported missing on September 11, and he set out on September 14. Her body was found on September 19. On Wednesday Schmidt made a stone cross at the site where Petito was discovered, Fox News confirmed. He left yellow and white flowers on the site, beneath the trees. Gabby Petito's father James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where she was killed, and created a stone cross. He laid a floral tribute James Schmidt, Gabby Petito's stepfather, traveled to Wyoming on September 14 to help the search for the 22-year-old. Four days later her body was found Schmidt is pictured with his wife Nichole, Gabby's mother, at a press conference on September 14 - shortly before he set out for Wyoming A similar memorial had been made on Monday, on an open patch of muddy land on the banks of a river near the campsite. Gary Rider, a friend of Schmidt, said the pair had visited the site on Wednesday and that they had left some flowers next to the other cross. 'We did go the small cross with flowers was made by Jim and myself,' he told The Independent. 'That larger cross was not done by anyone connected with the search or recovery of Gabby.' A memorial for Petito will be held on Sunday in New York, the Long Island funeral home confirmed on Wednesday. Petito saved money for her road trip by working in a pharmacy and then set out on July 2 Moloney's Holbrook Funeral Home, in Holbrook, 50 miles east of Manhattan, announced the memorial on their website. The event will be held from noon until 5pm. No details were given about a funeral or service. The funeral home on Long Island, New York, has published details of her memorial Sunday's memorial will be held at the Holbrook funeral home near her family's house Gabby Petito, 22, is pictured with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, in a YouTube video made to document their 'van life' road trip. Petito's body was found on Sunday and Laundrie has disappeared A memorial of stones arranged in a cross pattern was spotted Monday evening at the Spread Creek Dispersed Campsite east of the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. On Wednesday Petito's stepfather made a similar tribute at the exact spot where her body was found Petito's family - from Blue Point, New York - have not spoken since a coroner on Tuesday confirmed that the body discovered on Sunday was indeed her. They said that they would speak once her remains were returned to them. The hunt for the sole 'person of interest' in her case continues. Her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, was reported missing by his parents on September 17, three days after telling them he was setting off on a hike. Laundrie's family lawyer issued a five-word statement when Gabby's body was found, saying: 'May she rest in peace.' The search for Laundrie has since Sunday been concentrated on the Carlton Reserve - a swampy, alligator-filled 25,000 acre site where Laundrie's abandoned car was found. The silver Ford Mustang contained a note, requesting it be towed away. North Port Police Department on Wednesday evening at around 7pm tweeted that the search had concluded for the day, and would resume in the morning. 'The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found,' they said. 'We will be back out Thursday, similar operation.' Petito and Laundrie are seen on July 4 in Utah. They had set out two days previously on a road trip, planning to document their journey on social media The pair had been travelling on a cross-country trip together since July 2, when they left New York. Petito was reported missing on September 11 Earlier on Wednesday there was a flurry of activity as divers were brought to the site, but it later emerged that there was no connection to the case. The team, made up of about 10 divers, was requested by North Port Police on Wednesday morning, said Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez. 'These divers are specifically trained and very talented in low visibility bodies of water,' Perez said. 'They dive down where you and I can't see anything at all. They utilize technology and other special equipment to help them get down deep into really deep bodies of water, so they're out there right now to recover whatever it is that they might find.' A mural of Gabby Petito with wings was placed at Nicholls Road and Montauk Highway, in Blue Point, New York Petito was originally from New York with her family saying they will release a statement when her body is returned there A makeshift memorial for Gabby Petito is seen near North Port City Hall in North Port, Florida, where she used to live The Laundrie family were initially reluctant to cooperate with the investigation. Their house was searched on Monday, and Brian's parents Christopher and Roberta were questioned. On Wednesday the Laundrie's neighbors, William and Charlene Guthrie, said that they saw the Laundrie family leaving the house with a camper van about a week after Brian's September 1 solo return to Florida. William Guthrie told Fox News that he was working in his yard when he saw the Laundries attach what looked like a new camper to the back of their pickup truck. Search teams are pictured on Wednesday heading into the Carlton Reserve in Florida The Carlton Reserve has been the focus of a search for Laundrie since his car was found at the site on Sunday 'I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper,' he said. The couple told Fox that the Laundries were gone 'for the weekend' after packing up the new camper. At that point, Petito had not been officially reported missing: her family did not raise the issue with the police until September 11. The Guthries said they found it 'odd' that Christopher, Roberta and Brian Laundrie would all spend the weekend together in one small vehicle. Laundrie was apparently an avid reader, with some pointing to a video on the couple's YouTube page showing him reading a book about a missing woman. He is seen here camping on the Appalachian trail with Petito in March for her birthday It also emerged on Wednesday that Petito and Laundrie were seen on August 27 at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson Hole - where an 'aggressive' Laundrie berated wait staff during an argument over the bill. Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans was at the restaurant with her boyfriend Matthew England and noted the blazing argument, sometime between 1 and 2pm. Their account provides what is believed to be the last sighting of Petito. While dining at the restaurant, they overheard a loud conversation in which another customer - believed to be Laundrie - was heard screaming at wait staff in what appeared to be an argument over the check. Brian Laundrie mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from cross-country trip alone, says neighbor Brian Laundrie's neighbor has revealed that the 23-year-old mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from the cross-country trip alone. Charlene Guthrie, who lives across the street from the Laundrie family in North Port, Florida, told Fox News she saw Laundrie return to 'normal life' - all the while his girlfriend Gabby Petito was missing, possibly already dead. 'He mowed the lawn. Him and his mother went for a bicycle ride around the block,' Guthrie said. 'I mean, everything was just normal life once he came back. 'And I just can't get over the fact that they it seemed like nothing bothered him. How can you do that?' Laundrie returned to North Port without Petito in the couple's campervan on September 1. Authorities were then alerted to her disappearance on September 11. Guthrie said the discovery of Petito's body and Laundrie's disappearance look 'really, really bad for him' and that she believes he 'should be a suspect.' The neighbor also hit out at Laundrie's parents for not coming forward when their son went missing and that they 'let him go' in the first place. 'I have children, and I know that you do what you can to protect your child, but, you know, that can go so far, and you gotta do the right thing eventually. You have to,' Guthrie said. '[The Laundries] should have absolutely come forward now. I mean, I just can't believe they didn't do something. I'm really angry now that they let this go. 'And that everything was so natural and they remained so normal through the whole thing, you know, while they were here, till he went on the run.' Advertisement Angelo said that the man involved in the dispute displayed 'aggressive' body language. The man left the restaurant and then returned around four times, she said. Afterward, a young woman who was with the man - believed to be Petito - came into the restaurant and apologized to wait staff for his behavior. Merry Piglets officials later posted on Instagram: 'Yes, we can confirm Gabby and Brian were in Merry Piglets. 'We have already notified the FBI and they are aware. We are letting them do their jobs and we are respecting Gabby's family and have nothing further to comment.' As England watched the images of Petito and Laundrie in the body cam footage, it began to dawn on him early on Wednesday morning that they looked familiar. 'He goes, 'Nina, that was the couple fighting at the restaurant',' Angelo said. 'And it stopped me in my tracks. I felt like the blood left my body. 'I was like, 'Oh my God, I completely forgot about that incident'.' Their account is yet another crucial piece of the puzzle, as police and FBI try to understand Petito and Laundrie's movements. They have been helped by intense public interest in the case. A huge manhunt was launched on September 11 to find the missing woman, and police said that they eventually received more than 1,000 tips. As of Tuesday, the hashtag #GabbyPetito has received more than 650 million views on the social media platform TikTok, according to the Associated Press. Petito and Laundrie had cultivated a following on social media as the traversed the West in their van, and fellow social media users jumped into the hunt for clues. The van was spotted in footage made by YouTubers, a TikTok user said that she had given an 'antsy' Laundrie a lift when he was hitchhiking on August 29, and an Idaho woman who owns a shop in the town of Victor said that she had seen the pair around that time. A graphic designer who has spent the past four years living in her Airstream trailer said that she believes she is the one that led the FBI to Petito's body, after agents told her: 'you guys are the ones that really tipped us off to the right place'. Jessica Schultz told law enforcement that she spotted Laundrie near the Spread Creek campsite in Wyoming on August 26, 27 and possibly 28. Schultz, 38, said that the publicity surrounding the missing New Yorker encouraged her to come forward, and she spoke to the FBI on September 16. She said in a TikTok that she and a group of friends were camped at Spread Creek from August 22 to 29. 'In that time frame, we all independently noticed that van,' she said. Schultz said that she noticed the van because it was trying to park, and blocking her way. She very clearly recalled seeing a man alone - who she now believes was Laundrie. She said she was '100 per cent certain' that it was him. 'He was very... kind of awkward and confused,' she said on TikTok. 'It was just him, there was no Gabby.' Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito had been traveling since early July. Petito was reported missing on September 11, and on September 16 a fellow 'van life' traveler told the FBI she believed she had spotted Laundrie Schultz approached the van to see if the man wanted to join their group, but saw that he was much younger than them so decided against extending the invite. 'He was just acting weird,' she told The San Francisco Chronicle. 'You know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, your hackles go up when you see something that's out of the ordinary.' She added: 'I'm pretty sure he got out of the van to like look around or something. 'There's definitely nobody in that passenger seat; like he definitely doesn't have a girl in there.' On August 27, Schultz saw the van again. This time, she was traveling as a passenger in her friend's vehicle, and noticed that the van belonging to Petito and used by her and Laundrie was in the same area. 'I was like, 'Oh, that guy stayed the night,' Schultz recalled telling her friend. 'He was very kind of awkward and confused. And it was just him. There was no Gabby': Jessica Schultz describes on TikTok seeing Laundrie 'So I saw Brian Laundrie parking his van August 26 at Spread Creek. 'So I had already reported to the FBI what I had seen. 'And I wasn't 100 per cent sure, but now that there is dashcam footage of the van where I saw it, I'm 100 per cent certain that I did see him parking his van. 'And he was very kind of awkward and confused. And it was just him. There was no Gabby. 'But that's only because, as a van lifer, I was checking out their van and I was checking out to see if it was a couple or a solo dude. 'So it was a solo dude, as far as I could see. Unless she was in the back somewhere. But when I pulled up he was driving still and hadn't yet pulled over. 'So I was like, hey, what are you going to do? Are you going to let me pass because it's only one car width of a road. 'And he kind of pulled over like half way, and made me drive half out into the road to go around him. 'So I thought it was just really weird. And for a timeline, it was parked on the 26th, I believe.' 'Sorry my last video cut off. I guess I only get 60 seconds. 'It's probably a good thing as the FBI actually called me back. Not as a result of my TikTok. 'So a group of friends and I were camping at Spread Creek from the 22nd to the 29th. 'And in that time frame we all independently noticed that van parked there. And I noticed it particularly because I had seen that van trying to park. And also because it wasn't actually parked in a designated spot. 'The Spread Creek camping area is a series of designated spots and you're not supposed to camp outside those spots. 'This van was not in a real spot so I figured that he would get booted by the people who patrol the area. But the van was there for several days and nights and it did not get booted. The weirdest part was that there was no indication that there was anybody at the van. 'Usually small van people have their doors open, they're outside, they have a hammock, something. But we didn't see any signs of actual life at the van.' Advertisement She remembered it clearly, she said, because it was not a designated parking spot. Schultz also believes she saw the van on August 28, because she recalled thinking it was surprising the owners had not been asked to move on to an actual parking place. 'The weirdest part of it was that there was no indication there was anybody at the van,' Schultz recounted on TikTok. When footage of the missing couple began circulating, Schultz noticed the distinctive hat that was on the dashboard - which she had seen. The van that Petito and Laundrie were traveling in was spotted by multiple travelers, including Schultz 'My friend texted me a picture of the hat on the dashboard and I just lost my s***,' Schultz said. 'And that's when I called the FBI and said, 'Guys, look at Spread Creek.' Lupe Alvarez, a friend of Schultz's who was camping at the site, said he and his partner first saw teams of police crews looking for Petito arrive on Friday evening. On Saturday a forest ranger approached them as they were about to set off on a hike and asked them not to destroy any evidence. 'She told us, 'You've probably heard about the missing girl and the van,' Alvarez said. Schultz said someone with the FBI called her and her friends back for an interview just before 10am on Sunday - before it was announced that Petito's remains had been found. Schultz recalled that the FBI agent said: 'I've talked to hundreds of people, but you guys are the ones that really tipped us off to the right place, so thank you.' She added: 'We're triumphant we were right and we led them in the right direction. 'But then, of course, it's not something you like to be right about. It's been emotionally exhausting for sure.' A teenage prisoner whose baby died in her arms had called for help four times and was ignored by three officers, according to a watchdog which found a string of failings in her care. The 18-year-old mother, known as Ms A, should never have been allowed to give birth without medical assistance at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Middlesex, prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) Sue McAllister said. Ambulance crews were called to the scene in September 2019 but the child did not survive. Police launched an investigation, treating the death as 'unexplained'. According to the watchdog's report, published on Wednesday, Ms A made two internal phone calls and pressed her bell twice to ask for a nurse before giving birth. The first call lasted around one minute while the second, made 25 minutes later, went through to the communications room and was 'immediately disconnected'. Ms A also pressed her bell to tell an officer she needed a nurse and ambulance, then rang again later when no nurse arrived, but received no response. It has also come to light that another prisoner from HMP Bronzefield gave birth to a full-term stillborn baby in an ambulance on the way to hospital, in December 2017. In addition, there have been two other unexpected births at the prison - one in October 2017 and one in March 2019. One baby required neonatal intensive care in hospital but survived. No less than 10 separate investigations have been launched into the latest incident, with the PPO conducting the overarching probe. A pathologist has been unable to determine whether the baby was born alive or was stillborn, and so far no inquest has taken place. The findings highlight a catalogue of 'troubling weaknesses' in the way the prison and healthcare services handled the mother's care and makes a series of recommendations for improvements in the care of pregnant prisoners. The 18-year-old mother on remand, known as Ms A, should never have been allowed to give birth without medical assistance at HMP Bronzefield (pictured above) in Ashford, Middlesex, prisons and probation ombudsman (PPO) Sue McAllister said Ms A had a 'traumatic childhood' and was on remand in prison for the first time, facing a charge of robbery. The findings said she was regarded as vulnerable, 'sad, angry and very scared' that her baby would be taken away from her. She engaged 'minimally or not at all' with the midwifery team at Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust (ASPH) in Surrey, and all ante-natal care, including refusing to attend appointments for scans. The report states that a prison officer, referred to as PCO 4, 'answered a cell call from Ms A who said "get me a f***ing nurse"' at 8.07pm. It continued: 'PCO 4 said he asked her why she needed one, but she would not tell him. He said he did not know Ms A. 'She was rude and abusive and did not sound in distress. The call lasted for one minute five seconds.' A second call came in at the same time, queuing Ms A's call, with the officer saying he was then called to another house block to attend a prisoner who had self-harmed. The officer said he told another member of staff, known as PCO 3, that Ms A wanted a nurse, but PCO 3 said he could not remember any information being handed over by PCO 4 that evening or speaking to the prisoner. Ms A made another call at 8.32pm, but this was not answered so went through to the communications room. The report says: 'The records showed that Ms As call was answered in the communications room at 8.45pm and immediately disconnected.' It adds: '[Ms A] said she pressed her bell and asked for a nurse and the officer asked her why she needed one. 'She said she told him that she needed help and a nurse and an ambulance. She rang again a bit later when no nurse came but got no reply. After that she gave up.' The report found 'some similarities' between births from other HMP Bronzefield prisoners and that of Baby A. An aerial view of HMP Bronzefield, taken in 2012. According to the watchdog's report, published on Wednesday, Ms A made two internal phone calls and pressed her bell twice to ask for a nurse before giving birth In full: Watchdog report's findings Maternity services at Bronzefield were 'outdated and inadequate' and contact with health professionals was limited. The care by Ms A's midwives was 'inflexible, unimaginative and insufficiently trauma-informed'. A 'lack of clarity' about the due date, and staff working on Ms A's block did not know she might give birth imminently. 'Several missed opportunities' to carry out checks in the days leading up to the birth which might have led to her labour being discovered. The response to her calls for a nurse the day before were 'completely inadequate'. Advertisement It states: 'There have been two previous unexpected births at Bronzefield, one in October 2017 and one in March 2019. Both babies were delivered by prison nurses in the prisoners cell. 'The baby born in October 2017 required neonatal intensive care in hospital but survived. In addition, in December 2017, a full-term stillborn baby was born in an ambulance on the way to hospital. 'We found some similarities across these cases with the birth of Baby A.' According to the report, staff at Bronzefield appeared to regard Ms A as 'difficult and having a 'bad attitude', rather than as a vulnerable 18-year old, frightened that her baby would be taken away'. Ms McAllister said: 'Ms A gave birth alone in her cell overnight without medical assistance. This should never have happened.' Ms A fell unconscious at around 2am, waking to find she had given birth but the newborn was purple and not breathing. She then bit through the umbilical cord and got into bed with the baby before two other prisoners raised concerns. All pregnancies in prison should be treated as 'high risk' because the women are 'locked behind a door for a significant amount of time', she said, adding that there was likely to be a higher percentage of 'avoidant' mothers who were 'fearful of engaging with maternity care'. Prisoners do not have direct access to their midwives, compared to pregnant women who are not in custody. The report found maternity services at Bronzefield were 'outdated and inadequate' with limited visits from health professionals. No less than 10 separate investigations were launched into the incident, with the PPO conducting the overarching probe (file photo of HMP Bronzefield) Although Ms A was considered a 'challenging person to manage', the approach to her care by midwives was found to be 'inflexible, unimaginative and insufficiently trauma-informed', while there was no plan for dealing with a pregnant woman who refused to accept the usual procedures. There was also 'lack of clarity' about the due date, and staff working on Ms A's block did not know she might give birth imminently. In the days leading up to the birth, there were 'several missed opportunities' to increase observations which might have led to her labour being discovered, the findings said, adding that the response to her request for a nurse the day before was 'completely inadequate'. Elaine Macdonald, of Tuckers Solicitors, who represents Ms A, described the failings identified in the report as 'truly shocking', and said: 'The number of significant concerns raised about her treatment while in custody need to be urgently and fully examined.' Justice Secretary Dominic Raab described the events as 'harrowing, unacceptable and should never happen to any woman or child'. He added: 'We have put in place important improvements to the care received by women in custody, and across government we must make sure that expectant mothers in prison get the same support as those in the community.' Justice Secretary Dominic Raab (pictured above) described the events as 'harrowing, unacceptable and should never happen to any woman or child' The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) stressed it was exceptionally rare for a woman to give birth in prison. Since the death, women have been given phone access to advice services, offered social services support and welfare checks are being carried out for pregnant women in their third trimester, the department said. The NHS has since taken over the healthcare budget for maternity services at the prison, increasing its budget in this area by 87 per cent and putting an ultrasound scanner inside the jail as part of a range of improvements, a spokeswoman said. Prison director Vicky Robinson said Sodexo was 'deeply sorry' the incident occurred and was 'absolutely dedicated' to working with all other bodies involved to address the recommendations and 'ensure the actions that needed to be taken have been taken'. The hospital trust's chief executive, Suzanne Rankin, said: 'We are deeply sorry for the devastating loss Ms A experienced and the lifelong impact this will have. 'The ASPH maternity team pride themselves on providing the highest level of care and are deeply distressed by the death in such tragic circumstances of Baby A.' The trust made a series of changes in light of the death including providing training and dedicating more staff and resources to this area of care and will take 'further action' as a result of the PPO report, she added. Nearly 18million fewer NHS appointments were carried out last year, according to official data that lays bare the true toll of the Covid-induced backlog on the health service. Before the pandemic struck, around 96million outpatient appointments such as CT scans, X-rays and MRIs were carried out every year. But the total figure fell by 18 per cent in 2020/21, the health service's own statistics revealed today. Hospitals cancelled 12.6million procedures, which was the highest toll since health chiefs began collecting the data a decade ago. NHS Digital, which compiled the annual report, admitted the trend was down to 'the impact of the coronavirus pandemic'. Disruptions to healthcare has already seen waiting lists for routine surgeries including hip and knee replacements spiral to a record high of 5.6million. This is expected to climb even further as millions of people who delayed or were unable to seek care during the pandemic come forward. Operations, scans and appointments were cancelled as the NHS focused on treating Covid patients and many people were scared to attend hospital for fear of catching the virus. NHS Digital's figures come after health bosses pleaded for a further 1.5billion in funding, just a fortnight after No10 pushed through a 12billion tax raid to prop up the NHS. Graph shows: Outpatient appointments attended by patients dropped more than 18 per cent to 78.4million in the year 2020 to 2021, down from 96.4million the year before Graph shows: The number of outpatient appointments and attendances in England from April 2019 to March 2021 Graph shows: 12.6million appointments were cancelled by hospitals (dark blue line) the highest on record London had the highest outpatient activity with both the highest number of appointments (21.2million or 20.8 per cent) and attendances (15.3million or 19.5 per cent) Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers which represents trusts across the country today asked for extra funds to fix crumbling hospitals. She said the money would bring 'long neglected parts of the NHS estate into the 21st Century', with cash used to fix leaky roofs, broken boilers and faulty air conditioning units in operating theatres. Ms Cordery insisted the separate funds are necessary because of red tape meaning the tax raid which won't hit millions of taxpayers until April cannot be spent on key maintenance and infrastructure repairs. Pandemic sees drop in sterilisations and vasectomies on the NHS The pandemic led to a dramatic drop in the number of women being sterilised and men having vasectomies, new figures suggest. Data from NHS Digital shows that the number of sterilisations performed in NHS hospitals in England has fallen from 15,189 in 2010/11 to 12,144 in 2019/20, a drop of 20 per cent. However, in 2020/21, there was a much larger fall of 37 per cent, to 7,665 sterilisations. Meanwhile, vasectomies have also been declining, with an accelerated drop during the pandemic year. Before 2015/16, there was a long-term decline in the number of vasectomies performed, dropping 43 per cent between 2010/11 (19,510) and 2014/15 (11,113). The numbers then stabilised until 2019/20 at around 11,000 to 12,000 a year. In 2020/21 during the pandemic, the number fell to 4,449, which is 63 per cent less than in 2019/20. Other data on Sexual and Reproductive Health Services (SRH), dedicated services provided by the NHS, showed there was a 45 per cent fall in emergency contraceptive items (commonly called the morning-after pill) provided in 2020/21 compared to 2019/20. There was also an 18 per cent fall in prescriptions of the morning-after pill prescribed at other locations in the community (mainly GP surgeries). SRH services saw a notably larger fall in 2020/21 than in previous years, with 44,420 emergency contraception items dispensed, which was 45 per cent less than in 2019/20 (80,692), NHS Digital said. The number of emergency contraception prescriptions dispensed in the community also fell to 90,068 in 2020, a fall of 18 per cent compared to 2019 (110,378). However, this continues a decade-long decline, 64 per cent from 252,800 in 2010. All this data excludes other places women may get contraception, including hospital out-patient clinics, and emergency contraception bought over the counter in pharmacies. Advertisement The NHS data showed the number of outpatient appointments in England dropped off as soon as Britain was plunged into its first lockdown. In the year 2019 to 2020 which only included a week of No10's first shutdown there were around 2.5million planned outpatient appointments per week with 2million attendances. By early April 2020 during the first lockdown weekly appointments (1.3million) fell by 48 per cent and weekly attendances (826,000) fell by over 60 per cent compared to these previous averages. Appointments dipped to just over 1million per week at the end of December, when Boris Johnson introduced Tier Four restrictions across swathes of England. But the fall-off in the second lockdown back in November was less dramatic. NHS digital said: 'Activity levels recovered during 2020-21 but remained below pre-Covid averages at the end of the period.' The damning data comes after the Prime Minister announced the National Insurance hike at the start of the month in order to help clear the NHS backlog, saying it would help the health service get 'back on its feet'. The health service will receive the vast majority of the 36billion raised by the 1.25 per cent National Insurance hike over the next three years, with social care receiving a 5.3billion slice. It will see people earning 50,000 a year having to pay an extra 500 annually in National Insurance. Critics warned pouring the money into the NHS which also given an emergency 60billion pot on top of its annual slice of 150billion to fight Covid last year would lead to even more demands for money in the future. NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation immediately told the Prime Minister that the extra funds were not enough at the time. But pleading for more funds today, Ms Cordery gave no indication of how the money would raised. She told Sky News the 1.5billion would be spent on fixing holes in roofs as well as making mental health wards safer. Ms Cordery: 'They're really critical to both the safe and effective running of hospital services. 'You know if the air conditioning doesn't work in an operating theatre then you can't use that operating theatre. So that's out of action and we know the challenges that that brings. 'This isn't about the running costs, this is about the physical infrastructure and it's also about digital transformation. She added: 'How do we bring NHS services fully into the 21st century and replace outdated technology. 'We need 1.5billion a year extra on top of the 8.5billion capital budget that is already there. 'It's a substantial amount but it's a really important figure because it enables us to really work at full pelt to recover that backlog of routine operations and it enables them to modernise their service and provide really safe environments.' Asked how people could trust the extra funding would be necessary or spent wisely, Ms Saffron said the NHS is currently hamstrung by rules that dictate what it can spend on. Hospitals and other care providers are given two separate budgets one for day-to-day running costs and another for maintenance and long-term spending. Current Treasury rules mean hospitals can't use any of the funds from the impending tax hike for maintenance work, she claimed. And caps on overall NHS spending also mean individual hospitals can't use funds available in their own budgets if it means the health service as a whole exceeds the agreed limits. Health chiefs are demanding further investment, despite the spike in funds the NHS will receive because of Boris Johnson's 12billion National Insurance tax raid to pay for health and social care. Graph shows: The increases to core funding and additional Covid funding in the Department of Health and Social Care's budget Graphs show: The increase in yearly national insurance payments in each pay bracket because of the Government's recent She said: 'There are some rules that need to be changed that would mean money that is already there could be used. 'I think what I would say to the Treasury is we know that we need the opportunity to use the investment that is already made and new investment as effectively and efficiently as possible. 'Because at the moment without those changes we're actually holding the NHS back in terms of what it can do with the funds it has already got, not just new funds that are coming. 'And I that's really worth remembering.' Labour's research in 2019, before the pandemic hit, showed at least 76 NHS hospital trusts experienced safety incidents over the previous year because their buildings were outdated or falling apart. In one gruesome example, sewage spurted out of a drain and landed on a patient's bed, while another had human faeces seeping up through the floor. Broken lifts have trapped staff and left patients lingering in corridors, and ceilings have caved in and only narrowly missed patients lying in beds below. It comes after Mr Johnson announced his new 36 billion social care fund as a way to help the NHS recover from the coronavirus pandemic and reform the adult social care system so people no longer face catastrophic care costs. Department of Health bosses said the new funding will see the NHS deliver an extra nine million checks, scans, and operations for patients across the country in a bid to try and drive down waiting times. Two diamond bracelets that belonged to Marie Antoinette who entrusted them to a friend for safekeeping before her execution are tipped to sell for 3million. The stunning jewels, which contain 112 diamonds, were among her few surviving possessions sent from France before she and her husband, King Louis XIV, were captured during the French Revolution. After the royal couple were executed in 1793 the jewellery ended up with their eldest daughter, Marie-Therese, who was exiled to Britain. She died in 1851 and her jewellery collection was divided among her three nieces and nephews, the Count and Countess of Chambord and the Duchess of Parma. The two matching bracelets have been presented to Christie's auctioneers by a mystery member of European royalty who is selling them almost 250 years later. Two diamond bracelets that belonged to Marie Antoinette who entrusted them to a friend for safekeeping before her execution are tipped to sell for 3million Francois Curiel, chairman at Christie's in Europe, said: 'It is a privilege to be able to offer these exceptional and unique bracelets which will attract bidding from collectors globally. 'As seen in recent sales, the market for jewels of noble provenance continues to perform extremely well. 'Of the pieces of jewellery with a traceable provenance back to the Queen of France, these extraordinary bracelets are the only example to include diamonds belonging to her. 'While it is possible that the bracelets might have been re-mounted at a later stage, no changes were made to the overall composition.' Marie Antionette bought the bracelets for 250,000 livres in 1776, paying for them partly with gemstones from her personal collection and with funds provided by her husband. The king's personal papers dated at the time state: 'To the queen: down payment of 29,000 livres for the diamond bracelets she bought in Boehmer.' Marie Antionette bought the bracelets for 250,000 livres in 1776, paying for them partly with gemstones from her personal collection and with funds provided by her husband, King Louis XIV The stunning jewels, which contain 112 diamonds, were among her few surviving possessions sent from France before she and her husband, King Louis XIV, were captured during the French Revolution The two matching bracelets have been presented to Christie's auctioneers by a mystery member of European royalty who is selling them almost 250 years after Marie-Therese's death As the French Revolution gathered pace, the queen placed the bracelets in a wooden chest which she sent to Austrian ambassador and personal friend, Count Mercy-Argenteau, in Brussels in 1791. He kept the box safe and unopened until Marie Antoinette was tried for treason and guillotined on October 16, 1793 following the abolition of the royal family. Emperor Francis II of Austria, the queen's brother, later ordered the chest to be opened and an inventory made of the items she had left behind. The jewellery inside was presented to her daughter, 17-year-old Marie-Theresa - known as Madame Royale - the only surviving member of the French royal family. Vincent Meylan, a historian who researched the bracelets for his new book, said: 'The story begins in 1794 when a box of jewels is opened in Brussels by Count Mercy Argenteau, Austrian ambassador to France and a personal friend of Queen Marie Antoinette. 'In March 1791, the queen had sent her jewels to Count Mercy for safe keeping. She had been guillotined in Paris on October 16 1793. 'All of her jewels were given to her only surviving child, Madame Royale, who had just been freed from the Prison Du Temple in Paris. 'She had entered the Temple in August 1793 with her father, King Louis XVI, mother, Queen Marie Antoinette, brother, the dauphin, and aunt, Madams Elisabeth - all were dead by the time she left.' After the royal couple were executed in 1793 the jewellery ended up with their eldest daughter, Marie-Therese, who was exiled to Britain. Above: Marie-Therese is seen wearing the jewellery in an 1816 portrait painted by Antoine-Jean Gros Queen Marie Antoinette was born the Archduchess of Austria as the daughter of Emperor Frances I of Austria in 1755. She married into the French royal family in 1770 at the tender age of 14. The queen had attempted to flee Paris to Varennes with her family in June 1791 but they were captured and placed under house arrest. They were later imprisoned and the monarchy replaced by the National Convention in 1792. The new government found Louis XVI guilty of treason and he was guillotined on January 21 1793, later followed by his wife. Marie Theresa was released in a prisoner exchange and taken to her mother's birthplace in Vienna in 1795 In a portrait by Antoine-Jean Gros, painted in 1816, Marie-Theresa is wearing a pair of diamond bracelets remarkably similar to those she received from her mother. The bracelets will be sold in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 9. The queen had attempted to flee Paris to Varennes with her family in June 1791 but they were captured and placed under house arrest. They were later imprisoned and the monarchy replaced by the National Convention in 1792. The new government found Louis XVI guilty of treason and he was guillotined on January 21 1793, later followed by his wife Advertisement Kwasi Kwarteng was branded 'shameful' today after he suggested a warm autumn might be the best hope of easing the crisis over gas prices. Dragged back to be grilled by MPs on the crisis, the Business Secretary stressed the weather is the 'single most important determinant' of costs. The comment came hours after Boris Johnson made a speech at the UN warning of the dangers of climate change. But he denied the government was 'complacent' about the issues and repeated that there will be no 'reward for failure' bailouts for collapsing energy firms, amid warnings that big suppliers will soon come 'cap in hand' for support. Mr Kwarteng has admitted there are no guarantees that gas prices will go back to previous levels, despite the government striking a deal to stave off a shortage in CO2 threatening to cause food shortages. As the problems bite, there have been calls for VAT to be cut on energy bills while ministers are believed to be looking at a windfall tax on fatcat energy firms profiteering. Meanwhile, there are complaints that ministers did not heed pleas to increase the UK's gas storage capacity - which could have given more time to handle the pressures. Labour's Ed Miliband said: 'It's shameful that the Business Secretary is suggesting a warm autumn will fix these problems. 'His complacency including his failure to plan ahead when warned about a looming energy crisis is part of the reason we are in this situation. 'He must take this seriously, starting with cancelling the cut to universal credit which will hurt families dealing with higher energy bills.' Dragged back to be grilled by MPs on the crisis, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng stressed the weather is the 'single most important determiner' of costs Two more energy firms with a combined 800,000 customers, Avro Energy and Green Supplier, went into administration yesterday. Dozens of other companies are under threat including Bulb, which supplies 1.7million homes Tories including former minister Robert Halfon have been urging the government to cut VAT on energy bills as a way of easing the pressure on families In the Commons, Labour MP Rachael Maskell, who represents York Central, said: 'The rise in energy prices will disproportionately impact people living in the North because it is colder during the winter in the North. 'So what assessment has he made of the regional disparities and how is he going to mitigate against that?' Mr Kwarteng replied: 'I think the honourable lady raises a very fair point and clearly in terms of the gas price the single most important determinant of it is the weather, and she's absolutely right. 'That's why we've got schemes like the Warm Home Discount and that's why we're absolutely focused on protecting the most vulnerable customers, wherever they are in the UK.' The Business Secretary insisted the industry and market will find the solution to the energy crisis. Responding to an urgent question, he told the Commons: 'The Government has been clear that protecting consumers is our primary focus and shapes our entire approach to this. 'We will continue to protect consumers with the energy price cap. 'The solution to this crisis will be found from the industry and the market, as is already happening, and the Government - I repeat - will not be bailing out failed energy companies.' Mr Kwarteng maintained the price cap will remain in place. Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband quoted a letter from energy regulator Ofgem warning of a 'systemic risk to the energy supply as a whole' which had been sent 18 months ago. He accused ministers of being 'complacent' about the shock that rising gas prices could wreak upon the market, as well as families and the cost of living. But Mr Kwarteng said Ofgem's concerns had been 'interrogated' during the coronavirus pandemic, with the supplier of last resort programme, where consumers are automatically transferred to a new provider if their supplier exits the market, was 'found to work'. Millions of families face paying more than 400 extra as the ongoing crisis causes further suppliers to collapse. Two more energy firms with a combined 800,000 customers, Avro Energy and Green Supplier, went into administration yesterday. Dozens of other companies are under threat including Bulb, which supplies 1.7million homes. Customers on cheap tariffs with failed firms face being bumped up to the capped rate of 1,277 a rise of at least 400. Energy watchdog Ofgem described the situation as 'unprecedented' and confirmed bills would rise further. The bleak warning came as food chiefs said supply problems caused by shortages of drivers and farm workers were deepening. 'Our concern is that the pictures of empty shelves will get ten times worse by Christmas and then we'll get panic buying,' said Andrew Woolfenden of Tesco. Twelve industry groups, led by the National Farmers' Union, predicted the situation would get worse without a new visa regime to draw in foreign workers. Customers with failing energy firms will be switched to new suppliers charging much higher tariffs, which is likely to add at least 400 extra to the cost of heat and light. The chief of Green, Peter McGirr, told the BBC this morning that he had done nothing wrong and bigger suppliers would soon face problems. Mr McGirr said: 'You will see larger suppliers feeling the pain as well and they will come cap in hand for a bailout.' George Grant of Stag Energy, said he had tried but failed to get support for the Gateway Project just off Barrow-in-Furness (pictured a disused storage facility in London) George Grant of Stag Energy, said he had tried but failed to get support for the Gateway Project just off Barrow-in-Furness. 'The proposal was for a salt cavern gas storage facility in what's been acknowledged by the British Geological Survey as the best salt structure for such a service in the UK,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'It was about 12 miles off the coast. The philosophy behind this is that you create caverns within the salt and it's a very good medium to store gas.' But he said they had 'finally given up' on getting the project to go ahead. 'In 2004, when we first spoke to the government, there was a lot of interest in new gas storage. We got to the financial crash in 2008 when credit requirements on long-term contracts became much more challenging. 'It was at that point that we really started to engage more with the government about potential support mechanisms or some form of intervention to ensure there was adequate security of supply in the gas sector. 'The government, in their wisdom, chose to run with a just in time approach. There is on an annual basis plenty of gas around the world and lots of liquid gas being shipped around, but the challenge we're seeing at the moment is a confluence of events including low wind production and the subsequent high demand for gas, supplies being drawn into China and the fertiliser plants going off. 'As a result there has been a shortage of supply and prices have risen accordingly. 'Additional storage in the UK would have certainly helped in this situation. 'The message we've given to the government is that you can't turn around when there is a crisis and call for a facility like this. The lead time is about ten years from getting sufficient encouragement and structure around financing to actually building it. 'Energy infrastructure is a long term business that goes beyond election cycles.' At least 1.5million consumers have seen their suppliers go to the wall in recent weeks after the energy sector was hit by rocketing global wholesale gas prices. Business minister Paul Scully confirmed there is pressure on the energy price gap, which he said is saving dual-fuel energy customers around 100 per year, but that it will be up to the regulator Ofgem to determine if it should rise. The cap is currently due to next be reviewed in April. Mr Scully told Sky News: 'This is all part of the conversations that Ofgem will set that cap at, because supply prices are based on a number of factors. 'Clearly, as Government, we need to make sure we are planning for the worst-case scenario because we want to make sure we can protect consumers.' Pressed on what the worst-case scenario looks like, he added: 'That it goes on for longer than a short spike. I can't give you a figure now.' A man accused of attempted rape has been ordered to wash and iron the clothes of all 2,000 women in his village for six months as a bail condition. Lalan Kumar, 20, will have to buy the detergent and other items needed to provide six months of free laundry services to the woman of Majhor in Bihar state, under the ruling made on Wednesday. Kumar, who washes clothes for a living, was arrested in April on charges including attempted rape, Santosh Kumar Singh, a police officer in Bihar's Madhubani district told AFP news agency. He was also required to pay a bail bond. No date has been set for his trial. Kumar's lawyer said the accused was ready to 'do community service relating to his profession' in order to show his professed respect for women. A man accused of attempted rape has been ordered to wash and iron the clothes of all 2,000 women in his village for six months as a bail condition [Stock image] 'All the women in the village are happy with the court decision, claimed Nasima Khatoon, the head of the village council. Khatoon, one of the village dignitaries who will monitor Kumar, added: 'It is historic. It will boost respect for women and help to protect dignity.' Women in the village said the order had already made a positive impact by making crime against women a subject of discussion in their community. 'This is a remarkable step and a different kind of punishment that sends a message to society,' said Anjum Perween. India's rape laws were overhauled after a 2012 gang rape in New Delhi but the number of offences remains high, with more than 28,000 rapes reported in 2020. The actual number is likely to be much higher. Police have long been accused of not doing enough to prevent violent crime and failing to bring sexual assault cases to court. Nineteen Chinese aircraft have entered Taiwan's airspace - ramping up tensions in the region in the wake of the AUKUS submarine pact. Taipei said 14 fighters - including 12 J-16s and two J-11s - entered its air defence identification zone on Thursday morning. Accompanying the fighters were two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, one Y-8 plane equipped with 'electronic warfare' equipment, and two Y-8 anti-submarine planes, the country's defence ministry said. Fighter jets were scrambled to turn the aircraft back while radio warnings were also broadcast and missile defence systems activated to monitor the situation. China frequently flies such missions, but they have taken on new significance in the wake of the AUKUS deal. Taiwan is a close ally of the US, meaning the UK and Australia could now be dragged into any future conflict with China because of the defence pact. China has flown 19 aircraft into Taiwan's air space, including 14 fighters and two nuclear-capable bombers in one of the largest sorties in months Two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers took part in the sortie, flying south of Taiwan island before turning around and heading back to China (file image) Flight tracking data published by Taiwan showed the J-16 and J-11 fighters flew a short distance into the ADIZ before turning back. Meanwhile the bombers, electronic warfare aircraft and anti-submarine planes completed a circuit around the southern tip of Taiwan before turning back. The island's government has complained for a year of repeated missions by China's air force near its borders, often in the southwestern part of its air defense zone close to Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island. China has flown aircraft into Taiwan's defence zone every day this month with the exception of September 2, defence ministry data shows. Most missions only involve a handful of aircraft, making Thursday's sortie exceptional for its size. Only two comparable missions have taken place in recent months, with one on September 5 that included 19 aircraft and one on June 15 that included 28. Self-governing Taiwan, which is home to the Republic of China which fought against the Communist Party when it first emerged, views itself as an independent state but Beijing views it as a breakaway province. It has long-standing ties with the US, which historically recognised it as the legitimate government of China. Tensions around the island have been mounting since President Xi Jinping vowed in 2019 to 'reunify' Taiwan with the Chinese mainland, using force if necessary. Twelve J-16 (pictured) and two J-11 fighters also took part in the mission, which was one of the largest to be flown in recent months The standoff entered a new phase last week when Australia, the UK and US announced a new defence pact to share military technology that will include giving Australia its first fleet of nuclear submarines. Beijing reacted angrily to the deal, denouncing the allies' 'Cold War mentality' while warning it risks stability in the region and could make Australia the target of a nuclear strike. Shortly after the alliance was announced, Australian defence minister Peter Dutton admitted that war with China is possible - with Taiwan likely to be the flashpoint. The deal is about securing 'peace' in the region, Mr Dutton insisted, but added that the odds of a conflict with China 'shouldn't be discounted'. 'The Chinese.. are very clear of their intent with regard to Taiwan [and] the United States has been very clear of their intention toward Taiwan,' he said. 'Nobody wants to see conflict but that really is a question for the Chinese.' The incident came a day after Taiwan proposed extra defence spending of $9billion over the next five years, including on new missiles, warning of an urgent need to upgrade weapons in the face of a 'severe threat' from China. Speaking earlier on Friday, Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said the government had to take the threat from China seriously. 'The Chinese Communists plot against us constantly,' he said. Taiwan's defence spending 'is based on safeguarding national sovereignty, national security, and national security. We must not relax. We must have the best preparations so that no war will occur', he added. China's government, for its part, criticised Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu on Friday for comments this week in which he said Taiwan was a 'sea fortress' blocking China's expansion into the Pacific. Wu's 'aim is to deceive public opinion, to rope in and collude with anti-China foreign forces', China's Taiwan Affairs Office said in statement. Advertisement The number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day fell five per cent last week, according to one of the country's biggest surveillance projects. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell. But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts warned cases would spiral after children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in September. Professor Tim Spector, who leads the study, warned today that the UK still had one of the highest infection rates in Europe and called for the Covid symptoms list to be updated to help get a handle on infections. He said the classic three symptoms cough, fever and loss of taste and smell were rarer these days thanks to vaccines which had made the virus more like a bad cold. He said other warning signs like a sore throat, runny nose and sneezing should be added to the official list. It came after the scientist who created the Oxford vaccine said Covid was unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. The symptom-tracking app's figures differ from the Department of Health's dashboard, which shows Covid cases have risen week-on-week for the last five days. But both are pointing to a surge in cases among youngsters. Separate Test and Trace statistics today showed the number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England fell 22 per cent last week to the lowest toll since the end of June. But data compiled is delayed and will pick up to reflect the up-tick spotted by the Department of Health. Public Health England's weekly surveillance report today showed Covid cases fell in 112 of 149 local authorities or three-quarters last week. But their data also highlighted a surge in infections among 5 to 9-year-olds. Experts say the symptom-tracking study also run by health data science firm ZOE is becoming less reliable because vaccines have made it harder to pick out Covid from other respiratory infections like flu. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts had warned children returning to classrooms would trigger a spike in cases The above graph shows the study's estimated of Covid cases by regions over time. It suggests they are flatlining in all areas Latest figures from Test and Trace showed Covid cases in England fell 22 per cent up to September 15, after 161,923 cases were recorded through testing. Infections are now at their lowest levels since the end of June. Department of Health data contradicts the ZOE study, showing that Covid cases rose week-on-week for the last five days. But it is picking up a surge among younger age groups, which matches the study Slide me PHE data showed Covid cases fell in three-quarters of local authorities last week (pictured) Public Health England's weekly surveillance report showed Covid cases are now increasing among 5 to 19-year-olds in a delayed back-to-school wave. But these infections are yet to spill over into other age groups They found that infections remained stable across England's regions in the week to September 19, the latest available Professor Spector said: 'The UK still has more cases than most of Europe and I believe this is for two main reasons; the first is a lack of masks and social distancing and the second is because were ignorant of the symptoms. 'We should be looking out for things like sore throat, runny nose and sneezing. 'The classic three cough, fever and anosmia [loss of taste and smell] are rarer these days, yet the government has done nothing. 'By not updating advice, were letting people into care homes, schools, workplaces and large gatherings displaying known signs of Covid. Britain's Covid cases rise by 13% in a week to 34,460 as delayed back-to-school wave kicks in Britain's daily Covid cases have risen 13 per cent in a week in another sign that the back-to-school wave has finally started to kick in but hospitalisations and deaths have fallen by nearly a fifth. Department of Health statistics showed another 34,460 infections were spotted yesterday, up on the 30,597 recorded last Wednesday. It marks the fifth day in a row that positive coronavirus tests have ticked up week-on-week, suggesting the UK may now be seeing the effect of the return of millions of pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scientists had warned that the reopening of classrooms would cause a sharp rise in infections. Meanwhile, latest Covid hospitalisation figures showed there were 747 admissions on September 18, down 17 per cent on the same time last week. And another 166 Covid deaths were recorded yesterday, mirroring the drop seen in hospital admissions. The figures came as Professor Chris Whitty warned yesterday that almost all unvaccinated pupils were likely to catch Covid in the future. Explaining to MPs that the risks of not jabbing 12 to 15-year-olds outweighed the harms, England's chief medical officer denied extending the roll out to these age groups was a political decision. More than 120,000 pupils were off school last week due to Covid, figures showed yesterday, or 1.5 per cent of total pupils in Britain's schools. Almost 92 per cent of pupils were in class. Advertisement 'One in 95 people in the UK have Covid. If we dont wake up to the fact these cold-like symptoms could be Covid, we will continue to keep numbers high, putting unnecessary strain on an exhausted NHS and letting more than 170 people die every day.' He added: 'Another week of declining cases is positive news, but the decline is slow and unpredictable. As predicted, the return to school has led to climbing cases in the young. 'While its true that Covid in children is mostly mild, the real issue is their ability to pass on the virus to those who are most vulnerable. ZOE Covid Study data shows protection waning in those who were first in line for a vaccine, and so their risk of getting infected is rising.' The study also estimated infections had risen slightly among 30 to 39-year-olds. But the age group where cases were increasing most were 0 to 18-year-olds in another sign that return of children to schools has triggered an uptick. They said their figures were based on reports from more than 750,000 Britons who have logged into the app to say they felt well or entered their results from swabs. The drop in Covid cases differs to figures from the Government dashboard, which show cases have risen for the past five days week-on-week. Department of Health statistics showed another 34,460 infections were spotted yesterday, up 15 per cent from the 30,597 recorded last Wednesday. Scientists had warned that the reopening of classrooms at the start of September in England, Wales and Northern Ireland would cause a sharp rise in infections. Data showed England and Wales both saw their Covid cases surge yesterday compared to the same time last week, by a quarter and eight per cent respectively. England's data indicates cases are rising fastest in 10 to 14-year-olds. Yesterday's statistics also showed hospitalisations dropped 17 per cent in a week after 747 people were admitted on September 18, and deaths fell by the same amount after 166 were recorded. PHE's report today showed three-qaurters of local authorities in England saw their infections fall over the week to September 19, compared to the previous seven-day spell. But according to Department of Health data England's infections only started rising from September 15, suggesting the latest report is unlikely to pick up all the areas where cases are now heading upwards. Hull recorded the sharpest drop in infections, down 36 per cent in a week, followed by Camden, down 33 per cent, and Southend-on-Sea, down 32 per cent. On the other hand, infections rose fastest in Herefordshire (up 23 per cent), followed by North Lincolnshire (up 22 per cent) and Swindon (up 21 per cent). When broken down by age group figures showed only 5 to 9-year-olds and 10 to 19-year-olds have seen their infections increase in a week, by 25 and 24 per cent respectively. This suggests cases are yet to spill over into other age groups. Those aged 10 to 19 also had the highest Covid infection rate (756.2 cases per 100,000 people), followed by 5 to 9-year-olds (483.5 per 100,000) and 40 to 49-year-olds (293.4 per 100,000). For comparison, over-80s had the lowest infection rate (81.1 per 100,000), alongside 70 to 79-year-olds (100.7 per 100,000) and 0 to 4-year-olds (125.7 per 100,000). Dr Yvonne Doyle, PHE's medical director, said: 'We must remain vigilant as case rates remain high throughout the country. When winter approaches, it is likely that infections, hospitalisations and deaths will rise. 'The vaccines offer the best protection against Covid. One dose is now being offered to 12 15 year olds and a third dose to those over 50 and the clinically vulnerable. 'Please keep following the simple steps to help protect yourself and others. Wear a face covering in enclosed spaces, such as on public transport, to reduce the spread of infection. 'Avoid mixing with others if you feel unwell and make sure to take a PCR test if you have any Covid symptoms.' ENGLAND: The above graph shows Covid cases in England by date reported. The latest figures show the country's cases have surged by a quarter in a week after 27,317 were recorded today. It schools returned at the start of September WALES: The above graph shows Covid cases in Wales by date reported. The latest figures show Covid cases in this country are also starting to increase, after schools returned in early September Test and Trace figures also showed some 12 per cent of people or one in eight who were transferred to the system were not reached, meaning they were unable to provide details of recent contacts. A total of 87.3 per cent of people who were tested for Covid in England in the week ending September 15 at a regional site, local site or mobile testing unit a so-called 'in-person' test received their result within 24 hours. This was up from 81 per cent the previous week. It came after the scientist who created the Oxford vaccine said Covid was unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. She said viruses tend to 'become less virulent as they circulate' through the population, adding: 'There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2'. Dame Sarah said the virus which causes Covid-19 will eventually become like the coronaviruses which circulate widely and cause the common cold. Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine seminar, Dame Sarah said: 'We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don't really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. 'It's just a question of how long it's going to take to get there and what measures we're going to have to take to manage it in the meantime.' The 59-year-old led the team at Oxford University's Jenner institute which created the lifesaving Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the most widely distributed jab in the world. Dame Sarah also revealed she is struggling to get funding to help prevent future pandemics. The scientist, who specialises in the development of jabs against emerging viruses, said urgent investment was needed to prevent other infectious diseases spreading around the world. She said: 'We're still trying to raise funds to develop other vaccines that we were working on before the pandemic, against diseases that have caused outbreaks in the past and will cause outbreaks in the future. 'We are being financially supported for our ongoing work against Covid... but when we try to return to projects we were working on before coronavirus we're still trying to get funding.' Meanwhile, she said the very rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca jab have not been seen in the same rates in other parts of the world. She also suggested that primary work on a tweaked vaccine to combat the Beta variant of the virus only gave a 'slightly better' immune response than the original vaccine, when given as a third dose to people who had already had two jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the data is still being collected. In June, then health secretary Matt Hancock said the Government was in commercial discussions with the pharmaceutical giant over the variant vaccine. Dame Sarah was also asked which of her titles she is most proud of, and said: 'Professor, definitely.' The scientist's comments came as England's chief medical officer said almost all unvaccinated children will become infected with Covid at some point and said the others would get it 'sooner or later', insisting that vaccines will cut that risk. Being grilled by politicians about his decision to recommend all over-12s are given Covid jabs, Professor Whitty insisted the move was made purely due to the benefits children would get. He denied the advice which overruled guidance from No10's top vaccine advisory panel which recommended youngsters weren't jabbed was political. Professor Whitty said: 'The great majority of children who have not currently had Covid are going to get it at some point. 'It won't be necessary in the next two or three months but they will get it sooner or later because this is incredibly infectious. Vaccination will reduce that risk.' A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Mesopotamian king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq. The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation's capital. Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet - known as the Gilgamesh Dream tablet - from the museum in September 2019. A 3,500-year-old clay tablet (pictured) discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Mesopotamian king, then looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, is finally headed back to Iraq Months later, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, began a civil forfeiture court proceeding that resulted in the repatriation, which is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at a ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian that will include officials from Iraq. It's part of an increasing effort by authorities in the U.S. and around the world to return antiquities pilfered from their home countries. In years past, such items probably would never have made it back - the black market for these relics is vast, as are criminal networks and smugglers dealing in stolen items and falsifying ownership data. 'By returning these illegally acquired objects, the authorities here in the United States and in Iraq are allowing the Iraqi people to reconnect with a page in their history,' said Audrey Azoulay, director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. 'This exceptional restitution is a major victory over those who mutilate heritage and then traffic it to finance violence and terrorism.' For the acting head of Homeland Security Investigations which found and investigated the origins of the tablet, the repatriation is personal. The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal Steve Francis was assigned to a U.S. Customs unit in 2003 that was sent to Iraq to help protect looted artefacts, and his parents were born in Iraq. He said: 'It's really special to me. I'm a Chaldean Iraqi and leading the agency that did this work,' Francis said. 'It is really something.' Authorities are also repatriating a Sumerian Ram sculpture that was seized during a separate case. The sculpture, from 3000 B.C., was used for religious vows in Sumerian temples. Investigators believe it had been stolen from an archaeological site in southern Iraq, then passed off as part of a collection that had been discovered years earlier. Homeland Security Investigations teams, curious about the size of the collection, looked it up and discovered the ram was not among the listed items. The dealer eventually fessed up. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in the nation's capital Homeland Security Investigations has returned more than 15,000 items in 40 countries, including at least 5,000 artefacts to Iraq since 2008. Many of the cases have come from the agency's office in New York, where a team of agents is investigating the trafficking of cultural property and stolen artefacts, which have included other tablets and clay seals. The owners of Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, devout Christians, collected artefacts for the Bible museum on a large scale. Prosecutors said Steve Green, the president of the $4 billion company, agreed to buy more than 5,500 artefacts in 2010 for $1.6 million in a scheme that involved a number of middlemen and the use of phoney or misleading invoices, shipping labels and other paperwork to slip the artefacts past U.S. customs agents. Prosecutors say Hobby Lobby was warned by its own expert that acquiring antiquities from Iraq carried 'considerable risk' because so many of the artefacts in circulation are stolen. But Green, who had been collecting ancient artefacts since 2009, pleaded naivete in doing business with dealers in the Middle East. Authorities are also repatriating a Sumerian Ram sculpture that was seized during a separate case In 2018, the executives agreed to settle the case for $3 million and return thousands of objects. The lead agent on the case, John Labbatt, based in New York, said Homeland Security was repatriating items from that case in 2018 when they were made aware of the smuggled tablet, too. But getting it back it wasn't simple. Agents had to prove it was wrongly acquired. Labbatt pored over records and tracked the tablet from London to the United States in 2003. It had been bought by a couple who admitted they were aware at the time they were purchasing it from someone who may not have been above board, he said. They mailed it to themselves in the U.S., so it didn't go through customs. The sculpture, from 3000 B.C., was used for religious vows in Sumerian temples. Investigators believe it had been stolen from an archaeological site in southern Iraq, then passed off as part of a collection that had been discovered years earlier A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several times before Hobby Lobby bought it from a London-based auction house in 2014. By then, the statute of limitations had passed to charge the couple with any crimes. 'But really in the end, the most important part is getting it back where it belongs,' Labbatt said. 'And that's what we're doing.' Sir John Bell, one of the Government's advisers on vaccines insisted the frequency with which the condition occurs is 'much, much lower than people had anticipated' Long Covid is 'overblown' and patients who think they have it often have another ailment, an expert has claimed. Sir John Bell, one of the Government's advisers on vaccines insisted the frequency with which the condition occurs is 'much, much lower than people had anticipated'. Estimates suggest two million people have self-reported Long Covid symptoms, including fatigue, muscle aches and concentration issues. However, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests half of people who appear to be suffering the effects may not actually have it. Sir John told Times Radio: The long Covid thing has been slightly overblown and as soon as you start to do proper epidemiological studies, you find the incidence is much, much lower than people had anticipated.' He added that the country was now over the worst of the pandemic and that things should be fine once winter had passed. Those comments were echoed by the boss of one of the first drug giants to get a Covid vaccine approved. Moderna's chief executive Stephane Bancel said enough jabs will have been made to vaccinate all of the world's 7.7billion people by the middle of next year. Asked when life would return to normal, he said: 'As of today, in a year, I assume.' Meanwhile, an array of top experts have also lined up to talk down the threat of the virus, which first emerged in China towards the end of 2019. Oxford University's Dame Sarah Gilbert, who helped create AstraZeneca's jab, last night reiterated Covid will eventually just become a cold which some scientists tracking the UK's outbreak say is already happening. And in another ray of hope, Dame Sarah also insisted it was unlikely to mutate into an even deadlier variant. Influential SAGE member Professor Neil Ferguson today also claimed it was unlikely another full-blown lockdown would be needed. But the Imperial College London epidemiologist, whose grisly projections spooked ministers into the first nationwide shutdown last spring, echoed No10's warning that some restrictions could be needed if pressure starts to explode on hospitals. Boris Johnson has already rolled the pitch for the return of masks, work from home guidance and vaccine passports when he unveiled his winter plan to fight Covid last week. Daily hospitalisation admissions are currently dropping, with 747 Covid-infected Brits seeking care on September 18 down nearly a fifth in a week. But cases finally appear to be on the rise again, in what some experts believe may be a delayed back-to-school wave. Experts feared the return of millions of pupils would trigger a meteoric spike in infections after cases spiralled to record highs in Scotland, when children went back in mid-August. Moderna's chief executive Stephane Bancel (left) said there will be enough jabs to vaccinate the world's 8billion people by the middle of next year and he expects a return to normal by this time in 2022. And Professor Neil Ferguson (right) today also claimed unlikely another full-blown lockdown would be needed Department of Health data contradicts the ZOE study, showing that Covid cases rose week-on-week for the last five days. But it is picking up a surge among younger age groups, which matches the study Number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day falls by 5% in a week, symptom-tracking app shows The number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day fell five per cent last week, according to one of the country's biggest surveillance projects. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell. But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts warned cases would spiral after children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in September. Professor Tim Spector, who leads the study, warned today that the UK still had one of the highest infection rates in Europe and called for the Covid symptoms list to be updated to help get a handle on infections. He said the classic three symptoms cough, fever and loss of taste and smell were rarer these days thanks to vaccines which had made the virus more like a bad cold. He said other warning signs like a sore throat, runny nose and sneezing should be added to the list. The symptom-tracking apps figures differ from the Department of Health dashboard, which shows Covid cases have risen week-on-week for the last five days. But both are pointing to a surge in cases among youngsters. Experts have warned the study also run by health data science company ZOE is becoming less reliable because vaccines have made it harder to pick out Covid from other respiratory infections like flu. Almost nine in ten over-16s have got at least one dose of the jab. Latest figures from Test and Trace showed the number of people that tested positive for the virus in England fell 22 per cent last week, after there were 161,923 positive tests. This was the lowest number since the end of June. Advertisement Infection rates across the UK rose by 13 per cent yesterday compared to one week earlier, with 34,460 cases recorded, according to official Department of Health and Social Care. It marked the fifth day in a row that cases have ticked upwards. But mirroring the drop seen in hospital admissions, 166 deaths were recorded, down 17 per cent from last week. It comes as Mr Bancel told Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung the pandemic could be over within 12 months, as a hike in global vaccine production will ensure there is enough to double-jab everyone in the world. He said: 'If you look at the industry-wide expansion of production capacities over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this earth can be vaccinated.' And there will be enough injections to give boosters to everyone who needs them and vaccinate children, he said. People who don't get inoculated will inevitably catch the virus and get antibodies from natural infection, the vaccine boss said. He told the newspaper: 'Those who do not get vaccinated will immunize themselves naturally, because the Delta variant is so contagious. 'In this way we will end up in a situation similar to that of the flu. You can either get vaccinated and have a good winter. 'Or you don't do it and risk getting sick and possibly even ending up in hospital.' Asked if that meant a return to normal in the second half of next year, he said: 'As of today, in a year, I assume.' Mr Bancel said he expected Governments to approve booster shots for people already vaccinated because patients at risk who were vaccinated last autumn 'undoubtedly' needed a refresher. Moderna's booster injection is a half dose of the vaccine used for first and second jabs, which means there are more booster doses available. He said: 'The volume of vaccine is the biggest limiting factor. 'With half the dose, we would have 3billion doses available worldwide for the coming year instead of just 2billion,' he said. The composition of the booster shot remains the same as the original for this year because Moderna had not had enough time to change it. 'We are currently testing Delta-optimized variants in clinical trials. They will form the basis for the booster vaccination for 2022. We are also trying out Delta plus Beta, the next mutation that scientists believe is likely,' he said. Moderna vaccine 'is more effective against Covid infection at 96% compared to Pfizer shot at 89%' Yet another study has found that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine may be more effective against infection that the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. Researchers, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared the two vaccines in a real-world study of 5,000 healthcare workers in 25 states. They found that the Moderna vaccine was 96 percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid while the Pfizer jab was 89 percent effective. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that while both vaccines are still highly protective, one may be more so than the other - and could have impacts on the conversation surrounding booster shots. Advertisement Moderna can use existing production lines for the new variants as for the original Covid vaccine and the price of vaccination will stay the same, Mr Bancel added. Around 1.5million Britons have already had Moderna's Covid vaccine. Its roll-out was slow when it was first approved, any the majority of adults had already been given Pfizer or AstraZeneca. It comes as Sir John, a regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said Britain is 'over the worst' of the pandemic and 'should be fine' once winter has passed. His comments followed the Royal Society of Medicine webinar last night, where Dame Sarah said viruses tend to become 'less virulent' meaning they have less severe outcomes, such as hospitalisation and death as they spread more easily. She said 'there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version' of Covid and there will be growing immunity in the population, as there is with all other seasonal coronaviruses. Asked about these comments on Times Radio, Sir John said: 'If you look at the trajectory we're on, we're a lot better off than we were six months ago. 'So the pressure on the NHS is largely abated. If you look at the deaths from Covid, they tend to be very elderly people, and it's not entirely clear it was Covid that caused all those deaths. 'So I think we're over the worst of it now.' King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts had warned children returning to classrooms would trigger a spike in cases 'Covid is going to just become a cold': Vaccine pioneer says virus will get weaker all the time The scientist who created the Oxford vaccine has said Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. She said viruses tend to 'become less virulent as they circulate' through the population, adding: 'There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2'. Dame Sarah said the virus which causes Covid-19 will eventually become like the coronaviruses which circulate widely and cause the common cold. Her comments come as Professor Chris Whitty warned that almost all unvaccinated children will become infected with Covid at some point in the future and around half of youngsters have already caught the virus. Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine seminar, Dame Sarah said: 'We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don't really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. Advertisement He expects there to be sustained high infection rates caused by the Delta variant, including in double-jabbed people who are unlikely to experience severe illness and this will add to immunity in the population. Sir John said: 'So I think we're headed for the position Sarah describes probably by next spring would be my view. 'We have to get over the winter to get there but I think it should be fine.' He said 'it's pretty important that we don't panic about where we are now', because hospitalisations and deaths from Covid remain 'very low'. Covid vaccines are working to prevent serious illness and death but 'don't really effectively reduce the amount of transmission', he noted. This was the reason infection rates in Israel skyrocketed earlier this month and in Britain after the holidays. Sir John said: 'If everybody's expecting the vaccines and the boosters to stop that, they won't. And it's slightly a false promise.' He agreed with England's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty that the vast majority of children would get Covid without a vaccine, adding 'this is now an endemic virus, it'll circulate pretty widely'. But Sir John said there are 'no bad consequences' in children with the virus, adding that 'I don't think there's any reason to panic'. He added: 'I don't think we're going to have a lot of children in intensive care units. And in fact, the evidence is we don't, we never have. And the likelihood of severe disease (is) quite small.' Sir John said he believed the issue of long Covid 'has been slightly overblown', adding that 'proper epidemiological studies' find the incidence of long Covid is 'much lower than people had anticipated'. And Professor Ferguson, whose pandemic forecasts triggered the Government to impose the first national lockdown last March, doesn't think the UK will 'need to go as far as full-blown lockdown'. Asked in an Imperial interview today whether additional Covid restrictions would be needed later this year, he said: 'The thing that will drive the government is NHS demand. 'If we started seeing a really significant uptick in hospital admissions, that's the point where we might need to consider the reintroduction of some degree of social distancing or other measures. 'I don't think that will need to go as far as full-blown lockdown but we might need to reimpose certain restrictions just to get hospital admissions down again.' He said official figures show that cases are rising in parts of the UK where schools opened earlier and infections among school-aged children are increasing. But this 'hasn't propagated through to the wider population', meaning 'we're not seeing a rapid increase in case numbers associated with the opening of schools'. Professor Ferguson said the challenge will come as Britain heads into the autumn and winter, when more people mix indoors, people move closer towards normal contact levels and protection from the vaccine among the first Britons who were jabbed begins to wane. 'So there's also likely to be some upward pressure on case numbers,' he said. But the UK's case trends are 'cautiously encouraging in the sense that we have flat or even slightly declining case numbers', Professor Ferguson added. Boris Johnson has been savaged online for referencing Kermit The Frog during a speech about climate change. Social media users mocked the Prime Minister for insisting the Muppet's character was wrong when he sang 'It's Not Easy Bein' Green'. Mr Johnson said it was 'easy, lucrative and right' to be green during his address to the United Nations General Assembly. His bizarre comment came as he implored the world to help tackle climate change ahead of the Cop26 summit, which he dubbed 'the turning point for humanity'. He said Earth is not 'some indestructible toy' but conceded a rise in temperatures was inevitable as we try to 'restrain that growth'. The address was the last stop on Mr Johnson's visit to the US which has seen discussions held on trade, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. He took Muppets favourite Kermit The Frog to task, insisting that it is in fact 'easy being green' But it was his reference to Jim Henson's Muppet that was picked up on by social media users today. He said Kermit was wrong when he sang It's Not Easy Bein' Green, adding it was 'easy, lucrative and right' to be green. One social media user wrote: 'Did Boris Johnson really quote Kermit the Frog in his UN speech? I mean, seriously?' Another put: 'It's official, Boris Johnson's advisers are muppets! Could someone break it to him gently - Kermit isn't real.' A woman posted on her Twitter: 'Boris quoting Kermit the Frog in his speech, I just can't.' Another asked: 'Did Boris Johnson really just mention Kermit the Frog at the UN General Assembly?' And one more shared a picture of the fictional frog looking sad, with the caption: 'Kermit when he finds out Boris used him in a speech.' Mr Johnson was speaking to the UN General Assembly where he is trying to push forward Britain's green credentials. He said Earth is not 'some indestructible toy' as he spoke of the upcoming Glasgow COP26 summit as 'the turning point for humanity'. Mr Johnson addressed the UN in the early hours of Thursday in a speech in which he conceded a rise in temperatures was inevitable but hopes to 'restrain that growth'. Mr Johnson told the Assembly it was time for 'humanity to grow up' and look to the coronavirus pandemic as an example of 'gloomy scientists being proved right'. He added: 'The world - this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere - is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart's content. 'Daily, weekly, we are doing such irreversible damage that long before a million years are up, we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable - not just for us but for many other species. 'And that is why the Glasgow COP26 summit is the turning point for humanity.' British Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to the United Nations to give a speech on global warming The UN summit is being held in Glasgow in November to 'accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement', a treaty aimed at keeping the rise in global temperatures to below 2C adopted in 2015. The speech started with a look at how humanity has been around for around 200,000 years and the average mammalian species exists for about a million years before it evolves or dies out - suggesting we were, in relative terms, 'now sweet 16'. He said: 'We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal. 'In the words of the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord, 'we are just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble'.' Mr Johnson's eco focus is a far cry from his past climate-sceptic views. He admitted on Monday 'if you were to excavate some of my articles from 20 years ago you might find comments I made, obiter dicta, about climate change that weren't entirely supportive of the current struggle, but the facts change and people change their minds and change their views and that's very important too'. Addressing the assembly, he said he was not 'one of those environmentalists who takes a moral pleasure in excoriating humanity for its excess' or viewing the green movement as 'a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism'. 'My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end,' he said. The Prime Minister gave his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York early on Thursday morning Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speak during a bilateral meeting at the UK diplomatic residence in New York 'We are approaching that critical turning point, in less than two months, when we must show that we are capable of learning, and maturing, and finally taking responsibility for the destruction we are inflicting, not just upon our planet but ourselves.' He called on countries to cut their carbon emissions by 68 per cent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, praised the end of China's international financing of coal, and congratulated Pakistan's pledge to plant 10 billion trees. The 20-minute speech ended with references to the renowned Greek writer Sophocles. He said: 'Sophocles is often quoted as saying that there are many terrifying things in the world, but none is more terrifying than mankind, and it is certainly true that... we are uniquely capable of our own destruction, and the destruction of everything around us. 'But if you look at the Greek, Sophocles actually said ... was that man is deinos and terrifying isn't quite right as far as a translation for deinos. What Sophocles really means is humanity is awesome - both terrifying but also awesome. 'We have an awesome power to change things and to change things for the better, and an awesome power to save ourselves. 'In the next 40 days, we have to choose, the world has to choose what kind of awesome we're going to be.' Advertisement Victoria Police were out in large numbers at Melbourne's St Kilda on Thursday amid fears protesters who have caused chaos throughout the city were planning to gather in the the beachside suburb. But instead they found joggers and sunbathers making the most of the warm 21C weather, along with small groups following Covid directions on the sand and near the esplanade. Melbourne residents are allowed to socialise outdoors in groups of up to five people if every person over 18 is fully vaccinated. While police were out in full force, protests hit a lull on Thursday with most crowds that of beach-goers (pictured) making the most of the sunny weather Melbourne residents exercising (pictured) were out in large numbers due to the sunny weather on display Residents swimming and sunbathing littered the beach and open areas in St Kilda, taking in the sun (pictured) Officers were seen out in full force around the city and along the St Kilda esplanade after rumours that protesters would be converging there during the day St Kilda locals flocked to the beach on Thursday - and are allowed outside to exercise or socialise in small groups After the city was rocked by demonstrations for three straight days, large-scale protests fizzled out on Thursday, although police made arrests in the CBD and rushed to the beach to head off possible violence. Demonstrators repeatedly changed meeting points on encrypted social media platforms but failed to show up. Some 92 people were arrested in the city, with police pouncing before protesters were able to gather in significant numbers. Officers were seen out in full force around the city and along the St Kilda esplanade after rumours that protesters would be converging there during the day. Instead police watched on as Melbourne residents enjoyed sun, had picnics on grassy areas, walked their dogs, and jogged along the beachfront. Police were under the impression large-scale protests would be occurring in the area and ensured a large police presence (pictured) was out and about Most crowds in the St Kilda area were those exercising or picnickers (pictured) making the most of the sunny 21 degree day in Melbourne Crowds in the area were mainly made up of beach-goers sunbathing and people exercising on the St Kilda esplanade (pictured right) Thursday's protests were significantly smaller than those earlier this week, with only small groups of protestors scattered in seemingly disorganised crowds in areas of Melbourne's CBD. Despite today's dip in protest numbers, intelligence from encrypted social media groups say more rallies are planned for tomorrow. 'We again urge anyone thinking of coming into the city without a lawful purpose to stay home and comply with the Chief Health Officer directions,' a spokesperson for Victoria Police said. 'Victoria Police will continue to provide a highly visible presence across the city over the coming days.' Melbourne residents are allowed to socialise outdoors in groups of up to five people if every person over 18 is fully vaccinated Victorian police officers (pictured) patrolled the beach front and streets of St Kilda after rumours large-scale protests would be occurring in the area and around Melbourne's CBD Despite the lull in protests numbers on Thursday, authorities have information that other protests will occur in the coming days (pictured residents making the most of the Thursday sun at St Kilda) A spokesperson for Victorian Police has stated there will be a continued visible presence of police throughout the city (pictured) The 21 degree day saw residents come out to make the most of the sun with many exercising along the St Kilda esplanade (pictured) It comes as media organisations were granted permission to fly over the Melbourne CBD after a ban was issued by the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority on Wednesday, at the request of Victoria Police. After complaints, organisations were told news helicopters could fly with the approval of police air wing and on the condition that any vision was broadcast with a 60-minute delay. Federal Court Justice Helen Rofe said there were serious questions to be determined at a trial next week. Meanwhile, stranded Victorians fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be allowed to return home from Greater Sydney within a week. Premier Daniel Andrews said anyone in NSW who has had both doses and returned a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours of returning could apply to come back from September 30. Officers arrested 92 protestors on Thursday, with some smaller groups gathering and drinking Victorian Police are set to keep up a highly visible presence around the Melbourne CBD in the coming days with rumours of more protests circling (pictured residents picnicking at St Kilda beach on Thursday) Victorians have been banned from coming home from NSW unless they had an exemption or another valid permit. Several thousand are expected to return to the state, but must test negative 72 hours before departure, isolate at home for 14 days and get tested at the start and end of quarantine. Authorised officers will do spot checks on returnees to ensure they abide by the rules. Victoria recorded its highest-ever daily COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to Thursday, with 766 new infections. Four people died, including three people from the Hume area and one from Moreland, bringing the latest outbreak's death toll to 20. There are now 257 people in hospital with COVID-19, 60 of whom are in intensive care, including 41 on a ventilator. More than three-quarters of Victorians aged over 16, or 75.2 per cent, have had at least one dose of a vaccine, with 45.6 per cent of those eligible now fully vaccinated. Mr Andrews said the state was 'currently rationing' Pfizer doses and there was not enough stock to bring the time between doses forward. Melbourne residents are allowed to socialise outdoors in groups of up to five people if every person over 18 is fully vaccinated Students at a Pennsylvania university could face disciplinary actions if they don't respect their classmates' preferred gender pronouns. Point Park University in Pittsburgh sent out a policy to students ahead of the 2021/22 school year regarding 'misgendering, pronoun misuse and deadnaming,' an email obtained by Campus Reform said. The policy has been in use since 2014, a spokesperson for the university told Mail Online. Deadnaming is the use of a person's legal 'dead' name rather than that person's chosen name. Students at Point Park University in Pennsylvania could face disciplinary actions if they don't respect their classmates' preferred gender pronouns 'Any individual who has been informed of another person's gender identity, pronouns, or chosen name is expected to respect that individual,' the email reads. 'While the University recognizes the aspect of intent versus impact, we must recognize that regardless of the intent, if an individual is impacted in a harmful way, action could be taken if a complaint is filed,' it continues. It is unclear what sort of action might be taken against anyone who goes against the policy. The mailing also included the school's 'Pronouns and Inclusive Language Guide.' Point Park University in Pittsburgh sent out a new policy to students ahead of the 2021/22 school year regarding 'misgendering, pronoun misuse and deadnaming,' an email obtained by Campus Reform said The mailing also included the school's 'Pronouns and Inclusive Language Guide' The guide, created by a Point Park alum, tells students abut the importance of using 'gender inclusive language' to avoid causing 'trans and gender non-conforming folks to feel isolated' The guide, created by a Point Park alum, tells students abut the importance of using 'gender inclusive language' to avoid causing 'trans and gender non-conforming folks to feel isolated.' The guide has suggestions such as altering 'boyfriend/girlfriend' to 'partner,' 'ladies and gentlemen' to 'students and guests,' and using the pronoun 'they' for non binary individuals. 'Point Park University expects all members of its campus community students, faculty and staff to treat each other with respect,' Louis Corsaro, a spokesperson for the school told Mail Online in a statement. Logan Dubil, a Point Park student, thinks the policy goes against his classmates beliefs. 'Personally, I believe in the science. There are two sexes and two genders: male and female,' Dubil said. 'The policies in question force me to go against my beliefs. The fact that I can be disciplined by failing to follow policies that violate my conscience is concerning.' Just under 4,000 students attend Point Park University, with just under 800 of them living on campus. It receives a $50 million endowment each year. Advertisement Prince Harry and Meghan Markle descended on the Big Apple Thursday where they were given the A-list treatment, being chaperoned around by a large security detail as they mingled with UN officials and New York politicians and stayed in a hotel where rooms cost up to $8,800 a night. The Sussexes - who dramatically quit their roles as working royals last year - met with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield at 50 UN Plaza in Manhattan Thursday afternoon for an 'important discussion' on COVID-19, racial justice and mental health. The ambassador described the meeting as 'wonderful' as she shared snaps of the trio chatting on sofas in a lounge area and then posing in front of UN branding. Further details on what the Sussexes discussed with the ambassador have yet to be shared but the former actress and former working royal appeared to mean business, carrying folders to and from the visit. Meghan, 40, and Harry, 37, were spotted leaving the residential building close to the United Nations Global Headquarters around 2pm before the eco-warrior couple clambered into their gas-guzzling SUVs. They then paid a visit to the World Health Organization headquarters at 885 Second Avenue, where they emerged carrying both WHO documents and documents featuring their Archewell Foundation branding. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry pose for a photo with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield at 50 UN Plaza Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield tweeted photos from their 'wonderful' visit Thursday afternoon, revealing they discussed COVID-19, racial justice and mental health The Sussexes - who dramatically quit their roles as working royals last year - were spotted leaving 50 UN Plaza in Manhattan around 2pm Thursday afternoon The couple met with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield who lives in the residential building in NYC Meghan clutched what appeared to be a black leather laptop sleeve which matched her dark outfit, sunglasses and face mask Meghan Markle is seen arriving at 50 United Nations Plaza in Manhattan Thursday for the meeting with the ambassador The Sussexes both sported black face masks as they walked to their waiting SUVs following the meeting with the UN official Harry and Meghan exit the residential building where the ambassador lives in the 37-storey penthouse apartment Harry is seen carrying a black leather laptop sleeve under his arm with 'Archie's Papa' emblazoned on it in white They then paid a visit to the World Health Organization headquarters at 885 Second Avenue, where they emerged carrying both WHO documents and documents featuring their Archewell Foundation branding Meghan slung her camel-colored Max Mara coat over her arm as they exited the building. Harry wore a face mask while Meghan appeared mask-free Meghan and Harry arrive back at the Carlyle Hotel following their day visiting One World Trade Center, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, 50 UN Plaza and the WHO HQ Thursday Are Harry and Meghan receiving federal protection? One of the burly bodyguards escorting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle around New York City has claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security. The male bodyguard, dressed in a smart grey suit and black wingtips that had been resoled with comfortable sneaker soles, was spotted outside the Carlyle Hotel Thursday between jaunts escorting the couple. He told a DailyMail.com reporter he was with DHS, but didn't specify which agency, leaving possible federal involvement in the couple's visit to New York a mystery. DHS did not immediately respond to multiple inquiries from DailyMail.com. The federal department encompasses a number of agencies with sworn police services, including the Secret Service, Federal Protective Service, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The Secret Service typically only protects visiting heads of state and their immediate families within the US, while lesser dignitaries fall under the protection of the State Department, according to former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow. This bodyguard, seen behind Harry and Meghan, told one journalist he was working for the Department of Homeland Security Wackrow said that UN general assembly had stretched the resources of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, which has protected Harry during past official visits to the US when he was a working Royal. He said it was possible HSI or agents from another DHS agency were supplementing the State Department's protective efforts during the busy UN session. 'Right now, under the United Nations General Assembly, it's all hands on deck for federal protection,' Wackrow told DailyMail.com in a phone interview. 'HSI have been brought in to provide supplemental protection... you may have this agent from HSI supplementing that detail,' he said of the Duke and Duchess' protective team. Wackrow noted that, although they have stepped down from official duties, Harry and Meghan are still family members of the British head of state, and thus might reasonably expect some government protection while in a high threat environment, such as Manhattan during the general assembly. 'While they are not the head of state for the United Kingdom, they are part of the head of state's family and at times such as summits, global gatherings, it is warranted they receive some level of protection, even if it is taxpayer funded protection,' he said. 'If something were to happen in New York, and the government were not extending protection to the Duke and Duchess, that would be a major diplomatic incident.' Advertisement The former actress clutched what appeared to be a black leather laptop case which matched her dark outfit, sunglasses and face mask. She had dressed for fall in head to toe dark navy blue for their morning visit to the 9/11 memorial and One World Trade Center despite the humid 80F New York City weather. Meghan then added some color to her somber attire for the afternoon jaunt, swapping her wide-legged dark trousers and coat for a dark pencil skirt and long tan Max Mara coat - while accessorizing with a $3,350 tan Valextra handbag. Harry also accessorized with a black leather laptop sleeve under his arm with 'Archie's Papa' emblazoned on it - a doting nod to the couple's two-year-old son. The afternoon meeting in the residential building, which houses the lavish 37-floor penthouse which Thomas-Greenfield calls home, lasted around an hour, before they reemerged flanked by a large security detail and got into their waiting vehicles which drove them back to their lavish hotel. This marked the second stop on their New York visit - their first major public appearance since they shocked the world by stepping back as senior working members of the royal family. On Thursday morning, they had paid a visit to the 9/11 memorial and One World Trade Center, during which they met with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, National September 11 Memorial & Museum President Alice Greenwald and Patricia Harris, CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropy. While atop the One World Trade Center, Meghan smiled and said 'it's wonderful to be back' in New York - almost exactly two years on from her last visit in September 2019 when she cheered on close friend and tennis star Serena Williams at the 2019 US Open. The Duchess spoke moments before she and her husband visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, to pay their respects less than two weeks after the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Meghan and Harry then made a pit stop back to the luxury Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side where the top-tier suite costs a staggering $8,800 a night. The couple are staying there for the duration of their four-day trip and were seen dining in the swanky hotel restaurant Wednesday night, after arriving into the Big Apple from their home in California. They exited the hotel around 12:30pm Thursday to travel on to 50 UN Plaza, with Harry carrying what appeared to be a binder of documents tucked under his arm. The prince also changed outfits for the occasion, with a less sobering dark gray suit and blue tie. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield tweeted photos from their 'wonderful' visit, revealing they discussed COVID-19, racial justice and mental health. 'Wonderful meeting with Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. 'Important discussion of COVID, racial justice, and raising mental health awareness,' she wrote on social media. The details of the Sussexes' trip to the Big Apple have been a closely guarded secret. They are scheduled to appear at Saturday's Global Citizen concert in Central Park which focuses on vaccine equity. However, it is currently unclear how they will spend the remainder of Thursday and Friday. DailyMail.com has reached out to the UN Global HQ, the mayor's office, the governor's office and the Archewell Foundation for further information about the Sussexes' schedule and purpose of the meetings. It is unclear if the Sussexes - famed for their pronouncements on climate change - arrived in New York on a commercial flight or flew there by private jet. It is also unclear who is paying for the trip and providing the security detail around the Sussexes. A spokesperson for the NYPD told DailyMail.com they were unsure of who was providing the Sussexes security, that they had not heard about their officers being drafted in to provide cover, and added that they doubted the department would do so. Several NYPD and Port Authority officers were present at the World Trade Center cordoning off the area during their morning visit. One Port Authority officer told DailyMail.com he had only learned of the famous couple's visit that morning. DailyMail.com has also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the DHS Secret Service to ask if they are providing security for the couple's visit. One guard seen accompanying the couple claimed he was with the Department of Homeland Security, but refused to be drawn further on his job title. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were spotted leaving the luxury Carlyle Hotel to head to the meeting with the UN official The Sussexes were flanked by security as they got into a black SUV in the parking garage of the luxury Upper East Side hotel around 12:30pm Thursday Meghan, who dressed for fall in head to toe black for their morning visit to the 9/11 memorial and One World Trade Center despite the humid 80F weather, had changed into a long beige coat and dark sunglasses for the afternoon jaunt Harry, meanwhile, was carrying what appeared to be a binder of documents tucked under his arm as they got into a car Security teams are seen inside the parking garage before the SUV leaves the hotel, with Meghan and Harry in the back seat Meghan said 'It's wonderful to be back' while posing with NY Governor Kathy Hochul (furthest left) and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (next to Harry) as well as De Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray, and the couple's son Dante, furthest right, on Thursday The Duchess of Sussex made the remark while visiting the One World Trade Center Observatory with her husband Harry Meghan and Harry are pictured at the South Tower memorial pool in New York City on Thursday morning, with National September 11 Memorial and Museum President Alice Greenwald, pictured in blue The couple took a moment of silence at the wreath on the site of the Twin Towers during their trip to the Big Apple Meghan Markle looked solemn as she paid her respects to the victims of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks Meghan waved and smiled at a handful of fans gathered at the site as the couple strolled hand in hand around the memorial The Sussexes were all smiles as they walked into One World Trade Center Thursday morning. The couple put face masks on before entering Forget to check the forecast, Meghan? Duchess wraps up for an 80F day in New York Meghan Markle wrapped up in a black coat, polo neck and wide-legged trousers as she joined Prince Harry in New York today - despite the weather being a humid 80F in the city. The Duchess of Sussex, 40, who is living in her $14 million mansion in California, appears to have forgotten how to dress for fall on the East Coast and stepped out in a heavy outfit better suited to winter. Meghan wore the heavy layers with a favourite pair of 450 Aquazzura pumps and sparkling diamond jewlry. Social media users were left baffled by Meghan's wardrobe, with one writing: 'Does she never learn how to wear clothes that suit the occasion and weather? 'It's a hot and humid day in New York and she is wearing a high collar and coat.' Another posted: 'It's a hot day here in New York. Why is she dressing like this?' A third added: 'She looks bitter, also this morning in New York city is 80 per cent humidity and hot! Why doe she wear a dark heavy coat?' 'It's tremendously hot and humidity today in New York and she's wearing a black heavy coat??? She's so ridiculous. Please check the forecast,' another commented. Meghan donned a smart smart wool coat, popping the collar around her neck, with a matching turtleneck, black wide legged trousers and her favourite black suede Aquazzura Purist pumps as she joined Harry at One World Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, she added a little glamour to her outfit by wearing a new diamond ring, which she paired alongside her new mysterious pinky ring. It is believed the ring, made by celebrity jeweler Lorraine Schwartz and reportedly worth an estimated 45,000, was fashioned with diamonds gifted to the couple by a mystery donor in the Middle East. The Duchess kept her makeup natural for the occasion, sweeping a dark eyeshadow across her lids and pairing it with a nude lipstick. Meanwhile, she swept her hair into a slicked back low bun, showing off her diamond stud earrings from Cartier. Before she entered the building with the Duke, she could be seen holding a dark face mask in her hands. Harry wore a complementary dark suit and tie. Later that afternoon, she changed into another unseasonably warm number - a heavy camel-colored Max Mara coat, which she still layered over the long-sleeve black turtleneck top and a pencil skirt. She finally removed the layers as she emerged from the WHO HQ later that afternoon with the coat slung over her arm. Advertisement Meghan last visited the city in September 2019 when she made the surprise stop at the US Open. This came seven months after her last trip, when pals including Amal Clooney and Gayle King held a lavish baby shower for her at The Mark Hotel's $75,000-a-night penthouse suite on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Duchess traveled to that event from London on a private jet, with the bash estimated to have cost $500,000. During their first stop on their Big Apple trip, Meghan and Harry posed for photos in front of the One World Trade Center observatory's floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer stunning views of New York City and New Jersey. The Sussexes were joined by Governor Hochul, 63, Mayor de Blasio, 60, de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray, 66, and the couple's son Dante, 24. Harry and Meghan then visited the 9/11 memorial pools around 9am EST. The couple inspected the large black pools, built in the footprints of the original Twin Towers, before entering the 9/11 Museum, which sits underneath, and spending around half an hour inside. Harry and Meghan, who donned somber dark outfits, walked hand-in-hand around the memorial pools and museum accompanied by National September 11 Memorial & Museum President Alice Greenwald and Patricia Harris from Bloomberg Philanthropy. The couple's two-year-old son Archie and three month-old daughter Lilibet remain at home in California. Harry and Meghan arrived at One World Trade Center at 8:14am Thursday in somber outfits, likely chosen for their planned trip to the nearby 9/11 Memorial afterwards. The couple exited a black SUV, and were whisked up to the skyscraper's viewing deck - which sits between floors 100 and 102 - to meet Hochul and de Blasio, who arrived moments before the royals. Meghan donned a stylish dark blue outfit, with a matching jacket, polo neck, wide-legged trousers, heels and her hair swept back into a business-like bun. She wore simple pearl earrings and muted makeup. Harry wore a complementary dark suit and tie. The couple were snapped donning black face masks as they entered One World Trade Center. They held hands as the walked up the steps of the building, with Harry giving a wave to watching fans who shouted his name on seeing him. No details on why the royals are meeting with the Democrat lawmakers and what they plan to discuss were shared in advance. De Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray, 66, and the mayoral couple's son Dante, 24, were also there to welcome the royal couple, who are visiting from their home in Montecito, California. The mayor and governor arrived and entered the building a few minutes ahead of the Sussexes. A small group of taxi drivers protested the event to call on Mayor de Blasio to offer additional protection for yellow cab drivers who've been hit by the rise in popularity of ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft, with security also present to guard the royals and politicians. 'De Blasio help the cabbies, Mr. Mayor help the cabbies,' the group chanted as de Blasio arrived at the building. One of the drivers told DailyMail.com the mayor should focus on supporting New Yorkers rather than mingling with royals. 'The mayor should take care of the people, not spend money on this,' said Barbara Basiaosowca. One of the burly bodyguards (left) escorting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle around New York City has claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security The man (right) told a DailyMail.com reporter that he was with DHS, but didn't specify which agency, leaving possible federal involvement in the couple's visit to New York a mystery Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pay their respects at a wreath by the survivor tree at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum The couple appeared somber as they were shown the huge memorial by Greenwald, during their first big public trip together since quitting the royal family in early 2020 Harry and Meghan were shown the South Tower pool moments after visiting the adjoining North Tower memorial pool. Patricia Harris from Bloomberg Philanthropy, pictured in green, also joined the couple Greenwald appeared to be explaining the symbolism of the pool to the couple. Both water features were built in the footprints of the original World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the 9/11 terror attacks Meghan looked pensive as she chatted to 9/11 Museum President Alice Greenwald (in blue) and Patricia Harris from Bloomberg Philanthropy (in green) Meghan and Harry dressed in complementary dark outfits - although the Duchess was in heavy clothing for NYC's humid 85F weather Harry and Meghan's big night out in the Big Apple: Royal couple enjoy drinks at swanky bar inside their $8,800-a-night hotel Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were last night spotted out partying in New York as they kickstarted their tour of the city, exclusive pictures for MailOnline show. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their huge security team descended on the swanky Bemelmans Bar in the luxury Carlyle Hotel Wednesday night. Witnesses said the couple, who have left their children Archie and Lilibet in Los Angeles during the three-day trip, pulled up with tens of cars and about 20 guards. Onlookers watched as their hired muscle took over tables around them trying to blend in as they sipped pre-dinner cocktails and chatted with a blonde woman and brunette man. Other stunned punters said Harry and Meghan drank martinis before leaving via the back door around three hours later and bundling into their Cadillac Escalade. Advertisement Mayor de Blasio shared a live stream of himself and Hochul with the royal couple posing for photos in front of the observation deck's floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer stunning views of New York and New Jersey. He captioned the video: 'The tragedy of September 11 touched the entire world, and it's still felt today. 'We're honored to join Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, at One World Observatory.' The group put masks on to enter the building, removed them for photos at the top, then put them back on after the photo opportunity. Afterwards, the Sussexes came back down to ground-level, and posed with Hochul, de Blasio, the mayor's wife and son for another photo. They hugged, smile and laughed before Harry and Meghan walked down towards the 9/11 memorial alone. A fan shouted 'you look beautiful Meghan, I love you!' prompting the Duchess to smile and wave, saying 'Thank you.' Meghan and Harry parted ways with the lawmakers at the entrance to the tower to then visit the 9/11 memorial pools and museum. They first visited the North Tower memorial pool, spending several minutes looking at the names of those killed in the attacks, which are inscribed around the edges of both pools. Harry was seen putting a protective arm around his wife as they paid their respects at the monument. They then walked to the nearby South Tower memorial pool, chatting with Greenwald and Harris, before taking a moment of silence in front of a wreath next to the survivor tree. The Sussexes then went into the museum, which sits underneath the reflecting pools, and offers a comprehensive retelling of the 2001 terror outrage. They spent around 30 minutes inside, before being driven away in a black Range Rover. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was joined by his son Dante (on his left) and wife Chirlane McCray (on his right) After completing their trip to the World Trade Center, the couple got into a waiting black Range Rover and were driven away Harry and Meghan are staying at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, where rooms cost up to $8,800-a-night, and are in New York for three days How NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is under fire for spiraling crime rates and handling of pandemic Democrat Bill de Blasios tenure as the 109th New York City Mayor has been marred by controversy since he was elected in 2014. Criticism during his time in office includes the spiralling crime on the citys streets, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his fractious relationship with NYPD. He has also come under fire for his approach to the Eric Garner case and his plans to increase affordable housing at the expense of the city's character. Crime has also become a frequent stain on de Blasio's tenure in office, with statistics showing that both shootings and felony assaults had both increased in number compared to last year - with de Blasio blaming the court system. Shootings in April 2021 in New York surged by 166 per cent compared to the same month last year, and felony assaults had risen by 35.6 per cent - while crime as a whole jumped by 30.4 per cent. High crime rates, paired with the nation's highest tax rates have also seen many people ditching New York City for good - with the coronavirus pandemic providing the push they needed. Bill de Blasio (pictured) has served as the 109th mayor of New York City since he was elected in back in 2014, though his time in office has been marred with controversy De Blasio has also endured some controversial episodes during his time in office, such as in 2014. Eric Garner died after former New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo put him into a choke hold on Staten Island - but the officer retained his job. He has also endured a strained relationship with the NYPD, with many officers turning their backs on him during the funeral for Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. The two officers had been shot just weeks after de Blasio gave an interview in which he claimed to have told his son Dante, who is biracial, about the 'dangers' posed by the police to young black men. Similarly, de Blasio faced backlash after he did not attend the vigil held for New York City police officer Miosotis Familia in July 2017. While speaking at Familia's service, many police officers again chose to turn their backs on de Blasio. Elsewhere, de Blasio has also been criticised for how he has dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic. During the second week of March 2020, he did not act to close down public schools as the virus rapidly spread. When he eventually did give the order for schools to be shut, he was called out for having been too slow. De Blasio has also faced criticism over a recent vaccination mandate he imposed on school staff. Advertisement Meghan and Harry waved and smiled as they arrived at the World Trade Center on Thursday morning Meghan and Harry arrived at the World Trade Center in New York for their meeting on Thursday morning Harry arrived at One World Trade Center at 8:14am, shortly after Mayor de Blasio and Governor Kathy Hochul Meghan gave her trademark smile as she arrived at the landmark NYC skyscraper, and showed off her huge diamond engagement ring Harry and Megna held hands after getting out of their SUV and walking towards the Freedom Tower for the first meeting on their three day trip to New York City The royal couple ascended the Freedom Tower for a meeting with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and NY Governor Kathy Hochul After their trip up the Freedom Tower, Meghan and Harry will visit the nearby 9/11 memorial reflecting pools Port Authority Police officers helped guard the royal couple as they began their first public visit to New York since moving to the United States in March 2020 Meghan produced a matching face mask as she approached the revolving door of One World Trade Center, while her husband of three years gave her a tender glance Meghan was snapped smiling at her husband as they arrived at the entrance to One World Trade Center Meghan was snapped donning a face mask before entering One World Trade Center to visit its observation deck Harry also appeared to be reaching for his face mask from his jacket pocket, moments before the royals took an elevator up to the building's 100th floor viewing deck Thursday's visit is the Sussexes' first public trip to New York City since their permanent move from England to Meghan's native California in March 2020. They arrived into the Big Apple Wednesday and were spotted dining in the swanky Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel that night with an unknown blonde woman and brunette man. One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, opened in 2014 after the original World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed in the 9/11 terror attacks in September 2001. The memorial's two giant sunken pools and cascading waterfalls have been constructed on the footprints of the original Twin Towers. The sides of the pools, which have been constructed from black stone, are inscribed with the names of the 2,977 people murdered in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. The Sussexes' itinerary will also see them attend the Global Citizen Live concert in Central Park Saturday. That will feature performances from artists including Coldplay, Lizzo and Jennifer Lopez, and will take place on the Manhattan park's Great Lawn. Harry, Meghan and other dignitaries are attending to draw attention to Global Citizen's call for the G7 group of countries and EU to share at least 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines with developing countries. The music event will form part of a 24-hour broadcast from cities around the world, which also calls for vaccine manufacturers to waive their intellectual property rights on COVID shots. Global Citizen Live and its supporters have further called for pharmaceutical firms to share mRNA technology used to develop the vaccines with a World Health Organization-backed medical hub based in South Africa. Harry and Meghan have become heavily-involved in philanthropy since sensationally quitting the Royal Family in January 2020, after complaining of the pressure-cooker environment and life in the spotlight. The couple's somber outfit choice came as they visited New York just a fortnight after the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks New York Governor Kathy Hochul, pictured in red, arrived a few minutes before the royal couple NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, pictured waving, was joined by his wife Chirlane McCray, pictured to his left, and their son Dante Details on why de Blasio, Hochul and the Sussexes are meeting have yet to be released The couple have also signed huge deals with Netflix and Spotify, rumored to be worth a combined $125 million, to produce content for the streaming and podcasting giants. They kicked off their new lives as aspiring media moguls with a bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2020. The most sensational claim from the bombshell-laden chat saw Meghan, who is bi-racial, claim that an unidentified member of the royal family had voiced concerns over the skin tone of the couple's baby while she was pregnant with Archie, who was born in May 2019. Meghan went on to refute claims that she'd made the Duchess of Cambridge cry in the run-up to her May 2018 wedding to Harry - and allege that Kate had actually been the one to reduce her to tears. Kate has not commented on Meghan's counter-claim. Meanwhile, Harry confirmed a rift with his brother William, the Duke of Cambridge, and told of how his father Prince Charles - the heir to the throne - had cut him off financially. And the couple, who were expecting their second child at the time, also revealed to Winfrey that they were expecting a girl. Their daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, was born in California in June. She was given Queen Elizabeth's childhood nickname, sparking controversy over whether the royal couple had asked permission to recycle the head of the royal household's cherished moniker. Harry and Meghan also paid tribute to the Duke's late mother Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in August 1997 aged 36. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were last night spotted out partying in New York as they kickstarted their tour of the city, exclusive pictures for MailOnline show Witnesses said the couple, who have left their children Archie and Lilibet in Los Angeles during the three-day trip, pulled up with tens cars and about 20 guards Onlookers watched as the hired muscle took over tables around them as they sipped pre-dinner cocktails and chatted with a blond woman and brunette man Other stunned punters said Harry and Meghan drank martinis before leaving via the back door around three hours later and bundling into their Cadillac Escalade Advertisement The White House is still refusing to reveal how many Haitian migrants have come to the US despite promising to do so yesterday. Jen Psaki on Wednesday promised to release the figures after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to. However partial information released Thursday accounts for only 10,000 of the 15,000 that the DHS said earlier in the week had come to the southern border. When questioned Thursday about why she had failed to supply the information that she had promised, Psaki simply said 'I'm happy to get you a more fruitful rundown for you, if helpful, from the Department of Homeland Security'. The partial information shows that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. However, this means roughly 5,000 remain unaccounted for. Officials revealed two day ago that immigrants are being released on a very, very large scale rather than deported. The figures released Thursday do not account for how many were released into the US or how many were turned away at the border. It is also feared that the 3,206 in custody might not be deported and could also be released. Those 3,206 Haitian migrants have either been moved to custody under Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or to other sectors of the border to either be expelled or placed into removal proceedings. DHS could not be reached for comment. This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Thursday, Sept. 23 Migrant children play near a man in an encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge where migrants, many from Haiti, have been staying after crossing the Rio Grande, Thursday, Sept. 23 A migrant child runs with food he received from volunteers at the encampment on Thursday, Sept. 23 Members with the World Central Kitchen deliver meals to migrants in an encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge Mayorkas was at the Capitol Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back congressional hearings this time before a House committee. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here. Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked the secretary during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. A girl with Barbie dolls stuffed in her boots waits with others to cross the Rio Grande river with their parents as they stand on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday, Sept. 23 DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. At Psaki's daily press briefing on Wednesday, Doocy confronted her on the yet-to-be-released numbers after Mayorkas revealed during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the figures. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When the press secretary attempted to direct him back to DHS, Doocy replied, 'He says he doesn't know.' 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those I promise, this afternoon,' Psaki vowed. The numbers came the following morning. In a follow-up question Doocy asked if the issue is that the administration doesn't know or if they don't want to reveal figures because 'a lot more people are being released into the U.S. than are being sent out.' 'That is certainly not the issue,' Psaki said. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge as DHS launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added as it was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Migrants stand in line while awaiting transport out of a border makeshift camp along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 A photo from Wednesday shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released U.S. Border Patrol agents ride near a migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The administration used the Trump-era Title 42 policy as a shield, claiming migrants would be sent back to the Caribbean country, which is still reeling from a deadly earthquake and political instability following the assassination of its president. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, officials told DailyMail.com that thousands of Haitian migrants are being freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out on the deportation flights. Two US officials with knowledge of the situation in Del Rio - where a peak of around 14,600 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under a bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico - said thousands have been released into the US with notices to appear at an immigration court in 60 days' time under the so-called 'catch and release' scheme. Others have been sent on buses and planes to other parts of the US to be processed by Border Patrol agents there, they said. US special envoy for Haiti RESIGNS over 'inhumane decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees', warns crisis will 'only grow' and slams Biden for causing it The U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Daniel Foote wrote in his resignation letter, first shared by a PBS reporter on Twitter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed' and he blamed the Biden administration for the ongoing crisis with Haitian migrants. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' The resignation comes as the U.S. migration crisis surged in the past few weeks when up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised during her press briefing on Wednesday to share later in the day the exact number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. this year - including those part of the massive Haitian migration. When asked Wednesday evening when the figures would be made available after they were still not released, Psaki told DailyMail.com: 'As soon as it is available form [sic] DHS.' By Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at least 5,000 of these mostly Haitian migrants had been removed from Del Rio whether they were moved to other centers, deported back to their homeland or released into the U.S. He could not give exact figures during a congressional hearing on how many were released into the country. Deportation flights ensued on Sunday and continued through the week as planes full of Haitian migrants arrived back in the island capital city of Port-au-Prince. People are fleeing Haiti and seeking refuge in America after a devastating earthquake and the assassination of their president, which has thrown the country into even more chaos. Foote said that the deportation back to Haiti will only exacerbate the migration crisis at the southern border. 'The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will further desperation and crime,' the now-former special envoy wrote in his resignation letter of Haiti. 'Surging migration at our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti's unacceptable misery.' Foote only served in his post for two months after becoming the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti in July following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the role, Foote served as a member of President Joe Biden's delegation to Moise's funeral. Before taking on that role he previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti and as the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia under President Donald Trump. In November 2019, during his tenure in Zambia, Foote said he was 'horrified' after a judge in the very conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal sentence two men to 15 years in prison after they were caught having sex in 2017. He received pushback from Zambia's President Edgar Lungu for trying to dictate policy and declared him a persona non grata or an unacceptable or unwelcome person. Foote has served with the Department of State since 1998 and has held a litany of roles since then including in the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico; the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in Colombia; deputy chief of mission in both Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and charge d'affaires in the Dominican Republic. While many migrants were rounded up and returned to Haiti from the U.S. in the last few days, many began crossing back into Mexico from the border town of Del Rio to avoid deportation to Haiti. Images began emerging on Sunday of Border Patrol agents and officers on horseback rounding up migrants and preventing them from returning to the makeshift camp near the Del Rio bridge. Immediately, the images were slammed as 'inhumane' and 'horrific' after some accused the agents of using either the reins or a lariat as a whip on the migrants. Images show a rope-like tool being thrown in the direction of some migrants who were running from the officers. Agents insist they were not using any whips on migrants, while Mayorkas says those pictured with the ropes have been reassigned to administrative duties pending a full investigation into the incident. EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of Haitian migrants who flocked to Del Rio were already working and living comfortably as refugees in CHILE and only set off for the US after Biden scrapped Trump-era deportation policy The secret behind the Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio, Texas is that they didn't migrate from Haiti at all but from Chile, where they had been granted asylum and were working and living comfortably as refugees. The dozens of Chilean identity cards that litter the ground in Ciudad Acuna, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, all bear distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. But they haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These have mainly come from Santiago, the glittering capital of relatively prosperous Chile. Many had jobs there. 'As one put it to me, "I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti," migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' The majority of the Haitian migrants have come from Chile - the wealthiest country in Latin America - and Brazil - the fifth wealthiest - where they have been living in modest comfort in Santiago and Sao Paulo for the past five or six years. There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence 'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' Energy bosses have blasted successive governments for failing to invest more in building gas storage facilities amid a worsening energy crisis. The energy sector has been hit by rocketing global wholesale gas prices, causing some firms to fold and raising the prospect of rising bills for consumers. Some industry chiefs have suggested the UK is badly-prepared to weather the current storm because ministers chose a 'just in time' approach to energy supply which means Britain's storage capability is much lower than its neighbours. Reports suggest the UK has just seven days' worth of gas storage compared to the 90 days of supply held by France and Germany. However, ministers have argued an apparent lack of storage is not 'relevant' because 'there is no way that any storage in the world is going to mitigate the effect of a quadrupling in the gas price in four months'. Statistics from Gas Infrastructure Europe show the UK has less than nine terawatt hours of storage compared to 113 for France and 148 for Germany. The UK supply would last about seven days while Germany's would last for about 90 days. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the issue of gas storage is not 'relevant because there is no way that any storage in the world is going to mitigate the effect of a quadrupling in the gas price in four months' Data published by the UK Energy Research Centre showed the UK has enough gas storage to cover six per cent of annual demand while Germany and France can cover about 20 per cent of annual demand. Statistics from Gas Infrastructure Europe show the UK has less than nine terawatt hours of storage compared to 113 for France and 148 for Germany. George Grant of Stag Energy, said he had tried but failed to get support for the Gateway Project just off Barrow-in-Furness which would have significantly increased available storage. 'The proposal was for a salt cavern gas storage facility in what's been acknowledged by the British Geological Survey as the best salt structure for such a service in the UK,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'It was about 12 miles off the coast. The philosophy behind this is that you create caverns within the salt and it's a very good medium to store gas.' But he said his firm had 'finally given up' on getting the project the go ahead after years of rejection from ministers. He said: 'In 2004, when we first spoke to the government, there was a lot of interest in new gas storage. We got to the financial crash in 2008 when credit requirements on long-term contracts became much more challenging. 'It was at that point that we really started to engage more with the government about potential support mechanisms or some form of intervention to ensure there was adequate security of supply in the gas sector. 'The government, in their wisdom, chose to run with a "just in time" approach. There is on an annual basis plenty of gas around the world and lots of liquid gas being shipped around, but the challenge we're seeing at the moment is a confluence of events including low wind production and the subsequent high demand for gas, supplies being drawn into China and the fertiliser plants going off. 'As a result there has been a shortage of supply and prices have risen accordingly. Additional storage in the UK would have certainly helped in this situation. 'The message we've given to the government is that you can't turn around when there is a crisis and call for a facility like this. The lead time is about ten years from getting sufficient encouragement and structure around financing to actually building it. Reports suggest the UK has just seven days' worth of gas storage compared to the 90 days of supply held by France and Germany. Storage tanks are seen at the Dragon Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility at Waterston, Milford Haven, Wales Two more energy firms with a combined 800,000 customers, Avro Energy and Green Supplier, went into administration yesterday. Dozens of other companies are under threat including Bulb, which supplies 1.7million homes 'Energy infrastructure is a long term business that goes beyond election cycles.' Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Downing Street dismissed the suggestion that increased gas storage would have helped in the current situation. Asked if the UK had 'dropped the ball' on gas storage, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said: 'I think Kwasi answered that question quite robustly in the House and he said "I don't think it is relevant because there is no way that any storage in the world is going to mitigate the effect of a quadrupling in the gas price in four months". 'I'd point to what we have said previously about the importance we place on moving to renewable energy sources as we look to tackle climate change and hit our targets which are well known.' British Airways' plans to launch a short-haul budget airline subsidiary at Gatwick Airport have been scrapped after it failed to reach an agreement over pilots' contracts. The airline had planned for the new business to have up to 17 Airbus A320 aircraft based at Gatwick in summer 2022, with more added in line with demand over the following three to four years. But after initially securing support from the pilots' union Balpa, talks broke down over pay - leading BA to abandon its project, which depended on its running costs to be 'viable and sustainable'. British Airways had planned 17 aircraft to helm its low-budget subsidiary operation at Gatwick Airport, but talks have broken down with union Balpa over pilots' pay A spokeswoman for the airline said it was 'disappointed' it could not secure a deal with trade union Balpa. She said: 'After many years of losing money on European flights from the airport, we were clear that coming out of the pandemic, we needed a plan to make Gatwick profitable and competitive. 'With regret, we will now suspend our short-haul operations at Gatwick, with the exception of a small number of domestic services connecting to our long-haul operation, and will pursue alternative uses for the London Gatwick short-haul slots.' Potential uses for the now-empty slots include selling them to rivals such as easyJet or Wizz Air, or offering them to partner airline Vueling. The vast majority of British Airways' short-haul flights from the West Sussex airport have been suspended since March 2020 due to the pandemic. In an email to staff, the airline's chief operating officer Jason Mahoney wrote that the terms offered to Balpa were 'the best that could be achieved in order to create a viable and sustainable operation at London Gatwick', but the union has chosen not to continue with a ballot of its members on the issue. Mr Mahoney added that the resumption of short-haul flights at Gatwick in summer 2022 would have been 'good for our business as we try to recover and pay back the debts that the pandemic has necessitated'. BA's short-haul slots at Gatwick could be sold to rivals such as easyJet and Wizz Air, or offered to partner airline Vueling Balpa acting general secretary Martin Chalk said: 'Despite our best efforts Balpa was unable to reach an agreement with British Airways on revised terms and conditions for London Gatwick short-haul that was acceptable to our members. 'The company has informed us it is now pulling out of London Gatwick short-haul and considering what to do with its London Gatwick slots. 'Balpa remains open to future negotiations with British Airways to address our members' concerns with the proposal for London Gatwick short-haul or about any other part of the business.' The number of flights to and from the UK has more than doubled since last summer - but remain well below pre-Covid levels. The seven-day average for last week was at 54% in the same week in 2019, the Office for National Statistics revealed. Yet the daily average of around 3,500 is still around half of what was seen before the pandemic, new data showed today. Yesterday saw 3,477 flights at UK airports, more than times the 753 seen on the first day of this year. This graph shows the increase in the number of daily flights this year, with the first day of each month used to illustrate the trend The travel industry has borne the brunt of pandemic disruption, with international travel grinding almost to a halt throughout much of the crisis. Yet the sector received a major boost with the news earlier this month that the current traffic light system is being ripped up. The double-jabbed will no longer have to take costly PCR tests when they return from abroad. Instead, they will need only a cheaper lateral flow test. The 'pre-departure tests' that travellers are forced to take before flying home are also likely to be scrapped. The new travel rules from October 4 at a glance... Traffic light system radically redrawn into simple go/no-go system Almost all existing amber list countries become 'go' destinations Number of red, or no-go, destinations slashed in half Double-jabbed travellers no longer need to take a PCR test after returning from 'go' or green country only cheaper lateral flow So-called pre-departure tests, taken 72 hours before someone flies home, likely to be scrapped Tougher rules for unvaccinated they have to isolate after returning from abroad and take two PCR tests on day two and day eight Hotel quarantine remains for remaining red list countries, even for double-jabbed Britons Advertisement There will also be changes to the controversial 'traffic light' rules - which will be cut to a two tier 'go' and 'no go' system. The new rules will be in place from October 4. Meanwhile, this seek saw Joe Biden finally allow in fully vaccinated Britons from November. Bookings surged by up to 700 per cent within an hour of the President's announcement and airlines' share prices rocketed. In a further boost, Business minister Paul Scully has said the Government could scrap the need to take departure and arrival PCR tests when travelling abroad, from as early as the October half-term holiday. Asked on Sky News whether PCR tests would be scrapped in time for half-term, the minister said: 'That's absolutely the aim. 'We've got to get the systems in place because we want to move to lateral flow tests to make it easier and cheaper for people to be able to enjoy those holidays at half-term. 'The aim is later on in October. 'We know that half-term is looming, we know people want to get away, but we also want to encourage business travel as well, because that is investment in the UK, it is investment in jobs and creates opportunities for people.' Department of Health data contradicts the ZOE study, showing that Covid cases rose week-on-week for the last five days. But it is picking up a surge among younger age groups, which matches the study In another sign of the economy reopening, the number of suits being dry cleaned at Timpson is up 80% compared to the same month last year, CEO James Timpson told MailOnline. Britain's pubs are reporting a surge in sales as thirsty workers head back to the office - with some already outpacing pre-pandemic figures. Profits have been recovering since the easing of lockdown restrictions in July, especially in city centres such as London and Manchester. But a shortage of EU workers - exacerbated by Brexit and Covid - means many pubs are struggling to fill the job vacancies required to cope with the fresh demand. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell Pub group Fuller confirmed office workers were an important factor in its recovery, which has seen sales in the seven weeks to September 18 reach 86% of levels seen before the pandemic. Boss Simon Emeny added: 'We are now beginning to see a return of customers to our central London pubs, which is a great sign as we head into a busy trading period.' Meanwhile City Pub Group revealed sales are at 90% of 2019 levels since indoor service was resumed in May, while Mitchells and Butlers said sales in the last eight weeks have now overtaken pre-pandemic levels on a like-for-like basis. However City Pub Group executive chairman Clive Watson said temporary worker visas are needed to plug the employment gaps. Advertisement U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday, claiming: 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti' The U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Daniel Foote wrote in his resignation letter, first shared by a PBS reporter on Twitter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed'. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' A State Department spokesperson accused Foote of 'mischaracterizing the circumstances of his resignation' and said some of his ideas were deemed 'harmful.' '[A]ll proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process,' a statement from the spokesperson reads. 'Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process.' 'For him to to say that his proposals were ignored is simply false,' they added. The statement claims: 'It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation.' Foote blamed Biden for making things worse in Haiti by backing the 'unelected' leader after the coup, claiming that 'picking the winner' will produce 'catastrophic results'. 'Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his 'political agreement' over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society,' he wrote. Foote added: 'The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner again is impressive.' 'This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results,' he said. 'The negative impact to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.' The resignation comes as the U.S. migration crisis surged in the past few weeks when up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. Jen Psaki on Wednesday promised to release the figures after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to. However partial information released Thursday accounts for only 10,000 of the 15,000 that the DHS said earlier in the week had come to the southern border. When questioned Thursday about why she had failed to supply the information that she had promised, Psaki simply said 'I'm happy to get you a more fruitful rundown for you, if helpful, from the Department of Homeland Security'. The partial information shows that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. However, this means roughly 5,000 remain unaccounted for. Officials revealed to DailyMail.com two day ago that immigrants are simply being released 'on a very, very large scale' rather than deported. Migrants from Haiti wait in line on Thursday to board buses near the Del Rio International Bridge A migrant family stands on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande River on Thursday, September 23 and another brushes his teeth after crossing the river into Del Rio, Texas In Foote's resignation letter, he blamed the Biden administration for exacerbating the issues in Haiti, claiming his recommendations to help the country have been 'ignored and dismissed' An aerial view image taken on Thursday shows thousands of mostly Haitian migrants at the encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge A Haitian migrant with a child on his shoulders crosses the waist-high water in the Rio Grande River into Del Rio from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico on Thursday to the mostly Haitian migration camp near the bridge on the U.S. side According to the new figures, 5,000 migrants remain camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, according to the new figures. The 3,206 Haitian migrants in custody have either been moved to other Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities or to other sectors of the border for deportation or removal proceedings. Foote's resignation comes as the U.S. migration crisis surged in the past few weeks when up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised during her press briefing on Wednesday to share later in the day the exact number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. this year - including those part of the massive Haitian migration. When the figures were not yet released by Wednesday evening Psaki told DailyMail.com she would share the data: 'As soon as it is available form [sic] DHS.' It became available on Thursday morning from the agency. By Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at least 5,000 of these mostly Haitian migrants had been removed from Del Rio whether they were moved to other centers, deported back to their homeland or released into the U.S. He could not give exact figures during a congressional hearing on how many were released into the country. Deportation flights ensued on Sunday and continued through the week as planes full of Haitian migrants arrived back in the island capital city of Port-au-Prince. People are fleeing Haiti and seeking refuge in America after a devastating earthquake and the assassination of their president, which has thrown the country into even more chaos. Foote said that the deportation back to Haiti will only exacerbate the migration crisis at the southern border. 'The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will further desperation and crime,' the now-former special envoy wrote in his resignation letter of Haiti. 'Surging migration at our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti's unacceptable misery.' Haitian migrants cross into the U.S. even as deportations have accelerated on the U.S. side of the border A girl with barbie dolls in her boots waits on Thursday morning in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico to cross the Rio Grande River with her parents into the U.S. despite increased DHS efforts to deport these asylum-seekers to their homeland Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. are seen holding out at a makeshift camp near the Del Rio border on Wednesday evening An image taken from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico Wednesday night shows U.S. Border Patrol, Texas Department of Safety and National Guard vehicles shining their lights on the Rio Grande in Del Rio Reined in: Biden BANS mounted Border Patrol agents over migrant 'whipping' controversy Jen Psaki revealed Thursday that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told civil rights leaders that his agency will not continue to allow agents to operate on horseback at the border in Del Rio. 'I can also convey to you that the secretary also conveyed to civil rights leaders earlier this morning that we would no longer be using horses in Del Rio,' Psaki said during her daily press briefing. 'So that is something a policy change that has been made in response.' 'We feel those images are horrible and horrific,' she reiterated from her comments in previous days. 'There is an investigation the president certainly supports overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which he has conveyed will happen quickly.' The images in question emerged earlier this week with Border Patrol agents on horseback apparently using either the horses' reins or other lariats as whips when chasing after the mostly Haitian migrants. Agents insist they were not using whips against the migrants, 15,000 of whom set up a makeshift camp underneath and around the Del Rio International Bridge over the last few weeks. They have reasoned that they were only using the reins on horses or to ward off immigrants but not to whip them. This didn't stop the overwhelming outcry from progressive politicians and civil rights leaders. Representative Maxine Waters said on Wednesday that the actions portrayed in the images were 'worse than slavery'. Advertisement Foote only served in his post for two months after becoming the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti in July following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the role, Foote served as a member of President Joe Biden's delegation to Moise's funeral. Before taking on that role he previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti and as the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia under President Donald Trump. In November 2019, during his tenure in Zambia, Foote said he was 'horrified' after a judge in the very conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal sentence two men to 15 years in prison after they were caught having sex in 2017. He received pushback from Zambia's President Edgar Lungu for trying to dictate policy and declared him a persona non grata or an unacceptable or unwelcome person. Foote has served with the Department of State since 1998 and has held a litany of roles since then including in the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico; the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in Colombia; deputy chief of mission in both Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and charge d'affaires in the Dominican Republic. While many migrants were rounded up and returned to Haiti from the U.S. in the last few days, many began crossing back into Mexico from the border town of Del Rio to avoid deportation to Haiti. Images began emerging on Sunday of Border Patrol agents and officers on horseback rounding up migrants and preventing them from returning to the makeshift camp near the Del Rio bridge. Immediately, the images were slammed as 'inhumane' and 'horrific' after some accused the agents of using either the reins or a lariat as a whip on the migrants. Images show a rope-like tool being thrown in the direction of some migrants who were running from the officers. Agents insist they were not using any whips on migrants, while Mayorkas says those pictured with the ropes have been reassigned to administrative duties pending a full investigation into the incident. An officer in Haiti blocks Haitian removed from the U.S. on Tuesday from boarding the same plane they were just deported on in an attempt tp return to America Del Rio Border Patrol repeatedly asked for extra resources in June but were ignored Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas were so concerned about the escalating situation at the U.S.-Mexico border that they requested additional resources three months ago - but their concerns were not acted on by superiors. Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president told CNN that the union on June 1 suggested improvements to the system. Anfinsen said that they wanted agents to be sent to the border with tablets to start the intake process when a large group crosses the river, instead of having the group wait there while space is cleared in the station. 'This way, we can at least get part of the process finished before they even get to the station instead of wasting that time,' said the email. The union followed up on June 3, and also suggested placing a trailer in the area for additional staff, to deal with a predicted surge. On June 17, the union received a one-sentence response: 'This is being explored, several other platforms are being considered which are more efficient.' The revelation came as Jen Psaki, the White House spokesman, promised to provide precise data on the number of Haitian arrivals released into the country - yet by 10pm had failed to do so. Migrants, many of them from Haiti, are pictured wading back and forth between Texas and Mexico on Wednesday. At the weekend an estimated 14,000 migrants were sheltering in Del Rio A photo from September 22 shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president, pictured testifying before Congress, said on Wednesday that they had warned back in June about the need for more resources on the U.S.-Mexico border At her daily press briefing on Wednesday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy confronted Psaki on the numbers - which he said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas didn't know. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When Psaki attempted to direct him back to DHS, an incredulous Doocy replied: 'He says he doesn't know.' She replied: 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those - I promise, this afternoon.' Doocy told Sean Hannity on his 9-10pm show on Fox that Psaki was yet to provide the figures. Mayorkas, meanwhile, was at the Capitol on Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back Congressional hearings. Republican Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here,' said Ron Johnson, a Republican senator for Wisconsin. 'Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was at the border on Monday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. On Wednesday, Johnson wrote to Mayorkas formally requesting the figures. 'At yesterday's Senate hearing you failed to answer my questions about basic information on apprehensions at the U.S. border,' he wrote. 'Of the approximately 1.3 million apprehensions, how many people have been returned, how many people have been detained, and how many people have been dispersed into the U.S.?' Johnson said he would like a response within a week. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge, as the Department of Homeland Security launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added. It was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Kamala Harris tells Mayorkas to order Border Patrol to treat migrants with 'dignity' Kamala Harris demanded that Border Patrol agents treat the thousands of mostly Haitian migrants gathered in Del Rio, Texas with 'dignity' after images emerged of officers on horseback using what appeared to be a whip to wrangle the illegal border hoppers. 'Yesterday, Vice President Harris spoke to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to receive an update about his trip to Del Rio,' Harris' chief spokesperson Symone Sanders said in a statement on Wednesday. 'During that call, the Vice President raised her grave concerns about the mistreatment of Haitian migrants by border patrol agents on horses, and the need of all CBP agents to treat people with dignity, humanely and consistent with our laws and our values.' However the VP failed to come up with a solution to the migrant crisis and simply heaped blame on overstretched Border Patrol agents. Advertisement Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation. Republicans say Biden administration policies led Haitians to believe they would get asylum. Democrats are expressing outrage after images went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. Many of the 8,600 who remain there have resorted to fashioning makeshift tents using discarded clothing and tree branches in order to provide at least some shelter from the elements. The heat has been punishing over the last week with temperatures soaring into the high 90s. Families have resorted to bathing in the grimy water of the Rio Grande river to cool off. The squalor is more reminiscent of a Developing World country than the land of the American dream, which thousands of migrants have fled to in the hopes of claiming asylum and building a better life. Empty water bottles, food containers and other litter is strewn around while mountains of garbage tower up high into the air. An aerial photo shows the huge piles of garbage from above, which are seen just steps away from the places young children call home. In another image, women and young children are seen lying among plastic bottles and an empty Oreo packet, on the ground which is covered in the remnants of trees that have been used to fashion the shelters. Another photo shows a Haitian passport in a pile of trash including empty aluminum cans, an old shoe and discarded clothing. The cramped conditions have also fueled fears of a COVID-19 outbreak - especially given that the migrants crossing the border are not required to be vaccinated before entering the US. Women and young children are seen lying on the ground of the camp among plastic bottles, empty Oreo packets and food containers A young girl stands in the place that she currently calls home in a makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas Almost 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under the bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico. Many fled Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and have been living in South American countries including Brazil and Chile. But since these nations have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, many Haitians have traveled up through South America and Mexico to seek asylum in the US. Biden has been blamed after a May proclamation that Haitians in the US would not be deported for 18 months because of instability in their home country, and could apply for documentation to work in the US. That only applied to Haitians already in the US at the time, but thousands have since made the trip to the border in a bid to take advantage of it. Most of them live in Chile and Brazil, having moved there after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000. Border Patrol agents struggling to process the vast numbers of people quickly enough set up the makeshift camp under the bridge as a temporary home. Last week, concerns rose that there would not be enough food, water and basic supplies to provide for the thousands of migrants living at the site. Meanwhile, Mexico has begun busing and flying Haitian migrants away from the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday, signaling a new level of support for the United States. Mexico has helped at key moments before. It intensified patrols to stop unaccompanied Central American children from reaching the Texas border in 2014, allowed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts in 2019 and, just last month, began deporting Central American migrants to Guatemala after the Biden administration flew them to southern Mexico. A migrant walks past a pile of garbage at the camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas on the US-Mexico border Tuesday night Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's foreign relations secretary, said Tuesday he had spoken with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about the Haitians' situation. Ebrard said most of the Haitians already had refugee status in Chile or Brazil and weren't seeking it in Mexico. 'What they are asking for is to be allowed to pass freely through Mexico to the United States,' Ebrard said. In Haiti, dozens of migrants upset about being deported from the U.S. tried to rush back into a plane that landed Tuesday afternoon in Port-au-Prince as they yelled at authorities. A security guard closed the plane door in time as some deportees began throwing rocks and shoes at the plane. Several of them lost their belongings in the scuffle as police arrived. The group was disembarking from one of three flights scheduled for the day. EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of Haitian migrants who flocked to Del Rio were already working and living comfortably as refugees in CHILE and only set off for the US after Biden scrapped Trump-era deportation policy The secret behind the Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio, Texas is that they didn't migrate from Haiti at all but from Chile, where they had been granted asylum and were working and living comfortably as refugees. The dozens of Chilean identity cards that litter the ground in Ciudad Acuna, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, all bear distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. But they haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These have mainly come from Santiago, the glittering capital of relatively prosperous Chile. Many had jobs there. 'As one put it to me, 'I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti,' migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' These are the discarded ID cards of the Haitian migrants who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousand after leaving Chile, where they were living as refugees DailyMail.com has learned that the majority of Haitians in Del Rio have actually come from Chile or Brazil, where they have been living as refugees for years, and only set off for the US after Biden opened the borders. The migrants were stopped in Tapachula, Mexico after the Biden administration pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north, but were suddenly released on September 12 The majority of the Haitian migrants have come from Chile - the wealthiest country in Latin America - and Brazil - the fifth wealthiest - where they have been living in modest comfort in Santiago and Sao Paulo for the past five or six years. There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. Border Patrol agents stand guard on the U.S. side of the bank of the Rio Grand river on Thursday The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. As a result, 15,000 Haitian migrants were encamped under the Del Rio International Bridge by last weekend - overwhelming the tiny Texas city of just 35,000 people 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' President Joe Biden suspended Trump's border program on his first day of office and the Homeland Security Department ended it in June, drawing an influx of migrants to the border over the past few months Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. Footage emerged Monday of scores of mostly Haitian migrants returning to the Mexico side of the Rio Grande River crossing as DHS accelerates deportations Migrants are guided by Border Patrol agents as they prepare to board a bus from the migrant camp in Del Rio to be taken to other parts of the US for processing A bus to transport migrants to other parts of the US for processing is seen by the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday night 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' 'Word went out - we're not going to deport you': Ted Cruz says migrant crisis grew from 900 in early September to 15,000 just weeks later after Biden CANCELED flights back to Haiti: Hundreds seek asylum in Mexico after crackdown Ted Cruz has slammed Joe Biden's chaotic management of the migrant border crisis, saying thousands of desperate Haitians rushed to Texas after the president canceled deportation flights. Up to 15,000 migrants have been living in squalid conditions in an impromptu camp that sprang up under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande from the Texas town Del Rio to Mexico's Ciudad Acuna. The Department of Homeland Security say they have removed 4,600 people in recent days from the site but have not revealed how many have been released into the US. The White House has also refused to answer when, if ever, Biden has visited the border, even in his previous roles as vice president and senator. Following the recent crackdown in response to the huge influx, hundreds of migrants have instead headed to Mexico's refugee agencies and shelters amid the chaotic scenes. Speaking to Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Cruz, a Republican Texas senator, said: 'What's happening in Del Rio really illustrates the cause-and-effect of the Biden border disaster. To really understand it, you have to go back to September 8. Ted Cruz has slammed Joe Biden's management of the migrant border crisis, saying thousands of Haitians rushed to Texas after the president canceled deportation flights Up to 15,000 migrants have been living in squalid conditions in an impromptu camp that sprang up under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande 'On September 8, under that bridge, there were, on any given day, between 700 and 1,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Haiti. 'On September 8 there were roughly 900 Haitians that were scheduled to be on airplanes to go back to Haiti and the Biden administration canceled those flights. 'They said, 'We're not gonna deport you. You can stay here. You can remain in America.' 'And what happened was simple. Those 900 Haitians, they pulled out their phones. And they got their phone and they called their families, they called their friends. They texted their family and friends.' Migrants have been using Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp to share detailed instructions with friends and family back home on how to cross the border into the US, it was recently revealed. The White House has refused to answer when, if ever, Biden has visited the border, even in his previous roles as vice president and senator Cruz continued: 'You had 700 people on September 8. I was down in Del Rio eight days later on September 16. The day I was there, 700 people had become 10,503. It took eight days for that to happen. 'Within a couple of days that 10,000 had become 15,000 and it was straight cause-and-effect. The word went out that the Biden administration is not going to enforce the law. 'And if you're from Haiti, come to Del Rio because that means you get to stay, and that's what's produced this disaster.' Biden initially suspended repatriation flights to Haiti after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people and damaged more than 100,000 homes. But he has since stepped up the deportation blitz in order to curb the number of undocumented migrants flooding into Del Rio as thousands continued to arrive. The official line is that Haitians are being expelled from the US back to the crisis-stricken Caribbean nation under a Donald Trump-era rule. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 523 Haitians have since been deported to their homeland on four flights, with repatriations set to continue on a regular basis, the Department of Homeland Security said. But thousands of migrants have also been freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out as the Biden administration promised, according to officials. It's estimated as many as 5,000 migrants have been allowed in. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been forced to use 'unprecedented' methods to prevent more from entering his state by creating a 'steel barrier' of hundreds of vehicles at the border. Migrants exit a Border Patrol bus and prepare to be received by the Val Verde Humanitarian Coalition after crossing the Rio Grande on Wednesday They are lined up outside Del Rio in Texas, which has seen an influx of 14,600 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US. An estimated 8,600 remained in the town of 35,000 people as of Tuesday night, with 1,083 so far deported back to Haiti Abbott visited the site on Tuesday and praised DPS and Texas National Guard for creating the barrier by using hundreds of state-owned vehicles, almost all of which appear to be bulky SUVs. Unlike Abbott, Biden is yet to witness the scenes of chaos firsthand, where migrants are living in squalid conditions and forced to sleep on the ground under makeshift tents from discarded clothing and tree branches in searing heat. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed on whether Biden had visited the southern border at all in his life but she said she could not provide a date. The president has frequently visited areas affected by natural disasters but is yet to make a trip to the current crisis emerging in Texas. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said: 'Has Joe Biden ever been to the border? It's a question that needs to be answered by the president, who is presiding over the most disastrous border crisis in decades. 'The RNC Research team investigated and has been unable to find a single example of Biden visiting the border in at least a decade, even when he was Obama's border czar. Biden created a humanitarian crisis at the border and refuses to take responsibility for it. 'The buck stops with him, and it is long past time for Biden to make the trip, see the devastating impacts of his open border policies for himself, and address the crises his failed policies created.' Filippo Grandi, the head of the UN refugee agency, has warned that US expulsions to such a volatile situation might violate international law. The chaotic scenes at the border and news of the expulsion flights convinced some Haitian migrants transiting through Mexico that it would be better to petition for legal status there, rather than risk crossing the U.S. border. 'My thinking is to find a better life, wherever I find it... I never said it had to be in the United States,' said Wilner Plaisir, a Haitian asylum seeker waiting outside the offices of the Mexican refugee agency COMAR in Mexico City on Wednesday. John Rourke on Wednesday night told of the distressing scenes he saw in Del Rio, Texas 'If I can find work, I'll stay here with my family,' said the construction worker. Statistics published by COMAR show that 18,883 Haitians applied for asylum in Mexico in the first eight months of this year, the second-highest nationality after Hondurans. Border Patrol agents were so concerned about the escalating situation at the border that they requested additional resources three months ago - but their concerns were not acted on by superiors. Jon Anfinsen, National Border Patrol Council local president told CNN that the union on June 1 suggested improvements to the system. Anfinsen said that they wanted agents to be sent to the border with tablets to start the intake process when a large group crosses the river, instead of having the group wait there while space is cleared in the station. 'This way, we can at least get part of the process finished before they even get to the station instead of wasting that time,' said the email. The union followed up on June 3, and also suggested placing a trailer in the area for additional staff, to deal with a predicted surge. On June 17, the union received a one-sentence response: 'This is being explored, several other platforms are being considered which are more efficient.' Meanwhile an Army veteran who organizes annual clean-ups of American cities has told of his shock at the squalid conditions along the border. John Rourke, founder of the Great American Clean-Up, said that he and his team were taken aback at the scenes. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, was in the city on Monday but Rourke told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that more needed to be done. 'Let me tell you what I saw,' Rourke said. 'I saw people washing babies in the Rio Grande. 'I saw ladies breastfeeding babies, sleeping in dirt, 107 degrees outside, red ants everywhere, real coyotes - the ones that have four legs walking around. 'It's like Naked And Afraid: the southern border edition, out there. 'People are literally knocking down trees and setting up lean-tos and teepees and sleeping under those.' He said he and his colleagues 'picked up thousands of pounds of garbage along the southern border.' Friends of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie have opened up about the ill-fated van-life couple's relationship, describing it as turbulent, often 'toxic' and filled with 'drama' from the time they first met as teenagers. Petito, a 22-year-old Long Island native, was killed while on a cross-country trip with Laundrie. Her body was discovered at a campsite near Grand Teton, Wyoming, on Sunday and was positively identified on Tuesday, with the manner of death being ruled a homicide. Laundrie, 23, has been named a 'person of interest' but not a suspect in his girlfriend's death. Law enforcement officials in Florida, where the boyfriend lives, have spent the past four days looking for him in an alligator-infested wilderness park, where investigators say he had fled after returning home without Petito earlier this month. The search for the missing man continued on Thursday for a fifth day, with dozens of officers heading out in swamp buggies to scour the area. Meanwhile, Laundrie's parents, Roberta and Chris Laundrie, were seen returning to their North Port home on Thursday morning with a Ford Mustang that police had towed away two days before. Speaking to People Magazine, Brian Laundrie's friend Ben Matula said the man's relationship with Petito had always been volatile. 'One minute, they'd be all over each other, the next minute, he'd be like, "We're fighting,"' Matula told the outlet. 'They always had some drama.' Scroll down for video Friends of Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito (pictured together) say their relationship was often 'toxic' and filled with 'drama' North Port, Florida, police are seen at the Carlton Reserve on Thursday as they resume the search for Brian Laundrie On Thursday, Brian Laundrie's parents brought back home the silver Ford Mustang that police had towed away two days before The Mustang is pictured parked in the Laundrie family's driveway in North Port, Florida, on Thursday morning As cops search for Brian, his parents, Chris and Roberta Laundrie, were spotted outside their North Port home on Thursday They left together in Chris' red pickup truck after refusing to comment on the search Search teams accompanied by K9 units scoured the park near North Port on Wednesday The large-scale search for the missing person of interest entered its fifth day on Thursday Police are seen riding a swamp buggy in the Carlton Reserve during the ongoing search for Brian Laundrie on Thursday A drone flies over the alligator-infested wilderness park on Day 5 of the search Officials believe Laundrie fled into the 24,000-acre preserve teeming with alligators and snakes after telling his parents he was going on a hike Alyssa Chen, 23, Petito's friend, echoed Matula's assessment of the young couple's relationship. 'They had times they were toxic and times where everything seemed a lot more healthy,' Chen told People. 'They had very low lows and very high highs. But they really seemed to love each other. 'When things were good, you'd be like, 'Why can't I have a relationship like that?" When they were bad, you'd be like "Oh my God, just break up and spare yourself from the drama and everyone else from having to hear about it."' Matula said Laundrie's relationship with Petito, which began when they were high school students in Blue Point, New York, always had a dark undercurrent. 'There was always something below the surface where things weren't 100 per cent wonderful,' he said. Memorials for Gabby Petito are scattered across her hometown of Blue Point, New York on Thursday Blue ribbons in memory of Gabby Petito are tied to poles along a road in her hometown A ribbon honoring Petito is tied to a utility pole in Blue Point, New York, Thursday Petito, 22, is seen with Laundrie in a post dated July 29, 2021. His post is captioned: 'Barefoot hiking.' He has been named a person of interest in her homicide Alyssa Chen (not pictured), Petito's friend, said her relationship with Laundrie 'had very low lows and very high highs.' The pair grew up together in Long Island Petito and Laundrie grew up together in Long Island but moved in recent years to North Port, where his parents live. Their home, about 35 miles south of Sarasota, was searched by investigators earlier this week and a Ford Mustang driven by Laundries mother was towed from the driveway. Authorities believe Laundrie drove that car to the 24,000-acre Carlton Reserve before disappearing. On Thursday morning, Roberta Laundrie returned home in the Mustang and parked it on her property, before taking off again with her husband in his red pickup truck. The couple made no statements to the media. His family reported him missing on September 17, three days after he told his parents he was going on a hike. Laundrie's family lawyer issued a five-word statement when Gabby's body was found, saying: 'May she rest in peace.' The couple got into a physical altercation on August 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case (Petito is seen in bodycam video) Police decided to separate the feuding couple for the night but no charges were filed and no serious injuries were reported Petito's last known sighting was believed to have been on August 27 at the Merry Piglets restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming Diners described Laundrie as acting aggressively while arguing with staff about his bill The Laundrie house was searched on Monday by the FBI for evidence, and Brian's parents were questioned. The ongoing outdoors search for Brian includes thousands of acres of forbidding, swampy subtropical terrain replete with alligators, snakes, bobcats, coyotes, turkey, deer and many other wild creatures. There are more than 100 miles of hiking and horseback riding trails, plus numerous camping areas and rivers. The Sarasota County Sheriffs Office brought in a 10-person diver unit called SURF, or Sheriffs Underwater Recovery Force, to perform a more specialized search for evidence. Petito and Laundrie documented online their trip in a white Ford Transit van converted into a camper, but got into a physical altercation on August 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case, as seen in a widely circulated body camera footage. Ultimately, police there decided to separate the feuding couple for the night but no charges were filed and no serious injuries were reported. Petito's last known sighting was believed to have been on August 27 at the Merry Piglets restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where an 'aggressive' Laundrie berated wait staff during an argument over the bill. Fellow diners reported seeing a man matching Laundrie's description storm out of the eatery and return four times to continue the argument. Later, a woman believed to be Petito came in to apologize for her male companion's behavior. 'It seemed like they were seeing the world with the person they loved,' Matula said of the couple's epic road trip. 'They were living the dream that all of us want to do. ...All their friends were either still in college or searching for entry level jobs, and they're out there killing it. I was jealous, and I know I'm not the only one. I was happy for them.' Gabby Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where she was killed, and created a stone cross. He laid a floral tribute Reflecting on Laundrie's portrayal in the media, Matula added: 'the guy who he's being made out to be isn't the guy I knew. But then I have to look at what's going on and realize that he did some stuff that seems like it was shady seems like maybe he wasn't on the up and up. And because he did that stuff, a girl might be dead and he might be in trouble.' Petito was reported missing on September 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West. Her body was discovered Sunday at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Petitos death as a homicide meaning her death was caused by another person but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results. Laundrie is not charged with any crime but is considered a person of interest in the case. With online sleuths and theories multiplying by the day, the FBI and police have been deluged with tips about possible Laundrie sightings. North Port police spokesperson Joshua Taylor said none have so far panned out. He also batted down rumors that Laundrie had been captured Tuesday. 'These reports are unfortunately false. Please rest assured that when Brian is found, we will be more than happy to let everyone know,' Taylor said said in an email. Former ultra-orthodox school principal Malka Leifer has been ordered to stand trial on 70 child sexual abuse charges. Leifer, 55, pleaded not guilty to all charges at the end of a committal hearing in Melbourne on Thursday. The allegations relate to sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper over incidents during Leifer's time at the Adass Israel School in the city's inner suburbs between 2004 and 2008. Former principal of Adass Israel School in Melbourne's inner suburbs will stand trial on 70 charges of child sexual abuse (pictured, Leifer in a Jerusalem court in 2018) Magistrate Johanna Metcalf said she believed the evidence presented during a hearing, which heard from all three sisters in closed court, was of sufficient weight to support a conviction. Four charges were withdrawn by prosecutors after it became clear during the evidence that those alleged incidents occurred in Israel. The remaining charges are 44 counts of indecent assault, 13 of an indecent act with a child, 10 of rape and three of sexually penetrating a child. Leifer's case will now go to Victoria's County Court for a directions hearing on October 21. The three sisters gave evidence behind closed doors, appearing by videolink. Leifer also appeared by video from Melbourne's women's prison, the Dame Phyillis Frost Centre. The 55-year-old pleaded not guilty to all charges via videolink at the end of a committal hearing on Thursday (pictured, Leifer in a Jerusalem court in 2018) Her barrister Ian Hill QC made no submissions at the end of the prosecution's case on Thursday. Ms Metcalf noted Leifer denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Five witnesses gave evidence on Thursday including former Adass Israel School staffer Esther Spigelman who said she went to see Leifer the day after she was stood down by the school board over the allegations in 2008. Leifer returned to Israel soon after and was later charged. She was extradited to Australia earlier this year. 'It was a very big shock and I went to say goodbye. She was very upset with what they were doing to her,' Ms Spigelman said. 'We didn't go into detail of things but she definitely said 'I did nothing wrong' and pretty much that she felt very unfair with what was happening.' Leifer's case will now go to Victoria's County Court for a directions hearing on October 21 (pictured, Leifer in a Jerusalem court in 2018) Ms Erlich's former husband Joshua Erlich gave evidence about overhearing a phone call between Ms Erlich and her sister Nicole Meyer when they lived in Israel in 2008. Ms Erlich had been seeing social worker Chana Rabinowitz, who had previously counselled students at the Adass Israel School. He said in the call Ms Erlich had seemed 'panicked' about something she had told Ms Rabinowitz about her relationship with Leifer. 'Dassi was very worried about how it had been taken and that Mrs Rabinowitz was going to contact other people in Melbourne to speak about it,' he said. 'She was very concerned about what was going to happen next and she was not sure why it was being taken in such a serious way.' He said he believed Ms Erlich had tried to persuade Ms Rabinowitz not to do anything about it, but that she had also confirmed her sister Nicole could corroborate the information. The allegations relate to sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper (pictured) during the period between 2004-2008 Mr Erlich said he believed Nicole had confirmed the information - which was not detailed in open court - and the school administration had been notified. The couple later separated, beginning divorce proceedings in 2011, after Ms Erlich decided to move away from religious observance. Mr Erlich said Ms Erlich had previously described Leifer as taking the place of a mother, sharing that school had given the sisters respite from troubles at home with their mother. He said he heard Leifer had hugged her, rubbed her thighs and gave her 'special attention' but didn't find it particularly concerning. 'If she had said it was under the clothes or something of that nature I would have been concerned,' he said. Advertisement Gabby Petito was last seen alive on August 27 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming trying to defuse a heated argument between fiance Brian Laundrie and a hostess at a Tex-Mex restaurant, according to a witness - shifting the timeline of when the 22-year-old van lifer was spotted. Investigators were initially operating under the assumption that Petito, whose body was found at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on Sunday, was last seen alive on August 24 leaving a Salt Lake City hotel with Laundrie. However, Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans said she and her boyfriend were at the Merry Piglets restaurant in Jackson Hole on August 27 and saw the tragic Long Island woman try to calm down the hot-headed Laundrie, during an interview on Thursday with ABC's Good Morning America. 'He was just very visibly angry. She was really upset. She was crying. He immediately went to the hostess stand and was going in on the hostess and the waitress and eventually the manager,' Angelo told GMA. 'It was almost like he was screaming. She was like "I'm sorry, come on just let's just go." But she was physically upset, she was crying. You could feel his temper. He was angry.' The sighting at the Jackson Hole restaurant places Petito 300 miles north of Salt Lake City and just 45 miles from the Wyoming campground in the Grand Tetons where her remains were found. Nina Celie Angelo (left) of New Orleans says she saw Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie (right) on August 27 at a restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her account has been confirmed by the restaurant. Petito was reported missing on September 11 after she and her 23-year-old fiance, Laundrie, set out from New York on a cross-country road trip in her white van two months earlier. They were documenting their travels on social media platforms including Instagram and YouTube Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they stopped to have lunch at Merry Piglets sometime between 1 and 2pm. The couple was in Wyoming in late August to attend a wedding. While dining at the restaurant, they overheard a loud conversation in which another customer, Laundrie, was heard screaming at wait staff in what appeared to be an argument over the check Angelo's account means that Petito was last seen alive on August 27. It was previously assumed that she was last spotted alive in Salt Lake City three days earlier Petito was reported missing on September 11 after she and her 23-year-old fiance set out from New York on a cross-country road trip in her white van two months earlier. They were documenting their travels on social media platforms, including Instagram and YouTube. Angelo and her boyfriend, Matthew England, were traveling through Wyoming in late August to attend a friend's wedding. England provided a credit card statement to Fox News which indicates that he spent $60.88 at the Tex-Mex joint on August 27. According to Angelo, she and England stopped to have lunch at Merry Piglets sometime between 1 and 2pm. A restaurant employee told DailyMail.com on Wednesday: 'We have already talked to the authorities about the situation and we are not allowed to comment on it further.' Merry Piglets officials later posted on Instagram: 'Yes, we can confirm Gabby and Brian were in Merry Piglets. 'We have already notified the FBI and they are aware. We are letting them do their jobs and we are respecting Gabby's family and have nothing further to comment.' Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they traveled to Wyoming for a wedding in late August Angelo says England recognized Laundrie and Petito after seeing news reports that included police body cam footage of the couple during an August 12 incident in Moab, Utah (above) The FBI would comment on the validity of Angelo's claim. But Angelo insists she and Matthew overheard a loud conversation in which another customer nearby, Laundrie, was heard screaming at waitstaff in what appeared to be an argument over the check. Angelo said that the man involved in the dispute displayed aggressive body language. Laundrie left the restaurant and then returned around four times, she said. Afterward, Petito came into the restaurant and apologized to waitstaff for his behavior. Angelo said she completely forgot about the incident when the couple returned to New Orleans to find the region ravaged by Hurricane Ida. But coverage of Petitos disappearance aired daily on TV and the couple caught a story about police body cam footage showing Petito and Laundrie being interviewed by an officer after a domestic incident in Moab, Utah. Jenn Bethune, who runs 'Red, White and Bethune' on YouTube, said she found footage of Petito's van when she parsed over her videos from Grand Teton National Park after she was tagged in a post urging anyone who had filmed or photographed the area to search for clues. This image was taken hours after the restaurant incident on August 27 Jenn Bethune (pictured left), who travels the country with her husband Kyle (pictured right) and her three children in a 1983 Silver Eagle bus that they call 'Blue Betty' (also pictured) said she remembered driving past the van because of its Florida plates - she and her travel partner, she said, are originally from the state. As England watched the images of Petito and Laundrie in the body cam footage, it began to dawn on him early on Wednesday morning that they looked familiar. 'He goes, "Nina, that was the couple fighting at the restaurant", Angelo said. Brian Laundrie mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from cross-country trip alone, says neighbor Brian Laundrie's neighbor has revealed that the 23-year-old mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from the cross-country trip alone. Charlene Guthrie, who lives across the street from the Laundrie family in North Port, Florida, told Fox News she saw Laundrie return to 'normal life' - all the while his girlfriend Gabby Petito was missing, possibly already dead. 'He mowed the lawn. Him and his mother went for a bicycle ride around the block,' Guthrie said. 'I mean, everything was just normal life once he came back. 'And I just can't get over the fact that they it seemed like nothing bothered him. How can you do that?' Laundrie returned to North Port without Petito in the couple's campervan on September 1. Authorities were then alerted to her disappearance on September 11. Guthrie said the discovery of Petito's body and Laundrie's disappearance look 'really, really bad for him' and that she believes he 'should be a suspect.' The neighbor also hit out at Laundrie's parents for not coming forward when their son went missing and that they 'let him go' in the first place. 'I have children, and I know that you do what you can to protect your child, but, you know, that can go so far, and you gotta do the right thing eventually. You have to,' Guthrie said. '[The Laundries] should have absolutely come forward now. I mean, I just can't believe they didn't do something. I'm really angry now that they let this go. 'And that everything was so natural and they remained so normal through the whole thing, you know, while they were here, till he went on the run.' Advertisement 'And it stopped me in my tracks. I felt like the blood left my body. 'I was like, "Oh my God, I completely forgot about that incident".' The memory of the argument is particularly powerful in light of the news that Petito's body was found nearby at Grand Teton National Park on Sunday. 'I have chills right now,' Angelo told Fox News. 'It's crazy because it wasn't just like we passed them on the street it was a full blown incident.' On Instagram, Angelo posted a story describing what she saw. Excuse my French, but I am freaking the f*** out, Angelo said on her Instagram page. Matt and I just realized - I dont know cause Im a dumb a** and I did not put two and two together - that we saw a blowout of a situation between Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie in Wyoming when we were there. How I did not put two and two together that this happened? I dont know. Angelo said that she had contacted authorities about the incident. She said that her boyfriend has an insane photographic memory. England has told her for days that he knows this guy, Brian and that he had seen him before. Angelo said England told her: They were the couple fighting in the restaurant. We were sitting right next to them, she said. They got kicked out of the restaurant and were fighting with the hostess. Angelo says Petito was 'hysterically crying' and 'walked out.' 'She was crying as she was standing on the sidewalk and I was watching the whole thing unfold,' according to Angelo. 'And he walked back in the restaurant and he's fighting with the hostess.' Laundrie walked in and out of the restaurant 'four more times' to 'talk to the manager' and 'tell the hostess off,' according to Angelo. The encounter would jibe with the account of another witness, travel blogger Jenn Bethune, who said she drove by Petito's van - hours after the restaurant incident Bethune, who runs 'Red, White and Bethune' on YouTube, said she parsed over her footage from the national park after she was tagged in a post urging anyone who had filmed or photographed the area to search for clues. She turned over images she took that included the van to the FBI and Petito's family, and said the discovery of the footage gave her 'chills.' The video was captured on August 27 at Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area near Grand Tetons National Park. 'I got chills all over my body and ran straight back to my laptop, got my GoPro footage, and lo and behold Gabby's van was on there,' she told host Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends on Monday. Laundrie is considered a person of interest since he is believed to be the last person to see Petito alive. He returned home to Florida on September 1 without her, and refused to cooperate with authorities. He was reported missing by his family last Friday. A massive search for Laundrie is underway in Carlton Reserve, a 25,000-acre swampy region just miles away from his North Port, Florida home. The exhaustive search for Laundrie in a vast Florida wilderness entered a sixth day on Thursday as the mystery deepened around a case that has engrossed Americans. Police divers joined the search for Brian Laundrie just before noon Wednesday with an airboat to join the manhunt for Brian Laundrie A van from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Underwater Recovery Force, towing a small dingy, turned up about an hour after an airboat was seen for the first time at the 25,000-acre reserve A team of divers joined police and FBI agents using boats and helicopters looking for Laundrie in the alligator-infested Carlton Reserve on Wednesday, but a spokesman said at nightfall that they had found 'nothing' to show for their efforts. Authorities have not said why they are convinced Laundrie, whom police call a 'person of interest' in the case, may still be somewhere inside the wilderness preserve near his home in North Port, Florida, more than a week after he told family members he was headed there to hike alone. North Port police say Laundrie's parents did not report him missing until September 14, three days after the family last saw him. The Carlton Reserve has more than 80 miles of hiking trails but is dominated by swampy water. Many Americans have closely followed the case since Petito was reported missing on September 11. Ten days earlier, Laundrie had returned home to North Port without her from a cross-country road trip the couple chronicled in social media posts. In identifying her remains, Teton County medical examiners ruled Petito's death a homicide, but did not make the cause of her death public. Petito and Laundrie left her home state of New York in July, heading west on what they called a 'van life' trip. They posted photos to social media as they traveled through Kansas, Colorado and Utah. Laundrie's whereabouts are still unknown, with the manhunt entering its fourth day at a nature reserve m Florida (pictured) Police and FBI agents resumed their search of the Carlton Reserve early Wednesday, sharing photos of search dogs (above) Search teams from multiple law enforcement agencies gathered Wednesday for a briefing before heading out into the 25,000-acre swampland Witnesses saw Petito on August 24 as she left a Salt Lake City hotel. She posted her final photo the next day. Petito's family believes she was headed to Grand Teton National Park when they last heard from her. Her body was found at the edge of that park near the Spread River. Investigators searched the Laundrie family home in North Port last week and were seen loading cardboard boxes into a van and towing away a silver Ford Mustang. In seeking search warrants, investigators cited text messages from Petito's phone to her mother, Nicole Schmidt, that struck Schmidt as suspicious. The final text from Petito's phone came on August 30 and read only: 'No service in Yosemite,' a national park in California that she and Laundrie are not believed to have visited during their trip. On August 12, a 911 caller reported to emergency dispatchers that Laundrie was slapping and hitting Petito in front of the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, Utah. Moab police pulled the couple over in their van on a highway near Arches National Park. Body camera footage of that encounter shows Petito sobbing as she describes a fight between the couple that she said escalated into her slapping Laundrie as he drove the van. The officers did not detain Petito or Laundrie but told them to spend the night apart. New York City's MTA is starting to fine anyone riding on city trains or buses without a face covering - enforcing the mask mandate more than a year after it went on the books. Any straphanger caught traveling on the MTA without a mask is subject to a $50 fine, the agency announced Wednesday. 'While the fine has been in place since last fall, we began ramping up enforcement on Sept. 7 to drive compliance,' MTA Chief Safety Officer Pat Warren said at a press conference. 'That includes stationing MTA police and staff at strategic subway railroad hubs and bus terminals to meet workers heading back to the office and students coming to school for the first time in person.' The MTA's mask mandate was initially instated in September 2020 to protect riders from the spread of COVID-19, and since then, the agency's transit police force has issued only 41 summonses to maskless straphangers, according to the New York Post. The agency also has handed out hundreds of thousands masks to riders. The MTA will begin to enforce a mask mandate for anyone riding on city trains or buses, and while the rule has been on the books for over a year, the agency says the grace period is over Any straphanger caught traveling on the MTA without a mask is subject to a $50 fine, the agency announced on Wednesday MTA officials said they are looking out for their employees as well, in a city where 34,102 people have died from COVID-19 and over a million others have contracted the virus since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. Data obtained by the New York Times shows that from late May until early July, the rate of new daily coronavirus cases steadily dropped to some of the lowest levels since the start of the pandemic, before once again spiking in August and September. On Tuesday alone, there were 1,720 new reported cases of COVID-19, compared to 128 on July 3. Subway workers were hit particularly hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 171 deaths from the virus as of this month, The City reported last week. And as for vaccine mandates, the MTA has been putting pressure on its unvaccinated workers. On September 12, the MTA announced it had pulled a $500,000 death benefit for any unvaccinated employees who succumb to COVID-19, while survivors of vaccinated workers who die from the virus receive the half-million dollar lump sum payout and three years of health insurance. The MTA's mask mandate has been on the books since September 2020, with the agency's transit police force issuing only 41 summonses to maskless straphangers since then As of August, 70 percent of the agency was vaccinated, according to Crain's New York. There is no vaccine mandate for riders. Meanwhile, straphangers who learned of the MTA's plan to enforce the year-old mask policy appeared supportive. 'At the end of the day were all in this together, and as New Yorkers, weve been through a lot and its not much to ask.' 'So if we can be a little bit safer and still get where we need to go, its what we should do,' New Rochelle resident Troy Sill told CBS2. For those straphangers who forget to bring a mask, free face coverings are offered at many subway stations citywide. Under state and federal law, face coverings are required on buses, trains and in enclosed stations 'I totally agree. Its the least thing we can do. I believe that we all are responsible for each other,' Washington Heights resident Richard Wingert added. Wingert told the news outlet that often more than half of his fellow straphangers aren't wearing masks during his packed rides in the city. CBS2 reported that several maskless riders ran away when confronted with questions regarding their lack of face coverings. Under state and federal law, face coverings are required on buses, trains and in enclosed stations. For those straphangers who forget to bring a mask, free face coverings are offered at many subway stations citywide. The parents of a 'traumatized' three-year-old girl are suing Disney Cruise Line for $20million claiming crewmembers failed to intervene as the youngster was sexually abused in an on-board youth club, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. The toddler was enjoying a week-long voyage on the flagship Disney Fantasy when she was 'excessively groped and sexually touched in her private parts' by an older girl dressed in a Princess Leia costume, according to court filings. Her ordeal lasted for an 'extended period of time' and was in 'plain view' of one or more counselors who failed to see what was happening or step in, say the parents, listed as John and Jane Doe in the harrowing complaint. They are suing the Walt Disney Company subsidiary for neglect, alleging that staff were not properly licensed and lacked the necessary skills and training to look after young kids. Vermont parents, identified as 'Jane' and 'John Doe' (pictured) have launched a $20million lawsuit against Disney Cruise Line claiming their young daughter (pictured) was sexually abused during a January 2020 trip The parents allege the toddler, pictured, was 'excessively groped and sexually touched in her private parts' by an older girl dressed in a Princess Leia costume' The family was enjoying a week-long cruise on the flagship Disney Fantasy (pictured at Port Canaveral, Florida in 2012) when the '20-minute attack' took place, according to the filing 'This is a parent's worst nightmare,' Michael Winkleman, a maritime law attorney representing the Vermont-based couple, told DailyMail.com. Winkleman said the January 2020 incident was captured on onboard CCTV which shows the attacker, a girl aged around ten years in a Princess Leia costume, pinning the smaller child to the ground. He said two crewmembers were seen walking in and out of the facility during the 20-minute attack but neither spotted what was happening. 'Any parent would reasonably think it was safe to leave their child in the care of Disney workers, but for an assault like this to occur when Disney crewmembers are supposed to be taking care of the child is unthinkable,' Winkleman added. 'The victim's parents filed this case in order to seek justice and accountability and to raise awareness about the hidden dangers of sexual assaults on cruise ships.' According to the federal complaint filed in Orlando, the family left Port Canaveral on January 4 for a seven-day cruise on board Disney's largest ship, the 4,000-passenger Disney Fantasy. The $940million vessel is geared toward families and described as a 'masterpiece of design and engineering', with Disney-themed restaurants and activities spread across 14 decks. The little girl, identified only by her initials, RV, was left in the supervision of staff at the Oceaneer Club daycare facility where she played with children between the ages of three and 12 The parents allege their daughter's ordeal lasted for an 'extended period of time' and was in 'plain view' of one or more counselors Kids can also enjoy a Star Wars Day at Sea where they dress up as their favorite characters for movie screenings and fireworks and take part in a ship-wide scavenger hunt. The suit says the little girl, identified by her initials, RV, was left in the supervision of staff at the Oceaneer Club daycare facility where she mingled and played with children aged between three and 12. 'On or about January 9, 2020, while enrolled and entrusted to the care of Disney in the Youth Club, R.V. was in a small room known as the Lab Media Lounge for a period of time with several other children,' the complaint reads. 'While in the Lab Media Lounge of the Youth Club, the Minor was physically restrained and sexually assaulted by a significantly older child, who was also a passenger on the cruise. 'The Minor was excessively groped and sexually touched in her private parts by the older child and did not have the physical capability to break through the physical restraint and thereby end the sexual assault. 'The Minor was physically restrained and or sexually assaulted and or physically battered while several Disney counselors and crewmembers entered the Lab Media Lounge but failed to recognize and or appreciate the ongoing sexual assault. 'The assault occurred in what was the plain view of one or more Disney counselors/crewmembers. The Defendant's Youth Club personnel failed to recognize the sexual assault and, therefore, allowed the ongoing abuse suffered by the Minor at the hands of another passenger for an extended period of time.' The couple are suing for pain and suffering, mental anguish, and current and future medical expenses under US maritime laws The suit says the child suffered extreme emotional and mental anguish and trauma during the assault but staff didn't notice that anything was amiss, nor warn her parents. They claim Disney failed to provide adequate staffing, failed to regulate the behavior of other passengers and failed to protect minors from sexual assaults and battery. The couple are suing for pain and suffering, mental anguish, and current and future medical expenses under US maritime laws. 'Instances of sexual assaults occur aboard vessels at an alarming rate. Yet Disney fails to take adequate steps or provide adequate supervision to prevent such occurrences, and fails to warn its passengers of the growing epidemic of sexual assaults at sea,' the suit alleges. 'Defendant's motive for failing to warn its passengers is financial in nature; that is, Defendant willfully chooses not to warn its passengers about sexual assaults aboard its ships so as not to scare any prospective passengers away.' Disney Cruise Lines, also known as Magical Cruise Company, operates four ships out of its Port Canaveral base, and is poised to add three more to its expanding fleet as the industry recovers from the pandemic. The Walt Disney Company-owned operation has not responded to the suit, filed late Wednesday, but provided a comment to DailyMail.com. 'This lawsuit is wholly without merit. The plaintiffs' first allegations were reported to the FBI, and the Brevard County Sheriff's Office investigated them and determined them to be unfounded,' a Disney spokesperson said in a statement. 'They have now come back with a different story, which is equally unfounded, that another young girl acted inappropriately with the 3-year-old plaintiff. We will vigorously defend this case in court.' A 68-year-old Las Vegas man was arrested in the cold-case murder of a 22-year-old 7-Eleven clerk in California 47 years ago after new DNA analysis technology led to a break in the case. Police arrested Carlin Edward Cornett on September 14 at his Nevada home in connection to the 1974 fatal stabbing of Marine Corps veteran Christy Bryant. A motive was not released by police. Bryant had been working alone on the early morning shift at a 7-Eleven on Highland Avenue in National City on July 31 when she was brutally stabbed to death, police said. She had moved to San Diego in 1971 where she served in the Marine Corps, but was medically discharged in 1972 after she was injured in a car crash, police said. The 7-Eleven where the stabbing took place is now a Dominos pizza. Police arrested Carlin Edward Cornett, 68, (left) in connection to the 1974 stabbing of 7-Eleven clerk Christy Bryant after advances in DNA testing led to a break in the case The investigation of the killing yielded no leads and the case went cold, but police had collected blood samples, apparently from the suspect, found at the scene. At the time, however, DNA testing wasn't available, according to National City Investigations Lt. Derek Aydelotte. 'Throughout the years, different NCPD detectives looked at the case, but no firm leads were developed,' Aydelotte said in a statement. In 2008, the blood was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but didn't turn up any results, according to KVVU. 'The DNA profile from the blood evidence remained in the system and was searched regularly with no hits,' Aydelotte said. Police had collected blood samples from the scene of the stabbing, a 7-Eleven in National City, but DNA testing was not available at the time, and the case went cold. The location is now a Dominos pizza In 2012, detectives with National City police requested that the San Diego Sheriff's Office perform a Y-STR analysis on the blood, which is typically used in familial DNA testing, Oxygen reported. The Christy Bryant murder case: a timeline 1974: Christy Bryant is stabbed to death while working the morning at a 7-Eleven in National City 2008: DNA evidence from blood collected at the scene is entered into the CODIS database 2012: Investigators perform a Y-STR genealogical analysis on the blood 2012, 2015, 2016: Follow-up genealogical searches yield no suspects 2013: National City police team up with the San Diego District Attorney to join its cold case DNA research program 2021: A further test and genealogy search identifies Carlin Cornett, 68, as a suspect in the killing Advertisement The California Department of Justice's Bureau of Forensic Services performed follow-up familial DNA searches in 2012, 2015, and 2016, but they too were unsuccessful. In 2013, however, the National City Police Department joined forces with the San Diego County District Attorney's office in a partnership that would eventually pay off. Through the DA's grant-funded Cold Homicide Research Genealogy Effort, or CHARGE, and further advances in DNA testing technology, an in-house genealogist with the DA was able to identify Cornett, according to ABC10. 'It never truly went cold, detectives have always been looking at it, poking at it, evaluating it, reviewing and seeing what can be done,' police Sgt. Mark Seagal, who worked as the lead detective in the case said. Cornett's is the third case solved using CHARGE; it is the first CHARGE case solved in which the suspect is still alive, the DA reported. Cornett, who operates an insurance liability inspection company in Nevada, is expected to be extradited to San Diego to face murder charges. Bryant's sister, Holly, said she was 20 at the time of Christy's slaying, and has never gotten over the shock. 'It was some despair and disbelief and of course thinking, "oh no, couldnt be,"' she told ABC10. She described her as 'very friendly' and 'always helpful,' and noted that she still calls her other sister, Tari, each year on Christy's birthday. After multiple DNA searches, authorities were finally able to identify Cornett, and police arrested him at his home in Las Vegas (pictured) on September 14 'We think about her a lot,' she told KSWB. 'My mother has passed, but she never got over that,' she said. 'She dealt with it but she never none of us really did get over it. 'People have suffered because of her loss,' she added. 'Things she wanted to accomplish and wanted to do, but she was never able to.' After nearly half a century, however, she hopes justice can finally be served. 'I do want him to pay for what he did,' she said. 'And I hope his family can accept it as well.' A 15-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped on several occasions by up to 33 men in the latest shocking sex attack case in India. The attacks took place at various locations in the Thane district of Maharashtra state over the last eight months, a senior official said. Police have arrested 24 people and detained two minors in connection with the case so far, Dattatray Karale, additional commissioner of police (East region), said on Thursday. The girl is said to be in a stable condition undergoing treatment at a government hospital. Times of India reported that angry crowds had gathered outside the police station where the men were being held, drawing a heavy police presence. A 15-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped on several occasions by up to 33 men in the latest shocking sex attack case in India. Pictured: Women protest after the brutal rape and murder of a Delhi Civil Defence employee earlier this month [File photo] Police in the city of Dombivli registered a case on Wednesday night against 33 people accused of crimes including rape, repeated rape, gang-rape and rape of a minor, Karale said. He added that the alleged offences were said to have happened between January 29 and September 22 of this year. 'It all started when the lover of the girl raped her in January and made a video of the incident. He started blackmailing her on the basis of that video. 'Later on, his friends and acquaintances gang-raped her at least on four to five occasions at different places, including Dombivli, Badlapur, Murbad and Rabale in the district,' Business Standard of India reported Karale as saying. A special investigative team has been formed to probe the case. 'The victim has named 33 persons. Out of them, 24 persons have been arrested and two minors detained in this connection. The girl's condition is said to be stable,' Karale said. Police are searching for the other suspects, while those already arrested will be remanded in custody until September 29. The two minors will be remanded in custody at a children's remand home. India's rape laws were overhauled after a 2012 gang rape in New Delhi but the number of offences remains high, with more than 28,000 rapes reported in 2020. The actual number is likely to be much higher as many cases go unreported due to social stigma and lack of faith in authorities. Police have long been accused of not doing enough to prevent violent crime and failing to bring sexual assault cases to court. At least 12 aftershocks have been recorded, with more suspected to occur Quake was felt as far away as Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and Tasmania Almost 2,000 insurance claims have been filed after Victoria's largest earthquake in history, as the state continues to experience aftershocks. The Insurance Council of Australia says insurers have received 1,700 claims since the 5.9 magnitude quake hit on Wednesday morning between Mansfield and Rawson in the state's northeast. Of the 1,700 claims, 96 per cent are from Victoria and most are for home building claims for minor damage such as fallen cornices as well as plaster and render damage. Almost 2000 insurance claims have been filed following the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that rocked Victoria on Wednesday (pictured official surveys damage to building on Chapel St, Melbourne) Emergency workers survey the damage caused by the quake where part of a wall fell from a building in Melbourne (pictured on Wednesday) While uncommon, Australia has experienced a number of major earthquake events (pictured) with the most deadly being in December 1989 Victoria's State Emergency Service confirmed it has responded to 180 calls for help since Wednesday's initial quake, with 120 related to building damage. Most of the building damage emerged in metropolitan Melbourne, including a notable instance at Betty's Burgers on Chapel Street in Windsor. The exterior of the restaurant came away from the building but no one was inside at the time. A notable amount of damage was caused to a Betty's Burgers shop front on Chapel St in Melbourne after the earthquake hit near Mansfield, Victoria Measuring at 5.9 on the Richter scale, the quake was felt as far away as Sydney, Tasmania, Canberra and Adelaide (pictured damage to shop fronts on Chapel St, Melbourne) Managing director Troy McDonagh said he expects the business won't be able to reopen for months. The 10km deep earthquake - the biggest in the state since records began - was felt as far away as Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and Tasmania. The quake struck at 9.15am near the town of Mansfield 180km north-east of Melbourne and temporarily knocked out power for 35,000 homes and businesses. Anyone who discovers building damage is being urged to contact a licensed builder or technician, with emergency repairs still allowed under Covid-19 restrictions. Victoria's State Emergency Service confirmed they attended 180 calls for help since the initial quake, 120 of those were related to building damage (pictured) It comes as authorities confirmed a man suffered minor injuries while performing building work in Mount Eliza during the earthquake. 'A man that was working on a repair of a construction and that, in the shaking, moved and came on top of him,' State Emergency Service chief officer Tim Wiebusch told the Seven Network on Thursday. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was relieved the earthquake did not cause widespread damage. A number of buildings were damaged during the main quake, with officials remaining cautious about the threat of aftershocks causing more damage (pictured road blocks in Melbourne's CBD following the quake causing debris to fall onto roads) 'Obviously, we need to remain cautious because of the threat of aftershocks, but it's pleasing to know that what was first feared was not realised, particularly in relation to any reports of serious injury,' he told reporters in Washington. At least 12 aftershocks have been recorded, ranging from 2.4 to 4.1 on the Richter scale, with one lasting for 20 seconds, and further tremors are expected in coming days and possibly months. 'We are asking people to know what to do: drop, cover and hold is the key message,' Mr Wiebusch said. Victorian residents are being warned to brace for more aftershock tremors that can often last for months after the main quake (pictured residents evacuating buildings after the earthquake) State Emergency Service chief officer Tim Wiebusch said the key message is for people to drop, cover and hold during a quake and aftershocks (pictured residents hunkering down after evacuating after the main) quake The 1989 quake caused damage to 50,000 buildings with 300 having to be demolished The earthquake was originally recorded as a magnitude six, but later revised to 5.8 and then 5.9. Seismologist have predicted aftershocks of up to magnitude 5 which could last for months. The initial quake was caused by a thrust fault after two sections of the earth's crust pushed against each other, causing friction and resulting in a quake. Australia is not likely to see an earthquake event of 8 or higher on the Richter scale due to its positioning in the middle of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate. Major earthquakes can occur when these tectonic plates move against each other so being in the middle of one means Australia is less likely to experience a major earthquake event. The most destructive earthquake Australia has experienced was in December 1989 in Newcastle. The 5.6 magnitude quake left 13 dead, 160 injured and damaged 50,000 buildings including 300 that had to be demolished. Australia's most destructive earthquake occurred in December, 1989 in Newcastle. The 5.6 magnitude quake left 13 people dead and cause mass damage to buildings Pregnant women may have suffered complications because of Covid even if they did not catch the virus, a study suggests. Researchers analysed the placentas from 115 mothers who gave birth during the pandemic. They found more physical abnormalities than they would have expected to see in a pre-2020 pregnancy. Rates of placental problems tripled among mothers with Covid, but doubled even among those who never caught the virus. Experts suggested this may be down to pandemic-related stress, which can trigger inflammation and structural changes to the vital organ. Charities say more research is needed to understand whether this puts mothers and babies at risk. Pregnant women may have had complications during Covid even when they did not catch the virus (stock image) The above picture shows calcification of the placenta in pregnant women in the UK. This is normal shortly before birth, but can cause problems if it happens earlier The above picture shows signals in the placenta indicating there is too much of the blood clotting protein fibrin in the placenta which can restrict babies growth Study co-author Professor Alexander Heazell, of Manchester University, said: 'The increase of placental problems weve seen during the pandemic is concerning. 'But we need more long-term research to understand the full effects of Covid and related stresses on pregnancy. 'Both clearly affect the placenta but we still cant tell exactly what that means for the health of mothers and babies. 'In the meantime, there must be appropriate psychological care and support available throughout pregnancy, to help reduce the pandemics impact on maternal wellbeing.' Does catching Covid put you at higher risk of a miscarriage? Pregnant women who catch coronavirus are not more likely to have a miscarriage or stillbirth or to deliver a baby with a low birth weight, a study in February 2021 found. The research included 4,000 pregnant women in the UK and US and found Covid did not increase the risk of a pregnancy going wrong. Advice for mothers-to-be during the pandemic has been cautious, with the NHS putting them in a 'clinically vulnerable' group. But there has been a lack of quality evidence to prove whether they are or aren't put in extra danger by Covid. Children seem to barely get sick with the virus unless they already have severe health problems. And the study, by Imperial College London, suggested the same is true of unborn babies and newborns. No babies died of Covid in the study and only around 10 per cent of them tested positive after birth. Although women were more likely to die if they had Covid than if they didn't, this risk was the same as for a non-pregnant woman, suggesting their baby was not a factor. Premature delivery was more likely in the women testing positive for coronavirus, the researchers found, but this appeared to be because doctors were deciding to induce labour because they were over-cautious about Covid. Advertisement The placenta is the first organ to form in foetal development. It acts as the unborn baby's lungs, gut, kidneys and liver, taking oxygen and nutrients from the mother's blood stream and exchanging waste. One in 500 women in the US suffer from placental problems annually, which is thought to be similar to the level in the UK. Pregnant women were recruited to the study from Canada, France and the UK from March last year amid the first Covid wave. Placenta, umbilical cord and fetal membrane samples were taken from mothers for the study, published in the journal Placenta. Three-quarters of Covid-infected mothers had abnormalities in their placentas. For comparison, the figure was half this for those who gave birth during the pandemic who did not catch the virus. But data from numerous studies suggested only a quarter of pregnant mothers developed abnormalities pre-pandemic. Abnormalities spotted included high levels of the blood clot protein fibrin which can restrict babies growth, and excess calcification which is only expected near birth. These trigger no symptoms but other conditions like placenta abruption when it detaches from the womb wall can spark stomach pain and contractions. The condition, thought to strike around one in 100 pregnant women, can also raise the risk of a stillbirth or having a premature baby. Researchers described these issues as 'common' among pregnant mothers during the pandemic, regardless of whether they had been infected. The research was also supported by Tommy's, the UK's largest charity funding research into stillbirths, miscarriages and premature births. Its CEO Jane Brewin said: 'Good research evidence takes time, and the pandemic is still unfolding so while our scientists keep working to understand how this affects pregnancy health, its vital that mums-to-be are supported mentally as well as physically. 'Weve seen a huge rise in calls to the midwives on our helpline throughout the last 18 months, as the pandemic has created extra confusion and anxiety for many families along the pregnancy journey. 'Services are adapting but theyre still running, so mums shouldnt hesitate to raise any concerns with their care team and seek help when needed.' An Idaho bow hunter taking a shortcut in the mountains on Friday found the remains of another hunter - a man who had been missing for 53 years. The missing hunter, identified as Raymond Jones, was 39 in September 7, 1968 when he disappeared. He had been looking for mountain goats in the east fork of Hayden Creek in Lemhi County. His body was found Friday afternoon by another hunter who called the Lemhi County Police. It was not clear how Jones had died but Lemhi County Sheriff Steve Penner said that the area where he disappeared was 'perilous' because of the rocky and rough terrain. Jones' wife and the rest of his family were then contacted. The body of missing Idaho bow hunter Raymond Jones was found by another hunter on Friday in Lemhi County mountains following a 53-year-disappearance A search party was started for Jones after he disappeared on September 7 1968 while he was looking for mountain goats 'The hunter was seeking a shortcut from one hunting area to another when he found human remains and then contacted the sheriffs office,' Penner told EastIdahoNews.com 'Due to the lack of remaining daylight and ruggedness of the terrain, recovery efforts began on the morning of the 18th.' The police identified the body as Jones when they found his wallet with his identification at the scene. 'It's pretty wild, ain't it?', Lemhi County Sheriff Steve Penner told EastIdahoNews.com. 'You have another bowhunter looking for a shortcut who stumbled upon a bowhunter from 53 years ago.' The remain of Jones were found in the east fork of Hayden Creek in Lemhi County Penner added that Jones was alone, but near hunters at the site when he disappeared. The hunt for Jones originally launched two days after his disappearance and a 70-person search party along with an aircraft were used. Efforts were briefly halted due to snow. An article from the Associated Press on September 15, 1968 said the search reopened after footprints were found near the area of Jones' disappearance. The case, however, was abandoned again and no further reported search efforts were made. He was declared dead in 1970. A statement was released during the search for Jones's body by his family 'The family of Raymond J. Jones wish to take this means to try to express the deep appreciated to all you people for the many sacrifices afforded us during the search for Ray,' his family said in a statement in The Recorder-Herald in 1968. 'We wish to thank those who so generously provided food for the hunters on the mountain and in the home, those who gave of their time and equipment, and to all who helped in any way. 'We wish to thank you for the moral support you gave us, both on the mountain and in Ray's and Donna's home. All we can say is 'Thank you, may God bless each and every one of you. 'We can never repay you for all you have done, but feel that you will receive your reward from a higher power; for Christ said in Matthew 25, verse 40, 'In as much as you have done it unto the last of these, my brethern, you have done it unto me.' The hunter who found the body has not been identified. This is the terrifying moment a tractor-trailer was flipped over during a tornado caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in Pennsylvania. Dramatic dashcam footage, which was recently shared online, shows a tractor-trailer, driven by Karl Beyer, being flipped over by 130mph winds in Maple Glen near Upper Dublin and Horsham, Pennsylvania. The footage was filmed on September 1, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida tore through the East Coast and spawned at least ten tornadoes from Maryland to Massachusetts, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Sharing the dashcam footage to YouTube, Mr Bayer urged people to take 'tornado warnings seriously' even if they are not in a 'tornado alley', which is an area in the US where tornadoes are most frequent. The clip begins with Mr Beyer pulling up behind a vehicle at a red traffic light while listening to the weather warnings on the radio, as the vicious tornado rages on around him. As the light turns green, the car ahead drives down the flooded road but Mr Beyer stays at a standstill as the strong winds cause the vehicle to precariously sway. Dramatic dashcam footage, which was recently shared online, shows a tractor-trailer, driven by Karl Beyer, being flipped over by 130mph winds in Maple Glen near Horsham Pennsylvania The rain beats down on the vehicle, which was pulling a 53ft trailer, and the monster tornado gets more intense with leaves whipping through the air and a street light appears to burst. As the ferocious storm batters the vehicle, the strong winds flip the truck on to its side, leaving Mr Beyer shaken - but still securely strapped in by his seatbelt. Mr Beyer, who said he 'wasn't sure he was breathing' during the scary ordeal, was lucky to escape from the roll-over with minor injuries, mainly from being secured in place by the seatbelt. Mr Bayer said the driver of the van in front of him quickly turned around his car when he saw the truck topple over and rescued him from the flipped vehicle. The tornado that flipped the truck was classed as EF2, which have wind speeds of 111 to 135mph and can rip roofs off houses, demolish mobile homes and overturn trains. The footage was filmed at 5.43pm on September 1, when the remains of Hurricane Ida battered Horsham Pennsylvania and caused 'extensive damage', with streets being obstructed by downed power lines and large trees. Nearby residents commented on the tense dashcam video, which racked up 162,954 views on YouTube, to share their 'terror' at the 'devastating' tornado that ripped through the State. When asked how he managed to stay 'so quiet' during the ordeal, Mr Beyer responded: 'I think I was in shock. I don't recall a lot of what happened. I don't remember how I got out of the seatbelt.' As the ferocious storm batters the vehicle, the strong winds flip the truck on to its side, leaving Mr Beyer (pictured) shaken - but still securely strapped in by his seatbelt One person wrote: 'Wow, I'm glad you were safe without injury. I live in Horsham by the avenues and that was too close for comfort. Glad everyone is safe.' Another said: 'Holy f**k. That was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. I'm so glad you're OK. I live less than 30 minutes from here and last night was the scariest storm I've ever experienced.' A third penned: 'Damn, glad you weren't seriously hurt or worse. That thing was completely rain-wrapped too. You had no way of telling what you were driving into.' And a fourth said: 'I live near here. The devastation is heartbreaking.' While a fifth commented: 'I'm glad you are ok. This is scary.' Hurricane Ida, which hit the East Coast from August 26 to September 4, spawned ten deadly tornadoes from Maryland to Massachusetts across the beginning of this month. The tornadoes left a path of destruction in their wake, tearing through neighborhoods, leaving homes splintered in its wake and destroying vehicles. On September 2, the National Weather Service confirmed that at least six tornadoes had ripped through Pennsylvania the day previously - the same day the terrifying footage was taken. After conducting surveys of the damage, the federal agency said there were tornadoes in Oxford, Fort Washington and Horsham Township, Buckingham Township, and Bristol. The service said wind speeds ranged from 75 mph (121 kph) to 130 mph (209 kph) in Pennsylvania, while five people died in the state amid the tornado. The remnants of Ida dumped more than nine inches of rain in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Hurricane Ida, which hit the East Coast from August 26 to September 4, saw ten tornadoes from Maryland to Massachusetts. Pictured: Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, on September 2 The tornadoes tore through neighborhoods, leaving homes splintered in its wake. Pictured: Properties in flooding in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania on September 2 The National Weather Service confirmed at least six tornadoes ripped through Pennsylvania on September 1. Pictured: Manayunk neighborhood in Philadelphia on September 2 The National Weather Service warned on August 30 of three to six inches of rain and 'considerable flash flooding' from the mid-Atlantic to southern New England from Ida's remnants. By the following day, meteorologists were warning of 'high risk' of excessive rainfall, raising the total expected to 3 to 8 inches of rain. The weather service warned of 'significant and life-threatening flash flooding' in the region especially in cities, starting at 5pm on August 31 and repeated the warning through the following afternoon. Elsewhere on the East Coast, one monstrous 150mph twister levelled homes and even toppled silos in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, south of Philadelphia. Debris from the destroyed homes reached the atmosphere, soaring around 23,000 feet into the air before landing miles away as the tornado ripped through New Jersey. Hurricane Ida also struck the Gulf coast and carved a northern path through the eastern United States, culminating with torrential rains and widespread flooding in New York and New Jersey. The fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the US knocked out power for more than a million customers and water for another 600,000 people in southern Louisiana, creating miserable conditions for the afflicted, who are also enduring suffocating heat and humidity. At least nine deaths were reported in Louisiana, with another 45 killed as flash flooding and tornadoes hit the Northeast on September 2. New York dealt with crippling floods from Ida, with residents facing water-logged basements, power outages, damaged roofs and calls for help from friends and relatives stranded by flooding. Flash flooding killed at least 45 people in the Northeast, including 23 in New Jersey alone and 12 in New York City following the 'historic' weather event that officials blamed on climate change. A former Netflix executive has been accused of rape by his wife and has an active warrant out for his arrest. Diego Bunuel, 46, lives in France and has an active US warrant in Massachusetts for allegedly raping his wife Maggie Kim three times in 2017, including once in Martha's Vineyard, according to the New York Post. Bunuel is the former head of European documentaries for Netflix and now is the programming chief at French state broadcaster France Televisions. He was born in France and is the grandson of filmmaker Luis Bunuel. As a French national, Bunuel will likely never be arrested if he avoids setting foot in America because the country does not extradite its citizens if they have maintained their citizenship at the time a crime was committed. Bunuel's wife Maggie Kim is seen with him at a 2016 film premiere. She accuses him of raping her three times in 2017 after he filed for divorce in France Kim, 48, alleges in court documents that Bunuel raped her 10 days after he surreptitiously filed for divorce in France in 2017. The couple married in 2007 in Costa Rica and are still not legally divorced. The couple married in 2007 in Costa Rica and are still not legally divorced. They have two children, and Bunuel has custody of the kids in France Bunuel has custody of their two children in France, and Kim is seeking to compel their return to the US. The details of the alleged sexual assaults were not immediately clear, but Kim claimed in civil court documents that she suffered 'abrasions and contusions to her neck and body'. 'In addition, the plaintiff suffered mental and emotional anguish, nervousness, increased heart rhythm, shortness of breath and increased blood pressure, some or all of which are likely to be permanent in nature,' the civil suit claimed, according to the Post. 'As a further result of the willful and/or malicious conduct of the Defendant, the Plaintiff has been and will be unable to engage in personal and family, leisure and social activities as she did prior to the incidents, all of which has and will cause her loss,' Kim claimed in her complaint. Kim alleged that one of the sexual assaults occurred in Martha's Vineyard, seen above Bunuel won custody of the couple's children in a French court, and a judge in Massachusetts dismissed Kim's civil suit in April, ruling that a French court should review the alleged rape in Martha's Vineyard. Kim now splits her time between Los Angeles and France so she can visit her children, her attorney told the Post. Bunuel joined Netflix in 2018 as head of original documentaries for the EMEA region and departed the company in December 2019, reportedly because he wanted to relocate to Paris full time. France does not extradite its own citizens for alleged crimes committed in other countries. After Sydney's New Year's Eve 9pm firework display was cancelled and the world-famous midnight show shortened, NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has stepped in to save the day. The state government will now take over the running of the fireworks displays, after Lord Mayor Clover Moore cancelled the family friendly showing on September 21. After initially calling the decision to cancel the show 'pre-emptive', Mr Perrottet has now suggested that the event could be permanently run by the state government. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has announced the cancelled 9pm New Years Eve fireworks will be going ahead (pictured, 2020 fireworks) 'For parents and young kids, the family fireworks are the main event,' Mr Perrottet said. While saving the fireworks for families, Mr Perrottet is also pushing for a New Year's Eve party for Covid-19 frontline staff on the Cahill Expressway. Last year, Gladys Berejiklian's government ran the event after they were cancelled by the local council, but the outrage at this year's cancellation has prompted the government to step in again. 'NYE is not the time for a nana nap, it's time to celebrate and have a great time,' Mr Perrottet said. Initially cancelled by the City of Sydney council, Mr Perrottet (pictured) took responsibility for running the fireworks as the state government will take over the event 'We need a bit more boom, boom, boom instead of all the gloom, gloom, gloom. 'Sydney and the state deserve to have a big party after enduring a tumultuous two years.' Mr Perrottet explained that by the year's end vaccination rates would be close to 90 per cent, so cancelling the family friendly show didn't make sense. Sydney's lockdown is set to end when 70 per cent of the eligible adult population is fully vaccinated against the virus, which is estimated to be on October 11 with more restrictions easing at the 80 per cent mark. 'Sydney and the state deserve to have a big party after enduring a tumultuous two years,' NSW's Treasurer said (pictured, NYE revellers in Sydney in 2020) But the New Year's Eve event will still be dictated whatever the public health orders are that are in place on December 31. There is also the possibility that the usually large-scale event could be governed by special public health orders put in place specifically for the event if needed. Currently, NSW is weeks away from unlocking the new freedoms after a surge in vaccine take-up has brought forward the projected 70 per cent milestone date to October 7. If that milestone is reached, earlier than projected, freedoms will be handed to residents on the following Monday, October 11. Mr Perrottet also wants to host a huge NYE party for Covid frontline workers on the Cahill Expressway (pictured, the 9pm fireworks in 2019) Health officials have welcomed declining cases in Sydney's Covid-19-ravaged west and south-west on Thursday, where new daily infections have almost halved in the last fortnight. More than 55.5 per cent of over-16s are now fully vaccinated while 28 per cent of ages 12-15 have received at least one dose. Health Minister Brad Hazzard reiterated pleas for everyone to get vaccinated and not listen to 'the strange dudes on social media'. Western Sydney recorded 220 daily infections on Thursday, compared to 444 cases on September 11. South-west Sydney had 294 cases, well down from the 490 recorded 12 days earlier. The HS2 high-speed rail line is a 'loss-making' project, which will not be completed before 2041, a Conservative MP has told the Commons. Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire Andrew Bridgen told Parliament that he had received information from a whistleblower within HS2 Ltd, which claims the first phase of the line, running between London and Birmingham, will not open until 2041, around 10 years later than planned. He told MPs: 'Experts in the field estimate that the energy requirements of HS2 trains will be five time that of conventional rail.' He added: 'Can we have an extended debate on the impact of HS2 on Government's energy policy and the level of subsidy this loss-making project will have to be supported with annually if it is ever built? 'Could we have this debate before 2041, which is the date that my whistleblower at the very top of HS2 tells me the project for phase one will actually be able to carry passengers between London and Birmingham?' It comes as work suspensions, social distancing and reduced productivity over the past 12 months saw HS2's costs soar by another 1.7bn - with the project's estimated overall budget now swelling over 106billion. The HS2 high-speed rail line is a 'loss-making' project, which will not be completed before 2041, Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen warned the House of Commons A concept image of the proposed Old Oak Common Station, west London Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed Mr Bridgen's claims, saying: 'I thought whistleblowing was more steam engine than fast high-speed trains but never mind. 'Obviously, the energy to run a train that is 440 yards long, that is two furlongs long, extraordinary length of train, at 225 miles an hour is more than running Ivor the Engine. 'And that is of course something that has to be built into the overall energy plans of this country. 'But the cost of energy to operate the HS2 network has been accounted for within the overall business case of the project and this energy will be procured in the open market at the right time to start operations and achieve value for money for the taxpayer.' He insisted Mr Bridgen's figures were wrong, adding: 'The delivery and service of HS2 phase one remains 2029-2033, so I am interested in his whistle blower and I will of course pass the whistle on to the Secretary of State for Transport.' Speaking at the Westminster Hall debate on Monday, the North West Leicestershire MP also claimed HS2 will cost 160 billion to build in full, 50 billion more than previous estimates. It comes as work suspensions, social distancing and reduced productivity over the past 12 months saw HS2's costs soar by another 1.7bn - with the project's estimated overall budget now swelling over 106billion. Above: Machinery working on HS2 in Buckinghamshire Why is the HS2 high-speed rail line project SO controversial? The Woodland Trust, a conservation charity, calls HS2 'a grave threat to the UK's ancient woods, with 108 at risk of loss or damage'. But HS2 says only 0.29 square kilometres (0.11 square miles) of ancient woodland will be lost during the first phase. HS2 says it will reduce journey times between London and northern England and add capacity to Britain's crowded rail network. Critics question whether the high speed rail line is worth its ballooning price tag, especially after a pandemic that might permanently change people's travel habits. The first phase linking London and Birmingham is due to open between 2029 and 2033, according to HS2 Ltd. In September, Boris Johnson joined the front line to see work begin on HS2, as shovels hit the ground in Solihull. He said the 'incredible' scheme, launched in 2009, would deliver not just '22,000 jobs now, but tens of thousands more high-skilled jobs in the decades ahead'. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told MPs last year the first trains may not be up and running until 2031. Advertisement A spokesman for the Department of Transport (DfT) said: 'We are making significant progress delivering HS2, a key part of our promise to build back better from Covid-19. 'The project is already supporting more than 20,000 jobs, construction on Phase 1 has begun, and MPs have given their backing to the Phase 2a route. 'We will continue to rigorously control pressures, and as our latest update to Parliament confirmed, Phase 1 remains within budget and schedule. 'The Integrated Rail Plan will soon outline exactly how major rail projects, including HS2 phase 2b, will work together to deliver the reliable train services that passengers across the North and Midlands need and deserve.' Phase 1 of HS2 was due to open in 2026, but in an update to Parliament in 2019, Transport Sinister Grant Shapps said the opening date would be pushed back to between 2028 and 2031. In the HS2 six-monthly report to Parliament in March 2021, the DfT said the projected 'delivery into service' date range is between 2029 and 2033. One contractor close to the project said that HS2 Ltd, the state-funded body responsible for delivering the line, 'doesn't really know how much Covid has added'. HS2 Ltd declined to comment when approached by MailOnline. Construction started on Phase 1 of the London to Birmingham line in August last year after more than a decade of planning. But the ballooning costs could add to Treasury fears that HS2 will be a black hole for taxpayers. The Department for Transport conceded to MailOnline that there had been 'unavoidable costs' arising from the coronavirus pandemic. A DfT spokesman told MailOnline: 'Our focus remains on controlling costs, to ensure this ambitious new railway delivers its wealth of benefits at value for money for the taxpayer. 'The response to Covid-19 remains ongoing and final assessments of its effect have not been made.' Photos of lunch options at Paterson International High School in New Jersey have left teachers and parents disgusted as the district promises to overhaul its $5 million food program. Zellie Thomas, a teacher in the district, posted photos of the inedible meals to Twitter on Friday captioned: 'Our kinds deserve better.' One photo shows what is supposed to be a chicken cheesesteak - a footlong roll with an unidentified piece of meat and sad slices of cheese. The other shows a mysterious brown loaf on a white school lunch tray alongside crispy fries, a bread roll and small carton of chocolate milk. Darcell Medley-Stokes, who first shared the photos to her social media account, said her child took the photos at two separate lunch breaks at the public school last week to show how terrible the meals are. These photos show the chicken 'cheesesteak' and mystery loaf that were served to students at Paterson International High School in New Jersey last week Photos of the school lunch served were taken by a student Tuesday and Wednesday last week and shared to their mother's social media account. Local teacher Zellie Thomas tweeted out the photos of the disgusting meals insisting 'Our kids deserve better' 'Would you eat this? Would you serve this to your children? If the answer is 'no,' then why serve it to our children?' Superintendent Eileen Shafer said, according to the Patterson Press. 'Our students deserve a nutritious meal like every other child in this country. We will not tolerate this.' After seeing the photos, Paterson Board of Education President Kenneth Simmons answered Shafer's question, 'I wouldn't serve my children that.' 'It's just disgusting,' Simmons told PIX11. 'There's just no other reaction.' But an alumni of the high school told ABC 7 that children in the school district have been served unacceptable meals for years. Veronica Aponte was part of the Paterson International High School Class of 2019. She remembered the terrible lunch options, 'It was just awful.' 'Like things that were supposed to be cold, they were lukewarm - biting into a chicken nugget you shouldn't be seeing pink or red,' she said. School board member Vincent Arrington believes the quality of the meals being served to Patterson students is unacceptable and noted that 'For a lot of our kids, the lunch they get in school is the only hot meal they get all day.' The school district took notice and promised to make changes to the $5 million school lunch program. An estimated 95% of students in the district qualify for a free or reduced lunch Paterson Board of Education President Kenneth Simmons admitted that he would not feed his children the meals that the school was serving and agreed that something needed to be done Finally school administrators are taking notice and promising a change to the $5 million school lunch program in a district where about 95% of students qualify for a free or reduced lunch. 'It may cost us more money, but I don't think finances is something that needs to be the key factor,' Simmons said. He scheduled the issue to be discussed at committee meeting on Wednesday. District food service employees went to the high school after the photos went viral and confirmed that the meals pictured were improperly cooked and served by district employees. Paul Brubaker, a district spokesperson, stated that, 'The cafeteria staff did not use the cheesesteak recipe as they were trained to do.' He confirmed that the cafeteria staff have been retrained. While the staff has been retrained, the district was also considering outsourcing the meals from a vendor but noted that the process would take some time to sort out. Advertisement A new monument to Virginia's African Americans who fought for emancipation was unveiled in Richmond just two miles from the site of the bronze statue of Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee that was taken down after Black Lives Matter protests. On Wednesday, state officials presented 'The Emancipation and Freedom Monument' in honor of African Americans in the state who fought for freedom before and after emancipation. Designed by Oregon sculptor Thomas Jay Warren, the monument features two 12-foot bronze statues of newly freed slaves. Scroll Down For Video: On Wednesday, state officials unveiled 'The Emancipation and Freedom Monument' in honor of African Americans in the state who fought for freedom before and after emancipation One statue depicts a woman cradling a baby in one arm while holding up a a document in her other hand that displays the date January 1, 1863 - the day Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation People look on at the Emancipation and Freedom Monument designed by Thomas Jay Warren 'The Emancipation and Freedom Monument' was unveiled only two miles away from the recently toppled bronze statue honoring Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee One statue depicts a woman cradling a baby in one arm while holding up a a document in her other hand that displays the date January 1, 1863, the date president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery in the United States. A few feet away is another statue of a man with scars on his back, arms outstretched and shackles at his feet. 'The enslaved built this city with their hands,' Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said at the ceremony. 'We will rebuild this city with our hearts.' Featured on the pedestal of the statue are the names and biographies of 10 Black Virginians who contributed to the fight for liberty before and after emancipation Children are seen playing near the newly unveiled Emancipation and Freedom Monument The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, is removed from its pedestal on September 8 Featured on the pedestal of the statue are the names and biographies of 10 Black Virginians who contributed to the fight for liberty before and after emancipation, including Nat Turner, who led a briefly successful slave revolt in 1831 in the state, and Dred Scott, a slave whose unsuccessful lawsuit seeking his freedom led to the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1857 that people of African descent were not entitled to citizenship, Reuters reported. The statues were unveiled just weeks after the 21-foot statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed from its pedestal to the sound of 'Black Lives Matter' chants and crowds singing 'Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye' in the latest victory for BLM. Governor Ralph Northam announced plans to remove statue in June 2020, 10 days after George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. At the unveiling, he told the audience that removing the Lee statue was one of his proudest moments and that the new emancipation monument is more representative of Virginia and it's future, WTVR.com reported. 'They're symbols of a Virginia that's reckoning with ugliness and inequality,' Northam said. 'A Virginia that's taking a deep hard look into what we need to do better and how to get there, a Virginia that tells the truth of our past so we can build a better future together.' He added that he hopes the statues will serve as a symbol of hope for future generations. The project began a decade ago as part of the state's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. 'The Emancipation and Freedom Monument' was unveiled less than a month after the Robert E. Lee monument was taken down after calls from civil rights activist. Following George Floyds death, the area around the statute became a hub for weeks of protests and occasional clashes between police and demonstrators. The pedestal has been covered by constantly evolving, colorful graffiti, with many of the hand-painted messages denouncing police and demanding an end to systemic racism and inequality. The decisions by the governor and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney to remove the Confederate tributes marked a major victory for civil rights activists, whose previous calls over the decades to remove the statues had been steadfastly rebuked by city and state officials alike. The 21-foot bronze statute of Lee atop a horse was sent to the Goochland Women's Correctional Center in Virginia until officials know what to do with it permanently. The statue was erected in 1890, 25 years after the end of the Civil War, and 20 years after Lee's death. It was funded by the Lee Monument Commission, founded in 1886, which was led by Lee's nephew, former Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee. The Lee statue was created by the internationally renowned French sculptor Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercie and is considered a masterpiece, according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, where it has been listed since 2007. When the monument arrived in 1890 from France, an estimated 10,000 Virginians used wagons and rope to haul its pieces more than a mile to where it now stands. The statue was the first of five Confederate monuments to be erected on Richmonds Monument Avenue, at a time when the Civil War and Reconstruction were over, but Jim Crow racial segregation laws were on the rise. In a statement after it was removed, Gov. Ralph Northam said: 'This was a long time coming, part of the healing process so Virginia can move forward and be a welcoming state with inclusiveness and diversity'. He added that it represented '400 years of history that we should not be proud of'. A woman with Down's syndrome has been murdered on her daily morning walk in New Zealand. The body of Auckland woman Lena Zhang, 27, was found in bushland near Mount Albert on Wednesday after she left her home at around 6:30am. Police have launched a murder investigation, identifying a balding man with a distinctive mark on his head as someone detectives want to speak to. Ms Zhang, who was also vision impaired, was described by family and friends as a 'loving and caring person'. The body of Auckland woman Lena Zhang, 27, (pictured) was found in bushland near Mount Albert on Wednesday after she left her home at around 6:30am Police have launched a murder investigation, identifying a balding man with a distinctive mark on his head as a 'person of interest' 'Whoever the offender or offenders are, they've targeted a vulnerable member of our community which is just appalling,' Detective Inspector Aaron Pascoe told reporters. 'Lena was a young lady, she was small in stature, she was vulnerable.' She walks from her home in Mount Albert to Owairaka Domain every day, but on Wednesday she never returned. Her body was found hours later, with detectives already speaking to a number of people who saw her during her walk. They have also reviewed CCTV footage and are asking for members of the public to help identify a person of interest. A man dressed in a blue jumper was featured on security cameras. Police are urging the public to help identify the man A man dressed in a blue jumper was featured on security cameras nearby. He is described as dark-skinned, balding, was wearing a blue mask and has a large mark on his forehead. Detective Pascoe says Ms Zhang's family are devastated. Anyone with any information on the man are being urged to contact New Zealand Police. StarJam, a New Zealand charity which supports people living with disabilities, paid tribute to the beloved young woman in a message posted online. 'For over 12 years Lena has been a true Jammer in Auckland Magic Movers and more recently the Central Alumni All Stars; greeting everyone with her infectious smile, genuine heartfelt support and inviting her fellow Jammers up to join her Spot the Talents,' they said. 'Lena you will always be in our hearts our thoughts go out to your family and friends.' Advertisement Downing Street today signalled it is bracing for a 'winter of discontent' after BP was forced to ration fuel and shut stations, supermarkets warned of food shortages and more energy firms went bust amid rising gas prices. The Petrol Retailers Association warned drivers to 'keep a quarter of a tank' of fuel in their vehicles in preparation for potential closures of local petrol stations. Number 10 said this afternoon that 'we acknowledge there are issues facing many industries across the UK' as the nation heads into the colder months. Gerald Ronson, owner of almost 300 Rontec - BP, Texaco and forecourts across the country, told The Telegraph he expects fuel court disruption to last for more than four weeks. He said: 'With everybody coming back to work - more cars on the road because people don't want to use buses or trains - this has drained a lot of fuel.' A government source added Downing Street is growing increasingly 'worried' over a brewing 'winter of discontent' - with Christmas ruined by soaring energy bills, shortages and Universal Credit cuts. BP has said it will restrict deliveries of fuel because of a lack of HGV drivers, which has also impacted supermarkets and raised fears of food and even toy shortages over the Christmas period. The oil giant is understood to have informed the Government that its ability to transport petrol and diesel from its refineries is being heavily impacted by the supply chain crisis. BP's Head of UK Retail, Hanna Hofer, told the Cabinet Office last Thursday that it was important that the Government understood the 'urgency of the situation' which she branded 'bad, very bad'. Ms Hofer warned that the company had 'two thirds of normal forecourt stock levels required for smooth operations' and that levels were 'declining rapidly'. The restricting of deliveries is expected to begin 'very soon'. Meanwhile, there have been reports of Tesco petrol stations closing or running out of fuel in Dorset, the Isle of Wight and Devon, however it is believed that the incidents of shortages are only affecting two sites. ExxonMobil, which operates Esso, added that some of its 200 Tesco Alliance sites were affected. A Tesco spokesperson however said supermarkets still had a 'good availability of fuel, with deliveries arriving at our petrol filling stations across the UK every day.' The news is the latest sign of the UK struggling to cope because of an ongoing shortage of HGV drivers which comes alongside a worsening energy crisis. An out of use sign on a petrol pump at a BP garage on Speke Hall Road, Liverpool. The HGV driver shortage has hit oil giant BP with deliveries of petrol and diesel to forecourts across the UK set to be reduced BP has announced that its ability to transport fuel from refineries to its branded petrol station forecourts is being impacted by the ongoing shortage of HGV drivers A graphic illustrating how the three issues are currently affecting the UK and the problems it is causing. The People's Energy Company (bottom, middle) is one of the energy suppliers that have already gone bust Avro Energy and Green yesterday became the latest energy firms to go out of business as soaring gas prices continued to batter the sector. Wholesale prices for gas have increased 250 per cent since the start of the year, and 70 per cent since August, meaning firms are buying energy for more than they sell it to customers. Nine firms have now ceased trading this year, with the head of regulator Ofgem warning more are likely to follow suit, leaving 'well above' hundreds of thousands of customers in limbo. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today suggested people should be hoping for a warm autumn to ease gas prices as he said the weather is the 'single most important determinant' of costs. Food supply chains have been placed under intense stress in recent weeks because of the shortage of around 100,000 HGV drivers - with empty shelves across many UK supermarkets as a result. Supply chains were further disrupted after two plants that produce 60 per cent of the UK's CO2 were shut down amid the rising gas prices. CO2 is used for everything from the humane slaughter of chickens and pigs, to putting the fizz in soft drinks and creating packaging that keeps foods fresh. Now, there are fears that shortages could bite households in the run-up to Christmas. The classic Christmas dinner could be decimated, with turkey, pigs in blankets, potatoes and brussel sprouts all at risk. Meanwhile, toys, vinyl and books could also experience shortages - with experts even warning of Christmas tree issues. Despite the Government agreeing a deal to restart production at the CO2 plants, industry bodies have warned that consumers may still see a hike in food prices, particularly if the cost of carbon dioxide rises. The Government's deal with CF Industries is only in place for three weeks - leading to fears that the issues could start up again in the run-up to the festive period. The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman insisted there is no shortage of fuel and urged people to continue to fill up their vehicles 'as normal'. The spokesman stressed the UK has 'very resilient and robust' supply chains, but the admission of challenges ahead is likely to spark fears of potential disruption. Asked if Boris Johnson is concerned at petrol station closures, the PM's spokesman said: 'I think the first thing to say is that there is no shortage of fuel in the UK and people should continue to buy fuel as normal. 'We obviously recognise the challenges faced by the industry and are taking steps to support them. 'You will be aware DfT recently announced that they are streamlining the process for HGV drivers and have increased the number of tests that they have made available. 'But obviously we will work closely with industry, we recognise there are issues that many are facing. This is a problem that many countries around the world are tackling.' Asked if the PM accepts the UK is facing a tough winter, the spokesman said: 'We acknowledge there are issues facing many industries across the UK and not just in terms of HGV drivers but we have obviously seen the increase in wholesale gas. 'That is why you have seen Kwasi Kwarteng speaking and working incredibly closely with industry over the course of this week and we will continue to do so.' The spokesman said the fuel and food sectors have a 'very resilient and robust supply chain' and people should continue to shop as normal. A BP spokesman said today: 'We are experiencing some fuel supply issues at some of our retail sites in the UK and unfortunately have therefore seen a handful of sites temporarily close due to a lack of both unleaded and diesel grades. 'These have been caused by some delays in the supply chain which has been impacted by the industry-wide driver shortages across the UK and there are many actions being taken to address the issue. 'We continue to work with our haulier supplier to minimise any future disruption and to ensure efficient and effective deliveries to serve our customers. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.' The planned restrictions will mean running 80% of services levels to 90% of BP's forecourt network and that most locations, as a result, will not be restocked for one-and-a-half days a week. However petrol stations on motorways will be prioritised and restocked as normal. Like hundreds of firms across the country, BP is struggling amid the shortage of truck drivers. The company outsources drivers through haulier firm Hoyer, and while it has 45 drivers coming through training, it is struggling to keep hold of them. In the week beginning September 6, for example, 10 drivers joined and six left. While BP hopes stocks will stabilise at some point in October, Ms Hofer warned: 'We are are expecting the next few weeks to be really, really difficult'. HGV driver shortage caused by Brexit and Covid pandemic The well-documented shortage of lorry drivers has created gaps on supermarket shelves. Britain is currently facing its own 100,000 shortfall of HGV drivers, which retail bosses have partly blamed on changes to migration rules post-Brexit and EU employees returning home. The Road Haulage Association said the total number of people in the UK with HGV licences this summer is 516,000. But the latest Department for Transport data shows 278,700 HGV drivers were employed in 2020, equivalent to 54 per cent of the total. They put the shortage largely down to Brexit and the pandemic, which led to 14,000 European drivers going home and just 600 of those returning. Since last year, the industry has also seen large numbers of drivers retiring, while lockdown has hit the training of new drivers with 40,000 HGV driver tests cancelled. The average age of a UK lorry driver is put at 56 to 57 and not enough young people have joined the industry due to its long hours, unattractive conditions and poor pay. Drivers' median hourly pay has risen 10 per cent since 2015 to 11.80 - below the 16 per cent average across other sectors, with new tax changes also not in their favour. Lorry drivers can only drive for nine hours each day, but many are away from home up to 15 hours a day - putting off many young people who do not want such hours. Last week, Tesco drivers and warehouse workers at four distribution centres rejected the offer of a 2.5% pay increase. If members vote for strike action then the supermarket giant could see empty shelves this winter which could potentially affect the Christmas period. Unite said its members voted against a 2.5 per cent offer, arguing it was lower than the RPI rate of inflation so represented a real-terms pay cut. Advertisement It is now calling on the Government to make it easier to recruit drivers from abroad. It comes as social media users claim their local BP garages were out of fuel this week. 'No petrol on Monday 20th,' wrote one, 'Assistant did not know when they would get any and fed up of abuse from angry would be customers.' Another added: 'I suggest you come to Kent, my two local petrol stations have no petrol (but I think one has diesel).' Another simply said: 'My local garage, no petrol, no drivers...' Minister for small business, Paul Scully told ITV News: 'We are concerned about BP and other sectors where we are hearing those stresses coming to bear. 'This is why we are having regular conversations to see what government can do to increase testing, to increase the supply of drivers and bring drivers back. 'We also want to see what the industry/ sector can do for themselves.' Trade association Logistics UK has called on ministers to provide up to 10,000 temporary work visas for trained EU drivers to paper over the cracks. The Government has so far rejected these calls, instead insisting firms recruit from a pool of British workers. It comes as shorter, fast-track HGV tests have been mooted as a potential solution to help plug the spiralling vacancies in the haulier industry. Industry experts say better pay and improved working conditions are needed to help improve staffing levels - and put the shortage largely down to Brexit and the pandemic, which led to 14,000 European drivers going home and just 600 of those returning. The Road Haulage Association said the total number of people in the UK with HGV licences this summer was 516,000. But the latest Department for Transport data shows 278,700 HGV drivers were employed in 2020, equivalent to 54 per cent of the total. The lorry driver shortage is one of several issues threatening to plunge Britain into a winter of discontent. A huge surge in gas prices is threatening to leave Brits without energy this winter. Mr Kwarteng today suggested people should be hoping for a warm autumn to ease gas prices - as ministers were slammed for refusing to boost storage capacity years ago. Dragged back to be grilled by MPs on the crisis, the Business Secretary stressed the weather is the 'single most important determinant' of costs. The comment came hours after Boris Johnson made a speech at the UN warning of the dangers of climate change. But he denied the Government had been 'complacent' about the issues and repeated that there will be no 'reward for failure' bailouts for collapsing energy firms, amid warnings that big suppliers will soon come 'cap in hand' for support. Mr Kwarteng has admitted there are no guarantees that gas prices will go back to previous levels, despite the government striking a deal to stave off a shortage in CO2 threatening to cause food shortages. As the problems bite, there have been calls for VAT to be cut on energy bills while ministers are believed to be looking at a windfall tax on fatcat energy firms profiteering. Meanwhile, there are complaints that ministers did not heed pleas to increase the UK's gas storage capacity - which could have given more time to handle the pressures. In the Commons, Labour MP Rachael Maskell, who represents York Central, said: 'The rise in energy prices will disproportionately impact people living in the North because it is colder during the winter in the North. 'So what assessment has he made of the regional disparities and how is he going to mitigate against that?' Average household bills in the UK are set to rise for 'standard variable' customers when the new price cap comes into force next month. The price cap, set by regulator Ofgem, will stop bills rising above 1,277 a year. Ofgem has already announced a further price cap rise for April next year, and this will see prices capped at 1,455. It is unclear whether the price cap will rise again the following October. Given the global uncertainty with wholesale gas prices, UK energy firms have today introduced 'fixed rate' deals up to 600 more than the 1,455 April cap, hoping customers fearful of ever-changing prices may prefer to a higher monthly tarriff, but one they are guaranteed will not fluctuate due to market forces - meaning families can accurately factor in energy costs into their household expenses. Setting the cost of a product way above the expected market value is known as 'price gouging'. Mr Kwarteng replied: 'I think the honourable lady raises a very fair point and clearly in terms of the gas price the single most important determinant of it is the weather, and she's absolutely right. 'That's why we've got schemes like the Warm Home Discount and that's why we're absolutely focused on protecting the most vulnerable customers, wherever they are in the UK.' How the gas crisis has erupted... and how it could get worse WHY ARE GAS PRICES RISING SO SHARPLY? The economy is opening up from its pandemic lows, so demand for gas is increasing. Europe is also about to start entering winter, when gas demand will be highest, especially from countries such as the UK which overwhelmingly rely on gas to heat homes. WASN'T THAT QUITE PREDICTABLE? Yes, but a perfect storm of other problems has also hit the sector. Supply from Russia has dried up recently, and demand is high in Asia, which is putting pressure on international markets. In the UK, several gas platforms in the North Sea have closed to perform maintenance that was paused during the pandemic. In a further stroke of bad luck, cables that import electricity from France were damaged last week, and September has not been a very windy month. These problems have meant that more gas is needed to produce electricity. SO WHAT PROBLEMS ARE BEING CAUSED? The high demand and low supply has been sending wholesale prices spiking, putting smaller energy suppliers under huge pressure. They are less likely to have 'hedged' by buying energy well in advance so they can manage costs over the longer term. As a result they face having to buy energy at 'spot' prices and incurring huge losses. Five have gone bust over the past month or so, and there are concerns more could follow. Ofgem has systems to allocate their customers to other suppliers. But appetite to take people on might be limited given the strains caused by rising wholesale costs, and the fact the government's cap limits scope for putting up prices. Inevitably as the cap is updated this autumn and then next spring consumer bills will go up sharply - possibly by nearly double. IF THIS IS ABOUT ENERGY COSTS WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT FOOD SHORTAGES? Aside from direct energy prices, there are also severe and less obvious knock-on effects. For example, fertiliser plants have temporarily shut due to the high costs, and they produce CO2 that is used in food processes such as animal slaughtering, and even for medical operations. Advertisement The Business Secretary insisted the industry and market will find the solution to the energy crisis. Responding to an urgent question, he told the Commons: 'The Government has been clear that protecting consumers is our primary focus and shapes our entire approach to this. 'We will continue to protect consumers with the energy price cap. 'The solution to this crisis will be found from the industry and the market, as is already happening, and the Government - I repeat - will not be bailing out failed energy companies.' Mr Kwarteng maintained the price cap will remain in place. Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband quoted a letter from energy regulator Ofgem warning of a 'systemic risk to the energy supply as a whole' which had been sent 18 months ago. He accused ministers of being 'complacent' about the shock that rising gas prices could wreak upon the market, as well as families and the cost of living. But Mr Kwarteng said Ofgem's concerns had been 'interrogated' during the coronavirus pandemic, with the supplier of last resort programme, where consumers are automatically transferred to a new provider if their supplier exits the market, was 'found to work'. Millions of families face paying more than 400 extra as the ongoing crisis causes further suppliers to collapse. Two more energy firms with a combined 800,000 customers, Avro Energy and Green Supplier, went into administration yesterday. Dozens of other companies are under threat including Bulb, which supplies 1.7million homes. Customers on cheap tariffs with failed firms face being bumped up to the capped rate of 1,277 a rise of at least 400. Energy watchdog Ofgem described the situation as 'unprecedented' and confirmed bills would rise further. The bleak warning came as food chiefs said supply problems caused by shortages of drivers and farm workers were deepening. 'Our concern is that the pictures of empty shelves will get ten times worse by Christmas and then we'll get panic buying,' said Andrew Woolfenden of Tesco. Twelve industry groups, led by the National Farmers' Union, predicted the situation would get worse without a new visa regime to draw in foreign workers. Customers with failing energy firms will be switched to new suppliers charging much higher tariffs, which is likely to add at least 400 extra to the cost of heat and light. The chief of Green, Peter McGirr, told the BBC this morning that he had done nothing wrong and bigger suppliers would soon face problems. Mr McGirr said: 'You will see larger suppliers feeling the pain as well and they will come cap in hand for a bailout.' George Grant of Stag Energy, said he had tried but failed to get support for the Gateway Project just off Barrow-in-Furness. 'The proposal was for a salt cavern gas storage facility in what's been acknowledged by the British Geological Survey as the best salt structure for such a service in the UK,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'It was about 12 miles off the coast. The philosophy behind this is that you create caverns within the salt and it's a very good medium to store gas.' But he said they had 'finally given up' on getting the project to go ahead. 'In 2004, when we first spoke to the government, there was a lot of interest in new gas storage. We got to the financial crash in 2008 when credit requirements on long-term contracts became much more challenging. 'It was at that point that we really started to engage more with the government about potential support mechanisms or some form of intervention to ensure there was adequate security of supply in the gas sector. 'The government, in their wisdom, chose to run with a just in time approach. There is on an annual basis plenty of gas around the world and lots of liquid gas being shipped around, but the challenge we're seeing at the moment is a confluence of events including low wind production and the subsequent high demand for gas, supplies being drawn into China and the fertiliser plants going off. 'As a result there has been a shortage of supply and prices have risen accordingly. 'Additional storage in the UK would have certainly helped in this situation. 'The message we've given to the government is that you can't turn around when there is a crisis and call for a facility like this. The lead time is about ten years from getting sufficient encouragement and structure around financing to actually building it. 'Energy infrastructure is a long term business that goes beyond election cycles.' Meat manufacturers have warned that shoppers are likely to face higher prices as a result of the surge in CO2 costs Shelves in a supermarket look sparse yesterday as supply chain issues continue in Northwitch Empty shelves are seen in the meat aisle of a Co-Op supermarket branch in Harpenden At least 1.5million consumers have seen their suppliers go to the wall in recent weeks after the energy sector was hit by rocketing global wholesale gas prices. Business minister Paul Scully confirmed there is pressure on the energy price gap, which he said is saving dual-fuel energy customers around 100 per year, but that it will be up to the regulator Ofgem to determine if it should rise. The cap is currently due to next be reviewed in April. Mr Scully told Sky News: 'This is all part of the conversations that Ofgem will set that cap at, because supply prices are based on a number of factors. 'Clearly, as Government, we need to make sure we are planning for the worst-case scenario because we want to make sure we can protect consumers.' What companies are supplying energy? The government has been trying to open up the UK's energy market to more competition, meaning there are far smaller players involved than there used to be. The traditional Big Six tend to use their reserves to 'hedge' against changes in prices, and can withstand sharp increases. Outside that group there are four larger 'challengers' that are also fairly well-established. But then there are dozens more, often little-known, suppliers that have been trying new approaches and look far more vulnerable to the shifts. The seven energy companies to have gone bust in 2021 Simplicity Energy Green Network Energy Hub Energy PfP MoneyPlus Utility Point People's Energy The 'Big 6' energy suppliers British Gas Scottish Power Npower E.ON EDF Energy SSE - Swalec, Scottish Hydro, Southern Electric and Atlantic The challengers Ovo Energy Shell Energy Octopus Energy Utilita Energy The remaining firms Affect Energy - Atlantic - Avro Energy - Better Energy - Boost Energy - Breeze Energy - Brilliant Energy - Bristol Energy Bulb Energy - seeking government bailout Co-Operative Energy Daligas - EBICo - Economy Energy - Economy Seven Energy - Ecotricity - Engie - Enstroga - Entice Energy - ESB Energy - Eversmart Energy - Extra Energy - Fairer Power - first:utility - Flow Energy - Foxglove Energy - Future Energy - Gen4U - GnErgy - Go Effortless Energy - Good Energy - Green - Green Energy UK - Green.Energy 10,000 Green Network Energy - Green Star Energy Gulf Gas & Power igloo.energy - IRESA Limited - iSupply - Leccy - Lumo - LOCO2 Energy - M&S Energy - Nabuh - npower Select - Oink Energy - One Select - Orbit Energy - Out Fox the Market - PFP Energy - OutFox the Market - Powershop - Pure Planet Qwest - Robin Hood Energy - Sainsbury's Energy - Simplicity - So Energy Solarplicity - Spark Energy - Southern Electric - Scottish Hydro - Swalec - Telecom Utility Warehouse Together Energy - Tonik Toto - Usio Energy Supply Limited - Zog Energy Advertisement Pressed on what the worst-case scenario looks like, he added: 'That it goes on for longer than a short spike. I can't give you a figure now. It comes as food supply chains have also been placed under intense stress in recent weeks because of the shortage of around 100,000 HGV drivers - with empty shelves seen across UK supermarkets as a result. Speaking to ITV's Robert Peston last night, Tesco chairman John Allan warned of a perfect storm of issues and said efforts were being made to avert a 'horrendous crisis at Christmas'. He said: 'I think it's almost impossible to forecast, but I mean I think we're probably looking at, for food overall, you know, mid-single digit increases which is much higher than we've had in recent years. 'I think certainly while we get through this particular set of issues that we're contending with, which include shortage of labour in a number of important areas of food manufacturing, shortage of HGV drivers, which can be fixed, and we're all working very hard to fix.' Gifts may also have to change with several industries also admitting shortage fears as supply and driver issues hit. Chris Bonnett, the founder of GardeningExpress.co.uk, warned that Christmas trees could also see a shortage as lorry driver shortages in Denmark are expected to impact imports to the UK with any Covid related restrictions further adding to the problems. He's also expecting a surge in demand after last year's muted celebrations as families and friends celebrate the festivities together. Denmark is a major producer of live Christmas trees with around 90% of its crop exported to other European nations. Mr Bonnett said: 'The last few years have played havoc with the Christmas tree market. Mild winters in Scandinavian countries have made it more complicated to fell trees. 'Add in the Covid restrictions in place last year and the current shortage of lorry drivers and you can see why we're concerned that there could be a shortage of trees. 'A Christmas tree is an essential part of the festivities, not just on Christmas Day but in the run up - picking the tree, squeezing it into the car and decorating ahead of the celebrations. 'This year it'll mean even more after the locked down restrictions of last year which is why we're already seeing a surge in the number of customers searching for Christmas trees. 'Hopefully between now and December, things will improve.' Bonnett added: 'We are seeing issues with disruption across the retail sector, from food and drink to gifts and clothing. 'For Britons really wanting to go all out to celebrate this year, the best advice is to plan ahead and get all the essentials pre-ordered so you can enjoy the festivities without the stress.' Meanwhile, industry body the Toy Retailers' Association said there would be less choice than previous years for parents wanting to buy toys for their children over Christmas. Suppliers blamed rising shipping costs and the ongoing shortage of HGV drivers for potential shortages. TRA chair Alan Simpson said to parents: 'If you see it, buy it.' 'If you think you are going to go into toy stores in December as you normally would do... and you are going to get what you want, you will be very disappointed,' he added. Barry Hughes, managing director of Golden Bear Toys, based in Telford, described it as 'a perfect storm'. He said: 'Undoubtedly we are going to see prices rising. It is not just going to be toys, it will be everything.' Demand for vinyl is at record levels in the UK, however, a lack of producers and distribution issues means shortages could be ahead. Artists have been forced to push back release dates for new music while awaiting vinyl production, while sellers have reported delays of up to a year for records to be created. The pandemic, they say, has exacerbated the situation, something that major booksellers in the UK, including Waterstones, have also reported. Foyles and Daunt Books founder James Daunt said. 'We will have shops fuller than ever before to make sure we don't get caught by logistics problems as we did last year. 'My concern is that at the beginning of December if we need 50,000 copies of whatever unforeseen literary hit and it's not there' However, Tesco boss Mr Allan insisted there was no need to panic buy and that Christmas would not be 'terrible'. He said: 'I don't think the end result will be a horrendous crisis at Christmas. I would hate for people to get the impression that we are going to have a terrible Christmas and they've got to go out and panic buy.' Yesterday, Tesco revealed it was currently suffering a shortfall of approximately 800 HGV drivers as it urged the Government to ease restrictions on foreign workers to help alleviate the supply chain crisis. Despite being the UK's largest supermarket chain, and offering new employees a 1,000 bonus since July, Andrew Woolfenden, Tesco's distribution and fulfilment director, warned they were still unable to make up the lost numbers. Slamming the problem as 'industry-wide', Mr Woolfenden compared companies desperately trying to recruit from a limited pool of expert drivers to 'moving deckchairs around'. He warned ITV News: 'Our concern is that the pictures of empty shelves will get ten times worse by Christmas and then we'll get panic-buying.' Despite gaps appearing on supermarket shelves across the country this summer, consumers are yet to see a return of full-scale panic buying that was endured at the start of the pandemic. But concerns are continuing to grow should demand suddenly surge again - with replenishing empty shelves already an issue for most major UK retailers. Trade association Logistics UK has called on ministers to provide up to 10,000 temporary work visas for trained EU drivers to paper over the cracks. The Government has so far rejected these calls, instead insisting firms recruit from a pool of British workers. It comes as shorter, fast-track HGV tests have been mooted as a potential solution to help plug the spiralling vacancies in the haulier industry. Industry experts say better pay and improved working conditions are needed to help improve staffing levels - and put the shortage largely down to Brexit and the pandemic, which led to 14,000 European drivers going home and just 600 of those returning. The Road Haulage Association said the total number of people in the UK with HGV licences this summer is 516,000. But the latest Department for Transport data shows 278,700 HGV drivers were employed in 2020, equivalent to 54 per cent of the total. The crisis, which has also been made worse by Covid-related delays to testing new drivers, has seen supermarket shelves across the country go empty as companies struggle to restock their products. But Tesco's chief Mr Woolfenden issued the stark warning that consumers could see even more barren shelves by December - alongside a return of panic buying. A spokesperson for the supermarket said: 'We have good availability, with deliveries arriving at our stores and distribution centres across the UK every day. 'While the industry-wide shortage of HGV drivers has led to some distribution challenges, we're working hard to address these and to plan for the months ahead, so that customers can get everything they need.' Exacerbating the issue is a roaring debate over limited nationwide supplies of CO2, commonly used in the food and drink industry, and how the Government plans to ensure families don't have to choose between 'heating' and 'eating' this Christmas. Prime Minister Boris Johnson triumphantly declared yesterday that 'Christmas is on', after the Government struck a short-term, taxpayer-funded deal with CO2 producers to avert food shortages. Unvaccinated children getting infected with Covid isn't an issue because they face such a vanishingly rare chance of falling seriously ill, a scientist said today. England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, yesterday told MPs 'virtually all' unjabbed youngsters would eventually catch the virus. He revealed about half of youngsters have already had the virus but insisted others would get it 'sooner or later'. Justifying the decision to roll-out jabs to millions of 12-15 year olds, Professor Whitty added: 'Vaccination will reduce that risk'. But one academic today criticised the CMO's reasoning, arguing the majority would probably still get infected even if they were inoculated. Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said the virus has evolved to be extremely transmissible and that vaccines aren't perfect at blocking the pathogen. And he said natural infection would be preferable to jabs for children because the virus poses little-to-no-threat of causing serious illness in youngsters, whereas the vaccines aren't risk-free. Some studies even suggest immunity from infection is stronger than that produced by the vaccines. Despite the chief medical officers who advised the Government to extend the rollout claiming they did so after assessing the benefits to children themselves, critics view the move as one intended to protect adults by reducing the risk of transmission. But a host of scientists are now suggesting the virus now amounts to little more than a common cold for the vast majority of vaccinated adults. Professor David Livermore said Professor Chris Whitty's assertion that every unvaccinated child will catch Covid is true 'but it is a poor reason to vaccinate them' Felix Dima, 13, from Newcastle, receives the Pfizer vaccine at the Excelsior Academy in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Dame Sarah Gilbert, one of the chief scientists behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, last night claimed viruses tend to 'become less virulent as they circulate' through the population. And Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King's College London, today said jabs had already drastically changed Covid's tell-tale symptoms, effectively turning it into a bad cold for most who catch it. He said other warning signs like a sore throat, runny nose and sneezing should be added to the official list of symptoms. What is the risk to children if they catch Covid? Most children who become infected with the virus have no symptoms, or mild symptoms such as low-grade fever, fatigue, and a cough. However children with underlying health conditions may be at an increased risk of a condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome can lead to life-threatening problems with the heart and other organs. Symptoms of the condition can include fever, stomachache, rash, vomiting, cracked lips, a swollen lymph node in the neck and sleepiness. This year, researchers found children face an 'extremely low' one in 500,000 risk of dying from the coronavirus. The studies were led by researchers at University College London, the University of York and the University of Liverpool. One of the study's showed the coronavirus contributed to 0.8 per cent of the 3,105 deaths in children from all causes in the first year of the pandemic. They found the under-18s who died were more likely to be teenagers than younger children, showing that the risk from the virus increases with age. Higher proportions of Asian and black children died from the virus but these deaths were 'still extremely rare', they said. A second study found that 251 young people in England were admitted to intensive care with Covid from March 2020 to February this year, which equates to around a one in 50,000 risk. Of these patients, 91 per cent had one or more underlying health conditions. A third study, which was led by Dr Rachel Harwood at the University of Liverpool, supported the findings of the other papers. Advertisement Professor Livermore told MailOnline: 'It is true that schoolchildren will mostly catch Covid, if unvaccinated. But it is a poor reason to vaccinate them. 'First, vaccines provide only limited protection against infection and transmission, so children are going to be infected over time anyway regardless of whether they have been vaccinated. At most, vaccinating them will only delay this. 'Secondly, Covid infection does healthy children little harm. They suffer mild disease and recover swiftly. The hazard from Covid is largely for the elderly, not children. 'Thirdly, evidence from Israel shows natural immunity which children will acquire from infection is 13-fold more protective than vaccination.' He said infection and reinfection multiple times could allow children to reach a level of immunity where Covid becomes just like a common cold. But he warned immunity from the vaccine could prevent this process occurring. Professor Livermore added: 'As children we encounter many existing respiratory viruses. We spend winters with repeated sniffles and runny noses. 'However, through infection, fading immunity and reinfection we develop a balance with these viruses, which then sees us through adulthood with just the occasional cold. 'Todays healthy children have the potential to co-develop with Covid in exactly the same way. For them as adults it will be one more sort of common cold. 'The hazard is that vaccination will disrupt their development of this natural balance, for no benefit. 'If you add this risk to the side-effect hazard, notably of myocarditis in boys, I can see no good reasoned to vaccinate healthy children.' And asked whether vaccines have reduced the severity of the disease in adults enough already to allay fears the back-to-school wave of infections could be dangerous for parents, Professor Livermore said: 'Absolutely. 'The vulnerable have been protected as well as possible from severe disease with vaccines and the virus is now endemic. Essentially it now just has to bed in. 'Repeated exposure, mild infection and boosters for the vulnerable will allow us to develop an immune "defence in depth". 'We really shouldnt worry about its circulation in schools. It is doing little harm there.' Being grilled by politicians about his decision to recommend all over-12s are given Covid jabs yesterday, Professor Whitty insisted the move was made purely due to the benefits children would get. He denied the advice which overruled guidance from No10's top vaccine advisory panel which recommended youngsters weren't jabbed was political. Professor Whitty said: 'The great majority of children who have not currently had Covid are going to get it at some point. 'It won't be necessary in the next two or three months but they will get it sooner or later because this is incredibly infectious. Vaccination will reduce that risk.' He added that while the vaccination programme would cause some disruption to schools, it would be outweighed by the likely disruption caused if children caught Covid. When asked what proportion of children had already had Covid, he replied: 'It varies by age and it does also vary by setting, but I think if we go for roughly half I think that is a reasonable stab at this. 'That's half over the period of the entire epidemic to date, and we've got quite a way to run. 'We're running into winter so there's still quite a lot of damage that could be done in terms of disruption.' Asked whether children would receive longer-lasting immunity from natural infection or the vaccine, Professor Whitty said it would be 'broadly similar'. But he said immunity of both kinds would be longer in children than in adults. Meanwhile, Dame Sarah suggested the virus would likely mutate to become less deadly and begin to resemble the common cold. She said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold She said viruses tend to 'become less virulent as they circulate' through the population, adding: 'There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2'. Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine seminar, Dame Sarah said: 'We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don't really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. 'It's just a question of how long it's going to take to get there and what measures we're going to have to take to manage it in the meantime.' And Professor Spector said data from the ZOE Covid study today suggested 'cold-like symptoms' are already becoming more common, with the old three main signs of infection cough, fever and a loss of smell less prevalent. But he was less confident vaccinated adults would not be infected with the virus and emphasised they could still be at risk of serious illness. Scientists have always admitted the vaccines are not perfect and immunity wanes over time. NHS bosses have already begun a booster drive campaign in order to protect the most vulnerable this winter. Professor Spector said: 'While its true that Covid in children is mostly mild, the real issue is their ability to pass on the virus to those who are most vulnerable. 'ZOE Covid Study data shows protection waning in those who were first in line for a vaccine, and so their risk of getting infected is rising.' Vice President Kamala Harris accused Republicans of rejecting 'even the most modest' police reforms, which she called 'unconscionable,' after Sen. Corey Booker announced Wednesday that negotiations were dead six months after they began. Harris had introduced Democrats' Justice in Policing Act in Congress along with Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif. Democrats in the House introduced the Justice in Policing Act in June 2020 and at the same time Republicans led by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., 'We learned that Republicans rejected even the most modest reforms. Their refusal to act is unconscionable. Millions marched in the streets to see reform and accountability,' she said in a statement. Meanwhile, the vice president has spoken out against Border Patrol's treatment of Haitian migrants at the southern border but has not released a plan for stemming the sudden onslaught at the border, as Biden's point person for addressing the root causes of migration. President Biden on Wednesday evening said that Republicans had rejected police reforms that even the previous president had supported. 'Regrettably, Senate Republicans rejected enacting modest reforms, which even the previous president had supported, while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address,' he said in a statement. Biden said he was reviewing 'potential further executive actions' to take. Booker said that on Tuesday he gave Scott Democrats' final offer, and after the South Carolina Republican did not accept, he called Scott Wednesday to inform him negotiations were done. 'Unfortunately, even with this law enforcement support and further compromises we offered, there was still too wide a gulf with our negotiating partners and we faced significant obstacles to securing a bipartisan deal,' Booker explained in a statement. Scott blasted his Democratic colleagues for 'walking away from the table.' 'Democrats said no because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement.' 'After months of making progress, I am deeply disappointed Democrats have once again squandered a crucial opportunity to implement meaningful reform to make our neighborhoods safer and mend the tenuous relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table. 'We learned that Republicans rejected even the most modest reforms. Their refusal to act is unconscionable. Millions marched in the streets to see reform and accountability,' Kamala Harris said in a statement President Biden is 'disappointed' lawmakers have decided to give up on negotiating bipartisan police reform six months after they began 'Unfortunately, even with this law enforcement support and further compromises we offered, there was still too wide a gulf with our negotiating partners and we faced significant obstacles to securing a bipartisan deal,' Sen. Corey Booker, above, explained Bass, D-Calif., in a statement blamed her Republican counterparts who she said were 'unwilling to come to a compromise,' and called on Biden to use executive powers to take action. 'We developed proposals that we crafted with law enforcement, proposals crafted with activists we even made proposals based on executive orders from former Presidents. 'We accepted significant compromises, knowing that they would be a tough sell to our community, but still believing that we would be moving the needle forward on this issue. But every time, more was demanded to the point that there would be no progress made in the bill that we were left discussing,' the congresswoman said. Police brutality protests racked the nation last summer after the death of George Floyd in police custody New York City was hit with a wave of racial injustice protests last summer 'I now call on President Biden and the White House to use the full extent of their constitutionally-mandated power to bring about meaningful police reform.' Scott said the negotiators had agreed on banning chokeholds, limiting the transfer of military equipment to police departments and increased mental health resources, but Democrats would not agree to a bill with only those areas of agreement. 'Once again, the Left let their misguided idea of perfect be the enemy of good, impactful legislation.' The South Carolina Republican seemed unaware talks would crumble so soon on Wednesday morning. 'If we walk away now, we walk away on that finish line,' he said earlier on CNN. After the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the spring of 2020 and the following protests that rocked the country, lawmakers promised to take up the matter of police reform. The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act last spring and has since tried to square it with Scott's Justice Act. But a key sticking point has been qualified immunity, or the doctrine that shields police officers from civil liability in cases of misconduct. Democrats had favored getting rid of or vastly drawing back qualified immunity, while Republicans largely support the measure. 'When it comes to issues like raising professional standards, we couldnt even agree to codify what Donald Trump did in his executive order,' Booker told reporters on the Capitol steps on Wednesday. President Trump last year issued an executive order creating federal incentives for law enforcement to boost training and create a database to track misconduct. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has been enacting its own police reforms for the federal officers it oversees. Federal law enforcement can no longer deploy chokeholds or no-knock warrants without use of force authorization in a life-threatening situation. The restrictions apply to federal agents who work under the DOJ and local police departments who work with the DOJ through a joint task force. There are more than 130,000 members of federal law enforcement, according to Justice Department figures, and more than 460,000 on the state and local level. More than two million workers would be allowed to ask their bosses to let them work from home from day one of a new job under plans unveiled by ministers today. The plan would ease the current rules that allow staff to request flexible working once they have been in a role for six months. It has been launched after millions of people worked form home during the Covid pandemic, with many firms deciding to keep some measures in place permanently. Ministers plan to keep in place rules that allow businesses to refuse the requests if they have 'good business reasons' to do so. But they want to place pressure on employers to negotiate with their staff rather than reject requests outright. However it is a watered down version of the move in the Tory 2019 manifesto which pledged to make flexible working the 'default' rather than something that has to be asked for. It has been launched after millions of people worked form home during the Covid pandemic, with many firms deciding to keep some measures in place permanently. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: 'Empowering workers to have more say over where and when they work makes for more productive businesses and happier employees. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: 'Empowering workers to have more say over where and when they work makes for more productive businesses and happier employees. 'It was once considered a ''nice to have'', but by making requests a day-one right, we're making flexible working part of the DNA of businesses across the country. 'A more engaged and productive workforce, a higher calibre of applicants and better retention rates - the business case for flexible working is compelling.' The Government said a range of flexible working methods will also be looked at, including job-sharing, flexitime, compressed hours and phased retirement, as well as working from home, a trend which has accelerated as a result of the pandemic. A day-one right to a week's unpaid leave for carers balancing a job with caring responsibilities is also being planned. Ministers said there were some circumstances where businesses will not be able to offer flexible working, so they should still be able to reject a request if they have sound business reasons. Minister for Women and Equalities Liz Truss said: 'As we move beyond the pandemic, we must seize the opportunity to make flexible working an option for everyone. 'No-one should be held back in their career because of where they live, what house they can afford, or their responsibility to family. 'I want everyone to have the same opportunities regardless of the background or location. This is the right thing to do for workers, families and our economy.' But Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner, who is also shadow future of work secretary, said it reflected 'another broken manifesto promise'. She said: 'Labour will give workers the right to flexible working - not just the right to request it. Labour will make flexible working a force for good so that everyone is able to enjoy the benefits of flexible working, from a better work-life balance to less time commuting and more time with their family.' TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'Flexible working should be a day-one right that's available to everyone. 'But under these plans employers will still have free rein to turn down all or any requests for flexible working. 'Instead of tinkering around the edges, ministers should change the law so that workers have the legal right to work flexibly from the first day in the job. The right to ask nicely is no right at all. 'Not all jobs can support every kind of flexible working - but all jobs can support some kind of flexible working. 'All job adverts should make clear what kind of flexibility is available.' Under employment law there are eight reasons a request for flexible working can be refused by an employer Matthew Fell, CBI chief policy director, added: 'Businesses have learnt a huge amount about the pros and cons of flexible working during the pandemic, with many firms expecting to receive more formal and informal requests in the future. 'Employers support giving employees the right to request flexible working from day one in the job. 'Companies want to work with the Government to ensure that they can say 'no' when they have properly considered requests but for good reason can't accept them,' he added. Baroness Kishwer Falkner, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: 'We have long been highlighting the benefits of flexible working - from unlocking career opportunities for women, carers and disabled people, to helping employers attract and retain a more diverse workforce. 'Its benefits are clear, and the pandemic has proved that different forms of flexible working can work in practice to benefit both employer and employee. 'The Government's consultation is a welcome first step towards flexible working becoming a default day one right, where possible.' A Florida federal court sentenced a Peruvian man to 110 months in prison for threatening Spanish-speaking U.S. residents with arrest, deportation and other legal consequences if they didn't pay for English classes. Henrry Milla owned and operated two call centers in Lima, Peru, which were used to target victims and their family members with legal action unless they paid for products to learn English, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. According to Peruvian authorities, Milla and his accomplices scammed victims out of at least $4million. The 37-year-old pleaded guilty to conspiracy to committing mail fraud and wire fraud. Milla and at least six accomplices lied to and threatened individuals in the United States, particularly in the South Florida area, from April 2011 until July 2019. The scammers, the Department of Justice said, were 'falsely telling victims that they were required to accept and pay for English-language courses and other educational products and that failure to do so placed them in legal jeopardy.' The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that Henrry Milla (right) was sentenced to 110 months in prison by a Florida federal court for pleaded guilty to conspiracy to committing mail fraud and wire fraud. Milla owned and operated call centers in his native Lima, Peru, which were used to target Spanish-speaking individuals in the United States. Evelyng Milla (left) with two of the five call center scammers from Peru have been sentenced to at least 110 months in a federal U.S. prison for threatening Spanish-speaking United States residents with arrest, deportation and other legal consequences unless they paid for English courses. Milla confessed that he and his co-conspirators pretended to be lawyers, court officials, federal agents. The callers, who operated out of Milla's Latinos en Accion and Accion Latino, would reach out to victims and tell them that unless they came up with money, they could face court proceedings, negative credit report filings, imprisonment and deportation. 'The Department of Justice's Consumer Protection Branch will pursue and prosecute transnational criminals who defraud vulnerable U.S. consumers,' said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton of the Justice Department's Civil Division. 'The defendants in this case defrauded immigrants by falsely promising free products to improve their English. In reality, the defendants were luring their victims into a trap of intimidation and fear, leaving them far worse off with substantial financial losses and, often, emotional scars from these crimes. With today's sentence, five defendants in this case have been brought to justice, demonstrating that those who prey upon U.S. consumers from abroad cannot do so with impunity.' Peruvian authorities said the individuals pulled in at least $4million by scamming Spanish-speaking U.S. residents The English-language products are normally free. Peruvian authorities arrested Milla in January 2020. He and four other accomplices were extradited to the Southern District of Florida in October 2020. U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. previously sentenced Jerson Renteria, 37, to 100 months in prison. Fernan Huerta; Omar Cuzcano, 32; and Evelyng Milla, 35, each received 90-month sentences. Two other defendants, Carlos Espinoza Huerta and Josmell Espinoza Huerta, fled when Milla and the other four individuals were arrested. However, they were both apprehended earlier this year and extradited on June 25. Judge Scola Jr. will preside over their trial when it begins February 14, 2022. A man dubbed 'Britain's worst landlord' has been banned for life from contacting his local council directly after a 10-year campaign of abuse. After losing a High Court battle, multi-millionaire landlord Fergus Wilson, 72, has been slapped with an injunction, stopping him from contacting Ashford Borough Council (ABC). Wilson sent one letter to Council Leader Gerry Clarkson's home address, called him as 'a buffoon', 'an a******', 'a bag of ****' and encouraged him to 'do all the young people in Ashford a service and commit suicide'. In another abusive email, Wilson had referred to a female member of staff as an 'objectionable fat lady' and 'Michelin lady' when calling for her to be fired. The previous temporary injunction was made permanent, meaning Wilson will only be able to contact the council workers through a named legal advisor. Landlord Fergus Wilson, 72, bombarded Ashford Borough Council with hundreds of messages, including tell the council leader to commit suicide Wilson and his wife Judith own one of the largest portfolios of properties in Kent, believed to be about 1,000 The court was told that Wilson sent hundreds of unpleasant letters, emails and phone calls, complaining about officers, councillors and legal representatives and repeatedly told councillors to 'kill themselves.' The property mogul is no stranger to the public eye. In 2017 his racist practice of banning 'coloured tenants' in his properties was overthrown by the courts. The council's representative Adam Solomon QC handed over a staggering 454 copies of correspondence sent by Wilson to council officials in the space of just over four years, between February 2016 and July 2020. Mr Solomon told the court that some workers had been subjected to rude emails from Wilson daily. He said: 'Officers, employees and councillors felt bullied and distressed, being unable to respond properly to allegations, some of them being reduced to tears.' Included in Mr Solomon's summary were the copies of the aggressive letters and emails that had been sent to council members and associated workers. Cllr Clarkson stated that the letters 'crossed any reasonable threshold' and that his wife was so distressed she stopped opening the post. Wilson has now been slapped with a permanent injunction, banning him from contacting Ashford Borough Council for life In a lengthy summary judgment, Daryl Allen QC said that he had 'no hesitation' when making the ruling. Mr Allen QC continued: 'The defendant's conduct repeatedly went far beyond merely irritating and annoying, it was deliberately offensive.' 'It included numerous unfounded allegations of professional misconduct and criminal conduct. 'It included multiple threats of criminal or other legal proceedings which were never pursued.' In support of the argument that his conduct was in fact, appropriate, Wilson reportedly submitted a photo of himself taken with the hashtag 'Fat ****' written underneath. In response to this, Mr Solomon said: 'The argument goes, insofar as it is coherent, is that if it is OK for people to call the defendant a 'fat ****', it is okay for him to refer to [the victim] in the way that he does.' An ABC spokesman said: 'The council is delighted with the judgement handed down today, confirming that the terms of the interim injunction obtained in July 2020 preventing Mr Wilson from continuing to harass council staff and councillors are now embodied in a final (permanent) injunction. 'The judgement has vindicated the council's decision to take the unusual step of resorting to litigation in order to protect its staff and councillors.' The parents of missing Brian Laundrie were shadowed by undercover agents Thursday as they broke cover and drove 150 miles to Orlando to meet with an attorney, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. Lawyer Steve Bertolino flew from New York to Florida specifically to meet with Brian's parents after a federal arrest warrant was issued for the missing 23-year-old on Wednesday. A convoy of unmarked vehicles first tailed Christopher and Roberta Laundrie as they left their North Port, Florida home and headed towards Orlando earlier this morning. In surreal scenes, undercover agents - believed to be with the FBI - followed the couple into the Orlando Public Library on Thursday and hovered in the aisles perusing 80s dance CDs and a Colombian art installation while keeping them under constant surveillance. Though it's not clear what they were doing in the library, it's now known that the couple met Bertolino in Orlando during their trip. 'It is my understanding that the arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie is related to activities occurring after the death of Gabby Petito and not related to her actual demise,' Bertolino told DailyMail.com. 'The FBI is focusing on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum.' Christopher and Roberta Laundrie were spotted in Orlando, Florida on Thursday, hours after leaving their North Port home The parents of missing person of interest Brian Laundrie broke cover and drove for 150 miles - before bizarrely visiting a library, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal The couple were followed inside the Orlando Public Library by undercover agents who hovered in the aisles as they kept them under constant surveillance Inside, Christopher, 62, looked agitated and unhappy as he talked on his phone while Roberta, 55, paced up and down in the lobby A day earlier Bertolino was hit with a cease and desist letter from Gabby's parents who complained that his business' Yelp page was using pics of their dead daughter without permission. Bertolino denied being responsible and said he had no control over what people had posted on the page. The image was later removed. On Thursday, the FBI confirmed the the US District Court of Wyoming issued a federal arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie 'pursuant to a Federal Grand Jury indictment related to Mr. Laundrie's activities following the death of Gabrielle Petito' the day before. Christopher, 62, looked agitated and unhappy as he talked on his phone while Roberta, 55, paced up and down in the lobby, occasionally glancing suspiciously at the plain-clothes operatives. They waited inside the library for around 30 minutes, not stopping to look at a single book or display, before ignoring requests to comment from a DailyMail.com reporter and hopping back into their red Dodge Ram truck. Moments later the vehicle was spotted entering a downtown Orlando parking garage, attached to a large office building. Around an hour later, Christopher and Roberta emerged from the garage and drove home to North Port - tailed the entire way back to their front door by the same convoy of unmarked law enforcement vehicles. The couple first set out on the trip earlier Thursday morning after they were seen being escorted by two law enforcement vehicles as they drove through their hometown. The reason for their visit - a two-hour-and 20-minute drive from their bungalow - was shrouded in mystery until later that evening, when attorney Bertolino confirmed he had met with the couple. They waited inside the library for around 30 minutes, not stopping to look at a single book or display before hopping back into their red Dodge Ram truck The Laundries are pictured heading into the library The Laundries refused to answer questions from a DailyMail.com reporter as they got into their car Roberta, pictured in the passenger seat, is seen talking on the phone as the couple drives away Moments later the vehicle was spotted entering a downtown Orlando parking garage, attached to a large office building Around an hour later, Christopher and Roberta emerged from the garage and drove home to North Port - tailed by the same convoy of unmarked law enforcement vehicles the entire way back They were spotted leaving their house at 8:15am before getting into their red Dodge Ram pickup truck and heading in the direction of the local police station on their own. Shortly afterwards they were spotted returning to their three-bedroom house on the normally quiet residential road, tailed by a North Port Police SUV and a black Ford 150 believed to be an FBI vehicle. Brian's silver Ford Mustang convertible - which was seized by the FBI in a dramatic raid on the Laundries' home on Monday - was returned to the house by a tow truck crew when the couple returned from town only to leave again a short while later. Christopher and Roberta Laundrie looked solemn has they headed to their pickup truck for the start of the journey to meet Bertolino in Orlando. Christopher Laundrie, 62, and wife Roberta, 55, were seen leaving their North Port, Florida home during a rare foray into town on Thursday morning The parents of missing person of interest Brian Laundrie were pictured getting into their red Dodge Ram pickup truck before setting off in the direction of the police station The parents looked solemn and were silent as they emerged from their house, which has been the focus of media attention since Gabby Petito's disappearance Brian Laundrie, 23, who was reported missing last week, remains a person of interest in the disappearance and death of fiancee Gabby Petito The development came on day five in the hunt for Brian Laundrie, 23, the fiance of van-life woman Gabby Petito, 22, who was found dead at a national park in Wyoming on Sunday - eight days after she was reported missing. Laundrie is considered a person of interest in her disappearance and death, which has been ruled a homicide. Gabby last spoke to her family on August 25 from Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. She had been traveling with Laundrie in the couple's camper van since July and the two were meant to return home in October. Laundrie, however, traveled back to his family's North Port, Florida home on September 1 without Gabby, and refused to speak to authorities about her disappearance. On Wednesday, neighbors revealed that they had seen Laundrie and his parents packing an 'attached camper' used for their long-weekend camping trips after he returned to the home. Charlene and William Guthrie claim they saw the Laundries hook up the camper to the back of their pickup truck for a weekend trip away on September 11 - the same day Gabby was reported missing. Roberta Laundrie gets into the passenger seat as she leaves the house Thursday morning The couple were soon spotted returning to the house in their normally quiet residential road, tailed by a North Port Police SUV and a black Ford 150 believed to be an FBI vehicle FBI agents seized Brian Laundrie's silver Ford Mustang convertible during a dramatic raid of the family home on Monday. It was returned to the house by a tow truck crew Thursday morning The family would have returned about two days later as DailyMail.com photos show the camper back in the driveway on September 13. When police contacted the Guthries, William told them about the family's trip, noting that it was unusual for Christopher and Roberta to go off in such a small camper with their 23-year-old son. 'I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper,' William told Fox News. The Gunthries added that living next to the Laundries has become a nightmare since Gabby and later Laundrie went missing, with police and reporters roaming the neighborhood for nearly a month investigating the case. The Laundrie family were initially reluctant to cooperate with the investigation until Brian went missing last week. Police divers joined the search for Laundrie on Wednesday as more than 50 law enforcement officers from eight agencies continued to comb the 25,000-acre alligator and snake-infested swampland of Carlton Reserve, near the Laundrie home. Charlene and William Guthrie told Fox they spotted the Laundries leaving for a camping trip just days after Brian Laundrie returned home alone without the missing Gabby Petito A DailyMail.com image taken on September 13 shows the Laundrie's camper in their driveway. Neighbors said they hooked it up to the red pickup truck in front of it for a weekend camping trip on September 11 - the day Gabby was reported missing Laundrie was believed to be hiding out in his parents' Florida home until September 14, when he purportedly set off on a hike at the local nature reserve. His family said they last saw him that day wearing a hiking bag, but did not report him missing until three days later, on September 17. His silver Ford Mustang was also found abandoned near the Carlton Reserve with a note requesting it be towed away. 'These guys, our law enforcement partners are motivated and they are hungry to find Brian Laundrie,' North Port Police commander Joe Fussell, who is helping to coordinate the search, said Wednesday. 'It's rough out there, it's hot, it's wet. We are trying to cover every acre in this reserve.' North Port Police Department on Wednesday evening tweeted that the search had concluded for the day, and would resume in the morning. 'The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found,' they said. 'We will be back out Thursday, similar operation.' Earlier on Wednesday there was a flurry of activity as divers were brought to the site, but it later emerged that there was no connection to the case. The team, made up of about 10 divers, was requested by North Port Police on Wednesday morning, said Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez. 'These divers are specifically trained and very talented in low visibility bodies of water,' Perez said. 'They dive down where you and I can't see anything at all. They utilize technology and other special equipment to help them get down deep into really deep bodies of water, so they're out there right now to recover whatever it is that they might find.' Brian Laundrie's weeklong disappearance into a 25,000-acre nature reserve is nothing compared to other solo trips he's taken into the wilderness including a hike on the Appalachian trail lasting three months, DailyMail.com has learned. 'I know he lived in the Appalachians for what I believe was three months, and he did it by himself, so I know he's skilled at it,' said Rose Davis, best friend of Gabby Petito, whose body was found Sunday in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. 'He and Gabby both told me stories about it,' Rose added in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com. 'And you could see the enthusiasm in his voice when he would talk about his adventures by himself like that trip into the Appalachians,' a trail stretching more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. The 22-year-old's death was ruled a homicide on Monday, and Laundrie has been declared a person of interest. Gabby Petito's death was ruled a homicide on Monday, and Brian Laundrie has been declared a person of interest Gabby Petito's best friend Rose Davis (pictured) revealed in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com that Laundrie is well-equipped to survive in the reserve Law enforcement are on their fifth day in the search for Brian Laundrie in the vast Carlton Reserve in Sarasota, Florida He was last seen more than a week ago leaving his parents' home in North Port, Florida with a backpack. His whereabouts remain unknown, with the manhunt entering its fifth day. Police and FBI agents resumed their search of the Carlton Reserve early Wednesday, sharing photos of search dogs heading out into the swampland. On Wednesday, police divers arrived at the vast swampland Carlton Reserve. A van from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Underwater Recovery Force, towing a small dingy, turned up about an hour after an airboat was seen for the first time at the 25,000-acre reserve. When asked if divers were recovering anything significant, North Port Police information chief Josh Taylor said: 'We are looking. Nothing found. We have to work to rule it out though.' 'Area resources are looking at large bodies of water, including dive teams, boats, and sonar equipment. At this time, this does not mean anything has been found. It's a part of the overall search process,' Taylor said. 'Additionally, right now, NPPD is on scene of a possible self-inflicted death, roughly one mile from the Environmental Park. Nothing to do with this case.' Rose said she met Gabby early last year on Bumble BFF, a meeting app for friends, and they instantly hit it off. Rose, 21, who lives in Sarasota, said Laundrie often liked to be alone and didn't appear to have any friends. Even when he'd join her and Gabby at the beach in Florida, he'd go off to sit by himself. She described him as a jealous and controlling, and said he'd try to prevent his fiance from hanging out with her. The couple had several brutal arguments in which Petito would drive off to spend the night at her house. 'I think that's one reason why Brian rushed into this van trip,' Rose said of the cross-country trip Petito and Laundrie began in July. 'He saw how close we were getting and he realized that after every fight, she was staying at my house. And he didn't have control over that.' The couple were filming their adventures for a 'van-life' YouTube channel Petito was creating. Rose was planning to meet them in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park in September and had even asked her boss for days off for the trip. They were planning to lock in a specific date on August 29, Rose's birthday, but Petito never called. Laundrie returned home without Petito on September 1, and her family from Long Island reported her missing on September 11. Rose said she was horrified when police then released details of an argument the couple had in Moab, Utah in early August, just days after Rose last spoke to her best friend. 'I'm sure it caused an argument when Gabby told him I was going there soon because he knows dang well that if I saw them in a rocky place, I would take her home with me,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I would be like screw this, you're coming home with me. We'll do this on our own some time.' Rose had considered Laundrie a friend at one point, but said she now hopes he'll be caught and made to suffer. 'I hope he's found and then I want him to get convicted and go to jail,' she said. 'I won't go into detail with the rest that I want to have happen to him, him and his parents.' Rose shared this photo of herself with Gabby before her best friend set out on her road trip, only to never return Rose who lives in Sarasota, a half hour from Gabby and Brian's home in North Port, said she last spoke to Gabby in early August and was planning to meet her in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park in September In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Friday, Rose revealed she met Gabby early last year and they instantly hit it off. She shared videos of them taking part in a TikTok dancing trend earlier this year During an interview with DailyMail.com on Friday, Rose went into detail about her friends increasingly combative relationship with Laundrie. She recalled that he allegedly went so far as to hide Petito's ID once so that she couldn't meet up with her at a bar, trigging a violent episode similar to the one police investigated Aug. 12. 'Brian took her ID just so she wouldn't be able to come out with me,' she said. 'He's got these jealousy issues and he struggles from what Gabby called these "episodes," where he would hear things and hear voices and wouldn't sleep. 'Gabby had to stay at my house a bunch of times because she just needed a breather and didn't want to go home to him.' Rose panicked when she learned that Laundrie had returned home from Wyoming without her best friend. 'When I saw that Brian was back from the trip, that was the first thing that popped into my mind - that Brian had one of his episodes - and I was just hoping he didn't have a snapping moment,' Rose said. Rose said she met Gabby early last year on Bumble BFF, a meeting app for friends, and they instantly hit it off. 'Neither of us had any friends,' Rose recalled, laughing. 'She had texted me, saying: "You seem so cool. I really want to be your friend. Can we be friends?" And I was like, "Yes, I'd be happy to be your friend." 'We just went everywhere together,' she said. Gabby, who worked last year at Taco Bell and then took a job at a smoothie place, would sometimes join Rose when she was working her job delivering pizza. 'We'd tell people she was my emotional service human,' Rose giggled. Rose got to know Laundrie early on when she'd visit their home in North Port. 'I used to consider him a friend, for sure, because I'd hang out with them a good amount,' she noted. 'He had this composure as a sweet, nice, caring guy. But you could tell he's a little off, a little weird. Like, he'd set up our hammocks when we'd go to beach, but wouldn't sit with us, which I found bizarre. 'Brian has a jealousy issue,' Rose said. 'I'm her only friend in Florida to my knowledge and that's not because she can't make friends, he just didn't want her to have friends.' Laundrie is seen with scratches on his face which he tells an officer were caused when Petito 'was trying to get the keys from me' and 'hit me with her phone A tearful Petito is seen in the back of the police car. Laundrie admits he 'pushed her' during the altercation and cops determine Petito was 'the primary aggressor' Rose and Gabby were so close that they'd share their locations with each through an iPhone app 'in case we got lost,' Rose said. But when Laundrie found out, he made Gabby delete it, she said. 'I didn't push the issue because I didn't want it to cause an argument with him,' she said. 'He was always worried she was going to leave him,' she added. 'It was a constant thing to try to get us to stop hanging out. 'He'd demand she be home for dinner, often cut our time short. He'd demand to pick her up from my house, even when I had a car and offered to drive.' She said the couple wouldn't argue in front of her, but she could tell afterward. Gabby would appear upset, but he'd seem calm. She said it was evident in the body camera footage police shared of an incident involving the two in Moab. A witness had called 911 after seeing the couple fighting. When police pulled the couple over, Gabby was breathing heavily and crying, while Laundrie seemed composed, even as he exhibited scratch marks on his face. Gabby was seen with tears streaming down her face, telling officers she 'was trying to get him to stop telling me to calm down' and admitting the couple 'have been fighting all morning.' She also told cops that she suffers from OCD and anxiety. Both she and Laundrie also said she had been stressed about the YouTube blog they were working on about their cross-country trip. Rose, who knew that her friend suffers from anxiety, said 'for her anxiety to act up like that, there has to be a decent thing to trigger it. Something had to happen, or just a lot of things had to build up.' 'I'm a little upset she didn't just call me after that fight, because she would have before,' Rose added. Laundrie was last seen more than a week ago leaving his parents' home in North Port, Florida with a backpack and his whereabouts remain unknown The manhunt for Brian Laundrie, 23, has entered its fifth day as police continue to search the 25,000-acre Florida nature reserve She said the body camera footage reminded her of the ID episode from Florida. Last summer, Gabby was driving to a bar to go line-dancing with Rose in Sarasota when she noticed her driver's license missing from her wallet. Gabby returned home and confronted her boyfriend, who Rose said admitted he took her license. 'Brian didn't want her to go out with me, so he took it,' she recalled. 'She was so hysterical. She told me she slapped him and said something about him pushing her. 'She was holding back. I told her you need to tell me the deep of what happened and she just wouldn't.' Rose also tried, delicately, to get Gabby to reconsider her engagement to Laundrie. Gabby told her mother she'd put off the engagement, but according to Rose, they were still looking to get married. 'I told her you're young and Brian is a little controlling for her, but I also told her to do what makes you happy and I'm here to support you,' she said. 'We thought it was odd': Brian Laundrie's neighbors reveal he and his parents packed up their 'attached camper' for camping trip on DAY Gabby Petito was reported missing - and ten days after he returned without her Brian Laundrie's neighbors said they spotted him and his parents packing an 'attached camper' used for their long-weekend camping trips after he returned to the North Port, Florida, residence without girlfriend Gabby Petito. Laundrie is a 'person of interest' in the homicide of Petito, whose body was found near a camp site in Wyoming where the couple had stayed during a driving trip across America. She was last seen alive on August 24, and he returned home to Florida alone on September 1. Laundrie vanished from his parents home before Gabby's body was found, and remains missing. Neighbors Charlene and William Guthrie said they saw the Laundries hook up the camper to the back of their pickup truck for a weekend trip away about a week after their son's return, on September 11 - the same day Gabby was reported missing. The family would have returned about two days later as DailyMail.com photos show the camper back in the driveway on September 13. When police contacted the Guthries over the disappearance of Petito, William told them about the family's trip, noting that it was unusual for Christopher and Roberta Laundrie to go off in such a small camper with their 23-year-old son. 'I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper,' William told Fox News. Charlene and William Guthrie told Fox they spotted the Laundries leaving for a camping trip just days after Brian Laundrie returned home alone without the missing Gabby Petito Gabby Petito, 22, is pictured with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, as they made their 'van life' road trip. Petito's body was found on Sunday and Laundrie has disappeared The Gunthries added that living next to the Laundries has become a nightmare since Petito and later Laundrie went missing with police and reporters roaming the neighborhood for nearly a month investigating the case. The Laundrie family were initially reluctant to cooperate with the investigation regarding the missing Petito until Brian went missing last week. Their house was searched on Monday, and Brian's parents Christopher and Roberta were questioned. Law enforcement continue to comb the nearby alligator-infested Carlton Reserve in search of Laundrie. The attached camper is seen on the driveway of Brian Laundrie's parents home on September 20 while FBI Agents talk with North Port police officers outside FBI Agents take away boxes from the home of Brian Laundrie with the attached camper visible on the driveway - it's not clear if police searched the camper Christopher Laundrie, Brian's father, pictured on September 21, with the camper still visible in the driveway Petito's stepfather James Schmidt has visited the exact spot where her body was found in Wyoming, and created a memorial to the 22-year-old New Yorker. Schmidt, who is married to Petito's mother Nichole, traveled from New York to Wyoming last week to help with the search for the missing 'van life' traveler. She had been reported missing on September 11, and his parents said he left their home to go hiking in a nearby reserve on September 14. Her body was found on September 19, and two days later a coroner ruled her death a homicide. Her cause of death is still being investigated. On Wednesday Schmidt made a stone cross at the site where Petito was discovered, Fox News confirmed. He left yellow and white flowers on the site, beneath the trees. A similar memorial had been made on Monday, on an open patch of muddy land on the banks of a river near the campsite. A memorial for Petito will be held on Sunday in New York, the Long Island funeral home confirmed on Wednesday. Moloney's Holbrook Funeral Home, in Holbrook, 50 miles east of Manhattan, announced the memorial on their website. The event will be held from noon until 5pm. No details were given about a funeral or service. The funeral home on Long Island, New York, has published details of her memorial Sunday's memorial will be held at the Holbrook funeral home near her family's house The pair had been travelling on a cross-country trip together since July 2, when they left New York. Petito was reported missing on September 11 Petito's family have not spoken since a coroner on Tuesday confirmed that the body discovered on Sunday was indeed her. They said that they would speak once her remains were returned to them. The hunt for the sole 'person of interest' in her case continues. Her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, 23, was reported missing by his parents on September 17, three days after telling them he was setting off on a hike. Laundrie's family lawyer said: 'May she rest in peace.' The search for Laundrie has since Sunday been concentrated on the Carlton Reserve - a swampy, alligator-filled 25,000 acre site where Laundrie's abandoned car was found. The silver Ford Mustang contained a note, requesting it be towed away. North Port Police Department on Wednesday evening at around 7pm tweeted that the search had concluded for the day, and would resume in the morning. 'The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found,' they said. 'We will be back out Thursday, similar operation.' A charismatic Italian priest has been arrested for allegedly stealing more than 85,000 from church funds to pay for gay sex parties at his home. Father Francesco Spagnesi, 40, from Prato near Florence, is under house arrest on suspicion of theft. Police are in the process of interviewing hundreds of people said to have attended his drug-fuelled orgies over the last two years. The parties typically involved the priest, his drug-dealing flatmate and at least one other person, whom they would find through gay dating sites, according to detectives. However, on occasion, the weekly parties would involve much larger groups of up to 20 or 30 participants. Father Francesco Spagnesi, 40, from Prato near Florence, is under house arrest on suspicion of theft Investigations into Spagnesi began after police reportedly discovered that his flatmate had imported a litre of GHB from The Netherlands. The drug is often referred to as a 'date-rape' drug as it has been used to incapacitate victims of sexual assault. Raids on the shared flat revealed bottles thought to be adapted to function as crack pipes. In recent months, a parish accountant found that 85,000 had been withdrawn from the parish's bank account - money which police suspect was used by Spagnesi to buy drugs. The local bishop stopped access to the funds, prompting Spagnesi to allegedly begin pocketing money from the church collection plate and soliciting funds from wealthy parishioners ostensibly to go to low-income families. The Times, citing investigators, reported that the priest was so successful at drumming up donations that he was soon bringing in hundreds of euros. Some parishioners made individual donations of as much as 1,281.00. The priest had initially claimed that the missing money had gone to families in need, but later admitted he suffered from a drug addiction The priest had initially claimed that the missing money had gone to families in need, but later admitted that he suffered from a drug addiction. Local media reported that parishioners had begun legal action to get their money back after hearing of Spagnesi's arrest. The priest's lawyer told The Times that his client had confessed to supplying drugs at the parties and was due to confess to taking church funds. Neither Spagnesi, nor his flatmate have been charged with any crimes. The priest had been ordained in 2007 and made a parish priest in 2009. Bishop Giovanni Nerbini has appointed a new administrator for the parish who has been working with the faithful to help them to deal with the shock of the allegations against Spagnesi. The House approved sending Israel $1 billion for its Iron Dome defense system by an overwhelming 420 to 9 majority after Progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib was accused of anti-semitism by a member of her own party in a stunning rebuke on the House floor Thursday. AOC, who abstained on the vote, made sure she was in camera shot and burst into tears as the result was read. Among the 'no' votes were Tlaib and her fellow Squad members Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts During the debate before the vote, Foreign Affairs Chair Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, who opposed the $1 billion in funds' initial removal from an earlier bill, condemned Tlaib when it was his turn to speak during the debate. 'I cannot - cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish Democratic state of Israel an apartheid state,' Deutch said Thursday. 'I reject it.' A visibly distraught Ocasio-Cortez can be seen being comforted by Rep. Barbara Lee A wider shot shows a group of lawmakers including Rep. Debbie Dingell comforting AOC During the debate before the vote, Foreign Affairs Chair Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, who opposed the $1 billion in funds' initial removal from an earlier bill, condemned Tlaib when it was his turn to speak during the debate. 'I cannot - cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish Democratic state of Israel an apartheid state,' Deutch said Thursday. 'I reject it.' 'If you believe in human rights, if you believe in saving lives - Israeli and Palestinian lives - I say to my colleague who just besmirched our ally, then you will support this legislation,' the moderate Democrat directed at Tlaib. He was cut off for time but given an additional 30 seconds - during which his barrage against Tlaib's criticisms of Israel continued. 'When there is no place on the map for one Jewish state - that's anti-Semitism, and I reject that,' Deutch said. Rep. Rashida Tlaib urged her colleagues to vote against funding for Israel's 'apartheid regime' on Thursday, prompting a stunning rebuke from fellow Democrat Rep. Ted Deutch The end of his speech was met with applause in the chamber. A few minutes earlier Tlaib asserted that Israel committed war crimes, invoking Human Rights Watch's previous condemnation of the country's actions in the Gaza Strip. 'I will not support an effort to enable war crimes, human rights abuses and war crimes,' Tlaib told lawmakers in the House chamber. 'We cannot be talking only about Israelis' need for safety under a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system.' 'We should also be talking about Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks. We must be consistent in our commitment to human life.' She went on to lambast her colleagues for allocating taxpayer money to fund what she said Human Rights Watch called 'war crimes' like bombs launched at religious centers. 'The Israeli government is an apartheid regime - not my words, the words of Human Rights Watch,' Tlaib continued despite being told her allocated time was up. Republican Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee also attacked Tlaib over her comments. Speaking directly after the Michigan lawmaker, Fleischmann gestured broadly as he delivered a furious condemnation of her remarks. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann also reacted forcefully to Tlaib's comments, urging her fellow Democrats to condemn her Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid praised the House vote on Twitter 'They have a vocal minority in the majority party that is anti-Israel, that is anti-Semitic, and as Americans, we can never stand for that,' the GOP representative declared. 'As Americans, I beseech you, I reach out to the majority and I say condemn what we just heard on the House floor. Condemn terrorism. 'You just saw something on this floor I thought I would never see. Not only as a member of this House, but as an American - let's stand with Israel and condemn anti-Semitism.' Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid posted on Twitter celebrating the House vote. 'I am grateful for the overwhelming bipartisan support for Israel and the solid commitment to our security demonstrated today by the vote on the replenishment of the Iron Dome missile defense system,' Lapid said. It's not clear yet when the bill will get a vote in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested it wasn't a matter of if it'll pass, but when. 'Iron Dome is very important and itll get done. Thats all Im going to say,' Schumer told Defense News on Thursday before the House vote. On Twitter earlier today, Tlaib said she will not be voting for Democratic leadership's bill allocating $1 billion toward Israel, accusing the US ally of 'war crimes.' The bill was introduced by House Appropriations Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro on Wednesday after House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer first announced it Tuesday night, backed by Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Schumer and President Biden. Israel's Iron Dome is partially supported by US funds and has been operational since 2011 Funding for the Iron Dome was originally part of Democrats' continuing resolution aimed at suspending the debt ceiling and averting an October government shutdown. It was removed after progressive Democrats, including Tlaib and fellow Squad members Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts threatened to tank the crucial measure otherwise. But the morning of the vote, Tlaib attacked the measure on Twitter. 'I will not support a standalone supplemental bill of $1 billion to replenish the bombs Israel used to commit war crimes in Gaza,' she wrote. The progressive lawmaker was referring to a provision in the text of the bill adding that the funds are being used 'to address emergent requirements in support of Operation Guardian of the Walls.' It refers to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) rocket campaign in May that killed more than 200 Palestinians in the Gaza strip and destroyed apartments, health clinics and a building that contained an Associated Press office. The IDF said it was targeting Hamas. The terror group also launched thousands of rockets into Israel, killing at least 10 Israelis in what they called Sword of Jerusalem. Iron Dome missiles intercepted 90 percent of rockets fired into Israel during the bloody conflict, Israeli officials claimed. Tlaib took issue with a provision in the bill's text that promotes Israel's rocket campaign against Gaza in May, dubbed Operation Guardian of the Walls Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, announced her intention to vote against the measure on Wednesday night The text in House Democrats' bill promoting Operation Guardian of the Walls is relatively vague. It could be interpreted a number of ways, including the US leaving the door open for more strikes on Gaza. However, intercepting Hamas rockets likely depleted a significant portion of Israel's Iron Dome missile supply, so the mention could refer to the $1 billion going toward replenishing the stocks. But on Thursday during debate ahead of the bill, DeLauro said the funds could not be used for the procurement of offensive weapons. Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, first announced her intention to vote against the funds on Wednesday night. 'I plan on casting a no vote,' the Michigan lawmaker said. 'We must stop enabling Israel's human rights abuses and apartheid government.' During the conflict in May, Tlaib made an impassioned speech on the House floor, lambasting Israel's 'inhumane' tactics and accused the US government of failing to recognize 'Palestinian humanity.' Israel's Iron Dome aerial defense system is activated to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip on May 12 A Palestinian man inspects the damage following reported Israeli airstrikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on September 12 'To read the statements from President Biden and Secretary Blinken, General Austin and leaders of both parties, youd hardly know Palestinians existed at all,' Tlaib said in May. In August, she was accused of anti-Semitism when she told an audience at the Democratic Socialists of America's national convention that people 'behind the curtain' are making money off of racist and 'broken' policies. 'They do it from Gaza to Detroit. And its a way to control people, to oppress people,' she said, earning accusations of using anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish people secretly controlling the world and exploiting others for financial gain. Yesterday, her fellow Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar expressed outrage on after House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced he'd bring the standalone bill allocating $1 billion toward Israel's Iron Dome to the House floor. 'We sold $175 billion in weapons last yearmore than anyone in the worldto some of the worst human right abusers in the world,' Omar wrote on Twitter. 'Heres an idea: dont sell arms to anyone who violates human rights.' Omar issued a scathing statement after the House moved to bring $1 billion toward Israel's Iron Dome defense system to a vote Hoyer spoke on the House floor Tuesday evening, two hours after crisis talks with Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid. 'Iron Dome saved lives and property, and held Israel secure,' Hoyer told the House chamber. He said the legislation already has the support of top Democrats in government - including President Joe Biden. 'The president wants this bill passed, Mr. Schumer wants this bill passed, the speaker wants this bill passed,' Hoyer said. 'Scores of others on both sides of the aisle want to make sure that Israel is secure.' Lapid said the Maryland Democrat told him the measure was pulled on Tuesday because of a 'technical postponement' resulting from the debate in Congress over the US budget deficit. 'I thanked Majority Leader Hoyer for his commitment and emphasized to him the need to approve the request as soon as possible to ensure Israel's security needs,' Lapid wrote in Hebrew on Twitter. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer spoke with Israel's foreign minister before announcing the House would vote on a standalone bill to fund the Iron Dome Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida told DailyMail.com he would vote for the measure if it went through traditional House channels but expressed hesitance at voting for an expedited bill. 'The Congressman joins the Republican Conference and moderate Democrats in condemning the removal of these funds at the behest of anti-Israel leftists like AOC and Omar. While it doesnt make sense for the House to take up this funding in a standalone bill, Rep. Donalds will likely support a clean bill that appropriates this vital funding to our longstanding ally, Israel,' Donalds' communications director Harrison Fields told DailyMail.com. He blasted its removal from the debt ceiling bill as 'reprehensible and completely unnecessary. GOP Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi told DailyMail.com he would support the measure. Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia also told DailyMail.com he'd vote yes. Israel's Iron Dome has been operational since 2011 and is one of the most sophisticated defense systems in the world. It was created by Israeli military firms with additional support from the US. The all-weather system uses radar technology to detect incoming airborne threats and destroy them before they can cause damage. The radar then activates a control center that calculates a rocket's flight path. If it's found to be dangerous, interceptor missiles are launched to detonate the incoming weapon. Each Iron Dome 'battery' comprised of radar, control center and missiles costs roughly $100 million. Missiles fired from the Iron Dome cost between $50,000 and $80,000, according to estimates from the Jerusalem Post. Israel uses Iron Dome systems to defend on land as well as at sea, where it can be fixed to Navy ships to guard offshore property. This is the moment vets flew to the rescue of an elephant calf after it became trapped in a snare laid by poachers in Kenya. Footage shows the baby elephant unable to free its ankle from the tight loop of rope binding it to a stake in the ground in a remote area of the Tana River in the Ndera Community Conservancy. Dr Poghon and his team from the KWS/SWT Tsavo Mobile Veterinary Unit from the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust flew to the remote area by helicopter before cutting the elephant free to be reunited with its mother. The clip begins with the group of vets taking off as they track down the elephant calf, whose mother had been spotted helplessly watching from around 50 yards away. An elephant calf was rescued by vets after becoming trapped in a snare laid by poachers in the Ndera Community Conservancy, Kenya On arrival, the vets fire a dart filled with anaesthetic at the calf, to subdue the distressed animal. As the calf slumps to the ground, the vets move in to assess its injuries. They swiftly cut the rope off and spray the wound in the elephants ankle and one on its ear with blue antiseptic spray. After the team successfully free the elephant, it wakes up and happily bounds off in to a thicket of nearby trees. Amie Alden, from Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, described snares laid by poachers as an 'incredibly cruel threat to wildlife'. Speaking about the rescue mission, she added: 'Our Airwing is poised for situations like these, so the helicopter flew Dr Poghon to the scene, where the mother stood watching her baby around 50 metres away. 'It remained a very real possibility that the mother and another nearby adult elephant, would move in, so our pilot circled overhead to monitor the situation and protect the ground team. Video footage showed the vets fire a dart filled with anaesthetic (pictured) at the calf, which fell to the floor and the team rushed in to begin freeing it Dr Poghon and his team from the KWS/SWT Tsavo Mobile Veterinary Unit from the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust cut the elephant free (pictured) from the rope snare 'Once the baby succumbed to the anaesthetic, the rope snare was easily cut away and fortunately we were able to provide help to spare this baby from a tragic end. 'The team were left feeling a sense of accomplishment and were thankful to be in a position to right such wrongs.' Simple snares are usually a noose made of wire, rope or cable and suspended around an animals path. As the snared animal fights to free itself, the noose tightens, cutting into the flesh and suffocating the animal if it is around the neck, or causing a deepening wound if around a foot. Snares usually set to catch smaller animals like impala, to feed the appetite for bushmeat, but large animals like elephants and rhinos can sometimes step into them. The vets use a knife to free the elephant calf from the tight rope around its ankle, being careful not to injure the helpless animal in the process Despite fears that the mother, who was standing 50 metres away, may move in and endanger the vets from the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, they were able to free the calf (pictured) In December 2020, a quick-thinking wildlife rescue team saved an elephant's life after it was spotted with a hunter's snare attached to its leg in Zimbabwe. The elephant, known as Martha, was seen with the looped piece of wire tightly cutting into her leg as she wandered the plains with her calf. Catherine Norton, 58, a conservationist living in the country, was called to the Musango Island Safari Camp after the owner spotted Martha struggling to walk. Norton said she and her team had to immobilise the elephant, saying the creature would have surely died without intervention. And in 2017, a lion in Zimbabwe was killed after being caught in a snare that reportedly cut into the animal's stomach and tore open it's neck. Kenya has cracked down on illegal poaching as it attempts to conserve vital wildlife, a move that has seen elephant populations begin to rise again. The vets also marked the elephant calf with blue paint on its ankle and ear after freeing it. A snare trap sees a loop of wire or rope suspended from tree by poachers to trap an animal After the vets successfully free the elephant, it wakes up (pictured) and happily bounds off in to the thicket of nearby trees According to the country's first wildlife census, Kenya has a total of 36,280 elephants, a 12 per cent jump from the figures recorded in 2014, when poaching activity was at its highest. 'Efforts to increase penalties on crimes related to threatened species appear to be bearing fruits,' the report, which counted 30 species of animals and covered nearly 59 percent of Kenya's land mass, said. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned in March that poaching and habitat destruction, particularly due to land conversion for agriculture, was devastating elephant numbers across Africa. The population of African savanna elephants plunged by at least 60 percent in the last half century, prompting their reclassification as 'endangered' in the latest update to the IUCN's 'Red List' of threatened species. Catherine Norton (centre) was part of a wildlife team that helped to save an elephant at the Musango Island Safari Camp in Zimbabwe in December 2020 after it was spotted with a hunter's snare attached to its leg Across Africa, poachers kill around 100 elephants a day for their meat and tusks, with only around 400,000 wild elephants left, according to World Elephant Day. Experts have estimated that elephants could be extinct within the next decade due to illegal poaching and other factors. Kenya, like several of its African peers, is trying to strike a balance between protecting its wildlife while managing the dangers they pose when they raid human settlements in search of food and water. '(Wildlife) is our heritage, this is our children's legacy and it is important for us to be able to know what we have in order to be better informed on policy and also on actions needed as we move forward,' Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta said last month as he received the wildlife census. 'It being a national heritage, it is something we should carry with pride', he added. Queensland is likely to be shut off from the rest of Australia and the world for even longer, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk claiming millions would rather stay in their own state than travel in another explosive tirade. Ms Palaszczuk all but ruined Christmas plans for families hoping to reunite, saying she will ignore the national cabinet's plan to open borders at 80 per cent vaccination rates because it will send QLD 'backwards'. On Thursday, she said the national plan had 'not been finalised' and that she would keep borders shut to New South Wales despite soaring vaccinations. Ms Palaszczuk claimed Queenslanders didn't want to travel overseas, despite her flying to Tokyo for the Olympic Games, and that they would prefer to stay in their own state during the upcoming holiday season. 'Where are you going to go? Are you going to go to India? In Tokyo, you have to sit in Perspex screens with masks on and if you remove your mask you can't talk while you're chewing,' she said. Queensland's premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) says she will ignore the national cabinet agreement and wants to keep borders closed even after 80 per cent vaccination rates are reached Ms Palaszczuk said tourist spots such as the Gold Coast would go backwards if the state was to re-open under the national cabinet plan (pictured, the Queensland border at Coolangatta) The decision will ruin Christmas plans for thousands of Australians who were hoping to holiday in Queensland or to reunite with family (pictured, a woman on Duranbah beach near the QLD-NSW border) PALASZCZUK'S POUTY PROMISES On the national roadmap: 'If you look at the national plan, the 80 per cent actually takes us backwards. So I don't want that for Queensland.' On overseas travel: 'Where are you going to go? Are you going to go to India? In Tokyo, you have to sit in Perspex screens with masks on and if you remove your mask you can't talk while you're chewing.' On domestic travel: 'Queenslanders would probably enjoy greater freedoms travelling around Queensland than if they hopped on a plane and went to Tokyo.' On opening for Christmas: 'In NSW, you have a massive Delta outbreak, so you have to go ask the NSW government what their plan is for Christmas?' On freedoms: 'At the moment, Queenslanders have more freedoms now than Victorians will when they hit 80 per cent vaccinated.' Advertisement Ms Palaszczuk continued: 'If you look at the national plan, the 80 per cent actually takes you backwards and I do not want that for Queensland, so we're probably going to see a difference for Western Australia and Queensland because at the moment we have freedoms.' NSW recorded 1,063 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, while Victoria saw 766 new infections. The states are at 56.6 per cent and 45.9 per cent full vaccination rates respectively. The premiers from around Australia had agreed on a plan with the federal government to release residents from lockdown at 70 per cent and re-open borders at 80 per cent, but Ms Palaszczuk and WA Premier Mark McGowan have refused. Ms Palaszczuk claimed opening up despite high vax rates would hurt QLD and lashed out at the mismanagement of other states. 'At the moment, Queenslanders have more freedoms now than Victorians will when they reach 80 per cent vaccinated,' she said. 'In NSW, you have a massive Delta outbreak, so you have to go and ask the NSW government what is their plan for Christmas?' She also dismissed the idea of opening international travel at 80 per cent, questioning where people would want to go, despite her travelling to Japan in July for the Tokyo Olympics. 'Where are you going to go? Are you going to go to India?' she sarcastically asked reporters. Ms Palaszczuk also claimed Queenslanders would prefer to explore their own state than the rest of Australia and the world. 'Queenslanders would probably enjoy greater freedoms travelling around Queensland than if they hopped on a plane and went to Tokyo,' the premier added. Ms Palaszczuk claimed Queenslanders would prefer to explore their own state than travel interstate or overseas thousands holding out to cross the border (pictured, families desperately reuniting at the Tweed Heads border between Queensland and NSW) Ms Palaszczuk said Queenslanders will have greater freedoms than those in NSW and Victoria even when those states reach 80 per cent vaccination rates (pictured, people talk over barriers at the Tweeds Head border between Queensland and NSW) Indian Australians upset by Premier's 'offensive' comment Premier Palaszczuk on Thursday said she would refuse to open her state's borders even when 80 per cent of over 16s are vaccinated and slammed the Federal Government's plans to restart international travel before Christmas. 'Where are you going to go? Are you going to go to India?' she said sarcastically. India suffered a huge Covid-19 outbreak in April and May which peaked at 4,000 deaths a day and led to families cremating their loved ones in the street as morgues and hospitals overflowed. Queensland Multicultural Council President Umesh Chandra said Ms Palaszczuk's comment was out of line and offensive to the 53,100 Indians living in Queensland. 'The comment singling out one country is offensive and it did not go down well within our community,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Only a few months ago Ms Palaszczuk donated $2million to support Red Cross efforts battling the Covid surge in India in May 'You have to be careful and sensitive to our community where there are so many people who want to go to India and waiting for people from India to come here. 'Parents and children have been separated from their families for so long and when they hear a comment like that it's very upsetting.' Mr Chandra said his phone was flooded with text messages as soon as Ms Palaszczuk made the comment during a Covid press conference. 'I've had text messages and calls coming in saying ''did you hear that'',' he said. 'An apology would be in order whether that would be forthcoming is another matter.' Queensland Multicultural Council President Umesh Chandra (left) Shyam Das, President of the Federation of Indian Communities of Queensland, also said it was unfair to single out India which is recording about 30,000 Covid cases per day, a similar number to the UK and four times fewer than the US. 'Everywhere has the same problem, why are you singling out India,' he said. 'Everyone wants to travel overseas to see their family, we want the borer to open and people to travel freely. 'If people want to take their own risk and travel where's the problem? 'People want to see their loved ones, I have a family in India and I want to go there as well,' he said. Mr Das said the comment was at odds with the Queensland Government's $2million donation to support Red Cross efforts battling the Covid surge in India in May. 'Not long ago she was the one handing out money to help,' he said. In a ceremony on the steps of Parliament to unveil the donation in May, Mr Das had told the Premier: 'The Indian community really appreciates all your support.' Australia's SmartTraveller website urges residents not to travel to the country. There are fears that thousands of Covid cases are not being recorded, especially in rural areas. According to Johns Hopkins University data, India has suffered 9,683 Covid deaths in the past 28 days while the US has recorded 48,034, Brazil 15,671, the UK 3,638, and Japan 1,667. Advertisement The premier also lost her cool earlier on Thursday saying she was 'sick of being attacked'. Ms Palaszczuk repeated unverified claims that her state would be hit with a deadly Covid outbreak if it opened up when it hits the 80 per cent full vaccination rate. She then played the victim when this was put under scrutiny and after she was pressed for detail on when she would open borders to NSW and Victoria. 'Let me say this to you, if we get a Delta outbreak here, we'll all be in lockdown and no business will be operating,' Ms Palaszczuk said at at a new vaccination hub in Brisbane on Thursday. 'Do you want that? Do you want that?' 'I don't understand this constant criticism of Queensland doing well. I will always stand up for this state, I am sick of being attacked for Queensland doing a great job, and Queenslanders doing a great job.' Ms Palaszczuk also claimed Queenslanders would prefer to travel their own state than the rest of Australia and the world (pictured, Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast) 'Queenslanders would probably enjoy greater freedoms travelling around Queensland than if they hopped on a plane and went to Tokyo,' the premier added (pictured, border checks at Coolangatta) Ms Palaszczuk implied the Queensland health system would be in crisis like NSW if the border was opened. This was despite NSW's hospital dramas being caused by an outbreak three months ago when vaccination rates were low. 'There are very serious issues here, the hospitals in NSW are going to be overwhelmed next month,' the premier said. 'I don't want that for Queensland, that is why we have tough border measures in place and that is why I want people to get vaccinated, to protect our freedoms.' Ms Palaszczuk repeated her mantra that the 80 per cent threshold would be different for each state, despite her initially agreeing to the national plan. 'In Victoria, at 80 per cent, they will be allowed 30 people to visit for Christmas dinner. Here, Queenslanders can have 100 people over,' she said. 'I'm sick of constantly being attacked for doing the right thing.' Queensland recorded two new Covid-19 cases on Thursday as the sate continues avoid a major delta outbreak. One is a St Thomas More College student from the cluster at Sunnybank identified two weeks ago who is in home quarantine, the other in hotel quarantine. Ms Palaszczuk told reporters to ask the federal government about the national plan for re-opening ahead of tomorrow's national cabinet meeting. 'You don't understand it, I'm sorry,' she chided one reporter who referred to what NSW residents would be free to do once the 80 per cent target was reached. Queenslanders have been trapped in their own state during the pandemic (pictured, the QLD-NSW border) Ms Palaszczuk defended her decision to maintain strict border controls because of the current Delta outbreaks in NSW and Victoria - which forced families to meet up on Father's Day this year at the border (pictured) 'You tell me what they can do at 80 per cent? Where's their roadmap? Where's their roadmap?' Ms Palaszczuk said a lot of the attacks on her state were coming from the federal government. 'Everyone needs to take a deep breath here because what we are trying to do is keep Queenslanders safe,' she said. Queensland has vaccinated 61.53 per cent of the eligible population with one dose with 42.78 per cent now fully-jabbed. The state has the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rate in the country and not expected to reach the 80 per cent target until early December. An unidentified woman pulled a gun while waiting on line at a Chipotle in Philadelphia and demanded that employees prepare her food after she was told that the restaurant was closing due to staffing issues. The incident, which was caught on surveillance footage, took place at the popular Tex-Mex franchise at Roosevelt Mall in the Rhawnhurst section of Philadelphia just before 5pm on Saturday. Surveillance footage released by the Philadelphia Police Department shows a woman visibly impatient while she waits to order at the cashier. The woman is standing next to a man. She then places her purse on railing before reaching into it and pulling out a dark-colored handgun. The Philadelphia Police Department released video on Wednesday showing a woman brandishing a gun at a cashier while waiting to order food at a Chipotle restaurant just before 5pm on Saturday Surveillance footage released by the Philadelphia Police Department shows a woman visibly impatient while she waits to order at the cashier. The woman is standing next to a man Footage shows the woman appearing to gesture to staff with the weapon. The cashier told police that moment earlier she was instructed by her manager to close the store at 4:56pm Footage shows the woman appearing to gesture to staff with the weapon. The cashier told police that moment earlier, at 4:56 p.m., she was instructed by her manager to close the store. The restaurant usually stays open until 10 p.m. Customers who were waiting to order were asked to place their orders online as the location was suffering from staffing issues. According to the cashier, the armed woman brandished the gun and asked to speak to the manager. After the staff made the order, the woman took out the gun again and told the employees: Somebody better give me my food The incident took place at the popular Tex-Mex franchise at Roosevelt Mall in the Rhawnhurst section of Philadelphia just before 5pm on Saturday After the woman pulled out the gun, the cashier activated an emergency button which notifies mall security of an incident. The armed woman is alleged to have told the cashier that if someone doesnt make her food, she will be back and there will be a problem. A co-worker then took the armed womans order to get her to leave. While waiting for her order, the woman put the gun back in her purse. After the staff prepared her items, the woman took out the gun again and told the employees: Somebody better give me my food. The armed woman then took the food and left. Police are now asking for the publics help in identifying the woman. Anyone with information is being asked to contact investigators at 215-868-8477. A Florida woman thought she had been saved from a man sexually assaulting her by an Uber driver, only to be sexually assaulted by that driver himself. The incident took place on September 10, when a man -- 30-year-old Jorge Calderon Nunez -- starts assaulting the victim, authorities said. She was 'rescued' from the attack by Kerry Calvin Gasag, 37, who broke up the incident and drove her away. A Florida woman thought she had been saved by Kerry Calvin Gasag (pictured left) from a sexual assault by Jorge Calderon Nunez (right), only to be sexually assaulted by Gasag shortly after Gasag then took the victim to Southernmost Point, a Key West landmark where tourists pose for photos by the Atlantic Ocean. He dragged her out of his SUV and assaulted her behind the landmark, authorities said. Police cite a tourist webcam that shows the victim 'clearly trying' to get away from Gasag, who later told authorities everything was consensual. A Boston dispatcher watching the webcam tipped police off to the incident, believing he was watching 'a rape in progress.' Gasag took the victim to Southernmost Point, a Key West landmark where tourists pose for photos by the Atlantic Ocean Gasag was arrested September 11 and charged with sexual assault, false imprisonment and destroying evidence. Authorities said he admitted to returning to Southernmost Point to take the woman's jean shorts and get rid of them on his way home. According to a police report, he also allegedly told investigators she did not scream for help or fight back against his attack 'like someone being raped does.' Nunez was arrested September 17 and charged with sexual assault, as well as a burglary charge from a prior incident. Both Nunez and Gasag are still in a county jail in Florida as they await trial. Advertisement Residents of the Texas border town that has become ground zero for President Joe Biden's latest migrant crisis are expressing their fury over the situation, likening the scenes of human misery to that of a war zone. The migrant camp under the International Bridge in Del Rio that at one point held as many as 15,000 Haitian migrants has shrunk to some 5,000, with many being released into the US. Freddy Castro, a welder in Del Rio, told the Washington Examiner that the situation at the bridge was 'total chaos,' adding that the Biden administration has managed it 'very poorly.' Kristen Williams, a resident of 31 years who lives in the county, told the newspaper that she's 'never seen it like this'. 'They need to go back to where they came from,' Williams said. 'We don't have the resources in this town. We don't have the resources in the United States.' Thousands of Haitian migrants in Del Rio are being released in the United States, according to two U.S. officials, undercutting the Biden administration's public statements that those in the camp faced immediate expulsion to Haiti. In Del Rio on Thursday, long lines of migrants were seen waiting to board buses to Houston after being released from immigration custody. They were snapped hours before the Department of Homeland Security announced a temporary suspension of horseback patrols by border agents, in the wake of snaps that sparked accusations agents were using horse whips on migrants. Those claims have been denied. The United States has returned 1,401 migrants from the camp to Haiti and taken another 3,206 people into custody, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said late on Wednesday, but unknown thousands have been released into the US. The Del Rio camp now holds fewer than 5,000 people, DHS said. It held a total of around 14,600 people at its peak. Meanwhile the Biden administration's special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the 'inhumane' large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants, U.S. officials said Thursday. The Haitian migrant camp is seen on Thursday morning. At one point holding as many as 15,000, the camp has shrunk to under 5,000 as thousands of migrants are released into the US interior Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in lines waiting to board busses at an encampment in Del Rio on Thursday A bus, top center, leaves an area near a migrant encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge as another bus, bottom right, arrives on Thursday. A steady stream of buses have been arriving to take the migrants for processing Haitians have been freed on a 'very, very large scale' in recent days, one official said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, put the figure in the thousands. Many have been released with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, an outcome that requires less processing time from Border Patrol agents than ordering an appearance in immigration court and points to the speed at which authorities are moving. Mackenson Veillard and his pregnant wife camped with thousands for a week under the bridge, sleeping on concrete and getting by on bread and bottled water, but were released by immigration officials. Three hours later, they were waiting for a Greyhound bus to take them to a cousin in San Antonio. 'I felt so stressed,' Veillard, 25, said the past week. 'But now, I feel better. It's like I'm starting a new life.' The releases come despite the Biden administration's vow to undertake a massive effort to expel Haitians on flights under pandemic-related authority that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum. A third U.S. official not authorized to discuss operations said there were seven daily flights to Haiti planned starting Wednesday. Ten flights arrived in Haiti from Sunday to Tuesday in planes designed for 135 passengers, according to Haitian officials, who didnt provide a complete count but said six of those flights carried 713 migrants combined. Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. disembark a Border Patrol bus at Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition after being released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Thursday in Del Rio Migrants who were released from CBP custody board a bus to Houston from Del Rio on Thursday Haitian migrants wait to board a bus to Houston at the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition after being released Thursday Haitians, pictured in Del Rio Thursday, have been freed on a 'very, very large scale' in recent days, one official said The releases come despite Biden's vow to expel Haitians on flights under pandemic-related authority that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum A volunteer hands out baby diapers as migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. line up to board a bus to Houston from Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition after being released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Del Rio on Thursday Migrants board a bus to Houston after their release on Thursday. U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released in the U.S. in recent days. U.S. authorities have declined to say how many have been released in the U.S. in recent days. Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, warned that the U.S. expulsions to Haiti might violate international law. On the other side of the river, several hundred more Haitians are living in Ciudad Acuna in a makeshift camp dotted with blankets, pieces of cardboard and a handful of tarps and tents. In Mexico, migrants who had camped in a park beside the river in Ciudad Acuna found state police trucks spaced every 30 feet or so between their tents and the waters edge at dawn on Thursday. Still, after anxious minutes of indecision, dozens of families opted to hustle into the river and cross at a point where there was only one municipal police vehicle, calculating it was better to take their chances with U.S. authorities. The entrance to the park was blocked and just outside, National Guard troops and immigration agents waited along with three buses. A helicopter flew overhead. The camps usual early morning hum was silenced as migrants tried to decide what to do. Guileme Paterson, a 36-year-old from Haiti, appeared dazed. 'It is a difficult moment,' she said before beginning to cross the Rio Grande with her husband and their four children. Mexican police stand guard near the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday on the border with Del Rio Migrants trying to reach the U.S., many from Haiti, camp out in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday A girl with Barbie dolls stuffed in her boots waits with others to cross the Rio Grande river with their parents as they stand on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday In Mexico, migrants who had camped in a park beside the river in Ciudad Acuna found state police trucks spaced every 30 feet or so between their tents and the waters edge at dawn on Thursday Mexican police and National Guard stand near a parked bus near the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico Thursday Texas Department of Safety and National Guard vehicles shine their lights on the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas before dawn, as seen from Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on Wednesday On the U.S. side, the government had been accelerating its efforts to clear the camp in recent days, releasing many migrants with notices to appear later before immigration authorities and flying hundreds of Haitians back to their country. Timeline of a border crisis that caught Biden by surprise May 22 2021: Department of Homeland Security announces Haitians in US will be granted Temporary Protection Status (TPS), meaning they can't be deported and can apply for documentation that allows them to work July 7: Haitian President Jovenel Moise is assassinated at his presidential palace in Port-au-Prince August 14: Haiti is hit by magnitude 7.2 earthquake, killing at least 2,000 September 17: An estimated 12,000 migrants suddenly arrive in Del Rio, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico. Many had been granted refugee status in Brazil and Chile after an earlier quake in 2010 September 18: Biden administration announces it will swiftly deport Haitians who cross into the US from Mexico September 19: The number of migrants in Del Rio swells to an estimated 14,600. Deportation flights to Haiti begin, with 327 people flown out of the US September 20: Border Patrol officials continue bussing Haitians away from Del Rio, with a further 233 deported. Photos of migrants being confronted by agents on horseback cracking their reigns emerge September 21: Another 523 people are deported via plane, with the number of Haitians remaining in Del Rio estimated at 8,600. Texas Governor Greg Abbott arranges for hundreds of state vehicles to form a makeshift border wall in Del Rio September 22: Unnamed sources tell AP thousands of Haitians apprehended in Del Rio have been released into the US rather than deported. Seven flights have been scheduled to continue the deportation effort. September 23: A total of 1,401 migrants have now been deported back to Haiti, with the Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspending the use of horseback patrols along the Rio Grande. Advertisement DHS has been busing Haitians from Del Rio, a town of 35,000 people, to El Paso, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border, and this week added flights to Tucson, Arizona, the official said. The migrants are processed by the Border Patrol at those locations. Criteria for deciding who is flown to Haiti and who is released in the U.S. are a mystery, but two officials said single adults were a priority. If previous handling of asylum-seekers is any guide, the administration is more likely to release those deemed vulnerable, including pregnant women, families with young children and those with medical issues. The Biden administration exempts unaccompanied children from expulsion flights on humanitarian grounds. The system is a 'black box,' said Wade McMullen, an attorney with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, who was in Del Rio. 'Right now, we have no official access to understand what processes are underway, what protections are being provided for the migrants.' On Wednesday, more than 300 migrants had been dropped off in Border Patrol vans by early afternoon at a welcome center staffed by the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition. They waited for buses to Houston, a springboard to final destinations in the U.S. Many were required to wear ankle monitors, used to ensure they obey instructions to report to immigration authorities. 'Hello. How are you?' volunteer Lupita De La Paz greeted them in Spanish. 'We will help you. You have arrived in Del Rio, Texas. It's a small town. There are not many options. We will help you get to another place.' Rabbiatu Yunusah, 34, waited with her 3-year-old daughter Laila, was headed to settle with an uncle in Huntsville, Alabama. She felt 'very happy to be in this country, to be free.' Jimy Fenelon, 25, and his partner, Elyrose Prophete, who is eight months pregnant, left the camp Tuesday and were headed to Florida to stay with an uncle. 'Everyone has their luck. Some didnt have luck to get here.' Fenelon said. Accounts of wide-scale releases - some observed in Del Rio by Associated Press journalists -- are at odds with statements Monday by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who traveled to Del Rio to promise swift action. 'If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your familys life,' he said at a news conference. Homeland Security, asked to comment on releases in the United States, said Wednesday that migrants who are not immediately expelled to Haiti may be detained or released with a notice to appear in immigration court or report to an immigration office, depending on available custody space. 'The Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey,' the department said in a statement. 'Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion.' Meanwhile, Mexico has begun busing and flying Haitian migrants away from the U.S. border, signaling a new level of support for the United States as the camp presented President Joe Biden with a humanitarian and increasingly political challenge. The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation. Republicans say Biden administration policies led Haitians to believe they would get asylum. Democrats are expressing outrage after images went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants. This overhead photo shows some of the hundreds of Texas state SUVs used to form a de-facto steel barrier along the United States-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas They are lined up outside Del Rio in Texas, which has seen an influx of 14,600 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US. An estimated 8,600 remained in the town of 35,000 people as of Tuesday night, with 1,083 so far deported back to Haiti A photo taken Wednesday shows a ramshackle encampment under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, as migrants are shepherded away to be processed The makeshift border camp at one point swelled to more than 14,000 migrants, with this photo emphasizing just how large the encampment has become Migrants who remained at the border bridge in Del Rio are seen in a waiting pen on Wednesday before being loaded onto buses Immigrants have described a screening process at the camp where people were given colored tickets for four categories: single men; single women; pregnant women; and families with young children, McMullen said. The vast majority of immigrants he and other advocates have interviewed and who have been released into the U.S. have been families with young children and pregnant women. Wilgens Jean and his wife, Junia Michel, waited in Del Rio this week for relatives to send the $439 in bus fare to get to Springfield, Ohio, where Jeans brother lives. Michel, who is pregnant, huddled under the little shade the parking lot had to offer from the brutal heat. Her only request was for sunscreen that she softly rubbed on her pregnant belly. On the concrete in front of them lay two backpacks and a black garbage bag which held everything the couple owns. The pair left in Haiti in April and were in the Del Rio camp for five days. Jean said because his wife is expecting, they were released from the camp on Monday. 'I entered by crossing the river,' Jean said. 'Immigration gave me a ticket.' After an initial stay with family in San Antonio, Veillard eventually hopes to get to New York City to live with his sister. He will take any job he can find to support his growing family. Veillard and his wife left Haiti four years ago and had been living in Brazil until they began their journey to the United States in June, much of it on foot. 'I dont know how Im going to feel tomorrow but now I feel lucky,' he said. Two US officials with knowledge of the situation in Del Rio said thousands of migrants have been released into the US with notices to appear at an immigration court in 60 days' time Del Rio in Texas, which has seen an influx of 14,600 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US. An estimated 8,600 remained in the town of 35,000 people as of Tuesday night, with 1,083 so far deported back to Haiti. Thousands more have been released into the US As the U.S. authorities have escalated expulsion flights, some Haitian families have decided to stay in Mexico and seek legal status there rather than risk being returned to Haiti. Enex and Wendy were among those who planned to stay in Mexico with their 2-year-old daughter after hearing about the expulsions. But on Wednesday morning, a cousin told them on WhatsApp that he had succeeded in entering the United States with his wife and had a court date to request asylum in October. 'I'm free... I'm in Texas,' the message read. Enex and Wendy, who asked not to disclose their last name, spent hours on Wednesday paralyzed by uncertainty before finally gathering up their few belongings and forging the river to the U.S. side to try their luck, the latest turning point in their odyssey from Chile that included a seven-day stretch through the dangerous Darien jungle. Thousands more Haitians, some of whom had been waiting for months for responses on their asylum applications in southern Mexico, traveled north to Mexico City, Veracruz, and Monterrey this week. Mexico's refugee agency, COMAR, said that because of high demand there are no appointments available in its office in Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, until next year and that many pending appointments had been rescheduled. Juliana Exime, a Haitian migrant, decided to stay and wait out the process in Tapachula, despite the delays. 'I was going to go with a big group heading north, but I'm very scared they are going to deport me,' Exime said. 'The only thing I want is that they let me work in Mexico, I want to do things legally.' EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of Haitian migrants who flocked to Del Rio were already working and living comfortably as refugees in CHILE and only set off for the US after Biden scrapped Trump-era deportation policy By Ruth Styles In San Antonio, Texas, For Dailymail.Com and Martin Gould For Dailymail.com The secret behind the Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio, Texas is that they didn't migrate from Haiti at all but from Chile, where they had been granted asylum and were working and living comfortably as refugees. The dozens of Chilean identity cards that litter the ground in Ciudad Acuna, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, all bear distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. But they haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These have mainly come from Santiago, the glittering capital of relatively prosperous Chile. Many had jobs there. 'As one put it to me, "I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti," migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' These are the discarded ID cards of the Haitian migrants who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousand after leaving Chile, where they were living as refugees Tens of thousands of Haitian migrants flocked to Del Rio, Texas because they heard the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel lets them cross the Rio Grande for free DailyMail.com has learned that the majority of Haitians in Del Rio have actually come from Chile or Brazil, where they have been living as refugees for years, and only set off for the US after Biden opened the borders. The migrants were stopped in Tapachula, Mexico after the Biden administration pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north, but were suddenly released on September 12. They headed to Ciudad Acuna, where they crossed the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas The majority of the Haitian migrants have come from Chile - the wealthiest country in Latin America - and Brazil - the fifth wealthiest - where they have been living in modest comfort in Santiago and Sao Paulo for the past five or six years. There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. Migrants wait on the Rio Grande to cross to the United States, in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on September 18 Thousands of Haitian migrants are seen in the makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday awaiting processing The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. As a result, 15,000 Haitian migrants were encamped under the Del Rio International Bridge by last weekend - overwhelming the tiny Texas city of just 35,000 people Migrants, many of them Haitian, cross the Rio Grande river back and forth from the United States and Mexico, to camp after a lack of supplies are given to them in the USA in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, 21 September 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. President Joe Biden suspended Trump's border program on his first day of office and the Homeland Security Department ended it in June, drawing an influx of migrants to the border over the past few months Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence 'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. Footage emerged Monday of scores of mostly Haitian migrants returning to the Mexico side of the Rio Grande River crossing as DHS accelerates deportations Migrants are guided by Border Patrol agents as they prepare to board a bus from the migrant camp in Del Rio to be taken to other parts of the US for processing A bus to transport migrants to other parts of the US for processing is seen by the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday night 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' Advertisement Keir's 10 principles We will always put hard-working families and their priorities first. If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be rewarded fairly. People and businesses are expected to contribute to society, as well as receive. Your chances in life should not be defined by the circumstances of your birth hard work and how you contribute should matter. Families, communities and the things that bring us together must once again be put above individualism. The economy should work for citizens and communities. It is not good enough to just surrender to market forces. The role of government is to be a partner to private enterprise, not stifle it. The government should treat taxpayer money as if it were its own. The current levels of waste are unacceptable. The government must play its role in restoring honesty, decency and transparency in public life. We are proudly patriotic but we reject the divisiveness of nationalism Advertisement Keir Starmer laid out his plans for Labour's future today - in an astonishing 12,000-word essay. The 35-page opus sets out plans for the party to be patriotic and a 'partner to private enterprise' in what appears to be an attempt to draw a line under the party's leftward spiral under Jeremy Corbyn. He attacks infighting that has dogged the opposition in the past and demanded it be more future-focused - while learning from the reforming Governments of Clement Attlee in 1945 and Tony Blair in 1997. The document is largely a musing on the state of the party and the nation, split between the past, the present and the future. But it also sets out 10 principles which he claims would form the basis of a new contract between Labour and the British people. But his decision to spend some not inconsiderable time on the document for the Fabian Society when he could have been publicly taking on Boris Johnson, has been met with criticism from within Labour. One party figure from the moderate wing told MailOnline the 35-page pamphlet - which was earlier described as being 14,000 words long but is in fact weighs in at 11,930 in terms of words by Sir Keir himself - was a 'waste of time' and normal people would not engage with the content. 'If ordinary voters suspected he was a weirdo before, now they know he is,' they said, adding gloomily: 'He'd be gone if he was leading the Tories, but there's no-one else.' Former Cabinet minister Lord Adonis said: 'When you haven't got anything new to say, it's best not to say it in 14,000 words.' However Oliver Dowden, Conservative Party co-chairman, said: 'If this is Starmer's 'big vision' then he should have gone to Specsavers. 'Labour are talking to themselves about themselves. They're all essays and no action.' Here we set out the key points of the document: He attacks infighting that has dogged the opposition in the past and demanded it be more future-focused - while learning from the reforming Governments of Clement Attlee in 1945 and Tony Blair in 1997. The 35-page opus sets out plans for the party to be patriotic and a 'partner to private enterprise' in what appears to be an attempt to draw a line under the party's leftward spiral under Jeremy Corbyn. Ten steps to power? Cutting ties with the broad nationalisation policies that belittled ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's previous election bids, Sir Keir explained he wants his party to 'once again be Britain's bricks and mortar'. Sir Keir said Labour cannot 'wait around for the public to decide we are right' and must instead grasp the opportunities the current political atmosphere provides. The paper ends with a series of 10 principles which steer the party very much towards the centre ground. At its heart is what he has dubbed a 'contribution society', where everyone has a part to play. Most eye-catching perhaps is the claim 'The role of government is to be a partner to private enterprise, not stifle it'. Under Jeremy Corbyn Labour ran on an election manifesto in 2019 that pledged to 'bring rail, mail, water and energy' and 'the broadband-relevant parts of BT' into public ownership. Facing claims about a lack of patriotism under the previous regime, the pledges also include 'We are proudly patriotic but we reject the divisiveness of nationalism'. Elsewhere he writes: 'Nationalists like to portray themselves as patriots. But patriotism and nationalism are not the same. In fact, they are opposites. 'Nationalism represents an attempt to divide people from one another; patriotism is an attempt to unite people of different backgrounds. 'Nationalism is about the casting out of the other; patriotism is about finding common ground. Nationalism is the flag as a threat. Patriotism is the flag as a celebration.' But Sir Keir is already repeatedly on the record on this issue, identifying it as a way to regain lost working class Red Wall voters put off by Corbyn. In February he insisted he was 'very comfortable' with displaying his patriotism, saying: 'Yes, I'm patriotic ... I want to be prime minister of this country because I want this country to be even better than it is now. 'Actually, the whole Labour movement is very patriotic, we are in politics to change our country for the better, you can't be more patriotic than that, and I'm very, very comfortable with it.' Learn from the past but don't be consumed by it Sir Keir cites the two most high profile Labour Governments as inspirations - the 1945 administration of Clement Attlee and the 1997 Government of Tony Blair Sir Keir cites the two most high profile Labour Governments as inspirations. The 1945 administration of Clement Attlee is a gimme, referenced by all sides of Labour. But he also cited the 1997 Government of Tony Blair - almost a swear word for the party's left. 'Out of the rubble of the Second World War and the economic depression of the 1930s, the Attlee government rebuilt Britain, with millions of homes for the heroes of the conflict and the creation of the NHS,' he wrote. 'Perhaps its greatest achievement was that the Tory governments that followed had no choice but to try and build upon this legacy rather than dismantle it. 'The Blair and Brown governments were similarly ambitious for Britain: from introducing the minimum wage and reducing child and pensioner poverty, to the hospitals and schools that were built and the nurses and teachers that were trained.' However he cautioned against becoming 'the party of sepia-tinged nostalgia', adding: 'We must take inspiration from 1945 but that cannot mean dwelling on the past. 'When we win, it is not because the country has come around to our way of thinking but because we have seized the future and moulded it. The arc of history will not bend towards us unless we force it to.' Love-bombing business In a thinly veiled jib at Corbynism and its calls for nationalisation, Mr Starmer lashes out at 20th century 'command economies' with everything under state control. 'Building that better country is not going to happen with the erratic approach to the economy of the Conservatives. But nor will it be created by a throwback to the planned economies of the 20th century. 'The first task in remaking the nation will be resetting the relationship between the government and business to create an economy that works. That will require a new, commonsense, practical approach: one in which we dont treat the economy as a battle for supremacy between public sector and private sector, but a joint effort. 'We need to drive innovation and change and drive up standards for employers and employees. 'The state must become an investor and a leader. British businesses large and small must know the government has their back. 'Workers must see their pay, skills and conditions improve. Business is a force for good in society, providing jobs, prosperity and wealth.' Fight the Tories, not ourselves Sir Keir admits: 'The Conservatives are not an easy opponent to pin down - and even less so when Labour has tied its own arms behind its back.' He added: 'We cannot go back into our comfort zones. We must embrace this new world and deal head on with the fundamental question of how Labour would remake Britain for the 2030s and beyond. ' But his comments come at a time where Labour is again gripped in an internal civil war over potential changes Sir Keir wants to make to leadership rules. Sir Keir has enraged left-wingers and unions by pushing to scrap the current 'one member, one vote' system for electing leaders. Instead he wants to return to a version of the old arrangements, where trade unions, MPs and party members each get a third of the voting power. Critics complain that probably would have meant Jeremy Corbyn losing in 2015. Shadow communities secretary Steve Reed suggested in interviews this morning that the proposals will be put to conference, which starts this weekend, despite the opposition. But Sir Keir suffered another blow when London mayor Sadiq Khan dodged saying if he supported the changes, swiping that 'internal party rules isn't at the fore of my mind'. More than 200 dogs have been rescued from an illegal puppy farm as rogue breeders were getting pets ready to cash in on the Christmas demand. Cockerpoos, Labradors and Cocker Spaniels were among animals found with infected bites and matted fur infested with maggots when officers went inside. Rescuers believe the puppy farmer was 'gearing up for the Christmas puppy market' with a string of popular breeds to sell. The raid in Carmarthenshire, Wales, comes after a seven-month investigation by Trading Standards Wales and National Trading Standards. More than 200 dogs have been rescued from an illegal puppy farm as rogue breeders were getting pets ready to cash in on the Christmas demand Charity Hope Rescue helped move the animals to safety and are now caring for 47 dogs found in the most 'appalling conditions' One Cocker Spaniel, named Smarties, needed immediate treatment for 'severely infected bite wounds and a serious ear infection'. Vanessa Waddon, Hope Rescue founder, said 'The rescue centre was already near capacity before this intake due to the predicted rise in abandoned dogs following the lifting of lockdown restrictions.' Cockerpoos, Labradors and Cocker Spaniels were among animals found with infected bites and matted fur infested with maggots when officers went inside Ms Waddon said the charity has an 'incredible network of foster homes' who will help to rehabilitate the puppies. She added: 'The sad reality is that this puppy farmer was no doubt gearing up for the Christmas puppy market.' Other breeds at the farm included Bichon Frises, Shih Tzus and Cavaliers. Officers say they rescued 15 dogs with injury or serious suffering due to the conditions. Breeding bitches, stud dogs and newly-born puppies were signed over by the alleged illegal puppy farmer and investigations are now ongoing. Rescuers believe the puppy farmer was 'gearing up for the Christmas puppy market' with a string of popular breeds to sell Clive Jones, National Trading Standards Regional Investigation Team (Wales), said: 'In recent years the industry has been infiltrated by unscrupulous individuals, often involved in other criminal activities, who sell puppies obtained from illegal puppy farms. 'The pandemic has increased demand and subsequently the profits and sharp practices of criminals.' The rescued dogs have also been taken in by Dogs Trust, RSPCA, and West Wales Poundies before they will be rehomed. The investigation was supported by Dyfed Powys Police. Pet owners are now being urged to find legitimate breeders or adopt from a refuge. A man who murdered a wealthy Omani student near London department store Harrods has been sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison. Mohammed Al-Araimi, 20, the son of property magnate Sheikh Abdullah Al-Araimi, was fatally stabbed in an alleyway after going for dinner with his university friend Nasser Kanoo, now 22. Badir Al-Nazi, 24, and Arseboon Dilbaro, 23, targeted the King's College students on December 5 2019 in what police suspected was an attempted robbery. Mr Al-Araimi was wearing a 37,000 Patek Philippe watch, while Mr Kanoo had an 8,000 Rolex, as they were attacked following a dinner at Sale E Pepe after meeting outside the Bulgari Hotel close to Mr Al-Araimi's family home. The friends were less than 10m down an alleyway when they were attacked from behind by the pair who had been laying in wait. Al-Nazi claimed that, minutes before the incident, he had asked the friends for a cigarette but that Mr Al-Amairi had denied his request and insulted him. But this account was not supported by any evidence, the court heard. Mohammed Al-Araimi (pictured), 20, the son of property magnate Sheikh Abdullah Al-Araimi, was fatally stabbed in an alleyway after going for dinner with his university friend Nasser Kanoo, now 22 Badir Al-Nazi (left), 24, and Arseboon Dilbaro (right), 23, targeted the King's College students on December 5 2019 in what police suspected was an attempted robbery Mr Al-Araimi was stabbed in the chest. He collapsed beside the Harrods Christmas tree and was pronounced dead at the scene. Mr Kanoo was stabbed in the hip and recovered from his injury. Kuwaiti citizen Al-Nazi previously admitted manslaughter and having a knife but denied murder, claiming he did not mean to stab Mr Al-Araimi, while German national Dilbaro blamed the stabbings on his co-defendant. Both men were acquitted of attempted robbery, but a jury at Inner London Crown Court found Al-Nazi guilty of murder and wounding Mr Kanoo with intent to do him grievous bodily harm. Dilbaro was acquitted of murder, manslaughter and having a knife but found guilty of wounding Mr Kanoo by assisting Al-Nazi when he blocked the victim's escape, the court heard. 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 Badir Rahim Alnazi, 24 (left), and Arseboon Dilbaro, 23, were sentenced today for the attack on Mr Al-Araimi At the same court on Thursday, Al-Nazi was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 27 years for murder, as well as an eight-year sentence for wounding with intent and six months for possession of a bladed article to be served concurrently. Dilbaro was sentenced to 33 months in prison for wounding. Addressing Al-Nazi, Judge Usha Karu said: 'There is no doubt that you knew full well what you were doing when you used a knife that evening to murder Mr Al-Araimi and wound Mr Kanoo. 'In the space of eight seconds a life was lost.' In a statement read to the court, Mr Al-Araimi's brother, Raid, described his sibling as someone who 'spread joy and kindness to anyone who crossed his path' and condemned his killing as a 'cowardly attack'. He said: 'Mohammed was murdered in such a monstrous manner which has inflicted such pain on us which cannot be described.' The court also heard a statement from Mr Kanoo, who said: 'Never did I imagine that a casual dinner would evolve into the last time I would see my best friend Mohammed or the last time I could call him by his name. 'I can only hope the offenders realise that action, which lasted a mere eight seconds, has had a grave, detrimental impact on the lives of our loved ones. 'No matter what the motive was, there is no convincing enough reason to take an innocent life away and traumatise another.' A two-year-old Texas boy has died after police say he accidentally shot himself in the head with a relative's gun that he found at home. The Waco Police Department stated in a Facebook post that the incident took place just after 6pm on Wednesday at the University Club Apartments in the 1700 block of North Martin Luther King Boulevard in Waco. Officers were summoned to the scene in reference to a possible shooting and discovered a toddler suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. Police in Waco, Texas, on Wednesday responded to the University Club Apartments, where they found a 2-year-old boy suffering from a fetal gunshot wound to the head The boy was rushed to Baylor Scott and White Medical Center-Hillcrest Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Meanwhile, investigators learned that the child had found the loaded gun used in the shooting inside a family member's backpack. 'At this time it is believed that the victim may have accidentally shot himself with the firearm after finding it,' the police department's post stated. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the 21-year-old owner of the gun took the weapon and fled the scene, but later returned and was taken into custody. The suspect was booked into the McLennan County Jail on a charge of tampering with physical evidence, a felony. While police have not released the name of the suspect, the jail's online list of inmates includes only one person who was arrested on an evidence tampering charge on Wednesday: Derrick Damon Pipkins. DailyMail.com on Thursday reached out to the Waco Police Department seeking comment on the arrest and was awaiting a reply. A 12-year-old Dutch boy has won a court battle against his anti-vaxxer father who refused to give him permission to get a Covid-19 jab so he could visit his dying grandmother. In one of the first cases of its kind in the Netherlands, a court ruled that the unnamed boy in the northern city of Groningen had the right to get the vaccine after he argued that getting the jab would reduce his chances of passing on an infection to her. Children aged 12 to 17 in the Netherlands can choose to be vaccinated but need permission from both parents. In this case, the boy's parents are divorced and his mother agreed. Judge Bart Tromp of Groningen District Court granted permission for the boy to be vaccinated due to the 'interests involved in vaccination, in particular the interest of this minor'. He ordered that the boy be given the shot 'shortly' because his interests were more important than any possible appeal by the father's lawyers. In one of the first cases of its kind in the Netherlands, a court ruled that a 12-year-old boy in the northern city of Groningen had the right to get the vaccine after he argued that getting the jab would reduce his chances of passing on an infection to her. Pictured: Groningen District Court The judge made the ruling on Tuesday but it was not released until Thursday. Court papers said the boy's father, who does not believe in vaccines or testing for coronavirus, refused to allow him to get a jab. 'The boy wanted to be vaccinated because he did not want to get infected and wanted to limit the chance of infecting others,' court papers said. 'On top of this, his grandmother is suffering from metastatic lung cancer and is in the final stages of her life.' 'The minor wants to spend as much time as possible with her, but he is not vaccinated. He is afraid that he may infect his granny and is convinced that if he did it would be life-threatening,' the papers said. The boy 'found it difficult to talk to his father and felt his pleas were not being heard.' His father argued that vaccines 'were still in a test phase' and said it was possible there would be 'great risks for the reproductive organs in the long term'. But the judge said there appeared to be no scientific basis for such concerns. Dutch law says judges can make decisions in the best interests of children if their parents cannot agree. Vaccine scepticism is a growing issue in the Netherlands, with the leader of one far-right party espousing anti-vaccine views in parliament. Protests are expected this weekend when the government introduces a Covid pass to enter restaurants and bars. The father of three young girls who were killed last week in New Zealand told a candlelit vigil he has 'forgiven' his wife who is accused of their murder. Orthopaedic surgeon Graham Dickason said that his wife Lauren was also a victim of the tragedy and urged others to forgive and pray for her at a vigil attended by dozens of families in Timaru on Thursday night. 'Pray for strength and for healing, please also pray for my lovely Lauren, as I honestly believe that she is a victim of this tragedy as well. People who know her well will testify to that, I have no doubt,' Mr Dickason said in a letter read out by the Reverend Alan Cummins. 'I have already forgiven her and I urge you, at your own time, to do the same,' he added of his wife of 15 years. Lauren, 40, has been charged with murdering her twin two-year-old girls Maya and Karla, and their six-year-old sister Liane, in a crime that has shocked New Zealand. She is being kept at a psychiatric facility ahead of her next scheduled court appearance on October 5. The Dickason family moved into housing for medical professionals near the Timaru Hospital in New Zealand less than a week before the killings. Before that, as new arrivals from South Africa, they were required to spend two weeks in a coronavirus quarantine hotel run by the military. Neighbours speculated stress after being quarantined 'for so long' could have left Lauren Dickason unable to cope. The children's father Graham Dickason, who is an orthopaedic surgeon, had returned to their Timaru home at around 10pm last Thursday where he discovered the children's bodies. Pictured: Graham and Lauren Twin sisters Maya and Karla Dickason and their older sibling Liane Children hold candles at the vigil outside the Dickasons home in Timaru, Canterbury, New Zealand on Thursday evening Little children hold candles outside the family's home as a vigil was organised by the local community Mr Dickason returned home just before 10pm last Thursday and found the bodies of their daughters, according to reports. Emergency services said that when they responded, they found Lauren Dickason, who was hospitalised in stable condition and later charged by police. Neighbours called police when they heard a man screaming and crying. A judge has suppressed the details of the alleged crime. At the vigil, Mr Dickason said in his letter that parents of young children should remember to let them play wildly and to laugh. He wrote: 'Dear people of Timaru, my words are few at the moment. On Thursday the 16th of September 2021, my life and Lauren's was turned upside down when our three precious angels were ripped away from us. 'It is a loss that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.' Dozens of neighbours turned out last night, including young children who held candles and laid flowers outside the home. Flowers and a cross were also laid by the Dickasons former neighbours outside the estate where they used to live in Pretaoria, South Africa. Mr Dickason thanked 'the people of Timaru, New Zealanders, South Africans and many from all over the world' for the love which they had shown to him. 'My faith in humanity has been restored, I thank you all. In this time of terrible tragedy and adversity, I can only ask for prayer for myself, my family and my friends,' he said in the letter. 'For the people touched and affected by this, look after yourselves, look after your wives, your husbands, your partners, look after your children. 'For those with faith in Jesus Christ, hold on to that. For the parents with young kids, remember them, remember to let them run free, remember to let them play wild, allow them to laugh as much as they can and they are never too young to be introduced to Jesus. I thank you for your love and support.' Churchgoing doctor Lauren Dickason, who struggled for years to get pregnant, appeared in court at the weekend charged with murdering her three young daughters. Above: Dickason with husband Graham, two-year-old twins Karla and Maya and their older sister Liane, six Many details were suppressed under New Zealand law and no cause of death for any of the three girls has emerged. Above: the couple's three girls Christine Wright, who said she had been a patient of Mr Dickason's, was one of those to bring flowers. She said she and her husband had seen news of the killings in South Africa, where it has gained media attention. 'We couldn't believe it at first. I mean, it was just such a shock to us,' she said. We had to read it twice to actually realise that it was our doctor.' Ms Wright's husband, Allan, said Mr Dickason's wife had assisted in some surgeries 'and she seemed like a very nice person.' Nothing on Lauren Dickason's social media pages over recent months when she was living in Pretoria indicated anything was amiss. She posted pictures of her family and of bakery treats, and wrote about the virus, urging people to get vaccinated. In May, she marked the couples wedding anniversary on Facebook. Residents hold a candle light vigil outside the home in Timaru, New Zealand Young children hold candles outside the home in Timaru In South Africa, the girls' grandmother said the family was struggling to comprehend what had happened. Pictured: The twins, Maya and Karla and sister, Liane 'Happy 15th wedding anniversary Graham Dickason. What an adventure. We have truly created a beautiful family and had many good times together,' she wrote. 'May the next years be more blessed, more happy and may the kids let us sleep.' Her Facebook page says she went to high school in Pretoria and studied medicine in Cape Town. On Saturday, church-going Lauren Dickason stood silently while appearing in the dock at Timaru District Court after being accused of murder. She looked drawn and distressed as she entered no plea and was remanded to a secure mental health unit until her next appearance, at Timaru High Court on October 5. Gifts are placed outside the home in Timaru, New Zealand Christine Wright leaves flowers outside the complex where the Dickason family lived prior to their emigration to New Zealand, in Pretoria, South Africa Mandy Sibanyoni, nanny of the three daughters of Graham and Lauren Dickason, holds photographs of the Dickason family in her Pretoria, South Africa home. 'I'm torn apart, a part of mine is gone,' Sibanyoni said in an interview last week. 'And it's like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them.' Mandy Sibanyoni, who worked as a childminder for the Dickasons in South Africa, described them as an 'awesome family' with 'wonderful kids' and no obvious problems. She said the only sign of stress she saw from Lauren Dickason was as a result of one of her daughters being born with a lip disfigurement, which needed surgical interventions. But both parents 'loved their kids like nobody's business,' she said. 'I'm torn apart, a part of mine is gone,' Sibanyoni said in an interview last week. 'And it's like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them.' 'I don't know what to do about this because the only question that I've got now is, what happened? What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids.' New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she is not budging on a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and vowed to those who do not get the shot by the September 27 deadline that 'we will be replacing people.' Hochul reiterated her hardened stance even as some hospitals face staff shortages and a lawsuit was launched by 17 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who say New York's requirement violates their constitutional rights in various ways. 'To all the healthcare providers, doctors and nurses in particular who are vaccinated, I say thank you. Because you are keeping true to your oath,' Hochul told WHAM-TV during a visit to Rochester on Wednesday. 'To those who won't, we will be replacing people.' New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she is not budging on a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and vowed to those who do not get the shot by the September 27 deadline that 'we will be replacing people.' U.S. District Judge David Hurd in Utica, in a written order, said he was blocking the mandate from taking effect on September 27 because it does not allow for exemptions based on workers' religious beliefs Hochul's comments come one week after the lawsuit by a group of Christian healthcare workers who say they object to receiving the vaccines because the cell lines of aborted fetuses were used in their testing and development. U.S. District Judge David Hurd in Utica, in a written order, said he was blocking the mandate from taking effect on September 27 because it does not allow for exemptions based on workers' religious beliefs. In response to the lawsuit, Hochul said Wednesday she's not aware of any major religious group that prohibits followers from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. 'Everyone from the Pope on down is encouraging people to get vaccinated,' she said. A lawsuit was filed Monday by 17 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who say New York's requirement violates their constitutional rights in various ways Healthcare workers wearing masks stand in front of a COVID-19 testing booth in Times Square on August 31, 2021 in New York City. Hurd gave the state until September 22 to respond to the lawsuit, and said he will hold a hearing on September 28 whether to block the vaccine requirement from taking effect pending the outcome of the case. The New York Attorney General's office, which represents the state, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did lawyers for the plaintiffs. The mandate was issued last month by former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said at the time that about 75% of the state's roughly 450,000 hospital workers were fully vaccinated. President Joe Biden announced the federal government's aggressive new approach to fight the COVID-19 pandemic on Thursday, which include new vaccine rules that the White House says will affect two-third of the American workforce The rate of COVID vaccinations slowed down going into summer, sending the White House into a frenzy looking for ways to encourage people to get the shot Hospitals in the state have struggled finding staffing because of the vaccine mandate. Nurses at a maternity ward at one upstate hospital resigned earlier this month, forcing the hospital to halt all baby deliveries after Sept. 24. 'There are facilities, for example in New York City, that 98% of their staff are vaccinated, they dont have a worker shortage. We are working closely with these hospitals to find out where we can get other individuals to come in and supplement nursing homes and other facilities,' Hochul said. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced the federal government's aggressive new approach to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which included new vaccine rules that the White House says will affect two-thirds of the American workforce. The strategy involves six steps all aimed at boosting the US vaccination rate, which fell over the summer as a new wave fueled by the Delta variant plunged health care systems in areas with largely unvaccinated populations back into disarray. About 73.4 percent of Americans over the age of 12 have at least one vaccine dose, but less than 63 percent are fully vaccinated - far short of the threshold to reach herd immunity. Biden's approach includes mandating all federal employees and federal contractors get vaccinated, requiring vaccinations for more than 17 million healthcare workers at Medicare and Medicaid-participating facilities and requiring all businesses with 100 or more employees to tell their workers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID testing. Meanwhile, coronavirus hospitalisations are continuing to fall, dropping 14.6 per cent to 714 on Sunday Week-on-week trend in Covid fatalities is continuing to waver every day, increasing by 15 per cent 182 today It marks the biggest week-on-week jump since July 18, when cases jumped up by 51.6 per cent in one week Department of Health bosses posted 36,710 infections today, up 36.4 per cent on the 26,911 last Thursday Advertisement Britain's back-to-school wave of Covid is continuing to bite, with today's case count up week-on-week for the sixth day in-a-row. Department of Health bosses posted 36,710 positive tests, which was a 36.4 per cent spike on the 26,911 recorded last Thursday. It was the biggest week-on-week jump since mid-July, barring a blip on September 6 which was skewed by fewer tests being registered on the August bank holiday. Covid deaths also jumped by 15 per cent to 182 today, but the overall trend which lags weeks behind infections because of how long it takes for people to get seriously ill after catching the virus remains fairly flat. And in a more positive sign, hospitalisations are continuing to fall, dropping 14.6 per cent to 714 on Sunday, the latest date data is available for. Meanwhile, separate data from one of the country's biggest surveillance projects today suggested the number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day fell five per cent last week. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell. But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts warned cases would spiral after children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in September. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell Slide me PHE data showed Covid cases fell in three-quarters of local authorities last week (pictured) Covid? What Covid? Moderna boss expects pandemic to be done next year as top Oxford expert says we're already 'over the worst' The coronavirus pandemic will have blown over by next year, according to the boss of one of the first drug giants to get a Covid vaccine approved. Moderna's chief executive Stephane Bancel said enough jabs will have been made to vaccinate all of the world's 7.7billion people by the middle of next year. Asked when life would return to normal, he said: 'As of today, in a year, I assume.' Meanwhile, an array of top experts have also lined up to talk down the threat of the virus, which first emerged in China towards the end of 2019. Sir John Bell, one of the Government's advisers on vaccines, today claimed Britain was 'over the worst' and 'should be fine' once winter has passed. Oxford University's Dame Sarah Gilbert, who helped create AstraZeneca's jab, last night reiterated Covid will eventually just become a cold which some scientists tracking the UK's outbreak say is already happening. And in another ray of hope, Dame Sarah also insisted it was unlikely to mutate into an even deadlier variant. Advertisement It comes as: Number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day falls by 5% in a week, symptom-tracking app shows; The woman who created the Oxford vaccine has said Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold; England's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty says every child is going to get Covid, unless they are jabbed; Official data that lays bare the true toll of the Covid-induced backlog on the health service revealed nearly 18million fewer NHS appointments were carried out last year; Health bosses are pleaded for a further 1.5billion in funding, just a fortnight after No10 pushed through a 12billion tax raid to prop up the NHS ; Covid-infected pregnant mother 'lost her baby after being forced to wait in NHS hospital car park for 2.5 HOURS until an isolated room became free'. Professor Tim Spector, who leads the King's/ZOE study, warned today that the UK still had one of the highest infection rates in Europe and called for the Covid symptoms list to be updated to help get a handle on infections. He said the classic three symptoms cough, fever and loss of taste and smell were rarer these days thanks to vaccines which had made the virus more like a bad cold. He said other warning signs like a sore throat, runny nose and sneezing should be added to the official list. It came after the scientist who created the Oxford vaccine said Covid was unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. The symptom-tracking app's figures differ from the Department of Health's dashboard, which shows Covid cases have risen week-on-week for the last five days. But both are pointing to a surge in cases among youngsters. Separate Test and Trace statistics today showed the number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England fell 22 per cent last week to the lowest toll since the end of June. But data compiled is delayed and will pick up to reflect the up-tick spotted by the Department of Health. Public Health England's weekly surveillance report today showed Covid cases fell in 112 of 149 local authorities or three-quarters last week. But their data also highlighted a surge in infections among 5 to 9-year-olds. Experts say the symptom-tracking study also run by health data science firm ZOE is becoming less reliable because vaccines have made it harder to pick out Covid from other respiratory infections like flu. But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts had warned children returning to classrooms would trigger a spike in cases The above graph shows the study's estimated of Covid cases by regions over time. It suggests they are flatlining in all areas Latest figures from Test and Trace showed Covid cases in England fell 22 per cent up to September 15, after 161,923 cases were recorded through testing. Infections are now at their lowest levels since the end of June. Public Health England's weekly surveillance report showed Covid cases are now increasing among 5 to 19-year-olds in a delayed back-to-school wave. But these infections are yet to spill over into other age groups They found that infections remained stable across England's regions in the week to September 19, the latest available Professor Spector said: 'The UK still has more cases than most of Europe and I believe this is for two main reasons; the first is a lack of masks and social distancing and the second is because were ignorant of the symptoms. 'We should be looking out for things like sore throat, runny nose and sneezing. 'The classic three cough, fever and anosmia [loss of taste and smell] are rarer these days, yet the government has done nothing. 'By not updating advice, were letting people into care homes, schools, workplaces and large gatherings displaying known signs of Covid. Number of Britons falling ill with Covid falls by 5% in a week, symptom-tracking app shows The number of Britons falling ill with Covid every day fell five per cent last week, according to one of the country's biggest surveillance projects. King's College London scientists estimated 45,081 people caught the virus every day in the week to September 18, down from 47,276 in the previous seven-day spell. But the data showed there was an uptick in infections among under-18s, in yet another sign of a delayed back-to-school wave of infections. Experts warned cases would spiral after children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in September. Professor Tim Spector, who leads the study, warned today that the UK still had one of the highest infection rates in Europe and called for the Covid symptoms list to be updated to help get a handle on infections. He said the classic three symptoms cough, fever and loss of taste and smell were rarer these days thanks to vaccines which had made the virus more like a bad cold. He said other warning signs like a sore throat, runny nose and sneezing should be added to the official list. It came after the scientist who created the Oxford vaccine said Covid was unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. The symptom-tracking app's figures differ from the Department of Health's dashboard, which shows Covid cases have risen week-on-week for the last five days. But both are pointing to a surge in cases among youngsters. Separate Test and Trace statistics today showed the number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in England fell 22 per cent last week to the lowest toll since the end of June. But data compiled is delayed and will pick up to reflect the up-tick spotted by the Department of Health. Public Health England's weekly surveillance report today showed Covid cases fell in 112 of 149 local authorities or three-quarters last week. But their data also highlighted a surge in infections among 5 to 9-year-olds. Experts say the symptom-tracking study also run by health data science firm ZOE is becoming less reliable because vaccines have made it harder to pick out Covid from other respiratory infections like flu. Advertisement 'One in 95 people in the UK have Covid. If we dont wake up to the fact these cold-like symptoms could be Covid, we will continue to keep numbers high, putting unnecessary strain on an exhausted NHS and letting more than 170 people die every day.' He added: 'Another week of declining cases is positive news, but the decline is slow and unpredictable. As predicted, the return to school has led to climbing cases in the young. 'While its true that Covid in children is mostly mild, the real issue is their ability to pass on the virus to those who are most vulnerable. ZOE Covid Study data shows protection waning in those who were first in line for a vaccine, and so their risk of getting infected is rising.' The study also estimated infections had risen slightly among 30 to 39-year-olds. But the age group where cases were increasing most were 0 to 18-year-olds in another sign that return of children to schools has triggered an uptick. They said their figures were based on reports from more than 750,000 Britons who have logged into the app to say they felt well or entered their results from swabs. The drop in Covid cases differs to figures from the Government dashboard, which show cases have risen for the past five days week-on-week. Department of Health statistics showed another 34,460 infections were spotted yesterday, up 15 per cent from the 30,597 recorded last Wednesday. Scientists had warned that the reopening of classrooms at the start of September in England, Wales and Northern Ireland would cause a sharp rise in infections. Data showed England and Wales both saw their Covid cases surge yesterday compared to the same time last week, by a quarter and eight per cent respectively. England's data indicates cases are rising fastest in 10 to 14-year-olds. Yesterday's statistics also showed hospitalisations dropped 17 per cent in a week after 747 people were admitted on September 18, and deaths fell by the same amount after 166 were recorded. PHE's report today showed three-qaurters of local authorities in England saw their infections fall over the week to September 19, compared to the previous seven-day spell. But according to Department of Health data England's infections only started rising from September 15, suggesting the latest report is unlikely to pick up all the areas where cases are now heading upwards. Hull recorded the sharpest drop in infections, down 36 per cent in a week, followed by Camden, down 33 per cent, and Southend-on-Sea, down 32 per cent. On the other hand, infections rose fastest in Herefordshire (up 23 per cent), followed by North Lincolnshire (up 22 per cent) and Swindon (up 21 per cent). When broken down by age group figures showed only 5 to 9-year-olds and 10 to 19-year-olds have seen their infections increase in a week, by 25 and 24 per cent respectively. This suggests cases are yet to spill over into other age groups. Those aged 10 to 19 also had the highest Covid infection rate (756.2 cases per 100,000 people), followed by 5 to 9-year-olds (483.5 per 100,000) and 40 to 49-year-olds (293.4 per 100,000). For comparison, over-80s had the lowest infection rate (81.1 per 100,000), alongside 70 to 79-year-olds (100.7 per 100,000) and 0 to 4-year-olds (125.7 per 100,000). Dr Yvonne Doyle, PHE's medical director, said: 'We must remain vigilant as case rates remain high throughout the country. When winter approaches, it is likely that infections, hospitalisations and deaths will rise. 'The vaccines offer the best protection against Covid. One dose is now being offered to 12 15 year olds and a third dose to those over 50 and the clinically vulnerable. 'Please keep following the simple steps to help protect yourself and others. Wear a face covering in enclosed spaces, such as on public transport, to reduce the spread of infection. 'Avoid mixing with others if you feel unwell and make sure to take a PCR test if you have any Covid symptoms.' ENGLAND: The above graph shows Covid cases in England by date reported. The latest figures show the country's cases have surged by a quarter in a week after 27,317 were recorded today. It schools returned at the start of September WALES: The above graph shows Covid cases in Wales by date reported. The latest figures show Covid cases in this country are also starting to increase, after schools returned in early September Test and Trace figures also showed some 12 per cent of people or one in eight who were transferred to the system were not reached, meaning they were unable to provide details of recent contacts. A total of 87.3 per cent of people who were tested for Covid in England in the week ending September 15 at a regional site, local site or mobile testing unit a so-called 'in-person' test received their result within 24 hours. This was up from 81 per cent the previous week. It came after the scientist who created the Oxford vaccine said Covid was unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said 'there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus'. She said viruses tend to 'become less virulent as they circulate' through the population, adding: 'There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2'. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert said Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant and will eventually just cause the common cold Dame Sarah said the virus which causes Covid-19 will eventually become like the coronaviruses which circulate widely and cause the common cold. Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine seminar, Dame Sarah said: 'We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don't really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. 'It's just a question of how long it's going to take to get there and what measures we're going to have to take to manage it in the meantime.' The 59-year-old led the team at Oxford University's Jenner institute which created the lifesaving Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the most widely distributed jab in the world. Dame Sarah also revealed she is struggling to get funding to help prevent future pandemics. The scientist, who specialises in the development of jabs against emerging viruses, said urgent investment was needed to prevent other infectious diseases spreading around the world. She said: 'We're still trying to raise funds to develop other vaccines that we were working on before the pandemic, against diseases that have caused outbreaks in the past and will cause outbreaks in the future. 'We are being financially supported for our ongoing work against Covid... but when we try to return to projects we were working on before coronavirus we're still trying to get funding.' Meanwhile, she said the very rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca jab have not been seen in the same rates in other parts of the world. She also suggested that primary work on a tweaked vaccine to combat the Beta variant of the virus only gave a 'slightly better' immune response than the original vaccine, when given as a third dose to people who had already had two jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the data is still being collected. In June, then health secretary Matt Hancock said the Government was in commercial discussions with the pharmaceutical giant over the variant vaccine. The true toll of Covid on the NHS: 18MILLION fewer appointments were carried out in 2020/21 in 18% drop on year before pandemic, figures show Nearly 18million fewer NHS appointments were carried out last year, according to official data that lays bare the true toll of the Covid-induced backlog on the health service. Before the pandemic struck, around 96million outpatient appointments such as CT scans, X-rays and MRIs were carried out every year. But the total figure fell by 18 per cent in 2020/21, the health service's own statistics revealed today. Hospitals cancelled 12.6million procedures, which was the highest toll since health chiefs began collecting the data a decade ago. NHS Digital, which compiled the annual report, admitted the trend was down to 'the impact of the coronavirus pandemic'. Disruptions to healthcare has already seen waiting lists for routine surgeries including hip and knee replacements spiral to a record high of 5.6million. This is expected to climb even further as millions of people who delayed or were unable to seek care during the pandemic come forward. Operations, scans and appointments were cancelled as the NHS focused on treating Covid patients and many people were scared to attend hospital for fear of catching the virus. NHS Digital's figures come after health bosses pleaded for a further 1.5billion in funding, just a fortnight after No10 pushed through a 12billion tax raid to prop up the NHS. Advertisement Dame Sarah was also asked which of her titles she is most proud of, and said: 'Professor, definitely.' The scientist's comments came as England's chief medical officer said almost all unvaccinated children will become infected with Covid at some point and said the others would get it 'sooner or later', insisting that vaccines will cut that risk. Being grilled by politicians about his decision to recommend all over-12s are given Covid jabs, Professor Whitty insisted the move was made purely due to the benefits children would get. He denied the advice which overruled guidance from No10's top vaccine advisory panel which recommended youngsters weren't jabbed was political. Professor Whitty said: 'The great majority of children who have not currently had Covid are going to get it at some point. 'It won't be necessary in the next two or three months but they will get it sooner or later because this is incredibly infectious. Vaccination will reduce that risk.' Meanwhile, an annual report from NHS Digital revealed nearly 18million fewer NHS appointments were carried out in 2020, due to the 'impact of the coronavirus pandemic'. Before the pandemic struck, around 96million outpatient appointments such as CT scans, X-rays and MRIs were carried out every year. But the total figure fell by 18 per cent in 2020/21, the health service's own statistics revealed today. Hospitals cancelled 12.6million procedures, which was the highest toll since health chiefs began collecting the data a decade ago. Disruptions to healthcare has already seen waiting lists for routine surgeries including hip and knee replacements spiral to a record high of 5.6million. This is expected to climb even further as millions of people who delayed or were unable to seek care during the pandemic come forward. Operations, scans and appointments were cancelled as the NHS focused on treating Covid patients and many people were scared to attend hospital for fear of catching the virus. NHS Digital's figures come after health bosses pleaded for a further 1.5billion in funding, just a fortnight after No10 pushed through a 12billion tax raid to prop up the NHS. Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers which represents trusts across England today asked for extra funds to bring 'long neglected parts of the NHS estate into the 21st Century', with cash used to fix leaky roofs, broken boilers and faulty air conditioning units in operating theatres. Ms Cordery insisted the separate funds are necessary because of red tape meaning the tax raid which won't hit millions of taxpayers until April cannot be spent on key maintenance and infrastructure repairs. Announcing the National Insurance hike at the start of the month, Boris Johnson said it would help the NHS get 'back on its feet'. Waiting lists for routine treatment have spiralled to record highs over the past year, with 5.6million awaiting care in England alone. The health service will receive the vast majority of the 36billion raised by the 1.25 per cent National Insurance hike over the next three years, with social care receiving a 5.3billion slice. Critics had warned pouring the money into the NHS which also given an emergency 60billion pot on top of its annual slice of 150billion to fight Covid last year would lead to more demands for money in the future. NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation immediately told the Prime Minister that the extra funds were not enough at the time. But pleading for more funds today, Ms Cordery gave no indication of how the money would be raised. Meanwhile, a Covid-infected pregnant woman has claimed she lost her baby after being forced to wait for two-and-a-half hours in a hospital car park. Fationa Nikolli, who was 32 weeks pregnant at the time, rushed to Birmingham Women's hospital at 10am on July 6 because she could no longer feel her unborn child. But the mother-of-two, who lives five minutes away from the hospital, says she was asked to wait in the car park by nurses because she had Covid. When she was finally brought in at 12.30pm after doctors found a private room that she could be isolated in, Ms Nikolli was rushed for an emergency C-section. But her son was stillborn. Ms Nikolli claimed a doctor told her: 'If you had come in before, I could have saved the baby.' Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, has apologised to Ms Nikolli and admitted it was 'not able to be there for her in the way we would want or expect'. Spy boss Sergei Naryshkin said the claims were a distraction from UK's problems A Russian spy chief has accused Britain of 'lies' after a third GRU suspect was named in connection with the 2018 Novichok attack against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Sergey Fedotov, real name Denis Sergeev, is a former Russian paratrooper captain who faces a string of charges including trying to kill former Russian double agent Skripal in Salisbury. Russia has denied any involvement in the poison attack, with Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) branding it a 'distraction' from Britain's other issues. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has accused Britain of 'lies' over the naming of a third Novichok suspect The Met released an image of Fedotov leaving Heathrow at 1.45pm on Sunday March 4 - the same day as the Salisbury attack He said today: 'This is an attempt to cover up another lie or to support a previous lie.' Naryshkin said Britain's move sought to 'distract the public from the shameful exit from Afghanistan, primarily by the United States and its allies.' The attack on Skripal, who sold Russian secrets to Britain, caused one of the biggest rows between Russia and the West since the Cold War, leading to the tit-for-tat expulsion of dozens of diplomats after Britain blamed Moscow. Sergey Fedotov faces a string of charges linked to the poisonings The attack also seriously injured police officer Nick Bailey and Salisbury resident Charlie Rowley, whose partner, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, later died. In 2018, British prosecutors charged two Russians with conspiracy to murder Skripal and the attempted murder of his daughter Yulia and Mr Bailey. Russia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said Britain was using the poisoning case to deliberately sabotage UK-Russia ties. Fedotov is now accused of seven charges, including three of attempted murder as well as conspiracy to murder Skripal, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Yulia and Mr Bailey, and possession and use of a chemical weapon. These are the same counts faced by two other suspects in the case already identified by police in 2018 - Alexander Mishkin, who used the name Alexander Petrov while in the UK, and Anatoliy Chepiga, who used the alias Ruslan Boshirov. Police believe Fedotov's real name was Denis Sergeev and he is a member of the GRU, Russian military intelligence Home Secretary Priti Patel said: 'Arrest warrants are in place for all three men and the police have applied for an Interpol notice against Fedotov mirroring those already in place against the other two suspects. 'Should any of these individuals ever travel outside Russia we will work with our international partners and take every possible step to detain and extradite them to face justice.' Theresa May, who was Prime Minister at the time, called the attack an 'appalling crime', adding: 'I urge the UK government to do all it can to bring the individuals concerned to justice.' Meanwhile, Downing Street said ministers would do 'everything' to bring the Salisbury suspects to justice but admitted that as long as they stayed in Russia it would be almost impossible to do so. Sergei Skripal - seen with his daughter, Yulia - served as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s Alexander Petrov (left) and Ruslan Boshirov, the two other Russian military intelligence officers accused of carrying out the poisoning 'We have said before that the use of Novichok nerve agent on British soil was a sickening and despicable act and a clear violation of the chemical weapons convention,' the PM's spokesman said. 'This wasn't a rogue operation and only the Russian state had both the technical means, experience and the motive to carry out the attack. 'But you will be aware that we don't have an extradition treaty with Russia and as we have found with other cases such as Litvinenko any formal extradition request is futile.' Democrats and Republican voters alike are pushing the federal government to crack down on big technology companies by issuing stronger regulations. A new poll revealed that 80 percent of registered voters believe that big tech companies that have 'grown too powerful' and use 'our data to reach too far into our lives'. The survey showed that 83 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans think federal policy makers need to take steps to limit the influence of big tech companies. Big tech executives, including Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos fared badly among people polled as part of the same survey. The poll found just 36 percent of people surveyed viewed Bezos favorably, with 35 percent viewing him unfavorably. Mark Zuckerberg had a 36 percent favorability rating versus 44 percent unfavorable. Voters want policy makers to strengthen user privacy and hold big tech giants accountable. They have also indicated they are 'very nervous' about the effects that social media has on their children. The poll findings come as the role of tech giants continues to be re-evaluated worldwide, according The Washington Post. Democrat and Republican voters alike are pushing the federal government to crack down on big technology companies by issuing stronger regulations Benenson Strategy Group, in partnership with Public Opinion Strategies, surveyed 2,016 registered voters in late July on behalf the Future of Tech Commission. '[The poll shows that] the tech industry has got to operate within boundariesand the only entity that can bind it is the federal government,' former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, also one of the commissions three co-chairs, told the newspaper. The poll argues that strengthening user privacy and holding big tech giants accountable are the two biggest priorities for Americans, in regard to tech policy. However, while there is large support for strengthening anti-trust laws, voters agreed by 54 percent to 45 percent that 'breaking up big tech companies threatens our country's biggest drivers of innovation and growth.' The poll also found that 84 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans expressed concerns about how social media was impacting their children. The poll argues that strengthening user privacy and holding big tech giants accountable are the two biggest priorities for Americans, in regard to tech policy The poll also indicated that most voters typically viewed big tech firms in favorable light, however their executives, including Mark Zuckerberg (pictured), were not well favored Additionally, the commission has been holding tech policy town halls nationwide. 'What we hear consistently is that people want and expect federal leadership,' said commission co-chair Margaret Spellings, who used to serve as education secretary under former President George W. Bush. 'Secondly, they want America, the U.S., to be the world's leader in these issues.' Despite fears over the power and reach of tech firms, their bosses, and the potential impact on children, Americans did still have a very favorable view of the biggest home-grown firms. The poll indicated that most voters view big tech firms with the following favorability ratings: Google at 81 percent, Amazon at 74 percent, Apple at 67 percent and Facebook at 53 percent. The poll's findings, which are said to have a margin of error of 2.07 percent, come as organizations have begun to evaluate the roles of tech companies worldwide. The poll revealed the following favorability ratings: Google at 81 percent, Amazon at 74 percent (founder Jeff Bezos pictured), Apple at 67 percent and Facebook at 53 percent. Several big tech companies including Facebook, Amazon, Apple (CEO Tim Cook pictured) and Google have 'generally rejected' arguments that they 'exercise too much power,' citing the fact that they operate in 'dynamic and highly competitive markets' Several big tech companies including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google have 'generally rejected' arguments that they 'exercise too much power,' citing the fact that they operate in 'dynamic and highly competitive markets'. However, at the same time, some of the companies have expressed openness to changes regarding privacy protections. 'As we have said for some time now, we support updated rules of the road for the internet and privacy regulations that will set more consistent data-protection standards that work for everyone,' said Steve Satterfield, Facebook's vice president for privacy and public policy. Facebook also noted that the company had been 'advocating for updated internet regulations for some time. We'll continue working with Congress and the administration to set clear and fair rules that support a safe and secure open internet.' Google, Apple and Amazon did not respond to the newspaper's response for comment. DailyMail.com has also reached out. During his presidency, Donald Trump (pictured( tried to get lawmakers to change section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects so-called 'big tech,' like Facebook and Twitter, from being held liable for what's posted on their sites Meanwhile, during his presidency, Donald Trump tried to get lawmakers to change section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects so-called 'big tech,' like Facebook and Twitter, from being held liable for what's posted on their sites. Trump said that keeping section 230 intact was a win for foreign bad actors who use social media to spread lies and target people unfairly. 'The Act fails even to make any meaningful changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, despite bipartisan calls for repealing that provision,' he said in December 2020. 'Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online, which is a serious threat to our national security and election integrity. It must be repealed.' Trump also filed three class-action suits against big tech giants YouTube, Facebook and Twitter this past summer. He sought damages that could amount to 'trillions' for an alleged violation of his First Amendment rights. The lawsuit alleges First Amendment violations by YouTube because it claims the video platform banned the former president at the behest of Democratic members of Congress. He filed the suits in collaboration with the America First Policy Institute, founded by former members of his administration. All three suits, filed in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., also ask federal judges to declare Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional. Advertisement A record number of container ships are currently stuck waiting outside the ports of Los Angeles due to a massive backup caused by a sudden surge in American buying just in time for the holiday season. The port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which moves 40 percent of containers in the United States, currently has 62 cargo ships waiting to enter the port to unload cargo, the Guardian reported. The backup at the country's busiest port complex was brought on by a combination of it being peak shipping period due to the upcoming holiday season and a pandemic-induced buying boom, coupled with a labor shortage that has overwhelmed the port workforce, port officials say. Cargo ships (pictured September 13) wait to dock at traffic-clogged Los Angeles ports The ports serve as the entry point for a third of imports to the US, and are the main import point for goods coming from China 'The Americans' buying strength is so strong and epic that we can't absorb all this cargo into the domestic supply chain,' Gene Seroka, the port of LA director, told the Guardian. The 62 container ships waiting to dock include 42 container ships physically at anchor and 20 in drift areas, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which tracks ship traffic in the area. The West Coast ports have faced traffic since August, when a then record-breaking 44 container ships were stuck off the coast due to similar disruptions. The traffic-jam at the ports, which serves as the main entry point for goods coming from China, has even directly impacted the prices for artificial Christmas trees. Balsam Hill, an artificial tree company based in California, is selling its four-and-a-half-foot tall Grand Canyon Cedar Tree for $499 this year. That is $199 more than the same tree cost in 2020 - a two-thirds increase in price in just 12 months. 'We've never raised prices anywhere close to that in our history and will make way less money,' Balsam Hill CEO Mac Harman told The Wall Street Journal. 'For the first time ever for us, the catalog was out, and we didn't have any products to sell,' Harman added. 'Our shipments didn't arrive on time. We're still trying to figure out exactly where the products are. Are they still on the water or stuck in ports? If this keeps happening, we could go out of business.' The Long Beach port is now on pace to break it's all-time record and process more than 9 million container units this year, almost a million more units than in 2020, the Guardian reported. To help reduce delays for ships, the southern California ports are working with the Biden administration and the transportation department, Long Beach mayor Robert Garcia announced on Twitter The port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which moves 40 percent of containers in the US currently has 62 cargo ships waiting to enter the port In June, the Los Angeles port became the first Western hemisphere port to process 10 million container units in a 12month period. But the supply-chain has not been prepared for the massive influx of imports, Kip Loutitt, executive director of the Marine Exchange told Business Insider. 'Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago,' Louttit said. 'They take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo.' To help reduce delays for ships, the southern California ports are working with the Biden administration and the transportation department, Long Beach mayor Robert Garcia announced on Twitter. The port of Long Beach is testing out a 24/7 pilot program that would expand the hours for cargo pickup to a time when there is less traffic in the region, allowing for speedier deliveries. 'We are in the midst of an historic surge in cargo, and our terminal operators and other supply chain partners are giving their all to keep it all moving,' Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero said in a statement. 'We welcome this pilot project by TTI as a first step toward extending gates to 24/7 operations, and we encourage our cargo owners and trucking partners to give this innovative program a try.' A pair of emails from business associates of Hunter Biden reveal he offered to help them unfreeze Libyan assets for a $2million retainer plus 'success fees', while they also discussed their misgivings over his drug and alcohol use. The email exchanges were between mid-level Democratic donors Sam Jauhari and Sheikh Mohammed al-Rahbani, who in 2015 were both working on behalf of the new Libyan government to free up $30billion in state foreign assets. They had been frozen by the Obama administration under the deposed Muammar Gaddafi regime in 2011. The emails are unrelated to those on his laptop, which outlined a number of his other business dealings. The computer was found at a repair shop in Delaware. In the first email dated January 28, 2015 sent by Jauhari to al-Rahbani, and obtained by Business Insider, Jauhari discusses what he believes the younger Biden might bring to the table in their efforts. Emails from mid-level Democratic donors Sam Jauhari (left) and Sheikh Mohammed al-Rahbani indicated they sought to hire Hunter Biden to help them free up billions in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration Jauhari said Hunter might give them access to a number of high level officials in his role as chairman of the UN World Food Program and through his relationship with his father Joe Biden. Hunter is seen at the World Food Program Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony in 2016 He outlines the number of connections Hunter has, including his role as chairman of the UN World Food Program, and the relationship he has with then-Secretary of State John Kerry and his then-vice president father, which in turn could provide access to Obama's file on Libya. 'Since he travels with dad he is connected everywhere in Europe and Asia where M. Q. [Muammar Qaddafi] and LIA [Libya Investment Authority] had money frozen,' Jauhari writes, adding that Hunter has also said he has high level access in China, and that, 'he can help there.' China at the time had been blocking the release of roughly $15billion in Qaddafi's assets that Obama ordered frozen amid a bid to increase its influence in Africa. Jauhari wrote that Hunter wanted '$2 per year retainer +++ success fees.' Sources familiar with the effort told Business Insider that $2 meant $2million, and that Jauhari and his associates stood to gain 5 percent of whatever Libyan money they were able to free up. Jauhari was frank about how Hunter's issues with alcoholism and drug abuse might pose problems for their endeavor Jauhari is frank, however, about how Hunter might pose problems for their endeavor. 'His negatives are that he is alcoholic, drug addict - kicked [out] of U.S. Army for cocaine, chasing low class hookers, constantly needs money-liquidity problems and many more headaches,' he wrote. In the second email, dated a little more than a year later on February 26, 2016, talks with Hunter Biden over his role in the Libyan project appeared to still be ongoing. In it, John Sandweg, a lawyer who served as Obama's acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, sends Jauhari and al-Rahbani a report on his talks with Hunter, according to Business Insider. The pair had been part of a group trying to unfreeze assets of Assassinated Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi (pictured left) Obama had frozen in 2011 'I spoke with HB's team yesterday. They are interested in the project, but emphasized that for them to get involved, the team (lobbyists, lawyers and PR) would need to be a small group of folks they have a tight relationship with,' he wrote. The talks came as Joe Biden was weighing his run for president, and in both emails they report that Hunter had requested secrecy over his involvement. 'They do not want a large group involved and they only want people with whom they have a close relationship with due to the sensitivities surrounding their involvement,' Sandweg wrote. Ultimately, Jauhari ended up hiring neither Sandweg nor Hunter to help with the effort to free up the funds, but Sandweg confirmed to Insider that he had been in contact with an associate of Hunter Biden. 'They indicated they would consider it and I passed the message back,' he told the outlet. A Black Lives Matter activist is suing the Los Angeles Police Department after she was targeted in a swatting incident in which heavily armed officers surrounded her home last year because a prankster claimed there were hostages held inside. Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of BLMs LA chapter and a supporter of the defund the police movement, claims the overwhelming police response was in retaliation for her activism and put her and her family at risk. 'This was a clear case of LAPD ... attempting to terrorize us,' Abdullah told the Los Angeles Times. 'They made no attempt to keep me or my children safe, and this was actually an infliction of harm.' Melina Abdullah (seen above in Los Angeles in June 2020), a co-founder of Black Lives Matter's Los Angeles chapter, is suing the Los Angeles Police Department On August 19, 2020, the LAPD received a 911 call from someone who claimed he had taken people hostage in Abdullahs home in the Crenshaw section of the city. Heavily armed LAPD officers responded to the scene (above) Abdullah livestreamed the incident on her Instagram account (above) The Crenshaw home that was 'swatted' is said to be worth between $1.3million and $1.6million, according to realtor web sites Abdullah's name is also on the deed of another home in the Leimart Park section of Los Angeles that was purchased in 2003. Realtor sites estimate that the home is worth more than $900,000 Abdullah is a divorced mother of three children. According to property records, she owns three homes - two in Los Angeles and one in Baltimore - whose total value exceeds $2.2million. The Crenshaw home that was 'swatted' is said to be worth between $1.3million and $1.6million, according to realtor web sites. Records indicate that Abdullah and her then-husband, former Hollywood producer Phaylen Abdullah, paid $486,949 for the home back in 2011. The couple obtained a $350,000 mortgage. Records indicate that Abdullah and her then-husband, former Hollywood producer Phaylen Abdullah, paid $486,949 for the Crenshaw home back in 2011. The couple obtained a $350,000 mortgage Abdullah's name is also on the deed of another home in the Leimart Park section of Los Angeles that was purchased in 2003. Realtor sites estimate that the home is worth more than $900,000. According to property records, Abdullah and her then-husband obtained a $120,000 loan to buy the home. On August 19, 2020, the LAPD received a 911 call from someone who claimed he had taken people hostage in Abdullahs home in the Crenshaw section of the city. The caller told police he wanted to send a message that BLM is a bunch of retards. News of the lawsuit was reported by the Los Angeles Times. The LAPD declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Swatting is a criminal harassment tactic of deceiving an emergency service into sending heavily armed police and other emergency service response teams to another persons address without actual cause. This is often triggered by falsely reporting a serious emergency, such as a bomb threat, hostage situation, murder, or a mental health emergency. Making false reports to emergency services is a criminal offense in many countries, punishable by fines and imprisonment. Abdullah livestreamed the incident on her Instagram account. I dont know why they are here, she is heard saying as heavily armed police are seen outside her home. They have guns pointed at my house. Theres a helicopter overhead. Nobodys knocked at the door, but apparently theyve made announcements for people to come out with our hands up. My children are in the house. My children are in the house. I dont know what this is. I dont know why they are here, she is heard saying as heavily armed police are seen outside her home Abdullah then stepped outside of the home. An officer then asked her what her address was, and she responded As Abdullah approached a group of officers, another asked her if she was in danger. She told them she was not Abdullah then stepped outside of the home. An officer then asked her what her address was, and she responded. Are you looking for me? Abdullah asked. The officer then instructs her to walk over to him, telling her: Youre not in trouble. As Abdullah approached a group of officers, another asked her if she was in danger. She told them she was not. 'OK. We got a call to this location that there is a male in there holding you guys hostage, and he wants a million dollars or hes going to kill you within an hour,' the officer said. 'Oh my...no,' Abdullah replied. No one was injured. The LAPD has yet to arrest anyone in connection with the investigation into the hoax 911 call. At the time of the incident, the nation was in the midst of widespread demonstrations, rioting, and unrest as protesters demanded changes to policing methods in minority communities. In court papers filed with California Superior Court, Abdullah says she feared LAPD SWAT officers would shoot into her home and wound her children. Abdullah also says that she feared she would be shot if she followed officers commands and stepped outside. Abdullah claims the LAPD staged the incident as retaliation for her protesting and activism She accuses the LAPD of failing to contact her beforehand even though she alleges that they had her contact information. Abdullah claims the LAPD staged the incident as retaliation for her protesting and activism. She alleges that police did not actually believe that there was a hostage situation in her home. To bolster her claims, Abdullah alleges that police allowed her security guard, whom the officer did not know, to pass through a perimeter and enter the home as they staged around it. Two neighbors of Abdullahs were also permitted to go inside the home to check up on her and walk to her side as she stepped outside to speak to officers, according to the lawsuit. She said the response was 'an attempt to put down protest, to target me as someone who's been very visible and vocal in protesting LAPD.' Abdullahs attorney, Erin Darlin, told the Times there was ample evidence the LAPD knew or should have known that the call was a hoax. Darlin also said the LAPD should have known that Abdullah and other high-profile members of BLM would be targets of swatting incidents. 'Especially for someone familiar with police abuse, she's thinking in that moment a moment of terror that, "Oh my god, they want to kill me and this is their excuse",' Darling said. The incident involving Abdullah could have ended tragically. Other high-profile swatting incidents made headlines in recent years. In December 2017, a Los Angeles man called police to falsely report a shooting and kidnapping at the address of a home in Wichita, Kansas. Abdullah is a supporter of the defund the police movement that erupted in the wake of the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year. A protest is seen above in Los Angeles on June 1, 2020 The intended target of the call, a gamer with whom he had a dispute, had moved to another address. The resident of the home, 28-year-old Andrew Finch, was killed by police when he opened the door to his home. Tyler Barriss, the man who originally made the fake 911 call, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to 51 counts for making false emergency calls and threats around the country, including the deadly hoax call in Kansas. The other online gamer, Casey Viner, will have to face a jury after violating the terms of a diversion deal he made with prosecutors, a judge ruled Monday. US District Judge Eric Melgren granted the government's motion to resume prosecution of Shane Gaskill of Wichita and set his trial for October 5. A slew of critical news coverage from the mainstream media and record-low approval polls are the latest evidence the United States is souring on President Joe Biden. The New York Times published two pieces on Wednesday comparing Biden to former President Donald Trump despite the former building his administration on the promise he would be different than his controversial Republican predecessor. The pieces cite Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the ongoing border crisis, pointing out his falling back on policies and decisions even he himself maligned while Trump was in office. An article titled 'Biden Pushes Deterrent Border Policy After Promising Humane Approach,' begins by reflecting on scenes that have surfaced this week of border agents on horseback forcefully rounding up and charging at migrants trying to cross the chest-deep waters of the Rio Grande. 'The images could have come straight from former President Donald J. Trumps immigration playbook,' the news story notes. That same day, a new Harvard/Harris poll indicated Trump, for the first time, has overtaken Biden in approval ratings for the first time since he lost the 2020 election. Biden got some unflattering comparisons to President Trump from top media organizations this week while polls show American voters may like him less than the Republican Biden has tried to distance himself from Trump's harsher border policies It comes a day after the Washington Post's White House bureau chief slammed the president for shutting down questions from American reporters during the president's meeting Tuesday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The Times's border story published on Wednesday points out that the Biden administration promised a more 'humane' approach to tackle immigration, but is ramping up its use of a Trump-era COVID rule to expel asylum-seeking migrants on the spot - specifically, to clear some 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants out from an encampment under the Del Rio bridge in Texas. 'The deportations are a stark example of how Mr. Biden... is deploying some of the most aggressive approaches to immigration put in place by Mr. Trump over the past four years,' the story claims. It quotes Latino civil rights leader Marisa Franco, 'The question thats being asked now is: How are you actually different than Trump?' An op-ed published the same day is topped with a scathing headline aimed at Biden: 'The UnTrump Presidency Slams Into Trumpness.' 'Biden isnt drawing an emphatic enough contrast with Trump,' author Frank Bruni writes, observing that Biden's deportation of Haitian migrants has invoked comparisons to his predecessor. Biden's handling of the border crisis prompted one immigration advocate to ask: 'How are you actually different than Trump?' 'The kind of border bedlam attributed to Trumps incompetence and insensitivity has returned and once again dominates the news,' Bruni writes. Bruni also notes Biden's decision to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan by August 31 caught allies by surprise. 'He pulled out of Afghanistan without the degree of consultation, coordination and competence that allies expected, at least of any American president not named Trump,' he writes With the abandonment of thousands of Afghan allies, Bruni said, Biden also failed to live up to the empathetic image he's crafted to distance himself from the cold, caustic perception of the Trump administration. On Tuesday the Washington Post, another legacy media organization, also joined in criticizing Biden. White House bureau chief Ashley Parker also invoked Trump on Tuesday night after Biden met with Johnson in DC. Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal and abandonment of US allies there has also prompted comparisons to Trump 'Worth noting that Biden ran for office promising to restore democracy after 4 years of Trump. But today it was the British leader, NOT the American one, who spotlighted a key tenet of a flourishing democracy - respect for a free press - by taking questions from his press corps,' Parker tweeted. Biden did not recognize any American reporters for questions during an Oval Office meeting with Johnson - and his aides cleared out journalists as they tried to query the president. White House staff even interrupted Johnson as they pushed to get reporters out of the room, shouting over the British prime minister as he and Biden sat in their chairs, watching the chaotic scene unfold as aides ushered journalists out of the Oval Office. As reporters were ushered out, CBS White House reporter Ed O'Keefe shouted a question to Biden asked about the situation on the US-Mexico border. The administration is facing backlash and criticism following images of US Border Patrol agents on horseback using whips to round up migrants or prevent them from stepping onto American soil. The Washington Post's White House bureau chief Ashley Parker was critical of Biden in a Tuesday night tweet President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the Oval Office at the White House But White House aides yelled 'thank you' and 'let's go' to the press in the room, herding them out as Biden appeared to try and address the issue. Between the shouting of his aides and the president's wearing a face mask, it was impossible to make out the majority of what Biden said. The newspapers' attitude toward Biden is reflective of the country's larger discontent with the president amid multiple crises. Support for Biden dropped dramatically to 46 percent as of September following the nation's chaotic exit from Afghanistan, crisis at the southern border with Mexico, and deadlock in Congress over his infrastructure bills, according to Harvard/Harris data. Meanwhile, Trump's approval ratings remained at about 46 per cent since 2020 and surpassed Biden after rising to 48 per cent in September. 'The mounting issues on all fronts have led to the surprise conclusion that Trump is now seen as being as good a president as Biden, suggesting the honeymoon is being replaced with buyer's remorse,' Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard/Harris survey told The Times. A new Harvard/Harris poll found that most people are regretting voting for President Biden as his approval ratings fell over the summer while Donald Trump's ratings saw a small uptick The poll comes as Biden held talks with feuding Democrats at the White House on Tuesday in an effort to reach an agreement on the $1.1 trillion infrastructure deal and the second $3.5 trillion bill containing new social spending. It also stands in the wake of a new migrations crisis in Texas as thousands of migrants, mostly from Haiti, cross the Rio Grande and settle in camps outside of the city of Del Rio. As well as revelations that the US mistakenly killed 10 people, including one aid worker and seven children, after a botched done strike meant to kill an ISIS-K terrorist. The Harvard/Harris poll also found that 55 per cent of people believed former Vice-President Mike Pence was a better vice president than his successor, Kamala Harris, and that 63 per cent of people thought Mike Pompeo was a better secretary of state than Anthony Blinken. President Joe Biden's White House will likely comply with requests for information about what former President Donald Trump and his aides were doing during the January 6 Capitol attack - setting up a legal battle with the ex-president. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the White House wants to err on the side of disclosure, according to two unnamed sources, and hand over documents to the House select committee that is probing the events of January 6. Trump has said he will claim 'executive privilege' to block requests from Congress for information about the insurrection. President Joe Biden's White House will likely comply with requests for information about what former President Donald Trump and his aides were doing during the January 6 Capitol attack Former President Donald Trump, seen speaking at the rally preceding the January 6 Capitol attack, said he will claim 'executive privilege' to block Congressional requests for information on what he was doing that day Supporters of former President Donald Trump ransacked the Capitol Building on January 6 - which is now being investigated by a House select committee 'The highly partisan, Communist-style "select committee" has put forth an outrageously broad records request that lacks both legal precedent and legislative merit,' Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told The Post. 'Executive privilege will be defended, not just on behalf of President Trump and his administration, but also on behalf of the Office of the President of the United States and the future of our nation.' White House spokesman Michael Gwin told The Post that Biden views the January 6 attack as a 'dark stain on our country's history.' Biden is 'deeply committed to ensuring that something like that can never happen again, and he supports a thorough investigation,' Gwin said. Lawmakers on the Democrat-run January 6 select committee argue that Trump no longer gets the benefit of executive privilege. 'It's not really relevant because there's no president involved - there's no such thing as a former president's executive privilege,' Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told The Post. 'That's extremely dilute and not really relevant,' Raskin added. Raskin teaches constitutional law. The House select committee - which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assembled after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tanked a bill that would have created a 9/11-style bipartisan commission to prob 1/6 - asked the National Archives on August 25 for 'all documents and communications within the White House on January 6, 2021, relating in any way' to the Capitol attack. Included in the request were call logs, schedules and meetings for Trump, droves of White House staffers, Trump's adult children - who appeared alongside him at the 'Save America' rally on the morning of January 6 - and advisers and allies including Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn. 'All documents and communications received, prepared, or sent by any official within the White House Situation Room and the White House Operations Center on January 6, 2021, including but not limited to any communication logs, situation reports, and watch officer notes,' the request said. The Archives already identified hundreds of pages from the Trump White House to hand over to Congress, The Post reported. A statute requires that those documents get turned over to the Biden White House and to Trump's legal team prior to any release. The first tranche of documents was sent to the White House and Trump on August 31, The Post reported. Trump has 30 days to object to their release. Even if Trump's team objects to the release, Biden's White House can release them after 60 days has passed. Trump could also take the administration to court. President Biden so far on average holds the third-fewest press conferences on record, according to a tally, behind only Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Biden has held seven total press conferences - formal settings where he takes traditionally unvetted questions from the press - four joint, and three solo, according to a count by the University of California at Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project. This puts his average at 10.45 news conferences per year, where former Presidents Trump averaged 22.00 and Obama average 22.38. George W Bush averaged 26.25, Bill Clinton averaged 24.13 and George HW Bush averaged 34.25. Ronald Reagan averaged only 5.75 conferences per year, while Richard Nixon averaged 7.03. Biden waited 64 days into his presidency to give his first press conference. Biden's advisors notoriously keep tight reins over the president's taking questions from the press. On Wednesday, the White House press corps was furious after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson took questions from British reporters after a meeting with Biden but the US president did not take questions from them. Biden waited 64 days into his presidency to give his first press conference White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed Johnson for the snafu, saying he hadn't told them he would be taking questions. 'I think our relationship with the United Kingdom and with Prime Minister Johnson is so strong and abiding, we will be able to move forward beyond this,' Psaki said Wednesday, 'but he [Johnson] called on individuals from his press corps without alerting us to that intention in advance.' And the president himself has repeatedly implied he is not in charge of when and where he takes questions. In August, while speaking at FEMA headquarters on the response to Hurricane Ida, told reporters 'I'm not supposed to take any questions.' Biden also caught attention when he took questions for the first time on the Afghanistan withdrawal, telling reporters: 'Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O'Donnell from NBC.' At the G-7 conference in June, the president said he would 'get in trouble with staff' if he did not follow the protocol for taking questions. 'I'm sorry, I'm going to get in trouble with staff if I don't do this the right way,' Biden said before calling on Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs. He also informed the press he'd be calling on reporters from a pre-determined list after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'I'll take your questions, and as usual, folks, they gave me a list of the people I'm going to call on,' he said. Ministers were urged to cut or scrap VAT on energy bills to help hard-pressed families and businesses during the gas price crisis today. Tory MPs suggested a move similar to that given to hospitality firms during the Covid lockdown, when the regular 20 per rate was cut to just 5 per cent. Businesses pay VAT of 20 per cent on energy bills, while the domestic rate is 5 per cent. Downing Street today signalled it is bracing for a 'winter of discontent' after BP and Tesco were forced to ration fuel and shut stations, supermarkets warned of food shortages and more energy firms went bust amid rising gas prices. Number 10 said this afternoon that 'we acknowledge there are issues facing many industries across the UK' as the nation heads into the colder months. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwateng was grilled by MPs about the tax cut as he faced the Commons this morning. Conservative former ministers Sir Christopher Chope and Robert Halfon suggested the Government should reduce or abolish VAT on energy bills. Sir Christopher said: 'Why don't we reduce VAT on fuel as a temporary measure? 'We did it for the hospitality industry, which was badly affected by Covid-19. Why don't we abolish VAT for consumers on fuel now?' Tory MPs suggested a move similar to that given to hospitality firms during the Covid lockdown, when the regular 20 per rate was cut to just 5 per cent. Conservative former ministers Sir Christopher Chope and Robert Halfon suggested the Government should reduce or abolish VAT on energy bills. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwateng was grilled by MPs about the tax cut as he faced the Commons this morning. Mr Halfon added: 'I am sure the Conservative answer to this is to reduce VAT on energy bills, something that was pledged by those who support Brexit in the EU referendum.' Mr Kwarteng replied: 'As he knows, I see the Chancellor on a regular basis and I am delighted to inform him that these conversations tend to be confidential.' The Business Secretary also dismissed the claims the UK's limited gas storage capacity is causing prices to soar, arguing it is actually a 'strength' rather than a weakness due to the country's 'greater diversity' of energy supply. The Prime Minister's official spokesman insisted there is no shortage of fuel and urged people to continue to fill up their vehicles 'as normal'. The spokesman stressed the UK has 'very resilient and robust' supply chains but the admission of challenges ahead is likely to spark fears of potential disruption. BP has said it will restrict deliveries of fuel because of a lack of HGV drivers, which has also impacted supermarkets and raised fears of food and even toy shortages over the Christmas period. The oil giant is understood to have informed the Government that its ability to transport petrol and diesel from its refineries is being heavily impacted by the supply chain crisis. BP's Head of UK Retail, Hanna Hofer, told the Cabinet Office last Thursday that it was important that the Government understood the 'urgency of the situation' which she branded 'bad, very bad'. Earlier, Mr Kwarteng insisted the industry and market will find the solution to the energy crisis. Responding to an urgent question from Labour, he said: 'The Government has been clear that protecting consumers is our primary focus and shapes our entire approach to this. 'We will continue to protect consumers with the energy price cap. 'The solution to this crisis will be found from the industry and the market, as is already happening, and the Government - I repeat - will not be bailing out failed energy companies.' Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said the Government had been 'far too complacent' about the gas crisis, after he made warnings earlier in the week. Mr Miliband said: 'He pretended on Monday and again today that it was normal for a number of suppliers to go down each winter, but what we are dealing with is far from normal - 800,000 customers losing their suppliers yesterday alone, 1.5 million in the last six weeks.' Kenya has banned a film about two gay lovers branding the movie an 'affront to culture and identity' and 'demeaning of Christianity'. Authorities on Thursday said the documentary was 'unacceptable and an affront to [the] culture and identity of the deeply Christian country which has long criminalised homosexuality. Directed by a Kenyan filmmaker, 'I Am Samuel' depicts a romantic relationship between two men living in Nairobi and has aroused the ire of the country's censors for promoting 'same-sex marriage as an acceptable way of life'. Kenya has banned film 'I am Samuel' about two gay lovers branding the movie an 'affront to culture and identity' and 'demeaning of Christianity' Directed by a Kenyan filmmaker, 'I Am Samuel' depicts a romantic relationship between two men living in Nairobi and has aroused the ire of the country's censors for promoting 'same-sex marriage as an acceptable way of life' (pictured, still from the film) The Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) said the documentary sought to propagate 'values that are in dissonance with our constitution, culture values and norms'. 'Worse still, the production is demeaning of Christianity as two gay men in the film purport to conduct a religious marriage invoking the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,' KFCB boss Christopher Wambua said in a statement, declaring it 'blasphemous'. 'Any attempt to exhibit, distribute, broadcast or possess the restricted film within the Republic of Kenya shall, therefore, be met with the full force of the law.' Homosexuality is taboo across much of Africa, and gays often face discrimination or persecution. Attempts to overturn British colonial-era laws banning homosexuality in Kenya have proven unsuccessful, and gay sex remains a punishable crime with penalties that include imprisonment of up to 14 years. The Kenya Film Classification Board (pictured) said the documentary sought to propagate 'values that are in dissonance with our constitution, culture values and norms' Authorities on Thursday said the documentary was 'unacceptable and an affront to [the] culture and identity of the deeply Christian country which has long criminalised homosexuality 'I Am Samuel' is the second gay-themed film to be banned in Kenya, following a 2018 decision to stop cinemas from showing 'Rafiki', a lesbian love story which became the first Kenyan movie to premiere at the Cannes film festival. The ban on 'Rafiki' ('friend' in Swahili) was later overturned by a court, and the film opened to sold-out audiences in Nairobi. 'I Am Samuel' director Peter Murimi told AFP in an interview last October that he did not expect the documentary to fare well with Kenyan censors. He described the film as 'very nuanced, it's very balanced, it's a story about a family that is struggling with this issue, having a gay son.' 'So we'll just try our best and hopefully Kenyans will see it and that's what we want,' he said. The documentary, which has been shown at several film festivals and is available to rent online, also enjoys support from 'Rafiki' director Wanuri Kahiu. 'We change people through conversation, not through censorship,' she tweeted in response to news of the ban, quoting hip-hop star Jay Z. Ted Cruz on Wednesday called on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive lawmakers to visit the 'Biden cages' housing migrants during the border crisis. 'Every Democrat who stood up and lamented kids in cages, in the House of Representatives, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, has a famous photo of her grasping her head by the kids in cages,' Cruz said from the Senate floor as he imitated the photo. 'Well, I'm going to give a simple challenge for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and for every Democrat in this body. Go see the Biden cages with your own eyes.' While campaigning in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez visited a city in West Teas that was housing migrant children under the Trump administration. During the trip, she was photographed standing near the fence looking visually distraught over the camps. One image showed the then-candidate with her hands over her face, another hugging someone who went on the trip with her. Senator Ted Cruz challenged progressive lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to visit the 'Biden cages' of migrants at the southern border amid the surging Haitian migration crisis In June 2018, while running for Congress, AOC visited a Texas town where migrants were being held under the Trump administration. Images of the trip (above) showed she was visibly distraught by the scene Now thousands of mostly Haitian migrant children are seen wading between the U.S. and Mexico as they seek asylum as Biden increases deportation efforts Cruz's comments Wednesday appear to challenge the congresswoman to have the same distraught reaction to the continuing migration crisis at the southern border specifically as an influx of mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment in Del Rio in the last few weeks. 'Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him,' Cruz said later in the Senate floor speech. 'Why does Kamala Harris, who's supposed to be the border czar she's supposed to be in charge of this why won't she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages.' 'And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say nothing to see here,' he added. '15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio nothing to see here.' 'Anyone want to know what Joe Biden's favorite ice cream flavor is? That's the news!' Cruz shouted. The Trump administration received a slew of criticism over its handling of the surge in border crossings specifically separating children from parents and guardians they crossed with. Here migrants cross the Rio Grande river on Thursday back to the U.S. from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico to a makeshift camp where they await processing as they seat asylum There was an outcry over images emerging of 'cages' or fenced-in areas in border facilities where migrants were being kept in close quarters. Similar images have emerged under Biden's presidency, but have been more ignored or less criticized by Democratic politicians. The 2018 images of Ocasio-Cortez were slammed as a 'staged' 'photo-op' as she vied to take down incumbent Democratic Representative Joe Crowley, who had just finished his 10th term and was running for reelection. AOC, which the congresswoman is commonly referred to as, said of the images: 'I'll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them.' White House STILL refuses to reveal how many Haitian migrants have been released into America despite Jen Psaki promising to do so yesterday... and 5,000 are missing from official tally The White House is still refusing to reveal how many Haitian migrants have come to the US despite promising to do so yesterday. Jen Psaki on Wednesday promised to release the figures after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to. However partial information released Thursday accounts for only 10,000 of the 15,000 that the DHS said earlier in the week had come to the southern border. When questioned Thursday about why she had failed to supply the information that she had promised, Psaki simply said 'I'm happy to get you a more fruitful rundown for you, if helpful, from the Department of Homeland Security'. The partial information shows that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. However, this means roughly 5,000 remain unaccounted for. Officials revealed two day ago that immigrants are being released on a very, very large scale rather than deported. The figures released Thursday do not account for how many were released into the US or how many were turned away at the border. It is also feared that the 3,206 in custody might not be deported and could also be released. Those 3,206 Haitian migrants have either been moved to custody under Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or to other sectors of the border to either be expelled or placed into removal proceedings. DHS could not be reached for comment. This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Thursday, Sept. 23 Migrant children play near a man in an encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge where migrants, many from Haiti, have been staying after crossing the Rio Grande, Thursday, Sept. 23 A migrant child runs with food he received from volunteers at the encampment on Thursday, Sept. 23 Members with the World Central Kitchen deliver meals to migrants in an encampment under the Del Rio International Bridge Mayorkas was at the Capitol Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back congressional hearings this time before a House committee. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here. Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked the secretary during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. A girl with Barbie dolls stuffed in her boots waits with others to cross the Rio Grande river with their parents as they stand on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday, Sept. 23 DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. At Psaki's daily press briefing on Wednesday, Doocy confronted her on the yet-to-be-released numbers after Mayorkas revealed during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the figures. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When the press secretary attempted to direct him back to DHS, Doocy replied, 'He says he doesn't know.' 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those I promise, this afternoon,' Psaki vowed. The numbers came the following morning. In a follow-up question Doocy asked if the issue is that the administration doesn't know or if they don't want to reveal figures because 'a lot more people are being released into the U.S. than are being sent out.' 'That is certainly not the issue,' Psaki said. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge as DHS launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added as it was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Migrants stand in line while awaiting transport out of a border makeshift camp along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 A photo from Wednesday shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released U.S. Border Patrol agents ride near a migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The administration used the Trump-era Title 42 policy as a shield, claiming migrants would be sent back to the Caribbean country, which is still reeling from a deadly earthquake and political instability following the assassination of its president. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, officials told DailyMail.com that thousands of Haitian migrants are being freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out on the deportation flights. Two US officials with knowledge of the situation in Del Rio - where a peak of around 14,600 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under a bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico - said thousands have been released into the US with notices to appear at an immigration court in 60 days' time under the so-called 'catch and release' scheme. Others have been sent on buses and planes to other parts of the US to be processed by Border Patrol agents there, they said. US special envoy for Haiti RESIGNS over 'inhumane decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees', warns crisis will 'only grow' and slams Biden for causing it The U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Daniel Foote wrote in his resignation letter, first shared by a PBS reporter on Twitter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed' and he blamed the Biden administration for the ongoing crisis with Haitian migrants. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' The resignation comes as the U.S. migration crisis surged in the past few weeks when up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised during her press briefing on Wednesday to share later in the day the exact number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. this year - including those part of the massive Haitian migration. When asked Wednesday evening when the figures would be made available after they were still not released, Psaki told DailyMail.com: 'As soon as it is available form [sic] DHS.' By Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at least 5,000 of these mostly Haitian migrants had been removed from Del Rio whether they were moved to other centers, deported back to their homeland or released into the U.S. He could not give exact figures during a congressional hearing on how many were released into the country. Deportation flights ensued on Sunday and continued through the week as planes full of Haitian migrants arrived back in the island capital city of Port-au-Prince. People are fleeing Haiti and seeking refuge in America after a devastating earthquake and the assassination of their president, which has thrown the country into even more chaos. Foote said that the deportation back to Haiti will only exacerbate the migration crisis at the southern border. 'The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will further desperation and crime,' the now-former special envoy wrote in his resignation letter of Haiti. 'Surging migration at our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti's unacceptable misery.' Foote only served in his post for two months after becoming the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti in July following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the role, Foote served as a member of President Joe Biden's delegation to Moise's funeral. Before taking on that role he previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti and as the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia under President Donald Trump. In November 2019, during his tenure in Zambia, Foote said he was 'horrified' after a judge in the very conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal sentence two men to 15 years in prison after they were caught having sex in 2017. He received pushback from Zambia's President Edgar Lungu for trying to dictate policy and declared him a persona non grata or an unacceptable or unwelcome person. Foote has served with the Department of State since 1998 and has held a litany of roles since then including in the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico; the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in Colombia; deputy chief of mission in both Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and charge d'affaires in the Dominican Republic. While many migrants were rounded up and returned to Haiti from the U.S. in the last few days, many began crossing back into Mexico from the border town of Del Rio to avoid deportation to Haiti. Images began emerging on Sunday of Border Patrol agents and officers on horseback rounding up migrants and preventing them from returning to the makeshift camp near the Del Rio bridge. Immediately, the images were slammed as 'inhumane' and 'horrific' after some accused the agents of using either the reins or a lariat as a whip on the migrants. Images show a rope-like tool being thrown in the direction of some migrants who were running from the officers. Agents insist they were not using any whips on migrants, while Mayorkas says those pictured with the ropes have been reassigned to administrative duties pending a full investigation into the incident. Reined in: White House BANS mounted Border Patrol agents over Haitian migrant 'whipping' controversy Jen Psaki revealed Thursday that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told civil rights leaders that his agency will not continue to allow agents to operate on horseback at the border in Del Rio. 'I can also convey to you that the secretary also conveyed to civil rights leaders earlier this morning that we would no longer be using horses in Del Rio,' Psaki said during her daily press briefing. 'So that is something a policy change that has been made in response.' 'We feel those images are horrible and horrific,' she reiterated from her comments in previous days. 'There is an investigation the president certainly supports overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which he has conveyed will happen quickly.' The images in question emerged earlier this week with Border Patrol agents on horseback apparently using either the horses' reins or other lariats as whips when chasing after the mostly Haitian migrants. Agents insist they were not using whips against the migrants, 15,000 of whom set up a makeshift camp underneath and around the Del Rio International Bridge over the last few weeks. They have reasoned that they were only using the reins on horses or to ward off immigrants but not to whip them. This didn't stop the overwhelming outcry from progressive politicians and civil rights leaders. Representative Maxine Waters said on Wednesday that the actions portrayed in the images were 'worse than slavery'. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that DHS will no longer allow the use of horses in Del Rio after outcry over images showing agents on horseback appearing to use whips on a crowd of migrants Civil Rights leaders and progressive politicians erupted after images emerged of Border Patrol agents lashing horse reins in the direction of migrants while ramping up deportation and deterrent efforts Fears have been raised that 5,000 Haitian migrants could have been released into the U.S. after DHS released figures Thursday showing they are processing only 10,000 of an estimated 15,000. The figures, which were finally released after days of requests from reporters, show that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remained in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said there were up to 15,000 immigrants but as of Tuesday, that number dropped to 10,000. U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday, claiming: 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti' The DHS has so far refused to clarify how many the remaining number have been released into the US and how many turned back at the border on their own. Officials revealed to DailyMail.com two day ago that immigrants are simply being released 'on a very, very large scale' rather than deported. It is also feared that the 3,206 in custody might not be deported and could also be released. Those 3,206 Haitian migrants have either been moved to custody under Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or to other sectors of the border to either be expelled or placed into removal proceedings. DHS could not immediately be reached for comment. The new numbers come as the U.S. special envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Foote wrote in his resignation letter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed'. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' A State Department spokesperson accused Foote of 'mischaracterizing the circumstances of his resignation' and said some of his ideas were deemed 'harmful.' '[A]ll proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process,' a statement from the spokesperson reads. 'Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process.' 'For him to to say that his proposals were ignored is simply false,' they added. The statement claims: 'It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation.' Psaki reiterated the sentiments from the statement during her Thursday briefing, saying: 'I'm not going to detail that further.' Foote blamed Biden for making things worse in Haiti by backing the 'unelected' leader after the coup, claiming that 'picking the winner' will produce 'catastrophic results'. 'Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his 'political agreement' over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society,' he wrote. Foote added: 'The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner again is impressive.' 'This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results,' he said. 'The negative impact to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.' This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Thursday, September 23 At Psaki's daily press briefing on Wednesday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy confronted her on the numbers, which had not yet been released, after Mayorkas revealed during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the figures. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When the press secretary attempted to direct him back to DHS, Doocy replied, 'He says he doesn't know.' 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those I promise, this afternoon,' Psaki vowed. In a follow-up question Doocy asked if the issue is that the administration doesn't know or if they don't want to reveal figures because 'a lot more people are being released into the U.S. than are being sent out.' 'That is certainly not the issue,' Psaki said. It is still not clear when those figures will actually become public. Mayorkas, meanwhile, was at the Capitol Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back congressional hearings this time before a House committee. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here. Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked the secretary during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. A girl with Barbie dolls stuffed in her boots waits with others to cross the Rio Grande river with their parents as they stand on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday, Sept. 23 DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge as DHS launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added as it was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Migrants stand in line while awaiting transport out of a border makeshift camp along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 A photo from Wednesday shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released U.S. Border Patrol agents ride near a migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The administration used the Trump-era Title 42 policy as a shield, claiming migrants would be sent back to the Caribbean country, which is still reeling from a deadly earthquake and political instability following the assassination of its president. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, officials told DailyMail.com that thousands of Haitian migrants are being freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out on the deportation flights. Two US officials with knowledge of the situation in Del Rio - where a peak of around 14,600 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under a bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico - said thousands have been released into the US with notices to appear at an immigration court in 60 days' time under the so-called 'catch and release' scheme. Others have been sent on buses and planes to other parts of the US to be processed by Border Patrol agents there, they said. A Tory MP has claimed that head teachers are facing 'abhorrent' levels of intimidation over school Covid jabs from protesters. Conservative frontbencher Alex Burghart, who was recently appointed an education minister in Boris Johnsons cabinet reshuffle, said that teachers should not face 'totally unacceptable' pressure from anti-vaccination protesters who are spreading 'outrageous' lies. He condemned the 'dreadful anti-vaccination protests' which have taken place outside schools after the Government announced it would widen the Covid-19 vaccination programme to all 12 to 15-year-olds in England. Mr Burghart also insisted that it is the Government's intention to keep schools open this winter saying that the cost of children missing out on school is 'extremely serious'. Consent letters are being sent out to parents with information on the Covid-19 vaccination, although parental consent will not be needed if the child is considered competent to make a decision by themselves. Tory MP Alex Burghart (pictured) said teachers should not face intimidation over Covid jabs for children and condemned anti-vaxx protesters outside schools, saying they are spreading 'outrageous' lies Speaking in the House of Commons, Conservative Bob Blackman (Harrow East) asked: 'What support is being given to schools, teachers and parents and young people to combat the anti-vaxxers, who obviously are misleading people on the benefits of ensuring the young people are vaccinated and therefore safe to be in school?' Mr Burghart replied: 'He raises an extremely important point. It is totally unacceptable that any teacher or head teacher is being placed under pressure in this way. 'The lies that have been spread by certain groups are outrageous. They have unquestionably made life uncomfortable for some people working in schools at this time.' Earlier, the minister said of the protests: 'These are totally unacceptable. The level of intimidation being put on schools and on teachers is abhorrent. 'I make absolutely clear to any head teachers and teachers watching, contrary to some of the things you have been told, legal liability does not rest with schools. 'It does not rest with schools at all. It rests with the health service and those providing vaccinations.' This comes after the Government announced Covid-19 jabs would be offered to all 12-15-year-olds in England and parental consent will not be needed. Pictured: A schoolboy, 13, from Newcastle recieves the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine He also said vaccinations in school were important to boosting attendance: 'Just last week this Government announced the rollout of vaccinations for all 12 to 15-years-olds. Our communications programme has promoted the importance of attendance and we continue to monitor the data closely.' Conservative MPs went on to press the Government to keep schools open. Robert Halfon, who chairs the Education Committee, said: 'Will my right honourable friend make sure that schools follow the Government guidance to the letter, don't send children home unless they have Covid, ring the headteachers himself, to make sure we keep our children learning?' Mr Burghart said: 'Absolutely, it's extremely important that schools follow departmental guidance. 'The message is clear, the best place for children is in schools and there are very clear criteria that tell us when children should be.' Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) said with 'the NEU, or the not education union as we should refer to them always, continually wanting to shut schools, and Labour being silent' could the minister confirm 'that no matter what happens this winter, schools are going to be kept open, kids will be learning face-to-face, and that way they will get and catch up exactly how they need to?' Earlier this week, anti-vaxxers including Piers Corbyn (left) targeted schools in London and Kent on Monday, handing out leaflets to scare pupils off getting the jab Mr Burghart said: 'It is absolutely the Government's intention to keep schools open. We are very clear schools are the right place for children. 'The cost of children not being in school is extremely serious. So yes, it's very much our hope that schools will be open from this point on.' Earlier this week, anti-vaxxers including Piers Corbyn were seen on camera targeting London pupils in an attempt to scare them off getting the jab while a separate mob picketed a school in Kent. The notorious conspiracy theorist and his allies were spotted on Monday screaming at pupils outside a school in Twickenham and trying to shove leaflets into their hands. In separate scenes, a group of protesters appeared outside Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School in Canterbury after the government announced it would begin rolling out Covid-19 vaccines to children aged 12 to 15. Guidance has been issued for head teachers to contact police if they believe protests could take place as the programme will largely be delivered through schools. In separate scenes, a group of protesters appeared twice outside Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School in Canterbury after the government announced it would begin rolling out Covid-19 vaccines to children aged 12 to 15 (pictured) The protesters had already shown up outside the school gates earlier this month when they were seen handing out literature to pupils. Two days later, the Abbey School in Faversham was targeted, with police being called after a woman was reportedly assaulted. They have now returned to Langton Girls', displaying placards from the opposite side of the road for students to read as they arrived. After the initial protest, the school's head teacher Paul Pollard circulated a letter to parents accusing the group of engaging in 'propaganda that has much in common with familiar far-right tropes'. It read: 'Following the recent events outside the school, where an anti-vaccination group staged a short protest, and with this announcement raising the possibility that this could happen again, I would like to ensure total clarity around this situation and the difference between the protest made and reasoned debate. 'The group that protested outside of the school were not engaged in a science-led debate on the decision of whether or not to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds. 'Instead, they were engaged in conspiracy theories, disinformation and various other propaganda that has much in common with familiar far-right tropes. 'Whilst their protest outside school was peaceful, and very few students accepted leaflets, groups of this nature are working to spread fear and misinformation, not engage in discussion or debate.' Advertisement Jen Psaki revealed Thursday that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told civil rights leaders that his agency will not continue to allow agents to operate on horseback at the border in Del Rio. 'I can also convey to you that the secretary also conveyed to civil rights leaders earlier this morning that we would no longer be using horses in Del Rio,' Psaki said during her daily press briefing. 'So that is something a policy change that has been made in response.' 'We feel those images are horrible and horrific,' she reiterated from her comments in previous days. 'There is an investigation the president certainly supports overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which he has conveyed will happen quickly.' The images in question emerged earlier this week with Border Patrol agents on horseback allegedly using either the horses' reins or other lariats as whips when chasing after the mostly Haitian migrants. Agents insist they were not using whips against the migrants, 15,000 of whom set up a makeshift camp underneath and around the Del Rio International Bridge over the last few weeks. They have reasoned that they were only using the reins on horses or to ward off immigrants but not to whip them. This didn't stop the overwhelming outcry from progressive politicians and civil rights leaders. Representative Maxine Waters said on Wednesday that the actions portrayed in the images were 'worse than slavery'. The White House is still refusing to reveal how many Haitian migrants have come to the US despite promising to do so yesterday. Jen Psaki on Wednesday promised to release the figures after DHS failed to. However partial information released Thursday accounts for only 10,000 of the 15,000 that the DHS said earlier in the week had come to the southern border. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that DHS will no longer allow the use of horses in Del Rio after outcry over images showing agents on horseback appearing to use whips on a crowd of migrants Civil Rights leaders and progressive politicians erupted after images emerged of Border Patrol agents lashing horse reins in the direction of migrants while ramping up deportation and deterrent efforts When questioned Thursday about why she had failed to supply the information that she had promised, Psaki simply said 'I'm happy to get you a more fruitful rundown for you, if helpful, from the Department of Homeland Security'. The partial information shows that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. This means roughly 5,000 migrants remain unaccounted for. U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday, claiming: 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti' The DHS has so far refused to clarify how many the remaining number have been released into the US and how many turned back at the border on their own. Officials revealed to DailyMail.com two day ago that immigrants are simply being released 'on a very, very large scale' rather than deported. It is also feared that the 3,206 in custody might not be deported and could also be released. Those 3,206 Haitian migrants have either been moved to custody under Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or to other sectors of the border to either be expelled or placed into removal proceedings. DHS could not immediately be reached for comment. The new numbers come as the U.S. special envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Foote wrote in his resignation letter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed'. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' A State Department spokesperson accused Foote of 'mischaracterizing the circumstances of his resignation' and said some of his ideas were deemed 'harmful.' '[A]ll proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process,' a statement from the spokesperson reads. 'Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process.' 'For him to to say that his proposals were ignored is simply false,' they added. The statement claims: 'It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation.' Psaki reiterated the sentiments from the statement during her Thursday briefing, saying: 'I'm not going to detail that further.' Foote blamed Biden for making things worse in Haiti by backing the 'unelected' leader after the coup, claiming that 'picking the winner' will produce 'catastrophic results'. 'Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his 'political agreement' over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society,' he wrote. Foote added: 'The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner again is impressive.' 'This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results,' he said. 'The negative impact to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.' This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. Migrants, many from Haiti, are seen in an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge near the Rio Grande, Thursday, September 23 At Psaki's daily press briefing on Wednesday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy confronted her on the numbers, which had not yet been released, after Mayorkas revealed during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the figures. 'So who else can we ask?' Doocy asked. When the press secretary attempted to direct him back to DHS, Doocy replied, 'He says he doesn't know.' 'I am confident that he wanted to have the most up-to-date numbers and we will venture to get you those I promise, this afternoon,' Psaki vowed. In a follow-up question Doocy asked if the issue is that the administration doesn't know or if they don't want to reveal figures because 'a lot more people are being released into the U.S. than are being sent out.' 'That is certainly not the issue,' Psaki said. It is still not clear when those figures will actually become public. Mayorkas, meanwhile, was at the Capitol Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back congressional hearings this time before a House committee. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. 'I want some numbers here. Of the 1.3 million people that we've apprehended, how many people have been returned? How many people are being detained? How many people have been dispersed to all points around America?' Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked the secretary during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. A girl with Barbie dolls stuffed in her boots waits with others to cross the Rio Grande river with their parents as they stand on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, at dawn Thursday, Sept. 23 DHS Secretary Mayorkas was grilled by lawmakers in back-to-back congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday 'Senator, I would be pleased to provide you with that data ' Mayorkas said before he was cut off. 'I want them now,' Johnson demanded. 'Why don't you have that information now?' 'Senator, I do not have that data before me,' Mayorkas replied. 'Why not? Why don't you have that basic information?' the senator asked. 'Senator, I want to be accurate,' Mayorkas said. The secretary revealed Tuesday that around 5,000 migrants have been removed from the encampment surrounding the Del Rio International Bridge as DHS launches a probe into agents on horseback using what appeared to be whips against the mostly Haitian migrants. 'How many migrants have crossed into the United States in Del Rio over the past week?' Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Mayorkas. 'So last week, I think the high point was 13,000-15,000 it is now well below 10,000. We continue to move individuals from Del Rio to other processing centers to facilitate their repatriation,' the DHS secretary responded. 'We have increased the number of repatriation flights to Haiti and to other countries,' Mayorkas added as it was revealed this week DHS is aiming to send out several deportation flights per day. Migrants stand in line while awaiting transport out of a border makeshift camp along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 A photo from Wednesday shows migrants being routed out of a makeshift border camp after being processed by US officials. The White House has pledged to deport most of the migrants back to Haiti under Title 42, but reports indicate that's not the case for some being released U.S. Border Patrol agents ride near a migrant camp in Del Rio, Texas on September 22 Mayorkas also refused to say whether he felt he and the Biden administration bear any responsibility for the influx of Haitian migrants over the last few weeks or the broader border crisis in general. The DHS chief visited the border after increasing pressure to do so as images of mostly Haitian migrants in a tent city under the Del Rio bridge spurred accusations the Biden administration was enabling a humanitarian crisis. The administration used the Trump-era Title 42 policy as a shield, claiming migrants would be sent back to the Caribbean country, which is still reeling from a deadly earthquake and political instability following the assassination of its president. Under Title 42, migrants can be repatriated to their home nations without the possibility of requesting asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, officials told DailyMail.com that thousands of Haitian migrants are being freed into the US on a 'very, very large scale' rather than being flown out on the deportation flights. Two US officials with knowledge of the situation in Del Rio - where a peak of around 14,600 mostly Haitian migrants were camped out under a bridge at the weekend after crossing into the US from Mexico - said thousands have been released into the US with notices to appear at an immigration court in 60 days' time under the so-called 'catch and release' scheme. Others have been sent on buses and planes to other parts of the US to be processed by Border Patrol agents there, they said. US special envoy for Haiti RESIGNS over 'inhumane decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees', warns crisis will 'only grow' and slams Biden for causing it The U.S. special envoy for Haiti resigned on Wednesday because he didn't want to be involved with the 'inhumane' deportation of Haitian migrants. 'I will not be associated with the United States [sic] inhumane, counterproductive, decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,' Ambassador Daniel Foote wrote in his resignation letter, first shared by a PBS reporter on Twitter. In the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foote said another reason for his resignation is that his recommendations to help Haiti have been 'ignored and dismissed' and he blamed the Biden administration for the ongoing crisis with Haitian migrants. 'Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,' Foote continued in his letter, 'and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.' The resignation comes as the U.S. migration crisis surged in the past few weeks when up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants set up an encampment near the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki promised during her press briefing on Wednesday to share later in the day the exact number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. this year - including those part of the massive Haitian migration. When asked Wednesday evening when the figures would be made available after they were still not released, Psaki told DailyMail.com: 'As soon as it is available form [sic] DHS.' By Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at least 5,000 of these mostly Haitian migrants had been removed from Del Rio whether they were moved to other centers, deported back to their homeland or released into the U.S. He could not give exact figures during a congressional hearing on how many were released into the country. Deportation flights ensued on Sunday and continued through the week as planes full of Haitian migrants arrived back in the island capital city of Port-au-Prince. People are fleeing Haiti and seeking refuge in America after a devastating earthquake and the assassination of their president, which has thrown the country into even more chaos. Foote said that the deportation back to Haiti will only exacerbate the migration crisis at the southern border. 'The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will further desperation and crime,' the now-former special envoy wrote in his resignation letter of Haiti. 'Surging migration at our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti's unacceptable misery.' Foote only served in his post for two months after becoming the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti in July following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In the role, Foote served as a member of President Joe Biden's delegation to Moise's funeral. Before taking on that role he previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Haiti and as the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia under President Donald Trump. In November 2019, during his tenure in Zambia, Foote said he was 'horrified' after a judge in the very conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal sentence two men to 15 years in prison after they were caught having sex in 2017. He received pushback from Zambia's President Edgar Lungu for trying to dictate policy and declared him a persona non grata or an unacceptable or unwelcome person. Foote has served with the Department of State since 1998 and has held a litany of roles since then including in the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico; the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in Colombia; deputy chief of mission in both Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and charge d'affaires in the Dominican Republic. While many migrants were rounded up and returned to Haiti from the U.S. in the last few days, many began crossing back into Mexico from the border town of Del Rio to avoid deportation to Haiti. Images began emerging on Sunday of Border Patrol agents and officers on horseback rounding up migrants and preventing them from returning to the makeshift camp near the Del Rio bridge. Immediately, the images were slammed as 'inhumane' and 'horrific' after some accused the agents of using either the reins or a lariat as a whip on the migrants. Images show a rope-like tool being thrown in the direction of some migrants who were running from the officers. Agents insist they were not using any whips on migrants, while Mayorkas says those pictured with the ropes have been reassigned to administrative duties pending a full investigation into the incident. EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of Haitian migrants who flocked to Del Rio were already working and living comfortably as refugees in CHILE and only set off for the US after Biden scrapped Trump-era deportation policy The secret behind the Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio, Texas is that they didn't migrate from Haiti at all but from Chile, where they had been granted asylum and were working and living comfortably as refugees. The dozens of Chilean identity cards that litter the ground in Ciudad Acuna, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, all bear distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. But they haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. These have mainly come from Santiago, the glittering capital of relatively prosperous Chile. Many had jobs there. 'As one put it to me, 'I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti,' migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' The majority of the Haitian migrants have come from Chile - the wealthiest country in Latin America - and Brazil - the fifth wealthiest - where they have been living in modest comfort in Santiago and Sao Paulo for the past five or six years. There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence 'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' But his grandfather allegedly kidnapped him and took him back to Israel He was living with his paternal aunt Aya Biran-Nirko in Pavia in northern Italy His mother, father, younger brother and great-grandparents all lost their lives The six-year-old survivor of a cable car crash that killed 14 people including his parents and brother is set to remain in Israel during a bitter custody battle over him. Eitan Biran miraculously survived the accident in the northern Italian region of Piedmont on May 23. After he was discharged from hospital in the city of Turin, the Italian authorities ruled that he was to live with his paternal aunt, Israeli-born doctor Aya Biran-Nirko, close to the city of Pavia. In their decision, the authorities cited the fact that he had been living with his immediate family in Italy prior to the accident taking place. A Tel Aviv court has decided that Eitan Biran, six, the sole survivor cable car crash that killed 14 people including his parents and brother is set to remain in Israel during a bitter custody battle over him Fourteen people, including Eitan Biran's Israeli parents, younger brother and great-grandparents, were killed in the accident in Italy's northwestern Piedmont region in May. After the accident, Eitan had been airlifted to hospital in critical condition But Eitan's maternal grandfather Shmulik Peleg allegedly took him to Israel two weeks ago on a private jet after taking him out on an agreed day visit and failing to return. The ongoing legal battle involves not only Biran-Nirko and Peleg but also Biran's Israel-based maternal aunt, Gali Peleg, who is also seeking custody of the youngster. In the latest hearing, the court in Tel Aviv decided that Biran was to remain in Israel during proceedings and he would be looked after by both sides of his family during that time. Biran-Nirko has travelled to Israel for the court case, and both she and Peleg will care for the boy alternately during the weeks-long process. Eitan's maternal grandfather Shmulik Peleg (pictured at court today) allegedly took him to Israel two weeks ago on a private jet after taking him out on an agreed day visit and failing to return After Eitan was discharged from hospital in the city of Turin, the Italian authorities had ruled he would live with his paternal aunt, Israeli-born doctor Aya Biran-Nirko (pictured), close to the city of Pavia Peleg had denied abducting his grandson, claiming that he drove him to Switzerland and then boarded a flight with him to Israel 'in a totally legal way'. However, the Israeli authorities subsequently placed him under house arrest and he was questioned by the police on suspicion of kidnapping. The Italian authorities also opened their own investigation into the actions of Peleg, who has a criminal record for domestic violence. Biran-Nirko hopes the fact that her nephew's mother tongue is Italian and that his medical and psychological rehabilitation took place in Italy will help her case. However, the boy's maternal relatives hope the fact that the family was planning on returning to Israel will convince the court not to order the boy's return to Italy. The legal case continues. A mother told by doctors she was 'too young' to have breast cancer has died of the illness just weeks after her wedding day. Sinead Richards, 31, was the picture of happiness when she tied the knot with her partner of 12 years Liam McDonagh on August 19. But the mother-of-two passed away just 22 days later on September 10, a year after tests revealed she had stage four breast cancer, which had spread over her body. The pastoral mentor, from Stanningley in West Yorkshire, found a lump in her breast in late 2019, then aged 29, and went to see her GP in early 2020. It is unclear whether this was before or after the first lockdown. But her heartbroken husband claimed the doctors said it could not be breast cancer because she was 'too young'. Medics reportedly carried out tests but her disease was not spotted. Mr McDonagh, 33, encouraged her to return, at an unspecified time, and tests then revealed she had stage four incurable breast cancer. Just one in four women survive for more than five years after they are diagnosed with the illness, which means the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, such as the bones, lungs, liver or brain. Sinead Richards. who died on September 10 from stage four breast cancer, pictured on her wedding day with her husband Liam McDonagh and their daughters Paige, seven, and Georgie, 10 Ms Richard's heartbroken husband Liam McDonagh claimed doctors said she was 'too young' to have breast cancer after she discovered a lump Ms Richards initially put off visiting the doctors for two months as she did not think it would be cancer. But after being diagnosed, she faced an 18-month battle against the cancer and spent the final weeks of her life in hospital in Leeds. Ms Richards died on September 10, less than a month after their wedding, leaving behind her husband and their two daughters, Paige, seven, and Georgie, 10. A funeral will take place in Leeds on October 7. Now Mr McDonagh, a builder, has urged other women to get tested despite their age. Speaking about their wedding day, he said: 'Everyone was smiling all day. She was very unwell but it really showed what she was like, she battled to get there and put on a brave face. 'It was mind over matter. She got herself there and that is all she wanted. 'It has had a huge impact on our lives. She was amazing, she was such a lovely person. 'Nobody she ever met had a bad word to say about her, everyone loved her. It is just so tragic. Ms Richards initially put off visiting the doctors for two months as she did not think it would be cancer Mr McDonagh said: 'If her story helps even one more person to get checked, this will have all been worthwhile. She was the most amazing person' 'When we were in the hospital, people would give us a second glance as they couldn't believe how young we were. She was only 31, we couldn't believe it.' He added: 'If her story helps even one more person to get checked, this will have all been worthwhile. She was the most amazing person. 'I just want to show that this can happen to anyone and urge people to get checked if they ever notice anything.' A fundraiser has been launched on GoFundMe to support the family and help with costs of a funeral which will take place on October 7. A day at a local pub and a canal ride from Leeds to Liverpool have been organised in the fundraising drive and more than 3,000 has been raised so far. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK and nearly all women survive for five years or more (98 per cent) if it is caught in stage one. But if it is not caught early enough and develops to stage four, just 25 per cent will survive for more than five years after they are diagnosed. Once it reaches stage four, the cancer is no longer curable, but can be controlled with treatment, such as hormone therapy or chemotherapy. Taliban thugs in Afghanistan are hunting for a priceless collection of gold artefacts dating back over 2,000 years. The treasure known as the Bactrian Treasure is one of the largest collections of gold in the world and represents the history and culture of the Ancient Silk Road. But during the Talibans takeover of the country following US and UK troop withdrawals at the end of August, it disappeared. Now in a chilling message Ahmadullah Wasiq deputy head of the Talibans Cultural Commission said efforts had begun to track and locate the 20,000 priceless pieces. Wasiq told Tolo News: The issue is under investigation, and we will collect information to know what the reality is. The government of Afghanistan will take serious actions if this and other ancient items are moved out of the country. Excavated more than four decades ago from the graves of six wealthy nomads in the Tela Tapa area of the Sherberghan district in northern Afghanistan, the Bactrian Treasury is recognised as one of the biggest collections of gold in the world. Composed of 21,145 pieces, it includes gold cupids, dolphins, gods and dragons encrusted with semiprecious stones such as turquoise, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. The treasure known as the Bactrian Treasure is one of the largest collections of gold in the world It also contains golden rings, coins, weapons, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, weapons, and crowns. Unearthed between 1978 and 1979 by Soviet and Afghan archaeologists, the six tombs of five women and one man were discovered on what was a vital trade route in the ancient Greco-Bactarian Kingdom that formed around 300 B.C. during Alexander the Greats rule. One of the tombs contained a young woman in her thirties who was described as a nomadic princess by the leader of the dig. Inside the tomb were Roman coins from the first century A.D., daggers with Siberian bears on them, an Indian medallion with an early depiction of Buddha, intricate golden belts, and a 5-inch tall gold leaf crown. Other treasures uncovered dated back to the Kushan empire which was formed by the Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, they destroyed many historical artefacts including two massive sixth-century statues known as the Buddhas of Bamiyan carved into a cliff. After the arrival of British and US forces following the 9/11 attacks, the Bactrian treasure was taken out of hiding and has since been displayed in 13 countries bringing in over 3 million to the Afghan treasury. But on the day Kabul fell last month to the marauding Taliban forces, the countrys National Museum posted a message on social media appealing to influential parties to help prevent looting if the chaotic situation deteriorated further. The director told National Geographic: We have great concerns for the safety of our staff and collections. Now, the Bactrian Treasury has disappeared from the museum. The Talibans Wasiq said that any contract that has been signed with the international community over the protection of ancient and historical monuments will remain in place. Officials also approved the lyrics which were written by the novelty group A foul-mouthed rap band was paid 7,000 of taxpayers money to write a song encouraging fans to get the Covid vaccine. The Labour-run Welsh Government handed out for 'cash for rap' to members of Goldie Lookin Chain - best known for songs like Guns Don't Kill People (Rappers Do) and Your Mother's got a Penis. The Newport-based hip-hop rappers released their new single called 'Get The Jab Done' last month after getting the public cash. And it has been revealed that Government officials approved the lyrics written by the comedy rappers also know for their album 'Safe as F***'. An FOI request has revealed the Welsh Government paid 7,000 of taxpayers money to rap group Goldie Lookin Chain to write a song encouraging fans to get the Covid vaccine The band said they wrote it after being fully vaccinated by the Welsh NHS and were 'keen to highlight how getting the life-saving jab is easy and safe.' The music video was filmed in a number of locations, including the Welsh Government's press room in the centre of Cardiff. A Freedom of Information request show the Welsh government spent a total of 31,789 on what it described as 'partnership activity' with the band. Around 7,000 went to the rappers themselves to cover script writing, performance, filming, social media publication, media interviews and the right to use the videos on government channels. The tracksuit-clad rappers' music video was filmed in a number of locations, including the Welsh Government's press room in the centre of Cardiff In the FOI response, it said the aim of the song was to reach people who don't normally engage with mass media or government campaigns to encourage them to get vaccinated. Although the government said it had final approval on the song's lyrics, the words were written by band members themselves. In a statement given in the FOI response, the Welsh Government said: 'Vaccination is considered one of the key ways to protect yourself and others against Covid and is a key message of the Keep Wales Safe campaign. 'As part of the campaign, the Welsh Government uses a number of methods to reach people in Wales who do not usually engage with mass media or government campaigns. Do it! 'Get both jabs if you haven't already, the people down at the centres are well nice and it's free too! And then come see us on tour, clarts!' said the band 'This includes the use of paid-for influencer and partnership activity. The individuals included in this work are not health professionals, but are listened to by the relevant audience group we are trying to target. 'When we work with influencers or partners, such as Goldie Lookin' Chain, the Welsh Government provide the key messages that we want to communicate. 'The influencer or partner will then develop their content, in this case, a song, to include those messages but in their own style and voice. 'That way, it is authentic and speaks to their usual audience and followers.' The government said the money covered an advertorial article, digital display ads, Facebook campaign, pre-roll video ads, and programmatic display ads. A Welsh Government spokesperson said: 'Wales has one of the best vaccination rates in the world and we are doing everything we can to ensure everyone understands the importance of vaccination in our fight against Covid19.' Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Thursday announced a deal to pay for President Joe Biden's ambitious social agenda but didn't offer any details about the agreement. The two leaders portrayed it as a step forward for Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan that includes funds for free pre-K and community college, expanded paid and family medical leave, and programs to fight climate change. 'We know that we can cover the proposals that the president has put forth,' Pelosi said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin joined the Democratic leaders at the press conference, where Pelosi pressured Republicans to join them in voting to extend the debt ceiling. The U.S. government has never defaulted on its debt. The speaker said was is 'quite appalling' that House Republicans voted against short-term funding bill that averted government shutdown and lifted the debt ceiling earlier this week. 'When Republican presidents were there, we always had bipartisan support for that,' she noted. 'It's always been bipartisan and that's how we want to keep it.' She also got in a dig at former President Donald Trump, whom she blamed for raising the nation's debt under his presidency: 'The former president is famous for not paying his bills,' she noted. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced a deal to pay for President Joe Biden's ambitious social agenda but didn't offer any details about the agreement Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin (center) joined Schumer and Pelosi at their press conference as the speaker pressured Republicans to help raise the debt ceiling But when it came to the details of a deal on Biden's social agenda, neither Pelosi nor Schumer offered specifics or the overall price tag as the two wings of the Democratic Party quibble over those matters. 'The revenue side we have an agreement on,' Schumer said, ignoring questions about what is in the details, calling the it a 'framework' of an agreement. Moderates and progressives in the Democratic Party have been bickering about the $3.5 trillion price tag. Some moderates, including Senator Joe Manchin, have made it clear they will not vote for that large of a package. But progressives want to stick to that number and threatened to derail Biden's infrastructure bill if they don't get their way. Pelosi, Schumer and Biden are working to bring the two sides together. 'The House, the Senate and the White House came to an agreement on how we can go forward in a way to pay for this,' Pelosi said. 'This is not about a price tag. It's about what's in the bill.' White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the framework 'a menu and a range of options' and said it represented progress. She also offered no details of what was in it. 'The next step is to have a discussion with a range of members about the path forward,' she said. The party has been divided over the final size and what items will be in the final package, and there has been no public word that agreements have been reached on any of those crucial questions. Republicans are solidly opposed to the package, and Democrats will be able to push it through Congress only if they limit their defections to three House members and none in the Senate. The statements by Schumer and Pelosi left unclear whether administration and congressional bargainers had made decisions actually paring down their options for financing the bill, or were simply working off a broad menu of options that had already existed. Also unclear was whether the 'framework' was a step toward resolving the myriad disputes between rank-and-file party moderates and progressives that have slowed work on the legislation, and there was no initial public indication that it had. Underscoring the questions that the leaders' announced 'framework' raised, other top Democrats expressed ignorance about it. Asked whether he expected to have the revenue outline shared with him soon, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders told reporters, 'If there is a framework, yes.' Sanders has been in the middle of talks on Democrats fiscal plans all year. 'Weve been through this a million times, so there are many, many approaches as to how you can raise money in a fair and progressive way, and raise at least three and a half trillion dollars. If thats what the menu is, then nothing particularly new, I think,' Sanders said. The leaders' comments also came with the House planning to begin considering a separate $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects on Monday. Pelosi has agreed to that schedule to assuage party moderates who badly want that legislation passed but are leery of supporting the larger $3.5 trillion measure. Progressives are threatening to defeat the smaller public works measure, and it is unclear whether Democrats can push it through the closely divided House. To win over progressives and make sure both bills can pass, Democratic leaders are trying to reach agreement on a final version of the huge social and environment bill that moderates would support. That bill incorporates much of Bidens domestic agenda. It includes a sweeping overhaul of federal taxes and spending to make what the president views as overdue investments in health care, family services and efforts to fight climate change. The measure would impose tax hikes on corporations and wealthy Americans earning beyond $400,000 a year and plow that money back into federal programs for young and old, along with investments to tackle climate change. Biden, however, has indicated he's open to negotiating the final top line number when he pleaded with Manchin to give him a figure as the president tried to get Democrats in line on his ambitious social agenda and infrastructure plan. He told the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia to name his price during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday. 'Please, just work on it. Give me a number, and tell me what you can live with and what you can't,' Manchin said at the Capitol after the sit down, describing his conversation with the president. 'He just basically said find a number you're comfortable with,' he noted. President Joe Biden told moderate Senator Joe Manchin (above) to name his price on the budget deal as he tries to break up party infighting President Joe Biden called in groups of Democratic lawmakers to the White House on Wednesday, holding lengthy but separate meetings with leadership, moderates and progressives Biden called in groups of Democratic lawmakers to the White House on Wednesday, holding lengthy but separate meetings with leadership, moderates and progressives as he tried to get all sides to stop fighting and come to a deal. In total, Biden held five hours of meetings with 23 lawmakers. 'Everybody had a chance to say their piece, and there was a lot of pieces said,' said Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. Meanwhile, the House and Senate remained at a standstill over a separate package to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 fiscal year-end and to suspend the federal debt limit to avert a shutdown and a devastating U.S. default on payments. Senate Republicans are refusing to back the House-passed bill. The Democratic-led House passed the funding-and-debt measure Tuesday night, but Republicans are refusing to give their support in the Senate, despite the risk of triggering a fiscal crisis. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said since Democrats control the White House and Congress, its their problem to find the votes - though he had relied on bipartisan cooperation to approve debt limit measures when Republicans were in charge. But in the 50-50 Senate, Democrats will be hard-pressed to find 10 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. Other options to try to pass the debt ceiling package could be procedurally difficult. The number of migrants detained by Border Force crossing the Channel by small boats has now reached 16,299 this year - nearly double the number who arrived in the whole of 2020. It comes after 459 people in 14 separate incidents arrived on Wednesday, according to the Home Office, making September the busiest month on record. Official Home Office statistics show 3,872 have arrived in 113 incidents so far this month - breaking the 3,509 who made the dangerous journey in 117 boats in July. In 2020 there were a total of 8,410 were detained in small boat incidents. Pictured: A graph showing the number of migrants crossing the Channel on small boats since 2019. The figure has increased each year and reached 16,299 so far in 2021 Around 80 arrived so far today in Dover Marina, Kent with a Border Force catamaran Hurricane docking yesterday at around 9.30am with 50 people on board Official Home Office statistics show 3,872 have arrived in 113 incidents so far this month - breaking the 3,509 who made the dangerous journey in 117 boats in July - and with 16,299 detained by Border Force officials already this year MIGRANT CROSSINGS: HIGHEST SINGLE-DAY CROSSINGS IN THE LAST TWO YEARS At least 495 migrants crossed to the UK on small boats on Wednesday bringing the year's total to 16,299. Here's a list of the highest recorded single-day crossings in the last two years: 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 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. August 21, 2021: 828 people reach the UK The number of arrivals hits a new record, as President Emmanuel Macron warns there was a risk a wave of migrants would sweep towards Europe due to the turmoil in Afghanistan. September 6, 2021: 1,000 people reach the UK The new record was based on sightings from witnesses and reported by Sky News. September 23, 2021: 495 people reach the UK At least 495 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on Wednesday in 14 separate incidents. The arrivals made September the busiest month of the year for crossings and pushed 2021's total to 16,299 - more than double the number in the whole of 2020. Advertisement Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said on Wednesday: 'The Government is determined to tackle the unacceptable rise in dangerous Channel crossings using every tool at our disposal, at every stage in the journey. 'Working with police and international partners there have been nearly 300 arrests, 65 convictions related to small boat criminality and our targeted efforts have prevented more than 12,000 migrant attempts. But this is a complicated issue requiring changes to our laws. 'The government's New Plan for Immigration provides the only long term solution to fix the broken system and deliver the change required to tackle criminal gangs and prevent further loss of life.' On Wednesday Border Force catamaran Hurricane docked around 9.30am with about 50 people on board. The first family to disembark consisted of a woman carrying possessions in a clear plastic bag, a man wearing a woolly hat and three young boys wrapped up in winter coats. They were followed up the gangway for processing by a little girl aged around seven with two women and a man all wearing orange lifejackets. A further five women were also on board alongside the remaining Middle Eastern men. The RNLI Dover Lifeboat docked around 11am with around 30 migrants on board - including a man with his long hair tied in a bun wearing a bright blue jacket, sunglasses and a shoulder bag. A little boy wearing a stripy beanie hat was followed by his mum, who was one of around a dozen women in the group. Onlookers monitoring activity in the Channel off the Kent coast predict it will be a busy day of crossings with people smugglers taking advantage of warm weather and calm seas. Another 30 landed on a lifeboat at Dungeness. It comes after UK authorities had to rescue or intercept 134 migrants in 5 boats on Tuesday. And the French intercepted at least 60 people from 3 events, according to the Home Office. The Home Office's top mandarin yesterday admitted Priti Patel's 'pushback' tactics for Channel migrants will only be used on a 'small proportion' of boats. During tetchy clashes with MPs, Matthew Rycroft dodged saying when the policy would be put in place, or even categorically that it will be. However, he insisted there was a 'legal base' for the manoeuvre to be carried out in 'certain limited circumstances'. France previously responded with fury after Priti Patel ordered the tactic to be developed amid mounting alarm at the numbers attempting the Channel crossing. Experts also questioned how it could be used without either sinking the unstable boats and risking passengers dying, or breaking maritime law. Giving evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mr Rycroft said Border Force officers had been 'preparing and trialling' the 'new maritime tactic'. However, he confirmed it had 'not been deployed yet' and this would only happen when 'all of the circumstances are in place to allow them to be deployed in a safe and legal way'. Asked roughly what proportion of the crossings in the past six months would have met the circumstances to legally push back boats, he said a 'small proportion', later conceding it would be nearer 1 per cent than 49 per cent but adding: 'I'm not going to give a number I'm not going to go further down that ' Arrivals today could also take the record-breaking total for the year to more than 16,000. The tally currently stands at 15,840 Onlookers monitoring activity in the Channel off the Kent coast predict it will be a busy day of crossings with people smugglers taking advantage of warm weather and calm seas Pressing Mr Rycroft repeatedly on the subject, Tory MP Tim Loughton said the committee needed to establish whether the tactic would make a 'meaningful difference' and was 'actually going to happen'. Mr Rycroft said he could not give a 'yes or no' answer when asked if the tactic would be deployed 'next week, month, year or ever', adding: 'When we see them will depend on lots of different factors.' He explained it was 'hard to give a definitive answer' as it involves Border Force commanders making 'judgments in the moment' based on a number of factors, including the type of boat being used and the weather. Mr Loughton suggested the boats may have made it to shore by the time this process is carried out, adding: 'Realistically, this isn't going to work'. 'I totally disagree with that assessment,' Mr Rycroft replied, adding that he did not want to provide detail on operations publicly so as not to give people smugglers arranging the boat crossings an advantage on tactics. The Home Office's most senior official also hit back at suggestions that plans under the Nationality and Borders Bill to send migrants who arrive in the country illegally to jail for four years would go against the Refugee Convention and could risk criminalising Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover. The Home Office's most senior official also hit back at suggestions that plans under the Nationality and Borders Bill to send migrants who arrive in the country illegally to jail for four years would go against the Refugee Convention and could risk criminalising Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover. Nick Robinson's political differences with Boris Johnson go back to Oxford University in the 1980s (pictured together at the Oxford Union) when the BBC broadcaster was tipped to be prime minister and was said to consider the current incumbent too left-wing to be a Tory. It came as the BBC decided not to admonish Mr Robinson after he ordered Mr Johnson to 'stop talking' live on air yesterday. Sources at the Corporation have said the 300,000-a-year presenter has not been rebuked by bosses as Radio 4 declined to comment on the incendiary interview that has upset No 10 and Conservative MPs. It is not the first time the men have clashed with Robinson recently comparing him to a 'dictator' and accused him avoiding the scrutiny of journalists. Boris and Nick first met at Oxford University when Mr Robinson was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association and was nicknamed 'Blue Robbo' because of his staunch support for the Tories then led by Margaret Thatcher. He didn't think Boris was a Conservative at all because he appeared too liberal, those who knew them both at university in the 1980s have said, assuming instead that he was a supporter of the SDP/Liberal Alliance at the time, according to The Spectator. Neil Sherlock, who beat the young Johnson to become Oxford Union president in 1984, said recently: 'I always thought at university that Nick Robinson would be the big political star and that Boris Johnson would be a journalist. When I left Oxford, that's what I thought would happen'. He added: 'In 1984-85, if you told me that Boris Johnson was going to be prime minister, I would have been very surprised. If you'd asked me then, I would have said Nick Robinson'. Google violated a conservative engineer's First Amendment rights after one of its executives publicly silenced his criticism of the tech giant, newly-released documents reveal. According to the documents, which were obtained by Business Insider, Urs Holzle - who fired engineer Kevin Cernekee in 2018 - told the employee that his behaviors were 'entirely inappropriate' and then refused to interact with him. Cernekee, who fought with Holze after claiming Google persecuted staff with right-wing views, reported the comments to the National Labor Review Board (NLRB) and argued that the company was bashing white males. NLRB regulators conducted an investigation and ruled that Google was 'justified' in firing Cernekee for his alleged improper use of company equipment. However, they also determined that Holzle violated labor laws and infringed on the engineer's First Amendment entitlement to free speech, including his right discuss concerns with his bosses. The case centered on Holzle reportedly writing Cernekee an email saying: 'One of the things that I consider when deciding whether to spend time on an interaction is whether it is conducted in a tone that is reasonably enjoyable, and whether I feel I can have a productive conversation. 'Your email doesn't qualify, and since I am not required to reply I choose to spend my time on other matters,' He also told the employee to 'stop doing what you're doing' in a post on a Google+ message board. Since the incident, Cernekee has become a celebrated icon among several prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump who claimed that Google targeted the employee for having views that were 'out of step with the company's liberal values'. Newly released internal documents reveal that senior Google executive Urs Holzle - who fired engineer Kevin Cernekee (pictured) in 2018 - had sent emails and wrote internal message board posts instructing the employee not to make political comments Holzle (pictured) told Cernekee that his behaviors were 'entirely inappropriate' and then refused to interact with him. He also told the employee to 'stop doing what you're doing' in a post on a Google+ message board Holzle and Cernekee's email disagreement started after the senior executive wrote an internal Google+ post that drew more than 150 responses. 'Let's all help make Google a supportive place for minorities of any kind,' Holzle wrote the post. Cernekee responded and reportedly accused Google of 'persecuting conservative-leaning employees who questioned the "Social Justice political agenda"'. He also claimed that some company leaders were trying to 'blacklist conservative employees' and 'get them fired'. The engineer asked Holzle to 'publicly declare' if he supported the alleged silencing behavior and asked that Google add a 'clear statement of banned opinions to the employee handbook so that everybody knows what the ground rules are'. Holzle denied the request saying, 'I think to ask for a rule book is missing the point. But if you want a succinct summary: don't do what you're doing here.' Cernekee then sent Holzle an email asking for clarification on whether his comments on the Google+ post violated company protocols and if it was 'against Google policy to disagree with Social Justice Theory on political threads'. Holzle, looping the company's anti-harassment group into the email chain, then told Cernekee that 'context matters a lot' and he was 'misunderstanding the problem'. 'It may be perfectly fine and welcome to utter a certain sentence in a restaurant, say, but entirely inappropriate/unwelcome to say it at a funeral,' Holzle said. Cernekee asked Holzle (pictured) to 'publicly declare' if he supported the alleged silencing behavior and asked that Google add a 'clear statement of banned opinions to the employee handbook so that everybody knows what the ground rules are'. He denied the request After being shut down by Holzle, Cernekee (pictured) furthered the issue, ultimately inviting like-minded employees to join a then-new internal mailing list dubbed 'g+/freespeech' where they discussed the executive's comments, as well as other company policies A member of the anti-harassment group echoed Holzle's remarks and allegedly attempted to set up a meeting with Cernekee to discuss the issue. Cernekee declined the appointment and instead fired back at Holzle. He wrote: 'As a leader, if you're going to scold employees for something it is critical to tell them what behavioral changes you're expecting to see going forward. 'What is the rationale for allowing vicious, non-constructive, ad-hominem attacks to remain posted on an SVP's G+ page?' 'Is your G+ page an appropriate forum for other Googlers to call me a 'shitheel' or to make other derogatory comments?' At this point Holzle stopped responding to the chain. However, Cernekee furthered the issue, ultimately inviting like-minded employees to join a then-new internal mailing list dubbed 'g+/freespeech' where they discussed Holzle's comments, as well as other company policies. The g+/freespeech mailing list was later called out by a fellow colleague who claimed it served as a platform to post comments with racist and anti-semitic overtones. Shortly thereafter, Cernekee filed a complaint with the NLRB after being reprimanded by the company and given a 'final warning' for what Google called his 'repeated bullying and purposely antagonizing behavior on Google's internal discussion boards.' In the complaint he argued: 'Google views white male bashing as a key plank of the company's diversity efforts.' Cernekee filed a complaint with the NLRB arguing that 'Google views white male bashing as a key plank of the company's diversity efforts' Cernekee was championed by several key Republicans including former President Donald Trump. In a string of since-deleted tweets from August 2019, Trump called out Google CEO Sundar Pichai for targeting Cernekee and wanting to make sure the then-president lost the 2020 election. '@sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with Chinas military, that they didnt help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary,' Trump tweeted. 'It all sounded good until I watched Kevin Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016 and that they want to "Make sure that Trump losses in 2020.' He continued: 'Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public. @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump [sic]. All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely!' The NLRB ultimately decided that Google was justified in firing Cernekee, however determined that Holzle's actions prior to the were 'violation of protected worker behavior involving employment conditions'. Cernekee received support from several key Republicans including former president Donald Trump (pictured) who claimed that Google 'targeted the employee for having views that were 'out of step with the company's liberal values' Following the Cernekee incident, Google agreed to post notices in the office informing employees of their rights to discuss working conditions and unionize. The notice read: 'We will not threaten employees because they presented workplace diversity issues to us and requested clarifications of permissible workplace behavior.' Weeks after posting the notice, the company reportedly fired five other 'activist employees' who had advocated for left-leaning causes such as protesting immigration enforcement. Google claims the employees were fired because they breached security rules and shared confidential documents. Their case is currently being adjudicated in NLRB court. Advertisement One of the burly bodyguards escorting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle around New York City has claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security. The bodyguard, dressed in a smart grey suit and black wingtips that had been resoled with comfortable sneaker soles, was spotted outside the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Thursday between jaunts escorting the couple. The man told a DailyMail.com reporter that he was with DHS, but didn't specify which agency, leaving possible federal involvement in the couple's visit to New York a mystery. Harry and Meghan's tour on Thursday included visits with Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Kathy Hochul at the 9/11 memorial and One World Trade Center - where multiple New York Police Department officers were spotted - as well as a trip to UN Plaza, where the general assembly is in session, for a suspected meeting with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. DailyMail.com has contacted the NYPD to determine whether the officers were on patrol at the September 11 memorial, or whether they were standing guard to protect Harry and Meghan. One of the burly bodyguards (left) escorting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle around New York City has claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security The man (right) told a DailyMail.com reporter that he was with DHS, but didn't specify which agency, leaving possible federal involvement in the couple's visit to New York a mystery The bodyguard accompanying Harry and Meghan had a badge pinned to the lapel of his suit Multiple NYPD officers were also spotted standing guard at the September 11 memorial as they passed through. It is unclear whether they were there to provide the couple with protection The Carlyle Hotel: New York City's star-studded 'tower of power' that once hosted Princess Diana, JFK and Michael Jackson The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are far from the first big names to grace the floors of 1,300-a-night The Carlyle Hotel in New York City. Meghan and Harry were pictured enjoying drinks at Bemelmans, the swanky 1947 piano bar that has been frequented by Bono, Mariah Carey, John Mayer and Billy Joel. Princess Diana was known to be a regular guest at The Carlyle, known as New York's 'Tower of Power' which enjoys spectacular roof top views of Central Park. And other royals, including Prince Charles and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have also stayed there in 2005 and 2014 respectively. Designed in Art Deco style and built in 1930, today The Carlyle boasts 190 rooms and suites. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge pictured arriving at The Carlyle ahead of their 2014 New York trip A stone's throw away from the city's famous Madison Avenue, The Carlyle boasts of offering its elite clientele the perfect blend of 'discretion and grace'. The historical landmark has seen a wealth of stars, celebrities and world leaders pass through its halls over the past 80 years. Woody Allen was known to have played clarinet in the cafe, while guests have reported brushing shoulders with Steve Jobs, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger while using the lifts. At least six former U.S presidents called on The Carlyle as a home away from home, with insiders dubbing the luxury hotel the New York White House as a result. President John F. Kennedy even reportedly snuck Marilyn Monroe into his 34th floor room through the service entrance and backdoors of the hotel. Advertisement DHS did not immediately respond to multiple inquiries from DailyMail.com. The federal department encompasses a number of agencies with sworn police services, including the Secret Service, Federal Protective Service, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). In 2021, its budget was nearly $50 billion, paid for with taxpayer money. The Secret Service typically only protects visiting heads of state and their immediate families within the US, while lesser dignitaries fall under the protection of the State Department, according to former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow. Wackrow said that the UN general assembly had stretched the resources of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, which has protected Prince Harry during past official visits to the US when he was a working Royal. He said that it was possible that HSI or other agents from another DHS agency were supplementing the State Department's protective efforts during the busy UN session. 'Right now, under the United Nations General Assembly, it's all hands on deck for federal protection,' Wackrow told DailyMail.com in a phone interview. 'HSI have been brought in to provide supplemental protection... you may have this agent from HSI supplementing that detail,' he said of the Duke and Duchess' protective team. Wackrow noted that, although they have stepped down from official duties, Harry and Meghan are still family members of the British head of state, and thus might reasonably expect some government protection while in a high threat environment, such as Manhattan during the general assembly. 'While they are not the head of state for the United Kingdom, they are part of the head of state's family and at times such as summits, global gatherings, it is warranted they receive some level of protection, even if it is taxpayer-funded protection,' he said. 'If something were to happen in New York, and the government were not extending protection to the Duke and Duchess, that would be a major diplomatic incident,' said Wackrow. The couple is in New York to attend Saturday's Global Citizen Live event at Central Park to encourage equal access to COVID-19 vaccines. It was their first joint outing since the birth of their daughter Lilibet 'Lili' Diana Mountbatten-Windsor in June. The Secret Service typically only protects visiting heads of state and their families within the US, while lesser dignitaries fall under the protection of the State Department The mystery bodyguard (left) was dressed in a smart grey suit and black wingtips that had been resoled with comfortable sneaker soles Prince Harry is seen talking to a group of people in the corner of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel last night Prince Harry spent about 45 minutes with a group of people and left with a notebook and iPad around between 6pm and 6:30pm Harry and a group of people were seen in The Carlyle Hotel bar Thursday night. It's unknown who they were or where Meghan was Proud dad! Harry carries laptop bag with 'Archie's papa' embossed on it Prince Harry was pictured coming out of United Nations Plaza on Thursday holding a laptop bag with the words 'Archie's papa' embossed on the side during his tour around New York City with Meghan. The proud dad spent Wednesday night and Thursday with his wife Meghan in New York City while the kids - Archie and Lilibet - stayed back in Los Angeles. But Harry made carry a little memento of his son with him during his highly publicized tour of New York City, which is the Sussexes' first public trip to the Big Apple since their permanent move from England to Meghan's native California in March 2020. Coming out out of the United Nations building on Thursday, Prince Harry held his laptop bag with the words 'Archie's papa' emblazoned on it Harry carries laptop bag with 'Archie's papa' embossed on the side during tour around New York city with Meghan Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle arrive at the World Trade Center Observatory in Manhattan Thursday morning The picture was taken Thursday afternoon after their visit to United Nations for a 40-minute meeting where they had an 'important discussion' on COVID-19, racial justice and mental health with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Thomas-Greenfield described the meeting as 'wonderful' as she shared snaps of the trio chatting on sofas in a lounge area and then posing in front of UN branding. Thursday's UN visit was sandwiched between a somber, morning trip to the 9/11 Memorial at One World Trade Center. Advertisement Their first stop Thursday morning was at the observatory at One World Trade Center, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were accompanied by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife, Chirlane McCray, and their son, Dante de Blasio. The 37-year-old prince and Meghan, 40, also paid their respects at the nearby September 11 memorial and stopped by the adjoining museum. At around 12.30pm the couple again left the lavish $1,300-a-night Carlyle Hotel, where they are staying, for a mystery meeting near the UN. Around 2pm they were spotted leaving 50 UN Plaza, where they are thought to have met with US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Meghan clutched what appeared to be a black leather laptop case which matched her dark outfit, sunglasses and face mask as she and Harry exited the residential building close to the United Nations Global Headquarters and clambered into their waiting cars. The details of the Sussexes' trip to the Big Apple are a closely guarded secret but they were thought to be meeting the UN official in the residential building, which houses the lavish 37-floor penthouse which she calls home. The couple stepped down from royal duties in early 2020 and are living in California with their two children. They had previously agreed to pay for their own security personnel - made up of former SAS soldiers - at a cost of 4 million a year. But Prince Charles continued to pay for their security from April 1, 2020 through March 31, 2021, according to financial statements obtained by the Washington Post, which showed he paid his sons and their families $6.3 million. It did not break down the amount by family. A spokesman for Charles' office, Clarence House, said in a statement that 'the Prince of Wales allocated a substantial sum' to Harry and Meghan to 'support them' with their transition in stepping down as senior members of the British royal family and relocating to California. 'That funding ceased in the summer of last year,' the office said and the couple are now financially independent. Yesterday, Harry was pictured in New York City's iconic Upper East Side Bemelmans Bar in the lobby of $1,300-a-night Carlyle Hotel for a second night in a row on Thursday - but this time, without Meghan. With his security by his side, Harry blended into the crowded bar arriving without ceremony shortly after 5.30pm to the melodic background of a jazz pianist. There was no sign of Meghan as he sat in a discrete corner of the banquette, where his security approached an older couple from Brooklyn and asked them not to take pictures. Harry spoke animatedly, gesturing frequently, with a glass of white wine set before him at what appeared to be a business meeting. It's unknown at this point who the middle-aged men and woman seen in DailyMail.com's photos were. The two men in the photos were dressed in black suits and the woman wore a white blazer. After about 45 minutes, Harry left clutching an iPad and notebook, shook hands and walked out with his security guard. The unidentified bodyguard shadows Harry and Meghan as they arrive at the World Trade Center for a meeting with Mayor de Blasio Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle arrive at the World Trade Center Observatory The couple is in New York to attend Saturday's Global Citizen Live event at Central Park to encourage equal access to COVID-19 vaccines A source told DailyMail.com, 'We get everyone in here. She (Meghan) was in last night. Bill Clinton sat here and spoke to people for three hours. He's a people person. This guy [Harry] not so much. I don't blame him.' This is the Sussexes' first public trip to New York City since their permanent move from England to Meghan's native California in March 2020. The couple has been staying in the pricey Manhattan hotel for the duration of their four-day trip. The Government has paid out compensation for the deaths of nearly 300 civilians in Afghanistan - including at least 16 children - at an average of 2,380 per family, analysis of official figures shows. The study of internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents shows overall 688,000 was paid out by the British military for the 289 deaths, while some 397,000 was paid out for 240 injuries, an average of 1,654. The findings are from an analysis by charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) and relate to deaths in 189 incidents between 2006 and 2013. It also showed the lowest payout for a civilian death was just 104.17 for a confirmed fatality and property damage in Helmand province in February 2008. Meanwhile another family received 586.42 following the death of their 10-year-old son in December 2009 with other claimants receiving higher payouts for damage to a crane and the loss of six donkeys. The MoD said the UK had always sought to minimise the risk of civilian casualties through 'rigorous targeting processes'. The Government has paid out compensation for the deaths of nearly 300 civilians in Afghanistan - including at least 16 children - at an average of 2,380 per family, analysis of official figures shows Most of the deaths occurred in Helmand, scene of some of the fiercest fighting involving UK forces, and were recorded in compensation payout data obtained under a Freedom of Information request. In one December 2009 incident, the document listed four children 'shot and killed by ISAF (International Security Assistance Force)', with 4,223.60 paid in compensation a month later. The youngest recorded casualty was a three-year-old boy, killed in December 2009 by 'shock from (a) controlled explosion' during an operation to clear an improvised explosive device. The files record the deaths of 16 children, the charity said, based on cases that either specify an age or describe victims as a 'child', 'boy' or 'girl'. But the true figure could be as high as 86 by including cases that mention the terms 'son', 'daughter' or 'nephew' because Afghanistan has a population with a median age of 18.4 so the likelihood of someone's child being a minor is high. Murray Jones, the author of the AOAV report, said: 'These files do not make for easy reading. The banality of language means hundreds of tragic deaths, including dozens of children, read more like an inventory. 'Sadly, due to the way civilian casualties were recorded, these totals are likely to be just a fraction of the true number.' The amount of compensation paid is determined by common law principles which include factors such as pain and suffering along with financial loss. The settlements also reflect local customs and practice, as well as economic factors, and are in line with other countries which provided forces for the 20-year Afghan campaign led by the United States which ended in chaotic fashion with the evacuation from Kabul airport in August. An MoD spokesman said: 'Every civilian death is a tragedy and the UK always seeks to minimise the risk of civilian casualties through our rigorous targeting processes, but that risk can never be removed entirely. 'The amount of compensation paid is determined by legal principles which consider the degree of injury and both past and future losses; settlements also reflect local customs and practice.' The Oakland Unified School District passed a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for students 12 and older Wednesday, despite a lack of full approval from the FDA that it is safe for children. The measure makes it one of the first districts, with its student population of nearly 50,000, in Northern California to pass such a vaccine requirement and follows a similar decision made by the Los Angeles school district - the second largest in the US - earlier this month. The Piedmont and Hayward districts also passed similar measures Wednesday. The resolution, which passed 5-1 with one abstention, did not include enforcement details or indicate a date for the mandate to take effect. It was met with concern and some outrage, among parents, students and the school board members themselves. A teenager received a Covid-19 vaccine in Los Angeles over the summer. Its school district became the first in the state earlier this month to mandate students 12 and older get vaccinated. On Wednesday, the Oakland School District followed suit, making it one of the first in Northern California to do so 'Why do you want to force the vaccine that is still undergoing vaccine trials,' one speaker asked during the public comment section of the meeting, the East Bay Times reported. 'Not you, the CDC or the FDA can make guarantees as to outcomes.' 'I'm opposed to the vaccine mandate. Parents and students must have the choice whether or not to take a vaccine,' said another, according to ABC7. Samantha Pal, the student director sitting on the Oakland board said that while many students supported the mandate, several, 'expressed concern about alienating students and families with such a strict policy,' the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Pal said a number of parents did not want their children getting shots out of fear, and that many suggested the district should, 'provide more education on the vaccine to both parents and students, so as to help get families to a place where they feel comfortable getting the vaccine.' There were 31 new coronavirus cases recorded in the Oakland School District over the past week, according to school figures Currently, there are around 255 new cases per 100,000 kids aged 12 - 17, in the surrounding Alameda County Board President Shanthi Gonzales - who abstained in the vote - said that, in particular, she was concerned it might alienate students of color, who have far lower vaccination rates than others. 'My concern is ... sending those families a message that theyre not welcome and not allowed to come to school anymore,' she said, according to the East Bay Times, adding that a number of students have limited health care access. Mike Hutchinson, the only member of the board to oppose the resolution, voiced similar concerns, citing internal figures from the district superintendent that only 34 percent of African American and 55 percent of Latino students have been vaccinated. 'Im concerned about passing a mandate that (says) half of black and brown students cant come to school,' Hutchinson said, adding that the district's remote option for students was already full. Currently, around 80.8 percent of the students aged 12 to 15 in the surrounding Alameda County have received at least one vaccine dose Children under 18 make up the age group with the second smallest number of confirmed infections next to the 71 -80, according to the county Health Department Over the past week the Oakland School District recorded 31 new cases among its student body, and while there is no available data on the percentage of vaccinated students in the district, around 54 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated in the City of Oakland, according to public data. In Alameda County, where Oakland is located, more than 60,000 or 80.8 percent of the children 12 - 15 have received at least one dose. Currently, there are around 255 new cases per 100,000 kids ages 12-17, and overall around 4,532 children per 100,000 under 18 have had confirmed cases throughout the pandemic. It is the age group with the second smallest number of confirmed infections next to the 71 -80 category, according to the county Health Department. Overall, children under 17 make up 14.5 percent of confirmed cases in California. Despite concerns, most of the Oakland school community supported the measure, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and it also had the backing of the district teacher's union, although with a push for expanded exemptions. 'Vaccination is a must,' said one teacher during an online rally in support of the vote Wednesday evening, ABC7 reported. In the overall state of California children under 17 make up around 14.5 percent of the total cases 'Please vaccinate and make it a mandate, it's a simple mandate to preserve our community,' another teacher said. Hutchinson, however, said it should be the responsibility of the state, not individual school districts, to impose vaccine mandates. 'The idea of local school boards across California deciding whats required for vaccination to enter into school scares me,' he said, according to the Chronicle. 'The failure of action is actually from the state representatives that sent this letter, Hutchinson said. 'Its their failure of action why were in this situation. ... Why havent they introduced legislation in Sacramento, which would provide the real solution to the problem were facing.' While Gov. Gavin Newsom has held off on pushing any such mandate, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said it is considering such a requirement for students older than 12 to attend school. 'That conversation is part of what were considering as a state, but no definitive action is being made at the moment,' he told reporters Thursday, according to the Chronicle. The United States government has tripled its reward in hopes that someone will come forward and lead officials to fugitive Mexican drug lord Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada. The Department of State announced Wednesday it was increasing its offer from $5million to $15million for information that would result in the apprehension and/or conviction of the Sinaloa Cartel co-founder. The 73-year-old Zambada is accused of conspiracy to possess five kilos of cocaine and more then 1,000 kilos of marijuana; conspiracy to import five kilos of cocaine and over 1,000 kilos of marijuana; and conspiracy to posses firearms in drug trafficking crimes and aiding and abetting. '(Zambada) is a long-time business partner of convicted Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin Guzman-Loera, also known as 'El Chapo' and is charged in several U.S. indictments along with El Chapo and his sons,' Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said in a press release. 'The increase is commensurate with his leadership status in the Sinaloa Cartel.' Zambada set up the powerful transnational drug trafficking organization with Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. The Department of State announced Wednesday it was increasing its reward from $5million to $15million for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, who co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is serving a life sentence in the United States According to the Drug Enforcement Administration's 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Sinaloa Cartel along with rival Jalisco New Generation Cartel, were the top two providers of narcotics to the U.S. The Sinaloa Cartel controlled Arizona- and California-area smuggling routes into the country. The cartel maintained a tight grip on the trafficking and sale of drugs across the United States, with a shocking influence in 24 states and Washington, D.C. Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada is leading the Sinaloa Cartel while his former associate and cartel co-founder El Chapo serves a life sentence in a U.S. prison The report found: 'The cartel employs gatekeepers assigned to Ports Of Entry and controls Arizona and California area smuggling corridors into the United States.' Zambada has kept a low profile and has never been arrested. In a 2018 interview with Mexican news magazine Proceso, Zambada admitted that the thought of being apprehended created a sense of 'panic, but he would not rule out killing himself if it meant avoiding doing time in jail. 'I don't know if I'd have the courage to kill myself,' he said. 'I'd like to think so, that I'd kill myself.' When asked if he thought he would be arrested, Zambada responded: 'At any moment, or never.' At the time of the rare sit down, former Drug Enforcement Administration chief agent Mike Vigil told Bloomberg: 'Even though he's only had maybe an elementary-school education, he's received a Harvard-level education from some of the most prolific, knowledgeable and astute drug lords that Mexico has ever had.' Vicente 'El Vicentillo' Zambada, pictured in Mexico City in 2009, helped put infamous drug lord El Chapo away for life. He was freed from a United States prison in April 2021, but a spokesman refused to say whether he was in protective custody Serafin Zambada, 27, the youngest of Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada-Garcia's three sons was released from a U.S. jail in September 2018. His middle brother, Ismael 'El Mayito' Zambada-Imperial, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges before a San Diego court judge in April 2021 THE SINALOA CARTEL REMAINS AT THE TOP OF THE DRUG TRADE WITH WITH EL CHAPO IN PRISON Founded in 1989 by Hector Palma, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, the Sinaloa Cartel today stands as one of the most established transnational drug trafficking organizations. While it has carved out a presence in 15 of the 32 Mexican states, the cartel also expanded its operations into the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. With El Chapo in prison, the cartel has been plagued by internal fighting between Zambada and El Chapo's sons, known as 'Los Chapitos.' The Drug Enforcement Administration views the Sinaloa Cartel as one of the top two criminal organizations along with its rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The DEA said the Sinaloa Cartel 'exports and distributes wholesale amounts of fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana in the United States by maintaining distribution hubs in various cities.' Advertisement With El Chapo serving a life jail sentence, Zambada has been embroiled in an internal dispute with El Chapo's sons, known as Los Chapitos, that had left scores of cartel henchmen, civilians and law enforcement agents dead across Mexico. Three of Zambada's sons have served time in United States prisons following their extraditions from Mexico. Vicente Zambada, 46, was handed over to US authorities in 2010 and pleaded guilty in April 2013 to drug trafficking charges. He received a 15-year sentence in May 2019, but was released in April 2021. He was scheduled for a 2022 prison release as part of a reduced sentence for his cooperation in El Chapo's trial and would have had his name changed as a protected witness. His US-born sibling, Serafin Zambada, 31, was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration while crossing the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, in November 2013. He was sentenced to five and half years in prison, but was released in September 2018. Ismael 'El Mayito' Zambada-Imperial, who had been in U.S. custody since December 2019 after his extradition from Mexico, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges before a San Diego federal court judge in April 2021. He is set to be sentenced in April 2022. Advertisement Primary school teacher Sabina Nessa was hit on the head just yards from her home by an assailant wielding a weapon, then slung over his shoulder and dumped in a park in an attack caught on CCTV, it was reported last night. Officers were said to be investigating the footage taken near the 28-year-old's home in Kidbrooke, southeast London, last Friday evening. In separate developments, detectives released different CCTV images of a man and a car they want to trace in connection with Sabina's death. And they also said last night that a 38-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murder, the second arrest in the investigation. Sabina disappeared on Friday evening as she left home to meet a man for a first date at a local pub. Her body was found in Cator Park, 200 yards from her home, on Saturday afternoon. On the same day a man in his 40s and known to her was the first to be arrested on suspicion of her murder. He was later released under investigation. The attack CCTV, first reported by the Daily Telegraph, shows an assailant apparently striking Sabina on the head with an object moments after she left her house. He then carries her over his shoulder in the direction of Cator Park, a police source told the newspaper. Their report came hours after police released their own CCTV images of a man they wish to identify in the case. Scotland Yard appealed for information on the man shown, and a silver vehicle that was seen in the area, and asked the public to come forward with information. Meanwhile a vigil will take place in Peglar Square, near to where Sabina's body was found, at 7pm tonight. The vigil is organised by campaign group Reclaim the Streets, which said it is 'angry and heartbroken' about her death. Sabina Nessa, 28 was on her way to the pub when she was killed and her body dumped under a pile of leaves in the busy Cator Park, south-east London, police believe Police have since released a separate appeal for another man and a vehicle that was seen on CCTV in the area they hope to identify which could provide a breakthrough in the case The man, pictured with balding, dark hair in grey tracksuit bottoms, a dark-coloured hoodie and black shoes, was seen on CCTV in Peglar Square on the evening of Sabina's attack The man, pictured with balding, brown hair and in grey tracksuit bottoms, a dark-coloured jacket and black shoes, was seen on CCTV in Pegler Square, close to Kidbrooke rail station at the north end of Cator Park, on the evening of Sabina's attack. Police are urging anyone who might be able to identify the man and his vehicle to make contact with them immediately on 0208 721 4266 or by calling Crimestoppers completely anonymously on 0800 555 111. A timeline of the Met Police's Sabina Nessa murder investigation Friday September 17, 8:30pm: Sabina Nessa, a teacher at the Rushey Green Primary School in Lewisham, sets out on a five-minute journey to meet a friend at a pub in Kidbrooke but never arrives. Saturday September 18, 5.30pm: Ms Nessa's body is found near the OneSpace community centre in Cator Park, Kidbrooke Saturday evening: A man in his 40s is arrested on suspicion of murder at an address in Lewisham, and is later released under police investigation. Monday September 20: A post-mortem carried out at Greenwich Mortuary proves to be inconclusive. Monday, 9pm: The victim is identified publicly as Ms Nessa. Wednesday September 22: Ms Nessa's cousin Zubel Ahmed says that her family is 'inconsolable' following their loss. In an interview with the BBC, he says: 'We are all truly devastated. Her parents are absolutely shocked, they're inconsolable still and understandably so, to hear of their daughter being taken away from them by some cowardly man is just horrific.' Thursday 23 September, 8pm: The Metropolitan Police announce that a second, 38-year-old man has been arrested at an address in Lewisham on suspicion of Ms Nessa's murder and is being held in custody. The force also issues CCTV images of a man they want to speak to, who was in the area at the time of the attack, as well as pictures of a car they believe the unknown man has access to. Friday 24 September, 7pm: A vigil will be held in Pegler Square, south east London, near to where Sabina's body was found, in memory of the primary school teacher. The vigil will be held by Reclaim the Streets, a campaign group who said they were 'angry and heartbroken' about Sabina's death. The group has urged anyone who cannot attend to light a candle outside their door at 7pm. Advertisement Officers in the case also revealed last night they had arrested a 38-year-old man said not to be the person shown in the CCTV images they released - on suspicion of murder. The man was held at an address in Lewisham, southeast London, yesterday afternoon and remains in custody. Detective Chief Inspector Neil John, from the Met's Specialist Crime Command, said: 'Our team have been working tirelessly to find the person responsible for Sabina's murder and this has included an extensive trawl of CCTV, work which remains ongoing. 'We would ask anyone especially those in Kidbrooke and the wider area of Lewisham and Greenwich to take a careful look at these images to check whether you know who this man is or have seen him over recent days. 'Any information as to his identity or whereabouts could be vital for our investigation so we are asking you to share this image far and wide to ensure as many people as possible see it.' Thursday saw the second arrest in the Sabina Nessa murder inquiry - after a man in his 40s had been detained before being released under investigation on Saturday. Ms Nessa left her home on Astell Road after arranging to meet a friend at The Depot bar in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke Village, south-east London, last Friday night but never made it. Police believe she was attacked in the busy Cator Park at around 8.30pm with her body being found by a member of the public almost 24 hours later near the OneSpace community centre, hidden under a pile of leaves. But furious campaigners and a handful of MPs demanded that public spaces be made safer for women in the wake of a string of high-profile murders this year. Reclaim These Streets, an organisation campaigning for the safety of women and girls which has organised a vigil for today, said: 'This is an epidemic of violence against women. Enough with reports, what is the actual plan to keep us safe and alive?' No one reported her missing after she failed to make the rendez-vous, said police, but her housemate has now spoken out on the horrifying ordeal and shared her unease. She told the Guardian: 'I never thought something like this could happen to her. I had been texting her and it's not like her to not reply to my messages. 'I don't feel safe living here now.' Earlier, detectives had speculated whether the attack had been carried out by a stranger and were 'keeping an open mind' on the killer's motive. Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry insisted the area remains 'safe for women' despite mounting pressure from women's safety campaigners who are urging officers to do more to protect them on Britain's streets. He said: 'The streets are safe for women, I'd like to reassure the public around that, I'd like to make sure that people are free to walk around free from fear and my officers will make sure that that can take place.' Ms Nessa was attacked in the park at around 8.30pm, and her body found on Saturday near the OneSpace community centre hidden under a pile of leaves Experts have sealed off large parts of the park as their murder investigation continues. Pictured above: forensics tent in Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south east London, where the teacher was found dead The Depot bar in Pegler Square, where Ms Nessa was due to go on a first date last Friday, according to her friend The primary school teacher, originally from Bedfordshire, is understood to have been just minutes from her home when she was attacked near the OneSpace Community Centre in Cator Park at around 8.30pm on Friday, September 17. Her body lay undiscovered for several hours because it was 'off the main park walkway', according to police. A post-mortem examination was inconclusive and further tests will now be carried out to establish a cause of death. 'I don't feel safe': Sabina Nessa's housemate tells of her shock and fear as Met detectives warn teacher's killer 'could strike again' and fury grows over women's safety By Jacob Thorburn, Rory Tingle, Nick Fagge and Katie Weston for MailOnline The housemate of murdered primary school teacher Sabina Nessa has said she 'doesn't feel safe' living in the area after investigating detectives earlier warned the killer 'could strike again'. The 28-year-old left her home on Astell Road and was on her way to a first date in The Depot Bar in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke Village, south east London on Friday night but never made it. Police understand she was attacked in a park at around 8.30pm, with her body being discovered by a member of the public almost 24 hours later near the OneSpace community centre hidden under a pile of leaves. No one reported her missing after she failed to make the rendez-vous, said police, but her housemate has now spoken out on the horrifying ordeal and shared her unease. She told the Guardian: 'I never thought something like this could happen to her. I had been texting her and it's not like her to not reply to my messages. 'I don't feel safe living here now.' Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry by the floral tributes at Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south London, near to the scene where the body of Ms Nessa was found DCI Lawry (pictured centre) by the floral tributes at Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south London, near to the scene where the body of Ms Nessa was found Ms Nessa's sister took to social media to commemorate her, writing: 'My beautiful, talented & caring sister. My inspiration to always put myself first & never let anybody put me down Detectives are investigating whether she was killed by a stranger, leaving locals fearful of returning to the usually busy park often packed with dog walkers and joggers. Parallels are being drawn to the horrific murder of 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard in March, amid fresh fury that women could not walk through Britain's streets alone without fearing for their lives. And in June 6 last year, sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were stabbed to death in a Wembley park in a random attack by 19-year-old Danyal Hussein, who believed he was acting on the orders of a demon. Other women who live in the Kidbrooke area have also revealed they feel anxious when out alone - prompting one resident to offer to walk anyone home who does not feel safe in the community. Women face an 'epidemic' of violence, campaigners warn as Jess Phillips says it is 'a scandal that women don't feel safe on the streets' By Claire Ellicot, Political Correspondent for the Daily Mail Women are dealing with an 'epidemic' of violence, politicians and campaigners warned yesterday as they lamented the lack of progress since the death of Sarah Everard. The killing of Sabina Nessa, 28, in south London comes six months after Miss Everard's murder and a year after sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were stabbed to death in the capital. Sarah Everard: Murdered in March this year Jess Phillips, Labour's spokesman for domestic violence and safeguarding, said that it was 'not safe' to be a woman. She said 78 women had been killed in the UK since the death of 33-year-old Miss Everard in March and questioned the Government response. 'It is a scandal that women don't feel safe on the streets,' she said. 'It's not safe to be a woman whether that's in the workplace, school, university or home. There are too many examples every year.' Referring to Miss Everard, who was kidnapped, raped and killed by Met policeman Wayne Couzens while walking home, the MP added: 'We can't keep having this. We can't keep having someone being murdered and then a pilot here and a review there. 'The British public now demand proper women's safety laws, legislation, resources and strategy to stop this. We can't just keep being sorry.' She also demanded that the Government reclassify violence against women and girls as a 'serious crime' in line with terrorism and serious youth violence. Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were stabbed to death in Wembley last year Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East, said: 'Sabina Nessa's murder in a park at 8.30pm is devastating. 'Her murder is not a one-off but part of an epidemic of gendered violence. We demand justice for Sabina and safety for all women, on the streets and in our homes.' Campaigner Anna Birley, who founded the Reclaim These Streets movement, said yesterday: 'We often get told when the worst happens that the murder of a woman by a stranger in a public place is very rare and we are very safe. 'But the thing is, our lived experience of street harassment, cat-calling, a man exposing himself to us, tell us we're not safe, and murder is rarely the first crime someone commits.' She said the Government must urgently fix the 'deep-rooted culture of misogyny in British culture' by reforming the criminal justice system. The campaigner called for a higher conviction rate for rapists, anti-misogyny training for police, and lessons in schools to 'tackle toxic masculinity'. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan warned that women face an 'epidemic' of violence. 'I think this deserves the same priority as counter terrorism,' he said. He added that schools should teach boys to respect girls, and misogyny should be made a hate crime. Advertisement Last night, Ms Nessa's sister took to social media to commemorate her, writing: 'My beautiful, talented & caring sister. My inspiration to always put myself first & never let anybody put me down. 'Never in my life did I or my sisters or my mum or dad think this could happen to us. May Allah grant her Jannah. Ameen #SabinaNessa'. She added in a separate tweet: '3 sisters down to 2. Pls make dua for her. No mother or father should have to go through this, may Allah grant my parents ease.' Ms Nessa's cousin, Zubel Ahmed, described her as the 'most caring person, kindest, sweetest girl you could meet.' He told the BBC: 'She's just got a beautiful soul, she's a caring person, she's left behind two cats. When we were at her house the other day the cats were looking for her. 'As strange as that sounds it's just her nature to care for things, to care for people, for animals, and she's just going to be truly missed.' Detective Inspector Joe Garrity added: 'Sabina's journey should have taken just over five minutes but she never made it to her destination. 'We know the community are rightly shocked by this murder - as are we - and we are using every resource available to us to find the individual responsible.' Det Insp Garrity added the investigation was making good progress and appealed for anyone with information to get in touch: 'We believe there are still others out there who may have information that could help.' The friend described Sabina as a 'lovely, bubbly person' with 'loads of personality'. Sabina had moved into the newly built Kidbroke Village last summer. The friend said: 'It's a lovely place to live. The flat has a view of the duck pond and the park. 'So you can see where Sabina died from the balcony. It's horrible.' Sabina's date failed to notify police that she failed to make the rendez-vous, police have confirmed. DCS Lawry said: 'Sabine left her home address just before 8.30pm on Friday night. 'We understand that Sabina was planning on meeting a friend at The Depot pub. 'Her journey would have seen her walk through Cator Park. We believe as she walked through the park she was approached by an individual and fatally attacked. 'She was not reported missing and Sabina's body was sadly found by a member of the public at 5pm the following day.' Downing Street said the Prime Minister's thoughts were with the family and friends of Ms Nessa. A spokesman for Boris Johnson said: 'The Prime Minister's focus is on making sure that we make our streets safe for absolutely everybody, that's why we're investing the money we are in recruiting more police officers and which is why we, as I say, introduced the strategy when it comes to violence against women and girls earlier this year.' He added that Metropolitan Police officers will be attending a planned vigil for Ms Nessa on Friday. A man in his forties was arrested on suspicion of murder a few hours after her body was found by a dog walker. But yesterday he was released under investigation pending further inquiries. On Thursday, a 38-year-old man from Lewisham was arrested on suspicion of murder. He remains in custody at present. Nessa's cousin Zubel Ahmed told ITV News the family remain 'inconsolable' and revealed she was just 'five minutes' from her own home. He said: 'The shock has not sunk in. She was a beautiful, kind, caring soul. I express my deepest sympathies for her sisters, mum and dad are absolutely devastated. 'Nothing is making sense to us, why was she taken from us we just don't know. She was the sweetest person, sweetest girl, I don't understand how someone can do this it's a big loss to our family.' The case has parallels to the killing of Sarah Everard, who was snatched off the street as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham, south London, on March 3 by Met Police firearms officer Wayne Couzens. Her body was found a week later in woodland near Ashford, Kent, just yards from land owned by Couzens, 48. She had been raped and strangled. Six months later, and women are continuing to speak out about their lack of safety on British streets - with a recent poll finding as many as 48 per cent of women do not feel safe walking alone. Ms Nessa's death has sparked a wave of fury over women killed in public spaces in London this year - with campaigners urging action on the 'epidemic of violence' facing women. Campaign group Our Streets Now said: 'Please, stop telling us we're overreacting. Sabina Ness, Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman. And these are just the names that we remember. 'Male violence is killing us. It's restricting our right to be free and equal citizens. We need change, now.' There was an outpouring of grief and anger today after yet another apparent murder of a woman walking alone at the hands of a stranger just months after Sarah Everard's horrific death The Year 1 teacher had worked for just over a year at Rushey Green Primary School, three miles away in Catford. Before landing her first teaching job, she studied sociology at Greenwich University in south-east London and went on to complete a teaching postgraduate degree at the University of Bedfordshire. Ms Nessa also had a qualification from Cambridge to teach English as a foreign language, and friends said she hoped to one day teach in the Middle East. Today, London mayor Sadiq Khan called violence against women and girls an 'epidemic' and called on men to be 'allies'. Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Mr Khan said misogyny should be made a hate crime, and harassment in a public space against women should be a criminal offence. He said: 'Between last year's International Women's Day and this year's International Women's Day, 180 women were killed at the hands of men across the country. 'We do have an epidemic when it comes to violence against women and girls. 'She had so much life ahead of her and so much more to give and her loss is desperately sad. 'As a school we are supporting each other through this very difficult time, and we will be providing specialist support to those who need it.' It came as residents told MailOnline they now fear leaving their homes after dark following Ms Nessa's death. Forensics teams dressed in blue overalls are pictured combing through the grassy murder scene in Cator Park, south east London Forensic Officers in Cator Park, Kidbrooke, south London, near to the scene where the body of Ms Nessa was found A heavy police presence remains in the area days after the body was recovered as increased patrols have been promised. Pictured: Police stand watch at the crime scene in Cator Park Flowers left at the edge of the park where police have sealed off an area of meadow One resident aged 33 who only gave her named as Naey said: 'I've been wary of going out after dark every since I heard about them finding the body. 'I use the park to come from the station as a shortcut. There's always people coming and going. 'It's scary and unnerving that it has happened so close to the main road. There surely must have been witnesses. I can't quite believe it.' George Williams, 41, who has operated his mobile fish and chip van Billingsgate Wrap regularly from the new Kidbrooke Village apartment complex over the last three years, said: 'This is absolutely shocking. 'If it is a random attack by a stranger then it is extremely worrying for everyone who lives around here. I hope the police can catch whoever committed this terrible crime. 'The park is very open and exposed but is usually pretty busy with joggers and walkers. Surely someone must have saw something.' A police officer pictured at Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south London. Officers revealed they were stepping up patrols and increasing their presence around the Kidbrooke Village neighbourhood for the next week Sabina's friends embrace as they pay their respects at the entrance to Cator Park, south east London on Tuesday On Friday, officers sealed off the area and were seen standing guard while investigators collected evidence Officers revealed they were stepping up patrols and increasing their presence around the Kidbrooke Village neighbourhood for the next week. Meanwhile, investigators told the Evening Standard that 'a number of crime scenes are in place' and a massive forensic inquiry is underway as they continue to investigate the alleged murder. A large section of Cator park between Cambert Way and the edge of the Kidbrooke Park Village housing development remains sealed off with police tape. The cordoned off area includes the One Space Community Centre, tennis courts and skatepark. A candlelit vigil in memory of the teacher is set to take place on Friday evening at Peglar Square. Organisers are encouraging people to bring their own candles to light as they pay respects to Ms Nessa. Reclaim These Streets, an organisation campaigning for the safety of women and girls which planned a vigil for Sarah Everard in March, said in a statement: 'We are angry and heartbroken to hear about the loss of yet another woman. 'This is an epidemic of violence against women. Enough with reports, what is the actual plan to keep us safe and alive?' Safeguarding minister Rachel Maclean told the House of Commons: 'Every woman who loses their life is one woman too much and we are devastated to hear of the loss of the life of Sabina Nessa. Our hearts go out to the family. 'This is a Government that is passing legislation, setting out actions and tackling these horrific crimes and we are determined to see a reduction in them.' A married father of 12 from Texas died a month into his battle with COVID-19, one day after his wife posted a desperate plea on Facebook asking for help with finding a special life-support machine for him. Reed Hickson, 49, from College Station, succumbed to the illness on Monday at St Joseph Health. His family declined to say whether or not he had been vaccinated against COVID. 'The hardest thing Ive ever done in my life was to come home and tell my babies that their daddy wasnt coming home,' Gina Hickson, Reed's wife of 29 years, told the station KBTX through sobs. Reed Hickson, 49 (center), died on September 20, a month after contracting COVID along with the rest of his family. He is pictured above with his wife and their 12 children Gina Hickson (center) said her husband fought for his life for a month Gina Hickson broke down in tears, talking about having to tell her children that their father was dead. It is unclear whether Hickson had been vaccinated As Reed's condition deteriorated, Gina took to social media, begging friends and strangers alike to help her find a bed for her husband in a hospital equipped with an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. The ECMO machine provides life support by taking on the functions of a patient's heart and lungs: it drains the blood from the veins, adds the oxygen and removes the carbon dioxide, warms the blood and then pumps the blood through the body. There has been a severe shortage of ECMO machines and technicians qualified to operate them during the pandemic. Dr. Andy Wilson, a friend of Reed's, said he and others were reaching out to hospitals as far away as Arizona, Oklahoma and Florida to try and secure an ECMO machine for the dying patient, but to no avail. The couple had been married for 29 years (pictured on their wedding day) and raised their family in College Station, Texas Over the course of his month-long battle with COVID, Reed had been hospitalized three days. He eventually ended up in the ICU On September 19, Gina took to Facebook, asking for help with find a hospital bed for Reed with a high-level life support machine called ECMO According to the widow, her husband contracted COVID, along with the rest of the family, in August. While the wife and children had a mild form of the illness, so much so that they initially did not even think it was COVID, the husband was soon hospitalized with breathing problems. After undergoing a 10-day treatment, the dad-of-12 was released home to continue his recovery. 'He got home he was doing great again,' Gina recounted. 'He was outside getting sun, feeling much better.' But Reed was not out of the woods: within 20 days of testing positive for COVID, he would be hospitalized twice more, eventually ending up in the ICU. 'I found myself having to face the harsh reality that putting Reed on a ventilator was his only chance to stay alive,' his wife wrote in a Facebook post last week. The family were unable to find help for Reed, resulting in his death on September 20 'He fought and fought and fought and pleaded and begged to stay here with his family, I saw it, I watched it every day for a month straight,' said Gina. Reed Hickson leaves behind his wife and their 12 children: Cayla, Mason, Leiah, Connor, Reece, Lily, Morgan, Lance, Chase, Hensley, Casen, and Ryker. Wilson has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with his late friend's medical bills and funeral expenses. 'We are all so incredibly heartbroken, and the void this family is experiencing is beyond description,' he wrote. As of September 21, just over 50 percent of Texas' 29.1 million people have been fully vaccinated. The state's rate of COVID transmission is 386 cases per 100,000 people. Advertisement When thousands of Haitian nationals embarked on the treacherous journey to the US border through South America, they set off with hopes of finding better living conditions than the ones they left behind at ramshackle refugee camps in Chile. But when the massive migrant caravan crossed the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas earlier this month, they found themselves going from bad to worse, with 15,000 of them being forced to take shelter in dirty makeshift tents under a bridge. They'd soon be dealt another cruel blow, with the majority now facing deportation to their impoverished island homeland, where many of them have not lived for several years. DailyMail.com has learned that many of the Haitians who made the trek to the US border were actually living in Brazil and the capital city of Santiago, Chile, where they were placed in shanty migrant camps after being granted asylum years ago. The settlements, made up of small wooden shacks with tin roofs, aren't far off from the conditions they faced in their homeland, but are now better than the squalid encampments they are living in in the US. This is one of the Haitian refugees camps in Santiago, Chile, where many of the 15,000 migrants camping under a bridge in Texas were living before setting off to the US border Many Haitians desperate to leave their impoverished island country began to look to South America as a haven following the 2010 earthquake and have settled in cities such as Santiago, Chile and Sao Paulo, Brazil over the years DailyMail.com has learned that the majority of Haitians in Del Rio, Texas had been living in Chile for the past five or six years as refugees. Pictured: A Haitian woman helps her son walk through a migrant camp in Santiago on September 22 The settlements, made up of small wooden shacks with tin roofs, aren't far off from the conditions they faced in their homeland, but are still better than the squalid encampments they are staying in now in the US Many Haitians have already lived outside their country for years after fleeing the Caribbean island after the 2010 earthquake. About 150,000 Haitians went to Chile from 2014 to 2018, many on charter flights to qualify for a visa, and found work as street vendors, janitors and construction workers. They lived largely in marginalized neighborhoods of the capital and suffered discrimination. In April, a stricter immigration law took effect, and the Chilean government started massive aerial deportations. Since then, more Haitians have been moving north through South America and Central America to border cities in Mexico, before entering the United States and claiming asylum. In Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, dozens of Chilean identity cards litter the ground, all bearing distinctly non-Hispanic names. There is Prosper Pierre for instance, or Linode Lafleur or Eddyson Jean-Charles. None of the cards carries a name such as Gonzalez or Munoz or Rojas. A closer look shows three telling letters - HTI - on the cards where they ask for the bearer's nationality. These are the discarded ID cards of Haitians who have turned up in Del Rio by the thousands. Many of them haven't come from Port-au-Prince or Cap-Haitien or any other city in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, but from Sao Paulo, Brazil or Santiago, Chile. 'As one put it to me, "I love Chile, it's 1,000 times better than Haiti," migration expert Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies told DailyMail.com. 'But I want to come to the United States, that's a million times better.' Nearly 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants have assembled around and under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, a town of only 35,000 people A makeshift border migrant camp is seen at daybreak along the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, on Wednesday DailyMail.com has learned that the majority of Haitians in Del Rio have actually come from Chile or Brazil, where they have been living as refugees for years, and only set off for the US after Biden opened the borders. The migrants were stopped in Tapachula, Mexico after the Biden administration pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north, but were suddenly released on September 12. They headed to Ciudad Acuna, where they crossed the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas Haitian girls are pictured in a makeshift encampment where tens of thousands hoping to enter the United States await under the international bridge in Del Rio There are an estimated 150,000 Haitians in Chile and around 125,000 in Brazil - tiny fractions of the two million that live in the United States. But as US immigration rules became tougher, people desperate to leave the impoverished island began to look to South America as a haven. Bensman revealed that he has not met any Haitian in Del Rio or Acuna who has come directly from their Caribbean-island homeland. 'None of these Haitians are from Haiti. None of them. These Haitians are all from Chile and Brazil,' he said. 'When Biden got in, word went out and they decided, we're coming now. That was the decision point. I've interviewed 60 to 70 Haitians over the last year and it's always the same story Joe Biden opened the border so we decided we could upgrade our lifestyle. 'I interviewed a guy an hour ago who said he was living in Brazil and making good money but he said he heard everyone was getting into America so he came.' The options remaining for thousands of Haitian migrants straddling the Mexico-Texas border are narrowing as the United States government ramps up to an expected six expulsion flights to Haiti and Mexico began busing some away from the border Migrants wait on the Rio Grande to cross to the United States, in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico on September 18 Thousands of Haitian migrants are seen in the makeshift camp under the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday awaiting processing White House STILL refuses to reveal how many Haitian migrants have been released into America despite Jen Psaki promising to do so yesterday... and 5,000 are missing from official tally The White House is still refusing to reveal how many Haitian migrants have come to the US despite promising to do so yesterday. Jen Psaki on Wednesday promised to release the figures after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to. However partial information released Thursday accounts for only 10,000 of the 15,000 that the DHS said earlier in the week had come to the southern border. When questioned Thursday about why she had failed to supply the information that she had promised, Psaki simply said 'I'm happy to get you a more fruitful rundown for you, if helpful, from the Department of Homeland Security'. The partial information shows that 1,401 were sent back to Haiti on 12 flights, 3,206 remain in custody, and 5,000 are camped out beneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. However, this means roughly 5,000 remain unaccounted for. Officials revealed two day ago that immigrants are being released on a very, very large scale rather than deported. The figures released Thursday do not account for how many were released into the US or how many were turned away at the border. It is also feared that the 3,206 in custody might not be deported and could also be released. A migrant child runs with food he received from volunteers at the encampment on Thursday, Sept. 23 Those 3,206 Haitian migrants have either been moved to custody under Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or to other sectors of the border to either be expelled or placed into removal proceedings. DHS could not be reached for comment. This year alone, around 1.3 million migrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. Mayorkas was at the Capitol Wednesday for his second day of back-to-back congressional hearings this time before a House committee. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez asked Mayorkas today about how many of the migrants apprehended at the border this year were detained, returned or 'dispersed.' 'I would be pleased to provide you with specific data subsequent to this hearing, congressman,' Mayorkas answered. Gimenez accused Mayorkas of being unprepared for the hearing, to which the DHS chief snapped about his long work hours. 'I work 18 hours a day, OK? So when I returned from yesterday's hearing, I actually focused on mission. We will get that data, both to the senator who posed it yesterday and to you, congressman, today,' he said. It follows on from Tuesday's hearing before the Senate when Mayorkas still could not provide migrant data. Advertisement The immigrants traveled up from South America on a path that took them through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala before landing in a camp across the Mexican border in Tapachula. There they stayed at the behest of the Biden administration who pressured Mexican authorities not to let them come further north. That was until Sunday September 12, when Mexico suddenly said they are free to go, said Bensman. So they headed for the United States. Del Rio was the destination of choice because unlike most other places on the border the local branch of the Los Zetos cartel allows them to cross for free, DailyMail.com has learned. In most Mexican frontier towns, coyotes charge fees of up to $10,000 per head to smuggle people across the border. But Del Rio is different, and by last weekend, just a week after they were freed from Tapachula, thousands had camped out under the Del Rio International Bridge - overwhelming the city of just 35,000 people. The sight of the squalid camp infuriated local politicians and saw the Biden administration scramble to get extra Border Patrol officers to the area while announcing that all the migrants camped in Del Rio would be deported back to Haiti. A miles-long steel barrier of state-owned vehicles was put in place on Wednesday to physically keep the immigrants - who had dumped their identity cards at the border so US authorities would not know where their journey had started from getting away from the border. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Bensman who has spent the past week with the Haitians in Ciudad Acuna said the absence of smuggling fees made the Del Rio sector the cheapest on the border. As a result, 15,000 Haitian migrants were encamped under the Del Rio International Bridge by last weekend - overwhelming the tiny Texas city of just 35,000 people Migrants, many of them Haitian, cross the Rio Grande river back and forth from the United States and Mexico, to camp after a lack of supplies are given to them in the USA in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, 21 September 'The cartel landscape is not the same in Del Rio as it is in Rio Grande Valley and other parts of Arizona and California. It's different everywhere. 'In this sector, there's never really been cartel human smuggling on the same scale I'm sure you can find a coyote here if you need one. President Joe Biden suspended Trump's border program on his first day of office and the Homeland Security Department ended it in June, drawing an influx of migrants to the border over the past few months 'People just cross on their own and make their way into the US without paying anyone. You'll pay further south in Texas but if you come through here, you pay nothing. 'It's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper. It's life-changing cheaper.' Other nationalities have also cottoned on to the lack of cartel activity in the Del Rio sector with Cuban migrant Williams Rodriguez, 28, telling DailyMail.com: 'We found out [about Del Rio] thanks to several people who were crossing into American lands and they told us what the route was like. 'We knew it would be dangerous and we knew we are risking our lives but as the saying goes, he who does not take risks, does not win.' His friend Luis, 56, added: 'We were told this was the only place to cross.' Bensman, a fellow of National Security Studies at the CIS, also said that many of the Haitians claim Mexico had turned a blind eye to their movements after months of penning them up on their southern border. Most of the migrants traveled from Tapachula province where they had trapped by roadblocks manned by the Mexican National Guard and had been forced to comply with onerous immigration rules that include getting their papers stamped every two days. The rules were introduced under the Trump administration sparking riots among the Haitian and African migrants trapped there. Biden had asked Mexico to keep the measures in place. 'Remember the Haitians had been causing problems down there because they were so frustrated by the requirements, Bensman explained. 'My speculation is that the Mexicans felt like this was becoming too much of a problem for them so they simply let them flush north.' Many of the Haitians say they were allowed to pass as a celebration of El Grito - the September 16 holiday marking the eve of Mexican independence 'But I really think it was more of a holiday present for the people of Tapachula who were going to have parades and their celebrations and all that,' said Bensman. Footage emerged Monday of scores of mostly Haitian migrants returning to the Mexico side of the Rio Grande River crossing as DHS accelerates deportations Migrants are guided by Border Patrol agents as they prepare to board a bus from the migrant camp in Del Rio to be taken to other parts of the US for processing A bus to transport migrants to other parts of the US for processing is seen by the Del Rio bridge in Texas Tuesday night 'I think they just said we're going to have El Grito without 50,000 angry Haitians here.' The migrant camp under the Del Rio International Bridge is currently being dismantled by Border Patrol, who are busing people out and putting them on deportation flights back to Haiti. On Tuesday, four flights left the US from Harlingen, Texas, bound for the capital, Port-au-Prince. Two more from Laredo and Harlingen were scheduled for Wednesday, with up to six more due to take off each day until the camp is cleared. On Sunday, 2,300 migrants crossed back into Mexico after hearing of the flights and made a break for other border towns such as Reynosa where more Haitian refugees are gathering. Bensman says others plan to wait it out in Ciudad Acuna or are traveling back to Tapachula to dodge deportation. He said: 'They have left the camp in Del Rio because they fear they will be deported and it's credible because all of them have text messages and photos sent from the tarmac in Port-au-Prince A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande There was even a takeover of an ICE bus by Haitians who realized knew they were being taken to an airport instead of being released into America, he added. 'Some of the Haitians were nonplussed because their friends in Haiti said don't believe the Americans, don't get on the bus. If you get on the bus, they'll take you to the airport. 'So all of these people were running away from the buses, the bus loading that's going on, because the Americans are not telling them where they're going. 'That's why this camp is over. Remember, these people living Chile and Brazil. They told me they would far rather live in Mexico or Chile than be returned to Haiti. 'It's the ultimate horror for them. But they take their gamble and sometimes it doesn't work out. 'They had two dollars and they figured, well I want five dollars so they put their money on the table and they've ended up in debt.' A mother-of-three was shot dead at a Memphis-area Kroger, allegedly by an employee, who injured 13 others then turned the gun on himself. Olivia King was killed when the gunman, whose name has not been released, opened fire in the supermarket in Collierville, Tennessee. Wes King, who appears to be in the military, paid tribute to his mom on Facebook after her death on Thursday. 'Dear friends, it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that my mother has died [from] her wounds,' Wes posted on Facebook. He said he had received a call 'from a stranger' while he was at work, informing him that his mother 'was hit during an active shooter scene, and that I was marked as her emergency contact. 'She was breathing at the time he called me.' The victim killed in a shooting at a Kroger supermarket outside of Memphis, Tennessee was identified as Olivia King, right. She is pictured with her youngest son, Greg Wes continued to explain that his mother was shot 'directly in the chest,' and emergency medical service technicians tried to save her with CPR until she got to the hospital. The hospital staff then also tried to save her, but to no avail. 'I apologize for the graphic details, but this type of crime needs to stop being glossed over and sanitized,' Wes wrote. 'No one deserves this.' Family and friends described Olivia, a mother to three sons, as 'kind, generous, caring and selfless.' 'Everyone needs to be more like Olivia,' Collierville Vice Mayor Maureen Fraser, who had been friends with her since they both moved into the town in the mid-1990s, told the New York Times. She said one Christmas, Olivia gave her family an enveloe filled with money, knowing her husband was out of a job. Olivia's own husband had died in 2005, and she had reportedly been living with Wes until he and his family moved to Ohio. In a statement to Fox 13, the King family said: 'Our family is devastated by this senseless act of violence. 'We ask that you pray for the repose of the soul of our mother, Olivia King,' they said. 'We also ask for their prayers for all families and friends affected by the events today, as well as God's mercy on the shooter and his family.' In a statement to FOX 13, the family asked for prayers for their mother and all of the other victims of the deadly shooting Olivia's son, Wes, took to Facebook to share the news of his mother's passing The shooting on Thursday took place at a Kroger in Collierville, a suburb just east of Memphis, according to Fox 13 TV. There were 44 employees inside the grocery store at the time, Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said in a news conference Thursday night. All of them had been accounted for. Lane said the department received a report of an active shooter at 1:30pm. The first officers arrived on the scene four minutes later. SWAT team officers arrived on the scene and went aisle to aisle in search of the shooter, according to police. The FBI also deployed its emergency response team. The shooter, meanwhile, killed King and injured 12 others in the rampage before taking his own life, according to authorities. Several store employees hid in freezers and locked closets during the horror. As of 4pm local time, four people were listed in critical condition at Regional One Hospital. Five were in non-critical condition. Baptist Memorial Hospital in Collierville also received one patient, who was discharged, and the Baptist Memorial in Memphis received two, according to the New York Times. Another walked into a hospital for treatment, Lane said, and an additional person who was at the scene later sought treatment for anxiety. One victim was in surgery, Dale said, and another was admitted to the ICU. Crime scene tape was seen outside of the Kroger supermarket on Thursday night Authorities gathered outside as they investigated the mass shooting The entire area surrounding the supermarket was roped off A member of the media live streams as Kroger representative Teresa Dickerson speaks at a news conference following the shooting Thursday night Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said at the news conference that the police were still investigating whether the shooter was a former employee The shooter is now believed to be an employee. According to Action 5 News, a current employee who was not working Thursday said one of his co-workers recognized the shooter as a Kroger employee, and a family member of another employee also said the shooter was a Kroger employee. But at the news conference Thursday night, Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane would not confirm whether the shooter had been a store employee or what type of weapon was used, saying those details were part of the investigation. He said, though, there is 'no credible evidence there was a second shooter,' and 'as far as we know there wasnt any other incident that led up to this.' Authorities are still working to figure out a motive, he added, and have not yet named a suspect. 'Its going to take a little bit before we know what happened,' Lane said Police respond to the scene of a shooting at a Kroger's grocery store in Collierville, Tennessee on Thursday One person has been killed and 12 others were wounded in a mass shooting at the supermarket People embrace as police respond to the scene of the shooting in suburban Memphis A Kroger employee appears to be overcome with emotion as she talks on a cell phone in the parking lot of the supermarket after Thursday's mass shooting A SWAT team officer is seen outside of the Kroger in Collierville, Tennessee on Thursday A woman uses a cellphone in the parking lot as police respond to a shooting at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, Tennessee After the store was secure and the shooter confirmed dead, police searching the store parking lot were still investigating the shooter's car as well as personal equipment that is believed to have belonged to him. Brignetta Dickerson, a Kroger employee for 32 years, said she was at the cash register when she heard gunshots. She said she played dead in order to avoid being seen by the gunman. 'He started popping that gun,' she told WREG-TV. 'It sounded a bit like a balloon popping. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap just like that.' Dickerson also said she saw a male colleague get shot in the head. He was still able to talk, she said. 'This right here is not going to stop me from working,' she said. 'I'm going to work on.' 'This is the most horrific event to happen in Collierville history,' Collierville Chief of Police Dale Lane said afterward. 'This scene is horrific, I've been involved in this for 34 years and never seen anything like it.' Several witnesses reported hearing at least a dozen gunshots. A number of customers fled the store while employees took shelter in the freezer, according to reports. An injured person is loaded into an ambulance outside of the Kroger supermarket in Collierville A massive presence of law enforcement officials was seen at the Kroger supermarket in Collierville, Tennessee on Thursday A Memphis Fire Department vehicle is seen above at the scene in Collierville SWAT team officers helped the employees run to safety. A Kroger employee who escaped to the roof was rescued by responding officers, according to police. A Fox 13 TV reporter witnessed three victims on the ground, though their condition is not known. Two medical helicopters were in the area to evacuate victims, according to witnesses. There is no additional threat to the community, Chief Lane said at a news conference Thursday night. The shooting was reported at the Kroger supermarket on Byhalia and Poplar Avenue in Collierville. In a statement, the supermarket chain said: 'The entire Kroger family offers our thoughts, prayers and support to the individuals and families of the victims during this difficult time. 'We are cooperating with local law enforcement, who have secured the store and parking lot,' it continued. 'The store will remain closed while the police investigation continues, and we have initiated counseling services for our associates.' Authorities said they were working with witnesses to understand what unfolded before the shooting, and did not have any information about a motive. The Collierville chief of police said the department received a report of an active shooter at 1:30pm A row of police cars is seen near the Kroger supermarket in Collierville on Thursday The ATF is heading to the scene and will be helping with the investigation. The Memphis Police Department has also sent personnel to assist with the probe First responders arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting began, with several individuals rushed to the hospital, WMC-TV reported. Glenda McDonald, a Kroger employee who works in the store's floral department, said she was not injured but was shaken. McDonald said she walked out of the back office to the floral counter when she heard a loud noise that sounded similar to a gunshot. 'I just ran out the door,' McDonald said. 'I left my purse, my keys, everything.' Schools in the region were placed on lockdown. Parents of students at Collierville High School received a message indicating that there was a shooting off-campus. A lockdown was announced but it has since been lifted. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms were at the scene to help with the investigation. The Memphis Police Department has also sent personnel to assist with the probe. Kroger employees are seen outside of the store after the mass shooting on Thursday Law enforcement officials and Kroger employees are seen in the parking lot outside of the supermarket in Collierville on Thursday Police officers investigate the crime scene outside the Kroger supermarket in Collierville on Thursday Employees embrace in the parking lot of the Kroger store after the mass shooting on Thursday Manny Reis, 49, was driving down Poplar Avenue when he saw several police cars arrive. 'Tons and tons of cop cars flying towards the back entrance of the Kroger on the street that runs behind it and they blocked it all off, and then they're all opening up their trunks and grabbing shotguns,' Reis told Memphis Commercial Appeal. 'And then they all started swarming around.' Reis said he witnessed four paramedics carrying away someone without a shirt. 'There were some people out. There was somebody without a shirt on,' Reis said. 'So I don't know if that person got injured, was shot I don't know. 'I know at one point I did see them basically, like four people go over to that person and pick that person up and carry them away from that area.' Sarah McDowell, 26, said her mother works in the store's meat department. She was at the scene and was unable to reach her mother. 'I heard that there was an active shooter and my mom works here,' McDowell said. 'It's been an hour and a half and I still don't know where she is.' She added: 'My mom is really kind. Everybody that works with her loves her. She's like a mom to everyone.' Elsewhere, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee tweeted that her office was in touch with local authorities and with agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the ATF. She added that she was 'closely monitoring the situation' and offered prayers for the victims. A prominent social media star was charged with running a TV pirating ring that netted him and two partners more than $30 million - and livestreamed his arrest as the FBI swooped down on his New Jersey mansion. The influencer, whose real name is Bill Omar Carrasquillo, 35, is being charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, tax evasion and fraud for his illegal online streaming service websites. Along with partners Jesse Gonzales, 42, and Michael Barone, 36, Carrasquillo supposedly offered subscribers all-inclusive access to content from Comcast, Verizon FiOS, DirectTV and HBO for as low as $15 a month. Both Gonzales and Barone were also charged, with prosecutors alleging they collected more than $30 million in subscription fees, which they attempted to conceal by distributing to various apps and bank accounts. In this photo, famous New Jersey YouTube star, Omi in a Hellcat, whose real name is Bill Omar Carrasquillo, speaks to reporters outside his home in New Jersey. The influencer was arrested by the FBI and charged in one of the largest illegal TV pirating rings ever Omi insists he has made his money legally through a a construction company and as a landlord. He also makes money via his YouTube channel This 69-page, 62-count indictment claims Carrasquillo, who has garnered over 800,000 YouTube subscribers, ran an illegal streaming service called Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded The 69-page, 62-count indictment claims Carrasquillo, who has garnered more than half a million YouTube subscribers, ran an illegal streaming service called Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded. In November 2019, the FBI raided Carrasquillo homes, seizing his supercars, Rolex watches and bank accounts and began investigating his TV streaming business and tax returns. He was arrested on Tuesday. Nearly all of Carrasquillo's assets were taken in the raid nearly two years ago, leaving him 'down to nothing'. 'They came back for things they alleged I did. The copyright infringement. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, obviously,' Carrasquillo told FOX 29 outside his home. Omi in a Hellcat, pictured, boasts more than 800,000 followers on Instagram and more than half a million followers on YouTube. He describes himself as an influencer, YouTuber, club owner, investor and entrepreneur on his online profiles The influencer, real name Bill Omar Carrasquillo, says his assets were taken in a raid last month 'We're going to have our day in court now,' he added. His attorney, Donte Mills said: 'Hes being penalized for being innovative and creative. There is no law that says he could not do what he was doing.' Carrasquillo adds: 'No copyright holders ever got in contact with me to say, "Hey, you cant do this" because there are certain ways that I set the business up thats going to prove a million percent that it wasnt illegal.' Nearly all of Carrasquillo's assets were taken in the raid, leaving him 'down to nothing' Department of Justice seizure notices are said to be on domains associated with Gears TV The car enthusiast also posted two documents online which he claims shows 12 of the cars taken from his properties, showing at least three Lamborghinis, three Jeeps and an Audi were seized. A second list shows a number of Rolex watches, plus jewelry was taken by authorities He said his mansion in Woolwich Township, New Jersey was also raided, with federal authorities taking 'everything'. He claims other properties he owns were also targeted. A neighbor, John Ware, told FOX 29: 'They loaded them off one by one over the course of 4 to 5 hours. They took all of his carsprobably 30 of them.' The car enthusiast also posted two documents online which he claims shows 12 of the cars taken from his properties, showing at least three Lamborghinis, three Jeeps and an Audi were seized. A second list shows a number of Rolex watches, plus diamond, gold and silver jewelry was taken by authorities. Carrasquillo added that he doesn't believe he's 'completely innocent,' saying 'Ignorance is not an excuse for the law.' 'I found a loophole, I ran through it and I did great. There are other colleagues in the same business I was in and they never got in trouble with the FBI,' he told FOX 29. That loophole can now cost Carrasquillo life in prison if convicted. Americans of every age have lost confidence in President Joe Biden, his mental acuity and his foreign policy, according to a new poll released on Thursday. The Pew Research Center survey, conducted from September 13 to 19, reveals a wide range of critiques voters have against the president in excruciating detail. Only 43 percent of Americans believe Biden makes wise immigration decisions, while 56 percent disagree. A majority - 37 percent - are 'not at all confident' in his immigration policy. That's against the backdrop of a worsening crisis at the southwest border as Border Patrol's struggle to manage an influx of thousands of Haitian migrants earns increasing bipartisan outrage. The 56 - 43 split is also the divide over how many Americans think the 78-year-old president isn't 'mentally sharp.' Biden also failed in his campaign promise to unite the country, according to voters surveyed by Pew. A devastating 66 percent don't think he's been able to do it, with just 34 percent believing he's brought the country closer together. Biden's character and commitment to his beliefs still rates high among voters, though most doubt he's mentally sharp The only issue Americans rate him favorably on is the COVID-19 pandemic - by a slim margin Biden's handling of the border crisis has faced bipartisan criticism Out of the minority, just nine percent said they were 'very confident' in the fact. The only issue Americans still view him favorably on is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifty-one percent of voters are confident in how he's navigating the pandemic, while 49 percent are not. Biden's favorability has also fallen across every age group. In July, he was rated highest by voters aged 30 - 49. That's dropped by a whopping 12 points in September to just 47 percent approving. The 12-point gap is his second-steepest decline of any age group. His largest was a 14-point drop among voters aged 18 - 29, from 56 percent in July to 42 percent in September. Older voters aged 65 and older also grew more disappointed in the president, but their decline was only eight points from 50 to 43 percent. Pew's survey has Biden at a dismal 44 percent approval rating nationwide, and his disapproval has gone up 10 points from July to 53 percent in September. He's also fallen in ratings for every age group, with the steepest drop being among voters aged 18 to 29 Former President Donald Trump overtook Biden in approval ratings for the first time since his loss at the 2020 presidential elections, according to a Harvard/Harris poll released Wednesday. While Biden enjoyed his highest approval rating of 57 per cent in May, support for the president dropped dramatically to 46 percent as of September following the nation's chaotic exit from Afghanistan, crisis at the southern border with Mexico, and deadlock in Congress over his infrastructure bills. Meanwhile, Trump's approval ratings remained at about 46 per cent since 2020 and surpassed Biden after rising to 48 per cent in September. 'The mounting issues on all fronts have led to the surprise conclusion that Trump is now seen as being as good a president as Biden, suggesting the honeymoon is being replaced with buyer's remorse,' Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard/Harris survey told The Times. A new Harvard/Harris poll found that most people are regretting voting for President Biden as his approval ratings fell over the summer while Donald Trump's ratings saw a small uptick President Joe Biden, left, saw his approval rating dip below former President Donald Trump's for the first time since the 2020 presidential election The influx of thousands of immigrants crossing the border into Texas is one of the latest issues plaguing the Biden Administration as Americans continue to question his leadership The poll comes as Biden held talks with feuding Democrats at the White House on Tuesday in an effort to reach an agreement on the $1.1 trillion infrastructure deal and the second $3.5 trillion bill containing new social spending. It also stands in the wake of a new migrations crisis in Texas as thousands of migrants, mostly from Haiti, cross the Rio Grande and settle in camps outside of the city of Del Rio. As well as revelations that the US mistakenly killed 10 people, including one aid worker and seven children, after a botched done strike meant to kill an ISIS-K terrorist. The Harvard/Harris poll also found that 55 per cent of people believed former Vice-President Mike Pence was a better vice president than his successor, Kamala Harris, and that 63 per cent of people thought Mike Pompeo was a better secretary of state than Anthony Blinken. Only about a third of independent voters approve of President Joe Biden's job in August, a new low as he trails his own vice president among the same group and across all voters nationwide, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Numbers released eight months into the 78-year-old's presidency weighed the opinions of Americans from September 1 to September 17, beginning just after the US wrapped Biden's chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid a worsening crisis at the southern border. Just 43 percent of Americans approve of his work in office while more than half - 53 percent - say they disapprove. Vice President Kamala Harris is faring slightly better, with an approval rating of 49 percent. Her nationwide disapproval is also 49 percent. It's a steep drop from Biden's 50 percent approval rating in July as most of the US struggled with a summer COVID surge fueled by the Delta variant. Biden's disapproval rating was only 45 percent at the time. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are failing to charm American voters, according to a new Gallup poll The drop is fueled largely by independent voters, who favored Biden by 61 percent at the highest point. Now only 37 percent of independents approve of the job he's doing. Fifty-six percent of independents disapprove of Biden. His approval among those voters was more than 10 points higher in July, before the Afghanistan withdrawal and before a devastating ISIS-K suicide attack killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members in Kabul in the US military's deadliest day in the region since 2011. Harris's approval rating among independent voters is 46 percent, nearly 10 points higher than her boss. Her disapproval rating is also slightly lower, at 51 percent. The overall negative feelings toward America's leaders is reflective of a wider dissatisfaction in government. A whopping 69 percent of voters surveyed say they disapprove of how the country is being governed. Joe Biden's approval rating has been on a consistent decline since June, when he was at 56% Kamala Harris's approval and disapproval rating are tied at 49% - the same number Joe Biden was at when he was vice president under Obama at this point in 2009 Just 30 percent, or less than a third, are satisfied with it. The number hasn't exceeded 50 percent since 2003. During the 17-day period the survey was taken, Biden issued a sweeping and controversial vaccine order covering two-thirds of the US workforce. Several Republican-led states have already announced their plans to take legal action against the White House's announcement. Meanwhile, he's also been dealing with a crisis at the southern border that's been getting worse since he took office. More than 208,000 migrant encounters occurred at the southern border in August, according to data from Customs and Border Patrol. Biden continues to please Democrats, who gave him a 90% approval rating in September Kamala Harris's approval by party is similar to that of her boss, though independents and Democrats weigh her slightly higher Nearly 1.5 million migrants were encountered by Border Patrol in Fiscal Year 2021 so far. But Biden's own party appears unfazed by the crises gripping the country. A commanding majority of 90 percent of Democrats still approve of his job in office. That's just three points down from August and unchanged from July. The president's job approval among Republicans hit a new low in Gallup's surveys at just 6 percent. The highest it's even been during his time in office was 12 percent in February and July. Biden's approval rating is significantly lower than that of his ex-boss at this point in his term. Former President Barack Obama held a 61 percent positive rating. Biden's approval rating as vice president at the time was tied with Harris's at 49 percent. On August 26, 2021, 11 Marines, one Navy corpsman, and one Army staff sergeant were killed in a suicide attack in Kabul that also claimed more than 160 Afghan lives. The US servicemembers were on a mission of mercy to evacuate at-risk Afghans after the disastrous US withdrawal led to a Taliban takeover. These are their stories: Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23 Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee was was a maintenance technician with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Roseville, California. A week before she was killed, Gee cradled a baby in her arms at the Kabul airport. She posted the photo on Instagram and wrote, 'I love my job.' Sgt. Mallory Harrison, who lived with Gee for three years and called her a 'sister forever' and best friend, wrote about the magnitude of her loss. 'I can't quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how Im never going to see her again,' Harrison wrote on Facebook. 'How her last breath was taken doing what she loved - helping people. ... Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she's gone.' Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, is seen four days before she was killed, escorting Afghans on to a plane in Kabul Just days before she was killed in the suicide blast, St. Nicole Gee was photographed holding an Afghan baby Gee, 23, (left and right) of Roseville, California was among those killed in the attack in Kabul Nicole Gee (left middle), a maintenance technician with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), awaits the launch of an MV-22B Osprey during an exercise in April Gee's Instagram page shows another photo of her in fatigues, holding a rifle next to a line of people walking into the belly of a large transport plane. She wrote: 'escorting evacuees onto the bird.' The social media account that includes many selfies after working out at the gym lists her location as California, North Carolina and 'somewhere overseas.' Photos show her on a camel in Saudi Arabia, in a bikini on a Greek isle and holding a beer in Spain. One from this month in Kuwait shows her beaming with her meritorious promotion to sergeant. Harrison said her generation of Marines hears war stories from veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but they seem distant amid boring deployments until 'the peaceful float you were on turns into ... your friends never coming home.' Gees car was still parked in a lot at Camp Lejeune and Harrison mused about all the Marines who walked past it while she was overseas. 'Some of them knew her. Some of them didnt.' she said. 'They all walked past it. The war stories, the losses, the flag-draped coffins, the KIA bracelets & the heartbreak. Its not so distant anymore.' Friends mourned Gee (right) whom they called a 'model Marine' and a 'Marine's Marine' 'She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person,' said friend and fellow Marine Mallory Harrison in a Facebook post on Gee (center right) 'She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person,' said Harrison in a Facebook post. 'I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine's Marine,' she said. 'She was doing God's work..a warrior. Searching Afghan women and children trying to get out of country,' Captain Karen Holliday said in a Facebook tribute. Holliday called Gee a 'Model Marine. A leader on the ground in a chaotic situation.' She said that a photo released of Gee a few days before her death, showing her escorting Afghans onto a waiting plane, had been bombarded with sexist online comments 'degrading her for being a female Marine.' Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, 20 Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, 20 Lance Corporal Merola was a Marine from Rancho Cucamonga, California. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California. The 20-year-old was a graduate of Los Osos High School, according to KABC-TV. Students honored him at the football game on the Friday after the attack by wearing red, white and blue. 'Dylan was a beloved son, brother, grandson, great grandson, nephew, a great friend, and a brave soldier,' said family friend Joseph Matsuoka on a GoFundMe page to raise money for his funeral. Matsuoka said that Merola 'paid the ultimate sacrifice at the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the evacuation.' Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25 Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25 Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo was a Marine sergeant from Lawrence, Massachusetts assigned to 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Naval Support Activity Bahrain. She was a graduate of Lawrence High School and attended Bridgewater State University. On social media, friends issued and outpouring of grief and devastation at Rosario's death. Nastassia Hyatt, a former Marine, recalled Rosario helping her through difficult times in a Facebook post. 'You brought me back to life. Back to life back to life.' Hyatt wrote. 'I wish i could bring you back to life for just one last hug, one last smile, one last nap, one last meal one last anything.' 'She the second half of my heart next to my son. Like she's everything to me. She is the greatest love I've ever known in a human besides my son. This one hit hard,' Hyatt said. 'We are heartbroken by the death of the service men and women due to the bombing in Kabul this week. I and the City of Lawrence are particularly saddened that one of those brave souls was a daughter of our City,' said Lawrence Mayor Kendrys Vasquez in a statement to WCVB-TV. The Dominican Republic's embassy in the United States tweeted that Rosario was originally from that Caribbean nation. On social media, friends issued and outpouring of grief and devastation at Rosario's death Sonia Guzman, the Dominican Republics ambassador to the United States, tweeted that the Dominican community shares in the loss. 'Peace to your soul!' she tweeted in Spanish. Rosario served with the Naval Amphibious Force, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which praised her efforts as supply chief this spring and thanked her for a job well done. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, Mayor Kendrys Vasquez said he has been in contact with the family. 'We are heartbroken by the death of the servicemen and women due to the bombing in Kabul this week,' he said. 'I and the city of Lawrence are particularly saddened that one of those brave souls was a daughter of our city.' The family wishes for privacy 'and that their loved one be recognized as the hero that she was,' the mayor said. Rosario (center) was a Marine sergeant from Lawrence, Massachusetts with the Naval Amphibious Force, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade Melendez said people have strong feelings about the U.S. involvement that's coming to an end after two decades in Afghanistan. 'There are people on both sides of the fence. I get it,' he said. 'This is about one of our own, a daughter of Lawrence. For us it is definitely about her service and her familys sacrifice. Thats what will be focusing on.' 'I have been in touch with the family of the Lawrencian killed in action to extend mine and my family's most sincere condolences and offer all of the aid that my administration can provide as they grieve this great loss,' the mayor said. 'At this time, the family's most immediate wish is to be given privacy and that their loved one be recognized as the hero that she was.' Hospitalman Maxton Soviak, 20 Soviak, an Ohio native, joined the Navy after high school and became a hospital corpsman Maxton William Soviak was a Navy corpsman from New Berlin, Ohio. He was assigned to 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California Weeks before his death, he made a tragic Instagram post on June 10, sharing a photo posing with other service members in what is believed to be Afghanistan. 'It's kill or be killed, definitely trynna be on the kill side,' he wrote in a comment on the post. Navy corpsmen often work alongside Marines, who do not have their own medics. Soviak's sister Marilyn said in her own Instagram post that her brother was there to 'help people'. 'My beautiful, intelligent, beat-to-the-sound of his own drum, annoying, charming baby brother was killed yesterday helping to save lives. He was a f***ing medic. There to help people and now he is gone and my family will never be the same,' she wrote. 'He was just a kid. We are sending kids over there to die. Kids with families that now have holes just like ours,' she added. 'I'm not one for praying but d**n could those kids over there use some right now. My heart is in pieces and I don't think they'll ever fit back right again.' Soviak was named as a casualty of the attack by his high school in Milan, Ohio, where he graduated in 2017. 'It is with deepest sorrow that I am sharing this news,' Edison Local School District Superintendent Thomas Roth said in a statement. 'Max was a good student who was active in sports and other activities throughout his school career. He was well respected and liked by everyone who knew him. Max was full of life in everything he did.' Maxton William Soviak (center), a medic in his early 20s, made this tragic post on June 10, writing 'It's kill or be killed, definitely trynna be on the kill side'. Marines Hunter Lopez (left) and Daegan Page (right) were also killed in the attack Soviak's sister Marilyn said an Instagram post that her brother was there to 'help people' Soviak took pride in his Navy service and worked alongside Marines in Afghanistan In high school, Soviak was on the honor roll and played football. He was named as a casualty of the attack by his high school in Milan, Ohio Soviak's family confirmed his death to local media and have asked for privacy. In high school, Soviak was on the honor roll and played football, according to the Sandusky Register. Soviak was among the nearly 6,000 US troops now working frantically to evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees from Kabul, with just days remaining before President Joe Biden's August 31 deadline to withdraw. Lance Corporal David Lee Espinoza, 20 David Lee Espinoza, 20, was one of the Marines killed in the attack David Lee Espinoza, was a 20-year-old U.S. Marine from Rio Grande, Texas. His mother, Elizabeth Holguin, said: 'He was a very good person. He served his country. He helped in any way he could. He was there (in Afghanistan), helping innocent people.' This was his second deployment; he first made a trip to the Middle East and arrived in Afghanistan for about a week. Holguin said she was uneasy about him being deployed there. 'I prayed every day,' she said. He is one of four children; he is not married and has no children. The mom last spoke with him the Tuesday before the attack. 'I just told him to be careful, that I was worried about him and I couldn't wait for him to come back,' Holguin said. 'He told me he was fine and not to worry. He was brave. If he was scared, he didn't show it.' She said she holds no animosity toward the president, saying her son 'wanted to be there.' Holguin learned her son was dead when she received a phone call on the Friday after the attack at 2.30am. 'He was just brave enough to go do what he wanted and to help out people. Thats who he was, he was just perfect,' his mother, Elizabeth Holguin, told the Laredo Morning Times. In a statement, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said Espinoza 'embodied the values of America: grit, dedication, service, and valor. When he joined the military after high school, he did so with the intention of protecting our nation and demonstrating his selfless acts of service.' Cuellar concluded, 'The brave never die. Mr. Espinoza is a hero.' Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, 20 Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum was killed in the attack Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum was named by his high school in Wyoming as a casualty in the attack. He was expecting to become a father and was pictured with his pregnant wife shortly before deploying to Afghanistan in April. Cheyenne McCollum, Rylee's sister, told DailyMail.com her brother had wanted to be a Marine since he was a toddler and that his own baby is due in just three weeks. 'Rylee was an amazing, man with a passion for the Marines. He was a son, a brother, a husband and a father with a baby due in just 3 weeks,' she said. 'He wanted to be a marine his whole life and carried around his rifle in his diapers and cowboy boots. 'He was determined to be in infantry and this was his first deployment. Rylee was sent to Afghanistan when the evac began. Rylee was manning the check point when he suicide bomb went off. 'Rylee wanted to be a history teacher and a wrestling coach when he finished serving his country. He's a tough, kind, loving kid who made an impact on everyone he met. His joke and wit brought so much joy. 'To his friends and teammates and coaches, he was family. Rylee will always be a hero not just for the ultimate sacrifice he made for our country but for the way he impacted every life around him for the better. Making us stronger, kinder, teaching us to love deeper. We love you Rylee.' Rylee McCollum graduated from Summit Innovations School in Jackson in 2019. Wyoming Schools Superintendent Jillian Balow said in a statement: 'Saying that I am grateful for Rylee's service to our country does not begin to encapsulate the grief and sadness I feel today as a mother and as an American.' 'My heart and prayers are with Rylee's family, friends, and the entire Jackson community,' she added. Rylee McCollum was named by his high school in Wyoming as a casualty in the attack Rylee McCollum was due to become a father. He is pictured with his pregnant wife, right, shortly before deploying to Afghanistan in April The Wyoming-born Marine's wrestling coach and close family friend, Benjamin Arlotta said 'heads should roll' over the disastrous US exit and that the young soldier's family is 'absolutely broken'. Arlotta told DailyMail.com that even in diapers McCollum would stand watch on his porch with a toy rifle, first said he wanted to be a Marine aged eight, and signed up on his 18th birthday. In a glowing eulogy to the young expectant father, whose new baby is due in three weeks, Arlotta described McCollum as a 'personal hero' and a 'fantastic brother, fantastic uncle, and a wonderful friend'. 'I was his wrestling coach since he was six. He was one of the best. A great kid, a great young man and an American patriot. He loved being a Marine,' Arlotta said. 'He was just a good man all around. We're all hurting pretty bad. 'It's impossible. I'm sitting here with the family right now with his dad and two sisters, his brother-in-law and niece. They're shattered, they're absolutely broken. The entire community is.' Arlotta, 37, said he is furious at the Biden administration and blames the White House for putting soldiers in an unnecessarily dangerous position. 'It's a junk show, an absolute junk show. Not just for Rylee but for every serviceman and woman over there. They were put in a very terrible spot. In my opinion this entire circumstance has been mismanaged from every level,' he told DailyMail.com. 'The only thing I can hope for is that accountability isn't forgotten. Because for the 13 men who were killed yesterday, heads need to roll for the way things have gone. Benjamin Arlotta, and his wife, Talia, are long-time family friends of the McCollums. Benjamin said he is angry and devastated 'We're just seeing the beginning of it. It's not over, it's only going to get worse. Everybody in the country needs to be praying for our servicemen and women right now. They have a scrap out in front of them. 'Sadly those 13 Marines aren't going to be the last ones to perish because of these terrible decisions that were made.' Recalling fond memories of the young Jackson Hole native, the wrestling coach told a heartwarming story of McCollum's determination. 'When he was 13 he came into the competition season 32lbs heavier than where he wanted to be,' Arlotta said. 'He told me he would lose it. We made a bet. I was going to quit chewing tobacco if he could get down there. That was September, by the time the state championship rolled around in January he had made weight. 'He entered the wrestling tournament at that weight and I quit chewing that day. 'He was first and foremost a man of his word. If he said he would do something, by goodness gracious he stood right in front of you until he did it.' McCollum moved to California for training. His pregnant wife Jiennah 'Gigi' Crayton lives in the San Diego area. The 20-year-old lance corporal wanted to be a soldier since childhood, first telling his parents he would join the Marines age eight. 'We were driving back from his first state wrestling tournament, I was riding with his family,' said Arlotta. 'We asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be in the Marines. 'He enlisted on his 18th birthday,' the coach added. 'When he actually enlisted his recruiter told him he could be anything, he could do any job. He swore up and down he wanted to be an infantryman. 'If you know Rylee, you know you can't talk him out of a damn thing, so that's what he did.' U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a fellow Wyoming resident, issued a statement when she learned of Rylee's passing. 'I want to offer my deepest condolences to Rylee McCollum's family and loved ones. His bravery and patriotism will never be forgotten. His willingness to put himself in harm's way to keep our country safe and defend our freedom represents a level of selflessness and heroism that embodies the best of America. 'We know that the McCollum family is grieving this tragic loss. I ask that people in Wyoming and across the country please keep those close to Rylee in their prayers, and remember that we are only free because of the courage and valor of service members like him.' Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, 20 Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz was a 20-year-old from Wentzville, Missouri Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz was a 20-year-old from Wentzville, Missouri. His father Mark Schmitz told KMOX the Marines notified his family about 2.40am on the day following the attack about his son's death. 'This was something he always wanted to do and I never seen a young man train as hard as he did to be the best soldier he could be,' Mark Schmitz said. The grieving father grew emotional as he spoke about his son, welling up with tears. 'His life meant so much more. I'm so incredibly devastated that I won't be able to see the man that he was very quickly growing into becoming.' Mark Schmitz slammed Biden and blamed him for his son's death. 'Be afraid of our leadership or lack thereof. Pray every day for the soldiers that are putting their lives at risk, doing what they love which is protecting all of us,' Schmitz's father said. He added that he was relieved when his son signed up as a Marine when Trump was in office because he 'really believed this guy didn't want to send people into harm's way.' Jared Schmitz was killed in the attack Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, 20 Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui was a native of Norco, California Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui was a native of Norco, California. Nikoui's father Steve, a carpenter, vented his frustrations at Biden in an interview with the Daily Beast. 'They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security. I blame my own military leaders Biden turned his back on him. That's it,' he said Steve Nikoui said he knew his son was dead when he saw two Marines approaching his home on the day of the attack at 7.15pm PST. He said he sat with the two emotional Marines, who cried more than he cried, and then had them leave. Steve also appeared on Fox with Tucker Carlson the day after his son's death to further criticize Biden in an emotional interview where he said the attack could have been avoided. 'From what I saw of the airport that they're in, looked like a Turkey shoot. It's funneled in to a single file-type entry point at which if you have in sort of chaos of any sort, they would all like gather to that one funneled area, which they would all be accessed. That's what happened. It was just basically so chaotic and not really planned out,' Steve said. As he teared up, he also said he was upset by how long it took to learn of his son's death. 'How long does it take for the military to, you know, inform the next of kin?' Marine Kareem Nikoui, pictured with his mother, was killed. His father said he blames Biden for abandoning them in Kabul 'I was actually trying to console them. But at the same time, I just wanted them to get out as soon as possible so that no one from my family came back and saw them. 'I thought it appropriate that I be able to tell them,' he said. He added that his son, who was based at Camp Pendleton in California, would often bring other Marines home on the holidays if they couldn't get back to their own families. 'My wife and I felt very honored that [since] these other boys weren't around their homes, that we were able to provide some sort of family life for them. 'He really loved that [Marine Corps] family. He was devotedhe was going to make a career out of this, and he wanted to go. No hesitation for him to be called to duty,' he said. Speaking outside Kareem's home, a relative told DailyMail.com that Kareem's family were inside signing the documents required to repatriate him. He added: 'They're totally devastated and they need some time. All the family are here and we're supporting them.' A steady stream of people have been seen coming and going from the home all day, among them some of Kareem's colleagues from the Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego. Steve Nikoui, right, father the late Kareem Nikoui, spoke with Fox's Tucker Carlson the day after the attack to condemn the Biden administration's efforts in Afghanistan that he said led to his son's death An American flag flew half-mast outside Norco Intermediate School in honor of Nikoui Kareem's mother Shana Chappell posted angrily on social media, blaming Vice-President Kamala Harris for the loss of her son. At the social media message of condolence from the Vice-President, she wrote: 'This c u next Tuesday is a joke! They are the reason my son is dead.' Kareem's death is also being mourned by his home city of Norco - a small community of 26,000 people nicknamed 'Horsetown' that sits 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Confirming his death, the city released a message of condolence that read: 'The City of Norco mourns the loss of Norco resident U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Mae'Lee Grant Nikoui who was killed in action while stationed at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, August 26, 2021. 'The U.S. Marine, who graduated from Norco High School in 2019 and served in JROTC, was committed to serving his country and is survived by his mother, father and siblings.' The city of Norco plans to honor Nikoui by placing his name on the 'Lest We Forget Wall' at the George A. Ingalls Veterans Memorial Plaza. Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez, 22 Marine Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez Marine Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez, a native of California's Coachella Valley and the son of two police officers, was also killed in the attack, Sheriff Chad Bianco confirmed. 'I am unbelievably saddened and heartbroken for the Lopez family as they grieve over the loss of their American Hero,' Bianco wrote. 'Hunter Lopez, son of our own Captain Herman Lopez and Deputy Alicia Lopez, tragically lost his life while serving our country in the United States Marine Corp. He was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, August 26th,' the sheriff added. 'Before joining the Marine Corp, Hunter proudly served in our Sheriff's Explorer Program. Our entire department is mourning this tragic loss. The Lopez family exemplifies the meaning of Service Above Self.' City of La Quinta issued a statement: 'Our La Quinta Family is in mourning today with the tragic loss of Hunter Lopez, one of the fallen United States Service Members in the attack in Afghanistan,' 'Hunter is the son of Captain Herman and Alicia Lopez, both members of the Riverside Sheriff's Department. Captain Herman Lopez is our Police Chief and Captain over at the Thermal Station,' the statement added. 'We are all so humbled by the service and ultimate sacrifice that Hunter gave to protect our country. He was a brave and selfless soldier who answered the call to be a United States Marine. Like his parents, Hunter wanted to help serve others and protect his community.' Marine Hunter Lopez, a native of California's Coachella Valley and the son of two police officers, was also killed, Sheriff Chad Bianco confirmed 'The Lopez family exemplifies the meaning of Service Above Self,' said the local sheriff 'I am unbelievably saddened and heartbroken for the Lopez family as they grieve over the loss of their American Hero,' Bianco wrote of Hunter Lopez (above) Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, of Salt Lake City, Utah Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was another of the service members killed outside the Kabul airport, his family told KSL-TV. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, California. Friends and family mourned his loss, including fellow students who graduated in the Class of 2008 at Hillcrest High School with him in Midvale. 'Soooooo glad I got to see him before he left. I love you son!!! You're my hero!! Please check in on us once in a while. I'll try to make you proud!!' Hoover's father, Darin Hoover, wrote on Facebook. 'My handsome nephew, Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover. Taylor spent his entire adult life as a Marine, serving. Doing the hard things that most of us can't do. He is a hero,' Jeremy Soto, an uncle, wrote. 'We are wounded. We are bruised. We are angry. We are crushed... but we remain faithful. Thank you for your courage nephew. We love you always.' 'Always a smile. Always respectful. A joy to be around. He is adored beyond measure. The world has lost a true light. Our hearts are broken. Shock, disbelief, horror, sadness, sorrow, anger and grief,' Brittany Jones Barnett, an aunt, added. 'Thank you sweet boy for the ultimate sacrifice. For giving your life for us all. Fighting for freedom and giving absolutely everything you had. You will never ever be forgotten. We love you so much,' she added. Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, pictured holding a young family member, died in Kabul Taylor Hoover, a Utah native, was mourned by his mother Kelly Barnett, left, and girlfriend, Nicole Weiss, right, following his death 'He is a hero. He gave his life protecting those that cant protect themselves, doing what he loved serving his country,' said father Darin Hoover, who lives in a Salt Lake City suburb, in an AP interview. He said he had heard from Marines who said they were grateful they had his son as their sergeant. 'They look back on him and say that theyve learned so much from him,' Hoover said. 'One heck of a leader.' Hoover said his son was also a best friend to his two sisters and loved all his extended family. He had a girlfriend in California and was the kind of guy who 'lit up a room' when he came in, his father said. Hoover, center, was among the Marine troops in Afghanistan to helping with the evacuation Hoover pictured in his uniforms, 'died a hero doing what he always wanted to do and was proud to do, ' a family member said Nate Thompson of Murray, Utah, first met Hoover when they were 10 years old in Little League football. They stayed friends through high school, where Hoover played lineman. He was undersized for the position, but his heart and hard work more than made up for what he lacked in statute, Thompson said. As a friend, he was selfless and kind. 'If we had trouble with grades, trouble with family or trouble on the field, we always called Taylor. Hes always level-headed, even if hes struggling himself,' he said. U.S. Representative Blake Moore, who represents Utah's 1st Congressional District, also mourned the loss of Hoover. 'We'll be forever grateful for his sacrifice & legacy. He spent his last moments serving our state & nation, and we'll never forget his unwavering devotion,' he wrote in a statement. Utah Senator Mike Lee wrote in a statement, 'Burying a child is a grief no parent should bear. Sharon and I mourn with the Hoover family and with all who loved [Hoover]... who gave the last full measure of devotion in Afghanistan. 'He died completing a mission to save his countrymen and civilians from evil and oppression. He lived the Marine Corps motto by living and dying always faithful.' Utah residents tied fellow ribbons to flags in front of Hoover's family home Neighbor Lena McIllece helped arranged the flags to honor Hoover and the other fallen troops Utah Gov. Spencer Cox ordered that flags be flown at half-staff at all state facilities and public grounds effective immediately until sunset on August. 30 to honor Hoover and all those who died in the recent attack. 'We are devastated to hear of the passing of Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover. Staff Sgt. Hoover served valiantly as a Marine and died serving his fellow countrymen as well as America's allies in Afghanistan. We honor his tremendous bravery and commitment to his country, even as we condemn the senseless violence that resulted in his death. Abby and I pray for Staff Sgt. Hoover, his family and loved ones during this most difficult time,' Cox said in a statement. A family member told ABC 4 that Hoover, 'died a hero doing what he always wanted to do and was proud to do, serve his country. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, was a native of Tennessee Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23 Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, was a native of Corryton, Tennessee. Knauss was assigned to 9th PSYOP Battalion, 8th PSYOP Group, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. He first was identified as one of the victims by his grandfather, Wayne Knauss. 'He grew up in a Christian home, attended Berean Christian school through 8th grade and spent, four years at Gibbs High [School],' said Wayne about his grandson. 'A motivated young man who loved his country. He was a believer so we will see him again in God's heaven.' Wayne told ABC 6 that Ryan had served right out of high school for five years with special training in Psychology Operations. Ryan's stepmother, Lianne Knauss, added that Ryan told them he was looking forward to returning to the U.S. and moving to Washington D.C. 'He was a super-smart hilarious young man,' she said. Knauss, 23, right, said he wanted to move to Washington D.C. when he returned Members of the Knauss family mourned Ryan's death on social media U.S. Representative Tim Burchett, a fellow Knoxville resident, also tweeted a tribute to the fallen marine. 'Ryan gave his life outside that airport helping people he didn't know get to safety. This is what true heroism looks like and Ryan's sacrifice will never be forgotten. The Knauss family is my prayers.' Burchett wrote Diane Trulson Amundson Knauss also urged people to support Wayne and the troops in Afghanistan. 'Please pray for our military in Afghanistan and all over the world,' she wrote. 'Our hearts ache for Wayne and Neena... and all families.' Marine Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, was a native of Omaha, Nebraska Corporal Daegan Page, 23 Marine Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, was a native of Omaha, Nebraska. In a statement, Page's family confirmed that he was one of the slain service members at Kabul airport. 'Our hearts are broken, but we are thankful for the friends and family who are surrounding us during this time,' the family said. 'Daegan's girlfriend Jessica, his mom, dad, step-mom, step-dad, 4 siblings, and grandparents are all mourning the loss of a great son, grandson, and brother.' Page grew up in Omaha and Red Oak, Iowa. He enjoyed playing hockey for Omaha Westside in the local hockey club and was a diehard Chicago Blackhawks fan. He also oved hunting and spending time outside with his father. His family said he was a longtime Boy Scout who was eager to join the U.S. Marine Corps. 'Daegan joined the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from Millard South High School. He loved the brotherhood of the Marines and was proud to serve as a member of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.' Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page died in the Kabul airport bombing attack Page, left, was a Marine and member of the 2nd Battalion Marine Regiment They added that Page was looking forward to coming home to see his family and friends. He also had plans to go to trade school, contemplating a career as a lineman. 'Daegan will always be remembered for his tough outer shell and giant heart. Our thoughts and prayers are also with the other Marine and Navy families whose loved ones died alongside Daegan,' the family said. Shana Nicole, a friend of Page, added that 'the world lost an amazing hero. 'My heart hurts for everyone who knew Daegan. He was so so kind always,' she wrote on Facebook. The Omaha, Nebraska, native was looking forward to returning home, his family said Page, center, hoped to reunite with friends back home and go to trade school Page, third from the left, rear, was drawn to the sense of brotherhood within the Marine Corps U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, who represents Page's home district, also issued a statement mourning the loss of the young marine. 'I was just notified about the death of Marine Corporal Page. My heart was already broken over our country's loss of 13 service members in Afghanistan. Now the loss is even harder,' Fortenberry said. 'God bless Corporal Page. He saved lives and served his country honorably. His life was cut short but had ultimate meaning. By his bravery and will, many others will have a chance. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family.' Marine Corp. Humberto Sanchez was among those killed Corporal Humberto Sanchez, 23 Officials in Indiana confirmed that Corp. Humberto Sanchez was also among the dead. Sanchez graduated from Logansport High School in 2017. He also attended Columbia Elementary. 'Like many, I have been heartbroken over the recent loss of the 13 U.S. service members who were murdered in the terrorist attacks against our evacuation efforts in Kabul, Afghanistan,' Logansport Mayor Chris Martin said in a statement on Facebook. 'Even more heartbreaking is learning the news today that one of those killed was from right here at home in Logansport, Indiana. 'This young man had not yet even turned 30 and still had his entire life ahead of him. Any plans he may have had for his post-military life were given in sacrifice due to the heart he exhibited in putting himself into harm's way to safeguard the lives of others.' Adrian Gazcon, a friend, also wrote a tribute on Twitter for Sanchez, saying that 'it hurts that he's gone.' 'Thank you for your service, you're a hero bro.' Sanchez pictured carrying friend Rhiannon Rickerd while attending Logansport High School in Indiana President Biden has been blasted for claiming the wealthiest families in America pay an average of 8.2 per cent of income tax as he seeks to raise a levy that'll target their stocks and investments. Biden claimed America's wealthiest 400 families - with a minimum net worth of $2.1 billion, or combined wealth of $1.8 trillion, pay far less than the 14 per cent levied on the average American. But the New York Times claims Biden's figures are misleading, because they fail to take into account the large amounts these high net worth individuals pay when they sell assets such as stocks and shares which are liable for capital gains tax. These sales are made sporadically, and therefore do not appear on annual tax returns. Biden has attacked their alleged tax underpayment while campaigning to dramatically increase capital gains tax, from a top rate of 20 per cent to the same 39.6 percent rate for people with incomes of more than $1million. That is the same rate he has proposed for top income tax earners. Top earners are currently charged up to 37 per cent income tax on salaries over $523,000 for single filers, or joint filers on more than $628,000, with Biden looking to raise that top threshold to 39.6 percent. The president has been accused of skewing the figures as he seeks to push his $3.5trillion reconciliation package through Congress. The Tax Policy Center in Washington DC, which is not affiliated to any political party, estimated that those condemned by Biden for underpaying actually paid a tax rate of 24 per cent. President Joe Biden said the wealthiest 400 families in America are paying an average income rate of 8.2 per cent but the Independent Tax Policy Center reported the figure is actually 20 per cent - and it raises questions if Biden is skewing figures to push his $3.5trillion reconciliation package through Congress That three times more than Biden's most recent estimate, and considerably more than the 14 per cent tax the average American worker pays. Biden's assertion came via analysis from the Office of Management and Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers, but has been criticized for using a completely different calculation to other tax bodies not affiliated with the federal government. A spokesman said: 'While we have long known that billionaires dont pay enough in taxes, the lack of transparency in our tax system means that much less is known about the income tax rate that they do pay.' Biden himself joined in the chorus of disapproval as he sought to push his reforms last week, saying: 'How is it possible for millionaires and billionaires that can pay a lower rate of tax than teachers, firefighters or law enforcement officers? 'This is our moment to deal working people back into the economy. This is our moment to prove to the American people that their government works for them, not just for the big corporations and those at the very top.' The analysis estimated that billionaires paid 8.2 per cent of their income to the federal government - a rate is lower than the income tax paid by most Americans, who are taxed in brackets depending on their income (pictured). However, the Tax Policy Center reported that the top one per cent's average tax rate is 27.44 per cent - more than triple what Biden has claimed Biden's proposal would see the top rate of tax raised to 39.6 per cent on both income - their salaries - and capital gains tax - profits on investments including stocks. Meanwhile, the top rate of capital gains tax is currently 20 per cent, meaning the new proposal would see the amount taken from the most successful investors almost double Biden's proposal would see the top rate of tax raised to 39.6 per cent on both income - their salaries - and capital gains tax - profits on investments including stocks. Meanwhile, the top rate of capital gains tax is currently 20 per cent, meaning the new proposal would see the amount taken from the most successful investors almost double. Federal income tax sits at 37 per cent for those earning more than $518,401 a year for single filers. Couples are only taxed that rate on income of $622,051 and above. Meanwhile, federal capital gains tax - the amount deducted from profits earned on stocks and other investments - are capped at 20 per cent for single filers whose investments earned them $441,451 or more. That jumps slightly for married or joint filers, who only hit the top tax band on profits of $496,601 or more. The analysis looked at publicly available data from the Office of Management and Budget and the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which said inequality in the tax code is driven largely by wealth, not work. Last week, Biden tweeted: 'It's time the super-wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share in taxes.' The tweet came a day after Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was slammed for attending the $35,000-a-head Met Gala donning a dress that read: 'Tax the rich.' Two hours later, Biden tweeted again, this time referencing his $3.5trillion proposed legislation, which House and Senate Democrats aim to pass into law by the month's end. 'To be clear: If you make under 400k, my Build Back Better Agenda wont raise your taxes a cent. 'Not only that youll get a historic tax cut, and see lower costs on things like child care and health care. And all of it will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share,' he said. Biden took to Twitter last week to share his thoughts on taxing America's rich If the proposal makes it through Congress, it will raise taxes on people and corporations making over $400,000 per year back to 39.6 per cent from the current 37 per cent. Single filers will have to make more than $523,600 each year starting in 2022 to be taxed the top federal rate. Heads of household would have to make $425,000 and a married joint $450,000, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. Biden's tweets came after Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was slammed for attending the $35,000-a-head Met Gala donning a dress that read: 'Tax the rich' Households making more than $1million annually will be taxed the same amount - 39.6 per cent - on their capital gains. It's a hefty increase from the current 20 per cent. Biden has also called for closing the loophole that allows wealthy Americans to inherit gains, as reported by CBS. The bill has been progressives' top priority as it focuses on helping families and combating climate change. It is currently in the process of markup and reconciliation but even among Democrats there is a disagreement over Biden's plan. House Democrats have instead proposed raising the top capital gains rate from 20 to 25 per cent - only five per cent more versus the nearly 10 that Biden proposed. They also suggested a three per cent surtax be placed on single taxpayers making more than $5million but did not address the topic of passing wealth down generations, CBS reported. Most recently, Senator Joe Manchin, the most moderate Democrat in the Senate, said that he could not support the expensive reconciliation as it stands. The Senate later passed a bipartisan version of the infrastructure bill last month with a price tag of $1.2trillion, which Democrats in the House said they wouldn't approve without approval of the $3.5trillion reconciliation package first. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin doubled-down and said he won't back his party's $3.5trillion reconciliation package as progressives say they won't vote through the $1.2trillion infrastructure bill without its passage Republicans have refused to raise the debt ceiling because of the Biden administration's trillion dollars worth of spending plans. Moody's said the spending limit 'has failed' at its job and instead 'has become highly disruptive to the fiscal process,' thus causing legislation to simply ignore the debt ceiling for increased periods of time A report published by Moody's Analytics on Tuesday noted that if Manchin does not budge, Congress could be at a deadlock where neither of the massive pieces of legislation will get through. Moody's found that the worst case scenario would be if Congress didn't act to lift the debt ceiling and the stalemate carried on, forcing the federal government to delay its billions in debts to Social Security recipients, veterans and active-duty military to November 1. Moody's explained: 'The original intent of the debt limit was to be a forcing mechanism on lawmakers to remain fiscally disciplined.' But the debt ceiling is proving that 'it has failed' at its job and instead 'has become highly disruptive to the fiscal process,' thus causing legislation to simply ignore the debt ceiling for increased periods of time. The result is the US defaulting on its debt payments, which would be a 'catastrophic blow' to Covid-19 economic recovery and result in the loss of six million jobs, according Moody's latest analytics. Moab City Police Department announced that they will launch an independent investigation into their officers' handling of a domestic dispute between Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito a month before she was found dead. The City of Moab, Utah confirmed that they will ask an outside organization to conduct a formal investigation into how the police department responded to the incident on August 12. They spoke out two days after a body found last weekend in Grand Teton National Park was confirmed to be Petito, with a coroner ruling her death a homicide. City officials released a statement on Thursday which said they were 'unaware of any breach of Police Department policy.' They noted that 'individuals can view the same situation in very different ways' and 'recognize how the death of Ms. Petito more than two weeks later in Wyoming might lead to speculation, in hindsight, about actions taken during the incident in Moab.' That statement noted that their 'police officers have been both praised and criticized for their response and their resolution of the incident.' Cops were filmed discussing what had happened with Petito and Laundrie after being called out by onlookers who reported seeing him hit her. They found Laundrie with scratches to his face, with Petito claiming she'd hit him with a phone while battling her OCD. Officers deemed her to be the 'primary aggressor' and separated the couple for the night to try and defuse the tension between them, but neither were arrested. That has subsequently triggered allegations that investigating the incident more deeply might have saved Petito's life, although other's have countered by hailing the cops' calm handling of the couple. Moab City Police Chief Bret Edge explained in a statement provided to Fox News on Thursday that a request for an investigation into the department's handling of the incident was requested by an outside party. Moab City Police Department and the City of Moab an investigation into officers' handling of a domestic dispute between Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito a month before she was found dead in Wyoming Police bodycam footage revealed the moment Utah cops asked missing 'van-life' woman Gabby Petito why she slapped her boyfriend Brian Laundrie in a dramatic incident 13 days before she disappeared on their cross-country trip Laundrie is seen with scratches on his face which he tells an officer were caused when Petito 'was trying to get the keys from me' and 'hit me with her phone' He said the department will 'identify an unaffiliated law enforcement agency to conduct the formal investigation on our behalf.' 'Should the investigation identify areas for improvement we will take that information to heart, learn from it, and make changes if needed to ensure we are providing the best response and service to our community,' Edge added. The recorded encounter began after a chilling 911 audio captured a caller in Utah reporting a domestic abuse incident involving Petito and Laundrie that claimed Laundrie slapped her. In the audio, obtained by DailyMail.com, the male caller tells a Grant County sheriff that a 'gentleman' in a white van with a Florida license plate had slapped a girl in the vehicle before driving away. The man also mentions the incident had happened 'by Moonflower' - likely referring to the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, where Laundrie and Petito stayed the night of August 11 and where they reportedly were seen having an explosive fight. 'I'm right in the corner of Main Street by Moonflower and we are driving and I'd like to report a domestic dispute. Florida with a white van - Florida license plate, white van,' the man says before being interrupted by the officer, who asks him what he saw exactly. 'They just drove off. They're going towards Main Street. They made a right onto Main Street from Moonflower. We drove by him, a gentleman was slapping the girl,' the man continues. 'He was slapping her?' the sheriff asks. 'Yes. And then we stopped. They ran down an up the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car and they drove off,' the man says as the audio ends. When an officer asks Petito if her boyfriend hit her, she replies 'I guess' and gestures to her chin. Petito admits he 'pushed her' during the altercation Moab police officers separated the couple for the night after responding to the 911 call. The City of Moab said they are 'unaware of any breach of Police Department policy' in their handling of Petito and Laundrie's domestic dispute Shortly after the call at 4:30 pm, Petito and Laundrie were filmed in police bodycam footage when they were stopped by Moab Police. The bodycam footage shows an officer reporting that the driver of a vehicle ahead is showing 'obscure driving', driving 45mph in a 15mph road, and is 'possibly intoxicated.' He says the vehicle has bumped a curb and puts the sirens on. Petito later told officers that the couple didn't drink. The officer then gets out the vehicle and approaches the couple's white camper van, which they have pulled over. The officer asks Petito to step out of the vehicle and takes her down the road, separating the couple to ask her what happened. In the video, an emotional Petito tells officers with tears streaming down her face that she 'was trying to get him [Laundrie] to stop telling [her] to calm down' and admitting the couple had 'been fighting all morning.' In the bodycam footage from Moab officers, Petito says she suffers from OCD and anxiety, with both her and Laundrie saying she was stressed because of the YouTube blog they were working on to document the doomed cross-country trip. The officer tells Petito she is 'not in any trouble' and escorts her to the back of the cop car so she can 'take a breath' and have 'a few minutes.' Laundrie is seen with scratches on his face and arm which he tells an officer were caused when Petito 'was trying to get the keys from me' and 'hit me with her phone'. He later said she was angry with him because of his dirty feet. When an officer asks Petito if her boyfriend hit her, she replies 'I guess' and makes a grabbing motion on her chin. Laundrie admits he 'pushed her' during the altercation. The cops determine Petito was 'the primary aggressor' and say they are separating the couple for the night. 'I am separating you two tonight, okay?' the officer is heard telling Petito. The 22-year-old nods through tears in response and mouths 'okay.' 'I want you guys both to be tonight, away from each other,' the officer says. 'Relax, breathe, because there's no need to be crying now,' he tells Petito. Petito nods and wipes tears from her eyes. 'I understand that this can feel like a nightmare,' the officer says. 'But you have come out as the golden flower on top.' According to the document, cops were called to a local business in Moab, Utah on August 12, after a witness reported seeing the couple 'arguing over a phone' outside their van The couple had been traveling around the country in their camper van since early July to start a blog and were visiting Moab when they got into an altercation, an incident report reveals. The report, released by the Moab Police Department on Wednesday, documented that the couple admitted they had been going through 'issues' over the last couple days. According to the police incident report, a witness, identified only as Christopher, had reported seeing the pair 'arguing over a phone.' In his account, one of the responding officers Eric Pratt, wrote that 'all three individuals' - Petito, Laundrie, and the witness - gave 'a similar and consistent story, consisting of the basic idea that the driver of the van, a male, had some sort of argument with the female.' Pratt said both Petito and Laundrie said 'they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately didn't wish to see anyone charged with a crime.' A Utah park ranger later revealed she warned Petito her relationship with Laundrie seemed 'toxic' after responding to the call. Melissa Hulls, the visitor and resource protection supervisor at Arches National Park in Moab, said she was 'imploring with [Petito] to reevaluate the relationship' but that the 22-year-old didn't understand 'how big a deal this was.' Park ranger Melissa Hulls (pictured) branded Gabby Petito's relationship with Brian Laundrie 'toxic'. Gabby is pictured, right, on August 12 - the day she chatted with Hulls 'I can still hear her voice. She wasn't just a face on the milk carton, she was real to me,' she said. She said she can remember Petito sobbing in the back of the police cruiser. Cops had already arrived at the scene by the time Hulls got there. She said that as a female ranger, she has been trained to chat with women during suspected domestic abuse call outs to try and get them to relax and open up. 'I was probably more candid with her than I should've been,' Hulls said. She told Petito that her and Laundrie's relationship had the markings of a 'toxic' one. 'I was imploring with her to reevaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life,' she added. An autopsy confirmed on Tuesday that the remains found near Grand Teton National Park last week belong to Petito. Her death was ruled a homicide but her cause of death is still under investigation. Laundrie was named a person of interest in the case and has since been reported missing. FBI and North Point police continued the search for Laundrie in the Carlton Wildlife Reserve for the fifth day on Thursday. His parents spent most of the day meeting with their attorney in Orlando. A woman has been charged after allegedly attempting to poison a two-year-old girl twice. The toddler was allegedly poisoned at a Umina Beach home, on the NSW Central Coast, in August and September 2020. She was admitted to the Children's Hospital at Westmead, in western Sydney, following the suspected poisoning both times. A woman has been charged after allegedly attempting to poison a two-year-old girl twice (stock image) Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad detectives launched an investigation into the incidents. Police then arrested a 28-year-old woman on July 28, 2021. They took her to Gosford Police Station where she was charged with attempted murder, and use poison to endanger life. She fronted Gosford Local Court before she was refused bail. She will reappear at court on Friday. The Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad was set up for detectives to investigate incidents against children and adults, including sexual assault, serious physical abuse, and extreme cases of neglect. Reports that ministers looking at providing loans or subsidies to cover losses The cost of rescuing failed energy firms' customers is set to be passed on to every household through a levy on bills, the Business Secretary has indicated. The wholesale price of gas has risen six-fold in a year, meaning most energy companies are now making a loss on every customer on their books. Regulator Ofgem is raising its cap on annual bills by 139 to 1,277 from next month but the actual cost of supplying a year's gas and electricity is now estimated at around 1,600. Seven energy firms serving a total of 1.5million customers have gone bust in recent weeks. Many more could follow, with the total number of suppliers potentially falling from 70 at the start of the year to as few as ten. Bigger firms such as British Gas and EDF have been put under pressure by the Government and Ofgem to take on customers from failed firms. The cost of rescuing failed energy firms' customers is set to be passed on to every household through a levy on bills, the Business Secretary has indicated The wholesale price of gas has risen six-fold in a year, meaning most energy companies are now making a loss on every customer on their books It was reported earlier this week that ministers were looking at providing loans, grants or subsidies which would allow them to cover their losses. However, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng made clear that this would not happen. As a result, households are now likely to face an extra levy on their bills under Ofgem's existing system for covering losses at firms taking on failed rivals' accounts, Yesterday also saw Paul Scully, the small business minister, admit that Ofgem and the Government were having 'conversations' about raising the energy cap again in the spring, should gas prices remain high beyond a 'short spike' as global economies reopen after months of lockdown to combat Covid. Mr Kwarteng told MPs that the Government would neither bail out failed energy firms, nor offer grants or subsidies to the larger ones that take on their customers. Instead, he said it was up to the industry to find a solution. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said ministers will not be looking at providing loans, grants or subsidies which would allow energy companies to cover their losses Give us Brexit cut on fuel VAT, say Tories Tory MPs yesterday demanded ministers slash VAT on household energy bills to help struggling families this winter. Senior backbenchers Robert Halfon and Sir Christopher Chope led the calls amid fears people on low incomes will struggle to keep their homes warm this winter. VAT of 5 per cent on fuel bills sets households back by around 60 per year but scrapping it could cost the Treasury 1.6billion. In the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, Boris Johnson pledged to scrap the tax if the UK left the EU. Last night Mr Halfon said: If there was ever a time to do it, the time is now. In the Commons, Sir Christopher said: We did it for the hospitality industry, which was badly affected by Covid-19. Why dont we abolish VAT for consumers on fuel now? Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng refused to comment. Advertisement Responding to an urgent question from Labour, he said: 'The Government has been clear that protecting consumers is our primary focus and shapes our entire approach to this. 'The solution to this crisis will be found from the industry and the market, as is already happening, and the Government... will not be bailing out failed energy companies.' Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said ministers had been 'far too complacent' about the gas crisis. His Labour colleague Rachael Maskell also challenged Mr Kwarteng in the Commons. 'The rise in energy prices will disproportionately impact people living in the North because it is colder during the winter in the North,' she said. 'What assessment has [Mr Kwarteng] made of the regional disparities and how is he going to mitigate against that?' Admitting she had raised 'a very fair point', Mr Kwarteng continued: 'Clearly in terms of the gas price the single most important determinant of it is the weather... we're absolutely focused on protecting the most vulnerable customers, wherever they are in the UK.' Mr Kwarteng also came under pressure from Tory backbench MPs to help hard-pressed customers by cutting VAT, which is currently 5 per cent on fuel. Contingency plans to keep the lights on amid the gas crisis could see a major electricity plant burning dirty coal beyond its planned closure next year. Drax in North Yorkshire is among three coal-fired stations called into action in recent days to maintain UK power supplies as an alternative to gas. Any increased reliance on coal would be embarrassing for a government which has promised to cut carbon emissions. Britain will host the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow next month, with Boris Johnson having berated world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week for failing to move quickly enough to combat climate change. Now we're running on empty: After energy drama, new fears of petrol shortage as lorry crisis hits scores of garage forecourts Fears of a petrol shortage erupted last night as a lack of tanker drivers forced BP and Esso to halt deliveries to dozens of garages. In a dramatic illustration of the impact of the lorry driver crisis, 100 forecourts were reported to be suffering supply issues. Some have been shut. Bosses at BP, which is Britains second largest petrol retailer, told ministers and officials the situation was very bad and stocks were declining rapidly. Esso said some of its petrol forecourts which are operated in partnership with Tesco Express stores were also suffering shortages. Last night, other retailers privately admitted that fuel supplies were tight. But they pleaded with drivers not to panic buy, as this could cause pumps to run dry. The Petrol Retailers Association warned drivers to make sure they had enough fuel to reach an alternative forecourt in case they could not fill up as planned. Fears of a petrol shortage erupted last night as a lack of tanker drivers forced BP and Esso to halt deliveries to dozens of garages. Pictured: A closed BP petrol station in East Dulwich this afternoon Bosses at BP, which is Britains second largest petrol retailer, told ministers and officials the situation was very bad and stocks were declining rapidly The drivers crisis has already hit supermarkets, deliveries and even bin collections. The petrol shortages will heap pressure on the Government to take action to tackle the issue before it causes more economic damage. It comes as many families are grappling with the cost of living, with millions facing a hike in energy bills and the threat of rising food prices, leading to fears of a winter of woe for millions. Yesterday, the Bank of England cut its growth forecasts and warned inflation could rise above 4 per cent by the end of the year. Britain is said to be short of more than 90,000 lorry drivers, which is partly the result of the pandemic, which cancelled the training and testing of tens of thousands of workers. Other factors include low recruitment, linked to poor pay and conditions, and Brexit, which resulted in thousands of EU drivers going home. The Government has set up a Cabinet Office taskforce, led by former Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay, to address problems in the supply chain. Ministers on spot over why they let vast gas storage facility shut Business leaders and MPs have slammed the Government for allowing Britain to effectively shut down the gas storage needed to cope with an energy crisis. The UK has minuscule levels of storage compared with other nations in Europe, which means families and businesses are more reliant than ever on imports. Reports suggest the UK has just seven days worth of gas storage compared with the 90 days of supply held by France and Germany. Storage is equivalent to just 2 per cent of annual demand here versus an average of 25 per cent in Europe. The lack of storage is largely because ministers allowed the owner of British Gas, Centrica, to shut down a huge facility in the North Sea responsible for 70 per cent of UK gas storage in 2017. Yesterday Labour MP Stephanie Peacock challenged Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to admit allowing the closure of storage facility Rough was a mistake. Mr Kwarteng rejected this saying: I dont think it is relevant because no amount of gas storage is going to mitigate the quadrupling of the gas price in four months. Advertisement There have also been issues with wider labour shortages. This week, the food and farming sector warned that a worker shortage, put at 500,000, meant tonnes of food was being thrown away because it cannot be picked, packed or delivered. Retailers, food manufacturers, farmers and haulage firms are jointly calling on the Government to introduce a Covid-recovery visa that would allow drivers and others into Britain to fill the vacancies. BPs head of UK retail, Hanna Hofer, said yesterday it was important the Government understood the urgency of the situation, which she described as very bad. She said BP had two thirds of normal forecourt stock levels required for smooth operations, but that was declining rapidly. We are expecting the next few weeks to be really, really difficult, she added. BP said: We are experiencing fuel supply issues at some of our retail sites in the UK and unfortunately have therefore seen a handful of sites temporarily close due to a lack of both unleaded and diesel grades. These have been caused by delays in the supply chain. Esso said: A small number of our 200 Tesco Alliance retail sites are impacted. We are working closely with all parties in our distribution network to optimise supplies. Petrol Retailers Association executive director Gordon Balmer said the issues appear to be confined to London and the South East. He added: The PRA recommends that motorists maintain sufficient fuel in the tank to enable them to get to an alternative filling station in the rare instance that fuel is not available. Rod McKenzie, of the Road Haulage Association, said: This is concerning but not surprising. We are short of drivers and it is getting worse because the Government is not doing enough to help. 'This is a cocktail of chaos. The supply chain is creaking and crumbling. The minister for small business, Paul Scully, told ITV News: We are concerned about BP and other sectors where we are hearing those stresses coming to bear. 'We are having regular conversations to see what the Government can do to increase testing, to increase the supply of drivers and bring drivers back. We also want to see what the industry can do for themselves. Boris: Bosses need to start paying more - as low-paid workers look to plug gap left by Universal Credit cut Many firms have been paying their staff too little for years, Boris Johnson has said , as he suggested rising wages could plug the gap left by a controversial Universal Credit cut. The Prime Minister also said the Government would press ahead next month with plans to scrap the 20-a-week uplift in universal credit, which was introduced at the start of the Covid pandemic. He said he had every sympathy with families who are finding it tough. But he warned that maintaining the extra payment would require a tax rise equal to more than 1p on the basic rate of income tax. Many firms have been paying their staff too little for years, Boris Johnson has said , as he suggested rising wages could plug the gap left by a controversial Universal Credit cut Inflation could hit 4% in months, warns the Bank The Bank of England issued a downbeat warning over rising living costs yesterday, saying that inflation could surge above 4 per cent by the end of the year. In a gloomy update yesterday, the Bank hinted at the threat of interest rate rises in the future, warning that cost pressures may prove more persistent than first thought. Yet, despite the concerns, members of the Banks Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted unanimously to hold interest rates at their historic low of 0.1 per cent. They worried that any move to raise rates too soon could put the brakes on the UKs post-Covid economic recovery. The Bank has now cut its expectations for growth in the third quarter of the year by around 1 per cent, leaving the economy at the end of September still around 2.5 per cent smaller than before the pandemic. However, it said recent price rises had strengthened [the] case for modest tightening of monetary policy over the next few years which would mean an increase in rates. The more pessimistic outlook will be a disappointment for Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was relying on a rapid bounce back from Covid to help shore up the Treasurys finances. It is now looking increasingly unlikely that the economy will return to its pre-Covid size by the end of this year, as the Bank had initially predicted. Fears that the recovery is slowing mean that the Bank has been reluctant to start reversing its massive stimulus programme, despite worries that this could be adding to inflation. As well as slashing interest rates last year, the Bank also re-started its 895billion money-printing programme to inject more cash into the economy. But Kevin Brown, at investments organisation Scottish Friendly, accused the Bank of fiddling with stagflation where the economy stagnates but the cost of living soars. He added: The Banks latest rate announcement [fails] to account for the real situation on the ground, where people are experiencing rocketing prices on a range of core needs. With prices soaring... people are going to batten down the spending hatches and this is going to kill off the recovery. Advertisement Last night, it emerged that ministers are considering softening the blow from the universal credit cut by allowing claimants to keep more money as they earn, it emerged yesterday. The Treasury is discussing cutting the taper rate the amount of benefit withdrawn for every pound someone earns from 63p to 60p, according to the Daily Mirror. Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey made the proposal in her submission to the Governments spending review. Mr Johnson told reporters while travelling in the United States: I have every sympathy for people who are finding it tough, I really really do but we have to recognise that in order to maintain the Covid uplift youve got to find another five to 6billion in tax. That has got to come out of some peoples pockets. Mr Johnson said many firms had paid their staff too little for years and suggested that rising wages seen in recent months could help plug the gap for some workers on low incomes. He added: Wages are now rising faster than they have been for a long time, and the philosophy of this government is to try to deliver a high-wage, high-skill economy in which we invest in people, we invest in capital, we encourage businesses to put their profits back into people, back into the capital of the business, in order to drive productivity gain. If you look at the UK since 2008, you look at our companies, theyve been paying very low wages and theyve been not investing, and productivity has fallen. The planned cut in Universal Credit has sparked opposition across the political spectrum, with some senior Tories, including former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, joining Labour calls for it to be kept in place. Campaigners warn it could plunge tens of thousands of low income families into poverty at a time when the cost of living is rising fast. But Mr Johnson said the best solution was to continue to invest in peoples skills, to make sure that they are getting the type of jobs that reward their hard work and youre starting to see that, youre starting to see wages go up. He declined to say whether he could live on the 118-a-week minimum that Universal Credit guarantees to couples. Yesterday, the ex-Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson added her voice to calls for the Government to keep the 20-a-week uplift. She told ITV it is the wrong thing to do for people on low incomes. The row came amid calls for the Government to increase winter fuel payments and the warm home discount to help pensioners. But Tory former minister Steve Baker urged ministers to prioritise universal credit. He said: The problem with the winter fuel allowance is we end up giving money to people who dont need it. President Joe Biden kept his own counsel when he received a letter from former President Donald Trump pocketing the note and refusing to share its contents with advisors, according to Bob Woodward's new book. Leaving a letter for his successor is one of the White House traditions former President Donald Trump decided to honor even after skipping Biden's inauguration and avoiding a traditional lunch with his successor. Biden found the letter in a drawer of the Resolute Desk inside the Oval Office, just as predecessors had before him. 'He put it in his pocket and did not share it with his advisers,' Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote in their new book, Peril. President Joe Biden did not share with aides the contents of a letter that former President Trump wrote to him 'His attention turned to the virus,' according to the authors, in a reference to Biden's battle against the coronavirus. Biden may have anticipated how Trump's words might have leaked had he spoken to advisors about it. Many of his aides appear to have cooperated in Woodward and Costa's book, which goes on at length about numerous meetings attended by just a handful of top officials, sometime quoting about the thoughts and feelings of big players. Biden spoke publicly about the letter after being sworn in, without revealing what Trump wrote him. 'The President wrote a very generous letter,' he said. 'Because it was private, I will not talk about it until I talk to him, but it was generous.' White House press secretary Jen Psaki later described the letter as 'generous.' Trump skipped Biden's inauguration and there were major disruptions to the transition during his election overturn effort. But he left a note for his successor in the Resolute Desk In this file photo taken on January 20, 2017, US President Barack Obama (R) greets President-elect Donald Trump as he arrives on the platform at the US Capitol in Washington, DC for his swearing-in ceremony A note that President George H.W. Bush left for his successor, Bill Clinton, set the standard for graceful gestures to a former rival Former US presidents George H. W. Bush (R) and Bill Clinton (L) talk as they board a private plane to depart for Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province following a visit to Phuket, at Phuket International airport, Thailand, 20 February 2005 The tradition dates back to at least 1989, when Ronald Reagan left a cartoon for his successor George H.W. Bush with the missive 'Don't let the turkeys get you down.' It is not known if anything inside the letter could convey legitimacy upon Biden, after Trump has spent months claiming widespread election 'fraud.' On Wednesday, Trump wrote in a statement from his 'Save America' PAC called the election the '2020 Presidential Election Scam or, as it is viewed by many, the Crime of the Century. They might have quit as working royals more than 18 months ago, but New York rolled out the red carpet for Harry and Meghan yesterday. With a private sightseeing visit hosted by the city's mayor and governor, a tour of the 9/11 Memorial while it was closed to the public for them and a meeting with the US ambassador to the UN, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were treated like royal visitors, even though they are supposedly very much private citizens. It was the couple's first major public outing since walking away from the British monarchy and moving to California last year. They are in New York to make a personal appearance at the Global Citizen Live event tomorrow, to push for a more equal Covid-19 vaccine roll-out. But they have decided to make the most of their visit, packing in several high-profile public events before then. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle burst into smiles when asked how her children are doing at One World Trade Center Observatory in New York City Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, walk while visiting the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan They have brought along a personal photographer to document their trip, LA-based Matt Sayles, who has worked with them before. Two of his pictures were posted on social media by ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield last night with the words: 'Wonderful meeting with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Important discussion of Covid, racial justice, and raising mental health awareness.' The duke and duchess are staying at the Carlyle Hotel, where a top suite costs upwards of 4,500 a night. The couple were spotted in the hotel's exclusive Bemelmans Bar on Wednesday night accompanied by two friends and a large security team. They were drinking with Meghan's friends, designer Misha Nonoo and her husband Mike Hess. Witnesses said the couple, who appear to have left children Archie and Lilibet in California for the three-day trip, sipped cocktails as their 'hired muscle' took over tables around them, trying to blend in. Fellow drinkers said Harry and Meghan had martinis before leaving via the back door around three hours later and apparently heading off for dinner. There was a phalanx of security including guards who described themselves as working for the Department of Homeland Security, suggesting Harry and Meghan were getting some sort of official US government protection, on top of their own private bodyguards. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry pause while getting a tour of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York The couple had their security and the help of Government security as they left from the garage of the Carlyle Hotel They drove in a fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs with blacked-out windows, accompanied by a car with flashing red and blue lights, and a sign saying 'police line permit'. The couple started the day at 8.15am with a visit to the One World Trade Center Observatory. Walking in with a group of bodyguards, advisers and press officers, they held hands in matching dark outfits Harry in a navy suit and Meghan in a navy jumper and coat with black trousers and heels. Both inside and outside the building, there was the air of a state visit, according to some of those working there, with dozens of security officials and NYPD officers standing guard. They were greeted by mayor Bill Blasio, his wife Chirlane McCray. Also present was New York state governor Kathy Hochul. When asked how it was to be in New York, Meghan smiled and answered: 'It's wonderful to be back.' The last time she visited was in 2019 when she flew out from London to cheer on close friend Serena Williams at the US Open. The trip was much commented on given her and Harry's espousing of green credentials and it is not clear if they travelled from California on a scheduled flight or a private jet that they have previously used inside the US. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stand with Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, while visiting One World Trade Center in Manhattan Afterwards they travelled to the nearby 9/11 Memorial, spending half an hour in the museum. It is believed they had a wreath of flowers displayed on their behalf. Shortly before 9.45am they walked back to their waiting cars and headed back to their hotel. But it was a short stop-off, before they drove off again at 12.30pm to the Manhattan penthouse home of the US ambassador to the UN, Mrs Thomas-Greenfield. There was no explanation from the Sussex's extensive PR team as to the purpose of these visits. But Mayor Bill Blasio quickly learnt Harry and Meghan don't always equate to good publicity. At a press conference later in the day a reporter asked him why he had time to host 'the royals' instead of visiting the crisis-hit Rikers Island jail. He blustered a bit, but didn't take the bait. Advertisement The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued an arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie following the death of Gabby Petito after he fraudulently used a Capitol One Bank debit card that was not his. The FBI said Laundrie is wanted for 'use of unauthorized access device' related to his activities between August 30 and September 1, following Petito's death, and that he used the card to obtain items totaling $1,000 or more. The statement was released today by the Bureau's Denver desk, reading: 'While this warrant allows law enforcement to arrest Mr Laundrie, the FBI and our partners across the country continue to investigate the facts and circumstances of Ms. Petito's homicide. 'We urge individuals with knowledge of Mr Laundrie's role in this matter or his current whereabouts to contact the FBI.' Authorities are continuing to search for Laundrie, 23, who was last seen by his parents and his attorney last week. The FBI desk in Denver released a statement issuing Brian Christopher Laundrie's arrest, saying that anyone with information concerning 'Mr Laundrie's role in this matter or his current whereabouts should contact the FBI' The FBI issued an arrest warrant (pictured) for Brian Laundrie, 23, after a federal grand jury indicted him for his 'use of unauthorized devices' following the death of Gabby Petito According to the indictment, Laundrie used a debit card and PIN number for accounts that did not belong to him for charges over $1,000 between the dates of August 30 and September 1 Steve Bertolino, Laundrie's attorney, issued a statement Thursday evening after the FBI's arrest warrant for his fugitive client was made public, emphasizing that the warrant was not for Petito's death but for related activities that took place after her demise . It is my understanding that the arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie is related to activities occurring after the death of Gabby Petito and not related to her actual demise, Bertolino told Dailymail.com The FBI is focusing on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum. Gabrielle Petito, 22, was reported missing on September 11, following a cross-country trip with Laundrie that they had been documenting on YouTube and social media. Her body was found in the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area of Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming, last Sunday. Petito was reported missing on September 11 after her 23-year-old fiance, Laundrie, came back to his parents' home in Florida. The pair were on a cross-country road trip in Petito's white van and they were documenting their travels on social media platforms including Instagram and YouTube before authorities found Petito's body in Grand Teton Park on September 19 The Teton County Coroner's Office performed an autopsy on the body Tuesday, confirming it was Petito's and that the manner of death was homicide. On Monday, the FBI raided the North Port home where Laundrie and Petito lived with Laundrie's parents, who claim that their son initially told them that he was going on a hike before his disappearance. Petito was last seen alive on August 27 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming trying to defuse a heated argument between fiance Brian Laundrie and a hostess at a Tex-Mex restaurant, according to a witness - shifting the timeline of when the 22-year-old 'van lifer' was spotted. Investigators were initially operating under the assumption that Petito, whose body was found at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming on Sunday, was last seen alive on August 24 leaving a Salt Lake City hotel with Laundrie. However, Nina Celie Angelo of New Orleans said she and her boyfriend were at the Merry Piglets restaurant in Jackson Hole on August 27 and saw the tragic Long Island woman try to calm down the hot-headed Laundrie, during an interview on Thursday with ABC's Good Morning America. 'He was just very visibly angry. She was really upset. She was crying. He immediately went to the hostess stand and was going in on the hostess and the waitress and eventually the manager,' Angelo told GMA. 'It was almost like he was screaming. She was like 'I'm sorry, come on just let's just go.' But she was physically upset, she was crying. You could feel his temper. He was angry.' The sighting at the Jackson Hole restaurant places Petito 300 miles north of Salt Lake City and just 45 miles from the Wyoming campground in the Grand Tetons where her remains were found. Nina Celie Angelo (left) of New Orleans says she saw Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie (right) on August 27 at a restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her account has been confirmed by the restaurant. Petito was reported missing on September 11 after she and her 23-year-old fiance, Laundrie, set out from New York on a cross-country road trip in her white van two months earlier. They were documenting their travels on social media platforms including Instagram and YouTube Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they stopped to have lunch at Merry Piglets sometime between 1 and 2pm. The couple was in Wyoming in late August to attend a wedding. While dining at the restaurant, they overheard a loud conversation in which another customer, Laundrie, was heard screaming at wait staff in what appeared to be an argument over the check Angelo's account means that Petito was last seen alive on August 27. It was previously assumed that she was last spotted alive in Salt Lake City three days earlier Petito was reported missing on September 11 after she and her 23-year-old fiance set out from New York on a cross-country road trip in her white van two months earlier. They were documenting their travels on social media platforms, including Instagram and YouTube. Angelo and her boyfriend, Matthew England, were traveling through Wyoming in late August to attend a friend's wedding. England provided a credit card statement to Fox News which indicates that he spent $60.88 at the Tex-Mex joint on August 27. According to Angelo, she and England stopped to have lunch at Merry Piglets sometime between 1 and 2pm. A restaurant employee told DailyMail.com on Wednesday: 'We have already talked to the authorities about the situation and we are not allowed to comment on it further.' Merry Piglets officials later posted on Instagram: 'Yes, we can confirm Gabby and Brian were in Merry Piglets. 'We have already notified the FBI and they are aware. We are letting them do their jobs and we are respecting Gabby's family and have nothing further to comment.' Angelo, a photographer, was with her boyfriend, financial adviser Matthew England, when they traveled to Wyoming for a wedding in late August Angelo says England recognized Laundrie and Petito after seeing news reports that included police body cam footage of the couple during an August 12 incident in Moab, Utah (above) The FBI would comment on the validity of Angelo's claim. But Angelo insists she and Matthew overheard a loud conversation in which another customer nearby, Laundrie, was heard screaming at waitstaff in what appeared to be an argument over the check. Angelo said that the man involved in the dispute displayed 'aggressive' body language. Laundrie left the restaurant and then returned around four times, she said. Afterward, Petito came into the restaurant and apologized to waitstaff for his behavior. Angelo said she completely forgot about the incident when the couple returned to New Orleans to find the region ravaged by Hurricane Ida. But coverage of Petito's disappearance aired daily on TV and the couple caught a story about police body cam footage showing Petito and Laundrie being interviewed by an officer after a domestic incident in Moab, Utah. Jenn Bethune, who runs 'Red, White and Bethune' on YouTube, said she found footage of Petito's van when she parsed over her videos from Grand Teton National Park after she was tagged in a post urging anyone who had filmed or photographed the area to search for clues. This image was taken hours after the restaurant incident on August 27 Jenn Bethune (pictured left), who travels the country with her husband Kyle (pictured right) and her three children in a 1983 Silver Eagle bus that they call 'Blue Betty' (also pictured) said she remembered driving past the van because of its Florida plates - she and her travel partner, she said, are originally from the state. As England watched the images of Petito and Laundrie in the body cam footage, it began to dawn on him early on Wednesday morning that they looked familiar. 'He goes, 'Nina, that was the couple fighting at the restaurant',' Angelo said. Brian Laundrie mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from cross-country trip alone, says neighbor Brian Laundrie's neighbor has revealed that the 23-year-old mowed the lawn and went on family bike rides 'like nothing bothered him' after returning from the cross-country trip alone. Charlene Guthrie, who lives across the street from the Laundrie family in North Port, Florida, told Fox News she saw Laundrie return to 'normal life' - all the while his girlfriend Gabby Petito was missing, possibly already dead. 'He mowed the lawn. Him and his mother went for a bicycle ride around the block,' Guthrie said. 'I mean, everything was just normal life once he came back. 'And I just can't get over the fact that they it seemed like nothing bothered him. How can you do that?' Laundrie returned to North Port without Petito in the couple's campervan on September 1. Authorities were then alerted to her disappearance on September 11. Guthrie said the discovery of Petito's body and Laundrie's disappearance look 'really, really bad for him' and that she believes he 'should be a suspect.' The neighbor also hit out at Laundrie's parents for not coming forward when their son went missing and that they 'let him go' in the first place. 'I have children, and I know that you do what you can to protect your child, but, you know, that can go so far, and you gotta do the right thing eventually. You have to,' Guthrie said. '[The Laundries] should have absolutely come forward now. I mean, I just can't believe they didn't do something. I'm really angry now that they let this go. 'And that everything was so natural and they remained so normal through the whole thing, you know, while they were here, till he went on the run.' Advertisement 'And it stopped me in my tracks. I felt like the blood left my body. 'I was like, 'Oh my God, I completely forgot about that incident'.' The memory of the argument is particularly powerful in light of the news that Petito's body was found nearby at Grand Teton National Park on Sunday. 'I have chills right now,' Angelo told Fox News. 'It's crazy because it wasn't just like we passed them on the street it was a full blown incident.' On Instagram, Angelo posted a story describing what she saw. 'Excuse my French, but I am freaking the f*** out,' Angelo said on her Instagram page. 'Matt and I just realized - I don't know cause I'm a dumb a** and I did not put two and two together - that we saw a blowout of a situation between Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie in Wyoming when we were there. 'How I did not put two and two together that this happened? I don't know.' Angelo said that she had contacted authorities about the incident. She said that her boyfriend 'has an insane photographic memory.' England has told her for days that he 'knows this guy, Brian' and that he had 'seen him before.' Angelo said England told her: 'They were the couple fighting in the restaurant.' 'We were sitting right next to them,' she said. 'They got kicked out of the restaurant and were fighting with the hostess.' Angelo says Petito was 'hysterically crying' and 'walked out.' 'She was crying as she was standing on the sidewalk and I was watching the whole thing unfold,' according to Angelo. 'And he walked back in the restaurant and he's fighting with the hostess.' Laundrie walked in and out of the restaurant 'four more times' to 'talk to the manager' and 'tell the hostess off,' according to Angelo. The encounter would jibe with the account of another witness, travel blogger Jenn Bethune, who said she drove by Petito's van - hours after the restaurant incident Bethune, who runs 'Red, White and Bethune' on YouTube, said she parsed over her footage from the national park after she was tagged in a post urging anyone who had filmed or photographed the area to search for clues. She turned over images she took that included the van to the FBI and Petito's family, and said the discovery of the footage gave her 'chills.' The video was captured on August 27 at Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area near Grand Tetons National Park. 'I got chills all over my body and ran straight back to my laptop, got my GoPro footage, and lo and behold Gabby's van was on there,' she told host Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends on Monday. Laundrie is considered a person of interest since he is believed to be the last person to see Petito alive. He returned home to Florida on September 1 without her, and refused to cooperate with authorities. He was reported missing by his family last Friday. A massive search for Laundrie is underway in Carlton Reserve, a 25,000-acre swampy region just miles away from his North Port, Florida home. The exhaustive search for Laundrie in a vast Florida wilderness entered a sixth day on Thursday as the mystery deepened around a case that has engrossed Americans. Police divers joined the search for Brian Laundrie just before noon Wednesday with an airboat to join the manhunt for Brian Laundrie A van from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Underwater Recovery Force, towing a small dingy, turned up about an hour after an airboat was seen for the first time at the 25,000-acre reserve A team of divers joined police and FBI agents using boats and helicopters looking for Laundrie in the alligator-infested Carlton Reserve on Wednesday, but a spokesman said at nightfall that they had found 'nothing' to show for their efforts. Authorities have not said why they are convinced Laundrie, whom police call a 'person of interest' in the case, may still be somewhere inside the wilderness preserve near his home in North Port, Florida, more than a week after he told family members he was headed there to hike alone. North Port police say Laundrie's parents did not report him missing until September 14, three days after the family last saw him. The Carlton Reserve has more than 80 miles of hiking trails but is dominated by swampy water. Many Americans have closely followed the case since Petito was reported missing on September 11. Ten days earlier, Laundrie had returned home to North Port without her from a cross-country road trip the couple chronicled in social media posts. In identifying her remains, Teton County medical examiners ruled Petito's death a homicide, but did not make the cause of her death public. Petito and Laundrie left her home state of New York in July, heading west on what they called a 'van life' trip. They posted photos to social media as they traveled through Kansas, Colorado and Utah. Laundrie's whereabouts are still unknown, with the manhunt entering its fourth day at a nature reserve m Florida (pictured) Police and FBI agents resumed their search of the Carlton Reserve early Wednesday, sharing photos of search dogs (above) Search teams from multiple law enforcement agencies gathered Wednesday for a briefing before heading out into the 25,000-acre swampland Witnesses saw Petito on August 24 as she left a Salt Lake City hotel. She posted her final photo the next day. Petito's family believes she was headed to Grand Teton National Park when they last heard from her. Her body was found at the edge of that park near the Spread River. Investigators searched the Laundrie family home in North Port last week and were seen loading cardboard boxes into a van and towing away a silver Ford Mustang. In seeking search warrants, investigators cited text messages from Petito's phone to her mother, Nicole Schmidt, that struck Schmidt as suspicious. The final text from Petito's phone came on August 30 and read only: 'No service in Yosemite,' a national park in California that she and Laundrie are not believed to have visited during their trip. On August 12, a 911 caller reported to emergency dispatchers that Laundrie was slapping and hitting Petito in front of the Moonflower Community Cooperative in Moab, Utah. Moab police pulled the couple over in their van on a highway near Arches National Park. Body camera footage of that encounter shows Petito sobbing as she describes a fight between the couple that she said escalated into her slapping Laundrie as he drove the van. The officers did not detain Petito or Laundrie but told them to spend the night apart. Women are dealing with an epidemic of violence, politicians and campaigners warned yesterday as they lamented the lack of progress since the death of Sarah Everard. The killing of Sabina Nessa, 28, in south London comes six months after Miss Everards murder and a year after sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were stabbed to death in the capital. Jess Phillips, Labours spokesman for domestic violence and safeguarding, said that it was not safe to be a woman. She said 78 women had been killed in the UK since the death of 33-year-old Miss Everard in March and questioned the Government response. It is a scandal that women dont feel safe on the streets, she said. Its not safe to be a woman whether thats in the workplace, school, university or home. There are too many examples every year. Women are dealing with an epidemic of violence, politicians including Labour MP Jess Phillips (picutred) and campaigners warned yesterday as they lamented the lack of progress since the death of Sarah Everard Referring to Miss Everard, who was kidnapped, raped and killed by Met policeman Wayne Couzens while walking home, the MP added: We cant keep having this. We cant keep having someone being murdered and then a pilot here and a review there. The British public now demand proper womens safety laws, legislation, resources and strategy to stop this. We cant just keep being sorry. She also demanded that the Government reclassify violence against women and girls as a serious crime in line with terrorism and serious youth violence. The killing of Sabina Nessa, 28, in south London comes six months after Miss Everards murder and a year after sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were stabbed to death in the capital Jess Phillips, Labours spokesman for domestic violence and safeguarding, said 78 women had been killed in the UK since the death of 33-year-old Miss Everard (pictured) in March and questioned the Government response The murder of Sabine Nessa comes a year after sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman (pictured) were stabbed to death in the capital Campaigner Anna Birley, who founded the Reclaim These Streets movement, said yesterday: We often get told when the worst happens that the murder of a woman by a stranger in a public place is very rare and we are very safe. But the thing is, our lived experience of street harassment, cat-calling, a man exposing himself to us, tell us were not safe, and murder is rarely the first crime someone commits. She said the Government must urgently fix the deep-rooted culture of misogyny in British culture by reforming the criminal justice system. The campaigner called for a higher conviction rate for rapists, anti-misogyny training for police, and lessons in schools to tackle toxic masculinity. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan warned that women face an epidemic of violence. I think this deserves the same priority as counter terrorism, he said. He added that schools should teach boys to respect girls, and misogyny should be made a hate crime. People law flowers at the bandstand on Clapham Common in March to honour murder victim Sarah Everard Yesterday, Home Secretary Priti Patel tweeted: My thoughts are with the family and friends of Sabina Nessa at this awful time. Boris Johnsons spokesman said: The Prime Ministers focus is on making sure that we make our streets safe for absolutely everybody. They added more police were being recruited and that the Home Office released a policy strategy to tackle violence against women and girls in July. Asked whether the Metropolitan Police had changed its approach to policing violent crime against women following Miss Everards death, Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry said: I think the main things that are changing are that... were listening to people, were understanding where people are feeling not so safe and were putting out patrols. Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in the Italian island of Sardinia, his lawyer said last night. Gonzalo Boye wrote on Twitter that the ex-Catalan regional president, wanted by Spain for his role in a failed bid for secession four years ago, was being held under a European arrest warrant issued by Spanish authorities in 2019. His arrest was confirmed by Boye to the Associated Press. Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in the Italian island of Sardinia, his lawyer said last night Puigdemont, who now holds a seat in the European Parliament, lost his immunity earlier this year. Sardinian media reported earlier in the week he was due to attend an event in Alghero on Sunday, so his presence on the Mediterranean island was expected. Local reports also suggest that Puigdemont was invited by a Sardinian pro-separatist group, but the politician's office said in a statement that he had travelled to Alghero from Brussels to attend a folklore festival. Police at the airport in northern Sardinian didn't respond to requests for comment on Thursday night, while authorities in the city of Alghero said they weren't aware of his detention. Puigdemont and a number of his separatist colleagues fled to Belgium in October 2017, fearing arrest after holding an independence referendum for Catalonia that the Spanish courts and government said was illegal. Nearly 70 Albanian migrants were smuggled into the UK on a converted fishing boat which only had enough life jackets to save 20 people, a court heard yesterday. The 98ft trawler, called the Svanic, was crossing the North Sea from Belgium to Norfolk on November 17 when it was intercepted by UK Border Force. It was escorted to Harwich in Essex where three members of the crew were arrested. Three other UK-based organisers were later detained. The Svanic, which was built in 1962, had been converted to hold 19 berths far fewer than the numbers on board, the jury was told. The 98ft trawler, called the Svanic, was crossing the North Sea from Belgium to Norfolk on November 17 when it was intercepted by UK Border Force And it had a maximum life-saving capacity of 20 people meaning there were only a handful of life jackets for the 69 migrants and three defendants on the boat. Prosecutor Tony Badenoch QC told Chelmsford Crown Court that the boat displayed a multitude of faults. But he added that the use of such a large vessel was unusual and more sophisticated than other methods of crossing. The most commonly used route for Albanians entering the UK illegally from Belgium is in heavy goods vehicles, at a cost of 2,000 to 3,000 per person. Small boats, such as rigid hull inflatables, are also popular and charge between 2,000 and 4,000 per migrant. But a fishing boat such as the Svanic which would require resources such as crew, fuel and mooring fees would have charged around 15,000 per person, Mr Badenoch added. The jury was played an audio message from September last year in which one of the UK-based organisers can be heard discussing the profits involved. The Svanic, which was built in 1962, had been converted to hold 19 berths far fewer than the numbers on board, the jury was told In it Arturas Jusas, 35, who has admitted conspiring to assist unlawful immigration, can be heard saying: Were going to bring every week 50 people, yes, we need to invest now, 40,000, if you want, 20 you, 20 me. From first trip were going to get the money back. Commenting on the audio, Mr Badenoch said: A single trip was therefore capable of returning 40,000 at the very least on the interpretation of that message. The unlawful moving of people in the manner alleged in this case is highly lucrative and it was for that purpose that Svanic was being used. Ukrainian nationals Igor Kosyi, 56, and Volodymyr Mykhailov, 49, along with Latvian Aleksandrs Gulpe, 44, were on board Svanic and were arrested in Essex. Kfir Ivgi, 39, of Finchley, north London, and Sergejs Kuliss, 32, of Newham, east London, were subsequently detained following an investigation. All deny conspiring to assist unlawful immigration. The Svanic left Latvia in late October and got into difficulty off the shore of Sweden, needing to be towed into port. The vessel then headed to Denmark, where it incurred repair costs, then sailed on to Belgium. Days later it was intercepted while heading towards Englands east coast and ordered to change course. The case which is expected to last between six and eight weeks continues. Victoria has recorded 733 new local Covid cases as fears rise that the violent protests across Melbourne could be a super-spreader event. There was one Covid-related death also recorded on Friday, the Victorian health department confirmed, as it warned against any public gatherings on AFL Grand Final Day on Sunday. Demonstrators who attended the third day of recurring Melbourne protests have been encouraged to get tested as a fellow mob member battles COVID-19 in hospital. Victoria has recorded 733 new local Covid cases on Friday. Victorian police are pictured patrolling St Kilda beach Police question a woman in Carlton Gardens, Melbourne, as they attempt to prevent protests by construction workers and demonstrators against Covid-19 regulations in the city Victorian police officers detain a man as part of their operations in response to the ongoing anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne Victoria's health department has confirmed a person is being treated in hospital after attending Wednesday's at-times violent rally. 'Public health investigations are under way,' a spokesman said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. 'We are urging protesters to get tested should they experience COVID-like symptoms, no matter how mild.' Melbourne has been in lockdown since August 5 and in total spent 236 days in lockdown since the pandemic began, which is the world record Police speak with a man during a patrol to prevent protests by construction workers and demonstrators against Covid-19 regulations in Melbourne on Thursday In total 219 Covid cases are in Victorian hospitals, as 56,520 Covid tests were done and 41,029 vaccine doses administered. Of the 733 new cases announced on Friday, well over half were from Melbourne's northern suburbs, 427. The percentage of Victorians double-vaccinated was 45.9 per cent, well below the national average of 49.3 and the NSW rate of 56.6. Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton warned Victorians to stay home for Grand Final Day and celebrate - or commiserate - by video chat with mates. 'We don't want crowds at the Wendy Noble or crowds at Josh's paddock on Sunday in celebration or commiseration. It's those close contacts that put you, your friends, and your household is at risk.' 'Enjoy your fancy cheese boards or whatever where you want to enjoy at home. Put the barbecue on, put your iPad up, have your phones on FaceTime, cry, scream and laugh over the internet to connect with friends and family and enjoy the spirit of the day in full.' 'Remember transmissions are occurring in households.' Dan Andrews has resided over 236 days of lockdown since the pandemic began The protest-related infection was included in Friday's official case tally. The COVID-positive protester was among a mob of 400 to 600 who swarmed the Victorian capital on Wednesday, despite stay-at-home orders and repeated warnings from authorities. Chanting 'every day' from the Shrine of Remembrance, hundreds without masks, some still wearing high-visibility clothing, marched through the city to the war memorial. Riot squad members fired tear gas and other non-lethal rounds when rioters became increasingly hostile and refused to leave, with two officers injured and 215 arrests. The demonstrations initially began in opposition to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for the construction sector and the closure of building site tea rooms, but have since turned into wider unrest. Protesters gather at the Shrine of Remembrance on September 22 A fourth day of the planned protests was a non-event, with demonstrators largely a no-show on Thursday despite flagging potential meeting sites. Police pounced on protesters before they were able to gather in significant numbers, making 92 arrests. Meanwhile, stranded Victorians fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will soon be allowed to return home from Greater Sydney. From September 30, double-dosed Victorians stuck anywhere in NSW can come home if they return a negative test 72 hours before departure, isolate at home for 14 days and get tested at the start and end of quarantine. Victoria recorded 766 new infections on Thursday - its highest ever daily COVID-19 case tally - and four deaths, bringing the latest outbreak's toll to 20. A property developer linked to financial giants Legal & General and NatWest has come under fire in claims it was 'relentlessly bombarding' a local councillor and ignoring the views of residents in a bid to get planning applications heard. Inspired Villages, a joint venture backed by Legal & General and NatWest Pension group fund, has recently been looking at several sites, including plans for 160 homes built in a small village on the edge of the Cotswolds and 133 flats on the edge of Sonning Common in the Chilterns. The developer says on its website that it is 'reinventing retirement living with premium properties to purchase or rent, set in beautiful and secure environments, situated in some of the most sought-after locations in the UK'. But its approach to building on the site in the village of Freeland, in West Oxfordshire, has been questioned by local Councillor Merilyn Davies, who described it as 'pressurised' and 'boorish'. Areas such as the Cotswolds are desirable places to live, placing huge pressure on them for new homes to be built The developer insists its plans have been designed to address the growing shortage of specialist accommodation for older residents, while also delivering a range of new facilities that are all open to local residents. While the developer said that it was too early to discuss prices for these sites, it said values on its other sites start at 230,000 for a one-bed flat. Ms Davies told MailOnline Property: 'As district councillor on the planning committee, Legal & General's Inspired Villages relentlessly bombarded me with highly pressurised emails to the extent I had to tell them to stop contacting me. 'This treatment is the worst I have ever experienced from a developer. 'These are developers who, even by developer standards, show absolute disregard for not only residents of the existing village but also for those of their proposed village.' She added: 'Villages comprise of built up areas in the centre which gradually peter out into the countryside. To build on these outlying areas destroys the village characteristic and risks urbanising a defining part of its identity.' It follows recent speculation that the Cotswolds could be designated a National Park, which could affect future planning permissions. The Government said recently that the Cotswolds was not currently being considered for a change in status - although a review of such areas is due to begin shortly. Meanwhile, developers are ploughing ahead with proposals with more development in the surrounding area. Councillor Merilyn Davies Cllr Davies explained that she has now 'excused herself' from any potential planning committee meetings concerning the application, as she 'cannot remain impartial, as required' and so that she can 'campaign openly to stop' the application in the village of Freeland. Cllr Davies, of West Oxfordshire district council, is a ward member for Freeland and Hanborough as well as cabinet member for Housing and Communities. She said: 'L&G's Inspired Villages appear to be conducting an attack on local plans and conducting themselves in a boorish manner so as to make their applications appear a given. 'This ignores the democratic nature of local plans as well as ignoring the housing need identified within it.' Freeland is already surrounded by development with 3,000 houses being built within a three-mile radius amid plans to double Oxfordshire's housing by 2050. Residents believe that the planning application could prove to be a test case as the site is so unsuitable. Cllr Davies added: 'Its proposals would see elderly people ghettoised on the edge of a village which already has an older demographic as well as no bus route, no street lighting, and no shop. Inspired Villages is hoping to get 160 homes built in a small village on the edge of the Cotswolds called Freeland (plans pictured) Meanwhile, a different councillor resigned amid other plans by Inspired Villages to develop another site in the county, in south Oxfordshire. Tom Fort was a member of the Sonning Common parish council in south Oxfordshire until the beginning of July. Tom Fort was a member of the Sonning Common parish council in south Oxfordshire until the beginning of July He says that he resigned partially in protest at the decision to allow an appeal by Inspired Villages for a 133 apartment retirement village to be built on part of the Chilterns, on the edge of Sonning Common. Mr Fort says that a public meeting at the village hall was attended by around 100 local residents who opposed the plans. He said: 'Despite being under the umbrella of Legal & General, Inspired Villages is essentially a speculative land development company. 'It has no interest in the views of local people, or in the Local Plan produced by South Oxfordshire District Council or in the preservation of the highly vulnerable countryside of south Oxfordshire. 'Their argument is that there is an acute need for assisted living and extra care accommodation which the district council has failed to provide for, and that this highly debatable shortage should enable them to trample on planning policies that have taken years to produce. 'In doing so they display an unbounded contempt for local democracy and are prepared to go to extreme lengths to exploit the planning inquiry system to their advantage.' Inspired Villages hopes to build a 133 apartment retirement village in the Chilterns, on the edge of Sonning Common (pictured) Archaeologists at Jamestown, Virginiathe site of the first permanent English settlement in North Americahave uncovered rare evidence tied to the first revolt in the British colonies. In September 1676, wealthy landowner Nathaniel Bacon led a siege of Jamestown over what he saw as Governor William Berkeley's appeasement of local Native tribes and burned down the new settlement, including its parish church. More than 340 years later, in 2019, Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologist Sean Romo uncovered burnt deposits below the surface near where the church would have been. At the time, Romo believed the charring could have come from one of three sourcesincluding a fire that engulfed the first church on that site back in 1608 and Confederate troops making a hasty retreat in 1862. But there was also a chance it came from a later church, the one destroyed during Bacon's 1676 uprising. After examining artifacts found on top of the burned layer, the team at Jamestown Rediscovery has concluded they date to just after the 1676 conflagration. That means the charred remains underneath were from the church destroyed in the blaze, the Virginia Gazette first reported. Scroll down for video A group of poor farmers, indentured servants and enslaved Africans revolved against Jamestown governor William Berkeley, burning the colony to the ground in 1676 Among the items found on top of the deposits were window leads, grooved metal frames used to hold panes of glass in casement windows together. Leads would often be etched with the glazier's initials and the date, providing crucial clues to a building's origins. In a video, Jamestown Rediscovery senior conservator Dan Gamble says that leads 'sometimes hold a few secrets.' Details in the leads Romo found enabled him to date them accurately. Archaeologists with Jamestown Rediscovery discovered a burnt layer at the site of the historic settlement that came from the parish church destroyed in the conflagration Among the items that helped date the burned layer were window leads, grooved metal frames used to hold panes of glass in casement windows together. Pictured: Example of 17th century window lead The church burned in the rebellion wasn't the first one at Jamestown that was destroyed 68 years earlier. It wasn't even the second, where Pocahontas married John Rolfe. Instead, it was the fourth made of wood and brick, it took more than 11 years to complete. The current structure, the seventh house of worship on the property, was completed in 1907 and is still in use today as an Anglican church. While many like to consider Bacon's Rebellion the first revolt against British rule, it can be attributed 'to a myriad of causes,' according to the National Park Service. A painting of British settlers landing at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America, in 1608 These include growing competition from Maryland, an increasingly restricted English market, a decline in tobacco prices and the rising costs of English manufactured goods. In addition, many colonists resented Gov. Berkeley's failure to protect them from attacks by Native American tribes. They aimed to drive the Indians from Virginia but Berkeley pleaded for restraint. Bacon eventually riled poor farmers into a violent revolt against Berkeley's rule, which he saw as corrupt. His forces burned Jamestown to the ground on September 19, 1676. Bacon had the upper hand much of the time but died of dysentery on October 26, 1676, causing his rebellion to soon fall apart. (Berkeley was eventually recalled to England.) According to director of archaeology Dave Givens, the discovery adds to the story of the church, the revolt and Jamestown itself. 'We have positive evidence of Bacon's Rebellion and the burning that took place,' Givens told the Gazette. 'The nice thing about this dig is that, as it evolves, it will help us understand more about the layers and what we're seeing every day.' Today, visitors to Historic Jamestown can take a walking tour recounting the events of the rebellion and its impact on the colony and local Native communities. The Tercentennial Monument also hosts a re-enactment of the city's burning as it occurred on September 19, 1676. Though the rebellion was 345 years ago, the parish church continues to provide clues to the settlement's inhabitants. In 2018, a headless skeleton was discovered on the sitearchaeologists believe it belonged to Sir George Yeardley, Jamestown's governor and one of the first colonists to own enslaved people. The village of Jamestown, circa 1615. Led by Nathaniel Bacon, a group of poor farmers, indentured servants and African slaves attacked Gov. William Berkeley in 1676, burning Jamestown to the ground Experts say the skull probably deteriorated over time or was destroyed by subsequent burials, rather than being removed as a result of foul play. The body was buried in what would have been the chancel, toward the front and center of the building. 'The closer you are to the chancel, the closer you are to God, essentially,' Kaitlyn Fitzgerald, an archaeologist with Jamestown Rediscovery, told WYDaily. 'You have to really be a prominent member of the society or in the clergy to be buried in the chancel of the church.' Yeardley served as governor of the colony three times, and convened the first meeting of the House of Burgesses in 1619 the same year enslaved Africans are believed to have arrived in English North America. The bones indicate the deceased was in his late 30s or early 40s when he died, which lines up with what is known of Yeardley's death in 1627 around age 40. Advertisement A bizarre armoured spike fossil, found in Morocco, belonged to a new species of dinosaur that was 'unlike anything else in the animal kingdom,' research has found. The fossil shows a series of spikes that were fused to the rib of the beast, which is unusual for an ankylosaur, as it would usually be connected to the skin tissue. Ankylosaurs were a diverse group of armoured dinosaurs related to the stegosaurs, which were present throughout the Cretaceous period from 145 to 66 million years ago. However, there is little evidence of them before then, making this new fossil, dating back 168 million years, the earliest example of the group ever discovered. The exciting discovery was made in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco at the same site where researchers from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London previously discovered the oldest stegosaur ever found. Dr Susannah Maidment, a researcher at the NHM, described the new species and named it 'Spicomellus afer', meaning collar of spikes and Africa. Susannah Maidment (pictures) named the dinosaur Spicomellus afer, and is seen here holding the specimens that led to its discovery A bizarre armoured spike fossil, found in Morocco, belonged to a new species of dinosaur that was 'unlike anything else in the animal kingdom,' researched found It isn't clear exactly what Spicomellus afer would have looked like, but researchers say it would have been similar to other Ankylosaurs (artist impression pictured) 'At first we thought the specimen could be part of a stegosaur, having previously found them at the same location. But on closer inspection, we realised the fossil was unlike anything we had ever seen,' the researcher explained. The specimen was so unusual that at first the researchers wondered if it could be a fake, but a series of CT scans confirmed it was 'the real deal'. A cross section from the base of the fossil showed a cross hatch pattern in the bone that is unique to ankylosaurs, revealing its identity. 'Ankylosaurs had armoured spikes that are usually embedded in their skin and not fused to bone,' said Dr Maidment, pointing out what made it so unusual. The exciting discovery was made in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco at the same site where researchers from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London previously discovered the oldest stegosaur ever found Specimen of the oldest ankylosaur ever discovered and the first from the African continent are at the Natural History Museum in London. The specimen is a fossil of armour spikes, that once protruded from the ankylosaur's ribs Contrary to Dr Maidment's original suspicion that the specimen could be fake, the specimen is genuine and, therefore, new to science Dr Susannah Maidment (pictured) worked with the specimens to determine they belong to the oldest known Ankylosaur ever discovered and the first in Africa Dr Maidment (pictured) said of the newly described creature: 'It is completely unprecedented and unlike anything else in the animal kingdom' 'In this specimen we see a series of spikes attached to the rib, which must have protruded above the skin covered by a layer of something like keratin. 'It is completely unprecedented and unlike anything else in the animal kingdom.' The new discovery dates from the Middle Jurassic period around 168 million years ago and helps fill an important gap in our knowledge of dinosaur evolution. It suggests that ankylosaurs may have had a global distribution, found across the planet and not in confined areas, the team revealed. The discovery also calls into question a previous theory that ankylosaurs outcompeted stegosaurs and led to their extinction. Ankylosaurs were a diverse group of armoured dinosaurs related to the stegosaurs, present throughout the Cretaceous period from 145 to 66 million years ago 'In this specimen we see a series of spikes attached to the rib, which must have protruded above the skin covered by a layer of something like keratin,' said Dr Maidment The exciting discovery was made in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco at the same site where researchers from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London previously discovered the oldest stegosaur ever found This new find, however, means the two groups co-existed for over 20 million years, and implies the extinction of the stegosaurs may have happened for other reasons. The fossil that led to the description of this new species is now part of the Natural History Museum's collections and will be the subject of ongoing study. Dr Maidment said: 'Morocco seems to hold some real gems in terms of dinosaur discoveries. In just this one site we have described both the oldest stegosaur and the oldest ankylosaur ever found. 'When circumstances allow, we hope to return and work with our colleagues at the University of Fez to help them to establish a vertebrate paleontology lab so that further finds can be studied in Morocco.' The study Bizarre dermal armour suggests the first African ankylosaur is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. A significant portion of the global workforce worked remotely in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in sharp declines (in some cases, 50 percent) in air pollution around the globe. As companies debate whether to allow workers continuing working remotely, come into the office or have a hybrid work week, workers that telecommute four days a week could cut nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels by as much as 10 percent, a new study finds. Researchers at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) looked at three different scenarios telecommuting two, three or four days a week and found that NO2 levels would decline by 4 percent, 8 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Workers that telecommute four days a week could cut NO2 levels by 10%, a new study finds If 40 percent of service-sector employees telecommuted four days a week, not only would NO2 levels decline 10 percent, but traffic emissions would decline 15 percent a well. Additionally, the length of trips that the remaining workers take to get to their jobs would decline by 37.5 percent. In the other two scenarios (two days for 20 percent of the workforce and three days for 30 percent) traffic emissions would decline by 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The length of work-related travel would also decline by rates of 12.5 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The researchers based their findings on mobility and air quality data obtained in Barcelona during the COVID-19 lockdown. The researchers based their findings on mobility and air quality data obtained in Barcelona during the COVID-19 lockdown 'We propose that teleworking be prioritized and promoted as an effective contribution towards reduction of long-term urban air pollution and short-term pollution peaks,' the study's authors wrote. The research, done in conjunction with urban mobility planning company Anthesis Lavola, was based on mobility reports from the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority. Nearly 85 percent of Barcelona's work force have service-sector jobs and 40 percent of all vehicles being driven are done for work purposes. Henceforth, a significant push to telecommute a portion of the work week could have wide-ranging implications on changes in pollution and an improvement to air quality. Barcelona has an estimated workforce population of approximately 1.1 million, according to the World Cities Culture Forum. The researchers also saw significant percentage levels of NO2 concentration between the base case and the three scenarios during the typical morning commute from Monday through Friday. The researchers also saw significant percentage levels of NO2 concentration between the base case and the three scenarios during the typical morning commute from Monday through Friday There was also a significant decline in NO2 levels between the base case and the three scenarios during the typical evening commute from Monday through Friday. There was also a significant decline in NO2 levels between the base case and the three scenarios during the typical evening commute from Monday through Friday The study found that NO2 levels would decline 4% and 8% if workers telecommuted two or three days a week. If 40% of service-sector employees telecommuted four days a week, traffic emissions would decline 15% and trip length would decline 37.5% The researchers also found that online education would cut private vehicle by 20 percent and shopping would be cut by 30 percent. 'The application of this [third] scenario could be viable and realistic during periods of high pollution, as it is simply based on the maximization of teleworking and the reduction of other work-related travel and shopping,' ICTA-UAB researcher and the study's lead author, Alba Badia, said in a statement. The research was recently published in Urban Sustainability. The findings come several months after the U.K. government found that air pollution was at its lowest levels since records began, as NO2 and particulate matter dropped to all-time low levels. In June, a study from NASA found that levels of nitrogen oxides decreased globally by 15 percent from June 2020. Scientists are describing a set of 23,000-year-old human footprints discovered in New Mexico as the earliest evidence of human activity in the Americas, 10,000 years earlier than previously believed. British and American archaeologists uncovered the prints in soft mud adjoining Alkali Flat, a dry lakebed at White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico. Using radiocarbon dating of seed layers above and below the tracks, experts from the U.S. Geological Survey dated the footprints as having been made over a period of at least 2,000 years, according to research published today in the journal Science. The oldest tracks date from around 23,000 years ago, a period that corresponds to the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets covered much of North America and sea levels were about 400 feet lower than today. For decades it's been generally held that homo sapiens first entered North America between 13,000 and 16,000 years ago after the melting of the North American ice sheets opened up migration routes and much later than study co-author Sally Reynolds and her colleagues suggest. Few archaeologists have claimed reliable evidence for human habitation older than about 16,000 years. Additional radiocarbon dates from samples of sediments, animal bones, and charcoal start even earlier approximately 33,000 years ago but some critics questioned whether the stone samples were actually made by humans. Scroll down for video Footprints found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico date to 23,000 years ago, making them the first 'unequivocal evidence' of homo sapiens in the New World thousands of years before most estimates Dan Odess, a science advisor with the National Park Service, counters that the White Sands footprints are 'unequivocal evidence for human presence in the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximum.' Most academics believe humans migrated from Asia to the Americas via a land bridge across the Bering Strait, which is now underwater and forms the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. But during the Ice Age, which started around 33,000 years ago and lasted until around 16,000 years ago, this route was blocked by glaciers. The new prints - which are flat, a possible sign the people were barefoot - reveal more than just a date, the researchers say. They offer a glimpse into what life was like during the Upper Paleolithic Era, which started about 40,000 years ago. Archaeologists say stone fragment found in Mexico suggest humans were in North America around 27,000 years ago even earlier than the footprints but critics question whether the stone samples were actually made by humans Most were left by teens and younger children, with occasional tracks from adults, as well as some from mammoths, giant ground sloths, and dire wolves. 'The footprints left at White Sands give a picture of what was taking place, teenagers interacting with younger children and adults,' co-author Matthew Bennett, a geographer at Bournemouth University said in a release. 'We can think of our ancestors as quite functional, hunting and surviving, but what we see here is also activity of play, and of different ages coming together,' Bennett added. '[It's] a true insight into these early people.' It's unclear at this time how the footprints were made, but other studies have found evidence of people living on the North America continent thousands of years than previously believed. In July 2020, stone tools were discovered in a cave in Mexico known as Chiquihuite that revealed archaeological evidence of human occupation dating back to 27,000 years ago. In 2018, 150,000 'unique' stone tools were found northwest of Austin, Texas that suggested people lived on the continent as far back as 20,000 years ago. 'All of the trackways we've found there show an interaction of humans in the landscape alongside extinct animals,' Reynolds, a mammalian paleontologist at Bournemouth University, said in the release. 'We can see the co-existence between humans and animals on the site as a whole and by being able to accurately date these footprints, we're building a greater picture of the landscape.' White Sands resource manager David Bustos was the first to come across the ancient prints in 2008. While he said it was exciting to have confirmation of their age, he was saddened that the region where they were laid bare is being rapidly lost due to ongoing soil erosion. Human footprints dating back 15,600 years were found in Chile in 2019, which at the time, were believed to be the oldest known human footprint tracks in the Americas. Designated a megatrack site in 2014, White Sands contains the world's largest collection of fossilized footprints from the Pleistocene era. Earlier prints found on the White Sands trackway indicate young humans were hunting giant ground sloths in the area by purposely stepping in the animal's tracks. Most of the prints at the White Sands site belonged to teens and children, with a few from adults. Researchers say this indicates 'activity of play, and of different ages coming together' 'This wasn't just one human footprint and one sloth footprint. Somebody was walking along, purposely putting their feet in the sloth tracks,' said University of Arizona anthropologist Vance Holliday in a 2018 statement. 'It's pretty amazing to see that sort of fleeting evidence of behavior. You don't see that kind of thing very often in the really early archeological record.' Analysis of the tracks indicate most where made by teenagers and younger children, with occasional prints from adults, as well as mammoths and giant ground sloths Despite the sloth's reputation for laziness, its prehistoric precursor was quite daunting. Standing seven to eight feet tall with razor sharp claws, it could eviscerate a hunter with one swipe. The researchers found human tracks a safe distance away from the sloth, suggesting a group effort at hunting that made use of distraction and misdirection 'to gain the upper hand in deadly close-quarter combat,' according to the release. Reynolds told DailyMail.com because researchers know the White Sands prints were made by homo sapiens, they can use modern growth data to determine the ages of the people who made them. Because the prints were made by homo sapiens, researchers were able to compare them to modern humans and estimate the age of the people who made 'We can then compare the fossil foot size data and make an estimate based on the modern human ages for similar foot sizes,' she said. In October 2020, fossilized footprints of a small adult - likely a woman carrying her child - were discovered in New Mexico across a muddy riverbed frequented by ancient predators such as saber-toothed cats and wolves. Odess said the discovery at White Sands will make other purportedly ancient human sites in the Western Hemisphere 'that much more plausible, even if the evidence they contain is less unequivocal.' Radiocarbon dating of seed layers above and below the tracks (above) allowed experts from the US Geological Survey to accurately dated the footprints as having been made over a period of at least 2,000 years 'This doesn't mean all of those sites are legitimate,' Odess added, 'but it means they cannot be dismissed out of hand.' One of those disputed sites is the Chiquihuite cave in northeast Mexico's Astillero Mountains, where a June 2020 study in the journal Nature pointed to evidence of human occupation thousands of years earlier than the team at White Sands. Over a 10-year period, archaeologists say they found nearly 2,000 stone tools in the cave, with radiocarbon analysis dating some back 27,000 years ago. The authors of the 2020 Nature article suggested humans from northeast Asia may have crossed over the Bering Strait land bridge before the Ice Age, when there was still a gap between the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. A timeline illustrating evidence pointing to the arrival of homo sapiens in North America. While some archaeologists put forth dates much earlier than the White Sands footprints, National Park Service science advisor Dan Odess calls their evidence 'less unequivocal' Alternatively, early humans could have traveled by boat from Asia, following the Pacific coastline until they bypassed the glaciers. Ciprian Ardelean, who led the excavation at Chiquihuite, said it may have represented a 'failed colonization' that left 'no genetically detectable heritage in today's First Americans populations.' Regardless of when homo sapiens first set foot in the Americas, it's generally agreed there was a population boom around 15,000 years ago, when evidence of humans is prevalent all across the U.S. and Canada and into Central and South America. This also coincides with the reemergence of the Bering Strait land bridge, as the Ice Age came to an end and the two ice sheets parted. Amateur freedivers have found one of Europe's largest hoards of gold Roman coins while on holiday off the coast of Spain. Thought to have been hidden from barbarian invaders around 1,500 years ago, the stash was discovered by two brothers-in-law cleaning rubbish from the seabed in Alicante. Despite lying on the seabed since the late 4th and early 5th century, the 53 intact gold coins are said to be in 'a perfect state of conservation' enabling researchers to read inscriptions and identify Roman emperors. Amateur freedivers have found one of Europe's largest hoards of gold Roman coins while on holiday off the coast of Spain Jaime Molina from the University of Alicante said: 'This is one of the largest sets of Roman gold coins found in Spain and Europe. 'It's an exceptional archaeological and historical find since its investigation can offer a wealth of new information to understand the final phase of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.' Brother-in-laws Luis Lens and Cesar Gimeno came across the extraordinary discovery seven metres deep off the coastal town of Xabia. Thought to have been hidden from barbarian invaders around 1,500 years ago, the stash was discovered by two brothers-in-law cleaning rubbish from the seabed in Alicante Specialist from the University of Alicante have now identified three coins showing Roman Emperor Valentinian I (pictured left), seven coins showing Valentinian II, 15 of Theodosius I (pictured right), another 17 of Arcadio and 10 of Honorius Lens told local media: 'I thought I had found what looked like a 10 cent coin. 'It was in a small hole, like a bottleneck.' But after returning to his boat he took a closer look and discovered 'an ancient image, like a Greek or Roman face' and thought it was a lost gem. The two brothers-in-law then returned to the site and using a corkscrew and Swiss Army knife spent two hours digging up the rest of the treasure. Brother-in-laws Luis Lens and Cesar Gimeno came across the extraordinary discovery seven metres deep off the coastal town of Xabia One of the 10 coins discovered that depicts Honorius, who was Roman emperor from 393 to 423 Specialists from the University of Alicante have now identified three coins showing Roman Emperor Valentinian I, seven coins showing Valentinian II, 15 of Theodosius I, another 17 of Arcadio and 10 of Honorius. Molina said: 'There are no remains of sunken ships in the area where they were found so it is probably a voluntary concealment from the arrival of the barbarians to the coast of Hispania, in this case, the Alans.' He added: 'This finding speaks to us of a context of fear, of a world that is ending, that of the Roman Empire. The coins will now be cleaned up and exhibited at a local museum, the University of Alicante revealed 'The find illustrates a historical moment of extreme insecurity with the violent arrival in Spain of the barbarian peoples and the definitive end of the Roman Empire in the Iberian peninsula from 409 AD.' The coins will now be cleaned up and exhibited at a local museum. The bay of Portitxol in Xabia is an area well known for the abundance of underwater archaeological remains. Anchors, amphorae cargoes, ceramic remains from different periods, metallic material and elements associated with ancient navigation, have previously been rescued to date. At first listen to this audio clip, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it as the soundtrack of the latest science fiction blockbuster. But the track isn't fiction at all, and is actually the sound of sawfly larvae secreting cocktails of unpleasant chemicals to repel predators. Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have translated the secretions into eerie sounds, and tested their effect on humans. Participants described the sounds as unpleasant and even frightening, with many comparing them to background music in horror and science fiction films. Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have translated the secretions of sawfly larvae (pictured) into eerie sounds, and tested their effect on humans Making the sawfly song The team transformed the chemicals into sounds through a process known as sonification, Characteristics of each molecule are mapped onto different sound parameters, including pitch, duration and timbre. Chemical information is then fed into a synthesiser, which produces a sound for each molecule, before mixing them all together. Advertisement Sawfly larvae protect themselves from predators - particularly ants - by secreting an unpleasant cocktail of chemicals. Previous studies have assessed these tactics by staging meetups, known as bioassays, between larvae and ants. However, in the new study, researchers Jean-Luc Boeve and Rudi Giot took a slightly different, and some would say more unusual, approach. Mr Boeve explained: 'You have small molecules like acetic acid contained in vinegar or pungent formic acid emitted by some ants, they're very volatile and diffuse into the air rapidly. 'So, I thought it would be possible to translate a high or low volatility into high or low tones, as well as other chemical traits into other sound traits.' The team transformed the chemicals into sounds through a process known as sonification, in which characteristics of each molecule are mapped onto different sound parameters, including pitch, duration and timbre. Chemical information is then fed into a synthesiser, which produces a sound for each molecule, before mixing them all together. Sawfly larvae protect themselves from predators particularly ants - by secreting unpleasant chemicals 'Typically, a sonification process is used to detect particular phenomena in large datasets,' explained Mr Giot. 'Examples of such phenomena are earthquakes in seismologic data, or network hacking in internet data streaming.' Once the sonification process was complete, the researchers tested the track on 50 participants. Partcipants described the track as unpleasant and frightening, with some even comparing it music used in horror or science fiction films. 'Interestingly, we could show that the responses by ants and humans are correlated, thus indicating that sonification can approximate the 'real world' of predator-prey interactions,' Mr Boeve said. The team hopes the method could be used alongside exisiting techniques of testing chemicals in the future especially in cases when an insect's seasonal availability is unfavorable or harvesting large enough quantities of its secretion is challenging. Sea ice in the Arctic dropped to an area of just 1.82 million square miles on September 16 its twelfth lowest extent on record, NASA has revealed. Experts at the US space agency and the National Snow and Ice Data Center used satellites to monitor the minimum sea ice coverage each summer since 1978. The ice wanes in the spring and summer each year, reaching its minimum levels in September. However, records laying bare the devastating toll climate change is having on the planet have shown significant declines in the last 43 years. In fact, the last 15 years have exhibited the 15 lowest minimum extents since the satellite measurements began. Scroll down for videos Sea ice in the Arctic dropped to an area of just 1.82 million square miles on September 16 its twelfth lowest extent on record, NASA has revealed. Pictured: this year's sea ice minimum area, as compared with the average summer minimum for 19812010 (shown in yellow) Experts at the US space agency and the National Snow and Ice Data Center have used satellites to monitor the minimum sea ice coverage each summer since 1978 (as depicted) Data for the visualisation in the above NASA video was provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water satellite (pictured) Sea ice: Everything you need to know Sea ice forms as seawater freezes and, because it loses density, floats on the surface of the water. It is estimated to cover around 7 per cent of Earth's surface and about 12 per cent of the world's oceans. The lion's share of sea ice is contained within the polar ice packs in the Arctic and Southern oceans. These ice packs undergo season variations and are also affected locally on smaller time scales by wind, current and temperature fluctuations. Advertisement According to NASA, September Arctic sea ice minimum extents are currently declining at a rate of 13.1 per cent each decade, relative to the 19812010 average. Researchers explained that the extent of Arctic sea ice is defined as being the area in which the concentration of ice is at least 15 per cent. Data for the visualisation in the above NASA video was provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water 'SHIZUKU' (GCOM-W1) satellite, which began operation back in 2012. The news comes in the wake of a European Commission-backed report that warned global sea levels are rising at an 'alarming rate' of 0.12 inches per year. The fifth iteration of the Copernicus Marine Service's 'Ocean State Report' was drawn up using a combination of satellite observations, measurements at different ocean locations around the world and a series of computer models. The report reveals the ways in which the ocean is changing and the consequences, which include ocean warming, sea ice loss and rising sea levels. Sea ice extent in the Arctic is well below average and is rapidly declining. In fact, Arctic sea ice has shown a steady decline in extent and thickness over the last thirty years. Summer (September) sea ice has followed a decreasing trend of -12.89 per cent per decade, with record lows of sea ice extent in the last two years Experts found that warming oceans and melting land ice is caused sea levels to rise at a rate that is unprecedented at any time in the last century. The report also revealed that the average extent of Arctic sea ice is decreasing, losing an area equivalent to the size of Germany in the period from 1979 to 2020. According to Alex Arnall, an environmental geographer at the University of Reading who was not involved in the present study, rising sea levels are no longer a 'future problem' and are already impacting coastal communities around the world. The report reveals the ways in which the ocean is changing and the consequences which include ocean warming, the loss of sea ice (pictured) and rising sea levels Copernicus Marine Service oceanographer Karina von Schuckmann said that climate change, pollution and overexploitation has placed unprecedented pressures on the ocean, which makes up 71 per cent of the Earth's surface. 'It is also responsible for regulating Earth's climate and sustaining life,' she added. 'Accurate and timely monitoring and reporting is crucial for understanding the ocean so we can adapt to its changes. 'The Ocean State Report highlights the necessity of governance to help us all work together to reduce harmful effects and adapt to protect this most precious resource and its ecosystems.' The full findings of the Ocean State Report were published on the Copernicus Marine Service website. Advertisement Gas pipe workers have discovered the remains of eight people, who were buried alongside musical instruments and food in Peru 800 years ago. Bodies of adults and children had been covered in plant material before being buried, at the site in Chilca, Peru, which is about 37 miles (60km) south of Lima. Workers laying gas pipes found the remains with corn, dishes, and a variety of wind instruments, including flutes, placed around them. Cecilia Camargo, an archaeologist hired by the Calidda gas company, whose workers made the discovery, said it provides information on pre-Hispanic Chilca. Food, artefacts and ancient funeral bundles containing the remains of eight inhabitants were uncovered by workers of the gas distributing company Calidda, during the installation of natural gas pipes in Chilca, Peru The remains, buried approximately 800 years ago, belonged to the Chilca culture, a small pre-hispanic village that remained isolated from other pre-hispanic cultures in its territory The history of Chilca dates back to about 7000 BCE, with houses discovered going back as far as 5800 BCE, according to archaeologists. The recently discovered remains were of people alive around 1220 CE, during the rise of the Inca empire, but are said to belong to the Chilca culture, which remained isolated from other pre-Hispanic cultures in the area. The Incan empire reigned until the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, when the Hispanic-era began. Some of the eight people found in the shared tomb had been buried with shells on their heads, and had bags in which coca leaves, traditionally chewed as a stimulant, are kept. Workers of the same company found another 30 ancient bodies in Chilca in 2018 as part of efforts to lay gas pipes. For nearly two decades, workers for Calidda, building gas lines across Peru's capital, Lima, have found themselves unearthing a treasure trove of history. The history of Chilca dates back to about 7000 BCE, with houses discovered going back as far as 5800 BCE, according to archaeologists Peruvian workers laying gas pipes found the remains with corn, dishes, and a variety of wind instruments, including flutes, placed around the bodies Archaeologists have been working through the remains to better understand the people that lived in the pre-Hispanic village An ancient purple corn kernel (left) was found with the bodies, along with music instruments, other food items and objects (right), although the team are still working through the bundle of 800 year old artefacts Workers of the same company found another 30 ancient bodies in Chilca in 2018 as part of efforts to lay gas pipes In 2018 the team came across four burials accompanied by ceramics from a pre-Incan civilization. Two years earlier, they found the bodies of farmers who had been among the first wave of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century. 'Lima literally sits atop a cultural bank,' with one layer of history atop another, Alexis Solis, an archaeologists working for Calidda national gas, said last year. The Colombia-based company says it has installed about 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometres) of natural gas lines across Lima over the past 16 years. As part of this effort, it has reported about 300 archaeological finds, some of them 2,000 years old and spent $2 million on the archaeological effort. Some of the eight people found in the shared tomb had been buried with shells on their heads, and had bags in which coca leaves, traditionally chewed as a stimulant, are kept A flute and basket of corn kernels were among the items found within the shared tomb, according to archaeologists Peruvian law requires that archaeological discoveries be reported and turned over to the Culture Ministry, but some developers haven't followed the law. In 2013, workers for real estate developers destroyed a 4,500-year-old pyramid-shaped structure on the edges of the capital city Lima. Lima is located in a valley irrigated by three rivers fed from the Andes, and housed human civilisations thousands of years before the Spanish arrived in 1535. It is scattered with cemeteries, irrigation canals, structures and ancient roads, with thin, vulnerable layers of deposited earth separating vastly different eras. 'The physical difference between the present and antiquity is but a few centimeters,' Solis said in an interview last year. NASA's InSight lander has measured one of the biggest and longest marsquakes yet, which featured tremors of 4.2 magnitude lasting nearly an hour and a half, the space agency said. The robotic seismometre celebrated 1,000 days on the Red Planet on September 18, when it detected the largest tremor since it arrived at the Elysium Planitia in 2018. The 4.2 magnitude quake equals the largest detected so far on Mars, but on Earth that would be considered 'light', with more than 10,000 earthquakes of that level detected every year, feeling like a light rumble that would make dishes shake. The lander was only able to make the measurement after efforts to clear dust from its solar panels earlier in the year - keeping the seismometre operating. The team took a counterintuitive approach to achieving this by sprinkling one solar panel with larger sand grains in the hope wind would blow it across the other panel and result in clearing enough of the dust to allow power to enter the device. This is the third major quake in a month, with a 4.2 and 4.1 magnitude tremor previously detected on the Red Planet on August 25, according to NASA. It isn't clear whether Mars has had larger quakes and InSight just hasn't detected them, or whether this is the maximum level it is likely to detect. NASA's InSight lander has measured one of the biggest and longest marsquakes yet, which featured tremors lasting nearly an hour and a half, the space agency said MARSQUAKES: SEISMIC ACTIVITY ON THE RED PLANET Marsquakes are the shaking of the surface or interior of the planet, caused by the sudden release of energy in the planet's interior. On Earth this is from plate tectonics and on Mars it could be hotspoots. These could be at sites like Olympus Mons or the Tharsis Montes. Hundreds of marsquakes were detected in two years of the NASA InSight robot operating on Mars. The first marsquake was measured and recorded by InSight on April 6, 2019. Advertisement NASA launched InSight with the goal of studying seismic waves to learn more about the interior of the Red Planet, and understand how it formed and its inner core. The waves change as they travel through a planet's crust, mantle, and core, providing scientists a way to peer deep below the surface. InSight relies primarily on solar power to keep it going, and earlier this year Mars' highly elliptical orbit took it further away from the sun and lowered temperatures. This meant the lander had to rely more on its heaters to keep warm and had lower levels of solar radiation to power the device. Making this worse, dust buildup on InSight's solar panels further reduced power levels, requiring the mission to conserve energy by turning off certain instruments. Thanks to the clever move of trickling sand on one solar panel, NASA kept the seismometer turned on throughout the summer months. Now that Mars is approaching the Sun once again, power is starting to inch back up. 'If we hadn't acted quickly earlier this year, we might have missed out on some great science,' said InSight's principal investigator, Bruce Banerdt of NASA JPL. 'Even after more than two years, Mars seems to have given us something new with these two quakes, which have unique characteristics,' said Banerdt. The team is still studying the findings from the September 18 marsquake and its magnitude, as well as finding out exactly where it originated. They know the shaking occurred too far to have originated where InSight has detected almost all of its previous large quakes - Cerberus Fossae. This is a region roughly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years. 'One especially intriguing possibility is Valles Marineris, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator,' NASA said in a statement. 'The approximate centre of that canyon system is 6,027 miles (9,700 kilometers) from InSight,' so would be a record distance. The robotic seismometre celebrated 1,000 days on the Red Planet on September 18, when it detected the largest tremor since it arrived at the Elysium Planitia in 2018 Volcanoes on Mars could be geologically ACTIVE Volcanos on Mars could still be active, researchers claim, saying that it could mean life on the Red Planet was active within the past 30,000 years. University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Planetary Science Institute discovered unknown volcanic deposits in satellite images of the planet. The team said these images showed evidence of eruptions in the past 50,000 years, in the Elysium Planitia region, about 1,000 miles from the NASA InSight lander. Most volcanism on the Red Planet occurred between three and four billion years ago, with smaller eruptions in isolated locations continuing up to three million years ago. They say this evidence 'absolutely raises the possibility that there could still be volcanic activity on Mars' and of habitable conditions under the Martian surface. 'This may be the youngest volcanic deposit yet documented on Mars,' said lead study author David Horvath, adding that 'if we were to compress Mars' geologic history into a single day, this would have occurred in the very last second.' Advertisement While NASA is only just starting to understand the September 18 quake, it knows more about the two marsquakes detected on August 25. The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far. To the surprise of scientists, the August 25 quakes were two different types. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterised the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander only about 575 miles (925 kilometers) away. That's good news for seismologists, as recording quakes from a range of distances and with different wave types provides clues to the planet structure. This summer, the team used previous marsquake data to detail the depth and thickness of the planet's crust and mantle, plus the size of its molten core. They found evidence of three layers of crust stretching down 41 miles below the surface, using the archive readings. Each layer of the crust has a slightly different makeup, and just below the crust is the mantle, which goes down as far as 500 miles. The rest an iron-nickel core, with a radius of about 1,140 miles, starting half way between the surface and planet centre. The crustal thickness of Mars is particularly interesting to scientists, as it formed early from remnants of the molten mantle running above the core. Thus, data on its present-day structure can also provide information on how Mars evolved, experts explained. In addition, a more precise understanding of the evolution of Mars helps to decipher how early differentiation processes unfolded in the solar system and why Mars, Earth, and other planets are so different today. The magnitude 4.2 event occurred about 5,280 miles (8,500 kilometers) from InSight the most distant temblor the lander has detected so far. Artist impression of InSight on Mars The inner structure of the planet Mars has been revealed thanks to the NASA InSight lander, showing the size of the core, mantle and crust for the first time Measuring quakes on Mars is one way scientists can understand this history, especially when the quakes are different. Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big - both occurred during the day, which is the windiest and noisiest time on Mars, especially for a seismometre. InSight's usually finds them at night, when the planet cools off, requiring less heating, and winds are lower. However, the signals from these August 25 quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind. The mission's team is now considering whether to perform more dust cleanings after Mars solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun. Because the sun's radiation can affect radio signals, interfering with communications, the team will stop issuing commands to the lander on September 29, though the seismometre will continue to listen for quake. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which had its 31st anniversary earlier this year, has found six dead galaxies in deep space in a remarkable discovery. The galaxies ran out of cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars when the universe was roughly 3 billion years old, considered the 'most prolific period of star birth in its history,' according to a statement from the U.S. space agency. The six galaxies are known as MRG-M1341, MRG-M0138, MRG-M2129, MRG-M0150, MRG-M0454 and MRG-M1423. Six dead galaxies have been in deep space, roughly 11 billion light-years away. The six galaxies are known as MRG-M1341 (pictured top left and right), MRG-M0138, MRG-M2129 (pictured bottom left and right), MRG-M0150, MRG-M0454 and MRG-M1423 The discovery was made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (pictured), in conjunction with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile The discovery was made in conjunction with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. 'At this point in our universe, all galaxies should be forming lots of stars. It's the peak epoch of star formation,' Kate Whitaker, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst assistant professor of astronomy and the study's lead author, said in the statement. 'So what happened to all the cold gas in these galaxies so early on?' For now, scientists are not sure why the galaxies ran out of the gas 11 billion years ago, leaving them to speculate. 'Did a supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center turn on and heat up all the gas? If so, the gas could still be there, but now it's hot,' Whitaker added. 'Or it could have been expelled and now it's being prevented from accreting back onto the galaxy.' Whitaker continued: 'Or did the galaxy just use it all up, and the supply is cut off? These are some of the open questions that we'll continue to explore with new observations down the road.' WHAT IS GRAVITATIONAL LENSING? Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bend the light emitted from a more distant galaxy. This forms a highly magnified, though much distorted image. This is because massive objects bend the spacetime around them, making light travel in a different path. This theory was first proposed by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity. Advertisement It's likely these galaxies will never rejuvenate, even if other galaxies merge with other small galaxies nearby. By absorbing other galaxies, it 'puffs up' the dead galaxies and if for some reason, they do start to create new stars, it is akin to 'a kind of frosting,' Whitaker added. Despite the lack of star formation, these galaxies are believed to have evolved and grow. The galaxies were studied as part of the Resolving QUIEscent Magnified Galaxies At High Redshift (REQUIEM) program, which looks at distant galaxies that appear red in color. A technique known as 'gravitational lensing' was applied to find the galaxies, Whitaker said. 'By using strong gravitational lensing as a natural telescope, we can find the distant, most massive, and first galaxies to shut down their star formation,' Whitaker explained. 'I like to think about it like doing science of the 2030s or 40s with powerful next-generation space telescopes but today instead by combining the capabilities of Hubble and ALMA, which are boosted by strong lensing.' The study has been published in the scientific journal Nature. The universe is widely believed to be roughly 14 billion years old, based on the Hubble Constant of 70 The universe is widely believed to be roughly 14 billion years old, based on the Hubble Constant of 70. In 2019, scientists in a separate study suggested that the Hubble Constant is 82.4, which would make the universe around 11.4 billion years old. Cracks appearing on the International Space Station are a 'fairly serious issue,' according to a former NASA astronaut, who says there may be others not yet found. A new crack was spotted in the Russian Zarya module in August, but was just the latest in a string of fissures found on the station, orbiting 253 miles above the Earth. NASA says the cracks on the $150 billion (109 billion) laboratory don't pose any danger to astronauts 'at this time', and no new leaks had been identified. However, former NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd, who served as the first commander on the ISS from October 2000 to March 2001, said there are likely more cracks. He told a House of Representatives committee hearing on Tuesday that NASA and Russian engineers 'don't exactly understand why the cracks are appearing now.' Shepherd reiterated claims by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that it was 'becoming a serious issue,' adding that it needs to be resolved before Congress clears the ISS for operational use beyond the current 2024 funding deadline. Cracks appearing on the International Space Station are a 'fairly serious issue,' according to a former NASA astronaut, who says there may be others not yet found August 2018 saw astronauts rush to fix a hole (pictured) which had appeared in the outer wall of the Soyuz capsule on the orbiting laboratory. Its origins were, and still are, a mystery despite rife speculation THE $100 BILLION ISS SITS 250 MILES ABOVE THE EARTH The International Space Station (ISS) is a $100 billion (80 billion) science and engineering laboratory that orbits 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. It has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000. Research conducted aboard the ISS often requires one or more of the unusual conditions present in low Earth orbit, such as low-gravity or oxygen. ISS studies have investigated human research, space medicine, life sciences, physical sciences, astronomy and meteorology. The US space agency, Nasa, spends about $3 billion (2.4 billion) a year on the space station program, a level of funding that is endorsed by the Trump administration and Congress. A U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees Nasa has begun looking at whether to extend the program beyond 2024. Alternatively the money could be used to speed up planned human space initiatives to the moon and Mars. Advertisement The ISS launched in 1998, with backing from Russia, the US and a range of international partners, and has been continuously occupied since 2000. It was originally set to operate for 15 years, but thanks to a series of upgrades and repair work, it is now coming up to 23 years since it first orbited the Earth. NASA has funding to keep up its share of ISS operations until 2024, but hopes to convince Congress to provide funds to keep it operational up to its 30th anniversary in 2028. Last month Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of Russian rocket and space corporation Energia, said a number of 'superficial fissures' had been found on Zarya. This is module is also known as the 'Functional Cargo Block' and Solovyov said the fissures had been uncovered in a 'number of places'. 'This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time,' Solovyov told Russian state-owned news agency RIA. He added that a significant portion of the equipment on the ISS is ageing. NASA vehemently denied claims from Russia that there were 'bad' cracks on the module, saying there were no issues 'impacting crew or normal operations.' The space agency told DailyMail.com that 'no new potential leak sites have been identified' by astronauts or ground crew. 'We are in regular coordination for station operations with all our international partners, including Roscosmos.' Shepherd, who has flown to orbit four times, said the cracks are small, like scratches on the surface of the aluminium plate - 'something like half a dozen of them'. Former NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd (pictured on the ISS), served as the first commander on the station from October 2000 to March 2001. He said there are likely more cracks Cracks and scratches aren't unheard of on the station, and NASA and Roscomos often take their time repairing those that pose 'no immediate threat'. Sometimes these cracks may not even be detected until an air leak is spotted, which Shepherd says is a 'growing issue'. He said it is showing signs of age, particularly in the Russian section which has some of the oldest components on the station. NASA says the cracks on the $150 billion (109 billion) laboratory don't pose any danger to astronauts 'at this time', and no new leaks had been identified Russian cosmonauts find 'bad' cracks on ISS The International Space Station has suffered 'bad' cracks cosmonauts fear could widen, potentially putting its future at risk. 'Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module,' Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of Russian rocket and space corporation Energia, told RIA news agency. 'This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time.' Solovyov did not provide further detail if the cracks had caused any air to leak, and there is no suggestion that any of the astronauts on board are in danger. NASA has yet to confirm the existence of the cracks on the Zarya module, also known as the Functional Cargo Block. A NASA spokesman told DailyMail.com the agency was looking into the claim. Advertisement Last year alone a toilet broke, temperatures increased without explanation or warning and an oxygen-supply system broke down. However, the station is full of redundancies, including 'escape capsules' that can take all of the between six and 10 crew members back to Earth in an emergency. In September 2019 another module, Zvezda, also on the Russian side, started leaking air - there was no immediate danger, but it was eventually located and repaired. Solovyov previously said: 'There are already a number of elements that have been seriously damaged and are out of service. Many of them are not replaceable. After 2025, we predict an avalanche-like failure of numerous elements onboard the ISS.' Shepherd says before Congress approves funding to keep the station going until 2028, NASA should solve the mystery of the Zarya module's new cracks. 'Getting to the bottom of this is a fairly serious issue,' Shepherd said to Congress. In a statement to the House, Shepherd said: 'Since last fall, ISS has experienced moderate internal air leakage to space. Leaks have been traced to the interior of the transfer tunnel at the rear of the Russian Service Module. 'Leak sources are small surface cracks in the tunnel's aluminum hull. The crew has sealed leak sites, and the leakage rates have reduced. Shepherd reiterated claims by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that it was 'becoming a serious issue,' adding that it needs to be resolved before Congress clears the ISS for operational use beyond the current 2024 funding deadline 'Engineers and technicians in Russia and the U.S. work together to understand and resolve this issue; but the root cause of the cracking, their failure modes, and impacts on ISS safety and future operations have not been adequately determined. 'I don't think the station's in any immediate danger. But before we clear the station for another so many years of operational use, we should better understand this.' Eventually, when the core structure becomes beyond repair, the ISS will be retired and sent to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, after which point NASA says it has no plans to fund or operate its own station in Earth orbit. Eventually, when the core structure becomes beyond repair, the ISS will be retired and sent to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, after which point NASA says it has no plans to fund or operate its own station in Earth orbit Roscosmos is currently working on its own space station, launching in 2025. It will be much smaller than the ISS but will include a dedicated tourism module. NASA has plans to build a space station in orbit around the moon, known as the lunar gateway, and is considering commercial proposals for a new Earth-orbit station. The agency is considering a dozen proposals from various companies and plans to split $400 million between up to four of them for access to the new platform. Much like NASA now pays SpaceX to send astronauts to the ISS, it hopes to just lease space on a commercial station in future - rather than operate the station itself. As well as the upcoming Russian station, China launched the first part of its own station into orbit earlier this year, with plans to complete it by the end of 2022. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko insists they are trying to ensure Max Verstappen avoids any more collisions by helping to develop a 'mutual respect' with other drivers, including Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen crashed with his title rival at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza earlier this month when his Red Bull vehicle launched from the curb and landed on top of the Brit's Mercedes, a collision that put both drivers out of the race. The Dutchman currently leads this season's standings, sitting five points above seven-time world champion Hamilton, but it was the second time he had crashed with his rival after they collided on lap one at Silverstone in July. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko insists they are trying to ensure Max Verstappen avoids any more collisions Verstappen crashed with title rival Lewis Hamilton at the Italian Grand Prix earlier this month His Red Bull vehicle launched from the curb and landed on top of the Brit's Mercedes But Marko, 78, claims his team are doing all they can to ensure there are no other collisions involving their driver, starting with this weekend's Russian Grand Prix, where the Dutchman faces a three-place grid penalty due to the crash at Monza. Speaking to RTL, he said: 'From our side, we try to influence Max so that there is mutual respect and collisions are to be avoided. 'These are racing drivers when the visor is down, everything is forgotten again.' Hamilton - who was saved from serious injury at Monza due to the protective halo device - required treatment for a neck injury following the crash but Ralf Schumacher believes he overreacted to the crash. The Dutchman faces a three-place grid penalty this weekend after colliding with Hamilton But Marko, 78, claims his team are doing all they can to ensure there are no other collisions The British driver was pictured partying at the Met Gala in New York with OnlyFans model Janet Guzman just hours after the crash, leaving Marko to join the German Schumacher in accusing Hamilton of exaggerating the injuries he suffered. 'The whole incident was certainly not life-threatening,' he added. 'If he had really serious neck pain or problems, then he would not have been in New York incidentally in the very funny outfit he appeared in. 'If you go on a seven-hour flight with a stiff neck after an incident like this, it couldn't have been all that serious.' Marko had also recently told the Osterreich newspaper: 'It was a normal racing accident. All the stories around it were pulled up by the hair by Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton was pictured partying at the Met Gala with OnlyFans model Janet Guzman (R) 'Verstappen had already got out when Hamilton tried to go back to get out of the gravel. 'The medical car saw that and drove on. And then a show is put on that poor Hamilton is suddenly injured.' A couple of days ago, Schumacher was equally scathing, stating: 'I think Lewis was too dramatising of it, considering that he flew to New York the next day to attend an event.' Daniel Ricciardo also leapt to the defence of Verstappen after the Dutchman was accused of failing to check on Hamilton following their crash at Monza. Verstappen drew criticism after appearing to walk away from the incident while Hamilton was left sat in his Mercedes cockpit. Ralf Schumacher believes Hamilton overreacted following the collision at Monza 'This is going to be diplomatic, I would say all of us drivers, for sure we've got rivalries, and for sure we don't all get on the best,' Ricciardo, who went on to win the Italian Grand Prix, explained on the Pardon My Take podcast. 'But if we had a crash and we knew that guy was injured, 100 per cent, hand on heart, I believe all of us would go and try and help. If we knew it was something serious, we wouldn't just turn our backs. 'I know Max, I was team-mates with him for a few years and that's him he's a competitor, he'll leave it on the track and that's it. 'I guess he probably still carried a little bit of frustration or anger or emotion from Silverstone, so maybe that was the reason why he was kind of like "Stuff this, I'm just going to walk away". 'There were things like Lewis trying to reverse and get out. I've already probably got too involved, maybe Max saw that and he's like "Okay, Lewis is fine".' Tom Girardi has claimed that he believes estranged wife Erika Jayne did know about his embezzlement scandal despite her previously denying any wrongdoing. The 82-year-old disbarred lawyer was recently seen leaving a lunch at an upscale restaurant in Los Angeles with some friends when he was asked about the involvement of his 50-year-old Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star ex. A cameraman asked Tom via PageSix - who once had an estimated fortune valued at $264million - about Jayne as he said: 'Did Erika know anything? Everyone wants to know.' Very interesting: Tom Girardi was seen leaving lunch at an upscale restaurant in LA when he said that estranged wife Erika Jayne did know about the embezzlement scandal despite her previously denying any wrongdoing (stock image) Tom - who has endured bankruptcy woes, allegations of embezzlement, and ailing health - stood quiet for a few seconds before one of his friends tried intervening and eventually convinced him to keep walking. Before heading off, the co-founder of downtown Los Angeles law firm Girardi & Keese finally answered the question about the woman he's been married to since 2000 saying: 'I think she does.' Jayne has repeatedly denied any knowledge of wrongdoing but fellow Housewives stars have reportedly said they were aware of the scandal. Camille Grammer claimed she heard of her and Girardi's financial difficulties at Andy Cohen's 2019 baby shower, Page Six reported. Fellow reality star Bethenny Frankel said Girardi's woes were the 'worst kept secret' in LA, claiming he owed her late ex-boyfriend Dennis Shields $500,000. According to Page Six, Jayne remained silent when she was asked about Giradi's comments. Last month, DailyMail.com revealed that Girardi is now living in a senior living home in Burbank, California after saying goodbye to living lavishly in his $13 million Pasadena mansion. Interesting: The 82-year-old co-founder of downtown Los Angeles law firm Girardi & Keese finally answered the question about the woman he's been married to since 2000 saying: 'I think she does' Doesn't seem too bothered: Meanwhile, Erika was seen partying it up at the grand opening of SUSHISAMBA at The Venetian in Las Vegas on Tuesday The former attorney is currently facing claims of allegedly embezzling settlement funds that were meant to help the families of plane crash victims. Just before after DailyMail.com's revelation on August 23, it was revealed that Girardi - who has now been placed under a conservatorship - has been federally disbarred by California Federal Court. It's quite the change of scenery for Girardi, who has now moved out of his palatial Pasadena mansion, that was once on the market for $13million. Pricing for Belmont Village Senior Living in Burbank is said to be between $4,545 - $4,750 a month for a private suite. The facility has staff available 24/7, and boasts community chef-prepared dining with 24 daily choices of meals. Costing for the facility depends on the room type and level of care that is required. New home: Last month, DailyMail.com revealed that Girardi is now living in a senior living home in Burbank, California after saying goodbye to living lavishly in his $13 million Pasadena mansion Girardi's move also follows claims from Jayne who said last week that she's been receiving death threats after it was claimed she allegedly spent $25million from Girardi's law firm on credit card purchases and fees for her glam squad. Lawyers for the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of the Girardi Keese firm allege the company transferred the money to Jayne's EJ Global LLC, according to a letter they sent to her lawyer, reports claimed last week. The letter will be filed with the bankruptcy court as a part of the legal proceedings, a source told the outlet. Jayne filed for divorce from Girardi in November and has denied wrongdoing after the law firm filed for bankruptcy and he was accused of misappropriating $2million intended for victims of Indonesia's Lion Air 610 crash. Will Erika visit? An inside shot of the senior living home shows a dining area where Tom will be free to lounge in Different to what he's used to: The senior living facility boasts comfortable sized bedrooms New living area: Interior shots of the home show where embattled Tom will be spending his time From 2008 to 2020, Jayne allegedly spent $14,259,012.84 on her American Express card and $1,417,587.50 on unknown purchases - as well as $1,532,774.88 on an agency for dancers and choreographers, the McDonald Selznick Associates Agency. Her company reportedly paid $102,596.77 to Kim Kardashian's former executive assistant Stephanie Shepherd. EJ Global reportedly paid $17,415 to Opus Beauty - a management agency that represents make-up artists, stylists and costume designers - and $1,000 to influential makeup artist Mario Dedivanoic. In hot water: Girardi is currently under investigation amid accusations he 'misappropriated at least $2 million' meant for the families of those killed in the Lion Air Flight 610 crash in Indonesia (He and Erika Jayne pictured in 2016 above) Jayne had said in an episode of RHOBH that aired last month that the family members of the victims of the Indonesia plane crash 'are owed their money,' but that she did not know Girardi had given her $20million in loans from his law firm. In July, a judge ruled that Jayne may have to pay three other clients of Girardi that he allegedly embezzled $11million from out of her own pocket. The same month, the former couple slashed the price of their Pasadena home from $13million to $9.98million. Living area: Pricing for Belmont Village in Burbank is said to be between $4,545 - $4,750 a month for a private suite Keeping fit: The senior living home also features a spacious gym area with an array of equipment Stylish: The interior boasts a modern feel though it will no doubt feel smaller than what Tom is used to The 10,277-square-foot, four bedroom, six bathroom abode, originally listed in May, had long been the main residence for the pair, with Jayne now having downsized. In December, Giardi was sued by his business partners, which led to his chapter 7 bankruptcy petition; clients of the law firm are also suing him, alleging that their money was also misappropriated. In March, the LA Times reported that there had been more than 100 lawsuits filed and multiple complaints made to the California State Bar against Girardi by disgruntled clients who alleged financial wrongdoing and theft between the 1980s and up until last year. Tom's diner: The facility has a formal dining area for residents staying at the home Modern: The bedrooms feature plush furnishings Outdoor space: Another shot from inside the premises shows a patio area for the residents to congregate In June, Jayne had been 'ordered to turn over financial records' from her accountant, lawyer and landlord as part of the embezzlement investigation and a bankruptcy trustee is documenting the couple's assets. It's been alleged that the split provided a way for the couple to embezzle funds and that Jayne had received 'tens of millions of dollars' from her husband's firm to fund her projects, Us Weekly reported in June. Meanwhile, an investigator in the bankruptcy trial of Tom and Erika says he wants to take into account 'inconsistent statements' the reality star has made on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Investigator Ronald Richards told Us Weekly this month: 'There's a lot of inconsistent statements and admissions made by the non-scripted actors that we're putting together to use in court.' Asked whether the attorney has seen 'a lot of inconsistencies with the story' being told on RHOBH in regards to Erika and Tom's lawsuit and financial woes, Richards said: 'That's correct.' Richards added that his team is 'going to take discovery from people that used to work for her.' Brand new The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is now streaming on hayu in Australia, plus relive every episode ever - only on hayu in Australia. Whoopi Goldberg isn't planning on going anywhere after signing a new deal to keep her on The View for another four years. The 65-year-old actor and talk show co-host's deal covers the current season 25 and will extend through season 28, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Goldberg currently hosts The View with Joy Behar, Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin. Not going anywhere: Whoopi Goldberg has inked a four-year deal to keep her on The View through Season 28, according to The Hollywood Reporter; pictured on September 13 in Manhattan Goldberg first joined The View back in 2007, when she replaced departing co-hosts Rosie O'Donnell. Since then, she's been a source of stability for the series, which has seen a variety of co-hosts come and go over the years. The financial terms of Goldberg's new deal weren't initially available. Her decision to stick with The View for a significant extension comes as the series 'takes a little time' to replace DailyMail.com's new columnist Meghan McCain. Few details: The financial terms of Goldberg's deal weren't yet made public. She has been on the show since 2007, when she replaced Rosie O'Donnell; seen in 2015 with (LR) Nicolle Wallace, Raven-Symone and Rosie Perez Staying put: Goldberg will be a consistent force as a bevy of conservative women guest host in the role vacated by Meghan McCain in August McCain announced she would be departing the daytime talk show in July after nearly four years, and her final episode of The View was in early August. A bevy of prominent conservative women, including Condoleezza Rice, former US Representative Mia Love, former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssah Farah, who served under the Trump administration. Current Real Housewives Of New York City star Eboni K. Williams and CNN host and commentator S. E. Cupp are also among the upcoming guest hosts. Nicolle Wallace, White House Communications Director for George W. Bush, will be paired with Goldberg on The View's podcast Behind The Table for its October 5 episode. Family: McCain, DailyMail.com's new columnist, departed The View after nearly four years on the air, citing her desire to spend more time with her husband Ben Domenech and their daughter Liberty When McCain announced her departure, she shared that she was looking forward to having more time to spend with her family. The daughter of the late Senator John McCain has been married to conservative commentator Ben Domenech, who co-founded The Federalist, since 2017. The couple welcomed a daughter named Liberty in 2020. Among the guest hosts set to appear on The View is McCain's mother Cindy McCain, who will be featured on the October 6 show. Jennifer Hough, the woman who accused Nicki Minaj's husband Kenneth Petty of rape in 1994, appeared on The Real Wednesday in a comprehensive interview saying she's 'tired of being afraid' as she opened up about her experiences with both Minaj and Petty, past and present. The appearance came on the heels of Hough, 43, filing a suit against the couple in New York last month, accusing them of harassment, witness intimidation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Hough in the suit also named Petty specifically for sexual assault, over the September 16, 1994 attack, according to TMZ. The latest: Jennifer Hough, 43, the woman who accused Nicki Minaj's husband Kenneth Petty of rape in 1994, appeared on The Real Wednesday in a comprehensive interview saying she's 'tired of being afraid' as she opened up about her experiences with both, past and present 'I felt like the actions that were taken in regards to this whole situation, have put me in a different type of fear at my age now,' Hough said on the show. 'It was wrong. And I don't want to be afraid anymore, so the only way not to be afraid is to continue to speak up.' Hough, who appeared with her lawyer Tyrone A. Blackburn, said that she filed the $500,000 suit against the couple in a move to make clear 'they were wrong' in their interactions with her. She said of Petty: 'He did something a long time ago and he had consequences that he was supposed to stick with. What they did to me and my family wasn't OK. 'It wasn't right and it doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter what your status is, you can't intimidate people to make things go better for you. And that's what they did.' The appearance came on the heels of Hough, 43, filing a suit against the couple in New York last month, accusing them of harassment, witness intimidation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress Minaj reportedly started dating Petty after he got out of prison, when he was 21 and she was just 16. The couple are pictured together in February 2019 In the emotional appearance, Hough explained the details of the 1994 incident in Jamaica, Queens, New York, which led to Petty's conviction the following year when he entered a guilty plea to attempted rape Hough said that she was coming forward to set an example for her daughters amid the traumatic life experiences. 'I want my daughters to know that as they grow, as they experience life as they come in contact with friends, family, strangers whatever, that they'll have the strength to know that they have a voice, and they should use it,' she said. 'And don't ever let anybody try to silence them.' In the emotional appearance, Hough explained the details of the 1994 incident in Jamaica, Queens, New York, which led to Petty's conviction the following year when he entered a guilty plea to attempted rape. Hough said she was 16 when she was walking alongside Petty and that 'before you know it, he was grabbing a hold of my jacket. 'I felt something in my back so I just assumed there was a gun,' she said. 'And I started walking. And I'm pleading with him the whole way, trying to understand what he wants.' She explained the details of the alleged sexual assault, as she said Petty told her that she 'knew what he wanted' prior to the attack. 'I didn't know why it didn't dawn on me to like really fight,' she said on the show. 'I just held on to my pants and he held my arms down and squeezed the sides of my stomach so hard. I let go and as soon as I let go he grabbed my pants. It was like a tug of war and after a while I just got tired.' Hough said Petty 'stood in the mirror and beat his chest' following the attack, after which she told a guard at a nearby school, who contacted police, leading to Petty's arrest at the house. Hough, who appeared with her lawyer Tyrone A. Blackburn, said that she filed the $500,000 suit against the couple in a move to make clear 'they were wrong' in their interactions with her Hough said that she was dismayed when Minaj and Petty wed October 21, 2019, as she felt 'so afraid of being known as the person [Petty] violated' In regards to allegations Petty's relatives made that the pair was dating at the time of the incident, Hough said they 'were never in a relationship' and 'never had no type of romantic anything. 'We never talked on the phone. We never hung out together. I just knew him from the neighborhood.' Hough said she looked to drop the charges in an effort to quell pressure from the situation that she blamed herself over, and that 'shortly after that,' she moved out of New York. Asked if she felt that justice was served in the case, Petty said, 'I don't think I thought about justice per se, because I was still blaming myself. 'And thought it was something that I did or didn't do. I don't think I thought about if I got justice. I just knew he did what he did and he went to jail and I had to leave my family. I had to leave my home. And I had to move away.' Hough said that she was dismayed when Minaj and Petty wed October 21, 2019, as she felt 'so afraid of being known as the person [Petty] violated.' She said she was 'so afraid of being found out,' and 'so afraid of being known as the person he violated. 'And I didn't want that. You know, it's Nicki Minaj. I didn't want that to reflect on my children.' Hough said that she was dismayed when Minaj and Petty wed October 21, 2019, as she felt 'so afraid of being known as the person [Petty] violated' The victim first came forward with her alarming allegations in an interview with the Daily Beast in March, using only her first name, Jennifer. In January she posted a video (pictured) showing her face for the first time, in which she tearfully pleaded: 'Tell your f**king people to leave my family alone leave me and my family the f**k alone' In regards to a 2018 social media post from Minaj downplaying the incident, she said, 'It was like reliving it again because it was a lie - it wasn't true. 'We both were 16. We were never in a relationship. It just felt woman-to-woman, that was wrong of her because I don't know you and you don't know me to know that that statement you put out to the world to be true. You have 150-something million followers ... they all believed it. It hurt coming from another woman.' Petty's conviction forced Petty to register as a sex offender, but he failed to do so in the state of California when he moved there with Minaj, and he was arrested in March 2020. Hough opened up about an exchange she had with Minaj in March of 2020 in which she claims the pop star looked to work out an arrangement in which she would pay her to recant her past allegations toward Petty. 'She called me and she said that she got word that I was willing to help them out in a situation,' she said. 'I didn't understand what she was referring to. She offered to fly me and my family to LA. I turned it down. And I told her, woman-to-woman, this really happened. And I hadn't spoken to her since.' Hough claimed Minaj and Petty began harassing her immediately after Petty was arrested, and tried to get her to recant her testimony. She said that she has consistently declined offers from Minaj and Petty, which have led to their associates approaching her with counter offers. 'Nicki is the one who personally reached out to me, in regards to helping her, helping them in this situation,' she said. 'And then the threats that I received because I kept saying no to every offer, to every suggestion. 'The last incident was when one of their associates put $20,000 dollars on my lap. And I still kept saying no.' In a lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Eastern New York, Hough says she 'has not worked since May of 2020 due to severe depression, paranoia, constant moving, harassment and threats from the defendants and their associates. She is currently living in isolation out of fear of retaliation.' The lawsuit came just days after Petty accepted a plea deal on the count of failure to register as a sex offender in California. Hough has previously only been named as 'Jennifer' in interviews, but is named in the lawsuit and gave an interview Friday using her full name to The New York Times. In January she posted a video online showing her face for the first time, in which she tearfully pleaded with Minaj: 'Tell your f**king people to leave my family alone Leave me and my family the f**k alone.' Many of the alarming allegations in the lawsuit are the same as ones Jennifer made in an interview with the Daily Beast in March. In the lawsuit, said she and her family began receiving calls and bribe offers from Minaj and her estate following the arrest of her husband, Kenneth Petty, in March 2020. When Petty failed to register himself in the state of California, he was arrested, and Hough's claims Minaj contacted her to recant her rape claim to help Petty. Hough claims Minaj and Petty - who grew up in the same part of New York City as she did - had recruited several people close to her family in an intimidation campaign that's forced her to move three times. The suit says that an intermediary offered Hough $20,000 in exchange for signing a prepared statement recanting the accusation, with a bonus that Minaj would send birthday videos to her daughter. Hough added that she received a call from her brother, with whom she said she was not particularly close, who said people had offered $500,000 if Jennifer agreed to speak with Petty's lawyer. Blackburn did not immediately reply to MailOnline's request for comment, nor did representatives for Minaj and Petty. Hough told the Times that she has never accepted a bribe and would not recant her story. 'If I lie now and say that I lied then, you know what that does?' she said. 'Do you know what that's going to say to my two little girls, or even my sons?' Like Petty and Minaj, Jennifer grew up in the South Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, where she was raised by a woman who adopted her as an infant. She said in court docs she was 16 when the alleged assault occurred after Petty approached her while she was walking to school on September 16, 1994. Petty allegedly came up behind her, pressed an object into her back and told her to 'keep walking' as he led her to his home, according to court records obtained by The Blast. Jennifer said the harassment began in March of last year - immediately after Petty (pictured) was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender Minaj and Petty welcomed their son in September of last year Once they arrived, Petty forced her upstairs and began to rape her at knifepoint before she managed to escape after striking him with a bottle, the records state. Jennifer immediately reported the incident and went to a hospital for examination. When she returned home she said her adoptive mother told her: 'Sorry you got raped, but you should have screamed.' Petty denied Jennifer's allegations when he was arrested, telling investigators: 'I didn't do anything.' His parents told Jennifer's mother that the teens were dating, she said, even though she insists that they weren't. 'I think I kind of always just felt like people wanted me to be a liar,' Jennifer told the Daily Beast in March. She said that in the months after Petty's arrest, his friends harassed her family relentlessly in an effort to get her to drop the charges. At one point her adoptive aunt even brought her to court, she said, but she still refused to walk back her claims and ultimately moved to Florida before the case concluded. Petty was ultimately convicted in 1995 on four counts: first-degree attempted rape in the first degree, second-degree assault, second-degree unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Minaj reportedly started dating Petty after he got out of prison, when he was 21 and she was just 16. He landed back behind bars in 2006 after pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the shooting death of Lamont Robinson. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served seven before being released in 2013. Minaj addressed Petty's attempted rape conviction on her Apple Music show, Queen Radio, in 2019 after facing backlash over her announcement that they'd tied the knot. 'When you're somebody's wife, you've gotta be even more prayed up,' Minaj said on the show. 'Because you've gotta cover your husband in prayer.' The rapper insisted that Petty had been wrongfully convicted and claimed that the accuser had planned to write a letter to the judge recanting her statement before realizing that she could face jail time for admitting that she lied. On Wednesday, seven-time Grammy winner Madonna went topless behind a red curtain to promote her rock-doc Madame X, which premieres October 8 on Paramount+. The 63-year-old Queen of Pop's personal videographer Ricardo Gomes directed the film during the Lisbon, Portugal stop of her 75-date 11th concert tour spanning 2019-2020. The Madame X Tour was shut down early due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Madonna was forced to cancel 14 shows due to lingering knee and hip injuries. Peek-a-boo! On Wednesday, seven-time Grammy winner Madonna went topless behind a red curtain to promote her rock-doc Madame X, which premieres October 8 on Paramount+ The self-made superstar had mostly completed the documentary in April after seven months of production when she first screened it for 12 people in a 500-seat theater. Madge (last name Ciccone) practically invented the modern rock-doc with Alek Keshishian's 1991 film, Truth or Dare, capturing her Blonde Ambition Tour. The Material Girl also teased BTS footage on Wednesday from her upcoming V Magazine #133 cover shoot hitting shelves November 1. In it, Madonna donned a black Valentino bustier, white Philip Treacy feathered hat, and Neil Lane crucifix selected by stylist B. Akerlund. Excited? The 63-year-old Queen of Pop's personal videographer Ricardo Gomes directed the film during the Lisbon, Portugal stop of her 75-date 11th concert tour spanning 2019-2020 No cell phones were allowed! The Madame X Tour was shut down early due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Madonna was forced to cancel 14 shows due to lingering knee and hip injuries 'Can't wait to show it to the world!' The self-made superstar had mostly completed the documentary in April after seven months of production when she first screened it for 12 people in a 500-seat theater Iconic: Madge (last name Ciccone) practically invented the modern rock-doc with Alek Keshishian's 1991 film, Truth or Dare, capturing her Blonde Ambition Tour Hairstylist Andy Lecompte coiffed the twice-divorced mother-of-six's platinum-blonde wig and make-up artist Aaron Smith Henrikson made sure she was fully contoured. Photographer Steven Klein captured 'The Most Photographed Woman In the World' shoot, which wrapped last Sunday. Madonna - who boasts 44.4M social media followers - made sure to give her fans all the behind-the-scenes on-set action. 'Getting ready for the festivities': The Material Girl also teased BTS footage on Wednesday from her upcoming V Magazine #133 cover shoot hitting shelves November 1 'Epic shoot': In it, Madonna donned a black Valentino bustier, white Philip Treacy feathered hat, and Neil Lane crucifix selected by stylist B. Akerlund Pearly whites: Hairstylist Andy Lecompte coiffed the twice-divorced mother-of-six's platinum-blonde wig and make-up artist Aaron Smith Henrikson made sure she was fully contoured Straddle session: Photographer Steven Klein (L) captured 'The Most Photographed Woman In the World' shoot, which wrapped last Sunday Joanna Chimonidis and Kady McDermott turned heads as they stepped out for Christine Quinn's Ciate x CQ launch party in London on Wednesday night. Joanna flashed a glimpse of her taut abs in a mint cropped blazer as she showed off her phenomenal figure in a thigh skimming nude skirt and towering stilettos. Meanwhile, Kady set pulses racing in a pair of sheer leggings with black stripes that barely concealed her modesty as she arrived at the event. Wow: Joanna Chimonidis and Kady McDermott turned heads as they stepped out for Christine Quinn's Ciate x CQ launch party in London on Wednesday night Joanna cut a stylish figure in the light green blazer top and leather-look side-split skirt. She accentuated her endless legs with her strappy black stilettos and completed the ensemble with a chic black shoulder bag. The blonde beauty wore her long tresses in a sleek straight style and accentuated her beauty with a bold bronzed contour and lashings of lip liner. Joanna was flanked by a pal who wowed in a glittering crop top and her co-star Kady McDermott in a very daring pair of see-through leggings. Stunning: Joanna cut a stylish figure in the light green blazer top and leather-look side-split skirt Girls' night out: Joanna was flanked by a pal who wowed in a glittering crop top and her co-star Kady McDermott in a very daring pair of see-through leggings Kady turned up the temperature in her sheer leggings that covered her body in bold black stripes and left little to the imagination. She flaunted her sensational figure in the barely-there ensemble and showcased her toned abs in the cropped A-symmetrical co-ord. The reality star angled her pert posterior towards the cameras as she worked her angles at the party and revealed a risque thong detail at the back of her leggings. Bombshell: Kady turned up the temperature in her sheer leggings that covered her body in bold black stripes and left little to the imagination Sizzling: She flaunted her sensational figure in the barely-there ensemble and showcased her toned abs in the cropped A-symmetrical co-ord Racy: The reality star angled her pert posterior towards the cameras as she worked her angles at the party and revealed a risque thong detail at the back of her leggings The pair stepped out for the launch party of Christine Quinn's new range with Ciate. The Selling Sunset star, 32, wowed in the stunning silk number as she flashed a glimpse of her endless pins that were accentuated by a pair of diamante stilettos. Christine channelled Hollywood elegance as she beamed for cameras in the floor-length dress that featured a racy cut out detail beneath her cleavage. She appeared to go without underwear for the outing as she strode towards the party with her curves on full display through the sizzling dress. The blonde bombshell styled her long tresses in gorgeous rippling waves and accentuated her features with a bold red lip and sultry winged-eyeliner. Katie Price has reportedly fled to Turkey with fiance Carl Woods to 'clear her head and get new hair extensions' after she was allegedly attacked at an Essex property last month. The TV personality, 43, has allegedly travelled abroad for a short break after furiously denying that she called the police on her husband-to-be amid whispers about the identity of the man who was arrested at her home following the assault. A source told The Sun: 'Katie left for Turkey this morning - she needs a few days to clear her head after everything that's been going on' with the paper further reporting on Thursday that the former glamour star is 'visiting her trusted hairdresser Alper Damdelen in Istanbul'. Taking a break: Katie Price has reportedly fled to Turkey with fiance Carl Woods to 'clear her head' after she was allegedly attacked at an Essex property last month (pictured on holiday) The source added that Katie will return to the UK to fulfil her work commitments adding: 'She's going back to where she stayed after the surgery - she needs to relax and enjoy the sun for a few days. 'She'll be back for her make-up classes at the weekend, but needed to get away for a few days.' A day later The Sun added: 'Katie was desperate to get her extensions redone and there's only one man she trusts with her hair.' MailOnline has contacted representatives for Katie for further comment. Hitting back: The TV personality has allegedly travelled abroad for a short break after furiously denying that she called the police on her husband-to-be (pictured in a recent post) Confirmation: Seemingly confirming her location on Thursday, Katie showed off her platter of 'beautiful Turkish food' in a new Instagram clip, telling fans she was tucking into the dishes 'while getting her hair done' Seemingly confirming her location on Thursday, Katie showed off her platter of 'beautiful Turkish food' telling fans she was tucking into the dishes 'while getting her hair done'. On Wednesday Katie insisted she never called the police on her fiance Carl Woods, after she was allegedly attacked last month. On August 23, police officers were called to a property in Essex at approximately 1.30am and a man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of assaulting Katie, theft and coercive and controlling behaviour and released on bail. Amid whispers about who was the perpetrator and Carl's denial, Katie took to Instagram to write: 'FACT, I've ALWAYS said DON'T believe everything you read in the media and what Carl is saying is true. 'FACT I've NEVER called the police on Carl my police investigation I'm currently going through to a incident a few weeks ago is not to do with Carl.' Tough: A source said: 'Katie left for Turkey this morning - she needs a few days to clear her head after everything that's been going on' (pictured following her alleged assault) In her comment under Carl's video, Katie went on: 'This man's mental health is so low and easy to say suicidal. Someone played what they thought was a clever game and involved media with inaccurate information'. Former Love Island contestant Carl had previously posted a statement on Instagram refuting all allegations that he was the perpetrator, and now he has taken to his Instagram Stories to reveal the toll the situation has taken on his mental health. He said: 'I've not been on Instagram for a long, long time. Let me tell you this past month has been one of the roughest of my life.' The reality star went on to reveal how the backlash and accusations were so severe, he was forced to take drastic action and go into hiding. Hitting back: She penned: 'FACT I've NEVER called the police on Carl my police investigation I'm currently going through to a incident a few weeks ago is not to do with Carl' Hitting back: Former Love Island contestant Carl has taken to his Instagram Stories to reveal the toll the situation has taken on his mental health He said: 'I had to go into hiding and shut down. If I wasn't a stronger person in the head it would absolutely have defeated me... 'So everyone who abused me and everyone said vile things about me, just because of what they read in the paper and how the paper decide to make it look like for their own stories' Carl, 32, went on to take a swipe at those who turned his world upside down and promised them that the truth will out eventually. Announcement: Carl released a statement earlier this month He said: 'I'm a good fella. I've always been a good fella and always will be a good fella. Anyone who thinks anything different of me, when you know the truth and I'm allowed to tell the truth, you'll be eating your words. In wrapping the post up, he stressed that he would never do anything to harm his glamour model fiancee. He said: 'I have never and would never, ever do a thing to hurt Katie, never. Never ever, ever, have I felt so low. I've never been involved in this media world before. I've never seen how corrupt [it is].' Hitting back: Carl, 32, went on to take a swipe at those who turned his world upside down and promised them that the truth will out eventually The pair's social media posts come after it was reported an unnamed man who was arrested over the alleged assault of Katie was rebailed on Monday. He was previously bailed until September 20. Essex Police confirmed the date has been extended until later this week as investigators continue to consider the case. A spokesperson said: 'A 32 year-old man arrested following reports of an assault in Little Canfield on 23 August has been rebailed until later this week.' Happy days: The couple are pictured in May shortly after their engagement Before her latest comment, Katie denied breaking off her engagement after being accused of 'flirting with another man' during a 'boozy' appearance at the NTAs. Katie attended the annual ceremony with eldest son Harvey, 19, earlier this month, weeks after sustaining facial injuries during the attack. She has since denied claims that she boasted of being single, broke strict event protocol by repeatedly leaving her seat during ad breaks and 'downed booze' before honing in on a mystery businessman at the late-night after-party. Taking to Instagram, she wrote: 'It's such a shame having such a good night these awful story's [sic] about me coming out infact... Speaking out: Before her latest comment, Katie denied breaking off her engagement after being accused of 'flirting with another man' during a 'boozy' appearance at the NTAs 'I never went out and said I've dumped Carl this is not true I was actually proud to be with my son Harvey I wish people would leave me and Carl alone.' [sic] Katie was in attendance after receiving a nomination in the Authored Documentary category for her show Harvey & Me, when onlookers reportedly overheard her talk about ending her five-month engagement to Woods. A source told The Sun: 'She was knocking back the wine and asking for vodka. She was telling people, ''I'm single, I've dumped him'' and was clearly focused on moving on. They had been constantly rowing, and she said she'd had enough. Attendance: Katie attended the annual ceremony with eldest son Harvey, 19, earlier this month, weeks after sustaining facial injuries during the attack 'She said she was back living at her house in West Sussex even though it wasn't fully done up yet. But she was adamant she wouldn't go back to his place. As far as she's concerned, it's over. 'Katie said she couldn't handle it any more and wanted out.' While guests were asked to remain in their seats between breaks during the live broadcast, onlookers claim Katie repeatedly got to her feet while gesturing towards the stage. Sources claim Katie later 'flirted' with an unnamed businessman at the ensuing after-party, where she remained after Harvey had been driven home. Sharna Burgess has hit back at claims she and her boyfriend Brian Austin Green have an 'unfair advantage' on Dancing With The Stars in the US by being paired together. The Australian professional dancer, 36, said that while everyone is entitled to their opinion, it's simply not true. Fans have claimed the pair get to 'practice all the time' at home ahead of the show and already have 'chemistry' that's needed on the dancefloor. 'Not true': Sharna Burgess has hit back at claims she and her boyfriend Brian Austin Green have an 'unfair advantage' on Dancing With The Stars in the US by being paired together 'There's a lot of people saying we have this unfair advantage as we can just practice all the time and that we already have chemistry going onto the dancefloor,' Sharna said in an Instagram story. The blonde insisted that she and Brian treat DWTS as work and make sure to leave their business in the studio and not take it home with them. She added that while she understands where fans are coming from, she insisted she develops chemistry quite easily with all her partners on Dancing With The Stars. Hitting back: The dancer, 36, spoke out on Instagram after fans claimed the pair get to 'practice all the time' at home ahead of the show and already have 'chemistry' that's needed on the dancefloor 'Two things, Bri and I work really hard to keep the studio and at home separate,' Sharna began. 'It's a big thing to do and we don't want to stress out our relationship and keeping balance is the best way we can do that. And it's a learning curve for me too. 'Bri has three young kids at home - we want to make sure we're present for them at home.' 'Bri and I have amazing chemistry, but I think anyone that's watched the show for as long as I've been on it, I've rarely struggled to build chemistry with my partners,' she added. 'Bri and I have amazing chemistry, but I think anyone that's watched the show for as long as I've been on it, I've rarely struggled to build chemistry with my partners,' she added 'People have assumed I was dating my partners most of the time. So I hear you on the chemistry thing.' Sharna and Brian, 48, made their debut on Dancing With The Stars in the US on Monday. It is the first time a real-life couple have paired up on the show as dance partners. After Monday's episode, Sharna remarked how much she loved dancing with her man on the show. Debut: Sharna and Brian, 48, made their debut on Dancing With The Stars in the US on Monday 'Honestly, dancing with my love, might be the most favourite thing I've ever done,' she said on her Instagram stories. Former Beverly Hills, 90210 star Brian is starring on the show as a contestant, while Sharna has been a professional dancer on the series for several years. The Aussie beauty went Instagram official with Brian in February. His ex-wife Megan Fox, 35, is now dating Machine Gun Kelly, 31. Michael Gandolfini was all smiles while rocking a dapper look as he hit the red carpet at The Many Saints of Newark world premiere. The 22-year-old actor plays the role that put his late father James Gandolfini on the map, Tony Soprano, in the upcoming movie. The actor was also seen posing with co-stars Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Alessandro Nivola and William Ludwig at the premiere, held at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Co-stars: Michael Gandolfini was also seen posing with co-stars Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga at the premiere, held at the Beacon Theatre in New York City Dapper: The 22-year-old actor plays the role that put his late father James Gandolfini on the map, Tony Soprano, in the upcoming movie Gandolfini was wearing a sharp tan suit with a light blue and white striped Gucci dress shirt under his suit coat. The star sported a bit of scruff with a beard, with a gold chain seen dangling from his neck under his slightly-unbuttoned shirt. He completed his look with a pair of tan dress pants and black dress shoes for his red carpet appearance. Michael's look: Gandolfini was wearing a sharp tan suit with a light blue and white striped Gucci dress shirt under his suit coat Michael's look: He completed his look with a pair of tan dress pants and black dress shoes for his red carpet appearance Coming soon: Corey Stoll as Junior Soprano, Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano, Jon Bernthal as Johnny Soprano, Michael Gandolfini as young Tony Soprano, Gabriella Piazza as Joanne Moltisanti and Alessandro Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti are shown in a still from The Many Saints Of Newark due out on October 1 Gandolfini was also spotted posing on the red carpet with his girlfriend, Ally Gorder, during the star-studded event. Gorder was wearing a navy blue dress that fell to her calves with a slit up her leg, plus gold hoop earrings and a bracelet on her left wrist. She completed her look with a pair of black pumps as she hit the red carpet with Gandolfini, who she's been dating since November 2019. Michael and Ally: Gandolfini was also spotted posing on the red carpet with his girlfriend, Ally Gorder, during the star-studded event Ally's look: Gorder was wearing a navy blue dress that fell to her calves with a slit up her leg, plus gold hoop earrings and a bracelet on her left wrist Dating: She completed her look with a pair of black pumps as she hit the red carpet with Gandolfini, who she's been dating since November 2019 Gandolfini portrays the younger version of Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark, showing how this iconic character grew up to become a mafia leader. The movie is set several years before his father James Gandolfini's HBO series The Sopranos, which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007. The elder Gandolfini won three Emmys for playing Tony Soprano throughout the show's run, with the actor tragically passing away at 51 years of age of a heart attack, while vacationing in Rome with his family in June 2013. Younger Tony: Gandolfini portrays the younger version of Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark, showing how this iconic character grew up to become a mafia leader Years before: The movie is set several years before his father James Gandolfini's HBO series The Sopranos, which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007 Gandolfini: The elder Gandolfini won three Emmys for playing Tony Soprano throughout the show's run, with the actor tragically passing away at 51 years of age of a heart attack, while vacationing in Rome with his family in June 2013 The younger Gandolfini had previously had smaller roles in Ocean's Eight, The Deuce and Yougnest. He most recently had a role in Apple TV Plus' Cherry, starring alongside Tom Holland, which debuted this spring. Michael is currently filming Disappointment Blvd. for Midsommar director Ari Aster, starring alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey and Nathan Lane. Smaller roles: The younger Gandolfini had previously had smaller roles in Ocean's Eight, The Deuce and Yougnest Filming: Michael is currently filming Disappointment Blvd. for Midsommar director Ari Aster, starring alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey and Nathan Lane South Sudanese-Australian supermodel Adut Akech ruled the runway during Milan Fashion Week on Wednesday. The 21-year-old looked stunning in a sheer bra, satin mini skirt and a fur trimmed bomber jacket by Fendi. She also flaunted her slim pins in a pair of sheer stockings emblazoned by the brand's logo and carried a chic mini bag. Queen of the catwalk! Australian supermodel Adut Akech stunned in a sheer bra and satin mini skirt as she ruled the runway at Milan Fashion Week on Wednesday Elsewhere, the statuesque beauty modelled a bikini and a resort-style crochet maxi skirt by Alberta Ferretti. She also strutted down the catwalk in a breathtaking green and turquoise blue peacock-inspired embellished mini dress by the Italian designer. Adut recently splashed out $3.7million (US$2.8million) on a sprawling four-bedroom property in Los Angeles. Gorgeous: The supermodel, 21, looked stunning in the bra, satin mini skirt and a fur trimmed jacket by Fendi The model who grew up in a refugee camp in Kenya before moving to Adelaide with her family, unveiled her new home in a video shared to Instagram. Adut said she was 'so bloody proud' of herself to own the mansion in LA's Studio City neighbourhood, in what is now her fifth property. The 3,000-square-foot home boasts five bathrooms, an open-plan living area and an outdoor space with an infinity pool and spa Resort: Elsewhere, the statuesque beauty modelled a bikini and a resort-style crochet maxi skirt by Alberta Ferretti Pretty: She also strutted down the catwalk in a breathtaking green and turquoise blue peacock-inspired embellished mini dress by the Italian designer Home sweet home! Adut recently splashed out $3.7million (US$2.8million) on a sprawling four-bedroom property in Los Angeles The house is decorated in shades of brown and cream, with a large marble island as the centre-piece in the kitchen. The property also has floor-to-ceiling windows, a rooftop entertaining area and a walk-in wardrobe in the en-suite master bedroom. 'I did it. I bought my first house in America!' Adut excitedly wrote in the caption, before showing fans around in an MTV Cribs-style video. How delightful! Adut said she was 'so bloody proud' of herself to own the mansion in LA 's Studio City neighbourhood, in what is now her fifth property Elegant: The house is decorated in shades of brown and cream, with a large marble kitchen island as a centre-piece, which Adut proudly posed on as she showed fans around her new pad Lovely: The 3,000-square-foot mansion boasts five bathrooms, an open-plan living area and an outdoor space with an infinity pool and spa Proud: Adut was beyond excited to show off the incredible property on Instagram, posing in every room as she gave fans an MTV Cribs-inspired tour 'Im usually quiet about personal things like this, I just be moving in silence but this one is too big of an achievement and proud moment for me to not share with the world,' she added. 'I cannot believe that at 21 years old Im a proud owner of five houses! 'I sit back reflect on my life and the things I have achieved within my career and personal life.... and damn Im so bloody proud of myself for staying focused and working my a** off to get here.' She said she was 'beyond grateful to God, my family and the people in my life that encourage me to keep pushing'. Stunning: The bedroom features a rooftop balcony just steps away from the bed Necessary! The fashion icon showed off her walk-in wardrobe next to the master bedroom Happy: 'I did it. I bought my first house in America!' she wrote alongside the short video Pride: 'Im usually quiet about personal things like this, I just be moving in silence but this one is too big of an achievement and proud moment for me to not share with the world,' she added Perfect for guests! Adut showed off her private rooftop area - ideal for entertaining friends 'To the people who have given me the opportunities that have led to moments like this. Im grateful to my supporters who motivate me everyday. Thank you! Cheers to new beginnings!' she said. Adut was born in South Sudan and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, and arrived in Adelaide with her family when she was seven years old. She caught a taste for modelling when she was 16, and was later snapped up by Chadwick Models on a chance trip to Melbourne in 2016. Since then Adut has soared to international fame, walking the runway for the likes of Alexander McQueen, Prada, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein and Versace. She has also featured on the cover of Vogue. The new season of Love Island Australia has been thrown into chaos after a crew member tested positive to coronavirus. The Nine dating show was scheduled to begin filming next Monday, but a last-minute disruption is threatening to derail production in the Byron Bay region. A makeup artist working a job for I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! nearby - which is made by the same production company - was diagnosed with Covid-19, plunging Byron Bay, the Tweed Shire and Kempsey into a snap seven-day lockdown. While this isn't a huge problem for 10's I'm a Celebrity since it has already wrapped, it could spell disaster for Love Island - which hasn't started filming yet - because the same crew is supposed to work across both shows. Pandemic problems: The new season of Love Island Australia has been thrown into chaos after a crew member tested positive to coronavirus While it's not known if any additional cases have been detected, Daily Mail Australia understands several ITV Studios crew members and I'm a Celebrity contestants have been instructed to isolate, regardless of their result. Love Island was slated to begin production on Monday ahead of its October 4 premiere date, but the new development has raised concerns that Nine may be forced to delay filming and/or find an alternate location. 'We are working with production and authorities as we find a way to deliver the show for our audience,' a Nine spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday. Up in the air: The Nine dating show was scheduled to begin filming next Monday, but a last-minute disruption is threatening to derail production Setback: A makeup artist working on the near the set I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! - which is made by the same production company - was diagnosed with Covid-19, plunging the Byron Bay area into lockdown. While this isn't a problem for I'm a Celebrity since it has already wrapped, it could spell disaster for Love Island - which hasn't started filming yet - because the same crew is supposed to work across both shows. Pictured: Love Island host Sophie Monk It comes after the Mayor of Byron Shire demanded to halt production on Love Island after the entire region was forced into a seven-day lockdown. Michael Lyon accused ITV Studios - which produces both Love Island and I'm a Celebrity for different networks - of bringing 'Covid to the region' in a searing Facebook post on Wednesday, and said he was trying to 'rescind council approval'. Lyon's statement began: 'I am looking into our options this morning to rescind council approval for the Love Island production, from the same studios that brought I'm a Celebrity - and Covid - to the region.' Not happy: The Mayor of Byron Shire, Michael Lyon (pictured), has demanded ITV halt production after a crew member on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! tested positive to Covid-19, sending the entire region into a snap seven-day lockdown 'As part of that approval issued recently, which allows them to film for longer than 30 days in Federal, I insisted on a 14-day isolation period whereby any cast or crew coming from an area with cases would not come into contact with people from our region,' he continued. 'It is clear that this is not possible to implement given what has happened in the last few days. Council approval was only one part of the process, it hasn't yet had Ministerial approval so I'd say it is unlikely to proceed. 'It is so devastating to be in lockdown again and it is clear the "honour" system relied on by the State Government is deeply flawed. It is worth noting that people coming here for work don't actually have to show a negative COVID test; this was thankfully part of the filming protocol that allowed this early detection. Perhaps our calls for a tightening of restrictions will now finally be heeded.' Blistering statement: Mr Lyon accused production company ITV Studios - which produces both Love Island and I'm a Celebrity - of bringing 'Covid to the region' in a searing Facebook post (pictured) on Wednesday, and said he was trying to 'rescind council approval' The mayor's statement comes after a Liberal MP called for Health Minister Brad Hazzard to resign after allowing I'm a Celebrity to film in Byron Bay where a crew member later tested positive to Covid. The Byron and Tweed shires were thrown into a snap lockdown on Tuesday afternoon after a case was recorded in the area. The person was later identified as a fully-vaccinated female crew member working an external shoot for Channel 10's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Daily Mail Australia understands that all crew members that were deemed close contacts have since tested negative. They will continue to remain in isolation for the mandatory 14 days, and will be retested on day 12. The crew member is now facing criminal charges for breaching conditions of her work permit and for failing to check into venues using QR codes. The 31-year-old had a permit to travel to the area for work-related purposes only. But police say she breached the conditions of her permit when she went to pubs and shops in Byron Bay and Kingscliff over the weekend. Liberal MP Catherine Cusack said she was 'devastated' by the news the worker was allowed to fly in from Sydney and called for the resignation of Mr Hazzard, her colleague, for granting the exemption. 'I am calling on Brad Hazzard to resign because he has ignored the regions and I hold him personally accountable for the new lockdown and destruction of the progress we have made on the Queensland border arrangement,' Ms Cusack said on Tuesday. 'Sydney coming out of lockdown is going to be a disaster for the regions unless Sydney is prevented from travelling out of the city.' Offence: The 31-year-old I'm a Celebrity crew member had a permit to travel to the area for work-related purposes only, but police say she breached the conditions of her permit Fury: Liberal MP Catherine Cusack (right, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian) called for the resignation of Brad Hazzard after the case was infectious in Byron and Tweed Step down: 'I am calling on Brad Hazzard to resign because he has ignored the regions and I hold him personally accountable for the new lockdown,' Ms Cusack said Byron Shire, Kempsey and Tweed Shire areas all went into a snap seven-day lockdown from 5pm on Tuesday. The woman, who is fully-vaccinated, arrived on the Virgin Flight VA 1141 from Sydney to Ballina on Saturday morning and was infectious for two days while working in Byron, Ballina and Tweed. Mr Hazzard said the lockdown would initially be for seven days, subject to a further review. Ms Cusack slammed the NSW government and the health minister for putting the regions at risk. 'The regions are not ready because we have not had vaccine access. We haven't had the same rules to fast-track vaccination, and we are sitting ducks,' she said. 'Our health system is not going to cope and our Indigenous communities are at massive risk.' In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, an ITV Studios Australia spokesperson confirmed an I'm a Celebrity crew member had tested positive for Covid-19. 'ITV Studios Australia has been filming I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! in Northern NSW in accordance with Public Health Orders and restrictions, as well as its own comprehensive CovidSAFE plan, which is consistent with Screen NSW's guidelines for film and television production,' the spokesperson said. 'We take our CovidSAFE plan extremely seriously. The health, safety and welfare of the community, as well as our cast and crew, is our number one priority. Crew: In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, an ITV Studios Australia spokesperson confirmed an I'm a Celebrity crew member had tested positive for Covid-19. Pictured: last year's cast 'We can confirm that one of our crew members has tested positive to COVID-19. This discovery was made through the rigorous testing regime implemented by our CovidSAFE plan. The crew member is fully vaccinated and was wearing PPE while at work.' 'The crew member is fully vaccinated and was wearing PPE while at work. All close contacts of the crew member from within the ITV production have been identified. 'They are being tested and will isolate in accordance with NSW Health's requirements. ITV is providing crew members with all the support and assistance possible. 'We are working with NSW Health to ensure all necessary steps are taken in relation to contact tracing, testing and further communication to anyone that needs to isolate.' The crew member was PCR tested and returned a negative result prior to their departure from Sydney for northern NSW, and took a second test on the day of arrival, as is required, and that test was positive. They have since returned to Sydney and entered isolation after their positive test. The crew member was not on set or in studio, and the production of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! was not affected by the positive test. The highly-anticipated film The Many Saints Of Newark, the prequel to the hit HBO series The Sopranos, premiered at the Beacon Theater in New York City on Wednesday, as part of The Tribeca Film Festival. Vera Farmiga, who plays Tony's mother, Livia Soprano, joined many of her castmates on the red carpet, which included Michael Gandolfini, who portrays a young Anthony 'Tony' Soprano that was made famous by his late father James Gandolfini. With a mix of elegance and sex appeal, the actress showed off her incredible figure wearing a plunging red dress and carried a matching purse clutch. Stunner: Vera Farmiga, 48, stunned in a plunging red dress at the highly-anticipated premiere of The Many Saints of Newark at the Beacon Theater in New York City on Wednesday The longtime leading lady accessorized with a pearl necklace and a couple of rings, and had her dark brown tresses styled just shy of shoulder length, with a part slightly to the left. After striking a number of poses solo, Farmiga's husband, Renn Hawke, joined her on the red carpet, where they proceeded to pack on the PDA. The couple, who has been married for 13 years, put on an amorous display as they kissed in front of the cameras Hawkey, a musician, looked handsome in an all-black ensemble consisting of fitted pants, dress shirt, tie, blazer and boots. Pack the PDA: Farmiga also shared the red carpet spotlight with husband Renn Hawkey Pivotal role: The actress plays Tony Soprano's mother Livia Soprano in the prequel to the hit HBO series The Sopranos, which ended its six-season run in 2007 Farmiga also chatted it up with with Gandolfini, who wore a beige suit, and Jon Bernthal (Giovanni 'Johnny Boy' Soprano, Tony's father), who looked dapper in dark blue suit and a white dress shirt combo. Chase co-wrote The Many Saints Of Newark with Lawrence Konner, and it was directed by Alan Taylor, who worked behind the camera on the television show for nine episodes. Set in the 1960s, the film focuses on the Newark Riots of 1967, all while examining the young Tony Soprano and his rise to power. Man in black: Hawkey, a musician, looked handsome in an all-black ensemble consisting of fitted pants, dress shirt, tie, blazer, and boots Coming soon: Corey Stoll as Junior Soprano, Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano, Jon Bernthal as Johnny Soprano, Michael Gandolfini as young Tony Soprano, Gabriella Piazza as Joanne Moltisanti and Alessandro Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti are shown in a still from The Many Saints Of Newark due out on October 1 The original: Aida Turturro as Janice Soprano and Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano are shown in a 2000 still from The Sopranos 'I was against [the movie] for a long time and I'm still very worried about it, but I became interested in Newark, where my parents came from, and where the riots took place,' Chase explained, as reported by Deadline. 'The movie will deal with the tensions between the Blacks and Whites at the time, and Tony Soprano will be part of this, but as a kid.' Chase considered making a follow-up film to the hugely popular series for years following its startling cut-to-black 2007 finale, but James Gandolfini's death in 2013 ended that possibility. As a result, the idea for the prequel began taking shape. Hamming it up: Farmiga was joined on the red carpet at the Beacon Theater by many of her castmates, including Jon Bernthal (Giovanni 'Johnny Boy' Soprano, Tony's father) and Michael Gandolfini (Anthony 'Tony' Soprano), who's the son of James Gandolfini, the actor who originally played Tony on the HBO series The Sopranos from 1999 through 2007 Coming: The Many Saints Of Newark will be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max for 31 days on October 1; Farmiga is seen talking with co-stars Bernthal and Gandolfini The film also stars Alessandro Nivola (Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher Moltisanti's father), Corey Stoll (Corrado 'Junior' Soprano Jr.), Ray Liotta (Aldo 'Hollywood Dick' Moltisanti), Billy Magnussen (Paulie 'Walnuts' Gualtieri), John Magaro (Silvio Dante), Samson Moeakiola (Salvatore 'Big Pussy' Bonpensiero), Alexandra Intrator (Janice Soprano), Chase Vacnin (Jackie Aprile), Robert Vincent Montano (Artie Bucco), Michela De Rossi (Giuseppina Bruno), Gabriella Piazza (Joanne Moltisanti), Leslie Odom Jr. (Harold McBrayer), Joey Diaz and Nick Vallelonga. The Many Saints of Newark was initially scheduled to be released on September 25, 2020, but due to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on theaters and the film industry as a whole, it was pushed back to March 12, 2021. It would be delayed two more times to be able to debut during the film festival circuit, and is now set to drop simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max for 31 days on October 1. Hit show: Michael Imperioli and James Gandolfini are shown in The Sopranos in a 2005 episode Younger Tony: Michael Gandolfini portrays the younger version of Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark, showing how this iconic character grew up to become a mafia leader Years before: The movie featuring Michael Gandolfini is set several years before his father James Gandolfini's HBO series The Sopranos, which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007 Original Bachelor couple Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards are proud parents to 11-month-old daughter Elle. And while their little girl has inherited her parents' looks, she does differ from both her mother and father in one important way. Fans noticed on Wednesday that Elle has different coloured eyes to her parents. Fancy that! Fans spotted an odd detail in Bachelor couple Tim and Anna Robards' family photo. They noticed daughter Elle, 11 months, has different coloured eyes to both her parents They clocked the eye-colour discrepancy after lawyer Anna, 35, shared a photo of herself, Tim and Elle to Instagram, and captioned it: 'Love my little family.' Fans said it was extraordinary that all three had different coloured eyes - with Elle's bright blue eyes standing out in particular. 'Aren't Elle's eyes amazing given the colour of yours and Tim's... so beautiful, ' one commented below the snap. Genetic lottery: Fans said it was extraordinary that all three had different coloured eyes - with Elle's bright blue eyes standing out in particular Auntie agrees! It wasn't just fans who were intrigued, with Anna's younger sister Charlotte noting how unusual it was What determines eye colour? Scientists used to think eye colour was determined by two eye colour genes, one from each parent. Since brown is dominant over blue, a blue-eyed person would have two blue-eye genes, and two blue-eyed parents couldn't have a brown-eyed child. We now know that it's much more complicated than that. Eye colour is determined by several genes that control melanin production in your iris. Darker eyes have a lot of melanin, while light eyes have only a little. Because you inherit genes from your parents, it's likely that your eyes will be similar in color to one or both of your parents. But it's also possible for you to have brown eyes, even if both of your parents have blue eyes, and vice versa. Source: Healthline.com Advertisement Another added: 'Who's eyes did your little gorgeous girl get?' It wasn't just fans who were intrigued, with Anna's younger sister Charlotte noting how unusual it was. The Robards, who got married in Italy three years ago, regularly share candid family photos on Instagram. Follow their journey: The Robards, who got married in Italy three years ago, regularly share candid family photos on Instagram In June, Anna proved her little girl was just as excited to get moving as her fitness-loving parents. She posted a video to Instagram of her toddler energetically bouncing in a baby chair. The Trial by Kyle star joked in the caption: 'Doing daddy's 12-minute ab challenge.' Sarah Silverman looked to be in a great mood on Wednesday as she and her beau Rory Albanese were seen walking their dog Mary in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. The 50-year-old comic wore a white top with black trim that read, 'Love your mother' with black shorts and white sneakers with green laces. The New Hampshire-born entertainer wore sunglasses and a pink cap that read Beer Nuts with her hair in a ponytail on the daytime outing in Los Angeles. Out and about: Sarah Silverman, 50, looked to be in a great mood on Wednesday as she and her beau Rory Albanese, 44, were seen walking their dog Mary in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles Albanese, 44, paid homage to the sitcom Three's Company with a navy blue top touting the Regal Beagle, the fictional bar on the show, with light grey shorts and navy blue sneakers. Albanese, who has past written for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, wore a grey cap with sunglasses and sported a beard on the outing on the sweltering autumn day. The couple, who were introduced by friends, have been linked since March of 2020. Speaking with The Howard Stern Show last November, Silverman said she and Albanese 'like to just be together all the time forever.' The 50-year-old comic wore a white top with black trim that read, 'Love your mother' with black shorts and white sneakers with green laces The New Hampshire-born entertainer wore sunglasses and pink cap that read Beer Nuts with her hair in a ponytail on the daytime outing in Los Angeles The Please Understand Me star said they bonded in the early days of the pandemic over playing video games. 'I started playing Call of Duty: World War II, which is great because you get to kill Nazis and stuff,' she said. 'I posted about it and he direct messaged me and every night, after seven oclock, we would play.' She added: 'Ive really been trying to correct patterns of just hooking up with a guy and doing two-and-a-half years with him. I just fall in so easily.' When Stern broached the topic of marriage to her, Silverman replied, 'If Rory was someone who was like, "I need to be married," then yeah, Id think about it I guess.' The couple of more than 18 months was also seen heading out for a snack The Please Understand Me star and the comic-writer bonded in the early days of the pandemic over playing video games The School of Rock actress was previously in romances with fellow comics Dave Attell and Jimmy Kimmel, and actor Michael Sheen. Silverman last week took to social media with a touching tribute to her late comedic colleague Norm Macdonald following his death at 61 after a nine-year battle with cancer he had kept under wraps. 'There is and was not ever a single comedian like Norm,' she wrote. 'He was derivative of no one. Norm was as wide-eyed as he was cynical. He believed in God which always struck me. But now I know he is with the angels. Norm- ask them why its always harps. Why never the djembe?' The School of Rock actress was previously in romances with fellow comics Dave Attell and Jimmy Kimmel, and actor Michael Sheen. Albanese paid homage to the sitcom Three's Company with a navy blue top touting the Regal Beagle, the fictional bar on the show, with light grey shorts and navy blue sneakers. Silverman last week took to social media with a touching tribute to her late comedic colleague Norm Macdonald following his death at 61 after a nine-year battle with cancer he had kept under wraps Billie Lourd was overcome with joy on Wednesday as she celebrated her son Kingston's first birthday. The 29-year-old American Horror Story actress shared a bevy of sweet photos to Instagram featuring her young son and her partner Austen Rydell, whom she also paid tribute to. Billie even joked that there should be a special anniversary holiday for parents to celebrate on their child's birthday. Birthday boy: Billie Lourd, 29, shared a bevy of sweet photos on Wednesday celebrating her son Kingston's first birthday and paying tribute to her partner Austen Rydell 'HAPPY #parentalanniversary TO THIS D (#damn) A (#angelic) D (#dude) @avstenrydell !!!' she gushed in her caption, adding the hashtag, '#petitiontomakeparentalanniversaryathing.' Billie shared a lovely black-and-white of the family of three, with Austen towering over her and little Kingston sitting on his shoulders with a heart to obscure his face. The Last Jedi actress wore a white patterned off-the-shoulder sundress, while her partner rocked a Hawaiian-style floral shirt. Kingston got plenty of loving from his parents in the photos, including one in which he snoozed against his mother's chest while sitting on a leopard-print sling. Billie rested her chin on his forehead delicately and beamed down at him. Cute: Kingston got plenty of loving from his parents in the photos, including one in which he snoozed against his mother's chest while sitting on a leopard-print sling New holiday? 'HAPPY #parentalanniversary TO THIS D (#damn) A (#angelic) D (#dude) @avstenrydell !!!' she gushed in her caption, adding the hashtag, '#petitiontomakeparentalanniversaryathing' She looked angelic in another photo dating to before Kingston was even born. The daughter of Carrie Fisher showed off her baby bump in a black dotted dress while snuggling up against Austen and wearing a lovely crown of roses. She and her Austin have been together since 2017, and they took the next step and got engaged in June 2020. They welcomed Kingston just two three months later, in September of 2020. Billie glowed in a golden floral print dress as she and her love posed next to a stroller ahead of an outing. The two embraced in another romantic snap, with the actress wearing a cloth crown on her head reading 'King' and leaning back for a kiss. On the go: Billie glowed in a golden floral print dress as she and her love posed next to a stroller ahead of an outing Lovebirds: The two embraced in another romantic snap, with the actress wearing a cloth crown on her head reading 'King' and leaning back for a kiss Affectionate: She leaned in to kiss him on the side of the head after they'd already chowed down on a cake She leaned in to kiss him on the side of the head after they'd already chowed down on a cake. Another post featured a playful snap of Kingston digging into the cake with his hands as his mother was overcome with laughter. The Booksmart actress showed off a soft smile and squeeze her eyes shut as her baby slept on her in another throw-back photo. Another old snap showed his tiny hand squeezing her finger. Sweet tooth: Another post featured a playful snap of Kingston digging into the cake with his hands as his mother was overcome with laughter Peaceful: The Booksmart actress showed off a soft smile and squeeze her eyes shut as her baby slept on her in another throw-back photo Mother and child: Another old snap showed his tiny hand squeezing her finger Closeup: Another closeup focused on Kingston's tiny fingers and adorably pudgy arm Another closeup focused on Kingston's tiny fingers and adorably pudgy arm. Billie gave a solid thumbs up to the camera while grinning in an old photo of Kingston nursing. She rounded out the posts with a funny photo of her opening her mouth wide while her son caressed her face. The parade of photos didn't end, as Billie posted more to her Insta Storie. Winning: Billie gave a solid thumbs up to the camera while grinning in an old photo of Kingston nursing Exploring: She rounded out the posts with a funny photo of her opening her mouth wide while her son caressed her face Almost there: In a year-old photo, she sat in a hospital bed waiting to give birth while wearing a mask Playtime: Billie also shared a recent photo of Kingston in a jersey with his birthday on it as he played with his toys In a year-old photo, she sat in a hospital bed waiting to give birth while wearing a mask. She wrote: '1 year ago today eating some sub par Italian ice waiting for the [king] to arrive!!!' Billie also shared a recent photo of Kingston in a jersey with his birthday on it as he played with his toys. Sarah Jessica Parker is 'not ready' to speak on her late Sex And The City costar Willie Garson's sudden passing at the age of just 57. The 56-year-old actress made the comment under an Instagram tribute by their castmate Chris Noth, which included a snapshot of her and Garson filming the first Sex And The City film in 2007. 'Thank you dearest Chris. I'm not ready yet. Xxx,' penned Parker, who is also mourning the very recent loss of her longtime business partner George D. Malkemus lll. Grieving: Sarah Jessica Parker is 'not ready' to speak on her late Sex And The City costar Willie Garson's sudden passing at the age of just 57; Parker and Garson pictured in 2008 Willie's death was confirmed on Tuesday by his 20-year-old son Nathen, while TMZ reported that the actor was battling cancer prior to his untimely death. Garson famously played the role of Stanford 'Stanny' Blatch, who was the male BFF to Sarah's Carrie Bradshaw on the series that spanned from 1998 to 2004. He starred in 27 of the show's 98 episodes. He also appeared in the first Sex And The City feature film in 2008, as well as its sequel, titled Sex And The City 2, in 2010. Just two months prior to his death, Willie was spotted filming a scene with Sarah on the set of the forthcoming SATC reboot, titled And Just Like That..., in New York City. Not ready: The 56-year-old actress made the comment under an Instagram tribute by their castmate Chris Noth, which included a snapshot of her and Garson filming the first Sex And The City film in 2007 (pictured) The reboot, which is expected to premiere on HBO Max later this year, is supposed to catch fans up on the lives of the series' characters and how they've evolved since the events of Sex And The City 2. On July 24, Willie and Sarah were also joined on set by costar Mario Cantone, who plays event planner Anthony Marentino in the beloved HBO series and subsequent revival. During the shoot, Garson could be seen placing a kiss on Parker's face as they performed their lines out front of the Lyceum Theater. He was last photographed filming for the reboot on August 3. RIP: Willie's death was confirmed on Tuesday by his 20-year-old son Nathen, while TMZ reported that the actor was battling cancer prior to his untimely death Iconic role: Garson famously played the role of Stanford 'Stanny' Blatch, who was the male BFF to Sarah's Carrie Bradshaw on the series that spanned from 1998 to 2004. He starred in 27 of the show's 98 episodes; Willie and Sarah pictured in 1998 Speaking to Us Weekly in June, Willie expressed his excitement over figuratively and literally 'stepping into the shoes [of Stanford Blatch] again' after so many years. 'It was great. I was just telling my friends that I probably was wearing about $200,000 worth of clothing yesterday,' speaking of his first day on set. 'And it was right away. It's like, "Oh, this is us, here we are."' Since the news of his passing broke, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, and former SATC player Kim Cattrall have issued social media statements in honor of Garson, many of which included their favorite snapshots of and with the late star. Cynthia called Willie 'a source of light,' while Cattrall deemed his death 'a terribly sad loss to the SATC family.' Back at it: Just two months prior to his death, Willie was spotted filming a scene with Sarah on the set of the forthcoming SATC reboot, titled And Just Like That..., in New York City; Sarah and Willie pictured with Mario Cantone (left) on July 24 Sweet: During the shoot, Garson could be seen placing a kiss on Parker's face as they performed their lines out front of the Lyceum Theater; pictured July 24 Davis remarked on Garson's devotion to fatherhood after having adopted his now 20-year-old son Nathen in 2009, writing: 'I really want to pay tribute to his fearless commitment to single fatherhood. 'We spoke about being single parents through adoption often. And nothing gave him more joy and pride than his son Nathen.' Sarah was the only one out of the show's four ladies who had yet to comment publicly, leaving many fans worried about the actress and how she was coping with the loss of yet another dear friend. Just last Thursday, Parker learned that her SJP shoe line co-founder George D. Malkemus lll had died at the age of 65 after a battle with cancer. Tributes: Since the news of his passing broke, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon (pictured with Garson in 2003), and former SATC player Kim Cattrall have issued social media statements in honor of Garson, many of which included their favorite snapshots of and with the late star Loss: Cynthia called Willie 'a source of light,' while Cattrall (pictured with Willie) deemed his death 'a terribly sad loss to the SATC family.' Devoted dad: Davis remarked on Garson's devotion to fatherhood after having adopted his now 20-year-old son Nathen in 2009, writing: 'I really want to pay tribute to his fearless commitment to single fatherhood Giving herself time to process, the actress/designer published a post in honor of her longtime friend, noting that she could not 'summon the words for a fitting tribute' and that he 'deserves prose I don't yet have.' She continued: 'I have to gather my thoughts. Today I can only say I'm utterly heartbroken. RIP dearest partner, elegant gentleman George. 'Til we meet again, I will spend the rest of my days asking "what would GM3 do?" I'm going to miss you so "F'in" much. Forever,' concluded the star. Sarah famously co-founded her seven-year-old accessories brand SJP Collection with the former CEO of Manolo Blahnik, who's survived by his husband Tony Yurgaitis. Just hours after mourning the passing of her friend Willie Garson, actress Hilarie Burton made a solemn promise to her family, to help publish his memoir. The 39-year-old actress published her own non-fiction book, The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm, in May 2020. Burton took to Instagram on Wednesday to swear to Garson's family that she will help publish his book, while also revealing the tattoo she got in his honor. Promise: Just hours after mourning the passing of her friend Willie Garson, actress Hilarie Burton made a solemn promise to her family, to help publish his memoir Authors: The 39-year-old actress published her own non-fiction book, The Rural Diaries: Love, Livestock, and Big Life Lessons Down on Mischief Farm, in May 2020 Tattoo: Burton took to Instagram on Wednesday to swear to Garson's family that she will help publish his book, while also revealing the tattoo she got in his honor The One Tree Hill actress explained that she saw him in late 2019, when she was, 'in the final edit of my book.' She added that Garson, 'came to play on a movie I was producingelevating the material, always. We talked a lot about memoir, this weird industry, our families.' 'Hed been toying with an idea for a book. An accounting of his career as a character actor. As someone who benefited from hours of Willies stories over countless dinners, I loved this idea,' Burton added. Book: The One Tree Hill actress explained that she saw him in late 2019, when she was, 'in the final edit of my book' 'So he did it. He wrote the book. And recently he asked if Id help his family get it published for his son Nathen,' she continued. Burton described the book as, 'a love letter to our industry, to storytelling and to the hundreds of people he worked with and made better over the decades.' 'To Willies family, especially @nathen_garson, on my honor I will see it through. You have been so generous in sharing him with the rest of us. Love you,' she concluded. Published: 'So he did it. He wrote the book. And recently he asked if Id help his family get it published for his son Nathen,' she continued She added that ever since Garson's passing, her phone has been 'blowing up' because people know how Garson was a, 'pivotal player' in her life. 'So I will not be able to fully articulate my feelings here. Im gonna need some time. @jeffreydeanmorgan and I are devastated,' she added. Burton described Garson as a, 'romantic friend' who was 'deeply thoughtful' and 'Intentional with his effort and attention and devotion.' Devastated: 'So I will not be able to fully articulate my feelings here. Im gonna need some time. @jeffreydeanmorgan and I are devastated,' she added She also shared a photo of the wedding present Garson sent to her when she married Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a first edition copy of Grapes of Wrath. She also included a photo of part of the note that he included, where he said it was 'somewhat harder to gift people I care about so much,' adding that that first edition, first printings of that book go for $15,000, joking, 'I mean, I like you, but calm down.' 'He would pay you the biggest compliment in the world. Tell you that you were the smartest or prettiest or most talented or that your book/show/recipe/charity, etc mattered and was valuable. And right as youd blush, hed temper it with alright, calm down! And then laughter. Hed stop you before you could rebuff the compliment,' she said. Calm down. I can hear him saying it,' she added. She also included a photo of her at Hudson Valley Tattoo in Wappingers Falls, New York, where she got a tattoo on her arm that read 'Calm down' in his honor. 'Before I went to see him, I needed him to know how I felt. And @hudsonvalleytattoo was so kind and understanding and got me in the night before my flight. I wanted Willie to know that I was carrying that calm down with me forever,' she said. Present: She also shared a photo of the wedding present Garson sent to her when she married Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a first edition copy of Grapes of Wrath Calm down: She also included a photo of part of the note that he included, where he said it was 'somewhat harder to gift people I care about so much,' adding that that first edition, first printings of that book go for $15,000, joking, 'I mean, I like you, but calm down' Advertisement Broadway fans will soon get a chance to check out the filmed adaptation of the hit show Dear Evan Hansen following its premiere Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Leading the red carpet arrivals were two of the films stars, Amy Adams and Julianne Moore, both of whom showed off elegant ensembles. Amy, 47, looked effortlessly elegant in a black off-the-shoulder dress, while Julianne, 60, looked vivacious in a sparkling beaded dress. Leading ladies: Amy Adams, 47, and Julianne Moore, 60, led the stars at the premiere of Dear Evan Hansen on Wednesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Amy wore an elegant black dress while Julianne sparkled in a mesh ensemble Amy's dress featured textured vertical stripes and a line of thick buttons running all the way down to the ground. The off-the-shoulder look emphasized the Arrival star's toned arms, while the floor-length dress completely covered up her footwear. She kept her accessories to a minimum, foregoing any kind of handbag and wearing several minimalist silver bracelets on one arms. The flame-haired beauty had her hair styled in delicate waves and swept over one shoulder to reveal her diamond earrings. Buttoned up: Amy's dress featured textured vertical stripes and a line of thick buttons running all the way down to the ground Fit figure: The off-the-shoulder look emphasized the Arrival star's toned arms, while the floor-length dress completely covered up her footwear Simple: She kept her accessories to a minimum, foregoing any kind of handbag and wearing several minimalist silver bracelets on one arms Striking: The flame-haired beauty had her hair styled in delicate waves and swept over one shoulder to reveal her diamond earrings Julianne covered up her trim figure up in a modest translucent gray dress with an eye-catching mesh design. The dress was covered in tiny black beads, creating a honeycomb pattern with beige patches of mesh webbing. The long-sleeve look featured a high collar and a skirt that reached to the floor. The Magnolia star added some sparkle to her look with multiple thick rings on her fingers, and she wore her red tresses swept back behind one ear and cascading down her chest. Gorgeous: Julianne covered up her trim figure up in a modest translucent gray dress with an eye-catching mesh design. The dress was covered in tiny black beads, creating a honeycomb pattern with beige patches of mesh webbing Covered up: The long-sleeve look featured a high collar and a skirt that reached to the floor. The Magnolia star added some sparkle to her look with multiple thick rings on her fingers, and she wore her red tresses swept back behind one ear and cascading down her chest Both veteran actresses play major supporting roles in Dear Evan Hansen as mothers deeply entwined in the life of the title character. Evan Hansen (played by Ben Platt, who originated the role on Broadway) is a high school student who deals with crippling social anxiety and writes himself letters to help himself get over it. But when a letter to himself addressing his infatuation with his classmate Zoe (Kaitlin Dever) is discovered by her furious brother Connor (Colton Ryan), Evan finds himself drawn into a tangle web of miscommunications. After Connor takes his own life, Evan's letter is found with him, leading Connor's mother (Amy Adams) to assume they were friends. The eponymous character gives into the mistaken connection in hopes of getting closer to Zoe, but the escalating lies threaten to come crashing down on him. Consequences: Ben Platt (R) plays the title character, who gets caught in a lie after another student kills himself that spirals out of control The lead: Platt looked dapper at the premiere in a black blazer with a watch fob, as well as a tie-free white shirt Stylish: He covered up with a cream-colored sweater vest and matching loose-fitting trousers with white loafers Lovebirds: The stage and screen star was accompanied by his boyfriend Noah Galvin, who filled the role of Evan Hansen on Broadway after Platt departed. Galvin looks chic in high-waisted black pants with wide pinstripes and a matching shirt that was left unbuttoned to show off a black tank top Platt looked dapper at the premiere in a black blazer with a watch fob, as well as a tie-free white shirt. He covered up with a cream-colored sweater vest and matching loose-fitting trousers with white loafers. The stage and screen star was accompanied by his boyfriend Noah Galvin, who filled the role of Evan Hansen on Broadway after Platt departed. Galvin looks chic in high-waisted black pants with wide pinstripes and a matching shirt that was left unbuttoned to show off a black tank top. Steamy display: Amandla Stenberg appears in Dear Evan Hansen as Alana, a student who proposes a tribute to the late Connor. She put on a risque display in a black sequined dress that settled below her bust with only thin stripes protecting her modesty Stunner: The actress wore a black blazer with peaked lapels over it and had her dyed-blond hair styled in thick braids and tied off in a playfully messy bun Amandla Stenberg appears in Dear Evan Hansen as Alana, a student who proposes a tribute to the late Connor. She put on a risque display in a black sequined dress that settled below her bust with only thin stripes protecting her modesty. The actress wore a black blazer with peaked lapels over it and had her dyed-blond hair styled in thick braids and tied off in a playfully messy bun. Rising star: Atypical actor Nik Dodani looked cool in an untucked white shirt with black accents on the sleeves and a black textured vest. He paired it with black pants and simple black loafers. Stephen Chbosky, the film's director, wore a classic gray suit with a black shirt and tie Patterns: Julia Chen Myers, who plays Naomi, looked stunning in a gray plaid mini dress with long baggy sleeves, along with copper-colored heels and a black handbag. Liz Kate, who appears as Gemma, glowed in an opulent black-and-silver dress Atypical actor Nik Dodani looked cool in an untucked white shirt with black accents on the sleeves and a black textured vest. He paired it with black pants and simple black loafers. Stephen Chbosky, the film's director, wore a classic gray suit with a black shirt and tie. He's best known for writing the YA novel The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, though he has begun directing films as well in recent years, starting with the adaptation of his novel. Julia Chen Myers, who plays Naomi, looked stunning in a gray plaid mini dress with long baggy sleeves, along with copper-colored heels and a black handbag. Liz Kate, who appears as Gemma, glowed in an opulent black-and-silver dress. Dark colors: Isaac Powell, who plays Rhys in the film, looked casual in an olive V-neck sweater with black pants and brown boots. Michael Evans stood out in a black pinstripe shirt with matching pants and black, red and blue Nikes Back in black: Swift Rice appears as Mr. Howard. He wore a black floral-print tuxedo jacket with black pants and black loafers Isaac Powell, who plays Rhys in the film, looked casual in an olive V-neck sweater with black pants and brown boots. Michael Evans stood out in a black pinstripe shirt with matching pants and black, red and blue Nikes. Swift Rice appears as Mr. Howard. He wore a black floral-print tuxedo jacket with black pants and black loafers. Colorful: Meg Donnelly added some color to the premiere with an orange miniskirt and a matching blazer, both of which were covered in silver stars. She also had on a lacy sheer crop top Black and white: Isabella Gomez paired a feathered black leather top with high-waisted white jeans and black pumps. Lauren Riihimaki highlighted her midriff in a white crop top with silky white pants and black open-toe heels Meg Donnelly added some color to the premiere with an orange miniskirt and a matching blazer, both of which were covered in silver stars. She also had on a lacy sheer crop top. Isabella Gomez paired a feathered black leather top with high-waisted white jeans and black pumps. Lauren Riihimaki highlighted her midriff in a white crop top with silky white pants and black open-toe heels. Women in red: Stevie Martin grinned ear-to-ear while wearing a lovely red lace blouse with high-waisted red slacks. Zoey Luna stuck to the same color but wore a lustrous red satin dress with black heels Seeing green: Patrick star also favored a shimmering look, though he wore a green top and flowing green pants with leopard-print heels Stevie Martin grinned ear-to-ear while wearing a lovely red lace blouse with high-waisted red slacks. Zoey Luna stuck to the same color but wore a lustrous red satin dress with black heels. Patrick star also favored a shimmering look, though he wore a green top and flowing green pants with leopard-print heels. A female barber who appeared on this year's season of Married At First Sight has lost her job of 12 years for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Joanne Todd, 40, announced on Thursday she was no longer working at her usual barbershop in Karingal, Melbourne, after being told to get the jab or quit. Despite being forced out of her position, the mother of two hopes her clients will continue to visit her at her new salon space. Protest: A female barber who appeared on this year's season of Married At First Sight has lost her job for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Jo Todd (pictured) said on Thursday she was no longer working at her usual barbershop in Melbourne after being told to get the jab or quit 'I never thought that I would lose my job over a vaccine, but the positive thing is that I've set up my own barber space,' Todd said in a video posted to Instagram. 'I'm jumping on here to reach out to all my regular clients and to the mums with the kids [whose] haircuts I used to do in Karingal. 'I won't be going back to that shop anymore, so anyone that I used to cut, or anyone who isn't getting the vaccine, please hit me up and I'll be happy to cut your hair.' Todd said that despite the new government rules, she is willing to cut anybody's hair regardless of their vaccination status. 'I'll be happy to cut your hair': Despite being forced out of her position, the mother of two, 40, hopes her clients will continue to visit her at her new salon space. Todd also said she is willing to cut anybody's hair regardless of their vaccination status Statement: Todd told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday, 'I'm not anti-vax. I just think we should have a choice and not lose our jobs over [the vaccine]' 'I am happy to take the vaccinated or the unvaccinated,' she said. Todd told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday: 'I'm not anti-vax. I just think we should have a choice and not lose our jobs over [the vaccine].' It comes after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced that hair salons can reopen for the fully vaccinated once the 70 per cent vaccination target is reached. Moving on! Pictured with her new boyfriend Joe Donaghy, whom she is understood to have met at her old barbershop Fans of Married At First Sight will remember Todd's ill-fated union with luxury car dealer James Susler from this year's season. She has since moved on with tradesman Joe Donaghy. Donaghy is understood to have been a customer at Todd's old barbershop, which is how they first met. More than two years after his tragic passing, the parents of Cameron Boyce attended the premiere of his final film, Runt. Libby and Victor Boyce attended the Los Angeles premiere of Runt on Wednesday evening, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. The Boyce's were spotted with some of the film's cast members such as Nicole Elizabeth Berger during the event. Premiere: More than two years after his tragic passing, the parents of Cameron Boyce attended the premiere of his final film, Runt Smiles: The Boyce's were spotted with some of the film's cast members such as Nicole Elizabeth Berger during the event Lilly hit the red carpet in a sleeveless black top with a shiny silver necklace and silver earrings. She also stepped out with a full-length grey and black plaid skirt with a number of bracelets around her right wrist. Her husband Victor opted for a purple plaid shirt, dark grey pants and black Converse All-Star sneakers. Lilly's look: Lilly hit the red carpet in a sleeveless black top with a shiny silver necklace and silver earrings Runt was their son's final film, where he plays Cal, part of a group of unsupervised high school seniors who start making dangerous decisions. The film also stars Brianna Hildebrand, Jason Patric, Aramis Knight, Tichina Arnold, Charlie Gillespie and Vivian Bang. Runt will be released digitally on VOD platforms starting October 19 from 1091 Pictures. Cameron's character: Runt was their son's final film, where he plays Cal, part of a group of unsupervised high school seniors who start making dangerous decisions Boyce made his acting debut at just nine years of age, starring in a Panic! at the Disco music video and films Mirrors and Eagle Eye in 2008. He also starred in Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2 with Adam Sandler, before playing Luke Ross in the hit Disney Channel series Jessie. He also played Carlos in Disney's hit Descendants movies, along with roles in Mrs. Fletcher and, most recently, Paradise City. Acting debut: Boyce made his acting debut at just nine years of age, starring in a Panic! at the Disco music video and films Mirrors and Eagle Eye in 2008 Boyce was found unresponsive in his home on July 6, 2019, and when authorities arrived, the young actor was pronounced dead at just 20 years of age. His parents released a statement that read Boyce died in his sleep, 'due to a seizure which was a result of an ongoing medical condition for which he was being treated.' They confirmed a few days later that he was diagnosed with epilepsy and he had passed away from an epileptic seizure. The City alum Olivia Palermo turned heads wearing a massive white feathered skirt while attending the Hollywood premiere of Runt at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres on Wednesday. The 35-year-old designer-influencer paired her Monique Lhuillier avian ball gown with a black sheer Monique Lhuillier blouse over a matching strapless top. Olivia paired her turtleneck top with an ornate bow-tie broach and matching cuffs in her left ear. Dramatic: The City alum Olivia Palermo turned heads wearing a massive white feathered skirt while attending the Hollywood premiere of Runt at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres on Wednesday Hairstylist Kenna Kennor slicked Palermo's highlighted locks into a tidy middle-parted updo and make-up artist Sam Tsan applied her cat eyeliner and red pout. The Olivia Palermo Beauty founder - who launched her cosmetics company May 6 - always styles herself both on and off red carpets. Joining Olivia's side was Nicole Elizabeth Berger wearing a plunging gold mini-dress and black gladiator stilettos. Like Palermo, the 17-year-old actress-pianist has deep roots in Manhattan and she portrays Cecily in Runt, which starts streaming VOD on October 19. Statement: The 35-year-old designer-influencer paired her Monique Lhuillier avian ball gown with a black sheer Monique Lhuillier blouse over a matching strapless top Accessorizing: Olivia paired her turtleneck top with an ornate bow-tie broach and matching cuffs in her left ear Glam: Hairstylist Kenna Kennor slicked Palermo's highlighted locks into a tidy middle-parted updo and make-up artist Sam Tsan applied her cat eyeliner and red pout HBIC: The Olivia Palermo Beauty founder - who launched her cosmetics company May 6 - always styles herself both on and off red carpets William Coakley's bullied teen drama thriller marked the last screen role of Cameron Boyce who died, age 20, from an epileptic seizure in 2019. The former child star's parents Libby and Victor Boyce attended the film premiere in his memory. The Boyces also posed with Cameron's former roommates Sophie Reynolds and Karan Brar as well as pal Paulina Char. Speaking of losses, the Dress for Success impact ambassador and her husband Johannes Huebl are mourning their Maltese fur baby, Mr. Butler, who died August 29 after 16 years of companionship. Who knew they were friends? Joining Olivia's side was Nicole Elizabeth Berger (L) wearing a plunging gold mini-dress and black gladiator stilettos Big Apple connection: Like Palermo, the 17-year-old actress-pianist has deep roots in Manhattan and she portrays Cecily in Runt, which starts streaming VOD on October 19 RIP: William Coakley's bullied teen drama thriller marked the last screen role of Cameron Boyce (R) who died, age 20, from an epileptic seizure in 2019 Honoring his legacy: The former child star's parents Libby and Victor Boyce attended the film premiere in his memory Friends and family: The Boyces also posed with Cameron's former roommates Sophie Reynolds (L) and Karan Brar (2-R) as well as pal Paulina Char (R) The 43-year-old male model flew from his native Germany on Tuesday to Italy to attend the Milan Fashion Week festivities, which run through Monday. On Wednesday, Johannes dined at Milan pizza restaurant Le Specialita with his friends Violante Nessi, Andrea Incontri, Ori Kafri, John Genovese, and Roopal Patel. Olivia - who boasts 8.3M social media followers - tweeted on Tuesday that she plans on staying in Los Angeles for 24 hours before flying to Milan to join Huebl. The married couple of seven years originally met through friends at a Manhattan film screening while Palermo was still attending The New School back in 2008. 'I will miss my best friend': Speaking of losses, the Dress for Success impact ambassador and her husband Johannes Huebl are mourning their Maltese fur baby, Mr. Butler, who died August 29 after 16 years of companionship Ciao! The 43-year-old male model flew from his native Germany on Tuesday to Italy to attend the Milan Fashion Week festivities, which run through Monday 'It's happening': On Wednesday, Johannes dined at Milan pizza restaurant Le Specialita with his friends Violante Nessi, Andrea Incontri, Ori Kafri, John Genovese, and Roopal Patel '#MFW': Olivia - who boasts 8.3M social media followers - tweeted on Tuesday that she plans on staying in Los Angeles for 24 hours before flying to Milan to join Huebl Suited and booted were Cyrus Arnold and Carson Boatman, who played Cal's (Boyce) BFF Borgie and Hank respectively. Jacqueline Guido - who played Cal's mother - wore a b&w-patterned jumpsuit for the red carpet ceremony. Meanwhile, Aramis Knight and Seth Lee - who played Vic and Chris - rocked a seventies-inspired look and a leather jacket with pin-stripe pants. Also attending the Runt premiere were Cameron's former Descendants castmates Booboo Stewart, Brenna D'Amico, and Sarah Jeffery. Dapper dudes: Suited and booted were Cyrus Arnold (L) and Carson Boatman (R), who played Cal's (Boyce) BFF Borgie and Hank respectively Stepping out: Jacqueline Guido - who played Cal's mother - wore a b&w-patterned jumpsuit for the red carpet ceremony Gentlemen: Meanwhile, Aramis Knight (L) and Seth Lee (R) - who played Vic and Chris - rocked a seventies-inspired look and a leather jacket with pin-stripe pants Jessica Marais beat the heat in Sydney on Monday by enjoying a swim at Coogee Beach. The 36-year-old South African-born Australian actress showed off her fit figure in a pair of shorts and a crop top. The mother-of-one looked content during the outing after pulling out of the Packed to the Rafters reboot for mental health reasons earlier this year. Cooling off: Packed to the Rafters star Jessica Marais showed off her fit figure on Monday as she took a dip at Sydney's Coogee Beach After strolling to the beach in her exercise gear, which included leggings, a black crop top and a blue and white long sleeve top, Jessica went into the water in her T-shirt and shorts. The blonde was makeup free and had her blonde curls tied up. Jessica was solo during the sunny outing and kept her belongings in a pile on the shore. Fit as a fiddle: The 36-year-old South African-born Australian actress showed off her fit figure in a pair of shorts and a crop top Feels like summer! Jessica went into the water in her T-shirt and a pair of shorts Relaxed: The mother-of-one looked content during the outing after pulling out of the Packed to the Rafters reboot for mental health reasons, earlier this year Squeezing in a workout: She first strolled to the beach in her exercise gear She kept her headphones in and appeared to be listening to music as she soaked up the sun. It comes after her former co-star Angus McLaren gave an update on how Jessica is doing, earlier this month. Last year, fans were shocked when Jessica pulled out of the much-anticipated Amazon Prime reboot Back To The Rafters due to mental health reasons. 'Doing well': It comes after her former Packed To The Rafters co-star Angus McLaren gave an update on how Jessica is doing earlier this month Out of the reboot: Last year, fans were shocked when Jessica pulled out of the much-anticipated Amazon Prime reboot Back To The Rafters due to mental health reasons Good news: But Angus told Daily Mail Australia that she is 'doing well' But Angus told Daily Mail Australia that she is 'doing well'. 'Jessica is doing well... it was good to see her in Sydney,' the Melbourne-based actor told Daily Mail Australia. Jessica was initially set to reprise her role of Rachel Rafter, after previously starring on the beloved Channel Seven drama from 2008 until 2013. 'Jessica is doing well... it was good to see her in Sydney,' the Melbourne-based actor told Daily Mail Australia Thirsty work! Jessica kept hydrated as she soaked up the sun Fresh: Jessica changed into a fresh beige T-shirt after her ocean swim Famous role: Jessica was initially set to reprise her role of Rachel Rafter, after previously starring on the beloved Channel Seven drama from 2008 until 2013 While she wasn't technically on set, Angus, 32, said she was a stone's throw away from him during filming. 'Yeah we definitely missed her on set, but the good thing about Jess is she lived quite close to me when I was in Sydney. So I actually got to see her, I really have a lot of love for Jess,' he added. 'It would've been great to work with her, she's certainly one of those people who brings a good vibe to the set.' Jessica is best known for her roles on Packed to the Rafters and Love Child. 'Yeah we definitely missed her on set, but the good thing about Jess is she lived quite close to me when I was in Sydney. So I actually got to see her, I really have a lot of love for Jess,' he added Advertisement Linda Evangelista claimed she has been 'brutally disfigured' from the rare side effects of a cosmetic procedure she underwent five years ago, as she explained her absence from the spotlight on Instagram on Wednesday. The supermodel, 56, took a tentative step back into the public eye when she blamed her 'reclusive' behaviour on a disfiguring procedure. In the social media statement, the Nineties-icon claimed she had been 'permanently deformed' due to a rare side effect from the fat-reducing procedure. According to Linda, she had undergone a CoolSculpting procedure to 'decrease' her fat cells, but instead the procedure 'increased' her fat cells, a peril she insists she was not warned of, so is now seeking legal action. She has developed paradoxical adipose hyperplasia - a rare, previously unreported adverse effect of cryolipolysis, which has been reported in of 0.0051% of the 1.5 million CoolSculpting procedures performed worldwide. With this condition, the treated area becomes larger, rather than smaller, in the weeks after the procedure. It can leave a 'painless, visibly enlarged, firm, well-demarcated mass' underneath the skin. Dramatic return: Supermodel Linda Evangelista, 56, claimed in an Instagram statement on Wednesday that she had been 'permanently deformed' after a CoolSculpting procedure caused a rare side effect (pictured left, in 2017, AFTER having the procedure and before the procedure - right in 2005) Rare adverse effect: She claimed she had developed Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia, a condition in which fat cells increase rather than decreasing after a cryolipolysis procedure Linda's statement read: 'Today I took a big step towards righting a wrong that I have suffered and have kept to myself for over five years. To my followers who have wondered why I have not been working while my peers' careers have been thriving, the reason is that I was brutally disfigured by Zeltiq's CoolSculpting procedure... '[It] did the opposite of what it promised. It increased, not decreased, my fat cells and left me permanently deformed even after undergoing two painful, unsuccessful corrective surgeries. I have been left, as the media described, 'unrecognizable.'' The model claimed she wasn't properly warned of the potential side effects associated with the CoolSculpting procedure. She went on: 'I have developed Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia or PAH, a risk of which I was not made aware before I had the procedures... 'PAH has not only destroyed my livelihood, it has sent me into a cycle of deep depression, profound sadness, and the lowest depths of self-loathing. In the process, I have become a recluse... That was then: Linda is pictured in 2016 in Tokyo, in one of her most recent appearances, which came shortly after the treatment which caused her fat cells to increase and cause weight gain Changing look: Linda shared snaps on social media in 2019, yet kept her face largely obscured beneath hats and her body entirely off-camera 'With this lawsuit, I am moving forward to rid myself of my shame, and going public with my story. I'm so tired of living this way. I would like to walk out my door with my held held high, despite not looking like myself any longer.' During a cryolipolysis procedure, also known as body sculpting, a device that's usually set below freezing temperature is applied to fat deposits, which causes cell death in the fat tissue. The body can then pass the dead fat cells. She described developing Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia, a rare condition sometimes observed after similar procedures in which adipose tissue (or body fat) increases after procedures known as cryolipolysis, even though they usually decrease adipose tissue. Changes: Linda was showing her evolving appearance in 2017 (left) when she was pictured in Tokyo shortly after undergoing the procedure, while she looked different at the Met Gala in 2015 (right) According to Healthline, the increased fat deposits aren't harmful, but they also don't appear to go away on their own over time. The 'very rare' condition is most common in men who have undergone cryolipolysis, though it can still affect women. Linda singled out the Allergan subsidiary Zeltiq for allegedly performing the botched procedure without informing her of the potential negative side effects. Sarah Michelle Gellar was unveiled as a CoolSculpting ambassador last year. Speaking at the time, Sarah detailed that while she is incredibly fit and healthy she struggles with difficult to shift areas of fat. She said: 'I had had such a positive experience with the procedure [Coolsculpting] (and the results) 'I was able to target those specific areas with an incredible result and with only an hour of my time (I even managed to get through a few chapters in the book I was reading) so you know that's a win for me.' LINDA'S POST-PROCEDURE TRANSFORMATION 2019 Linda's last appearance was on social media two years ago. Her face was largely concealed by hats in a duo of images she uploaded, with her transformed image barely-visible. In another image taken during a horseride, Linda wore a mask over her face, as well as a hat and sunglasses As well as keeping her face partially hidden in the images, Linda did not let any of her body be seen in the images. 2017 Sightings of the star in 2017 saw the biggest change in her appearance fresh from undergoing the ill-fated treatment the previous year. She was seen in New York and Tokyo, during which she had a fuller face and seemed somewhat puffy as she was showing the aftermath of the side effects, which she has since lamented on social media. 2016 According to her statement, Linda would have undergone the CoolSculpting in 2016. One of her rare sightings was in April of that year, when she was again seen in Tokyo. During the appearance, she was seen looking different to her appearances the previous year, in which she was seen looking more svelte. Clad in all-black, the supermodel made a low-key arrival and went make-up free for the outing. 2015 The year before Linda underwent her CoolSculpting, the star was looking wholly more like her runway self, as she took to the red carpet at the Met Gala in May. In June, she was again seen on the red carpet, this time at the Fragrance Awards. Advertisement Linda's post elicited an outpouring of sympathy and supporting from the model's admirers and friends in the fashion industry. Moschino Creative Director Jeremy Scott penned: 'You are and always will be a supermodel now adding super role model of courage to your glorious resume. I love you'. Mad Men star January Jones said: 'Love that you're reclaiming your story. This strength and bravery supersedes any superficial outward appearance. An icon is an icon is an icon. Always.' Evangelista's fellow supermodel Cindy Crawford wrote: 'Linda your strength and true essence are forever recognizable and iconic! Bravo!'. Gwyneth Paltrow shared her love with a heart emoji. Fellow supermodel Helena Christensen shared a moving comment for her old friend. She penned: 'It would've taken immense courage and strength to write these words. I can honestly say that I broke down in tears reading this... Changes: She lamented the life-changing impact of the procedure which had the reverse of the desired effect (pictured left in 2017 and right in 1990) CoolSculpting is the original form of cryolipolysis. Areas are sucked into a handpiece and cooled so fat cells freeze, die and are excreted. One session is needed, but can be repeated after 12 weeks. Each treatment takes an hour and results are seen from around three weeks 'Not only because I knew in my heart you somehow had been quietly going through something deeply personal and disturbing but also because I thought of all the scars life leaves on us all, whether physical or emotional and how long we suffer mostly in silence and alone. 'It is so important and beautiful when someone steps out of the shadow and are brutally honest and real. Thank you for being beautiful inside and out.' Naomi Campbell, who soared to fame alongside Linda in their heyday, wrote: 'Elos I applaud you for your Courage and strength to Share your experience and not be held hostage by it anymore .. You know I love you... 'We love you and here for you always Right by your side .. I can't imagine the pain you gone through mentally these past 5 years ., your free of it now.... WHAT IS CRYOLIPOLYSIS? The CoolSculpting fat-freezing procedure is a non-surgical fat reduction treatment using controlled cooling known as cryolipolysis to removed stubborn fat thats difficult to shift, even with diet and exercise. CoolSculpting technology delivers precisely-controlled cooling to target the fat cells underneath the skin, whilst leaving the skin itself unaffected. It doesn't use needles, and there is minimal downtime after treatment. CoolSculpting is available in over 74 countries, and to date over 8 million treatment cycles have been carried out worldwide. CoolSculptings popularity as a fat removal procedure is increasing in United States. The treatment received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2010. CoolSculpting treatments then raised by 823 percent. A 2009 study looked at the efficacy of cryolipolysis. Researchers found that cryolipolysis reduced the treated fat layer by as much as 25 percent. The results were still present six months after the treatment. Frozen, dead fat cells are excreted out of the body through the liver within several weeks of treatment, revealing full results of fat loss within three months. SOURCE: COOLSCULPTING.COM and HEALTHLINE.COM Advertisement 'Remember who you are , and What you have achieved and your influence and all the lives of people you have touched , and still doing so to this very day by sharing your story . Proud of you , and support you every step of the way'. Linda previously told the Mail On Sunday that she hadn't had any work done and hoped to grow old gracefully. She said: 'There was a picture of me in the press recently just after I'd had a facial, in which I was wearing no make-up. It was claimed that I had had this and that procedure done, and it was rubbish... 'I probably will have surgery not right now, but I am getting close. If it's important to me I will have it, and announce that I've had it.' Stunner: Linda got her start in modelling at the age of 16 when she took part in the Miss Teen Niagara beauty pageant, where she was spotted by a representative from Elite Model Management (pictured in 1997) WHAT IS PARADOXICAL ADIPOSE HYPERPLASIA (PAH)? Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia is a rare, previously unreported adverse effect of cryolipolysis. Cryolipolysis uses cooling to damage and destroy subcutaneous fat cells, without damaging the skin to reduce the amount of fat in the treated area. This phenomenon of PAH has a reported rate of incidence of 0.0051% of the 1.5 million CoolSculpting procedures performed worldwide. Many physicians see numerous cases in their offices. PAH causes a gradual enlargement of the treated area. It occurs when the stimulus (the freezing of fat cells) activates a reactionary process in the fatty tissue that thickens and expands the fat cells rather than breaking them down and allowing the body to process and remove them. PAH is only known to occur following a cryolipolysis, or CoolSculpting body contouring treatment. PAH typically cannot be confirmed until about 6 months post-procedure, with patients complaining that they are getting bigger in the exact shape of the applicator, as depicted below. SOURCE: WIFH.COM Advertisement All star support: Linda was met with gushing support from her celebrity friends The model muse was best known in the nineties as one of the world's six supermodels, a group which also included Naomi, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Kate Moss. The comment in her statement about her peers 'thriving' comes after her peers reunited on the Versace runway in 2017 - with the 'Originals' gathering to showcase the latest collection. Donatella Versace gathered Claudia, Naomi and Cindy alongside Helena Christensen and Carla Bruni to walk the runway following on from their frequent appearances for the brand in their heyday. Starring role: The comment in her statement about her peers 'thriving' comes after her peers reunited on the Versace runway in 2017 - with the 'Originals' gathering to showcase the latest collection - with Linda notably absent Star: Linda (left) was notably absent from the 2017 Versace reunion, despite being a stalwart of the brand's campaigns (pictured in 1991 alongside Cindy, Naomi and Christy Turlington L-R) Linda got her start in modelling at the age of 16 when she took part in the Miss Teen Niagara beauty pageant, where she was spotted by a representative from Elite Model Management. Her unique and versatile look meant that Linda was able to snag a multitude of modelling jobs, quickly becoming one of the highest paid models in the industry. She was famed for her - frequently misquoted - comment in a 1990 Vogue interview in which she said: 'We have this saying, Christy [Turlington] and I we don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day.' This transcended into various popular quotations including: 'I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day' and 'I never get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.' Bold: She was famed for her - frequently misquoted - comment in a 1990 Vogue interview in which she said: 'We have this saying, Christy [Turlington] and I we don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day' (pictured in 2003) Usually safe: The procedure Evangelista had normally uses below-freezing temperatures on fat tissue deposits to kill the fat cells, allowing the body to pass them; seen in 2012 in NYC She later said of the comments: 'I feel like those words are going to be engraved on my tombstone. It was brought up every single time I did an interview. I apologized for it; I acknowledged it; I said it was true; I said it was a joke... 'Do I regret it? I used to regret. Not anymore. I dont regret anything anymore. Would I hope that I would never say something like that ever again? Yes. Am I capable of saying something like that again? I hope not.' Since then, she has starred in campaigns for brands including NARS, Fendi, L'Oreal, Chanel, Talbots and Moschino. As of 2014, Linda was worth approximately $18million (11.7million). She has one child, an 14-year-old son named Augustin, with former flame, French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, who is now married to actress Salma Hayek. On her side: Fellow supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen shared moving comments to support her, while Gwyneth Paltrow posted a heart emoji (pictured in 2005 in Milan, Italy) She was seen celebrating her 20th birthday with her boyfriend Jacob Elordi. And on Wednesday, Kaia Gerber was spotted stepping out in Silverlake for a dinner outing with friends to Botanica restaurant. The 20-year-old model flashed her legs in a floral gown while out and about in the Los Angeles neighborhood. Looking good: She was seen celebrating her 20th birthday with her boyfriend Jacob Elordi. And on Wednesday, Kaia Gerber was spotted stepping out in Silverlake for a dinner outing with friends to Botanica restaurant Kaia donned a thigh-grazing mini floral frock that featured a collar detail; the multi-colored frock featured buttons down the center with a fitted waist. The daughter of Cindy Crawford hit the pavement with calf-grazing boots while toting a dark green handbag. Kaia wore a black face mask with small framed sunglasses, opting to put her short locks center parted and loose around her. Last week, Kaia shared a series of snaps from her 20th birthday bash to her Instagram page; the star posted images of herself, posing with her friends as well as with boyfriend Jacob Elordi. Gorgeous: The 20-year-old model flashed her legs in a floral gown while out and about in the Los Angeles neighborhood Chic: Kaia donned a thigh-grazing mini floral frock that featured a collar detail; the multi-colored frock featured buttons down the center with a fitted waist Gerber wore a beautiful sparkling dress that placed her toned arms on full display during the party. The social media personality's light outfit was contrasted perfectly by the dark brunette shade of her hair. The American Horror Stories actress also wore a pair of necklaces while she spent time with her pals. Elordi, 24, opted for a dark button-up shirt worn on top of a white undershirt as he celebrated his girlfriend's birthday. The happy couple was initially linked in September of 2020 when they were spotted stepping out together in New York City and Los Angeles. That same month, the model joined her boyfriend and his family during a getaway trip to Mexico. Prior to becoming involved with his current romantic interest, the actor was linked to his costars Joey King and Zendaya, although both romances fizzled out. Her main man: This comes after the daughter of Vogue favorite Cindy Crawford was seen celebrating her 20th birthday with her boyfriend Jacob Elordi He is very hands on: The actor held her breasts as she put his hand over hers and smiled The still-strong couple eventually went Instagram official last October when they dressed up as Elvis and Priscilla Presley for Halloween. The performer has made sporadic appearances on his girlfriend's account ever since then. Last November, a source spoke to People and noted that Elordi had become heavily invested in his girlfriend's lifestyle. They specifically noted that the Euphoria actor had 'embraced Kaia's Malibu life and seems to love it as much as she does.' Doing well: An insider previously revealed that the two are 'always very loving and cute' when they are around each other; they are pictured on September 13 in NYC The insider went on to illustrate what the happy pair enjoyed doing together when their hectic schedules gave them breaks. 'They rarely leave Malibu and instead enjoy the beach, go hiking and meet up with friends for dinner,' they said. The source concluded by expressing that the model's parents were happy about their daughter's choice of partner. 'Jacob is very sweet to Kaia. They are always very loving and cute...it's obvious that Cindy and Rande approve of Jacob too. They spend a lot of time together,' they remarked. She has made her fortune from designing scanty swimsuits and bikinis. And Kimberley Garner was showing off her money-making physique as she attended Club Rewind, the UK's first inter-city connected club experience powered by Virgin Media broadband at Ministry Of Sound on Wednesday night. The entrepreneur, 30, showed off her taut abs in a tin black two piece comprising a crop top and high-waisted trousers in a soft silk material. Stunner: Kimberley Garner was showing off her money-making physique as she attended Club Rewind, the UK's first inter-city connected club experience powered by Virgin Media broadband at Ministry Of Sound on Wednesday night Kimberley looked incredible in the stylish look which featured a high-neck and a high hemline to create a perilous finish on the chic look. The combat style trousers featured pockets at the knees and a D-loop belt buckle. She boosted her already statuesque height with a pair of peep-toe heels and held on to a black handbag with a silver chain and hardware. Her hair was coiffed into a bouncy blonde blow-dry while she went for a pared-back make-up look to allow her chic ensemble do all the talking. Cheeky! The entrepreneur, 30, showed off her taut abs in a tin black two piece comprising a crop top and high-waisted trousers in a soft silk material Also at the event was Olivia and Alex Bowen who caught the eyes of onlookers with Olivia, 27, sizzling up a storm while flashing her ample assets in a cropped shirt. The buttoned-down number, which exhibited a tattoo on her midriff, coordinated with a 60s inspired pair of flared trousers, which were completed with a brown belt. Kimberley has been jaunting around the world in recent months and has enjoyed the summer with her boyfriend, and is yet to reveal his identity. Wow: Kimberley looked incredible in the stylish look which featured a high-neck and a high hemline to create a perilous finish on the chic look What a pair! Also at the event was Olivia and Alex Bowen who caught the eyes of onlookers with Olivia, 27, sizzling up a storm while flashing her ample assets in a cropped shirt The influencer previously surprised fans when she revealed she cancelled a secret wedding and ended a long-term relationship last summer. Speaking to MailOnline in September 2019, Kimberley confirmed she had called it quits with her former boyfriend. The businesswoman said: 'I ended the relationship recently. It was a really wonderful three years and we are still good friends today.' Nicholas Cartwright joined the cast of Home and Away as Senior Sergeant Constable Cash Newman earlier this year. And with his character's simmering romance with nurse Jasmine Delaney, played by Sam Frost, fans of the soap are hoping the new couple are in it for the long haul. Photos on the drama's official Instagram on Thursday show the Summer Bay newcomer dressed in his police uniform and looking lovingly at his leading lady. The look of love: Home and Away viewers fawned over Summer Bay's hot new couple played by Nicholas Cartwright and Sam Frost. Photos on the drama's official Instagram on Thursday show the Summer Bay newcomer dressed in his police uniform and looking lovingly at his leading lady In another picture, Jasmine - wearing an elegant pink dress - looks down worried but it isn't until her knight in shining armour arrives and holds her hand that she appears at ease. 'We can't get enough of this new Summer Bay romance as Cash arrives to save Jasmine's day,' the caption read, hinting at the police officer's heroic act. Fans of the show shared their support for the genetically blessed couple, including one who commented: 'This better be her happy ending.' What's the drama: In another picture, Jasmine - wearing an elegant pink dress - looks down worried 'She deserves a happy ending': Fans of the show shared their support for the genetically blessed couple, including one who commented: 'This better be her happy ending' 'Yesssss Jasmine's one of my fave characters. She deserves a happy ending, she's been through so much that girl,' a second added referring to the character's previous relationships. Another wrote: 'These two are so cute,' followed by a fourth who said: 'They make a great couple.' There was one viewer who couldn't help but stir the drama who wrote: 'Some things likely to go wrong. There's no happy ever after at Summer Bay!' Loved up: It isn't until her knight in shining armour arrives and holds her hand that she appears at ease Cue the drama: There was a viewer who couldn't help but stir the drama who wrote: 'Some things likely to go wrong. There's no happy ever after at Summer Bay!' Fan favourites: But there was plenty of messages supporting the new Summer Bay couple, including another who said: 'Love these two' But there was plenty of messages supporting the new Summer Bay couple, including another who said: 'Love these two.' Before making his debut on Channel Seven's Home and Away, Nicholas Cartwright served in the Australian Defence Force. He enrolled in an acting course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art after leaving the military. 'I didn't want to go back to a 9-5 job': Before making his debut on Channel Seven's Home and Away, Nicholas Cartwright served in the Australian Defence Force. He enrolled in an acting course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art after leaving the military The 33-year-old told The Daily Telegraph: 'Transitioning from the Australian Defence Force to civilian life can be a very difficult process for a lot of vets and I was no different. I didn't want to go back to a 9-5 job.' 'I was always in creative spaces before I joined the army and I kind of just gravitated back that way,' he said. Meanwhile, Sam rose to fame on The Bachelor and then as The Bachelorette, followed by a stint on radio and eventually landing a gig on Home and Away. Home and Away airs Monday to Thursday from 7:30pm on Channel Seven Bindi Irwin's baby daughter Grace Warrior is following in her famous family's footsteps. On Thursday, Grace's dad Chandler Powell shared a photo of the toddler meeting a wallaby named Daniel at Australia Zoo. In the adorable image, Grace reaches out her arms in a bid to cuddle the marsupial. Sweet: Bindi Irwin's baby daughter Grace Warrior is following in her famous family's footsteps. On Thursday, Grace's dad Chandler Powell shared a photo of the toddler meeting a wallaby named Daniel at Australia Zoo 'Love how much she looks like her beautiful mama,' one follower gushed in the comments section. 'How sweet!! She truly is a wildlife warrior!' added another, while one wrote: 'Shes seriously the luckiest little girl to be born into such an extraordinary family.' Meanwhile, on Friday, Robert Irwin shared a sweet family selfie featuring his five-month-old niece Grace Warrior to Instagram. Making memories! Robert Irwin shared a sweet family selfie featuring his five-month-old niece Grace on Friday The 17-year-old posed for a photo alongside his mother Terri, sister Bindi, brother-in-law Chandler and baby Grace. In the photo, Robert held the camera as his family surrounded him and posed during an outing. 'Grace loves a good selfie,' he captioned the sweet image. In August, Grace also joined her uncle Robert for 'a big day of catching crocs'. Bonding time: In August, Grace joined her uncle Robert for 'a big day of catching crocs' In the photo, Grace smiled broadly at the camera while being held by the teenage adventurer during a 'crocodile research expedition'. Robert captioned the post, 'Hanging out with Grace in the camp after a big day catching crocs is the best'. 'She's lovin life up here on our crocodile research expedition!' Robert captioned the post: 'Hanging out with Grace in the camp after a big day catching crocs is the best' Bindi and her husband Chandler, 24, announced their daughter's birth on March 26, just a day after she was born on their first wedding anniversary. Bindi first met Chandler in 2013, when the American former wakeboarder went on a guided tour of Australia Zoo in Queensland. The pair married in a surprise ceremony at Australia Zoo in March last year. Sir Michael Caine got a helping hand from a female friend as he stepped out in Mayfair on Wednesday evening. The actor, 88, looked dapper in a navy blazer and trousers as he left Scott's restaurant in Mayfair with a group of ladies and his wife Shakira, 74. Michael appeared to be in a jovial mood while making his way home in a taxi from the swanky establishment while continuing to use his walking stick. Sweet: Sir Michael Caine got a helping hand from a female friend as he left Scott's restaurant in Mayfair on Wednesday night with wife Shakira, 74, following closely behind He donned a light blue shirt inside his tailored suit jacket and used a cane to aid himself walking. Shakira wore an elegant blue number as she indulged in giggles with the group. Michael put on a very animated display as he sat in the taxi giggling with friends. Carrying the party on: The actor, 88, looked dapper in a navy blazer and trousers as he jumped into a cab with his pals Dapper: He donned a light blue shirt inside his tailored suit jacket and used a cane to aid himself walking Fun night: Michael appeared to be in a jovial mood as his night continued The Italian Job star was grinning from ear to ear as he made his way home for the evening. The outing comes after Michael received the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at the 55th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic last week. He cut a dapper figure as he walked out on stage while holding his walking stick in the air. He wore a classic black tuxedo complete with a bow tie as he walked the red carpet with Shakira who looked very glamorous in a chic black blazer and glittery dress. Beautiful: Shakira accessorised with a long pearl Chanel necklace and matching earrings Giddy: Michael put on a very animated display as he sat in the taxi giggling with friends She looked amazing as she wore her raven bob swept to the side and she opted for red lipstick over her lips. Michael has been using a walking stick since he suffered from an unfortunate ankle injury when he slipped on some ice in February 2018. The star, who has over forty commendations including two Oscars, is this year's special guest at the festival. He was snapped on the glamorous red carpet, before heading up on stage to collect his accolade and then sitting down for an interview. Funny: At one point, the actor gripped the yellow side rail as if he was afraid to fall out while his wife and pals laughed Happy couple: Shakira found her husband's humour very funny as she bent over laughing Humour: The Italian Job star was grinning from ear to ear as he made his way home for the evening The iconic British actor was presented with the award at the opening ceremony at the festival. In 2019, the veteran British actor revealed how he met the love of his life after seeing her star in a coffee commercial. His romance with Shakira has proved to be one of the longest marriages in showbiz, after tying the knot in Las Vegas in 1973. Congrats: Michael got a helping hand as he received the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at the 55th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last week Couple: He wore a classic black tuxedo complete with a black bow tie as he walked the red carpet with Shakira, who looked very glamorous in a chic black blazer Legend: The star, who has over forty commendations including two Oscars, is this year's special guest at the festival Much to his surprise, his dream woman was not on the other side of the world, but instead a stone's throw away from where he was living. The thespian reportedly called his future wife every day for ten days until she finally agreed to go out with him. The couple have one daughter together, Natasha, 48, while the Alfie star has another daughter Dominique, 65, from his previous marriage with actress Patricia Haines. 'I said to my mate "we're going to Brazil tomorrow - I have plenty of money, we're going to find her.'' 'I was at home and this commercial came on, for Maxwell House coffee. And there was this beautiful Brazilian girl,' he told Andrew Denton's Interview. Known name: The iconic British actor was presented with the award at the opening ceremony at the festival Rylan Clark-Neal has shared a cryptic post on Instagram just weeks after returning to work following his split from husband Dan after six years of marriage. The TV and radio presenter, 32, posted a quote to his Instagram Story on Wednesday night which asked 'what's wrong with being too nice?' Rylan - who rose to fame on X Factor nine years ago - revealed in June that he and Dan had broken up and told how he was taking a 10-week break from work to prioritise his mental health. Quote: Rylan Clark-Neal has shared a cryptic post on Instagram just weeks after returning to work following his split from husband Dan after six years of marriage The full post read: 'What's wrong with being too nice? 'People will always try to take advantage of it until you aren't nice at all.' It is not clear what the post was referring to and he did not elaborate on the quote on any of his other social media platforms. What's the meaning? The TV and radio presenter, 32, posted a quote to his Instagram Story on Wednesday night which asked 'what's wrong with being too nice?' A representative for Rylan has been contacted by MailOnline for a comment. It comes after Rylan and Janette Manrara have been seen for the first time together as they prepare to present Strictly Come Dancing's It Takes Two next week. Rylan took to Instagram on Tuesday to introduce his 'new tele wife' Janette, 37, as he uploaded a never-seen-before photo of the pair in their glitzy Strictly attire. Sad news: Rylan - who rose to fame on X Factor nine years ago - revealed in June that he and Dan had broken up and told how he was taking a 10-week break from work to prioritise his mental health (pictured in 2017) The former X-Factor star confirmed the former professional dancer as his co-presenter, captioning his glittering upload: 'Introducing the new tele wife.. we will see you next Monday @jmanrara @bbcstrictly'. The pair will be co-hosting the show at 6.30pm on Monday to Thursdays, and at 6pm on Fridays. His social media confirmation comes as Janette was announced to replace Zoe Ball on the upcoming spin-off show. The dancer revealed the exciting news on The One Show in June, where she also announced that she has quit as a professional dancer on Strictly after eight years. Speaking to hosts Alex Jones and Ronan Keating, the Cuban-American, 37, beauty told how she's 'excited to be given the opportunity' and admitted that leaving Strictly has been the 'hardest part' of her new role. Janette, who is married to fellow professional dancer Aljaz Skorjanec, will join co-host Rylan Clark-Neal on the BBC2 show on weeknights, during Strictly's upcoming series. Dynamic duo: It comes after Rylan and Janette Manrara have been seen for the first time together as they prepare to present Strictly Come Dancing 's It Takes Two next week Speaking of her new role, she told The One Show: 'It's a dream come true to become part of the It Takes Two team! 'Although it's impossible to fill in the shoes of a legend like Zoe Ball, I hope to make her and all of the Strictly fans proud.' She went on: 'I will miss dancing on that iconic dance floor weekly, but forever grateful to continue being a part of the Strictly Come Dancing family!' Split: Rylan has spent time away from the spotlight focusing on his wellbeing surrounded by friends and family after his split from Dan (pictured together) Rylan revealed in June that he and Dan had split after six years of marriage and made the decision to step back from work. Taking to Instagram in July, he penned: 'I just wanted to write a message to thank you all for the love and kindness you have shown us. 'We are currently prioritising our mental health and looking after the ones around us we love the most. I am working towards getting back to the jobs I love in due course. Thank you for being patient with me X'. Danielle Lloyd and her husband Michael O'Neill proudly showed off their 3D baby scan, ahead of the arrival of their first daughter. The CBB star, 37, looked utterly delighted as she clutched the image of her scan while putting on a glamorous display in Gucci tracksuit bottoms, a vest top and a dramatically made-up face complete with a bold slick of red lipstick. The doting mother shares sons Archie, 10, Harry, nine, and George, seven, with ex-husband Jamie, and Ronnie, three, with Michael, and the couple delightedly revealed they are set to welcome a girl into their brood earlier this year. Yay! Danielle Lloyd and her husband Michael O'Neill proudly showed off their 3D baby scan, ahead of the arrival of their first daughter Danielle was glowing as she showed off the image of her little one, while Michael could hardly contain his glee while standing with the model. The star had previously said that if her fifth child had been another boy then she would have gone through controversial gender selection treatment. The practice has been condemned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and is illegal in Britain. Asked by New! magazine if she would have had the treatment had she found out she was expecting another boy this time around, she said: 'Yes we would.' She added that she would have still 'been pleased' if it had been a boy. Shock: The star had previously said that if her fifth child had been another boy then she would have gone through controversial gender selection treatment Her love: She has spoken about her desire for a girl for some time The mother-of-four told the publication: 'As long as the baby's healthy, it's still a child and still my baby at the end of the day. 'We'd planned to go to Dubai in August for gender selection, so that was all booked to go ahead, but it looked like Covid was going to change that. It must have been fate that I got pregnant and it's a little girl, otherwise we'd be in Dubai paying for it.' Danielle added that she and her husband booked a private gender scan and that she 'had such bad anxiety' in the run up due to her desire for a girl, but that she 'burst into tears' when she got the results. She also said that she had felt different during this pregnancy and had been trying to 'manifest' and 'meditate' so it would be a girl. Wanting a girlThe doting mother shares sons Archie, 10, Harry, nine, and George, seven, with ex-husband Jamie, and Ronnie, three, with Michael (pictured in June 2021) Her latest scan comes after Danielle was rushed to hospital after collapsing at home and her sons called an ambulance for her. She revealed to OK! that she fell ill at her house and began feeling pains in her stomach. The Liverpool-born star explained she went to the toilet and while she was in there she passed out, with her sons forced to knock on a neighbour's door for help to call out an ambulance. 'It was really traumatic,' Danielle told the publication about the July incident. 'I had really low blood pressure, I was so worried for the baby and it was obviously so terrifying for the boys, but I'm so proud of them.' Thankfully, after several tests, she was given the all clear to leave the hospital. George Clooney hid from his two kids in the closet in hilarious footage from a recent Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith. The actor, 60, told how his twins, Ella and Alexander, four. were 'bashing each other with swords' while he tried to escape from them to wish the actress a happy 50th on the star-studded show. George welcomed his children with human right lawyer wife Amal Clooney in 2017 after getting married during a lavish Venice ceremony in 2014. Funny: George Clooney hid from his two kids in the closet in hilarious footage from a recent Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith He said at the start of the clip: 'I'm talking to you from inside my closet because outside my closet there are twins bashing each other with swords. 'And it didn't seem like an appropriate way to celebrate your birthday!' Jada's daughter Willow and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris joined her star-studded surprise 50th birthday bash on her show Facebook Watch series and giggled when George made the revelation. Hilarious: The actor, 60, told how his twins were 'bashing each other with swords' while he tried to escape from them to wish the actress a happy 50th on the star-studded show Later he said in his speech to Jade: 'Now they tell me that you're turning 50, which that's not possible because that would mean that I'm 60 and that's not possible. So you're 39 - happy 39th - and I'm 49. I like that a lot better.' To roars of laughter from the hostesses George then asked how Jada stands being married to her movie star husband Will Smith. In a serious answer to his question Jada stressed the importance of 'friendship' with her husband, noting that 'really how do you put up with anybody?' Couple: George welcomed children Alexander and Ella, both four, with human right lawyer wife Amal Clooney in 2017 after getting married during a lavish Venice ceremony in 2014 She added: 'And once you learn how to put up with yourself you really learn how to put up with all others,' stressing taking 'the time to learn how to love myself.' Jada was left sobbing at her star-studded surprise 50th birthday bash on her show Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk. Her co-hosts had pulled out the stops for her special day where the sea of famous faces appeared to ask Jada one question each. After she walked onto a set festooned with roses and jewels Jada was treated to a string of video tributes from such names as Mariah Carey and Gabrielle Union. Reaction: Jada's daughter Willow and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris joined her star-studded surprise 50th birthday bash on her show Facebook Watch series and giggled when George made the revelation Adrienne joked that 'I hate even saying' that her daughter is 50, and Jada quipped: 'I know, your baby's 50! How crazy is that?' After George, Kerry Washington was next to ask her a question: 'So I think of you as such a deeply, deeply courageous person, so my question for you is do you have any fears that you're looking to conquer in this next decade of your being on this planet?' Jada cited the 'uncertain' position of 'the world' and raised the need to do away with her 'control issues,' adding that the 'greatest gift' of age was letting things go. Gabrielle Union then asked: 'What is one place that you've traveled in your lifetime that changed your world perspective, that changed you somehow?' Wow: Her co-hosts arranged tributes from stars as prominent as Mariah Carey (pictured) 'Vietnam,' said Jada. 'I went there by myself. I got an opportunity to meet one of my mentors which is Thich Nhat Hanh' - a world-famous Buddhist activist monk. 'He was ill, you know, but I got to give him honor and be in his presence. It is a gorgeous place. The spiritual rejuvenation that I got there was - I didn't wanna leave. You can really feel that energy there. It was such a magical experience,' she said. Angela Bassett shared her hopes for Jada to have 'a happy birthday and a happy forever,' then asked: 'What has been the most difficult thing for you to overcome?' Her appearance marked the first time Jada found herself in tears as she said how much 'love' she has for Angela. 'Courageous': Kerry Washington asked if 'you have any fears that you're looking to conquer in this next decade of your being on this planet?' Willow said one of her 'favorites' of the tough obstacles her mother conquered was 'dealing with' her and her brother Jaden as youngsters. 'We were not easy children,' said Willow but Jada said: 'You actually were,' noting: 'Raising children, I don't care who they are, that's challenging.' She said: 'Being a mother is challenging, you know, because you sacrifice a lot but I tell you what, sacrificing for you guys was sacred. There's a difference between sacrifices that actually empower your life versus sacrifice that steal life, that pull - that pull breath out of your life - and I had to learn the difference between the two.' Although the experience of bringing up her children she said that her children had been 'the greatest gift of my life,' and broke down crying as Willow comforted her. Globetrotter: Gabrielle Union then asked: 'What is one place that you've traveled in your lifetime that changed your world perspective, that changed you somehow?' 'You and Trey and Jaden, all three of you see me,' she said - notably including Will's son Trey from his first wife Sheree Zampino. 'You really do, through the toughest times. I would say being a mother wasn't easy but it was worth it,' she said through tears. She also acknowledged: 'I would say another challenge was smoothing out my thoughts around the relationship with Sheree and I. That was a real process.' Although they sniped at one another in the beginning they now share 'a real sisterhood - but it took 20-some years.' Mother: Later on the show she said that her children had been 'the greatest gift of my life,' and broke down crying as Willow comforted her Mariah Carey materialized onscreen via video-call to wish Jada 'a happy birthday or as I call them happy anniversary!' Ciara then appeared to gush: 'You are timeless, you are ageless, you are classic, you are the epitome of the ultimate woman.' Jimmy Kimmel said: 'If there's one thing I've learned over my 53 years on this planet earth it's that when you eat yogurt, you know, the fruit's on the bottom but it really should be on the top. Happy birthday, Jada.' Bethenny Frankel, who happens to also be 50 years old herself, video-called Jada to in Willow's words 'welcome you to the club.' 'Fifty feels liberating,' said Bethenny. 'You just value time differently. You just want to only really do the things the are important, that mean something to you.' Charlotte Crosby looked incredible as she enjoyed a night out in Soho with her friends on Wednesday. The former Geordie Shore star, 31, showed off her sense of style in a figure-hugging mini dress with a multi-coloured print. The garment also featured a zip detail while the media personality added height to her frame with a pair of clear heels. Out on the town: Charlotte Crosby looked incredible in a skintight mini dress as she enjoyed a night out in Soho with her friends on Wednesday Letting her locks fall loose down her shoulders, Charlotte donned a light pallet of makeup for the evening. The TV star kicked off her night on the town with a visit to 100 Wardour Street before making her way to Lucky Voice Karaoke bar. Charlotte was said to have belted out some tunes with her pals before arriving back at her hotel at 12:30am. It comes after Charlotte recently confirmed she has split from her boyfriend Liam Beaumont. Style: The figure-hugging garment featured a zip detail and a multi-coloured print Looking good: Letting her locks fall loose down her shoulders, Charlotte donned a light pallet of makeup for the evening Reports surfaced that the Geordie Shore star had broken up with the hunk, who she started dating in February last year, following a slew of furious arguments and claims before she booted him out of her Newcastle home. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Charlotte has dismissed these claims and insisted their relationship ended on good terms. She said: 'Me and Liam shared some amazing memories together and the split is amicable. We have just realised we are both two very different people. I have learnt so much in this relationship and am thankful that it happened.' It was reported that the couple had split when they became engaged in a furious row leading to her booting him out of her mansion. Party: The TV star kicked off her night on the town with a visit to 100 Wardour Street before making her way to Lucky Voice Karaoke bar Fun: Charlotte was said to have belted out some tunes with her pals before arriving back at her hotel at 12:30am Split: Reports surfaced that the Geordie Shore star had broken up with the hunk, who she started dating in February last year Speculation: It was claimed they had a slew of furious arguments and claims before she booted him out of her Newcastle home Charlotte said: 'Me and Liam shared some amazing memories together and the split is amicable. We have just realised we are both two very different people' Charlotte defiantly maintains the split is on friendly terms and told MailOnline that she wanted to 'take back the narrative' surrounding their split. She said in full: 'It's disappointing to wake up to the news coverage about our breakup. Things like this never get easier to read. My relationship has ended yes. 'Were there furious rows? No. Did I kick him out of the house? No. It's sad to see this negativity put on what was a good relationship. She added: 'I have learnt so much in this relationship and am thankful that it happened' Narrative: Charlotte defiantly maintains the split is on friendly terms and told MailOnline that she wanted to 'take back the narrative' surrounding their split She said: 'It's disappointing to wake up to the news coverage about our breakup. Things like this never get easier to read. My relationship has ended yes' She added: 'Were there furious rows? No. Did I kick him out of the house? No. It's sad to see this negativity put on what was a good relationship' 'So I'd like to take back some control of the narrative, get some truth out there and draw a line under this... 'Me and Liam shared some amazing memories together and the split is amicable. We have just realised we are both two very different people. 'I have learnt so much in this relationship and am thankful that it happened. I truly wish him nothing but the best.' James May appeared to take some style tips from Billy Connolly as he went for a bike ride in West London on Thursday. The TV presenter, 58, sported a distinctive beard and thick-rimmed glasses on the outing, making him bear a striking resemblance to the Scottish actor, 78. James cut a casual figure as he wrapped up in a bright orange bomber jacket which he paired with a dark green T-shirt. Out and about: James May appeared to take some style tips from Billy Connolly as he went for a bike ride in West London on Thursday The former Top Gear host wore his hair loose while he also sported dark grey jeans and put safety first with a black helmet. James is an avid bike rider and has said it was the main way he kept fit during the coronavirus lockdown since he had no reason to drive anywhere. Reflecting on how he didn't see co-stars Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond amid the global pandemic, James also joked that being away from the pair helped to make him 'healthier'. Speaking to The Sun, James said of Jeremy and Richard: 'I wouldn't say I've particularly missed them. I've seen so much of those two idiots over the past 15 years of my life. I don't pine for them in any way whatsoever. Lookalike: The TV presenter, 58, (left) sported a distinctive beard and thick-rimmed glasses on the outing, making him bear a striking resemblance to the Scottish actor, 78 (right) Dapper: Billy is known for his distinctive long hair and trimmed beard (pictured in 2013) 'I'm definitely healthier, no doubt about that. I'm slightly slimmer, I'm stronger. I'm still falling to bits but I'm falling to bits in a slightly trimmer way.' James went on to explain that he goes out to cycle between five to ten miles a day, and he claimed would follow government guidelines by only going out to exercise once a day. Of his new fitness regime, he said: 'I'm well buff now but probably can't drive my car any more.' James shot to fame as a co-presenter of iconic programme Top Gear, which he starred in alongside Jeremy and Richard from 2003-2015. He now hosts The Grand Tour alongside Jeremy and Richard, in December 2019 they travelled to Vietnam and Cambodia for special The Grand Tour Presents: Seamen. Exercise: James cut a casual figure as he wrapped up in a bright orange bomber jacket which he paired with a dark green T-shirt Casual: The former Top Gear host wore his hair loose while he also sported dark grey jeans and put safety first with a black helmet Routine: James is an avid bike rider and has said it was the main way he kept fit during the coronavirus lockdown since he had no reason to drive anywhere While in December last year they appeared in the special A Massive Hunt, which saw them go to the islands of Madagascar and Reunion in search of pirate gold. In November, Jeremy revealed that he and his co-hosts ended up swimming in shark-infested waters after Richard attempted to speak French during their time in Reunion. Speaking about the Hammond's lack of language skills, Jeremy explained how after a day swimming they were told a man had been eaten by a shark just the day before. Jeremy said: 'When we were in Reunion we had a day of sorting ourselves out and we all met on the beach and Hammond suggested snorkelling. Apart: Reflecting on how he didn't see co-stars Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond amid the global pandemic, James also joked that being away from the pair helped to make him 'healthier' James said of Jeremy and Richard: 'I wouldn't say I've particularly missed them. I've seen so much of those two idiots over the past 15 years of my life' 'So, he went off to the little hut where you could borrow the flippers and snorkels and he came back and he said, "My French is really coming along, Ive just had a long conversation with the man in the hut in French." 'We then went swimming and snorkelling and when we got back, we were told that the day before, a man had been eaten by a shark. Exactly in that spot, off that same beach, inside the reef where we were snorkelling. 'So, this French man was clearly saying, "Dont go swimming" and Hammond was saying "I like to go snorkelling on Wednesdays."' Jeremy continued: 'Half of the worlds shark attacks are off Reunion and we went swimming there like idiots. 'Everyone on the beach was staring at us like, "What on earth are they doing...?" And this was all because Richard Hammond thinks he can speak French.' Kate Garraway flashed a hint of her legs outside the Smooth radio studios on Thursday, while wearing a blue midi skirt which had two sexy splits. The 54-year-old looked sensational in the number which she teamed with a simple jumper and ankle boots. The former Strictly contestant looked spectacular as she carried her suitcase to the studio where she presents her show. Breathtaking: Kate Garraway looked sensational as she flaunted her super toned legs in a daring blue split skirt outside Smooth radio Her thick blonde locks were styled into her usual effortless bouncy bob and she completed the look with a sultry smokey eye and nude lip. The star added some height to her look with a pair of black pointed heels. Kate pulled her suitcase along in one hand as she carried a grey tote bag in the other. Kate also carried a turquoise trench coat, perfect for those chilly September evenings. Cheery! Kate had a big smile on her face as she trotted along in a black jumper worn with ankle boots Busy: The Power Of Hope author was all smiles as she entered the building ready for her radio stint The Power Of Hope author was all smiles as she entered the building ready for her radio stint. Kate, who praised the NHS during lockdown has recently been working with Disney and Make-A-Wish UK. She hopes to make 'families dreams come true' on her most recent project which will see her work alongside Loose Women presenter, Frankie Bridge. Keeping warm: Kate wore a turquoise trench coat to complement her look Kate said everything nurses do is 'utterly breath-taking' as she appeared at The Sun's Who Cares Wins Awards, which aired on Channel 4. Taking to the stage to present the award for Best Nurse, Kate first gave an update on husband Derek's health when awards host Davina McCall asked her: 'Kate, I would love to ask on behalf of all of us, how is Derek doing?' Derek is recovering from Covid-19 and still requires round-the-clock care. Grateful: Kate Garraway paid tribute to nurses and gave an update on husband Derek at the Who Cares Wins Awards on Sunday Kate replied: 'He's had a good day today, we did some exercises together before I came out. A day at a time, but today's a good day. Thank you for asking, that's really kind of you.' Ahead of presenting the award for Best Nurse, Kate, who was also a judge for The Sun's Who Cares Wins Awards, said: 'I'm here to talk about nurses. I mean, where do you begin, there is absolutely no doubt that everything nurses do every day is utterly breath-taking. 'But sometimes it's the little moments of thoughtfulness that make all the difference and it's one of those that's lead to tonight's recipient being nominated.' Fighter: Derek is recovering from Covid-19 and still requires round-the-clock care The winner of The Sun's Who Cares Wins Award for Best Nurse was Jackie Brunton, a lead nurse in end of life and bereavement. Elsewhere, David Beckham presented Dr Waheed Arian with the award for Best Doctor, Groundbreaking Discovery/Pioneer was awarded to the Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine team and The Caroline Flack Mental Health Hero Award was an accolade picked up by Charmaine George. The Sun's star-studded Who Cares Wins Awards took place on Tuesday at London's Roundhouse. It was attended by the Duke of Cambridge and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as celebrities including Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster, Gary Lineker, Frankie Bridge, Steph McGovern and Kadeena Cox. Recognition: The Sun's star-studded Who Cares Wins Awards took place on Tuesday at London's Roundhouse Achievement: The winner of The Sun's Who Cares Wins Award for Best Nurse was Jackie Brunton, a lead nurse in end of life and bereavement Beaming: The GMB star's heartfelt speech comes after she picked up the National Television Award for Authored Documentary at the O2 Arena in London for Finding Derek Presented by Davina McCall, the awards celebrated and thanked the NHS and healthcare heroes, key workers and ordinary people who care for us. Awards given out on the night, included Best Doctor, Best Nurse, 999 Hero and Ultimate Lifesaver. The GMB star's heartfelt speech comes after she picked up the National Television Award for Authored Documentary at the O2 Arena in London for Finding Derek - her televised account of Derek's ongoing battle against COVID-19. Finding Derek became ITV's most-watched factual programme in three years, after 4.5 million viewers tuned into the moving programme when it aired in March Daniel Craig has been appointed an Honorary Commander by the Royal Navy. The 53-year-old actor said he was 'truly privileged and honored' to have been given the title, which awards him the same rank as his most famous character, James Bond. He said: 'I am truly privileged and honored to be appointed the rank of Honorary Commander in the senior service.' Impressive: Daniel Craig has been appointed an Honorary Commander by the Royal Navy - pictured on Wednesday First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the Royal Navy - who worked closely with Daniel and the crew on latest Bond movie No Time To Die - said the organization's work was very similar to that done by the suave spy. He said: 'I am delighted to welcome Honorary Commander Daniel Craig to the Royal Navy. 'Our honorary officers act as ambassadors and advocates for the service, sharing their time and expertise to spread the message about what our global, modern, and ready Royal Navy is doing around the world. Old times: The actor is no stranger to boats, having previously used them as screen character James Bond (pictured in 2015 film Spectre) Achievement: The 53-year-old actor said he was 'truly privileged and honored' to have been given the title, which awards him the same rank as his most famous character, James Bond (pictured with First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Tony Radakin) 'Daniel Craig is well known for being Commander Bond for the last fifteen years a naval officer who keeps Britain safe through missions across the globe. That's what the real Royal Navy does every day, using technology and skill the same way as Bond himself.' Craig is keen to support personnel within the Royal Navy, with a particular interest in service families. Radakin added: 'I look forward to him getting to see more of our sailors and marines over the coming months and years.' Ahead of the release of No Time to Die, Daniel came face-to-face with the navy's real-life Commander Bond. Main man: The late, great Sir Sean Connery as James Bond in 1967 film You Only Live Twice No Mr. Bond, I expect you to swim! Sir Roger Moore's seafaring experience was required in 1977 classic The Spy Who Loved Me (pictured with co-stars Barbara Bach and Curt Jurgens) We've been expecting you, Mr. Bond: Pierce Brosnan wore a naval uniform in 1997 blockbuster Tomorrow Never Dies Lieutenant Commander Frances Bond said: 'I really enjoyed speaking to Daniel Craig and the rest of the cast. It was fascinating to hear their perspectives on working with the armed forces and learning a bit about the world of Hollywood.' Craig's appointment to the rank reflects his personal support for UK armed forces and links it with the legacy created through the guise of the fictional British secret agent. Navy warship HMS Dragon features in the movie, with the Type 45 destroyer's red dragon emblem on the hull seen cutting through the waves in the latest trailer. All at sea: But Connery looked rather dashing in his naval uniform as James Bond License the thrill: Daniel Craig's Bond used a speedboat while chasing the evil Blofeld across the River Thames in box-office smash Spectre Statement: He said: 'I am truly privileged and honored to be appointed the rank of Honorary Commander in the senior service' Important: First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the Royal Navy - who worked closely with Daniel and the crew on latest Bond movie No Time To Die (pictured) - said the organization's work was very similar to that done by the suave spy Realistic: During production for No Time To Die, filmmakers worked closely with the Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence (Craig is pictured in the upcoming film with co-star Ana de Armas) During production for No Time To Die, filmmakers worked closely with the Royal Navy and Ministry of Defence. As well as HMS Dragon's cameo, the RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire was used as a backdrop in the film, standing in for a Nato airbase in Norway where Bond joins MI6 allies and later boards a C-17 Globemaster. Meanwhile, the Army supplied troops from the Household Cavalry. They offered their time at a pivotal moment in their calendar, just before the Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace. End of an era: It comes after Daniel bid farewell to his role as James Bond, and the cast and crew he got to know along the way, in an emotional video shared to Twitter on Friday It comes after Daniel bid farewell to his role as James Bond, and the cast and crew he got to know along the way, in an emotional video shared to Twitter on Friday. In the clip, which was reportedly recorded on the set of No Time To Die in 2019, the star was shown baring his emotions to the feature's team while expressing his gratitude for their support. Craig has been involved with the long-running spy movie series ever since 2005 when he made his debut as the titular character in Casino Royale. During his speech, Craig, who looked suave in a crisp white dress shirt, a tailored black suit and bow tie, pointed out that many of the crew members in attendance had collaborated with him in all of his Bond movies and understood his views about them. He remarked, 'A lot of people here worked on five pictures with me, and I know there's a lot of things said about what I think about these films or all of those, whatever.' The Logan Lucky actor then noted that what made working on the Bond films worth the effort to him was the chance to see his longtime collaborators and friends. 'I've loved every single second of these movies, and especially this one, because I've gotten up every morning and I've had the chance to work with you guys,' he expressed. Craig finished the speech by proclaiming that being able to work with the same crew members on all of his Bond movies 'has been one of the greatest honors of my life.' He appeared emotional, placing his hand on his heart as he looked around to his crew members, and at one stage looked to fight back tears. In No Time To Die, Bond - played for the final time by Craig - has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. Britney Spears' fiancee has called out Netflix over the documentary about the pop star's conservatorship as he believes the profits should go to her legal defense. The major streaming service took to their Instagram on Wednesday to post the explosive first trailer for Britney Vs. Spears and the 27-year-old Iranian-American model could be seen in the comments defending his famous partner. Asghari wrote: 'I hope the profit from these docs go toward fighting agains[t] injustice #freebritney.' Standing by her: Britney Spears ' fiancee has called out Netflix over the documentary about the pop star's conservatorship as he believes the profits should go to her legal defense He then backed up an outspoken Britney fan's comment with a 100percent emoji who wrote: 'How much money is being made by third parties from this documentary leveraging Britney's personal story and its value in the media? 'There needs to be transparency about how or whether the filmmakers are profiting from this doc, or if they are donating their fees to Britney's legal defense, or to legal defense funds to aid those who do not have the financial resources to fight against conservatorships. Even if it is in support of freeing Britney, this appears that it could be exploitative.' The last few weeks have had several ups and downs as Sam and 39-year-old Spears announced their engagement on September 13. However on Wednesday it was reported that the pop star's legal team is moving forward in drawing up a prenuptial agreement. Not happy: The major streaming service took to their Instagram on Wednesday to post the explosive first trailer for Britney Vs. Spears and the 27-year-old Iranian-American model could be seen in the comments defending his famous partner Asghari wrote: 'I hope the profit from these docs go toward fighting agains[t] injustice #freebritney' 'How much money is being made by third parties from this documentary leveraging Britney's personal story and its value in the media?': He then backed up an outspoken Britney fan's comment with a 100percent emoji The legal maneuvering comes just as her lawyers filed the paperwork to have her father, Jamie Spears, removed as her court-appointed conservator Britney's lawyer, Matthew Rosengart, petitioned a Los Angeles court on Wednesday to replace Jamie with a 'temporary, short term' conservator when both sides meet again in court on September 29, while also citing that Jamie has, himself, taken recent steps to end the arrangement. 'To all the reasons why immediate suspension always has been required, we now can add another essential one: as has been publicly reported, Ms. Spears recently became engaged,' Britneys lawyer wrote in his filing that was obtained by E! News. 'With Ms. Spearss consent and pursuant to her instructions, Ms. Spears and the undersigned counsel are in the process of engaging a family law attorney to craft a prenuptial agreement.' 'Ms. Spears and the undersigned counsel are in the process of engaging a family law attorney to craft a prenuptial agreement': On Wednesday it was reported that the pop star's legal team is moving forward in drawing up a prenuptial agreement amid Sam and Britney's engagement, the couple are seen in July 2019 The filing continued, 'The prenuptial agreement process will require communications with and cooperation from the Conservator of her Estate but, as referenced above and well-established in the record, given that Ms. Spears's relationship with that Conservator (her father) is broken, Mr. Spears's continued involvement would impede the ability to negotiate and consummate a contract that all can agree is in Ms. Spears's best interests.' Rosengart went on to write that he believes the conservatorship should be 'completely and inevitably terminated this fall.' Meanwhile, the newly released trailer which Asghari commented on featured Spears pleading for freedom from the decade-plus conservatorship she's been under. 'I just want my life back,' she told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny earlier this year during a phoned-in testimony. 'I've worked my whole life. I don't owe these people anything.' Britney has been under a court order for 13 years where her dad has held the power over all of her personal and financial decisions following her multiple involuntary holds in psychiatric hospitals. 'Britney told her lawyer that her father threatened to take away her kids,' according to The Sun, with the new doc set for release on Tuesday, Sept. 28, the day before her next big court date where she will battle against her father, Jamie, to end the conservatorship. Me Against the Music: Meanwhile, the newly released trailer which Asghari commented on featured Spears pleading for freedom from the decade-plus conservatorship she's been under The last time Spears spoke directly to the judge was in May 2019, but the court was closed to the public and her testimony was sealed, and details of her mental health have never been disclosed. Directed by filmmaker Erin Lee Carr, the project has reportedly been in the works for more than one year. 'I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does,' her recording echoed in the background of clips through the years. 'It's been 13 years and it's enough.' 'Britney never had one person she could trust,' Adnan Ghalib said in an interview. 'Not Mom, not Dad.' One expert weighed in: 'Britney had a fear that her family would barge in and take everything.' Stronger: Britney has been under a court order for 13 years where her father has held the power over all of her personal and financial decisions following her multiple involuntary holds in psychiatric hospitals 'Britney never had one person she could trust,' Adnan Ghalib said in an interview. 'Not Mom, not Dad' Deep dive: Directed by filmmaker Erin Lee Carr, the project has reportedly been in the works for more than one year and blends archival footage with updated court room docs She began dating Adnan, a photographer, during the height of her mental health issues in 2007, a relationship that only lasted one year until she filed a restraining order against him. Carr and journalist Jenny Eliscu read through legal documents to piece together Britney's story and her fight to regain control of her life. 'Someone very close to the conservatorship leaked me this confidential report,' a woman echoed while scouring through a digital file. Tough spot: Carr and journalist Jenny Eliscu read through legal documents to piece together Britney's story and her fight to regain control of her life On her own: Britney sat behind the wheel of a white convertible in one scene, a rare sighting from the popstar who was at one point banned from driving 'The world knows Britney Spears: performer, artist, icon. But in the last few years, her name has been publicly tied to another, more mysterious term: conservatorship,' the Netflix synopsis said 'It shows Britneys life without utilizing the traumatic images that have previously defined her' 'Someone very close to the conservatorship leaked me this confidential report,' a woman echoed while scouring through a digital file 'What was going on inside the conservatorship and why was she still in one if she was "okay,"' another voice asked. 'The world knows Britney Spears: performer, artist, icon. But in the last few years, her name has been publicly tied to another, more mysterious term: conservatorship,' the Netflix synopsis said. 'Britney vs Spears tells the explosive story of Britneys life and her public and private search for freedom. Featuring years-long investigative work, exclusive interviews and new documents, this Netflix feature film paints a thorough portrait of the pop stars trajectory from girl next door to a woman trapped by fame and family and her own legal status. It shows Britneys life without utilizing the traumatic images that have previously defined her.' Since her shocking testimony, Britney's court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham, resigned after failing to file paperwork to end the conservatorship. And just the day before, Britney's longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, resigned saying he was no longer needed. Her new attorney, Mathew S. Rosengart, filed documents Wednesday to end the conservatorship without a psychiatric evaluation and put a plan in place to 'completely and inevitably' end the legal arrangement this fall. Advertisement Jessica Chastain looked a vision on Thursday as she arrived for the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. The 44-year-actress made an elegant arrival as she sported a white dress for the big day, which had gold jewels emblazoned on the collar, sleeves and pockets. The successful star - renowned for her roles in films with feminist themes - was bound to turn heads at Maria Cristina Hotel as she stopped to wave at onlookers. Gorgeous: Jessica Chastain was a vision in white and gold as she made a dazzling entrance for the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain on Thursday The Golden Globe winner boosted her svelte frame with classy gold heels, showcasing her keen eye for coordination. Her gorgeous auburn locks were swept into a beautiful up-do, which was particularly noticeable as she stepped out of her taxi. The California native applied her makeup naturally which contributed to her overall glow. Big name: The successful star is renowned for her roles in films with feminist themes Stepping out: The 44-year-old sported a white dress for the big day, which had gold jewels emblazoned on the collar, sleeves and pockets Turning heads: The Golden Globe winner boosted her svelte frame with classy gold heels Big day: Jessica's gorgeous auburn locks were swept into a beautiful up-do Jessica didn't refrain from stopping for several photo opportunities and even looked like she was greeted by eager fans. The Miss Julie star looked in high spirits as she beamed at the cameras, a slick of pale pink lipstick on her pout. The Eyes of Tammy Faye is the actress' latest project, with its European premiere forming part of the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival's schedule. Glowing: Jessica didn't refrain from stopping for many a photo opportunity Latest work: The Eyes of Tammy Faye is the actress' latest project, with its European premiere part of the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival's schedule Film festival: The American biographical film, based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, depicts the history of controversial televangelists Tammy Faye Bakker and Jim Bakker Talented: Not only does Jessica star in the film, she also produced it Famous: It looked as though she was greeted by eager onlookers The American biographical film, based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, depicts the history of controversial televangelists Tammy Faye Bakker and Jim Bakker. Not only does Jessica star in the film, she also produced it, showcasing her multitude of talents. The annual international film festival has been taking place in the Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastian and runs from 17-25 September. Scott Disick reportedly wants to smooth things over with his ex-girlfriend Amelia Hamlin but the 20-year-old model is going full-on Taylor Swift saying they are never, ever, ever getting back together. The 38-year-old Talentless owner has been reaching out to Amelia in the hopes of reconciling, a source told E! News but his attempts have been rebuffed, the outlet reported on Thursday. Amelia and Scott were first romantically linked last October, when she was just 19, but called things off recently. Regrets: Scott Disick reportedly wants to smooth things over with his ex-girlfriend Amelia Hamlin but the 20-year-old model isn't interested, a source told E! News on Thursday According to an insider, Scott has tried to reconnect with Hamlin 'a few times' since their split earlier this month. 'He does miss her a lot and regrets what went down in their final days of the relationship,' the source told E! News. The young daughter of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin, however, is having none of it. 'Amelia is definitely done with him,' the source added. 'He does miss her a lot and regrets what went down in their final days of the relationship,' the source told E! News. 'Amelia is definitely done with him,' the source added. The burgeoning fashion star made a veiled comment on social media about her recent headlines on Thursday, amid walking in runway shows abroad. 'Imagine giving a f**k about what other people think,' she wrote on her Instagram Story. Exactly who decided to pull the plug on the relationship changes based on who is asked. Several sources have reported that Amelia was the one to end things. However, a source told TMZ that Scott is the one who made the call to split as he did not see a long-term future with Amelia as she is 18 years his junior, and didn't want to keep 'wasting time.' Over it: The burgeoning fashion star made a veiled comment on social media about her recent headlines on Thursday, amid walking in runway shows abroad An insider told E! News that the couple 'needed a break from one another, that was clear,' before adding: 'They are in different places and trying to figure out if it's time to move on and if they are really done.' Meanwhile on August 30, Scott sent Kourtney Kardashian's ex Younes Benjima a direct message about her PDA-packed behavior with boyfriend Travis Barker. 'Yo is this chick ok!??? Broo like what is this. In the middle of Italy,' the Talentless designer wrote as he sent a photo of Kourtney kissing and straddling the Blink-182 drummer on an inflatable boat.' Split: Scott and Amelia - who is nearly 20 years younger - dated for about a year but broke up earlier this month amid controversy between Disick and Kourtney Kardashian Younes who dated the POOSH founder from 2016 to 2018 leaked the message on Instagram and had words to say about Scott. 'Keep the same energy you had about me publicly, privately,' the model wrote as he shared a grab of the story, after responding to Scott: 'Doesn't matter to me as long as she's happy PS: I ain't your bro.' After the message was leaked, a source told ET that Amelia was 'annoyed' by the situation but that they were 'still together'. Scott shares his three children, Mason, 11, Penelope, nine, and Reign, six, with the eldest Kardashian sibling. Heather Locklear shared a sexy throwback of her fiance Chris Heisser, who she first dated in the late 1970s at Newbury Park High School. To mark her other half's 60th birthday, the Melrose Place alum, 59, posted a shirtless photo of Heisser that showed off his chiseled chest, in which he appeared to be in his twenties. 'Happy birthday my love ' Locklear captioned the slideshow, which also included a recent image of him laying down on a lounge chair outside. Throwback! Heather Locklear shared a sexy throwback of her fiance Chris Heisser, who she first dated in the late 1970's at Newbury Park High School In the second snap, he was wearing a plain white tank top, grey sweatpants and was snuggled up with Locklear's beloved Maltese named Mister. DailyMail.com broke the exciting news last June that three years after they rekindled their on-again, off-again relationship, they became engaged. As teens, the high school sweethearts graduated together in 1979, and were even voted Prom King and Queen. Sweet: To mark her other half's 60th birthday, the Melrose Place alum, 59, posted a shirtless photo of Heisser that showed off his chiseled chest, in which he appeared to be in his twenties Cozy: In the second snap, he was wearing a plain white tank top, grey sweatpants and was snuggled up with Locklear's beloved Maltese Heather then went on to marry rockers Tommy Lee, 58, from 1986 to 1993 and Richie Sambora, 61, from 1994 to 2007, with whom she has a daughter, Ava, 23. Earlier this week, Locklear gave her followers a look at a few early birthday gifts she received ahead of her own 60th birthday on Saturday. 'Thank you to my beautiful Christina and Aaron who always have my back. I love you both and your babies,' she captioned a video of a basket full of customized Coronado Cookies from Kristine Carlson and Aaron Boyleston. So in love: DailyMail.com broke the exciting news last June that three years after they rekindled their on-again, off-again relationship, she accepted his proposal; pictured last year Lots of history: As teens, the high school sweethearts graduated together in 1979, and were even voted Prom King and Queen Locklear's next gig is starring in Lifetime's original movie Don't Sweat The Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story. While speaking to reporters during Lifetime's Fall Movies press event earlier this month, Locklear admitted she was 'fearful' of her return to TV after a four-year hiatus from acting. Locklear was memorably on TV's Melrose Place from 1993 until 1999. She also popped back on the new version of the show from 2009 until 2010. They tied the knot a second time in 2019 to make their union legal and have even purchased a house. Now Vanderpump Rules stars Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney are looking towards the next chapter in their lives together - children. In a sneak peek from the upcoming season nine season premiere, Schwartz, 38, reveals he and Katie, 34, actively tried making a baby together. 'We were really working on it': Tom Schwartz revealed he and wife Katie Maloney were actively working on starting a family during the pandemic 'During quarantine, Katie and I decided to really put a concerted effort into trying to make a baby,' Tom revealed. 'There was a two-month window in which we were really working on it.' Should the couple welcome a child together, it'll be the fourth baby to join the Vanderpump Rules family after stars Lala Kent, Scheana Shay, and Stassi Schroeder gave birth this past year. Scenes show Scheana doting on her newborn daughter Summer Moon Honey Davies while Lala drinks her own breastmilk. 'Pretty good actually,' she remarks. Oh baby! Scheana Shay doted on her daughter Summer Moon Honey Davies 'Pretty good actually': Lala Kent drank her own breastmilk Another baby in the works: Schwartz and Tom Sandoval have also been working on a new bar The baby isn't the only thing Schwartz has been working on. In the sneak peek, Tom and his business partner Tom Sandoval discuss their new bar with their business partner Lisa Vanderpump, who was not involved in the project. Schwartz admits to Lisa they are 'still working' on the name of their bar, but in a confessional his business partner declares they have already decided on one. 'Actually we have settled on a name and it's Schwartz and Sandy's,' Sandoval admits. Chit chat: In the sneak peek, Tom and his business partner Tom Sandoval discuss their new joint with their business partner Lisa Vanderpump 'It's Schwartz and Sandy's': Tom reveals the controversial name he decided on for their bar 'I think it's horrible!' Katie admitted to Ariana Madix she and Tom were not a fan of the name Sandoval had selected Turns out not everyone loves the name. Katie admits to Sandoval's girlfriend Ariana Madix: 'Your Tom really likes the name that he came up with, my Tom hates it!... I think it's horrible!' 'Yeah, they are on opposite sides,' Ariana said. 'They are on opposite sides': Sandoval's girlfriend Madix admitted the name was a touchy subject 'I lost my boner!' Katie blasted the name 'Schartz and Sandy's' in a confessional 'You want to make it like psychedelic, funky, fresh, lights, textures, and then you want to call it Schwartz and Sandy's. I lost my boner!' Katie admitted in a confessional. Fans also learn James Kennedy, who has struggled with alcohol, is approaching two years of sobriety. Raquel Leviss, his now fiance, reveals to Lisa that James is two months away from the big milestone - however does regularly smoke marijuana. 'I guess you can say James is a California sober!' Raquel says in a confessional. Season nine of Vanderpump Rules will premiere on Bravo on September 28 at 9/8c. Kate Hudson was seen browsing women's clothing store Zimmerman on Wednesday in Los Angeles. The 42-year-old beauty cut a casual figure in a patterned romper with spaghetti straps, and a wide-leg cut. The newly-engaged mother-of-three looked chic in the back-baring number. Shopping trip: Kate Hudson was seen browsing women's clothing store Zimmerman on Wednesday in Los Angeles For the solo shopping trip the blonde actress scooped her hair up into a messy topknot with a black scrunchie. Some flyaways fell at the nape of her neck and over her ears. The How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days star protected her eyes in a pair of tortoise Ray-Ban classic Wayfarer sunglasses. She sported a navy blue and white-speckled face mask. Flowy: The 42-year-old beauty cut a casual figure in a patterned romper with spaghetti straps, and a wide-leg cut The Fabletics designer slipped her feet into beige criss-cross slides, revealing a deep purple pedicure that matched her manicure. Hudson carried a black tote bag over one shoulder as she fingered through the retailer's offerings. Just weeks ago the film star became engaged to her partner Danny Fujikawa, with whom she shares 2-year-old daughter Rani Rose. Also on Wednesday afternoon, the entrepreneur shared a snapshot to Instagram cuddling up to her mini-me. Showing skin: The newly-engaged mother-of-three looked chic in the back-baring number The Hollywood vet announced her engagement to the former musician on Instagram with a photo of the pair post-proposal overlooking the ocean. Kate and Danny first met nearly two decades ago through his step-sisters and her best friends, Sara and Erin Foster, but only officially became an item in 2017. The daughter of Goldie Hawn also has sons Ryder Robinson, and Bingham Hawn Bellamy from previous relationships. Mom and daughter: This week the entrepreneur shared a snapshot to Instagram cuddling up to her mini-me Soon-to-be wed: The Hollywood vet announced her engagement to the former musician on Instagram with a photo of the pair post-proposal overlooking the ocean She never fails to pull out all the style stops when stepping out for red carpet events. And Katherine Ryan put on a busty display in a plunging muted green ruffled dress at the premiere of Jodie Comer's latest film Last Duel on Friday. The comedian, 38, looked stunning in the elegant maxi dress as she posed confidently with her hand on her hip ahead of the screening in Leicester Square. Wow: Katherine Ryan put on a busty display in a plunging muted green ruffled dress at the premiere of Jodie Comer's latest film Last Duel on Friday Katherine put on a confident display in the scoop neck dress and completed her look with a pair of strappy black stilettos. She swept her caramel tresses up into a low bun with a dramatic middle parting and secured the style with layers of hairspray. The Duchess star accessorised with a pair of gorgeous pearl drop earrings but otherwise let the statement outfit speak for itself. Katherine accentuated her natural beauty with a subtle smokey eye makeup look and a sweep of bronzer across her cheeks. Chic: The comedian looked stunning in the elegant maxi dress as she posed confidently with her hand on her hip ahead of the screening in Leicester Square Stunning: Katherine put on a confident display in the scoop neck dress and completed her look with a pair of strappy black stilettos Flawless: She swept her caramel tresses up into a low bun with a dramatic middle parting and secured the style with layers of hairspray Katherine looked upbeat at the event she was joined by her partner Bobby Koostra. The comedian's teenage sweetheart, who she has been married to for two years, cut a dapper figure in a relaxed fit grey suit, which he layered over a white T-shirt. Bobby opted for a laidback look as he completed his ensemble with a pair of box fresh white trainers. Upbeat: The Duchess star accessorised with a pair of gorgeous pearl drop earrings but otherwise let the statement outfit speak for itself as she joked around on the red carpet Loved-up: Katherine accentuated her natural beauty with a subtle smokey eye makeup look and a sweep of bronzer across her cheeks as she was joined by her partner Bobby Koostra Katherine and Bobby stepped out to celebrate the release of Jodie Comer's latest film the Last Duel. The Killing Eve actress stars alongside Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Adam Driver in the historical drama directed by Ridley Scott which premiered at The Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Jodie took to the red carpet at the premiere in a dusty pink oversized blazer and turned heads in her glitzy attire with her blonde tresses neatly curled. Grinning from ear-to-ear, the Liverpudlian looked every inch the stunning star as she arrived for the big screening. Leading lady: Jodie Comer took to the red carpet at the Last Duel premiere in a dusty pink oversized blazer and turned heads in her glitzy attire with her blonde tresses neatly curled Set in 14th century France, the Last Duel follows Jodie's character Marguerite de Carrouges after she is sexually assaulted by her husband's best friend. Her husband Jean (Matt) challenges his friend Jacques (Adam) to a state-sponsored trail by combat after she confides in him. They believe the battle, the last lawful duel in French history, will determine by God's hand whether or not Marguerite is telling the truth. The film is told from the perspectives of each of the three characters, with Jodie telling Variety the movie will challenge audiences pre-conceived ideas of the role women had in society during that period. She said: 'I think, for me, what was the most interesting [thing] about this script, first and foremost, was the opportunity to give this woman a voice. 'I think we have a tendency when we see these kind of stories announced, it's like, "Oh, she's going to be the wife; this is about the men and they're fighting." 'And everyone has these preconceived ideas about a place which a woman holds within these stories. And so it was great to challenge that, you know?' Jodie added that one of the films central themes - believing a woman who says she has been sexually assaulted - is still 'so relevant' today. Advertisement Sharon Stone led the red carpet glamour on Thursday evening as the south of France played host to the 2021 Monte-Carlo Gala for Planetary Health. The Hollywood actress, 63, looked stunning in a dramatic lilac gown complete with elaborate train as she greeted guests at the Prince's Palace of Monaco ahead of this year's event. Stone was making an appearance at the event following the tragic death of her young nephew, River, who passed away in August aged 11 months. High glamour: Sharon Stone led the red carpet glamour on Thursday evening as the south of France played host to the 2021 Monte-Carlo Gala for Planetary Health The actress added to her look with a smart black leather clutch-bag, while matching strappy heels rounded things off. Evidently delighted to be in attendance, Stone offered a beaming smile as she made her way into the charity auction, presided over by Prince Albert II of Monaco. The American star was joined by a host of special guests on the night, among them Orlando Bloom, who was making a rare public appearance without fiancee Katy Perry. The British actor looked dapper in a black tuxedo as he joined Stone, Prince Albert and Caroline, Princess of Hanover for a group photo. Pretty in purple: Her dramatic gown courted attention from those in attendance Tragic loss: Sharon's nephew River died last month after being found in his crib with total organ failure Pleased: Evidently delighted to be in attendance, Stone offered a beaming smile as she made her way into the charity auction, presided over by Prince Albert II of Monaco Wow! Sharon's dress had a long train as she took to the 'step and repeat' for some pictures Elsewhere Swedish model Victoria Silvstedt ensured she claimed her own share of the spotlight in an ethereal baby pink gown and matching cape while making her entrance. Victoria, 47, showcased the dress' flowy detailing as she posed on the marble floor. Adding to the elegant look with silver strappy heels, Victoria beamed a wide smile, a hint of pink lipstick on her pout. The Monte-Carlo Gala is defined as 'an unique opportunity to act for the Ocean, the Earth and Humanity'. Say cheese: (L-R) Princess of Hanover Caroline, Prince Albert II of Monaco and Sharon Stone posed together on the red carpet Main man: Orlando Bloom shook hands with Caroline, Princess of Hanover as he joined them for a photo Greetings: Sharon waved to onlookers as she made her way into the Royal venue on Wednesday Don't mind me: Swedish model Victoria Silvstedt ensured she claimed her own share of the spotlight in an ethereal baby pink gown and matching cape while making her entrance Pictured L-R: Pom Klementieff, Princess of Hanover Caroline, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Sharon Stone, Orlando Bloom, Melanie Laurent, Gaspard Ulliel and guests on the red carpet Sharing a joke: Orlando chatted with Sharon during the photocall Solo: Bloom was making a rare public appearance without fiancee Katy Perry Smart: The British actor looked dapper in a black tuxedo Pretty in pink: Adding to the elegant look with silver strappy heels, Victoria beamed a wide smile, a hint of pink lipstick on her pout Prince Albert's wife Princess Charlene remained in abroad as rumours of a rift continue to swirl. The Olympian, 43, has spent the past several months in South Africa being treated for an ear and throat infection she contracted in May, following a sinus lift and bone graft procedure she'd undergone prior to her arrival in preparation for dental implants. As a result, the mother-of-two missed her 10 year wedding anniversary and is not expected to return to the principality until October, after undergoing a 'four-hour operation under general anaesthesia' in August - although it was not made clear whether this was linked to the sinus infection. Despite Charlene being admitted to hospital earlier this month after a 'sudden collapse' rumours are rife that a rift with Prince Albert, rather than health issues, is what's keeping her away from Monaco. No-show: Prince Albert's wife Princess Charlene remained in abroad as rumours of a rift continue to swirl On the arm: The father-of-two linked arms with Sharon as they posed together on the white carpet at the prestigious event The father-of-two walked the red carpet with Sharon Stone and Princess Caroline of Hanover. Hosted by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the annual event gathers leading philanthropists, talents and scientists to join forces and launch the charity's initiatives to bridge the widening gap between health and the environment. The 2021 Monte-Carlo Gala for Planetary Health aims to highlight the idea that our future is dependent on healthy ecosystems. Hosted by the Princes foundation, it has gathered talents, philanthropists, decision makers and scientists to discuss the challenges the planets environment faces. The night is usually auction filled with many collectables, memorabilia and fine art from some of the most high-profile artists across the globe going on sale. Proceeds will be used to help the Foundation's initiatives, which includes the development of marine protected areas, protection of threatened marine species, the mitigation of the impact of climate change and acidification on the ocean, as well as the fight against plastic pollution. The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation was set up in 2006 with the aim to protect the environment and promote sustainable development at a local and global scale. In blue: Brazilian model Sofia Resing stunned in a semi-sheer shimmering number Model behaviour: Sabelli Fontana posed in a slick black cocktail dress Dramatic: Dite Anata posed in a daring black ensemble Brazilian beauty: Marianne Fonseca Prado looked ethereal in a sheer white dress It has 10 international branches across the globe, including in France, America, the UK, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Spain and China. It comes as a friend said Charlene, who hasn't been seen in Monaco since January, sees herself as a 'protector of the heirs' and not a royal. Speaking to People Magazine, a source close to the former Olympic swimmer said: 'She sees herself as the protector of the heirs, as opposed to the princess of Monaco'. The friend added Charlene 'only felt fully part of the family' after welcoming the twins which gave her 'a kind of security'. 'She's incredibly involved and protective... in a very loving and providing kind of way, shunning other activities to be with them and making sure that they're kind of living a semi-normal life,' they added. Standing out: Monica Bacardi (L) made a statement in a tiered red gown, while Melanie Laurent's (R) frock boasted an unexpected twist with a green waist belt Norwegian model: Frida Aasen looked glam in a textured cocktail dress Dutch top model: Cindy Kimberly looked flawless in green Oh! Shamed British businessman Sir Philip Green and wife Tina Green made an appearance Dusky: Sara Faraj (L) and Jessica Michel (R) opted for dusky dresses with small trains Statement style: Pom Klementieff (L & R) commanded attention in a violent gown, while Tatiana Korsakova (C) sizzled in red Meanwhile, Prince Albert has been preparing for his wife's return home after spending most of 2021 apart. In a previous interview with People, he said Charlene was ready to come home and has been joking that she wants to clandestinely hop on a ship to make her way to Monaco. Meanwhile, actress Sharon took to Instagram earlier this month with a poignant message in memory of her late nephew River. She captioned a shot of a room, 'The stages of grief,' sharing an image of a couch in what appeared to be a hotel room with a trio pictures on the wall. The Academy Award-nominated actress received kind words of support from notable names including Naomi Campbell, Leslie Jordan, Kelly Ripa, singer Michelle Williams and Sheila E. The latest: Sharon took to Instagram with a poignant message in memory of her late nephew River Tough times: Stone, snapped in Montreal in 2013, is aunt to the late River via her younger brother Patrick Stone and his wife Tasha 'Im so sorry!!' Williams wrote, while Campbell said, 'Beyond words ... praying for God to lift [and] hold you up @sharonstone my sincere and deepest condolences to you [and] your family.' Stone posted a video memorial of her late nephew scored to the Eric Clapton song Tears in Heaven with the caption, 'River William Stone Sept. 8, 2020 - Aug. 30, 2021.' The Basic Instinct star took to social media with an image of River as he was hospitalized with the support of multiple tubes and wires. The Sliver actress captioned the shot, 'My nephew and godson River Stone was found in his crib w total organ failure today. Please pray for him. We need a miracle.' Support: The Academy Award-nominated actress received kind words of support from notable names including Naomi Campbell, Leslie Jordan, Kelly Ripa, singer Michelle Williams and Sheila E Tragedy: The star's younger brother Patrick Stone and wife Tasha, who are River's parents, made the tragic announcement via CORE, the Center for Organ Recovery and Education The star's younger brother Patrick Stone and wife Tasha, who are River's parents, made the tragic announcement earlier this week via CORE, the Center for Organ Recovery and Education. 'He was our tiny jokester, our water baby, our little foodie,' the family said in a statement to the organization. 'Now, River has also become a hero. In death, he made a far greater contribution to this world than most of us could ever hope to ourselves. 'And he proved that the shortest of lives can also be the most meaningful ones. As an organ donor, River saved three lives.' The family said 'there will never be a day, hour, a minute or even a second that we won't miss our sweet baby.' Stone is mother to three teen sons - 21-year-old Roan, 16-year-old Laird and 15-year-old Quinn. Katie Holmes cut a stylish figure as she strolled through the streets of the Big Apple on Wednesday. At one point the the 42-year-old actress was seen chatting up a male companion. The mother-of-one wore a sheer, black button up blouse with white polka dots. It featured ruffle trimming on the sleeves. Spotted and polka dotted: Katie Holmes was seen on Wednesday walking through the Big Apple A black bra could be seen underneath. The Dawson's Creek alum made use of half the buttons and tucked it into a pair of light blue bootcut jeans. Katie held her red-encased phone in one hand and carried a black bag over one shoulder. She walked intently, wearing a white disposable face mask over her visage. The show business vet's dark brown hair was pulled into a messy bun that sat at the back of her head. Fun fashion: The mother-of-one wore a sheer, black button up blouse with white polka dots that featured ruffle trimming on the sleeves Holmes wore tiny earrings in her ears and sported a pink manicure on her natural nails. The Secret: Dare to Dream actress walked along the New York City streets in a pair of black leather cowboy boots. Her anonymous male friend had on maroon pants and olive green New Balance sneakers with blue laces. He sported a light blue shirt jacket with its collar turned up. On his face there was a forest green face mask with black straps. Unknown friend: At one point the the 42-year-old actress was seen chatting up a male companion The fellow wore a dark colored, patterned ball cap and close-cropped greying hair could be seen poking out underneath it. The man also had a backpack on his person. He held up his hand, gesturing while he spoke, as Holmes seemed to be listening earnestly. Another look: Also on Wednesday, the star was spotted in a more dressed down look Also on Wednesday, the star was spotted in a more dressed down look. The brunette beauty wore paint-splattered dark grey joggers with a blue, vintage Ramones t-shirt. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail and she carried a navy blue tote bag over her shoulder as she walked with her phone in hand. The Toledo, Ohio native was seen in a pair of white New Balance sneakers and striped socks. Carefree: Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail and she carried a navy blue tote bag over her shoulder as she walked with her phone in hand Katie recently completed work on a yet-to-be-titled TV movie from writers Ilene Chaiken and Melissa Scrivner-Love. The story will follow an FBI special agent who tries to rebuild her career after an illicit affair damages her professional reputation. Another recent project, also untitled, is a romantic drama following two strangers - both in bad relationships - who end up at the same Airbnb in upstate New York. She is a multi-talented star, with her expertise ranging from modelling to singing. And Victoria Silvstedt, 47, looked pretty in pink on Thursday as she attended the Monte Carlo Gala for Planetary Health. Wowing in a princess-styled ball gown, the Sweden native looked glowing at Prince's Palace of Monaco. Simply stunning: Victoria Silvstedt looked pretty in pink as she wowed in a princess-styled ball gown at the Monte Carlo Gala for Planetary Health on Thursday The blonde beauty showcased the dress' flowy detailing as she posed on the marble floor. Adding to the elegant look with silver strappy heels, Victoria beamed a wide smile, a hint of pink lipstick on her pout. The Monte-Carlo Gala is defined as 'an unique opportunity to act for the Ocean, the Earth and Humanity.' Pretty in pink: Adding to the elegant look with silver strappy heels, Victoria beamed a wide smile, a hint of pink lipstick on her pout High glamour: Sharon Stone was also in attendance, looking stunning in a dramatic lilac gown Sharon Stone was also among the stars in attendance. The Hollywood actress looked stunning in a dramatic lilac gown complete with train as she greeted onlookers ahead of this year's event. Sharon, 63, was making an appearance at the event following the tragic death of her young nephew, River, who passed away in August aged 11-months. Evidently delighted to be in attendance, Stone offered a beaming smile as she made her way into the charity auction, presided over by Prince Albert II of Monaco. The American star was joined by a host of special guests on the night, among them Orlando Bloom, who was making a rare public appearance without fiancee Katy Perry. The British actor looked dapper in a black tuxedo. He was the son of a billionaire who won the heart of a princess before their untimely and tragic deaths. And Dodi Fayed is expected to play a large part in the next series of The Crown and it was last night claimed that British actor Khalid Abdalla, 39, who starred in the 2007 film The Kite Runner, has been cast in the role. Film producer Dodi, 42, and Diana, 36, were killed when their Mercedes crashed in a tunnel in Paris in 1997. Iconic role: Khalid Abdalla will take on the role of Princess Diana's tragic boyfriend Dodi Fayed in series 5 of The Crown The Crown's producers have not confirmed if the crash itself will be depicted on screen. Post 1997 posed some challenges for the Royal Family, as not only did the Queen have two grieving grandsons to consider, she was also criticised regarding her handling of Dianas death. Palestinian actor Salim Daw, 70, will play Dodis father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed, Variety magazine reported. The Crown series five: Salim Daw, 70, will play Dodis father, former Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, 31, has already been announced as replacing British star Emma Corrin as Diana in the fifth series of the Netflix drama, which is currently being filmed. From her big break in 2013's The Great Gatsby to becoming a household name thanks to 2016 TV series The Night Manager, the star steadily climbed up the ranks of showbusiness to secure the career-making role. The actress said of her casting last year: 'Princess Diana's spirit, her words and her actions live in the hearts of so many. It is my privilege and honour to be joining this masterful series, which has had me absolutely hooked from episode one.' Out with the old... MailOnline takes a look at The Crown's new stars for series five - it was announced that Elizabeth had been cast as Princess Diana last August, and fans of the Netflix show were delight to hear that the Australian actress would be taking on the role Elsewhere, Imelda Staunton will replace Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II. Speaking about joining the hit show, Imelda, 65, admitted she is 'frightened' to take on the Queen Elizabeth role in The Crown. The actress is following on from Claire Foy as well as Olivia, but says she has an 'extra challenge' playing a recent version as it will be fresh in the audiences mind. Her Royal Highness: The very first image of Imelda Staunton in character as Queen Elizabeth II The actress playing Princess Anne in The Crown's fifth season has been revealed as The IT Crowd and Humans star Claudia Harrison. The Thick Of It star and London deli owner Theo Fraser Steele will play Princess Anne's husband Timothy Laurence. James Murray, 46, will take on the role of Prince Andrew, Dominic West is set to play Prince Charles in the final two series of the show, Lesley Manville has been cast as Princess Margaret - and Jonathan Pryce has said he is 'confident' about 'tackling the daunting prospect of portraying Prince Philip'. 'I lost my daddy during COVID': Taking home Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series was Olivia, 47, for her role as Queen Elizabeth II, who revealed her father died from Covid as she paid tribute to him in her acceptance speech The casting update comes after The Crown ruled supreme at the 2021 Emmy Awards with the Netflix drama winning Outstanding Drama Series and Olivia Colman, Josh O'Connor, Gillian Anderson and Tobias Menzies all nabbing trophies. The fan favourite show was the night's biggest winner, with seven awards including a sweep of the dramatic acting categories. The series beat out The Boys, Bridgerton, The Handmaid's Tale, Lovecraft Country, The Mandalorian, Pose, and This Is Us for the accolade. The trophy also gave Netflix its first win in the most elite of Emmy categories. With plenty of national pride and extreme prejudice against the enemy, a casting coup has brought together two Mr Darcys for a Second World War thriller based on an incredible but true story. Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen play two wartime heroes tasked by Winston Churchill to come up with an outlandish plan to hoodwink Hitler. They will star in the film Operation Mincemeat the top secret name given to one of the war's most unlikely escapades. It involved a dead tramp floating in the sea, handcuffed to a briefcase containing classified (and fake) documents about an impending Allied invasion in 1943. The corpse, found by a fisherman off the coast of Spain, was dressed in a Royal Marine officer's uniform. Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen play two wartime heroes tasked by Winston Churchill to come up with an outlandish plan to hoodwink Hitler. They will star in the film Operation Mincemeat the top secret name given to one of the war's most unlikely escapades Bond author Ian Fleming, pictured in uniform when he was an aide to the wartime chief on Naval Intelligence, helped come up with the plan The files, as intended, found their way into Nazi hands and fooled them into thinking Britain was targeting Greece and Sardinia so they diverted soldiers there, clearing a path for the Allies to invade Sicily. If that sounds like a far-fetched plot from the pen of Bond author Ian Fleming... well, he actually helped come up with the plan. Firth, 61, known for his damp-shirted Darcy in the 1995 BBC series of Pride and Prejudice, plays Commander Ewen Montagu, a criminal QC turned naval intelligence officer. Meanwhile, Macfadyen, 46 who starred in the 2005 film of Jane Austen's novel portrays Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley. Chosen for their 'corkscrew minds', they are charged by Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) to conceal the invasion. They set up a team in a tobacco-stained basement under the British Admiralty that became known as 'Room 13'. Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn) recalls the plot of a crime story about a dead body that had been found with fake papers. 'There were a series of deceptions within deceptions,' said Operation Mincemeat director John Madden, whose other movies include Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. 'The extraordinary but true fact is that sitting in the midst of this whole thing is Ian Fleming.' Montagu, Cholmondeley and Fleming persuade top brass that Hitler might take the bait. But first they have to conjure up a credible courier, who obviously has to be long past caring what happened to him. The film revolves around Commander Ewen Montagu (left), a criminal QC turned naval intelligence officer and Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley (right). Chosen for their 'corkscrew minds', they are charged by Churchill to conceal the invasion 'They needed a body that looked as if, when alive, he might have been a British Major,' explained Iain Canning, who produced the film with Kris Thykier. 'Fiction became a pack of lies that was very real.' Montagu and Cholmondeley tour morgues to find the right body, settling upon a Welsh tramp named Glyndwr Michael. 'It's a relatively unknown episode of World War II, unlike Dunkirk and the Normandy landings, because it didn't take place in a theatre of war,' said Madden. He added that he immediately felt the part of Commander Montagu would be perfect for Firth, a close friend. He joked that he hadn't deliberately set out to cast Firth and Macfadyen because they had both played Mr Darcy. 'They're such an odd couple in the story,' said Madden of his two leading men. 'The characters they play have such a difference in temperament and background.' The men may have the rank, said the director, but female characters Hester Leggett (Penelope Wilton) and Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald) play vital roles. Hester in particular ensures that Room 13 runs efficiently. 'She sees everything and knows everything,' said Madden, just as Dame Judi Dench's Queen Elizabeth did in 1998's Shakespeare in Love. Operation Mincemeat, based on Ben Macintyre's non-fiction bestseller, opens in cinemas on January 7 next year. The Many Saints of Newark (15, 120 mins) Rating: Verdict: Powerful Sopranos prequel The hit television drama The Sopranos ran from 1999 to 2007 and ever since has enjoyed that blessed small-screen afterlife of eternal repeats. So how else can its creators capitalise on what, for my money, is the greatest long-running TV drama ever made? The Many Saints Of Newark, a two-hour prequel, is the answer. The film whisks us back in time to a four-year period beginning in 1967, when violent race riots erupted in the New Jersey city of Newark. It introduces us to the generation of mobsters we only ever heard about in the TV series, and explains their formative influence on the young Anthony Soprano. In adulthood, as so gloriously played by the late James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano was the boss of an organised crime family. But fans know the key word in that sentence is not boss, crime or even Soprano, but family. The film whisks us back in time to a four-year period beginning in 1967, when violent race riots erupted in the New Jersey city of Newark Tony was also a husband, a father, a son, an uncle and a nephew, and every one of those relationships came with a whole trailer-load of emotional baggage, unloaded on his long-suffering therapist. The genius of David Chase, who conceived The Sopranos and has co-scripted the film with one of the shows regular writers, Lawrence Konner, was in humanising this bunch of terrifying mobsters, who maimed and murdered with chilling impunity, by giving them the same messy domestic concerns as the rest of us right down to putting the bins out. That brilliant formula, stretched over eight years and 86 episodes, is weakened in a one-off feature format. But if the older, ruthless Tony is a stranger to you, then you wont get much of a kick anyway out of meeting the younger, impressionable Tony. Fans, on the other hand, will appreciate how well Gandolfinis son Michael, who was just 13 when his father died eight years ago, plays the future crime lord as a teenager. Its not just sentimental casting; hes completely convincing. They will rejoice, too, in the portrayals of familiar characters as younger men and women, among them charmless Uncle Junior (Corey Stoll), Tonys monstrous mother Livia (Vera Farmiga), psychopathic Paulie Walnuts (Billy Magnussen) and Silvio Dante (John Magaro), the consigliere with a hairpiece so bad it deserved a concrete overcoat of its own. Moreover, if youre more of a nylon anorak than a concrete overcoat, then you will remember some of the anecdotes about the old days they told in the TV series, which are here brought to life. One of them has Tonys father (Jon Bernthal) firing a bullet through Livias beehive hairdo to shut her up as they drive home from a night out. The films lead character, though, is another man who was dead by the time television took up the story: hot-headed Dickie Moltisanti (the excellent Alessandro Nivola), who was much more of a mentor in Tonys boyhood than either of his parents, and whose son Christopher (Michael Imperioli, contributing here as a beyond-the-grave narrator), duly became Tonys protege. Against the backdrop of the riots, the film explores how Dickie came to take over as boss from his father, Aldo Hollywood Dick Moltisanti, and made his Italian stepmother (Michela De Rossi) his own goomar (Mafia slang, as all Sopranos fans know, for unmarried mistress). In another cute piece of casting, Aldo is played by Ray Liotta. It is one of many conspicuous links with Martin Scorseses 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas, in which Liotta starred. Really, Goodfellas was the crime swamp from which The Sopranos rose, and admirers of both will clock the references. As for the films intriguing title, it refers to the expiation Dickie seeks for at least one of the terrible deeds he commits. He craves salvation even as he tries to strengthen his criminal empire, which is threatened by an African-American former associate, the ambitious Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr). All this unfolds as slickly and compellingly as devotees of the television saga will expect, with a great period soundtrack, not to mention the sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and extreme violence to which we became rather worryingly inured. It wont be for everyone, to put it mildly. But for those who relished and cherished The Sopranos, it hits all the right notes. The Alpinist (12A, 92 mins) Rating: Verdict: Will peak your interest This fascinating documentary tells the story of Marc-Andre Leclerc, an insanely intrepid 23-year-old Canadian climber undaunted by any rock face or, indeed, vertical sheet of ice. Even Alex Honnold, subject of the Oscarwinning Free Solo, tips his cap to Leclerc (left), a maverick alpinist described even by his girlfriend as super socially awkward, who until recently free-climbed the worlds most formidable peaks in almost complete obscurity, doing it not for the kudos, just the very private satisfaction. The film is directed in a spirit of awestruck admiration by climbers Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer, who also narrates. And thats fine, because Leclerc deserves the attention, even if he doesnt always relish it. Mind you, a British audience will be just as intrigued by a talking head here; a gregarious veteran climber from the North of England, still with a broad accent, who is considered the unofficial mayor of the mountain settlement of Squamish in British Columbia, and goes by the curious nickname of Hevy Duty. I want to know more about him. B.V. How Dev put the mist into mysterious The Green Knight (15, 130 minutes) Rating: When a virile but enigmatic young hero sets off on horseback through a medieval England shrouded in mist, youre watching either a cider commercial or yet another interpretation of Arthurian legend. The Green Knight (15, 130 minutes) is the latter. David Lowerys fantasy has been rhapsodically greeted in some quarters, even acclaimed as a masterpiece. It moves far too laboriously to get that kind of lavish endorsement from me, but it does have a good deal going for it, above all its inventive writerdirector, whose 2017 film A Ghost Story really was a small masterpiece. For a man from the American Midwest, Lowery is quite happy to plunder stories from this side of the Atlantic. His next film is Peter Pan & Wendy, and we can expect that, too, to overflow with whimsy. Theres plenty of it here, along with an intriguing cast led by Dev Patel (above) as Sir Gawain who was immortalised in the epic poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, written anonymously in the 14th century. Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris also feature, as well as the suddenly ubiquitous Ralph Ineson in the other title role as the forbidding Green Knight, a supernatural monster who, having had his head lopped off by Gawain, promptly challenges him to a rematch a year later, at somewhere called the Green Chapel. The accents in this version of Olde England are all over the place; there are enough regional overlaps to call it Gawain And Stacey. But if this unusual film has a scene-stealer its the compelling Irish actor Barry Keoghan, credited simply as the Scavenger, a scallywag Gawain encounters on his search for the Green Chapel. As for Patel, he seems to be growing as an actor before our eyes. He used to give 20 per cent too much, but if anything he underplays Gawain, making him seem all the more mysterious, even when he steps out of the mist. In cinemas from today; also available on Amazon Prime Video. Several cast and crew members from Grey's Anatomy have given more details about the alleged incident that resulted in Isaiah Washington leaving the program. In Lynette Rice's recently released book How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey's Anatomy, it was noted that a fight between the performer and his castmate, Patrick Dempsey, resulted in the former uttering a homophobic slur. In the publication, writer Mark Wilding expressed via People that he had been on set during the incident, which was set off by both actors being tardy for filming. An inside look: A new Grey's Anatomy tell-all book has detailed the controversial incident that led to Isaiah Washington being fired for using a homophobic slur; he is seen in 2018 'It was my episode. I think one of them had been late to set one day and the other one then decided to pay him back by being late himself. Then it sort of exploded,' he noted. DailyMail.com has reached to reps for Washington for comment. The writer also expressed that the two quickly started a fistfight and that, although he could have broken the two up, he was not interested in risking his safety. 'They got into an arguing match, and then before you know it they were physically fighting....I'm, like, six feet four inches. I'm bigger than both of them. But I didn't really jump in right away because I'm like, I don't know if I want to get involved.' Series writer Harry Werksman, who was also on set during the incident, expressed that the 58-year-old actor was particularly troubled by Dempsey's behavior. Quick escalation: Writer Mark Wilding expressed that Washington and Dempsey 'got into an arguing match, and then before you know it they were physically fighting'; the latter is seen in 2019 'Isaiah, for whatever reason that day, just took that the wrong way and he went after Patrick. I guess he felt disrespected that he and the crew had been waiting,' he noted. The writer then expressed that Washington then verbally confronted his castmate and compared his treatment to that of their costar, T. R. Knight, before he uttered the slur. He recalled that the actor 'went after Patrick, pushed him up against the wall, and said, "You can't talk to me the way you talk to that little f***** T.R."' Marty Carillo then spoke about how the incident seemingly happened out of nowhere and that the cast and crew somberly departed the production area following the fight. Inappropriate language: Writer Barry Werksman recalled that Washington 'went after Patrick, pushed him up against the wall, and said, "You can't talk to me the way you talk to that little f***** T.R"'; the actor is seen earlier this month 'Everyone knew T.R. was gay. For some reason, Isaiah just lost it and pinned Patrick up against the wall. You could see Isaiah's pupils go wide, like, "What did I do?" It was quiet. Everyone had to leave the set,' he recalled. Both Washington and Dempsey were interviewed for the book, and the former pointed out that his behavior was used as an example of what not to do on set. 'We learned that we [had] to watch what we say. We [had] to make sure we [were] more accountable,' he expressed. The latter then noted that, although the incident led to his former castmate's firing, the incident also served to strengthen the cast and crew's resolve moving forward. Taking responsibility: Washington later stated that the incident forced the cast and crew members 'to make sure we [were] more accountable' for their actions; Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo are seen in 2013 'I think the explosion really healed the show. No one passed the buck, and everyone owned up to the situation and moved on,' he said. Washington was the subject of criticism for his actions after the incident and found himself as the center of attention during a press room event for the 2007 Golden Globes, where he used the slur while denying that he referred to Knight as such. He also claimed that he and Dempsey had mended their differences following their fight, although many of his castmates continued to criticize his behavior. Katherine Heigl also spoke about how she recently discussed the incident with Knight, who was reportedly indebted to her for supporting him after the fight. Being honest: Dempsey also expressed that 'the explosion really healed the show...everyone owned up to the situation and moved on'; he is pictured in 2005 'He said...hat he was so grateful because no one had ever stood up for him that way before. So that is a proud moment for me. I don't regret it,' she said. Washington was let go from the program following the fight, although he later returned to the show for a cameo appearance in 2014. In the book, the performer expressed that he thought that the incident had been addressed prior to his firing. 'I came back under great stress, and thought I was doing the job I was hired to do. I thought that was going to speak for my future at Grey's, but apparently that wasn't the same vision that the network and studio had for me,' he said. Johnny Depp appeared upbeat on Thursday as he emerged from his San Sebastian hotel after claiming his career has been harmed by the spread of cancel culture. The Hollywood star waved at fans while making his way towards a waiting car in the picturesque Spanish coastal city. Depp, 58, is in Spain for the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival, where he was the recipient of the Donostia Award on Wednesday evening. Cheerful: Johnny Depp appeared upbeat on Thursday as he emerged from his San Sebastian hotel after claiming his career has been harmed by the spread of cancel culture. Depp had previously claimed he is a victim of cancel culture, warning that 'no one is safe' and urging those affected to 'stand up' for themselves. Speaking in San Sebastian, before accepting his honorary award at the film festival, Depp said the situation had become 'so out of hand.' In July 2020 he lost a high-profile case at the High Court in London, after The Sun newspaper described him as a 'wife beater' and he sued. Johnny's in town: Depp, 58, is in Spain for the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival, where he was the recipient of the Donostia Award on Wednesday evening Greetings: The Hollywood star waved at fans while making his way towards a waiting car in the picturesque Spanish coastal city Speaking out: Depp had previously claimed he is a victim of cancel culture, warning that 'no one is safe' and urging those affected to 'stand up' for themselves His ex-wife Amber Heard filed for divorce in 2016, accusing him of verbal and physical abuse, and she testified in London. Depp lost his lucrative role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise in the aftermath of the case. Back in the U.S., Depp has recently won the right to proceed with a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard. Depp told the audience in Spain that he saw himself as a victim, and was concerned about the wider implications for society. Johnny Depp claimed on Wednesday that he is a victim of cancel culture - speaking in Spain, ahead of accepting the prestigious Donostia Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival Depp receiving his Donastia Award last night at the film festival in San Sebastian Depp has won the right to sue Heard (pictured in November 2011) in a $50 million libel case after a Virginia judge threw out the actress's plea to dismiss the suit Heard claimed that Depp had attacked her, and her legal team showed photos alleging abuse Ahead of taking to the stage to accept his award, Depp offered his thoughts on cancel culture, and called on people to 'stand up' for those facing 'injustice.' 'It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgement based on what essentially amounts to polluted air,' he said, according to Deadline. 'It's so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe. 'It takes one sentence and there's no more ground, the carpet has been pulled.' Depp said that his concern was not just for himself. 'It's not just me that this has happened to, it's happened to a lot of people,' he said. 'This type of thing has happened to women, men.' He said: 'It doesn't matter if a judgement, per se, has taken some artistic license. 'When there's an injustice, whether it's against you or someone you love, or someone you believe in stand up, don't sit down. Cause they need you.' Actor Johnny Depp places his Donostia Award on the ground at the 69th San Sebastian International Film Festival, in San Sebastian, on Tuesday night Actor Johnny Depp speaks after receiving the Donostia Award Depp holds his award at the film festival in San Sebastian last night Depp was reported by Deadline to be happy to answer questions about the recent state of his career, amid his ongoing lawsuit against Heard. But when a reporter asked about Spain's Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media, which released a statement saying the award 'transmits a terrible message to the public', a festival organizer stepped in and prevented him replying, insisting he would only speak about his career. Depp later said that he was 'worried' that his presence at the festival would 'offend people,' and insisted he 'didn't want to offend anyone.' He praised the event, its director Jose Luis Rebordinos, and the mayor of San Sebastian for their 'undying support'. He thanked them for 'not buying what has been, for far too long, some notion of me that doesn't exist'. Depp added: 'I haven't done anything, I just make movies.' Depp said that he was dismayed by the current state of the film industry, in particular how streaming had taken off. The actor vowed that 'no one is safe' from the movement because it has become 'so out of hand,' as he arrived for a photo call during the awards ceremony Ahead of taking to the stage to accept his award, Depp offered his thoughts on cancel culture, and called on people to 'stand up' for those facing 'injustice' Depp said: 'It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgement' He said many people - him included - realized they were disposable. 'Hollywood is certainly not what it was,' he responded. 'The studio system, the grudge matches, the pandemonium and chaos of cinematic releases to streaming it is a case of, 'no matter what, I'm going to get mine'. 'That's where these people are coming from. 'They realize they're just a disposable as I am. Some more so. 'Large, large corporations take control of these things. As someone who takes part in the creation of cinema, how much more formula do we need from the likes of studios? How much more condescension do we need as audiences? 'I think that Hollywood has grotesquely underestimated the audience.' Depp was asked about the future of his Pirates of the Caribbean role of Captain Jack Sparrow, and said that the character would never leave him, and that no one could ever take the character away from him. Depp added: 'It's so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe' The actor went onto say: 'It takes one sentence and there's no more ground, the carpet has been pulled,' and claimed it's happened to 'a lot of people' He then delighted the crowd with an impromptu Captain Jack impression, Deadline reported. Despite the mixed reception to his arrival at the festival, Depp was in high spirits as he headed to the photo call ahead of his acceptance of the award. His appearance in Spain came a month after he was cleared by a court to proceed with the $50 million defamation suit against Heard. In August, a Virginia judge ruled that he can proceed with the litigation, based on a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she wrote saying she was a domestic violence survivor. She did not mention Depp in the story, though she publicly accused him of abusing her in their 2016 split. Depp and Heard are pictured at the premiere of The Rum Diary - the film on whose set they met in 2009. The pair married in February 2015, and divorced a year later Depp later added that he was 'worried' that his presence at the festival would 'offend people,' and insisted he 'didn't want to offend anyone' Despite the mixed reception to his arrival at the festival, Depp was in high spirits as he headed to the photocall ahead of his acceptance of the award It comes after Depp was cleared by a court to proceed with a $50 million defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard The actor is trying to clear his name after losing a defamation suit against The Sun. His U.S. suit, filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, accuses Heard of creating a 'hoax' account of abuse. Heard had requested the libel suit against her, filed in March 2019, be thrown out, claiming the ruling in the UK case should swing any new cases in her favor because they both relate to domestic abuse allegations against Depp. But Judge Penny Azcarate ruled the statements made by The Sun and Heard were 'inherently different', and said the case should proceed. The ruling stated: 'The Sun's interests were based on whether the statements the newspaper published were false. '[Heard's] interests relate to whether the statements she published were false.' The ruling also noted that Depp filed the defamation suit against The Sun before Heard's op-ed was published - and that she was not named in the case against the British paper. In the December 2018 op-ed, the actress wrote: 'I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out.' In August, a Virginia judge ruled that he can proceed with the litigation, based on a 2018 Washington Post op-ed Heard wrote The actor is trying to clear his name after losing a defamation suit against The Sun after the paper branded him a 'wife-beater' amid allegations of domestic abuse Depp is pictured on July 29, 2020, outside the High Court in London during the case Amber Heard is seen outside court in London on July 28, 2020 The UK's High Court ruled against Depp following an explosive three-week trial last July, finding allegations the actor was a 'wife beater' were 'substantially true.' Lawyers for The Pirates of the Caribbean star had asked two Court of Appeal judges to grant permission for him to challenge the ruling, with the aim of having its findings overturned and a second trial ordered. They claimed the judge in Depp's initial libel trial had not 'factually' considered all the allegations of violence against him and that they had 'fresh evidence' Heard had 'lied' about giving her entire $7 million divorce settlement to charity. They said that the charity claim influenced how her testimony was viewed, but the Court of Appeal ruled that it did not have an impact on the judge and that he would have reached the same conclusion on Heard being the victim of domestic violence. Married At First Sight star Joanne Todd has been relentlessly mocked on social media after revealing she lost her job for refusing the Covid-19 vaccine. While there was the usual chorus of 'good for you' and 'stand up for your rights' from anti-vaxxers, other Aussies said they had 'no sympathy' for the 40-year-old barber. She was labelled foolish for choosing to walk away from her job of 12 years because of her stubbornness, with some fans saying they were unfollowing her on Instagram. Copping backlash: Married At First Sight star Joanne Todd has been relentlessly mocked on social media after revealing she lost her job for refusing the Covid-19 vaccine The coronavirus vaccine is a safe and vital measure being taken to protect the community from the spread of the virus. The vaccine makes you significantly less likely to become seriously ill with Covid, and also reduces the likelihood of transmission. In response to Todd saying she'd lost her job for refusing the vaccine, one fan asked her bluntly: 'Could you not just get vaccinated?' Divisive: While there was the usual chorus of 'good for you' and 'stand up for your rights' from anti-vaxxers, other Aussies said they had 'no sympathy' for the 40-year-old barber Others said she'd 'made her choice' and had to deal with the consequences, which for unvaccinated staff in the hair and beauty industry means not being able to work. 'Zero sympathy. She still gets a choice and she's made her choice - she wasn't fired,' one user commented on The Wash's Instagram account. 'You guys realise no jab, no play [a policy that disallows unvaccinated children from attending childcare centres] has been a thing for years among kids? 'Yeah, now it's for the adults and affects you directly you're all in uproar.' 'Over it': She was labelled foolish for choosing to walk away from her job of 12 years because of her stubbornness, with some fans saying they were unfollowing her on Instagram Made her bed: Others said she'd 'made her choice' and had to deal with the consequences, which for unvaccinated staff in the hair and beauty industry means not being able to work Stating the obvious: In response to Todd saying she'd lost her job for refusing the vaccine, one fan asked her bluntly: 'Could you not just get vaccinated?' Another commented: 'She made her choice and those are the consequences. I'm not sympathetic that she's taken that route and found out the hard way.' A third wrote: 'No sympathy whatsoever.' Several noted the irony of a barber offering health advice and also mocked women who refuse the vaccine but are all too eager to inject Botox, a toxin, into their faces. 'She's a hairdresser... of course I trust her with my health,' one fan remarked. Similar comments included: 'Yet she pumps her lips and face with injections but won't get the vaccine,' and, 'Bleaching your teeth to the nth degree? Yeah, nah, that vaccine is dangerous.' Ridicule: Several noted the irony of a barber offering health advice and also mocked women who refuse the vaccine but are all too eager to inject Botox, a toxin, into their faces Doubters: Others were skeptical that Todd would be able to retain her clientele after leaving the barbershop she'd work at for more than a decade Others were skeptical that Todd would be able to retain her clientele after leaving the barbershop she'd worked at for more than a decade. And one summed up the outrage perfectly with: 'Ah, yes. Thank God there are influencers to believe instead of scientists.' Todd announced on Thursday she was no longer working at her usual barbershop in Karingal, Melbourne, after being told to get the jab or quit. Despite being forced out of her job of 12 years, the mother of two hopes her clients will continue to visit her at her new salon space. Botox? Yes. Vaccine? No: Todd makes no secret of the fact she gets anti-wrinkle injections, but still doesn't want to get the safe and effective Covid vaccine Protest: Todd announced on Thursday she was no longer working at her usual barbershop in Karingal, Melbourne, after being told to get the jab or quit 'I never thought that I would lose my job over a vaccine, but the positive thing is that I've set up my own barber space,' Todd said in a video posted to Instagram. 'I'm jumping on here to reach out to all my regular clients and to the mums with the kids [whose] haircuts I used to do in Karingal. 'I won't be going back to that shop anymore, so anyone that I used to cut, or anyone who isn't getting the vaccine, please hit me up and I'll be happy to cut your hair.' Todd said that despite the new government rules, she is willing to cut anybody's hair regardless of their vaccination status. 'I'll be happy to cut your hair': Despite being forced out of her position, the mother of two hopes her clients will continue to visit her at her new salon space. Todd also said she is willing to cut anybody's hair regardless of their vaccination status 'I am happy to take the vaccinated or the unvaccinated,' she said. Todd told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday: 'I'm not anti-vax. I just think we should have a choice and not lose our jobs over [the vaccine].' It comes after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced that hair salons can reopen for the fully vaccinated once the 70 per cent vaccination target is reached. Moving on! Pictured with her new boyfriend Joe Donaghy, whom she is understood to have met at her old barbershop Fans of Married At First Sight will remember Todd's ill-fated union with luxury car dealer James Susler from this year's season. She has since moved on with tradesman Joe Donaghy. Donaghy is understood to have been a customer at Todd's old barbershop, which is how they first met. Edwina Bartholomew has blasted the 'professional protesters' who wreaked havoc at the anti-vax demonstrations in Melbourne earlier this week. In her column for The Daily Telegraph, the Sunrise newsreader hit back at the thousands of tradies and other far-right agitators who rioted over mandatory Covid vaccines for construction workers. 'Imagine sitting at home in lockdown watching a bunch of entitled professional protesters take to the streets, hurling urine at reporters, lighting flares and flying Trump 2020 flags?' the 38-year-old wrote. Blasted: Sunrise newsreader Edwina Bartholomew has blasted the 'professional protesters' who wreaked havoc at the anti-vax demonstrations in Melbourne earlier this week She continued: 'Some of the people protesting were construction industry members but most were just troublemakers. What were they hoping to achieve? 'No one actually knows, not even the thugs climbing all over police cars. We all want restrictions to be over. We all want life to return to normal. This is not the way to achieve it.' Bartholomew went on to say she looks forward to the day 'protests are behind us, picnics don't seem exceptional and the simple things are just standard'. Protests: Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Bartholomew hit back at the thousands of tradies and far-right agitators who rioted over mandatory Covid vaccines for construction workers It comes after anti-vax protesters ambushed riot cops and smashed up police squad cars as construction worker demonstrations on the streets of Melbourne descended into chaos on Tuesday. Footage showed tradesmen in hi-vis clothing kicking police cars and attempting to tear off their side mirrors in the CBD as thousands of demonstrators gathered outside Victoria's Parliament House. Riot police were then seen advancing in formation on the rioters before firing tear gas, stinger grenades and rubber bullets. Violence: 'Some of the people protesting were construction industry members but most were just troublemakers. What were they hoping to achieve?' she wrote Police chief Shane Patton said three officers were injured during the clashes and 44 protesters were arrested, but that number is expected to rise dramatically. Although more than 500 police had been deployed with the assistance of police air wing helicopters, Mr Patton said it had been 'really challenging for us' because of 'spontaneity and tactics they employed throughout the day'. The rudderless mob of about 2,000 demonstrators marched aimlessly around the CBD for hours, even scaling the West Gate Bridge in the afternoon shutting down traffic throughout the city. The protest began outside the boarded-up head office of the construction union, the CFMEU, which was badly damaged by violent demonstrations just 24 hours earlier. German-born pop-dancehall artist Lil Hanky Panky has landed a collaboration dubbed Closer the Better with dancehall superstar Sizzla. The single was released on Sizzlas own label, Kalonji Music earlier this week. Recording with Sizzla was a very interesting experience, he really lives his music, the music lives in him. He comes up with a lot of the stuff on the spot and it was inspiring to witness that. I went to his studio in August Town and it was a great vibe, Lil Hanky Panky told DancehallMag. She had always been a huge fan of Sizzlas music. I liked his vibe before that, I know he has big influence in the reggae culture and he is very versatile, a lot of his new material is different from what he had beforeits even more inspiring, she revealed. Lilie, who is now in the United States, did her first official live performance at The Major G.O.M.L Smoke show in Trenton, New Jersey over the weekend. The show features acts such as Lucci Loner, Sunsoul, Smoke 100, Juiceman, Mike Mizy, Ki Ki and others from the New Jersey music scene. Lilie hopes to shoot visuals for Closer the Better soon. I am pleased with the outcome of the song, it has a catchy vibe, everyone who hears it, keep singing the melody and I really love the song. A video is in the pipeline, but Sizzla has been busy working on his album and fixing up Judgment Yard but as soon as he is available, the video will be shot, she said. A German-born artist, she came to Jamaica to study dancehall music two years ago, and through a series of extraordinary events, is now recording music in Jamaica. She first came to public attention when a homeless man, Stamma made a cameo appearance during her Sativa video shoot in downtown Kingston, and a clip of him singing went viral. Dancehall fans seem fascinated by Stamma, who they see as probably the next incarnation of Gully Bop. She grew up in Hannover, Germany, where she attended Hochschule fur Musik Theater und Medien (College for Musical Studies, Theater and Media) in Hannover. She developed an early love for dancing and by the time she was an adult, she became a professional dancer. Sizzla is considered to be one of the most commercially and critically successful contemporary reggae artists in the annals of Jamaican music. He is is noted for his prolific production of high quality music with more than 70 albums to date, the most recent being Million Times and On a High. Emerging in the latter half of the 90s, he helped lead dancehall back to the musical and spiritual influence with heavily Rastafarian subject matter. His major breakthrough came with the release in 1997 of the now classic album, Black Woman and Child (Greensleeves) which bore slick production from the late Bobby Digital Dixon. The evocative title track, issued as a single, rapidly achieved anthemic status. More hits followed such as Babylon Give Dem a Ride, Thank You Mama, Praise Ye Jah, Woman I Need You, Solid As a Rock, and Take Myself Away. A versatile singjay-style vocalist with a gruff, gravelly tone, he is capable of both rapid fire chatting, as well as powerful, melodic singing. Sizzla Kalonji continues to release music through his own label. A natural leader, Sizzla continues to come up with innovative business opportunities to empower himself and the community by creating an environment for young people to grow and develop skills in his native August Town. Dancehall star Vybz Kartel blasted social media users for fake outrage over the abuse of Haitian migrants in an emotional Instagram Story post yesterday. After disturbing images at the Texas border went viral this week, the embattled deejay charged that likes and comments do little to change the centuries-old situation: the disregard for black lives on every continentfor the past 400 years. Instead of insisting on or lobbying for justice, performative rage is now a predictable response until the next big event, Kartel claimed. On Monday, images of Texas border patrol agents rounding up Haitian migrants on horseback went viral, sparking slavery comparisons and humanitarian concerns. More than 10,000 migrants have camped out in Del Rio, Texas to open an asylum claim, though U.S. officials have indicated they will be deported back to Haiti. White House officials and American news outlets spewed more diplomatic reactions, but the Fever deejay didnt hold back, firing off at internet users sensationalizing serious matters. You know very well that on every continent thats how black people are/have been treated for the past 400 years at least!! so fk you with the FAKE OUTRAGE!!! he wrote. Outlining what the term meant, Kartel blasted the cycle of social media outcries which ultimately achieve meager results. .And for those who missed what I said earlier about fake outrage This is my definition: it makes you look like you NEVER KNEW THIS WAS GOING ON, like your SEEING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME and you PLAN TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!till somn else happens .then yall fake outrage again, he said. Vybz Kartel has often spoken out against the victimization of black youths, both on home soil and beyond. The Haitian plight, however, remains significant to the outspoken deejay. Back in May, Kartel uploaded three posts in honor of Haitian Flag Day which celebrates the creation of the Haitian Flag during the revolution that gave its people freedom from France, setting the precedent for slave uprisings in the US. 1st Black Republic. 1st Independent Caribbean State, he reminded his 1.7 million followers. During his recent prison interview with Fox5s Lisa Evers, Kartel touched on how much global economic imbalance and lack of opportunities affected him also. I thought rich people were rich, poor people were poor, and it couldnt change. So I have to count my blessings to see that it could really change. So me beating that mindset, getting the opportunities that I got, I have to be grateful, he said. One could reasonably understand his anger at the current atrocities given that self-empowerment is the Worl Boss stock-in-trade from his own brand of liquor (Street Vybz Rum) to heading the Portmore Empire. The entertainer and author has long asserted that the real game-changer is opportunities for the underprivileged, a case he made throughout his 2013 autobiography and similarly titled album, The Voice of the Jamaican Ghetto. On the albums opener, Self-Empowerment Interlude, lecturer and activist Louis Moyston is heard saying, the education that we get ah miseducation. It teach we fi work inna people offices and plantation. It never teach we fi deal wid anything fi weself. Nobody nah go transform your life. Is not no IMF, no JLP, no PNP, is you di likkle black youth haffi go start get serious about self-transformation. New Delhi: One of the most fascinating things about film festivals is that while sitting in an immovable seat, we are transported from one distant, foreign land to another. The Toronto International Film Festival opened on Friday and I have already spent time with two sisters in a Mennonite community in Canada, stayed at a huge country mansion in Belgium where a famous author struggles with writers block and a beguiling new house help. I have also stayed with a family trying to sell an island in Croatia, a young Polish couple vacationing in Italy, travelled with a 13-year-old boy from Mexico City to Chihuahua to collect his fathers remains, and watched the romance and destruction of a Dutch sea captain and a Parisian socialite in 1920s. And just today I was in Chad, Africa. In the first five minutes of director Mahamat Saleh Harouns film, Lingui: The Sacred Bonds, about a 15-year-old pregnant daughter of a single mother, I was stunned by how little I knew about Chad and how similar it is to India. Watching Lingui, set on the outskirts of the capital Ndjamena, its shanty towns with mud houses and open drains, the 5-meter-long lafai a sari-like piece of clothing that women wear the batik tie-and-dye designs and the patriarchal restrictions on women, I thought I was watching a film set in Gujarat. Haroun, the first Chadian full-length film director who also wrote the film's screenplay, has said that Lingui means a bond what links people in order for them to live together. In Lingui, that bond is between women who help each other survive in a world that is designed to control them, through law and religion, through women's circumcision and a ban on abortion. Mother Amina strips old tyres to retrieve metal rods and wires inside which she then beats and twists into baskets. That's her means to survival. So when her daughter is expelled from school for being pregnant and says she wants an abortion, Amina, who prays daily at the local mosque, decides to help. But she has no money and has to dodge the prying eyes of the Imam and a state which conducts routine raids on hospitals and clinics. At every step of the way, when men threaten their survival, other women risk everything to help Amina and her daughter Maria. A hospital nurse, a midwife, an estranged sister. Lingui is the story of sisterhood that has helped women survive for generations despite the best efforts of men, in India and in Chad. HYDERABAD: After over two decades of its existence, the city-headquartered premium B-school, the Indian School of Business (ISB), is looking beyond its elite self-perception of creating world-class management graduates and leaders, and helping corporate and government leaders find excellence and success, and move towards initiatives to make a large impact on society and common people, especially in the host states of Telangana, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Punjab, said Prof. Madan Pillutla, the newly anointed sixth Dean. Speaking to a select group of journalists at the school, Prof. Pillutla, a thought leader on organisational behaviour, with several research papers and publications to his credit, said, For example, there is an incredible entrepreneurial DNA and risk appetite in Telangana people and government. We, at ISB, would love to bring together the entrepreneurial cells and hubs in the city to help forge a mega-entrepreneurial ecosystem network, to truly rival the Silicon Valley of California. Sharing his resolve and vision to further invigorate engagement with governments, he said, Beyond the currently offered executive education for political leaders and bureaucrats, we would like to create skill, leadership and self-employment modules to align with public skill-building initiatives with mass-deployment mindset. Prof. Pillutla, a native-born from Tenali in Andhra Pradesh, who graduated in mechanical engineering from BITS, Pilani, post-graduation from XLRI, Jamshedpur, and the University of Illinois and a PhD from the University of British Columbia, returns to India after three decades of academic career in the West, but is no stranger to the ISB. Associated with the ISB from its days of inception over 20 years ago, he was involved in shaping up programmes and curriculum at the ISB and taught the founding batches of the flagship PGP programme. I am currently working on understanding great and uniquely successful Indian organisations, among them Amul, wherein a farmers cooperative was running a world-class organisation for all stakeholders and sustaining an impact, ISRO, which has set a global benchmark for frugal innovation and, Pullela Gopichand badminton academy, producing champions each year, he shared. Quizzed about why organisations misbehave and why Hyderabad has been the centre of so many white-collar scams, he said, Hyderabad, and perhaps NCR, witnessed a globally rare outlier of wealth creation and growth in the last two decades. So many great corporations were born and extraordinary wealth was created within a relatively short time. A part of it might have been attributable to wrong practices but it wont be fair to generalise. He also spoke of how our understanding of the response to Covid and its impact was still nascent. Work from home, digitisation and hybrid models are all in their early days. How we will respond to it in the coming days is uncertain. One clear challenge to schools like ISB is to cope, and provide guidance to other stakeholders, in a dynamic phantasmagorical situation where the wisdom of last month is junk today. Among other initiatives he spoke about, was using the existing pedagogy and curriculum content of ISB with institutions across the country. There are thousands of B-schools who could benefit if we transformed to the Harvard Model, wherein we offer the content to each one of these schools across small towns in India. Prof. Pillutla, an award-winning teacher and researcher, who has held leadership positions at the London Business School and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, clarifying on why organisations go wrong, said, Initially people go wrong. Either in absence of processes or checks, they proliferate. It is for self-correction mechanisms within and external audits and policing which must detect and stop them before they take down an institution. Welcoming the possible entry of the IIM to Hyderabad (or some part of Telangana), he said, We would be delighted if that happens. The IIMs and ISB are different because their mandates and purposes are different. If in 20 years, the ISB has matched the global excellence levels of an IIM-Ahmedabad, it is a matter of pride. But together, we can all make a larger impact for our country and society. While the current batch has over 900 students to adjust some cancellations of selected students last year, he said the ISB would go back to the ideal 880-students batch from next year. We are currently in a hybrid model. But once all students complete double vaccination, as do all the staff on campus, we will go back to offline classes. The only concern we have is the 18 per cent GST students have to pay for an ISB PGP because it is not UGC certified MBA education but considered training. It would help if the government could help students who are often taking a mid-career break to pursue a value-adding education sabbatical, he added. Experts state that there are missed and undetected numbers which are not taken into account. Representational Image (Pixabay) Hyderabad: In a worrisome development, paediatric wards in the Niloufer Hospital and the Government Area Hospital are full of children suffering from dengue as many of them are reporting multisystem organ failures due to dengue shock. Those in the age-group of 13 to 19 years are being affected in Old City, Ranga Reddy district and other areas of the state. The children are reporting with high fever, bleeding, low blood pressure and low platelet count. A senior doctor at the Niloufer Hospital on condition of anonymity says, "Severity of dengue is the same as in 2019. There are severe cases with internal bleeding, shock and multisystem failures reporting to tertiary and area hospitals. These make the treatment very difficult and outcomes are poor." In the last one week, area hospitals of Old City witnessed more than 10 deaths of children. Dr R. R. Kiran, senior paediatrician at Nampally, explains, "Fever is considered as a disease which occurs due to seasonal changes. With dengue prevalent, diagnosis at the first stage is important. When that is missed, cases become severe." Till September 10, dengue cases recorded were 3,144 by the state health department. Experts state that there are missed and undetected numbers which are not taken into account. Most of the deaths are allegedly not being recorded despite city health centres reporting severe cases of dengue. A senior health official on condition of anonymity says, "Follow-up is required after the identification of a case in the area carried out by the GHMC but people are not sensitised. There are stickers put on house doors and many times occupants remove them rather than reading them. Sensitisation requires making them aware that there is a dengue case and if children suffer from fever, they must report to government centres and get evaluated. This information to households is important but it is not being done and there is a rise in cases." Weekly dry day schedule of drying pots, pans, water tanks, flower and animal pot trays is not being carried out by people. HYDERABAD: The designated CBI court at Hyderabad to try cases filed under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has accepted Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy's plea to exempt his appearance on Wednesday in quid-pro-quo cases filed against him by Enforcement Directorate. Jagan Mohan Reddy had been scheduled to appear before the CBI court on Wednesday in cases related to Vanpic projects and Lepakshi Knowledge Hub in Anantapur. Jagan had pleaded through his counsel that he had a busy schedule on Wednesday because he had to participate in a key meeting with district collectors and other officers and could not be present. The court accepted his request. Others accused in these cases Vijaysai Reddy, Dharmana Prasad Rao, Geetha Reddy and others however, appeared before the court. In another case, the CBI court did not accept the plea of TTD chairman Y.V. Subba Reddy to defer the case filed by CBI with regard to the Indu-Tech zone in which he had to place his contentions against charges that had been framed against him. Subba Reddy sought adjournment of the CBI court case till the High Court took a decision on the petition filed by him in the higher court to quash this case against him. The CBI court did not accept the TTD chairmans request. The court made it clear to Subba Reddy that he either get stay orders from High Court or submit his contentions in the case. Sources in the TRS said that once the standing committee was appointed without a comprehensive plan in choosing the members, the party would lose its hold in the Greater Hyderabad council. (Twitter) Hyderabad: Though the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has been functioning without a standing committee for seven months after the election of its new governing body, it is rumoured that the top brass of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) is delaying setting up of the committee to appoint leaders of its choice. As per the GHMC Act, the standing committee, which takes key decisions pertaining to the development of the city, has to be formed within three months after the formation of the general body. However, neither the civic body commissioner nor the state government seems to be keen to announce the committee. According to reliable sources, the names of the standing committee members were already decided by the party leadership. They said the names of eight corporators from the TRS and seven corporators from the MIM had been finalised to be the standing committee members for the freshly appointed Greater Hyderabad council. Top leaders of the TRS are learnt to have informed the party workers of the same during a recent meeting and also warned them that if the information was leaked, their jobs would be at risk. As per the GHMC Act, the stranding committee consists of 15 members. Every issue is decided by majority votes in the standing committee. The standing committee has to be appointed by the commissioner. However, seven months have passed since the election of the new civic body, but the corporation is yet to appoint a standing committee, which is like Cabinet ministers in the state government. The standing committee should be constituted by an order within three months from the date of the first meeting of the corporation under Clause (b) of Section 88 of the GHMC Act. Once the government issues the orders, the GHMC should initiate the process to hold elections to the 15-member standing committee in about two months time. According to official sources, the civic body, citing the lacunae in the GHMC Act, has been deliberately delaying the process of appointing the committee. Sources said there was a provision in the GHMC Act that the municipal commissioner can seek suggestions from the government including date and time to appoint the committee. The commissioner, just before the completion of four months' time, sought the permission from the state government and is said to be waiting for its reply. Sources in the TRS said that once the standing committee was appointed without a comprehensive plan in choosing the members, the party would lose its hold in the Greater Hyderabad council. They said the party leadership had already shortlisted the names of standing committee and co-option members without any consultation with the corporators or elected representatives. Sources said members of both standing committee and co-option members will be shared among the TRS and the MIM. They said the corporates were warned of severe consequences if the internal party information was leaked to the media. "We are just puppets. We have no choice to give opinions or suggestions about the GHMC council affairs despite being elected by the public to represent them. Everything is decided by party top leaders and we should oblige it," said a TRS corporator requesting anonymity. Hyderabad: Taking a serious note of the Covid-19 death of a government teacher in Kothagudem district and 71 school students from across the State becoming asymptomatic coronavirus cases, the Telangana High Court on Wednesday asked the state government to complete vaccination of all teaching and non-teaching staff in schools within two months. "All government schools and some private institutions have commenced physical classes, as per your own details, yet vaccination has not been administered to all the 4.93 lakh teaching and non-teaching staff. There is an impending need to vaccinate the remaining staff. As children interact with them, there is a possibility that they would get affected. Though children are asymptomatic, they will be carriers to their houses, which may lead to community spread. Hence, this court wants completion of the vaccination process to teaching and non-teaching staff within two months", the court ordered. A division bench, comprising acting Chief Justice M. S. Ramachandra and Justice T. Vinod Kumar was dealing with PILs related to Covid-19 management in the state. The bench directed the government to ramp up RTPCR testing as there has been a steep decline in the tests. Dr. G. Srinivas Rao, director of public health, informed the court that the governments special vaccination drive for teachers and non-teaching staff in all schools has so far covered 96 per cent of them, including students above 18 years of age. He submitted that only 71 asymptomatic positive cases had been identified from the two lakh samples that were collected for the test. The court directed the government to complete vaccination to the entire state population within the next three months. According to Dr. Srinivas Rao, 22 per centage of people were yet to get their second dose out of the 2.08 lakh, who have taken one shot. Around 95 per cent of GHMC population has been vaccinated, he said. The court slammed the government and the director of public health for not placing details about the availability of pediatrics infrastructure as if there is a third wave the most prone would be children. It said that despite reminders from the court, the government has not placed details before it. Justice Rao cautioned the government against further lethargy and warned of dire consequences if the details were not submitted by September 30. The bench expressed anguish over the Union health ministrys lackadaisical attitude with regard to the inclusion of life-saving drugs meant to treat Covid-19 in the national list of essential medicines, despite the recommendation of ICMR. It sought such an inclusion by October 31, failing which union health ministry officials would have to face the consequences. He said about 285 paediatricians, 1,250 medical officers, 1,202 nurses, along with 85 paediatricians recruited on July 6-7, have been given special training regarding providing treatment for third wave of COVID. (Representative Image: PTI) Bengaluru: Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar on Thursday said as part of its preparation to fight the possible third wave of COVID-19, the state government has taken several measures, including reserving 20 per cent of beds in district and taluk hospitals and community health centres for children. He was responding to a question raised by Congress MLA from Vijayanagar constituency M Krishnappa during question hour, on the issue of preparations made to tackle the possible third wave of COVID-19, especially concerning children. "The Technical Advisory Committee (consisting of experts) have suggested that children are at more risk during the possible third wave of COVID, in the wake of this the government has readied 25,870 oxygen supported beds and 502 paediatric ventilators both at the government and private level," Sudhakar said. He said about 285 paediatricians, 1,250 medical officers, 1,202 nurses, along with 85 paediatricians recruited on July 6-7, have been given special training regarding providing treatment for third wave of COVID. "All the required equipment and infrastructure have been kept ready, few more equipment are yet to come, probably in 15 days to three weeks time they will be made available at hospitals," he added. The Minister further said 20 per cent of beds at district and taluk hospitals, and community health centres will be reserved for children. Noting that as COVID numbers have come down there is no shortage of beds, he said, it is true that there are reports of shortage of beds at a couple of places like Raichur and immediate measures have been taken. "Action has been taken and instructions have been given to officials to ensure there is no shortage of beds," he said. Intervening, Congress MLA Shivanand Patil from Basavana Bagevadi constituency, pointed out that there is a shortage of beds for delivery at mother and child hospitals, especially in Vijayapura district, where the highest number of deliveries are taking place in the state. Responding to this, Minister Sudhakar said, at some district centres more deliveries are taking place, especially in border districts, as people from neighbouring states also come there, and the government will take steps to enhance the number of beds. Amaravati: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday wrote a letter to Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Gautam Sawang about the attack on a TDP leader's house at Kopparru and alleged that police are filing false cases against TDP leaders at the behest of the YSRCP. Naidu has written a letter to Sawang on the attack on a TDP leader's house at Kopparru in Guntur district on late on September 20 night during the Ganpati idol immersion procession. A clash broke out between workers of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). This came shortly after it was declared that the YSRCP had won a majority in the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTC) and Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTC) polls. TDP leader Naidu alleged that police are filing false cases on TDP leaders at the behest of the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) leaders. In his letter, Naidu further accused the YSRCP-led government and said, "Ever since the YSRCP Government assumed power there has been a consistent deterioration of law and order in the State of Andhra Pradesh. Adding to this the inaction by a section of police at the behest of the ruling YSRCP leaders is only encouraging the culprits to further perpetuate violent crimes." He demanded to ensure justice for the victims. The DGP said that so far no evidence has been found that the heroin was imported to Vijayawada or any other place in Andhra Pradesh. (Twitter) Vijayawada: DGP Gautam Sawang stated that there are no heroin trade links in Andhra Pradesh and Afghanistan heroin that was seized at Mundra port. Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, he said that it does not make sense to make statements that repeatedly distort facts about heroin that was seized at Mundra port and linking it to Vijayawada and the state. Sawang said that such allegations not only create suspicions among people but also puts them at risk. He mentioned that it is a fact that DRI officials seized heroin at Mundra Port in Gujarat. He further mentioned that Vijayawada police commissioner has already ruled out any connection to Vijayawada in this case. He objected to the statements of political leaders linking the heroin issue to Vijayawada and said it is not appropriate for politicians to mention this issue over and over again. The DGP said that various magazines and TV channels have reported the subject, mentioning only arrests in Delhi, Noida, Chennai and Mundra. He said that a senior leader was creating suspicions among people by linking the heroin issue to Vijayawada even after the DRI and central agencies had confirmed that there were no traces of that crime in Andhra Pradesh. He said that the address of Aashi Trading Company was given as Vijayawada and their activities are non-existent in the state. The DGP said that so far no evidence has been found that the heroin was imported to Vijayawada or any other place in Andhra Pradesh. WARANGAL: Under the shadows of the state governments prestigious Kakatiya Mega Textile Park (KMTP) near Chinthapalli village of Sangem mandal in Warangal district, farmers who gave up their land for the park awaiting the promised compensatory package. The government had promised to allot residential plots at the rate of 100 yards per acre given up for the park, build a double bedroom house in the same plot and provide a job to a person in the family. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao laid the foundation for the KMTP on October 22, 2017. Till date, farmers are doing the rounds of offices to find out when and where they will be allotted the promised plots. Some are yet to receive complete payment. Sometimes I wonder if the government takes farmers for fools. When they needed land, they pleaded with us and convinced us with promises though we were reluctant to give it up. When we gave away the land, they are making us beg for our compensation, said Routhu Nagaiah, an elderly resident of Kontepalli village who gave his land for the textile park. Routhu Nagaiah The former sarpanch minced no words in describing the attitude of the authorities and the local public representatives in addressing their woes. Corrupt revenue authorities benefited the most from land pooling. They duped innocent farmers and earned a lot. Unless we fought, they did not give us compensation. We were exploited completely, he alleged. Sign board of the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park Another farmer, Jakka Komuraiah, said he had arranged the wedding of his daughter after he received the initial compensation amount. After a few days, the officials withdrew the amount saying his land does not exist in the survey number. This is despite Komuraiah receiving a certificate of land acquirement. I performed my daughters wedding by borrowing the money. I did not receive a single paise till date for the land I gave up, he lamented. Jakka Komuraiah During the last five years, 900 farmers in the surroundings of Chinthapally gave their land for the KMTP. Only a few received the promised jobs and none of them were allotted plots despite charging for it from their compensation amount. With their livelihood taken away, these farmers are either working as daily wage workers or invested the money received for other forms of livelihood. Anantapur: Karnataka will no longer be a safe haven for gamblers from Andhra Pradesh, with its Legislative Assembly approving a new bill on Tuesday under which all gambling centres and clubs will not be allowed to run. Previously, Karnataka police could not take any action as gambling was considered a game of skill. But the new law makes it illegal. A large number of habitual gamblers from AP are regulars in Bengaluru city and border areas of Karnataka. Most of them are from Visakhapatnam, coastal areas and the four districts of Rayalaseema. These gamblers, including women, had shifted to neighbouring Karnataka after AP government banned gambling in the state, including at recreational clubs. Dachepalli in Guntur district used to be a major centre for gambling during Telugu Desam regime. There were many recreation clubs in AP, where gambling used to go on. These have been shut down after YSRC came to power. Incidentally, Anantapur Officers Club had been raided two years ago and a large number of officials detained for gambling. Following a swoop down on gambling, a large number of habitual gamblers from Andhra Pradesh shifted their activities to Bangalore city and border areas of Karnataka. But curbs on gambling have been placed even in Karnataka now. Interestingly, Chief Minister B.S. Bommai, while discussing an amendment to the bill banning gambling, mentioned that gambling dens have been noticed in border areas of AP. Others who participated in the discussion pointed out that a large number of gamblers from AP come to clubs in the state capital. With the amendment that has been brought in, Karnataka police can now book gamblers under non-bailable sections. Gamblers and organisers can also be imprisoned under the new law. A person from AP closely involved in gambling activity, on condition of anonymity, said thousands of gamblers, including women from Rayalaseema and coastal areas, frequent recreation clubs in Karnataka capital and indulge in different types of gambling. The daily turnover of each club is more than 25 lakh. The club ends up with a profit of 5 lakh daily, he stated. He pointed out that many habitual gamblers, who are businessmen and big farmers from Pulivendula, Nandyala, Vijayawada and Anantapur areas, even have permanent accommodation in Bangalore. Under the new law, Karnataka has banned all gambling activities, including games of skill and online gambling. Cyber crime and civil police have been given additional power to curb gambling activities. Nearly one lakh women SHGs (self-help groups) in Telangana have not got arrears of 2,500 crore since five years. (Photo: Twitter/@trspartyonline/File) Hyderabad: Welfare schemes of Telangana government have run into doldrums with no periodic monitoring of their implementation, funds required and funds released. Except for Rythu Bandhu, all other welfare schemes, such as KCR Kits, Arogyasri, Kalyana Laxmi, Shaadi Mubarak, fee reimbursement, scholarships, Aasara pensions, sheep distribution and crop loan waiver, among others, are facing a severe fund crunch. As a result, arrears in disbursement of these schemes have mounted. They are not reaching lakhs of beneficiaries in time, causing hardships to them. Normally, the chief minister or ministers of departments concerned monitor implementation of welfare schemes by holding review meetings at least once a month. However, official sources have disclosed that no such meetings have been held in the past seven years. The enthusiasm being shown in launching new schemes is missing when it comes to monitoring or implementing those schemes. For instance, KCR Kits scheme had been launched amid much fanfare in 2017. It became a huge hit with institutional deliveries in government hospitals increasing by 25 percent. Under this scheme, government provides new mothers a kit containing a baby mattress, baby soap, oil, talcum powder, mosquito net, toys, napkins, diapers, two pairs of clothes, and two handloom sarees for the new mother free of cost, besides financial assistance of Rs. 13,000 in four instalments for a female child and Rs. 12,000 in case of a male child. But due to fund crunch, beneficiaries are now getting just the kit and no financial assistance. In undivided Medak district, represented by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and finance minister T. Harish Rao, thousands of beneficiaries have been awaiting financial assistance under KCR kits since past two years. Another instance of welfare schemes failing is corporate and private hospitals not honouring Arogyasri health cards, as the government owes them arrears of Rs. 1,300 crore. Further, over 12.5 lakh students pursuing professional and higher education courses are awaiting fee reimbursement arrears of Rs. 3,800 crore since 201819. Because of this, students, who have finished their courses, are facing trouble; as colleges are holding back their original certificates, forcing students to pay what is due by the government. Poor, who cannot afford to pay, are losing out on higher education. They are also not getting any job opportunities, as they are unable to show their new employers original certificates. The list of mounting arrears of welfare schemes is endless. To mention a few, government owes arrears of Rs. 300 crore under Kalyana Laxmi and Shaadi Mubarak. Women, who got married three years ago and have children, are still awaiting the benefit. Nearly one lakh women SHGs (self-help groups) in Telangana have not got arrears of Rs. 2,500 crore since five years. 3.76 lakh are beneficiaries covered under sheep distribution scheme. 3.50 lakh of them are yet to receive their sheep since June 2017, when KCR launched the scheme with a promise to cover all beneficiaries within two years. Worse is 25,000 of them have paid their own contribution of Rs. 31,250 each to government in 2017. Even as they are awaiting the benefit, they are now being asked to pay an additional Rs. 12,500 each, saying prices of sheep have increased since 2017. Coming to Aasara pensions, beneficiaries used to receive the amount promptly in the first week of every month, which is now getting delayed by weeks together. Currently, the entire focus of state government is on Dalit Bandhu. Rs. 2,000 crore have been allotted for it in Huzurabad constituency alone, where by-poll is due. This too has left no funds for other schemes. A case was registered and the minor has been apprehended and the seized cell phone was being sent to forensic science laboratory (FSL) for examination, police said. (Representational Photo | Wikimedia Commons - EFF Graphics) Hyderabad: A housekeeping worker at a restaurant here was apprehended after he allegedly placed a camera phone in the women's washroom, police said on Thursday. According to a police official, a 25-year-old woman along with her friends had gone to the restaurant in Jubilee Hills on Wednesday. When the woman went to the washroom she noticed a camera inside. The woman brought the matter to the notice of the management and also complained to police, the official said. A police team went to the eatery and after investigation it was found that a housekeeping worker, who is a minor, had kept the camera inside the washroom, he said. The phone's camera was found switched on and it was recording, police said. A case was registered and the minor has been apprehended and the seized cell phone was being sent to forensic science laboratory (FSL) for examination, police said. The restaurant management and the owner will also be booked and they will be arrested, the official added. On August 15 this year, Indias Independence Day, an unspeakable event occurred in Afghanistan, taking the world by storm. The Taliban, which had been advancing through the country, marched into the capital Kabul and took charge. President Ashraf Ghani left the country. The global media was full of images of Afghans rushing to Kabul airport, desperate to leave the country. The Taliban closed the border with neighbouring countries. Within a month, girls were refused attendance at schools, and women were turned away from workplaces. The ministry of womens affairs was replaced with a ministry of vice and virtue, to enforce the Talibans rigid interpretation of Islam. Between 2004 and 2016 I visited Afghanistan a dozen times, working with UN agencies and international and national civil society organisations (CSOs). In 2004 Kabul was in ruins, bombed out by continued insurgencies and attacks, the last being the 2001 raid by the United States and its allies, in retaliation for the strike by Al-Qaeda operatives against America -- on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. While Afghanistan was the base for Al-Qaeda, the attackers were not Afghans. The then US President, George W. Bush, vowed to win the war against terrorism, later zeroing in on Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Taliban retreated, and the reconstruction of Afghanistan began. In 2004, an assembly of 502 Afghan delegates adopted a constitution, creating a strong presidential system intended to unite the countrys various ethnic groups. This was seen as a positive step towards democracy. Afghans have seized the opportunity provided by the United States and its international partners to lay the foundation for democratic institutions and provide a framework for national elections, declared US special ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad. It was a first for the country. Since then, I witnessed a country beleaguered by war and conflict move towards a nation state, a modern state. I also saw dissent and disarray. The ideal democracy that the West wanted to create in Afghanistan was a centrist and top-down model that didnt fit the political, economic, social, or religious reality of the Afghan people. Democracy and its components -- good governance, the rule of law, anti-corruption measures, credible and transparent elections, a vibrant civil society, an independent media, and the inclusion of women and the minorities in the development process -- was a first for Afghans. These were systems that worked well in the developed countries of the North, based on logical and rational thinking, with a huge safety net for their citizens. From 2002, Afghans who fled during the Soviet occupation from 1986-96 and then the Taliban regime (1996-2001), came back to their country in droves, mostly from Iran and Pakistan. They were somewhat educated and had the requisite skills needed to build a modern Afghan state. Consultants, of Afghan origin and otherwise, poured in from all over the globe. I was one of them. In some ways it was a glorious period. The media flourished, CSOs began to sprout, small and medium sized businesses came into their own and women -- from schools to Parliament -- were mainstreamed into Afghan society. Afghans, passionate about their country, wanted to build a modern Afghanistan. Western donors poured money into Afghanistan to build the nation, in every sector. By 2006, the Taliban, who had retreated in 2002, resurfaced in the south of the country and slowly began gaining ground. In 2016, in my last trip, there were serious threats of violence and insecurity, even in Kabul. I was conducting a training course on trafficking and migration with Afghan journalists, as illegal immigration was growing. Afghans were leaving as the economy was in a downturn. Unemployment rates were high and job prospects, especially in rural areas, were grim. My friends in Kabul told me stories of the Taliban recruiting illiterate young boys and men and who needed to make a living but couldnt find work. Today, the staff of the international and national CSOs, bureaucrats, parliamentarians and the activists who I worked with are the targets of Taliban rage because they were part of institutions that the Taliban consider un-Islamic. They are demanding that the Taliban include women and minorities in the government and asking the international community to support them. However, in the last two decades, the democratically voted governments have not been inclusive. Afghanistan is a mostly tribal and multi-ethnic society, with 15 ethnic groups, in which Pashtuns have historically been dominant; it has a long history of ethic and tribal rivalry and warlords. Like traditional cultures, they have indigenous systems of justice and resist the courts and laws of the modern state. The Taliban dont want democratic institutions, inclusiveness, or women in public life. Their worldview doesnt allow for this. Their interpretation of what is un-Islamic is firm and rigid, contrary to the concepts of democracy and democratic institutions. The Western model of democracy adopted by Afghanistan and the resistance and rise of the Taliban could be seen as a battle of tradition over modernity. Dissenting voices can be raised against the Taliban in and outside Afghanistan, especially related to women and minorities. But they might just be falling on deaf ears and may not change the hearts and minds of the Taliban. The Taliban may fall and fail as they have no experience in managing a country. Their assets are frozen, and the country is in deep debt. Humanitarian aid will only go so far. It may be time to lie low and watch the Taliban self-destruct. The remarks of Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to a RSS gathering at Silchar recently take the breath away both for their contemptuousness of the Constitution and for his presumed ignorance of Kashmir, and possibly even his own home state. He said Assam was on the way to becoming the next Kashmir. What exactly does he mean? Evidently, he is referring to the fact that Kashmir valley is a Muslim-majority region and for that reason is a problematic area. It is communal suggestions and sometimes outbursts by communal-minded politicians regardless of party labels and poisonous innuendos of this kind that ignore the facts and create social cleavages that injure national integration. More importantly, such a presentation gives Pakistan a free pass and comes in the way of the understanding that our neighbours armed interference is the root cause of the trouble in Kashmir, along with the ideology and mindset that it has assiduously cultivated. More, it was Kashmirs last ruler a Hindu maharaja who chose not to merge with India but acceded under certain conditions. The ordinary people were not even consulted on this matter. Fabricating a parallel with Kashmir, Mr Sarmas communal scaremongering looks to be aimed at giving Muslims in Assam a harder time than before, and is important that civil society stand up to call it out. In view of the emerging problem as he sees it, of Muslims over-running Assam, which is plucked straight out of the playbook of the communal majoritarian, the CM has appealed to the RSS to consolidate Hindus and save Hindu institutions. If a self-proclaimed cultural NGO is asked by the chief political executive of the state to protect people, then it is clear the CM is placing his faith in extra-constitutional entities, not in the machinery of the state sanctioned by the Constitution. This is craven helplessness, which underlines Mr Sarmas inability to protect the Constitution and work according to its principles. A US federal judge has ordered Facebook to release records of accounts connected to anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant had shut down, The Wall Street Journal reported. The judge in Washingon, DC, criticised Facebook for failing to hand over information to investigators seeking to prosecute the country for international crimes against the Muslim minority Rohingya, the outlet said. Facebook had refused to release the data, saying it would violate a US law that bars electronic communication services from disclosing users' communications. But the judge said the posts, which were deleted, would not be covered under the law, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reuters could not immediately access details of the ruling and Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Also read: Dozens of Rohingya missing after boat sinks in Bay of Bengal Gambia is seeking the records as part of a case against Myanmar it is pursuing at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, accusing Myanmar of violating the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. Myanmar authorities say they were battling an insurgency and deny carrying out systematic atrocities. More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar's Rakhine state in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said including mass killings and rape. Rights groups documented killings of civilians and burning of villages. Shannon Raj Singh, human rights counsel at Twitter, called the decision "momentous". In a post on Twitter, she said it was "one of the foremost examples of the relevance of social media to modern atrocity prevention & response". Check out latest videos from DH: Confusion, intermingled with horror This was how residents of the Ashrith Aspire apartment complex in South Bengaluru, described their emotions after a fire gutted a flat, claiming two lives. Naveen, a techie who had recently moved into the apartment complex, said he initially had no idea that anything was amiss until he received a message on the apartment WhatsApp group stating that a fire had broken out in flat number 210. I live in the flat-205. People said later that there had been a cylinder blast but I never heard a blast. The WhatsApp message called for all women and children to evacuate to the parking lot, followed by the men, he said. Read | B'luru fire: Son-in-law recalls attempt to enter flat Sunanda, another IT professional who lives in unit 110, directly below the afflicted apartment unit, confirmed that there was no sound of a blast. My husband and I were working at home. We heard the sound of objects falling. We thought that the people above were moving their furniture. This went on for nearly 10 minutes. There was no heat emanating from the ceiling. Then, we were told that a fire had broken out and that we must evacuate. At that time, we saw licks of flame from the balcony above, she said. Naveen said he attempted to put out the flames with other residents. But we could not approach the main door, so blazing were the flames. Someone said the fire department was on its way and we decided to get out. As we went down, there was the noise of explosions. They were windowpanes shattering because of the heat, he said. This noise was mistaken for the sound of an explosion by Anjamma (name changed), a senior citizen from Guntur, living in a migrant labour camp at the southside of the apartment complex, which unit 210 overlooks. The presence of that grille that prevented Lakshmidevi and her daughter Bhagya Rekha, 59, from escaping is now a contentious issue. Nearly all balconies of lower and mid-level apartment units balconies at the complex have grilles, DH found. We have to do something about the balcony grilles, admitted Ranjith Kumar, president of the apartment complexs RWA. They were installed individually by apartment owners for peace of mind. Some of the grilles have an escape door. That is something all grilles may have to have. Kumar said he was among residents who tried to reach Apartment 205, only to be beaten back by the flames. We used fire extinguishers, but the front door was on fire, along with the sofa in the living room and then on. They had a lot of furniture in that small apartment. It may have caused the fire to spread faster, he added. Sunanda's apartment was not damaged by flames but water is now leaking down from the ceiling. There is a palpable feeling of sadness, Kumar added. It is an unsettling time. The only good thing is that some people are able to move back to their homes as officials have given clearance. Watch the latest videos by DH here: Actors Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vir Das along with Sushmita Sen-starrer series Aarya have bagged nominations for India as part of 2021 International Emmy Awards, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced on Thursday. Siddiqui has secured a nomination in the best performance by an actor category for his Netflix movie Serious Men. He is pitted against British star David Tennant ("Des") as well as actors Roy Nik of Israel ("Normali") and Christian Tappan of Colombia ("El Robo del Siglo" or "The Great Heist"). Directed by Sudhir Mishra, Serious Men is an adaptation of author Manu Joseph's 2010 novel of the same name. Also Read | At Emmy Awards, TV celebrates its own survival It chronicles the story of an ambitious underachiever who capitalises on his son's newfound fame as a boy-genius to improve his family's fortunes. The film offers a stark commentary on caste discrimination and upper-class privilege through its protagonist Ayyan Mani (Siddiqui), a Tamil Dalit, who keeps challenging the system which has oppressed people for generations. The 47-year-old actor celebrated the moment in a post on Twitter. "Wow !!!! #SeriousMen has got me a nomination for the prestigious #InternationalEmmyAwards in the Best Actor category Congratulations Team #SeriousMenDirector@IAmSudhirMishra@sejtherage#BhaveshMandalia@manujosephsan& last but not the least@NetflixIndia" he tweeted. Sushmita Sen's Disney+ Hotstar series Aarya, directed by Ram Madhvani, has made it to the final four of the best drama series category. The show is nominated alongside Chile's El Presidente, Israel's Tehran and the second season of UK show There She Goes. Aarya is an official remake of the popular Dutch crime-drama Penoza. The Indian adaptation revolved around Aarya Sareen, played by Sen, a happily married woman whose world turns upside down when her husband, pharma baron Tej Sareen (Chandrachur Singh) is shot. Created by Ram Madhvani and Sandeep Modi, Aarya went on to garner acclaim after its debut in June last year. The team is currently working on its second season. Madhvani said he is feeling "proud" with the show's nomination and dedicated it to the cast and crew of Aarya. "To be nominated in the category best drama series at the International Emmy awards is truly something that makes us humbly proud. "Heres to my full team and my co-producer Amita Madhvani and my co-directors and to Sushmita Sen and all the actors and to Disney Plus HotStar and Endemol Shine," the director told PTI. Das' Netflix comedy special Vir Das: For India has been nominated in the comedy segment along with popular French show Call My Agent, UK's Motherland: Christmas Special and Colombia series Promesas de Campana. The special, which was Das' third with Netflix, came out in January 2020. The comedian said he is honoured to be nominated at the International Emmy Awards. "I'm just so happy it's for a show about my culture, and my people and how funny we are. The special was my love letter to India and this is just unbelievable," the actor-comic said in a statement. Confirmed the nomination is real. Thankyou to @TheWeirdass & @NetflixIndia and the crew of #VirDasForIndia for working so hard on something crazy. I'm just happy a show about our culture, and how funny my beautiful people are, got seen. Very cool #InternationalEmmyAwards Cheers! pic.twitter.com/6egqGpFCWz Vir Das (@thevirdas) September 23, 2021 The winners for 2021 International Emmy Awards will be announced during an in-person ceremony, to be held in New York City on November 22. India's three nominations comes a year after India registered a strong performance at the 48th International Emmy Awards with filmmaker Richie Mehta's "Delhi Crime" winning the best drama series honour in November 2020. Two other Emmy nominations from India included Amazon Prime Video's "Four More Shots" and Arjun Mathur for his role in drama "Made in Heaven" in the best comedy and actor categories respectively. Check out latest DH videos here The Taliban on Tuesday hailed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's efforts for peace, stability and an inclusive government in Afghanistan, the Express Tribune reported. "We do not see the positive statements of Prime Minister Imran Khan as interference in the internal matters of Afghanistan," said the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Zabiullah Mujahid, at a news conference in Kabul. The spokesperson added that Pakistan, Qatar and China are playing an active role for stability in Afghanistan. Read | 'Taliban commitment against terror must be implemented' "We will welcome the role of the countries which are interested to work with good intent for peace and stability in Afghanistan," he added, the report said. "We are heading towards an inclusive government. More people from different ethnicities, including Hazaras, technocrats and educated people, have been inducted in the interim cabinet. The cabinet formation is not complete yet and more people will be included in it," Mujahid said. Responding to a question, the spokesperson expressed confidence that economic activities would soon resume in the country. Ahead of talks on Afghanistan at the UN General Assembly, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that the most urgent priority is averting an even deeper economic collapse of the neighbouring nation that could trigger a humanitarian catastrophe. On September 3, the Taliban had heaped praise on Pakistan for its contributions towards the people of Afghanistan. Watch latest videos by DH here: Armin Laschet, the candidate from Angela Merkel's party to succeed her as chancellor, may have had a dismal election campaign marred by gaffes, but he also has a knack for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, which could still see him triumph in Sunday's polls. The affable 60-year-old has a reputation for endurance and what Der Spiegel magazine has described as an ability to "sit out" his opponents, even when the chips are down. Elected as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in January, Laschet was for some time the clear favourite to become Germany's next chancellor when Merkel bows out of politics after Sunday's election. But recent polls have shown the conservative alliance of the CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU), its Bavarian sister party, trailing behind the Social Democrats (SPD) and on course for their worst election result since World War II. A particular low point for Laschet came in July, when he was caught on camera laughing during a tribute to the victims of deadly floods in North Rhine-Westphalia, where he is the regional leader. He has also been widely criticised over his dithering response to the Covid-19 pandemic in that region, with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper describing him as "indecisive, sometimes acting impulsively". Also read: 'Eternal chancellor': Germany's Merkel prepares to leave the stage If Laschet does manage to bring his party home as the winner on Sunday, it would not be the first time he has defied expectations. Laschet won the vote to become CDU leader against the odds, and went on to secure the conservatives' nomination to be chancellor candidate after a drawn-out battle with the more popular Markus Soeder of the CSU. He also outperformed the polls to secure his impressive 2017 election win in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. Asked in a recent TV interview whether he thought he was often underestimated, Laschet replied that "many have certainly miscalculated". A devout Catholic, Laschet was born in Aachen, a spa city in western Germany near the border with Belgium and the Netherlands, where his father fed the family digging for coal. "When you're down in the mine, it doesn't matter where your colleague comes from, what his religion is or what he looks like. What is important is, can you rely on him," he told party colleagues in January. Laschet initially studied law in Munich before working as a journalist, including for several years as the editor of a Catholic newspaper. After first joining the CDU as a teenager, he was elected to the Bundestag German parliament in 1994 and to the European Parliament in 1999. He became head of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2012 and has been state premier there since 2017. A defender of multiculturalism, Laschet has a reputation for being even more pro-migration than Merkel and famously backed the chancellor during the fallout from Germany's 2015 refugee influx. A self-described "passionate European", he is a fluent French speaker and met his wife and the mother of his three children, who is of French-speaking Wallonian origin, singing in a church choir. In his office in Duesseldorf, Laschet keeps a golden bust of his hero and alleged distant relative Charlemagne, the king of the Franks credited with uniting Europe -- a fitting role model for a man often praised for his ability to unify. "Polarising is easy -- anyone can do it," he told a party conference earlier this year. "We have to speak plainly, but not polarise. We have to be able to integrate. Keeping a society together and bringing it together, that is hard work." Known for his jolly persona, Laschet is a regular at the famous carnival celebrations in North Rhine-Westphalia and was even awarded a "prize against deadly seriousness" by the Aachen carnival club last year. But he also showed his serious side when responding to the crisis in Afghanistan, accusing NATO of the "biggest debacle" in its history. Afghanistan gave Laschet "the first opportunity to present himself as a statesman in the making", Die Welt daily said. "This was no longer the friendly Rhinelander." Check out latest videos from DH: The World Health Organisation (WHO) tightened its air quality guidelines on Wednesday for the first time since 2005, hoping to spur countries toward clean energy and prevent deaths and illness caused by air pollution. The new recommendations targeting pollutants including particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, both of which are found in fossil fuel emissions, could save millions of lives, it said. Air pollution kills at least 7 million people prematurely each year. Even at very low levels, research has shown "air pollution affects all parts of the body, from the brain to a growing baby in a mother's womb," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. The United Nations body hopes the revisions encourage their 194 member countries toward actions that slash fossil fuel emissions, which are also driving climate change. Globally, countries are under pressure to pledge bold emissions-cutting plans ahead of the UN climate conference in November in Glasgow, Scotland. Read | India third-most polluted country in world: Report Scientists applauded the new guidelines, but worried that some countries would have trouble implementing them, given that much of the world was failing to meet the older, less stringent standards. In 2019, a full 90% of the global population was breathing air considered unhealthy by the 2005 guidelines, according to WHO data. And some countries, such as India, still have national standards that are looser than those 2005 recommendations. In the European Union, which has standards that are significantly higher than the WHOs older recommendations, some countries failed to keep average annual pollution levels within legal limits in 2020, even with the industry and transportation shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. Experts said that efforts to curb pollution by reducing fossil fuel use would provide a double benefit, in both improving public health conditions and bringing down climate-warming emissions. "The two go hand in hand," said Kurt Straif, a former scientist with the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, who is a visiting professor and co-director of the Global Observatory on Pollution at Boston College. "While implementation is extremely challenging, it is also a once-in-a-generation opportunity in the post-Covid recovery." Better health The new recommendations slash in half the WHO limits for a measure called PM2.5, which stands for particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres or less than one-thirtieth the width of a human hair. That is small enough to travel deep into the lungs and even enter the blood stream. According to the new limits, average annual PM2.5 concentrations should be no higher than 5 micrograms per cubic metre. The old recommendations set the average annual limit at 10. But scientists have determined that long-term exposure to concentrations even that low still contributed to heart and lung diseases, stroke and other negative health impacts. Hardest hit are those living in low- and middle-income countries reliant on burning fossil fuels for electricity. "The evidence is pretty clear that poorer populations and more socially disadvantaged populations are going to be more exposed, just because of where they are living," said Jonathan Grigg, a paediatrician and researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Generally, he said, these groups emit less pollution, yet face more of its consequences. Meeting the new guidelines would not only improve overall health, but could work to reduce health inequality, he said. In announcing the new guidelines, the WHO said that "almost 80% of deaths related to PM2.5 could be avoided in the world if the current air pollution levels were reduced. The average PM2.5 level in China in the first half of this year was 34 micrograms per cubic metre. For Beijing, the level was 41, the same as last year. "What matters most is whether governments implement impactful policies to reduce pollutant emissions, such as ending investments in coal, oil and gas and prioritizing the transition to clean energy, said Aidan Farrow, a Greenpeace international air pollution scientist who is based at Britain's University of Exeter. Watch latest videos by DH here: "The failure to meet the outgoing WHO guidelines must not be repeated," he said in a statement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here on Wednesday on an official visit to the US during which he will hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, attend the maiden in-person Quad summit and address the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Modi, who is visiting the US for the 7th time after assuming office in 2014, said his visit would be an occasion to strengthen the Indo-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and consolidate ties with Japan and Australia. He was received at the airport by senior officials of the Biden Administration and Indias Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Despite heavy rains since early in the morning, a significant number of Indian Americans were present at the Andrews Joint Airforce Base to welcome the Prime Minister. Prime Minister Modi has a packed agenda over the next three days. Read | We need mutual recognition of jab certificates: Modi President Biden will host Modi at the White House for their first bilateral meeting on September 24. Later on that day, Biden will host the first-ever in-person Quad Leaders Summit with Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Biden and Prime Minister Modi have spoken virtually on multiple occasions after the former, a Democrat, became US president in January. The last telephone conversation between them took place on April 26. Vice President Harris will meet Prime Minister Modi on September 23. This will be the first meeting between the two leaders. Harris had earlier spoken with Modi over the phone in June during the Covid-19 crisis. Harris is the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected Vice President. "During my visit, I will review the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with President Biden and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest," Modi said just before leaving for the US. "I am also looking forward to meeting Vice President Kamala Harris to explore opportunities for cooperation between our two nations particularly in the area of science and technology," said Modi, who is visiting the US at the invitation of President Biden. Modi said he will participate in the first in-person Quad Leaders' Summit. The Summit provides an opportunity to take stock of the outcomes of the Quad leaders' Virtual Summit in March this year and identify priorities for future engagements based on our shared vision for the Indo-Pacific region, he said. Prime Minister Modi will also hold bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Morrison and Prime Minister Suga and take stock of the strong bilateral relations. "My visit to the US would be an occasion to strengthen the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with the USA, consolidate relations with our strategic partners - Japan and Australia - and to take forward our collaboration on important global issues," he said in his departure statement. Modi said that he will conclude his visit with an address at the 76th session UN General Assembly on Saturday, focusing on the pressing global challenges including the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to combat terrorism, climate change and other important issues. At a media briefing in New Delhi, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday that the developments in Afghanistan will be extensively discussed in the bilateral talks between Modi and Biden and the Indian side will convey that Washington needs to continue to focus on that country. The United States has ruled out adding India or Japan to the recently created security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom in the Indo-Pacific, popular as AUKUS. On September 15, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the trilateral security alliance AUKUS under which Australia would get a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. "The announcement of AUKUS last week was not meant to be an indication, and I think this is the message the President also sent to (French President Emmanuel) Macron, that there is no one else who will be involved in security in the Indo-Pacific," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference on Wednesday. France had criticised its exclusion from the alliance, saying it reflects a lack of coherence when common challenges are being faced in the Indo-Pacific region. Read | AUKUS changes everything "Of course, it's an important topic in conversations with the French, with a range of countries who have a direct interest in the region, she said. Psaki was responding to a question if countries like India and Japan whose leaders would be in town this week for the Quad Summit would be made part of the security alliance. The Quad comprises India, the US, Japan and Australia. The US is hosting the in-person Quad summit in Washington on September 24. "On Friday you'll have the Australians there (for the Quad summit). But then you also have India and Japan. Would you envision for them a similar kind of military role that you've now defined for with the Australians? a journalist asked. "AUKUS? What would it become? JAUKUS? JAIAUKUS? Psaki said in lighter moments before giving answer to the question. The trilateral security alliance, seen as an effort to counter China in the Indo-Pacific, will allow the US and the UK to provide Australia with the technology to develop nuclear-powered submarines for the first time. China has sharply criticised the trilateral alliance, saying such grouping has no future and will gravely undermine regional stability and aggravate the arms race and hurt international non-proliferation efforts. Watch latest videos by DH here: The United States and Britain on Wednesday welcomed China's promise to end funding for coal projects overseas, but voiced hope the world's largest emitter would also do more at home on climate change. President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that China will stop backing coal overseas, all but drying up the world's foreign assistance to the dirty form of energy in developing countries after similar announcements by South Korea and Japan. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, seeking to rally international support for strong climate action ahead of UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, voiced hope for a complete global end to coal by 2040. "I thank President Xi for what he has done to end China's international financing of coal and I hope China will now go further and phase out the domestic use of coal as well," Johnson told the General Assembly. "Because the experience of the UK shows it can be done. Despite China's pledge on overseas assistance, it has kept investing at home in coal -- an issue raised on a visit earlier this month by US climate envoy John Kerry. A US official said of Xi's move: "We welcome this announcement but we also recognise that more needs to be done." "We look forward to hearing more about the additional steps that they can take in this decisive decade to further reduce their national emissions," the official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity. The official said that further Chinese action would "help put the world more closely on a trajectory that will hold temperatures from rising to well above 1.5 degrees," as appears increasingly likely despite an aspiration set by the 2015 Paris accord. UN scientists say that warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels is a threshold at which the planet can avoid the worst ravages of climate change including increasingly severe weather, droughts and flooding. President Joe Biden has put a high priority on the environment after defeating the climate skeptic Donald Trump and in his own UN speech Tuesday vowed to double US aid for countries hardest hit by climate change, a key gap ahead of the Glasgow talks. Watch latest videos by DH here: Wednesday marks the 15th year of Supreme Court issuing directives for police reforms but Karnataka is the only state in the country that provides its State Security Commission, which is to be set up to ensure that the state government does not exercise "unwarranted influence or pressure" on police, the power to make binding recommendations. Karnataka along with Arunachal Pradesh also give full power to Police Establishment Board (PEB) established to decide all transfers, postings, promotions and other service-related matters for officers of and below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police and make recommendations to the state government on postings and transfers of officers above the rank of DySP among others. An analysis by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a private watchdog, also shows that only six states provide security of tenure for their police chief, only seven provide for independent short-listing of candidates and only 13 allow an internal mechanism to enable police leadership to take decisions on transfers without political interference. Neither a single state nor union territories comply fully with the directives in true earnest signaling the central governments non-compliance, the 'Government Compliance with Supreme Court Directive on Police Reforms: An Assessment 2021' report said. Also Read | Urgent need for jail, police reforms "The failure to comply with the directives reveals the extent to which elected governments are resisting police reform across the country. Needed checks and balances that the directives seek to instill to make policing more professional and accountable are being stymied in multiple ways," it said. According to the SC, the State Security Commission (SSC) is to be set up to ensure that the state government does not exercise unwarranted influence or pressure on the police, lay down broad policy guidelines and evaluate the performance of the state police. It is designed to be a buffer between the political executive and police through its policy-making role and wide membership. The CHRI report said Karnataka is the only state that makes the recommendations of the SSC binding. Other states either do not include any provision on binding recommendations, or make it subject to broad terms like "only to the extent feasible" like in Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh, or "unless...the government decides to disagree with findings of the authority" as in (Delhi). "Absence of a categorical articulation of the SSC recommendations being binding on the respective government weakens the body and reduces its role to being merely advisory, rather than policymaking, as intended by the court," the report said. Twenty-seven out of 28 states have constituted an SSC, either through Police Acts or government orders and Odisha remains the only state yet to establish an SSC. Seven out of 27 states - Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Punjab, Telangana and Tripura do not include the Leader of the Opposition in the SSC. When it comes to the two-year tenure and process of appointment of the Director General of Police (DGP), only Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland are the only states that fully comply with the SC directive. Twenty-three states, including Karnataka Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, omit shortlisting by the UPSC and give state governments the sole discretion to select the candidates for the DGPs post. On separating law and order from investigation, 12 states Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have failed to comply. Sixteen states, including Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have taken some measures to separate investigation and law and order duties. Nine states Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, West Bengal and Uttarakhand include serving police officers as its members of the On Police Complaints Authorities. While the court did not specifically prohibit this, including serving officers in an authority mandated to inquire into public complaints against the police undermines the principle of independent external oversight and accountability, the report said. Check out latest DH videos here Prime Minister Narendra Modi has commended the Indian Diaspora for distinguishing itself across the world, as he received an enthusiastic welcome from the community on his arrival here on a major visit to further enhance Indo-US relations. Modi was warmly greeted by groups of Indian-Americans at the airport soon after his plane landed here on Wednesday and later at the hotel where he had an interaction with the members of the community. Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength, Modi said in a tweet along with a set of pictures of his interaction with Indian-American CEOs. It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world, Modi said. Also read: PM Modi to meet US VP Kamala Harris, hold bilaterals with Japanese, Australian PMs on Sept 23 One of the signature events of Prime Minister Modi's overseas visits has been his meetings with the diaspora community in large gatherings. However, due to the current Covid-19 situation, the prime minister is unlikely to have a large gathering or meeting with the diaspora. Modi has been popular among Indian-Americans, who constitute more than 1.2 per cent of the countrys population. The community is increasingly playing an important role, including in American politics. Modi, who is visiting the US for the 7th time after assuming office in 2014, has said that his visit would be an occasion to strengthen the Indo-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and consolidate ties with Japan and Australia. Apart from meeting US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Modi is also scheduled to have separate bilateral talks with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Check out latest videos from DH: Tractor convoys trundled thousands of oil palm seedlings to new homes on farms across southeastern India this month, as the world's top importer of edible oil rolls out an ambitious $1.5-billion plan to boost output. Record prices of palm, and new government promises of payouts even if Indian prices slump, are driving the effort, which aims to lift domestic output sharply within a decade from a tiny level now. "The return on oil palm will at least be double that of rice and banana, and it is far less labour-intensive," said B. Brahmaiah, one of the hundreds of farmers nationwide who are racing to switch from the usual staple crops, such as rice. Brahmaiah, 37, owns a six-acre (2.4-hectare) plot in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh state, where fertile soil, ample water and oil processing mills promise to be a strong driver of higher production. Nestling amid verdant ricefields are forest-like clumps of oil palm, coconut, and cocoa plantations, watered by plentiful supplies from the region's rivers and canals. Read | Oil palm in Northeast: Threat to biodiversity? Elsewhere, though, regular watering is just one of many obstacles to achieving a target of a 10-fold output expansion within a decade, ranging from a shortage of seedlings to a four-year growing term before palm trees produce fruit. A national Mission on edible oils launched last month aims to boost output to 2.8 million tonnes by nearly tripling the crop cultivation area to 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres), so as to curb oil imports, which exceeded $11 billion last year. Ravi Mathur, who heads the Indian Institute of Oil Palm Research, the government-backed body driving the campaign, said it had identified 2.8 million hectares (7 million acres) suitable for palm cultivation. Apart from Andhra Pradesh, these areas include the mountainous northeast and the remote islands of Andaman and Nicobar, where a price premium of 2% is on offer to farmers so as to match rates for produce in less isolated areas. Green groups have criticised the push, saying it could lead to water scarcity, reduce forest cover, and hit biodiversity, but Mathur dismissed these fears as unfounded, saying authorities would protect the environment from harm. Still, planting all 2.8 million hectares (7 million acres) with palm will be a major task, as the thirsty plants need regular, profuse supplies of water, a scarce commodity in India, where agriculture relies on annual monsoon rains. Another barrier to the switch is that oil palm requires up to four years to yield sellable fruit, unlike rice, cotton or pulses, which can be harvested in less than six months. That constricts income flows for farmers, said Sougata Niyogi, a top official at India's biggest palm oil producer, Godrej Agrovet Limited. The government plans to make up some of the cost by offering 29,000 rupees ($394) for each hectare of new palm cultivation, and help with planting other quicker-growing crops on farms. It will also guarantee a viability price for fresh fruit bunches, paying the difference if market rates fall below that level. That assurance should hasten oil palm plantings, said B V Mehta, executive director of trade body Solvent Extractors' Association of India, as price volatility was previously a major deterrent for growers. Years before income flows Even with such assistance, few small, cash-starved farmers will be able to wait years for income to come in, Godrej's Niyogi said. Farmer O S Chalapatha, who planted oil palm on a 35-acre (14-hectare) plot more than a decade ago, said his earnings from a job with a private firm initially helped defray costs. "In the first few years, a huge amount was required to develop oil palm plantation," he told Reuters. "I managed to arrange it, since I was employed in a private company. But it is not possible for everyone." Also shaping as a critical threat is a shortage of palm seedlings. Palm nurseries in India and southeast Asia, which normally need up to a year to expand production, have been overwhelmed by the surge in seedling demand for the drive. To reach its target of 1 million hectares under oil palm by 2025/26, India must add 130,000 hectares (321,000 acres) every year, calling for millions of seedlings. "India needs 18.6 million seedlings, but local supplies are limited to 1 million," said an industry official in the financial capital of Mumbai, who sought anonymity. "For the rest, we are dependent on imports." Godrej plans to import 1.15 million sprouts this year, up from 450,000 last year, to meet farmers' demand, Niyogi added. The shortfall leaves first-time producers unable to start planting. "We are willing to pay three times more than government-set prices, but we are not able to secure seedlings," said another Andhra Pradesh farmer, T Malddiramaiah. A longer term challenge for India is setting up oil mills to press the fruit once it is ready, so as to avoid spoiling. Such infrastructure is scarce in the northeast, where congested roads and limited supplies of fertiliser already strain supply chains. That leaves just a few pockets of producers, such as those in Andhra Pradesh, to rise to the challenge, which suggests a dent in huge imports is unlikely. For all its efforts, India may not be able to produce more than 2 million tonnes of palm oil by 2029/30, when demand is expected to have risen another 5 million tonnes, said a leading edible oil refiner. "India will remain import-dependent in the foreseeable future," said the refiner, who asked not to be identified. "Oil palm and other programs can only reduce some incremental growth in imports." But on his farm in Andhra Pradesh, Brahmaiah has his eyes firmly fixed on the prize. "Oil palm is more profitable than other crops once it starts yielding," he said. Watch latest videos by DH here: After the Shimla confabulations of the Gandhis where Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are on vacation, it is expected that Congress will push for an AICC reshuffle and put its house in order in the states. This follows the Punjab operation in which Rahul Gandhi pushed for change and Charanjit Singh Channi was appointed as Chief Minister after the exit of Amarinder Singh. This has raised hopes in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan where two chief minister aspirants -- TS Singh Deo and Sachin Pilot -- are waiting for their turn. Ahead of the Shimla vacation, Rahul Gandhi had met Sachin Pilot in Delhi for a long discussion. Read | Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot discuss Rajasthan Cabinet reshuffle in a 'quiet meeting' Although no details have come out about the meeting, alarm bells have started ringing in Rajasthan with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot likely to travel to Delhi to meet the central leadership. There is a strong sense in the Congress that Pilot will return as the Pradesh Congress Committee chief and move forward with the new assignment ahead of state elections. Similarly, in Chhattisgarh, there has been no final decision on the demand for rotational chief ministership. Rahul Gandhi was supposed to go there on the chief minister's invitation but that he chose otherwise shows that all is not well. The Chhattisgarh Chief Minister may have time till the elections in five states as his team are working in Uttar Pradesh. In the election going states of UP, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab, the Congress sees a chance of returning to power in four states except UP where it is not the main challenger. The party also has a tough task to overcome the Aam Aadmi Party which is cutting into its votes in Punjab, Goa, and Uttarakhand. The Congress is likely to see a reshuffle in the AICC with the appointment of a Gujarat in-charge in the party, a post which is vacant due to the demise of Rajeev Satav. The party will also try to balance regional and caste equations in the AICC with more representation from the northern states. However, there is strong resentment against Rahul Gandhi's close aides in the party and there is a consultation to appoint a senior leader to quell the resentment. Read | Lalu favours caste census, demands breaching 50% cap on quota The party has to decide on the organisational elections which was also the demand of the G-23 group in the party. After the Shimla sojourn, it has to be seen if Rahul Gandhi is ready to take the post or the Congress will go for a working president. Senior party leader Shashi Tharoor had said on Saturday there should be new leadership in the Congress party. "No one has spoken a word against Sonia Gandhi, but she herself is saying she wishes to step down and hence a new leadership should take over quickly." "If Rahul Gandhi wishes to take over, it should happen quickly," said Tharoor to the media as he arrived near Ernakulam on a day that saw the party's Punjab unit implode. He said if Congress has to come back, things should fall in place quickly and it should get ready to face the elections. Till now various frontal organisations of the Congress party have been demanding that Rahul Gandhi should take over as the new president. Check out the latest videos from DH: A 16-year-old girl was allegedly raped by three men in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, police said on Thursday. According to the police, the men took the girl to a jungle after threatening her with a pistol when she had gone to throw garbage on Wednesday. The accused left the girl in the jungle after rape. She was rescued by her family member who had gone out searching for her after she failed to return home. According to a complaint filed with the police, the accused attacked the girl's family members when they confronted them. A police officer said a case has been registered against the accused, identified as Rajive, Guddu and Ashu. The trio are on the run. Check out latest videos from DH: A woman allegedly killed her two-year-old son by banging him on the floor of her house in Chhattisgarh's Korba district after being harried by his demand for being breast-fed, police said on Thursday. The incident took place on Wednesday in Sector-5 area, about 10 km from the district headquarters, under Balco police station limits, they said. As per preliminary investigation, the police have learnt that since 2014, the woman was suffering from a psychological problem and was under-treatment. The police have detained the woman and questioned her, a senior police official said. She was fed up with the child's constant demand for being breast-fed, he said. The woman, in a fit of rage, banged the child on the floor of her house. The child suffered serious head injuries and was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead, the official said. The police have registered a case against the woman under relevant provisions, he added. Check out latest videos from DH: Former Jammu and Kashmir Bank chairman Parvez Ahmad Nengroo, who is facing graft charges, on Thursday joined the Peoples Conference. Nengroo, who was removed from the post of chairman of the bank in 2019 by the government, joined the People's Conference (PC) in the presence of party chief Sajad Gani Lone. Welcoming Negroo into the party fold, Lone said he will play a key role in scripting the PC's economic agenda for change. "I whole-heartedly welcome Parvez sahib into the Caravan of Change. He has had an illustrious banking career and is a hands-on leader who has risen from the ranks, he said. During his tenure, we saw one of the fastest turnarounds in the banking industry having turned around the J&K bank's financial fortunes during his tenure as the Chairman and CEO. He will play a pivotal role in scripting JKPC's agenda for the socio-economic upliftment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir," Lone added. Nengroo said he was inspired by Lone's "sincerity of thought, vision and deep desire" to usher in a new era of socio-economic development in J&K. "I have earlier had the privilege of serving the people and premiere institutions of J&K in a professional capacity for many decades. It is now my yearning to contribute in creating inclusive political and economic institutions for change by working within the aegis of the Peoples Conference. We are facing enormous challenges both politically and economically and it is time that we look for collective and institutional solutions to ensure sustainable socio-economic growth and development in J&K", he added. Responding to a question on the prevalent political environment in J&K, Lone said it is high time for introspection among the mainstream political parties of Jammu and Kashmir. He also said people must empower and accord the dignity and respect to the mainstream political parties that they deserve. Nengroo was removed as chairman of the J&K Bank in June 2019 following allegations of governance. He was arrested in April this year in a graft case relating to illegal allotment of housekeeping tenders that had allegedly resulted in the loss to the tune of crores of rupees to the bank. He was granted interim bail in May. Check out the latest videos from DH: Anand Giri, a disciple of Narendra Giri, who has been accused by the seer in his 7-page suicide note, is a native of Rajasthan's Bhilwara district, who left his home at the age of 13. His father Rameshwar Chotiya still resides in a small home in village Sareri in Jaipur. He said that Anand was a name given to him later. "We have named him Ashok. 25 years back, he left home without informing anyone. He was a Class 7 student at that time. We tried searching for him and after a few years, someone informed us that he is in Haridwar. "We tried searching for him in Haridwar too and traced him in Narendra Giri's ashram. We spoke to the latter, Narendra Giri then brought Anand along with him to our village in 2012. He was given Diksha here in the presence of family members." Also read: UP recommends CBI probe in connection with death of Mahant Narendra Giri Anand Giri's father said that the duo stayed in Jaipur for an hour and then did not come back. However, Anand Giri came back after his mother's demise five months back. The family denied the claims that Anand Giri ever sent them any money. Anand Giri is the youngest of the siblings. Two elder brothers are in Surat and are scrap dealers, mother died five months back and his father is engaged in farming while one brother runs a vegetable cart. The three-brother family has an ancestral house where they all are staying. The villagers, meanwhile, consider him as an icon and said that Anand Giri has a cool and composed nature and he could not engage in any crime. Check out latest videos from DH: The Supreme Court on Thursday orally observed that it will set up a technical committee to probe the allegations of snooping on citizens, particularly Opposition leaders, journalists, activists, etc. through Israel's Pegasus spyware. A bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana said that some experts have expressed their inability to join the probe due to personal reasons and an order on the committee may be passed next week. The CJI said that the court wanted to pass orders this week. However, it was deferred as some members, who the court wanted to be part of the technical committee, had expressed personal difficulties to be on the committee. Also Read Pegasus affidavit: Centre's stand untenable "That is why it is taking time to constitute the technical expert committee," the CJI said hoping that the court will finalise the names of members of the technical committee soon. The court made the oral observations to senior advocate C U Singh, who had appeared for one of the petitioners during the arguments in the matter. Singh was before the court in an unrelated matter on Thursday. The bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, had on September 13, reserved its order on interim directions to be issued on a batch of petitions for independent probe into use of the spyware. The Centre, on its part, had proposed to constitute an expert panel, comprising independent members, to examine the allegations. It also assured of disclosing details before the experts' panel. However, the government had declined to file a detailed affidavit, saying use or non-use of a particular software cannot be debated in such a manner since it involved questions of national security and might alert a potential terrorist or terror organisations to develop counter measures. The court said that it did not want any details which compromised the national security but wanted to know if any inquiry had been ordered by the government. On July 18, an international investigative consortium reported that many Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were among the 50,000 potential targets of the Israeli company NSO Groups phone-hacking software. A batch of petitions, including those by advocate M L Sharma, CPI(M) MP John Brittas, N Ram, former IIM professor Jagdeep Chokkar, Narendra Mishra, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Rupesh Kumar Singh, S N M Abdi and Editors Guild of India, were filed for independent probe into the matter. Watch the latest DH Videos here: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday began his engagements in the US with a "productive interaction" with President and CEO of Qualcomm Cristiano E Amon during which they discussed investment opportunities offered in India's telecommunications and electronics sector. Modi, who arrived here on Wednesday on an official visit to the US during which he will hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, held a one-on-one meeting with Amon here. "Talking technology... @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts," the Prime Minister's Office tweeted. Talking technology... President and CEO of @Qualcomm, @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts. pic.twitter.com/kKcaXhpFtB PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 23, 2021 Modi described the meeting as "fruitful" and said they talked about leveraging technology for greater public good and tech opportunities in India. "He was interested in Indias strides in 5G and our efforts such as PM-WANI to boost connectivity," Modi said. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that they discussed recent electronics and telecom manufacturing Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes; and measures to strengthen the innovation ecosystem. "Toward making India a global innovation hub! PM @narendramodi in conversation with @cristianoamon, CEO @Qualcomm on investment opportunities in hi-tech sectors in India. Discussed recent electronics & telecom manufacturing PLI schemes; & measures to strengthen innovation ecosystem, he tweeted. "During the meeting, they discussed investment opportunities offered in Indias telecommunications and electronics sector. This included the recently launched Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) as well as developments in the semiconductor supply chain in India, the MEA said in a release. Strategies for building the local innovation ecosystem in India were also discussed, it added. Sources said Amon expressed enthusiasm to work with India on ambitious digital transformation programmes including in 5G, PM WANI and others. He also expressed interest partnering with India to work in the field of semiconductors. Prime Minister Modi assured him that India will proactively work on the proposals made by them. He also stressed that India has the scale for ambitious projects. He said that India has prepared 5G standards and urged Qualcomm to actively participate as they did in case of NAVIK, sources said. Modi also said that since Qualcomm has trusted Indian talent already, it can now trust Indian talent and start manufacturing with the advantage the PLI scheme offers. He also spoke about the new liberalised drone policy and said that Qualcomm could take part in new opportunities in the new emerging market, according to sources. "It was an honor meeting with Indias Prime Minister @narendramodi today. Great discussion on #5G, #vRAN, digital transformation, and the importance of semiconductors and a reliable geo-diversified supply chain," Amon tweeted after his meeting with the Prime Minister. "Qualcomm supports Indias transition to #5G and transformation into a digitally empowered society. We look forward to working with the government, @investindia and local industry to help realize the vast growth opportunities for the technology sector and startup community, he said in another tweet. In an interview to Doordarshan after his meeting, Amon said, "We are so proud of our partnership (with India). Qualcomm is now pioneering its way to 5G with a new era of intelligent products that are revolutionizing industries, including automotive, computing, and IoT. "We talked about 5G and the celebration of 5G. We talked about an incredible opportunity to advance the industry not only domestically in India but India as an export of technology, he said in response to a question. Amon said they spoke about digital transformation enabled by 5G combined with the design in India. "We talked about semiconductors, which is kind of an important topic of conversation. And we talked about the opportunity to continue to build an incredible mobile ecosystem that is developing in India. We are very pleased with the conversations and we're very, very happy with everything we're doing together with India, he said. Responding to a question, Amon said Qualcomm would continue to invest in India. India, he said, could be an important destination for the semiconductor industry, subject to the availability of infrastructure. India, he said, is a great place for investors, not only to invest directly, but also to support other companies. For example, Qualcomm has a designing India program that helps several startup companies in India. Qualcomm, he said, has been very successful to date with all the investments that are made in India. The Prime Ministers approach to drive economic growth in making India a destination for investment has been very successful, he said. "We welcome that, he said. The meeting with chip giant Amon assumes significance, given Indias push for the 5G technology to be safe and secure. The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. A world leader in 3G, 4G, and next-generation wireless technology innovations for more than 30 years, Qualcomm is now pioneering its way to 5G with a new era of intelligent products that are revolutionising industries, including automotive, computing, and Internet of Things (IoT). India is looking for a major investment from Qualcomm, which has a huge presence in the country, including Research and Development. Check out the latest DH videos here: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday commenced his visit in Washington D.C. with meetings with the top brass of the multinational companies based in the United States, hard-selling his governments initiatives to draw more foreign investments to revive the Covid-hit economy of India, including the recently launched Production Linked Incentive scheme. Modi had separate one-to-one meetings with Cristiano Amon, Shantanu Narayen, Mark Widmar, Vivek Lall and Stephen Schwarzman, the Chief Executive Officers of Qualcomm, Adobe, First Solar, General Atomics Global Corporation and Blackstone respectively. They discussed prospects of the US companies investing or expanding existing investments in India. The Prime Minister and the Qualcomm CEO discussed investment opportunities offered in the telecommunications and electronic sectors in India. Modi pointed out that the Qualcomm could take advantage of the recently launched Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for electronic system design and manufacturing. He also highlighted recent efforts by his government to achieving self-reliance in production of semiconductors and to find long-term solution to the global chip shortage which started hitting the auto industry in India. Also Read | PM Modi to interact with American CEOs to highlight opportunities in India We're so proud of our partnership with India. We're happy with everything we're doing together with India, the Qualcomm CEO told journalists after his meeting with the Prime Minister. Amon conveyed to Modi that the Qualcomm was interested in exploring opportunities for production of semiconductors in India. He also evinced his companys interests in digital transformation programmes in India, a source aware of the discussion between the two said. The source quoted the Qualcomm CEO saying that India is a big market but the company also saw it as a big export market. It is the right time for the Government of India to not only encourage manufacturing for the market in India, but also plan to serve the need of other countries, he told the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister stressed that India had prepared 5G standards, and urged the Qualcomm to actively participate in the 5G rollout, as they did in case of the NAVIK. He also spoke about the new liberalised drone policy of the Government of India and said that Qualcomm could take part in new opportunities in the emerging market. The Prime Minister and the General Atomics CEO discussed investment opportunities in the defence technology sector in India. Lall appreciated the recent policy changes by the Modi Government to accelerate defence and emerging technology manufacturing and augment capacity building in India. Narayen of the Adobe expressed desire to bring videos and animation to every child in India. The Prime Minister told him that bringing smart education to every child is important and that made technology very significant. He said that the ground for digital education had been laid in the Covid-19 era and it should be taken forward now. Modi and Narayen emphasised on creating few centres of excellence in Artificial Intelligence in India. Modi told Widmar about Indias ambitious target of installing capacity for generating 450 GW of renewable energy. He also emphasised on Indias focus on manufacturing solar energy and said that the companies in the field of solar energy could take maximum advantage of the recently launched PLI schemes. Schwarzman briefed Modi about the Blackstones ongoing projects in India and its interest in further investments in the infrastructure and real estate sectors. The Prime Minister and the Blackstone CEO discussed investment opportunities in India, including the ones under National Infrastructure Pipeline and National Monetisation Pipeline. The Air India One with the Prime Minister on board landed at the Andrews Air Force Base near the US capital early on Thursday (6 pm on Wednesday Washington D.C. time). He was welcomed by T H Brian McKeon, Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources at the US State Department. New Delhis envoy to Washington D.C. Taranjit Singh Sandhu was also present at the airport. Some Indian-Americans greeted the Prime Minister on his arrival in Washington D.C. Check out DH's latest videos: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he would highlight economic opportunities in India during his meetings with CEOs in Washington. On Thursday, the prime minister is scheduled to hold one-on-one meetings with the top five American CEOs. Two of them are Indian Americans -- Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Vivek Lall from General Atomics. The three others being Cristiano E Amon from Qualcomm, Mark Widmar from First Solar, and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. Landed in Washington DC. Over the next two days, will be meeting President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Prime Ministers Scott Morrison from Australia and Yoshihide Suga from Japan," he tweeted. Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength. It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world. pic.twitter.com/6cw2UR2uLH Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 22, 2021 Will attend the Quad meeting and would also interact with leading CEOs to highlight economic opportunities in India, he said. The prime minister's meeting with American CEOs from five different key areas is reflective of the priorities of his government. While Narayen reflects the IT and digital priority that the Indian government is pushing for, Modis meeting with Lall is significant as General Atomics is not only the pioneer in military drone technologies but also the worlds top manufacturer of state-of-the-art military drones, which the US shares only with its key allies and partners. Landed in Washington DC. Over the next two days, will be meeting @POTUS @JoeBiden and @VP @KamalaHarris, Prime Ministers @ScottMorrisonMP and @sugawitter. Will attend the Quad meeting and would also interact with leading CEOs to highlight economic opportunities in India. pic.twitter.com/56pt7hnQZ8 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 22, 2021 India is in the process of procuring a significant number of drones for the three branches of its armed forces. It has also leased a few drones from General Atomics. Jakarta-born Vivek Lall, now based out of California, for over a decade has been instrumental in major bilateral defence deals worth around $18 billion, as India and the US take steps to forge a new relationship in which defence trade is a key pillar. Also read: PM Narendra Modi arrives in US to attend Quad leaders' summit, address UNGA The meeting with chip giant Cristiano Amon assumes significance, given Indias push for the 5G technology to be safe and secure. The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. A world leader in 3G, 4G, and next-generation wireless technology innovations for more than 30 years, Qualcomm is now pioneering its way to 5G with a new era of intelligent products that are revolutionising industries, including automotive, computing, and IoT. India is looking for a major investment from Qualcomm. As India is taking gigantic steps in the use of solar power to meet its energy needs, the meeting with Mark Widmar is important as First Solar is a leading global provider of comprehensive photovoltaic (PV) solar solutions, which use its advanced module and system technology. Early this summer, the Arizona-based company announced to add 3.3 GW of capacity in a new facility in India at an estimated cost of USD684 million. Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, one of the worlds leading investment firms investing capital on behalf of pension funds, large institutions and individuals. In March this year, Blackstone announced that funds managed by Blackstone Real Estate have acquired Embassy Industrial Parks from Warburg Pincus and Embassy Group, in one of Indias largest logistics transactions. Check out latest videos from DH: The ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front in Kerala has called for a hartal in the state on September 27 to express solidarity with the Bharat Bandh called by various farmers' organisations. LDF convenor and CPM acting secretary A Vijayaraghavan said that demonstrations would be staged across the state as part of the protest against the anti-farmers laws of the centre. The ruling Front itself calling for hartal is likely to trigger criticisms. Check out the latest DH videos here: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has told the G20 nations that the Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghanistans soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented and the world expects a broad-based, inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of the Afghan society. Jaishankar addressed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting on Afghanistan on Wednesday, held on the sidelines of the high-level 76th session of the UN General Assembly. International community must come together in response to humanitarian needs. Assistance providers must be accorded unimpeded, unrestricted and direct access, Jaishankar said in a series of tweets after the virtual meeting. Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented. The world expects a broad-based inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of Afghan society, he said. Read | 'Afghanistan unrest could inspire US-based extremists' The Taliban swept across Afghanistan last month, seizing control of almost all key towns and cities in the backdrop of withdrawal of the US forces that began on May 1. On August 15, the capital city of Kabul fell to the insurgents. Talibans commitment not to allow use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented. The world expects a broad based inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of Afghan society. Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 The Taliban claimed victory over opposition forces in the last holdout province of Panjshir on September 6, completing their takeover of Afghanistan three weeks after capturing Kabul. The Taliban has said that Afghan territory will not be used against any country. Jaishankar said the UN Security Council resolution 2593 on Afghanistan reflects global sentiment and should continue to guide our approach. Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. The resolution, adopted under Indias Presidency of the 15-nation Council in August, demanded that Afghan territory not be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter or train terrorists, or to plan or to finance terrorist acts, and reiterated the importance of combating terrorism in Afghanistan, including those individuals and entities designated pursuant to resolution 1267 (1999), and noted the Talibans relevant commitments. It had condemned in the strongest terms the deplorable attacks of August 26 near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, which were claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, an entity affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh), and resulted in deaths and injuries of over 300 civilians and 28 military personnel. The resolution took note of the Talibans condemnation of this attack. Following the G20 meeting, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted Had a productive dialogue at #UNGA76 with G20 Foreign Ministers and International Organisation Principals on Afghanistan. The international community is united in its expectations for the Taliban to adhere to their commitments. Had a productive dialogue at #UNGA76 with G20 Foreign Ministers and International Organization Principals on Afghanistan. The international community is united in its expectations for the Taliban to adhere to their commitments. pic.twitter.com/Ld85POFRUa Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 22, 2021 Watch latest videos by DH here: Feni distillers in Goa on Thursday requested the Goa government for insititutional support to market the indigenous alcohol brewed from fermented cashew apple juice internationally, on par with Russian vodka and Japanese sake. The Goa Cashew Feni Distillers and Bottlers Association also sought subsidies from the state government in order to boost and streamline production of the cashew fruit in the state, which the association's Secretary Hansel Vaz said would also help afforestation of bald hillocks and barren areas in the state. "It should be standard product like scotch, champagne... Like Mexico's tequila, Russian vodka and Japan's sake, we need to export our feni across the country and the world and the local distillers should also benefit economically," Vaz told a press conference in Panaji. Feni is one of the most popular indigenous alcohols in Goa, which is extracted from the fermented distilled juice of cashew apples. Feni also has a geographical indication tag which is owned by the Goa government's Science and Technology department and the Association. Feni was first manufactured in Goa in the 1600s, after the Portuguese imported the cashew plant from Brazil to India. There are currently 26 varieties of feni manufactured in Goa. While feni was earlier branded as a "country liquor", it was upgraded to a state heritage spirit some years back. Earlier this year, the state government announced a special policy to promote the feni industry. But a lot more needs to be done to boost the industry in a holistic way, treasurer of the Association Tukaram Haldankar said. "We request the government to allow sale of feni in duty-free stores in airports and cruiserliner terminals. The government should also support us through Department of Tourism, so that feni can be promoted in its programmes. If you go to Scotland, they promote Scotch. Goa should promote its feni to Goa," he said. "We also need to standardise the processes of feni production, which would require another set of subsidies and financial assistance from the government. The subsidies and financial assistance would help put feni on par with internationally celeberated alcohols," Haldankar also said. Check out latest DH videos here The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will launch a money-laundering investigation into the recent seizure of nearly 3,000 kgs of heroin from two containers at Mundra port in Gujarat, according to ANI. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has so far arrested eight persons including five foreign nationals in connection with the seizure of a staggering 2,988 kg of heroin at Mundra Port in Gujarat, an official release said here on Wednesday. Also Read | Behind India's biggest heroin smuggling at Mundra port, a Chennai couple, Afghan national and his Indian pointsman Those arrested included an Indian couple who allegedly ran the firm which had imported the consignment claiming it to be of `semi-processed talc stones'. The drug haul is considered to be one of the biggest in the world with the value of the seized heroin estimated to be Rs 21,000 crore in the international markets. One kg of the drug sells at Rs 5 to 7 crore. "A total of eight persons including four Afghan nationals, one Uzbek and three Indians have been arrested so far. Following the seizure of an astounding quantity of heroin from two containers which had arrived at Mundra Port in Kutch district a few days back, the DRI conducted raids across the country and seized another 16.1 kg of heroin from a godown in Delhi, it said. It took the total heroin seizure in the case to 3,004 kg, said the release. The agency also recovered 10.2 kg of suspected cocaine and 11 kg of another substance suspected to be heroin from "a residential place in Noida", it added. On September 13, the DRI detained two containers that had arrived at Mundra Port from Kandahar in Afghanistan via Bandar Abbas port of Iran. The declaration accompanying the containers claimed that they contained "semi-processed talc stones". On September 17 and 19 it established that the two containers in fact contained heroin which was concealed in "the lower layers" of "jumbo bags" topped with talc stones, the release said. The drug had to be "painstakingly separated from the talc stones," it added. The DRI then arrested -- from Chennai -- M Sudhakar and his wife Durga Vaishali who allegedly ran Vijayawada-registered M/S Aashi Trading Company which had imported the consignment of `talc stones'. On Monday, a special court for cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in Bhuj remanded the couple in 10-day custody of the DRI. (With inputs from PTI) Watch the latest DH Videos here: A 15-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped multiple times over a period of eight months in Maharashtra's Thane district and the police have arrested 24 persons and detained two minors in the case, an official said on Thursday. Based on the girl's complaint, the Manpada police in Dombivli registered a case on Wednesday night against 33 persons under IPC sections 376 (rape), 376 (n) (repeated rape), 376 (d) (gang-rape), 376 (3) (rape on a woman under sixteen years of age) and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said. Additional Commissioner of Police (East region) Dattatray Karale told reporters that the alleged incidents took place between January 29 and September 22 this year. The girl told a relative about the ordeal on Wednesday following which the complaint was registered, he added. "It all started when the girl's boyfriend allegedly raped her in January and made a video. He then started blackmailing her. Subsequently his friends and acquaintances raped her on at least four or five occasions at different places in the district including Dombivli, Badlapur, Murbad and Rabale," Karale said. A special investigation team (SIT) has been formed under Assistant Commissioner of Police Sonali Dhole to probe the case, he added. "The victim has named 33 persons. Of them, 24 persons have been arrested and two minors detained. The girl's condition is said to be stable," Karale said, adding that search is on for the remaining accused. The arrested men were produced before a court on Thursday and were remanded in police custody till September 29, said another police official. Speaking to reporters in Nagpur, BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis demanded that the Maharashtra government make special efforts to prevent such crimes. An atmosphere of fear is prevailing in the state. The increase in the number of such incidents is worrisome," the former chief minister said. "Such an incident taking place in Dombivli which is known as a peaceful city is very shocking. We demand that the government immediately intervene," Fadnavis added. On the other hand, Shiv Sena leader and deputy chairperson of the Maharashtra Legislative Council Neelam Gorhe said the incident should not be politicized. The survivor should be protected, given counseling and rehabilitated, she said. Earlier this month, the Shiv Sena-led state government had come under fire when a 34-year-old woman died after being brutally raped and assaulted inside a stationary tempo in Mumbai's Sakinaka area. One person was arrested in the case. Check out the latest DH videos here: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in the US for his first in-person Quadrilateral (US-India-Japan-Australia) Security Dialogue or, simply the Quad, the sheen has been taken off his first in-person meeting with US President Joe Biden. India is already busy downplaying the importance of the AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) trilateral security deal after it was announced on September 16. Some hard lessons can be drawn from the way the AUKUS was formed. It was worked out in secrecy and sprung as a surprise virtually on the eve of the first physical meeting of the Quad leaders. Those putting the AUKUS into place would have had no doubt that it would dilute the impact of the Quad summit. This suggests that the US had concluded that neither Japan nor India would take on China when the crunch came, and it saw Australia as more reliable. Indias posturing as the US sidekick has been shredded for now. It is neither seen as capable of countering China nor to be trusted with the latest defence technology. The US mistrust of India is underlined by its consistent refusal to lease or sell its SSN (US Navy hull classification for nuclear subs) submarine. This is the technology that Australia is being supplied. India, incidentally, already has a nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant, with three more in the pipeline. However, they are SSBNs (ballistic missile-firing submarines). India has tended to lease SSNs from Russia as its own indigenously developed SSNs may take years to commission.US nuclear submarines are the most advanced and use weapons-grade nuclear fuel for propulsion and can operate for 33 years without refuelling. Also read: Tiff over AUKUS: France pulls out of trilateral ministerial talks with India, Australia Just as the US has NATO for the western world, one may now be witnessing a similar security arrangement of Anglophone nations for the East. India (and Japan) for now seem destined to remain in the outhouse. Australia is a non-nuclear power under NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty) and is entitled to use nuclear technology for civilian uses only. However, it is now being offered the technology to build nuclear-powered submarines using weapons-grade Uranium-235 (enriched to 90 per cent). The Australian submarines will clearly not have a civilian role. The technology was so closely held by the US that it had reportedly refused to discuss sharing it with Australia two years ago in Track-2 dialogues with that country. While none of this suggests that the Quad will now become redundant, it will certainly lose importance as a strategic counter to China. Notwithstanding its commitments to a free and open Indo-Pacific, friendly maritime exercises, human assistance and disaster relief, joint infrastructure projects, cooperation in critical and emerging technologies, climate change, etc., it will not evolve into anything more. The AUKUS is the new instrument to send a strong message to China. The Quad was once intended to play that role - otherwise, other countries committed to keeping the region free of Chinese dominance, like South Korea, the UK and the EU, would also have been invited into the Quad. Also read: PM Modi to meet US VP Kamala Harris, hold bilaterals with Japanese, Australian PMs on Sept 23 There is little doubt that the Quad summit on September 24 will come out with a number of statements on areas of common interest, including climate change, but will that be sufficient to show the Indian prime ministers maiden foreign visit since the pandemic as a grand success? With the undermining of the Quad, success will have to be demonstrated through the upgrading of bilateral relations with the US by strengthening strategic commitment. Writing in Indian Defence Review, Major General (Retd) SG Vombatkere has explored the possibility of US boots on the ground in India with bases in northwest India being used for staging over-the-horizon operations (https://tinyurl.com/2tdwcnpe). He argues that with Pakistan supporting the Taliban and some West Asian countries friendly to the US being geographically distant, India may become the country of choice for such operations. He suggests that India may not be able to refuse a US request for a military base because it has already signed the logistics support agreement LEMOA (Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and communications agreement CISMOA (Communication and Information on Security Memorandum of Agreement) with the US. Although both sides earlier denied such a possibility, Vombatkere bases his speculations on a US Congressional hearing where Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, gave an evasive reply when this specific question was put to him by a Republican, Mark Green. Blinken responded that he would much rather take that up in a different setting and that the US administration was deeply engaged with India. Vombatkere speculates that by allowing US operations from Indian soil, the current government would save face, regain regional hegemony and establish its superiority in strategic partnership with the US. However, the moot question is whether Prime Minister Modi will be willing to take that disastrous plunge both for Indian security and sovereignty - to make a success of his first bilateral meeting with President Biden? (The writer is a journalist based in Delhi) Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH . Check out latest videos from DH: There has been a spate of high-profile seizures of narcotics and psychotropic substances in India in the last few months. What has been disturbing is not only the quantity of drugs seized but also the various modes adopted: sea, land and air. The trend started even before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan; thus late 2020 and early 2021 have witnessed huge seizures of high-grade heroin. 191 kgs in JNPT port followed by 135 kgs in Mumbai and 283 kgs and 191 kgs again in JNPT port, apart from regular seizures, from passengers trying to sneak it in through airports, as also cases of ingress through the Indo-Pak and Indo-Myanmar borders. Geography is, as has been said, destiny. This cannot be truer than in the case of India in the context of the drug problem. Wedged between the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle, India has a substantial land border with the opium-producing regions. Afghan-cultivated opium distilled into heroin, in labs dotting both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, enters India through the 3,300-km-long border with Pakistan. We also have about a 1,600-kms-long border with Myanmar. This has meant a constant battle to prevent the smuggling of heroin. India is particularly vulnerable also because it manufactures precursor chemicals essential for distilling opium into heroin. These chemicals are manufactured for licit usage but get diverted for the manufacturing of heroin. The National Drug Threat Assessment, 2020, of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, suggests that there is also a reverse flow of precursor chemicals from India. In this background, we should review the dramatic developments in Afghanistan over the last few weeks. Afghanistan, after the Taliban takeover, is a country ravaged by the effects of war and poverty, struggling to settle down. With a population of just under 34 million with 54% living under the poverty line, ranked among the countries with the lowest gross domestic product by capita at $580.82, Afghanistan desperately needs economic aid. The world today is, on the contrary, choking financial aid to Afghanistan. The International Monetary Funds (IMF) mandate is to help countries tide over economic crises; under pressure from the Biden administration, it has, however, blocked Afghanistan from accessing emergency reserves. $455 million in SDRs due to Afghanistan has been held back. Further, the US Treasury Department has frozen $9.4 billion of reserves held by DAB, the Afghan Central Bank in the New York Federal reserve and US-based financial institutions. The consequence is a huge financial and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Worse, what this financial crisis will mean is that the Taliban may turn to drugs to fund their activities. While there can be no justification for drug peddling, it should not be forgotten that Afghanistan produces nearly 90% of the worlds illicit opium. As per UNODC, nearly 2,24,000 ha of land is under opium cultivation, in 22 out of the 34 provinces in the country. In 2020 the UN estimated that nearly 6,300 tonnes of opium were cultivated, with a farm gate value of $350 million which when it reaches the markets multiplies many times. It is estimated that the opium trade is worth between 6-11% of Afghanistans GDP. Drug trafficking, apart from hurting societies, triggers a host of other criminal activities and worse, finances terrorism. Afghanistan has also discovered that the ephedra plant which is a major source for methamphetamine grows there, providing yet another conduit for illicit fund generation. The Taliban spokesman recently did make a brave statement that Afghanistan will not be a country for the cultivation of opium anymore. However, this seems unlikely. The financial stress and tacit persuasion of a myopic Pakistan will result in the Taliban resorting to even more unchecked cultivation of opium. As Gretchen Peters has pointed out, the Taliban has always profited from opium. While the Balkan route and Tajikistan are the popular drug routes, India, because of its proximity, convenient access through Pakistan and a growing drug problem, cannot escape the consequences. While enforcement agencies seek to choke supplies, it is equally important to curb demand. Creating awareness about the ill-effects of drugs among the population is essential. We must not forget that the continuing stressful conditions caused by the pandemicthe deaths, illness, loss of jobs, shutdowns are fertile ground for seeking solace in the world of drugs. A 2019 survey by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Magnitude of Substance Use in India shows opioids (heroin, smack brown sugar) are used by about 2.1% of the population. This translates to a whopping 2.26 crore people, and as the seizures indicate, growing by the day. Creating awareness would mean engaging social organisations and educational institutions, reducing stigmatization and rehabilitating addicts, organising visits to de-addiction camps to witness firsthand the debilitating impact of drugs and more. Remarks like those of the Bishop, that a Narcotics Jihad is being waged, even though made with the best of intentions, do not help. It distracts from the fact that it is the demand which spurs supplies. It ignores the fact that India too is a cultivator of opium, licit, but that we do have a problem of some leakage of opium which makes its way into the illegal domestic market. We must, for more reasons than one, be acutely conscious of the happenings in Afghanistan. The Taliban is likely to push opium to various markets to fund their activities. We have to tackle the menace from both the supply and demand ends. We cannot afford to let the menace of drugs go out of hand. (The writer is a former chairman of the Central Board of Indirect taxes & Customs) Over a dozen Congress leaders belonging to the dominant Vokkaliga community held a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night where they are said to have discussed a strategy to take on the JD(S) in the 2023 assembly elections. The Congress and the JD(S) are bitter rivals in the Old Mysuru region that is dominated by the Vokkaliga community and covers the geographies of Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan, Ramanagara, Chamarajanagar, Chikballapur and so on. The belt comprises some 60-odd assembly constituencies. The Wednesday night meeting was organised by Rajya Sabha member GC Chandrashekhar, Byatarayanapura MLA Krishna Byre Gowda and former MP N Cheluvarayaswamy. The plan is to undermine JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowdas political clout over the community, a party source said. The meeting discussed plans to ensure the victory of more Vokkaliga MLAs from the Congress in the Old Mysuru region. Also read: Karnataka assembly pauses as Siddaramaiah's dhoti slips Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar, the partys Vokkaliga face, did not attend the meeting. He was not invited preempting that he would say no as his participation would send out the wrong message because hes the party president, the source said. However, Shivakumars brother and Bangalore Rural MP DK Suresh attended the meeting. Shivakumar, who will lead the party into the 2023 polls, is aware of the challenge posed by the JD(S) that mainly depends on the Vokkaligas for votes. Congress is pursuing some JD(S) legislators. The regional partys GT Deve Gowda (Chamundeshwari) and K Srinivas Gowda (Kolar) are on their way out to join the Congress and a few others are lined up. The Congress hopes that these jumps will benefit them. The Congress Vokkaliga leaders have also discussed touring the Vokkaliga-dominated areas to drum up support. They discussed promoting youngsters in order to create a second line of leadership, the source said. The Vokkaligas are seen as a politically dominant community. They are estimated to make up for about 15% of the state's population, pegging their influence on a par with the Lingayats. Check out latest videos from DH: Donegal drinks producer Mulrines has secured a new 9.5 million deal with Aldi. Following a year of strong sales, the new 12-month contract will see Mulrines increase the volume of product it supplies to Aldi by almost 25%. The producer will now supply Aldi with over 11.5m litres of its Irish-produced fruit juices and smoothies each year, equivalent to five Olympic swimming pools full of product. Mulrines is one of Aldis longest serving suppliers in Ireland, partnering with the supermarket giant since 2002 and expanding into Aldis UK stores in 2003. The latest contract will see new innovative products developed for Aldi customers in the coming months. As well as this, Aldis Specially Selected Kildare Apple Juice, made entirely from an exclusive blend of apples grown in Mulrines orchard in County Kildare, will also be moving to new bottles made with recycled plastic later this year. This means that over 12 tonnes of virgin plastic will be removed from Aldis stores annually and makes Aldi the first retailer in Ireland to introduce recycled PET into the chilled juice range. Established in 1919, Mulrines currently employs 160 people across Ballybofey, Donegal and its two orchards in Porterstown and Rathbane in Co Kildare, where it grows varieties such as Coxs Pippen, Elstar, Jona and Golden Delicious apples. Peter Mulrine, Managing Director of Mulrines said: Working with Aldi since 2002 has been essential for our business to grow and expand. Were delighted to be producing even more great products for Aldis stores nationwide, and stores abroad, and we look forward to working with Aldi into the future. Aldi Group Buying Director, John Curtin said: Mulrines has been a long-term partner with Aldi for almost 20 years, and were delighted to continue this strong relationship into the future. The company is now supplying our stores with 25% more of its delicious products each year, which is testament to the fact that Mulrines juices and smoothies continue to be a massive success with our customers. President Michael D Higgins has thrown his support behind a review into the Irish Defence Forces (IDF) following multiple accusations of bullying and sexual abuse levelled against the organisation. He used his speech at the Defence Forces Values Awards yesterday to highlight the issue. He discussed his concern for the retired female members of the organisation who featured in the recent RTE documentary Women of Honour, which detailed allegations of sexual harassment, attempted sexual assault and bullying over at least thirty years within the IDF. President Higgins said: "My concern is, I know, shared by those who have responsibility for the safety and welfare of our Defence Forces personnel." "I welcome the fact that a review will now take place of the contents of the programme and of any issues surrounding bullying, harassment, sexual harassment or discrimination within the Defence Forces." He added: "I hope the review is wide, thorough, independent and inclusive of all issues irrespective of gender." Mr Higgins concluded by saying that it is important that the IDF provides an inclusive workplace, and "that false barriers are not erected on the basis of gender, religion, sexual orientation or ethnic background." The President paid tribute to the seven recipients of this years values awards, where military members were recognised for risking their life to save another, donating an organ and/or offering support to colleagues undergoing a difficult time. Last week, Former Army captain and whistleblower Tom Clonan claimed that more allegations would soon further shake the IDF, while another former IDF member named Anthony O'Brien reiterated his campaign calling for the organisation to be reformed. Minister for Defence and Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has since said that he is "committed" to meeting those who detailed their alleged experiences in the Women of Honour programme, and similarly commended their bravery in going public with their stories. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call Samaritans Ireland at 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie. In addition, you can contact the Rape Crisis Centre by visiting drcc.ie or calling 1 800 77 8888. Help is always at hand and there is always someone available to listen. Donegal Fine Gael TD Joe McHugh has described comments made by his party leader over the demands for 100% redress from mica-affected homeowners in the county as unhelpful. Mr McHugh is one of three Fine Gael TDs in counties badly affected by defective blocks who contacted Leo Varadkar on Tuesday night seeking a meeting after the Tanaiste said a 100% compensation scheme for homeowners with defective blocks could severely impact on the public finances as other groups would expect the same level of support. The comments, made after a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, were interpreted as him ruling out 100% redress. The Tanaistes comments were later clarified with a spokesman saying he is not opposed to 100% redress. Meeting Mr McHugh said on Wednesday that he was expecting the meeting between himself, Clare TD Joe Carey, Mayo TD Alan Dillon and the party leader to take place before the end of the week. He said it was important as we get closer to decision day to reiterate and ensure that commentary is clarified as it can impact on the process. Those comments werent helpful as they create vulnerability where there is already massive vulnerability at a personal and a family level. I think it is really important now that the process goes through the channels that it is supposed to go through and we need to be very careful about public commentary at this stage, he told the Donegal Democrat. Things can be misinterpreted and because we are coming to the end of the process, it is important that people know who exactly, and how, we will be bringing the process through Cabinet and who is exactly working on this particular item. And that is the minister in charge. Negotiators on behalf of Donegal homeowners affected by mica made their final submissions to the working group assigned to report on the issue last Friday. A report is due to be delivered to housing minister Darragh OBrien at the end of the month. He will then bring recommendations to the Cabinet. Mr Varadkar said on Tuesday the Government will have to control the cost of any mica redress scheme as well as other compensation packages that may come down the line. We do have to bear in mind the impact on the general taxpayer as well. Behind this issue, there's also the issue of defective apartments, many of them in my constituency. Ultimately it's not the Government that pays for this, it's the taxpayer, the average working person who pays for this, even though they weren't responsible in any way for the problems that happen, Mr Varadkar said. A spokesman for Mr Varadkar told the Irish Examiner that the Tanaiste is not opposed to - nor is he ruling out - 100% redress. The Tanaiste and the Government are conscious of the impact that mica damage has had on people and families across the Northwest, he said. Nawazuddin Siddiqui & Vir Das earn nominations for International Emmys with their Netflix projects; latter's reaction is pure gold Sushmita Sen's Aarya, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and standup comic Vir Das comedy special on Netflix have bagged an International Emmy nomination each. The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the nominations for all 11 categories on Thursday and Nawazuddin was nominated in the Best Actor category for his performance in the film Serious Men which release on Netflix last year. Vir Das: For India the comedy special also earned a nomination in the Best Comedy category alongside Call My Agent Season 4, Motherland Christmas Special, and Promesas De Campana. While this is Vir Dass first International Emmy nomination, Nawazuddin Siddiqui's previous projects like Sacred Games and McMafia have been nominated in the past. Sushmita's Aarya on the other hand bagged a nomination for the Best Drama series category. Directed by Ram Madhvani the series was nominated alongside El Presidente, Israel's Tehran and the UK show There She Goes season two Vir reacted to his nomination by sharing a screengrab of the Best Comedy category and wrote, Umm...I think I just got nominated for the #internationalemmyawards uh...Holy Sh*t... thankyou @weirdasscomedy @netflixisajoke @netflix_in. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vir Das (@virdas) Serious Men based on Manu Josephs book by the same name was released on Netflix in October 2020 while Vir Das comedy special had dropped on the digital platform in January 2020. The winners for all 11 categories will be announced at the 49th International Emmy Awards which will take place on 22 November 2021. Avika Gor serves stunning monokini looks from her beach vacation with boyfriend Milind Chandwani; See posts The Maldives has been the go to holiday destination for celebrities throughout the pandemic and we are living vicariously through the Instagram posts of our favorites enjoying the sea and white sand beaches. Avika Gor is among the many celebrities to have visited the island recently with her beau Milind Chandwani and their pictures are making us crave a vacation. Avika who not so long ago stunned fans with her transformation can be seen making the most of her vacation looking breathtaking in her lovely monokinis and bikinis. From enjoying spa treatments to soaking in the sun, Milind and Avika seem to be on a relaxing retreat. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Avika Gor (@avikagor) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Avika Gor (@avikagor) The Balika Vadhu star has in the Maldives for the past four days and has been busy making dreamy reels on the beach and in the sea. Even while on vacation together, Milind and her social media PDA is unmissable. The couple had made their relationship official on Instagram in November last year and frequently feature in each others posts and are often seen cheering for one another. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Avika Gor (@avikagor) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Avika Gor (@avikagor) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Avika Gor (@avikagor) On the work front, Avika is currently enjoying the actress of her recently released Telugu film Net and will next be seen in Naga Chaitanya starrer Tank God. Bollywood's Badman Gulshan Grover was to play a Bond villain in Casino Royale; here's why he was replaced Gulshan Grover has always been the Badman of Bollywood. He had made villains look glamorous and gave them an edge above the hero even at times. There was a time when reports had been doing the rounds that he has landed a major role in Hollywood. In fact, it was being said that he might face none other than Bond, James Bond in Casino Royale. Now, in a recent interview, he has revealed that he was indeed cast for the role but was later replaced. The reason why he was replaced is heartbreaking! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gulshan Grover (@gulshangrover) Talking to Rediff, Gulshan Grover revealed that he was asked about being the next James Bond villain by Prince Charles cousin, when he was at Clarence House in Londons St James Palace for a meeting in 2005. He said, His Royal Highnesss cousin immediately wanted to know if I was really doing the next Bond film. That is when he also excitedly told a reporter friend that he was finalised to play Le Chiffre, and that's what caused the problem. Unfortunately, it appeared before a formal announcement was made. That upset the producers, who replaced me with Mads Mikkelsen, he quipped. That is unfortunate indeed and it would have been a proud moment for India if Gulshan Grover had played Le Chiffre. Xiaomi has just launched a new laptop under the Redmi brand, called the Redmi G 2021 gaming laptop. The new G 2021 series launched as an upgrade to its last year Redmi G series laptops. The new model comes with both Intel and AMD variants that both feature a 144Hz display and 16GB of RAM. The laptop also carries 512GB of storage and is upgradeable to Windows 11. On the distinction front, the Intel variant of the Redmi G 2021 houses an 11th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, whereas the AMD option has an AMD Ryzen 7 processor. Both versions include Xiaomi's Hurricane Cooling 3.0 heat dissipation system that brings large dual fans. Also read: Apple tipped to launch a 16-inch MacBook Pro with its new M1X chip next month Redmi G 2021 Specifications and Features The new Redmi G features a 'Shadow Mech' design' and a unique X-shaped pattern on the cover. The Redmi G 2021 runs on Windows 10 (upgradeable to Windows 11) and features a 16.1-inch display with an up to 144Hz refresh rate along with TUV Rheinland certification for low blue light emission. The Intel variant of the laptop is powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11260H processor, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. The AMD option features an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 processor coupled with Nvidia GeForce 3060 graphics. Both Intel and AMD versions of the Redmi G 2021 carry 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The Redmi G 2021 runs on Windows 10 (upgradeable to Windows 11) and features a 16.1-inch display with an up to 144Hz refresh rate along with TUV Rheinland certification for low blue light emission. The Intel variant of the laptop is powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11260H processor, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. The AMD option features an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 processor coupled with Nvidia GeForce 3060 graphics. Again, both Intel and AMD versions of the Redmi G 2021 carry 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The laptop brings Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and a DTS:X Ultra 3D surround sound experience. There are also other useful features including USB Type-C charging, a three-level backlit keyboard, and the Xiao AI digital assistant. x Redmi G 2021 Pricing and availability The company has launched the Intel variant in China for CNY 5,699 (roughly Rs 64,900). The AMD variant is priced at CNY 6,999 (roughly Rs 79,700). The Intel variant will be available for purchase in China starting Thursday, September 23. However, the AMD option will go on sale from September 28. As of now, there is no information about whether these laptops will come to India and other global markets. Disclaimer: This article has been authored by a member of our Digit Squad community. India's popular telecom brand Reliance Jio came up with its new plan exclusively for Jio Phone users. This is an all-in-one recharge plan that is priced at Rs 749, and it offers a validity of 336 days. It is one of the cheapest long-term plans from Jio and concurrently the most inexpensive plan for Jio customers too. The plan is very convenient and will free users from recharging every 28 Days and will provide hassle-free service. Jio Rs 749 Plan Benefits As the new Jio plan comes with a validity of 336 days, the time period is divided into 12 spans of 28 days each. The plan offers 2GB of data for every 28 days period where the user receives 24 GB of 4G data. After the data limit exceeds the limit, the speed will be curtailed to 64 Kbps. Jio customers will get unlimited voice calls in this plan and 50 SMS for every 28 day cycle. Moreover, Jio customers can also avail benefits like a free subscription to Jio Cinemas, Jio TV, Jio News, Jio Security, and Jio Cloud. Users can recharge this plan through the Jio website or any other third-party website. Existing Jio Phone Plans After the inclusion of the Rs 749 Plan, Jio Phone users have now the liberty to choose from five different plans. Jio has a Rs 75 plan which offers 0.1 GB of data per day with the addition of 200 MB. The plan delivers unlimited voice calling and comes with a validity of 28 Days. We have another plan priced at Rs 125, the plan offers total internet data of 14 GB with a 0.5 GB per day limit. Voice calling is unlimited on the plan but users only get 30 SMS. The Rs 155 Plan offers 1 GB of data per day with unlimited voice calling and 100 SMS per day for a validity of 28 Days. While another plan of Rs 185 offers the same benefits but it offers 2 GB daily data. Disclaimer: This article has been authored by a member of our Digit Squad community. Subscriber content preview SEATTLE King County announced yesterday that it has struck a deal around the vaccine mandate for county employees with a majority of its unions, including the King County Coalition of Unions, the Technical Employees Association, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 77, the King County Corrections Guild and the Washington State Nurses Association. In August, County Executive Dow Constantine issued an order that all Executive Branch employees must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. Since then, the Office of Labor Relations has been in negotiations on compliance and implementation, coming to an agreement with the unions. . . . Subscriber content preview Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge] Floor plates in the buildings range between 26,500 and 29,500 square feet. The plaza between them features a public art installation by Konstantin Dimopolous. Home Plate Center, at 1501 1521 First Ave. S., has sold for a bit over $251.2 million, according to King County records. The seller was HPC RP LLC, associated with original developer American Life, which acquired the SoDo site in 2010 for over $17.7 million, then developed it. . . . Education Oxford elementary named 2021 National Blue Ribbon School Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL Kaliyah Brown, a third grader at Della Davidson Elementary School in Oxford, jumps and cheers as her school was named a National Blue Ribbon School during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL The Oxford High School Cheerleaders arrive at Della Davidson Elementary School to help celebrate the announcement of Della Davidson Elementary School being named a National Blue Ribbon School during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL Bradley Roberson, the Oxford School District Superintendent, speaks to the students and staff of Della Davidson Elementary School after the school was named a National Blue Ribbon School by former principal Marni Herrington during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL Marni Herrington, former principal at Della Davidson Elementary School in Oxford, waits to speak to her former students and staff after making the announcement of Della Davidson Elementary School being named a National Blue Ribbon School during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL Patches Calhoun, the principal at Della Davidson Elementary School in Oxford, runs with the Oxford school flag to get her students excited prior to the announcement of Della Davidson Elementary School being named a National Blue Ribbon School during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. Adam Robison | DAILY JOURNAL Brian Harvey, the former Oxford School District Superintendent, speaks to the students and staff of Della Davidson Elementary School after the school was named a National Blue Ribbon School by former principal Marni Herrington during a special assembly on Tuesday afternoon in Oxford. OXFORD The 700 students at Della Davidson Elementary School got to do something Tuesday that only 325 schools across the U.S. were able to do celebrate as one of the country's best. The school was recognized by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona as a National Blue Ribbon School for 2021. It was one of just four schools in Mississippi to earn the honor. "We are thrilled," said Oxford Superintendent Bradley Roberson. "It is a huge honor. It recognizes the efforts and hard work of the staff, the parents and the community to create a safe and welcoming environment for learning." The recognition is based on a schools overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups. Roberson said earning the award was a goal of the school's former principal, Marni Herrington, who is now the district's Chief Academic Officer. "It is a very extensive application process," Herrington said. "It asked about every facet of the school, from instruction to how we interact with the students to what interventions we have." After learning they had been nominated by the Mississippi Department of Education last spring, Herrington formed a committee to handle the additional workload of gathering information for the application. "Teachers from each area wrote essays," Herrington said. "It was definitely a team effort to get it completed before the end of the school year." The school got the occasional update from the national Blue Ribbon group over the summer. In early August, the group sent a request for pictures that depicted life at the school, along with an additional summary of the school. But even that didn't tip them off that they had won. "I didn't know if everyone got the same email," Herrington said. "But when the new principal at Della got an email last week addressed to the Blue Ribbon School principal, we knew." They worked to keep it a secret so both the students and teachers would be surprised at the Tuesday announcement. "I am proud to be a part of a district that strives for excellence," Herrington said. "I am so excited for the teachers to be recognized." Herrington called earning the distinction as being a part of one of the country's best schools is both exciting and humbling. "This is the way I wanted to go out," Herrington said. "I an still with the same district, but there is not a better way to end a principalship." Della Davidson is an upper elementary school, serving third and fourth grade students. The school was recognized as an exemplary high-performing schools, one of the states highest performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally normed tests. National Blue Ribbon schools are models of consistent excellence in teaching and learning, and these schools represent the high-quality education that takes place across Mississippis public schools, said state Superintendent of Education Carey Wright. I congratulate every teacher, school leader, student and family member who helped their school achieve this outstanding accomplishment. Other Mississippi schools to garner Blue Ribbon School honors were Woolmarket Elementary School, Harrison County School District; Brandon Elementary School, Rankin County School District; and East Hancock Elementary School, Hancock County School District. Cardona made the announcement during his Return to School Road Trip while visiting Walter R. Sundling Jr. High School in Palatine, Illinois, which was also recognized as a Blue Ribbon School. This years cohort of honorees demonstrates what is possible when committed educators and school leaders create vibrant, welcoming, and affirming school cultures where rich teaching and learning can flourish, Cardona said. I commend all our Blue Ribbon honorees for working to keep students healthy and safe while meeting their academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs." The secretary noted that these schools deserve more recognition for excelling during a pandemic and can serve as models for other schools and communities. Up to 420 schools may be nominated each year. HMS Endeavour (evens fav) is bred to be good. By War Front, his mother is Lady Eli, who won the Grade One Juvenile Turf for fillies at the Breeders Cup meeting at Santa Anita in 2014. This was a horse that looks bound for big things and it did not disappoint as it took took to the All Weather surrounding of Dundalk Stadium last week. Having won at Navan on his previous start, the Aidan OBrien-trained runner followed up here in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Race under Seamie Heffernan in the style of a progressive colt. It tracked the leaders for much of the five furlong contest before taking the lead when just inside the final furlong. From here it coasted to the line to take the two year old contest by two lengths in an impressive showing. Only time will tell just how good this horse will become. Having her first run since being claimed out of Eddie Lynams stable at Dundalk on September 2nd, Sister Lola (8/1) won at the first time of asking for new owner/trainer James McAuley when landing the Crowne Plaza Hotel Dundalk Handicap. It was the daughter of Slade Powers fourth win, three of them having been achieved at Dundalk. The winning trainer said: The only credit we can take is that we claimed her. Eddie had her ready. Her success gave jockey Shane Foley a double on the night following the win of Exquisite Acclaim (7/4 jt-fav) in the previous race, the Irish EBF Median Sires Series Maiden. Owned by Zhang Yuesheng, Exquisite Acclaims victory gave trainer Jessica Harrington a sixteenth winner since September 3rd. This became 18 when Leo De Fury (15/8 fav) bounced back to winning ways with a comfortable success in the Join Us On Instagram @dundalk_stadium Race, and Clew Bay (9/2), also ridden by Shane, landed the cards finale, the Find Us On Twitter @DundalkStadium Handicap. Her hard is clearly in excellent form and one to follow as we head into the jumps season. Winner of the Group 2 Mooresbridge Stakes at the Curragh in June last year, this victory will surely do Leo De Furys confidence a great deal of good. There are no such doubts, however, in relation to his jockey Shane Foley, who completed a fabulous four-timer on the card via his wins. Never Back Down (22/1) got into the first division of the Irishinjuredjockeys.com Handicap as a reserve and jockey Joe Doyle seized his opportunity by adopting a catch me if you can approach to the race. With these tactics paying off, the plan gave the six-year-old gelding his first win since November 2018, landing a first ever success in Ireland. It was his fifth start for trainer Joseph Murray, who is based near Navan in Meath, who acquired him in March. The second division of the handicap went to Skontonovski (11/1), who had gained his first career success just nine days earlier at Cork. Hes clearly in good heart and won fairly comfortably here in the hands of Ronan Whelan for trainer Ado McGuinness, for whom this was a twelfth winner at Dundalk this year. His stable continues to go from strength to strength. Trainer Andy Oliver had three runners in the BetVictor Apprentice Handicap, including the market favouriite Blue Shadow (7/2 fav) and that support proved to be right, winning quite cosily (by 2.5 lengths) under Siobhan Rutledge. He was the third winning-favourite (or joint-favourite) of the evening from the first six races. On what was a decent night for punters, this became four with Leo De Furys success. The track's next meeting is set for Friday 24th September, a card that will feature the 50,000 Group 3 Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Diamond Stakes. A really good night of racing awaits. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider subscribing to our ePaper and/or free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. TURKCE OKUYUN Ten high-potential, women-led micro and small businesses in Istanbul selected Companies will receive advisory support and training to grow their businesses EBRD organised launch event to mark the start of projects Unleashing the power of women, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and J.P. Morgan are launching an advisory support programme that provides access to know-how to selected women entrepreneurs in Istanbul. Thanks to philanthropic support from J.P. Morgan, the programme will also include the development of entrepreneurial skills through training and networking. Following a competitive selection process organised by the EBRD, ten high-potential micro and small companies run by female entrepreneurs were chosen and announced today. These are: Hadi Ham Yap, Esra Bridal, Ege Teknoloji Kimya, Nude Dansmanlk, Dogaclama Gda, Brev Bilisim, Buyuk Beden Stil, Ozge Makina Torna Pres, Skare Gda Pazarlama and Shamans Secret. The companies operate in a wide range of sectors, from garment manufacturing to the design of business software or metal processing. Their priority is to overcome the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis and the ongoing volatile business environment so that they can continue to grow in a sustainable manner. Dalya Saftekin is one of the entrepreneurs selected to take part in the business advisory and training programme. She founded her business in 2018, producing healthy cakes and snacks, and she manages it with her mother, Tuna. Their brand name is Hadi Ham Yap and they aim to help parents feed their little ones healthy food. Currently, they produce at home, but will soon move to a production facility, which will be a huge change for the company. The EBRD will help Dalya as she scales up her operation; a local consultant has started to work with the firm to design new operational procedures, provide know-how on financial management and begin building a team that will help mother and daughter bring their business to the next level. Supporting women-led businesses such as Hadi Ham Yap is one of the EBRDs priorities across the regions where it invests. The Banks Women in Business programme has helped more than 20,000 women entrepreneurs in Turkey since 2014 to reach their full potential by providing credit lines, advisory support, training, mentoring and access to business networks. Greater participation of women in the economy and a closing of the gender gap are expected to increase the countrys overall prosperity. J.P. Morgan is the first private philanthropic organisation to support the EBRDs advisory operations in Turkey with grant co-financing, aiming to boost the growth of small businesses and especially womens entrepreneurship. The new advisory programme launched today is part of the firms US$ 150 million, five-year commitment to expanding opportunities for underserved entrepreneurs globally. Support from J.P. Morgan will also be used to develop and promote the EBRD Know How Academy, an online learning platform for entrepreneurs. The Academy helps entrepreneurs to access tools and training that are relevant to growing their businesses. The EBRD is a major investor in Turkey. To date, the Bank has invested more than 14 billion through 351 projects in various sectors of the countrys economy, with 95 per cent of those investments in the private sector. EBRD President Renaud-Basso signs major transport project in Kazakhstan US$ 240 million loan to national road operator KazAvtoZhol Road reconstruction and new bypass around Kyzylorda The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is contributing to the improvement of regional connectivity in Central Asia and beyond by supporting a major road project in central Kazakhstan. A sovereign loan of up to US$ 240 million to the state-owned road company KazAvtoZhol will finance the reconstruction of a 204 km road section between the cities of Kyzylorda and Zhezkazgan, as well as the construction of a 14.8 km bypass road around Kyzylorda, a city in south-central Kazakhstan. The road will improve passenger and cargo transport along strategic route E123, which links western China with the Ural region of Russia. The funds, which will help reconstruct approximately half of the road between the two cities, will be disbursed in the local currency, tenge. The Asian Development Bank will finance the reconstruction of the remaining road section. KazAvtoZhol operates national highways across Kazakhstan and is a longstanding EBRD client. EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso said: At the EBRD, we believe that improved connectivity will provide new opportunities both for Kazakhstan and Central Asia. It is important for the country to create the right transport infrastructure to boost economic integration and post-Covid-19 recovery. To date, the EBRD has invested more than US$ 8.4 billion in Kazakhstans economy through 290 projects. A pensioner was duped into an internet money-laundering scheme even though it effectively had "bells, whistles and flags attaching to it, according to the sentencing judge. Judge Sean O Donnabhain said that despite the quite obvious dangers of getting involved in the scheme the 76-year-old Cork man went ahead and allowed two of his bank accounts to be used by others. James ORourke of Rosebrien, Newlands Field, Graball Bay, Crosshaven, County Cork, met an American woman through Facebook and went on to let his bank accounts be used for money-laundering where over 120,000 was sent through fraudulent means from Sweden and France. He pleaded guilty to two counts of money-laundering arising out of this investigation. Judge O Donnabhain said it had been a salutary lesson for the elderly man who had no previous convictions of any kind. In all the circumstances he said that he would impose a six-month sentence which he would suspend on the accused being of good behaviour for 12 months. Detective Garda James OReilly testified at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the 76-year-old man had no previous convictions and signed pleas of guilty to these matters at an early stage. The sums of money lodged in his accounts consisted of 52,000 sent from Sweden to the defendants Bank of Ireland account in April 2020. Around this time two sums were sent from France to his Allied Irish Bank account, namely sums of just over 29,000 and 40,000. Gardai were alerted by the two banks and the defendant was questioned by gardai. Mr ORourke said he was in full control of the two accounts in Cork. On investigation it transpired that the 52,000 came from a company in Sweden and the other sums came from a company in France. Det. Garda OReilly said both companies had been victims of email re-direct fraud, and complaints were made to the police authorities in those countries. All of the money from Sweden was sent on to a Lithuanian bank account very soon after it landed in the defendants account in Cork. In terms of any benefit he derived from the monies lodged in his accounts James ORourke had withdrawn 1,570 from the monies sent from France. Defence barrister Brian Leahy said the defendant was fully cooperative during interview. He got involved in this scam via Facebook. He invested 2,000 in a programme to feed homeless people in Nigeria having been told he would treble his investment and get 6,000 back. He did this to supplement a meagre pension. He would not be hugely savvy with the internet and he was sucked into a Facebook friendship and believed there was easy money to be made, the barrister said. The judge remarked, That would be alright for a 15-year-old to say something like that but your lad is 75 years old. Mr Leahy said someone could get caught up in something like this for a variety of reasons. Judge O Donnabhain said greed would be one reason. Referring to the 1,500 benefit which the defendant derived from the money-laundering, Mr Leahy BL said the accused brought this money to court in compensation. Asked afterwards about his advice for anyone who might be contemplating engaging in this kind of on-line activity, the pensioners advice was succinct when he said, Dont. SOME third-level students in Cork are commuting for up to five hours a day as they cannot afford what a student representative described as extortionate rent prices in the city. Students are holding a sleepout at the Dail to demand immediate and long-term solutions from the Government to help with the accommodation crisis. Munster Technological University (MTU) Cork Students Union president Aisling OMahony will be attending the protest and sleeping outside the Dail in a tent tonight to highlight the crisis and in solidarity with those who have been let down by the Government. Long commutes Ahead of the protest, Solidarity TD Mick Barry told the Dail that students at MTU in Bishopstown are commuting hours a day because they cannot find accommodation. I dont mean 10, 15, or 20 miles I mean really long distances, he said. A lot of students are trekking down to Bishopstown from West Cork. A lot of students are trekking up to Bishopstown from other counties; from Kerry, Kilkenny, Tipperary and Waterford, spending three hours a day, four hours a day, five hours a day in cars because of the housing crisis. Decrease in private housing available Speaking to The Echo, Ms OMahony said there were over 150 houses in the Bishopstown area five years ago that regularly rented to MTU students. Today, the list of houses has decreased to less than 15. Thats approximately a decrease from 900 to 90 beds available to students in the last five years, she said. Thats in privately owned houses. These houses are now currently being occupied by young families or working professionals. "My question now is where do we put the excess of the 810 students that now dont have access to those houses? Ms OMahony said there are students that have no option but to commute because they cant afford the extortionate rates for accommodation. Colleges acknowledge issues Deirdre Falvey, from MTU Student Services, said while they have lost a lot of private houses over the last number of years, there is some new purpose-built accommodation in the area. For students that are waiting for accommodation, or undergoing long commutes, she said there are still some digs available slightly outside of Bishopstown as well as nightly rates in local hotels and B&Bs for students who may have less time on campus. Meanwhile, University College Cork said it is working closely with students who engage with its accommodation and community life officer. UCC is acutely aware of the challenges facing students in securing accommodation, particularly first years, a spokesperson said. Student Unions across Ireland will be taking part in the protest outside the Dail today. IRISH Water has advised customers in the Sunday's Well area that their water supply will be impacted today following a burst watermain. Irish Water, working in partnership with Cork City, stated that the burst watermain will impact the water supply in the area. Irish Water and Cork City Council carrying out repair work in Sunday's Well to restore supply following the unplanned outages. The crews are repairing works as quickly and safely as possible and supply should be restored by this afternoon. Irish Water said it understands the inconvenience to customers when their water supply is affected and would like to thank the public for their patience and cooperation while the unplanned outage is attended to. Irish Waters customer care helpline is open 24/7 on 1800 278 278 and customers can also contact them on Twitter @IWCare with any queries. For updates, please visit the Water Supply Updates section of the Irish Water website. Irish Water said it continues to work at this time with Local Authority partners, contractors and others to safeguard the health and well-being of both staff and the public and to ensure the continuity of critical drinking water and wastewater services. Cate McCurry and Dominic McGrath, PA The Taoiseach has said the Government is committed to enhancing the compensation scheme for families affected by mica. Speaking to reporters in New York, Micheal Martin said the Government is aiming to have talks on a redress scheme finished by the end of the month, with a proposal brought to Cabinet in early October. Earlier, Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath said the Government had ruled out nothing in relation to its mica redress scheme. Mr McGrath said everything is on the table when helping homeowners whose properties have been destroyed by defective bricks containing excessive amounts of the mineral mica. In a bid to allay the fears of thousands families whose homes are crumbling, the Minister said a very significant enhancement and improvement of the existing mica scheme will be agreed soon. The whole purpose of the talks is to get to a position whereby we can get houses rebuilt or repaired, have a system to do it properly and in a much faster timeline than might originally have been envisaged, Mr Martin said on Wednesday. The Taoiseach is in New York for a series of meetings at the UN General Assembly. This Government is committed to enhancing the original scheme that was there, he told reporters. He said that he understood the impact mica had had on homeowners and that he wanted to allow talks to continue. The Government has faced huge criticism over its redress scheme for homeowners in Donegal, Mayo and other counties. The Government must finally do the right thing and provide 100% redress for families whose homes are crumbling around them due to mica and pyrite @PadraigMacL#MicaRedress #MicaProtest #defectiveblocks #100percentredress pic.twitter.com/wVIdeDdypH Sinn Fein (@sinnfeinireland) September 22, 2021 The representative group have called for a compensation scheme that meets 100 per cent of the costs. Mr McGrath appealed to Donegal TD Padraig Mac Lochlainn not to pass judgment yet on the new scheme. The Government has put in place a process to try to bring about a resolution to this issue, the Fianna Fail Minister added. I have listened to the heartfelt stories from the families who are impacted and I can only imagine what theyre going through, and the worry that they are having to carry every single day. The main point I want to make is that everything is on the table. The Government has ruled out nothing in relation to what would be needed here to support those families. There is an existing scheme up and running, which was broadly welcomed at the time when the details of it were announced in January of last year, and it opened up for applications in June of last year. A significant number of applications have come in, but the shortcomings of that scheme have also been highlighted. Mr Mac Lochlainn said families in the west of Ireland have been treated like second class citizens. The Sinn Fein TD added: This scandal has left deep scars in our community. It is agonising to see your neighbours, friends and family suffer in this way. They have been denied a fully funded 100% redress scheme. This is completely unacceptable and leaves families who have done nothing wrong with massive bills that they cannot afford to pay. Protesters during a demonstration outside the Government Buildings in Dublin to demand a 100 per cent redress scheme (Niall Carson/PA) He also criticised Tanaiste Leo Varadkar over comments he made about the impact a 100 per cent redress scheme would have on taxpayers. Mr Varadkar said it was not the Government that covers the cost, but the average working person. Mr Mac Lochlainn responded: Such dib comments attempting to turn public opinion have a devastating impact on the families. It creates an anxiety and a fear that those leading this Government do not hear them and wont do the right thing. Minister, you have to do the right thing. We were talking about people whose homes are literally crumbling around them. These are families who have worked hard, they have paid their taxes and they had saved hard to buy their home. Mr McGrath said there is a deep appreciation within Government of how serious the matter is. General Election: Isle of Man voters head to the polls today It's election day on the Isle of Man with voters heading to the polls to pick Members of the House of Keys. 24 MHKs will be picked across 12 constituencies to serve a five-year term in the Island's parliament. 65 candidates are standing. The newly-elected MHKs will be sworn in at a special sitting next Tuesday. Polling stations open at 8am and those on the electoral register have until 8pm to cast their votes. At the end of August, Airbnb announced it would offer free, temporary housing to 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan. Now, through its Airbnb.org nonprofit, the company says it can go beyond its initial commitment. With help from hosts and donors from across the US, Airbnb announced today it's prepared to house as many as 40,000 refugees temporarily. As Airbnb itself notes, that doesn't necessarily mean it will max out that capacity. "If demand for housing aligns with supply in communities where refugees are resettling, these new resources could help provide housing for an additional 20,000 Afghan refugees," the company said. Since announcing the initiative, Airbnb says it has helped place 675 Afghan refugees across the US. "Resettlement agencies expect bookings will increase as more Afghan evacuees move off military bases and into communities where they will resettle," the company noted. The need for temporary housing for Afghan refugees is dire, particularly in the US. Officials estimate as many as 65,000 refugees will arrive in the country by the end of the month. Additionally, another 30,000 could come over the next year. And that's just in the US. In August, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said there were 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees worldwide. To that point, Airbnb said it's assessing the possibility of expanding the availability of the program to other countries that have committed to resettling Afghan refugees. California governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB-701, the bill that aims to regulate warehouse productivity quotas, into law. As The Washington Post notes, that makes California the first state to put a restriction on productivity quotas in warehouses like Amazon's, and it could lead to better conditions for workers. After the law takes effect on January 1st, 2022, companies will be required to have transparency around productivity quotas. They have to disclose those quotas to their workers and provide authorities with a detailed description of the targets workers are expected to meet. In addition, it will prohibit the use of algorithms that prevent workers from being able to take state-mandated meal and bathroom breaks or force them to do things that aren't in compliance with health and safety laws. Workers can't be fired or retaliated against for failing to meet unsafe quotas, as well. In his office's announcement, Gov. Newson said in a statement: "We cannot allow corporations to put profit over people. The hardworking warehouse employees who have helped sustain us during these unprecedented times should not have to risk injury or face punishment as a result of exploitative quotas that violate basic health and safety. I'm proud to sign this legislation giving them the dignity, respect and safety they deserve and advancing California's leadership at the forefront of workplace safety." The bill's proponents had Amazon in mind when they wrote it up. Amazon's warehouse workers previously spoke out about having to urinate in bottles just so they wouldn't have to be disciplined for "idle time." The e-commerce giant also has a massive injury rate, because workers are expected to be able to keep up with the machines they're working with. California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the bill's author, said in a statement: "This bill is simply about giving workers some basic dignity back and empowering them to keep themselves safe. As workers are increasingly surveilled on the job and supervised by algorithms, AB 701 is just the beginning of our work to regulate dangerous quotas and keep employers that have operated above the law in check." Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, however, previously denied that the company has unreasonable productivity quotas. In a letter to shareholders back in April, he said that employees are "are able to take informal breaks throughout their shifts" and that the company doesn't set "unreasonable performance goals." He added: "We set achievable performance goals that take into account tenure and actual employee performance data." Just a couple of weeks after bringing its chicken nuggets to restaurants , Impossible Foods is launching another plant-based product. Its spin on ground pork, the inventively named Impossible Pork , will be on restaurant menus this fall. If you're in New York, you can try Impossible Pork starting on Thursday. Chef David Chang's Momofuku Ssam Bar in Manhattan will serve a version of its spicy rice cakes made with Impossible Pork ragu as of tomorrow. Starting on October 4th, more than 100 restaurants in Hong Kong will offer dishes using the ingredient, which will also arrive on some Singapore menus in the coming weeks. Impossible claims its faux pork is more sustainable than ground pork from pigs. The company says the product uses up to 85 percent less water and as much as 82 percent less land than is needed for typical pork production, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 77 percent. In addition, Impossible claims the ingredient has fewer calories, less fat and more iron than 70/30 USDA ground pork. This post contains major spoilers for season two, episode seven of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Artificial intelligence has been baked into the Star Trek universe since the original series. Kirk and his crew occasionally faced off against computers gone amok, including Nomad, Landru and the M-5. The only way to defeat these digital villains was to outwit them using logic, which caused them to self-destruct. But in The Next Generation, the franchise became more interested in exploring the personhood of artificial beings like Data and his family, Voyagers holographic doctor or the exocomps. This week, Lower Decks dredges up the old-style megalomaniacal AI and asks, are you really sure about those rights? The USS Cerritos is once more called upon to help out a civilization enslaved by an evil computer, this one called Agimus (voiced by long-time Trek actor Jeffrey Combs). Disconnected from his network of drones, hes actually pretty pathetic, desperately begging the organic beings around him to just hook him up to a computer. All thats left for Starfleet to do is to drop him off at the Daystrom Institute, which isnt the most glamorous of jobs, so of course Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler end up on this particular babysitting gig. CBS A gravimetric shear complicates things for the pair, forcing their shuttle to crash on a barren world with only the pleading voice of Agimus to keep them company. The computer uses this opportunity to pit the two against each other, continuing a plot thread that we thought had been settled two episodes ago. Beckett still doesnt trust Brad's abilities despite all theyve been through. It feels like a regression or perhaps even a mis-scheduled episode, except that we the audience still see his growth while his supposed best friend doubts him. Its a plot line unlikely to go away after a few episodes, reaffirming this shows commitment to character-driven storytelling. However, that breadth of characterization doesnt really apply to Agimus. Hes really just kind of a jerk, and he doesnt have the ability to directly influence anything due to his lack of arms and legs. Boimler and Mariner spend the entire episode lugging his box around: a sentient MacGuffin. If youre not familiar with that term, it means an item (or person) that moves the plot forward and motivates the characters, but is not actually important in itself. With Agimuss reign over, he really just serves here to get Mariner and Boimler at each others throats. CBS His status as a sentient being is never in question, but the problem of what to do with him as his behavior worsens goes in directions that would never come up for an organic individual. Mariner suggests burying him, a suggestion turned down by Boimler because hes a sentient being and thats not what Starfleet does. So it seems we have made some progress from the ol destroy them with their own logic days of TOS. But then the two ensigns end up burying him anyway, while Agamus protests that he has rights! And yet Star Trek has always been a bit sketchy about what those rights are. While episodes like The Measure of a Man and The Offspring have reaffirmed Datas humanity, its been contradicted since by events on Voyager and Picard. The Doctor asserted his authorial rights to a holonovel he created and won, but wasnt actually recognized as a person. The question remained unanswered nearly 20 years later on Picard, with us only being shown holograms of limited capabilities, or those based on the personalities of other sentient beings (Rios crew). And fully synthetic beings like Data, ones with brains and bodies, were illegal after the attack on Mars. CBS Lower Decks takes place a mere year after Nemesis, so its free to pick up and explore some of those plot threads without that later baggage. But without a synthetic crew member on the USS Cerritos it can only glance off the subject. Agamus is dumped in a storage facility as just another self-aware megalomaniacal computer, not too dissimilar from the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is dumped at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Is it a prison? Did he get a trial? Are he and the other computers just going to sit there until the end of the Federation? From an ethical perspective it isnt great, but its unlikely to ever be fully addressed, because who in Starfleet is really going to fight for the personhood of a computerized fascist dictator? Four months after Twitter first introduced in-app tipping, the company is expanding its tip jar feature in a major way. The company is opening up tipping to all its users globally, and for the first time will allow users to send and receive tips in Bitcoin. With the update, Twitter users around the world will have access to tipping, which allows users to send each other cash through apps like Venmo, Cash App, or Bandcamp, GoFundMe and PicPay, a Brazilian mobile payments platform.Twitter users in the United States and El Salvador will have the additional option of sending and receiving tips with Bitcoin via Strike, a person-to-person payments app built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. People in other countries will be able to receive tips via their Bitcoin address. As with tips using traditional, non-crypto platforms, Twitter wont take a cut of tips exchanged between users. Tipping is rolling out to all of Twitters iOS users beginning today, and will become available on Android over the coming weeks. Twitter Twitter sees the change as an extension of its recent work to empower creators on its platform. We want everyone to have access to pathways to get paid, Twitters Esther Crawford said during a call with reporters. Digital currencies that encourage more people to participate in the economy and help people send each other money across borders and with as little friction as possible help us get there. The move is also Twitters first big move into cryptocurrency, which founder Jack Dorsey has been a major proponent of. Crawford, who leads the companys creator monetization efforts, also said the company is in the early stages of exploring an NFT authentication service, which would allow users to display NFT art on their profile. Those plans are still in an experimental stage, but the idea is to support NFT creators by giving them a way to showcase NFTs on Twitter, and provide details about their ownership, Crawford said. By allowing people to directly connect their crypto wallets, we can track and showcase our NFT ownership on Twitter, she said. It's not clear exactly what this would look like, but she said it could take the form of a badge or another visual cue. We are interested in making it somehow visually clear that this is a[n] authenticated avatar and, and then giving you some interesting info and insight about the provenance of that NFT. Twitter has previously experimented with NFTs or non-fungible tokens. The company recently released its own collection of NFTs, and Dorsey sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million earlier this year. 2021-09-22 Maeci On 22 September 2021, the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr. Heiko Maas, of the French Republic, Mr. Jean-Yves Le Drian, and of the Italian Republic, Mr. Luigi Di Maio, co[1]chaired a Ministerial meeting on Libya on the margins of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The meeting was attended by United Nations Under-Secretary General Ms. Rosemary DiCarlo, United Nations Special Envoy Mr. Jan Kubis as well as Ministers of Foreign Affairs and senior representatives from Member States and regional organizations which are part of the Berlin Process, as well as from Libyas southern neighboring countries. The participants referred to the conclusions of the two Berlin Conferences on Libya. They expressed their gratitude to United Nations Special Envoy and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), Mr. Jan Kubis, for his efforts in the Libyan-led and UN-facilitated political process. The participants called for a swift adoption of the Security Council resolution needed to extend the UNSMIL mandate. They highlighted the need of a stable UNSMIL mandate to achieve peace and stability in Libya. The participants welcomed the statements of the President of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mr. Mohamed Younes al-Mnefi, and of Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Ms. Najila Mangoush. The participants highlighted the need for regional and international stakeholders to work together to help the Libyans find a lasting political settlement. The participants also highlighted the need for the extension of the mandate of the Fact Finding Mission by the UN Human Rights Council. Political The participants urged the preparation and holding of national Parliamentary and Presidential elections on 24 December 2021, as stipulated in the Roadmap of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum and endorsed by Security Council resolution 2570 (2021). Participants agreed that the necessary preparations must be made in order to allow for free, fair and inclusive Parliamentary and Presidential elections to be held on 24 December 2021. Participants reiterated their readiness to provide all necessary assistance to the HNEC for the preparation of elections. Security The participants commended the sustained stability of the ceasefire and lauded the opening of the Coastal Road, as well as the confidence-building measures resulting in release of detainees and joint security activities. Participants commended the efforts made by the 5+5 Joint Military Committee to ensure the full implementation of the ceasefire agreement and the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries. They stressed the need to immediately engage in withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries, beginning with foreign mercenaries on both sides, in a manner co-ordinated with Libyas neighboring countries. The participants urged further efforts regarding Security Sector Reform and a process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, resulting in united security forces under civilian control. The meeting was permeated by broad agreement that violations of the United Nations arms embargo had to stop immediately. Economic The participants stressed the need to maintain stability in the oil sector and for an equitable and transparent management of oil revenues among all regions of the country. They urged the Libyan House of Representatives to adopt a state budget and the Libyan authorities to make progress on economic reforms. Humanitarian and Human Rights The participants urged the Libyan government to mitigate concerns of international human rights and humanitarian organizations regarding access, in particular issues regarding availability of Libyan visas and registering organizations in Libya. They called on the Libyan government to enable repatriation and resettlement flights. Participants expressed concern regarding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Libya, including on vulnerable groups like refugees, displaced persons and migrants. They renewed their commitment to assist the Government of National Unity in its efforts to address the pandemic, including through the provision of vaccines, as reaffirmed at Second Berlin Conference. They encouraged the Libyan governments to increase their efforts for improving the human rights situation in Libya and keep up the steps taken to ensure reconciliation and transitional justice. n this regard, they stressed the need for the extension, during the ongoing 48th session of the Human Rights Council, of the mandate of the Fact-Finding Mission established by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to investigate human rights violations in Libya. They urged the Libyan government to introduce the necessary resolution. Conclusion The co-chairs thanked the participants for their contributions and commitments. They stressed the importance of coherent and coordinated efforts under the umbrella and leadership of the United Nations. 2021-09-23 Maeci The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio, co-chaired a ministerial meeting on Libya, in New York, with the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany, Heiko Maas, and the French Republic, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on the sidelines of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The meeting was attended by UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, Foreign Affairs Ministers and representatives of Member States and Regional Organisations participating in the Berlin Process, as well as Libya's neighbouring countries. The participants unanimously stressed the need for the international community to continue supporting the Libyan political process, and in particular to encourage the preparation and conduct of free, fair and inclusive parliamentary and presidential elections, according to the roadmap agreed by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum. It is therefore essential that all the actors involved, both domestic and international, work together to find shared and lasting political and institutional solutions, in particular by overcoming the uncertainties that still exist regarding the legal framework for holding the elections. At the same time, the participants stressed the need for the implementation of all the provisions of the ceasefire reached on 23 October including the exit from the country of all foreign fighting forces and mercenaries without delay, in order to achieve consolidated security conditions in the country and the entire region. During the meeting, there was a shared hope for the rapid adoption of the Security Council resolution extending the mandate of UNSMIL (United Nations Support Mission in Libya), to allow it to become fully operational at a crucial juncture of the Libyan transition. 2021-09-23 Maeci The Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, chaired yesterday a G20 ministerial meeting to exchange ideas on what useful contribution the Group could bring to ongoing international efforts in relation to the Afghan crisis. Spain, the Netherlands, Singapore and Qatar were invited to join. Thirteen UN specialized agencies, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank took part in the virtual meeting. The high level of participation (among others the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, sixteen Ministers, including the Foreign Ministers of the US, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Spain, the IMF Managing Director and the WB President) confirms the priority that the international community assigns to Afghanistan file and testifies to the wide consensus on the input that the G20 could provide to a sustainable, coherent and effective solution of the crisis. Participants concurred on the indispensable role of the United Nations and the importance of the continued presence of its Agencies in the Country, reaffirming full support to its efforts in assisting the Afghan people, as well as migrants in neighboring countries and IDPs. Participants highlighted some shared priorities, among which the need for a prompt and effective action to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and the economic collapse of the country, especially in view of the incoming winter season. In this vein, the guarantee of free, safe and unfettered access to humanitarian assistance is key. In this respect, the return of the International Airport in Kabul to full operational capability was regarded as essential. Security remains a serious concern and a firm appeal was reiterated for Afghanistan not to turn again into a safe haven for terrorists and extremists. Finally, it was pointed out that respect for human rights, especially of women and girls, as well as the need to answer the Afghans legitimate aspiration to peace and well-being should be the guiding principles of any activity in and for Afghanistan. 2021-09-23 Maeci A webinar entitled "The future of water civilisations- Venice lagoon and Mekong delta" was held on 16 September in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Vietnam, the National University of Ho Chi Minh City and Thuy Loi University in Hanoi. The initiative is part of the cycle "1600 years of Venice. History, Architecture, City", promoted by the IUAV University of Venice in collaboration with the Municipality of Venice, Italian embassies, and universities worldwide. Within the framework of such initiative, a series of webinars dedicated to architecture was organised. In Vietnam, the 1600th anniversary of the founding of Venice was celebrated with the webinar "The future of water civilisations- Venice lagoon and Mekong delta" (in both English and Vietnamese). The webinar addressed and compared the evolution and prospects of the two historical civilisations dependent on water resources in the context of the ongoing Climate Change scenarios. The Mekong Delta is one of the largest deltas globally. It is considered the most productive agricultural and aquaculture area in Vietnam. Water is a vital resource to sustain different ecosystems and the livelihoods of some 18 million inhabitants. Currently, water resources are highly vulnerable to upstream flow changes, sea-level rise, wastewater releases and climate change. Severe drought and salinity intrusion remain key water stress challenges in the dry season. In Italy, the Po River Delta, overlooked by the Venice Lagoon, faces similar threats, affecting most deltas worldwide. Adaptation strategies are needed to mitigate water-related risks for a safe, prosperous, and sustainable Delta. The 1600th anniversary of the legendary founding of Venice is an opportunity to reflect on a city seen as a role model also during the pandemic. Venice is where art and architecture, urban form and landscape combine uniquely. But most importantly, it is a city that has sustainably developed over the centuries, ensuring a human scale, quality of public spaces, resilience to natural phenomena. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the U.S. House stood in the rain outside of the Capitol building Wednesday to denounce the treatment of Haitian migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. The rate of unruly airline passenger incidents has dropped sharply since regulators moved to impose fines, but remains twice as high as last year. Tappx today announces that it has acquired PlayOn Content , a video generation and monetization platform. The acquisition will create a platform for global publishers which can generate, display and contextually monetize video content. PlayOn Content supports media publishers to maintain video inventory using its proprietary video players. It currently operates in media brand portfolios such as HuffPost, Prisa Radio and Grupo Kiss FM in Spain, and Televisa, Grupo Expansion and Multimedios GLP across Latin America. Tappxs acquisition of PlayOn Content will enhance the platforms audiovisual monetization offering by using Tappxs contextual AV technology, Contextualize-It, as well as supporting its expansion into the UK, Portugal, LATAM and Spain markets. While the two companies will pool resources for sustainable growth and share insights on current and future products, PlayOn Content will continue to operate under its existing brand. Tappx and PlayOn Content first collaborated earlier in 2021 for Tappxs launch of Contextualize-It; a contextual AdTech solution designed to analyze complex moving audiovisual content and deliver contextualized ads. Announcing the acquisition, Daniel Reina, CEO at Tappx, said: "PlayOn Content has developed a video player with innovative solutions that brings more video content to web publishers, which is completely complementary to Tappxs solutions. By integrating the PlayOn Content player with Tappxs monetization and contextualization solutions, we can bring much more value to publishers, allowing them to make important qualitative leaps in strategies for generating and monetizing video content. Jordi Sabat, Founder and CEO of PlayOn Content, added: In order to grow you have to know how to learn and how to be part of something greater. Tappx is a group which has enormous experience and reach, and I look forward to exploring the notable synergies in our business model and product roadmaps further. EdTech startup and Indias top small-group tuitions platform, Lido Learning, onboards Jagnoor Singh as Chief Business Officer for its global operations. The announcement is in sync with its recently announced growth and expansion plans into the US and Canada markets. In his new role, Jagnoor will be responsible for scaling up Lido Learnings international operations and services. Jagnoor will work closely with Sahil Sheth, CEO & Founder, Lido Learning and a dedicated team for international expansion towards sharpening the companys global strategy and operations. Lido Learning recently announced their foray into US and Canada. The company plans to expand into the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia in early 2022. Jagnoor will also oversee the recent expansions into UAE and Saudi Arabia which have seen rapid adoption of the small- group tutoring model offered by Lido. Announcing Jagnoors appointment Sahil Sheth, CEO & Founder, Lido Learning said, We are excited to have Jagnoor joining us at Lido Learning. His experience across industries is a strength that we can leverage as we expand into new markets, while also improving our local offerings. His experience in the hospitality industry will enable us to become even more customer-centric and experience-focussed. Given Jagnoors rapid success at OYO, we are confident that he will be instrumental in driving the companys growth and international operations. His extensive knowledge and experience as a business leader makes him the ideal choice for Lido Learning. Jagnoor Singh, Chief Business Officer, Global, Lido Learning on his appointment said Lidos purpose and vision appeals to both, the parent and the business officer in me. True learning that lasts a lifetime can't happen in isolation or a crowd. Lido has solved the problem of combining peer-learning and personal attention with its small-group tuition classes. It is the best of both worlds, which will help us fulfill our promise of making success a habit for every child, every time, in all of life's tests. I'm excited to help Lido on its next milestones to disrupt the $15 billion neighbourhood tuition market! Jagnoors professional stints in leadership positions have been across some reputed organizations. Prior to joining Lido, he was Vice President, Region Head North & East at OYO, heading the companys Nepal operations. Jagnoor is deeply committed to encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders to achieve their goals, and often delivers guest lectures at management institutes across the country. Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India) After a brutal coronavirus summer, the delta wave is finally subsiding in Texas, though the state still has nearly 12,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients and one of the highest mortality rates in the nation. Health experts warn that Texans cannot let their guard down just yet even if thats not the message they are receiving from the states Republican leaders. While Gov. Greg Abbott has highlighted the states declining case counts and hospitalization rates in recent weeks, public health experts say infections may rise again this winter as the contagious delta variant continues to spread and the efficacy of immunizations declines over time. Theyre offering the same advice now that they have been for more than a year: Mask up, social distance and get vaccinated. Its advice that has worked recently in other big states, such as Democrat-led New York and California, while Abbott has instead used his emergency power to prohibit masking and vaccine mandates. This will not go down anytime soon, said Juan Gutierrez, a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who has modeled COVID-19 trajectories in Texas. We might have an increase in the number of cases later in the year. And this is the result of lack of guidance for our communities regarding sensible public health guidelines. In the past month alone, more than 5,000 Texans have died of the virus. Hospitalizations now on a steady two-week decline peaked at nearly 14,000 earlier this month, roughly the same number as during the winter surge in late 2020 and early 2021. THIS WEEK: This Texas city is first in the state to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 As of Wednesday, 250 children were hospitalized with the virus down from a record of 345 earlier in the month but still far higher than the state had seen before. Unlike previous waves, the delta surge has hit schools particularly hard, causing some to close down just as the academic year started last month. Abbott has also banned mask requirements in schools, where many students are not immunized. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine. The severity of the states outbreak is a constant in the national and statewide conversations on government-issued public health orders, including mask and vaccine mandates. Daily death rates While states that have embraced those directives have seen lower hospitalizations and deaths during this wave, others that have banned or undermined such requirements including Texas have borne the brunt of the crisis this summer, experts say. Florida, for example, is currently seeing an average of 377 COVID deaths a day about 1.75 people for every 100,000. Texas stands at 284 daily fatalities for a per capita rate of 0.98, according to the New York Times coronavirus tracker. In New York and California, the average daily deaths are 35 and 117, respectively, for per capita rates of 0.18 and 0.3. In Texas, the seven-day average for deaths peaked in January at 341, according to data from the Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center. In part, the lower death rates in New York and California reflect the dramatic surges they faced when COVID first began spreading in the U.S. in early 2020. The scare quickly forced residents to embrace public health measures, and they have maintained that attitude, said Michael Li, a Ph.D. student at the MIT Operations Research Center who has helped project the severity of COVID outbreaks across the nation. But the current gaps are also attributable to those states higher vaccination rates, and their hospitals are better equipped to treat the virus, Li said. The governors of both states have embraced masking and vaccines, issuing directives promoting their use or requiring them in certain sectors. They have also allowed local officials to implement their own public health orders as deemed necessary. Mask use is particularly key, especially for the unvaccinated, as face coverings prevent the spread of respiratory droplets, which carry the virus, experts say. Abbott lifted the states mask mandate in March, when the COVID vaccine first became available to most of the population. He has since banned masking orders outright, and Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken school districts and local governments to court for requiring face coverings. At the onset of the delta wave, Texas didnt see a surge in COVID cases, and those who wanted to get the shot rushed to their local pharmacies. But infections began to creep up again this summer and then they skyrocketed. Abbott doubled down on the need for personal responsibility, and he prohibited public entities from requiring that their employees get immunized. Even as the surge began picking up in late July, he canceled an executive order he made earlier in the pandemic that allowed localities to restrict capacity for businesses in areas where COVID hospitalizations were peaking. Abbotts COVID shift The governor had handled previous outbreaks differently. When hospitalizations and deaths spiked last winter, Abbott formed surge teams to tamp them down in places including Laredo and Lubbock, was aggressive in touting vaccines on social media, halted nonemergency surgeries in high-hospitalization regions and allowed counties and cities to reduce capacity of stores and restaurants in hard-hit regions. Through it all, Abbott consistently called on Texans to mask up. While vaccines are an important step in the long-term fight against the virus, I encourage Texans to continue to follow the best practices to keep yourself and loved ones safe like wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, Abbott said Jan. 11. This time, the governor has shied away from such public statements. He hasnt held a COVID-related news conference since March, and the majority of his recent news releases on the virus have touted the opening of nearly two dozen antibody infusion centers to treat high-risk COVID patients. And since Abbott announced that Texas was through with all government coronavirus mandates, the state has navigated its way through the delta wave with no restrictions for businesses, no mask requirements and no mandates for regions to reduce nonemergency surgeries though Abbott has requested that hospitals postpone those. If Texas embraced those precautions on a statewide level, the number of hospitalizations, cases, the number of deaths would be substantially lower than what it is today, said Gutierrez, the UTSA professor. Like other Republican governors around the nation, Abbott now rarely wears masks in public. Last month, at a political event in Collin County, he was maskless as he interacted with crowds with little social distancing. Days later, he tested positive for the virus. He credited his vaccination status for his mild case, and in a video statement encouraged Texans to get the shot. Asked about his decision to scale back personal mask use, Abbotts press secretary, Renae Eze, reiterated that Abbott is focused on vaccinations, which are the best defense against getting COVID or becoming seriously ill. Right now, at the peak of this, when the hospital systems are stressed, we need to be doing all we can to prevent the spread, because every case counts, said Dr. David Lakey, the vice chancellor for health affairs and chief medical officer at the University of Texas System, who advised Abbott earlier in the pandemic. You continue to encourage individuals to wear masks in those types of situations. Whether the state comes in I think the argument from the state about not doing that is that everyone knows this information by now, and you have the strong arm of the state doing that versus education. I think people of goodwill are debating that. A big dose of humility So far, about 9,000 people have died of the virus during the states delta wave, compared with more than 28,000 in the wave last winter and 14,000 in the first wave that began in summer 2020. While fatalities are still expected to rise in the coming days and weeks, the relatively low number of deaths is the most promising statistic to come out of the delta wave because hospitalizations and case numbers have so closely matched the previous surges. In his social media posts and public messaging, Abbott has largely emphasized Texas progress in combating COVID noting repeatedly that the positive test rate and hospitalization numbers have dipped in recent weeks. People are tired, and people are, at the same time, suffering loss, Lakey said. I think all of that has to be understood as we think about how the leader of the state talks about whats going on in Texas, and wanting to strike that balance of risk communication so people do the right things to take care of themselves but also at the same time convey that this is going to end and we are going to go forth as a state. But given the novelty of the coronavirus and the multitude of factors contributing to Texas COVID statistics, its not clear that theres an easy or simple solution for the pandemics continued impact on the Lone Star State. While Texas had a respite from the virus in the spring, the arrival of the highly contagious delta variant offered everyone a big dose of humility, Lakey said. Even with the states positive COVID trends, hospital systems are still overwhelmed and will continue to be slammed heading into flu season, Lakey said. Cold weather and the declining effectiveness of the COVID vaccine for those who have already received it may also complicate matters this winter, experts say. Come December, January, February that might be a double crunch in terms of wintertime and vaccine efficacy waning, said Li, the Ph.D. student at MIT. I mean, I hope that doesnt happen. But we have to consider the scenario even if we dont like it. cayla.harris@express-news.net For years, San Antonians have written off the River Walk as a kind of zoo to house tourists, a picturesque habitat where the out-of-towners ramble without a destination, stopping at the occasional feed trough, wagging those giant tulip-bulb souvenir margarita glasses that run more than $20 a pop. Aside from a few serious restaurants like Biga on the Banks, Restaurant Gwendolyn and Range, I never paid much attention to the River Walk culinary scene except to wince whenever someone asked me to recommend good Mexican food down there. But as the holidays approach and the weather starts to cool, its a good time to take a fresh look at this underappreciated part of life in San Antonio, to make our way through the not-quite-post-pandemic landscape and get ready to plan the River Walk Christmas dinners and holiday celebrations we didnt get to have last year. In a four-part series starting today, without wincing, Ill give you my recommendations for the best restaurants on the River Walk. They wont be judged against the broad spectrum of the best restaurants in San Antonio, but rather within that narrow bandwidth of River Walk restaurants. Before we begin, lets set some rules. To qualify, a restaurant has to be right on the river, close enough to throw chips to the ducks you shouldnt be feeding in the first place. Not a block over, not a street over, not set back in a courtyard. On the river. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio's food truck guide The River Walk stretches 15 miles, winding through the heart of downtown San Antonio, extending south through the Mission Reach and north with the Museum Reach. This four-part series will cover the section starting at Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard to the south and stopping at Fourth Street to the north, including the horseshoe that runs through downtown and the strip that glides up to the Shops at Rivercenter. I visited all the restaurants here. This first part focuses on the locally owned restaurants I wouldnt hesitate to recommend to tourists and locals alike. In this search area alone, there are more than 25 locally owned restaurants among the dozens of hotel and chain restaurants, and there are nine I recommend. In the weeks to come, every other week, Ill sort out the best hotel restaurants next and then the best chains. For the fourth and final installment, Ill pull from all the lists and give you a ranked list of the 10 best River Walk Restaurants overall. Finally, just maybe, well have a list that lives up to the promise and potential of San Antonio and the river that runs through it. On ExpressNews.com: Review: Frida Mexican Restaurant & Bar in Stone Oak among San Antonio's worst Mexican restaurants Mike Sutter /Staff Acenar That thing about Mexican restaurant recommendations? This is one of them, a stylish resort-style setting for contemporary Mexican food with more distinction than some of its older contemporaries. Good examples include the Tres Enchiladas plate with verde, mole and queso styles, or grilled shrimp taquitos with razor-thin jicama in place of tortillas for an even more refined touch. And the large patio with riverfront seating is a plus. 146 E. Houston St., 210-222-2362, acenar.com Mike Sutter /Staff Biga on the Banks Chef Bruce Audens influence runs like a brilliant spiderweb through the citys best restaurants, run by chefs who worked under Auden over the years. Think of his crispy chicken-fried oysters with mustard hollandaise and squid ink pasta as a handshake to robust grill plates like Australian lamb chops with cheesy grits and a plate of Axis venison with Lockhart quail and a goat cheese tart. Its one of the citys best service experiences and has a second-story terrace that overlooks a quiet corner of the river. 203 S. St. Marys St., 210-225-0722, biga.com Mike Sutter /Staff Boudros Texas Bistro The overwrought Southwestern swagger of Boudros was lost on me during a review a few years back. But now more than ever I appreciate the hands-on showmanship of spicy tableside guacamole and the simple beauty of a perfectly grilled Black Angus beef filet and the sweet magenta swirl of a prickly pear margarita. Look for the hat-shaped umbrellas covering tables right by the river, or perch on the patio for prime people-watching. 421 E. Commerce St., 210-224-8484, boudros.com Mike Sutter /Staff The Esquire Tavern The Esquire is a study in evolution, from the dark and rowdy saloon of yesteryear to a respectable bar and grill more recently. The Esquires menu has lost a step since the pandemic and the departure of its star chef, but you can still count on a juicy bison burger, crispy chile-salt fries and some of the best cocktails in the city, including a proper tart margarita that will recalibrate what you expect from the usual River Walk sugar bombs. Riverside seating is at a premium, with just a few tables on the terrace above the sidewalk, but those tables are like a ringside seat in New Orleans. 155 E. Commerce St., 210-222-2521, esquiretavern-sa.com On ExpressNews.com: Fred's Fish Fry vs. Sea Island Shrimp House: Who will win this San Antonio seafood institution showdown? Mike Sutter /Staff On the Bend Oyster Bar & Cigar Lounge With a caricature artist on the patio, an incongruent statue of Benny Hill at the entrance and one of those frozen drink stands right next to it, On the Bend could be confused for a tourist trap. But its Riverwalk Punch is boozy and refreshing without going all Kool-Aid Man, and a Frutas del Mar platter is loaded with Gulf oysters, seafood campechana, seafood dip and peel-and-eat shrimp thats fresh, reasonably priced and available on a second-story terrace for a better view of lifes rich pageant below. 123 Losoya St., Suite 7, 210-354-3002, onthebendsa.com Mike Sutter /Staff The Original Mexican Restaurant If Acenar represents the new wave of Mexican cooking, The Original is its old-school counterpart, with just five tables next to the river, an unadorned patio and combo plates like the Especial de Saltillo plate with a respectable cheese enchilada, beef enchilada and a crispy taco with mildly spiced picadillo. While its not nearly the best Tex-Mex in town, its the best local Tex-Mex joint on the River Walk. 528 River Walk St., 210-224-9951, originalmexican.com Mike Sutter /Staff Paesanos Riverwalk Its no secret that after four visits and a zero-star review in 2019, I didnt like Paesanos in Lincoln Heights. So Im surprised that Paesanos Riverwalk came through so strong, serving lightly fried Shrimp Paesano with firm spaghetti and rich lemon butter garlic sauce and a lasagna that anybody would claim as their own. It didnt hurt that the river was clean, the weather was beautiful and the sunset hit the broad riverside courtyard to create the kind of golden hour that forgives all. 111 W. Crockett St., Suite 101, 210-227-2782, paesanosriverwalk.com Mike Sutter /Staff The Republic of Texas With a menu as frenetic as a precocious art students doodle pad, The Republic of Texas didnt strike me as a strong candidate for the River Walks best local Texas cafe until the chicken-fried steak showed up, all plate-hogging, crispy-crusted and gravy-soaked with loaded mashed potatoes on the side and a frozen mango margarita with chamoy and chile salt that I liked in spite of myself. Take a seat under the phalanx of Texas flag umbrellas by the river and have a showdown with the ducks, pigeons and grackles gunning for your leftovers. 526 River Walk St., 210-226-6256, therepublicoftexasrestaurant.com Mike Sutter /Staff file photo Restaurant Gwendolyn Chef Michael Sohocki fired up his pre-industrial fever dream of a restaurant 10 years ago, working with hand-cranked machinery and food from within a 150-mile radius. After a decade, its house-cured charcuterie board and five-course tasting menus are as strong as ever, with a lineup that might include watermelon gazpacho, green bean Caesar, quail satay, Guinea hen Veracruzano and apple strudel. Ask for a seat on the terrace by the East Pecan Street bridge and soak in the contrast of the quiet River Walk below and the rowdy bus stop nearby. 152 E. Pecan St., Suite 100, 210-222-1849, restaurantgwendolyn.com msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking Texas Department of Public Safety A convicted murderer from San Antonio has been named one of Texas' most wanted criminals, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Officials said Moises Calderon, 50, is wanted in connection with an assault and for a parole violation. He is affiliated with the Hermandada de Pistoleros Latinos gang, officials said. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) The North Carolina House is committed to trying to work with the Senate to approve legislation that would make more work histories of government employees available to the public, Speaker Tim Moore said Thursday. Senate Republicans have taken multiple paths to send legislation to the House that would make accessible to media and citizens short explanations of why a state or local government employee was transferred, demoted or suspended. It's supported by the North Carolina Press Association. PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) More Rhode Islanders may soon be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, officials said Thursday at a meeting of the states COVID-19 Vaccine Subcommittee. The subcommittee voted in support of the state Department of Health moving ahead with implementation of Pfizer boosters once the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided guidance, The Boston Globe reported. All three components of the Air Force active-duty, guard and reserve are expected to make their recruiting goals for the current fiscal year, the first time that has happened in five years. The head of the Air Force Recruiting Service, which is based in San Antonio, announced the milestone this week. The new Space Force also will be at its authorized strength. Were on track to meet goals this year, and it will be the first time in more than five years that weve made our goals for all of our components, Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr. said. Retention has been historically high through COVID, he added. The guard and the reserve particularly have had to paddle exceptionally hard. The active-duty force will slightly exceed its goal of signing up 26,641 airmen by Oct. 1. But while the active-duty Air Force has consistently hit its recruiting targets, the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard have not. The Reserve Command has sometimes fallen short of reaching its end strength since 2017, but as of Wednesday it totaled 70,447, which was 147 airmen above what was authorized. The Air National Guard exceeded its goal of 108,100 by 216. It, too, had fallen short in several recent years, often by just a couple hundred recruits. For the Reserve Command, 2020 was a recruiting low point, which it blamed on more people remaining in the active-duty force as the COVID pandemic locked down the country and reduced civilian jobs. Typically, active-duty airmen move into the guard and reserve as they return to civilian life, but a former Air Force secretary noted that changed during the pandemic. What obviously happened during COVID was the departure after the first tour was much less than normal because there was no place to go and the service was pretty well organized for COVID and COVID response, so people chose not to go, former Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters said Wednesday. The pandemic also changed the way recruiters had to do their jobs. Long reliant on storefront offices and personal contact, including frequent visits to high schools across the country, the Recruiting Service turned more to the internet and social media. On ExpressNews.com: In age of coronavirus, Air Force recruiters in San Antonio and nationwide go digital The latest figures offered a chance to celebrate for Thomas, but he pointed to an analysis of recruiting trends as a very concerning forecast of long-term trends. Over the past two years, propensity, or interest, in serving in the U.S. military in general fell from 13 percent to 10 percent of recruitment-age Americans, a reduction of nearly 2 million young people, he said, citing a report issued by the Pentagons Joint Advertising Market Research Service. The biggest dropoff in interest came among African American and Hispanic men and women. Propensity to serve ranges from 10 to 15 percent, but the long-term trends were worrisome, Thomas said, adding, The reason is Americas youth are becoming ever more disconnected from the military. Military sociologists and some in the armed services have called the phenomenon the civil-military divide. On ExpressNews.com: As war veterans die, the civilian-military divide grows Young people across America increasingly have no one in their immediate families who served at some point in their lives and arent inclined to consider serving when they graduate from high school. I think thats increasingly a problem, said Peters, who served as the Air Forces top civilian from 1997 through 2001. But remember, over three-quarters of eligible American youth are not actually able to serve because of health issues, obesity, drug use, criminal convictions. There are a wide number of factors that are disqualifying for the military, so I believe that roughly 75 percent of people who would otherwise be eligible are no longer eligible because of those kinds of factors. It may be higher than 75 percent at this point. Thomas covered some of the same ground in his discussion Wednesday with reporters at the Air Force Associations annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland. I can go into all the reasons why, he said. Smaller military, bigger population, less moms, dad, aunts and uncles, people who served, people that know (the military), so we have to be really serious about playing the long game. That includes inspiring the next generation of airmen and Guardians, the term used to describe those serving in the Space Force, and frankly the generation after that, Thomas said. Were also going through unprecedented change at Air Force Recruiting Service, he said. Ill just tell you that we are reinventing, re-imagining, re-engineering the way we do recruiting, regardless. sigc@express-news.net Nearly two dozen environmental organizations in Texas have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to remove Texas authority to administer the federal program to control and reduce water pollution in this state. In a 40-page petition sent to the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the groups call for the federal government to assume control of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System in Texas, saying the TCEQ has not met the programs intent. They say the TCEQ has demonstrated systemic and chronic failures to adequately review and approve water pollution control permits in Texas. Over the years, Texas has given a green light to a huge amount of contamination of our waterways by allowing developers and other polluters to short-cut the legally required permit review process that is meant to safeguard our rivers and streams, said Ilan Levin, Texas director of the Environmental Integrity Project, in a news release. For this reason, EPA needs to step in and take over or force Texas to fix its broken review system. The NPDES referred to in this state as the Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System is a federal program created to control pollution in surface waters. All operators that intend to discharge pollutants into waterways must obtain an NPDES permit, which limits how much is discharged. Courtesy of the Environmental Integrity Project / The Environmental Integrity Project In 1998, the EPA delegated management of the program in Texas to the state, as it has in 46 other states. The program is federally managed in New Mexico, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Among the claims of the 21 petitioning organizations including the San Antonio-based Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance and Austin-based Save Our Springs Alliance is that the TCEQ routinely gives permit applicants the benefit of the doubt that their discharges will have minimal effects. As a result, they are not required to demonstrate economic or social necessity. The TCEQ always finds that a proposed discharge is only going to have a de minimis impact, said Kelly Davis, a staff attorney with Save Our Springs Alliance. Its never taken that step thats defined in the NPDES rules in which the applicant must demonstrate significant social or economic development to justify the degradation of water quality. The TCEQ never gets that far. The TCEQ declined a request for comment, saying it wont do so until it has read the petition. As an example of the TCEQs deference to industry, Davis cites a permit issued for the Liberty Hill Wastewater Treatment Plant north of Austin, which allowed the plant to discharge 4 million gallons a day into the San Gabriel River. The TCEQ said the phosphorus pollution, which can cause harmful algae blooms, would be minor. Now, Davis said, there are thick clumps of algae downstream from the plant. The petition describes a similar situation involving Lerin Hill Ltd.s sewage treatment plant northwest of San Antonio. The petitioners complain that the TCEQ routinely applies a standard known as a de minimis exemption during its permitting process that places the burden on the public to demonstrate that degradation will be more than minor. That standard, they said, was applied in the Lerin Hill plants case to allow 500,000 gallons to be discharged into several Hill Country streams. An administrative law judge recommended denial, citing an undisputed increase of algal and plant growth, and the TCEQ issued the permit. Going to court for this is no small matter, Davis said. Its expensive. You have to hire lawyers and water experts. If the TCEQ was doing its job right and actually finding that these large discharges into water had an impact, it wouldnt put citizens in this position to expend their personal time and resources. Applying the de minimis standard, Levin said, also removes the burden on an applicant to prove that there is no viable alternative that would be less harmful to the water. The EPA is expected to work with the state and the petitioners to resolve the issues. If the EPA were to remove Texas authority to manage the NPDES program in this state, it would be first time any state has been stripped of that authority. The EPA has the option to withdraw the program, or TCEQ could make corrections, Davis said. But I cant really speculate on what approach they will take. Elena Bruess writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. elena.bruess@express-news.net U.S. Army North said Wednesday it had deployed 20 military personnel to support civilian healthcare workers treating COVID-19 patients in hospitals in Tennessee, an extension of a mission already underway in five other states. The Army medical personnel, which include nurses, respiratory therapists and medical doctors, will support the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. It follows those dispatched to hospitals in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Idaho. Army North, working under U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, is the operational command of the active-duty military COVID-19 response in support of federal efforts and the states. The command deployed 20 personnel to Dothan, Ala., and another 20 to Alexandria, La., to support civilian health care workers at the end of last month as COVID cases overwhelmed hospitals in those states. The delta variant of the coronavirus, which spreads more easily than earlier versions, has particularly strained medical resources and facilities in states that have the lowest vaccination rates. Defending the nation remains my number one priority, said Army Norths commander, Lt. Gen. John R. Evans Jr., according to a news release. This includes defeating COVID-19, which the secretary of defense describes as the greatest proximate challenge to our nations security, he said. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-based Army North sends medical teams to Alabama, Louisiana Tennessees 14-day average positive test rate for coronavirus peaked at 19.98 percent on Sept. 1. While it has fallen slightly, a chart maintained by the Mayo Clinic shows the rate remained stubbornly high at 19.14 percent as of Monday. On July 23 it stood at 10.13 percent. Tennessees fatality rate had fallen from 1.45 percent on July 23 to 1.23 percent on Monday. Alabamas 14-day test rate peaked at 25.72 percent on Aug. 13 but had since fallen to 16.61 percent on Monday, the Mayo Clinic said. In Arkansas, the test rate peaked at 11.9 percent on Aug. 15 and was down to 9.21 percent on Monday, while the rate in Mississippi moved from a high of 22.38 percent on Aug. 12 to 15 percent Monday. Idahos 14-day positive test rate reached its high mark only a week ago, at 23.91 percent on Sept. 15. It was down to 22.29 percent as of Monday. The rate for Louisiana reached a high of 16.22 percent on Aug. 9, but had fallen to 7.55 percent as of Monday. Army North, which operates out of the historic Quadrangle at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, restarted the military medical mission to hospitals in mid-August after wrapping up an effort that had included military personnel vaccinating civilians against coronavirus. It sent 20 U.S. Navy medical personnel to Lafayette, La., at the request of the FEMA as part of the Pentagons COVID-19 response. On ExpressNews.com: Medics to Louisiana: San Antonio-based Army North resumes COVID mission The Army North mission helped hospitals across the United States in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, units led by the command helped support civilian hospitals across the nation including some in San Antonio. At one point last November, the command had around 560 military medical personnel working alongside civilian healthcare providers treating patients sickened by the virus in six states and the Navajo Nation. It started providing active-duty military personnel to support federal vaccination efforts on Feb. 4, overseeing around 150 military medical and support personnel from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force. Working in 25 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, they administered around 5 million vaccines before ending the mission on June 21. sigc@express-news.net Jury trials that were halted because of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases are expected to resume in Bexar County in October, the countys administrative judge said Wednesday. Based on the countys steady reduction in test positivity and transmission rates of the coronavirus, state District Judge Ron Rangel said health and safety protocols in place should be sufficient to allow in-person jury proceedings to begin Oct. 4. We will resume the trial and in-person schedules we had this summer, picking up where we left off, he said in a memo sent to state and county courts. Rangels decision followed a meeting with local health authorities. He included in his memo an internal letter from Dr. Bob Leverence, the UT Health San Antonio chief medical officer, that warned of a fourth surge in winter now that school is back in session. Despite the grim prediction, the good news is we have the tools to prevent a bad winter surge, Leverences letter stated. We thought a vaccinated population of 60 percent might be enough to at least slow down COVID and prevent a severe surge, but the delta variant proved us wrong - we need closer to 90 percent. Both Rangel and Leverence urged vaccinated people to continue to wear masks and practice social distancing indoors, and for the unvaccinated to get a COVID-19 shot to protect themselves and others. The number of new cases reported in Bexar County was 571 on Thursday and the seven-day rolling average of new cases dropped to 595. A month earlier, on Aug. 23, the seven-day average was 1,246. The positivity rate currently is 4.9 percent, down from 7.1 percent last week, substantially lower than where it was this summer, at over 21 percent, Metro Health Director Claude Jacob said. Staff writer Laura Garcia contributed to this report. ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863 The lawsuit by the state of Texas against an employee vaccination mandate by the San Antonio Independent School District survived a challenge to its routine assertion that the state had jurisdiction to bring the suit. But the school districts lawyers delayed the states effort to stop the vaccination order, filing a notice that they will appeal a judges ruling on the jurisdiction question to the Fourth Court of Appeals. An order by Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 25 broadened his earlier ban against coronavirus vaccination mandates to include vaccines that had final approval by the Food and Drug Administration. This put the SAISD directive, issued a week earlier, in violation. The state sued the school district Sept. 9. Before a hearing could be scheduled on the states request for an injunction to halt the vaccination mandate, State District Judge Angelica Jimenez heard SAISDs challenge to the states claim of jurisdiction. Repeating a claim used in other lawsuits pitting local governments against Abbott, lawyers for SAISD said his outlawing of virus protection measures had unconstitutionally overridden state law that gives such authority to local governments. In a videoconference with lawyers early Thursday, Jimenez denied the SAISD plea and referred them back to Bexar Countys presiding civil court for another judge to hear the states request for an injunction. But the case was halted after the school district said it would appeal. SAISD respectfully disagrees with the ruling of Judge Jimenez that the governor and attorney general have the legal authority to proceed with this lawsuit, SAISD board President Christina Martinez said in a prepared statement. The counsel for SAISD has filed an appeal of the ruling, which has the effect of staying the attorney generals attack on the SAISD communitys efforts to provide a safe environment for the students, parents and employees of SAISD. On ExpressNews.com: Punches fly in first round of Paxtons lawsuit against San Antonio ISD A lawyer representing the Texas Attorney Generals Office had argued Wednesday that lawsuits to force local officials to obey state law are routine and had described as ludicrous and silly the school districts argument that Paxton himself had declared in other court cases that he had no power to enforce the governors order. Lawyers for the school district alerted the Fourth Court of Appeals they planned to file an interlocutory appeal. Online court records show an Oct. 4 deadline for the court to receive it. In civil cases, an interlocutory appeal happens when a party challenges a non-final trial court order that decides an issue but does not result in a final judgment. SAISD officials believe anecdotally that at least 90 percent of the school districts staff already are fully vaccinated, Superintendent Pedro Martinez told his board on Monday. The district began collecting proof of vaccination from employees when the mandate was announced last month. We are well over a third of our staff that have submitted that proof, but more are coming in every day, Martinez said. As we get closer to the October 15th deadline, we feel confident that we are going to get that information. Staff writer Danya Perez contributed to this report. ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863 A deportation flight headed to Haiti from San Antonio was delayed this week after passengers became unruly and assaulted officers, federal authorities allege. The incident happened Monday at San Antonio International Airport after the Biden administration began deporting Haitian immigrants who had gathered at the Del Rio border crossing. One of the migrants was charged in federal court, and the records were unsealed Thursday. The incident was one of several this week involving the migrants. The alleged assault delayed the 7 a.m. flight, which was ready to take 112 migrants back to Haiti. The same day, a busload of Haitian migrants being transported from Del Rio to Brownsville had to pull over south of Kingsville when passengers became unruly. Three of the migrants were taken off the bus, and that bus and another bus continued on their way, officials said. Photos and video of Border Patrol agents on horseback aggressively dispersing Haitian migrants at the border went viral over the weekend, and the White House said the images are extremely troubling, pledging to investigate the incidents. On Thursday, Daniel Foote, the senior U.S. diplomat to Haiti, quit over the deportations, saying in a letter announcing his resignation that the decision to return migrants fleeing an earthquake and political instability was inhumane. On Mondays flight, 12 passengers caused a disturbance in the middle of the plane as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was preparing for takeoff. Jubenson Dominique was alleged to be the main instigator, and officers decided to remove him from the plane, a federal affidavit said. As an ICE officer and two contract officers tried to force Dominique, who was shackled at the wrists, toward the front of the plane, he resisted, spat at officers and tried to bite them. Other migrants grabbed at the officers and struck them as the ICE officer held Dominiques head to prevent him from biting, the affidavit said. The officer lost his grip, and Dominique turned and bit him and two other officers, breaking skin, the affidavit said. Dominique was placed in more secure restraints, in preparation of resuming departure of the aircraft, the affidavit said. Ultimately, the officers were unable to complete the removal flight to Port Au Prince, Haiti. Two of the officers were treated by EMS at the scene. The third officer was treated at a local hospital, tested for HIV and given prescriptions, the affidavit said. The matter was investigated by ICEs Office of Professional Responsibility, the agencys internal affairs arm, which ultimately charged Dominique with assault on a federal officer. He faces up to eight years in prison if convicted. Meanwhile, internal investigations have also been launched over the Border Patrols encounters on horseback with Haitians at the border. The Department of Homeland Security does not tolerate the abuse of migrants in our custody, and we take these allegations very seriously, an agency spokesperson said this week. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also directed department personnel to deploy to Del Rio to ensure that border officials there carry out their duties consistent with applicable policies and training and the department's values. guillermo.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland More than half of all Texans lost water during last Februarys deadly winter storm. It was a warning of trouble to come. Our states water infrastructure is the backbone of our economy, and it is aging and fragile. Just one week before the storm knocked out water and power service, the Texas Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Texas huge network of water pipes and treatment plants a C grade. Further, the 2022 State Water Plan projects that more than $80 billion in water projects are necessary to meet the states future water needs. Texas now has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize its water infrastructure in a way that protects our economy, communities and fellow Texans. Billions of dollars are coming to Texas as part of federal stimulus and economic recovery funding, specifically through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. The funding could go a long way toward ensuring Texans have stable and resilient access to water. This week, the Legislature convened a special session in part to decide how to allocate this money. Water should be a top priority. According to the 2022 State Water Plan, if the plan is not implemented, a severe drought could cause $153 billion in economic damages per year by 2070. More importantly, a fragile water infrastructure leaves 29 million Texans vulnerable to extreme cold like that in February, as well as drought, floods and other extreme weather disruptions. ARPA provides Texas with $16.8 billion and local governments with an additional $10.5 billion to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and bring back jobs. Water and sewer infrastructure qualifies for this funding. Further, ARPA encourages recipients to consider green infrastructure investments and projects to improve resilience to the effects of climate change. Perfect for Texas, the funding is designed to be flexible, letting city and state governments address their biggest needs. This month, the nonprofit think tank Texas 2036 released a poll showing 88 percent of Texas voters support using $3 billion of the federal funds to improve water quality and access. State leaders can, and should, use this funding for grants to communities with big water infrastructure needs but few resources to address them. Texas has routinely offered low-interest loans for water projects to communities, but many particularly those that are historically underserved and marginalized cannot afford that debt. Grants would help. They also support important water-conservation and data-collection work that feeds good management strategies. Upgrading leaky pipes and installing backup generators is no longer enough. Planners also need to ensure water systems can bounce back from extreme weather, which means thinking about infrastructure as more than pipes and reservoirs. Additionally, ARPA offers a vital new path to support data collection and science that improve rural communities understanding of local and underground water systems. When it comes to groundwater, aquifers are infrastructure. Whether from floods, droughts or freezes, Texas faces significant and growing costs from extreme weather. Despite a sophisticated planning model, Texas water infrastructure is feeling those costs, which will directly impact our future water security. The Texas economy depends on water as much as its people do. In this special session, Texas has a unique and important opportunity to prioritize water security, resilience and equity. By treating ARPA funds as a down payment on the states water needs, Texas can avoid a repeat of the water disaster this year and be resilient in future crises. Vanessa Puig-Williams is director of the Environmental Defense Funds Texas Water Program. Sarah Rountree Schlessinger is chief executive officer of the Texas Water Foundation. Weve seen the signs. No shirt. No shoes. No service and We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. These are tenets of American business ownership, at least in the bricks-and-mortar world. If a company isnt discriminating against someones civil liberties, owners have the right to determine who they serve. Its a freedom that shouldnt be infringed upon, especially in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott constantly talks about the sanctity of individual and corporate rights. More accurately, Abbott and the Texas Legislature pick and choose which individual rights they protect as they pander to their base. Let us count the ways. Freedom to carry guns without a permit or training? Sure. Freedom to not wear a mask in the midst of a pandemic? Of course. Freedom to not get a COVID vaccine? Definitely. Freedom to vote? Nah. Freedom for a woman to make decisions about her own body? Not so much. Freedom for a company to flag and block false information online? Absolutely not. In line with Texas spate of kowtowing to the extreme right, Abbott signed House Bill 20 on Sept. 9. The bill purports to protect free speech on social media, but its really meant to protect conservative free speech. In a press release, Abbott states there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas. The bill aims to counter what Abbott and legislators deem online censorship. From the same release: House Bill 20 prevents social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users banning users simply based on their political viewpoints. This is an offshoot of the Big Lie of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election. Just as theres no evidence of widespread voter fraud Yes, President Joe Biden won, just as Republicans won across the board in Texas theres no evidence of social media companies booting people for simply communicating their political viewpoints. Social media companies act against content that violates their terms of use. Twitters policies, for example, forbid violence, threats, terrorism, violent extremism, child sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment, hateful conduct, promoting suicide, adult content or illegal activities. People must acknowledge the terms of use before using the platforms. Abbott calls it a free speech issue, but thats a misnomer not all speech is protected. Social media websites have become our modern-day public square, he said. They are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely. Lets run with that. Nobody is arguing that free speech and public debate should be infringed upon, but can you threaten, terrorize, exploit, abuse or harass people in a public square? Can you scream fire in a movie theater or talk about a bomb in the airport security line? If someone made racist comments in a restaurant or coffee shop, does that business have a right to ask that person to leave? Are private companies public squares? The former president wasnt banned from Twitter for expressing free speech. The company banned him because his speech incited violence. Its not like speech has been canceled. After all, conservative politicians, pundits and personalities led an exodus from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to places such as Parler, Gab, Rumble, Signal and Telegram in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The move was a reaction to traditional social media outlets banning and suspending accounts. We all saw how campaigns and foreign actors manipulated social media in the 2016 election. In the years that followed, social media companies have become more savvy (but not savvy enough). Our concern about social media isnt about limits to free speech. Its about users manipulating these platforms to push disinformation. Apparently, Texas lawmakers are for that. Re: Women-only vote, Your Turn, Sept. 16: In his letter, John B. Francis believes only women should be allowed to vote regarding abortion issues. I am a woman, and I believe those babies are human beings, with human DNA, beating hearts and breathing lungs that need someone to speak up for them. They need caring adults to protect them, just as we do when we stop women from drinking alcohol to prevent fetal alcohol syndrome. In our family, the women advocate for pre- and post-birth babies because they need love just like every other human being. Jacque Petterson Tine to come together Re: Another virus is infecting global unity: tribalism, Other Views, Friday: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedmans excellent commentary on tribalism could also be called the Death of Democracy. He cites the global war on separatism, stating that countries are falling into a state of destruction. Specifically, he names the Islamic fights between Sunnis and Shiites, and relates them to the turmoil in India in the rise of the new Hindu Pakistan. He also equates those attempts at tribalism with what we see going on in America today, the alignment of ideologies of the Democratic and Republican parties. His analogy is so true. I remember a time when we Democrats and Republicans could have a healthy debate over issues. However, today it seems that if one does not agree to anothers viewpoint, then they are considered the enemy and all discussion ceases. Personally, I have experienced this with friends and relatives to the point where I keep my ideas to myself fearing escalating the tribalism conflict. It is time to come together, and forget politics to try and save our democracy. For if we dont do it now, we will experience its death, and God help us if that happens. Whatever happened to the idea that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address? Our sacred responsibility is to ensure that this does not happen. Warren P. McKenney, Boerne University of Texas at Austin leaders sought to quell concerns among faculty this week over a proposed think tank on campus known as the Liberty Institute, after the Texas Tribune reported that the university was working with private donors and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to create a center that would be dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets. At a Faculty Council meeting, Provost Sharon Wood reiterated that many decisions had yet to be made about the institute, which already has $12 million in funding over the next two years from the state Legislature and the UT System Board of Regents. Faculty Council leaders had presented university President Jay Hartzell with a list of eight questions about the universitys plans for the institute, its mission and how it would be structured. Hartzell was at an event in Dallas, however, and did not attend the meeting. In his stead, Wood acknowledged to the council that the Tribunes article caused a lot of concern on campus. But she noted that the university did not provide information for the story, which detailed emails and documents obtained by the Tribune via open records requests. The request was filed after the university provided vague answers to students and ignored the Tribunes questions about the center. So I want to talk to you about what the university is actually planning to do and try to address some of the misconceptions, she told the faculty at Mondays meeting. On ExpressNews.com: Punches fly in first round of Paxton's lawsuit against San Antonio ISD Wood, who is the former dean of the UT-Austin Cockrell School of Engineering, was named provost in June. She told faculty she did not know answers to many of their questions because the discussions about this center predated her arrival in the presidents office. But she described a more politically muted proposal than ones discussed privately among donors, lawmakers and school leaders. According to Wood, the institutes intent is to support and help attract faculty. She said it will be an investment in philosophy, politics and economics. She said the idea has been discussed among faculty and school leaders for over a decade, originally led by Tom Gilligan, who was the dean of the McCombs School of Business before he left to run the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a conservative think tank that operates outside the normal university structure. She compared the new center to a philosophy, politics and economics department at Oxford University. The goal is to provide students who cross traditional boundaries and consider problems from multiple points of view, Wood said. This allows them to better understand how regulatory and legal environments are going to impact markets. They also will have the analytical and quantitative skills to solve complex problems and understand more economic drivers. In August, the Tribune reported on Hartzells emails obtained through an open records request to UT-Austin, as well as two proposals obtained from Patricks office that suggest more political though not explicitly partisan motivations to launch the institute among those involved. (A) growing proportion of our population lacks a basic understanding of the role liberty and private enterprise play in their well-being, read one proposal. Too many Americans, particularly younger students, maintain misconceptions about our political system and lack an even basic understanding of the moral, ethical, philosophical and historical foundations underpinning a free society. A second proposal described the institute as one that will educate thousands of students on the moral, ethical, philosophical and historical foundations of a free society and asks the state to dedicate money to the project. It is still unclear who wrote these proposals or when they were written. While they do not reflect the full breadth of discussion about the institute, they provided the most insight into the vision of some of the people involved in its creation. Emails show Hartzell has been involved in discussions since at least 2016. Wood said the Tribunes report ignored the role of faculty governance and faculty hiring and also developing new degree programs and implied there was no interest among students. She did not give specifics about those roles. UT-Austin did not respond to an interview request or written questions, including a request to provide a list of faculty and students involved in planning the new center. Despite the decisions yet to be made, some professors remained skeptical about the new center. After Wood spoke, College of Natural Sciences professor Stuart Reichler said facultys main concern is that the university is allowing the Legislature to politicize UT-Austin. You say we need outside funding for this institute to happen, Reichler said. It sounds like there are already donors, political donors, lined up to provide money for the university to hire people to work in these positions to form part of this institute. I think our concern or at least what Im reading into the concern from the questions are why is the university allowing itself to be politicized by the Legislature? It seems a very dangerous precedent for us to set. But one professor pushed back on the concerns of his colleagues, arguing that university programs such as social justice centers and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are already political. It seems like youre just treating this as ideas you dont want (on campus) as opposed to some broader principle, said Richard Lowery, a finance professor in the UT-Austin business school. In response to the funding concerns, Wood noted that there are 15 different efforts on campus funded in a similar way by the Legislature, including the McDonald Observatory and Marine Science Institute, while also stating that it is rare for the university to receive money this way. She said no donors have been secured for the new center. But emails show at least one donor had agreed to commit $8.5 million toward a new center in 2016. Bob Rowling, a conservative billionaire businessman and well-known UT-Austin donor, confirmed he and oil company executive Bud Brigham were involved in the project. Rowling told the Tribune in August that Brigham was the real leader on this. UT-Austin did not respond to a question asking Wood to clarify what she meant by her comment. UT-Austin has ignored interview requests and written questions from the Tribune. Leaders provided few details to students who also raised questions last spring. When asked by a faculty member at the meeting why UT-Austin did not respond to the Tribunes request for comment, Wood said she did not know. On ExpressNews.com: Tensions boil at UT-Austin over 'The Eyes of Texas', where students are refusing to work Wood told the council that the goal this year is to hire three to five new faculty who would have teaching interests in philosophical bases for individual and collective decisionmaking and choice, government regulation, legal and policy impacts on economic outcomes and individual choice and freedoms, market design and social welfare, and social prosperity and well-being, including innovation, entrepreneurial activities, company formation and job creation. She said any new professors would be hired within the proper university protocols, which include deans, department chairs and the Faculty Council. One of the proposals obtained from Patricks office had suggested the center would be run by a board of overseers made up of alumni and friends committed to the mission. They would report to UT-Austins president and the systems Board of Regents and would manage donor funds and help hire the faculty. Wood also told faculty that the presidents office will find philanthropic support to hire chairs or professors. She also said the university plans to do an inventory of existing courses to develop a list of new classes that may be added. They anticipate conducting a national search for the director. Wood said they also have yet to determine the official name of the institute, its mission, and the board and governance structure. While some faculty said the outline provided by Wood on Monday sounded reasonable, they did not feel as if the university has shared enough information and said more discussion and details are necessary. I dont think we know enough yet to know whether the university is doing anything inappropriate or in bad faith here, said Steve Vladeck, a law professor and member of the Faculty Council. But I dont think the university has helped itself in how it has conveyed information to the faculty. I dont think (Mondays) meeting helped in that respect at all. The Faculty Councils executive committee has asked Hartzell to make a presentation to them on the new center. Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Austin - McCombs School of Business and University of Texas at Austin - Texas Enterprise - McCombs School of Business have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. With the blessing of Gov. Greg Abbott, lawyers for the state and the plaintiffs in a class-action case alleging unsafe conditions in Texas foster care system are planning a meeting for next week to hash out policy solutions. The summit marks a new phase in six years of legal proceedings since federal Judge Janis Jack ruled that the Texas foster care system placed children in jeopardy and violated their constitutional rights. The state fought back and appealed, but Jacks ruling stood and she ordered a number of changes to the states system, threatened fines and upbraided state officials in hearings. But the time has ended for holding feet to the fire, Jack said in a hearing last week, calling for immediate solutions as up to 400 Texas children each month are stuck in unsafe, temporary placements in motels or state office buildings. She called on Abbott to decide whether he would support changes. LAST WEEK: Blistered by judge, Texas foster care chief says she feels like shes failing children Abbott agreed to good faith negotiations to discuss possible solutions to the problems described in a recent report from court-appointed monitors describing children who are staying in unlicensed facilities. Weve seen a change in attitudes, said Paul Yetter, lead attorney for the class-action suit against the state.This is a time for working together to protect the children, not for fighting against each other. And were very heartened to see the governor support that attitude. The summit is expected to be held in the next week or so, Yetter said, and he and his team will push for more trained staff, more licensed and safe facilities and clear, decisive leadership to implement solutions. This is a crisis, and we have to move as quickly as we can, he said. I dont think were going to rush into any solutions, but something has to be done quickly. Every day these children are out there in facilities that are putting them at risk, and children are getting hurt. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox In a court filing Tuesday, Abbott also sided with the plaintiffs suing Texas over staff for his own Department of Family and Protective Services on a significant legal question. Last weeks hearing centered around the children who are staying in unlicensed facilities. In August, there were 395 such children. Monitors appointed by Jack found instances of child-on-child sexual abuse, overmedication, not receiving prescribed medication and unnecessary physical restraints. There was also a report of a foster girl arranging to meet a sex trafficker and being taken away from a state building where she was staying temporarily. Lawyers for the family and protective services department, one of the agencies that administers the foster care system, had argued that Jacks restrictions on where the state can board foster children only applied to licensed facilities, leaving out the temporary placements. I think weve got a clear record that you dont think these children youre stuffing into hotels and offices should be placed in a position where theyre free from increased risk of harm. I think were all clear on that, Jack told the states lawyers at last weeks hearing, going on to ask Abbott to intervene. Abbott on Tuesday backed down from the DFPS position, saying instead that the children without placement will receive the same protections as other children in the foster care system. edward.mckinley@chron.com Despite comfortably winning the state in 2020, former President Donald Trump on Thursday called for an audit of last years election results in Texas, forcing Gov. Greg Abbott to confront a priority of conservative activists he has largely ignored. In an open letter to Abbott, Trump called on the governor to add House Bill 16 a proposal that would empower candidates and party chairs to request audits of the 2020 election and future contests to the agenda for the third special session of the Legislature, which began this week. Abbott, who Trump has endorsed for re-election over his three main Republican primary opponents, controls which topics the Legislature can consider during a special session. He did not respond to a request for comment. We're quickly running out of time and it must be done this week, Trump wrote to Abbott. Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties. Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 presidential election scam! Late Thursday evening, the Texas secretary of states office announced it had begun a full and comprehensive forensic audit of the 2020 election in four Texas counties, including Dallas, Harris and Tarrant the states three largest counties, all of which voted for Biden. The audit also encompasses Collin County, the largest in Texas carried by Trump. The secretary of states office said in a statement that it expects the Legislature to provide funding for the audits. Although some minor cases of voter fraud have been identified in Texas and elsewhere, multiple academic studies, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtons Election Fraud Unit , and an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department under Trump have yet to discover widespread fraud on the scale alleged by Trump and some other Republicans. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Still, support for Trumps calls to review the 2020 election and his unsupported claims of rampant fraud have emerged as a purity test of sorts in Republican primaries around the country. But Abbott has declined to give lawmakers the green light to pass election audit bills this session, again putting him at odds with the right wing of the Republican Party, which is already harshly critical of the governors COVID restrictions from earlier in the pandemic. Until Thursday, the audit issue had gained little attention in Texas, where Trump not only carried the state but Republicans up and down the ballot overcame lavishly funded Democrats in battleground districts. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick a close ally of Trump who is up for re-election next year pushed for an audit bill late in the summer and urged Abbott to add it to the agenda for the current session, to no avail. The nudge from Trump appeared to create new ammunition for the governors primary foes. Im glad President Trump is pushing Greg Abbott to pass a forensic election audit here in Texas, Don Huffines, an Abbott primary opponent and former state senator, said in a statement. Together, we can force him to do things he doesn't want to do." Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, condemned the secretary of states audit shortly after it was announced Thursday evening. Donald Trump ordered Gov. Abbott to audit the 2020 Texas election and, like clockwork, TX just initiated an audit of Harris County voters, Hidalgo tweeted. Democracy isn't a game. These fake audits are an affront to all voters, & pure pandering to the kinds of extremists that stormed our Capitol. Auditing a smooth and secure election House Bill 16, authored by state Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, mirrors legislation passed by the Senate during the final days of the previous special session. Both bills propose allowing certain stakeholders to request an explanation and supporting documentation when they suspect a local election official had violated the law, or when they want more information about alleged irregularities in precinct-level election results. If the complainant were to be dissatisfied with the explanation and supporting documentation, he or she could ask the Texas secretary of state to conduct an audit. The House declined to take up the bill before the end of the second special session earlier this month. The chamber met Thursday morning shortly before Trump published his letter and did not consider HB 16 or any other bills. In his letter, Trump wrote that Texans dont trust the election system and that an election audit is the number one thing they care about. An August University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll found that 74 percent of Texans believed the states election results are somewhat or very accurate, while 19 percent including 27 percent of Republicans believe they are inaccurate. Staffers for former secretary of state Ruth Hughs, an Abbott appointee, reported to the Legislature last spring that the states 2020 election was smooth and secure a determination that some Democrats say led to her ouster. The Republican-dominated Texas Senate, led by Patrick, declined to hold a confirmation vote on her appointment, without stating a reason. Abbott has yet to appoint a successor to Hughs, leaving the office vacant. Trump carried Texas by 5.6 percentage points in 2020 after winning the state by a 9-percentage point margin in 2016. It was the third-narrowest margin of victory for a Republican presidential nominee since 1976, the last year a Democrat carried the state. Still, Democrats failed to gain any ground in the GOP-controlled state House and lost all 10 of the Republican-held congressional seats they targeted last year, despite spending record amounts of money. Little appetite for Trump audit efforts Since losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, Trump and his supporters have sought to reexamine the results of a number of swing states carried by Biden, arguing without evidence that those states were stolen from Trump through rampant election fraud. In most cases, Trumps calls for election audits have gone unheeded. The former president and his allies also filed dozens of lawsuits challenging 2020 results in various states, all of which were dismissed or rejected by state and federal judges. In Arizona, Trumps supporters launched a recount of the 2020 results in the states largest county, which Biden narrowly carried on his way to flipping the state, though the effort has received criticism from local Republican officials and has been plagued by delays and infighting among the Arizona GOP. Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania voted recently to launch a similar investigation. Though Trumps letter raised eyebrows given his victory in the state, the former president suggested that his support for the audit bill is partly aimed at future elections, writing that the issue will affect 2022 and 2024. He has not ruled out running for president again. Meanwhile, Texas Republicans who have pushed for a review of the 2020 election have made clear they are focused largely on the states most populous urban counties, most of which are controlled by Democrats and were carried by Biden. During the first special session in July, Toth introduced a bill that would have established a forensic audit of the 2020 election results in counties with more than 415,000 people. Ten of the 13 counties that meet the threshold voted for Biden. Toth, asked by The Washington Post if he would consider including some smaller counties, responded, Whats the point? I mean, all the small counties are red. Toths bill died along with every other proposal that session, after House Democrats brought the Legislature to a standstill to thwart the GOPs main elections bill. Under that measure, which Abbott signed into law earlier this month, the Texas secretary of state will already be charged with auditing the elections held in four randomly selected counties after November elections in even-numbered years. Two of the counties must have a population of at least 300,000. The audit provision was added in an amendment from state Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, which passed despite opposition from about a dozen House Republicans. In his letter to Abbott, Trump called it a watered-down amendment that doesnt even apply to the 2020 Presidential Election. This short amendment doesn't answer the questions Texans have about the last election, Trump wrote. Texans demand a real audit to completely address their concerns. Pressure from the right Trumps letter creates a new source of pressure on Abbott from the right. Already, Abbott was under fire from popular conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who criticized the governor earlier this week for his handling of the Texas-Mexico border. After accusing Abbott of declining many times to appear on his show, Carlson invited one of the Abbotts primary opponents, former Texas GOP Chair Allen West, on the show Wednesday evening. Patrick, meanwhile, has successfully pushed Abbott multiple times this year for authority to pass legislation restricting which teams transgender student athletes can join, a priority of the lieutenant governor and Republican activists. On Wednesday, Abbott added property tax relief to the list of topics eligible for consideration this session, another one of Patricks top three priorities. During the 30-day session, the top priority for lawmakers is the redrawing of Texas political maps, a process that remains in the early stages. The governor can add items to the special session agenda at any point before the Legislature adjourns. jasper.scherer@chron.com When most people go home and park their car in their driveway, theyll lock it for extra safety precautions so that no one can break in or steal anything. Usually not on the list of potential carjackers? Giant black bears. This was the case for one woman in a video that has since gone viral on Twitter who found an unlikely guest sitting in the drivers seat upon walking up to the front door of her car. Related: Teenager Goes Viral After Fighting Off Giant Bear to Save Family Dogs The clip, presumably taken from security footage at the womans home, shows the woman walking towards a black Lexus SUV in her driveway while carrying a picnic basket. As she approaches the open door and peers inside, she jumps back and attempts to close the door shut in a frantic frenzy, trying to jam it shet several more times before bolting back to the house and dropping the basket, leaving a trail of apples behind over muffled screams. She gave the bear the Lexus pic.twitter.com/KtjYixgkws Y (@ijayt205) September 19, 2021 As she runs away, the black bear can be seen leaping out of the front seat of the car and running in the opposite direction before turning around and walking slowly back in the driveway and towards the picnic basket. The nearly unbelievable clip has been viewed over 4.7 million times and received over 31,500 retweets. She gave the bear the Lexus, Twitter user @ijayt205, who posted the clip joked, alongside several crying laughing emojis. "The fact she tried to trap him in HER car," Twitter user @SomaKazima pointed out. The fact she was still screaming tho off camera and the bear wasnt even chasing her, Skeeter Jay said. But she was OUTTA there. The woman in the video and the location of her home have not been publicly identified. The video is reminiscent of another viral video from earlier this summer where a teenage girl fought off a bear that was trying to enter her home and attack her dogs. It is estimated that there are around 40 bear attacks around the world each year, with 23 reported fatal attacks by black bears on humans from 2000-2016. Related: Why the 'Save Ralph' short went viral Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved The Fairfield Theatre Company is hosting a concert of Motown and soul music to benefit CLASP Homes, featuring the philanthropic organization Band Central on Oct. 15. A pre-party will be at 6:30 p.m., with doors opening for the concert at 7 p.m. and the concert starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40, and include access to the pre-party in the foyer and the art gallery of the theater, where art and ceramic work from CLASP residents will be displayed. Lite bites of food will be served from businesses including, Little Pub and Cafe Transilvania. Purchase tickets at fairfieldtheatre.org, or by calling 203-319-1404. CLASP Homes of Westport, is a local non-profit organization that serves men and women with autism and intellectual disabilities. The organization provides care, support, and inspiration to 85 residents, who are living in its group homes throughout Fairfield County, along with enrichment programming at the Daniel E. Offutt Arts and Education Community Center in Bridgeport. Visit clasphomes.org for more information. The theatre complies with the Town of Fairfields town-wide mask mandate amid the pandemic. Also visit fairfieldtheatre.org for the latest information about the venues COVID-19 policy regarding entry requirements. Dentist joins DeMartin Dental Associates Dentist, Dr. Ashley Pacelli has joined DeMartin Dental Associates, a family dental practice that has been in Fairfield for more than 60 years. Pacelli grew up in New Canaan and received an undergraduate degree in arts from Connecticut College, with a major in bio-behavioral neuroscience and a minor in theater. She then went on to receive her Ph.D., Doctorate of Dental Medicine from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine. She was awarded a Renaissance Award, which honors students who supplement their dental education with the arts. Pacelli has also been recognized for her contribution to scientific research. She received post-graduate training in all aspects of general dentistry at a general practice residency at Danbury Hospital. Pacelli is an active member with the Academy of General Dentistry, the American Dental Association, and the Connecticut State Dental Association. Restaurant week looking for participants, sponsors Fairfield Restaurant Week returns next month and will run Oct. 25 through Nov. 7. Bankwell is the lead sponsor for the event, which is in its tenth year. More than two dozen restaurants are expected to participate with special prix fixe lunch and dinner menus showcasing the restaurants culinary offerings. Full-service restaurants, that want to participate in the happening, or businesses,that are interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact Fairfield Director of Community and Economic Development at 203-256-3120, or mbarnhart@fairfieldct.org, for more information. New Festa Italiana series celebrating Italian cultural heritage The Fairfield University Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts is offering a fall 2021 virtual platform lineup of Festa Italiana: A New Series That Celebrates Italian Cultural Heritage. It showcases Italian culture in literature, art, history and food from the Renaissance to present day. The series was created in collaboration with the schools College of Arts and Sciences Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and Italian Studies program. Community members are invited to a number of free, public and virtual events, alongside the schools students. Registration is required for all of the events at quickcenter.fairfield.edu. Forgotten Figures: Examining the African Presence in the Golden Age of Venetian Art will be offered at noon on Sept. 28. In the Open MINDS Institute seminar, instructor Fiona Garland, will take participants back to the Venice of 1500, which is a dynamic, wealthy city at the crossroads of Europe, and the Middle East. Focusing on the eras representations of Black Africans in a range of paintings, sculptures, drawings, books, and prints, she will introduce the figures, and reveal how they impacted the visual landscape of the Golden Age of Venetian Art. The Renaissance of Italian Food will be offered at 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 5. Italy is defined by, and celebrated around the world, for its food. But what does food mean to Italians, and how does it reflect, magnify, and shape their collective identity as italianita? In the Open MINDS Institute seminar, Fairfield University assistant professor of modern languages, and literature, Sara Diaz, will explore references in Italian literature to spotlight some of the historical forces that have influenced Italys culinary traditions. Fairfield University graduate new managing director The Center Stage Theatre in Shelton has announced the appointment of Carla Supersano Sullivan as the theaters managing director, bringing theater, philanthropic and community experience to the organization. The appointment is effective immediately. Sullivan will oversee, and manage the organization, including its strategic planning, fundraising, operations, fiscal management and marketing. She will report to the organizations board of directors. Before joining The Shubert Theatre in 2018, Sullivan served as the director of the Fairfield Awards Dinner event, the director of corporate relations with Fairfield University, and the director of donor service, and grantmaking with the Valley Community Foundation in Derby. She also held previous positions at Pink Aid, Barnum Financial Group, Graustein Memorial Fund and Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. She is a graduate of Fairfield University, and holds a graduate degree from the University of Bridgeport. The indictment of Washington attorney Michael Sussman accused of lying to the FBI in order to smear Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign reveals the ace up the sleeve of high-powered Democrats. Its a card they played time and again to advance the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory: friends in high places. They used friends in law enforcement to launch secret investigations; they used friends in the federal government to broaden those investigations; and they used friends in the media to spread the word about Trump and his organization being under investigation. The Russia fiasco metastasized in large part because those involved in advancing the false allegations had important connections. They used friendships with powerful federal officials to encourage investigations against team Trump. Those targeted by Sussmann and others were unabashed outsiders, and as such lacked the sort of connections the insiders exploited so adroitly. Sussmann was a partner at the Washington law firm Perkins Coie in 2016, which represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign for president. But, according to the indictment handed down by Special Counsel John Durham last week, when he met with the FBIs general counsel, James Baker, to allege that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, Sussmann claimed he was representing another client. The indictment alleges this was false. Securing a meeting with the FBIs top lawyer cant have been easy. But for Sussmann it was. Not just anyone can call up the bureaus general counsel and, with amorphous claims of conspiratorial criminality by a presidential candidate, promptly get a private sit-down. And yet that is exactly what Sussmann did. How? Because, as Baker told congressional investigators, Sussmann came to him based on a preexisting relationship." In closed-door congressional testimony Oct. 18, 2018, Baker told lawmakers about Sussmanns convoluted claim that a computer server at Trump Tower was in secret contact with a possible Russian government cutout, Alfa Bank. So he was describing a what appeared to be a surreptitious channel of communications communication between some part of President Trump's, I'll say organization but it could be his businesses. I don't mean like The Trump Organization, per se. I mean his enterprises with which he was associated. Some part of that and a an organization associated with a Russian organization associated with the Russian government, and it was conducted in a way so as to make it a covert communications channel. When Baker asked him how he came upon this information, Sussmann, according to Baker, said that there were some cyber experts that somehow would come across this information and brought it somehow to his attention, and that they were alarmed at what it showed, and that, therefore, they wanted to bring it to the attention of the FBI. Asked for the names of the experts, Baker said, I dont think I ever found out who these experts were. Faced with flimsy sourcing for an abstruse allegation, Baker might have been expected to ask a lawyer whose firm was closely aligned with the Democratic Party some probing questions. But if he did, thats now lost in a cloud of foggy recollection. I can't remember, Baker told members of Congress when asked if he knew Sussmann was billing the DNC and the Clinton campaign for his time talking with Baker. I don't specifically remember when I learned that. So I don't know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office. I just can't remember. I just find that unbelievable, Rep. Jim Jordan replied, that the guy representing the Clinton campaign, the Democrat National Committee, shows up with information that says we got this, and you don't ask where he got it, you didn't know how he got it. But he got it from some, you know, quote, expert. Jordan asked Baker whether Sussmann ever mentioned he may have got some of this information from the Democratic National Committee? I am not sure what I knew about that at the time, Baker said a failure of memory that Sussmanns lawyers are sure to take advantage of. Baker suggested it was a mystery why Sussmann reached out to him and then repeatedly made it clear exactly why Sussmann saw him as a possible collaborator. I had a personal relationship with Michael, Baker said, but you'd have to ask him why he decided to pick me. And so what you're saying is you were the intermediary between Perkins Coie and the FBI because of your personal relationship with that attorney? then-Rep. Mark Meadows asked. I believe so, Baker answered but he did so with the caveat: You'd have to ask Michael why he came to me. One plausible answer Sussmann could have given was that going to Baker was the best way to achieve his goal after all, Baker did pass the information on to bureau investigators, and there would soon be stories in Slate and the New York Times telling of an FBI probe into Trump and Russia. For his part, Sussmann told congressional investigators that when he met with Baker, he told him "I wasn't looking for the FBI to do anything. I had no ask. I had no requests." Sussmann wasnt the only old friend feeding Russia conspiracy stories to James Baker. In the fall of 2016, another Washingtonian with the general counsels ear was David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones. David had part of what is now referred to as the Steele dossier and he talked to me about that and wanted to provide that to the FBI, Baker told lawmakers. And so, even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands of the FBI. How did a Mother Jones reporter/columnist get chosen to drop a dime on Trump with the FBI? David is a friend of mine Longtime friend? Longtime friend. When did you first meet Mr. Corn? Years and years and years ago, Baker said to congressional investigators. Our kids carpooled together. We carpooled with them when our kids were little. As with the materials from Sussmann, Baker took dossier sections from David Corn and passed them on to FBI counterintelligence agents. Having such relationships was seen not as a liability, not as a risk of bias, but instead as something that boosts the credibility of those passing along information. Consider former British agent Christopher Steele, who had a knack for cultivating friends in high places. In 2007 he met Bruce Ohr at an organized crime conference. They would continue to meet about once or twice a year, whenever Ohr was in London or Steele was in Washington. Orbis, the private intelligence firm Steele formed after he left MI6, produced a steady stream of short reports; Steele shared them with Ohr. Their friendship developed to the point that, in the spring of 2010, Ohr connected Steele with the FBI and pushed for the bureau to make his friend a paid FBI informant, a confidential human source. The relationship he built over the years with Ohr would prove helpful when Ohr became one of the highest ranking career officials at the Department of Justice, associate deputy attorney general especially since Steele wasnt the only one cultivating a connection with Bruce Ohr. Ohr had also become personally acquainted with Glenn Simpson at the same sort of policy conferences year after year. That relationship was reinforced when the opposition research firm Simpson co-founded, Fusion GPS, hired Ohrs wife, Nellie, as an independent contractor. When it came time for Steele to tap Ohr in launching a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Steele used all the trappings of friendship among international sophisticates: He took the Ohrs to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Not long before the 2016 election, Christopher Steele had a falling out with the FBI, which had discovered he was not honoring the confidential part of his agreement to be a confidential human source. But thanks to Steele and Simpsons relationships with Bruce Ohr, Steeles ability to influence the FBI was not lost. He began to funnel his spurious tales through Bruce Ohr to the bureau. Lawmakers asked James Baker why the FBI having shut down Steele as an official source turned to Bruce Ohr as a way to continue gathering information from Steele. Baker saw Ohrs friendship with Steele as an asset, not a liability: Bruce, Baker said, had some type of preexisting relationship with the source. Ohr wasnt the only official Steele cultivated; he had also become pals with Jonathan Winer sometime around 2000. During the Obama administration, Winer was a top State Department officer. And while at Foggy Bottom, Winer didnt forget his old friend from London. For years, Winer encouraged colleagues at State to read the research reports produced by Steeles private intel company, Orbis. Winer distributed well over 100 of Steeles intel memos to Victoria Nulands State Department Eurasia team. He also promoted Steele himself: Toria and Paul, Three reports from Orbis, Winer wrote in a November 2014 email, showing his nickname and first-name basis with Toria Nuland and Paul W. Jones, her deputy. He added, The man behind them and Orbis, Chris Steele (as previously mentioned, former MI6 Russia expert, and a trusted friend of mine) is in DC next couple of days. If youd like to meet with him, let me know and I can put it together. Winer promoted Steeles dossier with no less vigor and enthusiasm, distributing it among his friends at State. From Michael Sussmanns relationship with the FBIs general counsel, Jim Baker, to Bakers friendship with David Corn of Mother Jones; from Bruce Ohrs long connection with Christopher Steele to Steeles decade-long association with Jonathan Winer, the stealthy dissemination of allegations against Trump, his businesses and his staff remains a blueprint of how Washington works. Fairfield, MT (59436) Today Mostly cloudy skies. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 59F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 36F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. In much of the country, public pension funding has been one of the most persistent public policy problems. For years, many state governments have failed to make necessary investments in their retirement system, resulting in funding gaps that increasingly present a looming reckoning for taxpayers. Accordinaag to a recent report published by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a public policy think tank, many states are now taking earnest measures to reduce their pension funding gap. These measures include increased contributions, cost reduction strategies, and more sophisticated pension management tools. States have also benefited from once-in-a-generation investment returns following the COVID-19 market crash in March 2020. Still, based on 2019 data, the most recent year of available comprehensive data, the majority of states have a funding shortfall of 25% or more. Montana is one of 26 states to not have funding for over 25% of its pension obligations. Montana's public pension fund has $11.9 billion in assets, well shy of its $16.4 billion in obligations -- a 72.5% funding ratio. Unlike many other states, Montana's investments of pension assets are underperforming. The Montana Board of Investments reported a 28.1% net return in fiscal 2021 on its consolidated pension pool, below the 29.7% benchmark. All pension funding data used in this story was compiled by The Pew Charitable Trusts and is for 2019. We also considered public-sector, state-level employment, both in raw numbers and as a share of overall employment, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Northern Irelands farm businesses are set to benefit from an additional 15.5 million of BPS funding to help farmers with the rising cost of inputs. NI's agriculture minister Edwin Poots announced the news at a reception at the Balmoral Show on Wednesday (22 September). Mr Poots said the supplement to the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) budget would be paid out to farmers in October. Each farm business will see the value of their payments increase by 6.29%, or approximately 800, he said. "This will be a welcome boost and is vitally important given the ongoing increases in the cost of farm inputs," Minister Poots added. The boost comes on top of a permanent 4.3% uplift in BPS payments worth 8m, which the Minister announced last year. The Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) said the new 15.5m fund injection would provide a 'major boost to farmers across Northern Ireland'. The union's president Victor Chestnutt said: Farmers have endured various challenges over the last eighteen months particularly with the ongoing rise of input costs. "The decision taken by the DAERA Minister to provide this extra support will be a much needed and major boost, helping to sustain family farm businesses across NI. "We look forward to it being paid out to farmers next month so they can benefit. AHDB has issued the Recommended Lists (RL) 2022/23 septoria tritici ratings early following high levels of the disease in the 2020/21 growing season and concerns about the breaking of resistance. Disease ratings have declined for many winter wheat varieties, with the largest reductions in varieties with Cougar in their parentages. The ratings have been prepared using a standard three-year dataset, in addition to a one-year dataset, to help reveal the influence of the 2021 disease season. Paul Gosling, who leads the RL project at AHDB said: Following subdued septoria levels in RL trials and commercial crops during early spring, the disease increased rapidly in June. "It looked as if there would be a downward shift in disease ratings for those varieties with the old Cougar variety in their parentages. "Analysis of disease data has translated to lower ratings for many varieties, with Cougar-types, as expected, suffering the largest falls. Introduced in 2013, Cougar had the highest septoria tritici rating on the RL (7), but by 2015, its resistance declined. Subsequent AHDB-funded investigations found that a septoria tritici variant was able to cause disease exclusively on Cougar. Although Cougar was removed from the RL in the 2016/17 edition, the use of the variety in breeding programmes means the RL's current edition features 8 varieties with Cougar genes in their backgrounds. Research from Irish sites published this summer revealed a similar shift in resistance associated with the descendants of Cougar. Analysis of UK RL results shows that not all the varieties with Cougar in their parentage have been affected equally. This is because resistance is based on the cumulative impact of many minor disease resistance genes, in addition to the Cougar resistance. The results also show that problematic septoria variants are not distributed uniformly across the UK with resistance in these varieties holding up better in Scotland. Paul Gosling said: It is impossible to know how the septoria population will evolve. The Cougar-virulent isolates could become more common in Scotland, but their frequency could also reduce we simply dont know. "Disease ratings are only able to reflect recent pathogen populations, they cant predict the future. An exemption has been granted to allow seasonal poultry workers to travel to England without facing Covid-19 related travel restrictions. Seasonal poultry workers arriving in England may now work at their designated farm or processing plant during the quarantine period. Outside of working, and travelling in a Covid-19-secure manner between accommodation and work, workers must self-isolate in line with quarantine restrictions. Quarantine and testing rules for travellers will depend on their vaccination status and which country they are arriving from, the government said. The travel exemption came into force from Wednesday (22 September). The poultry sector had raised concerns that migrant seasonal poultry workers would face travel restrictions this year because of the pandemic. Trade bodies said that additional workers were needed to help meet increased poultry demand ahead of the busy festive season. The NFU welcomed the government's new announcement, saying it had recognised the 'invaluable role' that seasonal poultry workers play. The union's turkey group chair, Michael Bailey said: The NFU welcomes the addition of seasonal poultry workers to the list of jobs that qualify for coronavirus travel exemptions. This timely exemption offers a practical solution to allow these much-needed workers to undertake key roles on farms and in processing facilities. "Industry will continue to follow government guidance to help protect the health and safety of its staff. UK dairy groups are among 40 global organisations pledging to support a new net zero initiative looking to reduce emissions across the sector. Pathways to Dairy Net Zero has been launched during Climate Week and just prior to the United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit. Forty leading organisations, including 11 of the 20 largest dairy companies in the world, have already declared their support for the effort. Collectively, these supporters represent approximately 30 percent of total milk production worldwide. UK and European groups to pledge support to the initiative include Dairy UK, First Milk, Arla Foods and Glanbia. British farmers are currently working toward the industry's goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040, ten years before the UK government's 2050 target. Pathways to Dairy Net Zero seeks to improve dairy production and process efficiency as part of a global effort, to further reduce emissions of milk and dairy products. The companies pledge to enhance production practices that protect carbon sinks - such as soil, forests, grass, peatlands - and complement natural ecosystems. Practices such as feed, manure, fertiliser and energy management will also be improved. Hein Schumacher, CEO of Royal FrieslandCampina, a Dutch multinational dairy cooperative, said the global dairy sector had 'a lot to offer to lead this transition'. Pathways to Dairy Net Zero will accelerate climate efforts already underway and drive further necessary action to reduce dairys emissions over the next decades." Research is currently underway to identify where positive climate change action is possible in the global dairy sector. The study is being led by Scotlands Rural College (SRUC) and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre. Initial research found that the dairy sector already has the means to reduce a significant proportion of emissions - up to 40% in some systems - by improving productivity and resource use efficiency. Researchers are identifying plausible GHG mitigation pathways for different dairy systems globally, in particular methane reduction. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reaffirmed that the main GHG challenge is the reduction of carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere for centuries. The report also identified reductions in methane, a potent but short-lived climate pollutant that lasts only about 12 years in the atmosphere, as an immediate opportunity to address global warming. International dairy organisations pledging support to the initiative include Dairy Farmers of America, China Mengniu Dairy Company, Australian Dairy Products Federation and Dairy Farmers of Canada. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike. We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve. Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category Taapsee Pannu spoke to Bombay Times today and spoke about her experience as a producer on the sets of Blurr. Shes also acting in the film and reveals that the shooting experience was different from her previous films. Speaking about the same she said, Previously, for all my films, I had to focus on my performance and deliver what the director needed from me. For this film, the downtime after the shoot and the time before I stepped onto the set was where I was a producer, looking into all that needed my attention. However she further reveals when she stepped into the set as an actor then it was like any other film set for her. She only focussed then as an actor. Upon being asked if it was fun being a producer, she said, Infact, I feel its dangerous to become complacent in this profession. This liberty to experiment is what this line of work gives you in a big way. You can only grow when you do different things. Today, my aim is to remain a bankable actress for the producers and the audience. At the end of the day, its a business where apart from making good films, we also have to be able to make some money. The actress has Rashmi Rocket, Shabaash Mitthu, Looop Lapeta and Do Barah in her kitty besides Blurr. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 22, 2021) - Vatic Ventures Corp. (TSXV: VCV.H) (the "Company" or "Vatic") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement with Shadow Ventures Corp. ("Shadow") to acquire a gold exploration property known as the Hansen prospect located in the Chibougamau area of northern Quebec (the "Property"). The Property, which consists of 20 contiguous mining claims representing a total area of 1,113.98 hectares is approximately 15 kilometers southeast of the Chapais-Opemiska Mine Complex (Springer, Perry and Cooke Copper-Gold mines). Hansen Property The Property is located in the northeast corner of the Matagami-Chibougamau Greenstone Belt of the Abitibi Sub province of the Archean Superior Structural Province. The geology is dominated by massive and pillowed mafic to intermediate lava flows of the Obatogamau Formation. The Property is underlain by andesitic volcanic and altered rocks containing iron carbonate, pyrite, graphite and micro gabbro. The most prominent structural features in the area of the Property are northwest trending faults and shear zones along which the historic Hansen drilling programs intersected gold values. These structural elements provide the dominant structural control hosting most of the mineralized zones on the property. Gold mineralization and quartz veining on the property is associated with these northwest structural elements. Previous stripping and drilling exploration programs delineated a mineralized zone (Hansen Zone) 15 meters wide over a strike length of 250 meters. The Hansen Zone was evaluated with the deepest hole intersecting the zone at a depth of 175 meters. Past and recent mineral exploration programs on the property have outlined favorable geological environments for high grade gold mineralization represented by surface showings and diamond drilling results. Historic Hansen Prospect The Hansen prospect is a gold prospect that was discovered in 1952, located at GPS: 519630 E- 5503278 N, NTS Map sheet 32G/10. It is a vein type deposit, marked by a mineralized zone measuring 250 meters in length and up to 15 meters in width. It is known to exist from the surface down to a vertical depth of 175 meters and is oriented at N150 with a steep dip towards the southwest. Gold mineralization is associated with altered iron carbonatized rocks associated with northwest-southeast oriented shear zones. Mineralization is composed of visible gold in smoky quartz veins parallel to the shear and pyrite disseminated in the iron carbonate alteration zone, often within a graphitic envelope. Mineralization is associated with northwest-southeast trending shear structures of varying widths to 15 meters containing ankerite alteration zones. Gold assay results from surface sampling and diamond drilling showed exceptional results such as a grab sample of 112.5 g/t Au by Almar Mining Corp. (Quebec Gov. Assessment Files GM.04836). Prospector Larry Desgagne reported surface grab samples of 33.25 g/t Au, 34.92 g/t Au, 31.63 g/t Au, 33.25 g/t Au, and 12.04 g/t Au in 2008. He also reported intersections of 12.8 g/t Au over 1.05 meters, 7.94 g/t Au over 1.05 meters and 75.29 g/t Au across 0.3 meters from a small diamond drill program (Quebec Gov. Assessment Files GM.64102). From Loren Currie, CEO of Vatic: "We are excited to be strategically situated in a very active exploration area with over 6.7 million ounces of gold produced in the greater Chibougamau district. Furthermore, the results from the previous surface sampling and diamond drilling done on the Hansen prospect has shown exceptional gold values." Option Agreement Terms Shadow acquired the right to acquire the Property from Fayz Yacoub and Ramy Yacoub (the "Underlying Optionors") pursuant an agreement dated October 1, 2020, an amending agreement dated April 8, 2021, and a second amending agreement dated August 9, 2021 (together, the "Underlying Option Agreement"). Vatic has agreed, pursuant to its option agreement with Shadow (the "Vatic Option Agreement") to option the rights and obligations from Shadow as provided for in the Underlying Option Agreement by satisfying the requirements of the Underlying Option Agreement and by providing Shadow with additional consideration. In order to satisfy the requirements of the Underlying Option Agreement and the Vatic Option Agreement the Company will, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"), issue the shares, make the cash payments and complete the exploration expenditures as follows: Shares At the option of the Company either issue 500,000 shares or issue such number of shares equal to Cdn$100,000 (based on the 10 day volume weighted average price of the Company's shares prior to October 1, 2021; On closing issue 7,000,000 shares which will be issued pro rata to the shareholders of Shadow; On the date that a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report on the Property is submitted to the Exchange at the option of the Company either issue an additional 500,000 shares or such number of shares equal to Cdn$100,000 (based on the 10 day volume weighted average price of the Company's shares prior to the date of issuance; On or before October 1, 2022 a further 750,000 shares; On or before October 1, 2023 a further 1,000,000 shares; and On the declaration of proven reserves supported by a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report reserve calculation report that Shadow deems economically feasible to continue developing the Property a further 500,000 shares. Cash $40,000 on closing; $40,000 on October 1, 2021; $45,000 on October 1, 2022; and $50,000 on October 1, 2023. Expenditures $50,000 on or before November 1, 2021; A further $200,000 on or before October 31, 2022; and A further $500,000 on or before October 31, 2023. Vatic Ventures Corp. is a NEX Issuer, therefore this may be a Reactivation as per NEX Policy 2.6. The transaction may also result in a Change of Control as it will result in new shareholders holding a minimum of 39% of outstanding shares. Shareholder approval will be required for a Change of Control. Private Placement Financing The Company is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement financing (the "Financing") for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $500,000. The Company will be offering units of the Company (the "Units") at a price of $0.20 per Unit. Each Unit will be comprised of 1 common share of the Company and one half of a common share purchase warrant (the "Warrants"), with each full Warrant being exercisable for an additional common share of the Company at $0.30 for 12 months. In connection with the Financing the Company may pay finders fees in accordance with the policies of the NEX Board of the TSX Venture Exchange. All securities issued pursuant to the Financing will be subject to a 4 month hold period. The issuance of the Units and payment of any finder's fees are subject to the receipt of all regulatory approvals. Qualified Person - The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mitchell E Lavery, PGeo, who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. ABOUT VATIC VENTURES CORP. The Company is actively reviewing and evaluating exploration and development opportunities in the mineral resources industry. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF VATIC VENTURES CORP. "Loren Currie" Loren Currie, Director info@vaticventures.com 604-307-8745 "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." 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 that could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the 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/97367 BEIJING, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanzhou, a port city located in east China's Fujian Province and known as hometown for overseas Chinese, sent a public letter from home to overseas Quanzhou people to comfort their homesickness at the Mid-Autumn Festival on Tuesday. The city chose the timing to take the move as the festival, also called Moon Festival, is the second most important festival for a family reunion after the Spring Festival in China. With nearly three fourths of the 2021 already passing, Quanzhou celebrated with Quanzhou people at home and abroad the Mid-Autumn Festival with both eye-catching achievements and touching experience. In late July, "Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China" was accepted as a cultural property on UNESCO's World Heritage List amid the ongoing 44th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian. Believing in "where there is seawater, there are Quanzhou people", the city has always been a model for hard working to win for a better future. In 2020, Quanzhou saw for the first time its gross regional product exceed one trillion yuan, which rose 2.9 percent year on year despite the COVID-19 epidemic. Now, the city is working hard to build a better Quanzhou with blueprints for development already in shape in the new era. See the original link: https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/323945.html Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1631993/1.jpg Singapore, Sept 23, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Cybercrime is already a multi-billion-dollar industry with a projected cost expected to reach USD 10.5 trillion annually by 2025.So, how can CISOs working within the ASEAN region become catalysts for change? How can you deliver business value, overcome security systems complexities, mitigate risks and minimize costs?CISO Online ASEAN, a virtual forum taking place on 2 & 3 November 2021, is designed to help you find these answers. Through a series of keynotes, panels, interviews and our unique interactive discussion format, this is your opportunity to benchmark your current practices against leading executives.Join your peers and learn how to successfully adopt identity and privileged access management to overcome the challenges of compromised credentials, explore strategies to embrace the cloud with confidence and avoid misconfiguration risks, and discover how to bridge the gap in third-party software vulnerabilities.2021 Key Themes:- Emerging Threats, Intelligence and Incident Response: Assessing the newest threats and what CISOs are doing to combat them- Governance and Risk: Weighing the risk against the rewards - how cyber security leaders make difficult decisions involving risk and IT security- Driving Change in ASEAN's Cyber Security Space: What InfoSec leaders are doing to orchestrate change in order to strengthen data and IT protection across organisations- InfoSec-Focussed Game Plans: A detailed look at the actionable strategies and planning CISOs have in place for the next few years to meet new security challengesRegistrations are now open!- Given current circumstances, cybersecurity leaders are under added pressure to safeguard their companies and keep up with new risks and threats. This online high-level, strategic event is your opportunity to do just that.- Hear from Asia's best in class cybersecurity practices from your desktop, tablet, or mobile- Pick and choose the most relevant sessions and speakers- Gain access to the best solutions available to your business's needs- And the best part - all of this is freeRegister Here: https://bit.ly/3hBPjCfFor Further details regarding this event, visit our websitehttps://ciso-asia.coriniumintelligence.com/You can contact us at:info@coriniumintel.comSource: CoriniumCopyright 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. ML/AI for Smart Community ANPR and Student/Teacher Interaction Analysis DUBAI, Arab Emirates, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Disrupt-X, a Dubai-based IoT development company, recently announced their partnership with Intel IoT Alliance to launch Cognitive Neuron IoT Platform using ML/AI which is a bundle of AI-based Analytics Cloud Platform Solutions. Disrupt-X aims to leverage the power of IoT and artificial intelligence to revolutionize the current technology in the market and offer their customers valuable data analysis at disruptive pricing to make ROI on IoT for facility management and corporates realistic. Smart ANPR, their first solution under Cognitive Neurons, targets the community/residential compounds where parking management is a hassle. Building owners can conveniently monitor their parking spaces, view analytics, generate reports and customize alerts while residents/tenants will be able to generate visitor accesses conveniently. This cutting-edge solution comes at competitive pricing starting at US $14/month with built-in data sets of GCC, the European region/ North America, and the Asia Pacific. Edu-bot, the second solution under Cognitive Neurons will target schools and educational institutes. The innovative solution aims to analyze the student and teacher interaction in classrooms. We will be able to evaluate concentration levels of students during each course, their emotional levels and perhaps determine if a child is autistic. Furthermore, analysis can be performed on teachers as well to determine how well they are interacting with the students. During the launch event, Adib Rajji, Public Sector Manager for Intel Corporation said, "The need for intelligence on edge devices has never been greater. As deep learning approaches rapidly and replaces more traditional computer vision techniques, businesses can unlock rich data from digital video .This collaboration with Disrupt-X for implementing vision-based AI systems to collect and analyze data right on edge devices for real-time decision-making will offer advanced edge computing capabilities to help cut costs, drive new revenue streams and improve services." Finally, Adib Rajji added, "The OpenVINO toolkit is designed to fast-track development of high-performance computer vision and deep learning inference applications at the edge." Asim Sajwani President of Disrupt-X said, "We strongly feel the video analytics' current market is being used for traditional solutions while not benefiting the real-life solutions. Using Deep Learning to improve on AI-based solutions, which can offer real-time analytics to customers, is our goal. Intel Openvino is helping us making Edge analytics from Digital Video into innovative solutions which will surely help educational and facility management industries." Disrupt-X will be showcasing their solutions at GITEX Technology Week 2021 from October 17 to 21 at Zabeel Hall, Stand Number Z3-A12. Other solutions like indoor/outdoor air quality monitoring, pool/water tank monitoring, smart padlocks, smart parking, intrusion alarms, green mobility Smart ANPR Solution: https://disrupt-x.io/smart-anpr-iot/ Contact info@disrupt-x.io for more information. Related Images Image 1 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment Beter Bed Holding N.V. (BBH) - The Netherlands' largest sleep specialist in retail, wholesale and B2B - launches five building blocks for the online strategy. This strategy will allow BBH to fulfil its ambition to achieve online sales of at least 100 million by 2025. The online strategy is part of a large number of initiatives launched by BBH over the last 12 months to achieve its medium-term ambitions. The online strategy is based on the following pillars: Launching digital organisation LUNEXT. Further professionalising and expanding the E-commerce department. Establishing Data & Analytics department. Opening of first e-DC of 11,000 m2 in October 2021. Broadening and deepening online categories. John Kruijssen, CEO of BBH, comments: "Our strategic ambition is to grow our online sales to at least 100 million in sales by 2025. To facilitate this, we are launching LUNEXT, our own organisation to build specific disciplines, attract digital talent and allowing for agile running of the digital operation with a scale-up mentality." After several years of double-digit growth and a new ambitious target for 2025, the digital channel is becoming increasingly important to BBH in its omni-channel strategy. With a combination of a network of physical shops and a strong e-commerce proposition, BBH is making full use of the key trends that are dictating the future of the sleep domain. Investments in Tech, Supply Chain and Human Capital enable the company to achieve its goals as an online player. LUNEXT, a fusion of the words Lunar (moon) and Next (generation/ambition) is an employer brand under which all current and future e-commerce propositions of BBH will be further developed. LUNEXT focuses on attracting talent for Tech, Digital Marketing, E-commerce and Advanced Analytics roles. The current team is expected to double in the coming years. In addition, BBH is opening its first specialised e-DC of over 11,000 m2, taking an important step in increasing the scalability and future-proofing of the supply chain for online growth. The e-DC, which is located in Veghel, the Netherlands, provides space for considerable assortment expansion and offers the possibility to meet our customer's delivery needs within 24 hours. The e-DC will be fully operational by October. In order to shape these ambitions, Perijn Hoefsloot has been appointed Director of Strategic Business Development. In recent years, Perijn has successfully built up the E-commerce business within BBH right from the start. In this new role, Perijn will continue to be responsible for Marketing & Customer Experience, with an important part of his role being to initiate and lead strategic projects towards the 2025 growth plan. Thijs Nootenboom has been appointed Director E-commerce. Thijs has extensive experience in Marketing, Business Development, Data Analytics and developing e-commerce at various retail organisations in food and non-food. About Beter Bed Holding Beter Bed Holding (BBH) is the Netherlands' leading sleep specialist in retail, wholesale and B2B. Our mission is simple. We believe that the better we sleep, the happier, healthier and more productivewe are. And we won't rest until everyone gets the high-quality sleep they deserve. Listed on Euronext Amsterdam, BBH operates the successful retail brands Beter Bed, Beddenreus and the new subscription brand Leazzzy. In addition, through its subsidiary DBC International, BBH has a wholesale business in branded products in the bedroom furnishings sector, which includes the well-known international brand M line. With 3 distribution centres, a fleet of 80 vehicles, 134 stores and a fast-growing online presence, our team of over 1,000 dedicated employees served nearly 200,000 customers in 2020, generating over 200 million in revenue. Providing expert sleep advice is at the very heart of our strategy, and thanks to our revolutionary 'Beter Slapen ID' tool, our sleep consultants help customers to get the perfect night's sleep. BBH is proud that M line is the official sleep supplier of AFC Ajax, TeamNL, Jumbo-Visma and the KNVB. For more information Press enquiries: Uneke Dekkers / CFF Communications T +31 For the PDF of the press release please click on the link below. Press photos can be downloaded here . Attachment 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) - Facebook, Inc (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday lashed out at New York Times after the organization posted a report claiming that the social networking giant is using its news feed to whitewash its image. To add to the context, Facebook has been taking a lot of criticism recently for facing negativity among teens on its Instagram platform. In a response on Zuckerberg's plans to introduce a youth version of Instagram for the under-aged users, senators said, 'research shows that more than one in five young Instagram users are victims of bullying on the platform.' Asking Zuckerberg to abandon his plan to introduce Instagram for the youth, the lawmakers referred to some scholarly studies and cited the platform's inability to protect the well-being of the users. Apart from this, there have been reports that the social media giants have paid a lot of money to the Federal Trade Commission to keep Zuckerberg away from the mud of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Amidst these grave controversies, a certain post by the CEO has become the apple of discord. On July 4, Zuckerberg had posted a video of him riding a surfboard. A line in a Times report claimed that it was an 'electric surfboard'. Zuckerberg snapped back on Tuesday posting a screenshot of the report saying that it is clearly a manual hydrofoil. The report talks about a certain project 'Amplify', which the social media company is using to put forward a positive image of the company. 'Look, it's one thing for the media to say false things about my work, but it's crossing the line to say I'm riding an electric surfboard when that video clearly shows a hydrofoil that I'm pumping with my own legs,' Zuckerberg wrote. Other Facebook heads also joined in on the act to claim that the media house is 'villainizing' Facebook. Joe Osborne, the spokesperson of the company took to Twitter to say, 'There is nothing surprising about a New York Times story that attempts to villainize Facebook for telling its side of the story -- but this article includes such clear falsehoods that were clearly refuted that even we are surprised. The story salaciously implies we are using News Feed to improve our image, and yet, NYT intentionally clipped my statement which clearly said on the record: 'There is zero change to News Feed ranking.' This wasn't important to readers?' The report also claimed that a meeting was held in January to discuss Project Amplify adding that six anonymous Facebook employees agreed that Zuckerberg green-lit the project. The report also said that two of the employees also tested the project in August while one of the sources attended the January meeting. Osborne clearly denied any such meeting ever taking place and called the entire report 'fake'. Facebook has also hit out a WSJ when a report published internal documents proving that the company knew that Instagram is affecting the mental health of the youth. VP of Facebook, Nick Clegg wrote on a blog post that the report was to 'deliberate mischaracterizations' of the company. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX FACEBOOK-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Facebook Inc (FB) allegedly paid more than 5 billion dollars to the Federal Trade Commission to keep the organization from coming after the CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the 2018 privacy scandal, according to two lawsuits filed by shareholders. The lawsuit, filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery, was made public courtesy of the CEO of Digital Content Next, Jason Kint, who called it the 'mother of all lawsuits.' The complaint was filed by the shareholders of the company who brought charges against COO Sheryl Sandberg and board members Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel for breaching fiduciary duty. According to Forbes, Facebook paid $5 billion to the FTC to clear Zuckerberg while the estimated fine would've been only around $100 million. The Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal has been haunting the company since it came to the surface in 2018. The allegation was that Facebook could not keep user data private and it was used by Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. 'Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to authorize a multi-billion settlement with the FTC as an express quid pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTC's complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to sit for a deposition,' said one of the lawsuits filed by Rhode Island's pension fund. The complaints were filed in 2020 but were amended by the plaintiffs after a federal judge had ordered the organization to provide internal files from the board meeting on privacy. According to Politico, one of the shareholders who filed the lawsuits, said, 'The Board has never provided a serious check on Zuckerberg's unfettered authority. Instead, it has enabled him, defended him, and paid billions of dollars from Facebook's corporate coffers to make his problems go away.' This news is bound to increase the tensions in the organization as problems keep on piling up. Facebook is also plagued with other severe allegations of privacy failures, antitrust. Recently, the company was reprimanded for overlooking the negative effects its subsidiary app Instagram leaves on the mental health of young children. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX FACEBOOK-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Banking and wealth management group Investec Plc.(INVP.L) Thursday said its trading performance for the five months ended August 31 was substantially ahead of last year, and in line with the pre-COVID comparative period in 2019. The results were benefited by good growth in revenue and lower impairments. For the six months ending September 30, the company expects basic earnings per share between 20.2 pence and 22.7 pence, up 110 percent to 136 percent from last year's 9.6 pence. Adjusted earnings per share is expected between 21.5 pence and 24 pence, 92 percent to 114 percent higher than 11.2 pence a year ago. Adjusted operating profit before tax is expected between 265 million pounds and 293 million pounds, or 86 percent to 106 percent ahead of last year's 142.5 million pounds. The company plans to release interim results on November 18. Looking ahead for fiscal 2022, the company expects to report adjusted earnings per share above the upper end of the 36 pence to 41 pence range guided in May, based on current business momentum. 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. International business and technology veteran to oversee Aryballe's continued growth Aryballe, the pioneer in digital olfaction, announced today it has appointed Pierre Chauvineau as its new Chairman of the Board. Aryballe's board provides the company with business and technological guidance based on combined decades of digital technology, healthcare, science, and consumer executive experience. With three decades of leadership in enterprise and startup environments, Chauvineau joins Aryballe to provide assistance and guidance as the company transitions into a period of mass production and widespread adoption of its digital olfaction sensors. He brings a diverse range of international corporate and startup experience in evolving deep tech startups into product and commercialization phases. "Aryballe is fortunate to have Pierre's deep expertise as we move into this next phase of technological expansion and deploy our products at scale," said Sam Guilaume, Aryballe CEO. "His experience advising the strategic growth of companies on a similar trajectory as Aryballe, across an international landscape, will be an asset as we continue to expand our customer base and industry applications." Chauvineau began his career with Medtronic where he spent 20 years working in roles including country manager and head of multiple regional business units. In 2010, he joined Cameron Health, a venture-backed company based in California, and stayed with the company through its acquisition by Boston Scientific (BSC). He went on to serve as the head of BSC's largest business unit in EMEA for five years. He has also served in various startup advisory roles including on boards, and as an academic advisor to universities across Europe on business and innovation topics. Aryballe is a strong, innovative company that is well-positioned for significant growth in the digital olfaction market," said Chauvineau. "Aryballe's technology has incredible potential for commercialization across varied industries and I'm excited to work with Aryballe's executive team to continue innovating in this space." Chauvineau will assume the position of Chairman of the Board from Jean-Christophe Simon, who has held the position since 2018 and has successfully guided the company through several critical milestone events including the launches of the DOAC and the NeOse Advance for Aryballe's customers in food, flavor and fragrances. Simon will continue to support Aryballe in an advisory capacity on IP and technology issues. "Jean-Christophe has been instrumental in advancing Aryballe's vision" said Guilaume. "We are grateful for his leadership and welcome his ongoing expertise as he continues to serve Aryballe in an advisory role." About Aryballe Based in Grenoble, France and founded in 2014, Aryballe combines biochemistry, advanced optics and machine learning to mimic the human sense of smell. The company's premier product offering, NeOse Advance, uses silicon photonics technology to detect, record and recognize odor data, which powers improved decision making for R&D, quality control, manufacturing and end-user experiences. Aryballe Suite, the company's cloud-enabled software, enables customers to intuitively access and customize analysis of odors based on their unique needs. With operations in France, South Korea and the USA, Aryballe works with global leaders in automotive, consumer appliances, food manufacturing and flavor fragrances. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005038/en/ Contacts: Elizabeth Facteau pr@aryballe.com +33 4 28 70 69 00 Academy of Robotics and the Royal Air Force announced a new trial deployment of autonomous vehicles on an airbase as part of the RAF's Astra campaign to deliver next generation Air Force capability. This trial is the first time that autonomous vehicles have been deployed on a UK airbase by the RAF. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005049/en/ Kar-go Delivery Bot at RAF Brize Norton: the self-driving vehicle developed by leading British autonomous technology company, Academy of Robotics, during trials on the RAF Brize Norton airbase (Photo: Business Wire) The trial sees Academy of Robotics' Kar-go Delivery Bot making deliveries of tools, equipment and supplies to locations within RAF Brize Norton, near Oxford. RAF personnel then go out to meet the vehicle and a hatch is automatically released enabling them to collect the package. During the trial, the vehicles will perform autonomous and semi-autonomous procedures with a safety team monitoring from a mobile command hub. This unique remote command hub is a secure mobile unit, which can oversee all aspects of the vehicles' operations. From this facility, the team are also able to take control of the vehicle remotely if necessary. For security reasons, only trained and authorised personnel can move goods around an airbase, but the use of secure, autonomous vehicles could offer valuable support to professional personnel, freeing up their time to focus on the core roles they were trained for. As the vehicles are electric, the technology also opens up opportunities to reduce harmful emissions, helping the RAF towards its mission to achieve net zero by 2040. Part-funded by the RAF's Astra programme, with British start-up Academy of Robotics matching the investment, the trial is the first stage of understanding and investigating the potential to use autonomous delivery vehicles to support the work of RAF personnel. Alongside the big-ticket projects and programmes, the Astra programme aims to involve the Whole Force of regulars, reserves, civilians and contractors in driving change, by identifying the barriers that prevent progression however big or small and overcoming them by working smarter, innovating internally and with Defence partners to create the right environment for ideas to flourish. Squadron Leader Tony Seston, RAF Engineer and Astra ambassador commented: "Bringing self-driving technology onto a base offers many advantages. Ultimately, we could see fleets of autonomous vehicles with different autonomy levels delivering supplies, spares, tools, food and also providing airfield services such as aircraft fuelling, runway sweeping and snow and ice clearance. Our recruits receive world-class training. If new technology can help to ensure we are enabling them to use that training as effectively as possible, we need to look at how we can integrate it into our current processes. However, we must ensure we introduce this in a way that is secure and safe for our personnel. We see this trial as our first steps into understanding how we can deliver this vision safely." Bases like RAF Brize Norton support operations all over the world and throughout the UK including teams ready 24/7 to support humanitarian efforts worldwide and provide Military Assistance to the Civil Authorities in the UK Group Captain Emily Flynn, Station Commander at RAF Brize Norton commented: "Last month, we saw a fantastic response from our teams, putting extra hours in and giving up leave to help the Afghan rescue missions. That's the sort of work our aviators want to be able to focus on and in situations like this, every minute we save can save a life. This trial is part of a continued programme to take away the mundane tasks that cause added stress and inconvenience for our people, to help our highly-trained personnel to do the jobs they joined the RAF to do and to do them to the best of their ability." Whilst extensive pre-scanning and data capture is typical to train autonomous vehicles on a particular route to teach it how to perceive the different features of that route, due to security constraints, the team have had to invent a proprietary system to minimise data capture and enable the vehicle to navigate safely without this training. Furthermore, the team have had to address some new challenges unique to driving on an airfield and teach the AI to learn new behaviours like stopping at green lights on an airfield. The Kar-go delivery vehicle is just one part of a complete autonomous technology system developed by leading British technology company, Academy of Robotics. William Sachiti, CEO and Founder of Academy of Robotics explained: "Moving goods securely around a site is a major challenge for almost all large organisations and although we have optimised everything we do to be able to do trials like this where the technology can complement the core work taking place on large industrial sites, every site has its own nuances and challenges. The fact that we have designed and built every aspect of the self-driving system -from the vehicle to the software and the mobile command centre- has been a huge benefit here giving us complete control and making it much easier to adapt it to the specific integration challenges of the environment we are operating in. This trial represents the culmination of months of close collaboration and planning with the RAF and it has been a great privilege to work with teams who show such dedication and commitment to helping others. We hope that with this trial, we have taken a major step to helping them to do even more for those in need around the world." Following this first trial, the RAF will review the findings carefully and look at how it can be scaled effectively as part of their continued commitment to bringing innovation into the RAF. Squadron Leader Tony Seston added: "We are proud to have been able to collaborate with a leading British technology firm to help them understand and address the specific challenges of working on an active airbase and pioneer this use of self-driving technology. Having worked so closely with the team at Academy of Robotics on this project, we are confident that the insights from the trial will help us to design and develop processes to deliver smarter logistics to meet the requirements of a next generation Air Force." ENDS Images and video are available via bit.ly/RAFandAoR Further information on the RAF Further information on Academy of Robotics View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005049/en/ Contacts: Academy of Robotics Jill Lloyd jill@academyofrobotics.co.uk Celltrion wins contract from DLA to supply rapid antigen test kits 12-month supply for as much as USD 626 million to start next month Celltrion becomes first Korean mass supplier of COVID-19 rapid test kits after proving quality, supply capabilities, price competitiveness Celltrion (KRX:068270) announced today that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) under the Department of Defense has awarded Celltrion USA, Inc., a subsidiary company of Celltrion, a procurement contract for its DiaTrustTM COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test. Celltrion USA will make deliveries to approximately 25,000 U.S. CONUS locations to support military bases, long-term care facilities, community testing sites, critical infrastructure, and other designated places on a weekly basis. The DLA estimates its order volume to be as much as $626 million considering the change in demand by the COVID-19 community transmission rate in the U.S. Celltrion believes that this procurement contract underscores Celltrion's quality, production and supply capabilities as the deal has been awarded after the Department of Defense's rigorous verification. Celltrion has already proven the quality and safety of DiaTrustTM earlier this year as the product obtained Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on April 16. Celltrion's supply capability for the contract volume is sufficiently supported by the large-scale production facility in Korea. In addition, Celltrion USA emphasized the firm's drug distribution performance in the US market for the last three years to demonstrate its ability to perform timely deliveries to 25,000 designated places in the U.S., at a competitive price. Unlike other COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test kits, DiaTrustTM is a product that applied two antibodies binding COVID-19 virus to both N-protein and S-protein, respectively, resulting in improved sensitivity of 93.3% and specificity of 99.0%. Also, the infection can be diagnosed within only 15 minutes. The test kits to be supplied through this contact are point-of-care tests (POCT) which can only be used in the presence of medical professionals. "The fact that we were awarded a procurement contract by the DLA after having passed its strict screen process is a recognition of Celltrion's technology and supply capability. With the COVID-19 pandemic still not showing signs of waning, we plan to focus on executing this contract as diligently as possible and further solidify the external credibility of Celltrion's diagnostic test kits portfolio," said Bonjoong Kim, CEO of Celltrion USA. About Celltrion, Inc. Headquartered in Incheon, Korea, Celltrion is a leading biopharmaceutical company, specializing in research, development and manufacturing of biosimilar and innovative drugs. Celltrion strives to provide more affordable biosimilar mAbs to patients who previously had limited access to advanced therapeutics. Celltrion received FDA and EC's approval for Inflectra and Remsima, respectively, which is the world's first mAb biosimilar to receive approval from a regulatory agency in a developed country. Also Celltrion received FDA and EC's approval for Truxima and Herzuma. Its products are manufactured at state-of-the-art mammalian cell culture facilities, designed and built to comply with the US FDA cGMP and the EU GMP guidelines. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005328/en/ Contacts: Celltrion, Inc. Eunyoung Lee, +82 32 850 4384 Eunyoung.lee1@celltrion.com Selected companies all have a solid, initial business plan and proof of concept in place for a novel idea in the therapeutic, health tech and bioindustrial areas for the benefit of society and patients. COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BioInnovation Institute (BII), an international commercial foundation with a non-profit objective incubating and accelerating world-class life science research, today announces that four companies have joined its Creation House program. Creation House consists of a founder-friendly convertible loan of DKK 10M and 18 months incubation at BII with access to labs and office space, business development support, and BII partners. The program allows participants to meet and interact with BII's network of investors, industry partners, alumni and fellow entrepreneurs across its other programs, and is specifically designed to guide companies to a competitive international level and prepare teams for discussions with investors ahead of series A financing rounds. In collaboration with the BII team and their network of experts, companies will make a gap-analysis to find weak spots and roll out a development plan with every step needed to reach the milestones on drug development, good manufacturing practice and regulatory strategy. Bobby Soni, Chief Business Officer, at BioInnovation Institute, commented: "BII's Creation House program is designed to support start-ups in their journey, and essentially increase the likelihood of success. Through developing the three key pillars: science, team and business, we help each venture to overcome hurdles and position them to attract top quality international investment. We are delighted to have selected this cohort of initiatives, all of which offer the potential to positively impact the lives of patients suffering from conditions of high unmet medical need." Creation House is for companies with a solid, initial business plan. In the therapeutic area, a cellular proof of concept with chemical or biological tool compounds is required. In bioindustrials, a proof of concept or MVP (minimal viable product) is required and in health tech, a scale-up ready MVP is required. The new companies BII has accepted into the Creation House program are the following: Orbit Health: Harnessing sensor and AI technologies, Orbit provides doctors with continuous and objective insights to enable effective personalized treatment and continuous management of chronic patients at home. iNotify: Focuses on the initial ovarian follicle development to help infertile women who are not benefitting from today's standard hormone treatment. Embark Biotech: A spin-out from the University of Copenhagen with the aim of pioneering novel drugs for metabolic diseases. Pephexia Therapeutics: A biotechnology company working with the discovery and development of innovative peptide-based pharmacotherapies for the effective and convenient treatment of cachexia and related diseases. Since inception in 2018, BII has supported 79 start-ups and projects with EUR 44 million in funding. BII's start-ups have in total raised more than EUR 112 million from local and international investors. Its diverse team brings venture capital, pharma and business expertise together to help early stage companies accelerate to the next level. Recent portfolio / incubated company successes include Adcendo, Stipe Therapeutics, Twelve Bio, Octarine Bio and Chromologics. Details on the companies accepted can be found below: Orbit Health: Harnessing sensor and AI technologies, Orbit Health provides doctors with continuous and objective insights to enable effective personalized treatment and continuous management of chronic patients at home. The Company's first solution, Neptune, is an AI solution that uses only a smartwatch to enable treatment optimization to help people with Parkinson's attain optimal symptom control and restore quality of life. In addition, Orbit Digital Health Lab enables the orchestration of an array of relevant digital health solutions to be applied to a single patient. Orbit brings these solutions from their siloed environment and integrates them into the routine clinical workflow to achieve holistic patient care and real impact. Our vision is to truly enable early intervention and cost-effective management of chronic conditions by offering breakthrough digital health solutions to enable physicians to tailor and optimize care and empower patients to live their best possible life. Webpage link: Orbit iNotify: iNotify focuses on the initial ovarian follicle development to help infertile women who are not benefitting from today's standard hormone treatment. The Company uses first-in-class drug-inducing factors that regulated the intracellular AKT pathway; a major driver of follicle activation and a signal transductive pathway that promotes survival and growth in response to extracellular signals. The Company has identified and validated a compound that activates the AKT pathway in a controlled manner, and thus supports the activation of dormant follicles, a pre-request for fertility. Embark Biotech: Embark Biotech is a spin-out from the University of Copenhagen with the aim of pioneering novel drugs for metabolic diseases. Embark's first program focuses on proprietary agonists to a novel receptor (EMB1), identified by our in-house discovery platform. EMB1 agonists act on adipose cells to absorb and burn sugar and fat, and centrally to reduce food intake. EMB1 has potential in several metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, obesity and genetic forms of obesity such as Prader-Willi Syndrome. The main objective in Embark is to advance the development of an EMB1 agonist within Prader-Willi Syndrome. The largest unmet need for nearly all genetic forms of obesity is the uncontrolled desire to eat (i.e. hyperphagia). Embark seeks to make a breakthrough in this area by introducing a first-in-class drug countering hyperphagia in the most common form of genetic obesity, Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). PWS is an orphan disease characterized by intense hyperphagia, decreased metabolic rate and progressive weight gain accompanied by an increased risk of severe obesity, diabetes and related complications. Currently, no treatment for PWS hyperphagia exists. Embark has developed agonists for a novel receptor, EMB1, which profoundly decreases food intake and improves metabolic health in hyperphagic mouse models and obese, diabetic non-human primates. We expect that further preclinical development in PWS models will specifically reveal its potential for PWS. Pephexia Therapeutics: Pephexia Therapeutics is a biotechnology company working with the discovery and development of innovative peptide-based pharmacotherapies for the effective and convenient treatment of cachexia and related diseases. Cachexia is defined as un-intended weight loss of at least 5% in 12 months or less. A range of underlying diseases can cause cachexia, most commonly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, cognitive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. In cancer, cachexia accounts for 20% of the deaths, and in COPD cachexia is associated with 50% reduction in median survival. Link webpage: Perphexia Therapeutics About the BioInnovation Institute Foundation The BioInnovation Institute Foundation (BII) is an international commercial foundation with a nonprofit objective supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. BII operates an incubator to accelerate world-class life science innovation that drives the development of new solutions by early life science start-ups for the benefit of people and society. BII, located in Copenhagen, Denmark, offers start-ups and early-stage projects within health tech, therapeutics, and bioindustrials state-of-the-art labs, vibrant office facilities, business development, start-up business incubation, access to high-level mentoring and international networks, plus unique funding opportunities of up to 1.3 million euro per start-up and 2.4 million euro per project. Since the inauguration of BII in November 2018, BII has awarded 44 million euros to 79 high-growth start-up companies. Read more on www.bioinnovationinstitute.com Collaboration to facilitate an expanded manufacturing footprint to enable clinical supply of Quell's pipeline, including QEL-001 in liver transplantation and pipeline programs in neuroinflammation and autoimmunity LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Quell Therapeutics Ltd ("Quell"), the world leader in developing engineered T-regulatory (Treg) cell therapies for serious medical conditions driven by the immune system, today announced it has entered a collaboration with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult). The collaboration will expand Quell's clinical manufacturing capabilities and capacity in one of the recently opened specialist large-scale manufacturing modules at CGT Catapult's manufacturing innovation centre in Stevenage, UK. This will add a second GMP facility to Quell's manufacturing operations and allow the Company to efficiently develop and scale the production of its novel multi-modular engineered Treg cell therapies for clinical trials. Quell is currently preparing for the first ever clinical trial of a multi-modular engineered Treg cell therapy with its lead candidate QEL-001, which is designed to prevent organ rejection in liver transplant patients. Quell remains on track to begin the Phase 1/2 "LIBERATE" trial with QEL-001 in the first quarter of 2022. The LIBERATE study will be the first Treg based therapy in transplantation aiming to free patients from all systemic immune suppression. "In the two years since we launched Quell in 2019, a key part of our strategy has been to build a world-leading manufacturing capability for our engineered Treg product candidates that includes both expert talent and dedicated GMP infrastructure," said Iain McGill, Chief Executive Officer of Quell Therapeutics. "Our agreement with CGT Catapult is an important strategic step that gives us the flexibility to scale our production capacity, which is crucial to the success of our business both near term, as we prepare for our first clinical trial with QEL-001, and longer term, as we advance our pipeline of novel engineered Treg cell therapies in neuroinflammatory and autoimmune diseases." "The Stevenage CGT Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre is a proven model that enables emerging cell and gene therapy companies to further develop their own GMP manufacturing capability at one of the world's premier centres for the development of advanced therapies. I am very excited about this collaboration, which forms a key pillar of our process development, manufacturing and supply strategy," added Bernd Schmidt, VP Product Delivery at Quell Therapeutics. The CGT Catapult was established to bridge the gap between scientific research and full-scale commercialisation to ensure life-changing therapies can reach patients throughout the world. They create powerful collaborations to overcome challenges to the advancement of the sector. The Stevenage Manufacturing Innovation Centre allows companies developing cell and gene therapies to develop their manufacturing processes at scale to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards. The centre, underpinned by a unique collaborative model provides support and expertise from CGT Catapult experts across scientific research, manufacturing, supply, and regulation, to provide the required capabilities for manufacture at high throughput in a GMP environment. As well as the manufacturing development suites, collaborators work together with CGT Catapult on the development of raw materials supply, quality control testing, cryostorage, logistics, track and trace, and integration into the wider supply chain. "We are delighted to welcome Quell Therapeutics as the latest pioneering company to collaborate at the CGT Catapult Stevenage," added Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive Officer at the CGT Catapult. "Quell is a ground-breaking company with leading technology which is progressing engineered Treg cell therapies into the clinic. We are pleased to be able to provide them with the capabilities and collaboration they require to execute their ambitious growth plans." About Quell Therapeutics Quell Therapeutics is the world leader in developing engineered T-regulatory (Treg) cell therapies that aim to harness, direct and optimize their immune suppressive properties to address serious medical conditions driven by the immune system. The Company is leveraging its pioneering phenotype lock technology, unique multi-modular platform and integrated manufacturing capabilities to design and develop a pipeline of highly engineered Treg cell therapies with greater potential for persistence, potency and stability than earlier generations of Treg cell therapy approaches. Quell's lead candidate QEL-001 is being developed to induce operational tolerance following liver transplantation, with the potential to protect the post-transplant liver without the need for chronic immunosuppressive medications. Quell is also advancing additional programs in neuroinflammatory and autoimmune diseases. www.quell-tx.com. About the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult was established as an independent centre of excellence to advance the growth of the UK cell and gene therapy industry, by bridging the gap between scientific research and full-scale commercialisation. With more than 350 employees focusing on cell and gene therapy technologies, it works with partners in academia and industry to ensure these life-changing therapies can be developed for use in health services throughout the world. It offers leading-edge capability, technology and innovation to enable companies to take products into clinical trials and provide clinical, process development, manufacturing, regulatory, health economics and market access expertise. Its aim is to make the UK the most compelling and logical choice for UK and international partners to develop and commercialise these advanced therapies. The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult works with Innovate UK. For more information, please visit ct.catapult.org.uk or visit http://www.gov.uk/innovate-uk. About the European Regional Development Fund The expansion of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult facility in Stevenage has received 3.36m of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and in London the intermediate body Greater London Authority) is the Managing Authority for European Regional Development Fund. Established by the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support innovation, businesses, create jobs and local community regenerations. For more information visit https://www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding. About the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Stevenage project has received 12m of funding from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, part of the government's modern Industrial Strategy. The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund is a four-year, 1 billion investment in cutting-edge technology designed to create jobs and improve living standards, built on guidance from business and the academic community. Healthcare and Medicine is one of three core areas for investment under the programme. Contacts: For Quell Therapeutics: Media: Mark Swallow, Frazer Hall MEDiSTRAVA Consulting +44 207 638 9571 quell-tx@medistrava.com Investors: Christina Tartaglia Stern Investor Relations, Inc. +1 212 362 1200 christina@sternir.com For CGT Catapult: FTI Consulting: Michael Trace, +44 (0)203 319 5674, michael.trace@fticonsulting.com George Kendrick, +44 (0)203 727 1411, george.kendrick@fticonsulting.com HONG KONG, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Victor AI, Founder and CEO of Terminus Group, was invited to CLSA Investors' Forum, where he shared the company's vision of a future city - AI CITY, and elaborated on the concept of "mobility, sustainability, and opportunity", three key elements of a future city, using the company's recent partnership with Expo 2020 Dubai as an example. CLSA Investors' Forum is one of the most influential investor events in the world. This year's forum welcomed over 1,400 industry experts, corporate executives, and scholars from more than 500 world-leading associations, enterprises, and institutes, including the co-founder of Apple - Steve Wozniak, and CSO of Tencent - James Mitchell, to name just a few. Terminus' understanding of a future city echoes with Expo 2020 Dubai's three major themes - mobility, sustainability, and opportunity. 'By incorporating new-generation AIoT technologies, the company aims to alter futuristic urban development and provide people with exquisite lifestyles,' stated Victor. Founded in 2015, Terminus has turned into a world-leading AIoT company over a short period of time. In 2020, the company was chosen by Expo 2020 Dubai as one of its premier partners and the only premier partner from China, alongside global tech giants such as Siemens, Cisco, SAP, etc. According to Victor Ai, Terminus' collaboration with Expo consists of two phases. For the first phase of the collaboration, Terminus will provide Expo with its comprehensive AIoT technologies and solutions, including 152 programmable robots which will support the 6-month long event, providing services such as sterilizing, catering, etc. Following the Expo, Terminus will work with Expo and D2020 special zone and build up a future city in Dubai. The city will be the first-ever smart city in the Middle East. It's the company's goal and ambition to help Dubai become an industry-leading technological hub in the region. In fact, from Canada's Sidewalk to Toyota's Woven City, and from Saudi Arabia's NEOM to America's Denver, the world has been exploring pathways towards futuristic urban development powered by new ICT technologies. According to data from Grand View Research, the market size of global smart cities is expected to reach $676.01B by 2028, achieving a CAGR of approximately 29.3%. Mobility: comprehensive architecture that enables end-to-end data flow Derived from the idea of designing a city like designing a smartphone or a smart vehicle, Terminus AI CITY Operating System (TACOS) is a city-level operating system independently developed by the company, believed to be the cornerstone of the future AI CITY. TACOS links the scenario-based smart urban infrastructure in a city with the new urban technology services enabled by the company's AI SaaS clouds. Resembling iPhone's IOS, or a smart vehicle's CCM, TACOS, as a central operating system, makes it possible to manage the data flow between different modular components within the city, resolving problems such as lack of data synergy between different scenarios - a problem frequently experienced in previous smart city solutions. According to Victor, TACOS provides 4 different versions targeting different city scenarios at scale and has been deployed in over 100 cities across the globe so far. Sustainability: quick deployment of multi-scenario application to achieve carbon neutrality One of the 15 AI SaaS clouds developed by the company focuses on energy. Powered by TACOS, Terminus' energy cloud enables the sustainability of scenarios including community, park, business, tourism, manufacturing, construction, etc., ultimately contributing to the possibility of a carbon-neutral future. Victor believes that sustainability is not a business of a single player. He claims that the company will join hands with its supply chain partners to promote the sustainable development of the entire industry. Opportunity: to create an open ecosystem platform and enable countless innovations and possibilities Just like a smartphone operating system breeds millions of developers and applications, Victor believes the low-code and atomization features of TACOS make it possible for developers to quickly adapt to the system and develop relevant city-level applications. The enormous ecosystem bred by the platform will give a breath of life to an ever-growing AI CITY. According to Victor, over the course of past 6 years, Terminus Group has been developing at an unprecedented pace. Up until this point, the company has deployed over 9,000 projects around the world and serves the population of over 90,000,000. The first phase of AI CITY by Terminus has already been deployed in Chongqing, China in 2020. Victor believes that with the complete digitalization of urban infrastructure, more urban technology services will be stimulated, resulting in the comprehensive development of cities, and benefiting everyone who lives in a future city. Kratos Fan 001-626-4568311 fan.lvwei@tslsmart.com United States www.terminusgroup.com SOURCE: Terminus Group View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665271/Terminus-CEO-Victor-AI-at-CLSA-A-Future-City-is-a-Moveable-Feast BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 3.30 am ET Thursday, Swiss National Bank releases its quarterly monetary policy assessment. The bank is expected to retain its policy rate and interest on sight deposits at the SNB at -0.75 percent. Ahead of the decision, the franc rose against its major counterparts. The franc was worth 118.95 against the yen, 1.0829 against the euro, 1.2615 against the pound and 0.9243 against the greenback at 3:25 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Citi, acting through Citibank N.A., has been appointed by Banco Santander S.A. ("Banco Santander") to act as successor depositary bank for its NYSE listed American Depositary Receipt ("ADR") programme. Banco Santander's American Depositary Shares ("ADS") trade on the NYSE under the symbol "SAN". Each ADS represents 1 ordinary share of the company. Banco Santander's underlying ordinary shares are listed and trade on the Madrid Stock Exchange under the symbol "SAN". Banco Santander's Chief Financial Officer, Jose Cantera, commented: "At Santander we are always striving to achieve the highest standards in investor engagement and transparency. The US is a critical market for the group, and we look forward to working together with Citi in the coming years as we continue to expand our investor base, maintaining continuity of growth in the US market." Commenting on the appointment, Dirk Jones, Global Head of Issuer Services, at Citi said: "We look forward to supporting Banco Santander's ADR programme and further develop the company's investor outreach through the expertise of our leading Investor Relations Advisory team and the breadth of our global equity distribution network." For more information on Citi's Depositary Receipt Services, visit www.citi.com/dr. About Banco Santander Banco Santander (SAN SM, SAN US, BNC LN) is a leading retail and commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in the Europe, North America and South America regions, and is one of the largest banks in the world by market capitalization. Its purpose is to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way. Santander is building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising over 120 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2025, as well as financially empowering more than 10 million people over the same period. At the end of the first half of 2021, Banco Santander had 1.1 trillion in total funds, 150 million customers, of which 24.2 million are loyal and 45.3 million are digital, 10,000 branches and 190,000 employees. www.santander.com About Citi Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management. Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com Twitter: @Citi YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005357/en/ Contacts: Citi Media Contacts: Shani Halstead +44 (0) 20 7508 2352 shani.halstead@citi.com Banco Santander Investor Contacts: Sergio Gamez Global Head of Shareholders and Investor Relations investor@gruposantander.com Outreach extends its sales engagement and intelligence platform to offer localised support of the company's expansion in EMEA LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Outreach , the largest and fastest-growing sales engagement and intelligence platform provider, today announced its first-ever European Unleash Summit , bringing together the top sales professionals to discuss the future of sales and the keys to success in this ever-evolving market on October 12, 2021, in London at Outreach's London offices, 70 Wilson Street, London EC2A 2DB. Those unable to participate in person can attend Outreach's Unleash Virtual Summit the same day. The Unleash Summit features Outreach executives including chief revenue officer Anna Baird and global innovation evangelist Mary Shea. This year's Unleash Summit is designed to help sales leaders close their sales execution gap and become Revenue Innovators who proactively identify and act on growth opportunities, guided to great outcomes in real-time, to deliver efficient, predictable growth. "We are so excited to bring the Unleash Summit to the EMEA market for the first time," said Manny Medina, Outreach chief executive officer and cofounder. "Since we opened our first international office in London in February 2020, we've experienced incredible growth in EMEA, adding hundreds of new customers. We are expanding our investment this year to better serve the needs of our European customers." The new features include: Localised AI-powered Insights and Buyer Intent signals: unveiled in May , Outreach Insights helps sellers better understand the level of interest that a prospect or customer has in engaging in a sales conversation. Outreach Insights is an integrated reporting and analytics solution that leverages cutting-edge AI to detect buyer sentiment and more accurately measure buyer emotion. The solution now supports English, French, Spanish and German languages to allow sellers to optimise what, when, and how they communicate with their buyers. , helps sellers better understand the level of interest that a prospect or customer has in engaging in a sales conversation. Outreach Insights is an integrated reporting and analytics solution that leverages cutting-edge AI to detect buyer sentiment and more accurately measure buyer emotion. The solution now supports English, French, Spanish and German languages to allow sellers to optimise what, when, and how they communicate with their buyers. Editor support in 18 languages: Outreach's editor enables companies to easily create sales sequences to automate communications to prospects. To better serve the needs of European companies, Outreach's editor now simplifies the creation and management of campaigns in multiple languages, streamlining content creation and increasing the consistency of company messaging across geographies. Outreach's editor enables companies to easily create sales sequences to automate communications to prospects. To better serve the needs of European companies, Outreach's editor now simplifies the creation and management of campaigns in multiple languages, streamlining content creation and increasing the consistency of company messaging across geographies. Multi-currency support: Designed to simplify the tracking of opportunities across global customers, Outreach's dashboard now offers multi-currency opportunity mapping to help sales leaders monitor their customer base across geographies and better manage account-based sales strategies. Designed to simplify the tracking of opportunities across global customers, Outreach's dashboard now offers multi-currency opportunity mapping to help sales leaders monitor their customer base across geographies and better manage account-based sales strategies. Local schedule-based Sequence setup: Outreach's Sequences provide salespeople with pre-set cadences for sales communications to reach prospects in the most effective way. The system now features international workweek customization that allows for different workweek configurations as well as holiday support to help sales leaders create sequences that will generate the best results according to prospect availability. Outreach's Sequences provide salespeople with pre-set cadences for sales communications to reach prospects in the most effective way. The system now features international workweek customization that allows for different workweek configurations as well as holiday support to help sales leaders create sequences that will generate the best results according to prospect availability. EMEA hosting: Outreach already complies with the EU and UK GDPR, and is committed to offering the highest standard of data compliance. As a result, the company will provide hosting in the EU in the coming months. "Companies looking to sell across Europe often struggle to close deals due to the complexity of managing prospects across multiple languages and currencies, and responding to diverse customer behavior," said Baird. "This complexity can result in unpredictable and inefficient sales cycles that slow down growth. By offering support for all popular European languages, currencies, and local scheduling, European sales leaders are empowered to create powerful cross-continent campaigns that will increase predictable, efficient growth for sales teams in the region. We're proud that our platform can now help even more people to reach their prospects in more meaningful ways." The new capabilities benefitted from Outreach's recent series G funding of 144 million ($200 million/169 million), which increased the company's valuation to 3.17 billion ($4.4 billion/3.7 billion). The company is committed to the European market, where last year it opened its first international office in London , followed soon after by an innovation centre in Prague, Czech Republic. Outreach's sales engagement platform is used by more than 5,000 customers, including Adobe, Docusign, SAP, and Zoom. To register to attend the Outreach Summit Series event in London, visit https://summit.outreach.io/london/register . About Outreach Outreach is the largest and fastest-growing sales engagement and intelligence platform provider that helps companies dramatically increase productivity and drive smarter, more insightful engagement with their customers. Outreach is the only solution provider to integrate sales engagement, conversation intelligence and revenue intelligence into one platform. The only sales engagement and intelligence platform to make the Forbes Cloud 100, Outreach was also the fastest-growing vendor in the category on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. More than 5,000 companies such as Adobe, Tableau, Okta, Splunk, DocuSign, and SAP depend on Outreach's enterprise-scale, unparalleled customer adoption, and robust AI-powered innovation. Outreach is a privately held company based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more, please visit www.outreach.io . PR Contact: Amanda Woolley pr@outreach.io Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/563661/Outreach_Logo.jpg 23 September 2021 The announcement released by Ananda at 07.00 today has been re-released to provide direct links to the event and the presentation materials. All other information remains unchanged. ANANDA DEVELOPMENTS PLC ("Ananda" or the "Company") Proactive Investors Presentation Ananda, the AQSE-listed medical cannabis company creating UK-based operations to grow and provide carbon neutral, consistent medical cannabis for the UK and international markets, advises that its CEO Melissa Sturgess will be presenting at the Proactive ONE2ONE Virtual Investor Forum this evening, 23 September 2021 at 6pm. The link to the event is https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/register/event_details/357, and the link to the presentation to be given at the forum is https://anandadevelopments.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/UK-Medical-Cannabis-Production-final-Read-Only-1.pdf. -Ends- The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement. ANANDA DEVELOPMENTS PLC Chief Executive Officer Melissa Sturgess Investor Relations Jeremy Sturgess-Smith +44 (0)7463 686 497 ir@anandadevelopments.com PETERHOUSE CAPITAL LIMITED Corporate Finance Mark Anwyl Corporate Broking Lucy Williams Duncan Vasey +44 (0)20 7469 0930 Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain. About Ananda Developments Ananda is an AQSE-listed medical cannabis company creating UK-based operations to grow and provide carbon neutral, consistent, medical cannabis for the UK and international markets. The UK medical cannabis market is predicted to be worth 450m by 2025 and the European market is predicted to be worth USD4.2bn by 2027. Ananda, through its 50% owned subsidiary, DJT Plants Limited, was granted a Home Office licence in May 2021 to grow >0.2% THC cannabis in a new research facility to breed and stabilise 65 strains. For more information, please visit: https://anandadevelopments.com/ Acquisition propels Gupshup into global leadership in RCS (Rich Communications Services), solidifying its IP-based conversational messaging platform. Dotgo will also help Gupshup accelerate growth into Africa. Gupshup, the leader in conversational messaging, today announced that it has acquired New Jersey based Dotgo. Dotgo is the global industry leader in RCS business messaging (RBM), with award-winning technologies such as the RichOTP, RichSMS, Bot Store, and MaaP (Messaging as a Platform) that foster the growth of RCS Business Messaging. A strong partner of Google, Mavenir, Synchronoss, Vodafone, and Orange, Dotgo manages RBM in several markets, and operates the world's largest RBM Hub with global connectivity to RCS users across the world. Dotgo is uniquely positioned to help brands integrate, with simple APIs, the RCS channel into their customer communications, whether for sales, support, services, or other business processes. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005293/en/ Dotgo, powered by a founding team with a rich history of tech innovation, is a Cohort 6 graduate of the IIT Startups accelerator. Dotgo grew rapidly in 2021 as RCS gained traction in North America, Europe, India, Brazil, and Nigeria. Dotgo's MaaP, offered in partnership with, and pre-integrated with, Google Jibe platform, has been selected to operate RCS business messaging at several mobile operators. Dotgo has been a leading contributor at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum and GSMA in defining standards and processes for RCS business messaging. Dotgo will significantly strengthen Gupshup's conversational messaging platform that enables businesses and developers to build rich customer experiences. Gupshup also plans to leverage Dotgo's strong experience and presence in Africa to expand there. "Conversational experiences are becoming the key to business-customer interactions, and the RCS messaging channel is a critical enabler," said Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO, Gupshup. "Dotgo's product innovation, market traction, and thought leadership in the RCS ecosystem is truly impressive. Together, we'll be able to offer a broader range of conversational messaging solutions to businesses and developers. We are excited to welcome them to the Gupshup family." Inderpal Singh Mumick, co-founder and CEO of Dotgo, said, "RCS business messaging is destined to change the way businesses communicate with their customers. We started Dotgo to create APIs that make it easy for brands and other players in the ecosystem to adopt RCS, while taking care of and hiding all the backend complexity from our customers. With the addition of RCS, Gupshup will undoubtedly be the strongest IP messaging company, and thus helps us accelerate our mission." Johanna Kollar, Partnerships Lead, Communication Products, Google, said, "We congratulate Dotgo and Gupshup on this acquisition. We have worked closely with Dotgo, and are very impressed by the quality of their products and services. We look forward to growing our relationship as the Dotgo team becomes a part of Gupshup." "The Dotgo team members were visionaries in recognizing the potential of RCS at a time when it had little adoption. We congratulate them on building industry leading products that are being adopted by customers across the world, just as RCS is taking off. Their bet proved prescient, and combining with an exceptional company like Gupshup will create a far stronger value proposition in the market," said Naren Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners. RCS will be a key messaging channel in Gupshup's Conversational Messaging Platform, supplementing 30 other messaging channels available to customers via Gupshup's Single API for messaging. RCS, a part of the 5G standard, is the next generation of SMS that includes pictures, audio, video, and presence, combined with enhanced security and encryption. RCS messages are delivered to native messaging apps such as Google Business Messages and Samsung Messages on Android phones. RCS Business Messaging uses the rich and interactive features of RCS to enable branded and secure business messaging. RCS is available globally with over 600M monthly active users, including about 20% of India's smartphone users. About Dotgo Dotgo, a global leader in RCS, is building the APIs and cloud platforms needed in a world where every business must have a presence inside messaging apps, just as they have web sites and smartphone apps. Dotgo's APIs and services enable brands and developers to build conversational experiences that transform customer interactions, and help mobile operators to launch, manage, and monetize RCS business messaging. Dotgo is the provider of the Dotgo Bot Store, world's first and largest directory of RCS and WhatsApp bots, Dotgo MaaP, RichOTP, RichSMS, and the RBM Hub. Dotgo is a Google partner, a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider, and a member of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum. For more information, visit www.dotgo.com. Bot Store, Dotgo, and RichOTP are registered trademarks of Dotgo Systems Inc. in USA and other jurisdictions. About Gupshup Gupshup enables better customer engagement through conversational messaging. Gupshup is the leading conversational messaging platform, powering over 6 billion messages per month. Across verticals, thousands of large and small businesses in emerging markets use Gupshup to build conversational experiences across marketing, sales and support. Gupshup's carrier-grade platform provides a single messaging API for 30+ channels, a rich conversational experience-building tool kit for any use case and a network of emerging market partnerships across messaging channels, device manufacturers, ISVs and operators. With Gupshup, businesses have made conversations an integral part of their customer engagement success. Gupshup is present in India, LATAM, South East Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and the United States. Visit www.gupshup.io. Converse with the Gupshup bot. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005293/en/ Contacts: Press Richard Laermer RLM PR gupshup@rlmpr.com (212) 741-5106 x 216 ~ Pre-Commissioning of Mill Continues ~ VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Guanajuato Silver Company Ltd. (the "Company" or "GSilver") (TSXV:GSVR)(OTCQX:GSVRF) is pleased to have entered into a silver and gold concentrate sales agreement with Ocean Partners Ltd. of Berkshire, UK. The Company continues to pre-commission the El Cubo plant in anticipation of first commercial production, which is anticipated in October 2021. Concentrate sales agreement: GSilver has signed a silver and gold concentrate sales agreement with MK Metal Trading Mexico, S.A. DE C.V., a division of Ocean Partners Ltd. ("Ocean Partners") of Berkshire, UK. The agreement is for an 18-month period commencing in October 2021. Additionally, Ocean Partners has agreed to provide the Company with a prepayment financing facility of US$1.5m against the proceeds of concentrate sales. This facility will bear interest at 12-month libor + 6.75% (or approximately 6.95% annually) and be repaid in 15 monthly installments after a 3-month grace period. Israel Munoz, GSilver's Corporate Controller said: "We are happy to have concluded this agreement with Ocean Partners. Their proposal was the right combination of exceptional terms combined with meticulous attention to detail. We look forward to establishing the foundations of a long-term business relationship." About Ocean Partners: The Ocean Partners team delivers successful trading services to miners, smelters, and refiners. By applying technical, commercial, and financial insight, they bring expertise to every aspect of their worldwide metals trading business. Their team members have comprehensive backgrounds in mining, geology, metallurgy, and finance. Update of Operations: Mining: Mining operations are now ongoing at the El Cubo mine. The Company continues to focus on mining from its 2175, 1850, and Cebolletas stope areas, and continues to stockpile mineralised material in the El Cubo laydown yard ahead of commencement of mill processing. (Click and scroll to bottom). Milling: Pre-commissioning of the plant's primary crusher took place on August 25th, and pre-commissioning of the secondary and tertiary crushers has now also been completed. (Click here for video). Installation of ball mill liners, as well as the installation of additional pumps and upgraded lubricating systems have now mostly been completed. The Company now anticipates the commencement of milling operations in the second week of October 2021. Hernan Dorado Smith, a director of GSilver and a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, has approved the scientific and technical information contained in this news release. About Guanajuato Silver Co. Ltd.: GSilver is a mining development company engaged in reactivating past producing silver and gold mines near the city of Guanajuato, Mexico. The Company is focused on the refurbishment and swift re-commencement of production from its El Cubo mine and mill and its nearby El Pinguico project, as well as the delineation of additional silver and gold resources through underground and surface drilling. Both projects are located within 11km of the city of Guanajuato, which has an established 480-year mining history. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "James Anderson" Chairman and CEO For further information regarding Guanajuato Silver Co. Ltd, please contact: James Anderson, Director, +1 (778) 989-5346 Email: james.anderson@GSilver.com Continue to watch our progress at: www.GSilver.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. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain forward-looking statements and information, which relate to future events or future performance including, but not limited to, the estimates of mineral resources; the attractiveness of potential vein widths and potential coalescing of the San Jose and El Pinguico veins at depth; the opportunities for exploration, development and future production from El Cubo and El Pinguico and the proposed exploration and development programs therefor and the timing and costs thereof; the ability of the Company to successfully refurbish the El Cubo mill, procure equipment, hire personnel and supply and process sufficient mineralized material and resources from El Cubo and El Pinguico through the mill to successfully begin commercial production of silver and gold in Q4 2021 at the projected amounts, grades, costs and revenues and the success related to any future exploration and/or development programs. Such forward-looking statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to and assumptions made by the Company; which assumptions, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant operational, business, economic and regulatory uncertainties and contingencies. These assumptions include: our mineral resource estimates at El Cubo and El Pinguico and the assumptions upon which they are based, including geotechnical and metallurgical characteristics of rock conforming to sampled results and metallurgical performance; tonnage of mineralized material to be mined and processed; resource grades and recoveries; assumptions and discount rates being appropriately applied to production estimates; success of the Company's combined El Cubo / El Pinguico operation; prices for silver and gold remaining as estimated; currency exchange rates remaining as estimated; availability of funds for the Company's projects; capital, decommissioning and reclamation estimates; prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services (including transportation); no labour-related disruptions; no unplanned delays or interruptions in scheduled construction and production; all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals are received in a timely manner; and the ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements and information are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected including, but not limited to, market conditions, availability of financing, currency rate fluctuations, actual results of exploration, development and production activities, actual resource grades and recoveries of silver and gold, unanticipated geological or structural formations and characteristics, environmental risks, future prices of gold, silver and other metals, operating risks, accidents, labor issues, equipment or personnel delays, delays in obtaining governmental or regulatory approvals and permits, inadequate insurance, and other risks in the mining industry. There are no assurances that GSilver will be able to successfully re-start the El Cubo mill to process mineralized materials to produce silver and gold in the amounts, grades, recoveries, costs and timetable anticipated. In addition, GSilver's decision to begin processing mineralized material from its above and underground stockpiles at El Pinguico and estimated resources at El Cubo through the El Cubo mill is not based on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability and therefore is subject to increased uncertainty and risk of failure, both economically and technically. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them, and may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, socio-political, marketing, and other relevant issues. There are no assurances that the results of the Company's recently announced preliminary economic assessment and projected production of silver and gold will be realized. There is also uncertainty about the spread of COVID-19 and variants of concern and the impact they will have on the Company's operations, supply chains, ability to access El Pinguico and/or El Cubo or procure equipment, contractors and other personnel on a timely basis or at all and economic activity in general. All the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required by law. Cautionary Note for U.S. Investors regarding Reserve and Resource Estimates Canadian public disclosure standards, including NI 43-101, differ significantly from the requirements of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") set forth in Industry Guide 7 ("Industry Guide 7"), and information concerning mineralization, deposits, mineral reserve and resource information contained or referred to herein may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by U.S. companies in accordance with Industry Guide 7. In particular, but without limiting the generality of the foregoing, this news release uses the terms "measured mineral resources", 'indicated mineral resources' and 'inferred mineral resources'. U.S. investors are advised that, while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian securities laws, Industry Guide 7 does not recognize them. U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of "inferred mineral resources" exist, are economically or legally mineable or will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian securities laws, estimated "inferred mineral resources" may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies except in rare cases. Disclosure of "contained ounces" in a mineral resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian securities laws. However, Industry Guide 7 normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by Industry Guide 7 standards as in place tonnage and grade, without reference to unit measures. Accordingly, information concerning mineral deposits set forth herein may not be comparable with information made public by companies that report in accordance with Industry Guide 7. Guanajuato Silver Company Ltd. PH: +1(778) 989-5346 E: info@GSilver.com W: GSilver.com CA: Suite 578 - 999 Canada Place, Vancouver B.C. V6C 3E1 MX: Carretera - Guanajuato - Silao km 5.5, Int 4, Col. Marfil CP36250, Guanajuato, Gto., Mexico SOURCE: Guanajuato Silver Company Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665253/GSilver-Signs-Concentrate-Sales-Agreement TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Roscan Gold Corporation ("Roscan" or the "Company") (TSXV:ROS)(FSE:2OJ)(OTC PINK:RCGCF) is pleased to announce a US$5.0 million strategic investment by Asante Gold Corporation ("Asante") (ASE)(1A9)(ASGOF), to advance the Company's 100%-owned Kandiole Gold Project in West Mali. Asante has agreed to subscribe for and purchase 22.1 million common shares at a price of C$0.29 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of US$5,000,000 (approximately C$6,400,000 as at September 22, 2021), resulting in Asante owning approximately 6.7% of Roscan's outstanding common shares. The C$0.29 price per share reflects a 14% premium to the closing price on September 22, 2021. Commenting on the announcement, Nana Sangmuah, President & CEO said: "We are pleased to welcome Asante as a strategic investor in the Company. The investment by Asante introduces a rapidly growing partner with solid African based assets and strong connections with alternative pools of capital to help us unlock value on our highly prospective land package, and with minimal dilution." Douglas MacQuarrie, President & CEO of Asante states: "Roscan's 100% owned Kandiole Gold Project is located in one of the most prolific gold jurisdictions in West Africa and shows a high potential to define substantial gold mineral resources. With this financing, Asante's shareholders gain exposure to large exploration upside potential, and at a very attractive entry point." Roscan remains the sole owner of the Kandiole Gold Project and will continue to be the operator. The Company will use the proceeds of the strategic investment to fund its exploration program towards maiden resources over its 401.8km2 of area and multiple high potential targets. In connection with the strategic investment, Asante and Roscan will enter into an investor rights agreement, whereby, subject to certain conditions, including time and ownership thresholds, Asante will have certain rights, including the right to appoint one Board member to Roscan's Board of Directors. Under the investor rights agreement, for a period of 4 months, Asante has also agreed not to sell, transfer, offer or otherwise dispose of any shares without first notifying the Company. In addition, in the event of an equity financing subsequent to this offering of Common Shares, Asante will have the option to participate at a pro rata level so as to maintain their shareholder position in the Company. The shares acquired by Asante are for investment purposes and depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors, it may elect to increase, decrease or dispose its shareholding position. The closing of the strategic investment is expected to occur on or about October 15, 2021 and is subject to regulatory approval, including that of the TSX Venture Exchange. The common shares will be subject to a statutory hold period in accordance with applicable securities legislation. In addition to Asante's strategic investment, Roscan is in discussions with other strategic partners for additional investment of up to 19.9% of the Company to fast-track unlocking the value proposition on the broader land package. About Roscan Roscan Gold Corporation is a well-financed Canadian gold exploration company focused on the exploration and acquisition of gold properties in West Africa. The Company has assembled a significant land position of 100%-owned permits in an area of producing gold mines (including B2 Gold's Fekola Mine which is contiguous to the west of Kandiole), and major gold deposits, located both north and south of its Kandiole Project in West Mali. For further information, please contact: Nana Sangmuah President & CEO Email: clittle@roscan.ca Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information is characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, changes in the state of equity and debt markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in obtaining required regulatory or governmental approvals, and other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, including those risks set out in the Company's management's discussion and analysis as filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including that all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals will be received as and when expected. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable securities laws. 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: Roscan Gold Corporation View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665243/Roscan-Gold-Announces-US50-Million-Strategic-Investment-by-Asante-Gold-Corporation SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Former Amazon Inc (AMZN) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has pledged $1 billion of his $10 billion climate funds to create, manage, and preserve biodiversity and reduce carbon imprint in multiple forests. Bezos will distribute the money to different organizations working in the Congo basin, Tropical Andes region, and in the continent of Oceania. Referring to his space trip earlier in July, Bezos said on Monday, 'Nature is our life support system and it's fragile. I was reminded of this just this July when I went into space with Blue Origin. I'd heard that seeing the Earth from space changes one's point of view of the world, but I was not prepared for just how much that would be true.' The ever-growing human population and the rapidly increasing waste problem have made it difficult to preserve nature and it does not come without consequences. Lately, natural disasters have increased at an alarming rate across the world and studies have found out that the emission of CO2 in the northern hemisphere has had a record increase this year. Talking about the current situation of nature, Bezos added, 'When people hanker for the good old days and glamorize the past, they're almost always wrong. By most metrics, life is better than it was in the past. But there is a notable exception-the natural world is not better today than it was 500 years ago when we enjoyed unspoiled forests, clean rivers, and the pristine air of the pre-industrial age.' The grant will be given to the leading organizations that work with the preservation of biodiversity and the environment. According to reports, just acknowledging the Indigenous land claims across the globe can work as one of the biggest steps towards conservation in the world. The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed praised the decision and said, 'Conservation is one of the most effective anti-poverty strategies we have. I warmly welcome this generous commitment, which will help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.' Amazon, one of the top three largest companies in the world, is also infamous for its carbon footprint. Due to lockdown, the global carbon emission dropped 7% last year but the e-retail giants saw their carbon footprint increase 19%. Amazon's cloud computing services company, AWS is also accused of using little renewable energy in major plants. However, an Amazon spokesperson contradicted the statement in an interview with Recode, saying, 'To the contrary, Amazon is proud to be the world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy. We are on a path to power 100% of our business with renewable energy by 2025-five years ahead of our original target of 2030.' Bezos also added on the same note, 'We can and must reverse this anomaly. By coming together with the right focus and ingenuity, we can have both the benefits of our modern lives and a thriving natural world. I hope this commitment inspires others to make their own pledges to protect and conserve nature and help in the fight against climate change.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX AMAZON-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de Regulatory News: A consortium of TotalEnergies (Paris:TTE) (LSE:TTE) (NYSE:TTE), Green Investment Group (GIG) and Qair has been pre-selected by the Direction Generale de l'Energie et du Climat ("DGEC") to participate in an upcoming competitive tender for the development of a floating wind farm of up to 270 MW in Southern Brittany. Through the tender, the consortium will bid to develop a project that will produce enough green energy to power the equivalent of 250,000 homes across France. The consortium believes the Southern Brittany tender round is a key step in the deployment of this new technology and will help foster the development of a cutting-edge industry in France. A sustainable development opportunity for Brittany TotalEnergies, GIG and Qair are committed to working closely with local stakeholders and utilizing the local supply chain wherever possible to maximise the economic benefits to the regions of Brittany. A key consortium The consortium intends to leverage the member's unique mix of local knowledge, financial expertise, technical proficiency, their experience in renewable energy, as well as their ambitions for the growth of the floating offshore wind sector: TotalEnergies, a broad energy company, has expertise in offshore operations and maintenance thanks to its historical activities. TotalEnergies is already developing and building offshore wind projects with a cumulative capacity of approximately 6 GW, including three floating offshore wind projects in Europe and Asia. a broad energy company, has expertise in offshore operations and maintenance thanks to its historical activities. TotalEnergies is already developing and building offshore wind projects with a cumulative capacity of approximately 6 GW, including three floating offshore wind projects in Europe and Asia. Green Investment Group is a global leader in green energy investment and development, which has committed over 30 billion to the sector to date. With a total global portfolio of 14 GW, GIG is one of the world's largest players in the offshore wind sector. is a global leader in green energy investment and development, which has committed over 30 billion to the sector to date. With a total global portfolio of 14 GW, GIG is one of the world's largest players in the offshore wind sector. Qair, an independent producer of exclusively renewable energy and a pioneer in floating wind power in France, has more than 30 years of experience in the field and a strong local presence in France. A proven track record This joint bid is based on a productive history between the members of the consortium: Over 2 GW of floating wind projects in South Korea (GIG and TotalEnergies), the 1.5 GW bottom-fixed Outer Dowsing offshore wind project in the UK (GIG and TotalEnergies), project in the UK (GIG and TotalEnergies), the Eolmed floating offshore wind pilot project in France (Qair and TotalEnergies) "We are delighted to join forces with our partners Qair and GIG once again, to contribute to the French energy transition and the development of the Brittany region. Thanks to our expertise in offshore projects and the development of renewable projects, we have the resources to meet the technical and financial challenges of the project." said Julien Pouget, Senior Vice President Renewables at TotalEnergies "The deployment of floating offshore wind at scale is critical to realizing the full potential of France, and the world's, wind resource. With its deep waters and industrial heritage, Brittany is fantastically placed to unlock this new sector, creating significant job and investment opportunities." said Edward Northam, Head of GIG Europe "We are pleased to bring together our complementary expertise in the development, financing, construction and operation of renewable energy projects to contribute to the growth of the French floating offshore wind industry, built around an industrial project anchored in Brittany." said Louis Blanchard, President of Qair TotalEnergies, renewables and electricity As part of its ambition to get to net zero by 2050, TotalEnergies is building a portfolio of activities in renewables and electricity that should account for up to 40% of its sales by 2050. At the end of 2020, TotalEnergies' gross power generation capacity worldwide was around 12 GW, including 7 GW of renewable energy. TotalEnergies will continue to expand this business to reach 35 GW of gross production capacity from renewable sources by 2025, and then 100 GW by 2030 with the objective of being among the world's top 5 in renewable energies. About TotalEnergies TotalEnergies is a broad energy company that produces and markets energies on a global scale: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables and electricity. Our 105,000 employees are committed to energy that is ever more affordable, clean, reliable and accessible to as many people as possible. Active in more than 130 countries, TotalEnergies puts sustainable development in all its dimensions at the heart of its projects and operations to contribute to the well-being of people. About GIG Macquarie's Green Investment Group (GIG) is a specialist in green infrastructure principal investment, project development and delivery, green impact advisory and the management of portfolio assets. Its track record, expertise and capability make it a global leader in green investment and development, dedicated to accelerating the green transition. Initially launched by the UK Government in 2012 as the Green Investment Bank, it was the first institution of its type in the world. It was purchased by Macquarie in 2017 and combined with Macquarie Capital's renewables team to create one of the world's largest teams of specialist green infrastructure developers and investors. Now operating as the Green Investment Group, the business and its operating platforms have investments or operations in over 25 markets, more than 450 staff and a global development pipeline of 30 GW. (www.greeninvestmentgroup.com l www.macquarie.com) About Qair Qair is an independent producer of exclusively renewable energy developing, financing, constructing, and operating wind, solar, hydroelectric and green hydrogen production projects on own account. Active in 16 countries across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, with its 300 employees committed to the energy transition, Qair's ambition is to become an independent leader in responsible energy. Its subsidiary Qair Marine, dedicated to the development of renewable marine energies, mainly owns the EolMed project: a 30 MW floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Gruissan (Aude) and has contributed to the maintenance and operation of FloatGen, the first French floating wind turbine.(www.qair.energy) Twitter: @TotalEnergies LinkedIn: TotalEnergies Facebook: TotalEnergies Instagram: TotalEnergies Cautionary Note This press release, from which no legal consequences may be drawn, is for information purposes only. The entities in which TotalEnergies SE directly or indirectly owns investments are separate legal entities. TotalEnergies SE has no liability for their acts or omissions. The terms "Company" or "TotalEnergies company" refer collectively to the company TotalEnergies SE and the companies it controls directly or indirectly. Such terms are used solely for the sake of convenience for purposes of the present communication. Likewise, the words "we", "us" and "our" may also be used to refer to subsidiaries in general or to those who work for them. This document may contain forward-looking information and statements that are based on a number of economic data and assumptions made in a given economic, competitive and regulatory environment. They may prove to be inaccurate in the future and are subject to a number of risk factors. Neither TotalEnergies SE nor any of its subsidiaries assumes any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information or statement, objectives or trends contained in this document whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005472/en/ Contacts: TotalEnergies Media Relations: +33 1 47 44 46 99 l presse@totalenergies.com l @TotalEnergiesPR Investor Relations: +44 (0)207 719 7962 l ir@totalenergies.com GIG Corporate Affairs: Lindsay Roberts l +44 7920 212813 lindsay.roberts@greeninvestmentgroup.com Qair Communication: communication@qair.energy DGAP-Ad-hoc: Dexus Finance Pty Limited / Key word(s): Acquisition/Real Estate Dexus Finance Pty Limited: Dexus expands industrial platform with $1.5bn transaction 23-Sep-2021 / 12:28 CET/CEST Disclosure of an inside information acc. to Article 17 MAR of the Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Dexus (ASX: DXS) ASX release 23 September 2021 Dexus expands industrial platform with $1.5 billion of acquisitions and developments Dexus today announced the acquisition of a portfolio of quality industrial properties alongside APN Industria REIT (ADI) for a combined acquisition price of $1.5 billion[1], delivering on its strategic objectives of investing in sustainable income streams as well as expanding and diversifying the funds management business. The acquisition includes: - Jandakot Airport, Perth, WA (initially 66.7% Dexus[2], 33.3% ADI), a high-quality industrial portfolio comprising 49 properties, circa 80 hectares of developable land and an airport operating business - Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW (50% Dexus, 50% ADI), a fund-through development - 2 Maker Place, Truganina, VIC (100% ADI), a logistics facility leased to Australia Post Darren Steinberg, Dexus CEO said: "These are high-quality investments that will further enhance the resilience of our property portfolio. The near term development potential and scope to enhance returns by introducing third party capital make this a compelling opportunity, and one aligned with our priorities to grow our funds management business and recycle capital into high returning opportunities. "This transaction also provides the opportunity to achieve a step change for ADI as it secures an interest in quality logistics-oriented real estate with embedded development potential. We see considerable opportunity in ADI and will be supporting the equity raising announced today. "In addition to the transactions announced today, we remain focused on meeting the investment objectives of our third party capital partners, with the Dexus Industrial Partnership (DITA) in exclusive due diligence on the circa $123 million acquisition of 113-153 Aldington Road in Kemps Creek, NSW." Ross Du Vernet, Dexus Chief Investment Officer said: "These transactions will leverage our strong development capabilities and demonstrate how we are allocating more capital to opportunities with development potential and in structures where we are investing alongside third party clients. "The acquisitions will provide our industrial business with a meaningful footprint in Western Australia and new product in the Sydney market to service our growing customer base. Across the group, the industrial portfolio is expected to grow to $11.3 billion (4.6 million square metres) post completion of the near term developments and recent acquisitions." ADI equity raising ADI will undertake a fully underwritten circa $350 million equity raising to partially fund its share of the acquisitions at a fixed issue price of $3.45 per security, comprising a circa $100 million institutional placement and circa $250 million 1-for-3 non-renounceable entitlement offer. Dexus intends to take up its full $40 million entitlement under ADI's Entitlement Offer, and has also provided a commitment to sub-underwrite circa $39 million across the retail tranche of the Entitlement Offer. ADI's offer price reflects an attractive FY22 distribution yield of 5.0%. Further details relating to the equity raising are provided in ADI's announcement released to the Australian Securities Exchange today. Jandakot Airport, Perth, WA Dexus has agreed to acquire a 66.7% interest2 in the entities that own a 76-year ground lease at Jandakot Airport, WA, with ADI acquiring the remaining 33.3% interest, for a combined acquisition price of $1.3 billion[3]. The existing structure includes senior asset-level debt of $405 million which will remain in place at acquisition, reflecting a combined equity commitment of $895 million3. The acquisition was secured off-market and the $1.3 billion3 combined acquisition price is attributed as follows: - $875 million3 for a diversified stabilised portfolio of 49 modern prime industrial properties[4] leased to more than 54 tenants across circa 360,000 square metres, reflecting a 5.2% initial yield and 4.7% cap rate[5] - $225 million3 for circa 80 hectares of immediately developable land, of which 12 hectares is currently under Heads of Agreement and the remaining 68 hectares is approved under a current master plan - $200 million3 for an operating airport deriving income from long term ground leases, landing fees and infrastructure services, reflecting a circa 19x EBIT multiple Jandakot Airport is the major General Aviation Airport in Western Australia encompassing 620 hectares and located approximately 20km south of the Perth CBD and 25km south west of Perth airport. The location appeals to both first mile and last mile industrial customers due to its proximity to Freemantle Port, major road networks and nearby amenity. The stabilised portfolio is 100% occupied with a weighted average lease expiry of 7.6 years. The operating airport supports a long-term diverse and secure income stream, with a weighted average lease expiry of more than 14.6 years[6]. Initial settlement is expected to occur on 31 October 2021, with Dexus acquiring 100% of Jandakot City Holdings Pty Ltd (JCH)[7] and 49% of the company which owns the ground lease, Jandakot Airport Holdings (JAH)[8] for circa $825 million3,[9]. Dexus intends to bring in ADI for 33.3% shortly after initial settlement and additional third party equity capital partners into the Jandakot structure prior to settlement of the remaining 51% of JAH, which would result in Dexus's overall balance sheet interest in each of JCH and JAH reflecting an equal minority interest. Following the securing of equity commitments from additional third party capital partners and receipt of required regulatory approvals, settlement of the 51% remainder of JAH for $70 million is expected to occur in March 2022. Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW Dexus and ADI will jointly acquire a 42,500 square metre[10] prime logistics facility at Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, NSW as a fund-through development for a combined total consideration of $125.4 million3 (50% Dexus, 50% ADI). The facility is located in an emerging strategic industrial precinct, underpinned by extensive public infrastructure upgrades, and provides new development product in the near term to meet significant latent demand from customers in Western Sydney. The facility is in close proximity to the development land recently acquired by Dexus at 113-153 Aldington Road, Kemps Creek where Dexus has secured a pre-commitment with McPhee Distribution services for a 72,000 square metre logistics facility. Progressive land and development payments will be made from July 2022 until expected practical completion in May 2023, attracting a 4.25% coupon from the vendor/developer throughout the build period. 2 Maker Place, Truganina, VIC ADI will acquire 100% of 2 Maker Place, Truganina in Victoria for $69.0 million3. In August 2021, Dexus exchanged on the property with the ability to nominate an alternate purchaser within the Dexus group. The property will now settle with ADI nominated as the purchaser. The circa 30,000 square metre property is 100% leased to Australia Post with 4.5 years remaining on the initial term, with a further five year extension option. The 66,590 square metre site has further development potential across 16,740 square metres of land which could accommodate an additional 11,537 square metres of warehousing. Overall Impact to Dexus The combined transactions will be accretive to Dexus's Adjusted Funds From Operations per security for FY22. Dexus will update the market regarding guidance at the HY22 result in February 2022. Dexus will fund its share of the combined transactions through debt facilities, with gearing expected to initially increase by circa 3.3 percentage points[11] before reducing post the introduction of additional third party equity capital partners into the Jandakot structure. Authorised by Brett Cameron, General Counsel and Company Secretary of Dexus Funds Management Limited Images of Jandakot Airport can be downloaded here For further information please contact: Investors Rowena Causley Senior Manager, Investor Relations +61 2 9017 1390 +61 416 122 383 rowena.causley@dexus.com Media Louise Murray Senior Manager, Corporate Communications +61 2 9017 1446 +61 403 260 754 louise.murray@dexus.com [1] Includes the fund-through cost of Lot 2, 884-928 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek and excludes forecast future development spend. [2] Dexus will initially acquire 100% of Jandakot City Holdings Pty Ltd (JCH) and 49% of Jandakot Airport Holdings (JAH). Dexus intends to bring in ADI for 33.3% shortly after initial settlement, and additional third-party capital partners into the Jandakot structure prior to settlement of the 51% remainder of JAH, which would result in Dexus's overall balance sheet interest in each of JCH and JAH reflecting an equal minority interest. [3] Before acquisition costs. [4] Excludes three industrial development assets currently under Heads Of Agreement. [5] Reflects leasehold cap rate, with 4.5% core cap rate. [6] Including related JCH ground lease party lease arrangements WALE is 20.1 years. [7] JCH derives its revenue from rent from 49 high quality customers with strong tenant covenants including K-Mart, Amart, Reece, Baker Hughes, Tradelink, WA Government, Schenck, and Yokohama. [8] JAH's income is attributed to ground rent from JCH, infrastructure services, apron licences and airside parking from more than 100 tenants, predominantly associated with the aeronautical industry and private individuals. [9] Comprised of $757 million for JCH plus an initial $68 million for JAH. [10] Subject to Council approval. [11] Gearing impact calculated post ADI coming into the Jandakot structure shortly after initial settlement. Information and Explanation of the Issuer to this News: About Dexus Dexus (ASX: DXS) is one of Australia's leading fully integrated real estate groups, managing a high-quality Australian property portfolio valued at $42.5 billion. We believe that the strength and quality of our relationships will always be central to our success and are deeply committed to working with our customers to provide spaces that engage and inspire. We invest only in Australia, and directly own $17.5 billion of office, industrial and healthcare properties, and investments. We manage a further $25.0 billion of office, retail, industrial and healthcare properties for third party clients. The group's $14.6 billion development pipeline provides the opportunity to grow both portfolios and enhance future returns. Sustainability is integrated across our business, and our sustainability approach is the lens we use to manage emerging ESG risks and opportunities for all our stakeholders. Dexus is a Top 50 entity by market capitalisation listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and is supported by more than 30,000 investors from 23 countries. With over 35 years of expertise in property investment, funds management, asset management and development, we have a proven track record in capital and risk management and delivering superior risk-adjusted returns for investors. www.dexus.com Dexus Funds Management Ltd ABN 24 060 920 783, AFSL 238163, as Responsible Entity for Dexus (ASX: DXS) Level 25, 264 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000 23-Sep-2021 CET/CEST The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de SALT LAKE CITY, UT / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / IONIQ Sciences, Inc. ("IONIQ" or the "Company"), is developing a rapid and non-invasive Multi-Cancer Screen for early detection that has the potential to expand the therapeutic window, dramatically improve survivability and reduce the cost of healthcare. Today IONIQ Sciences announced that Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains has joined its Scientific Advisory Committee. Dr. Haibe-Kains is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Associate Professor in the Medical Biophysics department of the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Computational Pharmacogenomics. After earning his PhD in Bioinformatics at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Haibe-Kains has co-authored 200 peer-reviewed publications. Mr. Jared Bauer, IONIQ Sciences CEO, stated, "We are honored to welcome Dr. Haibe-Kains to our growing Scientific Advisory Committee. We expect that his extensive scientific and oncology expertise in developing new prognostic and predictive models will accelerate IONIQ's aim to modernize cancer detection utilizing our non-invasive, bioimpedance technology and proprietary algorithm. Our team is humbled and energized with the impressive cadre of experts who share our vision and have joined our Scientific and Medical Advisory Committees." Dr. Haibe-Kains added, "I am pleased to join IONIQ's Scientific Advisory Committee because the detection of cancer in the earliest, most-treatable stage of the disease is critically important. I believe that IONIQ Sciences has a real potential to make a dramatic difference in early cancer detection. I look forward to contributing my biomedical informatics and computational research expertise to help IONIQ Sciences accomplish its mission of developing a Multi-Cancer Screen for early cancer detection." About IONIQ Sciences, Inc. IONIQ Sciences, Inc. is developing an advanced multi-cancer screening technology for early detection that has the potential to expand the therapeutic window, dramatically improve survivability and reduce the cost of healthcare. IONIQ Sciences operates at the confluence of its Electrical Impedance Analytics (EIA) or bioimpedance technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). IONIQ Science's first product utilizing its proprietary analytic platform, the IONIQ ProLung Test for lung cancer, has been designated a Breakthrough Device by the U.S. FDA. Forward-Looking Statements Statements contained in this release that are not purely historical, including, without limitation statements regarding IONIQ Sciences' future performance and goals, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in the IONIQ Sciences' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such risks and uncertainties include inherent risks and uncertainties relating to IONIQ Sciences' ability to meet its funding requirements for its operations and other commitments and to obtain successful test results and regulatory approvals for its products. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations of future events. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections. For further information about IONIQ Sciences, Inc., please contact: Andy Robertson | 1-801-736-0729 | acr@IONIQsciences.com IONIQ Sciences, Vice President of Business Development IONIQ Sciences, Inc. 350 W. 800 N., Suite 214 Salt Lake City, Utah 84103 USA www.IONIQsciences.com Follow IONIQ Sciences, Inc. on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn : @IONIQSciences SOURCE: IONIQ Sciences, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665166/IONIQ-Sciences-Announces-Dr-Benjamin-Haibe-Kains-has-Joined-its-Scientific-Advisory-Committee VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / GATLING EXPLORATION INC. (TSXV:GTR)(OTCQB:GATGF) (the "Company" or "Gatling") is pleased to announce a new global mineral resource estimate (MRE) in accordance with NI 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of 388,000 ounces of gold in the Indicated category and additionally, 933,000 ounces of gold in the Inferred category from its 100% - owned Larder Gold Project, located on the Cadillac-Larder Lake break, in the Abitibi greenstone belt, Ontario. The global estimate includes open pit and underground mineral resource estimates in the Indicated and Inferred categories for the Fernland, Cheminis and Bear gold deposits (Tables 1 and 2). This mineral resource estimate incorporates the full drilling database available, including 237,000 m of historical drilling and 58,000 m of new drilling completed by Gatling between January 2019 and July 2021, on the three deposits. The NI 43-101 compliant Technical Report in support of the mineral resource estimate is currently being completed by SGS Geological Services Inc. (Canada) and will be filed on SEDAR under the Company's profile within 45 days. Jason Billan, President and CEO for Gatling, commented, "With an initial mineral resource estimate of over 1.3 million ounces for the Larder Gold project, Gatling has achieved a major milestone which was accomplished following several months of diligent effort by Gatling's technical team and SGS Geological Services. Overall, we are very pleased with the current result, which includes nearly 30% of the resource ounces in the Indicated category, despite the exploration team being hyper focused on expansion and step-out drilling through the 2019-2021 exploration programs. More importantly, with a current mineral resource model in hand, we are well-equipped to identify and concentrate on the further growth potential at Fernland, Cheminis and Bear in the near-term, with a goal of advancing the property into the multi-million ounce category, which would rank it quite favorably amongst the group of gold development projects currently progressing in the world-renowned Abitibi greenstone gold belt. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to our employees and contractors, the Matachewan and Wahgoshig First Nations, remaining key stakeholders, as well as our loyal shareholders for their support in reaching this key 2021 objective. We look forward to continuing our ongoing exploration at Larder through Q4 and into 2022. Drilling is ongoing at Bear, extended beyond the original 2021 program, and predicated on our strong drill results released in August. It is anticipated that continued resource expansion and regional exploration drilling will form the core of the 2022 Larder drill program." News Highlights Global In-Pit and Underground Mineral Resource Estimates for the Fernland, Cheminis and Bear deposits of 388,000 oz Au Indicated, and 933,000 oz Au Inferred (Tables 1 and 2). for the Fernland, Cheminis and Bear deposits of 388,000 oz Au Indicated, and 933,000 oz Au Inferred (Tables 1 and 2). Gatling's work has reinforced that this is one continuous gold mineralized system with three high-grade, rigorously built mineral resource estimates spanning in total a 4.5 km strike length on the southeastern side of the property. Mineralization has been traced from surface to 1,500 m depth with much of the system still untested below 800 metres (Figures 1, 2 and 3). spanning in total a 4.5 km strike length on the southeastern side of the property. Mineralization has been traced from surface to 1,500 m depth with much of the system still untested below 800 metres (Figures 1, 2 and 3). Gatling had completed more than 58,000 m of drilling across the three gold deposits up until the July 2021 cutoff date. The database now includes more than 295,000 m of total drilling, with an average discovery rate for the project to date of 4.5 oz Au per m drilled , which is on par with the leading explorers in the Abitibi region. Drilling has continued since July 2021 and remains ongoing. of drilling across the three gold deposits up until the July 2021 cutoff date. The database now includes more than 295,000 m of total drilling, with an average discovery rate for the project to date of , which is on par with the leading explorers in the Abitibi region. Drilling has continued since July 2021 and remains ongoing. 88% of in-pit ounces are within the Indicated category , demonstrating well-constrained and continuous mineralization and supporting the beginnings of a starter pit(s) at above average gold grades. , demonstrating well-constrained and continuous mineralization and supporting the beginnings of a starter pit(s) at above average gold grades. Significant room for resource growth via 1) follow-up drilling in the gaps between the Fernland/Cheminis pits aimed at further expansion beyond the existing pit limits, 2) drill testing Fernland at depth which has seen limited drilling sub 400 m yet intersected gold as deep as 900 m below surface, 3) drilling Cheminis beneath the existing shaft and underground workings, as well as in the modelled gaps in the north zone, and 4) at Bear, continue to extend the deposit both up plunge, along strike (to the east) as well as at depth, in both the north and south zones (ongoing). Table 1. Global Mineral Resource Estimates at the Larder Gold Project Table 2. Mineral resource estimates for Fernland, Cheminis and Bear deposits Notes: This Mineral Resource Estimate was prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards (2014) Block model size is comprised of 10x2x10 (x, y, z) meter blocks Ellipsoids are individually fitted on each solid/vein with a best fit plan calculated Interpolation method used is ID2 Indicated Mineral Resources are defined using 50 m ellipsoid centered on the blocks and Inferred Mineral Resources areas are defined using 120 m ellipsoids centered on the blocks Gold cut-off grades for underground are 2.4 g/t Au and in-pit are 0.3 g/t Au Grade capping - 40 g/t Au Compositing at 1 m minimum and only composites from a vein can be used to estimate each solid Bulk density - 2.84 t/ m3 Gold price - US$1,650/oz Historical mined stopes were removed from the 2021 volume and mineral resource estimate All blocks with the modeled shapes are included within the resource estimate on a percentage basis Mineral Resources have not demonstrated economic viability All figures are rounded to reflect the relative accuracy of the estimate. Numbers may not add due to rounding The results from the pit optimization are used solely for the purpose of testing the "reasonable prospects for economic extraction" by an open pit and do not represent an attempt to estimate mineral reserves. There are no mineral reserves on the Property. The results are used as a guide to assist in the preparation of a Mineral Resource statement and to select an appropriate resource reporting cut-off grade. 2021 Mineral Resource Estimate Parameters and Methods The mineral resource estimate was prepared by Dr. Allan Armitage, P.Geo., and Olivier Vadnais-Leblanc, P.Geo., from SGS Geological Services ("SGS") using the Genesis software. Wireframes were constructed for each deposit and used to constrain interpolation using the inverse distance squared (ID2) method. The same interpolation parameters were used on the three deposits because mineralization style and geometry are similar. Drill spacing and gold distribution are also similar between deposits. The mineral resource estimates at all three deposits were modeled using the following parameters: Resource domains were modeled to capture gold mineralization above 0.2 g/t Au and 1.0 g/t Au for open pit and underground estimates, respectively Minimum thickness modeled was 1.0 m to reflect the narrow vein geometry of the deposits Modelling respects geological contacts between mafic volcanics, sediments and ultramafics and utilizes structural controls including faulting and folding GEOVIA Whittle Pit Optimization software was used to create pit shells at the Fernland and Cheminis deposits using the following optimization parameters: US $1,650/oz gold price US $2.20/tonne for mining cost US $10.95/tonne for processing costs 95% Mining Recovery 94% Processing recovery 5% Mining dilution 55 pit slopes The mineral resources have been estimated in conformity with the widely accepted CIM Estimation of Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserve Best Practices Guidelines (2019). The reporting of the MRE's comply with all disclosure requirements for Mineral Resources set out in the NI 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (2016). The classification of the MRE's is consistent with current CIM Definition Standards - For Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves (2014). Summary of Deposits and 2021 Resource Estimate Model Fernland Deposit 50,000 m drilled. 115,000 Indicated oz Au and 156,000 Inferred oz Au (combined in-pit and underground) Gold mineralization is mostly associated with the south shear-hosted mafic volcanics with the north zone being a secondary zone at depth Fernland is open at depth and to the east within both the north and south zones of the deposit Near-surface gold mineralization at Fernland is captured within three pits proposed in the NI 43-101 technical report, the larger of which will extend 650 m by 250 m and to a depth of 185 m Cheminis Deposit 105,000 m drilled. 165,000 Indicated oz Au and 238,000 Inferred oz Au (combined in-pit and underground) The three main mineralized zones at Cheminis are lithologically controlled and occur within northern mafic volcanics, an ultramafic corridor, and southern mafic volcanics with most of the mineralization in the south zone The maximum depth of mineralization recorded thus far is 1 km Two pits have been proposed to easily capture mineralization within the upper 200 m of the deposit. The main pit shell is 490 m long, 280 m wide, and 200 m deep Bear Deposit 140,000 m drilled. 108,000 Indicated oz Au and 539,000 Inferred oz Au (underground) Majority of the high-grade gold at the Bear deposit sits within the steeply dipping north zone within quartz carbonate vein sets and is the highest grade deposit of the three at the Larder Gold Project Bear spans across 1.5 km of strike and down to 1.5 km in depth Bear is open to the east and west as well as at depth with a steep-easterly plunging direction The highest potential for high-grade gold expansion resides at the Bear deposit along strike, at depth and outside existing modelled grade shells General Summary of Mineralization The two main gold mineralized trends across the three gold deposits are: shear-hosted gold and gold-bearing quartz carbonate veins. These two trends are the primary hosts for gold mineralization at the Larder Gold Project and occur in all three main rock types on the property: mafic volcanics, meta-sediments and ultramafics. The grade and thickness of the zones vary depending on the structural complexities in the host rock across the entire Larder Lake Cadillac Fault Zone as the faults and folds transition from synclines to anticlines. New Global Mineral Resource Estimate The 2011 historic mineral resource that Gatling acquired on the Larder Gold Project in 2018 was limited to two of the three deposits and did not adhere to the existing 2014 CIM standards, best practices, and guidelines. Therefore, Gatling elected to complete a new full property mineral resource estimate across all three deposits using a conservative modeling and resource estimation methodology that will ensure the new guidelines and best practices are achieved at the Larder Gold Project and in accordance with the NI 43-101 standards of disclosure. Figure 1. Plan map of the Larder Gold Project with associated mineralized outlines of each deposit, open pit outlines and the 2021 Mineral Resource Estimate Figure 2. Idealized long section looking north displaying the 2021 modelled gold mineralized zones across the Fernland, Cheminis and Bear deposits with associated open pit outlines Figure 3. Idealized Long section looking north displaying the 2021 block model with grades above 1 g/t Au across the Fernland, Cheminis and Bear deposits with associated open pit outlines Ongoing Exploration and Upside Potential at the Larder Gold Project The 25,000 m drill program planned for 2021 (see press release dated January 7, 2021) has now been completed and due to the recent success at the Bear deposit, the program has been expanded in scope beyond the original program. In addition, exploration will continue through Q4 and into 2022 with a focus on several key objectives and targets: Bear Deposit. Expanding the Bear deposit along strike to the west towards the Cheminis deposit, east towards the historic Kerr Addison Mine (11 Moz Au historically mined) and following up on high-grade gold plunging targets in both vertical directions. Expanding the Bear deposit along strike to the west towards the Cheminis deposit, east towards the historic Kerr Addison Mine (11 Moz Au historically mined) and following up on high-grade gold plunging targets in both vertical directions. Fernland and Cheminis Pit Expansion and at Depth. Fernland and Cheminis deposits have both demonstrated near-surface gold mineralization that extends at depth with predictable high-grade, south-easterly plunging gold mineralized zones. The deposits have exhibited solid in-pit resource numbers that will be followed up with an aim to extend the current limits of the pit, in subsequent exploration programs. The deposits are also open at depth with exploration primarily focused on the upper 500 vertical meters, providing an excellent opportunity to add underground ounces to their current gold mineral resource estimates. Fernland and Cheminis deposits have both demonstrated near-surface gold mineralization that extends at depth with predictable high-grade, south-easterly plunging gold mineralized zones. The deposits have exhibited solid in-pit resource numbers that will be followed up with an aim to extend the current limits of the pit, in subsequent exploration programs. The deposits are also open at depth with exploration primarily focused on the upper 500 vertical meters, providing an excellent opportunity to add underground ounces to their current gold mineral resource estimates. Kir Vit Prospect. The current 5,000 m drill program at Kir Vit is nearly complete after testing the north-east south-west shears zones discovered in the 2020 outcrop stripping campaign. The drill program will also continue to explore intrusion-related and conglomerate hosted gold mineralization as the prospect continues to develop all three gold trends simultaneously. The northern part of Kir Vit consists mostly of the Timiskaming Conglomerate that has proven to host high-grade gold in Phase I of drilling. Current follow-up of this type of mineralization is underway, and if Gatling can continue to exploit this mineralized horizon, the entire northern portion of Kir Vit will become highly prospective. The current 5,000 m drill program at Kir Vit is nearly complete after testing the north-east south-west shears zones discovered in the 2020 outcrop stripping campaign. The drill program will also continue to explore intrusion-related and conglomerate hosted gold mineralization as the prospect continues to develop all three gold trends simultaneously. The northern part of Kir Vit consists mostly of the Timiskaming Conglomerate that has proven to host high-grade gold in Phase I of drilling. Current follow-up of this type of mineralization is underway, and if Gatling can continue to exploit this mineralized horizon, the entire northern portion of Kir Vit will become highly prospective. Swansea Zone. Explore the Swansea zone that hosts over 4 km of favorable Cadillac-Larder Lake Break geological units yet has only 19,000 m of historical drilling. The Swansea zone is located 2.5 km west of the Fernland deposit and is significantly underexplored considering its location along the break. Drill program permitting is underway. Explore the Swansea zone that hosts over 4 km of favorable Cadillac-Larder Lake Break geological units yet has only 19,000 m of historical drilling. The Swansea zone is located 2.5 km west of the Fernland deposit and is significantly underexplored considering its location along the break. Drill program permitting is underway. Regional Exploration. Multiple priority targets are being evaluated by the Gatling technical team and will be explored in future programs. Some of the high-priority targets include intrusion-related gold zones, conglomerate/unconformity horizons and structural trends identified in both AI targeting and LiDAR structure detection. Live Conference Call and Webcast Information for September 23, 2021, at 11:30 am EST Resource Estimation Review AUDIENCE INFORMATION (PUBLIC INFORMATION) Conference Call Participant Numbers Confirmation #: 3478933 Local: Toronto: 647-792-1240 North American Toll Free: 866-248-8441 Webcast URL Audience URL: https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1498767&tp_key=28afbc2fa0 About Gatling Exploration Gatling Exploration is a Canadian gold exploration company focused on advancing the Larder Gold Project, located in the prolific Abitibi greenstone belt in Northern Ontario. The Larder project hosts three high-grade gold deposits along the Cadillac-Larder Lake Break, 35 km east of Kirkland Lake. The Larder property has a global Mineral Resource Estimate (2021) of 388,000 oz Au Indicated and 933,000 oz Au Inferred gold ounces from both open pit and underground resources. The project is 100% owned by Gatling and is comprised of patented and unpatented claims, leases and mining licenses of occupation within the McVittie and McGarry Townships. The 3,370 ha project area is positioned 7 km west of the Kerr Addison Mine, which produced 11 million ounces of gold. All parts of the Larder property are accessible by truck or all-terrain vehicles on non-serviced roads and trails. Qualified Persons The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Nathan Tribble, P. Geo., VP Exploration of Gatling Exploration, and a Qualified Person pursuant to National Instrument 43-101. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Jason Billan, President and CEO Gatling Exploration Inc. For further information on Gatling, contact Investor Relations Telephone: 1-888-316-1050 Email: ir@gatlingexploration.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: Forward-looking statements are based on the current opinions and expectations of management. This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are frequently identified by such words as "may", "will", "plan", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "intend" and similar words referring to future events and results. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements that address future plans, activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur are forward-looking information. 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 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. SOURCE: Gatling Exploration Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665227/Gatling-Reports-388000-Indicated-Plus-933000-Inferred-Gold-Ounces-of-In-Pit-and-Underground-Resources-at-the-Larder-Gold-Project-Ontario Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Plurilock Security Inc. (TSXV: PLUR) (OTCQB: PLCKF) and related subsidiaries ("Plurilock" or the "Company"), an identity-centric cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces, has received a US$185,000 order from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) program, a U.S. Government-Wide Acquisition Contract Vehicle (GWAC). The IRS serves as the United States' federal tax collection agency and is responsible for overseeing the administration of the Internal Revenue Code enacted by the U.S. Congress.1 This order is part of a new contract established between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Plurilock through the SEWP V program. All contracts and orders announced by Plurilock since April 2021, including the latest order, represent a combined total of roughly US$11.70 million in sales. Experienced cybersecurity and IT support vendors represent a crucial component of a strong cybersecurity posture for government agencies, particularly those in the financial sector. Earlier this year, over 15 years of confidential data from the Internal Revenue Service was leaked as part of a ProPublica investigation.2 Additionally, for the first portion of 2020, financial firms experienced a 238% increase in cyber attacks.3 According to the purchase order, Plurilock will provide on-site residency professional services to support the government's data protection solutions. This latest contract aligns with Plurilock's stated goal to expand within the government and financial verticals. About SEWP The SEWP V program, launched by NASA in 2015, is the leading information technology (IT) contract vehicle, with government agencies spending $7.9 billion in fiscal 2020.4 Estimates anticipate that agencies will utilize SEWP V for $8.8 billion in contracted spending in fiscal 2021.5 The contract vehicle provides Plurilock with the opportunity to access downstream customers in the government sector. About Plurilock Plurilock provides identity-centric cybersecurity for today's workforces. The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division. Together, the Plurilock family of companies delivers persistent identity assurance with unmatched ease of use. For more information, visit https://www.plurilock.com or contact: Ian L. Paterson Chief Executive Officer ian@plurilock.com 416.800.1566 Roland Sartorius Chief Financial Officer roland.sartorius@plurilock.com Prit Singh Investor Relations prit.singh@plurilock.com 905.510.7636 Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") related to future events or Plurilock's future business, operations, and financial performance and condition. Forward-looking statements normally contain words like "will", "intend", "anticipate", "could", "should", "may", "might", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential", "project", "assume", "contemplate", "believe", "shall", "scheduled", and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances. Although management believes that the forward-looking statements herein are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Plurilock's business. Additional material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements herein include, without limitation, the impact of general economic conditions, the success of the Company in obtaining new or extended contracts or orders; the Company's ability to maintain existing customers or develop new customers; the Company's ability to successfully integrate acquisitions of other businesses and/or companies or to realize on the anticipated benefits thereof; and unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the control of Plurilock. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as at the date hereof, and Plurilock undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Information Form. They are otherwise disclosed in its filings with securities regulatory authorities available on SEDAR at www.sedar.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. https://www.irs.gov/about-irs https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/06/08/irs-commissioner-warns-of-prosecution-if-bombshell-tax-records-were-leaked-illegally-to-propublica/'sh=24ff11ea24aa https://www.cybertalk.org/2021/06/25/special-report-security-for-financial-firms-2021/ https://gov-acq.com/contracts/nasa-sewp-v-contract/ https://about.bgov.com/news/this-is-it-sewp-v-is-the-top-it-vehicle-in-fiscal-2020/ To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97325 Highlight: 4.1 g/t Palladium Equivalent over 24 meters, within 2.1 g/t Palladium Equivalent over 112 meters at Kaukua South, LK Project, Finland Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV: PDM) (FSE: 7N11) (OTC Pink: NKORF) ("Palladium One" or the "Company") is pleased to announce Kaukua South Hole LK21-081 which intersected 4.07 g/t Palladium Equivalent ("Pd_Eq") over 24 meters, within 2.08 g/t Pd_Eq over 112 meters, starting at 171.5 meters depth. This represents the highest-grade intercept over width that drilling has returned to date, at the Kaukua South zone of the LK Project in Finland (Table 1, Figure 1). In addition, down plunge drilling is successfully expanding higher grade core zones to depth as demonstrated by Hole LK21-080 which intersected 1.86 g/t Pd_Eq over 40.5 meters, including 2.95 g/t Pd_Eq over 3.0 meters from 229.5 meters depth. Multiple holes now demonstrate increasing grade and widths at depth. Derrick Weyrauch, President and CEO of Palladium One commented: "Our Kaukua South discovery continues to deliver excellent results and demonstrates potential for higher grade core zones within the Kaukua Area. We believe there are several other higher-grade core zones yet to be defined based on the significant number of drill targets still to be tested." Hole LK21-081 returned 234 gram*meters surpassing hole LK20-016, which returned 201 gram*meters (Table 1, Figures 1 and 2) reported on see news release October 22, 2021. These holes are part of two parallel higher grade, southwest plunging, core zones (Figure 2), or shoots at Kaukua South. A similar core zone occurs at the existing Kaukua deposit, where it occupies a linear depression in the footwall contact. These core zones may represent magma channels, within the marginal phase of the Koillismaa Mafic-Ultramafic Complex, that have thermally eroded the footwall rocks. Induced Polarization ("IP") surveys have proven very effective at targeting these higher-grade core zones, and two potential new zones have been identified to the west and east of the drill defined mineralization at Kaukua South (Figure 1), see news release July 7, 2021. Table 1. LK Project Kaukua South Drill Hole Results Hole From (m) To (m) Width (m) Pd_Eq g/t* Spot Cu_Eq g/t** Spot Au_Eq g/t** Pd g/t Pt g/t Au g/t Cu % Ni % Co ppm LK20-016 23.5 86.2 62.7 3.24 2.14 3.66 1.84 0.64 0.14 0.18 0.15 84 Inc. 47.5 66.0 18.5 4.23 2.81 4.82 2.51 0.86 0.18 0.22 0.17 84 LK21-079 156.5 179.5 23.0 1.01 0.64 1.09 0.16 0.04 0.09 0.11 0.15 91 Inc. 157.7 169.0 11.3 1.44 0.91 1.56 0.26 0.07 0.15 0.16 0.20 116 Lower Zone 229.5 270.0 40.5 1.86 1.22 2.10 0.77 0.27 0.10 0.16 0.15 77 Inc. 257.5 260.5 3.0 2.95 1.95 3.35 1.38 0.49 0.19 0.26 0.18 69 LK21-080 117.0 132.0 15.0 0.64 0.41 0.70 0.11 0.02 0.04 0.08 0.09 72 Lower Zone 271.4 274.0 2.6 1.02 0.66 1.13 0.33 0.13 0.03 0.09 0.11 82 LK21-081 85.0 148.5 63.5 0.65 0.41 0.69 0.09 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.11 81 Inc. 129.0 138.0 9.0 0.96 0.61 1.05 0.17 0.03 0.03 0.08 0.16 105 Lower Zone 171.5 283.5 112.0 2.08 1.37 2.35 0.93 0.33 0.10 0.16 0.16 78 Inc. 178.0 227.0 49.0 3.39 2.24 3.84 1.54 0.55 0.18 0.27 0.25 109 Inc. 202.6 227.0 24.5 4.07 2.70 4.64 1.98 0.70 0.18 0.31 0.27 104 Inc. 215.0 225.7 10.7 5.04 3.36 5.76 2.53 0.88 0.21 0.35 0.33 109 Inc. 221.1 222.5 1.4 7.36 4.92 8.43 3.90 1.36 0.21 0.40 0.49 162 LK21-082 93.5 115.6 22.1 0.73 0.46 0.79 0.11 0.04 0.05 0.09 0.11 81 Inc. 95.0 99.0 4.0 1.42 0.90 1.54 0.25 0.11 0.11 0.18 0.19 126 * Pd_Eq calculated using prices from the 2021 NI43-101 Haukiaho Mineral Resource Estimate; $1,600/oz Pd, $1,100/oz Pt, $1,650/oz Au, $3.50 Cu, and $7.50 Ni ** Spot Au_Eq and Cu_Eq is calculated for comparison only, using recent prices, $2,300/oz Pd, $1,000/oz Pt, $1,800/oz Au, $4.5/lb Cu, and $9.0/lb Ni. Grey Italicised results are previously released (see press release October 22, 2020). Figure 1. Historic and current drilling in the Kaukua and Western portion of the Kaukau South area having a drill data cut off date of September 4, 2021 (hole LK21-128), assays have been received for holes up to LK21-082, the rest are pending. Background is Induced Polarization ("IP") Chargeability. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6502/97365_44831fc23467bbfb_001full.jpg Figure 2. Kaukua South Long Section. Having a drill data cut off date of September 4, 2021 (hole LK21-128), assays have been received for holes up to LK21-082, the rest are pending. The long section covers only the western portion of Kaukua South which the Company is focused on bringing to an initial NI43-101 resource estimate. The long section is a vertical slice representing only the ~55 south dipping Lower Zone of Kaukua South. Intercepts are represented in both width (meters) and grade (Pd_Eq*) as well as gram*meters (grade*width). To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6502/97365_44831fc23467bbfb_002full.jpg Figure 3. Cross sections A and B through Kaukua South, looking west. To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6502/97365_44831fc23467bbfb_003full.jpg Palladium Equivalent Revised price assumptions - The Company is now calculating Palladium equivalent using US$1,600 per ounce for palladium, US$1,100 per ounce for platinum, US$1,650 per ounce for gold, US$3.50 per pound for copper, and US$7.50 per pound for nickel consistent with the calculation used in the Company's September 2021 NI 43-101 Haukiaho Resource Estimate. Spot Gold Equivalent Spot palladium and gold equivalents are calculated using recent spot prices for comparison purposes using US$2,300 per ounce for palladium, US$1,000 per ounce for platinum, US$1,800 per ounce for gold, US$4.5 per pound for copper, and US$9.0 per pound for nickel. Qualified Person The technical information in this release has been reviewed and verified by Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P. Geo., Vice President of Exploration and a director of the Company and the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Palladium One Palladium One Mining Inc. is an exploration company targeting district scale, platinum-group-element (PGE)-copper nickel deposits in Finland and Canada. Its flagship project is the Lantinen Koillismaa or LK Project, a palladium dominant platinum group element-copper-nickel project in north-central Finland, ranked by the Fraser Institute as one of the world's top countries for mineral exploration and development. Exploration at LK is focused on targeting disseminated sulfides along 38 kilometers of favorable basal contact and building on an established NI 43-101 open pit Mineral Resource. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Derrick Weyrauch" President & CEO, Director For further information contact: Derrick Weyrauch, President & CEO Email: info@palladiumoneinc.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This press release includes "forward-looking information" that is subject to a few assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. Statements regarding listing of the Company's common shares on the TSXV are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties normally incident to such events. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future events and that actual events or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements represent management's best judgment based on information currently available. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include regulatory actions and general business conditions. Such forward-looking information reflects the Company's views with respect to future events and is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those set out in the Company's annual information form dated April 27, 2021 and filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, except as required by law. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97365 This Was the World's First Published Study Assessing MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy as a Treatment for Addiction Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Awakn Life Sciences Corp., (NEO: AWKN) (OTCQB: AWKNF) (FSE: 954) (Awakn) a biotechnology company developing and delivering psychedelic therapeutics to treat addiction, announced today that it has acquired the exclusive rights to the data from the phase IIa Bristol Imperial MDMA in Alcoholism Study (BIMA) from Imperial College London, which has one of the world's leading psychedelics research centers. BIMA was an Open-label safety, tolerability and proof-of-concept study to investigate the role of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy in treating patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD). It was the first published study assessing MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy as a treatment for addiction. The results which were published in February 2021, indicated that MDMA has the potential to be more effective at treating AUD. With a 20% relapse rate within the first nine months, compared to 75% relapse rate with traditional treatments. This data will assist Awakn's progress by enabling a better design and more efficient execution of its clinical program. Awakn will now be able to accelerate its clinical research into a phase IIb randomized controlled trial (RCT) in the U.K. This is part of its strategy to secure marketing authorization for MDMA to treat AUD in both the U.K. and the European Union, a 400 million person territory. "Drinking behavior outcomes from the BIMA phase IIa study that Awakn just acquired indicates that MDMA has the potential to be more effective at treating AUD, with only a 20% relapse rate within the first nine months. This compares very favourably with the current best available traditional treatments for patients' post-detox with AUD," said Dr. Ben Sessa, Chief Medical Officer of Awakn and the principal investigator of the BIMA study. He continued, "This data acquisition is an important step along Awakn's path to providing lifesaving MDMA treatment to the millions of people currently suffering with AUD, offering better outcomes without the exorbitant rates of relapse." AUD is a serious and currently poorly treated disorder, affecting 5% of the global adult population. Treatment of AUD rates are low at 16%. About Awakn Life Sciences Corp. Awakn Life Sciences is a biotechnology company with clinical operations, developing and delivering psychedelic therapeutics (drugs and therapies to be used in combination) to better treat addiction. Awakn's team consists of world leading chemists, scientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who are developing and advancing the next generation of psychedelic drugs, therapies, and enabling technologies to treat addiction. Awakn will also deliver evidence backed psychedelic therapies for addiction in clinics in the U.K. and Europe and through licensing partnerships globally. www.awaknlifesciences.com | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook About Imperial College London Imperial College London is one of the world's leading universities. The College's 20,000 students and 8,000 staff are working to solve to the biggest challenges in science, medicine, engineering, and business. Imperial is the world's fifth most international university, according to Times Higher Education, with academic ties to more than 150 countries. Reuters named the College as the UK's most innovative university because of its exceptional entrepreneurial culture and ties to industry. Imperial staff, students and alumni are working round-the-clock to combat COVID-19. Imperial has nearly two thousand key workers, and is at the forefront of coronavirus epidemiology, virology, vaccine development and diagnostics. More than one thousand Imperial staff and students are volunteering to support the NHS. http://www.imperial.ac.uk/ Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Information This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, as defined in applicable securities laws (collectively referred to herein as "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events or the Company's future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "continues", "forecasts", "projects", "predicts", "intends", "anticipates", "targets" or "believes", or variations of, or the negatives of, such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, including statements relating to the proposed NEO listing, and the business of the Company. All forward-looking statements, including those herein are qualified by this cautionary statement. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the statements. There are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking information. These include: whether conditions to the listing on NEO will be satisfied; the business plans and strategies of the Company, the ability of the Company to comply with all applicable governmental regulations in a highly regulated business; the inherent risks in investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are engaged in activities currently considered illegal in some jurisdictions; changes in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; inconsistent public opinion and perception regarding the medical-use of psychedelic drugs; and regulatory or political change. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release or as of the date or dates specified in such statements. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For more information on the Company, investors are encouraged to review the Company's public filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. 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, other than as required by law. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities in the United States. The Company's and Awakn's securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. Investor Enquiries: KCSA Strategic Communications Valter Pinto / Tim Regan Phone: +1 (212) 896-1254 Awakn@KCSA.com Media Enquiries: America and Canada: KCSA Strategic Communications Anne Donohoe Adonohoe@KCSA.com Rest of World: ROAD Communications Paul Jarman / Anna Ramsey Awakn@roadcommunications.co.uk To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97351 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Patriot Battery Metals Inc. (the "Company" or "Patriot") (CSE:PMET) (OTCQB:RGDCF) (FSE:R9GA) is pleased to announce it has collared the first drill hole of its inaugural drill program at the Corvette-FCI Property (the "Property"), located in the James Bay Region of Quebec (announced Sept 16, 2021). The program is focused on the CV5-6 Spodumene Pegmatites, part of the more than 25 km long CV Lithium Trend, as well as the core area of the more than 10 km long Maven Copper-Gold-Silver Trend. Blair Way, Company President and Director, comments: "The teams on site have done a great job setting up and collaring this first drill hole so efficiently. I'm very pleased at how well organized the entire setup was, including the off-road and remote expediting services, utilizing helicopter support. The teams are doing a fantastic job and it is great seeing the core coming out of the ground. I look forward to learning more about this lithium trend over the coming weeks and the copper trend after that." This drill program marks the first drill testing to date along these two highly prospective trends as well as the first drill program by the Company on the Property to date. This drill program will be comprised of 15 to 20 drill holes for a total of approximately 2,000 m of NQ size coring. Approximately 1/3rd of the drill meterage is expected to target the CV Lithium Trend and the remaining 2/3rd focused on the Maven Cu-Au-Ag Trend. Forage Fusion Drilling Ltd. of Hawkesbury, ON, is contracted to complete the diamond drilling with Dahrouge Geological Consulting Ltd. of Edmonton managing the program. The CV Lithium Trend is an emerging spodumene pegmatite district discovered by the Company in 2017 and spans the FCI West, FCI East, and Corvette claim blocks. The core area includes an approximate 2 km long corridor of numerous spodumene pegmatite occurrences, highlighted by the CV5 Pegmatite - a large (~220 m long and 20-40 m wide), well-mineralized outcrop where eight samples collected average 3.00% Li2O and 154 ppm Ta2O5, including a peak assay of 4.06% Li2O and 564 ppm Ta2O5. The high number of well-mineralized pegmatites in this core area of the trend indicates a strong potential for a series of relatively closely spaced/stacked, sub-parallel, and sizable spodumene-bearing pegmatite bodies, with significant lateral and depth extent, to be present. The program's initial series of drill holes will test at depth the CV5 and CV6 spodumene pegmatites and will mark the first ever drill testing of the CV Lithium Trend to date. The Company notes that it has developed a COVID Management Plan for the program and will carry out its field programs while adhering to all federal, provincial, and regional restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mineral exploration has been recognized as an essential service in Canada and the Province of Quebec. Qualified Person Darren L. Smith, M.Sc., P. Geo., Vice President of Exploration for the Company and Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, supervised the preparation of the technical information in this news release. About Patriot Battery Metals Inc. Patriot Battery Metals Inc. is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of mineral projects containing battery, base and precious metals. The Company's flagship assets are the wholly owned Corvette Property and the FCI Property (held under Option from O3 Mining Inc.) located in the James Bay Region of Quebec, and the 100% owned Freeman Creek Gold Property, located in Idaho, USA. The Corvette-FCI Property includes the wholly owned Corvette claim block, and the FCI East and West claim blocks held under Option from O3 Mining Inc. The claim blocks are contiguous, and host significant gold-silver-copper-PGE-lithium potential highlighted by the Golden Gap Prospect with grab samples of 3.1 to 108.9 g/t Au from outcrop and 10.5 g/t Au over 7 m in drill hole, the Elsass and Lorraine prospects with 8.15% Cu, 1.33 g/t Au, and 171 g/t Ag in outcrop, and the CV1 Pegmatite Prospect with 2.28% Li2O over 6 m in channel. The 100% owned Freeman Creek Gold Property hosts two major advanced targets - the Gold Dyke Prospect with a 2020 drill hole intersection of 4.11 g/t Au and 33.0 g/t Ag over 12 m, and the Carmen Creek Prospect with surface sample results including 25.5 g/t Au, 159 g/t Ag, and 9.75% Cu. In addition, the Company holds the Pontax Lithium-Gold Property, QC; the Golden Silica Property, BC; and the Hidden Lake Lithium Property, NWT, where the Company maintains a 40% interest, as well as several other assets in Canada. For further information, please contact us at info@patriotbatterymetals.com Tel: +1 (778) 945-2950 , or visit www.patriotbatterymetals.com. On Behalf of the Board of Directors, "BLAIR WAY" Blair Way, President & Director "ADRIAN LAMOUREUX" Adrian Lamoureux, CEO & Director Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning our plans, intentions, and expectations, which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "expects" and similar expressions. The Company cautions readers that forward-looking statements, including without limitation those relating to the Company's future operations and business prospects, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release SOURCE: Patriot Battery Metals Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665201/Patriot-Battery-Metals-Collars-First-Drill-Hole-on-the-Corvette-FCI-Property-James-Bay-Region-Quebec-Canada VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / FinCanna Capital Corp. ("FinCanna") (CSE:CALI)(OTCQB:FNNZF), an investment company for the U.S. licensed cannabis industry is pleased to announce growing demand and onboarding of highly regarded women led cannabis brands for its investee company QVI, Inc. doing business as "The Galley", a cannabis infused product manufacturer located in Sonoma County, California. FinCanna previously announced that it signed a binding Letter of Intent to increase its investment to 100% ownership of QVI Inc Annie Holman, Founder and CEO of QVI Inc. stated, "We are thrilled to be the go-to co-manufacturer for so many women led cannabis brands. Firstly, women led cannabis businesses represent a major segment of the industry and are extremely valuable to us as we grow our business. And secondly, they are essential participants and leaders in creating a healthy and thriving industry across the state. Additionally, women are the drivers behind some of the best brands on the market. Sisters unite!" Women-led Galley client brands include: Sonder, Faun Chapin, CEO of Sonder said, "Sonder is a labour of love a reflection of lives spent as makers who seek to delight and inspire a sense of wonder in the world much like most of the women I know in the cannabis industry." Professor Snooks, Elena Du Charme, CEO of Professor Snook said, "Annie is Professor Snook's biggest supporter, not to mention great fun to work with. The Galley's blend of business and brand nurturing is a wonderful feminine leadership quality." Green Bee Botanicals, Bridget May, founder, CEO of Green Bee Botanicals said "There are many things we love about working in the cannabis space - like getting to work with such an incredibly healing plant - but above all it's the support, camaraderie and genuine collaboration with other women here that sustains us. The reason we're thriving is entirely because of the guidance, mentorship and funding from women, and we couldn't be more grateful." Bad Mommy, Lalita Khosla, CEO of Bad Mommy said, "While we can't claim that imbibing delicious, high quality, low potency edibles solves every problem, it sure takes the edge off. Working with Annie is connective and supportive for women in the industry, which is essential." Potli, Felicity Chen, CEO of Potli said, "Our sriracha is an ode to a cult favorite Vietnamese hot sauce which always seems to sneak its way into nearly any meal we eat. it's spicy and nano-emulsified with 100mg of THC." Laurie & Mary Jane is an award-winning, family-owned, and women-led edible company, their sacred mission: "to make the most delicious, reliable, and effective cannabis edibles." From organic, fair-trade chocolate to infused, full-spectrum coconut oil, you can taste the quality of ingredients in every bite. House of Saka are makers of Luxury Infused Beverages, "Vinfusions", that have been carefully crafted to satisfy even the most discerning of palates. Andriyko Herchak, CEO of FinCanna Capital said, "Annie continues to attract great clients for the Galley. It's no surprise that women-led brands would be attracted to The Galley as Annie's charisma and leadership stand out. And equally important, The Galley delivers best in class service and production - top to bottom." QVI's 8,300 sq. ft. state of the art co-manufacturing facility located in Santa Rosa CA, built to FDA and CDPH standards and has been fully operational since July 2020. QVI's immediate goal is to become the premier contract cannabis manufacturer in California, the largest single market in North America and, upon success, to license products nationally and globally. The legal U.S. cannabis market is expected to reach more than US$41 billion in annual sales by 2025 with California, the single largest market in North America, representing an estimated 20% market share or US$8.2 billion. (New Frontier Data) About FinCanna Capital Corp. FinCanna is an investment company that provides growth capital to rapidly emerging private companies operating in the licensed U.S cannabis industry. FinCanna is focused on delivering high impact returns to its shareholders by way of a strategically diversified investment portfolio. For additional information visit www.fincannacapital.com and FinCanna's profile at www.sedar.com About QVI QVI Inc, which stands for Quality, Value and Integrity, doing business as "The Galley", is an 8,300 sq. ft. state of the art cannabis-infused co-manufacturing facility is built to FDA and CDPH standards located in Santa Rosa CA. "The Galley" has been fully operational since June 2020 and continues to aggressively add to its book of business of cannabis brand manufacturing clients. The company attributes the acceleration of customer demand from a growing roster of in-state and out-of-state brands to its automated manufacturing expertise, superior production quality and its "one stop shop" capability to produce virtually all high-value cannabis products including, Edibles, Topicals, Tinctures, Chocolate, Hard Candies, Gummies and Beverages under one roof. Additionally, its outstanding R&D team has the ability to assist brands in launching not only new individual products but whole new product lines. The Galley's operational design also positions the business to rapidly scale production as demand escalates. For more information about "The Galley" please visit thegalleysr.com QVI's immediate goal is to become the premier contract manufacturer in California, the largest single market in North America and, upon success, to license products nationally and globally. FinCanna Capital Corp. Andriyko Herchak, CEO & Director Investor Relations: Arlen Hansen Kin Communications 1-866-684-6730 CALI@kincommunications.com Forward-Looking Information Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements about the potential acquisition of 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of QVI; market for, and effectiveness of, QVI products or services, the ability of QVI to commence and expand operations and generate sales, revenues profits and positive cashflows, the operating capacity of QVI's facility, and FinCanna's ability to earn and realize revenues from its investee companies. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the risks that the acquisition of 100 % of QVI may not complete as currently anticipated, or at all; and risks identified in the CSE listing statement available at www.SEDAR.com and other reports and filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made, and the respective companies undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. SOURCE: FinCanna Capital Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665244/FinCanna-Portfolio-Company-QVI-Inc-Proud-of-Expanding-Client-Roster-of-Women-Led-Cannabis-Brands COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientists receive prestigious prize from the Novo Nordisk Foundation in recognition of their decades-long tremendous research and development efforts and impact on people's lives and society. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is awarding the Novo Nordisk Prize to pioneering researchers Professor Katalin Kariko, Professor Drew Weissman, Professor Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci for their scientific discoveries and development, which led to the approval of the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. The scientists have played instrumental roles in basic research and the development of the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech, which has proven 95% effective against COVID-19 and has become a decisive factor in overcoming the pandemic. By the end of the year, more than 1 billion people worldwide will have been vaccinated with the vaccine. The mRNA technology on which the vaccine is based also holds promise for future vaccines and treatments for a wide range of diseases, including cancer and genetic diseases. "With the awarding of this Prize, we pay tribute to the people behind one of the most exceptional achievements of our time - in which scientific discoveries through the past two decades have led to the development of a vaccine with incredible speed. The mRNA vaccines have already prevented thousands of COVID-19 related deaths among people all over the world," says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Jrgen Frkir, Chair of the scientific committee that awards the Novo Nordisk Prize, says: "The awarding of the Prize underlines Louis Pasteur's famous words that 'chance favours the prepared mind'. The decades-long dedicated work of these four scientists in the field of mRNA significantly contributed to a well-tolerated and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in spring 2020, Ugur Sahin und Ozlem Tureci realized immediately that the technology could create the vaccine that could save humanity from the grip of the pandemic. With their unique scientific contributions and the responsible entrepreneurship, the first mRNA-based vaccine was born. It opened the door to a new and revolutionary technology - a completely new type of vaccine that could turn life-threatening diseases upside down over the coming years." The Novo Nordisk Prize is awarded to honour active scientists who have provided outstanding contributions to advance medical science to benefit people's lives. The Prize is accompanied by DKK 5 million. Pioneering forces Professor Katalin Kariko, Senior Vice President at BioNTech and Adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Drew Weissman, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research at the Perelman School of Medicine, have been pioneering forces for more than a decade in discovering a nucleoside-modified form of mRNA. Professor Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci have made scientific and technological breakthroughs in the past two decades, originally designed to unlock the full potential of this molecule for the development of mRNA-based cancer vaccines. Their pioneering work includes the discovery of modifications in the mRNA backbone that improve the amount and duration of mRNA-encoded protein production in human cells and the discovery of lipid envelopes that improve the potency and immunogenicity of mRNA vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine, developed in the laboratories at BioNTech's headquarters in Mainz, Germany, is based on decades of research and achieves its high efficacy and good tolerability by combining the discoveries of the four scientists. The vaccine was approved by several health authorities worldwide, including UK, USA and EU, within an unprecedented 8-month period since WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. Recipients: science can make a difference Katalin Kariko says: "It is a great honour to receive the Novo Nordisk Prize with my colleagues Drew Weissman, Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin. Sharing the spotlight with them makes this Prize extra special. As a result of our joint scientific efforts over many years, a safe and very effective COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was developed." Drew Weissman says: "I would like to thank my co-recipients and all of the scientists involved in mRNA, LNP, and basic science research that has made the vaccines possible." Ugur Sahin says: "The Prize represents what is key in the research and development of breakthrough technologies. It emphasizes that various discoveries and many inventions are needed to develop a new class of drugs powerful enough to fight serious diseases. The collaboration during the pandemic between scientists, organizations and companies around the world and the lessons learned are an excellent basis for the development of future innovations to improve people's health." Ozlem Tureci says: "The development of the first mRNA-based vaccine has shown that science can make a difference. It also underlines that decades-long basic research by scientists around the world and billions of investments are necessary to invent and optimize technologies that can improve the lives of many. I would like to thank the co-recipients of the Prize as well as all scientists who dedicate their work to find better ways of preventing and addressing diseases." The four researchers are receiving the 2022 Novo Nordisk Prize. The Novo Nordisk Foundation has decided to advance the announcement of the 2022 Prize in recognition of the importance and impact of the work of the four recipients in the current pandemic. The recipients will officially receive the Prize at a ceremony in Copenhagen, Denmark on 1 April 2022. Years of effort The story of the mRNA technology and development of the vaccines is also the story of dedication, perseverance, reactivity and exceptional entrepreneurial skills. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman worked together for many years at the University of Pennsylvania. Convinced of the potential of mRNA therapies, they overcame widespread scepticism and many years of setbacks and developed the nucleoside-modified mRNA technology that both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna later used in developing their COVID-19 vaccines. The key discovery that the use of nucleoside modifications suppresses recognition of mRNA by the innate immune system, published in 2005, was a major step forward. Initially, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman were most interested in using this technology for the in vivo delivery of therapeutic proteins. However, as the technology showed more promise, interest in other applications, including vaccines, grew. Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci explored how mRNA vaccines could be improved to become potent enough to trigger effective immune responses capable of shrinking existing cancer masses. Through years of research, they solved the fundamental mRNA-associated problem of low and short-lived protein production in a different way than Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Prior to founding their company, they discovered several modifications of the mRNA backbone that, when combined, strongly improved the amount and duration of mRNA-encoded protein production in human cells. With the results of this work first published in 2006, they emerged as winners of a nationwide competition of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research that same year, which led them to found their company BioNTech in 2008. In 2013, BioNTech invited Katalin Kariko to give a lecture in Mainz, Germany about her patented technology for making non-inflammatory mRNA. A scientist at heart, Ugur Sahin was impressed by the technique and, as an entrepreneur, he appreciated its vast potential. Realizing the potential of combining their efforts, the like-minded scientists decided to work together. Katalin Kariko joined BioNTech as Vice President in 2013 to support the company's nucleoside-modified mRNA work. In 2014, they jointly published a landmark review on the development of mRNA drugs that serves as a guide for many mRNA researchers even today. When the pandemic was declared in 2020, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, in agreement with the BioNTech management, initiated Project Lightspeed, BioNTech's effort to accelerate the rapid development and distribution of a vaccine in collaboration with Pfizer. Ozlem Tureci led the clinical development of Project Lightspeed, a historic achievement completed in less than 1 year. Today, more than 1.7 billion doses of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been delivered worldwide, showcasing what can be achieved by bridging science and technology. About Katalin Kariko Born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary 1982: PhD, University of Szeged 1989: Research Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania 2005: Key discovery with Drew Weissman on modifying the mRNA to be suitable for disease treatment 2006: Co-founder and CEO of RNARx 2013: Vice President, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals 2019: Senior Vice President, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals 2021: Adjunct Professor, University of Pennsylvania About Drew Weissman Born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA 1987: MD, PhD, Boston University 1987: Residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center 1990: Fellowship at the NIAID/NIH under the supervision of Anthony Fauci 1997: Professor, University of Pennsylvania 2005: Key discovery with Katalin Kariko on modifying the mRNA to be suitable for disease treatment 2006: Co-founder of RNARx About Ugur Sahin Born 1965 in Iskenderun, Turkey 1990: MD, University of Cologne 1992: Resident, Saarland University Medical Center and research group leader 2000: Research group leader, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2001: Co-founder, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals 2006: Full Professor, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2006: Key discoveries for optimizing backbone elements enabling the development of potent mRNA vaccines 2008: Co-founder and CEO, BioNTech, Biopharmaceutical New Technologies 2015: Key innovation with Ozlem Tureci pioneering the development of individualized mRNA cancer vaccines 2016: Key discovery of highly potent DC targeting lipid enveloped mRNA vaccines 2020: Development of the first mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19 About Ozlem Tureci Born in 1967 in Siegen, Germany 1992: MD, Faculty of Medicine of Saarland University 1992: Junior resident, Saarland University 1993: Research group leader, Saarland University 2000: Research group leader, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2001: Co-founder and CEO, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals Since 2002: Associate Professor/Lecturer ("Privatdozent"), University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2006: Key discoveries with Ugur Sahin for optimizing backbone elements enabling the development of potent mRNA vaccines 2008: Co-founder and CMO, BioNTech, Biopharmaceutical New Technologies 2015: Key innovation with Ugur Sahin pioneering the development of individualized mRNA cancer vaccines 2016: Key discovery of highly potent DC targeting lipid enveloped mRNA vaccines 2020: Development of the first mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19 About the Novo Nordisk Prize The Novo Nordisk Prize recognizes active scientists who has provided outstanding international contributions to advance medical science to benefit people's lives. The Prize is awarded annually and is intended to further support biomedical research in Europe. The Prize is accompanied by DKK 5 million (672,000) and comprises a DKK 4.5 million (605,000) research grant and a personal award of DKK 0.5 million (67,000). The Foundation will award an additional DKK 0.5 million for hosting an international symposium within the recipient's field(s) of research. About the Novo Nordisk Foundation The Novo Nordisk Foundation is an independent Danish foundation with corporate interests. It has two objectives: 1) to provide a stable basis for the commercial and research activities of the companies in the Novo Group; and 2) to support scientific, humanitarian and social causes. The vision of the Foundation is to contribute significantly to research and development that improves the lives of people and the sustainability of society. Since 2010, the Foundation has donated more than DKK 30 billion (4 billion), primarily for research at public institutions and hospitals in Denmark and the other Nordic countries as well as research-based treatment and prevention of diabetes. Read more at www.novonordiskfonden.dk/en. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - PharmaDrug Inc. (CSE: PHRX) (OTC Pink: LMLLF) ("PharmaDrug" or the "Company") a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of controlled-substances and natural medicines such as psychedelics, cannabis and naturally-derived approved drugs, is pleased to announce that its Super Smart division is launching its own premium blend of functional mushrooms. MycoWeRx Infinite will initially debut for sale in the United States before also being made available through Super Smart's ecommerce platform in Europe. The first commercial lot of product has already been manufactured and the Company expects to start shipping orders mid-October. MycoWeRx Infinite will be positioned as a premium brand in a rapidly growing marketplace that is primarily occupied by high price, low potency functional mushroom products. Based on evolving consumer trends in the health supplements space, the Company understands that health-conscious individuals are often reluctant to take large numbers of pills, several times per day as part of their health regimen. For this reason, the Company's initial product release has been formulated as a once a day complete 6 functional mushroom dose in one pill that does not compromise on the quantity of active ingredients. To accomplish this, high potency concentrates, prepared only from the mushroom fruit body are processed using an optimized hot water and/or hot water/alcohol extraction. Our approach compares favorably to many competing products that contain only mushroom mycelium (roots of the mushroom) which are often contaminated with the grain materials that are artificially grown on. The MycoWeRx line only uses mushroom fruit bodies cultivated from a mushroom's natural substrate to ensure maximum potency in every capsule. The focus of the brand will be on product transparency and rigorously vetted research. Each MycoWeRx package will contain a QR code that will link consumers to the corresponding Certificate of Analysis for their particular product lot as well as peer reviewed scientific literature that supports the product's unique formulation. Information on the product can been seen by scrolling down on the homepage of the revamped U.S. site www.slimwinkel.com. "We are extremely excited to be launching our new line of functional mushrooms," Said Dr. Paul Van Slyke, Chief Scientific Officer of PharmaDrug. "I have personally been a mushroom forager and user for over 20 years. My desire has always been to seek products that are closest to what I can forage for myself in nature. Our ingredients and quantities will always be clearly defined on the label so that consumers can make the best, informed decisions about their health and wellness journey." Super Smart Update Super Smart hired a Director of E-commerce in June and began working on an overhaul of the U.S. website in July while refining the Slim Winkel brand and message. In the meantime, the company has been building traffic, developing its social media network, and increasing its followers. The cornerstone of the revamped strategy will focus on the Slim MycoWeRx brand but will also be augmented with researched and curated bundles from several suppliers to meet the suggested requirements of specific users. The Company has also been engaging influencers and micro influencers to champion both the Slim MycoWeRx brand and the Slim Winkel website. PharmaDrug's executive team flew to The Netherlands to visit the current store in Tiel as well as several locations in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam in August. Management was able to visit over 30 stores, including several stores currently for sale. The conclusion was that the retail market is still under tremendous pressure. The cost of purchasing existing stores is prohibitive and the building of greenfield locations in a competitive environment is not economically viable, especially since the market is relatively small and not currently exhibiting any signs of significant growth. Super Smart will continue with the European online effort and will undertake to overhaul the site and develop a strategy to reflect the distinct market within North America by adapting an e-commerce only model. In formulating this decision, management met with director of e-commerce candidates with direct European branding expertise. Future focus will be on a launch of a Slim psilocybin product for The Netherlands complemented by a functional mushroom offering in all of Europe including the Slim functional products once they are established in the United States. About PharmaDrug Inc. PharmaDrug is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of controlled-substances and natural medicines such as psychedelics, cannabis and naturally-derived approved drugs. The Company owns 100% of Pharmadrug Production GmbH, a German medical cannabis distributor, with a Schedule I European Union narcotics license and German EuGMP certification allowing for the importation and distribution of medical cannabis to pharmacies in Germany and throughout the EU. The Company also owns 100% of Super Smart, a Dutch company building a modern adult use psychedelic retail business with an elevated and educational focus. PharmaDrug recently acquired Sairiyo Therapeutics, a biotech company that specializes in researching and reformulating established natural medicines with a goal of bringing them through regulatory and research driven clinical trials. For further information, please contact: Daniel Cohen, Chairman and CEO dcohen@pharmadrug.co (647) 202-1824 Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information: THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED NOR DOES IT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results of the Company. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be correct. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. The Company's securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States or "U.S. Persons", as such term is defined in Regulations under the U.S. Securities Act, absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein, such as, but not limited to dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; the ability to locate additional supply of medical cannabis, owning interests in companies or projects that are engaged in activities currently considered illegal under United States federal law; changes in laws; limited operating history, reliance on management, requirements for additional financing, competition, hindering market growth; regulatory and political change. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97359 Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - White Metal Resources Corp. (TSXV: WHM) (FRA: CGK1) (OTC Pink: TNMLF) ("White Metal" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has discovered three new gold zones and has assay results for five diamond drill holes from the Phase 2 drilling program from its Flagship Tower Stock Gold Project (the "Project" or "Property"). The first new gold zone, named 110 Zone, was drilled to test a high priority DasVision 3D-IP geophysical target, and the second and third new gold zones, named Star Zone and C & M Zone, were found at surface as part of the ongoing prospecting and mapping program. The Phase 2 drilling program totalled 3,760 m in 20 drill holes (TM-21-98 to 117) with 11 drill holes reported to date. Highlights Successfully extended Bench Zone down-dip to the southwest. A Zone: 3.94 g/t Au over 23.8 m (from 3.7 m). New drilling discovery 110 Zone: 0.44 g/t Au over 141.50 m including 1.02 g/t Au over 7.5 m. New Surface Discoveries Star Zone: 24 rock grab samples, taken over 450-m-long by 250-m-wide area, ranging from 8 ppb to 2.83 g/t Au, with 14 of the 24 samples assaying over 0.1 g/t Au. C & M Zone: two rock grab samples assayed 5.27 g/t and 2.33 g/t Au. Popa Zone: two rock grab samples, taken over a 10-square-metre area, assayed 3.05 g/t and 2.94 g/t Au. Michael Stares, President and CEO of White Metal, commented, "We are extremely pleased with the progress of our exploration to date. Yet again we have demonstrated, through drilling and our ongoing prospecting and mapping program, that there are still lots of surprises at the Tower Stock Gold Project. With only one year of exploration on the Property we have made several new discoveries such as the Ellen and 110 Zones and have expanded the Bench and D Zones. Prospecting, mapping and soil sampling have proven very effective with a number of additional untested surface areas discovered including the C & M Zone, Star Zone and Popa Zone. We look forward to receiving the results of the remaining drill core assays, that includes the extension drilling of the Ellen Zone, the 04-36 Zone, and an untested IP anomaly in the area to the south of the 04-36 Zone. The Tower Stock Gold Project, unique due to its excellent location, great infrastructure and impressive geology, has delivered exceptional gold grades over wide intervals, including some very exciting high-grade gold intercepts." PHASE 2 DIAMOND DRILLING The Phase 2 diamond drilling program was completed in mid-September. A summary of the latest results is provided in Table 1. A summary of previously announced results is provided in Table 2 (see news release dated August 24, 2021). Table 1. Summary of the latest drill core assay results, Phase 2 diamond drilling. Hole ID From (m) To (m) *Interval (m) Au (g/t) Au (ppb) Zone TM-21-101 68.00 138.50 70.50 0.27 271 Between T & Ellen incl 71.00 77.00 6.00 0.51 508 TM-21-102 47.00 60.50 13.50 0.73 734 TM-21-103 81.50 129.50 48.00 0.61 607 incl 105.50 116.00 10.50 1.52 1515 TM-21-104 no significant intervals Bench TM-21-105 188.00 210.50 22.50 0.75 750 incl 200.00 210.50 10.50 1.11 1110 TM-21-106 80.00 230.00 150.00 0.56 563 incl 171.50 230.00 58.50 1.01 1012 incl 215.00 230.00 15.00 1.74 1741 TM-21-107 143.00 192.50 49.50 0.84 842 incl 143.00 164.00 21.00 1.29 1292 TM-21-108 3.70 59.00 55.40 1.81 1805 A Zone incl 3.70 27.50 23.80 3.94 3943 incl 8.00 15.50 7.50 8.77 8774 TM-21-110 2.50 54.50 52.00 0.75 754 110 Zone incl 47.00 54.50 7.50 1.02 1021 *Drill hole intervals are not true widths and are being reported as drill core lengths. Table 2. Summary of previously released drill core assay results, Phase 2 diamond drilling. Hole ID From (m) To (m) *Interval (m) Au (g/t) Au (ppb) Zone TM-21-98 72.50 107.00 34.50 1.11 1111 Ellen incl 86.00 93.50 7.50 2.33 2326 and 159.50 165.50 6.00 1.02 1023 TM-21-99 no significant intervals TM-21-100 23.00 113.00 90.00 1.23 1233 incl 23.00 33.50 10.50 3.68 3683 incl 51.50 65.00 13.50 1.56 1557 incl 92.00 113.00 21.00 2.75 2753 *Drill hole intervals are not true widths and are being reported as drill core lengths. Bench Zone Holes TM-21-105,106,107 : three holes designed to test the down-dip extension of the central portion of the Bench Zone, over a strike length of 150 metres (Figure 1). Successful in extending the zone 40 m to 50 m to the southwest with TM-21-105 and TM-21-106 returning significant widths of gold mineralization between 150 m and 169.5 m, including a number of zones with >1.0 g/t Au. This includes an as yet unnamed new zone, about 150 m below surface, intersected by TM-21-106 that returned 1.01 g/t Au over 58.50 m and remains open at depth. A Zone Hole TM-21-108 : designed to test for the east extension of the main A Zone horizon (Figure 1). Successful in intersecting the zone, returning 3.94 g/t Au over 23.8 m, including 8.77 g/t Au over 7.5 m, starting from surface (3.7 m). Although the A Zone was previously worked by Inco Limited and Noranda Exploration Inc., only sparse work and data was reported. 110 Zone Hole TM-21-110 : designed to test a high priority DasVision 3D-IP chargeability anomaly, approximately 250 m southeast of the south extent of the Bench Zone (Figure 1). Successful targeting, resulting in the discovery of a new gold zone. Entire length of the hole (143.0 m) returned anomalous gold (average 0.44 g/t Au) with the main part of the zone returning 0.75 g/t Au over 52.0 m (from 2.5 m), including 1.02 g/t Au over 7.5 m (from 47.0 m). It should be noted that the style of mineralization in the 110 Zone is unlike any mineralization found on the Property to date in that it is wholly-hosted within an intrusive monzonite body with less than 1% pyrite and trace chalcopyrite in quartz-carbonate fractures; the majority of known gold mineralization is hosted by altered metavolcanic rocks. Figure 1. Compilation map showing the location of drill hole collars and traces, target IP-Resistivity anomalies, and approximate locations of known gold zones. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5364/97366_58a28e8e54e76899_004full.jpg PROSPECTING AND MAPPING C & M Zone Located 720 m east of the 110 Zone discovery area, two surface samples from this newly-discovered zone, collected near one another, returned 2.33 g/t and 5.27 g/t Au (Figure 2). This zone is hosted within fractured monzonite with less than 1% pyrite and trace chalcopyrite. Its similarity with the 110 Zone suggests a much larger target region, interpreted to be over 300 m across. The area has very poor exposure with 95% overburden - drilling is planned for this area. Star Zone Located 600 m to the west of the 04-36 Zone, in a previously unmapped area, this newly-discovered zone hosts widespread gold mineralization with anomalous gold concentrations ranging from 86 ppb to 2.8 g/t Au over a minimum strike length of 400 m and up to 100 m wide (Figure 2). Mineralization is hosted within an extensive zone of felsic pyroclastic volcanic rocks exhibiting extensive and pervasive hydrothermal alteration plus well-developed fracturing and deformation. This area of widespread anomalous gold mineralization shares similarities with the 04-36 Zone and if connected presents an exploration target with as much as 600 m of strike length. Popa Zone Located about 700 m northeast of the eastern edge of the Bench Zone, two rock grab samples, taken over a 10-square-metre area, assayed 3.05 g/t and 2.94 g/t Au (Figure 2). This zone is hosted within fractured monzonite with 1%-3% pyrite and located in an area largely covered by overburden. The Company is currently trenching this area to get a better understanding of the extent and controls on gold mineralization. Figure 2. Compilation map showing the location of previously identified and newly-discovered gold zones, locations of drill hole collars and traces, and gold assay results from rock grab samples. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5364/97366_58a28e8e54e76899_005full.jpg To view drill hole sections and additional Project information and maps please visit the White Metal website and slide show at https://www.whitemetalres.com/tower-stock-au.html. A Qualified Person, as described by NI 43-101, has not done sufficient enough work to verify the historical assay results and technical information reported herein. Rock grab samples are selective samples by nature and as such are not necessarily representative of mineralization hosted across the Property. Sample Analysis Company QA/QC standards and blanks were inserted into the sample stream for all sample types (surface rock grab samples and half drill core samples) and submitted for analysis by Activation Laboratories Ltd. (Actlabs) in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Samples were transported under the direct supervision of senior White Metal personnel and delivered from the Property to the laboratory receiving facilities. Samples were analyzed for Au by Fire Assay with an AA finish and Au - Fire Assay with Gravimetric finish. Actlabs is an independent commercial laboratory that is ISO 9001 certified and ISO 17025 accredited. Qualified Person Technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Scott Jobin-Bevans (P.Geo.), Vice President Exploration and a Director of White Metal, who is a Qualified Person under the definitions established by NI 43-101. About White Metal Resources Corp. White Metal Resources Corp. 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. On behalf of the Board of Directors "Michael Stares" President & CEO For further information contact: Michael Stares President & CEO White Metal Resources Corp. 684 Squier Street Thunder Bay, ON P7B 4A8 Phone: +1 (807) 358-2420 Nancy Massicotte Investor Relations White Metal Resources Corp. Phone: +1 (604) 507-3377 TF: +1 (866) 503-3377 Email: ir@whitemetalres.com Thomas Do Investor Relations Manager CHF Capital Markets Phone: +1 (416) 868-1079 x 232 Email: thomas@chfir.com 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/97366 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Joe Biden announced that the United States is buying an additional half a billion Pfizer vaccines to donate to low and lower-middle income countries around the world. Speaking at Virtual Global Covid-19 Summit Wednesday, Biden also announced the launch of the EU-U.S. vaccine partnership to work more closely with with its partners on expanding global vaccinations. U.S. Secretary of State Blinken will be convening foreign ministers later this year to check on collective progress. Biden proposed a second high-level virtual Covid summit in the first quarter of 2022. 'We're working with partner nations, pharmaceutical companies, and other manufacturers to increase their own capacity and capability to produce and manufacture safe and highly effective vaccines in their own countries,' Biden told leaders. He cited the U.S Government's Quad partnership with India, Japan, and Australia, which is on track to help produce at least 1 billion vaccine doses in India to boost the global supply by the end of 2022. 'And we're providing financing and helping strengthen manufacturing in South Africa and produce more than 500 million doses of J&J in Africa, for Africa next year,' Biden added. He also announced that the United States is providing an additional $370 million to support administering these shots and delivery globally. Washington will be providing more than $380 million to assist in the Global Vaccine Alliance - GAVI - to further facilitate vaccine distribution in regions with the greatest need. Addressing the Summit, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the U.S. is contributing at least $250 million to establish a new Global Health Security Financial Intermediary Fund at the World Bank to coalesce resources for pandemic preparedness. The EU and the United States, through the European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority, and the Department of Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, will expedite the development of new vaccines and make recommendations on enhancing the world's capacity to deliver these vaccines in real time. At the summit, which brought together heads of state and leaders from more than 100 countries online, the European Union pledged to donate more than 500 million doses of vaccine. With 2785 new coronavirus casualties reporting on Wednesday, the U.S. total has increased to 681,222, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. 135611 additional cases took the national Covid infection toll to 42,547,004. The number of people hospitalized in the country has declined to 91,189, according to data compiled by New York Times. It marks 10 percent decrease within a fortnight. 32,947,854 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country. 1,775,075 Covid tests were conducted among Americans Wednesday. As per the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 182,387,840 people in the United States, or 54.9 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. This includes 83 percent of people above 65. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX PFIZER-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de LONDON (dpa-AFX) - RedHill Biopharma Ltd. (RDHL), a specialty biopharmaceutical company, announced Thursday the settlement of Movantik patent litigation with Aurobindo Pharma USA, Inc. The company noted that RedHill Biopharma Inc., AstraZeneca AB and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP and Nektar Therapeutics have entered into a settlement and license agreement with Aurobindo resolving their patent litigation in the U.S. This was in response to Aurobindo's Abbreviated New Drug Application or ANDA seeking approval by the US. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic version of Movantik (naloxegol). RedHill acquired the global rights to Movantik, excluding Europe and Canada, from AstraZeneca in April 2020. Under the settlement deal terms, Aurobindo may not sell a generic version of Movantik in the U.S. until April 1, 2031, subject to U.S. FDA approval, or earlier under certain circumstances. The settlement agreement with Aurobindo brings closure to all presently pending Movantik patent litigation brought pursuant to The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act. The earliest licensed entry date of any generic naloxegol in the U.S. is October 1, 2030. The companies have also agreed to file a stipulation and order of dismissal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware which will conclude this litigation with respect to Aurobindo. 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. Adds Veteran Private Equity Professionals and Opens Office in Dublin, Ireland HOUSTON and BOSTON and DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ara Partners ("Ara"), a private equity firm specializing in industrial decarbonization investments, today announced that it has significantly expanded its presence in Europe through the hiring of five key investment professionals and the opening of an office in Dublin, Ireland. Ara's expansion in Europe includes the addition of Christopher Picotte as a Partner, Luis Pais Correia as a Senior Operating Partner, Lisa O'Brien as General Counsel-Europe, Myles O'Shaughnessy as a Principal and Chris Seenan as a Vice President. "We are thrilled to welcome Chris, Luis and the rest of the Europe-based team to the Ara organization," said Charles Cherington, a Managing Partner at Ara. "We believe this world-class team of professionals and their combined expertise will further Ara's growing presence in the European private equity market." "Europe is clearly at the forefront of the global decarbonization movement," added Troy Thacker, a Managing Partner at Ara. "Our Dublin office provides us with a meaningful foothold in this important market and will be supported by a strong team of professionals with decades of experience investing in the industrial sector in Europe and with established networks across the industry." Chris Picotte co-founded Aksiom Group in 2017. Since 2013 he has also been the Chairman and a shareholder of px Group Ltd, a leading provider of O&M and technical services for midstream, power generation and industrial infrastructure assets in the United Kingdom and Northwestern Europe. He serves as the Chairman of AXESS Networks Solutions SL and as a board member of Anesco Holdings Ltd and of Jernbro Industrial Services AB. He served as a Managing Director and Senior Advisor at ArcLight Capital Partners from 2001-2014, where he led their European investment activity. Luis Pais Correia co-founded Aksiom Group in 2017. He has been a board member and a shareholder of px Group Ltd since 2014. He is a member of the board of Varmevarden, a leading Swedish district heating company owned by institutional investors advised by JP Morgan Asset Management. He serves as the Chairman of Anesco Holdings Ltd and Jernbro Industrial Services AB and as a board member of AXESS Networks Solutions SL. Luis has been a senior manager in the energy industry for over 25 years. Prior to Aksiom, Luis was a Director and Manager at Dalkia (a company co-owned by Veolia Environnement and EDF, respectively the largest environmental and energy services company and the largest power company globally) for more than 15 years. Lisa O'Brien previously served as General Counsel for Aksiom Group and has over twenty years of experience in finance and corporate law. Prior to joining Aksiom, Lisa was a partner in the New York office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where she was a member of the Partnership Council and a Co-Head of the US Energy and Infrastructure practice. Her transaction expertise includes private equity, energy and infrastructure, project finance and corporate finance and securities in both the US and Europe. Myles O'Shaughnessy previously served as a Vice President at Aksiom Group. Prior to Aksiom, Myles was a Vice President in the Corporate Credit Group of Guggenheim Partners where he was responsible for European corporate debt investments including syndicated and direct middle market leveraged loans as well as high yield bonds across the energy, utilities, infrastructure, services and chemicals sectors. Previously, Myles worked in a number of trading and operations roles within financial services. Chris Seenan previously served as a Vice President at Aksiom Group. Prior to Aksiom, he worked for several PE-backed companies developing renewable energy projects in emerging markets. Chris started his career at Deloitte within the financial services division of their audit practice and progressed to positions within their corporate finance advisory division, where he was involved in projects and transactions across service areas including M&A, debt advisory, business modelling and valuations. About Ara Partners Ara Partners is a private equity firm specializing in industrial decarbonization investments. Ara invests in the industrial & manufacturing, chemicals & materials, energy efficiency & green fuels, and food & agriculture sectors, seeking to build businesses that provide significant decarbonization impact. For more information on Ara Partners, please visit www.AraPartners.com. The Company is fully funded and eager to commence exploration drilling Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Silver Dollar Resources Inc. (CSE: SLV) (OTCQB: SLVDF) ("Silver Dollar" or the "Company") is pleased to report it has submitted a drilling permit application and environmental remediation report for the next phase of drilling at the La Joya silver project (the "Project") located in the state of Durango, Mexico. Click on the image above to view a two-minute video introducing the La Joya Project To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7232/97334_d854abec846e0aa1_001full.jpg In keeping with the previously announced surface rights agreement signed with the local ejido of Noria de Pilares, who collectively own and farm the land in the area, initial drilling is planned on the Noria portion of the La Joya property. Three drilling contractors have visited the property and provided bids for the proposed diamond drilling. The drilling bids are being evaluated and a contractor will be selected once the permits have been received. Silver Dollar has reported the following milestones since signing the letter of intent to acquire the La Joya Project in June 2020: Appointed economic geologists Perry Durning and Frank (Bud) Hillemeyer as technical advisors. Having worked together for decades, Perry and Bud received the PDAC's 2010 Thayer Lindsley International Mineral Discoveries Award in recognition of their outstanding record of grassroots discoveries. Entered into a definitive agreement with First Majestic Silver Corp. to acquire up to a 100% interest in the Project (see news release of August 10 th , 2020). , 2020). Reported the Project's highest grade drill core assays to date for silver, copper, and gold not previously released from Phase 3 drilling that was conducted in 2014 by previous operator SilverCrest Mines Inc. (see news release of August 25, 2020). Closed $10,500,000 exploration financing with lead orders from billionaire mining investor Eric Sprott; and First Majestic, one of the largest silver producers in Mexico. Retained consulting and engineering firm Tetra Tech, Inc. who provided technical support services on the Project to SilverCrest between 2010 and 2015. Engaged Mark Malfair, a Durango-based consulting geologist with 25 years of experience, as Country Manager for the Project. Mark has served as country manager in both Mexico and Honduras, and his previous roles include vice president of exploration for Chesapeake Gold Corp. where he was the lead member of the ground team responsible for advancing the Metates Au-Ag-Zn Project in the state of Durango. Tetra Tech completed a compilation and reinterpretation of all historical data on the Project which identified several new areas for follow-up that demonstrate the potential to host additional high-grade mineralization. Strengthened the executive suite with the election of Guillermo Lozano-Chavez, MSc., MBA, to the board of directors. Guillermo is a professional geologist with over 40 years of experience in Latin American mineral exploration. Previously, he was vice president of exploration for First Majestic where he was responsible for all exploration programs in and around five operating mines. Signed surface rights agreement with ejido Noria de Pilares. Commenced relogging and resampling of select historical drill core, and a focused surface sampling and mapping program to refine drill collar locations for Silver Dollar's initial drilling program. Drilling permit application and environmental remediation report submitted. Three drilling contractors have visited the property and provided bids for evaluation. Undertaken numerous tasks to prepare for drilling including road and infrastructure remediation, establishing a field office, updating the core shack, and hiring staff. About Silver Dollar Resources Inc. Silver Dollar is a mineral exploration company that completed its initial public offering in May 2020 and is fully funded for 2021 with approximately $10 million in the treasury. The Company's projects are located in two of the prolific mining jurisdictions in the world and include the advanced exploration and development stage La Joya Silver Project in the state of Durango, Mexico, and the discovery-stage Pakwash Lake and the Longlegged Lake properties in the Red Lake Mining District of Ontario, Canada. The Company has an aggressive growth strategy and is actively reviewing projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions internationally for potential acquisition. For additional information: contact investor relations, you can download our latest presentation by clicking here and you can follow us on Twitter by clicking here. Joseph Cullen, Investor Relations Manager Direct line: (778) 919-8615 Email: joseph@silverdollarresources.com ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Signed "Michael Romanik" Michael Romanik, President, CEO & Director Silver Dollar Resources Inc. 179 - 2945 Jacklin Road, Suite 416 Victoria, BC, V9B 6J9 Forward-Looking Statements: This news release may contain "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this news release and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97334 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - CAVU Mining Corp. (CSE: CAVU) (OTC: CAVVF) (FSE: 8NQ) ("CAVU" or the "Company") is proud to announce the formation of the Company's Advisory Board with the appointment of Mr. Allen Edzerza. Mr. Edzerza has broad experience negotiating with and for First Nations, both federal and provincial governments and industry across Canada and is a proud member of the Tahltan First Nation. Highlights Mr. Edzerza has been a senior negotiator for the past 25 years serving as Lead Negotiator for the Tahltan Central Council, Chief Negotiator for the Kaska Nations and held several senior positions in INAC, Government of Canada. He is currently leading mining reform discussions with the Government of BC on behalf of the First Nation Energy and Mining Council. He was previously advisor and Chief Negotiator for the Premier and Cabinet of the Governments of British Columbia and Yukon. Mr. Edzerza, through his company Volta Solutions, brings important expertise to the company. Mr. Edzerza has negotiated agreements between industry, first nations, the provincial governments of BC and Yukon, and the government of Canada. His insight and networks with First Nations across Canada will be beneficial to CAVU's future exploration programs, First Nations engagements, and future acquisitions. "Through our discussions I have come to see CAVU as a company that sets itself apart from other exploration companies through a proactive approach with First Nations and by taking ESG seriously," stated Mr. Edzerza. "A large part of First Nation culture is about sustainable land use and resource sharing, and CAVU has demonstrated a willingness to become an industry leader in this respect. I look forward to my involvement in the Company." "We are excited to grow the company with Mr. Edzerza's addition to the advisory board," stated Jaap Verbaas, CEO of CAVU. "Mr. Edzerza brings an important First Nation perspective to our Company and we are honoured to be working together in building a collaborative approach to sustainable and responsible mineral exploration in Canada." About CAVU Mining Corp. CAVU Mining Corp. is a mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral projects containing metals used in green technologies and the renewable energy sector. The Company is currently focused on the exploration of its Kitimat Copper Project in British Columbia and continues to evaluate complimentary mineral projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Dr. Jaap Verbaas, P.Geo. CEO and Director CAVU Mining Corp. jverbaas@cavumining.com 604-493-2997 Forward-Looking Statements All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are disclosed in the Company's documents filed from time to time with the Canadian Securities Exchange, the British Columbia Securities Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97345 QUEBEC CITY, Quebec, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brilliant Matters is proud to announce the closing of an oversubscribed $3.5M seed round. The round was led by Ecofuel Fund, a specialized and dedicated cleantech fund, together with Investissement Quebec, Anges Quebec and GSI Creos Corporation. Founded in 2016, the company uses a clean and reliable production method to produce a new generation of printable, flexible semiconductors that offer an eco-friendlier and cost-effective alternative to traditional electronics. Using their proprietary process, Brilliant Matters' polymers and compounds were able to increase the performance and stability of organic printed solar modules, two key competitive factors in the solar energy market. Owing to the impact of this technological advance, BM has received this investment to scale up production in the market. "The Ecofuel fund is a pillar in the search for innovations that have significant environmental impact. Brilliant Matters has succeeded in developing a revolutionary sustainable production process that enables the manufacturing of several materials for a new generation of organic printed solar modules and semiconductors. The quality of the management team and the financial partners is key for growth," describes Richard Cloutier, Managing Partner of the Ecofuel Fund. Together with the help of long-time partner and now investor GSI Creos, Brilliant Matters also plans to greatly expand commercialization efforts. Anticipating highly increased demand, Brilliant Matters will scale up manufacturing operations to produce hundreds of kilograms per year. Takashi Yanagisawa, Executive Officer of GSI Creos explains, "We invested in Brilliant Matters because their unique synthesis technology is Green, and their IP portfolio is clear. We are convinced of BM's bright future in "Deep Tech" and their approach that will meet the clean technology needs of the world and society." "We are pleased to support Brilliant Matters, a promising player in the semiconductor industry, by taking part in this round of financing," says Guy LeBlanc, President and CEO of Investissement Quebec. "With the Impulsion PME program, which Investissement Quebec administers on behalf of the government, we are able to support the development of young, innovative businesses in the start-up phase that have strong growth potential, in every region of Quebec." For more information about Brilliant Matters, please visit: www.brilliantmatters.com For more information on Ecofuel Fund, please visit: www.fondsecofuel.ca For more information about Ange Quebec, please visit: https://angesquebec.com/ For more information about GSI Creos, please visit: https://www.gsi.co.jp/en/index.html Contact: Laura Armiento Marketing Specialist Brilliant Matters +1 Subscribe to our newsletter here Vantage Group Holdings Ltd. (Vantage) is pleased to announce the launch of its Construction business, continued momentum in its Political Risk business and expanding the Vantage distribution capabilities. Vantage was established in late 2020 and began writing reinsurance risk on January 1, 2021, through its Bermuda Class 4 company, Vantage Risk Ltd. The Bermuda carrier has since expanded its offering to include select insurance products. In the US, Vantage launched a US surplus lines carrier, Vantage Risk Specialty Insurance Company, enabling certain US risks to be written on A- (Excellent)/Financial Size Category XII AM Best rated paper. Commenting on the continued growth of Vantage, CEO Greg Hendrick said, "It is exciting to see our business plan taking shape as we onboard new talent and build out our capabilities across the Vantage enterprise. Our team is highly energized and bringing creativity to the way we are building out our businesses, and that is proving to be very welcomed by clients and brokers." Construction Jason Lamonica has joined the Vantage team to lead the Construction insurance business in the US, bringing exceptional depth of experience in all aspects of the Property Casualty Insurance industry, most recently as Profit Center Head of Subcontractor Default Insurance at AXA XL. His long-standing industry relationships span over 25 years with producers and construction customers, including most ENR 400 general contractors throughout the US and Canada. Combining insights generated from his broad spectrum of product leadership, production management and profitability analysis, Jason delivers fresh perspectives and clear assessments of our clients' risks. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from St. John's University. Jason is joined by Megan Fletcher, SVP and Head of Construction Subcontractor Default Insurance, and Lawrence Lejfer, SVP and Head of Construction Professional Pollution lines of insurance. Both bring more than 15 years of prior experience, most recently with AXA XL. Political Risk Dan Riordan joined Vantage in May 2021 as Global Head of Political Risk Credit and has already begun building a team of trusted experts. Dan brings over 30 years of experience after holding senior roles at AXA XL, Zurich, and the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and African Studies from State University of New York College at Oswego, and a Master of Arts in International Development from American University. Dan is supported by a team of proven leaders with decades of experience underwriting political and credit risks, including Richard Abizaid, Javier Gomez and Jamie Brache as Vice Presidents Senior Underwriters, supported by Lila Granda as Senior Risk Manager. Bringing innovative capabilities and ample capacity in high-demand countries, Dan and his team are well-aligned to deliver on the Vantage mission and strategic growth plans. They partner with select clients to underwrite innovative, bespoke solutions by utilizing the latest technology, data, and leading expertise to advance economic investment and development around the world. Clients include government agencies, multilateral development banks, global financial institutions and leading corporations. Commenting on the results achieved thus far, Dan Riordan said, "With our team's expertise in underwriting innovative solutions for our clients, we are well positioned to grow the Vantage book of Political Risk and Credit Insurance and help our clients trade and operate across the globe. We have been well received in the market and we look forward to building long-term relationships with our broker partners and clients in the months and years to come." Distribution Vantage also welcomes Dane Lopes as Chief Commercial Officer, Insurance to lead our insurance distribution and client management efforts as well as supporting marketing and communications across the group. Dane held similarly senior roles at Everest Re Group, following more than 25 years of sales, marketing and business transformation experience. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Syracuse University and an MBA in Marketing from Seton Hall University. Greg Hendrick added, "Dane's role will allow us to fine tune our enterprise-wide distribution capabilities. I am very excited to continue building our partnership approach to our business, and Dane's skills and experience will be a huge asset to Vantage as we build beyond our inaugural year as a specialty re/insurer." About Vantage: Vantage Group Holdings Ltd. (Vantage) is a re/insurance partner designed for the future. Driven by relentless curiosity, our team of trusted experts provides a fresh perspective on our clients' risks. We add creativity to tech-enabled efficiency and robust analytics to address risks others avoid. The Carlyle Group and Hellman Friedman, global investment firms with successful track records and experience in the re/insurance industry, are lead investors. Disclaimer: The information contained herein is not an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy, any particular insurance product. No insurance product is offered or will be sold in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation would be unlawful under the laws of such state or jurisdiction. Vantage Risk Specialty Insurance Company is not licensed in all states, and products are not available other than through a licensed surplus lines broker. Vantage Risk Ltd. is not licensed, or otherwise authorized, to conduct business in the United States and does not engage in or transact any business in the United States. Business is written in Vantage Risk Ltd. through Bermuda brokers only. Insurance policies issued by these entities are not protected or guaranteed by state insurance guaranty associations or insolvency funds. For more information, please visit www.vantagerisk.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005257/en/ Contacts: Meridith Bridge, Vested vantage@fullyvested.com 917-545-4118 THIS ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO, THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, JAPAN, THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA OR ANY MEMBER STATE OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA. This announcement is an advertisement and does not constitute a prospectus and investors must subscribe for or purchase any shares referred to in this announcement only on the basis of information contained in the Prospectus and not in reliance on this announcement. Copies of the Prospectus, subject to any applicable law, will shortly be available for viewing at the National Storage Mechanism at https://data.fca.org.uk/#/nsm/nationalstoragemechanism and on the Company's website. This announcement does not constitute, and may not be construed as, an offer to sell or an invitation to purchase investments of any description or a recommendation regarding the issue or the provision of investment advice by any party. No information set out in this announcement is intended to form the basis of any contract of sale, investment decision or any decision to purchase shares in the Company. 23 September 2021 Castelnau Group Limited Initial Public Offering on the Specialist Fund Segment of the LSE's Main Market and Publication of Prospectus Castelnau Group Limited ("Castelnau" or the "Company") today announces that it has published a prospectus (the "Prospectus") in connection with an initial public offering ("IPO") to admit its shares to the Specialist Fund Segment ("SFS") of the London Stock Exchange's Main Market. Castelnau is targeting an issue in excess of 170 million ordinary shares of no par value ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 1.00 per Ordinary Share via an initial placing ("InitialPlacing"), an offer for subscription ("Offer for Subscription") (together the "Initial Issue") and the issue of Ordinary Shares as consideration for the acquisition of a seed portfolio ("ConsiderationShares"). A subsequent placing programme (the "Placing Programme") will allow the Company to issue up to a further 300 million shares, in aggregate, in the twelve months from the date of the Prospectus. Castelnau was incorporated with limited liability in Guernsey under the Companies Law on 13 March 2020 as a closed-ended company limited by shares. The Company's investment objective is to compound shareholders' capital at a higher rate of return than the FTSE All Share Total Return Index over the long term. Phoenix Asset Management Partners Limited ("Phoenix" or the "Investment Manager") will be the Investment Manager to the Company, led by Gary Channon (CIO and CEO of Phoenix). Phoenix manages approximately 1.3 billion across three funds; the Phoenix UK Fund, Aurora Investment Trust Plc, and the Huginn Fund. Castelnau currently holds investments in two unlisted companies, Rawnet and Ocula Technologies, with existing clients of the Investment Manager committing to transfer holdings in four underlying investee portfolio companies (Dignity Plc, Hornby Plc, Phoenix S.G. Limited (the principal asset of which is a 58.1 per cent holding in Stanley Gibbons Group plc), and WLS International Ltd) on Initial Admission (the "Target Assets"), in exchange for the issue of the Consideration Shares. Key highlights and investment rationale Proven track record and governance - Castelnau will benefit from the Investment Manager's experience of value investing over the past twenty-three years, with value investor Gary Channon as CIO. The Phoenix UK Fund has outperformed the FTSE All-Share by more than 6% per annum (gross) since inception in 1998, generating an 11.6% annualised gross return. Furthermore, at least one director from Phoenix will sit on the board of each of Castelnau's portfolio companies serving to maintain the investment and transformation ethos across the portfolio. Experienced and committed cornerstone investor - Sir Peter Wood , British entrepreneur and innovator, has committed to make a cornerstone investment of 25 million in the Initial Placing, via his wholly owned and controlled investment vehicle SPWOne. Sir Peter has a long track record of entrepreneurial success, founding, building, and investing in disruptive businesses and brands including Direct Line Insurance and Gocompare.com. Furthermore, the Investment Manager has entered into non-binding heads of terms with SPWOne to establish a proposed 50/50 joint venture between the Company and SPWOne to identify new investment opportunities to which the Castelnau toolbox of knowledge and techniques can be applied along with Sir Peter's business expertise and acumen. Clear and direct investment methodology - Benefitting from the experience of Phoenix , Castelnau is clear in its investment approach for generating value creation: identify traditional businesses that are suffering from digitisation of commerce; apply a proprietary toolbox of methods to transform these businesses into valuable winners; generate significant upside shareholder value; hold for the very long-term and continue to re-invest capital at high rates of return; and lastly, to float minority positions to recognise value. Significant upside to intrinsic value - Castelnau's holdings will be seeded from Phoenix -managed funds and include four companies (including holdings in three listed entities) which the Investment Manager has significant control or influence over and where it sees the biggest upside to the intrinsic value. Attractive valuation of private assets - The fund will contain three private holdings, with potential to add a further substantial position via the joint venture with SPWOne. WLS International (Cambium Group) is being seeded at a post-pandemic valuation as weddings were severely impacted in 2020 and the first half of 2021. Recent trading has been significantly above pre-pandemic levels, offering significant scope for near-term valuation uplifts. Joanne Peacegood, Independent Chair of Castelnau, said: "Listing Castelnau on the London Stock Exchange is an important next step for the Company and our investors. The growth potential of Castelnau's traditional businesses and enabling companies is hugely exciting and we anticipate generating attractive returns for our shareholders by using the Investment Manager's toolbox of modern techniques to transform old economy businesses into valuable long-term winners. We are obviously delighted that an entrepreneur as respected as Sir Peter Wood is not only making a cornerstone investment in Castelnau via SPWOne but is also bringing his vast experience and expertise to help develop the Group's businesses and identify new investment opportunities. Together with the unique and highly successful approach of Phoenix and Gary Channon as our Investment Manager, it's a compelling combination which should benefit all Castelnau stakeholders." Gary Channon, CIO and CEO of Phoenix Asset Management Partners Limited, said: "Phoenix's success is based on an investment approach which has been continuously refined through experience, and which has delivered returns well in excess of the market. Castelnau is an evolution of that approach applied to whole companies. This is something we have done within Phoenix for a number of years as we have developed and applied a business philosophy along with a toolbox of techniques and methodologies to transform investee companies. Castelnau will build on that work as we continue the transformation of the holdings within the initial portfolio and identify new businesses with a sound core franchise but are suffering from the changes going on in commercial life, such as the rise of ecommerce which can be transformed through embracing the best of modern techniques. It's an approach which will enable them to thrive and deliver value beyond their current valuations. We're very pleased to be joining forces with Sir Peter and that Castelnau will be able to benefit from the outstanding track record that he and the SPWOne team have in building market leading brands, transforming industries through digitisation and creating significant value." Sir Peter Wood, Chairman of SPWOne, said: "Over more than twenty years, Gary has built up a fantastic track record of long-term outperformance, delivering excellent returns for investors through Phoenix's bespoke approach of exceptionally in-depth analysis of undervalued companies. I've known Gary for many years and we share the same long-term outlook and belief in the importance of building great British companies over time, rather than simply focusing on the short-term. The growth opportunities for Castelnau and its businesses are considerable and I'm very much looking forward to working with the Company and with Phoenix to ensure that they are successfully realised." The Company Castelnau was incorporated with limited liability in Guernsey on 13 March 2020 as a closed-ended company limited by shares. The Company's investment objective is to compound shareholders' capital at a higher rate of return than the FTSE All Share Total Return Index over the long term. Target Return: The Company will seek to grow the long-term shareholder value of its portfolio companies through direct engagement. The Company's investment objective is one of capital growth and it is anticipated that returns for shareholders will derive primarily from capital gains. Castelnau will target 10 to 15 per cent. more per annum than the return of the FTSE All-Share Total Return Index and a minimum Net Asset Value total return of 20 per cent. per annum. Investment Policy: The Company will draw on the knowledge, experience, and expertise accumulated by the Investment Manager over the past twenty-three years. The Company will follow a high conviction investment strategy. Companies in Castelnau's portfolio will typically have the following five core characteristics: supplying products or services that are or have the potential to be 'best in class'; an addressable market much greater than its current customer base; capable of benefiting significantly from digitisation; a culture that would benefit from modernisation; and trading at a price that doesn't reflect its future value potential. Initial Portfolio: Following Initial Admission and the acquisition of the Target Assets, the initial portfolio ("Initial Portfolio") will comprise investments in: Portfolio Company Market % of Co. held Description and Investment case Dignity Plc Premium Main Up to 19.0% The UK's leading funeral provider with Gary Channon as CEO. Has a significant opportunity to grow the business by building a winning price and service proposition, making better use of its crematorium assets and using the internet to grow its customer base. Hornby Plc AIM Up to 49.7% Hobby and toy business which owns brands including Hornby, Airfix and Scalextric. Attractive long-term potential to take its portfolio of brands to a global market as it connects to and grows its passionate hobbyists. Phoenix SG Limited Private company but main asset is AIM quoted 31% Phoenix SG Limited is a private holding company, the principal asset of which is an approximately 58.1 per cent. holding in The Stanley Gibbons Group plc ("Stanley Gibbons"). Stanley Gibbons is a UK business trading in stamps, coins, medals and banknotes. From the new foundation created it has the potential to build on its world leading reputation, to reach a bigger audience for stamps and coins, grow its auction business and make more of its heritage, intellectual property, and unique lifetime guarantee. WLS International Ltd Private 19% WLS International Ltd is a private holding company which is the parent company of The Cambium Group UK Holdings Limited (the "Cambium Group"). The Cambium Group is one of the UK's leading wedding gift businesses, operating wedding gift list services, an online homeware outlet and a wedding planning and resource platform. Strong trading coming out of the pandemic with revenues nearly double 2019 peak. Low post pandemic valuation offers significant upside scope. Rawnet Limited ("Rawnet") Private 100% A digital agency and a long-term digital partner of the Investment Manager. The Investment Manager believes that Rawnet has significant potential future value both as a driver of existing portfolio company value and as a digital marketing company in its own right. Ocula Technologies Limited ("Ocula") Private 77% A data analytics start-up which will seek to provide companies with advanced data analytics to drive optimisation. Ocula is run by Gerry Buggy a successful technology executive with over twenty years experience (currently Chief Strategy Officer of FDTechnologies). On Initial Admission the Initial Portfolio is expected to have a total market value of approximately 123 million. Fees: No annual management fee will be paid to the Investment Manager but the Investment Manager is entitled to a performance fee dependent upon the performance of the Company's investments. In order for the Investment Manager to earn a performance fee, the total NAV return must have outperformed the FTSE All Share Total Return Index over a 3-year period. The performance fee will be equal to one-third of such outperformance and will be satisfied wholly by the issue of new Ordinary Shares to the Investment Manager. Background to Castelnau The Investment Manager has an investment philosophy and approach that is inspired and influenced by some of the great investors such as Warren Buffett, Phil Fisher, Charlie Munger and John Maynard Keynes. These philosophies have been built into a "Phoenix approach", which the Investment Manager has continuously refined using experience of application and analysis and learning. This has turned the philosophical approach into a proprietary technical approach which has been applied to the investments managed by the Investment Manager and has helped to deliver long term outperformance. Building on the investment management team's experience of investing in private companies and companies where they have control or influence, and in particular in respect of what is now the Cambium Group, the Investment Manager has built a "Castelnau Toolbox", essentially a way of standardising the Investment Manager's critical knowledge and techniques that can be applied to a specific type of investee company, which can be assessed and improved through application over time. At the heart of this is the Investment Manager's insight that there are businesses with a core franchise that are suffering from the changes going on in the marketplace (such as the rise of e-commerce), which, if they could embrace the best of modern techniques, would allow these businesses to thrive and ultimately deliver value not recognised in their current valuations. In addition, the Company will own businesses that are considered by the Investment Manager to be "enablers", and which can be used to enable the business transformations of investee companies. These businesses are Rawnet, a digital marketing and software development company, and Ocula, a data science company. These are portfolio companies that will be able to build their capabilities with investee companies and then sell those capabilities externally. These companies could ultimately deliver value to shareholders, both through the "enabling" process with investee companies and also through their own valuations as standalone businesses. Following the acquisition of the Target Assets, the Investment Manager expects that two of the private company investments in the Initial Portfolio will undertake an IPO within three years of Initial Admission. In summary, the Company has been established to apply modern techniques to traditional businesses, which it owns, controls and influences, with the intention of creating sustainable long-term value for shareholders. The Company has a majority independent Board of non-executive Directors. The Directors will meet at least four times a year, inter alia, to review and assess the Company's investment policy and strategy, the risk profile of the Company, the Company's investment performance, the performance of the Company's service providers, including the Investment Manager and the Administrator, and generally to supervise the conduct of its affairs. The Investment Manager Phoenix has been investing in UK listed equities for 23 years using a long-term business-like approach. Phoenix's investment process aims to identify great businesses and management through intensive primary research. The Investment Manager is known for the depth of its research which can often last many years before making an investment. Once an investment is made, the investment team maintains this intensive approach to research by monitoring the competitive landscape of investments. This dedication to reducing risk through knowledge is where the Investment Manager believes it differentiates itself from other investors. As the research process has matured and the processes have improved, the Investment Manager has found itself in situations where it is able to contribute genuine insight to the discussions about competitor analysis, capital allocation and the long-term strategy of holdings. This direct engagement has evolved into an extension to the investment process. Phoenix has spent six years iteratively learning and formalising the way in which it accumulated business insight, contacts and monitoring systems and how these can contribute to the success of the investments it makes. This has included direct engagement with management and occasionally direct intervention to facilitate changes to the board composition and strategy of investee companies. As the Investment Manager's assets under management have grown and proportional stakes in businesses have become larger, this has become an increasingly useful part of the process. The ability to add insight, optimise board composition and refine strategy can both limit the downside of an investment and increase the probability of favourable outcomes. The formation of Castelnau is the next stage in the evolution of the Investment Manager's investment process. After many years of active application of new principles and processes, it is the right time to bring the relevant businesses together in a single vehicle. This will give the holdings the permanent capital they need to think truly long-term, together with the liquidity of a London Stock Exchange quote. Expected timetable Initial Issue Initial Placing opens 23 September 2021 Offer for Subscription opens 23 September 2021 Latest time and date for receipt of completed Application Forms under the Offer for Subscription and payment in full or settlement of the relevant CREST instruction 11:00 a.m. on 12 October 2021 Latest time and date for receipt of Initial Placing orders Midday on 12 October 2021 Announcement of the results of the Initial Issue 14 October 2021 Initial Admission of the Ordinary Shares and dealings commence 8:00 a.m. on 18 October 2021 CREST accounts credited in respect of Ordinary Shares issued in uncertificated form as soon as practicable after 8:00 a.m. on 18 October 2021 Certificates despatched in respect of Ordinary Shares issued in certificated form Within 10 Business Days of admission Subsequent Issues under the Placing Programme Placing Programme opens 18 October 2021 Placing Programme closes 22 September 2022 Notes: (1) References to times above are to London times unless otherwise specified. (2) All times and dates in the expected timetable may be adjusted by the Company. Any material changes to the timetable will be notified via an RIS. Publication of Prospectus A copy of the Prospectus will shortly be available on the Company's website at www.castelnaugroup.com, subject to certain access restrictions. A copy of the Prospectus will also be submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will shortly be available for inspection at https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/primary-markets/regulatory-disclosures/national-storage-mechanism. The information required to be made available to investors in the Company before they invest (the "Article 23 Disclosures"), pursuant to the requirements of the FCA Rules implementing the EU Alternative Fund Managers Directive (Directive 2011/61/EU) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2011 on Alternative Investment Fund Managers in the United Kingdom and related UK laws (including Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 231/2013, as it forms part of UK law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) is available for inspection on the Company's website at www.castelnaugroup.com. The information required to be made available to investors in the Company is set out in Chapter 3.2 of the Investment Funds sourcebook of the FCA Handbook. The Initial Issue The Company is targeting an issue in excess of 170 million Ordinary Shares pursuant to: (i) the Initial Issue (comprising the Initial Placing and the Offer for Subscription) and (ii) the issue of the Consideration Shares in connection with the acquisition of the Target Assets. Ordinary Shares will be issued pursuant to the Initial Issue at an Issue Price of 1.00 per Ordinary Share. In addition, the Consideration Shares will be issued at a deemed issuance price of 1.00 per Ordinary Share. The Offer for Subscription will remain open until 11.00 a.m. on 12 October 2021 and the Initial Placing will remain open until midday on 12 October 2021. If the Initial Issue is extended, the revised timetable will be notified via a Regulatory Information Service announcement. The total number of Ordinary Shares to be issued pursuant to the Initial Issue, and therefore the Initial Gross Proceeds, are not known as at the date of this document but will be notified by the Company via a Regulatory Information Service announcement and the Company's website prior to Initial Admission. Sir Peter Wood, British entrepreneur and innovator, has committed to make a cornerstone investment of 25 million in the Initial Placing, via his investment vehicle SPWOne. Application will be made for the Ordinary Shares to be issued pursuant to the Initial Issue to be admitted to trading on the Specialist Fund Segment of the Main Market. It is expected that Initial Admission will become effective and dealings in the Ordinary Shares will commence at 8.00 a.m. on 18 October 2021. The Placing Programme The Company also intends to put in place a Placing Programme with the flexibility to issue up to a further 300 million Ordinary Shares and/or C Shares in aggregate. The Articles contain the C Share rights, full details of which are set out in paragraph 4 of Part 8 of the Prospectus. The Placing Programme will be flexible and may have a number of closing dates in order to provide the Company with the ability to issue Shares on appropriate occasions over a period of time. The Placing Programme is intended to satisfy market demand for the Shares and to raise further money for investment in accordance with the Company's investment policy. The Placing Programme is designed to give the Board the flexibility to include pre-emptive elements in any future issue. The Placing Programme will open on 18 October 2021 and will close on 22 September 2022 (or an earlier date on which it is fully subscribed, or otherwise at the discretion of the Directors). Liberum Capital Limited is acting as financial adviser and sole bookrunner in relation to the Initial Issue, and with effect from Initial Admission, will act as the Company's corporate broker. The Legal Entity Identifier of the Company is 213800PED8RFUBMK1T64 and it is incorporated in Guernsey. The ISIN of the Ordinary Shares is GG00BMWWJM28 and the SEDOL is BMWWJM2. The ISIN of the C Shares is GG00BMWWJN35 and the SEDOL is BMWWJN3. Except where the context requires otherwise, defined terms herein shall have the meanings given to them in the Prospectus. - Ends - Enquiries Phoenix Asset Management Limited +44 (0) 208 600 0100 Gary Channon Steve Tatters Lorraine Smyth Liberum Capital Limited +44 (0) 20 3100 2000 Chris Clarke Darren Vickers Owen Matthews Will King Citigate Dewe Rogerson +44 (0) 20 7638 9571 Chris Barrie Caroline Merrell Toby Moore Important Information Liberum Capital Limited ("Liberum") is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Liberum is acting exclusively for the Company in connection with the matters described in this announcement and are not acting for or advising any other person, or treating any other person as their respective client, in relation thereto and will not be responsible for providing the regulatory protection afforded to its clients or advice to any other person in relation to the matters contained herein. This does not exclude any responsibilities or liabilities of Liberum under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 ("FSMA") or the regulatory regime established thereunder. This announcement is a financial promotion and is not intended to be investment advice. The content of this announcement, which has been prepared by and is the sole responsibility of the Company, has been approved by Phoenix Asset Management Partners Limited ("Phoenix") solely for the purposes of section 21(2)(b) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (as amended). This announcement is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy any securities in the Company in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Republic of South Africa, Japan, or in any other jurisdiction where such offer or sale would be unlawful. This communication is not for publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States of America. This communication is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States, except pursuant to an applicable exemption from registration. No public offering of securities is being made in the United States. The Company has not been and will not be registered under the US Investment Company Act of 1940 (the "Investment Company Act") and, as such, holders of the Company's securities will not be entitled to the benefits of the Investment Company Act. No offer, sale, resale, pledge, delivery, distribution or transfer of the Company's securities may be made except under circumstances that will not result in the Company being required to register as an investment company under the Investment Company Act. Moreover, the Company's securities will not be registered under the applicable securities laws of Australia, Canada, the Republic of South Africa, Japan or any member state of the EEA. Subject to certain exceptions, the Company's securities may not be offered or sold in Australia, Canada, the Republic of South Africa, Japan or any member state of the EEA or to, or for the account or benefit of, any national, resident or citizen of, Australia, Canada, the Republic of South Africa, Japan or any member state of the EEA. The Initial Issue and the distribution of this announcement, in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and accordingly persons into whose possession this announcement is received are required to inform themselves about and to observe such restrictions. Neither the content of the Company's website, nor the content on any website accessible from hyperlinks on its website for any other website, is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement nor, unless previously published by means of an RIS announcement, should any such content be relied upon in reaching a decision as to whether or not to acquire, continue to hold, or dispose of, securities in the Company. The information in this announcement is for background purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. No reliance may be placed for any purpose on the information contained in this announcement or its accuracy or completeness. The material contained in this announcement is given as at the date of its publication (unless otherwise marked) and is subject to updating, revision and amendment. In particular, any proposals referred to herein are subject to revision and amendment. The value of shares and the income from them is not guaranteed and can fall as well as rise due to stock market and currency movements. When you sell your investment you may get back less than you originally invested. Figures refer to past performance and past performance should not be considered a reliable indicator of future results. This announcement may include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements". These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms "believes", "estimates", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "might", "will" or "should" or, in each case, their negative or other variations or similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this announcement, including, without limitation, those regarding the Company's financial position, strategy, plans, proposed acquisitions and objectives, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as at the date of this announcement and cannot be relied upon as a guide to future performance. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and, accordingly, the Company's actual future financial results and operational performance may differ materially from the results and performance expressed in, or implied by, the statements. These factors include but are not limited to those described in the Prospectus. These forward-looking statements speak only as at the date of this announcement and cannot be relied upon as a guide to future performance. Subject to their respective legal and regulatory obligations (including under the Prospectus Regulation Rules), the Company, the Investment Manager and/or Liberum expressly disclaim any obligations or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based unless required to do so by law or any appropriate regulatory authority, including FSMA, the Prospectus Regulation Rules, the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules, the Prospectus Regulation and UK MAR. None of the Company, the Investment Manager and/or Liberum, or any of their respective affiliates, accepts any responsibility or liability whatsoever for, or makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to this announcement, including the truth, accuracy or completeness of the information in this announcement (or whether any information has been omitted from the announcement) or any other information relating to the Company or associated companies, whether written, oral or in a visual or electronic form, and howsoever transmitted or made available or for any loss howsoever arising from any use of the announcement or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. The Company, the Investment Manager and Liberum, and their respective affiliates, accordingly disclaim all and any liability whether arising in tort, contract or otherwise which they might otherwise have in respect of this announcement or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. INFORMATION TO DISTRIBUTORS Solely for the purposes of the product governance requirements contained within PROD 3 of the FCA's Product Intervention and Product Governance Sourcebook (the "Product Governance Requirements"), and disclaiming all and any liability, whether arising in tort, contract or otherwise, which any "manufacturer" (for the purposes of the Product Governance Requirements) may otherwise have with respect thereto, the Shares have been subject to a product approval process, which has determined that the Shares to be issued pursuant to the Initial Issue and Subsequent Placings are: (i) compatible with an end target market of retail investors and investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties, each as defined in COBS 3.5 and 3.6 of the FCA's Conduct of Business Sourcebook, respectively; and (ii) eligible for distribution through all distribution channels as are permitted by the Product Governance Requirements (the "Target Market Assessment"). Notwithstanding the Target Market Assessment, distributors should note that: (a) the price of the Shares may decline and investors could lose all or part of their investment; the Shares offer no guaranteed income and no capital protection; (b) an investment in the Shares is compatible only with investors who do not need a guaranteed income or capital protection, who (either alone or in conjunction with an appropriate financial or other adviser) are capable of evaluating the merits and risks of such an investment and who have sufficient resources to be able to bear any losses that may result therefrom, and (c) the Shares will be admitted to the Specialist Fund Segment, which is intended for institutional, professional, professionally advised and knowledgeable investors who understand, or who have been advised of, the potential risk from investing in companies admitted to the Specialist Fund Segment. The Target Market Assessment is without prejudice to the requirements of any contractual, legal or regulatory selling restrictions in relation to the Initial Issue and/or Subsequent Placings. Furthermore, it is noted that, notwithstanding the Target Market Assessment, Liberum will only procure investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties. For the avoidance of doubt, the Target Market Assessment does not constitute: (a) an assessment of suitability or appropriateness for the purposes of the FCA's Conduct of Business Sourcebook; or (b) a recommendation to any investor or group of investors to invest in, or purchase, or take any other action whatsoever with respect to the Shares. Each distributor is responsible for undertaking its own Target Market Assessment in respect of the Shares and determining appropriate distribution channels. UK PRIIPS REGULATION In accordance with the UK PRIIPs Regulation, a key information document prepared by the Investment Manager in relation to the Ordinary Shares is available on the Company's website: www.castelnaugroup.com. It is the responsibility of each distributor of Ordinary Shares to ensure that its "retail clients" are provided with a copy of the key information document. The Investment Manager is the manufacturer of the Ordinary Shares for the purposes of the UK PRIIPs Regulation and neither the Company nor Liberum is a manufacturer for these purposes. Neither the Company nor Liberum makes any representations, express or implied, or accepts any responsibility whatsoever for the contents of the key information document prepared by the Investment Manager in relation to the Ordinary Shares or any other key information document in relation to the Shares prepared by the Investment Manager in the future nor accepts any responsibility to update the contents of any key information document in accordance with the UK PRIIPs Regulation, to undertake any review processes in relation thereto or to provide such key information document to future distributors of Shares. Each of the Company, Liberum and their respective affiliates accordingly disclaim all and any liability whether arising in tort or contract or otherwise which it or they might have in respect of any key information document prepared by the Investment Manager. Award Winning Plant-Based Foods Innovator; Helped Over 400 Companies Create Over 900 New Food Products in 35 Year Career Eat Well Investment Group Inc., the "Company" or "Eat Well Group") (CN:EWG) (US:EWGFF) (FRA:6BC0), a publicly-traded investment company,is pleased to announce that award-winning food innovation pioneer and President of the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre Inc. ("Food Centre"), Daniel Prefontaine, has joined the Company's strategic advisory board. Dan Prefontaine has been active in the plant-based food industry for over 35 years. He was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agriculture Hall of Fame in 2019 and was further recognized for his role in promoting the use of pulses in plant based-foods in 2020. Dan has played an integral part in establishing Canada as one of the global leaders in food production and technology. Mr. Prefontaine has led the Food Centre to assist over 400 companies to develop over 900 new food products ranging from a wide variety of ingredients and consumer packaged goods (CPG). These companies include some of the most well-known plant-based CPG brands from around the world. In 2016 Dan raised $27,000,000 to establish the new Agri-Food Innovation Centre in Saskatchewan, which has recently expanded to include an incubator to its portfolio, expanding its capacity in extrusion technology for plant-based foods. Additionally, Mr. Prefontaine has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of the Canadian Federal Grant Organization for Agriculture. "Rare are true pioneers in plant-based food development; rarer-still are pioneering culinary craftsmen who commercialize and lead as well as Dan Prefontaine," commented Marc Aneed, President of Eat Well Group. "His joining of our advisory board is a powerful, industry-level affirmation of Eat Well Group's vision and potential," continued Marc Aneed. The Company believes there is an immense opportunity to invest in the global food sector to support a healthier society through diversification with a focus on the conversion of plant and cell-based materials as new ingredients that have the ability to change the landscape of consumer foods. Mr. Prefontaine's extensive track record and experience in product innovation together with his network of global leaders in plant-based foods and CPG will be a significant asset for the Company. "Over the past five years, we have seen the largest increase in entrepreneurship opportunities in the area of food, particularly in the plant protein space. It is clear Eat Well Group's strong assets, investments, and management are working to unmask new technologies to provide innovation and technological solutions to address the need for a secure food chain. I am incredibly excited to join Eat Well Group's experienced team to help expand their product offerings, capabilities, and markets," stated Dan Prefontaine, newly appointed Strategic Advisor of Eat Well Group. Mr. Prefontaine joins the recently announced Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed ("Prince Khaled") on Eat Well Group's newly formed Strategic Advisory Board. Prince Khaled is a known pioneer in plant-based food investing and venture-backed future food start-ups and among those global visionaries driving solutions at scale related to food security, human and animal welfare, and climate change. Prince Khaled is the CEO of KBW Ventures and serves in various key appointments in Saudi Arabia and globally. "With the appointment of Dan Prefontaine and the recently announced appointment of Prince Khaled to our Strategic Advisory Board, Eat Well Group is building an unparalleled senior leadership team with direct experience in scaling multi-national plant-based food companies; with a global impact in climate change, food sustainability and the democratization of plant-based foods," commented Mark Coles, Chief Investment Officer of Eat Well Group. To learn more, join Eat Well Group's mailing list for important updates. ABOUT EAT WELL GROUP Eat Well Group is a publicly-traded investment Company primarily focused on high-growth companies in the agribusiness, food tech, plant-based and ESG (environmental, social and governance) sectors. Eat Well Group's management team has an extensive record of sourcing, financing and building successful companies across a broad range of industries and maintains a current investment mandate on the health/wellness industry. The team has financed and invested in early-stage venture companies for greater than 25 years, resulting in unparalleled access to deal flow and the ability to construct a portfolio of opportunistic investments intended to generate superior risk-adjusted returns. The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005609/en/ Contacts: Eat Well Investment Group Inc. Nick Demare ir@eatwellgroup.com www.eatwellgroup.com Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - TransCanna (CSE: TCAN) (FSE: TH8) ("the Company") is pleased to announce that plants are going into its first crop management site today - a greenhouse in Wesley, California. The Company partnered with the 3rd generation cannabis farmers at 365 CannaFarms to consult on the construction of the state-of-the-art, computer-controlled greenhouse and to help manage the crop for the client, Central Valley Growers. The entire crop is comprised of premium genetic strains from Lyfted Farms, TransCanna's wholly-owned subsidiary. "This project combines the 'best-in-class' expertise of Cannabis 365 who are famous in the industry for their ability to cultivate top-shelf greenhouse flower, and our Lyfted Farms Master Cultivators who are famous for their strains and expertise in cultivating top-shelf indoor flower," said Bob Blink, TransCanna CEO. The client, Central Valley Growers, is a family-run company with over 25 years of history in traditional agriculture that had sought out Lyfted Farms specifically for its potent, premium genetic strains. The contract began this summer and involved advising on the construction of a 22,000 square foot, fully automated light deprivation glass greenhouse with computer controlled light curtains, cooling, heating and humidity systems. Central Valley Growers is using Lyfted Farms genetics with the intent to produce live resin and cured resin concentrates, which require the highest quality strains and cultivation parameters. Producing live resin also requires high quality cold storage of the freshly cut plant, which TransCanna will also provide. "This project is a perfect example of what we can offer 3rd party cannabis growers: crop management, processing, and cold storage services all in one contract," said Mr. Blink. The Company can also provide packaging, white labelling and distribution services throughout the State of California. "This first successful contract will be a shining example of what we can offer California growers," said Mr. Blink. "We intend to be the go-to 'one-stop-shop' for indoor and greenhouse growers throughout the state." California currently has 3,637 licensed cannabis greenhouse cultivation sites. About TransCanna TransCanna Holdings Inc. is a California-based, Canadian-listed company building cannabis-focused brands for the California lifestyle, through its wholly-owned California subsidiaries. TransCanna's wholly owned subsidiary Lyfted Farms is California's authentic cannabis brand whose pioneering spirit has been continuously providing the finest cannabis flower genetics and cultivation methods since 1984. The Lyfted Farms brand of exclusive cannabis flower is sold at premium retailers throughout the state. With its new cultivation facility in Daly, California, the company is now poised to become one of the largest and most efficient vertically integrated cannabis companies in the California market. Visit the TransCanna website today at transcanna.com. For updated information with respect to our company, please see our filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the CSE at www.thecse.com, or visit the Company's website at www.transcanna.com. To contact the Company, please email info@transcanna.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors Bob Blink, CEO Corporate Communications: info@transcanna.com 604-200-8853 FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION: Certain information in this release may contain forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding future expansions and cost savings and plans regarding production increases and financings. This information is based on current expectations and assumptions, including assumptions concerning the completion of the expansion of the Daly Facility, government approval of pro-cannabis policies, greater access to financial services and increased cultivation capacity, that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. Risks that could cause results to differ from those stated in the forward-looking statements in this release include unexpected increases in operating costs, a continued strain on farmers due to fires and the Coronavirus pandemic and competition from other retailers. All forward-looking statements, including any financial outlook or future-oriented financial information, contained in this release are made as of the date of this release and are included for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Company. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97371 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - IntegraDose Compounding Services, LLC has recalled a total of eleven lots of antibiotic medication cefazolin in the form of injection for the potential lack of sterility assurance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or FDA said in a statement. The lack of sterility resulted from compounding in a newly installed biologic safety cabinet without completing dynamic smoke study testing. The FDA warned that the intravenous administration of a non-sterile drug could result in serious infections ranging from fever, chills, and malaise, to severe adverse events such as septicemia, bacterial meningitides and wound infection which may be life-threatening. Cefazolin is an antibiotic and the products are packaged in zip-locking bags containing ten units. The recall involves nine lots of cefazolin 2 gram in 20 mL syringe and two lots of cefazolin 3 gram in 100 mL 0.9% sodium chloride bag, with expiration dates between September 17 and September 26, 2021. However, the company has not received reports of any adverse events associated with this issue for these recalled lots, which were distributed across the U.S. to hospitals between August 12 and September 15, 2021. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company urged anyone with an existing inventory of the recalled lots to stop use and distribution of the recalled product and quarantine it immediately. IntegraDose Compounding has initiated an investigation to determine the root cause and corrective and preventative actions. Though the possibility of a breach in sterility assurance in the distributed product lots in not confirmed, but cannot be eliminated. This recall is seen as a precautionary measure as no batches of product have been identified as containing microorganisms. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de PANAMA (dpa-AFX) - Carnival Corporation & plc (CCL, CCL.L, CUK) said it expects to return over 50% of total fleet capacity to guest cruise operations by the end of October. Eight of the company's nine cruise line brands will be operating 42 ships, marking the return of over 50% of the company's global fleet capacity. Carnival noted that this is an important milestone towards its overall goal to return nearly 65% of capacity by December 31, 2021. 'Based on our initial restart of guest cruise operations across eight brands, it is clear from our guests that there is tremendous confidence in our brands, our health and safety protocols,' said Roger Frizzell, chief communications officer for Carnival. 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. STOCKHOLM, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lindab has signed an agreement for the divestment of Business Area Building Systems, which is Lindab's division for steel buildings sold under the Astron brand. The buyer is the French construction company Groupe Briand. The acquisition is subject to anti-trust approval in Russia. Non-recurring costs, due to the divestment, are expected to amount to approximately SEK 430 million during the third quarter, without any impact on cash flow. Astron was acquired in 2005 and has operated as an independent unit within Lindab Group. In 2020, Astron's sales amounted to SEK 946 million, which corresponded to approximately 10 percent of Lindab's total sales. The adjusted operating margin was 5.9 percent, compared with Lindab's adjusted operating margin of 10.0 percent for the full year 2020. The business area employs 680 people. Groupe Briand has 70 years of experience in the building industry with metal, timber and concrete constructions. Today they mainly have operations in France and therefore see the acquisition of Astron as an opportunity to expand to other countries in Europe. Groupe Briand has sales of approximately EUR 300 million and 1,200 employees. "Astron has improved the profitability in recent years and they have an attractive product portfolio and a skilled management team. Lindab's primary focus is on ventilation systems and Astron's steel buildings do not fit into Lindab's strategy. We are convinced that Groupe Briand is a better fit with its long experience from similar type of business.", says Ola Ringdahl, President and CEO of Lindab Group. "Lindab will now invest fully in the growing business areas Ventilation Systems and Profile Systems." "We are delighted to welcome Astron within Groupe Briand. Astron is a well-known brand in the field of steel building and car parks in Europe. The quality of the technical teams and the customer-oriented management make us optimistic on our ability to develop Astron", says Gil Briand, President and owner of Groupe Briand. "The sharing of best practices between our subsidiaries is a source of efficiency for our customers and development for our teams" Read more about Groupe Briand at: https://www.groupebriand.fr/ Following the divestment, Business Area Ventilation Systems will account for approximately two thirds of Lindab's sales and Business Area Profile System for approximately one third of sales. "Our priority for the future is ventilation business in Europe. It is mainly within Business Area Ventilation Systems we implement our extensive investment program and make acquisitions. After the divestment, we will retain two business areas that are well integrated with each other and where Lindab has the right expertise to now grow both sales and profitability further", continues Ola Ringdahl. Financial effects The divestiture is subject to anti-trust approval in Russia, which is expected to be received within two to four months. Until approval is obtained, Astron will continue to be part of Lindab. At the time of signing the acquisition agreement, a non-recurring cost, relating mainly to impairment of goodwill, is estimated to arise at approximately SEK 430 million, which will have a negative effect on net profit during the third quarter. The non-recurring costs will not have any impact on cash flow. The purchase price will largely be offset by Astron's cash and cash equivalents as well as advance payments from customers, and will thus not have any major impact on Lindab's total cash flow. As of the interim report for the third quarter of 2021, Astron will be reported as assets held for sale and discontinued operations. Press and investor meeting Lindab invites journalists, analysts and investors to webcast later today with more information about the deal. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions. Date and time: 23 September, 16.00 CET. To participate, join via the web at https://tv.streamfabriken.com/pressconference-2021 or call: SE: +46 856642651 PIN: 14066646# UK: +44 3333000804 PIN: 14066646# US: +1 6319131422 PIN: 14066646# This disclosure contains information that Lindab is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation (EU nr 596/2014) and the Swedish Securities Markets Act (2007:528). The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person, on 23-09-202115:09 CET. CONTACT: Ola Ringdahl President and CEO E-mail: ola.ringdahl@lindab.com Phone: +46 (0) 431 850 00 Catharina Paulcen Head of Corporate Communications E-mail: catharina.paulcen@lindab.com Mobile: +46 (0) 701 48 99 65 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/lindab/r/lindab-divests-business-area-building-systems-to-groupe-briand,c3420437 The following files are available for download: The ThousandEyes, Twilio alum will lead the company's financial operations out of the company's new Dublin office LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Genesis, the low-code/no-code platform built for financial markets, announced today that Billy Morris has joined the company as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as the company additionally announces the October opening of a new office in Dublin, Ireland. He will report directly to Stephen Murphy, Genesis Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and will act as the founding tenant of the company's new Dublin office. Morris brings nearly two decades of leadership experience in finance, successfully assisting to scale various high-growth technology companies globally. He will oversee Genesis' financial operations and work in lockstep with the rest of the senior leadership team to drive and grow the company's global financial and development strategy. The new office will initially house a portion of the company's financial operations and business development teams, with plans to scale the operations and rapidly add headcount over the next 12 months "Billy's proven leadership skills, financial expertise and passion for next-gen low-code/no-code innovation will play a key role as Genesis continues to build on its huge momentum," said Stephen Murphy, CEO, Genesis. "Ireland is one of Europe's fastest-growing regions, and we couldn't be more thrilled to have Billy on the ground spearheading this latest chapter of our combined growth." Morris joins from ThousandEyes where he most recently served as VP of Finance, helping with the company's M&A and Finance strategy which aided in its successful acquisition by technology conglomerate Cisco Systems. Prior to that, he worked as Finance Director at Twilio, where he helped lead the company's financial planning & analysis team, as well as various accounting & investor relations initiatives, including helping in the successful completion of the company's Initial Public Offering. Over the years, Morris has actively collaborated with organizations like IDA Ireland from abroad, further fostering his passion for attracting and retaining new business and talent throughout Ireland. "Genesis sits at the forefront of the next-gen low-code/no-code movement and at its core, helps to empower and enable developers. The company is transforming how financial institutions innovate and solve complex challenges through its unique 'buy to build' approach," said Morris. "Genesis is also addressing the mounting need to fulfill gaps in the technical-talent pipeline - allowing financial firms to build in weeks what would typically take years. The path ahead is an exciting one and as the company continues to scale, I look forward to leveraging my background to implement the next phase of operational excellence and build the finance organization with rapid growth at the forefront of our planning. Equally, I am very excited to follow on from the successes with Twilio and ThousandEyes in building out best in class operations in Ireland, and look forward to the path ahead with Genesis here." About Genesis Genesis is the first and only low-code/no-code application platform built for financial markets. With Genesis, firms can build software significantly faster than if they had started from scratch, with less code and at a lower cost, while simultaneously catering for a range of simple and complex financial use cases. Trusted by Citi, B3, ING and London Clearing House, Genesis is a resilient, secure and scalable modular platform which addresses regulatory and competitive requirements such as low-latency, making it ideal for regulated industries and large enterprises. Breaking away from the old paradigm of 'build or buy', Genesis allows firms to buy to build, empowering them to build new applications while improving or isolating functionality of existing legacy systems. Genesis has offices in London (HQ), New York, Miami, Sao Paulo, and now in Dublin, Ireland. For further information visit www.genesis.global Media Contact Clarity PR for Genesis Email: genesis@clarity.pr Tel: +1 630-346-4936 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1632862/Genesis_Logo.jpg - Future Market Insights' incisive analysis on the global wireless charging ICs market provides readers with 360-degree view of the entire landscape. The study reveals key information regarding growth drivers, opportunities, and trends across multiple segments and major regions for the forthcoming decade. For the purpose of the study, the market has been classified in terms of products, power range, and applications. DUBAI, U.A.E, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ESOMAR-certified consulting firm Future Market Insights (FMI) has published a report on the global wireless charging ICs market, studying its growth trajectory for the forecast period between 2021 and 2031. As per the study, increasing adoption of wireless charging technology in automotive and consumer electronics industries will drive sales in the market. The market will continue to exhibit remarkable growth through 2021 with worldwide revenue up by 15.8% year-over-year in 2021. FMI also projects the market to register growth at 16.7% CAGR, reaching US$ 9.7 Bn by 2031. Key manufacturers are continuously upgrading their product portfolio through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of thinking (IoT). Recent developments offers by market players are aimed at meeting the consistent demand for advanced technologies in automotive and consumer electronics industries. Request a report sample to gain comprehensive insights at https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-13304 Growing sales of electric vehicles across emerging economies such as India, China, and Japan also will spur the sales of wireless charging ICs. Consumers' preference for autonomous, connected, electric, and wireless vehicles will increase the application of wireless charging technology. Subsequently, adoption of electric and autonomous-advanced home appliances such as electric toothbrush, earphones, notebooks, and smartphones will increase the sales during the forecast period. "Demand for sensor and advanced technology to make consumer goods more efficient and smarter has compelled manufacturers to increase the adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as AI and IoT. This is expected to increase the competition in the market, while creating ample growth opportunities for players," says the Future Market Insights analyst. Key Takeaways from Wireless Charging ICs Market Survey In terms of product type, receivers will hold the leading market share, exhibiting growth at 17.6% CAGR Over 48% of wireless charging ICs sales to come from medium power range segment Based on application, consumer electronics application will hold largest market share, creating an incremental opportunity of US$ 3.9 Bn by 2031 by 2031 The U.S.'s wireless charging ICs market is expected to be the most lucrative market, totalling US$ 330 Mn in 2021 in 2021 Demand for wireless charging ICs in U.K. is expected to soar at 16.4% CAGR during the forecast period Japan is expected to account for over 35.7% of global market sales of wireless charging ICs Key Drivers Growing adoption of wireless technology in consumer electronics devices will improve the demand Rising sales of electric vehicles, especially across emerging economies, will spur the sales of wireless charging ICs Increasing adoption of artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of wireless charging devices will create conducive environment for key players, spurring sales Increasing application of wireless technology in warehouse management and trucks charging will propel growth Key Restraints Lack of proper infrastructure needed for dynamic charging will restrain the market growth Declining demand for wireless chargers due to the outbreak of COVID-19 is expected to hamper sales Preference for traditional charging technology and chargers, especially among baby boomers, is likely to impede growth of wireless charging ICs market Let us know about your queries and our expert advisors will connect with you: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-13304 Competitive Landscape As per Future Market Insights, NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm Inc., Renesas Electronics Corporation, Analog Devices Inc., and Texas Instruments Inc. are identified as the top 5 players. Adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and internet of thinking to improve existing cyber security solutions is the new growth strategy of key players. Key players are also focusing on expanding their product portfolio through adding innovative capabilities which will assist them in upgrading their existing products. In January 2021 , Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the launch of the world's first 60W wireless power receiver, the P9418, to deliver faster wireless charging experiences for smartphones, laptops, and notebook devices in the industry's highest power density solution. , Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the launch of the world's first 60W wireless power receiver, the P9418, to deliver faster wireless charging experiences for smartphones, laptops, and notebook devices in the industry's highest power density solution. Another leading player, Xiaomi, in January 2021 , unveiled its "Mi Air Charge Technology", which is able to wirelessly charge devices from across a room with 5W of power. This technology offers a 'true wireless charging' solution, with no cables or stands using spatial positioning and beamforming energy transmission. , unveiled its "Mi Air Charge Technology", which is able to wirelessly charge devices from across a room with 5W of power. This technology offers a 'true wireless charging' solution, with no cables or stands using spatial positioning and beamforming energy transmission. In July 2019 , Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT), subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation, announced sampling of the P9415 receiver and P9247 transmitter that work together to enable smartphones to change wirelessly with up to 30W of power, narrowing the charging time gap between wireless and wired charging options. Prominent players operating in wireless charging ICs market profiled by Future Market Insights include: NXP Semiconductors Renesas Electronics Corporation ROHM CO., LTD. Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC Qualcomm Inc. Texas Instruments Analog Devices, Inc. Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. Toshiba Corporation WiTricity Corporation Powercast Corp PLUGLESS POWER INC Semtech Corporation MediaTek Inc. Others More Valuable Insights into Wireless Charging ICs Market In its latest report, Future Market Insights offers comprehensive insights on the global wireless charging ICs market, presenting historical demand data (2016-2020) and forecast statistics for the period from 2021-2031. The study offers incisive coverage on the global wireless charging ICs market with an unbiased analysis, segmented on the basis of: By Product: Transmitters Receivers By Power Range: Low (<15 Watt) Medium (16-50 Watt) High (>51 Watt) By Application: Automotive Consumer Electronics Healthcare Others By Region: North America Latin America Europe East Asia South Asia & Pacific & Pacific Middle East and Africa (MEA) Key Questions Covered in the Wireless Charging ICs Market Report The report offers detailed insights into wireless charging ICs demand outlook for 2021-2031 The market study also highlights projected sales growth for wireless charging ICs market between 2021 and 2031 Wireless charging ICs market survey identifies key growth drivers, restraints, and other forces impacting prevailing trends and evaluation of current market size and forecast and technological advancements within the industry Wireless charging ICs market share analysis of the key companies within the industry and coverage of strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, collaborations or partnerships, and others Purchase a report to know more about the Wireless charging ICs Market: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/13304 Explore FMI's Extensive Coverage on Technology Web Real Time Communication Solution Market : The demand for web real time communication solution is expected to top US$ 4,528.3 Mn in 2021. As per Future Market Insights (FMI) analysis, the market will register impressive growth at 44.4% CAGR between 2021 and 2031, as enterprises around the world are exhibiting high demand for web real time communication solutions and services. AI in Fraud Management Market : The AI in fraud management solutions revenue totaled ~US$ 6.5 Bn in 2020, according to Future Market Insights. The overall market is expected to reach ~US$ 39.5 Bn by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 18.0% for 2021 - 31. Industrial Access Control Market : Future Market Insights (FMI) projects the industrial access control product demand outlook to remain positive, with sales predicted to surpass US$ 3,653.5 Mn by 2021. Continued use of access control systems across various industrial sectors such as automotive, paper and pulp, chemicals is expected to propel the year over year growth at 9.0% in the market in 2021. About Future Market Insights Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai, and has delivery centres in the UK, U.S. and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis help businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers. Contact: Future Market Insights, 1602-6 Jumeirah Bay X2 Tower, Plot No: JLT-PH2-X2A, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates For Sales Enquiries: sales@futuremarketinsights.com For Media Enquiries: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ Report: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/wireless-charging-ics-market Press Release Source: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release/wireless-charging-ics-market Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1197648/FMI_Logo.jpg DGAP-News: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous Steinhoff International Holdings N.V.: DUTCH SoP - CONFIRMATION OF THE COMPOSITION PLAN BY THE COURT 23.09.2021 / 16:00 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. DUTCH SoP - CONFIRMATION OF THE COMPOSITION PLAN BY THE COURT Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. ("SIHNV" or the "Company") announces that the District Court of Amsterdam (the "Court") has today issued an order confirming (homologeren) SIHNV's composition plan (akkoord). The Court's order will become final, SIHNV's suspension of payments procedure will terminate and SIHNV's composition plan will become binding (verbindendverklaard) following an eight-day period if no appeal is lodged within that period. The decision of the Court follows the unanimous approval of the SIHNV composition plan by the 15 member committee of representation on 8 September 2021. Louis du Preez, Chief Executive Officer and Management Board member, said: "While our task is not yet complete, this judgment is a further significant milestone in concluding the global litigation settlement. With the decision of the Dutch committee of representation and the Court, together with the positive voting in all of the recent claimant meetings in South Africa, we have seen overwhelming support for our global settlement proposal. We will continue to work on the final approvals required that will allow us to deliver the financial compensation detailed in the settlement proposal." The Company has a primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the JSE Limited. Stellenbosch, South Africa 23 September 2021 23.09.2021 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - Loblaw Companies Ltd. (L.TO) said that it has reduced food waste sent to landfill across its corporate retail operations by 86 percent, far surpassing its goal of 50% by 2025 from a 2016 baseline. The company noted that it donates enough surplus food to provide over 1.3 million meals to Canadians and prevent the release of over 3 million kg of greenhouse gases. The company noted that it has diverted more than 4.2 million kilograms of expired bakery waste from the landfill and converted it into animal feed for local farms. The company also aims to educate and empower its customers to join in their efforts, offering a number of resources, including a docuseries, Half Full, where Canadian chefs show how we can all cut down on waste by using every part of vegetables. 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. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Silver Elephant Mining Corp. ("Silver Elephant" or the "Company") (TSX:ELEF)(OTCQX:SILEF)(Frankfurt:1P2N) is pleased to provide the following update further to its news release dated August 26, 2021 with respect to the Company's proposed plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") to spin-out its Manitoba based Minago Nickel project ("Minago"), its Nevada based Gibellini Vanadium project ("Gibellini"), and Battery Metals Royalties into Flying Nickel Mining Corp. ("Flying Nickel"), Nevada Vanadium Mining Corp. ("Nevada Vanadium"), and Battery Metals Royalties Corp. ("Battery Royalties", and together with Flying Nickel and Nevada Vanadium, the "SpinCos"). Further to the news release of the Company dated September 6, 2021, assuming the full completion of proposed previously announced private placement of common shares of the Company for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $3,300,000 and that no further securities of Silver Elephant are issued prior to the record date of the Arrangement (the "Record Date"), which is presently expected to be in December, 2021, Silver Elephant will have approximately 235 million common shares and 32 million warrants and options issued and outstanding on the Record Date. Subject to applicable laws, the policies of and approval by the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX"), the receipt of shareholder approval and court approval, and satisfaction of other closing conditions, it is presently expected that, pursuant to the Arrangement: each Silver Elephant share outstanding on the Record Date, will be consolidated on the basis of one post-consolidation common share ("ELEF Share") for every ten pre-consolidation shares of Silver Elephant (the "Consolidation"); and each Silver Elephant shareholder ("Shareholder") will receive: one share of each of Flying Nickel and Nevada Vanadium for every post-Consolidation ELEF Share by such Shareholder on the Record Date; and two shares of Battery Royalties for every post-Consolidation ELEF Share held by such Shareholder on the Record Date. Accordingly, upon completion of the Arrangement (including the Consolidation), there will be approximately: 23,500,000 ELEF Shares and 3,200,000 warrants and options of Silver Elephant issued and outstanding; 50,000,000 common shares in the capital of Flying Nickel issued and outstanding ("Flying Nickel Shares"); 50,000,000 common shares in the capital of Nevada Vanadium issued and outstanding ("Nevada Vanadium Shares"); and 80,000,000 common shares in the capital of Battery Royalties issued and outstanding ("Battery Royalties Shares"); Silver Elephant securityholders (common share, option, and warrant) on the Record Date, assuming exercise of all warrants and options of Silver Elephant will collectively directly hold approximately: 26,700,000 Flying Nickel Shares representing approximately 53.4% of the Flying Nickel Shares issued and outstanding; 26,700,000 Nevada Vanadium Shares representing approximately 53.4% of the Nevada Vanadium Shares issued and outstanding; and 53,400,000 Battery Royalties Shares representing approximately 66.8% of the Battery Royalties Shares issued and outstanding. Any remaining Flying Nickel Shares, and Nevada Vanadium Shares held directly by Silver Elephant (upon completion of the prior distribution to Shareholders and reservation of Flying Nickel and Nevada Vanadium Shares for distribution upon exercise of warrants and options of Silver Elephant) will be transferred to Battery Royalties as part of the Arrangement. Upon completion of the Arrangement, it is currently expected that the Company and each SpinCo will focus on its corresponding core business with: Silver Elephant holding a 100% interest in its Pulacayo silver and El Triunfo gold-silver projects in Bolivia, and approximately 26,600,000 (representing 33.2% of) Battery Royalties Shares as a long-term investment; Nevada Vanadium, holding a 100% interest in its Gibellini vanadium project in Nevada; Flying Nickel, holding a 100% interest in its Minago nickel project at Thompson nickel belt in Manitoba; and Battery Royalties, holding 2% royalties of each of the assets referenced above and, approximately 23,300,000 (representing 46.6% of) Flying Nickel Shares and 23,300,000 (representing 46.6% of) Nevada Vanadium Shares as a long-term investment. While the foregoing has been prepared on the basis that no additional securities of each SpinCo will be issued, it is presently expected that each SpinCo will complete a financing in connection with the Arrangement to provide for working capital and other corporate purposes. Further details on SpinCo financings will be provided when available. John Lee, Chairman of Silver Elephant states that "After the spinout, green energy institutional fund managers, precious metals fund managers, and royalty focused investors will be able to buy nickel, vanadium, silver, or royalty company shares of their choice from our plan. We also aim to list Flying Nickel, Nevada Vanadium, and Battery Royalties on the TSX-Venture Exchange to facilitate trading liquidity and support future business expansion." There can be no assurance that the Arrangement will be completed on the terms described herein or at all or that any of the SpinCos will be listed on any stock exchange. Completion of the Arrangement is subject to applicable laws, the policies of and approval by the TSX, the receipt of shareholder approval and court approval, and satisfaction of other closing conditions. Subject to applicable laws, the policies of and approval by the TSX and the receipt of court approval, the Company presently expects to call a Shareholder meeting ("Meeting") to be held in early-to-mid December, 2021 to approve the Arrangement. Further details regarding the Arrangement will be contained in an information circular of the Company to be mailed to Shareholders in early November. About Silver Elephant Silver Elephant Mining Corp. is a premier mining and exploration company in silver, nickel, and vanadium. Further information on Silver Elephant can be found at www.silverelef.com. SILVER ELEPHANT MINING CORP. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "John Lee" Executive Chairman For more information about Silver Elephant, please contact Investor Relations: +1.604.569.3661 ext. 101 ir@silverelef.com www.silverelef.com Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this news release, including statements which may contain words such as "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "plans", "believes", "estimates", or similar expressions, and statements related to matters which are not historical facts are forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These forward-looking statements, may involve, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future events or future performance, the completion and structure of the Arrangement, anticipated shareholder, court and regulatory approvals, the realization of the anticipated benefits deriving by any entity from the Arrangement or from the Company's or in relation to any SpinCo's assets or investments, the general performance of the assets of the Company and any SpinCo, and the results of exploration, development and production activities as well as expansions projects relating to the properties of the Company and/or any SpinCo and/or in which the Company and/or any SpinCo will hold a royalty, stream or other interest. Such forward-looking statements, which reflect management's expectations regarding the Company's future growth, results of operations, performance, and business prospects and opportunities, are based on certain factors and assumptions, including, without limitation, management's perceptions of historical trends; current conditions; expected future developments; the ongoing operation of the properties of the Company and/or any SpinCo and/or in which the Company and/or any SpinCo will hold a royalty, stream or other interest by the operators of such properties in a manner consistent with past practice; the accuracy of public statements and disclosures made by the operators of such underlying properties; no material adverse change in the market price of the commodities that underlie the asset portfolio; no adverse development in respect of any significant property of the Company and/or any SpinCo and/or in which the Company and/or any SpinCo will hold a royalty, stream or other interest; the accuracy of expectations for the development of underlying properties that are not yet in production; and the absence of any other factors that could cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended, and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and the documents incorporated by reference herein are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. In addition, 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 statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events, or results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements made in this press release, see the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the most recent Annual Information Form of the Company which is filed with the Canadian securities commissions and available electronically under the Company's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and the Company's Form 20-F annual report for the year ended December 31, 2020 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and available electronically under the Company's issuer profile on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. The forward-looking statements set forth herein reflect the Company's expectations as at the date of this press release and are subject to change after such date. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release any future revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this news or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as expressly required by law. None of the securities to be issued pursuant to the Arrangement have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and any securities issuable in the transaction are anticipated to be issued in reliance upon available exemptions from such registration requirements pursuant to Section 3(a)(10) of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable exemptions under state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. SOURCE: Silver Elephant Mining Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665319/Silver-Elephant-Provides-Update-and-Schedule-on-Plan-of-Arrangement ROGUE BARON PLC ('Rogue Baron' or the 'Company') Final Exempted Accounts to 31 December 2020 23 September 2021 Audit Exemption Statement For the year ended 31 December 2020 the Company was entitled to exemption under Section 477 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies and has elected not to prepare Group accounts. The members have not required the Company to obtain an audit in accordance with Section 476 of the Companies Act 2006. The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Act with respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts. These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies' regime. The Company intends to publish audited financial statements for the year ended 30 December 2020 by the end of 2021. Chairman Statement Since officially achieving our public listing on 12 March 2021, Rogue Baron Limited has made substantial progress towards the goals it set out for 2021. In spite of significant global challenges continuing from the COVID pandemic, the Company has continued to grow and persevere. Shortly after listing on the Aquis Exchange one of the Company's key goals was to complete a cross-listing on a U.S. exchange. In June 2021, Rogue Baron successfully completed that listing on the OTCQB (a recognised exchange in the United States), under the ticker symbol SHNJF. This was a big achievement for the Company as it now brings another market of potential investors as well as additional market awareness for our Company and brands. Due to the many unknowns the pandemic has presented, and continues to present, Rogue Baron made the strategic decision to put a keen focus on managing its costs while continuing to push the expansion and market traction of its flagship brand, Shinju Japanese Whisky. Since listing, Rogue Baron has placed Shinju into seven new United States markets; Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Illinois, Colorado, Kansas, and Ohio. With the addition of these markets Shinju's availability now covers over 60% of the United States population. Along with that Shinju is now listed in the United States on many of the largest direct-to-consumer online platforms, including ReserveBar and Drizly. ReserveBar alone delivers to 35 U.S. states. Part of Rogue Baron's strategy in managing costs was to pull back on its Shinju marketing budget and focus more on an organic approach while letting the quality of the product create the traction. This approach is proving successful as requests from new markets and accounts continue to come in. Liquor.com awarded Shinju as one of the '10 best Japanese Whiskies to drink in 2020' and again awarded it as 'one of the best' in 2021. In 2019 the Company sold 1000 cases of Shinju. In 2020, despite the COVID shutdowns, the Company doubled the cases sold to 2000. Rogue Baron set a goal of 5000 cases for 2021. The Company is on track to exceed that amount in 2021 even with three-month delays in shipping due to COVID. This all builds towards 2022 when the Company plans to make a big marketing push to increase the velocity and turnover in its current markets, while also expanding into new markets. Rogue Baron has a goal of exceeding 10,000 cases sold in 2022 and it all starts with an official projected launch of Shinju into the U.K. market in Q4, 2021. As part of that impending launch Rogue Baron has spent the past four months redesigning and upgrading the current label. Based on the current Japanese Whisky landscape, the Company believes the new label will set it apart from the competition and be one of the best-looking labels on the market. Included in the U.K. launch is one of the most exciting pieces for the Company, the introduction of Shinju's first aged extension. Rogue Baron will launch its 8-year old 'black pearl' expression when it enters the U.K. This is exciting for the Company as it now puts Shinju on another level. Very few of the newer Japanese whiskies have multiple expressions, especially aged expressions. Aged Japanese whisky has been in very limited capacity, with many brands having to pull their aged expressions due to the lack of supply. Rogue Baron feels it is a perfect time to launch its 8-year as aged expressions are in high demand from customers. The 8-year will open many new accounts for the Company. Part of the sales strategy the Company will employ is requiring accounts that want the 8-year to also carry the original. This will continue to increase the sales of the original Shinju expression as well. The 8-year will carry a premium which will increase the revenues and margins for the Company. As Shinju continues to grow, open distribution and accounts, Rogue Baron is strategically planning the launch of its second brand as part of its portfolio. The goal is to launch this second brand in 2022. This particular brand will come from what is currently the fastest growing sector in spirits. Part of Shinju's fast growth comes from Rogue Baron's retail/bar locations. The Company continues to focus on building out its bar locations. These locations have proven valuable for the Company not only from a revenue standpoint, but from a marketing platform for its brands. At these locations we have direct access to the consumer. These locations give the Company the ability to introduce our brands and educate the consumer on something they may have never tried. It gives Rogue Baron the opportunity to convert consumers, who may have never tried Shinju, into Shinju loyalists. This has been proven over and over. 2020, and early 2021, was a difficult time for the bar/restaurant industry. Many bars and restaurants suffered under COVID restrictions. Rogue Baron's Washington DC location, Bin 1301, was no different. The Company knew if it could weather the storm and come out the other side, it had an opportunity to capitalize on the pent-up demand and spending the industry would see from consumers. At Bin 1301 when COVID restrictions were finally fully lifted, the Bar produced circa USD 95,000 in unaudited sales over the month. This total was nearly 19% higher than the Bar's previous record high, March of 2021, and roughly 32% higher than any month ever before COVID. Seeing an opportunity to capitalize, Rogue Baron opened a second DC location, called De Rhum Spot. De Rhum Spot is a rum bar, with a nod to the historical influence rum has had on the Americas, Africa, and specifically Great Britain and the Royal Navy. The Rhum Spot is three floors with an outdoor patio and has one of the largest selection of rums in Washington DC. The location is roughly three times the size of Bin 1301, plus it has a large outdoor patio which is becoming increasingly valuable in a post-covid world. Rogue Baron will continue to look for location opportunities, places where revenue can be generated while at the same time pushing and marketing our brands. BrewDog has built a $2B brand off the back of its 100+ pubs and restaurants. The Company believes it can learn and capitalize off of BrewDog's model. I would like to pay tribute to the continued hard work of our CEO Ryan Dolder and his team in what has been trying circumstances over the last 18 months. I also thank all our shareholders for their continued support and look forward to updating them as we progress. Sandy Barblett, Chairman 22 September 2021 The directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement. For further information, please contact: The Company Ryan Dolder rdolder@roguebaron.com AQSE Corporate Adviser: Peterhouse Capital Limited Guy Miller +44 (0) 20 7469 0936 AQSE Corporate Broker: Peterhouse Capital Limited Lucy Williams +44 (0) 20 7469 0936 STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME For the year ended 31 December 2020 Year ended Year ended 2020 2019 $'000 $'000 Payments made in shares (62) - Other administrative expenses (68) - Total administrative expenses (130) - Exceptional costs relating to IPO (146) - Movement in derivative liability (79) - Loss from operations (355) - Finance cost (151) - Loss before and after taxation, and loss attributable to the equity holders of the Company (506) - Exchange differences (116) - Total comprehensive loss for the year, attributable to owners of the company (622) - Total earnings per ordinary share Basic and diluted earnings per share (cents) (2.75) 0.00 STATEMENT FINANCIAL POSITION At 31 December 2020 31 December 2020 (Unaudited) 31 December 2019 (Unaudited) $'000 $'000 ASSETS Fixed assets Investment in subsidiaries 4,397 - Total fixed assets 4,397 - Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 97 - Trade and other receivables 171 - Total current assets 268 - Total assets 4,665 - LIABILITIES Current liabilities Trade and other payables 231 - Loans payable 950 - Derivative liability 184 - Total current liabilities 1,365 - Liabilities falling due over one year Loans 294 - Derivative liability 63 - Total liabilities 1,722 - EQUITY Share capital 46 - Share premium 3,519 - Exchange reserve (116) - Retained earnings (506) - Equity attributable to equity holders of the Company 2,943 - Total equity and liabilities 4,665 - The financial statements were approved by the Board and authorised for issue on 20 September 2021. STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY For the year ended 31 December 2020 Share capital Share premium Exchange reserve Retained earnings Total equity $'000 $'000 $'000 $'000 $'000 Balance at 1 January 2019 - - - - - Share issue - - - - - Transactions with owners - - - - - Loss for the year - - - - - Total comprehensive profit for the year - - - - - Balance at 31 December 2019 - - - - - Share issue 46 3,529 - - 3,575 Share issue costs - (10) - - - Transactions with owners 46 3,519 - - 3,575 Exchange differences - - (116) - (116) Loss for the year - - - (506) (506) Total comprehensive loss for the year - - (116) (506) (622) Balance at 31 December 2020 46 3,519 (116) (506) 2,943 CASHFLOW STATEMENT For the year ended 31 December 2020 OTTAWA, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Global IQX has been selected as a Finalist for Best Service Provider - Insurtech in the sixth annual Insurance Business Canada Awards, the leading independent awards event for the insurance profession in Canada. Presented by Insurance Business, the Insurance Business Canada Awards recognizes insurance professionals and organizations for their outstanding achievements, best practices and leadership in the insurance profession over the past 12 months. "We are honored to have been selected as a top insurtech provider in Canada," said Mike de Waal, president and founder of Global IQX. "The digital transformation in employee benefits over the past few years has been remarkable. Global IQX has been at the forefront of that change with our investments in underwriting automation, artificial intelligence, APIs, and cloud computing." Global IQX has seen a marked increase in new insurance carrier clients over the past year. The company attributes its success to the its specialization in employee benefits and championing of "sustainable digital transformation." "Customer success is always our first priority," says de Waal. "Our automated employee benefits platform is fully modular, enabling carriers to implement only the components they need at a time. We always try to embrace and extend existing technology investments using integrations. Ultimately, we want our clients to grow with us for the long haul." Winners of the Insurance Business Canada Awards 2021 will be selected by an independent judging panel of industry experts and then revealed at the celebratory virtual awards show, November 17-18, 2021. The virtual show will also feature live panel discussions with the finalists. For the full list of finalists or more event information, visit www.ibawards.ca. About Global IQX: Global IQX is a dominant provider of AI-driven employee benefits sales and underwriting solutions, helping insurers write more business in less time. Global IQX offers a suite of business-configurable modules and microservices that digitize, streamline, and automate new-business and renewal processes for group and voluntary benefits. The IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench streamlines quoting for all benefits products sold in North America and experience rate groups of 100,000+ lives with hundreds of divisions and classes. Global IQX serves some of the world's largest insurance companies. Follow Global IQX on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. For more information, contact Stephen Boucher at stephen.boucher@globaliqx.com. About Insurance Business: Insurance Business is the leading independent business magazine and website for insurance brokers and advice professionals. A key business resource, Insurance Business provides daily breaking news, cutting-edge opinion and in-depth analysis affecting the industry. Insurance Business also offers a series of industry reports that recognize the achievements of key individuals and businesses as well as providing the latest in business best practice in a continually evolving industry. Part of the global Insurance Business suite of publications, IB reaches a wide readership in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, USA, Canada and UK. For more information, contact Krissy Salvador, marketing manager, at krissy.salvador@keymedia.com. Media contact: Henry Stimpson henry@stimpsoncommunications.com SOURCE: Global IQX View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665312/Global-IQX-Selected-as-Finalist-for-Best-Service-Provider--Insurtech-in-the-Insurance-Business-Canada-Awards-2021 London, September 23, 2021 CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) today announced that its indirect wholly owned subsidiary, CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd., plans to offer new notes in a private placement to certain accredited investors in each of the provinces of Canada, subject to market conditions. The notes will be guaranteed by CNH Industrial Capital LLC, CNH Industrial Capital America LLC and New Holland Credit Company, LLC, each an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of CNH Industrial N.V. CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd. is the primary financing and business entity in Canada for CNH Industrial Capital LLC, the North American arm of CNH Industrial's global financial services business. CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd. intends to add the net proceeds from the offering to its general funds and use them for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including, among other things, the purchase of receivables or other assets in the ordinary course of business. The net proceeds may also be applied to repay CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd.'s indebtedness as it becomes due. *** The securities offered in the private placement have not been and will not be qualified for sale to the public under applicable securities laws in Canada and, accordingly, any offer and sale of the securities in Canada will be made on a basis which is exempt from the prospectus requirements of such securities laws. The securities offered in the private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. This press release is being issued pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135c under the Securities Act. Contacts: Corporate Communications Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com Investor Relations Email: investor.relations@cnhind.com Attachment Air and Surface Purification Technology Will Outfit the Michigan Primary Care Association Annual Conference Sept. 26-28 DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / ActivePure Medical , LLC - the healthcare division of ActivePure , the global leader in surface and air purification technology - will provide the Michigan Primary Care Association (MPCA) with products equipped with ActivePure Technology to protect attendees from airborne and surface contaminants at its annual conference this year at the Lansing Center from Sept. 26-28. ActivePure Medical is sending multiple units with the disinfection technology, including the ActivePure Medical Guardian - an FDA-cleared Class II Medical Device - ActivePure Beyond Guardians and ActivePure Surface & Air Guardians, to protect conference attendees. ActivePure Technology will help give attendees peace of mind at the event on top of the MPCA's already rigorous safety guidelines comprised of vaccination requirements, social distancing and mask-wearing. The MPCA's goal is to host a conference where all attendees have a positive experience reconnecting, networking and sharing ideas in a safe environment, according to the event's overview. ActivePure Medical President Dan Marsh and Vice President of Marketing Marissa Ransdell will be in attendance along with ActivePure's healthcare distributors who will have an exhibit at the show. "We are honored to have the opportunity to better protect our healthcare heroes attending the conference," said Marsh. "This event is regularly attended by chief medical officers and CEOs, so it is vital to show our care and concern for their health and safety as they battle to protect those of their patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. ActivePure was designed to tackle the tough pathogens found in the healthcare environment, and we are proud to provide an added layer of protection for the attendees of the conference." ActivePure Technology is a proprietary, patented and proven technology that works 24/7 to produce and propel molecules into occupied spaces. The molecules then reduce and inactivate airborne and surface pathogens, including a range of viruses, such as SARS CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), bacteria, molds and fungi, on contact, by 99.99%. After the conference concludes, ActivePure Medical will donate the ActivePure units to the MPCA for use at future events. "Ensuring the highest degree of safety in our learning and professional networking environments is critically important," said Phillip Bergquist, Chief Operating Officer of the Michigan Primary Care Association. "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to use ActivePure Technology to ensure the well-being of our conference attendees." The 2021 MPCA Annual Conference will take place from Sunday, Sept. 26 at 9:30 to Tuesday, Sept. 28 at the Lansing Convention Center, located at 333 E Michigan Ave, Lansing, MI 48933. ### ABOUT ACTIVEPURE MEDICAL, LLC: ActivePure Medical has a 95-year-old parent company, ActivePure , with a deep history in cleaning and disinfecting. Founded under Electrolux USA, ActivePure was established in 1924 and has since operated as a Smithsonian-honored company. In 2020, the ActivePure Medical Guardian received Class II Medical Device clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That same year, the ActivePure Medical division was launched to ensure the company's healthcare partners have access to a dedicated team of medical infection prevention experts. For more information on ActivePure Medical, please visit ActivePureMedical.com , or call 888-572-6241. ABOUT MICHIGAN PRIMARY CARE ASSOCIATION (MPCA): Michigan Primary Care Association (MPCA) gives a voice to 44 community health centers that provide primary and preventive health care to more than 700,000 patients in rural and urban communities across Michigan. The association advocates to influence and advance health policy in Lansing and Washington, D.C., and offers operational support and training to its health centers to enhance the delivery of integrated care inclusive of primary care, dental, vision and behavioral health. For more information about MPCA, please visit MPCA.net . For more information about the 2021 MPCA Annual Conference, please contact Barb Lincoln at blincoln@mpca.net , or call 517-853-1062. MEDIA CONTACT: Jo Trizila, TrizCom Public Relations on behalf of ActivePure Email: Jo@TrizCom.com Office: 972-247-1369 Cell/Text: 214-232-0078 SOURCE: ActivePure Medical View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665325/ActivePure-Medical-to-Help-Protect-the-2021-MPCA-Annual-Conference - Low-code innovator is positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision, lands at top for Collaborative App Development - Mendix is creating a comprehensive ecosystem to address the burgeoning demand for enterprise-grade low-code solutions BOSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in low-code application development for the enterprise, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Applications . Mendix was also positioned furthest to the right for Completeness of Vision. This is the third year in a row that Mendix has been positioned both as a Leader and furthest in Completeness of Vision. Mendix continues to lead and shape a market that is seeing meteoric growth, further accelerated by the sudden drive for digitalization triggered by the pandemic. As enterprises encounter imperatives to digitalize operations and customer interactions and support remote and hybrid work arrangements, low-code has emerged as the go-to technology for rapid solution development. These imperatives have effectively redefined the way enterprises approach digitalization both now and for the future, with advanced low-code platforms such as Mendix playing a pivotal role. In its introduction to the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner states, "By 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020." In an earlier report, Gartner said, "low-code application platforms have moved from the 'early adopter' to 'early majority' phase on its technology adoption curve; and that low-code is "a potent best-of-breed application delivery tool for mainstream business use cases, sometimes removing the need for high-control frameworks and platforms entirely in some organizations."(1) "Being recognized as a Leader by Gartner is validation of the ideas our company is built on and the success our customers have experienced by partnering with us to execute their most strategic digitalization initiatives," said Mendix founder and CEO Derek Roos. "Our vision goes far beyond application development. We built a digital solution ecosystem from the DNA of low-code by applying our core principles of abstraction, automation, collaboration, and community to every aspect of the digital enterprise. At our recently concluded Mendix World conference, we introduced an expanded Mendix Marketplace that now supports a platform economy -- one in which packaged capabilities, templated solutions, and tailored components are offered by Mendix and its partner community. These 'building blocks' enable developers to assemble their own custom solutions in a fraction of the time." Mendix gets highest score for 'Collaborative App Development' Use Case As part of the research, Gartner evaluated low-code vendors on a variety of critical use cases. In its 2021 "Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms" report, Mendix received the highest score of any vendor in "Collaborative App Development," and also performed well in the "Custom Business Applications" and "Business Workflow Automation" use cases. Collaborative App Development. Fluid collaboration across business stakeholders and IT is a founding principle of the Mendix platform. Ensuring this collaboration is integrated into the development process is central to realizing the core benefit promised by low-code: delivering better software faster. In Mendix, this focus on the importance of collaboration starts with the unique architecture of offering two purpose-built integrated developer environments (IDEs): Mendix Studio is designed for less technical business experts and citizen developers who can use it to build their own apps or add domain expertise to more sophisticated apps. Mendix Studio Pro empowers professional developers to create the most sophisticated, complex, enterprise-grade solutions. The two IDEs share development responsibilities with a common model-based language, so teams of developers, even of different skill sets or using different IDEs, are always in sync. Collaboration is enhanced in the platform through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, AI tools to assist development, real-time communication between developers, and robust version control. As an example, VGZ, the second largest health insurer in the Netherlands, leveraged Mendix's collaborative environment when it created a mobile application to better service its customers. Originally designed to simplify insurance claims by using OCR to scan invoices and automatically process them, the application has since grown to offer support on all tasks and answer all customer policy questions. Rob Polman, product owner at VGZ, explains, "Mendix was instrumental in getting an early, one-task mobile app to the market very quickly. Over the following years, we've used the platform to enhance it into a feature-rich, mature mobile offering that now supports over one million customer sessions per month. Throughout the process, from the earliest iteration on, the Mendix platform has enabled a fully collaborative BizDevOps process between our business and IT teams." The success of the application is reflected by 4.5 and 4.6 ratings from nearly 75,000 reviewers in the Android and Apple app stores, and a significant increase in NPS scores among customers using the application. Custom Business Applications. Increasingly, customers are using Mendix to create large-scale enterprise applications from scratch. As organizations increase the velocity with which they digialize, the limited customizations available in commercial off-the-shelf software solutions are no longer adequate to capture the changing business landscape and spate of new technologies that enhance solutions. Classic models of custom software development often remain economically infeasible and not agile enough to deliver the newest experiences end users are expecting. With the Mendix low-code platform, organizations can easily incorporate a broad range of technologies including AI, AR, and IoT into their solutions. Data Hub ensures that data sources across the enterprise are never more than a click away, while the multi-experience capabilities delivers stellar user experiences with a sleek, modern UI and support for conversational interfaces, native mobile and progressive web apps. Mitsubishi Elevator Europe is one company realizing their vision, with Mendix as the enabler of a series of fit-for-purpose applications - including a field service app and IoT-driven monitoring system - that were then integrated into a unified, holistic maintenance solution. "Our vision is clear," says Evert Visser, managing director, Mitsubishi Elevator Europe. "We want to adopt new technology in a fast and sustainable way. Our overarching goal is customer satisfaction. Mendix enabled us to leverage our existing assets and add new capabilities to create a solution that brings the benefits of technology to our customers." Business Workflow Automation. Mendix Workflow equips citizen and professional developers to automate processes across the enterprise. The Workflow Editor provides governed access to enterprise data via Data Hub and integrates seamlessly into enterprise applications and human touch points to create true intelligent automation solutions - not just single workflows, but full-featured, adaptable applications. Reflecting on a recent project that digitized complex processes in the compliance context for major brands including Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, Jonathan Lamb of Kinetech said, "Using the Mendix Workflow platform allows us to quickly adapt to changes in the complex supplier compliance process, enabling brand owners to capitalize on the introduction of new products, components and ingredients." View the full Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms . (1) Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: 2021; Published 21 November 2020 - ID G00730556; By Analyst(s): Tuong Nguyen, Martin Reynolds, Rajesh Kandaswamy, John Santoro, Danielle Casey Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved Learn more about the Mendix Platform and Pricing and Availability .} Connect with Mendix Follow @Mendix on Twitter Connect with Mendix on LinkedIn About Mendix Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in enterprise low-code, is fundamentally reinventing the way applications are built in the digital enterprise. With the Mendix platform, enterprises can "Make with More" by broadening an enterprise's development capability to conquer the software development bottleneck; "Make it Smart," by making apps with rich native experiences that are intelligent, proactive, and contextual; and "Make at Scale," to modernize core systems and build large app portfolios to keep pace with business growth. The Mendix platform is built to promote intense collaboration between business and IT teams and dramatically accelerate application development cycles while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and governance - in short, to help enterprises confidently leap into their digital futures. Mendix's "Go Make It" platform has been adopted by more than 4,000 leading companies around the world. Press Inquiries Sara Black sara@bospar.com (213) 618-1501 Dan Berkowitz Senior Director Global Communications Mendix Dan.Berkowitz@mendix.com (415) 518-7870 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/440429/Mendix_Logo.jpg VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Group Ten Metals Inc. (TSX.V:PGE; OTCQB:PGEZF; FSE:5D32) (the "Company" or "Group Ten") is pleased to provide an update on resource modeling and exploration activities, and further announces that it has engaged researchers at the University of British Columbia to study the potential for large-scale carbon sequestration at its flagship Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project in Montana, USA. Exploration Update SGS Geological Services has completed their site visit and is working with Group Ten to deliver inaugural National Instrument 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimates at the most advanced target areas at Stillwater West. Block models consisting of drill-defined nickel and copper sulphide mineralization, enriched in palladium, platinum, rhodium, gold and cobalt, are now being finalized for release in the near term. In addition to the more advanced Chrome Mountain, Camp, and Iron Mountain target areas, the inaugural resource figures will include the Crescent target area following successful expansion of the block models based on the continuity of mineralization observed in all target areas. Diamond drilling is ongoing, with one rig at the Chrome Mountain target area and a second that completed priority holes at the Camp target area before moving to the Iron Mountain area. A total of twelve holes have been drilled to date. Conditions are favorable and the program is expected to continue into October. Expansion of the inaugural mineral resource estimate is one of the primary objectives of the 2021 drill campaign. An Induced Polarization geophysical survey is now underway with crews currently working new survey lines to the west of the highly successful 2020 survey in the Chrome Mountain target area. In-fill lines, and additional extension lines off the east end of the previous work at the Crescent target area, are also planned. Figures 1 and 2 - Group Ten geologists John Bailey, Justin Modroo, and Nate Nelsen examine Stillwater West drill core. Carbon Sequestration and the Potential for Low-Carbon 'Green' Metals at Stillwater West The Company has engaged Dr. Greg Dipple and his team at the University of British Columbia, Canada, for a second phase of research to assess the capacity to use mineral carbonation to bind carbon dioxide for permanent disposal as part of a potential mining operation at Stillwater West. Preliminary work has shown good potential based on the presence of certain minerals at Stillwater West. This next phase of study is expected to refine and advance that work by identifying specific minerals in rock samples while beginning to look at possible reaction rates, among other items. Contingent upon the success of the current program, subsequent work would then examine reaction rates and other factors in more detail to culminate in large-scale pilot demonstration to provide data necessary for full-scale projections and inclusion in potential broader engineering studies at Stillwater West. Group Ten President and CEO, Michael Rowley, stated, "We see the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide while providing needed battery, catalytic, and precious metals at a large scale in a premier US district as a very compelling opportunity to play a significant role in promoting global sustainability initiatives. Stillwater West hosts nickel sulphide mineralization which, compared to the laterite nickel that dominates global production, has been shown to more easily refine to the high-grade nickel sulphate that is required by the battery industry, and with a much lower environmental footprint. This new study paves the way for further reductions in the carbon footprint for all our commodities in a possible production scenario at Stillwater West, offsetting the impact of mining activities and potentially even achieving significant reductions wherein the uptake and disposal of carbon exceeds the emission from operations. In addition to being strongly aligned with Group Ten's Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG") guidelines and principles, the incorporation of carbon uptake may bring financial benefits via initiatives such as the 45Q Tax Credit for Carbon Oxide Sequestration that is now in place in the US. We look forward to further announcements including our inaugural resource estimates in the near term." 'Green' Metals at Stillwater West The primary metals that are essential to global electrification and improvements in air quality include battery metals, such as nickel, copper, and cobalt, and platinum, which is essential for the low-carbon production of hydrogen via the electrolysis of water, and also for the consumption of hydrogen in fuel cells. Moreover, platinum - along with palladium and rhodium - is also essential to environmental quality as all three are used in catalytic convertors to reduce exhaust emissions and provide clean air, with demand driven by increasingly stringent emissions requirements globally. Group Ten has demonstrated world-class potential for both scale and grade of all six of these commodities, plus also gold, in five priority target areas where drill-defined mineralization showing strong correlations with very large geophysical anomalies across 9.2 kilometers in 3D model results, and more broadly in early-stage results across the entire 32-kilometer span of the Stillwater West project. The Stillwater district is a prolific US mining district that hosts world-class mines and a smelter-refinery complex operated by Sibanye-Stillwater, who are widely recognized for producing palladium and platinum, along with lesser amounts of other commodities including nickel, at the highest environmental and sustainability standards. Group Ten's location adjacent to Sibanye is very favorable to potential end-users including the domestic auto industry. The Company is focused on advancing Stillwater West as one of only a few projects in North America that may be able to help meet the shortfalls projected by analysts and EV industry leaders for environmentally responsible production of our target commodities. About Stillwater West The Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project positions Group Ten as the second-largest landholder in the Stillwater Complex, adjoining and adjacent to Sibanye-Stillwater's Stillwater, East Boulder, and Blitz PGE mines in south-central Montana, USA1. The Stillwater Complex is recognized as one of the top regions in the world for PGE-Ni-Cu-Co mineralization, alongside the Bushveld Complex and Great Dyke in southern Africa, which are similar layered intrusions. The J-M Reef, and other PGE-enriched sulphide horizons in the Stillwater Complex, share many similarities with the highly prolific Merensky and UG2 Reefs in the Bushveld Complex. Group Ten's work in the lower Stillwater Complex has demonstrated the presence of large-scale disseminated and high-sulphide battery metals and PGE mineralization, similar to the Platreef in the Bushveld Complex2. Drill campaigns by the Company, complemented by a substantial historic drill database, are driving 3D models of Platreef-style mineralization in the five most advanced target areas, three of which are expected to become formal mineral resources by mid-2021. Multiple earlier-stage Platreef-style and reef-type targets are being advanced across the rest of the 31-kilometer length of the project based on strong correlations seen in soil and rock geochemistry, geophysical surveys, geologic mapping, and drilling. About Group Ten Metals Inc. Group Ten Metals Inc. is a TSX-V-listed Canadian mineral exploration company focused on the development of high-quality platinum, palladium, nickel, copper, cobalt, and gold exploration assets in top North American mining jurisdictions. The Company's core asset is the Stillwater West PGE-Ni-Cu-Co + Au project adjacent to Sibanye-Stillwater's high-grade PGE mines in Montana, USA. Group Ten also holds the high-grade Black Lake-Drayton Gold project adjacent to Treasury Metals' development-stage Goliath Gold Complex in northwest Ontario, and the Kluane PGE-Ni-Cu-Co project on trend with Nickel Creek Platinum's Wellgreen deposit in Canada's Yukon Territory. About the Metallic Group of Companies The Metallic Group is a collaboration of leading precious and base metals exploration companies, with a portfolio of large, brownfield assets in established mining districts adjacent to some of the industry's highest-grade producers of silver and gold, platinum and palladium, and copper. Member companies include Metallic Minerals in the Yukon's high-grade Keno Hill silver district and La Plata silver-gold-copper district of Colorado, Group Ten Metals in the Stillwater PGM-nickel-copper district of Montana, and Granite Creek Copper in the Yukon's Minto copper district. The founders and team members of the Metallic Group include highly successful explorationists formerly with some of the industry's leading explorers/developers and major producers. With this expertise, the companies are undertaking a systematic approach to exploration using new models and technologies to facilitate discoveries in these proven, but under-explored, mining districts. The Metallic Group is headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and its member companies are listed on the Toronto Venture, US OTC, and Frankfurt stock exchanges. Note 1: References to adjoining properties are for illustrative purposes only and are not necessarily indicative of the exploration potential, extent, or nature of mineralization or potential future results of the Company's projects. Note 2: Magmatic Ore Deposits in Layered Intrusions-Descriptive Model for Reef-Type PGE and Contact-Type Cu-Ni-PGE Deposits, Michael Zientek, USGS Open-File Report 2012-1010. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: Michael Rowley, President, CEO & Director Email: info@grouptenmetals.com Phone: (604) 357 4790 Web: http://grouptenmetals.com Toll Free: (888) 432 0075 Forward-Looking Statements Forward Looking Statements: This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization, historic production, estimation of mineral resources, the realization of mineral resource estimates, interpretation of prior exploration and potential exploration results, the timing and success of exploration activities generally, the timing of the timing and results of future resource estimates, permitting time lines, metal prices and currency exchange rates, availability of capital, government regulation of exploration operations, environmental risks, reclamation, titlefuture driling actiivities and the locations of such drilling, and future plans and objectives of the company are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Although Group Ten believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of material factors and assumptions. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include failure to obtain necessary approvals, unsuccessful exploration results, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, results of future resource estimates, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, risks associated with regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of personnel, materials and equipment on a timely basis, accidents or equipment breakdowns, uninsured risks, delays in receiving government approvals, unanticipated environmental impacts on operations and costs to remedy same, and other exploration or other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the companies with securities regulators. Readers are cautioned that mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral exploration and development of mines is an inherently risky business. Accordingly, the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on Group Ten and the risks and challenges of their businesses, investors should review their annual filings that are available at www.sedar.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. SOURCE: Group Ten Metals Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665328/Group-Ten-Metals-Provides-Exploration-Update-and-Advances-Potential-for-Low-Carbon-Battery-and-Platinum-Group-Metals-at-Stillwater-West-PGE-Ni-Cu-Co-Au-Project-in-Montana-USA Strengthened financial position with the approval of TWYMEEG (Imeglimin hydrochloride) for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Japan: Allowed Poxel to draw the third and final tranche of the IPF loan for EUR 13.5 million included in the Q2 cash and cash equivalents of EUR 36.9 million Triggered a milestone payment of JPY 1.75 billion (approximately EUR 13.2 million, USD 15.8 million) 1 from Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma to Poxel which was paid in July 2021 (not included in Q2 cash and cash equivalents) Increasing strategic focus on rare metabolic diseases with continued commitment to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH): Patient enrollment in PXL065 DESTINY Phase 2 trial in NASH was completed in September 2021 with results expected in Q3 2022 Phase 2a clinical Proof of Concept (POC) biomarker studies of PXL065 and PXL770 in X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) planned to initiate in early 2022 with data expected by year end 2022 Webcast on Thursday, September 23, at 12:00 pm ET 6:00 pm CEST (in French), 1:00 pm ET 7:00 pm CEST (in English) POXEL SA (Euronext POXEL FR0012432516), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative treatments for chronic diseases with metabolic pathophysiology, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and rare disorders, today announced its financial results for the period ended June 30, 2021 and provided a corporate update. "Thus far, 2021 has proven to be a pivotal year for Poxel as exemplified by the approval and subsequent product launch of TWYMEEG in Japan. This first product approval highlights our proven capabilities to deliver upon our corporate and clinical goals and to bring improved metabolic therapeutics to patients. This achievement has strengthened our near-term financial position and will continue to enhance our financial foundation with associated future royalties and sales-based payments," said Thomas Kuhn, CEO of Poxel. "We also look forward to harnessing the full potential of our strategic shift with an increased focus on rare metabolic diseases, in addition to our ongoing commitment to NASH. Poxel is well-positioned to leverage its existing platforms to develop therapeutics in rare metabolic diseases," Mr. Kuhn concluded. Corporate Highlights The June 23 approval of TWYMEEG in Japan, Poxel's first product to reach commercialization, triggered two financing events: 1. In June 2021, Poxel received the third and final tranche of the IPF loan for EUR 13.5 million which is included in the second quarter cash and cash equivalents of EUR 36.9 million. 2. In July 2021, Poxel received a milestone payment of JPY 1.75 billion (approximately EUR 13.2 million, USD 15.8 million)1 from Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. Poxel appointed Dr. John Kozarich to the Board of Directors during the June 23, 2021, Annual and Extraordinary General Meeting, where he was also appointed as Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Board. Dr. Kozarich has over 40 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and academia. Bpifrance Participations transitioned off as Board observer, effective July 9, 2021. In June, Poxel conducted the Annual and Extraordinary General Meeting. The shareholders approved all resolutions that were recommended by the Board of Directors. For further information, please visit: https://www.poxelpharma.com/en_us/investors/shareholder-information/annual-general-meeting-documents. Clinical Development Updates Type 2 Diabetes (TWYMEEG/Imeglimin) On June 23, the new drug application for the 500mg TWYMEEG tablets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, was approved in Japan. The first-in-class drug with a unique dual mechanism of action was approved as a monotherapy and/or as an additional treatment to other glucose-lowering therapy regimens. Approval was based on positive results from various preclinical and clinical studies, including the Phase 3 TIMES (Trials of IMeglimin for Efficacy and Safety) program managed jointly by Poxel and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. The program included three pivotal trials to evaluate TWYMEEG 's efficacy and safety in over 1,100 patients. TWYMEEG met its primary endpoints and objectives, exhibiting a favorable safety and tolerability profile. tablets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, was approved in Japan. The first-in-class drug with a unique dual mechanism of action was approved as a monotherapy and/or as an additional treatment to other glucose-lowering therapy regimens. Approval was based on positive results from various preclinical and clinical studies, including the Phase 3 TIMES (Trials of IMeglimin for Efficacy and Safety) program managed jointly by Poxel and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. The program included three pivotal trials to evaluate TWYMEEG 's efficacy and safety in over 1,100 patients. TWYMEEG met its primary endpoints and objectives, exhibiting a favorable safety and tolerability profile. Three presentations on Imeglimin were included in an oral session for large clinical studies at the 64 th Annual Meeting of the Japan Diabetes Society held in May. The presentations focused on the analysis and interpretation of clinical data derived from Phase 2 and Phase 3 (TIMES program) trials with Imeglimin in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes. Annual Meeting of the Japan Diabetes Society held in May. The presentations focused on the analysis and interpretation of clinical data derived from Phase 2 and Phase 3 (TIMES program) trials with Imeglimin in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes. In January, Poxel regained all Imeglimin rights from Metavant. In the US and Europe, Poxel continues to explore options to move Imeglimin forward in Phase 3 in patients with type 2 diabetes with moderate to severe chronic kidney disease (CKD), including partnering activities. Rare metabolic diseases (PXL065 and PXL770) In X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a rare disease affecting the nervous system and adrenal glands, Phase 2a clinical POC biomarker studies examining PXL065 and PXL770 are planned to initiate in early 2022 with data readouts anticipated by year end 2022. Two identical studies will enroll adult male ALD patients with adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), the most common form of the disease, and observe the effect of PXL065 and PXL770 over 12 weeks of treatment on pharmacokinetics, safety, and efficacy using relevant biomarkers, including the impact on elevated very long chain fatty acids (VLCFA), the hallmark plasma marker of the disease. In April, Dr. Sophie Bozec, Senior Vice President, R&D Pharmacology and Scientific Communication at Poxel, delivered a presentation at the Mitochondria-Targeted Drug Development Summit highlighting Poxel's scientific focus and deep expertise in mechanisms modulating cellular energy homeostasis and addressing mitochondrial dysfunction including showcasing the potential of Poxel's AMP-kinase (AMPK) activator and deuterium-stabilized thiazolidinedione (dTZD) platforms for rare disorders where mitochondrial dysfunction is a major pathogenic component. NASH (PXL065 and PXL770) PXL065, deuterium-stabilized R-pioglitazone, is being evaluated for safety and efficacy in a streamlined Phase 2 trial, DESTINY1, for the treatment of NASH. Patient enrollment was completed in September 2021, with topline data anticipated approximately one year later. This 36-week trial in noncirrhotic biopsy-proven NASH patients will assess three doses of PXL065 compared to placebo in 123 patients. The results will be used to help identify the dose or doses for a Phase 3 registrational trial. Future development of PXL770, a first-in-class, oral direct AMPK activator, in NASH will be assessed pending results from the PXL065 Phase 2 trial in NASH and both Phase 2a POC studies in ALD. Dr. Kenneth Cusi and Dr. Vlad Ratziu each delivered presentations on PXL770 clinical studies at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) International Liver Congress (ILC), held from June 23-26, 2021. Dr. Cusi presented the results of the STAMP-NAFLD 12-week, randomized, controlled Phase 2a trial of PXL770 in 120 presumed NASH patients selected as a "Best of ILC" abstract. Dr. Ratziu presented the results from a 4-week PK/PD target engagement study of PXL770 in NAFLD patients. Subsequent Events after the Period In July, Poxel announced it will pursue a strategic direction to focus its pipeline on high value, rare metabolic indications, to complement its commitment to NASH, with the goal of creating pipeline synergies, maximizing resources, and driving shareholder value. In July, ENYO Pharma SA announced positive results for Vonafexor (EYP001), an FXR agonist that was licensed from Poxel in 2015, in a Phase 2a study in NASH patients over 12 weeks and topline interim results from two ongoing Phase 2a studies in chronic hepatitis B patients. In August, Elizabeth Woo was appointed as Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Public Relations Corporate Communications. Elizabeth brings over 25 years of investor relations and biotech communications experience in initial public offerings, follow-on financings, market launches, and commercialized products. She is based in Boston. On September 16, Poxel's strategic partner, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, launched TWYMEEG 500mg tablets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Japan. Japan is the first country where the product has been approved. As part of the license agreement with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, Poxel is entitled to receive escalating double-digit royalties on net sales and sales-based payments (based on Poxel's current forecast) of up to JPY 26.5 billion (approximately EUR 200 million, USD 230 million) 2 in accordance with sales goals. 500mg tablets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Japan. Japan is the first country where the product has been approved. As part of the license agreement with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, Poxel is entitled to receive escalating double-digit royalties on net sales and sales-based payments (based on Poxel's current forecast) of up to JPY 26.5 billion (approximately EUR 200 million, USD 230 million) in accordance with sales goals. In September, data for PXL770 was published online by Hepatology Communications, titled "Direct AMPK Activation Corrects NASH in Rodents Through Metabolic Effects and Direct Action on Inflammation and Fibrogenesis." First Half 2021 Financial Results (IFRS standards) Revenue Poxel reported revenues of EUR 13.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021, as compared to EUR 6.4 million during the corresponding period in 2020. Revenue for the first half of 2021 mostly reflects the JPY 1.75 billion (EUR 13.2 million) milestone payment from Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma which Poxel received in July 2021. EUR (in thousands) H1 2021 H1 2020 6 months 6 months Roivant Agreement 13 Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Agreement 13,274 6,359 Total revenues 13,274 6,372 Limited review procedures have been performed by the auditors and the issuance of the report is in process. Income Statement Poxel devotes the bulk of its resources to research and development (R&D) activities. R&D expenses totaled EUR 14.7 million for the first half of 2021, as compared to EUR 12.6 million for the corresponding period in 2020. R&D expenses for the first half of 2021 primarily reflect the clinical study costs incurred for the phase 2 DESTINY study evaluating PXL065 in NASH. To a lesser extent, they also reflect the Phase 2a clinical program cost of PXL770 for the treatment of NASH and the regulatory costs incurred over the period for TWYMEEG, for which the Company obtained marketing approval in June 2021. R&D expenses are net of the R&D Tax Credit (CIR) that resulted in an income of EUR 1.6 million for the first half of 2021 as compared to the same level for the corresponding period of 2020. General and administrative expenses totaled EUR 5.4 million for the first half of 2021, as compared to EUR 6.0 million for the first half of 2020. The financial loss amounted to EUR 1.2 million for the first half of 2021, as compared to an income of EUR 0.2 million for the first half of 2020. It primarily reflected the interests attached to the Company indebtedness. The net result for the financial period ending June 30, 2021, was a net loss of EUR 8.0 million, as compared to a net loss of EUR 12.1 million in the corresponding period in 2020. Condensed Income Statement EUR (in thousands) HY HY 2021 6 months 2020 6 months Revenue 13,274 6,372 Research and development expenses* (14,683) (12,580) General and administrative expenses (5,443) (5,983) Operating gain (loss) (6,851) (12,191) Financial income (loss) (1,178) 249 Income tax (118) Net income (loss) (8,029) (12,060) *Net of R&D tax credit Limited review procedures have been performed by the auditors and the issuance of the report is in process. Cash As of June 30, 2021, cash and cash equivalents were EUR 36.9 million (USD 43.9 million), as compared to EUR 40.2 million (USD 49.4 million) on December 31, 2020. Cash and cash equivalents were fully offset by financial liabilities (excluding IFRS16 impacts and derivative debts) as of June 30, 2021. Cash and cash equivalents net of financial liabilities (excluding IFRS16 impacts and derivative debts) were EUR 17.1 million on December 31, 2020. In July 2021, Poxel received a EUR 13.23million milestone payment from its partner Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma for the Imeglimin approval, which is not reflected in the June 30, 2021 cash update. EUR (in thousands) Q2 2021 Q4 2020 Cash 20,431 15,587 Cash equivalents 16,490 24,616 Total cash and cash equivalents* 36,921 40,203 *Cash and cash equivalents were fully offset by financial liabilities (excluding IFRS16 impacts and derivative debts) as of June 30, 2021. Cash and cash equivalents net of financial liabilities (excluding IFRS16 impacts and derivative debts) were EUR 17.1 million on December 31, 2020. Limited review procedures have been performed by the auditors and the issuance of the report is in process. The webcasts will be held on September 23, 2021: In French, at 12:00 pm ET (New York) 6:00 pm CEST (Paris time). To register for the webcast: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o4kretFCS8uz7iHv0iLmxg In English, at 1:00 pm ET (New York) 7:00 pm CEST (Paris time). To register for the webcast: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Flka34pnTdGsTj_fJSvGIw A slide presentation to accompany the webcast will be available in the Investors section of Poxel website. Participants will be able to submit questions through the webcast chat during the event. Following the live call, a replay will be available for 90 days on https://www.poxelpharma.com/en_us/investors/company-information/corporate-presentations Planned Presentations and Participation at the Following Upcoming Events International AMPK meeting, Evian, France, September 26-30, 2021 HealthTech Innovation Days, France, October 4-5, 2021 World Congress of Neurology, October 3-7, 2021 H.C. Wainwright NASH Conference, October 12, 2021 National Organization for Rare Diseases (NORD) Rare Disease Summit, October 18-19, 2021 Next Financial Press Release: Third Quarter 2021 Financial and Corporate Update on October 21, 2021 About Poxel SA Poxel is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative treatments for chronic serious diseases with metabolic pathophysiology, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and rare disorders. Poxel has clinical and earlier-stage programs from its adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator and deuterated TZD platforms targeting chronic and rare metabolic diseases. For the treatment of NASH, PXL065 (deuterium-stabilized R-pioglitazone) is in a streamlined Phase 2 trial (DESTINY1). PXL770, a first-in-class direct AMPK activator, has successfully completed a Phase 2a proof-of-concept trial for the treatment of NASH, which met its objectivesFor the rare inherited metabolic disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), the company intends to initiate Phase 2a proof of concept studies with PXL065 and PXL770 in patients with adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN). TWYMEEG (Imeglimin), Poxel's first-in-class lead product that targets mitochondrial dysfunction, has been approved and launched for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Japan Poxel expects to receive sales-based payments and royalties from Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. Poxel has a strategic partnership with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma for Imeglimin in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and nine other Southeast Asian countries. The Company intends to generate further growth through strategic partnerships and pipeline development. Listed on Euronext Paris, Poxel is headquartered in Lyon, France, and has subsidiaries in Boston, MA, and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, please visit: www.poxelpharma.com All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release about future events are subject to (i) change without notice and (ii) factors beyond the Company's control. These statements may include, without limitation, any statements preceded by, followed by or including words such as "target," "believe," "expect," "aim," "intend," "may," "anticipate," "estimate," "plan," "project," "will," "can have," "likely," "should," "would," "could" and other words and terms of similar meaning or the negative thereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties beyond the Company's control that could cause the Company's actual results or performance to be materially different from the expected results or performance expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. ________________________ 1 Currency exchange rate at the date of the approval. 2 Currency exchange rate at the date of the agreement (30 Oct 2017). 3 Currency exchange rate at the date of the approval View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005729/en/ Contacts: Poxel SA Catherine David Investor Relations Communication Manager catherine.david@poxelpharma.com +33 7 64 57 61 78 Aurelie Bozza Investor Relations Communication Director aurelie.bozza@poxelpharma.com +33 6 99 81 08 36 Elizabeth Woo Senior Vice President, Investor Relations Communication elizabeth.woo@poxelpharma.com Investor relations Media EU/US Trophic Communications Stephanie May or Valeria Fisher poxel@trophic.eu +49 171 185 56 82 or +49 175 804 1816 Investor relations Media France NewCap Emmanuel Huynh or Arthur Rouille poxel@newcap.eu +33 1 44 71 94 94 NVMe, NVME-oF and DPU processors will reshape the Storage industry: Kalray's CEO and industry storage executives will share their views on Tuesday September 28th Grenoble - France, September 23, 2021 - Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris: ALKAL), a leading provider of a new generation of processors specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge, is delighted to announce its Storage Digital Event on BrightTALK on September 28 at 4pm CET. Storage arrays are fundamental building blocks in present-day data centers. However, the adoption of NVMe SSDs, a new type of ultra-fast, low latency storage media, challenges the way storage infrastructure and appliances are built today. Join key storage industry players, and learn more about industry trends and how new technologies such as NVMe, NVMe-oF as well as DPUs, a new type of processor dedicated to data processing, are driving the next storage revolution: WHO: Quentin Adam, CEO, Clever Cloud Philippe Deniel, Group Storage Lead at CEA Dennis Hanh, Principal Analyst, Storage at OMDIA Rick Kumar, SVP at Viking Enterprise Solution, a division of Sanmina Corporation Olivier Lambert, CEO at Vates Davide Villa, Director, Business Development EMEAI at Western Digital Eric Baissus, CEO, Kalray WHAT: Learn about the new revolution in the storage world linked to new Flash SSDs technologies, the massive adoption of NVMe-oF and the arrival of DPUs which make efficient disaggregation possible! WHEN: Tuesday, September 28, 2021 at 4pm CET WHERE: This digital event is accessible online with confirmed registration HOW: To register: https://bit.ly/3EMRg9d "The new storage revolution has started. We are delighted to organize such an event with some of the most talented storage experts in the world. Delivering high performance and a complete range of enterprise data storage services on top of NVMe technology requires a new generation of processors, DPUs, and a new generation of storage appliances. Kalray is one of the leading providers of DPUs with Kalray MPPA processor family and during the event will present the Kalray FlashBox, one of the first DPU-based NVMe storage appliance available on the market" said Eric Baissus, President and CEO of Kalray. "During this illustrious event, we would like to take the opportunity to unveil our new brand identity to align with the vision, values and ambition of Kalray moving forward." NVMe SSDs are up to 100x faster than traditional SSDs, but more difficult to deploy at scale. Most NVMe SSDs are deployed as direct-attached or local storage, which does not scale and is highly inefficient. Kalray's FlashBox, whose co-development with Viking Enterprise Solutions a division of Sanmina Corporation has been announced last July, is the first disaggregated NVMe storage array that has been designed from the ground up to leverage the full potential of NVMe flash at scale, while ensuring the lowest storage TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). FlashBox features the Kalray K200-LP Storage Acceleration Card with Kalray's flagship data?centric processor, the MPPA DPU. It enables customers to unlock the performance of NVMe SSDs at scale, while meeting reliability and efficiency requirements for their businesses. Customers, willing to build their own All-Flash Array from an on-the-shelf chassis, can start from Kalray's K200?LP acceleration card. K200-LP is a low?profile, 2x 100Gb/s ethernet, PCIe Gen4 card that can deliver more than 2 MIOPS and 12 GB/s per card (both RoCE and TCP) with a latency as low as 30 microseconds. ABOUT KALRAY Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris - FR0010722819 - ALKAL) is a fabless semiconductor company, leading provider in a new generation of processors specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge. Kalray MPPA Intelligent Processors are able to capture and analyze on the fly massive data flows, and interact in real time with the outside world. These processors are capable of running demanding AI algorithms and simultaneously a wide set of different processing and control tasks such as intensive mathematical algorithms, signal processing, network or storage software stacks. Kalray's Intelligent Processors can be deployed in fast-growing sectors from Cloud to Edge: modern data centers, 5G telecom networks, autonomous vehicles, healthcare equipment, industry 4.0, drones and robots Kalray's offering includes processors, acceleration cards and a software suite, for a broad spectrum of customers such as next generation data center equipment manufacturers and service providers, system integrators and consumer product manufacturers such as car makers. Founded in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA French lab, Kalray counts among its investors: Alliance Venture (Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi), Safran, NXP Semiconductors, CEA and Bpifrance. Read more at: www.kalrayinc.com CONTACTS INVESTISSEURS Eric BAISSUS contactinvestisseurs@kalrayinc.com Tel. 04 76 18 90 71 ACTUS finance & communication Anne-Pauline PETUREAUX kalray@actus.fr + 33 1 53 67 36 72 CONTACTS PRESSE Loic HAMON communication@kalrayinc.com Tel. 04 76 18 90 71 ACTUS finance & communication Serena BONI sboni@actus.fr Tel. 04 72 18 04 92 ------------------------ This publication embed "Actusnews SECURITY MASTER ". - SECURITY MASTER Key: mJlylsVokm+YlnFtZcZmZpWZmGlhyGPIl5LKk2qaZp7Gb3BnmGtoZsjGZnBilmlr - Check this key: https://www.security-master-key.com. ------------------------ Copyright Actusnews Wire Receive by email the next press releases of the company by registering on www.actusnews.com, it's free Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-71145-pr-kalray-digital-event-september-23-2021-en-vfinal.pdf Press release Brussels, September 23rd , 2021 With its new positioning Tomorrow is ours to make, Orange Belgium goes one step further in addressing all customer needs via the launch of a new and innovative b-brand to answer the needs of digital-savvy customers. hey! is a 100% digital brand which takes a participative approach specially designed to meet the needs of ultra-connected customers whose life is completely digitally oriented. This next generation value proposition is based on 4 pillars: 100% digital, Generous,Low impact, Evolutive. hey! will shake up the market by putting communities at the heart of its offers. The threehey! offers which boast attractiveonline pricing with extensive mobile data , will be launched on the 24th of September 2021. 100% digital hey! meets the needs generated by new internet usages, which have become increasingly popular, particularly among digitally active customers. hey! is aimed at those who love efficiency and getting things done in a few clicks - the people who prefer the simplicity of a digital experience. Because online doesn't mean compromising on quality and value. hey! addresses the needs of those who fully enjoy the benefits of digital and tend to favor such channels instead of more conventional ones, such as physical shops. Those people have a shared digital mind-set. As a fully digital brand, which empowers its customers, hey! offers can only be purchased via the website, and the My hey! 'customer zone' is tailored for self-service only. Low impact hey! offers very competitive prices and a brand new customer experience, but it also designed to have the lowest environmental impact possible: a recycled plastic sim cards, a fully digital customer journey, full carbon neutrality of its operations and certified 100% recycled packaging and paper use. Generous hey! offers loads of data for a smart price, combined with a seamless digital experience. What you see is what you get. Digital life should be simple and easy. Christophe Dujardin, Chief Consumer Officer of Orange Belgium, adds: "By launching hey! next to the new services and developments made under the Orange flagship brand, we can ensure every consumer can find the perfectly fitting service and offer, while relying on the state-of-the-art mobile network.While Orange will focus on breadth of services and families, hey! will be more focused on individuals looking for aggressive prices. We really want to empower our customers, let them get what they need for the best possible price, but also engage with the brand and participate in its creation, its evolution." Evolutive Tomorrow is ours to make will be reflected in hey!'s involvement with its customers over time. A community will be built to co-create future offers and share ideas for improving the service and for the future of the brand. To make this community spirit a reality, the hey! team will get involved and will be available for discussions and sharing on several dedicated spaces such as the main website, www.heytelecom.bebut also social media. The brand will also stay in touch with users thanks to its innovative online customer service: in the coming months a chat service will offer customers a way to get in touch with hey! team members for technical and sales assistance. In a later phase, a hey! forum will provide community members with a site to discuss, get answers and contribute. The new brand will enjoy using Orange Belgium's high-quality network, which offers excellent mobile coverage and high-speed mobile data, but also innovative technologies like HD Voice, VoLTE and Voice over WiFi. The commercial launch will be on 24th September 2021. The online shop will open at www.heytelecom.be Xavier Pichon, CEO of Orange Belgium, explains that, "Nowadays, digitally active customers are connected to their friends and are active on social networks, they buy online, and they're always looking for great deals for leisure activities, outings, music and cinema. Above all, they want to form new relationships with brands. As an operator, we're highly committed to always closely following the evolutions of the market and the consumers' needs and this launch perfectly fits this strategy. It is the kind of offer we also see emerging in other countries, also within the scope of the Orange Group.hey! not only offers very competitive prices, it is also a sustainable offer, as this is also the kind of concern we know our customers share." About Orange Belgium Orange Belgium is one of the major telecommunication operators on the Belgian market, with over 3 million customers, and in Luxembourg, via its subsidiary Orange Communications Luxembourg. As a convergent player, it provides next generation connectivity services to residential customers through multi-gigabits mobile, cable and optic fiber networks, also relating to the Internet of Things. Its high-performance mobile network is equipped with the latest technologies and benefits from continuous investments preparing for the arrival of 5G. As a responsible operator, Orange Belgium is also investing to reduce its ecological footprint and promote sustainable and inclusive digital practices. Orange Belgium is a subsidiary of the Orange Group, one of the main operators in Europe and Africa for mobile telephony and internet access and a world leader in telecommunication services for companies. Orange Belgium is listed on the Brussels Stock Exchange (OBEL). For more information go to: corporate.orange.be, www.orange.be or follow us on Twitter: @pressOrangeBe. Press contact Younes Al Bouchouari - younes.albouchouari@orange.com+32 (0)477 69 87 73 Annelore Marynissen - annelore.marynissen@orange.com+32 (0)479 01 60 58 Attachment Non-Profit assembling world's greatest strategic minds in collaboration with Holy See (Vatican) based impact initiatives VATICAN CITY, ITALY / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Humanity 2.0 , a Non-Profit (Non-Government Organization) focused on identifying and removing the most significant impediments to human flourishing in collaboration with the Holy See (Vatican), is proud to announce it has appointed Jim Pitofsky to its advisory board which oversees the strategic and ethical direction of Humanity 2.0's impact initiatives. Matthew Sanders, CEO of Humanity 2.0 commented; "Jim is one of the most important social impact connectors in the U.S. and we are honored he has accepted to join our Advisory Board. I look forward to collaborating with him on discerning new ways to accelerate human flourishing globally and identifying new partners to scale our impact." Humanity 2.0 Advisory Committee consists of 10 members: Maurice Levy ; Chairman of the Supervisory Board; Publicis Groupe Bill Hilf ; Chief Executive Officer; Vulcan Tae Yoo ; Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility; Cisco Carlo D'Asaro Biondo ; Former President - EMEA Partnerships; Google Jean Oelwang ; President & Trustee Virgin Unite & B Team; Senior Partner; Virgin Jim Pitofsky ; Managing Director, Strategic Alliances; John Templeton Foundation Hilary Pennington ; Executive Vice President for Program; Ford Foundation Dinah McLeod ; Director and Cause Lead, Equality in the Workplace; The B Team Matt Bird ; Chief Executive Officer, CommPro Worldwide Fr. Philip Larrey ; Chairman; Humanity 2.0 About Jim Pitofsky Jim is the Managing Director of Strategic Alliances at the John Templeton Foundation, a $3B foundation where he builds partnerships with philanthropists, such as Giving Pledgers, and with executives at foundations and companies. Prior to joining JTF, Jim was Chief Strategy Officer at the Arizona Community Foundation where he oversaw strategic planning and execution, public policy, education, and strategic alliances, as well as ACF's Center for Business Philanthropy. Jim also served as the V.P. and Acting President of the Echoing Green Foundation, supporting hundreds of social entrepreneurs around the world; the Deputy Director of the National Youth Leadership Council, one of the leading service-learning organizations in the U.S. and the world; and the Executive Director for Hands-on Bay Area, the leading manager of corporate volunteerism in the Bay Area. Additionally, Jim founded and directed an organization that worked internationally to create school/community and business/education partnerships and was adopted by the National Association of Partners in Education. During that time, he also served as the elected President of the National and Community Service Coalition and led their federal public policy efforts. Throughout his career, Jim has worked closely with CEOs, foundation executives, philanthropists, celebrities, policy-makers, and nonprofit leaders to advance philanthropy, education reform, leadership development, social entrepreneurship, community service, and racial and economic equity. He has been a speaker at the World Economic Forum (Davos), FORTUNE Magazine CEO Forum, the White House Conference on Philanthropy, the Milken Institute, and hundreds of other convenings of corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit leaders. He has also organized meetings around the world in places such as the White House and the Vatican and facilitated convenings such as TED. About Humanity 2.0 Humanity 2.0 a Non-Profit (Non-Government Organization) focused on identifying and removing the most significant impediments to human flourishing in collaboration with the Holy See (Vatican). A vehicle for facilitating collaborative ventures between the traditionally siloed public, private, and faith-based sectors. Its mission is to identify impediments to human flourishing and then work collaboratively across sectors to remove them by sourcing and scaling bold and innovative solutions. Developed in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development at the Holy See and a consortium of leaders and luminaries, Humanity 2.0 seeks to unite humanity in the common cause of realizing a better world for our children. For more information visit: www.humanity2-0.org | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn CONTACT: Humanity 2.0 Communications: Matt Bird Advisory Council Member P: +1 646.401.4499 E: matt@commpro.com PR & Media Contact: Nicole Liddy Project Manager CommPro Worldwide E: Nicole.liddy@commpro.com C: 848-702-4173 SOURCE: Humanity 2.0 View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665338/Humanity-20-Appoints-Jim-Pitofsky-to-Advisory-Board--Rome-Italy VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 23, 2021 / Infield Minerals Corp. (TSXV:INFD) ("Infield" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that drilling has commenced at the M1 Property (the "Property") North Zone ("M1 North Zone"). The drilling program is expected to comprise approximately 2,000 metres of reverse circulation drilling across seven holes ranging in depth from 150 to 400 metres. "Having recently visited our Property during the mobilization phase, I am extremely pleased that the M1 North Zone drilling program is now underway," stated Evandra Nakano, President and CEO of Infield. Ms. Nakano continued, "We are excited to advance Infield's testing of these high priority targets and to determine whether near surface mineralization extends at depth across the interpreted structures and geophysical signatures." M1 Property The M1 property is located approximately 75 kilometres north of the city of Ely in White Pine County, Nevada. Gold and silver mineralization at the Property is associated with silicified breccia zones along and proximal to regional and local fault structures. On June 30, 2020, Infield entered into a property option agreement to acquire 100% interest in the M1 property over a three-year term. Please see the Company's news release dated August 3, 2021, for details on the M1 North Zone drilling program and targets being tested. Qualified Person Technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Richard Dufresne, P.Geo., Vice-President Exploration for Infield Minerals Corp. and a Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101. For more information, please contact Evandra Nakano, the CEO, President and a director of the Company, at +1 (604) 220-4691 or email: info@infieldminerals.com. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of Infield Minerals Corp. Evandra Nakano President, CEO & Director About Infield Infield Minerals is currently exploring for gold and silver in mining-friendly Nevada. Our mission is to grow and deliver value through discovery, acquisitions and sustainable development of high quality, high potential assets for the social and economic benefits of our stakeholders. Founded in 2020, Infield is led by a team of mining entrepreneurs with extensive technical and resource evaluation experience. www.infieldminerals.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 Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning Infield's plans, intentions and expectations, which are not historical in nature, are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements include, among other matters, the exploration plans for the M1 Property. Forward-looking statements may be, but are not always, identified by words including "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "expects" and similar expressions. Infield cautions readers that forward-looking statements, including without limitation those relating to Infield's future operations and business prospects, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties (including geopolitical risk, regulatory, COVID-19 and exchange rate risk) that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statement will prove to be accurate or that management's assumptions underlying such statements, including assumptions concerning future developments, circumstances or results, will materialize. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this new release and Infield does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking information included herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. SOURCE: Infield Minerals Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/665340/Infield-Minerals-Commences-Drilling-at-the-M1-Property-North-Zone-in-Nevada Sleep specialist Beter Bed was today voted category winner of the 'ABN AMRO Webshop Award in the Netherlands' for the fifth time. Beter Bed is now a nominee for the overall winner of the 'ABN AMRO Best Retail Chain Award in the Netherlands'. The announcements were made during the category presentation ceremony for the 'ABN AMRO Retailer of the Year the Netherlands', at the ABN AMRO head office in Amsterdam. Beter Bed received the highest score from the consumer panel in the Web shop category, beating off competition from other webshops in the Sleeping category. John Kruijssen, CEO of Beter Bed Holding, is delighted and proud that Beter Bed was once again awarded the Webshop Award. "Within our omni-channel strategy the digital channel is becoming increasingly important, as is confirmed by our customers with this award. This title will be a real boost to the launch of our digital organisation under the name LUNEXT. LUNEXT, Beter Bed's new employer brand, will serve as the vehicle for the further development of all current and future e-commerce propositions for the whole of the Beter Bed Holding." Largest consumer awards the Netherlands During recent months, more than 294,000 consumers scored their favourite retailers for these public prizes, on the basis of ten aspects. In total, more than 500 retailers took part in the process, making these the largest consumer awards in the Netherlands. The awarding of the category winner title in the Sleeping category means that Beter Bed is also in the running to win the overall title by earning the votes of consumers, over the course of the coming month. The overall winners will be announced on Thursday, 28 October, during the Retailer of the Year Gala. About Beter Bed Holding Beter Bed Holding (BBH) is the Netherlands' leading sleep specialist in retail, wholesale and B2B. Our mission is simple. We believe that the better we sleep, the happier, healthier and more productive we are. And we won't rest until everyone gets the high-quality sleep they deserve. Listed on Euronext Amsterdam, BBH operates the successful retail brands Beter Bed, Beddenreus and the new subscription brand Leazzzy. In addition, through its subsidiary DBC International, BBH has a wholesale business in branded products in the bedroom furnishings sector, which includes the well-known international brand M line. With 3 distribution centres, a fleet of 80 vehicles, 134 stores and a fast-growing online presence, our team of over 1,000 dedicated employees served nearly 200,000 customers in 2020, generating over 200 million in revenue. Providing expert sleep advice is at the very heart of our strategy, and thanks to our revolutionary 'Beter Slapen ID' tool, our sleep consultants help customers to get the perfect night's sleep. BBH is proud that M line is the official sleep supplier of AFC Ajax, TeamNL, Jumbo-Visma and the KNVB. For more information Press enquiries: Uneke Dekkers / CFF Communications T +31 For the PDF of the press release please click on the link below. Press photos can be downloaded here . Attachment Traders voted FP Markets 'Best Global Value Broker' for the THIRD consecutive year, and FP Markets also scooped the 'Best Forex Trading Experience Award in the EU' for 2021 LIMASSOL, Cyprus, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FP Markets has been awarded the "Best Global Value Forex Broker" and "Best Forex Trading Experience in the EU" at the Global Forex Awards 2021. The Global Forex Awards 2021 is celebrating its 4th edition as an international award ceremony rewarding forex retail businesses both globally and regionally and champions cutting-edge technology, low-cost trading, comprehensive market research tools, advanced educational programs, and world-class customer service for direct to consumer/trader businesses. FP Markets' Head of Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Craig Allison, hailed the victory: "For the third consecutive year, FP Markets has been voted the 'Best Global Value Forex Broker' proving that our commitment to providing superior trading experiences for our customers is paying off. Picking up the 'Best Forex Trading Experience in the EU' for the first time is also an honour, and being appreciated by new traders around the world shows that we are heading in the right direction and demonstrates that FP Markets is increasingly recognized globally as the best destination for clients for overall trading experience given our market-leading tight spreads and award-winning fast execution. The appreciation from our own traders is doubly satisfying as we continue to strive to improve FP Markets' products and services." FP Markets offers over 10,000 trading instruments offering traders access to CFDs across Forex, Indices, Commodities, Stocks, and Cryptocurrencies, making it one of the largest offerings in the industry and offers eight platforms, including MT4, MT5 and Iress. Over the past 16 years, FP Markets has learned that the combination of consistently tight spreads and fast execution, coupled with cutting-edge platforms, a wide product range, and first-rate customer support are the key ingredients that give serious traders the confidence to trade. Since the year of its establishment in 2005, Australia's Best Forex Broker 2020 continues to expand its product offering, giving traders the ability to trade under some of the best trading conditions in the industry. Notes to Editors About FP Markets: FP Markets is an Australian-regulated global Forex Broker with more than 16 years of industry experience. FP Markets offers highly competitive interbank Forex spreads available from 0.0 pips and leverage up to 500:1*. Download FP Markets' Mobile App and trade on-the-go across several powerful online platforms like MetaTrader4, MetaTrader5, WebTrader, and IRESS. The company's outstanding 24/5 multilingual service has been recognized by Investment Trends as home to some of the most content clients in the industry, having been awarded "The Highest Overall Client Satisfaction Award" five years running from Investment Trends. FP Markets has been awarded the "Global Forex Value Broker" in three consecutive years (2019, 2020, 2021) at the Global Forex Awards. For full details of our wide-ranging offering, visit https://www.fpmarkets.com. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1633728/FP_Markets.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574261/FP_Markets_Logo.jpg Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Origen Resources Inc. (CSE: ORGN) (FSE: 4VXA) (the "Company" or "Origen") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Jessy Ventures Corp. ("Jessy Ventures") (TSXV: SARG.P), to acquire a 60% interest in its Arlington property ("Property") located 17km north of Beaverdell, BC. Jessy Ventures intends on using the Arlington property as its qualifying transaction to obtain a full TSX-V listing. "The business plan adopted at the Company's inception, of partnering with capable groups to advance certain assets, is starting to gain momentum. The signing of this option agreement with Jessy Ventures is yet another successful execution towards generating increased value for our shareholders," states Blake Morgan, President. Option Terms Jessy Ventures can earn a 60% interest in the Arlington property by paying Origen a total of $185,000, issuing 2 million shares and incurring work expenditures of $750,000 over a 3 year period. Jessy Ventures is also required to reimburse Origen the costs they have incurred on the recently completed exploration program conducted on the newly acquired Fresh Pot claims totalling approximately $110,000. About the Arlington Property The Arlington property is located 17 km north of Beaverdell and 67 km south of Kelowna within the Arrow Boundary District of south-central British Columbia. The Property consists of five (5) mineral claims covering 1,572 hectares that cover geologically prospective ground immediately north of the historic Beaverdell and Carmi mines, the sites of two landmark BC mining camps operational in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The success in the Beaverdell and Carmi mining camps was a key driver in the early identification of and discoveries on the Property. The Property hosts numerous Minfile occurrences identified as structurally controlled polymetallic Ag-Cu-Pb-Zn +/- Au veins including a series of historical mine workings. Recent work programs comprised geochemical, mapping and prospecting surveys, and a MAG-VLF geophysical survey. The results were very encouraging. The mineralization observed at surface, including two grab samples that returned assays grading 221 g/t silver and 11.7 g/t gold*, in conjunction with a thorough geological and geophysical interpretation, indicate that the polymetallic mineral occurrences have the potential for considerable subsurface continuity between the showings. This increased appreciation for the potential of the Property prompted the expansion of the Property with the acquisition of two adjacent claims (Company News Release dated April 19, 2021). The 2021 summer field program focused on the contiguous newly acquired ground with complete coverage by prospecting, soil sampling and a ground magnetic survey. Several trenches, open cuts, adits and a shaft were located during the prospecting program. Rock grab sample results returned anomalous values in Au (0.001 to 1.85ppm), Ag (<0.2 to 10,001ppm), Co (4.0 to 249.8ppm) and Cu (38.7 to 1118.3ppm)*. A review of the geochemical results exhibits anomalous results for Ag ( 0.1 to 1.33ppm), Au (0.001-0.295ppm), Cu (2.5 to 1131.4ppm), As (0.9 to 975.7ppm) and Co (2.3 to 98.5ppm)*. Plots of the 80, 90 and 95 percentile values for these elements roughly describes a circular to semi circular pattern of anomalous values wrapping around a barren core which may suggest a buried intrusive feature. The circular feature described by the anomalous results roughly measures 500m in size. Results are pending for the magnetic survey recently completed over the established grid. * Grab samples are solely designed to show the presence or absence of mineralization and to characterize the mineralization. Grab samples are by definition selective and not intended to provide nor should be construed as a representative indication of grade or mineralization at the project. All of the rock and soil samples collected during the 2021 field program were securely stored at Coast Mountain Geological Ltd.'s field facilities and were hand delivered by Coast Mountain Geological Ltd staff to MS Analytical Services in Langley BC for Multi element ICP-AES/MS, ultra trace level analysis for both rock and soil samples. MS Analytical is an ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC17025 certified commercial laboratory. MS Analytical is a Canadian company with over 25 years of experience analyzing geological material and is independent of the issuer and the vendor. The submitted soil samples were dried at the lab and then screened to -80 mesh size. The undersized fraction was analyzed and the oversize fraction is discarded. The soil samples were analyzed using MS Analytical package ICP-IMS-117 (39 element) trace level analysis with dilute aqua regia. The submitted rock samples were first crushed to 70% passing 2mm, and then a representative split is taken and pulverized to 85% passing 75m. The pulverized rock samples were analyzed using MS Analytical package ICP-IMS-111 (51 elements) Ultra trace level analysis with dilute aqua regia. Richard Kemp, P Geo., a Qualified Person as that term is defined in NI 43-101 has prepared, supervised the preparation or approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release. About Origen Origen is an exploration company engaged in generating, acquiring and advancing base, precious metal, and lithium properties. The Company currently holds a property portfolio of four 100% owned precious and base metal projects in southern British Columbia, a 100% interest in the 26,771 ha LGM project and an option to acquire a 100% interest in the 3,971 ha Wishbone property in the mineral rich Golden Triangle of British Columbia, a 100% interest in the Middle Ridge gold project and a 100% interest in 15 lithium prospects in Newfoundland. On behalf of Origen, Blake Morgan President For further information, please contact Blake Morgan, President at 236-878-4938 or Gary Schellenberg, CEO at 604-681-0221. 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. Certain of the statements made and information contained herein may constitute "forward-looking information." In particular references to the private placement and future work programs or expectations on the quality or results of such work programs are subject to risks associated with operations on the property, exploration activity generally, equipment limitations and availability, as well as other risks that we may not be currently aware of. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/97422 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 23, 2021) - Castle Peak Mining Ltd. (TSXV: CAP) ("Castle Peak" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary company in the Republic of Ghana named Castle Sika Mining Ltd. ("Castle Sika"). Pursuant to the Definitive Agreement between Castle Peak and Wononuo Investment Limited ("Wononuo") for the purchase of a prospecting license from Wononuo for a mineral deposit located in Ghana and as disclosed by news release dated February 20, 2019, Castle Peak plans to use Castle Sika to hold title to the prospecting license and carry out business operations in Ghana. Castle Peak and Wononuo have entered into a further agreement to set the closing date of the Definitive Agreement for October 31, 2021. The completion of the transaction is subject to a number of conditions including, but not limited to: final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, fulfillment of the conditions as set out in the Definitive Agreement, and other actions necessary to complete the transaction. On behalf of the Board of Castle Peak Mining Ltd.: "Iyad Jarbou" Chief Financial Officer Tel: 604.362.7685 Email: iyadj@castlepeakmining.com FORWARD-LOOKING AND OTHER CAUTIONARY INFORMATION Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain 'forward-looking information' and 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This release may contain statements that are forward looking statements and are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. Such information contained herein represents management's best judgment as of the date hereof based on information currently available. As a result, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this release. The Company does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. For more information on the Company, investors should review the Company's filings that are available at www.sedar.com. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada 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/97424 SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei launched its Smart Port Solution at HUAWEI CONNECT 2021. As part of the Smart Customs Integrated Solution, the solution builds digital management capabilities based on all factors - people, vehicles, goods, enterprises, and places - in port scenarios to help build safe, efficient, and intelligent world-class ports, making cross-border trade safer and more convenient. Ports of the Future - Intelligent, Sustainable, and Collaborative Due to the changing global environment, growing population and urbanization in developing countries, cross-border e-commerce, and post-pandemic new normal, port management is facing more and more challenges. During the Customs Session, Mr. Zhou Yi, Managing Partner of Customs and Global Trade Services at Deloitte China, said: "Ports connect ecosystem stakeholders and supply chains. Therefore, they need to have core competitiveness for sustainable development, which will facilitate innovation across the value chain to support cross-border trade and other activities. There are five factors driving the modernization of ports: population, sustainable development, new patterns in business and trade, global environmental changes, and new technological developments. To be successful, ports must fully leverage new technologies to respond to new demands, achieve connectivity across all scenarios, process and utilize massive amounts of data more efficiently, adapt to green ecosystems, make sustainable development a competitive advantage, and build a collaborative ecosystem for economic zones near the ports." Huawei Smart Port Solution: Help Build World-Class Ports As cross-border e-commerce gathers momentum in the increasingly globalized world, there is added regulatory pressure towards trade management and facilitation. In addition, the pandemic has also brought on new inspection and quarantine responsibilities to customs worldwide. Ports are impacted hugely too with its modernization an important area of focus in the digital transformation of customs. The main goals of port digitalization are ensuring trade safety, improving clearance efficiency, cracking down on smuggling, and increasing customs tax revenue collection. Augustine Chiew, Chief Customs Expert in the Global Government Business Unit at Huawei, shared, "A multinational enterprise with businesses in 170 countries, Huawei has an international vision on port modernization. We hope to work with customs and ecosystem partners to develop secure, convenient, and efficient solutions to help nations build world-class ports." Huawei Smart Port Solution leverages leading technologies such as converged communications, AI, big data, and cloud computing to build an integrated digital foundation achieving synergy between cloud, network, edge, and device. The solution focuses on four areas: intelligent customs clearance, visualized collaborative command, convenient clearance services, and efficient comprehensive management. Working closely with leading customs ecosystem partners,multi-scenario solutions such as integrated online service platform, smart customs clearance and inspection, in-transit goods supervision, surveillance command center, and port campus management has been developed. These facilitates the integration of ports and logistics, enabling smooth port operations, and efficient customs supervision. In particular, the Smart Customs Clearance Solution integrates computing, storage, network, and security capabilities. It brings together intelligent checkpoint, customs clearance system, as well as surveillance and command services, helping ports build one-stop smart customs clearance capabilities quickly. With the solution, the average deployment time is reduced by 60% and the vehicle clearance time to seconds, greatly increasing them overall intelligence and clearance efficiency of ports. Nadim Abdulrahim, Expert of Global Government Industry at Huawei, said: "Based on the digital platform, Huawei is building a campus IOC and fully connected campus network to provide ubiquitous smart terminal awareness. The IOC facilitates personnel access, intelligent vehicle identification, all-domain situational awareness, emergency risk control, campus perimeter alarm, campus video patrol, intelligent pandemic prevention and control, and customs clearance situational awareness, covering people, vehicles, objects, and places all on one screen. It helps improve campus operation and service efficiency and achieves a truly secure and convenient smart campus." Chongqing Lianglu-Cuntan Free Trade Port Area is the leading comprehensive bonded zone among 14 in China and the only one among them that has both an airport and a water port. At HUAWEI CONNECT 2021, Mr. Shi Zhiyong, Director of the Smart City Administration Office of Chongqing Lianglu-Cuntan Free Trade Port Area, shared his experience of digital transformation: "Based on Huawei's top-level planning, infrastructure network, and digital platform capabilities, the port area drives transformation in organization, management, processes, personnel, and facilities and develops five smart applications and a command center. So far, the port area now has 13 intelligent checkpoints, which enable customs clearance within seconds. A converged communications and IoT network has been built to achieve intelligent management of nearly 50,000 municipal facilities, covering the entire port area. The port can now access transportation big data, which effectively address problems such as traffic congestion, illegal parking, and speeding. With Huawei, the port area has built an industry-leading smart brain, which is now the center for information, surveillance, command, coordination, and emergency response. Operation status is now visible, with events controllable, and services much more manageable." Currently, digital technology is driving transformation in all industries. Using its advantages in ICT, Huawei will continue to innovate and develop smart port solutions. We will dive into digital, lead port modernization leveraging digital technology, unleashing the potential of smart customs. Huawei will facilitate digital transformation of customs and ports in countries worldwide, playing a key role in making cross-border trade safer and more convenient. Huawei hosts HUAWEI CONNECT 2021 online from September 23 to October 31. The theme of this year's event is Dive into Digital. We're going to dive deep into the practical application of technologies like cloud, AI, and 5G in all industries, and how they can make organizations of all shapes and sizes more efficient, more versatile, and ultimately more resilient as we move towards economic recovery. For more information, please contact our local team or check out https://www.huawei.com/en/events/huaweiconnect WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures settled higher on Thursday amid prospects for a surge in energy demand, and tighter supplies amid the slow recovery in restoration of output in the Gulf of Mexico following the disruptions caused by recent hurricanes. Recent data showing a drop in U.S. crude stockpiles in the week ended September 17 continued to support oil prices. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for November ended up by $1.07 or about 1.5% at $73.30 a barrel, the lowest settlement in about two months. Oil prices had dropped to $71.61 a barrel earlier in the session. Brent crude futures were up $0.97 or 1.27% at $77.16 a barrel a little while ago. Data from Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed crude stockpiles dropped by 3.481 million barrels to 414 million barrels last week, the lowest level since October 2018. Gasoline stockpiles rose by 3.47 million barrels, more than 2.5 times the expected increase, while distillate stockpiles dropped by 2.55 million barrels, more than twice the expected drop. The EIA also said that oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico continue to return to production, and weekly output rose by 500,000 barrels per day in the most recent week. The OPEC and allies, collectively known as OPEC+ will meet on October 4. Iraq's oil minister said on Wednesday that the group was working to keep crude prices close to $70 per barrel amid a recovery in global economy. 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) - Six employees of United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (UAL) have filed a lawsuit against their employer, citing that the airline is discriminating against its employees through its compulsory-vaccine policy. The lawsuit was filed before a Texas federal judge on Tuesday. According to the lawsuit, the company did not discuss with employees its vaccination policy and plans to put on all unvaccinated employees on 'indefinite unpaid leave'. The employees also said that the airlines denied their requests for religious or medical exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine. This denial, according to them, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The employees who filed the lawsuit hold different positions in the company like pilots, flight attendant and operation staff. According to them, despite asking for exemptions from the vaccine, their demand was denied and they were put on 'indefinite unpaid leave' by the airlines. Meanwhile, the airlines had said on Wednesday that around 97 percent of its staff were vaccinated against Covid-19. United Airlines, in August, had announced September 27 as deadline date to get vaccinated or to go on 'unpaid leave'. The airline is the first major one to issue compulsory vaccine mandate for its employees. Commenting on the developments, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that the company had accepted 'most' of the exemption requests and denied only few. Kirby said that some employees have already quit over the vaccine conditions and by the time the deadline approaches, more employees are expected to quit. Other than United Airlines, no other big airline has issued a compulsory vaccine policy, while some have hinted that some tough rules are in the pipeline. Like its counterparts, United Airlines is not allowing unvaccinated workers to take Covid-19 tests. It had immediately issued the stringent complete vaccination policy. 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. London, September 23, 2021 CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) today announced that its indirect wholly owned subsidiary, CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd., has priced CAD$ 300 million in aggregate principal amount of 1.50% notes due October 1, 2024, with an issue price of 99.936%. The notes are being offered on a private placement basis to certain accredited investors in each of the provinces of Canada, which offering is expected to close on September 28, 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd. intends to add the net proceeds from the offering to its general funds and use them for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including, among other things, the purchase of receivables or other assets in the ordinary course of business. The net proceeds may also be applied to repay CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd.'s indebtedness as it becomes due. The notes, which are senior unsecured obligations of CNH Industrial Capital Canada Ltd., will pay interest semi-annually on April 1 and October 1 of each year, beginning on April 1, 2022, and will be guaranteed by CNH Industrial Capital LLC, CNH Industrial Capital America LLC and New Holland Credit Company, LLC, each an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of CNH Industrial N.V. *** The securities offered in the private placement have not been and will not be qualified for sale to the public under applicable securities laws in Canada and, accordingly, any offer and sale of the securities in Canada will be made on a basis which is exempt from the prospectus requirements of such securities laws. The securities offered in the private placement have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. This press release is being issued pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135c under the Securities Act. Contacts: Corporate Communications Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com Investor Relations Email: investor.relations@cnhind.com Attachment Jerusalem-based visual content creation app development company Lightricks has confirmed a $130 million Series D round, comprised of $100 million primary funding and $30 million secondary funding. This places the companys current valuation at $1.8 billion and brings its total funding to $335 million. In July 2019, a $135 million Series C funding round saw Lightricks valued at $1 billion, so the new round represents an 80% increase in value in just over two years. Its a rapid rise for a company founded just eight years ago. The new D round was championed by Insight Partners and Hanaco Venture Capital in New York, while Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham and Shavit Capital invested in Lightricks for the first time. Investors who had participated in earlier rounds showed strong confidence as well, with Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Claltech, Harel Insurance and Finance, and Greycroft all returning to increase their stakes. Lightricks has created a diverse suite of creativity apps with image and video tools aimed at social media users such as Facetune2, Facetune Video and Filtertune. Their expansive ecosystem includes products designed for more general usage, including Boosted, Beatleap, Photoleap, Videoleap, Motionleap, Artleap and Lightleap. Combined, these apps now have 547 million installs and 29 million active monthly users, covering a significant proportion of content creators. Lightricks has also seen considerable growth during the pandemic, as more people have begun to take the potential opportunity of being a professional content creator seriously. The total number of installs grew by 42% in the past 12 months. Investors will be particularly encouraged by the paid subscriber growth by 24% to 5.1 million in the last year. This forms the bedrock of Lightrickss $200 million revenue in 2021 so far. The startups founders and investors expect this market to continue to grow at a rapid rate. Currently, people export 78 million visuals from Lightricks apps per month. The lions share of these assets are used as social media posts, and output has been constantly increasing. Pasha Romaovski of Hanaco Venture Capital sums up their ambitions as it relates to wider trends. The creator economy has changed the way we, as a society, experience social networks, he said. Audiences constantly consume information through the different content channels daily. Lightricks platform enables creators to have a broader, more professional and higher-quality set of tools to optimize content, Romaovski continued. At a time when we are seeing content creators monetize content on social media at new levels, it is clear that Lightricks platform has the ability to create a one stop shop that will be meaningful to its users. Indeed, this is Lightricks Co-founder and CEO Zeev Farbmans strategic vision for the company. Were here to give creators the tools, services and connections to help them produce and publish their content more smoothly, building out a solid creator economy that lets them earn a respectable income, he told Entrepreneur some three months ago. Today Lightricks is on pace to see 40% revenue growth in 2021 compared to 2020. The D round funding will also enable them to make crucial acquisitions to push them further ahead. This will be a mix of smaller purchases and larger ones, according to Farbman, Although the companys headquarters are located in Jerusalem at the moment, they have global ambitions with employee growth expected in London, Shenzhen and Haifa. They currently have 460 employees and are aiming to build to 1000 employees by the end of 2023. If Lightricks continues on this success trajectory, Farbman and his executive team will create a critical mass of jobs in the creative technology sector and solidify its status as an integral part of a booming industry. Christian Miccoli, CEO, Conio Conio, a provider of a multi-signature Bitcoin wallet, has been identified as a Sample Vendor in the 2021 Gartner Hype Cycle for Blockchain. Gartner Hype Cycle is a graphical depiction of a common pattern that arises with each new technology or other innovation. Each year, Gartner creates more than 90 Hype Cycles in various domains as a way for clients to track technology maturity and future potential. The five phases in the Hype Cycle are Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Gartner Hype Cycle provides an overview to understand which technologies are expected to thrive and evolve over the next few years. This is the second recognition for Conio following the identification, last year, as a Cool Vendor in Banking 2020.The service is evolving year by year, and, given this, the company has reached the Slope of Enlightenment of the Gartner Hype Cycle in a time horizon of 2-5 years. Founded in 2015 by Christian Miccoli, CEO and based in Milan, Italy and San Francisco, CA, Conio has developed a secure and plug & play multi-signature Bitcoin wallet solution designed to reduce compliance issues. Users have full custody and ownership, ensuring security against hacker attacks, identity theft and loss. In addition, the user experience has been specifically designed to integrate with banking services, from sign-up to first purchase in a few minutes. The company offers financial institutions, banks and insurance companies proprietary custody technology and integrated solutions for the management of digital assets: from wallets for the management of cryptocurrencies, to the integration of blockchain protocols within cards, to payment services on smartphones. Conio has signed partnerships with such companies as Hype, Nexi Open Banking, and Banca Generali, among others. In the end od 2020, Banca Generali acted as main investor in Conios USD 14m capital increase. Hayden AI, a San Francisco CA-based autonomous traffic management platform provider, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total funding to over $30m, was led by TYH Ventures with participation from Autotech Ventures, BootstrapLabs and Modern Venture Partners. The company intends to use the funds to expand its reach nationally and internationally, and to accelerate hiring across R&D, cybersecurity, and customer support. Led by Michael Byrne, Chris Carson, Vaibhav Ghadiok, and Bo Shen, Hayden AI combines mobile sensors with artificial intelligence to allow governments to bridge the innovation gap while making traffic flow less dangerous and more efficient. The company partners with government agencies to deploy its spatially aware technologies and encourages community and stakeholder participation through its digital platform, converting a citys fleet of public and private vehicles into a smart fleet of sensors capable of autonomous traffic enforcement. By combining data from IoT sensors, the platform generates a digital twin of the citys main roads and curbsides in real time to simulate scenarios and generate insights that enhance traffic management, including parking and curbside management. Looking ahead, Hayden AI has its sights set on autonomous vehicles for further expansion of its traffic enforcement solution. The company plans to embed traffic enforcement rules, such as the location of bus lanes, bike lanes, no stopping zones, and no standing zones, into HD maps used by self-driving vehicles. By partnering with mapping companies, Hayden AIs policy layers semantically annotated with traffic enforcement rules will be embedded into HD maps that help autonomous vehicles navigate. This will enable self-driving vehicles to automatically comply with traffic laws when navigating through cities without human interference. For instance, the vehicle will know not to pull over and pick up a passenger at a no stopping zone, or that cars can ride in bus lanes only at certain hours. FinSMEs 23/09/2021 Left: Rui Ribeiro, Jscrambler Co-founder and CEO; Right: Pedro Fortuna, Jscrambler Co-founder and CTO Jscrambler, a Porto, Portugal-based technology company specializing in cybersecurity products for web and mobile applications, raised $15m in Series A financing. The round was led by Ace Capital Partners, with participation from existing investors including Portugal Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to augment marketing and sales resources in the U.S. and European markets, as well as strengthen and accelerate the product roadmap to meet current customers expanding requirements including an integrated solution that ensures website owners can protect the client-side to secure user data, mitigate fraud and user hijacking, and improve compliance with regulations (GDPR, CCPA, PSD2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, among others). Led by Rui Ribeiro, CEO, and Pedro Fortuna, CTO, Jscrambler provides client-side web security solutions. With Jscrambler, JavaScript applications become self-defensive and resilient to tampering and reverse-engineering, while also capable of detecting and blocking client-side attacks like Magecart and data exfiltration. The companys platform is used by the Fortune 500 and major companies in sectors such as finance, e-commerce, broadcasting, software development, and gaming. Pedro Abreu has joined as an independent board member to contribute to the companys vision, roadmap and product-market fit. He is currently COO at Exabeam and brings 20+ years of cybersecurity business operations and strategy experience from companies such as McAfee and ForeScout. FinSMEs 24/09/2021 June Homes, a New York-based proptech company, raised $50M in funding. The round was led by SoftBank Ventures Asia with participation from TQ Ventures, FJ Labs, K50, Reshape, Quiet Capital, Demi Lovato and Scott Belsky. The $50M in equity financing includes: a recently raised $27M Series B, a previously unannounced $13M Series A, and $10M in seed funding. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate expansion to other U.S. markets. Led by founder and CEO Daniel Mishin, June Homes provides a proptech startup thats using technology to improve the rental experience for tenants and small mom-and-pop landlords. The company has built an algorithm that detects apartments with untapped potential (often in disrepair) and developed a process to inspect, upgrade, renovate, and list units for rent in just under 72 hours. June Homes tenants can discover, apply for, and move into their new home in as little as three hours. The homes are fully customizable tenants can rent furnished or unfurnished, with roommates or alone, and have the option to stay for as long as theyd like (1-18 months) while paying fair and accessible prices. The company has signed on thousands of tenants across NYC, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. In addition to new funding, June Homes is announcing additions to its leadership team, including: Chief Financial and Strategy Officer Daneel Siddiky (formerly Amazon/Audible); Chief of Staff Mauricio Zuniga (IBM); Chief People Officer Jennifer Gardner (Casper); VP of Brand Erin Abernathy (Feather); and VP of Performance Marketing Mateus Rocha (Skyscanner, Expedia). FinSMEs 23/09/2021 Sternum, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based IoT company that brings security, observability and data capture to every IoT device, closed a $27m Series B funding. The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing investors Square Peg Capital, the Hinrich Foundation, btov, and other private investors, which represents a total of $37m raised to date. The company intends to use the funds for R&D to advance its scalable platform and to grow its team overall as it ramps up global go-to-market efforts. Led by Natali Tshuva, co-founder and CEO, Sternum is a code-free, device-resident IoT security, observation, and data-harvesting company. Its patented software can be embedded into any IoT device, no matter the underlying code, manufacturer, or year of production, and is actionable whether the device is connected or not. This self-sustaining, unified platform brings intelligence to otherwise non-communicative edge devices, enabling them to autonomously protect themselves without connectivity and generate real-time data; processing happens in the Sternum cloud platform when available. FinSMEs 24/09/2021 Palo Santo: The Fragrant Wood of America That Purifies, Soothes, and Relaxes Raw Materials With sustainable extraction processes of some components of the Amazon flora, we had a greater distribution of knowledge from native peoples throughout the world. Some roots, wood, leaves, and aromatic seeds that for many years were known only to the Amazon people, today are not only part of the daily lives of many people but also featured in the cosmetics and perfume industry. As I've already mentioned here, the possibilities of aromatic raw materials in the Amazon forest are abundant and even almost infinite, as we still don't know half of everything that exists in this vast forest. We drink from the source of ancestral traditions to understand a tiny portion of the forest scents and their properties. Entering not only the cultures of the Brazilian Amazon, we come across a sacred wood that is also part of the cultures of the Amerindians of the Andes and Central America. Used as the sacred scent of the forest to lead thoughts to high stages, purifying environments and souls, Palo Santo has been known for hundreds of years for its sweet, soft, and light scent that soothes, purifies, and relaxes. Palo Santo is actually a tree with the scientific name Bursera graveolens, a tree native to the Amazon rainforest (belonging to the same family as frankincense and myrrh trees) that extends from Brazil to countries such as Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Palo Santo is a medium-sized tree that reaches between 5 and 15 meters in height, with a pale yellow, almost beige, wood. All the wood from the Palo Santo tree is delicately scented, as it has the following chemical components responsible for its pleasant odor: terpenes, limonene, and -terpineol. Due to these chemical components, Palo Santo wood has a delicate, woody, and sweet scent. According to aromatherapy, limonene helps with stress reduction and relaxes; terpenes have a tonic effect that improves immunity; and -terpineol is able to help with clarity of thoughts, whether it is true or not. Palo Santo fragrance, when burned, is delicately perfumed and relaxing, with woody and sweet nuances. Unfortunately, the great problem related to the sustainability of Palo Santo is due to the way in which its essential oil is extracted. When an oil with excellent quality is extracted, it is necessary that the tree be cut and that this wood has to age for at least 30 years, and only then will the best possible oil be extracted by means of steam distillation, which preserves the delicate characteristics of its fresh fragrance. This process puts the trees of Palo Santo at risk of extinction if a conscious planting policy is not developed for industrial use, both for the wood and for the extraction of its oil. These delicate, sweet, and woody characteristics make Palo Santo an exotic and desired component in perfumery, as its fragrance, like the Brazilian Rosewood, has the ability to harmonize floral and spicy notes in a perfume, making them more rounded and soft. In addition, it serves as a great base for perfumers who want more longevity in their perfumes, leaving a light and sweet woody trail in the base. Usually, I only indicate one fragrance that best represents the note I'm writing about, but this time I have two special fragrances that leave me completely satisfied with respect to the Palo Santo note. Los Humos Sagrados de Fueguia 1833 is an almost magical mixture of two sacred woods. Equally sacred herbs, sage, oud wood, and Palo Santo are powerfully combined to form a smoky, woody, and mystical fragrance that translates very much into Palo Santo the way I know it. Another fragrance that makes me completely happy with its composition is Palo Santo Oud by Atelier Segall & Barutti, combining resins such as Peru balsam, a mix of different resins, oud, and Palo Santo, leaving a mysterious, woody, smoky, and deep fragrance. Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: AGN) (FRANKFURT: AGW) (OTCQB: AGNPF) (the Company or Algernon), a clinical stage pharmaceutical development company, is pleased to announce that Dr. Mark Williams has been appointed as a member of the Board of Directors, replacing Michael Sadhra who has resigned from the board to pursue other business ventures. Dr. Williams was a cofounder of the Algernon Pharmaceuticals drug repurposing program and was actively engaged as the Companys Chief Scientific Officer until March 1st, 2021. He has over 15 years of experience in drug and medical device development and has authored multiple patents. He has specific expertise and skill sets in taking companies from the discovery process to Phase 2 trials including cGMP manufacturing and toxicology. He holds a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Alberta, and an MBA from the University of Manitoba. The Company welcomes Mark back to Algernon as its newest Board member, said Christopher J. Moreau, CEO of Algernon Pharmaceuticals. His extensive knowledge and background in pre-clinical and clinical drug development and biochemistry will add significant diversity to the skills and experience of our Board. About Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. Algernon is a drug re-purposing company that investigates safe, already approved drugs, and naturally occurring compounds, for new disease applications, moving them efficiently and safely into new human trials, developing new formulations and seeking new regulatory approvals in global markets. Algernon specifically investigates compounds that have never been approved in the U.S. or Europe to avoid off label prescription writing. CONTACT INFORMATION Christopher J. Moreau CEO Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. 604.398.4175 ext 701 info@algernonpharmaceuticals.com investors@algernonpharmaceuticals.com www.algernonpharmaceuticals.com. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER STATEMENT: No Securities Exchange has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to product development, licensing, commercialization and regulatory compliance issues and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as will, may, should, anticipate, expects and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Companys expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions of the relevant securities exchange(s) and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulations. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. New Orleans, United States, Sept. 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rhino Research LLC will offer free webinars all week starting 20th of September 2021 titled Rhino Week Distributive Marketing, Is This for Real? Webinars will cover the topic of increasing costs in online marketing, along with how to increase efficiency and conversion rates using a new method. Anyone who wants to make money online could benefit from this. Consumers are also welcome since this new method will be highly beneficial to them as well. At the webinar, they will introduce their innovative app Rhino Emancipation, which will launch the next generation of digital marketing platforms. Rhino Emancipation pays everyone, unlike current platforms. Current platforms (all big and established ones) act as middlemen, collecting money from businesses for marketing, to sell them someone elses data. From September 20th to 26th, they will be launching the app called Rhino Emancipation. It has been purposefully kept secret, and no additional information will be shared until next week. Anthony Calascione, the founder, will host ten live global events. It is not yet known if the webinars will be available for replay. So it is best that anyone interested joins live. But in case they miss it, they should check the page on the below link. All that is known is that every company will get its own mobile app, while every non-business owner will get the community app, which pays registered users cash, stock, and coins on the first day of every month. Furthermore, all these participants will own part of the company immediately. The platform is inviting new partners as this is the ground floor launch of the Rhino Emancipation app. Those who apply for partnership will receive 20% a month, for life, on all advertising spent by any business for the foreseeable future. It is not to be confused with the establishment of a business, as anyone can invite others to be compensated for free. If those individuals establish their own business later on, then the referred party benefits. Imagine collecting 20% of Facebook and/or Google ad spend simply by becoming an initial partner. Many have, and this time it will be possible for anyone registering for the app. It is super easy to register for the platform; interested stakeholders can RSVP to book a spot for free on the webinar via this link. Anthony Calascione will lead the presentation and says this webinar is a chance to hear from industry leaders about new ways to engage customers and find ways to benefit them. Until now, there has never been such a model. It is a guarantee. Anyone who registers for the webinar can ask questions live and receive information that is not readily available through other channels. Anyone interested in learning more about this incredibly innovative Customer Business relationship model can register for free. About Rhino Research LLC Founded in 2017, Rhino Research LLC is a provider of online business promotion apps, design, and distribution marketing. Whether involved parties are a small business or a large established company, a student, or just someone trying to make ends meet, Rhino Research LLC creates additional value for everyone. This company is dedicated to adding value to all parties involved. Website: https://cutt.ly/RhinoEmancipation Pune, India, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rise in prevalence of breathing problems and related diseases such as sleep apnea is promoting the growth of the global continuous positive airway pressure masks market says Fortune Business Insights in their new study. The study is titled Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Masks Market Size, Share and Global Trend by Type of Masks (Nasal Masks, Full Face Masks, Nasal Pillows, Pediatric masks), By Patient Type (Pediatric, Adults), By Distribution Channel (Hospital Pharmacy, Online Pharmacy, Retail Pharmacy) and Geography Forecast till 2026. This report analyzes major factors driving and restricting the growth of the market during the forecast period of 2019 to 2026. Irregular Sleeping and Eating Habits Are Increasing Prevalence of Sleeping Problems The changing lifestyle and irregular eating and sleeping habits of people worldwide are creating leading inadequate sleep problems, insomnia, and other health concerns. This is a major factor boosting the global CPAP market. Request a Sample Copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/continuous-positive-airway-pressure-masks-market-101130 The World Health Organization in 2016 has found that an estimated 1.9 billion adults around the world are overweight out of which 650 million were obese. Obesity can lead to various health problems, out of which breathing problems is a major one. The rising prevalence of obesity worldwide is a major factor boosting the continuous positive airway pressure masks market growth. According to the American Thorias Society International Conference in 2018, an estimated 1 billion people were suffering from sleep apnea. This is also promoting the CPAP market growth and estimated to continue doing so in the forecast period as well. Technological advancements in positive airway pressure masks over the last couple of years have propelled its growth in the market. On the flipside, patients suffering from sleep deprivations or patients with sleep apnea often choose to opt out of treatment, and this may cause hindrance to the growth of the continuous positive airway pressure masks market in the coming years. Besides this, the market may also face challenges in terms of low adherence to treatment facilities, especially in developing nations, thus, harming the overall growth of the market in the forecast period. To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impact of COVID19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/continuous-positive-airway-pressure-masks-market-101130 Asia Pacific to Offer Lucrative Growth Opportunities From a geographical point of view, the global continuous positive airway pressure masks market is prognosticated to be dominated by North America. This is attributable to the high prevalence of sleep apnea in the developed nation such as the U.S. Analysts at Fortune Business Insights states that U.S. is the largest contributor of CPAP masks as compared to other states. On the other hand, the continuous positive airway pressure marks market in the Asia Pacific on account of rising awareness about sleep-deprived illnesses and availability of its treatment in the region. FDA Approvals for Smallest CPAP Device is Working Wonders for Market Players operating in the global market are focusing mainly on adopting strategies that will help them increase their continuous positive airway pressure masks market share in the coming years. These strategies include merger and acquisitions, advanced product launches, company collaborations, and others. To cite an example, the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration approved the worlds smallest CPAP device called Airmini, announced by ResMed in the year 2017. On another instance, the launch of Dreamwear full mask was announced by Koninklijke Philips N.V. in the year 2018. This product guarantees better sleep options for patients suffering from sleep apnea. Such innovations are likely to bode well for the global continuous positive airway pressure masks market in the long run. Quick Buy - Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Masks Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/101130 Some of the companies functioning in the global continuous positive airway pressure masks market are Sunset Healthcare Solutions Inc., DeVilbiss Healthcare LLC, Fischer Paykel healthcare Ltd, AG Industries, KOIKE MEDICAL CO., LTD, Teleflex Incorporated, ResMed, Sarnova, Inc., Medline Industries, Inc., Koninklijke Philips N.V., and others. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Masks Market Segmentation: By Type of Masks Nasal Masks Full Face Masks Nasal Pillows Pediatric masks By Patient Type Pediatric Adults By Distribution Channel Hospital Pharmacy Online Pharmacy Retail Pharmacy By Geography North America (USA and Canada) Europe (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and Rest of Europe) Asia Pacific (Japan, China, India, Australia, Southeast Asia and Rest of Asia Pacific) Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Rest of Latin America) Middle East & Africa (South Africa, GCC and Rest of Middle East & Africa) Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/continuous-positive-airway-pressure-masks-market-101130 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them to address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Our reports contain a unique mix of tangible insights and qualitative analysis to help companies achieve sustainable growth. Our team of experienced analysts and consultants use industry-leading research tools and techniques to compile comprehensive market studies, interspersed with relevant data. At Fortune Business Insights we aim at highlighting the most lucrative growth opportunities for our clients. We, therefore, offer recommendations, making it easier for them to navigate through technological and market-related changes. Our consulting services are designed to help organizations identify hidden opportunities and understand prevailing competitive challenges. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. 308, Supreme Headquarters, Survey No. 36, Baner, Pune-Bangalore Highway, Pune - 411045, Maharashtra, India. Pune, India, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortune Business Insights through its report, titled Telemedicine Technologies and Services Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Type (Tele-care, Tele-diagnostics, Tele-monitoring), By Modality (In-campus, Cloud-Based), By Application (Emergency Services, Dermatology, Neurology, Cardiology, Gynaecology), By End-User (Hospitals, Clinics, Diagnostic Centers, Ambulatory Surgery Centers) and Geography Forecast till 2026, offers an in-depth analysis of the various aspects in this promising market. The report is multi-faceted in nature in that it incorporates a thorough assessment of the plausible trends, changing dynamics, business opportunities, and regional developments in the global telemedicine technologies and services market. Request a sample copy of the Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/telemedicine-market-101067 The World Health Organization describes telemedicine as delivery of health services by professionals at a distance. This delivery involves access and exchange of information using information and communication technology (ICT) to diagnose and treat injuries and diseases in a time-bound manner. In essence, the term denotes the blending of technology in the field of healthcare. Growing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases to Boost the Market Chronic diseases, or non-communicable diseases (NCDs), account for 71% of deaths globally every year, as per WHO estimates. The WHO also reveals that 15 million deaths, 85% of the global deaths, occur in low and middle income countries where healthcare infrastructure in ill-equipped. These countries are seeing an increasing demand for telemedicine technologies as in many cases, patients are unable to make it to the doctor in time. Rising need for modern technology in healthcare delivery in developing countries will fuel the expansion of the global telemedicine technologies and services market size till 2026. However, high cost of telemedicine services and apprehensions related to data breach possibilities can negatively impact the global telemedicine technologies and services market. To get to know more about the short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on this market, please visit: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/telemedicine-market-101067 North America to Lead and Asia-Pacific to Broaden the Market Among regions, North America is anticipated to hold a dominant section of the global telemedicine technologies and services market share in the forecasted period. This is primarily an outcome of a well-entrenched healthcare infrastructure, rapid developments in medicine technology, and growing focus on early detection and prevention of diseases. Climbing demand for better and advanced healthcare facilities along with an ever-increasing use of smart devices will favor the global telemedicine technologies and services market potential in Asia-Pacific. For More Questions, Talk with Telemedicine Technologies and Services Industry Experts: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/telemedicine-market-101067 Increasing Collaborations to Energize Market Competition Key players in the global telemedicine technologies and services market are frequently entering into strategic collaborations and partnerships to amplify their reach and diversify their product portfolios. For example, in July 2019, GE Healthcare took its partnership with InTouch Health forward by integrating the latters virtual care communications system with its own telehealth platform, Mural. Similarly, Doctor On Demand and Humana collaborated in April 2019 to launch a low-premium virtual plan for primary healthcare. Some of the major participants in the global telemedicine technologies and services market, as covered by Fortune Business Insights, include: Boston Scientific Corporation GE Healthcare Resideo Life Care Solutions Medvivo Allscripts Siemens Healthcare Private Limited Cerner Corporation Ergotron, Inc. Get your Customized Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/telemedicine-market-101067 About Us: Fortune Business Insights offers expert corporate analysis and accurate data, helping organizations of all sizes make timely decisions. We tailor innovative solutions for our clients, assisting them to address challenges distinct to their businesses. Our goal is to empower our clients with holistic market intelligence, giving a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Our reports contain a unique mix of tangible insights and qualitative analysis to help companies achieve sustainable growth. Our team of experienced analysts and consultants use industry-leading research tools and techniques to compile comprehensive market studies, interspersed with relevant data. At Fortune Business Insights we aim at highlighting the most lucrative growth opportunities for our clients. We, therefore, offer recommendations, making it easier for them to navigate through technological and market-related changes. Our consulting services are designed to help organizations identify hidden opportunities and understand prevailing competitive challenges. Contact Us: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. 308, Supreme Headquarters, Survey No. 36, Baner, Pune-Bangalore Highway, Pune - 411045, Maharashtra, India. Phone: US :+1 424 253 0390 UK : +44 2071 939123 APAC : +91 744 740 1245 Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com Fortune Business Insights Dublin, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Genome Editing Market, By Technique (CRISPR, TALENs, Zinc Finger Nucleases, Others), By Application (Cell Line Engineering, Animal Genetic Engineering, Others), By Delivery Method, By End User, By Region, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Genome Editing Market is expected to reach USD8711.24 million by 2026, growing at double-digit CAGR of 12.73% Growing research & development activities for the treatment of various chronic diseases and increasing preference for personalized medicine are fueling the market growth of genome editing until 2026. Genome editing is a way of making specific changes to the DNA of a cell or organism. It could be used to edit the genome of any organism. It uses a type of enzyme called an 'engineered nuclease' which cuts the genome in a specific place. After cutting the DNA in a specific place, the cell naturally repairs itself. It finds application in large number of areas, such as mutation, therapeutics, and agriculture biotechnology. Rise in the number of chronic and infectious diseases is likely to expand the scope of genome editing in the coming years. The Global Genome Editing Market is segmented based on technique, application, delivery method, end-user, region and company. Based on technique, the market is segmented into CRISPR, TALENs, Zinc Finger Nucleases and others. CRISPR dominates the market in this segment and is expected to be the fastest growing segment because as it is cheaper and is the most efficient technique among the rest. Based on application, the market is segmented into cell line engineering, animal genetic engineering, plant genetic engineering and others. Among them, the cell line engineering is expected to witness the highest growth rate in the coming years due to increase in the number of people suffering with genetic disorders and rising government funding for stem cell research. Based on end-user, the Global Genome Editing Market is segmented into pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, clinical research organization and research institutes. Pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies contribute to the largest share of revenue generation for the Global Genome Editing Market. Growing establishment of biotech and pharma companies in emerging economies and growing usage of gene editing technique in research activities undertaken by them to manufacture and develop drugs for rare diseases are the enablers for the growth of the market. The major players operating in the Global Genome Editing Market are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Homology Medicines, Inc. CRISPR Therapeutics AG Pfizer Inc. Editas Medicine Inc. Intellia Therapeutics Inc. Cellectis SA Sangamo Therapeutics Inc. Origene Technologies Inc. Merck & Co Inc. New England Biolabs Inc. Lonza Group AG Danaher Corporation (Integrated DNA Technologies Inc.) PerkinElmer Inc. (Horizon Discovery Group Plc) Genscript Corp. Oxford Genetics Ltd. Bayer AG Arcturus Therapeutics Inc Inscripta Inc. Beam therapeutics Inc. Report Scope: Years considered for this report: Historical Years: 2016-2019 Base Year: 2020 Estimated Year: 2021 Forecast Period: 2022- 2026 Global Genome Editing Market, By Technique: CRISPR TALENs Zinc Finger Nucleases Others Global Genome Editing Market, By Application: Cell Line Engineering Animal Genetic Engineering Plant Genetic Engineering Others Global Genome Editing Market, By Delivery Method: Ex-vivo In-vivo Global Genome Editing Market, By End-User: Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies Clinical Research Organization Research Institutes For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/x7n56t Beverly Hills, California, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The mission behind Paratus Group At the Paratus Group, Searcy and his team focus on teaching situational awareness with regard to safety in crisis situations. We're trying to empower the ability to learn situational awareness to prevent bad things from happening, Searcy says. When you learn situational awareness as a process, he explains, you are not only able to prevent bad things from happening; you prepare yourself to respond as well. We are on a mission to educate people that the traditional training we have been doing for over 30 years doesnt work, and you dont learn situational awareness and are not educated about the threats; you need to have a training program that empowers people to learn habits, behaviors, a new mindset, and processes that surround situational awareness. As threats are on the rise, we need to change the paradigm of how we deal with them. Listen to the complete interview of Brian Searcy with Adam Torres on Mission Matters Business Podcast. What is situational awareness? Situation awareness, Searcy explains, is the experience of knowing what's going on around you, using a variety of perceptive abilities to understand whats happening. Using it as a cornerstone of its programs, Paratus Group focuses on ten critical skills, including self-awareness, perception, perspective, active listening, critical thinking, learning agility, decisiveness, communication, humility and empathy. One process Searcy recommends is running through hypothetical crisis situations and asking, "Okay, if anything bad happened today, what would I do?" The repetition of exercises like this, he explains, are an example of how you develop a habit and a mindset. What does the Paratus Group do? Paratus Group co-creates courses with businesses, schools and churches, providing programs to train the leadership and the team members. In addition, the Paratus Group has specific programs - for parents, high school students, college students, and those that want to secure their home to learn how to develop and engage in situational awareness. "It's a skill that parents haven't learned for a long time, he says. We want to empower parents and organizations to learn this critical skill and pass it on to those around them." "We're introducing real-world content so that everything that the learner is getting is personal to them in the real world, Searcy says. That's what makes our program unique, because we leave all rooms open for discussion. The road ahead When asked about what the road ahead looks like, Searcy notes, "I would love the opportunity to do keynote speaking or educate people initially about situational awareness, and why do we have to have it, how it applies to mental health, and how also, as I said, you can't be an effective leader, you can't be an effective parent or grandparent, without situational awareness. So it's an education process, but then allow them to figure out that you can't do that traditional training and that you have to have a program, whether it's ours or somebody else's." To learn more about Paratus Group. visit www.paratus.group or email brian@paratus.group. Media Communications Inquiries: adamtorres@missionmatters.com Publicist for Adam Torres and Mission Matters Media KISS PR Brand Story PressWire Brand Publicity Partners KissPR.com For more details, visit Kisspr.com Content Marketing for podcasters. KISS PR Digital PR & Marketing powers the Mission Matters Business podcast with brand storytelling. T: 972.437.8942 Attachment 15,000 m phase 2 drilling program commenced to expand existing Alexo North and Alexo South Mineral Resources along strike and to depth; Phase 1 borehole electromagnetic (BHEM) geophysical surveys have been completed and results modelled for follow-up drill testing in Phase 2; and Phase 1 drill core assay results expected to be delivered starting in October 2021 TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Class 1 Nickel and Technologies Ltd. (CSE: NICO/OTCQB: NICLF) ("Class 1 Nickel" or the "Company") is pleased to announce commencement of a 15,000 m Phase 2 diamond drilling campaign at its Alexo-Dundonald Project near the City of Timmins, Ontario. The 15,000 m drilling program is planned to continue until late-December 2021. The drilling program is designed to expand the current Mineral Resource Estimates, along strike and down-dip/plunge of the current Mineral Resources. The Phase 2 program will also test priority BHEM and VTEM anomalies outside of the immediate areas of the four known deposits (i.e., Alexo North, Alexo South, Dundonald North and Dundonald South), for the presence of additional high-grade nickel sulphide mineralization. Class 1 President, Mr David Fitch commented: The 15,000 m diamond drilling program is progressing as planned following completion of the Phase 1 drilling program. Our main goal is increasing the tonnage of the Mineral Resources at Alexo North and Alexo South. In addition, potential exists for new discoveries. The technical and exploration teams are doing an excellent job in planning and executing the Phase 2 program. Figure 1: Alexo-Dundonald Project Map: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/761b6e54-5a6b-416a-b7ea-8bc4bfb479ff About Alexo-Dundonald Project The 100%-owned Alexo-Dundonald Property is an advanced portfolio of komatiite hosted magmatic nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide deposits located 45 km northeast of the City of Timmins (Ontario, Canada), a world-class mining jurisdiction with processing plants in need of additional feed. Class 1 Nickel has assembled a strategic land package that combines the historically mined Alexo nickel sulphide deposits with the Dundonald nickel sulphide prospects to create a larger and more diversified property portfolio. The Companys updated total estimated Indicated Mineral Resource consists of 1.25 Million tonnes (Mt) with an average grade of 0.99% Ni and a total estimated Inferred Mineral Resource of 2.01 Mt with an average grade of 1.01% Ni. The Company is currently drilling to expand the known Mineral Resources and discover new resources to support a Preliminary Economic Assessment. Qualified Persons All the technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. William Stone (P.Geo.), independent geological consultant to the Company, who is a Qualified Person under the definitions established by National Instrument 43101. About Class 1 Nickel Class 1 Nickel and Technologies Limited (CSE: NICO/OTCQB: NICLF) is a Mineral Resource Company focused on the development of its 100% owned Alexo-Dundonald Property, a portfolio of komatiite hosted magmatic nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide Mineral Resources located near Timmins, Ontario. The Company also owns the Somanike komatiite-hosted nickel-copper sulphide property in Quebec, which includes the famous Marbridge Nickel Mine. For more information, please contact: David Fitch, President T: +61 400.631.608 E: dfitch@class1nickel.com For additional information please visit our website at www.class1nickel.com and our Twitter feed: @Class1Nickel. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its regulation services provider has reviewed or accepted responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. This news release contains forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information is characterized by words such as plan, expect, project, intend, believe, anticipate, estimate and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions may or will occur. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, changes in the state of equity and debt markets, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in obtaining required regulatory or governmental approvals, and other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, including those risks set out in the Companys managements discussion and analysis as filed under the Companys profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including that all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals will be received as and when expected. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable securities laws. WATERFORD, CT, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Waterford Hotel Group, a leading hospitality management company, announced today the appointment of Brian Ehrlich as Vice President, Development. In this role, Ehrlich will seek new business for Waterford Hotel Group, including management and investment opportunities. As a seasoned veteran in the hospitality industry, Ehrlich has held key senior positions with companies such as Ensemble Investments, Kimpton Hotels, Viceroy Hotels and Resorts, Secured Capital, and Lodging and Leisure Investment Advisors. Based on the west coast in San Francisco, Ehrlich will be instrumental in the westward expansion of Waterfords hospitality footprint in the US. Waterford is well-positioned for growth, and we are pleased to welcome Brian to our executive team, said Michael Heaton, President of Waterford Hotel Group. Brians extensive industry knowledge and strong relationships will be instrumental in expanding our portfolio, added Heaton. Ehrlich brings a wealth of experience to Waterford, with expertise in deal sourcing, market intelligence, and underwriting in both acquisitions and new development. In addition, Ehrlich brings high-level relationships with the nations leading hotel brands, developers, owners, brokers, and consultants. Ehrlich earned his B.S. in American History from Harvard University. He and his family reside in the suburbs of San Francisco. I am honored to join Waterford Hotel Group and to lead their development and growth efforts, said Ehrlich. With more than 35 years of experience and a track record of successfully operating more than 100 hotels in 23 states, representing major brands and independents, Waterford has the capability, stability, and creativity to ensure the success of any hospitality project, added Ehrlich. About Waterford Hotel Group Since 1986, Waterford and its affiliates have been involved in developing and operating hotel, gaming, and venue properties totaling more than $3 billion. Waterford Hotel Group is an approved operator for the leading hotel brands and experienced with virtually every type of hotel product, including full service, select service, and resort properties, as well as convention centers. The company has owned and/or managed more than 100 properties nationwide, ranging from large multi-use projects to small independent inns. For information, visit www.waterfordhotelgroup.com. Attachment Kelowna, BC, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avant Brands Inc (TSX: AVNT) (OTCQX: AVNTB) (FRA: 1BUP) (Avant or the Company), an award-winning leading producer of handcrafted, high quality cannabis products, is pleased to announce that it has completed its first shipment of Tenzo Vape Cartridges (or vape carts) to the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS). The first drop of Tenzo vape carts are produced from Tenzos flagship cultivar, Watermelon Mojito Zkittlez, which is best-known for its bag appeal and robust terpene profile. This will be followed-on with a second product launch, based on Tenzos popular Wedding Crasher cultivar. The Tenzo 510-thread vape cartridges were meticulously designed to elevate the consumer experience, using high-end hardware with a strong focus on safety and performance. Tenzo's premium vape carts are made with a curated formulation that consists of a unique blend of solventless-extracted craft cannabis derived terpenes, and 100% all natural botanical terpenes. The carts are offered in a single gram size. "Entering into concentrates, which is the second largest consumption category, with our Tenzo vape cartridges marks a pivotal milestone as we continue to execute on our market growth strategy, said Norton Singhavon, Founder & CEO of Avant Brands. We look forward to delivering to Canadian consumers and retailers our next set of innovative concentrate products - which will be marketed under our flagship recreational cannabis brands." Avant has recently executed multiple agreements with leading Canadian extraction companies in order to facilitate the launch of various concentrate products under the Companys recreational cannabis brands. The Company anticipates that entering into the concentrates segment will enable Avant to leverage the success that it has built through its superior cannabis flower, highly sought-after brands and innovative products. For more information about the Tenzo brand, please visit www.tenzo.life About Tenzo Tenzo is a bold and vibrant brand which offers a diverse portfolio of products that appeal to the consumer who enjoys variety, appreciates quality, and has a desire for unique and flavourful terpene-rich products at an accessible price point. Always handcrafted and carefully cultivated by our Master Growers in Alberta, B.C. and Ontario. About Avant Brands Avant is an innovative, market-leading cannabis brand house. Avant has multiple licenced and operational production facilities across Canada, which produce high-quality, handcrafted cannabis products for our highly desired, and award-winning consumer brands, sold across both recreational and medical channels. Avants recreational consumer brands includes BLK MKT, Tenzo, Cognoscente and Treehugger, all produced from rare and exceptional cultivars, and sold in British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Yukon. The Companys medical cannabis brand, GreenTec, is distributed nationwide, directly to qualified patients through its GreenTec Medical portal, and through various medical cannabis partners. Avant is a publicly traded corporation listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: AVNT), and cross-trades on the OTCQX Best Market (OTCQX: AVTBF) and Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FRA: 1BUP). The Company is headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia and has operations in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. To learn more about Avant, to access the investor presentation, or learn more about its consumer brands, please visit www.avantbrands.ca CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain forward-looking information as defined under applicable Canadian securities legislation, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company with respect to future business activities and operating performance. Forward-looking information is often identified by the words "may", "would", "could", "should", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" or similar expressions and includes information regarding: the second product launch of Tenzo vape carts; and expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Examples include statements that the Company will operate in a fiscally disciplined manner; build long-term shareholder value; reduce operational expenses; or increase its revenue and gross margins. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking information is not based on historical fact but instead reflects managements expectations, estimates or projections concerning future results or events based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates of management considered reasonable at the date the statements are made. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking information are reasonable, such information involves risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such information, as unknown or unpredictable factors could have material adverse effects on future results, performance or achievements of the Company. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information are the following: regulatory and licensing risks; changes in consumer demand and preferences; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; the global regulatory landscape and enforcement related to cannabis, including political risks and risks relating to regulatory change; compliance with extensive government regulation; public opinion and perception of the cannabis industry; the impact of COVID-19; and the risk factors set out in the Companys annual information form dated March 16, 2021, filed with Canadian securities regulators and available on the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date of this news release. 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, except as required by law. Attachment SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FBS broker continues to grow its all-in-one mobile trading platform. In the recent update, FBS Trader got Economic Calendar. It means that traders can now keep up with breaking economic news and reports right in the app where they trade. What is Economic Calendar? In simple terms, it is a tool that shows upcoming economic events. Traders follow the events because they may affect the price of assets, be it commodities, currencies, or stocks. An accurate and reliable overview of the economic events and news is of much help for fundamental analysis. For FBS Trader clients, Economic Calendar means a lot because this all-in-one trading platform offers assets of various markets. In FBS Trader, there are Forex instruments, stocks, metals and energies, indices, and crypto. For convenient crypto trading, the app recently launched a Crypto account. How to keep an eye on everything that impacts the assets? With Economic Calendar, of course. It is right here, ready for traders to follow the events. How FBS Trader took Economic Calendar to a new level Usually, to stay updated, traders are forced to use various sources. Clients of FBS Trader are free to trade and follow economic releases right in the trading app. Global financial markets are in their hands. Higher levels of volatility are easily predicted, and perfect chances for trades are seized. Traders can access Economic Calendar in various ways. And the most convenient one is right from the menu of the instrument they trade. A few taps and they can check the events that will be taking place. It adds comfort to the overall trading process. New standards of Economic Calendar As an all-in-one trading platform, FBS Trader does its best to provide ideal conditions for traders. Economic Calendar is no exception. It was made with care and attention to detail to make it convenient to use. What's so special about Economic Calendar in FBS Trader? It is free, reliable, and simple to use. Provides everything a trader needs: date of an event, impact, event description, and forecasts. Has a special earnings and dividends calendar for stocks. Shows the instruments that may be influenced by an event. Has easy-to-manage filters for the events. Contains data from FBS's professional analysts. In short: Economic Calendar is well organized and works perfectly for news traders. More about FBS Broker and FBS Trader FBS Trader is a product of FBS an internationally acknowledged and regulated broker operating in 150+ countries for 12 years. More than 17 000 000 clients from all over the world choose FBS as their broker. FBS is the Principal Partner of Leicester City FC and the Official Trading Partner of FC Barcelona. The broker actively develops its trading platform that already earned popularity among traders. For example, in Google Play and App Store, the number of FBS Trader's installs surpassed 4M. The award-winning app conquers the hearts of traders with a simple interface, bonus for beginners, and 240+ assets of various markets: Forex, stocks, commodities, indices, and crypto. Social Links https://www.facebook.com/fbstraderapp/ https://youtube.com/c/FBSTrader-allinonetradingplatform https://mobile.twitter.com/fbstraderapp Media Contact Brand: FBS Inc E-Mail: da.ivanova@fbs-m.com Website: https://fbstrade.onelink.me/c2dL/c40abc7d SOURCE: FBS Inc New York, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Glamping Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Accommodation Type, By Age Group, By Region And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06046008/?utm_source=GNW Glamping Market Growth & Trends The global glamping market size is expected to reach USD 5.41 billion by 2028. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 14.1% from 2021 to 2028. Some of the common factors influencing the consumers willingness to avail glamping stay include a preference for experience-oriented trips over fancy possessions and readiness to pay for luxurious travel. The availability of exotic and unconventional landscapes along with luxurious facilities is influencing young travelers to explore and invest in such services. Furthermore, with the emergence of social media as a digital advertising platform, market players use it to promote their services.Many glamping service providers offer customized packages to suit consumer demand. This has also been a major factor driving the consumers willingness to avail of these services. For instance, Honey Glamping, based in New Zealand, offers mobile glamping services at any location in the Great Auckland area and also organizes festivals, staycations, and other occasions. In the years 2018 and 2019, campsite guests across the country stayed over 125 million nights wherein camping reservations have grown about 34% on lastminute.com. As business for glamping has increased two-fold over the past two years, traditional camping revenue has dropped in the country. Over 1,000 traditional campsites have been closed over the past 20 years in France. The increasing need among consumers to witness new experiences in the country is expected to drive the market for glamping over the forecast period. With no front desk staff, common areas, no restaurant or bar, and secluded cabins or tents, operators like Getaway, HipCamp, and Tentrr are perfectly positioned to capture this demand. For the glamping brands that do offer a higher level of service, EBITDA margins are still higher than hotel industry standards, reaching up to 50%. The impact of Covid-19 on many traditional hospitality offerings, such as hotels and restaurants, whereas camping and glamping products have witnessed explosive demand due to their ability to provide socially distant, hygienic, and secluded breaks from the city.As per a report published by The PKF hotel experts group, Getaway observed a 400% increase in bookings when the Trump administration announced a Europe travel ban, and many outposts were close to sold out all summer. Collective Retreats bookings are up 10% in 2020 compared to the same week last year.The Dyrt, a camping trip planning website, has 400% more traffic in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019. Kampgrounds of America (KOA) reported that over the last year, 20% of their visitors are first-time campers with many of them choosing to ease into the outdoors world via cabins and RVs.Wyoming State Parks saw a 160% increase from April to May 2020 compared to the running average of the previous five years. Pennsylvania State Parks have seen over one million more visitors so far in 2020 than they did in all of 2019. RV Share, a motorhome rental site, has reported a 1,600% increase in bookings nationwide since April 1st. Based on summer 2020 demand, adventure travel is expected to continue to rebound quickly, while in comparison, Tourism Economics expects overall U.S. travel market spending to recover to 2019 levels in 2024. In terms of accommodation type, the cabins and pods segment held the largest share of 45.7% in 2020. Families prefer cabins as they are well equipped with all facilities, especially when they have two or more kids. Cabineering is a new glamping trend that is offered by numerous luxury properties. It gives adventure travelers the comfort of a home and the amenities of a luxury hotel amidst nature. In addition, cabins and pods offer various safety features, including locks and latches, which is a primary necessity among consumers nowadays. Sky Den, an outdoor-indoor treehouse situated in Northumberland Kielder Forest, and Ditchling Cabin, one of Canopy & Stars recent floating cabins in South Downs National Park, are witnessing a high number of bookings among the U.K. consumers. The 18 - 32 years age group segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 44.6% in 2020. As per a report published by Kampgrounds of America, Inc., millennials and Generation Z alone accounted for 60% of the total leisure travelers in the American market for glamping. Moreover, the growing prominence of sole traveling among females is influencing the gender to opt for glamping. Moreover, among travelers who glamp comprises 20% of couples without children. Thus, a rising number of travelers of the younger generation with higher disposable income are driving the market for glamping. Europe dominated the market with a revenue share of 34.9% in 2020. In the U.K. the number of glamping trips has doubled between the years 2015 and 2016, rising from about 160,000 trips to over 325,000. In the first 3 months of 2018, Cool Camping, which is a glamping holiday specialist company, reported a 50% rise in bookings as compared with the same period in 2017. Increasing awareness about the benefits of glamping among consumers, coupled with the unique experiences it offers, is expected to have a positive impact on the market growth over the forecast period. Glamping Market Report Highlights By accommodation type, cabins and pods are expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period owing to their growing preference among families as they are well equipped with all facilities and offer various safety features The 18-32 years age group segment dominated the market in 2020 and is expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period due to the growing trend of camping among this population North America is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 16.7% from 2021 to 2028 Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06046008/?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. __________________________ KANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Airtasker , a $500M local services marketplace, today announced Kansas City, Dallas and Miami as the first U.S. markets it will activate to empower Americans to get more done and help local service providers monetize their skills. While the platform is available nationally - and showing early signs of strong demand - Airtasker is prioritizing investment and activation in a few key markets initially before expanding to other city-level markets. After vetting potential markets based on population demographics, tech-savviness and appetite for outsourcing tasks, Kansas City, Dallas and Miami scored high across all metrics, making them the optimal locations for Airtasker's U.S. launch. "While anyone in the U.S. can now use Airtasker, we're excited to begin activating Kansas City, Dallas and Miami to solve real customer problems and achieve marketplace liquidity. These cities are full of opportunity and the type of creativity that fuels Airtasker," said Airtasker U.S. CEO, Bo Fishback. "We're at an economic inflection point as many households and businesses face financial uncertainty due to the fallout of COVID-19. Airtasker creates flexible opportunities where the scope of work is defined by the customer - not the platform - and accepted by the service provider (or 'Tasker'). Ultimately our mission is to create more sustainable jobs during a time when Americans need it most." On average, Taskers earn up to $2,500 a month on the platform with $80,000 worth of job opportunities already captured on Airtasker in the three initial markets alone. "I've joined other online platforms looking to reach new customers, but leads often ended up costing us more than our return on investment," said Tasker and Owner of All Clear Dryer Vent Cleaning Dan Millman. "I'm excited to join Airtasker, who advertises transparent and fair service fees, which are processed once the job is complete. I believe Airtasker will help me grow my customer base and scale my business." With nearly 6,500 tasks posted to date, Airtasker connects customers who need something done - like cleaning, delivery or furniture assembly - with rated, reviewed and verified local service providers ready to work straight away. Unlike other marketplace platforms, Airtasker is the first marketplace to offer flexible economy work in the U.S. as an infinitely horizontal marketplace that doesn't limit the types of tasks that can be posted. About Airtasker Airtasker is a trusted community marketplace that connects people who need work done with people who want to work. Since launching in Australia in 2012, Airtasker has established a global community of over 4.6 million users. For more information please visit: www.airtasker.com/us Based on the median top 50 Tasker's monthly earnings Airtasker marketplace data (November 2020 - September 2021) Media Contact: usmedia@airtasker.com This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. SAN DIEGO, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Episcopal Community Services (ECS), a nonprofit social services agency providing early childhood education and other critical services to children and adults across San Diego, has partnered with TOOTRiS, a first-of-its-kind platform that provides on-demand Child Care. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the struggles of working parents across the nation to find affordable, high-quality care for their children. To help make this difficult time easier on low-income families, ECS and TOOTRiS have come together to connect parents with ECS's Head Start programs. All ECS's 17 Head Start sites are now accessible for free on the TOOTRiS platform, which allows parents to look near their home or work, using filters to find Child Care that fits their needs and budgetary requirements - even for temporary slots or drop-ins - and to view photos of the site and arrange a visit. This partnership will provide parents assurance that their children are being engaged, enriched, and supported by a licensed preschool provider, allowing parents to focus on work and other responsibilities. "We feel privileged to be instrumental in helping Elizabeth Fitzsimons and her team at ECS achieve their noble vision of providing quality early childhood education to our communities," said Alessandra Lezama, Founder & CEO of TOOTRiS. "With this partnership, families in our region can now have critical on-demand access to these Head Start programs with an easy click of a button." Of the families enrolled in ECS's Head Start and Early Head Start educational programs, 70% have one or more parent/guardian that is employed, and almost 90% of the families identify as Hispanic. Many families with children under five years of age meet the eligibility criteria for Head Start, including foster youth, special needs, or below the federal poverty level. According to the CDC, essential workers are more likely to belong to these populations and provide critical support to their communities. For an essential worker, a flexible schedule from an employer is rare and may not allow for instances where affordable and quality care can consistently be secured. "We are thrilled to be partnering with TOOTRiS, who has made it their mission to tackle a huge issue in our region: lack of affordable high-quality care," said Elizabeth Fitzsimons, Chief Executive Officer at ECS. "Part of our organization's mission is to empower adults and this partnership will do just that by connecting parents to quality early childhood education. This is a great opportunity to help children learn and grow, and support parents who work hard to provide for their families." ECS provides more than $30 million in health and human services in the areas of homelessness, mental health, substance use disorder treatment, and early childhood education to more than 6,000 clients in San Diego. Founded in 2019, TOOTRiS is a startup company that provides 100% free resources to more than 122,000 childcare providers in 22 states, connects working parents to these programs in real-time, and enables employers to incorporate Child Care as a benefit through its technology platform. The TOOTRiS platform can be accessed online at tootris.com. Media Contact Sarah Vargas Beck Ellman Heald sarah@behmedia.com (951) 591-9727 About Episcopal Community Services Serving God by serving those in need through programs that foster hope and dignity. ECS inspires children, empowers adults and transforms communities by providing vital, high-quality social services that focus on early childhood education and development, homelessness, mental health, and substance use disorder treatment. Last year ECS served more than 6,000 San Diegans. For more information, please visit ecscalifornia.org. About TOOTRiS TOOTRiS is reinventing Child Care, making it convenient, affordable and on-demand. As the world shifts to digitalized services, TOOTRiS helps parents and providers connect and transact in real-time, empowering working parents - especially women - to secure quality Child Care, while allowing providers to unlock their potential and fully monetize their program. TOOTRiS is creating a new digital economy that promotes entrepreneurial opportunities for individuals with passion and talent to become Child Care providers, improving their quality of life while increasing the much-needed supply of Child Care across the state. TOOTRiS' unique technology enables employers to provide fully managed Child Care Benefits, giving their workforce the flexibility and family support paramount to regaining employee productivity and increasing their ROI. Related Images Image 1: TOOTRiS Child Care On-Demand Image 2: Episcopal Community Services This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Step One Automotive Group had the pleasure of hosting the truly inspirational Whiskey & War Stories presented by Will Summers from Horse Soldier Bourbon on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021, at The Place on Beal in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Will is one of the 12 soldiers from the U.S. Army Special Operations team (ODA595) that overthrew the Taliban stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif while riding horseback through the inhospitable, mountainous terrain of Northern Afghanistan in the first days after the 9/11 attacks, earning them the nickname "Horse Soldiers." Companies and organizations owned and operated by military personnel, such as Horse Soldier Bourbon, hold a special place in the heart of Step One Automotive Group. Forever Warriors was coined by Step One to symbolize the long-term commitment to assisting military members and their families in their transition into civilian life after service. The Forever Warriors initiative helps close the gap between these transitioning warriors and our local partners to aid in employment and education opportunities, and physical and mental wellness and awareness. The company currently employs several retired and disabled military members and actively works in creating necessary corporate positions based around the skillsets many retired members possess. Following the trend with supporting local military and first responders, Step One Automotive Group sponsored the Fort Walton Beach Fire Department in honoring our fallen heroes on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks from Sept. 11, 2001. The public was invited to visit Fire Station 6 at 7:45 a.m. to meet the FWB firefighters and honor our fallen heroes by ringing the ceremonial bell. The bell was rung 343 times in honor of each first-responder life lost on that September day. Chief Shannon Stone is the Battalion Chief at Engine 6 in Fort Walton Beach. He and other members of Engine 6 attended the Whiskey & War Stories event. About Step One Automotive Group Step One Automotive Group is an American company based in Florida that was built on a singular dedication to empowering lives through smarter and easier ways of accessing mobility. Step One Automotive Group owns 22 dealerships in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, representing 16 brands including Chrysler, Dodge Jeep, Ram Fiat, Volkswagen, Subaru, Kia, Hyundai, Genesis, Ford, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Alfa Romeo, and Maserati. Please visit https://www.steponeautomotive.com. Facebook & Instagram at Step One Automotive Group and hashtags #foreverwarriors and #westeptogether Contact Aerika Wardrip at awardrip@steponeauto.com for more information. Related Images Image 1: Whiskey & War Stories This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. Attachment EDMONTON, Alberta, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A first-of-its-kind global business accelerator will be based in Edmonton to help grow tech companies and provide artificial intelligence solutions that address community and social challenges. Alberta Innovates chose the Community Safety & Wellness (CSW) Accelerator powered by Alchemist as one of four proposals that will receive provincial, federal and municipal investment under an unprecedented accelerator initiative intended to help innovative tech companies scale up in Alberta and attract global companies and technologies to the province. An Edmonton-based public-private group comprising the Edmonton Police Foundation, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), the University of Alberta, Telus, ATB Financial and Motorola partnered to submit this unique proposal. The CSW Accelerator powered by Alchemist will support tech companies (including social enterprises) using artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop apps or digital platforms that specifically provide a social, community or wellness benefit. The group partnered with a top-ranking firm from Silicon Valley called Alchemist Accelerator to develop a first-of-its-kind program to deliver business development, mentorship and opportunities to selected applicants in the community safety and wellness sector. These companies will be validating their business and technology in Edmonton by accessing local community service organizations. A group of investors led by Ashif Mawji, chair of the Edmonton Police Foundation, will form a fund to help invest in the companies coming through/out of the accelerator. This accelerator is part of the Alberta Innovates Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program (Scaleup GAP). The four accelerators are providing services in Alberta with the support of a funding consortium led by Alberta Innovates. All three orders of government are investing about $35 million for the overall accelerator program. This includes funding from the Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy and Innovation to Alberta Innovates to lead and manage the overall Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program. The Government of Canada, through Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), has invested in the Alberta Innovates program to expand funds available to not-for-profit business accelerators. Funding is coming from Innovate Edmonton at the municipal level. QUOTES This is the first accelerator of its kind in Canada targeted to solving social challenges, and a unique opportunity for companies and investors. Participants in the CSW Accelerator will gain access to a global network of mentors, investors and entrepreneurs, plus access to Albertas world-class talent in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In addition to helping Alberta-based tech companies scale and grow, we also want to highlight Albertas capability to the world, attract global firms and create a global mindset in our local ecosystem. Laura Kilcrease, CEO, Alberta Innovates The world needs what Edmonton offers a passionate and vibrant community of entrepreneurs committed to solving some of the worlds biggest challenges. The CSW Accelerator fueled by Alchemist will support local innovators and digital IP designed for positive social impact, improving lives for Edmontonians and people around the world. Catherine Warren, CEO, Innovate Edmonton The CSW Accelerator powered by Alchemist will leverage robust and rich community data, and community service organizations as domain experts, pilot sites and first paying customers. The Edmonton Police Foundation, with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), the University of Alberta, Telus, ATB Financial, Motorola and others, are excited to partner to make significant change in this space. Ultimately, the digital solutions generated by this program will create positive social impact, improve lives, and create and nurture a more livable and investable city and share our solutions, globally. Ashif Mawji, Board Chair, Edmonton Police Foundation, on behalf of the CSW Accelerator partnership "Alchemist's mission is to bring Silicon Valley know-how and networks to the most interesting entrepreneurs all over the world. We can't wait to get started with our partners in Alberta. Rachel Chalmers, head of corporate and government programs, Alchemist Accelerator Media Contact: Ashif Mawji Chair, Edmonton Police Foundation executivedirector@edmontonpolicefoundation.com 780.391.6371 BACKGROUND & FAQs: Initiated by the Edmonton Police Foundation in partnership with the Edmonton Police Service, University of Alberta, Amii, ATB Financial, TELUS and Motorola. Programming will be delivered in Edmonton. Training, mentors and networking will be provided by Alchemist Accelerator through its AlchemistX program. This accelerator will leverage technology, data, artificial intelligence/machine learning to devise and deploy workable community safety and wellness solutions. Participants will have access to private funding. A group of Alberta investors will form a fund to invest in ventures coming through the accelerator. Local organizations and social agencies will be first paying customers. Q: What do you mean by community safety and wellness? A: This is a broad umbrella term encompassing health, criminal justice and social issues from a preventative lens. It addresses wellness, addictions, domestic violence, homelessness and other social challenges. Q: The CSW Accelerator powered by Alchemist will be attracting global firms. Why should we fund non-Alberta companies? A: One of the goals of the program is to highlight Alberta capability to the world and make Alberta a preferred technology destination for entrepreneurs and investment. The Alberta Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program (Scaleup GAP) administered by Alberta Innovates is unprecedented for Alberta in terms of its global scope and quality of programming. It is intended to attract both Alberta and eligible global companies to come to Alberta to strengthen the Alberta ecosystem, and provide access to global collaborations and capital. Participating companies will be selected accordingly to the criteria set by the Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator with their service delivery partner, Alchemist Accelerator. Q: Is there a fee to apply? A: There will be no fees to apply or participate. Q: Is this intended to only address social problems in Edmonton? Whats in it for Alberta and global companies? A: The community safety and wellness challenges we face are common elsewhere. The solutions we commercialize/launch here can be scaled to help the provincial and global community. Participating companies can scale globally, after they prove their solution works here and they get their first paying customer. Also, ventures from around the world can come here to help further their business through an accelerator offering a unique opportunity in the social space. Q: What kinds of digital products or platforms could be developed through the CSW Accelerator to help address societal challenges? A: Some examples of whats possible: Predicting domestic violence earlier, for early intervention; empowering homeless people with tools that predict needs and match solutions; technology-based addiction management/reduction solutions; solving cold cases on missing people; gamified platform to provide racial bias awareness and corrective solutions; proactive mental health and wellness platforms for individuals and businesses/entities; predictive tool to enable law enforcement to help offenders of certain crimes go through rehab instead of putting them through the criminal justice system. About Alberta Innovates Alberta Innovates is the provinces largest and Canadas first provincial research and innovation agency. For a century we have worked closely with researchers, companies and entrepreneurs trailblazers who built industries and strengthened communities. Today we are pivoting to the next frontier of opportunity in Alberta and worldwide by driving emerging technologies across sectors. We are a provincial corporation delivering seed funding, business advice, applied research and technical services, and avenues for partnership and collaboration. Learn how Alberta Innovates. About Innovate Edmonton Headquartered in Albertas capital city, Innovate Edmonton leverages, unites, and promotes home-grown innovation as a gateway to solving the worlds most pressing problems. We harness the power of the public and private sectors, ground-breaking academic research, and purpose-driven investment to build a shared prosperity and open international markets. From sustainable climate solutions to public health and digital education, Edmonton is a leading global centre for inspiration, ingenuity, and inclusion. Learn more about Innovate Edmonton and Startup Edmonton, a division of Innovate Edmonton. About the Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator The Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator (CSW) is sponsored by the Edmonton Police Foundation in conjunction with various partners, including ATB Financial, TELUS, Motorola, U of A, AMII, Edmonton Police Service and others. Using a combination of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, entrepreneurship, mentorship, domain expertise, funding, structured accelerator programming and other key ingredients to help create successful social impact ventures, its mission is to help solve our communitys challenges and create a sustainable model to help bring those solutions to the world. Being one of the first in the world with this unique combination will allow the CSW to demonstrate the social impact power of Albertans. For more information, visit the CSW Accelerator. About Alchemist Accelerator Alchemist is a venture-backed accelerator focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). CB Insights rated Alchemist the top accelerator based on median funding rates of its grads (YC was #2). The accelerators primary screening criteria is on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. The organization provides seed investment into companies it admits and provides founders a structured path to traction, fundraising, mentorship, and community over the course of a 6-month program. Our backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley -- including Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, GE, next47(Siemens), and Salesforce, among others. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures / year. Notable alumni include LaunchDarkly, Rigetti Quantum Computing, mPharma, Matternet, and Mightyhive. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2c6a91a6-9356-4e37-a403-a64408d8ddbf EDMONTON, Alberta, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Business accelerators with global reach are setting up shop in Alberta to power new growth and opportunities in the provinces burgeoning tech startup sector. The accelerators are experienced in vaulting promising startups through scaleup and growth by providing intensive mentoring, networking, access to capital and other opportunities. They are key to positioning Alberta as a global technology and innovation hub to diversify the provincial economy, create growth, jobs and a knowledge workforce for the future. The four successful candidates were chosen from 64 proposals submitted to Alberta Innovates request for proposals announced last March. The selected accelerators: Alberta Accelerator by 500 500 Global, one of the worlds most active venture capital firms, is launching a one-of-a-kind accelerator to nurture seed-stage tech companies in Alberta. The goal is to support Alberta Innovates in strengthening an Alberta innovation corridor which encompasses Edmonton, Calgary and rural Alberta. Alberta Accelerator by 500 will alternate their operations between the hubs of Edmonton and Calgary. 500 Global, one of the worlds most active venture capital firms, is launching a one-of-a-kind accelerator to nurture seed-stage tech companies in Alberta. The goal is to support Alberta Innovates in strengthening an Alberta innovation corridor which encompasses Edmonton, Calgary and rural Alberta. Alberta Accelerator by 500 will alternate their operations between the hubs of Edmonton and Calgary. Plug and Play Alberta Plug and Play connects startups with international corporations to bring technology to market faster. They will offer sector-agnostic and sector-based accelerator programs in digital health and sustainable clean resources across the province, with their main Alberta office in Calgary and a satellite office in Edmonton. Plug and Play connects startups with international corporations to bring technology to market faster. They will offer sector-agnostic and sector-based accelerator programs in digital health and sustainable clean resources across the province, with their main Alberta office in Calgary and a satellite office in Edmonton. Community Safety and Wellness powered by Alchemist A public/private consortium from Edmonton has partnered with Alchemist Accelerator to provide services to ventures using artificial intelligence in the social sector. This accelerator will be based in Edmonton and intends to export digital solutions globally. A public/private consortium from Edmonton has partnered with Alchemist Accelerator to provide services to ventures using artificial intelligence in the social sector. This accelerator will be based in Edmonton and intends to export digital solutions globally. Alberta Pre-Accelerator To be launched later this year, the Alberta pre-accelerator is an unprecedented realignment, harmonization and expansion of startup supports for founders anywhere in Alberta, with a focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion. In partnership with Alberta Innovates, this merit-based pre-accelerator is being developed and delivered by Platform Calgary and Innovate Edmonton, with support from partners and organizations across the Alberta Innovation Network. 500 Global, Plug and Play and Alchemist Accelerator are all rooted in Silicon Valley with multinational operations, corporate and government customers, investments and alumni around the world. Each accelerator brings a unique program to Alberta to support entrepreneurs and startups at different stages in the client journey, so they will complement each other in serving the Alberta innovation ecosystem. Together, these accelerators are intended to fill a scaleup gap that exists for local startups and capitalize on Albertas strengths. The programs are also intended to attract global firms, technologies and investments to the province. All three orders of government provincial, federal and municipal have come together to support this unprecedented initiative developed and managed by Alberta Innovates through its Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program (Scaleup GAP). Governments are investing about $35 million in the initiative. This includes funding from the Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy and Innovation to Alberta Innovates to lead and manage the overall Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program. The Government of Canada, through Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), has invested to expand funds available to not-for-profit business accelerators. At the municipal level, the initiative will also include Innovate Edmonton and the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF). In addition, a separate accelerator was announced in June to scale high-potential startups in the agrifood sector. The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Olds College and Alberta Innovates are providing up to $2.5 million dollars to support the establishment of SVG Ventures | THRIVES Canadian subsidiary with its headquarters located in Calgary. News releases, announcing each of the accelerators can be found at: QUOTES: Accelerators will fill a gap in our provinces tech sector. Theyll create new companies that will generate investment and hundreds of jobs across Alberta, in sectors ranging from agriculture, energy, health care, finance and beyond. Hon. Doug Schweitzer, Alberta Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation This level of accelerator scaleup and growth has never before been undertaken in Alberta with this quality and scope of global programming. Its a momentous opportunity for entrepreneurs. In addition to helping Alberta-based tech companies scale and grow faster, we are highlighting Albertas capability to the world, attracting international firms and investment and create a global mindset in our provincial ecosystem. Bringing these top-of-class accelerators with their proven expertise, capital and connections will help Alberta become a choice destination for innovation, entrepreneurship and technology investment. Laura Kilcrease, CEO, Alberta Innovates Accelerators bring people together to create global opportunities, open international sales channels, boost significant investment and position Albertas entrepreneurs on the world stage. Together, these accelerators ensure that our high-potential companies have the end-to-end supports that they need for growth from concept to commercialization and from pitching to closing as they prepare to collaborate and compete in todays impact economy. Catherine Warren, CEO, Innovate Edmonton "As we work to develop a diverse economy driven by innovation in Calgary and Alberta, there is a critical role for leading business accelerators to collaborate with existing local stakeholders to support local entrepreneurs and emerging companies that are applying technology to solve global challenges. These accelerators will increase the pace of scaling and success for our next generation of companies that will drive both economic growth and diversification." Mark Blackwell, Executive Chair, Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund BACKGROUND: Business accelerators are a tool to help companies scale and grow at a quicker rate. An accelerator provides an intensive learning experience for cohorts of selected businesses, where accomplished mentors compress years of experiential learning into a few months. They also often provide access to investment capital. The overall objectives of the Alberta Innovates Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program are to: Build Albertas entrepreneurial ecosystem capacity by recognizing technology and innovation scaleup potential in the province. Increase the number of new Alberta scalable junior tech companies. Improve business maturity. Create Alberta jobs. Increase new Alberta technology company revenue. Increase follow-on investment (investment attraction). Bring a global mindset to the Alberta ecosystem, and create opportunities for international linkages and collaboration. Transform Alberta into a recognized tech innovation hub that attracts global firms and investment. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fd352486-848d-42cc-ba33-7580090fb582 Beverly Hills, CA , Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- JANSON is honored to announce its $10,000 grant to Natick, MA-based nonprofit Family Promise Metrowest (FPM) for their Shelter program. JANSON is honored to be able to extend our support to Family Promise Metrowest, says Janet Chihocky, CEO of JANSON. In every state where we conduct business, JANSON searches for local entities who share a similar mission to ours making an impact in the lives of others. We are thankful to have found FPM in Massachusetts and have the ability to bless their community. FPMs cornerstone Shelter program serves families with children that have lost their housing, providing safe shelter, meals, clothing, and supportive case management so families can address the root causes of their housing instability and set goals for future sustainability. Like most areas and shelters, the shelter has been put to the test during the pandemic. FPM skillfully pivoted its programming to remote services and successfully raised emergency funding to bring immediate relief and stability to the families that were currently being served. In 2020, FPM served a record-breaking 50 families, including 58 parents and 89 children that were facing homelessness. FPM is currently on track to double the number of families we served last year. Increasing our resources and community support is essential in order to meet the great need. We are so grateful for JANSON Communications generosity, said Susan Crossley, Family Promise Metrowest Executive Director. Family Promise Metrowest serves low- and moderate-income Massachusetts families with at least one child under the age of 18 that are facing homelessness. With the help of a diverse community, FPM provides resources, guidance, and encouragement to help motivated families meet their goals, move themselves out of poverty, and become self-sufficient. To learn more about Family Promise Metrowest and how to become involved or donate, please visit www.familypromisemetrowest.org. About JANSON JANSON is a unified branding and communications company that brings customized solutions for its military, defense, and federal customers worldwide. To learn more, please visit jansoncom.com. Media Communications Inquiries: adamtorres@missionmatters.com Podcaster Adam Torres - Powered by Mission Matters For more details, visit Kisspr.com. Brand visibility partner for Mission Matters Business podcast: T: 972.437.8942 Attachment DENVER, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Forty-five percent of consumers ranked breakfast sandwiches as one of their favorite breakfast items, according to a new survey hosted by Nextbite , a leader in virtual restaurants. Conducted in conjunction with National Breakfast Day (September 26), the survey found 24% of consumers rated breakfast sandwiches as their favorite breakfast food item, with 21% choosing it as their second favorite breakfast selection. Delivery for breakfast is also about to get a boost, as 39% of consumers order breakfast for delivery at least once a month. In addition to breakfast sandwiches, other top breakfast favorites include pancakes/waffles/french toast (18%), cooked eggs (14%) and breakfast burritos (11%). While men are more likely (44%) than women (37%) to order breakfast at least once a month, women (14%) are more likely than men (11%) to indicate that breakfast is their favorite meal of the day. And, 18% of respondents indicated they are ordering breakfast for delivery more often. Whats more, consumers arent just eating breakfast in the morning anymore. Twenty percent of men surveyed order breakfast for an afternoon snack once a week or more, and 26% of dinners include traditional breakfast items. According to the survey, the top reasons consumers order breakfast for delivery are food quality (19%), convenience (17%) and taste (17%). The survey also revealed that consumers order breakfast for delivery more during the week (37%) than on the weekend (20%). For National Breakfast Day, Nextbite launched a special promotion (Sept. 24-26) enabling consumers to buy one item and get one free on all the delivery apps for its breakfast menu items -- Crackt and Hatch House breakfast sandwiches along with the HuevoRito breakfast burrito. People are looking for variety and quality in their delivery breakfast choices, said Alex Canter, CEO of Nextbite. Our new Crackt and Hatch House concepts give consumers a range of options, from delectable brunch-inspired specialties to exciting new twists on the ever-popular breakfast sandwich and breakfast burrito. The convenience of breakfast delivery makes it even better for busy workers and students. Available to consumers through Nextbite restaurant partners, the new Nextbite delivery-only breakfast options include: Hatch House classic breakfast sandwiches with a gourmet touch; Crackt amped up breakfast sammies; and HuevoRito authentic breakfast burritos with eggs, potatoes, meats, veggies and cheese. HuevoRito also includes a hearty vegan option. Consumers can order Nextbites new breakfast menu items through delivery services such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates and Grubhub. Nextbite partners with restaurants to offer these delivery-only menu items. Local restaurant owners interested in becoming a Nextbite restaurant partner can learn more and sign up on the Nextbite website . The survey sample represents responses from 712 adults in the U.S. on Sept. 16, 2021, conducted by Suzy.com. About Nextbite Nextbite is focused on helping restaurant partners successfully enter the virtual restaurant space by diversifying their portfolio, using under-utilized labor and kitchen capacity, and driving demand to increase margins and revenue. Founded in 2019, Nextbite is the only complete virtual restaurant solution for existing restaurants and kitchens that pairs the proven Ordermark ordering/delivery management solution with a selection of highly visible, on-trend, delivery-only brands. Headquartered in Denver, Nextbite/Ordermark recently announced the close of its $120M funding round led by SoftBank. Nextbite Media Contact: Lisa Hendrickson/LCH Communications for Nextbite 516-767-8390 lisa@lchcommunications.com Infographics accompanying this announcement are available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/26ab745b-4f50-4371-b0e4-6d61c51b6f71 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/66abf864-73dd-4d0e-9362-da51d46ff01f Sydney, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clean Group Sydney, one of the leading commercial cleaning companies in New South Wales, Australia has answered all the queries related to the Cost of COVID Cleaning Services Sydney. They answered all the queries during the webinar they are hosting under their Covid-19 awareness campaign. It has been observed that the company is continuously hosting training and awareness programs along with managing all the service requests they receive during this period of the pandemic. As per their CEO, Suji Shiv, they are putting some extra effort during this time to make everyone aware of all the risks, precautions, and correct ways of wearing protective gear. Suji Siv said, As a reputed cleaning company with hundreds of customers it is our responsibility to share the correct information to everyone who is looking for valid sources of information. We have started this campaign to deliver valid information to everyone. People who want to join this webinar can visit the official website. In this webinar, we are also explaining the correct way of cleaning and our Covid-19 Cleaning services. The Covid-19 Cleaning services of Clean Group, Suji Shiv has mentioned in this webinar is a dedicated cleaning service launched by Clean Group. This service includes regular cleaning, deep cleaning, sanitizing, disinfecting, training and certification as well. Suji Siv said about their Covid-19 Cleaning Services: We designed this comprehensive service especially for businesses and commercial properties but it will also be suitable for residential and strata properties. By hiring us for Covid-19 Cleaning Service you dont have to wander here and there in search of people or companies who provide these services. By combining all together we are not only making all the services affordable but also helping people to stay safe from Covid-19 infection. However, people are not fully aware of the costs of Covid-19 services thus maintaining distance. He further explained the cost of COVID Cleaning Services Sydney and how the cost gets decided. As per the provided details in the webinar, the cost of Covid-19 cleaning is not as much as people think. The final cost depends on various factors like the size of the area, the number of cleaners required, the schedule of the cleaning, time is taken, the product, equipment, and taxes. The cost of Covid-19 cleaning varies from company to company and area to area. However, it has been observed that some companies add charges for unnecessary things, which are not even mentioned in the guidelines, thus business owners need to choose a company carefully. In the webinar, the CEO of Clean Group also answered some of the queries of viewers, When asked about the changes they have made in their services, he said, We trained our teams according to the latest guidelines, provided them with proper supplies, and ensured that our customers get the best protection against this the virus. We made amendments in our methods, added detail in our tasks, added protection gears, and we included some powerful tools and products. With these efforts, we were able to provide cleaning services even during the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clean Group is a Sydney-based reputed commercial cleaning company known for providing quality commercial, residential, industrial, and strata cleaning services in and around Sydney, NSW. The company has all the resources including tools, equipment, machines, cleaning/ sanitizing/ disinfecting products, and to handle all, a team of well-trained professionals. Who knows their job and the art of cleaning. Clean Group Sydney is well aware of all the methods, techniques, and tricks of cleaning and they are also up-to-date with all the guidelines. The company also explained the process of their Covid-19 Cleaning Service. First, the cleaner will do regular cleaning of the entire area and all surfaces, then a deeper cleaning will be performed. After completing cleaning tasks, cleaners will use disinfectants to make high-touch surfaces completely virus-free. The rest of the work will be done by sanitizing spray. However, professional cleaners are necessary to do all the work while maintaining safety. We offer Commercial COVID cleaning, Childcare COVID cleaning, Medical COVID Cleaning, Warehouse COVID cleaning and Strata COVID cleaning. Anyone looking for professional cleaners for a COVID-19 cleaning service can visit the Clean Group Sydney website and contact them via phone at 1300141946 or email sales@cleangroup.email to discuss the cost of a Covid-19 cleaning in Sydney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJNDrahhywU&t=27s ### For more information about Clean Group Sydney, contact the company here: Clean Group Sydney Stephen Matthews +61288598938 sales@cleangroup.email 50 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000 United States, New York, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fast-rising crypto adviser BitBod has urged new investors coming to the currency space to take time to learn three essential lessons. BitBod has become a highly influential adviser and trainer in the Middle East in the cryptocurrency eco-community. Born to a poor family background in Iran, he did not let his circumstances hold him back as his desire was driven to impact the world. As a teenager, he immersed himself in everything to do with cryptocurrency. He had virtually no opportunity to learn from advanced classes, and he went on this path through personal study. After a while, he acquired valuable knowledge and through the transactions he made, he concluded he could control his life well. After a while, he decided to teach this to others, and so, in 2020, he launched BitBod Company, the largest cryptocurrency training company in the Middle East. He progressed very quickly and reached a point where, within six months, millions of people were consulting him and subscribing to his telegram channel. BitBod has now become an international figure and is being consulted on in many countries. So we asked him to share three great lessons he can teach us about investing in cryptocurrency. "It is clear there is no one in the world these days who does not know cryptocurrency, and everyone has enough information about this market. But the point is that the path they take to invest in cryptocurrency must be the right one," BitBod said. "So keep these three lessons in mind so you can get the most out of your cryptocurrency market." It is always too early to buy bitcoins: A few years ago, when Bitcoin was priced at around $1,000, some people believed it was experiencing its last price cap. Then it advanced to $8,000, $60,000 and will soon see $100,000. Never think it is too late to enter the cryptocurrency market, as there is always an opportunity in the market for great profits. So invest today and if you are looking for a safe way, use the free BitBod channel for more info. Observe capital management: Most people entering the property market are looking to learn technical and fundamental analysis, but in my opinion, the first thing you need to do is to learn how to manage capital. Capital management gives you two basic guarantees: you will never lose your capital and get a guaranteed profit from the market. The same is true of cryptocurrency. Although there are attractive offers in exchange offices for margin trading, you should always believe in the principle of capital management. Look for new opportunities: Trading in the cryptocurrency market these days is the easiest thing to do. These are opportunities that are always there, and you can take advantage of them. But the important thing is that you try to look for the best new opportunities in the market. For example, NFT or buying land with digital currency are new opportunities. For more information, log through to his telegram channel: https://t.me/joinchat/WnSpX_P8nXwwOGQ0. Attachment NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Families and businesses have suffered from the lifechanging impacts of Hurricane Ida, a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2021. In fact, across the child care sector alone, 328 child care centers reported physical damage to their facilities, and 65 reported major damage. Two Louisiana nonprofits dedicated to advocating for and supporting Louisianas youngest residents, Louisiana Policy Institute for Children (LPIC) and Agenda for Children, are working together to raise funds in support of hurricane recovery efforts. In the days following Hurricane Ida, our team quickly got to work contacting partners and assessing the damage. We were immediately met with an overwhelming need for financial resources, said LPIC Executive Director Dr. Libbie Sonnier. We continue to hear that families need safe, reliable child care so they can focus on rebuilding their lives, but countless early child care facilities have been deemed inoperable at this time due to damage sustained from the storm. In partnership with Agenda for Children, we launched The Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund for Louisiana Child Care Providers (Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund) to quickly and efficiently work to solve this problem. The Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund has an ambitious goal of raising $500,000. One hundred percent of all donations will be distributed to child care providers in regions affected by Hurricane Ida, with priority given to providers most in-need across the states hardest-hit areas. Thanks to generous donations and grants from organizations such as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation, LPIC recently announced on social media that the fund reached its halfway point. "When faced with a disaster such as Hurricane Ida, its important for communities and organizations to band together to support a common goal, said Michael Tipton, president of The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation. We are thrilled to support the Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund and its broader mission of providing reliable care for Louisianas families.The Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund has already been met with a tremendous response, and LPIC and Agenda for Children are hopeful to meet the final goal by October 1, 2021, so they can begin distributing funds immediately. This urgency is also due in part to the broader child care crisis Louisiana and the rest of the country are facing with the U.S. Department of the Treasury just last week releasing data highlighting the inadequate supply of child care resources across the county and its growing economic impact. We are eager to reach our final goal as quickly as possible so we can focus our efforts on distributing these funds to Louisianas child care providers who need them most, said Agenda for Children Chief Executive Officer Jen Roberts. We know that young children have faced an unprecedented amount of change and stress in their short lives, from having to navigate childhood during a pandemic to major disruptions in their daily routines after the hurricanes. Getting child care centers back up and running quickly doesn't just mean that parents can go back to work, it also means that young children can benefit from the stability and nurturing that child care can provide in these challenging times. Those looking to support the Hurricane Ida Recovery Fund can learn more and donate directly through the donation portal on LPICs website. All donations are tax-deductible. To learn more about LPIC, visit their website or follow LPIC on social media for frequent updates @PolicyInstLA. For more information on Agenda for Children, visit agendaforchildren.org. About Louisiana Policy Institute for Children: Louisiana Policy Institute for Children is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that Louisiana's young children, from birth to age four, are best prepared for success in school and in life. The Policy Institute develops policy proposals informed by data, research, best practices and the experiences of other states to improve the outcomes of Louisianas youngest citizens, and further provides educational and outreach activities based on recommended policy solutions. The organization works to ensure children are safe, healthy and have opportunity to reach their full potential. For more information, visit www.policyinstitutela.org and follow the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. About Agenda for Children: Agenda for Children is Louisianas oldest statewide child advocacy organization, founded by a multi-racial group of community advocates in 1984 to create an independent voice for Louisianas children and work on a diverse set of childrens issues from birth through 18. Agendas legacy is built on child advocacy and wellness, data and research, and as a direct operator of innovative programs that have strengthened the early childhood sector. The nonprofit provides free professional development to over 5,000 early childhood educators in Southeast Louisiana each year, and its Early Childhood Opportunity (ECHO) fund has provided over $2 million in grants to child care centers and family child care providers since it was launched in 2019. For more information, visit www.agendaforchildren.org and follow Agenda for Children on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. ### Attachments New York, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aircraft Wheels Market: Key Insights According to our new research study on Aircraft Wheels Market Forecast to 2028 COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type, Aircraft Type, Fit Type, End-User, and Geography, The global Aircraft Wheels Market is expected to grow from US$ 1,704.25 million in 2021 to US$ 2,769.54 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.2% from 2021 to 2028. Aircraft Wheels Market: Competitive Landscape and Key Developments Raytheon Technologies Corporation, Meggitt Plc, Honeywell International Inc., Parker Hannifin Corporation, Safran, Beringer Aero Usa, Lufthansa Technik, Tae Aerospace, and Matco Manufacturing Inc are among the key players profiled in the study of the aircraft wheels market. The companies mentioned above are collectively holding a significant share in the market. In April 2021, Honeywell and GKN Aerospaces Fokker Landing Gear business in the Netherlands signed a license and parts supply agreement for an authorized service center for Honeywells wheels and brakes on the F-35 military fighter jet. Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Aircraft Wheels Market - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00021704/ The demand for aircraft is rising across the world, owing to the rapidly growing airline industry in the developing economies because of the continuously increasing demand for passenger airline services. In addition, the aviation industry is undergoing expansion at a rapid pace, recording significant production volumes and deliveries of aircraft (commercial and military) fleets. Specifically, the commercial aviation industry has witnessed tremendous growth in the past few years with the emergence of new low-cost carriers (LCCs) and fleet expansion strategies adopted by the full-service carriers (FSCs). Further, there is a surge in commercial aviation, owing to the mounting number of air travel passengers and aircraft procurements. This surge in aircraft production is boosting the demand for aircraft wheels. The production volumes of aircraft are continuously rising to bridge the gap between their demand and supply. For instance, Boeing and Airbus received new aircraft orders of 1,008 and 831 in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and delivered 806 and 800 aircraft in the respective years. However, in 2020, the number of aircraft orders and deliveries dipped due to the COVID-19 outbreak. On the other side, with the huge backlogs of aircraft delivery and with the fresh receiving orders, the market is expected to pull back its growth in the post-pandemic era. Furthermore, the demand for line fit wheels is growing with the rising production of aircraft as the main landing gear system consists of multiple wheels. The global aircraft wheels market is segmented into five major regions North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), the Middle East & Africa (MEA), and South America. In 2020, North America led the market with a 35.7% revenue share. The region comprises a significantly large number of aircraft (commercial, military, and general aviation) manufacturers and major aircraft maintenance, repairing, and overhauling (MRO) services providers. The presence of both in the region, especially in the US, boosts the growth of the aircraft wheels market in the region. In the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period, the aircraft manufacturers in North America were experiencing large volumes of orders, which generated a huge requirement for aircraft wheels. In addition, the region houses some of the major airline operators, which is propelling the demand for aircraft wheels, owing to new aircraft orders and retrofits of wheels in operating aircraft by MRO services. Thus, the above-mentioned factors are driving the North America aircraft wheels market and maintaining its dominance among all other regions. Download Sample PDF Brochure of Aircraft Wheels Market Growth Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00021704/ Presently, the majority of helicopter wheels are made of metallic light-alloy materials, such as aluminum or magnesium. However, wheels made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) are ~3040% less in weight than aluminum or magnesium alloy wheels. CFRP wheels are expected to offer improved corrosion resistance and noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) performance. Also, these wheels are stiffer with improved fatigue life, which extends their life. Manufacturers have already initiated the designing of CFRP-based wheels for rotary wing aircraft. For instance, in January 2021, Carbon ThreeSixty, a UK-based aircraft wheels manufacturing company, began to develop CFRP-based wheels for rotary wing aircraft. The company is expected to complete the wheel designing in the next 18 months. These composite wheels will also be interchangeable with existing wheels to make them suitable for retrofit applications. Hence, with the introduction of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic-based wheels in rotary wing aircraft, the market is expected to flourish further in the coming years with an opportunity to penetrate the rotary wing aircraft wheels. Aircraft Wheels Market: Type Overview Based on type, the aircraft wheels market has been segmented into main wheel and nose wheel. Aircraft wheels are one of the important components of an aircraft landing gear system as they provide necessary structural strength and support to aircraft in landing and takeoffs and during aircraft taxing. The modern aircraft wheels are being produced through the forging and casting process to provide maximum strength to the wheels. Aircraft Wheels Market: Aircraft Type Overview Based on aircraft type, the aircraft wheels market has been segmented into fixed wing aircraft, rotary wing aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The fixed wing aircraft wheels market segment comprises cargo planes, passenger aircraft, military aircraft, private jets, training aircraft, and others. The fixed wing type aircraft type segment holds a notable amount of the market share as fixed wing aircraft are widely used for commercial applications globally. Rising demand for passenger airlines, coupled with increasing air transportation services for goods, is augmenting the application of fixed wing aircraft types. In addition to this, the rising number of aviation institutes and business class people is proliferating the demand for training aircraft and private jets. Order a Copy of Aircraft Wheels Market Shares, Strategies and Forecasts 2021-2028 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00021704/ Aircraft Wheels Market: Fit Type Overview Based on fit type, the aircraft wheels market is segmented into line fit and retrofit. The aircraft components are fit in two different ways. Line fit components are performed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) whereas retrofit is done by maintenance, repairing, and overhauling (MRO) service providers. The retrofit segment is expected to gain the majority of market share during the forecast period, owing to the increasing size of aircraft fleets among major airline operators globally. Aircraft Wheels Market: End-User Overview Based on end-user, the aircraft wheels market is segmented into commercial and military. The commercial segment is anticipated to gain a notable market share of the aircraft wheels market. On other hand, the military segment is expected to grow at a decent rate in upcoming years, owing to the rising procurement of military aircraft globally. Browse Related Reports: Aircraft Wheel Scanning System Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Component (Hardware, Software); System (Laser 3D Scanner, Structured Light 3D Scanner, Others); Aircraft Type (Fixed-wing Aircraft, Rotary-wing Aircraft) and Geography Aircraft Wheels and Brakes Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Component (Braking System, Wheels, and Brakes), Fit Type (Line Fit and Retro Fit), and End User (Defense and Commercial) and Geography Aircraft Wheels MRO Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Wheel Type (Nose Wheel, Main Wheel); Aircraft Type (Narrowbody Aircraft, Widebody Aircraft, General Aviation Aircraft, Military Aircraft, Helicopter); Technology (Inspection, Non-destructive Testing, Machining, Others) and Geography Aircraft Battery Market Forecast to 2028 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis - by Battery Type (Lithium-Ion Battery, Lead-Acid Battery, Nickel-Cadmium Battery, and Others); Aircraft Type (Military Aviation, and Civil Aviation); Technology (Traditional Aircraft, Electric Aircraft, and Hybrid Aircraft); Sales Channel (Aftermarket and OEMs) Aircraft Lightning Detection Systems Market Forecast to 2028 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis - by Equipment (Lightning Sensor, Lightning Processor, Lightning Display); Aircraft Type (Fixed-Wing, Rotary-Wing); Fit (Linefit, Retrofit); End-User (Defense, Commercial) and Geography Aircraft Video Surveillance Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By System Type (Cockpit Door Surveillance System, Cabin Surveillance System, and Environmental Camera System), Fit Type (Retrofit and Line Fit), and Aircraft Type (Wide Body Aircraft and Narrow Body Aircraft) Aircraft Tachometer Market Forecast to 2028 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis - by Type (Digital Type, and Analog Type); Measurement Technique (Frequency Measurement, and Time Measurement); Application (Military Aviation, and Civil Aviation) About Us: The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We specialize in industries such as Semiconductor and Electronics, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Transportation, Biotechnology, Healthcare IT, Manufacturing and Construction, Medical Device, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Chemicals and Materials. Contact Us: If you have any queries about this report or if you would like further information, please contact us: Contact Person: Sameer Joshi E-mail: sales@theinsightpartners.com Phone: +1-646-491-9876 Press Release - https://www.theinsightpartners.com/pr/aircraft-wheels-market Connect With Us on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7591674/admin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tipmarkettrends Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theinsightpartners/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheInsightPartners RSS/Feeds: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/feed/ | https://www.openpr.com/news/archive/139407/The-Insight-Partners.html Waukesha, WI (53187) Today Overcast with showers at times. Low 58F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Overcast with showers at times. Low 58F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%. The Hartford skyline is visible from Wickham Park in Manchester in October 2013 as the fall foliage shows its autumn colors. This yearas wetter-than-usual summer should contribute to a splendid fall foliage season, according to one of Connecticut's top forestry experts. (John Woike/Hartford Courant/TNS) Governor Northam Announces New Grant Program Supporting Local Food and Farming Infrastructure Local governments can apply for grants to support farmers markets and small-scale agricultural facilities October 1 through November 15 RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today announced a new grant program designed to support equitable and sustainable local food systems for small-scale agricultural producers, farmers markets, and food hubs. It is a new component of the Governors Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund. This Infrastructure Program competitively awards matching grants of up to $25,000 in partnership with local governments for community infrastructure development projects that support local food production and sustainable agriculture. Special reduced match requirements are available to projects in economically distressed localities, underserved communities, or for those benefiting multiple small-scale producers. Ensuring equitable access to healthy and affordable food for all Virginians has always been a priority of this administration, said Governor Northam. One of the best ways we can do this is by partnering with local governments to make strategic investments in our local food systems. The local infrastructure created by this new program will enable Virginias small-scale farmers and food producers to thrive, grow local economies, and improve food access. One of the greatest strengths of Virginia agriculture, the Commonwealths largest private sector industry, is its diversity, said Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Bettina Ring. I am pleased that the new Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Infrastructure Program provides another economic development tool for localities. These resources make funding accessible to communities that need it most and benefit farmers and producers, as well as our local food systems. Delegate Sam Rasouls House Bill 2068 created this grant program during the 2021 General Assembly session. The legislation authorizes the Governor to award grants of up to $25,000 to political subdivisions. The reimbursable grants are primarily for capital projects at new and existing food hubs, farmers markets, commercial kitchens and other value-added facilities such as those for the processing and packaging of meats, dairy products, produce, or other Virginia-grown products. Small farmers, food producers, local food systems advocates and others interested in building their communitys local food and farming infrastructure are encouraged to learn more about the program and work with their localities to identify and develop suitable projects. Applications for this funding can be submitted October 1 through November 15. Final award announcements will be made no later than December 31 of this year. The Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Infrastructure program, with its focus on supporting local food and farming, benefits both our communities and farmers, said Delegate Rasoul. The money spent with local farmers and growers stays close to home and is reinvested with the businesses and services in our communities. The new Infrastructure Program joins two other the Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development funded programs, all of which are administered by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The Facility Grants Program is a Governors discretionary economic development incentive for new and expanding facilities that, in addition to creating new jobs and investment, add value to Virginia-grown products. The Planning Grants Program funds a wide range of activities that support agriculture and forestry-based industries more broadly and is designed to empower localities to develop creative solutions tailored to their unique needs. Additional information about the Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Infrastructure program is available here. Questions about the program and upcoming application workshops should be directed to Jennifer.Perkins@vdacs.virginia.gov. # # # A selection of recent media releases, and news stories is available in the database below and can be searched for by year and month. Thursday 23 September 2021 This morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC CVO, Governor of Queensland, received Clerk of the Parliament, Mr Neil Laurie for the presentation of the following Bill to which the Governor granted Royal Assent: Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2021 - A bill for an Act about access to voluntary assisted dying and related matters, and to amend this Act, the Coroners Act 2003, the Guardianship and Administration Act 2000, the Medicines and Poisons Act 2019 and the Powers of Attorney Act 1998 for particular purposes. The granting of Royal Assent to Bills passed by the Legislative Assembly is one of the Governor's key constitutional duties, and is an integral part of an Act of Parliament becoming the law of the land. It is forecast to rain again during a race. Next weekend F1 is in Russia and the weather forecasts predict rain. Especially on Saturday, there is a high probability of rain. Wet Saturday in Sochi F1.com Reports that on the Friday sessions there will probably be no rain and during the race the chance is not very high, but there could definitely be showers. For Saturday, there is 80% chance of rain. Fernando Alonso says to Motorsport-magazin.com that he fears a repeat of the rained-out weekend at Spa. He also remembers heavy rain in Sochi: "The visibility was very poor then. The track is very flat, you don't have any elevation changes so the water stays down. I remember with that Turn 1, which wasn't really a turn, was really a turn in the rain." WHITE PLAINS Before he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Javier Da Silva heard the words of the mother whose daughter he killed and later dumped on a wooded road in Greenwich. She called her daughters killer a worthless soul. A mother can never prepare to face a terrible day like this, Norma Sanchez, the mother of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes, told Judge Vincent Bricetti in a White Plains, N.Y., federal courtroom before the 30-year sentence was imposed Thursday. Da Silva pleaded guilty in 2020 in the killing of Valerie Reyes, a bookstore worker and aspiring artist. He admitted he went to her apartment in New Rochelle, N.Y., in January 2019 and engaged in a violent confrontation that resulted in her death. The two had dated for several months the year before. Federal prosecutors say Da Silva killed Reyes by placing her in a suitcase bound in packing tape and twine. She died by asphyxiation. Reyes body was found by DPW workers in Greenwich who spotted the suitcase off the side of lower Glenville Road. She had been reported missing by her family in the days before. Sanchez, supported by her son, Sal, as she addressed the judge, said her daughter was a vibrant and loving woman who was adored by her three brothers. My boys are all heart-broken and devastated. ... My boys struggle to accept she is no longer here, Sanchez said. She told the judge how she would call out her daughters name repeatedly while in the depths of despair following her killing. Turning to address Da Silva, who was wearing a khaki prison outfit, and sobbing quietly, Sanchez called him a selfish, greedy soulless person. Speaking to Da Silva, she said, I want you to hear the words of a mother who you devastated by taking away my baby girl. Her voice breaking with emotion, she said he went to Reyes apartment like an evil flood, surprising her in her peaceful place. You deserve nothing but pain and rejection, she said. Today, I hope Valerie finds the justice she deserves. Da Silva, an immigrant from Venezuela who was living in Queens, N.Y., and working at a restaurant in Queens at the time of the killing, addressed the judge before his sentencing, speaking in Spanish translated into English by an interpreter. My words can never express how repulsed I am by the acts I committed, he said, his voice thick with emotion. My acts caused Valeries death, and I can never forgive myself for doing that. ... Its my fault that shes not here any longer. Valeries family deserves to know Im sorry. ... I implore before God, on my knees, that God will bless them and remove some of their pain. Briccetti referenced the reports from Da Silvas defense lawyers that Da Silva was remorseful about the killing, as well as many letters written by his friends and family members who called him a decent and respectful person, but the judge rebuffed calls for a more lenient sentence. Look at me, Briccetti told the defendant. What you did to this woman was sickening. ... Anyone who could do such a thing is not a good person, by definition. Anyone who can do a thing like that is an evil person. Justice requires an evil deed be punished by a lengthy prison sentence. The judge highlighted the cruelty of the killing, as well as how Da Silva profited from her death, stealing money from her bank account and trading one of her electronic devices for computer equipment. After Da Silva wrapped her face in packing tape, he placed her in a suitcase, leading to her death by asphyxiation. He later withdrew thousands of dollars from her bank account and sold her electronic equipment. He drove to Greenwich and dumped the body on Glenville Road, according to his guilty plea. Da Silva took over $3,000 from her bank account, using her debit card in New Rochelle and New York City. The judge noted that while Da Silvas family, who were listening to the court proceedings on an audio feed, could visit him in prison, Reyes family would never see her again. You have to live with what you did, the judge said. Da Silva was arrested at his Queens, N.Y., apartment on Feb. 12, 2019, with Greenwich police participating in his apprehension. He pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping resulting in death in U.S. District Court in New York on Feb. 5, 2020. Two Greenwich police detectives attended the sentencing Thursday, along with law-enforcement officers from other agencies that worked on the case. Family members, who were wearing pictures of Valerie Reyes on a button on their clothes, declined comment outside the courtroom. Reyes had recently returned from a trip to Alaska shortly before her killing, her mother told the judge, highlighting her daughters love of life. She said she was honing her artistic skills in hopes of becoming a tattoo artist. She called her daughter someone who changed lives, a loving compassionate and selfless young woman. Sanchez also called attention to what she believed was Da Silvas deceitful nature he told Reyes his own mother was dying of cancer in Venezuela to elicit sympathy and keep their relationship going. His mother was not dying of cancer at all, Sanchez said. Reyes and Da Silva met on an online dating platform and spent a few months together, according to court documents, and Reyes later refused to speak or communicate with him. The federal prison system does not grant early parole, so the 30-year sentence will not be reduced. After his sentence ends, Da Silva will be turned over to immigration authorities and likely be subject to deportation because he is in the country on an expired visa. rmarchant@greenwichtime.com LAS VEGAS (AP) Feuding factions of the Las Vegas-area Republican Party have emerged from separate meetings with slates of officers, but the head of the Nevada GOP said Wednesday that only one set will be seated at a statewide leadership meeting next month. The Clark County Republican Central Committee headed by Jesse Law will be recognized at the Oct. 16 meeting in Winnemucca, said Michael McDonald, chief of the state Republican Party. Law is a former aide to the state GOP and former President Donald Trumps Nevada campaign. The state party will seat Jesses slate, and well move forward, McDonald said. Its sad that it turned out this way. Law and McDonald pointed to a court order issued earlier in the day that dismissed a lawsuit from other party members claiming they were the legitimate leaders. Judge Susan Johnson in Las Vegas ruled that decisions about matters of internal party management would be left to party members, not the courts. Laws group is recognized by both the Republican National Committee and the state party, Law and McDonald said. Law acknowledged that party members associated with the extremist Proud Boys were among the 500 people attending his meeting. He characterized the crowd as a sea of diverse folks. The Proud Boys are a male-only group with a history of violent clashes with left-wing protesters. Trump cited the group during an October 2020 presidential campaign debate, and several Proud Boys have been charged with conspiracy and other crimes relating to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Law predicted the eventual dissolution of the other GOP group, which drew about 100 people Tuesday to a virtual meeting that elected state Sen. Carrie Buck as chairwoman. The interim chairman, Republican state Assemblyman Stephen Silberkraus, was elected as committee political director. Ed Gonzalez, committee secretary, said the Buck-led group intends to go to the meeting in Winnemucca. Before she was elected, Buck termed Laws group an insurgency," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The Clark County Republican Party is at a tipping point, Buck said in a statement that vowed she would focus on goals, accountability and making the county GOP the most well-functioning political organization in the state. CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico (AP) After more than a week at this crossing on the U.S.-Mexico border, Haitian migrant Nelson Saintil felt like the walls were beginning to close in on him and his family. Saintil was along the banks of the Rio Grande on Wednesday morning with his wife and four children, ages 5, 10, 13 and 16. They had returned to Ciudad Acuna the day before after eight days in the squalid camp in Del Rio, Texas, where as many as 14,000 migrants had gathered. Reports of U.S. deportations to Haiti had pushed them back to Mexico, but the situation remained fluid. The family constantly reevaluated its situation based on imperfect information. I dont want to be like the mice who dont know about the trap and get caught, because returning to Haiti is like being buried alive, Saintil said. At the same time, he and others feared straying far from the growing river camp on the Mexican side, because Mexican immigration agents continued picking up migrants around town and conducting overnight raids at the small hotels where some stayed. The threat of possible deportation on both sides of the border created the sensation of an open-air jail, he said. Without the sort of overwhelming show of force deployed by the United States and Texas on the north side of the border, Mexico has been ramping up efforts to relieve migrant numbers at this segment of the border. In Ciudad Acuna, patrols of National Guard, immigration agents and in some cases local police intensified Wednesday, with more raids and migrant detentions in hotels and in the streets. Empty buses waited for detained migrants outside the local immigration offices. Suddenly, some buses would disappear and be replaced by others. Mexicos National Immigration Institute has not provided numbers on how many migrants have been moved from Ciudad Acuna in recent days. Well before dawn Wednesday, a couple of immigration vans pulled up outside a small hotel in Ciudad Acuna with National Guardsmen carrying rifles. Soon, shattered glass rained down from a second floor window and a woman screamed. Several migrants were led out with their hands secured behind their backs and loaded into a van. Inside, an AP journalist found blood spattered on the tiled floor of the room in which they had been staying. Bodlet Manaasse, 27, was the only migrant not taken from the hotel in the raid. I was sleeping, they knocked on the door and I didnt open, he said. The owner opened it, and they told me, you have to go with me." They didnt ask to see any documents, but he told them he was sick and had to see a doctor, showing his swollen belly. He was the only one they left, he said. The rest of the hotel exploded in shouts, scuffles and breaking glass. One family tried to hide in the bathroom, but authorities broke down the door. A couple families wielded shards of glass to ward off agents and managed to dash out of the hotel with their children and run into the night. One migrant accidentally cut himself with the glass, explaining the blood on the floor, said Manaasse. The hotel manager, shaken by the event, would only say that he witnessed part of the action and had never seen anything like it. On Tuesday, Mexico flew the first planeload of migrants from the border city of Piedras Negras just downstream from Ciudad Acuna to the southern city of Villahermosa. More flights were expected, including to Tapachula, near the Guatemala border. At the same time, Mexico was trying to keep more migrants from reaching the northern border. Bus lines were reminded not to sell tickets to migrants without proper documentation. On Monday, immigration agents in the northern city of Monterrey, a key transportation hub for travel to the border, detained about 100 migrants at the bus station who were then flown to Tapachula. In Monterrey, the number of Haitian migrants arriving at a local shelter had grown exponentially since Sunday. Some 1,500 Haitian migrants had arrived to the shelter since Sunday. The shelter, which has a capacity of 700, has expanded outside with tents for the overflow. The wave started with the deportation from from the United States, which has been done inhumanely, said Jose Jaime Salinas, administrator of the Casa INDI shelter. It is the new United States presidents first error, because this is being seen around the world. Selomourd Menrrivil, 43, left Tapachula to head to Monterrey with his family after seeing the situation developing in Ciudad Acuna and Del Rio. He and his wife arrived in Monterrey Sunday with their two teenage daughters. Their plan is to regularize their status in Mexico and find work, even though he conceded that their ultimate destination remains the United States. Without work we cant do anything, said the Cap-Haitien native who lived for five years in Santiago, Chile before heading north. We want documents here. Mexicos immigration agency estimated Wednesday that 3,300 migrants were still on the Del Rio side and 500 to 600 were in Ciudad Acuna. That was down from the 8,600 that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reported Tuesday and from the more than 14,000 estimated five days earlier. Mexico plans to begin direct flights to Haiti, which would initially target Haitian migrants already in Mexicos detention centers who have not applied for asylum. Those with open asylum cases would be flown or bused to Tapachula, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Andres Ramirez, coordinator of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, told Milenio television Wednesday that we have had a quantity of people applying like never before in the history of Mexico. From January to August, the agency received more than 77,000 applications for asylum, already 10% above the previous record in 2019, he said. About 19,000 of those came from Haitians. Dozens of Haitians waited outside the offices of the agency in Mexico City with a seemingly new urgency to legalize their status in Mexico. Leon Cardin, a 30-year-old plumber, waited with his wife and 1-year-old son. They arrived Wednesday morning from Tapachula. He said he paid about $750 for them to travel from Tapachula to the capital on a bus and in a private vehicle. Cardin had been in Tapachula for more than a month, but the commission cancelled his appointment to apply for asylum, so they decided to come to Mexico City. He left Haiti in 2019, passing through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and all of Central America before arriving in Mexico. Cardin had seen what was happening at the border his sons godfather was expelled by the U.S. to Haiti and wants to make sure he cant be sent back to Haiti. Like others, though, he said he would one day like to make it to the United States. But were not lucky now. Were obliged to stay here and seek a visa and try to find work here, he said. Back in Ciudad Acuna, little by little the migrant camp was growing beside the Rio Grande. Small tents and tarps were sprouting to provide shelter for several hundred migrants, mostly families, in a scene reminiscent of camps that have appeared in other border cities like Matamoros, Reynosa and Tijuana in recent years. Antonio Pierre, 33, listened to the news on a friends cellphone. They are releasing some, but they are very few, he said. His wife and daughter were across the river in Del Rio. He had waded back across the river through waist-deep water just to charge his cellphone, but said it was possible the whole family would join him in Mexico before the day was through. ___ Associated Press photojournalist Felix Marquez in Ciudad Acuna and AP writers Marcos Martinez Chacon in Monterrey and Fabiola Sanchez in Mexico City contributed to this report. BERLIN (AP) Germans go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament and produce a new German leader after 16 years of having Angela Merkel at the helm. Merkel decided not to run for a fifth term and the election campaign has largely focused on the three candidates hoping to succeed her. Here is a look at the highs, the lows and the unexpected that happened during Germany's latest campaign: WHAT'S HOT... Climate change rose to the top of Germany's political agenda over the summer, following the deadly floods that hit western Germany in July and which experts say will become more likely if global warming continues. The issue was hotly discussed during the televised election debates, with the three main candidates staking out different plans to tackle climate change. While Merkel's center-right Union bloc and its main candidate, Armin Laschet, want to focus on technological solutions, the center-left Social Democrats under current Finance Minister Olaf Scholz emphasized the need to protect jobs from being lost as Europe's biggest economy tilts toward a carbon-neutral future. The Greens, who have made the issue their core campaign topic, pledged to do everything to put Germany on course to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. They want to achieve that by ramping up carbon prices, requiring solar panels on all new public buildings and ending the use of coal eight years earlier than planned. ...AND WHAT'S NOT Foreign policy, including the future of the European Union, received comparatively little attention during the campaign. Although Berlin's allies have long called for Germany to show more leadership on the international stage, the three candidates shied away from presenting any radical foreign policy visions. Migration has also slipped down the list of priorities for voters compared to the 2017 election, when the far-right Alternative for Germany party came third. Its co-leader said recently that the party is focusing on state elections in the east, where polls suggest it could also win several constituencies on Sunday. ___ NOT LAUGHING ANYMORE One image that will remain in many voters' minds is that of Laschet laughing in the background during a somber visit by Germany's president to the flood region. Laschet, who is governor of the hard-hit state of North Rhine-Westphalia, later expressed regret for the incident. The 60-year-old has also come under fire for a campaign ad showing him chummily chatting with a member of the Querdenken movement that's opposed to coronavirus restrictions. Rivals said the ad was in bad taste following the killing of a gas station clerk by a man who refused to wear a mask. ___ BOOK BLOOPERS Both the Green party's candidate, Annalena Baerbock, and the Union bloc's Laschet were left red-faced by revelations that they had been economical with crediting the sources they drew on for their books. The mistakes provided a further boost for Scholz, whose curt, no-nonsense image helped push his party to the front of the polls a month before the election. ___ KID QUESTIONS The three candidates arguably faced the toughest questions from two 10-year-olds who interviewed them in a play tent filled with toys. While Baerbock struggled to explain her green tax policies to the children, Laschet raised eyebrows by defending his cigarillo habit with the words: I don't inhale. Scholz was forced to explain to his young interviewers why the German government hasn't done more to stop migrants, including children, from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Europe. A mock election by 250,000 students under 18 in schools across Germany showed a narrow victory for the Greens, ahead of the Social Democrats and Merkel's Union bloc. In practice, however, German elections are heavily skewed toward older generations. First-time voters will make up less than 5% of the electorate of 60.4 million people on Sunday. ___ GOVERNING COALITION COLORS What have Jamaica and Kenya got to do with the German election? Because each party in Germany is associated with a particular color, the two countries flags are widely used as shorthand to denote two of the dizzying array of coalition options that come into play after the election. Others include the "Germany" coalition, a traffic light alliance and one known as red-red-green because the Social Democrats and the Left party both claim slightly different shade of red. ___ TRIPLE VOTE Aside from the national election, voters in Berlin and the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will also choose new regional assemblies Sunday. The Social Democrats are polling strongly there and some experts say the party could be in for a triple win. ___ A SMALL PROBLEM ... Opinion polls show smaller parties are getting more support than during many previous German elections, sapping votes from larger rivals and making forming a governing coalition harder. One tiny party that could enter the German parliament again for the first time since 1949 is the South Schleswig Voters Association, or SSW. Election authorities say as a party representing the Danish minority in Germany it doesn't need to meet the usual 5% vote threshold. ___ ... AND A BIG ONE Whoever wins Sunday's election, experts say Germany's next parliament will likely be bigger than ever. Election rules mean the current 709-seat Bundestag could grow to 800 seats or more, making it even more unwieldy than it already is. ___ Follow APs coverage of Germanys election at https://apnews.com/hub/germany-election About 270,000 state residents 65 and older will be eligible for Pfizers COVID booster shots starting Friday, following the approval of the expansion of the vaccine program late Thursday afternoon by federal health authorities. Those who have been inoculated with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots will have to wait a little longer, however. Gov. Ned Lamont, in what has become a rare update on the pandemic for state reporters, said Thursday that about 800 vaccination sites are preparing for the booster program and people can locate nearby vaccinations sites by going to ct.gov/covidvaccine. He praised the states high rate for vaccinations - with 80 percent of adults inoculated - and its low infection rate, stressing that those who self identify as immune-compromised or are essential workers will be allowed to join those 65 and over at clinics, hospitals and pharmacies, for the boosters. That development, along with a seven-day infection average that remains below 3 percent, made Dr. Manisha Juthani, the states new director of public health, optimistic that Connecticut is on a positive track in the battle against the delta variant in the pandemic. I do think that we seem to be reaching the place where we have plateaued and (are) potentially going further down, which is very good news for Connecticut, said Juthani, a veteran infectious disease specialist from Yale said during her first news conference. I think we need to continue our vaccinations efforts so that we can try to prevent any sort of surge that might come this winter, Juthani said. I think its unclear at this point whether something else may happen, but I think things are looking very promising at this point. As we get children eligible for vaccinations as well, there is the possibility that we will continue to look better and better. About 680,000 eligible adults in the state have not been vaccinated. About 430,000 people have received their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine six months ago or longer, about 270,000 of whom are 65 and over. The other 160,000 are under 65. Josh Geballe, Lamonts chief operating officer who has led the administrations pandemic efforts, noted that 15,000 people a week are getting their first doses of vaccines. I think some of that has been a function over the last month or two of the delta wave and concerns around that, he said. There has obviously been a number of employers, including the state, and the vaccination rates that are driving vaccinations. Juthani said that those who have been vaccinated already have effective immunity against COVID, but those who have not been inoculated create a hindrance in the states overall defense against the virus. She suggested that patients discuss with their physicians the issues of whether their immune-system issues warrant getting in line right away for a booster. The way I understand the language, is that for those that would be at high risk of complications for COVID-19, Juthani said. Lamont and Juthani believe that by the end of October, vaccines a fraction of the current strength will be approved for children ages 5 through 11. Thatll mean that we can start getting young people in our schools vaccinated, Lamont said. And that may mean we can take a second look at our protocols, as time goes on. The state Department of Public Health reported Thursday a 2.28-percent daily infection rate and a 2.7-percent rate over the previous seven days, while a month ago it was about 3.5 percent. Over the last week there were an additional 36 fatalities, bringing the death toll to 8,483 since March 17, 2020. There was a net increase of 13 patients in state hospitals since Wednesday, with a total of 282 hospitalized. In April of 2020, at the height of infections, 1,972 people were hospitalized. For me, the relative good news is that in each of these waves, the severity goes down a little bit and thats in large part because of the vaccinations and the management weve had over the last - you know - year and a half, Lamont said. As we continue to keep our society open, our schools open, our service sector open, were able to do this, keeping you safe despite each of these different hits. Starting Monday, state employees will be required to be vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID tests. If they do neither, they risk suspension without pay, but the overall issue is still being negotiated with bargaining units. Lamont and Juthani warned that it is the beginning of the flu season and recommended vaccinations because after a record low influenza rate last year, it could become much worse this winter. The governor said that negotiations with school bus drivers throughout the state are active in attempt to keep them on the job next week. I just tell the bus drivers youre in a tight congregate setting, a bus, surrounded by kids who arent vaccinated. Were trying to keep you safe and were trying to keep them safe. kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT BERLIN (AP) After three-and-a-half weeks on a hunger strike, Henning Jeschke is frail and gaunt, but determined to go on, still hoping to pressure the three candidates for chancellor of Germany into meeting him for a debate about the climate crisis ahead of Sunday's general election. For the first time in Germany, climate change is perhaps the most dominant issue in an election campaign, especially for young voters. It's at the center of televised debates among candidates, and five of the six main parties offer plans with varying degrees of detail for slowing global warming. But young climate activists who pitched a protest tent camp in a park in Berlin's government district last month fear politicians promises will quickly dissipate after the vote or give way to pressure from special interests. Jeschke and six others launched a hunger strike Aug. 30. By late Thursday, Jeschke was the only one from the original group to remain on a hunger strike, even doubling down by now also refusing liquids, a protest organizer said. The others had dropped out, most this week, amid appeals from politicians and public figures not to endanger their lives. Jeschke said Wednesday that he was not ready to give in. He was resting on a mattress in the center of the camp, propped up on one elbow and taking occasional sips of tea. The hunger strike is an act of despair, he said, because he and his fellow activists believe that in this time of climate collapse, there are no honest conversations, that party programs are insufficient and that we urgently need to take action against the climate catastrophe. The 21-year-old from the northeastern town of Greifswald, who quit his political science studies for full-time activism, has already lost 11 kilos (24 pounds) and said his parents are worried. My mother is at home in tears, my father comes to visit again and again, but they also see that its necessary, he said. Lena Bonasera, 24, who joined the hunger strike Monday, said the activists first met during Fridays For Future protests, as part of the international youth-led movement launched in 2018 by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. The Oxford-educated Bonasera, who also vowed to stop taking liquids as of Thursday evening, said she halted work on her dissertation on civil disobedience to make time for the campaign. I asked myself, why me, and my mom also asked this," she said of her decision to risk her health for her beliefs. But once you allow yourself to feel how terrible the climate crisis really is, then I have no choice but to act this way." At this point, its unlikely the candidates Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, Armin Laschet of the center-right Union bloc or even Annalena Baerbock of the pro-environment Greens will show up. They have urged the strikers to end their protest amid health concerns, instead offering private meetings after the vote, presumably to avoid encounters that could go off the rails. Baerbock spoke to the strikers by phone and expressed empathy for their frustration, A spokeswoman for Scholz said he met with some of them and their supporters after a campaign stop near Berlin. This Friday, youth activists plan to stage large-scale international protests against climate change, weeks before leaders gather for a U.N. summit in Glasgow. Thunberg is expected at the Berlin rally, taking place just two days before an election that the Greens and climate activists portray as the last chance for Europe's biggest economy to change course. The hunger strike has made some ripples, even if there won't be a pre-election debate. Climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who has advised Pope Francis, Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, spoke to the protesters by Zoom this week, urging them to start eating again and offering to connect them to decision-makers after the election. In an open letter, Schellnhuber lent legitimacy to the activists' warnings, writing that Earth will warm by close to 3 degrees Celsius this century if current climate policies continue worldwide, and that there is even an outside risk that large parts of the planet will become uninhabitable. This risk may be small, but would we push our children into a school bus that had a 5% chance of being predicted to be fatal? he wrote in the letter, widely circulated in the German media. But Schellnhuber told the activists it's not time yet for drastic measures, such as hunger strikes. He said he senses a political opening, with leading politicians more willing to tackle the issue. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, he said he believes after conversations with Scholz that the front-runner takes the issue far more seriously than a few years ago. In the climate debate, two camps have emerged, with the Greens offering the most comprehensive program for making Germany carbon neutral with a mix of government incentives and penalties for polluters. Scholz' Social Democrats also propose government-driven change, but with more time than demanded by the Greens to phase out coal plants and combustion engines. In the other camp, the Union bloc and the pro-business Free Democrats argue that market-driven innovation should take the lead. The race between the parties remains close, with the Social Democrats a few percentage points ahead in the polls. Whatever the final outcome, the focus on climate change in public debate is unprecedented, driven in part by young activists, observers said. We can feel that this is a generation that is being politicized by the issue of climate change, said Sascha Muller-Kraenner of Deutsche Umwelthilfe, a veteran environmental protection group. It's an enormous opportunity for our democracy ... that an entire generation has been mobilized. Mueller-Kraenner's group has taken companies with some of the highest carbon emissions to court, filing lawsuits this week against carmakers Mercedes and BMW. He said such lawsuits and the street protests complement each other. In the end its the politicians who need to make the decisions, but we must keep up this positive pressure on them, he said. ___ Follow APs coverage of Germanys election at https://apnews.com/hub/germany-election. Follow AP's coverage of climate change at https://apnews.com/Climate COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) As South Carolina continues to grapple with thousands of new coronavirus cases that have burdened hospitals and disrupted schools, the panel of lawmakers that oversees medical issues is gathering testimony from people who want greater access to unproven alternative COVID-19 treatments not currently recommended by public health officials. The Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee heard Wednesday from several doctors, including two from out-of-state, promoting the use of ivermectin, the cheap parasite drug that is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19 but has been pushed by Republican politicians and conservative talk show hosts across the country and amplified via social media to millions of Americans who remain resistant to getting vaccinated. Although the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control indicates on its website that ivermectin is not an evidence-based treatment for COVID-19, the agency cant stop providers from prescribing it or punish them for doing so, said Dr. Edward Simmer, the departments director. We dont tell providers what to prescribe or not, Simmer said. Still, South Carolina has seen an increase this year in people requiring emergency care for exposure to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that major studies have shown is not effective in treating COVID-19, according to the Department of Health and Environmental Control. Wednesdays five-hour-long hearing was the second in a series of meetings aimed at evaluating the availability of COVID-19 treatments in the state. Last week, lawmakers heard from members of the public about their own experiences trying to secure coronavirus care for themselves and their families. Some said doctors ignored their pleas for ivermectin or other alternative treatments. Others reported difficulty navigating doctors offices and hospitals to secure the monoclonal antibody treatment that is shown to lessen the harsh effects of the disease. Growing demand for the antibody infusions has created a temporary bottleneck, with state health staffers driving doses of the treatment to clinics in the middle of the night to help even out supply, Simmer testified. Some conservative lawmakers have also spoken before the subcommittee, urging the Legislature remove any bureaucratic or administrative barriers doctors may encounter while trying to prescribe alternative treatments. On Wednesday, several representatives for medical and pharmacy licensing boards, as well as the South Carolina Medical Association, said they were unaware of any doctors or pharmacists who had faced professional consequences or complaints over the unproven treatments. One family medicine physician in Spartanburg, Dr. Robert Jackson, claimed he was among the most prolific prescribers of ivermectin in his hospital system but had been warned against it by the hospital. Two pediatricians described the continuing COVID-19 crisis in South Carolina, as children's hospitals remain full of young patients struck by the virus. There are three children so ill they are currently on ECMO, a machine that takes over the lungs to add oxygen to blood, said Dr. Elizabeth Mack, a pediatrician with the Medical University of South Carolina. South Carolina tops the charts in terms of COVID in children right now, in all the wrong ways, Mack said. Those children do not have access to some of the treatments available for adults, including monoclonal antibodies, which are only federally approved for people 12 and older. The best solutions to help protect children are the measures public health experts have repeatedly said will work to bring an end to the pandemic, doctors testified: getting vaccinated, social distancing and mask wearing. Even as the state's latest COVID-19 surge appears to be on the decline, South Carolina is still reporting more than 3,000 new cases daily. Health officials have recorded 11,913 virus deaths in the state since the start of the outbreak, the 14th highest per capita death rate in the nation, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins. If I told you we had a drug that 70% of the time would prevent COVID and almost always prevent death from COVID unless you had other underlying conditions, I think wed jump all over that, wouldnt we? said Dr. Anne Cook, an internal medicine physician and president of the state Board of Medical Examiners. Thats what the vaccine is. ___ Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic. Microsoft announced its Surface Duo 2 yesterday with smoother 90Hz displays, Qualcomms Snapdragon 888 chipset and a revamped triple camera setup. The dual-screen Android 11 device will officially go on sale from October 20 in the US for $1,499 in the base 8/128GB trim. Buyers in Germany and the UK will have to wait a day longer as first sales there tip-off on October 21 at 1AM local times. Microsoft Surface Duo 2 and Surface Slim Pen 2 (sold seperately) Those who want to be first in line to receive the device can already head to the respective Microsoft Store pages and pre-order a Duo 2 in Obsidian Black or Glacier White. In Germany, users can choose between the 8/128GB trim for 1,599 or hte 8/256GB variant for 1,699. The 512GB model which comes in at 1,899 cannot be pre-ordered at the moment as it is not in stock. The situation in the UK is similar in terms of available trim levels. The 8/128GB model goes for 1,349 while the 8/256GB variant is listed at 1,429. The top of the line 8/512GB model will cost 1,589 but is still not in stock. Surface Duo 2 in its folded and unfolded states In terms of accessories, Microsoft is offering its Surface Slim Pen 2 for $129.99/129,99/119.99 as well as the Surface 23W USB-C Power Supply for $39.99/44,99/39.99. Keep in mind that Microsoft is not bundling a charger in the Duo 2 retail package. There's also the Surface Duo 2 Bumpers which come in at $39.99/44,99/39.99. Surface Duo 2 US pre-order page Surface Duo 2 Germany pre-order Surface Duo 2 UK pre-order Since Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event from last month, there have been two Thom Browne Edition bundles with the Galaxy Z Flip3 and the Galaxy Z Fold3. Each of these bundles came with a Galaxy Watch4 and a pair of Galaxy Buds2, each Tome Browne Editions as well, but it wasn't possible to buy the Watch4 Classic Thom Browne Edition until now. This Edition of the Watch4 Classic has been officially unveiled by Samsung and will carry a price tag of $800. The box includes a total of three Thom Browne wrist straps, and a charger branded with the Thom Browne tri-color stripes. The Watch4 Classic is plated with rhodium for a shiny finish. It also comes with five pre-loaded Thom Browne watch faces. This edition comes in the 42mm size Bluetooth model of the smartwatch. Samsung Like the ZFold3 and ZFlip3 Edition bundles (both of which are sold out on Samsung's USA website), the Galaxy Watch4 Classic Thom Browne Edition will be available in limited quantities on Samsung's website starting on September 29. In the official unveiling video from last month above, we saw the Z Flip3, Z Fold3, Galaxy Buds2, Galaxy Watch4, and Galaxy Watch4 Classic all make appearances in their Thom Browne Editions. Haiti - Politic : The publication in Le Moniteur of the PM's agreement is illegal The publication in the official journal Le Moniteur (special issue 46) of the Prime Minister's agreement "Political agreement for peaceful and effective governance of the interim period" https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34802-haiti-flash-the-political-agreement-of-the-pm-published-in-the-official-journal-full-text.html is "illegal and contrary to administrative procedures relating to publications that may be recorded in Le Moniteur" affirms Lyonel Valbrun, the Secretary General of the Presidency. In a correspondence addressed to the Prime Minister ai Ariel Henry he recalls that "[...] that only the decisions taken in the Council of Ministers and thus binding the Government of the Republic can be the object of publication in the Official Journal apart from the legal publications usual. This outrageous publication is illegal and abusive because it does not fall within the scope of the constitutional powers governed by article 158 of the Constitution." Stressing in another correspondence sent to Jean Emmanuel Jacquet, the Minister of Communication "[...] This publication therefore constitutes a serious fault and engages the personal responsibility of the Director of the National Press." Ronald SAINT-JEAN, the Director General of the National Press, who also received a letter reminding him that "[...] the General Secretariat is the only body authorized to transmit any document to the National Press for publication, otherwise this constitutes a fault which results in its consequences." Letter addressed to the Prime Minister : "Port-au-Prince, September 22, 2021 Mr Ariel HENRY Prime Minister Primature Mr. Prime Minister, I have taken note of the publication in the official journal of the Monitor no. 46 of September 17, 2021 of a document entitled 'Political Agreement for Peaceful and Efficient Governance of the Interim Period'. I would like to point out to your attention that only decisions taken at the Council of Ministers and thus binding the Government of the Republic can be published in the Official Journal, apart from the usual legal publications. This outrageous publication is illegal and abusive because it does not fall within the scope of the constitutional powers governed by article 158 of the constitution. In addition, it seems necessary to remind you that the services of the General Secretariat of the Presidency provided for in article 24 of decree 9 of February 1, 2016 are placed under the responsibility of a Secretary General who reports directly to the President of the Republic and on which it depends exclusively. I would then like to emphasize to your attention that in your capacity as the interim Prime Minister, your first mission under article 149 of the constitution of the Republic is to organize elections to ensure the legitimate governance of the country. Receive, Mr. Prime Minister, my best regards. Lyonel Valbrun Secretary General" Letter addressed to the Minister of Communication: "Port-au-Prince, September 22, 2021 Mr Jean Emmanuel JACQUET Minister of Culture and Communication In its offices Minister, I took note of a Le Moniteur N46 of Friday, September 17, 2021 publishing a text entitled "Political Agreement for peaceful and effective governance of the Interim period". I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this publication in the official journal is illegal and contrary to the administrative procedures relating to the publications which may be recorded in Le Moniteur. At present, apart from the usual legal publications, only the Council of Ministers is empowered to take political decisions which may have a legal character. In addition, the decisions taken during the Council of Ministers must be transmitted to the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic with a view to their publication in the Official Journal Le Moniteur. This publication therefore constitutes a serious fault and engages the personal responsibility of the Director of the National Press. Hoping that the necessary follow-up will be given to this unspeakable failure, I ask you to receive, Mr. Minister, my best regards. Lyonel Valbrun Secretary Generale Letter addressed to the Director General of the National Press : "Port-au-Prince, September 17, 2021 Mr Ronald SAINT-JEAN Director General of the National Press In its offices Mr. Director General Following the publication of Special Monitor No 46, the Secretary General of the Presidency reminds you of the provisions of article 7 of the Presidential Decree of February 1, 1016 as stipulated in the powers of the Secretary General : "The Secretary General receives the deposit from all texts of an official or legal nature and ensures, where applicable, their publication in the Official Journal of the Republic." (sic). Thus, the Secretary General would like to point out for your attention, if it were necessary, that the General Secretariat is the only body authorized to transmit any document to the National Press for publication, otherwise this constitutes a fault which carries its consequences. He urges you to keep this produced observation clearly so that it can do the right thing with it. The Secretary General of the Presidency takes the opportunity to renew to you, My Sir the Director General, his best regards. Lyonel Valbrun Secretary General" HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Already 14 repatriation flights "About 14 repatriation flights have already been carried out, at a rate of 120 to 140 passengers by plane, as part of the massive repatriation operation of Haitian migrants started since Sunday by the American authorities," informs us the National Airport Authority. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34786-haiti-flash-joe-biden-orders-the-deportation-of-thousands-of-illegal-haitian-migrants.html 1,250 arrests in 20 days No less than 1,250 individuals were arrested by the police from September 1 to 20, 2021. They are accused, among other things, of kidnapping, armed robbery, rape and criminal conspiracy. 26 firearms, 21 cars, 3 trucks and 54 motorcycles were seized, according to the report presented on Wednesday by Divisional Inspector Marie Michele Verrier, spokesperson for the National Police of Haiti. In addition, she informed of the establishment of a new security plan called "mache pran yo" in order to support students during the school year, which officially started on Tuesday, September 21. The border with Mexico closed US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said this week during a visit to the US-Mexico border, "Haitians are receiving false information that the border is open. This is not the case and there will be deportation flights to Haiti and other countries." Human rights organizations dismayed The Jesuit Migrant Service (SJM-Haiti), Groupe d'Appui aux Repatries et Refugies (GARR) and the Frontier Network Jeannot Succes (RFJS), express their dismay and their deep sorrow at the inhuman decision of the Biden administration to deport thousands of Haitian migrants to Haiti. This organization says they are "deeply disturbed by the horrible and infrahuman treatment inflicted on Haitian migrants by Border Patrol agents while they sought refuge in the United States. Revolting images that evoke nightmares from the days of slavery when white settlers hunted blacks across mountains and valleys." New Inspector General of Education Mrs. Marie Lucie Joseph, the Minister of National Education proceeded to the installation of the former departmental director of education of the West, Louis Fritz Dorminvil as Inspector General of education. He replaces in this post Louis Delima Chery, who recently died https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-33895-icihaiti-obituary-passing-of-professor-louis-delima-chery.html International call for Biden to end mass deportations Several international human rights organizations "Global justice clinic", "Family action network movement", "Haitian bridge alliance", "Institute for justice & democracy in Haiti", "Haitian women for haitian refugees" among others, call the Biden administration to stop the mass deportations of Haitian migrants to Haiti. HL/ HaitiLibre McPherson-Hauer cites negative atmosphere driven by politicization as reason for departure The Blaine County Health Board conducts a meeting in the Blaine County Courthouse Wednesday. Blaine County Public Health Nurse and County Health Officer Jana McPherson-Hauer, back table on the right, announced her resignation druing the meeting. A meeting of the Blaine County Board of Health got emotional Wednesday afternoon with the announcement that County Public Health Nurse and Health Officer Jana McPherson-Hauer was resigning effective Oct. 15. McPherson-Hauer said her resignation was due to the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic and the damage it has done to her profession through the curtailing of their authority by the Montana Legislature and the daily stress of having the department's expertise, motivation and evidence-based policies questioned, ignored or rejected. "I do not fit in a system where I must constantly... A Havre High School teacher is one of the plaintiffs asking the courts to overturn a law passed this year by the Legislature that restricts Election Day registration. Havre High band teacher Cullen Hinkle is one of the plaintiffs, citing his need to use same-day registration in the 2020 election or not be able to vote. The other plaintiffs are Montana Federation of Public Employees, Montana American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, Montana Association of Centers for Independent Living and Montana voters Samantha Harrington, Adam Clinch, Paul Dougherty, Ashley John... PUBS, breweries and farms in the Henley area have been affected by the nationwide carbon dioxide shortage. Rises in wholesale prices of natural gas caused the temporary closure of two large fertiliser plants which create CO2 as a by-product. As a result, deliveries of dry ice, which is vital to the meat and drinks industries, are now taking three weeks longer than usual, potentially leading to short supplies of their products. The Government has agreed to pay tens of millions of pounds to cover the operating costs of a Teeside plant owned by American company CF Industries, for three weeks. The family-run Loddon Brewery in Dunsden Green, which sells beer to pubs and has its own shop, may have to close its tap room. Dan Hearn, who helps run the business with his parents Chris and Vanessa and brother Luke, said they were concerned. We use CO2 for the tap yard to pour beer and also in our kegs, he said. Weve noticed how incredibly difficult it has been to get hold of in the last few weeks. There are large delays in ordering. Its normally next day delivery but now were waiting up to three weeks. If we cant get the CO2 we cant use the pumps and at some point I think we wont be able to open the yard over a weekend. Local pubs have been calling us and begging us to help them if we can but cant, we need to ration ourselves. Mr Hearn said the business had also been affected by the shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers. Its across all industries, he said. There have been lots of delays of things coming from Europe and there are lots of things not on shelves anymore. Our packaging for our beers is delayed and the malt that used to be delivered the next day is also taking three weeks. Its the lack of HGV drivers and Brexit and were really starting to see the effect. These were the things we were worried about. All the issues they said wouldnt happen are happening and we cant hide behind covid on this. The main driver is Brexit. We saw it coming but we didnt think it would be this bad. Stan Ainsley, who chairs Phyllis Court Club, off Marlow Road, Henley, said the private members club had also been indirectly affected by the shortage of lorry drivers. He said: Our suppliers cant get staff and getting the supplies out to us with the lack of drivers is becoming quite tough. If you zoom out from Henley this is an developing situation and is adding to our staffing shortage problem. It will be interesting to see how the Government will act on allowing visas for foreign workers. Tom Davies, chief executive of Henley pub company Brakspear, said: Were aware of some pubs struggling to get gas from their usual suppliers but so far theyve managed to make other arrangements. Weve advised our pubs to ensure they have enough gas to dispense beer and not leave it until their levels get too low to get more. At the moment, its not causing too many issues but the situation may get worse. Farmers are also being hit by the carbon dioxide shortage as the gas is to stun livestock before slaughter. Its also used in meat processing and storage. Arable farms have also been affected by the fertiliser plants being closed. Simon Beddows, farm manager at Coppid Farming Enterprises in Dunsden Green, said: Weve already been hit by the fact the fertiliser is really expensive this year and now the plants have shut and we will still need to buy more in the spring. Its going to make life really difficult for us if plants dont re-open or they open late in terms of getting fertiliser to the farm. We have the fertiliser we need at moment so were okay for the time being but if it continues into the spring or if theres a back log it will affect farmers. The issue is that without fertiliser the crop wont yield a lot, which means produce will be a lot less and food prices will increase. If its a nationwide problem and we rely too much on importing food thats another issue. Mr Beddows added: The Government has really messed up by closing the storage facilities for natural gas as we dont have enough in this country. We have storage for just a few days but in others they have it for several months. Iain Tolhurst, who runs the Tolhurst Organic farm, off Hardwick Road, Whitchurch, said if the problems werent resolved quickly farmers could go out of business. He said: Large animal farmers will be concerned as the lack of carbon dioxide is detrimental. The lack of fertiliser means the yield would be 50 per cent less, which is also detrimental. Mr Tolhurt, who has farmed his land for more than 30 years, grows only crops on stock-free principles, meaning he grazes no animals nor uses any animal by-products such as manure. This drastically reduces the amount of carbon dioxide or methane produced. Both are greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. He said: As a business, we are not going to be affected but the Government needs to do something quickly. There are other options to carbon dioxide and others way of producing it you can take it from the atmosphere, which helps with climate change. Long term, farmers would be able to move away from carbon dixoide and fertiliser production as it has a massive impact on the climate. Need to refute anti-Hindu views at thought level for protection of Dharma and rebuttal of the hypocrites ! Sadguru Dr. Charudatta Pingale, national Guide, HJS Pro-Hindu activists from all over India and Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh participated ! Mumbai : After the terrorist attack of 11th September 2001 in America, those citizens started looking at Muslims with suspicion. Creating a similar opinion against Hindus was the purpose of holding the anti-Hindu Dismantling Global Hindutva conference at the international level. Hindus should, therefore, be alert. This wrong propaganda against Hindu Dharma should be given apt replies at ideological and intellectual levels with proper study. Mental terrorism has been spread through the medium of this conference. Elimination of Hindu Dharma is impossible, is the truth; but for protection of Dharma and rebuttal of hypocrites, anti-Hindu thoughts should be refuted at the thought level. In case such anti-Hindu programs are organised in or outside the country, it is our i.e. pro-Hindu activists duty to create awareness towards the same amongst ignorant Hindus, propagate the principles of Sanatan Hindu Dharma, etc. The mission of establishing Hindu Rashtra has Gods blessings and is successful and we have to just do our duties, stated Sadguru Dr. Charudatta Pingale, the national Guide of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) during the online meeting held for the protection of Hindutva on 12.9.2021 as a part of All India Hindu Rashtra Convention. The meeting was attended by several pro-Hindu activists from all over the Indian States, besides, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The dignitaries participating in this meeting expressed their views on the recently held anti-Hindu online Dismantling Global Hindutva conference. The meeting was started with Pujya Nilesh Singbal, the Dharmapracharak of HJS explaining the purpose of the meeting. In his introductory speech, Mr Ramesh Shinde, the national spokesperson of HJS, spoke about the legal fight against the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference given so far. Sanatan Sansthas national spokesperson Chetan Rajhans did compeering of the meeting. Now Open 23 September 2021 Delta Hotels by Marriott, part of Marriott Bonvoy's extraordinary portfolio of 30 hotel brands, announced today the opening of the Delta Hotels by Marriott Santa Clara Silicon Valley, debuting the brand's refreshed guest room design inspired by its commitment to a seamless travel experience, focusing on the details that really matter. This is Delta Hotels' first property in the Northern California area and second in the Golden State, providing travelers with more opportunities to explore and experience the destination. The Delta Hotels by Marriott brand is rooted in simplicity and focused on perfecting the small details that make all the difference during travel. Thoughtful design, complimentary water, a fully-stocked Delta Pantry for Marriott Bonvoy Elite members, and efficient service are just a few of the elements that bring this brand promise to life. Focusing on details that matter, modern agility, and bright optimism, Delta Hotels' newly refreshed guest rooms are inspired by true craftsmanship, featuring a premium aesthetic coupled with comfortable materials for a straightforward yet purposeful design. Design touches include a bright, neutral palette with rich yet unobtrusive accents of color; a headboard wall featuring large format artwork, playing with softened shapes and linework that reinforces the brand's design concept of simplified forms; and premium finishes across the platform bed, lounge area, and bathroom. Delta Hotels Santa Clara Silicon Valley is located in the heart of Silicon Valley close to the Santa Clara Convention Center, Levi Stadium, and many major high-tech companies. The hotel is three miles from Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), making it an ideal destination to fly in and enjoy day trips to other Bay Area destinations such as Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Napa Valley. The pet-friendly hotel has 263 spacious guest rooms and suites featuring the brand's modern approach to design, a heated swimming pool, and a 24-hour fitness center. In addition to these amenities, the property will also include Lucas Lounge, a full-service restaurant and bar serving signature cocktails, local wines, and craft beer alongside a specially curated menu; Zin Cafe, an all-American breakfast restaurant; Grab & Go, a full-service stand-alone specialty coffee shop serving Starbucks beverages, premium baked goods and snacks as well as prepared hot and cold items; and Delta Pantry offering premium beverages and snacks available to Marriott Bonvoy Platinum, Titanium and Ambassador Elite Members. The more than 8,000 square feet of technologically advanced meeting and conference space is across seven flexible meeting areas - available indoor and outdoor. Appointment 23 September 2021 Willard InterContinental Washington, D.C. proudly announces the appointment of Michael Deltette as director of social events for the 335-room hotel located at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Deltette will spearhead the social events for this historic luxury hotel featuring 22,000 square feet of iconic event space and three unique ballrooms. Michael brings more than 20 years of catering, event management, and hospitality experience within the top luxury and lifestyle hotels in Washington, D.C. Named the Style Guru (Engaged! Magazine), Washingtonian Style Setter (Washingtonian Magazine), The Party Guru (Washington Weddings), this most celebrated wedding professional will oversee weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other high end social events. Deltette joins Willard InterContinental Washington, D.C. after serving as a director of guest experience and quality assurance, as well as a director of catering sales and events management for one of the prominent luxury hotels in Washington, D.C. Michael was born and raised in the Philippines, where he received a master's in psychology and management and later went back to school to pursue his passion of becoming a chef. Deltette then assisted in the development and opening of his family's multi-cuisine restaurant. Michael's travels led him to New York City, where he attended The Culinary Institute of America, where he learned both back and front of the house operations. Michael enjoys painting, cooking and entertaining, traveling, and spending time with his husband, David, and their beagle, Franklin, at their home in upper Washington, D.C. Press Release 23 September 2021 Some students are looking for that special balance between degree courses that offer an academic challenge but also ample opportunities to learn practical skills outside the classroom. Certain types of students thrive better with a hands-on learning approach; they know that learning while working provides them personally with a better style of training that optimizes their chances to really develop. Advertisements For students who do not want to spend all day in the classroom but still want a learning experience that will broaden their horizons and set them up for professional success, a degree in Hospitality can be the perfect solution. Here at EHL, our students not only take classes from industry leaders in the field of hospitality, but they also have the chance to put their skills to use and build their professional experience through a variety of practical learning opportunities. Here is what all prospective students should know about EHL degree courses in Hospitality and how they combine both academic and practical learning approaches. Hospitality Studies: a mix of academic and practical courses A degree in Hospitality offers both ample academic and practical opportunities. The industry is incredibly diverse, with graduates working in a range of businesses from hotels and resorts to restaurants and spas. Hospitality education involves all aspects of the Food & Beverage industry, hotel management, finances, business plans, creative marketing, etc. From the art of serving in a fine dining restaurant to managing the accounts, there are many hands-on facets to this university degree. The academic coursework for a degree in Hospitality includes: Management of various hospitality businesses Human Resources issues Finance for businesses and how to manage a budget Marketing and engaging customers Administration related to the front and back end of the business All of these different courses help prepare students for the different aspects of hospitality management, however, the learning does not stop at the classroom door. The thorough EHL program also offers hands-on learning opportunities that challenge and encourage every student to grow. Brains are stretched outside the classroom; the theory of what is learnt in class is regularly put to practical use. Rather than just learning about the different aspects of hospitality from an academic perspective, EHL students are shown how to put apply and adapt them to real life situations. They learn about what happens out of the office, and are regularly faced with situations where they have to interact with customers, learning how to put the guest at the center of every interaction. The hands-on part of the Hospitality curriculum includes: Learning about the culinary arts Serving at a Michelin star restaurant Studying tourism Spa management Workshops on exploring their management personalities, strengths and weaknesses EHL students, from the offset, are urged to step outside the classroom and participate in the running of real hospitality businesses via workshops, internships and business projects. This practical approach continues throughout their degree program. Opportunities for hands-on experiences in hospitality training The EHL degree programs include practical learning experiences for students to see how different areas of hospitality studies actually function in real life. Students participate in real-life workshops around the campus ranging from the diverse food and beverage outlets, the in-house gourmet boutique and the Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant, Le Berceau des Sens. Each practice station presents students with a unique opportunity to see how these establishments are run, what goes into making them a success and how to create customers satisfaction. Students get to see in person the subtle differences between these types of businesses and what makes them stand out for customers and management alike. During these hands on sessions, students have the chance to develop a wide array of all-important soft skills (extremely sought-after not just in the hospitality industry, but across all the service sectors in general). Confidence gained via rigorous practical training. This will help them transition more easily into professional jobs following graduation. Good time management skills gained from having to balance the responsibilities and priorities that come with running a real business. Students learn the importance of efficiently dealing with tasks and prioritizing what needs to be done. A deep sense of delivering customer excellence by paying attention to detail and sensing the needs of the customer. Adaptability and agility. Students rotate around different workshops throughout the degree program, learning how to adjust and pivot to different circumstances and set of responsibilities. Throughout the entire rotation of workshops, students learn their skills according to the Swiss standards of hygiene and excellence. The graduates from this program demonstrate a high degree of aptitude and discipline, which will benefit them enormously regardless of which part of the hospitality and service industry they later seek employment in. No matter the job, each day brings its own set of challenges that they need to face. The EHL practical workshops help to them prepare for real working life. Internships and professional experience gained during the degree program In addition to the practical workshops on campus, students have the chance to build professional experience in a variety of other ways: Internships Students are encouraged throughout the degree program to participate in internships. Guided by a member of faculty to help them find an internship opportunity that fits their career goals and interests, students have the chance to learn in a real-life professional setting what they have been studying in class. During their internship, their work with reputable external businesses in turn helps them to build their CV, gain a larger network and make contacts within the field that can prove useful in the future. During these internships, students experience what it feels like to work professionally in a typical hospitality establishment. As they try out their targeted career goals, they start to cement their ideas for their desired career path and gain experiences and skills that cannot be taught in the classroom. Student Business Projects Many degree programs at EHL provide students with the chance to participate in a Student Business Project. During this initiative, they work in a small group to provide real consulting services for external clients. With the leadership of a faculty member, they work full-time over a six-week period creating presentations, carrying out market research and professional services for the client. These opportunities challenge the students to put their classroom learning to use and see how well it can impact a real-life business. Many clients receiving these services end up acting upon the students suggestions and these projects often lead to job offers at the end of their degree program. During these projects, students gain a greater appreciation of the practical application of their new skills and confidence in the services they are able to provide for their customers. Together, these types of programs make it possible for students to gain professional experience outside the comfort of the campus. They have the chance to enter their desired field with ample professional experience and a CV that speaks to their skills. Students quickly realize the value of putting their skills to use, as there are many aspects of running a hospitality business that crop up in real life but cannot be taught in a classroom. Learning how to make adjustments in response to customer situations, dynamically engage with them and meet their needs is what a great hospitality business is built on, but this skill requires years of practical experience. Choose the right balance of practical and academic training The EHL Hospitality Studies degree allows students to select the balance of practical and academic work that fits them best. The professional pathway The professional pathway offers the chance for more hands-on work throughout the degree program. Students who thrive on real-life learning and gain the most when putting their skills to use in-person will find this pathway more suitable for them. They can use their aptitude for hands-on learning to build their hospitality skills and prepare for their career from a more practical perspective. The academic pathway The academic pathway is based more on classroom learning throughout the degree program. Students who value opportunities to discuss theories and ideas related to hospitality in a classroom environment among other students may appreciate this option better. This could also appeal more to students who enjoy writing, researching and theory. Conclusion It is important to note that both the professional and academic pathways offer students multiple opportunities to engage with real hospitality businesses and customers via the workshops, internships and projects. They both include academic, classroom experiences for students to gain theoretical knowledge about the how hospitality works. The difference simply lies in the degree of emphasis on the academic and the practical areas of the degree programs. Here at EHL, we pride ourselves on giving students a complete and thought-provoking curriculum that encourages them to not only learn the theoretical side of the hospitality sector in the classroom, but also provide valuable practical insights in-situ. This fully-rounded approach is what helps give EHL its outstanding reputation for hospitality excellence. For prospective students looking to challenge themselves to learn a myriad of transferable skills and position themselves on an interesting career path that can take them anywhere in the world, the EHL Hospitality degree programs offer an excellent passport to success! Supplier News 23 September 2021 Lund, Sweden - Zaplox AB (publ.) (Zaplox), which offers hotels, casinos and resorts a contact-free mobile guest journey, announced the company will demonstrate its suite of contactless guest solutions at Zaploxs booth 3022 at HITEC Dallas 2021, September 27 to 30. The solutions; Zaplox Mobile Key App, Zaplox Mobile Guest App and Zaplox Kiosk provide a safer and more convenient guest experience while addressing the hotels urgent staff shortages by empowering guests to take care of more things themselves, thus reducing lines at the front desk. By implementing Zaplox solutions, hotels are able to offer guests a contactless alternative to the traditional check-in process, fully integrated with leading PMS and lock systems. Guests can skip the lines in the lobby and instead use their phone or the hotels kiosk for the check-in/checkout process. Guests using the app, can unlock the room, review room charges, and pay directly in the app at checkout. In addition, the app improves the hotels ability to communicate with guests before, during and after their stay. Guest inquiries and service requests can quickly be resolved and in-app promos and offerings provide new ways to increase ancillary sales and direct bookings via the app. After being grounded for two years, we couldnt be more excited for our U.S. team to attend HITEC in Dallas and finally meet with our customers and partners in person, says Even Frydenberg, CEO at Zaplox. As a result of the pandemic, we have seen a digital transformation of the hotel industry and the demand for the type of contactless guest solutions that Zaplox offers, continues to increase. HITEC is the perfect opportunity to find out how both the hotel and the guests can benefit from the hotels guest app. Zaplox encourages HITEC participants to prebook their meetings for the highly anticipated HITEC show and offers 15-minutes in-person demos in the Zaplox booth. Meetings can be booked via Zaploxs website. For those who are not ready to travel and walk the exhibition aisles yet, Zaplox is offering 15-minutes virtual demos before, during and after the show also available to book via Zaploxs website. HITEC 2021 participants can take advantage of an exclusive show promotion on Zaploxs Contactless Guest Solutions with no upfront fee and discounted pricing per door, starting as low as $1.00 USD per door and month when signing up before October 31, 2021. Please visit the Zaploxs booth for more details about the HITEC promo. Zaplox offers integration with the leading property management systems such as Agilysys, Amadeus, HotSoft, Maestro, Mews, Oracle Opera, protel, and StayN Touch and support the market leading lock systems, including ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, dormakaba, Salto Systems and ONITY. Press Release 23 September 2021 London, UK: The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) announces the launch of a Net Zero Roadmap for the Travel & Tourism sector to support the industry in combatting climate change during its virtual climate week event. Advertisements It also announced the launch of ground-breaking social and environmental research data. The first time such data will be produced across the whole sector, building on WTTCs annual high-anticipated Economic Impact Report (EIR). These vital pieces of work represent WTTCs biggest deliverables in the sectors drive towards net zero by 2050. The powerful initiative is being run in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and professional services and consulting experts, Accenture. WTTC made the announcement at its virtual Net Zero Travel & Tourism - From Ambition to Action event today, during annual Climate Week NYC. Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: The launch of our Net Zero Roadmap for the Travel & Tourism sector and development of sector wide data to measure our success are major steps to show how Travel & Tourism is playing its part in addressing climate change. WTTC, alongside our partners and sponsors, looks forward to offering tangible and meaningful solutions to meet the climate change challenge. In collaboration with UNEP and Accenture, WTTC will launch the Net Zero Roadmap for the Travel & Tourism sector at COP26 in Glasgow next month. This is a major new initiative that will support our industries on their journeys to become Net Zero. As a sector, we are aware that not all industries can achieve such goals at the same time, which is why our Net Zero Roadmap will be so critical. As the new President & CEO of WTTC, I am committed to putting climate change front and centre of everything we do. The Net Zero Roadmap will include a status quo overview of climate actions in Travel & Tourism, direct lessons learned from the past 18 months, and will include action frameworks for specific industries to help accelerate climate commitments and emissions reduction. WTTC will regularly monitor and update this climate action inventory research, providing continuous updates until the Travel & Tourism sectors targets are achieved. During the virtual event, which was sponsored by IHG, participants discussed the sustainability challenges the Travel & Tourism sector faces, along with the creation of the way forward in the sectors quest to become net zero. The interactive session included remarks by Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, representatives for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Arnold Donald, WTTC Chair and President and CEO of Carnival Corporation, Elie Maalouf, Chief Executive Officer Americas, IHG, Alex Zozaya, Chairman of Apple Leisure Group, and Gilda Perez-Alvarado, Global CEO of JLL Hotels and Hospitality among others. Download the press release > A group of Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, are raising red flags about publicly traded shell companies that raise money to acquire other businesses and and are seeking information from their founders, including Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta. Warren and other Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs addressed letters to Fertitta and five other founders of such shell companies, known as special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. The letters raise concerns about abuses by the creators and operators of SPACs and question whether insiders are exploiting regulatory gaps at the expense of investors. On HoustonChronicle.com: Tilman Fertitta adds assets to the merger taking his Landry's empire public In their letter to Fertitta, senators took aim at a deal by one of his SPACs, which acquired Golden Nugget Online Gaming, a division of his hospitality company, and agreed to pay half of Golden Nuggets debt. These sorts of maneuvers ensure that sponsors win regardless of the performance of the merged company, senators wrote. Fertitta and his representatives did not return requests for comment Thursday. SPACs, also called blank check companies, soared in popularity during the pandemic. Interest in SPACs skyrocketed last year as celebrity entrepreneurs entered the space and capital that sat out the first half of 2020 sought investments, according to consulting firm Deloitte. Nationally, 248 SPACs last year raised a combined $83.4 billion, up from 59 the year before that raised $13.6 billion, according to SPAC Insider, a trade publication. In the SPAC booms wake, regulators are working to catch up, said Michael Shaub, an accounting professor at Texas A&M. The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, has signaled he will roll out new regulations regarding SPACs, Shaub said. Shaub projects those regulations will deal largely in disclosures, ensuring SPAC sponsors release more relevant information to prospective investors. That, I think, is something thats going to be shored up, Shaub said. Its not like theyre going to ban SPACs. SPAC founders say the blank check entities offer a faster, cheaper way to take a company public than the traditional route of launching an initial public stock offering, or IPO. But the Democratic senators said in the letter that they worried that SPACs provide incentives to strike merger deals quickly, regardless of the deals quality, and that banks and hedge funds enjoy guaranteed risk-free investments. On HoustonChronicle.com: DraftKings to buy Fertitta's Golden Nugget Online Gaming for $1.56 billion The senators asked Fertitta to provide details about the SPACs hes founded and done business with and to elaborate on the compensation he received in each arrangement. The senators asked Fertitta and other SPAC sponsors to reply by Oct. 8. Fertittas fourth blank check company started trading this year after a string of SPAC deals for Fertitta. His first SPAC, Landcadia Holdings, merged with the Louisiana-based food delivery service Waitr and took it public in 2018. Golden Nugget Online Gaming merged with Fertittas second blank check company, Landcadia Holdings II, and went public in December. Last month, sports giant DraftKings which also went public last year through its own blank check merger announced its plans to buy Golden Nugget Online Gaming in a deal valued at $1.6 billion. Fertittas third SPAC, Landcadia Holdings III, agreed this year to merge with HMAN Group Holdings Inc., parent company of Hillman Group Inc., a Cincinnati-based hardware and home improvement distribution business. He also plans to take his hospitality empire public through a merger this year with blank check company FAST Acquisition. That deal is valued at $8.6 billion. amanda.drane@ chron.com Twitter.com/amandadrane Oil and gas companies are being bankrolled by some of the biggest names in finance to tap the Arctics vast natural wealth even as warnings grow about the melting ice cap due to man-made global warming. Gazprom PJSC, ConocoPhillips and TotalEnergies SE are among energy firms expanding their fossil-fuel expansion in the region, with production of oil and gas set to climb 20% over the next five years, according to a report by Reclaim Finance. The banking sector is complicit, having provided more than $314 billion for such companies from 2016 to 2020, the climate watchdog said. The Arctic is a climate bomb, and our research shows that the oil and gas industry is hellbent on setting it off, thus blowing up our chances of avoiding runaway climate breakdown, said Alix Mazounie, co-author of the report. But they arent the only culprits: Financial institutions have bankrolled these companies, making a mockery of their own climate commitments. The study lays bare the increasing concern that financial institutions and energy companies often tout their green credentials, yet can be found acting in ways that are contrary. The authors say that while two-thirds of the top 30 banks fueling expansion in the Arctic have so-called Arctic restriction policies, none exclude support for companies involved in the development of new oil and gas projects in the region. The worlds leaders will gather at the end of next month for crucial climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, amid growing pressure to act following a warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the target for keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels would be breached unless more drastic action is taken. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said averting a climate crisis means there can be no new oil, gas or coal fields. In a separate report published on Thursday, investors jointly managing $6.6 trillion are pressing the finance industry to boost funding for carbon-removal methods and standardize pollution credits. As much as 1.2 billion metric tons of the greenhouse gas must be removed annually by 2025 to meet the goals laid out by the Paris Agreement. There are currently 599 oil and gas fields in the Arctic that are either in production, under development or have been discovered, according to the report. European banks are responsible for one quarter of the global underwriting and loans to the leading companies, it added. The Biden Administration has set ambitious clean energy targets for the near future, including net-zero carbon emissions for the power sector by 2035. But decarbonizing the power sector would require a major deployment of renewable resources, according to a new study by consulting firm Deloitte. Renewable power generation accounted for about 20 percent of the nations electricity last year, with about 100 gigawatts of solar and 122.5 gigawatts of wind power capacity on grids across the country. To meet the net-zero emissions target between 2035 and 2050, the country would need to add 70 to 100 gigawatts each of wind and solar power each year double to triple the rate of expansion seen last year. The scale of the task left some power industry executives questioning if its possible. About two-thirds of electricity executives surveyed by Deloitte said they were not sure emissions-free electricity would be attainable by 2035, and 51 percent said constrained supplies of critical minerals like copper and cobalt would likely slow renewable energy growth. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston company hopes to store renewable energy in salt domes Still, the studys authors said some of the hurdles to getting more renewables on the grid like cost, a lack of battery storage, managing supply chains and increasing power demand may be more attainable than earlier thought. Take the relative cost, the studys authors wrote. Wind and solar are now the cheapest source of power generation in the country, even without subsidies, falling in price by about 55 percent for onshore wind and 85 percent for utility-scale solar photovoltaics in the past decade. While the costs of renewable projects that integrate battery storage arent yet competitive with combined cycle gas turbines for quick, dispatchable power, the studys authors said thats changing in states with high-renewable penetration, such as California. It could become more viable as the cost of utility-scale batteries falls, as they have by about 89 percent over the past decade. Another issue is the supply chain. Nearly 85 percent of solar panels sold in the U.S. are imported from China or Chinese firms. China manufactures 42 to 65 percent of all lithium-ion batteries globally. As for lithium-ion battery manufacturing, the United States produces 10 percent or less of global supplies of key battery components such as anodes, while 42 percent to 65 percent of these and other components come from China. The studys authors said investing and bringing more of that manufacturing to the U.S. would help solve those issues. On HoustonChronicle.com: Elon Musk's Tesla applies to provide power in Texas But manufacturing those parts in the United States will do little do address what the International Energy Agency calls looming mismatch between the worlds strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realizing those ambitions. The need for minerals like silver, copper and magnesium, among others, could increase by six-fold by 2040 as more batteries and energy tech is produced. The studys authors said researchers are working to create solar cells, electric vehicle batteries and other pieces of tech without those minerals, but that governments and businesses will need to start investing in more mining to ensure those materials are available. The authors wrote that although some of the issues they mentioned may sound like showstoppers that could halt renewable energy growth, thats not likely. Some perceptions are actually misperceptions, and the reality is that solutions are already being explored and implemented, they wrote. In sum, reality is often more encouraging than perceptions imply. shelby.webb@chron.com El Paso officials said week that the city is the first in Texas to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus. As of Monday, 75 percent of El Pasoans 12 and older were fully vaccinated, Jorge Rodriguez, the El Paso Assistant fire chief and emergency management coordinator, told the El Paso County Commissioners Court. The definition of herd immunity varies, but experts generally say at least 70 percent of the population needs to be immune, either by vaccination or natural infection, for the virus to stop spreading. On Express-News.com: El Paso says it reached herd immunity. Here's what that means. "We should celebrate their milestone," said Dr. Ruth Berggren, an infectious diseases specialist with UT Health San Antonio and director of the university's center for medical humanities and ethics. "It's a worthy target but unfortunately the delta variant has pushed the goal post for us. Many people feel that 90 percent or more may be necessary for the community to truly be protected." Because El Paso has such a high vaccination rate, it means that coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths could be pushed down to insignificant levels. Rodriguez said the city is way ahead of federal vaccination goals and already seeing the benefits. As other jurisdictions throughout Texas and throughout the country continue to suffer a great deal through COVID, we are actually doing pretty well, Rodriguez said. We should be very proud of this effort." El Paso County Health Authority Dr. Hector Ocaranza told commissioners that area hospitalizations are on the decline. Ninety percent of those hospitalized for COVID-19 were not vaccinated. According to Berggren, unless vaccination rates increase throughout Texas, surges among the unvaccinated will undoubtedly fuel more mutations. These mutations can be a threat to vaccinated populations whose immunity to COVID-19 could wane with time. "That will result in more people getting sick and more people potentially dying," she said, noting that El Paso should continue to encourage that people get vaccinated. Ocaranza told El Paso officials that they will continue to do just that, focusing particularly on parents living with young children. It will be great if parents and kids can get vaccinated. In the meantime, they need to continue wearing the mask and parents who still need to get the vaccine need to do so to protect the rest of the family, Ocaranza said. Ocaranza is encouraged by Mondays news that Pfizer soon will apply for federal approval for children to receive its vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech, which jointly manufacture the vaccine, said this week that clinical data show it is safe and effective in children 5 to 11 years old. People above age 12 already are authorized to receive the vaccine. "I hope that authorization will happen in a month. We were hoping for November, but it would be better if its October," Ocaranza said. Timothy.Fanning@express-news.net AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images SALT LAKE CITY (AP) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Wednesday that masks will be required inside temples to limit the spread of COVID-19. Church leaders said in a statement that masks will be required temporarily in an effort to keep temples open. The message was the latest in a series of statements from church leaders encouraging masking and vaccination efforts against COVID-19. DALLAS (AP) United Airlines says more than 97% of its U.S.-based employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 now that there is less than a week before a deadline to get the shots or get fired. The airline said Wednesday that the new figure does not include a small number of employees who are seeking a medical or religious exemption from vaccination. HELP DESK: Is Texas faring better or worse than the rest of the US in COVID deaths? Vaccine requirements work, United said in a memo to employees. Six United employees sued United this week claiming that the airline is discriminating against employees who get exemptions from the vaccine mandate by placing them on unpaid leave. Uniteds actions have left Plaintiffs with the impossible choice of either taking the COVID-19 vaccine, at the expense of their religious beliefs and their health, or losing their livelihoods, lawyers for the employees say in their lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in Fort Worth, Texas. STILL TRACKING: How much COVID is in Houston's sewage? See for yourself. Four of the six employees said they sought religious exemptions based on their belief that the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal tissue, one said she is allergic to eggs and penicillin, and another said he has multiple sclerosis and his neurologist recommended against vaccination. All were granted exemptions but told they would be put on unpaid leave, according to the lawsuit. United Airlines spokeswoman Leslie Scott said the company was "reviewing this complaint in greater detail, but at this point we think its without merit. The airline said last month that up to 90% of pilots and nearly 80% of flight attendants were vaccinated, but it did not give a figure for all U.S. employees at the time. United said it will start termination proceedings as soon as next Tuesday against employees who are unvaccinated and have not received an exemption. The airline is among a small group of companies that announced they would require vaccinations even before Sept. 9, when President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing employers with more than 100 workers to require vaccinations or weekly testing for the virus. Last month, United set a deadline of Sept. 27 next Monday -- for its 67,000 U.S.-based employees to get vaccinated or face termination. However, employees who apply unsuccessfully for an exemption could get more time. They will have five weeks after their denial to get vaccinated. Chicago-based United declined to give a precise figure for how many workers have asked for an exemption and how many requests have been granted. Employees who win an exemption will be placed on leave beginning Oct. 2. Some could come back if they wear masks and are tested weekly, although the timing of their return is uncertain. ___ David Koenig can be reached at www.twitter.com/airlinewriter Boo Eaker had never lived in a small town. Her husband, Lance, grew up in the small south Texas town of Uvalde, but they met in San Antonio and eventually moved to Houston, got married and started a family. I met Lance and Boo in 2018 when I wrote about their newly-opened Houston food truck. Though the truck was successful, it was hard work. Fast forward to early 2020 when I visited the truck in the parking lot of an office building in Montrose. It was a hot day and they were fighting with the trucks flat top griddle, trying to get it to light. Just one of many nuisances of running a mobile food business. As I stood outside the order window, Boo came out and to take a break and get some air. Im giving Lance a year, she said. Either were in a brick-and-mortar location by then, or we go back to our day jobs. The clock was ticking. Eaker Barbecue 607 W. Main, Fredericksburg Open Wed.-Sat. eakerbarbecue.com See More Collapse Then, of course, the pandemic hit. It was a blessing and a curse to own a food truck. There was no dining room to close. They operated outside, and were set up for to-go orders. Still, the grind of running a food truck never got any easier. They began looking for a permanent location in Houston, touring several existing barbecue joints that were available to lease or buy. But even during a pandemic, the costs to acquire and renovate a restaurant were prohibitive for a couple self-financing their small business. Then I got a call from Lance. If you were moving to a small town in Texas to open a barbecue joint, where would you go? he asked. This is a hot topic among barbecue fans. We want a great smoked-meat emporium in every Texas town, big or small. Whether on a business trip or a family vacation, we need our fix. One place that is often mentioned for lacking in exceptional barbecue is Fredericksburg. This Hill Country town is mainly known for antique shops and, more recently, palatial wineries and vineyards. So Fredericksburg was the first name out of my mouth. Soon Lance and Boo were making scouting trips to the Hill Country. Though Boo wasnt entirely sold by the small-town lifestyle, she noted that the people in Fredericksburg were friendly and the schools seemed like a good fit for their two young sons. Things happened fast. They sold their home in Houston just as the housing market took off, convinced a local property owner in Fredericksburg to lease them a property that was otherwise only for sale, and got lucky when a slot opened up at a barbecue pit maker to have a custom 1,000-gallon offset smoker built in record time. The new, small-town version of Eaker Barbecue, and the Eaker family, commenced in June when they opened the doors of their new brick-and-mortar joint on Main Street in Fredericksburg. To be sure, theres nothing small about the flavors in Lances mesquite-smoked brisket or the Asian-influenced side dishes inspired Boos Korean-American upbringing. On a recent visit, the brisket was perfectly cooked with a salt-and-pepper rub and a spicy taste imparted by the mesquite wood. Boos Korean cucumber salad features a light coat of fish sauce and a dusting of toasted sesame seeds. They collaborate on one of the most popular dishes here: Lance smoked, meaty pork ribs that Boo slathers with a spicy Korean gochujang sauce. Antiques, wine and barbecue. Thats a great combination for a weekend trip to Fredericksburg. jcreid@jcreidtx.com twitter.com/jcreidtx A group of sea turtles peers over Seawall Boulevard, and the Gulf of Mexico beyond, from a mural on the side of Galvestons McGuire-Dent Recreation Center. The Turtles About Town statues, created by the Turtle Island Restoration Project and Clay Cup Studios, serve as 50 further reminders of the island citys and the public at larges fascination with these seafaring reptiles. Theres something about sea turtles that people just love, and Im so surprised at how much people are thrilled with sea turtles, says Christopher Marshall, director of Texas A&M University at Galvestons Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research. I think it has to do with the fact that theyre just so ancient, he says. They seem like theyve been here well, they have been here for millions of years, and people recognize that. Theres something special about something so ancient and primitive still swimming our seas and following those primal urges to come up onto the beach and lay their eggs and return back. Southeast Texas is home to five of seven sea turtle species in the world, including green turtles, loggerheads and the highly endangered Kemps ridley, the official sea turtle of Texas. The center was established in 2019 to coordinate research between scientists around the region and promote conservation activities, including public awareness, on behalf of an animal that until not so long ago was on the brink of extermination in this part of the world. How to help The Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research relies upon sources of support through sponsored research, grants, gifts and donations. To donate to the Sea Turtle Hospital Fund or purchase a Texas Sea Turtle Specialty license plate, visit tamug.edu/GulfCenterforSeaTurtleResearch. See More Collapse Therefore, according to Marshall, the centers primary focus right now is simply trying to get a handle on the local turtle population. What were trying to do is answer the questions whos here? in terms of the species: how many of them are here and at what stage of life history are they here basically, are these juveniles, subadults, or adults? he says. All those are important for proper management of sea turtles in our area. One thing Marshall does know, sadly, is that Texas turtle population took a significant hit from Februarys winter storm, though thousands more were saved. But the more A&Ms researchers learn about the animals environment, the more they can help protect them. Theyre currently focusing on a mark and recapture program where they outfit turtles with electronic tags similar to what veterinarians use to keep track of household pets. They also glue a device to the turtles shell that employs a satellite uplink, another tool to help measure their range. In turn, this helps his team understand more about turtles habitat and foraging needs, Marshall says. Theyre using all parts of Galveston Bay, even way up into Trinity Bay, he says. Weve had several turtles up into the higher reaches of Galveston Bay, as well as the adjacent coastal waters. And so all of the Galveston Bay estuary system is important to our sea turtles. Learning how turtles use the bay can also have a ripple effect, Marshall says. Agencies like Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Galveston Bay Estuary Program can use the centers data to identify a habitat that can be set aside and protected for sea turtles but also all the other marine community thats associated with those habitats, too, he says. Those sea turtles are not an apex predator by any means, but theres a whole other community of animals that live in sea grasses and oyster beds, Marshall adds, so sea turtles are kind of like a flagship species that can protect whole ecosystems. Additionally, the center is running point on an areawide turtle rescue program, housing sick and rescued turtles until theyre ready to return to the wild. (The Houston Zoo helps provide veterinary care.) It recently launched a fundraising campaign to build a much larger hospital and education outreach center, where visitors will be able to watch turtles being rehabilitated, learn about marine conservation and greet the resident turtle ambassadors. If all goes well, says Marshall, doors could be open in 2024. The idea is to generate ecotourism dollars to sustain our conservation programs, he says. Itll be a real tourist attraction on the A&M campus. Assisting Marshalls team are dozens of volunteers, such as Carlos Rios, who describes his first sea turtle encounter as love at first sight. You get your hands on a sea turtle for the first time and youre like a little kid going goo-goo ga-ga, he says. Rios retired from the Houston Chronicle in 2007 after 30 years as a photographer. He got involved in A&Ms Texas Master Naturalist volunteer program, which funnels trainees into either land management or endangered species. He chose the latter and worked for a long time with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Galveston facility before coming over to Marshalls center when it opened last December. His duties include going on turtle patrols, where he and other volunteers comb Galvestons beaches looking for nests. It almost never happens, but a couple of years ago, he actually saw a turtle come out of the water and nest on the beach. When they do find a nest, researchers and volunteers remove the eggs and send them to a sister facility on South Padre Island, where hatchlings are periodically released into the sea. Rios has seen that, too. Lately, hes been working at the turtle barn, the centers rehab hospital, where he cleans the tanks and helps prepare meals. He took a special liking to a patient named Stubbs, whose flippers had to be partially amputated and battled serious illness for weeks before improving. She was medically cleared and scheduled to be released last month. I got to the point where I could get her to come up to the side of the tank and scratch her back, and shed do a little turtle dance for me, Rios says. Those are those little moments that you have with some of these turtles that youre not supposed to humanly befriend, but you do have this connection with. Theres kind of a magic that goes on with that. Chris Gray is a Houston-based writer. Katy Caldwells intense care for others led to an unpredictable 25-year career in community health care. But at the precipice of her retirement as CEO of Legacy Community Health, the native Houstonian knows she has been in the right place, advocating for her friends and those who needed help in the city. Years before she was hired, Caldwell, 64, was a volunteer and board member at the Montrose Clinic, which was later rebranded as Legacy Community Health. She saw firsthand how different AIDS patients, many of whom she considered friends, were treated by health care institutions in the 1980s especially if they were uninsured. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 80s. Since Im an only child, I took care of her during that time at MD Anderson, Caldwell said. My mom was a teacher, so I dont think she paid for a dime of any treatment maybe $1,000 over five years. She was fully covered. On HoustonChronicle.com: Teens find allies in Houston 'unicorn doctors' who give them control over their health Then Caldwells best friend got an HIV diagnosis in the late 80s. He had no health insurance and paid for every treatment he could afford to keep himself alive, Caldwell remembers. Toward the end of his life, he received palliative care and counseling at the Montrose Clinic, inviting Caldwell to his appointments. Determined that all people receive equitable care, she started volunteering and joined the board. And in 1996, she was hired as the executive director, even though she had no experience in health care administration at the time. Recruited for her numbers-focused mind, Caldwell expected to stay on for a few years to help the clinic get on its feet financially while securing new funding. For about 15 years, the clinics 35-person staff offered HIV/AIDS services prevention, case management, patient education for Houstonians at the peak of the AIDS epidemic. The clinic treated about 1,000 patients per year on a $3 million budget, she said. The same year Caldwell was hired, HIV care radically changed with the advent of antiretroviral medications, a combination therapy called highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, that greatly lengthened the life span of AIDS patients. As the treatment for HIV patients changed, so did the clinic. Its services broadened to help more than the LGBTQ community, including low- or no-income people without insurance. Soon, behavioral health, case management and social services were offered. In 2004, the clinic became a Federally Qualified Health Center, which meant it could bill private insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare. Services expanded again to pediatric practice, adult primary care, dental and vision. We believed our method of care, serving the whole person, would work across any community, Caldwell said. We developed a system of care that looks at what we now call the social determinants of health housing, food access, transportation, behavioral health. We realized that not just physical health but everything goes into keeping a person healthy. A year after becoming an FQHC, the Montrose Clinic merged with another organization and rebranded as Legacy Community Health. Legacy was chosen because of the effect the original clinic had on the Montrose neighborhood and Houston for its first 20 years, but its also as an open-ended statement. It has allowed everyone to leave a legacy, also, in terms of community health, she said. On HoustonChronicle.com: Baylor College of Medicine president dabbles in sous vide cooking during pandemic Since then, Legacy has expanded to 16 locations in Houston and Beaumont and became the largest FQHC in Texas in 2020. Offerings have further broadened to gynecological health, school-based clinics and extended behavioral and mental health services. Caldwell is most proud of Legacys school-based clinics, which started with a partnership with KIPP Houston and have expanded to YES Prep and all of Galena ISD 33 schools in total. A nurse practitioner and behavioral health specialist are on hand to help students in crisis, which takes pressure off working parents, she said. In schools, children can see a therapist while they are at school. Thats had a real impact, she said. Theyve done training with school staff on how to recognize certain things. As weve expanded, the school leaders have said the nurse practitioner is great, but please dont take away the behavioral health therapist. In 25 years, Caldwell has helped the once-small neighborhood clinic morph into a well-funded and multifaceted center for people of all income levels to receive quality health care. As Legacy evolved, so has the Montrose neighborhood. Caldwell lived there for 15 years and still calls it one of her favorite neighborhoods in Houston. And the California Street location is still the heart of Legacys main operations. Seeing the Montrose Clinic grow and respond to a changing HIV epidemic, becoming an FQHC and then going through the COVID pandemic, Caldwell said. Overall, Im most proud of how well weve responded to crisis. I think our organization understands how to pull together quickly to serve the communities were in. julie.garcia@chron.com Twitter.com/reporterjulie After 18 tumultuous months that included a global pandemic and natural disasters, Houston-area nonprofits are bracing for a potential wave of evictions and hunger to end 2021. Particularly worrisome is the end of some pandemic-related assistance programs, namely a federal eviction moratorium that expired last month. All eyes are on the end of the year, said Amanda McMillian, CEO of the United Way of Greater Houston. Exacerbating the potential problem, she said, are the lingering effects of COVID-19 and Februarys winter storm on already vulnerable communities in Houston. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston-area organizations need volunteers. Here are opportunities to help out. Still, McMillian and others said they are optimistic about the outlook of Houstons nonprofit sector a marked change from last year, when many nonprofit leaders warned of huge spikes in service demand amid an expected slowdown in donations and volunteers because of the pandemic. So steep was the sudden demand that the Salvation Army started its annual Red Kettle drive nearly a month earlier than normal, citing an expected 50 percent drop in donations at the same time as a 150 percent increase in demand. Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Houstonians, like their countrymen, responded with an outpouring of donations that, coupled with federal disaster assistance, helped buoy many organizations through the worst of the pandemic. In 2020 and amid one of the worst economic collapses in U.S. history Americans donated a record $471 billion to charity, and donations by individuals also increased 2.2 percent over the year prior, totaling $324 billion, according to Giving USA. Garet Robinson, a Houston-based pastor who just finished his doctorate in philanthropy at Harvard University, said many organizations have been forced to adapt after a half-decade of disasters, particularly in Houston. Thinking back on the past 18 months, I think resiliency would be the key word for the nonprofit space, not just in Houston but nationally, he said. On HoustonChronicle.com: Report: Minority vaccine skepticism driven by misinformation, fear of government Robinson believes the past few years of chaos will ultimately help nonprofits prepare for future waves of need. He noted the growing presence of issue-specific charities in Houston, such as those that deal directly with climate change. He also said the cancellation of most in-person events last year caused many nonprofits to think outside the box to reach untapped donors or those who forwent charity because it was largely virtual. Ken Ellis/Houston Chronicle Volunteer Houston, which is run by Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston, worried last year that volunteerism would taper amid fears of COVID-19. But the sector has largely recovered and may have even benefited in the long run, said Jodi Bernstein, vice president of interfaith relations and community partnerships at Volunteer Houston. The pandemic has opened up all kinds of volunteer opportunities for everyone, she said. So volunteers of all ages have been able to get into the spirit of volunteerism. The beauty of it is that there is something for everyone, she said. Still, there are concerns that the coming months could further what McMillian called a great resignation wave among volunteers and nonprofit workers after a half-decade of seemingly endless calamity. The nonprofit community is very tired, McMillian said. You have a lot of people who are just deep-in-their-bones tired from having to navigate at least one disaster a year as well as everyday needs. There is a breaking point somewhere. I just dont know where it is. Thats why now is not the time for Houstonians to roll back their volunteering or the money they donate, she said. Its time to roll up their sleeves. robert.downen@chron.com Hispanic Heritage Month, like Black History Month, celebrates people of color and their tremendous contributions to American history. Its a cultural connection we Hispanic and Black people share because our history and our voices are often rewritten, abbreviated or omitted from textbooks. So Texas new critical race theory law for K-12 classrooms, while an effort to quiet the truthful telling of the nations past of slavery and systemic racial practices, also undermines the greatness that comes from these celebrations. Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, began as Hispanic Heritage Week, created by Congress in 1968. Expanded to a month in 1988, it begins in the middle of September to coincide with national independence days of several Latin American countries, including El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, on Sept. 15, and Mexico on Sept. 16. Hispanic heritage is American heritage, President Biden declared in a proclamation earlier this month. National Hispanic Heritage Month is an important reminder of how much strength we draw as a nation from our immigrant roots and our values as a nation of immigrants, he wrote. But the new Texas law will stifle classroom conversations about race, the history of people of color and immigration, while penalizing teachers who talk about the issue of race by withdrawing funding to the schools. Just recently, a Black principal in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was accused of teaching critical race theory and promoting the conspiracy theory of systemic racism. James Whitfield was the first Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School, and the district suspended him without explanation. If you dont talk about it, it didnt happen, right? I am not the CRT (Critical Race Theory) Boogeyman, Whitfield wrote in a Facebook post. I am the first African American to assume the role of principal at my current school in its 25-year history, and I am keenly aware of how much fear this strikes in the hearts of a small minority who would much rather things go back to the way they used to be. The problem is that conversations about Hispanic and Black history in this country cannot be held effectively without understanding how race and racism has shaped many of the inequities, such the economic wealth gap and access to quality education and health care, that are current today. We know when children of color see themselves in the classroom lessons, they perform better. The majority of school-age children in Texas are of color. They need to see themselves in all of the glory and with all of our flaws, said Dr. Pamela Quiroz, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston. Latinos are a founding culture of this society. Students need to be able to identify and understand the causes of inequity in this country. A National Education Association report, which included studies of the Mexican American Studies program of the Tucson school district and San Francisco school districts Ethnic Studies program, consistently shows that ethnic studies courses have a positive impact on students of color and even on white students. While there were few conversations about Black history and culturally relevant teachings in my primary public and private education, I was given full opportunity to explore Black, Latino and Native American history and culture at a small, mostly white liberal arts college in Colorado. It was the first time I saw myself and my college friends of color clearly reflected in history taught in the classroom. There have been valiant efforts in Texas to give students a full picture of history. In 2018, the Texas State Board of Education approved a Mexican-American studies, after debating for more than four years on whether to offer teachers materials and guidance to teach Mexican-American studies in public high schools. In 2020, the board approved African American studies course. So with this new law, what happens to those opportunities? That depends on how critical race theory is interpreted. Most people dont even know what it means. In actuality, critical race theory refers to an intellectual movement founded by legal scholars of color two Black and one Mexican American in the 1970s to explain racist practices in our laws and systems. The concept has been discussed widely since the killings last year of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other people of color by police officers led to a national reckoning on race. This campaign against critical race theory is an anti Black Lives Matter campaign, an anti-George Floyd-era campaign, said Tony Diaz, a writer, activist and professor of Mexican American Literature and Rhetorical Analysis at Lone Star College. While the nation has recently undergone a re-evaluation of structural discrimination and institutions, and even seen the removal of Confederate statues, Diaz said the attack on ethnic studies and history is nothing new. In 2012, he made national news when he successful led an effort to defy Arizonas 2010 ban of Mexican American Studies. His Librotraficante Caravan smuggled in books banned in Tucson. In 2017, a federal judge forbade the state from enforcing such a ban. Whats happening now in Texas is an update of the ethnic-studies attack in Arizona, he said. Arizona went after Mexican Americans, but they forgot we are citizens, we speak English, we have degrees. We pushed back and defeated the law. Now, they have come up with this other campaign that sounds logical, but isnt. Its meant to intimidate teachers and confuse people about history, to think it is bad. Diaz said its ridiculous to think the concept of critical race theory, which is taught in graduate schools, is seeping into elementary schools. It should be clear an attack on the Black and Chicano community like this is an attack on the Asian community, too. Its all a direct response to the browning of Texas, he said. The U.S. Hispanic population reached 62.1 million in 2020, up from 50.5 million in 2010. In Texas, people of color account for much of the states 95 percent growth, according to the recent Census. The Hispanic population is now nearly 40 percent. Critical race theory is not synonymous with culturally relevant teaching, which affirms identity, Quiroz said, but shes worried that the states ban will set a precedent. Basically, anything that is a different perspective could create problems for African American and Mexican American studies. Its censorship. All cultures need to be recognized, and people need to understand history - the good and the bad. Quiroz is optimistic for the future of an inclusive and cultural-enriching education system. I dont believe the force of progress will reverse itself. It might in the short run, but I believe progress will prevail, she said. joy.sewing@chron.com Dr. Mike and Bethany McCann asked their interior designer, Julie Shannon, to help them replace the windows at their summer home in Kemah, after a heavy rain proved how leaky their bayside windows were. That simple task turned into a complete remodel and eventually the subject of the couple's 65-foot Fontaine-Pajot catamaran came up as well. Mike McCann and the couple's combined five children -- Bethany is their head cheerleader -- all enjoy sailing and compete extensively. Calling all young Muslim women: Theres a new group in Houston designed specifically for you. Muslimah Nights is held every other Sunday divided by age into two sessions, one for ages 13-17 and one for 18-30. The online gatherings are designed to be part social, part book club and all about Islam and sisterhood. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstons faith community prepares to receive Afghan refugees Muslim women are invited to join in the conversation and feel like their voices, opinions and thoughts are being heard, founder Fatimah Ali said. They have the opportunity to grow in their spiritual identity and religious knowledge. The virtual community is the brainchild of Ali, 24, a Richmond resident. After graduating from Colby College in Maine in 2019, she decided to return to Houston to live with her family for a while. I figured I would take about a half a year off, Ali said. But then the pandemic happened. Even before the forced social isolation, however, she recognized a challenge in her post-university life. I thought it would be so much easier to find Muslim friends in Houston, she said. Then I realized, I had no idea how to find Muslim friends my age. Growing up, Ali had Sunday school to connect with other Muslim girls. Then, in high school and college, there were built-in friendships. But after college, its more difficult across the board to find friends your age, she said. And it was definitely difficult to find Muslim friends. Ali talked to cousins and friends in town. They also found it challenging to meet Muslim women and cultivate meaningful relationships, she explained. I realized we were all saying the same thing. She realized a greater need to foster Muslim sisterhood. Initially, Ali considered waiting out COVID-19 to launch her group. But by October 2020, she decided to go virtual instead. I realized it wasnt going away anytime soon, Ali said. I thought it would be a good idea to start cultivating digital community while we were all waiting for physical community again. She enlisted her cousin Aiesha Rasheed, 28, to help brainstorm. We worked a ton together, Ali recalled. We talked about the types of conversations we wanted to have, the topics we wanted to discuss. Rasheed, a resident of Spring, had tried to start a young Muslim group before. It was something I wanted for a while, she said. On HoustonChronicle.com: How a Houston bodybuilder overcame a traumatic brain injury to compete in the sport he loves Consistency would be key, Rasheed said, as would ensuring the meetings were relevant and beneficial to members. And just because we want to talk about something, doesnt mean other people do, she said. The two cousins created a list that included navigating college or the workplace as a Muslim woman, challenges they would share and techniques that could help. They envisioned how they could facilitate conversations about spirituality and support each other. Reading the Quran and commentaries on the sacred text written by women would take center stage. We wanted to hear that feminine perspective and female voice on religious topics, Ali said. She also selected books that members could read together, such as Secrets of Divine Love by A. Helwa and Reclaim Your Heart by Yasmin Mogahed. By April, Ali and Rasheed were ready to launch their first Zoom meetings. They invited their friends, spread the word at the masjid and opened the group to others. Still, Rasheed said, they were the only two to attend the first meeting. Then, a couple more came and went. Finally a core group emerged. It was exciting to have members who look forward to the meetings and say its beneficial for them, Rasheed said. We definitely have a solid group of sisters who now come every meeting, Ali added. Its a small but mighty group. Theyre incredibly smart and perceptive. We have awesome conversations. Having the casual online setting also helps facilitate the gatherings, Rasheed explained. Everyone feels comfortable sharing, she said. Its good for anyone looking to talk or if they need advice or if they just want to have a fun time. Though Ali did not set out to discover ways to have community in a pandemic, she has accomplished just that. So much of trying to build community over this pandemic period is pioneering a new model for digital connection, she said. And its really awesome to be able to provide another mode of connecting right now. Being interactive and engaging is her goal with Muslimah Nights. Its really about individual connections, she said. COVID really amplified a need for everyone to feel more connected. Thats definitely true for Muslim women as well. In forcing us to stay home, it highlighted for everyone what they wanted in their own, personal community. On HoustonChronicle.com: They survived COVID, but unseen brain damage is leaving them foggy and forgetful Being online also allows women to join from other cities. We have some members in Chicago, Atlanta and New York, Ali said. If you live in Houston and go to college in California, you can still log in. And you can invite your friends to join. Member Aliyah Abdur-Razzaaq lives in Dallas and was one of the first to join the group. At the time, she was working six days a week and did not have the opportunity to engage with her masjid as often as she wanted. Her mother said, I know you want to be more active doing Muslim things. I heard about this group. At first, Abdur-Razzaaq admitted to being hesitant to join. At 26, she worried a Zoom group would be composed of teenagers. Then I saw there were two tiers, she said. I thought, Ill dip my toes in. But then I realized its awesome, and I knew that Id definitely be coming back. The conversations have been insightful, Abdur-Razzaaq said. Its about what were currently experiencing and also what wed like advice about, she said. Ali has asked for feedback and expanded the topics to meet members particular interests. Its definitely a unique group, Abdur-Razzaaq said. She said the group of all Muslim women makes it comforting and welcoming. They know what its like, and they all get it, she said. Its nice just to talk to other sisters and get their input. After COVID, Ali hopes opportunities will emerge to gather in person. She also envisions the group taking trips together or meeting for functions and seminars. All young Muslim women are invited to join. There are even new converts to the religion who have become members. Ali explained that theres a Muslim concept that all believers need reminders. She tries to highlight quotes from the Quran or spiritual practices to show small, everyday ways to strengthen faith. Her goal is for members to walk away from the meetings with experiences, advice and support to guide their spirituality forward. If youre looking for a community dedicated to sisterhood, religion and spiritual enrichment, Muslimah Nights is for you, she said. In the meantime, the online group has helped Ali with her initial goals. Ive definitely made some new friends, she said. Its so nice to know that finding Muslim women is something that can still be done, even in the middle of a pandemic, she said. And there are still opportunities for connection, even though were all socially distanced. Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer. Spring Branch ISD is warning parents about the serious consequences of the newest TikTok challenge. The challenge, termed Devious Licks, involves students recording themselves stealing or damaging school property and posting the video on the social media video-sharing app TikTok. Spring Branch ISD ninja: Wilchester Elementary fifth grader Grace Schneider shines on American Ninja Warrior Junior The challenge is particularly popular among middle and high school students, and multiple Spring Branch ISD middle and high schools, as well as Darrell Tully Stadium, have been vandalized in acts expected to be related to the TikTok challenge. In response, principals of all the Spring Branch ISD middle and high schools sent a letter to parents alerting them to the challenge and warning them of the serious consequences that can result from it, all in an effort to discourage and prevent such actions. This destructive activity, which mainly occurs in school bathrooms, is costing schools tens of thousands of dollars in damages, the letter, which was written by Spring Branch ISD Executive Director for Communication and Community Enagement Terry Abbott reads. Toilets are being destroyed, soap dispensers stolen or torn apart, bathroom stalls ruined with red dye, fire extinguishers sprayed, along with many other acts of mayhem. This must stop, the letter continues. Im asking that you please talk with your children and warn them that the consequences will be severe if they take part in this type of senseless destruction of their own school property. The consequences could range from disciplinary action to fines to felony criminal charges, depending on the activity and the value of the damage. In the Texas Penal Code, vandalism is a felony if the damage caused is at least $2,500. Last week, multiple acts of vandalism were discovered in boys bathrooms at Alief ISDs ODonnell Middle School. ODonnell Middle School principal Amador Velasquez wrote in a Facebook post that the school had a direct talk with the seventh grade boys and, like Spring Branch ISD, urged parents to discuss the potential consequences of the Devious Licks challenge. I ask that you please take a moment to talk with your child of the consequences of following and being influenced by social media and the negative effects of being a follower as opposed to leader, the post reads. We must take pride in our school and our facilities as we respect and appreciate each other and our surroundings. Looking to respond: Volleyball: Memorial Lady Mustangs looking to bounce back after losing district opener TikTok announced in a post on its Twitter account @TikTokComms that it has removed all search results for #deviouslicks and other variations of that search term and is banning all videos of the challenge from the platform, saying they violate the apps community guidelines. We expect our community to create responsibly - online and IRL (in real life). Were removing content and redirecting hashtags & search results to our Community Guidelines to discourage such behavior. Please be kind to your schools and teachers, the post reads. elliott.lapin@hearst.com ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) A northern Illinois coroner pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges alleging that he stole more than $14,000 in cash from dead people. Winnebago County Coroner Bill Hintz pleaded not guilty to 12 counts, including official misconduct and theft of government funds, WREX-TV reported. A judge set his bond hearing for Oct. 8. A Winnebago County grand jury indicted Hintz in early September on the charges, which accuse him of stealing about $14,500 in cash from the coroners offices evidence vault. That money had belonged to deceased individuals. Illinois General Kwame Raoul has also said that Hintz required family members to pay cash in order to recover the cremated remains of their homeless loved ones but kept the money for himself. The new charges came nearly a year after Hintz was initially charged in October 2020, with several counts of official misconduct, forgery for allegedly spending money on hotel rooms, car rentals and other expenses unrelated to official county business. WREX-TV reported that court documents the station obtained allege that Hintz stole money from a deceased resident as recently as April 2021, six months after the initial charges were announced. Hintzs wife, Michelle, also faces charges in the case filed last October. She also appeared in court on Wednesday, and her trial date was moved to Jan. 24, 2022. FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) Opening statements in the case of a U.S. Air Force airman charged in the shooting death of a Mennonite woman are scheduled to start Friday. Mark Gooch, 22, faces up to life in prison if he is convicted of first-degree murder and other charges in the disappearance and death of Sasha Krause, 27. Jury selection wrapped up late Wednesday after two days. The process was slowed by protections in place to keep jurors more socially distant during the pandemic. The court won't be in session Thursday. Krause was gathering material for Sunday school in a Mennonite community in Farmington, New Mexico, when she disappeared in mid-January last year. A camper discovered Krause's body in a forest clearing outside Flagstaff, Arizona, more than a month later. Krause's parents and members of her community in Farmington were in court Wednesday during jury selection. Fifteen jurors were picked, some of whom unknowingly are alternates and won't weigh in on the verdict. Gooch was stationed at Luke Air Force Base in metropolitan Phoenix at the time. He told investigators he was near Farmington about a seven-hour drive when Krause went missing because he had been seeking out Mennonite churches for the fellowship. But he said he did not kidnap or kill her, according to a recording of the interview. There is no indication that they knew each other. Krause moved to Farmington from Texas where she was a teacher. Gooch grew up in the Mennonite faith in Wisconsin but never officially joined the church, he told investigators. Prosecutor Ammon Barker will try to convince the jury that Gooch was motivated to kill Krause by a general disdain for Mennonites. A bullet taken from Krause's skull was fired from a .22-caliber rifle that Gooch owned, a state crime lab report showed. Authorities said they tied Gooch to the crime using cellphone data, financial records and surveillance video. Gooch's attorney, Bruce Griffen, has said using cellphone data to determine location isn't scientifically sound. The trial began Tuesday in Coconino County Superior Court. It's scheduled to last three weeks. A fire severely damaged an American Legion post Wednesday night in southwest Houston. No injuries were reported in the fire that erupted around 10:11 p.m. at Post 490 at 11702 Galveston Road. The commander of the post, John Cronin, said about 10 people were there for a meeting and everyone got out safely. The kitchen had been closed and someone said they smelled smoke, according to Cronin. When they opened the door, there it was, he said. Charles Ortiz with Houston Fire Department District 70 said fire was visible on the roof when they arrived. A probable cause may be located in the kitchen area, but like I say, its under investigation currently, Ortiz said. NEWS IN YOUR INBOX: Sign up for breaking news email alerts from HoustonChronicle.com here Ortiz said people were outside and inside and they started to hear unusual sounds coming from the fire. People went to investigate, realized there was one and called 911, according to Ortiz. Cronin is expecting the post to quickly get back to business. This little setback aint going to do nothing for us, were gonna be right strong tomorrow morning, Cronin said Wednesday night. For three months, Morgan Tate could only see her mother through a hospital room window. The 7-year-old could not go inside, so she wrote notes for the nurses at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center to place by her unconscious mothers bed. In the childs mind, her mother was sleeping. In reality, 41-year-old Michelle Tate was battling a devastating COVID infection that left her comatose and connected to a life-support machine called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO. SHARE YOUR STORY: Were looking to talk to health care workers about what it's been like on the frontlines of COVID She didnt know how close I was to death, Michelle Tate said. The ECMO machine allowed Tates lungs to heal from May to July. Against the odds, she returned home in August. Her experience shows why ECMO machines have become an important tool for hospitals facing waves of COVID patients who need the highest levels of care. Now Playing: After being hospitalized for four months as her body fought and recovered from COVID, Michelle Tate shares her story from her Houston home. Video: Elizabeth Conley Houston Chronicle Not everyone who needs the machine can get one. ECMO is a scarce resource, said Dr. Subhasis Chatterjee, director of the thoracic surgical intensive care unit and ECMO program at Baylor St. Luke's Hospital. There is a limited number of people who can safely operate the machine and care for the patients. Baylor St. Lukes has 12 total machines, 11 of which are being used. All four ECMO machines at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands are in use. About 7,600 COVID patients have initiated ECMO treatments worldwide within the last 90 days, including about 4,900 in North America, according to a registry maintained by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization. The machine drains blood from a vein in the patients groin area, before pumping the blood full of oxygen, removing carbon dioxide and returning it to the patients body through another vein, usually in the neck. By oxygenating the blood, ECMO does the lungs lungs work, giving them time to recover from the long-term effects of COVID. The life-saving benefit of ECMO comes with consequences, said Dr. Daniel Kievlan, medical director of critical care at Memorial Hermann. (Tate) is not going to count as a mortality but its going to have robbed her of months of normal living, Kievlan said. Even if youre young and healthy, even if we can pull someone through this with amazing efforts, your family can suffer from that. You can suffer long-term effects. Buying time In a typical COVID case, ECMO is one of the last treatments before a person may need a lung transplant, said Chatterjee. While the sickest patients on ventilators require oxygen to be delivered to their lungs at a high pressure, which Chatterjee said can cause further damage, ECMO bypasses patients' lungs completely, requiring a lower level of ventilation. But the treatment is difficult on the body, and it doesnt cure anything, he said. Blood thinners, used by every ECMO patient, can lead to bleeding complications and infections. About half of all COVID patients on ECMO die in the hospital, according to ELSO registry. ECMO just buys us time until the body can heal itself, Chatterjee said. ECMO is a bridge for the body to recover. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston-area parents hope to get back to normal with COVID vaccine for kids ages 5-11 Tate was still connected to the machine when she woke from her medically induced coma in July. She tugged on the tubes spilling from her body, not yet understanding they were keeping her alive. In her foggy state, she thought she was paralyzed forever. She could not speak and was too weak to handle a pen. She communicated using flash cards with basic words like car and apple. COVID patients on ECMO typically remain paralyzed and sedated wihle they are intubated, allowing the machine to do the bodys work. But after 72 hours without fighting against gravity, a bodys muscle mass disappears, Kievlan said. Tates ECMO treatment continued for months without any significant improvement in her oxygen levels, , he said. We had to get her up and moving, he said. A great spirit Tate managed to walk while connected to the machine a first for Kievlan and his team. Kievlan hoped walking would strengthen her body enough to open her lungs. Partially numb and weakened from immobility, Tate said she felt like Frankenstein when a group of doctors guided her out of bed. Over the next two weeks, Tate went from struggling to sit up to walking 100 feet. Michelle was absolutely amazing, Kievlan said. Ive never had a patient with just the drive and incredible effort and rapid progressions she showed. She has a great spirit. A normal ECMO treatment should take less than three weeks, but COVID patients can take longer because of extensive damage to their lungs. Younger people those in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are typically in good health perform better on ECMO, said Chatterjee. At his hospital, ECMO candidates usually do not include older patients or those with medical conditions like diabetes. We would love to take care of everybody, but we are at our own maximum capacity, he said. Once a person is removed from the machine, recovery in the hospital can last several weeks followed by more rehabilitation. Tate, a former Zumba instructor, lost 42 pounds during her hospital stay. She spent her final weeks in speech therapy and re-gaining her strength and mobility for day-to-day chores. Now, she says the only lingering side effects are shortness of breath while climbing the stairs and minor aching in her joints. She is already hoping to return to Zumba by the end of the year. Changed my life Many patients who require ECMO are not so fortunate. Arturo Hito Bazan, a Houston police sergeant who supervises a narcotics squad, developed pulmonary fibrosis a disease that occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred after roughly two months on ECMO last year at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands. Almost one year after his discharge, he still needs pulmonary rehab, which includes cardio exercises to build lung capacity. Portable oxygen remains a necessity as he regains enough strength to return to work. Bazan tries to keep a positive outlook. He knows ECMO gave him a chance to live. He is grateful for the strong support of his wife and three children. But for a man with a previously active lifestyle going to CrossFit, lifting weights, playing softball he is constantly reminded of the virus physical and emotional toll. Ive been in critical situations at work, and they never affected me like this did, he said. Because (the virus) is not something you can see. I thought I was being careful and it has changed my life in every aspect. On HoustonChronicle.com: Almost like not being vaccinated: 2 million Texans have missed their second COVID vaccine For both Tate and Bazan, one of the most difficult parts of ECMO treatment was the separation from their children. Bazan missed his daughters 16th birthday. His now 21-year-old son moved out of the house. His oldest son, now 23, graduated from Texas A&M University. As a parent, thats what you look forward to and live for, he said. Tate wonders how the experience affected her daughter. Morgan fetched the neighbors when she saw Tate pass out in their Greenwood Forest home. She still calls for Mom! when she returns from school to make sure she is home. Thats the worst having to worry about how long itll stay with her, Tate said. At the end of her hospital stay, Tate called Morgan every night to say her bedtime prayers with her. Tate promised that one day, she would be sitting on the couch waiting for her. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston-area ICU beds remain scarce even as COVID hospitalizations decline across Texas She kept her promise and surprised Morgan at home on Aug. 19. Tate cried the moment the child left the room. Maybe when she gets older and goes to college and gets married, maybe Ill explain it to her then, Tate said. But now it has been all about protecting her, and just trying to normalize what she has seen so far. julian.gill@chron.com julie.garcia@chron.com Pfizer this week announced its vaccine is safe and effective for children in the 5- to 11-year-old age group, but what about Moderna and Johnson & Johnson? This weeks COVID Help Desk will answer that question and help explain the characteristics of a vaccine designed for kids. We also explore the latest news in monoclonal antibodies and the COVID death rate in Texas. As Pfizer seeks approval for young children to use its vaccines, whats the latest on similar efforts by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson? Moderna started vaccine trials in children younger than 12 in the spring. The trials continue at a slower pace than Pfizer. One reason for the lag is that Moderna doses are administered four weeks apart, whereas Pfizer doses are given three weeks apart, said Dr. George Delclos, professor of epidemiology at UTHealth School of Public Health. Also, it appears that Moderna is still trying to find the ideal dose for children, said Delclos, noting that Pfizers dose for kids is about one third of the adult dosage. From what Ive read, Moderna isnt expected to request (emergency approval) from the FDA before years end. GOT COVID QUESTIONS?: Ask the COVID Help Desk here. Moderna is still waiting on its emergency approval for its in vaccine in the 12- to 17-year-old age group. Like Pfizer, the company continues to recruit younger age groups for the pediatric vaccine trial, said Dr. Flor Munoz, associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. I think the design and goal is very similar, said Munoz, who is also co-principal investigator of the Moderna pediatric vaccine trial at the college. They are looking at lower doses for the 5-11 age group in a two-dose regiment. As for Johnson & Johnson, she said she is not aware of any ongoing clinical trials in children in the United States. Whats the difference between how vaccines affect adults vs. children? Pfizer said children developed an antibody response similar to the 16- to 25-year-old age group when given one-third of the dosage. Recent studies show Pfizer is 88 percent effective at preventing hospitalization for adults who are not immunocompromised. The kid dosage showed similar or fewer temporary side effects such as sore arms, fever or aches than teens experience, the Associated Press reported. Pfizer summarized the results released Monday from 2,268 trial participants. The information was included in a press release which is not peer-reviewed and the companys data did not appear to be publicly available as of Wednesday, said Delclos. The result of the trial vaccine cannot be directly compared to the vaccines protection in older adults, said Munoz, because the older population has a different level of immunity. How will the changes in monoclonal antibody access affect Houston-area patients? The Biden administration is taking over distribution of monoclonal antibodies, returning to the system that had been in place until vaccines became readily available and infections began to plummet this year, according to reports in the Houston Chronicle. It also purchased 1.4 million additional doses. The change means hospitals and clinics can no longer order the doses directly from the distributor. They must now go through the state. Texas health officials were notified that the national supply has considerably decreased and states should expect lower amounts of therapeutics available for shipment in the coming weeks, said Douglas Loveday, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. By early September, 70 percent of doses were going to just seven Southern states where COVID cases are still high and vaccination rates are low, including Texas. The state health department is working to develop a state system for allocations but the demand is expected to outstrip supply, Loveday said. But we just dont know what the supply will be over the long term and cant predict what the effect will be, he said. The therapy has been shown to have substantial benefits for people with a mild to moderate COVID infections or those who have had a close, unprotected exposure to someone with the virus. Are COVID deaths slowing or accelerating? And is Texas faring better or worse than the rest of the nation on this front? The Washington Post on Sept. 15 reported that 1 in 500 people have now died of COVID, 19 months into the pandemic. Texas rate is slightly higher with 1 in 490 succumbing to the virus, the Post reported. That ranks 24th out of 50 states, with Vermont reporting the fewest deaths per capita and Mississippi the most. Its difficult to determine whether Texas has passed the peak of daily deaths in the current surge. The state tallies the number based on death certificates, which take an average about 10 days to be filed. SHARE YOUR STORY: We're looking to talk to health care workers about what it's been like on the frontlines of COVID According to the data available so far, the state saw the most daily deaths during this surge on Sept. 1 with 286. An average of 276 deaths per day have been reported over the past seven days, compared with 256 for the previous seven days, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. It does seem like the rate of increase is slowing, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the state health department. Remember, deaths are a lagging indicator. We always see them follow increases or decreases in hospitalizations by a few weeks. Jeremy Blackman and Benjamin Wermund contributed to this report. julian.gill@chron.com All Cypress resident Kelly Stanfield heard after the birth of her fifth child was one cry. Then nurses whisked her preemie away to the NICU. She never got to hold the little boy shed delivered via an unplanned C-section at 27 weeks after falling dangerously ill with COVID. I was fighting for my life, Stanfield said. I knew I had to keep fighting so I could see him later. On HoustonChronicle.com: ECMO saved this Houston COVID patient after months of devastation. Now she tells her story from home Doctors across Houston and southern states report an uptick in pregnant COVID patients, due to a surge in the highly transmissible delta variant, coupled with low vaccination rates among pregnant women. About 25 percent of pregnant women ages 18 to 49 have received at least one vaccine dose nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention less than half the national average for that age group. Many mothers worry about the effects the vaccine will have on their unborn child, especially since pregnant women werent included in initial clinical trials. Although research now indicates the vaccine is safe for pregnant women, doctors are struggling to dispel fear from soon-to-be parents. Pregnant COVID patients the vast majority of which are unvaccinated are more likely to have pregnancy complications than pregnant women who dont have COVID. And those complications can be severe: Patients infected with the virus are 40 percent more likely to deliver prematurely and were admitted into hospital intensive care units at a rate six times higher than non-infected patients, according to a study from American Medical Associations JAMA Network. The CDC reports that of the 124,000 COVID-positive pregnant women across the nation, nearly 160 have died. In a pandemic, where the rules seemed to change constantly, mothers-to-be were skeptical about a vaccine that was relatively new. Many thought that by opting out, they were doing what was best for their baby. It wont happen to me Doctors began noticing more pregnant women with COVID coming into the hospital last month. Dr. Manisha Gandhi, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Texas Childrens Pavilion for Women and Baylor College of Medicine, said shes seen the number of coronavirus cases among pregnant women double on a weekly basis. She encourages her patients to be vaccinated, sharing new research about how the vaccine is safe for pregnant women and discussing the benefits it can have for the baby. But it isnt always an easy sell. For many of the patients that I talked to, they just have a feeling that theres not enough information, Gandhi said. For them its easier to say I will be really safe and It wont happen to me. That is how Stanfield felt. She didnt get vaccinated because shed had two miscarriages, and wanted to take as few risks as possible. She was wary of a vaccine that had not been out a full year. Ive never been an anti-vaxxer. Ive always gotten my shots, Stanfield said. But I just didnt know what (the COVID vaccine) would do. On HoustonChronicle.com: As COVID patients overcrowd hospitals, those with other medical issues wait for care Twice her doctor asked her to get the vaccine, but Stanfield kept reading on social media about miscarriages and women saying they were having adverse reactions to the vaccine. Often these were people she knew and trusted, she said. Stanfield thought she would be fine. The 36-year-old had no underlying conditions. She didnt smoke or drink and she exercised five times a week. She was also working from home and thought she had limited chance for exposure. I thought, Im young and healthy. Im going to be OK, Stanfield said. The people that you were hearing about getting really sick were people with underlying health conditions and people that were older. Then her husband contracted COVID-19 in early August. They werent sure how they thought they were being careful. It wasnt long before he passed the virus to Stanfield while she cared for him. After five days of mild symptoms, she was hit with intense chills, and a complete loss of her appetite. She had to force herself to eat for her baby, she said. She went to the hospital once it became difficult to breathe. Initially, she was sent back home, but when she returned to Houston Methodist West Hospital two days later, her oxygen levels were so low, she had to be admitted. She gave birth to her son Aug. 21, three months early, and he weighed 2 pounds and 13 oz. He is still in the newborn intensive care unit and it will likely be there two more months before he can go home, Stanfield said. She had to wait several weeks before she could even meet her son in person. The first time she laid eyes on him was on a screen. During a virtual NICU visit, she recalls one of the nurses saying to her, Oh, were so happy youre here. Other NICU mommies havent made it. Now that shes back home in Cypress, without her son, she has a new perspective on the vaccine. I should have listened to my doctor, and I didnt, Stanfield said. She always led me the right way, but I let other noise dictate my decision. Protection for two Dr. Jacqueline Parchem, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, said she hears too often about people seeing vaccine misinformation on social media. She also said it didnt help that pregnant women were excluded from clinical trials, which is typical of most trials to protect a vulnerable population. But it actually did the opposite in this instance, Parchem said. We need to protect them by including them in research, because then what happened was, they werent included in the studies, Parchem said. And then that lack of data for that population was used as a reason to withhold treatment. Since pregnant women were not included in the original research, it took a while for enough safety data to come out before experts started endorsing it. Parchem was in her third trimester when vaccines first came out in the winter. As a frontline health care worker, she was eligible for her shot in the first wave. She didnt hesitate. Im a scientist and a researcher. So, I know what mRNA is, and I know how vaccines work, Parchem said. I could only see an upside here because the only alternative is getting sick with COVID. Over the summer, several organizations recommended vaccination during pregnancy including the CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Now research indicates vaccines offer a lot of benefits to pregnant women, Parchem said. They not only protect the mother, but studies have shown that protections are passed onto the baby as well. SHARE YOUR STORY: Were looking to talk to health care workers about what its been like on the frontlines of COVID When Im counseling people about (the vaccine), I try to empower them and sort of flip it around and say, You have the power to protect your baby, Parchem said. In fact, youre the only one who can give this protection to your baby. Not one size fits all Not all pregnant women with COVID will have complications. Karla Escobedo, of Greenspoint, contracted COVID when she was five months pregnant. She likely became infected at a quinceanera in November before vaccines came out. I was freaking out, Escobedo said. I called my OB-GYN and she said Come in if youre feeling faint or having trouble breathing, but we really cant do anything. The 22-year-old was bedridden for about two weeks and lost her sense of smell and taste, but didnt need to be hospitalized. She was able to deliver a healthy baby on time in January. Gandhi, who works at Texas Childrens, said she has seen cases across the spectrum. Some women are asymptomatic, while others cant breathe. She cautions pregnant women to get vaccinated, because there are more risks for them. Pregnancy is a state where your immune system is suppressed, Gandhi said. So, even though shes an otherwise healthy mom doing really well with no other comorbidities, she can get very sick much more than somebody who wasnt pregnant. becca.carballo@chron.com Mayor Sylvester Turner on Thursday ordered his legal department to review the affordable housing deal at the center of bombshell accusations by his former housing director that the mayor set up a charade of a competitive process to steer money to a developer. In a statement released by his office, Turner said City Attorney Arturo Michel, who reports to the mayor, will review the allegations from top to bottom to determine whether there were any illegalities, fraud, conflicts of interests, violations of procedures, practices, and policies. Michel will make his findings public, the mayor said. My administration works extremely hard to avoid potential conflicts of interest, and I have not conducted business differently than any former mayor in the city of Houston, Turner said in the statement. Former Housing Director Tom McCasland told a City Council committee on Tuesday the mayor manufactured a competitive process to steer $15 million in Hurricane Harvey relief money to a select affordable housing developer. The move rebuffed staff recommendations to fund four other projects, for roughly the same amount of money, that would have resulted in 274 more affordable units. He said Turners administration was bankrolling a certain developer to the detriment of working families who need affordable homes. McCasland declined comment on the legal review announced Thursday. The former department head was careful in his remarks Tuesday to say he was not alleging fraud or criminal behavior, but he said the process amounted to a charade of a competitive process that was predetermined to fund the Huntington at Bay Area project. Turner fired McCasland shortly after he made the accusations. He named an interim housing director Wednesday. Turners former law partner, Barry Barnes, is a co-developer on the deal. Both McCasland and Turner have said they did not know about his participation until the Chronicle reported it Tuesday. Turner has denied wrongdoing and said he prioritized the project because it is in City Council District E, a relatively wealthy district that has not seen a city-backed affordable development in six years. One of the projects scrapped to make room for the Huntington deal was a project in District C, another wealthy district with fewer affordable units than E, that would have funded more units at a fifth of the cost to the city. Turner said the investigation by Michel, who serves at the mayors pleasure, will have no interference from me or my administration. Unless someone is questioning his integrity, then there is no problem here, Turner told the Chronicle. He is not my attorney, hes the citys attorney. David Feldman, who served as city attorney under former mayor Annise Parker, said if he was still in the role, he would turn the probe over to outside counsel or the citys inspector general, who is housed within the legal department. The position which still reports to the city attorney and up to the mayor is tasked with investigating complaints of misconduct by city employees. It was revised in 2011, while Feldman was city attorney, so the inspector general could accept referrals from the city attorney or mayor. The idea of a city attorney investigating his or her boss is a bit awkward, Feldman said. The awkwardness is evident. Thats why going to the inspector general first makes sense, said Feldman, who succeeded Michel after his first stint as city attorney under then-Mayor Bill White. Arturo will do the right thing. It was not clear Thursday whether Michel planned to engage the inspector general. We are considering all resources within the Legal Department, Michel said in a statement. We currently are in the process of reviewing documents and will continue our investigation. Bob Stein, a professor of political science at Rice University, said he thinks the internal investigation amounts to a damage control move. The mayor knows the federal and state governments are likely to scrutinize the deal, Stein said, and he may be hoping to forestall a more partisan investigation from the state. The city has sparred with the General Land Office, a state agency that has said it will review the citys relief money requests in light of the allegations. What the mayors trying to do is preempt that and say, You know what, if I did something wrong, my internal investigation will uncover it, Stein said. I wouldnt be shocked to see the investigation raise some questions, maybe identify things that can be done better It may be that the mayors looking for a slight rap on the knuckles rather than the harsh criticism. dylan.mcguinness@chron.com Houston Police Department Officer William Jeffrey, shot and killed while trying to arrest a wanted man, had a chance to retire. Relatives to the officer said Jeffrey chose instead to keep working reaching his third decade with the Houston Police Department, city officials said. Twelve of those years were spent with the Major Offenders division, chasing down the citys most dangerous criminals. During his tenure, Jeffrey executed more than 4,000 warrants and made about 2,500 arrests, police Chief Troy Finner said. Harris County Commissioners Court this week unanimously agreed on a proposal to cut the overall property tax rate for the coming year, a compromise that avoids a potential quorum break by Republicans that would have forced an even deeper cut. The rate of 58.1 cents per $100 of assessed value is 3 percent less than the current levy. This means the owner of a home valued at $300,000, with the standard 20 percent homestead exemption already factored in, could save up to $54 in the first year. However, as Harris County Appraisal District valuations continue to rise, homeowners could see slightly higher tax bills, despite the lower rate. The overall rate is the sum of the rates Commissioners Court sets for four entities: the county as a whole, the flood control district, the hospital district and the Port of Houston. Compared to the current levies, the flood control district rate will increase slightly, while the other three entities would see a rate cut. Democratic Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia last week proposed a rate of 58.6 cents per $100 of assessed value, a 2.2 percent cut from the current rate of 59.9 cents. The two Republican members wanted more significant savings for taxpayers, noting economic hardships wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey proposed a rate of 57.9 cents. County Judge Lina Hidalgo warned against cutting the tax rate, and thus revenues, too much because it will make raising more revenue in the future more difficult. That is because of a revenue cap the Legislature placed on cities and counties last year which limits year-over-year growth to 3.5 percent without voter approval. We should be negotiating on what the county needs, Hidalgo said. It does not benefit me, politically, to want to cut taxes less. I simply know were headed down a dangerous path. After hours of haggling at a hearing Tuesday afternoon, the panel agreed on the 58.1 cent rate, which Garcia offered as a compromise. The court at one point was mulling a half dozen options and ounty Administrator David Berry confessed he was struggling to keep track of who had proposed which. Commissioners Court in February approved a general fund budget of $3.3 billion. The county budget office estimates the new rates will increase the county revenue by $2.6 million and $7.4 million for the flood control district. Hospital district revenue is projected to increase by less than $4 million. The original Garcia proposal would have produced the same revenues for the county and flood control district, and boosted the hospital district revenue by $4.6 million, according to the county budget office. Court members highest priority was avoiding a larger tax cut rate that would have occurred had the two Republicans opted for what Hidalgo called the nuclear option preventing a vote by denying the body a quorum. This is where the Republicans, who regularly are steamrolled by the Democratic majority, have rare power. Texas law requires a quorum of four members for a vote setting tax rates, unlike the standard quorum of three. If Commissioners Court is unable to vote, the tax rate automatically falls to what is called the no net revenue rate, which aims to raise the same amount of money as the current fiscal year. In 2019, Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle and then-Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack broke quorum to block an attempted tax hike by the Democrats, forcing the adoption of the no net revenue rate. The Democratic members called the maneuver irresponsible and said it would hamper Harris Countys ability to provide services as its population continues to grow rapidly. They made the same argument this time around. What were dealing with is a severely underfunded county government, for decades, said Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis. I dont know if anyone every planned for us to have 5 million people in this region. Meanwhile, while Tuesdays negotiating focused on how much to cut the overall tax rate, several members of the county hospital district unsuccessfully lobbied for a tax rate increase. Harris Health CEO Dr. Esmaeil Porsa asked for a tax rate of 17.1 cents per $100 of assessed value, a 3.2 percent increase over the current rate and the maximum level allowed without voter approval. Porsa said the safety net hospital system, which serves a far higher percentage of uninsured and Medicaid patients than private hospitals, is so strained that it lacks enough beds and suffers from broken equipment. Theres no question we need more resources to make the care we provide is the very best, said Harris Health board member Dr. Arthur Bracey. There are a number of brilliant caregivers, some of whom feel they have one arm tied behind their back because of certain resource constraints. No court member expressed support for raising the hospital district tax rate this year; Ramsey noted that Harris Health has the ability to raise additional revenue through bonds. It also is not constrained by the 3.5 percent revenue cap; Commissioners Court in the future can increase the Harris Health tax rate to boost revenues up to 8 percent without seeking voter approval. Commissioners Court must formally vote on the tax rates by Oct. 15. zach.despart@chron.com A new initiative called Black Indigenous People of Color Arts Network and Fund announced an initial investment of $2 million in grants to support artists of color in nine counties of the Houston metro area, as part of a larger sum that will be distributed over the next five years. Artists and organizations serving Black, Latinos, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and other communities of color can apply for grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 until the Oct. 22 deadline. More from Olivia P. Tallet: Meet 10 Houston Latinos who are making a difference The initiative, part of the Ford Foundations Americas Cultural Treasures initiative, committed $156 million last year to support art communities among Black Indigenous People of Color, or BIPOC, facing negative economic impacts generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Locally, the Ford Foundation partnered with the Houston Endowment, the citys largest nonprofit foundation, which called art and community stakeholders of color to create the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund initiative. The area initiative will finance artists and art programs in Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller counties. The $2 million represents the first round of money, to be distributed by the end of this year, from a total of $12.4 million that the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund received to support artistic projects over the next five years. Ive been in the community for 25 years, (but) I think this is the first time in which weve had philanthropy and community leaders of color at the table with resources at the level that we have in the arts arena, said Sixto Wagan, project director for BIPOC Arts Network and Fund., or BANF, as organizers are calling it. Wagan, of Filipino descent, was previously the director for the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston and played leadership roles at DiverseWorks, a contemporary arts center in the city. Unlike in other regions where established mainstream institutions have led the efforts, the Houston Endowment decided to empower communities of color to make decisions about how to invest the funds in their own artists and organizations, Wagan said. NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here. I believe this is a model that can be implemented in other cities, he said, echoing a long-standing sentiment among local communities of color for being underserved and underfunded. Tony Diaz, leader of the writers group Nuestra Palabra and one of the members of the new networks steering committee, has been one of the most vocal artists and activists criticizing the system to distribute most of the funds that the city assigns to the arts. Most of those funds go to the largest institutions as the distribution criteria center on the size of the organizations financial operating budget. That leaves small and independent artists, such as those belonging to traditional minorities, with squalid funding opportunities, Diaz said. Art grants What: Grants for art organizations and artists belonging to communities of color. Where: Applicants should be located in the counties of Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller. Applications: A submission portal can be found at www.houstonbanf.org with applications in English and Spanish. Deadline: Oct. 22, at 5 p.m. CT. Guidance: Virtual grant information sessions will be hosted on Sep. 29 at 12 p.m. and Oct, 7 at 9:30 a.m., CT. Registration at:https://bit.ly/3AbVmVB. See More Collapse On HoustonChronicle.com: Plan to build 'first class' Latino cultural center in Houston gets enthusiastic support We have not received equitable or sustainable funding, ever, and if we continue like that, we will never flourish, Diaz said. He added that BANF represents an unprecedented opportunity to support and develop artists of color in the area. Another exciting element of this initiative, Diaz said, is that it is casting a broader net for artists and organizations beyond the governmental demarcations of the city of Houston to include nine counties, many of which have invested even less in arts diversity. Due to the pandemic, Houston lost 42,500 creative industry jobs and $1.6 billion in sales just in four months last year according to a study reported by the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Wagan said BIPOC arts organizations tend to be the most vulnerable and impacted due to historical exclusions from funding. BANF said in a statement that it plans to achieve its goal in the Houston region through grant funding, advocacy, and community-building networking that revolutionize the local funding landscape. The initiative seeks to support BIPOC art communities because we need to celebrate all of us and find ways to come together and break through all of the silos in order to make Houston live into its potential as the most diverse city in the country, Wagan said. BANF has created an accountability and advisory council and is seeking public nominations for community reviewers who will join that council in a peer review process to consider grant applications. Reviewers may include independent artists, educators, patrons, community leaders and organizers who can be nominated on the initiatives website www.houstonbanf.org. olivia.tallet@chron.com Twitter: @oliviaptallet How low can we go? Thats the question we have been asking ourselves since the U.S. Supreme Court decided earlier this month to allow our ignominious abortion vigilante law to go into effect. The law itself which violates nearly a half century of Supreme Court precedents and essentially bans abortions in Texas was bad enough, but state Rep. Briscoe Cain, one of the many sponsors, took the states ignominy even lower when he gleefully tweeted out that he now considers himself a baby-murder bounty hunter. Cue the reality TV series. Cain is referring to a basic provision of the law, known as Senate Bill 8, that essentially deputizes ordinary citizens in Texas or outside the state to sue anyone they suspect has engaged in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion. If successful in court, the vigilante er, plaintiff will be awarded at least $10,000 per illegal abortion. Presumably, that bounty will be paid by the defendant, in addition to court costs and attorneys fees. Cain, the baby-faced Deer Park Republican, arguably the most inept lawmaker in the Texas Legislature, favors cowboy hats and boots and no doubt envisions himself as a squinty-eyed Man with No Name, a young and relentless Clint Eastwood on the vigilante trail of abortion providers and staff, friends and family, Uber drivers and anyone else who might offer assistance to a woman facing one of the most serious decisions of her life. (SB 8 makes no mention of the father.) Now, Cain has company. The first abortion vigilante to step up and take action under the blatantly unconstitutional Texas law is an Arkansas man named Oscar Stilley, who describes himself as a disbarred and disgraced attorney. Stilley told the New York Times that he served a decade in prison after being convicted in federal court of tax evasion and conspiracy and is now under house arrest. According to a U.S. Justice Department press release, he hasnt paid federal taxes since 2010. Stilley said he decided to file suit after reading an op-ed in the Washington Post last Saturday by Dr. Alan Braid, a San Antonio physician who wrote that on the morning of September 6 he had provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the states new limit. I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care. Braid also mentioned that several times a month women come to his clinic because they have been raped. Some go to the police, but usually they do not, he wrote. Cains law makes no exception for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. (Of course, Gov. Greg Abbott has said that he will be eliminating all rape in Texas, so perhaps we dont need to worry about that omission.) I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care, Braid concluded. I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients. I cant just sit back and watch us return to 1972. To add to the absurdity, Stilley told the Times he wasnt interested in preventing Braid from performing abortions, since he is pro-choice. He sued, he said, for the money. Im going to get an answer either way, he said. If this is a free-for-all, and its $10,000, I want my $10,000. And yes, I do aim to collect. Another disbarred attorney, this one in Illinois, also has sued Braid. State Rep. Cain and these cynical disbarred men deserve each other, but Cains fellow Texans particularly Texas women deserve so much more. They certainly deserved a more judicious ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, as Chief Justice John Roberts argued in a rebuke of his five colleagues who voted to let the law stand based on procedure, not a judgment of its constitutionality. The State defendants argue that they cannot be restrained from enforcing their rules because they do not enforce them in the first place, Roberts wrote in his dissent. I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante before the law went into effect so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another of the four dissenters, was more pointed: The court has rewarded the states effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the courts precedents, through procedural entanglements of the states own creation. In light of the high courts dereliction, Dr. Braid in San Antonio deserves credit for at least forcing the issue no doubt at some cost to himself although given what appears to be the anti-choice views of five Supreme Court justices, its increasingly obvious that a womans constitutional right to an abortion is in danger, even if the Texas law is struck down. In a few weeks the court will hear a Mississippi case that offers them an opportunity to eviscerate most of Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives advanced a bill earlier this week that would protect the right to abortion, as well as annul several restrictions passed by Republican-controlled state governments. The so-called Womens Health Protection Act is likely to pass the House, only to die in the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans would have to join every Democrat to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass most legislation. That wont happen. A federal judge in Austin has set an October 1 hearing date to consider the Justice Departments request for an emergency order that, in effect, would nullify SB 8. If the legal challenges fail, look for the baby-murder bounty hunter to be flying to Arkansas with a symbolic over-sized Sweepstakes-style check in hand, made out to one Oscar Stilley for $10,000. Cain will have to go to Stilleys Cedarville house, of course, since the fellow doesnt get out these days. We can see both of them on the front porch, posing with the check for photographers. That, fellow Texans, is how low we can go. Regarding Editorial: Tell the truth, Mayor Turner. Why the charade over wasteful housing contract? (Sept. 22): I think Mayor Sylvester Turner should reinstate Tom McCasland. No one should be fired because they have integrity. Given the events as reported by the Chronicle, the mayor of this city needs to commit to a complete independent investigation and finding of the facts. Mike Sternesky, Houston Manchin and mountains Regarding Krugman: Dear Joe Manchin, coal isn't your states future, (Sept. 21): Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head with his insight that coal is not West Virginias future. When Donald Trump was elected, I made an offer to one of his supporters in my book group who had a background in the fossil fuel industry: You pick the denomination penny, dime, quarter, dollar and for every coal job gained in the next four years, I owe you one unit. And for every job lost, you owe me one. He wisely declined, or I would have won over $2,000 on West Virginia alone if he had gone with dollars, or a nice $20 meal if he had chosen pennies. Coal is a one-shot deal; tourism is an infinitely renewable resource (remember John Denvers lyric, Almost Heaven, West Virginia?). But if you destroy mountaintops to get at coal, you're crippling tourism as well. I understand Sen. Joe Manchins dilemma representing such a red state. But Democrats need to cynically give him whatever else he wants to avoid his blocking their climate policies and protection of voting rights. And all the infrastructure the Mountain State can hold without sinking into the ground. Walter D. Kamphoefner, Bryan I remember why I so distrust the New York Times, Paul Krugmans employer. The headline, Manchin needs to realize coal is not his states future is so off-subject and devoid of other key facts that Im surprised the Houston Chronicle would reprint it. What Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is against is the Biden administrations constant attacks on the oil and gas industry such as Bidens seemingly arbitrary attempts to shut down oil and gas permits not coal. West Virginia is and has been one of the major (seventh largest in the nation) natural gas-producing states for the single most used material in the production of electricity in the United States. Yet, nowhere in Krugmans column will you find the term natural gas, only coal coal coal. Hayden Black, Spring Spit take Regarding Thumbs: Patrick reveals GOP's real fear of migrants - 'invasion' of future Democrats, (Sept. 18): Good gosh. I will never read the editorial page again while sipping Dr. Pepper. After reading Saturdays offerings, my Dr. Pepper ended up spewed all over my paper! Thank you for keeping me amused, amazed and informed every single morning. Del Rhea Watson, Kingwood What exodus? Regarding Opinion: The 'tragic mistake' is the lack of accountability for the drone strike, (Sept. 22): I doubt you would print a letter from a reader opining about the stolen 2020 election, so why print one about the California exodus? Like The Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump, the idea of a mass California exodus has been thoroughly debunked by a July 2021 University of California study that found no evidence of an abnormal increase in residents planning to leave the state. David Kelly, Spring Chicken or the egg Regarding Opinion: The 'tragic mistake' is the lack of accountability for the drone strike, (Sept. 22): I have a question for the reader who wrote that those who make such choices have no right to complain about income inequality in response to the article about HISD hitting the streets to find thousands of students who have not returned to school: Isn't a teenager who drops out of school to work at McDonald's to help his family a victim of income inequality? Joanne Margraves, Houston Louisianas power grid Regarding Why Louisianas grid failed during Ida, (Sept. 18): Louisianas grid failed due to the destruction of 31,000 poles and high voltage transmission towers, including the eight high-voltage transmission lines that supply New Orleans. Utility regulators in Louisiana and Texas should seek federal money for grid upgrades and require power generation and transmission companies to replace poles and towers with ones that withstand at least Category 4 hurricane winds of 155 miles per hour. Hurricanes are not going away and likely to become even more frequent and powerful than they were in the past. Cory Frates, Houston WASHINGTON Two Texas Republicans have joined a House GOP effort to impeach President Joe Biden over his handling of the border, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and for extending the national eviction moratorium. Its more of a political exercise than anything, as Democrats control both the House and Senate and Republican leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have made clear Biden wont be impeached. The impeachment resolution has drawn the support of just four members of Congress so far, two of whom are Texans: U.S. Reps. Brian Babin of Woodville and Randy Weber of Friendswood both of whom criticized the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump as political stunts. RUNNING OUT OF TIME: Trump asks Abbott to push for audit of 2020 Texas election results The resolution, led by U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio, accuses Biden of breaking his oath of office and says the president has failed to secure the border, extended the moratorium on evictions despite publicly acknowledging it would not pass constitutional muster, and failed to act responsibly as Commander-in-Chief with regard to the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan. Since January 20, 2021, Joe Biden has done nothing but launch our nation into a state of retrograde and increased vulnerability while thwarting the rule of law at every turn, Babin said. He has failed miserably at his duties as Commander-in-Chief and violated his oath of office to defend the U.S. Constitution." Babin and Weber both voted against former President Donald Trumps two impeachments and both Texans accused Democrats at the time of playing politics. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox This impeachment is purely about political posturing and a catchy CNN headline its a disgrace, Babin said when Trump was impeached earlier this year for inciting the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol. Our 240-plus years of proud history and those who died to ensure America was victorious through its many trials deserve better than the mockery unfolding before us today in Congress. Impeachment is an extreme process reserved for actual crimes; using it as a political campaign publicity stunt only undermines our democracy, Weber said in 2019 when Trump was impeached for withholding congressionally approved military aide from the Ukraine as he sought to pressure the countrys newly elected president to investigate Biden for corruption. ben.wermund@chron.com When the ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote that a perfect society could only exist if it were ruled by philosopher kings, did he have someone like Matthew McConaughey in mind? McConaughey seems to think so, as the Oscar-winning actor continues to muse about a potential bid against Gov. Greg Abbott. Its just, Im more of a folksy, philosopher, poet-statesman than I am a per-se definitive politician, McConaughey said this week in an appearance on the Set it Straight: Myths and Legends podcast hosted by members of the Texas-based band Midland. So I go Well thats a reason not to, but then I go Oh, well thats exactly why you should. Because politics needs redefinition. Asked if he was considering a bid against Abbott, McConaughey who calls himself a centrist but has not disclosed his political affiliation said hes measuring it and he intends to serve in some capacity even if its in a whole new category that I just create. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox McConaughey's Hollywood career has spanned roughly 30 years. He grew famous playing a 20-something who hung out in bars and hit on high school girls, became a staple in romantic comedies across the aughts, then pivoted to serious dramas during a period he has referred to as the McConaissance, winning the Oscar for best actor in 2014. He appeared on the podcast promoting Greenlights, a book he published last year about how to find success and happiness in life. There has been a tsunami of media speculation this year about whether McConaughey would run for governor, with Politico reporting in May that hed made phone calls and was considering it. The actor added fuel to the fire on the Fourth of July when he posted a heartfelt video saying America was going through puberty and calling for unity in the country. A recent poll from the Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler found McConaughey out in front of Abbott by a few points. Former U.S. Senate candidate Beto ORourke is also reportedly strongly considering a run. But time is a flat circle as McConaughey said in 2014 because nothing has really changed since this spring. The actor has not committed one way or another. Im measuring what is my category, what is my embassy, because I have to remain a storyteller. Ive been given that gift. I love doing it, I have to remain an artist I have earned the right to enjoy that Saturday night part of life, that music part of life, McConaughey said. edward.mckinley@chron.com As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. Kosha Dillz: Why BottleRock is my favorite music festival I cant speak for other people, artists and artist managers, but this show is the best festival I had performed at in years. When I thought about how they had a 98 percent vaccination rate and set the tone for perfect health in todays crazy age alongside the enjoyment of my personal experience, I knew I had to write something down. Kosha Dillz I got to open for Guns n Roses and even play right after Big Freedia for a nighttime show. If you think that is a crazy statement for any new festival act to say, read below to see my list of everything else there is to rave about at Bottlerock. 1. The food was mouth-watering Im not gonna lie to anyone. I assure you the wine is obviously better than everywhere, but I ate a macaroni cheese at the culinary stage next to Guy Fieri while everyone was surrounding him and I was more into the mac n cheese and the miniature iron cast pan! It was that good. I also got to catch a selfie with Roy Choi and tell him about my claim of being the #1 Jewish rapper in Korea Town after seeing him in action. 2. Top-notch communication I played a festival where the most well-crafted emails were sent in my adult life (thx to Sarah at Jamcellars) and everything was where they said it was. I dont know the last time that happened but it is something that should be noted that for the newer artists. Wed love that to always be the case in all music dealings. It always elevates the artist experience to be part of a tight-knit ship. 3. Sustainability and cleanliness Bottleerock was the cleanest festival I had ever been to. I have been to many of them. I havent ever seen such good efficiency with cleanliness. My sneakers were barely even dirty after 3 days. Three was no trash anywhere. They recycled. The bottles were never in the trash area. In an ever-growing green world, BR was on it for that notch in the W section. I cant remember the time I went to a clean fest. ( I love dirty fests btw..but now I can say I really love clean ones too!) 4. Parking You can park extremely close to public parking or walking from town in 10 minutes. In other festivals, it could take a year and the parking lots could be destroyed by rain. This was quite easy for me. I didnt actually have a parking pass (until I did) and showed the parking person I was performing. Poof! The parking spot appeared. This is key in preventing festival fatigue. 5. Content Team and Press I havent seen such a great team since the days of Warped Tour. Even being one of the smallest artists there, I had just as much access to be documented efficiently. I was tweeted about by the official Bottlerock account multiple times. My photos were taken and videos were taken by photographers I just met (shout out Donny Evans.) I had just met within an hour of my show.. I was able to land myself in 5-6 press pieces as the opening act. It goes to show you they are all for building acts and not just focused on the largest of the large acts. If they were, I wouldnt even blame them. But the way I felt from that all was very moving personally and also moving of the needle as they say. 6. The Most Diverse Booking I gotta give up to Tom Hoppa for this one. Not many times in my career have I gone from rapping on stage before Guns n Roses and after Big Freediato hanging out with the Village People, schmoozing with G Eazy, jam band bonding with Turkuaz, and running over to see Run the Jewels play in the same two hours. Diversity is key. And to top it all off, Mondo Cozmo is my new favorite band and Molly Moore , Hoko, Baby Jake and Lily Meola are all crazy special shows that will get way more massive ini the upcoming year. Did I mention Avril Lavigne also made an appearance with Mod Sun for the first show of his sold-out tour right before Foo Fighters . 99 Neighbors and Warren G were a huge treat in the VIP section for me personally and Z Trip , Trackstar the DJ and DJ Logic removed all silence from a silent disco. Silent Discos are a huge asset to festivals Im not gonna lie. It is the extra weird refresher we all need. 7. The Afterparties and festival moments -The Bluenote afterparties by Jam Cellars was something special with Hush Silent Disco in thee back yard (and Black Pumas main stage was perfecttbh!) . There was also not a need to be at the After parties culture. I think that creates a greater vibe vs the thirst desire to be at a festival after-party. Thats what I liked so much about it. The VIP vibe of the entire festival finished the night off perfectly, and I got invited to play some birthday parties right off the street in a house that was literally next door to the fest. Ironically we were part of the same Schustermann philanthropy program in Jerusalem and knew each other distantly. We always love a festival moment when that happens. To leave with that small story, or leave with the story of how The Village People gave Grady Brennan (G-Eazys photo/CD) a case of Jamcellars Butter Chardonnay, is a story thatll be share forever. 8. Visibility: Id say it is top-notch. I literally just met someone at the festival and they booked me already for mid-October, which is kinda crazy. Here we are with a different gig. only one month after this one. More and more stuff keeps happening while we pitch for more. The storytelling continues. While I was at the festival, my own festival landed in the NY Post, which helped me get more opportunities at Bottlerock. 9. The Weather . Nice and hot but also not a hurricane and mud. You cant really beat the weather of Napa Valley. The only thing they are missing is a pool, but the fact that it was impossible to cancel while multiple festivals have been canceled due to rain is such a plus. Nothing beats caliifornia weather. 10. Fans and The Schmooze: The fact that you can schmooze with fans in the crowd and it is quite normal is a great vibe to it. I was able to meet many fans and people who found me with the Bottler Rock app on day 1, who learned my music and were already singing the words by the 2nd-night show. Extra Credit: Double Play: Something always happens when you miss the first set of an artist. You make that special festival connection and you can play two sets here. This is a key necessity for new artists. We get to play a festival twice that some people dont get to play once. Believe it or not; not everyone looks at the schedule and these things happen at festivals. Is there anything I missed? Do you know. a better place to play? Do tell us. Regardless, I cannot wait to. go back and be on a bigger stage with a bigger project next time. Kosha Dillz is a NYC-based artist and with a billboard charting album and a good picker. His collaboration list ranges from Kaskade to Rza and his latest album Nobody Cares Except You is produced in the majority by Sam Barsh, who landed production on Kanye Wests Hurricane and is a #1 song. When he doesnt rap, he also curates SXSW official showcases and most recently created Bald Fest, a festival for bald people and bald lovers that landed on the Emmy winning Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He can be contacted at rapperfriends at gmail dot com. Share on: Google employees are reportedly furious over the company's decision to remove a Russian voting app ahead of elections amid a legal threat from the country's government. The employees have reportedly posted internal messages and images deriding Google's removal of the app while blasting the company for capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, Google was threatened with criminal prosecution of individual employees and legal demands by Russian regulators to remove the app. The same person, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue, told the Associated Press that Russian police visited Google's Moscow offices last week to enforce a court order blocking the app. The backlash from Google employees has become more common in recent years as the company's ambitions conflict with its one-time corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil," adopted by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The motto is no longer in use and neither Page nor Brin is currently involved in Google's day-to-day management. Notably, Brin's family fled the former Soviet Union to the U.S. when he was a boy. Newsweek Newsletter sign-up > For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below. Google Logo Google employees have reportedly harshly criticized the company for its decision to remove a Russian voting app amid a legal threat. Above, a Google corporate logo stands at the Google Germany offices on Aug. 31, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Big Tech companies that operate around the globe have long promised to obey local laws and to protect civil rights while doing business. But when Apple and Google capitulated to Russian demands and removed a political-opposition app from their local app stores, it raised worries that two of the world's most successful companies are more comfortable bowing to undemocratic edicts and maintaining a steady flow of profits than upholding the rights of their users. The app in question, called Smart Voting, was a tool for organizing opposition to Putin ahead of elections held over the weekend. The ban levied last week by a pair of the world's richest and most powerful companies galled supporters of free elections and free expression. Newsweek subscription offers > "This is bad news for democracy and dissent all over the world," said Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel for Access Now, an internet freedom group. "We expect to see other dictators copying Russia's tactics." Technology companies offering consumer services from search to social media to apps have long walked a tightrope in many of the less democratic nations of the world. As Apple, Google and other major companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook have grown more powerful over the past decade, so have government ambitions to harness that power for their own ends. "Now this is the poster child for political oppression," said Sascha Meinrath, a Penn State University professor who studies online censorship issues. Google and Apple "have bolstered the probability of this happening again." Neither Apple nor Google responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press when the news of the app's removal broke last week; both remained silent this week as well. Google also denied access to two documents on its online service Google Docs that listed candidates endorsed by Smart Voting, and YouTube blocked similar videos. Apple, meanwhile, lays out a lofty "Commitment To Human Rights" on its website, although a close read of that statement suggests that when legal government orders and human rights are at odds, the company will obey the government. "Where national law and international human rights standards differ, we follow the higher standard," it reads. "Where they are in conflict, we respect national law while seeking to respect the principles of internationally recognized human rights." A recent report from the Washington nonprofit Freedom House found that global internet freedom declined for the fifth consecutive year and is under "unprecedented strain" as more nations arrested internet users for "nonviolent political, social, or religious speech" than ever before. Officials suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms, according to the report. Big Tech companies have generally agreed to abide by country-specific rules for content takedowns and other issues in order to operate in these countries. That can range from blocking posts about Holocaust denial in Germany and elsewhere in Europe where they're illegal to outright censorship of opposition parties, as in Russia. The app's expulsion was widely denounced by opposition politicians. Leonid Volkov, a top strategist to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wrote on Facebook that the companies "bent to the Kremlin's blackmail." Navalny's ally Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter that the politician's team is considering suing the two companies. He also mocked the move: "Expectations: the government turns off the internet. Reality: the internet, in fear, turns itself off." It's possible that the blowback could prompt either or both companies to reconsider their commitment to operating in Russia. Google made a similar decision in 2010 when it pulled its search engine out of mainland China after the Communist government there began censoring search results and videos on YouTube. Russia isn't a major market for either Apple, whose annual revenue this year is expected to approach $370 billion, nor Google's corporate parent, Alphabet, whose revenue is projected to hit $250 billion this year. But profits are profits. "If you want to take a principled stand on human rights and freedom of expression, then there are some hard choices you have to make on when you should leave the market," said Kurt Opsahl, general counsel for the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Source: https://www.newsweek.com/google-employees-reportedly-furious-company-removed-russian-voting-app-amid-legal-threat-1631635 Two reasons. Two beautiful, glorious, wondrous, and amazing reasons to give thanks this Thanksgiving and every day of the year. Thanksgiving approaches, and we all have gratitude on our mind. Some take this month to share on social media what they are thankful for each day. When we take the time to stop and consider, the list of blessings and graces God gives us is unending. We'll spend eternity praising and thanking our Savior for all He has done. In our churches, we have favorite songs and hymns we sing to give God our praise and thanksgiving. Some are more famous than others. Those songs are ones that if we were gathered with a group of Christians from different churches and someone started singing a a well-loved praise song, everyone would chime in together. Think 10,000 Reasons. In the Old Testament, one common refrain sung over and over that everyone knew was, "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever." This song is found multiple times in the Psalms. It is sung in Chronicles. The returning exiles sang a similar version of it in Ezra. As we make our thanksgiving lists this year, as we go around the dinner table spread with turkey, dressing (or stuffing, if you must), cranberry sauce, Aunt Susie's carrot souffle, and the requisite pumpkin pie, sharing with one another what we are thankful for, let us remember this song. It reminds us that there are two reasons we have to give thanks, no matter the time of year, no matter whether the harvest is plenty or meager, and no matter how hard and painful our trials: God is good and His steadfast love endures forever. God is Good In language arts (thanks to my years of homeschooling the kids!), a predicate adjective is an adjective that follows a linking verb and renames the subject of the sentence. This is what happens when we say, "God is good." 'Good' renames God. It's like saying God and good are the same thing. In essence God equals goodness. Thanking God for His goodness is a reference to His character. We know from reading Scripture that goodness isn't His only trait but it is one that is highlighted throughout the Bible. Everything God made was good (Genesis 1). Jesus told the rich young ruler, "Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No one is goodexcept God alone" (Mark 10:18). God works all things together for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). The psalmist clung to God's goodness in the midst of his trials and suffering, "For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you" (Psalm 86:5). Everything God does is good. He can't not do good. He works for our good. He does good through in us and through us. His goodness is something we can experience and know and feel, "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!" (Psalm 34:8). And when we dwell on that goodness, our only response is thanksgiving and praise. His Steadfast Love Endures Forever The second reason we have to give thanks at all times and in all places and no matter what else is happening is because God's steadfast love endures forever. It's hard to understand steadfast love. The love we often experience from humans is fickle. It is conditional. It comes and goes like the wind. God's love is so pure and perfect it's incomprehensible. But we see it time and time again in Scripture. God sets His love on His people and never lets go. "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). "And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD" (Hosea 2:19-20). We are wayward but He pursues us. We wander and He always finds us. We are weak and fail Him but He never fails us. In fact, there is nothing we can do to make Him love us less. There is nothing and no one in all creation that can keep Him from loving us, "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). His love is expressed most deeply in the sacrifice of His Son for our sins. "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16). His love for us began in eternity past and extends into eternity future (Ephesians 1:4-5). It will last longer than the earth and outshine the sun. It can not and will not end. Two reasons. Two beautiful, glorious, wondrous, and amazing reasons to give thanks this Thanksgiving and every day of the year. God is good and His steadfast love endures forever. Photo credit: Unsplash/Element5 Williamstown Diversity Committee Reviews Its Guiding Principles WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The town's diversity committee Monday reviewed the operating principles it adopted last year and discussed whether some of them ought to be modified. Monday marked the second meeting in four days for the newly constituted Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Advisory Committee, which held a Friday afternoon "retreat" last week. It was the first meeting in the committee's normal Monday evening time slot since the Select Board made three appointments to bring the panel to a full membership of seven. Only three DIRE Committee members remain from the nine who inaugurated the body in summer 2020 and adopted a set of eight guiding principles on Sept. 28, 2020. One of the new appointees, Carrie Greene, led off the review of those principles by asking about the turn of phrase in the first principle, which says the committee's process must be "inclusive and equitable." Greene suggested that those ideas might contain an inherent contradiction. If "equity" means emphasizing the voices of the traditionally marginalized, as DIRE Committee members and the principles document have consistently emphasized, can the conversation be fully inclusive, Greene asked. "Including or foregrounding voices that have not historically been hard or felt safe coming forward, if others feel that they're pushed out in that, if they don't feel included, is DIRE doing the job it's intending to do?" Greene asked. "I do know there are folks in town who feel excluded from the conversation, and maybe that's part of the reality or part of what happens when you foreground historically marginalized voices. "I'm asking what do we say when we talk about inclusivity, and yet there are those who feel they've been intentionally or unintentionally excluded." Andrew Art, one of the three original DIRE Committee members still serving on the group, said he agreed that the panel has not always heard a diverse range of voices, but he said that is not for lack of trying. Art noted that he personally has made appeals for more diverse opinions during the DIRE meetings most of which are telecast on the town's community access television station. "The people who have participated in our meetings have, perhaps, been a group who wanted to focus on a variety of topics important to them," Art said. "It's not that we've been excluding others from participating at all, ever. "The following principles, when we get there, describe what we've centered on as our committee's priorities in terms of making recommendations. But as far as having open forums, we have not excluded anyone from participating ever." Another longtime member of the DIRE Committee, Jeffrey Johnson, said since the panel was formed, he has been "begging" more people to attend its meetings an participate. "It's shocking the people who reach out to me [outside of meetings]," Johnson said. "As far as how I look at the language [in the principles], I'm adamant that we've never tried to have anyone feel uncomfortable speaking here. "There are four 'townies' on this committee now, although we're all townies. This is the start of trying to bring out more voices. I say this all the time: We're more alike than not." At the start of Monday's meeting, Greene pointed out that four of the DIRE Committee members grew up in Williamstown, including herself, Johnson, Art and Andi Bryant, who identified herself as a fourth-generation resident of the town. Shana Dixon, who has lived in town for three years and Berkshire County for 13, said she found the language in the first committee principle to be "very welcoming." "It doesn't have negative undertones," Dixon said. "Just to read it, I feel included." Dixon raised a different issue on the committee's second principle, which notes that the DIRE Committee's work is intersectional, recognizing that "addressing racial equity also means addressing issues of gender, sexual, class, and other forms of marginalization, and vice versa." "My opinion is [the issues] can all be separate as well," Dixon said. "Just because you have a racial issue, it doesn't mean it is about gender. I'd like the phrasing changed so it isn't about everything at once. It can be, but also, does it have to be?" Greene also pointed out that the word "intersectional" is academic and not necessarily accessible to all readers, leading to a conversation about creating a glossary of terms. Art said the document, which is posted on the town's website , could include hyperlinks to pages that explain some of the terms used. Johnson suggested using footnotes. Later in the meeting, Art said he always had an issue with the eighth principle in the founding document, which states, in part, "We urge everyone to think about the difference between fears that are based on statistical, historical, and well-documented histories and current news of injustice, and fears that are based on worries about lost social standing, embarrassment and shame, or other emotional discomforts. We would like to avoid the latter, simultaneously recognizing that as a matter of ethics, mission, and practicality we must prioritize the former." Art said he did not think it was the committee's place to guess at residents' motivations or assess the legitimacy of their fears. "People feel fearful based on their own experiences and narrative of what's happening in their world," he said. "It's really a personal thing. I don't feel it's possible always to distinguish between the source of someone's fear. If someone is feeling fear, it's true to them. "My own personal view is this goes a little too far for our committee's assessment of what the basis of someone's fear is." Kerri Nicoll, the third "original" member of the committee, defended the idea behind the principle. "There is a part of me that thinks it's important to recognize that this work makes people uncomfortable," Nicoll said. "I'm not sure we need to recognize that in the principles. I think there's value in saying that the things we'll talk about may make people uncomfortable, may make us uncomfortable, and we want to have those conversations through the discomfort, if that makes sense." As the discussion about the founding principles stretched to about 90 minutes of a planned two-hour meeting, Nicoll suggested that a working group of the committee convene before the next meeting to distill Monday's conversation into some suggested revisions that the full committee can consider at its next meeting. Art and Bryant volunteered to work with Nicoll on that project. In other business on Monday, Nicoll, Greene and Randall Fippinger volunteered to form a working group to create a job description for the committee's chair. Mohammed Memfis served that role in the committee's first year, but the 2021 Williams College graduate was one of the six members who did not continue into the panel's second year. Nicoll has been organizing meetings for the group since June. Medical Matters Weekly Welcomes American Nurses Credentialing Center Executive BENNINGTON, Vt. Southwestern Vermont Health Care's (SVHC) Medical Matters Weekly with Dr. Trey Dobsona weekly interactive, multiplatform medical-themed talk showwill feature Rebecca Graystone, MS, MBA, RN, NE-BC, the vice president of the Magnet Recognition and Pathway to Excellence Programs, on its Sept. 29 program. The show will air at 1 p.m. The American Nurses Credentialing Center's (ANCC) Magnet program is an internationally renowned credentialing program that recognizes health care organizations that promote nursing excellence and quality patient outcomes while providing safe, positive work environments. Graystone will share what makes Magnet hospitals different from conventional ones. The show is produced with cooperation from Catamount Access Television (CAT-TV). Viewers can see Medical Matters Weekly on Facebook at facebook.com/svmedicalcenter and facebook.com/CATTVBennington . The show is also available to view or download a podcast on www.svhealthcare.org/medicalmatters After the program, the video will be available on area public access television stations. On CAT-TV, viewers will find the show on channel 1075 at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 1:30 p.m. Monday, 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 a.m. Friday, and 7 p.m. Saturday. GNAT-TV's Comcast channel 1074 airs the program at 8 a.m. Monday, 9 p.m. Wednesday, and 1 p.m. Saturday. Graystone has more than 26 years of acute care nursing practice and leadership experience and has been with ANCC since 2012. During her tenure, she has managed the day-to-day operations of the Magnet Recognition Program and provided content expertise and analysis to applicants, commissioners, appraisers, Magnet organizations, Magnet Program, and ANCC office staff. She has also presented extensively on Magnet and nursing excellence topics and teaches numerous program-guidance courses. Under her direction, the 2018 ANCC National Magnet Conference became the largest attended nursing conference in the U.S. Graystone is a baccalaureate-prepared nurse and received a master's in Health Care Administration and master's in business administration from the University of Maryland, University College. She has a certificate in Health Care Management from Georgetown University and is board certified as a nurse executive. She is currently a PhD student with a concentration in Health Sciences and Health Care Administration. Upcoming guests include: 12 p.m. Wednesday, October 6: Kimberley Sampson, MD, of SVMC OB/GYN will provide information about obesity medicine, obstetrics, and gynecology. 12 p.m. Wednesday, October 18: Vanessa Britto, MD, the associate vice president for Campus Life and executive director of Health and Wellness at Brown University in Rhode Island, will discuss the university's pioneering role in mandating vaccines. To contribute questions in advance of each week's show, please e-mail wellness@svhealthcare.org or post to Facebook with #SVHCMedicalMattersWeekly. Ask about our new Total Equity Program with NO closing costs! Turn your house into a dream home. Name: J.R. Cunningham Organisation: Nuspire Job title: Chief Security Officer Date started current role: February 2021 Location: Michigan An accomplished leader, innovator and premier thinker in cyber security and risk management with a proven track record of success, J.R. Cunningham has performed executive consulting, architecture, and assessment work across the globe and in a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, education, intelligence community, retail, and government. Prior to joining Nuspire, Cunningham built and led industry respected executive consulting practices for Optiv & Herjavec Group. Cunningham is known throughout the industry as an evangelist of practical and business aligned security techniques. Prior to his work in security and risk, Cunningham directed technology operations at MarketWatch.com, one of the worlds most visited web sites. What was your first job? In middle school between 6th and 7th grade I worked for a man who sanded and refinished hardwood floors in old houses. My job was to wrap a toothbrush in sandpaper and sand the corners and edges of the floors where the sanding machines couldnt reach. It was hard work. How did you get involved in cybersecurity? Somewhat by accident, there really wasnt a cybersecurity industry or profession when I got started in Information Technology. One day a shipment of networking equipment came into the company I was working for and there was a device called a Firewall. I volunteered to learn about it and enjoyed it. About that time there was the emergence of viruses, and later what we called worms, and I just kept learning about these things and how to defend against them. Later we started to see regulations standards like FISMA and PCI come about, and I think the combination of technology & these standards were really the true beginning of what we call the cybersecurity industry today. What was your education? Do you hold any certifications? What are they? I do not have a college degree and over the years I have chosen to not pursue cyber certifications and deliberately so. When I started in IT/Cybersecurity, there really wasnt a curriculum for the profession. The only degree program was Computer Science. As a result, most of the original cybersecurity practitioners had to learn the trade as it developed. Today our profession has a multitude of specialities, each of which has its own set of certifications and educational curriculum. One of my greatest frustrations in our profession is how many people hold certifications and yet dont really know how to do the job. Many of our professional certifications are an exercise in memorisation, and unlike the legal or medical professions, weve never really developed a professional standards or accreditation body to determine if someone is credible in our industry. Its a big problem. Explain your career path. Did you take any detours? If so, discuss. While Ive been focused on cybersecurity my entire career, Ive had a variety of roles within our profession. I once was asked to lead a sales team, which I had never done before. That was quite a challenge, but it gave me great respect for what salespeople have to do to succeed. Ive had roles in security architecture, penetration testing, privacy, consulting, and a few others. Ive had the good fortune of being one of the few security leaders who has broken into a bank, led a sales team, been awarded a patent for a technology, led a consulting team, and been a Chief Security Officer. Part of what makes our industry so fascinating is that new challenges emerge regularly and sometimes the first person to step forward gets the chance to become knowledgeable in that area. I guess Ive always raised my hand when new challenges emerged and I believe it made me a better and more holistic practitioner. My first role as a CISO was a virtual CISO for a client that I had worked with for a while and needed a security leader. They asked if I would step into the role temporarily while they searched for a CISO. I had that role for three years, and it was really the first time I had interacted with boards, insurance companies, lawyers, and non-security business executives. I had to learn, quickly, how to talk about security with people who knew little or nothing about our profession. I learned to not use acronyms, explain why I was doing what I was doing, and also to report back on how successfully I delivered on what I promised I would deliver. Very few careers could present the opportunities to be a Swiss Army Knife like cybersecurity. Was there anyone who has inspired or mentored you in your career? I think anybody thats been in the profession for decades have a very long list of people who have helped or inspired us along our journey. Ive been very fortunate to have been around many very wise, smart, kind, and generous people who have given something to me thats helped me in my career. I sure hope I do the same for others during their journey. What do you feel is the most important aspect of your job? Its really an interesting multi-faceted profession. Its an engineering discipline that requires a focus on peopleI love that combination. What metrics or KPIs do you use to measure security effectiveness? This a complex topic that our entire industry struggles with. At the end of the day, the most important thing to me if Im measuring something is that I can impact with a decision. I avoid measuring things I cannot control or that are not actionable. We have a lot of noise in our industry and measuring things that are uncontrollable contribute to the noise. For example, many companies measure how many critical vulnerabilities they have at a given point in time. But if on Monday I have zero and on Tuesday I have a thousand, does that mean Im doing a bad job or does that mean the bad guys were busy on Monday night? Instead, Id rather measure how many critical vulnerabilities I have that are over 7 days old, because now I can affect the outcome. If Im not patching within my window, is it because I dont have enough resources? Is my policy too restrictive? I can make decisions to impact that situation. I measure what I can control. Is the security skills shortage affecting your organisation? What roles or skills are you finding the most difficult to fill? The talent shortage is very real and it impacts everything we do. Consulting engagements have longer lead times, deployments of technology take longer, and talent is far more expensive than ever before. The entire calculus of what a CSO should do internally versus source to a partner has changed as a result. I think were all learning how to be honest with ourselves regarding what we can do internally and where we need outside help. Cybersecurity is constantly changing how do you keep learning? This is the core of our professionits not a job, its a vocation. Anybody who wants a static, monotonous, non-changing work environment should avoid cybersecurity. This profession requires a lifelong commitment to learning and adaptation. Theres no room for curmudgeons in our profession, the moment you fold your arms and stop learning, your effectiveness in our profession comes to an end. For me engaging directly with our clients in the field is my number one way of keeping the edge. Understanding what their problems are, what their struggles are, whats top of mind for them becomes what I try to learn the most about. I avoid, to the extent that I can, the product company narratives on problem statements, and prefer independent writers, security trade publications, and direct client feedback. My peers are also a great resource, and many great learnings come from asking my industry peers what their perspective is on a particular topic. Im always humbled by how much institutional knowledge our industry has and how willing we are to share. What conferences are on your must-attend list? I enjoy the Gartner Security & Risk Management conference, RSA, BlackHat, and DefCon. Each have their own value, but my favorite part of them is being with my industry peers I really miss the in-person conferences and found them to be much more valuable than the virtual ones. What is the best current trend in cybersecurity? The worst? I think the best trend is that we are better at collaborating and sharing information amongst ourselves than we ever have been. Weve learned that the competition is really not the other company down the street, but advanced criminal enterprises and we need to help each other out. Thats been a fantastic evolution of our profession. The worst is that we have a lot of people in our industry that are attracted to the paycheck but really dont have a passion for cybersecurity. We have a poser problem in our industry and companies suffer when they hire cybersecurity people who really arent passionate or knowledgeable. I wrote an article on LinkedIn regarding this issue. What's the best career advice you ever received? It came from my grandmother, who would say, Dont just stand there, do something! She had no tolerance for standing around or being lazy. Whenever I find myself being simply an observer, I can hear her in the back of my mind saying, do something. I always err on the side of action, and if I act and make a mistake, Ill take another action to correct it. The same is true for decision making; I dont suffer from analysis paralysis or indecisiveness. If I make a decision and its wrong, Ill just make another decision to correct for that mistake. Progress requires action. What advice would you give to aspiring security leaders? It is an extremely rewarding career if you give it your best. Dont get overwhelmed by the complexity of itits ok to not have all the answers. Assume the best in your peers and treat it like a journey rather than something to conquer, because it truly is a dynamic profession and the day-to-day is the reward versus trying to score a win. What has been your greatest career achievement? To quote a scouting analogy, Ive left every campsite better than I found it. Ive consulted with hundreds of companies over the decades, mentored dozens of cybersecurity professionals, and made some fantastic lifelong friends. I think my legacy is that I gave my best to all of those relationships and left something of myself with every interaction. Ive not always had perfect results and have certainly made my share of mistakes, but Im proud of the fact that I have always given it my everything in whatever I did. Looking back with 20:20 hindsight, what would you have done differently? Early in my career I was very arrogant and had this belief that I had to be the smartest person in the room. In hindsight if I would have started my career with a good dose of humility, kindness, and compassion I would have been much more effective much earlier in my career. I stomped on some people earlier in my career that didnt deserve it and I certainly would undo that if I could. When the pandemic hit, people from all walks of life were forced to live a new normal with a set of new restrictions and limitations. One of the many changes was the transition of the education system from face-to-face classes to blended learning, which proved challenging in the Philippines. For educators in Catbalogan City, they had to respond quickly to ensure that their students learning remains unhampered. Transition to modular learning DepEd has announced that it will continue to implement a distance learning approach for the new school year, which means that teachers and students who are geographically remote from one another will resume interactions outside of the traditional face-to-face setup. As technology and internet connectivity remain a problem for most students, DepEd will be providing printed module materials which contain different activities, discussion points, and performance tasks which the students need to accomplish on their own. To be able to cater to diverse learners, all schools in the city of Catbalogan implemented a combination of modular, TV, and radio learning to make education more accessible. Cecilia Arga, Learning Resource Manager of DepEd Catbalogan City Division and Maximiano Casino, School Head of Silanga Elementary School under SPO Catbalogan City, shared their experience with overcoming the challenges to new modes of learning. For them, the transition was difficult due to the publics lack of knowledge on the mode of learning to be implemented and the availability of learning resources. To help address this, the city government, together with the local DepEd division, conducted a series of trainings and provided the tools needed to produce printed modules. We started from proper orientation of the teachers, the school heads, the parents, and even the local stakeholders. It was through proper advocacy of the learning delivery modality that the schools will be implementing, and of course, it was also all about educating the parents and most especially the learners. Then we went to the preparation of the learning resources needed by the students, thats where we focused on next, said Arga. Mass producing high-quality learning modules Anticipating the needs of students under distance learning, DepEd Catbalogan City Division and Silanga Elementary School chose to use Epsons WorkForce Pro WF-C869R & WF-C878R multifunction printers for their supplement materials. According to Arga and Casino, implementing modular learning means relying heavily on printers to mass produce learning materials and make them available for students on time. The school estimates that it prints 3,000 sets of materials per day, which include not only activity sheets and educational modules, but also the provision of various assessment and intervention materials used to gather insights from parents and students. We print intervention materials so that well be able to bridge learning gaps especially for learners who are struggling with the current setup. Face-to-face classes already had its own set of issues, what more with blended learning where we do not see our students daily? Casino explained. Arga shared that the WorkForce Pro WF-C869R & WF-C878R multifunction printers produced good quality printouts, especially in color, which is crucial for learning materials intended for younger students. Moreover, Arga attests to the printers user-friendly features, and shares how tasks such as changing ink packs, diagnosis, and basic troubleshooting can be done without the help of a technician. When schools print in large quantities, we expect that they might encounter printer issues. Most of the teachers do the troubleshooting themselves. Even without going to the suppliers, most of them can do it, she elaborated. Aside from its ease of use, Epsons business inkjet printers offer high quality scanning and photocopying, which is why educators like Arga and Casino consider these printers as indispensable partners not only for the current situation, but even beyond the pandemic. Good for both schools and the environment As a leader in printing technologies, Epson has developed its business inkjet printers to be one of the markets most reliable printers that bring benefits to both customers and the environment. Epsons Heat-Free Technology ensures that its business inkjet printers use no heat in the ink ejection process, which means less power consumption and more savings on electricity costs. With this original technology, no heat is required for printer warm up, allowing customers to save time with consistent high-speed printing. To help customers naturally reduce their environmental impact, Epsons business inkjet printers also use fewer parts and consumables that require replacement which minimises user intervention, increases productivity, and reduces e-waste. Visit this link to know more about Epsons business inkjet printers. Austin isn't the only startup ecosystem in Texas. Dallas and the neighboring Fort Worth loom large in the state, with massive companies including AT&T, ExxonMobil, and Southwest Airlines calling the area home. But emerging companies have found hospitable grounds there too, as this year's slate of the fastest-growing private companies in America shows. From varied industries including health care, real estate, and software, here is a closer look at the 10 fastest-growing private companies in Dallas: 7. United Real Estate Group 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 1055 | Three-year growth 459% With such in-demand housing stock in the area, United Real Estate Group is almost preordained to succeed. The company's technology platform offers virtual agent and brokerage technology services, with over 1.8 million listings and 30,000 leads per year. But its scope has extended far beyond the DFW. Today, with around 167 employees, the nearly 100-year-old company supports more than 600 offices and 15,000 real estate and auction professionals across four continents. 6. O9 Solutions 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 728 | Three-year growth 674% O9 Solutions is a cloud-based supply-chain management software maker that's attempting to tackle the ever-thorny logistical nightmare of chip shortages and general product scarcity set off by the pandemic. The company was founded in 2009 by veteran tech entrepreneur Sanjiv Sidhu, who had previously founded i2 Technologies, a supply-chain management software maker, which was acquired in 2008. With Sidhu and longtime business associate Chakri Gottemukkala at the helm, O9 works with prominent clients including Walmart, Starbucks, Estee Lauder, Nestle, Anheuser-Busch, Kraft Heinz, Samsung, Google, General Electric, and ExxonMobil. The company also got a boost last year from a $100 million minority investment from private equity firm KKR, which pushed O9's valuation to more than $1 billion. 5. AM RE Syndicate 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 655 | Three-year growth 741% AM RE Syndicate, a leading specialty program reinsurance provider, was founded in 2012 by husband and wife team Shevawn and Simon Barder. Through utilizing in-house analytics, proprietary software, and 20-plus years of experience in the industry, the company credits its most recent growth spurt to providing clients with risk-assessment opportunities during a skyrocketing housing market. 4. Eyeful Media 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 542 | Three-year growth 883% Eyeful Media is a digital strategy and marketing agency founded in 2017 out of Antonella Pisani's consulting relationship with her first client. Eyeful has more than 20 employees and serves midsize clients in industries such as luxury fashion, enterprise software, and private equity. 3. Zeal IT Consultants 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 483 | Three-year growth 1,003% Zeal is a boutique software development consultancy that builds custom software for clients. The company was founded by David Thach in 2012 out of the profits he generated from several of the 7-Eleven convenience store franchises he owns in the Irving, Texas area. The company now has 27 employees. 2. Shiftsmart 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 280 | Three-year growth 1,649% Shiftsmart is an online marketplace that helps companies facing increasingly complex staffing requirements. Aakash Kumar founded Shiftsmart in 2015 to execute his vision of empowering today's rapidly expanding labor force to maximize their employment opportunities. The company, which has 45 employees, focuses on offering flexibility for shift workers and gig workers. 1. Arise Recovery Centers 2021 Inc. 5000 rank No. 264 | Three-year growth 1,759% Founded in 2017, Arise Recovery Centers provides outpatient treatment to adults struggling with substance abuse and mental health challenges. The company has four facilities in the Dallas Fort Worth area, three facilities in Houston, and one facility on the Texas Christian University campus. Co-founder Danny Andino overcame his own addiction battle back in 2011 and later started the company with now president Lee Wolford in 2017. "We are laser-focused on outpatient care, which is lower cost and allows clients to continue their job and family life while in treatment," says Wolford, who adds that investments in new facilities, recruitment tactics, and training of clinicians have helped the company scale. EXPLORE MORE Inc. 5000 COMPANIES United Airlines has an impressive 97 percent vaccinated workforce, but six employees who sought accommodations are suing, saying the offered accommodations are essentially a termination. United Airlines' accommodation for people who turned down vaccinations for religious or medical reasons is an unpaid leave of absence. That, in the employees' minds, is termination by another name. United says they are looking for a solution for employees who don't work on flights, but those who go up in the air must stay on leave until the pandemic "meaningfully recedes." Is an unpaid leave of absence a reasonable accommodation? Of course, the lawsuit has just been filed, so we don't know the outcome, and attorneys disagree. Employment attorney Jon Hyman, a partner at Wickens Herzer Panza, takes United's side. He writes: I'd tend to agree with United's opinion about this lawsuit. The law appears to be on its side. 1. The law grants employees the right to a reasonable accommodation, not the employee's preferred accommodation. 2. Per the EEOC and courts, an unpaid leave of absence is a reasonable accommodation. However, employment attorney David Miklas disagrees. While he supports an unpaid leave as a last accommodation, he points out that employees are not likely to see such leave as an accommodation. I take Miklas's side here. If this goes before a jury, it will be challenging to explain how this is an accommodation at all--especially when United had planes flying before vaccine availability. Pushing back on religious accommodations. Federal law requires that you accommodate someone's sincere religious belief as long as it doesn't cause an undue hardship on the company. The key, though, is how to determine what is and what is not a sincere belief. A recent case involving a student at Williamson College of the Trades in Pennsylvania showed what can happen when you push back. While this is an education case, the same principles apply to your business. In this case, the plaintiff argued that receiving the vaccine violated his Catholic faith due to being created with fetal cells. The school countered that the vaccine does not use fetal cells, and the Catholic Church officially said the vaccine is morally permissible. That should be enough, but the school pulled out the trump card: the plaintiff received other vaccines created with aborted fetal cell lines. While I'm not a fan of questioning people's religious sincerity, this is something that you can do. Please consult with your local employment attorney before taking any adverse action against an employee claiming a religious exemption. What you can do to prepare. While reasonable accommodations for both ADA and religion can vary from business to business and job to job, you need to start thinking now about how you'll approach accommodations. Will you be like Williamson College of the Trades and push back to verify a sincere belief? Or will you take the employees' word for it? For ADA accommodations, have your paperwork ready. In this case, the doctor gets to decide if an employee can be vaccinated. If the doctor says the employee cannot be, then the interactive process begins. Do you have jobs that can be done at home or separated from others? Do you believe that masking and social distancing can be enough? Do you want to mandate vaccines, or (if you fall under Biden's mandate) do you want to allow people to test? If you have fewer than 100 employees and are not a government contractor, you don't have to require testing or vaccines (unless your state requires it). Robert Fyfe, the actor who played Howard in the sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, has died at the age of 90, just a few weeks after his wife also passed away. The Scottish actor, who came from Kirkcaldy, Fife, was known for portraying the shy and downtrodden husband of Pearl Sibshaw on screen from 1985 until the beloved BBC shows cancellation in 2010. His character was also known to viewers for his affair with Marina, played by Jean Fergusson, and his often failed attempts at hiding the relationship from his wife. Mr Fyfes death was confirmed to the PA news agency by the talent agency Curtis Brown on Wednesday night. His wife Diana died a few weeks before him, leaving sons Timothy, Nicholas and Dominic. The 90-year-olds manager Maxine Hoffman told the BBC that he was the most delightful client anyone could wish for, adding that he was a truly talented and versatile actor and much loved by everyone he worked with. Morris Bright, chairman of Elstree Studios, where episodes of Last of the Summer Wine were filmed, paid tribute to the actor by describing him as the loveliest of people. Sad to hear Robert Fyfe has passed aged 90. The loveliest of people, we shared some very happy times on location for Last of the Summer Wine back in the late 1990s, Mr Bright wrote on Twitter. Mr Fyfe's first role in television came in 1962 in Dr Finlay's Casebook and he appeared later in his career in Coronation Street and in the film Cloud Atlas. Juliette Kaplan, who played Pearl Sibshaw in the show, died in October 2019 from cancer while Ms Fergusson, who played Marina, died in November that year. Additional reporting by PA Evergrande stocks soared to its highest percentage rise ever on the Hong Kongstock exchange after the embattled Chinese developer said it struck an agreement with domestic bond holders. The jump in stock prices on Thursday came after indebted real estate giant issued a statement a day before stating that it would pay off interest payments on its Shenzhen-traded 5.8 per cent September 2025 bond on time on Thursday before it defaults. The amount due for the domestic bond is estimated to be $35.9m (26.3m). By the end of Thursdays trading session, Evergrande was up by 17 per cent at 2.67 Hong Kong dollars, its biggest single-day percentage rise since its listing in 2009. However, in the last one year since its debt woes intensified, the companys stock value has decreased by more than 80 per cent from its peak value of 20 Hong Kong dollars in July 2020. The HKEX was closed on Wednesday on account of a national holiday, so the effect of the statement was seen on Thursday. The statement on Wednesday, however, did not reveal any details on how and when the domestic bond interest will be paid. The statement said the payment issue has already been resolved through private negotiations. The same day, Evergrande Groups chairman Hui Ka Yan also assured the company will make it a top priority to help retail investors redeem their investment products sold by the indebted property giant, Reuters news agency reported. The domestic bond payment, as expected, came as a major relief to investors since the anticipation of Evergrande defaulting on its due interest wreaked havoc across Asian and global markets, with all major indices trading under pressure in the beginning of the week. However, the troubles of the worlds most indebted developer continue to persist, as it is due to make payments for two more offshore bonds this month. The cash strapped real estate giant has to make an $83.5 million in dollar-bond interest payments due on Thursday on a $2 billion offshore bond and more payments are coming due next week, with a $47.5 million dollar-bond interest payment due. The vague wording of the onshore bond and no mention of the offshore USD bond, whose interest payment is also due this Thursday, indicate that the company is still very cash strapped, Robin Yu, Investment Researcher for Hong Kong based RisCura told The Independent. Under agreements with investors, both bonds have a 30 day grace period after which they would default if Evergrande fails to settle the interest payments. The potential collapse of Evergrande has kept investors on tenterhooks as the fall of Chinas second biggest real estate company would have a domino effect on the Chinese economy and world markets at large. The company has a debt of $300bn (217bn) after China tightened its norms to cool down a hot property market, including introducing rent caps in big cities last year, that it has so far been unable to pay off. There is no short-term solution; they will very likely face a Chapter 11 type (where the company can continue to operate while negotiations with lenders happen to determine who gets what, which parts can be sold off, etc) of restructuring, Mr Yu says. Indias drive to vaccinate a world record 25 million people in 24 hours on prime minister Narendra Modis birthday last week is being scrutinised amid reports of data irregularities and apparently fake certificates being issued. In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, which is governed by Mr Modis Bharatiya Janata Party, several cases were reported by local media where people were sent Covid vaccine certificates on 17 September for jabs they never received. One extreme case saw Ashutosh Sharma, a resident of Aagar-Malwa district, receive a message on his phone stating that his mother had successfully received her second Covid dose that day. Mr Sharma told broadcaster NDTV his mother had died, from Covid, some four months earlier. Indias system of vaccine certification is handled online through the government-run CoWIN portal, where members of the public can book vaccine appointments and where medical service providers and officials register jabs once delivered. The government has closely linked vaccinations to Mr Modis personal brand, with each individual certificate issued in the country of 1.3 billion people bearing his image. The day before the vaccine drive, the countrys health minister Mansukh Mandaviya called on the public to turn out on 17 September and get our family and community vaccinated as a gift to the PM. In Madhya Pradesh at least, Mr Sharma said he believed local officials were likely trying to inflate the figures by any means necessary. I have her (my mothers) death certificate in one hand and her vaccination certificate in another, he said. I think a lot of pressure is being put on the officials, to increase the numbers. After NDTV reported this and several other cases of incorrectly-issued certificates, Madhya Pradesh state health minister Vishwas Sarang did not deny that there had been mistakes, but put these down to clerical errors. There may be one or two cases, it will be investigated if there is any clerical, he said. There were also reports of irregularities from Bihar, however, a state led by a BJP-backed alliance and which reported the highest number of vaccinations of any state on 17 September. Indian news website Scroll cited several local officials, who asked not to be named, as saying that they felt pressured into recording vaccinations on Mr Modis birthday that were actually administered across several days beforehand. Data entry operators reportedly told the website they were under tremendous pressure to perform. A spokesperson for the main opposition Congress party, Supriya Shirnate, accused the BJP of manipulating the vaccine drive for their headline management. India needs vaccination, she told The Hindu newspaper. We have double-vaccinated only 13 per cent of our population. There are 113 nations who are ahead of us. Why should we wait for this one day to have record vaccination? Indias Supreme Court on Thursday said it will set up a committee to investigate allegations that the military-grade spyware Pegasus was used to snoop on at least 300 mobile phone numbers in the country. NV Ramana, the chief justice of India (CJI), said the court will finalise members of the technical committee soon and pass orders in the case next week. According to reports published by a media consortium on 18 July, the Pegasus spyware was used by a client of the Israeli firm NSO Group to snoop on 300 Indian phone numbers, including those of prominent journalists, politicians, government officials, activists, and bureaucrats. The classified spyware is allegedly sold only to governments. Federal information and communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, water minister Prahlad Singh Patel, senior opposition politicians like Rahul Gandhi and Abhishek Banerjee, poll strategist Prashant Kishor, Indian army officials, and former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa were some of the prominent names that featured on the list. The Supreme Court said it had wanted to pass an order on the matter before this week, but some members we thought of considering for the committee... for personal reasons... they declined to be part of this committee. It added: Hence the delay. Mr Ramana made this oral announcement to advocate Chander Uday Singh, who is the counsel for one of the petitioners in the case. Mr Singh said he will pass on the court's decision to senior advocate and opposition party leader Kapil Sibal, who is the lead counsel for the petitioner in the case. The CJI-led three-judge bench had reserved an interim order on 13 September after the federal government expressed unwillingness to file an affidavit about the usage of the Israel-made spyware, citing national security. Mr Sibal had said at that time the governments refusal to file a detailed affidavit was unbelievable. The top court of India has received at least nine petitions seeking a judicial probe after a report suggested that the Indian government used Pegasus to snoop on prominent members of civil society. The Indian government has neither confirmed nor denied that it is an NSO Group client - the firm says it provides its technology so that governments around the world can prevent crime and terrorism - but ministers have denied the allegations of snooping. On 19 July, Mr Vaishnaw told the Indian Parliament that illegal surveillance was not possible in India. These allegations had no concrete basis or truth associated with it, he said. In the past, similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp by the Indian State, Mr Vaishnaws ministry said in a statement in July. Those reports also had no factual basis and were categorically denied by all parties, including WhatsApp in the Indian Supreme Court. 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. An independent digital forensic analysis conducted on 10 Indian phones whose numbers were on the list showed traces of either an attempted or successful Pegasus hack. WhatsApp in 2019 had revealed that journalists and activists in India were targeted using the Pegasus spyware. The government had then also dismissed the allegations. The Pegasus row rocked the Indian parliament during proceedings when the news was first published, where MPs from opposition parties tore papers and raised slogans demanding answers from prime minister Narendra Modis government. Britains decision to ask people vaccinated in India to be quarantined for 10 days is not related to the certification process but instead to the fact that the south Asian country still has some Covid, the British high commissioner has said. Several questions have been raised in New Delhi about recent updates to UKs vaccine policy, especially because it initially did not recognise Covishield, the locally manufactured version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Alex Ellis said that Covishield, which has now been acknowledged as one of the acceptable vaccines in the updated advisory, is not the issue for the UK government. The question is, were you a green listed country? On our list of 17 countries are mainly green-listed countries because they have very low levels of Covid ... India still has some Covid as we know. Thats why it is on the amber list, Mr Ellis told NDTVs Sreenivasan Jain in an interview on Wednesday. India has recorded between 25,000 and 30,000 Covid-19 cases every day for the past few weeks. It currently has more than 300,000 active cases. The controversy over the guidelines had risen earlier this week when the UK said it had reviewed its international travel norms, effective from 4 October. The guidelines said those who were inoculated in India, along with UAE, Jordan Russia, African and South American countries among others, would be considered unvaccinated. This sparked outrage in India and widespread condemnation of the new policy. India had warned the UK of reciprocal actions and said that the new travel policy was discriminatory in nature. It became a matter of debate in India because a majority of the Indian population is vaccinated with Covishield, which is a a locally manufactured version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being used in the UK and other countries. It is produced in India locally by the Serum Institute of India. Though the revised rules now include Covishield, they do not include Covaxin, the other vaccine being used in India. The indigenously manufactured vaccine is yet to be approved by the World Health Organisation. When questioned if the addition of Covishield in the list of acceptable vaccines was a result of diplomatic pressure from New Delhi, Mr Ellis said: We listen very carefully to what the Indian government says. The revised rules of the UK travel policy still require those vaccinated in India to take a mandatory 10 day quarantine and two RT-PCR tests after arrival in the UK. This led to accusations that the UK government did not trust Indias vaccine certificates, especially after a British High Commission spokesperson was quoted by Indian news agencies as saying that they were in talks with the Indian government to expand the UK recognition of vaccine certification. Mr Ellis took to Twitter on Thursday to clarify that neither side raised technical concerns with each others certification process. Excellent technical discussions with @rssharma3 @AyushmanNHA. Neither side raised technical concerns with each others certification process. An important step forward in our joint aim to facilitate travel and fully protect public health of UK and India, he wrote. Earlier, in the NDTV interview, he had said the two countries were in talks and the UK government was trying to figure out how the CoWin portal works. The CoWIN app is a central government-run system for vaccine appointments and certification in India. We have to have confidence [in the Co-Win app], Mr Ellis said. For the last couple of weeks, we have been having detailed technical conversations between the builders of the UKs NHS app and Indias Co-Win app, he added. They have been talking to each other about how the apps work, their security protocols. It is a very new policy which takes a bit of time to work through. What happens in the UK affects public health in India and what happens in India affects public health in the UK because of the fantastic movement of people between the two countries. So, we need to get this right, he added. A new artificial intelligence system could assess tipping points in the worlds ecosystems, and act as an early warning system to help stop runaway climate change, researchers have said. Climate tipping points are a particular threat to life on Earth, as when they are reached, they can set off chain reactions of climate-altering processes, supercharging global heating and rapidly exacerbating the existing climate crisis. Examples include the melting of the Arctic permafrost, which could release massive amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which would generate further rapid heating; the breakdown of ocean current systems, which would cause almost immediate major changes to global weather patterns; and ice sheet disintegration, which could lead to rapid sea-level rises. Using a deep-learning algorithm, the researchers examined thresholds beyond which rapid or irreversible change happens in a system. Chris Bauch, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, said: We found that the new algorithm was able to not only predict the tipping points more accurately than existing approaches but also provide information about what type of state lies beyond the tipping point. Many of these tipping points are undesirable, and wed like to prevent them if we can. The researchers also said they took an innovative approach with the creation of the AI, programming it to learn not just about individual tipping points, but about the processes and characteristics of the Earths climate tipping points generally. Through using a combination of AI and existing mathematical theories of tipping points, the team said their AI was able to accomplish more than either method could on its own. The researchers trained the AI on what they described as a universe of possible tipping points, including around half a million ecosystem models, and then tested it on specific real-world tipping points in various Earth systems this included using historical climate core samples. Our improved method could raise red flags when were close to a dangerous tipping point, said Timothy Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter and one of the studys co-authors. Providing improved early warning of climate tipping points could help societies adapt and reduce their vulnerability to what is coming, even if they cannot avoid it. The researchers said deep learning is making huge strides in pattern recognition and classification, with the team converting tipping-point detection into a pattern-recognition problem, for the first time. They said this was done to try and detect the patterns that occur before a tipping point, so a machine-learning algorithm is able to say whether a tipping point is coming. People are familiar with tipping points in climate systems, but there are tipping points in ecology and epidemiology and even in the stock markets, said Thomas Bury, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in Montreal, and another of the co-authors on the paper. What weve learned is that AI is very good at detecting features of tipping points that are common to a wide variety of complex systems. The new deep learning algorithm is a game-changer for the ability to anticipate big shifts, including those associated with climate change, said Madhur Anand, one of the researchers on the project and director of the Guelph Institute for Environmental Research in Ontario. The team said the next step is to give the AI the data for contemporary trends in climate change. But Professor Anand issued a word of caution of what may happen with such knowledge. It definitely gives us a leg up, she said. But of course, its up to humanity in terms of what we do with this knowledge. I just hope that these new findings will lead to equitable, positive change. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Extreme winds are set to bring waves as high as 16ft to Michigan's Great Lakes on Thursday, as strong storm conditions strike the Midwest. The storm system developed on Wednesday and will become stronger on Thursday, with wind speeds up to 50 mph in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Lake Erie and Lake Huron are set to see some of the highest waves. There is a lakeshore flooding warning in place along the Indiana shore. While kite and wind surfers have been tempted in by the unusual lake swells in the area, Chicagos Fire Department explained that the lakefront was closed for swimming as it was too dangerous during the adverse weather conditions. There are also warnings in place for jogging and walking along the lakefront, but some people are ignoring the advice. As waves pounded North Avenue Beach, Chicago, in the early hours of Thursday, local resident Amy told WGN News that she saw a couple of close calls with people near the lake. I saw a woman get knocked off her feet and almost dragged out into the lake, she said. Meteorologist Cheryl Scott, of ABC7 news, posted a video of a runner getting caught by a wave off Lake Michigan. Walkers and bikers have also been pounded by waves. Wow, I grew up right alongside the Lake on Chicagos South Side, and I have NEVER heard of anything like this, said one Twitter user Weather is getting weirder. Scientists and experts maintain that climate change is contributing to extreme weather events around the US and the world: Climate change is expected to worsen the frequency, intensity, and impacts of some types of extreme weather events, states the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. There were challenges with the toilet during SpaceXs first entirely private trip to space, Elon Musk has revealed. The SpaceX chief executive did not elaborate on what those problems were, but said the future mission will definitely include upgraded toilets to ensure they did not happen again. Mr Musk revealed the problems on Twitter, after revealing that he had met with the crew after they touched down in Florida. Before the mission, much of the discussion had been about how good the toilet in the SpaceX Dragon capsule that carried the crew were set to be. They were situated just beneath the cupola, the huge built-in window, meaning the crew could look out into space as they relieved themselves. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded the trip into space, told Insider that the toilet was covered by a curtain that might offer some privacy. SpaceX has not said much about how exactly the toilet works, but training on it was part of the extended regime of preparation that the crew of four space tourists had to go through before their flight. Other improvements in the future will include a little oven for heating food, Mr Musk said. He had already apologised to the crew for the fact they had to eat cold pizza and promised a food warmer, to which Mr Isaacman said he had no complaints and that the food was great. Mr Musk also said that the Dragon will include a WiFi connection through SpaceXs Starlink satellites. Mr Isaacman has revealed that the reason the photos of the Inspiration4 were few and far between was because the spacecraft only had so many ground station passes to transmit video and that government agencies such as Nasa were given priority to use those connections. The news this week that 28-year-old teacher Sabina Nessa was murdered while walking through a south London park on the way to meet her friend at the pub has saddened the nation. Police have since launched a murder inquiry, and arrested a man who was later released under further investigation. While details are yet to be confirmed, a woman losing her life at the hands of male violence in a public space is a story weve come to hear a numbing number of times: Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, were two sisters who were celebrating a birthday in a Wembley park last year when they were stabbed to death by a man; Sarah Everard was the 33-year-old murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens on her way home in Clapham in March. They are just three recent victims. According to a report shared on Tuesday, 77 women have been confirmed murdered where a man is the principal suspect since Everards death. These are far from isolated incidents. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. Over the past decade, more than nine out of 10 killers were men, and about 57 per cent of female victims were killed by someone they knew, most commonly a partner or ex-partner. These are figures we should be shocked by, and yet weve become numbed to them. Enough is enough is the rallying cry thats ricocheted throughout 2021, with campaigners spearheading the call for change to ensure real, impactful change on womens safety against male violence. We said enough is enough. And since then we have been given piecemeal measures and meaningless platitudes. Mandu Reid, leader of the Womens Equality Party The government was finally forced to respond with the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy (VAWG) , set out by Priti Patel in July this year. The central demand of the Home Offices multi-million pound campaign was to focus on targeting perpetrators and harmful misogynistic attitudes. Among its plans, the strategy promised to appoint a top police officer in a new role to tackle violence against women and girls a role that deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth has since stepped into. The two proposed VAWG Transport Champion positions to protect female passengers have also been fulfilled, and the 5 million safety at night fund which included the widely criticised pilot to put undercover policemen in bars has been launched, with funding applications closing earlier this month. Vigils for murdered woman Sarah Everard sprung up throughout the UK in March (PA) But what sort of impact is this new legislation having? The Independent spoke with key campaigners to ask: what is actually happening at this stage in the fight to end violence against women? Womens Aid: Domestic abuse needs to be included in the VAWG strategy Isabelle Younane, head of policy, campaigns and public affairs at Womens Aid, believes that, while the publication of the VAWG strategy was a positive step in terms of putting violence against girls and women on the political and public agenda, Womens Aid is concerned about the decision to separate domestic abuse from the strategy. Disconnecting the two offers little reassurance that the governments VAWG strategy will protect women wherever they are. Womens experiences of violence and abuse are interconnected, and the strategy needs to respond to this, Younane explains. This is particularly vital for Black and minoritised women, who disproportionately experience so-called honour based abuse, forced marriage and FGM, which are covered in this VAWG strategy but very often experience them in a domestic setting. The separation could push back progress in understanding how women experience these crimes, and prevent women from getting the help and specialist support they need. We urge the government to ensure that this is more clearly defined in the upcoming Domestic Abuse Strategy. Younane also flags that the landmark Domestic Abuse Act, which was passed earlier this year with the accompanying Statutory Duty, was also a step forward for womens safety providing 125 million to local authorities for safe accommodation. However, she adds, Womens Aid estimates that 409 million is required to securely fund specialist womens domestic abuse services in England, including ring-fenced funding for specialist services led by and for Black and minoritised women, Deaf and disabled women, and LGBT+ survivors. We have urged the government to deliver this. Mary Morgan: The government is grossly missing the mark in addressing the roots How many times have I heard enough is enough? asks Mary Morgan, a scholar and expert in body politics focused on the elimination of violence against women. Then, sure enough, more murders of women happen, despite promises from the UK government for change. Morgan believes that, while the VAWG strategy makes some promises including better support services for minority communities, a public health campaign to focus on perpetrator behaviours, and an increase in perpetrators brought to justice these feel like empty words. Popping up some more lights in parks and sending undercover police into bars grossly misses the mark in addressing the roots of issues. Mary Morgan, body politics expert The government cannot merely come together every several months to slap together false solutions, she says. The elimination of violence against women and girls must be a core issue. A police watchdogs report has said that tackling violence against women and girls should be as much of a priority as counterterrorism. And the best they can offer us are some more lights? Undercover police in bars? Its laughable if it wasnt so infuriating. Popping up some more lights in parks and sending undercover police into bars grossly misses the mark in addressing the roots of issues. The government seems dedicated only to publishing more and more reports. Against Violence & Abuse: Priority needs to be given to VAWG offences by the police Despite decades of political and economic gains for women, we dont feel any safer in public than we did in the days of the Yorkshire Ripper, says Donna Covey, CEO of Against Violence & Abuse (AVA). The issue is not about street lighting, or women policing our own movements, it is about a lack of political will to tackle mens violence against women whether in government, the police or the courts. Just look at how the prosecution rate for rape is now so low it is effectively decriminalised. Covey adds: The recent inspectorate report calls for a radical refocus and shift in the priority given to VAWG offences by the police, and the policing of the Sarah Everard vigil, and the police response to the murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman shows that the police have a long way to go in gaining the support of women exposed to mens brutal and fatal violence. Black and minority women also live daily with the double burden of institutionalised racism and misogyny, and government and agencies still ignore their calls for justice. Womens Equality Party: The government must stop managing the issue, and start preventing it I am horrified and devastated by Sabinas murder, I cant imagine how painful this must be for her family and everyone who knew and loved her my heart goes out to them, says Mandu Reid, leader of the Womens Equality Party (WEP). Six months ago, in the wake of Sarah Everards tragic murder at the hands of a Met Police officer, women across the country came together, united in our fury and heartbreak, to demand that ending violence against women become a political and policing priority. We said enough is enough. And since then we have been given piecemeal measures and meaningless platitudes by the government, mayors, and police chiefs. They are all failing women by failing to address the root causes of this violence and falling short on their responsibility to fund womens services. Reid says the WEP wants to see violence against women and girls identified and treated as a national threat, in the same way that terrorism is. The government and the authorities must urgently stop managing the issue and start preventing it, she warns. Every woman and girl should be able to take safety and freedom for granted. A vigil is being held for Sabine Nessa at Pegler Square, Kidbrooke, at 7pm on Friday. St James Church in Kidbrooke will also open its doors the same day to offer prayer to those affected by the tragic incident. Anyone unable to attend the vigil in person is encouraged to light a candle on their doorstep at the same time. A-level pupils should be required to study a humanities subject, mathematics and a foreign language to tackle a decline in humanities enrolments at universities, a report suggests. The report, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute, argues that requiring maths as an A-level subject would improve the numerical abilities of humanities graduates and boost their employment prospects. Dr Gabriel Roberts, an English teacher at a London secondary school and the reports author, argues that the number of humanities students may rise if studying a humanities subject at university was made compulsory. Requiring pupils to continue a foreign language until the end of school might stem the decline in applicants for Modern Languages courses at university and lessen the social exclusivity of Classics and Modern Languages courses at leading universities, he said. Mandating foreign languages may also stem the long-term shortage of linguistic skills identified by employers, Dr Roberts said, a move that would benefit students following the loss of international links likely to result from Brexit. The report highlights challenges humanities degrees are currently facing as enrolment, graduate employment and funding are all in decline. Between 1961/62 to 2019/20, the proportion of UK students studying humanities fell from around 28 per cent to roughly 8 per cent of all students, the report found. Dr Roberts said the employment prospects of humanitarian graduates are weaker than in other areas, but added that the picture is mixed. Theres a strong case for broadening post-16 education in the UK. A-levels are strikingly narrow by international standards, and the success of the International Baccalaureate and the Extended Project Qualification shows pupils can handle greater breadth than A-levels offer, Dr Roberts said. The growing popularity of interdisciplinary degrees should also tell us something about the kind of education that many young people want. There is a strong case for change. Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), said although there are distinct challenges around the humanities, the issue is more nuanced, more interesting and more positive than perceived, especially when considering teaching, course design or research. Moreover, the lively current debates on issues like statues and decolonising the curriculum prove that most people know we can only fully understand our society when the humanities thrive, Mr Hillman said. Two-legged dinosaurs like the mighty T Rex wagged their tails when they ran to stay balanced, similar to how humans swing their arms while walking and running, a new study suggests. While previous studies considered the tails of such land-dwelling dinosaurs as a static extension of the pelvis, the current three-year research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, used computer simulations to model the movement of the small carnivorous dinosaur Coelophysis which lived around 210 million years ago. This research gives us greater insight into how dinosaurs moved and may very well change the way we see dinosaurs depicted in films such as Jurassic Park in the future, Queensland Museum Network CEO Jim Thompson, said in a statement. The team of scientists, which included paleontologists, engineers, and biomechanics experts demonstrated the previously unrecognised, crucial and 3D dynamic role of the tail while these dinosaurs walked and ran. Rather than just being a static counterbalance, simulations indicate that the tail played a crucial dynamic role ... analogous to the swinging arms of humans, the scientists wrote in the study. When I first saw the simulation results I was very surprised, but after running a range of further simulations making the tails heavier, lighter and even no tail at all, we were able to conclusively demonstrate that the tail wagging was a means of controlling angular momentum throughout their gait, Peter Bishop, a research fellow at Harvard University in the US, said in a statement. Angular momentum, the scientists explained, is the physics principle that dictates how ballerinas and figure skaters can execute pirouettes. Essentially, our findings show that dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor wagged their tails from side to side when they ran, which helped them stay balanced, Dr Bishop said. We infer this mechanism to have existed in many other bipedal non-avian dinosaurs as well, and our methodology provides new avenues for exploring the functional diversity of dinosaur tails in the future, the scientists wrote. The findings spark more questions about the potential different functions of the tail and its evolution in dinosaurs. These cutting-edge, three-dimensional simulations show that weve still got much to learn about dinosaurs, John Hutchinson, study co-author and Professor of Evolutionary Biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College in London, said. A 26-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of abducting a woman in north London, in what police are calling a domestic incident. Metropolitan Police officers were called to Plevna Crescent, Haringey, at around 6.40pm on Saturday to reports that a young girl had been seen shouting for help from a car. The force have now confirmed it was in fact a 25-year-old woman and said she is safe and well, with support being offered to her. Police arrested the suspect on suspicion of abduction at an address in Haringey on Monday. He has since been released on bail, officers said. Det Insp Kelly Hodgson said in a statement: We recognise that incidents such as this will inevitably cause concern among the local community. I would like to reassure them that our primary aim has been to establish the safety and welfare of the female involved, who we now know to be an adult woman. It was reported on Monday that a member of the public had seen a girl trying to escape through the rear window of a car. Officers at the time appealed to the public for information, asking residents to check dash cam and doorbell footage. Speaking on Thursday, DI Hodgson said: I would like to thank the member of the public who called us out of concern for the woman, and those people who have since contacted us with further information. She finished by adding: The investigation is ongoing but at this stage it is being treated as a domestic incident. A 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of teacher Sabina Nessa. He was arrested at an address in Lewisham, southeast London, and remains in custody, the Metropolitan Police say. Ms Nessa, 28, was killed on Friday evening during a short walk through Cator Park, Greenwich, from her home to meet a friend at a pub in Kidbrooke. The force has also released CCTV footage and images of a man they want to speak to, which show him walking in nearby Pegler Square on the evening Ms Nessa was attacked. And detectives have issued an image of a silver vehicle captured in the area which detectives believe the man has access to, and urged anyone who recognises him or the vehicle to contact them immediately. Police want to trace this car (PA) Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe urged anyone who may know the man to contact them, as she gave an update on the investigation. Speaking outside the forces New Scotland Yard headquarters on Friday, she said: Anybody out there who may know who he is, or if youve seen that footage, and you have any information, no matter how small, please do get in touch. This is an incredibly shocking and tragic incident. Were working incredibly hard to secure justice for Sabinas family who are at the forefront of our mind at the moment. Ms Rolfe declined to comment on a cause of death, telling reporters: Were not discussing all the details of what we know, but, of course, were working incredibly hard to establish exactly whats happened here. There will be lines of inquiry that we can share and those that we cant, its really important that we maintain an open mind and do everything we can. Asked about reports claiming Ms Nessa was attacked outside of her home with a hammer before being carried into the park and that she was meeting someone for a date prior to the attack, she added: As I said, were maintaining an open mind. We dont have information to confirm that at the moment. Detective Chief Inspector Neil John, from the Metropolitan Polices specialist crime command, has urged the public, particularly those in Kidbrooke and the wider area of Lewisham and Greenwich, to take a careful look at the CCTV images to check whether they recognise the man. Any information as to his identity or whereabouts could be vital for our investigation so we are asking you to share this image far and wide to ensure as many people as possible see it, he said. Earlier Met detectives said they were investigating whether the attack was carried out by a stranger and were keeping a completely open mind on the killers motive. One of the organisers of a vigil in her memory said women did not feel safe on the streets of London. This is the second arrest the Metropolitan Police have made over the killing. On Saturday, detectives arrested a man in his forties on suspicion of murder. He was released under further investigation. Sabina was attacked on a short walk to meet a friend (AP) Ms Rolfe said she did not believe the two men arrested in connection with the murder - one who remains in custody and one who has been released - are known to each other. Ms Nessas cousin, Zubel Ahmed, says her parents are inconsolable. He told the BBC: We are all truly devastated. Her parents are absolutely shocked, theyre inconsolable still and understandably so, to hear of their daughter being taken away from them by some cowardly man is just horrific. She honestly was the most caring person, kindest, sweetest girl you could meet. Sabinas heart was as good as gold, she never had a bad word to say about anyone. Her sister is going to miss her so much. Investigations into whether Sabina Nessa was killed by a stranger are prompting fears in the southeast London neighbourhood where her body was found. Residents, who have said they once felt safe in the area, are now afraid to walk in the dark or walk home alone following the murder of the 28-year-old teacher in a park. Police believe she was on a five-minute walk from home to a pub last Friday when she was attacked in Cator Park, Kidbrooke. Friends have reportedly said she was going on a first date. On Thursday, officers said they were pursuing a line of inquiry that she had been murdered by a stranger, a development that has caused some to take extra precautions. My wife quite often walks home from the train station, I have to pick her up from the station now and be extra vigilant its quite scary, Thomas Kruel, who lives on the same street as Ms Nessas home, told The Independent. Well keep doing that until they catch the person, he added. Flowers for the murdered schoolteacher (Supplied) Tracy, 52, who declined to give her full name, was near tears describing the frustration of women in the area who feel they cant run or walk without being murdered, harassed or robbed. Im a woman of this neighbourhood its the fact that we are not safe in 2021. Thats what bothers me, she said. Im frustrated, nobody needs flowers, we need something done, we need to be heard. Im sick of it her poor family. You cant even go to the pub, what is wrong with people? I never run at night any more, I stopped two years ago. Ive lived in New York, LA, Bali all over the world and I can't believe you cant go through a park at 8.30pm at night. Grayston House, where Sabina Nessa lived and started her journey to The Depot pub (Supplied) Police have sought to allay the fears of the local community. Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry insisted at a press conference in Kidbrooke on Thursday the streets are safe for women. People should be free to walk around free from fear and officers are here to make sure that can take place, he added. When asked whether police believe Ms Nessa was attacked by a stranger, he replied: That is definitely a line of inquiry we are looking at. Her body, which was, off the track that you would normally walk, was found by someone walking their dog, the local policing commander added. Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry beside floral tributes to Sabina Nessa (PA) Mr Lawry said significant lines of inquiry were being followed by detectives but they are keeping a completely open mind as to the motive of the attack. Police had arrested a 40-year-old man in connection with the murder. He was later released pending further investigation. Ms Nessa, who taught at Rushey Green Primary School in Catford, is believed to have left her home in Astell Road just before 8.30pm last Friday. Her body was found close to the OneSpace community cafe, inside the park, the following day. She was on her way to The Depot, a pub in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke. Residents told The Independent that parts of the walk through the park are poorly lit but is a route routinely taken. Cantor Park, where Ms Nessa was attacked (supplied) Caitlyn Kelly, who lives in the same building as Ms Nessas home, said she gets chills every time she walks through the park now and said the parts of the pathway Ms Nessa walked are pure darkness and would be poorly lit around the time she was attacked. I definitely wont walk home at night any more, Ms Kelly said. Us women in the Kidbrooke community dont want to go out until we know whats what. Im questioning everything right now. Ms Kellys husband, Ben, said he: Doesnt let [Caitlyn] walk alone any more at night. Caitlyn Kelly and husband Ben who says he does not allow his wife to walk home alone at night (supplied) Ms Nessas sister paid tribute, writing on social media: My beautiful talented & caring sister my inspiration to always put myself first & never let anybody put me down never in my life did I or my sisters or my mum or dad think this could happen to us. May Allah grant her JannahAmeen. A vigil in remembrance is being held on Friday. A post-mortem examination on Monday was inconclusive. Anyone with information should call the incident room on 0208 721 4266 or Crimestoppers completely anonymously on 0800 555 111. Schoolteacher Sabina Nessa was walking to meet a friend at a local pub when she was murdered, the Metropolitan Police has said. Officers believe the 28-year-old was walking from her home address on Astell Road, southeast London shortly before 8.30pm on 17 September, making her way through Cator Park towards The Depot bar on Pegler Square, Kidbrooke Village. Ms Nessa did not arrive at the pub and officers believe she was murdered as she made her way through the park. The Depot bar is just over five-minute walk from Ms Nessas home address. Detective Inspector Joe Garrity said the ongoing police investigation is making good progress as specialist officers and staff remain at the scene in Kidbrooke to continue enquiries. Sabinas journey should have taken just over five minutes but she never made it to her destination. We know the community are rightly shocked by this murder as are we and we are using every resource available to us to find the individual responsible, Detective Inspector Garrity said. Officers continue to appeal for more information linked to the murder of Ms Nessa. The schoolteachers body was found close to the OneSpace community centre within Cator Park around 5.30pm on Saturday, 18 September. Ms Nessas family have been left devastated by her death, Zubel Ahmed, Ms Nessas cousin said. A post-mortem examination carried out as at Greenwich Mortuary on Monday, 20 September was inconclusive. Anyone with information should call the incident room on 0208 721 4266 or Crimestoppers completely anonymously on 0800 555 111. The sister of a teacher murdered in a London park has paid tribute to her, saying no mother or father should have to go through this. Officers believe 28-year-old Sabina Nessa was killed on Friday evening during a short walk through Cator Park from her home to meet a friend at a pub in Kidbrooke, southeast London. Detectives are investigating whether the attack was carried out by a stranger and are keeping a completely open mind on the killers motive. Her sister tweeted: My beautiful, talented & caring sister. My inspiration to always put myself first & never let anybody put me down. Never in my life did I or my sisters or my mum or dad think this could happen to us. May Allah grant her Jannah. Ameen #SabinaNessa. She also wrote: 3 sisters down to 2, adding a broken heart emoji. Pls make dua for her. No mother or father should have to go through this, may Allah grant my parents ease. In Islam, making dua is a plea or profound prayer to god. Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry said that police were concerned about the possibility of another attack, but that there was nothing to suggest it would happen. Asked whether police had any leads, he said: Theres significant lines of inquiry at the moment and theyre ones that I cant divulge. He insisted Londons streets were safe for women. Id like to reassure the public around that, Id like to make sure that people are free to walk around free from fear and my officers will make sure that that can take place, he said. On whether anything has changed in how the Metropolitan Police tackle violent crime against women since Sarah Everards death, he said: I think the main things that are changing are that: one, were listening to people, were understanding where people are feeling not so safe, and were putting out patrols to make sure that we do that. This isnt just a policing issue, theres lots of issues to be able to make people feel safe in an open space and were working with our partners to ensure we do that. He added that officers would attend a planned vigil for Ms Nessa on Friday. A spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson said: Youll appreciate I cant comment further whilst the police (investigation) is ongoing, but as the Met Police have said, theyre using every resource available to find the individual responsible. He said the government introduced its strategy on violence against women and girls this year. Covid is unlikely to mutate into a deadlier, vaccine-evading, variant because its run out of places to go , the creator of the Oxford jab has said. Dame Sarah Gilbert said coronavirus is likely to become less severe in its effects. Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine webinar on Wednesday, she said: We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2. Dame Sarah said that some variations were to be expected but predicted that coronavirus would eventually become like the flu virus, saying: What tends to happen over time is theres just a slow drift, thats what happens with flu viruses. You see small changes accumulating over a period of time and then we have the opportunity to react to that. Dame Sarah explained why she thought it wasnt likely that a new vaccine-evading variant of coronavirus would emerge. She said: The virus cant completely mutate because its spike protein has to interact with the ACE2 receptor on the surface of the human cell, in order to get inside that cell. If it changes its spike protein so much that it cant interact with that receptor, then its not going to be able to get inside the cell. So there arent very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus. Dame Sarah said that, as Covid-19 transitions to a more seasonal virus, there will be a general immunity building up in the population. She said: We tend to see slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses. There are four of them and theyve been circulating for decades and were not even aware of them. So we already live with four different human coronaviruses that we dont really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those. The question of how long its going to take to get there and what measures were going to have to take to manage it in the meantime. So far the coronavirus variants that are better at evading the vaccine have not been able to make much impact as the highly-infectious Delta variant continues to dominate the number of cases. Professor Sharon Peacock, the executive director of the Covid-19 UK Genomics Consortium, also told the webinar: Its watch and wait, but Delta is top of the list and other variants are not particularly concerning at the moment. It has been pretty quiet since Delta emerged and it would be nice to think there wont be any new variants of concern. If I was pushed to predict, I think there will be new variants emerging over time and I think there is still quite a lot of road to travel down with this virus. This week, trials began in Manchester on a Covid booster jab that is designed to offer increased immunity against a wider range of variants. The government should look at English Channel crossings with perspective, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said. An official told MPs that Britain only receives a small number of asylum seekers in comparison to other countries in Europe and that the vast majority of refugees stay in regions near their home nation. The UK by reason of its geographical position and relative distance from crisis countries receives a pretty small number of refugees, said Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, the UNHCR representative to the UK. I urge you to look at this in perspective the Channel crisis is certainly a challenge but needs to be looked at with the broader perspective of a global challenge for all countries in respect to displacement. Home Office figures suggest that more than 16,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, almost double the total for the whole of 2020. Ms Pagliuchi-Lor said that although the number of crossings had increased, the overall number of applications was relatively stable at around 35,000 a year, far below France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy and other countries. She warned that nations such as Jordan and Pakistan that neighbour warzones have seen frankly enormous influxes, which they cannot cope with alone. The official made the comments to a parliamentary committee considering the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would make it a criminal offence to enter Britain without entry clearance. The UNHCR previously said the proposals violate international law, by creating an unfair two-tier asylum system that discriminates on the basis of how people arrive with no lawful basis. Asylum cannot be sought from outside the UK, and the change would mean refugees reaching the country on small boats and other irregular means face four years in prison. The bill would also make it easier to prosecute asylum seekers who steer boats, and people who provide humanitarian assistance, for assisting unlawful immigration. What's behind the Channel crossing 'crisis'? Ms Pagliuchi-Lor said people should not be penalised where they act for humanitarian reasons rather than financial benefit or other forms of gain. The government has said the measures would deter illegal entry into the UK, to break the business model of people smuggling networks and to protect the lives of those they endanger. Witnesses speaking to the committee on Thursday questioned evidence for the claim. Dame Sara Thornton, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, said there were many other factors considered by asylum seekers journeying to the UK, rather than thinking about what is the nature of the law when we get there. She warned the proposals, which include limiting asylum seekers access to public support, could worsen modern slavery in the UK by making vulnerable people destitute and desperate. You risk that with a hope this will deter ... but Im concerned about the extent to which there is evidence that it will be effective, she added. It came days after a government impact assessment said there was a risk that increased security and deterrence in the Chanel could encourage migrants to attempt riskier means of entering the UK, adding: Deploying these measures does advance the legitimate aim of encouraging asylum seekers to claim in the first safe country they reach and not undertaking dangerous journeys facilitated by smugglers to get to the UK, though evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach is limited. The government has announced new schemes to resettle refugees directly from the Middle East and Asia, but critics say the places offered are not sufficient and the process too slow. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 1 October 2021 A driver talks to members of the media after passing his HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) driving test at National Driving Centre in Croydon, south London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 30 September 2021 The centrepiece One Thousand Springs by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is seen ahead of the beginning of the Japan Festival, a celebration of the countrys plants, art and culture running from 2-31 October, at Kew Gardens in London PA UK news in pictures 29 September 2021 The family of Betty Campbell unveil the bronze sculpture of her during the unveiling of the statue in Central Square, Cardiff, of Betty Campbell, Wales' first black headteacher PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2021 A sign referring to the lack of fuel is placed at the entrance to a petrol station in London AP UK news in pictures 27 September 2021 Police officers detain a protester from Insulate Britain occupying a roundabout leading from the M25 motorway to Heathrow Airport in London PA UK news in pictures 26 September 2021 Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer watches the Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur match at The Font pub in Brighton PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2021 Scottish pro-independence supporters hold a march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland Getty Images UK news in pictures 24 September 2021 Police officers remove two protesters from the top of a tanker, as Insulate Britain block the A20 in Kent, which provides access to the Port of Dover in Kent. The environmental activists have moved location after been banned from campaigning on the M25 motorway in London PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2021 Gabriella, the seven year old daughter of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, joins in a game on a giant snakes and ladders board in Parliament Square, to show the ups and downs of her mothers case to mark the 2,000 days she has been detained in Iran AP UK news in pictures 22 September 2021 A new sign hangs on the Millicent Fawcett statue after it was altered by CrackTheCrises coalition activists to highlight the climate crisis as a feminist struggle in Parliament Square in London EPA UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA Ms Pagliuchi-Lor said the entire bill revolves around the notion that refugees are required to seek asylum in the first safe country the reach - but that is not a requirement in international law. She said such a principle would be unworkable in practice, overwhelming developing and low-income countries that are nearest to crisis areas. Ms Pagliuchi-Lor also raised concerns that the bill, if passed in its current form, could trigger a race to the bottom if other countries start trying to renege on commitments under the Refugee Convention. We support the broad aims of this bill in terms of tackling smuggling networks, having fair and faster procedures and facilitating returns of those not in need of international protection, she added. We believe this bill will not achieve these aims and in fact it may exacerbate further some of the issues that have been identified. Ms Pagliuchi-Lor said changes to mean more asylum applications are declared inadmissible by the UK will create massive problems at a time when there are no agreements enabling them to be transferred to safe third countries in Europe. An EU-wide agreement allowing Britain to send asylum seekers to countries they previously passed through, such as France and Germany, expired with Brexit. Several nations have told The Independent that there are no ongoing negotiations for a replacement. Ms Pagliuchi-Lor said that since the UK changed its immigration rules, 4,500 asylum seekers had been told their applications may be inadmissible but no-one had been deported and the government was simply creating a very long queue leading to nowhere. The system as described would exacerbate the current backlog and increase the costs by making the procedures longer, she added. I think it will have a number of unintended negative consequences. Close Military tankers begin delivering fuel in bid to ease crisis No 10 said it is hard to put a specific date on when fuel supplies would return to normal - but insisted the situation was improving. Weve seen demand return back towards normal levels, the prime ministers official spokesperson said on Monday. It came as army tanker drivers started delivering fuel to petrol stations in a bid to ease shortages as Operation Escalin got underway. The troops were set to be concentrated in London and the Southeast, where the worst fuel shortages remained. Petrol stations have run dry and long queues have formed at forecourts as the UK grappled with the fuel crisis caused by a shortage of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and panic buying. Irelands prime minister has rejected a suggestion that US president Joe Biden does not fully understand the issues around Northern Irelands post-Brexit trading arrangements after comments made by a UK government minister. Environment secretary George Eustice suggested on Wednesday that Mr Bidens concerns were based on just reading the headlines and listening to accounts from the EU on the post-Brexit situation. Anybody who suggests President Biden doesn't get Northern Ireland or understand it is wrong. He understands it very well, Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin told reporters in New York. Mr Martin, who will chair a meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday, added that Irish diplomats in Washington had taken every opportunity to brief the US administration on the situation in Northern Ireland. He also suggested that he was confident a solution could be found to the ongoing row between London and Brussels over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has created a trade barrier for products crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain. The focus has to switch now, for the UK government, the Irish government and the EU working in partnership to resolve these issues, Mr Martin said. I believe the European Union is up for a solution. Where there's a will there's a way and these issues can be resolved. On Wednesday, Mr Eustice claimed that the US president was wrong to have concerns about the Good Friday Agreement and did not fully appreciate the row over the Protocol. [Mr Biden] is probably at the moment just reading the headlines, reading what the EU is saying, reading what Ireland might be saying, which is that they would like the Northern Ireland Protocol to work in the way the EU envisage, the Cabinet minister told Sky News. We think he is wrong because the truth is that unless we have a sustainable solution that enables trade to continue between GB and Northern Ireland then we are going to have issues, and that itself would become a challenge to the Belfast Agreement. His comments followed a White House meeting between Mr Biden and Boris Johnson, in which the US leader said that he felt very strongly about issues surrounding the peace process in Ireland and Northern Ireland. I would not at all like to see - nor, I might add, would many of my Republican colleagues like to see - a change in the Irish accords, the end result having a closed border in Ireland, Mr Biden said. Mr Johnson also noted that he agreed with the president on this issue, adding: On that point, Joe, we're completely at one, nobody wants to see anything that interrupts or unbalances the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Downing Street said this week that the prime minister updated Mr Biden on developments with the protocol since they last met in June. Additional reporting by PA Ministers are considering introducing a windfall tax on firms that have benefitted from soaring wholesale gas prices in recent weeks as energy firms struggle, the business secretary has suggested. Kwasi Kwarteng did not rule out such a move when asked by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee about the possibility of a levy on the generators and traders who are making very significant profits", which has been used in Spain, to fund protections for customers. We are looking at all options, Mr Kwarteng told the committee. What they are doing in Spain is recognising that it's an entire system - the energy system is an entire system. I am in discussion with Ofgem and other officials, looking at all options. However, the minister added that he was not a fan of windfall taxes in principle, despite the option being considered in order to protect the UKs energy system. His comments came as Avro Energy and Green Supplier Limited became the latest energy suppliers to go out of business due to the price spike, with about 1.5 million customers now affected by firms leaving the market this month. The UKs electricity and gas regulator Ofgem has said that it will ensure that a new supplier is appointed to take over Avro's 580,000 customers and Green's 255,000 households, which collectively supply 2.9 per cent of the UK's domestic energy customers. The regulator also said on Wednesday that households could continue to use gas and electricity as before while a new supplier is found. Under our safety net we'll make sure your energy supplies continue. If you have credit on your Avro Energy or Green Supplier Limited account this is protected and you will not lose the money that is owed to you, Ofgem director of retail Neil Lawrence said. Additional reporting by PA Gordon Brown has fiercely condemned ministers for the upcoming cut to universal credit, suggesting he has never seen a government act so callously. The former prime minister said the withdrawal of the 20-a-week uplift on 6 October could not come at a worse time for struggling households, which face the prospect of rising food and energy costs. I have never seen a government act so callously and with so little concern for the consequences of their actions on the poorest in our society, he said. Writing in the Guardian, he also called the reduction more economically illogical, socially divisive and morally indefensible than anything I have witnessed in this countrys politics. The universal credit uplift was introduced at the start of the pandemic and was initially intended to last a year, before being extended by another six months. However, politicians and charities have urged the government to make the change permanent, warning that its removal in the current financial climate could push hundreds of thousands more people into poverty. A new report by Citizens Advice predicted that as many as 1.5 million people could be plunged into hardship this winter by what it called a disastrous decision. It also estimated that up to 600,000 universal credit claimants are concerned about not being able to afford food if the change goes ahead. Dame Clare Moriarty, the organisations chief executive, said: "The government has shown in this pandemic that its willing to support people through hard times. "With a cost of living crisis under way, it must reverse the disastrous decision to cut this lifeline." Some Tory politicians are also opposed to the reduction, including former leader Iain Duncan Smith and former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson. Ms Davidson recently told ITV that the decision was bad politics, adding that its the wrong thing to do for people on low incomes. The government has remained silent on whether the new foreign secretary challenged her Russian counterpart over the Salisbury attack during a meeting held after a third suspect was charged. Liz Truss met the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday - a day after police announced the prosecution of GRU agent Denis Sergeev. A summary of their discussion provided by the government made no mention of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, which Theresa May said was approved at a senior level of the Russian state in 2018. The readout said: The foreign secretary met Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of the meeting of P5 foreign ministers convened by the UK. They discussed the need for Iran to return to nuclear talks. They also discussed stability and security in Afghanistan including the need for the Taliban to form an inclusive government. They looked forward to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November. Boris Johnson had urged Russia publicly to hand over the three suspects identified by British police, so they can go on trial in the UK. The meeting came a week after Ms Truss replaced Dominic Raab as foreign secretary in a cabinet reshuffle. Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its own summary of the meeting, which also made no mention of the Salisbury attack. It said the ministers discussed the current state of bilateral relations, and suggested that Mr Lavrov accused the British government of refusing to treat Russia with equality and regard for each others interests. Russia has denied responsibility for the Salisbury attack and refuses to extradite its nationals, meaning the likelihood of the three suspects facing a British court is slim. On Tuesday, MPs asked the home secretary what stance the foreign secretary would take with her Russian counterpart so that these suspects are forced to face justice. Priti Patel told parliament that Ms Truss and the Foreign Office were undertaking a range of diplomatic engagements in UN forums right now. Russian spy Denis Sergeev accused of attempted murder over Salisbury novichok attack The foreign secretary is currently in New York at the UN General Assembly, and we are in no doubt that we are pressing every single lever, she added. The FCDO and the foreign secretary will rightly lead on the key discussions. Ms Patel pledged that the government would take every possible step to detain the suspects and added: Our government will be relentless in our pursuit of justice for the victims of these attacks. Dean Haydon, the Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, previously said that police were relying on the Foreign Office and diplomatic channels for any hope of moving the case forward. There is no extradition treaty with Russia, he told a press conference. We had very little cooperation from Russia or the Russian state. The FCDO will be talking on diplomatic channels to Russia but from the police investigation side our due process is to seek arrest warrants and circulate them through Interpol. If there is an opportunity to arrest those individuals and put them in front of a UK court to seek justice for those individuals [poisoned] or the people of Salisbury, we will do that. Interpol red notices have been circulated internationally for the past three years for the two suspects previously charged over the attack, GRU agents Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, but no arrests have been made. The new suspect, Denis Sergeev is also thought to remain in Russia. Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Show all 19 1 /19 Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Salisbury train station The two suspects charged in relation to the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal at Salisbury train station at 16:11hrs on 03 March 2018 Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Suspects Suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, Russian nationals, approximately 40 years old, who travelled on a Russian passport. It is likely that they were travelling under aliases and that these are not their real names Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Evidence Bottle and applicator recovered by police from Charlie Rowleys address in Muggleton Road Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Evidence A counterfeit perfume box that was discovered by nerve agent victim Charlie Rowley, who later gave it, and the bottle inside, to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess Metropolitan Police/AFP/Getty Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Rowley has previously said he felt lucky to be alive after giving a perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent Novichok to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess, who later died Metropolitan Police/AFP/Getty Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Suspeccts The CPS has issued European Arrest Warrants for the extradition of 'Boshirov' and 'Petrov' in connection with the Novichok poisoning attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March Metropolitan Police/PA Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Boshirov' at Gatwick airport Movements in detail - At 3pm on Friday, 2 March, the suspects arrived at Gatwick airport, having flown from Moscow on Aeroflot flight SU2588 Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Petrov at Gatwick airport From the airport it is believed that they travelled by train into London, arriving at Victoria station at approximately 5.40pm Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Salisbury train station, 11:48hrs on 4 March 2018 They then travelled on London public transport to Waterloo station and were in the area between approximately 6pm and 7pm. They travelled to the City Stay Hotel in Bow Road, East London, where they stayed on Friday, 2 March, and Saturday, 3 March. On Saturday, 3 March, they left the hotel and took the underground to Waterloo station, arriving at approximately 11.45am, where they caught a train to Salisbury, arriving at approximately 2.25pm Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack City Stay Hotel in Bow Road Police officers stand outside the City Stay Hotel in Bow where on Sunday, 4 March, 'Boshirov' and 'Petrov' made the same journey from the hotel as they did the previous day, again using the underground from Bow to Waterloo station at approximately 8.05am, before continuing their journey by train to Salisbury Getty Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Wilton Road, Salisbury, 11:58hrs on 4 March 2018 CCTV shows them in the vicinity of Mr Skripals house and we believe that they contaminated the front door with Novichok Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Fisherton Road CCTV image of both suspects on Fisherton Road, Salisbury at 13:05hrs on 4 March, 2018 Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Salisbury train station, 13:50hrs on 4 March 2018 They left Salisbury and returned to Waterloo Station, arriving at approximately 4.45pm and boarded the London Underground at approximately 6.30pm to London Heathrow Airport Metropolitan Police Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack CCTV Heathrow airport security, 19:28hrs on 4 March 2018 From Heathrow Airport, they returned to Moscow on Aeroflot flight SU2585, departing at 10.30pm Metropolitan Police/PA Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Scene investigations The police investigation was carried out over 6 months. Ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found on March 4 in a critical condition on a bench outside the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury AFP Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Victims Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, right, and his daughter Yulia Rex Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Victims Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey who rushed to the aid of the Skripals was also taken to hospital in a serious condition after falling ill when attempting to help them PA Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Victims Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died after falling ill when partner Charlie Rowley gave her a perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent Novichok Facebook/AFP/Getty Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack Scene investigations The home of Charlie Rowley in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, where he and Dawn Sturgess were exposed to the deadly nerve agent Novichok PA The Crown Prosecution Service has authorised the same charges against him as the two previous suspects, including the attempted murder of Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, the grievous bodily harm of police officer Nick Bailey and the use of novichok as a chemical weapon. They do not cover the death of Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old-mother killed by novichok, because the investigation into how she came by the discarded chemical weapon in June 2018 is ongoing. Sergeev, who travelled to the UK under the alias Sergey Fedotov, is believed to have commanded the poisoning operation from London. He arrived in Britain hours before his alleged accomplices on 2 March 2018, and met them on more than one occasion before the attack. Sergeev flew back to Moscow from Heathrow at 1.45pm on 4 March, under two hours after the nerve agent was applied to Mr Skripals front door. Mr Haydon said the three suspects operated as a team to target Mr Skripal and had previously worked with each other on behalf of the Russian state on operations outside of Russia. No new sanctions or diplomatic action against the Kremlin have been announced after the new charges against Sergeev, which were revealed hours after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has refused to back Sir Keir Starmers plan to end the one member, one vote system which elected Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Labour mayor was asked three times if he supported Sir Keirs proposal to replace existing rules with a return to an electoral college system, which would give MPs and unions a much greater say. But Mr Khan three times spurned the chance to back the party leader. Ive got to be frank, as the mayor of London, internal party rules isnt at the fore of my mind, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. The senior Labour figure said he had not had a chance to look into the changes being considered and repeated that the plan was not at the fore of my mind as mayor. Sir Keirs efforts to change the leadership rules have sparked another internal dispute after failing to secure union support ahead the partys conference in Brighton, which starts on Saturday. The Independent understands union leaders do not want the proposal to go to a vote at the party conference, while left-wing grassroots group Momentum warned it could mark the start of a civil war in the party. Unites new general secretary Sharon Graham has urged Sir Keir to think again calling the proposed changes unfair, undemocratic and a backwards step. Under Sir Keirs plan, Labour members would only get a third of the votes in future leadership contests, while Labour MPs and the unions would also be given a third of the vote. Despite pressure to delay the proposal until after the conference, the Labour leader is said to be considering putting his idea to the partys governing body on Friday. Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, a leading figure in the Corbyn era, accused Sir Keir of focusing on internal factional pursuits in a bid to give the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) more power. The attacks come as Sir Keir said set out his vision for Labour to be Britains bricks and mortar in an 11,500-word essay for the Fabian Society published on Wednesday night. The response has been mixed. Commentator Rafael Behr said the document was a necklace of platitudes strung together with banalities, fastened with cliche, but former Gordon Brown adviser Theo Bertram said it had substance and significance. Labour frontbencher Lucy Powell called it a well-written, compelling read, but Mr McDonnell told The Independent the lengthy pamphlet was filled with platitudes and did not have any information on what a Labour government would actually do. Oliver Dowden, Conservative Party co-chairman, said: If this is Starmers big vision then he should have gone to Specsavers. Labour are talking to themselves about themselves. Theyre all essays and no action. Meanwhile, Mr Khan has warned that time is running out to act on the climate emergency, set to have devastating effects on the capital. We either take bold action now or face the consequences, with catastrophic impacts on our environment, he will say at a speech on Thursday. The mayor will launch a London-wide environmental campaign to raise awareness of the crisis and engage Londoners with changes such as the ultra-low emission zone expansion. It comes as analysis suggests rising temperatures could make the Tube potentially unbearably hot for more than a month a year, while a quarter of Londons rail stations are now at high risk of flooding. Amazon Chobani, UPS and more than 30 other companies have vowed to hire and train refugees fleeing Afghanistan for the U.S. The companies said Tuesday that they want to help the tens of thousands of Afghan refugees coming to America to integrate into the economy. A first group of 37,000 Afghan refugees started making their way to states this month. The 33 companies said they were joining the Tent Coalition for Afghan Refugees, a coalition founded by Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of yogurt and food company Chobani. The moment a refugee gets a job, its the moment they stop being a refugee," Ulukaya said in a prepared statement. Its the moment they can stand on their own two feet; its the moment they can make new friends; its the moment they can start a new life, UPS, the package delivery company, said it would work with refugees to place them in the right jobs. Online shopping giant Amazon said it offers refugees jobs in its warehouses or transportation hubs, as well as corporate or tech roles. It also pays for training and education, such as college tuition or English language courses. A US Army officer has explained on Fox News why he resigned over the Department of Defense vaccine mandate, but admitted he had agreed to all his other Army shots. First, and foremost, I am incapable of subjecting myself to the unlawful, unethical, immoral, and tyrannical to sit still and allow a serum to be injected into my flesh against my will and better judgment, former Officer Paul Douglas Hague wrote in his resignation letter, which his wife posted on Twitter at the beginning of September. He also cited a complete lack of confidence in the presidential administration, as a reason for quitting and forfeiting his pension after 18 years in the military. Ive got two years until Im eligible to pull my retirement, said Hague to Fox News host Sean Hannity. But I dont want the Covid vaccine and I dont plan on getting it. But Ive had all the other army vaccines. Ive had eight anthrax shots. Ive had the smallpox vaccination. Ive had em all. So its really not about whether or not Ill get the shot ... its about principle. The Pentagon said that coronavirus vaccinations are mandatory for the USs 1.3 million active-duty troops, and all must take the shot before 15 December or face suspension or dismissal. While soldiers who refuse the vaccine will first be counseled by their chain of command and medical providers, the official Army guidelines explain, continued failure to comply could result in administrative or nonjudicial punishment to include relief of duties or discharge from the service. Despite agreeing to a number of other vaccinations required by the US Army, Mr Hague alleged in his resignation letter that he thought the recent Covid-19 vaccine mandate was part of a Marxist takeover of the military and United States government at their upper echelons. This is not the first military personnel to speak out against the Biden Administration on social media in recent weeks. In late August, Marine Lt Col Stuart Scheller posted videos on social media criticising the government in its handling of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan. He knew one of the 13 US service members killed in the Kabul suicide bomb attack. Scheller demanded accountability from those who were overseeing decisions in Afghanistan. Im not saying weve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say Hey, its a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone. After 17 years of service, and three years until he gets a pension, the US marine was relieved of command following the release of his video due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command. Mr Scheller stated on screen that he was resigning my commission as a United States Marine, effective now I am forfeiting retirement, all entitlements, Mr Scheller said. Shortly after Brian Laundrie returned home without Gabby Petito on 1 September, his family took a weekend camping trip, their neighbours in North Port, Florida, have said. Charlene and William Guthrie said they saw the Laundries attaching a new camper to their pickup truck and go out of their house on the same weekend the police came looking for a lead in a missing persons case. The Guthries were unaware of Ms Petitos disappearance at that time. I saw them doing some work. And then when they prepared for their trip, I saw them loading the camper, Mr Guthrie said, according to Fox News. Mr Guthrie, who saw them preparing the camper while he was doing some yard work, said he found it odd that the three went off on a camping trip in such a small vehicle. The Laundries trip was reportedly around the time when the search for the now deceased Ms Petito intensified. The police were looking for her partner Brian Laundrie, who had gone with her on a nearly two-month-long road trip. Mr Guthrie said he did not know that the camper he saw outside the Laundrie home belonged to Petito, and assumed that it was the younger mans. Mr Laundrie, who is not a suspect in the death of Petito but a person of interest, had returned alone from the trip in the Ford camper van owned by his fiance. Remains believed to belong to Petito were located in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on 19 September. An autopsy confirmed that it was Ms Petito. The search for Mr Laundrie, meanwhile, has intensified in Floridas 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve, where he is suspected to have gone after returning home for a brief period. The police officials have roped in dive teams and boats to assist in the search. The couple had left their Florida home in early July for a road trip spanning 2,328 miles and several national parks, before the two reportedly got into fights and had to be separated by the police officials in Utah. Ms Petitos family went on a frantic search for their daughter after they stopped receiving texts from her and the 22-year-old did not make it back home with Mr Laundrie. Ms Petitos mother last spoke to her on 25 August. A woman facing criminal charges in Hawaii after travelling to the state with a fake vaccination card featuring an embarrassing spelling error is wanted by authorities again after failing to appear at a court hearing. Chloe Mrozak, a 24-year-old resident of Oak Lawn, Illinois, was due to appear before a judge via Zoom on Wednesday, but she did not show up. The judge has now issued a $500 warrant for Ms Mrozaks arrest. According to the Associated Press, she is not being represented by the public defenders office, and it remains unclear if she has hired an attorney. Ms Mrozak arrived in Honolulu on 23 August with a handwritten vaccination card reading Maderna, and provided false information to travel authorities including a hotel reservation that turned out not to exist. She and her misspelled card drew public ridicule when she was arrested at the end of August, reportedly at a Southwest Airlines counter when trying to leave Honolulu airport. Authorities say they identified her by a hip tattoo they had noticed when searching for her on Facebook. At a previous court session in early September, Ms Mrozak appearing from custody via webcam was asked by the judge whether she would attend all future proceedings if she was released. I promise, she said, apparently in tears. I promise I will do whatever it takes. I swear Im not a bad person. Ms Mrozak was arrested shortly after a couple who travelled to Oahu from Florida with four fake vaccination cards, two for themselves and two for their children who were too young to be vaccinated. Separately, a 57-year-old father and 19-year-old son from Los Angeles were arrested for trying to use fake credentials, with authorities alerted via a tip-off. Like other US states, Hawaii has seen a record surge in Covid-19 cases thanks to the spread of the Delta variant, though the seven-day average of new cases has halved in the last three weeks. With much of the continental US lagging behind in vaccination rates, authorities are under pressure both to enforce and tighten restrictions on travel to the islands, including by requiring pre-boarding proof of a negative test as well as vaccination. Additional reporting by Associated Press An Oklahoma man who castrated a volunteer at a cabin in the woods and bragged he intended to eat the testicles has been jailed. Bob Lee Allen, 54, performed the operation on a man he met online, who later told police that his body parts were stored in a freezer and that Allen joked he was going dine on them. Allen had been set to go on trial for the bizarre incident later this week but reached a plea deal with prosecutors on 31 August and will serve 12 years behind bars. He was arrested by police when the 28-year-old volunteer, who had flown to Oklahoma from Virginia, went to hospital because he was bleeding from the amateur surgery. Allen pleaded no contest to felony counts of conspiracy to commit unlicensed surgery, practising medicine without a licence and attempted distribution of a psychedelic mushroom. He also pleaded no contest to two misdemeanour counts and was sentenced to two years in jail and 10 years in prison. Allen told the judge he believed the plea was in his best interest because a jury might convict me, according to The Oklahoman. His husband, Thomas Evans Gates III, 42, was also charged in this case and pleaded guilty to three misdemeanour charges last month. Investigators were told by the victim that Allen claimed he had been performing gender reassignment surgeries for 15 years and had six clients ready to go under the knife. The victim made contact with Allen through his website Eunuch Maker while searching online about castrations. He flew to Dallas, Texas, and the couple drove the volunteer to their remote cabin in the southeast part of the state, where Allen performed a two-hour surgery using only local anaesthetic. After the surgery was over Allen said that he was going to consume the parts and laughed and said that he was a cannibal, the victim told investigators, an affidavit in the case stated. Allen and Gates were arrested after they visited the victim in hospital. Allen has denied any claims of cannibalism. A Utah police department is to be investigated over its handling of a dispute between Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie that was captured on bodycam video. City officials in Moab, Utah, say they have launched the probe into the Moab Police Department which dealt with the couple in August, weeks before Ms Petito was killed. Officers interacted with Ms Petito, 22, and Mr Laundrie, 23, on 12 August after a bystander called 911 to report a possible domestic dispute involving the couple. City officials acknowledged in a statement that the police department had received criticism and praise for their response and their resolution of the incident involving Ms Petito and Mr Laundrie. The Moab City Police Department has clear standards for officer conduct during a possible domestic dispute and our officers are trained to follow those standards and protocol, the city stated. At this time, the City of Moab is unaware of any breach of Police Department policy during this incident. However, the City will conduct a formal investigation and, based on the results, will take any next steps that may be appropriate. This police camera video provided by The Moab Police Department shows Brian Laundrie talking to a police officer after police pulled over the van he was traveling in with his girlfriend, Gabrielle Gabby Petito, near the entrance to Arches National Park on Aug. 12, 2021. (AP) Police pulled over the couple in their white van near the entrance to Arches National Park, and the subsequent interaction was captured on bodycam and written up in a police report. It has been used to highlight the couples stressed relationship in the month before Ms Petito disappeared and her remains eventually found near a remote campground in Wyoming. The police stop came two weeks before Ms Petitos final communication with her family, with a witness saying they were concerned at a fight the couple were having. We drove by and the gentleman was slapping the girl, the caller said, according to 911 audio from Grand County Sheriffs Office. Then we stopped. They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car and they drove off. In the bodycam footage Ms Petito can be seen sobbing and breathing heavily, and an officer tells her that they considered her the aggressor and Mr Laundrie the victim. No charges were filed against them, and at the suggestion of the officers Mr Laundrie spent the night at a hotel while Ms Petito stayed in the van. Both the male and female reported they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately didnt wish to see anyone charged with a crime, officer Eric Pratt wrote in the report. After evaluating the totality of the circumstances, I do not believe the situation escalated to the level of a domestic assault as much as that of a mental health crisis, officer Daniel Robbins wrote in the report. I then determined the most appropriate course of action would be to help separate the parties for the night so they could reset their mental states without interference from one another. Officials said that investigators would now gather all evidence to evaluate the departments response to the incident. And they said that all of the information would be made available to any agency investigating Ms Petitos death and all officers involved would be made available to answer questions. We understand that individuals can view the same situation in very different ways, and we recognise how the death of Ms Petito more than two weeks later in Wyoming might lead to speculation, in hindsight, about actions taken during the incident in Moab, added the city. The purpose of the Citys formal investigation is to gather the underlying facts and evidence necessary to make a thorough, informed evaluation of such actions. Ms Petito and Mr Laundrie had been on a van-life adventure across America when she went missing. He arrived back at his parents home in Florida on 1 September without his girlfriend, and the Petito family reported her missing 10 days later. Her remains were discovered at the spread creek campground in Wyoming on Sunday, and on Tuesday a coroner determined that she had died from homicide. Police in Florida continue to search for Mr Laundrie in a 25,000 acre nature reserve in Sarasota County, Florida, after he disappeared from his family home. He has been named as a person of interest by police. The stepfather of Gabby Petito has visited the place close to a mountain campsite where the young womans remains were found, according to a close friend. The FBI on Tuesday confirmed that the remains recovered on Sunday at the Spread Creek campsite, located about 20 miles north of Jackson, Wyoming, were those of Ms Petito, who failed to return home from a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. They said an autopsy had found she was the victim of a homicide, meaning she had been killed by another person, and that further tests were needed to determine the precise cause of death. As officials reopened the Spread Creek campsite, a number of campers, tourists and the media made their way to the spot where it is believed the young womans body had been found. Members of the media discovered a cross fashioned from 18 pebbles, in a riverbed. Search for fiance of missing Gabby Petito Gary Rider, a friend of Gabbys stepfather Jim Schmidt, said the pair had visited the site on Wednesday and that they had left some flowers next to the other cross. We did go the small cross with flowers was made by Jim and myself, Mr Rider told The Independent. That larger cross was not done by anyone connected with the search or recovery of Gabby. Mr Rider, who organised a GoFundMe campaign to help in the search, added: It was just a coincidence, we confirmed that. Mr Schmidt, who is married to Gabbys mother, Nicole Schmidt, had been helping in the search for his stepdaughter in Wyoming, handing out flyers and posters in restaurants and shops and trying to raise awareness. Ms Petitos mother and stepfather live in Long Island, New York, while Ms Petito had lived for the last two years in North Port, Florida, with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. Mr Laundrie returned from the trip with the van by himself. He has since gone missing and is being searched for by police. Police stress no charges have been brought against Mr Laundrie, though he has been described as a person of interest. The mobster accused of the largest art heist in US history has died from a stroke aged 85. The FBI suspected that Robert Gentile knew where valuable paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery of 1990 were, but now Gentiles alleged secrets will never be told. Gentiles lawyer, Ryan McGuigan, broke the news that he had died in Hartford Hospital on Friday. Thirteen pieces of valuable art, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas, were stolen during the museum heist 30 years ago. Robbers were disguised as police officers who responded to a disturbance call linked to Saint Patricks Day, but once inside they were allowed access to the building, and announced: Gentlemen, this is a robbery. The criminals duct-taped security guards to a pipe before making off with the historical artefacts, which were worth more than $500 million. Despite being such a high-profile case, with rewards of up to $10 million offered by the museum for the return of the artworks, the stolen art has never been found. Gentile was well-known to law enforcement, he had an extensive criminal record and served jail time. But right up until his death, he denied that he knew anything about the stolen artworks. I had nothing to do with the paintings. Its a big joke, Gentile said in a 2019 interview with the Associated Press, following his release from prison. However, Gentile allegedly spoke about the art when serving his time. Missing pieces include Rembrandts The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and a rare Vermeer painting titled The Concert. A man allegedly sexually assaulted a woman he had just saved from a sexual assault attack in a popular Florida tourist town. The woman was rescued by the man from the first attack on a street in Key West but then took her to a city landmark where he attacked her himself, police say. Authorities say that Jorge Calderon Nunez, 30, of Key West, allegedly carried out the first attack on the woman in the early hours of 10 September. Investigators allege that Mr Nunez was attacking the woman when an Uber driver interrupted and broke up the incident. Kerry Calvin Gasag then drove her to the Southernmost Point marker buoy, where tourists pose for pictures, by the ocean. Mr Gasag, 37, of Key West, then allegedly dragged her out of his SUV and assaulted her behind the large replica buoy, according to the arrest report. Police say they have video footage from a tourist webcam that shows the victim clearly trying to pull away from Mr Gasag. He later told police that the woman had consented to having sex. One of the people who called police over the incident was a dispatcher in Boston who was watching the Southernmost Point webcam. He told officers he believed he was watching a rape in progress, according to the arrest report. Mr Gasag was arrested on 11 September and faces felony charges of sexual assault, false imprisonment and destroying evidence. He reportedly admitted to police that he had returned to the Southernmost Point to retrieve the womans jean shorts and disposed of them on the way back to his home. He also told investigators that the woman did not scream for help or fight The alleged attack lasted several minutes. Gasag repeatedly told them the woman did not scream for help or fight like someone who is being raped does, the police report states. Mr Nunez was arrested on 17 September on a charge of sexual assault along with a burglary charge from a prior incident. Both suspects remain in custody at the county jail on Stock Island. The body of a missing woman from Florida has been found behind a fire department in South Carolina, hundreds of miles from home. Sheridan Lynne Wahl, 21, who was studying marketing at the University of South Florida, was last heard from around 1pm on Sunday 19 September in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she is said to have been visiting her father. On Tuesday, however, officials in Florence County, South Carolina said they had found her body behind the Hannah-Salem Fire Department nearly 45 miles away. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday. In a statement posted on Facebook, Ms Wahls mother Kelly Wahl confirmed her death sand said her family was heartbroken beyond belief. Mrs Wahl said: Sheridan was our cherished and loving daughter, sister, niece and friend. She will be missed more than words can ever express. Please note that the case has yet to be closed... in the meantime, the family graciously requests that their privacy be respected and deeply appreciates the outpouring of love and support from all. Ms Wahls body was reported to Florence County officials at around 8:40am on Tuesday, county coroner Keith von Lutcken said. According to the TV news station WPDE, citing a police report, Ms Wahl had travelled to Myrtle Beach to visit her father, who later told police she had never showed up. On Sunday afternoon, she called her mother on FaceTime while trying to rent a scooter on South Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, saying she had been refused service for not wearing shoes. When she said she planned to drive home to Tampa, Florida, about nine hours away, her mother advised her to stay in Myrtle Beach for the night. After that, however, all calls went to voicemail. Ms Wahl was found two days later behind the Hannah-Salem-Friendfield fire station in rural South Carolina. The station, just a small metal engine shed with three garages, is on the side of US route 378 and would have been on her route home. Employees at the scooter rental shop told WMBF News that her father had visited them on Monday to inquire after her. The Myrtle Beach Police Department said on Facebook that she had left [its] jurisdiction safely before her body was found. A memorial GoFundMe page set up by Ms Wahls friend and roommate Elizabeth Echenique I described her as a person with a pure heart of gold who was always trying to make her friends and family feel loved and accepted. Ms Echenique wrote: Sheridan was 21 years old with so much going for her. Her mother and father are amazing, loving parents who I know to have always supported Sheridan. She was an amazing musician and many times would sit down to make music for fun and relaxation alone and with friends. She loved fashion and was very healthy. She was spontaneous and knew how to make you laugh. She added that Ms Wahls car had been found crashed on Monday and that witnesses reported a white man driving away from the scene. However, that has not been confirmed by local police. Close Police respond to 'active shooter' at Tennessee grocery store At least one person was killed and another 14 shot in a mass shooting near Memphis, Tennessee. At least four were in a critical condition, while five were non-critical. The shooter is deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. The shooting occurred at a Kroger grocery store in Collierville, about 30 miles east of Memphis. Collierville police chief Dale Lane told a press conference: This is the most horrific event to happen in Collierville history. You know obviously its like every other community in the country, its horrific, we hate that it happened. but this is one of the most resilient communities in America, he said. Police, plus fire and rescue crews descended on the location and set up a perimeter after the first reports of an active shooter at 1.30 pm local time. Two medical helicopters touched down at the site and the nearby Collierville High School was put in lockdown. Police from nearby Memphis arrived at the crime scene to assist local officers with securing the perimeter. While the shooter was deceased, active scenes remained as police searched the gunmans car that remained in the parking lot. Brignetta Dickerson was at a cash register and played dead when the gunman started popping that gun, hitting one man in the head. She said he could still talk. It sounded a bit like a balloon popping. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap just like that. she told WREG-TV. Another employee Glenda McDonald said she ran out the front door after hearing shots fired from near the deli. Several people did get shot some customers and employees, she told told Fox 13. The only thing I heard was the gunshots. Trump White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany inadvertently slammed her own former administration as she tweeted about the rise in murders last year, claiming that it was President Joe Bidens fault despite Donald Trump being in charge at the time. The US murder rate under Joe Biden... Ms McEnany wrote in the now-deleted tweet along with a graph from The New York Times showing the spike in murders during 2020. Mr Biden became president on 20 January, 2021. Last year, the US saw the biggest spike in murders since records began 60 years previously, data collected by the FBI has shown. The FBIs yearly summary The Uniform Crime Report has revealed that the number of murders rose by 29 per cent in 2020, more than twice as large as the previous largest one-year spike 12.7 per cent in 1968. But the national rate of murders measured per 100,000 people is still about one-third below what it was in the early 1990s. Analysis of the numbers, which will be officially released on Monday, shows that the spike of murders during the summer of 2020 was not as large as the rise during the same period this year. The previous largest rise in the total number of killings, 1,938, came in 1990. The figures from the FBI show that almost 5,000 more murders were committed in 2020 compared to 2019. A total of 21,500 people were murdered last year, a figure still below the early 1990s. The New York Times reported that analysts have noted several possible factors in the rise of murders, such as issues stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, a worsening relationship between the public and police officers following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May, 2020, police stepping back as a result of the pushback, and an increased number of people carrying guns. The number of New York City police officers fell by more than 2,500 between 2019 and 2020. Around 77 per cent the highest share ever of the murders reported in 2020 were the result of gun violence. Ten years ago, that number was 67 per cent. In cities with more than 250,000 people that provided full data, murders rose by 35 per cent. In cities with between 100,000 and 250,000 residents, the number of killings spiked by over 40 per cent. In cities with fewer than 25,000 people, murder rose by around 25 per cent. In March, the FBI said that murders had risen by at least 20 per cent all over the country. In the Midwest, the figures rose by 30 per cent. Murders had increased by at least 20 per cent in counties won by both President Joe Biden as well as those won by former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. For the 32nd year in a row, Louisiana had the highest rate of murders. Murders were up at the start of 2020, but spiked in June and remained high for the rest of last year. Violent crime also increased last year, by about five per cent, but overall, crime fell between four and five per cent in 2020 the 18th year in a row in which the overall crime rate declined. Data from 87 cities shows that the number of murders has risen by 9.9 per cent in 2021 compared to 2020, a much smaller increase than the previous year, The New York Times reported. But 2021 has less available data to analyse at this time. A memorial site has been set up for Gabby Petito outside The Monarch, a restaurant and art collaborative space in Ogden, Utah, where she posted her last Instagram photo. The photo of Gabby, which was shared widely across social media, showed Ms Petito smiling broadly in the sunshine as she stood in front of the distinctive mural of an orange Monarch butterfly on a black and white background. Ms Petito, a 22-year-old van life blogger, went missing while on a road trip with her fiance. Her remains were later discovered on the edge of the Grand Teton National Park, and her death ruled a homicide by a coroner. Brian Laundrie, her fiance and a person of interest in the case, has since also disappeared, leaving many unanswered questions as a major hunt for him continues. The Utah artwork became an impromptu memorial to Gabby Petito when Ogden residents Jack McMahon, Seth Schilling and Jenna Burdess decided to honour her memory with a gathering there on Monday night. Explaining the motivation behind the tribute, Jake McMahon wrote in a Facebook post that although Ms Petito wasnt from Utah, she was a human being who saw the beauty of Utah/Ogden from all the way in Florida. If she can show Utah some love, we can show her some love and come together with one another in her memory. Mr McMahon continues to take care of the site and told The Independent that theres still a steady stream of people visiting daily to pay their respects and leave tributes. In order to make sure nothing gets stolen or damaged, I take home the gifts and cards each night around 8pm and I bring them back each morning around 8am. Morning, afternoon and night, people have been there each time Ive been there. He says hes seen more than 100 people at the mural, and so far, everyone who has visited has been very positive and respectful. We have some books that each person can write a message to Gabby or her loved ones (well be sending these to her family afterward), and the messages they write have been so heartwarming, he said. Flowers, candles and notes left at the Monarch memorial site in Utah (Jake McMahon) Mr McMahon added that some people have got in touch about other missing persons, and he agrees that more attention should be paid to those cases as well. I think this is motivating people to do more about other cases, which is the bigger picture here, he said. Hes posted details of several other unsolved missing person reports on his Facebook page, including Daniel Robinson, Rosemary Medina, Randilee Myo, Kylen Shulte and Crystal Turner. I agree that other/similar cases should get more exposure too, which is why Ive been so humbled to see the number of "missing person" posts being shared on my social media pages nearly quadruple overnight. Yes, were focusing on Gabby right now, but this has made everyone realize that this isnt a rare case, and similar things happen quite often whether we realise it or not. Its obvious to many that Gabby was a beautiful soul who would light up a room, and she didnt deserve this fate whatsoever, Mr McMahon said, adding that he thought Gabbys case has struck a particular chord with people who understood the pressure to present relationships in an idealised way on the Internet. I think this case is more heartbreaking to people because of the stigma of wanting to seem perfect on social media, especially in a relationship. I think its common nature to portray something a certain way online, but when the context of the tragedy kind of contradicts that picture that was being painted online, it brings eyes to the situation. I just feel as though Gabby was a beautiful soul who was still finding her way in this world, even without knowing her personally. Mr McMahon said he thought it was fitting that Ms Petito had posed in front of a Monarch butterfly in her last photo, as she was somewhat of a migrant butterfly herself! I thought the metaphor was beautiful, he said. Nothing about the disappearance of Daniel Robinson seems to make much sense. The young geologist was always close and in contact with his family until suddenly he disappeared for significant chunks of time. He was smiling, happy-go-lucky, and always loved to chat until suddenly he had a thousand-yard stare and couldnt hold a conversation. A large, 70-square-mile search area by air and land failed to find any trace of the missing man for almost a month until suddenly his Jeep was found just a short distance from where he was last seen. Police, private investigators, family and friends remained baffled as to what happened. Is it foul play? A planned disappearance? An endangered missing persons case? This is everything we know about Daniel Robinson and the bizarre circumstance that led to his disappearance in the hot desert of Arizona. Who is Daniel Robinson? South Carolina native Daniel Robinson, 24, graduated from the College of Charleston two years ago with a major in archaeology. He moved to Arizona after landing a job with Matrix New World Engineering. He is described as a 58 Black man weighing 165 pounds with black hair, brown eyes and a distinctive characteristic; he is missing part of his right forearm, including his hand. He was a keen outdoorsman, musician and traveller who was always close with his family and remained in constant contact with his parents and siblings. Family, friends and coworkers said hes really happy-go-lucky, loves to have conversations and hes always smiling. In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, and on the morning he vanished, Mr Robinson went from behaving normally to behaving erratically. He made some comments family thought were odd, and one day he left his apartment wide open, and disappeared from contact for a significant chunk of time before returning. The last time and place he was seen alive He was last seen by coworker Ken Elliot at a well site near Buckeye, Arizona on 23 June around 9.15am local time. The pair had met for the first time that morning to assess a remote drill site in the Arizona desert. The job site was near Sun Valley Parkway and Cactus Road in Buckeye. Temperatures throughout the summer climb well above 115 degrees and theres next to no shelter. Mr Elliott told The Independent that everything seemed fine as they discussed the weather and the job. But within a matter of minutes, Mr Robinsons demeanour changed from normal to distracted. He was just looking off into the desert; he had a very, very distant look in his eyes, Mr Elliott said. Whenever hed turn around again, I would look at him and look into his eyes the first thing I thought was maybe it was drugs or something ... [but] his pupils were not dilated. From that standpoint, everything appeared to be normal, Mr Elliott said. Then I thought this was a medical condition or something. I wasnt too sure. I kept watching him, but he just kept turning around and looking off into the desert. Then he just turned around and walked back over to his Jeep, and I just assumed he was going to get something out of his vehicle. And he opened the door, got in, sat down, put on his seatbelt, then he looked at me and just waved at me and backed up and took off. While family and friends described Mr Robinson as "happy-go-lucky", Mr Elliott said he didnt see that side of him. He was reported missing soon after disappearing Mr Elliott informed his coworkers by phone about the situation, assuming the younger geologist wasnt feeling well and would call in sick. Hours later, no one had heard from Mr Robinson, and Mr Elliott went investigating finding the 24-year-olds Jeep tracks heading further into the desert. When I saw that, my heart sank, because it just told me that he wasnt going home, Mr Elliott said. Something was really not right. Father David Robinson told The Independent that the family in South Carolina became concerned after his son failed to check in that same day, which was unusual. "We didnt know what was going on; we know Dan does not ignore his phone calls, Mr Robinson said. I can imagine his phone ringing, ringing, ringing for I think almost a day and then finally I guess the phone died or somebody cut it off. After that point, it goes straight to the voicemail. He was reported missing to Buckeye Police Department the same day he was seen. The search continues The search has been led by Buckeye Police Department, using UTVs, cadaver dogs, "boots on the ground" and drones flying overhead, along with assistance in the air from Phoenix Firebird helicopters and civil air patrol. Family members travelled from the East Coast to Arizona to join the search, which covered an area of 70 square miles. On 19 July, almost a full month later, a rancher found his 2017 Jeep Renegade in a ravine just a few miles from the worksite where he was last seen by Mr Elliott. It had landed on its side with "significant damage". Police said a seatbelt had been worn at the time, and the airbags were found deployed. The vehicle contained Mr Robinsons phone, wallet, keys, and, curiously, the clothes he was last seen wearing. Bottled water was also found. The ravine was searched on the ground by foot and in the air by the Department of Public Safety Ranger helicopter, but they found no further trace of Mr Robinson. On the same day, the family hired a private investigator: former police officer Jeff McGrath. On 31 July, a human skull was found but it did not belong to Mr Robinson, nor did it belong to another missing person. Its identity remains unknown. Other remains recovered during searches were determined to be animal bones. Strange circumstances after the disappearance Based on GPS data, Mr McGrath told the mans family that the vehicle got into multiple accidents after the geologists disappearance, but before it finally fell down the ravine. Evidence from the vehicle strangely shows that it crashed, the airbags deployed, then drove another 11 miles and was involved in another crash, said Mr McGrath, who specialises in accident investigations. The first crash was four hours after he went missing, based on the GPS data, while there was also some "paint transfer" from the vehicle. After that first accident, its unknown where the vehicle was taken next. Mr McGrath said that after the airbags were deployed, the ignition was turned on at least 46 more times during the additional 11 miles put on the Jeep. It was found only a few miles from the place Mr Robinson was seen, in an area that had already been searched. "Because of the rough terrain, the vehicle was not clearly visible to crews searching by air and foot," police said in a press release. What police think happened There was no blood found in the car and there are no indications of foul play, police said. Carissa Planalp, Buckeye PDs public information officer, said they were continuing to analyse the evidence and data taken from the geologists vehicle. But they still have no indication of where he is or what happened. "Were looking for any information from the public and the public has really come out in a big way through searches and through providing information thats been so helpful. But we need more. We need more information, she said. The search, and the case, remain open. What the private investigator thinks happened Mr McGrath says, at minimum, we have an endangered missing person case. If hes not right in his head and he just kind of wanders off, that could be a problem, he said. Maybe he did just take off, but hes got nothing. Theres no evidence that he built an account somewhere to have money; he didnt have much money to begin with. He didnt have a phone, his ID ... we didnt see any of that pre-planning that you would see if somebody just wanted to just go be someone else. What the family thinks happened While the geologists family are holding out hope and trying to keep the search alive, his father believes he may have met with foul play. Mr Robinson believes his sons Jeep, found two miles away with no blood or no sign of bodies nearby, was "dumped". It was returned to an area near where we were searching my theory would be maybe to try to throw us off, he told The Independent. Buckeye Police Department, they did a search, they didnt find a vehicle and also my search team had been out there; they hadnt seen the vehicle, he added. As the Robinson family continues to search and hope and pray, the elder Mr Robinson said, hes clinging to one specific personal theory. I believe that, somehow, Gods going to bring my son back alive, he said. A bipartisan effort spurred by the death of George Floyd to pass a police reform bill in Congress has collapsed, US lawmakers said Wednesday, in a setback for President Joe Biden. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was approved by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in March but has been stalled in the Senate. Democratic and Republican senators had been seeking to hammer out a compromise and bring the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote but they said on Wednesday that they have given up. The failure of the negotiations is a blow to Biden, who was elected last year with strong African-American support and has pledged to make police reform a priority of his administration. Biden accused Republicans of rejecting even modest reforms while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address. I still hope to sign into law a comprehensive and meaningful police reform bill that honours the name and memory of George Floyd, because we need legislation to ensure lasting and meaningful change, he said in a statement. Biden said the White House will consult with members of Congress, law enforcement, civil rights groups and victims families to define a path forward, including potential executive actions.Democratic Senator Cory Booker had been engaged in months of negotiations with Republican Senator Tim Scott in a bid to reach an agreement on the legislation. It remains out of reach right now, Mr Booker said. The time has come to explore all other options to achieve meaningful and common sense policing reform. Scott said the two sides had reached an agreement on numerous areas including banning chokeholds, limiting the transfer of military equipment to police and increased mental health resources. Democrats said no because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement, he said, adding that they have squandered a crucial opportunity to implement meaningful reform. The House bill was named after George Floyd, the 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, sparking protests against racial injustice and police brutality across the United States. Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, expressed extreme disappointment. In the last year and a half, we have witnessed hundreds of thousands of Americans urging lawmakers to bring desperately needed change to policing in this country so there can be greater accountability, transparency, and ultimately trust in policing, Mr Crump said. Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights organization, said it was disheartening that there is a lack of courage and bravery to bring about true reform. But one thing is clear, the battle for police reform is far from over, Mr Johnson said. It will remain a top priority for us because innocent lives are at stake. The City of Los Angeles no longer has to move the entire homeless population of its Skid Row area into shelters by October after an order was struck down by a panel of judges. A federal appeals court unanimously overturned US District Court Judge David Carters decision, which he gave officials in the California city earlier this year. The three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Judge Carter had failed to follow basic legal requirements in making his order. He had made the decision following a lawsuit brought against the city by a group of downtown Los Angeles business owners, residents and some formerly homeless people. Both the city and the county had appealed his ruling. We won an important victory in the Ninth Circuit today, but Los Angeles remains in the grips of a homelessness crisis, said City Attorney Mike Feuer in a statement. All officials need to share Judge Carters intense sense of urgency. With todays ruling, the ball is now squarely in the court of elected leaders. That means deeper collaboration between the City and County, additional state and federal resources, fundamental improvements in engaging people experiencing homelessness, and more driving to real solutions that reduce street homelessness and make our public spaces once again safe and accessible for everyone. In April Judge Carter ordered the city to place $1bn, its whole homelessness budget, into escrow to make sure it was not being wasted, and gave the city 180 days to offer shelter the thousands of people living on the 50-block area Skid Row. The judge has ordered a December status conference to discuss where the case now stands. The appeals panel ruled that most of the people who sued the city and county had no legal standing to bring the case, and that Judge Carter used novel legal theories that no one had argued. They also said that he had ruled claims that no one had alleged in the case and on evidence that had not been given in court. Neither snow nor rain nor the flash flooding of Hurricane Ida keeps New Yorks food delivery workers from the swift completion of their appointed pizza and shawarma rounds. In return, the City Council is expected to pass a sweeping slate of legislation to improve the working conditions of the couriers contracted by food delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub. The new laws come three weeks after a viral video showed a bike rider, carrying a plastic bag, trudging through knee-deep floodwaters in Brooklyn. It has been viewed millions of times and led to a search, that still continues, for the rider speculated to be a food delivery worker for Grubhub. While Grubhub found nothing indicating he was one of their couriers, the video nonetheless blew wind in the sails in the campaign of Los Deliveristas Unidos, an activist group of mostly immigrant delivery workers that had been demanding better pay and safer conditions. The new laws will guarantee minimum per-trip payments, independent of tips. Payment would also be regulated, ensuring apps cant charge workers fees to receive their tips and wages. Workers will be allowed access to the bathrooms of restaurants theyre delivering from when picking up an order. Restaurants that refuse will be fined for every offence. Theyll also be able to set their own delivery radius on how far theyll travel, and decide whether they accept trips across bridges or tunnels. The food delivery apps themselves generally support the City Councils new laws for workers, though the three largest Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats have separately taken the City Council to federal court to oppose caps on fees they can charge to the restaurants. These bills are common-sense steps to support the delivery workers who work hard every day for New Yorks restaurants and residents," a spokesperson told The Independent. "Ensuring they receive a living wage and have access to restrooms isnt just a good idea its the right thing to do. DoorDash was also broadly in favour of supporting delivery workers in ways that would not have "unintended consequences. We recognize the unique challenges facing delivery workers in New York City and share the goal of identifying policies that will help Dashers and workers like them," a spokesman said. The new laws were expected to pass on Thursday after the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, added his support to the measures this week. The exploitation of delivery drivers is unacceptable, de Blasio spokesperson Bill Neidhardt told THE CITY. City Hall wholeheartedly supports these bills to protect delivery workers and deeply appreciates the grassroots organizing of Los Deliveristas Unidos to make this possible. In an accident loaded with symbolism, an ambulance towing a giant Trump Unity display crashed into a telephone pole in a three-car pileup. The crash took place at around 1pm on Wednesday at an intersection in Flint , Michigan , police told MLive . No major injuries were reported. Donald Trump enthusiast Rob Cortis, who created what he calls the Trump Unity Bridge, was driving the ambulance. He says another vehicle sped past a red light into the road in front of him, causing them to crash. As we went through I hit the side of her, and it spun the ambulance around to where I ended up hitting this pole, Mr Cortis told MLive . The Livonia, Michigan native said one driver was given medical attention for chest pain, possibly from her seatbelt or airbag, but Flint police confirmed to MLive that there were no severe injuries. So hopefully well pray for her, and shell be all safe, and well move on, Mr Cortis said. Mr Cortis said he was driving home from an event protesting school mask mandates at the time. It was not immediately clear why he owns an ambulance, which itself is emblazoned with the phrase, TRUMP: Save the USA. The Trump Unity Bridge is a common site in Michigan, where it often appears at protests and rallies. The 30-foot trailer carries large banners of pro-Trump slogans, such as Making America Great Again, Build the Wall, and Drain the Swamp. On Wednesday, that pile of slogans could be seen languishing in the rain between the smashed ambulance, its lights still blinking, and a badly damaged silver sedan. Its just unfortunate that things like this have to happen, but thank God nobody was seriously hurt, Mr Cortis said. Civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton toured camps set up by more than 12,000 Haitian migrants near the international bride in Del Rio, Texas on Thursday where he called for the Biden administration to immediately suspend deportation efforts for the desperate migrants. Mr Sharpton spoke at a news conference on Thursday around noon local time, explaining that he and others were in Del Rio to pray with the migrants in the camps and assess the situation after speaking with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a day earlier. In particular, Mr Sharpton said there needed to be total accountability surrounding the actions of US Customs and Border Protection agents in Del Rio, who were seen over the past several days confronting migrants on horseback, in some cases as they fled through waist-deep water. Some images and videos showed agents brandishing the reins of their horse tack in a whiplike fashion, leading to questions about whether CBP agents used the reins in that manner against mostly Black migrants. You can look at the weaponisation of horses alone, he said. Progressives have echoed similar claims on social media over the past week and condemned the use of horses, which some said evoked imagery of slave patrols from Americas racist past. Mr Sharpton said that the Biden administration needed to act quickly and change how it was addressing the situation; DHS has begun deportation flights carrying migrants from the Del Rio camp to Haiti, and have scheduled four more flights for Tuesday. What is going on here is a crisis that everyone concerned with human rights or civil rights should be dealing with, Rev Sharpton continued at the press conference. The fact is, the deportation flights should cease immediately, and asylum should be granted to those that are certainly qualified for asylum. Pointing out the recent earthquake and tropical storm that have ravaged the island nation of Haiti as well as the assassination of its president Mr Sharpton said I dont know how you could more qualify for asylum than that. The White House said on Thursday that the use of horses among border agents has been suspended at Del Rio, an announcement echoed by DHS. The White House has made no indication that President Joe Biden plans to reverse course and allow any of the migrants to pursue asylum in the US before deportation. To be granted asylum in the US, one must reach the US border and apply at a port of entry, or be already inside the US when applying. The US began expelling all immigrants who arrived at the US-Mexico border to apply for asylum last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic, though the Biden administration reversed much of the Trump administration's restrictions on US asylum policy. The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba could receive new guests as the Biden administration struggles with the surge of Haitians illegally crossing the USs southern border, according to reports. The move caused an immediate fracture between the White House and the progressive edges of the Democratic party, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling the plan "utterly shameful". Fellow Squad member Ilhan Omar said it was an "embarrassingly bad decision", adding: "Do better". NBC News reported that the Department of Homeland Security is seeking a private contractor to operate a migrant detention facility at the base, with the requirement some of the guards speak fluent Spanish and Haitian Creole. The story was published online just as Democrats held a press conference demanding an end to "racism of how theyre being treated", with Andy Levin tweeting "Haitian lives matter". The White House, DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by the outlet. In a government listing, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says its looking for private contractors to guard the Migrant Operations Center at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. While the facility is estimated to hold 20 people per day, the listing suggests migrants could be placed in temporary housing at the site under contingencies for a "surge event" of up to 400 people. The listing says the facility has a capacity of 120, meaning the vast majority of "migrants and other vulnerable populations" detained at Guantanamo Bay would be placed in hastily assembled living conditions during a surge. "This equipment includes tents and cots, and the contractor must be able to have these assembled and ready with little notice. In addition, the service provider must maintain a roster of at least 50 individuals," the listing says. "At least 10% of the augmented personnel must be fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole." The listing was first reported by NBC Newss Ken Dilanian along with Jacob Soboroff, who scrutinised the Trump administrations immigration policies in the bestselling book Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. They note that the former president Donald Trump reportedly considered sending immigrants to the base, but that officials quashed the idea before it could be made public. That claim was made by former DHS official Miles Taylor writing under the Anonymous pseudonym in the book, A Warning. He said Trump proposed designating illegal immigrants as "enemy combatants" and shipping them to Guantanamo Bay alongside hardened terrorists, which includes the architect of the 9/11 terror attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. State Department spokesperson Ned Price has slammed Haiti Special Envoy Daniel Foote for supposedly lying in his resignation letter and for not properly raising his concerns about migrants leaving the country amid multiple crises. There have been multiple senior-level policy conversations on Haiti, where all proposals, including those led by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process, Mr Price said in a statement to The Independent. Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false. It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation, Mr Price added. He failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead. Im not going to parse the contents of his resignation letter, but I do want to emphasize that we have active policy debates in this administration on a number of issues. The role of the Presidents cabinet and his advisors is to provide the President with the best advice possible. No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas, Mr Price said. Mr Foote resigned after less than two months in the job, arguing that he cant stay amid the Biden administrations inhumane deportation policies. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life, Mr Foote said in his resignation letter on Wednesday. Haitians have been fleeing political turmoil following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on 7 July and natural disasters such as the earthquake on 14 August that caused widespread devastation. He sought a broader mandate and oversight responsibilities, which we did not think was appropriate or prudent at the time. He shortly thereafter submitted his resignation, a senior State Department official said according to The Miami Herald. Mr Foote was appointed to the job in July after Mr Moises assassination. He served as the ambassador to Zambia under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. Mr Foote said in his resignation letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was leaving his job with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes. Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own, he added in the scathing message. Mr Foote said the Haitian people are mired in poverty and are hostage to the terror, kidnappings, robberies and massacres of armed gangs and that theyre suffering under a corrupt government that has alliances with those gangs. Arguing against the deportation of Haitian migrants who have made it to the southern US border, Mr Foote said Haiti simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy. The collapsed state is unable to provide security or basic services, and more refugees will fuel further desperation and crime. Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haitis unacceptable misery, he wrote. He added that Haiti needs immediate assistance and money to deliver Covid vaccines and so many other things. Blasting international political interference in the country, Mr Foote said that what Haitians really want is to choose their own path without international puppeteering and favoured candidates. Last week, the US and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support ... for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his political agreement over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society, Mr Foote added. The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner again is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences, not only in Haiti, but in the US and our neighbours in the hemisphere, he concluded. A three-decade-old clip of US president Joe Biden saying it would not matter if Haiti sunk has resurfaced as his administration faces a backlash for its handling of the influx of Haitian migrants. The remarks were made by Mr Biden in 1994 during an interview with PBS when he was the senator for Delaware. Mr Biden was asked if then president Bill Clinton would invade Haiti following the 1991 military coup against democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the conversation, he said: If Haiti, a god awful thing to say, if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot in terms of our interest. This video has been around for years but it was widely shared this week after thousands of Haitian migrants encamped in the town of Del Rio near the US-Mexico border were forcefully sent back to their homeland. The White House faced backlash after videos showed horse-mounted border protection officers manoeuvring and whipping migrants attempting to cross the border, a tactic compared to Americas dark history of slave patrols. A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuna Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, on 19 September (AFP via Getty Images) Democrats have called on the Biden administration to end the use of Trump-era immigration rule Title 42 to deport migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek asylum. Despite the criticism, the administration has deported over 12,000 Haitians assembled at the border. The deportation comes at a time when Haiti is struggling to recover from the 7 July assassination of President Jovenel Moise and a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in mid-August that killed more than 2,200 people. But at the same time, many Haitian migrants camped in the border town of Del Rio are being released into the US in an effort to empty the camp under the International Bridge between Mexico and the US. There were more than 14,000 people in the camp over the weekend. On Tuesday, Texas governor Greg Abbott, during a visit to Del Rio, said the most recent tally at the camp was about 8,600 migrants. The criteria for deciding who is flown back to Haiti and who is released in the US are unclear, although officials maintained that single adults were a priority for expulsion flights. Those considered vulnerable, including pregnant women, families with young children and those with medical issues are more likely to be released in the US. Lashing out at the treatment of migrants, vice president Kamala Harris on Tuesday said: What I saw depicted about those individuals on horseback, treating human beings the way they were was horrible. I fully support what is happening right now, which is a thorough investigation into what is going on there, but human beings should never be treated that way, and Im deeply troubled about it. Ms Harris added that she would be in touch with Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On Monday, Mr Mayorkas had warned people from entering the US illegally saying: If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your familys life. Republicans have also sharpened their attack on the president, accusing him of letting Haitians believe they would get asylum in the US. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is still persona non grata with former President Donald Trump. The former president was quizzed on the issue during a radio interview on the John Fredericks Show, during which Mr Fredericks brought up reports in various media outlets from April speculating that he may be mending ties with the GOP Senate leader. Mr Trump held Mr McConnell responsible for not whipping senators to vote in favour of objections to the counting of the Electoral College votes from several states due to the former presidents false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. No, no, the former president said dismissively when Mr Fredericks suggested their relationship was on the mend. He went on to suggest that his endorsement was the reason that Mr McConnell won reelection against a well-funded Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, who raised nearly $90 million in her losing Senate bid while barely coming within 20 points of Mr McConnell on Election Day. The only guys who win are the guys who embraced the MAGA movement, Mr Trump said, referring to the Make America Great Again slogan as well as the phenomenon that has gripped the Republican Party where loyalty to the former president frequently trumps all other qualities in primary elections. The Senate GOP leaders campaign did not immediately respond to The Independents request for comment regarding Mr Trumps comments. Mr Trump also took aim at two GOP senators who supported his impeachment following the deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Their political opponents in the Democratic Party, the former president suggested, were more unified than the GOP caucus despite the very public feud currently ongoing between the Democrats conservative and progressive wings over President Joe Bidens infrastructure bill. The Democrats dont have a Romney and a dumb little Ben Sasse, he said, adding: They stick together whether you like them or not. In April, several news outlets, including one in Mr McConnells home state, the Lexington Herald-Leader, suggested that the feud between the two men may be abating after the Senate GOP leader declined to attack the former president or even mention his name after Mr Trump called him a dumb son of a bitch and a stone-cold loser during a donor event. At the time, allies of Mr McConnell suggested that the Kentucky senator did not hold Mr Trump in personal disregard despite his stinging criticism of Mr Trump for a dereliction of duty in a Senate floor speech while voting to acquit him at his second impeachment trial. Right now, its sort of a one-sided thing. The leader has no animosity and hes made it very clear he wants to work with the president to get the majority back, Sen John Thune told The Hill in April. Mr Thune added that he was hoping the president and leader at some point can come to an understanding. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Donald Trump is a fading brand, according to a new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Peril, co-authored by The Washington Post duo, is a damming account of the Trump administration and quotes Mr McConnell saying there is a clear trend moving, in the Republican Party, as sucking up to Donald Trump is not a strategy that works. Mr McConnell said the former president is retired or OTTB as they say in Kentucky off-the-track Thoroughbred. Mr McConnell has previously stated that he wants to get as far away from Trumps Republicanism in the lead up to 2022 midterm elections, and the book claims that if the former president endorsed a candidate that he believed would not win the pair could come to loggerheads. The only place I can see Trump and me actually at loggerheads would be if he gets behind some clown who clearly cant win, Mr McConnell is quoted as saying in Peril. To have a chance of getting the Senate back, you have to have the most electable candidates possible. Mr Trump lashed out at Mr McConnell in August, I have quietly said for years that Mitch McConnell is the most overrated man in politics now I dont have to be quiet anymore, he said of the Senate minority leader, who supported the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package. He is working so hard to give Biden a victory, now theyll go for the big one, including the biggest tax increases in the history of our country, continued Trump. US Representative for Wyoming Liz Cheney has outspokenly agreed with Mitch McConnells views that the GOP must go in another direction, but plenty of prominent GOP lawmakers dont agree. United States Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham has previously said the party cant grow if Donald Trump is not part of the party. Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no, he said on Fox News. The Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, is another who backs Mr Trumps involvement in the party. Despite his stance on the future of the GOP, Mr McConnell did vote against impeaching Trump in his second trial following the 6 January riots at the US Capitol. Peril was released on 21 September and follows, as the book blurb claims, one of the most dangerous periods in American history during which at the highest level of the US military, secret action was taken to prevent Mr Trump from possibly starting a war. Gun-toting Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert has sparked a backlash after she said rape survivors needed a Glock 19 pistol at the time of their assault instead of abortion rights. Addressing the House floor, the Colorado representative said: Rape victims need abortion. Wrong. They need love. They need support. They need safety and healing. They needed a Glock 19 when it happened. Her pro-gun and anti-abortion views drew sharp reactions from social media users. I want to say this is the stupidest thing Ive ever heard but Ive heard a lot of stupid, said Molly Jong-Fast, the editor at large for The Daily Beast. Colorado [representative] Lauren Boebert blames rape victims for their own assaults, saying they should have been armed to fend off rapists, wrote Shannon Watta, founder of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement demanding a solution to gun violence. The vast majority of rape victims -- more than two-thirds -- are assaulted by someone they know. Sharing personal story of assault, a user said: I was repeatedly raped by multiple family members. At 6 I dont think a fire arm would have helped me very much. Ms Boebert, a strong advocate of gun rights, has positioned herself as pro-life and family values and has cosponsored a number of anti-abortion bills. These include the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act aimed at ensuring that no federal funds are used to pay for abortion and the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which prohibits abortion of a foetus older than 20 weeks, among others. Earlier on 16 September, she shared a video titled abortion is murder on her Facebook page. I rise to speak in defence of those who cannot defend themselves. The voiceless, the unborn, she says in the video. I rise to say what we have all known to be true that human lives begins at conception because we know science is real (sic). In the video, she said that no taxpayer should be forced to pay for abortion. Abortion is not healthcare, it is murder. I will not stand by quiet. I say, planned parenthood can go fund themselves. The video was marked as sensitive content by Facebook. Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used a Scooby-Doo meme to make the case the Green New Deal is actually Chinese-style communism as she spoke on the floor of the House. If the American people actually knew what ... these globalist, America-last policies are, I believe that they would be ringing every single phone up here, probably demanding that Congress go home because America is only safe when Congress is out of session, she said. But unfortunately Congress is in session so lets tell the truth about whats happening. This is a simple meme that you would find on the internet, Ms Greene said, standing beside an image of Fred Jones of the Scooby-Doo Gang unmasking an unknown villain with Green New Deal written across the hood. As the fabric is pulled away, the hammer, sickle, and star from the Soviet flag are revealed. The emblem of the Chinese Communist Party includes the hammer and sickle but not the star. This meme is very real. The Green New Deal surprise serves China and China only, Ms Greene said. The Green New Deal is a congressional resolution introduced by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey in February 2019. The resolution details a plan for taking on the climate crisis and urges the federal government to stop using fossil fuels and to end greenhouse gas emissions to slow the warming of the planet. Following her lead, an aide then removed the Scooby-Doo meme and replaced it with an image of a smiling Xi Jinping, the president of China, with the words: I own Joe Biden ... and now I own Afghanistans lithium deposits. Talking about the Green New Deal and the all-out war on the men and women who built this country, which is definitely happening every single day here in Congress, Democrats want to turn out the lights on America. They want to shut down our economy, they want to end our energy independence, and surrender America, putting us on our knees, to China, dependent on China. Ms Greene has made a name for herself by spreading conspiracy theories and for her undying loyalty to former President Donald Trump. Illinois anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger tweeted that Congress is no longer serious with people like this in response to Ms Greenes House floor spiel. Ms Greene tweeted on Wednesday night that her time to speak had been halved and that she was going to return to finish her argument. Congress is so dysfunctional that my special order tonight was changed three times today and cut in half from one hour to 30 minutes, she wrote. These people would fail in the real world and be fired from a normal job. So expect part two of why the Green New Deal serves China, coming soon. Twitter users were quick to mock Ms Greene. This is a parody account right, one account holder asked. Really? A bad meme? Thats what you bring, no real arguments? another added. Sad thing is she thinks this is witty, a third added. We are laughing at you, NOT with you. A bit of grandstanding by senator Ted Cruz appeared to backfire on Wednesday as three election experts flatly told him his states laws are racist. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled Restoring the Voting Rights Act: Combating Discriminatory Abuses, Mr Cruz began by asking a confrontational question. In your judgement, are voter ID laws racist? the Texas Republican asked. It depends, responded Franita Tolson, a professor at the USC Gould School of Law. One thing we have to stop doing is treating all voter ID laws as the same. Mr Cruz did not let her elaborate, citing his limited time. Instead, he asked her which voter ID laws are racist. Apologies, Mr Cruz, Ms Tolson replied. Your state of Texas, perhaps? OK, so you think the entire state of Texas is racist? the senator shot back. I think, sir, thats pretty reductive, Ms Tolson said calmly. Im not saying the entire state of Texas is racist Mr Cruz cut her off again. You tell me, what about the Texas voter ID law is racist? he asked. The professor didnt blink. The fact that the voter ID law was put into place to diminish the political power of Latinos, with racist intent, she answered. Youre asserting that, Mr Cruz said, cutting her off again. Whats your evidence of that? The federal district court that first resolved the constitutionality of Texas voter ID law, she replied without missing a beat. In 2017, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that Texas voter ID law which requires voters to present a drivers license or other identification to cast a ballot violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Texas voting rules are considered some of the strictest in the country, and the state recently passed a new law to make them even stricter. Experts, including the ones Mr Cruz faced off with, have said the rules have a disproportionate impact on voters of colour. After his questioning of Ms Tolson, Mr Cruz appeared eager to move on to the next panelist. In quick succession, the next two gave him the same answer. I agree with Professor Tolson, replied John C Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Voter ID laws can be racist. There are some voter ID laws that are racially discriminatory in intent, answered Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. How about in practice? Mr Cruz asked. Yes, Mr Saenz answered. In effect, I think that there are discriminatory effects from a number of voter ID laws. The next two experts, however, gave Mr Cruz the opposite answer when asked if such laws are racist. No, sir, Maureen Riordan, an attorney at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, replied simply. No, answered Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, particularly because every single state that has passed an ID law has put in a provision to provide a free ID to anyone who doesn't have one. The turnout numbers show it has no effect. Update, 23 September 2021: An earlier version of this article said the entire panel Senator Cruz was addressing described Texas voter ID laws as racist. While three described the laws as racist, two other members of the panel disagreed. Donald Trump has raged against on-and-off ally Lindsey Graham for reportedly admitting in private that the former US presidents election lies amounted to grade school whining. Mr Graham, as reported by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in Peril, admitted in private that Mr Trumps allegations of voting fraud were third grade. As did Utah senator Mike Lee, who Mr Woodward and Mr Costa wrote was surprised by Mr Trumps lawyers theorising that he could win the presidency by asking then-vice president Mike Pence to throw away several Electoral College votes. Mr Trump, following the publication of those allegations on Tuesday, issued an attack on his part-time ally, Mr Graham, as well as Mr Lee, on Wednesday night. He wrote that both senators had been unwilling to fight for the Presidency of the United States, and that in fact, they had not spoken with the outgoing president about the 2020 election scam. The remarks did not acknowledge that there was no fraud. Lindsey [Graham] and Mike [Lee] should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win, wrote Mr Trump in a statement via his Save America PAC. Republicans who were unwilling to fight for the Presidency of the United States, which would have included at least an additional four Republican Senators, two in Georgia, one in Michigan, one in Arizona, are letting the Democrats get away with the greatest Election Hoax in history, he alleged. A total con job! Mr Trump appeared to ignore the fact that Mr Graham and Mr Lee although wary of Mr Trumps allegations of an election hoax were willing to listen to conspiracy theories issued by his lawyers, and tasked their own offices with searching for traces of fraud. Mr Graham, as reported by The Post, also went as far as calling Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to ask if the state official could throw out mail-in ballots to tip a recount in Mr Trumps favour. The election official refused to do so, and the swing-state was finally called for US President Joe Biden. Both Mr Graham and Mr Lee went on to vote to certify Mr Bidens win when Congress met on 6 January and the former presidents supporters stormed the building on the basis of his election lies. The allegations made by Mr Woodward and Mr Costa are among many stand-out claims about the end of the Trump presidency featured in Peril. Indonesia has rallied behind a list of countries in expressing worry about an arms race in the Indo-Pacific region following Australia's announcement to acquire nuclear-powered submarines as part of the new trilateral security alliance with the United States and Britain. The Indonesian foreign ministry on Friday said it was "deeply concerned over the continuing arms race and power projection in the region". The foreign ministry called on Canberra to maintain its commitment to regional peace and stability. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison told ABC radio on Friday that Indonesia's government had been informed about the plans and he intended to speak to Indonesian president Joko Widodo. US president Joe Biden announced the 'Aukus' alliance through a joint virtual event with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and the UKs Boris Johnson on Wednesday. The alliance will enable Australia with technology and nuclear power submarines to respond to Beijing's aggression in the South China Sea. The US and its allies have been trying to push back against China's maritime claims over the disputed regions of the South China Sea. Indonesias navy has increased patrols around its Natuna islands after Chinese and US vessels were detected in the country's waters. "We are worried that we will be caught in the middle of a war and that it will be unsafe for us to search for fish," said Hendri, the chairman of a fishing alliance in Natuna after fishermen reportedly spotted six Chinese ships, including warships, in Natuna waters. The country, in 2017, renamed the northern reaches of its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea as the North Natuna Sea, as a counter to China's ambitions. Meanwhile, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday said that Australia's new nuclear-powered submarines would not be allowed in its territorial waters under the 1984 nuclear-free policy. Criticising the new alliance, the Chinese government described it as an "extremely irresponsible" threat to regional stability. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the three countries were "severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts". France too denounced the pact and accused US president Joe Biden of stabbing them in the back. The west European countrys response comes Australia scraped the $40 billion French-designed submarine deal and joined hands with US and UK. "This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr (Donald)Trump used to do. I am angry and bitter. This isn't done between allies," French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told franceinfo radio. Additional reporting from agencies. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called the actions of protestors on Wednesday at Melbournes Shrine of Remembrance disgusting. More than 200 people were arrested after an intense stand-off between protestors and police at the war memorial. Two police officers were also struck in the head with bottles while one was admitted to hospital with chest pains. Mr Morrison, speaking from Washington DC said that the Shrine was a sacred site and not a place of protest. He added that the conduct of protesters was disgraceful adding that it was disrespectful and it dishonoured those Australians who have made the sacrifice and I would hope any and all who were in that should be ashamed. Protests against the governments Covid-19 lockdown and mandatory vaccinations began on Monday after a two-week shutdown of the construction industry was announced by authorities. Nearly 2000 protesters took over streets at peak traffic hours, according to news agency Reuters. It was reported that some in the crowd damaged cars including police vehicles, and set off flares. The protesters included, besides the construction workers, those who oppose the governments mandatory vaccination rule. Local media reports said protesters chanted: F**k the jab. The police used pepper balls, foam baton rounds, smoke rounds and stinger grenades to contain the protests. Shane Patton, the police commissioner in the southeastern state of Victoria said: This was a very, very large and very, very angry group. And it was a challenging and confronting environment. Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Shrine of Remembrance, Dean Lee said that yesterday was a troubling day for the veteran community. He added: We know what the Shrine means to the veteran community of Victoria and Australia and to see it disrespected in that way was very difficult for all of us. I think if we are to ask ourselves what it is to be Australian, its how we behave in times of crisis. This shows how we can be at our best when we want to behave in a way that brings us together. Mr Lee added that those that seek to divide us in a time of crisis are not doing themselves any favours and not representing the best values of what it is to be Australian. Meanwhile, after three days of anti-lockdown protests, on Thursday Melbournes streets were quiet. Police officers were seen patrolling the streets to prevent yet another rally. Covid-19 cases in Victoria hit a daily pandemic record, it was reported. Officials have said that they will ease the lockdown restrictions once at least 70 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated. This is expected to happen next month, reports said. Hunters in the Faroe Islands have slaughtered dozens of pilot whales just days after the brutal massacre of 1,428 dolphins in a bloodbath that caused widespread global anger. Its believed 53 pilot whales were driven onshore and slain in the latest mass killing, which went ahead despite a promise by the islands government to review dolphin hunting rules. The hunters lined up the pilot whales mutilated bodies beside a drain onshore for their blood to flow into. The killings prompted renewed calls for tourists to boycott the islands. Marine conservation group Sea Shepherd was furious, asking: When will enough be enough? The whale hunt took place at in a village called Kollafjordur, just a few miles from where the 1,428 Atlantic white-sided dolphins were slaughtered last Sunday. Sea Shepherd said it believed the dolphin slaughter had been the largest single hunt of dolphins or pilot whales in Faroese history, and was possibly the largest single hunt of cetaceans ever recorded worldwide. The Blue Planet Society called for urgent action, saying the EU Commission could not sit back and let the Faroe Islands devastate Europes protected dolphin and small whale populations. This hideous cruelty and unsustainable slaughter must stop now, it added. Known as the grindadrap (murder of whales), the annual hunt involves herding whales and dolphins into a bay, then forcing them onto a beach, where their spinal cords are severed, often while they struggle, their blood turning the seas red. Adults, including pregnant females, and calves are included in the kill, and young children are taught how to carve up the animals bodies. Health chiefs advise limiting the quantities of whale or dolphin flesh people eat because it is highly contaminated by mercury. Experts calculate the Faroes hunt more marine mammals than they can eat. Sea Shepherds Rob Read told Yahoo News Australia: The Faroese have no quota for the grindadrap hunts, no season, no need for the meat and, it seems, no compassion. In response to the outrage at the dolphin slaughter, Faroese premier Bardur a Steig Nielsen said: We take this matter very seriously. Although these hunts are considered sustainable, we will be looking closely at the dolphin hunts, and what part they should play in Faroese society. He was quoted by Sea Shepherd as also saying: It was expected that the protest would calm down as days passed, but there is no indication of this actually happening, but the group said it was not calming down. The Faroe Islands are part of the kingdom of Denmark, but responding to anger at the hunts, the Danish government points out the islands are a self-governing entity responsible for their own natural resource management, including whaling. A volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands sent a wall of lava 12 metres high cascading down upon a village, forcing locals to flee before their homes were engulfed. The Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, the largest island in the archipelago, began spewing molten rock on Sunday and by Wednesday it had crept close enough to the village of Todoque that an evacuation was ordered. Villagers were forced to queue outside the path of the lava flow and wait to be escorted back so they could quickly grab some belongings to be saved from the destruction. In the distance, the lava oozed down the hillside towards the Atlantic Ocean. Experts said it could either continue flowing the final 2km into the sea, or it could slow down and spread out, smothering a larger area of countryside. Javier Lopez said his house for the past three decades appeared to be in the path of the lava. He and his relatives had been staying at a friends house with the few documents, photos and basic belongings they had grabbed on Monday as they were hurriedly evacuated. "Ive put my whole life in a van," Lopez told the AP news agency, waiting for his turn to try to recover a vehicle and other valuables he had left behind. "This is probably going to be the last time I see my home. Or, in the best-case scenario, the house will remain isolated by the lava and inaccessible for who knows how long." Firefighters are attempting to divert the molten rock away from the houses in Todoque by digging a trench. Other residents were trying to remain positive and calm despite the imminent destruction. Melisa Rodriguez said: "Its hard to think straight about what you want to save, but we are only allowed in for one hour and you dont want to take longer because that would be taking time away from others. The eruption was following an "expected pattern" but much remained uncertain, Vicente Soler, a volcanologist with Spains top scientific body, told the BTC broadcaster. "It is difficult to say if the lava will reach the sea. If the source remains active and with a steady flow, it will be easy for it to arrive at the ocean. But if there are new lava diversions, that will slow down the flows head." About a thousand people have now been evacuated from Todoque, bringing the total number of those forced from their homes by the eruption on La Palma to 6,800. As well as the slow-moving lava, the island could soon face more earthquakes, volcanic ash fall, acid rain and smaller rocks hurled into the air by the strength of the volcano. And when the lava does reach the sea it could trigger landslides, explosions and produce clouds of toxic gas, the authorities have warned. Locals with children have been advised to keep them inside as much as possible because the eruption has affected air quality across the island. La Palma is one of the most volcanically active islands in the Canaries. Cumbre Vieja has erupted three times since the 18th century, in 1949, 1971 and currently. A Russian spy chief has accused Britain of using the Novichok attack to deflect from the UKs shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, a third Russian Denis Sergeev, also known as Sergey Fedotov was charged in absentia with the 2018 attack that led to the death of a woman called Dawn Sturgess, who unknowingly put the nerve agent novichok on her skin. In 2018, two other Russians Alexander Mishkin, alias Alexander Petrov, and Anatoliy Chepiga, alias Ruslan Boshirov were charged with conspiracy to murder double agent Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia, and a British police officer in Salisbury. Britain has said the three men were Russian military intelligence operatives. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Dean Haydon told a press conference this week that the three men had come to the UK in two groups Mishkin and Chepiga together, Sergeev by himself and met in London to plot their plan to deploy novichok to kill people in this country. The incident and subsequent charges led to one of the biggest rows between Russia and western nations since the Cold War, with diplomats being expelled on both sides after Britain blamed Moscow for the attack. Russia has continued to deny involvement. Now, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russias Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), is reported to have said that Britains moves to prosecute the three Russians could be an attempt to distract the public from the shameful exit from Afghanistan, primarily by the United States and its allies. He said: In my view, it is an attempt to use another lie to cover up or support a previous lie. Besides, given the recent developments in Afghanistan, its also perhaps an attempt to distract the public from the shame, the escape of primarily US troops and their allies, including the UK, from Afghanistan. Its an attempt to distract the public from the fact that Nato is no longer able to maintain security in various parts of the world. Last month, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan during the wests chaotic withdrawal from the country and coinciding with deadly Isis attacks on the airport in Kabul. It comes after Russias foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Britain was using the poisoning case to deliberately sabotage UK-Russian ties. A man suspected of shooting a petrol station cashier dead in Germany has been connected with coronavirus conspiracy groups and the far right. The 49-year-old man was arrested on Sunday, a day after a 20-year-old clerk was shot in the head with a revolver in Idar-Oberstein, a town in the west of the country. Researchers found he had openly supported the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on social media. They also believe he is a coronavirus denier. Earlier this week, the German health minister Jens Spahn told reporters the suspect had been asked to wear a mask - a requirement for shoppers in Germany - by the cashier, who has not yet been named. After first heading home, the man then returned to the shop, where he is alleged to have killed the victim. Mr Spahn said that incitement posted on social media created the atmosphere in which such a crime could occur. He also blamed the chant of Traitors! by coronavirus sceptics at anti-lockdown demonstrations during the pandemic for legitimizing violence. "We must clearly and decisively say no to any form of pandemic extremism," he said. In a similar vein, Stephan Kramer, who runs the intelligence services in the state of Thuringia, told the RND network there had been a pronounced increase in aggressive actions recently. "The escalation of right-wing conspiracy fantasies among aggressive and violence-prone citizens has been obvious for months," he said. The leaders of Germanys main political parties condemned the shooting, with Annalena Baerbock, of the Green party, saying she was shaken by this terrible murder of a young man who merely asked that existing rules be followed. The Christian Democratic Unions Armin Laschet called it a horrible crime, while Olaf Scholz, the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), said the country should resolutely stand up to hatred. Additional reporting by agencies Ukraines parliament has passed a law to limit the influence of oligarchs on politics one day after a failed bid to kill a top aide of president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was carried out. The leader said he believed the assassination attempt was triggered by the countrys ongoing reform. Mr Zelensky added in a statement it is necessary to protect the country from powerful businessmen who have corrupted its political system for decades. However, his opponents say they are fearful the measure will be applied selectively to concentrate more power in the president's hands. The law, which passed a first reading in July, provides a definition for an oligarch and bars those who fall under it from funding political parties or taking part in the privatization of state assets. It describes oligarchs as individuals who own significant financial assets and media outlets, and requires them to register as such. Top officials, including the president, prime minister and head of the central bank, would also be expected to declare any dealings they had with them. Thursday's second reading of the incoming legislation, which passed with 279 votes in the 450-seat parliament, means it now goes to Mr Zelensky for approval. The presidents team suggested any resentment towards it could be behind the attempted murder of Serhiy Shefir, a top aide and close friend of the president. Mr Shefir's car came under attack on Wednesday, when unidentified individuals fired bullets at the vehicle as he travelled between two villages outside Kiev, Ukraines capital. He was unharmed though his driver was wounded, officials confirmed. Police are searching for the weapon and interviewing possible witnesses who were picking mushrooms nearby, Ukraines interior ministry spokesperson Artem Shevchenko said on Thursday. In a Facebook post, Mr Shevchenko called it a real assassination attempt and not staged. Police examine the car of Shefir on Wednesday after an apparent assassination attempt (Getty ) Under the new law, the national security and defence council, headed by President Zelensky, has the power to designate someone as an oligarch. Opposition lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko, from former president Petro Poroshenko's party, said the law creates huge scope for corruption, and compared it to tactics used by Russian president Vladimir Putin to increase his powers. Kira Rudyk, the leader of the Voice party, said the bill was designed only to strengthen the power, strengthen the position of the president and make it so that he can, together with the national security and defence council, actually decide who can have control over the media and who cannot. Not everyone is as cynical, though. [The president] is trying to distance himself from all of the oligarchs and change the vicious system in which six or seven people controlled the politics and the business in all of Ukraine, Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst, and head of the Penta Center think tank, told the AP news agency. Mr Zelensky won a landslide election in 2019 during which he promised to tackle corruption and curb the influence of oligarchs, who have dominated the business landscape since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Additional reporting by agencies Lawsuit filed by Jeff Bezos Blue Origin against SpaceX and the US government may further delay Nasas crewed Moon mission, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson has reportedly said. Blue Origin had filed the lawsuit against Nasa and SpaceX over the US space agency awarding a lucrative $3 billion contract to build a lunar rover to Elon Musk-founded SpaceX. Bezos company argues in the lawsuit that Nasas decision to award SpaceX the contract violates fundamental tenets of government-contract procurement law. In a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Nelson said the lawsuit may delay Nasas plans to put humans on the Moon as part of the Artemis lunar programme, planned for 2024, Insider reported. Nasas plan is to use its Orion spacecraft to send four astronauts on a multi-day journey to the lunar orbit from which two crew members would transfer to the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) for the final leg of their journey to the surface of the Moon. After approximately a week exploring the surface, they will board the lander for their short trip back to orbit where they will return to Orion and their colleagues before heading back to Earth, the US space agency noted in a statement in April. But on Tuesday when asked if the mission to land humans on the Moon was still on track for a 2024 launch, Mr Nelson reportedly said the question could be better answered only after a federal court ruling, hinting that the lawsuit is expected to cause delays. With the lawsuit yet to be resolved, SpaceX cannot proceed with developing the lander for the mission, and NASA has also agreed to pause work on the HLS till the litigation is heard in court. In the lawsuit, Blue Origin claims that NASA has disregarded key flight safety requirements while awarding the contract to SpaceX. In a redacted version of the lawsuit shared by the US Court of Federal Appeals on Wednesday, Bezos company argues that Nasas decision was arbitrary, capricious, and irrational. NASA inexplicably disregarded key flight safety requirements for only SpaceX, in order to select and make award to a SpaceX proposal that Nasas evaluation team assessed as tremendously high risk and immensely complex, even before the waiver of safety requirements, the lawsuit alleges. Mr Nelson said on Tuesday that only after the federal judge makes the decision and after further legal possibilities are considered there can be clarity about the crewed-missions to the lunar surface. Irrespective of the lawsuit, a Nasa Office of the Inspector General, noted in a report last month that its not feasible for the space agency to meet its 2024 goal. This delay is mainly due to delays in the development of next-generation spacesuits for the astronauts. Chile has announced plans to reopen to international travellers who have had two doses of the Covid vaccine from 1 October. Double jabbed travellers who want to visit will also have to present a negative Covid test result taken in the 72 hours before arrival, as well as quarantining for five days after landing. They wont have to quarantine in a government-mandated hotel or facility, but must share the address theyll be isolating at with government officials. Other small print includes having purchased travel insurance with a minimum coverage of $30,000 (21,835), filling in a medical questionnaire and keeping in touch with authorities for the first 14 days of a visit. At present, Chile along with much of South America is on the UKs red list, meaning anyone returning from there must spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel at their own expense. This will remain the case from 4 October, when several of the Covid travel rules are set to change, but it is thought that the red list will continue to be reviewed every three weeks, with countries removed and added as case rates drop or increase. In the meantime, anyone looking to have a Chilean adventure could potentially launder their red list status by spending 10 days in one of the amber list (soon to be ROW list) European countries that operate direct flights - such as Spain, Germany or the Netherlands - before returning to the UK. The Chilean health ministry says 84.6 per cent of the population has had two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine. Argentina is also set to open its borders to fully vaccinated foreign tourists from autumn, with health minister Carla Vizzotti announcing earlier this week that international borders would open on 1 November. Double jabbed visitors to Argentina will have to show their vaccination status, with the second injection having taken place at least two weeks before arrival in Argentina, and show a negative PCR test result taken within the 72 hours before travelling. Once there, fully vaccinated passengers will have to take a PCR test between days five and seven after arrival, but will not have to quarantine. Argentina will also admit the unvaccinated, including children, at this stage, but they must self-isolate for a week and have a negative PCR test to be released at the end. Uruguay has also announced plans to allow fully vaccinated foreign tourists in from 1 November. Eight nations have been moved from the UKs red list, which means arrivals no longer need go into hotel quarantine. But while holidays to Turkey, Kenya, Pakistan and Oman can now go ahead, Egypt, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka remain on the Foreign Office no-go list based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks. A leading travel industry figure has deplored what she called huge complexities and confusion in the governments approach. Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of the Advantage Travel Partnership, told The Independent: Last week the transport secretary announced a simplification of the rules in relation to international travel. Whilst the rules from 4 October become less onerous for those fully vaccinated, there are still huge complexities and confusion travellers will need to overcome. The latest became a reality this morning when half of the eight countries moving from red to amber still have a travel advisory from the FCDO advising against all but essential travel to the country based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks. There is either a risk or there isnt. If a country is amber then the FCDO advise in relation to Covid risk must be updated otherwise its red. We need the government to ensure complete clarity is given to Brits because its communication in relation to international travel thus far has been anything but. The Independent has asked the Foreign Office for a response. The decision to keep Egypt, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on the list of nations where the FCDO warns against non-essential journeys means that standard travel insurance is not valid. Ms Lo Bue-Said made her call as the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that vaccinations administered in the UAE would be recognised by the UK from 4 October. It has been added to the 54 other nations whose vaccinations the UK will recognise from 4 October. But jabs administered in Turkey, India, anywhere in Africa and more than 100 other countries are not acceptable for avoiding quarantine in the UK. Turkey could become the quarantine launderette of choice for travellers seeking to reach the UK from red list countries. It was among eight nations, including Egypt, Sri Lanka and Kenya, removed from the UKs highest risk category on Wednesday. Hotel quarantine is no longer obligatory for arrivals, and travellers fully vaccinated in one of 55 countries approved by the UK need not self-isolate at home from 4 October (they can already avoid quarantine if vaccinated in the UK, EU or US). But despite the reduction of red list nations, the UK still requires hotel quarantine at a cost of 2,285 for solo travellers from 54 countries. Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa and much of Latin America remain on the red list. Increasingly, many travellers are legally avoiding hotel quarantine by spending 10 full days in a third country on the amber or green list before continuing to the UK. While France, Germany and the Netherlands have good air links, they also have relatively high costs for travellers. In contrast, Turkey is a relatively low-cost location. Comparing rates for a Holiday Inn, Istanbuls Old City is quoting only 72 for a double room, compared with 86 in Frankfurt, 105 in Amsterdam and 185 in Paris. A couple who spent 11 nights in Istanbuls Old City would pay the equivalent of 676 for accommodation, compared with 3,715 for hotel quarantine in the UK though that cost includes three meals a day. Istanbul also has the best-connected airport in the world. Turkish Airlines serves more countries than any other carrier. It has daily flights from dozens of cities in nations on the UKs red list including Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta in Asia, and Addis Ababa, Tunis and Zanzibar in Africa. Passengers departing from Brazil, South Africa or Nepal are currently banned from entering Turkey. However, there is no obstacle for the passengers travelling from these countries to have a transit flight via Turkey, says Turkish Airlines which is continuing flights. Connections from Turkeys largest city to resort areas are readily available at very low fares, with Pegasus charging an average of 20 one-way from Istanbul to Bodrum, Dalaman or Antalya. Travellers can then continue direct from the coast to the UK after spending 10 full days in Turkey on a range of direct Jet2 flights. The Leeds-based airline is offering links this autumn from Antalya or Dalaman to Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted. In addition easyJet is continuing services, with an Antalya-Manchester flight on 19 October priced at just 41 one way. While Turkey provides an alternative to quarantine for travellers vaccinated in the UK, European Union and US, people who have been vaccinated in Turkey must still self-isolate for 10 days on arrival in Britain. When President Biden stepped up to the lectern at the 76th United Nations General Assembly this week, his administration was reeling from what critics have described as a pair of grievous self-inflicted foreign policy wounds. The first, most obvious wound was caused by his decision to pull the United States out of its 20-year-old war in Afghanistan; the second by his decision to join the UK in embarking on a new Indo-Pacific-focused alliance and nuclear submarine technology sharing deal with Australia. Biden bet his 2020 run for president of the United States on the contrast between Donald Trumps dictator-friendly brand of bombast which often saw him shoving allies out of the way (sometimes literally) while berating them for not paying for Americas military presence in Europe and Asia and his own respect for longstanding alliances, gleaned from many years of glad-handing world leaders. His first speech to the General Assembly as president appeared to stick to the script, so to speak. Vowing to inaugurate an era of relentless diplomacy, Biden also promised that on his watch America would be using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world and renewing and defending democracy by proving that government by and for the people is still the best way to deliver for all of our people. But after concluding his remarks and taking one bilateral meeting with one of the two leaders with whom he announced the AUKUS alliance last week Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison Biden was gone. It was a far cry from his predecessors first appearance at the United Nations. Although the man he and his advisers prefer to call the former guy was often mocked (and at least once laughed at to his face) for the belligerent tone he adopted in his annual remarks to the General Assembly, Trump spent his first week representing the United States at the UN immersed in meetings upon meetings. When he arrived at the UN on September 17, 2017 (a Monday) Trump met with Israels then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Frances Emmanuel Macron, the latter of whom recalled his ambassador from Washington last week in protest of the AUKUS submarine deal (he and Biden spoke on Wednesday and agreed to meet in Paris next month). Bidens Monday, by contrast, consisted only of travel to New York and a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres. On the day Trump first addressed the General Assembly, he met with Gutteres, Slovakias Miroslav Lajcak (the General Assembly president that year), as well as the Amir of Qatar, a major US ally in the Middle East. The next day, he met with Jordans King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, then-British Prime Minister Theresa May, and Egyptian President Mohammed al-Sisi. All in all, Trumps first trip to the UN concluded with eleven bilateral meetings conducted, as well as a number of receptions and meetings with other world leaders. By contrast, Bidens meetings in New York this week included Guterres, Morrison, and Iraqi President Barham Selah, plus a White House bilateral with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which the president held after returning to Washington on Tuesday. White House and National Security Council officials pushed back on the idea that Biden has had a light schedule this week and noted that he will host the leaders of India, Japan and Australia the quad at the White House on Friday. Yet even with the quad leaders coming to the White House, the 46th presidents light presence at the first General Assembly week of his term has insiders concerned that he is playing into Republicans hands by giving ammunition to bad-faith critiques of his fitness for office. One foreign policy expert who regularly consults with administration officials and who requested anonymity to protect their relationship with the White House said theres not much to be gained from comparing DTrumps whirlwind first week at the UN to Bidens premier at the General Assembly because the former guy was a novice at foreign policy compared to the former senator and vice president. He already knows many of the major players from his time as VP, said the expert. Joe Biden doesnt need to go around introducing himself to everyone and glad-handing the entire United Nations when theres still a pandemic raging. Sources close to the White House said Bidens choice of meetings this week has been in keeping with the administrations focus on the Indo-Pacific region. The meetings with AUKUS partners and the quad are meant to highlight the partnerships Biden hopes will serve as a significant counterweight and deterrent to Chinas growing military ambitions. But a political strategist who works with Republican Congressional candidates said Biden is giving their clients exactly what they want a commander-in-chief who they can portray as out of his depth and afraid to be in the room. They pointed to a recent snafu during Bidens Oval Office meeting with Boris Johnson, during which the British prime minister took questions while the president did not. Every single time Biden has an opportunity to be present and engage but doesnt take the opportunity because he and his advisers dont think its needed, were going to hit him, they said. Even if the reasons are valid, the drumbeat for the next year and a half is that well need a Republican Congress to keep an eye on the tottering old man who cant take more than a meeting or two a day. It might have been good politics to limit his appearances to contrast himself with Trump early on, but Trump has been gone for nearly a year now. Staying out of the spotlight no longer gives him a presidential look; it just makes him look like he cant handle it. So that was Global Britain, then, in all its tremulous glory. In five days in America, at the United Nations and at the White House, Boris Johnson did his usual thing, indeed the only thing he can do, which was to lean against the wall of the world stage and spaff out his trademark repertoire of insulting jokes, tedious metaphors and easily demonstrable lies. It was by no means easy viewing. There have been so many of these visits over the years. The outward spectacle doesnt especially change the flags, the Oval Office, the somewhat passe green marble backdrop of the United Nations General Assembly hall which makes the inner reality glaringly impossible to ignore. These are the rarefied environments in which great leaders occasionally say or do great things. And they are also the environments in which poor ones find it very easy to embarrass themselves. Which is what Boris Johnson, and as such Britain, most certainly did. With Trump gone, Britain is now the worlds leading international embarrassment. Its very much unclear whether anybody at all voted for Brexit because they wanted Britain to get its identity back and forge its own path in the world. These arguments, the out and into the world stuff, were, after all, the old eurosceptic arguments of 50 years ago, favoured by the old eurosceptics like Bill Cash and John Redwood and all the dreary rest of them. Dominic Cummings, almost certainly correctly, thought they were mad, that these were the arguments that would not win, so he scrapped it all in favour of deliberately incendiary garbage about Turkey and the NHS. What followed is now history. So its not clear, really, whether anyone beyond Boris Johnson himself cares very much about Britain as a global statesperson. Brexit was the single most insular act any major country has undertaken in a hundred years or more, so the fact it is now making a circus clown of itself in front of a watching world is unlikely to especially bother anyone who voted for it. The rest of us, sadly, do have to suffer somewhat. If youre at all interested in politics, it is very hard indeed to go through the motions of paying attention to it, the events, the speeches, the assembled content for the news channels, because at its heart is a man who has not merely got nothing of any interest to say, but is strategically and deliberately committed to never saying anything of any interest whatsoever. After a few months or years of Donald Trump, most people stopped caring, or at least stopped being shocked, by the constant lying. Does anyone care all that much that Boris Johnson doesnt pause for breath before telling journalists that in a 90-minute conversation with Joe Biden, the subject of the Northern Ireland Protocol wasnt raised? And then the White House publishes its read out from the meeting and states in clear and certain terms that it absolutely was raised and discussed at length? Does anyone care that Boris Johnson casually claimed that the Dutch prime minister had offered to mediate in talks over the Northern Ireland Protocol, only for the Dutch prime minister to make it clear that he hadnt? Is anyone even counting any more the flurries of middleweight lies that must be told just to get through to the next part of the day? That Boris Johnson cant stop himself, indeed doesnt want to stop himself, from throwing out a few lines of franglais with regard to the ongoing row over the nuclear submarine deal hardly even matters. Its toe-curling, course it is. Donnez-moi un break, Boris Johnson tells France over Aukus submarine deal Its not merely what you get from having a columnist for a prime minister. Its also what you get from having a columnist prime minister whos more than a little bit past it. Boris Johnson is 57. Not many columnists make it that far, for no greater reason than theyve used up all their lines and find themselves with nothing relevant to say about the times they havent managed to keep up with. Donnez-moi un break, as Johnson jovially told Emmanuel Macron, was possibly passably amusing when he first said it in the Daily Telegraph in 1994. Marjorie and the Major may even have let out a little titter over the toast and marmalade as they read it, back then, in a world that doesnt really exist any more. For those of us who have to pay attention to this stuff, it is painful to have to be able to see directly through it. Boris Johnson was writing climate change denial journalism as recently as 2015. And yet here he is, standing up in front of the world, telling it it has to change, through the medium of his usual wearisome schtick. Humanity has reached adolescence, it has found the keys to the drinks cabinet Kermit the Frog was wrong. It IS easy being green. An actual world statesman, after a fashion, finding that the only voice he can draw upon is that of the juvenile newspaper columnist, cracking two-bit jokes to a world that absolutely doesnt care. People arent stupid. They listen to politicians, to leaders, when they know theyve got something to say. Why should they even so much as glance up from their busy lives to listen to the dreary pseudo-impassioned rubbish of a two-minutes-to-midnight climate change convert, who was denying the clear scientific evidence about it all for most of the past 20 years, and when challenged on it, just shuffles out whatever lie will do? And that, really, is the thing. Its only us that has to listen to this stuff, to parse it for meaning, to analyse it for merit, or potential electoral significance. The rest of the world just doesnt care. It wasnt always this way. Tony Blair Gordon Brown Margaret Thatcher they made significant contributions to the world at crucial points in history, not necessarily always for the better. Johnson has changed his country arguably far more than any of them. But the international consequences are clear to see, and they are fitting enough. In that regard, he is certainly the right man for the hour. A clapped-out joker from a clapped-out land, a boring throwback from a country that decided it was too scared of the future to take part in it. In response to Texass wildly unconstitutional abortion ban, SB:8, which the Supreme Court refused to block and is widely seen as a direct attack on Roe v. Wade, Senate Democrats (most of them) have put forward a bill that would codify the landmark ruling into law. The bill would need a filibuster-proof majority to pass in the Senate, and if it were to have a prayer of a chance it would need the support of Republican Senators who have claimed to be pro-choice in the past, such as Susan Collins of Maine. Alas Collins, in her typical fashion, swiftly threw cold water on the bill, saying she could not support it because of its extreme language. Jennifer Haberkorn, who reported the story for The LA Times, tweeted, Sen. Susan Collins, who supports abortion rights, says she would oppose Senate Dems bill to legalize abortion nationwide through viability because other provisions go too far, which raises the question of how were really defining the word support these days. If support means merely to say youre in favor of something, on a purely philosophical level, then sure, Collins supports abortion rights. If support means to actually do something to back up that theoretical idea, like take action to protect reproductive rights when they are endangered, then Collins is full of it. The only surprising thing about Susan Collins refusing to back this bill is that anyone was surprised. Collins is a master at talking out of both sides of her mouth. Somehow she has maintained a reputation as a moderate while acting as a Republican loyalist. The public accepts as naivete or short-sightedness that which could likely be better explained by simple duplicity. She is not guileless, she is canny. When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and liberals worried he would help to overturn Roe v. Wade, Collins justified her vote to confirm him by assuring the public that she was confident he regarded Roe as settled law. Even though then-President Donald Trump had always promised to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Likewise, after voting to acquit Trump in his first impeachment trial, Collins reasoned that, The president has been impeached. Thats a pretty big lesson, opining that Trump would have learned from his mistakes. As we can all see, he did not (though this did not stop Collins from voting to acquit Trump again in his second impeachment). These are just two of the most well-known cases, but they are exemplary of Collins talent for making mealy-mouthed concessions to the moderate position while continuing to act in lockstep with the most extreme ends of her party. To her exceptionally small credit, Collins did not vote to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a relatively meaningless gesture knowing that Barrett would almost certainly be confirmed by the rest of her colleagues anyway. And according to FiveThirtyEights analysis of her voting record, Collins voted with Trump 65.1 percent of the time overall not very extraordinary for a Republican Senator, until you take into account Collins expected score of 44.1 percent. In other words, Collins support for Trump surpassed expectations by 21 points. After four years of her famed furrowed brow and deep concern, it beggars belief that Collins actually supports or believes in anything. She has taken no stands, put forward no productive bills, defied Trump only when it was politically expedient to do so, and hidden behind flaccid rhetoric whenever challenged. She said she could not support the Democrats abortion rights bill because the language was extreme, as if the law currently in effect in Texas was not the most extreme assault on abortion since before Roe v. Wade was decided. I support codifying Roe, she said. Unfortunately the bill goes way beyond that. It would severely weaken the [conscience] exceptions that are in the current law. If she will not support a bill codifying Roe, what else is to be concluded but that Collins does not support codifying Roe? No, Susan Collins is not wishy-washy at all, though I believe shes content to have us all think so. She is a loyal Republican and an active threat to abortion rights, no matter what she claims to support. The tragic case of Gabby Petito is not lost on the Indigenous people in the Wyoming area. Many of them still wait to hear what happened to their missing or murdered loved ones without answers. Since 2011, 710 Indigenous persons have been reported missing in 22 counties, 57 percent of them female. Many families never found their loved ones and still seek answers. After the past decade came and went without much change in solving these crimes, local citizens took action which sparked much-needed discussion. In the United States, four out of five Indigenous people have experienced violence. For the women, most of the perpetrators were of other races. In 2019, students and community organizers decided enough was enough and organized a significant event to get the attention of lawmakers and citizens. It worked. Keepers of the Fire, an organization to preserve Native American culture at the University of Wyoming, sponsored a March for Justice. Community members shared personal stories of missing loved ones to raise awareness for the murdered or missing women and girls. This caught the attention of Governor Mark Gordon, who convened a task force to look into how the state could assist in addressing the problem with communities and law enforcement. The University of Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, along with the states Attorney Generals Division of Victim Services, developed the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People State Report. It compiled data from numerous sources and looked into the Indigenous missing persons and homicide victims within Wyoming. Interviewed members were kept anonymous in the study. The report focused on homicides, missing persons, media coverage compared to other races, and interviews with tribal community members. Communication was studied across the board. It also analyzed data from National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) along with other databases nationwide to see how information could be added regarding Indigenous homicides and missing persons. Almost half of homicides between 1999 and 2017 were missing from FBI and other agency databases. A member of the Wind River Indian Reservation stated, This is a big issue and not a lot of people are aware of it because it doesnt affect them, but when it happens, it doesnt affect just the family. It affects the whole community. Though recent public response has been supportive to the plight of Indigenous people, the media has either not covered the stories at all, or victims were portrayed less favorably than other races. Several areas of reporting were problematic, including how the crimes were presented to the public. Numerous articles analyzed found scenes of Indigenous homicide victims used graphic, violent language such as blood coming from his nose and mouth or he had a stab wound in his lower right abdominal area. White victims of similar violence had their homicides described in more sanitized ways, such as: They left the body in a ditch. Tribal members in the community were interviewed, and acknowledged that a lack of trust between themselves and outsiders needed to be addressed. For some, the research was too late after years of waiting on a judicial process that never came. One member said, Were second class. So we might find out. We might get this person by ourselves, someday, whenever. People out here dont expect that somethings gonna be solved quickly cause it isnt. Another noted, I want people in this state to remember that the citizens of the Wind River Reservation are citizens of Wyoming as well and deserve a voice in our government, and they deserve a voice to be treated like citizens. When the report was released, it came with numerous recommendations including the need for state, federal, and local policymakers to consider improved protocol and data systems, designated representatives for indigenous victims and families, and further awareness initiatives. In February, Governor Gordon acknowledged the number of cases open and the families still waiting for justice. This report captures state-specific data on crimes against Native Americans in Wyoming, many of which tragically remain unsolved, he said. Though generational trauma and misgivings about the government are still a factor, others recognize the need to continue the dialogue on every level, so that all voices have a chance to be heard. Collaboration within and outside of the community will be necessary to garner the best, most complete answers from any law enforcement agency. Further recommendations from the study included documenting tribal affiliation in official records, coroner reports, and vital records, to create an Indigenous advocacy position and/or response team to help families navigate the reporting and investigation process. Such family members need an advocate who can serve as a point person to help reduce the emotional stress of relaying incident details to multiple agencies. The statistics and data gathered by the state for Indigenous people are not just relevant in Wyoming. They matter to those living in other states as well. But for those who continue to wait for word, its a start. MAM | Marketing Brands turn to sustainable practices, as consumers call for climate action Consumers today expect brands to take responsibility towards following sustainable practices, while being more aware of their choices. And they expect action, not just empty promises on sustainability, according to a recent BBC Global News study which revealed that 80 per cent of consumers in the Asia Pacific region agree that demonstrating a commitment to sustainability adds value to the brand. Read More... MAM | Marketing CoinSwitch's latest campaign is a take on disclaimers in finance ads Cryptocurrency investment platform CoinSwitch Kuber has launched a two-film campaign during the IPL cricket season. Conceptualised by The Script Room, the campaign aims to create a positive awareness around Bitcoin, while positioning the crypto platform as a premier crypto trading platform and a thought leader in the category. Read More... MAM | Media And Advertising Madhav Sheth elevated to lead realme brand expansion in Latin America Chinese smartphone brand realme has elevated its vice president (VP) and India and Europe CEO Madhav Sheth to spearhead the company's business operations in the Latin America region. Under the new designation of realme VP and India, Europe and Latin America CEO, Sheth will lead the product, marketing, brand-building, and sales functions in these regions, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Read More... MAM | Media And Advertising Gozoop appoints Yash Bendkhale as creative director Digital-first agency Gozoop has announced the appointment of Yash Bendkhale as creative director. He will be heading the art team & co-leading the production team with creative director Aadheeraj Krishna and will report to VP of national operations Premkumar Iyer, said the company. Read More... MAM | Marketing Rajiv Gopinath named chief product & solutions officer at Publicis Groupe Publicis Media Services has bolstered its leadership team and elevated Rajiv Gopinath to the position of chief product and solutions officer. The company has also promoted Ajit Gurnani to chief growth officer, media services. Gopinath steps up as a chief product and solutions officer from being a chief client officer at Starcom, where he has been instrumental in building strategic functions and upscaling the business. Read More... By Kaniehtonkie Since 2000, Indigenous people have made up 21% of homicides in Wyoming, even though they are only 3% of the population. Thats according to a Wyoming state report released in January 2021. In Montana, there were 166 active missi... For vulnerable communities, libraries are increasingly becoming a refuge in times of disaster. When a heat wave hit the Pacific Northwest in late June, many cities and residents found themselves facing shockingly high - and lethal - temperatures: up to 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Oregon, for example. Hundreds of people across the re... When we talk about air pollution in India, it was mostly centered around the biggest cities in the country. Cities including Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad have regularly featured in the most polluted cities list, not just in India, but globally. Several factors including emissions from vehicles, factories etc have been blamed for this. BCCL But, India may have to relook into how it monitors air quality, the WHO has said. New WHO norms The World Health Organization on September 22, announced that it is tightening its recommended limits for almost every pollutant. The new global air quality guidelines reflect an overwhelming scientific consensus that countries need to more aggressively limit air pollution and protect everyone's health. PM 10, ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). The 2021 guideline stipulates that PM 10 should not exceed 15 g/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) annual mean, or 45 g/m3 24-hour mean. As per the 2005 guideline, the limit was 20 g/m3 annual mean or 50 g/m3 24-hour mean for PM 10. BCCL It recommends that PM 2.5 should not exceed 5 g/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) annual mean, or 15 g/m3 24-hour mean. As per the 2005 guideline, the limit was 10 g/m3 annual mean or 25 g/m3 24-hour mean for PM 2.5. As per the 2005 guideline, the AQG level of another pollutant Nitrogen Dioxide was 40 g/m3 annual mean which has now been changed by the WHO to 10 g/m3. Not looking good for the world This means that nearly entire India would be considered a polluted zone for most of the year. And India is not alone when it comes to poor air quality. More than 90 per cent of the worlds population lived in areas that did not meet its 2005 pollution standards. BCCL What India should do IIT-Kanpur professor S N Tripathi, who is also a member of the Steering Committee of National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), said air pollution is a severe health crisis and the World Health Organization's revised guidelines bring the issue under focus. "There is a body of scientific evidence to prove that air pollution is leading to severe health impacts and 90 per cent of the entire global population is breathing polluted air," he said. "There are no two ways about the need for revising India's air quality standards to make them more stringent," he said. Ravindra Khaiwal, Professor, Environment Health, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, said these stringent WHO standards for key air pollutants are important and swift action is needed to improve the air quality. BCCL "The WHO has recommended more stringent standards for key air pollutants, e.g., PM2.5 norms for 24 hrs average will be 15 g/m3 instead of 25 g/m3. This is important and would bring the focus on strict & swift action for better air quality. Air pollution has become a major risk factor for premature mortality and morbidity. Meeting the new WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines seems a challenge, but under National Clean Air Program (NCAP), India is committed to minimise 20-30 per cent of cities' air pollution, he said. "Collective efforts are needed to mitigate the air pollution and gain in terms of better human health and climate. PRIME MINISTERs Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situation Fund (PM-CARES Fund), a charitable trust under the law, has told Delhi High Court that the trusts fund is not a fund of the Government of India and its amount does not go in the Consolidated Fund of India. Irrespective of whether the trust is a State or other authority within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution of India and or whether it is a public authority within the meaning of section 2[h] of Right to Information Act, Section 8 in general and that of provisions contained in sub section [e] and [j], in particular, of the Right to Information Act, it is not permissible to disclose third party information, Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, an Under-Secretary at the PMO said in a reply. Reuters Petition sought fund to be declared as 'The State' The submission was made in response to a petition seeking that PM-CARES Fund be declared as The State under Article 12 of the Constitution. The plea contends that citizens of the country are aggrieved that a fund set up by the Prime Minister and with trustees like the PM and ministers of Home, Defence and Finance has been declared to be a fund over which there is no government control. PTI What PMO told Delhi HC Srivastava told the court he functions in the trust on an honorary basis and that the trust functions with transparency and its funds are audited by an auditor who is a Chartered Accountant from the panel prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. To ensure transparency, the audited report is put on the official website of the trust along with the details of utilisation of funds received by the trust, the reply said. It said all donations received by the trust are through online payments, cheques and or demand drafts. The amount so received is audited and the expenditure of the trust fund displayed on the website, it said. Representational Image: Getty Images In view of the specific provisions of Section 8 of the Right to Information Act, the relief against para 5.3 of the trust deed dated 27.3.2020 pales into insignificance, Srivastava said, referring to a prayer against a paragraph in the trust deed which states that it was not created by or under the Constitution or by any law made by Parliament or state Assembly. What petition says The petition filed by Samyak Gangwal states that the PM-CARES Fund was formed by the Prime Minister in March 2020 for a noble purpose of extending assistance to the citizens in wake of Covid-19 pandemic and huge donations were received by it. However, the plea said, a copy of the trust deed was released by the PM-CARES Fund on its website in December 2020, according to which it is not created by or under the Constitution or by any law made by Parliament. An asteroid roughly thrice as big as the Statue of Liberty in the United States is expected to pass by Earth today. The asteroid could measure anywhere between 425 and 985 feet in diameter and is currently headed Earth's way at speeds of thousands of kilometres per hour. Is Earth safe from this asteroid? Named 2021 NY1, the asteroid is expected to pass by Earth safely - maintaining a distance of 970,000 miles (1,561,063 kilometres), as stated NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth-Object tracking website. Reuters Also read: 9/11 Asteroid: Three Massive Asteroids Will Fly Really Close To Earth This Month The object, which is travelling at 27 times the speed of sound is within the distance of 193 million kilomteres from Sun, hence warranting its categorisation as a near-Earth-object. This event will mark 2021 NY1's closest approach to Earth in at least 10 years. Earth's vicinity is expected to host more guests from the cosmos on Autumnal Equinox (September 23, 2021). Reuters Why this week is filled with cosmic guests On Autumnal Equinox, the sun shines directly on the equator with both the northern and southern hemispheres receiving the same amount of sun rays. Just yesterday, an asteroid named 2021 RX9 almost as tall the Pyramid of Giza (128 feet) shot past Earth at the speed of 53,108 kilometres per hour (33,000 miles per hour). Reuters Also read: Former NASA Scientist's Crazy Theory On Moving Earth's Orbit By Asteroids On Friday, i.e., September 24, an asteroid dubbed as 2021 QV6 is also expected to shat past Earth. Expected to be as wide as 525 feet, the asteroid, like all other mentioned above has been classified as a Near-Earth-Object. According to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), none of these objects pose any harm to life on Earth. The same team has identified over 25,000 NEOs since the late 1990s. None of these asteroids will be visible to the naked eye. For you to see it, you may follow the path of the object and use your telescopes. Are you excited about such visits by objects from outer space? Let us know in the comments below. For more on technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com. In a massive boost to India's aerospace industry, Bengaluru-based Dynamatic Technologies has been awarded a contract for manufacturing assemblies for Boeing's newest tactical fighter, F-15EX Eagle II. This is a first where aerostructures for the latest and most advanced F-15EX Eagle II will be made in India, the company said in a statement. Boeing The deal, wherein Boeing has pitched the newest tactical fighter to the Indian Air Force (IAF), is seen as an attempt by the US aerospace company to make deeper inroads into the Indian market. As per a report in Money Control, Dynamatic Technologies will supply the F-15EX aerostructure assembly requirements from FY 2022. It will manufacture these aerostructures from its manufacturing facility in Bengaluru. Money Control Dynamatic has been associated closely with Boeing as a strategic tier-1 supplier partner for over a decade, CEO & Managing Director, Dynamatic Technologies Limited, Udayant Malhotra, said. The award for manufacturing aerostructures for the F-15EX Eagle II to Dynamatic is a testimony of our partnership with Boeing, he added. Indian Defence Review The F-15EX Eagle II can carry more weapons than any other fighter jet in its class. It is capable of launching hypersonic munitions that are up to 6.7 meters long and weigh up to 3,175 kg. The aircraft boasts a digital airframe and advance rapid technology insertion. Dynamatic Technologies designs and builds highly engineered products for automotive, aerospace, hydraulic and security applications. The company is also partnering with Boeing to help grow the Indian aerospace and defence ecosystem with advanced manufacturing capabilities, training and skill development in alignment with the Skill India' initiative of the Government of India, the report said. The Times of India and ThePrint boards are seen outside a building in New Delhi, India on Sept. 15, 2019. The Times of India is one of the newspapers of the Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd. media company, reportedly one of the targets of a Chinese hack. (Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Women officers of the Indian Army show victory signs as they pose for a photograph ahead of International Women's Day outside the Ministry of Defense, in New Delhi on Mar. 7, 2021. (ANI photo) Racing bar charts can be a useful way to visualize comparative data over time. There are a number of ways to create them in R, including combining ggplot with gganimate or using echarts4r. But the easiest way Ive found so far is with the ddplot package. Welcome to ddplot ddplot isnt on CRAN, so youll need to install it from GitHub with a package like devtools or remotes. remotes::install_github("feddelegrand7/ddplot", build_vignettes = TRUE) ddplot is an R wrapper for the D3 JavaScript library, and it does more than racing bars. For example, here is code adapted from the package website for a static bar chart using the mpg data set from ggplot2. library(dplyr) library(ggplot2) #loaded for the mpg data set only library(ddplot) mpg %>% group_by(manufacturer) %>% summarise(mean_cty = mean(cty)) %>% barChart( x = "manufacturer", y = "mean_cty", fill = "blue", stroke = "black", title = "Average City Miles per Gallon by manufacturer", sort = "descending" ) Sharon Machlis, IDG Static bar chart created with ddplot. There we have a perfectly nice chart. But animating the bars makes things interesting! Racing bar chart demo in R For data in this demo, Ill download raw daily vaccination info by US state from the Our World in Data GitHub repository. all_data <- read.csv("https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/raw/master/public/data/vaccinations/us_state_vaccinations.csv") This data frame has 14 columns and more than 15,000 rows too many for an animated bar chart. So next, Ill filter the data for once a week (every Wednesday) instead of daily, starting in March, for six states. (That should be more manageable than trying to watch 50 states animated bars.) graph_data <- all_data %>% mutate( Date = as.Date(date), day_of_week = weekdays(Date), PctFullyVaxed = round(people_fully_vaccinated_per_hundred, 1) ) %>% filter(day_of_week == "Wednesday", date >= "2021-03-01", location %in% c("Vermont", "Alaska", "New York", "California", "Massachusetts", "West Virginia")) %>% rename(State = location) %>% select(Date, State, PctFullyVaxed) If youre following along, feel free to select your own six states. ddplot has a barChartRace() function thats extremely easy to use. The key barChartRace() arguments include data frame, x column, y column, time column, color category if you want to change the default (as far as I know, you can only choose from 10 available D3 categorical palettes), and how to sort the charts. The syntax: barChartRace( data, # data frame x, # name of x axis column as string y, # name of y axis column as string time, #name of time variable column as strong colorCategory, # 1 of 10 available D3 named categorical color palettes sort # 'none', 'ascending', 'descending' ) There are more ways to customize your racing bars, including frame and transition speed, font size, titles, panel and background colors, and axis ticks: barChartRace( # in addition to key arguments above frameDur, # length each frame should show in milliseconds transitionDur, # length of frame transition in milliseconds xFontSize and yFontSize, xtitle and ytitle, title, # plot title titleFontSize, panelcol, #graph panel background color bgcol, #background color of the frame around the graph font, # font family timeLabelOpts # options include size, prefix and suffix ) Here is how easy it is to generate a default racing bar chart: graph_data %>% barChartRace( x = "PctFullyVaxed", y = "State", time = "Date", title = "Percent Fully Vaccinated by State" ) Only x, y, and time columns are required; I also added a title. Sharon Machlis, IDG Screen shot of the basic racing bar chart animation. Watch the video above to see the racing bars in action. Below is code for a more customized version with an axis title, a different label font size and color palette, and a longer time each frame displays. graph_data %>% barChartRace( x = "PctFullyVaxed", y = "State", time = "Date", xtitle = "Percent Fully Vaxxed", title = "Comparing State Vaccination Rates", frameDur = 750, colorCategory = "Dark2", panelcol = "white", bgcol = "#DCDCDC", # a light gray xgridlinecol = "#EBEBEBFF", timeLabelOpts = list(size = 16) ) Sharon Machlis, IDG Screenshot of a ddplot racing bar chart with customized colors. Watch the video above to see the racing bars in action. Check out the barChartRace() help file with ?barChartRace if you want to see additional ways to customize a racing bar chart. For more R tips, head to the InfoWorld Do More With R page. Federal officials on Tuesday warned of a dire situation that is likely to get worse as they explained details of a $16 billion plan to lessen back bay flooding, one of the major sources of storm damage at the Jersey Shore. At an online public hearing, officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers answered questions on flooding impacts, environmental effects, navigation and other concerns, even as they acknowledged they dont yet have all the answers. The proposal calls for construction of huge gates across the mouths of three inlets in New Jersey that could be slammed shut when major storms approach, closable barriers that would cut parts of two bays in half and the elevation of nearly 19,000 homes. Back bay flooding refers to floods that are not primarily caused by waves crashing over ocean barriers, but by stealthily rising water levels in bays along inland shorelines. Things are dire, and things could become worse with sea level rise and increased frequency and severity of storms, said Jay Smith, the project manager for the Army Corps. But officials did not yet have detailed answers on some concerns, particularly environmental ones, noting that the project, which is one of the most ambitious and expensive flood control efforts any U.S. state has yet taken to address back bay flooding, is still in the planning stages. Stan Hales, director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership at Ocean County College in Toms River, asked why managed retreat buying at-risk homes near the water and relocating their occupants to safer spots inland was not a main part of the study. Smith said that topic will be considered as part of land acquisition costs that may be needed for the project. Bill Dixon, director of coastal engineering with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said it is too early to tell if eminent domain, the court-sanctioned confiscation of private property after fair compensation is paid, may be needed for the project. Whether or not eminent domain is required is dependent on whether we can get the property donated to us, he said. Army Corps officials said construction of new protective sand dunes may be needed in some areas that do not currently have them if the project is built. In response to a question about possible impact on property values, Preston Oakley, an economist with the Army Corps, said he expects the flood barriers would actually improve real estate values nearby because they would be better protected from major flooding. Although ocean waves caused severe damage during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, back bay flooding also caused extensive damage in that storm. In numerous places, it was the primary source of property damage during Sandy. It also would change the way several iconic spots at the Jersey Shore would look and operate. It calls for large storm gates across the Manasquan, Barnegat and Great Egg Harbor inlets. In addition, so-called cross-bay barriers would be erected in Absecon Bay near Atlantic City and along a former railroad right of way that would extend along 52nd Street in Ocean City. These bay barriers would have a swing gate in the middle that could be shut during major storms, and slat-like gates spanning about a third of a mile that would be lowered down into the water to block surges of water during storms. The plans announced last month by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Protection are just that: plans. There is no guarantee of funding for the massive project, which would run from Neptune in Monmouth County all the way to the states southern tip in Cape May. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Windstorm Flood New Jersey Two men were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after a fall from a second-story balcony at a Maryland home, authorities said. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesperson Jason Blake said the men fell at a Clarksburg home on Monday morning, taking a section of railing with them to the ground, WUSA-TV reported. One man was flown to a trauma center and the other was taken in an ambulance. The property is a residential home for people with mental health challenges, according to the Sheppard-Pratt health system, which owns and operates the home through its affiliate Family Services Inc. Sheppard-Pratt said in a statement that it is cooperating with investigators. Three men live in the home, Montgomery County Police spokesperson Sheira Goff said. The injured men were 38 and 42, but their identities have not been released. No caregiver was on site when the incident occurred, she said. Neighbors said they heard what sounded like fighting before the two men fell. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Numbers Maryland Renaissance Insurance, Russias largest online policy provider, is trawling the countrys traditional insurers for acquisition targets as it prepares for a possible initial public offering. RenIns which hired banks earlier this month for an IPO is exploring ways to fund the purchases and invest in its telemedicine business, chairman of the board Boris Jordan said in an interview. Weve realized we can consolidate mainline traditional insurers onto our infrastructure, Jordan said. The adoption of online services, particularly in the financial services sector, is starting to grow, but it is still in its infancy in Russia, he said. Russian retail and tech companies are leading a local uptick in share sales, tracking the trend in the global IPO market as countries recover from the pandemic. Renaissance Insurance selected JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group AG and VTB Group as global coordinators to work on a possible offering, according to people familiar with the plans. An intention-to-float document may come in September, with the company looking to raise about $250 million and shareholders offering as much as a $150 million stake, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Jordan declined to comment on a possible deal. Jordans Sputnik Group and partners own a 53% stake, and a group of investors linked to billionaire Roman Abramovich and some of his business partners bought almost 29% in the company in May. Baring Vostok investment funds are among the other shareholders. RenIns has 3.6 million customers and its pace of expansion outstrips the markets, according to Jordan. Since the pandemic, its direct-to-consumer offerings are its fastest-growing segment, he said. Renaissance companies had a 5.1% share of Russian insurance premiums in the first half of 2021, putting it in the top ten of local insurers, according to Expert RA ratings agency. The company aims to take market share from traditional insurers that arent as nimble, Jordan said. Telemedicine Spinoff RenIns telemedicine start-up Budu, which it spun off this year, is one of its most promising businesses, Jordan said. RenIns holds a 49% stake in Budu, with RenIns shareholders owning the remainder. The company was created to provide regional customers with better medical services and now offers its services to the wider market. To do that first diagnosis online is going to be massively cost-saving, Jordan said. Russia is embracing this, but they need to create a regulatory framework. Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics Mergers Carriers Russia New Delhi wants to block Chinese investors from buying shares in Indian insurance giant Life Insurance Corp. (LIC) which is due to go public, four senior government officials and a banker told Reuters, underscoring tensions between the two nations. State-owned LIC is considered a strategic asset, commanding more than 60% of Indias life insurance market with assets of more than $500 billion. While the government is planning to allow foreign investors to participate in what is likely to be the countrys biggest-ever IPO worth a potential $12.2 billion, it is leery of Chinese ownership, the sources said. Political tensions between the countries rocketed last year after their soldiers clashed on the disputed Himalayan border and since then, India has sought to limit Chinese investment in sensitive companies and sectors, banned a raft of Chinese mobile apps and subjected imports of Chinese goods to extra scrutiny. With China after the border clashes it cannot be business as usual. The trust deficit has significantly widen(ed), said one of the government officials, adding that Chinese investment in companies like LIC could pose risks. The sources declined to be identified as discussions on how Chinese investment might be blocked are ongoing and as no final decisions have been made. Indias finance ministry and LIC did not respond to Reuters emailed requests for comment. It is hoped that India will provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory investment and business environment for Chinese companies, which is also in Indias own interests, Chinas foreign ministry said, adding economic and trade cooperation between China and India was mutually beneficial. Aiming to solve budget constraints, Prime Minister Narendra Modis administration is hoping to raise 900 billion rupees through selling 5% to 10% of LIC this financial year which ends in March. The government has yet to decide on whether it will sell one tranche of shares seeking to raise the full amount or choose to seek the funds in two tranches, sources have said. Under current law, no overseas investors can invest in LIC but the government is considering allowing foreign institutional investors to buy up to 20% of LICs offering. Options to prevent Chinese investment in LIC include amending the current law on foreign direct investment with a clause that relates to LIC or creating a new law specific to LIC, two of the government officials said. They added that the government was conscious of the difficulty in checking on Chinese investments that could come indirectly and would attempt to craft a policy that would protect Indias security but not deter overseas investors. A third option being explored is barring Chinese investors from becoming cornerstone investors in the IPO, said one government official and the banker, although that would not prevent Chinese investors from buying shares in the secondary market. Ten investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and SBI Capital Market have been chosen to handle the offering. ($1 = 73.8200 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Aftab Ahmed and Manoj Kumar in New Delhi, Nupur Anand in Mumbai; additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom; editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Edwina Gibbs) Topics China Federal or state court? How will attribution science impact climate litigation? The questions arent the only ones of interest to insurers and reinsurers wanting to understand the potential for mass climate liability claims in the years ahead. Another key question: Do liability insurance policies cover climate change litigation defendants? Social Inflation or Science: What Is Fueling Climate Litigation? Attribution Science May Help Plaintiffs Push Climate Suits Ahead In September 2011, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Steadfast Insurance Co. had no duty to defend and indemnify its insured, energy company AES Corp., for claims arising from a global warming lawsuit under a commercial general liability coverage policy. Praedicat General Counsel Stephen Jones explained that AES was one of the defendants in an early climate change suit, Kivalina v. ExxonMobil, filed in 2008 by Native Alaskans whose village usually protected by sea ice had been subjected to flooding during winter storms now that the sea ice had melted. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the entire village of Kivalina needed to be relocated due to the effects of climate change. The insurance coverage case, he said, hinged on the definition of occurrence in the CGL, which would include an accident but not an intentional act. The Virginia court held that because climate change harms, and specifically the harms alleged in the Kivalina complaint were a natural or probable consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, it would not fall under the occurrence definition. Instead, it would be considered an intentional act, Jones explained. Read more: Va. Supreme Court: Insurer Not Liable for Claims From Global Warming This is actually the only court thus far to find that theres foreseeabilitythat the harm is not too remote, he said, suggesting this might be an anomaly. When the Virginia Supreme Court denied coverage, there were legal commentators that basically said that under this definition of occurrence, CGL policies wouldnt cover any negligence actions at all, he said. Im not sure that that result will be repeated in other jurisdictions, although I assume that there will be further coverage disputes and some policies will cover and some policies wont, he concluded. This article first was published in Insurance Journals sister publication, Carrier Management. Topics Lawsuits This edition of International People Moves details appointments at the broker Howden and two Lloyds insurers: Apollo Syndicate Management and Atrium Underwriting. A summary of these new hires follows here. Howden Appoints Swiss Res Cochrane as Head of Energy Transformation Howden, the international insurance broker, announced it has appointed Stanley Cochrane as head of Energy Transformation. Cochrane joins Howden from Swiss Re, where he spent 30 years as a property underwriter, specializing in energy, natural resources and complex risks. Most recently, he spent six years in Singapore as head Property & Specialty Asia Pacific. He will work across both the Natural Resources, and Climate Risk and Resilience teams. His main areas of focus will be helping clients to navigate the changing risk landscape as they transition towards low-carbon energy sources; and further developing the potential for insurance to remove financial barriers to the projects that enable the transition. As the technology required to enable the transition to a low carbon economy becomes increasingly viable, we are seeing a significant increase in demand for insurance solutions to help to release the capital to finance these projects, commented Charlie Langdale, head of Howdens Climate Risk and Resilience division. Stanleys holistic view of the energy and natural resources industries, and understanding of emerging trends, will help to ensure we are supporting the projects that will make a real impact in delivering a sustainable transformation. *** Apollo Hires Sandi From Canopius to Lead Build-up of Casualty Treaty Team Apollo Syndicate Management, the independent specialist insurer and reinsurer, announced the appointment of Paul Sandi who will lead the build-up of a casualty treaty team within Syndicate 1969, subject to Lloyds approval. Sandi has nearly 20 years of industry experience. He joins Apollo from Canopius where he was head of casualty treaty, having initially created a new U.S. casualty treaty portfolio. He was previously a casualty reinsurance underwriter at Liberty Syndicates, where he was part of a team that wrote the largest North American casualty reinsurance book in Lloyds. Sandi began his insurance career at Price Forbes. It is an exciting opportunity to join Apollo as it continues to build on its existing strong underwriting offering, increasing profitability and expanding strategically into its next stage of growth. Creating a new casualty treaty business will give brokers and clients a wider variety of choice, while current market conditions mean that this is an opportune time for expansion, said Sandi. *** Atrium Appoints AXA XLs MacColl as Head of Hull and War Atrium Underwriting, the managing agent for Lloyds Syndicate 609, announce the appointment of Mike MacColl as head of Hull and War, reporting to David Sankey, head of Marine. MacColl has over 35 years experience in the marine market having started his career at Lloyds Claims Office. He joins Atrium from AXA XL where he held the position of global head of Marine Hull and War Underwriting. Prior to this, he spent seven years as head of Marine Hull and War Underwriting at Talbot Underwriting. As a top-quartile Lloyds syndicate, Atrium is known market-wide as a first-class business. I look forward to being part of the team and helping to profitably grow their hull and war classes of business, commented MacColl. Atrium Underwriters Ltd. is a regulated Lloyds managing agency and part of the Atrium Group. Syndicate 609s capacity for 2021 is 625 million ($855.5 million), up from 525 million ($718.6 million) in 2020. Topics AXA XL Swiss Re Casualty HDI Global USA Appoints Sapia Director of Liability Underwriting Chicago-based HDI Global Insurance Co. (HDI Global USA) appointed David Sapia director of liability underwriting. In this new role, Sapia will be responsible for the profitability, growth and overall strategic direction of HDIs US casualty business. He reports to Jim Clark, chief executive officer, HDI Global USA. With more than 30 years of underwriting and field management experience, Sapia joins HDI from Axis Capital, where he was vice president, excess casualty underwriter for the West Region. Prior to Axis, he held various underwriting and management roles at Guy Carpenter, RSA Insurance Group, Reliance National Insurance Company, and CalComp Business Insurance Group. AAU Hires Dettmann in Chicago AAU, a division of USG Insurance Services Inc., hired Mason Dettmann as a personal lines producer/broker in Chicago. Dettmann brings five years of industry experience to the AAU team, most recently with Marketscout Corp. in St. Charles, Illinois. As producer/broker for the personal lines division at AAU, Dettmann will focus on building his book of business and expanding AAUs national footprint. This move is the most recent change that AAU has implemented in its plan to expand operations nationwide and continue to provide innovative solutions for the risk management industry. Allied American Underwriters (AAU) is a program manager that offers programs for commercial lines to USG retail agents and other distribution channels. Malkin Joins Alliant in Chicago Experienced benefits consultant Matt Malkin joined Alliant Insurance Services as senior vice president based in the Chicagoland area. Malkin adds his skill set to the companys employee benefits group within its Vertus Benefits Consulting division. He will provide a range of employee benefits solutions that provide long-term sustainability and growth for clients across the region. Malkin has significant experience creating innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being and reduce client costs. He is highly regarded for his expertise with group medical insurance, analytics, consulting, and point solutions. He joins Alliant with extensive experience managing teams that serve a wide array of clients of various industries and sizes. Previously, Malkin was senior director with a global broker, advisory, and underwriting firm A man who stole $2 million from Kankakee, Illinois, and a regional wastewater agency was sentenced to nine months in federal prison and two years of home confinement. Richard Simms, 74, acknowledged diverting money through a fraudulent software invoicing scheme. He stands before the court deeply remorseful for his actions and for the great pain he caused, defense lawyer Alan Brunell said. Simms served as director of the Kankakee River Metropolitan Agency and superintendent of Kankakees Environmental Services Utility. People gave you a standing ovation when you retired in 2018. They praised you, U.S. District Judge Colin Bruce said. To me, you have no honor. You have no integrity. Simms declined to speak in court Monday. Prosecutors had asked for a 30-month prison sentence. We were embarrassed for having placed too much trust in Mr. Simms and for not discovering his criminal scheme sooner, said Paul Schore, the mayor of Bourbonnais and a board member at the Kankakee River Metropolitan Agency. Simms was head of the Kankakee Environmental Services Utility for decades. Simms was incredibly calculated as an engineer and as a thief. The betrayal, doubt and guilt that many of us at the city have felt has been overwhelming and very destructive, said Elizabeth Kubal, Kankakees comptroller. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Fraud Illinois Three members of a South Dakota family accused of bilking millions from farmers due to risky speculation in the grain business have been sentenced to time behind bars. Jared Steffensen and his wife, Tami Steffensen, pleaded guilty earlier to theft by deception and were sentenced to five years in prison. Jared Steffensens mother, JoAnn Steffensen, pleaded guilty to failing to inform state regulators that the company was failing financially and was ordered serve 120 days in jail. Authorities say Jared Steffensen lost between $6 million to $10 million of H&I Grains money hedging commodities in 2016. Even though the Steffensens knew that their business was insolvent, they continued to reassure farmers they were fine, took their grain, and did not notify state regulators as required by law. H&I declared bankruptcy and some of the farmers did win a judgment against the Steffensens in civil court, although losses are expected to total about $5 million. It is good to see a favorable conclusion for the community after all the hardship the victims have faced in the aftermath of this complex financial crime, state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg said. Duane Steffensen, who started the company, was facing charges as well, but died in January of 2019. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Agribusiness South Dakota It turns out robots are taking over jobs fastest around the world in places where their human counterparts are aging the most rapidly. That is the conclusion of a new study that looked at demographic and industry-level data in 60 countries and found a powerful link between aging workforces defined as the ratio of workers aged 56 and older, compared with those aged 21 to 55 and robot use, focusing in particular on industrial settings. The research showed age alone accounted for 35% of the variation between countries in their adoption of robots, with those having older workers far more likely to adopt the machines. Aging is a huge part of the story in robot adoption, said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conducted the study with Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. The research fits a longstanding trend of countries such as South Korea and Germany which both have very rapidly aging workforces also being among the worlds fastest adopters of robots, based on the number of robots per human worker they deploy. The U.S. has a huge technological advantage in a bunch of areas including software and (artificial intelligence), said Acemoglu. But in robots, its Germany, Japan and recently South Korea, that are further ahead. Of the worlds top 15 robotics companies, seven are based in Japan and seven in Germany, Acemoglu said. The researchers found a similar pattern inside the U.S. economy with metropolitan areas that have older workforces also seeing great adoption of robots after 1990. The study examined 700 U.S. metros and used the number of robot integrators firms that specialize in installing and maintaining industrial robots as a proxy for local robotic activity. They found a 10 percentage-point increase in the aging of a local population led to a 6.45 percentage-point increase in the presence of these integrators. (Reporting by Timothy Aeppel in New York Editing by Matthew Lewis) Topics Talent An estimated 2,600 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions. And in Arkansas, a hospital has been swamped with so many such requests from employees that it is apparently calling their bluff. Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot. And it is only likely to grow following President Joe Bidens sweeping new vaccine mandates covering more than 100 million Americans, including executive branch employees and workers at businesses with more than 100 people on the payroll. The administration acknowledges that a small minority of Americans will use and some may seek to exploit religious exemptions. But it said it believes even marginal improvements in vaccination rates will save lives. It is not clear how many federal employees have asked for a religious exemption, though union officials say there will be many requests. The Labor Department has said an accommodation can be denied if it causes an undue burden on the employer. In the states, mask and vaccine requirements vary, but most offer exemptions for certain medical conditions or religious or philosophical objections. The use of such exemptions, particularly by parents on behalf of their schoolchildren, has been growing over the past decade. The allowance was enshrined in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees who object to work requirements because of sincerely held religious beliefs. A religious belief does not have to be recognized by an organized religion, and it can be new, unusual or seem illogical or unreasonable to others, according to rules laid out by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But it cant be founded solely on political or social ideas. That puts employers in the position of determining what is a legitimate religious belief and what is a dodge. Many major religious denominations have no objections to the COVID-19 vaccines. But the rollout has prompted heated debates because of the longtime role that cell lines derived from fetal tissue have played, directly or indirectly, in the research and development of various vaccines and medicines. Roman Catholic leaders in New Orleans and St. Louis went so far as to call Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 shot morally compromised. J&J has stressed that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine. Moreover, the Vaticans doctrine office has said it is morally acceptable for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines that are based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses. Pope Francis himself has said it would be suicide not to get the shot, and he has been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer formula. In New York, state lawmakers have attempted to make the vaccine mandatory for medical workers, with no religious exemptions. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing the rule to give a group of workers time to argue that it is illegal because it lacks the opt-out. Andrew Kurtyko, a registered nurse, is among those who want a religious exemption to not take the vaccine, and he is preparing to leave New York for Florida with his 18-year-old daughter if necessary. Kurtyko said the draconian vaccine requirements in the U.S. remind him of communist Poland where he grew up before he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1991. He is a Catholic who believes fetal stem cells were experimented with in making the vaccine. He called Pope Francis guidance to get vaccinated his own opinion. My parents came to this country for better living and crossed the ocean, said Kurtyko. The least I can do is fight for myself and my family is to go to a different state where religious exemptions are still being honored.. . . Our rights are being trampled. Across the U.S., public officials, doctors and community leaders have been trying to help people circumvent COVID-19 mask and vaccine requirements. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, pastor Jackson Lahmeyer is offering a religious exemption form on his churchs website for download, along with links for suggested donations to the church. The 29-year-old is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. Anyone interested can get the form signed by a religious leader, or Lahmeyer can sign it himself if the person joins the church and donates. He said more than 35,000 people downloaded the form in just three days. Were not anti-vaxxers. Were just pro-freedom, Lahmeyer said. A lot of these people who have signed have already taken the vaccine. They just dont think its right that somebody else should be forced or lose their job. But obtaining a religious exemption is not as simple as producing a signed form. Measles outbreaks in schools over the past decade prompted some states to change their policies. Some now require an actual signed affidavit from a religious leader, instead of an online form. California got rid of nonmedical exemptions in 2015. Some employers are taking a hard line. United Airlines told employees last week that those who obtain religious exemptions will be put on unpaid leave until new coronavirus testing procedures are in place. In Los Angeles, Police Chief Michel Moore said he is waiting for guidance from the city personnel department on how to handle exemption requests. The city has mandated that municipal employees get vaccinated by Oct. 5 unless they are granted a medical or religious exemption. A group of LAPD employees is suing over the policy. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti had a warning for those seeking exemptions: We will not tolerate the abuse of these exemptions by those who simply dont want to get vaccinated. To anyone thinking about filing a disingenuous exemption request, I strongly urge that you reconsider. In Washington state, approximately 60,000 state employees are subject to a mandate issued by Gov. Jay Inslee that they be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or lose their job, unless they obtain a medical or religious exemption and receive an accommodation that allows them to remain employees. As of Sept. 14, more than 3,800 workers had requested religious exemptions. So far, 737 have been approved, but officials stressed that an exemption does not guarantee continued employment. Once the exemption is approved, each agency has to evaluate whether the employee can still do the job with an accommodation while ensuring a safe workplace. Seven accommodations so far have been granted. Inslee spokeswoman Tara Lee said the process may help distinguish between a sincerely held personal belief and a sincerely held religious belief. In Arkansas, about 5% of the staff at the privately run Conway Regional Health System has requested religious or medical exemptions. The hospital responded by sending employees a form that lists a multitude of common medicines _ including Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol, Preparation H and Tums _ that it said were developed or tested using fetal cell lines. The form asks people to sign it and attest that my sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true and I do not use or will not use any of the listed medications. In a statement, Conway Regional Health President and CEO Matt Troup said: Staff who are sincere should have no hesitancy with agreeing to the list of medicines listed. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Carla K. Johnson, Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar Sean Murphy, Stefanie Dazio, Brady McCombs and Rachel La Corte contributed to this report. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics COVID-19 Just Insure, a pay-per-mile insurance technology company that uses telematics to reward safe drivers and reduce insurer bias, announced it has raised $8 million, bringing its total funding amount to $15 million. The new funds will be used to scale the company and its product offering as it looks to expand into additional states. This funding round was led by CrossCut Ventures, ManchesterStory and Western Technology Investments. This funding comes as Just Insure (Just) enters a phase of rapid growth, issuing more than 1,000 new policies in the second quarter of 2021, up ten-fold from the same period in 2020. The company has also reported a 1,400% increase in revenue in this same period. The average cost of auto insurance in the U.S. is around $1,600 per year and close to $2,000 for those in their twenties, said Just in a statement. While legacy insurance providers rely on demographics indicators such as zip codes, credit rating or marital status, Just said, it uses telematics and only charges for the miles driven. This enables the company to proactively offer lower rates for safer drivers and saves its customers around 40% relative to their previous auto insurance company, Just continued. Similar to a prepaid phone card, Just customers load up their account for as little as $30. As customers drive, their balance declines, and every 30 days, the company changes each customers price as more information is gathered about the customers driving habits. People are simply driving less as a result of increased work-from-home rates, and this isnt changing anytime soon, commented Robert Smithson, founder and CEO of Just Insure. Our approach enables us to offer customers rates that are truly reflective of their driving, which in turn rewards drivers, removes rate bias, and ultimately makes the road a safer place for everyone. Were eager to continue developing our telematics capabilities and growing our team with these new funds. We were initially attracted to Just Insure as the team is taking an approach to auto insurance that weve never seen before, said Matt Kinley, co-founder and managing partner at ManchesterStory. It is more fair, affordable, and customized across the board, and unique because the company offers customers rates that are actually reflective of their driving, which rewards safe drivers with lower insurance premiums. Just is currently available in Arizona, with plans to expand to additional US markets such as Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia. Founded in 2019, Just Insure is a subsidiary of SF Insuretech Inc., and is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in London. The company has raised a total of $15.3 million from CrossCut Ventures, ManchesterStory and Western Technology Investments. Source: Just Insure Topics Auto Funding The countrys flood insurance market is slowly transitioning toward private insurers providing additional options to the federal governments program for those seeking coverage, according to a new AM Best report. But private sector carriers are being selective, tending to avoid risks in flood-prone areas and concentrating more on commercial properties than homeowners, an AM Best report shows. According to Bests Market Segment Report, Appetite for Flood Risk Among Private Insurers Still Small, more than 70% of overall private flood premium has been generated from commercial property exposures. Insurtech Attracts $15.5M to Its Commercial, High Net Worth Flood Insurance Platform Also the report finds that private insurers tend to avoid flood-prone areas, noting that Florida experiences tropical systems more frequently than any other state and represents about one third of the total National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) insured value. Yet Florida represents only about a quarter of the total flood premium, partially illustrating the larger issue that the NFIP is subject to an inherent risk of adverse selection. If private insurers are able to price risks individually, they will cherry-pick the best risks with pricing better than the NFIPs subsidized rates, leading to further adverse selection, said Christopher Graham, senior industry analyst, AM Best. Neptune to Offer Flood Insurance to Small Business Administration Borrowers The NFIP still bears the heaviest burden of the U.S. flood market, but private flood insurers generated almost $3.1 billion in total direct premium during 2016-2020. The $735 million in direct premium in 2020 represented the largest amount during that period. Online Platform Allows Agents, Buyers to Compare, Buy Flood Insurance The slow shift toward more private sector involvement comes a time when the federally operated National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) notched a $20.5 billion shortfall earlier in the year, a figure that includes losses dating back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The NFIP is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has developed Rating 2.0, a strategy to address pricing inefficiencies and curtail any adverse risk selection by moving all properties to a true risk-based rate. The new NFIP rate structure is scheduled to take effect Oct. 1, 2021. New Federal Flood Insurance Rating Plan to Start Oct. 1 Under Risk Rating 2.0, the annual premium rate is expected to decline for a quarter of policyholders obtaining coverage through the NFIP. However, many will see their rates increase and reach their full risk rate in approximately five years. Eventually, the new rating measures should lead to more adequately priced NFIP risks and more competitive coverage offered by private insurers. According to Best analysts, higher premium costs for federal flood insurance should make the private insurance pricing more competitive and drive more insureds to the private market. This should help better spread the flood risk among private carriers and the NFIP, as well as create a better overall flood insurance market for customers needing the coverage, said David Blades, associate director, AM Best. Insurance, Housing Groups Urge Renewal of Flood Program That Expires Sept. 30 Authorization for the NFIP is currently set to expire at the end of this month unless Congress acts to renew it. In recent years, Congress has been unable to pass reform legislation or a long-term extension for the NFIP but has instead passed about a dozen short-term extensions. Last year, President Donald Trump signed a one-year extension passed by Congress right before the NFIP expired. Source: AM Best Topics Trends Flood Market AM Best Citizens Property Insurance Corp. president Barry Gilway said at a Wednesday board of governors meeting that the organization is considering all ideas to reduce exposure as policies mount by the thousands. Gilway said Citizens is accepting policies at a rate of 5,000-6,000 per week as private market insurers withdraw coverage amid significant losses. Citizens policy count is on pace exceed 760,000 by the end of the year, which could push the companys exposure growth to more than $230 billion. I think it would be optimistic to consider that we are going to get any significant depopulation activity until probably the second or third quarter of next year, Gilway said. Created by the Florida legislature as the insurer of last resort, Citizens provides insurance to property owners unable to find coverage in the private market. Gilway said the increase in policies has already had an impact on staffing, particularly at Citizens call center where calls have increased to more than 86,000 per month, up 59% from 2020. At a Tuesday Exposure Reduction Committee meeting, Citizens officials offered proposals that would refer potential policyholders to the private market. Any such proposals would likely have to go through the Florida legislature, which reconvenes in January 2022. At this point, everything is on the table as we try hard to support the development of a stronger private insurance market and stabilize the role of Citizens as the market of last resort, said Nelson Telemaco, chairman of Citizens Exposure Reduction Committee. Topics Florida A man who accused Seattle police officers of physical abuse after they entered his home two years ago during a welfare check has reached a $250,000 settlement with the city. Under the settlement, the city didnt admit wrongdoing and Howard McCay, 74, got a payment and an audience with the departments leadership. McCay said he woke early on Feb. 23, 2019 thinking intruders were entering his two-story home in Seattles Cherry Hill neighborhood. He called 911 and found out the intruders where Seattle police officers who were responding to a welfare check after a neighborhood resident called the citys non-emergency number to report that the front door to McCays home was open. McCay had left his television volume turned up in his upstairs bedroom and didnt hear the officers commands. The officers forcefully handcuffed him and finally asked if he was the homeowner. The Office of Police Accountability, a civilian review board, investigated the incident and found officers had followed the department protocols and procedures in the case. McCay and his lawyers disagreed, filing a $5 million lawsuit against the city in March. Both sides settled in July with McCay receiving $122,500 and the law firm representing him receiving $127,500. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Washington A Seattle, Wash. woman accused of forging signatures and stealing money by billing the state for appointments, some related to workers compensation services, that never happened pleaded guilty Wednesday. Carla C. Moreno also repaid the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries $43,296 in full for overbilling the department for interpreter services in the Tri-Cities. Moreno pleaded guilty to third-degree theft, a gross misdemeanor, in Franklin County Superior Court. Repaying L&I was part of her sentence. Moreno was sentenced to serve more than 30 days in confinement, including 10 days in jail and 20 days through electronic home monitoring. She also must serve probation for two years; she must break no laws during that time or could face additional criminal penalties in connection with this case. Moreno, 33, is also known as Carla Cynthia Montes De Oca Moreno and Carla Moreno Montgomery. Moreno committed the reported theft while operating The Language Spot and Language Spot, both based in Pasco, from 2009 to 2017. The Washington State Attorney Generals Office prosecuted the case based on a two-and-a-half-year investigation by its office and L&I. Moreno, a sole proprietor, reportedly hired independent contractors to interpret at medical and physical therapy appointments for Spanish-speaking workers who had workplace injury claims with L&I. Investigators found she used a variety of methods to overbill L&I for the services, including billing for non-existent appointments, double-billing for actual appointments, using names and provider numbers of interpreters who worked for her in the past, and submitting billing forms with forged signatures of health care providers and certified interpreters. In other cases, investigators found Moreno submitted 60 billing forms with the name and provider number of a certified interpreter who no longer worked for her. The certified interpreter and five other individuals told L&I they were unaware Moreno had been using their names and provider numbers to bill for services. Moreno stopped billing L&I in the fall of 2017 while the investigation was ongoing. She no longer provides interpreter services for L&I. Topics Workers' Compensation Washington Targeted supports for Irish agri-food companies facing new trade barriers with Britain, due to Brexit, and funding to reboot Irelands economic relationship with the UK should be introduced in next months budget, the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce has said. In its pre-budget submission, the chamber has called for a collaboration fund like the Governments Shared Island Fund project in order to boost trade and promote research work between Ireland and Britain. The re-opening of schools at the end of last month has not resulted in a significant increase in Covid-19 transmission, the chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team's (Nphet) Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group has said. In a Twitter thread, Professor Philip Nolan defended health officials' decision to allow asymptomatic close contacts of Covid-19 cases to continue to attend school. He said that while the level of infection in children and adolescents increased over the course of this past summer, largely as a result of the more-transmissible delta variant, this had now "stabilised at a high level in children aged 12 and under and has decreased markedly" among those aged between 13 and 18. Prof Nolan said that vaccinations have reduced incidence rates in adults and adolescents and have started to lower the probability of children become infected with Covid-19. "When schools reopened it was inevitable that some children attending school would subsequently develop symptoms or test positive. It was prudent at that time, with limited experience of the delta variant in schools, to isolate and test their contacts, he said. On Wednesday, officials from the Department of Health confirmed that close contact tracing and testing measures in creches and primary schools will be discontinued from next Monday. From then, automatic contact tracing of close contacts in childcare facilities and primary education will cease, not including special education facilities. The testing of asymptomatic close contacts in childcare facilities and primary education will be also be halted, not including special education facilities. Under the changes: Children aged 12 or under, identified as close contacts in childcare, educational settings, or other non-household settings and who are asymptomatic will no longer be required to restrict movements unless indicated by the local public health team. Children aged 12 or under who are identified as household close contacts in household settings will still be required to restrict movements and get tested, regardless of symptomatic status. Cases and outbreaks in Special Educational Needs (SEN) settings, respite care, or residential settings will still require a public health risk assessment. The changes were signed-off by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, following discussions with Nphet and the chief medical officer. In response, the country's largest teachers' union has called for a deferral until after the mid-term break. The Irish National Teacher's Organisation (INTO) said that abandoning the current contact tracing arrangements could cause mass confusion for schools, principals, staff, and parents. The union said a deferral would "allow time for better data to be obtained and sufficient time for considered analysis and to allow for the proposed changes to be implemented in an orderly fashion." When schools reopened it was inevitable that some children attending school would subsequently develop symptoms or test positive. It was prudent at that time, with limited experience of the delta variant in schools, to isolate and test their contacts. 4/14 Professor Philip Nolan (@PhilipNolan_MU) September 22, 2021 Prof Nolan did acknowledge that reopening of schools did indeed lead to a three to four-fold increase in the number of children being referred for Covid testing". However, he said that the yield from this additional testing was low. "This pattern is typical of increased case ascertainment due to intensive testing, that is, a very large increase in testing is finding (largely asymptomatic) cases that we were not detecting before, rather than a true increase in the underlying level of infection," he said. Prof Nolan said his data supports health officials' experience last year that schools "are not major contributors to or drivers of transmission". "The resumption of in-person education has not been associated with a significant increase in the level of infection when increased testing is taken into account. The summary: opening schools has had little effect on transmission of the virus; a massive increase in testing has detected only a modest number of additional cases; and the risks of allowing asymptomatic in-school contacts to continue schooling is low. 13/14 Professor Philip Nolan (@PhilipNolan_MU) September 22, 2021 The President of Maynooth University said that the risk associated with allowing an asymptomatic in-school contact to continue schooling is low compared with the impact of excluding that child from school. "The most important intervention now to keep schools and children safe is to support parents and guardians in keeping children with symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 home from school and caring for them," he added. HSE clinical lead for children: 'Well' children are 'not drivers of infection' Dr Abigail Collins, the HSE clinical lead on child health, defended the changes this morning. Speaking on Morning Ireland, she said that health officials were "constantly evaluating if what they were doing was necessary and proportionate". She said that "well" children were "not drivers of infection, and not very good at spreading the infection if they have no symptoms". "The balance of the benefits and the harms of excluding well children from society, not just for school, is something that needs to be addressed and considered, and obviously this discussion has been had with Nphet and the recommendation has been made for implementation." Dr Collins said international evidence had shown schools to be a low-risk community setting. HSE clinical lead on child health, Dr Abigail Collins. File Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins Dublin Asked why it is the case that children who are close contacts of a confirmed case in household and special educations needs settings need to isolate and be tested, but children in primary schools do not, Dr Collins said households still posed the highest risk of transmission. She said special educational needs settings often had children with medical vulnerabilities and that if a Covid-19 case was notified in such a setting, it would be brought forward for a full public health risk assessment. "Its right that those two are considered differently, she said. Giving advice to parents, Dr Collins said that if a child had a runny nose, but was otherwise completely well, they do not need to be excluded from school settings. However, if the child complained of other symptoms, then parents should act accordingly. "Contact your GP. You are not expected to make that decision about if they should have a Covid-19 test. "If you have a child you dont think is well, you observe them and discuss with your primary care physician as per normal." The Taoiseach has opened a UN debate on climate change and global security as the UN President warned that the climate crisis is a "code red". Micheal Martin is today the first Taoiseach to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council as Ireland holds the Presidency of the council this month. In his speech, Mr Martin said that the Security Council must agree that extreme weather events are a cause and exacerbating factor of global conflict. "A concerted multilateral response to climate change involving all the organs of the UN is urgently needed. That response must include this Council. "The impact of climate change is global and our collective security is at risk." While the call was broadly supported by France, the US, Kenya, Norway, the UK and others, it was less warmly welcomed by Russia and China, two holdouts on linking the two issues. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the issue was "an argument that should have been settled a long time ago". He said that the effects of climate change were not an idea in the future, but one that is seen in New York where subway stations flooded recently. Mr Martin confirmed that Ireland will begin the work of passing a resolution on the issue next week. "To take these proposals forward, Ireland will convene a discussion on a thematic resolution on Climate and Security in the coming days. "I ask today that all members of the Council engage constructively on this Resolution. People affected by climate change-driven conflict depend on this Council for leadership. "The international community is looking to us for guidance. "By working together, in a spirit of common purpose, I hope that we can reach a shared understanding of how the Security Council can meet this challenge. Now is the moment for the Council to act." However, the three holdouts on the Security Council rejected Ireland's resolution out of hand. India's representative Reenat Sandhu argued that the Paris Agreement and the UN framework convention on climate change are there to "holistically" address climate change. Read More Taoiseach praises Biden as ally on Covid and climate change Russia's representative said that "too many cooks spoil the broth" and said that the UN's other arms already handle the substantive issues. He said that the Security Council was not a universal tool of the UN and that climate change was one of many challenges. He said that Russia "wholeheartedly concurs" with international calls to address climate concerns, but Ireland's resolution would duplicate work at the UN. "I will be frank, we believe that the insistent and persistent attempts to, at all costs, advance at the Security Council agenda the premise of climate change as a threat to international peace and security introduces a completely unnecessary political component to an already complicated and sensitive discussion. "This kind of an approach is also liable to artificially simplify the approach to the situation, which in turn is liable to result in one-sided and futile solutions in terms of strengthening, stability, worldwide. Perhaps our colleagues, by involving the Security Council, simply wish to raise the profile of the climate discussion." He said that the climate issue would "not benefit" from inclusion at the Security Council. China's representative Zhang Jun said the UN report noted that climate change has become a real threat to the survival of mankind. He said the relationship between climate and security is very complex. He said it is imperative that the Paris Agreement and other UN bodies that are tasked with dealing with climate change issues be maintained as the main channels in dealing with the issue. Read More China and US unveil big steps to fight climate change He added that the Paris Agreement is the most authoritative channel to do this. He said it would be inappropriate for the security council to replace this channel. Speaking after the debate, Mr Martin said that "now is the time to act". He said that 80% of UN peacekeepers are deployed to countries being hit by climate emergencies. Mr Martin said that the threat of a veto from Russia and China did not mean the resolution was "doomed". He said that Ireland will engage "with all members in good faith" and said that Ireland will try to persuade those opposed. He said that "as an experienced politician" he believed that there is a "greater consensus on climate change than there had been". "One cannot go through life assuming that others will not change their minds. One has to pursue and persist and change the paradigm. People don't have the same opinions forever." He said that the Security Council had been discussing the issue for 15 years but that there was "no time to waste". Specialist emotional counselling and hot meals for hunger prevention in schools are two major issues for the governments Covid pandemic impact response in education. Successive recent Joint Oireachtas Education Committee reports on Covid response (January 2021) and on mental health and school bullying (August 2021) have given the same key recommendation to the Minister for Education and Skills, Norma Foley, namely, that emotional counselling and therapeutic supports be provided in all primary and secondary schools as an urgent priority. The Covid Response Oireachtas Report also recommends that "the provision of hot meals to vulnerable students should be expanded to cover periods of school closures and holidays and a Hot Meals Programme should be rolled out nationally to all schools on a phased basis". The Ombudsman for Children, Dr Niall Muldoon, was asked by the chair of the Oireachtas Committee to develop a concrete proposal for such specialist emotional counselling/therapy in schools. Paul Downes: "Ireland is radically out of step with many European countries such as, for example, Czech Republic, Belgium, Sweden, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany who all provide emotional counselling services in schools." A key recommendation in the Child Ombudsmans proposal is a pilot across the whole country to cover both primary and post-primary involving the hiring of therapists, akin to those working within the National Counselling Service. This gives the added value of consistent presence around the school for acting earlier and reducing problems quickly. His proposal to establish 160 emotional counsellors nationally, in every county, costs less than 10 milllion per annum. The August 2021 Report of the Oireachtas Committee adds further detail to its key recommendation: The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) should be reconstituted and expanded urgently as the National Educational Psychological and Counselling Service (NEPCS) and mandated to provide specialist emotional counselling and therapeutic supports, on site, in all primary and secondary schools. The service should be adequately resourced and funded to ensure it can deliver on its mandate. On-site counsellors Ireland is radically out of step with many European countries such as, for example, Czech Republic, Belgium, Sweden, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany who all provide emotional counselling services in schools. Croatia and Bulgaria have legislation in place that provides for emotional counselling. The Children's Ombudsman notes in the Oireachtas Report that there is a national school counselling strategy in second-level schools in both Wales and Northern Ireland where statutory access is granted to all children in second-level schools. Over 60% of secondary schools in England also have this access and in 2020, for the first time, the Scottish Government pledged to invest 80m over the next four years in the provision of counselling in education, including the use of 60m to provide counsellors to all second-level schools in Scotland. Trauma and adverse childhood experiences take many different forms, including school bullying, bereavement, separation/divorce, alcohol/addiction issues or domestic violence. These experiences have detrimental educational impacts on early school leaving, concentration, motivation, engagement, interaction and attendance in school. Read More Call for education system to be 'Covid-proofed' to stop vulnerable falling behind A teacher can offer support as mental health promotion and stress prevention, but is not a therapist. The National Wellbeing in Schools Policy 2018 of a teacher as One good adult is no substitute for qualified emotional counsellors/therapists. NEPS cannot and do not provide sustained one-to-one emotional counselling support for students, even for critical incidents. Career Guidance Counsellors remit is not for trauma and adverse childhood experience. Universal pre-packaged programmes on wellbeing at trauma-informed schools are at the universal level and are no substitute for the trauma and adverse childhood experiences level of one-to-one counselling. Specialist emotional counsellors/therapists onsite in schools are a key part of an early intervention strategy to prevent mental health problems reaching clinical levels of need bringing referral to CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service). Child poverty A major concern is the impact on child poverty of the economic crisis generated by Covid-19 and the series of lockdowns. 109,401 children age 6-11 experienced poverty calculated at 70% of the national median income, 72,649 at 60% of the national median income, and 28,632 6-11 year olds experienced deep poverty, at 50% of the national median income. These Irish official 2020 child poverty figures based on a 2018 analysis are a massive current underestimation of need and are outdated in light of the pandemic impacts affecting Irish children and families. The explicit commitment in the Programme for Government 2020 is to "continue to review and expand the roll-out of the new Hot School Meals initiative". This vital initiative received an October 2020 budget commitment of an additional 5.5m for hot meals in schools for 35,000 more children nationally. Budget 2022 However, there is need for a much more substantial financial commitment in the forthcoming budget to expand this across DEIS and other schools nationally so it is not simply a hit-and-miss approach depending on which schools can or cannot avail of this national scheme. The Department of Education and Skills' response to the Covid pandemic needs to be a holistic one that is not only focused narrowly on academic learning loss but on emotional and hunger needs of students. Emotional counsellors are routinely available to all third-level students in Ireland. This glaring gap in provision for primary and secondary school students must be directly and substantially addressed in the forthcoming budget by the Minister for Education and Skills, Norma Foley, Taoiseach Micheal Martin and the whole of government to implement these key Oireachtas Education Committee recommendations on emotional counsellors/therapists onsite in schools. This article is an extract from his keynote presentation for the National Webinar of the Childrens Futures Network. A former Catalan leader sought by Spain for a failed secession bid is due in court to argue against extradition, a day after Italian police detained him in Sardinia, an Italian island with strong Catalan cultural roots and its own independence movement. Police on Thursday night transferred Carles Puigdemont to a jail in the city of Sassari after he was detained at the airport in Alghero on an international warrant. Alghero is hosting a traditional Catalan folklore festival that he was expected to attend. Demonstrators outside the courthouse in Sassari held signs in a Sardinian dialect proclaiming Democracy, the Sardinian nation supports the Catalan nation, and carried the flags of Sardinia and Catalonia the north-eastern Spanish region for which Puigdemont pushed for secession from Spain. Demonstrators hold Sardinian and Catalonian flags (Gloria Calvi/AP) His Italian lawyer, Agostinangelo Marras, told reporters outside the courthouse that an appeal court judge will hold a hearing to either uphold Puigdemonts detention or release him, as part of the extradition request process. The judges decision will be based on documents that I and the judge will have to evaluate, the lawyer said. The hearing might be held later on Friday or perhaps on Saturday morning, the lawyer indicated. Ultimately, it will be up to the Italian justice ministry to approve or deny extradition. At the heart of the immediate legal matter is whether the warrant issued by Spain seeking his arrest is valid. His lawyer in Spain, Gonzalo Boye, insisted the warrant issued in 2019 has been suspended. Mr Boye told Spanish radio station SER: We have to see whether the arrest warrant is enforceable. Thatll be up to the legal authorities in Italy. Spains Supreme Court, which issued the European arrest warrant, made no official comment. It is not the first time Spanish courts have tried to detain Puigdemont abroad. After a Belgian court declined to send him back in 2017, the following year he was arrested in Germany but a court there also refused to extradite him. Puigdemont and a number of his separatist colleagues fled to Belgium in October 2017, fearing arrest after holding an independence referendum for Catalonia that the Spanish courts and government said was illegal. Nine Catalan separatists later received prison sentences for their role in the 2017 referendum ranging from nine to 13 years. They were pardoned in July but Puigdemont, who fled, was not. He holds a seat in the European Parliament, although that legislature stripped him of parliamentary immunity. Carles Puigdemont at the European Parliament in Brussels (Francisco Seco/AP) The Spanish government said Puigdemonts detention in Sardinia obeys a legal process which is under way and which applies to any citizen of the European Union who must respond to his acts in court. Madrid said it would respect decisions taken by Italian authorities and its courts. Earlier in the week, Sardinian media reported that Puigdemont had been invited to a closed-door gathering in Oristano, Sardinia, of sympathisers of a Sardinian independence movement. Algheros historic and cultural ties with Catalonia date back to the 14th century, when a Catalan-Aragonese force won a naval battle off the Sardinian coast and the forces commander entered triumphantly into the city on Sardinias north-west coast. Some 20% of Algheros residents speak a Sardinian dialect derived from the Catalan tongue and recognised by the national government of Italy and the islands regional government. The Catalan regional government keeps a delegation in Alghero, which is now a popular tourist town. Burma Daw Aung San Suu Kyis Australian Advisor Appears in Naypyitaw Court Detained Australian Economic Advisor Sean Turnell and Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon in 2012. / Sean Turnell / Facebook Sean Turnell, a key economic adviser to ousted State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, appeared in court alongside three ousted Union ministers for the first time since their arrest in February. The Australian economist appeared at the Dekkhinathiri District Court in the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw, along with three ousted Union ministers: former planning and finance ministers U Kyaw Win and U Soe Win and deputy planning and finance minister U Set Aung. Along with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Turnell and the three ministers are accused of violating section 3(1c) of the Official Secrets Act. The case was originally set to be heard in Yangons Eastern District Court, but in June the Union Supreme Court ordered it transferred to the Dekkhinathiri District Court in Naypyitaw. On Thursday, Turnell, U Kyaw Win, U Soe Win and U Set Aung appeared at the court in full COVID-19 personal protection equipment, while Daw Aung San Suu Kyi appeared via video for the hearing. They all looked very tired and frail, said U Khin Maung Zaw, the lawyer representing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. U Soe Win is over 80 and U Kyaw Win over 70. Sean Turnell has been charged with two cases under the Immigration Act. His lawyers filed their power of attorney for the second charge on Thursday. The Australian served as one of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis top economic policy advisers for several years. He is also the director of research at the Myanmar Development Institute, a leading economic think tank focused on building government capacity. In March, junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun said Turnell was being investigated and faced two possible charges over allegations that he tried to flee Myanmar after the February 1 coup with secret financial information. He faces potential prison terms of five and seven years respectively for the two offences. Turnells family and the Australian government have repeatedly called for his immediate release. At the hearing on Thursday, the lawyers representing the accused requested that the court allow an in-person meeting with their clients and also applied for an interpreter to translate, said U Khin Maung Zaw. The lawyers requested the in-person meeting as Thursday was the first time they had seen their clients in person at the court. The accused were arrested shortly after the military takeover that ousted the democratically-elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government. The junta has claimed that the NLDs landslide victory in the 2020 general election was marred by voter fraud, despite outside observers judging the poll to have been free and fair. After their arrest, Turnell and the three ousted Union ministers were held at Insein Prison in Yangon. They are now believed to have been moved to a jail in Naypyitaw. The military regime has filed numerous charges against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, former President U Win Myint, cabinet members and government officials. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged in 11 cases including alleged possession of illegal walkie-talkies, violating COVID-19 restrictions, sedition and corruption. Since June, the State Counselor has been supposed to be appearing weekly at a special court in Naypyitaw to answer five of the charges against her, but the trial was delayed for two months from mid-July due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The hearings resumed earlier this month. On Wednesday, the junta filed an additional charge against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for alleged corruption. The case was filed in Yangons Regional Court, but her legal defense team said that they have yet to be told the details of the case. They expect to know more about it soon. You may also like these stories: More Volunteers and Civilians Detained in Myanmars Anti-Regime Stronghold Former UN Under-Secretary-General Tipped as Next Special Envoy to Myanmar Myanmar Juntas Internet Blackout Violates Residents Rights Burma More Volunteers and Civilians Detained in Myanmars Anti-Regime Stronghold A military column heading to Loikaw with detained civilians. / KNIC Myanmars military regime has detained two volunteers who are aiding displaced people in Kayah State, as well as two residents of Loikaw Township in Kayah. Two volunteers helping displaced persons were detained. We can guarantee that they are civilians engaged in humanitarian services. The two other detainees are an old woman and her grandchild who were detained on their return from their farm, said Ko Banyar, a spokesperson for the Karenni Human Rights Group. The four have been held incommunicado for over a week and denied their fundamental right to see a lawyer. The regime also arrested two men on suspicion of possessing arms and ammunition in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah, in the second week of September, said Ko Banyar. We wont complain about the right of the government or authorities to detain people for interrogation. But as aid volunteers are among the detainees, we would like to demand seriously that their families are allowed to see them and that they receive legal protection under domestic and international law. What they [the junta] did amounts to kidnapping, which is the worst form of human rights violation, Ko Banyar added. Over 30 civilians were detained in Kayah State between August 27 and September 12 amid heightened military tensions between junta troops and Karenni resistance groups. Twenty-three civilians are still being held by the regime. Fresh fighting broke out in Daw Poe Si at the border of Demoso and Loikaw townships on September 7, after the parallel National Unity Government declared a nationwide war against the junta. More than a dozen youths were arrested in the ensuing clashes. Six houses in Sanpya 5th and 6th Mile villages burned down after junta forces launched artillery strikes following the fighting, forcing hundreds of villagers from several villages to flee their homes. The military regime has denied arresting civilians in conflict areas, including those in Kayah State. Regime spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun said that all those detained were captured along with arms and ammunition. The military regime always denies [arresting civilians]. It also denies torching houses and killing civilians in Chin State. They do arrest, torture and kill civilians. They do torture civilians into confessing that they are resistance fighters, said a volunteer helping internally-displaced people in Kayah State. In June and July, regime soldiers reportedly detained 20 civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, and used them as human shields at the frontline for over 20 days. You may also like these stories: Former UN Under-Secretary-General Tipped as Next Special Envoy to Myanmar Myanmar Juntas Internet Blackout Violates Residents Rights Myanmar Regime Forces Kill Family of Four in Mandalay Region Burma Thirty Myanmar Police, Troops Defect in Chin State Since War Declaration Against Junta Junta troops at Mindats hospital in Chin State in March / Zalen Another 30 junta police officers and soldiers in Chin State have joined the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) defying military rule over the past two weeks, since the declaration of a Peoples Defensive War against the military regime by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) on Sept. 7. That means a total of 350 junta police and 21 soldiers have gone on strike against military rule in Chin State since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the Chinland Defense Force (CDF), which consists of ethnic Chin civilian armed forces across the state. Since late April, the military regime has faced intense resistance from the civilian fighters of the CDF teams, most of which are armed with homemade traditional hunting guns. The CDFs have managed to inflict heavy losses on junta forces in a series of firefights. In a speech to the country on Sept. 7, the NUGs acting president, Duwa Lashi La, urged anyone serving under the regime including soldiers and police to leave their jobs, while calling on all citizens to revolt against the rule of the military terrorists led by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing in every corner of the country. Since the declaration, 21 police and nine soldiers in Chin State have joined the CDM through the Chinland Defense Force, according to the group. Of them, three soldiers brought firearms along with them in joining the CDM, a spokesperson for the CDF told The Irrawaddy on Thursday. The junta forces have joined the CDM as they realized the military has become the most unpopular institution in the country, and after witnessing the revolution of the people against the junta, according to the CDF. The terrorist group [junta] which has seized power from the elected government, realized itself that the international community does not recognize them [as the legitimate government]. So, junta soldiers need to realize that point too, the spokesperson said. He also said that junta forces need to decide quickly whether they intend to protect the interests of the junta or join the CDM, as they are among the main targets of the revolution now that the NUG has officially declared war. The Chinland Defense Forces have been inviting junta soldiers to join the CDM by promising safe accommodation and a proper daily wage to those who do. The Chin civilian armed forces have already announced that they will award 5 million kyats (US$2,713) to junta troop who bring firearms and rounds along with them when defecting from the military. Those who bring heavy weapons with shells will be awarded 10 million kyats ($5,427). They also said government officials also would be awarded 5million kyats if they bring a vehicle from their offices while defecting to the CDM. A video shows civilian resistance fighters of the CDF encouraging surrounding junta soldiers to join the CDM during a firefight in Chin State, promising them safety and rewards. Meanwhile, some striking police officers are joining the Chinland Defense Forces in their fight against the military regimes forces in Chin State. As well, 320 police who defected from the junta-controlled Home Affairs Ministry after the coup have formed a police force that will work together with anti-regime groups to fight military rule in Kayah State. In Myanmar, almost 410,000 government staff have gone on strike against the military regime since February. Among them, around 2,000 junta police and soldiers have also joined the CDM, as of August, according to Peoples Embrace, a group helping security forces personnel who are refusing to work for the regime. Since the declaration of the Peoples Defensive War on Sept.7, 15 to more than 30 junta police and soldiers have contacted the CDM to join it each day, the NUG said. You may also like these stories: Brother of Slain Myanmar Pastor Says Regime Fails to Take Accountability for Atrocities Daw Aung San Suu Kyis Australian Advisor Appears in Naypyitaw Court More Volunteers and Civilians Detained in Myanmars Anti-Regime Stronghold Electronics company LG has successfully demonstrated the transmission and reception of wireless 6G THz data over 100 metres in an outdoor setting, a breakthrough in 6th generation mobile telecommunication development. iTWire previously reported that LG collaborated with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Europes largest applied research lab. The data travelled between Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and the Berlin Institute of Technology in Germany. With this breakthrough, LG looks at the possibilities and what the future may hold for 6G. LG says 6G uses terahertz frequencies which refer to the spectrum between 0.1 to 10 THz electromagnetic wave with wavelengths of 30 to 3000 micrometres. THz signals are very sensitive to shadows which significantly impact coverage. Furthermore, lower frequency terahertz experiences larger free space fading, LG adds. While only a test, the LG demonstration marks a milestone in the evolution of 6G. According to LG Electronics principal research engineer Dr Lee Ki-dong, 6G technology will play a key role for promising future industries including autonomous vehicles, AI robots and virtual and augmented reality-based technologies. LG says 6G is a key component of its focus on mobility, autonomous vehicles and cloud-based service robots. What self-driving cars and remote surgery have in common is the need for connectivity that 5G cannot readily support but which ultra-responsive and extremely low-latency 6G can, Ki-dong says. But while the technology will be ready, its also critically important for governments to be on board as well and that requires the right regulations. Company News: Data is as valuable as currency today, and every business needs to protect it. Hardware and software failures, data corruption, ransomware attacks, or simple accidental deletion can result in lost data, damaged reputations, and missed revenue. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it even more risks to data protection. Cybercrime has increased six times since the beginning of the pandemic, according to PurpleSec, while the FBI has been receiving up to 4,000 cybersecurity complaints each day. In the first half of 2021, Accenture found a 125% rise in the global volume of cyber intrusion activity compared with the same period in 2020, which included targeted ransomware, extortion operations, and supply chain intrusions. The increase in cyber threats has spurred businesses to take precautions to keep their digital assets secure. It is now commonly acknowledged that the best data protection practices focus both on prevention and recovery. As we enter the post-pandemic era, more challenges lie ahead. We are now at a critical crossroads where businesses must find a backup solution that provides comprehensive countermeasures. The challenges to come in the New Normal Skyrocketing data growth The amount of data businesses create continues to grow. Global data consumption is forecast to reach 79 zettabytes in 2021 and over 180 zettabytes, or 180 trillion GB, by 2025. The installed base of storage capacities is also expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 19.2% from 2020 to 2025. As data grows, so does the cost to store it. Coupled with the expense of scalability and backup measures for future business expansion, the costs of storing and protecting data may grow faster than many IT budgets can keep up with. Remote and hybrid working models Whether out of necessity or choice, many businesses are adopting remote and hybrid work models. Yet, these setups may unknowingly put data security at risk, as IT admins have less oversight and limited control over employees working in a remote setup. From weak home networking security to unsecured endpoint devices using VPNs for remote connectivity and intranet access, these could all create vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit. Should incidents like accidental data deletion or employees falling victim to phishing campaigns happen remotely, IT support may not be as prompt. With workloads being scattered across various employee devices and platforms in a remote working setup, IT teams may be faced with infrastructures that are difficult to manage and back up. These challenges can lead not only to higher administration costs but also to formidable cyber threats to a companys digital assets. Compliance with legal requirements As time spent online and data consumption surge during the pandemic, the onus on businesses to handle all this new data responsibly strengthens. Even before the pandemic, data privacy and security were increasingly in the public eye, as concerns about how organizations use consumer data continue to mount alongside shocking stories of significant data breaches. In response, governments have started to implement compliance regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to hold companies accountable and protect personal data. Businesses may be at risk of major fines if they fail to comply as a result of data breaches, unlawful storage of, or unauthorized sharing of data. Organizations must be transparent about the customer data they store, why it is stored, and how it is secured. To remain compliant, organizations are met with the challenge of building a comprehensive data protection solution that addresses safe data storage, backup, and recovery. Overcoming challenges and embracing the New Normal A solid data backup and recovery plan is integral to making sure digital assets remain intact, enabling businesses to get back to normal service as seamlessly as possible in the event of disruptions or disaster. The ideal backup and recovery solution should come with essential features that address the challenges of the New Normal and remain future-proof in the face of advancing technological landscapes. 1. Centralized management for easy deployment A centralized backup solution can greatly reduce IT efforts. The best backup solutions offer intuitive backup management for all endpoints, including servers, virtual machines, and SaaS applications. With one simple console, IT teams can deploy and monitor backup tasks, and stay alert with timely notifications and detailed reports. Backups are less effective without fast and easy restoration options. Leading solutions offer near-instantaneous restoration to minimize costly service downtime. With an easy-to-use centralized backup solution, individual employees can be trusted to restore their data using flexible recovery options without burdening IT admins. 2. Maximize storage efficiency with future-proof technology Data loss can happen at any time and in a multitude of ways. Keeping consistent backups of all devices and platforms is critical. Considering rapidly increasing data volumes, backup procedures can have a significant impact on data and storage consumption, resulting in both longer backup wait times, higher bandwidth usage, and increased costs. Advanced backup solutions overcome these challenges through incremental backup technology, which saves a copy only of changed or newly added files since the last backup, and data deduplication, a technology that eliminates identical data blocks across backed up workloads. The best backup solutions offer both options while also giving attention to storage device deployment. It is essential to find a solution that is flexible and scalable enough to meet the needs of growing businesses without requiring the replacement of existing IT infrastructure. 3. Integrated solutions for cost-effectiveness Managing business data can be time-consuming and expensive. Upfront costs, ongoing capacity upgrades, routine maintenance, integration with separate vendors, periodic firmware and software updates, repairs, and recurring license fees are just some of the prices to pay. These expenses can pile up quickly and result in an exorbitant total cost of ownership. Having a backup service that integrates hardware and software can mitigate these costs. Some providers offer built-in backup applications that achieve full data protection, including backup tasks for physical and virtual environments, and even saving off-site copies to the cloud. By consolidating acquisition, deployment, and technical support with one vendor, IT admins can have a comprehensive backup and recovery plan in place without paying additional license or maintenance fees. 4. Create a backup for your backups Having one copy of your primary data is not enough to protect against the rising threat posed by cybercriminals, or to remain compliant with increasingly demanding regulations. A good backup plan should always include a secondary backup. An ideal plan will comply with the golden 3-2-1 backup rule by creating three copies of your data on two different media, with one copy stored off-site for disaster recovery. An example of this could be storing the production data of a video project on a PC, and creating multiple backups of that data, with one stored on the PC and another on the cloud or on an external hard drive for an extra layer of protection. Choosing a one-stop backup solution for todays data protection needs Finding a solution that rises to the challenges and threats brought forward by the New Normal can be overwhelming, but that does not make it less imperative. Now is the time for businesses to up their backup game. Businesses should consider an effective, long-term backup and recovery solution that addresses modern data challenges. Synology NAS delivers a license-free solution that comes with centralized data protection and leverages storage efficiency. Polish lender Idea Bank is one such business that was challenged with the legal requirement to keep backups of all operations, including emails and Microsoft SharePoint data. With data scattered over different sources, performing backup and recovery tasks took a lot of time and effort. Business continuity was also at risk as a result of hardware failures and hard drive corruption, resulting in costly data loss and downtime for repairs. After investing in four Synology NAS, the bank leveraged Synologys Active Backup for Business to back up their physical and virtual Windows deployments onto two 12-bay rackmount SAS units. A further two 12-bay Synology RackStation units were used to back up a total of 2,506 Microsoft 365 accounts and 1,239 Microsoft SharePoint sites with Active Backup for Microsoft 365. New users were also automatically detected and backed up, reducing the time spent on manual configuration. The bare-metal and SaaS backups proved to be exactly the time-saving solution that Idea Bank needed, as their applications could be restored to their original configurations and computers were ready for use immediately after restoration. "Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365 has streamlined our operations. It has dramatically boosted the efficiency of our admins backing up email, SharePoint, and other data, said Przemysaw Grzegorczyk, Microsoft Systems Administrator at Idea Bank. Not forgetting to adhere to the 3-2-1 backup rule, the bank regularly backs the data on two of the Synology NAS devices up to one another with Snapshot Replication, adding a layer of redundancy in the event that the primary backup destination is unavailable. Idea Bank created an effective backup plan with an efficient Synology setup. Because it is license-free, we also do not have to worry about renewing subscriptions or buying additional support for the next few years," Mr Grzegorczyk added. After deploying an affordable and consolidated solution, Idea Bank was able to simplify and centrally manage backup and recovery tasks with ease, protecting all their digital assets and solving their data protection challenges. Discover how you can overcome your data protection challenges with Synologys comprehensive backup solutions here, or sign up for the Synology Business Backup webinar here. GUEST RESEARCH: The SolarWinds and Kaseya attacks were devastating intrusions at the heart of IT and network management supply chains. In each case, alleged state actors were able to infiltrate the mechanisms used by the vendors to ship software updates to customers, and infect those updates with malware, including ransomware, according to industrial security company Claroty. Tens of thousands of customers installed compromised updates, and the trust both vendors built with customers was damaged. SolarWinds and Kaseya were likely targeted not only because of their large and influential customer bases, but also because of their respective technologies access to enterprise networks, whether it was managing IT, operational technology (OT), or internet of things (IoT) devices. Given that these systems are used to monitor servers, they often contain many network secrets such as credentials or API tokens that would be attractive to attackers. Clarotys Team82 researchers addressed the ongoing threat to network management systems and mapped popular monitoring software in various IT, IoT, and OT networks, Nagios, or Nagios Core to be more specific. Claroty says Nagios Core is an open-source tool for monitoring IT infrastructure for performance issues, event scheduling and processing, alerting, and more functionality related to network health. Nagios XI is a proprietary web-based platform using Nagios Core. XI expands Cores capabilities by adding additional features to enhance IT operations. Network operations centre staff and system administrators use the platform to view the current state of managed servers and workstations. Nagios says that thousands of organisations worldwide use its software to monitor networks: Comcast, Shell, DHL, LOreal, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, and dozens of other companies are listed on its website as users. However, Team82s research discovered 11 exploitable vulnerabilities in Nagios XI that can lead to remote code execution with the same privileges as an Apache user (Nagios XI commonly runs on an Apache web server), credential theft, phishing attacks, local privilege escalation to user permissions, and local privilege escalation to root. By chaining some of these vulnerabilities, an attacker can achieve post-authentication remote code execution with high privileges (root). Vulnerabilities CVE-2021-37353: Nagios XI Docker Wizard before version 1.1.3 is vulnerable to server-side request forgery (SSRF) due to improper sanitisation in table population.php CVE-2021-37352: An open redirect vulnerability exists in Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 that could lead to spoofing. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker could send a link that has a specially crafted URL, and convince the user to click the link. CVE-2021-37351: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to insecure permissions and allows unauthenticated users to access guarded pages through a crafted HTTP request to the server. CVE-2021-37350: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to SQL injection vulnerability in the Bulk Modifications Tool due to improper input sanitisation. CVE-2021-37349: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to local privilege escalation because cleaner.php does not sanitise input read from the database. CVE-2021-37348: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to local file inclusion through improper limitation of a pathname in index.php. CVE-2021-37347: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to local privilege escalation because getprofile.sh does not validate the directory name it receives as an argument. CVE-2021-37346: Nagios XI WatchGuard Wizard before version 1.4.8 is vulnerable to remote code execution through Improper neutralisation of special elements used in an OS command (OS Command injection). CVE-2021-37345: Nagios XI before version 5.8.5 is vulnerable to local privilege escalation because xi-sys.cfg is being imported from the /var directory for some scripts with elevated permissions. CVE-2021-37344: Nagios XI Switch Wizard before version 2.5.7 is vulnerable to remote code execution through improper neutralization of special elements used in an OS command (OS Command injection). CVE-2021-37343: A path traversal vulnerability exists in Nagios XI below version 5.8.5 AutoDiscovery component and could lead to post-authenticated RCE under the security context of the user running Nagios. Recommendations In August, Nagios addressed the vulnerabilities privately disclosed by Team82 through updates to Nagios XI, Nagios XI Docker Wizard, Nagios XI WatchGuard Wizard, and Nagios XI Switch Wizard. Users are urged to immediately update all affected systems, and follow some basic rules about keeping network management systems secure. Trust: These systems require extensive trust and access to network components in order to properly monitor network behaviours and performance. They may also extend outside your network through the firewall to attend to remote servers and connections. Therefore, these centralised systems can be a tasty target for attackers who can leverage this type of network hub, and attempt to compromise it in order to access, manipulate, and disrupt other systems. Monitor: Access to the network management system should be closely monitored and limited to privileged insiders. All connections and activity should be monitored and alerted upon. This report is the first in a series of research into the security of network management systems where Team82 examines what it means for OT, IT, and IoT domains. Strewth! Having done a vibe check, Alexa speaks 'Strayan at long last, and knows that "Barbie" isn't a plastic doll, at least in the Strayan context, that "Yeah/Nah" is something Aussies really say and can turn on the lights when you ask to flick it on, but still can't flick off the mozzies, or at least, not yet! If you've ever wanted to tell Alexa to play an absolute banger, or even get Alexa's help to chuck a sickie, which in areas of lockdown means staying in the same home you're already in doing even less than you are probably doing now, then... oi! Alexa may well be the most understanding digital assistant yet. Yes, Aussie lingo now added to Alexas vocabulary, and with Amazon getting a little help from true blue icons Sophie Monk and The Inspired Unemployed, with Sophie Monk celebrated for her famously broad and absolutely unmissable Australian accent. Amazon conducted a new study which revealed the sense of pride the nation has for our Strayan phrases, with our unique vernacular amongst the top five things that make modern Australians proud to be Aussie (53%), more so than our iconic sporting culture/greats (49%), food culture (48%) and music legends (33%). Not only is our Aussie slang a sense of national pride, a third (32%) say that using uniquely Aussie phrases is an important part of who they are. Bloody oath! So, to celebrate the great Aussie vernacular, and ensure Alexa can better understand some of Australias most unique, popular and need-to-know phrases when customers speak to their Echo devices, Amazon teamed up with the instantly recognisable voices of Sophie Monk and viral comedy duo The Inspired Unemployed. So, just how Aussie has Alexa become? Well, we're told Alexa now understands over 100 true blue phrases from flick it on to switch on the lights, bucket down to get a weather check and even sparrows fart when you need to set an early morning alarm. Sophie Monk said, Its no secret that Im a self-confessed bogan, but I honestly love the way us Aussies talk, its unlike anywhere else in the world. Its so funny to me because I was born in the UK, yet Im such a true blue Aussie. "I cant shake it - even living overseas for 10 years didnt make a difference. People had no idea what I was saying half the time, but I wouldnt change it for the world. It makes me feel at home. Thats why Im excited to help Alexa understand the Aussie phrases we all love. Strayan is its own brand of unique, and thats what makes it feel like home Just like Sophie, Amazon tells us "38% of Australians have had to explain classic Aussie terms when abroad, but it's that uniqueness that makes the Aussie turn of phrase an important part of the way we create community. Over half (53%) of those surveyed say hearing Aussie slang makes them feel at home and 41% say they find it endearing when someone uses classic Aussie phrases. "Our love of Aussie sayings also means they pop up in unexpected situations, particularly for younger generations. A fifth (22%) aged 25-34 use slang in professional documents like essays and presentations and walking down the aisle is even becoming a true-blue event. A sixth (14%) of those aged 25-34 gave their proposal or wedding vows a little Aussie flair." You are what you speak. Our favourite phrases reflect our famously laidback culture When it comes to our favourite Australian slang, Amazon informs us "Yeah/nah" (38%) is among the top, followed by "Mozzie," (32%) Barbie, (28%), Give it a crack, (28%) and Flat out like a lizard drinking (21%) - all of which are now understood by Alexa. Dr. Amanda Laugesen, an expert on the Australian English vocabulary, explains the interesting reason these particular words have won Aussie hearts: "Australian English has so many distinctive features, yet its telling that our favourite sayings are things like Yeah/Nah and Give it a crack. "Words arent just a way of communicating, theyre a form of self-expression and phrases like these, and our tendency to shorten words, reflect the laid-back attitude we pride ourselves on. Yeah/Nah is a great example of this; were disagreeing but in a way that doesnt invite conflict. Aussie English definitely has that distinctively relaxed and informal quality, and thats part of the reason why we all love it so much. One for the road; how Aussie English is evolving While Aussies share a love of classic Strayan phrases, Amazon tells us a yarn when it says "the words we use are shifting and changing across generations, so Amazon has also made sure Alexa understands the latest slang. "A fifth (21%) of those over 64 years old have had to ask younger family members to explain new slang. So, while Gen Z might have to explain the latest TikTok phrases like Cheugy, Hey Bestie, or Vibe check to their granny, Amazon has made sure Alexa has no problem understanding the assignment. Alexa is becoming even more Aussie Alexas expanded vocabulary doesnt just celebrate our love of Aussie slang and how its changing, but reflects how Aussies already communicate with Alexa. In fact, these new words build on Alexas extensive understanding of Australian slang with "footy "devo, and barra already amongst the most frequent Aussie terms used by Alexa customers. What was that about us shortening words? Country Manager for Amazon Alexa, Kate Burleigh explains: Before launching in Australia, our team worked hard to make sure Alexa could understand uniquely Australian phrases, and we know our Aussie customers already love how easy and natural it is to communicate with her. "Alexa has learnt a lot in the last three years down-under and now, with the help of some iconic Aussies, is getting even smarter. Our research shows just how important the quirks of Aussie English are, and were proud of the work were doing to make sure that Alexa gets all Aussies, whether theyre 18 or 80. So, how can you test out Alexa's Aussiness? Test out Alexas Aussie knowledge for yourself on Alexa-enabled devices like Echo smart speakers, Echo Show smart screens, and Fire TV devices, or via the Alexa app. Some new commands you can try include: Alexa, tell me something Aussie Alexa, play an absolute banger Alexa, day for it! Alexa, wake me up at sparrows fart? Alexa, do you like savvy b? Alexa, find a chicken parmi recipe Alexa, is this look cheugy? Alexa, should I chuck a sickie? You can find out more information on Amazon Alexa and Devices here. A protocol used by Microsoft Exchange, the popular email server software used by both individuals and businesses, has been found to be leaking credentials of users, who attempt to authenticate from clients like Microsoft Outlook, due to a defect in its design. Research released by security outfit Guardicore on Wednesday US time, said the flaw, in an implementation of the Autodiscover protocol based on the POX XML protocol, would leak Web requests to Autodiscover domains outside a user's domain, but within the same top-level domain. The Autodiscover protocol allows users of mail clients like Outlook to authenticate to a server after inputting a username and password; the remainder of the credentials needed for authentication would be supplied by the Exchange server. But, as Guardicore's Amit Serper found, Windows domain credentials could be easily captured, something he achieved by setting up multiple Autodiscover domains with a TLD suffix that connected to a Web server controlled by Guardicore. Between 16 April and 25 August, Serper said 372,072 Windows domain credentials were harvested, in addition to 96,671 unique credentials that leaked from Outlook, mobile email clients and other applications that interfaced with the Exchange server. "This is a severe security issue, since if an attacker can control such domains or has the ability to 'sniff' traffic in the same network, they can capture domain credentials in plain text (HTTP basic authentication) that are being transferred over the wire," he wrote. "Moreover, if the attacker has DNS-poisoning capabilities on a large scale (such as a nation-state attacker), they could systematically siphon out leaky passwords through a large-scale DNS poisoning campaign based on these Autodiscover TLDs." No. That's exactly the point. It makes no sense. Amit Serper (@0xAmit) September 22, 2021 He said since Exchange was part of Microsoft's domain suite of solution, the credentials that were needed to access the mail server were generally the domain credentials. "The implications of a domain credential leak in such scale are massive, and can put organisations in peril. Especially in todays ransomware-attacks ravaged world, the easiest way for an attacker to gain entry into an organisation is to use legitimate and valid credentials," Serper pointed out. Four years ago, researchers from Share Security shared details of how Autodiscover implementations for mobile email clients could cause such leaks. The flaws that were disclosed were patched, but "here we are in 2021 with a significantly larger threat landscape, dealing with the exact same problem only with more third-party applications outside of email clients", Serper noted. He explained the process of authentication that occurred behind the scenes, by using a hypothetical email address: amit @ example.com First, the email client would parse this address. Then, the client would try to build an Autodiscover URL based on the email address with the following format: https: //Autodiscover.example.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml http: //Autodiscover.example.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml https: //example.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml http: //example.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml "In the case that none of these URLs are responding, Autodiscover will start its 'back-off' procedure," Serper explained. "This 'back-off' mechanism is the culprit of this leak because it is always trying to resolve the Autodiscover portion of the domain and it will always try to 'fail up', so to speak. "Meaning, the result of the next attempt to build an Autodiscover URL would be: https:// Autodiscover.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml. This means that whoever owns Autodiscover.com will receive all of the requests that cannot reach the original domain." To test out his findings, Serper registered the following domains: Autodiscover.com.br Brazil Autodiscover.com.cn China Autodiscover.com.co Columbia Autodiscover.es Spain Autodiscover.fr France Autodiscover.in India Autodiscover.it Italy Autodiscover.sg Singapore Autodiscover.uk United Kingdom Autodiscover.xyz Autodiscover.online All these domains were allocated to a Web server owned by Guardicore and soon torrents of Web requests started to arrive. "The most notable thing about these requests was that they requested the relative path of /Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml with the Authorisation header already populated with credentials in HTTP basic authentication," Serper noted. "Generally, Web requests should not be sent blindly pre-authenticated, but rather by following the HTTP authentication process: "A client requests access to a protected resource; "The Web server returns a dialog box that requests the username and password (in accordance with the supported authentication methods; in our case, basic authentication); "The client submits the username and password to the server; [and] "The server authenticates the user and returns the requested resource." He said that with the majority of requests received on the Web server, there was no attempt from the client side to check if the resource was available or even existed on the server. "Usually, the way to implement such a scenario would be to first check if the resource that the client is requesting is valid, since it could be non-existent (which will trigger an HTTP 404 error) or it may be password-protected (which will trigger an HTTP 401 error code)," Serper pointed out. Comment has been sought from Microsoft. 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. Swedens prime minister on Thursday called on Eritrea to free a Swedish-Eritrean journalist held without charge for two decades, as an NGO petitioned Swedish authorities to investigate human rights abuses in the case. Dawit Isaak was among a group of around two dozen senior cabinet ministers, members of parliament and independent journalists who were seized in a draconian purge in the east African country in September, 2001. Today marks 20 years since Dawit Isaak was arrested in Eritrea. That is an incredibly long time, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a post to social media. My government and multiple previous governments have worked intensely with Dawits case. Our work has so far not had the result we wanted, but we will never give up, Lofven added. Meanwhile, press rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) renewed a call to Swedish prosecutors to investigate crimes against humanity in the case. A Swedish law adopted in 2014 enabled the prosecution for such crimes even if committed elsewhere in the world. A similar petition was filed with Swedish authorities in October last year, but prosecutors declined to open a case, arguing there were practical obstacles to the investigation even if there was reason to believe crimes had been committed. RSF requests that the Prosecution Authority take their international responsibility and open a preliminary investigation for crimes against humanity in Dawit Isaaks case, the group said in a statement on Thursday. Isaak was arrested on September 23, 2001, shortly after the Eritrean newspaper he founded, Setit, published articles demanding political reforms. He had fled to Sweden in 1987 during Eritreas struggle against Ethiopia which eventually led to independence in 1993. He returned in 2001 to help shape the media landscape. RSF ranks Eritrea as the worlds most repressive country when it comes to press freedom, ahead of North Korea and Turkmenistan. The Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is coveted by various militias operating in the South Kivu region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They include the militia of Chance Mihonya, which moved into this protected natural area in 2019. Mihonya, a deserter from the Congolese army, claimed he wanted to defend the right of pygmies to live on their ancestral lands in the KBNP. But his real motives soon emerged: exploitation of the protected resources of Kahuzi-Biega, with a view to enriching himself, says TRIAL International, a non-governmental organization engaged in fighting international crimes, which works with many Congolese victims. In concrete terms, Mihonya and his men cut down trees to sell wood and charcoal, and dug mines to extract minerals from the ground. With the money from these sales, he bought weapons for his militia, which held sway in the area, adds the NGO, echoing the accusations of the military justice prosecutor. In May 2020, Mihonya, who called himself a colonel, was finally arrested in a joint operation by the Park guards and the Congolese army. International crimes and a co-accused The trial opened the following November without charges of international crimes. But at the request of the civil parties, the proceedings were suspended to allow the prosecutor to conduct further investigation. The prosecutor returned in April 2021 with an indictment implicating not only Chance Mihonya but also Major Benjamin Mazambi Bozy. Mihonya, 46, is now charged with crimes against humanity (deprivation of liberty, murder, other inhumane acts, rape), war crimes (enlisting and using children under 18 in his armed group, desertion), as well as environmental crimes (damaging and destroying protected areas, building in protected areas). Mazambi Bozy, 49, was also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for having, according to the prosecution, supplied ammunition and weapons to Mihonyas militia between 2019 and 2020. The new trial opened on September 13 at the scene of the events in Katana, about 50 kilometres north of Bukavu, the regional capital of South Kivu. Hundreds of children, women and men attended the six days of hearings, sometimes until nightfall. Proceedings were held outdoors, except when the weather didnt allow this or when closed sessions were necessary, for example to hear rape victims. No luck for Chance The judgment came on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 21, with members of Mihonyas family present. His parents named him Chance (meaning luck in French) in the hope it would keep bad luck away from him, but that apparently failed now. The militia leader was found guilty on all counts against him. For each of the war crimes and crimes against humanity, the military judges gave him life imprisonment, except for the crime of enlisting and using child soldiers, for which he got 20 years. For environmental crimes, he received three years for violating a nature reserve and 12 months for building a house and a hangar in the PNKB. The court thus imposed the heaviest sentence: life imprisonment. Mihonya was also ordered to pay 50,000 US dollars to the KBNP for the various damages suffered. The 87 other civil parties including 14 women who were raped and 8 children under the age of 18 were not forgotten. The convict will have to pay each of them an amount varying between 3,000 and 10,000 dollars, depending on the seriousness of the harm jointly and severally with the Congolese State, which was held to be civilly liable. No extenuating circumstances were retained, even though Mihonya admitted certain facts in the indictment. Defence to appeal On the other hand for Major Mazambi it was the end of the nightmare. He was acquitted for lack of evidence. Some of his superiors told the court they had never noticed any war materiel missing from their stock, whereas Mihonya had stated during the investigation that the major sold him weapons from his unit. Justice has been served. Chance did not show any willingness to repent, he did not express remorse. On the contrary, he boasted as if it was his right to commit these crimes, said David Bugamba, one of the lawyers for the civil parties. As for the acquittal of the second defendant, Bugamba believes that the judge did his job, conceding that the evidence against him was not solid. We werent expecting an acquittal for Chance Mihonya, but we did expect a lighter sentence, said his lawyer, Paul Bushabu Mabosho. He announced that he would appeal, saying the criteria were not met to prosecute for international crimes. He operated in an isolated, sporadic manner. We cannot talk about crimes against humanity and war crimes. We argued this, but the court preferred to follow the prosecutor, said the lawyer, before expressing joy at the acquittal of Mazambi. A victory for the rights of nature We welcome this conviction of Chance Mihonya for environmental crimes. Other criminals linked to this mafia network will be deterred, seeing that things have changed, said Josue Aruna Sefu, a coordinator for civil society environmentalists in South Kivu. We urge the justice system to continue tracking down all environmental criminals so they can be held accountable like Chance. These environmental crimes feed the armed groups in the forests and protected areas like Kahuzi-Biega National Park. Illegal mining in protected areas allows them to procure weapons, sowing panic and desolation in local communities. Environmental lawyer Olivier Ndoole from North Kivu, another part of eastern DRC where armed groups plunder natural resources and commit crimes against the civilian population, also hails a victory for the rights of nature. He says trafficking of wood, ivory and illegal fishing in the Virunga National Park in North Kivu illustrates the link between these environmental crimes and the deaths, extra-judicial summary executions and destabilization of the Republic. But he says the work to be done is immense. To achieve peace and stability in the DRC, we must stop the ecological haemorrhage. The International Criminal Court, the Security Council and other international bodies must now take seriously the issue of environmental crimes by armed groups in eastern DRC. We need to block the financial channels of these armed groups. This is one of the harshest sentences ever handed down by military justice on former soldiers in eastern DRC, commented a jurist who followed the trial. But it couldnt have been any other way, since these were deemed international crimes. As for the pygmy community that [Mihonya] claimed to defend, it seems they have distanced themselves from him. Burundi has issued an international arrest warrant against exiled opposition politician Alexis Sinduhije, accusing him of leading a group responsible for multiple terrorist acts, the countrys attorney general said. The announcement by Sylvestre Nyandwi late Wednesday followed a string of attacks in the troubled East African nation in recent days that have left at least six dead and more than a hundred wounded. But the warrant relates to earlier attacks, including grenade explosions and ambushes that have killed dozens and injured several since the beginning of 2020, the attorney general said. The investigations already carried out have revealed that these acts are committed by a band of terrorists led by () Alexis Sinduhije, he alleged. Under national and international law, these acts constitute acts of terrorism, as well as crimes against humanity. The president of the opposition Movement for Solidarity and Development (MSD), Sinduhije lives in exile in Belgium. He has long been suspected by the Burundian government of being at the helm of RED-Tabara, the most active rebel group in the country a claim he has always denied. RED-Tabara has a rear base in South Kivu in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and is estimated to number between 500 and 800 men. The group emerged 10 years ago and is accused of being behind many deadly attacks or ambushes in Burundi since 2015. In 2020, the group said it was behind a series of attacks that killed more than 40 people from the security forces and the youth league of the ruling CNDD-FDD party. It claimed responsibility for a series of mortar blasts targeting the airport in Burundis financial capital Bujumbura on Saturday night. No damage or casualties occurred. Deadly grenade attacks also struck the capital Gitega on Sunday evening and Bujumbura on Monday night. The group has not commented on these. However, the attorney general said those blasts were linked to the earlier attacks that Sinduhije is accused of carrying out. He did not provide further details and it was not possible to verify his claims. The MSD on Thursday said it rejected the unfounded accusations of a government incapable of ensuring the safety of its citizens. Neither our leaders, nor our members are oriented towards violence against our fellow citizens, it added. In addition to Sinduhije, arrest warrants have also been issued against Francois Nyamoya, the MSDs secretary general based in Rwanda, and Marguerite (Maggy) Brankitse, founder of the Maison Shalom home for orphans, who lives between Rwanda and Europe. We ask the countries where these criminals are based to offer us their collaboration so that they are arrested and do not continue to shed the blood of their fellow citizens, Nyandwi said. A US judge has ordered Facebook to release posts the social network removed over their role in inciting government-backed violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. In his ruling on Wednesday, Washington DC district court Judge Zia Faruqui criticized the company for refusing to provide the records to countries pursuing a case against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice. Facebook had resisted releasing the content on the grounds of US privacy law. But the judge ruled that the deleted posts would not be covered under the protections for users personal communications. Locking away the requested content would be throwing away the opportunity to understand how disinformation begat genocide, Faruqui wrote in his ruling, saying Facebook taking up the mantle of privacy rights is rich with irony. Facebook has been accused of being slow to respond to abusive posts portraying Myanmars Rohingya Muslims in sub-human terms, helping to drum up support for a military crackdown that forced more than 740,000 members of the persecuted minority to flee the country in 2017. In August 2018, United Nations investigators called for an international probe and prosecution of Myanmars army chief and five other top military commanders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. On the same day, Facebook banned the top generals from its platform. The Gambia has taken majority-Buddhist Myanmar to the UNs top court in The Hague, accusing it of breaching the 1948 UN genocide convention. Gambian authorities, in a statement titled The Gambia beats Facebook, welcomed the judgement as a boost for its case against Myanmar. Facebook said Thursday it was reviewing the judges decision and stressed it had made voluntary disclosures to the UN Human Rights Councils Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), which is collecting and analyzing evidence of serious international crimes in the Southeast Asian country. Were reviewing this decision. We remain appalled by the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people in Myanmar and support justice for international crimes, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. Weve committed to disclose relevant information to authorities, and over the past year weve made voluntary, lawful disclosures to the IIMM and will continue to do so as the case against Myanmar proceeds. burs-mtp-rma/jm/mlm FACEBOOK In the aftermath of Hurricane Idas destruction, Community Coffee Company will donate 10% of retail sales proceeds, up to $250,000, from the sale of Community coffee products from Sept. 13, 2021, through Oct. 28, 2021, to support The Salvation Armys Hurricane Ida relief efforts in Louisiana. Salvation Army staff and volunteers are on the ground across South Louisiana, supporting communities with food, water and relief supplies. With mobile feeding units and field kitchens, The Salvation Army has served hundreds of thousands of meals to those impacted since Ida made landfall on Aug. 29. Our state has a long road ahead, but we know our communities are strong and are already coming together to support each other, said Community Coffee Company President and CEO David Belanger. Its inspiring how Louisianans lock arms and take care of one another when disaster hits. We are proud to call Louisiana home. Hurricane Idas impact is no match for the people in the State of Louisiana, and were humbled to serve these resilient communities during a time of need, said William Trueblood, emergency disaster services director for The Salvation Army Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi Division. Our work is just getting started as we provide essential items to the public, and gifts like the one from Community Coffee help us lift up these communities with comfort. In addition to giving back to The Salvation Army, Community Coffee Company is supporting employees, customers and communities impacted by the storm. In the first week following Hurricane Idas landfall, the company served more than 70,000 cups of fresh coffee to first responders, frontline utility workers and displaced residents. Mobile cafes are serving communities as rebuilding efforts continue. More information about Community Coffee Companys hurricane relief efforts is available at https://www.communitycoffee.com/relief. Now through October 28th Community Coffee will donate 10% of retail sales proceeds, up to $250,000, from the sale of Community coffee products to support The Salvation Armys Hurricane Ida relief efforts in Louisiana. As for what is on the shelves, the company recently launched their newest limited-edition flavor: Spiced Pumpkin Pecan Pie. Spiced Pumpkin Pecan Pie is the latest innovation from 102-year-old Community Coffee, which also launched its first canned, ready-to-drink beverage, Espresso + Cream, made with Signature Blend Community Coffee and lightly sweetened and balanced with rich cream. From being hailed as "Korea's Little Sister" to the nation's "Sageuk Fairy" due to the long list of historical dramas under her belt, Kim Yoo Jung grew to be a stunning lady with remarkable acting skills. At the age of four, she charmed the K-drama fandom with her striking beauty and impressive talent, landing several notable series, including "Moon Embracing the Sun," where she took on the role of a younger Yeon Woo, played by Han Ga In. Another Kim Yoo Jung drama that was instilled in viewers' minds is her 2016 series "Love in the Moonlight" alongside Park Bo Gum and B1A4's Jinyoung. Five years later, the public gets to witness the former child star put on a traditional outfit as she stars in SBS' historical fantasy drama, "Lovers of the Red Sky," opposite Ahn Hyo Seop. As the birthday girl turns 22, let's take a glimpse of Kim Yoo Jung's Instagram moments, including her achievements and some hilarious snaps shared on social media. Black and White Photo for Korean Actors 200 The "Clean with a Passion for Now" actress is among the brightest stars included in Korean Actors 200 that introduce celebrities that best represent the present and future of Korean cinema. Kim Yoo Jung's Instagram shot exudes elegance and innocence with her delicate features and charming aura. Won Excellent Actress Category at 2020 SBS Drama Awards Kim Yoo Jung welcomed 2021 with an impressive achievement after taking home the Excellent Actress given by SBS Drama Awards for her role in "Backstreet Rookie." Over her Instagram, the 22-year-old actress looked divine and sleek in her black tube dress while holding the trophy. In her caption, she thanked her fans for supporting her and greeted them with a "healthier year." Behind-the-Scenes for Allure Magazine The "Love Cells" star gave fans a sneak peek of her shoot with Allure magazine. Posted on August 18, the 22-year-old actress flaunted her alluring beauty while donning a puffy yellow dress on the set. The Hong Cheon Ki in Her In one of her 2020 posts, Kim Yoo Jung shared a photo of her doing an art piece as she smiled brightly in front of the camera. A year later, she portrays Hong Cheon Ki, the sole female painter in the Joseon Dynasty, through the Kdrama "Lovers of the Red Sky." 'Lovers of the Red Sky' Behind-the-Scenes Kim Yoo Jung's Instagram often posts her shenanigans while on the set of the SBS historical drama. Her post only shows that she's having fun shooting the drama alongside her co-stars. Kim Yoo Jung Fun Facts From her striking Instagram photos, now let's move on to essential fun facts about the birthday girl, Kim Yoo Jung. Born on September 22, 1999 The "Backstreet Rookie" actress is currently celebrating her 22nd birthday, making her a Virgo. Learned Korean Painting 'Lovers Of The Red Sky' Although she's an avid painter, Kim Yoo Jung underwent training for Korean painting for three months in preparation for her role. Loves Boat Fishing Apart from art, she also considered fishing as one of her hobbies. In one episode of "Knowing Brothers," she revealed that she likes boating to catch fish. "I usually catch bluefin tuna and yellowtail amberjack. The largest fish I caught was about four feet long." KDramastars owns this article Written by Geca Wills Son Ye Jin took to social media as she shared her post Chuseok celebration with a special companion. The Crash Landing on You actress flaunted her good times with fur baby Kitty, her white Maltese dog. Over her post, she asked her 4.8 million followers how their Chuseok holiday has been. In addition, she also revealed that the post was a throwback photo that was taken months before. "Did you all have a good Chuseok? I came back to my daily life after the holidays. I'm looking for a picture to post, but I haven't had any recently. I post pictures that I took a few months ago," she explained. Moreover, Son Ye Jin Instagram post also talks about how time flies and wraps it by greeting everyone with a great day ahead. "Summer is very long. As soon as I felt it, the wind got cool. It's autumn again. I feel that time flies these days. I hope you have a precious and healthy day by day." Son Ye Jin's Dog Kitty Makes a Cameo on Instagram This is not the first time that the Hallyu star showed off her adorable little Maltese. To recall, Son Ye Jin's dog stole the hearts of many with her matchy outfit with the actress during their trip to Jeju Island. The fur-mom and Kitty dons a red checkered dress as they spend the chill afternoon on the seaside. The Something in the Rain star recently shared a short clip with Kitty alongside a heartfelt message to her fans. She revealed that she has just started filming an upcoming drama as well as her new commercial. "It's been a long time. I really miss you guys!! I'm starting drama shooting. I hope you will be doing well. Be safe." Son Ye Jin New Drama Speaking of her new drama, the Shark star is set to make a comeback on the small screen with her upcoming rom-com Kdrama Thirty Nine. The actress took on the role of the stunning head dermatologist Cha Mi Jo, who is based in Gangnam. Amid her successful career, caring family, and wealth, she still feels that something is missing in her life. The same goes for her friends Jeong Chan Young and Jang Joo Hee, played by Jeon Mi Do, and theater and musical actress Kim Ji Hyun. Jeon Mi Do's character is a wannabe actress who ends up becoming an acting teacher instead. The 39-year-old beauty, whose claim to fame is her role as Chae Song Hwa in the medical Kdrama "Hospital Playlist," viewers would get to see the different side of the actress as she is set to play the straightforward and blunt Chan Young. As for the "Backstreet Rookie" actress, Kim Ji Hyun will portray a manager at a department store cosmetics named Jang Joo Hee. Her timid personality is getting in the way of finding herself a boyfriend. Son Ye Jin's new drama is helmed by "Age of Youth 2" PD Kim Sang Ho and penned by Yoo Young Ah, who also wrote "Encounter" and "Run Off." KDramastars owns this article Written by Geca Wills Park Hae Soo and Lee Jung Jae's Kdrama Squid Game continues to dominate worldwide with its unique concept and fresh take on children's games. The Netflix series has been receiving massive approval globally, causing a stir and is raising the status of the Korean series. KDrama Squid Game Tops Netflix U.S. With this, the action thriller series surpassed the achievement of Sex Education after landing first place in the top 10 TV series in the United States, according to Flix Patrol, a Netflix ranking site. For week 38, the nine-episode K-drama reigned the said category for two consecutive days and the Netflix Top 10 overall for September 22. The latest achievement makes Kdrama Squid Game the first K-series to rank number 1 in Netflix's "Today's Top 10" in the US and top 40 countries worldwide. Apart from this, the streaming giant previously mentioned that the Park Hae Soo and Lee Jung Jae's new series eclipsed the success of Sweet Home starring Song Kang and Lee Do Hyun and even the popularity of the Spanish series La Casa de Papel or widely known as Money Heist. Netflix Unveils Unreleased Squid Game Stills Amid the Squid Game craze worldwide, Netflix dropped new still cuts featuring Lee Jung Jae, Park Hae Soo, Jung Ho Yeon, and Lee Yoo Mi. In one photo, the Chief of Staff star was stunned to see that he managed to finish the sugar honeycomb task despite having a difficult figure. It came after he chose the umbrella shape and explained that it reminded him of how his mother called his attention for always losing his umbrella. The second still cut showed the photo of Park Hae Soo's character, Cho Sang Woo, where they were tasked to wear a suit for dinner prior to their last game. Meanwhile, the third photo illustrates the beginning of Kang Sae Byeok and Ji Yeong's friendship. Played by Jung Ho Yeon and Lee Yoo Mi, their connection showed the meaning of true friendship after one sacrificed herself for the other. Will There be Squid Game Season 2? The newest thriller K-series depicts the lives of 456 cash-trapped individuals as they join the mysterious survival game. Only one winner will take home the cash prize of whooping 40 million USD, but contestants must survive the death-defying children games. With the intense popularity of Netflix Squid Game, fans were hopeful that the series would return with another sequel. Unfortunately, there's no official statement from the streaming giant nor the production team regarding the possibility of Squid Game season 2. What Made the Viewers Think Squid Game Season 2 is Possible? Despite Netflix and Siren Pictures Inc., the production company behind the K-drama, kept mum about the second sequel, fans believe that "Squid Game" might return in the coming years. It came after several netizens raised that the series concluded with an open-ended story, sparking a conclusion with Seong Gi Hoon and what truly happened between Hwang Joon Ho (Wi Ha Joon) and his brother Hwang In Ho (Lee Byung Hun.) KDramastars owns this article Written by Geca Wills Marie Claire Korea dropped new photos of Kdrama D.P. actor Goo Kyo Hwan for its special edition features films and actors included in the 26th Busan International Film Festival. As a refresher, Goo Kyo Hwan has been owning the spotlight for his remarkable performances in Kingdom: Ashin of the North, Escape from Mogadishu, and D.P. (Deserter Pursuit). Goo Kyo Hwan Poses for Marie Claire Special Edition Goo Kyo Hwan flaunted his visuals for Marie Claire Korea special issue. After he graced the small screen with well-received projects, Goo Kyo Hwan also shared his true feelings with the magazine about his status as a rising star. Unlike his previous screen roles, Goo Kyo Hwan displayed his dapper persona. This new partnership with the known magazine is for the upcoming Busan International Film Festival. In Marie Claire Korea special edition, Goo Kyo Hwan joins Gong Yoo, Kim Tae Ri, Yoo Jae Myung, Han Ye Ri, Uhm Tae Goo, and more. Since the film festival is slated to happen on October 6, several photos of the artists nominated and expected to attend will also be included for next month's magazine release. What is Goo Kyo Hwan's Secret for His Impressive Acting? Meanwhile, in one of the snaps, the D.P. star showed off his masculine facial line that fans truly adore. Through his collage photos, the scene-stealer displayed his genuineness and undeniable charms with his unique poses and various facial expressions. In a subsequent interview, Goo Kyo Hwan expressed his feelings about his growing popularity. He said, "I am grateful to receive such warm love from all of you (fans) and I am already excited to meet more audiences in the future." The Escape from Mogadishu star also mentioned that in order for him to immerse in one's character, he becomes wary not to easily define his true identity or intention. Goo Kyo Hwan tries to expand his emotions more while maintaining a composed facial expression. He added, "The more I work and encounter new characters, the more I feel that life is more cinematic than films. Movies cannot replace the reality that we all are experiencing." The full interview of Goo Kyo Hwan will be released in the special edition of the Marie Claire Busan International Film Festival Meanwhile, Goo Kyo Hwan will make his small screen comeback with Strange, slated to premiere in 2022. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Confirmed: Song Joong Ki and Park So Dam to Host the 26th Busan International Film Festival What can you say about Goo Kyo Hwan's newest magazine pictorial? Let us know in the comments! For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars. Kdramastars owns this article. Written by Shai Collins. A law enforcement underwater dive team on Wednesday joined the effort at a nature reserve in Florida to search for Brian Laundrie, Gabby Petito's fiance, who has been unaccounted for since last week. A large van and boat from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office arrived midday Wednesday at the Carlton Reserve, a swampy 25,000-acre reserve in Venice, Florida, where Laundrie told his parents he was headed last week. The dive team, called the Sheriff's Underwater Recovery Force (SURF), is made up of "highly trained underwater specialists" who are "called upon to search for evidence of crimes and victims of drowning, water accidents and foul play," the sheriff's department website says. North Port Police said the arrival of the dive team "does not mean anything has been found. It's a part of the overall search process." The team, made up of about 10 divers, was requested by North Port Police on Wednesday morning, said Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez. "These divers are specifically trained and very talented in low visibility bodies of water," Perez said. "They dive down where you and I can't see anything at all. They utilize technology and other special equipment to help them get down deep into really deep bodies of water, so they're out there right now to recover whatever it is that they might find." The fourth day of searching the reserve ended Wednesday evening, according to officials. "Nothing found. We will be back out Thursday, similar operation," North Port Police tweeted. The ongoing search comes as investigators try to piece together what happened to Petito, 22, and Laundrie, 23, on their road trip in a white Ford Transit van through the American West this summer. Petito's remains were recovered in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest on Sunday, and a coroner made an initial determination on Tuesday that she died by homicide. Throughout the trip, the couple had posted online regularly about their travels with the hashtag #VanLife, but those posts abruptly stopped in late August. Laundrie and the van -- but not Petito -- returned to his parents' home in North Port, Florida, on September 1. Her family, unable to get in touch with her, reported her missing 10 days later. Laundrie, believed to be the last person to see Petito alive, declined to speak with authorities looking into her disappearance. His parents then reported him missing on September 17, saying he had left home three days earlier and hadn't returned. The FBI said the agency would like information from anyone who may have had contact with Petito or Laundrie, anyone who visited the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest between August 27-30 or anyone who may have seen their vehicle. In the days since she was reported missing, Petito's story has become a national obsession for many, spurring digital detectives to comb through the couple's online trail to try to solve the case. The story has also further highlighted the tens of thousands of missing persons stories that do not garner such intense interest among the public. Given the national attention on the case, several people have come forward to say they interacted with the couple in late August. And evidence from a 911 call about a "domestic dispute" involving Petito and Laundrie shows the couple's volatile relationship was not as aspirational as their sun-drenched lives on Instagram and YouTube suggested. Search for Laundrie focused on nature reserve Investigators have used ATVs, dogs, drones and more as part of their ongoing search for Laundrie at the Florida nature reserve where his parents reportedly said he indicated he was going last week. Laundrie's parents told investigators he left their home in North Port with a backpack September 14 to go to the reserve near Venice. The swampy, wild landscape of the Carlton Reserve has made the search particularly difficult. "Please be aware, the Carlton Reserve is a vast and unforgiving location at times. It is currently (waist) deep in water in many areas," police said. "This is dangerous work for the search crews as they are wading through gator and snake infested swamps and flooded hiking and biking trails." Authorities also searched the family home on Monday after getting a search warrant for the property. FBI agents removed a number of items from the home and towed away a Ford Mustang convertible. In addition, Laundrie's parents, Christopher and Roberta Laundrie, were questioned at their home by the FBI. Witnesses tell police about their interactions with the couple In a series of videos on TikTok, Miranda Baker said she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a ride on August 29 in Wyoming -- and that he claimed he was camping by himself for multiple days while Petito was back at their van working on social media posts. Baker said they picked up Laundrie while he was hitchhiking in Colter Bay, Wyoming, which is not far from where Petito's remains were found. He offered to pay $200 for the ride before he even got in the car, she said. In her TikTok videos, Baker said that when Laundrie found out she and her boyfriend were going to Jackson Hole instead of Jackson, he got agitated, asked that the vehicle stop, and got out near the Jackson Dam. She said they dropped him off less than 30 minutes after picking him up. Baker said she has spoken to law enforcement about the interaction with Laundrie. North Port Police confirmed to CNN that Baker spoke with the department before posting the videos on TikTok. "Her account is plausible, it appears," North Port police spokesperson Josh Taylor said. CNN has not been able to independently verify Baker's claims. The FBI has not returned CNN requests for comment. Further, evidence has also emerged suggesting tension was building between the couple. A man who saw the domestic dispute between Petito and Laundrie in Utah last month said, "They were talking aggressively at each other, and something seemed off." In a handwritten sworn statement, the witness named Chris -- whose last name was redacted in the document provided by Moab City Police to CNN -- said it appeared that the two were arguing over control of Petito's phone. "At one point she was punching him in the arm and/or face and trying to get into the van." The witness said he heard Petito say, "Why do you have to be so mean?" although Chris added that he couldn't be sure if the comment was meant to be taken seriously. Moab City Police responded to the incident, and the couple agreed to spend the night apart. There is also a 911 recording of the incident in Moab on August 12 when police confronted the pair. In the recording from the Grand County Sheriff's Office, a caller reported what he called a "domestic dispute" between a couple. "We drove by and the gentleman was slapping the girl," the caller says. "Then we stopped. They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off." Finally, her conversations with her mother appeared to reveal she had "more and more tension" with Laundrie, according to a police affidavit for a search warrant of an external hard drive found in the couple's van. Petito sent multiple text messages and had many talks with her mother during her trip, Florida police wrote in an application filed last week. On August 27, Petito's mother received one last communication from her daughter, which she called an "odd text," the affidavit says. The message read: "Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls." Because the text message referred to Petito's grandfather as Stan, her mother was concerned that something was wrong, the warrant states. Following that text message, Petito's phone was no longer operational, and she stopped posting anything on social media about their trip, the warrant says. One more text came on August 30 that read, "No service in Yosemite." Her family doubts she wrote it. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. EUGENE, Ore. A former employee of the federal government was sentenced to prison on Wednesday for possession of child pornography, a charge that stemmed from his time working aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientific research vessel. 44-year-old Johnny Dale Hale was sentenced to two years in prison and five years' supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution. In late 2016, Hale a decorated veteran was working as a crew member aboard the Bell M. Shimada, a NOAA research ship. On November 15 of 2016, the ship was experiencing connectivity issues and the IT team bean running diagnostics. According to court documents, an electronics technician found two new folders on the ship's server while troubleshooting, finding what we believed was child pornography. Further diagnostics by IT found that Hale's employee access card was associated with the time and date that the folders were first accessed. Court documents say that Hale used two different workstations on the ship to access the server when the folders were created. After the discovery, the ship's senior security engineer alerted the U.S. Department of Commerce. Federal special agents and a forensic analyst reviewed the folders, discovering 109 pornographic web links and confirming the presence of child porn. Roughly 33 images were found in one of the folders, with images from at least four series of photographs that depicted previously-identified victims of child pornography. "It is important to remember child sexual abuse material depicts actual crimes being committed against children," the US Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon said in a statement. "Not only do these images and videos document victims exploitation and abuse, but when shared across the internet, child victims suffer re-victimization each time the image of their abuse is viewed." In June of 2017, a federal grand jury in Eugene returned an indictment charging Hale with possesion of child pornography. Nearly four years later, in April of 2021, he pleaded guilty to that charge. Anyone who has information about the physical or online exploitation of children are encouraged to call the FBI at (503) 224-4181 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. PHOENIX, Ore. Officers with Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement (MADGE) arrested a woman in Phoenix on Wednesday after learning that she was involved in selling drugs in the Rogue Valley, according to Medford Police. MPD said that 42-year-old Kerri Jensen has been on MADGE's radar "for a while." Investigators approached her in Phoenix and served a search warrant to go through her vehicle. Detectives found 14 ounces of methamphetamine, an ounce of heroin, psilocybin mushrooms, and fentanyl pills, Medford Police said. She was also held on a probation violation for an earlier conviction on Unlawful Delivery of Methamphetamine. "She is now in the Jackson County Jail for Unlawful Possession, Delivery and Manufacture of well, pretty much everything," MPD concluded. By Harmeet Kaur, CNN (CNN) -- In the months before Mary Johnson disappeared, her sister said she wasn't herself. Johnson is 5 feet, 6 inches, about 115 pounds and sometimes wears glasses. She also has a sunburst-style tattoo on her upper right arm and a birthmark on the back of her neck. Johnson is 5 feet, 6 inches, about 115 pounds and sometimes wears glasses. She also has a sunburst-style tattoo on her upper right arm and a birthmark on the back of her neck. Johnson and her husband, who had been living in the home of her sister Gerry Davis in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, abruptly left and moved to Marysville about 40 miles away, Davis said. She rarely answered her phone when Davis called, and only occasionally responded to texts. Then one day, Johnson's estranged husband contacted Davis to say he hadn't seen his wife in weeks. The last time anyone said they saw Mary Johnson -- also known as Mary Davis -- was on November 25, 2020. Johnson, an enrolled citizen of the Tulalip Tribes and then 39 years old, was walking on a road in Western Washington, en route to the house of some friends in a nearby town. She never made it there. It's been nearly 10 months since Johnson was reported missing. A billboard on Interstate 5 and local media coverage have yielded few credible tips, and tribal police have yet to make an arrest in the case. Only last week did the FBI announce it would offer a reward of up to $10,000 for information about Johnson's disappearance. While family members and advocates welcome the move, they also wonder what took so long. "If that was a little White girl out there or a White woman, I'm sure they would have had helicopters, airplanes and dogs and searches -- a lot of manpower out there -- scouring where that person was lost," Nona Blouin, Johnson's older sister, said. "None of that has happened for our sister." Those feelings ring especially true this week, as the case of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito captured the attention of the internet. Meanwhile, at least 710 Indigenous people -- more than half of them women or girls -- were reported missing between 2011 and September 2020 in Wyoming, where Petito's remains were found this week, according to a University of Wyoming report. While about half were usually found within a week of going missing, as per the report, family members and advocates said none received the same level of media coverage nor the same urgency in law enforcement's response as missing White people. Too often, that means families like Johnson's are left waiting without answers. Johnson's disappearance remains unsolved There's a lot unknown about the circumstances under which Johnson disappeared last year. The following sequence of events, based on a CNN interview with Tulalip Tribal Police Department Detective David Sallee and a local news report in The Everett Herald, is what authorities have pieced together based on cell phone records and conversations with people who saw her. At the time Johnson disappeared, she and her husband weren't in a good place, Sallee said. She was staying mostly with friends, returning to the couple's shared house every few days to pick up her mail and take a shower before heading out again. On November 24, a day before she was last seen, Sallee said her estranged husband dropped her off with a suitcase at a friend's house on the Tulalip reservation. Johnson stayed there overnight, and planned the next day to head to the house of a couple she knew in Oso about 30 miles away. The friend she was staying with was supposed to give her a ride to a nearby church, where someone else would pick her up and take her to the couple's house in Oso. A second man, who had been staying at the same house as Johnson, wanted a ride, too. But things went awry on November 25, and Sallee said Johnson's friend backtracked on the offer to give her and the second man a ride. Johnson set out toward the church on foot around 1:30 p.m., and the second man also started walking away from the house. A third man who was set to pick Johnson up at the church and take her to Oso eventually drove by and saw her walking on Fire Trail Road with the man who also wanted a ride, Sallee said. He indicated he only had enough room in his vehicle for one person and kept on going, ultimately declining to give her a ride. Johnson never made it to the couple's house in Oso, Sallee said. But before she disappeared she left that couple a voicemail, desperation in her voice as she urged them to pick up, according to records obtained by The Everett Herald. She also made another call around 2:30 p.m. -- the woman who picked up reportedly said to police that she told Johnson she was too busy to speak. Police believe that someone may have picked Johnson up at some point, because cell phone records indicate that about an hour after her last call, her phone connected to a tower in the Oso area -- too great a distance for her to have walked so quickly. The phone then went offline for a period of time, Sallee said, before again connecting to a tower in the Greater Marysville Tulalip area that night. It remained in that location until the next morning, when it eventually powered off. The man who was supposed to pick Johnson up from the church reportedly told police that he hadn't seen or heard from her since November 25. The man who had been walking with her said the two went their separate ways and that he'd had no sign of her either. On December 9, 2020, Johnson's estranged husband reported her missing. In the nearly 10 months since, there has been little movement in the investigation, which Sallee said remains "open and active." He said the police department had identified multiple persons of interest, though it has yet to make an arrest. Because a body hasn't been recovered, Sallee said it's difficult to establish the probable cause necessary to seek specific search warrants. Because Johnson's disappearance was reported weeks after the fact, he said surveillance footage or precise location information that could offer clues has likely been overwritten. And because authorities don't know for sure whether Johnson disappeared on or off the reservation, he said it's unclear whether they can leverage federal grand jury subpoena powers or not. "We don't know if she was kidnapped, held against her will, if she has been murdered. It could be argued maybe she just wandered off in the woods and got lost. Maybe she overdosed and passed away somewhere in a remote area and we don't know where she's at. Maybe she's just hiding, maybe she's in treatment," Sallee said. "There's a lot of maybes." Authorities are often slow to act, advocates say To advocates who work on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, however, such challenges and uncertainties come off as excuses. Abigail Echo-Hawk, chief research officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board and an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, says one of the primary barriers in addressing this crisis is the "maze of jurisdiction" in Indian Country. Cases of missing Indigenous women are often mired in bureaucracy, with prosecutors and law enforcement having to establish whether the authority rests with the federal government, the state or the tribe. The time it takes to determine the jurisdiction of a case can ultimately affect whether those women live or die, she said. "This maze of jurisdiction that exists -- that is, who does what investigations and who's responsible for what -- is part of this system of inequity," Echo-Hawk said. It's why so many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women remain unsolved, says Annita Lucchesi, executive director of the research group Sovereign Bodies Institute and a descendant of the Cheyenne tribe. Jurisdictional issues can limit tribal authorities from successfully prosecuting non-Native people for crimes committed on tribal lands except in some cases, and the federal government -- who typically does have that authority -- has often declined to act. Another piece of the problem, as some advocates see it, is that Indigenous women are often blamed for their own disappearances, resulting in a lack of empathy for victims from authorities and the general public. "They are assumed to have been killed, murdered or disappeared. They're assumed to have run away, to have had substance abuse issues, to have done something that caused them to go missing or to be murdered," Echo-Hawk said. Those attitudes only perpetuate the problem and make it easier for perpetrators to avoid accountability, Lucchesi said. "That kind of narrative about Indigenous people just lends itself to more violence so that when this violence does happen, it's not a disruption of the social fabric the way it would be when it happens to somebody else," she said. "Because we're already perceived as not part of the social fabric, because we're either dead and disappeared. We're less than human. We're so far away on some remote reservation that we're not part of the rest of the community." The full scale of the problem is unknown Johnson is just one of countless missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls in the US -- a nationwide crisis for which there are no definitive statistics. The numbers that do exist are likely an undercount, in part because Indigenous women and girls are sometimes misclassified as White, Hispanic or Asian. Adding to the data problem is a historic distrust of law enforcement by Indigenous communities, which can lead some cases to go unreported. About 1,500 missing persons cases of American Indian and Alaska Native people have been recorded across the US by the National Crime Information Center, while approximately 2,700 homicide cases have been reported to the federal government's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. A database maintained by Lucchesi's Sovereign Bodies Institute puts the count higher, with more than 4,500 cases of missing Indigenous women and girls dating back to the 1900s, she said. There are nine such cases just in her own family, Lucchesi said. "That shadow of death is always there," she added. That's why advocates are pushing leaders and policymakers to do something about the issue. The attorney general in Washington state, where Johnson was last seen and which has the second highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women cases, announced a 21-member task force to examine the systemic inequities behind the problem of missing Indigenous women and girls. Echo-Hawk's organization recently completed a project in the state with the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, reforming database systems and training staff to properly collect racial identity and tribal affiliation information for victims. And on the national level, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced a new unit earlier this year that would investigate the killings and disappearances of Indigenous people. Advocates say such actions, however, are just a first step. "There has to be money allocated. It can't just be a checkbox for some politicians [to say], 'We did this,'" Echo-Hawk said. "It has to be more than that." Johnson's family hasn't given up hope Johnson's sisters, Davis and Blouin, are trying to stay positive -- though they're also mentally preparing for the worst. They're heartened by all the people who have shared the poster with Johnson's picture on their social media accounts. They're asking everyone to keep their eyes out for a 5-foot-6, 115 pound woman with black hair and brown eyes, a sunburst tattoo on her upper right arm and a beauty mark on the back of her neck. And they want law enforcement to deploy every possible resource at their disposal -- because Native women deserve the same respect and compassion as anyone else. "My sister is a wonderful person and we all love her dearly," Blouin said. "If you have any information, please just reach out to your local law enforcement, the Seattle FBI or the Tulalip PD. Bring her home. We miss her." Jenica Atwin, Member of Parliament for Fredericton, speaks to the media during a funding announcement in Fredericton, N.B., on July 23, 2021. She was declared re-elected as a Liberal after Elections Canada finished counting special ballots. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray Ted Arnott speaks to press after being elected the new Speaker of the Ontario Legislative Assembly at Queen's Park, in Toronto on July 11, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov 7 Shares Share Studies reveal that more than half of all practicing physicians demonstrate signs of burnout. Contemporary physicians face tremendous pressures due to a confluence of factors, including balancing heavy patient loads within constrained schedules, the increasing complexity of patient health problems, and increasingly burdensome COVID-related documentation requirements. These circumstancesand morechallenge physician empathy, and even to some extent dampen it even further. Multiple research studies document a decline in empathy that appears to begin in the third year of medical school and persists during residency. The pandemic has exacerbated this deterioration. In the past, empathy rebounded after the rigors of training were over, but today, empathy needs to be refreshed to help both patients and providers. Physicians who lose sight of the meaning, purpose, and rewards of their roles in patients lives suffer more from burnout than those who remain connected to their purpose. The role of empathy training In response to patients pleas for more empathic care and national media headlines calling for more compassion in medicine, which have been growing since about 2005, empathy training courses grounded in the neuroscience of emotions and emotional intelligence can be helpful. In fact, recent neuroscience research on the brains plasticity in up-regulating and down-regulating empathy provided evidence that empathy could be taught. The research team in the Empathy and Relational Science program at Massachusetts General conducted a study of the effectiveness of the three, 60-minute empathy training courses in physicians. Researchers found statistically significant improvement in patient perception of physician empathy on a validated and reliable empathy rating scale called the CARE measure. Another study by the same team show that empathic physician behaviors resulted in higher ratings of both physician warmth and competence. One of the most frequently asked questions about empathy training is, Doesnt this just add even more time to a busy doctors day? Actually, it does not. Empathic care does not have to take more time. Courses on empathy training help health care professionals detect subtle emotional cues and nuances that indicate patient concerns so they can be addressed right away. In addition, when physicians convey empathy, they put patients at ease, increasing trust in the provider-patient relationship. This creates a dynamic that ensures that small problems are addressed before they become bigger problems. Multiple studies have demonstrated that better medical outcomes are also correlated with strong empathy and relational skills. Empathy training offers many benefits Courses based on empathy research and principles provide training for each of the following predictors of risk of increasing medical professional liability claims: Physicians uncaring attitudes, attitudes of superiority, or callousness Communication failures including not listening, interrupting, or not being clear about availability or backup coverage Disparagement of previous care Failure to learn and manage patient expectations Physicians can learn how to perceive patient emotions, manage difficult interactions, and communicate bad news. Empathy education teaches how to respond with empathy and compassion even in challenging situations, including informed consent conversations and inter-team conflicts. In addition to greater patient satisfaction, doctors also discover the personal satisfaction that connecting with their patients in a more meaningful way provides. After empathy training, I feel that I like my work again, and instead of resenting all the demands, Im remembering why I chose this profession in the first place, a physician reported. Interviews and research around empathy-based practices reveal that greater empathy not only improves patient satisfaction, but also helps to reduce physician burnout and improve physician job satisfaction. By using empathy-based skills, physicians, nurses, and other providers become more attuned to the needs of patients and their families. With this greater perception and shifts in attitudes, communication between providers and patients improves. More empathic conversations will enable patients to trust their care to physicians who are confident in their skills without demeaning prior care they may have received. Patients will appreciate physicians who explain things clearly, ask about and understand their expectations, and form alignment about what is desired, likely, and possible. Empathy-based training brings rewards Through empathy-based training, physicians and other health care providers learn the skills to have honest informed consent discussions without causing undo fear, while also preparing patients for all possible outcomes. Empathic skills make for better physicians, better communications, and better conversations for all outcomes. With a strong alliance, a reduction in medical professional liability claims is the result of increased trust, better understanding and expectations of all possible outcomes, and knowledge that physicians deeply care about their patients, because, when it comes to health care, empathy matters. Helen Riess is a psychiatrist and author of The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences. This article originally appeared in Inside Medical Liability. Image credit: Shutterstock.com SPRINGFIELD, Ore. The deputy who shot and killed an armed man after a dispute on Camp Creek Road earlier this month was justified, according to Lane County District Attorney Patty Perlow. It started before 10 p.m. on Sept. 6 when deputies responded to reports of a domestic dispute outside Springfield. Family members reported that Robert Gutierrez, 59, had physically struck another family member and had fired a gun before deputies arrived at the scene. Leading up to the shooting, deputies reportedly tried to talk to Gutierrez to de-escalate the situation, but he pointed his gun at them. A deputy fired his rifle at Gutierrez three times, and Gutierrez lowered his weapon. However, Perlow said Gutierrez again pointed his gun at the deputies. Thats when the deputy again fired three times at Gutierrez, striking him in the chest. The shooting was a lawful use of force, Perlow said, because it was intended to save the lives of the deputy and others at the scene. Eugene, Ore. -- In front of a crowd of 2,196 fans at Matthew Knight Arena, no. 13 Oregon bested Oregon State in a sweep of three sets to improve to 10-1 on the year. The Beavers fall to 2-9. The Ducks run started in the first set, as they rattled off an 11-1 sequence that gave them a 19-7 lead. Four service aces, two from Taylor Borup and another pair from Elise Ferreira, paced them to a 25-10 win in the first set. That continued into the second, as Oregon again went on a scoring run that gave them some cushion which led to a 25-15 victory and second set win. In the third, Oregon State dug out of two holes and managed to tie the score at 24. But a service error gave the edge to the Ducks and a service ace from Taylor Borup closed out the match in a clean sweep. Oregon heads to Arizona State while Oregon State flies to Tucson to see Arizona this coming weekend. EUGENE, Ore. -- The timeline for creating new safe sleep sites for the homeless is being pushed back and there's no date for when the planned sites will open, according to Eugene city officials. The proposed safe sleep sites were supposed to open back in August, but officials told KEZI 9 News the process is taking longer than expected due to the pandemic and other factors. Officials hoped the new sites would allow campers to relocate from Washington Jefferson Park and other camps to safe locations with restrooms, garbage service and other outreach programs. MORE: Eugene approves two new safe sleep sites Kelly McIver with the city of Eugene said there are a lot of unknowns right now. "It just takes some time. It's happening in the middle of a pandemic, and that has created a whole lot of wrinkles in terms of the supply and delivery availability; there are certain things that are needed for those locations, so some things not going quite as quickly," said McIver. McIver said in order for the process to be successful, everything has to be right. And making sure everything is right can take some time. One Eugene resident KEZI 9 News spoke with has been living off of Jefferson Street for nearly 20 years. She said the big move for campers under the bridge can't come soon enough. "I don't feel safe here; it's not a pleasant place to live anymore. I can't believe that the city council thinks it's OK to put 300 tents of drug addicts in a neighborhood and that's OK. And people are supposed to just live that way, for how long? I mean, it's ridiculous. It's not OK," said the resident. RELATED: Neighbors frustrated amid slow rollout of safe sleep sites KEZI 9 News also spoke to several members of the homeless community at the Washington Jefferson Park campsite. One young woman, Lilian Prindle, said she lived under the bridge for nearly seven years until she was able to get things together. "Everybody deserves a second chance, but if you're OK with actually being in the addiction life and wanting to just live this way and not wanting to be up in a house, then why take that opportunity from somebody that can actually flourish and grow with it like I did?" said Prindle. Emily Semple, a Eugene city councilor, said there is a lot that goes into the process of relocating members of the homeless community. "It's hard because we can't see all of that, and we're tired of everything, and it needs to change; it needs to have changed. And it's not OK. And that's what I'm working on," said Semple. She also said she sympathizes with both neighbors and campers in the area. And she hopes campers will be relocated to the safe sleep sites before the winter weather hits, but she has no set date on when this will happen. LANE COUNTY, Ore. -- The Food and Drug Administration has authorized Pfizer booster shots for some Americans. The decision means anyone over 65 can get a booster if they were fully vaccinated at least six months ago with the Pfizer vaccine. The approval also applies to frontline workers with high-risk jobs and those at severe risk if they catch COVID-19. But this is not a done deal yet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to weigh in on who it believes should get boosters and when. That decision could come as soon as Sep. 22. Seniors at the Campbell Community Center told KEZI they cannot wait to get their booster. Sharon Prindel, 81, said she went as soon as she could to get her first two shots. She's planning to do the same with the booster once health authorities give her the green light. "I want to do whatever I can to do what I just said about protecting each other," Prindel said. Alfred Wilkins agrees. He said it's his responsibility to get the third shot. "Anything we can do to protect the rest of the community we should do. I'm 82 years old. I will get the shot for sure," Wilkins said. Lane County Public health said if everything goes as expected, they are planning booster mass vaccination clinics for those who are eligible starting either late Tuesday or Wednesday. After that, the clinics will run five days a week with about 16,000 shots administered every week. EUGENE, Ore. A suspect has been arrested after a string of burglaries in Eugene overnight. It all started with break-ins at Pegasus Pizza and Laughing Planet on Willamette Street just before midnight on Tuesday. Police said something was thrown through the glass and the cash registers were targeted. Next, there was a similar break-in just after 3 a.m. on Wednesday at the Friendly Neighborhood Pub on Chambers Street. At this point, officers had yet to locate a suspect. Then, just after 5:30 a.m., an employee at Safeway on Coburg Road told police someone broke the glass doors of the nearby Ta Ra Rin. Officers arrived to the scene and found that the glass door into the area Papa Murpheys Pizza had also been broken. After a search, an officer found a man who matched the description from the Chambers area burglary. Thomas Dale Young III, 39, was reportedly uncooperative, and the officer waited until backup arrived to detain him. Police said they found stolen property from at least one of the businesses in Youngs possession. He was taken to the Lane County Jail on three counts of second-degree burglary and on a parole violation. The investigation is ongoing. EUGENE, Ore. -- A major traffic jam caused severe congestion on Franklin Boulevard Thursday. Cars were at a near standstill in the area around the University of Oregon for hours. According to Eugene police, the issue was due to move-in day for university students. University officials apologized for delays that many experienced and said about 2,700 students were being checked in on Thursday, the university's biggest single move-in day. The traffic jam was largely being caused by students and families arriving at the university ahead of their scheduled check-in time, according to the university. Check-in times were staggered as part of COVID-19 safety protocols. Check-ins are continuing, and housing staff will be flexible, officials added. University of Oregon Police helped with traffic management. Drivers were advised to avoid the area. Stay with KEZI 9 News for the latest. SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- The City of Springfield is facing another lawsuit alleging misconduct by police. Ashley Carr, a member of the group Black Unity, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city and one of its police officers. That lawsuit claims Carrs neighbor hung a noose with a skeleton outside his home last summer. According to the lawsuit, Carr felt the display was racially motivated and meant to scare her. However, the lawsuit does not name the neighbor as a defendant. Instead, it takes aim at the City of Springfield and a police officer who questioned Carr over the noose. Carr said a police officer approached her last year while she was in a car outside her home in Thurston with a friend. KEZI is not identifying the officer because he has not been charged with a crime. During the conversation, she claims the officer was openly supportive of the noose, downplaying it as a Halloween decoration. The officer allegedly phoned the neighbor with the noose in the presence of Carr and her friend. Carr and her friend, the lawsuit says, were afraid as they witnessed the white officer speak to their white neighbor by first name and justify that the noose was an appropriate decoration because the white neighbor claimed it had been there for four years. The white officer continued to refer to BLM and Black Unity as a mob, hell bent on causing trouble for the white neighbor, including making the neighbor look racist. The lawsuit was announced during a press conference alongside the Eugene-Springfield NAACP and Eugene City Councilor Greg Evans, who was involved in passing a state law criminalizing the display of a noose. We need to not only discourage people from doing those things, but we need to educate people about these kinds of symbols, what effect it has on not just African Americans, but the entire community, Evans said. Brian Michaels, the attorney representing Carr, said he hopes the incident makes more people aware of how serious displaying the symbol can be. This gives us a glimpse -- when I say us, I mean, white America -- a glimpse as to how Black people are treated by police, Michaels said. According to the lawsuit, Carr never felt comfortable around her neighbors house because of his year-round Halloween decorations, but the noose was new. However, the officer allegedly told Carr the noose had been hanging up for four years, according to the neighbor. The noose was eventually taken down. Councilor Evans said racist behavior has discouraged people of color from settling in Lane County. I have seen a number of professionals of color come here over the years, only to be harassed, to be intimidated, and to be driven out of this community because of what they look like, what they sound like and the ethnicity that they embody, Evans said. Carr is suing for $250,000 in damages. The City of Springfield said it is reviewing the lawsuit but does not comment on pending litigation. Last Thursday in Episode 3 of Glow Up Ireland the guest judge was LA based Oscar winning make up artist - Michele Burke. In this challenge the remaining MUAs were asked to create modern day versions of some of Micheles most memorable film characters. We chatted to the two Kilkenny contestants after the show, with Michael Ryan and Carol Knox having two very different reactions to last week's show. Michele is the winner of two Oscars for Best Makeup for Bram Stokers Dracula and Quest for Fire and has been nominated a total of six times. Micheles credits include Dracula, Mission Impossible 3 & 4, Jerry Maguire, As Good As It Gets and Minority Report among many others. Her leading ladies include Penelope Cruz, Helen Hunt, Jessica Chastain, and Cameron Diaz and her leading men include Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Morgan Freeman. Michele believes that character work shows the 'true mettle of a make-up artist' in a film. Whether Francis Ford Coppola asked for a unique take on Dracula or Tom Cruise sought a never seen before vampire in Interview With A Vampire, Michele had to think outside the box, and this is what she is looking when she asked the MUAs to create modern day versions of some of her most memorable characters. The eight MUAs were also paired up to test their team playing skills, as being asked to 'double team on sets happens all the time' and is part of the challenge of a real working environment. The prize for the challenge last week was to win a life changing all access mentorship by this incredible award winning make up artist. So how did Michael and Carol perform? The tables turned for Carol Knox this week, resulting in it being her favourite episode so far. "To have Michele Burke, a pioneer and top lady in her field who has worked with all the Hollywood A-listers was mind-blowing. She is just such a gorgeous and kind woman," she said. "For this industry challenge from Michele, we were paired up so the oldest - me and the youngest - Niall were matched. We had the best crack and the two of us bonded during that episode. Our brief was to recreate the Tom Cruise's vampire character from Interview with a Vampire, so the vampire had to be very beautiful. We were really happy with our look but as always if we had more time we could have pushed it further." Carol dodged the red chair this week and was delighted with the feedback she received both on and off camera from the judges. "To have two people who believe in me more than I believe in myself was very emotional for me," she said. Creative Challenge The creative challenge this week was entitled Primal Fear. The remaining MUAs are tasked with creating a look that embodies their worst fear or phobia and this challenge saw Kilkenny's Michael fighting to stay in the competition. Michael told the Kilkenny People how episode 3 was the one he was worried about: "This week's theme was about facing your fears. I had a completely different concept planned for this look but the morning of challenge I changed my mind. My original concept just didn't feel genuine so I knew I had to tell my real story," he said. "It was a really hard day on set, I had gotten in my own head and I was freaking out. I ended up in the face off which I had expected, my look just wasn't up to standard. Luckily I managed to stay to fight another week. I'm glad I told my story as the feedback from people who've been through similar has been great." Don't miss Glow Up Ireland this Thursday as this week's guest judge is the Queen of Ireland and a national treasure - Panti Bliss. The MUAs will be asked to create a distinctive drag look on their model and we cannot wait to see this. Glow Up Ireland is presented by TV star, model and influencer Maura Higgins which airs on RTE2 from 9.35pm every Thursday. MASON CITY, Iowa Authorities say they have identified the body found after a house fire on September 7. The Mason City fire and police departments were called to a house fire at 123 N Tennessee Avenue just after 5 am on September 7. Investigators say a body found inside has now been identified, pending DNA confirmation, as Tonette Wolfe, 24 of Mason City. Wolfes body was found inside the residence. An investigation into the fire and Wolfes death is ongoing and anyone with information about either is asked to contact the Mason City Police Department at 641-421-3636. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the State Fire Marshal have assisted with this case. SOUTHEAST, Minn. - Minnesota law enforcement officials got active for a cause! At 7 a.m., officers from Hastings PD, Rochester PD, FMC Rochester PD, and Minnesota Department of Corrections Faribault met outside the Rochester Government Center for the Special Olympics Minnesota Law Enforcement Torch Run. The officers mounted biked, strapped on running shoes, or got behind the wheel of a car to honor Minnesota's Special Olympic athletes with a 95-mile journey along the highways of Southeast Minnesota. Olmsted County Sherrif Kevin Torgerson has been waiting for this day. "It's a big day," said Sherrif Torgerson. "COVID has obviously put things aside. And the athletes...many of them work in very communal, open, social atmospheres, like grocery stores and other places. And all that stuff was taken away from them, as well as competition and practices." The run is usually held in June but was postponed this year due to the spread of COVID. Instead of a warm, sunny day in June - law enforcement officers added a couple more layers this morning in the 40-degree weather. But, they didn't seem to mind. "It's just exciting to be able to do this and send that reminder out to our community that hey, our athletes are still here, they're missing competitions, some are participating - but we just want to make sure people don't forget about them. We're still here and we want to keep supporting them," said Sherrif Torgerson. The Law Enforcement Torch Run has been raising awareness and funds for the Special Olympics Movement since 1981. A $200,000 grant was given to Channel One Food Bank and Second Harvest Heartland by Feeding America on Monday at 2:30 outside Bleu Duck Kitchen. CEO of Feeding America Claire Babineaux-Fontenot and Channel One Regional Food Bank Director Virginia Merritt joined Bleu Duck Kitchen co-owner Jennifer Lester to celebrate the grant. The grant will go towards food insecurity programs, such as Minnesota Central Kitchen, to provide up to 2,000 meals a week to those in need. Bleu Duck Kitchen is one of the local restaurants participating in the program. Roughly 15,000 people in Olmsted County are affected by food insecurity every day. IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) A man who was paralyzed when an Iowa police officer shot him in April is suing the officer. Marcelino Alvarez-Victoriano contends the shooting was not justified. Authorities say a Waterloo police officer shot Alvarez-Victoriano after he pointed a pellet gun that looked like a shotgun at two Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies. But the lawsuit filed Thursday questions the official version of events. It notes that few details have been released months after the shooting. Black Hawk County Attorney Brian Williams says he's still reviewing whether the officer's use of force was justified. Waterloo Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald says the officer has been cleared internally. MASON CITY, Iowa Things are moving quickly for a Mason City man accused of dealing in drugs and stolen weapons. Jacob Raymond Shafer, 30, was arrested on August 20 after a traffic stop at 2nd Street NW and N. Adams Avenue in Cerro Gordo County. Law enforcement says a search found methamphetamine and a stolen firearm. Shafer, the driver, has pleaded not guilty to possession of meth with intent to deliver, failure to use a drug tax stamp, and trafficking in stolen weapons. His trial is set to begin on October 19. A passenger, Desarae Schwab, 28 of Mason City, was charged with misdemeanor crimes of possessing meth and drug paraphernalia. ROCHESTER, Minn. - Med City Mayor Kim Norton is sharing some take-aways from her recent visit to Rochester's sister cities in Germany. During this year's annual University of Minnesota sponsored trip to Munster, Norton toured and talked clean energy and climate change with the city's leaders. Joined by officials from the departments of state, commerce, and agriculture, the mayor says her visit was filled to the brim with meetings and workshops. While abroad, Mayor Norton also stopped by Moosburg, another sister city. A delegation from Munster will be visiting Rochester this upcoming February, and yes, they've been warned to bundle up. MASON CITY, Iowa A not guilty plea is filed in a collision that injured two people. Kade Levern Hambly, 21 of Mason City, is pleading not guilty to OWI-2nd offense and driving without a license. His trial is scheduled to begin on December 7. The Cerro Gordo Sheriffs Office says Hambly was behind the wheel on June 16 when his truck collided with another vehicle at the intersection of 265th Street and Vine Avenue. Hambly is accused of not stopping at the stop sign. The driver and passenger in the other vehicle were taken to MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center for treatment. The City of Rochester is asking construction companies to come forward with a bid for a new bike trail that will connect to Chester Woods Park. The upcoming project is split into two phases, according to Olmsted County Parks Director Karlin Ziegler, with the first starting at Chester Woods. The first phase involves construction at the popular park and will connect to existing trails, such as the Legacy Trail, Ziegler said. The Department of Natural Resources is footing the bill for the trail construction, with a cost estimate of $2.5 million. Community members at Chester Woods Park could see DNR officials as soon as this fall, with construction slated to start in 2022. ROCHESTER, Minn. A man accused of crashing into parked cars has taken a plea deal on lesser charges. Devin Scott Garrison, 28 of Rochester, was arrested in June 2020 and charged with one felony count of fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle and misdemeanor charges of DWI and reckless driving. The Rochester Police Department says Garrison refused to pull over for an officer, then drove away into Silver Lake Park. Police say Garrison hit one parked car and then smashed into another parked car twice before being apprehended. Garrison has pleaded guilty to DWI and reckless driving, with the felony charge being dismissed. He was sentenced to one year of supervised probation and ordered to pay a $400 fine or do 40 hours of community work service. The music video's title - "This is America" - is the message one Hickman parent wants State Rep. Chuck Basye to hear. Federal arrest warrant issued for Brian Laundrie for his 'use of unauthorized devices' after Gabby Petito's death, FBI says For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, KCTV-TV. Top diplomats of South Korea, Japan and the United States hold trilateral talks on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 22. Yonhap The top diplomats of South Korea, Japan and the United States on Wednesday reaffirmed their cooperation in dealing with various regional issues, such as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and climate change, the State Department said. The meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday (local time). "The secretary and the foreign ministers highlighted the global scope of U.S.-Japan-ROK cooperation based upon our shared values, as well as our commitment to preserving and promoting regional peace, stability and prosperity," State Department spokesman Ned Price said of the trilateral meeting. "The discussion included ways to deepen cooperation between our countries through multilateral efforts to tackle the pressing global challenges, such as combating the climate crisis and securing supply chains," he added in a press release. President Moon Jae-in bumps elbows with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson during their summit in New York, Monday (local time). Yonhap Trilateral security pact is seen as US's latest attempt to contain China's assertion By Nam Hyun-woo AUKUS, a new trilateral security partnership between the U.K., Australia and the U.S., is placing indirect pressure on South Korea to join Washington's campaign to contain an assertive China, and throwing a new challenge for the Moon Jae-in administration's balancing act between the two superpowers. AUKUS became the subject of South Korea's diplomacy during a summit between President Moon and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in New York, Monday (local time). According to presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee, Johnson told Moon that "AUKUS will not cause any regional problems," and Moon responded, "I hope AUKUS will contribute to regional peace and prosperity." The remarks were interpreted as Moon's effort to take a neutral stance on the trilateral pact, which is widely viewed as an anti-China grouping. AUKUS was announced Sept. 15, as a military deal that will see the U.S. and U.K. help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines. None of the leaders of the involved parties mentioned a specific country while announcing the pact, but it is believed to be a measure to counter China's rising influence in the Indo-Pacific region. U.S. President Joe Biden, right, meets with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the Intercontinental Barclay Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Tuesday (local time). AP-Yonhap AUKUS is the latest among various U.S.-led campaigns to contain China's assertiveness, following the QUAD security dialogue among the U.S., India, Japan and Australia; and the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance comprised of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Among those countries, South Korea has been increasing its diplomatic contacts with the U.K. and Australia in recent months. Moon's summit with Johnson came just 100 days after the two leaders met during the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in the U.K. During the two summits, the leaders held discussions on the U.K.'s participation in South Korea's project to develop a light aircraft carrier. Moon also held a summit with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the sidelines of the G7 Summit, and met Australian foreign and defense ministers in Seoul, Sept. 13, to talk about military and security cooperation. Against this backdrop, the creation of AUKUS is interpreted as the U.S. concentrating its diplomatic influence on having its allies exert efforts to contain China; and South Korea is being pressured to join this campaign. During a Sept. 20 press briefing on AUKUS, a senior U.S. administration official was asked whether Washington had the intention of transferring nuclear submarine technology to South Korea as it had decided to do for Australia. The official responded, "We don't have the intention of extending this to other countries." The South Korean military also wants to develop nuclear-powered submarines. During his presidential campaign in 2017, Moon said Korea also needs nuclear submarines, and former Deputy National Security Advisor Kim Hyun-jong reportedly visited the U.S. last October to ask for Washington's cooperation in supplying nuclear fuel; which was refused. According to observers, this shows that the U.S. is providing a favor to Australia, which has been expressing its clear stance against China, despite Beijing's trade retaliation on wine, sugar and seafood exports. "It is seen as a significant incentive for Australia, which has long been standing as faithful partner for the U.S. in terms of countering China," said Shin Beom-chul, the director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. "South Korea was also given similar opportunities to join the anti-China campaign, but the Moon administration made its choice to stand neutral, which could cause mid- to long-term pressure on Seoul's diplomacy," Shin said. Minister of Foreign Affairs Chung Eui-yong speaks with Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, during an interview organized by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Wednesday (local time). Courtesy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs By Park Ji-won Poster for SIDance2021 / Courtesy of SIDance The 24th Seoul International Dance Festival (SIDance2021), hosted by Seoul Section of the UNESCO International Dance Council (CID-UNESCO), will be held from Oct. 16 to Nov. 14 at various locations in Seoul and through online platforms. This year's festival will focus on presenting dance performances from Benelux countries Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg as well as works from non-metropolitan areas. The festival features 84 works from 83 dance companies representing 14 countries, encompassing Europe, Asia, Middle East, and North America. They will be held at various locations in Seoul, such as Seoul Arts Center, ARKO Art Center and Oil Tank Culture Park as well as online platforms which will be announced. The works and countries as well as online platforms may be added according to the organizer. Renowned Belgian choreographer, Thi-Mai Nguyen, will be visiting Seoul to present her solo work, "ETNA," which is a show of her interpretation of life of an ageless homeless person strolling around cities with a tape recorder. The show will be held at Oil Tank Culture Park from Oct. 23 to 24. Apart from her performances, shows from overseas will be presented through online platform. The festival will present a wide array of performances for Seoul residents who may not have many opportunities to see dance troupes based outside of the capital. Daegu City Dance Company, Gyeonggido Dance Company, Cheongju City Dance Company and individual choreographers active in regions such as Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, Daejeon and Daegu will also take part in the festival. A diversified portfolio of performances is being offered this year. In Dance Eat Song, dancers create choreographies according to K-pop songs, while SIDance Tomorrow lets new dancers come up with new routines. SIDance was established in 1998 during the 13th International Dance Council World Congress in Seoul and has been involved in the largest international dance festivals held here every year. Since 2018, SIDance has been expanding its themes to include social issues, such as refugees and violence to inspire people through dance performances. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it held online performances for the first time. Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Overcast with showers at times. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.. Tonight Overcast with showers at times. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%. (ST. JOSEPH, Mo.) Louisiana reported its 16th child death from Covid-19 Wednesday. Missouri reported its sixth earlier this month. In total there have been more than 450 children's deaths due to Covid-19 since the pandemic began. We spoke to Children's Mercy's top infectious disease doctor to ask how this compares to a typical flu season. Since the beginning of the pandemic, one persistent myth that won't go away, is that Covid-19 poses no more risk to kids than the flu. At local school board meetings, parent after parent repeats the myth as the reason children shouldn't be in masks. Kansas City's top children's doctor studying and treating infectious diseases says that's just not true. It's also not true that Covid-19 only affects kids with underlying or chronic conditions. "I'm seeing healthy kids in the hospital with Covid-19. I'm seeing healthy kids in the ICU with Covid-19, Dr. Angela Myers, Division Director, Infectious Diseases at Childrens Mercy Kansas City said. Here are the facts. People are 10 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than the flu. That's because Covid-19 is more contagious. "This virus, especially the delta variant, is more contagious. If you have a more contagious virus, more people get infected, more people are going to get seriously ill and then die, Dr. Myers said. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been well over 450 children deaths due to Covid. Compared to a typical flu season where about 100 to 150 kids die from the flu. "It's a year and a half but even if you took out six months of that, that's still well above that mortality rate compared to influenza," Dr. Myers said. Dr. Myers says that it's clear that Covid-19 is more deadly than the flu for both children and adults. She also said that the flu is not something we should just be ignoring. "The death rate is much smaller for kids than adults but still 150 deaths is still 150 deaths and you know that's too many to me," Dr. Myers said. Other countries take the flu seriously, they get immunized and use mitigation strategies like masks. "Some countries have been doing this for years and years so in Asia, one could argue they were on the ball quicker than we were. They do wear masks in a typical flu season and we just as Americans have not ever kind of adopted that. Had we done that before the pandemic would we have had less flu cases and less flu deaths in our country? Perhaps," Dr. Myers said. Dr. Myers says perhaps it's time to put two myths to bed and start taking the flu and Covid-19 more seriously, especially when it comes to children. Children's mercy also says another myth you should ignore is that masks don't work. Dr. Meyers says they work at protecting children from Covid-19, the flu and RSV and they also keep kids in school. (ST. JOSEPH, Mo.) The start of fall means the start of deer season. For Missouri, deer season began on September 15, and with that, the USDA reported results on a study tracing Covid-19 in deer. According to the United States of Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, recently completed a study involving white-tailed deer. The APHIS collected a total of 481 samples between January 2020 and March 2021 from Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. In those 481 samples, 33 percent detected SARS-CoV-2 anitbodies. Jasmine Batten, a Wildlife Biologist and Wildlife Health Program Supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation in Columbia, Missouri, spoke with KY3 in a recent article. Batten said this information is fairly new and they are trying to figure out what it all means. KQ2 spoke with a local meat processing company on how the virus could effect deer season. "Right now they believe that it would be difficult for a animal to transmit to a human, not as difficult for a human to transmit to an animal," said Trina Clark, a co-owner of Clark's Custom Meat Company. "So our working assumption is that, that will not be a major problem during deer season for the hunters that are out harvesting deer." The study states that deer are testing positive for the antibodies. There are no clinical sign of symptoms. "We've always had a certain process and procedure that we follow to make sure that that doesn't happen and that consumers are not susceptible to that," Clark stated. While the study is fairly new, the USDA has relayed that the source of the virus is still unknown. Concluding the deer are contracting covid from the environment, humans or other animals. Meat processing plants have yet to receive procedures on how to properly treat deer meat that may possibly be infected by Covid-19, but Trina Clark says they will continue to use the same process as they would when treating any other diseases found in meat. "What will we do as a precautionary measure for that, is the same thing that we do for every other disease process in any pathogen that we are concerned about in meat processing," Clark added. "So we'll be careful about all of the organs. Obviously, covid is a respiratory-born disease. So, we'll be careful of the respiratory tract--disposing of that properly and then we will do an intervention on the carcass with a lactic acid that will work well against covid, so that should reduce anything else on the meat itself." The USDA says the risk is relatively low for the deer to pass on the disease to humans. "What every hunter should do regardless of covid, you know any concern with deer health, you're just watching to make sure that deer is acting normally. That they're moving around normally, that they look filled out and not emaciated, that they are not hanging their head or not responding to noise. Anything out of the norm would make you consider whether you wouldn't want to harvest that animal and eat it." Overall, Clark believes there is nothing to worry about for those hunting deer and processing themselves, saying to continue normal precautions until further information is released. "It's not that we have never dealt with disease processes and animals. So really I feel like we can handle this safely, unless there's new data that emerges, I think that we can handle it without there being any real risk to consumers even if you're processing yourself. Just be careful. Wash your hands, do the normal things that you would do to prevent infection to keep things clean and not pass on a pathogen in your meat," said Clark. Clark added that the OIE has specific information on animals and covid. Larose, LA (70373) Today Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 67F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 67F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. ROME, SEP 23 - Eitan Biran, the orphaned six-year-old Israeli boy who was the sole survivor of the Mottarone mountain cable-car disaster in Piedmont in May and was taken out of Italy by his maternal grandfather earlier this month, will stay in Israel for the moment, lawyers representing the paternal side of the family said on Thursday. Speaking after the first hearing in Tel Aviv about the custody battle over the boy, the lawyers said the two sides of the family had reached an agreement on Eitan's routine until the next hearing on October 8. Until then the boy will spend half of his time with the maternal family and half with his paternal aunt, Aya Biran, who is the legal guardian for the Italian authorities, legal sources said. The case is set to be examined by the court for three consecutive days from October 8. The paternal grandfather, Shmuel Peleg, is being probed in Italy for alleged aggravated kidnapping. Eitan was reportedly driven across the border to Switzerland and flown to Tel Aviv with a private jet after being taken out by his maternal grandfather during a visit. Eitan's parents, great grandparents and two-year-old brother were among the 14 victims of the disaster. Eitan, who moved to Italy with his parents in 2018, had been put into the care of his Italian-based paternal aunt, Aya Biran, after the disaster by the Italian authorities. Aya Biran has presented a petition for the boy to be returned to Italy on the basis of the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention. (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - The Senate on Thursday gave the final green light to the government's reform of Italy's criminal justice system, approving it with 177 votes in favour and 24 against. The package, aimed at speeding up the system, had already been approved by the Lower House and is now the law of the land. The EU made the granting of COVID-19 Recovery Plan funds conditional on Italy speeding up its notoriously slow criminal justice system and revamping the civil system too. The reform, drafted by Justice Minister Marta Cartabia, sets limits on the time it can take to rule on first appeals and on cases at the supreme court. It caused considerable tension within Premier Mario Draghi's coalition before a compromise was reached at the end of July. It effectively waters down a reform passed by Alfonso Bonafede, a 5-Star Movement (M5S) lawmaker who was the justice minister in ex-premier Giuseppe Conte's two coalition governments from June 2018 until the start of this year. Bonafede's reform puts the statue of limitations on hold after the first-instance ruling in order to stop criminals getting off because their cases get timed out due to the slowness of the legal system. The judiciary's self-governing body, the CSM, said a huge number of cases would end up being shelved if the Cartabia reform had been approved in its original form. The M5S demanded changes to the reform to stop this happening, which led to a compromise in which crimes regarding the mafia, terrorism, sexual violence and criminal association are handled under a different regime. (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - A 69-year-old Naples woman who had a 500,000-euro-winning scratch card stolen from her by the tobacconist who sold it to her has finally been able to cash it in, Italy's Customs and Monopolies Agency has said. The tobacconist, Gaetano Scutellaro, aged 57, has repented and apologised, his lawyer said earlier this month. Scutellaro was stopped by border police as he tried to embark on a flight to the Canary Islands at Rome's Fiumicino airport after stealing the card and subsequently detained by Carabinieri police as he drove back to Naples. Police tracked down the winning card in a bank in Latina, a city between Naples and Rome. Scutellaro is accused of aggravated theft and attempted extortion as it is suspected that he may have tried to get money from the card's authentic owner to return it. The tobacconist had initially said that the card was his and the woman was lying. (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - Justice Minister Marta Cartabia on Thursday signed two extradition requests to Pakistan for the parents of Saman Abbas, a Pakistani-Italian woman who has been missing since the end of April and is believed to have been murdered by her family after refusing an arranged marriage. The parents of the 18-year-old are fugitives form justice and are believed to be hiding out in their native country. The requests follow the arrest in Paris Wednesday of one of Saman's uncles who is believed to have strangled her to death at the family home at Novellara near Reggio Emilia in a so-called honour killing. The uncle, Danish Hasnain, is one of five members of the woman's family who are under investigation over the alleged murder. The Pakistani man was detained on the outskirts of Paris under a European arrest warrant. He was tracked down with the help of Carabinieri police investigators based in Reggio Emilia. Saman Abbas disappeared after reportedly rebelling against demands she have an arranged marriage in Pakistan. The woman's parents and one of her cousins fled from Italy after she went missing and are fugitives from justice. The parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, went to Pakistan on May 1. Another cousin, Ikram Ijaz, was arrested in relation to the case in France in May and is in jail in Italy. Investigators think Hasnain, 33, is the man who actually killed Saman. The woman's younger brother told prosecutors that he thought Hasnain strangled the woman to death. Police said they would now compare the uncle's and cousin's versions of events. Saman's mother reportedly lured her home from the shelter she had taken refuge in with a deceptive text message that said the family would respect her wishes. According to the Gazzetta di Reggio, Saman's mother sent her a text saying "please get in touch, come home. We are dying. Come back, we'll do as you say". Saman went home on April 22, a week before she disappeared. Her body has yet to be found. The Italian Union of Islamic Communities (UCOII) has expressed horror at the case and banned Muslims in Italy from forcing their children into arranged marriages. (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - The government estimates that Italian growth will be around 6% this year, Premier Mario Draghi said Thursday. This is up from a 4.5% growth forecast issued in the spring, he said. "The government forecasts that we will present in the coming days estimate growth at around 6% this tear, compared with the 4.5% hypothesized in the spring, Draghi told the annual assembly of the industrial employers' federation Confindustria. Draghi also said the major challenge facing government was to achieve "lasting" post-COVID growth. In order to stoke the recovery, he said, fresh contagion and lockdowns must be averted at all costs. He said that if the spread of the virus was brought under control, "we will ease the remaining restrictions". Draghi said the government was "close" to its target of getting 80% of Italians fully vaccinated by the end of September. He said the Green Pass vaccine passport which has recently been enforced in all workplaces across Italy was an "instrument of freedom and safety". (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - Italy's ecological transition is not a choice but a necessity, Premier Mario Draghi told industrial employers' group Confindustria Thursday. "The ecological transition is not a choice but a necessity," he told Confindustria's annual assembly. "But we must take into account the capacity for reconversion of our productive structures," the premier stressed. "The State must play its part in helping citizens and businesses to bear the costs of this transformation. "It must pay particular attention to the weakest sectors of the population". Draghi recently said it was time to dump coal and that the world was not doing enough to meet climate pledges. He said that the world must move from setting goals to taking concrete action to tackle the climate crisis, adding that dumping coal should be part of that. (ANSA). ROME, SEP 23 - Premier Mario Draghi on Thursday launched an economic and social pact to boost the post-COVID economy and create jobs. Speaking for the first time to the annual assembly of the industrial employers' federation Confindustria, Draghi also said the government will jto raise taxes. The government estimates that Italian growth will be around 6% this year, Draghi said. This is up from a 4.5% growth forecast issued in the spring, he said. "The government forecasts that we will present in the coming days estimate growth at around 6% this tear, compared with the 4.5% hypothesized in the spring, Draghi said. Draghi also said the major challenge facing government was to achieve "lasting" post-COVID growth. In order to stoke the recovery, he said, fresh contagion and lockdowns must be averted at all costs. He said that if the spread of the virus was brought under control, "we will ease the remaining restrictions". Draghi said the government was "close" to its target of getting 80% of Italians fully vaccinated by the end of September. He said the Green Pass vaccine passport which has recently been enforced in all workplaces across Italy starting in mid-October was an "instrument of freedom and safety". Confindustria chief Carlo Bonomi voiced the hope that Draghi would continue leading the government for a long time. (ANSA). VATICAN CITY, SEP 23 - The European Union must return to the farsighted vision of its founding fathers, Pope Francis told European bishops in Rome Thursday. Speaking at a Mass in the Vatican, Francis said the EU should emulate its founders who "did not seek consensus of the moment but dreamed of the future of all". He said the need to build a common home meant that today's European leaders must "leave immediate convenience behind". Today's Europe, the pope said, is "sick with fatigue" and the Catholic Church can help is rediscover faith, in "the ever-young face of Christ and his bride". He said "we cannot fail to give all of ourselves so that this eternal beauty can be seen", (ANSA). Agenda Item 7: Reaffirming the determination to put an end to the suffering caused by cluster munitions Mr. President, Sri Lanka is pleased to join the Second Review Conference of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), a significant milestone of the Convention. We join with other delegations in congratulating you, Mr. President and your team for your hard work and dedication in the process leading up to this important Review Conference. Mr. President, As a country that has never used or produced cluster munitions, we take this opportunity to renew our persistent commitment to the humanitarian principles and objectives enshrined in the Convention on Cluster Munitions. We acceded to the Convention on 1 March 2018 as a country that has been a keen and active participant in the disarmament and non-proliferation deliberations over the years. Sri Lanka had the honour to preside over the 9th Meeting of State Parties to the Convention, one year after accession to the Convention. We remain fully committed to the multilateral regime of disarmament and non- proliferation discourse and yearn to see substantive progress on some of the key outstanding issues in the realm of disarmament and non-proliferation. As we celebrated last year the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of this very important Convention, we are encouraged by the growing number of countries acceding to the Convention and the adoption of the resolution on CCM at the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 75) with zero no votes for the first time recognizing the indiscriminate humanitarian consequences of the use of cluster munitions. We note however that we are still behind the goal of the Dubrovnik Action Plans goal of 130 State Parties by this Review Conference, yet we remain hopeful that with the adoption of the Lausanne Action Plan as well as the renewed political commitment of the member States will contribute to bring on board more new State Parties committed to the objectives of the Convention. Sri Lanka actively pursued the goal of Universalization, during its presidency in 2019 by organizing a Universalization side event in New York coinciding with the UN General Assembly session. We were also able to share our national experience with a group of non-State Parties at the South East Asia Regional Workshop on the CCM held in Manila in June 2019. Accelerated universalization is an important necessity to achieve a world free of cluster munitions. We take this opportunity to thank the Coordinators on Universalization, Chile and the Philippines for their steadfast efforts, supported by the Implementation Support Unit (ISU), towards promoting universalization including the Working paper on Ways Forward on Universalization of the CCM. This Review Conference provides an important opportunity to review our work in implementing and achieving humanitarian objectives of the Convention. The Review of the Dubrovnik Action Plan and finalizing of the Lausanne Action Plan provide the necessary platform to acknowledge the challenges and difficulties that we face on our way to this Review Conference and how we could find creative strategies to achieve our common goal of achieving a world free of cluster-munitions. Sri Lanka takes this opportunity to reiterate its commitment to the norms of the Convention and to fully endorse the principles enshrined in the Lausanne Political Declaration. As highlighted in the Lausanne Political Declaration strong national ownership and international cooperation and assistance are central elements of the full implementation of the Convention. Prohibition of cluster munitions, would have a direct impact and effective realization of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 16 on promoting peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. We welcome in this context the reference made to Sustainable Development Goals in the Lausanne Action Plan to be adopted during this meeting and the need to make use of synergies between implementation of other humanitarian and human rights instruments, including the Mine Ban Treaty. Mr. President, It is important in this context to understand that not only States that retain and deploy cluster munitions who have an obligation to stop the use of this weapon and to destroy stockpiles but the arms exporting states that produce and invest in cluster munitions also have an equal responsibility to ensure such investments are halted immediately so that eventually the world will be free of cluster munitions. In conclusion, Mr. President, let me assure you our delegations full support towards successful adoption and implementation of the important documents to be adopted in this Review Conference. Thank you, Mr. President. View Statement PDF The Foreign Ministry of Sri Lanka, jointly with the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, organized a virtual business to business (B2B) interactive session on 17 August, 2021, with the Member States of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) to enhance tourism cooperation. About 100 tourism industry experts representing the public and private sector from twenty-seven CICA Member States participated in the webinar. The discussions focused on the importance and benefits of international collective efforts and joint endeavors to build a more resilient and sustainable tourism sector in the post-pandemic era. Delivering the opening remarks, State Minister of Regional Cooperation Tharaka Balasuriya stressed that the Government of Sri Lanka has demonstrated its unwavering dedication and sheer commitment consistently though a worrying economic and social impact has been left by the dreadful waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated that the Government of Sri Lanka was working with all the international organisations and friendly governments including the CICA Member States to defeat the pandemic and uphold the economic and social development aspirations of our peoples, to which the revival of the tourism industry will play a key role. Sri Lanka Tourism Chairperson Kimarli Fernando in her keynote speech highlighted that Sri Lanka has all the attributes to position itself as a perfect post-pandemic travel destination with its wide-open spaces and a multitude of nature-based experiences and spoke extensively on Sri Lankas rich experiences and initiatives relevant to the revival of the tourism industry in the island nation during and the post pandemic era. Past President of the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO) Mahen Kariyawasan, President of the Association for Small & Medium Enterprises in Tourism (ASMET) Rohan Abeywickrema and President of the Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) Sanath Ukwatte also addressed the session. The session was moderated by Sri Lanka Tourism Marketing Director Dushan Wickremasuriya. While sharing their experience and expertise on the subject, the Global industry experts participating in the webinar agreed to develop a road map conceptualizing the way forward for tourism revival within the CICA region in the post-COVID context. CICA is a multinational forum of twenty-seven member States formed for enhancing cooperation towards promoting peace, security, and stability in Asia. Sri Lanka obtained the full membership of CICA in 2018 and currently serves as the co-coordinator for Confidence Building Measures in Tourism. Foreign Ministry Colombo 18 August, 2021 Read more : www.mfa.gov.lk Statement by H.E. Gotabaya Rajapaksa President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka at the General Debate of the Seventy-Sixth Session of the United Nations General Assembly 22 September 2021 Mr. President, Secretary General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ayubowan, I am honoured to represent Sri Lanka at this august gathering today. Let me first congratulate His Excellency Abdulla Shahid on being elected President of the 76th session of the General Assembly. Mr. President, you have long been a friend of Sri Lanka. We look forward to working closely with you in the year ahead. I also take this opportunity to convey our appreciation of His Excellency Volkan Bozkirs stewardship of the previous session of the General Assembly, and to commend Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for his leadership in these difficult times. Mr. President, The COVID19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on humanity. I sympathise deeply with all who have lost their loved ones during the pandemic. I thank frontline healthcare and essential workers around the world for their dedication and commend the World Health Organisation for its crisis response. I also greatly appreciate the rapid advances made by the scientific and medical communities in devising vaccines and treatment protocols to combat the virus. At the same time, we must recognise that the challenges surrounding production, distribution, deployment and acceptance of vaccines must be overcome urgently if the spread of dangerous new virus strains is to be prevented. Ensuring that everyone, everywhere, is vaccinated is the best way out of the pandemic. Although still a developing nation, Sri Lanka has been very successful in its vaccination programme. We have already fully vaccinated nearly all those above the age of 30. Everyone over the age of 20 will be fully vaccinated by the end of October. We will start vaccinating children over 15 years of age in the near future. The rapid progress of vaccinations was enabled by coordinated efforts between healthcare workers, Armed Forces and Police personnel, Government servants, and elected officials. In collaboration with the WHO, Sri Lanka is establishing a Regional Knowledge Hub to facilitate exchange of lessons learnt from COVID19 and support countries to recover better. Sri Lanka also benefitted greatly from financial and material support provided by bilateral and multilateral donors to manage the pandemic. I thank these nations and institutions for their generosity. The increased global cooperation visible during this ongoing crisis is greatly encouraging. However, there is still more to be done. Mr. President, The economic impact of the pandemic has been especially severe on developing countries. This has placed the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals at considerable risk. It is vital that more initiatives including development financing and debt relief be adopted through international mechanisms to support developing nations and help them emerge from this uncertain situation. Sri Lanka too has suffered greatly due to the pandemic. In addition to the tragic loss of life, our economy has been deeply affected. The lockdowns, together with general movement restrictions, reduced international travel, and slower global growth have affected nearly all sectors of our economy. Tourism, one of Sri Lankas highest foreign exchange earners and a sector that supports nearly 14% of the population, has been devastated. This industry, together with small and medium businesses in many other sectors, received Government support through interest moratoriums and other financial sector interventions. Daily wage earners and low-income groups were also supported through grants of cash and dry rations during lockdowns, adding significantly to state expenditure. In addition to their immediate impact, these economic repercussions of the pandemic have limited the fiscal space available to implement our development programmes. Mr. President, As devastating as the consequences of the pandemic have been to humanity, the world faces the even greater challenge of climate change in the decades to come. As emphasised in the recent report by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, the unprecedented effect of human activity on the health of the planet is deeply worrying. Addressing the grave threats posed by climate change and the loss of biodiversity requires decisive and urgent multilateral action. As a climate-vulnerable country, Sri Lanka is deeply aware of the dangers of climate change. Sri Lankas philosophical heritage, deeply rooted in Lord Buddhas teachings, also emphasises the vitality of preserving environmental integrity. It is in these contexts that Sri Lanka is a Commonwealth Blue Charter Champion and leads the Action Group on Mangrove Restoration. Through the adoption of the Colombo Declaration on Sustainable Nitrogen Management, which seeks to halve nitrogen waste by 2030, Sri Lanka has also contributed to global efforts to reduce environmental pollution. Having participated virtually in the Pre-Summit held in April, I trust that the United Nations Food Summit later this month will result in actionable outcomes to promote healthier, more sustainable, and equitable food systems globally. Such outcomes will be crucial to human health as well as to the health of our planet. Sustainability is a cornerstone of Sri Lankas national policy framework. Because of its impact on soil fertility, biodiversity, waterways and health, my Government banned the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and weedicides earlier this year. Production and adoption of organic fertiliser, as well as investments into organic agriculture, are being incentivised. I appreciate the encouragement received from many global institutions and nations for our efforts to create a more sustainable agriculture in Sri Lanka. The conservation of our environment is one of our key national priorities. We aim to increase forest cover significantly in the coming decades. We are also working to clean and restore over 100 rivers countrywide, and to combat river and maritime pollution. We have also banned single use plastics to support ecological conservation. Sri Lanka recognises the urgent need to reduce use of fossil fuels and support decarbonisation. Our energy policy seeks to increase the contribution of renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydropower to 70% of our national energy needs by 2030. Mr. President, Sri Lanka welcomes the support of the international community as it engages in the task of reviving its economy and carrying out its national development programme. We intend to make full use of geostrategic location and our robust institutions, strong social infrastructure, and skilled workforce, to attract investment and broaden trade relationships. My Government is focusing on extensive legal, regulatory, administrative and educational reforms to facilitate this, and to deliver prosperity to all our people. Sri Lanka has enjoyed universal adult franchise since pre-Independence. The democratic tradition is an integral part of our way of life. My election in 2019 and the Parliamentary election in 2020 saw Sri Lankan voters grant an emphatic mandate to my Government to build a prosperous and stable country, and uphold national security and sovereignty. In 2019, Sri Lanka experienced the devastation wrought by extremist religious terrorists in the Easter Sunday attacks. Before that, until 2009, it had suffered from a separatist terrorist war for 30 years. Terrorism is a global challenge that requires international cooperation, especially on matters such as intelligence sharing, if it is to be overcome. Violence robbed Sri Lanka of thousands of lives and decades of prosperity in the past half century. My Government is committed to ensuring that such violence never takes place in Sri Lanka again. We are therefore acting to address the core issues behind it. Fostering greater accountability, restorative justice, and meaningful reconciliation through domestic institutions is essential to achieve lasting peace. So too is ensuring more equitable participation in the fruits of economic development. It is my Governments firm intention to build a prosperous, stable and secure future for all Sri Lankans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or gender. We are ready to engage with all domestic stakeholders, and to obtain the support of our international partners and the United Nations, in this process. However, history has shown that lasting results can only be achieved through home-grown institutions reflecting the aspirations of the people. Sri Lankas Parliament, Judiciary and its range of independent statutory bodies should have unrestricted scope to exercise their functions and responsibilities. Mr. President, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, If, in keeping with the theme of our General Debate today, we are to truly build resilience through hope, we must all strive towards the common good. It is the role of the United Nations to facilitate this by treating all sovereign states, irrespective of size or strength, equitably, and with due respect for their institutions and their heritage. I request the United Nations and the international community to ensure the protection of the Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan. I call on the member states of this august Assembly to work together in a spirit of true cooperation, generosity, goodwill, and mutual respect to foster a better and more sustainable future for all humanity. Thank you. View Statement in English - PDF View Statement in Sinhala - PDF View Statement in Tamil - PDF The video can be viewed through the following link: https://youtu.be/0yttqpTMkvQ New Delhi [India], September 23 (ANI): More than 80.67 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been provided to states and union territories, out of which, over 4.29 crore balance and unutilised doses are still available with them, informed the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday. As per a statement released by the ministry, the Centre has provided 80,67,26,335 vaccine doses to all the states and union territories so far (free of cost channel) through the direct state procurement category and 64 lakh doses are in the pipeline. Also Read | Karnataka: Headmaster of a High School Suspended For Getting Massage in Classroom. Further, the statement read, "Around 4,29,03,090 balance and unutilised COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states and union territories to be administered." "In the new phase of the universalisation of the Covid-19 vaccination drive, the Central government will procure and supply (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country to states and union territories," it added. Also Read | Sensex Rallies Over 450 Points in Early Trade; Nifty Tops 17,650. The new phase of universalisation of COVID-19 vaccination commenced on June 21, 2021, to ramp up the speed of vaccination in the country. Meanwhile, 83.39 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far in the country under a nationwide vaccination drive, out of which, over 71.38 lakh doses were administered in the last 24 hours. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Republican lawmakers, headed by Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs, have introduced three impeachment articles against President Joe Biden on Tuesday for his decision and handling of Afghanistan, the immigration crisis, and the federal eviction moratorium. Gibbs told the Washington Examiner that he was not trying to get media attention for himself, adding that he takes it seriously and is not haphazard. Gibbs claimed that Joe Biden had done so much damage in less than nine months of his stay in office. The Republican lawmaker described it as scary, The Daily Wire reported. Other Republican representatives who joined Gibbs in introducing the impeachment articles were Andy Biggs, Brian Babin, and Randy Weber as co-sponsors. Bob Gibbs said that Joe Biden is "not capable of being commander-in-chief." He added that maybe the impeachment articles would make the White House think twice before "they do some of this nonsense." READ NEXT: U.S. President Joe Biden Supports Afghanistan Investigation Over the Airstrike Error Killing Civilians Impeachment Articles Against Pres. Joe Biden Bob Gibbs' first impeachment article accuses Joe Biden of violating "his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President," citing Biden's handling of the influx of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border. The first impeachment article also noted the postponement of the construction of the border wall and ending the policy that requires migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico. Gibbs also claimed in the first impeachment article that thousands of migrants entered the U.S. illegally without a date to appear in court for immigration, including those who tested positive for COVID-19. The second impeachment article accuses the president of violating the separation of powers by extending the federal moratorium on evictions. Gibbs noted that Joe Biden has done it this despite a clear warning from the U.S. Supreme Court and without any legislative directive from Congress. The last impeachment article accuses Joe Biden of failing to act responsibly as commander-in-chief regarding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The articles noted that Joe Biden "abandoned" Americans in Afghanistan by his move to withdraw the military first, putting their lives in danger, New York Post reported. It was the second time Republicans had filed articles of impeachment against the president. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green filed the first one on the day Joe Biden was sworn in office. Meanwhile, Bob Gibbs said he was aware that the effort to impeach Biden when Democrats hold the majorities in Congress would be difficult. Joe Biden's Presidency Joe Biden is currently facing issues regarding the bipartisan infrastructure spending package and abortion, among others. The decision on the plan has been split with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin saying that he will not support the spending package that costs more than $1.5 trillion, BBC News reported. On the other hand, Senator Bernie Sanders said that he would not accept anything less than $3.5 trillion as they already compromised down from a $6 trillion plan. Abortion has also become a huge topic with the U.S. Supreme Court set to take up a case on a Mississippi law banning the health procedure after the 15th week of pregnancy. Texas has already imposed a six-week ban that prohibits getting the procedure past the six-week stage of pregnancy. COVID mandates have also become an issue with many promising legal actions and political resistance. READ MORE: Sen. Mitch McConnell Says Pres. Joe Biden Won't Be Impeached Over Afghanistan, Says Hold Him Accountable at 'Ballot Box' This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: Joe Biden Makes Concessions on Infrastructure Plan - From ABC News A woman claimed Wednesday that she saw Gabby Petito's fiance Brian Laundrie "acting weird" near a Wyoming campsite, where the remains of the YouTuber were found on Sunday. Jessica Schultz, a graphic designer who lived in a camper for more than four years, also claimed that she tipped off the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on where they should look for the body of then missing Gabby Petito. Schultz said she caught a slow-moving white van near Grand Teton National Park on August 26, and as she passed by it, she noticed a "generic" white man, who she now believes was Laundrie, alone inside the vehicle. "He was just acting weird. You know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, your hackles go up when you see something that's out of the ordinary," Schultz told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday. The woman noted that she also saw the white van on the 27th and possibly the 28th without someone else around it. She said she contacted the FBI Thursday about her sighting when she heard about the search for Petito. Schultz shared her sightings on a TikTok video, saying that when she saw the van, she was not 100 percent sure it was Brian Laundrie. However, she said she was convinced that what she saw might be relevant when she saw the dashcam footage of a sobbing Petito after the couple had a fight. "He [Laundrie] was very kind of awkward and confused... and it was just him. There was no Gabby [Petito]," Schultz noted. On the couple's van, authorities found a straw hat on the dashboard. Schultz said that when her friend sent her a photo of the hat on the dashboard, that's when she recalled seeing it in the white van and called the FBI and told them to search in Spread Creek. Schultz noted that the FBI called her back on Sunday morning, the day Petito's body was found in a remote section of a Wyoming national forest. READ NEXT: Officials Confirm Gabby Petito Remains; Initially Determines Homicide as Manner of Death Witness Says Brian Laundrie Got 'Aggressive' at Wyoming Restaurant Another witness on Wednesday claimed that she saw Brian Laundrie two days before Gabby Petito last spoke to her mom. Nina Celie Angelo told Fox News that she saw Laundrie "flipped out" at Merry Piglets restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Angelo noted that Laundrie became aggressive at the staff in the restaurant, to the point that Gabby Petito apologized to the crew. "It's crazy because it wasn't like we passed them on the street. It was a full-blown incident," Angelo said. The woman noted that she believed the argument stemmed from the couple's bill, claiming that Laundrie stormed out and returned four times inside the restaurant. Petito then later came into the restaurant and apologized for the behavior of her boyfriend. Dive Team Joins Search of Gabby Petito's Boyfriend Brian Laundrie On Wednesday, the law enforcement dive team joined the effort to look for Brian Laundrie at the Carlton Reserve in Florida. The officers were reported to be from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office as they arrived at the swampy 25,000-acre reserve, where Petito's boyfriend told his parents he was going last week. Sarasota County Sheriff's office spokesperson Kaitlyn Perez said the team, made up of about 10 divers, were trained to investigate low visibility bodies of water. The divers were reported to "search for evidence of crimes and victims of drowning, water accidents, and foul play." Despite the deployment of the divers, the North Port Police said that Brian Laundrie was still not found. However, the department noted that they would be back on Thursday with the same operation. The ground search for Brian Laundrie has been halted for the evening. Nothing found. We will be back out Thursday, similar operation. North Port Police (@NorthPortPolice) September 22, 2021 Gabby Petito disappeared on a cross-country road trip with Brian Laundrie. The couple was traveling to Oregon when the You Tuber stopped communicating with her family in Wyoming in late August. Brian Laundrie was named a person of interest by North Port police after returning home on September 1 or 10 days before Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family. READ MORE: Search for Gabby Petito's Missing Fiance Brian Laundrie Expanded to Alabama After Cops Receive Tips of 'Seeing' Him There This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Joshua Summers WATCH: Witnesses Say They Saw Gabby Petito, Brian Laundrie Fighting Before Her Disappearance - From NBC New York Two Afghan refugees, who were brought to Wisconsin following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, are facing federal charges for allegedly trying to rape a minor and suffocate a woman. In a statement, the Department of Justice said Bahrullah Noori, 20, was charged with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor, with one count alleging use of force, the Daily Wire reported. The Justice Department noted that the victims have yet to reach the age of 16 and were at least four years younger than the suspect. Another Afghan refugee was charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her on September 7. He was identified as Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32. Two Afghan refugees have reportedly been charged while at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Fort McCoy is the site where the U.S. has been directing refugees from Afghanistan since the Taliban took over. The complaints against the two Afghan refugees were filed in U.S. District Court, CBS 58 News reported. They are currently being detained at the Dane County Jail. Officials said the two are scheduled for arraignment on September 23. A mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the charges alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other two charges await Noori if found guilty. On the other hand, Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Fort McCoy Police Department are in charge of the investigations. READ NEXT: Pres. Joe Biden's Administration Praises Taliban Days Before 9/11 Anniversary, Says Militant Group Is a "Professional" in Dealings Afghan Refugees Vetted American officials have said that Afghan refugees are being screened with authorities taking fingerprints, portraits, and biographical information and placing it into federal databases, The New York Times reported. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted that the Defense Department had provided biometric screening machines to 30 countries. However, unclassified briefing documents titled "2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission" revealed that there had been spotty information collected in some cases. There were incomplete data such as visa or citizenship status being unknown and lack of basic demographic data. On August 19 or four days after the Taliban seized Kabul, 226 people arrived at Dulles International Airport on two separate flights. However, 58 of these passengers had no information. Meanwhile, 13 flights also landed at Dulles on August 29 with 3,842 people, including six refugees who tested positive for the COVID and six unaccompanied boys. Mayorkas noted that 22 percent of the nearly 40,000 people, who arrived in the U.S. from Afghanistan, were U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The rest were Afghans, including those who were at risk of retaliation at the rule of the Taliban. On Monday, the State Department confirmed that a commercial flight carrying 21 Americans and 48 lawful permanent U.S. residents had departed Kabul over the weekend, CNBC reported. The State Department expressed their gratitude to Qatari authorities for coordinating the flights with the Taliban. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the Biden administration is still working to help American citizens, permanent residents, and Afghans to leave the country. Around 125,000 people were evacuated out of the country by August 31. That includes almost 6,000 U.S. citizens and their families. READ MORE: Sen. Mitch McConnell Says Pres. Joe Biden Won't Be Impeached Over Afghanistan, Says Hold Him Accountable at 'Ballot Box' This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: Afghan Refugees Charged in Wisconsin - From WISN 12 News Amid a legal battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard, award-winning actor Johnny Depp decried cancel culture on Wednesday, claiming he was a victim of the movement. Depp offered his thoughts on cancel culture before receiving an honorary award at a film festival held in San Sebastian, Spain, saying it had become "so out of hand." READ NEXT: Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard Defamation Lawsuit Continues as Judge Decides Not To Dismiss It Johnny Depp Worries for Society Over Cancel Culture Speaking to the Spanish press, Johnny Depp said that he saw himself as a victim of cancel culture, adding that he was concerned about the wider implications for society. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor described cancel culture as an "instant rush" to judge "based on what essentially amounts to polluted air." He also pointed out that "no one is safe" from cancel culture. "It's so far out of hand now that I can promise you, that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door," Depp said. He added that "it takes one sentence and there's no more ground, the carpet has been pulled." The actor went on to say that he was not the only one who experienced cancel culture, and it happened to a lot of men and women. Johnny Depp then urged the public to stand up if someone experienced something like he did, emphasizing that someone needs somebody to stick up for them. Depp's comments ahead of receiving the honorary Donostia Award at this year's San Sebastian Film Festival happened following a controversy that labeled him a wife-beater to his ex-wife Amber Heard. It can be recalled that Amber Heard filed for divorce to end his marriage with the actor in 2016. The actress accused Depp of verbal and physical abuse. In 2020, Johnny Depp lost a high-profile case at the High Court in London against a British newspaper that called him a "wife-beater." His loss in the lawsuit also led him to be crossed out as a cast from the "Fantastic Beast" franchise. Johnny Depp still has an ongoing legal battle with Amber Heard. A $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife was scheduled to go on trial in the U.S. next year. Johnny Depp Worried to Appear in the Film Festival Johnny Depp was bestowed with a Donostia Award at this year's San Sebastian Film Festival to recognize his "outstanding contributions to the film world." But before receiving the awards, the Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media released a statement saying the award bestowed to Depp sends a "terrible message to the public" amid the controversy surrounding the actor. Johnny Depp then later admitted that he was worried that his presence in the film festival would offend people, emphasizing that he did not want to offend anyone. But despite the controversy, the actor thanked those involved in the Spanish film festival, including its director Jose Luis Rebordinos and the mayor of San Sebastian, for the support and "not buying" some notion of him that does not exist. READ MORE: Amber Heard Welcomes Baby Girl Oonagh Paige via Surrogate After Ugly Johnny Depp Trial This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Joshua Summers WATCH: Johnny Depp Claims Cancel Culture Has Gotten 'Out Of Hand' - From Access The Biden administration is seeking a private contractor to run a migrant detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with a requirement that some of its personnel speak Spanish and Haitian Creole. The move came as the Biden administration struggled to process an influx of Haitian migrants at the southern border. In a public government contract solicitation issued on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it seeks to establish the migrant facility at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, with a capacity of holding up to 400 migrants. READ NEXT: 'Horrible': Kamala Harris Condemns Border Agents Using Horses and Whip-Like Cords to Disperse Haitian Migrants The DHS said the private contractor shall be responsible to maintain on site the necessary equipment to erect temporary housing facilities. NBC News reported that the winning service provider must provide tents, cots, and a staff of at least 50 who can meet the minimum requirements of an unarmed custody officer. DHS Says No Haitian Migrants Will be Sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba The documents did not state that the Biden administration plans to transfer Haitian migrants from the southern border to Guantanamo Bay. But a DHS spokesperson told Insider that the DHS would not send Haitian migrants being encountered at the southwest border to the "Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay." The DHS official explained that the MOC had been "used for decades to process migrants interdicted at sea for third-country resettlement." The spokesperson noted that the request for information (RFI) recently posted was "unrelated" to the influx of migrants at the southwest border, adding that it is "a typical, routine first step in a contract renewal." The DHS official added that the contract was initially awarded in 2002, with the current term ending on May 31, 2022. According to the new contract solicitation, which was first posted on September 17, the formal bidding is expected to take place later this fall. "The tentative target solicitation positing date is December 15, 2021," the contract said. The Biden administration is ramping up its efforts of deporting Haitian migrants back to their country. As of Tuesday, Mayorkas confirmed that the number of Haitian migrants under the Del Rio bridge fell to 10,000 as massive deportation efforts began on Sunday. It can be recalled that the peak number of Haitian migrants there was nearly 15,000. Guantanamo Bay in Cuba The Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is currently known to be the site of a prison for high-value terrorism detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks. In the early 1990s, the U.S. has sent up to 12,000 Haitian migrants, who were attempting to seek refuge in Florida, to migrant detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay. The move was made based on a policy ideated by then-Attorney General William Barr under the George H.W. Bush administration. READ MORE: Haitian Migrants Hijack Bus, Briefly Escape Deportation Route - Report This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Joshua Summers WATCH: Deported Haitian Migrants Arrive in Port-au-Prince - From Reuters Officials in Brazil have officially launched an investigation on JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s alleged role in reported bribery and money laundering scheme with Petrobras company in 2011. According to a Reuters report, Brazilian police have focused their attention on the purchases of some 300,000 barrels of Petrobras fuel oil by JPMorgan in 2011. The documents acquired by Reuters include email messages between co-conspirators, bank records, and witness testimony. The sources familiar with the matter said that authorities are working to identify if the alleged bribery continued in the following years. The court documents also included witness testimony from Rodrigo Berkowitz, a former Petrobras fuel trader. During his plea bargain agreement with Brazilian authorities, Berkowitz said two fuel cargoes were sold to a JPMorgan unit. U.S. and Brazilian authorities had accused the oil company traders of taking bribes from counterparties for years through 2018. Petrobras is Brazil's huge majority-state-owned oil company. READ NEXT: 'Lula' Corruption Charges Dismissed; Could Run Again in Brazil Petrobras Scandal The Petrobras scandal was revealed by a federal investigation in 2014 under the code name "Car Wash." More than 30 individuals were arrested in operations carried out nationally by federal police starting in the middle of November 2014. According to a Britannica profile of the issue, the accused were taken to a detention center in Curitiba. Those directly implicated were identified as the CEOs of the major construction companies OAS, Queiroz Galvao, and UTC, among others. Senior executives of the oil firm IESA were also implicated in the case. Around 110 people were accused of corruption and money laundering, among other financial crimes, in March 2015. Petrobras accounted for more than an eighth of all investments in Brazil while providing hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction firms, shipyards, and refineries. Petrobras had also formed business ties with international suppliers. Their business connections include Rolls-Royce and Samsung Heavy Industries, according to The Guardian. The oil company had also become the center of Brazil's politics during the 2003-2010 presidency of the Workers' Party leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula's political allies were also allegedly offered executive posts in the oil company. According to another Reuters report, Petrobras has said that it is the victim of corruption rather than its perpetrator. It added that the company helped authorities with dozens of criminal investigations and 21 administrative probes. Prosecutors earlier said that there were indications that Petrobras employees had arranged a system with corrupt traders so that sweetheart contracts would be granted on a rotating basis. Senator Delcidio do Amaral has claimed that it was Lula who had organized payoffs and urged him to get former Petrobras executive Nestor Cervero out of the country. Amaral, who was the Workers' Party leader in the upper house at the time, was taken into custody in November 2015. He agreed to co-operate with investigators and told them everything he knew about the illegal activities of his fellow politicians, including former president Dilma Rousseff. Amaral has accused Rousseff of conspiring to obstruct justice. But the senator has singled out Lula as the mastermind of the Petrobras corruption scheme. Meanwhile, Lula and Rousseff denied the allegation and said that Amaral was lying to save himself. In a phone call recorded by police, Jaques Wagner, Rousseff's former chief of staff, told Lula that they never imagined that Amaral was such a "scrotum." READ MORE: Brazilian Authorities Probes Lula da Silva's Link to Corruption Scandal; Is the Former President Running for 2018 Presidency? This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: JPMorgan's $264M Settlement For Bribery In China - From CNBC A teenager was arrested and charged with murder after he took his mom's handgun and shot her in the head while she was asleep in their home. Police said Shawn Tyler Willis, 17, was upset with his mother for punishing him by taking away his cellphone, according to a newly released juvenile court petition. Law and Crime reported that Willis was charged with first-degree murder for the death of his mother, Sandy K. Willis. Detective Don Scuglia of the Anderson County Sheriff's Department, who authored the juvenile court petition, said deputies responded to a call about an unresponsive female lying at the bedside in a home at Rocky Top, Tennessee in April 2020. Teen Kills Mom For Taking Away His Cellphone First-responders who arrived at the scene noted that Sandy had been killed while lying in her bed. The cause of her death seemed to be a fatal close-range gunshot wound at the left side of her head. Records said the teen was an Anderson County High School junior at the time, WBIR reported. Previously, Shawn Tyler Willis was detained at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. But right now, he is kept in the Anderson County Jail as an adult, with a $1 million bond, said County Sheriff's Department spokesman Tyler Mayes. The teen has reportedly called his girlfriend to say that his mother was in bed with blood on her. Willis' girlfriend's father arrived at home and checked Sandy, whom he found was already dead. Shawn Tyler Willis gave numerous stories that were conflicting as to what happened. However, he was interviewed by a detective in this case, where he admitted to shooting his mom in the head while she was asleep. The petition stated that Willis had taken the pistol downstairs to hide the sound of loading it and returned back upstairs to his mom's room. He then walked around the victim's bed, positioned himself beside the bed, and shot her at close range on the left side of her head. Sandy Willis reportedly suffered two gunshots to the head. READ NEXT: Los Angeles Mom, Daughter Charged With Murder After Performing Illegal Plastic Surgery That Resulted in Woman's Death Parricide Cases A 2014 Federal Bureau of Investigation data showed that 169 people were killed by family members younger than themselves, KWQC reported. However, the data does not distinguish the exact relationship. The data further noted that there were over 14,000 murders across the U.S., and parricide was only a small fraction. A 2008 study tried to find answers about parricide, and its authors said the number of parricides is very consistent with most of the murders caused by an argument. The authors also suggested that the numbers of juveniles killing their parents declined from the early 1980s despite more of these stories being reported by the media. Improved awareness of child abuse may have helped keep the number of juvenile murders steady by getting state services to these children, the study's authors said. A study from the University of Georgia further noted that children kill their parents due to several factors, including their own mental illness, own victimization, or seeing someone they loved be victimized. READ MORE: Colorado School Shooter Devon Erickson Sentenced to Spend Over a Thousand Years in Prison for 2019 Shooting This article is owned by Latin Post Written by: Mary Webber WATCH: What's Behind the Sharp Rise in Murders Across the U.S.? - From PBS NewsHour A retired Laois school principal who has given the past 40 years to promote heritage in Laois and in Ireland is set to retire from the national body that fosters and promotes the country's rich heritage. Michael Parsons has been chair of the Heritage Council for Ireland for the past five years. He joined the Heritage Council in 2012 after he retired as school principal and educationalist at Portlaoise Community College. I feel privileged to have been part of the Heritage Council for the past ten years. I enjoyed working with my fellow board members to promote our marvellous heritage. The board is very fortunate to have such a highly skilled and dedicated staff at our headquarters in Kilkenny, led by our dynamic chief executive, Virginia Teehan, and the support of the county heritage officers throughout the country. The strong support we receive from our Department and Ministers augers well for the future and I wish the Heritage Council continued success in its vital mission, said Mr Parsons. The Heritage Council has described his important work in saving and promoting Laois heritage. "A passionate supporter of heritage and public history, Michael Parsons has also enjoyed a 40-year involvement with Laois Heritage Society, where he has served as Chair, Vice-President and President. In that capacity he has been deeply involved in promoting local heritage through talks, walks, journals, school competitions, town heritage trails and the James Fintan Lalor School. "More recently, Mr Parsons has been part of the team responsible for the conservation of Fort Protector, the first plantation fort in the English-speaking world, located in the centre of Portlaoise town," the council said. Chief Executive of the Heritage Council, Virginia Teehan paid tribute to his work. His commitment to the heritage cause has been unwavering, and he has always been a sterling source of support as the Council has continued to expand its activities. We wish him the very best for the future, and no doubt his lifelong interest in our heritage and all it symbolises will continue. Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh OBrien, TD, and Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Malcolm Noonan, TD, visited the Heritage Councils historic offices in Kilkenny on Thursday September 23 to mark the retirement of Mr Parsons and the successes of the Council under his leadership. As principal of Portlaoise Community College, for more than 30 years, Mr Parsons worked at national and international levels, representing educational leaders. During his career, he served as executive member of NAPD (National Association of Principals & Deputies) 2000-06 and President of NAPD 2004-05 and was a founding member of NAPD, Arts Culture and Heritage Committee in 2000, which he chaired for several years. A passionate supporter of heritage and public history, he has enjoyed a 40-year involvement with Laois Heritage Society, where he has served as Chair, Vice-President, and President. In that capacity he has been deeply involved in promoting local heritage through talks, walks, journals, school competitions, town heritage trails and the James Fintan Lalor School. In recent weeks, the achievement of Colonel James Fitzmaurice, a Portlaoise native who was co-pilot on the first plane to cross the Atlantic from East to West in April 1928, was celebrated in Portlaoise. "In keeping with his commitment to local history, MR Parsons was central to the celebrations," said a statment. In recent months, the Heritage Council has increased its staff by 50%. Thanking Mr Parsons for his contribution to the Heritage Council, the Ministers also met with the Council team on their visit to Kilkenny. New recruits include a Cultural and Inclusive Heritage Officer, a Community and Public Engagement Officer, and Corporate Services Officer, as well as staff in the areas of communications and finance. In addition, new staff have also been recruited to help to coordinate two of the Councils key strategic programmes: The Museums Standards Programme of Ireland (MSPI) and Heritage in Schools Programme. The Council also saw its budget increase by 45% last year. The new staff, along with the budget increase, will enable the Council to realise its ambitious plans for a range of new initiatives and projects, as the country eases out of COVID-19 restrictions. The Heritage Council was established under the Heritage Act 1995 with responsibility to propose polices and priorities for the national heritage. It works in co-operation with a range of agencies, communities and individuals to promote education, enjoyment and understanding of our national heritage. For further information, visit: www.heritagecouncil.ie. Laois and Offaly ambualances are travelling outside the Midlands on emergency runs while patients living in the counties are depending on paramendics based as far away as Cavan to get to them to give urgent help. So claimed Laois Offaly Fianna Fail TD Barry Cowen in the Dail where he called for urgent action as serious concerns highlighted with Midlands ambulance service A statement said Dep Cowen raised serious concerns in the Dail about the effectiveness of the ambulance service in the Midlands region in recent times and called for urgent improvements. Reports from crews and patients around the country over the past year or so suggest serious delays with ambulances arriving to treat patients. These delays were once an occasional occurrence, but now seem to be making the news on a daily basis. In one week alone, in a small town in my constituency, there were three cases highlighted to me where very serious delays occurred. Paramedics, who are working incredibly hard, are also being dispatched to calls way outside of their own regions, irrespective of the levels of cover locally. In turn, many calls in the Midlands area recently have been answered by crews from Roscommon, Ballinasloe, Athy, Maynooth and even Cavan. This is because Midlands crews have been dispatched to other regions, he said. He said Covid-19 swabbing is wrongly taking precedence. I know some staff were released from frontline duty to carry out Covid swabbing. Returning these to frontline duty should be considered as an option to improve staffing," he said. Deputy Cowen concluded: I would implore the Minister to insist on improvements and to measure and review operations to ensure the service can effectively deal with the demands currently being placed on it. Heated words on the housing crisis were exchanged this afternoon during Leaders' Questions. The exchange occurred as a student protest on lack of accommodation and rising rent costs took place outside the Dail. Deputy Pearse Doherty told Tanaiste Leo Varadkar that he saw homes as investments and appealed to him to "listen to the people". Deputy Doherty spoke about the lack of student accommodation, the families affected by the MICA redress scandal, as well as a woman in her 50s who recently spoke to Liveline about living in a shed with no running water. You should be ashamed Pearse Doherty and Leo Varadkar clash on housing in the Dail pic.twitter.com/oMjcQqUd3C NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) September 23, 2021 He said, "You talk about Housing for All but you're not listening." The Tanaiste replied to say he's "very aware" of the housing crisis and that Deputy Doherty doesn't "have a monopoly on compassion or understanding". He continued: "You said earlier the people on these government benches should be ashamed, you should ask yourself if you should be ashamed too as your party voted to increase rents in Northern Ireland in a pandemic." Both the Tanaiste and Deputy Doherty continued their heated exchange with both stating the other should have "a little humility". The Leas Ceann Comhairle, Catherine Connolly, demanded they finish and said they were acting in an "ungentlemanly fashion". Humanitarian aid agency GOAL is appealing to people all over Co Leitrim to show their true colours by getting on their kit for GOAL Jersey Day, which takes place on Friday, October 8, in partnership with Folens. To sign up to GOAL Jersey Day, please visit: jerseyday.org School students, employees and members of organisations across the country are being encouraged to don their favourite County, Club, Country or Provincial team jersey to raise vital funds to help GOALs lifesaving work with vulnerable communities all over the world. With COVID-19 still resulting in thousands of people working from home, GOAL Jersey Day is the perfect excuse for workmates to get connected with colleagues by putting on their favourite jersey - and their Zoom camera at the same time! Those without jerseys can change their zoom backgrounds to their favourite team colours. Children in classrooms are encouraged to lift spirits and swap their school uniform for their favourite jerseys on 8 October. Funds raised from GOAL Jersey Day will go towards the agency's life changing work in emergency response, health, nutrition, and livelihoods in 14 countries. Last year alone GOAL reached more than 14.3 million people with support in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. This year, your support is needed more than ever. Ireland importation of 3,600 tonnes of peat from Latvia at the weekend, has been described as "utterly unacceptable". IFA president Tim Cullinan said the Governments inaction on the availability of peat for the horticultural industry is "an unbelievable scenario". "Following an IFA protest in July, we secured a commitment that a short-term solution was imminent in order to avoid the importation of peat from Eastern Europe and the Baltics," he said. However, he said on Saturday, a load that filled 200 trucks was imported from Latvia to supplement this so called stockpile of peat. "IFA had highlighted that this stockpile of peat would not be of use for the mushroom industry as fresh excavate is required. If no action is taken, its expected that imported peat for the mushroom sector will be required in the next six weeks. In effect, we will be importing product that is 80% water, which is utterly ludicrous," the IFA president said. Its an unbelievable scenario given that horticultural peat is readily available and can be harvested in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner in this country, he said. The difficulty in sourcing peat is the final nail in the coffin for many horticultural operators. Its very contradictory to talk of expanding our horticultural sector while many growers are currently forced into exiting due to rising input costs, labour shortages, peat availability and diminishing margins, he said. According to the IFA, the consultation group convened by Minister Malcolm Noonan earlier this year has met on 11 occasions. Every possible alternative has been discussed at length. As it stands, no viable alternative is available for the industry. A NEW research centre at University of Limerick is using personalised digital medicine to transform cancer care and improve outcomes for patients. The Limerick Digital Cancer Research Centre (LDCRC) is a collaboration between UL and the UL Hospitals Group that has an entirely different approach to cancer treatment at its heart. It brings together the Universitys excellence in technology, software, engineering, maths and health, University Hospital Limericks clinical oncology expertise and patient advocates, and combines it with the industry knowledge of several multinationals, including Dell Technologies and Becton Dickenson. The Centre, which was officially launched this Thursday, will use and develop technologies that are revolutionising health care and have vast potential to improve our ability to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. UL launches the Limerick Digital Cancer Research Centre #ldcrc congratulations to the team led by Scientific Director Prof Paul Murray. Leading in delivering digital personalised #cancer medicine to patients https://t.co/r2wHOlVK7b #limerickcancerresearch pic.twitter.com/FdANFUz6gx September 23, 2021 Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris has welcomed the launch of the new research centre. "Its goals are ambitious to get a better understanding of cancer at the cellular and molecular level and drive the development of the next generation of digital diagnostics to improve patient outcomes. We need to be ambitious. New, innovative diagnostics like the ones that will be developed here, will make it possible to deliver better outcomes and improve the quality of life for patients," he said. UL President Professor Kerstin Mey added: The Limerick Digital Cancer Centre will build on ULs strength and apply state of the art approaches to cancer research with the goal of improving the lives of cancer sufferers and their relatives not only within the Limerick region, but also across the rest of Ireland and beyond." Prof Mey says UL is well placed to respond, with world-leading expertise in cancer biology, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and digital technologies. "We are uniquely position to deliver a truly multi-disciplinary cancer centre, which can deliver better outcomes for patients and transform cancer care, she said. Colette Cowan, CEO of UL Hospitals has also welcomed the launch of the new research centre: "Currently, it is estimated that one in two Irish adults will receive a cancer diagnosis in their own lifetimes and our growing and rapidly ageing population represents a huge challenge for our cancer services and for society as a whole. It is heartening for us all who live and who work in the Mid-West to see the scale of ambition set out today for the Limerick Digital Cancer Research Centre and the calibre of the people involved," she said. University Hospital Limerick is one of the eight designated cancer centres under the HSEs National Cancer Control Programme. The Mid-Western Cancer Centre has seen a considerable increase in activity in recent years; with attendances at the Haematology Oncology Day Ward having risen by 54% between 2010 and 2019; and a corresponding increase in outpatient attendances over the same period in the order of 45%. Digital cancer research spans the creation of innovative mobile medical apps, software that assists clinical decisions doctors make every day, to the application of statistics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to large scale mining of genomics and molecular data. These technologies hope to provide earlier and more accurate cancer diagnosis and discover new drugs that cure disease and provide patients a better quality of life. The Centre features a newly created Limerick Living Lab, an initiative established in partnership with the HSEs Digital Transformation Unit, Dell Technologies and Akoya Biosciences. Paul Murray, Professor of Molecular Pathology at UL, heads the Living Lab which uses high powered microscopy and state of the art artificial intelligence to digitally profile biopsies taken from a patients cancerous tissues. The technology can learn to predict how an individual will respond to a specific type of drug, explained Professor Murray, who is Scientific Director of the Limerick Digital Cancer Research Centre. This will in future allow clinicians to tailor patient treatment which will improve patient outcome and spare them from potentially life threatening side effects of the toxic cancer drugs, while at the same time, saving the Health Service the unnecessary expense associated with the use of ineffective therapies, he added. The University of Limerick and the Centres commitment to find new ways to reimagine how to diagnose and treat cancer is evidenced by a recent appointment of a new Chair of Cancer Genomics that will spearhead this research in Limerick. Professor Aedin Culhane, a Limerick native with over 20 years experience in cancer bioinformatics in Ireland, the UK and the USA has joined the Centre and the University as Professor of Cancer Genomics at the UL School of Medicine. Professor Culhane is a leader in cancer bioinformatics having spent over 15 years in Harvard University and at one of the top US cancer hospitals, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her team develops methods to perform analysis of fine resolution molecular profiles of individual cells in tumours. Single cell profiling of cancer tissue biopsies provide vast amounts of data, requiring complex math and advanced statistics but these higher definition digital tumour maps give a greater opportunity to interrogate a patients cancer. Cancer is a complex disease, and these tools allow us to perform detailed dissection of the molecules in cancer cells, so we can understand how our healthy cells, immune cells and cancer cells are interacting and tailor cancer treatments. This is an incredibly exciting time in cancer research, we are making new insights every day, especially in immune oncology, said Professor Culhane. Professor Paul Burke, Chief Academic Officer for UL Hospitals Group and Vice-Dean Health Sciences at University of Limerick, said collaboration between academic and clinical institutions was vital to create better healthcare. The Centre has already received significant investment and has ambition to create a world-class critical mass of multidisciplinary research scientists, all with the same ambition - to improve patient outcomes from cancer, Professor Burke explained. In the coming years, we hope that the Centre will be housed in purpose-built accommodation, with state of the art facilities on both UL and UHL sites. Combining this expertise across clinical and academic fields will be of major benefit to the people of the Mid-West region and beyond, he added. Prof Ruth Clifford, Consultant Haematologist at University Hospital Limerick, said: To improve the care of our patients we need to improve cancer diagnostics and cancer treatments. There are rapidly evolving means of diagnosing patients, prognosticating for patients and treating patients. We want to be at the forefront of these developments in Limerick. The LDCRC affords us this opportunity." Prof Clifford added: "By working closely to develop the Digital Patient, linking clinical staff and scientists working in the area of cancer research across Limerick, we aim to be a leading centre with international impact. The launch of the LDCRC also coincides with the establishment of the new Cancer Services Directorate within UL Hospitals Group, which will see a renewed emphasis on cancer research, recruiting more staff interested in research and a commitment to improved access to clinical trials. THE University of Limerick has confirmed it is to continue funding additional garda patrols in the Castletroy area following a meeting with residents and other stakeholders. The meeting was arranged in the wake of some chaotic scenes in private housing estates following the return of students after the summer. UL acknowledges that the behaviour of a small minority of the student body who live in the off-campus estates in private rented accommodation has been entirely unacceptable in recent weeks, said a spokesperson who added that appeals have been made to those living in off-campus rented accommodation to be responsible. The University takes any behaviour that disrupts the campus and local community very seriously and will address matters in accordance with existing procedures outlined in the UL Student Code of Conduct, said the spokesperson. UL has come under pressure to take action following a number of incidents some of which were highlighted on social media. Gardai have also attended a number of incidents and proceedings have been initiated under the Public Order Act and the Road Traffic Act. UL says it has worked extensively with local residents, gardai and the local authority over the summer to ensure the return to campus of students is co-ordinated in as safe a manner as possible. While UL cannot be a responder to off-campus incidents, which are the jurisdiction of An Garda Siochana and other relevant agencies, any student who has been officially reported, investigated and found to have broken the UL Code of Conduct will face sanction, stated a spokesperson. As we continue to encourage our students living in off-campus accommodation to be good neighbours, University of Limerick is also implementing a number of measures, together with the ongoing work with the local community, to help combat issues with anti-social behaviour in our community, added Professor Mairead Moriarty, ULs new Vice President Global and Community Engagement. The UL Advocate process has been expanded and there are now three advocates dealing with official complaints. To this end, we have been engaging with stakeholders over the summer and presently we are working with the gardai to fund additional policing presence in the form of patrols for the next month, added Prof Moriarty. UL senior management has also approved the rollout of a community liaison framework that would engage with the community and student body living in off- campus accommodation and directly address reported incidents of anti-social behaviour. UL Student Life is also recruiting participants for the Meitheal Na MacLeinn initiative which will see student patrols, starting this weekend, to encourage good neighbourly behaviour and support student safety. THE LIMERICK coroner has warned of the dangers of drug use after he delivered three verdicts of death by misadventure in one day of inquests. The three men died within a couple weeks of each other last winter. At the end of the final inquest, a parent said sadly: The curse of drugs. John McNamara, Limerick coroner, told the parent they see it all the time. They think they are bullet proof that the drugs wont affect them. Cocaine and Xanax together are lethal. You might as well play Russian roulette as put them together, said Mr McNamara. Cocaine is considered an upper while Xanax is a downer. Separately, this Tuesday gardai launched their #Riseabovetheinfluence drug awareness campaign to encourage students to seek out positive influences and avoid the harmful consequences of drugs misuse. Detective Superintendent Se McCormack, of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau. said: Freshers Week should be a time for celebration, the beginning of something good in your life. Dont let drug use end your career before it starts. If you use drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, ketamine and MDMA, you are committing a criminal offence and also risking addiction, loss of career opportunities, under-achievement, and international travel restrictions. Taking other substances like cannabis edibles: jellies, sweets, drinks, vapes, or synthetic cannabinoids or nitrous oxide balloons also carries health and prosecution risks. In the first drug overdose inquest, held last week, the gardai gave evidence of attending the scene at an address in County Limerick where the man was discovered in a room unresponsive. The pathologist, Dr Gabor Laskai, said the post mortem showed a heart condition and multiple drugs present in the males system. He was aged in his 40s. They were in the therapeutic range but many drugs help each other and mostly affect the central nervous system, said Dr Laskai. He said it resulted in cardiac failure and it is highly likely he died in his sleep. The coroner said the deceased had consumed a quantity of drugs which put his heart under pressure. Mr McNamara recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. In the second inquest regarding a drug overdose, the garda who attended the scene in County Limerick said the man, aged in 30s, was found lying in bed. Dr Laskai said not an extremely high concentration of heroin was found but Xanax was in a very toxic bracket and there was a very high level of codeine. The cause of death was drug overdose, said Dr Laskai. Mr McNamara said the young man would have gone into a coma-like state. Heroin addiction is a terrible scourge. He didnt intend to die. Unfortunately he took many types of drugs. It is quite clear he didnt intend it, said Mr McNamara, who recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. The family thanked the gardai and paramedics. In the third drug-related inquest, the garda who attended the scene in County Limerick said the man in his 20s was found on a couch. The post mortem found cocaine, heroin, Xanax, cannabis in his system and he died from a sudden cardiac arrest due to the combined toxic effects of drugs. Mr McNamara said he didnt believe the deceased intended to die and recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. One of the young mans parents said: The scourge of drugs. In all the inquests held at Kilmallock Court last week, Mr McNamara expressed his sincere condolence to family and friends on their loved ones tragic death. Inspector Pat Brennan, on behalf of the gardai in Limerick, also expressed his sympathies to the bereaved families. A LIMERICK-based orchestra has launched a free online teaching resource for children. Sing Out With Strings Online is a unique music education website filled with accessible resources including multi-angled performance demonstrations by the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) musicians. This user-friendly site offers downloadable sheet music enabling participants to engage fully with content as well as Meet the Musician section where users can learn more about specific musicians and their instruments. ICO CEO Gerard Keenan said: The Irish Chamber Orchestra has provided quality music education in Limerick City schools for 13 years, providing more than 300 children weekly with free music education through its Sing Out With Strings and Irish Chamber Orchestra Youth Orchestra initiatives." The new site also houses music to accommodate all levels in one place, to be accessed free-of-charge. It provides teachers and pupils with resources to integrate music into their daily lives and caters for those with a basic level of musical skill right up to confident progressor level. Mr. Keenan added: The ICO is committed to developing and deepening engagement with young people through its inclusive and innovative educational and community projects. Our new Sing Out With Strings Online website takes us another step forward, expanding on the important work we are currently undertaking in Limerick and bringing our expertise to a wider audience both nationally and internationally. Visit Sing Out With Strings Online at sows.ie/. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today, met chip giant Qualcomms chief executive office (CEO) Cristiano Amon in the United States (US) today. According to an announcement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the PM discussed investment opportunities in Indias telecom and electronics sectors, and the governments recently announced production linked incentive schemes for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM). Further, the two also discussed developments in Indias semiconductor supply chain and strategies to build the local innovation ecosystem" in the country. The Indian government has been working on schemes to attract semiconductor companies to the country. In May, Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had said that the government had received expressions of interests (EoIs) from several semiconductor firms and will come out with a scheme for semiconductors in the next six months. In June, Rajeev Khushu, chairman of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), said that the government has received over 20 EoIs from semiconductor firms who want to set up shops in India. Last month, N Chandrashekharan, chairman of the Tata Group, confirmed that the company is looking to enter the semiconductor space. At the Tata group, we have already pivoted into a number of new businesses like electronics manufacturing, 5G network equipment as well as semiconductors, in all probability," Chandrashekharan said, while speaking at the annual general meeting of the IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Vedanta Group has also been said to be interested in forming strategic partnerships that will allow the company to enter the semiconductor industry. Khushu said that India should focus on specialty fabs, which play a key role in power, health and other important sectors. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Indian finance ministry officials plan to pitch for a sovereign rating upgrade from Moodys Investors Service when it meets with the firm, scheduled for Sept. 28, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Finance officials plan to provide details on how India will meet its budget targets for the current fiscal year, which runs through March, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details arent public. Moody's Investor Services downgraded India's sovereign rating to the lowest investment grade on June 1, 2020. The rating agency downgraded India's ratings to 'BAA3' from 'BAA2' and also maintained the outlook from 'stable' to 'negative'. It cited policy challenges in addressing a prolonged economic slowdown and its deteriorating fiscal position. S&P Global Ratings in May said it sees no change in Indias sovereign rating for the next two years. The rating agency, along with its peers, has been criticised by government agencies who accuse them of holding biases towards emerging market economies like India, and deliberately assign lower credit ratings despite a superior record. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he would highlight economic opportunities in India during his meetings with CEOs in Washington. On Thursday, the prime minister is scheduled to hold one-o-one meetings with top five American CEOs. Two of them are Indian Americans -- Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Vivek Lall from General Atomics. The three others being Cristiano E Amon from Qualcomm, Mark Widmar from First Solar, and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. Landed in Washington DC. Over the next two days, will be meeting President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Prime Ministers Scott Morrison from Australia and Yoshihide Suga from Japan," he tweeted. Will attend the Quad meeting and would also interact with leading CEOs to highlight economic opportunities in India," he said. The prime minister's meeting with American CEOs from five different key areas is reflective of the priorities of his government. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. The Pentagons top officer met with his Russian counterpart in the Finnish capital Wednesday amid American and allied efforts to find ways to fight terrorism after the departure of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan last month. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley met here with Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, officials said. U.S. military officials declined to provide any details of the meeting, except to issue a brief statement saying the two discussed risk reduction and operational de-confliction." The U.S. and Russia have in the past discussed how to avoid conflict in Syria, where both countries maintain troops, and in the Black Sea, where both militaries conduct naval patrols. The two sides have also discussed Moscows incursion into Crimea and its massing of forces along Ukraines eastern and southern borders. But Gen. Milley, on a tour through Europe this week, has been focused on terrorism and countering violent extremism in the region. He met NATO chiefs of defense in Athens before meeting with a smaller group of his counterparts in Berlin on Monday. On Tuesday, he was in London meeting with the military chiefs of the so-called Five Eyes nations, including Canada, Australia, the U.K. and New Zealand. The meeting with Gen. Gerasimov comes weeks after the tumultuous end to the U.S.s 20-year presence in Afghanistan, with the Taliban quickly assuming power once again and the U.S. limited in its ability to keep a lid on terrorism emanating from inside the country. President Biden has said the U.S. will remain vigilant to ensure that militant groups like al Qaeda or the Afghanistan branch of Islamic State dont reconstitute to the point that they can threaten Americans at home or abroad. Mr. Biden, along with top military officials like Gen. Milley, have said the U.S. can monitor the situation on the ground and conduct airstrikes as needed to keep militant groups at bay. But that so-called over the horizon" capability means drones or manned aircraft must fly hundreds of miles from bases in the Gulf region, depriving the U.S. military of adequate coverage of landlocked Afghanistan. When Mr. Biden announced his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in April, U.S. officials said they hoped to establish a presence nearby in Central Asia, possibly in Uzbekistan, to help conduct counterterrorism operations from there. So far, however, the Russian government has been unwilling to support the American endeavor. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Mr. Bidens entreaties for such a base at a summit in Geneva in June. On Wednesday, the U.K. is expected to call for China and Russia to agree to an international plan to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for militants, according to a statement from British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The Helsinki meeting between Gens. Milley and Gerasimov was the second time the two met in person, having previously met in December 2019 in Switzerland. The two have had several conversations since Gen. Milley took office in September 2019. This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. London: There aren't many places left for the COVID-19 virus to mutate and evade immunity as it will only get weaker with time, said the creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the most widely distributed jab in the world. The virus cannot completely mutate because its spike protein has to interact with the ACE2 receptor on the surface of the human cell, in order to get inside it," Dame Sarah Gilbert, the lead scientist from Oxford University, and the brain behind the vaccine manufactured in India as Covishield, said during a webinar titled: Vaccines, variants, and infection: The position this winter for the Royal Society of Medicine on Wednesday. If it changes its spike protein so much that it cant interact with that receptor, then its not going to be able to get inside the cell. So, there arent many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still remain infectious," she explained. Comparing the SARS-CoV-2 with other flu viruses and the vaccine modifications made for them annually, she said: What tends to happen over time is theres just a slow drift, thats what happens with flu viruses. You see small changes accumulating over a period of time and then we have the opportunity to react to that." The expert said that such viruses, by their very nature tend to become less virulent over time, but there is no set timeframe for how long that would take. We normally see that viruses become less virulent as they circulate more easily and there is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of SARS-CoV-2," she noted. Gilbert said the virus that causes Covid-19 will eventually become like the coronaviruses which circulate widely and cause the common cold. We tend to see a slow genetic drift of the virus and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses. We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we dont really ever think about very much and eventually SARS-CoV-2 will become one of them. The question is how long its going to take to get there and what measures were going to have to take to manage it in the meantime," she said. The webinar also covered the topic of COVID-19 variants, with Professor Sharon Peacock, the executive director of the COVID-19 UK Genomics Consortium, flagging the Delta variant as top of the list". It has been pretty quiet since Delta emerged and it would be nice to think there wont be any new variants of concern. If I was pushed to predict, I think there will be new variants emerging over time and I think there is still quite a lot of road to travel down with this virus," she said. Both experts underscored the importance of vaccinations to stay on top of further COVID-19 vaccine-resistant mutations. This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. "The Golden Ring" was the overall winner of the 2021 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. An otherworldly photograph of a solar eclipse took top prize in this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. The highly sought-after award is given by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in England. The winning photographer, Shuchang Dong of China, captured the shot during an annular solar eclipse from the Ali region of Tibet on June 21, 2020. Titled, "The Golden Ring," the photograph looks like just that - a circle of light against a dark, moody sky. "You feel as if you could reach into the sky and place this onto your finger," judge Steve Marsh said in a statement . Related: See photos of all the astrophotography winners This is the 13th year of the astronomy photography competition. Winners receive a cash prize, and their photographs are exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Dong's "The Golden Ring" also took first place in the competition's "Our Sun" category. Other recognized photos in the category show the details of the sun's surface and outer atmosphere. Related: See all winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 13 contest The winners of the competition hail from around the globe. Taking home top prize in the "Our Moon" category was Nicolas Lefaudeux of France, who captured an image of a crescent Venus rising over Earth's moon . Third officer Dmitrii Rybalka won first place in the "Aurorae" category for a glorious green shot of the Northern Lights that he snapped from the bridge of a ship near Russia's Kara Strait. Deepal Ratnayaka of the United Kingdom won the "People and Space" category for a dreamy shot of a child set against star trails during a COVID-19 lockdown. "Lockdown" won the "People and Space" category in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 13 competition. (Image credit: Deepal Ratnayaka / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 13) Winners took in their astronomical views from vastly different vantage points. For "The Milky Ring," a 360-degree view of the Milky Way that won the "Galaxies" category, Chinese photographer Zhong Wu stitched together images taken in Sichuan and Qinghai, China, and Lake Pukaki, New Zealand. The "Skyscapes" winner shows moonrise over Death Valley National Park, an image that required U.S. photographer Jeffrey Lovelace to hike over sand dunes after sunset. Some shots required photographers to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment: The "Planets, Comets and Asteroids" winner was taken by U.S. photographer Frank Kuszaj, who was trying to shoot distant galaxies when a Quadrantid meteor fireball blew past his lens. Others took days and days of image capture to create the final shot. The winner of the "Stars and Nebulae" category, American Terry Hancock, spent seven days photographing the California Nebula to put together his brightly colored winning image. The "Youth" award was taken home by 15-year-old photographer of China, who photographed the planets of the solar system over the course of a year and stitched them into one "family photo." Two other special awards were also given: The Manju Mehrotra Family Trust Prize for Best Newcomer, which went to beginner astrophotographer Paul Eckhardt from the United States for his photograph of the Falcon 9 rocket blasting by the moon, and the The Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation, which is given for the best imagery made with publicly available data. That prize was split between two winners: Leonardo Di Maggio of the United Kingdom, for his mosaic of images of Saturn from the Cassini mission; and Sergio Diaz Ruiz of Spain, for a colorful view of Jupiter's clouds made from Hubble telescope imagery. This year's awards ceremony was virtual and took place on Sept. 16. A video of the ceremony is available online . Originally published on Live Science Click here to read the full article. Australia has been so successful in attracting overseas films and international streaming series that the country has deprived it of available sound stages. Russell Crowe who recently made the case for the establishment of new film studios at Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales coast, is not the only one planning to add new capacity. Developers at Ballina, further up the coast, make a similar case and are advancing with plans to develop the Byron Studios where part of recent Netflix series Gods Favorite Idiot was filmed. Ballina, which is closer to Queensland, Brisbane and the Village Roadshow Studios at Gold Coast than it is to New South Wales state capital Sydney, was originally developed by Will Gammons Cumulus VFX company and has two small stages. The new project is headed by former Network Ten and CBS executive, Paul Anderson who is in advanced discussions with the town council to take over a disused quarry site and build two larger stages. Productions are clamoring for space in Australia, now that the Fox Studios in Sydney have effectively become the Marvel Studios for the next five years, Anderson told Variety. Disneys acquisition of 21st Century Fox has cemented the Sydney site as home of a slate of productions that included the recent Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, while the Village Roadshow complex is closely associated with Warner Bros. titles including Aquaman and the Baz Luhrmann-directed Elvis project. Anderson explains that Byron Studios and the Tuckombil Quarry extension are intended to facilitate smaller international shoots and local productions in a fashion similar to the boutique studios in Adelaide and Perth. There are lots of commercials and TV series that shoot in the Northern Rivers district due to its natural beauty, but Anderson says that fulfilling the infrastructure gap has the potential to transform the area into a significant hub, with economic and employment multiplier effects that cities crave. We have an MOU with the council and there are plans to have the zoning changed within the next 12 months. While that is happening, we will be finalizing the business plans, raising some money from local and state governments, and getting ready to take it out to private sector backers. We are talking about two stages at first, not big boxes, and to anchor these with workshops. We have cliffs, a backlot and 60 acres of lakes, said Anderson. We envisage a museum, theaters and a creative precinct. Plans seen by Variety call for a 700 square metre stage and a 1,500 square metre stage to come on stream by June 2022. If these are successful, two more 1,500 square metre and one 2,500 square metre stages would be added. Australia has long been an attractive destination for international film and TV productions, thanks to the countrys vast and diverse landscape, an impressive talent pool in front of and behind the camera, and its English-language skills. High costs have been ameliorated by generous incentives (often known as offsets or production rebates) at federal and state level, and by a currency that was weak against the U.S. dollar for much of the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic gave the Australian facilities sector a further boost from mid-2020 to mid-2021 as the country initially coped well with the disease, and as the government moved quickly to help restart the screen production industry. Those advantages have been dulled in the past three months as the delta variant has exposed the countrys slow vaccine rollout and lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne, the screen production industrys main hubs, have become prolonged. The single biggest risk when building a new studio is lack of demand, Anderson said, who does not see that drying up soon, despite the high-profile recent exit of a couple of series. Im still talking regularly to the U.S. studios. Australia remains well-positioned, Anderson believes. Streaming has changed the world in the past 12 months, he says. Netflix has contracted to produce many hours of drama each year in the country. And, with or without local content regulations expected to be introduced by 2022, the launches of HBO Max, Disney Plus and Paramount Plus may all translate as more production in Australia and more demand for facilities. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Peter Mullan (Westworld, Top of the Lake) and Charles Dance (Mank, The Crown) have joined the cast of The Hanging Sun, based on Jo Nesbs bestselling novel Midnight Sun. Frederick Schmidt (Angel Has Fallen) and Raphael Vicas (Grantchester) are also boarding the production. The Sky Original film is a U.K.-Italian co-production from Sky, ITV Studios Cattleya and Groenlandia. It will be broadcast on Sky in Italy, the U.K., Ireland, Germany and Austria. The adaptation is written by Stefano Bises (ZeroZeroZero, Gomorrah) and directed by Emmy-nominated Francesco Carrozzini (Franca: Chaos and Creation). I am in the middle of filming and I could have not hoped for better. The cast is incredible, Carrozzini told Variety. The Hanging Sun is a noir thriller set in a part of Norway where religion dominates, the sun never sets, and local residents seem to be from a different era. The film follows John a man on the run because he has betrayed his powerful crime-lord father, Dad. To escape from his family, John heads north and takes refuge deep in the forest near an isolated village. The only thing standing between John and his destiny are Lea, a woman facing hardship with a great deal of strength, and her son Caleb, a curious, pure-hearted boy. Mullan plays Dad, while Dance is playing Jacob, Leas father. Other cast members include Alessandro Borghi (On My Skin: The Last Seven Days of Stefano Cucchi) as John, Jessica Brown Findlay (Brave New World) as Lea, and Sam Spruell (Small Axe: Mangrove) in the role of twins Aaron and Nicolas. Carrozzini was introduced to Nesbs critically acclaimed book several years ago. I had just presented my documentary Franca: Chaos and Creation in Venice and I started working with an agent, Steve Rabneau, who became a great friend, says Carrozzini. He introduced me to his wife Sylvie who represents Jo Nesb and she gave me Midnight Sun along with other books. I read it and understood right away I wanted to make it into a film because of the incredible setting and characters. The Hanging Sun is currently filming in Norway, in the towns of Alesund and Fosnavag. There is an enormous interest in adapting Nesbs work, a well-established catalogue of Nordic Noir thats been translated into over 50 languages the storytelling resonates across cultures, Meghan Beaton, newly appointed film commissioner for Norway, told Variety. There are two Nesb projects in production or pre-production in Norway alone: The Hanging Sun and The Devils Star. Norway has such a unique and atmospheric landscape, unparalleled light conditions, and in Nesbs work the dramatic scenery plays an important role. Working Title own the rights to all the Harry Hole books, so were looking forward to seeing how they are adapted further. Working Titles The Devils Star was recently offered NOK 31.4 million ($3.6 million) in reimbursement through the Norwegian production incentive program. Other Nesb projects in the works include London, with Ben Stiller, for Lionsgate; HBO series The Son, with Jake Gyllenhaal and director Denis Villenvue attached; and Amazon has just purchased the rights to The Jealousy Man story collection. The Hanging Sun will release in cinemas and then premiere on Sky and streaming service Now TV. NBCUniversal Global Distribution is handling international sales on behalf of Sky Studios. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. LONDON (AP) The names Craig, Commander Craig. Britains Royal Navy said Thursday that James Bond star Daniel Craig has been made an honorary commander in the service the same rank held by the fictional secret agent. In Ian Flemings spy thrillers, which spawned the film franchise, Bond is a World War II naval veteran working for Britains secret service with a license to kill. Craig was made an honorary naval officer ahead of the release of No Time to Die, his fifth and likely final appearance as 007. Since the series began in the 1960s, the Bond thrillers have brought welcome though unofficial and fanciful publicity to Britains military and intelligence services. Britains armed forces allowed bases and personnel to be used in making No Time to Die. First Sea Lord Adm. Tony Radakin, head of the Royal Navy, said Craig is well known for being Commander Bond for the last 15 years a Naval officer who keeps Britain safe through missions across the globe. Thats what the real Royal Navy does every day, using technology and skill the same way as Bond himself, he said. Honorary naval officers act as ambassadors for the service. After 18 months of pandemic delays, No Time to Die opens Sept. 30 in Britain and Oct. 8 in the United States. Click here to read the full article. Derry Girls, the popular Channel 4 comedy set in 1990s Northern Ireland, is ending after its upcoming Season 3, creator Lisa McGee announced on Twitter on Thursday. Season 3, which is heading into production, will mark the end of the show, but a trio of seasons was always the plan, McGee said. It was always the plan to say goodbye after three series. Derry Girls is a coming of age story; following five ridiculous teenagers as they slowlyvery slowlystart to become adults, while around them the place they call home starts to change too and Northern Ireland enters a new, more hopeful phase which was a small, magical window of time, McGee wrote. Derry Girls is a love letter to the place I come from and the people who shaped me. It has been an honour to write it and I will be forever proud of everything its achieved. Id like to thank the people of Derry and Northern Ireland for getting behind us. Thanks also to the team behind the series, the incredible Hat Trick Productions and a special thanks to Channel 4 the channel I grew up watching; the channel that made me want to write comedy and the only channel that could have made our show. Derry Girls stars Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, Nicola Coughlan, Jamie-Lee ODonnell and Dylan Llewellyn as teens navigating their youth during the turbulent political era of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, while they also attend an all-girls Catholic school. The cast also includes Tara Lynne ONeill, Kathy Kiera Clarke, Siobhan McSweeney, Tommy Tiernan, Ian McElhinney and more. Who knows if Erin, Clare, Orla, Michelle and James will return in some other guise someday, but for now this is it for us and were excited to start filming this series with our incredible cast and crew to hopefully take our loyal fans on one last adventure, wrote McGee. Season 3 of Derry Girls was already ordered by Channel 4, but has been delayed by the pandemic. Season 2 premiered back in March 2019. The show has gained international popularity after being released on Netflix, and it has been nominated twice for best scripted comedy at the BAFTA TV Awards. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. What happens when a chief law enforcement officer acts like hes above the law? Embattled Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva is refusing to comply with a subpoena from the countys Civilian Oversight Commission to answer for alleged abuses of power, claiming hes too busy to appear at a hearing this week. In a letter to the commission, obtained by Rolling Stone and embedded below, Villanueva offers no legal justification for flouting the commission, insisting only that hes booked for the entire day. The COC is seeking to question Villanueva about allegations that LASD has undertaken politically motivated criminal investigations of the sheriffs critics in local government. The COC is also examining the scandal of alleged violent deputy gangs within LASD, which, according to an official report issued last week, have been actively recruiting on Villanuevas watch. The executive director of the COC, attorney Brian K. Williams, blasts the countys top law enforcement officer for not following the rule of law. He seems to think that it is optional. Thats not our view, Williams tells Rolling Stone. The law gives us the authority to subpoena the sheriff, and were going to have to take steps to make him comply. The subpoena, served August 26th, demands the sheriff appear before the oversight body at a meeting this Thursday, September 23rd. Williams insists that Villanuevas stated reason, that his schedule is full, is not a valid excuse. Reached for comment, LASD Captain John Satterfield says Villanueva has a legal justification for his refusal to comply with the subpoena, but would not share it. Under advice of counsel, he said, we are unable to comment further at this time. At a press conference Wednesday, Villanueva blasted the Civilian Oversight Commission as a kangaroo court, asserting the COC is conducting a proxy war on behalf of the Board of Supervisors. Their goal is not to seek information or to clarify, he said. They have only one mission, which is to discredit me. Theyre using the subpoena as a tool to do exactly that, he told reporters. And youre buying it hook, line and sinker! Elected in 2018 to lead the nations largest sheriffs department, Villanueva took office with promises to rebuild and reform LASD around ethical standards of conduct. But Villanuevas tenure has been marred, instead, by scandal and open defiance of government officials tasked with holding the department accountable. In October 2020, the Civilian Oversight Commission issued an extraordinary call for the sheriffs resignation, writing in a resolution that Villanueva enables a culture of deputy impunity, disregards the constitutional rights of Los Angeles County residents, disdains other elected officials and disrespects the will of voters who support robust civilian oversight. LASD deputy gangs have been accused of misconduct ranging from violent initiation rituals involving beating up inmates in county custody to harassment against fellow deputies, including withholding backup for non-member deputies in harms way. A defiant Villanueva not only remains in office today, but has allegedly misused his authority in an effort to silence critics. In May, COC commissioner Sean Kennedy, a director at Loyola Law School, called for an investigation into whether Villanueva has been abusing his power by launching highly publicized criminal investigations into his public detractors, citing nearly half-a-dozen cases. The number and similarity of the announcements, Kennedy writes, suggest a pattern of targeting oversight officials for investigation. The lack of criminal charges stemming from these probes, Kennedy adds, suggests that the motive is to chill oversight of the Department, not to pursue a prosecution. Kennedys legal analysis even suggests that Villanuevas conduct approaches the legal threshold for extortion. In a heated letter responding to the COC dated July 16th, LASD undersheriff Timothy Murkami called the wild accusations of the Kennedy memorandum completely irresponsible, blasting extortion claims as nothing short of outrageous slander. Captain Satterfield defended his boss to Rolling Stone as the most transparent sheriff in the history of the office adding that misconduct claims against Villanueva are either politically driven or rooted in ignorance. A prominent incident cited in Kennedys memorandum involves Villanuevas decision to reinstate a disgraced former deputy with a Grim Reapers tattoo who had been fired by the previous administration for violating policies regarding domestic violence and dishonesty. (The Grim Reapers are an alleged deputy gang within LASD.) Los Angeles County Inspector General Max Huntsman investigated the case and was preparing to release a report critical of the reinstatement, when Villanueva reportedly warned the IG there would be consequences if he proceeded. Undeterred, the IG released the report in July 2019. The next month, LASD trumpeted a criminal investigation into Huntsman, alleging hed improperly accessed confidential files during the investigation and could face charges of conspiracy, theft of government property, unauthorized computer access, theft of confidential files, unlawful dissemination of confidential files, civil rights violations, and burglary. The LASD announcement generated headlines, but has not led to any charges. And Villanuevas move to reinstate the disgraced former deputy has since been overruled by a judge. The subpoena by the Civilian Oversight Commission is not the first that Villanueva has fought. In March, IG Huntsman subpoenaed Villanueva to answer questions about LASDs gang scandal. Villanueva refused, arguing the subpoena was too broad and a form of harassment. In July, a judge dismissed the sheriffs motion to quash the subpoena, although legal wrangling between the Sheriff and the IG continues. Vincent Miller is a lawyer for a group of LASD deputies whove sued the department, claiming abuse and harassment by the Banditos, an alleged LASD gang operating out of the East Los Angeles station. The Sheriff needs to be asked why he is unwilling to discuss the Banditos under oath, Miller says. What is he afraid of? Villanuevas letter announcing he will not abide by the COCs subpoena, dated September 9th, mounts no substantive argument as to why the Sheriff should not comply with the legal order to appear. It says only that Villanueva has previous commitments he is choosing to honor instead of the subpoena. I am simply not available to attend the COC meeting, Villanueva writes. I will be out of the office on two separate speaking engagements, a meeting, and a Town Hall event. The sheriffs office refused to reveal the details of Villanuevas calendar, claiming secrecy is essential for the Sheriffs safety: Im sure you realize the sensitive and confidential nature of sharing the schedule of an elected official who routinely receives credible threats of violence, Satterfiled says. Villanuevas one publicly announced event that day is a community conversation to be held at the City of Walnuts Senior Center. At its Thursday meeting, the COC will address the sheriffs absence by voting on a motion for the County Counsel of Los Angeles to immediately consider all legal remedies to bring the sheriff in front of the COC. That includes initiating an Order to Show Cause, which would force Villanueva to convince a judge why he should not be held in contempt. Williams, the COC director, insists the oversight commission wont stop until it gets answers from Villanueva. We think there are actions by the sheriff and the sheriffs department that are extrajudicial, that are not constitutional, he says, and we want to question him about those actions. Click here to read the full article. Taking place inside a cool, concrete extension of the San Telmo Museum, a dedicated Basque cultural hub, the challenges facing LGBTQI+ cinema in Latin America was the subject an industry panel at San Sebastian International Film Festival. Participants included Patra Spanou of the eponymous German sales outfit, which handled sales for the homoerotic feature El Principe; festival programmer and producer Hebe Tabachnik, producer of Valentina; Clarisa Navas, director and scriptwriter of Berlin hit One in a Thousand, a lesbian love story set on the working class outskirts of Argentinas Corrientes; and Gabriela Sandoval, a multi-hyphenate producer and distributor at Chiles Storyboard Media, head of Sanfic Industria and executive director of the Amor LGBT + Film Festival. Moderator Rolando Salazar of Festival Outfest Peru led the discussion. Spanou spoke about the nuances of reaching distributors. We deal with arthouse films, and our first concern is with the film and arthouse sector and then its with the LGBT story so that you can attract specific distributors, she says. There are smaller categories that might take films for video or because they are sexy or because they are supporting these communities. Tabachnik has been programming festivals for 20 years in the U.S. and Latin America. She executive produced the Brazilian trans film Valentina, by Cassio Pereira dos Santos in 2020. It took seven years to make it but it couldnt be made today because these films are censored by funds, she says. We can see progress but also that we have gone back, especially in Brazil which is a conservative society making financing difficult. Cassio Pereira dos Santoss film had its world premiere at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival during the pandemic. In the case of Valentina, we were able to sell it to platforms in multiple territories. But talking to friends, producers, its like we want gay cowboys that meet in the mountains. Thats what we want to see, she adds. Sandoval spoke about the role of festivals in creating much needed LGBTQI+ spaces. In film festivals, we create spaces for the audience. 10 years ago, it was a different situation. Today filmmakers are more aware about relating to the audience and its diversity, she said. She added: Sometimes we feel that we have not moved forward. We tackle hatred with festivals raising awareness about subjects that make society uncomfortable. But weve seen many societies go back during the pandemic, practicing violence. That said, opportunities to distribute films in the LGBTQI+ space have increased as has the the quality of filmmaking. Says Tabachnik: New channels have encouraged the distribution of this content. Knowing that people that make LGBT content now have a space is helping expand the sector. One positive factor is that storytelling is becoming more varied, notes Sandoval: Lesbian cinema was not very well represented but now we are beginning to see good content and themes. Tabachnik added: The work required is a collective effort that has to do with generating audiences, creating spaces for alternative creators. Help for circulation of this kind of content. You have to get audiences accustomed to things. She went on: People get accustomed to seeing certain things. In 10 years we are going to have stories you cant even imagine. I think it will be far more fluid. Young people today are far more open. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Uruguayan filmmaker Manuel Nietos social thriller The Employer and the Employee, starring Nahuel Perez Biscayart (Persian Lessons and BPM (Beats Per Minute), comes to the San Sebastian Film Festival to close the Horizontes Latinos sidebar on Thursday, Sept. 23. Its a journey that began at Cannes Directors Fortnight where it world premiered after winning development prizes at Toulouses Latin Film Festival, Mar del Platas LoboLab and San Sebastians WIP Latam. Picked up by Latido Films in the run-up to Cannes in July, The Employer and the Employee is Nietos third feature after his debut The Dog Pound, followed by The Militant. If theres a thru line to find among his films, Nieto sees several: The leads are masculine, the father figure is always present, they deal with youth in different stages and weights of responsibility and invariably touch on the concepts of legacy, identity, he told Variety while sitting at a sunny terrace in the Hotel Maria Cristina. The Employer and the Employee follows the parallel lives of two young men, both young fathers but from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Rodrigo, played by Perez Biscayart, has been given the responsibility by his father to run the familys soy plantation. Anxious to find a qualified driver for the estates combine harvesters and tractors, he hires Carlos, played by non-pro Cristian Borges, despite his obvious lack of experience. Despite their disparate backgrounds, they are mirror images of each other, both struggling with their young families and attempts to please their respective fathers. A tragedy strains the uneasy alliance they have formed. Set in rural Uruguay, which Nieto continues to be fascinated with, the film also centers on the 100-plus year old tradition of weekend horse races in the countryside where both the rich and poor compete. The horse symbolizes freedom and the rupture of their relationship, explained Nieto. While always working from his own scripts, Nieto confessed that his greatest dream would be to adapt a novel by Philip K. Dick. He has a sci fi film in development titled Los Ladrones de Ganado (Cow Thieves), which he described as a mystical, naturalist sci-fi film set in rural Uruguay. It took six years from concept to post to make The Employer and the Employee so he knows it will take some time to get made. Meanwhile, hes working on a documentary about his family, Que Piensan Mis Hijos, centered on his three boys, ages 5, 7 and 10, which he started filming this year. It will be observational and discreetly filmed, and explore how they think, how they see life, their parents, he said. The Employer and the Employee was lead produced by Nietos Roken Films, along with Argentine companies Pasto and Murillo Cine, Brazils Vulcana, and Sancho & Punta and Frances Paraiso Production. Nieto, Barbara Francisco, Georgina Baisch, Cecilia Salim, Paola Wink, Michael Wahrmann, Julia Alves and Nathalie Trafford serve as producers. Commenting on the multi-country backing of the film, Francisco said: To produce a film in Latin America, it is almost a necessity to create a multilateral structure. In the case of Argentina or Brazil, the way to produce auteur cinema is by maintaining very small structures that favor specific companies per film that also lead to internal co-production agreements. In the case of The Employer and the Employee, there is also the thematic issue of the film; the gaucho world of the Pampas, the social and geographical theme is common in the Uruguay-Argentina-Brazil triangle. So, in this case, a co-production like this also delves into regional cultural and social issues, she added. John Hopewell contributed to this article. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. About $27 million in assets seized from the Vice President of Equatorial Guinea including an array of Michael Jackson memorabilia will help pay for Covid-19 vaccines and other medical supplies in the African nation. The money comes from a civil forfeiture settlement with the Equatorial Guinea VP, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who was accused of purchasing items in the United States with money obtained through corruption (Mangue who is also the son of Equatorial Guineas longtime president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has disputed the claims.) While the forfeiture agreement between the U.S. and Mangue was struck in 2014, a DOJ deal with the United Nations for the purchase and distribution of medical supplies wasnt announced until Monday, September 20th. Civil forfeiture is a procedure that allows law enforcement to seize assets from people they believe are responsible for crimes. The seized items then become defendants in legal proceedings, which is why the case involving Mangue came to be dubbed, in part, United States v. One Michael Jackson Signed Thriller Jacket. The DOJ has alleged that, back in 2011, when Mangue was serving as the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, he made a salary of under $100,000 but used his position and influence to amass over $300 million in assets through corruption and money laundering. The 2014 settlement agreement required Mangue to sell a mansion in Malibu, California, a Ferrari and various items of Jackson memorabilia. Its unclear, however, which pieces of Jackson memorabilia seized from Mangue were sold as part of the settlement. A 2014 report from CNN noted that Mangue would get to keep most of his collection, including the jewel-encrusted glove the pop star wore on his Bad tour. Per court documents detailing the 2014 settlement, the U.S. government said it would take responsibility for selling what were described as Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch Life Size Statues. Click here to read the full article. Noemie Merlant, the rising French star of Celine Sciammas Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Jacques Audiards Paris, 13th District (pictured), is reteaming with Pierre Guyard at Nord-Ouest Films to develop her sophomore feature, Les Femmes au balcon. Merlant made her feature debut with Mi Iubita, Mon Amour which world premiered in the special screenings section at this years Cannes and is playing at San Sebastian Film Festival. Set over the course of three days, Les Femmes au balcon is a high-concept film following three women in Marseille, Southern France, during a heat wave. Across the street, their mysterious neighbor is the object of all their fantasies. But suddenly, they find themselves trapped in a terrifying and crazy situation with one goal in mind. To set themselves free. Guyard, who produced Mi Iubita Mon Amour, said he was looking forward to continue working with Merlant whom he described as a promising director with a singular voice. Shes captivating as an actor and as a director; shes extremely intelligent and knows precisely what she wants, said Guyard, who pointed out the film will boast genre elements and a feminist twist. In Mi Iubita Mon Amour, the actor-turned-director stars as young woman who is traveling to Romania to celebrate her bachelorette party with her friends when she meets Nino, who is 17. Although they are worlds away from one another, they engage in a passionate and timeless summer. The movie has already been sold by Films Boutique in a flurry of deals including to Scandinavia (Triart), Spain (Barton), Switzerland (Agora) and Portugal (Leopardo). Merlants acting career took off in a big way following Portrait of a Lady on Fire which won a prize at Cannes and was nominated for a Golden Globe, among other awards. Shes currently shooting Todd Fields Tar opposite Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Wednesday, late night went in on climate change, joining forces for a Climate Night. On the Daily Show With Trevor Noah, the host caught up with climate activist Greta Thunberg three years after her first appearance on the show to see if theres been progress in, well, saving the world. Turns out, emissions have not gotten much better. Emissions are still rising and 2021 is currently projected to see the second-highest emission rise ever recorded. As you know, weve been through a pandemic and theres lots of talk about the green recovery and building back better and so on, but only about 2% of government spendings have been spent on clean energy. It just shows that we are not really taking this seriously, it seems like, or at least the world leaders are not taking it seriously. She added that everyone could be doing a better job treating a crisis like a crisis as we climate activists have been saying for many many years. Thunberg said that with the pandemic looming, people seem to be grasping that more, but the environment is still not getting the serious attention it should. Jimmy Kimmel invited climate scientists that he previously had on the show five years ago to reiterate taking action. Theres still time to unfuck some stuff, said one, leading into a montage of experts calling on us to unfuck the world. It seems that we get hit with fallout from the climate crisis every day here in California. Wildfires, floods, landslides which are all amazing things to hear Stevie Nicks sing about, not something you want to experience in life, Kimmel said. And if death and destruction, famine, pestilence, water shortages on a global scale isnt enough, think about this: Scientists say climate change can severely impact the world supply of beer. This is a huge planet-wide emergency. If we dont act now and dont act big, then there will hardly be a planet left for Jeff Bezos to flee from in his liquid hydrogen-fueled dildo rocket, he added. Meanwhile, Samantha Bee talked poop. Tonight Im partnering with other late-night hosts to bring you stories about climate change because climate change is making the planet slowly uninhabitable. But theres another big climate change issue that doesnt get as much attentionyou might say its the Number Two issue, she said. I really dont want to do this segment. My official stance on all bathroom talk is Feminists Dont Poop.' She went on to discuss how the water sanitation infrastructure is falling apart and how racism is tied to the issue. As with virtually every other problem in this country, racism plays an unfortunate role in our sanitary system dysfunction, She said. Water horror stories like these can be found in many predominantly black communities, as opposed to predominantly white communities where the worst water horror story is when the waiter says, Were out of sparkling.' COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) Andy Douglas, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice who was part of the courts liberal gang of four coalition that forced changes in the states school-funding system, died early Thursday. He was 89. Douglas had been in declining health for a number of years but remained mentally acute to the end, said Columbus-based law partner Paul Lafayette, who confirmed his death. He was still mentally super sharp, still giving advice to attorneys and just doing what he's always done as recently as this week," he said. Just, unfortunately, he had some physical issues that caught up with him. Douglas, a moderate Republican, served three six-year terms on the state Supreme Court following his election in 1984. He stepped down in 2003 after reaching the mandatory retirement age for Ohio judges of 70. During the 1990s, Douglas, along with Democrats Alice Robie Resnick and Francis Sweeney and fellow Republican Paul Pfeifer forged a majority that riled businesses for its rulings on insurance, medical malpractice, workers compensation and right-to-sue cases. Dubbed the Gang of Four, the group in a series of decisions also declared Ohios system of funding public schools unconstitutional. Known as the DeRolph decisions for Nathan DeRolph, the southern Ohio schoolboy in whose name the lawsuits were brought, the rulings led Ohio to pump billions more into schools. But the court never fully resolved the issue, relinquishing jurisdiction in a final, 2009 ruling that returned the matter to the General Assembly. In 1991, in one of the courts lowest moments, Douglas and then-Justice Craig Wright got into a scuffle over whether Wright accused Douglas of leaking information to the media. Douglas broke two ribs when he fell to the floor. The two mended fences; Wright died in 2010. In 1987, the court decided that Dayton Power & Light had violated the civil rights of a Black employee, the only person fired after a group of employees all of whom besides Prather were white engaged in horseplay that damaged company property. Douglas called it his most meaningful case. Douglas, who was known for his support of open records law, also wrote the 1995 opinion that ordered the Columbus police department to hand over internal records sought by civil rights lawyers and a Black officers group. After leaving the court Douglas returned to private law practice in Columbus. He also served as executive director of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association from 2004 to 2009. Douglas kept up a rigorous law schedule well into his 80s. In 2014, at age 81, he represented Toledo in a statewide challenge to red-light cameras. He also represented veterans groups suing over a ban against charitable raffles games that the attorney general had called illegal gambling. Im happiest when Im working, he told The Associated Press in a February 2014 interview at age 81. Im afraid to retire. Andrew Grant Douglas was born July 5, 1932, in Toledo to Andrew and Elizabeth Douglas. He attended the University of Toledo, where he earned his law degree in 1959. From 1954 to 1956, he served in the U.S. Army Infantry and Signal Corps and obtained the rank of first lieutenant. ___ Reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report. NEW YORK (AP) Former President George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser next month for top Donald Trump critic Liz Cheney, turning her reelection race into a proxy war of sorts between the ex-presidents who represent two competing factions of the Republican Party. Bush will be the featured guest at an Oct. 18 event in Dallas supporting the Wyoming congresswoman's campaign, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to discuss the fundraiser by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Cheney, a daughter of Bush's two-term vice president, Dick Cheney, was the most prominent House Republican to vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. She has since emerged as one of his most vocal antagonists, and Trump has vowed to exact his revenge. Bush's involvement puts the two former Republican presidents directly at odds and underscores the deep tension that remains within the party between Trumpism and the GOP's establishment wing. Earlier this month, Trump announced his support for Cheney challenger Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming attorney looking to unseat the three-term congresswoman. Bush spokesperson Freddy Ford said in a statement that the former president has historically helped a few key candidates and friends each cycle, so this one shouldnt come as any surprise." "President Bush is impressed by Liz Cheneys strength and vision, and hes proud to support her, he added. Trump on Wednesday evening fired back in a statement that cast Bush as a Republican in name only," despite his lengthy leadership of the party, and labeled Cheney warmongering" and so bad for Wyoming." Cheneys campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday on the significance of the fundraiser. Bush aides did not comment on any possible plans to campaign on the congresswoman's behalf. While Bush has generally kept a low profile since leaving office in 2009, he delivered a pointed speech earlier this month on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in which he warned of the country's growing internal division and a violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home, he said as he delivered the keynote address at the national memorial to the victims of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them. The warning came eight months after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters attempting to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. It marked some of Bushs sharpest criticism of that attack and appeared to be an implicit criticism of Trumps brand of politics. Trump, a longtime critic of Bush who ran on opposing the country's wars in the Middle East, responded to the speech by slamming Bush for suggesting terrorists on the right are a bigger problem than those from foreign countries that hate America, and that are pouring into our Country right now. He shouldnt be lecturing us about anything, Trump said in a statement. The World Trade Center came down during his watch. Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldnt be lecturing anybody! Cheney was ousted from her leadership position as the No. 3 House Republican for taking on Trump but has nonetheless posted huge fundraising numbers, with two consecutive record quarters, according to financial reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. That includes bringing in $1.88 million from April through June and $1.54 million in the first three months of 2021, reports show. Trump has endorsed several other Republicans challenging GOP incumbents who voted to impeach him. That includes Kelly Tshibaka, who is running against Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska; Michigan state Rep. Steve Carra, who is trying to unseat longtime Rep. Fred Upton; and Joe Kent, who is challenging Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington. Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio announced last week he will be retiring instead of running for reelection next year against a Trump-backed opponent. A former Louisiana State Police trooper has been charged with a civil rights violation for pummeling a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight the first criminal case to emerge from federal investigations into troopers' beatings of at least three Black men. A grand jury on Thursday indicted Jacob Brown for the 2019 beating following a traffic stop that left Aaron Larry Bowman with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head. Brown was charged with one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, federal prosecutors said. Brown's indictment comes as the federal prosecutors on the case are scrutinizing other troopers who punched, stunned and dragged another Black motorist, Ronald Greene, before he died in their custody on a rural roadside. The probe of Greene's 2019 death has grown to examine whether police brass obstructed justice to protect the troopers who beat the Black motorist after a high-speed chase. Body camera video of both beatings, which took place less than three weeks and 20 miles (32 kilometers) apart, remained under wraps before the AP obtained and published them this year. They are among a dozen cases over the past decade in which an AP investigation found troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. The department has previously acknowledged that it has open and ongoing criminal investigations into incidents involving the Louisiana State Police that resulted in death or bodily injury to arrestees," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. "Those investigations remain ongoing. Browns attorney, Scott Wolleson, declined to comment. Capt. Nick Manale, a state police spokesman, said Brown engaged in excessive and unjustifiable actions and failed to report the use of force to his supervisors. Any instance of unjustifiable use of force jeopardizes public safety and is a danger to our communities, Manale said in an email. These actions are inexcusable and have no place in professional public safety services. Bowmans attorney, Donecia Banks-Miley, called the indictment a sigh of relief. Were just trying to remain hopeful and trust the process of justice, she told The Associated Press. Aaron is extremely happy and he just wants full justice. On the May night Bowman was pulled over for a traffic violation, Brown came upon the scene after deputies had forcibly removed Bowman from his vehicle and taken him to the ground. The trooper later told investigators he was in the area and was trying to get involved. Video and police records show he beat Bowman 18 times with a flashlight in 24 seconds after deputies pulled him over for a traffic violation near his Monroe home. Brown later said Bowman had struck a deputy and the blows were pain compliance intended to get Bowman into handcuffs. Bowman, 46, denied hitting anyone and is not seen on the video being violent with officers. He still faces a list of charges, including battery of a police officer, resisting an officer and the traffic violation for which he was initially stopped, improper lane usage. Brown, 31, failed to report his use of force and mislabeled his body-camera footage in what investigators described in internal records as an intentional attempt to hide the video. State police didnt investigate the attack until 536 days later, and only did so after a lawsuit from Bowman. Jacob Brown was perhaps the Louisiana State Police's most prolifically violent trooper in recent years. Records show he tallied 23 uses of force dating to 2015 19 on Black people and he faces state charges in Bowman's case and two other violent arrests of Black motorists. If convicted of the federal charge alone, Brown faces up to a decade in prison. Brown is the son of Bob Brown, a longtime trooper who oversaw statewide criminal investigations and, before retiring, was the agencys chief of staff. Bob Brown did not immediately respond to a call and text message seeking comment. The elder Brown was present at a meeting in Monroe where state police commanders pressured their detectives to hold off on arresting one of the troopers who beat Greene, according to notes written by the lead investigator, detective Albert Paxton. The meeting is among the events being scrutinized as part of federal prosecutors probe of potential obstruction of justice. The Louisiana State Police's own tally shows that in recent years 67% of its uses of force were against Black people. That figure has fueled mounting calls from civil rights groups and Black leaders for the U.S. Justice Department to go beyond individual prosecutions and launch a pattern and practice probe into potential racial profiling by the agency. Col. Lamar Davis, the head of the state police, said earlier this month that he would welcome such a probe if the department deems it necessary but that he wants the opportunity to correct the department's issues and is already working to do so. After it was announced that the federal government would start an investigation over the Texas Education Agencys approach to mask mandates, the Texas State Teachers Association responded and Driscoll Childrens Hospital launched a PSA regarding pediatric vaccinations. The investigation over the ban will revolve around how the ban may affect disabled students. In a statement, TSTA President Ovidia Molina said the organization was in support of the investigation as a ban on mask mandates poses risks for students with disabilities, adding they are particularly vulnerable to contracting COVID-19. All of our students, school employees and their communities are at risk. Barely a month into the new school year, the number of COVID cases reported in Texas schools has almost exceeded the number for all of last year, she said. Once again, we call on the governor to drop his ban on mask mandates in schools so that individual school districts can require masks to protect all their students, employees and local communities while the pandemic remains dangerous. Regardless of the ban, both LISD and UISD went ahead with a mask mandate to mitigate the risk of infections among students, staff, faculty and families. Laredo Health Authority Dr. Victor Trevino said previously that 1,175 pediatric cases were reported locally in July and 1,067 in August. Throughout the entire country before schools returned to campuses, 8,400 pediatric cases were reported in June. In contrast to the early part of the pandemic in 2020, the majority of active cases in Laredo since schools returned have been from individuals below the age of 30. Of the 452 active cases, 146 are younger than 17 and 99 are between 18-30. Trevino has been a persistent advocate for mask wearing in schools as he believes campuses are a hot zone for potential infection with students and staff potentially finding themselves in crowded areas. In these situations, a mask could help mitigate infections throughout the grade levels. As previously reported, Laredo relies on transferring severe pediatric COVID-19 cases to external hospitals as the city does not have a pediatric ICU. Until the vaccine for younger children is approved by the FDA, their main lines of defense against the delta variant are masks and for their surrounding loved ones to get vaccinated. Health experts strongly recommend masks as an important means of protection in our schools, Molina said. Educators and parents want to keep students safe. But the governor cares less about the health and safety of children than he does about his political base. That is not leadership. That is pandering. It is time for the governor to get out of the way and let local school officials follow the guidance of health experts. To help quell the spread of COVID, medical health professionals from Driscoll Children's Hospital issued a PSA to families to encourage people to get vaccinated. The majority of COVID-19 patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, Dr. Karl Maher, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Medical Director said. As the childrens hospital is a transfer point for counties and cities unable to care for pediatric cases, the medical professionals outlined that the vaccine is safe and can help prevent severe symptoms and the spread to nearby family members. cocampo@lmtonline.com The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks! Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics. The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc. The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics. The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates. Access to college recruiters and advisors its harder to line up higher education. Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family. Vote View Results The theme of this years National culture night was Come Together Again clearly referencing the recent scaling back of Covid-19 public health restrictions and the desire of a nation to re-connect and celebrate. And celebrate they did. Over 1,000 people attended events for Culture Night in multiple locations across county Longford. Culture Night in County Longford was funded by the Arts Council in partnership with Longford County Council Arts Office and coordinated by Republic of Culture Ltd. Culture Night / Oiche Chultuir is described as a national moment, celebrating all that makes up the richness and diversity of Culture in Ireland today, connecting people to cultural activities locally and nationally. The movement also aims to open up pathways to ongoing engagement and while Connolly Barracks may have seen its first African Carnival there on Friday night it would seem that it will certainly not be the last. Some 400 people bobbed and swayed to the African groove, with Longford town born and bred artists like ND+ thrilling the crowd with their home-grown numbers. Ama Millieir was another hit performer before Genesis The Lion came on stage to perform two songs, before introducing his father, the headline act: Daddy Showkey who arrived on wheels, complements of Longford Vintage Club. In his first ever Irish performance, the veteran Nigerian star had the crowd singing and dancing from the word go and promised that this first African Carnival would be the start of a bigger and better African Irish festival for Longford. The culture didnt stop there. Hundreds of other music lovers were treated to Longfords musical talent in the classical genre at a special Culture Night concert staged in the hauntingly beautiful surrounds of St Mels Cathedral. Emer Barry, Maria Matthews, Fintan Farrelly, Paul Hennessy, Eimear Reynolds and The Mulligan Sisters delivered a breath-taking programme of classics and contemporaries to great acclaim and indeed to delighted audience members who shared their appreciation widely online. Elsewhere in the south of the county, a pleasant evening was had and Sound Harvest in Jolly Boys Restaurant in Ballymahon, while the Maria Edgeworth Centre proved to be the attraction of the night in Edgeworthstown with live music performance to entertain those viewing the exhibits. While Coffee House 45 also hosted The Pen and Ink in Longford town with Longford Writers Group, an art installation was also unveiled at Granard Library. In Between Breakdowns is the work of Mullinalaghta based artist Tommie Cunningham. Punters there were treated to a live session by Strad and the John Dungan CCE Branch. Longford County Council would like to thank everyone who supported the Culture Night events in any way, whether it was hosting activities or attending them. (Sharecast News) - Caledonia Mining Corporation has entered into an agreement to purchase the mining claims over the Maligreen project in the Gweru mining district of the Zimbabwe Midlands, it announced on Thursday, from privately-owned local company Pan African Mining. The AIM-traded firm said the acquisition carried a total cash consideration of $4m, with the property estimated to contain an NI 43-101-compliant inferred mineral resource of around 940,000 ounces of gold. It described Maligreen as a "substantial" brownfield exploration opportunity with "significant" historical exploration and evaluation work having been conducted on the property over the last 30 years. That work included an estimated 60,000 meters of diamond core and percussion drilling, 3.5 tonnes of bulk metallurgical test work, and aeromagnetic and ground geophysical surveys. As at 31 August, Maligreen was estimated to host an inferred mineral resource of about 940,000 ounces of gold in 15.6 million tonnes, at a grade of 1.88 grams per tonne. Caledonia said 76% of the inferred mineral resource, or 712,000 ounces, was shallower than 220 metres, indicating the potential for an open pit mining operation. The inferred mineral resource was estimated using a cut-off grade of 0.4 grams per tonne for a potential open pit, and 1.5 grams per tonne for a potential underground mine. Initial assessments of the inferred resource indicated a favourable grade tonnage curve, with the company explaining that by applying a higher cut-off grade of one gram per tonne, the total estimated resource reduced by 12% to around 827,000 ounces at a grade of 2.79 grams per tonne, or a 48% higher grade. Those favourable grade tonnage dynamics offered a high level of flexibility in the evaluation of a future mining operation, the board claimed. The total land area of Maligreen totalled around 550 hectares, comprising two historic open pit mining operations which produced about 20,000 ounces of gold mined from oxides between 2000 and 2002, after which the operation was closed. Caledonia said it was expecting to drill an initial 4,800 meters at an estimated cost of $1.6m over 18 to 24 months to improve its understanding of the existing resource, and assess the potential for a mining operation. Further exploration opportunities existed within the claims area, and a subsequent exploration programme was under consideration to explore for continuations of the existing inferred mineral resource at depth to the north-west and the strike extension in the northern part of the property. "We are delighted to enter into this agreement to purchase the claims over Maligreen, one of the more significant exploration opportunities in Zimbabwe," said chief executive officer Steve Curtis. "The property has significant potential and has benefitted from many years of exploration activity. "Initial evaluation of the inferred mineral resource by our own team and by independent consultants indicates the potential for a significant mining operation with a NI 43-101 compliant inferred mineral resource of almost one million ounces at a grade of 1.88g/t, an acceptable open pit grade." Moreover, Curtis said the company's understanding of the grade tonnage curve indicated that the deposit was likely to offer a "high level of mining flexibility", although much more work was needed in that area. "We believe the property also offers significant upside exploration potential at the north-west extensions to the existing inferred mineral resource and at additional exploration targets in the northern part of the property. "This transaction is an important next step as Caledonia pursues its strategy to become a multi-asset gold producer in Zimbabwe, one of the last gold frontiers in Africa." At 1202 BST, shares in Caledonia Mining Corporation were up 0.56% at 905p. Lloyds Banking Group PLC - Edinburgh-based lender - Stuart Sinclair and Nick Prettejohn plan to step down as non-executive directors. Sinclair will retire at the 2022 annual general meeting. Prettejohn will step down as Lloyds non-executive director and as chair of Scottish Widows Group on Thursday next week, having served on the board for seven years. He is moving to become chair of TSB Bank PLC. Edinburgh-based TSB is owned by Spanish banking group Banco de Sabadell SA, which bought the business from Lloyds in 2015. Sophie O'Connor, a non-executive director of Scottish Widows will become interim chair of the subsidiary. Current stock price: 44.82 pence, up 1.9% on Thursday Year-to-date change: up 23% By Tom Waite; thomaslwaite@alliancenews.com Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Panther Metals PLC - Isle of Man-based company focused on mineral exploration in Canada and Australia - Completes capital raise for 5.3 million shares at 12 pence each, raises GBP630.0 million to fund its projects on Hemlo-Schreiber and Obonga greenstone belts in Ontario, Canada. Placing conducted by SI Capital Ltd. "This raise provides us with the capital required to proceed exactly as planned during this autumn," says Chief Executive Darren Hazelwood. "As we advance the business, the exploration processes required to make a discovery are now fully underway." Each placing share holds a one-for-one warrant with exercise price of 18 pence and a 24 month life. Company notes: "Warrants are subject to an accelerator, shortening the exercise period, if the volume weighted overage price of the company's shares exceeds 30p for five consecutive trading days." Placing price of 12 pence represents 7.7% discount to the middle market price at market close on Tuesday, equal with last UK Panther fundraise in April. Earlier this month, Australian subsidiary raises AUD300,000 to fund listing on Australian Securities Exchange. Current stock price: 13.44 pence at London close on Wednesday Year-to-date change: down 10% By Josie O'Brien; josieobrien@alliancenews.com Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. (Alliance News) - Marley Group Ltd on Thursday confirmed its plans to list on London's Main Market, after saying earlier this month it was considering an initial public offering. The Burton Upon Trent-based pitched roofing business did not disclose the number of shares to be issued, offer price or expected market capitalisation, but said it hopes to raise gross proceeds around GBP75 million. The offer will consist of existing shares and new shares to support the company's growth plans and to repay outstanding third-party debt. "It is expected that an over-allotment option of 15% of the total offer size will be made available by certain existing shareholders," it added. The IPO is likely to take place in October. The company is targeting a free float of at least 25% of its issued share capital immediately following admission, making it eligible for inclusion in the FTSE UK indices post-admission. It has chosen Jefferies International Ltd and Peel Hunt LLP as joint sponsors, joint global co-ordinators and joint bookrunners and Panmure Gordon Ltd as joint bookrunner. "We are delighted by the significant interest shown by potential investors in Marley, which provides us with the confidence to progress with our proposed IPO," said Chief Executive David Speakman. By Josie O'Brien; josieobrien@alliancenews.com Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. (Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Thursday and not separately reported by Alliance News: Kromek Group PLC - Sedgefield, England-based detection technology supplier - Receives D3S-ID 'dirty bomb' detector contract worth USD1.6 million from US federal entity. Says its D3S-ID wearable nuclear radiation detector is designed to enable first responders, armed forces, border security and other experts to detect radiological threats. The contract will be delivered over two years commencing immediately, the company adds. "With global defence and security spend on the rise around the world in response to volatile international relations, we expect to receive further orders for our nuclear security products, contributing to our significant anticipated revenue growth for this year and our pipeline for the years ahead," says Chief Executive Arnab Basu. Mkango Resources Ltd - Vancouver-based explorer for rare earth elements - Begins geotechnical drilling and pitting program at its Songwe Hill Rare Earths Project in Malawi. Says geotechnical engineering firms Geoconsult Ltd and Zutari Ltd are on site to obtain samples from around 150 five-metre-deep pits and and 22 twenty-metre drill holes. Data from the samples will support the company's engineering design plans, it says. Mkango says the plans are required in order to finalise the Definitive Feasibility, which is due to be completed in the first quarter of 2022. Trakm8 Holdings PLC - Birmingham-based telematics hardware company - Revenues rises 19% year-on-year in the five months of its financial year, which began on April 1. Since the beginning of the financial year, connections are up 1% to 257,000 and fleet connections are up 3% to 72,000 from 70,000. Says the second half is likely to benefit from the growth in connections and recurring revenues in its Fleet and Insurance segments. Expects to break-even on pretax and post-tax profit in financial 2022. Guides revenue of around GBP19 million for the full-year. Chariot Ltd - Africa-focused transitional energy company - Signs agreement with oil field service company Halliburton for assistance on its Anchois gas appraisal well. The Anchois gas appraisal well is located in the Lixus licence, offshore Morocco, the company notes. Says Halliburton will assist with project management, drilling and engineering services as well as some materials. "Following on from our recently announced rig award, today's release marks further progress towards our planned appraisal well on the Lixus licence, offshore Morocco, later this year. We remain on track for drilling operations to commence in December and we look forward to updating the market further as other operational milestones are achieved ahead of drilling," says acting chief executive of Chariot, Adonis Pouroulis. Colefax Group PLC - London-based interior designer - Reports "strong" trading conditions since August 12, when the company released its full-year results. "We attribute this to a healthy housing market and continued interest in home-related spending," says Chief Executive David Green. Through the autumn trading period the company expects conditions for its Fabric division to remain in line with expectations. Begbies Traynor Group PLC - Manchester-based corporate restructuring specialist - Reports double digit growth in revenue and profit in its first quarter, which began on May 1. Says this is due to recent acquisitions and a rebound from lockdowns in 2020. Remains confident of meeting market expectations in its full-year ending April 31, 2022. Notes an increase in demand for its Insolvency Service since May 2021, after being suppressed over the previous 18-months due to government support measures. Its property advisory and transactional services division is performing well, the company says, achieving growth in both revenue and profit in comparison to the Covid-impacted year prior. Says its recent acquisitions - CVR Global, David Rubin & Partners and MAF Finance Group - are performing well and in-line with expectations. Helios Underwriting PLC - London-based investment vehicle, which acquires and consolidates underwriting capacity at Lloyd's - Buys three further limited liability vehicles for around GBP2.0 million. Acquires syndicate capacity of GBP2.4 million with the purchase. The transaction includes the acquisition of Nameco (No 1011) Ltd for a GBP891,000 consideration, Nameco (No 2012) Ltd for GBP360,000, and GTC Underwriting Ltd for GBP696,000. Caledonia Mining Corp PLC - gold miner in Zimbabwe - Acquires mining claims over the Maligreen project from Pan African Mining Ltd for USD4 million. Maligreen has an inferred mineral resource of around 940,000 ounces of gold, the company says. The site covers 550 hectares and includes two historic open pit mining operations, which produced approximately 20,000 ounces of gold mined from oxides between 2000 and 2002. The company reports that, over the past 30 years around 60,000 metres of diamond core and percussion drilling has been carried out, along with 3.5 tonnes of bulk metallurgical testing and geophysical surveys of the area. Chief Executive Steve Curtis says: "We believe the property also offers significant upside exploration potential at the north-west extensions to the existing inferred mineral resource and at additional exploration targets in the northern part of the property." Union Jack Oil PLC - UK-focused onshore hydrocarbon production, development and exploration company - Raises GBP3 million via a placing of 13.6 million shares, priced at 22 pence each. Expects new shares to begin trading on AIM by next Tuesday. Plans to use these proceeds to expand oil production facilities at its Wressle prospect, which has achieved rates of 884 barrels of oil per day on a choke setting from its Ashover Grit reservoir. Funds will also be used to pursue a gas-to-power revenue stream at Wressle and drill a side-track well at Biscathorpe in 2022. Decides against acquiring a further 25% interest in the Claymore Piper Complex Royalty Units. By Scarlett Butler; scarlettbutler@alliancenews.com Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Download Image: Web Lycoming College was ranked once again as one of the nations best liberal arts colleges in a series of rankings released this fall by U.S. News and World Report, the Princeton Review, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Monthly. The recognition affirms the success of the Colleges innovations over the past decade and demonstrates that its modern and challenging degrees are sought-after in the job market and by graduate schools. Lycoming College ranked No. 124 in U.S. News & World Report National Liberal Arts Colleges list for 2022, and ranked No. 32 on the publications Top Performers on Social Mobility list. In addition to academic excellence, U.S. News cites as noteworthy Lycomings strengths in alumni giving, financial resources, and faculty resources. The Colleges full U.S. News profile can be accessed at: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/lycoming-college-3293. Lycoming College was again recognized as one of the nations Best 387 Colleges and Universities in the 2022 edition of the annual college guide published by the Princeton Review. The publication provides college-bound students with a comprehensive look at the nations best colleges, featuring in-depth profiles and student-driven details that help students find their best college fit. In the Princeton Review survey, Lycoming students commented that faculty and administration work hard to customize the...college experience to each students needs, and that the school offers great opportunities to do hands-on research with your professors as well as excellent undergraduate internship...[and] study abroad opportunities. Princeton Reviews profile on Lycoming College can be read in full at: https://www.princetonreview.com/college/lycoming-college-1022971. In this years Washington Monthly Liberal Arts Colleges Rankings, Lycoming College took the No. 77 spot. The DC-area publication releases college rankings every fall and differentiates itself from other rankings by evaluating colleges based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research, and promoting public service. Lycomings entry can be viewed as part of the full 2021 Liberal Arts Colleges Ranking at: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021college-guide/liberalarts. With a No. 30 ranking in social mobility, Lycoming continued to be recognized for its success in creating opportunity and promoting student success. The Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education U.S. College Rankings, now in its sixth year of publication, ranked Lycoming as being among the top 37 percent of nearly 800 colleges and universities in its database. WSJ recognized Lycoming College for both its financial strength and a positive learning environment. The rankings also acknowledged Lycomings student-to-faculty ratio of 12, which enables the College to offer students small class sizes and close faculty mentorship a hallmark of learning at Lycoming. The Lycoming profile can be found at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/lycoming-college. Continued recognition as one of the nations strongest institutions of higher education helps attract bright young scholars and invites them to discover how Lycoming changes lives, said Kent Trachte, president of Lycoming College. In recent years, the College has risen in each of these rankings, which affirms that the College is on an exciting trajectory. TRAVERSE CITY With a large number of its staff already vaccinated, Munson Healthcare announced its plan on Wednesday "to fully comply with anticipated COVID-19 vaccination requirements for hospitals and health systems put forward by President Joe Biden on Sept. 9." Our healthcare team has faced extreme challenges over the past year and the vaccine is a critical tool to help eliminate this virus, said Dianne Michalek, chief communications officer for the health system, in a news release. We look forward to learning more details about specific regulations and timing from the government. Munson Healthcare "has established a proactive COVID-19 workforce vaccine requirement for the health system." RELATED: Michigan COVID-19 testing lab overwhelmed with calls after Biden's mandate On Sept. 9 a news release from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services stated that "the Biden-Harris Administration will require COVID-19 vaccination of staff within all Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities to protect both them and patients from the virus and its more contagious Delta variant. Facilities across the country should make efforts now to get health care staff vaccinated to make sure they are in compliance when the rule takes effect." As of Aug. 31, several hospital systems in the state already were requiring vaccines, including Beaumont Health, headquartered in Royal Oak; Henry Ford Health System, headquartered in Detroit; and Spectrum Health, headquartered in Grand Rapids. Munson Healthcare employees more than 8,000 total, Michalek told the News Advocate with about 390 employees at Munson Healthcare Manistee Hospital in Manistee and 197 at Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital in Frankfort. "Just over 70% of general staff are vaccinated and about 90% of our doctors are vaccinated; that's pretty true in Manistee ... about 70.7% are vaccinated," she said. "We just want to try to get a little bit more than that." Under the announcement from Munson Healthcare, employees, providers, contract workers and students must receive their COVID-19 vaccination by Jan. 7 or earlier if mandated by a regulatory body. RELATED: Myths versus facts about the COVID-19 vaccine Munson Healthcare includes seven owned and two affiliated hospitals, and hundreds of physician's offices, lab locations, walk-in clinics and urgent cares. The requirement applies to the seven Munson-owned entities and the Munson-owned doctor's offices, said Michalek. "There are many doctors' offices across Michigan that are associated with Munson Healthcare but they're not owned by Munson Healthcare. So this will apply to all the employed providers and employed physicians. We're working through the other providers or doctors who have privileges at our facilities that will be the expectation that they will also be vaccinated but that will be handled in a different way under their medical bylaws." All new employees and providers who join the organization after Sept. 30 and all volunteers will be required to get the vaccine as a condition of employment and volunteer opportunities. Pending additional regulations, all employees who work 100% remotely are currently excluded from this COVID-19 workforce vaccine requirement, according to the news release. Health system members and providers who are not compliant by Jan. 7 face corrective action and possible termination. RELATED: How did we develop a safe COVID-19 vaccine so fast? "Just like the general public, there's been a little bit of a mixed reaction, but I would say that because over 70% of our workforce is currently vaccinated there are a lot of people who are happy that we're going to try to get to 100% vaccination rate," Michalek said in an interview. She said many staff members were expecting the announcement. "Of course there's some feedback about people thinking they may choose not to be vaccinated and they may look for jobs elsewhere, but that's actually been a minority right now. Overall we're getting a relatively positive reaction to this announcement," she said. The health system will accept vaccination exemption requests through Nov. 15. A process similar to the one used for requesting an annual flu vaccination exemption will be used, according to the news release. A special committee will be established to review all COVID-19 exemption requests. Michalek said the organization continues to advocate for all the measures to limit the spread of the virus such as universal masking inside health system facilities, appropriate use of personal protective equipment, handwashing and social distancing. We know that for some people this is a highly personal decision, but the science tells us that this is a safe vaccine, and it will help us shorten the impact of the pandemic. This decision will not only improve lives, but save them, she said. Visitation restrictions are also in effect at most Munson Healthcare facilities. "Our current visitation policy is listed on our website (munsonhealthcare.org/). We do encourage people to review that before coming to any of our facilities," said Michalek. "Currently visitation is restricted at all facilities; we are allowing one visitor in per day per in-patient." She said some waiting rooms are closed to visitors so it's best to call ahead of time to find out each facility's policy. The bad man of Bollywood, Gulshan Grover is known for his excellent performances as a villain in multiple Hindi movies through the years. Not many people know this but, turns out, this baddie was not just a hit with Indian cinema lovers but also managed to grab certain eyeballs in Hollywood as well. The actor recently revealed in an interview that he was offered the role of playing a villain in a James Bond movie. A cousin of Prince Charles once asked him if he would play the next James Bond villain during a meeting which the actor was attending at Clarence House in Londons St James Palace back in 2005. Gulshan Grover, eventually, was taken on board and he even signed up to play Le Chiffre, in Casino Royale. BCCL However, things didnt pan out the way he intended them to be. The makers probably wanted to keep the casting under wraps and an exciting conversation with his friend cost him this crucial role. The news of him being chosen was leaked by a UK tabloid after he shared the piece of information with a reported friend, which, in return, angered the makers and he was, eventually, dropped from the role. He was later replaced by Mads Mikkelsen. While many mainstream actors try to dabble in different variants of acting and test their nuances, Gulshan has always managed to stick to playing the bad guy with finesse. In an interview with ET, he elaborated on why he chose to be a villain back in the 90s: It is absolutely a conscious effort. After completing my education, when I entered films, I realised that I wanted to be a star. A star has a recall value. I also chose to become a villain based on what I felt while I was training under Roshan Taneja with my batchmates like Anil Kapoor and others. Another reason to become a villain was that I feel villains have a longer shelf life. Their longevity is not based on personal vanity and good looks, but on their performance. They dont have any age bar. And also because I felt it was quite challenging. It suited me very well so I chose to play one." While it would have been fun to watch him being chased by James Bond, he really doesnt need to prove his mettle to anyone. A high-end Delhi restaurant has found itself in the middle of a controversy after a woman bashed them on social media for not letting her enter the property because she was wearing a saree. To be honest, it's extremely disappointing but not really surprising because such incidents have occurred in the past too. Its sad how despite being a part of a country that believes in diversity, we come across such cases. In a Facebook post, Anita Choudaary alleged she was not allowed to enter the Aquila restaurant because she was wearing a saree. "In one of the restaurants in Delhi, a saree is not considered to be a smart outfit. The restaurant's name is Aquila. We argued over saree, and a lot of excuses were made, but I was not allowed to enter the restaurant, because the Indian attire saree is not a smart outfit. I have never been insulted like this. I also feel hurt," she wrote. Heres her post: The hotel management has a different narrative, however, and has completely denied that they barred her from entering the premises because of her attire. They claimed to be a native company that values Indian culture and has always welcomed customers dressed in ethnic wear or western wear. The restaurant further added, "A guest visited the restaurant and was politely requested to wait at the gate as there was no reservation under her name. However, while we discussed internally where we could seat them, the guest entered the restaurant and began to fight and abuse our staff. What unfolded after was beyond our imagination, with the guest slapping our manager." We believe in utmost transparency and are hence attaching snippets of people who have visited our restaurant in a traditional dress code previously, the restaurant management said in the statement. In one of their videos, they have shared how other women in saree have entered the restaurant. Heres the full statement: After the statement went viral, men and women took to social media to protest against the restaurant in their own ways. Women started posting photos wearing sarees and highlighted how saree is probably one of the best smart attires as it can be used for both formal and informal occasions. They also went on to say that its a part of Indian culture. Twitter Twitter` Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter And men on Twitter are supporting the cause and are annoyed with such a policy. They want the hotel to be seized immediately and their license should be canceled. Heres how men supported women: Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter What do you have to say about this fiasco? Let us know in the comments section below. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V.Makei participates in the 76th session of the UN General Assembly (first day) On September 22, 2021 during his visit to New York for the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Vladimir Makei, held a number of meetings with Foreign Ministers of the UN Member States. During the meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the parties discussed a wide range of issues of cooperation on the bilateral track as a follow-up to the agreements reached at the meeting of the Presidents of Belarus and Iran in Dushanbe on September 16, 2021. The Ministers reaffirmed the need to intensify the Belarusian-Iranian trade and economic interaction in the near future, taking into account the joint efforts of the two countries on the international arena to counter the policy of economic pressure and unilateral coercive measures. In order to effectively implement mutually beneficial projects, the heads of the foreign ministries agreed to intensify their work within the existing bilateral mechanisms of interaction: both through inter-ministerial consultations and at the Belarusian-Iranian Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation. The parties also discussed issues on the multilateral agenda and interaction in international organizations. The Ministers noted the coincidence of positions on a number of topical international issues, primarily in relation to the problem of illegal sanctions as a method of political pressure and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. During the conversation Hossein Amir Abdollahian invited Vladimir Makei to pay a visit to Tehran in the near future. At a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua, Denis Ronaldo Moncada Colindres, issues of political, trade and economic cooperation between the two countries were discussed. The sides approved of the high level of mutual support in the international arena. Denis Ronaldo Moncada Colindres noted the importance of Belarus' participation in the activities of the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. V.Makei thanked the head of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry for the assistance in promoting Belarus initiatives at the UN, including combating human trafficking. Particular attention was paid to the development of economic ties between both countries, the intensification of the work of the Belarus-Nicaragua Joint Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation and increasing dynamics of contacts between the foreign ministries. At the meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu, the parties noted positive dynamics of bilateral cooperation. The issues of preparation of the next meeting of the Belarusian-Turkish Joint Intergovernmental Economic Commission were also discussed. An exchange of views took place on issues on the international agenda, including the topic of combating illegal migration. V.Makei thanked his colleague for the principled position and friendly assistance of the Turkish side against the background of anti-Belarusian rhetoric and actions by a number of states. M.Cavusoglu confirmed Turkeys high interest in the development of comprehensive relations with Belarus, the implementation of major economic projects in our country. He also expressed gratitude to the Belarusian side for providing significant assistance in eliminating forest fires on the southern coast of Turkey. V.Makei also met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, Nikola Selakovic. The parties discussed the current state and prospects for bilateral cooperation in the political, trade and economic spheres, interactions at multilateral fora, and exchanged views on topical issues on the international agenda, including the situation in the Western Balkans region. At the end of the day, a very rich and meaningful meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, took place within the framework of which a number of issues of mutual interest were discussed. print version Ambassador of Belarus A.Metelitsa meets the Secretary of the Ministry of Interior of Pakistan On September 23, 2021, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Andrei Metelitsa met with Secretary of the Ministry of Interior of Pakistan Yosaf Nassem Khokhar. During the meeting, the sides discussed topical issues of Belarusian-Pakistani relations. The head of the Belarusian diplomatic mission informed the interlocutor about the Belaruss liberalization of the visa regime, including for citizens of Pakistan. The parties agreed that this friendly initiative will have a positive impact on the development of bilateral relations, including the expansion of business contacts and tourist exchanges. The interlocutors also considered ways to intensify interaction between the Ministries of Internal Affairs of Belarus and Pakistan. An agreement was reached on holding consultations to improve the relevant bilateral legal framework. print version Permanent Representative of Belarus to the UN Office in Geneva Y.Ambrazevich meets the Director General of WIPO On September 23, 2021, at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Permanent Representative of the Republic of Belarus to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva Yuri Ambrazevich met with WIPO Director General Daren Tang. The meeting was held in anticipation of the 62nd Series of Meetings of the Assemblies of the WIPO Member States, scheduled for October 2021. Y.Ambrazevich outlined the practical importance of cooperation between Belarus and the Organization on the entire spectrum of issues of intellectual property protection. In October 2020, Belarus joined the WIPO Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works, in July 2021 Belarus became a member to the WIPO Hague Agreement on Industrial Designs. The Organization provided practical assistance to Belarus in organizing Summer School on Intellectual Property in July 2021. D.Tang positively noted the progressive dynamics of WIPO-Belarus interaction over the last years and confirmed the readiness to expand bilateral cooperation to support innovations, to advance commercialization of intellectual property. The WIPO Director General welcomed the activities of the Belarusian side to support innovation, which allowed Belarus to improve its ranking in the Global Innovation Index 2021. The Permanent Representative of Belarus conveyed to the Head of WIPO the invitation from the Prime Minister to pay an official visit to the Republic of Belarus. print version Michigan Heroes Campaign Launched to Recognize Those Helping Others Michigan Heroes Campaign Launched to Recognize Those Helping Others The Michigan Community Service Commission, the state's lead agency on volunteerism, launched the Michigan Heroes Campaign virtual recognition website to celebrate individuals and organizations that have made a difference during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond in Michigan. "Michigan residents gave their time and talent to help the state succeed in many different ways during the pandemic," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "To celebrate these heroes, I encourage Michiganders to go online and nominate individuals and the many organizations that helped mobilize to serve others during the COVID-19 pandemic." Submissions to the Michigan Community Service Commission virtual recognition website will highlight Michigan residents that have made Michigan stronger and more resilient. Anyone can nominate a hero by visiting miheroesproject.org. The early focus of the Michigan Heroes campaign will be to highlight the response and recovery of the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone can be nominated for helping others. Nominees will be put through a brief screening to make sure they meet certain criteria, then their story will be featured on the website. One of the heroes already nominated is Pat Munshaw of East Lansing, a retired 81-year-old registered nurse (RN) who stepped forward to volunteer to help deliver COVID-19 vaccine shots. Munshaw volunteers several times a week through both the Ingham County Health Department and Sparrow Hospital and has administered more than 500 COVID-19 vaccine injections. "It was a simple decision to volunteer because I have the time, I have the skill set, and they needed help," Munshaw said. "I like the socialization and mental stimulation you get while volunteering. Volunteering is really fun and fulfilling to me." The Michigan Heroes Campaign will recognize the service to others that occurs every day throughout the State of Michigan. Michiganders are encouraged to begin their hero journey at Michigan Nonprofit Guide, miserves.org, to connect with a nonprofit organization to volunteer or donate to the cause they are passionate about. "As we continue the road to recovery, we want to unite our state and recognize heroic efforts that have transformed lives," said Michigan Community Service Commission Executive Director Ginna Holmes. "During challenging times, Michiganders have lifted each other up. Their collective heroism should inspire us all to make a difference." Governor Whitmer Proclaims September as Life Insurance and Annuity Awareness Month; DIFS Announces $3.9 Million Recovered for Consumers Governor Whitmer Proclaims September as Life Insurance and Annuity Awareness Month; DIFS Announces $3.9 Million Recovered for Consumers Media Contact: Laura Hall, 517-290-3779,DIFS-Press@michigan.gov Consumer Hotline: 877-999-6442, Michigan.gov/DIFScomplaints FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 23, 2021 (LANSING, MICH) Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proclaimed September as Life Insurance and Annuity Awareness Month, and the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) and the Life Insurance Association of Michigan (LIAM) are reminding consumers of the importance of life insurance. "Life insurance not only provides protection for your loved ones, it is also one way to build generational wealth and secure financial stability for your children, grandchildren, or other beneficiaries," said Governor Whitmer. "Life Insurance and Annuity Awareness Month is a great reminder to look into this coverage and ensure that your family and the generations that follow you are financially protected." Life insurance is a key strategy for long-term financial planning as it is one way to pass wealth on to future generations, and help is available for those who cannot find information about their deceased loved one's life insurance policies. DIFS is announcing today that, as of August 31, its Life Insurance and Annuity Search Service helped nearly 100 consumers recover $3.9 million in unpaid life insurance policies or annuity contracts this year. "Life insurance and annuities are important parts of financial planning for Michiganders and we appreciate our partnership with Michigan insurers to help beneficiaries locate millions of dollars in unpaid policies every year," said Director Fox. "DIFS is here to assist consumers in understanding their life insurance benefits, including those who cannot find important records after the death of a loved one." "Life insurance and annuities provide critical financial security for Michiganders and the people they love," said Traci Riehl, executive director of the Life Insurance Association of Michigan. "During Life Insurance and Annuity Awareness Month, we urge people to take action to ensure a financially secure future for their family." For more information on the DIFS Life Insurance and Annuity Search Service, visit Michigan.gov/LIAS or email DIFS-LIAS@michigan.gov. Additional information related to life insurance or annuities is available on the DIFS website or by calling DIFS Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 877-999-6442. A national resource is also available from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners at EApps.NAIC.org/Life-Policy-Locator. The mission of the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services is to ensure access to safe and secure insurance and financial services fundamental for the opportunity, security, and success of Michigan residents, while fostering economic growth and sustainability in both industries. In addition, the Department provides consumer protection, outreach, and financial literacy and education services to Michigan residents. For more information, visit Michigan.gov/DIFS or follow the Department on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. #### Sept. 23, 2021 Request for proposals for northern Michigan DNR facilities coming this fall In a step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has signed a power purchase agreement with South Lyon-based Utopian Power, LLC to supply almost 1 megawatt of clean energy to seven state parks and offices in southwest Michigan. That's more than 100 times as much power generated through the Oden State Fish Hatchery Visitor Center pilot program. The agreement covers the installation of solar systems totaling approximately 884 kilowatts, with the first systems (capacity of 300 kW) installed and active throughout fall 2021. The DNR anticipates saving $1.4 million through a discounted utility rate, as the 25-year agreement allows the department to save on utility costs over several locations without the capital investment or ongoing maintenance for the solar arrays. Individual projects (and expected completion year) for awarded solar installations in the southwest region include: DNR Customer Service Center, Plainwell (2021). Fort Custer Recreation Area, Kalamazoo County - Headquarters building and beach house (2021); east and west campgrounds (2022). Holland State Park, Ottawa County - Lake Macatawa campground (2021) and Holland Beach building (2022). Ionia State Recreation Area, Ionia County - Headquarters building, campgrounds and cabin rentals (2021). Muskegon State Park, Muskegon County - Headquarters building and cold-storage building (2021) and Muskegon Channel campgrounds (2022). P.J. Hoffmaster State Park, Muskegon County - Headquarters building (2021) and campgrounds (2022). Yankee Springs, Barry County - Headquarters building (2021) and campgrounds (2022). "This agreement is in line with our commitment at the state level to strategically deploy solar power across state-owned land where it makes sense, and to pursue clean energy solutions that protect public health, boost efficiency and make us more effective stewards of our natural environment," said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. "The projects also demonstrate how a move toward renewable energy creates investments in local communities and good-paying jobs. I will work with anyone who wants to put Michiganders first and help usher in a new era of prosperity for our state by building a clean energy economy that works for everyone." Project impact The annual production of the installed solar arrays in the southwest region will be enough to power roughly 90 residential homes, or equivalent to reducing 159 passenger vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon dioxide emissions from 82,000 gallons of gasoline. Learn more about how the Environmental Protection Agency calculates greenhouse gas equivalencies. Utopian installed the solar array system at the Oden State Fish Hatchery Visitor Center. DNR Director Dan Eichinger said that system and the arrays planned for the southwest region will help the department demonstrate clean energy in action. "A lot of people think 'clean energy' sounds like a good thing to do, but maybe haven't seen many examples of what that really looks like or how it works," said Eichinger. "Going forward, visitors of all ages to these state parks and facilities will see firsthand that renewable energy can be easily integrated into everyday operations." Eichinger said the southwest Michigan project is the latest in line with Whitmer's goal of bringing renewable energy to state-owned facilities and leveraging the power of state-managed lands in climate-friendly ways. Others include: The previously mentioned pilot program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and convert to renewable energy by installing solar panels at the Oden State Fish Hatchery Visitors Center in Emmet County. The development, via a 25-year land lease agreement, of large-scale solar arrays on state forest land at two former mine sites: Groveland Mine in Dickinson County, a former 347-acre iron mine tailings site gifted to the state, and 7 Mile Pit in Crawford County, a 169-acre property previously use for sand and gravel mining. The Bluesource/Michigan DNR Big Wild Forest Carbon Project in the Pigeon River Country State Forest, the first of its kind in the nation, to leverage the carbon storage capacity of trees on state forest lands. A pilot program to mitigate climate change by promoting mass timber construction, an environmentally friendly building technique that allows construction of tall and large buildings using engineered wood. Projects include the DNR's own planned mass timber building in the Upper Peninsula town of Newberry. The Utopian project will be developed, financed and constructed by Michigan companies with a total investment of $2.5 million into the Michigan economy over the next six months. Utopian is partnering with several companies, including an energy-specific financier based out of metro Detroit and The Green Panel based in Brighton and Grand Rapids. Utopian Power President Forrest Cohn said the company was founded with the goal of accelerating renewable energy development in communities throughout Michigan and beyond. "We believe in the impact that clean energy has in maintaining Pure Michigan," Cohn said. "These solar systems will provide economic, environmental and social benefits to our communities and neighbors, and we are proud to lead that effort. We thank the state for the opportunity to provide renewable energy to these DNR state parks and facilities." Southwest ribbon-cutting, RFP process for northern Michigan To celebrate the first region completed as part of the DNR's renewable energy efforts, a ribbon-cutting at Holland State Park is slotted for spring 2022 as an opportunity to showcase the installed solar arrays. More information to follow as plans are finalized. The DNR utilizes a vendor prequalification program to solicit proposals for each region, with requests for proposal published at Michigan.gov/SIGMAVSS. Vendor response to the bid solicitation for southwest Michigan yielded six vendor proposals. Currently, there are 11 registered, qualified vendors in the system. The department expects the next RFP, for the northern Michigan region, will be issued this fall, with site visits scheduled in late October. The northern region will contain state parks and DNR field offices estimated at a total of 1 MW of clean energy for all locations. Those interested in becoming prequalified vendors for future solar power purchase agreements should contact Laura Gyorkos at GyorkosL@Michigan.gov. Annual medication disposal event on Capitol lawn scheduled for Sept. 28 Annual medication disposal event on Capitol lawn scheduled for Sept. 28 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 23, 2021 Jill Greenberg, EGLE Spokesperson, GreenbergJ@Michigan.gov, 517-897-4965 Christine Grossman, Environmental Specialist, GrossmanC@Michigan.gov, 517-285-5637 The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is joining the Michigan Pharmacists Association (MPA) for its annual medication collection event, which will take place from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sept. 28 on the Capitol lawn in downtown Lansing. Residents are encouraged to bring unused, unwanted or expired medications for proper disposal, which assists in preventing drug abuse, accidental poisonings and helps preserve the state's natural resources. The event will allow residents to safely discard controlled substances, narcotics, and other unwanted prescription and over-the-counter medications at a collection tent. A drive-thru drop-off also will be available at the intersection of Capitol and Michigan avenues. For a complete list of medications accepted at the event, go to MichiganPharmacists.org/MedicationDisposal. Collected medications will be sent for incineration to destroy active drug components. Michiganders who cannot attend are encouraged to use the EGLE interactive Household Drug Take Back Map and map Tutorial found online at Michigan.gov/egleDrugDisposal. The map allows residents to enter their ZIP code to find nearby collection locations. An EGLE Classroom video also helps increase awareness about the importance of proper drug disposal. Healthcare providers are encouraged to share the video and drug disposal resources in patient waiting areas and on their websites. A press conference addressing the opioid epidemic, and how proper disposal benefits the environment and communities, is planned for 11 a.m. Sept. 28 on the Capitol lawn. For more information about drug abuse prevention and treatment, go to Michigan.gov/Opioids. To stay up-to-date on other EGLE News, follow us at Michigan.gov/MIEnvironment. # # # Governor Whitmer Launches Two Initiatives to Advance Michigan's EV Infrastructure and Workforce Landscape Governor Whitmer Launches Two Initiatives to Advance Michigan's EV Infrastructure and Workforce Landscape FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 22, 2021 Contact: Press@Michigan.gov Governor Whitmer Launches Two Initiatives to Advance Michigan's EV Infrastructure and Workforce Landscape Lake Michigan EV Circuit to expand EV infrastructure network along Lake Michigan, support region's tourism industry. MiREV RFP issued to help prepare Michigan's workforce for automotive mobility and electrification jobs and career pathways. Michigan remains center of high-tech vehicle production and job creation MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. - At the Mackinac Policy Conference, Governor Gretchen Whitmer today announced two new initiatives to continue advancing Michigan's electric vehicle (EV) and mobility landscape by building out critical charging infrastructure in the state and ensuring the strong pipeline of talent needed for automotive mobility and electrification career pathways. The Lake Michigan EV Circuit and the Michigan Revolution for the Electrification of Vehicles (MiREV) build on yesterday's launch of Governor Whitmer's MI New Economy plan that focuses on growing the middle class, supporting small businesses and investing in our communities. "I am laser focused on growing our economy, creating good-paying jobs and building the future of mobility and electrification right here in Michigan," said Governor Whitmer. "Today's announcements build on our rich Pure Michigan tradition of exploration and bring together communities and small businesses to ensure that we honor our past as the place that put the world on wheels and continue to invest in our workforce as we lead the transition to electric vehicles." The Lake Michigan EV Circuit: Expanding Michigan's EV Infrastructure The Lake Michigan EV Circuit delivers on the Governor's 2019 vision for an electric vehicle route with reliable charging options along Lake Michigan and key tourism clusters, creating the best new road-trip for EV owners in America. The Lake Michigan EV Circuit will tie together key coastal and rural communities, state and national parks and tourism attractions into a wider EV infrastructure network, installing EV infrastructure along sites where chargers are needed to fill the route's demands of high summer utilization and challenging winter weather battery performance constraints. The charging sites along the Lake Michigan EV Circuit will include either DC fast charging or level 2 chargers depending on the electrical infrastructure at the host site. Grants to install the charging infrastructure will be provided through the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) Charge Up MI program with $1.25 million in funding initially available and eligibility limited to site hosts that meet the geographical and user-experience designs of the Lake Michigan EV Circuit's route. "Michigan put the world on wheels. Now we are making those wheels more sustainable, less polluting, and part of the push to decarbonize Michigan's economy by 2050 through the state's Mi Healthy Climate Plan," said Liesl Clark, EGLE Director. "Building muscle onto Michigan's EV charging infrastructure is a cornerstone of moving away from climate pollution." EGLE will work in partnership with the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and Michigan Department of Transportation on the initiative to support a more environmentally conscious transportation infrastructure here in the state that benefits businesses and consumers alike. "The Lake Michigan EV Circuit fits nicely with MDOT's goal of enhancing connectivity," said MDOT Director Paul C. Ajegba. "I am very pleased we can work with our partners in government and the private sector and help fund an initiative that supports our state's major job providers and our shared goal to reduce emissions that harm the planet." Michigan's tourism industry contributes more than $26 billion to the state's economy, supporting more than 350,000 jobs. One of the industries hardest hit by the impacts of COVID-19, the Lake Michigan EV Circuit builds on the continued success of the state's Pure Michigan campaign to help the industry recover by offering an exciting ecotourism attraction and reducing range anxiety for out-of-state visitors from population centers along Lake Michigan, such as Chicago and Milwaukee. MiREV to Further Enable Michigan's Mobility and EV Workforce The Whitmer Administration has remained laser-focused on making sure Michigan workers can access the training and education they need to stay competitive in this new economy. The Michigan Revolution for Electrification of Vehicles Academy/Academies (MiREV) will help position Michigan at the center of that growth by proactively preparing the talent needed for automotive mobility and electrification current, emerging, future jobs and career pathways. LEO is looking to partner with three to five organizations for this effort for a total investment of up to $5 million through a competitive RFP process. "By using an employer-led collaborative approach, we can effectively respond to the specific knowledge and skill demands of the automotive mobility and electrification industry," said Susan Corbin, Director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO). "MiREV will deliver a measurable return on investment for both employers and learners." MiREV will work directly with employers to ensure Michigan has the right kinds of programs and resources to fill both current and future talent gaps for in-demand and emerging jobs in the mobility and electrification industry. This will include determining projected job openings, identifying competencies, credentials and other hiring requirements, reskilling and upskilling incumbent workers, identifying training opportunities for job seekers interested in industry and conducting career awareness and promotion of EV-related industries and its occupations with Michigan's future workforce. "The outcomes of this RFP will ensure employers are able to address their most critical workforce needs while job seekers have access to better employment outcomes and career pathway opportunities in the mobility and electrification industry," said Stephanie Beckhorn, Director of LEO's Office of Employment and Training. "As this industry continues to expand, investments like MiREV will support the growth opportunities for companies, investors and workers." Beginning today, September 22, LEO's Office of Employment and Training and the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification have released a Request for Proposals that seeks to identify one or more conveners who can lead this statewide initiative, with applications due November 8. For details on eligibility and to access the RFP visit Michigan.gov/MICA. MiREV will further support Michigan's efforts to create a clean energy future through electrification while continuing to prepare the state's workforce to secure the new jobs that are being developed in Michigan's automotive and mobility sector and keep Michigan on track to meet Governor Whitmer's goal of having 60% of the working-age population with postsecondary education or skills training by 2030. Michigan remains the center of high-tech electric vehicle production in the U.S. More than 15,000 mobility and automotive manufacturing jobs have been created since 2019 - many supporting increased electric vehicle manufacturing here in Michigan. Last week, Ford announced a new $250 million investment and 450 direct jobs across three southeast Michigan facilities - Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, Rawsonville Components Plant, and Van Dyke Electric Powertrain Center - to support F-150 Lightning production capacity increase. GM located its first fully dedicated electric vehicle assembly plant in Hamtramck, with a commitment of 2,200 jobs. Stellantis is building JEEP plug in hybrid models at the first new assembly plant in Detroit in three decades as part of investment creating 6,433 jobs in Michigan, including for more than 4,100 Detroit residents. Manufacturers, suppliers and R&D facilities are also choosing Michigan with XL Fleet opening its new Fleet Electrification Technology Center in Wixom and Magna International building a state-of-the-art facility in St. Clair to support GM's new GMC Hummer EV. Just as Michigan put the world on wheels, with the MI New Economy plan as its foundation, the state is once again where the future is being built - as the epicenter of high-tech electric vehicle production in the U.S. as well as the premier location for young companies to start, scale, commercialize and grow technologies redefining the movement of people and goods. "By working collaboratively across both the public and private sector we can continue to encourage EV adoption, enable our workforce and build our manufacturing core all while working to meet our goals to be carbon neutral in Michigan by 2025," said Trevor Pawl, Chief Mobility Officer at the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification. "From charging stations spanning the Lake Michigan shoreline to building the pipeline to fill critical jobs in EV-related industries today and in the future, we are building a stronger state economy through safer, more equitable and environmentally conscious transportation for all Michigan residents" ### Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announces electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian to establish Rivian Service Support Operations at its facility in Plymouth, Creating 100 High-Wage Jobs Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announces electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian to establish Rivian Service Support Operations at its facility in Plymouth, Creating 100 High-Wage Jobs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 23, 2021 Contact: Kathleen Achtenberg, Achtenbergk@michigan.org Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announces electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian to establish Rivian Service Support Operations at its facility in Plymouth, Creating 100 High-Wage Jobs Rivian adding 100 well-paying jobs, investing $ 4.6 million in Plymouth with support from the Michigan Strategic Fund Project builds on Michigan ' s leader ship in workforce growth across the mobility and electrification sector, including professional services LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) today to announce that Rivian, a manufacturer of all-electric adventure vehicles, is establishing its new Rivian Service Support Operations facility in Plymouth creating 100 new high-wage jobs and investing $4.6 million into the Plymouth facilities with support from the Michigan Strategic Fund. This announcement comes on the heels of Governor Whitmer launching the MI New Economy plan this week, as well as various electrification announcements that demonstrate Michigan continues to be the epicenter of future mobility and electrification solutions. "This investment by Rivian will create 100 high-skill jobs as we work to grow Michigan's economy, create good-paying jobs, and build the industries of the future," said Governor Whitmer. "This state-of-the-art facility reinforces our reputation as a leader in both customer service and the future of mobility and electrification. We're excited to welcome Rivian's new service support operations to Michigan and look forward to working together to grow and add jobs for Michigan residents in the future." Rivian is experiencing significant growth and plans to support all Rivian owners out of the new Service Support Operations Center at its offices in Plymouth Charter Township. The state-of-the-art, highly technical service support operations center includes a $4.6 million investment into the Plymouth facilities, and the center will create 100 new high-wage jobs for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer service. The facility will provide around-the-clock assistance by the Rivian Roadside and Service Support team to North American Rivian owners with vehicle questions, roadside requests and service scheduling needs. As a result of the total capital investment and job creation, the company has been awarded a $750,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant. Michigan was chosen for the project over competing sites in other states. "Congratulations to the team at Rivian on your tremendous growth and success. We appreciate this continued vote of confidence in our incredible talent and competitive business climate here in Michigan," said Quentin Messer, Jr., CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and President and Chair of the Michigan Strategic Fund. "We're pleased to work with our local partners to support Rivian's investment that reinforces Michigan's position as the leader in electric vehicle manufacturing and customer adoption." The project will further boost Michigan as the global leader in the future of mobility and vehicle electrification and will bring immediate, good jobs to area residents. Rivian provides advancement opportunities to its employees after six months of employment, as well as training programs and tuition reimbursement, child-care assistance, and other benefits. The project also supports Michigan's rich and diverse mobility ecosystem, which, along with key jobs in engineering, R&D and professional services, also features the largest deployment of vehicle-to-infrastructure technology in the nation and more than one-sixth of the entire U.S. auto production. "This center provides a base of service to our Rivian owners. This team will be the most all-around knowledgeable and most highly-trained group on Rivian vehicles," said Rivian Roadside and Service Support Operations Senior Manager Tracy Stevens. "The program includes six weeks of in-depth training for our service support advisors, and we will add about 15 new hires every other month throughout 2022 to ensure coverage as production ramps up. Our expansion in Plymouth is part of a long-term strategy that will allow access to the talented workforce Michigan offers." Rivian owners will be able to interact with the center digitally or by phone. To apply for a job at Rivian, visit Rivian Careers. "It's no surprise Rivian's national search for a new state-of-the-art customer service center led them to Wayne County. The collaborative culture fostered by all levels of government has created a world-class business environment for companies large and small," said Wayne County Executive Warren C. Evans. "As a result, more than 100 good paying jobs will be created in Plymouth Township. I'm excited for the opportunities this project creates for Wayne County workers and grateful for collaboration between Wayne County and partners like the MEDC, SEMCA/Michigan Works, and township leaders to bring Rivian to Plymouth." Plymouth Charter Township has offered to assist the company with finding candidates for the newly-created positions. "I am thrilled that Rivian will be expanding its operations here in Plymouth Township at the historic Burroughs facility," said Charter Township of Plymouth Supervisor Kurt L. Heise, JD, LL.M. "Rivian and Plymouth Township are building on our outstanding partnership, bringing high-paying, cutting-edge jobs to our community that will provide exceptional customer service to Rivian's owners, while improving the township's brand as a destination for economic development. I also want to thank the MEDC and all our local partners who helped to make this happen." In 2015, Rivian announced plans to establish a research and development center in the city of Dearborn, a project that generated a total capital investment of $29.5 million and created approximately 170 jobs. The project was supported by a $1.77 million Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant. Michigan continues to focus on forward-thinking innovations around mobility and electrification, including through the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, which is working across state government, academia and private industry to enhance Michigan's mobility ecosystem, including developing dynamic mobility and electrification policies and supporting the startup and scale-up of emerging technologies and businesses. About Rivian Rivian has developed and vertically integrated a connected electric platform that can be flexibly applied to a range of applications, including the company's adventure products as well as B2B products such as our last mile delivery vans. The company's launch products, the R1T and R1S, provide an unmatched combination of performance, off-road capability and utility. These vehicles will be produced at Rivian's manufacturing plant in Normal, Ill., with customer deliveries expected to begin in fall 2021. Learn more about our company, products and careers at rivian.com. About Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is the state's marketing arm and lead advocate for business development, job awareness and community development with the focus on growing Michigan's economy. For more information on the MEDC and our initiatives, visit www.MichiganBusiness.org. For Pure Michigan tourism information, your trip begins at www.michigan.org. Join the conversation on: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. ### The journey from stage to screen, so often a perilous one, has been particularly bumpy for Dear Evan Hansen. The Broadway show, starring Ben Platt as a lonely, anxiety-racked teenager who turns into a social media sensation after exaggerating his friendship with another, more hostile loner who kills himself, was an overwhelming hit. It won six Tony Awards in 2017, including best new musical and acting honors for Platt's star-making performance. Here, from book writer Steven Levenson and songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul ("La La Land"), was a Broadway musical that didn't sugarcoat adolescent pain, grief or yearning for acceptance. But when Stephen Chboskys film adaptation debuted earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival, much of the love for Dear Evan Hansen had seemingly evaporated. The film tweaks the musical in a handful of ways but it's largely quite faithful to the stage show. The script and songs again come from Levenson, Pasek and Paul. Platt reprises the role of Evan. So what happened? Did two sets of critics see nearly the same thing and draw vastly different conclusions? Was Dear Evan Hansen, like its central character, a viral phenomenon under false premises, only to eventually have its flaws revealed? The answer, I think, is a bit of both. Dear Evan Hansen, like a star-studded after-school special, is laudable for its good intentions for the way it tries to bring empathy to all of the characters it touches in a high-school world only made more treacherous by social media. That, alone, ought to make Dear Evan Hansen recommendable to a wide spectrum of young people who will find uplift and support in its it gets better message. It is also, as you might expect in any story that uses a minor character's suicide as a springboard for the protagonist's redemption arc, a coming-of-age morality tale that doesn't always have a firm grasp of its own melodramatic manipulations. But what most troubles Dear Evan Hansen, I think, is what's bedeviled so many musical adaptions before it: the heavy lift from an isolated stage setting to a physical reality. The pressures of are only greater on Dear Evan Hansen because it's sincerely trying to capture an emotional realism. But in a more recognizably real world, the false notes of Dear Evan Hansen ring louder. And nothing is more offkey than Platt's performance. The 27-year-old Platt, gifted as he is as an actor, is a decade too old for the character. While such discrepancies can sometimes be masked or overlooked, it's fatal in the case of Dear Evan Hansen. It's not hard to see why the filmmakers would be drawn to casting Platt in the role he defined; particularly in song, he soars. But the ways he's been aged down the curly hair, the hunched shoulders, the striped polo shirt only enhance the mismatch. For much of the film, it's difficult not to imagine the Saturday Night Live sketch that's probably already being written. More than the age difference, though, Platt's performance is a constant reminder of Broadway artificiality in a movie striving for something real. Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower," Wonder) seems perfectly suited to the material as a filmmaker who specializes in both young life and multi-generational tales of empathy. And he has peopled the film with a number of terrific actors, including Kaitlyn Dever, Julianne Moore, Amandla Stenberg and Amy Adams. The film begins with Evan writing a letter to himself at the direction of his therapist. Dear Evan Hansen, he writes. Today is going to be an amazing day and heres why. At school, Evan's only friend (Nik Dodani) insists he's only a family friend. Both his solitude and awkwardness are total. One day in the library, he has an exchange with schoolmate Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan) who steals Evan's letter from the printer and, with ironic menace, writes his name on Evan's cast. When Connor takes his life, his parents (Adams, Danny Pino) find Evan's letter in his pocket and assume it was written by Connor. The mother is desperate to latch on to something happy in her son's life, and Evan can't bring himself to tell her the truth. A well-intentioned lie leads to many more, and Evan soon finds himself nearly part of Connor's family, which includes his sister (Dever, especially good). Evan becomes an increasingly celebrated spokesman for Connor in death. It's all a lie, one which will ultimately crumble, but there's truth in it for Evan. When he speaks of Connor's loneliness, he's talking about himself. Very much to the film's credit, it ultimately doesn't suggest social media fame brings any salvation, and instead draws out a third-act atonement for Evan. The film, which cuts four songs from the stage show, seems plainly alert to improving some of the musical's inherent issues. Just as Broadway is opening up, scores of musicals have been landing on screens. Lately there's been In the Heights, a live taping of Come From Away and Everybody's Talking About Jamie. Soon there will be Tick, Tick ... Boom! Cyrano and West Side Story. In between, Dear Evan Hansen will probably go down as a cautionary tale. Not every stage hit looks quite so good in close-up. "Dear Evan Hansen, a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic material involving suicide, brief strong language and some suggestive references. Running time: 137 minutes. Two stars out of four. ___ Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP When youre traveling and need something to help ease the time while waiting for your plane, looking for a beach read while on vacation, or just prefer to stay in your comfy home, Manistee County Library has digital media platforms available that provide e-books, e-audiobooks, music, magazines and movies at your fingertips. Links can be found on our website, manisteelibrary.org with thousands of titles available. UP NORTH DIGITAL Up North Digital is a media platform for e-books, e-audiobooks, e-mMagazines and downloadable movies and music. Manistee County Library is one of over 50 libraries in northern Michigan that contribute to the content. All you need is a current library card and a tablet, or phone. Android and Apple devices will use the free Libby app, found in the Google Play Store. This app allows the user to store multiple library cards, making it perfect for our snowbirds heading south in the winter. OVERDRIVE Kindle users can use the Overdrive app from Amazon. The link on our website will take laptop users directly to the Up North Digital site via Overdrive, no app needed. Once the app is installed on a tablet or phone, patrons will need to create their account, including a library card in good standing and a PIN, which is the last eight digits of your library card number. The library card connects to your library in Up North Digital. Searching for materials for all ages is fun and easy. Patrons can choose to browse or go directly to their favorite genre. There are sections for Just Added titles, Your Next Great Read, Celebrity Book Club Choices and more. Click on the Collections tab and find audiobooks, videos, magazines. Click on the title and the option to sample is available. There are reviews, a synopsis and a You May Also Like section. To check out, click borrow and choose the checkout option for your device. More information is available by clicking on the Help tab at the top of the Overdrive page. HOOPLA Another great option that is available to all library users is Hoopla Digital. Hoopla also provides eBooks, eAudiobooks, comics, movies and music. Television series are available here too. Patrons are allowed ten checkouts per month which are billed to Manistee County Library. Download the Hoopla app and set up your account. Hoopla provides a history of materials that have been checked out and allows the patron to select topics of interest showing those titles when browsing. NEWSBANK Looking to catch up on the news, Manistee County Library subscribes to NewsBank. Using the link on our website, patrons can access newspapers from 28 major cities across the country and thousands around the world. Our own Manistee County News Advocate is also available. Quick links are provided for topics such as books and authors, education, social issues and more. Personal accounts can be created by registering on the site. This feature allows the patron to save searches. Manistee County Librarys website, manisteelibrary.org provides many links to services patrons can access anywhere. Explore the options online and take the world with you as you go. Kim Jankowiak and Becca Brown of the Manistee County Library write the recurring On the Same Page feature that showcases the library's titles available surrounding a revolving topic. Jankowiak is a reference librarian and Brown is a circulation clerk for the library. ABC Greater Michigan Chapter recently held its annual meeting and awards presentation at Apple Mountain in Freeland. Dozens of businesses were recognized for safety, construction and more at the Greatness & Gratitude Gala. The chapter was proud to announce the member companies that are recognized for the 2021 Safety Training and Evaluation Process (STEP). STEP recognizes ABC member companies who consistently excel in the field of safety, but more importantly to provide an evaluation tool to help identify areas in which contractors can work to reach the ultimate goal sending every worker home safe to their families every day. STEP is designed to provide an organized approach to analyze and further develop a contractors safety and loss prevention program. It also provides a valid, objective method to measure safety program improvements. The following ABC Greater Michigan Chapter member companies were recognized in the following categories: Diamond level Alloy Construction Service, Inc.; American Plumbing; Blasy Electric; Central Concrete Products; Fisher Contracting Co; Fisher Sand & Gravel Co., Inc.; G.E. Insulation Co; Great Lakes Bay Construction; RCL Construction Co., Inc; Three Rivers Corporation; and Valley Electrical Contractors Platinum level Architectural Metals; Laux Construction, LLC; The Mackenzie Companies; United Electrical Contractors; Vos Glass; and Windemuller Gold level A/C Electric; Magnum Construction Co.; Niles Plant Services; and Sugar Construction. Silver level Albin Hengesbach Carpentry & Custom Cabinets, Inc; Answer Heating and Cooling; J.E. Johnson; and The Tancor Corporation Bronze level Consolidated Electrical Contractors; Pleune Service Company; and Wolgast Corporation The highest honor recognizing a safety program that demonstrates the highest commitment, a diamond level winner must have an incidence rate at least 50% below the National Bureau of Labor Statistics average in their particular NAICS code for the current year and each of the past two consecutive years. Also, recognized was the 2021 Pete Crawford Safety Leader of the Year award, which was presented to Peggy Bergkamp of Great Lakes Bay Construction. The Craftsman of the Year award was given to Steve Coates of Three Rivers Corporation. Also recognized were ABC Greater Michigan Chapter members celebrating a significant anniversary in 2021 including the following: Wolgast Corporation, 45 years; Marlette Roofing & Sheet Metal Co., 40 years; Allen Supply, 35 years; Andrews Hooper Pavlik, PLC, 35 years; Capital Steel & Builders Supply, 35 years; K & H Concrete Cutting, Inc., 30 years; Saginaw Bay Underwriters, Inc., 30 years; Bri-Car Roofing & Sheet Metal, Inc., 25 years; Crampton Electric Co., Inc., 25 years; Graham Construction, Corp., 25 years; Sandborn Construction, 25 years. The 2021 Excellence In Construction (EIC) awards were also presented at the evenings event. A staple for chapters across the country, EIC recognizes the outstanding projects, craftsmanship and work that member companies do. Projects were submitted this year in a variety of categories. The following companies were awarded: GC/CM: New construction over $10 million GOLD: Wolgast Corporation Project: Northland Area Federal Credit Union, Alpena GC/CM: New construction - $5-$10 million GOLD: Three Rivers Corporation Project: Region 7 PACE Sunrise, Fort Gratiot GC/CM: New construction $1-$5 million SILVER: Three Rivers Corporation Project: Sanford Hardware, Sanford GOLD: Wolgast Corporation Project: Cheboygan Otsego Presque Isle Educational Service District (COPESD), Indian River GC/CM: New construction under $1 million GOLD: Three Rivers Corporation Project: Caro Farmers Market, Caro Exterior finishes SILVER: Architectural Metals Inc. Project: Jackson Public Schools John R. Lewis Elementary School, Jackson GOLD: Architectural Metals Inc. Project: Central Michigan University Chippewa Champions Center, Mount Pleasant Plumbing GOLD: American Plumbing Contractors Project: Red Cedar Building B, Lansing Electrical BRONZE: Consolidated Electrical Contractors Project: 409 ON 9, Ferndale SILVER: Consolidated Electrical Contractors Project: Samaritas, Grand Rapids GOLD: United Electrical Contractors, Inc. Project: Block 600, Lansing GC/CM: Addition/renovation over $10 million GOLD: Three Rivers Corporation Project: MidMichigan Health Heart and Vascular Center, Midland GC/CM Addition/renovation $5-$10 million GOLD: Wolgast Corporation Project: Department of Veterans Affairs, Lansing GC/CM Addition/renovation under $1 million SILVER: Three Rivers Corporation Project: Red Oak Lounge, Sanford GOLD: Great Lakes Bay Construction Project: Vascular Health Clinic Research Center, Midland Glazing GOLD: Vos Glass Project: Michigan Realtors, Lansing Interior finishing GOLD: Three Rivers Corporation Project: MidMichigan Health Heart and Vascular, Midland ABC recognized three amazing member companies on their outstanding growth: Bs Electric LLC, JC Electric, LLC and McCoy Heating & Cooling Company Each company was presented the Member Growth Award. The following ABC, Greater Michigan Chapter 2022 Directors and Officers were inducted in office: Chairman Jon Lynch, Three Rivers Corporation Vice Chairman Kevin Wray, Valley Electrical Contractors Secretary JoAnn Tanzini, The Tancor Corporation; and Treasurer Mike Laundra, Alloy Construction Service Inc. Directors with Three Year Terms: JoAnn Tanzini, The Tancor Corporation; Jeff Kipfmiller, Answer Heating and Cooling; Steve Russell, A/C Electric; and Rick Deneau, A4H Construction ABC reports it is an honor to recognize all of the individuals and companies for their outstanding leadership, safety practices and construction work that make our region great! Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC) is a national trade association with 22,000 members representing more than 19,000 construction and industry-related firms. Founded on the merit shop philosophy, ABC and its 69 chapters help members win work and deliver that work safely, ethically and profitably for the betterment of the communities in which they work. You can learn about ABC National at www.abc.org. ABC Greater Michigan Chapter serves a membership spanning 23 counties. ABC-GMC provides craft and professional education, up-to-date industry communication, legislative representation, as well as affinity programs and packages. For more information, call 989-374-4600 or visit www.abcgmc.org. BRISBANE, Australia (AP) Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has announced plans to build a new type of drone military aircraft in Australia. Boeing said Wednesday it has selected Toowoomba city in Queensland state as the final assembly point for its unmanned Loyal Wingman planes. The first test flights were completed earlier this year. The announcement comes less than a week after the U.S., Britain and Australia announced a new security alliance that will supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. The deal was condemned by China and has heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific region. Scott Carpendale, managing director of Boeing Defence Australia, said development of the new aircraft is going to plan. He said it uses artificial intelligence to operate in tandem with manned aircraft and was conceived, designed and developed in Australia. Its the first military combat aircraft to be designed and manufactured in Australia in half a century. Boeing Australia is currently developing six of the aircraft in partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force. Carpendale said no orders have been confirmed but the Australian government seems confident and happy about the Loyal Wingman's capabilities. Theres a significant interest from other countries," Carpendale added. He said the drone will be built in a facility at Wellcamp Airport, which is owned by Wagner Corp. Wagner chairman John Wagner said he hopes a defense and aerospace precinct at the airport will attract more companies in similar fields. The project is expected to create 300 jobs during construction of the facility and 70 ongoing operational and production positions. Queensland State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the announcement was fantastic news and represents the first time Boeing has set up a facility of its type outside North America. A film showing about two brothers who are at risk of being deported, and a discussion with the documentarys director, highlights Delta Colleges Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration. A public showing of the film, American Exile, will take place at 11:30 a.m. Oct. 26, followed by a discussion with John Valadez, the films director, producer and writer. The event will take place in the Lecture Theater on the main campus and online via Zoom. Registration is required at go.delta.edu/americanexile. ELKO, Nev. (AP) The largest school district in northeast Nevada is requiring students to wear face coverings at most of its campuses, now that they are dealing with outbreaks of COVID-19. Three elementary schools in Elko and one in Spring Creek were the latest to report an increase in positive cases and activate mask requirements, the Elko Daily Free Press reported Thursday. The move brings the number of Elko County School District campuses with mask mandates to at least 13. A district statement said keeping schools open for in-person learning remains the top priority and asked community support for mandated mitigation efforts, which remain in place for 28 days. High schools in Elko and Spring Creek and an intermediate school in Elko were the first to announce outbreaks Sept. 8 a little more than a week after the school year began for some 10,000 students at 19 schools. County lawmakers were applauded in August when they voted not to comply with a mask mandate Gov. Steve Sisolak re-imposed to stem the spread of the aggressive delta coronavirus variant. Elko County Commissioner Rex Steninger said at the time that businesses and the emotional and physical well-being of residents depended on refusing to wear masks. Elko County, with a population of about 55,000, has reported 82 deaths due to COVID-19 during the pandemic, and state health officials reported Wednesday that 22 people were hospitalized including four on ventilators to assist their breathing. One in three people in the county has been fully vaccinated far below the statewide figure of 54.7%. Test positivity, a measure of the number of people tested who are positive for COVID-19, topped 29% in Elko County, much higher than the statewide rate of 11%. The World Health Organization goal is 5% or less to relax coronavirus restrictions. In the Las Vegas area, home to most of the state population, 559 new coronavirus cases and 30 deaths were reported since Wednesday, continuing a recent trend of declining numbers. Almost two-thirds of Clark County's 2.3 million residents have received at least one shot of coronavirus vaccine, and 54% are fully vaccinated. The test positivity rate remained steady at 8.6%. The Nevada Hospital Association said staffing shortages are limiting patient transfers and admissions statewide. Some northern hospitals have open requests for additional staffing and equipment, which emergency managers have difficulty fulfilling, the association said in a weekly report issued Wednesday. It said that in Washoe County, including Reno and Sparks, the number of staffed beds have fallen from almost 1,800 in early August to 1,320 this week, and the number of intensive care beds has been reduced by nearly 29%, from 233 to 166. Our hospitals are very, very strained, Washoe County Health District Officer Kevin Dick said Wednesday. We have 90% of staffed hospital beds occupied now in Washoe County. We know hospitals are understaffed. Skilled nursing facilities they discharge to are understaffed," he said. U.S. Army veteran Amanda Ertman reported for duty at 8 a.m., Thursday, to start as the next Tuscola County Health Officer. When I read the criteria about the position, it was a lot like what I did while I was in the Army," Ertman said. "I was a service officer and a health officer. I like the idea that I will get to serve my community. Im really excited about that. After 16.5 years in the Army earning the rank of lieutenant, Ertman left the service March 3 to move back to her home county to put down roots. She is a Cass City and Caro native with family in the area. Ertman, 39, said she left the military due to personal reasons. The military was 100% wonderful for me hands down," she said. "My decision to leave had nothing to do with the military. It was an amazing experience that provided me with a lot of training. She initially started out attending Ferris State University, but decided at that time college life wasnt for her. Military service drew her interest when terrorists attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, and she decided to follow her brothers footsteps to join the service. She spent eight years working as a heavy construction engineer out of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. She did two tours of duty in Iraq with each one lasting about a year. There she helped clear explosives from transportation routes, and she served as a combat engineer and was a drill sergeant for two years. She also spent two years in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program, finishing in the top 10% of her class. She then set her sights on medical administration. Despite her medical military background, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is requiring her to obtain a master's degree in public health and have a health officer mentor for three years. According to Ann Hepfer, who is the current health officer for both the Huron County Health Department, and the Tuscola County Health Department, that is normal protocol, and there are few other health officers in the state that have those same conditions for employment. I feel she will do well," Hepfer said. "Her military experience will be a valuable asset. We have a very professional and experienced health department team that she will be working with. Also, Dr. Hamed will also always be available to help with medical direction and decisions. Hepfer will be retiring at the end of the month, and Ertman is her replacement in Tuscola County. Anything that I can do that will help better serve my community and do the job I dont have a problem with, Ertman said. I believe you should always keep learning. It doesnt bother me to get more education. She said she has looked into attending South Central University for a master's degree in public health, and it will take about 2.5 years to obtain. Im excited to serve the people in Tuscola County and I look forward to meeting everyone at the health department," Ertman said. "Ive heard nothing but good things about the department and the staff. And Ive heard nothing but good things about Ann, so I know I have some big shoes to fill. Ertman will work side-by-side with Hepfer, who will retire on Sept. 30. A portion of downtown Midland and other areas in the county remain without power this Thursday morning, Sept. 23, as rain continues to fall. The Midland Daily News office building is without power. There are 116 other Consumer's Energy customers without power in Midland County, per the company's outage map. Comments on the Daily News' Facebook page show some residents across the city experienced a power outage on Wednesday. The Tittabawassee River levels are just below 10 feet as of 10:15 a.m. Thursday, which is categorized as "low stage" in terms of flooding. A river is in "flood stage" when it reaches 24 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The Midland area has received barely an inch of rainfall this week. There is no need to be concerned about flooding, according to Danny Costello, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service. Costello said with most of the rainfall being in southeast Michigan this week, there is no need to be concerned in the Midland area. "We are not expecting the four lakes in the greater Midland area to go above flood stage," Costello said. "It should be fine." Local officials are also monitoring the rainfall forecasts. Gladwin County's Emergency Management Director Bob North said its standard process whenever the community experiences a weather related event. For us, this time, its been a pretty typical rainfall event, said North. (There is) nothing out of the ordinary. The waters are all where they are supposed to be and were doing fine. Midland Countys Emergency Management Coordinator echoed his remarks. This was a minor rain event for us, coordinator Jennifer Boyer said. Were not experiencing any issues. In the Detroit area, 3 inches of rain fell and some areas in southeast Michigan received 6 inches of rain, Costello said. As rain is predicted to continue this week, no hazardous weather is forecasted for the area. However, a wind advisory is in effect through Thursday night for Bay County, according to the National Weather Service. A flood warning has been issued for the Detroit area and other parts southeast Michigan. The flood warning is for the following rivers in Michigan: Huron River near Hamburg affecting Livingston County, Rouge River at Detroit affecting Wayne County, Clinton River near Clinton Township affecting Macomb County and Saginaw River at Saginaw affecting Saginaw and Bay Counties. PHILADELPHIA (AP) A federal appeals court has revived a Philadelphia newscasters lawsuit against Facebook over the unauthorized use of her image in advertisements for dating sites and sex-related products that ran on the site. A divided panel concluded that Facebook is not immune from Fox 29 host Karen Hepps claim that the advertisements violated her right to control her public image and reputation. U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman, writing for the 2-1 majority, said the suit falls under the narrow carveout for intellectual property claims under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The act largely protects internet providers from liability for third-party content. However, Hepp argued that she is a public figure whose image was used to sell what she called prurient goods and services on Facebook without permission or compensation. The case is being closely watched by interest groups on both sides, and could reach the U.S. Supreme Court given its split with a ruling on the issue from the Ninth U.S. Circuit in San Francisco. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free-speech groups filed an amicus brief in support of Facebook in the case, while the Screen Actors Guild filed one in support of Hepp. "In the twenty-five years since the Communications Decency Act was passed, there are precious few cases interpreting Section 230s intellectual property provision," Hardiman wrote. His panel concluded that the carveout includes not just federal intellectual property laws, as the Ninth Circuit had found, but state claims like Hepp's as well. Facebook is right to argue that 230 seeks to promote a free exchange of ideas on the internet, Hardiman wrote. (But) simply put, a state law can be a law pertaining to intellectual property, too. The case will now go back to the lower court, unless Facebook appeals or asks for a rehearing. Washington-based lawyer Craig Primus, who argued the case for Facebook, did not immediately return a call for comment. The panel agreed with a lower court that Hepp cannot pursue similar claims against Reddit or the photo-sharing site Imgur in Pennsylvania because theres no evidence it was part of their business activities in the state. Facebook chose not to challenge the jurisdictional issue, leaving itself to defend the suit. The photograph appears to have come from a security camera at a New York convenience store several years ago, when Hepp worked for WNYW-TV. She is currently a morning host for Fox29 in Philadelphia. Her lawyers believe it found its way to an online clearinghouse where images can be downloaded, sometimes for a fee. Because she wasnt paid, thats a violation of her right of publicity, lawyer Samuel Fineman said Thursday. She has a brand. Not only is she an anchor on Fox, but theres a monetary value in her face based on her social media following, Fineman said. The ads, he said, "don't fit with her persona and brand. ___ Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state Legislature on Wednesday, Sept. 22, agreed upon a budget proposal that includes language preventing health officials from enforcing mask mandates in schools and preventing state public agencies from enforcing vaccines on employees or customers. Under the nearly $70 billion budget deal that includes major investments in infrastructure, child care and higher education, there is language stipulating how far government-funded bodies can take COVID-19 restrictions, including requiring the vaccine a win for Republicans who have fought back against vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 mitigation efforts throughout the pandemic, according to MLive. The 1,000-page budget, also known as Senate Bill 82, states in one section that, "The director or local health officer shall not issue or enforce any orders or other directives that require an individual in this state who is under the age of 18 to wear a face mask or face covering." The bans on vaccine mandates and mask rules are nestled in what is known as "boilerplate language." The language is not intended to create new policies, but legislators do frequently attempt to insert objectives that may have stalled in the traditional legislative process, according to the Detroit Free Press. Whitmer is expected to sign the budget ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline, in time for it to take effect before the new fiscal year. However, the likelihood of this section surviving Whitmers line item veto is not high, but as of now, the language is in there. It would mean local health departments like Oakland and Wayne counties, which have issued mask mandates for K-12 schools, would need to rescind them, according to an article by clickondetroit.com. Instead, mask mandates would be left in the hands of school boards and districts. The governor has demonstrated that she believes that local health departments and local school boards should be involved in these decisions, said Oakland County Executive David Coulter, Click on Detroit reported. I agree with that and any opportunity to remove us from that would be a huge mistake, and I would certainly hope that she would not support that. More than half of all Michigan students attend a school with a mask mandate, but that means hundreds of thousands do not, according to the Detroit Free Press. Whitmer has previously said she is not considering any vaccine requirements or mask mandates. But, she has called on local health and education officials to enact orders requiring masks at school. The decision on whether to require masks in schools or not remains a topic of contention. For example, Eaton County commissioners and elected representatives wrote a letter "opposing tyrannical mandates" in schools that was issued Sept. 22. The letter calls for the immediate resignation of the health officer of the Barry-Eaton District Health Department, Colette Scrimger, because of "the false statements and misleading direction given in her Executive Order 2021-1 and Executive Order 2021-2." In addition, the letter calls for her to completely rescind her recent aforementioned orders for schools and students. LONDON (AP) The British government sought to ease concerns Thursday of a fuel crisis after oil giants BP and ExxonMobil-owned Esso warned they had to ration supplies and close some gas stations as a result of a truck driver shortage. BP said it was reducing gasoline and diesel deliveries and that a "handful of its stations were closed. ExxonMobil said the labor problem affected a small number of the businesses it operates with supermarket chain Tesco. The driver shortage is a very serious issue that needs urgent government and industry action to resolve; however, we urge people not to panic buy," trade body Logistics U.K. said. The logistics industry is resilient and has proven capable of supporting shops, families and businesses during COVID-19, border closures and the first stages of Brexit, and will continue to serve the needs of the nation," the association said. Industry and government officials worry the news will cause a rush of people speeding to fill up their vehicles, leading to lines and further supply bottlenecks. In September 2000, Britain came to a near-standstill for several days when truckers, aghast at the rising cost of fuel at the time, started blockading refineries, spurring motorists to head to the pump. Prime Minister Boris Johnsons office urged people not to panic buy fuel in response to the latest news and said the government was making changes to deal with the driver shortages. I think the first thing to say is that there is no shortage of fuel in the U.K., and people should continue to buy fuel as normal, Jamie Davies, a spokesman for the prime minister, said. We obviously recognize the challenges faced by the industry, and were taking steps to support them, Davies said, pointing to a new government initiative to accelerate the process by which drivers can get their trucking licenses. Fuel distribution is not the first industry to face issues from the shortage of drivers. A number of factors have contributed to the shortage, including an exodus of drivers from European Union countries as a result of Britains departure from the EU and the coronavirus pandemic. Among the many companies struggling to maintain stock and service levels are pub company JD Wetherspoon, whose founder was an ardent supporter of Brexit, and fast-food chains KFC, McDonalds and Nandos. Supermarkets have also reported a shortage of some goods, while vaccine company Seqirus said drivers shortages had delayed its deliveries of flu vaccines. ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) Croatian police have broken a gang that smuggled more than 100 migrants from Bosnia into Croatia and on toward Western Europe, and charged nine suspected members, officials said Thursday. The suspects are eight Croatian nationals and a Serb, police said in a statement. Seven have been arrested and two remain at large. Poor air quality is an ongoing issue in many Connecticut classrooms, and an airborne pandemic and climate change have only made matters worse. But local districts and municipalities say they cant afford to front the bill. At a press conference on Thursday, union leaders and association heads called on the state to improve school HVAC systems and air quality, including temperature, humidity and contaminants like mold. A recent survey of school teachers showed that was a major concern for most respondents. Speakers sought support from the General Assembly, and asked they approve a state spending plan using federal funds for HVAC repairs, and include air quality updates in state education department bond funding for school construction. Weve declared the problem just too hard to solve, and at the expense of the educators and the students, said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the states largest teachers union. We stand strong with our partners here today, asking that our politicians step up and take care of our students and our teachers and our communities. For many educators at the event, including Dias, the problem of poor climate is a personal one. My classroom environment was on the second floor of a building built in the 50s, said Dias, a Manchester High School math teacher. I had two windows that overlooked a blacktop roof that basically radiated heat back into the classroom. My classroom could easily become 95 degrees with 78 percent humidity. And that was incredibly uncomfortable, she said. But more importantly, its just not conducive to learning. Representatives for Gov. Ned Lamonts office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. State Rep. Kathleen McCarty, R-Waterford, who sits on the Education Committee, said she supports taking a look at the issue. I do believe that we need to have air quality looked at in all our schools, she said, and to be sure that every child has a healthy, safe environment in which to learn. Acknowledging these projects can take a long time, McCarty suggested they evaluate schools needing immediate attention, and put temporary fixes in place for the meantime. Then, she said, all parties can work collaboratively on long-term solutions and find a way to share the costs so that its reasonable. Fran Rabinowitz, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, recalled her own time as interim superintendent of Bridgeport Public Schools, where she had to make tough decisions as a result of uninhabitable air quality. I have let kids go home, half day, because the conditions for teaching and learning were just atrocious, said Rabinowitz. The heat in the buildings was so high that I deemed it to be unsafe for our children. Our children could ill afford to lose that learning time in school, she added. Both the teachers union and superintendents association conducted surveys to understand the scope of the problem. While the vast majority 97 percent of teacher respondents reported their schools HVAC and ventilation systems were substandard, just over a quarter said their concerns have been actively addressed. A random sample of nearly 1,000 educators were included in the union survey. The Connecticut Education Association said the teachers union does not have a precise dollar amount of how much it would cost to update all air quality systems in the state, according to Donald Williams, the executive director. In a poll of more than 100 school districts, superintendents reported 233 elementary schools and 42 high schools dont have air conditioning in the buildings. There are roughly 1,200 public schools in Connecticut. The Lamont administration conducted its own survey last winter to evaluate air quality and contaminant like mold, reported Connecticut Public Radio, but public record requests from the station have been denied. Since early August the state has declined to release results until its report is complete. Rabinowitz suggested some federal funds pouring into towns and school systems can be put toward air-quality projects, but the money isnt there to support them in full. Districts that have chosen to allocate Elementary and Secondary School Education Relief dollars into air quality assessments and updates have seen the line item swallow up out-sized shares of recovery funding. Much of New Britains $50 million in the latest round of schools funding round has been earmarked for building repairs and HVAC system upgrades, according to a press release circulated for the press conference. In Bridgeport, the district is in the process of installing air purification units in cafeterias and securing an order for classrooms and offices. The district is also in the design phase to put air conditioning in two schools and could replace units at another. And about $1.65 million in Stamford will be used on air quality projects at three schools through the city. Its not enough, and we cant depend on the local districts and local municipalities to do this alone, Rabinowitz said. We need state help. Other speakers said theyve heard the suggestion that updates should be paid for locally but called on the state to partner with them to assure air quality is satisfactory for everyone in school buildings. The statement ignores that in many towns across Connecticut, the expense of replacing an outdated or dysfunctional air quality system is more than the entire allotment the town receives in (American Rescue Plan) funding, said Joe DeLong, the executive director and CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. I am optimistic that it is on the General Assemblys radar, he added, and that we have a lot of supporters within the General Assembly who, while maybe not ready to commit to exactly what the solution is, believe that its a very real issue and want to maybe be involved in. At the local level, Michelle Embree Ku, who sits on the Newtown school board, said a failure to adequately fund these projects outside of municipalities could lead to inequities from town-to-town. I worry that without the state and federal support, there will be disparities in whether towns and cities can garner the support from taxpayers and locally elected officials needed to address these long-term issues in all of our schools, she said. BRIDGEPORT It is not a formal federal takeover, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is assigning staff to work more closely with officials at the citys failing public housing authority to improve the situation there. The authority, named Park City Communities, provides units for 9,500 low-income tenants. Seven years after designating the authority as troubled because of poor management, finances and building upkeep, HUD on Aug. 19 notified Bridgeport's executive director for the past year, Jillian Baldwin, via letter that her agency was in substantial default of its recovery plan. Any federal public housing entity rated below 60 on HUDs annual performance assessment scale of 100 is deemed troubled and given two years to shed that label. Bridgeports authority, which scored a 56 rating in December 2014, currently has an even worse rating of 48. Despite HUDs long history of cooperatively and comprehensively engaging with BHA (the Bridgeport Housing Authority) ... BHA has repeatedly failed to fix the systemic issues of its failing public housing ... programs, reads the letter. The performance of its public housing program has not recovered, and its ... designation has remained troubled. While HUD already had employees working with Bridgeport, Rhonda Siciliano, a HUD spokesperson, told Hearst Connecticut Media in a statement that as a result of the substantial default classification, HUD will assign a remediation monitor and team who will work closely with BHA to take necessary steps to ensure decent and safe housing for residents. Siciliano also emphasized, HUD is not proposing to take possession of BHA at this time. It is expected that residents will not be directly impacted by declaring BHA in default. Baldwin, hired in spring 2020 following a national search, in a subsequent interview Thursday argued the situation is not as dire as it may initially seem based on HUDs letter from last month. Baldwin said HUD not long after she began work in June of last year had made her aware Bridgeport was facing default, though the formal letter did not arrive until a year later. Within that period of time, Baldwin said, she, her staff and the mayoral-appointed authority board did what they could to make further improvements. There were 141 recovery action items that had to take place to bring the agency out of troubled status and monitoring from HUD, Baldwin said. That was seven years ago. When I came here in 2020 ... 61 (action items) remained open. And since then, Baldwin said, that figure has further been reduced to 26 something confirmed in HUDs August letter. Substantial progress has taken place in these last 12 months, Baldwin said, adding that likely prevented HUD from pursuing a more drastic recourse, such as taking over the authority or having other Connecticut low income housing organizations do so. Its not a federal takeover, echoed Cowlis Andrews, a board member who served as its chairman until early 2020. They could have gone with a takeover. They could have dissolved it (Park City Communities). ... They chose assistance for the authority because were headed in the right direction and they see us headed in the right direction. Both Andrews and Baldwin also sought to portray current management as cleaning up a years-old mess. This is a long, long story. This is not something any of us are surprised about, Baldwin said. Nearly two decades ago, in 2004, then-Mayor John Fabrizi upended the existing board with new members after HUD criticized the management. Jump ahead to 2015 when Mayor Joe Ganim, Fabrizis predecessor, is reelected after 12 years out of office. Ganim inherited an again-floundering Housing Authority from his immediate predecessor, Mayor Bill Finch, who was elected in 2007. During the summer of 2016 Ganim forced out both the authoritys executive director, George Lee Byers the third person to occupy the executive directors office since spring 2013 and, with HUDs backing, the board members he inherited. Until Baldwin was hired, James Slaughter served as interim director. Steve Nelson, another housing board member, said he did not understand why HUD waited until Baldwin was on board to issue the default designation. Why wait until now when we get a new executive director who has rolled up her sleeves and is addressing 100 percent of these issues that were already in existence? Nelson said. Siciliano in her statement Wednesday expressed HUDs faith in Baldwin and the current board, stating the federal agency was not seeking leadership changes in Bridgeport. HUD looks forward to our continued work with the current executive director. Additionally, governance by the Board of Commissioners has improved, Siciliano wrote. CADIZ, Ky. (AP) The bodies of a man and a woman he was suspected of kidnapping were found in a vehicle in central Kentucky after a brief police pursuit, authorities said. Kentucky State Police were investigating a report Wednesday that Tammy Beechum, 53, of Dover, Tennessee, was kidnapped from the parking lot of a business in Cadiz when troopers spotted the vehicle involved, the agency said in a statement. Tara ONeill / Hearst Connecticut Media MILFORD Details are scarce regarding an unspecified incident on Railroad Avenue in the city Tuesday night, but police say they continue to investigate. At about 6:45 a.m. Wednesday, police said detectives were on scene in the area of Railroad Avenue between High Street and Beardsley Avenue investigating an incident that took place Tuesday night. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) Gov. Tom Wolfs administration became so concerned about how three cases of neglect or abuse of older people were handled in Philadelphia that it is ordering improvements at an agency there, but officials are refusing to disclose what happened to those three people, or whether they are alive. The Aug. 6 letter by Wolf's Department of Aging secretary, Robert Torres, came weeks after staff at the state agency began raising alarms, including that caseworkers' caseloads were above the limit in state law. Torres' letter went to the president of the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, a nonprofit with a state contract to field and respond to calls about elder abuse and neglect in the city. A copy requested by The Associated Press was heavily redacted. The redactions left it unclear whether those three adults are alive or dead, and both the department and the nonprofit have refused to disclose what exactly happened to them. The AP is appealing the redactions. But an internal email in late June by the director of the department's protective services office may give details about one case. In it, Denise Getgen wrote to a colleague to ask why a PCA caseworker would find out that an older person is possibly sick and dehydrated, and incapacitated and then not act immediately to assess and/or address these serious medical concerns? Two of the cases had been terminated, or closed, while one remained active, Torres' letter said. Among other things, Torres ordered PCA to retrain its staff on medical risk and intervention and write a policy on when caseworkers must see potential victims in person and on what to do when a caseworker cant get in touch with a potential victim. The Philadelphia Corporation for Aging is one of 52 local agencies across Pennsylvania, some of which are county-run while others are nonprofits, that field calls about elder abuse or neglect. They employ caseworkers to investigate and coordinate with doctors, service providers and if necessary, law enforcement. In recent years, the number of such calls have risen, according to state data. Most calls involve an elderly person who lives alone or with a family member or caregiver. Poverty is often a factor. Philadelphia has been one of the lowest-rated agencies in the departments stoplight-colored rating system for grading county-based agencies after state inspectors periodically review a sample of cases. The department doesn't publicly post those ratings, but has provided them upon request by the AP. Najja Orr, PCA's president, said in an interview Wednesday that the pandemic has worsened long-standing difficulties in recruiting people to do the demanding job of a caseworker. PCA's biggest challenge over the past few months has been staffing, while hot temperatures made the summer a trying stretch, as Philadelphia saw three heat advisories, Orr said. The agency is working to hire more caseworkers, satisfy Torres' requests and follow state laws, Orr said, even as he acknowledged that caseworkers are struggling to balance large caseloads. Our goal is to make sure that we hone in on those areas and to try to identify the areas that theyd like us to strengthen and then work very collaboratively, closely with them, Orr said. Torres' Aug. 6 letter is one of the department's starkest warnings in recent years to any of the county-based agencies it oversees. In it, Torres said the cases are very concerning and that the letter is a formal notification of non-compliance. The Department requires assurances that sufficient and appropriate actions are being taken to protect older adults from all types of abuse and that responsive, quality protective services are being delivered in Philadelphia County, Torres wrote. Should a county-level agency fall short, Pennsylvania reserves the right to take over the task, or fire it and hire some other agency. It has never done that. Asked what it would take to consider firing PCA, Torres said he hopes it won't come to that. A transition could be complicated and he believes PCA's leadership is committed to improving, Torres said. I think its important that Philadelphia Corporation knows Philadelphia," Torres said. "And I want to do the best we can to help prop them up and get them through this situation." For weeks before Torres' letter, department staff had been raising an alarm about what they were seeing in Philadelphia, according to internal emails released to the AP under a Right-to-Know Law request. Some emails were heavily redacted. On May 3, Getgen, director of the department's protective services office, emailed PCA officials to tell them that she did not understand why we are still finding cases like this (incomplete investigation, incomplete documentation, gaps of time between investigative activities, etc.)," despite repeated state interventions. Getgen told Torres on May 19 that, I continue to have serious concerns about the performance" of PCA. A couple of days later she told Orr that many PCA caseworkers had well over 30 active cases, the limit in state law. On June 29, she alerted Torres to two very recent and concerning cases at PCA, although the details and outcome of those cases was not disclosed. ___ Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter. If you are in the military, there is no doubt you have heard the term "zero tolerance" when it comes to the topic of drugs. To be fair, this is a justified rule and policy. If you are going to be entrusted with protecting and serving our nation, then there is an expectation that you are not doing it while under the influence of any illicit substances. As such, service members -- from Recruit to General -- are regularly tested for drugs to prove they are operating in their best physical and mental condition. With this firm stance and policy surrounding drug usage and testing, many service members may think that if their results come back positive, they will automatically face the consequences and have their careers severely damaged. That's not always the case. The consequences for a positive drug test can range from administrative separation to court-martial, charges which can be debilitating to your career. They also can depend on when it happens in your career. Failing a drug test does not have to mean your career is over. There are many ways to advocate for yourself should your test come back positive. Knowing how to effectively advocate in this situation is the difference between facing an adverse separation and maintaining your career. Consequences of a Failed Military Drug Test Generally speaking, applicants to the military are able to retake a failed drug test when at a Military Entry Processing Station (MEPS). Depending on the branch of service, recruits who test positive for drugs may be able to reapply 90 days after their previous test. However, should you fail the second test, you can be barred from serving in any branch of the military going forward. For active-duty service members, they are not given that second opportunity. If they do test positive, administrative and disciplinary action will be forthcoming. Depending on which type of drug returned a positive result, the consequences could be more serious. Throughout much of this process, service members may not be assigned a free military defense counsel until it's too late. How To Fight Back After a Failed Military Drug Test Nevertheless, a failed drug test does not mean it's over. You often hear about the "zero tolerance" and how compliance is mandatory. However, it is mandatory processing, not mandatory separation. There are many ways to challenge these allegedly positive tests. You can challenge the way the sample is collected, the way it was handled, and the way it was tested. The collection process is detailed, and the testing procedure is scientific. I have seen many cases where samples get mislabeled or mishandled, which can lead to questions about the accuracy of the results. With your career on the line, you should be sure the process was done correctly. Another way to fight back would be if you could prove you unknowingly ingested the drug. If you innocently ingested a substance (which can happen in a variety of ways especially in this day and age), then you are not guilty. Sure, your test was positive, but did you intentionally use that drug? You need to force the government to prove that you did and not just accept it based on a positive result. It is Never too Early to Be Prepared As with most careers, drug usage is always something to be conscious of since the consequences can be catastrophic. This is doubly so in the military, as the consequences of a failed drug test will affect you even after your time in the service. Negative characterizations of service will follow you forever. Even if the odds may seem impossible, it's worth it to know how to fight a positive drug test so you can best protect your reputation and military career. Don't give up. Marc T. Napolitana, is an Associate with Tully Rinckey PLLC's Washington, D.C. office, where he practices in support of clients needing representation in Military Law and National Security Law. Marc brings his extensive legal experience to Tully Rinckey from the United States Marine Corps and two private law firms. The Pentagon said Wednesday its first set of military-wide sexual assault reforms under Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, including new special victims prosecutors, will take until 2027 to fully complete. The newly unveiled plans would create a full-time and specialized workforce inside the military focused on preventing sexual assault, as well as adding response coordinators and victim advocates, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told reporters during a briefing Wednesday. These are the department's highest-priority changes -- Hicks called them the foundation of the military's latest effort to deal with what has been described for years as an epidemic of sexual assault among the military services. Congress, frustrated by years of no progress, is moving toward changes of the military justice system this year to help victims. Legislation spearheaded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that was added into the Senates version of the annual defense authorization bill would remove commanders from decisions on felony cases, including rape and sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, child endangerment, child pornography, and negligent homicide. The House version of the defense bill would remove commanders on cases of special victim offenses, a category that includes sexual assault, sexual harassment, and all offenses against a child under the age of 18, among others, according to the House Armed Services Committee summary. Pentagon officials, including Hicks, have described concerns about removing commanders from the justice process for crimes besides sexual assault. Hicks said the changes are set to "deal a fundamental blow" to the stubbornly growing or, at best, unchanging number of sexual assaults among troops over the past decade. An annual report by the Pentagon in May found 6,290 reports of sexual assault in fiscal 2020, up 1% from the prior year. Read Next: VA Will Keep Paying Caregiver Benefits During Review That Could Cut Off One-Third of Enrolled 9/11 Vets Adding the specialized workforce can be done more quickly within the active-duty force; Hicks said she expects significant progress there over the next two years. But the changes are unlikely to be completed within the National Guard and reserve forces for six years, she added. "The DoD efforts in this space will be the largest ever attempted. No university, no major institution is at our scale," Hicks said. "We want to move fast, but we want to make sure these changes last and we build back that trust." President Joe Biden ordered an independent review earlier this year and in July backed results that called for removing sexual assault prosecutions from the military chain of command, a proposal that had been opposed by the Pentagon previously and debated for years on Capitol Hill. "We need concrete actions that fundamentally change the way we handle military sexual assault and that make it clear that these crimes will not be minimized or dismissed," Biden said in a July statement. Commanders can intervene in the criminal prosecution of sexual assaults under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and critics say that has allowed perpetrators to avoid punishment and eroded trust among victims. In July, Austin supported removing the cases from the chain of command -- a sea change making it almost certain that new legislation will pass Congress -- and all 82 recommendations from the independent review commission ordered by Biden. Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct what is included in legislation currently being considered by the House and Senate. -- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten. Related: Sexual Assault Prosecutions Should Change in 2023, Commission Recommends Two Afghan evacuees who were living at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin have been arrested in unrelated cases. One was charged with crimes against minors, the other with assaulting his wife, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. Bahrullah Noori, 20, has been indicted on four charges that allege he engaged in sexual acts with minors. According to court documents, Noori touched the genitals of one victim in three separate instances, once using force, in the barracks and bathroom at Fort McCoy. The indictment also alleges that he tried to engage in an unspecified sexual act with another minor victim. According to court documents, the victims were between 12 and 16 years old. A gender was not given for either. In the other case, Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, allegedly assaulted and strangled his wife on Sept. 7. The woman, who is also an Afghan refugee and is identified only by initials in court papers, reported the alleged assault to soldiers on base, who then moved her to an all-female barracks. The criminal complaint says that the woman told soldiers that her husband "beat me many times in Afghanistan to the point I lost vision in both eyes." Read Next: Soldier's Body Recovered from Reservoir After Dive Training Death "She stated that she had been the victim of hitting, strangulation, verbal abuse as well as rape since arriving to Fort McCoy at the hands of Mohammad Imaad," the complaint says. At one point, the woman told service members that she was concerned for the safety of her mother, who was living in an all-female barracks on base. Soldiers detained Imaad just outside the mother's room, court documents say. Both men have been arraigned and are being detained at the Dane County Jail, according to the Justice Department. The incidents appear to be the first instances of significant crimes on U.S. soil by any of the more than 60,000 Afghan evacuees, many of whom worked with U.S. service members in Afghanistan, who are making their way into the country. The Department of Defense has, in the past, dealt with instances of child sexual abuse perpetrated by Afghan people who worked closely with U.S. forces. A 2017 Inspector General report found that troops were effectively told to ignore any child sexual abuse they encountered. "DoD cultural-awareness training for U.S. personnel deploying to Afghanistan and two Human Terrain System Reports identified child sexual abuse as a culturally accepted practice in Afghanistan," the report said. Meanwhile, a 2018 UN report noted that violence against women had been widespread throughout Afghanistan, notwithstanding the Governments concrete efforts to criminalise these practices and establish measures for accountability. The UN report noted that Afghanistan had an underlying cultural norm that sexual and domestic violence were private family matters and, as a result, reporting of incidents was rare. The report also concluded that that the vast majority of murder and honour killings of women resulted in impunity for the perpetrator. News of the arrests comes amid broader concerns for the health and safety of the refugees at Fort McCoy. John Kirby, the Department of Defense's chief spokesman, said that officials are aware of reports that refugees lack food and clothing, as well as alleged harassment of women by former Afghan soldiers. "I know of no specific request today to conduct an investigation, but the secretary is certainly mindful of the reports," Kirby said Wednesday. "We're certainly aware of these reports ... and we take it very, very seriously." U.S. Reps. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., have called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to investigate possible mistreatment or neglect at Fort McCoy. If convicted, Noori faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charge alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other charges, according to the Justice Department. Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years. -- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin. Related: Waiting in America: The End of a Soldier's Odyssey Helping Evacuate an Afghan Ally TAIPEI, Taiwan China sent 24 fighter jets toward Taiwan in a large display of force Thursday, after the self-governing island announced its intention to join an 11-nation Pacific trade group that China has also applied to join. China's People's Liberation Army flew fighter jets toward Taiwan twice on Thursday, once in the morning with 19 planes, and once in the afternoon with five more. Taiwan deployed air patrol forces in response to the Chinese jets and tracked them on its air defense systems, the islands Defense Ministry said in a statement. The jets the morning flight, some of which flew in a long L-shaped path, were 12 J-16 and two J-11s, as well as bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft. Later in the day, China sent 2 J-16 and J-11 planes as well as an early warning aircraft. China has sent fighter jets toward Taiwan on an almost daily basis this past year. It stepped up its military harassment of the self-ruled island and has sent large displays of fighter jets after political events which it views as interfering with its sovereignty. Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949, but China continues to claim Taiwan as part of its territory. Beijing opposes Taiwans involvement in international organizations. Taiwan announced Thursday that it applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, setting up another potential clash with Beijing. Chinas military sent 18 planes toward Taiwan last year when a top U.S. diplomat visited the island and met with officials there. In June, it sent 28 warplanes after leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations issued a statement calling for a peaceful resolution of cross-Taiwan Strait issues. Multiple news outlets on Thursday reported that an active shooter was on the loose in Fort Meade, Maryland, and had left a trail of bodies. The problem: There was no shooter, but the news outlets hadn't fabricated the story. Troops at Fort Meade were conducting an active shooter drill, a common training event at military installations. These events usually have a series of role players: a shooter for service members and law enforcement to engage; victims and medical teams to care for them; and fake reporters to give public affairs teams a stress test with insistent questions and eventually a press conference on the day's events. But when Fort Meade public affairs posted on social media about an active shooter, reporters called the installation to figure out what was going on. One Facebook post on the base's verified page said: "Exercise Exercise Exercise-- Reports of an active shooter, please shelter in place. We will provide more information as it becomes available. Exercise Exercise Exercise" Read Next: Soldier's Body Recovered from Reservoir After Dive Training Death When real reporters called the base, public affairs officials thought they were role players and part of the simulation and gave them information about a fake crisis. "Next time this happens, I guarantee you I'm asking my staff if this is a real reporter," Chad Jones, director of public affairs at Fort Meade, told Military.com in an interview following the incident. Jones said public affairs officials are supposed to think up crisis-related posts for Facebook during the training and go through some of their playbooks for social media announcements. But he added that he didn't make it clear to staff not to actually publish posts about fictional events, which could be interpreted by some as real. The base did make a social media post Monday about the upcoming drill. "It was my fault," Jones said. "I don't think anyone should get in trouble; they all did what they thought they were supposed to do." News outlets later updated their stories, when public affairs officials with Fort Meade told them they had mistakenly issued fabricated information. "No one from the exercise knew it was a reporter [on the phone]," Jones said. He said journalism role players often use fake names but claim to be with real news outlets, such as Military.com, during training, something he said needs to be reexamined. When public affairs officials answered their phones during the training, they began the conversations by saying "exercise, exercise, exercise," to indicate they were in the middle of a simulation, Jones explained. While that's standard procedure, public affairs officials did not verify that the people on the phone knew what "exercise" meant or whether the reporters on the calls were real. "What should have happened is noting a real world reporter was calling about the exercise, and [we should] better identify a notional reporter," Jones said. When asked whether any disciplinary actions should be taken, Jones said he doesn't believe anyone should be fired and that the errors are instead an opportunity to tweak public affairs training. He added that he has "not gotten anything negative" from the Pentagon and officials seem understanding of the snafus. "I explained to my leadership what happened," Jones said. "Obviously, nobody is happy about what happened. We're not running from it." Fort Meade is the home of the Defense Information School, or DINFOS, which trains all public affairs officials for the Defense Department. -- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon. Related: Active-Shooter Training at Wright-Patterson Ends in Lockdown After 911 Call The coronavirus pandemic exposed flaws in the military's "fragmented approach" to moving troops' household goods and underscored the need to finally outsource management of the moves to a private company, the nominee to head U.S. Transportation Command said Thursday. The command had to keep more than 900 companies updated on shifting health protection policies as they sent movers into military homes to pack or unload belongings amid COVID-19 outbreaks, Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a confirmation hearing. "Frankly, what we learned in COVID was it really exacerbated the flaws that are in the current contract," Van Ovost said. A plan to shift military management of those companies and service members' permanent change of station, or PCS, moves to a private company, or consortium, has been in the works for years, following widespread troop dissatisfaction. But a final contract remains stymied after bidders protested the initial awarding of a $19.9 billion contract last year. Transportation Command awarded what it calls the Global Household Goods contract to American Roll-On Roll-Off Carrier, or ARC, of New Jersey in April 2020. But after competing bidders filed protests, the Government Accountability Office last October sustained several of the protesters' allegations, negated the contract, and sent it back to the command. Now, the finalized contract is not expected until the end of October, at the earliest. The overhaul could affect the hundreds of thousands of service members and their families who are given orders to move to new duty stations each year. Read Next: 'I Never Left Anybody' -- Fighting for Veterans Left Behind by the Country They Served If confirmed, Van Ovost would head up one of the Defense Department's 11 combatant commands and provide a wide array of mobility services to the others, including moving troops and equipment. The confirmation hearing appeared to go smoothly, with no indications from senators that her nomination could be imperiled. The general is currently head of Air Mobility Command and would be the first woman ever to lead Transportation Command. Van Ovost testified that making PCSing easy and efficient for families is a key quality-of-life issue, and said the military needs to rein in its scattershot method of hiring companies to carry out those moves. The Defense Department's 39 regional shipping offices hire moving companies on a shipment-by-shipment basis without formal contracts, she said. Therefore, it can't hold them accountable when personal items are lost or broken, or for other poor performance. The military's current system also makes it hard to use movers' capacity efficiently and keeps it from taking advantage of modern technology, she said. But shifting to a single, multi-year contract with a company to manage moves will make it easier to adopt up-to-date tech and hold movers accountable when necessary, Van Ovost added. Recent reports of moving companies experiencing labor shortages in areas with high military populations underscore the problems with the current system and the need to move to an official long-term contract, she said. If the contract is signed within the next few weeks, the winning company likely would take over managing moves sometime in 2022. -- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey. Related: Outsourced Military Moves Are on Hold Again Thanks to a $20 Billion Contract Cancellation The United States is open to discussing the possibility of formally ending the Korean War in an effort to achieve "the complete denuclearization of the peninsula," the Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. "The United States remains committed to achieving lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea," John Kirby told reporters during a press briefing. "We continue to seek engagement with [North Korea] to address a variety of issues." Kirby added that "we're open to a discussion about an end of war declaration," but qualified his remarks by noting that the ultimate goal is to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons. "We know that this is a complex issue, and we're committed to supporting the role of our diplomats in having that kind of dialogue going forward," he said. Although the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, the U.S. and South Korea technically remain at war with communist North Korea. Wartime hostilities have ended but the North is still subjected to international sanctions due to its development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons programs. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has floated the idea of formally ending the conflict throughout his tenure. Most recently, Moon renewed his call for the armistice signatories to "come together and declare that the war on the Korean Peninsula is over" during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. "When the parties involved in the Korean War stand together and proclaim an end to the war, I believe we can make irreversible progress in denuclearization and usher in an era of complete peace," he said in his speech. Moon also broached the subject during a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018, when the two leaders signed a document to "declare the end of war" that same year. Formally ending the Korean War has led to some concerns among policy-watchers, particularly in light of Pyongyang's continued development of its weapons programs. It test-fired cruise missiles and ballistic missiles this month, and evidence it restarted its nuclear reactor also came to light in August. The "biggest beneficiary" to the war's end would be Moon and his political party, according to professor Sung-Yoon Lee of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "All these illusory, very promising signs would boost Moon Jae-in and his supporters' approval rating," Lee told Stars and Stripes in a phone interview Thursday. Lee cautioned that formally ending the war would be "basically meaningless to the United States," adding that it may be "playing right into Kim Jong Un's game plan." Lee said an end-of-war declaration and a possible peace treaty with North Korea would call into question the legitimacy of the United Nations Command and the presence of American troops in South Korea. Roughly 28,500 U.S. service members are stationed on the peninsula to "deter aggression" and defend South Korea, ostensibly from the North, according to a statement from U.S. Forces Korea's website. "Why would North Korea be so interested in another paper agreement when it has violated ... virtually every single major international agreement it's signed?" Lee said. The man who found the Titanic did so with help from the US Navy, and he got that much needed support in part by convincing the Navy that finding the shipwreck would "drive the Soviets crazy," renowned explorer Robert Ballard reveals in the new book "Into The Deep," which was co-written with investigative reporter Christopher Drew. Over the course of his celebrated career, Ballard has discovered the wrecks of the Nazi battleship Bismarck, the US aircraft carrier Yorktown, and US patrol torpedo boat PT-109 (commanded by then Lt. j.g. John F. Kennedy). But his most recognizable discovery was the British passenger ship Titanic that sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, ending more than 1,500 lives. That famous discovery in September 1985 was backed by the US Navy, which offered its support for two reasons. The search for the Titanic was a cover for a top secret Navy mission involving the use of undersea systems to explore two submarine wrecks. And Ballard convinced the service his discovery would play into a game of psychological warfare with the Soviets during the later years of the Cold War, "Into the Deep" explains. Navy Vice Adm. Ronald Thunman, a top submarine officer, initially told Ballard that his dream of finding the Titanic was crazy, but he ultimately agreed to let the persistent explorer piggyback on the Navy mission and pursue the lost passenger ship using any time and funds that remained after looking into the two wrecks. "You can do whatever you want, but you gotta do it within the time and within the money, and that's it," Ballard recalled the officer saying. The search for the Titanic became cover for the submarine investigation. Although he had been given something of a green light to look for the Titanic from Thunman, Ballard wanted the support of Navy Secretary John Lehman. He decided to leverage the secretary and President Ronald Reagan's thinking on psychological warfare to gain that endorsement as well. Both Reagan and Lehman were eager to confront the Soviets more aggressively, and part of that included rattling them psychologically, specifically making them believe the US had capabilities beyond their own. Ballard, then a Navy reservist, invited Lehman, who had been behind Ballard since a talk he did on underwater terrain warfare, on an underwater excursion in an exploration and research submersible looking at what Ballard described as "the undersea battlefield." Thousands of feet beneath the surface, he repeatedly made his pitch to search for the Titanic. "The president wants to really play with the Soviets' minds," Ballard recalled telling the Navy secretary in a paraphrased conversation presented in his memoir, "to make them think we can do far more than we're capable of." "Let me find Titanic," the explorer said, explaining that with the gear in his possession, specifically a few robotic submersibles, he was sure he could find it in two weeks. "I'll find it, and then we'll go public," Ballard told Lehman, "Show videos from the robots roaming through the ballrooms. It will drive the Soviets crazy. They'll think that if we're willing to publicize this capability, imagine what our Navy is doing in secret." Lehman agreed to pass the recommendation on to Reagan, who, according to the Navy secretary, responded: "Absolutely, let's do it." 'May God bless these found souls' The hunt for the passenger ship Titanic was the public face of a secret Navy mission to explore and take photos of the wrecks of the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, which sank with all hands in 1963 and 1968 respectively. They were among the deadliest submarine disasters and ones the US Navy studied intensively for answers. Ballard returned to active-duty status temporarily so that he could be read into classified material for the missions. He wrote in his book that "the Navy's investigation was my real mission." Searching for the Titanic, while a priority and long-time dream for Ballard, came second. Sailing aboard the research vessel R/V Knorr, Ballard obscured the true mission from members of his crew. "Given the highly classified nature of the mission, the Navy would only let me tell those with a need-to-know status what was really happening," he explained. "We told everyone we were testing equipment for the Navy." "I wanted to do a bang-up job for the Navy, but I was also constantly thinking about how to find Titanic," Ballard wrote. As it turned out, the investigation into the submarine wrecks would prove beneficial to finding the Titanic. Both the Thresher and Scorpion had debris trails almost a mile long. While some believed Titanic sank in one piece, there had been eyewitness accounts from survivors that it broke apart, which would leave a debris trail like the submarines that imploded. "I visualized the ship not just breaking in two but falling to the bottom, with the heaviest pieces heading straight down and lighter ones drifting with the current, just as I had seen with Scorpion and Thresher," Ballard wrote. "It played out like a film in my head, and, all of a sudden, it was clear as a bell," he said. "I shouldn't be searching for the ship. I should be searching for the debris trail. A mile-long trail would be easier to find than 833-foot ship." Ballard and his team arrived in the area where the Titanic was believed to have sunk toward the end of August 1985 and deployed Argo, a ship-towed video camera sled designed to operate in deep waters that had just explored the wrecks of the Thresher and Scorpion, to scan the ocean floor. Late one night after several days of searching for the Titanic, the team came upon the debris field, discovering a large metal cylinder over 15 feet in diameter. "There it was, one of 29 boilers that had created steam for Titanic's engines," Ballard wrote in his book. "It was a signature piece. We'd found the debris field, about 12,500 feet down. Bull's-eye!" Using the Knorr's onboard sonar, Ballard and his team detected a 100-foot-tall object to the north of their position. They relocated to the place the object was detected and deployed Argo to scan what turned out to be the wreckage of Titanic. "We were drifting slowly. Titanic was unveiling herself to us," Ballard said of the moment the ship's hull came into view. "No one was blinking. Our eyes were drying out, because we were not going to close them for a nanosecond. It was an 'Oh my God!' kind of moment." As the submersible passed over the hull, "everyone exploded," he said. "We'd done it." In written notes on the place where Titanic sank, Ballard wrote: "It is a quiet and peaceful and fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest. May it forever remain that way, and may God bless these found souls.' Read the original article on Business Insider. WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs is prioritizing firearm safety as a way to prevent veteran suicides, arguing the method that veterans use should be a focus along with the underlying reasons that drive them to take their own lives. Veterans continue to use firearms more than any other means of suicide. According to a VA report released earlier this month, firearms were used in 69.9% of veteran suicides in 2018 and 70.2% in 2019. That's higher than the rest of the U.S. population, in which firearms were used in about 50% of suicides. "What you can do in suicide prevention is yes, explore the risks, preventative factors, explore policy and interventions, but as we're exploring the 'whys' of suicide, don't forget the 'how,'" said Matthew Miller, executive director of the VA's suicide prevention program. "When the 'how' is 70% of the time explained by one thing -- a firearm -- that suggests it's a very important area to focus on." Miller, speaking Wednesday to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, said the VA was "addressing this issue aggressively" by teaching lethal means safety, which is a voluntary action that veterans can take to reduce their suicide risk by limiting their access to firearms. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., said he supported the idea of safe storage of weapons, but he voiced concerns about any potential restrictions placed on veterans owning firearms. "The mandated removal or restrictions on firearms by veterans who seek help would be very counter-productive and, quite frankly, would be completely unacceptable to many members of this committee," Rosendale said. "I want to make sure where we're headed in order to address this problem without infringing on the rights of our veterans." Miller countered the VA was not considering any attempt to place restrictions on gun ownership. Citing studies, the VA said the time between someone deciding to attempt suicide and that person taking action is sometimes less than 10 minutes. The department is teaching veterans to store their guns locked and unloaded while not in use, Miller said. Ammunition should be stored separately. "Safety, in this context, is defined as time and space between the person, the firearm and ammunition during critical points in time," he said. "Ten to 20 minutes can be life-saving." Firearm safety was listed as the first priority in the VA's initiative "Suicide Prevention Now," which specifically targets veterans at high risk for suicide. In February 2020, the VA started advertisements about firearm safety. The department in October 2020 also started a training course on firearm safety that's required of all VA health care providers. The training teaches providers to counsel patients on firearm access and safe storage. By the beginning of August, 145,690 employees had completed the course. Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., argued Wednesday that the VA's efforts weren't enough. The department should require the training of all health care providers who interact with VA patients, she said. Underwood introduced the Lethal Means Safety Act earlier this year to require the training for private-sector doctors who are contracted with the VA to treat veterans. "My act expands the courses to ensure that anyone who regularly interacts with veterans are prepared to have a conversation that could save a veteran's life," Underwood said. Miller said the VA established a goal to extend the training to health care providers in the department's community care program. The VA is also considering a "preferred provider" system, in which certain private-sector doctors would be given a "preferred" status once they complete the firearm safety training. Rajeev Ramchand, a senior behavioral scientist at Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank, testified Wednesday. Citing a 2015 study, he said 45% of veterans owned at least one firearm, but less than 25% of the gun owners stored their firearms locked and unloaded. He suggested the VA collect better and more timely data about gun ownership among veterans and how veterans store their firearms. "Without timely data ... it will be impossible to know whether the [VA's] efforts are effective at changing veterans' firearm storage practices," Ramchand said. Strategy Analytics: Strong Cloud, 5G, Video and Device-as-a-Service Adoption Plans in France and Germany, Despite COVID-19 Known as Europe's economic engines, France and Germany have played an important role in leading the European Union through the COVID-19 crisis. Mobility has a leading position among companies' ICT priorities in France and Germany, according to End User Research carried out by Strategy Analytics (News - Alert) on the France and Germany Enterprise Mobility Market in Q2 and Q3 2021. In general, 37% and 42% of French and German companies respectively will increase IT budget between 1-5% in the next 2 years. COVID-19 has fueled Cloud budget, especially PaaS/IaaS, BI/data, EMM and mobile apps; other solutions French and German companies budgeted for include IoT, DaaS and Edge computing. "COVID-19 pandemic sparks explosive growth for video conferencing and Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) as well. Video conferencing usage has increased considerably since COVID-19. Microsoft (News - Alert) Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet are the top 3 conferencing software French and German companies currently use. As for DaaS, it has been earmarked as a critical area for many Digital Transformation projects and will provide a significant lift to the Corporate Liable device market as DaaS model allows devices to be managed in a unified way, simpler lifecycle management and provides more updated devices. In France and Germany, laptops, PCs and smartphones are often being deployed via a DaaS model. Microsoft, IBM (News - Alert) , Google, HP and Dell are the top DaaS providers chosen by French and German companies," said Gina Luk, Associate Director of Mobile Workforce Strategies at Strategy Analytics. Andrew Brown, Executive Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics added, "Furthermore, France and Germany are leading the adoption plans for 5G. In France, 41% of French companies plan to integrate 5G within the next year, while 28% have already integrated 5G within the last year. 12% have had 5G more than a year; while 35% of German businesses have already integrated 5G into their company, and 39% plan to integrate 5G within the next 1 year. Carriers are the key partners for 5G projects in France and Germany." Strategy Analytics interviewed more than 600 IT decision makers across 9 vertical markets in France and Germany. Respondents were required to be from key vertical markets, in current senior positions with influence on purchasing decisions for enterprise solutions. Specifically, this survey sought to identify trends, and the future direction enterprises plan to take, regarding their approach to mobile strategy and investment. For more survey findings, click here for the reports: France Enterprise Mobility Adoption and Trends 2021 Germany Enterprise Mobility Adoption and Trends 2021 US Enterprise Mobility Adoption and Trends 2021 is also available. A range of vertical market research will also be published. About Strategy Analytics Strategy Analytics, Inc. is a global leader in supporting companies across their planning lifecycle through a range of customized market research solutions. Our multi-discipline capabilities include industry research advisory services, customer insights, user experience design and innovation expertise, mobile consumer on-device tracking and business-to-business consulting competencies. With domain expertise in smart devices, connected cars, intelligent home, service providers, IoT, strategic components and media, Strategy Analytics can develop a solution to meet your specific planning need. For more information, visit us at www.strategyanalytics.com. For more information about Strategy Analytics Mobile Workforce Strategies: Click here View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005707/en/ In a rare action, Rahul Singh, information commissioner (IC) of Madhya Pradesh (MP) has issued an arrest warrant on 20th September against Dr Vikram Singh Verma, chief medical and health officer (CMHO) of Burhanpur district, who is also the public information officer (PIO). Mr Singh was irked by the four continuous years of defiance and non-compliance with orders of the state information commission (SIC). Dr Verma had earlier been issued a show-cause notice asking why disciplinary action should not be initiated against him. In 2009, the information commissioner from Arunachal Pradesh had issued the first such arrest warrant against a PIO. Dr Vikram Singh Verma and Akash Tripathi, commissioner of the directorate of health services of MP, are charged with disregarding their duties as PIO and showing blatant disregard to the orders of SIC. This historic action emanates from an RTI (Right to Information) application filed by Sadashiv Sonwane on 10 August 2017, seeking information on posting and appointment of drivers with the health department in Burhanpur district. When Dr Verma did not reply within the stipulated 30 days, Mr Sonwane filed a first appeal. On 7 October 2017, the first appellate authority (FAA) ordered Dr Verma to disclose the information; but the PIO refused to comply. Then on 22 March 2018, Mr Sonwane filed his second appeal with the SIC. Information commissioner Mr Singh says, The SIC, while hearing the case, issued numerous summons dated 18 October 2019, 29 November 2019, 21 September 2020, 2 November 2020, 16 December 2020 and 10 February 2021. However, the PIO failed to attend any proceedings or produce any document in compliance with the summons without providing any justifiable reasons or lawful excuse. Mr Singhs order also observes, (The) SIC had also directed the commissioner of health services on these dates to ensure the appearance of the PIO but having not ensured the compliance, the commissioner violated the rule 8 (4) of MP RTI Appeal and Fees Rule 2005. Finally, on 16 December 2020, SIC imposed a penalty of Rs25,000 on Dr Verma and asked the commissioner of health services in MP to recover the penalty amount from the CPIO if he fails to deposit the amount with the SIC within a month. The SIC had again, on consecutive dates, on 7th April, 7th June and 7 August 2021, asked the commissioner to deduct the penalty amount from the salary of the PIO and deposit it with the SIC. The commissioner did not do so. In what can be termed as scathing remarks on the defiant bureaucracy, Mr Singh in his order, stated, conduct and demeanour of the PIO and the commissioner clearly reflects apathetic disregard of the law passed by the Parliament for creating transparent and accountable governance. It is disheartening and disappointing to see officers, who are responsible and obligated to citizens under the RTI Act, are actively neglecting, violating, and obstructing the operation of the RTI Act, which is part of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) of the Constitution of India, Mr Singh further stated. Calling for strict action in this appeal, Mr Singh says, The SIC, as a statutory body established to promote and uphold the letter and spirit of the RTI Act, cannot remain a mute spectator to such blatant repeated violations of the RTI Act. If such violations are not addressed properly, it will create a mockery of the law and institutions established to uphold the law. Can the SIC actually arrest a PIO for non-compliance? Probably anticipating this question, Mr Singhs order cites specific rules from the Central RTI Act and Madhya Pradeshs rules to back his action. They are: Once the PIO violates Section 7 (1) of RTI Act 2005, by not providing information within 30 days of the RTI application, a penalty of Rs250 per day, not exceeding the maximum penalty of Rs25,000 shall be imposed guilty PIO under Section 20 of the Act. The PIO is expected to deposit the amount with the SIC within one month. As per Rule 8 (6)(3)(i) of MP RTI (Fees & Appeal) Rules, 2005, the PIO has been mandated to deposit the imposed penalty with the SIC within one month of the receipt of penalty order issued by the SIC. As per Rule 8 (6)(iii) of the MP RTI (Fees & Appeal) Rules, if the PIO fails to deposit the imposed penalty amount within the prescribed time limit, SIC shall report to the concerned disciplinary authority to take disciplinary action and ensure recovery of imposed penalty amount against the PIO. Section 19 (8)(a) of RTI Act says the commission has the power required by a public authority to take any such steps as may be necessary to secure compliance with the provisions of this Act. Rule 8 (4) and Section 19 (7) of RTI Act state that the order of the SIC shall be binding on the concerned officer. State IC Rahul Singh thus issued an arrest warrant under order XVI Rule 16 of Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) and Section 18(3) of RTI Act. He directed the deputy inspector general (DIG) of Indore division to execute the warrant to secure the personal attendance of Dr Vikram Singh before the SIC at 12noon on 5 October 2021 in court room No4. The warrant reads: Dr Vikram Singh shall give bail himself in the sum of Rs5,000 to attend before me on 11 October 2021, at 12noon; he may be released. Mr Singh has also directed the commissioner of the directorate of health services to ensure recovery of the penalty and initiate disciplinary action against Dr Verma within 15 days of the receipt of SIC order. Updated on 24 September 2021 at 4pm to include clarification from DICGC The Union government has announced that the Deposit Insurance & Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) would be paying a maximum of Rs5 lakh to depositors of 21 banks, including Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank and Gururaghvendra Sahakara Bank Niyamitha, within 90 days or by 29 December 2021. However, unlike all other cooperative banks that have gone into liquidation, PMC Bank is actually in the process of a revival and has many large depositors, including employees of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Many customers, who have well over Rs5 lakh deposited with PMC Bank and Gururaghvendra Sahakara Bank, are confused about the announcement. Does it mean that they can claim Rs5 lakh now and will still be entitled to the rest of their money if the PMC Bank achieves a turnaround under Centrum Financial Services Ltd (CFSL) along with Resilient Innovation Pvt Ltd? Some large depositors believe that accepting Rs5 lakh from the deposit insurance corporation would be considered a 'full and final settlement'. The finance ministry and RBI are silent on the matter, although they ought to have offered a complete explanation about why they have made an exception for PMC Bank, especially after granting in-principle approval to an acquirer. This is only the second time in the history of RBI that deposit insurance is being paid without liquidating the cooperative banks the previous time was also under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which made an exception for Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank of Gujarat, which went bust due to its involvement with scamster Ketan Parekh in 2001. While tabling the amendment in Lok Sabha, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said, (The) DICGC Bill is effective from now, but PMC Bank, and Guru Raghavendra Bank that are already under stress but which are not under moratorium, which may have administrator sitting and sorting the business out, even their depositors will benefit and get Rs5 lakh within 90 days. If the bank goes into liquidation, DICGC is liable to pay the liquidator the claim amount of each depositor up to Rs5 lakh within two months. However, suppose the bank is reconstructed or amalgamated or merged with another bank. In that case, DICGC pays the difference between the total amount of deposit or the limit of insurance cover in force at the time, whichever is less and the amount received by him under the reconstruction or amalgamation scheme. It is done within two months from the date of receipt of the claim list from the transferee bank or chief executive officer (CEO) of the insured or transferee bank, as the case may be. Bankers, as wells former senior officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), opined that depositors should accept the offer from DICGC and submit the form for willingness to the insured bank. G Jaganmohan Rao, former managing director (MD) of Bank Note Paper Mill India Pvt Ltd, who worked as principal chief general manager (PCGM) in the department of banking supervision of RBI, says, We do not know the terms and conditions of the deal between PMC Bank and Centrum Financial Services. If the bank has assets and the administrator thinks they have surplus money, they may prioritise depositors for emergency or medical expenses. However, only the RBI can clarify on this. All those involved in the PMC Bank resolution are not disclosing anything. Moneylife attempted to contact the CEO of PMC Bank and the RBI, but we have no clarity. A senior official from Centrum Financial replied to our message saying, We have no comment to offer here. According to Kaza Sudhakar, former MD of Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt Ltd and former PCGM in RBI, all deposits under one name will receive up to Rs5 lakh from DICGC. Under the DICGC rules, depositors who have deposits above this amount will be treated as unsecured creditors. However, since PMC Bank is not liquidated, depositors may get paid more money if and when RBI issues a notification. On 24 September 2019, RBI had imposed strict restrictions on the Mumbai-based Bank. PMC Bank was also barred from carrying out most of its routine business transactions, and depositors were restricted to withdraw only Rs1,000 from their accounts at that time. On 5 November 2019, the limit was increased to Rs50,000. In June last year, this limit was raised to Rs1 lakh, with which the central bank had said that more than 84% of the depositors of PMC Bank would be able to withdraw their entire account balance. Former banker Abhay Datar, who is also a counsellor at Moneylife Foundation and former managing committee member of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, says, Without waiting further, depositors of PMC Bank can at least receive maximum Rs5 lakh, including interest, from DICGC against their all deposits. This does not mean that depositors who have more than Rs5 lakh will not receive their money. They may receive, but it depends upon the deal between PMC Bank and Centrum Financial. As per the terms and conditions in this deal, depositors may receive their balance amount. Strangely, RBI has not provided any clarity on the deposits because several investors with large deposits are in dire need of money after the COVID pandemic, and they need to be told in no uncertain terms whether accepting the insurance money will compromise the rest of their money. Meanwhile, depositors need to know that even if they have multiple accounts with these banks, they will be aggregated and insurance cover is available up to Rs5 lakh in maximum. Suppose more than one deposit accounts, like savings, current, recurring or fixed deposits (FDs), are jointly held by individuals in one or more branches of a bank in which their names appear in the same order. In that case, balances held in all these accounts are aggregated, and DICGC would pay a maximum of Rs5 lakh. However, suppose individuals open more than one joint account in which their names are not in the same order. In that case, deposits held in these joint accounts are held in different capacities and rights. For such deposits, insurance cover will be available separately up to Rs5 lakh to every such joint account where the names appearing in different order or names are different. Further, the bank has the right to deduct its dues from the amount of deposits on the cut-off date. The deposit insurance is available after netting such dues. UPDATE In a clarification, the DICGC stated, "In terms of section 18 A (7) (a) of the Act, where the Reserve Bank finds it expedient in the interest of finalising a scheme of amalgamation or compromise or arrangement or reconstruction in respect of insured banks, the date on which the Corporation shall become liable to pay depositors of such insured banks may be extended by a period not exceeding ninety days. It is noted that in the case of the PMC Bank there may be a need to invoke the provisions of section 18 A (7) (a) of the Act. The revised date for submission of claims and the procedure to be followed in respect of payment of deposits in this bank will be communicated separately." This means the depositors of PMC Bank will have to wait for some more time to get their money back from the lender. September 23, 2021 Heads Roll As Biden Policies Move To The Right The Washington Post has a piece on the current deportation of Haitian migrants from the U.S. and how it is charged with racism. Charges of racism swirl as Haitian Americans, allies unite to protest Bidens border crisis One sentence in the piece reveals the supremacist thinking of its authors: Many in the Haitian American community also blame U.S. foreign policy for spurring Haitis humanitarian crisis, saying successive administrations have failed to nurture stable Haitian governments willing to embrace human rights and fight corruption, poverty and criminal gangs. No one is quoted in support of that delirious claim. It is not the task of U.S. administrations to "nurture stable Haitian governments" nor has it ever been its aim. The U.S. has in fact done the opposite for more than 100 years and everyone in the Haitian community knows that. Today its envoy to Haiti resigned over exactly that: A top U.S. envoy to Haiti tendered his resignation on Wednesday, citing the Biden administration's "inhumane" effort to expel hundreds of Haitian migrants to their home country, which is recovering from a deadly earthquake and plagued by political instability, widespread insecurity and crippling poverty. Ambassador Daniel Foote, who was chosen to be the U.S. special envoy to Haiti in July, called the Biden administration's policy in Haiti "deeply flawed," saying his recommendations were brushed aside. "I will not be associated with the United States['] inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life," Foote wrote in his resignation letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which was obtained by CBS News. Foote's resignation letter (also here) includes some words the State Department establishment does not like to hear: Haitians need immediate assistance to restore the governments ability to neutralize the gangs and restore order through the national police. They need a true agreement across society and political actors, with international support, to chart a timely path to the democratic selection of their next president and parliament. They need humanitarian assistance, money to deliver COVID vaccines and so many other things. But what our Haitian friends really want, and need, is the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering and favored candidates but with genuine support for that course. I do not believe that Haiti can enjoy stability until her citizens have the dignity of truly choosing their own leaders fairly and acceptably. Last week, the U.S.and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support by for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr.Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his political agreement over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society. The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner again is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences n o t only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere. The State Department responded aggressively: In a statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price pushed back sharply on Foote's assertion that his recommendations were dismissed out of hand, saying Foote "failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead." "For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false. I'm not going to parse the contents of his resignation letter, but I do want to emphasize that we have active policy debates in this administration on a number of issues. The role of the President's cabinet and his advisors is to provide the President with the best advice possible," Price said. "No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas." The Biden administration has been using Title 42, a public health authority first invoked under former President Donald Trump, to expel Haitian migrants in U.S. border custody without a court hearing or an asylum screening. We can chalk this up as another point where Biden follows Trump on foreign policy. To save its falling ratings the Biden administration is not only moving to a more hawkish position on immigration and foreign policies. It is also removing officials who are not hawkish enough. The Haiti move follows a day after the Pentagon removed a to nuclear policy official because she was opposing a more aggressive nuclear weapons policy: The Defense Department has removed a top political appointee in charge of nuclear policy from her position, prompting concern among disarmament advocates that the Pentagon is sidelining those with less hawkish views as the Biden administration develops its official policy on nuclear weapons. Top Pentagon officials asked Leonor Tomero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense, to resign from her post in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel matter. The shake-up comes as the Biden administration hammers out the details of its Nuclear Posture Review, a document that each administration has released since the 1990s to set out its nuclear weapons policy and strategy, and which the administration is expected to release early next year. The Arms Control Wonk is quoted with a truism: People wonder why we dont learn from failures like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason is simple: People who point out alternatives to current national security policies are systematically driven out of positions of authority, said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies. Firing her sends a clear message to everyone in the Pentagon that there is no tolerance for new ideas when it comes to our nuclear weapons policies. Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said in a tweet that Tomeros firing was not the first time the Defense Department deep state has reorganized a smart, competent person who poses commonsense [questions] that challenge the nuclear status quo out of office. It would have been impossible to remove Leonor Tomero, a political appointee, without the approval of the White House. Biden hopes that a move to the right will allow the Democrats to win the mid term elections. I believe that the strategy will fail. Posted by b on September 23, 2021 at 17:40 UTC | Permalink Comments Vaccinations keep people out of the hospitals. That was the message Thursday from Midland Health President/CEO Russell Meyers. Meyers pointed to what is taking place in El Paso, where 75.34 percent of residents 12 and older are fully vaccinated and 89.21 percent of those 65 and older are fully vaccinated, according to the Department of State Health Services. In Midland those numbers are 45.12 percent and 69.31 percent, respectively. Thirty percentage points more on our population is another 40,000 people that we need to get vaccinated, Meyers said. Midland Health has opened a mass vaccination/booster clinic from 2 to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the F. Marie Hall Outpatient Center (formerly west campus). They can handle around 300 people each day, and walk-ins are welcome, Meyers said. Meyers said growing the number of vaccinated people will result in low utilization rates in hospitals. He said the latest state statistics show 6 percent of hospital beds in the El Paso are used on COVID patients. That percentage in the region that includes Midland and Odessa is consistently over 15 percent and has been as high as 30 percent recently. The San Antonio Express-News recently reported El Paso is the first city in Texas to reach herd immunity levels. Herd immunity for any disease, according to Johns Hopkins, is When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protectionalso called population immunity, herd immunity or herd protectionto those who are not immune to the disease. It is debatable whether any community can reach herd immunity during a COVID pandemic and what the needed level of vaccination actually is because of the differences between COVID and other infectious diseases, including the unwillingness of people to receive vaccinations. Still, Meyers said Thursday that what is being experienced in El Paso shows vaccination works and that there's more and more evidence all the time that it keeps people out of the hospital and keeps people from dying. Right here in Texas, we have a couple of communities El Paso being at the top of the list where that fact is being proven. Things to know Earlier this month, the Rotary Club of Midland and the Midland West Rotary Club met to host the AC-130W Stinger II Gunship from Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico. The Gunship was open to the public on static display at AirSho. The crew met Rotarians and spoke to the club about the mission of the aircraft and the various roles each crewmember performs on their missions. They also provide information of the various missiles and guns the aircraft uses to support American ground personnel in a conflict. MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexico has so many drug lords to deal with that critics openly wondered Wednesday why the government has instead sought to lock up 31 academics, professors and scientists in the countrys harshest maximum security prison. The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has charged the university professors with violating a law that prevents members of an advisory board from receiving money from a government science fund. But that law was passed in 2019, and the scientists got the $2.5 million years earlier when it was apparently legal. The money was meant to be used to promote scientific discussions, and those involved have denied the funds were illegal or misused. A judge at the Altiplano prison denied prosecutors request for arrest warrants against the academics Wednesday. But the whole episode lent heft to accusations that Lopez Obradors government has sought to politicize academic life in Mexico. Enrique Graue, the Rector of Mexico's National Autonomous University, the country's largest, called the charges inconceivable and an absurdity. It doesn't help that Mexico's Attorney General, Alejandro Gertz Manero, decided to bring the most serious possible charges money laundering, organized crime and embezzlement against people who had no criminal records and are respected in their professions, and sought to put them in the country's most-feared prison, which is normally used to house drug lords. There is extra space in the Altiplano prison, given Lopez Obrador's policy of no longer seeking to detain drug lords. But whether academics belong there is another question. Prosecutors accuse them of creating a non-profit group to spend the money. Gertz Manero's office defended the charges Wednesday, saying the academics used federal funds meant for scientific research on a private organization, buying furniture, vehicles, properties, and paying salaries and other services. The office said it would re-file the charges. But it doesn't help that the current director of the government science board, Maria Alvarez-Buylla, earlier this year defended giving Gertz Manero a spot among the country's most prestigious top-level researchers, despite the fact that he was accused of plagiarism in a decades-old biographical thesis. Gertz Manero said he appropriately cited his sources in the bibliography. But that isn't the only thing that Alvarez-Buylla has done to anger academics in her tenure at the National Council on Science and Technology, known by its Spanish acronym as Conacyt. She has criticized some researchers for presenting reports in English, despite the fact that is the common language in some technical fields, saying they should speak in Spanish. She criticizes western science" and techno-science that makes knowledge merchandise, and has called for collective processes of generating knowledge" more closely tied to social concerns. Western science has produced the most splashy, and perhaps most useless advances, like reaching the Moon," Alvarez-Buylla said in 2020. A petition on the Change.org site that has garnered over 12,000 signatures says the attorney general is trying to terrorize the academic community that has publicly and openly expressed its disagreement with the current policies of Conacyt. Lopez Obrador said Wednesday the academics had nothing to fear despite the prison's fearsome reputation and the fact that some people in Mexico wait years in prison for their trials to conclude. The accusation is there was mishandling of funds in the Conacyt, he said. But this is something the judge will resolve, and is people haven't done anything wrong, they should have no fear. In fact, a judge ruled Wednesday that prosecutors had not demonstrated evidence that the academics' actions could be considered crimes. STR/AP LIMA, Peru (AP) The Peruvian prosecutors office on Thursday ordered the cremation of the body of Abimael Guzman, the leader of the brutal Shining Path insurgency who died Sept. 11 in a military jail. Authorities will collect Guzmans remains, which remain in a morgue in the port of El Callao, for cremation within 24 hours, in line with the law, prosecutors said in a statement. His ashes will be scattered at an undisclosed date and place. If you talk to new Midland ISD Associate Superintendent Charlie Garcia, it is easy to hear that he sees opportunities where others might not. STAAR tests? While many see them as an unfair assessment and a punishment for teachers and students, he sees them as an opportunity for a school district on the rise to show how much improvement has taken place. The same can be said for intersession, which are the weeks built into the Midland ISD calendar that werent unanimously endorsed by the school board or the community. Whether citing an unfair burden put on teachers, students or families, some believed the calendar change wasnt what was best for the Midland community. Garcia disagrees. As a former principal in the Socorro and Ysleta districts inside the El Paso metropolitan area, he has experienced the opportunity that intersession has allowed. The opportunity, he said, is for students to get back on track, to be positively impacted by a more attention with teachers and to take advantage of enrichment offerings. That, he said, will be the case Oct. 18-21, when Midland ISD takes part in its first intersession week. Midland ISD officials are trying to dub the week MISD Achieves. And what they are offering far exceeds to the reading-only curriculum that was once thought to be focus of intersession. The district reported the following this week: Intervention sessions in reading, math, English and algebra to make sure all students are on track with their grade level; Enrichment programs like Go for Launch! a space-themed science program for 8-12 graders that will send one winning experiment to the International Space Station; Princeton Review SAT/PSAT Prep for high school students, made possible by Diamondback Energy. The district reported Tuesday that Midland High students have already filled up their allotment of seats, but there is still room for Legacy High students. Some of those students participating in the intersession will be there voluntarily. Others will be required to be there based on academic performance issues. Campuses will inform parents if a student needs to be a part of the first intersession, the district reported this week. Participating elementary and junior high students will attend sessions for full days, while some high school students may only be required to attend for a half day. Garcia said the district has hired enough teachers, helped by incentives for those who want to be on campus. Either way, he said those students participating can expect smaller scale classes and creative instruction that makes the week fun for students while still allowing them to learn. It is full steam ahead, Garcia said. Momentum, he said, will be built for the spring intersession and to prove to any doubters what intersession can do. Some of the most successful schools in the region utilized an intersession period to help students, Garcia said of his time in El Paso. These students have been through a pandemic. We want to catch them up and promote their learning. The period, he said, can help provide a segue to success for that student that might feel like he or she is behind. He also said it will help some of the districts premier educators to establish intersession as a useful tool for Midland, which has been ranked near the bottom of the largest school districts in the state. Garcia is new to the district Superintendent Angelica Ramsey brought him on board this summer to help complete her leadership team. However, Garcia likes the talent on the campuses. He said there is no doubt teachers and principals will have a great deal of success at the end of the year. He said he wanted to thank the community for its patience and support of the district. And, yes, he looks forward to STAAR testing. We are mobilizing to make Midland ISD a premier school district in a short amount of time, he said. In a perfect world, the Young Womens Leadership Academy in Midland would have a new building, all the technology one could put in a classroom and more space than it needed. Just like every other school in Midland. The fact is it doesnt, and for the second time this year, attention was brought to their conditions during a school board meeting. Young Womens Leadership Academy is an in-district partnership between Midland ISD and the Dallas-based Young Womens Preparatory Network. In this column, readers have seen major kudos sent to the district for its decision to make such a partnership a reality, just like the decision to partner with IDEA Public Schools. Both have a record of academic achievement. That should be the No. 1 priority of the district. Young Womens Leadership Academy in Midland shares a campus with Jones Elementary in southwest Midland not a building but land. Midland ISD has spent money for upgraded portables where many of the girls classes and activities take place. It is not ideal, but people knew that when the school was first started. The hope for district leaders when the school was started in 2019 was that voters would approve a $569 million bond and YWLA would eventually be upgraded and take over a junior high campus. The bond failed. And when that happened the district was caught in a tough situation. Plan B is not that easy. What district leaders are looking at is taking a campus in a part of town where growth isnt happening and considering moving those kids at that campus to another. This is an idea supported by some on the school board because, well, YWLA deserves better. Representatives of YWLA told us they want something done at the most recent school board meeting. They told us YWLA was one of the highest performing schools in the district. They told us students sometimes have to exit a building, defenseless from the elements or exposed to the southwest Midland neighborhood. In both cases, those appear to be very true statements. Those representatives also said they were promised better digs than what they enjoy now. One speaker even said they were told their experience at YWLA would resemble what girls at the Hockaday School in north Dallas experience. Hockaday is one of the most expensive private high schools in the state of Texas. Another comment made this week by a representative of the school was that YWLA deserved better because they are one of the top performing schools in the district and that its facilities should match its students performance. I dont have a problem with the people at YWLA wanting better. Those students probably deserve better than an education at a portable school community. All students do. YWLA should have started like IDEA with its own building from day 1. That didnt happen, and new MISD leadership is having to deal with this inherited situation. But I also offer this to those who represent YWLA. Please stop with the talk that you deserve your own campus more than other students inside the district. You dont. Please stop with the language that your facilities should reflect your performance. My guess is that Carver kids could make a similar argument, and I have never heard a peep from that campus. In my perfect world, someone donates a building that becomes the home of Young Womens Leadership Academy. That would be cool. Its also highly unlikely. What I expect will happen is that students -- like those who attend Jones Elementary -- will be forced to another campus where there appears to be room for them. Then, money will be spent to upgrade what will become the YWLA campus into one suitable for a secondary campus (including parking). Lastly, we lose the opportunity to upgrade them to a more proper campus at a later date. School district officials have said they expect the solution to the YWLA problem to happen by the end of the year. I can say -- without a doubt the end result will not remind anyone of Hockaday. Still, I hope those who have made it clear YWLA deserves better including those on the board appreciate the sacrifices that took place to make better happen. InMoment Adds Weight to APAC Consulting Offer CX and customer intelligence platform InMoment has appointed Eric Weight as VP solutions consulting, supporting its rapid expansion across Southeast Asia and Japan. InMoment uses a 'hyper-modern' technology platform alongside teams of experts to assist clients with 'Experience Improvement'. Earlier this month it acquired structured and unstructured data analytics firm Lexalytics. The firm has opened offices in Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland in the last three years, as well as a Singapore data centre in August 2021. Tech sales executive Carl Kimball joined the team in April as VP of sales, Asia Pacific and Japan. Weight (pictured) brings over 25 years of experience designing and deploying CX solutions at major B2B growth technology companies: most recently he was Head of Consulting at NICE Satmetrix, based in the US; and he also has in-depth experience of leading consulting, services, product management and presales teams worldwide. APAC Managing Director David Blakers says of the hire: 'As we build our Southeast Asian presence, we were looking for an industry expert to join our team and help accelerate growth across the region. We welcome Eric's talent and leadership to InMoment, and look forward to his expertise helping build high impact customer experience programs across the region'. Web site: www.inmoment.com . Noah Berger/AP Tim Sweeney, CEO of Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc., said Wednesday its been told by Apple that the game will be blacklisted from the Apple ecosystem until the companies legal case is resolved and all appeals are exhausted, which could take as long as five years. Sweeney posted on Twitter that Epic has asked Apple to reinstate Fortnite and promised that it will adhere to Apple's guidelines whenever and wherever we release products on Apple's platforms." The U.S. moved a step closer Wednesday to offering booster doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine to senior citizens and others at high risk from the virus as the Food and Drug Administration signed off on the targeted use of extra shots. The FDA authorized booster doses for Americans who are 65 and older, younger adults with underlying health conditions and those in jobs that put them at high risk for COVID-19. The ruling represents a drastically scaled back version of the Biden administrations sweeping plan to give third doses to nearly all American adults to shore up their protection amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. However, more regulatory hurdles lie ahead before the dispensing of boosters can begin. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opened a two-day meeting Wednesday to make their own, more specific recommendations about who should get the extra shots and when. And in their first day of discussions, some experts were so perplexed by the questions surrounding the rationale for boosters that they suggested putting off a decision for a month in hopes of more evidence. The uncertainties were yet another reminder that the science surrounding boosters is more complicated than the Biden administration suggested when the president and his top aides rolled out their plan at the White House last month. The FDA decision Wednesday was expected after the agencys own panel of advisers last week overwhelmingly rejected the Biden plan. The panel instead recommended boosters only for those most vulnerable to severe cases of COVID-19. FDA acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement that the FDA authorization would allow for boosters in health care workers, teachers, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons. "As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed, Woodcock said. Under the FDA authorization, vaccinated Americans are eligible for a third dose six months after receiving their second Pfizer shot. That's different than the Biden proposal announced in August, which called for boosters after eight months. Todays FDA decision is a major step forward in our effort to provide Americans with additional protection from COVID-19, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Wednesday night. We have been preparing for weeks to administer booster shots to eligible Americans and are ready to do so following CDCs final recommendation later this week. The timing of the FDA decision was highly unusual given that the agency typically takes action before the CDC convenes its own experts. The CDC panelists heard a series of presentations Wednesday outlining the knotty state of science on boosters. On one hand, the COVID-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death. On the other hand, there are signs of more low-grade infections among the vaccinated as immunity wanes. Ultimately the committee must decide who is considered at high enough risk for an extra dose. Data provided by Pfizer and the Israeli government suggests a strong case for boosters in people 65 and older, but there is less evidence that extra shots provide much benefit for younger people with underlying health conditions. Several CDC advisers agreed boosters are also important for keeping health care workers on the job. We dont have enough health care workers to take care of the unvaccinated, said Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University. They just keep coming. The CDC has already said it is considering boosters for older people, nursing home residents and front-line health care workers, rather than all adults. The World Health Organization and other global health advocates are opposed to wealthy nations dispensing a third round of shots when poor countries dont have enough vaccine for their first doses. And many independent scientists say that the vaccines continue to perform well against the worst effects of COVID-19 and that their ability to curb the overall trajectory of the epidemic is uncertain. U.S. regulators will decide at a later date on boosters for people who have received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. They indicated the Pfizer shots would not be recommended for people who got a different brand of vaccine initially. The across-the-board rollout of boosters proposed by the White House was supposed to have begun this week. Some questioned whether President Joe Biden had gotten ahead of the science by announcing his plans before government regulators had reached any conclusions. Despite the resistance in recent days, some top U.S. health officials said they expect boosters to eventually win broader approval in the coming weeks or months. Dr. Anthony Fauci said over the weekend that this is not the end of the story. Other administration officials noted that the FDA decision covers tens of millions of Americans and that seniors and other high-risk groups would have been the first to get boosters even if extra shots had been authorized for the entire population. Seniors were in the first group of Americans eligible for vaccination last December. The U.S. has already authorized third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for certain people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients and transplant recipients. Other Americans, healthy or not, have managed to get boosters, in some cases simply by asking. The U.S. is dispensing around 760,000 vaccinations per day on average, down from a high of 3.4 million a day in mid-April. About 180 million Americans are fully vaccinated, or 64% of those who are eligible. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. CHICAGO (AP) The Rev. Jesse Jackson was released Wednesday from a Chicago facility a month after he was hospitalized for a breakthrough COVID-19 infection and intensive physical therapy for Parkinson's disease. The civil rights leader and his wife, Jacqueline, were first hospitalized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital last month. Jesse Jackson, 79, was vaccinated for COVID-19, but his 77-year-old wife was not. She required oxygen and a brief intensive care unit stay before she was released this month. The reverend's case was less severe, and about a week after he was first hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment, he was transferred to a physical therapy hospital. He briefly spoke to reporters Wednesday, accompanied by doctors and therapists who worked with him at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Jackson said he did not have any shortness of breath or respiratory issues, but it did affect his Parkinson's and his ability to walk and talk. The shot protected me from death, he said of the vaccine. Doctors and other medical staff described a regimen of about 60 to 90 minutes of daily physical therapy, along with occupational and speech therapy, saying the civil rights leader who has remained active since disclosing his Parkinson's diagnosis in 2017 was full of energy and upbeat during his treatment. Before he left the hospital for home, he playfully confirmed with the medical team: So I can march again? Despite his illness and gallbladder surgery this year, Jackson has remained active and continued traveling in his advocacy for voting rights and other causes. He has encouraged COVID-19 vaccinations, particularly for Black people, and got his first shot publicly at an event in January. However, he told The Associated Press last month that his wife of nearly 60 years wasn't vaccinated because she had an undisclosed pre-existing condition that worried family members. Generally, public health experts strongly encourage people with existing health conditions, such as cancer or diabetes, to get vaccinated as they are at increased risk for severe illness. Since her release from the hospital, though, Jacqueline Jackson has become a true advocate for everyone to get vaccinated, according to son Jonathan Jackson. We know it is a miracle that both of our parents are now COVID-19 survivors, and we thank God for his healing, Jonathan Jackson said in a Wednesday statement. We also pray for the millions of people who have been infected with this virus and pray they too will also overcome. ___ Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen The Jacksonville Public Library will play host to a class in Chinese calligraphy. California-based calligraphy instructor JoJo will lead the 1 p.m. Oct. 9 class, which will offer a brief history of Chinese calligraphy and instruction in proper writing techniques. Participants will have a chance to write a few phrases using calligraphy. The class will be on Zoom, as well as at the library. Registration is limited and required by emailing Sarah Snyder at ssnyder@jaxpl.org or by calling 217-243-5435. A small take-and-make calligraphy kit is included with registration and will be used during the class. Those participating from home can pick up a kit at the library, 201 W. College Ave., between Oct. 5 and 9. Angela Bauer Todd Rosenberg/AP Absent from Chicago since February 2020 due to the pandemic, Riccardo Muti walked into Orchestra Hall and started to rehease Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica. It was a very, very emotional moment when I walked on stage and I went to the podium because the orchestra was united for the first time with their music director in the concert hall, Muti said during a telephone interview Thursday, two days after the first rehearsal and before the Chicago Symphony Orchestras opening night of the season. We played immediately the `Eroica,' which I dedicated to the musicians of the orchestra and all the musicians in the world that have been separated and been in suffering because of the virus. BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) The boyfriend of Gabby Petito, whose body was found at a national park in Wyoming after a cross-country trip with him, was charged with unauthorized use of a debit card as searchers continued looking for him Thursday in Florida swampland. A federal grand jury indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Wyoming alleges Brian Laundrie used a Capital One Bank card and someone's personal identification number to make unauthorized withdrawals or charges worth more than $1,000 during the period in which Petito went missing. It does not say who the card belonged to. FBI spokeswoman Courtney Bernal declined to reveal the nature of the charges made to the debit card. FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider said an arrest warrant issued Wednesday over the alleged fraudulent use of the bank card will allow law enforcement across the country to continue pursuing Laundrie while the investigation continues into Petitos homicide. Laundrie has been named a person of interest in the 22-year-old woman's death. The case has garnered enormous public interest but also raised uncomfortable questions over the unequal attention given to the hundreds of cases of Native American and other minority women missing or murdered across the United States. In Florida, searchers on Thursday spent a fifth unsuccessful day searching for Laundrie in the forbidding wilderness preserve near his parents home. The search at the Carlton Reserve park was set to resume Friday, said Joshua Tayler with the city of North Port, where the park is located. It began after Laundrie told his parents he was going there, several days after returning alone Sept. 1 from his trip out west with Petito. The indictment says the unauthorized use of the debit card occurred from about Aug. 30 to Sept. 1. Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino said it is his understanding that the arrest warrant was related to activities that occurred after the death of Petito, and not to her actual demise. The FBI is focused on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum, Bertolino said in a text message to The Associated Press. An attorney who has represented the Petito family also did not immediately respond for comment. Petito was reported missing Sept. 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West. Her body was discovered Sunday in the vicinity of a remote, undeveloped campground along the border of Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Petitos death as a homicide meaning her death was caused by another person but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results. Officials urged anyone with knowledge of Laundries role in Petitos death or his whereabouts to contact the FBI. With online sleuths and theories multiplying by the day, the FBI and police have been deluged with tips about possible Laundrie sightings. No piece of information is too small or inconsequential to support our efforts in this investigation, Schneider said in a statement. Petito and Laundrie grew up together on Long Island, New York, but they moved in recent years to North Port where his parents live. Their home, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Sarasota, was searched by investigators earlier this week, and a Ford Mustang driven by Laundries mother was towed from the driveway. Authorities believe Laundrie drove that car to the Carlton Reserve before disappearing. The couple documented online their trip in a white Ford Transit van converted into a camper, but they got into a physical altercation Aug. 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case. Ultimately, police there decided to separate the quarreling couple for the night. But no charges were filed, and no serious injuries were reported. The city of Moab said it will conduct a formal investigation into the handling of the dispute. City officials said they were not aware of any breach of department policies, but intend to make a thorough, informed evaluation based on the results of the investigation. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told reporters in Washington, D.C., that the extensive news media coverage of the case should be a reminder of missing or murdered Native American girls and women. Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, said that her heart goes out to Petitos family, but that she also grieves for so many Indigenous women whose families have endured similar heartache for the last 500 years. Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Associated Press writers Sophia Eppolito contributed from Salt Lake and Matthew Daly from Washington. SYDNEY Australias two largest cities are moving closer to ending lockdowns as vaccination rates climb, but leaders are warning that people should remain cautious with their newfound freedoms and that coronavirus case numbers will inevitably rise. In New South Wales state, where an outbreak continues to grow in Sydney, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has set a target of reopening on Oct. 11 once vaccination milestones are reached. But she said Friday it would need to be done with a degree of caution and responsibility because otherwise too many people would end up in hospitals. Meanwhile in Victoria State, where there is an outbreak in Melbourne, Health Minister Martin Foley said there had been a tremendous increase in vaccinations and there was no shortage of enthusiasm among people wanting to get jabs. Health officials in New South Wales reported 1,043 new cases and 11 deaths on Friday, while officials in Victoria reported 733 new cases and one death. ___ MORE ON THE PANDEMIC: Vaccine apartheid: Africans tells UN they need vaccines New York state health commissioner resigns, backed Cuomo CDC advisers try to work out details on booster shots Some Argentines turn to unusual pandemic pets for comfort ___ See all of AP's pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic ___ HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: SEOUL, South Korea South Korea has reported its biggest daily jump in coronavirus since the start of the pandemic as people returned from the countrys biggest holiday of the year. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said more than 1,750 of the 2,434 new cases reported Friday were from the greater capital area, where officials have raised concern over an erosion in citizen vigilance despite the enforcement of the strongest social distancing rules short of a lockdown since July. It was expected that transmissions would worsen beyond the capital region during the Chuseok holidays, the Korean version of Thanksgiving which began on the weekend and continued through Wednesday, a period when millions usually travel across the country to meet relatives. It will be crucial to maintain the effectiveness of our anti-virus campaign throughout next week, when the effect of increased travel during the holidays will manifest more clearly, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said during a virus briefing. The restrictions in the Seoul metropolitan area prevents gatherings of three or more people after 6 p.m. unless the participants are fully vaccinated. Officials have said peoples exhaustion and frustration with social distancing are becoming an increasing challenge in the countrys fight against COVID-19. The country has now reported a daily increase of more than 1,000 for 80 straight days. Its previous one-day record was 2,221 reported on Aug. 11. ___ TERRE HAUTE, Ind. Indiana State University will require that all students and staff show proof of vaccination by Jan. 1 or be tested each week for COVID-19, the schools president said Thursday. The announcement by Deborah Curtis is a shift in policy. The university has been encouraging vaccinations this fall but has not made them mandatory. Masks are required indoors. Some students whose school work takes them off campus must be regularly tested or get the vaccine, starting Oct. 1. As the pandemic has evolved locally, statewide and across the country, we have remained committed to making decisions based upon guidance from federal, state and local health officials, Curtis said. More details about the vaccination plan will be released before the end of fall term, she said. Indiana State has 9,400 students. ___ SEATTLE - Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday the states eviction protections will remain in place through the end of October because counties arent getting federal and state COVID-19 relief funds intended for rental assistance out fast enough ahead of the current moratorium that was set to expire Sept. 30. Under an eviction moratorium bridge that Inslee announced in June, landlords were prevented from evicting tenants for any past-due rent owed from Feb. 29, 2020 through July 31, 2021. Since Aug. 1, renters have been expected to pay full rent unless they negotiate a lesser amount with their landlord or are actively seek rental assistance. Tenants must also be provided in writing what services and support are available to them and landlords must offer them a reasonable repayment plan before starting the eviction process. Those protections will now remain in place until Oct. 31. ___ GAINESVILLE, Fla. A Florida school district has received cash from President Joe Bidens administration to make up for state pay cuts imposed over a boards vote for a student anti-coronavirus mask mandate. Alachua County school Superintendent Carlee Simon said in a news release Thursday the district has received $148,000 through a U.S. Department of Education program. Simon says Alachua, where Gainesville and the University of Florida are located, is the first district in the nation to receive such a grant. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state education officials have begun cutting salaries paid to school board members in Florida who voted to require masks for students. DeSantis favors allowing parents to decide whether their children wear face coverings and is in the midst of court battles over this broader issue. About a dozen school boards in Florida, representing more than half the states students, have voted to defy the state ban on mask mandates despite Gov. Ron DeSantis decision to withhold some of their funding. ___ RALEIGH, N.C. More than one-third of the 56,000 North Carolina government employees included in Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers executive order compelling them to get a COVID-19 shot or face weekly testing have not been fully vaccinated, according to new state data. Law enforcement officials are getting vaccinated at the lowest rates, though the state said it is still processing a large set of data from the Department of Public Safety. Less than 53% of the 21,804 employees within that department who are subject to Coopers directive have been fully vaccinated. This is substantially lower than the 63% of North Carolina adults who have gotten one Johnson & Johnson vaccine or two Pfizer or Moderna shots, as of Thursday. Cooper said in a news conference Tuesday that he is particularly concerned by the number of prison officials who have thus far refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Its probably the most concerning because we know theres close quarters and congregated populations there, so we really want to work on those percentages, Cooper said. Right now, were setting up discipline procedures for people who do not do the vaccination or the testing, and there are some employees who are beginning to fall in that category. The Department of Public Safety is the largest agency covered under Coopers order, followed by the state Department of Health and Human Services, which has three-fourths of its more than 15,000 employees subject to Coopers directive fully vaccinated. ___ MONTGOMERY, Ala. Alabama has averaged more than 100 deaths a day from COVID-19 over the last week, statistics showed Thursday, giving it the nations highest death rate over the period even as hospitalizations linked to the coronavirus pandemic continue to decline. Statistics from Johns Hopkins University show 106 deaths were reported statewide daily over the last seven days, although some of those could have occurred earlier because of a lag in reporting. Alabamas rate of 18 deaths for every 100,000 people over the last week is far above second-place West Virginia, which had 10 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase in deaths come as hospitalizations in the state fell below 1,800 patients for the first time in a month, a change health officials said likely was due to both people getting well and dying. While more people are getting vaccinated than before the highly contagious delta strain took hold, the state still has one of the nations lowest vaccination rates, and its chief health officer said still more people need to get shots because the risk of getting infected remains high. Increasing vaccine rates remains critical to reduce cases of COVID-19, Dr. Scott Harris, head of the Alabama Department of Public Health, said in a statement Thursday. ___ NEW YORK The inequity of COVID-19 vaccine distribution is coming into sharper focus as many of the African countries whose populations have little to no access to the life-saving shots stepped to the podium to speak at the U.N.s annual meeting of world leaders. South Africas president Cyril Ramaphosa pointed to vaccines as the greatest defense that humanity has against the ravages of this pandemic. Ramaphosa, speaking by video link, urged U.N. member states to support a proposal to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization to allow more countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, to produce COVID-19 vaccines. It is an indictment on humanity that more than 82% of the worlds vaccine doses have been acquired by wealthy countries, while less than 1% has gone to low-income countries, he says. Angola president Joao Lourenco says: These disparities allow for third doses to be given, in some cases. While in other cases, as in Africa, the vast majority of the population has not even received the first dose. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Israel are among the countries administering boosters or have announced plans to do so. Namibia president Hage Geingob called it vaccine apartheid. ___ OAKLAND, Calif. The Oakland Board of Education has voted to require students 12 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to attend in-person school. The move late Wednesday makes Oakland Unified the first school district in Northern California to adopt a vaccine requirement. The vote comes after Los Angeles Unified, the states largest school district, and the smaller Southern California district of Culver City imposed similar policies for their students this month. Several other school boards in the San Francisco Bay Area are considering similar measures as schools try to navigate in-person instruction during the pandemic. ___ ISTANBUL A Turkish school official is using traditional shadow puppet shows to teach children how to follow COVID-19 restrictions in class, the state-run news agency reported Thursday. Mehmet Saylan, based in the central Anatolian city of Kirsehir, has been staging Karagoz plays to educate kindergarten and primary school pupils. Karagoz was popularized during the Ottoman period and often contains a moral message. I cover the issues of masks, distance and hygiene, Saylan, 39, told Anadolu Agency. The children do what they see and hear in the play with more enjoyment and willingness. The feedback we get from schools is also very positive. The children learn the rules of the pandemic while having fun. ___ NEW YORK New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker has submitted his resignation. Hochul said Thursday that Zucker has agreed to stay on until the state names a new commissioner. Zucker was appointed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as state health commissioner in 2015. He has faced heated criticism over the states COVID-19 response, particularly in nursing homes. Data released by the state earlier this year show 15,800 people living in nursing homes and other long-term care homes in New York have died of COVID-19. Zucker has defended a since-rescinded March 2020 directive that said nursing homes couldnt refuse to admit patients solely because they had COVID-19. Zucker also faced criticism from health care workers who said the state failed to ensure hospitals and nursing homes had adequate personal protective gear and staffing during the peak of the pandemic in New York. ___ FOND DU LAC, Wis. A 26-year-old Fond du Lac police officer has died of COVID-19 complications, according to his department. The death of Officer Joseph Kurer on Wednesday came a day after his second child was born, according to a statement from Chief Aaron Goldstein. Kurer joined the Fond du Lac Police Department in August 2018 and was a member of the Tactical Field Force Team, the Honor Guard Unit, Domestic Violence Intervention Team and was certified as a field training officer. Kurer also was a member of the Wisconsin National Guard, according to his department. ___ HELENA, Mont. Medical providers and Montana residents with compromised immune systems are challenging a state law that prevents employers from mandating vaccines for employees. They argue the law passed by the 2021 Legislature violates federal requirements for safe workplaces and reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and want a federal judge to rule it doesnt apply to hospitals and other medical providers. The Montana Medical Association, private physician groups, a Missoula hospital and seven individuals filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Wednesday. The complaint names Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Commissioner of Labor and Industry Laurie Esau as defendants. Montanas Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law that said requiring vaccines as a condition of employment is discriminatory and violates the states human rights laws. Montana is the only state with such a law. Knudsens office says he'll defend the law, and is committed to protecting Montanans right to privacy and their ability to make their own healthcare decisions. The complaint argues the new law prevents medical providers from taking steps to protect employees and patients who have compromised immune systems and violates Occupational Safety and Health Act provisions that require employers to provide workplaces free from hazards. ___ LISBON, Portugal Portugal is scrapping many of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, after becoming the world leader in the vaccination rollout. Portugal has fully vaccinated nearly 85% of the population, according to Our World in Data. The government says starting Oct. 1, it will remove limits on how many people can be in cafes and restaurants, weddings and baptisms, shopping malls, concerts and cinemas. Bars and discos will reopen, although only for vaccinated people and people with negative coronavirus tests. Prime Minister Antonio Costa said some restrictions need to stay in place. The wearing of face masks will still be mandatory on public transportation, in hospitals and care homes, and shopping malls. People arriving from abroad by air or sea must still show a vaccine certificate or a negative virus test. The pandemic isnt over, he said. The risk is still there. Naval Rear Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, with his team from the three branches of the armed forces, took charge of the vaccine rollout in February. Tiago Correia, an associate professor in international public health at Lisbons New University Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, credits the traditional consenting attitude in Portugal toward national vaccination programs. Its vaccination rate for measles, mumps and rubella is 95% one of the EUs highest and theres no significant anti-vaccination movement. A museum dedicated to the history and culture of the Jacksonville area is ready to open its doors in just a few short days. It has been 10 to 12 years in the making, Jacksonville Area Museum board member Chad Boehlke said. He said the museum celebrates the uniqueness of the city. There is no town like this in Illinois, Boehlke said. Volunteers and supporters attended a private preview Wednesday to see the efforts that have gone into displaying artifacts from places like Illinois College and the now-closed MacMurray College. as well as the citys past. This is just the beginning 15 percent, said Steve Varble, museum exhibit and creative consultant. He said that as more funding comes from donors the more work will go into open up the majority of what used to be the citys historic post office and was also once a restaurant. One of the driving forces since the idea of the Jacksonville Area Museum began are Bob and Karen Sibert, who were honored with the first named portion of the museum. A sign noting Sibert Hall the museums main exhibit gallery was unveiled during the preview. This museum would not have happened without the unwavering support and dedication of Bob and Karen Sibert and the Bound to Stay Bound Foundation, museum board Chairman David Blanchette said. We are poised to open our doors to the public largely because of the Siberts and their commitment to this institution. The new facility at 301 E. State St. will open at 10 a.m. Saturday and then will be open on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m to 4 p.m. There is no admission fee, but a donation of $5 is suggested to help with operations. Whatever happened to the Yukon to Yellowstone wildlife corridor dream that was in the news years ago? Conservationists dreams of a wildlife corridor stretching from the Yukon to Yellowstone where charismatic megafauna like bears, wolves and caribou can roam freely and have enough continuous undisturbed habitat to thrive is slowly becoming a reality thanks to the dogged determination of thousands of concerned individuals and over 450 partner groups behind them. Since the projects inception in 1993, green groups, indigenous groups and government agencies have worked together to preserve upwards of 500,000 square miles of the intermountain west for this project, with hopes of adding much more. The core of Yukon to Yellowstone is all within the Rocky Mountains, the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia, and the Liard Plateau in northern British Columbia. Scientists have collaborated as well to expand Yukon to Yellowstone into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Columbia Mountains of eastern British Columbia, the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, given their similar ecological characteristics. Unlike other animal crossings, Yukon to Yellowstone is a large area across mountain ranges without a hard boundary. Since natural ecosystems are entirely interconnected, conservationists have drawn soft, flexible boundaries in conjunction with evolving patterns of seasonal movements by wildlife. These untouched areas serve as safe highways for the diverse range of species to feed, breed and migrate without outside interference. In other sections of the Yukon to Yellowstone region, where development has been more commonplace, partner groups have worked to create wildlife-friendly infrastructure to facilitate crossings of roads and other man-made obstructions. They have also set up tracking mechanisms for some species to monitor their success. Meanwhile, other partners have been focused on acquiring real estate parcels that can be left in a natural state or converted back from development to be included in the animal-friendly network of corridors. In the Yukon to Yellowstone region, conservationists and scientists have focused on the preservation of grizzly bears an umbrella species. Since grizzly bears roam such an expansive area of land in search of food and mates, they play a central role in maintaining the healthy functioning of an ecosystem. Given the population declines and genetic diversity loss of the region, conservationists have especially pushed for wildlife corridors to alleviate the habitat loss and fragmentation among grizzly bears. Achieving the Yukon to Yellowstone vision has not come easy. Much of the region stretches across private lands. To accommodate both humans and wildlife, conservationists have worked with private landowners to ensure safe passage for wildlife without interrupting human lifestyles. Many oil, gas and mining projects also require access roads, which often cut through natural landscapes and degrade wildlife habitat. While the Yukon to Yellowstone mission has come far in preserving the natural environments from Yellowstone to Yukon, the initiative calls for further collaboration from diverse communities. Whether its volunteering from local groups or partnerships with larger organizations, Yukon to Yellowstone aims to continue its vision of harmonizing a wild and wooly 2,000-mile swath of the North American West. EarthTalk is written by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss. Send questions to question@earthtalk.org. An estimated 9 million Americans got the rug pulled out from under them this month as enhanced pandemic federal unemployment benefits expired, leaving millions of families in the lurch during a record-breaking season for COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Some 35 million people nearly 1 in 10 Americans live in households that will be impacted by the cut. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted a response to those families: Um, get a job? If only it were that simple. Workers in this country arent lacking work ethic. They simply dont have reliable child care, health care, or economic infrastructures to support them in times of crisis. As much as lawmakers like Cruz would like to believe that the pandemic is behind us, the number of daily COVID-19 cases is three times higher than a year ago, with children now representing more than a quarter of weekly COVID-19 cases. And there are still 5.7 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. Vaccination rates are still lagging in much of the country, yet many state governments are undermining masking rules and other basic precautions. That makes returning to work more dangerous for front line workers, many of whom also continue to lack paid leave or reliable child care. Additionally, in a pandemic thats sent billionaire and CEO wealth soaring, many workers are asking if their labor is worth the risk if their bosses are the ones reaping the benefits. For instance, Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta rigged the companys pay rules to inflate his 2020 compensation to $56 million 1,953 times more than the companys median employee. Front line Hilton workers, meanwhile, face a 39 percent reduction in staffing as the company moves to cut costs. How could we expect an abrupt and mass return to work under these conditions? Republicans thought they could force it by simply cutting the added $300 a week in federal unemployment insurance. It didnt work. Over the summer, governors in 25 states prematurely ended the enhanced unemployment benefits to pressure people back to work. The results? Unimpressive. Payrolls grew by a meager 1.33 percent in the states that chose to end the benefits compared to 1.37% in states that maintained them. Unemployment insurance wasnt keeping people out of work, it turns out. It was keeping them out of poverty. After Congress expanded government assistance programs in spring 2020, including unemployment insurance, the number of people in poverty actually fell. All told, pandemic government aid programs kept 53 million people above the poverty line in 2020. Had enhanced programs not been in place, the number of people in poverty would have increased by 2.5%, new data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggests. The pandemic unemployment benefits also, for the first time, reached workers previously left out of our already-faltering unemployment system including part-time workers, gig workers, and the self-employed. Ending enhanced federal unemployment benefits during a global pandemic isnt just cruel its ineffective. Taking away $300 a week equivalent to $15,200 a year from a single parent wont make that parent return to work during a global pandemic. It will force them deeper into poverty. Fortunately, Congress has an opportunity to build a just economy that advances equity in the pandemic recovery and beyond. The $3.5 trillion reconciliation package Congress is debating would provide paid leave, universal pre-K, affordable childcare, an expanded Child Tax Credit, and better health care programs. These badly needed investments would provide families and individuals with the social safety net needed to recover from the pandemic before the next crisis hits. If policymakers want to get people back to work, they need to make our economy work for people. Rebekah Entralgo is managing editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. This column was distributed by OtherWords.org. Azerbaijan files case alleging ethnic cleansing by Armenia View Photo THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) Azerbaijan on Thursday filed a case at the United Nations top court accusing neighboring Armenia of a policy of ethnic cleansing targeting Azerbaijanis. The case was lodged at the International Court of Justice a week after Armenia filed suit against Azerbaijan at the same Hague-based world court, accusing Baku of a state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred. Both cases focus on the two countries decades long territorial dispute that erupted into armed conflict again last year, leaving hundreds dead. Referring to that eruption of hostilities, Azerbaijan alleged in its written filing that Armenia once again targeted Azerbaijanis for brutal treatment motivated by ethnic hatred, the court said in a statement. Armenias policies and conduct of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and fomenting of hatred against Azerbaijanis systematically infringe the rights and freedoms of Azerbaijanis, as well as Azerbaijans own rights, the case alleges. It accuses Armenia of breaching an international convention aimed at eradicating discrimination. Armenia last week cited the same convention in bringing its case to the court, which handles disputes between nations. Both countries have signed the convention. The legal dispute is the latest battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government for more than a quarter of a century. The predominantly Armenian-populated region had an autonomous status within Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. Tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris boiled over as the Soviet Union collapsed. Conflict broke out in 1988 when the region tried to join Armenia, and escalated into war after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, leaving an estimated 30,000 dead and displacing about 1 million. Azerbaijan asked the court to urgently order so-called provisional measures aimed at compelling Armenia to protect Azerbaijanis from the irreparable harm caused by Armenias ongoing conduct. Armenia made a similar request last week aimed at protecting its interests while the case is heard. Cases at the court often take years, but hearings on the two requests for provisional measures will likely be scheduled in coming weeks. By MIKE CORDER Associated Press ultrastructural morphology exhibited by corona viruses View Photos Tuolumne Public Health shared a statement with their report of the 100th death due to COVID-19 was released today. The most recent reported death is a somber reminder of all the community members that our county has lost since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every person who has died during this pandemic was someones parent, sibling, child, friend, or neighbor. As Tuolumne County passes the 100-death mark, we want to recognize all the lives lost to the virus and the tragic impact on their loved ones and our community. For added perspective, Tuolumne Public Health notes additional stats, The recent death comes on the heels of nationwide reports that 1 in 500 Americans have died from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. As of September 15, 2021, at least 666,440 people have died nationwide of COVID-19. With the predominance of the delta variant, nationwide hospitalizations and death rates have increased. The surge is reflected in Tuolumnes case rate of 43 per 100,000 and rise in local hospitalizations. Locally and regionally, hospitals have reached ICU capacity and have utilized the state health officer load-leveling order to move patients out of our region to an available ICU bed. As reported here, the CDC identified California as the only state in the nation with a less than high Covid-19 transmission. For a Tuolumne County perspective, 33 of the 100 COVID-19 deaths happened in 2020. According to data available through the California Department of Public Health, CA Vital Data (Cal-ViDa), death statistics, over the past three years the average number of all deaths per month for Tuolumne County Residents is 57. In March of 2020 there was a notable increase to 79, there were also 79 deaths in December, 77 in January 2021, 73 in February, and in July, the most recent information available had 69 total deaths. The data for Tuolumne, Calaveras and Stanislaus for this year and past seven years are in charts included with the image. There were 10 or fewer Influenza and pneumonia deaths in 2020 and 2018, there were 11 in 2019. Heart Disease and Tumors/Cancer (malignant neoplasms) cause the most deaths in Tuolumne and both increased in 2020 from 2019. There were 15 intentional self-harm suicides in 2020 and 11 in 2019. Accidents/unintentional injuries were down to 25 in 2020 from 36 in 2019. The number of Alzheimers disease deaths and Parkinsons disease deaths were the same in 2019 and 2020. Regarding COVID-19 deaths, County Health Officer, Dr. Eric Sergienko, says We have the ability as individuals to reduce the burden of disease on our community. Consider those actions, such as vaccination, that you can do to help us all out. Tuolumne Public Health concluded their statement, As we continue our fight against COVID-19, we urge the public to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and layer on safety measures such as masking in public spaces, getting tested, avoid large gatherings and staying home when sick. All these acts make a difference in preventing the death of another community member. Tuolumne Public Health reports the new death due to COVID-19 was a woman in her 70s. There are 18 new COVID-19 cases since yesterdays report. There are 181 active cases including 11 who are hospitalized. The total current case rate, a 14-day average for Tuolumne County is down to 43.1 from 46.3 per 100,000 population. A total of 4,426 have been released from isolation after testing positive for COVID-19, there have been 100 deaths and 1,620 inmate cases, for a total of 6,327 Covid cases. Of Tuolumnes eligible population to be vaccinated 55% have been vaccinated. Todays newly reported cases include 4 cases age 17 or younger and 3 cases are age 60 and older. The gender and age breakdown is; 1 girl and 3 boys age 12-17, 4 women and 2 men age 18-29, 1 man age 30-39, 1 man age 40 to 49, 3 men age 50-59, 1 woman age 60 -69, 1 woman age 70 to 79 and 1 woman age 80 to 89. Of the 18 new community cases, 14 were unvaccinated and 4 were vaccinated. The California Department of Corrections reports 3 active cases in the inmates the Sierra Conservation Center oversees which includes all of the Southern Conservation Fire Camps. There are eight correctional facilities in the state managing more active inmate cases. Calaveras County Public Health reports 8 new Covid cases since yesterdays report, active cases decreased to 85 from last weeks high of 125. The active cases include 4 current Covid hospitalizations. There are 4 new cases age 0-17 and no new cases in individuals age 65 years old or older. Since the pandemic began Calaveras has had 505 Covid-19 positive people who are 17 and under and 594 Covid-19 positive people 65 and over. Calaveras has vaccinated 52.6% of their eligible population. COVID-19 Testing Public health recommends if you believe you have been exposed to COVID, schedule an appointment to get tested 5 days after exposure and if you are having any symptoms, please get tested right away. The Tuolumne County State testing site is open 7 days a week beginning from 7 AM to 7 PM at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds. Appointments can be scheduled at www.lhi.care/covidtesting or by calling 888-634-1123 the same website and phone number can be used to schedule tests in other counties. Testing is also available through some pharmacies, at Rapid Care, the hospital emergency department if you are experiencing any symptoms, or contact your healthcare provider. COVID-19 Vaccines Public Health continues to strongly encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated, as the most important step we can take to reduce the spread of disease and prevent serious illness and death, as well as reduce the impact to our healthcare system. In addition, the continued practice of other preventive actions like wearing a mask in public, keeping your distance, avoiding crowds, washing hands, and staying home when sick will help slow the spread of the virus. Vaccine appointments can be made at local pharmacies and through myturn.ca.gov or by calling 833-422-4255. Anyone 12 and older is eligible for a COVID vaccine, Pfizer is approved for anyone age 12 or over. As detailed here healthcare workers are required to be vaccinated by September 30. The Pfizer vaccine requires 3 weeks between doses and the Moderna requires 4 weeks. The J&J vaccine requires only one dose. Call or email with any questions you may have Tuolumne is available at (209) 533-7440 Health@tuolumnecounty.ca.gov, Mariposa at (209) 259-1332 or mariposacovid19@gmail.com more numbers are available on our COVID-19 vaccine page here. County/Date Tier Color Active Cases New Cases Total Cases COVID Deaths Amador 9/21 131 12 2,979 50 Calaveras 9/22 85 8 3,343 71 Mariposa 9/22 75 8 1,007 12 Mono 9/22 73 3 1,291 5 Stanislaus 9/22 2,155 127 72,720 1,243 Tuolumne 9/22 181 18 6,327 100 Israeli to face trial on 70 sex abuse charges in Australia View Photo MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) A former school principal who was extradited from Israel after a six-year legal battle was ordered to stand trial Thursday on 70 charges of child sex abuse. Malka Leifer, 55, pleaded not guilty to all the charges at the end of a court hearing. The committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates Court was held to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. Leifer is accused of carrying out the abuse against sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper when Leifer was head of Melbournes Adass Israel School between 2004 and 2008. The three sisters testified by video link during a closed court hearing. Leifer also appeared by video from Melbournes womens prison, the Dame Phyillis Frost Centre. Melbourne is currently in lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak. The judge, Magistrate Johanna Metcalf, said she believed the evidence was of sufficient weight to support a conviction. Leifer faces 44 counts of indecent assault, 13 of an indecent act with a child, 10 of rape, and three of sexually penetrating a child. Prosecutors withdrew four further charges after it became clear those alleged incidents occurred in Israel. The next hearing will be held at Victorias County Court on Oct. 21. Leifers lawyer Ian Hill didnt make any submissions at the end of the prosecutions case. The judge noted Leifer denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Five witnesses gave evidence on Thursday including former Adass Israel School staffer Esther Spigelman, who said she went to see Leifer the day after she was stood down by the school board over the allegations in 2008. It was a very big shock and I went to say goodbye. She was very upset with what they were doing to her, Spigelman said. We didnt go into detail of things but she definitely said I did nothing wrong and pretty much that she felt very unfair with what was happening. Erlichs former husband Joshua Erlich said that Erlich had previously described Leifer as taking the place of a mother, saying that the school had given the sisters respite from troubles at home with their mother. He said he heard Leifer had hugged her, rubbed her thighs and gave her special attention, but he didnt find it particularly concerning. If she had said it was under the clothes or something of that nature I would have been concerned, Joshua Erlich said. Last year, the sisters were granted a court order allowing them to speak publicly and under their real names about their allegations of being abused by Leifer. The Associated Press does not usually identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the siblings have spoken publicly about their accusations as part of their campaign to force Leifer to return to Australia. Leifer was extradited from Israel in January. The protracted court case and repeated delays over her extradition had drawn criticism from Australian officials as well as the countrys Jewish leaders. As accusations against her began surfacing in 2008, Israeli-born Leifer left the school and returned to Israel. The two countries have an extradition treaty, but critics, including Leifers accusers, said Israeli authorities had dragged out the case, while Leifer claimed she was mentally unfit to stand trial. Last year, an Israeli psychiatric panel determined Leifer was lying about her mental condition, setting in motion the extradition. In December, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a final appeal against her extradition, and Israels justice minister signed the order to send her to Australia. COVID-19 creates dire US shortage of teachers, school staff View Photo SAN FRANCISCO (AP) One desperate California school district is sending flyers home in students lunchboxes, telling parents its now hiring. Elsewhere, principals are filling in as crossing guards, teachers are being offered signing bonuses and schools are moving back to online learning. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stress of teaching in the COVID-19 era has triggered a spike in retirements and resignations. Schools also need to hire staffers like tutors and special aides to make up for learning losses and more teachers to run online school for those not ready to return. Teacher shortages and difficulties filling openings have been reported in Tennessee, New Jersey and South Dakota, where one district started the school year with 120 teacher vacancies. Across Texas, the main districts in Houston, Waco and elsewhere reported hundreds of teaching vacancies at the start of the year. Several schools nationwide have had to shut classrooms because of a lack of teachers. In Michigan, Eastpointe Community Schools abruptly moved its middle school back to remote learning this week because it doesnt have enough teachers. The small district north of Detroit has 43 positions vacant a quarter of its teaching staff. When several middle school teachers resigned without notice last week, the district shifted to online classes to avoid sending in unqualified substitutes, spokeswoman Caitlyn Kienitz said. You dont want just an adult who can pass a background check, you want a teacher in front of your kids, Kienitz said. This is obviously not ideal, but were able to make sure theyre getting each subject area from a teacher certified to teach it. According to a June survey of 2,690 members of the National Education Association, 32% said the pandemic drove them to plan to leave the profession earlier than expected. Another survey by the RAND Corp. said the pandemic exacerbated attrition, burnout and stress on teachers, who were almost twice as likely as other employed adults to feel frequent job-related stress and almost three times more likely to experience depression. The lack of teachers is really a nationwide issue and definitely a statewide issue, said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of Californias State Board of Education. A school district in Californias West Contra Costa County is considering hiring out-of-state math educators to teach online while a substitute monitors students in person. This is the most acute shortage of labor we have ever had, associate superintendent Tony Wold said. We opened this year with 50 thats five-zero teaching positions open. That means students are going to 50 classrooms that do not have a permanent teacher. There are an additional 100 openings for non-credentialed but critical staff like instructional aides who help English learners and special needs students custodians, cafeteria workers and others, Wold said. Californias largest district, Los Angeles Unified with 600,000 students, has more than 500 teacher vacancies, a fivefold increase from previous years, spokeswoman Shannon Haber said. Schools try to fill in with substitutes, but theyre in short supply, too. Only about a quarter of the pool of 1,000 qualified substitutes is willing to work in Fresno Unified, said Nikki Henry, a spokeswoman for the central California district with 70,000 students and 12,000 staffers. At Berkeley High School, a shortage of substitutes means teachers are asked to fill in during their prep periods, leading to exhaustion and burnout typically not felt at the start of a school year. We are absolutely strained. This has been an incredibly stressful start to the year, said Hasmig Minassian, a ninth-grade teacher who describes physical and mental exhaustion as she tries to juggle staffing needs and the emotional needs of students who are showing signs of more mental fragility and learning loss. It doesnt feel like there are enough adults on these campuses to keep kids really safe. We feel short-staffed in a way weve never felt before, she said. You know the early videos of nurses crying in their cars? I kind of expect those to come out about teachers. The California shortages range from dire to less severe in places that planned ahead and beat the competition, but those are the minority, said Darling-Hammond of the board of education. In a new twist, money is not the main problem. School districts have the funds to hire additional staff, thanks to billions in federal and state pandemic relief funding. There just arent people applying. Were all competing for a shrinking piece of the pie, said Mike Ghelber, assistant superintendent at the Morongo Unified School District in the Mojave Desert, which has more than 200 openings for special education aides, custodians, cafeteria workers and others. I dont know if everybody is getting snatched up, or if they dont want to teach in the COVID era, but its like the well has dried up. The district of 8,000 students has ads in newspapers, radio and social media. Teachers are packing now hiring flyers into kids lunchboxes, with a long list of openings so families can spread the word. In the meantime, everyone is pitching in. Principals and administrators are out being crossing guards. Secretaries are directing traffic because were short on supervisors, Ghelber said. The shortages raise concerns that schools will hire underqualified teachers, particularly in low-income communities where its already harder to fill positions, Darling-Hammond said. Class sizes also are expanding. Mount Diablo Unified School District, which serves 28,000 students east of San Francisco, has had to fill several elementary school classrooms at the maximum capacity of 32 students. Its not ideal for social distancing but frees up teachers for online school. About 150 kids initially signed up for distance learning, but with spiking infections blamed on the highly contagious delta variant, the number ballooned to 600 when school reopened. The same happened in Fresno, where enrollment in remote learning exploded to 3,800 from 450. Superintendent Adam Clark said the Mount Diablo district is offering $5,000 signing bonuses for speech pathologists and $1,500 for paraeducators who help students with learning needs. San Francisco Unified is offering a similar starting bonus for 100 paraeducator jobs. Nearby West Contra Costa County Unified has set $6,000 signing bonuses for teachers, with a third paid out after the first month and rest when the teacher enters year three. Districts in Oklahoma, North Carolina, New Jersey and elsewhere are offering a range of cash incentives for new teachers, particularly in low-income and low-performing schools. Of a dozen officials interviewed in California districts, only one said it was facing no shortages. Long Beach Unified, the states fourth-largest district with over 70,000 students, anticipated the need last spring for a hiring spree of about 400 jobs. We went full aggressive, assistant superintendent David Zaid said, including beefing up human resources for a 24-hour turnaround on contract offers. A virtual interview team worked through the summer. Recruitment events drew hundreds of applicants, and as HR employees met hiring benchmarks, they got rewards like catered breakfasts and an ice cream truck. We probably would have experienced the same shortages as others, Zaid said. But we became much more assertive, and as a result, we are not in the same position. By JOCELYN GECKER Associated Press Danes side with US against French criticism of defense deal View Photo COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) Denmark is siding with the United States in the dispute with its fellow EU member France over a major Indo-Pacific defense deal. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a newspaper interview that she wants to warn against turning concrete challenges, which will always exist between allies, into something they should not be. France has reacted strongly to the deal between the U.S., Britain and Australia. As part of it, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. The French government is suggesting it was betrayed by the deal, and on Tuesday, the EU agreed to put the dispute at the top of the blocs political agenda. In the light of the discussions that are taking place right now in Europe, I think it is important to say that I experience (U.S. President Joe) Biden as very loyal to the trans-Atlantic alliance, Frederiksen told Danish newspaper Politiken on Wednesday. In a half-hour telephone call also Wednesday that the White House described as friendly, President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Biden agreed to meet next month to discuss the way forward. The call suggested a cooling of tempers. France also agreed to send back its ambassador that it had recalled from Washington. Asked whether she can understand the French criticism, Frederiksen replied: No, I cannot. I do not understand that at all. She stressed that that did not mean Denmark agreed with the U.S. on everything. We have said that we would have liked to see another exit from Afghanistan, she said. But I have no frustrations at all in relation to the new American administration. Denmark, a NATO member, has been a staunch supporter of the U.S. It backed the war in Iraq and maintained some 12,000 soldiers in Afghanistan from 2002 until the U.S. withdrawal this year. Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian issued a statement Thursday saying he held a bilateral meeting with his American counterpart Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the United Nations summit aimed at restoring confidence between their two countries. Le Drian said the New York meeting took place in the light of Wednesdays call between Macron and Biden. Le Drians statement noted that the way out of the crisis between our two countries would take time and would require action. The Latest: Libya plans conference on its political process View Photo The Latest on the UN General Assembly: ___ After a no-confidence vote in Libyas transitional government this week added to uncertainty ahead of key elections in December, one of its leaders said Thursday the government would hold an international conference next month on trying to keep the political process on track. Mohammad Younes Menfi, who chairs Libyas three-member Presidential Council, announced the plan but gave few specifics at the U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders. He said the conference would involve relevant national bodies and institutions, plus regional and international voices. The aim: maintaining the political process, keeping unified, consistent, coherent international support, and conducting safe, transparent, fair elections, Menfi said. He didnt give a location or exact date. Libya is at a critical juncture indeed, a defining moment, said Menfi, a diplomat from the countrys east. We either succeed in the democratic transition by means of fair and free and transparent elections, the results of which are acceptable to all, then move towards a sustained stability and prosperity or we fail and relapse into division and armed conflict, he said. Libya has endured a decade of chaos since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In the aftermath, the oil-rich nation was split between a government in the east, backed by commander Khalifa Hifter, and a U.N.-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli. Each side has also had the support of different regional powers, militias and mercenaries from countries such as Russia and Syria. All mercenaries and foreign forces were supposed to withdraw after last Octobers cease-fire agreement, but they remain in the country and Menfi said this issue remains a real challenge. The current transitional government replaced the two rival administrations and was intended to prepare the country for elections on Dec. 24. But Libyan lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in the transitional government on Tuesday, adding to questions about the planned elections. Still, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said the government would keep pushing ahead. (edited) ___ Panamas President Laurentino Cortizo has requested support to address the flood of migrants passing through his nation. He told the U.N. General Assembly that, this year alone, already 80,000 migrants have traversed Panama. Its been an exponential rise, from 800 in January to 30,000 last month, and Panama dedicates some of its limited resources to providing them with food and shelter. Panama does its part. Now we appeal to the international community to, as soon as possible, make a joint effort, with coordinated strategies and resources, he said. Cortizo said the migrants largely originate in Africa and the Caribbean. The crisis is centered in the deep forest of the Darien Gap at Panamas border with Colombia, which migrants attempt to cross en route to the U.S. Panamas foreign minister Erika Mouynes said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday that the nation hasnt received a cent of international cooperation to face up to the flow of migrants. This is everyones responsibility, Cortizo said. ___ UNITED NATIONS Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel seized on the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan to blast the United States for what he said is a history of foreign policy disasters. Occupation only leaves destruction, and no country has the right to impose its will on sovereign nations, Dias Canel said in a pre-recorded video shown at the U.N. General Assembly. Afghanistan is not an isolated case. It has been evidence that where the United States intervenes, there is an increase in instability, deaths, suffering and enduring scars. Afghanistan was just one example the Cuban president used to attack U.S. foreign policy, which he said relied on the pernicious use and abuse of measures of economic coercion. He scolded U.S. President Joe Biden for maintaining more than 200 measures adopted by his predecessor, Donald Trump, particularly the addition of Cuba to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism. Trump added Cuba to the list just days before leaving office in January. Diaz-Canel also expressed support for regional allies Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Venezuelas Nicolas Maduro, and said the South American nation will always be able to count on Cubas solidarity. In Maduros video speech broadcast at the U.N. yesterday, he railed against U.S.s fierce campaign of sanctions and demanded they be lifted. By The Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) A guard at the federal jail in downtown Los Angeles was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of lying to investigators about having sex with an inmate, prosecutors said. A federal grand jury indictment charges Abel Concho, of East Los Angeles, with one count of making false statements, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in a statement. He was scheduled to make an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon. It wasnt immediately known if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. During interviews with investigators, Concho allegedly made a series of false statements, including that he never had sexual contact with the inmate who was under his care at the Metropolitan Detention Center from June 2010 to February 2011, the statement said. Concho then falsely stated that he had sexual intercourse and engaged in oral sex with the victim just once (or) twice that he could recall, the indictment alleges. Concho is also accused of smuggling a cellphone into the facility to the victim to take nude photographs for him. According to the indictment, Concho was the target of a criminal investigation that he had sexual contact with multiple inmates at the jail, which houses a total of 635 male and female inmates. If convicted of the charge in the indictment, Concho, 53, would face a statutory maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. NEW YORK (AP) Even in a crazy year with so many ups and downs, consider the last 12 months of Aaron Tveit. The Broadway star was wowing fans in Moulin Rouge! The Musical when it was suddenly shuttered by the coronavirus. Then he contracted COVID-19 himself. He recovered to lend his voice to relief efforts, got a few high-profile acting gigs and then landed his first Tony nomination. Its hard to have perspective, he said. I just think thats going to need a little bit of time and a little bit of a 25,000-foot view to see what actually happened in the last year. Two back-to-back blows came within weeks last March when his show was shuttered and then Tveit became one of the first Broadway actors to speak publicly about contracting COVID-19. "I wanted to kind of say, Look, Im somebody that really takes care of my health and Id like to think Im in good shape. I was basically trying to say, This can affect anyone. Please take this seriously, he said. Tveit, 37, says he now suspects he was sicker than he thought at the time. For several weeks, he slept 13 hours a day but thankfully, his lungs weren't affected. It was like a terrible, terrible sinus infection. A few weeks later, he had a flare-up. In terms of lasting effects, I think Ive been OK, he said. I know a lot of people that really, really suffered. So I consider myself very lucky that I got by with as mild a case as I did. Tveit summoned the strength to lend his support for out-of-work actors joining stars like Sutton Foster and Jeremy Jordan for a benefit concert hosted by Rosie ODonnell and later singing Marry Me a Little for a Stephen Sondheim birthday celebration. It felt so meaningful to me to be included but also the message behind it: We can still be a community, we can still learn how to come together even under these circumstances," he said. With Moulin Rouge! grounded, Tveit found work elsewhere. Over the summer, he shot a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie with Laura Osnes and flew to Vancouver to work on the Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon! Gratitude doesnt even describe how I feel, he said of the employment. I think about it every day because I know so many people who have not been able to work at all. The question of paying rent, of being able to support families and pay bills its its truly devastating. Tveit's first big gig was in a Rent tour and he made his Broadway debut as a replacement in Hairspray and then Wicked. He then had three starring roles in Next to Normal, Catch Me If You Can and now Moulin Rouge! His film work includes the adaptation of "Les Miserables" and on TV he was in Graceland, BrainDead and Grease Live! A bright spot in a dark year was when Moulin Rouge! earned more than a dozen Tony nominations, which the company celebrated with a Zoom toast. Id like to think that our show would have done as well in any year. So Im very proud of the work that weve done, he said. Tveit was the only actor nominated in the category of best leading actor in a musical for his role as Christian and it marks his first nomination. Unopposed, hes poised to win, as long as 60% of Tony voters vote for him in the category. Its the most wild thing that it just worked out that way. But Im just so grateful and I take it as nothing but as a recognition of the hard work that I put into the show, he said. Producer Carmen Pavlovic calls Tveit a unique musical theater actor whose vocal talent just blows you away, spanning ballads and all-out rock numbers. "Im thrilled hes received his first Tony nomination for his performance, which reflects not only his work on Moulin Rouge! but also Aarons vast body of work that brings his career journey to this special moment, she said. Tveit sees something of a silver lining in the Broadway shutdown: Long unaddressed social issues are being examined, top among them racial representation on both sides of the curtain. While urging donations to the national services group The Actor's Fund, he also champions Black Lives Matter groups, anti-racism organizations, bail relief and transgender resources. Ive done a lot of listening, he said. I've tried to just shut my mouth and listen to everything around me and what people need and what people feel and then look at how personally I may or may not be helping. When Broadway restarts, he hopes the hard work can continue of ensuring all people have equal access to theater work, not just friends or those recommended. I think that if that means for a while making a concentrated effort to look beyond the norm, then maybe five or 10 years from now hopefully we'll be in a much better place, he said. ___ Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits UNITED NATIONS (AP) Using apocalyptic images, three presidents and seven foreign ministers warned Thursday that a warmer world is also a more violent one. At a ministerial meeting of the Security Council, the officials urged the U.N.s most powerful body to do more to address the security implications of climate change and make global warming a key part of all U.N. peacekeeping operations. The leaders and ministers pushing for more U.N. action said warming is making the world less safe, pointing to Africa's conflict-plagued Sahel region and Syria and Iraq as examples.. Micheal Martin, Irelands president, who chaired the meeting, said climate change is already contributing to conflict in many parts of the world." And Vietnam President Nguyen Xuan Phuc said climate change is a war without gunfire so to speak that causes economic damage and losses in lives no less dire than actual wars. The effects of climate change are particularly profound when they overlap with fragility and past or current conflicts, said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "And when natural resources like water become scarce because of climate change, grievances and tensions can explode, complicating efforts to prevent conflict and sustain peace. Our lives and daily realities are at the nexus of climate change insecurity, said Ilwad Elman, a Somali-Canadian peace activist. The impact of climate change and environmental degradation are also changing what it takes to build peace ... because we are experiencing climate-related shocks and stresses. The Security Council first discussed the impact of climate on peace and security in 2007 and has held a number of meetings about it since, most recently in February. But it remains off the councils agenda because of divisions among members. That means there can be no legally binding resolutions or official requests for action. Irelands Martin said he recognized the different views bit if the council is to meet its responsibility to maintain international peace and security, it must have the information and tools to analyze and address climate-related security risks. For years, academics who study conflict and climate change have been highlighting how events like a once-in-a-millennium Syrian drought have exacerbated conflicts without being the sole causes. It's a more nuanced approach to understanding conflict and to developing tools that reduce its impact on societies. Look at almost every place where you see threats to international peace and security today, and youll find that climate change is making things less peaceful, less secure, and rendering our response even more challenging, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. He cited a list of nations including Syria, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia. We have to stop debating whether the climate crisis belongs in the Security Council, Blinken said, and instead ask how the council can leverage its unique powers to tackle the negative impacts of climate on peace and security. Russian and Chinese diplomats reiterated their countries objections to putting climate change on the agenda of the council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, when other U.N. and international forums are addressing the entire climate issue. There is a Russian saying that ... too many cooks spoil the broth, said Russias deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky. He accused council members of introducing a completely unnecessary political component to an already complicated and sensitive discussion. Chinese U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said the council must refrain from using a wholesale approach, saying that not all war-torn countries were plunged into chaos because of climate change. Both Russia and China, which is the worlds top emitter of climate-damaging pollution, stressed their countries' commitment to cut emissions. So did Blinken for the United States, the second largest carbon polluter, and India, the third-largest, which also said climate change doesn't belong on the council agenda. Reenat Sandhu, a deputy Indian foreign secretary, said singling out one cause of conflict is counterproductive." Climate change may enhance conflict, but cannot be determined as a reason for it," she said. Oversimplification of causes of conflict will not help in resolving them nor can it justify extreme policy measures. We need to bring back our focus to where it should be combating climate change." Still, most of the leaders who spoke Thursday morning painted a gloomy picture for the planet as a whole. They said climate change needs to be fought in the same way the world is battling the coronavirus because, for the planet, it is a matter of life and death. Decisions at the November U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland will decide whether this decade will be remembered as the decade when we started to save the planet or the beginning of the end, said Estonia President Kersti Jaljulaid. At the General Assemblys annual gathering of world leaders on Thursday, Angola President Joao Lourenco said Earth has been giving us increasingly clear signals that she is not happy with how we treat her, and is defending herself in the most violent manner possible. And the previous evening, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who will host the climate negotiations in Scotland, gave a speech that started with a lesson on extinction among mammals and then reminded the world that humans, too, are mammals. Our grandchildren will know that we are the culprits. And theyll know that we knew that we were warned, Johnson said. And they will ask themselves what kind of people we were to be so selfish and so shortsighted. ___ Borenstein, an Associated Press science writer, reported from Washington. Click here to read the full article. Al Harrington, the Samoan-American actor known for his role as Detective Ben Kokua on Hawaii Five-0, died Sept. 21 after suffering a stroke earlier this month. He was 85. Harrington was one of the last living cast members from the original CBS drama that aired from 1968 to 1980. He also had a recurring role as a different character on the series reboot that bowed on CBS in 2011. Al was truly a gift from God. A noble, compassionate, patient and gentle man with a witty sense of humor and a larger-than-life laugh that will echo in my heart until we are reunited, Harringtons wife, Rosa, said in a statement to People. It was his greatest honor to represent his people on-screen, and to serve them off-screen. To know him was to feel seen, loved, safe and welcomed. As an Icon for Hawaii, our islands and her people are mourning his loss. Harrington, born Tausau Taa in 1935 in America Samoa. He moved to Honolulu with his mother three years later. He studied at Menlo College and Stanford University. After graduating with a degree in history, he returned to Hawaii and taught at the University of Hawaii. On the side, he worked as a professional entertainer and dancer in Waikiki under the moniker The South Pacific Man. His acting debut was on Hawaii Five-0, first as several other recurring characters in the earlier seasons and then as a regular in 1972. His other television credits include Magnum, P.I., Scrubs and The Byrds of Paradise, and in 2018, he was honored with the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his wife, survivors include sons Alema and Tau, daughters Summer and Cassi, and several grandchildren. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Jay Sandrich, the prolific Emmy-winning TV director who was an instrumental player in such series as The Cosby Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles, CAA confirmed. He was 89. Sandrich was beloved in the creative community and was considered a mentor to a generation of TV directors, notably James Burrows. Sandrich had a major influence on TV comedy as the director of pilots for Soap, The Golden Girls, The Bob Newhart Show, Empty Nest, Night Court and A Different World. His career began on the set of I Love Lucy and stretched through Two and a Half a Men. More from Variety Seth MacFarlane, Cicely Tyson, Bob Iger Among TV Academy Hall of Fame Honorees His father, Mark Sandrich, was a famed movie director of musicals such as Holiday Inn and Top Hat. Jay Sandrich earned five Emmys for directing throughout his career, including two for The Cosby Show in 1985 and 1986, plus two for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1971 and 1973. He won a Daytime Emmy for Insight, a weekly anthology series about religion, in 1984. In 2020, Sandrich was inducted into the Television Academys Hall of Fame in 2020. He also won three Directors Guild of America awards, for The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls and The Lily Tomlin Special. In addition to his wins, he earned six other Emmy nominations and six nods from the DGA. Sandrichs long list of credits include the most acclaimed and popular comedies of the past half-century: The Odd Couple, That Girl, He & She, Benson, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor, Welcome Back, Kotter, Laverne & Shirley, The Cosby Show, Thea, Ink, Pearl and Carol & Co. Ron Howard, director and co-head of Imagine Entertainment, worked with Sandrich when Howard was a child actor on Andy Griffith. Talent, taste, hard work and a great team spirit defined his stellar reputation, Howard wrote on Twitter. RIP Jay Sandrich . I knew Jay when he was an associate producer on #TheAndyGriffithShow before he became one of the greatest & most prolific #TVComedy directors. Talent, taste, hard work and a great team spirit defined his stellar reputation. https://t.co/CKY0rdtNkA Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) September 23, 2021 Born in Los Angeles in 1932, Sandrich attended Beverly Hills High School and UCLA. He served in the Army and began his career as a second assistant director on I Love Lucy. He quickly became an in-demand helmer working on such hits as The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show and Get Smart. In a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television, Sandrich said he learned a key truism about directing from actor Richard Benjamin, star of He and She, namely that directors need to understand the script to be effective. Emotion, Sandrich told the archive, is a very strong word in my vocabulary as a director. He is survived by his wife, Linda, and three children from a previous marriage, Eric, Tony and Wendy, and four grandchildren. The family requests that donations be made in Sandrichs name to Planned Parenthood, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank or the Cradle to Career Aspen Community Foundation. Here is Jay Sandrichs interview with the Archive of American Television Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. FALMOUTH, Maine (AP) A Maine Turnpike attendant was injured by flying glass and debris from a fiery crash involving an alleged drunken driver, state police said. John Schwabe, 46, of Westbrook, was treated at Maine Medical Center for cuts on his face and head following the crash early Thursday at his toll booth on the Falmouth spur of the turnpike, officials said. Brent Stirton, Staff / TNS A former Houston police officer pleaded guilty this week to charges related to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Tam Pham, an 18-year veteran of the Houston Police Department, was charged with parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. He was initially arrested on Jan. 20 for knowingly entering a restricted building without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Fox News host Tucker Carlson is upset with Texas Governor Greg Abbott for refusing to appear on his show. In a Tuesday night monologue, the conservative commentator claimed show organizers have been trying for months to get the Republican leader to come on the show and answer questions about the situation at the Texas border. Weve asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott many times to come on this show to explain to us why he hasnt called the National Guard to seal the Texas border and protect us from this invasion, Carlson told viewers. Greg Abbott has refused to come on repeatedly. The news anchor threatened to invite Abbotts primary opponents on the show to explain how they would better manage the state, but gave the governor a final chance to make an appearance. Sincerely, please, come on and tell us how you plan to save the rest of us from what is happening in your state," Carlson said. Carlson has been consistently critical of the handling of immigration in Texas, where thousands of asylum-seeking Haitian migrants remain under the Del Rio International Bridge after crossing the border from Mexico. In an article shared on Fox News Tuesday, Carlson blamed President Joe Biden for the migrant surge and made claims of broad dereliction of duty at border outposts. On Friday, the Border Patrol checkpoint near El Indio, Texas was completely unmanned, Carlson said in the article. There was nobody there. You could have driven a truck full of fentanyl or illegal aliens directly into the United States without being stopped or questioned or checked or anything. It's unclear why Abbott has refused requests to appear on Carlson's show, as the two appear to agree that the Biden administration is not doing enough to secure the countrys southern border. During a press conference at the border Tuesday evening, Abbott railed against the Biden administration for promoting and allowing open border policies. Abbott added that DPS and the National Guard have taken steps to seal the border by placing DPS vehicles along the border to create a makeshift barrier, but the Biden Administration needs to step up. The Biden Administration is a man-made disaster of inhumanity of epic proportions, he said. It must end immediately. Gene J. Puskar/AP Former President George W. Bush is headlining a fundraiser for Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney as she lines up support in her effort to fight off attacks from former President Donald Trump in her bid for re-election. Bush is attending an Oct. 18 event in Dallas for Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership position in Congress over her vote to impeach Trump. The event will also feature other prominent Republicans including Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, according to a person familiar with the event first reported by Politico and the Wall Street Journal. Will Matthew McConaughey make a run for political office in Texas? He gave some of his thoughts on the matter this week. During a recent episode of the Set it Straight: Myths and Legends podcast, McConaughey said he's still considering challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022. Country trio Midland, who are the podcast hosts, urged the actor to run, saying they admire his ability to spread awareness and positivity, The Hill reported. "Well, thank you, man. I'm measuring it. Look, it's going to be in some capacity... I just I'm more of a folksy and philosopher-poet statesman than I am a, per see, a definitive politician," McConaughey told the hosts in an episode released on Wednesday, September 22. "So I go, well, that's a reason not to, but then I go, no, that's exactly why you should, because politics needs redefinition, but I'm measuring, you know, what is my category? What's my embassy?" Earlier this year in May, Politico's Meredith McGraw reported McConaughey was weighing a gubernatorial run and was "quietly making calls to influential people in Texas political circles." In a recent poll from the Dallas Morning News, McConaughey from being behind Abbott to moving nine percentage points ahead of the Texas governor in the hypothetical match-up. Also in the poll is former Texas representative Beto O'Rourke, who is expected to announce a run for governor of Texas in 2022, according to multiple news outlets. He inched closer to surpassing the governor's lead over him, cutting from 12 to five points in the Dallas Morning News poll. While he's "measuring" his run, McConaughey noted on the podcast he wanted to remain a storyteller and an artist even if he were to run for a political office. "I have to remain an artist. I've earned my right to enjoy that Saturday night part of life, that music part of life. It has to have music to it. You know what I mean. I'm very good at being diligent, Monday morning, practical, structure, I'm all of that. But I gotta continue to be an artist in what I do," McConaughey said. "Now if that's the category to be able to do that in, which would be different than, I think, some people have done it up to now, maybe it's for me. But maybe it's also in a whole new category that I just create, and we'll see." Good morning, y'all. If you're a bit out of the political loop, the Southside has an important election coming up. Early voting began Monday for the Texas House District 118 seat, and Democrats pack the ballot to fill the seat once held by former state Rep. Leo Pacheco. Pacheco resigned in August to take a faculty job at San Antonio College. Now three Democrats are vying for the seat including Desi Martinez, Frank Ramirez and Kate Farias. The Express-News endorsed Ramirez on Tuesday. There are two Republicans also in the running, including Adam Salyer and John Lujan who won the seat for a short while in a January 2016 special election, but lost it to Pacheco in November 2016. House District 118 covers the Southside and most of south Bexar County. Early voting continues until this Friday, September 24. Election Day is September 28. Find early voting times and locations here. Election Day locations can be found here. Here's what else you need to know to start your day, San Antonio. Southtown bodega and coffee shop to brew up new chapter Raul Martinez opened Wong's Bodega and Fahrenheit 209 in the old Wong Grocery Co. building in April 2020. A little over a year later, the Southtown bodega chose not to renew its lease and will close at the end of the month to prepare for a "new future." Here's what that means. Trying out the Farrah Fawcett look in 2021 Texas native and Charlie's Angels star Farrah Fawcett was a national treasure in the late 1970s. So was her iconic hairstyle. But do the Farrah Fawcett curls still hold up for the generation of TikTok dance trends and "devious licks." MySA's Camille Sauers tried it out. See the results here. Abuelita-inspired Mexican coffee shop to open soon A coffee shop that used to serve abuelita-inspired cafecito out of an old Volkswagen van, is brewing up a grand opening on the Northeast Side. The owner shared photos with us, and now we get to share them with you. Get a first look here. El Paso becomes the first in Texas to reach herd immunity The El Paso Times reported Monday that 75 percent of El Pasoans 12 years old and older are fully vaccinated, achieving herd immunity. But local officials are enforcing a local mask mandate and encouraging vaccines. Read more here. Cullum's Attaboy to reemerge on the St. Mary's Strip Cullum's Attaboy is coming back as a burger joint on St. Mary's Street. The owner says the concept is geared towards "an older version of San Antonio." Read more here. Texas is being sued over its new law barring social media platforms from banning users over their political views by two trade associations that represent some of the industrys biggest online companies. NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represent Google and Twitter, among other companies in the e-commerce and social media industries, filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal judge to block the law. Under the law, which was passed by the Legislature as House Bill 20, and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 9, social media platforms with over 50 million monthly users in the U.S. a threshold that includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube must publicly report details about content removal and account suspensions biannually. The platforms are also required to establish an easily accessible complaint system, where users could flag violations of the law. Supporters of the bill said it was a necessary step to ensure users viewpoints arent censored and people who are blocked have a path for recourse. The state cannot force platforms to host content they wouldnt otherwise host, the presidents of NetChoice and CCIA said in a Tuesday meeting with reporters. The law threatens the safety of users, creators and businesses that use platforms to reach their audiences, said NetChoice President and CEO Steve DelBianco. They cant be forced to carry content that violates the community standards that they use to curate a community of online content that suits their advertisers and audience, DelBianco said. The law was passed in response to outcry from Republicans over what they call an anti-conservative bias among tech companies. Gov. Greg Abbott has been a proponent of the legislation, saying that social media companies were part of a a dangerous movement to silence conservative ideas [and] religious beliefs. The issue culminated after the Jan. 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol, when Twitter purged more than 70,000 accounts linked to the dangerous conspiracy theory group QAnon and permanently banned former President Donald Trump for inciting violence. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service, the platform said in a Jan. 8 blog post. Experts and critics questioned the Texas laws legality throughout the legislative process. State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, previously said HB 20 could be a slippery slope to government violations of First Amendment rights. Thomas Leatherbury, the director of the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, said the law is extremely intrusive and violates social media platforms right to curate user-generated content in accordance with their terms of service. It has all the same flaws that the Florida law did, that has already been held unconstitutional, and then some, Leatherbury said. Leatherbury, who is a partner at Vinson and Elkins, noted the law also violates the equal protection clause by targeting only the largest social media platforms, a point also made in the lawsuit. With some exceptions, the law prohibits electronic mail service providers from preventing emails from being sent based on the messages contents, with some exceptions. Leatherbury said this section unconstitutionally restricts the First Amendment rights of email services as well. "The shame of it all is that the law is clearly unconstitutional, Leatherbury said. The Legislature should have known that, particularly after the Florida experience. And they're going to have to spend, potentially, $1 million, $2 million to defend a patently unconstitutional law. And that's money that could be much better spent elsewhere." This lawsuit isnt the first of its kind for NetChoice and CCIA. In May, the groups sued to block a similar measure in Florida, which became the first state to regulate tech companies speech. In June, a federal judge granted the request to block the enforcement of the law. DelBianco said the First Amendment flaws outlined by the judge in Floridas case match pretty closely to the Texas law. While state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, the author of HB 20, has compared tech companies to common carriers like phone companies or cable providers, which are already barred from discrimination against customers, the judge in the Florida case said that comparison isnt completely accurate. The Texas lawsuit raises concerns surrounding the First Amendment, 14th Amendment and vagueness statutes, arguing the Texas laws definition of social media platform is so expansive it could enjoin companies not popularly considered social media, like eBay. The Constitution prohibits federal and state governments, not private actors, from restricting free speech, the groups argue. CCIA President Matthew Schruers said the law restricts digital services ability to respond to content that might not be illegal but is certainly malicious. Forcing those companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints would put the Nazi party political speech and extremist messages from Taliban sympathizers on equal footing with God bless America, Schruers said. Disclosure: Facebook and Google have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. New genomic analysis sorts out when Polynesians reached which islands ars technica (Kevin W) Coral Reef Protection in Exchange for Debt Relief: Could it Really Work? Credit Slips Ghost forests creep up U.S. East Coast NBC Boris Johnson: Time for humanity to grow up on climate change BBC Metals supercharge a promising method to bury harmful carbon dioxide under the sea University of Texas at Austin (Chuck L) Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics Wired We Need Software Updates Forever SpectrumIEEE This Microchip With Wings Is The Smallest Flying Structure Humans Have Ever Built ScienceAlert (David L) New optical transistor speeds up computation up to 1,000 times, at lowest switching energy possible Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Chuck L) Mathematicians discover music really can be infectious like a virus Guardian (David L) Infectious diseases go hand in hand with authoritarian attitudes ZMEScience Is the worst cold ever going around? BBC. Yours truly has a mild sniffle nearly all winter, which I tell myself helps me ward off worse infections (this really does seem to be true). I am sniffling a bit ahead of schedule. People who eat more dairy fat have lower risk of heart disease, study suggests CNN (furzy). n=1, but my 93 year old mother thinks butter is a food group and has a perfect EKG. And she has correctly declared herself to be the original couch potato, so its not as if her heart benefited from years of strenuous activity. #COVID-19 JUST IN Israeli Ministry of Health announces that the Green Pass for vaccinated expires when 6 months have passed after the 2nd dose and now also 6 months after the 3rd (booster) vaccination. Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 22, 2021 China? AUKUS Boris Johnson tells Macron: Donnez-moi un break over new pact BBC (Kevin W) Looks like Macron has extracted his payoff. From the Politico daily European newsletter: MACRON AND BIDEN VOW TO MAKE AMENDS: In a remarkable conciliatory statement after his call with French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday expressed regret over an Indo-Pacific security pact that enraged Paris. How Biden says sorry 1: The two leaders agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners. President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard, said the readout of the call released by the White House and the Elysee. How Biden says sorry 2: Bidens most concrete concession to France was a promise to reinforce Americas support to counter-terrorism operations in the Sahel conducted by European states. Macron has long been calling for the international community especially other EU countries and the U.S. to step up their support to Frances mission in Mali. Saying it in person: The White House also announced plans for Biden and Macron to meet in Europe at the end of October. In addition, the French Ambassador to the United States Philippe Etienne will return to his post in Washington next week, after being recalled last Friday amid the diplomatic row. Europe doesnt need a Mega-Fab Bruegel. Readers? My default is that supply chain issues are making clear that being more of an autarky, at the cost of getting the best price, is worth the tradeoff. But the lead times here are not trivial. Brexit By crushing party democracy, Labour may sign its own death warrant openDemocracy Biden TikTok Users Watch Nancy Pelosi For Stock Trade Tips From Congress Disclosures NPR (TF) Clinics in states neighboring Texas are seeing drastic increases in patients seeking an abortion Business Insider Florida Proposal Would Ban Most Abortions, Mimicking Texas Bloomberg California-Grown Cannabis To Be Judged At Next State Fair CBS Sacramento. Resilc: 4H: High, hazy, happy, hammered. Our Famously Free Press Russiagate, More Like Watergate Matt Taibbi Number of Environmental Advocates Killed in 2020 Hits New Record Undark :-( What one citys struggle to ban natural gas says about the challenge of electrifying buildings Grist US crude at 24 month low, gasoline at 22 month low, total supplies at 42 month low Angry Bear A record number of cargo ships are stuck outside LA. Whats happening? Guardian (David L) Apple memo from Tim Cook denouncing leakers gets leaked RT (Kevin W) Wagging the Bitcoin Dog Counterpoint. Yours truly was not cynical enough: Living up to its deserved reputation as a tool associated with criminality, the Salvadoran move to Bitcoin is very much political theater. NASAs top official says Blue Origin lawsuit could delay human return to moon Business Insider The Fed is evaluating whether to launch a digital currency and in what form, Powell says CNBC (J-LS) So BofA thinks their customers only rent their deposits? oh dear *BANK OF AMERICA IS A `SUBSCRIPTION BUSINESS, MOYNIHAN SAYS Silvia Killingsworth (@silviakillings) September 22, 2021 Reclaiming Central Banks Ann Pettifor, Project Syndicate (Colonel Smithers) Class Warfare Antidote du jour (Leroy): And a bonus: See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Yves here. Even though workers seem to be clawing back some of their lost ground via wage increases, weve still seen very little in the way of successes in bargaining situations. And with ever-more employer surveillance and forcing workers to meet almost impossible production schedules, the losses in control over conditions are at least as bad as the long-term decay in pay levels. So a victory in the gig economy space is particularly welcome. Some heads will explode over the the requirement that food delivery workers be allowed to use restaurant bathrooms. By Josefa Velasquez and Claudia Irizarry Aponte. Originally published at THE CITY on September 22, 2021 De Blasio supports first-in-the-nation bills scheduled for Thursday vote, seeking better working conditions in the booming tech-driven food courier economy. The City Councils actions come as app firms sue to block bills it passed previously. City lawmakers are acting to aid workers in the booming multi-billion dollar app-based food delivery industry, scheduling a vote for Thursday on a landmark slate of bills intended to ensure bathroom access, minimum pay and more. The proposals were sparked by the activism of Los Deliveristas Unidos, a labor organization of immigrant delivery couriers who kept New Yorkers fed during the pandemic. Supporters say the New York effort to provide minimum working standards for app-based couriers is the first of its kind in any major U.S. city and they hope the measures will influence local governments across the country. Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday announced his support for the measures, which come as the city fends off dual lawsuits from delivery giants over previous Council-passed regulations on their business. The exploitation of delivery drivers is unacceptable, Bill Neidhardt, a de Blasio spokesperson, told THE CITY. City Hall wholeheartedly supports these bills to protect delivery workers and deeply appreciates the grassroots organizing of Los Deliveristas Unidos to make this possible. But unlike prior Council bills tied up in court battles, the new package has the full support of at least one app company, Grubhub. The new package of six bills would allow food couriers access to restaurant bathrooms, put limits on how far they can be asked to deliver, set minimum payments per trip and ensure that tips get to workers. For the first time, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) declared his support Tuesday night. The basic human dignity of delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants, has been ignored for too long across the country, said Johnson in a statement. New York City is taking the lead in transforming this industry with a legislative package that will give deliveristas the rights they deserve. Sergio Ajche, a Guatemalan food delivery worker from Brooklyn and one of the leaders of the grassroots immigrant labor collective Los Deliveristas Unidos, said hes feeling happy and optimistic over the expected approval of the bills. We have the support of a good group of elected officials, and that helps us muster strength to keep fighting. These six bills will help workers, but theyre not enough, Ajche told THE CITY in Spanish. Only time, each passing day will inform us what else we should change and demand. Every day more delivery workers are getting together and the movement grows. Were making progress. Fierce Determination The City Council vote comes nearly a year after THE CITY first reported workers beginning to unite over the perilous and exploitative nature of app-based delivery work, including lack of bathroom access, alleged wage theft, insufficient pay, and reports of muggings and robberies. Restaurant staff denying bathroom access became a galvanizing issue in the early days of the pandemic, as indoor dining shut down, as did most other restroom options and the takeout business boomed. The bill from Councilmember Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan) would require most restaurants to allow delivery workers picking up an order to use the bathroom if requested. The measure also would grant the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection the power to fine bars and restaurants that deny restroom access to couriers up to $50 on the first offense and $100 for every subsequent violation. Rivera told THE CITY shes been working with the Deliveristas for nearly two years to come up with a package of bills. Though this battle has been long and hard-fought, the fact that the Council will be voting on our legislation just a few short months after introduction is a testament to the organizing power and fierce determination of our citys Deliveristas, Rivera said. Storm Showed Dangers The working conditions of app-based food couriers came under further scrutiny earlier this month when the remnants of Hurricane Ida barrelled down on New York City, dumping a record amount of rain, paralyzing mass transit and leaving drivers stranded on roadways. Workers hauled outside in hip-deep water for meager pay as orders continued coming in. Images of food couriers wading through the deluge quickly began circulating on social media, reigniting public conversation over hazardous conditions workers face. A delivery worker in Astoria toiled in high water as the remnants of Hurricane Ida poured over the region Sept 1. Obtained by THE CITY Tono Solis, a delivery worker and member of the Deliveristas, told THE CITY that he earned just $5 for an hour-long trip to deliver a meal in Brooklyn from Astoria the night of the downpour, including tip. He made just $115 during the 9.5 hour workday, roughly $12 an hour, with tips lower than New Yorks $15-an-hour minimum wage. The apps treat couriers as independent contractors, not employees, leaving them exempt from minimum wage requirements. Council bill sponsors say the crisis for workers runs deeper. We shouldnt have needed a pandemic, or a hurricane, for us to recognize that Deliveristas are essential workers who deserve essential rights, said Councilmember Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), whos advancing a measure to regulate drivers pay. How these so-called gig workers get classified by employers has become a major issue nationally. A New York State proposal that would have allowed gig workers to unionize but stopped short of reclassifying them as employees failed to gain support in Albany. Last month, a California trial court dealt a blow to tech companies over a successful 2020 ballot proposition that allowed gig workers to be reclassified as independent contractors, ruling that it was unconstitutional. A survey of 500 York City app-based food delivery workers released last week found that workers on average earn less than the states minimum wage and that pay is often unreliable, with money coming in late and tips whittled down or missing. Food delivery workers reported earning an average of $7.87 an hour before tips and about $12.21 an hour with tips included, far less than the $33 food delivery company DoorDash claims its Manhattan couriers earn. The bill introduced by Lander, who is running for city comptroller, would establish minimum per-trip payments for delivery workers, similar to protections that the citys Uber and Lyft drivers already have in place. Delivery cyclists rode down Broadway in October 2020 to protest a lack of protection during the coronavirus pandemic. The city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection would be obligated to study working conditions and then issue rules establishing minimum per-trip payments, which would not include tips. Another bill would require that food delivery apps disclose to customers what portion of their tip is distributed to workers, how the tip is paid to them and what amount of each tip is used to make up workers base pay Yet another measure would prohibit online delivery companies from charging workers any fees to receive wages and tips, as well as require them to pay couriers at least once a week and offer at least one payment option that doesnt require a bank account. Regulating an Indispensable Industry Hildalyn Colon Hernandez, director of policy at the Workers Justice Project, a Brooklyn-based center that represents the Deliveristas, said the Councils package can serve as a framework for other municipalities. The City Councils package received an endorsement from at least one of the food ordering companies, Grubhub. Chicago-based Grubhub, one of the major tech companies involved in the app-based delivery sector, said through a spokesperson that Grubhub supports the proposals the City Council is currently considering that would provide a number of new protections. But the possibility of a legal showdown with other app firms looms large. A federal lawsuit filed earlier this month by delivery giants that include DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub claims earlier Council action to cap fees they charge to restaurants amounts to unconstitutional overreach. Last week, San Francisco-based DoorDash filed a lawsuit against the city over a new law approved in August that requires delivery companies to provide customer data to the restaurants that fulfill the orders. Uber Eats declined to comment. Relay, a smaller New York City-based food delivery company that works with restaurants, did respond to requests for comment. One of the thornier items, according to people familiar with the discussions, is a proposal by Councilmember Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn) to allow delivery workers to set limits on how far theyre willing to travel for a delivery. Theyd also be able to select which routes they want to take without fear their rating on the apps will decrease. In an emailed statement, DoorDash said it had concerns with Brannans bill because it could lead to couriers to decline to deliver to some neighborhoods, leading to discrimination. DoorDash spokesperson Campbell Millum said the company recognized the unique challenges facing delivery workers in the five boroughs and would work with city officials. We will continue to work with all stakeholders, including the City Council, to identify ways to support all delivery workers in New York City without unintended consequences, Millum said in an emailed statement. Citing the survey released last week by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Workers Justice Project, Brannan said the report was a scathing indictment on this unregulated, unsafe, yet completely indispensable industry. He added: We cannot sit back and allow companies worth billions to profit off the backs and bikes of exploited workers. The Flags of Many Countries Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), who introduced the payment bill, said the measures highlight the grotesque nature of the style of capitalism thats connected to these apps. That for me, has been just one example of what theyve been trying to get away with, Menchaca added. And theyre no longer going to get away with here. Another bill to be voted on would require that the third-party delivery platforms supply workers with insulated delivery bags. The app-branded thermal bags can cost up to $60, workers told THE CITY, and are an unofficial requirement for the job to keep food hot before it reaches the customer. Los Deliveristas Unidos plan to host an event at City Hall Park Thursday as the Council readies to vote, offering bicycle tune-ups, assistance with NYPD bike registration and help filling out applications for state pandemic financial assistance. A growing number of riders originally from Bangladesh and other countries will be joining the largely Mexican and Central American Deliveristas, members say. Our vision is that this movement includes the flags of many countries theres no race or color, Ajche said. Its for every delivery worker who identifies with our movement. This story was originally published by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York. Yves here. Its been hard to miss the way gas prices have been rising in the US. Of course, per Washington, rising energy charges are dastardly Russias fault. From the Financial Times: The US has vowed to support European countries hit by an energy supply crunch blamed by some officials and traders on Russia, and said it would stand up to suppliers accused of manipulating prices. Surging gas costs due to tight supply and low reserves have forced European governments to draw up plans to provide emergency aid to households and utilities. Energy market participants said moves by Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom to restrict supply have contributed to fears of a crippling energy crisis this winter. Perhaps some readers are well informed enough to have a basis for disagreeing, but I dont see how Russia, let alone one very large oil and gas company, can squeeze prices on a global basis. I am not aware of any Brent/European analogue to Cushing and the WTI, where it is possible to manipulate index prices due to storage capacity constraints. By Irina Slav, a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. Originally published at OilPrice It was only a matter of time, really. In a globalized world, energy crunches can hardly remain regionally contained for very long, especially in a context of damaged supply chains and a rush to cut investment in fossil fuels. The energy crunch that began in Europe earlier this month may now be on its way to America. For now, all is well with one of the worlds top gas producers. U.S. gas exporters have enjoyed a solid increase in demand from Asia and Europe as the recovery in economic activity pushed demand for electricity higher. According to a recent Financial Times report, there is a veritable bidding war for U.S. cargos of liquefied natural gas between Asian and European buyersand the Asians are winning. Coal exports are on the rise, too, and have been for a while now, especially after a political spat had China shun Australian coal. But supply is tightening, Argus reported earlier this month. In July, according to the report, U.S. coking coal exports dropped by as much as 20.3 percent from June. The report noted supply was constrained by producers limited access to funding and a labor shortage that has plagued many industries amid the pandemic. All this should be good news for U.S. producers of fossil fuels. But it may easily become bad news as winter approaches. The Wall Street Journals Jinjoo Lee wrote earlier this week high energy prices could be the next hot import for the United States. Lee cited data showing gas inventory replenishment was running below average rates for this season, and gas in storage in early September was 7.4 percent below the five-year average. Coal inventories are also running low because of stronger exports, with prices for thermal coal three times higher than they were a year ago. According to calculations from the Energy Information Administration cited in the WSJ report, coal inventories in the United States could fall to less than half last years inventory levels by the end of the year. Last year, energy demand was depressed because of the pandemic. This year, the U.S. economy is firing on all cylinders once again. No wonder electricity prices are already going up. In a way, the events in Europe could be seen as a trailer of what might happen in the United States. It is a trailer because it shows all the worst bits. The United States is much more energy independent than, say, the UK, and thats a big plus. Yet exports bring in revenues, and it would require government intervention to make gas producers cut exports. In an alarming move, such intervention was requested last week by a manufacturing industry group. Industrial Energy Consumers of America, an organization representing companies producing chemicals, food, and materials, asked the Department of Energy to institute limits on the exports of liquefied natural gas in order to avoid soaring prices and gas shortages during the winter, Reuters reported on Friday. Opinions seem to differ on whether rising LNG exports are in fact hurting U.S. consumers. But the fact is that gas prices are already double what they were a year ago. According to the IECA, they are not, however, high enough to motivate a ramp-up in natural gas production. Therefore, in order to stockpile enough gas for the winter, the U.S. government must force a reduction in exports. The LNG industry is, of course, against this. The executive director of Center for Liquefied Natural Gas told Reuters most LNG exports are shipped under long-term fixed-price contracts that have no relation to benchmark gas prices and their movements. Yet some cargos are sold on the spot market. Buyers of LNG who compete for natural gas with U.S. consumers are state-owned enterprises and foreign government-controlled utilities with automatic cost pass through, Paul Cicio, president of IECA, said, as quoted by Reuters. U.S. manufacturers cannot compete with them on prices. Traders are already getting jittery, and this will likely contribute to price uncertainty; regardless of how the fundamentals situation develops. Again, Europe is at the heart of the uncertainty or rather the certainty that prices have higher to climb. But now, China has added to concern about gas supply and the potential for shortages. For now, Chinas biggest problem seems to be coal rather than gas. A recent Bloomberg report said that China coal power plant operators are struggling to buy enough coal to keep their plants running, and some are being forced to shut down their boilers because of insufficient coal supply. This, however, might lead to stronger gas demand to ensure enough electricity and heating for the winter. This will further exacerbate the difference between global demand and supply. The European energy crunch is spilling over into other regions. The blame game has begun with culprits ranging from years of underinvestment in local gas production to a Gazprom scheme to get Nord Stream 2 approved by Germany. For now, it is still unclear how much of the price surge is due to a gap between demand and supply and how much of it is due to market nervousness, at least according to RBC commodity strategist Christopher Louney, as quoted by the WSJs Lee. This question is less important than another, however, and it is a scary one: Just how bad could things get this winter? By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans. Ocean Cleanup. the much-hyped project to collect plastic waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, limped back into port recently. yielding merger results, Now, Im loath to criticize this endeavor, as we must certainty clean up our environmental messes. Yet what worries me about this project is that some might think that this technofix can substitute for what we urgently must do: Stop using so much plastic. Now. Not only to reduce waste, but also so as not to generate the extra carbon that goes into making plastics in the first instance. Cleaning up rubbish was necessary well before plastics became the scourge they are today. Back in the 70s, I remember when I along with my Girl Scout troop cleaned up a stretch of local highway. We were shocked by what people tossed out of their cars: dirty disposable diapers? Yuck. Back to the present, the situations considerably worsened, as plastic waste has increased, as discussed in this article in Hakai magazine. Scooping Plastic Out of the Ocean Is a Losing Game: A garbage truck turns off the road, engine rumbling, brakes wheezing, and the smell of rot trailing in its wake. The truck stops short and starts to reversebeep, beep, beeping down a boat launch. With salt water lapping at its rear tires it stops, opens its tailgate, and dumps its load of cups, straws, bottles, shopping bags, fishing buoys, and nets. A minute later, this plastic waste is floating away on a journey to pollute the ocean and poison the food chain. As the garbage truck drives away it passes another truck preparing to back down the ramp. And another pulling into the marinaone of an endless stream of garbage trucks, each lining up to dump its own load of plastics. It doesnt happen like this, of course, but eight million tonnes of plastic does end up in the ocean every yearthe equivalent of a garbage trucksworth every minute. And the rate is increasing. If nothing changes, the amount of plastic sloshing around the ocean could double in 10 years. By 2050, that mass of plastic could exceed the weight of all the fish in the sea. The costs to society and the environment are huge. A study by the consultancy firm Deloitte shows that, every year, up to 1,000,000 seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die after ingesting or being entangled by plastic. Microscopic bits of plastic are working their way up the food chain, including in the seafood we eat. Plastic floating around the ocean carries invasive species that compete with or prey on native species. And when it washes onto beaches, plastic pollution affects tourism and devalues real estate. In its examination for 2018, Deloitte pegged the price of ocean plastic pollution at US $6-billion to $19-billion. Thats cheap compared with another study, which calculated the cost at up to $2.5-trillion per year, or $33,000 per tonne. None of that accounts for plastics costs to human health. Yet along its production cycle from oil and gas refining to use and disposal, plastic produces chemical emissions that have been linked to hormone disruption and cancer. While Cceaning up this mess is certainly a worthy goal, alas, Ocean Cleanup hasnt managed to fulfill its early promise, despite much enthusiastic hype. From The Wire, Ocean Cleanup Struggles To Fulfill Promise to Scoop up Plastic at Sea: Docked at a Canadian port, crew members returned from a test run of the Ocean Cleanups system to rid the Pacific of plastic trash were thrilled by the meager results even as marine scientists and other ocean experts doubted the effort could succeed. The non-profit, launched in 2013 amid buoyant media coverage, hopes to clear 90% of floating plastic from the worlds oceans by 2040. But the groups own best-case scenario still likely years away envisions removing 20,000 tonnes a year from the North Pacific, a small fraction of the roughly 11 million tonnes of plastic flowing annually into the oceans. And that amount entering the ocean is expected to nearly triple to 29 million tonnes annually by 2040, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Ocean Cleanup, funded by cash donations and corporations including Coca-Cola, as well as in-kind donors like A.P. Moller-Maersk, had fixed assets over $51 million (Rs 374.86 crore) at the end of 2020. During 120 hours of deployment last month, System 002 or Jenny, as the crew nicknamed it scooped up 8.2 tonnes of plastic, or less than a garbage trucks standard haul. The Ocean Cleanup spokesperson Joost Dubois described the amount as on the high end of our estimates and emphasised that it was still just in the test phase. I spot some greenwashing here: notice Coca Colas donation. Im certain their contribution is a mere drop in the bucket compared to their profits from plastics waste the company has produced over the last decades. Over to The Wire again, zeroing in on the nub of the plastics problem: I think theyre coming from a good place of wanting to help the ocean, but by far the best way to help the ocean is to prevent plastic from getting in the ocean in the first place, said Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress think tank. Once plastic has gotten into the open ocean, it becomes very expensive and fossil-fuel intensive to get it back out again. I suppose I shouldnt be surprised, after handling that dirty disposable diaper during my teenage years, but I confess Im still amazed at the amount of garbage weve collectively managed to dump into the oceans. Im old enough to remember when cloth diapers were the norm and I suppose Pampers and their ilk account for a significant amount of the U.S. waste stream. Those and so many unnecessary other things. According to The Wire: The Ocean Cleanups first target is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the worlds largest swirling mass of marine debris spanning 1.6 million square kilometers in the North Pacific between California and Hawaii. The group estimates the patch holds at least 79,000 tonnes of plastic. If the flow of plastic into the ocean continues unabated, the seas will contain more plastic mass than fish by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum. Note that the Ocean Cleanup system also contributes to global warming, as the system releases greenhouse gases: The Ocean Cleanup, created by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat when he was 18, initially planned on using an autonomous floating system driven by wind, waves and currents to remove plastic. But that first system, named Wilson, bobbed ineffectively alongside the garbage until it ultimately broke. A later design, System 001B, was more efficient, but the team estimated they would need 150 such systems to clear the patch at a high cost. With the Jenny system, two fuel-powered Maersk vessels tow the 520-meter wide horseshoe-shaped catchment system across the ocean surface. An underwater camera helps make sure marine life does not become entangled. Jenny has outperformed everything weve done so far, Dubois said of the recent six-week trials, during which the system picked up plastics small as 1 centimeter in diameter. The Ocean Cleanup hopes eventually to deploy 10 to 15 expanded-range Jennys powered by 20 to 30 ships to operate round the clock 365 days a year at the garbage patch. At that scale, organizers say, the effort could recover between 15,000 and 20,000 tonnes of plastic a year, though it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The group regrets its reliance on ships that release climate-warming greenhouse emissions. The Ocean Cleanup is purchasing carbon credits to offset the heavy fuel use and noted that Maersk is experimenting with less-polluting biofuels. Preferably we would have done something without any carbon footprint, Dubois said. The Bottom Line Its perhaps inappropriate to trash the well-meaning efforts of people who are trying to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yet a far sounder policy might be to eliminate most of our uses of plastics, thus preventing them from getting into the oceans in the first place. Not so long ago within my lifetime, as a matter of fact bottles were made of glass, grocery bags were paper, and plastics werent so ubiquitous. Cant we move back to a world where we just say no to plastic? My position with Nashville Post has evolved since 2000 when I began work with the now-defunct The City Paper. TCP became a Post sister pub in 2008 (when I began some Post work) and folded in 2013. I have worked mainly with the Post since late 2011. Follow William Williams Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today (Natural News) For more than a year, PANDA (Pandemics, Data & Analytics) has been receiving calls from doctors all around the world who are horrified at the rampant fraud and malpractice taking place at hospitals as part of their Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) response. Nick Hudson, PANDAs chairman, says that most of these doctors end up remaining silent after learning about the risks involved with being a whistleblower. However, they have stories to tell that need to be heard. The longer the plandemic goes on, the more people in the medical profession are realizing that it is not even worth keeping their jobs while muzzled because of how terrible things are getting. those same doctors are starting to realise that their jobs are so unpleasant as long as they know what they know and stay silent, and that theyd rather speak out, even knowing that actions will be attempted against them by corrupted regulators, Hudson tweeted. Theyre remembering why they became doctors, the oath they swore to, and how at odds their current environments are with that. Basic principles of public health are being spurned, and they do not want to be part of the travesty. It is only when the corporate technocracy and creeping authoritarianism of the Branch Covidians is put to an end that real doctors will once again be allowed to practice real medicine. If its lost, they will not want to practice medicine in any event, Hudson notes. This is the conclusion all ethical doctors will eventually reach. Honest doctors must speak out or their entire profession will collapse It is in their best interest for doctors who know the truth and are witnessing fraud and malpractice first hand to speak out about it. If they do not, then the medical professional as a whole is at risk of failure. There is already growing distrust among Americans who used to trust the system concerning the legitimacy of Western medicine in the age of the Fauci Flu. So much has been tampered with and lied about concerning prevention and treatment for covid that many are now avoiding their doctors altogether because they would rather live than die. Is this how the medical profession wants to be viewed by the general public? The Chinese Virus has revealed much about the true ugly nature of Western medicine. Ironically, the medical fascism that has really ramped up over the past several years has done more to damage the integrity and reputation of the medical profession than the last 70 some-odd years of Big Pharmas influence has. Now, more people than ever before are asking questions that they never would have thought to ask pre-covid. When hospitals are denying patients lifesaving ivermectin and putting them on death-inducing ventilators instead, it quickly becomes apparent that something is seriously wrong with post-covid medicine. In private conversations with people they trust, American citizens are heaping contempt on doctors for forcing a narrative on us that had no basis in science, writes Randi Pinkerton for the American Thinker publication. Many of us, perhaps even the majority, immediately recognized this virus for what it is: a common flu virus maybe engineered to be more contagious if not more fatal but hardly differing substantially from other influenza strains. Every doctor that goes along with the sham deserves what comes to him or her in the end. Those who are afraid to speak up need to decide if remaining silent will really be worth it in the end. Does the medical community understand that it has sacrificed the trust of Americans, possibly forever? Pinkerton asks. Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny will only end when we make it end. To learn more, visit Fascism.news. Sources for this article include: TheReaderApp.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Imagine for a moment you are the friend of a friend of a friend who has simply been exposed to someone who was possibly exposed to Covid-19, and because of those ties to that friend of a friend of a friend, youve been told to quarantine yourself for 7 or 10 or 14 days (or whatever the magic number of days it is on that particular day.) (Article by Stefan Stanford republished from AllNewsPipeline.com) Happily taking a few days away from the madness of the hour, you dedicatedly quarantine yourself away from friends and family, using the time wisely to catch up on things you hadnt been able to do. Deciding one day to take a well-deserved, nice long hot bath in Epsom salts to sooth away the day, you drift off into a happy zone, only to be rudely taken away from it 15 minutes later as you hear something crashing down in your living room. Getting out of the tub and opening the bathroom door to see 10 uniformed masked men holding guns pointed at your head with your front door laying broken into pieces all over your living room floor, the news out of Australia reports Queenslanders in home quarantine are facing just such a possibility, with residents in home quarantine getting a visit from the cops if they fail to comply with a strict new compliance rule within 10 minutes. And what might that compliance rule be? As that story reports, those in Queensland under home quarantine will need to answer a randomly-timed text message within 10 minutes or risk a visit by the cops. Part of what theyre calling a real-time compliance push by the government there ahead of school holidays that start next week, Health Minister Yvette DAth told parliament today residents in home quarantine will receive a random message at least once a day from Queensland Health that theyll be required to respond to within 10 minutes, or face the possibility of their doors being knocked down. Just the latest moves in Australia to turn their once free nation into a full-scale medical tyranny, it sounds like something out of a dystopian horror movie, where corrupt government is always watching over its subjects, and gives us a taste of where America is headed if the despots here get their way. When checking out the madness from that story below, can you imagine this coming to neighborhoods near you? This means Queensland Health will be able to ensure individuals in home quarantine are at the residence theyre lawfully required to be at, Ms DAth said. It specifically allows authorities to identify if anybody is away from their approved residence. Potential breaches will be assessed by police to identify whether further action is required, including fines and a direction to go into hotel quarantine at their own cost. (ANP: Hotel quarantine = FEMA-style camp.) With compliance rules sounding an awful lot like submission techniques used by mixed martial artists to obtain compliance from those who they are fighting against, and such techniques using pain to manipulate their opponents into submitting to them, its not just a coincidence that Joe Biden and the globalists are attempting to use pain to force 10s of millions of Americans into doing something that they dont want to do by mandating vaxxes for employers with 100 employees. But as William Dunn had pointed out in this July 28th story on ANP, much of what has been happening in America and the Western world goes completely against the Nuremberg Code, which requires the voluntary consent of the people for medical experimentation, more proof that Joe Biden and Democrats using compliance techniques such as get the shot or lose your job are going completely against war crimes doctrine. (Who else would pay to see Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci get into the Octagon against, say, Clint Eastwood or Jon Voight? Biden or Fauci against pro-maga MMA fighters Colby Covington, Jorge Masvidal, Eddie Alvarez, Michael Chandler and Tito Ortiz would be too much of a slaughter!) With msm talking heads such as Don Lemon recently giving us a taste of what some of those compliance techniques the democrats would love to inflict upon Americans would be when he said anti-vaxxers should be shunned and shamed, claiming the rest of America needs to just leave them behind, just imagine what America would look like right now if we had gone the way of Australia, where Well camps and quarantine hotels are popping up like mad along with compliance texts. Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com (Natural News) September 19 marks the sixth month of the Reykjavik volcanic eruption that continues to mesmerize spectators in the area, making it the longest that Iceland has witnessed in over 50 years. Lava first spewed out of a fissure close to Mount Fagradalsfjall on March 19 in the Geldingadalir region of the Reykjanes peninsula, southwest of Reykjavik. The eruption, which ranges from a slow trickle of lava to more dramatic geyser-like spurts of rocks and stones, has become a major tourist attraction that has since drawn around 300,000 visitors, as per the Iceland Tourist Board. Some of these visitors were even seen grilling food on the scorching crust of magma to soak up the experience. The sixth volcanic eruption in Iceland in 20 years, this event is already longer than the preceding one in Holuhraun, which lasted from August 2014 to February 2015. According to volcanologist Thorvaldur Thordarson, six months is a reasonably long eruption. He compared the lava flow to that of the Puu Oo eruption in Hawaii in 1983, which continued to erupt for 35 years. It could end tomorrow or it could still be going in a few decades. The lava field, christened Fagradalshraun or beautiful valley of lava takes its name from the nearby Mount Fagradalsfjall. The eruption has already spewed out almost 143 million cubic meters of lava. But despite the large number, it is actually comparatively small, representing only a tenth of the volume of the Holuhraun eruption, which spewed the biggest basalt lava flow in Iceland in 230 years. The latest eruption is special in a sense because of its relatively slow, but strong outflow. The usual behavior that we know from volcanoes in Iceland is that they start really active and pour out lava, and then the outflow sort of decreases over time until it stops, said Halldor Geirsson, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Science. Icelands longest eruption took place on Surtsey island over 50 years ago and lasted nearly four years from 1963 to 1967. (Related: At least 700 tremors recorded off La Palma, Spain: New magma may be rising, warn experts.) No end in sight for eruption After subsiding for nine days, the lava at Fagradlshraun reappeared in September, when it started spurting red-hot from the cater, accompanied by a powerful plume of smoke. The lava also accumulated in fiery tunnels beneath the mountains solidified surface, forming pockets that eventually unfurled like waves on the shore. Ten fissures opened up in the first month, forming seven small craters. Two of them are still visible, though only one crater, measuring 334 meters, is still active. The volcano has showed no signs of stopping soon. There seems to be still enough magma from whatever reservoir the eruption is tapping. So it could go on for a long time, Geirsson said. The Geldingadalur eruption provides signs that the volcano is reawakening, according to Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist from Lancaster University. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the long-term volcanic activity of southwest Iceland, and scientists are looking to find clues as to why the peninsula flares up just once every eight centuries. Based on the geological history of the region and the studies concerning somewhat similar eruptions in Iceland, another eruption from a different fissure is a distinct possibility, but it could transpire from weeks to months from the initial explosion. The possibility of future eruptions is also underscored by the fact that the type of seismic shaking leading up to the March eruption has happened in the past few thousand years. There had been historical accounts and layers of ancient volcanic rock suggesting that each time the area experiences a significant increase in earthquakes, it can culminate in several decades of eruption from fissure to fissure all over Iceland. The relatively safe eruption that is occurring now thus provides opportunities for scientists and emergency managers to prepare for possible bursts of lava. Read more about volcanoes and their unusual behaviors at Environ.news. Sources include: France24.com News.Sky.com NationalGeographic.com (Natural News) Perhaps the biggest Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) threat right now are people who took the vaccines, suggests Prof. Christian Perronne, a former head at the World Health Organizations (WHO) European Advisory Group of Experts in Immunization. Perronne warned in a recent speech that fully vaccinated people must quarantine over the winter months or else risk becoming seriously ill or even dying, now that their immune systems have been permanently altered with experimental gene therapy. A specialist in tropical pathologies and emerging infectious diseases, Perronne says the situation in Israel and the United Kingdom, two of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world, is deteriorating rapidly. The same is expected to occur here in the United States as well. Unvaccinated people are not dangerous; vaccinated people are dangerous for others, Perronne is quoted as saying. Its proven in Israel now Im in contact with many physicians in Israel theyre having big problems, severe cases in the hospitals are among vaccinated people, and in U.K. also, you have the larger vaccination program and also there are problems. A working group in France is said to be utterly panicked about the situation and not sure what to do to address it. Most of the people getting sick after testing positive for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) are people who took the jabs, which is not what we were all told would happen as part of Operation Warp Speed. 95% of seriously ill patients are vaccinated. Fully vaccinated people account for 85-90% of hospitalizations, announced an Israeli doctor by the name of Kobi Haviv during a segment on Channel 13 News. We are opening more and more covid branches. The effectiveness of vaccines is declining or disappearing. If the effectiveness of covid vaccines is disappearing, then why the aggressive push for more of them? It is not as though any of this is breaking news. We have been warning for months that Fauci Flu shots are spreading the variants, not stopping them. Why, then, is the Biden regime basically threatening Americans to roll up their sleeves, or else? Does China Joe want more people to get sick and die, which will commence another round of shots causing more sickness and death, and so on for the rest of time? At this point, it should be painfully obvious even to those who buy into the Branch Covidian rhetoric that something is really wrong with the narrative. Experts in immunology have also been warning for many months now that administering vaccines during a pandemic, even with good intentions, is not a good idea. It would appear as though the goal is not to stamp out the scourge but to continue fueling it with more and more injections. Meanwhile, sick patients with vaccine-induced illnesses are unable to access remedies like ivermectin that could actually help them. If you stock up with ivermectin and boost your immune system with vitamin D and start taking ivermectin immediately after symptoms appear (i.e., fever), your odds of survival approach 100 percent, wrote one commenter at Americas Frontline Doctors (AFLDS). I got 100 12 mg ivermectin tablets from India for $170 including shipping. The recommended dosage is 24 mg for five days or sooner if fever subsides, so my cost to get to 100 percent is $17. And the beauty is: NONE of that $17 goes to Pfizer. To say nothing about the four billion doses of ivermectin given in Africa and elsewhere, with statistically zero side effects, is a travesty, wrote another. Biden et al. are sociopaths: if they had an ounce of genuine care for the health of people they would say, you do whatever you think is best for your health after taking proper advice.' To keep up with the latest news about the scourge of Chinese Germ injections, visit ChemicalViolence.com. Sources for this article include: AmericasFrontlineDoctors.org NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Things are really heating up in Australia, which has quickly become one of the most medically fascist places on earth thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19). Police officers in Melbourne are reportedly opening fire on protesters, blasting them with rubber bullets for their opposition to the highly oppressive mask, vaccine and distancing mandates that were reinstated due to the delta variant. As you may recall from last fall, Melbourne was ground zero for Fauci Flu tyranny. Politicians were calling for the arrest of anyone who dared to break quarantine, and residents were told that they had to wear a mask even outside in order to do anything outside of their homes. Just when it seemed like everything was going back to normal, along came the delta variant, which by all appearances spawned from the vaccines. Now, Aussies are being assaulted by law enforcement for trying to take back their rights. Some are even being snatched off the streets watch the video below as punishment for making their voices heard. In another video captured from a different angle, you can see Melbourne police officers all geared up with machine guns like they are fighting terrorists. Telling the truth about the plandemic and standing up for your rights is apparently now considered to be terrorism. Any police officer who tyrannizes covid protesters is a treasonous fascist Bystanders present during the incident captured protesters running away from the SWAT-clad officers who continued to shoot rubber bullets at them while they attempted to flee the scene with their backs turned watch below: In another scene, protesters were seen getting abducted by police and taken away, possibly to one of Australias new Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) concentration camps watch as protesters were pummeled to the ground by the fascists: Why dont you police harder mate, he looked so threatening pic.twitter.com/xvuz7w4Gd6 Evelyn Rae (@_evelynrae) September 22, 2021 For clarification: this is NOT military, one Twitter user felt compelled to write since the Melbourne police officers were seen clad in full-scale military gear. This is a specialised unit in the Victorian police force called the SOG specialist operations group. They are basically in laymans terms the SWAT team. One individual, a construction worker, was shot in the back by a SOG goon. You can hear his story and see the damage below: Melbourne Tradie shot in the back for refusing the WAX This is not Australia, this is Tyranny pic.twitter.com/kVt534ZFTp (@risemelbourne) September 22, 2021 It is also worth your time to watch the interview below as it contains eye-opening revelations about the situation on the ground in Melbourne: Whoa.. this man is amazing pic.twitter.com/FkCtApf5WW Pelham (@Resist_05) September 22, 2021 Even a media reporter was assaulted by the SOG while trying to film a segment about the clash: Anyone who still backs the blue after seeing this kind of thing should probably reevaluate to whom they are paying their allegiance. This kind of behavior is not okay, and if law enforcement gets a free pass to continue, things will only get worse. It starts in other countries and eventually comes to the United States. We have seen this kind of thing before which is why American patriots must remain vigilant in the fight against medical fascism otherwise it will never end. Police are no longer protecting the people who pay their salaries they are protecting the government, wrote one commenter at Citizen Free Press. The protesters need to rush the gestapos and strip them of their equipment, wrote another. There is strength in numbers. Another commenter emphasized that what we are now witnessing in Melbourne is nothing short of actual fascism not the fake fascism that the anti-fascists (Antifa) pretended to fight following the staged death of George Floyd. It will be a long, difficult struggle but freedom is worth it and there is no point in living under tyranny unless you are fighting it, this person wrote. Australia used to be a great place: laid back and the people enjoyed life. But then came the communists and the globalists who are now enslaving the people over a fake and dangerous gene therapy. Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny will not stop until people make it stop. To learn more, visit Fascism.news. Sources for this article include: CitizenFreePress.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Melissa Red Pill talks about the Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, during her program Freedom Force Battalion on Brighteon.TV. Yom Kippur is celebrated on the 10th day of the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar, which starts on the night of Sept. 15 this year and ends on the night of the following day. The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt. At the end of Yom Kippur, the believers hope that they have been forgiven by God. Red Pill plays a recording of s shofar, a ritual musical instrument made from the horn of a ram, and encourages her viewers to do the same at the start of Yom Kippur. Tonight at six oclock you can play that, and also proclaim liberty throughout the land. Thats what we are to do this day, Red Pill says. I proclaim liberty throughout the land; I proclaim liberty throughout the world; I proclaim liberty for everyones bank account; I proclaim liberty over everyone for peace, for health, for wealth, for restoration of your family and all the good things. I proclaim all these in Jesus name. While Red Pill is proclaiming liberty, President Joe Biden is busy conquering more grounds. Biden administration is busy suppressing freedom Biden met with executives from companies that include Walt Disney Co., Microsoft Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. to advance his Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination requirements for the private sector. The White House meeting comes after Biden announced a series of vaccine mandates last week that could affect roughly 100 million workers. Vaccination is key to getting the pandemic under control and keeping the economy strong, says Biden in a brief public remark at the start of the closed-door meeting. Before the meeting, Columbia Sportswear Co. CEO Tim Boyle said that people have to get vaccinated in order for us to get back to any kind of a normal business and life experience. Other participants included Microsoft President Brad Smith, Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer and Greg Adams, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente. Also expected to be in attendance are Louisiana State University President William Tate; Madeline Bell, the president and CEO of Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia; Business Roundtable President and CEO Josh Bolten; and Molly Moon Neitzel, the founder and CEO of Molly Moons Homemade Ice Cream. Under Bidens new plan, all employers with 100 or more employees would have to require their workers to be vaccinated or undergo at least weekly COVID-19 testing. Boyle has said that Columbia Sportswear plans to implement the Biden administrations requirements. This is actually quite a good thing for leveling the playing field, Boyle says. Companies like ourselves that want to have employees encouraged to the highest degree to get vaccinated this is going to give us the ability to do that and not put our business at risk. Some companies are planning to take further action when the Biden administrations rule is released, which is expected in the coming weeks. Federal employees and contractors that work with the government face renewed vaccine mandates and will no longer have the option of regular COVID-19 testing. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated, says Biden. If you want to do business with the federal government, vaccinate your workforce. Healthcare workers also face strict mandates. The Biden administration has ordered all healthcare facilities that receive federal Medicaid or Medicare funding to mandate vaccines for their workforces with no testing option. Opposition leaders are blowing the shofar Opposition leaders are doing their best to protect health freedoms. Several Republican-led states have already moved to ban or restrict vaccine mandates by employers and schools. Twenty-four Republican attorneys general are threatening to sue the president if his proposed vaccination mandate for large companies takes effect. They have sent a seven-page letter to the president, warning that a lawsuit will follow the implementation of the proposed requirement on private-sector employees to either get a COVID-19 shot, submit to weekly testing or be fired. (Related: Republicans vow to sue Biden over COVID-19 vaccine mandate.) The attorneys general say some workers will quit their jobs rather than comply, further straining an already tight labor market. Your plan is disastrous and counterproductive, they write. From a policy perspective, this edict is unlikely to win hearts and minds it will simply drive further skepticism. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has fired a warning shot, filing a lawsuit against the mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees. Meanwhile, the American Federation of Government Employees says in a statement that vaccination requirements should be negotiated with unions. Those opposing Bidens vaccine mandates represent the people blowing the shofar at the start of Yom Kippur. The texts on the video that Red Pill has played with the recorded sound of shofar read: The powerful sound of the shofar is healing and causes confusion in the enemys camp. When blown it clears the air around us. Rejoice and give thanks to the living God. Judging by Bidens actions, his administration is already confused. Biden is initially reluctant to pursue vaccine mandates largely because of the legal implications they bring. But his administration is now desperate to vaccinate every American eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. Watch the Sept. 15 episode of Freedom Force Battalion here: You can catch Freedom Force Battalion live every Wednesday from 11-12 p.m. on Brighteon.TV. Follow JoeBiden.news for more news and information related to the Biden administrations vaccine mandates. Sources include: Brighteon.com WSJ.com Deseret.com (Natural News) A team of scientists named Drastic have been investigating the origins of covid-19, uncovering multiple years worth of gain-of-function coronavirus research. When the genetic sequence for covid-19 was first identified, scientists were appalled at how evolved the virus was, how it contained an enhanced human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein. Now its becoming clear how this came about. Drastic unveiled a series of controversial grant proposals submitted by zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance in New York. These grants not only sought to enhance coronavirus infectivity, but also sought to release highly-penetrable spike protein nano-particles into the wild! The unethical project sought $14 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and was set to be initiated in 2018. See the full DRASTIC document at this link, archived on NN servers. Dr. Daszak intended to release enhanced coronavirus spike proteins into the wild DARPA did not approve the $14 million, and said, It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk. DARPA warned that Daszak and his team had not properly considered the dangers of enhancing the virus and releasing a vaccine by air. Neither DARPA nor the NIH tried to stop the research from going forward, however. These grants reveal Daszaks INTENT to develop and release highly infectious viruses and spike protein nano-particles for advancing vaccine research. Daszak is joined by Dr Shi Zhengli, the bat woman from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as well as US researchers from the University of North Carolina and the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Centre. Daszak and his collaborators planned to develop genetically enhanced, chimeric viruses that could readily infect humans. According to the documents, researchers sought to combine human-specific cleavage sites to bat coronaviruses, allowing viruses to readily enter human cells. The proposal even sought to enhance Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a coronavirus strain with low transmissibility but a 30 percent fatality rate! This research required that scientists from Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology intentionally release enhanced, airborne coronaviruses into bat populations in China. These bat populations were to be subsequently inoculated with experimental vaccines against diseases that could cross over into human populations. The research would assist scientists in identifying pathogens of greatest concern so that lucrative vaccine programs could be developed. This controversial research was proposed just eighteen months before the first case of covid-19 was identified in Wuhan China. Daszak wrote in the grant application that they would conduct educational outreach so that there is a public understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, particularly because of the practice of bat-consumption in the region. Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St Georges, University of London, said Daszaks research could have continued without DARPA funds, especially with how much was time, energy and money was already invested in the project. This is clearly a gain of function, engineering the cleavage site and polishing the new viruses to enhance human cell infectibility in more than one cell line, Dalgleish said contradicting Dr. Anthony Fauci, who denied the fact that NIAID funded this type of research. Daszak, Fauci and their collaborators must be arrested, with a full criminal investigation to follow According to the document release, Dr. Daszak and his collaborators planned to release nano-particles that could penetrate the skin. These nano-particles contained novel chimeric spike proteins from bat coronaviruses. These enhanced, skin-penetrating spike proteins were set to be released into cave bats in Yunnan, China. The documents reveal that covid-19 is more than a virus. Its a biological weapon that was strategically developed and slated for deployment in 2018. With the CCP working closely on this research, its plausible that these spike protein nano-particles could have been released anywhere in the world, stealthily and without remorse. These spike protein nano-particles can be released over cities to cripple medical systems and exploit the vulnerabilities of hospitals and fragile immune systems. They could also be used to target specific types of people at specific event venues. Additional intel documents reveal that the Chinese military planned aerosolized bioweapon development and deployment to cause the enemys medical system to collapse. Daszaks grant applications include unethical animal and virus release experiments, with the threat of serious repercussions for human populations. Dr. Peter Daszak and Dr. Anthony Fauci are culpable for the origins of covid-19. It is of preponderance that these doctors be ARRESTED. Many in the scientific community are calling for a full CRIMINAL investigation into their roles in establishing and completing these diabolical, macabre research projects. Daszak and Fauci must be brought to trial and interrogated, with the greater scientific community calling for a new system of ethics to stop these deadly experiments on animals and humans and to stop the censorship and abuse. All the relevant gain-of-function research these doctors participated in, oversaw and lied about must be brought forth and meticulously addressed. In early 2020, Daszak conspired with several other scientists who were invested in coronavirus gain-of-function research. Daszak authored the paper in the Lancet to shut down any scientific debate or investigation into the origins of covid-19. Daszak even thanked Fauci in private emails for downplaying the lab leak theory in front of the world stage. Fauci lied to U.S. Congress about the research he approved and funded, denying his well-documented role in overseeing these unethical coronavirus gain-of-function research projects that exploit human immune systems. Sources include: Telegraph.co.uk NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Well, congratulations Politico! It only took you nearly a year to finally recognize the validity of a major news story that most other media outlets already admitted was valid. The story in question was the October 2020 scoop by the New York Post about emails and other scandalous material found on Hunter Bidens laptop. Not only did much of the media, including notably Twitter, try to censor the story but many, such as Politico, actively tried to discredit it by claiming it was Russian disinformation. (Article by P.J. Gladnick republished from NewsBusters.org) So what caused Politico to belatedly embark on a voyage to the obvious? Apparently they couldnt avoid continuing to deny the validity of the Hunter Biden laptop story since one of their own reporters, Ben Schreckinger, just had a book published, The Bidens: Inside the First Familys Fifty-Year Rise to Power which discussed Hunters laptop and its contents. Tuesdays Politico Playbook contains some of the highlights of Schreckingers discovery that has already been long out there: FIRST IN PLAYBOOK Ben Schreckingers The Bidens: Inside the First Familys Fifty-Year Rise to Power, out today, finds evidence that some of the purported HUNTER BIDEN laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last Octobers controversy. A person who had independent access to Hunter Bidens emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden. The same goes for a 2017 email in which a proposed equity breakdown of a venture with Chinese energy executives includes the line, 10 held by H for the big guy? (This person recalled seeing both emails, but was not in a position to compare the leaked emails word-for-word to the originals.) MORE: Emails released by a Swedish government agency also match emails in the leaked cache, and two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden confirmed emails from the cache were genuine. While the leak contains genuine files, it remains possible that fake material has been slipped in. WHAT DOES HUNTER HAVE TO SAY? This spring, he told CBS the laptop certainly could be his. His lawyer, CHRIS CLARK, did not respond to questions for the book. Contrast this ridiculously delayed Politico admission to the attack upon the credibility of the New York Post story on October 19, 2020 by Politicos Natasha Bertrand who has a sad history of hyping the discredited Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory. The headline was Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say. More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Bidens son has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation. But the release of the material, which POLITICO has not independently verified, has drawn comparisons to 2016, when Russian hackers dumped troves of emails from Democrats onto the internet producing few damaging revelations but fueling accusations of corruption by Trump. While there has been no immediate indication of Russian involvement in the release of emails the Post obtained, its general thrust mirrors a narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies have described as part of an active Russian disinformation effort aimed at denigrating Bidens candidacy. Thus far, Politicos Natasha Bertrand and her merry band of 50 former intelligence officials have been unavailable for comment. Read more at: NewsBusters.org and BidenCrimeFamily.news. (Natural News) The son of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) made an appearance in Butler County, Ky., the other day to talk about the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) and the Biden regimes stifling of monoclonal antibody treatment. Sen. Rand Paul, who lives in Kentucky, explained that president Joe Biden, as well as television doctor Tony Fauci, are condemning some patients to death by depriving them of access to REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab antibody cocktail), a passive vaccine drug cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In many of the red states where Chinese Virus vaccines are not as widely accepted, Republican officials are making Regeneron, as the drug is also called, available in IV tents, as Sen. Paul calls them. In other states, however, Regeneron is not as widely available, and that has to do with the federal government refusing to talk about it. Ive never heard Dr. Fauci on television talk anything about the treatment, Sen. Paul lamented during his presentation. There is a treatment that will save your life and that you need to know about, and that if your parents get sick you need to know about. The best treatment out there is probably the IV monoclonal antibodies. This is made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly. Its an infusion, but heres the rub: You have to be within a certain window of time to get it. If youre not sick enough, they wont give it to you, and if youre too sick they wont give it to you. You can watch Sen. Paul speak below: Forcing someone to take pharmaceutical drugs is medical rape One of the governors who is heavily pushing Regeneron is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. All across the state of Florida, Regeneron tents have been set up for people to pop in, get the treatment, and leave. According to Sen. Paul, Regeneron treatments reduce deaths and hospitalizations by up to 85 percent. While Sen. Paul says that he supports regular Chinese Virus vaccines because they all seem to, both on the left and the right he also believes that Americans should have the choice to get injected or not. Biden and Fauci, however, do not want anyone to have a choice. If it were up to them, all Americans would be forced to roll up their sleeves for an experimental gene therapy injection, including children and even babies. Sen. Paul also made the case against mandatory masks and injections for children, though his argument is not ideal. In his view, because someone under the age of 25 has a one in a million chance of dying after testing positive for Chinese Germs, Sen. Paul believes that they should be exempt from any mandates. Truth be told, the right to choose is not negotiable based on statistics. Even if the rate of death among children was much higher, they should still always have the right to just say no to drugs and other medical interventions if they so choose. Sen. Paul has also spoken out in defense of ivermectin, an FDA-approved drug that is helping to save lives but that Biden and Fauci do not want you to have. When the next natural coronavirus circulates, its going to kill the vaccinated, speculated one reader at Citizen Free Press. Thats why they arent pushing therapeutics and mandating the EUA (emergency use authorization) inoculations. What theyre doing is against the SCIENCE and everyone knows it. The GOP are such a bunch of worthless cowards, for over fifty years straight they have allowed the Democrats to run roughshod all over them, wrote another. The latest news stories about the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: CitizenFreePress.com WFLA.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) The unprecedented employment crisis that we are watching unfold around the globe is so bizarre that it could have been pulled straight out of an episode of the Twilight Zone. For the very first time in recorded history, there is an extremely severe shortage of workers in nations all over the planet. When this shortage first started to emerge earlier this year, I thought that it was very strange, because 2020 had been a year when we had seen unemployment absolutely skyrocket in the U.S. and other western nations. In fact, somewhere around 70 million Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits last year. Not too long ago we had vast hordes of people that were out of work, and now we are suddenly facing the greatest labor shortage in history? (Article by Michael Snyder republished from TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com) Something is not adding up. When I wrote my most recent article about the labor shortage, a few people wrote to me and blamed the Biden administration for what we are witnessing. And it is certainly true that actions that the Biden administration has taken have made the labor shortage in the United States even worse. But the Biden administration is not the reason why there is an extremely severe shortage of workers literally all over the planet. In Vietnam, for example, there are so few workers that the government actually sent the army out to help with the rice harvest Across the world, a dearth of workers is shaking up food supply chains. In Vietnam, the army is assisting with the rice harvest. In the U.K., farmers are dumping milk because there are no truckers to collect it. Brazils robusta coffee beans took 120 days to reap this year, rather than the usual 90. And American meatpackers are trying to lure new employees with Apple Watches while fast-food chains raise the prices of burgers and burritos. Why arent there enough people to do these jobs? We have never seen anything like this before. Considering the horrendous unemployment crisis that gripped much of the globe during the earlier stages of this pandemic, you would think that there should be colossal pools of desperate workers for large companies to choose from at this point. But instead, it is almost as if untold numbers of low paid workers have simply disappeared. Of course certain types of workers are far more important to the basic functioning of the global economy than other types of workers. For example, the world would be just fine if there was a severe shortage of actors and actresses. But if there arent enough people to grow, process and transport our food, that is a massive problem, and that is precisely what we are currently facing Whether its fruit pickers, slaughterhouse workers, truckers, warehouse operators, chefs or waiters, the global food ecosystem is buckling due to a shortage of staff. Supplies are getting hit and some employers are forced to raise wages at a double-digit pace. Thats threatening to push food prices already heated by soaring commodities and freight costs even higher. Prices in August were up 33% from the same month last year, according to an index compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Unfortunately, the shortages and price increases are eventually going to get a whole lot worse. I cannot recall another time since the dawn of history when the entire world has ever faced something like this. Please correct me if I am wrong. All over the globe, we are being told that shortages of food are being caused because there simply is not enough people to do the work Shortages are hitting farms, processors and restaurants alike. Malaysia, the worlds No.2 palm oil producer, has lost about 30% of potential output of the edible oil used in everything from chocolate to margarine. Shrimp production in southern Vietnam one of the worlds top exporters has dropped by 60% to 70% from before the pandemic. And a fifth of tomato production in the south of Italy has been lost this year, due to the scorching heat and transport paralysis, according to the farmers association CIA. Before the pandemic, there was never a time when we didnt have enough workers to do the basic tasks that needed to get done. In fact, many nations around the globe were persistently facing huge problems with rampant unemployment. But now the pandemic has come along and suddenly all of our unemployment problems have been solved? I dont understand why this isnt raising a red flag for more people. Here in the United States, if you want a job you certainly have many to choose from these days. In response to the article that I posted a few days ago, one of my readers sent me an email describing what conditions are like in one section of Illinois Where have all the people gone? When you drive down the highway in Fairview Heights and Swansea, Illinois, there are signs on both sides, now hiring. Fazolis, a fast food Italian restaurant has a sign stating that they pay up to $15 an hour. Dominos is looking for employees, Sparkle Car Wash, a rental business, and several others within a two or three block area. Panera Bread Company has signs posted outside that they closed early now due to lack of employees. Food items on our grocery shelves are dwindling and they are never replaced. Some of the food is expired. I noticed when trying to purchase butter at Aldis, it had the same expiration date as it did months ago. They put out expired butter and left it out to sell in the cooler. Same thing at Schnucks, you have to be careful and check the expiration dates. A lot of their food has either expired or is about to expire very soon. At a time when basic services are breaking down because of a lack of workers, the Biden administration has decided to make things even worse by imposing offensive new mandates on tens of millions of workers. As these new mandates go into effect, we could soon see things we have never seen before in the history of our country. For instance, it is being projected that close to half of the entire police force in the city of San Diego could soon be forced to quit their jobs A rather remarkable situation in San Diego that we could see play out in the rest of the nation. The police union, The San Diego Police Officers Association (SDPOA), asked their members about the vaccination mandate. 65 percent of the respondents said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. However, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate. The SDPOA has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, half of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the entire police department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city of San Diego would be in a really sketchy place. The path that the Biden administration has decided to take us down is absolutely nuts. As scores of qualified workers leave their posts, the problems that we are facing right now could go to an entirely new level. But the U.S. is only one piece of the overall puzzle. Everywhere in the world there are alarming labor shortages, and we are being told that this is a crisis that isnt going to be solved any time soon. So once again, there is a very simple question that I must ask. Where did all the people go? This is story of monumental importance, and hardly anyone is taking about it. Read more at: TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com and Pandemic.news. (Natural News) Dr. Mike Spaulding tells America Unhinged Radio host, Dr. John Diamond, that the U.S. has been turned upside down in every possible way. Id lived long enough to see the change in America. Id lived long enough to see America be turned on its head in nearly every fashion, says Spaulding, author of the book Upside Down in America: What went wrong and how do we make it right again? During his appearance on the Brighteon.TV program Friday, Sept. 17, Spaulding shares the news about the satanic group that plans to sue the state of Texas for banning abortion. Members of the group claim that abortion is a ritual within their religious system. Now, how upside-down can you be that we now have an organization that publicly says bloodletting or murdering the preborn is part of their religious practice, so they want to stop that [law banning abortion]? Spaulding asks. We are in serious trouble in America. And unless true Christians and patriots stand up and speak in the most clear, concise yet forceful voice, and unite together in this were going down. Satanic group cites religious freedom in fight against abortion ban The group that Spaulding is referring to is the Satanic Temple, which is lobbying against a Texas law that bans abortions after a mother is six weeks into her pregnancy. The Massachusetts-based group, which runs an officially recognized and tax-exempt religion, is arguing that women should be able to take an abortion-inducing drug as an expression of religious freedom within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. A lawyer for the Satanic Temple has sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to request that the church be allowed access without prescription to the abortion-inducing drugs mifepristone and misoprostol as part of its sacramental abortion ritual. The group has said that it does not actually worship Satan in any way. Instead, co-founder Lucian Greaves has said that the group sees Satan as a symbol of rebellion against tyranny. The Texas abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy came into effect on Sept. 1 after the Supreme Court failed to block it based on a technicality. The ruling hinged on whether the court currently had the right to step into a dispute that the majority felt was not ready for a full hearing on its merits. Courts have blocked other states from imposing similar restrictions, but Texas law differs significantly because it leaves enforcement up to private citizens through civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutors. The new law prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, and exemptions will only be made in cases of medical emergencies. It also offers $10,000 to private citizens who successfully sue abortion providers or anyone who assisted with abortions that violate the law. Biden sides with satanic group, blasts anti-abortion bill President Joe Biden has blasted the anti-abortion bill. This extreme Texas law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century, Biden said in a statement. The Supreme Court is still expected to act on the Texas law, though there is no firm timeline. A decision to allow the ban could indicate a readiness by the justices to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide. My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right, Biden says. Many are not surprised that Biden and the satanic group are supporting the same cause. The Bible verse that Diamond has shared at the start of his program may be referring to Biden and his kind of people. It says: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. Watch the Sept. 17 episode of America Unhinged Radio below or on Brighteon.TV. You can catch America Unhinged Radio with Dr. John Diamond live from Monday to Friday at 9-10 a.m. on Brighteon.TV Follow AntiChrist.news for more news and information related to Satanists. Sources include: Brighteon.com Insider.com Bloomberg.com (Natural News) A doctor in Texas is being sued for deliberately violating the states new abortion law. The doctor claimed he did this to test the new laws legality in the courts. The physician in question is Alan Braid, an obstetrician-gynecologist in San Antonio. On Saturday, The Washington Post gave the lawbreaker a platform to explain his actions by publishing an essay he wrote. In the article, Braid admitted that he broke the new controversial Texas law which bans abortions once medical professionals can detect the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. (Related: Satanists admit that legalized abortion is how they perform ritual child sacrifices at the Satanic Temple.) Texass new abortion law prohibits prosecutors from taking criminal action against Braid and other doctors that violate the law. Instead, the law can only be enforced through lawsuits brought forward by private citizens. If the lawsuit is successful, the private citizens are entitled to claim at least $10,000 in damages. In the article, Braid said he understands there could be legal consequences because of his action. But I wanted to make sure that Texas didnt get away with its bid to prevent blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested, he said. I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but its something I believe in strongly. Braid sued by pro-abortion advocates who want courts to overturn new law On Monday, two private citizens who are not even from Texas, filed separate lawsuits against Braid. Oscar Stilley, of Cedarville, Arkansas, filed a civil complaint against Braid in a Texas district court. Stilley explained that he is not opposed to abortion. But he sued Braid to force a court review of Texas abortion law, which he called an end-run. The doctor is going to get sued, said Stilley. Someone is going to get $10,000 off him. If thats the law, I may as well get the money. If its not the law, lets go to court and get it sorted out. I dont want doctors out there nervous and sitting there and quaking in their boots and saying, I cant do this because if this thing works out, then Im going to be bankrupt,' he added. In an interview with Reuters, Stilley added that he believes the new abortion restrictions violate the constitutional rights of women in the state. I think its a decision between her and her doctor, he said. It should be noted that Stilley is a disbarred lawyer. He lost his license in 2010 after a conviction of tax evasion and conspiracy. He is currently on home confinement serving the 12th year of a 15-year sentence. The second lawsuit against Braid was filed by Felipe N. Gomez, a resident of Chicago. He described himself in his filing as a pro-choice plaintiff. He believes the pro-life law is a form of government overreach, and he wants to hold Texas Republicans accountable. He believes the Texas GOP is hypocritical because it has taken a stand against forcing people to wear masks or take Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, but it will not defend the right of women to kill their unborn babies. Im against having someone tell me I have to get a shot or wear a mask and the same people who agree with me on that the GOP tell people what they can do with their bodies on the other hand, he said. Its inconsistent. If Republicans are going to say nobody can tell you to get a shot they shouldnt tell women what to do with their bodies either, he added. I think they should be consistent. Gomez claimed he was not aware he could receive up to $10,000 in damages if his lawsuit succeeds. He added that if his lawsuit succeeds he will probably donate the money to Braids patients or an abortion rights organization. Stilley and Gomezs lawsuits are currently the most direct tests of the legality of Texass abortion law. It remains to be seen how the courts will react, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and many other Republicans in the state and outside have vowed to defend the new law. Sources include: FoxNews.com Politico.com Reuters.com WSJ.com (Natural News) Employees at the so-called happiest place on Earth are unhappy because of The Walt Disney Companys refusal to pay living wages. Thus, more than 25,000 Disney cast members sued the company in 2019 demanding better compensation. The plaintiffs allege that Disney must pay employees higher salaries given that it receives taxpayer subsidies. The lawsuit seeks to determine if the $550 million contribution from the city of Anaheim, California is counted as a city subsidy. Of that amount, $108 million has been allocated to the Mickey and Friends garage while the remaining amount has gone to the Anaheim Convention Center and Disneyland. Both Disneyland and the city deny the company is receiving a subsidy with the latter calling the $550 million an investment in Anaheims future instead. But attorney Randy Renick, the lawyer responsible for filing the lawsuit, has a different opinion. He believes that the investment counts as a city subsidy. I think the issues here are simple: The voters demanded that companies like Disney, who take public handouts, pay their workers a living wage, Renick says to the Los Angeles Times. Disney should not get a pass. The garage is built on land owned by Disney, but the city of Anaheim is responsible for building and maintaining it for the time being. Even though the city has financed the garage, Disneyland keeps the revenue from it alongside a $1 yearly lease the city pays. Anaheim Chief Communications Officer Mike Lyster defends the $550 million investment as part of a shared interest. The city spokesman tells SFGATE: [Disney has] an interest in running successful theme parks, shopping, dining and hotels, and we have interest in seeing a thriving economy that is based on visitors. Building a parking structure facilitates more people coming to the parks and spending money in our city, which in turn generates revenue that we use [for] public safety, libraries and community centers. Lots of money for structures, but not even a penny for employees The city of Anaheims $550 million investment is meant for Disney structures, but Disney employees do not receive a single penny. A survey of 5,000 cast members finds that many experience difficult living conditions due to low pay. A February 2018 study by the Economic Roundtable and Occidental College finds that 11 percent of Disneyland cast members experience homelessness in the previous two years. The same study finds that 68 percent experience food insecurity and 73 percent say their wages are insufficient for basic living expenses. Upon discovering these conditions, Austin Lynch of labor union UNITE HERE Local 11 started gathering signatures for an initiative in Anaheim seeking to raise employees hourly wages. The crux of the initiative was if you are getting taxpayer subsidies in the resort area, then you should be paying a living wage. It was based on the reality that Disney has gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in tax giveaways over the years. In return, [it should] pay enough for people to live, Local 11s coordinator for Orange County says. (Related: Magical Kingdom of Unemployment: Disney replaces American workers with cheap foreign workers on H1B visas.) Lynchs initiative eventually gained momentum and becomes Measure L, which became a city law in 2018. It mandates private businesses to raise their employees wages to $18 per hour by 2022 and increase salaries based on cost of living after that. Concurrent with Measure L gaining momentum, Disney agreed to raise cast members starting wages to $15 per hour. This is one dollar more than the state of Californias minimum wage for firms with more than 26 employees at $14 per hour. Despite the passage of Measure L, many more Disneyland employees such as hotel valets have been excluded from the measure. Because of this, Local 11 and other unions have gathered cast members to file a lawsuit with 25,000 plaintiffs joining. They argue in the lawsuit that Disney should be held to the payment structure under Measure L given the fact that it receives subsidies from the city. Disney has laid off workers during the pandemics onset in 2020 The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced Disneyland to close in March 2020. It has also laid off about 30,000 cast members and furloughed a significant amount. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Josh DAmaro said in a memo: For the last several months, our management team has worked tirelessly to avoid having to separate anyone from the company. However, we simply cannot responsibly stay fully staffed while operating at such limited capacity. He laments the heartbreaking retrenchment as the only feasible option in light of the prolonged impact of COVID-19. (Related: Disney to lay off 28,000 workers in belt-tightening move amid coronavirus pandemic.) Despite the layoffs, Lyster cites Disney extending its support toward employees by paying their first months wages following the parks closure in March 2020. Disney officials add that the company supports employees through perks such as public transportation subsidies, support for child care and elder care and additional paid sick time during the pandemic. Furthermore, Disneys $15 starting wage applies to both union and non-union cast members. Disney also continues to extend health insurance benefits to all cast members including those who havent returned to work. Of the approximately 32,000 employees in the Anaheim theme park, about 19,000 more than half have returned to work since its reopening in late April 2021. Lynch lauds Disneys move to expanding health insurance coverage, but acknowledges the several thousand workers such as subcontracted employees and those relying on tips that his unions 2019 lawsuit aims to help. Corruption.news has more articles about Disneys refusal to pay their employees living wages in spite of its huge profits. Sources include: SFGATE.com LATimes.com NBCNews.com (Natural News) The pandemic pushers always talk about the unvaccinated as being anti-science. Well, this really takes the cake, now that the White House is declaring that all Covid-infected illegal immigrants coming into America (by simply walking across the open border) have NO CHANCE of infecting Americans because theyre not coming to stay, and they wont be here for a very long time. Thats a bad lie piled on top of another really bad lie. So then answer us this: When DOES Covid start to become transmissible from the infected illegal immigrants to unassuming Americans? Is it two weeks, two months, or are the illegal aliens immune from passing along Covid for two years? Whats the cutoff, Ms. Wild Guess Psaki? Only American citizens flying by plane into America can spread Covid, never infected illegal foreigners on foot or in the back of a pickup truck You see, if youre speaking for the Democrats running DC and the plandemic playbook, then you get to decide that Covid is only a threat for Americans flying back into the United States on planes, but for foreign nationals on foot, Covid cannot be contagious or transmissible to American citizens during the undetermined initial period of transgression onto US soil, no matter what city or town they wind up in, after the Biden Regime transports them all for free to mainly red states. Surely, Fauci agrees with all these non-science-based wild theories that the White House is dishing out to the cognitive-voided vaxxed sheeple. Thats why illegal immigrants dont need ID, vaccine passports, real passports, actual Covid tests run, or any food or money to come to America and live the dream. Currently, Del Rio, Texas is the ultimate breeding ground for Covid among the illegal immigrants waiting for Bidens buses to take them to Republican cities across the USA It would seem that most Democrats and their leaders are paranoid and extra-careful about not spreading Covid in our country, being that they impose masks, social distancing, lock-downs (when they can get away with it), and mass-vaccination, but when it comes to illegal immigrants, all bets are off. Why is that? Illegal immigrants are huddling in massive swaths, with large percentages of them already infected with Covid, and most of them are not social distancing, wearing masks or required to be vaccinated. If these were American citizens, the Democrats would be going crazy, like they did during the Trump rallies last year, blaming Conservatives for fueling the pandemic. The real reason the Democrats do NOT care about illegal aliens violating all Covid safety rules is because its all a scamdemic, and the scam artists at the top all know it. The China Flu is just another respiratory virus that can be prevented, beaten back and defeated with nutrients, vitamin D, zinc, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The vaccine industry shills and plandemic salespeople on television, including Fauci and Wen, are not afraid of Covid because they dont even follow their own flagrant, so-called rules and regulations about it. Its all just theatre. As soon as the cameras stop taping them, they remove their masks and laugh. Nearly every Covid pusher politician has been caught repeatedly violating their own mandates, so its more than obvious the masks, dirty vaccines and social distancing do not work. This is why illegal immigrants can walk across the southern US border with no mask, no vaccine and no Covid testing, but American citizens who come back home from international travel are being hounded about vaccine passports and mandatory masks, just to perpetuate the police state we are living in that strips us of our constitutional freedoms and rights. Are you, or is someone you know suffering from SPS Spike Protein Syndrome? Tune your truth news dial to Pandemic.news for updates on the war against dirty vaccines and communism, and how to keep your family happy, healthy and safe. Sources for this article include: Pandemic.news NaturalNews.com TruthWiki.org NaturalNews.com ZeroHedge.com (Natural News) A year and a half prior to the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) making its world debut, scientists working in Wuhan, China, reportedly submitted a proposal asking to release genetically altered (GMO) coronaviruses into the wild. Leaked documents dated from 2018 reveal that a full 18 months before anyone had ever even heard the term covid, researchers had announced plans to unleash skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing novel chimeric spike proteins' into bat caves in Chinas Yunnan province. They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund the work, reports explain. Peter Daszak of the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance organization submitted a bid requesting permission to use genetic engineering for implanting human-specific cleavage sites into bat coronaviruses, making it easier for the virus to enter human cells. This would explain how SARS-CoV-2, which should have remained in bat populations, somehow crossed over into human populations. Genetic tampering allowed the virus to infect humans, and it would appear as though the so-called vaccines are one of the major delivery vehicles for getting the manipulated virus into peoples bodies. On Daszaks bat team was none other than Dr. Shi Zhengli, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), along with researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Wildlife Health Center. See the full DRASTIC document at this link, archived on NN servers. Daszak appears to have gone ahead with the project anyway, despite his funding request being rejected It turns out that DARPA refused Daszaks contract saying that it is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk. It went on to warn that Daszak had not even fully considered the dangers involved with enhancing the virus through gain of function research before making his request. Daszaks team claimed that it would conduct educational outreach to make sure there was a public understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, particularly because of the practice of bat-consumption in the region. Despite having his proposal rejected, it appears as though Daszak went ahead with it anyway. This is according to Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology at St. Georges, University of London, who says that illegal gain of function research on coronaviruses was taking place in Wuhan long before SARS-CoV-2 mysteriously appeared. This is clearly a gain of function, engineering the cleavage site and polishing the new viruses to enhance human cell infectibility in more than one cell line, Dalgleish said. Daszak published fraudulent letter in The Lancet claiming lab origin theory was debunked You may recall that Daszak published that infamous letter in The Lancet debunking the theory that the Chinese Virus came from a lab in Wuhan, instead blaming its release on bats. Daszak was later outed as a bag man with serious conflicts of interest who was simply trying to cover up his evil deeds by publishing lies in a credible medical journal. Now, everyone who is paying attention knows the truth about him. For more than a year I tried repeatedly to ask questions of Peter Daszak with no response, says Viscount Ridley, the co-author of an upcoming book on the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19). Now it turns out he had authored this vital piece of information about virus work in Wuhan but refused to share it with the world. I am furious. So should the world be. Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) proposed injecting deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised and batified mice, and much, much more. The newly released documents incriminating Daszak even further came from an international consortium of scientists that calls itself Drastic Research. They were authenticated by a former official in the Trump administration. Drastic Research says that very soon it will publish the actual DEFUSE Proposal Documents that outline the scheme in greater depth. Daszak will have nothing to hide behind once these go public. Given that we find in this proposal a discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites, a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted, Drastic said in a statement. Daszak also had plans to enhance MERS and make it more deadly An anonymous scientist from the World Health Organization (WHO) also came forward to suggest that Daszaks grant proposal included plans to enhance Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) to make it more deadly. The scary part is they were making infectious chimeric MERS viruses, the source indicated. These viruses have a fatality rate over 30 per cent, which is at least an order of magnitude more deadly than Sars-CoV-2. If one of their receptor replacements made MERS spread similarly while maintaining its lethality, this pandemic would be nearly apocalyptic. Daszak is clearly a mad scientist who enjoys creating Frankenstein monsters out of otherwise harmless pathogens that would never otherwise be a threat to humanity. Why is this individual still walking around freely and not in prison or appearing before a military tribunal for committing crimes against humanity? This is like a moronic five-year-old playing with his dads loaded shotgun absolute madness, wrote one Zero Hedge commenter about Daszaks endeavors. Godless apes like Daszak have no moral compass and academia is chock full of nuts like him, wrote another. More of the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: ZeroHedge.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the thousands of Afghans being brought into the U.S. by the Biden administration for permanent resettlement will require vaccination against measles, though there has not been any indication if they are mandated to take any of the coronavirus vaccines as well. The CDC wrote in a release that it has notified public health departments of 16 measles cases among the evacuees. All patients confirmed to have the disease have been isolated and provided care, and their contacts have been quarantined as well. Those who were not immune were given the MMR vaccine or immunoglobulin, if not vaccine-eligible. Evacuees who are in the U.S. are also required to be vaccinated with MMR and complete 21-day quarantines from the time of vaccination in designated locations, such as military bases. (Related: Biden regime blamed for delaying private groups trying to evacuate U.S. citizens from Afghanistan: This is zero place to be negotiating with American lives.) Measles, viral disease outbreaks following Afghanistan evacuations The move comes due to reports of measles outbreaks at several U.S. military bases, where the Biden administration is currently housing tens of thousands of Afghans. Those who remain at overseas military bases will also be required to take measles vaccines and wait 21 days before they can be brought to the U.S. Flights for more than 9,000 evacuees housed at Ramstein Air Base and Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Germany have been halted after the discovery of measles affecting evacuees in the United States. Sandra Archer, a spokeswoman for the 86th Airlift wing said that there is no set date for the resumption of lights, as the CDC recommended a pause on the evacuation efforts. Well continue to follow CDC guidance and public health expert guidance during this temporary CDC pause, she said. The CDC reported that some Afghan evacuees have left bases before they were able to identify measles cases that prompted mass vaccination campaigns. Due to this, a special advisory has been issued to doctors around the country, warning them to be alert for cases of measles and other infectious diseases among the evacuees. In addition to measles, the CDC officials also said that there have been outbreaks of other viruses such as varicella, mumps, tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, hepatitis A and coronavirus. The agency warned that evacuees are at an increased risk of gastrointestinal infections such as shigellosis, giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis. Further, the CDC said that it expected measles infections to spread among evacuees because only 60 percent of people living in Afghanistan have been vaccinated. The country also ranks seventh in the world for measles cases. Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. While it is no longer endemic, travelers still continue to bring it into the country, posing risks to those who are unvaccinated. Most of the evacuees who arrived in the U.S. flew in via the Dulles International Airport in Virginia. The state has now declared measles outbreaks in its northern and central regions in connection with the evacuees arrivals. The Virginia Department of Health website noted that community transmissions have not been identified, and officials believe the risk to the general public remains low. Biden administration plans to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans in the US The Biden administration plans to permanently resettle around 95,000 Afghans in 46 states in the U.S. over the next 12 months. In a 21-day period from August to September, Biden has already brought more than 48,000 Afghans into the country for resettlement. The resettlement operation is said to be bankrolled not only by taxes, but also through several refugee contractors, multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations backed by former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Read more updates at Pandemic.news. Sources include: Breitbart.com LawEnforcementToday.com NYTimes.com (Natural News) At least 24 states, or roughly half of the country, is planning to unleash hell against the Biden regime over its unconstitutional Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine mandates. Two dozen Republican state attorneys general have signed onto a letter challenging Bidens mandate, which amounts to forced medical rape. Those states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. Missing from the list among the red states are Idaho and Tennessee. Your plan is disastrous and counterproductive, the letter states. From a policy perspective, this edict is unlikely to win hearts and minds it will simply drive further skepticism. And at least some Americans will simply leave the job market instead of complying, the letter goes on to read. This will further strain an already-too-tight labor market, burdening companies and (therefore) threatening the jobs of even those who have received a vaccine. Many of those who are already leaving their jobs over Bidens mandate are essential workers, meaning they work in critical sectors like health care, law enforcement and emergency services. Without them, the country very well might collapse. This is no idle speculation, the letter further states. A New York hospital recently announced its plans to stop delivering babies after several staff members resigned in the face of New Yorks mandate. And recent polling suggests those frontline healthcare workers are not outliers. Thus, Mr. President [sic], your vaccination mandate represents not only a threat to individual liberty, but a public health disaster that will displace vulnerable workers and exacerbate a nationwide hospital staffing crisis, with severe consequences for all Americans. No, China Joe cant force you to take a covid jab Since Bidens edict is technically just a press release without any teeth, there is no actual lawsuit in motion quite yet. But it is ready to go in the event that the Puppet-in-Chief tries to pull the trigger with an actual mandate, which is also not a law and thus would not be legally binding regardless. Much like the mask mandates of yesteryear, this latest attempt at forcing people to be penetrated with a mystery needle using press releases and decrees is a fools game that does not pass the constitutional stress test. Were obviously preparing for what the president said he wanted to do, which seems to be clearly beyond his authority, stated Attorney General Dave Yost (R-Ohio) to the Washington Watch with Tony Perkins program. Its important to note that we dont have a regulation yet, so we dont have anything to bring to court to sue about, [and] you cant sue over a press release. Even if China Joe does release some kind of official edict, that also would not hold any weight as only Congress is allowed to write laws, not the president, Yost revealed. Beyond that, health is not a power that belongs to the federal government at all, he further explained. Throughout our history, health issues have been considered to be part of the police power. That belongs to the states and not the federal government. Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, recently published an article chastising Biden for attempting to force-vaccinate Americans against their will. In it, he warned that Bidens policies are sowing division and distrust throughout the country. this road will lead to an endless string of intrusive dictates that will have far-reaching consequences for civil liberties, conscience rights, religious freedom, human dignity, parental rights, and more, Perkins warns. The latest news about Beijing Bidens Chinese Virus injection tyranny can be found at Fascism.news. Sources for this article include: HarbingersDaily.com Scag.gov NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Locked down and isolated from interstate commerce, the island of Bermuda should have theoretically been free of COVID infections over a year ago. But like any nation, lock downs suppressed the health and well being of the population, priming people for disease, poverty, mental health challenges and societal breakdown. After a miserable mask mandate was put in place on December 1, 2020, the island quickly saw a spike in COVID cases a spike that far exceeded any previous influx of infection. According to the COVID case data, forced masking only suppresses the population further, spreading infections and straining the very systems of the body (respiratory and cardiovascular) that need to be strengthened in order to overcome these attacks. Heavily masked and vaccinated, Bermuda now plagued with severe wave of COVID After the British island pushed citizens to mask up and take two experimental vaccines in 2021, the case counts spiked yet again in March and April, dwarfing the previous two waves of illness. Now, heading into the Fall of 2021, Bermuda has fully vaccinated approximately 67 percent of their population. At this vaccination rate, experts postulated that COVID outbreaks would go away and life would go back to normal. Dr. Anthony Fauci said a 50 percent adult vaccination rate would eliminate any future COVID surges. He has repeatedly dismissed the durability of natural immunity and pushed experimental vaccine science on people. Now the fully vaccinated are waiting helplessly as their artificial immunity wanes, as they become the super spreaders they once feared. As vaccination rates increase, COVID cases are now plaguing Bermuda at a shocking rate. The island is now witnessing a 5,600 percent increase in COVID cases in the month of September, as leaky, non-sterilizing vaccines speed up viral mutations and increase the populations susceptibility to respiratory illness. Bermuda has 67% of their entire population fully vaccinated, only 2 percent behind Vermont Cases have risen 5,605% in the past month, and theyre averaging the equivalent of ~750,000 cases per day in the US Are we done pretending high vax rates will end the pandemic yet? pic.twitter.com/s6AZpB3yJl IM (@ianmSC) September 21, 2021 CDC warns fully vaccinated people not to travel to Bermuda The situation is so dire, the Centers for Disease Control has put Bermuda in the level four, very high-risk category for COVID. The CDC recommends that Americans avoid travel to the island. The agency says the current situation is so bleak that fully vaccinated travelers are at risk of getting and spreading COVID-19 variants. This is the same CDC that threatens to segregate, terminate employment and make life miserable for every person who didnt enter into this FAILED vaccine experiment. The situation in Bermuda is similar to the vaccine failure that is currently being witnessed in the state of Vermont. Vermont has a higher vaccination rate than Bermuda, and the people there are also witnessing an unprecedented uptick in cases. Approximately 88 percent of Vermont adults are partially vaccinated, and 79 percent are fully vaccinated. However, the state is currently setting a new record in COVID cases and hospitalizations. This damning information wont be found anywhere across the mainstream media, because CNN, MSNBC and NPR are too busy attacking Republican governors in states that allow people to make their own choices regarding lockdowns, suffocation and bioweapon clot shots. Bermuda looks very similar to Vermont Vermont, with the highest vaccination rate in the country 88% of adults at least partially vaccinated & 79% fully vaccinated is about to set a new high in COVID cases, just 3.5 months after Fauci said with 50% of adults vaccinated we wouldnt see significant surges. Whoops! pic.twitter.com/7QHOxKZ5Je IM (@ianmSC) September 16, 2021 Stay up-to-date with uncensored data at Pandemic.News. Sources include: CitizenFreePress.com NaturalNews.com CDC.gov (Natural News) On the Health Ranger Report on Brighteon.TV, New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively tells the Health Ranger Mike Adams that Alan Dershowitz is wrong to make the Supreme Court ruling on Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905 as legal ground for President Joe Bidens Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine mandates. At most it gives a government the authority to impose a relatively small fine. But it doesnt say that you cant participate in the society if you dont get a vaccine. It doesnt say, were going to keep you from interacting with people. Thats the first thing that made me say, Dershowitz is absolutely wrong,' Heckenlively tells Adams. Watch the Sept. 20 episode of the Health Ranger Report here. Bidens vaccine mandates are unprecedented For context, Massachusetts was one of 11 states that had compulsory vaccination laws at the time. The Massachusetts law empowered the board of health of individual cities and towns to enforce mandatory, free vaccinations for adults over the age of 21 if the municipality determined it was necessary for the public health or safety of the community. Adults who refused were subject to a $5 fine. In 1902, faced with an outbreak of smallpox, the Board of Health of Cambridge, Massachusetts adopted a regulation ordering the vaccination or revaccination of all its residents. Pastor Henning Jacobson refused vaccination saying that he and his son had had bad reactions to earlier vaccinations as children. Jacobson believed that his family may have some sort of hereditary condition that made taking a vaccine particularly dangerous. Because of his refusal to get vaccinated, Jacobson was prosecuted and fined $5 (about $150 in 2020 dollars). The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws in 1905. Dershowitz, a New York Times bestselling author like Heckenlively, often cites Jacobson v. Massachusetts to make a case for vaccine mandates. The former Harvard Law School professor says there are three issues that will be addressed in constitutional challenges: whether the federal government has the power to mandate vaccines, whether Biden has the power to issue the mandate and whether a mandate is constitutional. I think that if its done properly, it would be, says Dershowitz. The Supreme Court has held since 1905 that you can compel vaccination of a highly contagious disease like smallpox. But in his interview in the Health Ranger Report, Heckenlively shoots down Dershowitzs argument. Lets compare COVID to smallpox. Smallpox killed 300 million people. So were looking at something that was much more serious than COVID. In 1905, what they did was they said, if you dont take a smallpox vaccine, were going to give you a $5 fine,' says Heckenlively, author of the upcoming book The Case Against Vaccine Mandates. Heckenlively says $5 in 1905 is the equivalent of $150 today. According to him, that small fine suggests that nobody had ever anticipated that youll violate somebodys bodily integrity by forcing them to take a medication. That fine is definitely much less than the fines and consequences laid out in Bidens vaccine mandates. States gear up for a fight against Bidens vaccine mandates Nearly 30 states are gearing up for a fight against Bidens vaccine mandates, which include requiring employers with more than 100 employees to either get vaccinated or be tested regularly. At least 14 states have already enacted COVID-related laws to bar vaccine mandates, as well as mask mandates and vaccine passports. (Related: Now 27 states are fighting Bidens aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandate.) A group of Republican state attorneys general has sent a letter to Biden vowing to take legal action if he does not reverse course. The attorneys general argue that the mandate would be illegal and unlikely to be successful as a public health measure. The vaccines have helped protect millions of Americans, and there are surely others who could benefit from obtaining this treatment, the letter reads. But convincing those who are hesitant to do so would require you to allow room for discussion and disagreement. Instead, you have offered the American people flimsy legal arguments, contradictory statements, and threatening directives. It is almost as if your goal is to sow division and distrust, rather than promote unity and the publics health. Arizona has already filed a lawsuit, arguing that the mandates violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Dershowitz, author of upcoming book The Case For Vaccine Mandates, contends that vaccine mandates support peoples civil liberties. Vaccinated people have the right not to be subject to contagion from unvaccinated people, says Dershowitz. Vaccinated people have the right to go to hospitals and right now theyre being excluded from hospitals. People are dying because the unvaccinated are filling up the hospital beds. Adams has invited Dershowitz to appear on the Health Ranger Report. If you want to come on and defend your argument, we welcome you. Maybe we can have a lively, informed debate about this, says Adams. You can catch the Health Ranger Report with Health Ranger Mike Adams from Monday to Friday at 3-3:30 p.m. on Brighteon.TV. Follow Immunization.news for more news and information related to coronavirus vaccines and vaccine mandates. Sources include: Brighteon.com Fox17.com TheHill.com (Natural News) Democrats are looking to spend billions in taxpayer money to ensure that newly arrived Afghans have access to welfare, housing assistance and medical services. House Democrats recently published their plan to fund a number of federal agencies, including making sure that Afghans arriving in the U.S. on humanitarian parole are given the same public benefits typically reserved to those on refugee status. The plan would specifically give resettlement assistance, entitlement programs and other benefits to the tens of thousands of Afghans on parole. This would open the scope of who would be eligible for such benefits to include those who may arrive in the U.S. after September 2022, such as spouses or children of newly arrived Afghans. The plan will use around $21.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to provide them with medical support, screening, and other public health-related activities. Another $1.7 billion will go to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This will be used for grants or contracts with qualified nonprofit organizations to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services such as wrap-around services during temporary housing and after resettlement, housing assistance, medical assistance, legal assistance, and case management assistance. President Joe Biden said that he hopes to resettle around 95,000 Afghans across the U.S. over the next year. In a 21-day period from August to September, he already brought over 48,000 into the U.S. for resettlement. States learning how many evacuees they are taking in The Biden administration began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators about the number of evacuees their states will receive from the first group of nearly 37,000 arrivals. California is projected to take in the most number of evacuees at more than 5,200 people. Alabama and Mississippi are each set to welcome ten, while Hawaii, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia are not expected to resettle anyone from the first group. The administration requested funding from Congress to help resettle 65,000 Afghans in the U.S. by the end of the month, and 95,000 by September 2022. Biden also tapped the former governor of his home state in Delaware to temporarily serve as his point person on resettling evacuees in the nation. States with a historically large number of Afghans who resettled in the U.S. in the last 20 years, such as California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia, are again welcoming disproportionate numbers of evacuees these areas also have the most expensive housing markets in the country. Oklahoma, on the other hand, had resettled a relatively small number of Afghans in the past and is slated to resettle 1,800 arrivals. Many of the new evacuees requested to be resettled in the aforementioned states because they already have family and close friends living nearby. Resettlement agencies also have a large presence and capacity in these areas. The State Department is resettling evacuees based on the advice of local affiliates of nine national resettlement agencies that the government is working with. Officials said that evacuees have been advised that other parts of the country, including those with plentiful job openings and cheaper housing, could be good places to resettle in. (Related: Botched withdrawal traps 10,000 Americans in Afghanistan: Biden admits he cant do anything about it.) Resettlement process The Afghan evacuees will go through a coordinated process from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where they will be vetted before being admitted. Every evacuee that goes in the U.S. also goes through health screening. Those who are 12 and older have been required to get COVID-19 vaccinations as a term for their humanitarian parolee status. The process is not without complications. U.S.-bound flights for evacuees who had been staying in third-world country processing sites were halted after measles cases were discovered among several Afghans who recently arrived on U.S. soil. Evacuees are also not yet eligible for food stamps, cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, Medicaid, or other traditional refugee services funded through the HHS. Afghan evacuees are slated to receive $1,225 each to help with rent, furniture, food and a small amount of pocket money. Biden also called on Congress to take action and ensure that the recent arrivals have access to the same benefits as refugees. Read more about the fall of Afghanistan and the efforts of the U.S. government to support evacuees at Collapse.news. Sources include: Infowars.com Breitbart.com APNews.com (Natural News) Almost two years have passed since the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) made its debut on the world stage, and the Branch Covidians are still deceiving the world with how they calculate covid deaths. Even after getting exposed for their lies, these medical charlatans are counting every death with covid as a death from covid. This is disingenuous at best, and some Colorado public health officials have had enough of it. During an appearance on Full Measure with investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, Brenda Bock, the county coroner for Grand County, explained that last November, she processed a murder-suicide case that the following day showed up on the state website as covid death. And they were gunshot wounds, Bock added, flabbergasted at the audacity of the system lying like that. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as covid deaths. In several other instances, corrupt authorities logged two individuals who were still alive as being dead from covid, Bock added. These plus however many more fake deaths were added elsewhere throughout the country suggests that the medical deep state really has pulled a fast one on society. Two of them were actually still alive, Bock explained to Attkisson about what she personally observed. And yet they were counting them. Had I not called them on it and asked them who those were, where they were from, all the information about it and its like, Oh, well that was a typo. They just got put in there by accident.' Gov. Polis continues to lie about covid deaths in Colorado James Caruso, who works as the chief medical examiner and coroner for the city of Denver, had much the same thing to say about what he has heard from colleagues throughout the Centennial State. I was told by some of my fellow coroners in the more rural counties in Colorado that it was happening to them, that they knew of issues where they had signed out a death certificate with perhaps trauma involved, Caruso told Attkisson. And they were being advised that it was being counted as a covid-related death. I think early on, the people signing the death certificates probably were doing it accurately. But at some level maybe the state level, maybe the federal level theres a possibility that they were cross-referencing COVID tests. And that people who tested positive for COVID were listed as a COVID-related death, regardless of their true cause of death. And I believe thats very erroneous, and not the way the statistics needed to be accumulated. Eventually, the state of Colorado adjusted its presentation of the data to differentiate between with covid and from covid deaths, the two now say. But Gov. Jared Polis continues to be resistant to the change, and Bock says that Polis has still to this day refused to remove the murder-suicide case from the covid deaths category. I believe theyre very inflated, Bock says about the current data. And dont get me wrong. I believe COVID is real. And I believe people do get very sick from it. And I do believe a small number do die from that. I do not believe a homicide-suicide belongs in that number, she added. I dont. I dont believe car accidents belong in those numbers. I think the numbers are skewed. And I think that it is my job to tell the truth. Unlike many other elected officials these days, Bock and Caruso are trying to tell the truth at much risk to themselves. They deserve commendation for doing what is right rather than what is easy. More related news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) plandemic deception can be found at FalseFlag.news. Sources for this article include: JustTheNews.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Cuba is vaccinating all children aged two and up against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). On Monday, multiple mainstream media outlets were invited by the communist nation to the capital of Havana to witness a carefully choreographed portion of the mass vaccination. During a single day at a policlinico [general hospital] in Havana, where CNN and other media were invited to film the vaccinations, more than 230 children ages three to five were vaccinated, said the report. Cuba is giving its homegrown vaccines known as Soberana 02 and Abdala to its citizens, including children and toddlers. Health officials claim these vaccines are safe to give to the very young. Our country would not put [infants] even at minimal risk if the vaccines were not proven safe and highly effective when put into children, claimed Aurolis Otano, director of the Vedado Polyclinic University in Havana. The polyclinic expects to vaccinate around 300 children between the ages of two and five per day. Otano attempted to justify the communist nations mass vaccination campaign against children by claiming that the post-vaccine delta variant of the coronavirus caused a surge in COVID-19 infections among the countrys youngest populations. This forced the Cuban scientific community to take the vaccine to clinical trial, after which it was approved for use in children. The communist nations main health regulator, the Center for State Control of Medicines and Medical Devices (CECMED), announced in early September the expansion of the countrys mass vaccination campaign to include children between the ages of two and 17. (Related: Cuba first country in the world to administer COVID-19 vaccines to toddlers.) We have children dying, getting severe disease, claimed Dr. Vicente Verez Bencomo, director of the Finlay Institute, the countrys main vaccine research institute. The Finlay Institute is also the main body responsible for developing Soberana 02 and Abdala. We are vaccinating children so we are moving closer to the point there is community immunity established, he added. According to Bencomo, around 117,500 minors have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of whom 7,660 were breastfeeding infants. The communist government has refused to say how many children in Cuba have died due to the coronavirus. The health ministry only began reporting the deaths of children and infants in August. The approval of the vaccines for children is based on data provided by the Finlay Institute of a clinical trial that only involved a paltry 350 children and teenagers between the ages of three and 18. This trial only reached up to Phase 2. More importantly, the summary of the trial results did not say how effective the Cuban COVID-19 vaccines are against infections, hospitalizations and deaths in children. Scientists from the Finlay Institute are instead relying on efficacy data from a larger clinical trial involving only adults, which supposedly show that the Soberana 02 vaccine is 91.2 percent effective at protecting against symptomatic COVID-19. Despite the incomplete clinical trials and the lack of data, the Cuban government still approved the vaccines for children. Bencomo tried to argue that what little data the health ministry had proved that the vaccines are safe for children. It should be noted that not even the World Health Organization has approved the Cuban COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), even refused to comment on the use of the Cuban COVID-19 vaccines on toddlers because PAHO has not received the data that the Finlay Institute presented to the Cuban government. More children around the world being given COVID-19 vaccines Cuba is not the only country in the world to begin vaccinating young children. In the United States and most of Europe, children 12 years and older can receive COVID-19 vaccines. In Chile, children six and older can receive the vaccines. In China, health authorities allow giving the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines to children between the ages of three and 17. Back in the U.S., Pfizer recently released more data supposedly proving that its COVID-19 vaccine works for children between the ages of five and 11. By the time the U.S. and many other countries around the world are expected to begin vaccinating children as young as two, Cuba might already be done with its mass vaccination campaign. Authorities in the communist nation said it plans to vaccinate as much as 90 percent of the population, including children, by mid-November. This deadline is also when the country is expected to reopen its borders to tourists and other visitors and when schools will resume in-person instruction. Learn more about the mass vaccination campaigns in Cuba and other parts of the world at Vaccines.news. Sources include: ZeroHedge.com APNews.com MiamiHerald.com EuroNews.com (Natural News) No sooner than Joe Biden sat down behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office did he begin to sign a stack of executive orders undoing various policies enacted by his predecessor, Donald Trump. Among those first policy reversals: Nearly all of Trumps border and immigration enforcement policies. What happened next was predictable hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world flooded across our southwestern border, many of them never to be returned to their home country. Since January, some estimates have put the number of people who have crossed illegally into the U.S. at more than 1.3 million. The most recent crisis, however, came this past week, when nearly 15,000 migrants from Haiti gathered under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, setting up a tent city. Initially, the Biden regime said that it would restart repatriation flights back to Haiti after being pressured by Republicans and some media outlets, but it turns out that the regime isnt doing that, and in fact, the regime is actually moving those people into our country like theyve been doing with Mexican and Central American migrants for months, according to Breitbart News: Biden administration officials began quietly telling journalists Monday they will release many of the roughly 15,000 Haitian migrants in the Del Rio camp. The releases will allow the migrants to take Americans jobs, to compete for housing, to ask for asylum and green cards, and to put their children into the crowded classrooms needed by ordinary American kids. The Haitian catch and release process also will be displayed by Haitians cellphones and will encourage more Haitians to risk their childrens lives in the long trek to the U.S. border, the outlet continued. The Haitians who have invaded our country arent idiots theyre rational actors, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Theyre not cartoons in the imagination of some liberal do-gooder. Theyre people who have a good sense of what they want and what the odds are, he said. [So] if anyone who brings a child with him is exempted from the [deportation] rules, then sending back the single adults only [to Haiti] is not really sending the [deterrence] message that people think it is, because it is saying [to Haitians] Always make damn sure you have a kid with you, and then well let you go into the U.S.,' he continued. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld blasted the mainstream media, as well as Democrats, who criticized Border Patrol agents on horseback who were photographed keeping Haitian migrants from streaming into the country from Mexico, which is their job, because liars claimed that they were whipping the migrants. I dont care about the humanitarian crisis until I can find an angle that I like Thats what you just saw with these dumb hacks that you just saw in that montage, he said in response to a clip of on-camera comments from Vice President Harris, Rep. Ilhan Omar D-Minn., MSNBC host Joy Reid and CNN host Christopher Cuomo. These networks [and] these people had no interest in the story until they could create an acceptable villain in law enforcement. They didnt give two poops about the 12,000 refugees that were there. But oh, they discovered a Twitter image in their doom scrolling that looks like a whip: So they go Full Covington, Gutfeld continued, in reference to how most mainstream outlets blasted Nicholas Sandmann, a Catholic school student from Kentucky who was seen on video facing off and smiling at a Native American left-wing activist during the March For Life in 2019, while Phillips banged on a drum in his face while he chanted. Chris Cuomo, Yamiche, April and all of these other bozos who pretend to be journalists, then pretend to have a story, Gutfeld said. If Democrats and the media cared enough about this crisis from the time that we started covering it months ago and weeks ago with this, this actual story wouldnt be necessary, he said. Sources Include: Breitbart.com FoxNews.com InvasionUSA.news (Natural News) A report says that warnings of children near a drone strikes target area in Afghanistan came too late. Three anonymous sources claim that intelligence officials only informed the U.S. military of the childrens presence with seconds to spare. Ten individuals were killed as a result of the Aug. 29 drone strike in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The sources remark that the Central Intelligence Agency informed officials about the children only seconds before the Hellfire drone missile hit Zemari Ahmadis vehicle. Ahmadi and his three children Faisal, Bin Yamin and Ayat are among the 10 fatalities from the drone attack. U.S. officials initially claimed that Ahmadi, an aid worker for an American group, was a terrorist and an imminent threat to the country. However, the Biden administration has walked back on this claim and insists that Ahmadi is innocent. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command (USCC), told reporters during a press briefing: I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike. McKenzie continues: We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with [ISIS-Khorasan] or a direct threat to U.S. forces. The strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the airport, but it was a mistake and I offer my sincere apology. Other defense officials have followed suit. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has issued a statement describing the strike as a horrible tragedy of war. He adds: Its heart-wrenching and we are committed to being fully transparent about this incident. Meanwhile, a statement from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin offers apologies toward the incident and calls Ahmadi an innocent victim. (Related: NYT confirms Biden murdered innocent family in Kabul drone strike.) Tragic drone strike was supposed to be response to Kabul airport bombing U.S. officials initially said that the Aug. 29 drone strike targeted a suicide bomber with connections to ISIS-K. However, an internal investigation however revealed that innocent civilians including Ahmadi and his children were killed by the strike instead of terrorists. U.S. Navy Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesperson for the USCC, said in an earlier statement: We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. He continued: We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time. We remain vigilant for potential future threats. ISIS-K is believed to be behind the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The Pentagon said the incident has claimed the life of 13 U.S. service members and wounded 18 more. An estimated 169 Afghans were also been reported dead following the bombing. The attack occurred amidst evacuation efforts by the U.S. following the Talibans takeover of the country. (Related: Jeffrey Prather talks about warfare, Afghanistan and false flag attacks Brighteon.TV.) Zemaris brother Emal meanwhile believes apologies from Washington are insufficient. While he survived the Aug. 29 attack, his three-year-old daughter Malika is among the 10 casualties of the drone strike. That is not enough for us to say sorry. The [U.S.] should find the person who did this, he says. The Ahmadis seek financial compensation and relocation to any country including the U.S. that is deemed safe. While Emal acknowledges the apologies and the recognition of his family members who died as innocent victims, he says these actions will not bring them back. He also expresses frustration over U.S. officials refusing to reach out to his family despite repeated requests. Furthermore, Emal also calls on the U.S. to investigate the ones who fired the drone and hold them responsible. The [U.S.] can see from everywhere. They can see that there were innocent children near and in the car. Whoever did this should be punished, he adds. Terrorism.news has more articles about ISIS-K attacks in Afghanistan. Sources include: NYPost.com BusinessInsider.com CBSNews.com ABCNews.Go.com (Natural News) Prepare for a flood of intel in todays Situation Update podcast shown below. Beyond the world bombshell DARPA document leaked to DRASTIC, which shows that EcoHealth Alliance and Fauci conspired to release aerosolized, skin-penetrating spike protein nanoparticles into wild bat populations in China (which would immediately leap to humans as planned), we also have bombshell intel about something else that makes it even worse. DRASTIC has confirmed that Daszak and Fauci, working via the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were able to create 180 strains of coronavirus bioweapons and put them under the control of the communist Chinese (an act of treason). We now know from other sources that CCP-run bioweapons deployment teams have crossed the US border, carrying MERS-augmented biological weapons with at least a 30% fatality rate, with plans to release them in major US cities when commanded to. With full credit to DRASTIC, we have mirrored their PDF analysis of the DARPA documents at this link on NN servers (PDF). The original EcoHealth Alliance proposal to DARPA is numbered HR001118S0017-PREEMPT-PA-001 Investigative journalist Lara Logan has confirmed all this through her own sources, as she is now warning that the migrant crisis in Texas is the perfect cover for Americas enemies to sneak in a dangerous biological weapon. Our sources, who have been in touch with Logan, have confirmed she knows much more but isnt yet at liberty to go public with the full details. We have the full details here. Read these bullets carefully. This is the plan thats now under way, to the best of our knowledge. Its far worse than you probably imagined. The Super MERS attack is now imminent, and the bioweapons deployment operators are already pre-positioned across US cities, likely armed with drones and aerosolizing drone attachments. We are about to be sprayed with a super dangerous biological weapon: DARPA originally funded MERS but refused to support any effort to release it into the wild. They wanted to keep it as a strategic, last-ditch biological weapon for extreme emergencies. Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance finagled a way to get their hands on MERS, which became the template for the gain of function research that was laundered through the WIV, using US taxpayer money. Elements from MERS, HIV, SARS and other viral strains were engineered together to create the chimeric bioweapons with special affinity for human ACE2 receptors. Daszak and Fauci approached DARPA to request funding to release their bioweapons in China. DARPA refused. But they found funding through globalist sources that support depopulation. Had DARPA agreed to the funding, Daszak and Fauci had planned to invite Shi Zheng Li (the Bat Lady) to a celebration announcement at DARPA headquarters ! ! SARS-CoV-2 was never designed to kill. It was designed to spread rapidly, with low fatality, to create worldwide panic and demand for vaccines, along with government lockdowns and global communism due to cases diagnosed via fraudulent PCR tests. But MERS is a super deadly bioweapon. This will be released next, a souped-up version of MERS that has been weaponized via Fauci, the NIH and the WIV under the control of the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army). a souped-up version of MERS that has been weaponized via Fauci, the NIH and the WIV under the control of the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army). The EcoHealth Alliance project proposal to DARPA mentions their plans to develop three to five coronavirus bioweapon strains each year. This was to be an ongoing, never-ending assault on humanity via biological weapons, all funded by the US military working with communist China. We dont yet know the official designation of this MERS bioweapon, but Ill call it Super MERS for now. Super MERS is already in the hands of PLA operators who have crossed into the United States via Mexican narco smuggling routes. The CCP / PLA has hundreds of military advisors working with Mexican narcos, with the promise that the narcos will receive a piece of the southern USA once China occupies and defeats the United States. These Chinese bioweapons operatives are told to simultaneously release Super MERS across US cities when given the activation command, which could come via public means such as the New York Times being ordered by China to use a certain phrase on a certain day. (The NYT has long been on Chinas payroll, just like most Democrats, half the US Senate and all of Big Tech). The White House is almost completely controlled by the CCP, and Biden is Chinas puppet. This Super MERS strain will kill at least 30% of those who are infected, under normal circumstances. But because the covid vaccines have destroyed the immune response among vaccinated individuals, the death rate in the vaccinated may be significantly higher. (50%?) The Super MERS strain is effectively the second half of the binary weapon system , with the first half being the vaccine. This is why tyrannical government has pushed so hard for mass vaccinations. Its the setup for the kill. The Biden administration has been working with China all along to try to achieve a 70% vaccination rate in the USA, which would translate into an overall kill rate of at least 20% of the US population once Super MERS is released. This translates into about 70 million people, roughly speaking. Or more than ten times the death statistics of the Nazi Holocaust. , with the first half being the vaccine. This is why tyrannical government has pushed so hard for mass vaccinations. Its the setup for the kill. The Biden administration has been working with China all along to try to achieve a 70% vaccination rate in the USA, which would translate into an overall kill rate of at least 20% of the US population once Super MERS is released. This translates into about 70 million people, roughly speaking. Or more than ten times the death statistics of the Nazi Holocaust. The release of Super MERS cannot be stopped. The agents are already in place. The border has long been penetrated. Americas military was ordered to stand down during all this, via treasonous Pentagon criminals like Milley and Austin. The left-wing media is all in on this, as is Big Tech. They are all taking orders from China. The release of Super MERS will be called a variant by the criminal government, and they will blame the unvaccinated while activating the CDCs covid death camps to round up political dissidents and begin mass executions. Map of the CDCs current quarantine stations which will be transmorphed into covid death camps. Source: CDC.gov From the CDC.gov website: CDC has the legal authority to detain any person who may have an infectious disease that is specified by Executive Order to be quarantinable. Treasonous imposter Joe Biden recently signed an EU adding measles to this list of quarantinable diseases. Thus, any political dissident can be diagnosed with measles via fraudulent PCR testing, then forcibly thrown into a quarantine death camp run by the CDC. The State of Washington recently posted a public jobs ad calling for Isolation & Quarantine strike team coordinators to help run its own quarantine camp in Centralia, WA. When the public became aware of this ad, Washington government goons scrambled to remove the strike team phrase from the job listing and stealth edited it to pretend that it was just an ad for people to do laundry and change bed sheets. (Yes, really.) At the same time, we are hearing rumors that military personnel who refuse vaccinations are being loaded onto buses and forcibly isolated / quarantined by the military until they agree to be vaccinated. This isnt happening everywhere (yet). Our report is from a single military base, but this practice could spread. China will very shortly initiate the bioweapons release in America, likely followed by cyber attacks and financial system tactics While the exact timing on all this is always difficult to know, it appears China will soon initiate its bioweapons attack on America, making covid look like childs play. Once this commences, anyone who doesnt take Super MERS seriously will be in grave danger. This will be a time to truly stay away from public places and avoid large cities where it is likely that Chinese operatives will use drones to disperse aerosolized, skin-penetrating toxic nanoparticles based on the MERS research. Yes, Americas cities are about to be gassed / sprayed with deadly poison, much like Zyklon B (except at a much larger scale). Cyber attacks will likely be timed to coincide with this planned chaos and biowarfare death wave, and it seems almost certain that China will choose this moment of vulnerability to assault Americas financial standing i.e. the world reserve currency status of the petro dollar. Very quickly, America could lose: A third of its active duty military personnel, due to the mass vaccinations. A third of the US population living in targeted cities. World reserve currency status for its fiat currency dollar, which would collapse to near-zero value overnight. The power grid could go down, regionally, due to cyber attacks, plunging areas of the country into darkness. At the same time, armed state and federal government agents would be unleashed as strike teams against the population, aiming to achieve: Nationwide gun confiscation Mass executions of political dissidents Medical kidnappings, quarantines and executions of large populations in order to achieve depopulation Total government control over all movement, speech and medical interventions Expect highway checkpoints, vaccine papers, on-site executions, door-to-door medical kidnappings and every nightmare of government terrorism against the people that you could possibly imagine. More details are found in todays Situation Update podcast: Brighteon.com/358dc7fe-2580-40c6-8a90-13a13175caf5 Prepare to be sprayed with aerosolized, skin-penetrating toxic nanoparticles. Its all in the DARPA proposal (which DARPA refused to fund, thankfully), and the depopulation agenda is now abundantly obvious to everyone paying attention. We post a new podcast each day, along with bombshell interviews with top experts. Find it all at my channel on Brighteon.com: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/hrreport (Natural News) Twenty-two year old Imogen Allen may no longer ride a horse or become a detective after getting injected with Modernas Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine. The British woman has suffered from two massive blood clots in her lungs two weeks after her vaccination. Allen will now be on anticoagulant medicines for the rest of her life, and could possibly die from a simple cut or bump to the head. Allen has represented England in show jumping events since she was a teenager, but the blood clots in her lungs following vaccination have put an abrupt end to this. The two clots in her lungs developed two weeks after getting injected with the Moderna mRNA vaccine. Doctors say the contraceptive pill Allen has been taking for five years could have played a role in the bilateral pulmonary thromboembolism she is suffering from. Furthermore, Allens condition has left her bedbound and unable to return to her regular activities. I have absolutely no idea what Im going to do now. Work isnt even on the horizon. Im literally in bed every day [and its] depressing. Ive had a massive setback, she says. The 22-year-old plans to be a detective, but the blood clots she suffered have sidelined this dream. According to Allen, she first felt breathless while climbing the stairs a day after she gets injected. This continued over the next few days, with the woman feeling exhausted while doing simple tasks. She added that her lungs feel like being crushed while sleeping on her side. Despite these, she insists on joining her boyfriend and his family on a camping trip. Allen continued to feel weak throughout the camping trip, to the point of almost collapsing after walking up a steep hill. She called emergency services and told them about her symptoms, but refused an ambulance. Allen and her partner then drive to the North Devon District Hospital, where doctors revealed the devastating news: There were two clots in her lungs, and her heart was struggling to pump blood around her body. Doctors informed Allen that she may require surgery to remove the clots and that it could take three months before her breathing normalizes. They believed that Allen being on the pill since 17 has made her more susceptible to developing blood clots. The synthetic estrogen hormone in contraceptive pills made her blood thicker, increasing the likelihood of clotting. A Coloradan also suffers blood clots from the Moderna vaccine Allen is not the only victim who has suffered from blood clots following vaccination. A 49-year-old Colorado resident claims the two-dose Moderna mRNA vaccine has caused blood clots to develop on his left leg. Brighton resident Jeff Johnson believes the shot has caused his leg to swell and become painful. According to Johnson, he initially does not have any issues after he gets injected with the Moderna vaccine. But about a week later he reports swelling, pain and tenderness in his left leg. He tells local station KDVR: I was concerned, naturally. I know blood clots are bad and I was afraid to die. He then visits the emergency room, where doctors found two blood clots in his left leg. They diagnosed Johnson with deep vein thrombosis, a condition involving the formation of clots in distant blood vessels such as those in the thigh or lower leg. One of Johnsons doctors cited the Moderna vaccine as a possible cause of the clots in his leg. Fortunately, Johnsons condition improved following medical treatment. The 49-year-old Coloradan has been able to return to work, but he hopes that he encounters no other reactions post-injection aside from the clots. (Related: Moderna vaccine causes blood clots in Colorado resident.) The experiences of Allen and Johnson contradict claims by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer do not cause blood clots. FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Dr. Peter Marks has previously claimed that there have been no reports of blood clots and low platelet count following injection with the mRNA vaccines. (Related: Scientists warn that mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are causing BLOOD CLOTS.) However, data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) tell a different story. From Dec. 14, 2020 to April 1, 2021, VAERS has recorded more than 730 reports of blood clots linked to the mRNA shots. 400 of these are attributed to the Pfizer vaccine, while 337 are linked to the Moderna vaccine. VaccineInjuryNews.com has more articles about blood clots caused by the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Sources include: GreatGameIndia.com DailyMail.co.uk 1 DailyMail.co.uk 2 KDVR.com ChildrensHealthDefense.org (Natural News) A multimillion-dollar bat coronavirus research grant, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was made public last week, revealing that researchers based in Wuhan, China had manipulated coronaviruses in ways that led to increased severity of infection, employing platforms that tested the ability of bat coronaviruses to use human receptors. (Article by Shannon Murray republished from USRTK.org) The grant documents underscore the perils of the collection of and experimentation on potentially pathogenic viruses, and shed new light on U.S.-funded coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, China for five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new information disclosed in the grant proposal and its interim reports do not establish that the research led to the pandemic. But they do suggest that it was possible. The NIH-funded, five-year grant was awarded in 2014 to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, with EcoHealth President Peter Daszak as principal investigator in collaboration with several researchers in China, including two working at Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). A key collaborator on the grant was Ralph Baric, of the University of North Carolina, providing expertise in mouse models for coronavirus infections. The grant was renewed in 2019 but then cancelled in 2020 as the pandemic set off panic around the globe. A copy of the research plan and interim reports, titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, was obtained through litigation against the NIH and publicly released by The Intercept. The documents show that the NIH grant was for $3.1 million, of which $599,000 went to the WIV and to researcher Zhengli Shi, who specialized in the study of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-1 (SARS-CoV-1) and similar viruses, called SARS related (SARSr)-CoVs. Many scientists have posited a possible lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, and suggested the WIV as a possible source for the origin of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. Coronaviruses (CoVs) emerging from wildlife are a significant threat to global health, the grant claims, with bats considered a natural reservoir of these viruses. With that in mind, the authors said that the purpose of their research was to examine the risk of future coronavirus emergence from wildlife using a range of research techniques and to understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV emerging in people The work involved screening more than 30 species of bats for CoVs and then developing strategies for assessing the potential spillover of coronaviruses from bats to humans, according to the grant documents. But it is possible that, in seeking to learn how to avoid spillover events, the work actually caused one. How it could have happened How might the EcoHealth Alliance grant have caused, or contributed to, the pandemic? Here are some possible scenarios based on a close reading of the grant. During fieldwork, collection, and containment of bat SARSr-CoV samples, people could have been accidentally infected. The research involved collecting samples from bats in four Chinese provinces: Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. The researchers explained their prolific sampling of Chinese bats and identification of new coronaviruses: We have identified sequences from 268 novel bat-CoVs (140 from China alone), they wrote in the grant. We have an additional 5000+ clinical samples from free-ranging bats and rodents from Guangdong province. The grantees acknowledged that their work had serious implications, writing in the grant documents that some SARSr-CoVs currently circulating in bats in southern China are likely able to infect and replicate within people. [Emphasis in original]. In fact, the most closely related virus to SARS-CoV-2 identified to date was found by WIV scientists in a mineshaft in Mojiang (Yunnan Province). In 2012-2013, six miners experienced acute respiratory distress syndrome after exposure to bat feces in this mineshaft, and three died. There is evidence of lax bat-handling practices and minimal use of personal protective equipment at WIV and Wuhan University, where parts of the research were conducted. By their own admission, the researchers noted, this work could be dangerous. Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARSr-related or other bat CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled, according to the grant documents. The grant documents state that Tyvek suits and HEPA-filtered Powered Air Purifying and Supplied Air Respirator Systems (PAPRs) will additionally be worn in cave systems where there is a higher risk of contact with aerosolized bat feces. If any of those bat samples contained a close relative of SARS-CoV-2 infectious to humans, an accidental infection during the course of fieldwork, subsequent lab procedures or containment could have led to a transmissible SARS-CoV with greater similarity to SARS-CoV-2 than the currently reported strains. In fact, analysis of some early strains of SARS-CoV-2 shows that they may be more similar to bat coronaviruses than previously thought, based on evidence recovered from viral sequences deleted from NIH sequence archives. During lab experimentation with the bat coronaviruses, it is possible that a novel virus was produced with greater similarity to SARS-CoV-2 than those reported in the NIH grant. The researchers stated in the grant that they developed an in vivo model, that is, mice genetically engineered to carry human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE-2), the receptor for SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. The research group also reported that they were successful in generating new SARS-like coronaviruses. They did this by splicing the RNA sequences of the novel spike proteins they discovered into the viral backbone of known lab strains. This kind of novel virus is called a chimera because it consists of genetic elements from different viruses. In this way, the researchers created three chimeric viruses, each with a different spike protein, from bats. Though the grant does not mention a virus similar enough to SARS-CoV-2 to be a direct progenitor, it is possible that other chimeric viruses were tested in this model, but were not reported in the grant. The researchers had access to troves of novel coronaviruses collected during fieldwork, including unreported bat viruses. It is common for researchers to present some but not all data in interim grant reports. The research described in the grant established a platform that could have easily been used to study other chimeric viruses more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than those mentioned in the grant. There are indications of this within the grant documents. While results from infection of hACE-2 mice with three chimeric viruses were presented, the researchers wrote in the grant, [w]e cannot anticipate exactly how many viruses we will find that are candidates for experimental modelsand that we will identify approximately 20 viruses that will be used for mouse infection experiments. It is possible that the researchers generated a novel chimeric virus with more similarity to SARS-CoV-2 than those reported. Experiments on human ACE-2 mice The NIH grant describes important research on mice with human ACE-2 receptors. The researchers infected the hACE-2 mice with the chimeric SARS-like bat coronaviruses to see how sick they would get, and whether they would shed infectious virus compared to the original viral strain. They found that hACE-2 mice infected with some of the chimeric viruses lost more body weight and shed more virus in the lungs than those infected by the original viral strain at certain time points. This research resulted in chimeric viruses that gained infectious and pathogenic properties. Well infect them [hACE-2 mice] with cultured bat coronaviruses and determine which organs become infected and whether these mice are capable of shedding infectious virus, the grant proposed. The grant aimed to study tissues of the chimeric virus-infected hACE-2 mice for virus replication. The grant proposed testing different transmission routes in which the mice could be infected, comparing nasal infection versus other routes. The grant outlines, [W]e will perform in vivo infection experiments in humanized mice modified to carry human ACE2gene in the Wuhan Institute of Virology BSL-3 animal facility[t]his work will provide information about viral pathogenicity, tissue tropism, transmission route, and infection symptom. An outstanding question is whether the chimeric viruses can be transmitted between the hACE-2 mice. Whether the scientists explicitly reported on this is not the question, but rather, was a novel chimeric bat virus engineered that was also transmissible between hACE-2 mice? While the grant does not discuss repeated passage of viruses in hACE-2 mice, the platform also sets up biosafety concerns about this possibility. A weakness in the prominent proximal origin paper? Some scientists who have argued against a lab origin for SARS-CoV-2 contend that the virus has a signature of it being adapted in an animal host with an intact immune system, for which no such appropriate laboratory model has been described. One of these arguments against a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, advanced by scientist Kristian Andersen and colleagues, and published as an influential correspondence in Nature Medicine, was [s]ubsequent generation of a polybasic cleavage site would have then required repeated passage in cell culture or animals with ACE2 receptors similar to those of humans, but such work has also not previously been described. [Emphasis ours.] However, the grant shows this is not correct; the experimentation on the hACE-2 mice establish such a model. Infection of hACE-2 mice with the novel chimeric bat coronaviruses could have supported new viruses with sequence changes that make them better able to infect human cells. These could be more similar in sequence to SARS-CoV-2 than the original chimeric virus infecting strains. The hACE-2 expressing mice could have enabled some human adaptation of the chimeric SARS-like bat coronaviruses in vivo, generating viruses with more similarity to SARS-CoV-2 than those reported to date. This is another possible explanation for how NIH-funded research in China could have led to the COVID-19 pandemic. The bottom line In addition to searching for spillover events, the research outlined in the grant had the potential to generate a spillover event. This could have occurred as an accidental infection during fieldwork and laboratory handling of bat SARSr-CoVs; during containment or storage of them; or during the laboratory engineering of novel chimeric bat coronaviruses; or, after these novel viruses were used to infect hACE-2 mice, leading to a more infectious, transmissible, and/or pathogenic virus that was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2. The possibility of a lab leak or lab-acquired infection with any of these novel coronaviruses during lab experimentation raises serious biosafety concerns. Though the bat coronavirus grant project has concluded, it is entirely possible that other studies using this platform were performed or are now being performed, including those related to viral transmission. It is noteworthy that it took civil litigation to bring these grant documents to light, even though the research itself was paid for by U.S. taxpayers. It is also noteworthy that EcoHealth Alliance has received nearly $40 million in multiple grants from the Department of Defense, and DOD grant data is often considered classified and withheld from the public. And though the 5-year bat coronavirus research grant was only renewed for one additional year, a $7.5 million NIH grant, titled Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in EID Hotspots of Southeast Asia, was awarded to EHA in 2020 to expand on the platforms established in the 2014 grant. This newer grant, with Daszak again as principal investigator, was also made public last week by the Intercept. The new grant is a consortium grant that adds more collaborators and lab sites where the research will be performed, including a BSL-4 facility in Boston. Funding is approved for the budget cycle of June 17, 2020 through May 31, 2025. The bottom line is this: It is unclear whether the work performed under the 2014 bat coronavirus NIH grant played a role in the COVID-19 pandemic. But the EcoHealth Alliance and WIV collection and storage of SARS-related bat coronaviruses, and the creation and use of chimeric novel bat coronaviruses with human ACE-2 expressing mouse platforms, could have sparked the pandemic. Congress should launch an investigation into U.S. government funding of this type of risky research as part of a full and thorough investigation of the origins of the pandemic. U.S. Right to Know believes transparency in science is essential to protection of public health, including preventing future pandemics. Read more at: USRTK.org and Conspiracy.news. (Natural News) A bombshell report has concluded that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their affiliated partners attempted to secure $14 million in funding from the Pentagons scientific arm DARPA to genetically alter viruses, including bat coronaviruses, and make them more infectious to humans, just eighteen months prior to the subsequent outbreak and pandemic. (Article by Steve Watson republished from InfoWars.com) The London Telegraph reports the findings revealed by Drastic, a web-based investigations team set up by scientists from across the world to look into the origins of Covid-19. The documents they obtained, confirmed as genuine by former US government officials, show that DARPA turned down the request, saying the plans for yet more gain of function research were TOO DANGEROUS to the human population. The Telegraph notes that the documents reveal the Wuhan scientists submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing novel chimeric spike proteins of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China. The documents also show that the plan involved genetically altering the bat coronaviruses to add human-specific cleavage sites, essentially making it easier for the virus to get into human cells. This is EXACTLY what was discovered when Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, prompting many scientists to suggest the virus had been genetically manipulated in a lab. The documents reveal that the same cast of characters already under scrutiny regarding gain of function research in Wuhan submitted the plan to DARPA. Both British zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, who later attempted to shut down scientific debate on the possibility of a lab leak, and the bat woman Dr Shi Zhengli were intimately involved. Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St Georges, University of London, who maintains that the pandemic was likely a result of a genetically altered virus, said the research may have gone ahead even without the funding. This is clearly a gain of function, engineering the cleavage site and polishing the new viruses to enhance human cell infectibility in more than one cell line, Dalgleish said. The Telegraph notes that the plans were rejected by DARPA, with the agency noting It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk, and further warning that proper consideration of the consequences of enhancing the viruses had not been undertaken. Let that sink in. Even DARPA, the secretive military weapons development agency, the ones who have invented implantable microchips, cyborg dogs and drone killing machines said that the WIV gain of function plan was nuts. The Telegraph also notes that a Covid-19 researcher from the World Health Organisation (WHO), who wished to remain anonymous, said it was alarming that the grant proposal included plans to enhance the more deadly disease of Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The scary part is they were making infectious chimeric MERS viruses, the source warned. Those findings dovetail with previous revelations in documents obtained under the FOIA showing that lab tampering was undertaken on MERS-like coronaviruses in several labs around Wuhan, including a level three biocontainment facility, which has lesser security that the level four labs previously mentioned in relation to the outbreak. MERS viruses have 30-50 percent fatality rates, with the source noting If one of their receptor replacements made MERS spread similarly (to COVID-19), while maintaining its lethality, this pandemic would be nearly apocalyptic. Drastic issued a statement on the latest findings urging Given that we find in this proposal a discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites, a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted. The accumulating scientific evidence that points to a potential coronavirus lab leak, as well as Chinas record on bio-security, and its constant stonewalling, warrants an adequate global independent investigation, which hasnt happened. Read more at: InfoWars.com and Pandemic.news. Aerial drones have been used by scientists to monitor the populations of critically endangered animals such as killer whales. Doctors Holly Fearnbach of SeaLife Response, Rehabilitation, and Research and Doctor John Durban of Southall Environmental Associates of Washington state had discovered the possibility of three pregnant killer whales on the loose, giving hope to researchers in British Columbia and possibly helping the species move away from extinction. According to Doctor Durban, "Last year, we documented a number of other pregnant females, who were not successful in rearing calves. Unfortunately, this is not unusual and we have documented a high rate of reproductive failure over the last decade." These findings may be very exciting for those who have seen the likeliness of reproduction in the recent decades. Especially for those sectors who focuses on helping the endangered species from extinction. These three pregnant killer whales might just help the population of killer whales. Endangered Whales: The Famous Orca or the Killer Whales Killer whales, often known as orcas, are the biggest of dolphins and one of the most formidable predators on the planet. Their unique black-and-white coloration makes them instantly identifiable. Orcas are intelligent and sociable creatures who create a broad range of communication sounds, and each pod has its own characteristic noises that its members can distinguish even from afar. They communicate and hunt through echolocation, which involves generating underwater noises that travel until they meet things, then bouncing back to disclose their location, size, and form. Killer whales eat a wide variety of food, however certain populations specialize on specific sorts of prey. Some just eat fish, while others hunt marine animals like as seals and other dolphin species. Baleen whale calves and even adult whales have been known to be attacked by them. Since killer whales have no natural predators, they are apex predators. They are extremely sociable; certain populations are made up of the most stable matrilineal family units (pods) of any animal species. Due to prey depletion, habitat loss, contamination (including PCBs), capture for marine animal parks, and conflicts with human fisheries, certain local populations are considered vulnerable or endangered. Also read: 'Toxic Soup' from World's Largest Mass Extinction Led to Similar Event Today Conservation Efforts to Help the Population of the Killer Whales Southern orcas have dropped in number over the previous several decades, from more than 90 in the 1970s to 74 now. It's the only endangered killer whale population in the world. According to Josh McInnes, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, killer whales have a high percentage of miscarriages and infant death, resulting in a poor rate of reproduction. Scientists are concerned about the Orcas' tendency for miscarriages, and the best thing you can do is pray and hope. Researchers examine the Orcas with airborne drones that fly about 30 meters above the ocean, according to Doctor Barrett-Lennard. It provides researchers with extremely high-resolution images as well as detailed information about killer whales. Various government bodies, such as the United States and Canada, have put in place various measures to assist in the survival of orcas in their waters. In June, the Canadian government issued an interim order to preserve southern resident killer whales in British Columbia seas by tightening shipping rules. Also read: Global Reef Systems Affected by Severe Climate Change O&G Industries / Contributed photo MIDDLETOWN O&G Industries recently completed the construction of the new Beman Middle School (formerly Woodrow Wilson Middle School) at 1 Wildermans Way, where 650 students in sixth through eighth grade now attend. The project included the construction of a new 190,000-square-foot facility, with abatement and demolition of the existing facilities administrative and classroom space, according to the Torrington-based firm. The existing middle school pool and gymnasium were not demolished. They are being renovated, and will eventually be turned over to the Middletown Parks and Recreation Department as a standalone structure. League of Women Voters / ROXBURY The League of Women Voters of Litchfield County will sponsor a candidates debate for the First Selectman of the Town of Roxbury on Thursday, Sept. 30 at Shepaug Valley High School. The candidates are Republican Bruce Tuomala and Democrat Patrick Roy. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy after midnight. Low near 60F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy after midnight. Low near 60F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. UPDATE, 5:12 p.m.: OTTAWA Bloomington Police Department spokesman John Fermon said Thursday afternoon that the investigation of the Jelani Day missing-person case did not slow down after a body that was identified today as Mr. Day was found Sept. 4 along the Illinois River near Peru. That didnt stop because a body was found, Fermon said. He said Bloomington and Peru police, the LaSalle County Sheriffs Office and Illinois State Police have continued to investigate, with the FBI joining the investigation a couple weeks ago. Fermon said said most of the details of the investigation cant be released because the case is ongoing. In most missing-person cases, he said, an investigation is not launched until 10 days after a person is reported missing. But Days case was out of the ordinary. His mother, Carmen Bolden Day, said her son called her at least once a day, but he failed to call her Aug. 24 or 25. It was just so unusual and somewhat suspicious, Fermon said. This is not normally how missing-persons (cases) go. He said time will tell whether the case is a homicide, noting the LaSalle County Coroners Office has more information on the condition of the body. Mr. Day was last seen on camera Aug. 24 going into a store in Bloomington. His vehicle was found Aug. 26 in a wooded area near Peru. His mother said she was told her sons billfold was found on the street. A witness told police a person was seen dropping the billfold. Some questioned why there was not more public scrutiny regarding the case of Day, a Black man, compared to the national attention for Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old White woman from Florida who disappeared while on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend and whose remains were recently found in Wyoming. The Day case changed within the past week, and Fermon said he welcomed the additional publicity. We got 50-something (news outlets) across America talking about this case, he said. A lot of our high-risk missing persons in the city dont get the attention they deserve, either. There is one teenage girl in the Chicago area, a 16-year-old who might be in Guatemala. Well take the criticism. Part of our job isnt to release all the details. From the get go, it got a decent amount of media attention," he said. "The story has taken off more the last few days. Fermon said Mr. Day, an Illinois State University graduate student who was studying to be a speech pathologist, was a beloved person, as evidenced by the large number of people who volunteered to help with the search. Jelani was a great person and had so many friends. People were reaching out to help. People who touch others in a personal way ... kind of get that reaction, he said. We have had people driving out of their way a couple hours to search or email offering to help however they could. Fermon said police began receiving additional information to target a larger area around LaSalle-Peru. Family members expressed frustration that DNA test results were being delayed. I think the coroner up there said the state police crime lab ... there is a backlog up there," Fermon said. "I think they ran out of a testing agent. Im hearing that third party." He said the department's cybercrimes unit was actively involved in the investigation. Original story, published 3:29 p.m.: OTTAWA A body discovered Sept. 4 along the Illinois River near Peru has been identified as Jelani Day, 25, of Danville. The LaSalle County Coroners Office said the identification was confirmed through forensic dental identification and DNA testing. LaSalle County Coroner Rich Ploch said the cause of death is unknown. He said further investigation and toxicology tests will be conducted. Mr. Day, a student at Illinois State University, was reported missing Aug. 25. Family members had said they had last spoken with him in the evening hours of Aug. 23. He was last seen at the ISU campus Aug. 24. His vehicle was located Aug. 26 in a wooded area near Peru. It's not uncommon for people to live normal, healthy lives without knowledge of any underlying genetic conditions. However, all it takes is one external impact, such as a heart attack, to induce the expression of the condition. This is exactly the situation that occurred in an individual who was severely electrocuted in a work accident. Indeed, following the accident the patient began exhibiting signs of multiple cardiac arrythmias, or irregularities in the normal beating of the heart. In a study recently published at the Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI), Dr. Jonathan Cordeiro found that the individual actually had two overlapping cardiac conditions. "We had previously seen similar situations in individuals who had suffered heart attacks, where a sudden stressor event increases susceptibility to heart diseases later in life. In this situation, electrocution was the physiological stressor that resulted in long-term cardiac alterations," said. Dr. Cordeiro. In his research, Dr. Cordeiro and his team used fibroblasts (skin cells) from the electrocuted patient to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). This type of cell can be directed to any cell type of interest, such as cardiomyocytes (heart cells) to study disease under tissue culture conditions. "The nice thing about stem cells is they are patient specific. Not everyone responds the same way to a drug, but with access to a patient's cells, we can determine how those cardiomyocytes respond to drug treatment and develop a more personalized and patient-specific approach to therapeutic strategies. Through our research, physicians can make more informed decisions for a specific patient's treatment regiment," said Ryan Pfeiffer, co-author and Research Associate at MMRI. The use of hiPSC, together with a combination of a myriad of other techniques, such as calcium imaging, electrophysiology, and field potential analysis, the mechanisms by which genetic mutations cause cardiac arrhythmias can be systematically determined. In this case, the electrocuted individual was shown to carry several genetic mutations linked to Early Repolarization Syndrome and Short QT Syndrome, two very severe cardiac arrhythmia conditions that can lead to sudden cardiac death. Importantly, knowing that the individual carries these mutations can help clinicians better and more effectively treat the conditions, to allow for a longer and healthier life. "This study is an excellent example of investigators from different areas of expertise working together to resolve a common problem. It was enjoyable to work with the other co-authors," said Jacqueline Treat, a Research Associate and co-author on the manuscript. These overlap phenomena are likely to be of some significance. Indeed, many scientists want to divide syndromes neatly into one category or another but as your paper illustrates there may well be a continuum in which overlap phenomena occur." Dr. Jules C Hancox, Professor of Cardiac Electrophysiology, University of Bristol Women who do not receive recommended cancer screenings are at a higher risk of morbidity and mortality. But why is it that some women are more likely to receive cancer screenings than others? A new study examined differences in receipt of cancer screenings by race. Study results will be presented during The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, September 22-25, 2021. To evaluate the impact that race plays on a woman's likelihood to have a colonoscopy, mammogram, or pap smear within the recommended time intervals, researchers from at University of Pittsburgh studied nearly 900 women, of which 12% were White, 36% were Black, 49% were Hispanic, and 3% were other races/ethnicities. Going into the study, the researchers hypothesized that White women would be more likely to receive cancer screenings than women from other racial and ethnic groups. However, this was not always the case. While White women were more likely than Black and Hispanic women to have up-to-date colon cancer screening in unadjusted analysis, they were less likely to have up-to-date mammograms than Black women. However, once researchers adjusted the analysis for such covariates as income, employment, education, disabilities, health insurance, age, BMI, comorbidities, smoking status, marital status, and trust in healthcare, racial differences in colon cancer screening became statistically insignificant. Of these factors, disability and health insurance coverage played the greatest role in helping to explain disparities. After adjusting for such covariates, only mammogram frequency remained race-dependent. Roughly 80% of study participants reported receiving a mammogram within the past two years. In comparison, 83% reported having cervical cancer screening in the last five years with no difference by race. Of the women over 50, only 58% had up-to-date colon screening. "Knowing which women are less likely to receive cancer screenings can help target quality improvement initiatives to patients most in need," says Dr. Holly Thomas from the University of Pittsburgh School and lead author of the study. "The aim of this analysis was to examine the differences in receipt of cancer screenings by race within a community sample from one geographic location while controlling for other key variables." This cross-sectional survey was conducted in selected underserved areas of Chicago. The National Institutes of Health has awarded $2.7 million to a UMass Lowell researcher studying how Alzheimer's disease evolves. Funded by the NIH's National Institute on Aging, Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Prof. Joyita Dutta aims to develop models that predict the progression of tau tangles in the brain. While tau is an important protein that helps stabilize the brain's nerve cells, in cases of Alzheimer's, an abnormal form of tau builds ups inside the nerve cells and evolves into tangles. Along with amyloid plaques, which are abnormal proteins that build up between the nerve cells, tau tangles are primary markers for Alzheimer's disease. Dutta directs UMass Lowell's Biomedical Imaging and Data Science Laboratory, which is developing novel image- and data-processing tools that merge traditional signal processing with the emerging field of data science. For the Alzheimer's study, Dutta, who is the sole researcher for the five-year grant, will look at the disease from a network perspective, viewing the interconnections between the regions of the brain. She will use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to build models from existing patient imaging data that is available from two sources: the Harvard Aging Brain Study and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. The AI tools will be applied to tau measures obtained from positron emission tomography (PET) scans and structural connectivity information obtained from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans to make personalized predictions of future tau buildup. Our approach is data driven. There are a lot of cool AI tools we can use that we didn't have five to 10 years back." Joyita Dutta, UMass Lowell Researcher While the causes of Alzheimer's are not fully understood, the number of people affected by the disease continues to grow. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2020, as many as 5.8 million Americans were living with Alzheimer's. That number is projected to rise to 14 million by 2060. There is currently no known cure for the disease, but research indicates that early diagnosis is key to treating it. "Scientists know that people with Alzheimer's experience latent changes in the brain before clinical signs of the disease like memory loss manifest," Dutta said. Imaging can help document changes in the brain and be used to help predict future risks for cognitive decline. "Alzheimer's disease has a slow progression that needs to be tracked over time," she said. Dutta holds faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. The grant was awarded to her through Mass General. UMass Lowell, as a subcontractor, will receive $1.76 million over the lifespan of the project. Dutta has won previous NIH funding for Alzheimer's research that focused on imaging, as well as sleep metrics as a tool for diagnosing the disease. The latest research project will offer hands-on experience to several graduate students in the disciplines of electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering and physics. It will also support a full-time postdoctoral scholar. "It will be a great opportunity for training the next generation of Alzheimer's researchers," she said. Researchers have warned that the United States has not yet reached the necessary thresholds for achieving population immunity against severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) the agent that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The team from RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Pfizer Inc. in Collegeville, Pennsylvania says that as of August 26th, 2021, not one state had achieved a level of population or herd immunity that would be considered sufficient to disrupt the transmission of the virus (78% or higher). Using publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the team calculated that the proportion of presumed immunity, acquired through vaccination or infection, varied substantially between states, from 43.1% to 70.6%. States with the highest levels of presumed immunity were those with the highest vaccination rates. In 19 states, at least 40% of people had neither been infected nor vaccinated and were presumed to have no immunity. While four states had reached presumed population immunity thresholds that would limit the transmission of less infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants (67%), none had reached the thresholds required for more infectious variants (78% or higher). After accounting for waning immunity, Marie Stoner and colleagues found that the presumed immunity might be even lower, resulting in a greater likelihood of sustained transmission in the United States. As more infectious variants emerge, it is critical that vaccination efforts intensify across all states and ages for which the vaccines are approved, says the team. A pre-print version of the research article is available on the medRxiv* server, while the paper undergoes peer review. More about population immunity thresholds Population or herd immunity occurs when a sufficient proportion of a community has become immune to a particular pathogen, making transmission from an infected person to susceptible individuals unlikely. The level of population immunity that is sufficient to limit the spread of a pathogen is usually calculated based on the reproductive number (R 0 ) a measure of how contagious a pathogen is. The estimated population immunity threshold for SARS-CoV2 has ranged from 50% to 83%, but it is likely to be even higher for more infectious variants that emerge. For, the B.1.617.2 (delta) variant that emerged in India in the spring of 2021, the estimated threshold is as high as 80% to 90%. The likelihood of reaching the population immunity threshold is influenced by the timing and patterns of transmission in different geographic areas. It is therefore essential to estimate the proportion of people in a given population that have presumed immunity as a result of vaccination or infection. Public health response efforts could then be focused on areas where the most significant impact can be achieved in terms of reducing the risk of severe COVID-19 and death. However, few studies have attempted to robustly calculate the proportion of presumed immunity by state and researchers have primarily focused on vaccination rates alone. What did the current study involve? Stoner and colleagues estimated the percentage of the US population with presumed immunity to SARS-CoV-2 as a result of vaccination, infection or both using publicly available data as of August 26th, 2021, from the CDC. Seroprevalence data were used to estimate the percentage of the population previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and vaccination coverage data were used to calculate presumed immunity from vaccination. The estimates were compared to a range of thresholds considered necessary to achieve population-level immunity. A sensitivity analysis was also performed to account for waning immunity. What did the study find? As of August 26th, the percentage of the population with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection ranged from 4.0% in Hawaii to 41.7% in Mississippi and the percentage of vaccinated individuals ranged from 35.5% in Idaho to 61.5% in Massachusetts. The presumed population immunity ranged from 43.1% in Idaho to 70.6% in New Jersey. The states with the highest levels of presumed immunity were those with the highest vaccination rates. States with the lowest levels of presumed immunity had some of the lowest vaccination rates and in 19 states, at least 40% of the population had neither vaccine- nor infection-induced immunity. Percentage of the population vaccinated for COVID-19 and/or previously SARS-CoV-2 infected by state as of August 26, 2021 Using a minimum threshold (for less infectious variants) of 67% corresponding to an R 0 of 3 only four states (New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania) would have reached population immunity. Based on a higher threshold for more infectious variants (78%; R 0 of 4.5), none of the states would have reached population immunity. Given that the threshold for the delta variant is likely even higher than 78%, we can assume that no states will have reached that threshold, says the team. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis assessing the effects of waning estimated that the level of presumed immunity would be even lower ranging from 37.9% in Idaho to 62.3% in New Jersey and that none of the states would meet even the minimum threshold of 67%. What do the researchers advise? Stoner and colleagues say that given the low levels of presumed immunity in many states and the possibility that more infectious variants may continue to emerge, it is imperative that vaccination efforts intensify within all states and that uptake occurs across all age groups as soon as vaccines are available. Without increased population immunity, the risk of continued transmission and large outbreaks will exist throughout the US, they warn. *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 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began nearly two years ago and rapidly spread across the globe, causing a worldwide health and economic disaster. While mass vaccination programs are beginning to allow restrictions to ease, concerns over the alternate strains such as the Delta variant remain. Vaccination will also take much longer for some countries than others, as the most commonly used vaccines require strong logistic chains and constant refrigeration. As such, it is still very important to examine the persistence and level of antibody response. To this extent, researchers from Tel Aviv University have been examining the kinetics of antibodies in recovered COVID-19 patients. A preprint version of the group's study is available on the medRxiv* server, while the article undergoes peer review. The most common antibodies that target severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) will target the spike protein specifically the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the S1 subunit. The spike protein is responsible for a large element of the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2. The RBD binds to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in order to allow viral cell entry, while the N-terminal domain in the S2 subunit is required for membrane fusion. While antibodies can target multiple different areas of SARS-CoV-2, targeting the RBD tends to show the most effective response, and so RBD-specific antibodies tend to be evaluated in these studies. The researchers examined samples gathered from over 200 patients who had recovered from COVID-19, with some gathered from those who had been infected over 400 days beforehand. Eighty-nine of these patients provided further samples periodically across 90 days. Patient ages ranged between 20 and 81 years old, from an equal number of men and women, and the severity of the COVID-19 infection was recorded, with the vast majority (82%) of participants suffering from mild symptoms. In order to examine the difference between natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity, another 17 individuals were sampled that had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2, but who had received both doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. 24% of the examined individuals who had previously been convalescent had also been vaccinated. Anti-RBD IgG, IgM and IgA levels were measured by ELISA testing. The scientists found that women tended to show higher levels of IgG, IgM and IgA. Interestingly, those over 50 showed significantly increased levels of IgG and IgM compared to those under 50. This same pattern showed with severity, with those displaying mild symptoms have lower levels of both IgG and IgA. By applying a regression model and determining the regression coefficient, the researchers examined the change in antibody concentration over time. For all three tested antibody isotypes, levels decayed over the 14 months, with IgA showing the fastest decrease in RBD binding. IgM followed, and then IgG. On the first round of testing, individuals who had previously been infected with COVID-19 mostly showed reasonably high antibody levels only 14%, 49% and 40% for IgG, IgA and IgM, respectively, showed levels equivalent to the negative controls. By the final visit, 29%, 70% and 73% were equivalent to the negative control. When comparing the antibodies in the recovered patients to those seen in vaccinees that had not been exposed to the disease, the authors saw significantly quicker antibody decay in vaccinated individuals. Similar to participants who had previously been infected with the disease, IgA decayed the quickest, followed by IgG and IgM. All non-exposed vaccinated individuals also showed lower overall antibody levels compared to the rest of the study. This data is supported by previous studies showing less binding to the RBD from antibodies taken from vaccinated individuals compared to previously convalescent individuals. The authors highlight the difference between the immune response from natural infection and vaccination. They suggest that recently seen lower vaccination efficiency is likely due to the developing threat of the Delta strain. They also propose a potential mechanism by which the temporal difference in decay could be explained as natural infection involves a full immune reaction, with inflammation and activation of the innate immune arm. mRNA vaccination may avoid this, potentially due to an absence of cellular damage. This could lead to the reduced ability of the immune system to maintain the long-loved plasma cells that support the higher antibody counts seen in previously infected individuals. They also stress the importance of their own and similar studies' evidence in informing future vaccine plans. The information could also be useful in countries still looking at the possibility of reducing restrictions. *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 It took years for Elle Moxley to get a diagnosis that explained her crippling gastrointestinal pain, digestion problems, fatigue, and hot, red rashes. And after learning in 2016 that she had Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, she spent more than four years trying medications before getting her disease under control with a biologic drug called Remicade. So Moxley, 33, was dismayed to receive a notice from her insurer in January that Remicade would no longer be covered as a preferred drug on her plan. Another drug, Inflectra, which the Food and Drug Administration says has no meaningful clinical differences from Remicade, is now preferred. It is a "biosimilar" drug. "I felt very powerless," said Moxley, who recently started a job as a public relations coordinator for Kansas City Public Schools in Missouri. "I have this decision being made for me and my doctor thats not in my best interest, and it might knock me out of remission." After Moxley's first Inflectra infusion in July, she developed a painful rash. It went away after a few days, but she said she continues to feel extremely fatigued and experiences gastrointestinal pain, constipation, diarrhea and nausea. Many medical professionals look to biosimilar drugs as a way to increase competition and give consumers cheaper options, much as generic drugs do, and they point to the more robust use of these products in Europe to cut costs. Yet the U.S. has been slower to adopt biosimilar drugs since the first such medicine was approved in 2015. That's partly because of concerns raised by patients like Moxley and their doctors, but also because brand-name biologics have kept biosimilars from entering the market. The companies behind the brand-name drugs have used legal actions to extend the life of their patents and incentives that make offering the brand biologic more attractive than offering a biosimilar on a formulary, listing which drugs are covered on an insurance plan. "It distorts the market and makes it so that patients can't get access," said Dr. Jinoos Yazdany, a professor of medicine and chief of the rheumatology division at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The FDA has approved 31 biosimilar medications since 2015, but only about 60% have made it to market, according to an analysis by NORC, a research organization at the University of Chicago. Remicades manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, which makes the Remicade biosimilar Inflectra, have been embroiled in a long-running lawsuit over Pfizer's claims that Johnson & Johnson tried to choke off competition through exclusionary contracts with insurers and other anti-competitive actions. In July, the companies settled the case on undisclosed terms. In a statement, Pfizer said it would continue to sell Inflectra in the U.S. but noted ongoing challenges: "Pfizer has begun to see progress in the overall biosimilars marketplace in the U.S. However, changes in policy at a government level and acceptance of biosimilars among key stakeholders are critical to deliver more meaningful uptake so patients and the healthcare system at-large can benefit from the cost savings these medicines may deliver." Johnson & Johnson said it is committed to making Remicade available to patients who choose it, which compels us to compete responsibly on both price and value. Biologic medicines, which are generally grown from living organisms such as animal cells or bacteria, are more complex and expensive to manufacture than drugs made from chemicals. In recent years, biologic drugs have become a mainstay of treatment for autoimmune conditions like Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as certain cancers and diabetes, among other conditions. Other drugmakers can't exactly reproduce these biologic drugs by following chemical recipes as they do for generic versions of conventional drugs. Instead, biosimilar versions of biologic drugs are generally made from the same types of materials as the original biologics and must be "highly similar" to them to be approved by the FDA. They must have no clinically meaningful differences from the biologic drug, and be just as safe, pure and potent. More than a decade after Congress created an approval pathway for biosimilars, they are widely accepted as safe and effective alternatives to brand biologics. Medical experts hope that as biosimilars become more widely used they will increasingly provide a brake on drug spending. From 2015 to 2019, drug spending overall grew 6.1%, while spending on biologics grew more than twice as much 14.6% according to a report by IQVIA, a health care analytics company. In 2019, biologics accounted for 43% of drug spending in the U.S. Biosimilars provide a roughly 30% discount over brand biologics in the U.S. but have the potential to reduce spending by more than $100 billion in the next five years, the IQVIA analysis found. In a survey of 602 physicians who prescribe biologic medications, more than three-quarters said they believed biosimilars are just as safe and effective as their biologic counterparts, according to NORC. But they were less comfortable with switching patients from a brand biologic to a biosimilar. While about half said they were very likely to prescribe a biosimilar to a patient just starting biologic therapy, only 31% said they were very likely to prescribe a biosimilar to a patient already doing well on a brand biologic. It can be challenging to find a treatment regimen that works for patients with complicated chronic conditions, and physicians and patients often don't want to rock the boat once that is achieved. In Moxley's case, for example, before her condition stabilized on Remicade, she tried a conventional pill called Lialda, the biologic drug Humira and a lower dose of Remicade. Some doctors and patients raise concerns that switching between these drugs might cause patients to develop antibodies that cause the drugs to lose effectiveness. They want to see more research about the effects of such switches. "We haven't seen enough studies about patients going from the biologic to the biosimilar and bouncing back and forth," said Dr. Marcus Snow, chair of the American College of Rheumatology's Committee on Rheumatologic Care. "We don't want our patients to be guinea pigs." Manufacturers of biologic and biosimilar drugs have participated in advertising, exhibit or sponsorship opportunities with the American College of Rheumatology, according to ACR spokesperson Jocelyn Givens. But studies show a one-time switch from Remicade to a biosimilar like Inflectra does not cause side effects or the development of antibodies, said Dr. Ross Maltz, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and former member of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation's National Scientific Advisory Committee. Studies may be conducted by researchers with extensive ties to the industry and funded by drugmakers. Situations like Moxley's are unusual, said Kristine Grow, senior vice president of communications at AHIP, an insurer trade group. "For patients who have been taking a brand-name biologic for some time, health insurance providers do not typically encourage them to switch to a biosimilar because of a formulary change, and most plans exclude these patients from any changes in cost sharing due to formulary changes," she said. Drugmakers can seek approval from the FDA of their biosimilar as interchangeable with a biologic drug, allowing pharmacists, subject to state law, to switch a physician's prescription from the brand drug, as they often do with generic drugs. However, the FDA has approved only one biosimilar (Semglee, a form of insulin) as interchangeable with a biologic (Lantus). Like Moxley, many other patients using biologics get copay assistance from drug companies, but the money often isn't enough to cover the full cost. In her old job as a radio reporter, Moxley said, she hit the $7,000 maximum annual out-of-pocket spending limit for her plan by May. In her new job, Moxley has an individual plan with a $4,000 maximum out-of-pocket limit, which she expects to blow past once again within months. But she received good news recently: Her new plan will cover Remicade. "Im still concerned that I will have developed antibodies since my last dose," she said. "But it feels like a step in the direction of good health again." A newly conservative Supreme Court agreed to hear a case most assumed it would use to overrule the 1973 landmark abortion-rights ruling, Roe v. Wade. And Democrats on Capitol Hill, convinced the issue would play to their political favor, vowed to bring up legislation that would write abortion protections into federal law. "We'll debate it. We'll vote on it. And we'll pass it," the Senate Democratic leader promised. Sound familiar? The year was 1992. The Supreme Court case in question was Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. After the court surprised almost everyone by upholding the right to abortion, the legislation, called the "Freedom of Choice Act," never reached the floor of the Senate, nor the House. (Click on the hyperlink to go back in time.) Lawmakers today face almost the same situation. The Supreme Court this week scheduled for Dec. 1 arguments on a case from Mississippi challenging that state's ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. And the House, as soon as this week, could vote on the latest version of the Freedom of Choice Act, now called the "Women's Health Protection Act." The question now, as it was then, is whether the legislation will help or hurt Democrats on one of the most polarizing issues in politics. Just as in 1992, opponents of the current bill complain it would go much further than merely writing the protections of Roe into federal law. In addition to securing a person's right to abortion throughout pregnancy, the legislation would void many state restrictions the Supreme Court has allowed even as Roe stands, including those requiring parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision. "This may be the most extreme legislation ever," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) told the House Rules Committee on Monday. "Abortion for any reason at any stage of pregnancy until birth." The bill would, Republicans complained, not just overturn existing state abortion restrictions, but it could also lead to mandatory public funding for abortion. Overturning the so-called Hyde Amendment that has banned most federal abortion funding since the late 1970s is a priority for many progressive Democrats, but it also marks a line that voters in many swing districts do not want their elected officials to cross. While the scenarios seem eerily similar, some key differences emerge. The biggest: In 1992, the threat to abortion rights was theoretical; in 2021, millions of pregnant people already have lost reproductive rights after the high court failed to block a controversial Texas law that bans nearly all abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy. To prevent courts from blocking it, the law is to be enforced not by state officials, but by individuals suing people who "aid or abet" someone in obtaining an abortion. Under that law, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told the Rules Committee on Monday, "the whole country has basically been turned into bounty hunters for women exercising a constitutionally protected right." "Texas has just completely changed what's at stake," said Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and a longtime Texas politics observer. (Her mother, Ann Richards, who died in 2006, was governor in the 1990s.) "Women think, 'This will never happen,'" said Richards, who now co-chairs American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super political action committee. "Well, it just happened." Yet the politics of abortion are both very much the same as they were three decades ago, and very different. What's the same is that the outliers in both parties Democrats who oppose abortion rights and Republicans who support them would prefer not to have to vote on the issue. What's different is there are far fewer outliers today. In 1992 nearly a third of Democrats opposed abortion, including the then-governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, who was the defendant in the Planned Parenthood suit and who tried, publicly and unsuccessfully, to change the party's platform in 1992 to oppose abortion. His son, Sen. Robert "Bob" Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), is one of a handful of Senate Democrats who do not strongly support abortion rights. But it's not merely anti-abortion Democrats who are in shorter supply. In 1992 Republicans were as likely to lead abortion-rights fights as Democrats, and most efforts were bipartisan. Before 1972, in fact, Republicans were generally more supportive of abortion rights than Democrats. And obviously the biggest difference between now and 1992 is that the Republican president, George H.W. Bush, vowed to veto the abortion rights bill if it passed. President Joe Biden would sign it, according to a formal "Statement of Administration Policy" issued Monday. "In the wake of Texas' unprecedented attack, it has never been more important to codify this constitutional right and to strengthen health care access for all women, regardless of where they live," the statement said. Bushs and Biden's own abortion positions probably best demonstrate how much the parties have shifted on the issue. As a House member, the elder President Bush was the lead sponsor of the federal government's Title X family planning program now strongly opposed by anti-abortion Republicans. Biden, a devout Catholic, opposed abortion rights early in his Senate career and has been criticized by activists for not uttering the word "abortion" as president until the Texas law took effect. Biden, however, almost certainly will not get a chance to sign the Women's Health Protection Act. At least not anytime soon. Although the bill might have enough support to squeak through the House, support in the Senate remains far short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. That won't stop the fight from happening, though. What remains to be seen is which side in the abortion debate will ultimately win the battle for public support. HealthBent, a regular feature of Kaiser Health News, offers insight and analysis of policies and politics from KHN's chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years. As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spread across the globe, it caused worldwide health and economic disasters. More quietly, mental health issues also began to increase in both quantity and severity, and there were strong concerns over potentially increasing suicide rates. Most of the population was protected from the disease by restrictions, lockdowns and social distancing orders. However, healthcare workers not only had to remain at work and at risk of catching the disease from their patients, but also had to endure increased hours and increased stress. A group of researchers from the University of Bristol and University College London recently collaborated in order to plan an investigation into suicidal behavior and self-harm in healthcare workers. A preprint version of the group's study is available on the medRxiv* server, while the article undergoes peer review. While the Provisional Office of National Statistics does provide data indicating an increase in the number of suicides, as well as the proportion of healthcare worker deaths due to suicide in the first six months of 2020 compared to 2019, there have been limited studies that show in-depth analysis of these figures. The researchers have designed their experiment in order to investigate: the prevalence of suicide and suicide-risk behavior such as self-harm and suicidal ideation (the regular intrusion of suicidal thoughts) both before and during the pandemic, and the investigation between demographic characteristics on these factors. In order to explore this, they examined responses to NHS Check, an online survey distributed across 18 NHS Trusts during the COVID-19 pandemic. While one set of results was removed due to a low response rate (below 5%), this should still provide plenty of data for statistical analysis. The survey contained many questions such as: "Have you ever thought of taking your life, even though you would not actually do it?" and "Have you ever made an attempt to take your life, by taking an overdose of tablets or in some other way?" There were three potential responses, "Yes, within the past 2 months", "Yes, but not in the past two months," and "No." Demographics explored include age, sex, ethnicity and role, including non-clinical staff. Other factors will include concerns over issues such as access to personal protective activity and confidence around the management of safety concerns, as well as satisfaction with the standard of care provided. The researchers will use Chi-squared tests for each variable, which will allow them to identify any statistically significant differences between the groups. Beforehand, all initial responses to the survey will be weighted using a ranking algorithm based on the aforementioned factors in order to maximize the representativity of the data, and any missing demographic data will be filled in using multiple imputations. This will only affect the weighting and will not be used in any further analysis. They will then examine the same data six months into the pandemic. By using random effects logisitic regression models traditionally used to model events with two incompatible outcomes they will build a model that will allow them to investigate the relationships between the characteristics investigated and suicidal behavior both before and after the pandemic. *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 Earlier studies have shown that minority groups tend to have lower vaccination rates compared to the general population. A new preprint examined the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination rates among health care workers (HCWs) in Norway, according to immigrant background. Study: COVID-19 vaccination rates among health care workers by immigrant background. A nation-wide registry study from Norway. Image Credit: Orpheus FX/ Shutterstock A preprint version of the study is available on the medRxiv* server while the article undergoes peer review. Background By 5 September 2021, over 90% of HCWs in Norway had taken one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. However, some minorities tend to have more vaccine hesitancy than the Norwegian population overall. This is especially true of those who have immigrated from Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Africa. An early report indicated that people above 75 years who were Scandinavian by birth were likely to be vaccinated in over 90% of cases, vs. 34% in those born in Somalia. The study included over 356,000 HCWs, of which approximately 80% were women. The median age was 41 years. Of these, about a sixth were immigrants, and only about 5,000 were born in Norway to immigrant parents What did the study show? The study showed that 92% of all HCWs had been vaccinated by 31 August 2021, but only 85% of immigrant HCWs were vaccinated. This is nine percentage points lower compared to non-immigrant HCWs, as of 31 August 2021. The highest uptake was for those from Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Denmark, the UK, and India, at 94% and upwards. The latter groups had a higher crude vaccination rate than non-immigrants, and even after adjustment, Thai, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, and Filipino immigrants continued to show this trend. Those born in Norway to immigrant parents had an 88% vaccine uptake rate. The vaccination rates were lowest for Russian immigrant HCWs at 71%, increasing gradually but with Serbia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Eritrea, and Somalia showing rates between 72-78%. However, when the occupation was adjusted, it was seen that the presence of a higher proportion of healthcare assistants among the HCW immigrants from Eritrea and Somalia led to higher vaccine uptake. Overall, a quarter of HCWs were health care assistants, but two-thirds of Syrian immigrant HCWs, half of those from Eritrea or Afghanistan, and over 40% of those from Somalia. These findings also underline the long-observed association between higher HCW education ad vaccination rates until the last month. While 97% of physicians and specialist nurses were vaccinated, healthcare assistants had the lowest uptake in this occupational group at 89%. Healthcare assistants consistently had a lower vaccination rate throughout the vaccination program, indicating a lower priority. Within each group, this link is still more obvious, with physicians from Lithuania showing 92% vaccination vs. 66% for healthcare assistants, compared to 94% and 87% respectively for those from Pakistan. What are the implications? The study demonstrates marked differences in vaccine uptake rates among HCWs in Norway, based on their immigration background. Some of this discrepancy is because of differences in the occupation, which may have led to lower vaccine access. The lowest vaccination rates among immigrants were among those from Eastern Europe. They appeared independent of occupational subgroups, while in those from East Africa, the occupational details were related to the vaccine uptake. Factors related to a lower vaccination rate among certain immigrant subgroups of HCWs may include limited access, lower priority in the vaccine program, younger age, risk factors for severe COVID-19, and geographical location in high-incidence areas. These were adjusted in the current study. However, factors like lower access to or competence in handling digital services, language barriers, and logistical issues were not addressed separately. Vaccine hesitancy has been found to exist, especially among those born in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Africa. Only 40% of those born in Eastern Europe were willing to take the vaccine. *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. (Newser) Kim Crumbo is not short on survival skillsthe 74-year-old Utah resident is a former Navy SEAL who spent two decades working as a National Park Service ranger after leaving the militarybut he has been missing in Yellowstone National Park for days, and family members are very worried. The body of Crumbo's half brother, 67-year-old Mark O'Neill, was found on the east shore of Shoshone Lake on Monday, the day after relatives reported the men missing after they failed to return from a four-day trip, NBC reports. O'Neill also spent decades working for the service. story continues below The National Park Service says that on Sunday, crews "located a vacant campsite with gear on the south side of Shoshone Lake," the park's second-biggest lake. A canoe, paddle, and personal belongings were found on the east side. The park warns that dangerous winds and waves can develop on the lake at any time, though. Crumbo is an extremely experienced boater: He worked as a river ranger at Grand Canyon National Park and also as a professional river guide for 10 years. Associates describe Crumboa renowned conservationist and a member of the Potawatomi Tribe as a "larger than life" character and one of the country's strongest wilderness advocates, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. He retired as the Western conservation director of Wildlands Network in 2019. "If there was anybody who was going to figure out a way to survive in the wild, it would be Crumbo," says Katie Davis, the group's executive director. She notes that Crumbo had survival training in the Navy and had two combat tours of duty in Vietnam. (Read more Yellowstone National Park stories.) (Newser) Police in Quebec are looking for a man who apparently believed he had the authority to impose an anti-vaccine mandate in his marriage. The suspect allegedly assaulted a nurse in a Sherbrooke pharmacy Monday morning, the CBC reports. Police spokesman Martin Carrier tells Reuters that the "angry and aggressive" man confronted the nurse in a pharmacy office where she had been administering COVID vaccines and told her she had vaccinated his wife without his consent. "Our suspect went directly into the office and began to yell at the nurse," Carrier says. story continues below Carrier says the man punched the nurse in the face several times and ran away. The nurse, a woman in her 40s, was treated in a local hospital for serious facial injuries and a possible concussion. She is now recovering at home. "Zero tolerance!" tweeted the province's order of nurses. "This unfortunate situation is unacceptable to any healthcare professional. We wish this nurse a good recovery." Police have asked for the public's help in finding the suspect, who is described as man between 30 and 45 years old with a medium build and a dark complexion, per CTV. Police say the French-speaking man had a tattoo resembling a cross on one hand. (Read more Canada stories.) (Newser) The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a state law preventing anyone from moving a Confederate monument or changing the historical name of a street or building without the Legislature's permission is legal. But in the same ruling, the AP reports, the justices struck down a requirement that two-thirds of the General Assembly approve a move or name change. The unanimous decision keeps intact South Carolina's Heritage Act, which has stopped colleges and local governments from removing statues honoring Civil War soldiers or segregationists even as other areas of the South have taken them down. story continues below The law was passed in 2000 as part of a compromise to remove the Confederate flag from atop the Statehouse dome. The banner was moved to a pole on the Capitol lawn, where it flew until 2015, when lawmakers removed it after nine Black worshippers were killed in a racist massacre at a Charleston church. One of the people who sued lawmakers over the Heritage Act is the widow of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor at Emanuel AME church in Charleston who died in the attack. The law specifically protects monuments from 10 warsfrom the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War. It also protects monuments honoring African Americans and Native Americans as well as a catchall phrase of "any historic figure or historic event." Jennifer Pinkney has pointed out that means she couldn't make changes to a monument to her late husband unveiled this year without asking lawmakers for permission. Days after the Confederate flag was removed in 2015, legislative leaders vowed they would not approve removing any other statues or renaming buildings under the Heritage Act and have kept their word. South Carolina Senate President Harvey Peeler said in a statement Wednesday that "the protections over all of our state's monuments and statues were ruled constitutional and they will remain in place." (Read more Confederate statues stories.) (Newser) A white man convicted of the random killing of two Black men in Baton Rouge, La., in 2017 reportedly died by suicide just as he was starting a life sentence. Authorities say Kenneth Gleason, 27, was discovered dead early Wednesday in his cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, where he'd been transferred on Monday "to begin a life sentence," reports the AP. He was alone in the cell under a 14-day COVID-19 quarantine period for new inmates, state corrections spokesman Ken Pastorick said in a statement. "While making routine rounds, correctional officers discovered Gleason unresponsive and hanging in his cell," Pastorick added. story continues below Gleason, of Baton Rouge, was convicted in April of first-degree murder in the killings of 49-year-old Donald Smart and 59-year-old Bruce Cofield, per WAFB. Smart was shot dead in a park near Louisiana State University while en route to an overnight shift as a dishwasher on Sept. 14, 2017. Cofield, a homeless man, was shot and killed at a bus stop two days earlier. Prosecutors said Gleason shot both men from his vehicle before standing over them and firing several more bullets. They also presented evidence that Gleason fired three gunshots through the door of the only Black family living on his street, as well as researched white nationalism. "There's nothing the penal system can do to rehabilitate you," East Baton Rouge District Judge Beau Higginbotham told Gleason in sentencing him to life without parole on Aug. 23, per the Advocate. Though Smart's family had requested a life sentence, per WAFB, Higginbotham added Gleason's execution would have been "appropriate." Gleason was found unresponsive around midnight. His attorney, Jarrett Ambeau, is now questioning the official narrative of suicide, as he claims officials first told the family that his client may have died from a heart attack. "We need to see if this is a cover-up," he said, per the Advocate. An autopsy is planned. (Read more suicide stories.) (Newser) In July, a person in Glenaire, Mo., told authorities he hadn't seen his neighbors in a whilebut by then, it was far too late to save them. Deputies who forced their way into the home on July 21 found the bodies of Roger Wilfong, 66; his sister, 67-year-old Mary Wilfong; and Virginia King, their 99-year-old mother. Investigators believe Roger Wilfong died on June 21 from choking on food and the two women, who had extensive health problems and were unable to move around without his help, died in the days that followed, KSHB reports. The Clay County Sheriff's Office says deputies found all three "seated in the living room and appeared to have been there for some time." story continues below Wilfong was the caretaker for the two women and investigators say that without his help, they "were unable to access the food, water, medication and sanitation they needed," per KMBC. There was no sign of foul play or drug or alcohol use. Investigators say the house lacked working air conditioning and temperatures reached the 90s multiple times between Wilfong's death and the day the bodies were found. A dead dog was found next to a bathroom toilet in the home. The case has now been closed, with the cause of death for the two women described as undetermined but natural and "unfortunate." (Read more Missouri stories.) (Newser) Johnny Depp, whose movie career has suffered since he lost a libel case against a British tabloid that called him a "wife beater," portrayed himself as a victim of "cancel culture" at a film festival in Spain on Wednesday. He slammed the "instant rush to judgment" and said it could happen to anybody. "Its so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe, he told reporters at the San Sebastian Film Festival, per Variety. "It takes one sentence and theres no more ground, the carpet has been pulled," said Depp, who was speaking before he received a Donostia career award at the prestigious festival. story continues below Depp didn't directly refer to the British court case or ex-wife Amber Heard, but he spoke of judgments taking "artistic license," the AP reports. "When there is an injustice, whether its against you or someone you love, or someone you believe in, stand up, don't sit down," Depp said. He is suing Heard for $50 million over an op-ed in which she described herself as a survivor of domestic violence. She has filed a $100 million countersuit. Depp "didn't appear to have an issue with addressing sensitive topics," Deadline reports, but the host of the press conference rejected a follow-up question and told reporters to stick to questions about his career. Depp also spoke about the film industry, slamming the "studio system, the grudge matches, the pandemonium and chaos of cinematic releases to streaming." "They realize theyre just as disposable as I am," he said. "Some more so." The award Depp received is the festival's honor and the decision to grant it to him was controversial. "What is the message that remains when men denounced for sexist violence are applauded, photographed on red carpets, surrounded by unconditional fans?" asked Spains Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media, per the AP. (Last month, Depp blamed his problems on the "absurdity of media mathematics.") (Newser) Update: United Airlines says the number of employees facing termination for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 has dropped nearly by half, to 320, after more of its 67,000 US workers provided evidence of vaccination, per the AP. The airline had said Tuesday that 593 employees faced termination unless they got their shots or provided proof they'd already received them. An airline spokeswoman said Thursday that the declining number of potential firings shows that the company's policy of requiring vaccinations is working. Our earlier story follows: story continues below United Airlines says almost all of its employees are now vaccinatedand those that aren't are getting fired. The company said Tuesday that it had started the process of firing 593 workers who decided not to get vaccinated against COVID and have not received an exemption, reports Reuters. United said the employees could keep their jobs if they get vaccinated before their formal termination meeting. The airline said more than 99% of its employees are now vaccinated, not including those who received a medical or religious exemption. Six employees have sued United, claiming that the airline is discriminating against employees who get exemptions from the vaccine mandate by placing them on unpaid leave. Four of the six employees said they sought religious exemptions based on their belief that the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal tissue; one said she is allergic to eggs and penicillin, and another said he has multiple sclerosis and his neurologist recommended against vaccination. All were granted exemptions but told they would be put on unpaid leave, according to the lawsuit. United Airlines spokeswoman Leslie Scott said the company was "reviewing this complaint in greater detail, but at this point we think its without merit. (Read more United Airlines stories.) (Newser) Alaska, now recording the highest COVID-19 case rate per capita of any US state, is activating crisis standards of care with short-staffed hospitals overwhelmed. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services on Wednesday announced an addendum to the state's existing COVID-19 public health order that grants limited liability protections to healthcare providers "acting in good faith in a time of limited resources," meaning "the usual, expected level of care may be modified." story continues below Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy also announced the state would receive 297 registered nurses, 114 certified nursing assistants or patient care technicians, 17 surgical technicians, 15 respiratory therapists, and other health care workers through an $87 million contract with the federal General Services Administration, per the Anchorage Daily News. The announcements came as the state reported 1,251 new COVID-19 cases, its highest single-day total since the pandemic began, per the Daily News. Dunleavy told residents to "be very careful" over the next month. Some livestream viewers responded by claiming "fake numbers," "lies," and "propaganda," even as Dr. Anne Zink, the state's chief medical officer, warned Alaska is "at the worst place in the pandemic" and the delta variant is "crippling our healthcare system," per Reuters. The state's largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, adopted crisis standards of care on Sept. 11 before announcing at least one patient had died as a result of doctors rationing treatment. Another patient died waiting for a bed at a rural hospital, per the Daily News. (Read more Alaska stories.) (Newser) Anyone who's fought with a tangle of wires hunting for the right charger may find themselves cheering a proposed law in Europe: It would require that all phones, tablets, and all other such electronic devices use the same type of chargera USB-C, reports the BBC. Apple is already crying foul. The plan: The European Commission unveiled its USB-C connector plan on Thursday, reports NPR. It's just a proposal at this point because it still must be approved by the European Parliament. If that happens, a two-year phase-in period would follow, meaning 2024 would be a likely start date. It would then be illegal to sell a phone in Europe without a USB-C port. The Verge thinks the proposal should have "broad support" in the EU. The European Commission unveiled its USB-C connector plan on Thursday, reports NPR. It's just a proposal at this point because it still must be approved by the European Parliament. If that happens, a two-year phase-in period would follow, meaning 2024 would be a likely start date. It would then be illegal to sell a phone in Europe without a USB-C port. The Verge thinks the proposal should have "broad support" in the EU. Apple: The Verge also notes that USB-C chargers have become "increasingly universal" (think Android) with one massive exceptionApple. The company, which ships new phones with its Lightning connector, already is speaking out. "We remain concerned that strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe and around the world," the company said, per the AP. If this kind of law were imposed years ago, today's USB-C and Lightning connectors likely would not have been developed, says the company, per the New York Times. story continues below Another critic: It's not just Apple speaking out. "This is a profoundly stupid way to approach product design and standardization," tweeted industry analyst Benedict Evans. "What happens in 5 years when someone wants to use a better connector?" It's not just Apple speaking out. "This is a profoundly stupid way to approach product design and standardization," tweeted industry analyst Benedict Evans. "What happens in 5 years when someone wants to use a better connector?" In favor: "European consumers were frustrated long enough about incompatible chargers piling up in their drawers," says Margrethe Vestager of A Europe Fit for the Digital Age. "We gave industry plenty of time to come up with their own solutions, now time is ripe for legislative action for a common charger." In addition to helping consumers, the EU says the law would cut down on e-waste. "European consumers were frustrated long enough about incompatible chargers piling up in their drawers," says Margrethe Vestager of A Europe Fit for the Digital Age. "We gave industry plenty of time to come up with their own solutions, now time is ripe for legislative action for a common charger." In addition to helping consumers, the EU says the law would cut down on e-waste. An exception: Devices that use wireless charging would not be required to have a port for a USB-C charger. The EU says that counters the argument about stifling new designs. "There is plenty of room for innovation on wireless," says EU commissioner Thierry Breton. (Read more European Commission stories.) (Newser) For untold centuries, the Well of Barhout in eastern Yemen, also known as the Well of Hell, has been feared by locals who believe it is a gateway to the underworld or a prison for genies. A team of Omani cavers, however, say they descended to the bottom and found snakes and dead animals but no sign of the supernatural, AFP reports. The hole in a desert region of Al-Mahra province is about 100 feet wide and almost 370 feet deep. Mohammed al-Kindi, a geology professor at the German University of Technology in Oman, rappelled to the bottom with seven colleagues. They recorded video in the cave below. story continues below "We collected samples of water, rocks, soil and some dead animals but have yet to have them analysed," Kindi says. "There were dead birds, which does create some bad odors, but there was no overwhelming bad smell." He says snakes were abundant, as were "cave pearls," shaped by falling water over thousands of years. He tells the National that the water from the "Well of Hell" is said to be "the most evil," but "all we saw was pure freshwater down there. We even drank an entire bottle and nothing happened to us!" While others claim to have entered the hole and returned, Kindi says the team saw no footprints or other traces of human activity. The professor, who plans to investigate a similar hole in the Hadramout region, says the name "Well of Hell" should now be dropped. But the superstition might not fade so quickly: According to Islamic and pre-Islamic folklore, genies can be invisible or take the form of snakes. (Read more discoveries stories.) (Newser) Authorities have identified a woman found dead in Mississippi 44 years ago, who is believed to be yet another victim of America's most prolific serial killer. Samuel Little, who died in a California prison in January, was convicted of three murders in 2014, but later confessed to killing 93 women in 19 states between 1970 and 2005. That included a "small in stature" Black woman with a gold tooth, who apparently wore a wig, whose body was found at a construction site in Jackson County in December 1977, three to four months after she was believed to have been killed, per CNN and NBC News. story continues below Authorities used facial reconstructions, computer composites, and DNA tests to try to identify the woman known as "Escatawpa Jane Doe," whose cause of death was undetermined. They finally caught a break this year when Texas DNA research facility Othram, tasked with mapping the woman's family tree, learned of a possible distant cousin living in Texas. That woman put authorities in touch with her 93-year-old paternal grandmother, originally from Leflore County, Miss., who said her cousin, Clara Birdlong, had disappeared from the area in the 1970s, per WLOX. Another cousin said Birdlong, born in 1933, had a gold front tooth and wore a wig. The Jackson County Sheriff's Department said a Leflore County resident recently recalled Birdlong leaving the county in the 1970s with an "African American man who claimed to be passing through Mississippi on his way to Florida." "They never heard from her again," an investigator tells WLOX. Littlewho targeted vulnerable, often Black womenwas known to be in the Jackson County seat of Pascagoula in August 1977, when he was arrested for selling stolen clothes out of the trunk of his car, per WKRG. The serial killer, who admitted to returning to strike again in cities where he'd already killed, also confessed to killing a woman named Malinda Lapree in Pascagoula in 1982. (Read more Samuel Little stories.) (Newser) Police in Collierville, Tennessee, say a gunman opened fire at a Kroger supermarket Thursday. At least two people are deadincluding the shooterand another 12 people are injured, reports USA Today and CNN. The shooter is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot, per the AP. The town is about 30 miles east of Memphis, and that city's police department tweeted that it's on the scene to assist. One employee says she got out of the building when she heard a gunshot. "I just ran out the door," Glenda McDonald tells USA Today. "I left my purse, my keys, everything." story continues below Collierville Police chief Dale Lane says some of the victims who were taken to hospitals had serious injuries. When a SWAT team entered the store, we found people hiding in freezers, in locked offices," says the chief. "They were doing what they had been trained to do: run, hide, fight." Police helped people to safety and found the gunman dead. There was no immediate word of a motive or an identification of the shooter. Lane said "it's going to take a little bit before we know what happened." But he added: I've been involved in this for 34 years and Ive never seen anything like it." (Read more mass shootings stories.) The pandemic has led to a lasting impact on the job market. It has changed the way a lot of people look at employment and impacted the way they want to work. There are several social trends to stay aware of. Many Still Want to Enter the Medical Field The demand for medical professionals has only grown, so you will have a career that is always in demand if you decide to go this route. Even if there is an economic recession, there will always be a need for medical professionals. Plus, you can enjoy a higher-than-average salary after graduation. It should not be your sole reason for choosing this profession, but it is a great motivator. If you are thinking about getting your graduate medical degree, you can take out a student loan from a private lender to cover the cost. You can benefit from no fees in order to secure the loan. More Want to Work Remotely Remote work really took off at the beginning of the pandemic, and now it seems like it is here to stay. Before the pandemic, there were remote jobs available, but even though more employers are having employees go back to the office, many are offering full-time remote work. They found during the pandemic that working remotely did not affect productivity negatively. Depending on the job, it even improved productivity. In accordance with top trends in society and culture, many jobs today are advertising remote positions, especially in industries such as insurance, financial, and computer-related ones. In the past, clerical and office type of jobs were mostly done in-office, but there are now more available to be done remotely. That means people from all around the country now have more job opportunities open. It doesn't matter now how close someone is to the company office if they never have to go in. It allows a company to potentially save money on hiring costs. For example, if they are based in an area with a high cost of living, they might not have to pay a remote employee as much if the employee lives in a cheaper area. Not Everyone Are Going Back to Work Older people are choosing to stay home, partly because of the pandemic, and that will contribute to the speed at which jobs recover. Older people feel more vulnerable, so they might not want to be in-person as much as younger people might be willing. They make up a good portion of both the workforce and certain industries' customers. Industries such as restaurants, travel, and hotels might not recover as quickly. Since not everyone wants to go back to work, labor shortages have continued. Part of the reason is that the labor markets are tighter because the pandemic has led to unusual dynamics. Between the fact that not everyone wants to go back to work and the fact that there are more jobs available, it has been harder for recruiters to find employees. Less desirable jobs, such as ones that don't pay as well, are even harder to fill because people are looking for something to pay their bills. Bahrain proud to share BeAware Bahrain app with the world Bahrain proud to share BeAware Bahrain app with the world TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Chief Executive Mohammed Ali Al Qaed has highlighted Bahrains experience in deploying modern technologies to support the efforts of the national task force through developing the framework of the BeAware Bahrain application. The app is a unique national initiative that Bahrain is proud to share with the world, contributing to global efforts to combat the coronavirus, Al Qaed said as he received Bahrain-based World Health Organization (WHO) Office Representative Dr.Tasnim Atatrah. The meeting discussed potential cooperation in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related projects within the health sector. He acknowledged the cooperation with WHO in documenting and presenting the Kingdoms experience. Al Qaed welcomed further cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) in conducting & publishing health surveys and statistics. Al Qaed praised the efforts of various medical teams expressing future cooperation between the Authority and health organizations, to highlight health sector growth and keep pace with global trends. Atatrahs visit is in line with the objectives WHO hopes to achieve through its new Bahrain office, including stronger cooperation with government entities, international bodies, civil organizations, and universities through the provision of technical advice and knowledge-sharing. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Bahrain is ready to contribute to efforts to adequately address the challenges facing the world today. Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said that 3G and G20 states must work together to help overcome the major problems. Dr Al Zayani made the remarks as he took part yesterday in the 14th ministerial meeting of the Global Governance Group (3G), which was held at the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations in New York. It was held on the sidelines of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Bahrain, which is assuming the presidency of the 2021-2022 Asian Cooperation Dialogue, is committed to continuing the constructive partnership with the G20, chaired by Indonesia in 2022. Al Zayani stressed that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic showed everyone the importance of collective global action so international cooperation must be promoted to help solve the global problems. The Foreign Minister also praised the leadership of both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Italian Republic of the G20, wishing the Republic of Indonesia every success during its presidency of the Group. Participation The meeting also saw the participation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which chaired the G20 in 2020, the Italian Republic, which will chair the group this year, and the Republic of Indonesia, which will chair the group in 2022. During the meeting, the participants discussed the challenges of economic recovery after the pandemic and promoting international solidarity to ensure the acceleration of the pace of vaccination around the world, especially in developing countries, in addition to a number of topics and issues of common concern. They also emphasised the need to promote coordination between the G20 countries and 3G countries in order to combat climate change and achieve a green economy, in addition to facilitating digital transformation, which would contribute to achieving comprehensive and sustainable development for all countries of the world. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The National Medical Team for Combatting the Coronavirus (COVID-19) was honoured for its noble work to safeguard public health. President of the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) and Head of the National Medical Team for Combatting the Coronavirus (COVID-19), Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, received Cabinet Affairs Ministrys Undersecretary and Honorary President of the Good Word Society His Highness Shaikh Isa bin Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa who presented to him the Voluntary Work Award honouring Team Bahrain for the second consecutive year. HH Shaikh Isa expressed his sincere appreciation for the outstanding and noble contributions made by the members of the national medical team, led by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, who stood as a great example in dealing with the pandemic regionally and internationally. SCH President affirmed that the achievement was made with the directives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the follow up of HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister and the cooperation of various governmental and private entities. HH Shaikh Isa wished the team further achievements and continued success in confronting the pandemic and praised HM the Kings directives and HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Ministers efforts. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The Bahrain-Saudi relations are a distinguished role model for strong cohesion and shared destiny. This was emphasised by Council of Representatives Speaker Fawzia bint Abdulla Zainal as she praised the steady growth of solid fraternal relations between the two peoples, under the leadership of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The Speaker lauded the major role played by Saudi Arabia in safeguarding regional security and stability, as well as its international humanitarian initiatives and continuous development achievements, under the leadership of King Salman. She expressed pride in the pivotal role played by Saudi Arabia in preserving Arab and Islamic rights and freedoms, respecting international conventions and serving the issues of the Arab and Islamic nations, in line with its principles emanating from the Islamic religion. Zainal extended deepest congratulations to the Saudi King, government and people on Saudi Arabias 91st National Day, wishing the brotherly Saudi people further progress and prosperity, under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. She indicated that Saudi Arabia is the guarantor of the stability of the Arab and Gulf Cooperation Council regions, highlighting its tireless efforts to achieve stability and balance in the region since its establishment. She affirmed the depth of the strategic deep-rooted brotherly relations between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, stressing Saudi Arabias pioneering humanitarian, political and economic role at the regional and global levels, as well as its constant keenness to champion the just causes and consolidate Arab and Islamic unity. Pride and appreciation Shura Council Chairman Ali bin Saleh Al Saleh expressed pride and appreciation for Saudi Arabias great role under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, in spreading peace, justice and equality, and ensuring security and stability in the region. Al Saleh praised the support and consolidation of Arab solidarity by Saudi Arabia, preserving legitimate Arab rights and serving the causes of the Arab and Islamic nations, and wished Saudi Arabia further progress and prosperity. He confirmed the great parliamentary cooperation and stressed the councils keenness to support and strengthen ties for the interests of the two countries and peoples. The Shura leader sent a cable of congratulations to Saudi Arabias Shura Council Speaker Shaikh Dr Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al Al Shaikh on his countrys National Day TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The Bahrain Institute of Public Administration (BIPA) will continue to implement plans to improve government performance in the field of policies, strategies, resource management, change and development of government services. The assurance was made by BIPA Director-General Dr Raed Mohammed bin Shams during a government media briefing organised by the National Communication Centre in cooperation with the institute on its achievements in 2021. Through BIPA initiatives, government leaders and employees will be able to improve skills, behaviour and knowledge of learning and training, contribute to the decision-making process by consulting, and find effective solutions through scientific research means, build and develop capacities through evaluation and personal guidance. They are based on the strategic priority within the governments programme to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of its performance and in the implementation of Bahrain Vision 2030. Dr Shams said that BIPA excels this year in the development of administrative work in the Kingdom of Bahrain despite the circumstances imposed by the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. He pointed out that the global health crisis was a motivation for the institute to employ innovation and creativity to continue its mission and reach its strategic objectives, which contributes to advancing the wheel of sustainable development. Dr Shams stressed that the National Program for the Development of Government Leaders, on which BIPA is based, has had a great impact in upgrading the level of the cadres of Bahraini government institutions. Through the programme, the institute trained more than 6,900 government employees amid pandemic related to attendance at work premises, its continuity, frequency and productivity, which contributed to the promotion of dozens of trainees to distinguished leadership positions such as agents, managers, consultants and presidents, who had the largest share of promotions. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Bahrain has urged all states to strongly commit to ensuring the advancement of womens role in building peace and pursuing diplomacy. It is consistent with the Kingdoms commitment to continue empowering Bahraini women and enhancing their leading role in laying the foundation for international peace and security. The call was made by Permanent Representative of Bahrain to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Yusuf Abdulkarim Bucheeri, yesterday during the 48th session of the Human Rights Council. Ambassador Bucheeri delivered a Joint Statement on behalf of Bahrain, the UAE, Israel and Morocco, as well as the University of Peace and more than 50 countries, on the role of women in peace and diplomacy. The Joint Statement on Women, Peace and Diplomacy reaffirmed womens fundamental role in peace processes and conflict prevention, and urged the international community to support womens key role in diplomacy and peace-building process. Commenting on this achievement, Ambassador Bucheeri said: This joint statement is consistent with the distinguished Bahraini experience in terms of empowering Bahraini women and enhancing their leading role in laying the foundation for international peace and security through their remarkable and renowned diplomatic presence in international fora. Moreover, it conveys an important message of peace stemming from the deep-rooted values of the Bahraini society, the vision of its wise leadership, and its pioneering experience in the field of peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance. Israels Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar, said: This Joint Statement is the first formal initiative in the multilateral arena between Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco. I am especially pleased that the important issue of women in peace processes is the focus of this statement and I believe that it is testament to the new dynamic we want to promote in our region and beyond. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com A conference will be held in October under the theme Social Dialogue in Times of Crises, in cooperation with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU) will hold the event under the patronage of Labour and Social and Development Minister Jameel bin Mohammed Ali Humaidan. The minister received GFBTU Secretary-General Abdul Qader Al Shehabi and his deputy, Hassan Abdulla Al Halwaji, and discussed labour issues and efforts to promote tripartite dialogue. They also discussed the implementation of recent legislations, such as decree-law 21 of 2021 on regulating the labour market and decree 16 of 2021 on prohibiting wage discrimination. The conference will highlight the detrimental impact of the pandemic on the labour market and efforts to mitigate its repercussions on economic and social stability and jobs. Summer is about to wind down in Bahrain, relatively mild winter is finally coming Summer is about to wind down in Bahrain, relatively mild winter is finally coming TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com This years summer is almost over with the arrival last night of the autumn equinox. The phenomenon took place in Bahrain at 10:21 in the evening yesterday announcing the end of summer, which is the longest season of the year, and the advent of the autumn season, which lasts for 89 days, 20 hours and 38 minutes, according to astronomers. After the June Solstice or Summer Solstice, night gradually regains a few minutes from the day, until they become equal by the autumnal equinox, which usually falls on September 22 or 23. This astronomical event is a reminder from Mother Nature that cool temperature is finally on our doorstep. What does that mean for expatriates? Expatriates, who makeup 52.6% of the population and play a key role in the development of the national economy, can now heave a collective sigh of relief although only temporarily! Power bills are expected to go down starting this month until March next year. Every hot summer month from April to October expatriates all have the same issue and concern: extremely high electricity and water bills! This year is no exception. The issue has caused an uproar among the expat population as it comes at a time when many have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Utility bills are a significant part of every households monthly budget. And as always, utility bills are the highest during the summer months due to the increased use of air conditioners and water, making it a struggle for many expatriates. Since 2016, expats are charged 29 fils per unit for electricity and 750 fils per unit for water. Bahrainis pay 3 fils per unit for electricity under 3,000 units, increasing to 9 fils for anything above this. This means expats pay a massive 866 per cent more than Bahrainis. The abnormally high utility bills are causing a sizeable burden to low-income expats. Absurdly high utility bills are weighing down on them as many are unable to cope with the rising costs. Many of them struggle to pay bills and they leave Bahrain for good as their entire salary is just going towards expenses. For other expatriates, especially those with families, it is unreasonable to pay utility costs that almost amount to the rent, so they are forced to send their families home. Expenses are soaring but salaries remain the same there is no increase, in fact and in some sectors salaries are not paid on time by many employers. This is making the situation worse for expatriates who send money to their families back home. Many are forced to move into shared accommodation because they are struggling to meet rising expenses, foremost of which is the soaring electricity and water bill. Tenants, bachelors, couples and large families, who live in apartment buildings that share electricity and water bills also complain about what they describe as an unfair system. In some cases, expats are paying utility bills that are even higher than their monthly rent. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Following approval by the Government Executive Committee, the National Medical Taskforce for Combatting the Coronavirus (COVID-19), has announced the approval of a booster shot for those 18 years of age and above, who have received a second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca (Covishield), or Sputnik V vaccine at least six months ago. Eligible individuals could opt for the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine as a booster shot, or the same vaccine they have received for their first and second doses, as a booster shot. The Taskforce noted that those aged 18 to 39, who have taken the second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine at least three months ago, can take a booster shot, instead of the initial recommendation of 6 months. The Taskforce further announced the approval of a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for individuals who have recovered from COVID-19, and have obtained one dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine. The Taskforce further added that individuals who have recovered from the COVID-19 can receive a vaccine three months from the date of infection, and a booster dose 12 months from the date of infection. The Taskforce noted that the vaccination protocols were developed in line with the Kingdom of Bahrain's comprehensive efforts to combat COVID-19 and protect public health. To register for a vaccine or booster shot, please visit the BeAware application or the Ministry of Health's website on healthalert.gov.bh. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Bahrain has been ranked among the top ten in the 2021 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER) one of the worlds most comprehensive and widely-read research on startup ecosystems. The report is published annually by Startup Genome in cooperation with the Global Entrepreneurship Network. The report includes an international rating in the field of entrepreneurial innovation, with 280 entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems and 3 million startups analysed. It was officially announced globally yesterday during the London Tech Week 2021. The report includes a ranking of the top 140 ecosystems around the world. According to the report, Bahrain has emerged among the top 10 ecosystems with qualified technical talents in the MENA region and is among the top 15 on the Bang for Buck ecosystems - which measures the average amount of venture capital of startups working in the technology sector. The report also refers to the Kingdoms ranking among the top 15 ecosystems in the MENA region in terms of having talent and experience with the ability to generate and keep talent in the ecosystem. The report also considers Bahrains ecosystem among the top 15 in Performance in the MENA region, which measures the size and performance of an ecosystem based on the accumulated tech startup value created from exits and funding. The Kingdom has also been included in the top 15 knowledge ecosystems in the MENA region, measuring innovation through research and patent activity. On this occasion, Tamkeen Chief Executive Husain Mohamed Rajab said, The report reflected Bahrains prominent ranking as a supportive startup ecosystem. In addition to its advanced positions in a number of economic aspects, an attractive business environment, a highly-skilled workforce & a low cost of living are cited as reasons a startup should move to Bahrain, Rajab explained. The Fintech sector is, also, highlighted for its density of talent, support resources, and startup activity, promoting and facilitating a fast-growing ecosystem in line with the Kingdoms promising vision for sustainable economic development, he added. Entrepreneurs, policymakers, and community leaders are working hard all over the world to build productive and inclusive technology ecosystems that are engines of economic growth and job creation for all, said JF Gauthier, Founder & CEO of Startup Genome. WASHINGTON (AP) The White House and congressional Democrats have agreed to a framework of options to pay for their huge, emerging social and environment bill, top Democrats said Thursday. Now they face the daunting task of narrowing the menu to tax possibilities they can pass to fund President Joe Bidens $3.5 trillion plan. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced the progress as Biden administration officials and Democratic congressional leaders negotiated behind the scenes. The package aims to rewrite tax and spending priorities to expand programs for Americans of all ages, while upping efforts to tackle income inequality and fight climate change. Staring down a self-imposed Monday deadline, lawmakers said they would work nonstop to find agreement on specifics. Democrats' views on those vary widely, though they largely agree with Biden's idea of raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund the package. We certainly think its progress, Biden press secretary Jen Pskai said at the White House. Biden has been putting his shoulder into the negotiations, inviting more than 20 of his partys moderate and progressive lawmakers to the White House for lengthy meetings this week. He's working to close the deal with Congress on his Build Back Better agenda at a time when his presidential campaign promises are running into the difficulty of actually governing. But the party has been divided over many of the details. Moderate Democrats, most prominently Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are demanding that the massive dollar total be reduced. The revenue options to pay for it that mostly means taxes being considered can be dialed up or down, the leaders say. The ultimate price tag may certainly slip from the much-publicized $3.5 trillion. Republicans are solidly opposed to the package, calling it a reckless tax and spending spree. So Democrats will have to push it it through Congress on their own, which is only possible if they limit their defections to a slim few in the House and none in the Senate. Were proceeding, Pelosi said. We intend to stay the course and pass the bill as soon as possible. The congressional leaders huddled early Thursday with the chairmen of the tax writing committees to agree to the framework, pulling from work already being done on those panels. They are intent on sticking to Biden's pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, has already drafted his version, which would raise about $2.3 trillion by hiking corporate tax rates to 26.5% for businesses earning more than $5 million a year and increasing the top individual tax from 37% to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, or $450,000 for married households. The House panel's bill also includes a 3% surtax on the adjusted incomes of very wealthy people making more than $5 million a year. The Senate Finance Committee under Sen. Ron Wyden has not yet passed its bill, but has been eyeing proposals that further target the superrich including efforts to curtail practices used to avoid paying taxes. Im not going to get into any specific stuff today, but Ive made it very clear as chairman of the Finance Committee a billionaire's tax will be on the menu, Wyden said. Those tax goals align with the Biden administration, which is marshaling arguments that the increases are fundamentally about fairness at a time of gaping income inequality. According to a new analysis released Thursday by the White House, the wealthiest 400 families worth more than a billion dollars paid an average tax rate of just 8.2% between 2010 and 2018. Treasury Department tables show that is lower than the average tax rate of families with an income of roughly $142,000. The analysis suggests two clear reasons why billionaires pay a lower rate than the upper middle class: They derive income from stocks, dividends and other assets that are taxed at lower rates and they can permanently avoid paying tax on certain investment gains that by law are excluded from taxable income. Without divulging a framework, Wyden indicated he is in agreement with the House's plans for certain retirement savings accounts used by the wealthy to shield liabilities. Targeting Mega IRAs, Democrats hope to correct what they see as a flaw in the retirement savings system enabling billionaires to amass millions in independent retirement accounts without ever paying taxes. Under some proposals, individuals earning beyond $400,000 would be barred from contributing to their IRAs once their account balances top $10 million. The Biden administration has also shown interest in one climate change tax a so-called pollution importer fee, which would essentially impose a tariff on goods coming from countries without certain emissions controls and seen as a way to pressure China. Gaining less traction seems to be a carbon tax that could fall on households and stray from Biden's pledge not to tax those earning less than $400,000. Another big unknown: Whether Democrats can coalesce around a plan to rein in prescription drug costs, which could save the government hundreds of billions that could be used for Bidens goals Thursday's sudden announcement of framework options caught key lawmakers off guard, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the chairman of the Budget Committee, and others playing leading roles in assembling one of the biggest bills Congress has ever attempted. Schumer later acknowledged about the emerging framework "it's hardly conclusory, but it was a good step of progress. Yet the framework could help the congressional leaders show momentum as they head toward crucial deadlines and start to address concerns raised by Manchin and other moderates who want a more clear-cut view of what taxes are being considered before they move forward, aides said. On Monday, the House plans to begin considering a separate $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects as a first test of Biden's agenda. That public works bill has already passed the Senate, and Pelosi has agreed to schedule it for a House vote to assuage party moderates who badly want that legislation passed but are leery of supporting the larger $3.5 trillion measure. But progressives are threatening to defeat the public works bill as inadequate unless it is partnered with the broader package. To make sure both bills can pass, Democratic leaders are trying to reach agreement on the bigger bill. Meanwhile, the House and Senate remain at a standstill over a separate package to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 fiscal year-end and to suspend the federal debt limit to avert a shutdown and a devastating U.S. default on payments. Senate Republicans are refusing to back that House-passed bill, despite the risk of triggering a fiscal crisis. ___ Associated Press writers Marcy Gordon and Josh Boak contributed to this report. The controversial statue of Capt. John Mason, who led the massacre of Pequot Indians during the Battle of Mystic in 1637, got a reprieve of sorts on Wednesday when the commission that oversees the preservation of the State Capitol building agreed to hold a hearing on the issue. That forum, combined with a higher-than-expected price tag on the removal of the statue, mean that the possible tearing down of Mason is unlikely to occur until next year, at the earliest. Amid reluctance by members of the Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission to see the statuary torn away from the buildings third-floor facade overlooking Bushnell Park, the panel said that a November hearing of invited guests, including historians and representatives of Connecticuts five surviving indigenous tribes, could fully air the arguments over removing Mason because his presence insults Native Americans, or keeping it in place to acknowledge the states messy history. At the same time, leaders of the commission noted that there is room in empty niches around the Capitol, to commission new statues of indigenous leaders, such as the Mohegan Tribal Nations Sachem Uncas and Sachem Sassacus of the Pequots, who was killed in 1637 by the Mohawks in New York State and whose head and hands were sent to the English settlers. During a more-than-hour-long discussion on the issue Wednesday, state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, who as chairwoman of the legislative Appropriations Committee put $15,000 in the current budget to remove the statue and transfer it to the Old State Capitol building a mile away, said that the Mason statue remains a symbol of genocide and an insult to federally and state-recognized tribes alike in the state. I just dont believe he should have that place of honor on the State Capitol, Osten said in a rare appearance before the appointed board, which includes former state lawmakers, retired nonpartisan staff, as well as State Historian Walter Woodward. Im not looking to dispose of that component of history. It was an ugly, complicated, conflicted past Woodward said. There are no good guys here. It is not a case of the terrible blood-thirsty English and the mild-mannered, peaceable indigenous people. There was enough atrocity on both sides to make your head spin. Woodward said. In our desire to correct for centuries of injustice to indigenous people we have adopted an interpretation of much of the past events that downplays one side of the stories and mollifies another side of the story. He suggested retaining the Mason statue on the Capitol, and that statuary honoring both Uncas and Sassacus be created and put up on the facade, which has several empty niches. I see this as a moment of great opportunity, Woodward said. The last statue placed on the facade was Gov. Ella T. Grasso nearly 40 years ago. Eric Connery, facilities administrator for the Capitol complex, said the $15,000 budgeted for taking down and transferring the Mason statue underestimated the actual costs, which exceed $50,000, he said. The issue is pending before a bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders and Connery declined to give commission members, meeting virtually, with the current total cost. The extraction of the statue would include mechanical lifts and a crane that would hold the statue in a sling while workers chisel-out the material holding the heavy stone to the niche. Connerys remarks prompted William Morgan, a commission member who was the longtime head of the State Capitol Police, to warn that such a removal could affect the structural integrity of the building, which was erected in 1878. Equity dictates that we hear from all sides, said Chairman Buddy Altobello, a former longtime state representative from Meriden, noting that Tuesday was the anniversary of the 1638 Treaty of Hartford. Rodney Butler, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, sent a letter commemorating the 383rd anniversary of the treaty, stressing that its harsh terms included the execution of Pequot men and the placing of women and children into slavery and servitude. It essentially began to erase the tribe that once lived in 250 square miles of Southeastern Connecticut from historical memory, Butler said. In order to come to terms with our present, we must reflect on our past and acknowledge the atrocities committed in building this nation, Butler wrote. Masons actions, when viewed in this full context, do not warrant posthumous representation on our State Capitol. Quite the contrary, his likeness should be relegated to halls of Connecticuts historical museums, along with an accurate representation of his deeds and actions. Osten noted that after the Pequot Wars, which included the battle of the Great Swamp in Fairfield and other confrontations in New York State including the murder of Sassacus, the name of the river that separates Groton from New London was changed from the Pequot River to the Thames River. She said that in recent conversations with Connecticut College and the Coast Guard Academy, those two New London institutions became interested in commemorating the Pequot name for the river. Connery, who works in the Office of Legislative Management, which sought bids for the statue removal, noted that another complaint from Native Americans that a picture in the underground walkway between the Capitol and the Legislative Office Building portrays a member of an indigenous tribe from Pennsylvania or Virginia, and not Connecticut, can be changed as soon as an appropriate eastern woodland Indian image is found. The commission does not have to review issues outside the Capitol. kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT FARGO, N.D. (AP) A petition drive to recall four members of the Fargo School Board who have supported measures meant to limit the spread of COVID-19 has failed, district officials said Wednesday. Officials said that while the recall group submitted more than the required amount of signatures, many of them were rejected for various errors. That included inadequate signatures, out-of-district addresses, notary mistakes and the lack of city, zip code and date information. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Less than three months into the current budget year, Mississippi legislators are starting to plan for the next one. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee holds a public hearing Friday as part of the long process of deciding how the state will spend billions of dollars during the year that begins July 1. Legislators face three big questions: Will Mississippi enact another teacher pay raise in the coming year, as many politicians have promised? Will the Republican-controlled state Legislature phase out the state income tax? And how will the state spend hundreds of millions of dollars sent by the federal government for pandemic recovery? Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has said for months that he wants Mississippi to phase out its income tax, pushing this as a way to make Mississippi more competitive with states that don't tax income, such as Texas, Tennessee and Florida. Gunn's effort fell short in the Republican-led Senate earlier this year. Some critics rejected the accompanying proposal to increase sales taxes, saying that would dig deeper into the pockets of people with modest incomes. Other critics said phasing out the income tax would hobble Mississippi's budget and make it more difficult to afford a teacher pay raise or to pay for big-ticket items such as expected court-ordered improvements to the state's mental health system. Mississippi has long had some of the lowest teacher salaries in the U.S. During the 2021 session, legislators passed and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill giving $1,000 raises to most teachers and $1,100 to some. Those raises took effect when the current budget year began in July. Senate Education Committee members met last week to discuss teacher pay. According to the Southern Regional Education Board, the average teacher salary in the U.S. for 2018-19 was $62,304. For Mississippi, the average was $45,105, which was about $8,200 below the Southeastern average. Mississippi received more than $903 million in May from the federal pandemic relief package Congress approved this year, the first half of the state's allocation. Mississippi legislators were already finished with their 2021 session before the money arrived, and they voted to delay spending decisions until they return to the Capitol. The next regular session begins in January, and Reeves shows no sign of calling a special session before then. Several state agency directors will present their budget requests during Fridays hearing in the Woolfolk state office building near the Capitol. The 14-member Budget Committee will release its initial set of spending recommendations in December. The governor will release his own budget ideas before the session begins. Legislators are likely to revise the recommendations before all 122 House members and all 52 senators have a chance to vote on final spending plans before late March or early April. ___ Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus. LANSING, Mich. (AP) Michigan lawmakers who finished passing the state budget Wednesday will next turn to allocating an unprecedented amount of federal COVID-19 rescue funding money that largely is flexible and can be spent however the state decides. For months, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been proposing ways to allot $6.5 billion in discretionary funds approved by Congress and President Joe Biden. About $5.7 billion remains after the bipartisan budget deal and the enactment of K-12 and supplemental spending bills in July. The initial allotments will expand free preschool eligibility for low-income 4-year-olds, help schools wanting to transition to a year-round calendar, and assist hospitals and nursing homes confronting financial pressures. The aid also will be used to partly replenish the state unemployment benefits fund and increase Medicaid payments for nursing facilities. New economic development grants will help rehab vacant buildings and develop place-based infrastructure associated with social zones, downtowns and outdoor dining in communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Legislators also have left unspent $1.8 billion in federal coronavirus aid with which they have less discretion and $3 billion in surplus state revenues, according to the state budget office. I'm looking forward to additional infrastructure, education and water packages that we will be able to put together over the coming months, House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski of Washtenaw County's Scio Township told reporters after the House passed $55 billion in spending on 99-6 and 97-8 votes. The governor will sign it and likely declare some Republican-backed vaccine and mask provisions constitutionally unenforceable before Oct. 1, when the next fiscal year begins. Most recently, she proposed spending billions of the federal pandemic funding to boost the business climate and to expand health care and infrastructure, including to bolster access to mental health services, replace state psychiatric hospitals and build a new public health lab. Other initiatives would expand tuition-free programs for adults ages 25 and older and frontline workers, provide grants and loans to small businesses, replace lead water pipes and upgrade state parks. Republicans in the GOP-led Senate have floated proposals as well. One would rehabilitate or replace local bridges, beyond those that will be fixed under the budget agreement. Another would replace lead pipes, upgrade drinking water and wastewater facilities, repair dams and clean up sites contaminated with forever chemicals" called PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. In the months ahead, we will continue to take advantage of the opportunity to make additional one-time investments that will strengthen Michigan for years to come, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Thomas Albert, a Lowell Republican. GOP legislators included provisions in the budget designed to restrict state and municipal coronavirus vaccine requirements including for government employees ban vaccine passports and to prohibit school masking mandates that have been ordered by county health departments. President Joe Biden plans to require vaccinations for employers with at least 100 workers, which could affect state and municipal employees regardless. Whitmer, who has said she does not plan to mandate the vaccine, is expected to strike the anti-mask language. Republicans said there is an agreement on at least some of the provision related to vaccines. Government funds cannot be used to create or support a vaccine passport, and it ensures that government employees are afforded vaccine exemptions. Additionally, college students must be given vaccine exemptions or given reasonable accommodations," Albert said. Whitmer spokesman Bobby Leddy said her office was conducting a legal review of the legislation and was aware of likely unenforceable or unconstitutional language that she will address. He said the governor made clear during negotiations that she would not bar businesses, local health departments and schools from using all of the tools necessary" to combat COVID-19. ___ Associated Press/Report for America writer Anna Liz Nichols in Lansing contributed. Robert Gentile, a Connecticut man long suspected of being involved in the $500 million Isabella Gardner Museum heist from 1990, died Friday at the age of 85, according to his longtime attorney. Gentile died from a stroke, attorney A. Ryan McGuigan said. Allegedly he was the last person to have possessed the paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, McGuigan said in an email to Hearst Connecticut Media Group. Despite pressure from federal authorities, Gentile denied his involvement till his death, McGuigan said. He was the last of his kind, McGuigan added. Gentiles family asked for privacy at this time. In March 1990, two robbers dressed as Boston police officers tied up the Isabella Gardner Museums security guards and cut 13 works of from their frames. The art, including works from Rembrant, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, has never been recovered. Two other pieces, a vase and a eagle finial, were also stolen. It was the largest art heist in modern history, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The FBI announced in 2013 that it had evidence that some of the paintings had moved through Connecticut, possibly decades before. Richard DesLauriers, then head of the FBIs office in Boston, said the agency identified the thieves who were members of a criminal organization based in the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. The FBI said a sale took place, but had limited knowledge of where the paintings ended up. The agency also never publicly released the identity of the thieves. In a 2013 case against Gentile, federal prosecutors told a judge they found a handwritten note with the names of all the paintings while searching Gentiles Manchester home, according to the Associated Press. While facing gun charges in 2016, federal prosecutors said the Manchester resident told an undercover agent that he had access to two of the stolen paintings and could see them for $500,000 a piece, the Associated Press reported. Gentile pleaded guilty to these gun charges and was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison. He was released in 2019, according to the Associated Press. Federal prosecutors also told a judge that Gentile spoke of the paintings while he was held in a federal prison in Rhode Island, according to the Associated Press report. Editors Note: This story was to updated to reflect that additional works of art were stolen along with paintings from the museum. According to sources, Prime Minister Modi will start his day by meeting with select heads of corporates in the United States. The CEOs will include the heads of Qualcomm, Adobe, Blackstone, General Atomics and First Solar. On the itinerary-packed first day of his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold meetings with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison, US Vice President Kamala Harris and the select heads of corporates that have the potential to invest significantly in India. According to sources, Prime Minister Modi will start his day by meeting with select heads of corporates in the United States. The CEOs will include the heads of Qualcomm, Adobe, Blackstone, General Atomics and First Solar. The Prime Minister reached Washington on Wednesday local time. Prime Minister will start the day with meetings with select heads of corporates in the United States I think these are CEOs that represent fairly large corporate interests, companies that have particular expertise and invested in India and has the potential to invest significantly in India, the source added. They represent diverse areas from technology, the IT sector to finance to defence to renewable energy. I think it is a very good mix of CEOs, that would be meeting Prime Minister Modi on a one to one basis, investments in the United States have been very important and very significant in Indias recent development activities in line with our major economic initiatives, the flagship program. In particular what we call Make in India, the source further added. On Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The official said that Prime Minister Modi is looking forward to meeting Prime Minister Morrison on a range of issues. In the afternoon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. They have met on a number of occasions on the sidelines of various international conferences, Prime Minister Morrison recently called Prime Minister Modi to brief him about the plan to go ahead with the AUKUS Alliance, he said. And I think, you know this meeting has been long overdue because Prime Minister Morrison was to visit India in January last year but he couldnt be here, he could not make it because of the fairly severe fires at that time in parts of Australia. He was then supposed to come in May last year but because of the COVID situation he could not make it, the source added. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24, this is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Ahead of leaving for the US to participate in Quad Leaders Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said his visit will be an occasion to strengthen the strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia. He will then come to the White House where he will meet Vice President Kamala Harris in her ceremonial office. The discussion on issues is expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides. We have allocated one hour for the discussions and discussions are expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides, from the management of COVID-19 to issues like cooperation in the high tech sector the space sector, where the Vice President has an interest and owned a number of areas including the resilient and secure supply chain are something that both sides have great interest in, he said. Cortlandt Hull was barely 13 when he opened his movie monster museum in 1966. It was in a building his parents constructed in the backyard of their Bristol home, and he charged 50 cents admission. His first exhibit was a life-size figure of a witch he dubbed Zenobia, hence the museums name. Celebrating its 55th anniversary, the Witchs Dungeon Classic Movie Museum now has 25 life-size wax figures, mostly classic horror movie characters in sets representing their films, but also science fiction and fantasy. About 2,000 pieces of authentic movie props and memorabilia are on view from films such as Dracula to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hull has more items than display space, so he rotates objects, ensuring repeat visitors have something new to see. The museum previously was only open in October, but after it moved to Plainville from Bristol last year, it is open year round, Friday through Sunday, with guided tours. Over the years, visitors have flocked here from 40 states and 27 countries. Ned Gerard When I started this, Halloween was celebrated one day only and it was rather dull. All you did was trick-or-treat or go to a costume ball, he says. There were no attractions related to the classic movie monsters or anything like that, so we were the very first. The museums inspiration was two-fold. Suffering from a rare blood condition as a child, Hull was mostly confined to home, where he built Aurora movie monster kits. The problem was they were only 8 inches tall and I wanted them life-size, he says. I was a weird little kid. I loved to go to wax museums, but my disappointment was whenever they promoted a chamber of horrors, I expected it to be the classic movie monsters. Instead, it was torture devices. Combining his interests in model building and wax museums, Hull created a place paying tribute to the actors and makeup artists from classic films. He is always adding objects, and will unveil two new figures in October. Original movie props figure prominently in the collection, and rare items include one of the two Exorcist heads for Linda Blair, headpieces from Planet of the Apes and a golden idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Starting Thanksgiving weekend, the museum will present Monsters Holiday, when visitors can see movie sets decorated with a holiday theme, including vintage toys. RELATED: Quiz: How many of these famous horror movies were filmed in Connecticut? Ned Gerard Cortlandt Hulls favorite movie memorabilia The Phantom of the Opera set: The Phantom is one of my all-time favorites films ever since I was a little kid, so that is probably my favorite set. We have Lon Chaney Sr. as both The Phantom and The Red Death from the film, he says. Linda Blairs Exorcist head: Festooned in full demon makeup by artist Dick Smith, the head was later given to Hull by Smith. It is so real-looking and there were only two of them made, Hull says. Dick Smith was amazing, the way he taught me how to do makeup and props. Creature from the Black Lagoon head: Among life-size figures, Hull is excited to have a rare prototype head of the creature, which is more eel-like than the film version. French Beast figure: Hull pays homage to Beauty and the Beast with his Beast figure from the 1946 French version, La Belle et la Bete. Its just so elegant, and the head of the Beast the hair was meticulously put on, one hair at a time, he says. Werewolf of London figure: My great uncle, Henry Hull, was the Werewolf of London so my figure of him as the Werewolf is definitely a favorite, he says. If it wasnt for Henry, I would not have met a lot of these people in the film industry and not many people can say that their uncle was a werewolf! This Island Earth alien headpiece: From Hulls favorite sci-fi movie as a kid is the original headpiece used for the alien, Metaluna Mutant. Its a unique design and I always liked it. NORTH CANAAN - More than 400 accordions have been moved into the recently-restored Canaan Union Railroad station in the heart of North Canaan, by longtime collector Angelo Paul Ramunni. As creator and owner of the New England Accordion Connection & Museum Company, Ramunni recently relocated the exceptionally-detailed and highly-ornate hand-crafted accordions from throughout the world dating back to the year 1829 into the historic railroad station. This is a happy, hands-on experience place that the public is embracing with great joy, said Ramunni. We opened this living historical museum in early July 2021 and visitors jaws drop when they enter and see hundreds of accordions in a room with 12 high wood-beamed ceilings and windows. It is the only room in the original 8,500 square foot station dating back to when it was built in 1872, he said. The rest of the building was destroyed in a 2001 fire and had to be re-built to modern-day specs. Between 1984 and 2002, Ramunni used the historic station to house his CPA business. In 2001 he sold it to the Connecticut Railroad Historical Association, after it was heavily damaged by a fire. Visitors to his museum today are enthusiastically engaged when he tells them folk stories about what happened in the building over the last 147 years at the crossroads where thousands of people passed through every week. In 2011, Ramunni created his accordion museum in a garage on his own property in North Canaan. In July, he relocated the collection. He also repairs, buys and sells these remarkable vintage accordions, and has more than 10,000 pieces of sheet music and accordion-related books for sale. He gives lessons, and provides his accordion-playing talents for special events. Vienna, Austria in 1829 was where the first official accordion was patented, Ramunni said. In America, the accordion became very popular as the West was being settled, and it became an integral part of many emigrating families from across the globe. Being portable and musically-rich with numerous mechanical reeds and sounds, it was played in happy and harrowing times of peoples lives including throughout the Civil War, World War I and II. People who play accordions offer their personal gifts of music to the listeners. Frequently they create lasting relationships with other people through their music, he said. That is what is happening with this newly-relocated display of accordions. Visitors here experience a great deal of joy and excitement. This museums 40 x 24 foot historical room is helping people to reconnect to themselves and unite with others again, according to Ramunni. It offers an energizing and really beautiful atmosphere. It is my blessed joy to witness true excitement and wonder of visitors of all ages as they tour. Visitors walk through taking deep, appreciative and very long breaths of wonder and joy. They especially enjoy my old Wurlitzer jukebox, and I play a lot of polkas, he said. The New England Accordion Connection & Museum Company is located in the Canaan Union Railroad station in North Canaan next to the Connecticut Railroad Historical Association Museum and the Great Falls Brewing Company restaurant. The accordion museum is open on weekends, and by appointment on weekdays by calling 860-833-1374 or emailing to ramunni@comcast.net. To learn more, visit newenglandaccordionconnectionandmuseumcompany.com/ HAMDEN Educational supplies retailer Lakeshore Learning Store will close its Dixwell Avenue location early next month. A manager at the store, located in the Marketplace at Hamden shopping center at 2335 Dixwell Ave., said the closing is the result of Lakeshore Learnings lease running out. Officials with the California-based chain were not able to agree on a new lease, she said. The landlord for the Marketplace at Hamden is Boston-based Wilder Co. Wilder officials were not immediately available for comment. Information about how many of the stores employees would be losing their jobs was not immediately available. The Hamden location is Lakeshore Learnings only Connecticut store and one of four in New England, according to the companys website. The company has more than 60 stores in 30 states. Lakeshore Learning opened in Hamden in early 2010, according to information from the towns Economic & Neighborhood Development office. The store occupies the space that once was a Sears Hardware store. The stores focus is on providing education materials, toys and games for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. Sue Morgan, who teaches preschool special education classes in the Bethel school system, said she has been getting classroom supplies from the Hamden store for years. Morgan said when she visited the store last week, she was told it would be closing Oct. 3. Im really disappointed they are leaving because there is really nothing else like this in the state, Morgan said. With all the vacant stores out there, youd think they would be able to find space nearby. But for a retailer that has been priced out of its current space, finding a nearby alternative isnt as easy as it seems, said David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac Universitys School of Business. For one thing it may not have the same level of customer traffic, Cadden said. Or the amount of parking might make it a less attractive location. Retail landlords need to carefully evaluate the ability of retailers before raising the rent dramatically, he said. If you get too greedy in the current economy, you could be left with a vacant space for a long time, Cadden said. luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com EAST HAVEN The state Department of Public Health is working with the Caroline Manor care facility to relocate some of the residents of the Caroline Manor care facility where two employees overdosed Wednesday while the owner addresses multiple alleged state fire code violations, Fire Chief Matt Marcarelli said Thursday night. Caroline Manor had a surprise inspection last month during which 19 alleged fire code violations were found, according to the towns fire marshal. The facility currently is in the midst of responding to the Aug. 26 inspection, which resulted in a rather lengthy list of state fire code violations, said Marcarelli. After meeting with the owner Thursday, It appears the ombudsman has worked with the staff to relocate voluntarily some of the clients, Marcarelli said. The remainder will be able to stay until the violations are corrected. Marcarelli said he was told the residents being moved must be relocated within 15 miles. Only about 6-10 will remain in the facility, which he earlier said has about a dozen residents. Those remaining will not occupy the portion with violations, Marcarelli said. The building is protected with a sprinkler system, which offers a level of protection, he said. Marcarelli shared documents on the inspection Thursday, the day after two employees of Caroline Manor allegedly overdosed on fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Marcarelli said the two workers were found purely by happenstance by a visiting nurse and had it not been for that, they could have expired. State Department of Public Health spokesman Chris Boyle said, The Connecticut Department of Public Health is currently on-site and conducting an investigation at Caroline Manor Resident Care Home in East Haven. Counseling services are available for the current residents there. No further updates on the investigation are available. Messages seeking comment were left with owner Tim Conroy of Higganum. A man found in the basement Wednesday was in cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated by firefighter paramedics, Marcarelli said. A woman found on a stairway was in respiratory arrest. She was administered Narcan and resuscitated, he said. Their names had not been released Thursday. The visiting nurse had stopped by to bring her client his medication and found the woman near the top of a stairway, breathing irregularly, according to a recording of her 911 call that police released Thursday. The nurse reported the possible overdoses around 3:07 p.m., said police Capt. Joseph Murgo, who identified the person she was speaking to as Dispatcher Lindsay Martus. The two employees were the only staff members working at the time they were found, leaving no one to supervise or watch over the residents of the facility, Murgo and Marcarelli said. Marcarelli, asked how there could only be two staff members present in the middle of the afternoon, said Caroline Manor is licensed as a board and care facility, which is different from a skilled nursing facility, with different licensing and inspection requirements. The people that reside there cant live on their own but they can care for themselves, Marcarelli said. The employees will prepare meals and just look after the residents ... but theyre not doing health care. Marcarelli said he believed Caroline Manor, which from the outside looks more like a large house than a nursing facility, has around 12 residents, although he didnt know the exact number. Marcarelli, who met with Department of Public Health officials Thursday, said, The real issue is the code violation. The state is involved based upon the fire marshals re-inspection, the fact that the building owner has failed to get in touch with us and now Wednesdays two overdoses, he said. While there were electrical issues, The real issues involve egress doors, Marcarelli said including the fact that one of the buildings two front doors has been boarded up and several interior doors have been removed. This incident is an active, ongoing investigation, and developing situation that is a coordinated effort between our police department, our fire department, and the (state) Department of Public Health, said Mayor Joe Carfora. Most importantly, all involved want to make sure that patients are appropriately protected and cared for, he said. With that being said, I have confidence that if the investigation warrants criminal charges, an arrest will be made. According to an Aug. 30 letter to Conroy from Deputy Chief and Fire Marshal Charles Miller, inspectors found 19 violations, including electrical and wiring issues, multiplug adapters used in place of permanent outlets, improper use of extension cords, failure to provide and properly maintain fire extinguishers, failure to install fire extinguishing equipment in a cooking exhaust hood and failure to provide required emergency lighting. The facility was given 30 days to correct the violations. It was due to be reinspected on Oct. 6, said Murgo. mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com NEW HAVEN CT Folk, after shifting this year from a one-day CT Folk Festival to a series of roots concerts in Edgewood Park, will take its new format into autumn and finish with a flourish Saturday with a three-act concert featuring singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah and local standouts Thabisa and Phat A$tronaut. The final Folk At The Edge concert, sponsored by Grassy Hill Entertainment, will run Saturday from 3 p.m., when the gates open, to 9 p.m. It will take place in the section of the park off Edgewood Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, near the ranger station. In the midst of the challenges of this past year, we have taken the opportunity to strengthen our existing partnerships and explore ways in which new alliances can help to further engage and celebrate our diverse community, said CT Folk board President Lisa Kaston. We invite and strongly encourage people to support local artists, live music, independent music venues, and arts organizations such as CT Folk, said Event Director Nicole Heriot-Mikula. We must celebrate the magic that live music creates and the community it brings together. Kiah rose to fame in 2019 as a member of the roots group Songs of Our Native Daughters, along with Leyla McCalla, Rhiannon Giddens and Allison Russell. Blending both alt-rock and old-time music influences, Kiah has been hailed by Rolling Stone as one of Americanas great up-and-coming secrets. Thabisa aka Thabisa Rich is a native of South Africa who is a city resident with both a huge voice and a personality to match. She has become both a local favorite and an artist to watch for broader exposure in the near future. Shes coming off a comparatively busy summer, given the current state of life, with appearances at the Westville Village Art Walk, International Festival of Arts & Ideas and now Folk At The Edge, among others. Phat A$tronaut, an experimental, deeply rhythmic pop-soul ensemble from New Haven, is another act thats of New Haven but not necessarily destined to be confined here. Gates for the event open at 3 p.m. It will include a mini-Green Expo featuring childrens yoga from Full of Joy Yoga at 3:30 p.m., handmade artisans, local nonprofit organizations and food trucks as well as a beer and wine tent sponsored by New England Brewing Co. Outside food and picnicking is allowed. Individual tickets are $40 free for children aged 12 and under. New Haven residents can buy discounted tickets at $20 each. (Up to six tickets must show ID at main gate.) Tickets are available at CTFolk.org. A portion of ticket proceeds will benefit CT Folks mission to engage, entertain and inspire a diverse audience through music and conversation, and to help create a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable community, organizers said. Attendees will be required to wear masks when they are not seated. For more information, go to CTFolk.org. To stay up to date on new acts to come in the future, follow CT Folk at Facebook.com/CTFolk and Instagram.com/CT_Folk. mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com An attorney for the New Haven officer charged with DUI in a Las Vegas crash, during which another officer died, said a judge Thursday took the officer off house arrest. He can travel to Connecticut to await adjudication at home, said Robert Ferraros defense attorney, Gabriel Grasso. If Ferraro were not granted that by the court, he would have had to find an apartment to rent in the Las Vegas area, Grasso said. The attorney said Ferraro is still under intense supervision and has to do a weekly check-in call over the phone with authorities and has an alcohol monitor that requires random tests. Ferraro also is unable to drive until further notice and must forfeit his passport. Among other clients, Grasso previously represented O.J. Simpson in the infamous Palace Station Casino memorabilia case, according to his website. Authorities contend Ferraro was driving a 2020 Rolls Royce Cullinan around 4 a.m. Sept. 17 when he allegedly entered an intersection at a high speed and began to lose control. He allegedly then drove off the side of the road, hitting a 2021 Ford Mustang, utility poles, landscaping and a fire hydrant, authorities said. The car turned onto its roof, ejecting fellow New Haven Officer Joshua Castellano from the vehicle. Castellano later died at the hospital, according to a release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Castellano will be be honored with a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Marys Church on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, according to his obituary. Castellano was returned home to Connecticut, with officers from multiple police departments standing in front of New Haven police headquarters on Union Avenue Tuesday to salute his casket. New Haven Officers Matthew Borges and John Truhart, as well as two women from San Antonio, Texas, also were in the vehicle and suffered minor injuries, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. New Haven Interim Chief Renee Dominguez said Saturday that Ferraro was placed on administrative leave with pay, per the departments policy, and that the Police Department will conduct its own investigation. Borges and Truhart will not be placed on administrative leave, Dominguez said. She said the two officers have not yet returned to work, as theyre taking accrued time off. Both have returned to Connecticut, she said. Grasso said Ferraro and Castellano were close friends from high school and were in the police academy together. He said the two, with two other friends from the academy, had an annual tradition of taking vacations together. Not everyone in the car was associated with the same New Haven police academy class, he said. Every year they do a trip for whoever can make a trip. For the last couple years because of COVID they hadnt done a trip. It was the first trip in a while and they were here for the weekend to be tourists in Las Vegas, he said. It is a huge, huge devastating loss thats being felt, he said. Regardless of what ends up happening in this case, its a huge loss for everyone obviously the Castellano family but its just devastating for Robert Ferraro to have lost his best friend ... this way, Grasso said. Grasso said no one disputes that it is a terrible tragedy. He said that, although Ferraro is headed back to Connecticut, he is unsure whether he should attend Castellanos funeral. Do you show up or not show up? You dont want to step on anybodys feelings, he said. He lost a brother. ... Its a tragic situation. Grasso said Thursdays court date was in Nevadas justice court, or its lower trial court, where misdemeanors are often heard. It functions as the preliminary hearing court for district court, he said, which is the higher trial court. He said that, according to Nevadas legal statute, the state must provide probable cause whether there is slight or marginal evidence. Court records show Ferraros next appearance as Oct. 7. In a letter released Monday by New Haven police spokesman Officer Scott Shumway, Castellanos family said that amid their unimaginable heartbreak and grief over the tragic loss of Joshua, we are comforted by the overwhelming love and expressions of support from Joshuas Police Officer family, his friends and the Yale community. Joshuas life was a gift, and we are grateful that he could share part of it with his colleagues at the New Haven Police Department and with the countless community members he encountered while proudly serving on the police force, the familys letter said. Joshua approached his life and work with unmatched passion and excitement, and his genuine love for people was infectious. NEW HAVEN A city man pleaded guilty Thursday in connection with the attempted robbery of a New Haven restaurant, during which he allegedly shot an employee, in April 2015, according to federal authorities. Treizy Lopez, 24, of New Haven, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven to one count of attempted interference with commerce by robbery, federal authorities said in a statement. In the case, Lopez, Tythrone Ford and another man entered the Smokin Wings restaurant, located on Congress Avenue in New Haven, at about 11 p.m. April 11, 2015, and demanded money at gunpoint, federal authorities said in the statement, citing court documents and statements made in court. Lopez subsequently discharged a firearm and shot a female employee in the stomach, federal authorities said in the statement. Lopez, Ford and their associate then fled the restaurant. Responding New Haven Police officers subsequently located a .22 caliber revolver in a nearby trash can. About eight hours before the Smokin Wings robbery, Lopez and another individual, armed with handguns, entered Sapiaos Market, located on Lexington Avenue in Bridgeport, and demanded money. During the attempted robbery, the owner of the market, Jose Salgado, was shot and killed, federal authorities said in the statement. Ford was waiting in a car outside of the market during the attempted robbery. Forensic analysis of the revolver found in the trash can in New Haven, and projectiles collected from the scene of both attempted robberies, revealed that the gun was used in both shootings. DNA collected from the gun revealed that both Lopez and Ford possessed the gun. Lopez faces up to 20 years in prison; Meyer scheduled sentencing for Dec. 16, 2021. Ford pleaded guilty to the same charge on September 21, 2021, and awaits sentencing. Lopez is incarcerated in state custody after being convicted of offenses related to his role in the robbery and homicide at Sapiaos Market, federal authorities said in the statement. The cold case investigation was conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the New Haven Police Department, with the assistance of the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Peter D. Markle, Jocelyn C. Kaoutzanis, and Nathaniel J. Gentile through the Justices Departments Project Safe Neighborhoods program and Project Longevity. BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) A Florida day care worker is accused of slapping a 4-month-old several times before twisting the baby's leg until it broke, police said. A family member brought the child to Manatee Memorial Hospital on Sept. 16, and hospital staff called police to report suspected child abuse, Bradenton police Capt. Brian Thiers said. WARNER ROBINS, Ga. (AP) City leaders in Warner Robins are considering new laws to regulate large parties after a teenage girl was shot to death and four others wounded by gunfire at a large weekend party during the Labor Day weekend. The city requires a permit for parades or picketing, but no ordinance or permit for large gatherings like block parties, WMAZ-TV reported. ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) A U.S. District Court judge has ruled against plans by the Native Village of Eklutna to build a tribal gaming hall about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of downtown Anchorage. The tribe had intended to offer pull-tabs, bingo and lotteries at the site, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The tribal government has said the gaming hall would support jobs, tourism and the economy. NEW HAVEN Tweed New Haven Regional Airport can install four non-flood-proofed modular trailers within a potential flood zone, according to a key city agency. Avports LLC, Tweeds contract operator, plans to install the trailers below the base flood elevation, as the City Plan Commission unanimously approved it as part of its previous approval to renovate the existing terminal and the airports older administration building into departure and arrival terminals. The variance to the flood damage prevention ordinance came on the evening before the airports proposed 43-year lease goes before the Board of Alders. Storm Elsa brought flooding at Tweed New Haven in July. New Haven seeks change to Tweed airport deal; neighbors call it 'window dressing' The alders will consider the lease, which is part of a broader proposal under which Avports, owned by a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, would fund a $100 million airport expansion plan, in a meeting at 7 p.m. tonight in City Hall. The four leased trailers and the work to the terminals all are part of the plan to accommodate a new airline, Avelo Airlines, which announced plans May 6 to make Tweed its first East Coast base and begin flying from Tweed to four cities in Florida in early November. Avelo has agreed to contribute $1.2 million for the immediate improvements. Avelo announced plans this month to serve a fifth Florida city, Palm Beach, in addition to previously-announced service to Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers. The four trailers would include a holdroom trailer to provide additional seating for departing passengers, an office trailer, a check-in trailer with ticket counters outside the existing terminals and departure building entrance and a catering trailer on the aircraft tarmac, said Billy Ferrell, an architect with PJL Architects of Houston. The office and holdroom trailers would be connected to the departure terminal to meet airport security and operations requirements, he said. The modular trailers are not floodproofed by their manufacturer and in a flooding event, the structures would be susceptible to being damaged, the application states. The trailers will be leased and include conditions to be insured to cover losses or damages, it says. The trailers are intended to be temporary ... because the state building inspectors said they will be temporary, and will be limited in use to three years, Avports lawyer Joe Williams of Shipman & Goodwin told the commission. They will be needed only until a new, larger, 74,000-square-foot terminal can be built on the East Haven side of the airport, Williams said. Tweed and Avports have yet to apply to build the new terminal. Obviously, this is a unique property, Williams said. Its been operating as an airport for going on 100 years and is the only property in the city like it. City Plan members were satisfied with the application. These are temporary and regardless of what happens with approval of a potential new terminal, this approval will expire in 36 months, said Alder Adam Marchand, D-25, the Board of Alders representative on the commission. I think it makes sense to grant this approval so these temporary structures can be built and put in place. Commission Chairwoman Leslie Radcliff, Vice Chairman Ed Mattison and alternate Carl Goldfield all had little in the way of questions or comments other than to say they supported the application. mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com NEW BRITAIN School officials move to temporarily suspend in-person classes for remote learning has been upended by the State Department of Education, according to officials. Two weeks after the start of an in-person fall semester, New Britain High School officials said Wednesday they would be sending students back home for the rest of the week in what they termed a refresh and reintegration. But a spokesperson from the Department of Education said the states education department told school officials they cannot shut down the school, meaning it will be open Thursday. The district is now aware that their actions are in conflict with state guidance that does not recommend that they move to full remote learning, spokesperson Eric Scoville said in an email, adding the department is providing support in response to behavioral health needs the district had identified. That decision came after New Britain High Schools Principal Damon Pearce sent a letter out addressing the schools roughly 2,000-person student body and parents. The vast majority (of students) have adjusted well and are acclimated to this school year, Pearce wrote in a letter announcing the move Wednesday. However, there are some students who have not been able to adjust according to the high expectations we hold at the high school. Because of this, we are hitting the refresh button and restarting the beginning of the school year. Students were told they would be home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Pearces letter did not elaborate on the reason behind the decision, citing only the difficult transition. But in a statement posted to Facebook, Mayor Erin Stewart said her office had been told by the school district that the decision was made because of a recent spate of disciplinary issues specifically vandalism and fighting. Stewart said she was disappointed in the decision and blamed the situation on a lack of consequences for bad behavior. What it comes down to is the fact that there are no consequences for bad behavior, and this is the end result, Stewart wrote. The board of education must make finding a solution to this problem their highest priority. There has been an outcry over students participating in a viral TikTok devious licks trend, where students film themselves destroying or vandalizing school property. Connecticut educators and lawmakers have been vocal about their concerns earlier this week, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on the social media platform to testify before a congressional committee in response to the trend. Social media influence hasnt only affected the high school, but younger students as well. Johanna Robles, the principal of Pulaski Middle School, cited social media as the biggest challenge so far this school year. The school district later held a town hall to address concerns. There, Pearce told parents he wouldnt have made the request to temporarily suspend in-person instruction if I didnt think it was absolutely necessary. We really needed to pull the entire administrative and support staff team together to really begin to identify and support students, and apply those consequences where appropriate, for the limited number of students that are making, quite honestly, a lot of disruption and distraction here in the school, Pearce said. He also said school officials are not ignoring student behavior. We are obligated as public school administrators to really approach this process thoughtfully and in a way that not only applies a consequence but can also help the student improve and grow, Pearce said. According to a schedule posted on the schools website, officials planned to gradually transition back to full in-person attendance next week. After the state stepped in, Pearce said in an update that the school would be operating on early dismissal schedule for Thursday and Friday, with students dismissed at noon. Students will go back to a normal schedule beginning Monday, Sept. 27. The education department has been prioritizing an in-person return across the state for months now. We want all students to have the opportunity to be in the classroom, where they learn best, and where they have peer and adult support, access to nutrition and health resources, and the social-emotional interaction that is so imperative to their personal and educational development and long-term success, the department said in a July 15 release detailing back-to-school measures. Staff writer Liz Hardaway contributed to this report. MADISON Police Chief John Jack Drumm urged town officials this week to bolster the ranks in his department by funding additional officers, saying that such action is a necessary response to citizen complaints over carjackings and thefts. In some parts of Madison, calls for police service were up 45 percent this summer, Drumm told members of the Board of Selectmen this week, echoing fears in several Shoreline towns that crime especially those committed by juveniles is on the rise. Drumm said he wants to increase the police department ranks by one or two officers to handle the boost in calls for service, as well as requests for nightly patrols in some areas of town. The department has 27 uniformed officers, with three more expected to soon come aboard from the police academy, Drumm said. Widespread issue Whats happening in Madison is happening across the state and probably beyond the borders of Connecticut, Drumm said, adding that several cars stolen from Madison this summer were later recovered in New York. Middletown and Cromwell are also dealing with stolen vehicles. Drumm did not respond to requests for comment following the meeting, but Police Capt. Joseph Race provided statistics Thursday showing that recent increases in motor vehicle thefts and thefts from motor vehicles appear to have peaked between 2019 and 2020. For example, Race said that Madison police have recorded 22 stolen cars as of Thursday afternoon, which, he added, may mean just over 30 will occur by the end of the year. Madison recorded 31 vehicle thefts last year, the most over a five-year period. The town is on pace to have 53 thefts from vehicles in 2021, down from 72 reported thefts in 2019, data shows. Crimes across Connecticut Statewide data on car thefts paints a similarly complex picture of the issue in Connecticut. For example, while the number of car thefts in Connecticut rose to their highest level in a decade in 2020, that spike came after an all-time low in reported car thefts in 2019, according to the Connecticut Mirror. Thefts are also on the decline in larger cities, the Mirror reported, while increasing in more suburban communities such as Madison. First Selectwoman Peggy Lyons, who also did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, said during the meeting that Madison is dealing with a rash of car break-ins in our neighborhoods. Those crimes are largely targeting residents who leave their keys or key fobs in or near their car, Drumm said, telling the board that more than 90 percent of thefts occur in this way. Addressing the situation In addition to increasing nightly patrols in the area of town south of Route 1 where Drumm said the largest increase in calls came from police have also put up electronic billboards urging residents to lock their vehicles. People have to realize we cannot be in one specific neighborhood for a nine-hour period on a midnight shift, said Lt. R. Neal Mulhern. We have an entire town that has to be covered. Drumm expressed some frustration during the meeting, saying that officials had on several occasions passed over his requests for money to expand the police force during annual budget discussions. At this point, I think in light of whats happening in crime, juvenile justice across this state and other places, I think the time is now ... to move it up (in importance), Drumm said. Budget discussions for the next fiscal year will likely begin around December, town officials said. Ed Dowling, chairman of the Madison Board of Police Commissioners, said the group is surveying existing resources, and plans to craft a budget to address recent crimes. By increasing the size of the force to around 32 officers, Drumm said that he hoped to establish a dedicated traffic unit that could address speeding another area of rising concern in town. Cassandra Day / Hearst Connecticut Media MIDDLETOWN The Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs and Connecticut Funeral Directors Association will hold a military funeral ceremony for eight U.S. veterans who had unclaimed cremated remains, including veterans of WWI, WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam War. It will take place Oct. 1, rain or shine, at 10:30 a.m. at the State Veterans Cemetery, 317 Bow Lane in Middletown. Veterans Affairs Commissioner Thomas J. Saadi will lead the ceremony, which will be supported by directors of various funeral homes from across the state, according to a press release. The House of Representatives has asked the federal government to commence the process of securing the release of Nigerians illegally detaine... The House of Representatives has asked the federal government to commence the process of securing the release of Nigerians illegally detained abroad. The resolution was sequel to a motion moved by Dennis Idahosa (APC, Edo), on Thursday, during plenary. Moving the motion, Mr Idahosa said several Nigerians were languishing in detention centres across the world without adequate legal counsel or intervention. He advised the federal government to ascertain the number of Nigerians in foreign prisons, considering the contributions and remittances to the country by Nigerians in the diaspora. Many Nigerians are languishing in foreign prisons, some of whom are being illegally detained, while some are exposed to labour exploitation, poor living conditions, discrimination, sexual exploitation and other forms of dehumanizing treatments, he stated. He added that about 16,500 Nigerians who are in prisons outside the country were convicted without legal representation and not knowing why they are in jail. The Committees on Mandate on Foreign Affairs, Justice and Inter-Parliamentary Relations were mandated to ensure compliance. Babagana Zulum, Borno State Governor, on Thursday said thousands of Boko Haram members have surrendered. Zulum disclosed this during... Babagana Zulum, Borno State Governor, on Thursday said thousands of Boko Haram members have surrendered. Zulum disclosed this during a Town Hall meeting in Maiduguri, the state capital. Describing the decision of the terrorists as a welcome development, the governor said the Nigerian Army, Department of State Services, DSS, and police have been supporting his administration over handling of the repentant Boko Haram members. Zulum said the Army, DSS, and police are supporting and helping his government ensure the success of the process. The governor also disclosed that his government is working with the federal government on a framework for the surrender of Boko Haram members. The ongoing surrender of Boko Haram members is a welcome development. So far, thousands of them have surrendered. We have been receiving tremendous support from the Nigerian army, Nigerian police and DSS, and others at ensuring the success of this very process. Governments at state and federal level are working assiduously to establish a sustainable framework that will ensure proper handling of these processes, Zulum said. I've been vaccinated, and I've never had COVID. I've been vaccinated, and I have had COVID. I've not been vaccinated, and I've never had COVID. I've not been vaccinated, and I have had COVID. Vote View Results This is a story about notes written by Tulane University freshmen on small scraps of paper. The notes were stuffed in a tiny hole, in the wall of a dorm room, where somebody might find them, or might not. They were simple messages from one newcomer to another. Nothing terribly profound, really. But in a world of instantaneous, not-always-encouraging communication, the tiny notes seem somehow precious. Jack Harty arrived at Tulane from Newport Beach, California, in mid-August, at the start of the 2021 school year. He was ready to ride the Green Wave wherever it might take him, hopefully medical school. Naturally, he sizzled with apprehension as he lay in bed in his Monroe Hall dorm room. The first night was kind of overwhelming, he said. For some reason, Harty said, his eye settled on a piece of gum stuck to the brick dorm wall. It wasnt chewing gum. It was that rubbery stuff you use to hang posters instead of thumbtacks. Beside the gum was a cavity in one of the bricks, just a bean-sized bubble baked into the clay. And inside the cavity, there seemed to be a wadded piece of paper. I had a feeling it would be a note, Harty said. I had a weird feeling. Harty used a pencil to extract the torn scrap of paper, which was folded six times and rolled. The handwriting was difficult to decipher at first. Hartys roommate Nico Sabia said it was awesome and fun to find the note, but it took a couple of tries to read it. The cipher read: To the inheritors of (room) MO921, Welcome! You got the best room and view in the building and it may not seem great at first, but youll learn to love it. Enjoy the view and make the most out of this year. Itll be over before you know it. The note writer was right. The view out the ninth-floor window was spectacular. You could see the whole city, all the way to the Superdome. In addition to his words of welcome, the note writer offered to answer any questions or help Harty settle in. Dont hesitate to reach out, he wrote above his phone number. The note was reassuring. Hardy didnt feel quite as alone as he had. To him, the most amazing part was the date written on the back. The note had been hidden since 2018, which, to the 18-year-old, seemed like a super long time. Los Angeles-born Jonathan Gan was preparing to move out of room MO921 after his first year of college four years ago when he penned the tiny note. Gan, now 23, studied marketing, Spanish and public health, while volunteering as a campus emergency medical technician. Gan loved being an EMT, handling dislocated shoulders at the student gym, alcohol overindulgence at a bar at the edge of campus and other student emergencies. The job made him especially sensitive to the homesickness, anxiety binges and depression that can darken student life and occasionally turn tragic. Once, he said, he was called to the site of a suicide. I learned a critical life lesson, he said. You cant always tell on the surface what people are going through. By the time he graduated, Gan had fallen in love with New Orleans hook, line and sinker. So much so that the citys culinary culture had entered his vocabulary. 'The world is your oyster, definitely rings true in New Orleans, he said, whether you like it chargrilled, Rockefeller or with mignonette sauce. Gan, who now works for a health care startup company that caters to underserved communities, said he was mystified when he received a text in mid-August, from an unknown number. It just said, MO921 reunion? Gan recalled. The cryptic text had come from Harty, who was reaching back over the years to make contact with the encouraging former occupant of his dorm room. Gan said he was amazed that his note had survived so long without being found. What inspired Gan to hide a note in a hole in his dorm room wall in the first place? As he explained, when he first moved in, he was hanging a poster on the brick wall, using that rubbery stuff that substitutes for thumbtacks, when he spied a sliver of paper protruding from a tiny hole in the brick wall. See, Gan was the middleman in all this. He said that he pulled out the crumbled paper, which turned out to be a note that began Dear future 921 resident, Please enjoy this room. As Gan put it, This is one of those pass-it-along situations. Delaney Connor said that the half-inch hole in the brick wall was at eye level from her raised bed in room 921 when she was a Tulane freshman in 2016. It was the perfect spot to store her dental floss pick, she remembered, laughing. Connor, who grew up in Seattle, pointed out that New Orleans is so flat, you rarely get a vista of the city. But from the ninth-floor dorm room near Willow Street, you can watch the sunset over the city and see spectacular storms roll past. As she and her roommate packed up to leave 921 in 2017, she knew it was the view shed miss most. I cant recall my thought process, Connor said, but somehow she was inspired to squeeze a note into the tiny hole. Back when she was a kid, her dad found an old magazine and a soda can hidden in the wall of the family home, during a renovation. So he and his daughter made a time capsule of their own and hid it in the architecture for someone else to discover. Maybe thats what sparked her to leave a note in a hole for posterity. When he found Connors note in 2018, Gan called and sent her a shot or two of the view for old times sake. Connor, 23, said shes happy she started a mini tradition in room 921. Im very pleased to hear people are paying it forward, she said. Harty, his roommate Sabia and Gan met in person at a burger joint near campus in late August for lunch, where they discussed the pros and cons of dorm life, the food in the university commons, the wonders of Carnival and the impending hurricane. Connor graduated in 2020, having studied public health plus architectural design. So far, shes stayed in New Orleans, working for a nonprofit organization. Gan said he wishes he'd invited Connor to lunch with Harty and Sabia. But, he said, it took him until the morning of the meeting to find the note that he'd packed away, and by then it seemed too late to call. Hurricane Ida disrupted Harty and Sabia's plunge into campus life. As the storm approached, the two young men evacuated to Sabia's home in Chicago. When they come back, and when they've completed their first year and prepare to leave MO921, they say they'll probably continue the note-hiding custom. +10 Theres a big dead alligator sticking out of a pink dumpster on Perrier Street -- No lie The tail of a rather large, dead alligator protruded from a pink dumpster at the corner of Perrier and Upperline streets at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Th The raw bar menu at Sidecar Patio & Oyster Bar is as detailed as a wine list and reads like a love letter to the world of oysters, routinely listing a dozen or more varieties on offer. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the downtown restaurant is showing some love for people who bring those oysters to the table. The woman behind Sidecar's oyster program, Lindsay Allday, has developed close bonds with the producers, especially the local ones who are working to develop the niche for specialty, place-based oysters in Louisiana. Many of their operations were devastated by Hurricane Ida, damage that only compounded the losses many took from Hurricane Zeta last year. So on Monday, Sept. 27, Sidecar and its attached sibling bar, the Rusty Nail, will host a fundraiser for three Louisiana oyster farmers and regular suppliers to help them through Idas aftermath. The event, dubbed Help the Hand that Harvests is a happy hour benefit from 5-8 p.m. Beneficiaries are Louisiana Oyster Co. and Bright Side Oysters, both in Grand Isle, and Tesvich Oyster Farms in Empire. We make our living because of them, we just want to give them some love back, said Allday. Tickets ($45 or $100) include specialty cocktails and sparkling wine, raw oysters and jambalaya. A Sidecar regular donated funds to pay for the nights oysters, and the brands Tanqueray, Ketel One and Popup Sparkling Wine are co-sponsoring the event, so all proceeds go directly to the oyster farmers. Food and restaurant news in your inbox Every Thursday we give you the scoop on NOLA dining. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up +22 At Sidecar, an ever-expanding New Orleans oyster bar shucks open new possibilities A good oyster bar has personality. Theres the repartee between regulars and shucker, the arms-length view of the craft, the way the oyster b Its one of a growing number of outreach efforts from the New Orleans-area hospitality businesses, which are themselves still dealing with the financial tumult of the pandemic, along with losses from Idas impact here. See stories below for more. Help the Hand that Harvests Sept. 27, 5-8 p.m. Sidecar Patio & Oyster Bar and the Rusty Nail 1114 Constance St. Get tickets here +9 Racing to help her bayou home, a New Orleans chef taps a potent grassroots network They are going door to door, though often those doors are off their hinges and the roofs that once covered them are gone. +9 In this bayou town, Louisiana fishers team up to feed neighbors in need after Ida Milton Naquin would otherwise be running his shrimp boat out of Delcambre with white shrimp season in full swing. But instead, last Thursday h The New Orleans City Council unanimously voted Thursday to launch investigations into Entergy New Orleans preparation and response to Hurricane Ida, after much of the city was left without power for more than a week following the storm. The measures were the latest steps from the council, which regulates ENO, aimed at putting pressure on the company and holding it accountable for the aftermath from the storm. All eight of the companys transmission lines failed during the Category 4 hurricane, and as residents were left without air conditioning, some Southeast Louisiana residents died due to the excessive heat. The council voted to begin searching for a consulting group to do a study on potential ownership options for a power utility. City Council President Helena Moreno said the study was not necessarily aimed at having city ownership of the power system but rather to explore the citys options. Still, those options could include breaking Entergy New Orleans current monopoly in the city. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not a push to do any one of these things not to bring in another company, not to municipalize, whatever, she said. We just dont know, but this is really a push for more information. The council also voted to have the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigate Entergys electric transmission failures, since the council only has jurisdiction over ENO. Originally, the council had given ENO an Oct. 1 deadline to deliver a report on its handling of the February winter storms, in which the company cut off power to more than three times as many households than was needed. The council postponed that until Nov. 1 due to the storm, but it was a reminder that the company has been under ongoing scrutiny from the council long before Ida. Additionally, the council unanimously passed Councilmember Kristin Gisleson Palmers resolution to state it wouldnt support Entergy New Orleans raising customers rates to cover Hurricane Ida costs until a careful evaluation of proposed increases, to ensure such costs are reasonable and prudent, and not a result of any failure of Entergy New Orleans to adequately maintain and strengthen the utility infrastructure. Let us also not forget that many people died, Palmer said. "Most of those who passed were a part of our citys most vulnerable populations and suffered in sweltering heat. Asking for the people of New Orleans to pay more is not going to work for us. New Orleans Council President fires shot across Entergys bow New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno Tuesday announced she is launching an investigation into Entergy New Orleans failed handling Yes. A new building will give the team a needed boost. It's better to just renovate the Smoothie King Center. No, save the money. The problems with the team run much deeper. Only if the Pels raise the money with a bake sale. Vote View Results Hopes for a revival in large events at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center this autumn have been dashed by Hurricane Ida, which did more than $1 million worth of damage to the facility and made potential conventioneers wary of coming to the city. The outlook for the city's convention business was already shaky because of the latest surge in COVD-19 cases, which made several of the events set to take place in coming months vulnerable to cancellation. Now, 11 of the 34 events that had been booked from September through the end of the year have been canceled, including some that would have attracted tens of thousands of visitors, Convention Center officials said this week. "The biggest challenge in keeping the [convention] groups in place is the general misperception for how New Orleans fared through the storm, during an already tenuous condition nationally due to COVID," Tim Hemphill, the facility's head of sales and marketing, told the Convention Center board of commissioners Wednesday. The International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference, which had been scheduled to commence on Sept. 11, was canceled right after Ida hit, when it was obvious the city wouldn't even have begun to recover in time. With attendance typically of about 15,000 and more than 750 exhibitors, the conference had been expected to be the first major event since the pandemic began. The board also heard on Wednesday that the hurricane had inflicted extensive damage to the building's massive roof, which caused dozens of leaks and water damage, requiring more than $1 million of repairs. In the wake of the hurricane, the Convention Center was pressed into service as a temporary medical facility and hosted emergency service workers and U.S. National Guard personnel. Adam Straight, the building's head of operations, told the board that it had ceased this week to operate as an emergency staging post. He expects that the repairs should be completed by Oct. 15. But there was more bad news on the events front. Last Friday, the Produce Marketing Association said that its huge "Fresh Summit" event scheduled for the end of October wouldn't proceed. The last one of those, at the Anaheim Convention Center, in California in 2019, had 24,000 attendees and 1,700 exhibitors. The PMA Fresh Summit was due to take over the entire Convention Center and all of its halls. But last Friday, PMA CEO Cathy Burns said in a video message posted on the organization's website, "We had hoped to be able to bring everybody together for Fresh Summit 2021 at the end of October, but given the impact of Hurricane Ida on New Orleans and now Tropical Storm Nicholas we have decided we are unable to put (it) on." She went on to explain that it took weeks on the ground prior to the three-day event to prepare. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up "We are simply not confident that the infrastructure necessary for an event the size and the scale of Fresh Summit will be in place," Burns said. The Solar Power International convention which had been due to commence on Monday, Sep. 20, also was canceled. In 2019, SPI attracted 19,000 visitors and 700 exhibitors at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. Hemphill said that there are still 23 events booked at the center through to the end of the year, including three with the potential to attract very large crowds: the American Academy of Ophthalmology on Nov. 15, with expected attendance of 20,000; the American Kennel Club on Nov. 21, with 17,000 visitors expected; and the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 17, with 20,000 expected. The center and the city's tourism marketing agency, New Orleans & Co., are pulling out all the stops to try and attract attendees, Hemphill said. New Orleans & Co has produced a video, for example, aimed at encouraging potential attendees to the Specialty Coffee Association confab starting Oct. 1. In it, Walt Leger III, head of strategy at New Orleans & Co. says, "You'll have seen the news lately and realize that heavy winds blew through our region lately." But he emphasizes the city's resiliency in bouncing back from such events. The coffee event organizers already anticipate that visitor numbers will be only 5,000 instead of the original 11,000. The prolonged absence of major events continues to deplete the Convention Center's financial reserves. Operating revenues this year through July were only about $4 million, which includes money paid by the state for its emergency roles. Expenses mainly wages as the staff has been maintained at full force were $24 million, according to the latest financial report. With depreciation and other charges, the loss runs to more than $31 million through July, only about half of which was covered by the building's share of New Orleans' hotel taxes. So far this year, officials have had to dip into reserves to cover another $21 million in operating expenses, on top of the $22 million shortfall last year. Cox customers on the west bank are without service Thursday morning after the company said some of its equipment was damaged in Mid-City. Update: Service has been restored, Cox says. The outage is for Algiers, the west bank of Jefferson Parish and St. Charles Parish, Cox said in a statement. Westwego police said their phones and computer networks are down because of the outage. But, the 911 system is still working and residents should call that number if they have an emergency. Cox service restored after four utility poles fall and cars run over fiber lines in Mid-City Internet and cable TV service has been restored to Cox customers in St. Charles Parish, Algiers and the west bank of Jefferson Parish. Those a Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Westwego police said they aren't able to do physical inspections on vehicles or do criminal background checks until the outage is fixed. 'Fiber ring was severed' The outage started at 7:45 a.m. when Cox said "a piece of our fiber ring was severed" in Mid-City. The company did not say how the damage happened or give more details about what the equipment does. A Cox official at 9 a.m. said workers were investigating the cause of the damage and working to get a restoration timeline "as soon as possible." Cox is one of the major internet and cable TV servicer providers in the metro area. Louisianas supply of monoclonal antibody treatments, a drug the state has relied on heavily to try and keep COVID-19 patients from becoming critically ill, has dropped by roughly 30% as demand rises in other states struggling with the delta variant, according to public health officials. The drugs, produced by pharmaceutical companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly, are one of the few treatments studies show can prevent hospitalization when given to COVID patients early in the course of the disease. They gained prominence in October, when former president Donald Trump received monoclonal antibodies experimentally to treat a COVID infection before vaccines were available. The Food and Drug Administration authorized it for emergency use in November and access has widened such that anyone over 65 or with a number of common medical conditions can get it. But in recent months, even as it has become much more common, its supply in the U.S. has still lagged. It is currently being apportioned to states by the federal government based on the number of cases. With coronavirus cases continuing to drop in Louisiana, that's meant fewer doses arriving. In late August, the state consumed over 7,100 treatments in a week, about 7% of the nations weekly 100,000 dose distribution. But during the week ended Sept. 8, less than 4,400 doses were administered. The flagging usage is a good sign as it indicates that Louisiana is likely past the peak of the fourth surge of the virus sparked by the highly contagious delta variant. But rising use in other parts of the country now being hit by the delta variant may make it harder for people here to get it, particularly if another surge occurs. The new cutbacks really havent adversely affected us yet, but it might in the weeks to come, said Dr. Joe Kanter, the state health officer. Even though were on a downward trend, we still have a lot of COVID relative to other states. When Louisiana's usage of monoclonal antibodies peaked in August, there wasn't a limit to how many doses of the treatment states could order from the federal government. But low vaccination rates in many parts of the U.S., coupled with the delta variant, are creating supply constraints. There's been a 20-fold increase in monoclonal antibody use since mid-July, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that distributes the treatment. Recently, states like Florida and Texas have pushed the monoclonal antibody treatment over prevention measures like masking or vaccine mandates even as deltas deadly surge reached those areas. In response, HHS changed its formula for deciding how much each state gets. Now the drug will be delivered based on a states share of coronavirus cases, and states will only receive a weekly shipment if theyve used at least 70% of the supply on hand, said Kanter. Given this reality, we must work to ensure the federally purchased supply of these life-saving therapies remains available for all states and territories, not just some, said HHS spokesperson Elleen Kane in an emailed statement. Louisiana was one of seven southern states using 70% of the nations supply in recent weeks. At Ochsner Health, 13,000 of the systems total 17,500 doses delivered were during the delta surge. Though Louisianas COVID cases have tumbled from the all-time highs of the fourth surge, Louisiana remains in the top half of states for hospitalizations, with around 1,220 across the state, and the ninth-highest for deaths per capita over the last week, with an average of around 37 per day. Pfizer says its COVID vaccine works in kids ages 5 to 11, will seek FDA approval soon Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for this age group soon -- a Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up About 55% of the state's overall population remains unvaccinated. But despite hesitancy to receive what studies show are safe, effective, FDA-approved vaccines, health professionals said unvaccinated patients who have contracted COVID have largely accepted the treatment, which is still under an emergency use authorization. Thats what we see in the hospital: Oh, sign me up, Ill take the infusion. But theyre not willing to get the vaccine, said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department. It really is a little bit baffling. The drug costs around $2,100, which the federal government has covered. Comparatively, the vaccine costs less than $100 to make, deliver and administer, said Avegno. To be effective, the monoclonal antibodies must be used during a sweet spot when people who might get severely ill are within 10 days of the first symptom, said Dr. Julio Figueroa, an infectious disease expert at LSU Health New Orleans. Patients cannot be sick enough to be on oxygen or need hospitalization, and a physician referral is required. The drug, which is administered via intravenous infusion, is made up of synthetic antibodies that mimic the antibodies created by the body when someone fights off a virus after infection. +2 Hurricane Ida's death tally stands at 26. Some fear the true toll will be far greater. Hurricane Ida led to the deaths of 26 people in Louisiana in the two weeks since it made landfall, according to a tally from the Louisiana Dep Those synthetic antibodies are more targeted than the antibodies the vaccine nudges the body into creating, however. So using the treatment is a bit like being defended by an army versus having an army, a navy and an air force. And it does not prevent infection or transmission the way the vaccine does. When we do the vaccination, what we induce is a polyclonal response poly meaning multiple, said Figueroa. You are able to create a number of antibodies that would protect you. One of those sets of antibodies, or multiple, would protect you against any different variants that would be out there. Giving the IV of antibodies also takes up a chunk of hospital resources, Figueroa said. It can take a few hours to administer, its only available in certain places, staff must monitor patients and hospitals have to create an area that can contain lots of COVID-positive patients. Patients with a positive PCR test can be referred for antibody treatment by a physician if they meet one of the following criteria: Have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 25 Have chronic kidney disease, diabetes or immunosuppressive disease Are currently receiving immunosuppressive treatment Are 65 years of age or older Are 55 years of age or older and have one or more of the following: cardiovascular disease, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/other chronic respiratory disease Kids between 12 and 17 can also get the treatment if they are in the 85th percentile for BMI or have a number of diseases such as sickle cell disease, heart disease, cerebral palsy, asthma or other issues that require a ventilator, tracheostomy or gastrostomy. Although Louisianas cases continue to trend downward, the state has plans to set up 13 federally supported sites before the end of the week. There are another 143 providers that can administer it. There are no current plans in Louisiana to alter the criteria to receive it, but other states have sparked controversy after altering plans based on a person's vaccination status. Tennessee officials recently limited the treatment to unvaccinated people. Its a very American approach to health care, said Avegno of the broad willingness to take monoclonal antibodies versus the hesitancy surrounding vaccines. She compared the COVID response to the way people think about heart disease. We would much rather pay for the angiogram, stent, cath lab and heart surgery but not for vegetables that would have prevented all that in the first place," Avegno said. "We expect to be able to live as we please and then spend an awful lot of money dealing with the complications, rather than a little bit of prevention. The New Orleans Police Departments chief of detectives, Paul Noel, has received a national award for creating programs to teach officers to intervene when colleagues are breaking - or are about to break - the law and agency rules, officials announced Thursday. Noel helped design, implement and teach the Ethical Policing Is Courageous, or EPIC, program at the Police Department amid federally mandated reforms that the agency has been adopting since 2012. Using training videos, role-playing scenarios and other tools, the program's overarching goal for the past few years has been to teach trainees how to speak with and stop colleagues or supervisors who are on the brink of breaking policies or laws, ideally before the violations occur. Noel and the Police Department then worked with Georgetown University to create an essentially identical program that police agencies nationally and internationally have opted to learn, a curriculum called Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement, or ABLE. The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020, which sparked street protests across the United States and prompted the push for ABLE. +5 A year after George Floyd's death, pent-up rage remains as Louisiana faces its own policing issues It began with a few dozen protesters shouting into traffic on North Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, four days after George Floyd was killed l Police forces in Arlington, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; Newark, New Jersey; and San Francisco are among those in the U.S. who were early outside students of the EPIC program that set the stage for ABLE, officials have said. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up The laurel that Noel received is the Gary Hayes Award from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a national institute that works to train officers for senior management positions, the New Orleans Police Department said. The forum gives the award annually to a mid-career police force leader who demonstrates imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and initiative in the design or implementation of new approaches to policing, the Police Department said. Noel is in his 25th year at the Police Department. He started as a patrol officer but by 2015 had become the chief of field operations under then Superintendent Michael Harrison, who is now PERF's president. When Harrison left to become the police commissioner of Baltimore in 2019, he was succeeded by Shaun Ferguson, who last year put Noel in charge of criminal investigations. Paul has played a major role in implementing successful law enforcement reforms at NOPD, and this award is a well-deserved recognition of his tireless efforts, Ferguson said. Noel thanked his colleagues and said the Police Department showed officers can fight crime morally and ethically while continuing to build community relationships. The number of nursing home residents who died after being evacuated en masse to an unsanitary warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish for Hurricane Ida has increased to 12, state health officials said Wednesday. UPDATE: Death toll now 15 among nursing home residents evacuated to Tangipahoa Parish warehouse The Louisiana Department of Health had previously confirmed a death toll of seven evacuees within the first week after the storm. In addition, they have said that more than 50 people were hospitalized after the abortive evacuation, in which nursing home owner Bob Dean sent 843 residents from seven nursing homes to shelter at a former pesticide plant he owns in Independence. Nursing home residents have described a horrific ordeal: They slept on the floor on soggy mattresses, toilets overflowed and air conditioners stopped working. State inspectors who visited the facility documented instances of residents crying out for help some in waste-laden diapers that went days without changing to no avail. The LDH has revoked Deans seven nursing-home licenses and terminated his Medicaid provider agreements in the wake of the scandal. They are also pursuing federal regulatory action against Dean, while the Louisiana Attorney Generals Office has opened a criminal probe into the evacuation. +5 Bob Dean, owner of 7 Louisiana nursing homes closed by state, will seek to get licenses back The owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes who sent more than 800 fragile residents to ride out Hurricane Ida in an unsanitary warehouse will Deans attorney, John McLindon, has said that Dean will appeal to get back his nursing home licenses and Medicaid provider agreements. He also said that nothing about the evacuation rose to the level of criminal activity. Though the death toll has grown to 12, only five of the deaths to date have been classified as storm-related by coroners, meaning that coroners have not yet linked the remaining seven deaths directly to Hurricane Ida or the stressful evacuation. Additional deaths may be considered storm-related pending autopsy/pathology results, but to stress, these deaths have not yet been classified as storm-related, said LDH spokesperson Aly Neel. As time passes and given the health conditions that required a nursing home level of care, unfortunately the number of deaths among this group is likely to increase, Neel added. That is why it is important to make a distinction between the number of total deaths regardless of the cause and the number of storm-related deaths. McLindon said Wednesday that he had no information about the additional deaths. Dean said in a previous interview with The Advocate | The Times-Picayune that a certain number of deaths among his residents was to be expected, given their age and frailty. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up I usually lose two or three people a day, that pass on, Dean said. So, four of the five thats passed were hospice patients, which, you know those are people that are on their way out. Dean also blamed state health officials who rescued residents from his squalid warehouse for problems in the aftermath, including residents lacking needed medications and their families not being able to track them down. Theyre hurting my people and theyre killing them, he texted LDH officials after the warehouse was cleared out. Dean is already facing at least five lawsuits from nursing home residents and their family members, including those who died either during the evacuation or in the aftermath. +11 Families never knew nursing home loved ones were suffering in warehouse; it breaks my heart Terry Hicks spent a week trying to contact her husband of 33 years after he told her his nursing home was evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ida. Couhig Partners of New Orleans, for example, represents one resident who died at the warehouse and a second who died last week, said attorney Blair Constant. He said the firm has also been in touch with a third family whose loved one died last week. Constant said that the law firm does not know yet whether the two most recent deaths can be directly linked to the evacuation, and that they are relying on coroners to make those judgments. The names of the deceased nursing home residents have not yet been publicly released. Jefferson Parish District Court Judge Donald Chick Foret orally granted a preliminary injunction Monday in the Couhig Partners lawsuit against Dean, which forbids him from destroying any documents or communications about the evacuations or from destroying any of the residents personal belongings. +4 Nursing home owner is already facing several lawsuits over Hurricane Ida evacuation Its only been a week since 843 nursing home residents were rescued from a partially flooded warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish where they were li Even for those residents who made it out of the warehouse alive, the aftereffects of the evacuation have lingered. New Orleans attorney Madro Bandaries, who has also filed suit against Dean over the evacuation, said Wednesday that he had a recent interview with a resident who was evacuated to the warehouse and spent three days sleeping in her wheelchair. She'd already had her left leg amputated, but noticed problems with her right leg during the evacuation. Her attempts to report the problem went ignored, he said. After the residents were rescued, medical officials determined that her right leg had gangrene and needed to be amputated as well, he said. Bandaries said that his law firm has been unable to serve Dean in his personal capacity with their lawsuit. McLindon is only representing Dean in the criminal and licensing matters, not the civil suits. State health officials now say that 15 nursing home residents have died out of a group of more than 800 that was evacuated to a warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish in advance of Hurricane Ida. On Wednesday, officials had said the death count among the 843 evacuees had risen to 12. They stressed that just five of those deaths to date have been classified by coroners as "storm-related," a fact they repeated Thursday, though they also cautioned the number could still grow. +5 Death toll reaches 12 among nursing home residents evacuated to warehouse for Hurricane Ida The number of nursing home residents who died after being evacuated en masse to an unsanitary warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish for Hurricane Ida At least 50 of the evacuees were hospitalized as conditions at the makeshift shelter, a former pesticide plant, devolved into crisis. State officials closed the shelter days after the storm and moved the patients to other shelters and nursing homes around the state. The evacuees came from seven nursing homes owned by Baton Rouge developer Bob Dean. Some of those taken to the warehouse in Independence, which Dean also owns, have described sleeping on the floor on soggy mattresses and languishing for days in soiled diapers. Get hurricane updates in your inbox Sign up for updates on storm forecasts, tracks and more. e-mail address * Sign Up State inspectors who visited the facility daily documented a worsening crisis and finally evacuated the facility over Dean's protests. Since then, the LDH has moved to revoke Deans seven nursing-home licenses and terminate his Medicaid provider agreements, though Dean's attorney has said he will appeal and expects to win the licenses back. The Louisiana Attorney Generals Office has also opened a criminal probe into the evacuation. As time passes and given the health conditions that required a nursing home level of care, unfortunately the number of deaths among this group is likely to increase, said Aly Neel, a spokeswoman for the LDH. That is why it is important to make a distinction between the number of total deaths regardless of the cause and the number of storm-related deaths. +5 Bob Dean, owner of 7 Louisiana nursing homes closed by state, will seek to get licenses back The owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes who sent more than 800 fragile residents to ride out Hurricane Ida in an unsanitary warehouse will In the most sweeping measure yet aimed at ending New Orleans' trash crisis, Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Thursday said the city had hired four emergency waste haulers to immediately put more garbage trucks on the street and speed up trips to the dump. The $20 million plan will include more than 20 additional garbage trucks and 35 work crews using dump trucks and front-end loaders to pick up waste. As part of the plan, a decommissioned transfer station on Chef Menteur Highway will be re-opened to shorten the distance each truck will need to travel to unload once it is full. During a news conference Thursday, Cantrell said the contractors will work under the command of Lt. Euclid Talley, a branch manager with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, starting in areas with the most severe backups and eventually scouring every block in the city. Cleaning up the city entirely remains a top priority, and so with this mission Im just hoping it is a real demonstration to the public that Im serious about it, Cantrell said. The four haulers are under a month-long contract, the value of which appears to demonstrate the seriousness of the garbage crisis and the difficulty of finding anyone to take it on. In splitting $20 million, the contractors will be making about the same amount that the city's two primary waste haulers are paid for trash collections over an entire year. Cantrell said she will seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, though it is not clear if the agency will consider municipal garbage collection backups which started prior to Hurricane Ida but were worsened by the storm as a recovery expense. NO.trashwrap.091821 310_1.JPG New Orleans PublicsWorks employees, Clyde Wilson, left, and James Montgomery, pick up trash on Congress Street in New Orleans, Friday, Sept. 1 Cantrell promised a "methodical" approach to clearing garbage bags that, in some areas, have festered since before the landfall of Ida on Aug. 29. One of the contractors, Waste Management, Inc., which owns the reopened transfer station in New Orleans East, is under contract to reopen the facility and haul garbage from there to the River Birch landfill in Waggaman. The hours-long round trip to the landfill in rapidly filling trucks was a contributing factor to falling behind on collections, officials have said. NO.trashwrap.091821 1141.JPG New Orleans Publics Works employee Clyde Wilson directs the dumping of trash on Congress Street in New Orleans, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021, during The operational efficiencies that this project will gain as a result of having a transfer station on the eastern plank of the city are immeasurable, said Sanitation Director Matt Torri. River Birch LLC, Witt O'Brien's LLC and Ceres Environmental Services are the other three contractors participating in the emergency effort, which will begin Friday morning. Ceres Environmental, which is also managing the city's storm debris removal, will start with eight crews on Friday morning and steadily increase to more than 35 crews over the next week. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Officials were careful to note that debris removal will be conducted separately from Ceres' solid waste collections. Witt O'Brien's will monitor both aspects of the Ceres operation. NO.trashwrap.091821 1573_1.JPG With a house still boarded up from the hurricane, New Orleans Publics Works employee James Montgomery, removes trash on Congress Street in New River Birch will contribute 20 trucks to the areas of the city served by Metro Service Group on Saturday, Sept. 25 and Sunday, Sept. 26, with future weekend work an option when needed. That area, which includes Lakeview, New Orleans East and neighborhoods that are lakeside of Esplanade Avenue and downriver of the French Quarter, has seen the worst of the recent problems. Cantrell's announcement Thursday came a week after the unveiling of "Operation Mardi Gras," in which the city dedicated more than 50 city employees to a makeshift trash pick-up operation focused on clearing bags piling up outside of overstuff garbage bins. After a slow start, Operation Mardi Gras was beginning to see gradual progress as of Thursday. Nearly 200 truckloads and 1,200 tons of curbside garbage bags had been collected in parts of the Seventh Ward, St. Roch, Gentilly, Lakeview and New Orleans East, according to a dashboard on the NOLA Ready website. Those teams will gradually be replaced by the emergency haulers over the next few days, officials said. The administration initially issued emergency bid invitations for additional waste haulers on Sept. 8, but only one qualified company, Ramelli Waste, responded. That firm agreed only to work in one of the two primary service areas, which Richard's usually covers. The Richard's service area has seen fewer problems than Metro's. Asked what had happened over the last two weeks to generate more interest, Cantrell replied meeting, talking, working out issues that some may have brought to the table, alleviating fear." "It was definitely not something overnight. It took a lot of long, long hours, Cantrell said. "We did what was necessary." Ramelli will continue supporting Richard's with regular pickups, and IV Waste Management, which has been helping Metro under a subcontract, will continue working in that haulers pick-up area. The city's infrastructure director, Ramsey Green, added that a transfer station coming online at a closer location made the work more feasible to bidders. NO.trashwrap.091821 1784.JPG Residents watch the New Orleans Publics Works employees remove trash on Congress Street in New Orleans, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021, during the fir Meanwhile, New Orleans residents will see some small relief on paying for garbage pickup. The $24 monthly sanitation fee charged on Sewerage and Water Board bills was suspended by the City Council for a month. The refund should be reflected as a credit on November bills. Cantrell said she will sign the ordinance. We should not force people to pay for service they are not receiving, said District D Councilmember Jared Brossett, who authored the ordinance earlier this year following missed garbage collections that were occurring even before Ida. We are better than this. The New Orleans City Council on Thursday passed a one-time suspension of monthly sanitation fees after weeks-long gaps in solid waste collections left garbage piling up throughout the city. The suspension of the $24 monthly fee should be reflected as a credit on Sewerage and Water Board bills in November. According to the ordinance, the credit will show up on the following month's bill if there are any administrative delays. The ordinance, passed unanimously, will need Mayor LaToya Cantrell's signature to be enacted. We should not force people to pay for service they are not receiving, said District D Councilmember Jared Brossett, who authored the ordinance earlier this year following missed garbage collections that were occurring even before Hurricane Ida. We are better than this. The citys sanitation woes predated Idas landfall on Aug. 29, but the storm and subsequent power outages exacerbated the crisis as residents dumped the contents of refrigerators and waste went uncollected in the storm's immediate aftermath. While the city does not regularly publish solid waste collection data, administration officials have said the most serious problems are in the area serviced by Metro Service Group, which covers Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East and neighborhoods that are lakeside of Esplanade Avenue and downriver of the French Quarter. Cantrell was scheduled to provide an update on the citys efforts to resolve the crisis at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. This is a developing story. More to come. Connectivity is limited though, with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a Surface Connect port and dual USB 4.0 Type-C ports that support Thunderbolt 4. Thankfully, the Surface Laptop Studio does have a removable SSD, another improvement over the Surface Book series. The Surface Laptop Studio is available to pre-order today in North America from US$1,599.99 in the US and CAD$2,049 in Canada. The machine is configurable up to US$3,099.99 with 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB SSD; all configurations will start shipping on October 5. Unfortunately, the Surface Laptop Studio will not be available in other markets like Europe, India and the UK until 'early 2022'. Purchase the Dell XPS 9310 on Amazon The rise in Haitian migration began in the months after President Biden took office and quickly began reversing former President Donald J. Trumps strictest immigration policies, which was interpreted by many as a sign that the United States would be more welcoming to migrants. In May, the administration extended temporary protected status for the 150,000 Haitians already living in the country. But tens of thousands have attempted to cross into the United States since then despite not qualifying for the program. False information, misinformation and misunderstanding might have created a false sense of hope, said Guerline M. Jozef, the executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an organization that works with migrants. Mr. Bidens term has coincided with a sharp deterioration in the political and economic stability of Haiti, leaving parts of its capital under the control of gangs and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes. The assassination of Haitis president and a magnitude 7.2 earthquake this summer have only added to the pressures causing people to leave the country. Shortly after the assassination, hundreds of Haitians flocked to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, many carrying packed suitcases and small children, after false rumors spread on social media that the Biden administration was handing out humanitarian visas to Haitians in need. Most of the Haitians in Mexico a country that has intercepted nearly 4,000 this year were not coming directly from Haiti, but from South America, where, like Mackenson, they had already been living and working, according to a top official in the Mexican foreign ministry. The number of Haitians heading northward across the border that separates Colombia and Panama often by traversing the treacherous jungle known as the Darien Gap has also surged in recent years, increasing from just 420 in 2018 to more than 42,300 through August of this year, according to the Panamanian government. To the Editor: Re The Performative Antiracism of Black Students at the U. of Wisconsin and The University of Wisconsin Smears a Once-Treasured Alum, by John McWhorter (Opinion newsletters, nytimes.com, Aug. 24 and Sept. 17): Recent coverage of the University of Wisconsin-Madison asserts that students and administrators are overly sensitive and reactionary, falsely pursuing small, insignificant symbols, rather than supporting significant goals of racial equity and not maligning an alumnus. As the chancellor at Wisconsin, Im writing in collaboration with student leaders from the Wisconsin Black Student Union and Union Council to tell you what actually occurred. Like campuses across the country, we are wrestling with named places and objects that have imperfect and racist histories, while also striving to create an environment that makes students, faculty and staff feel that they belong. Who and what are given prominence on campus carry meaning and reflect what values we wish to endorse. These are choices. We sought to question whether those choices if revisited today reflect our values. The breathless coverage of the disappearance and apparent killing of Gabrielle Petito has played out in a virtual and sometimes literal split screen alongside images of mounted officers in Texas swinging long reins like whips while herding Haitian migrants. That startling contrast forces us once again to wrestle with a crucial question: What kinds of people, in what kinds of bodies, with what kinds of lineage do we value? I have been in journalism my entire professional life over 30 years and I, like many others, have seen a consistent pattern of missing white women and girls receiving outsize coverage when other missing people receive none. In 2004, at the Unity journalists of color convention in Washington, Gwen Ifill popularized the phrase missing white woman syndrome, joking that if there is a missing white woman, youre going to cover that every day. It is not that these white women should matter less, but rather that all missing people should matter equally. Race should not determine how newsroom leaders assign coverage, especially because those decisions often lead to disproportionate allocation of government resources, as investigators try to solve the highest-profile cases. James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary, testified on Wednesday at the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, that she misinformed him before and during his time on the companys board of directors. Mr. Mattis, who served on the board for several years, said he had supported the start-ups mission of cheap, fast and easily accessible blood tests but lost faith after The Wall Street Journal exposed major issues with the technology in 2015. It became clear to him, he said, that Ms. Holmes had not been forthcoming with Theranoss directors about the problems. We were unable to help her on the fundamental issues that she was grappling with if we only saw them in the rearview mirror, Mr. Mattis said. He resigned from the board in late 2016 after President Donald J. Trump tapped him to become defense secretary. Two years later, Theranos collapsed amid lawsuits, fines and financial troubles, and federal prosecutors charged Ms. Holmes and her business partner, Ramesh Balwani, with a dozen counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Both have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they face up to 20 years in jail. WASHINGTON President Biden, declaring the coronavirus an all-hands-on-deck crisis, set out ambitious goals on Wednesday for ending the pandemic and urged world leaders, drug companies, philanthropies and nonprofit groups to embrace a target of vaccinating 70 percent of the world by next year. But the course that Mr. Biden charted, at a virtual Covid-19 summit meeting that he convened on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, may be difficult to turn into reality. And pressure is mounting on the president to lean harder on U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers, which are resisting sharing their Covid-19 technology with poorer countries. The daylong meeting, the largest gathering of heads of state to address the pandemic, was a reflection of Mr. Bidens determination to re-establish the United States as a leader in global health after President Donald J. Trump severed ties with the World Health Organization last year, at the outset of the coronavirus crisis. Mr. Biden announced a series of actions, including the purchase of an additional 500 million doses of Pfizers vaccine at a not-for-profit price to donate overseas and $370 million to administer the shots. Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the United States would donate $250 million to a new global fund that aims to raise $10 billion to prevent future pandemics. Follow our live news coverage on the government shutdown and infrastructure bill. WASHINGTON President Biden huddled with congressional Democrats on Wednesday to try to break through a potentially devastating impasse over his multitrillion-dollar domestic agenda, toiling to bridge intraparty divisions over an ambitious social safety net bill and a major infrastructure measure as Congress raced to head off a fiscal calamity. Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are nearing a make-or-break moment in their bid to push through huge new policies, as an escalating fight between the progressive and moderate wings and a multitude of other divisions within the party threatens to sink their chances of doing so while they retain control in Washington. At the same time, even the basic functions of Congress keeping the government from shutting down next week and from defaulting on its debt sometime next month are in peril as Republicans refuse to support legislation that would both fund the government and increase the statutory cap on federal borrowing. The challenges are unfolding against a backdrop of mistrust and strife within Democratic ranks. Moderates are pressing for quick action on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill; progressives are demanding approval first of a far-reaching, $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan including vast new investments in climate, education, health and social programs. Kristy Edmunds, an experienced leader in the performing and multidisciplinary arts, in October will become the new director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, known as Mass MoCA. Edmunds, currently the executive and artistic director of the University of California, Los Angeless Center for the Art of Performance, will replace Joseph C. Thompson, who helped found the museum and led it for more than 32 years. This is a place that resonates with me, Edmunds said in a telephone interview, citing the way they create a pipeline for helping artists to help them dream the culture forward. Edmunds said she would prioritize issues of equity and inclusion. Its predominantly white in that area of the world, she said. But the diversity of voices in Mass MoCAs programming is significant and it will grow. While New England will be a shift from Southern California for Edmunds, the annual operating budgets of each institution are similar Mass MOCAs annual operating budget was recently reduced to $10.5 million from $12 million because of the pandemic. The University of California center has annual costs of $8 million to $10 million. U.S. moves to roll out Covid booster shots A day after drug regulators authorized the third shot of the Pfizer vaccine for some Americans, a panel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specified who should qualify. C.D.C. science advisers unanimously supported the booster shot for adults older than 65 and for residents of long-term care facilities. They also endorsed shots for people ages 18 to 64 with underlying conditions. People could begin receiving the shots as soon as the end of the week. U.S. drug regulators had authorized the booster shots on Wednesday for older and high-risk adults and people with high exposure jobs. Our science and global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli broke down the debate about boosters. Why are booster shots necessary for these vulnerable populations? President Biden has chosen Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator overseeing the largest U.S. banks, the White House announced on Thursday. If confirmed, Ms. Omarova, who grew up in what is now Kazakhstan, will be the first woman and the first nonwhite person to serve as comptroller of the currency. The agency, which has about 3,500 employees, is charged with setting policy around the businesses that banks engage in from traditional ones like mergers and lending to newer efforts like cryptocurrency. I am deeply honored to be nominated for this role in President Bidens administration, Ms. Omarova said in a statement provided to The New York Times. If confirmed, I will work hard to make sure that our banks remain stable, strong and serve the needs of the American people. Ms. Omarovas nomination caps a monthslong search for the top banking regulators job; the Biden administration dropped two earlier candidates because progressive and moderate Democrats couldnt agree on them. But Ms. Omarovas nomination will require Senate confirmation potentially an uphill battle given the 50-50 split between Republican senators and the Democratic caucus. Covid News: Delta Variant Is Overwhelming Alaska, Site of Worst U.S. Outbreak A C.D.C. panel recommended including older Americans and people with certain medical conditions, but excluded those at risk because of their jobs. Follow our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, vaccines and booster shots. Hospitals in Alaska struggle to handle a worsening outbreak. Image Frontline caregivers waiting for Covid-19 vaccines in December at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. Credit... Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News, via Associated Press Alaska, once a leader in vaccinating its citizens, is now in the throes of its worst coronavirus surge of the pandemic, as the Delta variant rips through the state, swamping hospitals with patients. As of Thursday, the state was averaging 125 new cases a day for every 100,000 people, more than any other in the nation, according to recent data trends collected by The New York Times. That figure has shot up by 46 percent in the last two weeks, and by more than twentyfold since early July. Alaska Covid-19 Hospitalizations All time Last 90 days 100 200 hospitalized Apr. 2020 May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. 2021 Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. Oct. 7day average 221 About this data Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government. On Wednesday, the state said it had activated crisis standards of care, giving hospitals legal protections for triage decisions that force them to give some patients substandard care. The state also announced an $87 million contract to bring in hundreds of temporary health care workers. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, said that while hospitals were strained, he did not see a need to implement restrictions aimed at curbing transmission. Still, he encouraged people who had not yet received a vaccination to seriously consider it. We have the tools available to us for individuals to be able to take care of themselves, Mr. Dunleavy said. While the state led the nation in vaccinations early in the year, it has been lagging in recent months, with half of its population fully vaccinated, compared with 55 percent nationally, according to federal data. Jared Kosin, the head of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association, called the surge crippling in an interview on Tuesday. He added that hospitals were full, and health care workers were emotionally depleted. Patients recently were kept waiting for care in their cars outside overwhelmed emergency rooms. There is growing anxiety in outlying communities that depend on transferring seriously ill patients to hospitals in Anchorage, Mr. Kosin said. Transfers are getting harder to arrange and are often delayed, he said. We are all wondering where this goes, and whether that transfer will be available, even tomorrow, Mr. Kosin said. Critically ill people in rural areas, where many Alaska Natives reside, often have to be taken by plane to a hospital that can provide the treatment they need, said Dr. Philippe Amstislavski, an associate professor of public health at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Unlike in the lower 48, you dont have that ability to move people quickly, because of the distances and remoteness, said Dr. Amstislavski, who was formerly the public health manager for the Interior Region of Alaska, focusing on rural and predominantly Alaska Native communities. Mr. Kosin said that if hospitalizations rise much further, hospitals and clinics around the state could be forced to apply crisis standards of care and more extreme triage decisions. That is the worst-case scenario we could be heading to, he said. Alaska Natives, who have historically suffered from health disparities in the state, are disproportionately struggling during the latest virus wave, Dr. Amstislavski said. Dr. Anne Zink, Alaskas chief medical officer, said several factors may be contributing to the surge, including summer tourists bringing in and spreading the virus. Were hoping that as the snow falls and we have less people visiting, those numbers will settle down, Dr. Zink said in an interview Tuesday night. On the other hand, she noted that cooling weather drives residents indoors, where the virus spreads more readily. The states Canadian neighbors to the east, Yukon and British Columbia, have not suffered such severe outbreaks, Dr. Amstislavski said, possibly because of that countrys stricter travel restrictions and less strained health care system. Daniel E. Slotnik, Eduardo Medina and The C.D.C. chief overruled her own agencys panel and recommended Pfizer boosters for workers at risk. Image A dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was prepared at a clinic in Reading, Pa., earlier this month. Credit... Matt Rourke/Associated Press The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday overruled a recommendation by an agency advisory panel that had refused to endorse booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine for frontline workers. It was a highly unusual move for the director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, but aligned C.D.C. policy with the Food and Drug Administrations endorsements over her own agencys advisers. The C.D.C.s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Thursday recommended the boosters for a wide range of Americans, including tens of millions of older adults and younger people at high risk for the disease. But they excluded health care workers, teachers and others whose jobs put them at risk. That put their recommendations at odds with the F.D.A.s authorization of booster shots for all adults with a high occupational risk. Dr. Walenskys decision was a boost for President Bidens campaign to give a broad swathe of Americans access to boosters. The White House had come under criticism for getting ahead of the regulatory process. The C.D.C.s statement arrived well past midnight, a sign of the complicated and confusing decision-making surrounding the boosters. The C.D.C. advisers similarly spent two days debating who should get boosters and when, and could not agree on whether occupational risk should qualify as a criterion. I am surprised that Dr. Walensky overturned one of the four A.C.I.P. votes today, and I believe others will be as well, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford and the American Academy of Pediatrics liaison to the committee. But the vote on boosters for occupational risk was close, Dr. Maldonado said, and agreed with Dr. Walenskys decision. This addresses not only waning immunity but those at high risk of exposure, Dr. Maldonado added. Minutes before Dr. Walenskys statement, Dr. Amanda Cohn, who oversaw the two-day meeting of the panel, tried to prepare the advisers for the directors decision. Dr. Walensky is reversing the decision to not recommend use of a booster dose in persons at high risk for occupational or institutional exposure, Dr. Cohn wrote in the email. I am hoping to share this news with you before you see it in the press. Dr. Walenskys decision to go against her own agencys advisers came as a surprise to at least some of her staff members: The C.D.C. directors endorsement of the advisory committees recommendations is typically just a formality. Hours before her statement, agency insiders predicted she would stick with the usual protocol because doing otherwise would undermine the process and upset the advisers as well as her own staff. But experts outside the C.D.C. said Dr. Walensky may have had no choice but to align herself with the F.D.A.s decision. Theres a complexity here, because Dr. Walensky was part of the White House announcement on boosters, noted Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Walensky said providing booster shots to health care workers and others who risk contracting the disease on the job would best serve the nations public health needs. Apoorva Mandavilli and Advertisement Continue reading the main story Boosters for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients werent up for debate during a C.D.C. panel. Image Vials with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine labels. Credit... Dado Ruvic/Reuters A committee of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted on Thursday to recommend booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to many Americans who were fully inoculated with the same vaccine. The panel advised that those booster shots go to older Americans and people with certain medical conditions, but excluded those at risk because of their jobs. But the panel was not asked to judge whether people who received the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines should receive Pfizer boosters. The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing data for a Moderna booster, but has not received an application from Johnson & Johnson for a booster of its vaccine. Several experts nevertheless supported a mix-and-match strategy, and signaled that they would revisit the issue as new data emerge. The advisers wrestled with the practicalities of endorsing a booster shot of Pfizers vaccine, but not the other two. Recipients of those vaccines may rightly feel resentful of being asked to wait if the evidence suggests they need boosters, they noted. I just dont understand how, later this afternoon, we can say to people 65 and older, Youre at risk for severe disease and death, but only half of you can protect yourselves right now, said Dr. Sarah Long, a pediatrician and infectious diseases expert at Drexel University College of Medicine in Pennsylvania. It might be the right thing to do, she said. It just doesnt sound like a good public health policy. Some experts seemed to suggest on Wednesday that it might be better to hold off on recommending any booster shots until recipients of all three vaccines could qualify for them. Modernas authorization may arrive in a few days, or weeks. The company has applied for authorization of a booster carrying half the dosage given in the first two shots, which has delayed the F.D.A.s deliberations. Federal regulators have indicated that there was insufficient evidence for mixing first shots of the Moderna vaccine with a Pfizer booster, or vice versa. Apoorva Mandavilli and Here is who voted on which booster-shot policies the C.D.C. should adopt. Image A health worker in Miami prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Credit... Saul Martinez for The New York Times A committee of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted on Thursday to recommend booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to many Americans, including older people and those with certain underlying medical conditions, but excluded those at risk because of their jobs. The panel debated a number of thorny questions before reaching a decision that will shape the federal governments guidance. But who exactly are those experts on the agencys Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices? According to the agency, the committee includes 15 voting members who are responsible for making recommendations on all kinds of vaccines. Their recommendations are very likely to influence who gets the booster shots in practice. Members are selected by the Secretary of Health and Human Services after a lengthy nomination process. Fourteen members are medical practitioners and scientists with expertise in fields like vaccinology, immunology, pediatrics and public health. The 15th is a consumer representative who provides perspectives on the social and community aspects of vaccination. Dr. Grace M. Lee is the chair of the committee. She is associate chief medical officer at the Stanford Childrens Health system, and a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Here are the other voting members: Dr. Kevin A. Ault is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. Lynn Bahta , a registered nurse and public health expert, is the immunization program consultant for the Minnesota Department of Health. Dr. Beth P. Bell is a clinical professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington School of Public Health, where she leads efforts to improve work in the areas of pandemic preparedness and global health security. Dr. Oliver Brooks is the chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare Corp. in Los Angeles, and served as co-chair of the California working group that oversaw Covid-19 vaccine allocation in the state. Dr. Wilbur H. Chen is a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the universitys travel medicine practice. Dr. Sybil Cineas is an internal medicine and pediatric expert and the associate program director for the Brown Combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program in Providence, R.I. Dr. Matthew Daley is a practicing pediatrician and a vaccine safety investigator at the Institute for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, in Aurora, Colo. He is also an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Camille N. Kotton is an infectious disease clinician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. James Loehr is a practicing family physician in Rochester and Ithaca, N.Y. Dr. Sarah S. Long is a professor of pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine, and a practicing physician in Philadelphia specializing in infectious diseases in children. Veronica V. McNally is the chief executive officer of the Franny Strong Foundation in East Lansing, Mich., which promotes vaccinations and education about vaccines. The foundation is named for her daughter, who died of whooping cough. Dr. Katherine A. Poehling is a professor of pediatrics and of epidemiology and prevention at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Dr. Pablo J. Sanchez is a professor of pediatrics with expertise in neonatal and perinatal infections at The Ohio State University Nationwide Childrens Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot is an internist and infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. Advertisement Continue reading the main story African health experts hail Bidens vaccine pledge, but call for more transparency. Image Receiving a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine in Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier this year. Credit... Themba Hadebe/Associated Press African public health experts on Thursday hailed President Bidens plan to expand global coronavirus vaccine donations, but warned that his ambitious goals would not be met without timelier deliveries and greater transparency about when and how many doses were coming. Africa, the continent with the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rate, has suffered not only from a shortage of vaccine doses but also from delayed and inconsistent deliveries. Although supplies have been increasing four million doses arrived over the past week from Covax, the global vaccine-sharing facility African countries have still received only one-third of the doses they were promised for this year, experts said at a virtual briefing held by the World Health Organization. The first thing to say is, we appreciate all the donations that were pledged by the rich countries and those who have doses to offer, said Githinji Gitahi, chief executive of Amref Health Africa, a charity. But we call for a commitment to deliver on those, and deliver in a timely manner. Anger over the rich-poor divide in vaccine access was a consistent theme among the leaders of African countries speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. Unfortunately, the global rollout of the vaccine has not been impervious to the scourge of inequality, said President Hage G. Geingob of Namibia. He called the situation vaccine apartheid. President Joao Lourenco of Angola said it was shocking to see the disparity between some nations and others with respect to availability of vaccines. At a summit on Wednesday, Mr. Biden pledged to donate an additional 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, nearly doubling the United States total committed donations to 1.1 billion doses, more than any other country. But only 300 million of the doses are expected to be shipped this year, leaving poorer nations with the prospect of a longer wait. Mr. Biden embraced the target of vaccinating 70 percent of the worlds people by the end of 2022. But that would require raising the pace of vaccinations in Africa sevenfold, to about 150 million doses a month, said Benido Impouma, a program director with the World Health Organizations Africa program. It is in every countrys interest that this happen quickly, Dr. Impouma said of speeding up the continents vaccination campaign. The longer the delay in rolling out the vaccine, the greater the risk of other challenges emerging, he added, including the rise of more troubling coronavirus variants. To date, he and others said, vaccine deliveries to Africa have been not only slow and scant, but also unpredictable. Many shipments have arrived with little notice, hampering health systems ability to administer them, and with doses soon to expire. Richard Mihigo, coordinator of the W.H.O. immunizations program in Africa, said that the agency had analyzed the vaccine shipments and found that the average shelf life of doses that reached Africa was two to three months. That wasnt long enough for health systems to get the doses to people who needed them, many of whom lived far from health facilities, he said. Most of time the news about donations comes on short notice, within a couple of days, Dr. Mihigo said. Countries do not have time to prepare. To change this paradigm, we need a bit more predictability on doses, how many doses, when they are coming. The surfeit of soon-to-expire doses has also contributed to vaccine hesitancy in parts of Africa, said Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research in the Democratic Republic of Congo. People consider that a short shelf life, such as three months, is a synonym for bad quality, he said. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting. Cuba expects to reach full immunization with homegrown vaccines by Dec. 31. Image A teenager received a dose of the Soberana 02 vaccine this summer in Havana, Cuba. Credit... Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters Cuba expects to reach full immunization against Covid-19 with its own vaccines by the end of the year, the president of the island nation told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, whose 11 million citizens have long been isolated by the American embargo, devoted much of his recorded address to fulminating against the United States for what he called its policies of economic coercion and deprivation, which he said were meant to erase the Cuban revolution from the political map to the world. But he also extolled Cubas medical and scientific communities for what he described as their heroic achievements in creating vaccines to combat the pandemic. More than one-third of the Cuban population has been fully vaccinated with them, he said. We expect to achieve full immunization by the end of 2021, which will make it possible for us to advance in the struggle against the new outbreak of the pandemic, Mr. Diaz-Canel said. Cuba has been especially hard hit recently by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which sent new case reports soaring over the summer and worsened shortages of basic medical supplies in Cuba. A lack of medicines, medical oxygen and coronavirus tests increased social tensions and prompted anti-government protests in July. Mexico shipped supplies of oxygen to Cuba last month, and activists in the United States sent two million syringes to the island. As proud as the Cuban government is of its vaccines, the shots have yet to receive approval from the World Health Organization. Data from clinical trials of the vaccines have yet to be published in international peer-reviewed journals. Even so, Cubas claimed self-sufficiency in vaccinating against Covid-19 is conspicuous in the landscape of vaccination inequality around the world, where most of the vaccine doses made so far have gone to the most affluent nations, while many people in poorer countries have yet to get their first doses. This month Cuba began vaccinating children as young as 2 against the coronavirus, making it the only country so far to immunize children that young. The move came against the backdrop of prolonged closures of Cubas schools through most of the pandemic, which has generated enormous frustration among parents. Online learning is not a practical option in Cuba because of the high cost of internet access there. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Nearly 1 in 4 hospitals treating Covid in Afghanistan have shut down, the W.H.O. warns. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 1:44 - 0:00 transcript Afghanistans Health System Is on the Brink of Collapse, W.H.O. Says Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general, warned of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe as the countrys health care system struggles with a loss of foreign funding and dwindling supplies. Over the past 20 years, significant health gains have been made in Afghanistan in reducing maternal and child mortality, moving towards polio eradication, and more. Those gains are now at severe risk with the countrys health system on the brink of collapse. There has been a surge in cases of measles and diarrhea. Almost 50 percent of children are at high at risk of malnutrition. The resurgence of polio is a major risk, and 2.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine remain unused. Unless urgent action is taken, Afghanistan faces an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. Health workers are leaving, creating a brain drain that will have consequences for years to come. We visited a hospital where we met some nurses who have stayed. My heart broke when they told me they have not been paid in three months. The focus of our efforts now is to support and sustain the Sehatmandi Project, which is the backbone of Afghanistans health system, providing care for millions of people through 2,300 health facilities, including in remote areas. But a funding pause by major donors only 17 percent of these facilities are fully functional. And two-thirds have stockouts of essential medicines. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general, warned of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe as the countrys health care system struggles with a loss of foreign funding and dwindling supplies. Credit Credit... Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Nearly one-quarter of the hospitals treating Covid-19 in Afghanistan have closed in recent weeks, and the countrys efforts to respond to the pandemic have declined, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday. The W.H.O. issued an urgent warning on Wednesday, saying that Afghanistan is on the brink of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. The notice followed a recent visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, where W.H.O. leaders met with the leadership of the Taliban, which is now in control of the country. The W.H.O. officials also met with United Nations partners, health care workers and patients. Cuts in donor support to the countrys largest health project, Sehatmandi, has left thousands of health facilities without funding for medical supplies and salaries for health staff, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the W.H.O., and Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the organizations regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said in a joint statement on Wednesday. Roughly two-thirds of the countrys health facilities are part of Sehatmandi, a three-year, $600 million project administered by the World Bank and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the European Union, the World Bank and other donors. Because funds for the project were funneled through the Ministry of Public Health, donors withdrew their support after the Taliban seized power. Now, only one-sixth of all Sehatmandi facilities are fully functional, according to the W.H.O. Many of these facilities have now reduced operations or shut down, forcing health providers to make hard decisions on who to save and who to let die, the statement said. Officials also said that nine of the 37 hospitals treating Covid-19 in Afghanistan have closed, and coronavirus surveillance, testing and vaccination efforts have contracted. Afghanistan, which emerged from a surge in virus infections at the end of June, is starting to see cases rise again, this time involving the highly contagious Delta variant. Before last month, the W.H.O. said, about 2.2 million people, or about 6 percent of Afghanistans population, had been vaccinated against Covid-19. But in recent weeks, the organization said, vaccination rates have slowed markedly, and some 1.8 million vaccine doses in the country remain unused. The countrys acting health minister and last remaining holdover from the pre-Taliban Cabinet, Dr. Wahid Majrooh, stepped down on Tuesday. Martin Griffiths, the U.N.s under secretary for emergency relief, said on Wednesday that he was releasing $45 million to help prevent Afghanistans health care system from collapsing. Medicines, medical supplies and fuel are running out in Afghanistan, Mr. Griffiths said in a statement. Cold chains are compromised. Essential health care workers are not being paid. On top of the threat of a public health crisis, new figures released by the World Food Program suggest that 95 percent of Afghans lack secure access to adequate food, a situation that could worsen in the winter, when many remote communities are likely to be cut off from outside support for several months. The N.Y. state health commissioner resigns under political pressure. Image Dr. Howard A. Zucker was appointed by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2015. Credit... John Lamparski/NurPhoto via Getty Images Dr. Howard A. Zucker, the New York State health commissioner, has submitted his resignation, following political pressure for his removal over his role in the states pandemic response under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who announced Dr. Zuckers resignation on Thursday, said that she agreed with his decision and that he would stay on board until she found a replacement. Dr. Zucker, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed to the position in 2015, came under fire for his possible involvement in helping obscure the coronavirus death toll in the states nursing homes, and in withholding health data from the Legislature last year. Since Mr. Cuomo resigned last month, Ms. Hochul has been pressed by Republicans, and even some Democrats, to dismiss Dr. Zucker. Urging patience, Ms. Hochul had said she would take up to 45 days, or until early October, to decide whether to retain Dr. Zucker and other cabinet officials from the Cuomo era. I thank Dr. Zucker for his willingness to stay on board, so we dont have a gap in leadership until a person is identified, Governor Hochul said on Thursday. I think I made it very clear on my first day in office that Id be looking to build a new team. The states response to the pandemics ravaging of nursing homes, and the handling of death data from the facilities, is the subject of a federal investigation, as well as an inquiry being led by the State Assembly. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Victoria State in Australia will allow stranded residents to return. Image People gathered at a park in Melbourne, Australia, on Sunday, after the easing of some Covid-19 restrictions in Victoria State. Credit... Daniel Pockett/EPA, via Shutterstock Australias second most populous state announced that some residents stranded in surrounding regions because of the pandemic would be able to travel back home starting Sept. 30. On Thursday, the state premier, Daniel Andrews, said that people who had been stuck in New South Wales for a lengthy period of time could return to Victoria, if they were fully vaccinated and tested negative for the coronavirus. They must quarantine for 14 days. We have on numerous occasions sent our apologies to them and made it clear we understand just how challenging it is and we wish things were different, he said. Australia has imposed some of the harshest restrictions in the world to help contain the spread of the virus, with individual states employing lockdowns that have prevented people from returning to their cities. The daily average of new cases has dropped 13 percent in the past two weeks in Australia, which has lived through several lockdowns since the start of the pandemic. While its vaccination kickoff had a slow start, the nation has to date fully vaccinated 39 percent of its population. Recently the country began vaccinating children as young as 12. While travel restrictions have eased for many Australians, and the tourism ministry has even announced a possible reopening of its borders by Christmas, the country is still facing setbacks with new infections breaking out. A makeup artist working on an Australian reality television program tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this week, sending over 130,000 Australians into yet another lockdown, according to Chris Cherry, the mayor of Tweed Shire, part of the area in northern New South Wales that has been placed under restrictions for seven days. According to ABC News, the 31-year-old woman visited various businesses like restaurants and cafes without checking in via QR code. The police have charged her with breaching several public health regulations, including her work travel exemption guidelines. Michael Lyon, the mayor of neighboring Byron Shire, shared his frustration over going back into lockdown in a Facebook post on Wednesday. It is so devastating to be in lockdown again and it is clear the honour system relied on by the state government is deeply flawed, he wrote. Perhaps our calls for a tightening of restrictions will now finally be heeded. Covid requirements add another number to define small businesses. Image Credit... Tom Grillo When the Biden administration announced a mandate that employees be vaccinated or tested regularly at companies with 100 or more employees, business leaders responded with a barrage of questions. Among smaller companies, one loomed especially large: Why 100? Its an appealingly round, easy-to-remember number, and it captures a broad section of the American work force. President Biden estimated that his order would apply to 80 million employees and cover two-thirds of all workers. But as a dividing line between a big business and a small one, its a threshold not found in any other major federal or state law. There was no explanation for how or why the number was chosen. And for entrepreneurs who employ a smattering of workers, thats an increasingly common challenge: Every time lawmakers invent a new regulation, they also make up a new definition of which businesses count as small. The Affordable Care Act set 50 as the number of workers after which employers would be required to offer health insurance. That edict, which took full effect in 2016, led to an intense, vocal backlash from owners who feared that the requirement would bankrupt them, with some even paring back their business to keep their employee roster under the limit. The mandates actual costs turned out to be fairly muted for most the law helped stabilize insurance prices in the notoriously erratic market for small-group plans and, after surviving many legal and political efforts to dismantle it, the health care law has become a bedrock piece of federal policy. So why not use 50 employees as the boundary for the vaccination mandate? The White House isnt saying; officials did not respond to repeated questions about the 100-person criterion. The Labor Departments Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for drawing up the rules, has not yet explained how and when the mandate will be enforced. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A vaccination deadline looms over employees at New Yorks largest private hospital. Image NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the citys largest private network, has informed its 48,000 employees that they must meet a Wednesday deadline to receive a first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19 or lose their jobs. Credit... Karsten Moran for The New York Times The fate of unvaccinated employees in New York Citys largest private hospital system was uncertain Wednesday night, as the deadline to get a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine drew near. New York States vaccination mandate for workers at hospitals and nursing homes doesnt require a first shot until Monday, Sept. 27. But NewYork-Presbyterian, the citys largest private hospital network, has ordered its 48,000 employees to get vaccinated on a faster timeline, requiring a first dose no later than Wednesday. In recent weeks, the hospital had warned employees that those who remained unvaccinated without a legitimate exemption will be deemed to have opted to resign, according to an email sent to some employees. A hospital spokeswoman, Alexandra Langan, declined to comment on Wednesday afternoon about how many employees faced the loss of their jobs. More than 90 percent of NewYork-Presbyterian employees had gotten a first dose by early last week, according to a court affidavit by Shaun E. Smith, NewYork-Presbyterians chief human resources officer. In recent days, more holdouts have gotten vaccinated, according to interviews. But that still left hundreds, if not thousands, of employees unvaccinated. About 200 employees have valid medical exemptions, according to Mr. Smiths affidavit. And at least 1,364 employees had sought religious exemptions, Mr. Smith said. The hospital had granted about 129 of those requests before the states Department of Health reversed course in late August and said religious beliefs no longer qualified for an exemption. A federal judge has since temporarily ordered the state to refrain from enforcing that policy. For now, NewYork-Presbyterian has said it will not take action against unvaccinated employees who had previously received a religious exemption or had a request pending, according to court filings. One nurse in an intensive care unit, Maureen A. Buckley, said in a lawsuit that NewYork-Presbyterian suspended her without pay last week because she remained unvaccinated against Covid-19. In court papers, she said that the hospital system denied her a medical exemption and ignored her efforts to obtain a religious exemption. Reached by phone Wednesday evening, she declined to comment further, explaining that she was still in the middle of negotiating with the hospital. At more than 90 percent, the vaccination rate within the NewYork-Presbyterian system is higher than at many other hospitals. At St. Barnabas Hospital, an independent safety-net hospital in the Bronx, just under 80 percent of staff are vaccinated against Covid-19, the hospitals chief medical officer, Eric Appelbaum, said. He expressed hope the rate would climb as Monday the state-mandated deadline approached. Some folks are like that: If the deadline is Friday morning, Ill do it Friday morning, he said. Holdouts at New York hospitals have cited a range of reasons for not getting vaccinated: some say they distrust the safety of the vaccine, or worry about fertility, while others object to the use of cell lines derived from aborted fetuses in the development or production or testing of Covid-19 vaccines, according to interviews and court records. Another major New York hospital network, Mount Sinai Health System, had told employees to get vaccinated by Sept. 13, but a spokeswoman said she did not know if anyone had yet been placed on leave or fired for not complying. Correction : Sept. 22, 2021 Because of an editing error, a caption for a photograph in an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the number of employees in the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital network. There are 48,000, not 36,000. A fictional funeral home tries to save lives with an anti-vaccine ad. Image Crenshaw Visions decided to send this truck out during a Carolina Panthers game against the New Orleans Saints. Credit... Laura Beebe/BooneOakley It was a tailgate unlike any other on Sunday morning, as a strange truck circled the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. Dont get vaccinated, the side of the truck said, much to the bewilderment of the Carolina Panthers fans who were there to watch a game against the New Orleans Saints. Underneath that text was the name of the apparent sponsor, Wilmore Funeral Home, with a link to its website and a phone number. Images of the mobile advertising truck quickly drew widespread attention on Twitter, as people who were in on the joke applauded the advertisement. Dope ad campaign, one tweet said. The twist was that Wilmore Funeral Home was a fictional business, and its website sent visitors to a vaccine registration page. The phone number belonged to Crenshaw Visions, the advertising agency that owned the truck. My voice mail is filled up, said Garrett Crenshaw, the president of the agency. People have been calling him for days to criticize or compliment the ad, or simply to ask questions about the Covid vaccine. That discourse is exactly why BooneOakley, a North Carolina advertising agency, created and funded the ad, said David Oakley, the president of the agency. A lot of the advertising thats out there right now is just, Get the shot, he said. We wanted something that made people think. The advertisement was created as government officials across the country struggle to vaccinate people who are hesitant about the vaccines origins and side effects, among other things. In North Carolina, just under half of all people are fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database. Mr. Oakley said that the company didnt realize how much the message would resonate with people. An hour after the truck left the companys parking lot on Sunday, pictures of the ad were already drawing attention on social media. Clearly, it has hit a chord, he said. For every penny that we spent for the board, if one person got vaccinated for it, it would have been worthwhile. Sundays ad wasnt the agencys first to draw widespread attention. In October 2000, just weeks before the presidential election, BooneOakley ran a billboard advertisement for a job-listing site that said Gore 2000 next to a picture of George W. Bush. A few days later, it added a banner at the bottom of the ad that said, Todays job opening: proofreader. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Has Covid cost Australia its love for freedom? Image Police patrol Bondi Beach in Sydney last month. The Eastern Suburbs and affluent part of the city has been criticized for its relaxed approach to lockdown measures compared to the lower socio-economic areas in Western Sydney as coronavirus cases continue to rise. Credit... Matthew Abbott for The New York Times SYDNEY, Australia In the war against the coronaviruss Delta variant, few if any democracies have demanded as much of their people as Australia. In the middle of the latest lockdowns, the police in Sydney gave hefty fines to three mothers with strollers chatting in a park. Melbournes playgrounds were wrapped in police tape, and traveling from a state with Covid restrictions to one without for the lucky few granted permission by the authorities requires two-week stints in quarantine at a hotel or a remote former mining camp. There are now two Australias. In Perth, offices, pubs and stadiums are crammed and normal as ever the payoff for a closed-border approach that has made Western Australia an island within an island. In Sydney, residents are approaching their 14th week of lockdown. The working-class areas with the highest infection rates have faced a heavy police presence, and, until recently, a 9 p.m. curfew and just an hour of outdoor exercise per day. Is the sacrifice worth it? Australia is at a crossroads with Covid. The confidence and pride of 2020, when lockdowns and isolation brought outbreaks to heel, have been replaced by doubt, fatigue and a bitter battle over how much freedom or risk should be allowed in a Delta-defined future. Some states are trying desperately to hold on to what worked before, while New South Wales and Victoria, home to the countrys biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, are being forced by Delta outbreaks to find a more nuanced path forward. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has thrown his weight behind a plan to reopen when 80 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. But the road ahead may not be smooth as shown by protests this week over a vaccine mandate and state leaders are still insisting that they will go it alone. We might be looking at the country turning the clock back on itself, said Tim Soutphommasane, a political theorist at the University of Sydney. There is an explicit insularity and parochialism that now dictates debate. Almost 30 years ago I interviewed the onetime child actor Bill Mumy, who was about 40 by then. He had played Will Robinson on Lost in Space when he was a kid and was now enjoying a creatively prosperous adulthood. Which has not often been the case for child actors. Citing himself and Jodie Foster, he insisted that what made a difference for them was preparation professional training at an early age. Growing up, Bjorn Andresen wanted to be a musician and spent time singing and playing. But his actual fate was something for which he could not have prepared: The film director Luchino Visconti hand-picked him to play Tadzio, the ravishing albeit inadvertent angel of death to Dirk Bogardes Aschenbach in Viscontis 1971 adaptation of Thomas Manns Death in Venice. We meet Visconti early in this often spellbinding documentary directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri. In archival footage, Visconti visits Stockholm. He says hes been all over Europe looking for a teen boy who embodies the perfection of Manns vision. This pursuit would be considered very odd and possibly actionable today. The 59th New York Film Festival will have what the previous edition lacked: people in the seats. To tempt viewers back into its well-ventilated Lincoln Center theaters, the festival has instituted Covid-19 protocols, including mandatory masks and proof of vaccination. It has also assembled an international lineup of premieres and festival-circuit favorites, showcasing work from both established and next-generation auteurs. As ever, there is also a robust selection of rediscoveries and revivals, including a tribute to Amos Vogel, the festival co-founder, and restorations of Wendell B. Harris Jr.s Chameleon Street and Miklos Jancsos The Round-Up. The Currents section continues the festivals tradition of highlighting new work from experimental and avant-garde filmmakers. It all starts Friday with Joel Coens The Tragedy of Macbeth and runs through Oct. 10. Plenty of tickets are available; for information on the how, the when and the where, visit filmlinc.org. Here are some of our favorites: The Tragedy of Macbeth Blood and betrayal, toil and trouble filmmakers from Akira Kurosawa to Roman Polanski have taken on Macbeth. In his stripped-down version, Joel Coen pitches his expressionistic tent between cinema and theater, taking a lead from Orson Welles, whose 1948 adaptation was one of his last Hollywood films. Is this an ill omen from Coen? (This is the first movie hes directed without his brother, Ethan.) Whatever the answer, the play is still the thing and so is a volcanic Denzel Washington, who ferociously embodies, as Welles put it, the decay of a tyrant. MANOHLA DARGIS Hot take: Denzel Washington is a good actor, with a special flair for Shakespeare. Bruno Delbonnels black-and-white cinematography emphasizes the salt and pepper in Washingtons beard, and he plays the Thane of Cawdor as a weary, haunted old soldier, a tender soul pitched into cruelty and madness by ambition his own and Lady Macbeths. That would be Frances McDormand, bringing viperish eloquence to this lean (under two hours), mean and lyrical reading of the Scottish Play. A.O. SCOTT Indeed, not everyone here approves of the new businesses: The St. Regis tribal government maintains that the dispensaries are operating outside the laws of the reservation and robbing the tribe of critical revenue from licensing and sales fees, which underwrite essential services, including education, health care and public safety. The internal strife on the reservation has grown so intense that tribal leaders have sued in tribal court, after giving the rogue dispensaries 48 hours to close or face being disqualified from any future licensure. The dispensaries have defiantly refused: More stores have opened, and many pot shops on the reservation are now posting signs on their doors warning that tribal compliance officers are not welcome and will be charged with trespassing. Such posturing has done little to dissipate tension between tribal officials and the dispensaries. Theyre thinking about themselves and not the overall community, said Chief Ronald LaFrance Jr., one of three St. Regis chiefs, adding, And thats my concern, the lost revenue for the tribe. Marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the U.S. government, but it has been legalized for adult recreational use in 18 states, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, and for medical use in more than 30. And in recent years, dispensaries have opened on tribal lands around the country, in states including Nevada, Washington and Michigan; in New York, the Shinnecock on Long Island are taking steps to get into the market, as are the Seneca on the states western flank. For their part, the New York State authorities seem to be taking a hands-off approach to the early entrepreneurs on the St. Regis reservation, noting that such businesses are legal on federally recognized, sovereign tribal land. With state regulations still far from being codified, and the tribal government unable thus far to stop the shops spread, the St. Regis dispensaries are operating both in a legal gray zone and with a sense of urgency seemingly not felt until recently in Albany. The risk of deportation for all noncitizens was heightened by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which injected the eras tough-on-crime logic into immigration enforcement. Even civil violations or misdemeanors can be the basis for sending immigrants to a country theyve never known. (Photos of seven adoptees who have been deported or are facing deportation appear at the end of Blue Bayou; many other adoptees are unhappy with the film and have accused Mr. Chon of unfairly appropriating the story of Adam Crapser, who was deported to Korea in 2016.) To make Blue Bayou, Mr. Chon consulted with several noncitizen adoptees, including Anissa Druesedow, who was deported to Jamaica in 2006 and now lives in Panama. In 2003, while working in retail, Ms. Druesedow allowed someone she knew to return stolen items without receipts. She pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for forgery and theft. There, she was flagged by ICE and learned that she was not a U.S. citizen. Her adoptive parents had applied to adjust her status decades earlier, but because the government had taken six years to approve her green card, she had turned 18 and become ineligible for citizenship. Today, she works in a call center and uses WhatsApp to communicate with her daughter in Salt Lake City; she has a prosthetic leg but lacks health insurance. In 2000, Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act, which granted automatic citizenship to most categories of transnational adoptees. It was nicknamed the Delahunt Bill, after Representative William Delahunt of Massachusetts, the adoptive father of a daughter born in Vietnam. As Mr. Delahunt told the House, the law would cure heartbreaking instances of forced separation of parents and children, including those caused by bureaucratic delays, as in Ms. Druesedows case. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas co-sponsored that bill, stating, after an adoption takes place the child should automatically be considered a citizen. But the law applied only to adoptees who were 18 years or younger on Feb. 27, 2001, when it went into effect. This arbitrary cutoff has left as many as 50,000 transnational adoptees like Ms. Druesedow without U.S. citizen status. Adoption promises us a family, and we should have the same rights as biological children, she told me by phone last week. There is a solution. The Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2021, introduced by Republican Roy Blunt in the Senate and Democrat Adam Smith in the House, would eliminate the exclusions of the 2000 law. It would give transnational adoptees both those still in the United States and those who have been deported a chance at naturalization. Since 2015, three other versions of this bill have been introduced in Congress, with bipartisan support and the backing of a wide range of advocacy groups. But it has repeatedly stalled in committee. A representative for Mr. Smith told me that he is actively courting bipartisan support, but as of now there are only four Republican and four Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate. To the Editor: Re 3rd Pfizer Shot for Key Groups Gets Clearance (front page, Sept. 23): With the current focus on preventing severe Covid-19 disease, we may be slighting our goal of herd immunity. Although the Pfizer vaccine remains highly protective against severe disease, it appears to lose effectiveness against mild or asymptomatic infection. This allows the virus to infect vaccinated people, who can then infect unvaccinated people. Our best hope for herd immunity is to decrease circulation of the virus among people who have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Giving a third dose will raise the level of serum antibodies, which are three to five times higher after a third shot than after two shots. Protecting against both severe disease and mild or asymptomatic infections has a much greater public health benefit than just preventing severe disease. We shouldnt give up on conferring herd immunity against Covid-19. A third dose given to all adults is likely to give us greater control of the pandemic than if we focus on vaccinating only elderly and immunocompromised people and those at increased risk because of job exposure. Dan M. Granoff San Francisco The writer is former director of the Center for Immunobiology and Vaccine Development, University of California San Francisco Benioff Childrens Hospital Oakland. Im a native New Yorker. Im a staunch feminist. And I grew up playing bass in punk bands on the Lower East Side. Those are three ways of telling you that Im not generally a person ruled by fear, or someone who automatically does what shes told. So when Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the start of the summer that the city would be returning to in-person school in September, there wasnt really a bone in my body that believed Id soon be dropping off my seventh-grade son, Harper, every morning at his well-intentioned but criminally underfunded Lower East Side public school, with its insufficient ventilation and lack of outdoor space. A lot of our teachers went to middle-class schools and were taught there was a certain way to be successful, Polino said. Not many of our teachers grew up having to deal with poverty and the socioeconomic impacts that come with that. This, of course, does not mean that race doesnt matter or matters less in the suburbs. Housing inequality, for example, has led to segregated schools within districts and an internal retrenchment of the idea that the white schools are the good schools and the minority schools are the bad ones. And even in diverse schools, theres still a problem with internal segregation and the distribution of resources, as well as political resistance to integration or a curriculum that reflects the student body, which in some areas could even be the impetus for fights over critical race theory. What it does mean is that suburban teachers face a broad range of problems that can all coexist at the same public school. Teachers in Sweet Home, for example, may have to deal with a traumatized Arabic-speaking child, a Burmese refugee and a Black student whose family recently moved into the district. The teachers may, as many do, embrace this challenge and see it as everything thats right about the American public school system, but they might also go into their work with giant blind spots due to the lack of research, support and experience in the field. Thousands of school districts in this country face a similar slate of problems. In the excellent book The Resegregation of Suburban Schools, Erica Frankenberg and Gary Orfield argue that suburban school districts are feeling unsupported and unable to formulate a coherent response to the metropolitan demographic change. They outline several issues that suburban schools now face, including a replication of patterns of racial and economic segregation, inadequately trained teaching staffs and political resistance. They also offer something of a corrective or, perhaps, a call to their colleagues. In 2013, when the book was published, there was almost no research done on the rapid changes underway in the suburbs. Today, Frankenberg says that more people seem interested in the suburbs but that any improvement assumes a very low baseline. Part of what needed to be studied then and needs to be looked at today is how the binary ways in which Americans usually think about racial inequality in America suburbs: rich and white; cities: poor and Black might be incomplete, especially when it comes to finding solutions in suburban school districts around the country. They write: The sweeping racial change in U.S. cities in the 1950s to the 1970s was accompanied by major civil rights battles, including Brown v. Board of Education, federal war on poverty, urban riots and presidential commissions to study issues of race. The result was the creation of fair housing laws, urban school desegregation, magnet school programs and many other initiatives, chiefly designed to integrate Black students into majority white schools. This biracial dynamic that no longer holds for our nations central cities or its suburbs; demographics have been transformed through the huge growth of Latino communities, which had been virtually invisible outside the Southwest and a few metropolitan areas in other states until the 1980s, as well as the expansion of Asian populations who often immigrated directly to the suburbs. For years, the academy and the media have been fixated on the problem of Black-white equity in urban schools, which, in turn, has been the focus of think tanks, consulting firms and administrators that all approach that problem in pretty much every way possible. The unbalanced focus in both the academy and the media on urban schools has reduced the conversation around education to fights about selective high schools, achievement gaps and the role white parents can play in inner-city areas. This work is important and should continue, but it must be accompanied by a clearer look into whats happening just a few miles up the road in the suburbs, where poor children from around the world go to school together, where similar inequalities persist and where support for those students often comes down to cash-strapped small school districts and local governments. The pandemic led to a lot of theorizing about what, exactly, happens when schools go online and people start moving all over the country. Whether or not you fear the effects of haphazard openings, haphazard closings, fatigue with distance learning or not enough distance learning, Im sure someone is arguing that its absolutely happening. Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age. The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path. Researchers who have argued for such an early arrival hailed the new study as firm proof. I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years, said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. I dont know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find. For decades, many archaeologists have maintained that humans spread across North and South America only at the end of the last ice age. They pointed to the oldest known tools, including spear tips, scrapers and needles, dating back about 13,000 years. The technology was known as Clovis, named for the town of Clovis, N.M., where some of these first instruments came to light. When Constance Collins began dating Matthew Steuer in October 2018, some of her family members were not too thrilled. They had some strong reservations with Matthew, said Ms. Collins, who is 32 and from College Park, Ga. They said that Matthew and I didnt belong together for two reasons: They did not like the fact that he was 24 years older than me and that he was a white man. The two met in August 2016 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where each began a teaching job at the American School of Kinshasa. They became fast friends. We collaborated professionally on numerous projects, and trusted and counted on each other, said Mr. Steuer, 56, who is from Manhattans Upper West Side. We were simply enjoying each others company in this strange and challenging new land. Scrolling through her social media feed, Laura Dornheim is regularly stopped cold by a new blast of abuse aimed at her, including from people threatening to kill or sexually assault her. One person last year said he looked forward to meeting her in person so he could punch her teeth out. Ms. Dornheim, a candidate for Parliament in Germanys election on Sunday, is often attacked for her support of abortion rights, gender equality and immigration. She flags some of the posts to Facebook and Twitter, hoping that the platforms will delete the posts or that the perpetrators will be barred. Shes usually disappointed. There might have been one instance where something actually got taken down, Ms. Dornheim said. Harassment and abuse are all too common on the modern internet. Yet it was supposed to be different in Germany. In 2017, the country enacted one of the worlds toughest laws against online hate speech. It requires Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove illegal comments, pictures or videos within 24 hours of being notified about them or risk fines of up to 50 million euros, or $59 million. Supporters hailed it as a watershed moment for internet regulation and a model for other countries. But an influx of hate speech and harassment in the run-up to the German election, in which the country will choose a new leader to replace Angela Merkel, its longtime chancellor, has exposed some of the laws weaknesses. Much of the toxic speech, researchers say, has come from far-right groups and is aimed at intimidating female candidates like Ms. Dornheim. Vittoria was grinning, she had been expecting this. We pulled over and got out. I dont understand, I kept saying. We had arrived at the Piano Grande, the mouth of the extinct volcano that hosts Castelluccio. The mountains had opened up onto this vast, clear, bright plain, with colors that were piercingly sharp: the bright green of the grass and the mountainsides, the dark green of trees dotted along, including the Bosco Italia, a map of Italy including Sicily and Sardinia! made entirely of pine trees. And then, beyond the grass, the colors of the lentil flowers and poppies that blanketed the plain in an enormous living tapestry. We made our way toward Castelluccio, hanging like a sentry guarding her Piano Grande, past a riding stable where tourists were mounting horses to canter across the plain. Above us, two paragliders soared over the poppy and lentil fields. It had been around 90 degrees when we left home that morning, now it was around 72, crisp and beautifully clear. My pal from L.A. Law had eaten at Taverna Castelluccio, so thats where we headed, and where I met Peppe for the first time. He was used to dumbstruck people coming to his taverna, and we did not disappoint. We flirted with one of his waiters who seemed fascinated by Vittorias insistence on ordering fish in the middle of this wild boar and lamb lovers paradise, but she can be contrary like that. We were all three giddy that day, taking hundreds of photos of the waiter, with the waiter, of the plains, with the plains, of the trees in the shape of Italy, among the poppies, of ourselves scampering among the flowers. Every year after that, Castelluccio was a staple of my summer vacation. We went by the carload, in convoys that paraded through the Valnerina. On the second trip, my friend Dusan discovered the wild boar ragu pappadelle at Taverna Castelluccio, and a lifetime love affair was born. In the third year, my friend Isabella discovered the grilled lamb chops, and I fully embraced the Italian tradition of primi and secondi. And, lets not lie, contorni and dolci. Those lentils werent going to eat themselves. Were at an inflection point, said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix pollster and Republican political consultant who has been skeptical of the Arizona investigation. When the results drop, Ill be curious to see how the Legislatures Republican leaders react to this, including the State Senate itself. The 16 Republicans in the 30-member Senate unanimously supported the review when it was proposed in December. But at least two Republican senators have publicly renounced their backing, one using Twitter in July to accuse the Senate president, Karen Fann, also a Republican, of a total lack of competence in overseeing the inquiry. The inquiry has been dogged from its start by slipshod and sometimes bizarre conduct. The firms conducting it had essentially no prior experience in election work, and experts said their haphazard recounting of ballots guaranteed unreliable results. Election officials said security lapses raised the risk that voting equipment had been compromised. And some aspects of the investigation checking ballots for secret watermarks, and for bamboo fibers that would suggest they were printed in Asia were based on outlandish conspiracy theories. Recent developments have only heightened skepticism about the election review. In July, officials said the vote review had been largely financed by nearly $5.7 million in donations from nonprofits run by far-right figures and allies of Mr. Trump. But in late August, a court-ordered release of documents related to the inquiry disclosed that another $1 million had come from an escrow account controlled by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump as he sought to subvert the election results. Ms. Mitchell was a participant in an infamous telephone conversation in January during which Mr. Trump urged Georgias secretary of state to find enough votes to overturn Mr. Bidens win there, suggesting he could be guilty of a criminal offense if he did not. Although officials said Mr. Trump did not contribute to the escrow account, it remains unclear who did. An email among the released documents indicates that it came from a previously unknown group called the American Voting Rights Foundation, whose only known officer is an accountant who has managed money for Republican congressional campaigns and conservative political action committees. C.D.C. recommends boosters Last night the F.D.A. authorized Pfizer-BioNTech booster shots for a broad swath of Americans at risk of severe Covid-19. Today, scientific advisers to the C.D.C. recommended the booster shots for tens of millions of older Americans and those with certain medical conditions. The F.D.A. had authorized the Pfizer shots for people over 65, people who are high-risk, or those who have jobs that leave them exposed to the virus like health care workers, teachers and grocery workers. The C.D.C.s science advisers unanimously supported Pfizer boosters for adults older than 65 and for residents of long-term care facilities. Thirteen of the committees 15 members endorsed extra shots for people aged 50 to 64 years with underlying medical conditions. A majority also recommended the boosters for adults aged 18 to 49 years with underlying medical conditions, based on their individual benefit and risk. Brignetta Dickerson knew the popping sound she heard on Thursday inside the Kroger grocery store where she worked was a gunshot, as she yelled at customers to Go! Go! Go! As they ran to the back of the store in Collierville, Tenn., a Memphis suburb, the sounds followed, Ms. Dickerson told Region 8 News, a television station in the area. I heard him come to the back, she said. I was like, Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. They watched, she said, as the gunman shot one of her co-workers in the head and a customer in the stomach. At least 13 people were injured, one fatally, in the shooting, and the police said the gunman had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Glenda McDonald, who works in the stores floral department, said she thought she saw the gunman fire at a bagger and some customers as she escaped the building. WASHINGTON House Democrats plan on Friday to push through broad legislation to uphold abortion rights, taking urgent action after a major Supreme Court setback as they brace for a ruling next year that could further roll back access to abortion nationwide. The House vote will be largely symbolic given that the bill, the Womens Health Protection Act, has little chance of advancing because of Republican opposition in the Senate. But House Democrats decision to consider it reflects their view that the issue could resonate strongly in the midterm elections next year, particularly if female voters see the Supreme Court action as a threat to rights that many believed had been long settled. Democrats moved swiftly to schedule action on the measure after the court refused this month to block a Texas law that prohibits most abortions after six weeks of gestation. It would guarantee the right to abortion through federal law, pre-empting hundreds of state laws governing the procedure around the country. Democrats argue that it would codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. The bills authors say they began drafting it a decade ago in response to emerging efforts at the state level to impose stringent requirements on those seeking and providing abortions, as well as the increasingly conservative makeup of the court. They say that the courts current membership and its hostility toward abortion rights have validated the approach, and that time is of the essence because the justices are set to rule next year on a Mississippi law that severely restricts abortions. Mr. McConnell conveyed a similar message during a telephone conversation with Ms. Yellen last week, his spokesman said. Mr. McConnells former chief of staff, Brian McGuire, said the Kentucky Republican would not be persuaded by pressure tactics and suggested that the Treasury secretary should direct her economic warnings at Democrats. If I were advising Secretary Yellen, Id suggest she be highly skeptical of the Democratic strategy on the debt limit, said Mr. McGuire, who was Treasurys assistant secretary for legislative affairs from 2019 to 2020. On Thursday, Ms. Yellen appeared at a news conference with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. Ms. Pelosi assailed Republicans for refusing to join Democrats in covering costs that both parties have incurred, including the $1.5 trillion tax cuts that Republicans passed during the Trump administration. This is a credit-card bill that we owe, Ms. Pelosi said. Democrats wanted to pair the federal debt limit increase with legislation to keep the government funded through early December, which would require Republican support in the Senate. With no such agreement in sight, the White Houses Office of Management and Budget on Thursday alerted federal agencies to review their shutdown plans, given funding is scheduled to lapse next week. Democrats do have another legislative option for raising the borrowing cap they could pair it with the $3.5 trillion spending bill that they are aiming to pass along party lines using a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation. However, that would impose procedural hurdles they are trying to avoid, and Democrats have yet to agree on what the spending bill should include or how to pay for it. Party leaders claimed progress toward a deal on Thursday, saying they had agreed upon an array of possible ways to pay for it. But they offered no details about what programs would be included or what the total cost would eventually be, and what they called a framework agreement appeared to be modest. With the debt limit increase becoming so contentious, Ms. Pelosi signaled for the first time on Thursday that Democrats could ultimately strip it from the government funding bill because of Republican opposition. We will keep our government open by Sept. 30, which is our date, and continue the conversation about the debt ceiling, but not for long, she said. The opposition to masks has been particularly crushing for parents like Ms. Hart, who see in-person schooling as a lifeline for their children with disabilities. Those students have been among the most underserved during the pandemic but also sometimes face a higher probability that going to school could make them severely ill. Tennessee is one of seven states that the federal Education Department is investigating to determine whether governors orders allowing families to flout school mask mandates discriminate against students with disabilities by restricting their access to education. Even though many local school boards, including Williamson Countys, have voted to require universal masking, an executive order issued by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, allows parents to send their children to school maskless, no questions asked. At the high school Ms. Harts son attends, data published weekly by the district shows that more than 30 percent of parents have formally opted out, a percentage that mirrors the districts overall. Weve always known that not everybody really cares about our children, but it is in our face right now that its not worth you asking your child to wear a mask, so my child can be safe, said Ms. Hart, who is a researcher and a trained epidemiologist. That is the scar that I will carry from the pandemic, this playing out in my face over and over and over again. Parents of special education students in two Tennessee counties covering the eastern and western parts of the state have sued to block the governors order; one lawsuit has succeeded. A third, covering Williamson County, had a hearing before a judge this week. In the most recent complaint, three lawyers argued that the governor, the Williamson County school board and a carve-out district within the county called the Franklin Special School District, are violating the rights of special education students by allowing parents to opt their children out of the mandate. The suit was filed on behalf of a student with Down syndrome and another with Type 1 diabetes, but seeks protections for all similarly situated students. Defendants actions have pitted children against children, while placing the health and safety of medically vulnerable children with disabilities in danger, the complaint said. More than 2,000 Haitians have been deported in the past week, with more flights scheduled, and thousands have been allowed into the country, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss the matter. As of Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that about 4,000 migrants, most of them Haitian, were being held in a temporary staging area under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas, as agents process them. The rise in Haitian migration began in the months after Mr. Biden reversed some of President Donald J. Trumps strictest immigration policies and projected a more welcoming tone toward migrants. But so far in his presidency, Mr. Biden has struggled to balance tough measures to secure the southwestern border against his campaign promise to show compassion to migrants who want to come to the United States for a better life. That has led to a divide among some top aides, including Susan E. Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser, who support measures that serve as immigration deterrents, and progressives who are trying to hold him to his pledge of delivering a humane system. In May, the Biden administration extended temporary protected status for 150,000 Haitians already living in the United States. Two months later, the order was extended again for Haitians who were in the United States before July 29. But tens of thousands more Haitians have tried to cross into the United States since then, despite not qualifying for the program. Facing the highest level of border crossings in decades, the Biden administration has stepped up enforcement of policies intended to slow their entry. On Thursday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, described officials as horrified by the images of Haitians being confronted by border agents on horseback and said the president was working to develop a humane immigration system. But weve also reiterated that it is our objective to continue to implement what is law, and what our laws are and that includes border restrictions, Ms. Psaki said. The liberals maneuver roiled many other Democrats, who said their colleagues opposition to funding Israels defense was beyond the pale. They noted that during the peak of fighting in May, the Iron Dome intercepted more than 90 percent of the flurry of Hamas-launched rockets that would have otherwise landed in civilian-populated areas. In an angry speech, Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida, said he would not allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid state. To falsely characterize the state of Israel is consistent with those who advocate for the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world, he said. When there is no place on the map for one Jewish state, thats antisemitism, and I reject that. Despite the angst, only eight Democrats as well as one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky ultimately opposed the measure. Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to present. The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party. (A spokesman for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment on her change of position.) Another Democrat, Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, also voted present. WASHINGTON Four years after removing stained-glass windows honoring two Confederate generals, Washington National Cathedral officials said Wednesday they had chosen an acclaimed Black artist, Kerry James Marshall, to design their replacements. The artist visited the cathedral for the first time on Wednesday after being given the task of healing a small wound in the countrys second-largest cathedral. Together with the poet and author Elizabeth Alexander, Mr. Marshall will design two stained-glass windows addressing themes of racial justice to replace those that paid tribute to Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Right now I dont have a clear concept of what I think I will do, he said. It will have to be work that is able to synthesize a multiplicity of ideas and sentiments about what the country represents for all of us. There will be some kind of imagery that presents itself as an invitation to reflection on the meaning of America now. The decision in 2017 to remove the windows was preceded by a debate that began in 2015, after a self-described white supremacist shot and killed nine African Americans at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, S.C. It became even more urgent in 2017, when white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Va., against the removal of a statue of Lee. A woman was killed when one of those protesters drove his car into the crowd of counter protesters. The appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, has not yet issued a decision in an appeal pending before it. But the writing is on the wall, the providers told the justices. And although the Fifth Circuit expedited the appeal, it will not hold argument until December at the earliest. Meanwhile, Texans are in crisis, the providers wrote. The Texas law, known as S.B. 8, has novel features. The law, which makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or aids and abets it. That makes it hard for abortion providers to know whom to sue, as lawsuits seeking to block laws as unconstitutional typically name the officials charged with enforcing them as defendants. When the providers filed suit in federal court, they named, among others, every state trial court judge and county court clerk in Texas. While it may be hard to sue to challenge the law, it allows private citizens to file suits against doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, and even an Uber driver taking a patient to an abortion clinic. Plaintiffs, who do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, are entitled to $10,000 and their legal fees recovered if they win. Prevailing defendants are not entitled to legal fees. Faced with the threat of unlimited lawsuits from the general populace and the prospect of ruinous liability if they violate the ban, abortion providers have been forced to comply, the providers wrote. As a result, Texans with means must now travel hundreds of miles each way to other states during a pandemic, just to exercise a clearly established federal right. The surge of Texans seeking out-of-state appointments for this time-sensitive medical care is causing backlogs in those states, delaying abortions by weeks for Texans and non-Texans alike. The Biden administration on Thursday finalized its first major regulation to directly limit greenhouse gases, part of an effort to show Americas progress on global warming before a crucial climate summit in Glasgow in November. The measure would curb the production and use of potent planet-warming chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. Without the new regulation, President Biden would be in danger of arriving at the United Nations summit in Glasgow with few concrete emissions-reducing measures to back up his calls for global action against climate change. Mr. Biden has vowed to cut United States emissions 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels in the next decade. But legislation that includes policies to cut carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the most prevalent greenhouse gas and the most politically difficult to address, faces uncertain prospects in a sharply divided Congress. The outlook for meaningful broad-based climate legislation is not very good, said Robert N. Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard. He said that makes regulatory actions to curb HFCs and methane, another potent greenhouse gas, vastly more important. Mr. Nashiri, 56, is accused of orchestrating Al Qaedas suicide bombing of the warship during a port visit to Aden, Yemen, in 2000. Seventeen sailors died. His is one of two capital cases in the military commissions system, alongside the attempt to prosecute five detainees who were arraigned in 2012 on charges of aiding the Sept. 11 attacks. Both cases have been stuck in pretrial hearings. It was Mr. Nashiris first court appearance since January 2020. The 39 men currently held at the wartime prison spent much of the first year or more of the pandemic in isolation with no visits from their lawyers and limited access to other prisoners and Army guards to prevent an outbreak at the remote base of about 6,000 residents. The pandemic continues to hamper progress at the war court. The proceedings were canceled on Wednesday after two prosecutors who had participated in the case from a courtroom annex in Crystal City, Va., developed symptoms of the coronavirus. The remote courtroom was set up during the pandemic, and all but two of the witnesses were being called to testify from there to avoid the need to send unvaccinated witnesses to Guantanamo two weeks early for a mandatory quarantine. Defense lawyers have described a pattern of suspected eavesdropping on confidential attorney-client communications, and call it government intrusion into their ethical duty to safeguard their work, particularly in a death penalty case. In December 2013, Mr. Nashiri told his lawyers that the cell where they had been meeting since 2008 had been part of a secret C.I.A. prison, where he had been held in off-the-books detention in 2003-4. Soon after that conversation, prosecutors responded to an 18-month-old request from Mr. Nashiris lawyers for information about the meeting compound. Camp Echo II, as it was called, had been used as a black site. By then, lawyers had discovered that a device that resembled a smoke detector in a Camp Echo meeting room was in fact a listening device. Prosecutors brought military commanders to testify in open court that nobody was listening to conversations between the detainees and their lawyers. Defense lawyers said the use of the black site itself re-traumatized Mr. Nashiri because he was tortured during his 2002-6 detention by the C.I.A. In response, Mr. Nashiri and his lawyers were assigned to a different meeting site, the one that had two hidden microphones, at Camp Delta. Cuba expects to reach full immunization against Covid-19 with its own vaccines by the end of the year, the president of the island nation told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, whose 11 million citizens have long been isolated by the American embargo, devoted much of his recorded address to fulminating against the United States for what he called its policies of economic coercion and deprivation, which he said were meant to erase the Cuban revolution from the political map to the world. But he also extolled Cubas medical and scientific communities for what he described as their heroic achievements in creating vaccines to combat the pandemic. More than one-third of the Cuban population has been fully vaccinated with them, he said. We expect to achieve full immunization by the end of 2021, which will make it possible for us to advance in the struggle against the new outbreak of the pandemic, Mr. Diaz-Canel said. Ibrahims parents fled political turmoil in China for Afghanistan more than 50 years ago. At that time, Mao Zedong had unleashed the Cultural Revolution, and life was upended for many Uyghurs, the mostly Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang that included Ibrahims parents. Ibrahim was born in Afghanistan. But now he, too, is trying to escape the clutches of Chinese authoritarianism. He and his family have been afraid to leave their home in Afghanistan since the Taliban, the countrys new rulers, took control last month, venturing outside only to buy essentials. We are extremely worried and nervous, said Ibrahim, whose full name is being withheld for his safety. Our children are worried for our safety, so they have asked us to stay home. For years, Chinese officials have issued calls for leaders in Afghanistan to crack down on and deport Uyghur militants they claimed were sheltering in Afghanistan. The officials said the fighters belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist organization that Beijing has held responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in China since the late 1990s. MELBOURNE, Australia An Australian court ruled on Thursday that a former principal of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls school must stand trial on charges that she had sexually assaulted students under her care. The decision came months after she was extradited from Israel, following a long deportation battle that strained ties between the two countries. The Australian police initially charged the former principal, Malka Leifer, in 2012 with 74 sexual offenses, but a lawyer for the prosecution asked the court to withdraw four counts because the alleged crimes had occurred in Israel. The magistrate, Johanna Metcalf, determined there was enough evidence to support a conviction for the remainder of the offenses of which the accused is charged. Ms. Leifer, 55, pleaded not guilty to 70 counts in connection with offenses that the prosecution said happened between 2004 and 2008. A trial date was not immediately set, but a hearing was scheduled for Oct. 21. Ms. Leifer made no application for bail and remained in jail. LONDON He told the world to grow up and accept the challenge of climate change. He made fun of Frances neuralgic reaction to being elbowed out of a submarine deal with Australia by Britain and the United States. He even cleared up lingering confusion about how many children he has (six). Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain cut a characteristically colorful swath from New York City to Washington this week, managing to travel between the cities by Amtrak a nod to his Amtrak-loyal host, President Biden before telling the aggrieved French to prenez un grip and donnez-moi un break. For Americans, now used to a president who rarely strays from the script, it was a throwback to a time when their own leader would show up in Britain and start lobbing cherry bombs. Except in the case of Donald J. Trump, that involved calling Londons mayor a stone-cold loser and telling a British tabloid that Mr. Johnsons predecessor, Theresa May, was doing a bad job of negotiating a Brexit deal. Mr. Johnson has always been a more genial, upbeat figure, a journalist-turned-politician who uses humor, often at his own expense, to make serious points. What is less clear, after a five-day visit that featured signs both reassuring and problematic for the special relationship, is how the prime ministers lighthearted style advances Britains effort to stake out a post-Brexit role on the global stage. PARIS Beneath Frances angry outbursts about a secretive knife-in-the-back American deal to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia lay a single question that, as the French say, put the finger where it hurts. After much tiptoeing in France around the issue, the newspaper LOpinion asked at the top of its front page a question familiar to anybody who knows Snow White. Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me if Im still a great power? Europe is speckled with fading former imperial powers. But France has clung more than most to its past as a great power, still seeing itself as having global interests partly because of territorial possessions in the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean. Imbued with a sense of grandeur, France harks back to the Enlightenment to speak about fighting obscurantism in the world today and proffers its secular universalism as a model for modern societies. It often punches above its geopolitical weight, though it also overreaches. The question of whether France is still a great power not only the answer, but also the fact that it is still being asked shows how its past glory continues to shape its national psyche. The flip side the repeated assertion that France is suffering from an existential decline is one of the most potent themes in French domestic politics, pushed forward mostly by the right and far right. I came to honor Ms. Merkel, our chancellor and representative, she said, adding that throughout her 30 years representing the constituency, Ms. Merkel would visit regularly, attending meetings and engaging with the community. She remained approachable and down-to-earth. Vilana Cassing and Tim Taugnitz, both students in their early 20s, were vacationing in Stralsund and saw the posters advertising the event and Ms. Merkels attendance. They decided to attend more out of curiosity to see the woman who had shaped their lives than out of political interest. They described their political leanings as leftist-Green, saying they would vote on Sunday, but not for Mr. Laschet. I think it is good if the Christian Democrats go into opposition, Mr. Taugnitz said. That could happen. On Sunday, voters will go to the polls, though many may have already done so, with the pandemic resulting in an unusually high number of requests for mail-in ballots a form of voting that has been around in Germany since 1957 and that organizers assure is safe. Should the Social Democrats emerge as the strongest party, they would still need to find at least one partner to form a government. While that means that the roles could be reversed, with the Christian Democrats as the junior partners under Mr. Scholz, more likely is a center-left alliance led by the Social Democrats together with the Greens and the business friendly Free Democrats. MADRID Carles Puigdemont, the former separatist leader of Spains Catalonia region, was arrested by the Italian police Thursday night on the island of Sardinia, his office said in a statement, on an arrest warrant issued by Spains top court on charges of sedition. Mr. Puigdemont, a member of the European Parliament, had been traveling to the Sardinian city of Alghero from Brussels, where he had fled to avoid the charges, first brought in 2017. He had gone to Sardinia to attend a Catalan folk culture festival known as the Adifolk Conference, the statement from his office said. When he arrived at the airport, he was detained by the Italian police. He faces a trial in Spain for his leading role in an unsuccessful attempt to declare an independent state in Catalonia in the fall of 2017, following a referendum that the Spanish government and courts had declared illegal to hold. MESSINA, Italy The little girl climbed over the metal roofs of the shacks, gave chase to a rat as big as a rabbit, then stopped to look with trepidation at the sky. I think its going to rain, she said. Like her father, grandfather and great-grandfather before her, the girl, Aurora, 8, grew up in the slums of the Sicilian city of Messina. And, like them, she knows that rain is bad news at home. Water leaks through their asbestos-coated roofs, permeates their walls and floods their street. To keep the children dry, adults sometimes have to carry them on their heads. TEL AVIV When a cable snapped, sending a cable car plunging down a mountainside in northern Italy last May, 5-year-old Eitan Biran lost his parents, two great-grandparents and his 2-year-old brother. When he came home from the hospital, only his cat, Oliver, was waiting for him. I know it sounds stupid, but its the only thing that he had in his old house that was still with him, said Eitans aunt, Aya Biran, who lives in a small town near Pavia, Italy. She says the boy should stay there, his home since he was 2 months old. Eitans grandfather, Shmuel Peleg, says that Eitans parents always intended to return to Israel, where Eitan was born and where most of his relatives live. Eitan is an Israeli boy, he was born here, said Mr. Peleg, who lives in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv. He has everything here. So why there? The pandemic reminded us: we exist to do more than just We now have space to reimagine how a job fits into a good life Opinion Guest Essay The Future of Work Should Mean Working Less A dozen years ago, my friend Patricia Nordeen was an ambitious academic, teaching at the University of Chicago and speaking at conferences across the country. Being a political theorist was my entire adult identity, she told me recently. Her work determined where she lived and who her friends were. She loved it. Her life, from classes to research to hours spent in campus cafes, felt like one long, fascinating conversation about human nature and government. But then she started getting very sick. She needed spinal fusion surgeries. She had daily migraines. It became impossible to continue her career. She went on disability and moved in with relatives. For three years she had frequent bouts of paralysis. She was eventually diagnosed with a subtype of Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, a group of hereditary disorders that weaken collagen, a component of many sorts of tissue. Ive had to evaluate my core values, she said, and find a new identity and community without the work she loved. Chronic pain made it hard to write, sometimes even to read. She started drawing, painting and making collages, posting the art on Instagram. She made friends there and began collaborations with them, like a 100-day series of sketchbook pages abstract watercolors, collages, flower studies she exchanged with another artist. A project like this allows her to exercise her curiosity. It also gives me a sense of validation, like Im part of society, she said. Art does not give Patricia the total satisfaction academia did. It doesnt order her whole life. But for that reason, I see in it an important effort, one every one of us will have to make sooner or later: an effort to prove, to herself and others, that we exist to do more than just work. We need that truth now, when millions are returning to in-person work after nearly two years of mass unemployment and working from home. The conventional approach to work from the sanctity of the 40-hour week to the ideal of upward mobility led us to widespread dissatisfaction and seemingly ubiquitous burnout even before the pandemic. Now, the moral structure of work is up for grabs. And with labor-friendly economic conditions, workers have little to lose by making creative demands on employers. We now have space to reimagine how work fits into a good life. I am never going back to angry commute podcast listening and mid-drive meditation to deal with the frustration of traffic. I just can't stomach the meaningless drive anymore. Work happens wherever. I am never going back to being the last parent to pick up my child from school. I am never going back to frantically trying to get it all done on artificial timelines by working more rather than being honest about my own mental health needs. As it is, work sits at the heart of Americans vision of human flourishing. Its much more than how we earn a living. Its how we earn dignity: the right to count in society and enjoy its benefits. Its how we prove our moral character. And its where we seek meaning and purpose, which many of us interpret in spiritual terms. Political, religious and business leaders have promoted this vision for centuries, from Capt. John Smiths decree that slackers would be banished from the Jamestown settlement to Silicon Valley gurus touting work as a transcendent activity. Work is our highest good; do your job, our supreme moral mandate. But work often doesnt live up to these ideals. In our dissent from this vision and our creation of a better one, we ought to begin with the idea that each one of us has dignity whether we work or not. Your job, or lack of one, doesnt define your human worth. This view is simple yet radical. It justifies a universal basic income and rights to housing and health care. It justifies a living wage. It also allows us to see not just unemployment but retirement, disability and caregiving as normal, legitimate ways to live. When American politicians talk about the dignity of work, like when they argue that welfare recipients must be employed, they usually mean you count only if you work for pay. The pandemic revealed just how false this notion is. Millions lost their jobs overnight. They didnt lose their dignity. Congress acknowledged this fact, offering unprecedented jobless benefits: for some, a living wage without having to work. I resolve to do less and enjoy it more. I resolve to remember my boundaries. No is a complete sentence. I resolve to try and unionize my fellow employees. The idea that all people have dignity before they ever work, or if they never do, has been central to Catholic social teaching for at least 130 years. In that time, popes have argued that jobs ought to fit the capacities of the people who hold them, not the productivity metrics of their employers. Writing in 1891, Pope Leo XIII argued that working conditions, including hours, should be adapted to the health and strength of the workman. Leo mentioned miners as deserving shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Today, we might say the same about nurses, or any worker whose ordinary limitations whether a bad back or a mental health condition makes an intense eight-hour shift too much to bear. Patricia Nordeen would like to teach again one day, but given her health at the moment, full-time work seems out of the question. Because each of us is both dignified and fragile, our new vision should prioritize compassion for workers, in light of works power to deform their bodies, minds and souls. As Eyal Press argues in his new book, Dirty Work, people who work in prisons, slaughterhouses and oil fields often suffer moral injury, including post-traumatic stress disorder, on the job. This reality challenges the notion that all work builds character. Wage labor can harm us in subtle and insidious ways, too. The American ideal of a good life earned through work is disciplinary, according to the Marxist feminist political philosopher Kathi Weeks, a professor at Duke and often-cited critic of the modern work ethic. It constructs docile subjects, she wrote in her 2011 book, The Problem With Work. Day to day, that means we feel pressure to become the people our bosses, colleagues, clients and customers want us to be. When that pressure conflicts with our human needs and well-being, we can fall into burnout and despair. To limit works negative moral effects on people, we should set harder limits on working hours. Dr. Weeks calls for a six-hour work day with no pay reduction. And we who demand labor from others ought to expect a bit less of people whose jobs grind them down. In recent years, the public has become more aware of conditions in warehouses and the gig economy. Yet we have relied on inventory pickers and delivery drivers ever more during the pandemic. Maybe compassion can lead us to realize we dont need instant delivery of everything and that workers bear the often-invisible cost of our cheap meat and oil. The vision of less work must also encompass more leisure. For a time the pandemic took away countless activities, from dinner parties and concerts to in-person civic meetings and religious worship. Once they can be enjoyed safely, we ought to reclaim them as what life is primarily about, where we are fully ourselves and aspire to transcendence. Leisure is what we do for its own sake. It serves no higher end. Patricia said that making art is often meditative for her. If Im trying to draw a plant, Im really looking at the plant, she said. Im noticing all the different shades of color that maybe I wouldnt have noticed if I wasnt drawing it. Her absorption in the task the feel of the pen on paper puts the pain out of focus. I am never going back to driving for Uber. Its the definition of chaos in myriad ways. It is also the exact opposite of where employment should be headed. I am never going back to being separated from my children for 10 to 11 hours per day as they commute and attend school and after-school programs while I work. I am never going back to sending work-related emails after dinner or on weekends. Its true that people often find their jobs meaningful, as Patricia did in her academic career or as I did while working on this essay. But for decades, business leaders have taken this obvious truth too far, preaching that well find the purpose of our lives at work. Its a convenient narrative for employers, but look at what we actually do all day: For too many of us, if we arent breaking our bodies, then were drowning in trivial email. This is not the purpose of a human life. And for those of us fortunate enough to have jobs that consistently provide us with meaning, Patricias story is a reminder that we may not always have that kind of work. Anything from a sudden health issue to the natural effects of aging to changing economic conditions can leave us unemployed. So we should look for purpose beyond our jobs and then fill work in around it. We each have limitless potential, a unique genius, as Henry David Thoreau called it. He believed that excessive toil had stunted the spiritual growth of the men who laid the railroad near Walden Pond, where he lived from 1845 to 1847. He saw the pride they took in their work but wrote, I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt. Pursuing our genius, whether in art or conversation or sparring at a jiujitsu gym, will awaken us to a higher life than we fell asleep from, Thoreau wrote. It isnt the sort of leisure, like culinary tourism, that heaps more labor on others. It is leisure that allows us to escape the normal passage of time without traveling a mile. The mornings Thoreau spent standing in his cabin doorway, rapt in a revery, he wrote, were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. Compared with that, he thought, labor was time wasted. I resolve to put work second. My family and I come first from now on. I resolve to be firm in my decision to go home when I feel sick, and stay home or wear a mask until I am better. I resolve to save more, stay put. Dignity, compassion, leisure: These are pillars of a more humane ethos, one that acknowledges that work is essential to a functioning society but often hinders individual workers flourishing. This ethos would certainly benefit Patricia Nordeen and might allow students to benefit from her teaching ability. In practice, this new vision should inspire us to implement universal basic income and a higher minimum wage, shorter shifts for many workers and a shorter workweek for all at full pay. Together, these pillars and policies would keep work in its place, as merely a support for people to spend their time nurturing their greatest talents or simply being at ease with those they love. Its a vision we can approach from multiple directions, befitting Americas intellectual diversity. Pope Leo, Dr. Weeks and Thoreau criticized industrial society from the disparate, often incompatible traditions of Catholicism, Marxist feminism and Transcendentalism. But they agreed that we need to see inherent value in each person and to keep work in check so everyone can attain higher goods. These thinkers are hardly alone. We might equally take inspiration from W.E.B. Du Boiss contention that Black Americans would gain political rights through intellectual cultivation and not only relentless labor, or Abraham Joshua Heschels view that the Sabbath day of rest is not an interlude but the climax of living, or the right not to work advocated by the disabled artist and writer Sunaura Taylor. The point is to subordinate work to life. A life is what each of us needs to get, wrote Dr. Weeks, and you cant get one without freedom from works domination. That said, she continues, one cannot get something as big as a life on ones own. That means we need one more pillar: solidarity, a recognition that your good and mine are linked. Each of us, when we interact with people doing their jobs, has the power to make their lives miserable. If Im overworked, Im likely to overburden you. But the reverse is also true: Your compassion can evoke mine. Early in the pandemic, we exhibited the virtues we need to realize this vision. Public health compelled us to set limits on many peoples work and provide for those who lost their jobs. We showed imperfectly that we could make human well-being more important than productivity. We had solidarity with one another and with the doctors and nurses who battled the disease on the front lines. We limited our trips to the grocery store. We tried to flatten the curve. When the pandemic subsides but works threat to our thriving does not, we can practice those virtues again. Bob Livingston Former House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston is representing New York-based Sikhs for Justice on issues related to the intimidation and harassment of US citizens of Sikh ethnicity by individuals and entities outside of the US for expressing their personal and political views. In an open letter to president Biden and vice president Harris that was published in Politico on Sept. 23, SFJ said India has been criminally charging American Sikhs who have been advocating for the Khalistan referendum from US soil. A separatist movement wants to establish Khalistan as a homeland for Sikhs in Indias Punjab region. The letter alleges that threats were made against Meena Harris, niece of the VP, for her support of striking farmers in India. Harris, who is Hindu, tweeted the farmers protest was not just against Indias agricultural policies but also about the persecution of a vocal religious minority. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for SFJ, told O'Dwyer's his group has launched an email campaign directed at UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and member countries urging them to hold India prime minister Narendra Modi accountable for 1) the use of unbridled and brutal violence to crush the farmers' protest and the use of sedition charges against overseas Sikhs for supporting the protesters, and 2) India's heightened attempts to curb the freedom of speech of diasporaDikhs who support the Khalistan referendum. The Livingston Group has Livingston, who was a Republican Congressman from Louisiana; Allen Martin, managing director and ex-chief of staff for Livingston, and Cathryn Kingsbury, international practice area director, working the SFJ business. KCSA Strategic Communications is selected as agency of record by EzFill Holdings, Inc., the first publicly traded on-demand mobile fuel company. KCSA is tasked with implementing a communications program aimed at educating investors, fleet owners, and consumers about EzFill's value proposition as the largest app-based mobile fuel delivery provider in South Florida, and the only company to offer subscription-based, on-demand fuel delivery service to customers in three vertical segments: consumer, commercial and specialty including marine, construction and agriculture. "Working closely with the team from KCSA, we look forward to executing an aggressive communications program that raises EzFill's profile with the investment community as well as with targeted customers in Florida and nationally," said EzFill CEO Mike McConnell. Hemsworth Communications runs national media relations push for The Beaufort Bonnet Company, upscale baby and children's clothing brand. The agency will also lead brand partnership development and drive PR efforts surrounding the brand's new corporate stores, the first two of which are slated to open in the coming months. "We love nothing more than aligning with other female-founded companies and are so impressed by what The Beaufort Bonnet Company has already created, as well as the ambitious plans they have for the future," said Hemsworth Communications founder and president Samantha Jacobs. Cindy Riccio Communications is named agency of record for British footwear brand Sans Matin. CRC will handle the US launch of the brand, which sells handmade unisex sneakers. The brand plans to introduce one new shoe every month over the next few years, which will include espadrilles and platform sneakers. It donates two percent of all sales to charity and is also in a partnership with Children Change Colombia, which works with children and their families to challenge poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence. "Sustainability is at the forefront of our minds at SANS MATIN," says co-founder Lockie Cunningham. "Our ethically and locally sourced materials minimize our carbon footprint and waste." Google does it right. With minimal fanfare, the search giant announced Sept. 21 that it would shell out $2.1B to buy the massive St. Johns Terminal on Manhattans Hudson River waterfront front and would add 2,000 more people to its 12,000-member workforce in the Big Apple. Its one of the biggest prices ever paid for an office building in the US. Opened in 1934 as a freight railroad terminal, St. Johns Terminal was once known as the lifeline of New York for its role in delivering shipments of meat, milk and eggs from the Hudson Valley to the city. Google is throwing another lifeline to NYC, which is struggling to stage a comeback from the COVID-19 pandemic. The St. Johns Terminal deal is a strong vote of confidence in both the city and the importance of the in-the-office work model. New Yorks energy, creativity and world-class talent are what keeps us rooted here and why were deepening our commitment with plans to purchase St. Johns Terminal, said Ruth Porat, CFO of Google. Googles low-key NYC expansion stands in sharp contrast to Amazons search for a second headquarters saga that went on for more than a year. CEO Jeff Bezos team barnstormed the US, Canada and Mexico and shook down more than 200 cities for tax breaks, infrastructure improvements, and a myriad of corporate goodies. Amazon announced the search for HQ2 in September 2017 and the online retailer unveiled a shortlist of 20 survivors in January 2018. Arlington, VA and Long Island City, Queens were announced the lucky winners in November 2018. Amazon promised each 25K workers. New York grassroots groups, unions and politicos questioned why the worlds greatest city needed to shower corporate giant Amazon with $1.5B in tax breaks, $325M grants and incentives to entice it to move. In a pique, Bezos canceled LIC in February 2019 and decided to expand its Seattle HQ instead. The lure of the Big Apple proved too much for Jeff. Less than a year later, Amazon signed a lease to expand near the new Hudson Yards Development on the West Side and bought the former Lord & Taylor department store building on Fifth Ave in Midtown. Army musters out its top public affairs officer. Brigadier General Amy Johnston, chief spokesperson for the Army and its highest ranking PA official has been suspended after a climate command survey blamed her for creating a hostile work environment. She has been suspended and placed on special duty pending the outcome of an investigation. Army Times obtained slides of the climate survey and found massive dissatisfaction with the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs. About two-thirds of respondents reported low morale at OCPA, compared to eight percent saying morale was high. Overwork, lousy work-life balance and fuzzy expectations were among reasons for the morale problem. A whopping 97 percent of respondents report workplace hostility at OCPA. More than a quarter (26 percent) witnessed racial harassment and 21 percent saw instances of sexual misconduct. Johnston became chief of PA on April 13, 2019. Earlier, she was PA officer at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Belgium), deputy PA officer at the Pentagon and PA officer for the US Army in South Korea. ESG issues are rapidly climbing the corporate agenda, becoming a major consideration of CEOs, according to FTI Consultings Resilience Barometer. Once viewed as a supplementary PR exercise, more than one in five of executives at G20 country companies believe ESG and sustainability developments have had a material adverse impact on their revenues during the past year. The idea of ESG as a risk to be managed has evolved into an opportunity to be seized. A robust 85 percent of RB respondents have shifted their approach from reactively managing ESG to proactively identifying new ESG-related business opportunities. Thirty percent of G20 companies expect to make a merger or acquisition to improve their ESG capabilities over the next year. LLYC acquires 75 percent of Mexican creative data-predictive agency BESO for $8.4M, a price subject to change based on the agencys results from 2021 to 2024. The acquisition triples LLYCs size in Mexico, making it the market leader. It also strengthens LLYCs Deep Digital Business unit. BESO founding partners Jose Beker and Federico Isuani will continue to hold a stake in and lead the companys business, as well as joining LLYCs global DDB team, led by LLYC partner and chief strategy & innovation officer Adolfo Corujo. Corujo said that BESOs experience in data-predictive creativity and ability to work through Digital Command Centers, which are deployed for leading brands, both complement our proposal to accompany our clients in their digital journeys. Weber Shandwick launches its Media Security Center, which will leverage AI-driven technology to help organizations build resiliency around information threats. The center builds on the agencys crisis & issues work, with a particular focus on better anticipating, managing and mitigating risk from information/media intended to do harm. An exclusive partnership with threat detection platform Blackbird.AI. the center will offer solutions to the problems posed by information threats, as well as immersive education and training sessions to help executives and marketing and communications teams become well-versed in how information and misinformation spreads. As malicious content becomes more pervasive and more sophisticated, it presents an increasingly material reputational and commercial threat, said Weber Shandwick CEO Gail Heimann. The Weber Shandwick Media Security Center team works to understand the influence of questionable content on the attitudes and behaviors of customers, employees and other stakeholders. Private equity firm Trinity Hunt Partners forms a partnership with Exclusive Concepts, a digital marketing and advertising services agency based in Burlington, MA. Founded in 1997, Exclusive Concepts works with eCommerce-focused clients. Exclusive president Scott Smigler will remain a significant shareholder in the firm. Through its partnership with Exclusive, Trinity Hunt intends to acquire complementary businesses across the United States in what it says is a bid to create the market leader in the digital marketing industry. Exclusives commitment to thought leadership in eCommerce digital marketing is a true differentiator, said Trinity Hung principal George Morgan. We are excited to partner with Scott and the entire Exclusive team to execute our thesis in the digital marketing and digital media services industry. 750kg of litter was cleared up in Offaly last weekend as part of a nationwide clean-up operation. After a break in 2020, the Big Beach Clean took place and Clean Coasts were overwhelmed with the incredible support and commitment shown by communities across Ireland. Even in inland counties like Offaly, clean-ups took place. This year, thanks to the support of the An Taisce National Spring Clean programme, Clean Coasts opened registrations to residents of non-coastal counties too. The reason behind this is that according to recent studies, 70% of marine litter is originated inland in towns and cities. Litter dropped inland can make its way through our waterways all the way to the coast. Offaly saw a huge response with 125 volunteers organising clean-ups in Cappincur and Rahan and collecting 750kg of litter. The Big Beach Clean is an annual call to action that takes place in September at the end of the bathing season. Volunteers around Ireland were asked to register their clean up event and take part in a worldwide citizen science project, as part of the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), operated internationally by Ocean Conservancy. This year, a record number of over 400 clean-ups were organised by volunteers who removed 42 tonnes of litter across the country. In addition, more volunteers joined clean-ups facilitated by Clean Coasts officers in 8 different locations around Ireland. Statistics show that the number one cause of marine litter is litter dropped in towns and cities. Thanks to the involvement of An Taisce National Spring Clean programme, the Big Beach Clean was open to all residents of Ireland, including non-coastal counties, who contributed to the problem of marine litter at its source. Sinead McCoy, Coastal Communities Manager, said: After a break in 2020 due to Covid, we were excited to host the Big Beach Clean again, but we didnt know what to expect. This year there was a significant increase in clean-ups organised, but in a different format: we saw more people registering for clean-ups as individuals or within their household. Sinead continued: This year, there was an over 5% decrease in litter found across Ireland. Overall this is an incredible improvement. The work that Irish volunteers do all year round to tackle litter and less waste dropped by more conscious beach users mean that we are heading in the right direction! AsIAm, Irelands National Autism Charity, has condemned the Department of Educations decision to exclude students in special classes and schools from the easing of Covid-19 close contact guidelines. These were announced on Wednesday as part of changes to the current test and trace policies for students under the age of 12, who will no longer need to restrict movements if deemed a close contact in childcare and educational settings. However, this easing of the current policy does not apply to special education classes and schools, who must continue the practice next week when the changes are introduced for all others in these settings. Under the new rules, asymptomatic young people in primary schools will be able to continue to attend school, without the need for an automatic Covid-19 test or self-isolating. This is due to the high levels of vaccination and recent data showing that schools are low-risk environments for the transmission of Covid-19. However, students with the greatest level of need in the education system - whose educational and support needs have often increased greatly during the pandemic - will face discrimination in having to remain at home in these circumstances even though many of these children are in small groups, in larger classrooms and have no underlying health conditions, according to AsIAm. Responding to the announcement, AsIAm CEO, Adam Harris said: We are deeply concerned by the flagrant discrimination in the new rules which take effect next Monday. Throughout the pandemic, the Department has consistently recognised that children with additional needs have suffered greatly and have lost out on learning opportunities due to being unable to engage in learning at home. This decision will lead to our community disproportionately losing out on teaching and learning at a critical time. What is of particular concern is the lack of evidence to support the decision. When the State chooses to treat people differently it must demonstrate a credible rationale for why this is necessary and act with surgical precision in terms of implementation. In this instance, the State is telling thousands of children, with little or no underlying health conditions, that they cannot go to school if they are a close contact simply because of their diagnosis and educational placement. It is impossible to see this as anything other than a breach of the Equal Status Act. This undermines decades of campaigning to end the shameful history of stigma and discrimination towards disability in this country. The Departments decision gives licence to unsubstantiated scaremongering which has been directed towards disabled people throughout the pandemic. It is particularly shocking that whilst consultation took place with union officials on this issue, once again disability organisations were not consulted or notified in advance - despite a previous commitment to a forum on the matter. We are calling on the Minister for Special Education and Inclusion to take urgent action to engage with our representative groups and scrap this discriminatory unfair measure. The playing field must be levelled here. The mob started pelting stones and attacked the police when Assam Muslim Student Union leaders held a discussion with the administration at the eviction site around 12 pm. Several police were injured and had to retaliate to push back the violent mob. Guwahati: Hundreds of migrant Muslim miscreants attacked police and government officials with sharp weapons and bamboo rods in Dhalpur in Darrang district while carrying an eviction drive against illegal encroachment of government land. Eight police personnel, including two women constables, were seriously injured in the attack. In retaliation, police had to fire to push back the attackers. Two attackers, namely Saddam Hussain and Sheikh Farid, were killed in police firing, and several others were injured. The violent mob also set their illegally constructed house on fire. According to a district administration official supervising the eviction drive, some Assam Muslim Student Union (AMSU) leaders held a discussion with the administration at the eviction site around 12 pm. But a group of people started pelting stones and attacked the police. Several police personnel were injured in the attack, and police had to retaliate to push back the violent mob. 518 migrant Muslims were occupying around 200 acres of government land in the bank of river Brahmaputra in the 1st and 3rd sector of Dhalpur areas under the Sipajhar constituency. Around 3000 migrant Muslims living in the government lands in Dhalpur tried to resist the police administration team that reached the place for eviction. The migrant Muslim families set their homes on fire and blamed the administration team for doing the same, and started agitating on the site. While police were trying to convince them to clear and leave the place, the mob attacked the eviction team. Police sources said some bad elements were instigating the mob against the police. Darrang district police started an investigation of the matter. Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma told the media that the mob attacked police with sharp weapons, and police retaliated. Police have been given the charge to evict the encroached area, and the eviction drive will continue. Last Monday (September 20), the Darrang district administration, with the help of police and paramilitary forces, evicted 800 Muslim families from government lands in the same area. 1488 acres of government land were cleared from illegal occupants. Another 300 illegal families living in other parts of the Dhalpur area have approached the Guwahati High Court for an injunction in the eviction drive. Government sources said that these people have encroached on almost 9000 acres of government land. The process is to clear the illegal encroachment. The state government has announced a mega agriculture project in the evicted lands. The project named as 'Gorukhuti Agricultural Project '' will engage local youth in profitable agricultural ventures. The government has constituted a committee headed by MLA Padma Hazarika. The committee has trained 500 young boys and girls, and they started farming in the evicted lands under the Gorukhuti Agri project. The Centre has informed the top court that the amount per deceased person will also include those who were involved in relief operations or as associated in preparedness activities subject to the cause of death being certified as COVID-19. New Delhi: In tune with the directives of the Supreme Court, the central government on Wednesday (September 22) informed the apex court that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has recommended giving Rs 50,000 to the kin of those who lost their lives because of COVID-19. The Supreme Court had on June 30 directed the NDMA to recommend the guidelines for ex gratia assistance on account of loss of life to the family members of persons who died because of COVID-19. The District Disaster Management Authority will ensure that the process of claim, verification, sanction and the final disbursement of ex gratia will be done through a "people-friendly procedure". All claims must be settled within 30 days of submitting required documents and disbursed through Aadhaar Linked Direct Benefit Transfer procedures. The Centre said the NDMA had issued the guidelines on September 11. It says compensation will be given for deaths in the past and also "will continue to be provided for deaths that may occur in the future phases of the Covid-19 pandemic as well, or until further notification". The Centre has informed the top court that the amount per deceased person will also include those who were involved in relief operations or as associated in preparedness activities subject to the cause of death being certified as COVID-19. The redressal of grievances regarding certification will be governed by the guidelines issued by the Health Ministry and ICMR on September 3, 2021. However, it is stated that the funds would be provided by states from the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF) and distributed by the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) or the district administrations. "Concerned families will submit their claims through a form issued by the State Authority, along with specified documents including the death certificate that certifies the cause of death to be CoVID. The DDMA will ensure that the process of claim, verification, sanction and the final disbursement of ex gratia will be done through a robust yet simple and people-friendly procedure. All claims must be settled within 30 days of submissions of required documents and disbursed through Aadhaar Linked Direct Benefit Transfer procedures." There are some reports already saying the Centre cannot leave the payment of ex gratia entirely to states. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that while states cannot entirely distance themselves from providing the assistance, a major share of the same has to come from the Central funding. In Rajasthan, Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra told journalists that: "It should be done by the Centre through their relief fund". The NDMA is the country's apex disaster management body headed by the Prime Minister. The Covid death count as of now stands at 4,45,768. Drawing up the guidelines, the NDMA said, "Covid-19 is a disaster that has not abated. The total number of deaths continues to rise. There is uncertainty about new variants of the virus and the likely future waves. Therefore, it is not possible to ascertain the total financial burden emanating from ex gratia assistance." The NDMA also said - "While Covid-19 is an unprecedented disaster, other natural disasters that occur more frequently have not abated. It is important that sufficient funds are available to provide a timely and effective response to other disasters as well." The apex court has also asked the Centre to come up with simplified guidelines for issuing official documents to family members of Covid-19 victims, which would help them pursue the collection of papers issued by the municipal or other authorities in connection with the death. It also decided to treat deaths happening within 30 days from the date of testing or from the date of being clinically determined as a Covid-19 case as death due to the pandemic, even if it takes place outside the hospital/ in-patient facility. However, deaths occurring because of poisoning, suicide, homicide, accidents etc., will not be treated as Covid-19 deaths. Vice President Naidu lauded India's performance in the 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings while addressing a summit organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). New Delhi [India] (ANI): India is now at a decisive point in regaining its economic growth, said Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday (September 23) while virtually addressing a summit. Addressing 'Mystic South - Global Linkages Summit' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Vice President Naidu said, "India is now at a decisive point in regaining its economic growth. Now is the time for all the stakeholders to join hands and ensure sustained momentum. The industry should work with the government on various reforms that need to be implemented with greater vigour." "Global trends such as automation, shifting supply chains, demographic changes and a greater focus on sustainability and health are assuming a new significance in the wake of the pandemic. For India, these trends could catalyse growth and become the hallmarks of the post-pandemic economy," he added. Naidu further said that South India has all it takes to become a 1.5 trillion economy by 2025. "The region is a classic example of 'Unity in Diversity', and combines manufacturing with services, culture with modern values and education with skills. The culture of South India is one of its biggest strengths and should be used as a soft power to bring the world to its doors," he stated. He also lauded India's performance in the 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings. "Entrepreneurship has always been a strong point for Southern success. Start-ups have also started flourishing in smaller cities of the region. I am pleased to know that the Southern States are amongst the top in the 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings in India," said Naidu. Courtesy: ANI The court noted the decision to close dairy farms was taken because of financial considerations and the mid-day meal menu was modified without compromising the nutritional content. The Kerala High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the reforms introduced by the new Lakshadweep Administration. The court observed that a writ court could only consider a policy matter if there was any arbitrariness, illegality or unfairness on the part of the authority while exercising power conferred under law. "Taking into account the proposition of law laid down by the Apex Court and the facts and circumstances available in the case at hand, we have no hesitation to hold that the petitioner has not made out any case of arbitrariness or illegality in the policy decision taken by the Lakshadweep administration in the matter of the closure of the cattle farm, and the modification of the midday meal scheme provided to the children of the island," a Division Bench of Chief Justice S Manikumar and Justice Shaji P Chaly remarked. The court noted that because of financial considerations, the decision to close dairy farms was taken, and the mid-day meal menu was modified without compromising the nutritional content. The petition was filed by one Ajmal Ahmed R., an Advocate by profession and a member of the Executive Committee of the Lakshadweep Bar Association. Kozhikkode radio station has informed the Thiruvananthapuram radio station that the drama on Veer Savarkar cannot be broadcasted tomorrow. The Kozhikkode Akashvani radio station has shown its reluctance to broadcast a drama on Veer Savarkar, reports Janmabhumi daily. All India Radio had directed all state units of Akashvani to include drama on Veer Savarkar in the ongoing national drama festival. AIR had given the drama script, which was supposed to be translated to local languages. Kerala has eight radio stations, and dramas are prepared on a rotation basis. Kozhikkode radio station has informed the Thiruvananthapuram radio station that the drama on Veer Savarkar cannot be broadcasted tomorrow. According to the report, Kozhikkode radio station master said that the current problem arose because of their employees getting infected with COVID. At the same time, the stationmaster has the power to transfer the drama to another radio station. Later AIR clarified that the play will be produced by Thiruvananthapuram station and will be broadcasted on September 30. Security forces have busted a Maoist camp in Malkangiri district and seized arms, ammunition and other Maoist articles, informed Police on September 23. Talking to reporters Prahlad Meena, SP, Malkangiri said an encounter took place in the Kirmiti forest area between security forces & armed cadre of Maoists. But Maoists managed to escape. "We had specific intelligence input about the maoist camp and movement of armed Maoist cadres in Kirmiti Reserve Forest area under Mathili police limits in Malkangiri district. With this input a joint operation by the Special Operation Group (SOG) and District Voluntary Force (DVF) of Odisha Police and the Border Security Force (BSF) was launched in the area." said Meena. During this operation, an exchange of fire took place, and it lasted for more than two hours. However, the Maoists managed to flee, taking advantage of the terrain. During the subsequent search operation, four rounds of .303 ball ammunition, one empty case of 7.62 mm SLR ammunition, Maoist literature, medicines,Maoist uniform and other articles were recovered from the spot. 1921 Malabar riots were directed against kafirs. Mappilas were angry with the 'Christian' British because they reconverted Hagia Sophia into a church on October 2, 1921 Mappilas attacked christian labourers and slaughtered three men and five children Six years back in 2015, in the summer of February, in Kerala, the Ecumenical Association took out a silent rally in the district of Pathanamthitta in protest against the killing and harassment of Christians in Libya and other parts of the world. Priests and believers attached to different parishes in and around the same district took part in the rally, which began from St. Stephen's Orthodox Cathedral. A prayer by the Pathanamthitta Bishop of the Malankara Catholic Church, Youhanon Mar Chrysostom, was held ahead of the rally (In memory of those killed in Libya in The Hindu, February 25, 2015). ). Father Paul Thelekkatt, the former spokesperson of the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala, expressed in 2016 that the militant Islamic State outfit is trying to purge Christianity from their ancient lands. In January 2021, Synod of Syro-Malabar Church raised concern over the worldwide terrorist attacks against Christians. This comes given the recent terrorist attacks on Churches in various parts of the world, including France, Burkina, Egypt, and Indonesia. The protest carried out by the ecumenical association was not an isolated event in Libya and other countries. It brings fearful memories for the Christian community of what happened to their forefathers a hundred years back in Malabar. Today when the Left and secular groups are in the forefront to celebrate the century of the Khilafat and the blood it spilt in Malabar in 1921, they are answerable to the question why Christian labourers were slaughtered, which led to their mass exodus from Malabar to the then princely states of Kochi and Travancore which were Hindu majority regions. Constantinople, which bestrides Asia and Europe, and was the capital of the Byzantine empire, is hailed by Thomas Madden, author of Istanbul, as the greatest Christian city. It was renamed Istanbul after the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, virtually all of the city's surviving cathedrals and churches were, after being desecrated and thoroughly plundered, converted into mosques. Its renowned Hagia Sophia Byzantine cathedral was changed into a mosque. When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, virtually all of the city's surviving cathedrals and churches were, after being desecrated and thoroughly plundered, converted into mosques. Its renowned Hagia Sophia Byzantine cathedral was changed into a mosque The eastern Orthodox Cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for 900 years was an imperial mosque for 482 years and then a museum from 1935. The Hagia Sophia issue was the reason for the anti-Christian stand by Khilafat in India. There was strong discontent among the Indian Sunni Muslims as a direct result of the agitation in Britain for the expulsion of the Turks from Constantinople and the 'redemption of the Church of St. Sophia back to Christianity (The Times, February 17, 1920). Nothing could symbolise a change of control at Constantinople than the reconversion of Aya Sophia Mosque back into a St Sophia Cathedral. In Britain, the focus of such views was the St Sophia Redemption Committee, which sought to restore the building to its original function. Across England, ardent philhellenes formed the St. Sophia Redemption Committee, and its manifesto was published in 1919. According to Rev. John Douglas, the idea of the return of Hagia Sophia to Christianity symbolised European aspirations for the ancient city of Constantinople, which was invaded and renamed by Turks as Istanbul. Rev. Douglas said, Never probably has there existed in Great Britain, a sentiment more forceful and more wholly disinterested than that, which though at present hardly articulate is ready to insist on the restoration of Saint Sophia to Christian worship. Robert G Ousterhout of Byzantine Studies at the University of Pennsylvania has highlighted at the beginning of January 1921, a special service was held in the cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, with Orthodox and Episcopal clergy offering prayers in six languagesHungarian, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Serbian, and Englishfor the restoration of Hagia Sophia as a Christian sanctuary. The American interdenominational prayer services of 1921 came as a response to the British movement known as the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, founded in 1864. An 1877 article in the New York Times began, How soon will the cross replace the crescent over the minarets of St. Sophia, or how soon the minarets themselves will be entirely swept away, leaving the outlines of the church in their ancient condition, no seer has foretold. The same article notes the longstanding belief among the Greeks, not altogether discredited by the Turks, that the building would be restored to Christianity. As Ottoman control of its European territories crumbled, the restoration of Hagia Sophia to Christianity was a firmly held hope and widely-felt belief, according to Ousterhout. According to Rev. John Douglas, the idea of the return of Hagia Sophia to Christianity symbolised European aspirations for the ancient city of Constantinople, which was invaded and renamed by Turks as Istanbul. Rev. Douglas said, "Never probably has there existed in Great Britain, a sentiment more forceful and more wholly disinterested than that, which though at present hardly articulate is ready to insist on the restoration of Saint Sophia to Christian worship" Hagia Sophia issue was snowballing into a major problem. A foreign secretary from 1916 till 1919, Arthur Balfour received a letter from the Church of Scotland demanding the expulsion of Turks from Constantinople, which was once the Holy City of Byzantine (Eastern) Christianity. Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1895 to 1905 and replaced Balfour as foreign secretary, was much interested in Hagia Sophia Cathedral. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (19081914) pronounced with unfounded optimism that with the control of the straits, "the cross will replace the crescent on the minaret of St' Sophia," which has been discussed by Robert S. Nelson, who has written on Hagia Sophia (1850 1950). The reclaim of Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Europe, especially in Britain, raised much discontent among the Indian Khilafat Committee of 1920. The anti-British sentiments of the Khilafat Committee in India were fundamentally based on anti-Christian solid emotions linking back to the Crusades and the unwillingness to give back Saint Sophia Cathredal converted to a Mosque by Ottomans for the Muslims exist as a symbol of victory by Islam over Christianity. When Ottomans assumed power in Turkey, Mehmet II revived the jihad against Constantinople and ensured no "Christian fifth column" would join hands with the European powers. There was escalating tension between Christians and Muslims in Ottoman Empire. The Khilafat Mappilas were infuriated with the Christian labourers at Kodakkal near Ponnani in South Malabar. On October 2, 1921, not far away from Thirunavay at Kodakkal, there was a Christian settlement. Nearly a thousand people, including men, women, and children labourers in a nearby tile factory, resided. At night, the settlement was attacked by nearly three hundred Mappilas, butchering Issac and Jacob, two labourers, and Yesumitran, a school master, and his five children. The rest of the nearly one thousand Christians resorted to a mass exodus to nearby Kozhikkode and Palakkad regions. The gruesome incident is narrated by K Madhavan Nair, secretary of the Kozhikkode Congress Committee, in his much-acclaimed Malayalam work Malabar Kalaapam (Malabar Rebellion) published by the Matrubhumi. During the spread of the 1921 riots, M.C.Chandy, who was a forest conservator at Nilambur, fled to Nedungayam, where he was captured by Moplahs and threatened to either adopt Islam or face death, but he escaped. There was a mass exodus of nearly a thousand Christians from the riot-hit regions in south Malabar into neighbouring Thrissur, Palakkad and Kochi regions. Their houses and settlements were mostly burnt down, destroyed, and the rest looted, which has been discussed by Madhavan Nair. Attack on Christians by Mappilas in Malabar has a long history. In his Malabar Manual, William Logan discusses the attack on churches by Moplahs during the period of the Mysorean interlude. In March 1764, Moplahs attacked the church on Dharmapattanam island during the holy mass and murdered one and severely wounded several others. Sayyid Sana Ullah Makti Tangal was an uncompromising critic of Christianity and Christian missionaries. He orchestrated large religious debates and published numerous pamphlets challenging Christian religious ideas. In his memoirs titled Tarikh-i Khudadadi (History of the God-given kingdom), Tipu describes his operation against Christians at Mangalore. J.A. Dubois, a French Catholic priest who came to India in 1792, documented the plight of Christianity in Canara under Tipu Sultan: "Sometime after they arrived at Seringapatam, Tippoo ordered the whole to undergo the rites of circumcision, and be made converts to Mahomedanism. The Christians were put together during the several days that the ceremony lasted. After the fall of the late Tippoo Sultan, most of these apostates came back to be reconciled to their former religion, saying that their apostasy had been only external, and they always kept in their hearts the true faith in Christ. Almost 2,000 of them fell in my way, and nearly 20,000 returned to the Mangalore district, from whence they had been carried away and rebuilt there their former places of worship." Thus Tipu was hostile towards Christians. In a tradition followed for decades, Catholics of Dakshina Kannada district still felicitate members of three Hindu families in gratitude for having protected them during the attack by Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan's army attacked the Our Lady of Remedies Church, Kirem 30-km from Mangaluru in 1784. Three families of the local Hindu Bant community succeeded in foiling the attack. To date, the members of these families are honoured by Our Lady of Remedies Church, Kirem. This tradition is held at Damaskatte, Kinnigoli, every year. In 2018, the function was held on November 28 at Our Lady of Remedies Church, Kirem, during the church's annual feast. The local Christians are still grateful to the Hindu families who stopped the destruction of the church, which is one of the oldest churches in the Manguluru Diocese in Karnataka. The Census of India Special Studies on Kerala temples, Thrissur district, by S.Jayashankar, narrates that in November 1789, Tipu desecrated and plundered Hindus while invading temples and Christian churches in Thrissur district. After being converted by Sultan Mohammed the conqueror into a mosque, Hagia Sophia remained so till 1931. In 1935, the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, also known as Ataturk, or Father of the Turks, transformed Hagia Sophia into a museum. In 2020, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again converted it into a mosque, which raised massive protests by Churches and Christian organisations worldwide. Tipu was hostile towards Christians. In a tradition followed for decades, Catholics of Dakshina Kannada district still felicitate members of three Hindu families in gratitude for having protected them during the attack by Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan's army attacked the Our Lady of Remedies Church, Kirem 30-km from Manguluru in 1784. Three families of the local Hindu 'Bant' community succeeded in foiling the attack The Indian Union Muslim League ( henceforth IUML)' in its mouthpiece Chandrika, published an article on Hagia Sophia titled 'The Friday Prayer at Ayasofya' on July 24, 2020, written by senior IUML leader Panakkad Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal in support of President Erdogan's decision to convert the museum into a mosque again. Churches in Kerala, especially the Syro Malabar church, raised their protest. These issues have polarised the two communities in Kerala. In August 2020, Catholic Bishops in Kerala warned about the increasing influence of international terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State in the southern Indian state. The bishops call follows a United Nations report which said there are Islamic State-related terrorists in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka. The Bishops expressed concern in August 2020. Earlier on January 15 2020, the synod of Syro-Malabar Church, an apex body of Catholic Bishops, chaired by Cardinal George Alencherry, accused that members from the Christian community from the southern state were being lured into the trap of Islamic State and used in terror activities. He also accused the state police of not viewing the matter cautiously and taking timely action (Indian Express January 15, 2020). The church in India is alarmed at the plight of Christianity in Europe. Contemporary historian Niall Ferguson wrote about Europe's future as "the creeping Islamisation of a decadent Christendom". One of Christendom's most prominent atheist advocates is the Italian philosopher and politician Marcello Pera. In 2004, he delivered a series of lectures and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that presented their shared view of the need to restore the fast diminishing Christian identity in Europe to counter intellectual degeneration and Islamic fundamentalism. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow warned that Europe must not lose its Christian roots. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Europe and European culture have Christian roots. Since 2012, the country's constitution has officially recognised "the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood". In January 20, 2020, Varghese Vallikatt, Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) deputy general secretary told The New Indian Express that earlier investigations and reports were submitted to the government by various agencies including Vigilance, CBI and special intelligence bureau, no one was ready to discuss it in the public domain, he said. It's a major problem we've been facing for many years, but secular political parties in Kerala are not interested in discussing these issues. It's part of their politics. He said that every death and killing in the state is sidelined as an isolated incident. A series of killings have taken place, and yet no mainstream party in the state has addressed the issue. There have been reports that radical groups were involved in the killings. The government has all the details, said Fr Vallikat (Politics in state silent on love jihad, but we cant be: Bishops Council in The New Indian Express January 20, 2020). Father Jimmy Poochakatt, the spokesperson of Syro Malabar Church, observed, If the believers are concerned with such a scenario, then you cannot fault them for it. Though officially, the diocese has not taken a stand, we are concerned. So if people are working towards stopping such a thing, what is wrong in supporting them? (Hindustan Times, July 17, 2017). Mathew Mar Gregorios, the Bishop of the Syrian Independent Orthodox Church, says there is a rampant conversion of Christian girls into Islam in the Malabar region. Since I am heading a Church denomination here, I have my limitations to talk about it openly," the Bishop told Hindustan Times (July 17, 2017). In 2021, reports came that an Islamic State document titled Know your martyrs says Abu Bakr Al-Hindi was a Christian who embraced Islam while working in the Gulf. The document says he is the first 'Istishhadi' (suicide bomber or 'martyr' in an attack) from India killed in Libya These incidents are not isolated events in Malabar. As KCBC Deputy General Secretary revealed, it is a problem faced by the Church in Kerala for many years, and which Left and secular groups are not interested in discussing. What has gone untold by secular and Left historians is the massacre of Christians and their mass exodus in south Malabar during the Khilafat rampage of 1921. The 1921 massacre was not confined to Hindus in Malabar. Even the Christians in Malabar were victimised. But this was not revealed or discussed since the aim of 1921 Khilafat studies was to twist and interpret the rampage as an uprising by the tenants against the landlords and state. Did the Khilafat rampage and its aftermath bring peace and permanently settle communal tensions in Malabar? The Syro-Malankara Orthodox Church in Kerala informally protested against the Turkish government's decision to turn one of Christianity's most historic masterpieces into an Islamic place of worship. Wherever they have strongholds, Jihadi groups attack the Church. Since the 1960s, Christian persecution by Islamic terrorists has escalated in Kashmir, such as the attack and destruction of Holy Family Church, All Saints Church, Holy Family Catholic Church St Francis School, Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson schools, School of the Convent of St. Luke, all by Islamic militants. There was calculated silence by left-liberal groups who today laments the attack on minorities, fascism and denial of the right to protest in India. Dr Sajan George and Dr Bernard Malik representing the Global Council of Indian Christians, wrote a letter on January 25 2012, to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, demanding Farooq Abdullah be immediately dropped from the Council of Ministers for his anti-constitutional statement in support of Kashmir Shariat Court's 'recent unilateral decisions of permanent expulsion of 5 respected and innocent Christian clergymen from Jammu and Kashmir'. On January 15, 2020, a pastoral letter by Syro-Malabar Media Commission under the Syro Malabar Church Major Archbishop, Cardinal George Alencherry, urged the priests and laity to take serious note of Christian girls getting trapped in love and being killed in Kerala and other States by Islamic State organisations. The media commission has Bishop Joseph Pamplany as Chairman and Bishop Paul Kannookkadan and Bishop Sebastian Vaniapurackal. The letter came after a week-long Synod of the Eastern Rite, in which 57 of 64 Bishops of the Syro-Malabar church participated. The Church's statement pointed out that out of the 21 people from Kerala recruited to IS a couple of years back, almost half were converted from the Christian community. In 2021, reports came that an Islamic State document titled Know your martyrs says Abu Bakr Al-Hindi was a Christian who embraced Islam while working in the Gulf. The document says he is the first 'Istishhadi' (suicide bomber or martyr in an attack) from India killed in Libya. The engineer is believed to be a youth from an aristocratic Christian family in Kerala. (Malayali engineer dies fighting for ISIS in Libya? (The New Indian Express, June 6, 2021). The reason for this strategic silence is the recent psychological fear that has gripped the church in India against rising attacks by Jihadi groups on its believers. Already there are reports, as in Union of Catholic Asian News on October 12, 2016, that IS terrorists plan to target Syrian Christians in India, especially Kerala, which is causing grave concern for religious leaders of the southern state. The Kerala Catholic Bishops Council deputy secretary-general Father Varghese Vallikatt told Catholic Asian News in 2016, We cannot take the threat lightly. The spread of IS militancy poses a threat to all mankind. Spiritually and intellectually powerful ancient Indian civilisation could moderate the invaders supremacist ideology and socially integrate them with the mainstream conquered society India is not an idea or a dream, it is a vibrant civilisation in constant churn, a civilisation that has not been absolutely dated, and even after repeated attempts, is the only ancient civilization on this planet that man and time have not been able to destroy, subdue or drastically alter. India is the only country in the world that has outlived prolonged brutal attempts to convert into Islam or Christianity. What are those qualities in the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent that withstood all existential adversities and survived many onslaughts to destroy their ancient civilisation? What are those underlying spiritual high-points unique to the inhabitants of this subcontinent, which time and again had overwhelmed the proselytisation attempts of various invaders. To understand this, we have to delve into the spiritual thoughts of the ancient Indian saints and the way of life practised by the people of the subcontinent. Indian civilisation is steeped in what is known as the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion with no founder, messenger or Holy Book. It envisaged an aesthetic way of life, in search of the eternal truth about life and the universe that is lucidly discussed in the Vedas, the immemorial ancient Indian scriptures. Today, religious activities of evangelists have considerably ebbed but the intent to Islamise the whole of India is a work in progress Failure to Convert Hindus The Moghuls and Evangelists had been successful in making dents into the established Indian way of life, but could not convert the majority population into their faiths, as they had successfully done with many other countries they had invaded. Spiritually and intellectually powerful ancient Indian civilisation could moderate the invaders supremacist ideology and socially integrate them with the mainstream conquered society. That is why, in general, Indian Muslims are more tolerant than their ilk in other parts of the world. Today, religious activities of the evangelists have considerably ebbed, but the intent to Islamise the whole of India remained a work in progress. This unfulfilled religious agenda remained deeply embedded in the psyche of the fundamentalists Muslims and often exposed its ugly face at the slightest provocation. Growing Number of Muslims Census Reports reveal that after the bloody dissection of the subcontinent into Hindu and Muslim majority nations, Muslims added more than 13.6 crores to their population of 3.6 crores in India, a whopping 378% jump. Hindu population in the same period grew from 30.4 crores to 96.6 crores, adding 66.2 crores, an increase of 218%. Throughout, Muslims have maintained constant growth, while all other religions have shown a general decline in their growth trends. Muslims have been able to reach the present level of population without resorting to any violence, their worldly trademark. Their growth has been innocuous and staying within the existing laws of the land by exponentially increasing their population; a policy that worked wonderfully well in a country where tolerance and acceptance are cultural embodiments. Though India launched the National Family Planning programme in 1952, the idea went haywire and landed the country in a skewed demographic equilibrium, disproportionately in favour of the Muslims. Absence of effective population policy to maintain numerical balance amongst various religions in the country helped Muslims population to achieve their present stupendous growth. Vulnerable to Extremist Elements Pew Research surveys state that by 2050, the Indian population would be 169.4 crores, of which 130 crores would be Hindus (76.4%), 31.1 crores Muslims (18.36%), 3.7 crores Christians (2.18%) and 4.6 crores other religions (2.72%). It is to be noted that the 18.36% Muslims are not sprinkled all over the country but concentrated in certain areas and vulnerable to machinations of extremist elements within the community. In the entire melodrama unfolding in front of us, we are forgetting what life we are passing on to our future generations. Have we become so selfish and unconcerned about our children and grandchildren? By our inaction, arent we pushing them into an irreversible hopeless situation that we are capable of preventing today? Do we ever imagine how our children and grandchildren would cope with Sharia; the antiquated, puritanical, societal edicts, modern mankind can never accept. It will be the biggest let down by the present generations if we turn our faces the other way and pretend everything is hunky-dory with our grand old civilization. A progressive, democratic and multicultural country like India, steeped in Sanatana Dharma, needs to be free from any sort of dogmatic social chaining. True Indian Muslims find themselves side-lined and their leadership usurped by archaic diehard mullahs, maulvis and politicians without any scruples. The community is in a confused state, and has not been able to discriminate and distance themselves from the heady mixture of medieval-age dogmatic fundamentalism and follow liberal Islam, as their DNA urge them to. Indian Muslims need dynamic and rational leadership to lead them out of its present morass and keep pace with socioeconomic, political and technological advancement in the world. School education is a vital domain to bring about generational changes. It had been and still is an important tool for religious proselytisation. It is therefore logical to use the same instrument to reverse the developing ugly communal tangle. Many modern countries include religious studies in their school curriculum. It formed part of knowledge development at critical stages in the learning process and understanding their society better. Indian secularism created religious verticals and denied people correct knowledge about other religions that existed in the country. This policy denied Indian youth proper understanding of the civilization and multiculturism of the country and only confused their thoughts about theology. This policy landed the country in its present calamitous situation of crude religious knowledge and unhealthy religious competition. The aim should be to give the youth fundamental knowledge about all the major religions in the country, as available in authoritatively accepted scriptures and other empirical evidences, in an academic atmosphere that would stir their mind to arrive at an unbiased understanding about all faiths. Learning various religions, along with other academic curriculum enables a student to comprehend the subject in its proper perspective, than the topic being indoctrinated by theologically committed religious teachers under prejudiced environments. Indian Muslims find themselves side-lined and their leadership usurped by archaic diehard mullahs, maulvis and politicians without any scruples. The community is in a confused state, and has not been able to discriminate and distance themselves from the heady mixture of medieval-age dogmatic fundamentalism and follow liberal Islam Along with education reforms, there is a need to revisit the Constitution we adopted in 1950. To maintain social harmony, it is essential to have constitutional provisions that are fair to all and not slanted towards minority communities, as it is at present. Large sections of Hindus genuinely feel that some provisions of the Constitution are unfair to them. A Constitution cannot be effective with the dominant group feeling let-down. The nation has to brace itself to meet the new challenges to its glorious civilisation. Yesterday it would not have been that difficult as it would be today, but tomorrow it is going to be terrible. When the Muslim population crosses the threshold, violent jihad is assured and there will be no looking back; a prolonged, violent, religious and political turmoil is destined. The window to prevent this from happening will close sooner than one would wish for. Can we forget Kashmir so soon? We have to forestall such a disaster befalling our motherland. All political systems have failed in the country and time has come for the aspiring new generation to take charge and reverse their motherlands civilisational perdition. The Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy is landing for twin power centres - Washington and New York at a time when the Democrat President Joe Biden has taken a beating in Afghanistan. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's love-hate relationship, in a real sense, with America had started in 2007. In several places, the Gujarati American Associations attracted media attention for keeping an empty seat on the podium during the functions. The idea being - register protest against the then Bush administration over the visa row. Long before blogs came into the lexicon of the Indian neta class, the blog universe overseas, especially in the United States, would hold a no-holds-barred debate on Modi. In circa 2021, the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy is landing for twin power centres - Washington and New York at a time when the Democrat President Joe Biden has taken a beating in Afghanistan. He is certainly under immense pressure. Biden believes the end of the war in Afghanistan is the beginning of a new chapter. "..... We are opening a new era of relentless diplomacy," he told the UNGA. Now, let us take the debate into much deeper and detailed issues. The economy looks uncertain, and America's global relationships with various countries look precarious. Hence, some of Biden's assertions sound hollow as the botched up withdrawal from Afghanistan has only forced the US, NATO and the region to make a big U-turn. The Taliban have been ousted, and the Taliban have returned with a vengeance. Nearly three tonnes of heroin reached Indian shores. Sleuths from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) are working on the case. The origin of these items links to the terror intent of the Taliban and Pakistan's notorious spy, the ISI. "In UN Security Council resolution 2593, which was adopted during Indian Presidency, it is stated that Afghanistan's territory should not be used against any other state. So this is a very important indicator which is an important benchmark from the side of the international community and countries which you can say non-state actors or countries which will go against this idea of this will definitely kept an eye on," Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla said in a briefing in Delhi. The reference is to Pakistan, whose role in the war against terror must be understood in its true sense by the US. The security threats from Kabul and its new masters are growing on every front in the region. The groups are already moving to Afghanistan, and some are even making statements on Kashmir as well. The Taliban leaders have openly thrown a challenge to Pakistan for PM Imran Khan's remarks that discussions are on for ensuring an inclusive government. The Taliban has expanded their ministry, and yet there is no space for women. Biden's US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has been questioned by Congressmen to 'reassess' the US ties with Pakistan. PM Modi and other global leaders would debate how an unstable Afghanistan would threaten South Asia. What answer can Biden offer at the UNGA table - on whether US exit has only created a terror 'safe haven' in Afghanistan? Confronting France: The new AUKUS partnership between the US, Australia and the UK has unnerved France. The move has cost Biden - again to point out a Democrat - possibly one of America's oldest allies. Even European Council officials are not pulling their punches. Biden, in this case - within weeks of Afghanistan, hara-kiri - is caught amid allegations of breach of trust. The US 'secretly' negotiated with Australia, and French President Emmanuel Macron cancelled a meeting between foreign ministers of India, France and Australia. France is already reaching out to like-minded countries. President Macron already held a tele talk with PM Modi. For a long, Biden and the Democrats always attacked Donald Trump. Biden, unlike Trump, talks about multilateralism but generally acts on his own. He has mishandled France with AUKUS, and in Afghanistan, the NATO leaders were never kept in the loop. Well, Trump was open about his bravado. Even Modi had thought Trump would return to power. So he said: 'Trump Sarkar'. Hence, India will have to keep a close vigil because 'Democrat' regime in Washington has already committed two major betrayals in the foreign policy paradigm. Some radical Muslim clerics opposed the burial of an Ahmadiyya woman in the local graveyard in Safdarabad, Sheikhupura district in Punjab, on June 6, leading to violent clashes between the two sides. Islamabad [Pakistan], September 23 (ANI): Many international human rights organisations are alarmed over the recent persecution of the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan. The International Forum for Right and Security (IFFRAS) said that the organisations are documenting the systematic persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community endured at the hands of religious extremists and state institutions. In the latest incident, a Khatm-e-Nabuwat Conference that was held on September 12 under the aegis of Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan, presided over by JUP (Punjab) Deputy President Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Saleem and the Ulema, demanded that the government remove Qadinias (Ahmadiyya) from key posts. The Ulema said that Qadinias deny the end of the Prophethood and are traitors of Islam, said IFFRAS. Earlier, some radical Muslim clerics even opposed the burial of an Ahmadiyya woman in the local graveyard in Safdarabad, Sheikhupura district in Punjab, on June 6, leading to violent clashes between the two sides. Incidentally, dedicated Ahmadiyya graveyards in Pakistan are even kept locked most of the time for fear of the graves being destroyed by extremists. In July, Tahreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) extremists demolished an Ahmadiyya mosque in connivance with local police in the Faisalabad district. Pakistan's media reports also mentioned that various Islamic clerics like Amir of Tahreek-e-Dawat-e-Haq Pakistan, Peer Allama Muhammad Ashgar Noorani, castigate the Ahmadiyya for distorting 'the Islam faith' and have called on Western countries to stop considering them as part of the Muslim community, reported IFFRAS. The international community has highlighted the Ahmadiyya Muslim community persecution in Pakistan. Siobhain McDonagh MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, UK, in a letter (Dec 2020) to the Pakistan High Commissioner in the UK, expressed concern over reports of efforts to target, harass and persecute Ahmadi Muslims, including the murder of an Ahmadi doctor in Punjab and killing of two Ahmadis in Peshawar in October and November 2020. Similarly, US Senators Richard Blumenthal and John Cornyn also expressed concern in February and objection over the 'continued and escalating persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan,' including exploiting cyber and blasphemy laws to target 'an already persecuted religious minority.' They underlined that six Ahmadiyya Muslims, including one US citizen, had been killed in Pakistan in the last six months, while another Ahmadi had died in prison facing blasphemy charges, reported IFFRAS. They pointed out that Pakistani lawmakers, far from condemning these atrocities, instead praised the killers, both in the Parliament and on social media, further inflaming anti-Ahmadi bias. They called on the Pakistan government to take immediate action to protect one of their most vulnerable religious communities, drop baseless charges pending against senior Ahmadi Muslim leaders and end discrimination towards the community, reported IFFRAS. In February, David Hartman, Director General of South Asia of Global Affairs Canada, had also taken up the issue of criminal cases registered against members of the Ahmadiyya community with the Pakistan High Commissioner in Canada, reported IFFRAS. Courtesy: ANI Dr Jaishankar addressed the G-20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Afghanistan and said its "historical friendship" with the Afghan people that will drive India's engagement. New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishakar is keeping himself engaged in a series of meetings with his counterparts from across the globe. In between, he attended two important foreign ministers' meetings of G-4 and G-20 nations. At the G-4 deliberations attended by Dr Jaishankar and his counterparts from Brazil, Germany and Japan, there was "a clear message on the need for reformed multilateralism". ".... Called for concrete outcomes in a fixed timeframe," Dr Jaishankar tweeted. Besides Dr Jaishankar, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas of Germany, Carlos Alberto Franco Franca of Brazil, and Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu attended the meeting on the sidelines of the 76 sessions of the UNGA. Dr Jaishankar also addressed the G-20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Afghanistan. "International community must come together in response to humanitarian needs. Assistance providers must be accorded unimpeded, unrestricted and direct access," he tweeted. The External Affairs Minister said at the meeting that "Taliban's commitment not to allow use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented." He said: "The world expects a broad based, inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of Afghan society. UNSC resolution 2593, which reflects global sentiment, should continue to guide our approach." He also said its "historical friendship" with the Afghan people that will drive India's engagement. During his stay, he has held meetings with his various counterparts. "Always nice to meet FM of Japan. Appreciated his insights on Indo-Pacific events. A good exchange of views on Afghanistan," he tweeted. The External Affairs Minister also met German Minister Heiko Maas and held "useful exchange of assessments" of Germany on the Afghanistan situation. Among others, the External Affairs Minister met counterparts from Tanzania, Chile and Sri Lanka. "Pleased to meet Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris .... A comprehensive discussion on our close relationship.Look forward to working with him to advance our shared agenda," Dr Jaishankar wrote on the microblogging site. Pakistan's leaders have decided that their interests are best served as clients of China, ignoring Beijing's persecution of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang and are supporters of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Islamist terrorists. Washington: The time for the US has come to unfriend Pakistan as its leaders continue to support Islamic supremacists and jihadis of various stripes. Clifford D May, writing in The Washington Times, blamed Pakistan for America's humiliating surrender in Afghanistan, the dishonourable abandonment of American citizens along with Afghans who sided with us against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the disgraceful treatment of NATO allies, and the lethal incompetence with which the retreat was carried out. May also said that powerful elements within Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment helped create the Afghan Taliban in the early 1990s and continued to fund and trains its fighters even after the US intervention in 2001. The Taliban's close alliance with Al Qaeda troubled them not at all. Author Elliot Ackerman, who served as a Marine in Afghanistan, is hardly alone in believing that had Pakistani leaders ended that support and shut the border to the Taliban - whose leaders retreated to Pakistani bases every winter - the organization would have "collapsed" rather than soldiering on until American leaders grew tired and quit - the outcome the jihadis both expected and predicted, reported The Washington Times. Pakistani leaders continue to support Islamic supremacists and jihadis of various stripes. Former Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani, now a scholar at the Hudson Institute, has written, "While Pakistan's establishment has alternated between various Islamist factions, mainstreaming one while suppressing another, it has never thought about mainstreaming secularists who have been dubbed as traitors or unfaithful to the ideology of Pakistan." Following President Biden's announcement of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan declared "the shackles of slavery" broken. The head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lt. Gen Faiz Hameed, was welcomed by the Taliban in Kabul. Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2018, the US government gave Pakistan more than USD 33 billion in assistance, says May. Meanwhile, Pakistan's leaders have decided that their interests are best served as clients of China, ignoring Beijing's persecution of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang. In fact, they are supporters of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Islamist terrorists, this marriage cannot be saved, said May. President Joe Biden inherited a long list of mistakes, misjudgments, and unfinished business from his predecessors. But, the buck stops on the desk behind which he currently sits. Courtesy: ANI Supporters of the legislation argue that it's necessary to combat the possibility of US capital. helping finance the Chinese Communist Party's rise without hindering investors' ability to invest in non-threatening Chinese companies. Washington: A US Congressman unveiled legislation on Wednesday (September 22) to "target sanctions against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military or surveillance companies". Member of the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees, Republican Andy Barr, introduced the bill, which requires President Joe Biden to sanction CCP military companies included on the US Department of Defence's annual listing and other Chinese military and surveillance companies that pose a risk to US national security, according to a statement released by the office of Congressman Barr on Wednesday. The statement added that the Chinese Military and Surveillance Company Sanction Act of 2021 protects US national security and limits western capital from fueling CCP military and surveillance companies. The bill seems to target certain Chinese companies that US authorities have listed as posing a threat to national security. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Department of Defence have included various Chinese companies in this list, including telecom giant Huawei, New York Post said. Barr stressed that the legislation protects "the privacy of every American by imposing sanctions on companies clearly identified as CCP military or surveillance companies." He added that "without question, these companies present real and imminent threats to national security, and my bill would limit their access to capital and investment." Supporters of the legislation argue that it's necessary to combat the possibility of US capital. helping finance the Chinese Communist Party's rise without hindering investors' ability to invest in non-threatening Chinese companies, the New York Post reported. Barr crafted the bill as part of a "broader effort by Republicans on the Financial Services Committee to combat the rise of the CCP." Courtesy: ANI State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and Office of the Director of National Security officials failed to answer the basic questions of US lawmakers during the briefing for House Foreign Affairs Committee members. Washington: Multiple Republican and Democratic lawmakers angrily stormed out of a classified briefing with members of the Biden administration in Afghanistan on Wednesday (September 22) morning after their questions went unanswered. Citing sources, CNN reported that lawmakers were frustrated after State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and Office of the Director of National Security officials failed to answer their basic questions during the briefing for House Foreign Affairs Committee members. State Department officials, both privately and publicly, continue to say that about 100 Americans are still in Afghanistan who wants to get out of the war-torn country after the Taliban takeover. Some lawmakers have told CNN they do not understand that accounting, given the department has said that they evacuated more than 75 Americans from Afghanistan through evacuation efforts in the last few weeks. State Department officials have said that the dynamic situation on the ground is the reason they cannot give a more precise figure. A State Department spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday that "as a general matter, we do not comment on communications with Congress, especially those conducted in a classified setting." Republican Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" on Wednesday that "everybody walked out" from the meeting, and he questioned whether administration officials knew the number of Americans still in the country. "I don't think they know all the answers, quite honestly," he said of the administration. A Democratic aide told CNN that some of the members left Wednesday's classified briefing because there were Republican members who were not wearing masks in accordance with COVID-19 protocols. The aide added that many members are satisfied with the engagement from the State Department. Evacuation flights continue to depart Afghanistan at a slow pace, including one over the weekend with over 21 US citizens on board. Officials say it takes a tremendous amount of work, especially because of the coordination required between the US, Qatar and the Taliban to do background checks on people who do not have all the necessary documents, reported CNN. Courtesy: ANI GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) _ Steelcase Inc. (SCS) on Wednesday reported fiscal second-quarter net income of $24.7 million. On a per-share basis, the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company said it had net income of 21 cents. The office furniture maker posted revenue of $724.8 million in the period. For the current quarter ending in December, Steelcase expects its per-share earnings to range from 7 cents to 11 cents. The company said it expects revenue in the range of $755 million to $785 million for the fiscal third quarter. Steelcase shares have fallen 1.5% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Wednesday, shares hit $13.35, a rise of 18% in the last 12 months. _____ This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on SCS at https://www.zacks.com/ap/SCS Looking for something to do? Heres a list of local community and nonprofit events. Please check with your club or organization to be certain of meetings, outings and classes, as they may be canceled because of bad weather or other reason. If any listing is inaccurate or to submit an event, contact Julie Norwood at 231-592-8358 or julie.norwood@pioneergroup.com. Cub Scout Pack 174 Registration Night: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, 223 E. 5th Ave., Reed City. Reed City Cub Scout Pack 174 will kick off its 2021-22 season with a Pack Meeting. All new and returning Scouts are invited to attend, and new Scouts can register to join the Pack during the meeting. Open to boys in grades 1-5. Wolfy Memorial Tournament: Friday, Sept. 24, and Saturday, Sept. 25. Contact: Cody Wyman at cwyman@cityofbr.org, 231-349-2060. For more information or to register a team, visit wolfymemorialtournament.com. Mosaic Mirror: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, at Artworks 106 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids. Cost: $80 for Sept. 25 and Oct. 2 sessions; $60 for Sept. 25 session only. Contact: 231-796-2420 Family Tailgate Party: 12:30-3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, at Big Rapids First United Methodist Church, 304 Elm St., Big Rapids. Play some games, enjoy game day grub. Rain date is Oct. 2. RSVP at https://fb.me/e/4ALlYaYEx. Contact: Jeremy Wicks at (231) 796-7771. Tuba Bach Festival: 4 p.m. Saturdays, Sept. 11-Oct. 17, outside at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 726 Fuller Ave., Big Rapids. A separate concert will be livestreamed online only, as well as on Sunny 97.3 FM at 4 p.m. Sundays. Visit www.tubabach.org. for links. Little Women: 7 p.m. Sept. 24, Sept. 25, Oct. 8, Oct. 9; and 2 p.m. Sept. 26, Oct. 2, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10; at CrossRoads Theatre, 249 W. Upton Ave., Reed City. Tickets are $10 each and can be reserved by calling 231-465-4044. Corn Maze/Haunted Maze: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays and 2-5 p.m. Sundays, Sept. 26-Oct. 31 for Corn Maze; 8-10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Oct. 8-30, for Haunted Maze; at Four Green Fields Farm, 15693 Wilson Road, Rodney. Cost: $3 for corn maze, ages 5 and under free; $2 for wagon rides; and $4 for haunted maze. Morley Stanwood Alumni Tour: 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, at Morley Community Center, 151 7th St., Morley. Come and take a look at the former Morley Stanwood High School you used to attend. See what's changed and what's the same since becoming a community center. Swiss Steak Dinner: 4-6:30 p.m. the last Friday of every month, April-October, at the Barryton Senior Center, 71 Northern Ave., Barryton. Includes dinner and dessert. Everyones welcome. Tai Chi: Noon on Wednesdays at Hemlock Park. Improve muscle tone, flexibility, balance and coordination. Newcomers welcome. brpr.org. Mecosta Co. Genealogical Society: Open 5-7 p.m. Wednesdays and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. every second Saturday, at 424 N. Fourth Ave., Big Rapids, next to Recycle. Thousands of obits and hundreds of books with history and genealogy for the Mecosta Co. area. Stop by or call Maureen Nelson at 231-250-5555 to set up an appointment. Mecosta County Sheriff Posse: 7 p.m. the second Thursday of each month at the Mecosta County Jail basement training room, 225 S. Stewart Ave., Big Rapids. This volunteer group is always looking for more members. For more info call 231-250-9241 Lords Table Food Pantry: 3-5 p.m. Wednesdays at Faith Community Church, 610 Green St., Big Rapids. Everyone is welcome. Reed City Food Pantry: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, beginning Sept. 7, at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, 831 S. Chestnut St., Reed City. Morley Community Center: The center, at 151 7th St., Morley, hosts weekly pickleball, open gym, indoor garage sales and outdoor market, in addition to monthly ancestry class, craft night and blood drive. For a list of activities, visit morleycenter.org/events or call 231-856-4496. ARTWORKS ONGOING CLASSES, EXHIBITS 106 N. Michigan Ave. in Big Rapids / 231-796-2420 / artworksinbigrapids.org After School Arts: 3:45-5:15 p.m. Wednesdays, Sept. 1-29. Drop-ins welcome on a first come, first serve basis, but registration recommended. Register at Artworks gift shop or by calling 231-796-2420 the Monday before each session. Open Pottery: 5-8 p.m. Tuesdays. Cost: $10 per session, $60 for an eight-session punch card. (Additional firing fees apply. Clay may be purchased in bulk for $20 per 25 lbs.) Call 231-796-2420 to schedule your session. Hand Built Pottery Fall Session: 6-8 p.m. Mondays, Sept. 13, 20, 27, and Oct. 4, 18, 25. Cost: $150. Register by calling 231-796-2420 or online at www.artworksinbigrapids.org/pottery. Beginning Wheel Fall Session: 6-8 p.m. Wednesdays, Sept. 15, 22, 29, and Oct. 5, 12, 26. Cost: $150. Register by calling 231-796-2420 or online at www.artworksinbigrapids.org/pottery. Fundamentals of Photography Beginner Course: 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Sept. 15-Oct. 19. Cost: $75. Register by calling 231-796-2420 or online at www.artworksinbigrapids.org/photography. Forged in Fire for Beginners: 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Oct. 5-Nov. 9, at The Forge, 5710 18 Mile Road, Barryton. Learn the basics of bladesmithing by doing. Everything will be provided. Closed toe shoes are required. Cost: $150. Register at artworksinbigrapids.org/specialty-workshops. Exhibit Joyful Journey: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday, Aug. 30-Oct. 3. Exhibit features artwork Hope Network and MOISD students. PHOENIX (AP) A recording that emerged of a Republican elected Arizona official criticizing his GOP colleagues for opposing a partisan review of the 2020 election result in Maricopa County led him to announce his resignation just days before the state Senate's review is set for release. During the meeting recorded surreptitiously last March, Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri suggested two fellow Republican county supervisors opposed the review by Senate Republicans because they nearly lost their own 2020 races. Chucri apologized in a statement announcing his resignation late Tuesday and said he shouldn't have made the comments, adding the political landscape has changed for the worst this year. The environment is wrought with toxicity and all civility and decorum no longer seem to have a place, Chucri said. The fixation with the 2020 election results and aftermath have gotten out of control. Fellow Republican board member Bill Gates said Wednesday that he was surprised by Chucri's decision to step down. He suspects the comments his colleague made to leaders of a group trying to recall the board were an attempt to ingratiate himself with them. I would chalk it up to an example of someone telling people what they want to hear. I really do, Gates told The Associated Press. Those were the two that led that recall effort against us. And so I think that he thought thats what they wanted to hear. Chucri did not return calls or emails seeking comment on his decision to resign, which is effective Nov. 5. Maricopa County has become Ground Zero in the effort by supporters of former President Donald Trump to use false accusations of fraud to cast doubt on the 2020 election results. Chucri's resignation comes as Trump supporters hired by the state Senate Republicans prepare to release their findings from an unprecedented partisan review of the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, the machines that counted them and a variety of other data obtained through a legislative subpoena. Now-President Joe Biden beat Trump in Maricopa County by 45,109 votes, and won the state with a slim 10,457 vote margin. Chucri said his comments about his colleagues are being wrongly used to paint a picture about a cover-up, scam and other nonsense," and he vouched for the accuracy of the results. There was no cover-up, the election was not stolen, Churci said. Biden won. He said hes disagreed with his colleagues, but hes known them to be good, honorable and ethical men. Chucri's in his third term representing the eastern portion of Maricopa County, the nation's fourth largest and home to the Phoenix metropolitan area. While in office, Chucri has remained the head of the Arizona Restaurant Association, an influential lobbying group. The secret recordings were published Tuesday on the conservative website Gateway Pundit, which said they were recorded during a meeting on March 22 with leaders from a group called We the People AZ Alliance as well as a Jan. 22 phone call. All five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, including Chucri, have been highly critical of the Senates election review, led by consultants with no experience in election work and who have promoted baseless theories that the 2020 election was marred by fraud. But in the March meeting, Chucri said Supervisors Jack Sellers and Bill Gates were scared by the idea of an election review because their own races were close. What would happen in those two races? Chucri said. And that is way too self-serving. He said Supervisor Clint Hickman just didnt have the guts for an election audit. Hickman and Sellers are also Republicans. Supervisor Steve Gallardo is the sole Democrat on the five-member board. Gates said in an interview that he and Chucri got along and worked well together, as did the board as a whole. And he said the review did not even look at county races, so the thought that he and Sellers were scared was completely misplaced. The board will appoint a replacement after Chucri's resignation takes effect, and in the meantime Gates expects all five members will continue to work together. Its unfortunate, because Steve and I work well together, Gates said. I think we had a successful time on the board together; we got a lot accomplished. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) Search teams found nothing of note Wednesday at a Florida wilderness park where they have spent days looking for the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the young woman who authorities say was killed while on a cross-country trip with him. The search resumed Wednesday morning at the 24,000-acre (9,700-hectare) Carlton Reserve park and ended just before dark, North Port police spokesperson Joshua Taylor said. Investigators say Brian Laundrie's parents told them he had gone there after returning home without Petito on Sept. 1. It marked the fourth day of searching in the Carlton Reserve, with operations suspended Monday while the FBI searched the nearby Laundrie home for evidence. The search of the reserve was set to resume Thursday morning, Taylor said in an email. The outdoors search includes thousands of acres of forbidding, swampy subtropical terrain replete with alligators, snakes, bobcats, coyotes, turkey, deer and many other wild creatures. There are more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of hiking and horseback riding trails, plus numerous camping areas and rivers. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office brought in a diver unit called SURF, or Sheriffs Underwater Recovery Force, to perform a more specialized search for evidence. These highly-trained deputies work in the most difficult and challenging environments imaginable. They are on call 24/7/365, the sheriff's office said in a tweet. Petito, 22, was reported missing Sept. 11 by her parents after she did not respond to calls and texts for several days while the couple visited parks in the West. Her body was discovered Sunday at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Teton County Coroner Brent Blue classified Petito's death as a homicide meaning her death was caused by another person but did not disclose how she was killed pending further autopsy results. Laundrie, 23, is not charged with any crime but is considered a person of interest in the case. With online sleuths and theories multiplying by the day, the FBI and police have been deluged with tips about possible Laundrie sightings. Taylor, the North Port spokesperson, said none have so far panned out. He also batted down rumors that Laundrie had been captured Tuesday. These reports are unfortunately false. Please rest assured that when Brian is found, we will be more than happy to let everyone know, Taylor said in an email. Petito and Laundrie grew up together in Long Island, New York, but moved in recent years to North Port, where his parents live. Their home, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of Sarasota, was searched by investigators earlier this week and a Ford Mustang driven by Laundrie's mother was towed from the driveway. Authorities believe Laundrie drove that car to the Carlton Reserve before disappearing. The couple documented online their trip in a white Ford Transit van converted into a camper, but got into a physical altercation Aug. 12 in Moab, Utah, that led to a police stop for a possible domestic violence case. Ultimately, police there decided to separate the quarreling couple for the night but no charges were filed and no serious injuries were reported. The FBI is seeking information from anyone who may have seen them in the Grand Teton area as well as any other tips nationally. We join the FBI in asking for continued public assistance by sharing any information through the tip lines 1-800-CALL FBI or tips.fbi.gov, Taylor said. HOLLAND, Mich. (AP) The doors at a western Michigan restaurant were open before sunrise as the owner welcomed diners for the first time since she spent four nights in jail for ignoring orders related to COVID-19. Marlenas Bistro and Pizzeria in Holland had been closed since March. But Marlena Pavlos-Hackney has recovered her food license. Shes a hero, said Kris Simmons, one of the first customers to place a breakfast order Tuesday. Pavlos-Hackney last winter allowed indoor dining, despite state and local prohibitions, and ignored other rules aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19. She said her customers health was up to them. Michael Farage ordered steak and eggs Tuesday and offered a side dish of praise. She did this at a time when many restaurateurs wanted to do the same thing, but they were nervous, Farage told MLive.com. And rightly so, you dont want to get fined and you dont want to get the cops surrounding your car. I get it. But she stood up and were very proud of her. Pavlos-Hackney still believes her rights were violated. She is appealing a $15,000 fine that had to be paid before she could leave jail. It feels so good to see all my people, their smiling faces. This means a lot to me, she said. Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who put Pavlos-Hackney in jail, said she had put the community at risk. Attorney General Dana Nessel said she had defied court orders and the local health department at every turn. BARCELONA, Spain (AP) Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain after a failed secession bid for the northeastern region in 2017, was detained Thursday in Sardinia, Italy, his lawyer said. Puigdemont, who lives in Belgium and now holds a seat in the European Parliament, has been fighting extradition to Spain, which accused him and other Catalan independence leaders of sedition. Lawyer Gonzalo Boye said Puigdemont was detained when he arrived in Sardinia, where he was due to attend an event this weekend. The circumstances under which Puigdemont was taken into custody were not immediately clear. Boye wrote on Twitter the ex-regional president was detained under a 2019 European arrest warrant, even though it had been suspended. Police at the airport in northern Sardinia didnt answer phone calls Thursday night, while police in the city of Alghero said they werent aware of his detention. The European Parliament voted in March to lift the immunity of Puigdemont and two of his associates. In July the three EU lawmakers failed to have their immunity restored after the European Unions general court said that they did not demonstrate they were at risk of being arrested. Sardinian media reported earlier in the week he was due to attend an event in Alghero on Sunday, so his presence on the Mediterranean island had been expected. Sardinian media had also reported that Puigdemont was invited by a Sardinian pro-separatist group. Puigdemont's office said in a statement that he had traveled to Alghero from Brussels to attend a folklore festival where he was detained upon arrival by Italian police. On Friday Puigdemont will appear in front of a judge in the city of Sassari who would rule on whether he should be freed, the statement said. Puigdemont and a number of his separatist colleagues fled to Belgium in October 2017, fearing arrest after holding an independence referendum for Catalonia that the Spanish courts and government said was illegal. Nine Catalan separatists received prison sentences for their role in the 2017 referendum ranging from nine to 13 years. They were pardoned in July. HELENA, Mont. (AP) Medical providers and Montana residents with compromised immune systems are challenging the only law in the U.S. that prevents employers from mandating workers get vaccinated amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. They argue the new law violates federal requirements for safe workplaces and reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and want a federal judge to rule that it doesnt apply to hospitals and other medical providers. The Montana Medical Association, private physician groups, a Missoula hospital and seven individuals filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Wednesday, arguing the law inhibits providers ability to practice ethical and effective medicine by requiring them to employ unvaccinated workers who are more likely to spread infections and diseases than vaccinated workers. The law which applies to all vaccinations prevents medical providers from complying with national standards for the care and treatment of patients, including observing and enforcing infectious disease prevention protocols, the complaint says. The Montana Medical Association is joining this lawsuit to restore a physicians ability to protect the safety of their vulnerable patients when providing needed medical services," the group said in a statement. Montanas Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law this year that says requiring vaccines as a condition of employment is discriminatory and violates the states human rights laws. Supporters said the law was needed in response to employers coercing employees to get vaccinations under the threat of losing their jobs. This month, President Joe Biden asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to write a rule requiring employers with at least 100 workers to mandate they get vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has said he would challenge that rule, calling it unlawful and un-American. The Republican has encouraged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 but has maintained it should be a voluntary decision. Biden also announced the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will require vaccinations of employees at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, including hospitals and nursing homes. The Montana law allows health care facilities to require unvaccinated workers or those who refuse to disclose their vaccination status to wear masks and take other precautions against spreading disease. However, the complaint argues that the law prevents medical providers from taking steps to protect employees and patients who have compromised immune systems and also violates the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which requires employers to provide workplaces free from hazards. The presence of unvaccinated medical workers undermines the credibility of medical providers when they urge vaccine-hesitant patients to become vaccinated, even when the vaccines may be in the best interest of the patients and of the public at large, the complaint argues. It does not challenge the law as it applies to employers other than medical providers. State Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Commissioner of Labor and Industry Laurie Esau were named as defendants. Attorney General Knudsen will defend the law," spokesperson Emilee Cantrell said. He is committed to protecting Montanans' right to privacy and their ability to make their own health care decisions." Esau hasn't been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment on pending litigation. Montana has reported nearly 17,000 new cases of COVID-19 in September and 123 deaths in the past three weeks. Just over 400 people were hospitalized Thursday, compared with about 250 at the beginning of the month. ___ This story has been corrected to show that seven individuals, not five, were named as plaintiffs Midland County added 93 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths between Tuesday, Sept. 21, and Wednesday, Sept. 22. COVID-19 numbers reported from Sept. 21-22 Midland County: 93 cases and two deaths were added; pandemic total is 8,003 cases, 755 probable cases, 107 deaths and three probable deaths. Bay County: 83 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 11,757 cases, 800 probable cases, 351 deaths and 16 probable deaths. Gladwin County: 31 cases and one death were added; pandemic total stands at 2,250 cases, 447 probable cases, 62 deaths and four probable deaths. Isabella County: 71 cases and one death were added; pandemic total stands at 6,347 cases, 1,114 probable cases, 99 deaths and five probable deaths. Saginaw County: 146 cases and three deaths were added; pandemic total stands at 22,548 cases, 1,673 probable cases, 629 deaths and 21 probable deaths. The state added 6,079 cases and 81 deaths between Tuesday and Wednesday. Overall, Michigan is at 1,001,989 cases and 20,781 deaths. Recovered According to the Midland County Health Department website, which was updated Sept. 20, 7,554 Midland County individuals have recovered from COVID. The state reported that as of Sept. 17, a total of 906,096 persons have recovered. Testing Midland Countys seven-day rolling positivity rate on Sept. 20 was listed at 10.8%, and Gladwin County's was listed at 13.7%. Our 12-county region was listed at 12.6% and Michigan was at 8.8%. MidMichigan Health statistics As of Sept. 20, MidMichigan Medical Center in Midland was listed as having a 84% bed occupancy, with 23 COVID patients and three in the ICU. MidMichigan Medical Center in Gladwin was listed as having a 25% bed occupancy, with two COVID patients and none in the ICU. Both medical centers reported having at least 15-30 days worth of personal protection equipment (N95, surgical masks, gowns, gloves and eye protection) on hand. Schools As of Tuesday, Sept. 21, Midland Public Schools reported 169 staff/students were close contacts to an individual who was confirmed COVID-19 positive and 27 staff/students were currently tested positive for the virus. Schools with one or more staff/student confirmed positive for COVID-19 as of Monday include Dow High (7), Midland High (2), Jefferson Middle (3), Northeast Middle (4), Central Park Elementary (3), Siebert Elementary (2) and Woodcrest Elementary (2). On Monday, the state's website listed two schools in the Midland area among its new outbreaks: Meridian Junior High with four students and Meridian Early College High with 11 students. Midland County vaccinations The Michigan COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard lists Midland's completed vaccine rate is 65.5%. Currently, the vaccines are not authorized to be given to those under age 12. Midland County Health Department is hosting a weekly walk-in COVID vaccination clinic from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every Tuesday on the second floor of the Midland County Services Building, 220 W. Ellsworth St., Midland. Future COVID-19 vaccine clinics in Midland County are listed at www.co.midland.mi.us/HealthDepartment/COVIDVaccineInformation.aspx. Those with questions may call 989-832-6380 or email MCDPH@co.midland.mi.us. A local conversation regarding dam funding is taking place after Michigan lawmakers passed the state budget Wednesday. Rep. Annette Glenn, R-Midland, issued a press release outlining the Michigan Legislatures recent approval of $19 million total in additional funding for dam repair and safety across the state. Although the Michigan legislature and state administration have agreed on a budget for the next fiscal year, according to the Four Lakes Task Force (FLTF), any financial allocation for the dams would more than likely come in with the approval of a supplemental appropriation. Legislation was introduced in the Michigan House and Senate in May that could allocate millions of dollars for dam repairs to restore the four lakes. FLTF said discussion on these types of investments are expected to begin in October. The group added that financing for the bills is possible due to an excess available funds. There has been strong advocacy from our local property owners, which is appreciated by our elected officials, said FLTF in an email to community members Wednesday. FLTF is actively engaged in monitoring and providing input into this process. FLTF, the delegated authority for Midland and Gladwin counties, took this opportunity to answer questions that local residents might have regarding the May legislation and dam funding. How much money will the four lakes receive? FLTF: We don't know the amount that will be allocated to the four lakes. The bills' sponsors are aware that restoration costs are $250 million and have shared support for being a major partner in the restoration effort. How will the four lakes receive this funding? FLTF: Government grants and funding stay with the Treasury Department and are usually released as construction in draws and given as payments for work that is planned, approved, and documented. FLTF and/or the counties will not be given a lump sum. Funds will be audited, per requirements of state laws and regulations. How will an allocation impact the Four Lakes Special Assessment? FLTF: The state may grant enough so there would not be a need for a capital assessment to rebuild the lakes. There would still be an operational assessment. We have not yet determined final numbers but if this is the scenario, the operational assessment would likely be a few hundred dollars per year. FLTF is still pursuing additional financing via an assessment or U.S. Department of Agriculture loans, given the uncertainty of funding. The assessment amount per property owner cannot be predicted until we know the final allocation. This is covered in the Restoration Plan that was published and presented in May. The computational costs for the operations assessment have not yet been determined but we expect it to be a few hundred dollars a year for the long-term if there is no capital assessment." If FLTF gets the funding, how will it impact the timeline? FLTF: "A very large grant would simplify our efforts and would give more confidence in the completion dates, but probably would not speed up the design, permitting or construction processes." How much has the state given to the FLTF already? FLTF: "The state previously granted Four Lakes Task Force $22.5 million for engineering studies, acquisition, recovery and restoration. We currently estimate that the total cost of restoration will be $250 million, with approximately $215 million going towards construction, $10 million for completing engineering on all four dams, and $25 million for other risk factors, primarily environmental (risk factors)." The Michigan Legislature approved a budget which includes $6 million for a dam safety emergency fund that will help with response to immediate problems and $13 million for a new dam safety grant program. The states budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 is headed to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for signing. To read more about the recent approval visit ourmidland.com. Related Content Rep. Glenn helps approve $19 million for dam safety in Michigan Midland's Stamas discusses state budget Clouds form at sunset on the edge of the San Luis Valley, where Crestone, Colorado is located. The San Luis Valley is one of the most remote parts of Colorado, extremely vast and sparsely populated. Photo Credit: CampPhoto (iStock). 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. Port-Louis, Mauritius (PANA) - A 46-year-old Congolese national has been arrested at the Mauritius international airport with heroin in his stomach, police sources said in the Mauritian capital The Latvian subsidiary of Estonian delivery firm Omniva has entered into a cooperation agreement with retailer Narvesen Baltija to offer parcel pick-up services at more than 200 locations. Together with 92 new parcel machines to be installed at the end of the year, Omniva will offer the possibility to pick up parcels in more than 500 locations in Latvia by the end of 2021. ') } // --> ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Kristi Unt, member of the board of Omniva, said, The rapid development of e-commerce during the pandemic and the continuing high demand for parcel services are forcing us to continue to look for new solutions and forms of cooperation. Despite the fact that this year, we are investing in expanding the parcel machine network and installing 92 new parcel machines in Latvia, we are pleased to have established cooperation with a reliable partner that will bring us even closer to our customers. ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Dace Dovidena, CEO, Narvesen, said, One of the main tasks of Narvesen is to be accessible to everyone, including in remote areas. That is our common goal with Omniva. As the services of Omniva are important to many Latvians, we are pleased to be able to provide the right infrastructure to make them even more widely available. This cooperation is the best way to achieve our goals by joining forces with like-minded partners so that all parties, especially the residents, benefit. Narvesen is the largest franchise retail chain in Latvia, with 24 years of experience and more than 230 retail outlets employing more than 800 people. The company offers customers quality coffee, fresh food and snacks, and magazines. Photo: (Photo : CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images) Florida has a new surgeon general who has immediately made quarantine optional for students exposed to COVID-19 on his first day on the job. Dr. Joseph Ladapo signed the new guideline Wednesday, taking the decision off school officials' hands. Ladapo also changed the ban against face mask mandates in schools to leave the choice up to the parents. These new rules filed in court will effectively replace the emergency measures set in place since August, which some school districts have challenged in Florida courts. Florida previously required students exposed to COVID-19 to quarantine for four days. Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference that the state will take a symptom-based approach and make quarantine optional so that healthy students can still go to school. He stressed that four days off might be "incredibly damaging" for their learning and disruptive for families. "I trust parents and families, and I don't think they are going to go around lying," the governor said. Read Also: Florida ER Doctor Fired for Offering Mask Exemption Letters to Parents of School Kids What About Asymptomatic Students? However, Thomas Hladish of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida said that they should "err on the side of caution" and insist on quarantine for exposed individuals since they could be asymptomatic. The expert noted that people who don't show any signs of COVID-19 could be a "major source" of virus transmission. School district officials challenging the previous mandates in court found their complaints thrown out as Ladapo's new rules took effect. Jamie Cole of the Miami-Dade and Leon County school districts said there were no consultations and no transparency to Lapado's guidelines. Other school officials claimed this move was purely political to undermine their efforts. Andrew Spar of the Florida Education Association said that blocking schools from implementing guidelines based on the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not in the best interest of the students, the staff, and their families. However, some school districts plan to retain their policies on strict quarantines and face mask mandates and consult with their lawyers on their next moves. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education said they would be backing school boards who impose mitigation measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 based on CDC recommendations. Who is Dr. Joseph Ladapo? Ladapo replaces Dr. Scott Rivkee, who is back as a tenured professor at the state university. Ladapo is a Harvard Medical School graduate who worked in the state's Department of Health and, more recently, at the David Geffen School of Medicine. The doctor said that he would not base his policies on fear and would instead encourage the people to make their own choices about their health. According to NPR, Ladapo doesn't believe that vaccination against COVID is the only measure out of this pandemic. He wrote an op-ed piece called "Vaccine Mandates Can't Stop Covid's Spread." CNN reported that he supports COVID-19 therapies like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Related Article: Ivermectin Poisoning: Families Infected With COVID-19 Getting More Sick From Misusing Anti-Parasite Medication Photo: (Photo : Francois Durand/Getty Images for Dior) Uma Thurman has written a personal piece detailing a dark secret in her life to make a point about the highly controversial Texas abortion law. The 51-year-old actress confessed via The Washington Post that she got pregnant as a teenager who was just starting her acting career. After discussing her predicament with her parents, she decided to go through an abortion that set her on a "path to the life full of joy and love." Thurman said that her need for abortion still brings sadness and anguish, but the choice allowed her to become "the mother I wanted and needed to be" instead of proceeding with early pregnancy. It's for this reason that she's denouncing the Texas abortion law, which took effect on September 1, and said that this is a human rights crisis for women. Read Also: American Airlines Responds to Family Kicked off a Flight as Toddler Had No Face Mask 'Have Courage' The "Kill Bill" star emphasized that she has no regrets about terminating her teen pregnancy, especially after becoming a mom to Maya and Levon, with ex-husband Ethan Hawke, and Luna, with ex-partner Arpad Busson. Thurman also addressed the women of Texas to have courage amid the risk of trauma or shame from bounty hunters who could report them to authorities. The actress said that women of America are outraged by the new law that takes their rights to make calls about their health and their body. The Texas abortion law or Senate Bill 8 (SB8) has been dubbed the most restrictive in the country as it strips women of the right to have an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy when most women learn that they are with a child. The law also doesn't allow for exemptions even if the pregnancy happened because of rape or incest. Anyone knowledgeable of a woman who had an abortion in Texas could file a case and include those who helped her get the procedure. Private citizens may sue the woman, the doctor, the workers of the abortion clinic, or the driver who brought the woman to the facility if they suspect an illegal procedure. Those who sue could gain a windfall of $10,000 or higher. According to Thurman, data from Guttmacher Institute showed that over 70 percent of abortions in Texas in 2019 were given to women of color or the economically disadvantaged. She said that she is grief-stricken that marginalized sectors are once again denied the choice when they do not have the capacity to care for a baby. First Lawsuit Meanwhile, a doctor in San Antonio could be slapped with the first lawsuit defying the Texas abortion law. Dr. Alan Braid also wrote an op-ed piece on The Washington Post to confess that he performed an abortion, which will likely test the law's unconstitutionality after the law took effect. The Center for Reproductive Rights has promised to represent Braid in court, and its representatives pledged to defend the doctor against the "vigilante lawsuits" that this restrictive law has unleashed. However, an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life is also preparing to bring those liable to the court. They even set up a tip page online for suspected abortions. Related Link: Texas Abortion Law: Biden Justice Department Sues for 'Unconstitutional' Ban Photo: (Photo : Andrea Morales/Getty Images) The number of foster kids for adoption in Arkansas has reached 349 due to the pandemic barriers, prompting the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to launch a three-month campaign, dubbed "Everyday Counts," which aims to find forever families for these children by November 2021. Established in partnership with Project Zero, a 15-year-old adoption coalition, "Everyday Counts" has nearly 160 kids waiting for the completion of their adoption process in court with their new families. The DCFS is hopeful that more residents will consider becoming an adoptive family for older children and teens. The agency has been hitting the ground running to match kids with their new parents. In a statement, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged that the DCFS has been making up for lost time when the courts had to shut down and then shift to virtual operations due to the lockdowns. "[DCFS and Project Zero] need families that are willing to adopt children who through no fault of their own don't have a permanent home," the governor said. Read Also: American Airlines Responds to Family Kicked off a Flight as Toddler Had No Face Mask How 'Everyday Counts' Work The governor also acknowledged the contribution of Christie Erwin from Project Zero, as she works hard to make Arkansas the first state without any kids waiting in foster care. Under this initiative, the legal fees for the adoption process will be absorbed by the state so that new parents can focus on preparing to welcome their child. To encourage more families to consider adoption, Erwin's team has also been conducting awareness campaigns and sharing stories via the Arkansas Heart Gallery featuring the kids who are now happily adjusted in their new homes. Arkansas does not require adoptive parents to be married, but they must be of legal age with healthy and safe home life. The potential new moms or dads will also need to pass a background and medical check. They will have to sufficiently meet the resources needed by the child without any government financial assistance. Children in foster care have individual emotional requirements; hence it's advisable not to fast-track the process. The children and the prospective adoptive parent should be given enough time to bond with each other. COVID-19 Relief for Foster Care Kids Meanwhile, the state's Department of Human Services is giving COVID-19 relief for young adults who have been in foster care. Under the Supporting Foster Youth and Families Through the Pandemic Act, individuals between the ages of 16 to 26 may claim a one-time $750 payment from the state. At least 4,000 young people are eligible to receive the COVID-19 relief. Mikayla, who has been in the foster care system since she was 13, said that she's saving the relief for the rainy days as an emergency fund. Now in college at the University of Arkansas in Fort Smith, Mikayla noted that the benefit from the government would help kids like her in multiple ways. Related Article: Adoptive Parents Appeal Reinstatement of Birth Dad's Rights to 3-Year-Old Adopted Child Photo: (Photo : Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ParentsTogether) An extra child tax credit payment in the amount of $500 will be coming for some parents when they file their 2021 tax returns, but only those with college-age kids may qualify. The additional one-time payment is for parents with dependents who are 18 to 24 and are enrolled full-time at a university. The parents who qualify should also be paying part of their college expenses and have declared the young adults as dependents on their IRS profile. Read Also: American Airlines Responds to Family Kicked off a Flight as Toddler Had No Face Mask Taxpayers with college-age dependent kids but earn more than $75,000 (single filers) or $150,000 (joint filers) won't be able to claim a full $500 child tax credit payment since there is an income threshold. According to Fatherly, parents with an income beyond this threshold will have reduced $50 payment for every $1,000 of their adjusted gross income. Opt-Out For 18-Year-Old Dependents Since the rollout in July, American families have benefitted from the $250 or $300 monthly child tax credit payment per child. However, some parents could be making a mistake in claiming an extended monthly child tax credit payment for their 18-year-old dependents when they should be under the extra one-time refund. According to Rep. Steve Cohen, a child turning 18 years old in 2021 is no longer eligible for the $250 or $300 monthly payments, three of which have been rolled out in July, August, and September. "However, the American Rescue Plan did provide for a one-time credit of $500 for dependent children aged 18 and for dependent full-time college students aged between 19 and 24," he said. Parents still have time to opt-out of the succeeding monthly payments for October, November, and December using the Child Tax Credit Portal to correct this mistake. They'll have to wait for the adjustments and the reconciliation of the actual refund when they file their taxes in 2022. If they fail to opt out, they may have to pay back the IRS next year. Parents need to remember that the IRS has been referring to the taxpayers' 2020 or 2019 tax returns to disburse the payment. So, if these are not updated with the correct details of the dependents, there could be problems with the eligibility. Child Tax Credit Helping Families Meanwhile, the Arizona Center for Economic Progress released a report showing that the first two months of child tax credit payments have extended significant relief for families in times of great need. The refund has alleviated economic hardships among 2.4 million households, with one or both parents losing their jobs because of the pandemic. Mayor Kate Gallego said that the initiative brings a "world of good" when governments invest in children. Over $352 million child tax credit payments were distributed among Arizona families in August, which many parents used for food, school supplies, utilities, and debt payments. Because of the feedback on child tax credit payments, Democrats are working out a plan to extend this to 2025. However, Congress will still deliberate on this matter as it involves billions of the federal budget. Related Article: Child Tax Credit: How Parents Who Have a New Baby in 2021 May Claim Money This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions A federal court in New York partially denied Apples motion to dismiss copyright claims stemming from the distribution of the films "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" and "After the Rain" on iTunes. The court found Ralf Hartmann sufficiently pleaded he owns the copyright to the latter film and the international copyright and distribution rights to the former, and his claims that Apple committed direct copyright infringement may proceed. However, Hartmanns contributory infringement claims and foreign infringement claims were dismissed. For more details, read the Court's "'Memorandum Opinion and Order" in the SCRIBD document below. Ralf Hartmann v Apple, Copyright Case - Judge's Opinion by Jack Purcher on Scribd It's being reported today that Apple will be giving online and retail store employees as much as $1,000 in one-time bonuses next month, a rare move that follows a tumultuous effort to get its retail operations back on track after pandemic shutdowns. Apple is said to be giving $1,000 to retail staff hired before March 31, while anyone who joined after that date will receive $500, according to people familiar with the situation. New workers for the holiday shopping season will get $200. The bonus structure extends through to AppleCare and online sales workers as well. The Sept. 14 launch event, which also included the new Apple Watch Series 7 and a redesigned iPad mini, kicked off the companys holiday season blitz. This Christmas will provide a key test of Apples retail operations as the company navigates the waning of the pandemic. For more, read the full Bloomberg report. Epic Denied back to the Apple Store until On another front, Bloomberg is reporting that "Apple sent a letter to Epic Tuesday saying that it "will not consider any further requests for reinstatement until the district courts judgment becomes final and non-appealable." The letter, sent to Epics lawyers from a firm representing Apple, was published on Twitter by Epic Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney. That process could take five years, he said. Mark Perry, a lawyer representing Apple, said the company wont reinstate the developer account immediately because of Epics duplicitous conduct in the past and statements made by Sweeney after the ruling. For more, read the second Bloomberg report. (Click on image to Greatly Enlarge) Last August we reported that the production of the Apple TV+ Alien "Invasion" series was back on track after it was shut down due to COVID-19. One of Apples most ambitious original series to date, Invasion filmed in four locations on four continents: New York in the U.S. as well as UK (Manchester), Morocco and Japan. Apple today released the official trailer for the coming series. The 10-episode Sci-Fi series is set to debut on Friday October 22 with the first three episodes being made available at launch. For bingers, the full series will be made available on December 10th. The Tragedy of Macbeth In May Patently Apple posted a report titled "Hollywood Heavyweights Frances McDormand & Denzel Washington to Star in new Apple Original Film "The Tragedy of Macbeth" This movie, with its heavy hitter cast that will first be released in Theaters on December 25 and on Apple TV+ on January 14. A New yet unnamed Dark Comedy Series Signed on In other Apple TV+ news we learn that Sharon Horgan is set to star in, co-write, and executive produce a dark comedy that has been ordered to series at Apple. The untitled comedy follows the lives of the Garvey sisters, who are bound together by the premature death of their parents and a promise to always protect one another. Apple has given the project a 10-episode order, reports Variety. New Cast Members for Apple TV+ Series "Wool" In May we posted a report titled "Apple TV+ Orders new Drama Series titled "Wool" starring Swedish Actress Rebecca Ferguson." Then in August we followed-up with a report that veteran actor Tim Robbins was joining the cast. We're now learning from Deadline that Apple has added two more cast member for the series: Rashida Jones & David Oyelowo. "Wool" is a set in a ruined and toxic future where a community exists in a giant underground silo, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Archive: Apple TV News Today a Korean report claims that Samsung Display is expected to supply all the OLED panels used in Apples iPad next year. In fact, the new OLED panels may use a new vertical deposition of organic material for the production of Gen 8.5 IT OLED panels. The Elec reports that Samsung is collaborating with Japan's ULVAC in the development of the equipment needed for this new process. The new panels could also be used in future notebooks and monitors. Vertical deposition method has the glass substrate stand up vertically against the surface. The organic material, in gas form, is deposited on the substrate from the sides. Samsung Display is considering trying the vertical method as it minimizes the mask used in deposition from sagging. Fine metal masks used in deposition are vulnerable to have their center sag down as the substrate is placed horizontally. This is because the mask is aligned in a stick shape and the gravity pulls it down from the center as it is held in that position for long times. Display makers usually mold these sticks onto a large frame to prevent this from happening. But since the substrate is held vertically, the center of the masks will be less prone to sagging, the sources said. ULVAC has secured a research space near one of Samsung Displays factories for the development of the equipment, sources said. In 2017, Applied Materials had supplied some kits to Japans JDI that were used to manufacture OLED panels for Apple Watch. However, their production capacity was limited to only 2,000 Gen 6 substrates per month. The technology has since greatly advanced. For more, read the full report by The Elec. President Nana Akufo-Addo has decried moves by some countries in Europe to not recognise Covishield, the Indian version of the AstraZeneca vaccine. According to him, one unfortunate development appears to be the recent measures on entry into some countries in Europe, which suggest that Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, is not recognised by some countries in Europe. The President said this on Wednesday when he took his turn to speak at the 76th United Nations General Assembly, currently ongoing in New York, in the United States of America. His comments come on the heels of the simplified travel measures announced recently, by the UK Government, and indeed, by some countries in Europe, which comes into effect from 4th October, 2021. The measures specify that persons who have received double-dose vaccines such as Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna or the single shot Janssen vaccine under an approved vaccination programme in the UK, Europe, US or UK vaccine programme overseas will be considered fully vaccinated. The rules also consider persons who have received jabs under public health bodies in Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan as fully vaccinated. What is intriguing is the fact that this vaccine was donated to African countries through the COVAX facility. The use of vaccines as a tool for immigration control will be a truly retrogressive step, the President noted. Ghana, President Akufo-Addo said, has so far received five million doses, which have been administered to frontline health workers and those classified as being most at risk. Five million is not a figure to be sneered at, particularly when we consider the situation in many other African countries. We are grateful that our efforts at the management of the pandemic and vaccine distribution have been recognised, and we have received these amounts so far. We are still hoping to vaccinate twenty million of our people by the end of the year, he said. President Akufo-Addo continued, Ghana agrees with the call of the Rome Declaration of Global Health for voluntary licensing and technology transfers to boost vaccine production. The Africa Union is working with WHO, WTO and other global partners to expand its vaccine manufacturing and deployment. He told the Assembly that Ghana recognised that vaccination is the way to protect populations and revitalise societies. In the case of Africa, the President stated that vaccinating seventy per cent (70%) of the population in the shortest possible time, as is being done elsewhere in the world, means some nine hundred million Africans have to be vaccinated. He stressed that the Afreximbanks structuring of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforces $2 billion acquisition of four hundred million Johnson & Johnson vaccines is part of the historic African Unions Covid-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy. It is a critical milestone in our collective fight against the pandemic, in a continent suffering the worst brunt of vaccine nationalism. The Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce vaccine programme, partly manufactured in South Africa, is the single largest and most far-reaching trade transaction since the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area in January this year, he added. President Akufo-Addo described it as an eloquent testimony to the benefits of domestic production and pooled procurement in Africa, as envisioned by the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. COVID-19 has been damaging Recounting his statement at the 2017 UN General Assembly, where he indicated that he wanted to build an economy that is not dependent on charity and handouts, President indicated that the significant progress that had been made by Ghana between 2017 to 2020, where an average growth rate of 7% was recorded, had been eroded. In 2020, when the global economy and sub-Saharan Africas contracted by 3.5% and 2.1%, respectively, Ghana was one of the few countries that produced a positive growth rate. This is a testament to our determination to build a Ghana Beyond Aid, he said. However, he stated that many economies in Africa are in recession, as the viruss impact on economies and livelihoods has been devastating. The latest numbers from the African Development Bank indicate that African economies, which contracted by 2.1% in 2020, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. More than thirty million Africans fell into extreme poverty in 2020, and nearly forty million could do so in 2021, he said. The social impact of the pandemic, President Akufo-Addo reiterated, has been devastating; over one hundred and three million African jobs have been lost. Women, who account for forty per cent (40%) of total employment, have been most hard hit. Source: Jubilee House Communication Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Audio Attachment: Listen to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ag. Director-General, Public Affairs. Kwesi Ofori in an interview on Peace FM's 'kokrokoo' The Ghana Police Service has confirmed that the missing but found 'Pregnant' woman in Takoradi, Josephine Panyin Mensah "was never pregnant". According to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ag. Director-General, Public Affairs. Kwesi Ofori, preliminary investigations conducted show she has never been pregnant within the period under review following thorough medical examination by the medical doctors at the Axim Government Hospital. In a statement released by the Police Service on Thursday, September 23, the victim, now a suspect, during interrogation mentioned the European Hospital in Takoradi as the hospital for her antenatal reviews and assessment. "Medical records at the facility suggest that the lady visited the hospital without pregnancy somewhere in October last year". Investigations also suggest the suspect may have conspired with other persons over her possible planned disappearance. Three people have so far been arrested for further questioning on possible conspiracy charges. Police would like to inform members of the public that adequate measures are in place to ensure she is safe as they continue investigations. My wife was pregnant Husband Michael Simmons, the husband of Josephine Panyin Mensah, the 'pregnant' woman who allegedly went missing in Takoradi, has spoken out after his wife was found in Axim in the Western Region. Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Michael Simmons said he was yet to speak to his wife, who is under police guard. But her mother has been able to ask her a few things, Michael noted. He recounted that on the day she went missing, Josephines mother received a call from persons suspected to be behind his wifes disappearance. Since Josephine was found near a Kingdom Hall building in Axim, there has been speculation that her pregnancy was a hoax, following a claim by the Western Regional Minister that a preliminary report shows she was not pregnant. But her husband has refuted these claims. She had been pregnant for nine months. The problem is when she was going to the hospital, I wasnt going with her. She was going alone, he said. Missing woman found in Axim was not pregnant Western Regional Minister The Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, has said the woman who went missing last week in Takoradi and was found under mysterious circumstances on Tuesday, was not pregnant. He said this was the preliminary security report he had from the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB). Josephine Panyin Mensah, the woman said to be nine-month-old pregnant, reportedly went missing last Thursday, September 16, 2021, after she had embarked on a dawn walk in Takoradi. But speaking on Kessben TVs morning show, the Western Regional Minister, who doubles as the head of the Western Regional Security Council, said I received a call from NIB yesterday [Tuesday], that she had been found and was at the Axim hospital. According to the police, they suspect that the story was fake per their preliminary investigations. The medical doctor who attended to her even suspects that she may not have been pregnant, as has been reported. They are even surprised at how this story has gone so far. This is the immediate information I have. Nevertheless, the police are still with her and are conducting further investigations, the Minister added. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Some residents in Takoradi including family members have expressed their displeasure over reports by the Ghana Police Service that 29-year-old Josephine Panyin Mensah faked her pregnancy and kidnapping. The Ghana Police Service in a statement released earlier today confirmed that the missing but found 'Pregnant' woman "was never pregnant" According to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ag. Director-General, Public Affairs. Kwesi Ofori, preliminary investigations conducted show she has never been pregnant within the period under review following thorough medical examination by the medical doctors at the Axim Government Hospital. "Medical records at the facility suggest that the lady visited the hospital without pregnancy somewhere in October last year" the statement indicated. But the agitated residents of Sekondi insist Panyin was pregnant. Speaking to Appiah Dankwah, Peace FM's Western Regional Correspondent, the father of Panyin vowed that his daughter was pregnant and cursed anyone who thinks otherwise. "...this shows there's no truth in this country. My daughter was really pregnant. It's even surprising how authorities are focusing on whether or not she was pregnant and not on the fact that she was kidnapped. I swear on everything I hold sacred that my daughter was pregnant and anyone who thinks my daughter wasn't should be struck by lightning and may they never have success". Listen to him in the video below Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A man suspected to be a 'Yahoo boy' has been arrested by the police in Bayelsa State over alleged failed attempt to use his girlfriend for money rituals. It was gathered that the suspect was caught attempting to behead the victim along SETRACO Road, Amassoma/Ogobiri axis of the state on Tuesday morning, September 21. The girl, said to be a student of the Niger Delta University Wilberforce Island (NDU) was fortunately rescued by youths of Ogobiri community and police operatives. According to a post by Kokobaiye Abeki, the Special Adviser to Governor Diri on New Media, the suspect who has been dating the girl, lured her to Setraco Road along Ogobiri-Toruebeni drive. "After he succeeded in roping her hands and legs, he was at the verge of cutting her neck when the savour of her nightmare (Ogobiri Youths) who traced his earlier movement through a revelation from a nearby person caught him together with the efforts of the men of the Operation Doo-Akpo NPF special squad." Abeki wrote. The suspect has since been handed over to the Nigeria Police for further investigation. Source: lindaikeji's Blog Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Former Minister for Central Region, Kwamena Duncan, has called on NPP supporters who are angry over the list of MMDCEs to be calm. Some disgruntled NPP youth, prior to and after the announcement of nominated MMDCEs, went on the rampage when they realized that their preferred candidate's name was missing. Some youth in the Odododiodio Constituency embarked on a protest on Saturday burning car tyres to register their displeasure over the MMDCEs. Police have announced the arrest of four persons said to be ringleaders of the disorder. Reacting to the issue on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Kwamena Duncan advised the irate supporters to put the party first over their individual interests. To him, "the party indeed is supreme'', so it is the duty of the members and supporters to ''ensure that party remains intact. It is when the party is intact and solid on its feet, then these opportunities will come up again in future". "I am asking that the party needs to be held together. The party requires your support today. Don't say the name of the person I supported wasn't mentioned and therefore, I will do all to tear this party apart, that opportunity will not be there tomorrow for you to continue to support for others who may want to put in the application to be able to do so," he further stated. He charged the party's rank and file to "stay together. Let us hold together for this party". Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Atta Mills Institute, Samuel Koku Anyidoho, says the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day is worth celebrating as a national holiday due to his immense contribution to the development of the country. According to him, from the days of the country's self-government struggles and subsequent attaining independence, the achievements of Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah cannot be glossed over or downplayed for any political reason. Speaking on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Koku, a former Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), commended President Akufo-Addo for cementing Dr Nkrumah's exploits by settig aside a day to honour his memory. Kwame Nkrumah came and open up Ghana and we have celebrated him not only in Ghana but all over Africa. He is still being remembered . . . " I think that we should thank President Akufo-Addo for making 21st September a public holiday because initially it was a political debate between the NPP and NDC but if over the period, we have all agreed that Kwame Nkrumah stands tall, nobody can change what he did," he commended. He also lauded his boss, former President John Evans Atta Mills, for naming the first floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) oil vessel after Ghanas first president; FPSO Kwame Nkrumah or Kwame Nkrumah MV21. "I am happy that President Mills named the first oil vessel Ghana purchased and remodeled after Kwame Nkrumah and that is one of the legacy President Mills left behind. So, I think that we cannot forget Kwame Nkrumah and we cannot downplay what he did for this republic, he noted. "Kwame Nkrumah created a very powerful tool with the establishment of NCCE for national development. He had a personal interest in the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE). Kwame Nkrumah did a lot for the country in terms of infrastructure and institutions which had a sole aim of developing the country and his contributions extended to other African countries and so he is still hailed outside this country, he added. Watch video below Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Former Central Regional Chairman of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Bernard Allotey Jacobs, has called for maximum support for Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to be the next President of Ghana. Although Dr. Bawumia hasn't been elected or declared flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party(NPP), some party supporters have already begun campaigning for him. There are speculations he might stand for Presidential candidate during the party's primaries. Speaking during the Wednesday edition of Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', Allotey Jacobs was of a strong belief that Dr. Bawumia will make a good President. "I want to see Vice President Bawumia as the next President . . . It's a fact. There's a magic in him that he can use to help Ghana to move Ghana forward. Let's see what is in him!'', he emphasized. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Social commentator, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, has called on the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to restore calm in the party following the disorder arising from the announcement of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executive (MMDCEs'). Some irate NPP youth in the Odododiodio Constituency, Greater Accra Region, on Saturday, embarked on a protest at Jamestown burning car tyres to express the disappointment over the MMDCE nominees. At Chereponi in the North East Region, another NPP youth vandalized some structures after the nomination of Zuwera Mada Nashiru as the District Chief Executive was announced. The aggrieved youth wanted their favourite candidate, S. K. Orlando. The Police have reportedly arrested the ringleaders of the protests. Discussing the matter on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' programme, Allotey Jacobs advised the NPP to ''manage this thing as quickly as possible by going out there and counselling their supporters, their party members and those who even applied who are the reason why their supporters are doing all these things". He called for effective communication between the party leadership and supporters stressing, "in politics, don't underrate the act of communication. I'm telling you; it is very, very important". Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The NDC Member of Parliament for Lower Manya Krobo Constituency, Ebenezer Okletey-Teye Larbi, has said construction of roads is not part of his work as a lawmaker. According to him, his government is not in power and there is little he can do about issue of poor road networks in his constituency. He was responding to questions in a telephone interview about the poor road network in Akuse, a community in his constituency. My brother the point is that it is also a concern to me so the fact is that the roads have not been done. So I dont think there is anything I can tell you. I am not in government and I can only talk about it. You know MPs cannot construct roads, he told Freelance Journalist Amos Ekow Coffie. When asked what effort he is putting in to ensure to address the poor road networks, Mr Larbi stated that the issue has been put before Parliament but nothing has been done about it. MPs cannot construct roads. Lobby who? I say lobby who? It has been there already. You go to Parliament and find out if it is not there. I have spoken about it. I have asked questions about it. It is there and the Minister has come to promise and so thats the extent to which I can go. What do you expect me to do?" he stated. The MP continued, Masa, when you come to Lower Manya it is not only Akuse that has road problems, we have road problems all over, so sometimes you people should educate the people the more. Let the people know. My whole life as an MP, I cant use my money to construct it, so push more like what, look the work of an MP is to bring it to the attention of the ministry. You can ask for monies to be released to be done but cant come and hold the MP. You people should educate our people to appreciate what we are doing so that they dont put unnecessary pressure on us, no MP can construct roads. Residents on September 21, 2021 in a communal labour exercise to mark Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day, lamented the challenges they go through in plying the bad roads. The situation, they claim, drive potential investors. We decided to have a communal labour because of our roads. The road is very bad when it rains people cannot come out, from here to Okwenya, cars have to ply the roads for about an hour or 30minutes before reaching Okwenya, so we are appealing to the government to come to our aid and do the roads for us because Akuse is an old town, we have to do the roads so that, the town will be good for us so we are appealing to the government to come to our aid, a resident told this reporter. Akuse is home to one of the oldest hospitals in Ghana, the Akuse Government Hospital, the Akuse Prisons, and the Kpong Dam. Its indigences are predominantly small and medium scale business owners and farmers. It has a population of about 1,500 and serves as the major link which connects Asutuare and other surrounding communities. Source: modernghana.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video President Akufo-Addo has reiterated Ghanas resolve to continue to defend democracy and constitutional rule, as uphold human rights in Ghana, in the West African Region, and on the wider African continent. Addressing the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, 22nd September 2021, the President stated that Ghana shall work to strengthen the institutions that support democracy in our country and in our Region. We shall continue to support the United Nations and other international organisations to help remind us that, indeed, no man is an island, entire of itself. Recent events in Mali and Guinea, in West Africa, President Akufo-Addo said, have shown that not everybody has accepted democracy as the preferred mode of governance in our Region. Now more than ever, he indicated that we must defend democracy, constitutional rule and human rights in the world. In the last twenty-four (24) months, we have witnessed assaults on democracy around the world, sometimes in developed countries where we had assumed that a consensus on the democratic form of governance had been established. Touching on events in Guinea and Mali, he told the Assembly that ECOWAS has given Guinea six (6) months to do so, and requested the immediate release of President Alpha Conde. On my visit to Conakry last Friday, the military leaders indicated their willingness to see to the imminent release of President Conde, and it is our hope that they will keep to their word. The Authority has also made it clear to the military government in Bamako, the capital of Mali, that it is not prepared to negotiate an extension to the February deadline for the holding of democratic elections, as the essential steps to be taken can, with political will, be effected within the ECOWAS-sanctioned timetable, the President said. He continued, It is better that a government, with a democratic mandate, be in place as soon as possible, to implement the reforms that are necessary for the future stability and growth of Mali, and, thereby, enhance the all-important fight against terrorism in Mali. Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Deputy Minority Whip in Parliament, Ahmed Ibrahim says that the provisional results from the 2021 population census by Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) is not a true reflection of the reality on the ground. The total number of Ghanaians in the country is now 30.8 million according to provisional results of the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC). From 6.7 million persons in 1960, the population has increased to 30.8 million persons in Ghana by 2021. From the provisional results of the 2021 PHC, Ghana's population has increased from 24.7 million in 2010 to a 30.8 milion. Speaking on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, the Member of Parliament for Banda Constituency in the Bono Region asserted that most of the findings of the Statistical Service in the population and housing census were public knowledge. He added that the provisional results from the population and housing census could have exceeded 30.8 million people since most of the households were not counted, because some people prevented officials of the Statistical Service from entering their homes. The Statistician of the Ghana Statistical Service, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, came out to complain that the money they needed for the census was not enough and so the results from the census cannot be a true reflection of the exercise, he asserted. . . we are already aware of the situation in the country before the census was conducted. If we were to resource the statistical service to do their proper work, I tell you that Ghana population would have been over 35 million people, he indicated. Watch video below Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Liberal leader Justin Trudeau watches election results with wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau and children, Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien, at Liberal headquarters in Montreal, Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. Early election results have the Liberals pulling ahead in Quebec, after a race that saw frequent appeals to Quebec nationalism. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. Senators want the National Nuclear Security Administration to develop a comprehensive strategy for treatment and disposal of radioactive wastes born from the maintenance and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Of particular interest, lawmakers noted in documents tied to the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, are the volumes of transuranic waste that will be generated by plutonium pit production, both at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site south of Aiken. The committee notes that as the United States continues to maintain and modernize its nuclear weapons stockpile, waste will continue to be generated and must be treated, stored, and disposed of, reads a bill report published Wednesday. Dozens of plutonium pits fissile cores, or triggers are expected to be made every year in New Mexico and South Carolina. Most of the demand will be fulfilled in the Palmetto State, according to plans announced in May 2018. Transuranic waste contaminated gear and other materials, often referred to as TRU and low-level waste would be produced at the Savannah River Site pit factory, the potentially $11 billion Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. Transuranic waste would be disposed of in New Mexico, at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a choke point; other options exist for the low-level waste, environmental studies show. It is unclear, senators suggested, whether there are sufficient facilities to address the waste generated by these activities or whether such facilities are included in current plans and budgets. Lawmakers are interested in hearing exactly how the National Nuclear Security Administration will work alongside the Office of Environmental Management, the Energy Departments cleanup wing, to tackle waste streams associated with stockpile work. They also want a price tag. The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual spending-and-policy bundle, supports nearly $778 billion in defense funding. It would authorize $740.3 billion for the Defense Department and $27.7 billion for certain Energy Department programs. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the United States is doubling its purchase of Pfizer's COVID-19 shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses as he embraces the goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the global population within the next year. The stepped-up U.S. commitment marks the cornerstone of the global vaccination summit Biden convened virtually on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where he encouraged well-off nations to do more to get the coronavirus under control. It comes as world leaders, aid groups and global health organizations have growing increasingly vocal about the slow pace of global vaccinations and the inequity of access to shots between residents of wealthier and poorer nations. "Global health security until now has failed, to the tune of 4.5 million lives, and counting," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the summit, referring to the confirmed global death toll from the coronavirus. "We have effective vaccines against COVID-19. We can end the pandemic. And that is why I have been appealing for a global vaccination plan and I hope this summit is a step in that direction." The U.S. purchase of another 500 million shots brings the total U.S. vaccination commitment to more than 1.1 billion doses through 2022. About 160 million shots supplied by the U.S. have already been distributed to more than 100 countries, representing more donations than the rest of the world combined. The remaining American doses will be distributed over the coming year. "To beat the pandemic here, we need to beat it everywhere," Biden said. He added that with the new commitments, "For every one shot we've administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world." The latest purchase reflects only a fraction of what will be necessary to meet a goal of vaccinating 70% of the global population and 70 percent of the citizens of each nation by next September's U.N. meeting. It's a target pushed by global aid groups that Biden threw his weight behind. Biden is pressing other countries to do more in their vaccine sharing plans. "We need other high income countries to deliver on their own ambitious vaccine donations and pledges," Biden said. He called on wealthy countries to commit to donating, rather than selling the shots to poorer nations, and to provide them "with no political strings attached." The European Union committed to donating 500 million doses a slight increase from its earlier announced plans according to a joint statement between the bloc and the U.S. "We call for nations that are able to vaccinate their populations to double their dose-sharing commitments or to make meaningful contributions to vaccine readiness," the statement said. They also committed to working with the U.S. to bolster global vaccine supply. Biden, in his remarks, said the U.S. would also increase its funding to global aid groups that are administering shots. The American response has come under criticism for being too modest, particularly as the administration advocates for providing booster shots to tens of millions of Americans before vulnerable people in poorer nations have received even a first dose. "We have observed failures of multilateralism to respond in an equitable, coordinated way to the most acute moments. The existing gaps between nations with regard to the vaccination process are unheard of," Colombian President Ivan Duque said Tuesday at the United Nations. More than 5.9 billion COVID-19 doses have been administered globally over the past year, representing about 43 percent of the global population. But there are vast disparities in distribution, with many lower-income nations struggling to vaccinate even the most vulnerable share of their populations, and some yet to exceed 2 percent to 3 percent vaccination rates. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said the "triumph" of speedy vaccine development was offset by political "failure" that produced inequitable distribution. "In science, cooperation prevailed; in politics, individualism. In science, shared information reigned; in politics, reserve. In science, teamwork predominated; in politics, isolated effort," Pinera said. The World Health Organization says only 15 percent of promised donations of vaccines from rich countries that have access to large quantities of them have been delivered. The U.N. health agency has said it wants countries to fulfill their dose-sharing pledges "immediately" and make shots available for programs that benefit poor countries and Africa in particular. COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship vaccines to all countries has struggled with production issues, supply shortages and a near-cornering of the market for vaccines by wealthy nations. The WHO has urged companies that produce vaccines to prioritize COVAX and make public their supply schedules. It also has appealed to wealthy countries to avoid broad rollouts of booster shots so doses can be made available to health care workers and vulnerable people in the developing world. Such calls have largely gone ignored. COVAX has missed nearly all of its vaccine-sharing targets. Its managers also have lowered their ambitions to ship vaccines by the end of this year, from an original target of some 2 billion doses worldwide to hopes for 1.4 billion now. Even that mark could be missed. As of Tuesday, COVAX had shipped more than 296 million doses to 141 countries. "Today's summit was full of speeches but tragically lacking in action," said Oxfam America's President and CEO Abby Maxman. "While we commend President Biden for rallying world leaders to commit to vaccinate 70 percent of the world by this time next year, we have yet to see an effective plan to meet this goal. President Biden and leaders of rich countries should listen to what leaders from developing countries are asking for: the rights and the recipe to make their own vaccine doses." Biden, earlier this year, broke with European allies to embrace waivers to intellectual property rights for the vaccines, but there was no movement Wednesday toward the necessary global consensus on the issue required under World Trade Organization rules. While some nongovernmental organizations have called those waivers vital to boosting global production of the shots, U.S. officials concede it is not the most constricting factor in the inequitable vaccine distribution and some privately doubt the waivers for the highly complex shots would lead to enhanced production. The 70 percent global target is ambitious, not least because of the U.S. experience. Biden had set a goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the U.S. adult population by July 4, but persistent vaccine hesitance contributed to the nation not meeting that target until a month later. Nearly 64 percent of the entire U.S. population has received at least one dose and less than 55 percent is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. officials hope to increase those figures in the coming months, both through encouraging the use of vaccination mandates and by vaccinating children once regulators clear the shots for the under-12 population. Aid groups have warned that the persistent inequities risk extending the global pandemic, and that could lead to new and more dangerous variants. The delta variant raging across the U.S. has proved to be more transmissible than the original strain, though the existing vaccines have been effective at preventing nearly all serious illness and death. ___ Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Josh Boak at the United Nations and David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report. Moncks Corner, SC (29461) Today Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. This week marks the anniversary of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark returning to St. Louis from their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. This sale from the French had, effectively, doubled the size of the country in an instant, and President Thomas Jefferson needed to find out what had been bought. We all may have been taught about the expedition when we were in elementary school, but how well do you know the background of Americas first great road trip? COLUMBIA Richland School District Two Superintendent Baron Davis saw the finishing touches put on his contract one week after trustees walked out of a meeting because of what they said was a last-minute push to approve the document but tensions still remained high. Over the course of a fiery 30-minute meeting on Sept. 22, trustees approved a 4 percent pay bump for Davis beginning July 1, coinciding with a one-year extension to keep him under contract through 2025, with a clause giving him 18 months of severance pay should both sides part ways. District leaders said Davis contract was not immediately available as attorneys give it a final review, but trustees gave him a "distinguished" overall rating and praised the job he's done, including boosting its bond rating and increasing student participation in career and technology education programs. But the vote Sept. 22 came after heated exchanges between Richland Two board members. Officials hoped to close out Davis contract and evaluation on Sept. 14, but trustees Lindsay Agostini, LaShonda McFadden and Monica Scott left in protest, claiming they were not given enough time or adequate responses to questions they had about the deal. All three walked out within 30 minutes of the meetings start, leaving the board without a quorum and unable to act on student transfer requests into the district, approval of a sixth grade Spanish language and culture program, and hiring of several teachers. Board Chairwoman Teresa Holmes said Sept. 22 shed call another meeting for Sept. 24 to deal with those outstanding issues. All of the sudden tonight, because the cameras are rolling, everybody is miraculously concerned, but they were not concerned when it was time to pull the lever, she said. When there is a board meeting called, you come and do your responsibility. You don't do your dereliction of duty and walk out of a meeting. Scott, who was first to walk out on Sept. 14, lashed out after trustee Jim Manning suggested the move was pre-meditated. I walked out on my own, and if I need to do that again, I will, she said. No position, no matter how much money you have or your presence moves me What moves me is my conscience, because I have to sleep at night, and I have to sleep well. Holmes did not immediately give a time and location for the Sept. 24 meeting, but a district email the next day said it would take place at 5:30 p.m. at the Richland Two Institute of Innovation. COLUMBIA The South Carolina House won't return when the Senate does in mid-October, making it impossible for the full Legislature to address or overturn their ban on masks in schools for the foreseeable future. The House will return in December to approve new, post-census voting lines but it is highly unlikely the chamber will come back to Columbia before then, House Majority Leader Gary Simrill said Sept. 22 following a private House GOP Caucus meeting in Columbia. That means it will be impossible for legislators to address their controversial ban on school mask mandates despite a growing chorus of educators, doctors and elected officials of both parties calling for a repeal of the one-year law that took effect July 1. Legislative leaders in both GOP-majority chambers have already said there aren't enough votes to overturn it. Even if senators manage to find a compromise that lets school boards set their own mask rules, neither chamber can enact or change state law on its own. "At this time, the House has no plans to reconvene for a special session," House Speaker Jay Lucas said in a written statement following the caucus meeting. Last week, Senate President Harvey Peeler announced the Senate will come back Oct. 12, specifically to debate new voting maps and discuss how to spend $3 billion in federal money. He insisted debate will follow the law legislators adopted in May outlining when they could return for any special session for the rest of the year and what it could include. The law reflected legislators' intention to return this fall to craft a spending plan for $2.5 billion in federal COVID aid they control, as well as $525 million from a settlement with the Department of Energy over plutonium at the Savannah River Site. The plans also called for passing new maps for legislative and U.S. House seats to align with population shifts. But limiting discussion and podium speeches by senators could still prove futile. "We will watch what the Senate does," Simrill said after the caucus luncheon. Asked if he envisioned any scenario that would bring the House back before December, he said, "No, I do not." For starters, he said, the House is nowhere close to being able to debate new voting maps. The panel handling House lines is still holding hearings around the state to take public testimony on what changes voters do or don't want to see. As for spending the federal money, House leaders want to hold off on making decisions amid a third surge of COVID-19. "For us, time and patience are important because we dont know the ramifications of COVID," Simrill said. "Until we have a grasp of what is happening on that front, its difficult to react." For example, Gov. Henry McMaster's recommendation to spend $360 million to widen Interstate 26 between Columbia and Charleston seemed an obvious "top-tier" use of the money. But other needs may take priority, he said. There's no need to make those spending decisions this year, he said, as legislators have several years to spend the federal COVID aid. And if hospitals or the state's public health agency needs more money to combat the pandemic, the state's fiscal oversight board can dip into a reserve account the Legislature created last year specifically for COVID expenses. About $80 million remains in it, Simrill said. House Democrats who called for a special session on Aug. 17 noted that since that news conference, more than 1,500 additional South Carolinians have died with COVID. House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, said he believes the Legislature could address the ban on using state money to enact or enforce a school mask mandate, despite GOP leaders saying the votes aren't there. Regardless, every legislator should want to "come back and deal with this health crisis" and make their stance public by voting, he said. "Its unfortunate that the House Republican Caucus has the time to meet in Columbia for lunch, but not to convene to address the ongoing and prolonged coronavirus pandemic," said Rep. Russell Ott, D-St. Matthews. Continuing with our on-the-road Civil War history tour, we now move from Harpers Ferry to the great battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. For this portion of the tour, our guide was the Rev. Jeff Miller, rector of St Philips Church, an expert who did a great job, including slide presentations during the evenings. Information also was obtained through websites searches such as history and battlefields and from the National Park Service at Antietam. Now, a prelude to the battle: As of June 1, 1862, just a little more than a year into the Civil War, the Union had established a clear military advantage over the Confederate States of America. In the Western Theater, defeat had followed defeat Forts Henry and Donelson, Nashville, Shiloh and New Orleans. After relatively minor skirmishes in both theaters, the horror of the bloodbath at Shiloh April 6-7, 1862 (13,047 Union casualties with 1,754 killed; 10,699 Confederate casualties with 1,728 killed), and the loss of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston were extremely demoralizing for the South. (Johnston was shot behind the right knee and initially felt it was a relatively minor injury. A major artery had been clipped, however, and the generals boot quickly filled with blood. He turned a ghastly pale within minutes and was essentially a dead man slumped in his saddle before anything could be done the highest-ranking officer, Union or Confederate, killed during the war.) In the Eastern Theater, CSA operations were frequently disorganized, piecemeal and error-prone. At the time, Brig. Gen. Robert E. Lee, though a senior military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, had only served in minor combat operations and was derisively referred to as Granny Lee for perceived indecisiveness and even timidity before being shipped off to the Carolinas to construct fortifications. Despite the Confederates success under commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston (no relation to Albert Sidney) at First Manassas (or Bull Run) July 21, 1861, where Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson earned the moniker Stonewall, and despite the latters remarkable campaign in the Shenandoah Valley earlier in the spring of 1862, the Army of the Potomac had nonetheless advanced to the very outskirts of Richmond by the time of the Battle of Seven Pines (or Fair Oaks Station) on May 31 and June 1, 1862. The Battle of Seven Pines was consequential for two reasons. Both sides sustained heavy casualties (and the South got the worst of it), yet Union Gen. George B. McClellan chose to abandon his operations possibly based on false intelligence about Confederate forces thus laying the groundwork for mounting tensions between him and President Abraham Lincoln, who would grow increasingly frustrated with McClellans apparent lack of killer instinct. Secondly, Johnston, who after First Manassas had become more of a defensive strategist, was wounded in the conflict. Having no one else to turn to, Davis asked Lee to assume command of the army. The offer was accepted, though with some reservation by Lee himself, and not everybody below the Mason-Dixon Line was thrilled. Even Brig. Gen. J.E.B. Jeb Stuart confided that, With personal regard for General Lee, he has disappointed me as a general. McClellan, on the other hand, was thrilled: I prefer Lee to Johnston. The former is too cautious & weak under grave responsibility and is likely to be timid and irresolute in action. Or not. Lee turned out to be a brilliant command strategist and far more aggressive in action than anticipated. By early August 1862, and despite terrible casualties, the Army of Virginia had succeeded in driving McClellan away from Richmond and off the Peninsula (the Peninsula Campaign). With his capital safe, Lee marched northward in late August and won a stunning victory over Union Maj. Gen. John Popes Army of Virginia (not to be confused with the Army of Northern Virginia) at the Second Battle of Manassas. Sign up for our new opinion newsletter Get a weekly recap of South Carolina opinion and analysis from The Post and Courier in your inbox on Monday evenings. Email Sign Up! These two Confederate victories had cleared Virginia of any major Union military presence, and Lee decided to seize momentum and initiative by moving his army into U.S. territory and out of war-torn Virginia. He would like to have chosen Pennsylvania right away (which supplied more soldiers to the Union than any other state except New York), but ended up in Maryland, a slave-holding state with lush countryside and plenty of food and fodder, a state that might have seceded were it not for federal bayonets and the arrest and incarceration of its citizens, legislators even the mayor of Baltimore without benefit of the writ of habeas corpus. Lee picked Maryland by default because his line of supply and communication into Virginia was threatened by a 12,500-man Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia), thus causing delays and forcing him to divide his army. Jackson was dispatched to Harpers Ferry and had the area secured by Sept. 15, 1862. Part of Gen. James Longstreets command was diverted to Hagerstown, Md., and a third force, General D. H. Hills command, guarded the South Mountain gaps near Boonsboro, Md. Meanwhile, on Sept. 13, a Union soldier found a copy of Lees Special Order 191 outside of Frederick, Md. This Lost Order, as it came to be known, contained valuable information concerning the Army of Northern Virginias movements and campaign plans and was immediately taken to McClellan, who realized that now was the time to strike Lees divided army. Here is a paper, McClellan exclaimed, with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home. (The practical value of the intelligence, which was quickly growing obsolescent, continues to be the subject of much debate.) On Sept. 14, the Confederates received significant pushback at the Battle of South Mountain and were forced from the gaps. Lee considered returning to Virginia but reevaluated things after learning that Harpers Ferry had fallen and placed his army in formation at Sharpsburg, Md., a quiet, 100-year-old farming community of some 1,200 residents adjacent to a meandering body or water known as Antietam Creek. We will make our stand on those hills, Lee is supposed to have said, referring to the farmland around Sharpsburg. The Army of Northern Virginia lay down fitfully the evening of Sept. 16 awaiting McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. No one on either side could possibly have imagined what lay in store for them over the next 24 hours or conceptualize the implications. (The account of the actual battle will take place next week.) The Post and Courier earned 10 awards, including six first-place finishes, in a national features journalism contest with stories about climate-driven flooding, COVID-19 and Charleston's neglected racial history. It was the best showing for a newspaper with a circulation under 90,000. The Society of Features Journalism honors the nations best storytelling and design work. This was the second year in a row that The Post and Courier had the most awards in its division. The Post and Courier's "Rising Waters" series, which chronicled Charleston's climate-driven flooding emergency in real time, won first place honors for a feature series or project and for integrated storytelling. Judges called the series, which previously was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, "an exquisite piece of service journalism told in an entertaining and arresting manner." Projects reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes won three first place awards: She won the best feature writing portfolio for three narrative stories that chronicled a fallen sheriff, the race to save a dog whose owner was killed and the city of Charleston's neglected racial history. The judges described Hawes' work as "powerful stories of people, masterfully told." Hawes won first place for diversity in digital features for Forsaken History: In Charlestons 350th year, key places and stories in citys racial past long neglected. The judges pointed to her "detailed, descriptive writing" and "painstaking and sometimes painful research." Hawes also won first place in arts feature stories for No Plays. No Prom. No in-person classes. From a pandemic come new ways to live senior year. She also received an honorable mention in the portfolio category for three stories about people grappling with COVID-19. Hanna Raskin, the newspaper's former food editor and critic, won first place among food feature stories for her piece SC victims of COVID wont be here to make favorite holiday dishes, but left recipes behind. The judges said it was "a powerful feature because of its quiet starkness, made all the more immortal with the accompanying original recipe cards." Raskin also won second place among food writing portfolios and second place in food criticism for Our critic dined in a downtown Charleston restaurant to see if its worth it for the wary. Projects reporter Tony Bartelme received an honorable mention in general feature writing for Ghost Bird: Few will ever see S.C.s elusive black rail. Will climate change make it vanish forever? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended its emergency-use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Sept. 22, approving it for a single booster dose at least six months after an individual's second shot. The FDA said in a news release those persons included in the provision include everyone 65 years of age and older, individuals 18 to 64 at high risk of severe COVID-19 and individuals 18 to 64 whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure to the coronavirus puts them at high risk of serious complications from COVID-19. "The FDA amended the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for a booster dose in certain populations such as health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said. The news comes just a few days after Pfizer announced results of a trial for the COVID-19 vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 years old. The evidence showed children who received a second vaccine dose, which was one-third of the original dose given to adults, developed coronavirus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teenagers and young adults getting the regular-strength shots. Currently, 51.1 percent of South Carolina residents are considered fully vaccinated. Statewide numbers New cases reported: 2,202 confirmed, 963 probable Total cases in S.C.: 674,403 confirmed, 163,676 probable. Percent positive: 12.4 percent. New deaths reported: 39 confirmed, 5 probable Total deaths in S.C.: 10,386 confirmed, 1,571 probable. Percent of ICU beds filled (with COVID-19 and other patients): 82.95 percent. S.C. residents vaccinated In South Carolina, 59.7 percent of people who are eligible for the vaccine have received one shot, and 51.1 percent of eligible residents are considered fully vaccinated. Hardest-hit areas As of Sept. 23, Greenville (305), Anderson (146) and Charleston (145) counties saw the highest totals of newly confirmed cases. What about tri-county? Charleston County had 145 new cases on Sept. 23, while Dorchester had 60 and Berkeley had 56. Deaths DHEC releases county-level data regarding COVID-19 deaths and the ages of those who have died from the virus on Tuesdays. According to the data published Sept. 21, at least 399 people in South Carolina died from the virus Sept. 12-18, and their ages ranged from pediatric (17 and younger) to elderly (65 and older). Horry County recorded 30 COVID deaths that week the highest number in the state. Health officials have reported that the vast majority of patients who are dying from the coronavirus at this stage of the pandemic are unvaccinated. Hospitalizations Of the 2,325 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of Sept. 23, 551 were in the ICU and 386 were using ventilators. Student, teacher and faculty cases DHEC's weekly school report shows 38,107 staff and students have been isolated since the start of the school year, meaning they tested positive for COVID-19. An estimated 166,198 have been quarantined since the start of the school year. These estimates are likely low because some schools did not provide data for the report. Variants of concern DHEC sequences a small, random sample of positive COVID-19 cases each week to determine which variants of concern (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) are circulating in the state. According to data published by the agency that is up to date through Sept. 15, 2,731 samples have been identified as variants of concern over the course of the pandemic. Of those, 1,485 have been identified as the delta variant, which health officials say is now the dominant strain in South Carolina. What do experts say? "This pandemic is dynamic and evolving, with new data about vaccine safety and effectiveness becoming available every day," Woodcock said. "As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed." A subtle policy change by the Federal Emergency Management Agency may make a world of difference for some disaster victims who have had trouble proving that they actually own their properties. The federal disaster agency now says it will accept a broad range of documents to show home ownership, including motor vehicle registrations, letters from schools, receipts from major home repairs, statements from mobile home park operators and, for some, statements from the people seeking assistance themselves. This is a culture shift for the agency and we are only just beginning, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said in a statement on the change released at the beginning of September. Advocates for those who have been turned down for assistance before are waiting to see how the changes are actually implemented before celebrating. Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said major problems arose after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017. There, some landowners were recognized by the territory's government without having an actual title to their land. That lack of a deed led FEMA to deny around 77,000 households for storm aid, she said. FEMA was eventually convinced to accept self-certifications in Puerto Rico, or basically a form where residents testify that they owned their home, Saadian said. But not all caseworkers on the ground at the time knew this was an option, and some families were outright discouraged from applying for aid, she said. Saadian said FEMA's corps of response workers need to be educated on what documents the agency will now accept for the program to work effectively. "If it is as good as it looks on paper, then it will be a big win for survivors," she said. Many of the people who have struggled to prove ownership in the past are those with heirs property, or land that was passed down without a clear will after a former owner dies. These landowners' properties sometimes date back to the first Black settlements after slavery. Some involve many descendants in far-flung places who may try to stake a claim in land they have little connection to. Charleston's Center for Heirs Property Preservation, for example, estimates there are 108,000 acres of property without clear title in the 22 counties it serves in South Carolina. But that's probably an undercount, said the center's CEO Jennie Stephens and few places have an accurate tally of the full extent. "That's a challenge not just in our state," Stephens said. "Everyone is asking that question all across the United States." Josh Walden, an attorney at the center, helps clients secure a clear title to their land. He said that's a process that takes at least months, and maybe years, making it nearly impossible in the past for landowners to get disaster benefits if the problem hadn't been resolved. "What weve heard from folks regarding FEMA is well after the fact, when they come here and the storm is two years past, and they've either abandoned the home or they're living in it (damaged)," Walden said. He said the agency is clearly trying to make an effort, but he is waiting to see how successful the policy change is when a disaster strikes. "If the intent is to provide services to folks in a better way, then we'll know when the rubber hits the road," he said. NORTH CHARLESTON About $18.2 million will be awarded to Lowcountry nonprofits and state agencies to help crime victims, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said. Wilson made the announcement at a news conference on Sept. 23 at North Charleston City Hall. He was joined by dozens of nonprofit staff members, law enforcement officers and state representatives. One of the reasons we do this is because we want this community to know that people are ready to serve them should they ever find themselves in the unfortunate position of being a victim and or survivor of a crime, Wilson said. At least 25 organizations in Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Dorchester and Hampton counties would receive the grant money, which will primarily be federal funding from the Victims of Crime and Violence Against Women acts. The Attorney Generals Office awarded more than $32 million in grants statewide. Money coming through the grant programs will go specifically toward helping victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking and other violent crimes, through services such as evidence-based therapies and specialized law enforcement training, Wilson said. One grant recipient is the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center within the Medical University of South Carolinas department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The center has received Victims of Crime Act funding for about 25 years, Alyssa Rheingold of the treatment center said. The center provides mental health counseling for adults and kids who have experienced traumatic events, case management, as well as outreach services such as specialty programs for survivors of sexual assault and victims of crime within the Hispanic community. The center has used the grant money to expand its services, particularly for traditionally underserved populations, being able to tailor services to their special needs, Rheingold said. Grant money in the past has paid for more clinicians and case managers, free treatment and even vehicles, so staff members can visit victims wherever they are, she said. The center's pediatric collaborative care program also receives its own portion of the funding, used to provide screenings, therapy and case management to children and their caregivers, said Rochelle Hanson, who heads the program. We do know that when children experience a crime or are a victim, when its untreated, it doesnt just go away, she said. And then they infiltrate all the other different areas of their life. They dont do well academically, they dont achieve occupational status. So if we can nip it in the bud, we can potentially prevent, or at least reduce the risk, for those longer-term problems. Hanson hopes the program will eventually be able to expand, with the continued support of the funding, she said. David Morris, a victim advocate with the Charleston County Sheriffs Office, said the money will help provide services to victims. Some grant money for the Sheriffs Office will pay to continue covering the costs of victim advocates. Our services cost money, plain and simple, Morris said. So the more that we get, the better services that we can offer. Morris, who works at the countys detention center, helps notify victims once suspects in their cases have been arrested and booked into jail. He continues to update the victim as the court case makes its way through the system, including whether suspects may be released. Not only is it a victims right to be kept in the loop, but it also makes them feel involved, Morris said. Theyve already been through a terrible situation, he said. We dont want to make that worse. So we want them to feel that they have support, and they have somebody that actually cares. This years grant funding cycle will begin Oct. 1, when agencies will start receiving the money allocated to these projects. NORTH CHARLESTON Police are investigating the shooting death of a 27-year-old man at a motel. It's the third shooting death at a North Charleston lodging establishment since Sept. 11. The shooting occurred at 9:10 p.m. on Sept. 19 at an Econo Lodge on Northside Drive, according to a North Charleston Police Department incident report. Anthony Merida was found dead from a gunshot wound in a hotel room, according to the county coroners office on Sept. 23. Merida was from Kentucky. North Charleston police are investigating the case, police spokesman Harve Jacobs said. Police have not disclosed any suspects. A 44-year-old woman was found dead from a gunshot wound at a Red Roof Inn about a half-mile from the Econo Lodge on Sept. 20 the morning after Merida was killed. On Sept. 11, a 24-year-old man was shot dead at the Charleston Heights Motel. North Charleston police are investigating both cases. Gun violence has steadily risen in North Charleston in recent years, from 145 shootings reported in 2018 to 177 in 2020. It is part of a rising tide of violence reported by police agencies in South Carolina and across the United States. Shortly after the Charleston County School District's new mask mandate went into effect, small groups of parents showed up outside several of the district's schools to protest the new requirement. Don Calabrese, public information officer for the Mount Pleasant Police Department, said they received three calls about disturbances outside James B. Edward's Elementary, Laing Middle and Cario Middle on Sept. 21. The disturbances at James B. Edward's and Laing were ultimately handled by the schools' administration, but the police became involved in the Cario protest. The protesters refused to leave school property at the request of the school's administration. When police arrived, some people still did not leave. Ultimately one person received a summons for trespassing. Parents also showed up outside Cario the morning of Sept. 22. Jeff Hoffman, a parent of three Cario students, attended both protests. He said the school sent home a warning about his children not wearing masks on the first day of the week. On Sept. 21 they were put in an isolated classroom and on Sept. 22 they were sent home. Hoffman said he does not want his children to learn virtually because he does not believe the remote classes can be considered an equal education. He also does not think the district should be allowed to make his children wear masks in school. "We believe in our immune systems and we believe in the data that there is no threat to children," he said. Parents are also sending cease and desist letters to employees of different schools. Andy Pruitt, spokesman for Charleston County Schools, said the district will not be honoring any cease and desist letters that are handed to school officials. The only way that students can get around the mask requirement is by receiving a religious, medical or developmental exemption. District families can fill out exemption applications, which are listed on ccsdschools.com. The parents with cease and desist letters claim the mask requirement violates a provision of South Carolina's 2021-22 budget that says public funds cannot be used to implement a mask mandate. On Sept. 16 Charleston County School Board Chairman the Rev. Eric Mack described a loophole the district found. They plan on using past savings to implement the mandate, instead of funds from this year's budget. The day after the announcement, a group of at least four parents and one teacher filed a lawsuit against the district saying it is in violation of South Carolina law. Gov. Henry McMaster, who is a strong proponent of the budget law that prohibits mandates, has also expressed opposition against the district's mask policy. "I dont think they should be sending children home if they dont have masks because, as we know, theres not supposed to be a mask mandate in schools under state law," he told reporters on Sept. 22. A representative of the State Ports Authority said a proposed hurricane surge wall for downtown Charleston conflicts with the agency's plans for two properties on the Cooper River. One of them Union Pier, is where cruise ships used to dock before the coronavirus pandemic and where SPA is working on a redevelopment plan that will eventually put the land in private hands. The other, Columbus Street Terminal, is used to export Volvos and BMWs that are built in South Carolina and holds $600 million in autos at any given time. Jordi Yarborough, senior vice president of external affairs at SPA, made the comments Sept. 22 at the public meeting of a committee convened to give input on the $1.1 billion wall plan from the Army Corps of Engineers. Yarborough was protesting a proposed path for the wall that would leave the terminal and pier on the outside. "As it stands now, we can't be supportive of this," Yarborough said. The comments are some of the most significant opposition to the plan so far as the Corps has slowly refined it for the past year and a half. They also underscore the challenges of placing a wall around a city where many businesses rely on access to the water, even as sea level rise and hurricanes pose a persistent threat. The Corps' plan, designed to protect Charleston from the surge of ocean water that comes with a cyclone, includes a wall that rises about 8 feet past the point where the city floods from tides. It would wrap around the city for 8 miles, include dozens of gates that would stay open during dry times and 10 pumps to evacuate rainfall when those gates are closed to rising tides. Yarborough also said during the meeting she hasn't been able to get a clear answer on whether the agency could convince the Corps to move the wall later if the city proceeds with the plan and engineers start a more detailed design. Dale Morris, Charleston's chief resiliency officer, responded that the wall's path can be moved in that next design phase, preconstruction engineering and design, also referred to as PED. Corps spokeswoman Jaclyn Pennoyer confirmed this in an email, and said the wall could be moved because of new building technology, the results of further engineering analysis, buried cultural resources, buried utilities or situations where the Corps can't secure the land it needs to build. But there are significant challenges for where to put a wall at the ports' sites, Morris added. Right now, the wall would run landward of SPA's facilities, along Morrison Drive and East Bay Street west of the Columbus Street Terminal, and along Washington Street west of Union Pier. Moving it into the water, on the opposite side of the terminal and pier, would likely spur strong objections from state and federal agencies that regulate the environment, Morris said. (Indeed, those groups objected last year when parts of the wall were placed in water or marsh.) Building in water can also be three times more expensive than building on land, Morris and Pennoyer said. In an interview after the meeting, Morris said it's a goal of the city to protect the ports' sites, especially Union Pier, where there could one day be a mixed-use development of housing and commercial space. A better option might be a wall that crosses the sites at the high water lines, he said, leaving some of the facilities protected but avoiding the issues with building in the Cooper River. "The ports concerns about being outside of the structure are legit, and were with them," Morris told the Post and Courier. Yarborough did not respond to a follow-up phone message after the meeting. In an email, SPA spokeswoman Liz Crumley wrote, "SC Ports will continue working with the City of Charleston and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide input on the sea wall proposal to ensure no adverse impacts to marine terminal operations on the peninsula." The committee where Yarborough made her comments was convened in the spring and includes residents, businesspeople, and members of the environmental and preservation communities in Charleston. It is due to give Charleston City Council a recommendation on whether to pursue the wall plan this autumn, though the date for that presentation has been pushed a few times. City Council is also expected to vote on whether to pursue the wall plan into the more-detailed PED step by the end of the year. If it does so, it will have to certify that Charleston can pay for its part of the project, about $384.5 million. On Sept. 22, several members of the advisory group said there was still more investigation needed before making a recommendation on the plan, and that it had been hard to get answers on details of the wall and how the city of Charleston will fund its portion of the work. "The answers that were getting are 'Don't worry, it will be handled in PED,' " said Dan Battista of real estate developer Lowe. The company is helping SPA prepare plans for Union Pier. "Under the current due diligence, a lot more needs to be done," Battista added. "I don't want to be rushed to have to make a decision." But Morris said that without moving forward into the next step in the engineering process, Charleston would never get an answer on whether there is a wall alignment that would work in complicated settings such as around the SPA terminals. COLUMBIA State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel confirmed on Sept. 23 federal investigators are helping his agency investigate the web of criminal cases entangling the Murdaugh family. While investigating the June 7 slayings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, SLED uncovered other potential crimes that warranted further investigation, Keel said in a news release. Keel said the agency is committed to following the facts gathered no matter where they lead, and SLED agents will continue to work to bring justice to victims in all the cases. I have been in contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the United States Attorneys Office for the District of South Carolina," Keel said. "From very early on in this investigation SLED has utilized federal resources as needed. We will continue to call upon our federal partners as their assistance is needed to successfully investigate and prosecute specific aspects of these cases. Keel's statement confirms federal investigators are involved in the Murdaugh cases, which was first reported by The State. Kevin Wheeler, spokesman for the FBI's Columbia office, confirmed that the agency assisted local and state law enforcement partners during the initial homicide investigation. "It is not uncommon for the FBI to assist local law enforcement if we have the resources, tactics, or techniques to aid their investigation," Wheeler said. "We cannot provide any comments that would confirm or deny the existence of an investigation of subsequent matters." Michael Mule, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, was glib about his agency's involvement in the case. "The U.S. Attorney's Office acknowledges SLED Chief Mark Keel's statement and has no further comment at this time." Six state investigations have been launched into cases related to the Murdaugh family since Paul Murdaugh, 22, and his mother, Maggie, 52, were found shot to death June 7 at the family's property at 4147 Moselle Road. Those include the Labor Day weekend shooting of Alex Murdaugh; allegations that Alex Murdaugh embezzled funds from his former law firm; and the investigation into the 2019 boat crash in Beaufort County that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach. In addition, SLED has opened an investigation into the unsolved death of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, whose body was found with blunt force head trauma on a Hampton County road in July 2015. The agency has said information gathered as part of the Murdaugh double-homicide case prompted the new probe. On Sept. 15, SLED announced it had opened yet another probe, this one looking into the 2018 death of Alex Murdaugh's former housekeeper and the handling of a wrongful death settlement for her estate. So far, only Alex Murdaugh and Curtis Edward Smith have been arrested as a result of the investigations. Alex Murdaugh faces charges of insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report on allegations he tried to orchestrate his own murder Sept. 4 as part of a $10 million insurance fraud scheme. Authorities allege Smith shot the prominent attorney as he stood in the roadway on rural Old Salkehatchie Road in Hampton, according to criminal records, part of a failed suicide plot Murdaugh concocted so his son could collect on his life insurance policy. Murdaugh survived the shooting and was airlifted to a Savannah hospital for treatment. Smith, 61, is charged with assisting suicide, assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and pointing and presenting a firearm, among other offenses. Both men have been released on bond while awaiting trial on the charges. I went to the Interstate 526 extension public hearing Sept. 14 in West Ashley that the state Department of Transportation held as part of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement process. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement was last done in 2010, so it needs to be updated as part of the latest iteration of the project. This hearing capped the DOTs taxpayer-funded marketing campaign about building this 9-plus mile parkway. Most of it would be on bridges over the marshes and Stono River, and would take 30 acres of James Island County Park. It also would negatively affect historical African-American communities on Johns and James islands. In the absence of an updated cost estimate, DOT is using $772 million for its assessments. It was farcical to hold the hearing without a current price tag as there is no basis on which to make valid judgments. Charleston County Council member Brantley Moody introduced the hearing and spoke in favor of the project, saying 70% were in favor. He did not say who the 70% were, but it likely includes those salivating at nearly a billion dollars being spent on road construction. Of the 18 citizens from Moodys West Ashley district who spoke at the hearing, not one was in favor of the project. Those interested can see all the information at scdotmarkclark.com and comment on the environmental impact statement until Oct. 15. RICH THOMAS Member, Nix 526 advocacy group Betsy Kerrison Parkway Johns Island Stop zoning boundaries Ive been reading various articles concerning the lack of affordable housing, including the Aug. 23 Affordable housing project in North Charleston may not get proper zoning to go forward. What I mostly hear from leaders is an approach that is exactly backwards from the real issue: exclusionary zoning. As the Biden administration has recognized, exclusionary zoning, which is government-built walls excessively restricting uses in zoning districts, most destructively single-family zoning, is a great driver of wealth inequality. This is true in Charleston County and throughout the Lowcountry, and in places like Walterboro, where affordable housing is all but impossible to find. The Biden administration has pursued reforms that would make illegal zoning boundaries that have discriminatory impact, even if there is no discriminatory intent. Still, most zoning is local, and local leaders need to insist on a dialogue about ending zoning that restricts development to larger single-family tracts and excludes mixed use multi-family residential and commercial development. The result would be more functional neighborhoods, more housing and more affordable prices. Single-family zoning limits the number of units because it doesnt allow more than one unit to be built on a parcel of land. Racial overtones remain, but these days the driving force is more economic: a desire to preserve affluent neighborhoods at the expense of low income and middle-class populations. Its disappointing to hear politicians talk about preserving the integrity of neighborhoods through restrictive zoning. Thats mostly code for preserving racial and class boundaries. Whats needed is more inclusionary zoning, and political leaders who will embrace it. RICHARD MOORE East Washington Street Walterboro Biden's bad decisions President Joe Biden has denied responsibility for the Afghan debacle. Among the many sources that invalidated his position were newspapers, the Doha Peace Agreement with the Taliban and the Joint Peace Declaration between America and the Afghan government. An Aug. 17 New York Times article stated: Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen. And an Aug. 17 Wall Street Journal article quoted several administration and defense officials as saying Bidens decision to bring home America troops was made against the recommendations of his top military generals and many diplomats, who warned that a hasty withdrawal would undermine security in Afghanistan. It went on to report that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley urged Mr. Biden to keep 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions. In an attempt to divert the blame, President Biden said that President Donald Trumps peace agreement with the Taliban forced him to withdraw Americas troops. The U.S. could have nullified the agreement if peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghans failed. The U.S. was obligated by the Joint Peace Declaration with the Afghans to continue military operations against the threat of terrorism. The peace talks did fail. Ignoring their failure and obligations to the Afghans, President Biden chose to execute a complete withdrawal. BILL BISSETTE Short Street Charleston Former President Donald Trump lashed out at longtime and dependable ally Lindsey Graham in a late- night email blast, accusing the South Carolina Republican of negligence for failing to back his election fraud claims to the fullest. In a message to supporters, Trump singled out Graham who repeatedly has defended Trump both during and after his presidency and fellow GOP Sen. Mike Lee for rejecting near the outset Trump's false claim that a massive voting conspiracy cost him the 2020 election. "I spent virtually no time with Senators Mike Lee of Utah, or Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, talking about the 2020 Presidential Election Scam or, as it is viewed by many, the 'Crime of the Century,' Trump said late on Sept. 22. "Lindsey and Mike should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win," he continued. Trump's message then repeated his fabled claim that the election was stolen and that he won "in a landslide." "Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham, and all of the other Republicans who were unwilling to fight for the Presidency of the United States, which would have included at least an additional four Republican Senators, two in Georgia, one in Michigan, one in Arizona, are letting the Democrats get away with the greatest Election Hoax in history a total con job!" Trump said. The email blast (Trump is banned from various social media sites due to his potential to incite violence following the Jan. 6 Capitol rioting) came as details of Graham and Lee's parallel evaluations of the Trump campaign's election fraud claims were included in the new book "Peril," by Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa. Published accounts in The Washington Post about the book's claims describe Graham on Jan. 2 listening to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in the office of Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, about their proof of voting conspiracy. The evidence was sparse, according to the book's authors. Sign up for updates! Get the latest political news from The Post and Courier in your inbox. Email Sign Up! "Privately, Graham gave the arguments a withering assessment, according to the book, saying they were suitable for 'third grade,' The Post said. It was part of a pattern of election messaging by Trump and his supporters that continues today. Graham, however, would go on to acknowledge Democrat Joe Biden as the country's lawfully elected president in the hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Count me out. Enough is enough, Graham said on the Senate floor. He then said of Biden: "I hoped he lost. I prayed he would lose. He won. He's the legitimate president of the United States." Graham added, "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected, and will become the president and the vice president of the United States on January 20th." Since those comments, Graham has met with Trump on various occasions during his post-presidency, and their relationship appeared to be patched until this latest email. In the Sept. 22 email, Trump's tone showed no signs of backing down. "The evidence on determinative and wide-ranging Election Fraud is staggering," he said. "Your Republican Presidential candidate won in a landslide, but has so little backing from Republican 'leadership.' SPARTANBURG A growing statewide coalition with its roots in the Upstate has come together to ensure Latino immigrants across South Carolina have access to proper services and funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. The coalition has raised more than $300,000 for the state's Latino immigrant community. That number includes individual gifts and grants. In the spring of 2020, three groups in Spartanburg County PASOs-Spartanburg, Alianza Spartanburg and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg (UUCS) came together to distribute funds and services to those in need. More than $20,000 was initially raised for rental assistance, utilities, mortgages and food. With the help of the One SC Fund at Central Carolina Community Foundation and the Coastal Community Foundation, the effort was expanded statewide with a six-person grant management team representing four organizations PASOs, the Mary Black Foundation, South Carolina Appleseed and UUCS. We saw that the legislation was specifically excluding immigrants from receiving direct financial assistance and that even if a child was a U.S. citizen but lived in a household with a parent who was out-of-status, the U.S. child would be excluded from the financial assistance, said Natalia Valenzuela Swanson, program director at the Mary Black Foundation. We knew that our local Latinx community, the largest immigrant community in Spartanburg County, would be impacted significantly. Swanson is the co-leader of the coalition and the co-leader of the coalitions grant management team. She also writes grant applications to fuel the coalitions work. An immigrant herself, Swanson was inspired to start the coalition from seeing legislation targeting immigrants. She recognizes some of the privileges of her stable immigration status, but also notes that she could have been born into a different situation and is happy to be in a position to help immigrants across South Carolina. The team meets weekly to discuss the best ways to distribute funds and resources, according to Scott Neely, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg. "All of us have to pay our rent or mortgage, we have to pay our utility bills, and for better or worse that's the way our society functions," Neely said. "But a lot more has been communicated than just that bill was paid. Its connection, solidarity and community that's being communicated." PASOs, an organization whose goal is to build healthy Latino families, has offices in counties all across the state. Alianza Spartanburg works to promote inclusion for the Latinx community. South Carolina Appleseed is a legal justice center in Columbia that, among many efforts, helps immigrants navigate pathways to assistance regardless of their status. We have grown so much, said Nora Curiel, the Spartanburg program coordinator and community health worker for PASOs. And now I see how many other organizations know how we work, and they are interested in working with us. Before the coalition went statewide, the UUCS and Alianza Spartanburg held meetings to address the needs of Spartanburgs Latino community. The first round of the money came from members of the church and immigration advocacy groups in Spartanburg. Assistance requests are submitted by PASOs community health workers then reviewed by the grant management team. After review, funds are distributed through UUCS. Curiel said housing is a problem for many clients because local shelters require a social security number. Some people end up here undocumented because for all of their best efforts, they were unable to come here legally, said Louise Pocock, an immigration policy attorney for South Carolina Appleseed. They may not have all the paperwork that is necessary, fit the exact parameters to qualify for one of the avenues of immigration or they didnt have the resources to have an immigration attorney help them apply for what theyre electable for. Pocock said the countrys immigration laws are not keeping up with the realities of the world and some of the difficulties that people are facing. Those who arrive in the country undocumented leave behind a native language, way of life and support network. Even if you are documented in some status, very few immigrants, except for lawful permanent residents, and certain other humanities such as refugees and trafficking victims, are actually eligible for any public benefits, Pocock said. Even for those immigrants who are eligible, sometimes they have to be in that status for five years, before they can receive anything like Medicaid or snap. Members of the coalition said one of their current goals is to seek partner agencies in more rural counties in South Carolina. Immigrants comprise six percent of South Carolinas labor force and five percent of its population, according to the American Immigration Council. Working during a pandemic put those workers, many working jobs considered essential, at greater risk of exposure. Theyre really risking their lives to improve their quality of life, Curiel said. Some 3,000 miles north of Charleston, melting ice in Greenland is having a profound effect on Charleston's coastline. This week on Understand SC, we go behind the scenes of a special report that showed us how Greenland and Charleston are connected. Well hear from reporter Tony Bartelme and photographer Lauren Petracca about their trip to Greenland. Youll learn what they saw out on that ice sheet, what they learned from speaking with locals and how they got to fly in a plane over the icebergs with NASA. More Ways to Listen Understand SC is available in all major podcasting apps. Search for us or use one of these links: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Simplecast Read The Greenland Connection. What stories do you want to hear? Email understandsc@postandcourier.com with your ideas. Understand SC is a weekly podcast from The Post and Courier that draws from the reporting resources and knowledge of our newsroom to help you better understand South Carolina. This episode was hosted and edited by Emily Williams. Related reading: Two bills including Guam as a nuclear fallout downwinder in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act or RECA were introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on Wednesday Guam time. The original RECA legislation covered those affected by nuclear fallout during atmospheric testing in Nevada and the Marshall Islands, and the new bills introduced in Congress expand eligibility and improve compensation and benefits. The original RECA legislation, signed in 1990, did not include Guam as a downwinder or area affected by nuclear fallout. Robert N. Celestial, president of the Pacific Association of Radiation Survivors and others gave written and oral testimony in 2004 to the Board on Radiation Effects Research Committee to seek Guams inclusion for eligibility. Celestials testimony, in conjunction with other testimonies like those provided by then-Del. Madeleine Bordallo, Dr. Chris Perez, and Navy Lt. Charles Bert Schreiber convinced the BRER Committee to conclude in 2005 that Guam residents did receive measurable fallout during the period of U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific from 1946 to 1962, according to Speaker Therese Terlaje, of the Guam Legislature. The legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate was sponsored by Sens. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, and Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico. They are joined by eight co-sponsors. The House of Representatives bill was introduced by Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, also a Democrat from New Mexico, and 14 co-sponsors including Guams Del. Michael F.Q. San Nicolas. The bills would, according to the speaker: Extend coverage to claimants in Guam for the Pacific test sites. Increase RECA awards for downwinders from $50,000 to $150,000. Provide coverage for additional forms of cancer. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Extend the claims filing period for 19 more years. Specifically, the new bills provide those persons present in Guam for at least one year from 1946 to 1962 and were diagnosed with cancer are eligible for $150,000 compensation and medical benefits under RECA. The cancer diagnoses eligible under RECA include: Leukemia, excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Multiple myeloma. Lymphoma, other than Hodgkins disease. Primary cancers of the thyroid, male or female breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gallbladder, salivary gland, urinary bladder, brain, colon, ovary, liver (except if cirrhosis or hepatitis B is indicated), and lung. According to incidence data reported from Guam to the Pacific Regional Central Cancer Registry between 2007 and 2018, seven of the top 10 adult cancers on Guam are compensable under RECA. I want to thank Sen. Crapo, Sen.Lujan, Rep. Leger Fernandez, and their co-sponsors, including Guams own Del. Michael F. Q. San Nicolas for introducing their legislation in support of adding Guam as a RECA downwinder, stated the speaker. This legislation is important for securing the justified compensation and benefits our island radiation survivors need. The $150,000 for each cancer patient or survivor will help offset the exorbitant costs of treatment in Guam and improve our islands overall access to health care opportunities. The speaker plans to introduce a resolution this week that expresses the 36th Guam Legislatures support for both congressional bills to recognize and provide benefits for Guam radiation survivors. She also wants to extend her thanks to PARS for their work in getting the new bills introduced. For over 20 years PARS has put forth education campaigns, solicited community input to tell the stories of Guam radiation survivors, and show our islands support for RECA," she said. Insights Lately, weve been hearing a lot about the unhappy fate of women and girls in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has again assumed power. The ed Read more Chinas President Xi Jinping reportedly is moving down a Maoist path. If so, this is probably the most important development of 2021. The Wall Street Journal reports on this development in a story with the headline: Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Maos Socialist Vision. The subtitle is: Going beyond curbing tech giants, [Xi] wants the Communist Party to steer flows of money and set tighter limits on profit making. The Journal reports that Xis campaign has produced more than 100 regulatory and policy directives over the past year. The directives are said to have shattered the power of the companies that dominate Chinas new economy the Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent and a real estate behemoth called Evergrande. USA Today also reports on Xis campaign. It notes the return of self-criticism, that oppressive communist practice: Xi Jinping hit the road this week to Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing, whose 73 million residents have built an economy the size of Colombias. Instead of praise, Xi pushed Hebeis leaders to criticize each other, and themselves, on camera. Criticisms and self-criticisms are forceful weapons to solve contradictions within the party, Xi told them, in his far more important role as boss of Chinas ruling Communist Party. Its a dose of good medicine, he said, to boost unity, rectify decadent work styles and impose democratic centralism. USA Today recognizes these words for what they are: language and methods drawn from the often bloody rule of Chairman Mao. Whats really going on here and what are the implications? It would take someone far more knowledgeable than I am to answer these questions with confidence. Even someone less knowledgeable can see the obvious. If China truly moves in a Maoist, cultural revolution direction, it means (1) tremendous suffering for a great many Chinese and (2) the economic weakening of Americas prime adversary. But the American economy is tied to that of China, so the implications of the second point are complicated. Attacking local leaders who have helped build a hugely successful economy is a recipe for economic setback. So is shattering the power of the countrys most successful companies. Democratic centralism is a recipe for economic deterioration, as the history of communism demonstrates. The economic warning signs are already present. Reportedly, Chinas top six technology stocks have lost more than $1.1 trillion in value over the past six months. Evergrande, the real estate developer, may be on the verge of defaulting on tens of billions of dollars in debt. But is this really the path Xi intends to take on a long-term basis? And if so, why? The USA Today report quotes one analyst who views recent developments as another step in a serious campaign to make the Communist Party work better and look more responsive to both the public and to those in the party ranks concerned about shortcomings in the way the country is currently run. In other words, this is partly a PR move and partly a short-term correction. This was an accurate way of viewing an earlier revival of Maoist-style self-criticism instituted by Xi eight years ago. However, another view of the present situation takes Xis actions much more seriously. David Ignatius of the Washington Post writes: Xis leftward turn represents a major change in the management of the Chinese economy, in the view of a half-dozen experts Ive consulted over the past week. It has the idealistic goal of common prosperity and a fairer distribution of Chinas new wealth. But Xi will drive these changes using the ruthless instrument of an authoritarian, one-party state and you can already see the purges and figurative dunce caps for those he views as obstacles. The Chinese leader speaks internally of amalgamation of the public and private sectors, according to Christopher Johnson, a former top CIA China analyst who now heads the consulting firm China Strategies Group. Johnson describes an explanation often heard in elite circles: Xi wants the state sector to have more market discipline, and the private sector to have more party discipline. The result is a severe squeeze on what Xi views as undisciplined entrepreneurs. Ignatius view is consistent with the Journals reporting, from which he draws. He cites this bit from the Journal article which seems telling: The most chilling detail in Weis account involved Vice Premier Liu He, a market advocate who has over the past decade been Chinas most important contact with the West. The article noted that Liu offered self-criticism for allowing the ride-sharing company Didi to float a $4.4 billion IPO this summer. This humiliation of a senior official was an echo of Maos Cultural Revolution, which eviscerated Chinas educated middle class in the 1970s. I assume that many members of Chinas elites resent their lack of freedom. If, in addition, they are to be persecuted for their successes, fear of Chinas coming ascendency may soon recede. Why, though, would Xi revive ruinous Maoism? The obvious explanation is lust for power. The communist partys reduced control over the private sector may be good for Chinas economy, but its not good for a power hungry party head. Ignatius puts it this way: Xi is a cunning and ruthlessly successful politician; since taking power in 2013, he has purged a generation of leaders in the Communist Party, the military, and the intelligence and security services to gain absolute control. His hubris is that, like Mao, he now seeks to become a man-God, whose thoughts are holy writ. Xis unabated hunger for power is evident in his drive for a third term as party leader. That would break the two-term rule that has prevailed in Chinas modern history and provided the checks and balances of group leadership. China had solved the major problem of a one-party state succession. Now they are un-solving it, argues a former top-level U.S. national security official. If Ignatius and his sources are right, then Xis mini-Maosim is terrible news for China. It may also be terrible news for Taiwan, and therefore a major threat to peace. However, if the U.S. is able to avoid war, Xi may end up doing for America what America arguably is incapable of doing for itself keeping us ahead of China in the economic pecking order. In this post, I argued against a defense of Gen. Mark Milleys reassurances to China, in the waning days of the Trump administration, thats based on his apparent collaboration with the Defense Department. If Milley made improper statements to Chinese military officials, it doesnt matter that high-ranking DOD officials were in the loop. I also argued that, in all likelihood, Milley did make improper statements to the Chinese. Even before the events of January 6, China apparently wanted assurances that Trump would not lash out against it due to his frustration with the election. Much of official Washington shared this concern or pretended to. Bob Woodward and Robert Costa report that when Milley spoke to his Chinese counterpart on January 8, he provided assurances, and this aspect of their report seems undisputed. Given the way Milley and China apparently viewed Trump, it stands to reason that, as Woodward and Costa also say, such assurances included a promise, or at least an indication, that Milley would give China a heads-up, if it came to that. David Ignatius of the Washington Post seems to understand all of this. He acknowledges: Milleys efforts [with China]. . .took him into dangerous constitutional terrain that no soldier should have to patrol, edging close to violating the sacrosanct principle of civilian control of the military. Ignatius, an apologist, if not an unofficial spokesman, for the deep state, avoids saying that Milley, in fact, violated this sacrosanct principle. Perhaps thats the right line, since we dont know for sure what Milley said to his counterpart. However, if he said, in essence, what Woodward and Costa report, he surely crossed the line. Indeed, Ignatius continues: In curbing the unilateral power of a reckless commander in chief, did [Milley and other like-minded] violate the Constitution? None of them were (sic) elected, after all, unlike Trump. When I asked a member of this. . .group to go on the record five months ago, he refused. This is an ugly story, he said. It shouldnt happen in our democracy. No, it shouldnt. However, Ignatius is unwilling to condemn Milley. Instead, he reverts to what Ive called the original defense of Milley that the generals violation was justified because Trump. He writes: Milley is a target right now. But even as we underline the proper limits on the role of military leaders, we should remember that this problem began with a lawless president who threatened to politicize the military to the point that the top-ranking general decided to fight back to fulfill what he saw as his paramount duty, to safeguard his country. There are at least three good objections to this passage. First, if there was a problem, it began with the election of the lawless president by the American people. In our democracy, the military has no duty to fight back against the president Americans choose to lead them. Second, Milley wasnt fighting back against lawlessness. Trump did nothing unlawful during the period of time in which, it appears, Milley lawlessly assured the Chinese he would help thwart any attack the president ordered. And even if one thinks Trump acted unlawfully by encouraging the January 6 protest, promising to give the Chinese a leg up in a war with the U.S. is not fighting back against the Capitol protest or Trumps role, whatever it was, in that event. Third, the concern that Trump would attack China due to frustration with the election was absurd. This is a case of a not-terribly-bright general believing his own BS or perhaps more accurately, the BS being peddled by establishment figures including Nancy Pelosi and anti-Trump journalists while convincing himself that he was some kind of savior. Nothing in Trumps presidency suggests that he would attack a country with Chinas military capability. Throughout his time in office, Trump was less aggressive militarily than any of his four immediate predecessors. If Trump was going to attack any nation, it likely would have been Iran. But there is no indication that he ever seriously considered doing that. To be sure, the 2020 election left Trump in a terrible mood. But Trump was also in a terrible mood when he was being impeached for tying (for a short while) U.S. assistance to Ukraine to that governments willingness to help him discredit Joe and Hunter Biden. That frustration did not cause Trump to use military force, much less to attack Red China. Contrast this with Bill Clinton who, in a fit of anger over developments in the Lewinski scandal, launched attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan a rare sign of life from Clinton when it came to trying to counter terrorism. I have never tried to disguise my view that Trump is seriously flawed. But that didnt make him a threat to world peace. Trumps opponents tried, for cynical purposes, to conflate these two things. In doing so, it seems like they suckered Gen. Milley into what Ignatius diplomatically calls dangerous constitutional terrain. Yes, no matter what Yes, but it depends on variety No, for medical reasons, uncertainty No, principle Vote View Results Patience Dang is a smallholder farmer and a university graduate living in Jos. She cultivates maize and Irish potatoes. Like some farmers, she started farming due to the steep rate of unemployment in Nigeria. However, things changed favourably for her when she came in contact with an organisation that supported her farming activities. In this episode of Women in Agriculture, Ms Dang shares an interesting experience. PT: Can you put us through your journey in Agriculture? Ms Dang: I started farming three years ago after my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). I came back from Taraba where I was posted to serve but there was no work so I just started farming. I started with one and a half plots of land. I had to rent the land because people rent lands. The family land is in the village and I cannot reside there neither can I entrust someone with the responsibility of taking care of my farm there. I had to look for a farm around here, its just about 40 minutes walk from my house. It is also a suitable area where I can practice irrigation farming. I pay N25,000 for the whole year. PT: You started as a newbie, how were you able to raise the capital? Ms Dang: I started raising capital in my university days as a student. I was working and saving but I never knew it was going to be farming. I was ushering at different events. After graduation, I came home and started selling zobo to miners. When my call-up letter came, I was posted to Jalingo, where I started a fish business. I go to fishermen, buy fish and dry them myself before distribution. I sold to other parts of the country. At some point I had to sell to just supermarkets in Taraba. PT: Have you received any empowerment from the government or private organisations? Ms Dang: I have not received anything from the government but I have received from a non-governmental organisation called Alluvial Agriculture. I got to know Alluvial Agriculture in 2020 through a friend. I googled them and I registered. After registration, there was orientation on the organisations policy. They showed us improved seedlings, and people who had benefited from them shared their testimonies. We waited for some time for them to share the seedlings and, while waiting, the NGO organised training for women farmers on how to manage a farm as a woman, which included record-keeping. The training was informative because the rain came earlier so I could not wait for them to share their own seeds. So I used my own. I got the seedlings after but I was not able to use them. I will use them next farming season. They also distributed herbicides which I used on my farm this year and it was very effective. There is this termite that eats up maize when the rain is short, they also got the chemicals for that. It helped keep the termites away from my maize, it could have been a loss. PT: Aside from the herbicides and seeds, is there any other thing they distributed? Ms Dang: Yes, I got fertilizer. It was an improved one, I used three bags on my farm and my neighbour used the quantity on his farm but mine was very productive. PT: While registering with the organisation, was there a financial commitment? Ms Dang: Yes, just like other organisations. PT: The inputs you got, did you get them at subsidised rates? Ms Dang: Yes but you may not have to pay for everything before getting them. You have the opportunity to pay any percentage depending on what youre taking. As a registered member I can pay with either cash or some of my products. PT: Insecurity is another issue for everyone in Nigeria. Recently in Jos, lives were lost. Can you share your experience on how this has affected your business? Ms Dang: It has really affected farming in Plateau State. In fact, it happens more in rural areas where people practise commercial farming. Personally, I have not had any experience since I started. I stay in Jos South which is a city. I visit my farm often. If not the herders bring in their cows when no one is there. PT: The size of your land is small, how do you do with labour? Ms Dang: I employ people to work on the farm, or I do it myself if it doesnt require much stress. PT: Do you have a stable market where you sell your farm produce? Ms Dang: Yes, I do. I sell at the village markets. Sometimes I dont sell them as Irish potatoes. I allow them to grow into seedlings then I sell them as seedlings. For the maize, I harvest and keep then sell around June because its expensive. PT: What do you need as a woman farmer to succeed? Ms Dang: I dont think I need anything more now that I have gotten help from this organisation. All I need is motivation from within. PT: Tell us, is there any difference between before and after meeting Alluvial Agriculture? Ms Dang: The difference is clear because I now know how to calculate my farm income and expenditure and also the need for record-keeping so I will say I am experiencing a huge difference positively. Isa Okonkwo recalls the revolt he faced from his family members when he decided to build a mosque in his predominantly Christian Apu-Ugo community in Enugu State. The trauma is better imagined than experienced, he told PREMIUM TIMES. Mr Okonkwo is a former director of administration, Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), the apex Islamic body in the country. He is also the director of the School of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Ebonyi State, affiliated with the Islamic World League in Saudi Arabia. The status did not deter the opposition to his decision from members of his community Fear of Boko Haram Mr Okonkwo chose his words with care in our interaction, but his demeanour betrayed his emotions. I got land from my father while he was alive in my village in Apu-Ugo, Nkanu West Local Government in Enugu State. The land was given to me and my siblings. However, because I decided to use part of it to build the first mosque in the area, family members seriously revolted. They argued that that mosque is a subtle way of attracting Boko Haram. The incident happened at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northern part of Nigeria. Boko Haram, officially known as Jamaat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wal-Jihad, is a terrorist organisation with a significant presence in North-eastern Nigeria. The group is also active in Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon. In 2016, the group split into two factions, with the other faction known as the Islamic States West Africa Province. Boko Haram opposes western way of life and seeks to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria by force of arm and terror. According to Mr Okonkwo, due to Boko Haram attacks, many people in the south, especially in predominantly Christian Igboland, became apprehensive of Islam and Muslims. And it wasnt even a massive mosque, just a small establishment that can contain, say, 50 persons. Just a place I can come back home to pray with my family. Now, that was at the family level. At the community level, it was even more serious than that. It took only the willpower of someone convinced of the religion for that mosque to stand till today. I didnt buy the land; it is my ancestral land that my father gave me. Like Okonkwo, like Zubair Zubair Ugwu, the current director of administration of NSCIA, also had a harrowing experience identifying with the Islamic faith in Nigerias South-east. Mr Ugwu hails from Alor-agu in Igbo-Eze South Local Government Area of Enugu State but attended schools outside the South-east. When he returned to the region, he was shocked by the reception. The first time I returned to the East, in Awka, I was called a sabo (saboteur) because I identified as a Muslim, Mr Ugwu told PREMIUM TIMES. Messrs Okonkwo and Ugwu said their experiences typify those of the average Igbo Muslim in Nigerias South-east. Islam in Igboland The Igbos are one of three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. According to the CIA World Factbook, as of 2017, with an estimated 33 million domiciled in Nigeria, the Igbo account for 19 per cent of the countrys population. They are found essentially in the South-eastern part of Nigeria, regarded as their homeland. In their study titled: The Stages of Igbo Conversion to Islam: An Empirical Study, Chinyere Felicia Priest and Egodi Uchendu quoted Ohadike, another scholar, who found that a unique feature of the Igbo group is their economic and migratory tendencies, informed by land scarcity and population explosion that date back to the ninth century. The two scholars research was based on the analysis of interviews conducted with 30 Igbo converts to Islam who were drawn from different parts of Igboland. Their study shows that Muslim Igbos are more commonly found in Enugu especially Nsukka, Owerri, Enohia in Afikpo North, Nakano in Afikpo, Afikpo town, Obollo Afor, Imilike Enu, Imilike Ani, Ibagwa and Okija. Mr Ugwu told PREMIUM TIMES that the religion has been practiced in those areas for over a century. Many Igbos believe an Igbo can never be Muslim. Yet Islam came to my village over a century ago. That is why we have an appreciable number of Muslims. Our forefathers have lived as Muslims for more than a century, he said. In terms of the spread of Islam in Igboland, he noted that Ebonyi and Enugu states have a substantial Muslim population. According to him, Islam is widespread in Nsukka, Enugu State, and Afikpo axis of Ebonyi, where there is an Islamic School. He added that areas like Onu-eke in Ebonyi have a small Muslim population. Igbo Muslims and Identity Crisis Elsewhere, Suleiman Njoku, a specialist in Shariah law and the chief imam of Imo State, painted a gloomy picture when asked about what it means to identify as a Muslim in Nigerias South-east region. There is a lot of frustration, he said, his voice a mixture of excitement and worry. Immediately our people notice you are a Muslim; nobody will give you a job here. Thats certain. Look at what people are going through in the name of Hijab. As Igbo Muslims, we are in a challenging corner here. It has not been easy. But if you use wisdom, you will succeed. Some have been ostracized, chased away by family and all. But Alihamdulillahi (we thank Allah), he said. Mr Njoku explained that Muslims are mainly distrusted due to the Boko Haram factor and the temperament of some of our brothers, which he described as extremist. When people see things that do not relate to religion, they relate it to religion, like the belief that when you kill, you have 70 wives and paradise, he said. When I came in here as the chief imam in 2019, I was able to bridge that (gap). I speak to them on radio, television, Facebook, and all of that. So many of them are beginning to have an understanding of what real Islam means. Unfortunately, some of our Muslim brothers here behave hostile too, and two fires cannot exist in one place. Mr Ugwu, on his part, says because of the identity conflict, many Igbo Muslims were fleeing the South-east. The irony of it is that because of the suffering they are subjected to, the preponderance of Igbo Muslims now find it comfortable to live in the North. For instance, about 90 per cent are in the North while 10 per cent are in the South-east. Many only come back, like me, after retirement. Most of the Igbo Muslims are in the North because that is where they are allowed to worship freely, he said. The second layer of the identity problem, he said, is the stage of denial. Mr Ugwu said many Igbo people would never admit that there are Igbo Muslims. He recalled an experience he had with a fellow Igbo friend who thought he was a northerner and related with him quite well until they realised he was Igbo. You can see the level of hatred; he had no problem with me as a Hausa Muslim but would not relate with me as an Igbo Muslim. An average Igbo man thinks Islam is the religion of Hausa men, but we are changing that belief gradually. With time, they will start appreciating that we are Muslims and Igbo, he added. Reintegration, reconciliation It is easier to acquire land to construct recreational centres than to get a property to build a mosque or Madrasah (Islamic School) in Igboland, said Nkiru Mohammed, an indigene of Abia who now lives in Niger State. Mr Mohammed said he relocated to the North after his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme because of the ease the region affords him to practice Islam. It is very difficult to practice Islam in most parts of the South-east; the people can be hostile, he said. Commenting on land acquisition for mosque projects, Mr Okonkwo said it is easier if the federal government owns the land. Thats why most of the mosques you see here are in Hausa-Fulani communities or within federal government-owned facilities. In places where there is land to build a mosque, the Muslims would not be rich enough to build it, and they dont have the support that will give them the privilege. Most of the mosques in the South-east are sponsored by Muslim organisations from outside the country, he said. He further explained that it is easier to acquire land in rural areas. It is no problem in areas where there are indigenous Muslims who own land, especially in rural villages like in the northern parts of Enugu State. But in urban centres, it is an uphill task. It is difficult to come up with designs of mosques or madrasah, except it is second-hand. Crisis management Last November, an angry mob attacked Muslim communities in parts of the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State, following a disagreement among residents. The altercation is believed to have started after a Muslim woman selling tomatoes boarded a commercial tricycle from a village market to her shop, and an argument ensued between her and the driver over the fare. This reportedly led to the destruction and burning of properties belonging to Muslims in the area by some residents of the host communities and the subsequent burning of two mosques in the town. The Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, immediately called for restraint among the warring residents. He visited the sites and promised to rebuild the mosques. The governor is a peace-loving man. He presented those two mosques- redesigned and rebuilt, to the Muslim community, just recently, Mr Ugwu said. Also, three years ago, Igbo-Eze North Local Government headquarters was burnt by unknown arsonists, he rebuilt it. That is the governor. There was a governor before him who never thought in that direction; thats why I said it (reconciliation efforts) depends. He has promoted peace and understanding among religious groups in the state. Commenting on stereotypes, Mr Ugwu said people of different religious persuasions react in different ways, and their actions should not be seen as representative of their religion. He said before the Enugu crisis, a bishop was captured on video preaching against the building of mosques and calls to prayer, two days before the two mosques in Nsukka were razed down. When this bishop was inciting a mob against Muslims and mosques, a mosque was burnt the same day in Orlu, Imo State, and another bishop within that diocese was the one that mobilised people to go and chase away the hoodlums, he said. That was a peace-loving human, a Christian defending Muslims. So it depends on the human. Mr Njoku, however, said it is the responsibility of Igbo Muslims to change the negative perception non-Muslims in the region have about Islam. Igbo Muslims and the Path to Peace A peace and conflict resolution expert, James Igwe, told PREMIUM TIMES that leadership plays a vital role in forestalling crises and promoting peace and tranquility among adherents of different religions in the South-east and elsewhere. He called on leaders across the region to ensure the integration of religious groups towards giving them a sense of belonging and promoting peace. Mr Okonkwo on his part argued that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guarantees freedom of worship and association. That is a plus, not only for Igbo Muslims, but for other religious minorities, he said. Again, at the highest levels, there is the Nigeria inter-religious council which promotes peaceful co-existence among members of all faiths. The co-chairmen are the Sultan of Sokoto, the President-General of NSCIA, and whoever is the chairman of CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria). You cant practice your religion well by killing the other person or preventing him from practicing his. No religion tells the practitioner of the religion to kill the other. Once these two bodies promote peace and those whose duty it is to implement the laws of the land live up to their responsibility, religious intolerance will be a thing of the past, whether in Igbo-land or where we have other minorities like Christians in Hausaland. A peep into the future for Igbo Muslims On what the future holds for Igbo Muslims in the South-east, Mr Mohammed said the prospect is clouded in uncertainties. He said he does not see himself returning to the region anytime soon, because the socio-political tension in the country does not help matters. According to Mr Mohammed, the division and mutual suspicion among adherents of different religions in Igboland have been heightened by politics. However, he said, leaders across the religious divides were working round the clock to ensure harmony and mutual understanding. Mr Njoku too is optimistic about the future. He, however, called for dialogue and mutual respect among residents, irrespective of religious persuasions. In recent times, things are getting better. I speak and relate with reverend fathers; they visit me, I visit them. Islam tells us that if you save just one persons life, it is as if you saved humankind. If you kill one person unjustly, it is as if you have killed the whole of humanity. These are the teachings of the Quran. So that is what I teach them: that Islam is peace, love, truthfulness. This reporting was supported with a grant from ICFJ in conjunction with Code for Africa. The Federal Government says the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) will continue to collect Value Added Tax (VAT) following the ruling of the Court of Appeal on the matter. The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York while speaking on the disagreement over the collection of VAT between FIRS and Rivers Government. The chief law officer of the federation explained that the ruling of the Court of Appeal that FIRS and the Rivers Government maintain status quo, favoured FIRS. He said that it was Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) that had been collecting the VAT before the dispute arose, over which the Rivers government approached the High Court. The position of not only the Federal Government but indeed the judiciary is the fact that status quo associated with the collecting of VAT should be maintained, Mr Malami said. And as far as the judicial system is concerned, the status quo as at the time the parties approached the court, it was the Federal Inland Revenue Service that was indeed collecting the value added tax. So with that in mind, the Federal Government has succeeded in obtaining an order that establishes the sustenance of the status quo, which status quo is that the Federal Inland Revenue Service should continue collection. This is pending the determination of the cases that were instituted by states, particularly the Rivers State Government and the Lagos State government. The cases are being determined by the court. NAN reports that the Rivers government had urged the Supreme Court to set aside the Court of Appeals September 10 ruling ordering it and FIRS to maintain status quo on the issue of VAT collection. A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal headed by Haruna Tsammani, issued the order being challenged at the Supreme Court by the Rivers government. The state also urged the apex court to disband the panel of the appelate court, which gave the interim order and ordered another one to be constituted to hear the case. But one thing of interest is the fact that the Federal Government had indeed taken cognisance of the fact that where there exists a dispute between a State and Federal Government, it is the Supreme Court that should naturally have the jurisdiction to determine the dispute between the state and the federation. And we are taking steps to consider the possibility of instituting an action before the Supreme Court for the purpose of having this matter determined once and for all, Malami said. (NAN) The Nigerian Police Force said its men have arrested three out of the 25 suspected members of a gang that kidnapped students of Bethel Baptist High School, Maraban Damishi, Kujama in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. Police spokesman, Frank Mba, made this known in a statement obtained by PREMIUM TIMES. Mr Mba said the three were among the 50 suspects arrested for various offences. He listed their names as Ishaku Lawal, Muazu Abubakar and Adam Bello. Mr Mba said the suspects were arrested by operatives of the Special Tactical Squad (STS). Investigations by the Police team revealed how Muazu Abubakar a.k.a Datti m 27years, the principal suspect, carried out surveillance of the Bethel school and strategized with his other gang members before they attacked and abducted the students, Mr Mba said. PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the bandits in the early hours of 5 July, invaded the school and kidnapped 121 students of the school, but have been releasing the students in batches. The abduction of the students was the fourth mass abduction in Kaduna schools in the last few months of deteriorating insecurity in North-west and North-central states. Reports say the parents of the abducted children have had to pay humongous amounts of ransom for their release though no one has confirmed this. Mr Mba, in his statement on Thursday in Abuja, said the arrested suspects had narrated how they operated and are responsible for several highway robberies within that axis. The police also said it recovered rifles and ammunition from them. Read full statement by the police: PRESS RELEASE 3 SUSPECTS IN POLICE NET FOR BETHEL SCHOOL ABDUCTION As Police Arrest 50 Notorious Criminal Suspects, recover 27 Assorted Rifles, 2,720 Ammunition, Others The Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, psc (+), NPM, fdc has charged Police Operatives across the country to sustain the tempo in the ongoing operationalization of Operation Restore Peace in the country. The IGP, who noted that the special operation is remarkably assisting in rolling back the negative trend of crimes in the country, commended Police operatives for the recent arrest of fifty (50) notorious criminal suspects for their involvement in different crimes including kidnapping, banditry, unlawful possession of firearms, trading in illicit drugs, amongst others. Twenty-six (26) sophisticated firearms including 13 AK47 rifles, 4 SMGs, 4 locally made revolver rifles and 2720 ammunition of different calibre are some of the exhibits recovered from the suspects. Notable among the cases is the arrest of three (3) of the key suspects involved in the abduction of students of Bethel Baptist High School, Maraban Damishi, Kaduna, by operatives of the Special Tactical Squad (STS). The suspects are Ishaku Lawal, Muazu Abubakar and Adam Bello. Investigations by the Police team revealed how Muazu Abubakar a.k.a Datti m 27years, the principal suspect, carried out surveillance of the Bethel school and strategized with his other gang members before they attacked and abducted the students. Ishaku Lawal who was also arrested in connection with the incident, revealed how Ahmadu a.k.a Yellow provided the firearms and ammunition they used for the operation. One AK47 rifle was recovered from each of the suspects. Investigations into the case are still ongoing. Also arrested, is a prolific highway robbery syndicate that has been linked to about fifty (50) armed robberies along major highways in the South-West region of the country. The leader of the gang, one Mohammed Mode a.k.a Basullube from Gugu in Kwara State, revealed to the Police team how he masterminded and led other gang members, Abdullahi Mohammed from Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Musa Adamu from Otte Vilage, Kwara State and Abdullahi Ali from Orita Gambari in Oyo State, all within age bracket of 21 27 years, to carry out the series of highway robberies before their eventual arrest. Similarly, Police investigations into the recent spate of break-ins and theft in places of worship in the Federal Capital Territory and other contiguous States to the FCT, led to the arrest of three (3) members of a gang that specialized in theft of musical instruments from churches. The suspects revealed to the Police team how they broke into over fifty (50) churches. The suspects include one Monday Akawu m 39yrs who impersonates personnel of the Nigerian Army to enable the gang move the stolen items to their intended criminal receivers and Joseph Orazulike m 35yrs who is a receiver of the stolen items. Over thirty (30) specialized musical equipment and other electronic gadgets stolen from different churches were recovered from the suspects. The IGP, while appreciating citizens for their support, which no doubt has ensured the successes recorded in the fight against crimes and criminality in the country, reiterated that the Force will intensify efforts toward improving public safety and security in the country. All the suspects will be charged to court on completion of investigations. CP FRANK MBA FORCE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER FORCE HEADQUARTERS ABUJA The Federal Government has suceeded in blocking terrorism financing in Nigeria, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has said. Mr Malami told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York that the federal government had also succeeded in identifying and detaining high profile individuals responsible for funding terrorists activities in the country. The AGF had announced in May that Nigerian government was about to begin the prosecution of about 400 suspected Boko Haram financiers and was profiling some high-profile Nigerians strongly suspected to be financing terrorism for prosecution. The delay in their prosecution and unveiling the suspects have been criticised in certain quarters, but Mr Malami assured the federal government was determined to take stringent measures to counter insurgency in the country. We have succeeded in identifying those that are responsible for funding terrorists, the minister said. We have also blocked the leakages associated with funding and then embarking on aggressive investigation that is indeed impacting positively in term of the fight against terrorism. But then, the truth of the matter is that investigation is ongoing, is advancing and for the purpose of investigation, I wouldnt like to be pre-emptive in terms of making disclosures that would have the effect of undermining the successes we are recording as far as investigation is concerned. But one thing I can tell you for sure is that whatever we do in terms of detention and in terms of arrest is indeed backed by judicial process. We have indeed obtained a legitimate court order taking into consideration what we have presented before the court; the court eventually exercised its discretion in terms of granting orders that we can have them in custody. This is pending the conclusion of investigation, which investigation in essence is indeed deeply taking place and we are making a lot of successes and recording a lot of progress in the direction of investigation. Work in progress The chief law officer of Nigeria, however, said the issue of terrorism financing was a work in progress and would not like to be pre-emptive in terms of investigation. But one thing I can say for sure is, arising from such arrests, the terrorist funding and financing has indeed been crippled substantially and that eventually translated to some major improvements being recorded as far as crippling the strength of terrorists is concerned within the nation. You can see visibly that we are indeed witnessing tremendous successes associated with the Boko Haram, which translate to significant decimation of the Boko Haram terrorists. They (Boko Haram) have been decimated to a larger extent and you can see what is unfolding as far as the North West banditry activities are concerned. They (bandits) are as well been decimated to a larger degree. All these are indeed the effect of what we have done, he said. Mr Malami also said that Nigeria was creating a consensus building towards making assets recovery easier for countries. The minister recalled that Nigeria had recovered 322 million dollars from Switzerland in 2017 and 311 million dollars from the U.S. in 2020. He said Nigeria was looking at the possibility of recovering further 200 million pounds from the U.S. aside other associated assets being pursued in some other countries. We are pursuing a lot of assets across the globe and we intend very soon, we are coordinating a further meeting relating to huge recovery in U.K. associated with certain personalities. But I would not like to give further disclosure in respect of that to put into consideration the need not to be pre-emptive as far as our strategies are concerned. He said the 311 million dollars recovered from Switzerland was deployed to execute the Abuja-Kano highway, the Lagos-Ibadan highway and the Second Niger Bridge. So I think we are doing wonderfully well in terms of deploying the recovery of the looted assets and deploying same in projects that impact positively on the lives of people, he said. (NAN) President Muhammadu Buhari Wednesday held a bilateral meeting at the margins of the United Nations General Assembly holding in New York, USA, with Her Majesty, Maxima Zorreguieta, Queen of The Netherlands, during which he said Nigeria was well aware of her limitations, and thus prioritized the provision of infrastructure. Without infrastructure, development would be limited, so we put emphasis on building roads, rail, and power. We have a comprehensive plan, and we are doing our best, the president said. He added that the country was hampered by resources, despite being oil-exporting, and that with more financial wherewithal, infrastructure works would be sped up. President Buhari assured the queen, who last visited Nigeria in 2017, that if she came again, she would see a lot of differences. In the area of agriculture, the president said Nigerian borders were closed with some neighbouring countries to encourage farmers, and eat what we grow. People went back to the land, and this helped us tremendously. We made fertilizers available, resuscitated dams, and it all paid off handsomely. Otherwise, with about 200 million people, we would have been in trouble when COVID-19 struck, and affected the economy. He said just like Oliver Twist, Nigeria could do with more help in the area of investments, particularly in agriculture. We have the land, we have the people, capital input is what we need, President Buhari stated, adding that Nigerian farmers were quite receptive to modern ways of doing things, especially in respect of cutting post-harvest waste. Queen Zorreguieta lauded what she called the huge effort made by Nigeria to combat the Coronavirus pandemic, saying; you spent a great part of your GDP. She said she had a huge commitment to Nigeria, and will want to accompany her to do more. You wont be alone. We will be there along with other partners. The queen said agriculture was music to her ears, being the daughter of a former Minister of Agriculture, and her biggest plea would be for Nigeria to make infrastructure available so that investors and aid donors can access areas beyond the major cities. We need roads, railways, digital financial inclusion for farmers. Government needs to digitize all payments, she said. Femi Adesina Special Adviser to the President (Media and Publicity) The All Progressives Congress (APC) has rescheduled its state congresses for 16 October, the party announced on Wednesday. The congresses were initially slated for 2 October. The ruling party conducted its ward and local government area congresses nationwide in July and early September respectively. In a short statement earlier released by the APC Interim National Secretary, John Akpanudoedehe, the party did not explain the reason behind the sudden change of date. However, there were speculations that the decision to fix the 16 October date was made to buy time to appease aggrieved members in the states where parallel congresses were held ahead of the national convention. However, the APC in an addendum to the statement seen by this PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, said the postponement of its state congresses by two weeks was informed by the need to ensure the availability of its key members in different states. Mr Akpanudoedehe explained that the initial date of 2 October may not afford its governors, ministers, and party members to participate effectively due to proximity to Nigerias Independence celebration which takes place on 1 October every year. The country will mark its 61st Independence anniversary this year amidst its arrays of political and socio economic challenges. The need to honor the countrys 61st Independence anniversary, which is held a day before the initial date fixed for the state congresses, informed the new date. Governors, ministers, and party members will be involved in the Independence celebrations in their various states. The party decided to reschedule the state congresses to allow all our members to participate in the Independence celebration, Mr Akpanudoedehe said. The Niger State House of Assembly has directed the management of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai (IBBUL) to review downward the recently increased students tuition fees. The Speaker of the House, Abdullahi Bawa, gave the directive during an interface with the management and Students Union Government (SUG) of the university in Minna on Thursday. The house directed the Secretary to the State Government, Ahmed Matane, and the University Governing Council to make announcement on Friday, on the downward review of the school fees. We have listened and look at the issues from both sides and we have decided that IBB university must continue to survive as an institution. Given the peculiarity of the state, we must also look at the issues raised by the students, we know the country is facing financial crisis and parents should not be overburden in order to make the institution survive, he said. Mr Bawa directed the management of the institution to rectify issues of students who had already paid their fees before the downward review , especially final year students. He noted that it was the responsibility of the management of the university and the state government to ensure that the university survives. The speaker said the government had done a lot in the areas of provision of infrastructure, accreditation and other social amenities in the institution and called on both parties to imbibe the spirit of sacrifice. According to him, the students of the institution must also understand that government alone cannot fund education 100 per cent. Responding, Sumayyah Mohammed, Vice President, Students Government Union of IBBUL, appreciated the intervention of the lawmakers in ensuring that the issue was resolved amicably. She expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the meeting and urged the state government and the management of the university to keep to the resolution of the meeting. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the fees for returning students (indigene) was reduced from N67,925 to N50,000, and new Students (indigene) from N129,675 to N95,000. Non-indigene students (returning) reduced from N117,325 to N100,000, new students (non-indigene) from N201,210 to N170,000. New foreign students reduced from N329,625 to N250,000 while returning foreign students would pay N200,000 instead of N266,760. (NAN) The House of Representatives has urged the federal government to use diplomatic channels to secure the release of Nigerians detained illegally abroad. The call followed a motion moved by Dennis Idahosa (APC, Edo), during Thursdays plenary session. Mr Idahosa, in his motion, cited a 2019 survey report by the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEPAD), said there are 16,500 Nigerians in foreign prisons. He said some were convicted without adequate legal representation. Nigerians who are in prisons outside the country were convicted without legal representation and not knowing why they are in jail. The lawmaker stated that International Conventions and Treaties prescribe that anyone charged with a criminal offence is entitled to a fair hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. He said some of the illegally detained Nigerians are exposed to labour exploitation, poor living conditions, discrimination, sexual exploitation and other forms of dehumanizing treatments. He further stated that Nigerians living abroad have been of significant impact on the development and economic growth of the country. When the presiding officer, Deputy Speaker Idris Wase, put the motion to vote, the ayes had it. Consequently, the House mandated the Committees on Foreign Affairs, Justice and Inter-Parliamentary Relations to ensure compliance. Protest on illegal detention In July, Osaze Osemwengie-Ero, a former commissioner in Edo State, had threatened to lead a protest to Italy over detention of 300 Nigerians. Mr Osemwengie-Ero had described the detention by the Italian authority as illegal. He claimed that the detention was racial related. Reacting to the detention, Abike Dabiri, the chairman of the Nigerians Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) had promised that the federal government will help to secure those 300 Nigerians detained in the country. The Kano/Jigawa Command of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), on Thursday handed 185 cartons of unregistered and expired drugs worth N200 million to the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC). The commands Controller, Suleiman Umar, handed over the drugs to Kano State Coordinator of NAFDAC, Shaba Muhammad. He said that the drugs were seized by the command from smugglers from July to date. The patronage and consumption of unregistered, hard and expired drugs are of great concern due to their consequences on our teeming youths. Most criminal acts are carried out under the influence of these hard drugs; we will continue to stop it at all cost, the controller said. Mr Umar assured that the customs service would continue to carry out its enforcement duties with utmost professionalism and caution, based on actionable intelligence information. He urged the public to continue to cooperate with the service, so as to insulate the economy from smugglers and protect peoples health. READ ALSO: In his remarks, the NAFDAC coordinator appreciated the existing synergy between his organisation and the customs service in tackling the movement of illicit drugs in the country. You have saved so many people from the dangers of such drugs if it had gone into circulation, Mr Muhammad said. He urged the people to expose those dealing in illicit drugs. He also advised the people to patronise only registered pharmacies, to avoid consumption of expired drugs. (NAN) Judicial workers under the auspices of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) Ogun State Chapter have suspended their over one-month-old industrial action. The group embarked on the strike over the alleged reduction of their basic salaries. Emerging from a meeting of the union with government officials in Abeokuta on Wednesday, Tajudeen Edun, the state chairman of JUSUN directed their members to return to their duty posts. Those in attendance at the meeting include Tokunbo Talabi, the secretary to the state government, and Selimot Ottun, the head of service. I want to say that the industrial action that commenced on the 11 of August 2021, is now suspended. I want to call on all judiciary workers in Ogun State to prepare themselves to resume fully, Mr Edun told journalists after the meeting. There were series of meetings before the issue was finally resolved today. There was an agitation from the cut of our salary. We have reached an agreement with the government to resume work after striking for about two months. The State government has accepted our demands and we also agreed to what government asked from us. When asked for the details of the meeting and if the strike was suspended or called off, Mr Edun said that Yes, we have suspended the strike. There is an agreement between us and the government. We have mandated our members of staff to resume fully on Monday. We agreed on some areas that there are issues between us. We were asking that reductions from our basic salary be restored, and they have restored it, he added. The judiciary workers in the state had downed their tools since 11 August over alleged short-payment of their salaries by the state government. According to the workers, there had been a shortage in their salaries since October last year. Its been a long time that we have been on the issue and there were series of meetings, that is why we asked all members of the judiciary staff to sit at home until our request is granted, Mr Edun had said in an earlier interview. The police in Katsina State on Thursday arrested three women for allegedly selling fuel to bandits in a forest in the state. The police spokesperson in Katsina, Gambo Isah, at a press conference in Kaduna, paraded the suspects, Dija Umar, 50; Ummah Bello, 45; and Nusaiba Muhammad, 16, all of Malali Quarters, in Katsina Local Government Area of Katsina. The police said the suspects were arrested along the Katsina-Jibia road. READ ALSO: The fact of the case is, the syndicate was arrested by a team of policemen on patrol along Katsina Jibia road, concealing PMS in their travelling bags neatly, reasonably suspected to be supplies to the bandits hibernating in the fringes of Jibia forest. In the course of investigation, suspects confessed to the commission of the offence, contrary to the executive order and other extant laws of the federation. Investigation is ongoing, the police spokesperson said. The arrests followed a similar incident on Saturday when the police arrested one Lawal Shuaibu, 32, of Maradi in Niger Republic and four others for allegedly selling fuel to armed bandits in a forest in the state. The suspects were arrested while conveying the substance in vehicles into the forest. Andrew Yakubu, a former Group Managing Director (GMD), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has denied that part of the recovered money in his Kaduna residence was given to him by a businesswoman, Bola Shagaya. Mr Yakubu also refuted the allegations that some of the money was given to him by Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore, both of who. are into oil and gas business. The ex-GMD of NNPC denied the allegations during a cross-examination by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC)s prosecuting lawyer, G. Ofulue, before the trial judge, Ahmed Mohammed of the Federal High Court, Abuja. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the anti-graft agency had, during a raid on a property in Kaduna belonging to Mr Yakubu, recovered $9.7 million and 74, 000 from a safe. He wad arraigned on 16 March, 2017 on six counts. The trial court, however, struck out two of the counts in a ruling on the no-case submission filed by the defendant after the prosecution closed its case. The Court of Appeal, ruling on an appeal against Mr Mohammeds decision, further reduced the number of counts to two which bordered on failure to make full disclosure of his assets during interrogation by EFCC official and receiving cash without going through financial institution. NAN reports that Mr Yakubu had, on 8 July, 2020, told the court that a substantial part of the money found at his Kaduna residence by EFCC was given to him as gift after leaving office. Mr Yakubu, under cross-examination as the first defence witness (DW1) in the case, said on Wednesday, that though he knew Ms Shagaya, who is said to be the chief executive officer of Voyage Oil and Gas Limited, he was unaware that her company was awarded an exploration licence in 2012 when he was the NNPC GMD. Will I be correct to say that the company was awarded an exploration license in 2012 when you were GMD of NNPC? The EFCC prosecution lawyer, Mr Ofulue, asked. I am not aware because NNPC does not issue oil licenses but DPR, the defendant responded. He was further asked, Will I be correct to say some of the money recovered from your house in Kaduna was given to you by Bola Shagaya? Mr Yakubu gave a negative response. The EFCC counsel asked further if some of the money was given to him by Messrs Aluko and Omokore, and the former NNPC boss said the allegation was incorrect. Mr Yakubus counsel, Anone Usman, opted not to reexamine the defendant, who was subsequently discharged from the witness box. Application to recall prosecution witness Meanwhile, the anti-graft agency informed the judge that the commission had a pending motion dated 18 June and filed 25 June seeking an order of the court for a recall of third prosecution witness, Ahmed Yahaya, and sixth prosecution witness, Suleiman Mohammed, for further examination-in-chief and possible further cross-examination in respect to the remaining counts three and four of the charge. The EFCC said it sought the order on the grounds that the witnesses were led in evidence by former prosecuting counsel and that the lawyer did not make maximum use of the witnesses being sought to be recalled in extracting relevant evidence from the said witnesses to prove the two counts. The commission argued further that the witnesses being sought to be recalled were very material in proving counts three and four, among other grounds. However, Mr Usman, who acknowledged that a counter-affidavit was filed by June 28 in opposition to the EFCCs motion, urged the court to dismiss the application for being unmeritorious and highly vexatious. After the parties in the suit adopted their processes adjourned till 18 November for ruling. (NAN) Some members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday got the treatment ordinary Nigerians face with delayed and cancelled flights at some major airports in Nigeria. The spokesperson of the House, Ben Kalu (APC, Abia), Rotimi Agunsoye (APC, Lagos), Henry Achibong (PDP, Akwa-Ibom) and others were left stranded at the Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano while on a committee assignment. The lawmakers were to board Azman Airline for an official assignment with the Committee on Petroleum Upstream and Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) but waited for hours unattended for a flight that was earlier scheduled to take off at 12:30 p.m. thereafter shifted to 2:30 p.m., 6 p.m., 9:45 p.m. and finally to 12:15 a.m. Mr Kalu, the House spokesperson was left fuming while speaking with journalists at the airport. He said, It is important the people we represent know where we are and the National Assembly knows we are still stranded here. And as we speak to you, nobody is at the counter to address us, not even the manager. He added, In the hall, a lot of Nigerians are left stranded. There are other Nigerians who are stranded and we are witnessing this firsthand and we are feeling it. Some of the citizens abandoned here. We are raising this call for common Nigerians. Sometimes, when citizens bring their complaints before us, it feels as if they fabricated it but this one we are involved and we are seeing this for ourselves. Mr Kalu noted that the lawmakers will raise the matter with the Ministry of Aviation and Consumer Protection Council. We dont know when we are leaving here and we have shown interest to find out from the Ministry of Aviation and Consumer Protection Council what is happening to the Aviation sector as soon as we return, he said. There have been several complaints Nigerians over flight delays and outright cancellation without prior notice or explanation. In July, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, announced that airlines shall reimburse passengers their tickets after two hours delay. Despite the stiff penalty, Nigerians continue to experience flight delays. A witness testifying before a Finnish Court in the ongoing war crimes trial of Gibril Massaquoi has told judges that the former Sierra Leonean rebel leader Sam Bockarie was shot, stabbed and beaten to death by Benjamin Yeaten, then-Liberian President Charles Taylors Director of Special Security Service (SSS) on Taylors orders. The incident occurred in 2003 in a village in Nimba County, the witness said. The witness, codenamed X5 to protect him from retaliation, said as soon as Taylor learned that Bockarie had intended to go back home to Sierra Leone, he ordered Yeaten to act. The UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone had begun investigations and Taylor believed that Bockarie might testify against him. Bockaries death, the witness said, paved the way for Massaquoi, a fellow Sierra Leonean commander with the Revolutionary United Front who was stationed in neighboring Ivory Coast, to cross over to Liberia to help Taylor fight the LURD rebels. Taylor sent Benjamin Yeaten to Ganta to put things under control, said X3. When Yeaten and Bockarie met, he asked Bockarie to take a walk with him to brief him. On the walk Yeatens deputy was the first that stabbed Bockarie on the back. He escaped in a cocoa farm but was overpowered and beaten to death. Samuel Sam Bockarie, widely known by his nom de guerre, General Mosquito, was a Sierra Leonean commander who served as a leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group that fought a failed 11-year war to overthrow the government of Sierra Leone and fought closely with President Taylor. Bockarie was infamous during the Sierra Leone civil war for brutal tactics, which included amputation, mutilation and rape. It was reported at the time that Bockarie, then a fugitive wanted by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, was offered sanctuary in Liberia by Charles Taylor. This is not the first time a witness has accused Taylor of giving the order to kill Bockarie. The government, at that time, said he was killed in a standoff with Taylors forces by militia who wanted to turn him over to the Special Court. However, in his testimony before the Special Court in 2008, President Taylors Vice President, the late Moses Blah, told judges Mr Bockarie was killed by Yeaten on the orders of Taylor to destroy evidence of Taylors secret support to the RUF. Taylor would later deny his former VPs accusation. Ironically, Bockaries death was pivotal in Massaquois return to Liberia from neighboring Ivory Coast where he had linked up with Bockarie and fought in the Ivorian civil war. Massaquoi went on to give information about Taylor to investigators in Sierra Leone. While in the Ivory Coast, X5 said Bockarie and his men captured the town of Mahn, and seized weapons which they brought to Liberia and helped Taylors forces recapture Ganta, a commercial hub in Nimba County, from LURD. Bockarie, the witness said, died shortly after the Ganta operation. X5 said he had earlier fought on the battlefront in Lofa County where he headed the Wild Geese, a militia group that was supervised by Roland Duo, the commander of the Navy Division. While in Lofa, he said the RUF leaders including the late Foday Sankoh and Bockarie commanded their men and fought alongside Taylors forces. He claimed that some of Taylors generals in Lofa were Roland Duo, Jack-the-Rebel and Mark Guam. He said some of these men ate humans to instill fear in their enemies. When the Marines get there, they also eat human beings, X5 told the four-judge panel in his second appearance. Its no joke about that. Thats fighting tactics. They killed, designed body and eat them. Thats what make them fearful when they are really fighting. The court is in Liberia for the second time when it became clear that dozens of witnesses in the first hearing here in March were referring to battles that took place in 2003, outside the dates the indictment had originally listed for Massaquois alleged crimes. Massaquoi, 51, is standing trial in Finland where he was living under an immunity deal with the Special Court for Sierra Leone when he was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity during Liberias civil war. The inconsistency of witness statements has been a major problem for the defence and prosecution cases. And it continues. During Tuesdays hearing, Kaarle Gummerus, Massaquois defence lawyer spent nearly three hours grilling the witness, and pointing out inconsistencies in his testimony. The account of Massaquois return to Liberia from Ivory Coast is in contrast to his previous testimony on Monday when he said he brought in Massaquoi from Sierra Leone at Bo Waterside in Monrovia. He also claimed that while celebrating their victory against LURD in 2003, he and Massaquoi took several pictures that were damaged by the rain. On Monday, he said the pictures are available in Grand Gedeh County, and when given some time, he will go and get them. Earlier, the first witness, a Sierra Leonean, said he was brought to Liberia by a friend named Emory who asked for his help to drive his truck. It was in Liberia that he discovered that Emory was one of Massaquois soldiers. The witness said, although he did not come too close to Massaquoi because he was not a soldier, he saw him at few places including White Flower- Taylors Monrovia residence and at Massaquois relatives house in Congo Town. The trial continues on Friday. This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. The Federal Government may file a fresh action against Yoruba secessionist agitator, Sunday Adeyemo (also know as Sunday Igboho), following the judgment of Oyo State High Court which awarded N20 billion in damages in his favour. The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York that the federal government had the right to appeal the Judgement or file a fresh charge. The judge, Ladiran Akintola, had awarded the money as an exemplary and aggravated damages against the AGF and the State Security Service (SSS), over the invasion of Adeyemos home in Ibadan on July 1. However, Mr Malami said the position of the federal government on the judgment was about law and jurisdiction. As far as this matter is concerned, which court is it that has the jurisdiction to determine it? And as you rightly know, obedient to court orders and court judgments, he said. But then you have to understand within the context of such obedience that there are associated rights and interests that are vested in the Federal Government. Inclusive of rights of appealing against a judgment, inclusive of right to file an application for setting aside the purported judgment and order. And indeed, inclusive of the possibility of filling a fresh action if indeed the jurisdiction of the court that was alleged to have indeed handed that judgment is an issue. So, we are doing the needful in terms of looking at the law as it exists and then working within the context of the law in ensuring that justice is done as far as the contending issues between the parties are concerned, the minister explained. Mr Igbohos counsel, Yomi Alliyu, SAN, had filed a N500 billion fundamental human rights enforcement suit against the AGF, SSS and the Director of the SSS in Oyo State over the invasion of his home in Ibadan on July 1. Mr Alliyu claimed that his clients house and cars were damaged, while two occupants of the house were killed by SSS operatives during the incident. However, counsel to AGF, Abdullah Abubakar, had argued that there was no evidence before the court that the blood seen in the video clip tendered by Mr Alliyu belonged to a human being. Mr Abubakar also said there was nothing in the video clip that showed that the house that was invaded belonged to Igboho or linked the AGF with the invasion. Mr Adeyemo is still being held in the Republic of Benin where he was arrested some weeks ago while trying to flee to Germany. (NAN) The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate leakage of classified government documents to the public. At Thursdays plenary session, the House mandated the Committee on National Security and Intelligence to investigate the matter. The committee is to report back in two weeks for further legislative action. The resolution was a sequel to a motion moved by Samuel Adejare (APC, Lagos). This motion is coming amidst the Nigerian governments renewed efforts to gag reports of the general insecurity in the country. PREMIUM TIMES reported the directive by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to media houses not to report details of insecurity. Also, ministries, departments and agencies rarely obey the Freedom of Information Act, as reported by this newspaper. The motion Moving the motion, Mr Adejare said the leakages, particularly those on defence, are affecting the war against insurgents. The recurring incidents of leakage of classified security documents to the public through various social media platforms, online print media and other sources are jeopardizing the fight against insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the country, he said. The lawmaker blamed the leakages for the failure of intelligence gathering and lack of cohesion by the military. If such acts of sabotage are left unchecked, they may pose great risks to the lives of security personnel and ultimately imperil the country. This unfortunate situation is enabling other acts of crimes and criminalities such as jailbreaks, mass abductions, invasion of farms and animal rustling, he said. Members voted in support of the motion when it was put to vote by the Deputy Speaker, Idris Wase (APC, Plateau), who presided over the plenary. The ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja has fixed Friday for judgment on a suit bordering on alleged Fulani herdsmen attacks on seven Adamawa State communities in 2017, a statement from the courts information unit stated Thursday. Members of the communities who filed the suit told the court they suffered herdsmen attack which was followed by bombardment from jets and a helicopter gunship of the Nigerian Air Force between November and December 2017. This, according to them, led to the death of 105 persons, injury to 80 others and the destruction of property valued at over N1billion. The seven affected communities are Dong, Lawaru, Shaforon, Baya, Kodomti, Nzoruwe, Pullum, of Numan and Demsa local government areas of Adamawa State. Plaintiffs claims Fourteen representatives of the communities who filed the suit recalled how the incident first happened in November 2017 and resurfaced about a month later. They said following skirmishes between the herdsmen and indigenous farmers in the communities leading to fatalities on both sides in November 2017, herdsmen from the neighbouring states and West African countries flocked into a nearby village to attack the farmers. According to them, despite alerting the security agencies, nothing was done to avert the subsequent mayhem in which 105 persons were said to have been killed, 80 others injured and property valued at N1,023,709,250 destroyed. They told the court that the Nigerian army, navy and the State Security Service (SSS) were alerted about the invasion and they initially took steps to intercept and disperse the attackers. They said in the initial response to the alert, some soldiers and 300 policemen were deployed in the area, but that they withdrew on December 2, 2017, a day after six of the policemen and one civilian, were allegedly killed by the herdsmen. The plaintiffs, Lawrence Jockthan and 13 others, further alleged that the few soldiers deployed in the area also withdrew after they were allegedly threatened by the herdsmen. But they added the Nigerian Air Force continued to maintain surveillance over the fully armed and combat ready herdsmen. On December 4, 2017, they recalled, the herdsmen having allegedly gathered all their men and materials attacked their villages of Dong, Lawaru, Shaforon, Baya, Kodomti, Nzoruwe, Pullum, of Numan and Demsa local government areas of Adamawa State during which many of the farmers were killed, houses razed and livestock stolen while their vehicles and other machinery were torched. They further claimed that at about 5p.m. that day, a Nigerian Air Force helicopter gunship flew over the area and opened fire on any gathering of people which added to the number of casualties. They said the bombs dropped by the Air Force destroyed many of their buildings while many people were killed resulting in the invitation of the Police Bomb Disposal Squad to detonate the unexploded bombs. They alleged further that the defendant, the Nigerian government, did not protect them against the attack which led to the avoidable loss of lives and property which amounted to the violation of their rights to life and properties as a result of the defendants failure to perform their obligation under the Charter to guarantee their rights under Articles 1, 4 and 14 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Prayers They urged the court to, among others, declare the Nigerian government is obligated to protect and secure the right to life of members of the plaintiffs communities who were gruesomely slaughtered by armed Fulani herdsmen who attacked their villages of Dong, Lawaru, Shafaron, Kodomti, Baya and Nzuruwe on December 4, 2017. They also asked the court to declare the Nigerian government was guilty of gross dereliction of its obligation to protect the right to life of the members of the plaintiffs communities when in the face of attacks on Nigerian policemen and attacks on the plaintiffs communities, it failed to use force to disperse the Fulani marauders for over one week until they fully mobilised and attacked and killed members of the plaintiffs communities of Dong, Lawuru, Shaforon, Kodomti, Baya, Nzoruwe etc. The 14 plaintiffs, who sued on behalf of themselves and the communities are: Richard Magomya, Tony A. Mabulti, Simon Edan, Amori Farah, Elias Jerimonth, Jackson E. Gashitufo, Gregory Hunkana, Augustine Elkanah, Isaac Kula, Homnetaka Sabo, Holy Aniya, John Timothy and Humphrey David. Nigerian governments defence But the defendant denied the plaintiffs claims, stating that the indigenes communities and the herdsmen had co-habited for a long time and had a history of vendetta between them resulting sometimes in bloodshed and casualties on both sides. It blamed the crisis that led to the attack of December 4, 2017 on the massacre of 56 Fulani settlers, including women and children in the communities by suspected members of the local militia in retaliation for the alleged killing of a local farmer as reported by the media. READ ALSO: Adamawa community threatens war with Fulani herdsmen The defendant claimed that security agencies, especially the police upon receiving information of an imminent violence between the two communities, immediately deployed officers to the area to keep the peace who were attacked leading to the loss of four policemen. It also blamed the pervasive insecurity in the country, the difficulty in navigating the terrains of the Plaintiffs community and the attack on the Police for its difficulty in mobilising enough men to repel the armed attackers which had to call for aerial support from the army. The defendant denied that the Nigeria Army fighter jet shot at the villagers as reports stated that the community residents had all fled the villages upon the attack and that the villages were occupied by the attackers who were burning down houses and destroying properties in sight. The case is heard by a panel of three ECOWAS Court judges led by Gberi-be Ouattara with two others Dupe Atoki and Keikura Bangura, as members. The Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, fixed November 30 for judgment in a suit filed by deposed Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, against the Kano State government and others. The judge, Anwuli Chikere, fixed the date after counsel for the parties in the matter adopted their written addresses with some oral arguments. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the deposed emir had, on 12 March, 2020, sued the Inspector-General (IG) of Police and Director-General, State Security Services (SSS) over what he called unlawful detention/confinement. Also sued as a defendant in the suit marked, FHC/ABJ/CS/357/2020, are the Attorney-General of Kano State and the Attorney General of the Federation. The former emir had, in a motion -ex-parte dated 12 March, 2020, filed by his team of lawyers, sought an interim order of the court releasing him from the detention and/or confinement of the respondents and restoring his right to human dignity, personal liberty. The Kano State Government had on 9 March, 2020 deposed Mr Sanusi after which security agents moved him to Abuja. He was later banished to Awe, Nasarawa State, where he was detained in a private home until March 13 when he obtained an interim order of the court for his release from house arrest. The judge, Ms Chikere, however, ordered his immediate release. Although the deposed emir had since been released after the court ruling, the case is still in court as the originating motion was yet to be determined by the court. Part of the arguments of the respondents against Mr Sanusis main suit is that the Federal High Court in Abuja lacked jurisdiction to entertain the matter since the alleged violation complained of by him was a fallout of his dethronement which took place in Kano. This line of argument points that the Kano division of the Federal High Court ought to be the appropriate venue to file the suit instead of Abuja. (NAN) The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it has secured 978 convictions so far in 2021. EFCCs spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, quoted the anti-graft agencys chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, as saying this during a courtesy visit to the Administrator of the National Judicial Institute (NJI), Salisu Garba, at Jabi, Abuja, Thursday. At the last count, we have 978 convictions this year, which is a testament to the fact that the judiciary is cooperating with us, Mr Bawa said. The EFCC chairman, who assumed office in February, did not give a breakdown of the conviction record. But a cursory look at the commissions website which is regularly updated with statements on its arrests and court cases, shows the convictions are mostly in cybercrimes cases which often end in plea bargain. Mr Bawa, who said he was at the NJI to promote the cordial relationship between the institute and EFCC, also noted that his agency had secured hundreds of forfeiture orders leading to the recoveries of billions of Naira for various state governments and individuals. EFCC Press Release EFCC Secures 978 Convictions The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa on Thursday, September 23, 2021 disclosed that the Commission has so far recorded 978 convictions in 2021. He made this disclosure during a courtesy visit to the Administrator of the National Judicial Institute, Justice Salisu Garba Abdullahi at Jabi, Abuja. Bawa, who said he was visiting to promote the cordial relationship between the NJI and the Commission, noted that, the NJI has been with us in our capacity building for judges, justices, investigators and prosecutors in the areas that we feel we need to develop ourselves for the betterment of administration of criminal justice system. He expressed delight at the level of support from the judiciary in the fight against corruption. According to the EFCC boss, the Commission has secured hundreds of forfeiture orders leading to the recoveries of billions of Naira for various state governments and individuals. At the last count, we have 978 convictions this year, which is a testament to the fact that the judiciary is cooperating with us. Highlighting some of the achievements of the Commission, Bawa stated that the EFCC has embraced the use of technology in all its mandate areas and is working on several policy documents that will improve its effectiveness. Responding, the NJI Administrator, Justice Salisu Garba Abdullahi assured that the Institute will continue to partner with the EFCC in the area of capacity building. We must complement each other, so that our country can be corrupt-free. The relationship and collaboration which has been consummated by my predecessor will not only be continued under my watch but will be strengthened, he said. Wilson Uwujaren Head, Media & Publicity 23 September, 2021 As one of the biggest global events to take place, Expo 2020 Dubai is an arena for world countries to showcase their creativity, innovations, and progress across industries. The mega event will run from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022, inviting visitors from around the world to join the making of a new world, experiencing a six-month celebration of human creativity, innovation, progress and culture. Expo 2020s subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability will inspire visitors to preserve and protect our planet, explore new frontiers and build a better future for everyone. We got the chance to speak with an Expo 2020 Dubai spokesperson about the upcoming Dubai Expo experience as well as the recently published survey to shed more insight on what to expect from the Expo 2020 as well Nigerias participation; What key insights did the Survey unearth to influencer the Dubai 2020 Expo? The study, commissioned by Expo 2020 Dubai, and conducted by YouGov, explores sentiment towards Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability in a world irrevocably changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the intersection of these themes, and the collaboration of nations, can ensure people and planet can thrive. Just as Expo 2020 Dubai will act as a platform for collaboration when needed most, enabling action towards some of the worlds most pressing issues, the latest global study allows us to better understand peoples priorities and where our programming can be adjusted to remain topical and relevant to communities across the world. Can you tell us a bit more about Expo 2020 Dubai? Expo 2020 Dubai is the next World Expo, and the first mega event of its kind to take place in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region. Over the course of six months, from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022, over 200 participants will come together in Dubai to collaborate and seek to create a newer, brighter future. Were delighted to be joined by 192 nations from around the world, each with their own pavilion, plus our partners such as PepsiCo, Siemens, DP World and more for the most inclusive World Expo ever. This is also the first World Expo where every participating nation will have its own pavilion, under our One Nation, One Pavilion commitment. Every African nation has signed up to participate and showcase its unique culture and innovations, and well also play host to a pavilion for the African Union. Nigerias presence at Expo 2020 Dubai will propel conversations in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and the creative industries by showcasing the countrys culture to the world. Nigeria has scheduled 23 customised events, featuring Afrobeat music and the burgeoning Nollywood film scene, as it highlights its cultural, creative and economic opportunities. What programs can we expect at the Expo, especially with relevance to the realities in Africa? Expo 2020 Dubai is built on an ethos of One Nation, One Pavilion. This means that, for the first time at a World Expo, every participating nation will have its own pavilion where it can showcase its history, culture, innovations and future. Were delighted to welcome every African nation to Expo 2020 Dubai, from South Africa to South Sudan, the worlds youngest country. We will also be hosting the African Union in their own pavilion. Africa is the youngest, fastest-growing continent on the planet, brimming with promise, and the global community has a shared responsibility to ensure it grasps that opportunity. Huge strides have been made since the Organisation of African Unity was founded in 1963, and we will continue that momentum at Expo 2020 Dubai, where Africa and everything it has to offer will be accessible to the world in new and unexpected ways encouraging connections, boosting collaborations and helping drive widespread progress and prosperity. The Global Business Forum Africa (13th 14th October) alone will offer networking opportunities and the chance to hear from eminent speakers on topics surrounding economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic, with a specific focus on trade opportunities. Sessions will cover areas such as how Africa can attract investment from overseas, including the UAE, and the importance of strengthening sustainable finance, among many other topics. Since its inception what impact has Expo 2020 Dubai had on global economies? Expo 2020 will begin in Dubai on October 1st 2021, and we look forward to welcoming businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups to network, share knowledge and participate in our extensive programme of business events and opportunities. The UAE has built an open economy and society for a global community based on an exemplary model of governance and partnership, as well as values of tolerance and inclusion. Expo will see the nation bring the world together in its commitment to pushing limits and achieving goals that others felt were impossible. Were also excited to see the business programme at Expo come to life, including events such as the Global Business Forum, Africa, which will take place on 13-14 October, at the Dubai Exhibition Centre on site. Among the speakers for this event will be Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, the CEO of leading African philanthropic organisation, The Tony Elumelu Foundation, which is based in Nigeria. Ifeyinwa will take part in a session exploring how African countries can foster a culture of entrepreneurship, building on the success that start-ups in Africa have experienced in recent years. Through Expo 2020, Dubai is committed to providing a unique platform for large scale businesses, SMEs, start-ups, entrepreneurs, governments, and civil society organisations to come together and collaborate to build authentic partnerships that will enable meaningful, long-term growth. Looking at Nigeria specifically, what opportunities does Expo 2020 Dubai present to us? The Nigerian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai will offer visitors the chance to experience a country with a promising future. The pavilion will create an Opportunity City with streets bursting with energy, including Resilience Avenue, Respectful Avenue, Hardworking Avenue and Enterprising Avenue. It will include a virtual reality tour of Nigerias untouched and beautiful destinations, a chance to experience the creative and technology sectors propelling the youth and future of Nigeria, and the ability to immerse yourself in a cultural heritage that weaves together 250 ethnic groups. Over a program of 23 scheduled events, the pavilion will present homegrown talents and creativity, including Afrobeats and Nollywood showcases. Expo 2020 Dubai enables each nation to showcase the best of itself and create connections and networks with other world nations to effect meaningful progress and change. Are there any Expo 2020 Dubai programs that are geared towards the younger generation of innovators in Africa? One of the programs unique to Expo 2020 is Expo Live, our global innovators program. In The Good Place, the Expo Live Pavilion, we will welcome 140 innovators from 76 countries to showcase their creative solutions for improving the lives of people and the thriving of the planet. Expo Live has provided funding of up to $100,000 USD per innovative organization and, in addition, will showcase these global innovators during the event itself, connecting them to an international network of participating nations, and global businesses, as well as many millions of anticipated visitors. Out of 140 Global Innovator organizations, 36 are making a significant impact in Africa. These include the likes of Hydroponics Africa from Kenya who address poverty and food sustainability through cost effective sustaining farming methods without the use of soil, and with an 80 per cent reduction in water use. Visitors will also learn about Rwandas Nuru Energy, which provides affordable solar and human powered electricity that can be sold by village entrepreneurs. These are just two examples of the innovative organizations from Africa, and around the world, who will be given a platform at Expo 2020 Dubai. We understand that there are strict travel restrictions for Nigeria and airlines are currently not flying to the UAE from Nigeria. How do you expect to attract visitors who are keen to visit from this part of the world? The situation is an ever changing and evolving one, and we hope that as a six month event, visitors from around the world will be able to safely travel to the UAE to visit us at some point. Since its inception, Expo 2020 Dubai has been committed to harnessing cutting-edge technology to provide visitors with an enriched experience, both onsite and wherever they may be in the world. The Virtual Expo is an events-focused website offering a 3D view of the site and pavilions, updated over the course of the event. Whereas, the Digital Expo is an aggregator of content created by the entirety of the Expo family, inclusive of webinars and podcasts. We want to leverage tomorrows technology to excite and inspire, creating entirely new types of experiences, a first for a World Expo. We want to ensure that every visitors experience, whether digital or physical is special. We are following the current global situation closely as we prepare to open our doors in a matter of weeks, on 1 October. The former director-general, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Dakuku Peterside, has urged Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State to urgently reactivate the drainage master plan in the state, to check flooding. He said the masterplan was put in place by Rotimi Amaechis administration. Mr Peterside made the call in a statement on Wednesday, in Port Harcourt, in reaction to the flooding being experienced in several parts of the state. He expressed dismay that Rivers residents were suffering as a result of the flooding, which had long ago been predicted by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), with the state featuring prominently. Former Governor Chibuike Amaechis administration had put in place a drainage master plan for the city of Port Harcourt. It was already being executed before he left office in 2015 but was, however, abandoned by Wike for political reasons, he alleged. Mr Peterside, a former commissioner of Works in Rivers, blamed the Wike-led administration for not paying attention to early warning signals from NIMET. But rather, it chose to put the blame on Rivers people who are already suffering from a lack of jobs and economic empowerment. Our people are traumatised, a lot of persons are displaced, we have lost several goods and property estimated at over N3 billion; social and economic life has been disrupted. This is because the state government slept off, and people are suffering, he added. According to Peterside, Governor Wike awards projects from his office without going through due process and the very important Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which led to pain and agony by Rivers people. It is even more shocking that the state government is yet to respond, even if half-heartedly to the cries of the people but chose to blame everybody other than itself. A responsive government should by now be engaging and looking for ways out of the crisis, he added. Mr Peterside, who was the 2015 governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers, called on the government to immediately mobilise resources of the state to alleviate the sufferings of the people. And it can only mean that the states relevant ministries, departments, and agencies are either incompetent in carrying out their duties or have been starved of necessary funds to function optimally, said. The Rivers State Government, through the Commissioner for Information, Paulinus Nsirim, had earlier assured residents that it would begin the process of checking flooding in the state. Mr Nsirim said the state government was working with relevant agencies to roll out the process that would check perennial flooding in the state. The commissioner, however, expressed displeasure at the attitude of residents who turned drains into refuse bins, and urged them to desist from such practice. (NAN) Some senior police retirees based in Edo State have decried what they referred to as poor retirement benefits after their service years. The retirees, who were at the police headquarters in Benin, requested the police authorities in Nigeria to remove them from the current police contributory pension scheme. A retired superintendent of police, Anthony Nnachor, who heads a group of senior police retirees in Edo State, led the retirees to the police headquarters. Mr Nnachor claimed the police retirees were the least paid among security agencies in Nigeria. He regretted that while the police force is the leading security agency in the country, the welfare of its personnel was not a priority. Mr Nnachor said retired police officers deserve better treatment after committing their productive years to the countrys service. He said the promotion allowance for some retirees promoted in 2017 and resettlement allowances had not been paid, describing the situation as the highest form of injustice. Mr Nnachor appealed to the federal government to review the police scheme and return the scheme to the police-defined benefit of old. Responding to the retirees demands, Miller Dantawa, the deputy commissioner of police in charge of operations in the state, said that serving police officers were in sympathy with the retired officers over their plight. He promised to brief the Commissioner of Police, Philip Ogbadu, who would channel their grievances to the police headquarters, Abuja. (NAN) The All Progressives Congress Local Government Congress Appeal Committee for Lagos State, says it has not received petitions from aggrieved groups, despite parallel congresses that trailed the 4 September local government congress in the state. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the Lagos4Lagos Movement, a group within the Lagos Chapter of APC, held parallel ward and local government congresses at different locations, at the nationwide APC congresses on 31 July and 4 September respectively. The group, among others like the Conscience Forum and Democrat Group within the party, had alleged impunity, imposition, and marginalisation in the party as the reason for their actions. The Chairman of the five-man appeal committee, Ibrahim Akaje, while speaking with journalists at the APC secretariat in Lagos, assured all would-be petitioners of impartiality, fairness, and justice. Mr Akaje said the committee would follow the normal democratic channels toward ensuring that all petitions received a fair hearing. So far, the committee is yet to receive any petition. It is incumbent at this juncture, to appeal to all petitioners to feel free, without hindrance in presenting their grievances before the committee. Our task is to arbitrate between the petitioners and those saddled with the responsibility of conducting the just concluded APC congresses in Lagos state. In this regard, | want to assure all and sundry that as members of this committee, we shall be impartial by dispensing justice to all in accordance with extant laws, rules, and guidelines provided in the APC constitution and statutes. All we demand is that all those with genuine complaints should be decorous in their presentations, Mr Akaje said. According to him, APC remains the most reliable and viable political party that will entrench democracy in the country. The chairman urged members of the party to exhibit political tolerance and love for one another in order to promote unity and harmony for peace and positive development. Mr Akaje said all aggrieved parties were expected to submit their grievances at the party secretariat. The chairman, who noted that the committee had until Saturday to hear all grievances, said the report of the Ward Congress Appeal Committee had been submitted to the APC national secretariat. NAN reports that the committee will hold a stakeholders meeting with party faithful later in the day. (NAN) The police in Ogun State have arrested a former member of the House of Assembly, Joseph Adegbesan, and two others over allegations of cultism, breach of public peace, threat to life and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms. The lawmaker was arrested and whisked away to Lagos, alongside two others known as Muibi Olufodun and one Samson, by operatives of the Intelligence Response Team (IRT), Force Headquarters, Abuja. Their arrest followed a petition written to the police authorities by the lawmaker representing Ijebu North II State Constituency, Oludare Kadiri. A member of the APC in the area told PREMIUM TIMES that other suspects targeted for arrest took to their heels. Yes, its true that armed policemen came today and arrested Hon. Adegbesan. He was apprehended in Awa (a town in Ijebu North Local Government Area of Ogun State), said the member who didnt want to be named to avoid being victimised by the party hierarchy. READ ALSO: Muibi was arrested in Ago-Iwoye. All the accused persons were subsequently taken away. We learnt that the officers were from the IG squad. It was learnt that the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Alkali, had directed the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of Force Intelligence Bureau to act on the petition filed by Mr Kadiris counsel, Oludare Adejare, alleging threat to the life of his client. Abimbola Oyeyemi, the police spokesperson in Ogun State, confirmed the arrest, but added that only the IRT can provide details. Mr Kadiri, who is currently represents Ijebu North II State Constituency in the Ogun State House of Assembly, had accused Mr Adegbesan, one of his predecessors, of sponsoring suspected cultists to attack and kill him. A copy of the petition seen by our correspondent stated that some of the accuseds accomplices had, in the past, confessed to killing two students of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago-Iwoye. While delivering his address, Prof. Adam Burakowski said, "Poland is India's largest trade partner in Central Europe. The bilateral trade between India and Poland is currently valued at US$2.36 billion and it has grown seven-fold over the last 10 years. Indian investments in Poland are valued at over US$3 billion, which comprises companies such as ArcelorMittal, Videocon, Escorts, Strides Arcolab, Ranbaxy, Essel, Propack, KPIT Cummins, Zensar Technologies Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services, HCL Technologies Ltd, Infosys and Wipro." The ambassador further added that, "There is a sizeable number of Indian diaspora (40,000) in Poland and Indians are contributing big time in the economic development of our country. In addition, the number of Indian students studying in Poland have been growing over the years, and in 2019, 2987 students from various parts of India took admissions in Polish Universities, which is an increase of more than 20%." Dr. Bawa, Pro-Chancellor, said, "Chandigarh University is working on the vision of our Prime Minister, which is Internationalization of Education through tie-ups with top ranked foreign universities so that students can get global exposure." The ambassador visited the Technology Business Incubator and Research facilities of Chandigarh University. While intearcting with the research scholars of university, Prof. Adam Burakowski said, "The quality of research done by students and faculty of Chandigarh University is praise-worthy and we would like that Universities from Poland to jointly work with the university in different areas like Engineering, Management, Science and Technology which can mutually beenfit the students of both the countries." About Chandigarh University Chandigarh University is a NAAC A+ Grade University and an autonomous educational institution approved by UGC and is located near Chandigarh in the state of Punjab. It is the youngest university in India and the only private university in Punjab to be honoured with A+ Grade by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council). CU offers more than 109 UG and PG programs in the field of engineering, management, pharmacy, law, architecture, journalism, animation, hotel management, commerce, and others. It has been awarded as The University with Best Placements by WCRC. For more information, please visit our website www.cuchd.in. Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1633118/Chandigarh_University_Polish_Delegation.jpg SOURCE Chandigarh University NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE AMERICAN: ATNM) ("Actinium" or the "Company"), a leader in the development of targeted radiotherapies for patients with unmet needs, today announced multiple senior leadership appointments including Arun Swaminathan, Ph.D., as Chief Business and Commercial Officer, Paul Diamond, Ph.D., as Vice President, Patent and Legal Counsel and Avinash Desai, M.D., who previously served as Executive Vice President, Clinical Development, Operations and Medical Affairs, to the position of Chief Medical Officer, effective immediately. These senior leadership additions add over 50 years of experience in key areas aligned with Actinium's growth strategy. Sandesh Seth, Actinium's Chairman and CEO, said, "I am thrilled to welcome Arun and Paul to the Actinium team. Arun brings a unique blend of experiences across commercial-focused roles at global biopharmaceutical companies, as well as an entrepreneurial mindset and track record of value creation in smaller organizations. His scientific training, experience and business acumen make him ideal to lead our commercial planning for Iomab-B, following the recent completion of the Phase 3 SIERRA trial and to lead our business development activities focused on our clinical assets and AWE technology platform to further expand our leadership in target radiotherapies." Sandesh Seth, continued, "Equally exciting is Paul's appointment, which coincides with our expansion in R&D, leveraging our AWE technology platform, which is expected to yield new programs in the coming months. Paul is a highly experienced and proven patent attorney who brings a strong scientific pedigree. He will be imbedded in the R&D activity at Actinium to ensure our patent portfolio is architected in line with our development objectives through value-added patent development and prosecution. With our clinical progress led by Iomab-B, novel clinical pipeline of actinium-225 targeted radiotherapies and enhanced R&D capabilities overlaid with our strong balance sheet, we are excited with the caliber of talent being attracted to and joining Actinium." "I am excited to announce Dr. Desai's promotion to Chief Medical Officer, in place of Dr. Berger, who will be leaving the Company effective September 24th. I have been impressed with Dr. Desai's execution since he joined Actinium last November. In this short time, he has taken the lead on clinical operations for Iomab-B and implemented strategies that led to the completion of our Phase 3 SIERRA trial, with the last 25 percent of patients being enrolled faster than any previous cohort, despite the challenging environment from the ongoing COVID pandemic. Additionally, he has assumed leadership of our CMC operations and further strengthened its integration with our clinical team. With SIERRA enrollment complete, Dr. Desai will leverage his extensive drug development experience to execute the BLA filing strategy he has led. Finally, with his extensive medical affairs experience in oncology, he will be invaluable in our Iomab-B commercial planning. With Dr. Desai and Dr. Swaminathan onboard, I am confident in our team's capabilities and look forward to working with them in executing our strategic vision to create value for patients and shareholders." Dr. Swaminathan stated, "I am excited to join the Actinium team just as enrollment is completed for the pivotal Phase 3 SIERRA trial of Iomab-B. This is an exciting time in the Company's evolution, as it sets the stage for us to further leverage the SIERRA study to expand our pipeline of target radiotherapies across hematologic and solid tumor indications, leveraging our AWE technology platform. With the growing interest in targeted radiotherapy, Actinium's capabilities, clinical development experience, intellectual property and supply chain set us apart. Through the development of Iomab-B and Actimab-A, Actinium has gained tremendous insights into the development of targeted radiotherapies across multiple isotopes, targeting agents and indications, which I look forward to leveraging in my business development efforts. Additionally, through the Phase 3 SIERRA and Phase 1/2 Actimab-A trials, Actinium has developed a supply chain that can bring targeted radiotherapies to the point of care in many of the leading comprehensive cancer centers across the United States and Canada, where a significant number of patients with advanced cancers are treated. As we begin our commercial planning, first for Iomab-B, I am struck by the concentrated nature of the bone marrow transplant market and the opportunity to leverage a conditioning-focused commercial organization across transplant, cell, and gene therapies for potential future indications beyond acute myeloid leukemia. We believe there is a significant opportunity across several of these indications, which are expected to build upon the growing awareness of Iomab-B among transplant centers and physicians." Dr. Avinash Desai, added, "I am honored and excited to be promoted to the role of Chief Medical Officer at Actinium. I have a deep passion and energy for oncology drug development that I will continue to apply to the advancement of Actinium's pipeline of novel and differentiated targeted radiotherapies together with my amazing clinical development, clinical operations, and CMC colleagues at Actinium. Across our pipeline, I believe we have the opportunity to transform patient outcomes, particularly in indications not adequately addressed by traditional therapeutics. Iomab-B is a prime example, as the older, relapsed/refractory AML patients with active disease are not considered eligible for transplant with traditional cytotoxic conditioning regimens, yet in the SIERRA trial, 100% of patients receiving Iomab-B have accessed transplant and engrafted without delay. After completing SIERRA enrollment with strong momentum, we look forward to preparing for a BLA filing and with Arun's joining, beginning commercial planning for Iomab-B. Beyond Iomab-B, our Iomab-ACT initiative for cell and gene therapy conditioning and actinium-225 alpha therapy and combination trials in relapsed/refractory hematology indications have the same paradigm-shifting potential as Iomab-B. Finally, I am excited to leverage our clinical experience and capabilities with our AWE technology platform to unveil new targeted radiotherapies to further bolster Actinium's pipeline." Arun Swaminathan, Ph.D., Chief Business and Commercial Officer Dr. Swaminathan is a highly accomplished executive with over 20 years of experience in the global biopharmaceutical industry, which has included increasing positions of responsibility across commercial, business development, and clinical roles. He has a proven track record of converting great science into successful business opportunities. Prior to joining Actinium, Dr. Swaminathan was the Chief Business Officer and Senior Vice President at Alteogen Inc. a South Korea-based biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the development and commercialization of novel biologics. In this role, his negotiations with partners led to deals totaling over $6 billion in potential value, including agreements with two of the top ten global pharmaceutical companies. During his tenure at Alteogen, the Company's market value increased from approximately $400 million to over $4 billion. Dr. Swaminathan joined Alteogen after they entered into an agreement with Lynkogen Inc. and gained full rights to develop the assets. As CEO and co-founder of Lynkogen, he raised capital, in-licensed potentially transformative drug candidates to address complex metabolic diseases and advanced Lynkogen from concept to a pre-clinical stage company with a lead drug candidate ready for IND enabling studies that he successfully negotiated for out-licensing. Previously, Dr. Swaminathan held commercial and business development roles at Bristol Myers Squibb over 12 years during two tenures, most recently as Worldwide Brand Director, where he managed products with over $2 billion in annual sales across the top 10 global markets. Earlier at BMS, Dr. Swaminathan advanced from principal scientist to associate director, working on approved products including Nulojix, Orencia and Eliquis. Between his tenures at BMS, he spent nearly four years at Covance (now Labcorp Drug Development), where he rose to Marketing Head, in charge of a $1 billion clinical business. Dr. Swaminathan received his Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, and is a graduate of the Marketing Management Program at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. Avinash Desai, M.D., Chief Medical Officer Dr. Desai is a hematologist/oncologist with nearly 25 years of drug development industry experience. Over the course of his career, Dr. Desai has successfully designed and implemented clinical development, U.S. and global medical affairs, and life cycle management plans for a variety of pharmaceutical products. This has included participation in multiple INDs, NDAs, and sNDA submissions and efficiently managing the product Scientific Advisory Boards (SAB) and Data and Safety Monitoring Boards (DSMB) for hematology, oncology, and therapeutic candidates. Most recently, Dr. Desai, served as Vice President, Head of U.S. Medical Affairs Oncology at Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK). At GSK, he established the U.S. medical affairs oncology team that oversaw the launch readiness plans for three novel oncology productsBlenrep in multiple myeloma, Zejula in ovarian cancer, and dostarlimab in endometrial cancer. Prior to GSK, Dr. Desai has overseen the clinical development, implementation, and delivery of oncology life cycle management plans for various oncology therapies at several leading global pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly & Company (Lilly), Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Takeda, Inc. Prior to GSK, he was the VP of Global Medical Affairs at Lilly, during which time he oversaw the global medical affairs team for Lilly's GI Oncology portfolio. Earlier in his career, Dr. Desai contributed to the approval of Janssen's myeloma drug Darzalex (daratumumab) and leading and strategically executing medical affairs activities globally for Velcade (bortezomib). Prior to Janssen, Dr. Desai was responsible for the international development of oncology products in solid tumors and hematological malignancies at Sanofi, where he successfully executed pivotal trials that led to NDA submission for Jevtana (cabazitaxel). Paul Diamond, Ph.D., Esq., Vice President, Patent and Legal Counsel Dr. Diamond joins Actinium with over 20 years of experience in patent law, developing and executing IP strategy within the biotechnology industry. He joins Actinium from Enzo Biochem, Inc., where he was Senior Counsel, Patents and Business Development. As Enzo's sole patent attorney and senior-most counsel, he reported to the CEO and led all IP related and essential in-house legal functions. During his time at Enzo, Dr. Diamond obtained critical, high-value patent coverage for key products and technologies and managed high-profile litigations and settlement negotiations that resulted in a number of sizeable settlements. Prior to Enzo, Dr. Diamond first practiced IP law at global law firm White & Case LLP before opening his own practice, Diamond Law Office, LLC, where he was of counsel to the firms Lucas & Mercanti, LLP and Zuber, Lawler & Del Duca, LLP. Paul received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law. He also has a strong scientific background, receiving a B.A. in Biology from The Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University. About Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing targeted radiotherapies to deliver cancer-killing radiation with cellular level precision to treat patients with high unmet needs not addressed by traditional cancer therapies. Actinium's current clinical pipeline is led by ARCs or Antibody Radiation-Conjugates that are being applied to targeted conditioning, which is intended to selectively deplete a patient's disease or cancer cells and certain immune cells prior to a BMT or Bone Marrow Transplant, Gene Therapy or Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) such as CAR-T to enable engraftment of these transplanted cells with minimal toxicities. Actinium's targeted conditioning ARCs seek to improve patient outcomes and access to these potentially curative treatments by eliminating or reducing the non-targeted chemotherapy that is used for conditioning in standard practice currently. Our lead product candidate, I-131 apamistamab (Iomab-B) has been studied in several hundred patients including in the recently completed, 150-patient, pivotal Phase 3 Study of Iomab-B in Elderly Relapsed or Refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (SIERRA) trial for BMT conditioning. Iomab-ACT, low dose I-131 apamistamab is being studied as a targeted conditioning agent in a Phase 1 study with a CD19 CAR T-cell Therapy with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In addition, we are leaders in the field of Actinium-225 alpha therapies. Actimab-A, our clinical stage CD33 targeting ARC alpha therapy has been studied in nearly 150 patients including our ongoing combination trials with the salvage chemotherapy CLAG-M and the Bcl-2 targeted therapy venetoclax. Underpinning our clinical programs is our proprietary AWE (Antibody Warhead Enabling) technology platform. This is where our intellectual property portfolio of over 160 patents, know-how, collective research and expertise in the field are being leveraged to construct and study novel ARCs and ARC combinations to bolster our pipeline for strategic purposes. Our AWE technology platform is currently being utilized in a collaborative research partnership with Astellas Pharma, Inc. Website: https://www.actiniumpharma.com/ Forward-Looking Statements for Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. This press release may contain projections or other "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe-harbor" provisions of the private securities litigation reform act of 1995 regarding future events or the future financial performance of the Company which the Company undertakes no obligation to update. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated or estimated future results, including the risks and uncertainties associated with preliminary study results varying from final results, estimates of potential markets for drugs under development, clinical trials, actions by the FDA and other governmental agencies, regulatory clearances, responses to regulatory matters, the market demand for and acceptance of Actinium's products and services, performance of clinical research organizations and other risks detailed from time to time in Actinium's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including without limitation its most recent annual report on form 10-K, subsequent quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q and Forms 8-K, each as amended and supplemented from time to time. Investors: Hans Vitzthum LifeSci Advisors, LLC [email protected] (617) 430-7578 SOURCE Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Related Links https://www.actiniumpharma.com/ EDMONTON, AB, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alberta tech entrepreneurs and startups will soon have access to an accelerator with worldwide reach that will help them grow their businesses. Alberta Innovates chose Plug and Play Alberta as one of four proposals to receive funding under an unprecedented entrepreneurial initiative for Alberta the Alberta Innovates Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program (Scaleup GAP). The program is intended to fill a scaleup gap in the province's innovation system by helping local tech companies grow, and to attract global firms and investment to the province. Plug and Play, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is a tech investor and accelerator firm with an international network of more than 30,000 startups and 500 corporations, and hundreds of venture capital firms, universities and government agencies across multiple industries. Plug and Play invests in more than 200 startups per year globally. Plug and Play Alberta will deliver programs in Calgary and Edmonton and bring ventures from around the world to Alberta. They will offer sector-agnostic and sector-based accelerator programs in digital health and sustainable clean resources across the province, from their main Alberta office in Calgary and a satellite office in Edmonton. In total, the four chosen accelerators, including Plug and Play, will provide services in Alberta with the support of a funding consortium led by Alberta Innovates. Three orders of government are investing as much as $35 million for the overall accelerator program in Alberta. This includes funding from the Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy and Innovation to Alberta Innovates to lead and manage the overall Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program. The Government of Canada, through Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), has invested to expand funds available to not-for-profit business accelerators. At the municipal level, the initiative will also include Innovate Edmonton and the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF). Quotes: "Plug and Play has a unique business model that will connect the best startups with international corporations to bring technology to market faster and is a key player in creating syndicated technology investment deals. We are happy to have the power of its networks working for Albertans and our innovation system. Thanks to funding from our government partners, the scope of the scaleup and growth accelerator program and the quality of the global programming is unparalleled for Alberta and a tremendous opportunity." - Laura Kilcrease, CEO, Alberta Innovates "As we work to develop a diverse economy driven by innovation in Calgary and Alberta, there is a critical role for leading business accelerators to collaborate with existing local stakeholders to support local entrepreneurs and emerging companies that are applying technology to solve global challenges. These accelerators will increase the pace of scaling and success for our next generation of companies that will drive both economic growth and diversification." Mark Blackwell, Executive Chair, Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund "Attracting Plug and Play to Alberta is game changing for Edmonton and our province. They will connect Edmonton's entrepreneurs with the support they need to scale, grow and to compete on the world-stage in today's impact economy. Locally, Edmontonians will benefit from job growth, new investment and economic diversity." Catherine Warren, CEO, Innovate Edmonton "We are committed to becoming a central pillar of Alberta's economy through establishing and building a long-term presence and an integrated, collaborative system. This will not only attract top technology and investment to the region but will drive innovation and help Alberta entrepreneurs to scale and grow." - Saeed Amidi, CEO and Founder, Plug and Play "The startup community that exists in the Alberta region is innovative and resilient, presenting several opportunities for growth. We at Plug and Play, are dedicated to helping the community, bringing our values and vision to create an ecosystem that is vibrant and unique from other environments around the world." Michael Olmstead, Chief Revenue Officer, Plug and Play "As part of our global innovation strategy, BASF has long partnered with Plug and Play in Stuttgart, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and in June 2020, we announced our anchor partnership and shared Canadian office space in Canada (Ontario). Today, we congratulate Plug and Play on their announcement, where BASF has a significant presence and sees market, partnership and innovation potential. We look forward to continued collaboration and engagement with innovators within Plug and Play's ecosystem." Irene Yang, Director, Business Development & Innovation, BASF Canada "Worley is excited to be a founding corporate partner of Plug and Play's accelerators in Calgary and Edmonton and is looking forward to playing a part in commercializing promising cleantech and artificial intelligence companies in the province of Alberta. Worley is proud of the relationship it has built with Plug and Play in Silicon Valley and we are delighted to bring that partnership to Alberta in collaboration with Alberta Innovates, University of Alberta, fellow corporate partners, and local technology ecosystem stakeholders. On a personal level, being an Albertan and Calgarian, I am passionate about diversifying our economy and advancing industries of the future, and I look forward to working with the accelerator program to grow Alberta and the Canadian economy." Pushkar Rao, Global Head, DX Lab & Digital Solutions, Worley BACKGROUND/FAQs Plug and Play Alberta: Q: Who is eligible to participate? A: This program is open to ventures from anywhere in Alberta, Canada and around the world. Companies will be selected accordingly to criteria set by Plug and Play. Q: Why should we fund non-Alberta companies? A: One of the goals is to highlight Alberta capability to the world and make Alberta a preferred technology destination for entrepreneurs and investment. We want to attract international firms to Alberta and create a global mindset in our local innovation ecosystem. Q: Is there a fee to apply? A: There will be no fees to apply or participate. For more information about this accelerator, contact: Allison Romero Director of Marketing Plug and Play [email protected] Or Dwayne Brunner Senior Manager, Media & Strategic Community Relations Alberta Innovates 587-572-4091 [email protected] About Alberta Innovates Alberta Innovates is the province's largest and Canada's first provincial research and innovation agency. For a century we have worked closely with researchers, companies and entrepreneurs trailblazers who built industries and strengthened communities. Today we are pivoting to the next frontier of opportunity in Alberta and worldwide by driving emerging technologies across sectors. We are a provincial corporation delivering seed funding, business advice, applied research and technical services, and avenues for partnership and collaboration. Learn how Alberta Innovates. About Innovate Edmonton Headquartered in Alberta's capital city, Innovate Edmonton leverages, unites, and promotes home-grown innovation as a gateway to solving the world's most pressing problems. We harness the power of the public and private sectors, ground-breaking academic research, and purpose-driven investment to build a shared prosperity and open international markets. From sustainable climate solutions to public health and digital education, Edmonton is a leading global centre for inspiration, ingenuity, and inclusion. Learn more about Innovate Edmonton and Startup Edmonton , a division of Innovate Edmonton. About OCIF The Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of The City of Calgary in 2018 to support catalytic investments within the city to help diversify and transform the economy. The fund is administered by Calgary Economic Development and has a volunteer Board of Directors. For more information, visit our website. About Plug and Play Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we're present in 35+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we've invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi. For more information, visit https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/ SOURCE Plug and Play Related Links http://plugandplaytechcenter.com DALLAS, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Three attorneys from Aldous \ Walker LLP have been selected for inclusion in the 2021 edition of Texas Super Lawyers. Partners Charla Aldous and Brent Walker were recognized with selections to the Super Lawyers listing, while Attorney Caleb Miller was named to the Super Lawyers list of Rising Stars. Aldous and Walker also earned additional selections to several of this year's "Top Super Lawyers" listings including Aldous' inclusion in the publication's most prestigious Top 10 Texas Super Lawyers list. Endorsed by Peers. Backed by Results. Regarded as one of the nation's most respected legal rating services, Super Lawyers publishes annual listings that recognize attorneys who have excelled in their practice while garnering the respect and esteem of their peers. The publication uses a patented selection process to vet nominees on over a dozen criteria of success, and solicits in-depth evaluations from fellow leading lawyers. In total, no more than 5% of attorneys make the final Super Lawyers list, and no more than 2.5% are named to the Super Lawyers list of Rising Stars. Even fewer receive the honor of being named a Top Super Lawyer. Given numbers like these, Aldous \ Walker's impressive catalogue of Super Lawyers selections speaks volumes about the firm's attorneys and their work in high-profile and high-stakes civil claims. Charla Aldous : Texas Super Lawyers 2003-2021 : 2003-2021 Brent Walker : Texas Super Lawyers 2013-2021; Rising Stars 2007, 2009-2013. : 2013-2021; Rising Stars 2007, 2009-2013. Caleb Miller : Texas Super Lawyers Rising Stars 2019-2021 In addition to their continued inclusion in Super Lawyers, Partners Aldous and Walker were selected to several supplementary special-feature listings. These listings honor attorneys who've demonstrated unparalleled accomplishments and are considered among Super Lawyers' most prestigious accolades. Charla Aldous: Top 10: 2021 Texas Super Lawyers Top 100: 2021 Texas Super Lawyers Top 50: 2021 Women Texas Super Lawyers Top 100: 2021 Dallas/Fort Worth Super Lawyers Brent Walker: Top 100: 2021 Dallas/Fort Worth Super Lawyers Backed by accolades like these, the Aldous \ Walker LLP legal team has been able to recover millions in compensation for clients, prevail in claims against some of the nation's most powerful corporations, and secure landmark legal victories. Most recently, the firm successfully represented Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins in litigation that resulted in a temporary injunction blocking Gov. Greg Abbott's controversial ban on mask mandates within the county. For more information about Aldous \ Walker LLP and its award-winning team, visit www.aldouslaw.com. Media Contact: Charla Aldous [email protected] SOURCE Aldous \ Walker LLP Related Links http://www.aldouslaw.com ROSEVILLE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Always Best Care Senior Services, one of the leading senior care franchise systems in the United States, announced today system-wide rollout of the National Minority Health Association's (NMHA) COVID-19 vaccination reward program, Flex for Checks. The goal is to increase direct care worker and community vaccination rates across the country. The NMHA developed the program as part of a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Through this program, Always Best Care franchisees and their caregivers can earn money just by getting vaccinated and encouraging others in their community to do so as well. Caregivers are eligible to receive $25 for getting one shot or $50 for getting both doses of the shot. Additionally, franchisees and caregivers are eligible to receive $25 for any individual they encourage to register and get vaccinated. Community members who are referred by a caregiver are eligible to receive $50 for getting one shot, or $100 for getting both doses of the shot. Caregivers qualify as both caregivers and community members, thus earning $150 for becoming vaccinated with the potential to earn an additional $25 for each community member they encourage to receive the vaccine. This results in a beneficial campaign focused on increasing the number of vaccinated people within every community in which Always Best Care operates. "Joining the Flex for Checks program is another way we can do our part to help our franchisees and their dedicated staff safely care for their clients," said Jake Brown, President & CEO of Always Best Care. "By offering a cash incentive for getting vaccinated and inspiring others to get their shots, we hope to make a positive difference in vaccination efforts throughout our communities." Safety has been paramount for the company throughout the pandemic. Late last year, Always Best Care announced it was a primary non-medical organization to be awarded a grant to facilitate rapid Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 testing. Through that initiative, the majority of Always Best Care franchises nationwide have the ability to test staff once a week. Always Best Care is one of the nation's leading providers of non-medical in-home care and assisted living referral services. The company delivers its services through an international network of more than 200 independently owned and operated franchise territories throughout the United States and Canada. By working with case managers, social workers, discharge planners, doctors, and families, Always Best Care franchise owners provide affordable, comprehensive solutions that can be specifically matched to meet a client's particular physical or social needs. The hallmark services of Always Best Care include non-medical in-home care and assisted living finder and referral services, with skilled home health care in some limited markets. For information on franchising with Always Best Care, please visit https://home-care-franchise.alwaysbestcare.com/, call 855-430-2273 or email Jason Wiedder at [email protected]. About Always Best Care Founded in 1996, Always Best Care Senior Services is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Always Best Care was founded on the belief that having the right people for the right level of care means peace of mind for the client and family. Always Best Care assists seniors with a wide range of conditions and personal needs, and currently provides thousands of hours of care every year. Franchise opportunities are available to individuals interested in leveraging the company's clear strategy and proven track record for delivering affordable, dependable service to seniors in their local areas. Always Best Care also offers an exclusive program called Always in Touch, a telephone reassurance program that provides a daily phone call to seniors and disabled adults who are living alone and have limited contact with the outside world. Always in Touch is a national telephone reassurance program offered in the USA and Canada. For more information on Always in Touch, or to request an application, visit www.Always-In-Touch.com . CONTACT: Paige Alonso Fish Consulting 954-893-9150 [email protected] SOURCE Always Best Care Related Links http://www.alwaysbestcare.com CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) is pleased to announce the sale of Barnett Outdoors LLC (Barnett), to Surge Outdoors. The specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction furthers BGL's market-leading position in outdoor enthusiast investment banking and as an advisor to companies across a range of branded consumer products. In addition, Barnett's fast-growing outdoor gear eCommerce business provides significant growth opportunities and represents another core area of focus for BGL's Consumer Investment Banking Group. Barnett operates as a premium retail crossbow and archery accessories brand. Tweet this Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) is pleased to announce the sale of Barnett Outdoors LLC (Barnett), to Surge Outdoors. The transaction furthers BGLs market-leading position in outdoor enthusiast investment banking and as an advisor to companies across a range of branded consumer products. Founded in 1962, Barnett operates as a premium retail crossbow and archery accessories brand. Its portfolio of innovative, patent-protected products is sold to a diversified base of top-tier retailers. The company offers crossbows, arrows, slingshots, youth archery, and other accessory products across North America. Surge Outdoors, LLC is a newly developed outdoor enthusiast company, owned and operated by Ryan Busbice and David Barnett. BGL's Consumer Group has an extensive track record in mergers and acquisitions advisory and capital-raising services spanning the entire consumer retail spectrum, with deep experience in branded consumer and eCommerce investment banking. BGL's Consumer bankers offer market-leading technical expertise, positioning strategies, and growth-oriented projection models to ensure branded and managed marketplace eCommerce DTC & B2B platforms are optimally positioned. The team focuses on providing market participants with expert insights into the trends influencing their business and helping them identify and harvest strategic opportunities in an increasingly complex marketplace. About Brown Gibbons Lang & Company Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) is a leading independent investment bank and financial advisory firm focused on the global middle market. The firm advises private and public corporations and private equity groups on mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, capital markets, financial restructurings, valuations and opinions, and other strategic matters. BGL has investment banking offices in Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia, and real estate offices in Chicago, Cleveland, and San Antonio. The firm is also a founding member of Global M&A Partners, enabling BGL to service clients in more than 30 countries around the world. Securities transactions are conducted through Brown, Gibbons, Lang & Company Securities, Inc., an affiliate of Brown Gibbons Lang & Company LLC and a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. For more information, please visit www.bglco.com. SOURCE Brown Gibbons Lang & Company Related Links www.bglco.com NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has added key challenges and trends for independent artists, writers, and performers industry profiles on their platform. All 18,000+ company profiles will now contain 50+ company data points, including a list of potential challenges which are expected to impact market participants over the next few years. Snapshot of key challenge impacting BizVibe's independent artists, writers, and performers industry group. One challenge which is being highlighted is how easy it can be for a public figure to damage their reputation and, as a consequence, their job prospects. Having a social media presence is important to developing a brand and generating interest in one's work, but this also creates more opportunities for social missteps and controversies. Backlash in traditional and social media can damage public image, which may lead to contracts being cancelled with image-conscious brands or even to sanctions or disciplinary actions from the regulatory bodies in various fields. The near-impossible task of image management and damage control often lands on agents in such situations. By identifying such challenges, BizVibe is helping users analyze which suppliers are right for their business, while allowing them to efficiently monitor the risk of doing business. Get Free Access to all Industry Challenges Key Insights Provided for Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers In addition to analysis on how key challenges are expected to impact businesses, BizVibe company profiles contain numerous high-quality insights to help users discover, track, compare, and evaluate suppliers or sales prospects. These insights include: Relevance and influence of industry trends and challenges, segmented by region Press releases and news coverage referencing key trends and challenges Risk of doing business score, segmented by operational, financial, compliance, and country risk Top company competitors at the global, regional, and national levels Names of top company decision makers, including job titles and social profiles Company financials such as annual revenue, profitability ratios, and management effectiveness View 50+ Company Data Points for Free Categories for Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers BizVibe's platform provides access to over 10 million buyer and supplier company profiles. Businesses from more than 200 countries are categorized into 40,000+ product and service categories, each providing detailed insights tailored to the needs of procurement and sales teams globally. The independent artists, writers, and performers industry group features 18,000+ company profiles categorized into multiple product and service categories, enabling clients to identify and connect with potential new business partners across diverse market segments. Product and service categories for the independent artists, writers, and performers industry include: Art creation services Art licensing services Art restoration services DJ services Get Free Company Profile Access for all Categories BizVibe for Buyers and Sellers BizVibe is a modern B2B platform dedicated to connecting buyers and sellers from around the world. Powered by the latest best-in-class solutions, BizVibe is designed to help companies generate leads, shortlist suppliers, request proposals, and identify global companies. Evaluate companies side-by-side to compare key metrics and initiate productive partnerships. Buyers use BizVibe to discover suppliers from among more than 5 million companies using advanced search filters and comparison tools. Features for buyers include: Shortlist potential suppliers Track and compare companies Set up custom news alerts Quickly create and customize RFIs Explore BizVibe's buyer services: https://www.bizvibe.com/buyers Sellers can take advantage of BizVibe's smart sales intelligence tools to discover, evaluate, and communicate with prospects across 300+ categories. Features for sellers include: Identify and qualify sales prospects Receive customized prospect recommendations Analyze and evaluate potential buyers Integrate CRMs for efficient data transfer Discover BizVibe's seller tools: https://www.bizvibe.com/sellers About 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 helps 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 MCLEAN, Va., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, October 26, 2021, at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time, Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) will release its third quarter 2021 earnings results. Additionally, the company will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to review financial and operating performance for the quarter ending September 30, 2021. The call will be webcast live and the earnings release will be available on the company's homepage at www.capitalone.com . A replay of the webcast will be available 24 hours a day, beginning two hours after the conference call, until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on November 9, 2021, through the company's Investor Relations homepage. About Capital One Capital One Financial Corporation (www.capitalone.com) is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., had $306.3 billion in deposits and $423.4 billion in total assets as of June 30, 2021. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients through a variety of channels. Capital One, N.A. has branches located primarily in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and the District of Columbia. A Fortune 500 company, Capital One trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "COF" and is included in the S&P 100 index. Visit the Capital One Investor Relations website for more investor news. SOURCE Capital One Related Links https://www.capitalone.com WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development (CDICD), managed by National Disability Institute (NDI), announced today its Second Annual Inclusive Community Development Awards Program. The purpose of the awards is to raise the visibility of financial institutions' and community-based organizations' activities that are promising and exemplary in support of low- and moderate-income (LMI) individuals with disabilities to improve their financial stability and health and be more active participants in adding value to our nation's economy. Nominations will be evaluated on innovation, responsiveness, collaboration and impact in building a better financial future for people with disabilities and their families. Focus areas include: workforce development, affordable and accessible housing, small business development, financial literacy and counseling, adaptive technology, digital literacy and digital access. Award applications must include both the financial institutions (bank and credit union) and the partnering organizations working on the project. "Thirty-one years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities are still more likely to be low- or moderate-income, as well as less likely to be banked or have access to mainstream credit," said Michael Roush, Director, Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development. "However, we know that vibrant communities are best supported when economic opportunities are inclusive of all LMI populations, including people with disabilities. These awards will recognize the community-based organizations and financial institutions who have showed innovation, impact and inclusiveness in their efforts on behalf of people with disabilities." The Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development works to improve the financial health and well-being of low- and moderate-income individuals with disabilities and their families by increasing awareness and usage of the opportunities and resources available under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Nominations can be made by filling out the online application form. The submission deadline is October 22, 2021; award winners will be announced on November 10, 2021. To view last year's winners: Paraquad, LaunchCode and the Regions Foundation; Easterseals Iowa and Iowa Able Foundation; and Houston Financial Inclusion Working Group and JPMorgan Chase, visit the Inclusive Community Development Awards webpage. Launched in 2019, the Center is focused on the importance of inclusive community development activities. These include improving how the financial, community development and disability communities can work more closely together to respond to current financial and economic challenges and bringing attention to positive examples of CRA investment, lending and service that support financial resilience for LMI people with disabilities and their families. In the next year, the Center's work will remain focused on improving the financial health and well-being of LMI individuals with disabilities and their families by increasing awareness and usage of the opportunities and resources available under the CRA. National Disability Institute is the first and only national organization exclusively focused on the financial health and wellness of people with disabilities and their families. With an emphasis on poverty reduction, financial capability and financial inclusion, NDI continues to build extensive relationships between the disability and financial communities to focus on systems change. Visit the Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development website to learn more about its activities. About the Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development The Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development is focused on improving the financial health and well-being of low- and moderate-income (LMI) individuals with disabilities and their families by increasing awareness and usage of the opportunities and resources available under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The Center creates an opportunity to reexamine the approaches, roles and responsibilities of regulated financial institutions to proactively address the financial access and economic opportunity needs of people with disabilities through CRA. To learn more about the Center for Disability-Inclusive Community Development and its work, visit www.cdicd.org. About National Disability Institute National Disability Institute (NDI) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better financial future for people with disabilities and their families. The first national organization committed exclusively to championing economic empowerment, financial education, asset development and financial stability for all persons with disabilities, NDI affects change through public education, policy development, training, technical assistance and innovative initiatives. To learn more, visit www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org. Engage with NDI on Facebook: @NationalDisability or follow NDI on Twitter: @NatDisability. Contact: Kathleen Brannigan National Disability Institute 917-647-4430 [email protected] SOURCE National Disability Institute Related Links https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/ CLIFTON, N.J., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- When remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the area, it caused torrential rainfall to overflow the banks and contaminate the New Street Reservoir. Water from the reservoir, which supplies Clifton, Passaic, Paterson and Woodland Park could no longer be used, causing a Boil Water Advisory to be issued in accordance with NJ Department of Environmental Protection regulations (NJ DEP). In the weeks since the hurricane, Passaic Valley Water Commission (PVWC) has been working diligently to bring the reservoir back to the high-quality water standards that existed prior to the hurricane. Massive pumps have been used to bring in millions-of-gallons of clean water while contaminated water was removed from the reservoir. Once the reservoir is brought back to satisfactory levels, the next step in the process is to clean all the water pipes in the area, by flushing out an estimated 4,000 water hydrants. This process will run 24-hours a day and could take another 10 to 14 days to complete. PVWC is adding extra crews to try to finish the flushing more quickly. PVWC warns that customers may experience unavoidable discoloration or low pressure during the flushing process. Customers that see water discoloration should open the cold-water faucet and allow the water to run for a minute or two until it clears. After the water pipes have all been flushed, PVWC will conduct required testing to ensure the water is clean and meets all safe drinking water standards. When NJ DEP authorizes the ending of the Boil Water Advisory, PVWC will notify its customers. PVWC thanks its customers for their patience and understanding during this situation and remains committed to replacing the open finished water reservoirs with enclosed water storage tanks to prevent this from happening again. In the meantime, consumers are urged to visit www.PVWC.com/Alerts for additional information and to sign-up for emergency notifications via voice, text and/or email. PVWC is New Jersey's largest public drinking water provider serving over 800,000 consumers in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris and Passaic counties. For more information about this release please contact Lendel Jones at 609-332-4821 or [email protected] SOURCE Passaic Valley Water Commission Related Links www.pvwc.com WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the enactment of SB8 in Texas an unconstitutional law that will leave millions of women without access to critical abortion care Corporate Accountability Action is fighting back by launching #OffTheBANWagon . The new project will shine a light on the corporations that have bankrolled the campaigns of the Texas state legislators who sponsored this cruel abortion ban. CAA ad calling out AT&T. AT&T, NBC Universal, Time Warner, and Charter Communications spent over $1 million financing the campaigns of Texas legislators that effectively ended 50 years of precedent established by Roe v. Wade and repeatedly affirmed. These powerful corporations have been publicly advocating for equity and empowerment for women while behind the scenes spending hundreds of thousands of dollars propping up state legislators who continue to push and champion harmful legislation that stands in direct contradiction to the company's statements. Click here to watch CAA's first ad calling out AT&T that's set to air in the Dallas media market and on digital beginning this week. Corporate Donor Contributions to Anti-Abortion Lawmakers AT&T donated $645,383 to the primary sponsors in Texas and $22,900 to the sponsors of HB 1510 still serving in the Mississippi legislature. and to the sponsors of HB 1510 still serving in the legislature. Time Warner Cable /Charter Communications donated $523,661 to the primary sponsors in Texas. to the primary sponsors in Texas. NBC Universal donated $88,000 to the primary sponsors in Texas . AT&T, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, donated the largest amount to the sponsors of the extreme Texas abortion ban while widely claiming that "one of the company's 'core values' was 'gender equity and the empowerment of women." "Women in Texas and across the nation deserve to know that companies they've long patronized, which claim to want to empower women, are actually doing the exact opposite. Through their support of anti-abortion extremists, companies like AT&T helped enact one of the most cruel and disgraceful laws in the country, and they should be held accountable," said #OffTheBANWagon spokesperson Julie McClain Downey. "This law not only put an end to safe and legal abortions in Texas, but it interjected perfect strangers into the private, time sensitive, and deeply personal medical decisions of individuals on strict and baseless timelines and without exceptions for victims of rape and incest. We must call these companies out for their hypocrisy and put an end to the enactment of similar bans being proposed around the country." "This abortion ban part of the Republican plan to make reproductive health care completely out-of-reach is devastating, which is why companies that backed the lawmakers responsible for this cannot be permitted to bury their heads in the sand," said reproductive rights advocate and American Bridge co-chair Cecile Richards. "By funding politicians that have made clear their disdain for reproductive freedom, corporations are giving lawmakers across the country the green light to ban essential health services while giving lip service to 'equity' and 'empowerment.' We cannot let this go on, which is why it's so important to call out their hypocrisy and stop them from continuing to harm people." SB8, recently passed by the Texas legislature and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott (R), effectively bans abortions for millions of women with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Moreover, it allows for vigilante justice giving any individual the right to sue another over a personal medical decision. A similar law has been passed in Mississippi and is on the docket to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. As a result of the Texas ban, state legislatures across the country are considering extreme abortion ban laws of their own, taking away long-established reproductive rights. The #OffTheBANWagon campaign, a project of Corporate Accountability Action and American Bridge 21st Century, will be releasing advertisements focused on educating Texas residents on the corporate backers of the ban, along with the critical role these major corporations played in the ultimate passing of the law. To learn more about how to hold these corporations accountable, visit OffTheBANWagon.org or Twitter @CAAction2021 , Facebook at / corporateaccountabilityaction , or on Instagram @corporateaccountabilityaction . SOURCE Corporate Accountability Action MANILA, Philippines, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybint, a global cyber education training company, partners with Xepto Education, the leading education tech company in the Philippines, to bring its cybersecurity bootcamp and workshops to the nation. Xepto will be managing the courses together with Mantua Cybersecurity, a major Philippine cybersecurity company offering security testing, consulting, and training services. A ransomware cyber attack costs a Filipino company or organization about $820,000 on average, a report published in May 2021 revealed. On its global list of countries where users face the highest risk of online infection, Kaspersky ranked the Philippines 13th this year. The country's business association is expecting cyber crime to soar even further, an uptick that comes amid a lingering gap in the local cybersecurity talent pool. At the same time, about 44 percent of businesses in the country say that they struggle to hire people with the right cybersecurity skills. Through this partnership with Xepto, Cybint will work to help the country close this gap, empowering local businesses to prepare their employees for the incoming flurry of cyber attacks. In mid-September, Cybint has launched its Secure Coding workshop in the Philippines, introducing the local Web developers to all the best practices in secure application and website design. Mantua Cybersecurity will provide highly trained instructors with rich experience in the field to make sure those signing up receive the most relevant and industry-proven guidelines. The five-day, forty-hour workshop is designed to deliver the theory of security coding, along with rigorous hands-on training for students. At later stages, the partners are also planning to put Cybint's Bootcamp on offer. Cybint's military-grade course guides the students through the core cybersecurity concepts, tools, and skills, leaving them well-equipped to seek entry-level positions in the field. Since 2014, Cybint has trained over 10,000 individuals across four continents. Some 97 percent of Cybint bootcamp graduates land jobs in cybersecurity shortly after completing the intensive course. "We are delighted to be bringing our workshops and bootcamp to the Philippines with Xepto," says Roy Zur, Founder and CEO of Cybint. "As businesses move online in the wake of the pandemic, cybersecurity becomes the top priority due to the skyrocketing number of cyber attacks. I believe that in today's world, cybersecurity awareness and skills are a must for any professional, even on non-technical jobs, and we are proud to be delivering these exact skills to our students." "From the many companies we deal with in the industry, we see that our partnership with Cybint is just what we need to train the next generation of cybersecurity talent," says Paco Sandejas, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Xepto Education. "The demand for professionals in the field is soaring, and Cybint's format is ideal to respond to it lightning-fast, without making any compromises on the quality of the education. Mantua Cybersecurity, for its part, is best-equipped to support the project with trained instructors, as it knows the threatscape that Philippine companies are facing inside out. Together, we will help the Philippine businesses bolster their cyber defenses." About Cybint Cybint is a global cyber education company with a commitment to reskilling the workforce and upskilling the industry in cybersecurity. With innovative and leading-edge education and training solutions, Cybint tackles cybersecurity's two greatest threats: the talent shortage and the skills gap. The Cybint team is comprised of military cyber experts, industry professionals, and educators united under the vision of creating a safer digital world through education, training, and collaboration. For more information, visit www.cybintsolutions.com About Xepto Education Founded in 2008, Xepto Education is the leading provider of high-tech solutions and training for educational institutions in the Philippines. Backed by venture companies including Narra Ventures, Tallwood Ventures, and Summit Investments Worldwide, the company develops innovative IT services for educational institutions. Its offerings include training for teachers and lecturers, a learning management system, and an online education platform. For more information, visit https://xeptoeducation.com/ About Mantua Cybersecurity Mantua Cybersecurity is a cybersecurity services company operating in the Philippines and Singapore. Backed by software and cloud solution provider Stratpoint Technologies and Narra Ventures, it offers its customers a diverse range of services, including penetration testing and audit, security monitoring, consulting and compliance, and cybersecurity training. For more information, visit https://mantuaservices.com/ SOURCE Cybint Related Links https://www.cybintsolutions.com/ The Internet of Military Things Edge Platform is a converged infrastructure solution consisting of EDJX EdjOS with Cubic Corporation's edge compute and networking hardware. Blueforce Development , a leading innovator in sensor fusion, sensor cueing, and Artificial and Predictive Intelligence software at the edge, will become the first certified application developer on the IoMT Platform. The Internet of Military Things Edge Platform, which has significant implications for IoT and advanced AI solutions at the far edge of the network, is the first major solution to be built on the Autonomy Institute GRID that includes Public Infrastructure Network Node (PINN) , announced earlier this year. The Autonomy Institute is the conduit for these technologies combining to form a transformational end-to-end IoT solution from base to battlefield, solving immediate challenges for the military and civilian first responders. The IoMT Platform will launch on the Autonomy Institute Alpha Lab at Texas Military Department's (TMD) Camp Mabry in Austin, TX, coinciding with the deployment of PINN infrastructure. The PINN is the first unified open standard to support 5G wireless, Edge Computing, Radar, Lidar, enhanced GPS, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and solves current infrastructure challenges. The Autonomy Institute Alpha Lab at Camp Mabry will be available to developers to build, test and deploy next generation IoT solutions providing the blueprint for public safety, military and civilian use cases. The Alpha Lab is part of operationalizing the PINN, which will have significant implications for public safety and disaster response. PINNs will enable first responders to accelerate emergency and disaster response with intelligent infrastructure and facilitate humanitarian assistance with disaster relief and domestic operations. The IoMT Edge Platform is part of the broader future of AI at the edge and IoT story as a key proof point in an emerging market. IoT and 5G marks AI at the edge, the processing of AI algorithms on edge, on users' devices. Internet of Military ThingsTM is an emerging application of this technology, transforming military security and connectivity. "We are excited to support the launch of the Autonomy Institute Alpha Lab. Camp Mabry and the Texas National Guard have become a center of gravity for research and innovation. We are continually looking to leverage and accelerate the adoption of new commercial technology and novel architecture deployments like the PINNs. This Lab will help bring the concept of the Internet of Military Things to fruition by acting as a pathfinder for our systems to connect, share data, and learn. As a nation, we need to move faster if we are to meet the challenges of tomorrow," said Lt. Col. Alex Goldberg, Southwest Region Engagement Lead for the Defense Innovation Unit. "The EDJX platform is a quantum leap in the field of edge computing because it enables our intelligent IoT and C2 application products to scale from base to battlefield, reducing cognitive lift while increasing the tempo of operations for members of the military and our first responders," said Michael Helfrich, Founder and CEO of Blueforce Development. "Military and first responders need actionable intelligence for superior decision-making, where access to data and the fidelity of information is critical to decision-making in time-constrained decision environments." Service members and first responders make quick decisions for mission success and for the safety and security of others who depend on those decisions. These individuals operate under intermittent connectivity, weighty and complex gear, and with limited time to assess an environment before acting. The proliferation of sensors, unnamed vehicles, command posts, and mobile-enabled ground troops has resulted in a battle space that is increasingly complex and sophisticated. Edge computing enables data processing at the tactical edge by decentralizing decision-making changes, bringing the powers of data to the field, providing better information for the military and civilian first responders. "Our innovative compute and networking platforms have been enabling allied forces around the world to benefit from the emerging Internet of Military Things over recent years. Our partnership with EDJX and Blueforce Development will greatly accelerate the proliferation of intelligent and autonomous solutions," said Mike Barthlow, SVP & GM, Cubic Mission Communications and Computing. "We are excited to team up with EDJX, Blueforce, and Autonomy Institute Alpha Lab at Camp Mabry to expand our vision for the safety and security for those operating at the tactical edge." The tactical edge comprises the platforms, sites, and personnel (U.S. military, allied, coalition partners, first responders) operating at lethal risk in a battlespace or a crisis environment characterized by a dependence on information systems and connectivity for survival and mission success. Users are fully engaged, highly stressed, and dependent on their information systems' availability, integrity, and transparency. "Launching the IoMT Edge Platform in partnership with Cubic ushers in the era of Industry 4.0 by bringing all of the key ingredients missing in the pursuit of mobile, intelligent, and autonomous systems development," said John Cowan, EDJX co-founder and CEO. "Innovation will be at the heart of this project and we are excited to work with leading innovators like Blueforce and the Autonomy Institute in the effort to create the future." Call to Action Sign up to attend the roundtable discussion, Critical Infrastructure At The Edge . Roundtable panelists include John Cowan, CEO and Co-founder, EDJX; Jeffrey DeCoux, Chairman, Autonomy Institute; Michael Helfrich, CEO and Founder, Blueforce Development; Mike Barthlow, SVP, Cubic Corporation; Major General (ret.) James K. "Red" Brown, Deputy Commanding General, Army National Guard for United States Army Forces Command. Moderator: Laura Roman PhD, CMO, EDJX. About EDJX EDJX is an edge computing platform that makes it easy to write edge and IoT applications using serverless computing, accelerate content delivery, increase the responsiveness of edge applications, and secure edge data at the source. EDJX helps businesses handle the explosive demand for data processing to serve real-world edge computing applications, including industrial IoT, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics. Led by cloud industry veterans John Cowan and James Thomason, EDJX is a privately held company based in Raleigh, NC. Visit EDJX and follow EDJX on LinkedIn and Twitter . About Cubic Corporation Guided by continuous customer collaboration, Cubic Mission Communications and Computing is reshaping multi-domain operations through mission-inspired solutions that are big on performance but small in size. Our reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP), modular designs, and class-leading scalability combined with the latest satellite, cellular, and radio frequency (RF) technology ensure our users can meet the emerging Internet of Military Things requirements, both now and into the future. On land, at sea, or in the air, our solutions are faster to deploy, easier to learn, and simpler to use. Cubic Mission Communications and Computing is a business unit of Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions, a Cubic Corporation division. For more information about Cubic, please visit the company's website at www.cubic.com or on Twitter @CubicCorp. About Blueforce Development Corporation Blueforce Development is a turnkey IoT/sensor communication platform that delivers shared and real-time actionable insights to provide rapid, secure, intelligent connectivity between people, sensors, and systems in edge-based IoT environments to accelerate and enhance decision making. More information can be found at blueforcedev.com or by calling Blueforce at 866-960-0204. About Autonomy Institute Autonomy Institute is a cooperative research consortium focused on advancing and accelerating Autonomy and AI at the edge. Autonomy Institute aligns government, industry, academia, and the public to create the policies, industry, jobs, and community benefits of autonomy, starting with Intelligent and Autonomous Infrastructure. Investment in a twenty-first century Intelligent and Autonomous infrastructure is among the highest priorities for stimulating economic and job growth. Autonomy Institute's deployment of the Public Infrastructure Network Node (PINN) will be as critical to a city as roads, power, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. Learn more about PINN at Autonomy.institute and follow Autonomy Institute on LinkedIn and Twitter . Media contact: Laura Roman [email protected] SOURCE EDJX, Inc. Related Links http://edjx.io NEW ALBANY, Ind., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kittle Property Group, Inc., a leader in the multi-family housing industry, is pleased to announce the opening of its newest property in the Hoosier State: Monon Crossing. Located in New Albany, just across the river from Louisville, Monon Crossing offers families a new option in the affordable housing market. Monon Crossing Apartments | New Albany Apartments For Rent | Clubhouse Photo Monon Crossing Apartments | New Albany Apartments For Rent | Clubhouse Photo 2 Built on the site of the former Stemwood Corp lumber mill off of Grant Line Road, this $43 million development has redeveloped a large parcel on the north side of New Albany. The newly constructed community features 72 one-bedroom, 108 two-bedroom, 40 three-bedroom, and 20 four-bedroom apartment homes for a total of 240 newly constructed apartments. All apartment homes are affordable to residents earning between 50% - 70% Area Median Income. "Being able to redevelop the old Stemwood site has presented some unique challenges, but we are excited to revitalize this area of New Albany," said a Kittle Property Group representative. "We are happy to give local community members an affordable housing option and we are ready to welcome them to their new home." Construction on the property began in August 2020 and the first homes became available for leasing in July 2021. Kittle Property Group expects to have all homes available for leasing by May 2022. Residents of Monon Crossing have several options ranging from one- to four-bedroom apartments. One-bedroom apartments offer residents 891 square feet of living space. Two bedroom apartments feature 1,042 square feet, three-bedroom homes have 1,398 square feet, and four-bedroom apartments 1,497 square feet. Residents can also take advantage of garage spaces on-site that are available for rent as well as separate storage units for additional space. All of these new construction apartments come with a variety of amenities that residents will enjoy. Each home comes with wood look flooring in the living spaces and carpet in each bedroom, ceiling fans, walk-in closets, and new GE appliances, including a full size washer and dryer in each home. Professional management and maintenance are also located on-site and are ready to provide swift turnarounds on requests. Residents will also have access to many amenities around the property. This includes a playground, a dog park, picnic and BBQ area, and a pool. The clubhouse will have a fitness center, business center, game room, craft room and a community room with warming kitchen. The central location of the property also offers easy access to shopping, restaurants, and recreational opportunities. There are numerous bike trails in the area, as well as Silver Street Park. The property is located just south of a Wal-Mart for convenient access to groceries and other necessities. On site staff is currently accepting leasing applications for all prospective residents. For leasing information please contact the property at 833-691-1589 or visit their website. About Kittle Property Group, Inc. With roots going back to 1948, Kittle Property Group is a national leader in bringing together community, financial and government partners with innovative plans to develop, construct and manage quality, affordable and market-rate multi-family apartment homes that serve as a catalyst to local economies by sustaining families, neighborhoods and businesses. Kittle Property Group, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, owns and manages more than 18,000 apartment homes, providing homes to 30,000 family members in 19 states, and invested capital of more than $2.5 billion. Media Contact: Laurren Brown 317-902-0494 [email protected] SOURCE Kittle Property Group SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new market study published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., (GIA) the premier market research company, today released its report titled "Dairy Products - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics". The report presents fresh perspectives on opportunities and challenges in a significantly transformed post COVID-19 marketplace. FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 18; Released: April 2021 Executive Pool: 7777 Companies: 2072 - Players covered include Agropur Cooperative; Arla Foods amba; Dairy Farmers of America Inc.; Danone; Dean Foods Company; Fonterra Co-Operative Group Limited; Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd.; Megmilk Snow Brand Co. Ltd.; Meiji Co. Ltd.; Nestle SA; Parmalat S.P.A.; Royal FrieslandCampina N.V.; SanCor Cooperativas Unidas Limitada; Saputo Inc.; Savencia Fromage & Dairy; The Kraft Heinz Company; Unilever NV and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Type (Milk, Cheese, Yogurt, Dessert, Butter, Milk Powder, Cream, Other Types) Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; Spain; Russia; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific (Australia; India; South Korea; and Rest of Asia-Pacific); Latin America (Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; and Rest of Latin America); Middle East (Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates; and Rest of Middle East); and Africa. Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry ABSTRACT- Global Dairy Products Market to Reach $569.4 Billion by 2026 Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Dairy Products estimated at US$458.1 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$569.4 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 3.6% over the analysis period. Milk, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 3.1% CAGR and reach US$172.5 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Cheese segment is readjusted to a revised 3% CAGR for the next 7-year period. The U.S. Market is Estimated at $127.5 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $115.7 Billion by 2026 The Dairy Products market in the U.S. is estimated at US$127.5 Billion in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$115.7 Billion by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 6.4% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 1.1% and 2.7% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 1.8% CAGR. Yogurt Segment to Reach US$72.7 Billion by the year 2026 In the global Yogurt segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 4.1% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$41.6 Billion in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of US$55 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. More MarketGlass Platform Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide. Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years. CONTACTS: Zak Ali Director, Corporate Communications Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Phone: 1-408-528-9966 www.StrategyR.com Email: [email protected] LINKS Join Our Expert Panel https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp Connect With Us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./ Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/marketbytes Journalists & Media [email protected] SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Related Links http://www.strategyr.com HOUSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GSV announced today the investment of a $750,000 Partner Preferred investment led by Golden Section Ventures (GSV) to drive expansion and growth. Statera is the leader in physician compensation and analytics software for health systems and multi-provider practices. GSV Logo statera Logo "Amy Jackson and her team are experts in physician compensation and medical informatics. They know the problem health systems and providers face in this area and they have solutions that provide tangible value. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to partner with such a great team," says Dougal Cameron, General Partner at GSV. "Statera is already trusted by some of the world's top institutions and leading medical groups to ensure seamless physician performance and compensation management. Our platform automates the complex physician compensation process, while providing physicians with a modern, intuitive interface and personalized performance improvement insights," stated Amy Jackson, Statera Founder and CEO. "But medicine is a team sport. Our new suite of social tools will redefine the relationship between physician performance, organizational goals, and care outcomes. We're confident that with their deep healthcare expertise and track record of success, GSV is the right partner for this next step in our journey." "There is no replacement for creative founders who have lived experience in their customer's shoes. We love partnering with these kinds of founders. Amy Jackson is a perfect example of such a founder. We are confident that this team will continue driving success and adding value for their customers, their team, and their industry," says Adam Day, General Partner at GSV. Statera is the leader in physician compensation and analytics software for health systems and multi-provider practices. The company's solutions help drive significant value by bringing clarity to the opaque world of physician pay for the benefit of providers and executives. For more information, please visit www.hellostatera.com. GSV is a Houston based investment fund specializing in early-stage B2B software companies at the inflection point of expansion. GSV partners with driven entrepreneurs to build great companies. The fund is excited to meet entrepreneurs who have a deep understanding of the end customer's problems and an existing product with demonstrated traction. For more information, please visit www.gstvc.com. Statera Boston, MA https://hellostatera.com Golden Section Ventures 808 Travis Street, Suite 1406 Houston, Texas 77002 https://gstvc.com [email protected] Media Contact: Dougal Cameron [email protected] 888-935-9359 SOURCE GSV FORT WAYNE, Ind., Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hannah Copeland, MD, FACS, FACC, is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted Surgeon for her outstanding work in the field of Medicine and for her professional excellence at Lutheran Health Physicians. As a Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon, she cares for patients who require all aspects of advanced cardiovascular procedures. She routinely provides heart transplants, mechanical circulatory support, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and cardiac critical care medicine. Hannah Copeland, MD, FACS, FACC In 2020, Dr. Copeland joined the Lutheran Heart Physicians, with five years of experience in the medical field. She has previously worked at the University of Mississippi Medical Center as a member of the cardiac surgery team. Throughout her career, she has contributed to many research presentations and publications on a wide array of topics. To begin her distinguished career, Dr. Copeland first attended the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine in Kansas City, MO. She next completed a residency at the General Surgery University of California in San Diego, CA. Dr. Copeland completed a Fellowship in Cardio Surgery Transplant at Indiana University in Indianapolis, IN. She is board-certified in Thoracic Surgery. To remain abreast of developments in the field, Dr. Copeland is affiliated with the American College of Cardiology, American College of Surgeons, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, American Society of Transplantation, and the Association of Academic Surgery. For more information, visit https://www.lutheranhealthphysicians.com/. Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected] SOURCE Continental Who's Who Related Links http://www.continentalwhoswho.com PHOENIX, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) (the "Company")a vertically integrated, cannabis dispensary franchisor and operator that produces premium, award-winning productstoday announced continued development of its cannabis dispensary franchise brand, Unity Rd., across the Northeastern United States. The industry trailblazer signed agreements for New Jersey and Virginia alongside continued expansion across the Northeast region: - New Jersey The New Jersey agreement was signed with an experienced entrepreneur whose familiarity with franchising drew him to the investment opportunity. Dish Patel and his business partner will join the strong list of three franchise groups that have signed with Unity Rd. to bring the brand to New Jersey they're all awaiting legislation to clear them for development. - Virginia As investors line up for the opportunity to bring Unity Rd.'s business model to their communities, Laurin Wallace, along with two business partners, signed on recently to bring a Unity Rd. to the Old Dominion state. - Maine Unity Rd. also supported their Maine franchise group in securing a lease and are now working with them on securing a dispensary license. This group was originally planning on developing in Massachusetts but pivoted to pursue opportunities in Maine to break into the burgeoning industry sooner. The state's adult-use market launched in October 2020 and has been flourishing. This past August, it exceeded $10 million in sales for the first time in one month. Learn more about Item 9 Labs Corp. and its cannabis franchise, Unity Rd., contact [email protected] or 800-403-1140, or visit https://investors.item9labscorp.com/. Franchise Model Creates Low Corporate Capital Requirements for National Expansion The Company acquired Unity Rd.'s parent company, OCG Inc., earlier this year, making it the first national, vertically integrated cannabis franchise company in the US. The combination of the Unity Rd. cannabis retail franchise and premium Item 9 Labs products puts Item 9 Labs Corp. in a unique industry position. Item 9 Labs Corp.'s CEO Andrew Bowden, said "Unity Rd. franchise partners own and operate 100% of their businesses. Therefore, low corporate capital is required for national development of the brand, creating a capital-efficient method for both our retail and product expansion. By clustering our operations, we're creating a focused network to more effectively launch the Unity Rd. and Item 9 Labs brands into new markets." Item 9 Labs Corp. plans to develop top tier cultivation and lab facilities all across the country as Unity Rd. franchises start to open the first Unity Rd. franchise opened this past June in Boulder, Colorado. This strategic growth plan gives Unity Rd. operators front-of-the-line access to a reliable product supply chain and the Unity Rd. brand the national product consistency that consumers have come to expect from franchises. It also eases new market product entry with a built-in distribution platform that will bring Item 9 Labs across the nation. Currently, Unity Rd. has multiple agreements signed with more than 15 entrepreneurial groups who are in various stages of development across eight states. As a traditional franchise model, Unity Rd. franchise partners own 100% of their dispensary license and business, while benefitting from one of the safest routes for entrepreneurship in the complex, highly-regulated cannabis industry. The dispensary franchise's time-tested Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and veteran team guide franchise partners through every operational function of the business, whether it be assisting with cash flow, product selection or the ever-changing regulations. "The cannabis industry and all its complexities can be intimidating, leaving even the most capable of investors and operators unsure of where to start," said Unity Rd.'s VP of Franchise Development Justin Livingston. "As part of the Unity Rd. network, our partners can operate their dispensaries more efficiently resulting in more time to focus on growing the business rather than managing it. We're offering the supportive network and tools they need to reach new heights and achieve their business goals." Franchise partners sign 10-year agreements and pay a $100,000 franchise fee up-front. The Company also earns a residual monthly 5% gross royalty on top-line revenue and a 2% marketing royalty fee per location. About Item 9 Labs Corp. Item 9 Labs Corp. (OTCQX: INLB) is a vertically integrated cannabis operator and dispensary franchisor delivering premium products from its large-scale cultivation and production facilities in the United States. The award-winning Item 9 Labs brand specializes in best-in-class products and user experience across several cannabis categories. The company also offers a unique dispensary franchise model through the national Unity Rd. retail brand. Easing barriers to entry, the franchise provides an opportunity for both new and existing dispensary owners to leverage the knowledge, resources, and ongoing support needed to thrive in their state compliantly and successfully. Item 9 Labs brings the best industry practices to markets nationwide through distinctive retail experience, cultivation capabilities, and product innovation. The veteran management team combines a diverse skill set with deep experience in the cannabis sector, franchising, and the capital markets to lead a new generation of public cannabis companies that provide transparency, consistency, and well-being. Headquartered in Arizona, the company is currently expanding its operations space by 650,000+ square feet on its 50-acre site, one of the largest properties in Arizona zoned to grow and cultivate flower. For additional information, visit item9labscorp.com. About Unity Rd. Unity Rd. is bridging the two previously disconnected worlds of cannabis and franchising. The industry trailblazer is the first to bring the cannabis dispensary franchise model to the United Stateswith duality of prowess in both industries to back it up. Built up from a collective 200 years in the legal cannabis industry and franchising, the company helps eager operators enter the complex industry with ease. The marijuana franchise pioneer offers its partners the knowledge, resources, and ongoing support needed to compliantly and successfully operate a dispensary. Launched in 2018, Unity Rd. has signed multiple agreements with more than 15 entrepreneurial groups across the country. Recently, it was named one of the top cannabis retail leaders in the nation by MJBizDaily magazine and one of the "Best Cannabis Companies to Work For" in both the dispensary and cultivation categories in Cannabis Business Times' elite 2020 list. The company is also the first cannabis business to earn a Franchise Times Dealmakers award. For more information, visit unityrd.com. Media Contact: Item 9 Labs Jayne Levy, Director of Communications Email: [email protected] Investor Contact: Item 9 Labs 800-403-1140 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Item 9 Labs Corp. Related Links http://item9labscorp.com MILWAUKEE, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Milwaukee headquartered fixed-base operator Jet In has announced plans to break ground on its new facility located at 504 E Citation Way at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. An $11 million investment will permit the development of the last greenfield parcel on the airport into the premier facility for general aviation in the state of Wisconsin. The facility will provide a full complement of services and amenities, including heated hangars capable of accommodating the largest general aviation aircraft. A thoughtfully designed terminal will incorporate the latest technology advancements and will cater to every need of passengers and flight crew. Sustainability was a top priority in the facility's design, incorporating energy-efficient heating and cooling technologies, an all-electric fleet of aircraft towing equipment, and electric crew and courtesy cars. The facility will be fully compliant with the City of Milwaukee's Green Infrastructure Plan. The Jet In facility will open to the public as a full-service fixed-base operator. It will also serve as the Milwaukee base of operations for its sister company, Jet Out. The infrastructure and staff at the new facility will play a critical role in Jet Out's ambitious plans to scale its successful aircraft co-ownership program. "Services like those provided by Jet In and Jet Out are more essential than ever," said Joseph Crivello, the Chief Executive Officer of Jet In and Jet Out. "As we continue to adjust to a post-pandemic world, general aviation provides solutions for individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses, sporting teams, and other institutions seeking to manage risk and adapt their operations to a new reality. Jet In and Jet Out are proud to meet this need." Mr. Crivello went on, "We'd like to thank the many strategic partners who have each played an important role in launching this major development project, including Wisconsin Bank & Trust, RODAC Development and Construction and the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport." FOR MORE INFORMATION: Joseph Crivello Chief Executive Officer (414) 283-2627 [email protected] SOURCE Jet In Amor Prohibido is an adaptation of the novel Ask-i Memnu by the famous Turkish writer Halit Ziya Usakligil and marks the return of Beren Saat to the Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S. in the starring role of the beautiful Bihter, a young woman from a good family who suffers the sudden loss of her father. But while Bihter visits her father's grave every day, unable to overcome his sudden demise, the rest of the family, including her mother, goes on as if nothing had happened. While Bihter lives in a permanent state of mourning, her mother Fatma (Nebahat Cehre) is busy preparing for the wedding of her other daughter, while she herself tries to capture the attention of a rich widower. The plot will focus on how complex family relationships can be, especially between mother and daughter. Will Bihter be able to keep her mother out of her life? Will Fatma allow her daughter to live the life she thought was her due? Will Fatma be her daughter's enemy, or will she become an ally in order to maintain her status in a rich society? Amor Prohibido will captivate the U.S. Hispanic audience with its intense plot of loves, passions, deceptions, and betrayals. It should be noted that Beren Saat's masterful performance in the series won her two consecutive Golden Butterfly awards (Turkey's Emmys) for Best Actress. Kanal D Drama is the product of a strategic alliance between THEMA America, a Canal+ group company, and Kanal D International, leaders in exporting Turkish productions worldwide, and is the first and only channel that distributes the best Turkish dramas worldwide. Since its launch, Kanal D Drama's excellent productions have been widely accepted by the Spanish-speaking audience in the United States. Amor Prohibido will air on Kanal D Drama Monday through Friday at 11:40 p.m. Eastern / 8:40 p.m Pacific on Xfinity, Xfinity On Demand, and Verizon FiOS (channel 1586). To see the official trailer, visit https://youtu.be/nED7f4rDZIg To learn more about Kanal D Drama and its programming in the United States, visit www.kanalddrama.com and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify. About Thema America: THEMA, a Canal+ group company, is a leading distributor of thematic and multicultural content on all platforms for MVPDs (Multichannel Video Programming Distributors). It has a varied portfolio of more than 180 channels worldwide. Its portfolio includes, among others, Kanal D Drama, in association with Kanal D International; MEZZO Live HD a Canal+'s, also it offers Mexico's leading channels, Once Mexico and Canal 22 International, and the Dominican Republic's Telemicro Internacional, among others. About Kanal D International: Kanal D International is the global business arm of Demiroren Media Group, Europe's leading media organization operating at television, newspaper, internet and magazine publishing and distribution industries. Since 2018, Kanal D International has widened its presence at the content world with Kanal D International Networks brand to reach the end-user. The distribution arm of the company continues its activities under the brand Kanal D International and Kanal D International Networks is the name of the business line that holds all linear assets. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1632527/Amor_Prohibido.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1488303/KANAL_D_DRAMA_Logo.jpg SOURCE Thema America Related Links https://www.kanalddrama.com/ Bringing over 25 years of experience in leading digital transformation initiatives within the banking, financial services and credit union industries, Bandaru will be responsible for managing the technology infrastructure and digital strategic initiatives to support Kinecta's strong financial position and longstanding commitment to its members, employees and communities. Bandaru will report to Keith Sultemeier, Chief Executive Officer of Kinecta. "We're honored to welcome Raj Bandaru to our leadership team," said Sultemeier. "Raj's excellent blend of strategic, technological and business skills, in addition to his passion for developing his employees to their fullest potential, will further Kinecta's goal of offering the latest digital strategies to better serve our members and communities." Sultemeier added, "I would like to acknowledge and thank our retiring SVP/CIO, Sharon Moseley, for her outstanding contributions. In 2012, Sharon and her amazing IT team developed an overarching Omni-channel strategy, aimed at creating a seamless and personalized banking experience for our members regardless of their chosen technology channel. We congratulate Sharon on her retirement and are confident that Kinecta's members and team will continue to benefit from her values-based approach." In Bandaru's most recent role as Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Gesa Credit Union, he was instrumental in driving digital transformation, multiple mergers, core digital transformations and online/mobile banking conversions. Furthermore, Bandaru was given the opportunity to take on additional responsibility for back-office operations, fraud management and the member contact center. In 2020, he also joined Digital Align, Inc., a leader in business process transformation for credit unions, as an advisor. Bandaru started his career as an Oracle database developer and an AIX system administrator and consulted with several different Fortune 500 companies prior to joining JPMorgan Chase & Co, where he worked for 14 years holding various leadership roles of increasing responsibilities managing global teams and leading several strategic initiatives, mergers, acquisitions, conversions, datacenter consolidations and offshoring initiatives. With the hiring of Bandaru, Kinecta bolsters its Executive Management Team to continue guiding its members and communities to financial security. Last April, Kinecta announced its merger with Xceed Financial Credit Union, which positioned it as the nation's 35th largest credit union, California's eighth largest in terms of asset size and the largest credit union operating in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County. About Kinecta Federal Credit Union Kinecta Federal Credit Union is the country's 35th largest credit union, with assets of $6.5 billion and over 270,000 member-owners. Our 800+ employees serve members from 32 branches, a variety of specialty offices, and highly responsive call centers on both coasts. Banking the Southern California area for more than 80 years, with recent expansion to Northern California, New York, and New Jersey, Kinecta offers its members a full range of financial products through the Credit Union and its subsidiaries, Kinecta Wealth Management and Kinecta Insurance Services. Daily Breeze readers have named Kinecta a top South Bay credit union for the past 10 years, and Kinecta was voted Easy Reader's 2020 "Best of the Beach" Credit Union. SOURCE Kinecta Federal Credit Union Related Links www.kinecta.org A multidisciplinary research team led by Loyola Marymount University aims to shift that course by creating an innovative seafood traceability network that will improve stock management and ensure the sustainability of octopus fisheries. The project's first phase will be funded with a $750,000 award over 12 months from the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator . "Working with a range of partners and leading-edge technology, we plan to produce a traceability tool that will allow for a better understanding of the species caught, the source of the product, and confirmation of its legitimate path from fishery to fork," said Demian Willette, assistant professor of biology in LMU's Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering, who will serve as the team's lead principal investigator. The project is one of 28 awardees in the NSF Convergence Accelerator's 2021 cohort. In the first phase, which includes nine months of intensive training and planning, teams will develop use-inspired solutions to societal challenges in two areas: ocean-related industries and resources, or communications systems aligned to combating misinformation, disinformation, and trust and authenticity. The 15-member team led by Willette includes experts from seven countries in the fields of fisheries management, marine biology, computer science, data science and analytics, environmental anthropology, genetics, and fisheries trade policy. Additionally, 14 industry partners, from fishers to seafood processors, will help inform and test the human-centered design of the traceability tool for real-world use. Their objectives are to develop a prototype traceability system allowing for affordable identification of species and area of capture for wild octopus fisheries in the U.S. and abroad; to bring together a community-based citizen-science network to gather new data from portable environmental DNA (eDNA) kits; and to set a system in place to link traceability, sustainability and legality to support the development of a blue economy around the octopus value chain. eDNA is free DNA that persists in the environment, providing an indication of which organisms are prevalent or in the vicinity. Water samples collected by team members off Southern California and Campeche/Yucatan, Mexico will be analyzed at Willette's LMU laboratory, and the results stored with other data in the SeaTraceBlueNet dashboard. While the team will focus on cephalopods, Willette said, its overall aim is to provide a comprehensive system to enable any seafood item to be harvested, distributed and processed through to the consumer in sustainable ways. "The Convergence Accelerator's curriculum, consisting of human-centered design, user discovery, team science, early-stage prototyping, and pitch preparation is designed to provide our funded teams the tools to transition their solutions into practice," said Office Head Douglas Maughan of the NSF Convergence Accelerator program. "Phase One teams are expected to apply the curriculum, as well as focus on cross-cutting partnerships as most national-scale challenges cannot be solved with a single discipline and expertise." In addition to LMU, team members and industry partners represent: The Bay Foundation; Tohoku University Graduate School/Agricultural Science; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); AiCeph LLC; Rhodes University; Booz Allen Hamilton; El Colegio de la Frontera Sur; Jupiter Data Factory; Tohoku University Center for Northeast Asian Studies; Brandenberg University of Technology; Alaska Pacific University; Aberystwyth University; Netuno USA Inc.; North Atlantic Inc.; Stavis Foods; Tetra Tech Inc.; Coastal Ocean Observing System/Gulf of Mexico (GCOOS); Marganzo Seafood; SmartFish Inc.; Santa Monica Seafood Inc.; NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); Sociedad Coopertiva Punta Maxtun; Sea Pact; and Iridian Genomes Inc. SOURCE Loyola Marymount University Related Links www.lmu.edu SHANGHAI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lufax Holding Ltd ("Lufax" or the "Company") (NYSE: LU), a leading technology-empowered personal financial services platform in China, today released its first Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report. The report highlights the Company's long-term commitment to inclusive finance, improving access to financial services for small and micro business owners, alleviating rural poverty, supporting the real economy and other societal benefits through FinTech innovations. The report provides a look at the Company's ESG performance for 2020 and offers a comprehensive overview of its commitment to making retail borrowing and wealth management easier, safer and more efficient. Of the many areas covered in the report, a few to highlight include achievements in corporate governance, providing inclusive financing to small and micro businesses, strengthening consumer protections, contributing to poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, and promoting green finance. "In this report, we present our sustainability achievements and express our determination to developing long-term value," said Guangheng Ji, Chairman of Lufax Holding. "Looking ahead, Lufax Holding will continue to stay ahead of the curve and capture emerging opportunities. With positive financial services as the starting point, we will innovate and drive forward. We will bolster inclusive finance, support the wider economy, fulfil our corporate responsibilities and create our own sustainability path." "Our goal is to become a best-practice benchmark for compliance and governance among overseas-listed Chinese companies," commented Ji. Among the many focus areas addressed in the ESG report, key highlights from the past year include the following: Providing inclusive financing to small and micro businesses Small and micro businesses contribute significantly to economic and social development. However, they usually face financing difficulties in their development process, especially in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges across the world. Making retail borrowing easier, safer, and more efficient is at the very core of Lufax's mission. As part of the Company's commitment to providing convenient financial services for small and micro business owners, in 2020 Lufax's retail credit facilitation platform subsidiary Ping An Puhui ("Puhui") set up a special loan channel during the pandemic to provide affected companies and individuals with loans for small and micro businesses. This initiative eased issues caused by capital shortages and limited loan channels due to the pandemic. As of 2020, Lufax has helped more than 1.24 million small and micro businesses and provided inclusive finance for 2.76 million people. By the end of the year, Lufax's total inclusive credit reached RMB 564.961 billion, with its balance of inclusive credit loans reaching RMB 545.149 billion. Supporting public welfare and revitalizing the rural economy As underscored in the ESG report, Lufax is committed to alleviating poverty by offering products and services tailored to empower vulnerable groups for long-term rural revitalization. Lufax's subsidiary Puhui has launched innovative projects to improve access to financing for vulnerable groups in less developed regions. Initiatives on improving rural women's employment and entrepreneurship include a program providing preferential agricultural loans to female entrepreneurs in less developed regions. Puhui also founded a special "Mom's Sewing" program that provides sewing machines, production materials and social connections to help local women in Liangshan prefecture monetize traditional handicrafts. Puhui also focused on rural revitalization in its preferential agricultural loans project that provides diversified, affordable, and convenient loan services for rural entrepreneurs. Additionally, Puhui encourages rural revitalization through its "New Farmers for Poverty Alleviation" project, which targets younger talented farmers who want to return to and build their hometowns by starting businesses. Under this program, Puhui offers emerging agricultural technology to support sustainable development. These projects have injected new momentum into rural economic and industrial development in impoverished areas and support rural revitalization. At present, Puhui has agricultural and rural initiatives in 13 provinces and cities, covering planting, animal husbandry, forestry, fishery and other specialties. By the end of 2020, Puhui had provided assistance funds worth more than RMB 123 million to nearly 300 rural cooperatives and entrepreneurs, directly supporting more than 800 financially distressed households. Moreover, Lufax and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) jointly launched "Big Country, Small Towns", a poverty alleviation plan designed to raise the industrial development level of villages and towns to improve local public welfare and income levels. By combining the customer resource advantages gathered by Lufax's online wealth management platform with the public smart financial system, the Company has created a series of measures to alleviate poverty, improve local career prospects for younger generations, and improve environmental protection. Alongside local industries, Lufax has identified a path for people to rise out of poverty and obtain wealth by developing an "Industry + Ecology" sustainable development model that lays a solid foundation for reducing poverty. By focusing on initiatives that provide affordable financing to rural communities instead of donations, Lufax is investing in long-term rural development and sustainability. Developing green finance to support carbon neutrality To support national and international carbon neutrality goals, Lufax has also set up a green finance office to drive its business in a greener way, support the development of green finance and create a low-carbon model for financial institutions. As highlighted in the ESG report, Lufax will continue to support the development of green finance by improving access to green financial products and services as well as introducing more green funds and net worth products like the ESG-related products jointly offered with "Lu Funds." Online financial services like Lufax's "Wealth Cloud" can offer a lower carbon footprint future for financial services. With its paperless system, "Wealth Cloud" already has saved 64.884 tons of paper compared to traditional brick and mortar systems. By continuing to replace traditional offline marketing approaches with environmentally conscious cloud-based alternatives, Lufax hopes to continue its pursuit of green finance and operations. Enhancing financial service quality through technology Lufax has built a thriving and professional team providing services for small and micro business owners and individuals with financing needs all over the country by combining online and offline services. In addition, the Lufax service team also helps customers improve their financial knowledge in key areas such as financing, planning, compliance of financial products, and avoiding investment traps. Lufax has leveraged its artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to improve customer experience and protect consumer rights and interests with an AI-backed customer service platform. Customers may submit their requests and inquiries to both AI robots and human agents over the phone, online or on the mobile app. The AI customer service offers access to financial education and customer service around-the-clock and has achieved an intelligent recognition rate of 99.8% and customer satisfaction rate of 93%, helping to quickly resolve customer issues or inquiries. With the support of the AI customer service platform, Lufax customer service agents have also achieved a high level of customer satisfaction, with an answering rate of 98% and an on-the-spot settlement rate of 95%. Lufax Holding's ESG report is formulated in accordance with the Environmental, Social and Governance Reporting Guide of the Main Board Listing Rules of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited ("HKEx") and the Global Reporting Initiative sustainability reporting standards (GRI Standards). To learn more about Lufax's ESG efforts and to view the report in full, please visit https://ir.lufaxholding.com/files/doc_downloads/2021/2021-9-18-ESG.pdf About Lufax Holding Ltd Lufax Holding Ltd is a leading technology-empowered personal financial services platform in China. Lufax Holding Ltd primarily utilizes its customer-centric product offerings and offline-to-online channels to provide retail credit facilitation services to small business owners and salaried workers in China as well as tailor-made wealth management solutions to China's rapidly growing middle class. The Company has implemented a unique, capital-light, hub-and-spoke business model combining purpose-built technology applications, extensive data, and financial services expertise to effectively facilitate the right products to the right customers. For more information, please visit www.lufaxholding.com. Contacts For media inquiries, please contact: Lufax Holding Ltd Email: [email protected] Edmond Lococo Tel: +86 138-1079-1408 Email: [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Lufax Holding Ltd GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Sunday, November 28, 2021, Museum Store Sunday will celebrate five years of offering inspired shopping at more than 1,650 museum stores representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Globally, the signature event that stimulates consumers and visitors to support museums and other cultural nonprofits has grown to include 24 countries on five continents. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to affect museum attendance worldwide, Museum Store Sunday lets the public know about the important value museums provide for their communities through distinctive experiences and products featured in their stores. Founded by the Museum Store Association (MSA), the event and shopping campaign kicks off annually on the Sunday after Thanksgiving through the holiday season. While there is only one Museum Store Sunday every year, consumers are encouraged to support and shop at museum stores throughout the year. Karen McNeely, President of the MSA Board of Directors and Director of Retail Operations at the Milwaukee Art Museum, says, "We're excited to celebrate the five-year anniversary of Museum Store Sundayfive years of supporting cultural institutions around the globe, offering unique gifts for the whole family, and encouraging communities to shop local. During these uncertain times, Museum Store Sunday provides consumers with opportunities to not only find unique educational giftsbut to also lend needed support to their local museums, many of which are still recovering after extended closures due to the pandemic." Whether browsing in-person or online, holiday shoppers will find a diverse and broad selection of creative gifts for all ages. Through their purchases, patrons help support small businesses, independent suppliers, and artisan makers featured in many museum stores. Proceeds directly support the missions and programs of museums and help arts, cultural, and nonprofit attractions educate and thrive. Many stores will offer discounts, in-store or virtual events, and gifts with purchase in celebration of Museum Store Sunday. Consumers can easily find participating museum stores at https://museumstoresunday.org/find-a-store or online stores at https://museumstoresunday.org/online-store-locator. For more information, visit www.museumstoresunday.org. About the Museum Store Association (MSA) The Museum Store Association is a 501(c)3 organization with the mission of advancing the nonprofit retail industry, its stores, and the success of professionals engaged in it. www.museumstoreassociation.org. SOURCE Museum Store Association Related Links www.museumstoreassociation.org "This recommendation by the NKF-ASN Task Force is an important step forward in assuring health and healthcare equity. We commend the task force for the time, thought, thoroughness, and effort it took to explore this issue deeply and recommend the best path forward for us all," said NKF President Paul M. Palevsky, MD, FASN, FNKF. "The NKF and ASN urge all laboratories and healthcare systems nationwide to adopt this new approach as rapidly as possible so that we can move towards a consistent method of diagnosing kidney diseases that is independent of race. While the work of the task force is an important initial path forward, both of our organizations are committed to continuing to work to eliminate disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease." "As the largest organizations representing kidney patients and health professionals, NKF and ASN are committed to eliminating health disparities that harm kidney patients and ensuring that racial bias does not affect the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of kidney diseases," said ASN President Susan E. Quaggin, MD, FRCP(C), FASN. "By recommending the CKD-EPI creatinine equation refit without the race variable, the task force has taken action and demonstrated how nephrology continues to lead the way in promoting health care justice. It is time for other medical specialties to follow our lead, and NKF and ASN stand ready to help however we can." More than 37 million adults in the United States have kidney diseases and 90% aren't aware they have diminished kidney function. A disproportionate number of these people are Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian American, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. These Americans also face unacceptable health disparities and inequities in healthcare delivery. The NKF-ASN Task Force organized its work, which took place over a period of 10 months, into three phases: 1) clarify the problem and evidence regarding eGFR equations in the United States.; 2) evaluate different approaches to address use of race in GFR estimation; and 3) provide recommendations. The group identified 26 approaches for the estimation of GFR and narrowed their focus by consensus to five such approaches. "The holistic approach incorporated input from the medical community and patients to identify an approach that balanced social justice with scientific rigor," said Cynthia Delgado MD, FASN, Associate Professor of Medicine, San Francisco Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (SFVAHS) and University of California, San Francisco and co-chair of the joint task NKF-ASN task force. NKF and ASN are pleased to share the new equation recommendation with the kidney community as well as other stakeholders, particularly the medical students, residents, fellows, and other trainees who spearheaded the call to action on this important issue. NKF and ASN encourage the Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) and Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) to develop updated guidelines that ensure a uniform approach consistent with the task force's recommendations. Such clinical practice guidelines will help ensure institutions and the laboratory community rapidly adopt the new equation to estimate kidney function. This new approach will replace the existing equations for estimating kidney function and well as assure confirmatory testing is done when there are important clinical decisions. Both the interim and final report will inform the medical community for clinical practice. "We appreciate the patience of the community as the Task Force developed a sound strategy to not disproportionately disadvantage patients from any particular racial or ethnic group. Our approach was guided by health equity, patient centeredness and patient safety, and was informed by evidence," said Neil Powe, MD, MPH, MBA, FASN Chief of Medicine at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the Constance B. Wofsy Distinguished Professor, Vice-Chair of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and co-chair of the joint NKF-ASN task force. "We hope strong efforts will develop new, more informative, GFR markers and unite all of us in a focus on interventions to eliminate health disparities, thereby improving the quality of care for everyone in the United States." It's a common practice in the medical field to use calculations to make accurate estimations that are reliable, non-invasive and identify certain illnesses and their potential risks. Those estimations are often confirmed with additional testing that is more invasive or more expensive. It will take laboratories, hospital systems, physician practices, and academic institutions time to incorporate the new approach into their results for doctors and patients. NKF and ASN recommend diagnosing kidney disease using a blood test for creatinine to estimate GFR and a urine test for albumin to calculate albumin to creatinine ratio (uACR). The new approach may report a different eGFR and could alter the stage of kidney diseases in some people. Patients should learn their latest eGFR and uACR to assess if the new eGFR calculations change their kidney disease status or stage. Patients and healthcare professionals can use an updated eGFR calculator that uses the new equation to determine a non-race-based calculation to assess their kidney function. It's important for patients to speak with their doctors to determine if this may affect their treatment and care going forward. We invite public comment to the final report. To learn more about NKF and ASN, visit www.kidney.org and www.asn-online.org. Editor's Note: See additional quotes from task force members. Kidney Disease Facts In the United States, 37 million adults are estimated to have chronic kidney diseasesand approximately 90 percent don't know they have diminished kidney function. One in three adults in the United States are at risk for chronic kidney disease. Risk factors for kidney disease include: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and family history. People of Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian American, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander descent are at increased risk for developing the disease. Blacks or African Americans are almost 4 times more likely than White Americans to have kidney failure. Hispanics are 1.3 times more likely than non-Hispanics to have kidney failure. Approximately 785,000 Americans have irreversible kidney failure and need dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive. More than 555,000 of these patients receive dialysis to replace kidney function and 230,000 live with a transplant. Nearly 100,000 Americans are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant right now. Depending on where a patient lives, the average wait time for a kidney transplant can be upwards of three to seven years. About the American Society of Nephrology ASN leads the fight to prevent, treat, and cure kidney diseases throughout the world by educating health professionals and scientists, advancing research and innovation, communicating new knowledge, and advocating for the highest quality care for patients. ASN has more than 21,000 members representing 131 countries. For more information, please visit www.asn-online.org or contact the society at 202-640-4660. About the National Kidney Foundation The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is the largest, most comprehensive, and longstanding patient-centric organization dedicated to the awareness, prevention, and treatment of kidney disease in the U.S. For more information about NKF, visit www.kidney.org. Facebook.com twitter.com/nkf www.kidney.org SOURCE National Kidney Foundation Related Links https://www.kidney.org/ TUSTIN, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New American Funding, a leader in the mortgage industry, has moved up to #4 out of 75 companies recognized as a 2021 Best Workplaces for Women by Fortune and Great Place to Work. The company rose six spots from its 2020 ranking to #4 and is the highest-ranking private mortgage lender to be recognized. This marks the fifth consecutive year the company has been recognized in the large companies category, including a #10 ranking in 2020. The Best Workplaces for Women award is based on survey responses from 5.6 million current U.S. employees. In the survey, 96% of New American Funding employees responded that the company is a great place to work, compared to a 59% average of employees surveyed for U.S.-based businesses. The company's co-founders, the husband-and-wife team of CEO Rick Arvielo and President Patty Arvielo, guided New American Funding to a record-breaking year in 2020. "We are honored to be recognized among the Best Workplaces for Women," said Patty Arvielo. "As the top-ranking private mortgage lender, we celebrate our talented women whose contributions are invaluable in creating an environment of mutual respect for each individual and continued support where everyone can thrive." The company is comprised of approximately 59% women, while 46% are minorities and 39% are Millennials. Between August 2020 and August 2021, the company promoted 82 women to executive and middle management leadership roles. The company is also the largest Latina-owned private mortgage lender in the nation. Spearheaded by Patty Arvielo, the company offers mentorship programs such as "If You Want to Grow, We Want to Know" and "Thrive and Lead," to further employee growth. To learn about the company's career opportunities, visit their careers page. About New American Funding New American Funding is an independent mortgage lender with a servicing portfolio of over 208,000 loans for approximately $54.2 billion, 176 nationwide locations, and about 4,600 employees. The company is a 2021 MPA 5-Star Retail Lender and has made Inc. 5000's list of Fastest-Growing Companies in America seven times. It offers state-of-the-art career training and provides its branch Loan Officers with innovative technologies to streamline the mortgage process. SOURCE New American Funding Related Links https://www.newamericanfunding.com/ BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest episode of acclaimed docu-series EARTH with John Holden airs Sunday, September 26th at 5 pm ET on Fox Business Network; Sunday, September 26th at 3:30 pm ET on Bloomberg TV; Sunday, October 3rd at 3:30 pm ET on Bloomberg TV and in Canada on Sunday, September 26th at 10:00 am ET on Bloomberg Canada. EARTH with John Holden is also available on the streaming platforms Vimeo, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and YouTube. In this episode, viewers explore how Object Carpets makes new floor coverings from old fishing nets; how Mubea makes cars lighter with newly designed parts; how Commercial Metals Company uses scrap metal to shore up American infrastructure; how NexTier maximizes fuel sources using more efficient oilfields; and how JBT Corporation reduces food waste with new packaging and preservation technologies. First, host John Holden travels to Denkendorf, Germany, to see how discarded nylon fishing nets called "ghost nets" that endanger marine life are given new purpose. Object Carpets uses Econyl yarn, regenerated from nylon waste, to produce beautiful, durable rugs and carpets. The company recycles tons of material that would otherwise become landfill waste while avoiding the need to use petroleum to produce virgin fibers. Next, John visits Attendorn, Germany to find out how Mubea has become integral to achieving CO2 neutrality in the automotive industry. Making cars lighter with newly-designed parts and components means less energy is needed to run them resulting in lowered emissions. Mubea has also introduced an innovative e-Cargo bike, which should become popular with urban drivers as cities reduce access to fossil-fueled transportation. John goes to Mesa, Arizona, where Commercial Metals Company shows us how yesterday's scrap becomes tomorrow's steel. CMC uses an innovative micro mill process called "continuous EAF" or electric arc furnace, to melt scrap metal which requires much less energy than standard steel-making. CMC takes green steel to the next level saving scrap metal headed for landfills, and repurposing it into American infrastructure. Next, John travels to Midland, Texas to discover how NexTier helps oil and gas companies produce cleaner energy, to reduce their impacts on global warming. NexTier provides technology to boost higher oil extractions from smaller well fields, using natural gas as a power source. The company believes energy producers should compete to provide reliable, low cost, greener power for the world's growing population. Finally, co-host Andrea Ocampo visits Sandusky, Ohio to show us how JBT Corporation works to reduce food waste to help end world hunger, and address global warming. Food wasted by growers, retailers and consumers often rots in landfills, releasing greenhouse gases. JBT is introducing new technologies for water conservation, freezing, preservation, and packaging, which greatly extend food's shelf life. Throughout the series, six-time Emmy Award winner John Holden takes viewers around the globe to showcase companies with inspiring, eco-friendly initiatives that enhance our lives through the latest technologies and innovations. With insightful interviews and on-site discoveries, Holden highlights the ways businesses protect our environment, to create a better world and fight global warming. StarMedia Productions remains at the forefront of the latest trends, technology and ideas that shape the way audiences interact with television - in entertaining and educational ways. Our shows lead viewers towards a promising future fueled through effective, powerful communications between consumers, business leaders, and stakeholders. Sources: StarMedia Productions: https://www.starmediatv.com lnstagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthwithjohnholden Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earthwithjohnholden LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/earthstarmediaproductions Links: https://www.object-carpet.com/en https://www.mubea.com/en https://www.cmc.com/ https://nextierofs.com/ https://www.jbtc.com/ Contact: Robert Albolino, EVP of Programming Phone: +1 (561) 501-3828 Email: [email protected] SOURCE StarMedia Productions Related Links starmediatv.com NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Revere Securities is pleased to announce that Dr. Dajiang Guo will be joining the firm as senior managing director of investment banking. More recently Dr. Guo was a partner at Tiger Securities, a publicly traded Fintech brokerage firm. Dr. Guo has over 20 years of experience as an executive in the Securities industry. Prior to Revere, Dr. Guo was a partner at Tiger Securities, tasked with developing institutional business for the investment banking and sales and trading divisions. He also held various C-level positions at CITIC Securities, China Renaissance and was critical in their growth and success as well. "We are very pleased to have Dr. Guo join our firm. He is a seasoned professional with huge experience in capital markets and will certainly push further the growth of our company. His contribution will also allow us to be closer to the markets and to investors, thanks to a very hands-on vision for our future," says Kyle Wool, President of Revere. "I am very excited to be joining the Revere team," said Dr. Guo. "I believe Revere has a great business model and talented management team that uniquely positions it to capitalize on the evolving investment banking industry." About Dajiang Guo Dr. Dajiang Guo worked as a Partner at Tiger Securities, developing the institutional securities business of the investment banking/ECM and sales and trading divisions. Prior to that, Dr. Guo was a Partner at China Bridge Capital in the FA and PE division. He was also the Chief Strategy Officer at China Renaissance responsible for strategic planning, international expansion, and strategic investments. He was the CEO of CITIC Securities International USA and COO at CITICS Investment Banking Division, and Head of CITICS Strategy and Planning. He has also held several executive positions at CICC HK/US. Before venturing into cross border financial services, Dr. Guo worked more than ten years for Citigroup Global Markets, RBS Greenwich Capital Markets, and the Centre Re of Zurich Financial Services, where he specialized in securitization and derivatives business. Mr. Guo also taught at the College of Insurance and the University of Guelph as an assistant professor and has published numerous academic articles in peer-reviewed financial journals. Dr. Guo received his Ph.D. in Financial Economics from the University of Toronto. He is a CFA Charter holder. Mr. Guo has the series 7, 24, 63, 79, licenses. About Revere Securities Revere Securities is a global broker-dealer firm providing strategic and financial support to institutional investors, hedge funds, and individual investors. The firm's professionals are involved in all components of the sales and trading process and include extensive compliance and operational personnel. In addition, Revere Securities LLC provides differentiated corporate access, helping institutional clients gain access to management as a component of their investment process. The firm has industry focused sales specialists who possess "buy-side" experience; therefore, providing a sound, alternate perspective, to the investment process. Media Contact: Jay Yu Revere Securities LLC (212) 688-2350 [email protected] SOURCE Revere Securities LLC Related Links https://www.reveresecurities.com/ NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, hires thousands of new workers across the U.S. each year. But according to a lawsuit recently filed by Outten & Golden LLP and Youth Represent, the retail giant also rejects many qualified applicants because of their criminal histories part of a uniform hiring policy that disparately impacts Black and Latinx candidates in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. In collaboration with legal advocacy nonprofit Youth Represent, Outten & Golden filed a 19-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The pleadings alleged that lead plaintiff Jacqueline Ramos and similarly situated individuals applied for and were denied employment due to Walmart's centrally administrated criminal history screening process. The class action lawsuit claims that Walmart's overly broad background checks fail to assess if applicants' convictions are job-related or consistent with business necessity and ignore evidence of rehabilitation and mitigating circumstances. Outten & Golden partner Ossai Miazad said, "Criminal history screening policies that are unjustifiably restrictive and overbroad not only serve as unnecessary barriers to gainful employment for individuals like our clients, but they transport the racial disparities in the criminal justice system into the workplace and have lasting consequences for entire communities." Ms. Ramos's ordeal sheds light on the stigma of a candidate's criminal past, regardless of whether the history has any bearing on the candidate's ability to succeed in a position. After a six-month internship with a Walmart subsidiary and with her supervisor's encouragement, Ms. Ramos applied for an entry-level position at Walmart. The company formally offered her a position shortly after her interview, and Ms. Ramos consented to a third-party criminal history screening. She explained that she had focused on securing employment since her conviction and participated in a workforce development program that led to her internship. Despite her relevant work experience, Walmart rescinded the job offer due to her criminal history. On Sept. 23, 2021, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, adding a second lead plaintiff, Edwin Johnson, whose experience paralleled Ms. Ramos's. In 2020, Mr. Johnson applied for an entry-level stocking position at Walmart. At his interview, he was offered a job on the spot. He was informed that his background check had cleared during his orientation, and he could start working for Walmart immediately. But Walmart later backtracked, informing Mr. Johnson that he was ineligible for employment with the company because of his criminal history. Michael Pope, Executive Director of Youth Represent, said, "Walmart has an opportunity to demonstrate how their public commitment to racial equity and criminal justice reform is more than a PR statement. Black Americans are disproportionately harmed by the criminal legal system and Walmart can be a leader in mitigating against this harm rather than compounding it." Outten & Golden partner Christopher M. McNerney said, "Denying employment for qualified candidates left Ms. Ramos and Mr. Johnson in a terrible position. Walmart lost out on two incredible, passionate and committed employees." The case is "Jacqueline Ramos, et al., v. Walmart, Inc.," Case No. 2:21-cv-13827-CCC-AME in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. CONTACTS: Ossai Miazad, Christopher M. McNernery or Pooja Shethji at 516-261-6080 or [email protected]. About Outten & Golden LLP Outten & Golden LLP focuses on advising and representing individuals in employment, partnership, and related workplace matters both domestically and internationally. The firm counsels individuals on employment and severance agreements; handles complex compensation and benefits issues (including bonuses, equity agreements, and partnership interests); and advises professionals (including doctors and lawyers) on contractual issues. It also represents employees with a wide variety of claims, including discrimination and harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, disability, national origin, religion, and age, as well as retaliation, whistleblower, and contract claims. The firm handles class actions involving a wide range of employment issues, including economic exploitation, gender- and race-based discrimination, wage-and-hour violations, violations of the WARN Act, and other systemic workers' rights issues. Outten & Golden has nine practice groups: Executives & Professionals, Financial Services, Sexual Harassment & Sex Discrimination, Family Responsibilities & Disability Discrimination, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer (LGBTQ) Workplace Rights, Discrimination & Retaliation, Whistleblower Retaliation, Class & Collective Actions, and WARN Act. Outten & Golden has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. SOURCE Outten & Golden LLP STOCKHOLM, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The first preclinical study, where the adjuvant technology Endocine has been evaluated with a vaccine candidate against COVID-19, shows positive results. In May 2021, Eurocine Vaccine signed an evaluation agreement with an innovative North American company with the ambition to evaluate Endocine along with their vaccine candidate against COVID-19. The first study in a mouse model indicates positive results with our adjuvant Endocine, where antibodies of both type IgA and IgG could be detected, as well as T cell immunity. The North American company now intends to proceed with additional studies where Eurocine Vaccines will deliver Endocine and assist with knowledge and experience within the area. Read more about our adjuvant: https://www.eurocine-vaccines.com/the-portfolio/ CONTACT: Hans Arwidsson, Ph.D., MBA CEO of Eurocine Vaccines AB [email protected] +46 70 634 0171 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/11552/3420508/1472292.pdf Positive results with Endocinea and a vaccine candidate against COVID-19 SOURCE Eurocine Vaccines Frequently Asked Questions: What are the major market threats for Digital Signal Processor Market? The pressure from substitutes and a moderate level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the Moderate bargaining power of suppliers. The pressure from substitutes and a moderate level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the Moderate bargaining power of suppliers. Who are the key vendors in Digital Signal Processor Market? NXP Semiconductors NV, Texas Instruments Incorp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Intel Corp., Analog Devices Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Broadcom Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., NVIDIA Corp., and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., are some of the major market participants. NXP Semiconductors NV, Texas Instruments Incorp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Intel Corp., Analog Devices Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Broadcom Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., NVIDIA Corp., and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., are some of the major market participants. What are the pricing models followed by buyers? Fixed pricing model, Volume-based pricing model, and Competitive pricing model are the widely adopted pricing models in commercial vehicle cabin procurement. Fixed pricing model, Volume-based pricing model, and Competitive pricing model are the widely adopted pricing models in commercial vehicle cabin procurement. What will be incremental spending in commercial vehicle cabin procurement? The procurement market will register an incremental spend of about USD 5 .65 billion, during 2021-2025. The procurement market will register an incremental spend of about .65 billion, during 2021-2025. What is the expected CAGR of the Digital Signal Processor Market? The Digital Signal Processor market will grow at a CAGR of about 8.17% during 2021-2025. Find more detailed COVID-19 impact analysis on the Digital Signal Processor Market: www.spendedge.com/report/digital-signal-processor-sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report Related Reports on Heavy Industry Include: Fruits and Vegetable Processing Equipment - Forecast and Analysis : The fruits and vegetable processing equipment will grow at a CAGR of 5.52% during 2021-2025 . Click the above link for a free sample report. The fruits and vegetable processing equipment will grow at a . Click the above link for a free sample report. Amusement Park Construction Services Sourcing and Procurement Report : This report evaluates suppliers based on quality of services to ensure safety of drugs and medical devices, therapeutic expertise, reputation and level of experience, and global reach and capacity. This report evaluates suppliers based on quality of services to ensure safety of drugs and medical devices, therapeutic expertise, reputation and level of experience, and global reach and capacity. Waste Management Equipment- Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: This report evaluates suppliers based on warranties, low lifecycle costs, proximity to the buyers location, and manufacturing performance. The pressure from substitutes and a high level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the moderate bargaining power of suppliers. Commercial Vehicle Cabin Market's Procurement Report Highlights Information on: What are the changes expected in the price forecast report? Is my Digital Signal Processor TCO (total cost of ownership) favorable? Is my Digital Signal Processor TCO (total cost of ownership) favorable? What is driving the current and future price changes? Key trends and drivers in this market Table of Content Executive Summary Market Insights Category Pricing Insights Cost-saving Opportunities Best Practices Category Ecosystem Category Management Strategy Category Management Enablers Suppliers Selection Suppliers under Coverage US Market Insights Category scope Appendix About SpendEdge: SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions. To know more: https://www.spendedge.com/request-for-demo Contacts SpendEdge Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340 https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us SOURCE SpendEdge NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Practising Law Institute (PLI), a leader in continuing education, is honoring the legacy of President Emerita Anita C. Shapiro by dedicating its New York Conference Center in her name. Ms. Shapiro successfully led PLI as the nonprofit organization's first woman president for five years until her death in 2020. Located in midtown Manhattan, PLI's state-of-the-art Anita C. Shapiro Conference Center hosts thousands of attendees each year, including esteemed faculty from leading law firms, law schools, the judiciary, non-profits, and corporations. When fully vaccinated attendees, faculty, and staff return to PLI's New York Conference Center for in-person programs resuming in October, they will see a portrait of Ms. Shapiro and a plaque in her honor. The Anita C. Shapiro Conference Center was formally dedicated with a resolution by PLI's Board of Trustees on September 22, and a ceremony will be held in the coming months. "Anita was an inspiring leader who dedicated her career to continuing education and access to justice," says PLI President Sharon L. Crane. "We are excited to welcome our Privileged Members and other attendees to the Anita C. Shapiro Conference Center and to honor the tremendous positive impact she made on our staff and the legal community." About Practising Law Institute (PLI) Practising Law Institute is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and other professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise. PLI is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and was founded in 1933 by Harold P. Seligson. PLI provides the highest quality, accredited, continuing legal and professional education programs in a variety of formats. This content is delivered by more than 4,000 volunteer faculty, including prominent lawyers, judges, investment bankers, accountants, corporate counsel, and U.S. and international government regulators. PLI publishes a comprehensive library of treatises, course handbooks, answer books and journals, also available through the PLI PLUS online platform. The essence of PLI's mission is its commitment to the pro bono community. Please visit www.pli.edu to learn more. SOURCE Practising Law Institute Related Links http://www.pli.edu COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientists receive prestigious prize from the Novo Nordisk Foundation in recognition of their decades-long tremendous research and development efforts and impact on people's lives and society. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is awarding the Novo Nordisk Prize to pioneering researchers Professor Katalin Kariko, Professor Drew Weissman, Professor Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci for their scientific discoveries and development, which led to the approval of the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. The scientists have played instrumental roles in basic research and the development of the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech, which has proven 95% effective against COVID-19 and has become a decisive factor in overcoming the pandemic. By the end of the year, more than 1 billion people worldwide will have been vaccinated with the vaccine. The mRNA technology on which the vaccine is based also holds promise for future vaccines and treatments for a wide range of diseases, including cancer and genetic diseases. "With the awarding of this Prize, we pay tribute to the people behind one of the most exceptional achievements of our time in which scientific discoveries through the past two decades have led to the development of a vaccine with incredible speed. The mRNA vaccines have already prevented thousands of COVID-19 related deaths among people all over the world," says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Jrgen Frkir, Chair of the scientific committee that awards the Novo Nordisk Prize, says: "The awarding of the Prize underlines Louis Pasteur's famous words that 'chance favours the prepared mind'. The decades-long dedicated work of these four scientists in the field of mRNA significantly contributed to a well-tolerated and highly effective COVID-19 vaccine. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in spring 2020, Ugur Sahin und Ozlem Tureci realized immediately that the technology could create the vaccine that could save humanity from the grip of the pandemic. With their unique scientific contributions and the responsible entrepreneurship, the first mRNA-based vaccine was born. It opened the door to a new and revolutionary technology a completely new type of vaccine that could turn life-threatening diseases upside down over the coming years." The Novo Nordisk Prize is awarded to honour active scientists who have provided outstanding contributions to advance medical science to benefit people's lives. The Prize is accompanied by DKK 5 million. Pioneering forces Professor Katalin Kariko, Senior Vice President at BioNTech and Adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Drew Weissman, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research at the Perelman School of Medicine, have been pioneering forces for more than a decade in discovering a nucleoside-modified form of mRNA. Professor Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci have made scientific and technological breakthroughs in the past two decades, originally designed to unlock the full potential of this molecule for the development of mRNA-based cancer vaccines. Their pioneering work includes the discovery of modifications in the mRNA backbone that improve the amount and duration of mRNA-encoded protein production in human cells and the discovery of lipid envelopes that improve the potency and immunogenicity of mRNA vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine, developed in the laboratories at BioNTech's headquarters in Mainz, Germany, is based on decades of research and achieves its high efficacy and good tolerability by combining the discoveries of the four scientists. The vaccine was approved by several health authorities worldwide, including UK, USA and EU, within an unprecedented 8-month period since WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. Recipients: science can make a difference Katalin Kariko says: "It is a great honour to receive the Novo Nordisk Prize with my colleagues Drew Weissman, Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin. Sharing the spotlight with them makes this Prize extra special. As a result of our joint scientific efforts over many years, a safe and very effective COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was developed." Drew Weissman says: "I would like to thank my co-recipients and all of the scientists involved in mRNA, LNP, and basic science research that has made the vaccines possible." Ugur Sahin says: "The Prize represents what is key in the research and development of breakthrough technologies. It emphasizes that various discoveries and many inventions are needed to develop a new class of drugs powerful enough to fight serious diseases. The collaboration during the pandemic between scientists, organizations and companies around the world and the lessons learned are an excellent basis for the development of future innovations to improve people's health." Ozlem Tureci says: "The development of the first mRNA-based vaccine has shown that science can make a difference. It also underlines that decades-long basic research by scientists around the world and billions of investments are necessary to invent and optimize technologies that can improve the lives of many. I would like to thank the co-recipients of the Prize as well as all scientists who dedicate their work to find better ways of preventing and addressing diseases." The four researchers are receiving the 2022 Novo Nordisk Prize. The Novo Nordisk Foundation has decided to advance the announcement of the 2022 Prize in recognition of the importance and impact of the work of the four recipients in the current pandemic. The recipients will officially receive the Prize at a ceremony in Copenhagen, Denmark on 1 April 2022. Years of effort The story of the mRNA technology and development of the vaccines is also the story of dedication, perseverance, reactivity and exceptional entrepreneurial skills. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman worked together for many years at the University of Pennsylvania. Convinced of the potential of mRNA therapies, they overcame widespread scepticism and many years of setbacks and developed the nucleoside-modified mRNA technology that both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna later used in developing their COVID-19 vaccines. The key discovery that the use of nucleoside modifications suppresses recognition of mRNA by the innate immune system, published in 2005, was a major step forward. Initially, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman were most interested in using this technology for the in vivo delivery of therapeutic proteins. However, as the technology showed more promise, interest in other applications, including vaccines, grew. Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci explored how mRNA vaccines could be improved to become potent enough to trigger effective immune responses capable of shrinking existing cancer masses. Through years of research, they solved the fundamental mRNA-associated problem of low and short-lived protein production in a different way than Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. Prior to founding their company, they discovered several modifications of the mRNA backbone that, when combined, strongly improved the amount and duration of mRNA-encoded protein production in human cells. With the results of this work first published in 2006, they emerged as winners of a nationwide competition of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research that same year, which led them to found their company BioNTech in 2008. In 2013, BioNTech invited Katalin Kariko to give a lecture in Mainz, Germany about her patented technology for making non-inflammatory mRNA. A scientist at heart, Ugur Sahin was impressed by the technique and, as an entrepreneur, he appreciated its vast potential. Realizing the potential of combining their efforts, the like-minded scientists decided to work together. Katalin Kariko joined BioNTech as Vice President in 2013 to support the company's nucleoside-modified mRNA work. In 2014, they jointly published a landmark review on the development of mRNA drugs that serves as a guide for many mRNA researchers even today. When the pandemic was declared in 2020, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, in agreement with the BioNTech management, initiated Project Lightspeed, BioNTech's effort to accelerate the rapid development and distribution of a vaccine in collaboration with Pfizer. Ozlem Tureci led the clinical development of Project Lightspeed, a historic achievement completed in less than 1 year. Today, more than 1.7 billion doses of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been delivered worldwide, showcasing what can be achieved by bridging science and technology. About Katalin Kariko Born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary 1982: PhD, University of Szeged 1989: Research Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania 2005: Key discovery with Drew Weissman on modifying the mRNA to be suitable for disease treatment 2006: Co-founder and CEO of RNARx 2013: Vice President, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals 2019: Senior Vice President, BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals 2021: Adjunct Professor, University of Pennsylvania About Drew Weissman Born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA 1987: MD, PhD, Boston University 1987: Residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center 1990: Fellowship at the NIAID/NIH under the supervision of Anthony Fauci 1997: Professor, University of Pennsylvania 2005: Key discovery with Katalin Kariko on modifying the mRNA to be suitable for disease treatment 2006: Co-founder of RNARx About Ugur Sahin Born 1965 in Iskenderun, Turkey 1990: MD, University of Cologne 1992: Resident, Saarland University Medical Center and research group leader 2000: Research group leader, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2001: Co-founder, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals 2006: Full Professor, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2006: Key discoveries for optimizing backbone elements enabling the development of potent mRNA vaccines 2008: Co-founder and CEO, BioNTech, Biopharmaceutical New Technologies 2015: Key innovation with Ozlem Tureci pioneering the development of individualized mRNA cancer vaccines 2016: Key discovery of highly potent DC targeting lipid enveloped mRNA vaccines 2020: Development of the first mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19 About Ozlem Tureci Born in 1967 in Siegen, Germany 1992: MD, Faculty of Medicine of Saarland University 1992: Junior resident, Saarland University 1993: Research group leader, Saarland University 2000: Research group leader, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2001: Co-founder and CEO, Ganymed Pharmaceuticals Since 2002: Associate Professor/Lecturer ("Privatdozent"), University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Mainz 2006: Key discoveries with Ugur Sahin for optimizing backbone elements enabling the development of potent mRNA vaccines 2008: Co-founder and CMO, BioNTech, Biopharmaceutical New Technologies 2015: Key innovation with Ugur Sahin pioneering the development of individualized mRNA cancer vaccines 2016: Key discovery of highly potent DC targeting lipid enveloped mRNA vaccines 2020: Development of the first mRNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19 About the Novo Nordisk Prize The Novo Nordisk Prize recognizes active scientists who has provided outstanding international contributions to advance medical science to benefit people's lives. The Prize is awarded annually and is intended to further support biomedical research in Europe. The Prize is accompanied by DKK 5 million (672,000) and comprises a DKK 4.5 million (605,000) research grant and a personal award of DKK 0.5 million (67,000). The Foundation will award an additional DKK 0.5 million for hosting an international symposium within the recipient's field(s) of research. About the Novo Nordisk Foundation The Novo Nordisk Foundation is an independent Danish foundation with corporate interests. It has two objectives: 1) to provide a stable basis for the commercial and research activities of the companies in the Novo Group; and 2) to support scientific, humanitarian and social causes. The vision of the Foundation is to contribute significantly to research and development that improves the lives of people and the sustainability of society. Since 2010, the Foundation has donated more than DKK 30 billion (4 billion), primarily for research at public institutions and hospitals in Denmark and the other Nordic countries as well as research-based treatment and prevention of diabetes. Read more at www.novonordiskfonden.dk/en. SOURCE Novo FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Roses Natural is a rapidly growing health and wellness brand. The Texas-based operation is helmed by Roseline Okoro. Born in Nigeria, Roseline's journey from humble student to the proud owner of a minority- and woman-owned company is an inspiring tale of Nigerian work ethic and American opportunity. Roseline went to Ohio State University where she got a B.SC in Pharmaceutical Science. While her new life in the States was going well, though, there was one factor that continued to plague her in her new home: her eczema. As a child back in Nigeria, Roseline remembered her dad making soaps from scratch. He would use natural, simple, and effective ingredients that were safe for everyone to use. Roseline found that the same wasn't true in America. Cleansers both for personal hygiene and home cleaning tended to be filled with harsh chemicals, synthetics, surfactants, and artificial fragrances. Over time, the issue became bad enough that the entrepreneurially-minded Roseline decided to solve it herself. She summarizes the genesis of her company by saying that, "Roses Natural was created based on my skin condition," adding that, "The idea was to create plant-based products that will not irritate my skin but also be safe for the environment." In 2018, Roseline's new company was officially launched with a single product, her dish soap . The whole idea was an experiment, but it quickly became apparent that she couldn't stop there. As friends and family tried the cleaner, they kept coming back for more. They also spread the word. Soon requests were coming in for liquid hand soap. Then foaming hand soap. Then other hygiene and house cleaning items. Roseline was happy to accommodate these requests, and soon, she had a catalog of effective, popular health and wellness products and a rapidly growing brand, to boot. She had already moved out of her kitchen and into the garage to have more space. Now she made the leap into an official business space that she rented in nearby Katy, Texas. In early 2021, the Roses Natural family officially started to grow when Kola Akinmuyiwa joined the company as a managing partner. Akinmuyiwa brought a wealth of business experience to the growing brand and continues to serve as the company's Business Development Manager. Roses Natural has continued to see explosive growth since its humble beginnings. It also continues to stand by its ethics, offering products that are "good for the earth and good for you." These are plant-based, all-natural, vegan, kid-safe, hypoallergenic, and cruelty- and sulfate-free. Best of all, Roses Natural continues to be a proudly woman- and minority-owned-and-operated company. And this isn't just on paper, either. Roseline states that each and every product that her brand sells is still handmade by herself. About Roses Natural: Roses Natural was created by Roseline Okoro and launched in 2018. The company operates out of Katy, Texas. The brand combines Roseline's passion for natural ingredients, developed during her childhood in Nigeria, and her scientific knowledge and training. Learn more about Roses Natural at rosesnatural.com. Please direct inquiries to: Roseline Okoro www.rosesnatural.com (281) 810-7221 [email protected] SOURCE Roses Natural Related Links http://www.rosesnatural.com OSTERSUND, Sweden, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Skanska has signed a contract with the Florida Department of Transportation to design and build a new interchange at Interstate 75 (I-75) and Big Bend Road in Hillsborough County, Florida, USA. Skanska will include the contract worth USD 82M, about SEK 690M, in the US order bookings for the third quarter of 2021. The project includes the widening and reconstructing of Big Bend Road and reconfiguration of the I-75 ramps, improving traffic ow and reducing delays. The overall configuration will change Big Bend Road from an existing four-lane rural roadway to a six-lane urban highway. The planned improvements will also include replacement of existing bridges, accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists, upgrades to roadway lighting, and adjustment and installation of wet utilities. Construction begun in August 2021 and the new interchange is expected to be completed by August 2024. Skanska is one of the leading construction- and project development companies in U.S., specialized in building construction, civil infrastructure and developing commercial properties in select U.S. markets. Skanska USA had sales of SEK 66 billion in 2020 and had about 7,600 employees in its operations. For further information please contact: Maritza E. Ferreira, Communications Director, Skanska USA, tel +1 (404) 946 75 21 Andreas Joons, Press Officer, Skanska AB, tel +46 (0)10 449 04 94 Direct line for media, tel +46 (0)10 448 88 99 This and previous releases can also be found at www.skanska.com. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/skanska/r/skanska-transforms-new-interchange-in-florida--usa---for-usd-82m--about-sek-690m,c3420000 The following files are available for download: https://mb.cision.com/Main/95/3420000/1471947.pdf 20210923 US Big Bend Rd I-75 Interchange ENG https://news.cision.com/skanska/i/image-20210923-big-bend-rd-at-i-75,c2958509 Image 20210923 Big Bend Rd at I-75 SOURCE Skanska JUNCTION CITY, Kan., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Active-duty service members at Fort Riley, Kansasone of the largest U.S. military installationswill receive data-guided recommendations for upskilling and employment opportunities as they prepare for the transition to the civilian workforce, thanks to a new pilot program called Junction Military Civilian Innovation. Using a career advising platform built by data services firm AstrumU, the program will harness the power of data science to analyze the skillsets of thousands of active-duty soldiers, helping them to identify right-fit career opportunities across a network of some of the region's largest employers. "Every year, more than 2,200 men and women in service at Fort Riley transition to civilian careers, creating a base of skilled talent for employers in our region," said Jeff Underhill, mayor of Junction City Kansas. "This collaboration between Fort Riley, local government agencies, private companies and regional universities will springboard growth and career opportunities for veterans throughout our region. We are grateful for the opportunities being created in Junction City through this partnership with the Junction City Economic Development Council, Initiatives, Inc. and participating employers." The new initiative is the result of a unique public-private partnership between the city government of Junction City, Kansas, a network of regional employers and education providers who have committed to participate, and U.S. Army leadership at Fort Riley. Active-duty soldiers will be able to participate in the program at no cost, receiving alignment with career opportunities at actively hiring employersand guidance on the education and training programs that can help them upskill or retrain for roles in the civilian labor market. More than 200,000 men and women in uniform leave the military for civilian careers every year, a transition process that can be complex and difficult to navigate. To support the military-civilian transition for soldiers at Fort Riley, Junction City has assembled some of the region's largest employers, all of which have made commitments to hire transitioning service members. The initial cohort of participating companies includes telecommunications company, T-Mobile ; general building contractor, JE Dunn Construction Group ; facility service and construction solutions provider P1 Group, Inc; and Evergy , the largest electrical utility company in the state of Kansas. The launch of the new initiative will help employers meet talent gaps by tapping into the thousands of active-duty military members who are beginning to transition into civilian roles. Soldiers who opt in to the new platform will receive data-driven recommendations for last-mile education and training through a network of local universities that includes Kansas State University Salina and others. Using AstrumU SkillSet, participating companies will be able to analyze and compare the skillsets of active-duty military members, helping them understand how unique combinations of military qualifications, experiences, and credentials fit into current job openings and career paths. To create personalized career recommendations, AstrumU's platform ingests verified data directly from employers, educational providers, and participating service members to understand and predict how specific skills, credentials, and experiences translate into career outcomes. Service members will be able to opt in and enroll in the program through military transition services like programs from the Army Transition Assistance Program , which provides resources to help Soldiers successfully transition into the civilian workforce. Service members interested in enrolling in the program can learn more here . Leawood, Kan.-based strategic consulting firm Initiatives, Inc. served as the lead public-private partnerships advisor for the project. About Junction City: Junction City is a thriving and diverse community in north central Kansas nestled in the picturesque Flint Hills, directly off I-70. The community is home to Ft. Riley, the largest military base in the state of Kansas. This incredible asset allows the community to produce an organic workforce many areas of the country don't possess. This asset coupled with access to transportation infrastructure, land availability, and educational resources makes Junction City the ideal location for new opportunities and economic growth. About Fort Riley: Fort Riley, located in the Flint Hills Region of Kansas, is home to Soldiers and families of the 1st Infantry Division known as "The Big Red One" which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. There are approximately 15,000 active duty service members assigned to Fort Riley with more than 18,000 family members, 29,000 veterans and retirees and 5,600 civilian employees who live in the region and/or work at the post. The 1st Infantry Division as well as National Guard and Reserve units from several states use the modern training facilities at Fort Riley to gain skills necessary to defend our nation. About AstrumU: AstrumU is a data services company based in Kirkland, WA that is working to translate educational experiences into economic mobility. AstrumU quantifies skills and affinities developed through education, training, and professional experiences of all types. The AstrumU AI Translation Engine ingests verified data from learning, skills, and labor market outcomes to measure, map and make recommendations based on the probable impact to outcomes. We are on a mission to quantify the return on educational investments for all learners, education providers and employers, so everyone can maximize their potential in the Future of Work. SOURCE AstrumU Related Links https://www.astrumu.com Dr. Correa decided to leave his successful Vascular Surgery practice in Overland Park and joined Modern Vascular to master the practice of Endovascular Interventions as a minimally invasive treatment for PAD. Dr. Correa joins three other Vascular Surgeons who have left their practices in the last year and a half to join Modern Vascular, joining one in St. Louis and two in Texas. Historically, diabetes and PAD were often seen as a one-way road to amputation. A chronic disease affecting the circulation of the legs of as many as 12 million people in the U.S. alone, PAD was historically treated with traditional vascular surgery that usually require stays in the hospital of one or more days. Over the past decade, more minimally-invasive procedures have been introduced, allowing most patients to go home the same day, with amazing success rates and complications at half the rate of traditional surgery. Embracing the Future of PAD Treatment Dr. Correa, the first Spanish bilingual Managing Physician at Modern Vascular, explains the draw. "I wanted to be part of the future of PAD treatment, not the past. I saw what they were doing in clinics and wanted to be part of it. Now I am thrilled to be overseeing my own clinic in Overland Park and providing state-of-the-art treatment to my patients." Dr. Correa is not alone among vascular surgeons; four of the last seven Managing Physicians to come to Modern Vascular have also been Vascular Surgeons. Dr. Steve Berkowitz, Chief Medical Officer at Modern Vascular, sees this trend only growing. "There are two populations of Vascular Surgeons out there, those who are fighting the trend because of fear of change and lost revenues and those who are embracing the innovation and jumping on board." Dr. Berkowitz admits there has been criticism in the medical community as the medical model has grown, but he indicates that is to be expected any time there is disruptive innovation. "The numbers are indisputable, more advanced endovascular revascularization using newer techniques is reducing amputations in the PAD community. Here at Modern Vascular, where specialists can extend that revascularization to the foot and toe, the benefit to the patient multiplies." PAD affects approximately 8-12 million Americans. Senior citizens or those with a history of diabetes, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure or high cholesterol may be at a higher risk for PAD. Members of indigenous communities and African Americans are often the hardest hit. The rate of lower limb amputation due to PAD is high, as is the rate of death following amputation: nearly 50% after one year, 90% within 5 years, yet up to 90% of these amputations are preventable. Dr. Correa is excited about the medical treatment he is bringing to Kansas City but admits the biggest challenge is patient and referring doctor education. September is PAD Awareness Month nationally, and Dr. Correa and other Modern Vascular doctors have been working hard to get the word out in their communities. "Many patients don't know that PAD even exists or know the symptoms to watch for," Dr. Correa concludes "My colleagues and I have the knowledge and skills to correct this and am dedicating myself to get out into the local community and deliver this message, one patient at a time." About Modern Vascular Modern Vascular is a group of healthcare companies headquartered in Phoenix, AZ. Modern Vascular clinics specialize in the treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD) through below-the-knee and below-the-ankle and pedal endovascular arterial reconstruction. Most patients report reduced pain, rapid wound healing, and a better quality of life post procedure. Modern Vascular procedures are also an important step in avoiding future limb amputation and extending life expectancy in diabetic, cardiovascular, and peripheral artery disease patients. Modern Vascular now operates and manages sixteen clinics across AZ, CO, IN, KS, MO, MS, NM, TX, VA. For more information, visit www.ModernVascular.com . For educational videos on PAD and its treatment, visit our video library . Press Contact: Doug Haslam KNB Communications [email protected] 617-862-9073 SOURCE Modern Vascular Related Links http://www.ModernVascular.com LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VaxEquity, developing transformative RNA vaccines and therapeutics based on its next generation self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) platform originating from Imperial College London, today announces a collaboration with AstraZeneca to progress the company's platform technology through proof of concept to enable the development of multiple products. VaxEquity could receive development, approval and sales-based milestones totalling up to $195 million and royalties in the mid-single digits per drug target. VaxEquity also received an upfront equity investment from AstraZeneca and global life sciences investor Morningside Ventures. The strategic, long-term research collaboration with AstraZeneca aims to optimise and validate VaxEquity's saRNA platform and apply it to advance novel therapeutic programmes. AstraZeneca will support VaxEquity with research and development funding and has the option to collaborate with VaxEquity on up to 26 drug targets. VaxEquity's modified saRNA platform uses similar technology to mRNA but with the added ability to self-amplify, thereby expressing proteins for longer, resulting in higher protein levels per dose level. Michael Watson, Executive Chairman of VaxEquity, said, "We are delighted to collaborate with AstraZeneca given its strong track record in innovation and welcome them as a new investor. We are also grateful for the ongoing support of our existing investor, Morningside Group. With our self-amplifying RNA platform, we aim to underpin the next generation of RNA-delivered medicines enabling not only vaccines but also broad range of therapeutic applications." Professor Robin Shattock, Head of Immunology of Infection within the Department of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London, and co-founder of VaxEquity, said, "We have all seen how technologies based around RNA have been fundamental to preventing ongoing severe disease and death in major global pandemics. The prospect of further therapeutic applications adds to this technology's great potential." Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said "This collaboration with VaxEquity adds a promising new platform to our drug discovery toolbox. We believe self-amplifying RNA, once optimised, will allow us to target novel pathways not amenable to traditional drug discovery across our therapy areas of interest." Professor Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London, said: "I am deeply proud of my colleagues' work in pioneering self-amplifying RNA technology. This collaboration will help realise our ambition of building a lasting legacy from the great scientific advances Imperial made in this pandemic." The proprietary, flexible platform enables the simultaneous expression of a broad range of targets and immunomodulatory proteins that can be rapidly produced and delivered at scale. Using saRNA, rather than mRNA, means that a lower (1/3 to 1/10th) dose of RNA is required to provide greatly enhanced protein expression as the RNA replicates for longer post-administration. VaxEquity modifies the RNA to include elements (called 'Innate Inhibitory Proteins' or IIPs) that finely tune the innate immune response (based on interferons) preventing suppression of RNA replication and thereby maximizing protein expression by saRNA. As part of this investment and collaboration, Tyrell Rivers and Anders Holmen from AstraZeneca will join VaxEquity's Board as Investor Directors. Will West and Jason Dinges will represent Morningside. Charles Mallo will represent Imperial. Robin Shattock will remain on the Board, while Michael Watson will assume the role of Executive Chair. Media contacts: VaxEquity Michael Watson Executive Chairman [email protected] Scius Communications (for media) Katja Stout [email protected] Daniel Gooch [email protected] About VaxEquity VaxEquity is developing transformative RNA therapeutics and vaccines using its next generation self-amplifying RNA platform. The Company uses saRNA to provide extended duration of protein expression. This enables lower doses to be used for vaccines and higher protein levels to be achieved for therapeutics. VaxEquity is pioneering a next generation approach by modifying its saRNA to modulate the innate immune response and thereby overcoming current limitations. The flexibility of the Company's platform ensures that its broad pipeline of assets can be designed, developed and manufactured rapidly and at scale. VaxEquity was founded in 2020 by Professor Robin Shattock, the Head of Immunology of Infection at Imperial College London and Morningside and is led by a world class team who are pioneers in the field of RNA. The Company is collaborating with AstraZeneca to progress its platform across multiple disease areas. To learn more about VaxEquity please visit www.vaxequity.com and follow our LinkedIn. About Morningside Group Morningside was founded in 1986 by the Chan family, to make private equity and venture capital investments in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. In the life sciences, Morningside specializes in early-stage (pre-clinical through human proof-of-concept) investments in biopharmaceutical products. They partner with academic founders and entrepreneurs to build world class companies that want to markedly improve the current state of medicine today and ultimately, the lives of patients. Morningside's focus is to invest in excellent biomedical research, where a significant body of knowledge has been gathered and there is a plausible path forward in clinical development. Their mission is to contribute to making meaningful, positive impact on prevention or treatment of human disease and believe that so long as this is achieved, commercial success will follow. About Imperial College London Imperial College London is one of the world's great universities. The College's 20,000 students and 8,000 staff are working to solve to the biggest challenges in science, medicine, engineering and business. Imperial is the world's fifth most international university, according to Times Higher Education, with academic ties to more than 150 countries. Reuters named the College as the UK's most innovative university because of its exceptional entrepreneurial culture and ties to industry. Imperial staff, students and alumni are working round-the-clock to combat COVID-19, and the institution is been at the forefront of coronavirus epidemiology, virology, vaccine development and diagnostics. http://www.imperial.ac.uk/ SOURCE VaxEquity BROOMFIELD, Colo. and WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vita Inclinata (Vita), developer and producer of helicopter and crane load stabilization and precision hardware, today announced BG (ret) J. Ray Davis, U.S. Army, has joined the company as Senior Advisor, Army National Guard Affairs. Davis' appointment underscores Vita's commitment to helping the nation's armed forces heighten mission safety and closely follows the appointment of Major General (Ret.) Garry Dean , U.S. Air Force, as Senior Advisor, National Guard, and Reserve Affairs. BG (ret) J. Ray Davis, U.S. Army, joins Vita Inclinata as Senior Advisor, Army National Guard Affairs Vita Inclinata Davis will leverage his proven experience in the Army National Guard and as an experienced Army aviator with 2,500 hours of helicopter flight time, to help Vita better understand Army Guard and Aviation affairs as well as match their needs to the company's specific military and government product offerings . "Ray's multiple deployments commanding MEDEVAC missions gives him a unique perspective on the risk associated with hoist missions," said Vita Inclinata, CEO, Caleb Carr. "We are privileged to welcome Ray to our team and look forward to gaining his perspective as we pursue our goal of supplying Vita's Rescue System technology to our warfighters." As a United States Army Brigadier General (Ret), Davis brings over three decades of senior executive strategic leadership, as well as extensive work in aviation operations to Vita. In addition to his advisory role with Vita, Davis serves as vice president of Business Development at Rolls-Royce and is a member of the Board of Advisors at Lulius Innovation, an information and technology services company. Davis' past military experience includes being a military officer at ARNG 68X Workgroup and South Carolina Army National Guard (SCARNG) in addition to his position as commander at the 1-151 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion. "After seeing Vita's stabilizing technology in action, I have no doubt this can immediately impact aviation safety and mitigate rescue mission risks," Davis said. "My military experience provides me with unique insights to allow this life-saving technology to be recognized with Army requirements." About Vita Inclinata A friend's death during a rescue operationwith a helicopter close but unable to stabilize due to weather and terrainwas the genesis of Vita Inclinata. Founded in 2015 as a way to solve a real problem, Vita today controls chaotic swinging and spin and adds safety and precision for rotor-wing and fixed-wing aircraft and cranes. With the mission of "Bring them home, every time," Vita's technology changes the narrative while saving lives, time, and money across industries, including search and rescue, military, firefighting, public safety, construction, wind energy, and oil and gas. The company is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, with offices in Washington, DC, and Huntsville, Alabama. For more information, please visit www.vitatech.co . For more information, contact: Betsey Rogers BridgeView Marketing 603-821-0809 [email protected] SOURCE Vita Inclinata Related Links http://www.vitatech.co NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Yotpo, a leading eCommerce marketing platform, announced the launch of a new Partner Portal. Developed in-house by Yotpo engineers, the Partner Portal is designed to make it as simple and easy as possible for partner providers to collaborate with Yotpo on new eCommerce deployments for mutual brand customers. Yotpo developed its Partner Portal as the demand for B2B eCommerce services and products surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of this, the Yotpo partner community, which includes agencies, system integrators and technology companies, has significantly grown over the last 12 months: Yotpo partners now span across the globe, including the US, Europe , Australia , Israel and Japan , , and Globally, the number of active partners grew 68% In the UK, the number of active partners grew 63% In the US, the number of active partners grew 70% In Australia , the number of active partners grew 700%, with over 70 new partners onboarded in the previous quarter "Yotpo is humbled to be able to work with amazing partners in the eCommerce industry, enabling the creation and acceleration of online businesses for brands of varying sizes, all over the world. That's why we developed the Partner Portal, to provide a foundation and scalable infrastructure enabling fellow eCommerce providers to 'get to the business' of serving joint customers more quickly and seamlessly. Now is the time to enable as many entrepreneurs and brands as possible to capitalize on the surging global eCommerce opportunity," said John-David Klausner, VP of Partnerships at Yotpo. Currently open to agency partners to start, the Partner Portal is designed to allow partners to easily manage their partnership with Yotpo in one place. Much like a loyalty program, Partner Portal functionalities include: visibility into partnership status and progress towards reaching the next partner tier; a one-click referral process; centralized benefits access; a complete library of education and enablement materials; and more features to come. Yotpo's Partner Program continues to evolve based on the partner ecosystem needs. As a partner-first program, this investment in a portal is a significant development for the program and was designed based on the partner community's feedback and priorities. For more information on the Yotpo Partner Program, please go to: https://www.yotpo.com/partners/ About Yotpo Yotpo is an eCommerce marketing platform that helps thousands of forward-thinking brands like Steve Madden, Brooklinen and Princess Polly accelerate direct-to-consumer growth. Yotpo's single platform integrates advanced solutions for Loyalty & Referrals, SMS Marketing, Reviews, and more, to strengthen customer relationships, promote community advocacy, and increase retention. Yotpo integrates with the tools online businesses use every day, including Google and Instagram, and is available on most eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce, and BigCommerce. Yotpo is a three-time Forbes Cloud 100 company with teams across the world including the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Bulgaria, and Australia. Yotpo is hiring! Visit yotpo.com/jobs. Contact: Cristina Dinozo [email protected] SOURCE Yotpo Related Links https://www.yotpo.com The five-product RAF FIVE line consists of the Wash Away Gel Cleanser Acne Treatment, Spot On Acne Treatment, Kick Off Hydrating Lotion Broad Spectrum SPF 30 Sunscreen, After Hours Moisturizing Lotion Acne Treatment, and Clear the Way Acne Treatment Pads. The products include known skin-boosting ingredients hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, glycerin, thiotaine (derived from mushrooms), and peptides. The RAF FIVE line is Zelira's first step into the acne medication market valued at more than US$11 billion worldwide. Available now in the United States at www.raffive.com , RAF FIVE is the only skin care line in the world to feature Zylorma, a patent-pending acne fighting complex developed by Zelira and US board-certified cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Karyn Grossman. Zylorma uses a proprietary formulation with CBD, salicylic acid and additional botanical compounds to fight bacteria and clogged pores associated with acne, and balance sebum production to help eliminate and prevent acne breakouts. RAF FIVE uses pharmaceutical-grade CBD isolate derived from hemp and is THC-free. Zelira Therapeutics CEO and Managing Director, Dr. Oludare Odumosu, commented, "I am excited to announce the launch of Zelira's Dermatology subsidiary and the RAF FIVE acne treatment line of skincare products. Dr. Grossman's reputation and experience in the cosmetic dermatology industry, combined with Zelira's peerless position in cannabinoid science, is the perfect combination. We have a unique opportunity to present a differentiated suite of proven acne treatment solutions to the US$11 billion acne treatment market where there is a high level of dissatisfaction with existing products and unmet needs. Zelira is staking a claim in the cannabinoid-based, over-the-counter skincare product market with our differentiated dermatology." Dr. Karyn Grossman commented: "I am thrilled to be a part of the new Zelira Dermatology and to have teamed up with Zelira to create Zylorma and the RAF FIVE skin care line. Zelira is already known as a leader in cannabinoid research and development for the medical cannabis market, so when they offered me the opportunity to use my medical expertise alongside their ground-breaking scientific formulations to create a truly new and unique solution for acne, I couldn't pass it up. In my medical practice I've spent many years treating patients suffering from acne and have seen firsthand their struggle to find effective treatments, so I am so excited to see the results from our ongoing patient study and the marked improvement after using the RAF FIVE products. I believe that science has just started to skim the surface of the skin-healing properties of cannabinoids; RAF FIVE is only the beginning." Zelira also conducted a rigorous industry standard consumer use study for the RAF FIVE franchise that showed improvement in all of the participants during the 28 day study. Results showed significant improvement as early as 7 days for some of the participants. The RAF FIVE name is a tribute to the cannabinoid science on which the product is based and the man who pioneered its study. It all started from a fateful bus ride in 1964, when Raphael Mechoulam brought five kilos of hashish he received from the Israeli Police to his laboratory at the Weitzman Institute in Rehovot. With that material, he was able to first isolate and identify the psychoactive component in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), that had eluded scientists for decades. He ultimately identified cannabidiol (CBD) and began to unlock its amazing benefits. Zelira's Dermatology subsidiary is currently developing several other topical products, anticipated to be launched in 2022 including anti-aging, sexual health/intimacy, and specific skin conditions such as psoriasis. Zelira Therapeutics Ltd (ASX: ZLD) (OTCQB: ZLDAF) is a leading global biopharmaceutical company manufacturing and marketing cannabinoid-based medicines. Zelira owns a portfolio of proprietary revenue generating products and a pipeline of candidates undergoing clinical development that are positioned to access the world's largest and fastest growing markets. The Company is focused on developing and clinically validating branded cannabinoid-based medicines for the treatment of a variety of medical conditions in its Rx business, including insomnia, autism and chronic non-cancer pain. The Company has two proprietary formulations under the HOPE brand that are generating revenues in Australia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Washington D.C. with other states in the US expected to follow. Zelira is also generating revenue in Australia from its proprietary and patented Zenivol - a leading cannabinoid-based medicine for treatment of chronic insomnia. Zenivol has successfully completed the first Phase 1b clinical trial for chronic insomnia where it was found to be a safe and effective treatment. This clinical trial is published in the prestigious journal 'Sleep'. In 2020, Zelira partnered with SprinJeneNatural to develop and commercialize natural and organic oral care products under the SprinjeneCBD brand, as part of Zelira's OTC business. The SprinjeneCBD toothpaste product is the first of several scientifically formulated, hemp-derived, oral care products containing cannabinoids and based on the proprietary and patented technology of Blackseed oil and Zinc. The Company conducts its work in partnership with world-leading researchers and organizations which since inception includes Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia; the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth; the University of Western Australia, in Perth; St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia; and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in the United States. Zelira Therapeutics Media Contact: Brenda Loughery [email protected] Gia Moron [email protected] SOURCE Zelira Therapeutics Related Links https://zeliratx.com/ MIAMI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zigazoo, a top-10 iOS kids app for kids ages 9 to 11 years-old, is giving existing and new users the chance to earn an official kid-creator channel for a month on the app. Kids can participate by downloading Zigazoo and doing the #ZigazooTalentSearch challenge with a video answering the prompt: "Tell us why you want your very own talent channel!" The 14 kid stars with official Zigazoo channels have nearly 100,000 Zigazoo subscribers and have been featured on shows such as Little Big Shots, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Ellen Show, American Ninja Warrior Junior, and Nickelodeon's Top Elf. Other official channels include the Philadelphia Zoo, PAW Patrol, and Nick Jr's Canticos. Aside from talent-led channels, Zigazoo content comes from major children's brands, including Apple TV+, Netflix, Peanuts Worldwide, PAW Patrol, and the upcoming Addams Family 2 movie. "One of my favorite things about Zigazoo is the way kids organically find audiences and inspire other kids on our platform because of their sheer talent," said Zak Ringelstein, founder and CEO of Zigazoo. "We can't wait to see who becomes our next kid-creator, because it's the Zigazooers who get to decide." The #ZigazooTalentSearch video with the most emoji reactions at 11:59pm ET on October 10, 2021 will win and get their own channel for a full month. About Zigazoo Just over a year since launching, Zigazoo is a top-10 app on the Apple App Store for kids in the 9 to 11 year-old age bracket and recently raised capital from MaC Venture Capital, Serena Ventures, Talis Capital, Jimmy Kimmel, and other Hollywood heavyweights. Zigazoo hosts kid-friendly challenges from brands and talent such as Apple TV+, Netflix, Peanuts, PAW Patrol, and Serena Williams' doll, Qai Qai. TechCrunch calls Zigazoo "the future of remote learning" and CNN says Zigazoo is the "example of how to offer a social yet safe place for children to be online." Zigazoo's safety has been lauded by children's media advocacy organizations such as Common Sense Media and is a member of the kidSAFE Seal Program. Founded in 2020 by parents and former elementary school teachers, Zigazoo makes screen-time healthier, safer, and more creative. SOURCE Zigazoo Related Links https://www.zigazoo.com/ Mr. McCarthy was nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate twice within his federal career. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Sept. 26, 2019, and sworn in as the former 24th secretary of the U.S. Army, September 30, 2019, serving until January 2021. He was also confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 33rd Under Secretary of the Army, August 1, 2017. Prior to his confirmation as the Under Secretary of the Army, he worked for Lockheed Martin Corporation in sequential Vice President roles responsible for the sustainment, customer solutions and program integration of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and the company's global security policy. Mr. McCarthy previously served as the special assistant to the 22nd Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, under Presidents Bush and Obama, where he advised as the Secretary's Representative to the White House, Congress, National Security Agencies and other Foreign Governments. He also served as the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics and was responsible for policy development and coordination with the joint staff and uniformed services acquisition leaders on procurement and supply chain management policies. Prior to his Pentagon service, he served on the Staff of the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has also served in various roles in commercial banking. He proudly served in the U.S. Army from 1997 to 2002 and served in combat operations in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with the 75th Ranger Regiment, U.S. Special Operations Command. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and holds an MBA from the University of Maryland at College Park, Smith School of Business. Traviss Green, COO of Millennium Corporation, stated that, "Our team is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to add The 24th Secretary of the U.S. Army Ryan McCarthy to our Board of Advisors. His leadership and insight will be essential in driving our continued focus on how best to serve our customers and our county." About Millennium Corporation Millennium Corporation is a strategic management, cybersecurity and systems engineering firm and committed partner to the Federal Government driven by results and focused on people as we help our customers achieve mission success. Millennium is headquartered at 1400 Crystal Drive #400 Arlington VA 22202. Media Contact: Christina Mansfield, Chief Administrative Officer 703.887.4811 [email protected] SOURCE Millennium Corporation Related Links http://www.millgroupinc.com GENEVA, Switzerland, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Economic Forum today launches the New Generation Industry Leaders (NGIL) programme, a global community of fast-rising young industrialists to accelerate environmental and social progress in manufacturing and production sectors, transforming perceptions and inspiring a new generation to take up a career in industry. Over 50 world-leading companies in the production ecosystem, including Apple, DHL, Johnson & Johnson, Rockwell Automation, Siemens and Stanley Black & Decker, are supporting the NGIL programme. Beyond proposing their young leaders to join the community, these companies are making their training materials available to the community and executives are acting as mentors for the community members. Emerging technologies are transforming industries as diverse as automotive, chemicals, electronics, healthcare and textiles. But industrial production is facing a skills shortage in all areas from R&D and design to consumer behaviour and end-of-use cycles. Research from global consulting firm Korn Ferry found that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, which could result in $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues. The New Generation Industry Leaders community will play an active role to address these challenges. Mark Maybury, Chief Technology Officer of Stanley Black & Decker, said: "Stanley Black & Decker is honored to contribute to the establishment of the NGIL community which fills a critical gap in the leadership development of future industrial leaders. This programme inspires the next generation through exposure to visionary industrial leaders, cross connecting this worldwide cohort to foster peer-to-peer learning and transforming their future by accelerating their growth and focusing their purpose on global challenges." Tanja Kuppers, Chief Operating Officer of DHL Supply Chain Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: "New Generation Industry Leaders have the ability to push innovative minds and fire up the hearts of people to reach great heights of sustainable performance; by embracing connectedness with the business, society and environment they act as responsible leaders towards their workforce, customers and partners." Members of the New Generation Industry Leaders programme are nominated by senior executives from their respective companies and organizations. The first cohort of leaders numbers over 100, of whom half are women. They represent more than 20 countries and 12 industrial sectors, including energy, automotive, mining and metals. Each cohort of new leaders will embark on an 18-month journey embracing the following principles and activities: Get inspired: learning modules in strategy, leadership and operations, delivered by thought leaders, CEOs and senior executives from the production ecosystem. learning modules in strategy, leadership and operations, delivered by thought leaders, CEOs and senior executives from the production ecosystem. Connect: peer networking sessions to learn from each other's unique workplaces and career experiences and to share ideas, challenges and solutions. peer networking sessions to learn from each other's unique workplaces and career experiences and to share ideas, challenges and solutions. Transform: smaller cross-industry teams to help accelerate responsible industry transformation and co-create new ideas to get the world excited about new opportunities and innovations in manufacturing and production. Members agree to collaborate to drive positive change within each impact area in their own organizations, with the goal of leveraging their shared efforts to engage with and attract younger generations. The online home of the New Generation Industry Leaders programme is https://www.weforum.org/new-generation-industry-leaders . The programme, launched out of the World Economic Forum's platform on Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains , is run in collaboration with the platform on Shaping the Future of Energy, Materials and Infrastructure and the other Forum platforms . It is supported by 50+ leading companies, listed here along with their nominated leaders. Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director at the World Economic Forum, said: "The transformation in manufacturing and production being driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution can only succeed with the leadership and collaboration of young professionals. We are thrilled to announce the launch of this inaugural group of exceptional leaders who will challenge their peers to embrace the incredible opportunities promised by a career in industry." Lawrence Whittle, Chief Executive Officer of global technology firm Parsable, said: "Today's factories are the most technologically advanced work environments in the world. So much innovation is happening in industrial sectors. But industry has an image problem it's not seen by young people as tech-savvy or future-focused. We urgently need to change perceptions around a career in manufacturing to attract and retain the finest talent from mobile-first generations." Sustainable Development Impact Summit 20-23 September The meeting brings together global leaders from business, government, and civil society under the theme Shaping an Equitable, Inclusive and Sustainable Recovery. It will focus on new technologies, policies and partnerships to advance cooperation, accelerate progress, and highlight tangible solutions to our global challenges. Media can learn more and register here . About Parsable Parsable ( www.parsable.com ) helps the world's largest industrial firms get jobs done right every time. Connected Worker from Parsable enables employees to collaboratively execute their work using paperless, digital work instructions on mobile devices. In addition to measuring every step and action, workers can raise issues and provide feedback in real time so that every process is quickly analyzed and improved. With Parsable, companies gain unprecedented visibility into their operations, uncover detailed data about their work processes for continuous improvement, and attract new tech-savvy talent. Follow the company on LinkedIn , Twitter ( @ParsableHQ ) and the Parsable blog . Media Contact: Connie Sung Moyle Parsable, Inc. [email protected] SOURCE Parsable, Inc. BOSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Online privacy company Abine announced today it is using technology from Anonybit.io to release the first ever password manager built on a decentralized identity framework for the company's Blur platform. While device-based password managers use biometric authentication for enhanced security, the processes they use are easily circumvented by hackers. In contrast, the Anonybit system closes the gaps by breaking down biometric data into anonymized bits ("anonybits"). The anonybits reside in a peer-to-peer network composed of numerous nodes able to compute the biometric match. The anonybits never leave the nodes and cannot be used to reconstruct the initial information, providing unparalleled security for consumers. "This implementation represents a first in the password protection space, and is something that's long overdue," says Rob Shavell, Abine Co-Founder and CEO. "The decentralized nature of the biometric information storage makes the Anonybit solution a leap forward in privacy-by-design." Anonybit's decentralized identity framework uses face biometric technology to encrypt and retrieve a single master password which reduces the forgotten password problem while reducing fraud, strengthening compliance, and protecting the user's identity and assets. CEO and co-founder of Anonybit , Frances Zelazny, considers the collaboration an opportunity to provide increased online security to a wider audience. "Consumers are clamoring for better data protection and stewardship over their personal information. Abine is answering the call, bringing enhanced security for their customers and instilling greater confidence in their online interactions. There is no entity today that does not face privacy and security issues, and we are pleased that through this initiative, our infrastructure can reach more users," she says. The decentralized password manager will be available at no cost to all existing Abine Blur customers through their existing account, starting with password retrieval and followed by extended functionality for account login in the coming months. For questions on the new tech, visit the FAQ section of Abine's website. To sign up for the Blur password manager, go to Abine.com . About Abine Blur: Blur was created with one simple mission: make it easier for you to manage and protect your privacy and identity without sacrificing convenience. It is designed to integrate seamlessly into your online life and its features appear when you need them without getting in your way, lowering your risk of identity theft and credit card fraud. About Anonybit Anonybit is the first fully decentralized biometrics infrastructure used by embedded partners and enterprises to deliver privacy-by-design solutions to market. Supporting all biometric modalities and multiple use cases in the identity management lifecycle, Anonybit easily integrates into existing workflows. For more information, visit anonybit.io Contact: Will Simonds (425) 243-6570 [email protected] SOURCE Abine, Inc. Related Links https://abine.com/ SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Agtonomy , a hybrid autonomy and tele-assist service platform, launched today out of stealth and announced a $4 million seed round from Grit Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Village Global, the venture firm backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Dell. The Agtonomy mission is to address the massive labor crisis gripping local farm and land maintenance operations. The executive team consists of veterans from the AI, EV, cloud service and agriculture industries, with extensive experience at tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Uber and Cruise, as well as lifelong farming experience at Northern California agriculture operations such as Trattore Farms. By 2050, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that we will need to produce 60% more food on a smaller amount of land just to feed a growing global population of 9.3 billion. At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment of agricultural workers to increase just 2% from 2020 to 2030, slower than the average for all other occupations. The skilled labor crisis and the growing impact of climate change compound the challenges for farmers, and more broadly, land maintenance operations. Local agriculture, as opposed to big agriculture, has been especially hit hard yet accounts for the vast majority of the good food movement which consumers demand today. Even though the number of local farmers outpaces those involved in big agriculture, few technology companies have addressed their challenges. "While most technology is focused on big agriculture, Agtonomy is making autonomous equipment accessible to local agriculture growing high-value crops and providing a technology-enabled labor force to operate that equipment," said Tim Bucher, Co-Founder and CEO of Agtonomy. "By working with established original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), we can accelerate our sustainable technology platform to market and enable services that help alleviate the most critical issues facing local farmers and land maintenance operators today and into the foreseeable future: skilled labor shortage and climate change." Agtonomy is a hybrid autonomy and tele-assist service platform that turns tractors and other equipment into autonomous machines. A robust sensor suite and custom software stack enable remote modes of operation with extensive flexibility and safety features in comparison to conventional equipment. Agtonomy, through its OEM partners, will address both local farming and broader land maintenance operations, including routine mowing and weeding as well as wildfire prevention through land clearing. "While trillions of dollars are being spent on developing autonomous passenger vehicles, core industries, such as agriculture, construction and manufacturing, are rapidly deploying robotics-as-a-service to augment human labor and increase both operational and energy efficiency," commented Jennifer Gill Roberts, Grit Ventures Managing Partner. "We believe Agtonomy's focus on high value crop and land maintenance, innovative business model, clean energy approach, and deep agriculture domain knowledge will give them a significant competitive advantage. By partnering with some of the most trusted names in equipment, Agtonomy will deliver immediate value to local farmers who must make continuous improvements, weather labor shortages and reduce field-to-table timelines, all while working with tight budgets and seasonal challenges. Complementing the existing talent at OEM partners with skill sets in key areas such as AI, machine learning, EV technology, sensor fusion and autonomous software and services, Agtonomy helps these global OEMs expand their existing market segments and open new markets while providing local farmers and land maintenance professionals the tools they need to thrive in the challenging environment they face today. "Creating greater autonomy for local farmers is key to moving the agricultural industry forward, and Agtonomy is uniquely qualified to address this challenge in a meaningful way," said Andy Wheeler, General Partner at GV. "The Agtonomy team includes seasoned farmers with deep technology roots, and they have the right combination of skills and experience to bring more value to the farming community at-large." Agtonomy takes a differentiated approach in both their technology stack and their go-to-market strategy through partners. As a B2B company, Agtonomy focuses on the technology pieces of its solution that work with existing equipment and leaves the significant task of manufacturing and distribution to the experts who have been doing it for decades. "We invest in promising entrepreneurs and startups across all geographies and sectors," said Anne Dwane, Co-founder and Partner at Village Global. "Agtonomy has set its sights on improving local agriculture and production, which is what consumers want. They will help feed the world with good, high-quality, local food." With this round of funding, Agtonomy plans to expand its team to accelerate innovation in markets that desperately need more solutions that help close the labor shortage gap and operate more sustainably with increased safety. To learn more, visit Agtonomy.com. About Agtonomy Agtonomy , based in South San Francisco and Sonoma County, is a hybrid autonomy and tele-assist service platform with the venture backing of GV, Grit Ventures and Village Global. The platform will give local agriculture and land maintenance operators the ability to solve the skilled labor shortage with autonomous equipment and greatly increase their efficiency. The executive team consists of veterans from the AI, EV, cloud service and agriculture industries, with extensive experience at companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Uber and Cruise as well as lifelong farming experience at Northern California agriculture operations such as Trattore Farms. SOURCE Agtonomy Related Links https://www.agtonomy.com WATERTOWN, Mass., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine Publishing announces today the release of Dance or Die: From Stateless Refugee to International Ballet Star: A Memoir in which world-renowned ballet dancer Ahmad Joudeh shares his story of growing up in the Al-Yarmouk camp in Syria, a stateless refugee descended from Palestinians who fled war in the 1940s, and his determination to overcome life-or-death circumstances to achieve his dreams. Dance or Die Ahmad Joudeh From his childhood in the camp to the dangers of living and studying in the middle of a war to extremists threatening to kill him if he dared to dance and teach children to dance. Performing with one of Syria's top dance companies, Ahmad not only ignored these threats but also, at the exact place where an executioner's blade would fall, had his neck tattooed with the words "Dance or Die." He wanted that to be last thing they would see if they followed through with their threats. Dance or Die paints a picture of life as a stateless refugee in Syria, of the pursuit of personal expression in the most dangerous circumstances, and of the power of art to transcend war and suffering. Ahmad leads readers from Damascus to Beirut to Amsterdam, where in spite of his statelessness, he establishes a career as an international dancer. Ahmad's story was chronicled in the International Emmy award-winning documentary "Dance or Die" by Roozbeh Kaboly. Ahmad continues to fight for the human rights of children, refugees, and the stateless everywhere through his art, his activism, and his commitment to justice. Ahmad was appointed International Friend by SOS Children's Villages International. Dancer and choreographer Ahmad Joudeh was born in Syria in 1990 and grew up as a stateless refugee in the Al-Yarmouk camp on the outskirts of Damascus. Amid the violence of the Syrian civil war, he pursued his dream as a dancer and appeared on the Middle Eastern version of So You Think You Can Dance before moving to Europe in 2016 to dance with the Dutch National Ballet. He lives in Amsterdam and performs throughout the world. See Ahmad dance at https://youtu.be/H9BKpjnopIE. "A story that touches the heart and truly lets us understand the importance of having a dream, of believing in it solidly, and of fighting for it until that dream becomes a reality." from the foreword by Roberto Bolle, principle dancer, Teatro all Scala, Milan Available now 978-1-62354-513-0 Hardcover $24.99 Contact: Donna Spurlock Phone: (617) 321-2502 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Imagine Publishing OKLAHOMA CITY, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyke & Byke has recently published a detailed blog post explaining how outdoor enthusiasts can sleep comfortably while camping. The company delivers premium, lightweight, comfortable gear designed to help users sleep well. Hyke & Byke sleeping pad for camping is already popular as a bed while camping, backpacking, hiking, and bikepacking. More about this product is currently available at https://www.amazon.com/Hyke-Byke-Appalachian-Inflatable-Sleeping/dp/B08F956Q2N . Air Mattress Hyke & Byke founder Daniel, an outdoor lover himself, draws from his experiences sleeping rough on the trail to write the blog. He mentions that a good night's sleep is critical for enjoying the thrills of hiking, and one of the best ways to ensure this is by using the correct gear, including the right sleeping bag, sleeping pad camping, pillows, eye pads, and earplugs. Another vital issue Daniel talks about is properly setting up the tent because this allows campers to relax before they sleep. Setting up a tent correctly involves picking a smooth surface, not storing food inside the tent, drinking something warm before sleeping, keeping the bugs away and adapting quickly to the situation. "Camping has a string of perks that comes along with it, but it also requires a little sacrifice on your part. It takes you away from the conveniences of modern living, and it keeps you away from technology for a while. However, that should not include depriving yourself of sleep and rejuvenation," Daniel states. The entire article is available at https://www.hykeandbyke.com/blogs/hyke-byke-blog/how-to-sleep-well-while-backpacking-or-camping . The sleeping pad self inflating from Hyke & Byke is available in standard and ultralight sizes and comes with thick horizontal air channels ensuring optimal wide body and joint support. Its micro-adjustment valve allows users to adjust air pressure per their preference. The product is made of water-repellent 70 D ripstop nylon and can be rolled down to 11 inches by 4.5 inches (standard) and 11 inches by 3.5 inches (ultralight). To find out more about Hyke & Byke and its products, please visit its official website or Amazon storefront. Contact Name: Daniel Ede Contact Phone: 1 (888) 300-1001 Contact Email: [email protected] About Hyke & Byke "Hyke & Byke is a small but rapidly growing, independent outdoor gear company that was inspired and built by a group of entrepreneurial outdoorsmen who felt that the outdoor gear market was filled with overpriced products that could be better designed and sold at honest prices. We struggled for years to always find a great deal on each product we buy to support our addiction to the outdoors. After years of turmoil, we felt we could do better and launched Hyke & Byke to the public in 2015, after years of start-up conversations and planning efforts. SOURCE Hyke & Byke WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomes the introduction today of a resolution in the U.S. Senate urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terror organization. The bipartisan resolution was introduced by Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). AJC lauded the introduction in July of a similar resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2013, the EU encouraged especially by Bulgaria, which experienced a Hezbollah attack in 2012, and Cyprus, which foiled an attack being planned by Hezbollah operatives, also in 2012 designated only the so-called "military wing" of the Iranian-sponsored terror group. AJC has long advocated for governments to label the Lebanon-based Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and for applying sanctions against it. Argentina, Austria, Bahrain, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Lithuania, Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States, as well as Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab League have all designated Hezbollah in its entirety as a terror organization. "We encourage swift passage of this important bipartisan resolution in the House and Senate. It is past time for the EU to do the right thing and correct the fiction of a bifurcated Hezbollah it endorsed nearly a decade ago," said AJC CEO David Harris. "Mistakenly believing it can tame Hezbollah's behavior, a proposition unsupported by evidence, the EU has created 'military' and 'political' wings within Hezbollah, when, in reality, it is a single, unified terrorist entity," Harris added. In addition to terrorist activities, Hezbollah continues to engage in illicit narco- and weapons-trafficking, money laundering, stockpiling of explosives, and surveillance in European cities. Full designation by the EU would further delegitimize Hezbollah and hamper its ability to fundraise, recruit, and mobilize. Designating Hezbollah in its entirety would empower European governments to take stronger steps to prevent the group from organizing and fundraising within EU borders. It would lead to the issuance of arrest warrants against members and active supporters of Hezbollah, the freezing of its assets in Europe, and a prohibition of fundraising activities on its behalf. The House resolution was introduced by Representatives Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), along with Representatives French Hill (R-AR), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Peter Meijer (R-MI), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Ann Wagner (R-MO), and Joe Wilson (R-SC). This congressional effort follows similar resolutions over the course of the last decade, strongly supported by AJC, that urged full designation of Hezbollah as a terror organization. SOURCE American Jewish Committee Related Links http://www.ajc.org Alexandre Family Farm's regenerative farming practices produce tangible benefits for soil biomass and helps restore ecosystems and habitats for various animal species. On the farm's 4300 acres in northern California, the farm practices include intensive rotational grazing and waste up cycling, while also focusing on support of the local community. "We are honored for this recognition, and grateful to New Hope for helping to spread the word about organic and regenerative agriculture," said Blake Alexandre, owner, Alexandre Family Farm. More than 650 products entered to compete for a Nexty Award in 23 categories that ranged in types from supplements to food, beverage, personal care and natural living. The nominated products were evaluated based on the criteria of innovation, inspiration and integrity - along with potential impact - over the course of two week-long judging rounds which took place at the New Hope Network offices in Boulder, Colorado. Earlier this year, Alexandre Family Farm was also named a Whole Foods Market Supplier of the Year in the grocer's new Global Regenerative Agricultural Commitment category. ABOUT ALEXANDRE FAMILY FARM As fourth generation dairy farmers with over 40 years of experience, Blake and Stephanie Alexandre founded Alexandre Family Farm in 1988 and began bottling under their brand in 2017. Along with their family, they operate the only certified regenerative organic and 100% A2/A2 dairy and mobile coop egg ranch in the United States. Their grass-based products, which are distributed nationwide, include a line of 100% A2/A2 (the digestible protein) milks and yogurts, and nest-laid, hand-gathered eggs from hens always free-roaming on fresh green pastures. Website: www.alexandrefamilyfarm.com Social: @alexandrefamilyfarm Contact: Sharon Egan ([email protected]) or Abby Oppenheim ([email protected]) SOURCE Alexandre Family Farm Related Links https://www.alexandrefamilyfarm.com NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- All Ships Investors (ASI), a strategic alternative finance company with expertise in residential mortgage loans and private credit, is excited to announce a new partnership as part of its advisory to Percent, a leading financial technology company and alternative investment platform. ASI and Percent are furthering their storied relationship into a new partnership with Indigoblue, a Canadian residential mortgage originator. This partnership extends the capital markets and technology suite of Percent to a new geography and asset class, and is the latest in a series of new partnerships between Percent and a growing number of originators of private credit assets. Percent offers accredited investors uncorrelated, transparent, high-yield investment products while providing non-dilutive growth capital to its origination partners. On September 21st, 2021 Percent closed IDG Residential Mortgage Sr. 2021-1, a $2,500,000 private debt deal backed by Canadian residential mortgages originated by Indigoblue. The deal, initially announced on September 9th, 2021 as a $2,000,000 issue with an investment window of eleven days, saw unprecedented demand for participation, causing it to be oversubscribed within the first three days, upsized by 25% to $2,500,000 and receiving full funding after just six days in the market five days ahead of schedule. "Percent is excited to develop a relationship with Indigoblue as both companies continue to bring overdue improvements to their industries," says Prath Reddy, President of Percent. "We are especially pleased to partner with an originator that brings new exposure to both Canada and to the real estate industry, as we strive to provide additional diversification opportunities to our investors. Our long-standing relationship with the All Ships Investors team, who acted as Strategic Advisors on this deal, has contributed to our expansion into new asset classes and geographies. The results so far speak for themselves." "We are thrilled to be the first Canadian alternative residential lender to be featured on Percent's innovative investor platform." says Indigoblue CEO Harry Singh. "Both firms share a common goal to provide easier and more transparent access to alternative investments. In addition, we are delighted with the insights All Ships brought to us and their work to position Indigoblue to grow our business in ways we could never have done without All Ships and Percent. The fact that we were able to upsize our deal by 25% demonstrates the power of the All Ships and Percent relationships." Devin Wicker, Managing Director at All Ships noted that "A key to the success of this partnership was All Ships' realization of a unique match between Percent's strategy or providing short-term high-yield investments to retail investors and the unique characteristics of the Canadian Mortgage market where shorter-term mortgages are commonplace compared to longer mortgage terms in the US. Being able to combine Percent's technology and All Ships' real estate expertise with Indigoblue's underwriting quality has given us an opportunity to bring a new asset class to retail investors who may not otherwise be able to access this kind of an investment. We are delighted with the results so far and look forward to bringing more originators onto the platform in the near future." All Ships Investors LLC New York-based All Ships Investors helps fund the growth of loan originators in the US and internationally, across multiple asset classes with capital sources tailored to their product, portfolio characteristics, and strategic objectives. If interested in exploring financing from All Ships Investors or Percent contact Quentin English: Tel: (646) 470-9526 | [email protected] SOURCE All Ships Investors LLC HOUSTON and BOSTON and DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ara Partners ("Ara"), a private equity firm specializing in industrial decarbonization investments, today announced that it has significantly expanded its presence in Europe through the hiring of five key investment professionals and the opening of an office in Dublin, Ireland. Ara's expansion in Europe includes the addition of Christopher Picotte as a Partner, Luis Pais Correia as a Senior Operating Partner, Lisa O'Brien as General Counsel-Europe, Myles O'Shaughnessy as a Principal and Chris Seenan as a Vice President. "We are thrilled to welcome Chris, Luis and the rest of the Europe-based team to the Ara organization," said Charles Cherington, a Managing Partner at Ara. "We believe this world-class team of professionals and their combined expertise will further Ara's growing presence in the European private equity market." "Europe is clearly at the forefront of the global decarbonization movement," added Troy Thacker, a Managing Partner at Ara. "Our Dublin office provides us with a meaningful foothold in this important market and will be supported by a strong team of professionals with decades of experience investing in the industrial sector in Europe and with established networks across the industry." Chris Picotte co-founded Aksiom Group in 2017. Since 2013 he has also been the Chairman and a shareholder of px Group Ltd, a leading provider of O&M and technical services for midstream, power generation and industrial infrastructure assets in the United Kingdom and Northwestern Europe. He serves as the Chairman of AXESS Networks Solutions SL and as a board member of Anesco Holdings Ltd and of Jernbro Industrial Services AB. He served as a Managing Director and Senior Advisor at ArcLight Capital Partners from 2001-2014, where he led their European investment activity. Luis Pais Correia co-founded Aksiom Group in 2017. He has been a board member and a shareholder of px Group Ltd since 2014. He is a member of the board of Varmevarden, a leading Swedish district heating company owned by institutional investors advised by JP Morgan Asset Management. He serves as the Chairman of Anesco Holdings Ltd and Jernbro Industrial Services AB and as a board member of AXESS Networks Solutions SL. Luis has been a senior manager in the energy industry for over 25 years. Prior to Aksiom, Luis was a Director and Manager at Dalkia (a company co-owned by Veolia Environnement and EDF, respectively the largest environmental and energy services company and the largest power company globally) for more than 15 years. Lisa O'Brien previously served as General Counsel for Aksiom Group and has over twenty years of experience in finance and corporate law. Prior to joining Aksiom, Lisa was a partner in the New York office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where she was a member of the Partnership Council and a Co-Head of the US Energy and Infrastructure practice. Her transaction expertise includes private equity, energy and infrastructure, project finance and corporate finance and securities in both the US and Europe. Myles O'Shaughnessy previously served as a Vice President at Aksiom Group. Prior to Aksiom, Myles was a Vice President in the Corporate Credit Group of Guggenheim Partners where he was responsible for European corporate debt investments including syndicated and direct middle market leveraged loans as well as high yield bonds across the energy, utilities, infrastructure, services and chemicals sectors. Previously, Myles worked in a number of trading and operations roles within financial services. Chris Seenan previously served as a Vice President at Aksiom Group. Prior to Aksiom, he worked for several PE-backed companies developing renewable energy projects in emerging markets. Chris started his career at Deloitte within the financial services division of their audit practice and progressed to positions within their corporate finance advisory division, where he was involved in projects and transactions across service areas including M&A, debt advisory, business modelling and valuations. About Ara Partners Ara Partners is a private equity firm specializing in industrial decarbonization investments. Ara invests in the industrial & manufacturing, chemicals & materials, energy efficiency & green fuels, and food & agriculture sectors, seeking to build businesses that provide significant decarbonization impact. For more information on Ara Partners, please visit www.AraPartners.com. Contacts Mark Semer / Alex Jeffrey Gasthalter & Co. LP. [email protected] (212) 257-4170 SOURCE Ara Partners Related Links http://www.arapartners.com WATERTOWN, Mass., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arranta Bio ("Arranta"), a leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) supporting advanced therapy pioneers, today announced plans to establish contract manufacturing capacity for messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. Arranta will offer the first end-to-end platform for full integration of cGMP manufacturing of critical raw materials, in-vitro transcription, mRNA purification, LNP formulation and sterile fill/finish all within its Watertown, MA facility. Arranta intends to support product innovators using an mRNA platform to develop vaccines, for example, vaccines targeting infectious diseases, as well as therapeutic vaccines, such as those targeting cancer. mRNA vaccines are a relatively new class of vaccines. Prophylactic vaccines have been recently validated with the successful commercialization of COVID-19 vaccines, while therapeutic immuno-oncology focused vaccines offer significant promise to cancer patients. This latter class of mRNA vaccines works by encoding single or multiple tumor antigens that stimulate a specific immune response and produce anti-tumoral immunity. "Arranta Bio is building a team with deep expertise in analytical and process development, and GMP manufacturing to support clients in this cutting-edge sector that is poised to transform vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer treatments" said Mark Bamforth, Executive Chair and CEO of Arranta. "We are delighted to be able to expand access to provide best-in-class mRNA capacity with the first end-to-end platform in a single facility. Arranta's leadership team has a track-record of establishing commercial facilities and has supported successful FDA approvals for dozens of biopharmaceutical products and are committed to support mRNA vaccine innovators." In 2020, Arranta completed the built-out and commissioning of an 80,000ft commercial-ready facility in Watertown, MA, with Grade C (ISO 7) clean rooms, which are suitable for the production of mRNA, lipid nanoparticle formulation, and sterile fill/finish into vials within isolator technology. Arranta will have drug substance process development and formulation development capacity in place by the end of 2021 in existing laboratories and GMP clinical manufacturing by early 2022 from existing clean rooms which are already qualified. Integrated isolator technology will be installed and operational in the second half of 2022 to complete the end-to-end platform. Additional suites are available to meet client needs, including dedicated custom capacity options. Arranta has an established bacterial manufacturing platform for live bacterial pharmaceuticals (LBPs) targeting the human microbiome, and for fermented starting materials for use in advanced mRNA vaccines. Arranta has deep experience and continues to invest in capabilities, following an initial $100M spend in the fit-out of world class, commercial-ready facilities and in building a deeply experienced team. Arranta is proud to be a leading CDMO focused on supporting the supply needs of these varied innovator companies. About Arranta Bio Founded in 2019, Arranta Bio is a visionary contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) that partners with companies seeking to develop and manufacture complex biological drugs and innovative therapies. Our dedicated team, state-of-the-art facilities, and unparalleled resources are crucial for advancing products from development to commercial launch. Arranta Bio continues to expand capacity and development and manufacturing services across multiple sites with technology platforms designed to meet the evolving demands of our clients and partners. Additional information about Arranta Bio is available at www.arrantabio.com About Ampersand Capital Partners Founded in 1988, Ampersand is a middle market private equity firm with more than $2 billion of assets under management dedicated to growth-oriented investments in the healthcare sector. With offices in Boston and Amsterdam, Ampersand leverages its unique blend of private equity and operating experience to build value and drive superior long-term performance alongside its portfolio company management teams. Ampersand has helped build numerous market-leading companies across each of the firm's core healthcare sectors. Additional information about Ampersand is available at www.ampersandcapital.com. Arranta Bio media contact: Nathan Archibald T: 321-271-0777 E: [email protected] Arranta Bio services contact: Traci Kyes T: 352-871-2440 E: [email protected] SOURCE Arranta Bio Related Links http://www.arrantabio.com NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ATSG, a leading, tech-enabled managed services and solutions company, today announced its acquisition of dinCloud, LLC, a leading Cloud Services and Virtualized Workspace Subscription Provider with a global hybrid and multicloud footprint. With a complementary portfolio to that of ATSG's Technology Solutions as a Service offerings, the acquisition bolsters ATSG's global cloud business with a focused set of Virtual Hosted Desktops and Infrastructure as a Service offerings, as well as the expansion of the global delivery footprint. dinCloud has become a rapidly growing leader in the cloud infrastructure, hosted workspaces, desktop as a service, and cloud security arena and further expands the long-standing ATSG partner ecosystem relationships with Microsoft, Cisco, and Citrix. The acquisition also spans a multichannel, go to market approach, inclusive of other service providers and solutions aggregators, across Large Enterprises, as well as Middle Market end user customers. With the dinCloud acquisition, ATSG continues to grow its customer relationships and overall offerings portfolio with specific emphasis on the rapidly growing, secure virtualized desktops and applications hosting markets, as well as cloud infrastructure services. dinCloud's managed technology solutions, provides users with secure, simple access to the desktops, applications, data, and IT services they need to work from anywhere, at any time. In addition, the team of dinCloud experts and engineers hold an array of impressive certifications and specializations, providing even further scale, capabilities, technical expertise, and intellectual property to ATSG. "I am thrilled to join ATSG, a recognized leader in the tech-enabled managed services space," said Mark Briggs, CEO of dinCloud. "With this move, we further enhance our capabilities for our employees, our clients and our channels. Our joint vision and collaboration with ATSG is in perfect alignment and we look forward to serving many of our clients and channel partners in a leveraged model that will benefit our customers." "The dinCloud acquisition was a clear strategic choice to complement both our Cloud and Digital Workplace Services portfolio," said Anthony J. D'Ambrosi, Chief Executive Officer of ATSG. "The global synergies between ATSG and dinCloud were immediately apparent, with their passion for customer success, innovation and deep channel partnerships. We are very excited about this fantastic combination." As ATSG looks ahead to 2022, they will continue to focus on growth, both organically and through future acquisitions. The company began over 25 years ago as an enterprise network and systems integrator and has aggressively transformed over the past decade to a Tech-enabled MSP, featuring highly secure, multicloud solutions, powered by the ATSG automation platform Ai2. The acquisition of dinCloud depicts the execution of yet another milestone in ATSG's strategic growth plan and is its seventh acquisition over the last 3 years; ATSG previously acquired QTS in 2017, VDX in 2018, HNS, ShoreGroup Solutions in late 2019, MTM in 2020 and the DatAvail IMS business unit in 2021. ATSG will continue to evaluate future investments and alliances that strategically enhance their tech-enabled managed services and overall Technology Solutions as a Service digital transformation strategy and offerings. The dinCloud acquisition serves as the first acquisition under Ron Zampolin's new role as President of Corporate Development and further expands on the focused transformation strategy ATSG is successfully executing. Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to dinCloud during the transaction. For more information on ATSG's acquisition of dinCloud, LLC, visit www.atsg.net, email [email protected] or call (888) 504-9559. About ATSG ATSG is a global tech-enabled managed services and solutions company focused on innovative solutions to enhance today's digital enterprise and end-user experiences. ATSG provides Intelligent IT through Technology Solutions as a Service (TSaaS) to a variety of customers; leveraging an offerings portfolio of rediTech, rediManage, rediCloud, and rediSecure, which delivers reliable, elastic, dynamic infrastructure, collaboration, applications, as well as world-class IT operations. ATSG is a privately held company headquartered in Manhattan, New York. For more information on ATSG, please visit us on the web at www.atsg.net, like us on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter or become a fan on our Facebook page. #AboutATSG ATSG is a portfolio company of RunTide Capital, a private equity firm focused on building tech-enabled growth companies. Press Contact: Elizabeth Kubycheck [email protected] SOURCE ATSG Related Links http://www.atsg.net SYDNEY, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Auraya, a voice intelligence company, announces today the release of EVA Forensics, its fraud detection and prevention capability for cloud-based, on-premise and SaaS solutions. Under the new name, EVA Forensics is the third generation of its predecessor, EVA Fraud Manager. Auraya introduces several enhancements, improving the fraud analyst experience, delivering even faster crossmatching capability and more flexibility in methods to match voices to real-time and historical audio sources. Whilst EVA Fraud Manager has always been available as a cloud service, EVA Forensics is now also available as a SaaS offering. Main improvements to user interface: New visuals and user-friendly controls New dashboard landing page showing system statistics and service status at a glance New collapsible navigator access to access application modules New module showing a set of selected reports with grid data display and visualizations New identities view showing all identities in the system which can be filtered through to easily locate records Main improvements to security: Added Role Manager, enabling administrators to create and manage roles and access Added security configuration for user access in case SAML-based IdP is not present Improved ad-hoc audio testing, allowing for stereo files and channel selection Better match scoring with 3 different scores now available so raw score, impostor probability score and the odds score can feed AI based decision systems with more data to make better informed decisions More configurable fields allowing analysts to track value of fraud averted More powerful and flexible capability to capture data from other systems to inform analysts when analyzing audio and score matches Main improvements for convenience: Added configurable job scheduling, allowing admins to create, configure and manage multiple job schedules Audio bundles for matches can now be downloaded to analyst computers or removable media Identity audio records can now be downloaded separately from the identity details page Match reports can now be downloaded for viewing technical information of the audio involved and its scores Easy direct access to system records and resources through URL EVA Forensics enables organizations to track and manage known and potential fraudsters that target contact centers, voice bots and digital channels, all in real-time. Organizations enroll fraudster voiceprints via historical call recordings or through external sources. Through real-time tracking and flagging, organizations are able to detect potential and known fraudsters and mitigate or prevent the risk of successful fraud attempts. Integrating EVA Forensics into an organization's existing solution platform is quick and seamless. It can be integrated as an AMI and installed behind their own firewall or as a SaaS model through Auraya. EVA Forensics provides law enforcement and homeland security organizations with the ability to analyse millions of audio feeds to spot a person of interest in a conversation in real time or from historical recordings. "We are excited about our latest release of EVA Forensics and the enhancements around features and functionality that we have now included in this version," said Ray Doak, CEO of Auraya. "Our enterprise customers have asked for EVA Forensics to be provided as SaaS which we have included in this latest software release. This enables organizations of any scale to adopt Fraud Management within their Contact Center or Digital channel environment. Ultimately this will lead to cost savings for organizations and improved security for legitimate customers as a result of detecting and deterring fraud. Government agencies in law enforcement and homeland security now have improved tools to detect persons of interest in all forms of audio communications. About Auraya Auraya is a voice intelligence company with the mission of empowering people and organizations to interact and engage with convenience and security in all channels and languages. Auraya develops next-gen voice biometrics technology to deliver easy-to-use and highly secure authentication and fraud detection capabilities. Auraya provides its technology to a global network of partners who incorporate Auraya's voice biometric technology into their secure, customer-facing applications and fraud detection solutions. The ecosystem of partners delivers solutions in all industries including government, education, healthcare, financial services, retail services, and telecommunications. If you would like to talk to the team at Auraya, send us an email at [email protected]. SOURCE Auraya Systems Related Links https://aurayasystems.com/ GLEN MILLS, Pa., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Axalta (NYSE: AXTA), a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, today announced the winners of its first-annual Bright Futures Scholarship Program. The 19 recipients represent a group of students who have demonstrated academic excellence, leadership, and active participation in school and community activities. The 2021 Axalta Bright Futures Scholarship recipients are: Aman Agrawal University of Houston ; ; Alejandro Alberto Universal Technical Institute ; ; Pagnaa Attah Nantogmah Drexel University ; ; Jainita Chauhan Texas A&M University; Texas A&M University; Martin Chown University of Michigan ; ; Sara Dwivedi University of Michigan ; ; Jesse Efymow Drexel University ; ; Lucia Fernandez Villanova University ; ; Marcelo Guzman Texas A&M University ; ; Jack Hendrzak Drexel University ; ; Tejas Karun Wayne State University ; ; Ted Kim University of Houston ; ; Erika McCormick University of Virginia ; ; Raheem Royall Universal Technical Institute ; ; Isaiaah Sears Universal Technical Institute ; ; Brittany Shimanski University of Delaware ; ; Nicole Tavormina Drexel University ; ; Vivie Tran Texas A&M University ; and ; and Zhiwen Xu University of Virginia . "We are thrilled to award Bright Futures Scholarships to these outstanding students who represent the next generation of innovators that will advance the coatings industry and the customer segments we serve," said Robert Bryant, Axalta's Chief Executive Officer. "Axalta is passionate about providing STEM and vocational opportunities to students and educators at every level in order to identify, support, and develop strong talent that will be the future workforce." The Bright Futures Scholarship Program assists current students in college or vocational programs in underrepresented communities near Axalta facilities who are studying chemical engineering, chemistry, supply chain management, and autobody painting and repair. It not only provides monetary support to recipients, but also creates opportunities throughout the school year for the students to interact and network with Axalta technology and business leaders, as well as fellow scholarship recipients. The company also announced it will fund an additional 16 scholarships for students studying science, engineering, and manufacturing-related trades at Lord Fairfax Community College (LFCC, soon to be known as Laurel Ridge Community College) near the Company's Front Royal, Virginia manufacturing site. The Bright Futures Scholarship Program further solidifies Axalta's 40-year history and commitment to that community. To learn more about Axalta Bright Futures and the Scholarship Program, visit www.axalta.com/brightfutures. About Axalta Axalta is a global leader in the coatings industry, providing customers with innovative, colorful, beautiful and sustainable coatings solutions. From light vehicles, commercial vehicles and refinish applications to electric motors, building facades and other industrial applications, our coatings are designed to prevent corrosion, increase productivity and enhance durability. With more than 150 years of experience in the coatings industry, the global team at Axalta continues to find ways to serve our more than 100,000 customers in over 130 countries better every day with the finest coatings, application systems and technology. For more information, visit axalta.com and follow us @axalta on Twitter. Contact Jessica Iben M +1.267.398.8163 [email protected] SOURCE Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. - Potential for superior tolerability to mRNA and Adenovirus Vector vaccines - Production Agreement signed with Millipore-Sigma for SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Supply VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BioVaxys Technology Corp. (CSE: BIOV) (FRA: 5LB) (OTCQB: BVAXF) ("BioVaxys" or "Company"), announced today that it has initiated what could be a scientifically groundbreaking study on the reduced ACE2 binding capabilities of the hapten-modified spike protein that is the foundation of BVX-0320, the Company's SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Many SARS-CoV-2-infected patients develop pneumonia that may lead to acute respiratory distress, with some patients developing cardiac symptoms and cardiovascular injury. In their peer-reviewed research paper, "SARS-CoV-2 binds platelet ACE2 to enhance thrombosis in COVID-19," published in the Journal of Hematological Oncology, S. Zhang et.al.1 conclude that the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor and that this binding of SARS-CoV-2 to ACE2 prevents the enzyme from converting angiotensin II, potentiating pulmonary and cardiovascular issues. Currently available vaccines, whether comprised of recombinant full-length or partial spike protein can result in rare, but life-threatening side effects, such as abnormal blood clotting or myocarditis. These toxicities may be caused by unwanted binding of the vaccine spike protein to ACE2 receptors in the heart or platelet factor 4. The Biovaxys vaccine for COVID-19, BVX-0320, comprises a portion of the spike protein that is modified by the hapten, dinitrophenyl (DNP). Biovaxys believes that the haptenized spike protein has much diminished ability to bind to ACE2, which would result in much diminished vaccine toxicity. David Berd, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Biovaxys, explained that "Biovaxys will compare the binding of haptenized spike protein with the non-haptenized. The results could provide evidence that our vaccine has lowered potential for some of the observed serious vaccine side effects." James Passin, BioVaxys CEO, stated, "Haptenization, as a method to inhibit the ACE2-binding ability of the spike protein, while increasing its immunogenicity, may prove to play a critical role in global COVID-19 vaccine development and deployment strategies, as public health authorities consider options for repeated seasonal vaccine boosters in the context of reported, albeit rare, adverse effects and apparent waning immunity." This week BioVaxys entered into an agreement with Millipore-Sigma ("Millipore") a global Contract Development and Manufacturing Research Organization ("CDMO"), to manufacture a supply of GLP-grade BVX-0320, the Company's SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate for the study. Millipore produced similar yields of BVX-0320 last summer for the Company's animal immune response studies, but will now be incorporating in manufacturing the recently produced purified recombinant s-protein produced by BioVaxys bioproduction partner, WuXi Biologics. Millipore is a subsidiary of Merck KGaA (Deutsche Bourse: MRCG), one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, with a market capitalization of US$102 billion. BioVaxys is currently finalizing arrangements with a major US academic research institution who will be collaborating with the Company on the study. For greater certainty, BioVaxys is not making any express or implied claims that it has the ability to treat the SAR-CoV-2 virus at this time. 1J Hematol Oncol 2020 Sep 4;13(1):120 About BioVaxys Technology Corp. Based in Vancouver, BioVaxys Technology Corp. (www.biovaxys.com) is a British Columbia-registered, clinical stage biotechnology company that is developing viral and oncology vaccine platforms, as well as immuno-diagnostics. The Company is advancing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine based on its haptenized viral protein technology, and is planning a clinical trial of its haptenized autologous cell vaccine used in combination with anti-PD1 and anti-PDL-1 checkpoint inhibitors that will initially be developed for Stage III/Stage IV ovarian cancer. Also in development is CoviDTH, a diagnostic for evaluating the presence or absence of a T cell immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. BioVaxys has two issued US patents and two patent applications related to its cancer vaccine, and pending patent applications for its SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccine and diagnostic technologies. BioVaxys common shares are listed on the CSE under the stock symbol "BIOV" and trade on the Frankfurt Bourse (FRA: 5LB) and in the US (OTCQB: BVAXF). ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Signed "James Passin" Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information This press release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating the future operating or financial performance of the Company, are forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to, among other things, completion of the murine model study, regulatory approval for a Phase I study of its BVX-0320 Vaccine Candidate in humans and the overall development of BioVaxys' vaccines, including any haptenized SARS-Cov-2 protein vaccine. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates, primarily the assumption that BioVaxys will be successful in developing and testing vaccines, that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies including, primarily but without limitation, the risk that BioVaxys' vaccines will not prove to be effective and/ or will not receive the required regulatory approvals. With regards to BioVaxys' business, there are a number of risks that could affect the development of its biotechnology products, including, without limitation, the need for additional capital to fund clinical trials, its lack of operating history, uncertainty about whether its products will complete the long, complex and expensive clinical trial and regulatory approval process for approval of new drugs necessary for marketing approval, uncertainty about whether its autologous cell vaccine immunotherapy can be developed to produce safe and effective products and, if so, whether its vaccine products will be commercially accepted and profitable, the expenses, delays and uncertainties and complications typically encountered by development stage biopharmaceutical businesses, financial and development obligations under license arrangements in order to protect its rights to its products and technologies, obtaining and protecting new intellectual property rights and avoiding infringement to third parties and their dependence on manufacturing by third parties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law. James Passin, CEO +1 646 452 7054 Media Contacts BioVaxys Technology Corp. Gina Cestari, Senior VP 6 Degrees Public Relations +1 917 797 7904 [email protected] SOURCE BioVaxys Technology Corp. WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Star Families (BSF) , the nation's largest nonprofit dedicated to supporting military and veteran families and strengthening communities across the United States, will officially kick off their Blue Star Welcome Week from September 25th, 2021 to October 3rd, 2021 to raise awareness among Americans and build grassroots support for the roughly 600,000 active-duty and transitioning military families that move to new communities each year. It has been a long fight for America's military and their families in the twenty years since 9/11, and they are still in the arena. Military families are in our communities and need our support now more than ever. While many Americans may understand that deployments, training, and transitions are a huge part of military life, most are unaware that military families are likely to not live on military bases anymore they live in our communities, attend our schools, and shop at our grocery stores. The frequency of moves often mean military members, spouses, and children are removed from the proximity of family and friends. In surveys most say they do not have a sense of belonging in the communities in which they live, and many do not have a single person of whom they can ask a favor. Our military families make significant sacrifices as they serve alongside their service members across the world, and isolation makes those sacrifices harder to shoulder. Blue Star Welcome Week is an opportunity for communities across the country to welcome our military and transitioning veteran families and remind all Americans what we owe to our military families, their service members, and veterans. It is an opportunity for military families and transitioning families to make meaningful connections to their communities. For a full week, Blue Star Families and community partners are providing fun and creative, virtual and in-person, opportunities for relocating military- and Veteran-connected families to meet and engage with local community members. This connection will help ease their transition and create a greater sense of belonging in the places where they live and serve. Welcome Week is designed to alleviate the challenges of frequent relocations and support families with opportunities to participate in events including sending messages of welcome and appreciation from communities across the country, special events and giveaways, and spotlights on local favorites from military families and Blue Star Neighbors. "Most Americans have no idea hundreds of thousands of military-connected families make transition moves to new communities across the country each year," said Kathy Roth-Douquet, CEO of Blue Star Families. "America's military families leave their family and friends to find new schools, new jobs, new communities over and over again while supporting a challenging military mission. Blue Star Welcome Week is designed to recognize transitioning military families across the country, providing a platform for communities and individuals to engage and welcome these families. Each of us, across the country, can take part." "There are some very unique challenges and sacrifices to the military lifestyle," General Joseph Dunford. "Given the contribution that they make to the security of the nation, giving their willingness to do whatever must be done, unquestioning. The fact is we can do more to help them. We can do more to support them. We can do more to make sure that their sacrifices are recognized and appreciated." Each year, Blue Star Families conducts the annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey (aMFLS), the largest, most comprehensive survey of its kind, which acts as a listening tool for military families to sound off on what is and what is not working for them. Data from the 2020 aMFLS shows that 79% of military families feel that the general public is largely unaware of the daily challenges they face. Blue Star Welcome Week addresses this by creating opportunities for community engagement that bring together community supporters, everyday civilian neighbors, and military families to help build stronger, integrated connections that help ease the stress of frequent moves. Blue Star Welcome Week honorary chairs are General Joseph Dunford, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mrs. Ellyn Dunford; Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies; and Harriet Dominique, SVP, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer and Corporate Responsibility Officer, USAA. Blue Star Welcome Week is supported by partners including the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, USAA Corporate Responsibility, CSX, Macy's, Boeing, Navy Federal Credit Union, Albertsons Companies, Inc., Blue Shield of California, Leonardo DRS, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Rancho Santa Fe Foundation, Philips North America, dozens of community small businesses, nonprofit partner organizations, and more. Support from corporate sponsors, private foundations, and individual donors sustains Blue Star Families and its mission of strengthening America's military families through communities by offering programs and services such as Blue Star Welcome Week. To learn more about Blue Star Families Welcome Week events and opportunities to get involved, please visit https://bluestarwelcomeweek.org. About Blue Star Families Blue Star Families is the nation's largest grass-roots military family support organization, with a mission to support military families to improve military readiness. Its distinctive approach builds stronger communities around military families through knowledge and programs that address the unique needs of those who serve. Blue Star Families' nationally recognized surveys and analysis give military families an important voice that informs policymakers and its military family programs. It uses the power of its collective resources and cross-sector collaborations to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of members of military families to strengthen the troops, their families, and our nation as a whole. For more information, visit bluestarfam.org. SOURCE Blue Star Families Annual program donates a day's worth of trading commissions generated by BMO Capital Markets globally Has raised over C$28 million and supported more than 5000 students since its inception in 2005 TORONTO, NEW YORK, and LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - BMO Capital Markets today announced that its 2021 Equity Through Education (ETE) trading day, held on September 22, 2021, raised C$1.6 million toward educational assistance for students in North America and the UK. Every year BMO donates 100 per cent of one day's institutional equity trading commissions in North America and Europe to charities that provide scholarships, bursaries, mentoring programs and development opportunities to underprivileged students to help them achieve their potential. "BMO's Equity Through Education trading day has been going strong for 17 years, helping us Boldly Grow the Good in business and life. The program helps build diversity, equity and inclusion through financial aid and development programs to benefit bright and deserving students across North America and the UK," said Dan Barclay, CEO and Group Head, BMO Capital Markets. "We're proud to partner with organizations that have a lifelong impact on young people, many of whom have made their professional home at BMO over the years." "As a graduate of the Financial Women's Association/BMO Capital Markets Baruch Mentorship Program I'm so grateful for the life-changing mentoring I received and the chance to experience two great summer internships at BMO. Not only did the BMO Scholarship help my family, I feel like it has launched me toward a very promising future," said Jenny He, a recent BMO recruit. The proceeds from this year's Equity Through Education trading day will go to the following nine charities: Since its inception in 2005, the program has raised over $28 million and helped more than 5000 students achieve their academic potential. For more information, visit Our Culture . About BMO Financial Group Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of $971 billion as of July 31, 2021, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets. SOURCE BMO Financial Group Related Links www.bmo.com Find extensive research with data synthesis and validation on Body Composition Analyzers Market report. Download a Free Sample Report Now! As the business impact of the COVID-19 spreads, the body composition analyzers market is expected to have a POSITIVE growth. 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:- Recognizing the existing business model Focusing on agile execution of proposed and approved changes. Assessing Impact on Critical IT infrastructure and Software System Retrieve Actionable Data Points to Make Critical Business Decisions Key Considerations for Market Forecast: Impact of lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, demand destruction, and change in customer behavior Optimistic, probable, and pessimistic scenarios for all markets as the impact of pandemic unfolds Pre- as well as post-COVID-19 market estimates Quarterly impact analysis and updates on market estimates Get Access to On-demand, Syndicated Extensive Research Reports using Technavio's Subscription Platform Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Reports that might interest you: Homecare Oxygen Concentrators Market -The homecare oxygen concentrators market has the potential to grow by USD 1.21 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 15.06%. Download a free sample report now! Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Devices Market -The continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices market has the potential to grow by USD 1.08 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 5.98%. Download a free sample report now! Emerging Opportunities with Key players Beurer GmbH - The company provides a body composition analyzer that records the heart rhythm, provides optimum monitoring of the heart rhythm, and self-monitoring of heart function at home or on the move. - The company provides a body composition analyzer that records the heart rhythm, provides optimum monitoring of the heart rhythm, and self-monitoring of heart function at home or on the move. Bodystat Ltd. - The company offers QUADSCAN 4000 Touch which gives immediate results of body composition and hydration status within the body. - The company offers QUADSCAN 4000 Touch which gives immediate results of body composition and hydration status within the body. COSMED Srl -The company provides body composition analyzers that use whole-body densitometry to determine body fat and fat-free mass in adults and children. 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 a detailed market share analysis of market participants during COVID-19 lockdown: https://www.technavio.com/report/body-composition-analyzers-market-industry-analysis Body Composition Analyzers Market 2021-2025: Segmentation Technology Bio-Impedance Analyzer DEXA Others End-user Healthcare Facilities Weight Loss And Therapy Facilities Home Users Geography North America Europe Asia ROW The body composition analyzers market is driven by the growing obese population and increasing geriatric population, In addition, other factors such as the increase in government initiatives to promote a healthy lifestyle, and increasing per capita expenditure are expected to trigger the body composition analyzers market for vendors. Download our extensive report to get Exhaustive Insights: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR70708 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 Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com/ SOURCE Technavio Related Links http://www.technavio.com/ "Up to $14,000 per violation - that's a hefty fine that can add up fast if you're a business owner," said Medcillary CEO Jon Boski, referring to the proposed, compounding fine for companies that don't comply with the mandate. "Business owners want to make sure they get this right." A bevy of federal agencies are still hammering out the specifics of Biden's proposed mandate. Right now, the government is suggesting employers provide employees paid time off to get vaccinations. Employees that don't want the shot will be required to get tested weekly. C-suites are nervous. They see plummeting productivity and a compliance nightmare. "Let's bring the vaccinations and testing to the office," said Boski. "Make the process more convenient for employee, less disruptive and more manageable for companies." He continued by saying you can't expect companies to hire new staff qualified to deliver the vaccine or weekly testing to employees. Boski, who has become something of a COVID-19 crusader, donating masks to schools and calling out what he termed "congressional COVID chaos," is offering to set up and manage inhouse vaccination clinics for companies free of charge. "This is a catalyst to end COVID. The vaccines obviously are free. We'll provide the on-site service free to the company if it means getting more people vaccinated," Boski said. "When the President made the mandate announcement, we were already getting ready to set up fall vaccination drives. We immediately refocused because it's the right thing to do." About Medcillary Medcillary is a healthcare consultancy and distributorship helping prepare people for tomorrow, today. They're identifying innovative products and services that are making medicine better. The company was founded in 2015 and operates in forty-nine states from headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Medcillary can be found on the web at www.medcillary.com . SOURCE Medcillary Related Links http://www.medcillary.com Innovative Technology Partnership Brings World-Class Workplace Experiences to Cadillac Fairview Office Clients and Building Occupants TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Cadillac Fairview (CF), a globally-focused owner, operator, investor, and developer of best-in-class real estate across retail, office, residential, industrial, and mixed-use asset classes based in Canada, is pleased to announce its partnership with HqO, the leading end-to-end tenant experience operating system for office buildings. Today, Cadillac Fairview is thrilled to announce the launch of CF Concierge, a mobile app designed to support building occupants with an enhanced workplace experience, offering access to digital amenities and services in CF office complexes in its Canadian portfolio. Earlier this year, Cadillac Fairview introduced CF Concierge at two of its flagship office complexes across Canada at CF Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto, Ontario and at CF Pacific Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, with plans to roll out the app at 30 CF office buildings nationwide. "At Cadillac Fairview we are committed to delivering exceptional service, and we are thrilled to launch CF Concierge, offering our office clients a seamless workplace experience by providing innovative spaces with digital amenities," commented Karen Jalon, Vice President, Sustainability, Energy & Smart Technology at Cadillac Fairview. "As we continue to welcome our office clients and their workers back to our office buildings, we're eager to offer a tech-enabled future for our community of building occupants to empower a frictionless environment that complements the modern workplace experience." CF Concierge will bring several key features to clients at participating CF office buildings, including: Mobile Key Access: users can access the building and office space directly from a mobile device using the app. users can access the building and office space directly from a mobile device using the app. Service Requests: users can report maintenance issues and place requests to CF's national service centre, CF Connect, available 24/7. users can report maintenance issues and place requests to CF's national service centre, CF Connect, available 24/7. Community: users can stay informed with real-time information and RSVP for local events hosted in CF buildings. users can stay informed with real-time information and RSVP for local events hosted in CF buildings. Order Food & Beverage: users can order meals from surrounding food service businesses via CF Eats. users can order meals from surrounding food service businesses via CF Eats. Offers and Services: users can view special offers exclusive to CF building occupants. users can view special offers exclusive to CF building occupants. Capacity Manager: users can easily manage the number of employees that come to the office to allow a safe return to work transition. users can easily manage the number of employees that come to the office to allow a safe return to work transition. Transit Info: users can get real-time transit information with ease and confidence. "Our work with Cadillac Fairview exemplifies their innovation and leadership in tenant experience," says Mark Rosenthal, COO at HqO. "Through the return to offices and beyond, our partnership with Cadillac Fairview and the development of CF Concierge is a compelling archetype of how the workplace can integrate with technology to enhance buildings and their surrounding communities. As we continue to expand our reach into Canada and other countries, our work with Cadillac Fairview will help inform our products and services to better serve our customers and the modern workforce." The CF Concierge platform will showcase the CF's dedication to navigation, safety, and the wellbeing of its employees and properties as the market addresses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For a video overview on CF Concierge, please visit: https://youtu.be/YmYFUl1lkMI. CF Concierge is available for download in the App store and Google Play store. For more information on Cadillac Fairview, visit cadillacfairview.com. For more information on HqO, please visit hqo.com. About Cadillac Fairview Cadillac Fairview (CF) is a globally focused owner, operator, investor, and developer of best-in-class real estate across retail, office, residential, industrial and mixed-use asset classes. Wholly owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, CF manages in excess of $35 billion of assets across the Americas and the United Kingdom, with further expansion planned into Europe and Asia. Internationally, CF invests in communities with like-minded partners, including Stanhope in the UK, Lincoln Property Company in the U.S., and Multiplan in Brazil. The company's Canadian portfolio comprises 68 landmark properties, including the Toronto-Dominion Centre, CF Toronto Eaton Centre, Tour Deloitte, CF Carrefour Laval, CF Chinook Centre and CF Pacific Centre. Continually striving to make a positive impact in communities where it operates by promoting social connection, growth, and a sustainable future, CF's Purpose is Transforming Communities for a Vibrant Tomorrow. Learn more at cadillacfairview.com and follow CF on LinkedIn. About HqO The world's leading commercial real estate firms count on HqO to help them deliver a state-of-the-art tenant experience within their properties. Active in over 150 million square feet in 8 countries, HqO is known for its tenant experience platform comprised of an award-winning tenant app, analytics suite, and partner marketplace. Our solutions put experiences and a sense of community directly into the tenants' hands while helping property owners uncover insights and take intelligent action to differentiate their assets. For more information, visit www.hqo.com, and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. SOURCE Cadillac Fairview and HqO CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chamberlain Group, a global leader in access solutions, and University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital, a top-tier children's hospital serving Chicagoland and beyond, are announcing the launch of the ONETEAM Mobile Maker Space. ONETEAM Mobile Maker Space is an innovative STEAM-based therapeutic intervention that helps children heal through creating, building, and learning. Comer Children's Hospital patients are the first in the Chicagoland area with access to the unique intervention, which has been made possible through support from Chamberlain Group's Good Corporate Citizenship program. Click here to view the introduction video of the ONETEAM Mobile Maker Space. "We are proud to be able to support Comer Children's Hospital by providing access to a novel STEAM-based maker space," said JoAnna Sohovich, CEO, Chamberlain Group. "The conditions that limit our ability to celebrate this special milestone also amplify the isolation that the hospitalized children feel. We are happy that the Mobile Maker Space is available to provide creative outlets for them during this especially challenging time." The idea that maker spaces can provide a unique therapeutic opportunity for children coping with challenging circumstances, anxiety, or trauma, is one of the most exciting new concepts in the field of child development. The Comer Children's Hospital Child Life Specialists are now able to provide this new intervention to patients with the ONETEAM Mobile Maker Space, a cart holding equipment and material that can be brought into hospital rooms to engage minds, teach skills, and encourage collaboration. "We are excited to be able to offer the STEAM-based maker space because it helps kids tap into their creativity and build anything they dream of, regardless of whatever their limitations might be," said Jennie Ott, Director of Child Life and Family Education, Comer Children's Hospital. "The children we care for are sometimes at the hospital for months at a time, and now more than ever, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of our programming will be even more impactful for isolated patients." Comer Children's, a 172-bed children's hospital in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, was established at UChicago Medicine in 2005 thanks to a generous donation from Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, and his wife, Frances. The facility is home to the only Level 1 pediatric trauma center on the city's South Side. It includes a 30-bed pediatric intensive care unit, one of the state's busiest neonatal intensive units and an array of general, specialty and subspecialty care for children of all ages. As a major tertiary referral center, Comer Children's admits about 5,000 patients and accommodates nearly 37,000 outpatient clinics visits annually from the Chicago area, the Midwest and around the world, offering a range of services from general care to groundbreaking treatments for the most complex medical conditions. Good Corporate Citizenship is a Chamberlain Group company value demonstrating passion to pursue activities and contributions that positively impact the communities where we work and live. With the backing of The Duchossois Family Foundation, the company's Good Corporate Citizenship program offers employees curated opportunities to volunteer their time or treasure to causes that benefit our communities, promote equality, and protect the environment. Support for the ONETEAM Mobile Maker Space was made possible through contributions from the Good Corporate Citizenship program and Wellbeing activities over the last three years. About Chamberlain Group Chamberlain Group is a global leader in smart access solutions across residential and commercial properties. Our prominent brands LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin and Grifco are found in millions of residential and commercial access applications across the globe. Our innovative products and partnerships, powered by our myQ smart ecosystem, provide customers with smart access solutions to move safely through garages, homes, communities, businesses and storage facilities. Chamberlain Group pioneered vehicle-to-home connectivity through patented technology aboard hundreds of millions of vehicles. Chamberlain Group owns Controlled Products Systems Group, a leading wholesale distributor of perimeter access control equipment in the U.S., and Systems, LLC, one of North America's leading dock leveler manufacturers. Blackstone recently signed an agreement to acquire Chamberlain Group, with an anticipated close by yearend. Further information is available @ www.chamberlaingroup.com. Follow Chamberlain Group on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. SOURCE Chamberlain Group PARSIPPANY, N.J, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CherryRoad Technologies Inc. today announced it has signed a NASPO ValuePoint Participating Addendum with the State of California, allowing the State to simplify its entire cloud procurement process. CherryRoad markets its cloud solutions and managed services to state and local governments through NASPO ValuePoint's Master Agreement awarded by the State of Utah. The State of California is the seventeenth state government to contract with CherryRoad to address its unique cloud-solution needs. A full list of states that currently have Participating Addendum's in place to leverage CherryRoad's services may be found at: https://www.cherryroad.com/naspo-valuepoint/. Cloud solutions provided by CherryRoad include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) which were developed specifically for state and local governments. NASPO ValuePoint is regarded as the nation's most significant public contract cooperative due to its unparalleled value for members as well as contractors, competitive pricing, and superior terms and conditions. NASPO ValuePoint Cloud Solutions Master Agreements are only awarded through a competitive RFP to a limited number of cloud solution providers whose offerings meet stringent security and data protection requirements. "By using a cooperative contract like NASPO, the State of California can alleviate the administrative burden of purchasing and accelerate the procurement process for its multiple entities," said Christopher Tilden, Director Strategic Alliances. "Cooperative buying can help agencies attain more competitive pricing by combining economies of scale that they would likely not be able to achieve on their own." About CherryRoad Technologies Inc. At CherryRoad, our clients entrust us with the success of their IT solutions, whether we're delivering on-premise ERP, cloud-based application management, business intelligence, process optimization, strategic staffing, or change management consulting. Throughout our 30-year history we've successfully partnered with hundreds of public sector and commercial clients to modernize, optimize, and manage their back-office functions. Headquartered in Parsippany, N.J. with offices across the U.S., we've earned a solid reputation for combining technology, organizational, functional, and vertical market expertise into practical solutions that deliver results on-time and on-budget. For more information, visit www.cherryroad.com. About NASPO and NASPO ValuePoint The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) is a non-profit association dedicated to advancing public procurement through leadership, excellence, and integrity. It is made up of the directors of the central purchasing offices in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of the United States. NASPO is an organization that helps its members as public procurement leaders by promoting best practices, education, professional development, research, and innovative procurement strategies. Learn more at www.naspo.org. NASPO ValuePoint is the cooperative purchasing division of the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO), facilitating cooperative public procurement solicitations using a Lead State model. NASPO ValuePoint delivers high value, reliable, and competitively sourced cooperative contractsoffering public entities outstanding prices, favorable terms and conditions, and value-added services. Learn more at www.naspovaluepoint.org. NASPO, NASPO ValuePoint, and Lead State Model are registered trademarks of the National Association of State Procurement Officials. SOURCE CherryRoad Technologies Inc. Sinopec, Cosco Shipping and China Eastern Airlines have taken their respective advantages to jointly develop an innovative practice of building "a new model of green transportation," exploring a cross-industry, full-cycle and zero-emission path a milestone significance as China's transportation and energy sectors promote to reach peak carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. The crude oil of this carbon neutral petroleum project was produced from Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corporation's share of oil in Angola and was imported by Sinopec's trading arm Unipec with Cosco Shipping as the carrier. The crude oil shipment travelled over 9,300 nautical miles across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, arriving at Ningbo Zhoushan Port. The 30,000 tons of crude oil was later transported to the Sinopec Gaoqiao Petrochemical Corporation refinery. Sinopec will officially launch the carbon-neutral gasoline and diesel products to the public at designated gas stations this year. In the meantime, Sinopec will be supplying 5,417 tons of jet fuel to China Eastern Airlines to build carbon-neutral flights as a joint effort. To offset the carbon emissions produced throughout the life cycle of the shipment of oil, Sinopec, Cosco Shipping and China Eastern Airlines actively implemented energy saving and emission reduction strategies, purchased Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) carbon credits, and hired SEEE as the carbon neutral certification authority. The project invited China Classification Society Certification Company (CCSC) as the third-party verification agency to measure the carbon dioxide produced throughout the entire life cycle, from oil exploitation, transportation, storage, refining to product consumption accurately, and then equally offset the emissions to complete China's first carbon neutral oil shipment. The three companies have played their respective advantages to reach a common goal. Sinopec took on the responsibility of offsetting the carbon emissions produced from exploitation, storage, processing, transportation of petroleum products, motor gasoline and diesel and LPG combustion; Cosco Shipping undertook the carbon emissions offset responsibility of crude oil transportation and marine fuel combustion; and China Eastern Airlines took on the responsibility of offsetting carbon emissions from aviation kerosene combustion. "Sinopec is committed to achieve green and low-carbon development. This carbon neutral petroleum project has achieved carbon neutrality from the 'cradle' to the 'grave' with every drop of oil. It is also the first carbon emissions offset endeavor carried out by companies across three industries, realizing full coverage of carbon neutralization of land, sea and air transportation. The project is of positive effect, and we will thrive to provide safer, cleaner and diversified energy while meeting the target requirements of reaching carbon peak and achieving carbon neutrality," said Ling Yiqun, Vice President of Sinopec Group. The petroleum sector has a long process chain with complicated technological processes and difficulties in calculating the carbon emissions. Faced with the new standards of carbon peak and carbon neutrality and to be in line with the general trend of energy transition, the oil and gas industry must find a new development direction that is green, sustainable and reduces carbon and emissions. Sinopec collaborated with Cosco Shipping and China Eastern Airlines to carry out China's first shipment of full life cycle carbon neutral oil trade, accurately measuring and offsetting carbon emissions from the project. This partnership explored a clear path to achieve carbon neutral oil trade to establish an industry benchmark and an example to lead the green and clean development of the industry. For more information, please visit Sinopec. SOURCE SINOPEC Christopher M. Whaley, Ph.D. named recipient of the 2021 Seema S. Sonnad Emerging Leader in Managed Care Research Award Tweet this Whaley is a policy researcher at RAND and a professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research focuses on using large-scale medical claims data to examine how information and financial incentives influence patients' choice of providers, how providers respond to changes in consumer incentives and how employers and insurers can design insurance benefits to promote value. His research has been published in a variety of clinical, health policy and economics journals, and he is the lead author of a JAMA paper that examines the effects of online price transparency information. "I'm honored to receive an award that's representative of Dr. Sonnad's tremendous influence. Her work touched the lives of many, and I will work to ensure her legacy of mentorship and leadership lives on," said Whaley. This award was established in honor of Seema S. Sonnad, Ph.D., former associate editor of AJMC, who passed away in June 2015. Sonnad served as a mentor to many young researchers and was the inspiration for the creation of an award that recognizes and encourages early career achievements in the field of managed care. About The American Journal of Managed Care The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) is a multimedia, peer-reviewed, MEDLINE-indexed journal that keeps industry leaders on the forefront of health policy by sharing digital research relevant to industry decision makers. Other brands in the AJMC family include The American Journal of Accountable Care and Evidence-Based Oncology. These comprehensive multimedia brands bring together stakeholder views from payers, providers, policy makers and other industry leaders in managed care. AJMC 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. Media Contact Kristie Luff +1-609-516-3722 [email protected] SOURCE The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) Related Links https://www.ajmc.com MIRAMAR, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Claro Enterprise Solutions , a leading global technology services company, today announced that it has been named to LATINA Style, Inc.'s list of top 50 best U.S. companies for Latinas to work for. This is the second consecutive year that the company has earned the recognition. The LATINA Style 50 Report identifies corporations providing the best career opportunities for Latinas in the United States. Considered the most respected evaluation of corporate America's career advancement opportunities for Latinas, the annual listing recognizes companies that support programs for training, mentorship, retention and advancement. "Achieving this distinction for the second consecutive year recognizes our commitment to opportunity, diversity and inclusion," said Jorge Rodriguez, President and CEO of Claro Enterprise Solutions. "We are proud to champion a workplace culture that consistently enables so many Latinas to succeed, both in senior leadership roles and across all parts of the organization." Companies responding to LATINA Style's questionnaire are evaluated based on criteria identified by LATINA Style magazine as most important to them in the workplace. A complete list of companies included in the report can be found here. "We are proud to recognize companies who support programs encouraging training, mentorship, and promotion for Latinas through the LATINA Style 50 Report," said Robert Bard, CEO, LATINA Style, Inc. "With the mission to recognize the work corporate America is doing to advance and empower Latinas, the survey reflects the opportunities provided to Latinas, as well as the company's overall culture and focus on diversity and inclusion." The LATINA Style 50 Companies will be honored in February 2022 during the LATINA Style 50 Awards Ceremony & Diversity Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. About Claro Enterprise Solutions Claro Enterprise Solutions , LLC is a global technology services company that provides proven, tailored solutions and a seamless customer experience to help businesses evolve and adapt to constant change. The company has two decades of experience across 25 countries and focuses on continually developing new approaches to enterprise solutions for businesses of all sizes. From digital innovation to streamlined operations, from enhanced security to guaranteed reliability, our products and services help businesses run better, faster and more efficiently. About LATINA Style, Inc. LATINA Style Inc., headquartered in Dallas, TX, is the publisher of LATINA Style Magazine, a national magazine for the professional Hispanic woman. The magazine has been published for 26 years and has a national readership of nearly 600,000. The company is host of the LATINA Style Business Series, the LATINA Style 50 Report, the National LATINA Symposium and the LATINA Style Hero Initiative. For further information about the LATINA Style 50 Report visit www.latinastyle.com or call (214) 357-2186. Media Contact: Claro Enterprise Solutions Alex Kozlov [email protected] 617-620-4180 SOURCE Claro Enterprise Solutions Related Links https://www.usclaro.com HONG KONG, Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CNOOC Limited (the "Company", SEHK: 00883,NYSE: CEO, TSX: CNU) announced today that Qinhuangdao/ Caofeidian onshore power project has commenced operation successfully. This onshore power project is located in the mid-western Bohai Bay, containing two parts, firstly the Qinhuangdao 32-6 and Caofeidian 11-1 oilfields onshore power project, and secondly the Qinhuangdao 32-6 facility capacity expansion project. The Qinhuangdao 32-6 oilfields are approximately 20 kilometres from the coast, with an average water depth of 19 meters. The Caofeidian 11-1 oilfields are approximately 30 kilometres from the coast, with an average water depth of 25 meters. The onshore power project has built with two onshore high voltage switching stations and two offshore electric power platforms, with a designed power transmission capacity of 200MW. It is positioned to provide electric power to Qinhuangdao 32-6 oilfields, Caofeidian 11-1 oilfields, and Caofeidian 6-4 oilfields. The Qinhuangdao 32-6 facility capacity expansion project has been constructed with two simple oil-water processing platforms both of which rely on the electricity supply of the onshore power project to scale up a holistic oil extraction and capacity expansion by taking advantage of the onshore power grid. It is estimated that the daily increase in oil production will reach the peak in 2023, about 8,100 barrels, an increase of nearly 20% over the current level. After the running the onshore power project, compared with self-generating electricity in the platform, the relevant oilfields are expected to save 85,900 tons of standard coal equivalents, reduce 4,000 tons of NOx emissions and 186,000 tons of CO 2 emissions in peak years. It demonstrates remarkable energy saving and emission reduction effects, which marks a historic change in the power consumption mode of China's offshore oilfield operations. It also signifies that the energy consumption structure of offshore oilfields has embarked on a fully-fledged implementation of low-carbon transformation. Mr. Wang Dongjin, Chairman of CNOOC Limited, said, "The onshore power project is a vigorously measure for the Company to practice the concept of sustainable development and improve our capability of low-carbon operation. The Company will take this as an important starting point, make every effort to promote increase in reserves and production, and demonstrate greater deeds in the implementation of the 'carbon peak and carbon neutrality' goal." - END - Notes to Editors: More information about the Company is available at http://www.cnoocltd.com . *** *** *** *** This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding expected future events, business prospectus or financial results. The words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by the Company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the Company believes are appropriate under the circumstances. However, whether actual results and developments will meet the expectations and predictions of the Company depends on a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause the actual results, performance and financial condition to differ materially from the Company's expectations, including but not limited to the Company and its controlling shareholder being listed in the list of the U.S. for sanction against companies with alleged ties to the Chinese military, those associated with fluctuations in crude oil and natural gas prices, macro-political and economic factors, changes in the tax and fiscal regimes of the host countries in which we operate, the highly competitive nature of the oil and natural gas industry, environmental responsibility and compliance requirements, the Company's price forecast, the exploration and development activities, mergers, acquisitions and divestments activities, HSSE and insurance policies and changes in anti-corruption, anti-fraud, anti-money laundering and corporate governance laws. For a description of these and other risks and uncertainties, please see the documents the Company files from time to time with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 20-F filed in April of the latest fiscal year. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company cannot assure that the results or developments anticipated will be realised or, even if substantially realised, that they will have the expected effect on the Company, its business or operations. *** *** *** *** For further enquiries, please contact: Ms. Jing Liu Manager, Media & Public Relations CNOOC Limited Tel: +86-10-8452-3404 Fax: +86-10-8452-1441 E-mail: [email protected] Bunny Lee Porda Havas International Finance Communications Group Tel: +852 3150 6707 Fax: +852 3150 6728 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE CNOOC Limited DENVER, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Malala Fund and hearing health not-for-profit Cochlear Foundation have partnered to raise awareness about the barriers keeping millions of children and young people with hearing loss from accessing a quality education. According to the World Health Organization, 34 million children around the world live with disabling hearing loss.1 Without equal access to a quality education and early access to hearing healthcare and support these children may not realize their full potential. In response, the world's youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of Malala Fund, Malala Yousafzai, called for societies and governments to prioritize hearing health across the life-course in a personal foreword for the World Health Organization's first-ever World Report on Hearing, in March 2021. Following this important step, Malala Fund and Cochlear Foundation, supported by Cochlear, sought to ensure hearing loss is not yet another reason girls, marginalized people and those who need hearing healthcare and support are left behind. "My hope is that all girls can have equal opportunities and that we ensure a world where every girl can have access to free, safe and quality education," said Malala Yousafzai. "Hearing loss doesn't need to be an obstacle to education." If children with hearing loss do not receive hearing healthcare and support early, they often experience lower school performance, higher risk of dropping out of school, and less likelihood of accessing higher education. Ultimately, this can impact their lifelong career prospects.2 This problem is exacerbated in many parts of the world where millions of children especially girls already face significant barriers to education.3 Cochlear Foundation Chairperson Professor Anne Simmons said hearing loss was a global issue that requires greater awareness and a global solution. "Malala Fund and Cochlear Foundation's missions are connected by a desire for children around the world including those with hearing loss to access education and embrace all of life's opportunities." "Cochlear Foundation is committed to supporting organizations and programs that enrich the lives of people with hearing loss and their communities, increase research into hearing loss and support hearing health professionals." Malala Fund and Cochlear Foundation are inviting children and young people with hearing loss to share their stories of personal achievement as part of the 'Achieve anything program.' This new program will highlight and publicly recognize their real-world experiences of hearing loss to promote their equal rights to an education and early access to hearing healthcare and support. "Education for girls can transform lives, communities, countries and our world but right now more than 130 million girls are out of school. We welcome this partnership with the Cochlear Foundation and together we hope to raise awareness about the challenges girls, including those with hearing loss, face and drive more people to join our movement for education and equality," said Suzanne Ehlers, CEO of Malala Fund. Cochlear CEO and President Dig Howitt said this partnership supported Cochlear's mission to help more people to hear and experience life's opportunities. "Two years ago, I hosted a group of children with hearing loss at a special event where Malala spoke. She is a role model whose incredible story of courage and determination inspired this group as it inspires people around the world. Malala speaking about her own experience will change lives by raising the confidence and self-esteem of a generation of girls and young people with hearing loss." "Cochlear supports Malala Fund's goals of equality for girls and believes all children should have equal access to education. I also hope this important partnership will help raise awareness of the need for governments and societies to prioritize hearing health so more children and adults with hearing loss can connect with life's opportunities." Visit www.CochlearFoundation.org to learn more about the partnership and how to submit stories to the 'Achieve anything program'. About Malala Fund Malala Fund is working for a world where all girls can learn and lead. Malala Fund advocates for resources and policy changes needed to give all girls a secondary education, invests in local education leaders and amplifies the voices of girls fighting for change. Learn more at malala.org. About Cochlear Foundation Cochlear Foundation is a hearing health not-for-profit, supported by Cochlear, which aims to raise awareness of hearing loss and help more people around the world access life-changing hearing treatment. We envision a world where anyone, anywhere with hearing loss can live a life full of opportunities. To achieve this, we advance research in hearing treatment, encourage the skill development of healthcare professionals, and support community efforts towards inclusivity. www.cochlearfoundation.org. . About Cochlear Limited Cochlear is the global leader in implantable hearing solutions. The company has a global workforce of more than 4,000 people and invests more than AUD$180 million each year in research and development. Products include cochlear implants, bone conduction implants and acoustic implants, which healthcare professionals use to treat a range of moderate to profound types of hearing loss. Since 1981, Cochlear has provided more than 650,000 implantable devices, helping people of all ages, in more than 180 countries, to hear. www.cochlear.com. References World Health Organization. Factsheet: deafness and hearing loss. Available here: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss World Report on Hearing, World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/world report on hearing UNICEF, Gender equality in education benefits every child, https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education SOURCE Cochlear Foundation While the vast majority of pension plans are well-funded, costs can vary over time due to a number of factors. Public pension plans currently are reporting strong investment returns, but stock market volatility, demographic changes and other factors can affect future costs. Accordingly, this competition seeks innovative ideas on state and local pension funding policies that can reduce cost volatility, promote intergenerational equity and assure that pension plans remain on a strong fiscal path over time. An esteemed panel of judges will select up to three innovative pension funding strategies for a $5,000 award. An esteemed panel of judges will select up to three funding strategies for a $5,000 award for each winning submission. Award submissions are due online by Monday, January 10, 2022, at 11:59 PM ET, and the winners will be announced by March 2022. For the competition, entrants are given a hypothetical pension scenario and asked to design a funding policy. The award guidelines are available here. An informational webinar is scheduled for Thursday, October 21, 2021, at 2:00 PM ET to review the award competition and to respond to questions about the award and process. Register here. For any award recipients precluded from accepting a financial award, the winnings will be donated to The Actuarial Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening math education and financial literacy through the talents and resources of actuaries. The selection of winners is at the sole discretion of NIRS and CCA. More information about the award is available here. The National Institute on Retirement Security is a non-profit, non-partisan organization established to contribute to informed policymaking by fostering a deep understanding of the value of retirement security to employees, employers and the economy as a whole. Located in Washington, D.C., NIRS membership includes financial services firms, employee benefit plans, trade associations, and other retirement service providers. More information is available at www.nirsonline.org. The Conference of Consulting Actuaries provides quality education and facilitates networking among established and aspiring leaders in the actuarial consulting community. Founded in 1950, the CCA is dedicated to supporting the professional needs and career success of consulting actuaries. More information is available at www.ccactuaries.org. SOURCE National Institute on Retirement Security Related Links https://www.nirsonline.org/ WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A council mandated by Congress has delivered key recommendations to support family caregivers, including a call for financial and workplace security and expanding home and community-based services, among other actions. The recommendations were developed by the congressionally authorized RAISE (Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage) Family Caregiving Advisory Council comprised of family caregivers and experts after a two-year, multifaceted effort that gathered information from family caregivers across the country. Recommendations fall under five goals, which include: Increasing Awareness of Family Caregivers to increase public understanding of the contributions caregivers make, including helping individuals self-identify as caregivers so that they can get the support they need. to increase public understanding of the contributions caregivers make, including helping individuals self-identify as caregivers so that they can get the support they need. Engaging Family Caregivers as Partners in Healthcare and Long-Term Services and Supports to better integrate family caregivers into healthcare processes and systems. to better integrate family caregivers into healthcare processes and systems. Improving Access to Services and Supports for Family Caregivers including counseling, respite care, peer support, training on common in-home medical tasks, and practical assistance like transportation. Also included is a recommendation for strengthening the paid caregiver workforce. including counseling, respite care, peer support, training on common in-home medical tasks, and practical assistance like transportation. Also included is a recommendation for strengthening the paid caregiver workforce. Supporting Financial and Workplace Security for Family Caregivers to decrease the impact family caregiving can have on the financial well-being and professional lives of caregivers. to decrease the impact family caregiving can have on the financial well-being and professional lives of caregivers. Generating Research, Data, and Evidence-Informed Practices to help create policies and interventions that meaningfully help family caregivers. "The RAISE recommendations represent the most comprehensive and meaningful ways to support family caregivers, who desperately need support," said Rani Snyder, MPA, vice president of program at The John A. Hartford Foundation. "Working with our Foundation, the National Academy for State Health Policy, and the Administration for Community Living, the Council drew on the latest research on caregiving, surveyed more than 1,600 family caregivers, held focus groups, and interviewed experts. Now we must bring these recommendations to life with concrete federal, state, and private sector actions." About 53 million people provide a broad range of assistance to support the health, quality of life, and independence of someone close to them each year, according to AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. An estimated one in seven individuals are family caregivers, and more than two-thirds of people will need assistance with tasks as they age. "States have been at the forefront of offering a variety of services including respite care, training for difficult medical tasks, and services to help families live in their homes and communities," said Hemi Tewarson, executive director at the National Academy for State Health Policy. "State leaders see the value in supporting family caregivers to delay costly nursing home care, to provide home and community-based services, and to offer better outcomes for people needing care and their families." The Council reported that the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated the challenges of family caregiving, including the struggle to balance work, family, and caregiving with many caregivers having to leave the workforce. There is currently no national strategy that provides guidance on how the public and private sectors at all levels can support family caregivers. The recommendations serve as the foundation of the forthcoming National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. The strategy will drive increased recognition and support for family caregivers by proposing specific actions that can be taken at the federal and state levels, by local communities, philanthropic organizations, and educational bodies, as well as healthcare and long-term services providers. The strategy will also provide a roadmap for the nation to strengthen its support and recognition of the critical role family caregivers of all ages play in healthcare and long-term support systems. The John A. Hartford Foundation and the National Academy for State Health Policy support the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council by providing resources, technical assistance, and policy analysis. About The John A. Hartford Foundation The John A. Hartford Foundation, based in New York City, is a private, nonpartisan, national philanthropy dedicated to improving the care of older adults. The leader in the field of aging and health, the Foundation has three areas of emphasis: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care. For more information, visit www.johnahartford.org. About the National Academy for State Health Policy The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) is a nonpartisan forum of policymakers throughout state governments, learning, leading, and implementing innovative solutions to health policy challenges. NASHP supports states as they reach across branches and agencies examining and creating solutions to critical health issues. For more information, visit www.nashp.org. About the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council The Family Caregiving Advisory Council (the Council) was established by the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act and convened for the first time in August 2019. The Council includes representation by federal agencies and 15 voting members, including family caregivers; older adults who need long-term services and supports; individuals with disabilities; health care and social service providers; providers of long-term services and supports; employers; paraprofessional workers; state local officials; accreditation bodies; veterans; and as appropriate, other experts and advocacy organizations engaged in family caregiving. The Council is charged with providing recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on effective models of both family caregiving and support to family caregivers, as well as improving coordination across federal government programs. For more information, visit www.acl.gov/RAISE. SOURCE National Academy for State Health Policy Related Links www.nashp.org WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Frustrated that a year has passed since the US Food and Drug Administration issued its landmark safety communication to drastically limit the use of dental amalgam, over 50 environmental, disability, health, and environmental justice groups have turned to the White House, calling on Council on Environmental Quality to insist that federal agencies providing dental care implement the new federal health policy. Letter: https://mercuryfreedentistry.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/ceq-letter.pdf FDA, on September 24, 2020, issued a safety communication admonishing the use of amalgam for "high-risk populations": children; women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, and planning to become pregnant; and people with neurological disorders or kidney impairments. Despite the availability of alternatives that are comparably-priced, safe, and environmentally friendly, federal agencies providing dental care to millions of Americans have yet to act! A primitive, pre-Civil War pollutant, amalgam is 50% mercury. "One would suppose that our government agencies would be first in line to implement federal health policy -- but the reverse is true," said Charlie Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice. "Dug-in federal bureaucracies refuse to follow federal health policy!" "The whole life cycle of amalgam adds to cumulative and disproportionate impacts on communities of color," said Nsedu Obot Witherspoon of the Children's Environmental Health Network. "These communities already face higher exposure to harmful chemicals where they live, learn, and work." "Even a small exposure of a neurotoxin at the wrong time of development can have a lifelong impact, including in the womb and for the breastfeeding baby," said Tracy Gregoire with the Learning Disabilities Association of America. "Amalgam use by these government bureaucracies means that military bases, Tribal Lands, and federal prisons become increasingly polluted with toxic mercury," said Pam Miller of the Alaska Community Action on Toxics. "The National Medical Association calls for the immediate end of amalgam use in high-risk populations in all government programs," said Dr. Mark Mitchell, Co-Chair for its Commission on Environmental Health. "A year is long enough." "No safe level exists for people, for food, or for fish," said Eve Gartner, managing attorney for the Toxic Exposure and Health Program at Earthjustice. "Proven and safe alternatives to amalgam are available which middle-class Americans already receive." "The ask to the Council on Environmental Quality is simple: tell the Indian Health Services, Department of Defense, Bureau of Prisons, and the VA to immediately cease placing amalgam in these vulnerable populations highlighted by the FDA," said Katie Huffling, Executive Director of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. Amalgam is the largest use of mercury in America today yet alternatives make its use unnecessary. Groups signing onto the letter include Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. The 50+ organizations highly commend the FDA, which also issued Infographics, https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/dental-amalgam-fillings/dental-amalgam-fillings-recommendations-graphics Contacts: Charlie Brown. Consumers for Dental Choice, 202-246-7642, [email protected] Tracy Gregoire, Learning Disabilities Association of America, 207-504-2556, [email protected] Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Children's Environmental Health Network, [email protected], 202-543-4033 SOURCE Consumers for Dental Choice Related Links http://www.toxicteeth.org/ ROCHESTER, Mich., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Foresight Research's recently released report on the 2020-21 US Auto Show Season reveals that COVID-19 forced a series of dramatic changes to the show circuit this past year, yet also brought many necessity-driven opportunities. This report covers 10 auto shows held between December 2020 and July 2021 (versus 55-60 shows measured during a typical season). These shows' public day runs were often shorter, their footprints smaller, and some had imposed visitor limits. Several moved all or part of their shows outdoors to accommodate local regulations and allay public health concerns. In the face of such conditions, it is no surprise that this season's attendance numbers represent only a fraction of a typical pre-pandemic season. Yet with these challenges came unique opportunities. Summer weather dates permitted a significant increase in test drive options and engaging outdoor displays. Chicago added a street festival to their docket, drawing crowds who may not have attended otherwise. And for consumers who did come, a return to their local auto show was an eagerly anticipated milestone event the opportunity to resume a semblance of normality. Countless visitors actually thanked participating automakers for being there. As in past years, show visitors continued to be younger, more often automotive influencers, and more ethnically diverse than the shows' local market area populations. Importantly, the mix of visitors who were in-market to buy a new car or truck in the next year was stable (74% reported being 12-month intenders, identical to last season). Show visitors were also far more hybrid and battery-electric vehicle savvy, and significantly more likely than the general population to be considering a hybrid / BEV for their next new vehicle purchase. Most visitors attended the shows to see new products and offerings (61%) or to be educated about new technologies (50%). One surprising finding was the average show visit was roughly 45 minutes longer than the prior season, and in fact was one of the longest US auto show season dwell times Foresight has recorded. About Foresight Research www.foresightresearch.com Since 1998, Foresight Research has been providing consumer insights and data to support strategies and best practices for the automotive industry. Foresight Research is a recognized leader in measuring auto shows, experiential marketing and sponsored events, as well as vehicle accessories and motorsports. Contact Christopher Stommel Foresight Research 248.608.1870 x 16 [email protected] SOURCE Foresight Research Related Links http://www.foresightresearch.com WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Doctors, lawyers, and politicians from three continents called on the international community to ensure an end to China's practice of forced organ harvesting during the first half of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting. Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) further calls upon the participants of the United Nations General Assembly to treat this issue like any other crimes against humanity that have been recognized and banned by the global community. The call comes as the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) is gathered in New York this week. These calls for high-level action are accompanied by widespread public support for the campaign against forced organ harvesting. The live video stream of the first three sessions of the "World Summit to Combat and Prevent Forced Organ Harvesting," gathered more than 200,000 views over the past weekend. A petition campaign to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that ended in 2018 garnered over 3 million signatures across the globe. After more than two decades of forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience, DAFOH believes the UN has fallen short in taking the lead in stopping these crimes against humanity. According to a 2016 report by David Matas, Ethan Gutmann, and David Kilgour, an estimated 30,000-100,000 people are being killed for their organs in China per year. "The failure of the United Nations to address and thoroughly investigate the forced organ harvesting from living people in China is an unacceptable omission that needs to be resolved," said Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of DAFOH. "Given the scope of China's organ harvesting crimes with an unknown number of victims and the nature of the crime itself, a commercialized murder for transplants, condemning this inhumane practice remains an unfulfilled task for the largest organization in the world," Dr. Trey added. In response to a growing momentum of concern for the victims and the critical impact on humanity, DAFOH and four other international NGOs are sponsoring the "World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting," which will resume on Friday, Sept. 24 and end on Sunday, Sept. 26 with the global launch of a Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting. For further information and registration: https://worldsummitcpfoh.info/ Contact: Dr. Ann Corson Email: [email protected] www.DAFOH.org www.facebook.com/DAFOH https://twitter.com/dafoh_org SOURCE Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting Related Links http://www.dafoh.org TOKYO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KOMOJU by Degica today announces partnerships with two new clients: Scalefast a top enterprise digital e-commerce channel solution and French e-commerce platform Prestashop, which boasts a leading position in open-source e-commerce solutions across Europe and Latin America. KOMOJU meets a direct need for both companies as they look to expand in the Asia-Pacific region opening up new markets by enabling the platforms' customers to pay via all major Japanese and Korean payment methods. "It is fantastic to see both Scalefast and Prestashop choosing KOMOJU as their Japanese and Korean payment provider. This is a sign of our rapid growth and shows how important it is to facilitate merchants' access to these high-potential markets that have previously been difficult to enter due to cultural and linguistic barriers. Payment and website display in the local language is often the first step to any e-commerce business's success and growth overseas and we are excited to make this happen," says Jack Momose, CEO, Degica. "When we needed Japanese and Korean payments, the decision was obvious. Providing simple integrations and English language support, Degica stands out among other Japanese payment providers. Given we were looking for serious support in the region, collaboration with KOMOJU was a no-brainer," comments Scalefast's Director of Payment and Fraud, Stephane Martinez. Joseba Fernandez Florin, Head of Technology, Payment & Fraud at Scalefast, adds: "The integration with KOMOJU was straightforward, fast and efficient. Thanks to KOMOJU's intuitive application programming interface (API), we were able to easily add all new payment methods. This was a huge advantage for us." "Payment is often the first step in any e-commerce business's success and growth overseas. We believe KOMOJU's expertise in Japan and Korea will help Prestashop users with their sales in the region," says Michael Casson, Head of Partnerships at Prestashop. As the leading local payment fintech company in Japan, KOMOJU aims to pave the way for thousands of small and medium-sized businesses from all over the world to get more access to the Japanese and South Korean markets. "We are very grateful that Scalefast and Prestashop have chosen KOMOJU as their Japanese and Korean payment provider," comments Christian Desert, Vice President, Revenue & Growth at KOMOJU. KOMOJU by Degica supports all major payment methods popular in Japan, South Korea, China and Europe, such as convenience store and smartphone payments, alternative payment methods or credit cards. Launched in 2014, KOMOJU now provides cutting-edge services to more than 3,000 merchants daily, including Shopify, Steam and Wix. About Degica Launched in 2016, Degica is an AI-powered, global payments business, headquartered in Tokyo. The company has its origins in video game publishing, where it decided to develop its own in-house solution for securely processing online payments. The solution worked so well that Degica decided to commercialise it, leading to the creation of the company's flagship KOMOJU payments platform. Drawing on its technology background, Degica also specialises in artificial intelligence (AI), which has enabled it to develop a market-leading translation tool. Today, the company is looking to combine this with its more than 15 years of payments expertise and industry knowledge to break down the barriers to e-commerce between Japan and the rest of the world. For further information, please visit www.degica.com. About KOMOJU KOMOJU is a global payments platform, spread across four regions, with over 50 international partners and more than 2,500 active merchants. Connected to platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Woo Commerce and Magento, KOMOJU offers merchants access to all major payment methods in Japan, Korea and China and incorporates FX functionalities to enable merchants receive funds in their desired currency, while processing currencies native to local markets. Founded in 2014 by Degica, KOMOJU (an abbreviation of the Japanese phrase "", meaning "purchasing module") was started with a single aim to make Japan simple. Today, on its way toward that goal, it stands as the fastest-growing payments platform in Japan. For more information, please visit. https://en.komoju.com/. SOURCE Degica NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The national nonprofit Delivering Good announced today that Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. will receive the charity's Impact Award, honoring the company's efforts to support important causes and communities where the company works. The award will be presented at the nonprofit's annual fundraising celebration on Wednesday, November 3 in New York City at the Ziegfeld Ballroom starting at 6:00 p.m. Delivering Good announced today that Tanger Outlets will receive the charity's Impact Award at its November 3rd celebration in New York City. "Tanger Outlets is a company that it is leading by example through its corporate social responsibility efforts," said Andrea Weiss, Chair of Delivering Good. "The company recently released its fifth annual Environmental, Social and Governance Report, showcasing the company's programs and accomplishments. Delivering Good has been very happy to benefit from the company's funding for local community impact and we look forward to continuing our relationship." Tanger Outlets is being recognized with Delivering Good's Impact Award for assistance the company provides to local communities and its specific support of Delivering Good's national mission. This year Tanger Outlets supported Delivering Good's back-to-school event in Washington DC with corporate funding, and by helping a local mom and her son with a shopping spree at Washington, D.C. Metro Area's upscale Tanger Outlets National Harbor. During the 2020 holiday season, all Tanger centers in the U.S. sold limited edition "Goodness Gives" winter beanies to benefit Delivering Good's mission. The hat program also donated 1,000 hats to community partners, in Pittsburgh, PA; Flint, MI; Durham, NC; and New York, NY. "It is truly a special honor to receive Delivering Good's annual Impact Award," said Stephen Yalof, CEO and President of Tanger Outlets. "Here at Tanger Outlets, supporting the families who make our surrounding communities so vibrant and engaging is an essential part of our company's mission. We are working to deliver the best value, experience, and opportunity for our communities, stakeholders and partners. We are so proud of what we've accomplished in partnership with Delivering Good and are excited to continue to offer resources, hope, and dignity to families in need." Throughout 2020, Tanger Outlets has made substantial progress in its Environmental, Social and Governance program with major milestones. The company created a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) mission and framework and formed a DEI Council, and also developed a Human Rights Policy to protect the rights of all people in the company's value chain. To deliver critical, basic needs and encourage civic engagement in its communities Tanger Outlets established new partnerships with nonprofit organizations, contributed more than $720,000 in charitable giving and spent nearly 3,900 hours volunteering in local communities. The company hosted over 280 community and charitable events, including nearly 100 to provide support during the pandemic. Ken Downing, Chief Creative Officer at Triple Five Group Ltd., is the chair and host of "An Evening of Delivering Good," and also a member of the Delivering Good Board of Directors. "The theme for An Evening of Delivering Good will celebrate the positive force of families, whether they are born or chosen, and the good it creates in our world," said Downing. "Regardless of where you are in life, most people still need some sort of family as a foundation for their dreams. The greatest impact Delivering Good has is often through our local community partners and the families they serve," he said. In addition to the Impact Award, Delivering Good is recognizing the Ralph Lauren Corporation with the Lifetime Achievement Award for the many philanthropic endeavors it has supported through the years, as well as the company's direct support for Delivering Good. SAP will receive Delivering Good's inaugural Innovation Award, recognizing the company's creative and inventive leadership in support of the charity's mission. SAP has developed a technology platform that can match Delivering Good's 800+ local community partners with companies and organizations that want to make a charitable impact across the US and Canada. "An Evening of Delivering Good" is being designed to offer program opportunities for people who want to participate virtually, while also providing a sit-down dinner and program to a live audience. For reservation and sponsorship information about the evening, please visit DGevening.org , or email [email protected] About Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. is a leading operator of upscale open-air outlet centers that owns, or has an ownership interest in, a portfolio of 36 centers. Tanger Outlet's operating properties are located in 20 states and in Canada, totaling approximately 13.6 million square feet, leased to over 2,500 stores operated by more than 500 different brand name companies. The Company has more than 40 years of experience in the outlet industry and is a publicly traded REIT. For more information on Tanger Outlet Centers, call 1-800-4TANGER or visit the Company's website at www.tangeroutlets.com . About Delivering Good Delivering Good is a national nonprofit organization that strives to help create a more equitable world where people facing economic, medical, social and environmental challenges can have useful items needed to overcome adversity and achieve their full potential. For more information, please visit Delivering-Good.org or follow @DeliveringGood on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and LinkedIn . Media Contact: Peter Paris 646.362.9091 [email protected] SOURCE Delivering Good SPARTANBURG, S.C., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Denny's announced the next phase of its digital transformation, which includes the relaunch of Dennys.com, Denny's on Demand and Denny's mobile app. The reimagined digital platforms provide guests with the same personalized Denny's experience found in the brand's approximately 1,500 locations across the country along with enhanced speed, convenience and value. "We're thrilled to offer the millions of guests who choose Denny's for a more convenient dining experience whenever, wherever and however they prefer," said Denny's Chief Brand Officer John Dillon. "Offering a seamless digital experience gives current and new guests more convenient ways to enjoy America's Diner." Denny's digital platforms are the most convenient way to order Denny's meals and stay connected with the brand through new channels, including: A new digital app : The mobile app has been designed to forge a deeper connection between guests and the Denny's brand. The new app features enhanced ease-of-use and gives guests access to the latest Denny's news including relevant menu updates. The new Denny's mobile app is available for iOS and Android. : The mobile app has been designed to forge a deeper connection between guests and the Denny's brand. The new app features enhanced ease-of-use and gives guests access to the latest Denny's news including relevant menu updates. The new Denny's mobile app is available for iOS and Android. A streamlined guest experience through Denny's on Demand : Guests can conveniently place orders for take-out, curbside pick-up, or delivery when the mood strikes. Guests benefit from a frictionless ordering and checkout experience. At checkout, smart upsell and cross-sell capabilities will allow guests to easily add recommended items to their cart to complete their meal. They also can easily locate the closest Denny's to satisfy their cravings. : Guests can conveniently place orders for take-out, curbside pick-up, or delivery when the mood strikes. Guests benefit from a frictionless ordering and checkout experience. At checkout, smart upsell and cross-sell capabilities will allow guests to easily add recommended items to their cart to complete their meal. They also can easily locate the closest Denny's to satisfy their cravings. Personalized profiles: Both the app and website now deliver a more personalized experience. Guests can create profiles and save their favorite meals, locations, and payment information for ease of re-ordering, all in one centralized place. Both the app and website now deliver a more personalized experience. Guests can create profiles and save their favorite meals, locations, and payment information for ease of re-ordering, all in one centralized place. Digital wallets for rewards: Denny's Rewards members now have direct access to the Denny's brand in the palm of their hand. With a new logged-in experience, including a digital wallet that grants Rewards members access to rewards and promotions, both in-restaurant and online, convenience is just a few taps away. The launch of Denny's new digital platforms is the next phase of the brand's long-term digital transformation strategy. By leveraging consumer and visitor data to power more personalized digital experiences, Denny's aims to increase ticket size and guest frequency. The technology powering the new digital platforms also allows Denny's to make rapid enhancements and add new features to quickly and seamlessly exceed guest expectations across their digital path to purchase. "Today's launch is the first major step in our mission to redefine how the Modern American Family dines together and to establish Denny's as the leader in digital guest experience," added Michael Furlow, Denny's Chief Information Officer. "Evolving our digital capabilities is a key component of our long-term vision and growth strategy and offers the very best of Denny's at an important time for our business and our guests." Denny's is committed to optimizing the digital experience for our guests with even more innovation and functionality being rolled out through the rest of 2021 and into next year. Click here to visit the new Dennys.com and download our new app from your smart phone's app store. About Denny's Corp Denny's Corporation is the franchisor and operator of one of America's largest franchised full-service restaurant chains, based on the number of restaurants. As of June 30, 2021 Denny's had 1,645 franchised, licensed, and company restaurants around the world including 149 restaurants in Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Philippines, New Zealand, Honduras, the United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, Guam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom. For further information on Denny's, including news releases, please visit the Denny's website at www.dennys.com or the brand's social channel via Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , TikTok , LinkedIn or YouTube . SOURCE Denny's Related Links http://www.dennys.com AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, announced today that BAM Digital Realty its Indian joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure L.P. (TSX: BIP.UN;NYSE: BIP) and its institutional partners ("Brookfield Infrastructure") has received all requisite regulatory approvals and the parties have closed the joint venture previously announced on July 14, 2021. The joint venture enables the expansion of PlatformDIGITAL, Digital Realty's global data center platform, which supports the evolving data, control and networking demands of global service providers as well as global and local enterprises. Its expansion across India is expected to enable customers to rapidly scale digital transformation by deploying critical infrastructure with a leading global data center provider at the heart of a growing connected data community in India. Data centers developed in India will leverage Digital Realty's industry-leading energy-efficient data center design and operating procedures and highly repeatable Pervasive Data Center Architecture (PDx) approach for the new digital workplace. In addition, Seema Ambastha has been appointed CEO of the joint venture. Ambastha joins BAM Digital Realty from NTT Netmagic where she held the position of Senior Executive Vice President, India Sales and Solution Engineering. Prior to that, she worked for Netmagic IT Services, Rolta, VMware, Oracle and Wipro Infotech. She has a strong academic background with a PhD in Computer Science as well as rich experience across diverse IT disciplines spanning more than three decades. "We are extremely pleased that Seema has joined BAM Digital Realty at such an exciting time in the industry," said Mark Smith, Managing Director, APAC for Digital Realty. "She brings over 20 years of strong business leadership skills across various roles in the industry. Not only will we have a fantastic global legacy to build upon, but we have a tremendous opportunity as well. With a population of over 1.4 billion, India is the world's fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP, with a rapidly emerging data center market and accelerating adoption of digital business models." To support the expected rapid growth opportunity for data centers in India, BAM Digital Realty has also recently filled multiple senior leadership positions, in the fields of Design & Construction as well as Business Development. "With Seema's appointment and the formal closing of the joint venture, we look forward to advancing several key strategic priorities for BAM Digital Realty and bringing together our collective capabilities to deliver a truly differentiated solution for our customers," said Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director and Head of India & Middle East, Brookfield Infrastructure. "The joint venture expands Brookfield Infrastructure's significant global data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, and storage, including a portfolio of 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers in India, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the near term. We are excited about what the Indian market has to offer and hope to contribute meaningfully to India's digital ecosystem." Additional Resources Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure to establish joint venture to develop and operate data centers on PlatformDIGITAL in India Digital Realty and Brookfield close Ascenty joint venture in Latin America Explore global deployment opportunities on PlatformDIGITAL Visit the Data Gravity Insights Hub to learn more about data gravity and see growth forecasts in the Data Gravity Index DGx Read about our open interconnection manifesto for enabling connected data communities About Digital Realty Digital Realty supports the world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx) solution methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with 291 facilities in 47 metros across 24 countries on six continents. For more information, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. About Brookfield Infrastructure Brookfield Infrastructure is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We are focused on assets that have contracted and regulated revenues that generate predictable and stable cash flows. Investors can access its portfolio either through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP; TSX: BIP.UN), a Bermuda-based limited partnership, or Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BIPC), a Canadian corporation. Further information is available at www.brookfield.com/infrastructure. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager with over US$625 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. For Additional Information Media Contacts Helen Bleasdale Digital Realty +44 7500 044027 [email protected] Sebastien Bouchard Brookfield +1 (416) 943-7937 [email protected] Shveta Singh Brookfield +91 9004287034 (Mumbai) [email protected] Investor Relations John Stewart/ Jim Huseby Digital Realty +1 (415) 738-6500 [email protected] Kathe White Brookfield +1 (416) 956-5183 [email protected] Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to our joint venture with Brookfield, the Indian market opportunity, expectations regarding the joint venture's development plans and operations in India, expectations regarding IT load capacity of the operations of the BAM Digital Realty joint venture, expected growth in digital transformation, sustainability programs and goals, and deployment and benefits of PlatformDIGITAL. Our forward-looking statements are generally identified with words such as "will", "believe", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Digital Realty Related Links https://www.digitalrealty.com/ The offer will run from September 23 through October 18, 2021. Consumers will have access to Dr.FORHAIR's best-selling product in a 25.26 ounce (750ml) bottle for the discounted price of $19.99. At twenty-three percent off the standard list price available through the online membership-based retailer, Folligen Original Shampoo will be the most affordable it has ever been in North American markets to date. A functional product that helps mitigate hair loss symptoms, Folligen Original Shampoo has risen in popularity with consumers throughout the U.S. Already the cornerstone of a global brand with a total of 18 million units sold worldwide, the Dr.FORHAIR brand has taken the Korean hair loss shampoo industry by storm. The multi-purpose shampoo helps users relieve hair loss symptoms and reduce sebum and dead skin cells for a healthier scalp that promotes even healthier hair. The formula is free of parabens, silicone, and sulfates and is also hypoallergenic, making it a viable shampoo alternative to the many synthetic-heavy products familiar to U.S. consumers. While the brand has exponentially expanded its impact in North America throughout 2021, Dr.FORHAIR's Folligen Original Shampoo is not new to success or accolades. Both Allure Korea and Olive Young, South Korea's largest health and beauty store, recently awarded the product first place for K-Beauty anti-hair loss shampoo in recent rankings. Folligen Original Shampoo has a lasting, luxurious fragrance evoking florals and cool aqua, in contrast to the lackluster scents other hair loss shampoos are known to have. The Dr.FORHAIR product also lathers more than other solutions, with highly concentrated scalp nutrition formulated in the rich, firm foam to enhance hair volume. With recognition from the most significant health and beauty retailers in Korea, Dr.FORHAIR has laid the groundwork for success in other markets. Asian consumers across North America responded positively to the brand's global accessibility in recent years, catching the interest of U.S. retailers looking to provide a wider variety of hair and scalp solutions for their customers. The result was an expansive relationship with one of the largest membership-based retailers in the U.S. to sell Folligen Original Shampoo through an extensive e-commerce platform. Already available at a reduced price as part of the agreement, the new limited-time promotion is designed to make it easier than ever for consumers to have access to functional shampoo developed with the latest technology and scalp care science. "The new promotional discount is further evidence of the success of our Dr.FORHAIR brand launch in the U.S.," said David Kwon, CEO, Dr.FORHAIR. "We believe this is only the start of what will be wide-reaching availability of our product line for consumers across North America as we continue to collaborate with retailers to bring products to this unique market that specifically address hair loss symptoms and general scalp care." Folligen Original Shampoo offers a premier blend of performance as signified with its designation as Excellent Certified by Dermatest, an internationally renowned company based in Germany that tests products for dermatological tolerance. Dermatest Trichoscan test results showed effectiveness in hair growth and scalp condition improvement after 12 weeks of Folligen Original Shampoo use. Additional testing performed by P&K Skin Research Center revealed that with one-time use of the product, dead skin cells on scalps reduced 37.6%, oiliness reduced 78.4%, and scalp elasticity increased 8.2%. About Dr.FORHAIR Dr.FORHAIR is a global scalp care brand by Wyatt Corp with Scalp Labs based in New York and Seoul. Using comprehensive clinical research and industry expertise, the brand provides a variety of scalp care products that help millions of customers worldwide. Website: https://www.drforhair.com/ Media Contact Sonya Park, [email protected] SOURCE Dr.FORHAIR Eastpak President Nina Flood has sharpened focus on growth in the Americas after initially entering the region through global ecommerce sites like ASOS and SSENSE and other high-end retail. Under Flood's direction, Eastpak is now fully platformed in the U.S. with the launch of us.eastpak.com . Appointed to the Eastpak role in 2020, Nina Flood was a logical choice to head the brand having previously served as President of Kipling Americas and, prior to that, VP of Strategy and Marketing at Nautica in her 17 years at VF Corp. In early 2021, Flood also took the helm of the iconic JanSport brand (in addition to Eastpak) to truly round out her "Packs" Presidency at VF, where she now leads both brands globally. "Consumers have been clamoring for Eastpak in the North Americaswhich led to launching our new website and opening new retail channels," says Flood. "It's amazing to see the potential for Eastpak as new consumers discover the brand and loyal ones can now get it much more quickly and easily through domestic retail." Eastpak's goals include an expanded presence in key US and Canada fashion and lifestyle retailers. The Fall 2021 relaunch will include iconic silhouettes such as the Padded Pak'r and Padded Zippl'r and also introduce soft carry and wheeled travel items, relatively new product categories for Eastpak since the brand was last distributed in North America. Eastpak is also rolling out several high-profile collaborations throughout 2021 and 2022, following many highly- anticipated collaboration releases from the brand, including Raf Simons, Vivienne Westwood, Kith and Neighborhood, to name a few. About Eastpak: Eastpak has been making bags that inspire people to move since 1952. From a manufacturer of military-issue packs and duffels for the US army to a leading lifestyle brand for people who live, work and play in the city. Since 2000, Eastpak forms part of the VF portfolio of international brands. We ensure that the same commitment to quality that made Eastpak famous lives on in its range of stylish and functional backpacks, shoulder bags, travel gear, and accessories. Eastpak continues to evolve with its loyal fans, and it is still very much the brand that is "Built to Resist. About VF Corporation: Founded in 1899, VF Corporation is one of the world's largest apparel, footwear and accessories companies connecting people to the lifestyles, activities, and experiences they cherish most through a family of iconic outdoor, active and workwear brands including Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies. Our purpose is to power movements of sustainable and active lifestyles for the betterment of people and our planet. We connect this purpose with a relentless drive to succeed to create value for all stakeholders and use our company as a force for good. For more information, please visit vfc.com. About Nina: Nina Flood is currently President of VF Global PacksEastpak and JanSport. Combining strong strategic and branding experience with a passion for driving consumer centric demand, she oversees all aspects of commercial management, operations, product development and marketing for two iconic lifestyle brands globally. SOURCE Eastpak TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eco Depot, Inc. (OTC Pink: ECDP), a Nevada company is pleased to announce the acquisition of Development One Nanotechnologies and Energy Inc. Eco Depot Inc has acquired all the outstanding common shares of Development One Nanotechnologies and Energy Inc., a Wyoming Corporation specializing in the research and development of nano carbon atoms and polymer products within the coatings and construction industries. Development One has developed a proven coating for the industrial space as well as the oil and gas industry that increases strength by 300% and lowers friction and is less abrasive as well as being a lubricant; these coatings can be used to repurpose and extend life of down hole tools in the oil and gas space, saving millions in annual costs to the oil industry. In the industrial space it will increase the life of parts and decrease the cost of repair and maintenance budgets. The Global Anti Abrasive Anti Corrosion Market is expected to reach USD $58.5 billion by 2025, from USD $43.5 billion in 2017. The coatings can be used to prevent corrosion when applied to rebar in the construction industry. Development One has also developed 3D printed and advanced manufacturing parts for use under high friction and high pressures that are 300 percent stronger than stainless steel and weigh at least 70 percent less. Development One has also developed a proprietary cement additive with the expectation of rapid expansion in the cement additive arena. Focusing on the down hole needs in oil and gas and construction cement challenges. The company's product has helped increase strength, decrease pour needs, and add to life expectancy in down hole cement and construction grade cement markets. The market size in 2020 for the combined segments were $1.2 Billion that year. The Company has already secured major development partners in Canada and recently signed with a major cement pumping company in the US. Development One will focus and work with industry leaders to address infrastructure issues related to corrosion. This new cement product can achieve decreased cure times by 30 percent, reduce shrinkage, make it hydrophobic, and increase cement shear strength by 30 percent. The product has shown the ability to also fight gas migration, as well as an overall ability to pump 25 percent less slurry and achieve the same coverage. The need for increased strength has led to the discovery of our third generation which will be 3D printed carbon atom graphene rebar embedded in the cement, which is currently also under development. For additional information on Development One visit our website at www.d1nano.com. We believe this is a great addition to our product lines, this is the future of concrete, one of many solutions to the US Infrastructure crises that will reduce our carbon footprint for future generations, creating added value for our shareholders" said Carlos Diericx. ABOUT ECO DEPOT Eco Depot, Inc. acquires, manages, and develops eco-friendly real estate assets and consumer and industrial brand products. Their focus is to provide investments, funding, and support for acquisitions, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and green technology companies dedicated to protecting the environment. Eco Depot is a development stage manufacturer and distributor of eco-friendly consumer brand products and is publicly traded Over the Counter at OTCMKTS: ECDP. ABOUT BRONYA CANADA GROUP Bronya Coatings Group, Inc. ("the Company") is based in Montreal and intends to commercialize a Multi-Purpose liquid thermal insulation paint Bronya Climate Shield product line in North America. The Company's mission is to establish third-party production facilities globally to reduce the costs associated with the business' supply chain. The Company also has established relationships with major home improvement stores on a worldwide basis. ABOUT BRONYA CLIMATE SHIELD Bronya Climate Shield increases energy efficiency, energy savings, and reduces carbon emissions through energy conservation. Product website: www.bronyaclimateshield.com Safe Harbor Statement This Press Release may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company has tried, whenever possible, to identify these forward-looking statements using words such as "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "expects," "plans," "intends," "potential" and similar expressions. These statements reflect the Company's current beliefs and are based upon information currently available to it. Accordingly, such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or advise in the event of any change, addition, or alteration to the information catered in this Press Release, including such forward-looking statements. CONTACT: Eco Depot, Inc. 2001 Sources Boulevard Unit 2001 Pointe-Claire, QC H9R5Z4, Canada WEBSITE: ecdp.co +1-(844)-427-6692 [email protected] PRODUCT INQUIRIES: [email protected] SOURCE Eco Depot, Inc. - Enpal has raised 345 million of committed debt from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Pricoa Private Capital, UniCredit and other institutional investors. For Enpal, this marks the largest debt fundraising to date. - Enpal will use these funds to refinance the installation of more than 15,000 PV systems. Founded only in 2017, Enpal today is the market leader in solar leasing in Germany with over 10,000 customers. - Enpal is a fast-growing green tech company in Germany that recently secured a 100 million equity investment from several investors including HV Capital and SolarCity co-founder Peter Rive. BERLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Governments and companies will need to invest at least $92 trillion by 2050 in order to cut emissions fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change, according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg. More and more financial institutions are therefore promoting investments and funding in green energy. To accelerate the development of solar energy in Germany, Enpal was able to add new partners to its refinancing engine: In this recent debt fundraising Enpal secured senior debt commitments of 275 million from internationally leading investors BlackRock , Pricoa Private Capital (the private capital business of PGIM), and UniCredit . In addition, further institutional commitments of 70 million were signed in the form of a subordinated mezzanine loan. The senior and junior facilities will jointly be used to refinance more than 15,000 new solar plants and energy storage systems. This transaction increases Enpal's overall refinancing commitments to 500 million. "We are very excited to collaborate with leading international players like BlackRock, Pricoa Private Capital and UniCredit," said Enpal founder and CEO Mario Kohle. "The fact that prominent international investors are committed to fighting the climate crisis is a very important signal." "This commitment enables us to further pursue our vision of providing green and affordable energy to private households and to fuel our growth," highlighted Gregor Burkart, Head of Project Finance at Enpal. "We are humbled and very excited to partner with some of the most prominent names both within commercial banking as well as within the institutional investor space." ING Bank and the corporate finance boutique IDCM acted as financial advisors to Enpal on this transaction, legal advice to Enpal was provided by Greenberg Traurig. "With ING, IDCM and Greenberg Traurig we were advised by trusted partners with deep understanding of Enpal's business model which allowed us to execute this transaction efficiently and successfully," emphasized Gregor Burkart. The lenders were advised by Simmons & Simmons (transaction documentation & legal due diligence), Everoze (technical due diligence), and Marsh (insurance due diligence). For the senior debt commitments, UniCredit further acts as KfW Agent and Account Bank, and ING Bank B.V. is engaged as Senior Agent and Security Agent. Enpal wants to make green energy accessible for the mainstream and is spearheading a trend in Germany. "Not all customers have the necessary funds to purchase a solar system upfront. Our dream is that everyone has a solar system on their roof, an electric car in front of their house, a storage unit in their home, and to bring all these people together to form one big community," explained Enpal co-founder Viktor Wingert. Solar systems are particularly popular with homeowners. According to the German Solar Industry Association, no other form of electricity generation grew as strongly as photovoltaics in 2020. About Enpal Founded only in 2017 by Mario Kohle, Viktor Wingert and Jochen Ziervogel, Enpal is the largest provider of solar solutions for homeowners in Germany, with over 10,000 customers. Enpal offers PV systems and batteries in a leasing model, which eliminates high investment costs for homeowners. After 20 years of operation, the system can be purchased for only one euro. For prospective customers, Enpal offers a comprehensive package including consultation and planning. The installation is carried out by Enpal installers or certified partners. From the initial contact until the end of the subscription, Enpal takes care of the entire process, which makes the whole journey as easy as possible for homeowners. Enpal's goal is to supply one million households with their own solar system by the end of the decade. Enpal currently employs over 1,000 people. Tina O'Meara [email protected] +49 30 200 053 780 SOURCE Enpal OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) was named a 2021 Safer Choice Partner of the Year award winner for outstanding achievement in the manufacturing of products with ingredients that are safer for families, pets, workplaces, communities, and the environment. This is the company's fourth time receiving this award in the formulation/product manufacturing award category. Safer Choice helps consumers and organizations find products that perform and are made with safer ingredients. To qualify for the Safer Choice label, a product must meet EPA's Safer Choice Standard, which includes stringent human and environmental health criteria. Currently, 27 Clorox products carry the Safer Choice label, an increase from 19 products in 2018. Certified products include Clorox Compostable Wipes and the Real Simple product line. "Clorox is a health and wellness company at heart, so making products that are safer for people and the planet is a priority for us. It matters to our consumers and it's the right thing to do," said Lisa Pankiewicz, Vice President, Global Stewardship R&D for Clorox. "We're proud to be recognized as a leader in a program that helps protect people's health and the environment." Product stewardship is one of the environmental, social, governance (ESG) goals embedded in Clorox's corporate strategy, called IGNITE. Clorox's ESG goals are focused on strategic pillars where the company can have the greatest impact: Healthy Lives : Improving people's health and well-being through initiatives such as promoting employee safety, advancing product stewardship and innovating wellness products : Improving people's health and well-being through initiatives such as promoting employee safety, advancing product stewardship and innovating wellness products Clean World : Fighting climate change and eliminating plastic & other waste : Fighting climate change and eliminating plastic & other waste Thriving Communities: Investing in employees and communities to contribute to a more equitable world As part of the Healthy Lives pillar, Clorox's product stewardship efforts build on a track record of accomplishments, including becoming the first major consumer packaged goods company to voluntarily disclose ingredients in U.S. and Canadian retail and professional cleaning, disinfecting and laundry products over a decade ago. Clorox has played an active role in the Safer Choice program and its predecessor program, Design for the Environment, since 2007. Since that time, Clorox has collaborated with the EPA to advocate and support the program. The company was previously recognized as a Safer Choice Partner of the Year in 2016, 2017 and 2020. The Clorox Company The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) is a leading multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional products with about 9,000 employees worldwide and fiscal year 2021 sales of $7.3 billion. Clorox markets some of the most trusted and recognized consumer brand names, including its namesake bleach and cleaning products; Pine-Sol cleaners; Liquid-Plumr clog removers; Poett home care products; Fresh Step cat litter; Glad bags and wraps; Kingsford grilling products; Hidden Valley dressings and sauces; Brita water- filtration products; Burt's Bees natural personal care products; and RenewLife, Rainbow Light, Natural Vitality CALM, and NeoCell vitamins, minerals and supplements. The company also markets industry-leading products and technologies for professional customers, including those sold under the CloroxPro and Clorox Healthcare brand names. More than 80% of the company's sales are generated from brands that hold the No. 1 or No. 2 market share positions in their categories. Clorox is a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy Global Commitment. The company has been broadly recognized for its corporate responsibility efforts, included on the Barron's 2020 100 Most Sustainable Companies list, 2021 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, the Human Rights Campaign's 2021 Corporate Equality Index and the 2021 Parity.org Best Places for Women to Advance list, among others. In support of its communities, The Clorox Company and its foundations contributed about $20 million in combined cash grants, product donations and cause marketing in fiscal year 2021. For more information, visit TheCloroxCompany.com and follow the company on Twitter at @CloroxCo. About EPA Safer Choice program The Safer Choice program, formerly known as the Design for the Environment (DfE) Safer Product Labeling Program, was developed in 1997 and draws upon chemical and environmental expertise from across EPA. Safer Choice uses the technical tools and expertise of EPA's New Chemicals Program to evaluate the environmental and human health impacts of every chemical ingredient in a product, allowing only the safest ingredients in certified products. As a voluntary partnership program, Safer Choice brings all interested parties together to advance sustainability in chemical products. Safer Choice currently certifies approximately 2,000 products. For more information about the Safer Choice program, visit: www.epa.gov/saferchoice. CLX-C SOURCE The Clorox Company Related Links http://www.clorox.com SILVER SPRING, Md., Sep. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to allow for use of a single booster dose, to be administered at least six months after completion of the primary series in: individuals 65 years of age and older; individuals 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe COVID-19; and individuals 18 through 64 years of age whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19 including severe COVID-19. Today's authorization applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. "Today's action demonstrates that science and the currently available data continue to guide the FDA's decision-making for COVID-19 vaccines during this pandemic. After considering the totality of the available scientific evidence and the deliberations of our advisory committee of independent, external experts, the FDA amended the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to allow for a booster dose in certain populations such as health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others," said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. "This pandemic is dynamic and evolving, with new data about vaccine safety and effectiveness becoming available every day. As we learn more about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, including the use of a booster dose, we will continue to evaluate the rapidly changing science and keep the public informed." The Process for Assessing the Available Data Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA), was approved by the FDA on Aug. 23, for the prevention of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 in individuals 16 years of age and older. On Aug. 25, 2021, the FDA received a supplement from Pfizer Inc. to their biologics license application for Comirnaty seeking approval of a single booster dose to be administered approximately six months after completion of the primary vaccination series for individuals 16 years of age and older. As part of the FDA's commitment to transparency, the agency convened a public meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Sept. 17 to solicit input from independent scientific and public health experts on the data submitted in the application. During the meeting, the vaccine manufacturer presented information and data in support of its application. The FDA also presented its analysis of clinical trial data submitted by the vaccine manufacturer. Additionally, the public was also given an opportunity to provide comment; and FDA invited international and U.S. agencies and external groups, including representatives from the Israeli Ministry of Health, the University of Bristol, U.K. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to present recent data on the use of vaccine boosters, epidemiology of COVID-19, and real-world evidence on vaccine effectiveness. The FDA considered the data that the vaccine manufacturer submitted, information presented at the VRBPAC meeting, and the committee's discussion, and has determined that based on the totality of the available scientific evidence, a booster dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine may be effective in preventing COVID-19 and that the known and potential benefits of a booster dose outweigh the known and potential risks in the populations that the FDA is authorizing for use. The booster dose is authorized for administration to these individuals at least six months following completion of their primary series and may be given at any point after that time. It's important to note that the FDA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is the same formulation as the FDA-approved Comirnaty and the vaccines may be used interchangeably. "We're grateful for the advice of the doctors, scientists, and leading vaccine experts on our advisory committee and the important role they have played in ensuring transparent discussions about COVID-19 vaccines. We appreciate the robust discussion, including the vote regarding individuals over 65 years of age and individuals at high risk for severe disease, as well as the committee's views regarding the use of a booster dose for those with institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2," said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. "The FDA considered the committee's input and conducted its own thorough review of the submitted data to reach today's decision. We will continue to analyze data submitted to the FDA pertaining to the use of booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines and we will make further decisions as appropriate based on the data." Data Supporting Authorization for Emergency Use To support the authorization for emergency use of a single booster dose, the FDA analyzed safety and immune response data from a subset of participants from the original clinical trial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. In addition, consideration was given to real-world data on the vaccine's efficacy over a sustained period of time provided by both U.S. and international sources, including the CDC, the UK and Israel. The immune responses of approximately 200 participants 18 through 55 years of age who received a single booster dose approximately six months after their second dose were assessed. The antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 virus one month after a booster dose of the vaccine compared to the response one month after the two-dose primary series in the same individuals demonstrated a booster response. Additional analysis conducted by the manufacturer, as requested by the FDA, compared the rates of COVID-19 accrued during the current Delta variant surge among original clinical trial participants who completed the primary two-dose vaccination series early in the clinical trial to those who completed a two-dose series later in the study. The analysis submitted by the company showed that during the study period of July and August 2021, the incidence of COVID-19 was higher among the participants who completed their primary vaccine series earlier, compared to participants who completed it later. The FDA determined that the rate of breakthrough COVID-19 reported during this time period translates to a modest decrease in the efficacy of the vaccine among those vaccinated earlier. Safety was evaluated in 306 participants 18 through 55 years of age and 12 participants 65 years of age and older who were followed for an average of over two months. The most commonly reported side effects by the clinical trial participants who received the booster dose of the vaccine were pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, as well as fatigue, headache, muscle or joint pain and chills. Of note, swollen lymph nodes in the underarm were observed more frequently following the booster dose than after the primary two-dose series. Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under EUA for individuals 16 years of age and older. The authorization was expanded on May 10, 2021 to include those 12 through 15 years of age, and again on Aug. 12, 2021 to include the use of a third dose of a three-dose primary series in certain immunocompromised individuals 12 years of age and older. EUAs can be used by the FDA during public health emergencies to provide access to medical products that may be effective in preventing, diagnosing, or treating a disease, provided that the FDA determines that the known and potential benefits of a product, when used to prevent, diagnose, or treat the disease, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product. The amendment to the EUA to include a single booster dose was granted to Pfizer Inc. Media Contact: FDA Office of Media Affairs, 301-796-4540 Consumer Inquiries: Email or 888-INFO-FDA The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products. SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration Related Links http://www.fda.gov According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Latino community is the fastest growing community in the nation, growing by 23 percent over the decade. This growth drove FEMA's focus for this year's Ready Campaign to help all residents better prepare for disasters. FEMA used a data-driven approach to identify and develop culturally competent messaging tailored to resonate with the Latino community to encourage audiences to develop emergency plans. The Latino focused ads seek to build on the Latino community's commitment to personal planning for occasions and family milestones as a bridge to also planning for disasters. This aims to help address a gap identified in FEMA's 2020 National Household Survey which shows 98 percent of households acknowledging that at least one disaster could impact where they live, yet less than half made an emergency plan or talked to others about getting prepared. "Disasters transcend language and cultural barriers, and so should the way we talk about them. Our campaign, 'Prepare to Protect,' taps into Latinos' culture to plan for life's most common and special events to bridge a connection to their desire to prepare their loved ones and protect them against disasters," said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. "The power of this strategy is that we can all see ourselves in this message and establish a direct connection between planning for everyday life, and planning for a disaster." FEMA's Ready Campaign PSAs were developed pro bono by Lopez Negrete Communications in coordination with the Ad Council. FEMA's very own Hispanic/Latino Employee Resource Group was also tapped to help shape the ads. Throughout the month, Ready will emphasize unique aspects of preparedness, including making a communications plan, building a kit and teaching communities how to engage their families on emergency preparedness. FEMA is putting equity front and center and is committed to accessibility and leveraging cultural competency across the agency to better communicate with all cultures. This new, evolving approach builds on the work the agency is promoting to help the people FEMA serves and its workforce understand, and practice emergency preparedness. "This one-of-a-kind campaign is a step in a new direction for our agency that is committed to putting people first and reaching communities where they are. It is our hope that more people will use these resources to prepare ahead of disasters this year," said Administrator Criswell. "We are proud to be part of this very important effort and to have the opportunity to craft messages specifically targeting the American Latino audience, both in-language and in-culture, taking into account the specific insights and context that are in play for our community," stated Lopez Negrete Communications' President/CEO, Alex Lopez Negrete. "Ours is a strong, resilient community that has gone through its fair share of disasters and is adept at planning for everything from a complex quinceanera to a multigenerational family celebration, yet, very much lives in the 'now.' This campaign reminds and encourages our Hispanic audience to take those skills and apply them toward emergency preparedness for the sake of our families and loved ones." "When it comes to preparing for disasters, one of the most helpful things you can do is create an emergency plan and talk about it with your family," said the Ad Council's Chief Campaign Development Officer, Michelle Hillman. "This latest creative work reminds all of us that planning is a simple step everyone can take to help keep safe during emergencies." These PSAs build upon the annual month-long Ready Campaign activities that kicked off with President Biden's proclamation for the month. The Ready Campaign continues to release other creative content to engage communities to promote the steps to prepare for disaster in a variety of languages to help everyone have access to critical and life-safety information. This round of creative work for the Ready Campaign is the latest in 18 years of educating communities about disaster and emergency preparedness. For more information and to get started on your emergency plan, visit ready.gov/plan or listo.gov/plan. About FEMA FEMA's mission is to help people before, during and after disasters. Follow FEMA online, on Twitter @FEMA or @FEMAEspanol, on FEMA's Facebook page or Espanol page and at FEMA's YouTube account. Also, follow FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell's activities @FEMA_Deanne The social media links provided are for reference only. FEMA does not endorse any non-government websites, companies or applications. ABOUT THE AD COUNCIL The Ad Council is where creativity and causes converge. The non-profit organization brings together the most creative minds in advertising, media, technology and marketing to address many of the nation's most important causes. The Ad Council has created many of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history. The organization's innovative social good campaigns raise awareness, inspire action and save lives. To learn more, visit AdCouncil.org, follow the Ad Council's communities on Facebook and Twitter and view the creative on YouTube. ABOUT LOPEZ NEGRETE COMMUNICATIONS Lopez Negrete Communications stands as the largest independent, Hispanic-owned-and-operated, full-service agencies in the United States, specializing in providing marketing services to corporations wishing to reach and engage with America's increasingly diverse consumers. Founded in 1985 by Alex and Cathy Lopez Negrete, the agency offers thought leadership and a full range of marketing, advertising and communications services, including strategic planning, brand strategy, creative and production research and consumer insights, media planning and buying, digital/social/mobile marketing services, public relations, and promotions. Award-winning throughout a rich, 36-year history, Lopez Negrete counts as clients some of the nation's largest corporations and their prestigious brands, such as Bank of America, Walmart Inc., McDonald's, Sam's Club, Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), Phillips 66 Company, Motiva Enterprises LLC, Mattress Firm, United Airlines, and National Grid. With national headquarters in Houston, Texas, Lopez Negrete employs over 100 professionals who keep clients at the forefront of a burgeoning Omnicultural America and is a founding agency member of the ANA's Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM). SOURCE Ad Council RED BANK, N.J, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- First National Realty Partners (FNRP) is pleased to announce the acquisition of City Center Crossing, a grocery-anchored shopping center located at 6331 Roswell Road, Sandy Spring, GA 30328. City Center Crossing is a 98,408 SF shopping center that is 77% occupied and anchored by a 27,858 square foot Lidl Supermarket that opened in May 2020. The property is located approximately 16 miles north of downtown Atlanta and adds to FNRP's rapidly growing portfolio of premier real estate assets throughout the United States. City Center Crossing "We are extremely excited to not only acquire our first asset in the Atlanta Market but to also add Lidl to our portfolio, one of the most rapidly growing grocers in the country," said Matt Annibale, Senior Director of Acquisitions at First National Realty Partners. "The remaining vacancy in the center will provide significant upside for our investors." First National Realty Partners, LLC (FNRP) is a leading vertically integrated real estate investment firm focused on acquiring institutional quality commercial real estate throughout the United States. The firm is an active, opportunistic, and value-add investment firm that is equipped to operate in all facets of the real estate acquisition process as an investor, developer, and asset manager of commercial real estate. FNRP enhances the value of properties through hands-on management and targeted investments that result in superior, risk-adjusted returns for its investors. Contact Information Sam Perrelli, Investor Relations [email protected] First National Realty Partners 125 Half Mile Road Suite 207 Red Bank, New Jersey 07701 800-605-4966 https://fnrpusa.com/property/city-center Matt Annibale, Senior Director of Acquisitions [email protected] First National Realty Partners 125 Half Mile Road Suite 207 Red Bank, New Jersey 07701 732-696-1201 https://fnrpusa.com/property/city-center SOURCE First National Realty Partners, LLC Related Links https://www.fnrpusa.com/ The Thermo Scientific Delta Q Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS) is a next generation gas IRMS designed to enable detailed analysis with greater precision and accuracy. In addition to its improved specifications, including an upgrade in software to Qtegra ISDS to dramatically improve ease-of-use and laboratory productivity, the system's carbon footprint will be neutralized, allowing scientists to carry out their work, while minimizing their environmental impact. The Delta Q IRMS is the first product to be released as part of the IsoFootprint campaign , an initiative to permanently remove CO emissions associated with the manufacture and supply chain of all new inorganic IRMS products. The Inorganic MS (IOMS) team at Thermo Fisher has committed to removing all embodied carbon in its new instrumentation, using technologies, like direct air capture and bio-oil sequestration, that lock away carbon from the atmosphere permanently. "The Delta Q IRMS, and our IsoFootprint initiative, is a major step forward in our commitment to supporting sustainable science," said Chris Cascella, general manager, inorganic mass spectrometry, chromatography and mass spectrometry, Thermo Fisher Scientific. "With the world in climate crisis, we want to be sure we play our part in limiting the damaging environmental impacts of climate change. By 2026, our IOMS instruments will become carbon neutral, removing 4500 tCOe from the atmosphere each year. This is a bold, but necessary step world-class science should not be at a cost to the Earth." "Across industries, most products come with a carbon footprint, and direct air capture provides a mechanism to permanently eliminate this," said Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering, a direct air capture company working with Thermo Fisher as part of the IsoFootprint initiative. "It is inspiring to see Thermo Fisher leading the earth sciences field and taking the pioneering step to remove the CO emissions associated with their Delta Q IRMS product." To find out more about the IsoFootprint initiative, please visit www.thermofisher.com/IsoFootprint. About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with annual revenue of approximately $35 billion. Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. Whether our customers are accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics and therapies or increasing productivity in their laboratories, we are here to support them. Our global team of more than 90,000 colleagues delivers an unrivaled combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through our industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. Media Contact Information: Laura Bright Thermo Fisher Scientific +1 562-335-8318 [email protected] Janice Foley BioStrata +1 617-823-5555 [email protected] SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific Related Links http://www.thermofisher.com AKRON, Ohio, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In recognition of its commitment to supplier diversity and women-owned businesses, FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) has been presented with the 2021 "Regional Council Member Done Deals" award by the Women's Business Enterprise Center East (WBEC-East). The selection honors FirstEnergy for having the largest spend with the highest number of women-owned businesses certified by the WBEC-East over the past 12 months. FirstEnergy's Supplier Diversity Program provides opportunities in a competitive environment to small, woman-owned; minority-owned; HUBZone; veteran-owned; and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. It serves as just one part of the company's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, a FirstEnergy core value. In 2020, FirstEnergy spent $482 million with diverse suppliers, or about 16% of the company's total supplier expenditures. Of that, $54.8 million was spent with women-owned businesses certified by WBEC-East. "Building a diverse supplier base is key to delivering value to our customers and strengthening the economic health of communities across our service area," said Rich Sweeney, vice president of Supply Chain at FirstEnergy. "We are proud to receive this recognition from the WBEC East, a tremendous ally for women business leaders that promotes innovation, opens doors and creates partnerships that fuel the economy." As part of its efforts to be a corporate leader in making diverse suppliers a natural part of its business environment, FirstEnergy is committed to achieving 20% of supply chain spend with diverse suppliers by 2025. To support this goal, the company sponsors and attends trade fairs and conferences that focus on small, diverse businesses and leads initiatives by participating with organizations such as WBEC-East. The award is the latest recognition of FirstEnergy's leading diversity and inclusion and supplier diversity programs. Named as a Best Employer for Diversity in 2020 by Forbes magazine and to DiversityInc's Top Utilities List three years running, FirstEnergy has also been honored by U.S. Veterans Magazine as the Top Supplier Diversity Program (2019) and received six awards in the past 10 years from the Commission on Economic Inclusion, which recognizes board, senior management, workforce and supplier diversity. About WBEC-East As advocates for women business owners, WBEC-East offers training and education for entrepreneurs, and provides certification for businesses across Pennsylvania, Delaware and southern New Jersey. FirstEnergy serves as a Corporate Member on WBEC-East's Supplier Diversity Council. About FirstEnergy FirstEnergy is dedicated to integrity, safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company's transmission subsidiaries operate approximately 24,000 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Follow FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com and on Twitter @FirstEnergyCorp . SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp. Related Links http://www.firstenergycorp.com ANAHEIM, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ForeverLawn, Inc., sponsor of Jeffrey Earnhardt in the 2021 NASCAR Xfinity racing season, is excited to announce that their NASCAR race car, known as the #BlackandGreenGrassMachine by racing fans, will be on display at Harvest Riverside Church on Sunday, September 26, and SoCal Harvest at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Sunday, October 3. The ForeverLawn #BlackandGreenGrassMachine will be on display at Harvest Riverside Church on Sunday, September 26, and SoCal Harvest at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on Sunday, October 3. Unveiled for the first time in May at the Darlington Motor Speedway, ForeverLawn has been using the tail panel of their No. 0 Chevrolet Camaro to help Pastor Greg Laurie spread his message of hope. Josh Morris, Director of Marketing at Harvest Christian Fellowship said, "Having the opportunity to carry the message of hope to the extensive reach of NASCAR is very exciting. We appreciate the opportunity to continue offering this message via our unique partnership with ForeverLawn, Jeffrey Earnhardt, JD Motorsports and NASCAR." Unveiled for the first time in May at the Darlington Motor Speedway, ForeverLawn has been using the tail panel of their No. 0 Chevrolet Camaro to help Pastor Greg Laurie spread his message of hope. "In 2018, our family went through the shocking loss of our 20-year-old daughter, Makenna, said Dale Karmie, co-founder of ForeverLawn. "We were blessed to get to spend some time with Pastor Greg shortly after our tragedy. He had suffered through a similar ordeal when he lost his 33-year-old son 10 years earlier. He shared with us his journey and where his hope and strength came from. That was incredibly impactful to our entire family. We are thrilled to be able to share the message of hope with others via our #BlackandGreenGrassMacine." Where can hope be found? Visit harvest.org. There, Pastor Greg Laurie and the team at Harvest Ministries have extensive resources and information available to provide a message of hope, redemption, and freedom. Josh Morris, Director of Marketing at Harvest Christian Fellowship said, "Having the opportunity to carry the message of hope to the extensive reach of NASCAR is very exciting. We appreciate the opportunity to continue offering this message via our unique partnership with ForeverLawn, Jeffrey Earnhardt, JD Motorsports and NASCAR." For more information about ForeverLawn call 866.992.7876 or visit foreverlawn.com. About ForeverLawn ForeverLawn provides innovative synthetic grass products to create better landscapes worldwide. In areas where real grass is difficult to grow or maintaindue to high traffic or poor conditionsForeverLawn offers a natural-looking alternative that is beautiful, functional, and durable. ForeverLawn offers exceptional business opportunities nationwide for individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit wishing to join a growing industry. ForeverLawnGrass without limits. CONTACT Derek Taylor ForeverLawn 330.618.4616 [email protected] SOURCE ForeverLawn The Best Workplaces for Women award is based on an analysis of survey responses from more than 5.6 million employed Americans. In that survey, an astounding 93% of Activus Connect's workforce said that it is a great place to work. This number is 34% points higher than the average U.S. company! Activus Connect, a certified owned and operated Women & Minority organization lives the ethos of Elevating Experiences and has the distinction of being comprised of industry experts who have collectively helped to shape what is commonly referred to as the "at-home, work-from-home, virtual-agent delivery model." At their core and in their actions, Activus Connect is a values-based business focused on doing what is right above anything else. They do so with passion, integrity, respect, authenticity, and joy, aiming to enrich lives and cultivate communities locally and globally. "It is a great honor to continue to have Activus Connect recognized as a company committed to elevating experiences on behalf of our entire Ambassador community. Over the preceding eighteen months, millions of women worldwide were asked to adapt to working from home while also caring for their families when the global pandemic required us to work remotely and safely. As a mother and entrepreneur, I am grateful myself to have the opportunity to build and run a successful business at home and to support others who choose to do the same," Minerva Serrano, President and Chief Financial Officer said. The Best Workplaces for Women list is highly competitive. Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, selected the list using rigorous analytics and confidential employee feedback. Companies were only considered if they are a Great Place to Work-Certified organization. Great Place to Work is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they are creating a great employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, disability status, or any aspect of who employees are or what their role is. "These companies have made a commitment to fostering equity in the workplace. With the data about gender inequity in mind, the Best Workplaces for Women braved the task of combatting gender inequity by ensuring their women employees feel safe, heard, challenged and valued," says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. Earlier this year, Activus Connect also ranked as a Best Workplace for Millennials. About Activus Connect Activus Connect is a premium customer experience outsourcing solutions provider operating across the United States and Puerto Rico. The company has evolved the traditional approach to BPO and contact center services by leveraging its SmartVirtual platform in an exclusive work-at-home setting. Operating across all verticals, Activus provides multilingual, multichannel, voice, and non-voice customer care, sales, retention, social media moderation, and technical support services. For more information about Activus Connect, visit www.activusconnect.com. About the Best Workplaces for Women and Great Place to Work Great Place to Work selected the Best Workplaces for Women by gathering and analyzing confidential survey responses from more than 5.6 million U.S. 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. 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. Media Contact: [email protected] SOURCE Activus Connect Related Links https://www.activusconnect.com SHANGHAI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. ("Four Seasons Education" or the "Company") (NYSE: FEDU), a leading Shanghai-based educational company dedicated to providing comprehensive after-school education services with a focus on high-quality math education, today announced that effective on September 23, 2021, the board of directors of the Company (the "Board") approved a share repurchase program whereby Four Seasons Education is authorized to repurchase its own ordinary shares in the form of American depositary shares ("ADSs") with an aggregate value of up to US$15.0 million during the next twelve-month period. The Company plans to fund the repurchase program out of its available working capital, existing cash balance or future cash provided by operating activities. The share repurchases under the 2021 program may be made from time to time through various means, including open market purchases and privately negotiated transactions. The per share price cap will be determined from time to time at the discretion of the Chief Executive Officer, as authorized by the Board. The proposed share repurchase may be effected on the open market at prevailing market prices, depending on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, share price, trading volume and general market conditions, along with the Company's working capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors, as well as subject to applicable rules of Rule 10b5-1 and/or Rule 10b-18 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains statements of a forward-looking nature. These statements, including the statements relating to the Company's future financial and operating results, are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these forward-looking statements by terminology such as "will," "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "intends," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, management's quotations and the Business Outlook section contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections about the Company and the industry. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those relating to its ability to attract new students and retain existing students, its ability to deliver a satisfactory learning experience and improving their academic performance, PRC regulations and policies relating to the education industry in China, general economic conditions in China, and the Company's ability to meet the standards necessary to maintain listing of its ADSs on the NYSE or other stock exchange, including its ability to cure any non-compliance with the NYSE's continued listing criteria. All information provided in this press release is as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that its expectations will turn out to be correct, and investors are cautioned that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results. Further information regarding risks and uncertainties faced by the Company is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual reports on Form 20-F. About Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. is a leading Shanghai based educational company dedicated to providing comprehensive after-school education services with a focus on high-quality math education. The Company's vision is to unlock students' intellectual potential through high quality and effective education that can profoundly benefit students' academic, career and life prospects. The Company provides educational programs that are primarily focused on elementary-level math and have expanded in recent years to also include other subjects, including physics, chemistry, and languages, and other grade levels, such as middle school programs, as well as other programs including interest-oriented programs and programs catering for kindergarten students. The Company's proprietary educational content is designed to cultivate students' interests and enhance their cognitive and logic abilities. The Company develops its educational content through a systematic development process and updates it regularly based on student performance and feedback. Such process allows the Company to effectively drive better learning outcomes and serve students of different ages, aptitude levels and learning objectives. The Company's faculty is led by a group of experienced senior educators, including recognized scholars and award-winning teachers. Over the years, the quality of the Company's education services has been demonstrated by its student outstanding academic performance. For more information, please visit http://ir.sijiedu.com . For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China: Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. Olivia Li Tel: +86 (21) 6317-6678 E-mail: [email protected] The Piacente Group, Inc. Jenny Cai Tel: +86-10-6508-0677 E-mail: [email protected] In the United States: The Piacente Group, Inc. Brandi Piacente Tel: +1-212-481-2050 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE Four Seasons Education Inc. Related Links http://www.sijiedu.com FP Markets' Head of Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Craig Allison, hailed the victory: "For the third consecutive year, FP Markets has been voted the 'Best Global Value Forex Broker' proving that our commitment to providing superior trading experiences for our customers is paying off. Picking up the 'Best Forex Trading Experience in the EU' for the first time is also an honour, and being appreciated by new traders around the world shows that we are heading in the right direction and demonstrates that FP Markets is increasingly recognized globally as the best destination for clients for overall trading experience given our market-leading tight spreads and award-winning fast execution. The appreciation from our own traders is doubly satisfying as we continue to strive to improve FP Markets' products and services." FP Markets offers over 10,000 trading instruments offering traders access to CFDs across Forex, Indices, Commodities, Stocks, and Cryptocurrencies, making it one of the largest offerings in the industry and offers eight platforms, including MT4, MT5 and Iress. Over the past 16 years, FP Markets has learned that the combination of consistently tight spreads and fast execution, coupled with cutting-edge platforms, a wide product range, and first-rate customer support are the key ingredients that give serious traders the confidence to trade. Since the year of its establishment in 2005, Australia's Best Forex Broker 2020 continues to expand its product offering, giving traders the ability to trade under some of the best trading conditions in the industry. Notes to Editors About FP Markets: FP Markets is an Australian-regulated global Forex Broker with more than 16 years of industry experience. FP Markets offers highly competitive interbank Forex spreads available from 0.0 pips and leverage up to 500:1*. Download FP Markets' Mobile App and trade on-the-go across several powerful online platforms like MetaTrader4, MetaTrader5, WebTrader, and IRESS. The company's outstanding 24/5 multilingual service has been recognized by Investment Trends as home to some of the most content clients in the industry, having been awarded "The Highest Overall Client Satisfaction Award" five years running from Investment Trends. FP Markets has been awarded the "Global Forex Value Broker" in three consecutive years (2019, 2020, 2021) at the Global Forex Awards. For full details of our wide-ranging offering, visit https://www.fpmarkets.com. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1633728/FP_Markets.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574261/FP_Markets_Logo.jpg SOURCE FP Markets Related Links https://www.fpmarkets.com ATLANTA, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Georgia Power's Energy Assistance team remains a trusted voice in the community to help those most in need make their monthly bill payments. During 2020, the company's efforts increased dramatically through employee training, expanded community partnerships, increased funding and improved coordination. The efforts led to an 82 percent increase in the number of customers helped through the company's energy assistance portal, an innovative online system designed to help connect assistance resources and customers. "Our team has recognized the extraordinary burden our customers have faced and have worked incredibly hard to expand our energy assistance capabilities," said Danny Johnson, energy assistance manager at Georgia Power. "In 2019, our energy assistance portal was able to help connect nearly 4,600 customers with payment resources of approximately $728,000, while in 2020, we were able to increase payment aid to more than 8,300 customers exceeding $1,918,000." By partnering with community, nonprofit and faith-based organizations, as well as Georgia Power's Customer Care, Corporate Relations, and Energy Efficiency teams and the Georgia Power Foundation, the company is able to provide a safety net for customers in need. These customers include those that are elderly, experiencing a one-time or ongoing special need, in lower income brackets, and individuals impacted by the pandemic. Through these partnerships, Georgia Power was able to support thousands of families in the last year through community resources, programming, direct funding and private donations. Growing Resources; Expanding Capabilities Since 2020, Georgia Power's Energy Assistance team has trained 450 employees to provide proactive communication to customers and community partners on special payment options to pay past-due balances accumulated during the pandemic. Last year, the team also added 500 community partner organizations to their directory, nearly 300 COVID-19 resources and 10,000 faith-based resources to support customers across the state. Additionally, the team works closely with customers who need assistance regarding CARES Act funding and Spanish-language support. The Energy Assistance team's partnership with community organizations helps connect qualified customers to available assistance programs including: Home Energy Efficiency Assistance Program (HEEAP) Georgia Power customers have the opportunity to contribute funds to help make energy efficiency improvements for income-qualifying residents in their own community that will be added to funding provided by Georgia Power. These upgrades may include air sealing of gaps, cracks and leaks, sealing of heating and air delivery ducts, attic insulation, HVAC service and repair, LED light bulbs, smart/ wi-fi thermostat, and electric water heater blanket and pipe wrap. Customers can donate on a statewide level, or focus giving to a specific region of the state at www.georgiapower.com/HEEAPDonor. Georgia Power customers have the opportunity to contribute funds to help make energy efficiency improvements for income-qualifying residents in their own community that will be added to funding provided by Georgia Power. These upgrades may include air sealing of gaps, cracks and leaks, sealing of heating and air delivery ducts, attic insulation, HVAC service and repair, LED light bulbs, smart/ wi-fi thermostat, and electric water heater blanket and pipe wrap. Customers can donate on a statewide level, or focus giving to a specific region of the state at www.georgiapower.com/HEEAPDonor. Georgia Power's Income-Qualified Senior Citizen Discount Georgia Power customers 65 years of age or older who meet the income requirements for eligibility can receive up to $24 a month off their bill. Georgia Power customers 65 years of age or older who meet the income requirements for eligibility can receive up to $24 a month off their bill. The Salvation Army's Project SHARE Established in partnership with The Salvation Army, Georgia Power customers can provide assistance to residents in the same community for expenses, such as utility bills, housing, food and medical necessities. Customers can donate $1, 2, 5 or $10 on their monthly bill to support their neighbors in need. Georgia Power matches $1.50 for each dollar donated up to $1.5 million. To learn more about Georgia Power's energy assistance programs, to contribute or to reach out to someone on the team, visit: www.GeorgiaPower.com/EnergyAssistance. About Georgia Power Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.6 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is recognized by J.D. Power as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower), Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower) and Instagram (Instagram.com/ga_power). SOURCE Georgia Power Related Links http://www.georgiapower.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The California Young Lawyers Association (CYLA) is pleased to announce that Gilberto Vera is the recipient of its 2021 Jack Berman Award of Achievement. CYLA annually confers the Jack Berman Award of Achievement to recognize a new or young lawyer within their first eight years of practice for their distinguished service to the public, the judiciary or the legal profession. This year's pool of nominees was extremely competitive, and we thank and recognize everyone who submitted nominations. About Gilberto Vera Gilberto Vera, a Senior Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, is the recipient of the California Young Lawyers Association 2021 Jack Berman Award of Achievement. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Vera connected residents to rental assistance, legal representation, and bilingual access to eviction moratorium information that proved invaluable to 1,466 individual households in San Diego County. Mr. Vera is a Senior Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego where he manages a staff of four attorneys, two advocates, and one case manager on the housing team. Before the start of the pandemic, Mr. Vera's practice focused on unlawful detainer defense, representing families facing housing insecurity. At the start of 2020 and through 2021, Mr. Vera transitioned his practice to address COVID-19 and the ensuing economic impact and housing crisis. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Vera connected residents to rental assistance, legal representation, and bilingual access to eviction moratorium information that proved invaluable to 1,466 individual households in San Diego County. In addition to direct work with clients, Mr. Vera led trainings in English and Spanish on various local, state, and federal eviction moratoria, and became a sought-after subject matter expert on new legislation by elected officials. Mr. Vera holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a law degree from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. A first generation Mexican-American, Mr. Vera is a South San Diego native and has dedicated his career to public service with the mantra "to give his community a voice." About the Jack Berman Award of Achievement CYLA established this prestigious award in 1992 in memory of Jack Berman, a young attorney who performed outstanding service to both the public and the profession before he tragically died in a shooting in San Francisco. The Award honors Mr. Berman's dedicated service to issues of concern to the profession, especially to young lawyers. In conferring the award, the CYLA Executive Committee considers projects or service to the public, the judiciary, and/or the legal profession that the nominee has taken part in or spearheaded. To be eligible, an awardee must be an active California attorney in their first eight years of practice. The projects or services may be but need not be pro bono. The award is intended to recognize an early-career lawyer for their individual achievements and contributions. The 2021 Jack Berman award will be conferred to Mr. Vera by the CYLA Executive Committee later this fall. ABOUT CALIFORNIA YOUNG LAWYERS ASSOCIATION The mission of California Young Lawyers Association is to advance practical skills, leadership and pro bono opportunities, networking, and support to meet the unique needs of California's diverse community of new lawyers. CYLA represents all lawyers in California who have been practicing eight years or fewer. CYLA celebrates, invigorates, connects, and supports all new California lawyers. ABOUT CALIFORNIA LAWYERS ASSOCIATION Established in 2018, California Lawyers Association is the bar association for all California attorneys. CLA's mission is to promote excellence, diversity, and inclusion in the legal profession and fairness in the administration of justice and the rule of law. SOURCE California Lawyers Association Key Highlights Offered in the Report: Information on how to identify strategic and tactical negotiation levels that will help achieve the best prices. Gain information on relevant pricing levels, detailed explanation on pros and cons of prevalent pricing models. Methods to help engage with the right suppliers and discover KPI's to evaluate incumbent suppliers. Get a free sample report for more information Insights into buyer strategies and tactical negotiation levers: Several strategic and tactical negotiation levers are explained in the report to help buyers achieve the best prices for the Air Compressors market. The report also aids buyers with relevant Air Compressors pricing levels, pros, and cons of prevalent pricing models such as volume-based pricing, spot pricing, and cost-plus pricing and category management strategies and best practices to fulfil their category objectives. For more insights on buyer strategies and tactical negotiation levers, www.spendedge.com/report/air-compressors-sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report Key Drivers and Trends Fueling Market Growth: The pressure from substitutes and a moderate level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the low bargaining power of suppliers. Price forecasts are beneficial in purchase planning, especially when supplemented by the constant monitoring of price influencing factors. During the forecast period, the market expects a change of 5.00%-9.00%. Identify favorable opportunities in Air Compressors TCO (total cost of ownership). Expected changes in price forecast and factors driving the current and future price changes. Identify pricing models that offer the most rewarding opportunities. To get instant access to over 1000 market-ready procurement intelligence reports without any additional costs or commitment. Subscribe Now for Free Some of the top Air Compressors suppliers listed in this report: This Air Compressors procurement intelligence report has enlisted the top suppliers and their cost structures, SLA terms, best selection criteria, and negotiation strategies. Atlas Copco AB General Electric Co Kobe Steel Ltd Get the Details That You Are Looking for: Buy our detailed market analysis report to uncover: Changing market landscape with yearly forecast till 2025. Analyze the market's competitive and vendor landscape. How much marketing budget to set aside for geographical market expansion. Understanding the most adopted procurement strategies by buyers across industries. Download the FREE sample Report Now! Table of Content Executive Summary Market Insights Category Pricing Insights Cost-saving Opportunities Best Practices Category Ecosystem Category Management Strategy Category Management Enablers Suppliers Selection Suppliers under Coverage US Market Insights Category scope Appendix About SpendEdge: SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions. Contacts SpendEdge Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340 https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us SOURCE SpendEdge DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Biopharmaceutical Third Party Logistics Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Supply Chain (Cold Chain, Non-cold Chain), by Service Type (Transportation, Warehousing And Storage), by Region, and Segment Forecasts, 2021-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global biopharmaceutical third party logistics market size is expected to reach USD 145.2 billion by 2028. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2021 to 2028. Rising demand for temperature-controlled logistic services to transport biologics in various regions and growing distribution networks of biopharmaceutical companies to improve their sales are factors driving the market growth. The rising adoption of automated storage and retrieval systems in emerging countries is an ongoing trend in pharmaceutical logistics companies that has gained significant traction. The biopharmaceutical third party logistic players played a vital role in the fight against COVID-19 by minimizing supply disruptions and prioritizing critical care drugs. The future also seems good for the biopharmaceutical 3PL market with rising demand for domestic logistics coupled with favorable government initiatives and policies. Furthermore, the trend of shifting from small molecule drugs to biopharmaceuticals, mainly vaccines & biologics, is projected to drive the market. Since these small molecule drugs are temperature-sensitive products, demand for temperature-controlled transportation and storage increases and thus is responsible for market growth. Additionally, environmental concerns and cost have caused a slight shift in the means of transport used for commercial products, moving from airway to seaway shipping, and in roadways from trucks to intermodal (both rail and truck). Intermodal transport is majorly used by these pharmaceutical companies to reduce the carbon footprint. The ongoing trend shows that pharmaceutical manufacturers have shifted towards sea freight to reduce the cost and risk factors. Although for cold chain products, the companies still prefer air freight. However, some of the large pharmaceutical companies are planning to transport 70% of their products via ocean freight including cold chain products. Biopharmaceutical 3PL Market Report Highlights In 2020, non-cold chain logistics held the largest market share of 80.8% in terms of revenue owing to the sales of a large number of drugs that do not require any temperature control The cold chain logistics segment is expected to register the faster CAGR of 8.6% over the forecast period owing to the demand for biologics, such as cellular therapies, vaccines, and test kits Warehousing and storage held the largest market of 43.6% share among the types of services in 2020 Asia Pacific is expected to emerge with the fastest CAGR of 7.2% over the forecast period owing to the adoption of medicines from the aging population and a shift of drug sales from brand manufacturers to generic Competitive Landscape FedEx. DHL International GmbH SF Express United Parcel Service of America, Inc. AmerisourceBergen Corporation DB Schenker KUEHNE + NAGEL Kerry Logistics Network Limited Agility For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/1tqym6 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 DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Transformative Mega Trends Enabling Lights Out Manufacturing" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This study explores the top nine technologies companies must consider switching to a lights-out manufacturing environment. These include the internet of things (IoT), robotics, generative design, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital twins, 5G, and cloud computing. The study covers market potential, key drivers, patent landscape, regional insights, and growth opportunities for each of these technologies. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only hindered global manufacturing output but has also hastened the shift toward Industry 5.0. Digitalization and automation are rapidly shaping business strategy, with nearly 90% of companies embracing digital transformation in the short term. In an effort to become more resilient and shock-proof, manufacturers, especially in the West, are compelled to use digital processes to reconfigure their supply chains and move their production lines closer to the point of consumption. This is expected to accelerate the transition to fully automated lights-out manufacturing processes. In a lights-out environment, the manufacturing process is fully automated, with minimal human intervention required to run day-to-day operations. Although manufacturing 'lights out' is not intended to eliminate human labor, it will create the opportunity for a skilled workforce to add value to tasks that require complex problem-solving capability, creativity, and ingenuity. The future lights-out production space will also drive new opportunities in condition monitoring and predictive maintenance of automated assets. Switching to a lights-out manufacturing process can potentially save up to 20% of labor costs and bring about a 30% increase in productivity output. Only a handful of companies currently operate in a lights-out environment; others are expected to gradually 'phase into' a fully automated manufacturing process over the long term. While some industries may find the lights-out scenario attractive, operational complexity could hold them back. Automotive, general manufacturing, electronics and electrical components, and logistics and warehousing are four major industries expected to make rapid advancements toward a fully automated 'lights out' environment in the short term. The study also explores future manufacturing tenets driving key shifts in business models: Transactional to Subscription-based (e.g., robotics-as-a-service) Packaged to on-demand (e.g., shared manufacturing) Disassociated to connected (e.g., connectivity and network hosts) Segregated to integrated (e.g., integrated data platforms) Independent to distributed (e.g., distributed manufacturing) The convergence of transformational Mega Trends, disruptive technologies, and innovative business models will result in four major growth opportunities in this space: Rise of micro-factories - smaller, decentralized factories that require less space, energy, and materials Grid manufacturing - agile, distributed manufacturing process capable of delivering customized goods Manufacturing-to-Zero-as-a-Service - 'innovating to zero' manufacturing process, resulting in zero defects, zero waste and zero-accidents IIOT platforms - connected IIOT platforms that host an extensive ecosystem of alliances that bring complementary capabilities to optimize the manufacturing process Key Issues Addressed How will COVID-19 shape major shifts in manufacturing? What are the key technologies required for companies to build a lights-out toolkit? What are the key growth opportunities to watch out for in the next decade? How will emerging business models accelerate the shift toward lights-out manufacturing environment? What are the critical success factors for growth for companies seeking to build an automation strategy? Key Topics Covered: 1. Strategic Imperative About the Growth Pipeline Model Why is Growth Becoming Increasingly Difficult to Achieve? The Strategic Imperative The Impact of the Top Three Strategic Imperatives on Lights Out Manufacturing Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine 2. Executive Dashboard Key Findings Growth Opportunities Critical to Future Success Introduction - How To Read This Study 3. Post-pandemic Strategic Imperative Global Manufacturing Output Forecast Key Post-pandemic Shifts in Global Manufacturing Rising Cost of Labor vs. Falling Price of Robots 4. 'Lights Out' Manufacturing Overview Manufacturing Evolution From Industry 4.0 to Lights Out Lights Out Manufacturing - An Overview Lights Out Manufacturing - Key Trend Levers Lights Out Manufacturing - Key Trend Risks Lights Out to Drive Up Labor Cost Savings Lights Out to Drive Up Human Productivity Lights Out to Replace Human-led Tasks 5. 'Lights Out' Technology Toolkit Lights Out Manufacturing Technology Toolkit Technology Focus 1 - Internet of Things Technology Focus 2 - Generative Design Technology Focus 3 - 3D Printing Technology Focus 4 - Robotics Technology Focus 5 - Cybersecurity Technology Focus 6 - Digital Twins Technology Focus 7 - 5G Technology Focus 8 - Cloud Computing Technology Focus 9 - Artificial Intelligence 6. Emerging Business Models Emerging Business Models Enabling Lights Out Operations Emerging Business Models - Robots-as-a-service Emerging Business Models - Shared Manufacturing Emerging Business Models - Connectivity and Network Hosts Emerging Business Models - Integrated Data Platforms Emerging Business Models - Distributed Manufacturing 7. Future Visioning Scenarios Visioning Scenarios - Industries Overview Visioning Scenarios - Automotive Visioning Scenarios - General Manufacturing Visioning Scenarios - Electrical and Electronic Components Visioning Scenarios - Logistics & Warehousing Visioning Scenarios - Industry Use Case Summary 8. Growth Opportunities Analysis Growth Opportunity 1: Rise of Microfactories Growth Opportunity 2: Grid Manufacturing Growth Opportunity 3: Manufacturing-to-Zero-as-a-Service Growth Opportunity 4: IIoT Platforms Critical Success Factors for Growth The Way Forward 9. Next Steps For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/uaj1c3 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 VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - GoldMining Inc. (the "Company" or "GoldMining") (TSX: GOLD) (NYSE American: GLDG) is pleased to announce the completion of updated Mineral Resource estimates ("MREs") for four of the most significant properties owned by the Company. The updates included new pit constrained Mineral Resource estimates on each of the 100% owned Titiribi, Whistler, La Mina and Sao Jorge properties in addition to an amended technical report for the Company's Yellowknife Gold project. The technical reports are available for review under the Company's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on the Company's website (www.goldmining.com). Alastair Still, CEO of GoldMining, commented: "We are very pleased to have completed a foundational de-risking exercise by updating Mineral Resource estimates on four of our key properties. These properties, combined with an amended Mineral Resource estimate on Yellowknife Gold collectively represent approximately 84% of the Company's total Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources of 16.24 million gold equivalent ounces and approximately 74% of the Company's total Inferred Mineral Resources of 16.17 million gold equivalent ounces (see Table 1)." Mr. Still continued: "Updating and modernizing the MREs on key properties helps lay the foundation for the next stage of further advancing the projects. We are currently progressing with preliminary economic assessments ("PEAs") at our Yellowknife Gold project in Northwest Territories, Canada, Sao Jorge in Para State, Brazil and La Mina in Antioquia, Colombia which we expect to have completed in the next six months. We look forward to sharing results of the PEAs and other activities as we continue to unlock value from our extensive portfolio of assets within favourable mining jurisdictions located entirely within the Americas." Highlights: Global Mineral Resources Pursuant to the updated MREs, GoldMining's global aggregate of Mineral Resources totals (see Table 1 for details): 16.24 million ounces gold equivalent in the Measured and Indicated categories; 16.17 million ounces gold equivalent in the Inferred category; and Metal prices used for gold equivalent calculations are US$1,600 per ounce gold, US$21 per ounce silver, and US$3.25 per pound copper. Titiribi, Antioquia, Colombia (see GoldMining news release dated July 12, 2021) Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources of 5.54 million ounces gold, and 1,061.2 million pounds of copper (434.6 million tonnes grading 0.40 g/t gold and 0.11% copper) (see Table 1); and Inferred Mineral Resources of 3.15 million ounces gold and 212.6 million pounds of copper (241.9 million tonnes grading 0.41 g/t gold and 0.04% copper) (see Table 1). La Mina, Antioquia, Colombia (see GoldMining news release dated July 12, 2021) Indicated Mineral Resources of 0.66 million ounces gold, 1.60 million ounces of silver and 150.5 million pounds of copper (28.2 million tonnes grading 0.73 g/t gold, 1.76 g/t silver and 0.24% copper) (see Table 1); and Inferred Mineral Resources of 0.29 million ounces gold, 0.77 million ounces silver and 81.2 million pounds of copper (13.6 million tonnes grading 0.65 g/t gold, 1.76 g/t silver and 0.27% copper) (see Table 1). Whistler, Alaska, USA (see GoldMining news release dated June 21, 2021) Indicated Mineral Resources of 1.94 million ounces gold, 8.33 million ounces of silver and 422.0 million pounds of copper (118.2 million tonnes grading 0.51 g/t gold, 2.19 g/t silver and 0.16% copper) (see Table 1); and Inferred Mineral Resources of 4.67 million ounces gold, 16.06 million ounces silver and 711.4 million pounds of copper (317.0 million tonnes grading 0.46 g/t gold, 1.58 g/t silver and 0.10% copper) (see Table 1). Sao Jorge, Para State, Brazil (see GoldMining news release dated June 1, 2021) Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources of 0.71 million ounces gold (14.27 million tonnes grading 1.55 g/t gold) (see Table 1); and Inferred Mineral Resources of 0.72 million ounces gold (17.58 million tonnes grading 1.27 g/t gold) (see Table 1); Yellowknife, N.W.T., Canada (Effective date March 1, 2019; Amended June 9, 2021) Indicated Mineral Resources of 1.06 million ounces gold (14.11 million tonnes grading 2.33 g/t gold) (see Table 1); and Inferred Mineral Resources of 0.74 million ounces gold (9.30 million tonnes grading 2.47 g/t gold) (see Table 1). Table 1 Global Mineral Resource Estimates(1-3) Deposit Cut-off4 Tonnes Grade Contained Metal Gold Silver Copper Gold Eq Gold Silver Copper Gold Eq (g/t) (Mt) (g/t) (g/t) (%) (g/t) (Moz) (Moz) (Mlbs) (Moz) Measured Resources Titiribi5 0.30 85.00 0.39 -- 0.15 0.62 1.06 -- 285.6 1.69 Yellowknife6 0.5/1.5 1.18 2.12 -- -- 2.12 0.08 -- -- 0.08 Total 86.18 1.14 -- 285.6 1.77 Indicated Resources Titiribi5 0.30 349.60 0.40 -- 0.10 0.55 4.49 -- 775.7 6.20 Yellowknife6 0.5/1.5 12.93 2.35 -- -- 2.35 0.98 -- -- 0.98 Sao Jorge7 0.30 14.28 1.55 -- -- 1.55 0.71 -- -- 0.71 Cachoeira8 0.35 17.47 1.23 -- -- 1.23 0.69 -- -- 0.69 Whistler9 $10/t $25/t 118.20 0.51 2.19 0.16 0.79 1.94 8.33 422.0 2.99 La Mina10 0.25 28.25 0.73 1.76 0.24 1.09 0.66 1.60 150.5 0.99 Crucero11 0.40 30.65 1.01 -- -- 1.01 0.99 -- -- 0.99 Almaden12 0.30 43.47 0.65 -- -- 0.65 0.91 -- -- 0.91 Total 614.85 11.38 9.94 1,348.21 14.47 Measured and Indicated Resources Titiribi5 0.30 434.60 0.40 -- 0.11 0.56 5.54 -- 1,061.20 7.89 Yellowknife6 0.5/1.5 14.11 2.33 -- -- 2.33 1.06 -- -- 1.06 Sao Jorge7 0.30 14.28 1.55 -- -- 1.55 0.71 -- -- 0.71 Cachoeira8 0.35 17.47 1.23 -- -- 1.23 0.69 -- -- 0.69 Whistler9 $10/t $25/t 118.20 0.51 2.19 0.16 0.79 1.94 8.33 422.0 2.99 La Mina10 0.25 28.25 0.73 1.76 0.24 1.09 0.66 1.60 150.5 0.99 Crucero11 0.40 30.65 1.01 -- -- 1.01 0.99 -- -- 0.99 Almaden12 0.30 43.47 0.65 -- -- 0.65 0.91 -- -- 0.91 Total 701.03 12.52 9.94 1,633.8 16.24 Inferred Resources Titiribi5 0.30 241.90 0.41 -- 0.04 0.47 3.16 -- 212.6 3.62 Yellowknife6 0.5/1.5 9.30 2.47 -- -- 2.47 0.74 -- -- 0.74 Sao Jorge7 0.30 17.58 1.27 -- -- 1.27 0.72 -- -- 0.72 Cachoeira8 0.35 15.67 1.07 -- -- 1.07 0.54 -- -- 0.54 Whistler9 $10/t $25/t 316.98 0.46 1.58 0.10 0.63 4.67 16.06 711.4 6.45 La Mina10 0.25 13.63 0.65 1.76 0.27 1.05 0.29 0.77 81.2 0.46 Crucero11 0.40 35.78 1.00 -- -- 1.00 1.15 -- -- 1.15 Almaden12 0.30 9.15 0.56 -- -- 0.56 0.16 -- -- 0.16 Boa Vista13 0.50 8.47 1.23 -- -- 1.23 0.34 -- -- 0.34 Surubim14 0.30 19.44 0.81 -- -- 0.81 0.50 -- -- 0.50 Yarumalito15 0.50 66.27 0.58 -- 0.09 0.70 1.23 -- 129.3 1.50 Total 754.17 13.49 16.83 1,134.52 16.17 Notes to Mineral Resource Estimates: 1. For further information regarding the above resource estimates and projects, please refer to the technical reports identified below which are available at www.sedar.com under GoldMining's SEDAR profile. The estimate of mineral resources may be materially affected by environmental permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing or other relevant issues. 2. The above global resource estimate table is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to represent the viability of any project on a standalone or global basis. The exploration and development of each project, project geology and the assumptions and other factors underlying each estimate, are not uniform and will vary from project to project. Please refer to the technical report for each respective project, as referenced herein, for detailed information respecting each individual project. 3. All quantities are rounded to the appropriate number of significant figures; consequently sums may not add up due to rounding. 4. Cut-off grade is based on g/t Au or g/t Au Eq. for all projects except for Whistler, which is gold equivalent cut-off and is based on a NSR US$/t. When two cut-off grades are listed for a project, the first refers to the open pit portion of the resource and the second refers to the underground portion. 5. Notes for Titiribi: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report on the Titiribi Project, Department of Antioquia, Colombia" with an effective date of June 14, 2021. 6. Notes for Yellowknife: Based on technical report titled "Independent Technical Report Yellowknife Gold Project Northwest Territories, Canada" with an effective date of March 1, 2019, and amended and re-stated on June 9, 2021. 7. Notes for Sao Jorge: Based on technical report titled "Sao Jorge Gold Project, Para State, Brazil, Independent Technical Report on Mineral Resources" with an effective date of May 31, 2021. 8. Notes for Cachoeira: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report and Resource Estimate on the Cachoeira Property, Para State, Brazil" with an effective date of April 17, 2013 and amended and re-stated October 2, 2013. 9. Notes for Whistler: Based on technical report titled "NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate for the Whistler Project" with an effective date of June 11, 2021. 10. Notes for La Mina: Based on technical report titled "NI 43-101 Technical Report, GoldMining Inc, La Mina Project, Antioquia, Republic of Colombia" with an effective date of July 6, 2021. 11. Notes for Crucero: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report on the Crucero Property, Carabaya Province, Peru" with an effective date of December 20, 2017. 12. Notes for Almaden: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report: Almaden Gold Property, Washington County, Idaho, USA" with an effective date of April 1, 2020. 13. Notes for Boa Vista: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report on the Boa Vista Project and Resource Estimate on the VG1 Prospect, Tapajos Area, Para State, Northern Brazil" with an effective date of November 22, 2013. 14. Notes for Surubim: Based on technical report titled "Technical Report on the Rio Novo Gold Project and Resource Estimate on the Jau Prospect, Tapajos Area, Para State, Northern Brazil" ("Surubim Project") with an effective date of November 22, 2013. 15. Notes for Yarumalito: Based on a technical report titled "Technical Report: Yarumalito Gold-Copper Property, Departments of Antioquia and Caldas, Republic of Colombia" with an effective date of April 1, 2020. Qualified Person Paulo Pereira, P. Geo., President of GoldMining Inc. has supervised the preparation of this news release and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information contained herein. Mr. Pereira is a Qualified Persons as defined in National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). Notice to Readers Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that any part of the Mineral Resources estimated will be converted into a Mineral Reserves estimate. Disclosure regarding Mineral Resource estimates included herein have been prepared by the Company in accordance with NI 43-101. NI 43-101 is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators that establishes standards for public disclosure by issuer of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. NI 43-101 differs significantly from the disclosure requirements of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") generally applicable to U.S. companies subject to the SEC's disclosure requirements. For example, the terms "Indicated Mineral Resource" and "Inferred Mineral Resource" are defined in NI 43-101 by reference to the guidelines set out in the CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves. These definitions differ from the definitions in the disclosure requirements promulgated by the SEC. Accordingly, information contained herein or in the Company's descriptions of its projects may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies reporting pursuant to SEC disclosure requirements. About GoldMining Inc. GoldMining Inc. is a public mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of gold assets in the Americas. Through its disciplined acquisition strategy, GoldMining now controls a diversified portfolio of resource-stage gold and gold-copper projects in Canada, U.S.A., Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Forward-looking Statements This document contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of GoldMining with respect to its long-term strategy, proposed work and other plans and expected completion of PEAs and other reports for its projects. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the markets in which GoldMining operates. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: delays to plans caused by restrictions and other future impacts of COVID-19 or any other inability of the Company to meet expected timelines for planned project activities, including the timing of proposed PEAs and work programs; the inherent risks involved in the exploration and development of mineral properties, fluctuating metal prices, proposed studies may not confirm GoldMining's expectations for its projects, unanticipated costs and expenses, risks related to government and environmental regulation, social, permitting and licensing matters, and uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future. These risks, as well as others, including those set forth in GoldMinings Annual Information Form for the year ended November 30, 2020, and other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law. SOURCE GoldMining Inc. Related Links www.goldmining.com OSLO, Norway, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Just half of people worldwide (53%) find buying healthy and sustainable food easy according to a new global consumer research survey conducted by GlobeScan, an insights and strategy consultancy, and EAT, the science-based non-profit for global food system transformation. However, the biggest obstacles for those who find it difficult to buy healthy and sustainable food is affordability (48%) and availability (36%), with a quarter of people saying that they don't know what healthy and sustainable food is. The findings featured in this new report, Grains of Truth, look at the opinions of over 30,000 consumers in 31 markets around the world about their definition of good, healthy, and sustainable food. The survey also asked people about other issues including their biggest concerns about food production and the challenges they face purchasing healthy and sustainable food, as well as who can have the biggest positive impact in creating a more healthy and sustainable food system. This research has been carried out as part of the activity around the United Nations Food Systems Summit, where EAT has led Action Track 2 focused on shifting consumption toward sustainable patterns. While many people struggle with understanding what healthy and sustainable food is, there is also an understanding that the two terms have different meanings. The most popular descriptions of healthy food are nutritious (47%), organic (47%), and unprocessed/whole (44%). For sustainable food, the top three descriptions are good for the environment (51%), organic (42%), and locally grown (34%). Different generations have similar views on sustainable food, but there are differences when it comes to healthy food. Gen Z are most likely to describe healthy food as tasty and nutritious, while Baby Boomers associate it with unprocessed/whole and locally grown food. When considering some of the issues of the food system, the two biggest concerns are use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers (81%) and single-use plastic waste from food packaging (78%). These are closely followed by hunger and obesity, with 76 percent of people saying that they are concerned about both issues. These concerns are supported by the fact that one in 11 people are chronically hungry and that a third of the world's population is overweight. The issue that people are least concerned about is the transportation of food. Perhaps surprisingly, concern about each of the issues tends to increase with age, with Gen Z on average being the least concerned and Baby Boomers the most concerned. From a regional perspective, consumers in Latin America, Africa, and Southern Europe express the strongest concerns about the food system. Nearly half of consumers (46%) believe that the responsibility to make positive change to create a more healthy and sustainable food system lies with national governments. Over a third (37%) think food and beverage companies are best placed to achieve this, while 23 percent see people like themselves being able to influence positive change, and one in eight (15%) see young people as powerful agents of change. Speaking about the research, Dr. Gunhild Stordalen, EAT Founder and Executive Chair, said: "There is a lot to be encouraged by in this research with people around the world understanding the important role they can play in changing food systems through their own consumption patterns. But there are also still huge amounts to be worked on by both governments and food manufacturers it is these actors that consumers see as holding the power and that consequently they will listen to. And crucially, even though people want to move to more healthy and sustainable eating habits, they currently do not believe they can because in their view, product prices are either too high or difficult to find. This is something policy makers, retailers, and manufacturers need to work on and improve, so we can all work together on driving healthier consumption patterns." Chris Coulter, CEO of GlobeScan said: "This timely research provides a roadmap for consumer expectations for a sustainable food system. Demonstrating environmental integrity is a definer of sustainable food for people around the world, and there are very high levels of concern for a range of issues affecting the food system, from pesticide use to plastics, to obesity, to impacts on nature. In addition, consumers hold government and business especially responsible for delivering a sustainable food system, making the UN Food Systems Summit a critical opportunity to demonstrate progress to people across the world." The release of this research is part of the build-up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit on the 23rd of September 2021. To download a copy of the full report, please click here. SOURCE EAT By the end of its final phases of structuring, the Institute will have a budget and team to focus on social issues. "The actions we have always carried out over the years on behalf of the family will be strengthened and we also want to get closer to the beneficiary institutions", says Haroldo. As per the IHJ constitution, he will serve as CEO, his wife, Sarita Zlotnik, as vice president, and daughters, Karina and Valeria, as administrative and legal directors, respectively. The plan is to preserve current actions and identify new fronts for action, including developing a project connected to technology, innovation and education. Philanthropy Culture Haroldo Jacobovicz, the son of Polish and German Jews, has been following his parents' contributions to their communities since he was a child. "I learned early in life that to achieve individual success it is essential to contribute to the collective well-being in some way", he says. The vocation for philanthropy is a legacy passed down generation to generation and is something he is looking forward to leaving his grandchildren and daughters. The family is committed to building long-term relationships with the institutions they support over a number of decades. Rather than providing one-off assistance, the priority of IHJ is being a reliable partner over time. Along with recurring donations, the group organizes fun activities to celebrate holidays, such as Christmas, Children's Day, Easter and Mother's Day, which have been disrupted the past two years by the pandemic. Winter campaigns are also promoted every year with blanket distributions and a McHappy Day event in October. The goal of the institute is to create a structured annual calendar and implement it according to the Ministry of Health's social distance and hygiene guidelines. Donations and support are currently being provided to several organizations in Curitiba and surrounding regions, such as Hospital Erasto Gaetner, Associacao Amigo Animal, Associacao Israelita de Beneficencia Beit Chabad and Sociedade Protetora dos Animals. The goal is to maintain the number of 20 beneficiary institutions in 2022. Caring For Others Charitable acts and caring for others are a part of Haroldo Jacobovicz's company corporate values. The technology-based solutions they provide promote the digital transformation of society. The entrepreneur is a member of the Board of Directors of Horizons Telecom, a telecom company he founded in 2010, and CEO of the e-Governe group, a management software company, composed of Minauro, Sisteplan and Consult. His companies value people as protagonists of their achievements, promoting the autonomy to make a difference in society through social development and a respect for diversity. All of his corporate offices are designed with the goal of creating a well-being environment for workers, as most people spend a great deal of time working. Special attention is paid to the physical facilities, the functionality of the spaces, the landscape, and the maintenance of the infrastructure and equipment. Private transportation is also available so employees can travel safely to and from work without the risk of exposure to viruses or disease on public transportation. Along with comprehensive health insurance, the benefits package includes a birthday "day off", educational assistance, a tribute to family members who have passed on, and even baby baskets for new parents celebrating the birth of their child or adoption. As a Civil Engineer with a passion for technology, Haroldo Jacobovicz aims to solve everyday problems and improve the lives of people, companies, and public institutions. His motivation is to develop projects that transform ideas into concrete solutions. "I work in the field of technology, which is the basis for global transformation, and I want to see this change happen through social activities so a better world is left for future generations", he declares. Currently, the entrepreneur heads a new digital company, yet to be disclosed, that has the potential to foster social inclusion and equal opportunities in the areas of education and employment. SOURCE Haroldo Jacobovicz Institute Related Links http://haroldojacobovicz.com.br/ MIAMI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Havas House, a global custom media, content, and publishing company, announced the development of Notable, a print and digital publication set to launch December 2021. Showcasing the area's burgeoning and innovative business community, the publication will highlight the indomitable spirit and strength South Floridians and recent transplants bring to the workforce. Beyond business success, Notable will also shine a light on how these entrepreneurs continually give back and support the next generation of business leaders. Havas House logo Created with the support of the South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Notable will also provide these professionals with practical business advice and guidance. Each issue will feature a panel of experts that will advise on trending topics, contribute articles, and offer recommendations and tips for business owners. "Miami's workforce is unlike any other in the country thanks to its unique mix of cultures and widely varied set of industry expertise," explains Marisa Beazel, president and publisher, Havas House. "The fact that our community is booming with talent and innovation making our hometown a top destination for start-ups, technology firms, and more is no accident. And Notable will showcase it all." Notable will be available online and will be distributed throughout South Florida businesses, universities, chambers of commerce, consular corps, trade organizations, municipalities, elected officials' offices, and more. For more information, visit WeAreNotable.com and contact Cristiana Glassford at 786-347-4775 or [email protected]. About Havas House Havas House is a global custom media, content, and publishing company that creates meaningful connections between brands and consumers through innovative, 360-degree marketing solutions. Based in Miami, Florida, Havas House services include custom content, content production, integrated brand campaign development, social media, SEO/SEM, development, and design of digital publishing platforms, digital editions, print magazines, and marketing materials. Havas House is a division of Republica Havas, one of America's leading and fastest-growing creative, media, and communications agencies. For more information, visit havashouseinc.com . About Havas Group Havas is one of the world's largest global communications groups. Founded in 1835 in Paris, the Group employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries and operates through its three business units covering all communication activities. Havas Group's mission is to make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses, and people. To better anticipate client needs, Havas has adopted a fully integrated model through its 60+ Havas Villages around the world. In these Villages, creative, media, and healthcare and wellness teams work together, ensuring agility and a seamless experience for clients. We are committed to building a diverse culture where everybody feels they belong, can be themselves, thrive, and grow. Havas Group integrated Vivendi in December 2017. Further information about Havas Group is available on the company's website: havasgroup.com. MEDIA CONTACT: Ingrid Martinez [email protected] 954-347-8975 SOURCE Havas House Related Links https://havashouseinc.com LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawke Media's eCommerce Week LA is back for the second time, taking place virtually on Maestro's interactive video platform on September 27th October 1st, 2021. Hawke Media invites top entrepreneurs and C-suite executives from across industries for a week of conversations on marketing, entrepreneurship, investing, and the importance of diversity and equity. "We created eCommerce Week LA to celebrate and strengthen the incredible community that has been built here in Los Angeles. We are excited to host the second iteration of last year's successful event and hope to connect this community in-person next year," says Erik Huberman, CEO & Founder of Hawke Media. From the comfort of their own homes, attendees will learn and connect with over 100 speakers, in more than 45 panels and firesides, coupled with interactive cooking sessions and wellness breaks. Keep an eye out for presentations by industry leaders Ann McFerran, Founder and CEO of Glamnetic, Eliza Blank, Founder and CEO of The Sill, Rob Dyrdek, Founder and CEO of Dyrdek Machine, and Sallie Krawcheck co-founder & CEO of Ellevest just to name a few. Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti kicks off Tuesday of eCom Week LA with an opening address. "Small businesses endured extraordinary financial hardships during the pandemic, particularly those unable to adjust to the digital marketplace," said Garcetti. "I would like to thank Hawke Media for their commitment to supporting our city's businesses through eCommerce Week. The tools and services they provide empower entrepreneurs to bring their businesses into a new digital era." Huberman offers a sneak peek of his upcoming book, The Hawke Method, which includes three key pillars of marketing for businesses of any size to flourish. Hawke Media partner, Omnisend, guides viewers on how to connect with current contacts and turn them into customers. Krawcheck leads a conversation on making a difference within the wage, equity gap, and lack of diversity in leadership positions. TikTok influencers and HawkeZ Creative Directors, Josh Richards and Griffin Johnson, reveal how to effectively market to Gen-Z. Retail marketing platform, Listrak will demonstrate the importance of scalable, cross-channel orchestration for growing retailers and brands. Hawke is also bringing back the Hawke Cage, hosted by the Managing Partner of Hawke Ventures. Guests can join and participate in a pitch competition with actor and entrepreneur, Patrick Schwarzenegger, to win business funding from Hawke Ventures, Hustle Fund, and M13. Visit ecomweek.la to learn more and sign up for free. Contact: Marisol Torres, Public Relations Manager at Hawke Media [email protected] About Hawke Media Established on the idea that every modern business needs a CMO-level expert to lead marketing efforts, Hawke Media specializes in custom, data-driven, performance-focused solutions to help launch, scale, and invigorate businesses of all sizes, industries, and revenue models. Founded in 2014 by Erik Huberman and Tony Delmercado, Hawke Media is one of the nation's fastest-growing marketing consultancies and, while headquartered in beautiful Los Angeles, now has employees in 28 different states and counting. Its mission is to bring top-tier marketing to all brands because they deserve it. Acting as a full-service outsourced CMO, Hawke offers a wide array of digital marketing services on a month-to-month, a la carte basis. For more information, please visit www.hawkemedia.com . About Listrak The only integrated digital marketing platform trusted by 1,000+ leading retailers and brands for email, text message marketing, identity resolution, behavioral triggers and cross-channel orchestration. For more information, please visit www.Listrak.com . About Maestro Maestro is an interactive video platform that combines content, commerce, and community into one seamless storytelling experience. Maestro helps users build meaningful virtual experiences that solve business challenges. Designed to convert passive following into active customers, Maestro is completely white-label, which means virtual experiences created with Maestro are more like living video-centric storefronts built around a creator or brand. For more information, please visit Maestro.io About Omnisend Omnisend is a powerful email and sms marketing automation platform built for high-growth ecommerce businesses. With advanced automation workflows, customer segmentation features, and a multitude of channels to reach the customer (via email, SMS, push notifications, and more), Omnisend enables marketers to drive sales at scale while building lasting customer relationships. For more information, please visit www.Omnisend.com SOURCE Hawke Media Related Links https://hawkemedia.com/ LAS VEGAS, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- HERO Beverage Co. has launched Legend Blend coffee, in a collaboration with the Taya and Chris Kyle Foundation, that honors the late Chris Kyle and the non-profit organization founded by his wife, Taya Kyle, to fulfill Chris' visions to help support military and first responder families. Legend Blend Specialty Coffee - HERO Help Everyone Remain Operational A tribute to the late Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle, Legend Blend coffee combines a flavor profile that represents many things he loved in his life before it was tragically taken. This very special blend of Central American, South American, and Indonesian coffee was created to honor the life and legacy of a legend named Chris Kyle who was a true American HERO and the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. With subtle notes of chocolate and tobacco this blend is bittersweet yet smooth, just how Chris liked his coffee! "We are honored to partner with the Taya and Chris Kyle Foundation and help support what Taya and her organization are doing," said Founder & CEO Michael de Geus, a former Secret Service Agent. "The natural synergy between our brand and Taya's organization can be seen in our shared values and desire to help those around us remain operational. With this joint effort we will be able to collectively help provide men, women, and children of military and first responder families the support they need to keep themselves operational, whether emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or physically." "A partnership like this feels right," said Taya Kyle, Founder and Executive Director of the Chris & Taya Kyle Foundation. "Working with Hero Beverage Co. has been a great experience. Putting Chris's image on a coffee blend designed to specifically give back to people who serve, is a perfect match. Chris often said, 'It's our duty to serve those who serve us.' This blend represents not only his love of coffee, but his desire to find every opportunity to give back as both a civilian and Navy SEAL. This partnership is a great way to honor Chris's legacy by continuing to support those who serve." Legend Blend coffee can be found online at drinkhero.com or at participating retail partner locations across the U.S and is available in whole bean, ground, and single serve pods. A portion of proceeds are donated back to the Taya and Chris Kyle Foundation. About HERO Beverage Co. At the core of the HERO Beverage Company's mission is the belief that when everyone comes together to unite behind a common purpose, amazing things can happen. From the coffee fields to the frontline workers, and everyone in between, every purchase helps to keep everyone operational. With every purchase made we directly support those out on the front lines, no matter what the threat may be. We are committed to giving back 10% of profits via monetary and product donations. You buy, we give. Our team personally delivers HERO coffee to schools, hospitals, military bases, fire stations, police departments and organizations across the United States. For those areas we can't physically visit we mail care packages. As we grow, so will our ability to give back. About Taya and Chris Kyle Foundation The Taya and Chris Kyle Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Taya Kyle to honor the life and legacy of her husband, "American Sniper" Chris Kyle. Prior to Chris' untimely passing in February 2013, he was developing his vision for these programs to support military and first responder communities. Today, Taya and the team are fulfilling Chris' vision through the development and delivery of life-changing, impactful programs and services to support service communities across our nation. Media Contacts: Hero Beverage Co. Julie McCuen [email protected] 855-BE-A-HERO SOURCE HERO Beverage Co. Hope House Colorado is an organization that provides resources for supporting teen mothers, including but not limited to residential, high school and GED, and college and career programs. The organization also offers parenting classes, healthy relationship classes, certified counseling and much more. "At High 5 Plumbing, one of our core values is giving back to a community that has provided so much for us, and the High 5 Cares program is the perfect avenue to meet that goal," said Levi Torres, owner of High 5 Plumbing. "Hope House Colorado is an amazing organization providing a great service to these young women. They help teen moms become self-sufficient members of their community by providing services that may otherwise be cut off from them. "Whether it's teaching teen mothers how to be financially literate, providing personal growth classes or simply giving them a safe place to rest their head at night, Hope House Colorado is a great program and deserves to be recognized for what they do." High 5 Plumbing started its High 5 Cares program in 2018 with the mission to provide financial support to reputable trusted charity organizations in the community. The company spotlights a different nonprofit each month and donates a set amount of $500. In addition, the nonprofit receives $10 for every High 5 Club Membership that's sold during the month and receives 100% of the proceeds from the company's High 5 clothing line. High 5 Plumbing recognizes the nonprofits on their social media platforms, as well. "Community should be a focus for anyone in the home service industry, and we are always looking for an opportunity to serve our neighbors," said Torres. "High 5 Cares shows that we genuinely care about our residents and want to make a lasting impact on the families we serve. We are more than a plumbing company. We are a company that strives to meet the physical and emotional needs of our community through this program." To donate to Hope House Colorado, please visit https://www.hopehousecolorado.org/donate/. For more information about the High 5 Cares program, please visit https://www.high5plumbing.com/high5-cares/ or call (720) 388-8247. About High 5 Plumbing Founded in 2012, High 5 Plumbing is a local, family-owned company serving residents in the greater Denver metropolitan area. With a professional team that has extensive experience and a commitment to service, High 5 Plumbing offers comprehensive plumbing, sewer and drain services. The company was built on the values of solving plumbing problems and serving every customer with professionalism and respect. For more information about High 5 Plumbing, visit https://www.high5plumbing.com/. MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Ripley Ripley PR (865) 977-1973 [email protected] SOURCE High 5 Plumbing HONG KONG, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huobi Technology Holdings Limited ("Huobi Tech", Stock code: 1611.HK) is committed to becoming the leading one-stop virtual asset service platform, and is actively developing its trust and custodian business services provided by Huobi Trust Hong Kong and Huobi Trust US respectively. Huobi Trust Hong Kong is a trust company registered in Hong Kong, which provides clients with compliant virtual asset custody services. As of the end of August 2021, the asset under custody by Huobi Trust Hong Kong has exceeded US$1 billion. Since the beginning of the year, virtual assets represented by Bitcoin have set off a wave of enthusiasm to investors. As the virtual asset regulations set out by different economies are getting more stringent, the legal and compliance issue of virtual assets has become the key concern for investors entering the crypto space. On the other hand, the numerous hacking incidents of virtual assets have raised investors' concerns over the security of virtual assets. As one of the focused business lines of Huobi Tech, Huobi Trust Hong Kong was successfully registered as a trust company in Hong Kong on 29 April 2021, and is fully licensed under the Hong Kong Trust and Company Service Provider (TCSP) license (TCSP Licence No.: TC007494), as such its daily operations shall strictly abide by the relevant Hong Kong regulations as well as the AML/CTF requirements. Huobi Trust Hong Kong provides compliant virtual asset custody services to clients in need of compliant, secure, and risk isolated custody of their assets. Target clients include digital banks, market makers, licensed lenders, virtual asset exchanges to hedge funds etc. As of the end of August 2021, the asset under custody by Huobi Trust Hong Kong has exceeded US$1 billion. A spokesman from Huobi Trust Hong Kong stated that "the seamless product design, comprehensive functional modules and strong support from the listed company enable Huobi Trust Hong Kong to provide clients with a full range of high-quality virtual asset services for different business needs and scenarios. We aim to become the world's leading virtual asset trust and custodian service provider." About Huobi Tech Huobi Technology Holdings Limited ("Huobi Tech", formerly known as "Pantronics Holdings Limited", Stock Code: 1611) was listed in November 2016. Primarily engaged in OEM & EMS manufacturing of power-related and electronic products, Huobi Tech is also actively developing the blockchain ecosystem and virtual asset ecosystem business. Huobi Tech is committed to becoming the leading one-stop virtual asset service platform in Asia. At the same time, Huobi Tech is applying for virtual asset and finance-related licenses in major markets around the world. Up to now, Huobi Tech's respective subsidiaries have successfully gotten the approval to conduct Type 4 (advising on securities) and Type 9 (asset management) regulated activities from the SFC, the Trust or Company Service Provider License (Hong Kong), the Trust Company License (Nevada USA), and registered as Hong Kong trust company. SOURCE Huobi Technology DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Oral Hygiene Market (2020-2025) by Products, Distribution Channel, Application, Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Oral Hygiene Market is estimated to be USD 43.2 Bn in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 51.31 Bn by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 3.5%. Increasing dental problems among children and adults, due to poor eating habits, and the rise in popularity for herbal oral care products are the factors primarily driving the global toothpaste market. Moreover, rising premiumization and consumers seeking more targeted solutions are accelerating the growth of the market studied. The rise in consciousness regarding oral health has helped vendors introduce oral hygiene product categories, such as teeth-whitening products. One of the popular products used for teeth whitening is whitening toothpaste. Manufacturers offer toothpaste with teeth-whitening functionality that differs from ordinary toothpaste. To improve market position, manufacturers are constantly focusing on implementing innovative strategies and introducing a broad portfolio of products. Recent Developments 1. In April 2020, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Limited (India) merged with Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), with HUL responsible for the distribution of GSK's Consumer Healthcare brands in India, including its leading oral healthcare brand, Sensodyne. 2. In April 2020, Perrigo Company plc (Ireland) completed the acquisition of the oral care assets of High Ridge Brands (US), which includes Dr. Fresh, LLC. 3. In January 2020, Perrigo Company plc's Ranir subsidiary acquired the assets of Steripod, a leading toothbrush accessory brand, and innovator in the toothbrush protector market, from Bonfit America Inc (US). 4. In December 2019, Colgate-Palmolive Company launched Colgate Optic White Renewal Tooth Paste. Competitive Quadrant The report includes a Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc. Why buy this report? The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Oral Hygiene Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies. The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry. The report includes in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 force model and the Ansoff Matrix. The impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report. The report also contains the competitive analysis using the Competitive Quadrant, the analyst's proprietary competitive positioning tool. Key Topics Covered: 1 Report Description 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Overview 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Market Dynamics 4.2.1 Drivers 4.2.1.1 Growing Awareness about Oral Hygiene 4.2.1.2 Rising Incidence to Dental Diseases 4.2.1.3 Growing Number to Small/Private Dental Clinics with Dental Dispensaries 4.2.1.4 Technological Advancements 4.2.2 Restraints 4.2.2.1 Competitive Pricing Pressure Faced by Prominent Players 4.2.3 Opportunities 4.2.3.1 Increasing Online Purchase of Oral Care Products 4.2.4 Challenges 4.2.4.1 High Dependency on Retail/Consumer Stores 4.3 Trends 5 Market Analysis 5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis 5.2 Impact of COVID-19 5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis 6 Global Oral Hygiene Market, By Product 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Toothpaste 6.2.1 Pastes 6.2.2 Gels 6.2.3 Powders 6.2.4 Polishes 6.3 Toothbrushes & accessories 6.3.1 Manual Toothbrushes 6.3.2 Electric Toothbrushes 6.3.3 Battery-powered Toothbrushes 6.3.4 Replacement Toothbrush Heads 6.4 Mouthwashes/Rinses 6.4.1 Non-medicated Mouthwashes 6.4.2 Medicated Mouthwashes 6.5 Dental Accessories/Ancillaries 6.5.1 Dental Flosses 6.5.2 Breath Fresheners 6.5.3 Cosmetic Dental Whitening Products 6.5.4 Dental Water Jets 6.6 Denture Products 6.6.1 Fixatives 6.6.2 Other Denture Products 6.7 Dental Prosthesis Cleaning Solutions 7 Global Oral Hygiene Market, By Distribution Channel 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Consumer Stores 7.3 Retail Pharmacies 7.4 Online Distribution 7.5 Dental Dispensaries 8 Global Oral Hygiene Market, By Applications 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Home 8.3 Dentistry 9 Global Oral Hygiene Market, By Geography 9.1 Introduction 9.2 North America 9.2.1 US 9.2.2 Canada 9.2.3 Mexico 9.3 South America 9.3.1 Brazil 9.3.2 Argentina 9.4 Europe 9.4.1 UK 9.4.2 France 9.4.3 Germany 9.4.4 Italy 9.4.5 Spain 9.4.6 Rest of Europe 9.5 Asia-Pacific 9.5.1 China 9.5.2 Japan 9.5.3 India 9.5.4 Indonesia 9.5.5 Malaysia 9.5.6 South Korea 9.5.7 Australia 9.5.8 Russia 9.5.9 Rest of APAC 9.6 Rest of the World 9.6.1 Qatar 9.6.2 Saudi Arabia 9.6.3 South Africa 9.6.4 United Arab Emirates 9.6.5 Latin America 10 Competitive Landscape 10.1 Competitive Quadrant 10.2 Market Share Analysis 10.3 Competitive Scenario 10.3.1 Mergers & Acquisitions 10.3.2 Agreement, Collaborations, & Partnerships 10.3.3 New Product Launches & Enhancements 10.3.4 Investments & Funding 11 Company Profiles 11.1 3M Company 11.2 Church & Dwight Co, Inc. 11.3 Colgate-Palmolive Company 11.4 Dabur India Ltd. 11.5 Dentaid SL 11.6 Dentsply International Inc. 11.7 Dr. Fresh, LLC 11.8 GC Corporation 11.9 GlaxoSmithKline PLC 11.10 Henkel AG & Co. KGaA 11.11 Johnson & Johnson 11.12 Koninklijke Philips N.V. 11.13 LG Household and Health Care Ltd 11.14 Lion Corporation 11.15 Orkla 11.16 Perrigo Company plc 11.17 Procter & Gamble 11.18 Sunstar Suisse S.A. 11.19 The Himalaya Drug Company 11.20 The Procter & Gamble Company 11.21 Ultradent Products Inc 11.22 Unilever PLC 11.23 Young Dental 12 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rs8o8j 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 SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ease , a leading HR and benefits software solution for small businesses, insurance brokers and insurance carriers, today announced the appointment of insurtech veteran Eric Bluhm as Chief Revenue Officer. In his new role, Eric will support scaling the company to help meet the needs of the rapidly growing digital benefits industry. In today's landscape, there is tremendous opportunity in the benefits administration space. According to a recent survey from Ease , 57% of respondents noted technology will play a very important role for their groups heading into this year's open enrollment season. As CRO, Eric will oversee Ease's sales and client facing teams to further amplify the company's service and customer successes. Eric will work directly with CMO Tim Low to grow Ease's external brand and leading benefits software solutions. "The digital benefits administration landscape is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry,'' said Bluhm. "The overarching necessity of digitization is leading to companies like Ease to become a key differentiator in the benefits administration space. I look forward to working with teams across Ease to strategically enhance the value of digital transformation in the benefits industry and how it can further provide value to all brokers and insurance carriers nationwide." Eric has deep experience in the insurance, insurtech and benefits administration industries where he has led sales teams and driven revenue at various organizations. Most recently, Eric was the senior vice president of sales at Zywave where he helped scale the business by alleviating friction points, accelerating rapid company growth. "Eric has demonstrated a deep understanding of the need for change management as brokers move away from manual practices and look for technological, digital solutions," said David Reid, CEO and co-founder of Ease. "We're confident that Eric will help our customers streamline their benefits administration practices in a way that grows their business and saves them time as the industry continues to undergo its digital revolution." Eric's hiring is the latest milestone for Ease, with the company recently announcing the appointment of Timothy Low as Chief Marketing Officer, and Terressa DeHaven as VP of Legal & Compliance. Poised for further growth in Q4, Eric's position will help Ease ultimately enhance brokers' need to adopt digital practices. About Ease Ease is an online benefits enrollment system built for insurance brokers and employers. Ease makes it simple to set up and manage benefits, onboard new hires, stay compliant, and offer employees one destination for all their human resources information. Ease demonstrates the highest standards for protecting sensitive data and information by achieving HITRUST CSF Certification. Started in 2012 in San Francisco by employee benefits veteran David Reid and web and engineering architect Courtney Guertin, Ease works with insurance brokers and small businesses to create seamless HR and benefits processes on an easy-to-use system. Ease has offices in Las Vegas, New York, Omaha and San Diego. In 2015, Ease was launched on the West Coast and is among the most widely adopted, fastest growing solutions for brokers and employers in the area, with more than 75,000 employers and over 2.5 million employees. For more information, head to www.ease.com . Media contact: Inkhouse for Ease [email protected] SOURCE Ease CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Inteliquent, a leading provider of cloud communications platform solutions for voice, messaging, and emergency services, announced today they now offer international phone numbers and enhanced calling services in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Mexico. Global enterprises and communication service providers alike can easily expand their in-country presence by adding international telephone numbers and toll-free numbers for inbound and 2-way calling plus emergency services (where available). Inteliquent is on an aggressive trajectory to launch international services in over 50 countries covering Europe, Asia, and Latin America during the next 18 months. This marks another significant milestone in the company's market expansion, which, in the United States, recently reached 110 million numbers in service carrying over 300 billion minutes of traffic annually. Service providers and enterprises depend on Inteliquent's extensive footprint reach and high quality nationwide network, which has multiple layers of redundancy across all components. This announcement follows on other exciting steps Inteliquent is taking to ensure their customers' success by supporting their business needs and growth. At the beginning of the year, Inteliquent entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Sinch, a global leader in cloud communications for mobile customer engagement. Sinch serves the world's leading technology brands, including eight of the top 10 in the world. The acquisition, which is expected to close in the second half of 2021, will broaden Sinch's Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offering by combining both company's strengths in voice and messaging solutions while powering a superior customer experience in the rapidly developing market for cloud communications. Together, the companies will be able to provide a comprehensive communications infrastructure for customers' demanding quality, reach, and scalability. "Inteliquent is one of the top service providers in the United States, and Sinch is a global leader in cloud communications our customers and service offerings mesh perfectly," says Nick Reifschneider, Inteliquent vice of president of product. "Inteliquent has the potential to enrich the company's product portfolio with the addition of international services, including its CPaaS offering." Reliability is a major selling point for Inteliquent, which has a tier 1 all-IP network with multiple layers of redundancy and is connected to a suite of powerful APIs alongside a self-service portal. Comprised of 12,200 on-net rate centers, the network reaches more than 93% of the United States. Inteliquent aims to provide this same level of service and support for international numbers and enhanced calling services. "Our goal with Inteliquent has always been to provide a simple to consume and complete solution to our customers and remain a trusted partner," explains Reifschneider. "Inteliquent's international expansion represents a significant step forward. When purchasing international services, our customers can utilize the same portal and APIs they currently use, plus they can always count on us to provide fully regulatory-complaint services, so our customers won't miss a step with their business-critical communications." According to Reifschneider, voice communications play a critical role in digital transformation. Through their international numbers service, Inteliquent will enable seamless connectivity between customers, colleagues, vendors and business partners all over the world. Beyond voice communications, Inteliquent's portfolio also includes CPaaS, voice IP exchange, messaging, and toll-free services. They combine this portfolio with decades of industry experience to provide a solid foundation for the success of their clients. To learn more visit inteliquent.com . About Inteliquent Inteliquent empowers communications for the leading communication service providers and enterprises. The foundation of Inteliquent's communications platform is its fully redundant, geo-diverse, carrier-grade tier 1 network. This network is trusted by the nation's largest service providers, as it provides the most expansive footprint of local phone numbers in the United States with over 12,200 on-net rate centers and 300 billion minutes of traffic on the network annually. Learn more at www.inteliquent.com. SOURCE Inteliquent, Inc. Related Links https://inteliquent.com "The new International MV Series features thoughtful design that includes premier safety features, head-turning styling, simplified TEM integration and uptime enhancements," said Debbie Shust, vice president, Medium-Duty Truck. "We listened to customer feedback and developed a medium-duty vehicle that is custom built for all their needs." Enhanced Safety and Styling The new MV Series was purposely designed for increased maneuverability, visibility and safety. It is designed to stand out among International's product line. An aerodynamic hood and smartly designed breakaway mirrors provide superior visibility for drivers and the restyled bumper and black, molded-in-color grille with optional chrome surround deliver attention grabbing looks. The MV Series includes standard halogen headlights, with newly introduced, optional LED headlights to provide longer life and improved visibility. Several optional collision mitigation enhancements are also available. The Bendix Wingman Fusion System technology includes adaptive cruise, enhanced collision mitigation, multilane vehicle braking, stationary object alert, lane departure warning, and front radar and cameras. The Bendix BlindSpotter Collision Warning System is equipped with side object detection alert. Ultimate Capability and Body Integration The new International MV Series features numerous enhancements that increase the performance capability of the vehicle. The high efficiency cooling module eliminates mega-brackets enabling integrated front frame extensions and an improved snowplow upfit offering. Hood mounted splash panels and on-engine air cleaner provide improved under-hood access while an optional under-hood work light is available for improved visibility during daily maintenance checks. Smart chassis packaging changes allow for improved body integration and improved operating costs for a wide variety of applications. The Diamond Logic electrical system comes standard, allowing for customized programming for driver and equipment protection, ease of body integration and greater uptime. Hundreds of off the shelf features exist today for improved safety, examples of which include: driver safety with the inclusion of pre-trip light inspection, safety on the jobsite with external regen warning, and equipment protection with hydraulic oil power take-off (PTO) shutdown and an outrigger stowed interlock. The MV Series offers two engine options, the Cummins B6.7 and L9, with increased fuel efficiency as well as extended and aligned maintenance intervals. Corrosion protection is also improved with InterCoat ChemGuard standard on the cab floor as well as optional LINE-X offering for particularly tough environments. Connectivity to Maximize Uptime The new MV Series is supported through OnCommand Connection, Navistar's remote diagnostics system, offering the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of connected vehicle services. Customers have the option to receive real time information to protect their assets through GPS and geofencing capabilities as well as easy to understand and actionable vehicle health reports. The new MV Series includes the option for customers to add International 360 the service communications platform that makes it easier than ever to seamlessly communicate with the International service network and streamline the repair process. "This is an evolution, rather than a departure, from our existing strategy," said Diane Hames, vice president, Marketing. "The new MV moves the International brand forward and is equipped with the features and technology to be an excellent fit for every customer." The new International MV Series makes its first public appearance at the Utility Expo September 28-30 in Louisville, Kentucky at booth #N1135. To learn more about the all-new International MV Series, visit www.internationaltrucks.com. About Navistar Navistar, Inc. ("Navistar") is a purpose-driven company, reimagining how to deliver what matters to create more cohesive relationships, build higher-performing teams and find solutions where others don't. Based in Lisle, Illinois, Navistar or its subsidiaries and affiliates produce International brand commercial trucks and engines, IC Bus brand school and commercial buses, all-makes OnCommand Connection advanced connectivity services, and Fleetrite, ReNEWeD and Diamond Advantage brand aftermarket parts and includes a Brazilian manufacturer of engines and gensets, MWM Motores Diesel e Geradores. With a history of innovation dating back to 1831, Navistar has more than 12,000 employees worldwide and is part of TRATON SE, a global champion of the truck and transport services industry. Additional information is available at www.Navistar.com. All marks are trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE Navistar International Corporation Related Links http://www.navistar.com WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Students from Iowa will have an opportunity next week to hear from NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will air live at 10:30 a.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 27, on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website. NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur will answer prerecorded questions from students who participated in Astro Camps across the state this past summer. The downlink event is a collaborative effort between the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, and Iowa 4-H Youth Development. The Student Innovation Center at Iowa State University and other locations across the state will host watch parties for this virtual event. Media interested in attending or covering the downlink event should contact Valyn Bodensteiner at: 515-294-1082 or [email protected]. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides unique, authentic experiences designed to enhance student learning, performance, and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Astronauts living in space on the orbiting laboratory communicate with NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through the Space Network's Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. For more than 20 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked on the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing the skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Through Artemis program, the agency will return astronauts to the Moon, with eventual human exploration of Mars. Inspiring the next generation of explorers the Artemis Generation ensures America will continue to lead in space exploration and discovery. Follow NASA astronauts on social media at: https://www.twitter.com/NASA_astronauts See videos and lesson plans highlighting research on the International Space Station at: https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Goulston & Storrs, an Am Law 200 firm, is pleased to announce that Jaclyn Grodin has joined its New York City office as Counsel in the firm's Litigation Group. She joins the firm from the New York State Office of the Attorney General (NYAG) where she served as an Assistant Attorney General (AAG) in the Investor Protection Bureau since 2018. Grodin was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York and Boston for eight years before joining the NYAG's office. She has broad experience representing public and private companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, investment advisers, real estate companies, and individuals in a wide range of business disputes, including partnership and investor actions, financial fraud cases, securities-related matters, government investigations, trade secret litigations, and intellectual property controversies. Grodin also brings a wide range of securities enforcement and compliance experience with her to the firm. As an AAG, Grodin played a pivotal role in numerous high-profile investigations. She helped investigate a subsidiary of one of the largest U.S. retirement asset managers, leading to the organization's agreement to make major reforms and pay $97 million in restitution to thousands of customers who were misled into moving their retirement investments into higher-fee managed accounts. Grodin also led the investigation and was lead trial counsel in a suit against a private equity firm, investment adviser, and broker-dealer in connection with violations of New York's Martin Act arising out of misrepresentations to investors, misappropriation of fund assets, valuation of portfolio assets, and conflicts of interest. The trial team obtained a finding of liability, permanent injunction, and nearly $8 million in restitution for defrauded investors after a bench trial in New York State Court. Grodin was also part of a team that investigated the alleged misconduct of the New York City Police Department in connection with the 2020 social justice protests and helped prepare the preliminary public report of investigative findings on behalf of the New York Attorney General. She also participated in litigating related claims in New York federal court. "Jaclyn is a highly-skilled trial lawyer and will be a great addition to our litigation bench. Her strong track record in commercial litigation along with her experience in the public sector will be an asset to our clients and our team," said Martin Fantozzi, Co-Managing Director of Goulston & Storrs. "We are thrilled to have her here." "I wasn't looking to return to private practice but the opportunity to join Goulston & Storrs, which is known for its collegiality and cooperation, was hard to resist. My mentor, Jen Furey, is co-chair of the firm's Litigation Group, and I am excited to be a member of her team again," said Grodin. "I am looking forward to working with this talented group of litigators and advocating for the firm's clients, and am incredibly excited to be a part of the continued growth of the firm's New York litigation practice given its breadth of experience and sophistication." Grodin is an appointed member of the New York City Bar Association Judiciary Committee, which evaluates candidates for election, reelection, appointment, reappointment, designation, and certification to judicial office in state and federal courts in New York City. She serves on the Board of Directors of NADAP, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides wellness and workforce development services to underserved New Yorkers. Grodin received her J.D. from Boston College Law School in 2009 and her B.A., magna cum laude, from New York University in 2005. About Goulston & Storrs Collaboration is not just a pillar of our strategy; it is the key to our competitive advantage and approach to clients, community, and each other. At Goulston & Storrs, we practice law with excellence and integrity. We are a place where mutual respect and collaboration drive open discussion, transparency, creativity and optimal results for our clients. We are committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace where sophisticated business is conducted with genuine camaraderie. To learn more about us, visit www.goulstonstorrs.com. Contact: Liz Sobe Amy Blumenthal Director of Strategic Growth Blumenthal & Associates PR Goulston & Storrs PC (617) 879-1511 (617) 574-0556 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Goulston & Storrs PC "We're excited to open our second location in partnership with H-E-B," said John McCullough, CEO of James Avery Artisan Jewelry. "H-E-B shares many of the same values and commitments as us, and we look forward to offering our designs at locations where our customers already shop!" To celebrate the opening, September 29 through October 9, visitors may enter a drawing for a chance to win one of 60 James Avery gift cards valued at $50, $100 or $500. Putting customer and associate safety first, the Portland store is following recommended COVID-19 health protocols and guidelines implemented in all James Avery stores. Operating hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Store Manager Sommer Mello and her team are ready to welcome customers to shop in the new store or use Buy Online, Pickup in Store option at JamesAvery.com. In addition to the new Portland location, the company recently opened a location on September 15 in League City within H-E-B. The next store will open on October 13 in San Antonio, at the 211 and Potranco H-E-B location. About James Avery Artisan Jewelry James Avery is a vertically integrated, family-owned company located in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. We offer finely crafted jewelry designs for men and women in sterling silver, 14K and 18K gold designed by our own skilled artisans in Kerrville, Texas. We are a multi-channel retailer over 100 James Avery stores in five states. Our jewelry is also available in more than 220 Dillard's stores in Texas and 28 additional states, airport stores in Austin and Houston, Army and Air Force Exchange Service locations at Fort Hood, Fort Sam Houston, and Fort Belvoir and nationwide through JamesAvery.com. James Avery crafts jewelry in Texas workshops in Comfort, Hondo and Kerrville using the finest materials sourced worldwide. For more information, visit JamesAvery.com or facebook.com/JamesAvery. About the Drawings Forty-eight $50 gift cards, six $100 gift cards and six $500 gift cards. Entries accepted Sept. 15 through Sept. 25. Hourly drawings on Sept. 18 and Sept. 25 between 11:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. during the Grand Opening Celebrations at the Portland James Avery Artisan Jewelry store. Thirty James Avery gift cards will be awarded on each drawing day: twenty-four $50 gift cards, three $100 gift cards, and three $500 gift cards. No purchase necessary. Must be at least 13 years old to enter. Only one entry per person per day. Winners not eligible to win a subsequent gift card in the same promotion. Winners need not be present to win. Associates and immediate family members not eligible for this gift card promotion. SOURCE James Avery Artisan Jewelry Related Links http://www.jamesavery.com Has reduced fees on over $20 billion in AUM this year TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFC SEHK: 945 BOSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - John Hancock Investment Management, a company of Manulife Investment Management, today announced a 5 basis point (bps) reduction to the advisory fee schedule for its $12 billion John Hancock Disciplined Value Fund, effective October 1, 2021.1 The fund, subadvised by Boston Partners, seeks to outperform over time by limiting downside risk in falling markets while keeping pace in rising markets. The portfolio management team includes Mark E. Donovan, CFA, David J. Pyle, CFA, Stephanie T. McGirr, David T. Cohen, CFA, and Joshua C. White, CFA. "We're thrilled that through the exceptional growth of the fund platformwith a CAGR of more than 15% over the past 10 yearswe've been able to pass savings to our shareholders and have reduced fees on over $20 billion in AUM this year alone," said Andrew G. Arnott, CEO, John Hancock Investment Management, and head of wealth and asset management, Manulife Investment Management, United States and Europe. "We believe we're well positioned to capture the opportunity in large-cap value, driven by the veteran portfolio management team at Boston Partners, which continues to deliver strong performance for our clients." "We continually review the expenses of all of our funds to ensure that they're competitively priced and that the funds are adding value to our shareholders; we're very active on this front," added Gina A. Walters, head of strategy, implementation and innovation, United States and Europe, Manulife Investment Management. "Over the past 10 years, 88% of our current assets have had their net expense ratios reduced, either due to management actions, such as this permanent decrease in advisory fees, or due to asset growth." About John Hancock Investment Management A company of Manulife Investment Management, we serve investors through a unique multimanager approach, complementing our extensive in-house capabilities with an unrivaled network of specialized asset managers, backed by some of the most rigorous investment oversight in the industry. The result is a diverse lineup of time-tested investments from a premier asset manager with a heritage of financial stewardship. About Manulife Investment Management Manulife Investment Management is the global wealth and asset management segment of Manulife Financial Corporation. We draw on more than a century of financial stewardship and the full resources of our parent company to serve individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. Headquartered in Toronto, our leading capabilities in public and private markets are strengthened by an investment footprint that spans 18 geographies. We complement these capabilities by providing access to a network of unaffiliated asset managers from around the world. We're committed to investing responsibly across our businesses. We develop innovative global frameworks for sustainable investing, collaboratively engage with companies in our securities portfolios, and maintain a high standard of stewardship where we own and operate assets, and we believe in supporting financial well-being through our workplace retirement plans. Today, plan sponsors around the world rely on our retirement plan administration and investment expertise to help their employees plan for, save for, and live a better retirement. As of June 30, 2021, Manulife Investment Management's assets under management and administration, including assets managed for Manulife's other segments, totaled CAD$1 trillion (US$834 billion). Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulifeim.com. 1. John Hancock Disciplined Value Fund total net assets were US$12.15 billion as of September 21, 2021. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) and assets under management with net expense ratio reductions are as of 8/31/2021 from ISS Market Intelligence SIMFUND and are based on John Hancock Investment Management retail-sold funds only excluding closed-end funds, money market funds, SMAs, ETFs, college savings plan, asset allocation models, using the annual report net expense ratios from 2011 through 2020. 2021 John Hancock Investment Management. All rights reserved. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy illustrated will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. This material is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be, nor shall it be interpreted or construed as, a recommendation or providing advice, impartial or otherwise, regarding any security, mutual fund, ETF, sector, or index. Investors should consult with their financial professional before making any investment decisions. Clients should carefully consider a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses before investing. To request a prospectus or summary prospectus with this and other important information, call us at 800-225-6020, or visit us at jhinvestments.com. Value stocks may decline in price. Foreign investing, especially in emerging markets, has additional risks, such as currency and market volatility and political and social instability. Large company stocks could fall out of favor, and illiquid securities may be difficult to sell at a price approximating their value. Please see the fund's prospectus for additional risks. John Hancock Investment Management Distributors LLC, Member FINRA, SIPC, 200 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA, 800-225-6020, jhinvestments.com SOURCE John Hancock Investment Management FORT WORTH, Texas, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP (NYSE: KRP) ("Kimbell"), a leading owner of oil and natural gas mineral and royalty interests in more than 97,000 gross wells across 28 states, today announced that it will release its third quarter 2021 financial results on Thursday, November 4, 2021, before the market opens. In conjunction with the release, Kimbell has scheduled a conference call, which will be broadcast live over the Internet the same day at 10:00 a.m. Central (11:00 a.m. Eastern). By Phone: Dial 201-389-0869 at least 10 minutes before the call. A replay will be available through November 11th by dialing 201-612-7415 and using the conference ID: 13723111#. By Webcast: Connect to the webcast via the Events and Presentations page of Kimbell's Investor Relations website at http://kimbellrp.investorroom.com/. Please log in at least 10 minutes in advance to register and download any necessary software. A replay will be available shortly after the call. About Kimbell Royalty Partners Kimbell (NYSE: KRP) is a leading oil and natural gas mineral and royalty company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Kimbell owns mineral and royalty interests in over 13 million gross acres in 28 states and in every major onshore basin in the continental United States, including ownership in more than 97,000 gross wells with over 41,000 wells in the Permian Basin. To learn more, visit http://www.kimbellrp.com. Contact: Rick Black Dennard Lascar Investor Relations [email protected] (713) 529-6600 SOURCE Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP Related Links https://kimbellrp.com LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Latitude Consultancy Limited, a pioneer in residency and citizenship-by-investment consulting, announced today the opening of its office in Los Angeles. Continuing the company's recent growth with office openings and partnerships in China and India, this marquee office in California establishes a necessary footprint and consulting hub in the United States of America. Latitude is currently the first and only global citizenship-by-investment firm with dedicated offices in the U.S., empowering wealthy Americans with more choice to augment their citizenship and global presence. The Los Angeles office will be led by managing partner, Ezzedeen Soleiman. "Establishing a physical presence in the U.S. illustrates the importance of this market to ultra-high-net-worth individuals and their families seeking to create a 'plan b' to protect and enhance their legacies," said Eric Major, CEO and founding partner, Latitude Consultancy Limited. "Latitude enables individuals and families to more efficiently source EU residency or an additional citizenship, whether to fulfil the need to be a global nomad or to provide them with a unique insurance policy and a more secure future, in addition to enhancing their social status." Latitude's U.S. office will provide in-person consultative services to address the needs of American citizens seeking overseas European residency or an additional citizenship. In recent years wealthy Americans, in part due to pressures of reduced visa-free travel, political and social unrest, climate change and other factors, have been actively exploring a 'plan b' resulting in a 300% increase in citizenship and residency by investment inquiries. "Prominent Americans are increasingly considering alternative citizenship and residency to provide more options in life for themselves and their families, namely the ability to live, work and study in Europe. These investors are seeking to secure a passport from countries less likely to be affected by climate change and global crises," said Ezzedeen Soleiman, managing partner, Latitude Consultancy. "Since the beginning of 2021 and the initial post-pandemic emergence, our work with American citizens to find the right SMILE - our acronym for security, mobility, investment opportunity, lifestyle and education or employment opportunities, has soared 300% year-over-year." Ezzedeen has successfully developed the investment migration market in North America. He has spent several years working with business leaders, prominent families, and entrepreneurs in the Americas and Europe, advising them on international business and investment migration. A new generation of wealthy elite have ambitions that reach far beyond the limitations of national borders. They live in a connected world with a global outlook. Latitude's team of specialists offer leading insight and expertise for investors who are looking to gain residency or citizenship privileges by making an important economic contribution in a designated country. Latitude also provides government advisory services by helping nations create residency and citizenship-by-investment programs that attract this privileged segment of the world population to their shores. ABOUT LATITUDE Latitude is a leading government-approved partner and an authorized agent in all of the world's most popular citizenship and residency programs including Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Vanuatu, Portugal, and Malta. Latitude's experience in consulting with clients and governments has informed that building a new is complicated, developing the acronym SMILE to describe the necessary elements needed for a successful change of citizenship or residency: security, mobility, investment opportunity, lifestyle and education or employment opportunities. Latitude maintains offices in 18 different countries including Anguilla, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, China, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, UAE, USA, UK and Vietnam. Our executive team has more than 100 years of combined experience in the investment migration industry. An unrivalled international network of partners and institutional relationships provide a unique and compelling proposition for our clients. What makes Latitude really stand out from the crowd is our approach: genuinely innovative products, competitively priced services and customer-driven, hands-on delivery. Our clients expect the world we deliver it. Welcome to your world. www.latitudeworld.com. SOURCE Latitude Consultancy WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Red Cross today announced a $15 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to support ongoing disaster relief efforts underway throughout the United States. Devastating disasters throughout the United States have affected millions of Americans in 2021. From western wildfires that continue to burn, to multiple hurricanes that have caused destruction in both the Gulf states and the northeast, today thousands are still in need of shelter, food and other support as they begin the long task of recovery from these catastrophic events. Since June, Red Cross volunteers have been working around the clock in disaster-impacted states to provide some 55,000 total overnight stays in emergency lodgings and serve more than 760,000 meals and snacks. The Atlantic hurricane season will continue through November and tragically, wildfires are expected to continue to burn and threaten homes and communities across the western states. The grant from Lilly Endowment will support immediate Red Cross disaster relief activities, including sheltering, feeding, distribution of emergency supplies, and provision of individual financial assistance, as well as ensure the Red Cross is able to meet anticipated future needs in the coming weeks and months. "The frequency and intensity of natural disasters throughout our nation is increasing at a remarkable pace, largely driven by changes in our weather," said American Red Cross President and CEO Gail McGovern. "We are deeply grateful for this significant contribution from Lilly Endowment, which will help ensure the Red Cross can alleviate the suffering caused by these events and support communities in need throughout the United States." "Lilly Endowment has a long history of supporting the disaster relief efforts of The American Red Cross," said Ronni Kloth, the Endowment's vice president for community development. "We are pleased to be able to help as Red Cross works to provide compassionate care and support in communities across the country that have been affected by devastating natural disasters." Each year, the Red Cross responds to more than 60,000 disasters across the country, including home fires, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and wildfires. Red Cross services are provided to people in need of assistance at no cost through the generosity of Red Cross donors. About Lilly Endowment Inc: Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. Although the gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders' wishes, it supports the causes of community development, education and religion. It funds significant programs throughout the United States, especially in the field of religion, though it maintains a special commitment to its founders' hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. About the American Red Cross: The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies about 40 percent of the nation's blood; teaches skills that save lives; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a not-for-profit organization that depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit redcross.org or cruzrojaamericana.org, or visit us on Twitter at @RedCross. SOURCE American Red Cross Like its original Menstrual Cup, both new, game-changing products are crafted with Nordic plant-based ingredients that are kind to the skin and gentle for the most sensitive area. The soap-free Lunette Intimate Cleanser moisturizes by combining its clinically proven formula and Nordic botanical oil that helps in preventing vaginal dryness. Lunette Intimate Wipes are 100% biodegradable/compostable wet wipes, perfect for not just the intimate area, but the whole body, and contain allantoin and lingonberry extract. Lunette, founded in 2005 by Heli Kurjanen, created revolutionary period care over 15 years ago with its original, special, Finnish design Menstrual Cups, available in over 50 countries through their retail network. Now, with the addition of the Intimate Cleanser and Intimate Wipes, the female and founder-led brand is making a name for itself as a holistic and innovative intimate care solution for millions of women while making intimate care accessible and inclusive. "We have earned our place as a top global menstrual company through our continued mission-based focus on quality, safety and sustainability, and the Lunette Intimate Cleanser and Intimate Wipes embody just that," states Heli Kurjanen, Founder and CEO of Lunette. "Our goal with Lunette's expansion into holistic, plant-based intimate care is to serve women by making them feel comfortable and confident with the sensitive areas that deserve extra love and care!" "I strongly believe in the opportunity of this complete new line of Lunette brands' safe and natural products, which offers intimate care in multiple ways for all women," states Mikael Svensson, U.S. General Manager of Lune North America. Lunette has experienced strong growth since its inception resulting from its tireless commitment to reproductive rights and global sustainability. Through charity partners all over the world, the company has donated over 30,000 period cups to those in need. All of Lunette's products are proudly and meticulously made in its home country of Finland. In an interview, Kurjanen can share the benefits of the Lunette Intimate Cleanser and Lunette Intimate Wipes, including: Lunette Intimate Cleanser MSRP $15.99 Soap-free Ph balanced and hormone free Perfume and colorant free Combining a clinically proven gel and Nordic botanic oil Vegan Travel-friendly, 3.4 Fl Oz tube made from 55% recycled plastic (PCR) Lunette Intimate Wipes MSRP $11.99 For sensitive skin Moisturising allantoin and lingonberry extract For instant freshness on-the-go 50 wipes per resealable soft pack About Peptonic Medical AB Peptonic Medical AB (publ) is an innovative biomedical company that conducts research on and development of drugs and medical devices in the field of women's health. Our vision is to offer safe and effective treatments for women-specific diseases and medical conditions. Peptonic Medical launched VagiVital in July 2018. This is a hormone-free product for the treatment of vaginal atrophy and vaginal dryness. The company's development program also includes Vagitocin a product that contains oxytocin for the treatment of vaginal atrophy. The development of Vagitocin has been put on hold pending new information regarding the mechanism of action of oxytocin in this indication. The company was founded in 2009 and the share has been traded since 2014 on Spotlight (www.spotlightstockmarket.se, short code: PMED) in Stockholm. Lunette is a leading international menstrual company on a mission to change attitudes about periods across the world, reaching resellers in over 50 countries. Since August 2020, Lunette is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Peptonic Medical AB. Our holistic and innovative approach to intimate care makes Lunette the most convenient, ecological, and economical way to live with periods, with products including the popular Menstrual Cup, and now, our new intimate care products including the Lunette Intimate Cleanser and Lunette Intimate Wipes. Adhering to the United Nations Global Compact principles, Lunette is committed to changing the world by creating products that prevent women from feeling ashamed while also positively impacting human rights, labor standards, and the environment. Lunette also partners with H&M-owned fashion brand Monki , where, for every pink Lunette Cup sold, a pink Lunette Cup will get donated to thecup.org to empower girls in challenging situations. Lunette Menstrual cups are designed, manufactured, and packaged in Finland. For more information about Lunette, https://lunette.com . Contact: [email protected] SOURCE Lune North America, Inc. Related Links www.lunette.com DETROIT, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As efforts continue to increase vaccination rates in the state of Michigan and across the country, Meridian of Michigan has partnered with The Salvation Army's Bed & Bread program to deliver meals and COVID-19 vaccinations to community members. "Meridian's commitment to the health and wellbeing of all Detroiters is unwavering," said Jamie Winkler, executive director of The Salvation Army eastern Michigan Harbor Light System. "The pandemic continues to impact Detroitespecially the homeless and families struggling to gain access to care. With the generous support of Meridian, the Bed & Bread program remains a vital resource to thousands of Detroiters seeking food, shelter, and access to the COVID vaccine." "To stop the further spread of COVID-19, we need to work together as a community and remove barriers to accessing the vaccine," said Sean Kendall, Meridian Plan President & CEO. "We are pleased to work with The Salvation Army and committed to helping Detroiters live healthier lives." The Salvation Army Eastern Michigan Division has been a staple in the metro Detroit community for 134 years providing food, shelter and critical social services to those in need. The Bed & Bread program serves nearly 1.6 million meals and provides more than 77,000 nights of shelter annually. The Salvation Army's Bed & Bread trucks travel 180 miles every day, making 60 stops to serve meals in Detroit's most depressed areas. In a response to the pandemic, The Salvation Army adapted their Bread & Bed program to meet the current needs of the homeless population. In addition to modifying its trucks to enable contactless food delivery, the nonprofit also supplies other basic needs and offers COVID-19 vaccinations through its partnership with Central City Integrated Health (CCIH) and Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). Meridian volunteers have accompanied The Salvation Army's Bed & Bread trucks on three different routes within Wayne Co. (Region 10). On the route, Detroiters, especially the homeless, have the option to receive the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine while also receiving assistance for their basic needs. Additionally, Meridian is working closely with The Salvation Army to build out other opportunities to increase access of the COVID-19 vaccine. This isn't the first COVID-19 partnership Meridian has engaged with to ensure accessibility and safety for Michiganders and it won't be the last. "There is huge value in working with community agencies as they enable us to extend our reach into the community beyond what we can do on our own," Kendall stated. "It truly takes a village." About Meridian Meridian of Michigan provides government-sponsored managed care services to families, children, seniors, and individuals with complex medical needs primarily through Medicaid (MeridianHealth), Medicare Advantage (WellCare), Medicare-Medicaid Plans (MeridianComplete), Medicare Prescription Drug Plans (WellCare), and the Health Insurance Marketplace (Ambetter from Meridian). Meridian is a wholly owned subsidiary of Centene Corporation, a leading multi-national healthcare enterprise committed to helping people live healthier lives. For more information about Meridian, please visit www.mhplan.com. About The Salvation Army Founded by William and Catherine Booth in London, England in 1865, The Salvation Army is a faith-based, non-profit organization dedicated to serving people in need without discrimination. This past year, The Salvation Army of Metro Detroit was involved in providing 2,446,588 meals and 382,681 nights of shelter for the homeless. The Salvation Army uses $.86 of every dollar raised to provide direct services to people in need each and every day of the year. For more information about The Salvation Army, please call 877-SAL-MICH, or visit us at salmich.org. SOURCE Meridian of Michigan HERNDON, Va., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Metron Aviation has been awarded an air traffic flow management system contract from Republica Dominicana, Instituto Dominicano de Aviacion Civil (IDAC). IDAC selected Metron Aviation because its Harmony air traffic flow management (ATFM) system proactively and collaboratively manages demand to minimize delays. In addition, it maximizes airport and airspace throughput, reduces CO 2 emissions, and enables aircraft operators to manage their business needs while meeting IDAC's ATFM requirements. The Harmony system of collaborative decision-making and demand-capacity balancing tools will provide IDAC and its stakeholders with shared situational awareness and predictability of operations. These capabilities are offered through the Harmony system's Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud delivery model. This is a major step for the delivery and advancement of ATFM in the Caribbean and Latin American region. "The Dominican Republic has achieved another milestone in strategic Air Traffic Management," said Roosevelt A. Pena Mendez, IDAC ATFM Project Manager. "The Dominican Institute of Civil Aviation through the Directorate of Air Navigation will take advantage of the expertise in software development of the Harmony ATFM system by Metron Aviation, a leader in the aviation industry." "It's a great opportunity to work with a leader in the further advancement of ATFM in the Caribbean and Latin American regions," said Chris Jordan, President, Metron Aviation. "Harmony offered as a cloud solution is another milestone in Metron Aviation's ability to deploy ATFM capabilities to new customers rapidly and at a fraction of the cost of traditional on-site deployment." About Metron Aviation Metron Aviation is the most trusted and proven innovator in the Air Traffic Management (ATM) industry. A subsidiary of Airbus, Metron Aviation has an honored past of developing ATM and Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) solutions for the global aviation industry. By working with all stakeholders in the air traffic management arena air navigation service providers, airlines, airports, civil aviation authorities, and other influencers Metron Aviation understands what is at the heart of aviation issues and can tackle even the most complex air traffic management challenges. For details, please visit www.metronaviation.com Contact: Toni Evans, Metron Aviation Marketing | [email protected] SOURCE Metron Aviation MINDCURE to utilize patient data provided by ATMA to optimize iSTRYM, its digital therapeutics platform VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Mind Cure Health Inc. (CSE: MCUR) (OTCQB: MCURF) (FRA: 6MH) ("MINDCURE" or the "Company"), a leader in advanced proprietary technology and research in psychedelics, announced today an exclusive data licensing agreement with ATMA Journey Centers Inc. ("ATMA"), a pioneer in the psychedelic therapy industry and the first commercial company in Canada to legally treat a palliative patient with psychedelic-assisted therapy using psilocybin. This agreement is an extension to an existing partnership, whereby ATMA will grant MINDCURE an exclusive license to ATMA data from patients using the iSTRYM digital therapeutics software, with the intended goal of further optimizing the platform. MINDCURE is positioning iSTRYM to be the industry's distribution network for science-based, evidence-backed protocols and AI (Artificial Intelligence) data systems. iSTRYM is a first-of-its-kind software application that optimizes the healing journey for patients and clinicians before, during, and after therapy sessions. iSTRYM was built to shift the paradigm of care and access for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, reducing the cost of care, improving patient outcomes, and providing a distribution network for psychedelic companies to distribute protocols. As a drug agnostic platform, iSTRYM was built to support not only any type of psychedelic molecule within a treatment protocol, but to support protocols which utilize existing drugs on the market or therapeutic protocols that might not need a drug at all, as in traditional talk therapy. MINDCURE plans initially to service psychedelic clinics and to expand into integrated clinics, both traditional and psychedelic, and eventually to the broader mental health market. In August, the Company released the minimum viable product (MVP) version of iSTRYM into partner clinics across North America. MINDCURE plans to begin full commercial deployment in Q1 of 2022. "We are thrilled to expand our collaboration with the team at ATMA. With data being a core component to refining iSTRYM, having access to ATMA's network of therapists and anonymized patient data will improve our ability to provide the tools, protocols, and treatments to therapists, and enable us to address a global mental health crisis in need of a solution," said Kelsey Ramsden, MINDCURE President and CEO. "ATMA's growing clinical footprint in Canada along with its recently inaugurated center in Costa Rica gives MINDCURE the opportunity to deploy iSTRYM, with the intended goal of optimizing treatments for its patients and to expose iSTRYM to the data necessary to build the platform into one trusted by therapists and patients around the world." "Our partnership with ATMA is an exciting opportunity for MINDCURE to demonstrate the effectiveness of iSTRYM's treatment protocols and to identify those treatment components that are associated with optimal client outcomes. This is at the core of what we have built iSTRYM to do," said Ty Tashiro, MINDCURE Senior Translational & Psychometric Architect. "This particular collaboration will allow us to deploy iSTRYM's multifaceted assessment capabilities, including biometrics, natural language processing and unique psychometrics, to create a responsive, personalized treatment experience." "We look forward to helping MINDCURE develop iSTRYM into the leading digital therapeutics platform for therapists conducting psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy," said David Harder, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of ATMA. "Real data from patients will further strengthen and improve the protocols we use and the effectiveness of treatments we deliver at our Journey Centers." In related news, MINDCURE successfully launched the minimum viable product (MVP) of iSTRYM on August 26, 2021. The Company is on track to expand into over ten clinics across Canada and the U.S. within the MVP beta testing program in Q4 2021. About Mind Cure Health Inc. MINDCURE is a life sciences company focused on innovating and commercializing new ways to promote healing and improve mental health. The Company is developing digital therapeutics technology and researching psychedelic compounds to support access to safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies globally. Learn more at mindcure.com, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. About ATMA Journey Centers Inc. ATMA is a private healthcare company with the mission of delivering effective and innovative healing and transformative experiences that awaken the inner healer and promote a deeper connection with the self, with others, and with the beauty of the world. A pioneer in the psychedelic therapy industry, ATMA is building a global network of psychedelic therapy clinics. ATMA was the first private sector service provider in Canada to announce conducting legal psychedelic-assisted therapy for a palliative care patient under the approval of Health Canada's section 56(1) exemption. Its team collectively has over 100 years of experience in the disciplines of medicine work, integration, therapy and personal development. On Behalf of the Board of Directors Kelsey Ramsden, President & CEO Phone: 1-888-593-8995 Forward-Looking Information Forward-looking information is based on a number of key expectations and assumptions made by management of MINDCURE, including, without limitation: the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the Canadian economy and MINDCURE's business, and the extent and duration of such impact; no change to laws or regulations that negatively affect MINDCURE's business; there will be a demand for MINDCURE's products in the future; no unanticipated expenses or costs arise; MINDCURE will be able to continue to identify products that make them ideal candidates for providing solutions for treating mental health; that iSTRYM will be developed, optimized and operate as contemplated within the psychedelics industry; that the Company will be effective in obtaining the patents applied for synthesizing ibogaine, or synthesizing ibogaine, or developing synthesized ibogaine for research, medical or commercial use; that MINDCURE will advance wellness worldwide; that iSTRYM will be brought to commercial deployment in the near term or otherwise or that it will reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, or support transformation and healing, or that the deployment may not occur at the scale or within the time frame contemplated; or that ATMA's anonymized patient data will further optimize the iSTRYM platform or will improve MINDCURE's ability to provide the tools, protocols, and treatments to therapists. Although MINDCURE has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information presented, there may be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements as no forward-looking information can be guaranteed. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and MINDCURE does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. SOURCE Mind Cure Health Inc. While Mountain America is one of the fastest-growing credit unions in the nation, it also focuses on creating an exceptional workplace where employees feel valued and have opportunities to grow. One unique employee benefit is the Mountain America Cares Fundemployees donate to fund grants to help fellow team members in need. To promote wellness, the credit union offers online wellness groups, virtual workout classes, financial education workshops and more. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, work flexibility increased to protect employee health and well-being. Also, COVID-19 tests and vaccines are readily available at the on-site clinic at Mountain America's headquarters. Employees are also encouraged to contribute to their communities. Each employee is granted paid time off to perform acts of service during the Month of Caring event held each September. A list of all winners and rankings are available here. SOURCE Mountain America Credit Union Related Links http://www.macu.com NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Competency-based Education Network (C-BEN), the nation's largest non-profit organization devoted to focusing education on what learners know and can do, announced today the appointment of Dr. Amber Garrison Duncan as its first-ever executive vice president. With two decades of experience across higher education and philanthropy, Dr. Garrison Duncan will help the organization meet the rising demand to expand and grow competency-based learning models across the country. She begins her new role on October 4. "The pandemic and its impact on our economy have demonstrated the need for learning to center around competencies, in order to equitably expand the promise of higher education. Now, more than ever, institutions and employers are beginning to recognize the need to walk the walk,'' said Charla Long, president of C-BEN. "Amber's leadership, experience, and knowledge will be critical to meeting this moment of change--supporting colleges, universities, and employers as they embrace and implement competency-based learning." Demand for competency-based education (CBE) has continued to grow. The recently released American Institutes for Research's 2020 National Survey of Postsecondary Competency-Based Education found that more than 82% of higher education respondents expect CBE to grow nationally over the next five years. In particular, leaders highlighted a shift underway in the higher education landscape, noting the potential of CBE to help students successfully navigate the ever-changing future of work. Dr. Garrison Duncan brings a track record of success in and commitment to improving educational quality, equity and learning outcomes for all students. In her new role, she will provide strategic and operational leadership to expand C-BEN's work as an innovation network and membership-based organization focused on student outcomes. "C-BEN is uniquely positioned to advance a truly learner-centric model that creates new, more equitable opportunities for economic mobility across our nation," said Dr. Garrison Duncan. "I'm delighted to have this opportunity to further scale the promise of competency-based learning, to help all learners attain their personal and professional goals." Previously Dr. Garrison Duncan served as Strategy Director at the Lumina Foundation, where she oversaw a project portfolio driving innovative higher education policies and practices to better serve non-traditional students, especially within underserved populations. Prior to Lumina, she served in senior student affairs and services roles across a range of higher education institutions, including the University of Oregon and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. About C-BEN C-BEN is a network of institutions, employers, and experts who believe competencies can unlock the future of learning making postsecondary education and training more flexible, responsive, and valuable. We support stakeholders across the spectrum of competency-based learning, from institutions and employers who want to embed competencies into their existing programs to those looking to design full competency-based degree programs from the ground up. Across all our work, our aim is to make education and training more flexible, responsive, and valuable. For more information, visit www.cbenetwork.org . SOURCE C-BEN Related Links http://www.cbenetwork.org WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The White House Historical Association (WHHA) released a new episode of the 1600 Sessions podcast today, "U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps." In this episode, Stewart D. McLaurin, President of the White House Historical Association, speaks with SGM J. Mark Reilly, Senior Enlisted Band Leader, and SGM Billy White, Operations Sergeant Major, about the history and global work of the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. Watch the full video interview here. The White House is a ceremonial stage upon which our nation welcomes the most important visitors, including foreign heads of state. These State Visits often begin with an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps is a staple of those ceremonies. "When I came to the Old GuardI found a purpose for the Fife and Drum Corps that I didn't understand existed before. The opportunity to travel the country, to travel abroad and represent our country, has been the honor of a lifetime," says SGM(R) Billy White. The 1600 Sessions is available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. To hear the full episode, visit The1600sessions.org. The 1600 Sessions In this podcast series, White House Historical Association President Stewart McLaurin interviews luminaries, historians, and eyewitnesses to history about America's most famous residence and officethe White House. Each episode includes a prominent guest or guests to discuss varying facets of White House history, including insights from former staff and many other topical issues. About The White House Historical Association First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy envisioned a restored White House that conveyed a sense of history through its decorative and fine arts. In 1961, the White House Historical Association was established to support her vision to preserve and share the Executive Mansion's legacy for generations to come. Supported entirely by private resources, the Association's mission is to assist in the preservation of the state and public rooms, fund acquisitions for the White House permanent collection, and educate the public on the history of the White House. Since its founding, the White House Historical Association has contributed more than $50 million in fulfillment of its mission. To learn more about the White House Historical Association, please visit www.whitehousehistory.org . SOURCE White House Historical Association Related Links http://www.whitehousehistory.org Highlight sample assay results are summarized below. * Note that grab samples are not intended to be representative of gold mineralization at Big Dave A potential new zone of high-grade gold mineralization has been discovered along the Appleton Fault yielding assay results up to 1,131 g/t Au and is being called Big Dave. This showing is located 2km north of the Lotto Zone and 4km north of the Keats Zone, representing the northernmost showing of high-grade gold to date at the Queensway. Sampling at Big Dave represents the first recorded surface rock samples from this under explored section of the Appleton Fault. This area of the Appleton Fault demonstrates limited outcrop and the two high-grade grab samples collected were of highly angular quartz float containing visible gold. The samples were located in close proximity to one another indicating the high potential for further discoveries along the Appleton Fault. Big Dave shares a similar stratigraphic location to the Keats and Lotto zones along the east side of the Appleton Fault. The highly angular nature of the float samples and geographical location indicate a bedrock source that reaches surface and may be close to the sample site. The nearest drill hole to this new zone is located over 2km to the south at the Lotto Zone and these results indicate the potential for further high-grade gold mineralization along the underexplored Appleton Fault. Big Dave is easily accessed through gravel logging roads located within 700m of the sample site. of the sample site. The two samples of quartz contained disseminated fine-grained visible gold, boulangerite, chalcopyrite and arsenopyrite typical of the high-grade veins discovered at the Keats, Lotto, Golden Joint and other showings along the Appleton Fault. and other showings along the Appleton Fault. Extensive geophysical coverage of the area has allowed the Company to vector and plan drill targets to be completed in Q4 2021. Greg Matheson, COO of New Found, stated: "Over 20 years ago a single high-grade float sample was located along the Appleton Fault yielding 1,869 g/t Au; this sample led to the eventual discovery of the nearby Keats Zone. The continued drill expansion of the high-grade Keats Zone demonstrates our ability to find the source of such high-grade samples. Continuing to discover new areas with high-grade gold is exciting and speaks volumes to the potential to transform the Queensway into a multi-discovery district." Photos of Rock Samples Note that these photos are not intended to be representative of gold mineralization at Big Dave Sampling, Sub-sampling and Laboratory Assay values reported are uncut and were obtained by entire sample screened metallic screen fire assay at Eastern Analytical in Springdale, Newfoundland. The entire sample metallic screen assay method is selected by the geologist when samples contain coarse gold or any samples displaying gold initial fire assay values greater than 1.0 g/t Au. Field program Quality Assurance/Quality Control and interpretation of results is performed by qualified persons employing a Quality Assurance/Quality Control program consistent with National Instrument 43-101 and industry best practices. Standards and blanks are included with every 20 samples for Quality Assurance/Quality Control purposes by the Company as well as the lab. Approximately 5% of sample pulps are sent to secondary laboratories for check assays. Qualified Person The technical content disclosed in this press release was reviewed and approved by Greg Matheson, P. Geo., Chief Operating Officer, and a Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Matheson consents to the publication of this news release dated Sept 23, 2021, by New Found. Mr. Matheson certifies that this news release fairly and accurately represents the information for which he is responsible. About New Found Gold Corp. New Found holds a 100% interest in the Queensway Project, located 15 km west of Gander, Newfoundland, and just 18km from Gander International Airport. The project is intersected by the Trans-Canada Highway and has logging roads crosscutting the project, high voltage electric power lines running through the project area, and easy access to a highly skilled workforce. The Company is currently undertaking a 200,000m drill program at Queensway. Nine rigs are currently in operation at Queensway with the drill count planned to increase to ten rigs in Q3 2021. With a current working capital balance of approximately $111 million, New Found is well funded for this program. Please see the Company's website at www.newfoundgold.ca and the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Acknowledgements New Found acknowledges the financial support of the Junior Exploration Assistance Program, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Contact To contact the Company, please visit the Company's website, www.newfoundgold.ca and make your request through our investor inquiry form. Our management has a pledge to be in touch with any investor inquiries within 24 hours. New Found Gold Corp. Per: "Craig Roberts" Craig Roberts, P.Eng., Chief Executive Officer Email: [email protected] Phone: (604) 562 9664 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 Statement Cautions This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, relating to further exploration and drilling on the Company's Queensway gold project in Newfoundland, interpretation of results of the drilling program and funding of the drilling program. 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 statements that are not historical facts; they are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "aims," "potential," "goal," "objective," "prospective," and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "can," "could" or "should" occur, or are those statements, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made, and they involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Consequently, there can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include risks associated with possible accidents and other risks associated with mineral exploration operations, the risk that the Company will encounter unanticipated geological factors, the possibility that the Company may not be able to secure permitting and other governmental clearances necessary to carry out the Company's exploration plans, the risk that the Company will not be able to raise sufficient funds to carry out its business plans, and the risk of political uncertainties and regulatory or legal changes that might interfere with the Company's business and prospects. The reader is urged to refer to the Company's Annual Information Form and Management's discussion and Analysis, publicly available through the Canadian Securities Administrators' System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects. SOURCE New Found Gold Corp. Related Links https://newfoundgold.ca/ ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Home Builders Institute (HBI) today announced the official opening of its new Orlando-based facility for training people for jobs in construction. The BuildStrong Academy of Orlando will train and place area students who want to pursue careers in the skilled trades for the building industry. Funded by The Home Depot Foundation, along with other private, public, and nonprofit sector partners, the program will be free to trainees. Officials expect the training center to serve approximately 500 new trainees by year-end 2022. The BuildStrong Academy of Orlando's training program guides participants through a step-by-step process designed to take them from beginners, with little-to-no trade skills, to tradespeople who are sought after by employers. Instructors will use HBI's industry-recognized curriculum, which is one of only three pre-apprenticeship programs recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor. For more than 50 years, HBI has conducted programs across the U.S. training approximately 10,000 students each year through a variety of specialized programs. Officials of the Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization said they are taking a new approach in Orlando by managing a facility that instructs students in several construction trades under one roof. "As openings in construction jobs increase and people are rethinking their careers, the times demand that we take an inventive approach to creating the skilled workers so badly needed in the building industry," said Ed Brady, HBI president and CEO, at a grand opening ceremony here. "Students at the BuildStrong Academy of Orlando will be exposed to the full spectrum of their opportunities in the construction trades." The effort comes at a critical time. Every month this year, the construction industry has been short approximately 300,000 to 400,000 skilled workers, based on National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Yet only a small percentage of young adults are pursuing careers in construction, Brady said. "This is the opportunity for new recruits to the industry to get in on the entry level, and receive hands-on training and placement into well-paid jobs," he said. "We're excited to launch this academy program in Orlando and bring career opportunities to the area, in partnership with HBI," said Shannon Gerber, executive director of The Home Depot Foundation. "This program helps further our goal of supporting the next generation of tradespeople while diversifying the industry." In addition to The Home Depot Foundation, the BuildStrong Academy of Orlando is funded by the Charles Koch Institute; West Fraser, a diversified wood products company based in Vancouver, Canada, and; CareerSource Central Florida, the State of Florida's workforce development agency. "The Academy will provide incredible training opportunities to develop skills, build careers, and create value in the construction industry," said Benjamin Colas, program officer at the Charles Koch Institute. "We're thrilled to support this proven model and excited for all to come." "Many of those in this pandemic-driven economy workplace have been displaced or are reassessing what they will do for a living," said Ross Commerford, director of marketing and product development at West Fraser. "The Academy is for someone who might want a career as a skilled tradesperson in construction." "Central Florida is experiencing an economic boom in development projects and with that comes new jobs and the need for skilled talent," said Pam Nabors, CEO and president of CareerSource Central Florida. "The Academy will be a springboard for ultimately thousands of young people who will be trained and placed in good jobs." In advance of today's grand opening, the center trained its first class of students who graduated earlier this month. In June, they began a two-week, orientation session called the "residential introductory series." Once completed, they were able to progress to four weeks of skills training that resulted in an industry-recognized certification as a pre-apprentice. If they choose, the students could then enter a six-week-long program to be trained in carpentry skills. "Orlando's new BuildStrong Academy opens up the world of great jobs and careers in construction to anyone who wants to work hard and be part of an extraordinary industry," said Chuck Fowke, NAHB chairman, and a custom home builder from Tampa, FL, who spoke at today's event. For more information on the BuildStrong Academy of Orlando, and how to enroll, visit OrlandoAcademy.hbi.org or email: [email protected] SOURCE Home Builders Institute (HBI) NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NYPPEX, one of the world's leading providers of secondary private equity liquidity, today issued a warning about investment risk in China private equity investments. NYPPEX believes that China is entering a new phase of government policies that, in summary, seek to focus on "common prosperity" and Mao Zedong's vision for transitory capitalism. Mao Zedong believed that capitalism was initially only needed to alleviate widespread poverty in China. NYPPEX China Private Equity It was reported by Reuters on Friday, September 17, that Chinese government officials recently told large property developers in Hong Kong to prepare for higher taxes to help solve the city's housing shortage, as Beijing planned to target the city's wealth gap and runaway housing prices. As a result, on Monday, September 20, shares in Li Ka-shing's CK Asset fell approximately 9.3% and Henderson Land lost 13.2%. Further, on September 10, Blackstone scrapped its pending $3 billion acquisition of Soho China, a large property developer, despite having received an approximate 60% discount to Soho's book value as of the end of 2020. NYPPEX estimates that China's policy changes in 2021 have caused a decline of more than $1 trillion in stock market value in publicly-traded Chinese companies. NYPPEX believes that a potential default by China Evergrande Group, a large Chinese real estate developer with over $125 billion in debt, could have an adverse effect on funds worldwide. Some China Evergrande bonds are reported to have traded at approximately 25% of face value in September 2021. NYPPEX believes the recent declines in Chinese stocks will cause greater risk for private investments in Chinese private companies and private equity funds. NYPPEX believes this is an opportune time for investors and funds to evaluate their exposure and portfolio allocations to investments in China private equity. About NYPPEX Holdings NYPPEX Holdings operates a global private marketplace that provides price data and the opportunity for qualified investors to access secondary liquidity in alternative investment funds in a fair and ethical manner. Its clients include alternative investment funds, financial institutions, endowments, foundations, institutional investors, family offices, private clients and their respective advisors worldwide. Since 2004, the NYPPEX QMS has been formerly recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a Qualified Matching Service for private partnerships though a private letter ruling under Internal Revenue Code 1.7704. In 2014, the NYPPEX (Shanghai) Investment Consulting Co. Ltd. was among the first foreign financial firms approved as members into the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ), along with Oaktree Capital, Citadel and Man Group. Among its features, the Shanghai FTZ permits yuan convertibility and unrestricted foreign currency exchange, and a tax-free period of 10 years for the businesses in the area. Its private securities are privately offered to qualified investors through NYPPEX, LLC and only in jurisdictions were permitted. NYPPEX is regulated in the U.S. by the SEC and FINRA. Member FINRA, SPIC. Copyright 2021 NYPPEX Holdings, LLC. All rights reserved. For more information, please visit www.nyppex.com or contact [email protected] or by phone at +1 (914) 305-2825. SOURCE NYPPEX Private Markets Related Links https://nyppex.com/ LAS VEGAS, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DelveInsight's " Ocular Hypertension Market " report provides a thorough comprehension of the Ocular Hypertension historical and forecasted epidemiology and the Ocular Hypertension market trends in the 7MM [the United States, EU5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and United Kingdom) and Japan]. The Ocular Hypertension market report also proffers an analysis of the current Ocular Hypertension treatment algorithm/practice, market drivers, market barriers, and unmet medical needs. Some of the necessary takeaways from the Ocular Hypertension Market Research Report Several key pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Bausch and Lomb Incorporated, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Santen Pharmaceutical, Nicox Ophthalmics, and others, are developing novel products to improve the Ocular Hypertension treatment outlook. are developing novel products to improve the Ocular Hypertension treatment outlook. In March 2020 , Allergan announced that the US FDA had approved Durysta (bimatoprost implant) , making it the first intracameral, biodegradable sustained-release implant. , announced that the US FDA had approved , making it the first intracameral, biodegradable sustained-release implant. The Ocular Hypertension market is undergoing a continuous change in the coming years, owing to the rising prevalent population, increased patient awareness, and improved diagnostic methods. Several approved therapies such as Durysta, Alphagan-P, Rhopressa , and others will drive the current Ocular Hypertension therapeutic landscape in the US and is estimated to increase by 2030. , and others will drive the current Ocular Hypertension therapeutic landscape in the US and is estimated to increase by 2030. Ocular Hypertension is complex and has a polygenic basis resulting from a combined effect of various common gene variants, each of which has a small effect on the disease. Genome-wide association analyses have recognized several loci associated with glaucoma risk factors such as IOP, vertical cup-disc ratio, and central corneal thickness. resulting from a combined effect of various common gene variants, each of which has a small effect on the disease. Genome-wide association analyses have recognized several loci associated with glaucoma risk factors such as IOP, vertical cup-disc ratio, and central corneal thickness. In the last decade, significant efforts have been made to develop new products that use novel approaches to address the unmet needs associated with Ocular Hypertension. Advancements are seen within currently used eye drop classes such as prostaglandin analogs, Rho-kinase inhibitors, and nitric oxide donors, while there are also new drug classes, such as tyrosine-protein kinase activators. Most developing drugs are topical drop formulations, with a number already having entered Phase III trials. For further information on Market Impact by Therapies, visit: Ocular Hypertension Drugs Market Analysis Ocular Hypertension is a term used to describe intraocular pressure (IOP) greater than 21 mm Hg in one or both eyes without clinical evidence of optic nerve damage, visual field defect. DelveInsight estimates that the total Ocular Hypertension prevalent cases were 20,817,647 cases in the 7MM in 2020. It was also noted that females are affected more than males. The Ocular Hypertension Market Analysis Report provides historical as well as forecasted epidemiological analysis segmented into: Total Prevalent Cases of Ocular Hypertension Gender-specific Prevalence of Ocular Hypertension Age-specific Prevalence of Ocular Hypertension Treated Cases of Ocular Hypertension Get a complete epidemiological segmentation breakdown @ Ocular Hypertension Epidemiological Analysis Ocular Hypertension Treatment Market The Ocular Hypertension market has been categorized based on different classes of therapies available for the treatment. These include prostaglandin analogs, beta-blockers, alpha-agonists, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, alpha agonists, rho kinase inhibitors, and combination therapies. Prostaglandin analogs (PGAs) are recommended as the first-choice treatment for Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) because of their efficacy, limited systemic side effects, and once-daily dosing. Travoprost, Vyzulta, Zioptan are the commonly prescribed prostaglandin analogs. Before the entry of prostaglandins into the market, beta-blockers were quite well-known and popular for glaucoma management. Combination therapies account for the second-highest revenue-generating class of therapy after PGAs. Combining agents of different classes with a different mechanism of action (MoA) is associated with superior IOP-lowering efficacy than each component used alone. Fixed combinations eye drops in Europe include prostaglandin analogs and -blockers, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors and -blockers, -2 adrenergic agonists and -blockers, carbonic anhydrase inhibitor and -2 adrenergic agonists, and -blockers. Carbonic Anhydrase Inhibitors like dorzolamide and Trusopt are favored over oral agents because of their greater site-specificity and markedly fewer systemic side effects. Ocular Hypertension Emerging Drugs In the Ocular Hypertension emerging scenario, several companies are developing therapies for IOP that employ rho kinase inhibitors, nitric oxide (NO)-donating prostaglandin analogs, ROCK inhibitors, and others. Pharmaceutical companies like Santen Pharmaceuticals, Allergan, Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company (SPARC) Limited, Laboratorios Sophia S.A de C.V., Nicox Ophthalmics, and Nicox Ophthalmics are developing products with the potential to change the Ocular Hypertension treatment landscape. The pharmaceutical products of these companies are currently in the late and mid-clinical development stages. The emerging therapies such as DE-117 (Santen Pharmaceutical); PDP-716 (Sun Pharma); sepetaprost (DE-126/ONO-9054: Santen/Ono Pharmaceutical); NCX 470 (Nicox Ophthalmics), and Nyxol (Ocuphire Pharma) are effective treatments. These drug candidates have shown highly promising results, and DelveInsight's analysts have anticipated that completion of clinical development and launch of these products might increase the Ocular Hypertension market share of these companies, in addition to the availability of better management practices for Ocular Hypertension patients. Ocular Hypertension Market Dynamics Ocular Hypertension Market size shall increase owing to recent advances in therapy, particularly intravitreal administration of anti-angiogenic agents, which have opened new therapeutic perspectives. Also, a considerable amount of attention is being given to imaging biomarkers to fulfill the unmet need for better Ocular Hypertension diagnosis. It has been a promising development over the previous decade. The launch of such biomarkers would lead to a significant boost during the forecast years. Nevertheless, the growth of the Ocular Hypertension Market might be impeded by the lack of clarity about the disease pathophysiology, dearth of accurate diagnosis, and a few effective treatment options available. Moreover, there is an unmet need for a wider variety of such surgical procedures to provide long-term IOP-lowering effects, and in more complex cases such as angle-closure glaucoma and secondary diseases. Scope of the Ocular Hypertension Market Insight Report Geography Covered: The United States , EU5 ( Germany , France , Italy , Spain , and the United Kingdom ), and Japan. , EU5 ( , , , , and the ), and Japan. Study Period: 3-year historical and 10-year forecasted analysis (2018-2030). Ocular Hypertension Markets Segmentation: By Geographies and By Ocular Hypertension Therapies (Historical and Forecasted, Current and Upcoming) Dominant Market Companies investigating its candidates for Ocular Hypertension: Novartis, Bausch and Lomb Incorporated, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Santen Pharmaceutical, Nicox Ophthalmics, and several others. Analysis: Comparative and conjoint analysis of emerging therapies. Case Studies KOL's Views Analyst's View Request for a Webex demo of the report @ Ocular Hypertension Therapeutics Market Table of Contents 1 Ocular Hypertension Key Insights 2 Ocular Hypertension Report Introduction 3 Ocular Hypertension Market Overview at a Glance 4 Executive Summary of Ocular Hypertension 5 Ocular Hypertension Disease Background and Overview 6 Ocular Hypertension Epidemiology and Patient Population 6.1 The United States 6.2 EU5 Countries 6.2.1 Germany 6.2.2 France 6.2.3 Italy 6.2.4 Spain 6.2.5 The United Kingdom 6.3 Japan 7 Ocular Hypertension Treatment 8 NICE Recommendations and Guidelines 9 Ocular Hypertension Patient Journey 10 Ocular Hypertension Case Reports 11 Ocular Hypertension Marketed Drugs 11.1 Travoprost ophthalmic solution: Novartis 11.2 Vyzulta (latanoprostene bunod ophthalmic solution): Bausch and Lomb Incorporated 11.3 Zioptan: Merck Sharp and Dohme 11.4 Rhopressa: Aerie Pharmaceuticals 12 Ocular Hypertension Emerging Therapies 12.1 DE-130A (latanoprost): Santen Pharmaceutical 12.2 NCX 470: Nicox Ophthalmics 13 7MM Ocular Hypertension Market Analysis 13.1 The United States Ocular Hypertension Market Size 13.2 EU-5 Ocular Hypertension Market Size 13.2.1 Germany Market Size 13.2.2 France Market Size 13.2.3 Italy Market Size 13.2.4 Spain Market Size 13.2.5 The United Kingdom Market Size 13.3 Japan Ocular Hypertension Market Size 14 KOL Views 15 Ocular Hypertension Market Drivers 16 Ocular Hypertension Market Barriers 17 Ocular Hypertension SWOT Analysis 18 Unmet Needs 19 Reimbursement 20 DelveInsight Capabilities 21 Disclaimer 22 About DelveInsight Browse full report with detailed TOC with charts, figures, tables @ Ocular Hypertension Diagnostics Market Report View Other Reports DelveInsight's Ocular Hypertension - Epidemiology Forecast 2030 report delivers an in-depth understanding of the disease, historical, and forecasted epidemiology of Ocular Hypertension in 7MM. Ocular Hypertension Pipeline Insights, 2021 report by DelveInsight outlines comprehensive insights of present clinical development scenarios and growth prospects across the Ocular Hypertension market. DelveInsight's 'Bradycardia Treatment Devices -Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast - 2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Bradycardia Treatment Devices. Key companies working in this domain are Abbott Laboratories, Biotronik, Boston Scientific, Lepu Medical, Livanova, Medico, Medtronic, Oscor, Osypka Medical, and others. DelveInsight's 'Anastomotic Leak Devices -Market Insights, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecast - 2026' report delivers an in-depth understanding of Anastomotic Leak Devices. Key companies working in this domain are Baxter International Inc. (Synovis Micro Companies Alliance), Medtronic PLC Cryolife, Inc., Getinge AB, Ethicon US LLC. (Johnson & Johnson), Peter Surgical, Becton, and others. Browse Blog Posts Explore Cost-effectiveness, Advanced Technology, Rising Demand that Pushes the Insulin Delivery Devices Market Read FemTech Market : With 100+ Startups in the domain, Women Healthcare is Witnessing a Huge Upliftment About DelveInsight DelveInsight is a leading Business Consultant and Market Research firm focused exclusively on life sciences. It supports Pharma companies by providing comprehensive end-to-end solutions to improve their performance. It also provides Business Consulting Services with a credible market analysis that will help accelerate the business growth and overcome challenges with a practical approach. Contact Us: Shruti Thakur [email protected] +1(919)321-6187 www.delveinsight.com SOURCE DelveInsight Business Research, LLP MILWAUKEE, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Mike Gableman sent a letter to county clerks on Thursday formally inviting them to meet with him personally to discuss any questions, concerns, or observations they might have regarding his ongoing investigation into the 2020 election. "I would like to formally invite you to meet with me personally in person or by phone or video call to discuss these concerns, as well as any other thoughts of any nature that you might have about the State's investigation," the letter states. "Please contact my office at your earliest convenience to schedule a time to discuss the best practices you had in place that assured your county's successful administration of the 2020 election." "The purpose of this investigation is to ensure that Wisconsin's elections are run properly so that the public can have confidence in the process, and your active cooperation will go a long way toward helping the Wisconsin Assembly achieve that goal in a timely fashion," the letter adds. "The doors of the Office of Special Counsel will remain open to you and your staff throughout the duration of this investigation, and I look forward to speaking with you very soon." The letter was sent to Green Lake County Clerk Liz Otto, Washington County Clerk Ashley Reichert, Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, Lincoln County Clerk Christopher Marlow, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, and Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson because they had expressed concerns after receiving a letter from the Office of Special Counsel requesting that they preserve data and other information of potential relevance to the investigation. Gableman clarified in a separate statement that his invitation is open to all 1,922 county and municipal clerks in the State of Wisconsin. "The Office of Special Counsel exists to make sure that Wisconsin's elections are transparent, inclusive, and accountable," Gableman said. "Wisconsin state law entrusts clerks with conducting our elections, so they will naturally be vital partners throughout this process." SOURCE Mike Gableman WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mark Roberts of Stow, Massachusetts, in his electric wheelchair with his labradoodle Mocha by his side, crossed the "starting line" in West Stockbridge on Saturday, September 18th. Mark and Mocha begin a 300-mile trek across Massachusetts to bring attention to the fight against hunger. The journey, called "4Paws 4Wheels 4Hunger," is estimated to take seven weeks, taking the pair from the New York border to Boston and on to Provincetown. Mark and his team have already raised over $30,000 in donations and sponsorships, well on their way to the goal of $250,000. "We've seen donations from $5 to $2,000 from donors, all of which are welcome," reports Mark. "If we all do our little part, we'll definitely be able to reach or exceed our goal of $250,000." "We have already received sponsorships, including from Stop & Shop," continues Mark. Stop & Shop of Quincy, Massachusettsa household name and leader in the retail grocery industryhas signed on to the project as a corporate sponsor. "Stop & Shop is proud to support 4Paws 4Wheels 4Hunger to build awareness about the growing number of children and families facing food insecurity within our communities," said Jennifer Brogan, Director of Community Relations for Stop & Shop. "We look forward to seeing other businesses and residents join us in raising funds and discussing ways we can all help to end hunger." As part of their sponsorship, Stop & Shop will be collecting donated food at their stores for local food organizations. ForceMech, Inc., the manufacturer of Mark's electric wheelchair, are being recognized as a corporate sponsor for their support in donating a secondary battery to ensure that Mark & Mocha continue to safely roll across the Commonwealth. ForceMech of Pearland, Texas, manufactures a line of electric wheelchairs under $3,000 each, designed to allow users to increase mobility and freedom. Mark has been amazed by the response received from people as he rolls by. "One retired woman who works at the local Meals-On-Wheels program came out and insisted on donating $20. In the next town, a person working for the highway department jumped out of his truck and did the same," reflects Mark. "People have asked us for our stickers with our social media information so they can follow us along on our route and donate. And everyone in the vehicles passing us waves and smiles and toots as they go by." The journey continues through Western Massachusetts for the next week. "I can't wait to continue passing people on the rural roads in the Berkshires and then rolling into Holyoke, Chicopee, and Springfield on the weekend," says Mark. Extensive information about this effort to bring attention to food-insecurity, including pandemic-induced hunger and the impact of climate change on food insecurity and food production, can be found at www.4Hunger.org. Follow Facebook: 4Paws4Hunger, Twitter: @4paws4hunger, Instagram: @4paws4hunger, YouTube: 4Hunger. Mark Roberts 617/722-8222 [email protected] SOURCE Worthy Causes Inc Related Links 4Hunger.org OPY USA ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH EXPERIAN Tweet this Building on its existing relationship with Experian, the latest strategic partnership strengthens Opy's commitment to Americanize the Opy brand and platform, one of its key pillars in measuring success through strategic partnerships. In addition, the partnership between Opy and Experian validates Opy's commitment to accelerate its growth by providing consumers with a broader set of verticals where Opy's solutions will provide financial ease for meaningful life purchases. "For 13 years, as a Vice President at Experian, I witnessed first hand the value of Experian's Consumer, Commercial, and Affinity solutions," explains Michele Raneri, Opy's SVP, Head of Data and Consumer Product. "Opy's ability to leverage Experian's countless tools to enable our operation will help drive business as well as continue to scale and grow Opy's presence within the US market. This is an exciting expansion on our relationship to collectively increase Opy's continued progress with large scale aggregators." "The role Opy will play in the financial services arena is a critical one, and we're thrilled to provide Experian's tools to enable their operation in many sectors, including healthcare and retail," said Craig Boundy, CEO of Experian North America. "We're excited to deepen our relationship with Opy to create new business opportunities and significant success for both companies in the near future. We look forward to this evolving relationship." For more information, visit www.opy.com. About Openpay Openpay Group Ltd (ASX: OPY) is a global, fast-growing, and highly differentiated provider of 'Buy now pay later' (BNPL) payment solutions. Through its platform, Openpay delivers the most flexible BNPL plans in the market, with longer terms - up to 24 months, and with higher limits - of up to $20,000. Openpay brings fairness, transparency, and flexibility to merchants and consumers alike, and focuses on industries where it can truly make a difference: Automotive, Healthcare, Home Improvement, Memberships, and Education. The company focuses on providing a greater range of payment solutions and has created a powerful next generation BNPL solution for those who need it the most, the responsible adult consumer looking to Buy now, Pay smarter. Openpay's B2B offering, OpyPro, is a SaaS-based platform that enables companies to manage trade accounts end-to-end, including applications, credit checks, approvals, and account management all in one system. Openpay provides services to, payment processors, merchants, and their customers in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and in the United States, where it operates under the brand name Opy. The company was recent ranked number 318 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2020, and is ranked 41 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Australia. For more information, visit www.openpay.com.au, www.openpay.co.uk, and www.opy.com. About Experian Experian is the world's leading global information services company. During life's big moments from buying a home or a car to sending a child to college to growing a business by connecting with new customers we empower consumers and our clients to manage their data with confidence. We help individuals to take financial control and access financial services, businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders to lend more responsibly, and organizations to prevent identity fraud and crime. We have 17,800 people operating across 45 countries, and every day we're investing in new technologies, talented people and innovation to help all our clients maximize every opportunity. We are listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and are a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Learn more at www.experianplc.com or visit our global content hub at our global news blog for the latest news and insights from the Group. Experian and the Experian marks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Experian and its affiliates. Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Learn more at www.experianplc.com or visit our global content hub and our global news blog for the latest news and insights from the Group. SOURCE Opy USA, Inc. "Growing up in a small town in Louisiana known as 'Cancer Alley' has undoubtedly influenced my passion for plant-based wellness and medicine," explains Olivia Alexander, Kush Queen Founder. "When doing a deep dive into the history of cannabis we found the unsung mother of cannabis culture, New Orleans, which is another inspiration behind 'Spirit of the Bayou.' We are excited to debut such a meaningful collection inspired by our roots, share the significance of New Orleans to cannabis and help others connect with themselves, wellness and healing as we welcome the fall season." Evoking serenity, stillness or sensuality, the "Spirit of the Bayou" ritual describes to first sip the cannabinoid elixir then soak into deep relaxation. The collection features: "Spirit of the Bayou" Cannabinoid Elixir , 20mg Delta 8 THC A curiously intoxicating blackberry lemonade cannabinoid elixir sets the tone for self-exploration with full body relaxation and a lifted buzz. Retails for $10 . A curiously intoxicating blackberry lemonade cannabinoid elixir sets the tone for self-exploration with full body relaxation and a lifted buzz. Retails for . "Spirit of the Bayou" Bath Bomb, 200mg Full-Spectrum CBD The unique rich green bath bomb features a hidden black color to create visual depth and a swamp-like sensory experience. Inhale scents of fresh rain, wet earth, sweet woods and native plant. Retails for $20 . A portion of proceeds will be donated directly to the Pointe-au-Chien Tribal Community to help rebuild after Hurricane Ida. The "Spirit of the Bayou" collection featuring one bath bomb and two elixirs retails for $37 and can be found at https://kushqueen.shop/products/the-swamp-queen-collection Each product is handmade with precision and care using premium hemp cannabinoids. Kush Queen products are made with finished oil or cannabinoids which are converted into their patent-pending nanotechnology water-based form. Water-based cannabinoids allow the molecules to penetrate through the dermis of the skin and get absorbed into the bloodstream for enhanced bioavailability. All Kush Queen products meet the Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC) standards and have been tested for potency, heavy metals, pesticides and microbials. About Kush Queen: Since 2015, Kush Queen has been committed to the highest standards and ingredients, innovation and education offering a modern perspective on wellness to the world. Founded by Olivia Alexander, her passion for cannabis shapes her determination to normalize lifestyle and medical usage for everyone. Under Olivia's direction, Kush Queen has built a community and catapulted into a multi-million-dollar global company. Kush Queen is distributed to 1000+ accounts in the US, Japan, Hong Kong, South Africa and UK with over 55 hemp and 25 cannabis SKUs. To share the Kush Queen experience, visit http://www.kushqueen.shop and on Instagram @kushqueenshop and @kushqueenco SOURCE Kush Queen Related Links http://www.kushqueen.shop ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Accelerate 2022 , a venture investor conference and startup competition hosted by George Mason University, today announced that Paul Misener, Amazon's Vice President for Global Innovation Policy and Communications, and Bobby Franklin, the National Venture Capital Association's CEO & President, will participate as keynote speakers at the Accelerate 2022 Gala Event on Wednesday, October 20. An engineer, scientist, lawyer, and inventor with three patents to his name, Misener has been an Amazon VP for more than 20 years and remains passionate about Amazon's history, culture, and methods of sustained, customer-obsessed innovation. The founder of Amazon's global public policy organization, his background includes being a law partner and Senior Legal Advisor to a US FCC Commissioner, as well as working in telecommunications and computer technology policy at Intel and at the US Department of Commerce. "As a native Virginian and a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law, it's a special honor to speak at the inaugural Accelerate 2022 event and to support its mission to showcase the region's startup and investment opportunities to a national audience," said Misener. "At Amazon, we are guided by a passion for invention and, even as we grow, we're committed to maintaining a startup's energy and a culture of innovation to help us better serve our customers and the communities in which we operate. I look forward to learning from others at the event and to sharing Amazon's perspective on technology and innovation." Investors, entrepreneurs, and innovation experts will attend this year's event along with startup companies who compete for cash prizes. In addition to the business competition, Accelerate 2022 will showcase student projects that are focused on smart and connected cities. "We're honored to announce Paul Misener as this year's keynote speaker given his unique background, perspective, and tenure at Amazon," said George Mason University President Gregory Washington. "His deep knowledge of the technology and media industries in conjunction with the depth of his experience living in the DC metro area exemplifies what innovators can do and, for that reason, we're thrilled to have him join us." About Accelerate 2022 and its Partner Organizations Accelerate 2022 convenes local and national investors with high-growth companies. It is a VC and angel conference imbedded with a startup/student competition. The event showcases the best and brightest businesses to investors in order to foster engagement and economic growth. Made possible by support from VATTIP, Arlington Economic Development, the Fairfax County Economic Development Agency, Gryphon Technologies, Fairfax County, Pangiam, Belcan, and as well as corporate and community funding, Accelerate 2022 is designed to create an immediate and positive impact on the Virginia, DC and Maryland economies, bolstering and advancing our entrepreneurial ecosystem. For information and event registration, visit www.accelerate2022.org. Accelerate 2022 on Twitter , LinkedIn , TikTok. SOURCE George Mason University LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Perch Mobility, the premier provider of portable charging pods that fuel the micromobility industry, announced the launch of a nationwide partnership with LAZ Parking, one of the fastest-growing parking and mobility companies in the United States. Perch will deploy its Community Charging Portals in LAZ locations at the request of local logistics partners who charge vehicles for Bird, Lime and other operators; and fleet managers so that they can charge collected scooters in centrally located micromobility hubs through this partnership. The multimillion-dollar micromobility industry has made waves in cities worldwide. With low unit economics, everyone from electric scooter operators to gig-economy logistics partners are looking for new methods to improve margins. Perch's on-demand Community Charging Portals are now available to reserve for a monthly fee of $699. To reserve a Perch Community Charging Portal at a LAZ location, visit https://www.perchmobility.com/chargers. "Electric scooters are a viable form of transportation with one pitfall: the inefficiency of the current model to charge and release them back for public use," said Perch Mobility CEO and Co-Founder Tom Schreiber. "Our Perch Community Portals are the key to overcome this efficiency barrier. LAZ's national network of surface parking lots in high traffic micromobility markets is unparalleled. Through our LAZ partnership, we will deploy a network of scooter charging centers to allow the nation's scooter operators, community business owners, property managers, and professional chargers looking to maximize the potential of their 'juicing' activity." Perch Mobility owns and operates a network of proprietary micromobility charging centers ("Portals"), which it leases to professional chargers, scooter operators, and business owners, who use the company's Community Charging Portals to bulk-charge scooters and maximize profit potential. The company is accelerating and operationalizing its plans to build an optimized micromobility charging ecosystem to keep up with the growing demand for shared micromobility transportation in a growing number of cities. Each 20-foot Perch Community Charging Portal is a customized recycled shipping container modified to deliver up to 250kWh per day. Typical use runs twice the average US household's power consumption. Each Perch Community Charging Portal has four bays (Pods), which each has the capacity to charge 21 scooters, with a total unit capacity of 84 scooters at a time. Each Portal can support about 300 deployed scooters in a community. "At LAZ, we see the intersection of transportation, electrification, and last mile logistics converging at the parking lot," said Alan Lazowski, Chairman and CEO of LAZ Parking. "Partnering with Perch Mobility presents an incredible opportunity to support an eco-friendlier way of mobility and to help maximize the profits of individuals quite literally paving the success of electric scooter travel. We are enthusiastic about this partnership and our future endeavors together." In addition to the Perch Community Charging Portal, Perch manufactures an Enterprise Portal, that is capable of charging 105 scooters simultaneously. About Perch Mobility Inc. Perch Mobility provides large-scale charging logistics solutions to scooter operators, local municipalities, and the rapidly growing electric scooter charging community. Founded in Los Angeles in 2018, Perch's suite of portable, rentable charging pods, made from repurposed shipping containers, enables the electric scooter charging community to maximize earnings while supporting the adoption of the eco-friendly micromobility industry. For more information, visit https://www.perchmobility.com/. About LAZ Parking LAZ Parking is the largest and fastest-growing privately owned parking operator in the United States and a pioneer in digital parking technology. Founded in Hartford, CT, in 1981, with four decades of experience providing best-in-class parking management and transportation services, LAZ operates over 1.2 million parking spaces across the country in over 3,200 locations in 35 states and 444 cities. Over the past decade, LAZ has led the industry with business intelligence, remote monitoring, eCommerce solutions, and most recently launched its Proximity On-Demand Services "LAZ PODS". Leveraging our national real estate parking network through connected tech enabled solutions, LAZ PODS includes EV charging, micro warehousing, last mile logistics, and ghost kitchens. LAZ works across various industries, including hospitality, commercial, healthcare, airports, transportation, universities, government, retail, events, residentials, and shuttle services. LAZ is a people first, conscious capitalist company that believes in elevating humanity through business. Additional information can be found at www.lazparking.com. SOURCE Perch Mobility Related Links https://www.perchmobility.com SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PhenoBiome today announced it will launch its first human gut microbiome assay through Genetic Direction, a Dallas-based distributor of genetics-based health management programs. Clinical Enterprise, Inc., a Eurofins Scientific company, will process the assays in its CLIA- and CAP-certified laboratory. The PhenoBiome test, GxGutHealth, will be available to patients on a non-exclusive basis through Genetic Direction's 900 health professional affiliates in the United States. The test provides a deeper level of understanding and insight into a patient's gut microbiome, by assessing important metabolic pathways and physiological properties that rely on the gut microbiome to thrive. The personalized and detailed reports can inform behavioral and other health interventions to help improve gut health. "We know that the gut microbiome plays a key role in our overall healthfrom the digestive system to the immune system and from brain health to heart health," said Pavel Novichkov Ph.D., co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of PhenoBiome. "Through more than a decade of research, our science team has identified the specific bacteria that contribute to more than 100 physiological functions in the human body, and built a test that provides a complete and accurate picture of an individual patient's gut microbiome." The test launched at the Overcoming Obesity 2021 Conference in Chicago, this week. In addition to the human test, PhenoBiome is also collaborating with one of the largest animal health companies in the world to apply human gut microbiome technology to animal health. That technology is expected to be available by late 2021. The company has plans to expand into additional areas, including the development of personalized prebiotics, probiotics, and food supplements based on its gut health and microbiome analyses, a women's health gut and vaginal microbiome assay, and collaborations with therapeutic companies to leverage PhenoBiome testing in product development. About PhenoBiome PhenoBiome is on a mission to become the gold standard for developing microbiome-based solutions, from assay development to therapeutics, across human, animal, and agritech markets. About Clinical Enterprise, Inc Clinical Enterprise Inc is a CLIA- and CAP-certified laboratory that is part of the Eurofins Scientific group of companies. A brand-new laboratory based in Framingham, MA, CE is focused on providing high quality genetic testing services including next generation sequencing (NGS) and array testing. With planned test options including 16S microbiome profiling, metagenomics, whole exome sequencing, targeted sequencing for lipid and lipoprotein disorders, and polygenic risk scores for CVD, cancer, and diabetes, CE is developing scalable offerings useful for both patients and providers. About Eurofins Scientific the global leader in bio-analysis Eurofins is Testing for Life. The Eurofins companies are global leaders in food, environment, and pharmaceutical product testing. They are also market leaders in testing and laboratory services for genomics, discovery pharmacology, forensics, advanced material sciences and highly specialized and molecular clinical diagnostic testing. With over 50,000 staff across a network of more than 800 laboratories in over 50 countries, Eurofins' companies offer a portfolio of over 200,000 analytical methods. About Genetic Direction Genetic Direction improves individuals' lives by utilizing genetic testing to develop personalized health management programs and deliver them through our Affiliate health professional channel and our B2B partners, all under a complete white label solution. Contact: Didier G. Perez [email protected] (415) 269 0666 Overcoming Obesity Conference 2021, Booth #217 SOURCE PhenoBiome Inc Related Links www.phenobiome.com DENVER, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Platte River Equity ("Platte River") is pleased to announce the sale of In-Place Machining Company ("IPM" or the "Company") to Levine Leichtman Capital Partners ("LLCP"). IPM is a premier provider of on-site solutions including precision field machining, diamond wire cutting, metrology and specialty welding. "Platte River is proud to have supported IPM's remarkable transformation over the past several years," said Mark Brown, Platte River Managing Director. "Ongoing investments in leadership and processes accelerated organic growth and positioned the Company to complete two highly strategic add-on acquisitions. IPM is truly a unique company with unique people. We look forward to watching their continued success well into the future." "The team at IPM has had an amazing experience growing the company the past several years while partnered with Platte River Equity," said Dean Flint, CEO of IPM. "Our customers, our employees and their families, and our shareholders have all benefited greatly from the relationship. We are also very excited about the next chapter in our storied history." Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to IPM and Platte River. Bartlit Beck LLP served as legal counsel to Platte River. About Platte River Equity Founded in 2006 and based in Denver, CO, Platte River Equity is a private equity firm focused on investments in established lower middle market operating companies with enterprise values of up to $250 million. The firm invests in target sectors where it has substantial operating and investing experience, including aerospace and transportation; industrial products and services; energy products and services; and agriculture and chemicals. Platte River utilizes conservative capital structures in order to invest in future growth opportunities and withstand changing economic environments. The firm also provides significant on-going support to its portfolio companies through dedicated resources across functional areas. The firm has raised funds with committed capital in excess of $1.3 billion and is currently investing out of its $625 million fourth fund. Platte River's employees are the largest collective investor across its funds, deeply aligning the firm with its investors and portfolio company management teams. About In-Place Machining Company Headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, IPM provides precision on-site machining and other field services to a wide range of industrial customers throughout the world. IPM leverages its highly skilled workforce and significant inventory of dedicated machine tools and systems to solve its customers most challenging and complex needs. Media Contact Brian P. Klaban Director of Business Development & Debt Capital Markets Phone #: +1 303 292 7317 Email: [email protected] Lauren A. Metz Business Development Senior Associate Phone #: +1 303 292 7321 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Platte River Equity ATLANTA, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alkaline water is lauded for its ability to restore pH balance to the body. But that doesn't mean it always goes down easy. If it isn't manufactured properly, it's easy for the popular water option to taste bitter. Bottled water brand Positivity Alkaline Water has cracked the code when it comes to creating alkaline water that is as tasty as it is pH-positive. Water is a necessity of life. But that doesn't mean it always tasted good. Tap water can vary in flavor from one city to the next. Even pure spring water can have its own essence that waffles between varying levels of acidity and sweetness. Alkaline water, in particular, tends to struggle with neither acidity nor sweetness, but rather bitterness. When water is made alkaline, it's all too easy for the higher pH levels to leave a drinker with an unpleasant experience. But there's one bottled water brand based out of Atlanta, Georgia that has managed to crack the code when it comes to creating flavorful, delicious alkaline water. Positivity Alkaline Water is well-known in Atlanta and the surrounding areas as a hydration option that is genuinely pH positive. How much so? The brand boldly states right on the bottle that its water has a whopping pH level of 9.5+. In many cases, taking typical water (usually around a neutral 6.8 to 7 pH level) and cranking its pH level up that high would warp the flavor of the beverage. But Positivity doesn't start with typical, neutral water. The brand gets its HO from the nearby Smoky Mountains where natural spring water is sourced from the local municipality of Greenville, Tennessee. This means the company is working with water that, from the get-go, has been boosted to around an 8+ pH level by nature. From there, Positivity puts the liquid through a process that uses minerals to boost the pH to a more effective 9.5+ level. This process enables Positivity to tamper with the original water as little as possible. The end result is a drink that is impressively pH positive while also sporting a GREAT TASTE. Pure and clean, every drop of Positivity water backs up the brand's objective to provide consumers with an alkaline product that is able to taste fantastic even while it restores their pH balance. About Positivity Alkaline Water: Positivity Alkaline Water was launched in December of 2017, operates out of Atlanta, Georgia, and is owned by serial entrepreneur David M. Walker, Esq. The brand is a subsidiary of StarWalker Industries, Inc., a minority-owned manufacturer and distributor of bottled water brands. Learn more about Positivity at positivitywater.com . Please direct inquiries to: Barry Musacchio (954) 732-6113 [email protected] SOURCE Positivity Alkaline Water Related Links https://shop.positivitywater.com/ CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pronto , a leader in partner ecosystem management, today announced it has raised $4 million in seed funding to help companies harness the full potential of their business partnerships by offering a highly secure, customizable, collaborative platform on which companies and partners can manage, automate, and track the development of their solutions and go-to-market efforts. The new investment was led by Work-Bench, with participation from Vertex Ventures US, Firebolt Ventures and Tau Ventures. Coinciding with this announcement, Pronto is releasing a free tier option of its Ecosystem Management Platform which also includes marquee account mapping feature Insights. With Insights, organizations can quickly and securely identify customer and prospect overlaps, thereby accelerating upsell and cross-sell go-to-market motions. This funding comes as Pronto has gained considerable traction amongst mid-market and large enterprise technology companies. Launched in late 2018, nearly 100 companies currently utilize Pronto's platform, including Red Hat, Juniper Networks, and Sisense. With this investment Pronto will scale its team and accelerate the delivery of its product roadmap and innovation. Ecosystem business models will be one of the largest business disruptors over the next 10 years and have the potential to unlock over a 100 trillion dollars in business value . The winning and losing companies of the next decade will be defined by how well they build, manage, scale, and monetize their partner ecosystems. Business leaders, however, still face a myriad of strategic and tactical challenges as they attempt to build thriving partner ecosystems. Pronto's Ecosystem Management platform solves these pain points by utilizing a collaborative, data-driven SaaS solution that enables organizations to manage the full lifecycle of their entire partner ecosystem, easily measure ROI, and accelerate the go-to-market of those relationships. Be it any form of partner relationship, Pronto's platform can manage it seamlessly on a single unified platform, thereby eliminating the need for multiple tools. Pronto can also manage multi-party relationships to: Automate critical ecosystem processes and workflows for respective teams to focus more on strategic efforts and less on mundane tasks Uncover hidden sales leads and opportunities for upsell and cross-sell by identifying overlaps across customer and prospect data that would otherwise be in siloed systems separated by organizational boundaries Accelerate collaboration via a shared, data-driven view of key activities and metrics Reveal key trends and patterns to accelerate ecosystem productivity Evaluate and optimize ecosystem relationships by delivering timely insights measured at the ecosystem and relationship level Reduce risk and resource dependency via a collaborative shared system of record Deploys within 90 minutes Customers Underscore the Value of an Intelligent, Cross-Platform Collaboration "At Red Hat, we have an ecosystem-first mentality. Partners are core to our GTM strategy, not just in how we sell but also how we innovate. With Pronto, not only are we automating our business processes and collaborating with partners on various deals but also building innovative industry specific solutions. We are now enabling our partner sellers like never before, winning more deals, also getting a holistic view of our ecosystem performance." -- Jeff Clawson, Director, North American Service Providers, Red Hat "Juniper Networks often works with technology partners to deliver innovative solutions that transform the experience of networking and security. With Pronto's unified ecosystem management platform, we are able to collaborate seamlessly with our technology partners, improve our teams' productivity and visualize the trends and patterns together with our executive teams." -- Craig Strachman, VP of Corporate Business Development, Juniper Networks Investors Highlight Critical Need for an Ecosystem Management Platform Across Industries "Pronto gives business development executives and partner leaders at some of the world's most recognized enterprise companies the visibility and insights across their business. Companies now have a comprehensive solution to increase collaboration effectively within and outside the organization. We're thrilled for the opportunity to support Pronto as they transform the ecosystem management landscape." -- Jessica Lin, Co-Founder and General Partner at Work-Bench "Having led tech alliances and built channel programs before becoming a venture capitalist, I immediately empathized with Pronto's vision of redefining how organizations collaborate with partners," said Chase Roberts, Principal at Vertex Ventures US. "After seeing a product demo, it was clear that the Pronto team was already executing toward this vision and that their product is a game-changer in its current form. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Pronto." -- Chase Roberts, Principal, Vertex Ventures US About Pronto Pronto is a leading ecosystem management platform that helps companies build, manage, scale, and monetize their partner ecosystems. With deep cross-organizational collaborative capabilities, intelligent automation, and a scalable environment, Pronto's platform enables organizations to unlock the cumulative ROI of their ecosystem. Nearly 100 companies such as Red Hat, Juniper Networks and Sisense depend on Pronto's enterprise-scale, highly secure, and robust innovation to scale and efficiently manage their partner ecosystem. Pronto is a privately held company based in Cupertino, California. To learn more, please visit www.gopronto.io SOURCE Pronto Related Links https://www.gopronto.io ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PS Furniture is launching a revolutionary handgun bulletproof table that can be transformed into a protective shield in seconds. Sudden ballistic violence can occur anywhere, and the Revolution Shield is a visually ordinary looking table which can provide quick protection from potential gun violence. This Revolution Shield Table will stop a bullet. Coinciding with the official product launch, PS Furniture is hosting a media event at Oak Ridge Gun Range in Orlando, Fla., on September 28, 2021 at 9 a.m. to demonstrate the durability of the Revolution Shield to protect against handguns. Handguns are involved in about 78 percent of mass shootings, and this product has the potential to save lives during the increasing number of active shooter situations. The local Orlando community has been heavily affected by gun violence in recent years, and as part of the event PS Furniture is donating this life-saving device to the local Orlando Police department. Roger Clark, executive vice president of PS Furniture, says, "The Revolution Shield is a critical investment for schools, hospitals, concert venues and other public spaces that are subject to possible mass shootings." PS Furniture has created flexible furniture solutions for more than 100 years, and Amulet is a leader in innovative ballistics protective technology. Their combination of expertise created the Revolution Shield to transform the future of the safety space. Media Contacts: Roger Clark [email protected] 414-559-3017 Melanie Parncutt [email protected] 443-643-6199 SOURCE PS Furniture New Broadcast Channel Targeted For January 2022 Release Will Expand Audience Reach and Revenue Opportunities MUMBAI, India and TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - QYOU Media Inc. (TSXV: QYOU) (OTCQB: QYOUF) has announced that The Q India, the company's Hindi language youth oriented channel, now available in over 122 million TV households and to over 676 million users via OTT, mobile and app based platforms in India, will be launching a new second broadcast channel in January 2022. Specific details of the new channel are not yet being revealed, however it will focus on the Young India demographic currently targeted by flagship channel The Q. Content and programming will similarly tap into the massively popular world of social video and feature content from digital creators and social media stars. Throughout 2021, Hindi language channel The Q has rapidly risen to become the fastest growing youth oriented channel in India. With strong ratings, new programming and the addition of over 30 new advertisers, The Q has vaulted past other long standing channels targeting Young India audiences. The company has been working for several months to identify and launch an additional channel that can tap into the success of The Q while expanding the audience reach and overall revenue potential for the business. Simran Hoon, CEO of The Q India commented, "While we would love to reveal more about our specific plans, we intend on keeping the exact audience for this channel under wraps for a bit longer. What I can say is that it will leverage in a big way the people and strategies that have driven us forward so strongly with The Q. The media landscape in India continues to expand rapidly and we are determined to leverage our current momentum in every way possible. We studied a variety of options for our next channel and we are all convinced that our decision will lead us to a new and expansive group of fans and advertiser opportunities." Curt Marvis, CEO and Co-Founder of QYOU Media Inc., commented, "We are continuing to build our unique brand and it is clearly resonating extremely well with Young India. We are ecstatic with the ratings, revenue and moreover the fanbase that has been created on The Q this year and this new channel launch will represent another important step forward toward our goal of establishing a premiere and lasting media brand for Young India. Simran and the entire team could not be more excited about this upcoming launch." About QYOU Media QYOU Media operates in India and the United States producing and distributing content created by social media stars and digital content creators. In India, via our flagship brand, The Q, we curate, produce and distribute premium content including television networks and VOD for cable and satellite television, OTT and mobile platforms. Our India based influencer marketing division, Chtrbox, is India's leading influencer marketing platform connecting brands and social media influencers. In the United States, we create and manage influencer marketing campaigns for major film studios, game publishers and brands. Founded and created by industry veterans from Lionsgate, MTV, Disney and Sony, QYOU Media's millennial and Gen Z-focused content reaches more than one billion consumers around the world every month. Experience our work at www.qyoumedia.com and www.theq.tv Join our shareholder chat group on Telegram: http://t.me/QYOUMedia 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. SOURCE QYOU Media Inc. Related Links http://theqyou.com/ LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- QS Quacquarelli Symonds, global higher education analysts, released their annual deep dive into the relationship between university choice and graduate employment outcomes. The result is the 2022 QS Graduate Employability Rankings: an independent list of the world's top institutions for career-focused students. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is named global employability leader, achieving perfect scores in three of the five indicators used by QS to compile the table. The QS Graduate Employability Rankings offer a more-granular comparative examination of the work universities are doing to cultivate propitious pathways into high-quality employment. Universities are rated on partnerships with employers (including internships), the number of sectoral leaders among their alumni, the frequency with which employers are present on campus, and a location-adjusted graduate employment rate. Highlights include: Stanford University (2 nd ) and the University of California, Los Angeles (3 rd ) complete an all-American top three. (2 ) and the (3 ) complete an all-American top three. The University of Sydney is the top non-American institution (4 th ). It is joined in the top ten by the University of Melbourne (8 th ). is the top non-American institution (4 ). It is joined in the top ten by the (8 ). Asia's leader is China's Tsinghua University (6 th ). leader is Tsinghua University (6 ). Only one British university attains a top-ten place: the University of Oxford (7 th , up from 10 th ). (7 , up from 10 ). The University of Hong Kong ranks 10 th . ranks 10 . France's Institut Polytechnique de Paris (12 th , new entrant) ranks #1 in continental Europe . Institut Polytechnique de (12 , new entrant) ranks #1 in continental . Canada's leader is the University of Toronto (21 st ). It is joined in the top 25 by the University of Waterloo (24 th ). leader is the (21 ). It is joined in the top 25 by the (24 ). Mexico's Tecnologico de Monterrey (26 th ) is Latin America's leader. Tecnologico de (26 ) is leader. The Arab Region is home to one top-100 institution: American University of Beirut (73rd). Ben Sowter, Director of Research, QS, said: "With students becoming increasingly conscious of the competitiveness of the global graduate jobs market, and of the ever-increasing financial costs of their educational investment, it is crucial that independent data of this sort is available to them, to inform evidence-based decisions about their educational futures. With Australian institutions performing better at the top than British ones, and with a variety of universities in Latin America and Asia outperforming their overall rank, it is also clear that it is valuable to shine a unique light on outstanding employability performance one that rewards institutions successfully fulfilling this critical aspect of their mission." QS Graduate Employability 2022: Top 10 2022 Rank 2020 Rank 2022 QSWUR Institution Location 1 1 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA 2 2 3= Stanford University USA 3 3 40 University of California, Los Angeles USA 4 4 38 The University of Sydney Australia 5 5 5 Harvard University USA 6 6 17 Tsinghua University China (Mainland) 7 10 2 University of Oxford UK 8 7 37 The University of Melbourne Australia 9 12 21 Cornell University USA 10 9 22 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2004-2021 https://www.TopUniversities.com/. Methodology: https://www.topuniversities.com/employability-rankings/methodology. Full rankings: www.TopUniversities.com. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1503777/QS_World_University_Rankings_Logo.jpg SOURCE QS Quacquarelli Symonds Related Links http://www.qs.com/ The new store is located at 1535 Landess Ave, #124, Milpitas, CA 95035, in the Seasons Shopping Center and will be open seven days a week, from 8AM 9PM daily. While Red Ribbon is best known for its selection of mouth-watering, beautifully crafted cakes a special occasion "must have for many Filipinos" it also features an enticing line-up of pastries that can be enjoyed every day. For those who want to indulge in a true taste of the Philippines, Red Ribbon offers several options that showcase the brand's unique cultural heritage and culinary roots, including these best-sellers: Shareable Cakes Mango Supreme Cake This cake alone makes a trip to Red Ribbon worth the drive. This signature product is made with Philippine mangoes, which many consider to be the sweetest in the world. Featuring three layers of moist chiffon cake filled with white cream and a golden, mango-filled glaze, it is finished with additional mango chunks and topped with a maraschino cherry. This cake alone makes a trip to Red Ribbon worth the drive. This signature product is made with Philippine mangoes, which many consider to be the sweetest in the world. Featuring three layers of moist chiffon cake filled with white cream and a golden, mango-filled glaze, it is finished with additional mango chunks and topped with a maraschino cherry. Ube Overload Cake This iconic Filipino confection features a deep purple hue, as it is made with real Philippine ube halaya or purple yam, a native root crop that is a sweeter and more colorful version of taro. It is covered with delectable white cream frosting and bright purple ube cake crumbs. This iconic Filipino confection features a deep purple hue, as it is made with real Philippine ube halaya or purple yam, a native root crop that is a sweeter and more colorful version of taro. It is covered with delectable white cream frosting and bright purple ube cake crumbs. Yema Caramel Cake Soft, moist white chiffon filled and covered with yema (Philippine custard) caramel filling and finished with toasted cashew nuts. Snackable Pastries Butter Mamon This sweet pastry provides the perfect blend of moist chiffon and pure butter for a melt-in-your-mouth treat. This sweet pastry provides the perfect blend of moist chiffon and pure butter for a melt-in-your-mouth treat. Cheesy Ensaimada Red Ribbon's signature pastry offers soft, moist bread topped with butter, sugar, and cheesy deliciousness for the perfect sweet and savory flavor combination. Red Ribbon's signature pastry offers soft, moist bread topped with butter, sugar, and cheesy deliciousness for the perfect sweet and savory flavor combination. Chicken Empanada A savory dough generously filled with delectable chicken and a unique blend of spices, carefully cooked until golden brown. For those who simply want to treat their taste buds to a unique twist on more familiar flavors, like chocolate and mocha, Red Ribbon offers several stand-out options for both special occasions and everyday enjoyment, including: Black Forest Cake Layers of liqueur-moistened chocolate cake, brimming with maraschino cherries and cream, rich chocolate shavings and chocolate curls. Layers of liqueur-moistened chocolate cake, brimming with maraschino cherries and cream, rich chocolate shavings and chocolate curls. Mocha Flan Rich moist mocha chiffon cake topped with delicious, creamy leche flan. Rich moist mocha chiffon cake topped with delicious, creamy leche flan. Choco Mocha Crunch Chocolate chiffon cake filled with honeycomb candy in every layer; it is finished with rich mocha cream and topped with more honeycomb candy and chocolate shavings. "Red Ribbon's delicious cakes and pastries are perfect for gatherings with family and friends and hit the spot when you're craving a special treat during the week," said Agnes Briones, Business Unit Head, Red Ribbon Bakeshop, Inc. "We're thrilled to introduce our bakery favorites to a new audience of sweet and savory fans and always look forward to seeing the Filipino community come out to enjoy some familiar flavors." Milpitas customers can enjoy their Red Ribbon baked goods through a variety of ordering options, including to-go, or through the following online channels: the Red Ribbon Ordering app (available for download at the App Store and Google Play), the Red Ribbon website (redribbonbakeshop.us) and the DoorDash delivery platform. Red Ribbon also offers nationwide shipping. Founded in the Philippines more than 40 years ago, Red Ribbon's sweet success story began with a single mission: to create delicious and beautiful cakes that make every family celebration truly special. Since then, the bakery brand has expanded its offerings to include desserts-for-one and options intended to satisfy the savory snackers. For more information about Red Ribbon Bakeshop's U.S. locations, featured menu items, and nationwide shipping details, please visit redribbonbakeshop.us; Red Ribbon fans also can follow the brand's Facebook and Instagram pages for the latest news, including new products, upcoming store openings and special offers. About Red Ribbon Bakeshop Since being founded in 1979, Red Ribbon Bakeshop Inc. has become one of the largest and fastest-growing bakeshops in the Philippines. For the past 40 years the brand has offered superior tasting cakes and pastries and has proved itself as a staple for most Filipino families to mark every special occasion, celebration, and milestone. Today, the international bakery brand boasts over 500 total locations and over 30 bakeshops across the U.S. with locations in California, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, and Illinois. The Los Angeles Times has twice cited the brand's cakes as the "Best of L.A." and Eater also named Red Ribbon Bakeshop among the best restaurants for ube desserts in Las Vegas. Most recently, Red Ribbon entered the "Top 500 Chain Restaurants in the U.S." list, which is published annually by leading foodservice research and consulting firm, Technomic. Additionally, Red Ribbon's California-based manufacturing facility recently received its Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) certification. HACCP is an internationally recognized process control system that identifies where hazards might occur in the food production process and puts into place the safety measures that a facility should take to prevent the hazards from occurring. About Jollibee Jollibee Foods Corporation is one of the fastest-growing Asian restaurant companies in the world. It or its affiliates operate in 33 countries, with over 5,800 stores globally with branches in the Philippines, United States, Canada, the People's Republic of China, United Kingdom, Italy, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Panama, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and India. It has eight wholly-owned brands (Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, Red Ribbon, Mang Inasal, Yonghe King, Hong Zhuang Yuan, Smashburger), five franchised brands (Burger King, Panda Express, and PHO24 in the Philippines, Dunkin' Donuts and Tim Ho Wan in certain territories in China), 80% ownership of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and 60% ownership in the SuperFoods Group that owns Highlands Coffee and PHO24 brands. Jollibee Foods Corporation is a significant investor in Titan Dining LP, a private equity fund and the ultimate holding entity of the Tim Ho Wan (THW) Brand and has a joint venture with the THW Group to open THW restaurants in Mainland China. The Group will also establish a 50/50 joint venture to operate and expand Yoshinoya in the Philippines. Yoshinoya is one of the largest and most recognized Japanese restaurant brands globally. Jollibee Foods Corporation was named the Philippines' most admired company by the Asian Wall Street Journal for ten years. It was also honored as one of Asia's Fab 50 Companies and among the World's Best Employers by Forbes. In 2020, Gallup awarded Jollibee Foods Corporation with the Exceptional Workplace Award, making it the first Philippine-based company to receive the distinction. Jollibee Foods Corporation has grown brands that bring delightful dining experiences to its customers worldwide, in line with its mission of serving great tasting food and spreading the joy of eating to everyone. SOURCE Red Ribbon Bakeshop Inc. IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Restaurant365, the leading all-in-one restaurant management platform, today announced that Co-Founder and CEO Tony Smith was named a recipient of the seventh annual 2021 Orange County Business Journal (OCBJ) Innovator of the Year Awards. This award honors, recognizes and celebrates individuals and their organizations who are creating game-changing products and services, and demonstrate brilliance and leadership in innovation. "I am humbled to be recognized among five other leaders that are driving change and progress in their respective industries," said Smith. "On the heels of our recent acquisition of Compeat, Restaurant365 is poised for growth and will continue to be the leading platform solution for restaurants of all sizes. At a time when many restaurants are struggling to recover from the pandemic, our technology and tools are enabling owners and operators to optimize back of house operations and modernize accounting, allowing them to build for long-term success." Smith co-founded Restaurant365 in 2011 alongside partners Morgan Harris and John Moody to fit the needs of an underserved, fragmented market, with the ultimate goal of helping restaurants grow. The company's fully integrated restaurant accounting, operations and reporting capabilities delivers an improved flow of information and increased accuracy for restaurants. Prior to starting Restaurant365, Smith served as the Director of Services at Dynamic Methods, a software consulting company focused primarily on designing and implementing accounting and operations software solutions. Currently, Smith oversees company vision, focusing on workplace culture and long-term strategy. Last year, Restaurant365 was named to the Forbes list of Best Startup Employers, as well as a finalist in OCTANe's High Tech Awards. In 2019, Smith was honored with QuantumShift's "Top Entrepreneur in America" award, an award that recognizes the achievements of high-growth entrepreneurs from leading private companies. That same year, Restaurant365 also received recognition in The Herd's "Top 100 Private Technology Companies." Smith was also a finalist in Ernst & Young's 2018 "Entrepreneur of the Year awards." The company won the Best Product for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) category in the 2018 SaaS Awards Program. The OC Business Journal hosted its 7th annual Innovator of the Year Awards ceremony at the Irvine Marriott. Smith was selected among 79 nominees within a range of companies and industries. About Restaurant365 Restaurant365 is the industry's leading all-in-one, cloud-based accounting, inventory, scheduling, payroll and HR solution developed specifically for restaurants. The R365 platform simplifies day-to-day management for restaurant operators, allowing them to control food costs and optimize labor costs. Integrations and open APIs enable Restaurant365 to connect with other systems including POS providers, vendors and banks. The result is accurate, timely reporting that provides a clear and complete view of their businesses. Restaurant365 allows operators to focus on what matters -- their guests. Restaurant365 is based in Irvine, California with offices in Austin, Texas and Petaluma, California. The company is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, ICONIQ, Tiger Global Management, and Serent Capital. Additional information is available at Restaurant365.com. Contact: Lisa Tareila, Next PR 516-286-9317 [email protected] SOURCE Restaurant365 Related Links http://Restaurant365.com External and internal experts to discuss OEM production delays, volumes & pricing, labor shortages, climate change, and much more VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - With U.S. medium earthmoving equipment prices up 38% year over year at Ritchie Bros., the company is diving into the data with industry experts to discuss what is driving this hot construction market in 2021. On Thursday, September 30, at 12 p.m. Pacific (3 p.m. Eastern) Ritchie Bros. will host an Inside Edge panel about the construction industry, covering OEM production delays, auction volumes & pricing, labor shortages, climate change, and more. "Our Inside Edge Live Industry Panels are great way for Ritchie Bros. to connect with customers and industry associations to share expertise and data to help us all better understand the diverse issues and factors impacting the industries we operate in every day," said Matt Ackley, Chief Marketing Officer and host of Ritchie Bros.' Inside Edge Panels. "For our September 30 construction panel, we have some great guests joining our discussion, including Bob Lanham, President of Associated General Contractors of America, and Ron Glen, CEO of the Alberta Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association." The September 30 panel will also include in-house Ritchie Bros. experts, including Doug Olive, Senior Vice President, Pricing, and Doug Rusch, Managing Director, Sales, for Rouse Services. Ritchie Bros.' Inside Edge Construction Panel is open to anyone and will be held as a Microsoft Teams Live Event. Visit rbauction.com/blog to register today. For more information, please email: [email protected]. About Ritchie Bros.: Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is a global asset management and disposition company, offering customers end-to-end solutions for buying and selling used heavy equipment, trucks and other assets. Operating in a number of sectors, including construction, transportation, agriculture, energy, oil and gas, mining, and forestry, the company's selling channels include: Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, the world's largest industrial auctioneer offers live auction events with online bidding; IronPlanet, an online marketplace with featured weekly auctions and providing the exclusive IronClad Assurance equipment condition certification; Marketplace-E, a controlled marketplace offering multiple price and timing options; Mascus, a leading European online equipment listing service; and Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty, offering privately negotiated sales. The Company's suite of solutions also includes Ritchie Bros. Asset Solutions and Rouse Services LLC, which together provides a complete end-to-end asset management, data-driven intelligence and performance benchmarking system. Ritchie Bros. also offers sector-specific solutions including GovPlanet, TruckPlanet, and Kruse Energy, plus equipment financing and leasing through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services. For more information about Ritchie Bros., visit RitchieBros.com. Photos and video for embedding in media stories are available at rbauction.com/media. SOURCE Ritchie Bros. TOMS RIVER, N.J., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leasing is now under way for a new 12,600-square-foot retail center in the Silverton section of this Ocean County municipality being developed by March Construction of Wayne, .N.J. R.J. Brunelli & Co., LLC was named exclusive leasing agent for the property. With all municipal approvals now complete, March broke ground on the site in mid-September. With a summer 2022 opening anticipated, the new 12,600-sq.-ft. retail building on Hooper Ave. in Toms River can be developed for a single tenant or be subdivided. In the case of restaurants, the site can accommodate a drive-thru on an endcap location. Mario Brunelli: "This easily accessible site offers high visibility on the 'going-home' side of Hooper Ave., a four-lane highway which delivers a daily traffic count exceeding 38,200." Located at 1882 Hooper Ave., just off the signalized intersection at Church Rd., the 1.7-acre site can be developed for a single tenant or be subdivided, with targeted categories including restaurants, day care, medical or dental offices, eyewear, bakeries, coffee shops, salons, cellular, and jewelry. In the case of restaurants, the site can accommodate a drive-thru on an endcap location. "This easily accessible site offers high visibility on the 'going-home' side of Hooper Ave., a four-lane highway which delivers a daily traffic count exceeding 38,200," said project manager Mario Brunelli, a VP and Principal at Old Bridge-based R.J. Brunelli. In addition to Hooper Ave., the site provides rear access from Hinds Rd. and is also directly accessible from the U-turn jughandle at the Church St. intersection. The site adjoins a freestanding Walgreens (situated at Hooper Ave./Church Rd. intersection). Other prominent retail and food tenants in the immediate area along Hooper Ave. include Surf Taco and Bubakkoo Burritos (both just across the street), Stop & Shop, Burlington, Advance Auto Parts, Jersey Mike's, Manhattan Bagel, and McDonald's. Additionally, Starbucks recently opened on a pad site in the nearby Stop & Shop center on Brick Blvd. in Brick Township. The property will serve a primary market of 61,507 residents within a three-mile radius. Average household income in that area exceeds $97,800. Extending out to a five-mile radius, the market includes 151,972 residents with an average household income of just under $103,000. "Beyond the residential component, as the Ocean County seat, Toms River provides this site with a robust daytime population of 7,182 within a mile and 51,607 within three miles," Mr. Brunelli noted. "These figures include employees and students at Ocean County College, which is just 1.5 miles away, and such other major employers as the county government, Meridian Health Systems and the Toms River Regional School District." He added that the site also benefits from an uptick in seasonal traffic during the summer months, due to Silverton's location along the water. "Home prices in this area are skyrocketing like never before, especially during Covid, as more people are making their way to the water as a way to 'escape,'" Mr. Brunelli said. Lou March, Jr., President of March Construction, said his company expects to turn the building over to tenants for store build-outs in March 2022, and is targeting a grand opening for next summer. R.J. Brunelli additionally represented March Construction on its acquisition of the site; Michael DeGeorge, owner of DeGeorge Realty, acted as the seller's broker. This will be the second project for March and Brunelli in the last two years. R.J. Brunelli served as exclusive leasing agent on The Parke at Hamburg in Wayne, March's 50,150-square-foot retail project that opened 100%- leased last year with a tenant lineup led by Trader Joe's, Ulta, The Paper Store, Everbrook Academy and Habit Burger, to be followed this spring by Panera Bread. "Following our success in Wayne, we look forward to R.J. Brunelli delivering another strong tenant mix for this smaller scale project in this prime Ocean County location," said Mr. March. For leasing information on the Hooper Ave. site, contact Mario Brunelli, (732) 721-5800 [email protected] About R.J. Brunelli & Co. R.J. Brunelli & Co. serves as exclusive broker for 31 retail properties with a combined gross leasable area (GLA) exceeding 2 million square feet, and five properties for sale. The properties are located throughout New Jersey. The firm also serves as exclusive or preferred tenant representative for 22 retail, restaurant and service chains. These include representation in various New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania counties for such companies as Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, Jersey Strong, Urban Bricks Pizza, My CBD Organics, European Wax Center, Asian Food Markets, and New Jersey Spine and Wellness. Press contacts: At R.J. Brunelli & Co., LLC, Danielle Brunelli, President, (732) 721-5800; at Jaffe Communications. Bill Parness, [email protected], (732) 673-6852, or Elisa Krantz, [email protected], (908) 789-0700. SOURCE R.J. Brunelli & Co. BALI, Indonesia and BANGKOK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This November, our brave volunteers are invited to challenge themselves and paddle 10km from Pantai Jerman Kuta to Old Man's Canggu, to help SOS raise funds for much-needed food donations. At the first SOS Million Meals Paddle event in 2020, more than 50 participants joined the paddle, and together they raised over IDR 1 Billion. These funds paid for over 400,000 nutritious meals, distributed for free to communities in need. With the ongoing global pandemic and lack of business from tourism, communities in Bali need help more than ever before. Building on the paddle event 2020 success, SOS aims to double the impact of Million Meals Paddle 2021, and have a target to raise more than IDR 2 Billion, enabling them to distribute free nutritious meals to approximately one million people. "We were very proud how Bali came together at our Paddle last year to help those in need. This year the tourism crisis has sadly created many more recipients in need of our nutritious food, so we hope to have an even bigger event this year", said Bo H. Holmgreen, Founder and CEO of SOS Global. "I am proud to have joined Bali"s largest NGO on this noble quest and we look forward to continuing our food services for the hungry. Recent lock-downs have been difficult as we had to close most of our kitchens to protect the safety of our hundreds of volunteers and staff, yet we still managed to serve tens of thousands of meals every week during these hard times", adds Minni Vestergard, General Manager of SOS Indonesia. Participants are invited to sign-up for the Million Meals Paddle 2021 event at our website. Scholars of Sustenance (SOS) is a Non-Profit Organization that focuses on food distribution, dedicating its resources to tackle food insecurity and food waste issues. SOS Bali operations continue to grow in the wake of COVID-19, and the dedicated staff of 25, who are still all fully employed despite the economic downturn, distributed a total of 1.5 million free meals Bali-wide in 2020. Follow SOS Bali on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Register now and find more information at https://www.scholarsofsustenance.org/mmp2021 www.facebook.com/scholarsofsustenancefoundation/ SOURCE Scholars of Sustenance Related Links https://www.scholarsofsustenance.org LAS VEGAS, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientific Games International, Inc. (the "Issuer"), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Scientific Games Corporation ("SGMS"), announced today that it is soliciting consents (the "Consent Solicitation") from the holders of its 5.000% Senior Secured Notes due 2025 ("5% Secured Notes"), 3.375% Senior Secured Notes due 2026 ("3.375% Secured Notes"), 8.625% Senior Notes due 2025 ("8.625% Notes"), 5.500% Senior Notes due 2026 ("5.5% Notes"), 8.250% Senior Notes due 2026 ("8.25% Notes"), 7.000% Senior Notes due 2028 ("7% Notes") and 7.250% Senior Notes due 2029 ("7.25% Notes" and, together with the 5% Secured Notes, the 3.375% Secured Notes, the 8.625% Notes, the 5.5% Notes, the 8.25% Notes and the 7% Notes, the "Notes") for the adoption of certain proposed amendments as set forth below (the "Proposed Amendments") to the indentures governing the Notes (the "Indentures"). The Proposed Amendments seek to amend the Indentures' requirement that at least 75% of the consideration received from an Asset Sale is cash or cash equivalents to reduce that percentage to 60%, solely with respect to an initial public offering relating to SG Lottery (as defined below) occurring prior to June 30, 2022, subject to the terms and conditions described in the Issuer's Consent Solicitation Statement dated September 23, 2021 (the "Statement"). Unless otherwise defined herein, capitalized terms used herein have the meanings given to them in the Statement. As previously disclosed on June 29, 2021, SGMS is evaluating strategic alternatives for the intended divestiture of its lottery business ("SG Lottery"), including an initial public offering or combination with a special purpose acquisition company, or a sale or a strategic combination with another business (any such transaction, a "SG Lottery Transaction"). If an initial public offering of SG Lottery is consummated, we expect to hold no more than a minority equity interest in the entity that owns SG Lottery, but the amount of such minority equity interest is uncertain at this time. We are pursuing the Consent Solicitation to provide us greater flexibility with respect to the equity offered in the potential initial public offering. We can, though, consummate the initial public offering of SG Lottery and comply with the Indentures without receiving the required consents. Consistent with our previously stated intent to rapidly de-leverage our balance sheet, and bring our leverage in line with public industry peers, we currently intend to use a substantial majority of the net proceeds from an SG Lottery Transaction to repay indebtedness of SGMS and its restricted subsidiaries. SGMS does not intend to pay any dividends, or make any repurchase of its equity, with the net proceeds from an SG Lottery Transaction, nor does it intend to distribute any retained interests in SG Lottery to its shareholders (as a dividend or otherwise). We cannot assure you we will ultimately consummate an initial public offering of SG Lottery, or that, if we do so, we will do so prior to June 30, 2022. If we fail to do so prior to such date, the Proposed Amendments will not become operative and we will not make the Consent Payment. The Consent Solicitation will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City Time, on September 30, 2021, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Issuer in its sole discretion (such date and time, as the same may be extended, the "Expiration Date"). Only Holders of the Notes as of 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on September 22, 2021 (such date and time, including as such date and time may be changed by the Issuer, from time to time, the "Record Date") are entitled to consent to the Proposed Amendments pursuant to the Consent Solicitation. If the Holders of a majority in aggregate principal amount outstanding of each series of the Notes (the "Required Consents") validly deliver Consents to the Proposed Amendments on or prior to the Expiration Date and do not validly revoke such Consents prior to the Revocation Deadline (as defined below), it is expected that the Issuer, SGMS, the guarantors party thereto (the "Guarantors") and the trustee will execute supplemental indentures (the "Supplemental Indentures") effecting the Proposed Amendments (such time of execution, the "Consent Effective Time"). The Supplemental Indentures will be effective immediately upon execution thereof as to all Holders at the Consent Effective Time, whether or not a Holder delivered a Consent, but will not be operative until the Consent Payment is made. The earlier to occur of the Consent Effective Time and the Expiration Date is referred to herein as the "Revocation Deadline." Consents may be validly revoked at any time prior to the Revocation Deadline, but not thereafter. Consents to the Proposed Amendment shall not be revoked at any time after the Revocation Deadline, even if the Expiration Date is later than such Revocation Deadline. Promptly after the Consent Effective Time, the Issuer will notify DTC of the occurrence of the Consent Effective Time. In the event that the Consent Effective Time for a series of Notes has occurred and the SG Lottery IPO is consummated, the Issuer will pay in cash, on the date on or prior to the consummation of an initial public offering of SG Lottery, an aggregate amount of (i) US$3,125,000.00 with respect to the 5% Notes, (ii) 812,500.00 with respect to the 3.375% Secured Notes, (iii) US$1,375,000.00 with respect to the 8.625% Notes, (iv) 625,000.00 with respect to the 5.5% Notes, (v) US$2,750,000.00 with respect to the 8.25% Notes, (vi) US$1,750,000.00 with respect to the 7% Notes and (vii) US$1,250,000.00 with respect to the 7.25% Notes, in each case for the benefit, on a pro rata basis, of each Holder of record of such series of Notes on the Record Date which has validly delivered a Consent to the Proposed Amendments on or prior to the Expiration Date and not validly revoked its Consent prior to the Revocation Deadline. If the Required Consents with respect to a series of Notes are not delivered, no Holder of such series of Notes will be eligible to receive any pro rata portion of the Consent Payment, including Holders who have validly delivered their Consent. The Consent Payment will be made by the Issuer to the Paying Agent (as defined herein) for the benefit of the holders of the Notes who delivered (and did not revoke) such valid Consents to the Proposed Amendments with respect to the series of Notes for which Required Consents were obtained. Holders of Notes for which no Consent is delivered will not receive any pro rata portion of the Consent Payment, even though the Proposed Amendments, once effective, will bind all Holders of such series of Notes and their transferees. No Consent Payment will be payable unless the Required Consents are delivered in the Consent Solicitation for each series of Notes at or prior to the Expiration Date and the Supplemental Indentures related thereto are executed and delivered by the parties thereto. The Issuer reserves the right to modify the Statement and the terms and conditions of the Consent Solicitation or to terminate the Consent Solicitation at any time. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC are the solicitation agents in the Consent Solicitation and Global Bondholder Services Corporation has been retained to serve as the information, tabulation and paying agent. Persons with questions regarding the Consent Solicitation should contact Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC at (toll free) +1 (800) 624-1808 or (collect) +1 (212) 761-1057 and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC at (toll free) +1 (800) 828-3182 or (collect) +1 (212) 902-5962 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Requests for the Statement should be directed to Global Bondholder Services Corporation, at (toll free) +1 (866) 470-3700, (banks and brokers) +1 (212) 430-3774, by facsimile (for Eligible Institutions only) at +1 (212) 430-3775/3779 or by email to [email protected]. None of the Issuer, SGMS, the solicitation agents, the information, tabulation and paying agent and the trustee or any of their respective affiliates is making any recommendation as to whether Holders of the Notes should deliver consents in response to the Consent Solicitation. Holders must make their own decisions as to whether to deliver consents. This press release is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. This announcement is also not a solicitation of consents with respect to the Proposed Amendments or otherwise. The Consent Solicitation is being made solely through the Statement referred to above and related materials. The Consent Solicitation is not being made to Holders of Notes in any jurisdiction in which the Issuer is aware that the making of the Consent Solicitation would not be in compliance with the laws of such jurisdiction. In any jurisdiction in which the securities laws or blue sky laws require the Consent Solicitation to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Consent Solicitation will be deemed to be made on the Issuer's behalf by the solicitation agents or one or more registered brokers or dealers that are licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction. Neither the Statement nor any documents related to the Consent Solicitation have been filed with, and have not been approved or reviewed by, any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country. No authority has passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Statement or any documents related to the Consent Solicitation, and it is unlawful and may be a criminal offense to make any representation to the contrary. Forward-Looking Statements In this press release, Scientific Games makes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "will," "may," and "should." These statements are based upon management's current expectations, assumptions and estimates and are not guarantees of timing, future results or performance. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated in these statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including those factors described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including Scientific Games' current reports on Form 8-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its latest annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 1, 2021 (including under the headings "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors"). Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and, except for Scientific Games' ongoing obligations under the U.S. federal securities laws, Scientific Games undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. No assurance can be given that the transactions described herein will be consummated or as to the ultimate terms of any such transactions. SOURCE Scientific Games Corporation Related Links www.scientificgames.com BEIJING, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sogou Inc. (NYSE: SOGO) ("Sogou" or the "Company"), an innovator in search and a leader in China's internet industry, today announced the completion of the merger (the "Merger"), contemplated by the Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated September 29, 2020 and amended on December 1, 2020 and further amended on July 19, 2021 (as so amended, the "Merger Agreement"), by and among the Company, THL A21 Limited ("THL"), TitanSupernova Limited ("Parent"), and Tencent Mobility Limited ("TML") (THL, Parent, and TML, each of which is or was a direct or indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent Holdings Limited ("Tencent")), in which Parent was merged with and into the Company, with the Company continuing as the surviving company. As a result of the Merger, the Company ceased to be a publicly-traded company and became a privately-held company wholly-owned indirectly by Tencent. Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, all the Class A ordinary shares, par value $0.001 per share, of the Company ("Class A Ordinary Shares"), including Class A Ordinary Shares represented by American depositary shares ("ADSs"), each ADS representing one Class A Ordinary Share, that were issued and outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the Merger (the "Effective Time"), other than the Excluded Shares (as defined in the Merger Agreement) and ADSs representing the Excluded Shares, were cancelled, and ceased to exist, in exchange for the right of the holders thereof to receive $9.00 in cash per Class A Ordinary Share (the "Per Share Merger Consideration") or $9.00 in cash per ADS (the "Per ADS Merger Consideration"), as applicable. Payment of the Per ADS Merger Consideration (less an ADS cancellation fee of $0.05 per ADS and any other applicable fees), without interest and net of any applicable withholding taxes, will be made to holders of ADSs in respect of ADSs they held representing Class A Ordinary Shares that were issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time as soon as practicable after The Bank of New York Mellon, the ADS depositary, receives the aggregate Per ADS Merger Consideration from the paying agent. Shareholders of record of the Company as of immediately prior to the Effective Time who are entitled to the Per Share Merger Consideration will receive from the paying agent a letter of transmittal and instructions on how to surrender their share certificates representing their Class A Ordinary Shares, if any, in exchange for the Per Share Merger Consideration, without interest and net of any applicable withholding taxes, and should wait to receive the letter of transmittal before surrendering their share certificates. Shortly prior to the completion of the Merger on September 23, 2021, the transactions contemplated by the Share Purchase Agreement, dated September 29, 2020 and amended on December 1, 2020 and further amended on July 19, 2021, by and among Sohu.com Limited, Sohu.com (Search) Limited ("Sohu Search"), and Parent, providing for Sohu Search's sale to Parent of all of the Class A Ordinary Shares and Class B ordinary shares, par value of $0.001 per share, of the Company ("Class B Ordinary Shares") owned by Sohu Search (the "Sohu/Tencent Sogou Share Purchase") were completed. As a result of the completion of the Sohu/Tencent Sogou Share Purchase and the contribution by THL of all of the Class B Ordinary Shares held by THL to Parent, Parent held at least 90% of the voting power represented by all issued and outstanding Class A Ordinary Shares and Class B Ordinary Shares of the Company immediately prior to the completion of the Merger, and the Merger was effected through a statutory short-form merger of Parent with and into the Company in accordance with section 233(7) of the Companies Act of the Cayman Islands. The Company also announced today that it has requested that trading of its ADSs on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") be suspended and that the NYSE file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") a Form 25 (the "Form 25") notifying the SEC of the NYSE's withdrawal of the ADSs from listing on the NYSE and intention to withdraw the Class A Ordinary Shares from registration under Section 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). The Company intends to file with the SEC, 10 days after the NYSE files the Form 25, a Form 15 suspending the Company's reporting obligations under the Exchange Act and withdrawing the registration of the Class A Ordinary Shares under the Exchange Act. The deregistration will become effective 90 days after the filing of the Form 25 or such shorter period as may be determined by the SEC. The Company's obligations to file with or furnish to the SEC certain reports and forms, including Form 20-F and Form 6-K, will be suspended immediately as of the filing date of the Form 15 and will terminate once the deregistration of the Class A Ordinary Shares becomes effective. The management and the board of directors of Sogou thank the Sogou team for their efforts so far, and look forward to a new chapter for Sogou now beginning. Safe Harbor Statement This announcement includes statements that constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Sogou's and Sogou management's beliefs and expectations are forward-looking statements. Any such statements are based on current plans, estimates, and projections, which involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The Company cautions you that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement or other information included in this press release, except as may be required by applicable law. About Sogou Sogou is an innovator in search and a leader in China's internet industry. With a mission to make it easy to communicate and get information, Sogou has grown to become the second-largest search engine by mobile queries and the fourth largest internet company by MAU in China. Sogou has a wide range of innovative products and services, including the Sogou Input Method, which is the largest Chinese language input software for both mobile and PC. Sogou is also at the forefront of AI development and has made significant breakthroughs in voice and image technologies, machine translation, and Q&A, which have been successfully integrated into our products and services. For investor enquiries, please contact: Sogou Investor Relations Tel: +86 10 5689 8068 Email: [email protected] For media enquiries, please contact: Sogou Public Relations Tel: +86 10 5689 9999 (61958) Email: [email protected] SOURCE Sogou Inc. Related Links www.sogou.com NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tennessee Attorney Daniel L. Clayton was recently inducted into the International Academy of Trial Lawyers (IATL) during its mid-year meeting in Vista, California. An international legal association with a presence in nearly 40 countries, the Academy is comprised of just 500 Fellows in the U.S. and 150 attorneys abroad. Fellowship is extended by invitation only after attorneys have been rigorously vetted through both peer and judicial review. Given its limited membership, the Academy seeks out attorneys who have achieved careers of excellence in litigation and appellate practice, and who are recognized by their peers as distinguished advocates. Fellows participate in many pro bono efforts and contribute their time and resources to furthering the Academy's mission to expand the rule of law and elevate standards of integrity, honor, and courtesy in the legal profession. For Daniel Clayton, the honor is well-deserved. As Partner at Kinnard, Clayton & Beveridge, Clayton has leveraged his expertise as a dual-NBLSC-Certified Civil Trial Specialist and Medical Malpractice Specialist to guide victims and families through complex litigation. In addition to resolving several high-profile cases and recovering millions in compensation for clients, Clayton and a fellow KCB attorney secured the largest medical malpractice verdict for a single person in Tennessee state history a $22.2 million jury verdict for a woman who became paralyzed due to medical personnel's inappropriate use of an epidural catheter. Known as a compassionate advocate respected by clients and colleagues alike, Clayton has also garnered numerous awards and accolades over the course of his career. This includes his repeated selection to Nashville Business Journal's "Best of the Bar," The Best Lawyers in America, and Mid-South Super Lawyers. Most recently, he was named a 2022 Nashville Personal Injury Litigation Plaintiffs "Lawyer of the Year" by Super Lawyers. For more information about Daniel Clayton and KCB, visit www.kinnardclaytonandbeveridge.com. Media Contact: Marietta Greer [email protected] SOURCE Kinnard, Clayton & Beveridge Related Links https://www.kinnardclaytonandbeveridge.com WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2021/The-Boppy-Company-Recalls-Over-3-Million-Original-Newborn-Loungers-Boppy-Preferred-Newborn-Loungers-and-Pottery-Barn-Kids-Boppy-Newborn-Loungers-After-8-Infant-Deaths-Suffocation-Risk Name of Product: Boppy Original Newborn Loungers, Boppy Preferred Newborn Loungers and Pottery Barn Kids Boppy Newborn Loungers Hazard: Infants can suffocate if they roll, move, or are placed on the lounger in a position that obstructs breathing, or roll off the lounger onto an external surface, such as an adult pillow or soft bedding that obstructs breathing. Remedy: Refund Consumer Contact: The Boppy Company toll-free at 800-416-1355 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or online at www.boppy.com and click "Recall & Safety Alert" for more information. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and The Boppy Company, of Golden, Colorado, are announcing the recall of the Boppy Original Newborn Loungers, Boppy Preferred Newborn Loungers and Pottery Barn Kids Boppy Newborn Loungers. There have been eight reports of infant deaths associated with the Boppy Company Newborn Lounger and this hazard. The infants reportedly suffocated after being placed on their back, side or stomach on the lounger and were found on their side or on their stomach. The infant deaths occurred between December 2015 and June 2020. "These types of incidents are heartbreaking," said Acting Chairman Robert S. Adler. "Loungers and pillow-like products are not safe for infant sleep, due to the risk of suffocation. Since we know that infants sleep so much of the time even in products not intended for sleep and since suffocation can happen so quickly, these Boppy lounger products are simply too risky to remain on the market." "We are devastated to hear of these tragedies," a spokesperson for Boppy commented. "Boppy is committed to doing everything possible to safeguard babies, including communicating the safe use of our products to parents and caregivers, and educating the public about the importance of following all warnings and instructions and the risks associated with unsafe sleep practices for infants. The lounger was not marketed as an infant sleep product and includes warnings against unsupervised use." This recall involves all Boppy Newborn Loungers. The loungers were sold in a variety of colors and fashions and measure about 23 inches long by 22 inches wide and 7 inches high. Boppy sold about 3.3 million of the recalled loungers at juvenile product stores and mass merchandisers nationwide and online, including Pottery Barn Kids, Target, and Walmart and online at Amazon.com. The loungers were sold from January 2004 through September 2021 for between $30 and $44. Boppy also distributed about 35,000 in Canada. Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled loungers and contact The Boppy Company for a refund. Contact The Boppy Company toll-free at 800-416-1355 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or online at www.boppy.com and click "Recall & Safety Alert" for more information. CPSC continues to emphasize that the best place for a baby to sleep is on a firm, flat surface in a crib, bassinet, or play yard. Parents and caregivers should never add blankets, pillows, padded crib bumpers, or other items to an infant's sleeping environment. Babies should always be placed to sleep on their backs. Note: Health Canada's press release is at: https://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2021/76483r-eng.php 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 for nearly 50 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). - Contact a media specialist. Release Number: 21-198 SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Related Links www.cpsc.gov The United States of America (hereinafter referred to as the United States) was established in 1776. Throughout 245 years, it has developed into a complete and gigantic economic system, accounting for 23-25% of the global economy. It is undoubtedly the largest and most important economy in the world; regardless of its domestic demand and the export market, both have been well-developed. In addition to the numerous natural resources of the United States, what is more important is the government's continuous support for the operation of private enterprises, domestic and overseas trade agreements, and social construction. What is an "Integrated Bioscience Design Corporation"? "Integrated Bioscience Design (IBD)" is derived from consumer demand, integrating chemistry, biology, mathematics, industrial engineering, genetic medicine, aesthetics, human factors engineering, applied materials science, consumer behavior research and other cross-disciplinary expertise and technologies, to achieve the ultimate goal of "join and delight" the lives of consumers. TCI has been one of the preeminent manufacturing expertises of the functional food and skin care products industry in Asia for many years, using the extensive R&D patents of IBD and the advantages of automated manufacturing technology, which has repeatedly achieved supreme results. In particular, the collagen products are TCI's Hero products. "Corporation: Trading company" is mainly engaged in trading activities, and is based on the existing business, gradually tapping into other industries, expanding a wider range of business content and services. In addition to replicating Asia's success, TCI has also defined its US headquarters as the base of Integrated Bioscience Design Corporation. It not only provides health beverage ODM services in the United States, but also expands its business scope, adding special bio-integrated raw material into the US market, and connecting Asian and American clients with a global distribution network. In the value chain of the biotechnology industry, vertical integration of service items from both upstream and downstream will continue to expand to other industries. In addition, TCI actively builds green plants with a zero-carbon sustainable value chain to provide consumers with high-performance products that come with environmental sustainability. Starting from Taiwan, TCI uses integrated bioscience design methods to create high-efficiency products to join and delight consumers' lives. It has successfully exported to 62 countries around the world. By envisioning "Made in USA" this year, TCI uses the business model of "IBD Corporation" to provide global brand clients and consumers with more diversified choices and establish the world-wide biotech alliance. Contact Information: TCI BIOTECH LLC Managing Director Remi Lee Mobile: +1-385-202-8828 Email: [email protected] SOURCE TCI HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Sept. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Roll out the red carpet! It's time to party! The Hollywood Christmas Parade is back!!! On Sunday, November 28, 2021, Associated Television International, in association with The City of Los Angeles, will present The 89th Annual Hollywood Christmas Parade Supporting Marine Toys for Tots live in the streets of Hollywood at 6:00 p.m. PST. Hosted by Erik Estrada, Laura McKenzie, Dean Cain and Montel Williams, with Special Co-Host Elizabeth Stanton, the parade features Hollywood celebrities and movie cars, award-wining bands from around the country, dazzling equestrians, large-than-life character balloons, colorful floats, and humorous specialty acts. The parade culminates with the appearance of the Jolly Old Elf himself, Santa Claus and his reindeer, ushering in the holiday season! To view a sizzle reel of highlights from past Hollywood Christmas Parades, please visit: https://vimeo.com/user4830612/review/85566731/0e776f5e59 Laura McKenzie, Co-Host and a Producer of the Hollywood Christmas Parade said: "Since 1928 the live Hollywood Christmas Parade has been a loved and cherished annual holiday tradition enjoyed by millions, with the exceptions of 1942 to 1944 during WWII, and in 2020 during the pandemic, when the live parade wasn't presented. But now in 2021, we're back!" "For almost a century, the annual Hollywood Christmas Parade has been lifting the spirits of Angelenos from all walks of life," said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. "After a difficult year and a half, I am excited Angelenos will get to enjoy this parade once again." Erik Estrada, Co-Host of The Hollywood Christmas Parade said, "The parade will be presented in compliance with CDC rules and regulations. We'll make mask wearing fashionable!" Lieutenant General James B. Laster, USMC (Retired), President and CEO of the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation, said: "The exposure of Toys for Tots to millions of viewers of the Hollywood Christmas Parade on television, greatly expands the reach of our program and brings smiles to the faces of even more children by inspiring action throughout December." Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell, 14th District, City of Los Angeles, said, "It will be great to once again see Hollywood residents and local families enjoying this annual extravaganza. I know many people are looking forward to it!" Councilmember Nithya Raman, 4th District, City of Los Angeles, said: "I am honored to be one of the elected officials to represent Hollywood, and thrilled to be able to take part in the iconic Christmas Parade, enjoyed by so many across the city." Further information about The 89th Anniversary of The Hollywood Christmas Parade Supporting Marine Toys for Tots will be announced soon, including the Parade's Grand Marshal. For parade inquiries, please call the 24/7 Hollywood Christmas Parade Hotline toll free at 1-833-PARADE1 (1-833-727-2331). For updates on this year's parade, please visit the parade's official website at www.thehollywoodchristmasparade.org Media Contact for The Producers of The Hollywood Christmas Parade : Steve Moyer, Steve Moyer Public Relations 818.784.7027 (office/no text), 818.337.9987 (cell/text) [email protected] @stevemoyerpr Media Contact for The CW Network : Jodi Karp @ 818.977.2609; [email protected] SOURCE The Hollywood Christmas Parade Related Links http://www.thehollywoodchristmasparade.org NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. is proud to announce that all 10 of its attorneys are now OSHA 10 certified through New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). The OSHA 10-hour training teaches basic safety and health information to entry-level workers in the construction and general contracting industry. The course is part of the OSHA Outreach Training Program, which explains serious workplace hazards, workers' rights, employer responsibilities and how to file an OSHA complaint. The NYCOSH certification program specifically covers topics that include, but are not limited to, youth safety, workplace violence, chemical hazards, infectious disease, excavations, fall protection, sexual harassment, worker rights and building health and safety committees. NYCOSH staff includes an industrial hygienist as well as experienced safety and health specialists who are OSHA-authorized and have advanced degrees in public health, communications and policy. In New York, many people employed in the construction, building development and other related fields are required to complete OSHA Outreach Training to help workers prepare to identify and avoid potential hazards in the workplace. Earning an OSHA 10 Construction card can also help workers within the five boroughs to meet New York City Site Safety Training (SST) standards which require 40 hours of SST under Local Law 196. For supervisors, 62 hours of SST Supervisor training is required. "For most construction workers in New York City, OSHA 10 certification is required by law. While not required for personal injury lawyers, all of our attorneys have made the decision to become OSHA 10 certified to better serve our clients needs," said David Perecman, Founder and Lead Trial Attorney at The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. "Safety education is vital to protecting workers in every industry, especially the high-risk construction and labor trades, and I'm proud of our team for their commitment to their clients and for taking proactive action to strengthen the firm." This decision from the firm comes in conjunction with National Preparedness Month, an annual initiative through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Ready Campaign every September to remind people of the importance of preparation ahead of unforeseen accidents and natural disasters. "In the wake of a pandemic and string of natural disasters, we're reminded that we are not immune from unpredictable and unplanned events," said Zach Perecman, Trial Attorney at The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. "I am grateful for the opportunity to become OSHA 10 certified along with my colleagues. By preparing for accidents and emergencies, we can better navigate tough times and keep ourselves and those we care about safe." The Perecman Firm has full-service personal injury law offices in New York, New York, and Jericho, New York. For more information, visit www.perecman.com . About The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. Founded in 1983 by David Perecman, The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. is a full-service personal injury law firm with offices in New York, New York, and Jericho, Long Island. The firm's attorneys concentrate their legal practices in all aspects of personal injury, including construction accidents, premises liability, motor vehicle accidents, wrongful death and civil rights matters, as well as workers' compensation and Social Security Disability. Recognized by U.S. News for the past ten consecutive years as one of the Best Law Firms in America for Plaintiff's Personal Injury in New York, the Perecman team is distinguished among their peers for their professionalism and knowledge. The firm's consistent and notable results garnered attention from nationally-recognized organizations, including Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers, which named David Perecman a 2022 "Lawyer of the Year" in Personal Injury Litigation Plaintiffs. The firm and its attorneys have recovered more than half a billion dollars in verdicts and settlements on their clients' behalf. For more information, visit www.perecman.com . Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Contact: Sabrina Christiansen [email protected] / 801.836.0789 SOURCE The Perecman Firm, P.L.L.C. Related Links https://www.perecman.com "We understand that not everyone is in the position to adopt a pet," explained Arms, "but we also know that anyone who loves animals and is tapped into social media has the ability to share a message of support. By uniting all of these social media voices on one day, we can make a larger impact and really affect change." Now in its ninth year, RMT has been supported by 190 countries with hundreds of thousands of individuals and more than 1,000 separate animal welfare organizations around the globe holding candle-lighting ceremonies of their own, spreading the message on social media, or lighting a virtual candle. The enormous swell of celebrity support includes this year's spokesperson Brittany Aldean, as well as stars such as Kristin Chenoweth, Carrie Ann Inaba, Katherine Heigl, Rick Springfield, Wynonna Judd, Bethenny Frankel, George Lopez, along with dozens of athletes, designers, musicians, and social media influencers. With over 100 luminaries onboard, the star power behind the campaign has resulted in the topic trending each year on both Facebook and Twitter, garnering more than 1.5 billion social media impressions since its start. Last year's pandemic-restricted virtual event united representatives from animal welfare organizations and campaign luminaries as far away as Australia, Estonia, and Singapore via international Zoom Call. The emotional meeting was so impactful that Helen Woodward Animal Center has decided to incorporate a virtual global connection in this year's ceremony, as well. Speakers from each organization will share the state of animal welfare in their area and how they are commemorating the pet adoption awareness campaign. The ceremony will also include words from RMT founder and Center President and CEO Mike Arms, a reading of the official RMT poem and a presentation of the RMT Rescue Pet Hero award. The event will end with a heartfelt international candle lighting in remembrance of the millions of orphan pets still waiting in shelters for their own forever homes. The very special international RMT Zoom call and ceremony will be available online for the animal-loving public to watch. Those who wish to register to watch can click here. The public can also get involved by tweeting, tagging, posting and sharing the beauty and life-saving significance of pet adoption using the hashtags #RememberMeThursday and #SeeTheLight and tagging @hwac. Animal-lovers can also win life-saving funds, toys and food for adoptable pets looking for forever families at their favorite non-profit, pet adoption organization. To enter the Remember Me Thursday Social Media Contest, simply upload your rescue pet's photo and story to the #RememberMeThursday Photo Wall for a chance to win!* (*Restrictions apply. Final selection remains at the sole discretion of Helen Woodward Animal Center). For more information on Remember Me Thursday and a full list of participating celebrities and animal welfare organizations, go to www.remembermethursday.org. SOURCE Helen Woodward Animal Center Related Links http://www.animalcenter.org MORRISVILLE, N.C. and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TrialCard Incorporated, a full-service life sciences commercialization partner, announced today it has selected Infinitus Systems to implement its Digital Assistant platform to automate contact center activity with payers. The two parties executed a rapid implementation, moving from pilot to production within 30 days. With the Infinitus capabilities integrated into TrialCard's proprietary patient services platform, the team can leverage Infinitus' elastic scalability to dynamically process thousands of benefit verification calls per day. "For over twenty years, TrialCard has provided its life science partners and their patients the industry's best affordability and access programs. With today's announcement, we've created more capacity to help patients by automating repetitive payer-facing processes like phone calls," said TrialCard Chief Strategy Officer, Scott Dulitz. "We are excited to work with Infinitus to enhance our scalability and bring about further operational efficiencies to support the needs of our customers," added TrialCard Vice President of Operations, Eric Willis. More than 900 million healthcare-related phone calls are made every year in the US, with the primary purpose to initiate a process, collect information, request clarification, or check the status of a previously initiated process. The average phone call is over 35 minutes in length, and more than a million healthcare professionals spend over four hours each day making these tedious phone calls. The Infinitus platform automates the calls, allowing HCPs to spend less time on calls and more time on patient care. "We are excited to be part of TrialCard's digital transformation journey," said Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Infinitus. "This decision will no longer require TrialCard's patient access team members to sit on hold and ask the same questions over and over. Adding the Infinitus Digital Assistant will provide TrialCard's patient access teams with process efficiencies to return to the patient interactions that really matter." About TrialCard TrialCard Incorporated is a full-service life sciences commercialization partner that provides comprehensive solutions that span the entire biopharmaceutical value chain. In addition to a foundation of fully integrated, digitally enabled patient support services, its broader offerings include everything from late-stage clinical trial management to post-marketing HCP engagement services and proprietary data-as-a-service payer intelligence and insights. Founded in 2000, TrialCard provides commercialization needs for more than 160 life science customers and has connected over 35 million patients with more than $18 billion in branded drug savings to date. The company is headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina. For more information about TrialCard, please visit www.trialcard.com. About Infinitus Infinitus Systems is a healthcare-focused conversational automation company. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded in 2019 by Ankit Jain and Shyam Rajagopalan, leaders in scalable AI responsible for Google Play, Google Login, and Snapchat Security. The company has raised $21.4M to date and is backed by top-tier VCs including Kleiner Perkins, Coatue Management and Google (via Gradient Ventures). For more information about Infinitus, please visit www.infinitus.ai. Contact: Landy Townsend VP, Marketing & Communications TrialCard Incorporated [email protected] 919-415-5401 SOURCE TrialCard Incorporated Related Links http://www.trialcard.com OMAHA, Neb., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP) will release third quarter 2021 financial and operating results on Thursday, October 21, 2021, at 8:00 a.m. ET. The company's management team will host a conference call and live webcast at 8:45 a.m. ET. Parties interested in participating via teleconference may dial 877-407-8293. International callers may dial 201-689-8349. A live webcast of the presentation and materials will be available in the investor relations section of Union Pacific's website at www.up.com/investor. A replay of the audio webcast will be available shortly thereafter. ABOUT UNION PACIFIC Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) delivers the goods families and businesses use every day with safe, reliable and efficient service. Operating in 23 western states, the company connects its customers and communities to the global economy. Trains are the most environmentally responsible way to move freight, helping Union Pacific protect future generations. More information about Union Pacific is available at www.up.com. www.up.com www.facebook.com/unionpacific www.twitter.com/unionpacific SOURCE Union Pacific Corporation Related Links http://www.up.com Program Includes $100,000 in Education Grants for 2021/2022 and Hosting On-campus Interactive STEM Learning Events Tweet this "Employers are constantly looking for more automotive and diesel technicians, certified welders, and other trained workers in the skilled trades," said Universal Technical Institute CEO Jerome Grant. "Women have traditionally been underrepresented in these sectors, but that's something we're eager to address with IGNITE Worldwide by raising awareness about the career opportunities available across the skilled trades and STEM fields." "Since the first IGNITE Event in 2000, more than 100,000 girls have participated in the award-winning IGNITE Program, which has experienced unparalleled growth year after year as word spreads of the incredible impact and inspiration that IGNITE Events have on its students, teachers, and volunteers. By maintaining a steady, dedicated focus on introducing STEM opportunities and careers to IGNITE students, we are able to move the needle on gender and racial equity in STEM fields," said IGNITE Worldwide CEO and Founder Cathi Rodgveller. As part of the Education Partnership, UTI is providing the following tuition grants, which can be used toward UTI programs at any of their campuses located in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas: a $25,000 grant; a $15,000 grant; a $10,000 grant; and 22 $2,000 grants. Any female or female-identifying high school senior who attends an onsite or virtual IGNITE Worldwide event will be eligible to apply for a grant by completing an application and submitting a brief essay. The scholarship application will open in October. On Sept. 24, UTI-Avondale will host the first of more than a dozen events planned at UTI campuses nationwide over the next year. The event is an interactive opportunity for Phoenix-area female or female-identifying high school students and their families to learn more about the rewarding careers available in the transportation sector and other skilled trades. The event will include an interactive campus tour; hands-on, project-based training exercises; and a panel discussion featuring prominent leaders from across Arizona's transportation sector and other skilled trades. For more information about Universal Technical Institute, visit www.uti.edu. About Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Founded in 1965 and with more than 225,000 graduates in its history, Universal Technical Institute, Inc. (NYSE: UTI) is the nation's leading provider of technical training for automotive, diesel, collision repair, motorcycle and marine technicians, and also offers welding technology and computer numerical control (CNC) machining programs. The company has built partnerships with industry leaders, outfits its state-of-the-industry facilities with current technology, and delivers training that is aligned with employer needs. Through its network of 12 campuses nationwide, UTI offers post-secondary programs under the banner of several well-known brands, including Universal Technical Institute (UTI), Motorcycle Mechanics Institute and Marine Mechanics Institute (MMI) and NASCAR Technical Institute (NASCAR Tech). The company is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona For more information, visit www.uti.edu. Like UTI on www.facebook.com/UTI or follow UTI on Twitter @UTITweet, @MMITweet, and @NASCARTechUTI. About IGNITE Worldwide The IGNITE Worldwide Program works to directly address the gender and racial disparity experienced in STEM fields. By reaching the students at a young age, during the school day, we are able to encourage participating students to explore non-traditional STEM opportunities at their school, after graduation, and beyond. IGNITE Worldwide provides a sustainable, scalable, and effective program that works with teachers and other educators to reach students during the school day. The overwhelming success and increased demand of our virtual programming this past year has encouraged us to increase our Program, by expanding into rural and underserved communities throughout Washington that previously faced barriers due to location and access. The upcoming 2021-2022 school year will now include more program offerings, including not just our standard in-person events but also virtual and hybrid opportunities. By working even more closely with our educators, volunteers, and sponsors we were able to provide engaging and successful events to rural communities. Currently the IGNITE Worldwide Program primarily serves Washington State and California. For more information, visit www.igniteworldwide.org. Like IGNITE Worldwide on www.facebook.com/igniteworldwide or follow IGNITE Worldwide on Twitter @IGNITEWorldwide. ______________________ 1 Job openings include openings due to net employment changes and net replacements. See Table 1.10 Occupational separations and openings, projected 201929, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, viewed June 3, 2021. Media Contact Alanna Vitucci [email protected] 480-710-6843 SOURCE Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Related Links http://www.uti.edu ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With recreational marijuana now legal in New Mexico, UNM Continuing Education is launching a new set of courses to prepare workers for careers in a highly-regulated new field. State officials are predicting that the industry is expected to bring in at least $50 million in new revenue this year and more than 11,000 jobs. The University of New Mexico Continuing Education is partnering with cannabis education and training leader Green Flower, to offer non-credit online certificate programs beginning November 15, 2021. "The cannabis industry is one of the fastest growing new market opportunities in the country," states Audrey Arnold, Executive Director of UNM Continuing Education. "As providers of professional development and career education, we want to provide the knowledge and skills that our community will need to be successful in this rapidly growing market. We are thrilled as well for this innovative partnership with Green Flower who can offer solid education in this industry and an affordable and realistic approach in training." The four program options include the Business of Cannabis; Cannabis Agriculture and Horticulture; Cannabis Law and Policy; and Cannabis Health Care and Medicine. Each program consists of three 8-week courses over a 6-month period and students can complete at their own pace within that timeframe. Students receive online instruction in their chosen topic area from industry experts, vetted and selected by Green Flower. Upon completion, students will earn a certificate from UNM Continuing Education. Courses within the four program options will be a mix of instructor-student, student-student, reading, and general discussion/interaction. The cost of each program is $2950 and enrollment is open now. "Green Flower is honored to be working with the University of New Mexico and in particular the school of Continuing Education. Since the legislature of the State of New Mexico passed legal adult use cannabis this past March, we set out to find the perfect university with whom to partner and offer our programs. We could think of no better university in the state than the flagship university, UNM," said Daniel Kalef, Vice President of Higher Education at Green Flower. "In working with the leaders of the continuing education school, we saw the commitment by the university of expanding offerings for working adults and lifelong learners as an obvious sign that the university wants to serve all types of students in every stage of their growth and careers. With new rules and licenses coming in the new year, we applaud the leadership of the university for their foresight in wanting to offer certificate programs designed to prepare people for careers in what is now the fastest growing job market in the country. We are thrilled to partner with UNM and are excited to begin offering these programs to the public this November," said Kalef. To learn more about attending, visit https://cannabiseducation.ce.unm.edu . About UNM Continuing Education: UNM Continuing Education provides quality programs in Professional Development and Personal Enrichment. UNM Continuing Education is committed to providing innovative, accessible learning opportunities to individuals, organizations, and communities in New Mexico and around the world through impactful, engaging programs that position them for success. About Green Flower: Founded in 2014, Green Flower is the industry leader in cannabis education, empowering thousands of consumers, regulators, and professionals with the knowledge they need to succeed in the emerging cannabis industry today. Green Flower's content and technology platform powers the cannabis programs of top universities and colleges across the country, provides customized learning and compliance solutions for cannabis businesses of all sizes, and equips individuals with the skills and credentials necessary to make an impact in the modern cannabis industry. Media Contact: Mari Galvez 505.252.8980 [email protected] SOURCE Green Flower CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report "Virtual Data Room Market with Covid-19 Impact Analysis, by Component, Business Function (Finance and Legal), Application (Due Diligence and Fundraising), Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026" published by MarketsandMarkets, the Virtual Data Room Market size to grow from USD 1.6 billion in 2021 to USD 3.2 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.5% during the forecast period. Various factors such as increasing volumes of business data due to complexities arising from M&A activities and the shift toward remote work during COVID-19 are expected to drive the adoption of Virtual Data Room software and services. Browse in-depth TOC on "Virtual Data Room Market" 276- Tables 56- Figures 269- Pages Ask for Report Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=74439915 The COVID-19 crisis is having and will continue to have a material global impact on M&A. On a massive scale and in a very short period, hundreds of thousands of businesses have shuttered or cut back their operations significantly, millions of workers have been laid off, consumer spending has been drastically reduced, supply chains have been disrupted, and demand for oil and other energy sources has plummeted. The M&A world has endured and recovered from past economic crises, including the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000-2002 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009. As in past financial and economic crises, uncertainties in the business and capital markets have already contributed to buyers delaying or cutting back on their acquisition plans. But this time, the impact of the pandemic is not just on the financial system, the valuation of sellers, and the appetite of buyers, but on a multitude of other factors affecting M&A deals. With all the principal players working remotely, the effective use of new and creative collaborative tools, technologies and techniques have become more critical as buyers, sellers, providers of M&A financing, and all their respective legal and financial advisors adjust to the changing environment. Global M&A has already plummeted as a result of the COVID-19, and by the end of March 2020, it reached a near standstill. M&A levels in the US fell by more than 50% in the first quarter to USD 253 billion compared to 2019, but most of those transactions were entered into or closed earlier in the quarter before the crisis spread worldwide. The services segment to hold higher CAGR during the forecast period The services segment is further divided into professional services and managed services. These services are an integral step in deploying virtual data room software and are taken care of by software and service providers. While virtual data rooms provide similar services, such as secure data storage, data management, and data exchange, their roles may differ. Military-grade security, multi-language support, full-text search, in-document linking, and a variety of other advanced features are all available in the best online data rooms. The growing adoption of Virtual Data Room solutions is expected to boost the adoption of professional and managed services. The marketing and sales segment to hold the highest growth rate during the forecast period The marketing and sales business function is growing rapidly, owing to the increasing digitalization. This business function is critical to any organization that requires support and information from different departments, which can be instrumental in converting leads successfully. Marketing and sales teams are always on the lookout for new technologies to outperform their competitors. Cloud segment to account for higher CAGR during the forecast period The Virtual Data Room Market is bifurcated on the basis of cloud and on-premises. The market size of the cloud deployment mode is estimated to be larger and projected to have a higher CAGR during the forecast period. The cloud-based deployment helps businesses more efficiently process and report data findings, enhance collaboration, and enable decision-makers to get faster access to business intelligence leading to its higher adoption in the Virtual Data Room Market. Speak to Research Expert @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=74439915 SMEs segment to hold a larger market size during the forecast period The SMEs segment is a faster-growing segment in the Virtual Data Room Market during the forecast period as cloud-based solutions and services help them improve business performance and enhance productivity. The adoption of virtual data room software and services among large enterprises is high due to the ever-increasing adoption of the cloud, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period. Government and defense segment to have a higher growth rate during the forecast period The Virtual Data Room Market by vertical has been categorized into. The government and defense vertical is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Managing data rooms for transaction due diligence and negotiation process is increasing the adoption of virtual data room in this sector. APAC to hold higher CAGR during the forecast period APAC is showing a substantial rise in the adoption of virtual data room solutions and services during the forecast period. Digital leaders are strategizing to optimize operations and enhance customer experiences. Companies operating in APAC continue to focus on improving customer services to drive market competitiveness and revenue growth. The rapid growth of the Virtual Data Room Market in the APAC region can be attributed to the massive growth in business deals and transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and fundraising, across all the industry verticals in the APAC region. Request Sample Pages @https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=74439915 Major vendors in the global Virtual Data Room Market are Citrix Systems (US), SS&C Intralinks (US), Axway (US), Donnelley Financial Solutions (US), Thomson Reuters (Canada), Datasite (US), iDeals Solutions (China), Drooms (Germany), EthosData (India), SecureDocs (US), Diligent Corporation (US), Ansarada (Australia), SmartRoom (US), CapLinked (US), Vault Rooms (US), Vitrium Systems (Canada), Onehub (US), ShareVault (US), FORDATA (Poland), Digify (Singapore), FirmsData (India), Confiex Data Room (India), PactCentral (US), kamzan (Italy), bit.ai (US), DocuFirst (US), DCirrus (India), and Kasm Technologies (US). Browse Adjacent Markets @ Analytics Market Research Reports & Consulting Related Reports: Data Discovery Market by Component, Functionality, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, Application, Vertical (BFSI, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Telecommunications and IT, Manufacturing), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025 Big Data Market by Component, Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Business Function (Operations, Finance, and Marketing and Sales), Industry Vertical (BFSI, Manufacturing, and Healthcare and Life Sciences), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025 About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/virtual-data-room-market.asp Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/virtual-data-room.asp SOURCE MarketsandMarkets WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Once considered the future of search technology, the popularity of voice search has declined over the last few years, according to a new report from The Manifest , a business news and how-to guide. The Manifest's 2018 study claimed that 53% of respondents use voice search once a week, but only 18% of respondents use it as frequently in 2021. About 60% of people never used voice search in 2021. 27% of people ages 18-34 use voice search to issue commands Additionally, nearly 60% of respondents claim they never use voice search. Security concerns, the COVID-19 pandemic, and frustration over poor results may be to blame for the decline. When using voice search, results can be impacted by background noise, accents, and older technology. Users complain about having to repeat themselves several times. Often, they give up and conduct a traditional search instead. Voice Search Has a Promising Future In 2021, 63% of individuals over 55 have never used voice search technology. At the same time, about 30% of users between the ages of 3554 (27%) use it at least once a week. Haim Medine, the co-founder of Mark Henry , a premier jewelry house, argues that younger generations who grew up using technology are more likely to rely on voice search. "Technology is embedded into the culture of the younger generation children as young as 4 years old are using iPads and tablets," Medine said. In contrast, older generations trust new technology less. With many younger users, voice search's popularity may grow in the future. Additionally, voice search technology still has several advantages: improves accessibility allows people to multitask simplify daily activities. Tim O'Brien, the founder of The Healthy Place , a natural vitamin supplement brand, argues that, despite common challenges, voice search makes his life easier. "Siri has become my virtual assistant, and as she gets to know me better, the more she understands me," O'Brien said. Over time, technological advances will make voice search more reliable. How People Use It Depends on Their Age The Manifest also reported that younger generations (ages 1834) are more likely to use voice search to issue commands (27%), while older generations use it to find information (52% of users over 55). Olivia Tan, co-founder of CocoFax , an online fax solution provider, believes that the root cause of this difference is how people interact with the technology. "Younger generations use voice search more because of the hands-free quality that allows them to carry out searches while doing other things," Tan said. Voice search allows users to make commands while cleaning, cooking, or even driving, safely. The Manifest's 2021 Survey included 501 voice search users in the U.S. Read the full report here: https://themanifest.com/digital-marketing/blog/voice-search-statistics For questions about the survey, comments on the findings, or an introduction to the sources included in the report, contact [email protected]. The Manifest The Manifest is a business news and how-to website that compiles and analyzes practical business wisdom for innovators, entrepreneurs, and small and mid-market businesses. Use The Manifest as an approachable tour guide through every stage of the buyer journey. With three main offerings data-driven benchmarks, step-by-step guides, and agency shortlists The Manifest strives to make your business goals a reality. Contact Hannah Hicklen or Anna Peck [email protected] (202) 350-4344 SOURCE The Manifest Related Links https://themanifest.com/ COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- White Castle, the creator of the beloved Sliders sold at eponymous restaurants and in grocery aisles nationwide, has been celebrating its 100th birthday throughout 2021. The family-owned business has thrown star-studded virtual parties and showered customers with giveaways galore. This month, White Castle shines a light on the people powering the "Crave" its team members by continuing a time-honored tradition. On Sept. 23, White Castle will add 68 team members to its 25-Year Club, an honor reserved for those who have worked for White Castle for 25 years. White Castle to honor 68 team members who have reached their 25-year anniversary with the company. Tweet this "The 25-Year Club ceremony is one of our most special and proud traditions," said Lisa Ingram, president and CEO of White Castle. "On behalf of our family of 10,000, I congratulate and thank each of our inductees for their tireless work and invaluable contributions to White Castle." White Castle founder, Billy Ingram, began with just four team members in March of 1921. Today, with his great-granddaughter Lisa at the helm, the national restaurant and consumer-packaged goods business has a workforce of 10,000. These team members work in restaurants, retail manufacturing plants, regional restaurant operations and the Columbus-based home office. "My great-grandfather, Billy, believed that happy employees make happy customers, and that has remained our core focus for 100 years," said Lisa Ingram. "Team member tenure at White Castle is unprecedented in our industry, and that loyalty absolutely goes both ways." In 1946, Billy Ingram became the first member of the 25-Year Club. For 75 years since, White Castle has honored team members reaching 25 years with an all-expense-paid trip to the home office in Columbus, an extravagant event and an extra-special gift of an engraved gold watch. With the 2020 induction delayed due to the pandemic, 2021 will welcome two classes into this illustrious club. In all, 68 team members will be celebrated, bringing the total membership to 2,160. White Castle's extraordinary track record of team member engagement and loyalty was further validated in May 2021 when the business earned its Great Place to Work Certification. The distinguished certification was granted following a team member survey in which 81% said that White Castle is a great place to work, a full 22 percentage points above the 59% average for U.S.-based companies. White Castle has also celebrated its 10,000-strong workforce during its 100th birthday year with $100,000 in college scholarships awarded to team members and their dependents. In early September, the business announced a month-long program to thank its own team members who opt for the vaccine: $100,000 in cash prizes. About White Castle White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, has been making hot and tasty Sliders as a family-owned business for 100 years. Based in Columbus, Ohio, White Castle started serving The Original Slider in 1921. Today, White Castle owns and operates more than 350 restaurants dedicated to satisfying customers' cravings morning, noon and night. Through its retail division, which launched in 1987, White Castle also offers its famous fare in freezer aisles of grocery, convenience and club stores nationwide. The Original Slider, named in 2014 as Time magazine's "Most Influential Burger of All Time," is served alongside a menu of creatively crafted Sliders and other mouthwatering food options, including White Castle's Impossible Slider, named by Thrillist in 2019 as the "Best Plant-Based Fast-Food Burger." White Castle's commitment to maintaining the highest quality products extends to the company owning and operating its own meat processing plants, bakeries and frozen-food processing plants. In 2021, 100 years after the first Slider was sold, Fast Company named the fast-food pioneer one of the "10 Most Innovative Dining Companies." White Castle is known for the legendary loyalty of its team members, more than 1 in 4 of whom have worked for White Castle for at least 10 years, and also for its faithful fans ("Cravers"), many of whom compete each year for entry into the Cravers Hall of Fame. The official White Castle app, available at iTunes App Store or Google Play, makes it easy for Cravers to access sweet deals and place pickup orders at any time. They can also have their orders delivered using one of White Castle's delivery partners. For more information on White Castle, visit whitecastle.com. SOURCE White Castle Related Links http://www.whitecastle.com DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Electric Toothbrush Market (2021-2026) by Product Type, Bristle, Head Movement, End-user and Geography - Competitive Analysis, Impact of COVID-19, Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The Global Electric Toothbrush Market is estimated to be worth USD 750.4 Million in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 1,013.7 Million by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 6.2%. The prevalence of oral diseases and growing oral hygiene awareness are major factors propelling the electric toothbrush market growth. Furthermore, the increasing popularity of electric toothbrushes among the geriatric population and mentally disabled patients is expected to fuel the adaption of electric toothbrushes. In addition, premium applications such as whitening of teeth, gum massage, etc., have increased the demand for electric toothbrushes. However, high cost and bristle change every 5 to 6 months have hindered the market growth. In addition, stringent government regulations have hampered market growth. Technological advancements in electric toothbrushes are anticipated to provide lucrative growth of the market in the forecast period. Recent Developments Xiaomi Mi launched Electric Toothbrush T100 with 30-Day Battery Life in India . - 9th June 2021 Oral-B launched iO electric toothbrush with seven brushing modes. - 1st July 2020 Company Profiles Some of the companies covered in this report Colgate-Palmolive Company, The Procter & Gamble Company, Johnson & Johnson, Koninklijke Philips N.V, FOREO, Den-Mat Holdings, etc. Why buy this report? The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Electric Toothbrush Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies. The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel within the industry. The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 force model and the Ansoff Matrix. The impact of COVID-19 on the market is also featured in the report. The report also includes the regulatory scenario of the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules & regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies. The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's proprietary competitive positioning tool. Key Topics Covered: 1 Report Description 2 Research Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Market Influencers 4.1 Drivers 4.1.1 Awareness of Oral Hygiene 4.1.2 Increasing Geriatric and Physical Challenged People 4.2 Restraints 4.2.1 High Product and Maintenance Cost 4.2.2 Stringent Government Regulation 4.3 Opportunities 4.3.1 Emerging Smart Electronic Toothbrush with Premium Features 4.3.2 Acquisition and Partnerships between Top Players to Expand Market Presence 4.4 Challenges 4.4.1 Cut-Throat Competitive Market 4.4.2 Continuous Introduction of New Products 4.4.3 Slow Adaption of Electric Toothbrush in Developing Countries 4.5 Trends 5 Market Analysis 5.1 Regulatory Scenario 5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis 5.3 Impact of COVID-19 5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis 6 Global Electric Toothbrush Market, By Product Type 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Battery 6.3 Rechargeable 7 Global Electric Toothbrush Market, By Blister 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Soft Bristle 7.3 Manometer Bristle 8 Global Electric Toothbrush Market, By Head Movement 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Sonic 8.3 Rotation 9 Global Electric Toothbrush Market, By End-Users 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Child 9.3 Adult 9.4 Geriatric 10 Global Electric Toothbrush Market, By Geography 10.1 Introduction 10.2 North America 10.2.1 US 10.2.2 Canada 10.2.3 Mexico 10.3 South America 10.3.1 Brazil 10.3.2 Argentina 10.3.3 Chile 10.3.4 Colombia 10.4 Europe 10.4.1 UK 10.4.2 France 10.4.3 Germany 10.4.4 Italy 10.4.5 Spain 10.4.6 Netherlands 10.4.7 Sweden 10.4.8 Russia 10.4.9 Rest of Europe 10.5 Asia-Pacific 10.5.1 China 10.5.2 Japan 10.5.3 India 10.5.4 Indonesia 10.5.5 Malaysia 10.5.6 South Korea 10.5.7 Australia 10.5.8 Sri Lanka 10.5.9 Thailand 10.5.10 Rest of APAC 10.6 Middle-East and Africa 10.6.1 Qatar 10.6.2 Saudi Arabia 10.6.3 South Africa 10.6.4 United Arab Emirates 11 Competitive Landscape 11.1 Competitive Quadrant 11.2 Market Share Analysis 11.3 Strategic Initiatives 11.3.1 M&A and Investments 11.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations 11.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements 12 Company Profiles 12.1 Lixil Group 12.2 Baby Buddy 12.3 Bursten- und Pinseltechnik DN GmbH 12.4 Colgate-Palmolive Company 12.5 Den-Mat Holdings 12.6 Dr. Fresh LLC 12.7 FOREO 12.8 GABA GmbH 12.9 Hansgrohe SE 12.10 Johnson & Johnson 12.11 JSB Health & Fitness Pvt. Ltd. 12.12 Kohler Co 12.13 Koninklijke Philips N.V 12.14 Lion Corporation 12.15 Quip NYC Inc 12.16 Shenzhen Risun Technology Co. Ltd. 12.17 The Procter & Gamble Company 12.18 Water Pik Inc. 12.19 WaterPik, Inc. 12.20 Xiaomi Inc. 13 Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/oljwg5 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 DUBLIN, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Luminaire and Lighting Control Market by Product, Component, Light, Technology and Application: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global luminaire and lighting control market size is expected to reach $130.71 billion by 2030 from $72.66 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 6.51% from 2020 to 2030. Luminaire and lighting controls are a range of lighting devices that can regulate the levels, quality and characteristics of light in a defined space. These devices aid in reducing electricity wastage while simultaneously encouraging energy efficiency. In addition, lighting control is a network-based lighting control solution that uses various components, such as occupancy sensors, transmitters & receivers, and microcontrollers for controlling lighting. The control systems offer various advantages such as maximizing energy savings, while adhering to building codes and complying with green building and energy conservation programs. These systems have been widely used in lighting applications of smart building & smart home establishments, industries, and automotive areas. Reduced energy consumption is one of the major advantages of using smart lighting controls. The prominent factors that impact the luminaire and lighting control market growth are increasing demand of street and roadways lighting, high development of smart lighting system, and government initiatives toward energy saving product. However, high initial installation cost restricts the market growth. On the contrary, surge in development of smart city projects in Asia-Pacific is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market. Therefore, these factors are expected to definitely affect the development of the global luminaire and lighting control market during the forecast period. The global luminaire and lighting control market is segmented into product, component, light, technology, application, and region. By product, the market is bifurcated into luminaire and lighting control. By component, it is divided into hardware, software, and services. On the basis of light, it is segregated into LED, halogen, fluorescent, HID, and others. By technology, it is fragmented into wired and wireless. The wireless segment further sub segmented into Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, others. Depending on application, it is separated into indoor and outdoor. The indoor segment further sub segmented into residential, commercial, and industrial. The commercial is further sub segmented into offices, restaurants and hotels, healthcare facilities, educational institutions, and others. Region-wise, the luminaire and lighting control market trends are analyzed across North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico), Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Rest of Asia-Pacific), and LAMEA (Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa). North America is dominating the market, due to an increase in enhanced technologies in smart infrastructure. Competitive analysis and profiles of the major luminaire and lighting control market players, such as Acuity Brands, Inc. (Georgia), Cree, Inc. (U.S.), Eaton Corporation (U.S.), General Electric (U.S.), OSRAM AG (Germany), Philips N.V. (The Netherlands), Dialight (UK), Legrand S.A. (France), Lutron Electronics Co., Inc (U.S.), and Hubbell Incorporated (U.S.), are focusing their investment on technologically advanced, cost-effective, and more secure products and solutions for various applications. Key Topics Covered: CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3: MARKET OVERVIEW 3.1. Market definition and scope 3.2. Key forces shaping the luminaire and lighting control 3.3. Patent analysis 3.3.1. By region, 2012-2020 3.3.2. By applicant, 2012-2020 3.4. Covid-19 impact analysis 3.4.1. COVID-19 outbreak 3.4.2. Impact on market size 3.4.3. End user trends, preferences, and budget impact 3.5. Market dynamics 3.5.1. Drivers 3.5.1.1. Increasing demand of street and roadways lighting 3.6.3.1. High development of smart lighting system 3.5.1.2. Government initiatives toward energy saving product 3.5.2. Restraint 3.5.2.1. High initial installation cost 3.5.3. Opportunity 3.5.3.1. Surging development of smart city projects in Asia-Pacific CHAPTER 4: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MARKET , BY PRODUCT 4.1. Overview 4.2. Luminaire 4.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 4.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.2.3. Market analysis, by country 4.3. Lighting Control 4.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 4.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 4.3.3. Market analysis, by country CHAPTER 5: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MARKET, BY COMPONENT 5.1. Overview 5.2. Hardware 5.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 5.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.2.3. Market analysis, by country 5.3. Software 5.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 5.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.3.3. Market analysis, by country 5.4. Services 5.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 5.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region 5.4.3. Market analysis, by country CHAPTER 6: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MARKET , BY LIGHT 6.1. Overview 6.2. LED 6.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 6.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 6.2.3. Market analysis, by country 6.3. Halogen 6.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 6.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 6.3.3. Market analysis, by country 6.4. Fluorescent 6.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 6.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region 6.4.3. Market analysis, by country 6.5. HID 6.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 6.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region 6.5.3. Market analysis, by country 6.6. Others 6.6.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 6.6.2. Market size and forecast, by region 6.6.3. Market analysis, by country CHAPTER 7: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MARKET, BY TECHNOLOGY 7.1. Overview 7.2. Wired 7.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 7.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region 7.2.3. Market analysis, by country 7.3. Wireless 7.3.1. Wi-Fi 7.3.2. Bluetooth 7.3.3. ZigBee 7.3.4. Others 7.3.5. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 7.3.6. Market size and forecast, by region 7.3.7. Market analysis, by country CHAPTER 8: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MARKET, BY APPLICATION 8.1. Overview 8.2. Indoor 8.2.1. Residential 8.2.2. Commercial 8.2.3. Industrial 8.2.4. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 8.2.5. Market size and forecast, by region 8.2.6. Market analysis, by country 8.3. Outdoor 8.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors, and opportunities 8.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region 8.3.3. Market analysis, by country CHAPTER 9: LUMINAIRE AND LIGHTING CONTROL MAREKT, BY REGION CHAPTER 10: COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE 10.1. Introduction 10.1.1. Market player positioning, 2020 10.2. Top winning strategies 10.3. Product mapping of top 10 player 10.4. Competitive dashboard 10.5. Competitive heatmap CHAPTER 11: COMPANY PROFILES 11.1. ACUITY BRANDS, INC. 11.1.1. Company overview 11.1.2. Company snapshot 11.1.3. Product portfolio 11.1.4. Business performance 11.1.5. Key strategic moves and developments 11.2. DIALIGHT 11.2.1. Company overview 11.2.2. Company snapshot 11.2.3. Operating business segments 11.2.4. Product portfolio 11.2.5. Business performance 11.2.6. Key strategic moves and developments 11.3. CREE, INC. 11.3.1. Company overview 11.3.2. Key executives 11.3.3. Company snapshot 11.3.4. Operating business segments 11.3.5. Product portfolio 11.3.6. R&D expenditure 11.3.7. Business performance 11.3.8. Key strategic moves and developments 11.4. EATON CORPORATION 11.4.1. Company overview 11.4.2. Company snapshot 11.4.3. Operating business segments 11.4.4. Product portfolio 11.4.5. R&D Expenditure 11.4.6. Business performance 11.4.7. Key strategic moves and developments 11.5. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 11.5.1. Company overview 11.5.2. Key executives 11.5.3. Company snapshot 11.5.4. Operating business segments 11.5.5. Product portfolio 11.5.6. R&D expenditure 11.5.7. Business performance 11.5.8. Key strategic moves and developments 11.6. OSRAM LICHT AG 11.6.1. Company overview 11.6.2. Key executives 11.6.3. Company snapshot 11.6.4. Operating business segments 11.6.5. Product portfolio 11.6.6. R&D expenditure 11.6.7. Business performance 11.6.8. Key strategic moves and developments 11.7. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N. V. 11.7.1. Company overview 11.7.2. Company snapshot 11.7.3. Operating business segments 11.7.4. Product portfolio 11.7.5. Business performance 11.7.6. Key strategic moves and developments 11.8. LEGRAND S. A. 11.8.1. Company overview 11.8.2. Company snapshot 11.8.3. Product portfolio 11.8.4. Business performance 11.8.5. Key strategic moves and developments 11.9. LUTRON ELECTRONICS CO 11.9.1. Company overview 11.9.2. Key executives 11.9.3. Company snapshot 11.9.4. Product portfolio 11.9.5. Key strategic moves and developments 11.10. HUBBEL INCORPORATED 11.10.1. Company overview 11.10.2. Key executives 11.10.3. Company snapshot 11.10.4. Operating business segments 11.10.5. Product portfolio 11.10.6. Business performance 11.10.7. Key strategic moves and developments For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/fb290n 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 Award coincides with publication 2021 College and Career Readiness Report, underscoring need for digital solutions TORONTO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Xello , the award-winning K-12 college, career and future readiness program, today announced its recognition as Tech & Learning Secondary (6-12) Winner at the 2021 Awards of Excellence Back to School . The award coincides with the publication of the company's 2021 College and Career Readiness Report , which has shown the increased need for digital future planning resources as districts begin another pandemic school year. "We are honored to be recognized by Tech & Learning," said Matt McQuillen, CEO and founder of Xello. "Young people can sometimes struggle choosing their life's work, and this process usually takes time. Through using Xello, students develop confidence in their strengths, a stronger sense of purpose and a clear pathway toward a meaningful career they can look forward to when their career exploration lessons start in elementary school." Students in grades K-12 can build self-knowledge and explore options beyond high school while using the Xello platform. Using interest-based assessments, students are matched with careers that best reflect their interests, while educators have visibility into monitoring student progress and college application workflows. Students also build social-emotional skills and knowledge through the built-in curriculum and reflective activities. "As we head into another uncertain year in education, technology will continue to be one of the key drivers for innovation," says Tech & Learning Group Publisher Christine Weiser. "Our judges chose the winning products recognized here for their versatility, compatibility, value, and ability to help schools solve challenges and support continuous instruction. Congratulations to all of our winners." In conjunction with the receipt of this award from Tech & Learning, Xello is also releasing its newest report, The State of College and Career Readiness in K-12 , which underscores the relevance of college and career readiness as an important part of back to the classroom. The report surveyed more than 100 educators, including school counselors, directors of counseling, superintendents, principals, and CTE teachers and directors, about college and career readiness during the pandemic, as well as a survey of 400 U.S. parents, and found that: 41% of educators reported increased emphasis on college and career readiness activities during the pandemic Social-emotional competencies were ranked as the top indicator of future-readiness with standardized test scores ranking as second most important Student motivation ranked at 7.5 out of 10 during the pandemic, compared with 8.2 before the pandemic, a less significant difference than originally feared 96% of parents believe a future readiness program will benefit their children 80% of parents are very concerned with their children's preparedness after high school, but only 44% feel confident with their ability to help their children get future ready For more information, download the full report , or visit Xello.world. About Xello Xello's mission is to help anyone, anywhere in the world create a successful future through self-knowledge, exploration and planning. With more than 20 years in the education software industry, the team at Xello has helped millions of educators and millions of students become future ready with its suite of online platforms. Based in Toronto, Canada, Xello's award-winning future readiness programs are used globally by nearly eight million students and educators. Learn more about Xello at www.xello.world . SOURCE Xello Inc. Related Links https://xello.world/en/ With nearly three fourths of the 2021 already passing, Quanzhou celebrated with Quanzhou people at home and abroad the Mid-Autumn Festival with both eye-catching achievements and touching experience. In late July, "Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China" was accepted as a cultural property on UNESCO's World Heritage List amid the ongoing 44th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian. Believing in "where there is seawater, there are Quanzhou people", the city has always been a model for hard working to win for a better future. In 2020, Quanzhou saw for the first time its gross regional product exceed one trillion yuan, which rose 2.9 percent year on year despite the COVID-19 epidemic. Now, the city is working hard to build a better Quanzhou with blueprints for development already in shape in the new era. See the original link: https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/323945.html SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road LONDON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zeotap , the next-gen Customer Data Platform (CDP), has launched Consent Orchestration as part of its award-winning platform, to make it easy for marketers to activate data at scale within increasingly complex data privacy constraints. It unifies, configures and automates an individual's consent and marketing preferences across the customer journey, from data collection through to channel activation, ensuring compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. Consent Orchestration is designed to solve a problem that plagues every marketer, particularly those in Europe. Per regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, businesses are obliged to ensure that their use of customer data is compliant. However, this is inherently difficult - consent for an individual customer can be captured in multiple touchpoints, and then can differ for different activation channels and messages. The challenge for the marketer is to unify these consent choices and to act on them at speed and scale, without the need for constant vetting from a Data Protection Officer (DPO) that slows down activity. These challenges have become an increasing concern as the number of fines for GDPR violations has surged by 113% in the last year, most notably with Amazon's record July 2021 fine of 746 million. As the deprecation of third-party cookies pushes marketers to rely further on first-party data , the pressure to have compliance under control is set to increase further. "As one of the few Customer Data Platforms made in - and for - Europe, we know just how much marketers here can be paralysed by the challenges that data privacy regulations create, and that's the problem we set out to solve," said Projjol Banerjea, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Zeotap. "In doing so, we're hoping to deliver a balance on three priorities that have previously competed with each other: scalable results for the marketer, enhanced experiences for their customer, and fewer headaches for their DPO." Consent Orchestration is designed to make it easy for marketers (and their DPOs) to control data privacy compliance throughout the customer journey. It does so in three key steps: Unification: integrates consented data from fragmented sources into a single customer profile that delivers a single consent taxonomy Configuration: maps a customer's consent and marketing preferences to the marketers' communication channels Automation: reflects the customer's consent and marketing preferences across marketing campaigns, ensuring GDPR and CCPA compliance on a granular level (e.g. reflection of consented purposes) Consent Orchestration continues the consent journey that's often begun through the use of a Consent Management Platform (CMP). Where CMPs enable the collection and mastering of customer consent and marketing preferences data, Consent Orchestration integrates with the CMP and then enables this data to be automatically reflected in all omnichannel marketing campaigns. This end-to-end orchestration of the consent journey is governed by settings that only need to be reviewed once by a DPO in order to create a system of universal guardrails. This allows the marketer to activate at scale and speed, safe in the knowledge that consent will be reflected in all campaigns without needing constant DPO oversight. The launch comes just two weeks after the news that Zeotap secured an $11 million extension to its Series C funding round , adding up to total funding of $90m. The company has also recently been named a Leader in G2's Fall 2021 Grid Report for Customer Data Platform Software , with Chief Product Officer and Founder Projjol Banerjea recently awarded 'Tech Pioneer of the Year' at the Campaign Tech Awards . Earlier this year, Zeotap announced the launch of Predictive Audiences , which enables users to create and activate machine-learned segments without needing data science expertise. About Zeotap Zeotap is the next-generation Customer Data Platform. Its Customer Intelligence Platform (CIP), empowers brands to unify, enhance and activate customer data in a cookieless future, all while putting consumer privacy and compliance front-and-centre. Recognized by Gartner as a "Cool Vendor", Zeotap works with over 80 of the world's top 100 brands, including P&G, Nestle and Virgin Media. It is also the founding member of ID+, a universal marketing ID initiative. For more information visit www.zeotap.com. SOURCE Zeotap Related Links www.zeotap.com United Nations, Sep 23 : The UN General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a political declaration on the fight against racism at a high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. The political declaration reaffirms that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and subsequent documents provide a comprehensive UN framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and reaffirms member states' commitment to their full and effective implementation, Xinhua news agency reported. The political declaration welcomes the progress made in many parts of the world in the elimination of the scourge in the past 20 years, while acknowledging with concern that the scourge still persists in all parts of the world and countless human beings continue to be victims to the present day. It acknowledges with deep concern the rise in discrimination, hate speech, stigmatization, racism, systemic racism, stereotypes, racial profiling, violence, xenophobia and intolerance, both in-person and online, directed against, among others, Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent, indigenous peoples, Roma and persons belonging to other racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, as well as motivated by prejudices against persons based on their religions or beliefs, such as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, and against women and children, migrants, refugees, forcibly displaced persons, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, persons with disabilities, older persons, youth and other persons in vulnerable situations. It notes with concern the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on the existing inequalities within societies and regrets that persons belonging to racial and ethnic minorities and to other groups, including Asians and people of Asian descent, especially women and girls, have been victims of racist violence, threats of violence, discrimination and stigmatisation. The political declaration vows to pursue the common goal of ensuring the effective enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, while continuing to promote respect for human rights and to enhance democratic governance, the rule of law, independent judicial institutions and the fight against impunity nationally and internationally. It reiterates that the primary responsibility for effectively combating acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance lies with states and affirms that, whenever such acts occur, they must be condemned and their reoccurrence prevented, and urges states to take appropriate preventive measures, including legislative measures, in this regard. It aims to ensure that people of African descent have full access to effective protection and remedies through the competent national tribunals and other state institutions against any acts of racial discrimination, and the right to seek from such tribunals just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination. It calls on all states, the UN system and international and regional organizations, and invite all relevant stakeholders to fully commit themselves and to intensify their efforts for the elimination of all racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to continue cooperation with all relevant UN human rights bodies. It reaffirms member states' strong determination to mobilize political will at the national, regional and international levels and to accelerate momentum to make the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and the protection of the victims a high priority. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text United Nations, Sep 23 : Ghana President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has criticised European countries for not recognising the Indian-made Covishield vaccine, calling it a "retrogressive" step. Speaking at the high-level General Assembly session on Wednesday, Akufo-Addo accused those countries, which he did not name, of using the non-recognition of Covishield as an anti-immigration device. He said, "The use of vaccine as a tool for immigration control will be truly a retrogressive step." "One unfortunate development appears to be the recent measures on entry into some countries in Europe which suggests that Covishield, the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, is not recognised by these countries," he said. He said that it was "intriguing" that the Covishield vaccines made by the Serum Institute of India and donated to African countries by COVAX, the international facility co-led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and includes UNICEF, were not recognised. India donated 50,000 doses to Ghana, and sent 600,000 through COVAX and 2,000 commercially, according to India's Ministry of External Affairs statistics. Akufo-Addo backed the Rome Declaration of the G20, of which India is a member, that proposed granting licences voluntarily for making vaccines. He said, "Ghana agrees with the call of the Rome Declaration of Global Health for voluntary licensing and technology transfer to boost vaccine production. The African Union is working with WHO WTO and other global partners to expand vaccine manufacturing and deployment." Ghana, which has a population of about 31 million, has vaccinated 5 million people and hoped to vaccinate 20 million by the end of the year, he said. But he noted that the African continent has a long way to go. "To vaccinate 70 per cent in the shortest possible time as is being done elsewhere in the world means some 900 million Africans have to be vaccinated," he said. Covishield does not appear on the list of acceptable vaccines of some countries like Germany and Italy while AstraZeneca does. The European Medicines Agency, which is an agency for evaluating and monitoring vaccines, does not list Covishield either. But some European countries like the Netherlands, France and Britain list Covishield among vaccines that are acceptable for travel to those countries. The United States will recognise Covishield when the vaccination mandate for travellers comes into effect in November because it is on the list of vaccines authorised for emergency use by the WHO. Suriname President Chan Santokhi, who decried the refusal of many industrialised countries to share vaccines, thanked India for sharing vaccines. India donated 50,000 vaccines to Suriname. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis) Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text United Nations, Sep 23 : India and its three allies in the quest for Security Council reform have called for a determined push for the adoption of a text for conducting the negotiations and to set a time-frame for the changes. The foreign ministers of the G4 group "expressed their strong determination to work towards launching text-based negotiations without further delay in the IGN (Intergovernmental Negotiations), on the basis of a single document, with a view to its adoption in the General Assembly," according to their joint statement issued after a meeting on Wednesday. They also "decided to intensify dialogue with all interested Member States, including other reform-minded countries and groups, in order to seek concrete outcomes in a definite time-frame," the statement said. The reform process known as the Intergovernmental Negotiaitons (IGN) has been crippled by its failure to adopt a negotiating text on which to base the discussions and proceed. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Foreign Ministers Carlos Alberto Franco Franca of Brazil, Heiko Maas of Germany and Motegi Toshimitsu of Japan met on the sidelines of the high-level meeting of the Assembly to evaluate the progress of the negotiations for reforms and map out future strategy. The four countries work together for reforming the Security Council and support each other for permanent seats on a reformed body. A small group of countries known as United for Consensus (UfC) has blocked the IGN from adopting a negotiating text so the reform process can proceed. The UfC is led by Italy and includes Pakistan. The Security Council last underwent changes in 1965 and since then the membership of the UN has increased from 117 to 193 with many of the new members coming from Africa, where the UN has most peacekeeping operations. The four ministers "expressed their strong support to the Common African Position (CAP) as enshrined in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration" of the African Union. The documents call for expanding the Council to give African nations two permanent seats. The ministers said that it was essential "to reform the Security Council through an expansion of both categories, permanent and non-permanent seats, to enable the Security Council to better deal with the ever-complex and evolving challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security, and thereby to carry out its duties more effectively." The permanent membership of the Council is stuck at five -- giving the leaders of the winning side in World War II a grip on its agenda -- often leading to its immobilisation because of their veto powers. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New York, Sep 23 : Significant new commitments for financing clean energy, increasing renewables and improving access to electricity are expected to be announced on Friday at the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy. The summit-level virtual event will bring together heads of state and other leaders from government, business, foundations, youth and civil society. Over 100 countries will join. The energy summit will be a crucial step in building an international coalition for action on energy and will highlight how some countries and businesses are moving to address the energy crisis. Momentum is building with some announcements expected from businesses and NGOs at virtual 'Energy Action' pre-events, to feed into the main dialogue. The commitments are expected to drive even greater actions to close the huge gaps in ambition and financing required to meet the energy needs of all people while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. The High-level Dialogue is being convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the summit level at the request of the General Assembly. It will be the first energy-focused gathering of leaders at the UN in more than 40 years. For the dialogue, governments, businesses, foundations, cities, and international, civil society and youth organisations were urged to present voluntary commitments in the form of "Energy Compacts" to help achieve clean, affordable energy for all by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050, targets set out in Sustainable Development Goal 7 and in line with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Also among the dialogue outcomes will be a global roadmap for actions and timelines needed to meet energy targets by 2030. The roadmap involves inputs from expert working groups and was discussed at ministerial-level forums in June. Calling the Dialogue "a historic opportunity" in his invitation to global leaders, the UN Secretary-General urged actions set out in the roadmap. These include accelerating the energy transition by tripling investments for renewable energy and quadrupling the rate of energy efficiency improvement, and shifting fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy, while creating new green jobs and ensuring a just, inclusive transition. Without deep energy decarbonisation, the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement will fall quickly out of reach. The Secretary-General affirmed that decisive action must be apolitical priority in order to achieve access to clean energy for the 760 million people who currently live without electricity and for the 2.6 billion people still relying on harmful solid fuels for cooking. Over 135 Energy Compacts, including a number of significant commitments, have been submitted from governments; businesses; UN and international organisations; foundations; financial institutions; and civil society groups, including several youth networks, from all regions. Additional Compacts are expected to be registered in the months ahead, as momentum grows and partnerships are expanded, with progress tracked through the 2030 target year. "A wide range of stakeholders are making a serious push towards clean energy access and transition --governments, businesses, civil society leaders -- but much more is needed to achieve both the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement," said dialogue Secretary-General Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. "The High-level Dialogue is coming at a time when the climate crisis is already dramatically impacting millions of people, and we will not be able to meet our climate goals unless we solve energy poverty and make clean energy affordable and accessible." Taking place less than two months before the critical UN climate conference in Glasgow this November (COP26), the Energy Dialogue is also an important step towards mobilising commitments and defining the actions that will enable countries to reduce their emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by mid-century in line with the Paris Agreement. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Lucknow, Sep 23 : The Uttar Pradesh government has recommended a CBI probe into the mysterious death of Akhara Parishad head Mahant Narendra Giri. The inquiry was recommended by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath around midnight on Wedensday. "On the instructions of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a probe by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) has been recommended in the incident pertaining to the sad death of chairman of Akhara Parishad Mahant Narendra Giri," the state Home department said in a tweet in Hindi. The development comes after the state police arrested Anand Giri, Narendra Giri's estranged protege and two others. Anand Giri, it is alleged, had been harassing the religious leader who allegedly died by suicide. Police said a suicide note found near his body mentioned Anand Giri. The state police had also formed an 18-member Special Investigation Team to probe the incident. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had earlier said that 'several pieces of evidence' had been collected and that the 'culprits will not be spared'. New York, Sep 23 : Heads of state, philanthropic leaders and indigenous representatives have come together to announce unprecedented commitments to protect and restore nature, at the opening session of the Nature for Life Hub, a high-level event Transformative Action for Nature and People, coinciding with the 76th UN General Assembly. Nine organisations pledged $5 billion over the next 10 years to support the creation, expansion, management and monitoring of protected and conserved areas of land, inland water and sea, working with indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society and governments. "This is not a moment where we should not have hope. At the centre of all of this, people will have to be the ones who shape what happens next," said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. "Societies have found within themselves the ability to address things that often were long overdue whether it was the issues of inequality or exclusion, but also investments in systemic transformations. We are investing in one another's ability to, together, change the trajectory of the world." The event on Wednesday brought together 22 Presidents and Prime Ministers, as well as indigenous community leaders and leaders from the worlds of finance, philanthropy, and civil society to commit to momentous action for nature, climate and people. The nine philanthropic organisations jointly launched the 'Protecting Our Planet Challenge' to ensure that 30 per cent of the planet is protected and preserved by 2030 --with a specific focus on the most important places for biodiversity. The nine organisations include: Arcadia, Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Nia Tero, Rainforest Trust, Re:wild, Wyss Foundation, and the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation. This is the biggest-ever philanthropic commitment to nature conservation that campaigners see as crucial to unlock greater investments in conservation, to plug the gap in funding to reverse global nature loss, and secure a nature-positive world. Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, reiterated the announcement that the European Union will double its external funding for biodiversity, in particular for the most vulnerable countries, showing leadership which must now be matched by countries and institutions across the globe. The event also included participants from Finance for Biodiversity Pledge that gathers 75 financial institutions from around the globe -- collectively worth 12 trillion euros in assets -- committing to protecting and restoring biodiversity through their finance activities and investments. The announcements send a strong signal to countries to step up their ambition to protect and restore nature ahead of the COP26 climate conference taking place in Glasgow, UK, in November and the COP15 biodiversity conference taking place in Kunming, China in April/May 2022. New York, Sep 23 : Nearly 17 years after the deadly 2004 tsunami, when outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and US president Joe Biden meet September 24 for the first ever in-person leader level summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, it will mark a high point in a steady year-long elevation against the backdrop of China's growing economic and military strength and Covid-19. Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution, supply chain resilience in critical and emerging technologies like semiconductors and 5G telecom networks are tipped to be top of the agenda. For India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Quad meeting will be bookended by a Covid-19 summit convened by Biden and Modi's own speech at the United Nations General Assembly, on Saturday. The Covid-19 summit taps into the heart of Quad's most urgent priorities - and India's strengths in vaccine production. In the last 17 years, the Quad has taken a meandering path to its current prominence, with China's shadow being a central theme. In early 2021, Quad returned to the big stage after a nearly 10 year lull. Beginning from its roots in crisis, here is a timeline that captures some of the key moments that have nudged the Quad into a closer embrace: 2004: The earliest framework for the Quad surfaced when the US, Japan, India and Australia formed a "core group" during their joint response to the 2004 tsunami. 2006: While in Tokyo, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that Japan and India wanted to begin a dialogue with other "like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific region". In the same year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed an "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity". 2007: In August, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Confluence of the Two Seas" speech sparked the ideological foundations for the Quad. Speaking in the Indian Parliament, he said, "The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A 'broader Asia' that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form. Our two countries have the ability -- and the responsibility -- to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become seas of clearest transparence." 2007: Quad countries held their first official meeting, in Manila. The Prime Ministers of India, Japan, and Australia met with then US Vice President Dick Cheney on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In the same year, within four months of the first meeting, Quad countries, alongwith Singapore, held an ambitious naval exercise in the Indian Ocean. But the downplaying went in parallel. Australia framed the Quad as a construct limited to trade and culture, India said the Quad had "no security implication." 2007: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a champion of the Quad grouping, resigned in September 2007. The Quad lost its most vocal champion. 2008: Soon after the 2007 Malabar exercise, Australia pulled out of the Quad. Subsequently, Australia was dropped from the 2008 Malabar exercise. More than a decade later, in a 2019 article, former Aussie PM Kevin Rudd recounted that in a full day of meetings with President George W. Bush and senior members of his cabinet in 2008, Quad wasn't raised even once by the American side. The grouping came apart. Between Quad 1.0 and its revival 10 years on, the four countries realigned with minilaterals. Japan and India became important fixtures in two such arrangements. A steady string of "2+2" bilaterals and trilaterals among foreign and defence ministers took off. 2011: After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan received massive support from the US, Australia, and India. 2012: Shinzo Abe returned to office and wasted no time in calling for a "democratic security diamond." 2013-2020: During this period, each of the Quad countries saw their share of China aggression. India dealt with four Chinese border agressions in 2103, 2014, 2017 and 2020. 2017: Japan announced plans to propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India and Australia. The stated intention was to counter Chinese aggression. 2017: Late this year, Australia began re-engaging with Quad partners. Senior officials met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Biannual meetings continued at the "senior official" level. Also happening this year, a Japan-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement. 2019: First ministerial-level meeting of Quad 2.0. 2020: All four navies participated in their first joint exercise in over a decade, in November. 2021: In March, US President Joe Biden convened a virtual Quad meeting attended by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. They formed working groups on Covid-19 vaccines, climate change, and technological innovation and supply-chain resilience. 2021: First leader level in-person summit, scheduled for September 24 at the White House. (Nikhila Natarajan is on Twitter @byniknat) Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Koppal : , Sep 23 (IANS) The Karnataka Police have arrested five persons in connection with fining a Dalit family after their 2-year-old boy entered the village Hanuman temple on his birthday to pray, said police sources on Thursday. The arrested were identified as Kanakappa Poojari, Hanuma Gouda, Gavisiddappa Myageri, Virupakshagouda Myageri and SharanaGouda. They have been booked under IPC Sections 504, 149, SC-ST Act 2005 by jurisdictional Kushtagi police. However, the father of the Dalit boy has not lodged a complaint and the police department has taken suo motu cognizance of the offence. The father has told police, he would lodge a complaint only if he is troubled by the upper caste again. The parents of the 2-year-old Dalit boy were fined Rs 23,000 as the boy entered Hanuman temple in Miyapura. The toddler was taken near the Hanuman temple of the village by his father on his birthday. As Dalits were not allowed inside the temple, they always prayed from outside standing in front of the temple to the deity. The father wanted to pray from outside along with his son. Even as it rained father stood outside the temple and prayed. However, the toddler in excitement ran inside the temple. The incident took place on September 4. This became an issue as upper caste villagers thought that the temple was desecrated. They held a meeting on September 11 and asked the parents of the boy to pay Rs 23,000 as fine which is going to be used to carry out purification rituals of the temple. However, the district administration which came to know about the development sent officers from the police, revenue and social welfare departments to the village. The officers conducted an awareness programme regarding the untouchability for all villagers. The officers have taken the members of upper caste to task for imposing fine on the Dalit boy for entering the temple and let them off after warning them of legal action if their act was repeated. T.Sridhar, Superintendent of Police, Koppal also visited the spot. The culprits were admonished. They apologised to the father of the boy. Though the police went to the house of the victims to convince them to lodge a complaint, the community elders decided not to lodge a complaint. The team of government officers have also visited the village and conducted an awareness programme. Further investigation is on. Los Angeles, Sep 23 : Actress Sosie Bacon, who shared screen space with Hollywood star Kate Winslet in the Emmy-winning series 'Mare of Easttown', will be seen as a lead in the upcoming film 'Something's Wrong With Rose'. The 29-year-old actor has been roped in to star as Rose in the Paramount Players film, reports variety.com. Based on the short 'Laura Hasn't Slept', the movie centres on a doctor whose mind begins to turn on her after she witnesses a horrifying occurrence. The logline reads: "After a bizarre, traumatic event involving a patient, a psychiatrist begins to experience terrifying occurrences that only she can see, and grows increasingly convinced that she's being pursued by a malevolent supernatural force." Parker Finn will write and direct 'Something's Wrong With Rose', which is slated to start production in New Jersey this October. Bacon, whose parents are actors Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, began her career in Hollywood at the age of 11 when she was cast in the 2005 film 'Loverboy', which was directed by her father and starred her mother. She later appeared in the series 'The Closer' before taking time off to study at Brown University. Bacon returned to the small screen in Netflix's hit teen series '13 Reasons Why', in which she portrayed the character of Skye Miller, and she more recently joined the cast of 'Narcos: Mexico' in its second season. Following her role as Carrie Layden in 'Mare of Easttown', Bacon will star in Jason Katim's upcoming Amazon series 'Forget Normal'. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, Sep 23 : Irked with failure to comply with its directions, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued a show-cause notice to the Secretary of Urban Development Department, Rajasthan and also directed local top police officer to secure his presence during the next hearing. The show-case notice against the secretary of Urban Development Department was issued on Wednesday for not appearing before the tribunal despite its order for the same. The Tribunal's directive came while hearing a petition alleging the discharge of untreated sewage and industrial effluents on the agriculture lands in Nokha village of Bikaner district in Rajasthan. The petitioners had in 2019 taken the grievance about discharge of untreated sewage and effluents on the agriculture land at Nokha village to the Green Tribunal. "Since the Secretary, local bodies have failed to appear by video conferencing in compliance with order dated June 10, 2021, we are forced to issue show-cause notice requiring him to explain why action be not taken for such failure by appearing in person on the next date," NGT's principal bench said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Tribunal has asked the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Jaipur to ensure the presence of Secretary, Urban Development for next hearing, scheduled for January 6, 2022. "To secure his presence by video conferencing, we issue a bailable warrant to be executed by SSP Jaipur through the police officers concerned for a sum of Rs 5,000," the Tribunal order said. During the hearing on September 21, the Tribunal had pointed out that it had directed that the law be monitored at the level of the Chief Secretary by constituting a special cell. The Tribunal had also laid down the scale of compensation of Rs 10 lakh per month for delay in setting up of the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) and Rs 5 lakh per month for delay in providing interim remediation measures in the matter to the villagers. "Unfortunately, in the present case, the orders delaying the remedial action include higher officers, but no prosecution initiated by the State PCB. This is a dangerous trend to violate the law and to disrespect the rule of law, which calls for stringent action, if the rule of law is to prevail," the Tribunal said. The NGT had given last warning to the state (Rajasthan) authorities to take remedial action to prevent discharge of untreated effluents on the agriculture land on June 12. United Nations, Sep 23 : The UN General Assembly (UNGA) held a high-level meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and adopted a political declaration to carry forward the fight against racism and racial discrimination. The Declaration was adopted against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on September 8, 2001. In his opening remarks at the event on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all member states to take concrete actions, including policy measures, legislation and more granular data collection, to build on the current momentum against racism, reports Xinhua news agency. "A movement for racial justice and equality has emerged with unprecedented force, reach and impact. This new awakening, often led by women and young people, has created momentum we must seize upon," he said. "Together, we must work to recognize the contemporary resonance of past crimes that continue to haunt our present: the lingering traumas, the transgenerational suffering, the structural inequalities so deeply rooted in centuries of enslavement and colonial exploitation. And we must reverse the consequences of generations of exclusion and discrimination, including their obvious social and economic dimensions through reparatory justice frameworks," he said. The 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action offers an important opportunity to reflect on the status quo and future actions, said Guterres. Africans and people of African descent, minority communities, indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, displaced persons, and so many others, all continue to confront hatred, stigmatization, scapegoating, discrimination, and violence. Xenophobia, misogyny, hateful conspiracies, white supremacy and Neo-Nazi ideologies are spreading -- amplified in echo chambers of hate, he said. "We are witnessing a troubling rise in anti-Semitism, a harbinger throughout history of discrimination against others. We must condemn, without reservation or hesitation, the racism and discrimination of growing anti-Muslim bigotry, the mistreatment of minority Christians, and other forms of intolerance around the world." The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was meant to break the vicious cycle, in which discrimination leads to deprivation, and poverty deepens discrimination, he said. "We can overcome these harmful afflictions and heal if, and only if, we stand together as one human family. Rich in diversity, equal in dignity and rights, united in solidarity." Abdulla Shahid, president of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, said the international community has not done enough 20 years after the adoption of the Declaration. "When the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was adopted in 2001, it was done with emphasis to tackle racial discrimination and intolerance. "Sadly, two decades later, the doctrine is still being pursued. This is not to say that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action has failed, but rather that we have not done enough. "We, as a global community, have not done enough to tackle the pervasiveness of racism, racial discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia. Tackling racism in all its forms is a moral responsibility for justice. Racism begets violence, displacement, and inequality. It lives on because we allow it to. It penetrates society because we fail to acknowledge diversity," said Shahid. At the high-level meeting, the UNGA adopted a political declaration to reaffirm that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and subsequent documents provide a comprehensive UN framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to reaffirm member states' commitment to their full and effective implementation. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Panaji, Sep 23 : Goan politics may get a touch of West Bengal in the upcoming state Assembly elections, even as Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress appears likely to make yet another foray in the coastal state. Several opposition politicians in the state have confirmed that they were sounded out by the Trinamool Congress vis a vis the possibility of contesting on the party ticket for the state Assembly polls scheduled to be held in early 2022. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, however, seemed unperturbed by the potential re-entry of yet another political outfit in Goa's electoral politics. "Let everyone come, everyone loves Goa," Sawant said late on Wednesday, when asked for a reaction to reports of the Trinamool Congress possibly throwing its hat in the Goa polls. Among those who were contacted by the Trinamool Congress with the possibility of joining the West Bengal-based party, includes a former two-term Congress MLA Agnelo Fernandes. "I was sent feelers to join the party, but I have been with the Congress through thick and thin. I refused to participate in such a conversation," Fernandes maintains. Former Congress Chief Minister and sitting MLA Luizinho Faleiro, whose name has also been cropping up in political circles as a potential Trinamool Congress joinee has also said: "Lot of people are doing surveys. They are meeting all the leaders". If the Trinamool does make a foray in Goa now, it would be the second time that the party would be trying to make its political presence felt in the state. The party had roped in former Chief Minister Dr. Wilfred de Souza in 2012 to head the party's affairs, but had failed to make a dent in the subsequent Assembly polls. Former Chief Minister Churchill Alemao had also joined the party in 2014. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Los Angeles, Sep 23 : The third installment of the "Fantastic Beast" franchise has been titled "The Secrets of Dumbledore" and will release in theatres on April 15, 2022. "Harry Potter" maker David Yates is returning to direct the third movie. The third installment was initially scheduled to release on July 15 of next year, reports variety.com. The official tagline said: "Professor Albus Dumbledore knows the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald is moving to seize control of the wizarding world. Unable to stop him alone, he entrusts Magizoologist Newt Scamander to lead an intrepid team of wizards, witches and one brave Muggle baker on a dangerous mission, where they encounter old and new beasts and clash with Grindelwald's growing legion of followers. But with the stakes so high, how long can Dumbledore remain on the sidelines?" The prequel series, set decades before the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione, centers on magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who becomes a confidant of a young Albus Dumbledore, portrayed by Jude Law, amid the rise of the Hitler-esque Grindelwald. "Fantastic Beasts 3" made headlines last November when Hollywood star Johnny Depp exited the series, in which he portrayed the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, after Warner Bros. asked him to resign. Depp's exit came following the news he lost his libel case against The Sun, a British tabloid that published an article in 2018 alleging he was a "wife beater". Actor Mads Mikkelsen will replace Depp as Grindelwald. The cast also includes Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler and Jessica Williams. Author J.K. Rowling wrote the scripts for the first two entries in the franchise: 2016's "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and 2018's "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald". Steve Kloves, who worked on many of the original "Harry Potter" films, is co-writing the script for the third "Fantastic Beasts" film with Rowling. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 23 : A week after Kerala BJP president K. Surendran appeared before the Kasargode Crime Branch police officials in an election bribery case filed against him, a second notice has been served asking him to appear again with a mobile phone, which he claims has been lost. The police probe team however claims that the particular mobile phone which he says has been lost continues to be in use and hence has asked him to come again before them in a week's time. A local court had directed the Police to register a case under the Election Commission rules when a complaint was given against Surendran and two other local BJP leaders, after it surfaced that money was paid to the BSP candidate K. Sundara to withdraw his nomination at the Manjeswaram assembly constituency in the April 6 assembly polls. Surendran in the assembly polls had contested from two constituencies - Konni and Manjeswaram. Last week Surendran was closeted with the officials for over 75 minutes and according to sources in the know of things he denied of knowing Sundara. He also pointed out that since he has the highest respect and regards for the law of the land, he came before the probe officials. The CPI-M candidate from the constituency V.V. Ramesan, who finished third, is the complainant and the Kasargode First Class Magistrate Court gave the nod to register a case against Surendran and two others. When votes were counted on May 2, the Congress led UDF candidate A.K.M. Ashraff defeated Surendran with a margin of 745 votes. Incidentally it was Sundara himself who made an open admission to the media that he was given Rs 2.5 lakh and a Smartphone to pull out from the election. He said that he was also offered Rs 15 lakh, a home, and a wine parlour in Karnataka if Surendran wins. Since then the ruling CPI-M led Left was up in arms against this disclosure, but this charge was then promptly denied by Surendran and his party that no such thing has happened. Incidentally in the 2016 assembly polls, Surendran lost by a meagre margin of 89 votes and in that election Sundara, who contested as an independent candidate secured 467 votes. So the BJP was determined to see that this time with Sundara coming up as a BSP candidate, his name would appear just before the name of Surendran in the electronic voting machine and it could play spoil sport to the fortunes of Surendran. And on the last day of withdrawal of nomination, Sundara withdrew his candidature. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Airline major IndiGo is bullish on the upcoming festive season as well as capacity augmentation to potentially reach pre-Covid traffic levels by December 2021. Besides, the airline believes that economic rebound, weaning impact of Covid 2.0 and accelerated vaccination drive will further complement the traffic growth. According to Ronojoy Dutta, Wholetime Director and CEO of India's largest airline in terms of market share said: "My hopes for the festive season are very bullish and I think we will have a very good holiday season." Traditionally, the festive season in India ushers in higher air traffic growth. This year it will commence from October and last till mid-November. "I project by December we will be back to pre-Covid levels domestically." "As of now we are still way below pre-Covid numbers. In pre-Covid times, we used to do about 1,500 departures a day. Though it has recovered to 1,100 now, we are still below the pre-Coid level." In terms of capacity utilisation norms, Dutta said the company is in touch with the Centre to get 100 per cent domestic capacity soon. "I think, we will get 100 per cent soon and even the permission to re-start international operations." "By July of next year we should have recovered to pre-Covid levels internationally as well." At present, the Centre has allowed airlines to deploy limited domestic operational capacity up to 85 per cent. Furthermore, he said that pent-up demand has now become more sustained and predictable which is expect to drive growth. "Last year there were no flights for a period, as a result there was a huge pent up demand, but that's slowly petered out." "Now, I don't think this is pent up demand, but a gradual increase in demand." On the pandemic's progression, Dutta cited the current conditions are stable but cautioned against an element of uncertainty surrounding new variants. "If you look around the world, this Delta variant has clearly created a havoc in many countries. In someways, we are ahead of everyone else because we were hit first. So the havoc that they are seeing in other countries, we already experienced that in May. So to some extent, I think it is behind us." "For now things look reasonably stable." Currently, the company has a fleet of over 270 aircraft. It operates around 1,100 flights per day connecting 70 domestic and 24 international destinations. (Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in) Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed Sanaa, Sep 23 : Fighting has continued between Yemen's government forces and the Houthi rebels over the control of the country's oil-rich province of Shabwa, a military official said. "The government dispatched heavy reinforcements backed by armoured vehicles sparking ferocious battles with the rebels in Shabwa's western parts," the official told Xinhua news agency on Wednesday. During the past 24 hours, scores of people from both warring sides were either killed or injured as the fighting heads for more escalation, he said. "The government forces deployed several military units and managed to stop the Houthis advancement in some areas of Shabwa." Meanwhile, the country's Defence Ministry said in a statement that "dozens of Houthi fighters were killed by the army's fire in Bayhan district, in addition to destroying a number of their armoured vehicles". The pro-government ministry confirmed that large military reinforcements and hundreds of tribal fighters arrived in the area to support the army forces on the frontlines and stop the Houthis from invading Shabwa. On Tuesday, the Houthi rebel fighters achieved on-ground military progress and captured Bayhan and other key areas in Shabwa. In 2017, the Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia-led coalition launched a large military campaign and expelled the Houthi rebels out of all the strategic areas in Shabwa. The Houthi militia recently intensified their military operations against the government-controlled areas in different parts of the war-ravaged Arab country, and succeeded in capturing key areas from the government forces. Yemen has been locked into a civil war since the Houthi militia overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014. Saudi Arabia has been leading the Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthis forced him into exile. Patna, Sep 23 : In a bid to implement liquor ban in Bihar, the Nitish Kumar government has approved a proposal to seal warehouses or any other premises used for storage, production, sale or import and export of liquor in Bihar. Moreover, if any individual uses a section of a house for storage or area for consumption (House Bar) of liquor, the state government will seal that portion and will put it out for the auction. An amendment to the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 was passed in the cabinet meeting headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday evening. Besides, any vehicle laden with liquor or liquor manufacturing materials and are bound to other states, such vehicles which are using the roads of Bihar, will have to go outside the state within 24 hours. The vehicles carrying liquor or liquor manufacturing substances should have to declare the nature of material while entering into the territory of Bihar and authority will digitally log the timing of entry of the vehicles. Though, the state government has not clarified about vehicles "stuck due to roadblock". In Bihar, villagers generally block roads including national highways in case of accidents. At present, some of the country's busiest national highways pass through Bihar, such as Delhi-Kolkata NH 19 (Earlier NH 2), Delhi-Lucknow-Darbhanga-Siliguri-Guwahati NH 27, NH 30, NH 31 etc. The Nitish Kumar government has however exempted the storage of liquor in military cantonments. The liquor sale and consumption is allowed only for military personnel and officials inside the cantonment area. Any person who purchased liquor from a military canteen and then takes it outside is liable to face action under existing laws pertaining to liquor prohibition act. Ex-army personnel also cannot store liquor in their houses located in civil areas. New Delhi, Sep 23 : O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) is ranked among the world's top 500 universities in the prestigious QS Graduate Employability Rankings (GER) 2022, released on Thursday. JGU's overall ranking in the QS GER 2022 is 301-500. QS GER makes a global comparison of the employability outcomes of higher education institutions, therefore, making JGU one of the leading institutions globally for creating robust and globally recognised career pathways for the youth. To achieve this despite the turbulence of the global pandemic is extraordinary. JGU's ability to produce high-performing achievers is reflective of the university's cutting edge and progressive curriculum and effective career-services governance which enable the graduates of the university to be highly employable, and act as instruments of change at any organizations that they are a part of. This recognition is also a testament to JGU's constant commitment to breaking the stereotypes of success within the Indian Higher Education landscape. This is indicated by multiple dimensions of this accomplishment. Firstly, JGU is the only Indian university to be featured in these rankings that is purely focused on social sciences, arts and humanities. Secondly, it is one of the only two private Indian universities on this list; the other being the nearly-six-decade old Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani). Thirdly, JGU, established in 2009, remains India's youngest university on this illustrious list of 11 other Indian universities that have made it to the QS GER rankings this year. The list includes 6 IITs, University of Delhi, BITS Pilani, University of Mumbai, Indian Institute of Science, and University of Calcutta. The youngest among the Indian institutions ranked in QS GER 2022, JGU is also among the top 71 institutions in Graduate Employment Rate (GER). JGU has also received an impressive score of 86.9/100 in Graduate Employment Rate, a key indicator considered for the rankings that involves measuring the proportion of graduates (excluding those opting to pursue further study or those who have made themselves unavailable for work) in full or part-time employment within 12 months of graduation. Congratulating the JGU community on the achievement which cements the university's position among the world's premier higher education institutions, Naveen Jindal, Founding Chancellor, JGU, said, "I am humbled to learn that JGU now ranks among the top 500 of the world's higher education institutions in the prestigious QS Graduate Employability Rankings 2022. As we mark the 12th Anniversary of JGU on 30th September 2021, this remarkable achievement couldn't have come at a better time. It is a true reflection of the vision and imagination that led to the creation of JGU in 2009. It is indeed the result of the outstanding contributions of the faculty members, students and staff of JGU across all these years. This recognition proves that efforts to establish JGU as a centre of excellence that produces outstanding leaders in various walks of life are bearing fruits. This is a commendable accomplishment during this year given the impact of the global pandemic on the employment of students worldwide. I am filled with pride to see that JGU has overcome various challenges to provide world-class employment opportunities to its students even during a global health crisis." Expressing the significance of this accomplishment for JGU in carving a future especially for non-STEM students of India and the world, Professor (Dr) C. Raj Kumar, Founding Vice-Chancellor, JGU said, "The fact that in just 12 years since its establishment, JGU has emerged as one of the World's Top 500 universities in the coveted 2022 QS Graduate Employability Rankings 2022 is a fantastic recognition of the university's capacity to produce world-class graduates. In addition to putting in place world-class infrastructure and serving as a hub for erudite scholars from different parts of the globe, JGU has also established a robust Office of Career Services which connects our students with potential employers. I believe that these factors, combined with the university's focus on imparting interdisciplinary experiential learning, providing our students with opportunities of international exposure as well enabling them with internships with leading organisations have contributed immensely to the elevation of JGU's status as a globally recognized institution in QS GER 2022. JGU's entry into QS GER also shows that non-STEM graduates can also develop impactful career trajectories given the right platform. JGU will continue to work towards strengthening its platform for creating meaningful and globally recognized career pathways for non-STEM aspirants." Recognizing the efforts of the JGU community in achieving this important milestone, Professor Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik, Registrar, O.P. Jindal Global University said, "This recognition fills us with great joy and humility, especially since it comes on the heels of the QS World University Rankings (WUR) 2022, released in June this year, which ranked JGU as India's number one private University. It is a reflection of the commitment JGU has towards the youth of our nation. To have achieved this within just 12 years has made JGU the youngest Indian university in these rankings. As a non-STEM private university, JGU continues to strive towards breaking barriers. This achievement of JGU is indeed a result of the collaborative efforts of the JGU academic fraternity as a whole, including the students whose commitment and perseverance has been instrumental in achieving this important milestone. JGU will always ensure creation of experiences and curriculum that will help its students evolve into valuable assets to their employers, and demonstrate great leadership skills in their careers." Highlighting the competitiveness of these rankings and commenting on the significance of this accomplishment, Professor Arjya Majumdar, Dean, Office of Benchmarking and Institutional Transformation, said, "JGU has made it to the top 500 universities from among a very competitive pool of institutions worldwide. In fact, it relies on a very rich data set of survey responses. For this year's edition of international rankings, QS considered responses from over 75,000 employers, over 40,800 mapped degrees and affiliations of over 29,000 high-achievers, nearly 170,000 employers' connections with graduates, and evaluated over 310,000 work placement partnerships. Also, this recognition is all the more significant this year as many young graduating students across the nation still face high levels of uncertainty amidst the ongoing pandemic. These rankings demonstrate JGU's institutional resilience and its commitment towards overcoming challenges of all kinds to continue building word-class opportunities of employment for the students." The QS GER methodology is very robust and ensures the consideration of multiple and diverse parameters. For determining these employability rankings of higher education institutions across the world, QS considers how well reputed the institutions are among employers, whether the institutions are nurturing high-achievers, how connected institutions are to companies and how attractive the institution's recent graduates are to employers. QS considered the following indicators and weightings to calculate the scores for GER 2022: employer reputation (30 per cent), alumni outcomes (25 per cent), partnerships with employers per faculty (25 per cent), employer-student connections (10 per cent) and graduate employment rate (10 per cent). Beirut, Sep 23 : Lebanese President Michel Aoun said that his country is keen to resume indirect negotiations with Israel for the demarcation of maritime borders, an official statement said here. On Wednesday, Aoun renewed Lebanon's commitment to implementing UN Resolution 1701 in all aspects and upholding its rights to its waters and natural resources, reports Xinhua news agency. "This is why we expressed our objection to the Security Council and the UN over Israel's recent signing of contracts to start oil and gas exploration with an American company, as this step contradicts the path of indirect negotiations which requires freezing all exploration-related work in disputed areas, awaiting a resolution between the two countries," the statement quoted Aoun as saying. The President's remarks came during his meeting with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka to discuss the new cabinet's priorities in the near future. Wronecka told Aoun that the UN Security Council will convene on November 9 which will give Lebanon a chance to raise its concerns. Lebanon and Israel have border disputes both on sea and land. The neighbouring countries, mediated by the US, conducted a round of talks to demarcate the maritime borders in October 2020. But it was later suspended. Srinagar, Sep 23 : Mehrajuddin Kalwal, who is a senior separatist leader on NIA detention since 2017, was released on parole on Thursday to visit his home following the death of his mother. Official sources said Kalwal, who has been in a Delhi prison for the last 4 years, was released on parole to visit his home in Baghat-e-Kanipora area of Srinagar district. "He was first taken to Pantha Chowk police station where he spent the night. Today morning he has been allowed to visit his home for six hours. "He is accompanied by a team of Delhi Police, SHO of Nowgam police station, in whose jurisdiction his home falls, and policemen from Srinagar district police lines," sources said. Bengaluru, Sep 23 : Karnataka Police investigating the alleged rape of a woman traveller by the cab driver of a reputed cab service in Bengaluru, has found a selfie photo with the victim from the mobile phone of the accused, police sources said here on Thursday. Jeevan Beema Nagar police on Wednesday arrested the cab driver Devaraj alias Devarajulu, a resident of Avalahalli near KR Puram in connection with the case. The accused originally belonged to Andhra Pradesh. The incident had taken place in the wee hours of Wednesday. The victim when she rushed out of the cab after the incident had grabbed her bag and driver's mobile. She had submitted the cell phone to the police. The police are surprised to find the selfie photo on the accused mobile. The accused before committing the crime had clicked the selfie with the victim who in the frame is asleep. The sources further explained that the cab was booked at 3.20 a.m. on Wednesday by the victim from her friend's place in HSR Layout. She reached the destination, her home at 3.40 a.m. However, she was asleep and did not realize she had indeed reached her home. The cab driver who came to wake her up opened the backdoor and saw she was in deep sleep. At this point, he thought of committing a crime and took the vehicle to a nearby isolated place. There he clicked the selfie with the victim and raped her in the backseat of the cab, sources said. By the time the victim got back to her senses it was too late and somehow she managed to push the accused off and ran towards her home. She reached her home at about 4.45 a.m. The accused also escaped from the scene. But, he came back again to the spot as he found his phone was missing. The accused realized his mobile phone was missing when he wanted to end the trip, according to sources. The police said that the girl had called up the police station and informed them about the incident. Immediately, the police sent a team with a woman police officer to the house of the victim. The police collected further details of the incident. The victim was taken to the police station in their vehicle and after registration of the complaint and medical test, police dropped her back at home. The police have taken the clothes of the victim and the accused into custody and sent them for examination. The preliminary investigations have suggested sexual assault and the police are waiting for medical report. The accused had come to Bengaluru two years ago for a livelihood. The police are suspecting his involvement in many such cases and are questioning him. Though he denied having committed the crime initially, later he confessed to have sexually assaulted the woman. The incident has sent shock waves across Bengaluru and the state as thousands of women use cab services during nights. Earlier, S. Murugan, Additional Commissioner of Police confirmed the arrest of the culprit. Further investigation is on. San Francisco, Sep 23 : San Francisco Mayor London Breed has announced details from San Francisco's Organized Retail Crime Initiative, a new initiative led by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) in partnership with local retailers and regional law enforcement agencies. The focus of the plan is to increase reporting, investigating, and solving of retail theft cases and the upstream criminal enterprises that fuel them, the announcement said on Wednesday. The plan has three main elements: expanding and reallocating police investigative resources, strategic restructuring of publicly and privately funded deployments, and public-private partnerships aimed at reporting, investigating and solving cases, according to the announcement. "Retail theft and commercial burglaries are not victimless crimes," said Breed. "They hurt working families due to reduced work hours, shuttered stores and lost jobs." "The strategy we're outlining today is an all-hands-on-deck approach that brings the full partnership of state and local law enforcement and retailers to bear to aggressively pursue, investigate and deter organised retail crime in San Francisco," she added. Melbourne, Sep 23 : Authorities in Australia's Victoria are preparing to confront and contain demonstrators on Thursday who have been rampaging through the state capital Melbourne's central business district. Police made more than 200 arrests on Wednesday as throngs of protesters flooded through the streets bringing traffic to a grinding halt, reports Xinhua news agency. Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton, speaking to local media on Thursday, said riot police, armed with tear gas and rubber bullets, would continue to be out in force. "We won't tolerate the city being held to ransom," Patton said, adding that "we would hope common sense is starting to prevail, and they are starting to reflect on their conduct and what the public sentiment is towards these people who are doing this". The protests were initially orchestrated by construction workers opposed to new vaccine mandates placed on their industry. Other people, including anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown demonstrators, quickly joined the fray in a defiant show of opposition to the state's handling of the pandemic. Victorian health authorities recorded another 766 new local cases on Thursday, bringing the active cases to 6,666 which mostly clustered around Melbourne. Kiev, Sep 23 : Serhiy Shefir, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, survived an assassination attempt when his car came under attack by unidentified assailants, the National Police has said. Shefir was unharmed in the assault on Wednesday, which took place near the village of Lesniki, about 20 km from the capital Kiev, but his driver was wounded, Xinhua news agency quoted the National Police as saying. Adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine (OPU) Mikhail Podolyak, in a commentary to the local news agency Interfax-Ukraine, said the OPU associates the attempt on Shefir with Zelensky's campaign against the oligarchs. Zelensky, who is currently in New York, was promptly informed about the assault, according to the President's press service. Criminal proceedings have been opened regarding the fact of the attack, and the National Police have launched a special operation to nab perpetrators. Srinagar, Sep 23 : Sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday carried out a raid at the corporate headquarters of J&K Bank in Srinagar city. Sources said a CBI team, including a Superintendent of Police, four deputy superintendents and seven inspectors are part of the team that carried out searches at the Bank's corporate headquarters. Sources said Thursday's CBI searches are focused on one-time loan settlements made by the Bank from 2012 to 2019. One-time settlements are made by banks with defaulting borrowers to secure the interests of the financial institution. Such settlements often involve huge remissions on accrued interest afforded by the financial institutions to the defaulting borrowers in order to protect the interests of the financial institutions to the maximum extent possible. San Francisco, Sep 23 : Facebook has admitted that it underreported certain ad performance metrics on iPhone, indicating that Apple's iOS 14 privacy changes are having the intended effect on throttling data harvesting. In a blog post on Wednesday, Facebook product marketing chief Graham Mudd admitted that the company has heard from many advertisers that the "impact on (their) advertising investment" has been greater than they expected. Specifically, Mudd said that Facebook has been underreporting iOS web conversions by about 15 per cent, reports AppleInsider. "We believe that real-world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers," Mudd wrote. Back in July, Facebook warned investors that the iOS privacy features could have a greater impact on the company's advertising model in the third quarter than the second quarter. The feature, released earlier in 2021, makes cross-platform and cross-app tracking an opt-in for iOS users, the report said. Facebook's blog post then outlines some actions that advertisers can take to reach their customers and "deliver conversions" while maintaining consumer privacy. The steps include analysing the campaign data, allowing time before analysis, and setting up specific conversion APIs. The social media juggernaut also reiterated that it is working on several technologies that can deliver meaningful advertising campaign data to companies while preserving user privacy. "Over the coming months, we'll continue to introduce new tools to further help with delivery effectiveness and measurement," Mudd wrote. "As we learn and adapt right alongside you, we're committed to sharing what we are building in real-time," Mudd added. Mathura : , Sep 23 (IANS) Two men were intercepted and beaten up brutally by a mob in Mathura for carrying meat through an area where there is a ban on meat products. The two men have been identified as Ayub and Mausim. The right-wing outfit that attacked the men, went live on Facebook, recording their assault, and asking viewers to share the video. The men were kicked and slapped repeatedly by the mob of about 15 people. Ayub, 40, runs a licensed meat shop at Raya town and was taking meat there while Mausim, 23, was accompanying him. Ayub, Mausim and Bahadur, the driver of the vehicle, have been arrested for 'defiling place of worship and alleged cow slaughter'. Gau Raksha Dal, Mathura district president, Sitaram Sharma, said that on Wednesday, he had got information that the ban on meat was being violated and the men were allegedly carrying beef despite the ban. "Our informer had told us that meat was being transported from Agra to Mathura, which is illegal," he said. Gau Rakshak Dal president, Ravi Kant Sharma, said "After following them from the Yamuna Expressway exit, we stopped them at Mahavir Colony and handed them over to the police." Ayub and Mausim were arrested under sections 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle) of the IPC, and under the Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act. Mathura SP (city) MP Singh said, "About 160 kg meat has been seized and its samples sent for testing. The accused have been sent to judicial custody." The SP further said that, "The accused did not have a transit permit nor a refrigerator for transporting perishables -- both of which are mandatory." Chennai, Sep 23 : The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S. Ramadoss on Thursday said the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical college admission has become "the den of cheaters and it should be cancelled". Citing various instances of malpractices in the conduct of NEET, Ramadoss said the NEET should be beyond doubt but every year there are reports about malpractices like proxy writing and others. He said the NEET has failed in its twin goal of increasing the standards of medical education and avoiding commercialisation of medical education and hence it should be scrapped. Ramadoss said this year, the NEET question paper was sold for Rs 35 lakh in Jaipur. He said it was shocking to hear malpractices like proxies writing the exams on behalf of aspirants and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against a Nagpur based career guidance centre. The career guidance centre it is alleged had promised medical college aspirants in Delhi and Jharkhand admission in top colleges for a fee of Rs 50 lakh. United Nations, Sep 23 : The UN Security Council has condemned in the strongest terms an attempted coup in Sudan to disrupt the country's transition by force. In a statement, the members of the Security Council reiterated their full support to Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his endeavours to see Sudan through a successful transition in a manner that achieves the hopes and aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive, peaceful, stable, democratic and prosperous future, reports Xinhua news agency. The Council members urged all stakeholders to engage constructively with the national initiative known as "The National Crisis and Issues of the Transition -- The Way Forward", and further encouraged Sudan's civilian and military actors to remain committed and continue working in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration to achieve the goal of Sudan's inclusive transition as outlined in the Constitutional Document and the Juba Peace Agreement, said the statement. They also expressed their solidarity with the people of Sudan and affirmed their readiness to support Sudan during the transition period, and reaffirmed their strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Sudan, it said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attempted coup on Tuesday. "Any effort to undermine Sudan's political transition will jeopardize the hard-earned progress made on the political and economic fronts. The secretary-general calls on all parties to remain committed to the transition and the realization of the aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive, peaceful, stable, and democratic future," said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres, in a statement. The UN stands by the government and people of Sudan in this endeavour, said the statement. The Sudanese transitional government said on Tuesday that it has foiled a coup plot of officers of a group of armed forces from the remnants of the former regime. Canberra, Sep 23 : A new study revealed on Thursday that a majority of Indigenous Australians are at elevated risk of severe illness from Covid-19 as the country continues to battle the third wave of the pandemic. The study published by Australian National University (ANU) examined the prevalence of health factors such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and smoking among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, reports Xinhua news agency. It found that about 59 per cent of Indigenous Australians have at least one underlying health condition that puts them at increased risk of intensive care admission, ventilation or death if they contract Covid-19 and are not vaccinated. Katie Thurber, the lead author of the study, said the findings reinforced that Indigenous people "must remain a priority group" for the vaccine rollout. "The root cause of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' elevated risk of severe COVID-19 illness is health inequity, stemming from colonisation and racism," she said in a statement. "Our study makes it very clear, because of these long-term inequities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must continue to be treated as one of the highest priority groups in our pandemic response." On Thursday morning, Australia reported more than 1,800 new locally-acquired Covid-19 cases, which increased the overall tally to 90,372, while the death toll stood at 1,186. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not one group, but rather comprise hundreds of groups that have their own distinct set of languages, histories and cultural traditions. The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, in partnership with the federal government, has been critical in driving the Covid response for the Indigenous Australians. Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Hyderabad, Sep 23 : Actor Vishnu Manchu on Thursday announced his panel for the upcoming elections to Movie Artistes Association (MAA), the apex body of Tollywood "For my MAA, our privilege and honour," tweeted the actor while posting the names of his panel members who will be contesting for various posts. Vishnu will take on well-known actor Prakash Raj for the post of president in the elections scheduled to be held on October 10. The elections are likely to see a triangular contest as character artiste C.V.L. Narasimha Rao has also announced his plans to contest. He is yet to announce his panel. From Vishnu's panel, actor Raghu Babu will be contesting for general secretary, veteran actor and former minister Babu Mohan for executive vice-president, actor-producer Madhala Ravi and comedian Prithviraj Bali Reddy for vice-presidents, actor Siva Balaji for the post of treasurer, character actor Karate Kalyani and comedian Gautham Raju for joint secretary. Vishnu also named 18 candidates for the posts of executive members. They are Archana (Veda), Ashok Kumar, Geeta Singh, Harinath Babu, Jayavani, Malakpeta Shailaja, Manik, Poojitha, Rajeshwari Reddy, Rekha, Sampoornesh Babu, Shashank, Sivannarayana, Silakshmi, P. Srinivasulu, Swapna Madhu, Vishnu Bopanna and M. R. C. Vadlapatla. Prakash Raj has already announced his panel and is actively campaigning. He also received support from actors Jeevitha Rajasekhar and Hema, who dropped their plans to contest against him and joined his panel. Jeevitha will be contesting for the post of general secretary while Hema is in race for vice-president's post Actor Meka Srikanth is contesting for the post of executive vice-president, Banerjee for vice-president's post. Actors Uttej and Anitha Chowdary are the candidates for the post of joint secretaries while senior character artiste Nagineedu is in race for the treasurer's post "I came here to serve the film industry. I want to serve my fellow artistes and industry people," Prakash Raj had said while announcing his panel Tollywood sources say Prakash Raj has considerably bright chances of winning the election as MAA president. He enjoys the backing of Megastar Chiranjeevi. In 2019, actor-producer Naresh was elected as MAA president, defeating Shivaji Raja, who was contesting for second consecutive term On the Naresh panel, Jeevitha Rajasekhar was elected as general secretary while her husband actor Rajasekhar was elected as executive vice-president. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Kohima/New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Government has accepted the resignation of Ravindra Narayan Ravi, the interlocutor for the Naga peace process, officials said here on Thursday. A senior official of the Nagaland government on condition of anonymity said that Ravi on Wednesday wrote to the Union Home Ministry requesting the government to relinquish him as it was "inconvenient" for him to discharge his duty as the Interlocutor after being taking charge as the Governor of Tamil Nadu. Ravi, who was governor of Nagaland and on September 9 transferred to Tamil Nadu, where he took the gubernatorial post on Saturday. Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi has been given the additional charge as Nagaland Governor until regular arrangements are made. Ravi, a former Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, has been transferred to Tamil Nadu and relieved from the responsibility of interlocutor at a time when his relation with the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN-IM) turned very sour on various crucial issues. Ravi, a 1976 batch IPS officer of Kerala cadre, was appointed as the Centre's interlocutor for the Naga peace talks on August 29, 2014, soon after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government took charge. He was appointed as the Deputy National Security Advisor in October 2018 before being named the 19th Governor of Nagaland on August 1, 2019. The central government and the NSCN-IM signed the "Framework Agreement" on August 3, 2015. Despite the various political parties including the Congress having been demanding to make public the provisions of the "Framework Agreement", the Union Government is yet to respond. The leaders of NSCN-IM, the dominant Naga group, had openly criticised Ravi, who on his part had slammed the outfit for its various demands, especially over a separate flag and constitution. Ravi and NSCN-IM also got engaged in a war of words on many other issues including over the collection of "tax" from the public by the Naga outfit. The former Nagaland governor had outrightly rejected the demand for a separate flag and a constitution for the state. Meanwhile, after over a year, crucial meetings between the Government of India's envoy and the Naga insurgent outfits began in Kohima on Monday to settle the long-pending Naga political issue, involving various groups, including the NSCN (IM). Officials in Kohima said that Central government representative A.K. Mishra and the NSCN (IM) leadership led by Thuingaleng Muivah held a meeting at the police complex in Chumoukedima on September 20. Both Mishra and other NSCN-IM leaders remained tight-lipped about the details of the discussions, which took place for the first time after the Union government transferred Nagaland Governor Ravi to Tamil Nadu. NSCN-IM leader Rh Raising had told the media after the meeting that everything should be initiated on the basis of the "Framework Agreement" signed with the government in 2015. "We reiterate our commitment to the 'Framework Agreement' in letter and spirit. After the Covid-19 pandemic, the talks have resumed," Raising told a television channel in Kohima. Stating that a separate flag and constitution are uncompromising issues, the NSCN (IM) leader said: "Any agreement without a separate flag and constitution is unacceptable and meaningless. The solution must be inclusive. We can't sign an agreement ignoring the sentiments of our cadre. "In another development, assigned by the Home Minister Amit Shah, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday rushed to Dimapur and held meetings with the NSCN (IM) leaders, his Nagaland counterpart Neiphiu Rio, leaders of various political parties, Naga groups and senior government officials to take forward the much-debated Naga peace talks. Officials said that Sarma, who is also the Convener of the pro-BJP front North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), held meetings with former special director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Central government representative A.K. Mishra and the General Secretary of the NSCN (IM) Thuingaleng Muivah. After the meeting, the Assam Chief Minister had tweeted: "PM Shri Narendra Modi and HM Shri Amit Shah are committed to ensure ever-lasting peace in the Northeast. At Dimapur today, we held discussions with NSCN (IM) representatives in the presence of Nagaland CM Shri Neiphiu Rio about the ongoing peace talks with GoI." For the first time in the Naga peace talks, the Assam Chief Minister has been involved in the discussions. The opposition Congress in Assam has raised questions over the Assam Chief Minister's involvement in the Naga peace talks and said that the state's interest may be compromised in the long run. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Varanasi : , Sep 23 (IANS) The Congress suffered yet another jolt on Thursday when the family of one of its oldest families severed its ties with the party. Former MLA Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, great grandson of late Kamla Pati Tripathi, former UP chief minister, announced that he was quitting the Congress because dedicated and loyal party workers and cadre were being side-lined and neglected. Addressing a press conference, he said that he had decided to leave the party because he felt helpless at the prevailing state of affairs. However, he added, he would like to thank Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi for giving him an opportunity to serve the party. The former MLA said that he had not decided his future course of action but would continue to work for the poor and the marginalized sections of society. Lalitesh Pati, a few days ago, had resigned as vice president of the UP Congress, fuelling speculation about his quitting the party as well. The Kamla Pati Tripathi family has been one of the pillars of the Congress, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, and is among the most revered among the party workers. Besides, the family has also been the Brahmin face of the Congress. According to sources, Lalitesh Pati had been upset with the 'insulting' behaviour of UPCC president Ajay Kumar Lallu who did not give him "due respect". Lalitesh is the third senior and important Congress leader to have quit the party in recent months due to the alleged high-handedness of the state leadership. Earlier, former MP Annu Tandon and then Jitin Prasad had quit the Congress. While Annu Tandon has joined the Samajwadi Party, Jitin Prasad has joined the BJP. Colombo, Sep 23 : The World Bank has agreed to give a $100 million loan to support Sri Lanka's efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19, local media reported on Thursday. The island nation's government said the funding would be to procure 14 million doses of the Pfizer vaccines as well as for financing other costs pertaining to the inoculation program, reports Xinhua news agency. Sri Lanka's Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal submitted by Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella to this effect, the government information department said in a statement. A mass-scale inoculation program is currently underway in the country with over 51 per cent of the population vaccinated to date. The Health Ministry said the leading vaccine being administered across the nation was the Sinopharm vaccine with 11,182,365 people receiving the first dose and 9,102,271 receiving the second dose till date. Sri Lanka has recorded an overall of 508,672 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 12,376 deaths. Amaravati, Sep 23 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday virtually launched American Corner at Andhra University (AU) in Visakhapatnam. American Corner is a partnership between the United States Consulate and Andhra University, which aims to provide educational and cultural opportunities for the students. This is the third such centre in the country after Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The chief minister launched the facility in the presence of US Consul General of Hyderabad Joel Reifman and USAID Mission Director, Veena Reddy. Addressing the gathering, the Chief Minister said that this outreach programme will further be enhanced to have an American Consul in Visakhapatnam hopefully in near future. Having American Corner in AU will go a long way in bridging the skill gap and also supporting students to study abroad in the best universities. Jagan Mohan Reddy stated that this initiative would play a very vital role in the lives of the students and thanked the officials for bringing this to Vizag. The event was attended by Minister Mekapati Gautam Reddy, IT Electronics and Communication Principal Secretary G. Jayalakshmi, Chairperson of Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education Hema Chandra Reddy and others. Panaji, Sep 23 : If Aam Aadmi Party MLAs are elected in Goa, they will shelter Rohingya refugees in the coastal state, North Goa Zilla panchayat chairperson and BJP state office bearer Kartik Kudnekar said on Thursday. Addressing a press conference in Mapusa town in North Goa, Kudnekar also said that the assurance of 80 per cent job reservation for locals in the private sector announced by the Delhi Chief Minister and national convenor of AAP Arvind Kejriwal was already in place in Goa. He accused Kejriwal of misleading the people of the state ahead of the 2022 state Assembly polls. "Rohingyas are given shelter in Delhi. The AAP government is supporting Rohingyas (in Delhi). This should not happen in Goa. Not a single AAP MLA should win in Goa or else they will get Rohingyas to Goa. This should not happen here," Kudnekar said, after a meeting of the North Goa Zilla Panchayat members. The charge by Kudnekar comes amid a to and fro between the AAP and the BJP in Goa, whose leaders have been having a go at each other over populist poll promises made by the AAP. The AAP has announced free electricity to the tune of 300 units for domestic consumers, while also announcing unemployment doles and 80 per cent reservations for locals in private sector jobs. "There is already 80 per cent job reservation in the private sector in Goa. AAP's promises are false. They are misleading people. In Delhi, people are suffering, because AAP only makes announcements, but does nothing on ground," he also said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Ranchi, Sep 23 : The CBI on Thursday informed the Jharkhand High Court that an auto rickshaw had deliberately hit Dhanbad Additional District Judge (ADJ) Uttam Ananad in July leading to his death. "CBI is inquiring the death from every angle. The probe is going on. No angle will left while investigating the probe. "Of the two accused arrested so far, one is professional mobile thief. He has beens trying to mislead the CBI probe by floating new stories. "A team of 20 CBI officers are probing the case. It is now clear that the sitting judge of the district court was intentionally hit by the auto rickshaw when he was out for his morning walk. We will find out the conspirators of the case," said the CBI to Jharkhand HC on Thursday. While hearing the matter on September 16, the Jharkhand HC had expressed anguished over the CBI probe. The high court had directed the CBI Zonal Director to appear before the court on Thursday. The CBI has been submitting its progress report to court every week. On July 28, the ADJ was killed after hit by the auto rickshaw that was caught on a CCTV camera. Two people Lakhan Verma and Rahul Verma were arrested by the police. Jharkhand High Court did not trust the SIT formed by the state govt to probe the matter and handed over the case to CBI, even as the Supreme Court expressed its shock at the daylight incident targeting a judge. According to CBI source more than 200 people have been interrogated so far. September 23 : After wrapping up Turkey shoot schedule for her upcoming film Tiger 3, Katrina is currently shooting in Vienna with Salman Khan. The actress took to social media and shared a new picture today from her breakfast table. The Zero actress took to her Instagram handle and shared a couple of pictures from the breakfast table. In the pictures, the actor can be seen posing for the camera as she is seen enjoying a healthy breakfast of different kinds of fruits. She is seen wearing a lounge robe of her hotel, Palais Hansen Kempinski in the Austrian capital of Vienna. While she captioned the post as, Breakfast, she credited her stylist Anaita Shroff Adajania for her morning look. Anaita Shroff is also touring with the actor for the Tiger 3 shooting. Image Source: Instagram/katrinakaif Katrina Kaif enjoys breakfast in Vienna, credits her stylist for her morning look After shooting in Russia and Turkey, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are now touring Austria filming Tiger 3. The actors are shooting some intense action sequences in different parts of Austria. Austria reportedly plays vital to the plot of Tiger 3 and director Maneesh Sharma is going all out to shoot some of the most spectacular sequences of the film in Austria. Both Salman and Katrina are performing some elaborate action sequences, which are visually extravagant with daring action stunts. Shoots are taking place in Upper Austria, Salzkammergut, Dachstein Salzkammergut as well as in Vienna. The actress will also shoot dance numbers in Austria. Earlier this week, Katrina shared a video featuring her and her team travelling to the shoot location in a comfortable tour bus with spectacular view of the beauty of Austria in the backdrop. The video also featured mesmerising views of the outdoors that can be seen through the wide windows of her bus. Katrina also shared a photo with her stylist Anaita Shroff Adjania. Helmed by Maneesh Sharma, Tiger 3 is a Yash Raj Films project. The big budget spy thriller is the third instalment of the blockbuster Tiger franchise. While Salman will return as special agent Avinash Singh Rathore, Katrina as Zoya Humain. Earlier it was reported that to create larger-than-life action sequences, the producers are planning to bring on board a number of action directors from varied backgrounds. Tiger 3 is slated to release in 2022. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Talibans pick for the new Vice Chancellor of Kabul University, Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat, had once called for the killing of journalists. His appointment as the new Chancellor of the university sparked outrage on social media when users dug up some of his old tweets. Further, a Facebook post written by a person named Arif Bahrami who claims to be college class fellow of Ghairat has also been doing the rounds on social media, the Pakistan-based Friday Times newspaper reported. Bahrami claims that Ghairat was always disrespectful towards his women class fellows and professors while he was studying at the Kabul University. The person also claimed that Ghairat had barely received pass marks in 'very easy subjects', the report said. However, Ghairat claims the criticism is unfair. Responding to the backlash, he said: "I request you to clam down and inquire about me and my academic background." In one of the tweets which he posted last year in June, Ghairat had spoken about murdering journalists. "A spy journalist is more dangerous than a hundred Arbaki (Local Police/Paramilitary). I doubt the faith of those who restrain from killing journalists. Kill Spy Journalists. Contain Media," the tweet said. The tweet has since been deleted from his account. The appointment has reacted wide reaction in social media as a young bachelor degree holder replaced an intellectual and experienced Ph.D. holder as head of the best and the very first university in Afghanistan. People including some Taliban members have criticised the move and said that there were more eligible people than him among them, Khaama Press reported. When US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sit down for their first-ever personal meeting, and bilateral, at the White House on Friday, the meeting will be historic in true meaning of the word "historic". This is Year Zero of the Post-Covid Era, and a new world order is in throes of taking birth. It is but obvious that aides of both leaders would have drawn up a very tight-knit agenda for the discussion, and the topics to be covered in the 50 or so minutes at their disposal. These topics of discussion can be organized in a 5-cornered pentagon, as below: (1) What each wants to extract from the other, and persuades the other as a mutual win-win. (2) What compromise each wants from the other, in recognition of the special needs it has. (3) Some exchange of favours on some issues - with rain-check to be cashed in future. (4) To resolve, papering over of irritants, contentious issues in bilateral US-India relations. (5) To identify areas of cooperation for regional and global affairs, for mutual win-win. Having organised the above pentagon framework of the Biden-Modi meeting, we can now proceed to drill down and analyse the specifics of each of the five corners. In this column, your author focuses only half of the equation - i.e. only on what the United States, as represented by President Biden, may want or desire from India. The second half of the equation, i.e. what India wants from the US, will be subject of a subsequent column. Thus, below listed, are some of the key asks that President Biden will ask of PM Modi. 1. More defence purchases by India: The bottom-line that helps the US economy and jobs in America is the export of defence goods. Any leader wants exports, job-creation. 2. What is the muscle that India will contribute to the QUAD? Biden needs to calculate his strengths, and of allies, before a Biden-Xi summit, due soon. So that when he walks into the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he knows what assets and force-vectors he can marshal. What and how can India add to the heft for the US, Biden, when he negotiates with Xi? 3. Resilient supply-chains, and Standards: How will India improve its attractiveness for US, Japanese, and other companies that could re-locate from China? Specifically, with focus on manufacturing of semi-conductor chips, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles. 4. Covid Cooperation: How will India help the US in its global mission re Covid-19? What will India contribute to help the global aims and commitments re Covid-19? 5. Climate change and Green Energy: How will India contribute to US and global targets for climate change, and clean energy? Green energy? Progress to Hydrogen energy? 6. Cyber-space and Cyber-security: How will India assist in US and global efforts to counter the challenges in Cyber-Space that threaten US sovereignty, and global peace. Biden will present an ask, and want a buy-in, contribution from India on this strategy. 7. Hi-tech collaboration in Space: America needs to most urgently deny China a dominance in space. China is proceeding fast to be the Middle Kingdom that will position itself between the Heavens and planet Earth - and will completely dominate planet Earth. How and where can the US and India cooperate to deny China this Middle Kingdom dream? 8. Trade concerns of US companies: Where is India on trade liberalization? How is India responding to complaints of US companies regarding the non-tariff, and tariff, barriers that they are facing? 9. United Nations: The American side will assume that the India side has done a very careful analyses of the speech delivered by President Biden at the UN, two days ago. Where and what can India contribute to the aims that were outlined in that speech? 10. Afghanistan: The ask of India on Afghanistan will depend on what the US is planning as overall strategy re Afghanistan. However, yes, US would like to know what India can propose for the stabilization of Afghanistan? 11. Terrorism and Radicalization: The US may lead a global convention on terrorism. Enhanced intelligence sharing, strengthening of the FATF, how to eliminate or quarantine terror sources, and how to enforce civic behaviour by state actors - would be touched upon, and India's cooperation invited all across. Please note, the above 11 is a list of what only the US side wants - the India side, too has its own list of what it wants from the US, and Modi may have his own grand bargain that he may spring at Biden. As earlier mentioned, the India side list will be subject of a subsequent column. Once the two leaders, Biden-Modi, have ticked the above topics, over a glass of refreshing lemonade*, who knows what other big idea, grand bargain, private secret deal, may be proposed by Biden - or, by Modi. Maybe the US invites India to join the Five-Eyes (FVEY) Network? *Dear reader, please pardon me for this liberty of suggesting lemonade! There is a reason - in another avatar, I am founder of the Lemonade Party, which is a global motivational movement that promotes a lifestyle of peace, happiness, and problem-solving with a can-do attitude in personal, and social living, accompanied with a philosophy of "Live and Let Live" as a life mantra. The motto of the Lemonade Party is the proverbial phrase, "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade". As many would relate, this phrase is an exhortation, encouragement to try to do your best, and to find a new way ahead, whenever life hands you obstacles and difficult times. Biden has been handed several lemons, Modi has his own lemons, and the world has its own lemons. It is time for Biden and Modi to make lemonade, and open a lemonade stand outside the UN HQ building in New York. And invite the world to come by. (Robinder Sachdev is president of The Imagindia Institute. Views expressed are personal.) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Chennai, Sep 23 : At least 25 fishing boats of Indian fishermen were damaged after Sri Lankan navy personnel allegedly attacked them on Wednesday late night at Katchatheevu. Tamil Nadu fisheries department officials said that the Sri Lankan Navy personnel hurled glass bottles and stones at the Indian fishermen. The Sri Lankan Navy personnel came in 10 patrol boats and they damaged the fishing boats, it was alleged. Officials said that fishing nets in 40 boats were also damaged in the alleged attack by the Sri Lankan navy personnel. Fishermen association leader N. Devadass told IANS, "This is highly deplorable and a situation has reached wherein the fishermen from the Tamil Nadu coast are not able to carry out their vocation. We have already lodged a complaint with the fisheries department of Tamil Nadu and also the local police. We need protection, otherwise, we may not be able to go out in the deep sea for fishing." The Indian Coast Guard officials were apprised of the development by the fishermen as also Tamil Nadu fisheries department officials on the alleged attack by a foreign Navy. The Sri Lankan Navy has been indulging in attacks on Indian fishermen and fishing boats time and again. In an earlier attack off the coast at Dhanushkodi, several fishermen sustained injuries after the Sri Lankan Navy personnel hurled glass bottles and stones at the Indian fishermen. Katchatheevu is a 163-acre uninhabited island administered by Sri Lanka and was a disputed territory between the two countries. In 1974, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ceded the Island to Sri Lanka under the Indo-Sri Lankan Marine agreement. The island is located between Neduntheevu, Sri Lanka, and Rameswaram, India. The agreement allows Indian fishermen to do fishing around the island as well as gives them right to dry their nets at the island. But during the Civil war in Lanka, several difficulties were faced due to the agreement as the Sri Lankan Navy used to attack even the fishing boats as there were large scale smuggling of weapons those days. However, after the end of the civil war and despite no more threat of smuggling of weapons, the Sri Lankan Navy, according to Indian fishermen, continues to attack Indian fishermen and damage their boats and nets causing huge financial losses. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Among steps initiated by the government for an air pollution-free season for Delhi NCR, thermal plants would be buying 20 million tonnes of 'parali' (agrowaste). "Thermal plants are to use at least 10 per cent biomass. Of that, 50 per cent would be parali," Environment, Forests and Climate Change Secretary R.P. Gupta told media persons. A meeting was held for review of the situation with major stakeholders for ex-situ utilisation of crop residue and promoting utilisation of paddy straw for pellets/briquettes for co-firing in thermal power plants. The government said directions for this have been issued to all 11 thermal power plants within 300 kms radius of Delhi. "NTPC has issued a tender for the same," Gupta said. Stating that he has received a positive response from all states concerned, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said that the Pusa Bio-decomposer has been deployed in large scale. "Agrowaste as fodder is also being sent all the way to Gujarat and Rajasthan," he said. The Pusa Bio-decomposer technology would be deployed free of cost for farmers in Haryana for management of 1 lakh acres, for more than 4,000 acres of area under paddy out of the total 14,600 acres in Delhi, in Uttar Pradesh, 10 lakh capsules have been distributed targeting 6.1 lakh acres, while Punjab has targeted approx 7,413 acres. Apart from this, private enterprise UPL from Bangalore, is targetting more than 5 lakh acres in Punjab and Haryana where more than 25,000 farmers have registered with them. It would cost the company Rs 500 per acre but will be free for farmers. Yadav said that overall he is very optimistic vis-a-vis air pollution season this year. The government has issued six advisories and 40 odd directives till date. The Commission for Air Quality Management, formalised by an Act passed in the Parliament, has been actively working on the issue with multiple stakeholders. Kochi, Sep 23 : Actor Tovino Thomas' upcoming superhero film 'Minnal Murali' will release digitally on December 24. The movie talks about the life of an ordinary man Jaison, whose life changes after he is struck by a bolt of lightning. The superpowers change his life. Set in the 1990s, 'Minnal Murali' is produced by Weekend Blockbusters (Sophia Paul) and will stream on Netflix. The film is directed by Basil Joseph and also stars Guru Somasundaram, Harisree Ashokan and Aju Varghese in pivotal roles. The film will premiere in Malayalam with dubs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and English. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Bhubaneswar, Sep 23 : The Odisha government on Thursday appointed retired IPS officer Jalad Kumar Tripathy as new State Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). The State Information and Public Relation department has issued a notification on the appointment of Tripathy on Thursday. "In pursuance of sub-section (3) of section-15 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (22 of 2005) and on the recommendation of the Committee constituted for the purpose, the Governor of Odisha is pleased to notify the appointment of JK Tripathy as the State CIC, Odisha Information Commission from the date he assumes charge of office," read the notification. The Committee headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had recommended the name of the former IPS officer for the chief post in the Odisha Information Commission (OIC) during its meeting held last Tuesday, sources said. As per norms, Tripathy will hold office for a term of five years from the date of joining or attaining the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. A native of Odisha, Tripathy has served the Tamil Nadu police in various capacities including DGP and Chennai police commissioner over three decades. At present, the state information panel is run by four information commissioners. The post of CIC was lying vacant since August 15, 2021, after the completion of the tenure of Sunil Mishra. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Supreme Court on Thursday, taking into consideration the improved Covid situation, observed that it would recall its April 27 order, extending the limitation period to file cases, from October 1. A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, and comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Surya Kant, said the suo motu extension of limitation period will be withdrawn on October 1, and, after that, the usual limitation period, of 90 days, for filing cases in courts will be restored. On April 27, the top court, taking into account the second Covid wave, had relaxed the statutory period for filing petitions, including election petitions. On Thursday, the bench, reserving the order, said: "We will pass orders." Attorney General K.K. Venugopal submitted before the bench that the Covid situation has improved and currently, there was no containment zone in the country, and that the order relaxing the limitation period can be recalled. "If there are any containment zones in Kerala or at some other place, then they can approach the court," he added. Agreeing with his submission, the Chief Justice said: "I think we can lift the order." A counsel in the matter contended that the limitation period be extended till the year-end as there was an apprehension of a third Covid wave. Terming this submission pessimistic, the bench quipped: "Please do not invite the third wave." Senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing the Election Commission, suggested instead of 90 days, 45 days limitation period may be granted for filing election petitions. He added that the statutory period should start running from now, instead of October 1. The AG said that an exception on limitation period may be carved out for the poll body. The Election Commission, however, claimed that EVMs and VVPAT machines used in polls of six states -- Assam, Kerala, Delhi, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal -- are currently stuck and cannot be used for future elections. It has contended that the apex court's direction on an extension of limitation period created a situation where it cannot re-use of the EVMs and VVPAT machines in upcoming polls. The poll body argued these machines are lying unused, as they have to be preserved as evidence if there were an election petition in connection with polls, against the backdrop that limitation period is not running against the probable petitioners. The bench noted that if it were to have 90 days benefit now, it might result in litigation in future. Bengaluru, Sep 23 : The villagers of Santhebachahalli in Mandya district of Karnataka have demanded action against a maulana who has turned a government Urdu school into his dwelling place. The Urdu government school was constructed 45 years ago. It was closed for want of students. As the school is located close to the mosque, the religious leaders have painted its walls with green colour. They have also converted it into a prayer hall, the villagers have complained. The village panchayat joined hands with the religious leaders and with maulana, the villagers alleged. The village panchayat has given consent for the conversion of Urdu school into a religious centre. The dwelling place of Maulana has been mentioned as 'temple of Babiah' in records, the villagers said. Tehsildar of K.R. Pet, Shivamurthy, visited the village on Thursday and conducted spot inspection of the government Urdu school which is now the dwelling place of Maulana (a religious preacher). "I have received a complaint about a government school being encroached upon. It seems the school has been converted into a religious centre after encroachment. I will check the records and submit a report to the district commissioner in this regard for action," he explained. However, Naresh, a local Hindu Jagaran Vedike member, stated that the government property should not be encroached upon. The authorities should intervene and take action on the issue. The people of different faiths in the village are living peacefully like brothers and the authorities should not give any room for communal tensions, he demanded. London, Sep 23 : Covid is unlikely to mutate into a deadlier variant and will eventually end up as a common cold, said Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who created the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Cutting down fears of a more deadly new variant, she said that viruses tend to "become less virulent as they circulate" through the population, Daily Mail reported. "There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of SARS-CoV-2", as "there aren't very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus", Gilbert was quoted as saying. The 59-year-old led the team at Oxford University's Jenner institute which created the lifesaving Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the most widely distributed jab in the world. SARS-CoV-2 will eventually become like the coronaviruses which circulate widely and cause the common cold, Gilbert said. "We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don't really ever think about very much and eventually SARS-CoV-2 will become one of those," said Gilbert, while speaking at a seminar of the Royal Society of Medicine. "It's just a question of how long it's going to take to get there and what measures we're going to have to take to manage it in the meantime." Gilbert, who specialises in the development of jabs against emerging viruses, also called for funding to help prevent future pandemics, the report said. "We're still trying to raise funds to develop other vaccines that we were working on before the pandemic, against diseases that have caused outbreaks in the past and will cause outbreaks in the future. "We are being financially supported for our ongoing work against Covid... but when we try to return to projects we were working on before coronavirus we're still trying to get funding," she noted. Further, she also said the very rare blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca jab have not been seen at the same rates in other parts of the world. Gilbert also suggested that primary work on a tweaked vaccine to combat the Beta variant of the virus only gave a "slightly better" immune response than the original vaccine, when given as a third dose to people who had already had two jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but data is still being collected, the report said. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Chennai, Sep 23 : The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) leadership is on a fire fighting mode to try and persuade several party local leaders who have filed nomination papers against the DMK candidates in the rural local body polls. After the last date for filing of nominations came to an end, Congressmen have filed nomination papers in many seats much to the chagrin of the state party leadership. However, district Congress leaders are of the opinion that they were treated badly by the DMK district leaderships and had not provided seats to prominent party leaders including the party district leaders. In South Tamil Nadu, the DMK had parted with some seats to the Congress as the national party has some strength in the area. The DMK provided 15 per cent of the total seats in Tenkasi district to the Congress but in North Tamil Nadu the grand old party had to be satisfied with 3 per cent to 5 per cent seats. Districts like Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, Villupuram, Kallakurichi, Ranipet, Tirupattur, and Villupuram have many Congressmen filing nominations as rebel candidates and state leadership is having an uphill task to persuade these leaders to withdraw their candidature. The last date of withdrawal of nominations is on September 25. In Villupuram North, even the party district president was denied a seat by the DMK as the electoral arena is wide open following the powerful Vanniiyar party, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) walked out of the AIADMK alliance. The Congress as of Wednesday night will contest 9 of the 140 ward councillor posts in district panchayats and 63 of the 1,381 ward councillor posts in panchayat unions. The DMK even refused to provide any seat in panchayat unions in Anaikattu, Vellore, and Katpadi to the Congress, and even the former Chairman of Vellore panchayat and popular Congress leader, C.K. Devendran was not given a seat. He has filed the nomination papers on his own and the Congress state leadership is on bargaining mode for this seat with the DMK state leadership. In the rural local body elections, both the DMK and AIADMK bank heavily on the inputs from their respective district leadership, and the state leadership don't generally intervene on the candidate list provided by the district leaderships. R. Padmanabhan, Political analyst and Director, Socio-Economic Development Foundation, a Madurai-based think tank while told IANS, "The DMK district leaders clearly know the strength and weakness of the Congress. If Congress had strength just like they have in Tenkasi district, more seats would have been provided. Unfortunately, Congress is a spent force in several parts of the state and hence this step-motherly treatment." Thane, Sep 23 : In a shocking revelation, the Dombivali Police said on Thursday that they have booked at least 29 persons, including juveniles, for the repeated gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl in Thane for several months. The case has been registered by the Manpada police station in Dombivali and so far 23 youth have been arrested, two minors have been detained, while the police are hunting for at least four others who are absconding. According to an official, sometime in January, the victim's boyfriend had reportedly indulged in forcible sex with her and had recorded the incident. Later, he shared the video with his friends who allegedly used the clip to blackmail, threaten and repeatedly rape the girl for over the next eight months. The perpetrators, some of them said to be politically connected, compelled the girl to accompany them to various locations in Dombivali, other towns like Rabale, Badlapur, Thane and also at a remote farmhouse, where they repeatedly raped her. The heinous incident came to light following a tip-off and after the preliminary probe, the police lodged a complaint late on Wednesday. Police teams swooped into action and picked up the accused youngsters, including two who are aged below 18, from different parts of Dombivali and its surroundings areas. The victim has been admitted to a city hospital for check-up, counselling and treatment where her condition is stated to be stable. Moving swiftly, the police have booked the accused under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, besides other charges. Further investigations are underway to nab the other accused persons. Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 23 : Kerala continues to lead the rest of the country in daily new Covid cases, as 19,682 people turned positive on Thursday after 1,21,945 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in a statement. The daily test positivity rate was 16.14 per cent, while the state continues to record over 60 per cent of the new cases in the country, which has been the pattern for quite a few weeks. Vijayan's statement also said 20,510 people turned negative, taking the total active cases in the state to 1,60,046, of which 13 per cent of the patients are in hospitals. The day saw 152 Covid deaths taking the total death tally to 24,191. As on date, 91 per cent of the population aged above 18 have got their first dose of vaccine, of which 38.5 per cent have got both the jabs. On Thursday, a high-level meeting of health and education officials, chaired by the two state ministers, started to discuss modalities to be adopted when schools open in November. Meanwhile the opposition Congress-led UDF, which met here, said that the compensation of Rs 50,000, which the Centre is planning to give to the families whose member died of Covid is too less, and it should be Rs 10 lakh. Mumbai, Sep 23 : The Mumbai Police have registered an FIR against two persons for allegedly molesting a woman BJP worker inside a Municipal Corporator's office when the nation was celebrating Independence Day last year, at the height of the pandemic lockdown. The incident sparked off a bitter political row between Maharashtra's ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with the latter questioning why the issue was being raked up after one year by the victim. According to the victim's complaint, the incident took place on August 15, 2020 when one of the accused had called her to the Vazira Naka office of BJP Municipal Corporator Anjali Khedekar. The accused, said to a local BJP Ward leader, promised to help her join the party, called her to Khedekar's office and then allegedly molested her inside the premises late that evening. The victim said that after she went to the office, the accused downed the shutters, switched off the lights, molested her and said she would have to compromise if she wanted to work in the party. She said that she got up and walked out of the office and five days later complained verbally to local BJP MLA Sunil Rane. When there was no response, she later gave a written complaint to the Mumbai North BJP MP Gopal Shetty, but it remained ignored. Finally, she approached the Borivali Police Station on Wednesday to register her complaint which was lodged invoking Indian Penal Code Section 354 (molestation) but no arrests have been made, said Senior Police Inspector Sudhir Kalekar told media persons. Srinagar, Sep 23 : Three heavily-armed infiltrators were killed on Thursday in four-day-long operation by the army in Uri sector of J&K's Baramulla district, officials said. At a press conference at Rampur army headquarters in Uri tehsil, where 19 infantry Division GOC Maj Gen Virender Vats was also present, 3 Rajput Regiment commanding officer, Col Manish Panj said the infiltrators were killed in an operation in Uri sector. "Three militants were killed in the gunfight that ensued today after days of cordon and search operation in a vast area along the LoC. "As surveillance was enhanced, the group of militants was challenged after they were intercepted at Hathlanga area of Uri at 6 a.m. . "Three militants were killed after a brief exchange of fire," Panj said. The army said the three slain militants were carrying huge quantity of arms and ammunition that includes five AK-47 rifles, seven pistols, 5 AK magazines, 24 UBGL grenades, 38 Chinese grenades, seven Pakistan-made grenades, Rs 35,000 in Pakistani currency and some edibles. Maj Gen Vats said that only one of the slain militants, a Pakistani, has been identified so far. "The identity of the other two is being ascertained," he said. On whether the infiltration had any Afghanistan link, the GOC said: "Army is alert and we were anticipating change in the behaviour of Pakistan in the month of September and expecting infiltration ahead of the onset of winter. "I would not like to connect this with the geo-politics. We are ready to foil all bids." Maj Gen Vats said after sanitising the area, the Uri operation has been called off. Authorities had also suspended mobile telephony and internet in Uri after reports that some militants had infiltrated the LoC in the sector. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Defence Ministry placed an order to procure 118 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) Arjun Mk-1A with the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) in Chennai for the Indian Army on Thursday. The order, worth Rs 7,523 crore, will provide further boost to the 'Make in India' initiative in the defence sector and is a big step towards achieving the 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India) goal, the ministry said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had handed over an MBT Arjun Mk-1A to Army Chief General M.M. Naravane in Chennai on February 14, 2021. The state-of-the-art MBT Mk-1A is a new variant of Arjun tank designed to enhance fire power, mobility and survivability. Infused with 72 new features and more indigenous content from the Mk-1 variant, the tank would ensure effortless mobility in all terrains, besides precise target engagement during day and night. It has been designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) by incorporating numerous upgrades on Arjun MBT, the in-service main battle tank with the Indian Army. The MK-1A is equipped with accurate and superior firepower, all-terrain mobility and an invincible multi-layered protection provided by an array of advanced technology systems. It can take on the enemy in both day and night conditions as well as in static and dynamic modes. By virtue of these capabilities, this indigenous MBT proves to be at par with any contemporary in its class across the globe. This tank is particularly configured and designed for Indian conditions and hence it is suitable for deployment to protect the frontiers in an effective manner. This production order to HVF opens up a large avenue in defence manufacturing for over 200 Indian vendors, including MSMEs, with employment opportunities for around 8,000 people. This will be a flagship project showcasing the indigenous capability in cutting edge defence technologies. The MBT Arjun Mk-1A has been designed and developed by the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE), along with other laboratories of DRDO within two years (2010-12). The development activities commenced from June 2010 and the tank was fielded for user trial in June 2012. Extensive trial evaluation was conducted in various phases covering 7000+ km -- both in DRDO and user trials -- of automotive and substantial firing of various ammunition during 2012-2015. Hyderabad, Sep 23 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will reach New Delhi on Friday to attend a meeting of the left wing extremism-affected states. During his two-day visit - the second one this month, he will also call on couple of Union Ministers to discuss issues related to the state. According to the Chief Minister's Office, he will participate in the Assembly session beginning on Friday, and will also attend the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting, before leaving for the national capital. The Chief Minister will have a meeting with Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Saturday. This will be his second meeting with Shekhawat this month. He is likely to discuss the issues related to the river water dispute between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and the notification issued by the Centre to take control of the projects built across Krishna and Godavari rivers. On Sunday, he will attend a meeting of Chief Ministers of all Maoist-affected states, convened by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The meeting, also to be attended by Chief Secretaries and Directors Generals of Police of these states, is expected to discuss general issues confronting these states, like inter-state operations and problems of coordination. The meeting assumes significance in the light of the fact that it is being held after a gap of about three years. Later, the Chief Minister will have a discussion on paddy procurement with Union Food and Civil Supplies Minister Piyush Goyal. He will return to Hyderabad the same day. Earlier this month, he had visited Delhi and stayed there for a week. He had called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Union Ministers to discuss various issues related to the state. September 23 Sep 23 : Clean beauty products are making inroads and have gained a significant share of the beauty market, with more more people becoming aware of the their benefits. With each passing year thanks to technology, research and development natural ingredients have finally regained their place in the spotlight. Don't take our word for it, beauty icons Kriti Sanon and Shanaya Kapoor also believe in natural and clean beauty products, and associate with the 'Naturali' range launched by RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. The new age nature-inspired personal care brand aims to provide a one-of-a kind experience to their customer infused with trendy natural ingredients delivering quick visible results. Hair care ambassador Kriti Sanon said, 'I am extremely thrilled to be associating with Naturali haircare range that is infused with modern, trendy natural ingredients which are free from harmful chemicals. I have always been an ardent supporter of the 'no nasties' proposition when it comes to my hair care needs, hence this association came very naturally to me. Everyone knows that natural products are supposed to be good for you, but they are often believed to be slow in giving results. Naturali changes this, as the range has a unique SuperBlenda of complementary natural ingredients, that are optimized to give you quick visible results. As a woman myself, I strongly believe that no woman should ever have to compromise especially with respect to her beauty choices. So, it is extremely fulfilling to see a brand that is not only good for you being free from harmful chemicals but also makes you look good.' Bollywood debutante and skincare ambassador Shanaya Kapoor said, 'It is exhilarating to be associated with Naturali Skincare range. It's a brand that I feel complements my personality and I'm sure, just like me, a lot of young women are going to instantly connect with it. It's trendy, unapologetic, true to its claims, and most importantly takes charge. What resonated with me the most was the fresh take Naturali offers on nature-based skincare, the exciting ingredients - Avocado, Tea Tree, Red Raspberry coupled with the free from harmful chemicals promise. As someone who's had to deal with her fair share of skin problems like pimples while growing up, I am certain this range is going to be very useful for girls out there and I can't wait for them to try it out!' Shashwat Goenka, Sector Head, Retail & FMCG said, 'There has been a paradigm shift in how Indian consumers, especially the younger, more conscious generation, engage with beauty products today. They are looking for a holistic and transparent approach towards beauty and wellness that is result-oriented. However, despite there being a burgeoning rise in the demand for natural beauty products, the personal care 'free from nasties' segment is still underpenetrated in terms of mass, affordable players. And that's where we come in - Naturali, a personal care brand infused with natural ingredients that are efficacious and free from harmful chemicals. The range is also available at pocket-friendly price points to the masses, a first for the segment." He further added, 'We are very glad to announce Kriti Sanon as the face of the Naturali haircare range while Shanaya Kapoor represents the skincare offerings. We are a new, bold, and trendy brand and we wanted to associate with individuals who could help bring out and advocate these values. Kriti and Shanaya are a perfect choice as both are young, vivacious, and personally, resonates with our natural first proposition.' The brand backed by a SuperBlenda technology that offers a combination of two modern, efficacious, natural ingredients like Avocado and Charcoal, Moringa and Avocado, Red Onion and Bhringaraj, Tea Tree & Avocado amongst others. (N. Lothungbeni Humtsoe can be contacted at lothungbeni.h@ians.in) New York, Sep 23 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet US Vice President Kamala Harris for their first direct personal encounter on Thursday afternoon (US time), according to the White House. The meeting is scheduled for 3.15 p.m. (12.45 a.m. Friday in India) at the Vice President's Ceremonial Office. The meeting is closed, but before it starts, a media pool will be allowed in to see them and the leaders can make statements or entertain questions at their discretion. Harris and Modi are known to have interacted so far through only one phone call. Although she had spoken to several world leaders soon after becoming Vice President, she had a phone conversation with Modi only in June when she discussed President Joe Biden's offer to send vaccines to India from the US stockpile when it suffered a Covid surge. Modi tweeted after the call: "I deeply appreciate the assurance of vaccine supplies to India as part of the US Strategy for Global Vaccine Sharing. I also thanked her for all the support and solidarity from the US government, businesses and Indian diaspora." In protocol terms, Harris is the host of Modi since he is not a head of state like President Biden, but a head of government. However, in practical terms, the President treats Prime Ministers of major countries as equals. The Vice President's Ceremonial Office, where Modi and Harris will meet, is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), which is located next to the West Wing on the White House premises, according to the White House. The historic site was originally used by Navy Secretaries and later for a short time by the Army chief of staff. The late President Herbert Hoover also used it briefly after a fire in the West Wing in 1929. It was turned over to Vice Presidents in 1960. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) has raised fresh doubts over the ability of statutory auditors in presenting true facts about the accounts of IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd (ITNL), a subsidiary of beleaguered infrastructure financier IL&FS. In its Audit Quality Review (AQR) report on the statutory audit of ITNL, the NFRA has not only termed the initial appointment of SRBC & Co LLP, and its continuation as statutory auditor, of ITNL as illegal and void, but has also questioned the audit firms' failure to appropriately and sufficiently evaluate the use of the going concern basis of accounting by the management and thus, missing out on registering the implications thereof in the auditor's report. The NFRA audit quality review for ITNL has come for the period of 2017-18. This is the year when the board of IL&FS was superseded by the government and a new management under Uday Kotak put in place to correct the mishandling of the group and resolve debt running over Rs 90,000 crore. The AQR said that ITNL's financial exposure to its subsidiaries, associates, and joint ventures amounting to Rs 3,346 crore was not properly valued as per the applicable accounting standards. The company's losses during 2017-18 were understated by at least Rs 2,021 crore on account of unjustified reversal of Expected Credit Loss (ECL) on loans given to the SPV and on trade receivables, and due to incorrect impairment valuation. This is excluding the impact due to incorrect treatment of the letter of comforts amounting to Rs 2,654 crore, which should have been correctly treated as financial guarantees as per the accounting standards, the effect of which on profit/loss is not quantified, the NFRA review of the ITNL's accounts said. The audit firm's EQC partner has failed to report material misstatements known to him to appear in a financial statement with which he is concerned in his professional capacity and has not exercised due diligence to obtain sufficient information to objectively evaluate the significant judgements of the engagement team and conclusions reached by them, the AQR said. It added that the audit firm has failed to maintain documents as per SA 230. The integrity of the audit file is questionable due to tampering and inconsistency pointed out at several places in the AQR. Kolkata, Sep 23 : The top Bengal BJP leadership, including state unit chief Sukanta Majumdar, got engaged in a scuffle with the police after they tried to stage a demonstration with the body of defated BJP candidate from Magrahat West, Dhurjati Saha, in front of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's residence in Kalighat on Thursday evening. Saha, who had unsuccessfully contested the Assembly elections from Magrahat West in South 24 Parganas district on a BJP ticket, was allegedly beaten up by Trinamool 'ggons' on the day of counting of votes on May 2. Saha, who had suffered serious head injury in the attack, died after prolonged treatment on Wednesday. The family has demanded a CBI probe into Saha's death. The incident took a new turn on Thursday when the BJP leadership, including newly-appointed state unit chief Sukanta Majundar, MP Arjun Singh and the party's Bhabanipur bypoll candidate Priyanka Tibrewal, led a huge rally with Saha's body to protest in front of Chief Minister Banerjee's residence in Kalighat that falls under the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency. To avoid any breach in security, the police tried to move the body which triggered the tension. When the police were trying to move the vehicle carrying the body of Saha, Majumdar rushed and sat in front of the vehicle. A fracas ensued after the police tried to remove Majumdar from the spot. Majumdar stuck to his ground and said, "The people of entire West Bengal are watching. Is this democracy? See what Mamata Banerjee is doing. They are killing democracy but the police cannot stop us. We will again meet on the battle-field." Arjun Singh, who was next to Majumdar, said, "The family wanted to meet the Chief Minister and demand justice for Saha. And this is what they are getting in return. The police are forcing them out of the place. This is the Chief Minister of Bengal. There is no rule of law, only the rule of the ruling party. They are murdering democracy." Reacting to the incident, Trinamool Congress leader Tapas Roy said, "One should understand that they are protesting in front of the Chief Minister's residence, which is a high-security zone. The CM has been provided Z-plus category security. This cannot happen. They (BJP) are doing this with an ulterior political motive. He (Sukanta Majumdar) has got the responsibility recently and he is trying to be in the news, but this is not expected from a person who has done his Phd. He should have been more rational." The police, however, said that there was an unruly gathering near the residence of the Chief Minister which they have cleared. Mumbai, Sep 23 : In an embarrassing development for the BJP, the Mumbai Police have registered an FIR against two of its activists for allegedly molesting a woman worker inside a party Municipal Corporator's office when the nation was celebrating Independence Day last year, at the height of the pandemic lockdown. The incident sparked off another bitter political fued between Maharashtra's ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi and the opposition BJP, with the latter demanding to know why the issue was being raked up after one year by the victim. According to the victim's complaint, the incident took place on August 15, 2020 when one of the accused had invited her to the Vazira Naka office of BJP Municipal Corporator Anjali Khedekar. The accused, said to be a local BJP ward leader, promised all help to enable her to join the party, called her to Khedekar's office and then allegedly molested her inside the premises late that evening. The victim said that after she reached the corporator's office, the accused downed the shutters, switched off the lights, molested her and allegedly said she would "have to compromise if she wanted to work in the party". She said that she got up and walked out of the office and five days later complained verbally to the Borivali BJP MLA Sunil Rane, about the party activist's indecent proposal. When there was no response, she followed up with a written complaint to the Mumbai North two-time BJP MP Gopal Shetty, but claimed it remained ignored. Finally, she approached the Borivali Police Station on Wednesday to register her complaint which was lodged invoking Indian Penal Code's Section 354 (molestation) but no arrests have been made, Senior Police Inspector Sudhir Kalekar told media persons. The incident quickly acquired a political colour with the Congress state spokesperson Sachin Sawant and Shiv Sena leaders condemning it strongly and accusing the BJP of pointing fingers at others when such incidents prove that women are not safe within their own party. Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar termed the incident as "very serious" and said that instead of looking at its own house, the BJP was busy attacking the MVA for atrocities in women. This afternoon, she visited the Borivali Police Station to get an update on the investigations from the police, even as the BJP launched a counter-attack. "Why did the victim wait for so long and not lodge a complaint earlier. After one year, this is being raised only to tarnish the party's image. If anybody is guilty, then they should be punished, but innocents should not be harassed unnecessarily," a visibly irked Gopal Shetty told the media this evening. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana has constituted a Special Investigation Cell (SIC) to expedite and streamline the probe into the Delhi riots cases. According to an official order dated September 19 accessed by IANS, an SIC has been constituted under the chairmanship of Special Commissioner of Police, Central Zone, to monitor the investigation into North East Delhi riots that broke out February 2020, claiming the lives of over 50 people. The SIC headed by Special CP, Central Zone, will have three other top cops as members, including Joint CP, Eastern Range, DCP, North East, and Additional DCP, North East-1. The courts have several times pointed out flaws in the investigations carried out by the police into the Delhi riots cases. Just six days ago, a local court had accused the Delhi Police of "lackadaisical" approach. The new committee formed by Asthana will take stock of all the pending investigations and immediately chalk out a time-bound strategy to ensure expeditious investigation and effective prosecution of riots cases. The committee has been asked to put emphasis on bringing on record scientific and technical evidence. The police chief has asked the committee in the order to 'expeditiously' ensure the filing of chargesheets in the court. "The officers shall personally liaise with the special public prosecutors to ensure their presence in court in all matters to represent the case of the prosecution on each date effectively. They will be thoroughly briefed well in advance, before every date of hearing," the order read. The commissioner also directed the team to ensure that all witnesses and investigating officers are appearing in court in time, "properly briefed and well-prepared". The police headquarters have also attached 14 police officers, who had served in the northeast district during the riots, and had assisted the investigation into these cases. The monitoring cell will now ensure that these officers are properly tasked and monitored to achieve the desirable results. Apart from the new SIC, the Delhi Police chief has also appointed K.G. Tyagi as a consultant to monitor the court cases related to the riots. However, sources told IANS that even earlier, Tyagi was a member of the team probing the cases. "He was providing legal assistance given his expertise in the affected areas," a source said. Washington, Sep 23 : In the first leg of his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday met leading US CEOs in Washington. He held one-on-one meetings with CEOs of semiconductor and wireless technology manufacturer Qualcomm, software company Adobe, renewable energy company First Solar, arms manufacturer General Atomics, and investment management company Blackstone. The first meet was with Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon. "President and CEO of @Qualcomm, @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts," a tweet from PMO said. Modi's meeting with Amon is significant as India is looking at fast adoption of 5G technology in the country and for investment in this high technology area from credible partners who can provide safe and secure networks. The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology and is getting big into 5G technology with its range of pioneering products. It is expected that high level meetings would pave the way for big investment in new tech area that is required to help country leapfrog to providing its citizens with next generation of networking services. In the first leg of his tour, PM Modi is also slated to meet US Vice President Kamala Harris, besides his Australian and Japanese counterparts Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga. New Delhi, Sep 23: Why is Nepals Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who assumed charge on July 13, is still struggling to expand his cabinet? Analysts, India Narrative spoke to, said on condition of anonymity that the dissonance among the coalition partners is a direct cause of the Chinese influence. On Wednesday, Deuba managed to add one more member in his cabinet-- Narayan Khadka who will be the country's foreign minister. Of the total of 21, Deuba is currently looking after over 15 ministries-effectively implying that the bureaucracy is running the show. While this is an internal problem of Nepal, India is watching the situation. "China has already started influencing the Nepalese political contours..India must remain agile," one of the analysts told India Narrative. Deuba is known to have close relations with India. A recent article in Annapurna Express, noted that it will be interesting to "watch how the Chinese deal with Deuba in the days ahead." "They have cultivated a sizable political section in Nepal, which they are sure to use to minimize American presence and to push for expeditious implementation of the nine BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) projects identified for Nepal," the news organisation said, adding that a huge constituency in Nepali Congress is still strongly in favour of closer ties with Beijing. "This is indicative of some underlying dissonance which bodes ill well for the country's body politic," Bhaskar Koirala, Director of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies told India Narrative. He added that Deuba "must give full flesh to the government at the earliest in order also to ensure smooth and seamless functioning of the government, because today the people of Nepal have a singular concern: effective governance and public administration." "In the absence of that, not only does the integrity of Nepal stand to experience sustained levels of turbulence, the regional environment will also come under considerable strain," Koirala said. India and Nepal share more than 1800 kilometres of open border. Earlier, in an article, the Beijing headquartered Global Times, noted that "the Nepali Congress will likely lead the country's foreign policy towards a "favorable direction for India." However, it also maintained that despite this Nepal's relations with China will remain solid. (The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative Shimla, Sep 23 : Againt the picturesque backdrop of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh's Spiti Valley, India's highest electric vehicle (EV) charging station was set up by a company on Thursday. The Pune-based company, goEgoNetwork, has set up two EV chargers for two and four-wheelers in Kaza, some 350 km from here. Subdivisional Magistrate Mahender Partap Singh told IANS over phone that tourists often complain of lack of EV charging stations in the Spiti Valley. "This is the first station in the valley. If the station gets good response, more such stations would be set up. It will also help check vehicular pollution," he said. Two electric scooters have been provided by the company to the local administration to promote e-vehicles in the valley. Singh also said that two riders rode on e-scooters from Manali to Kaza. "They covered the distance of 320 km from Manali to Kaza by charging the vehicle at three-four points," he said. As per the riders, the e-scooters didn't face any problem while crossing the Kunzum Pass (4,551m). The EV charging station lies at an altitude of 3,720m, the highest in the country, as Kaza is located at an altitude higher than Leh, where temperatures plummet below minus 20-degree Celsius in winter. Not accessible by road throughout the year, the picturesque Spiti Valley remains cut off from the world for more than four months a year due to heavy snowfall. It reopens once the snow starts thawing after mid-April. Mumbai, Sep 23 : Premium valuations rather than bigger brandnames have caught the investors' fancy in the IT space of Indian stock markets. The sector has emerged as one of the best performers during the pandemic period due to acceleration in adoption of digital solutions. Accordingly, large-cap IT companies retained the overall investor interest, thereby growing their large capital bases even larger. However, the demand for mid-cap segment firms' stocks outpaced those of the large-cap ones. Besides, with cheaper acqusition costs, these counters offer margin protection due to operational diversification and better prospects of better RoI than their large-cap counterparts. A flood of retail investors' funds and the charm of the IT sector play the role of major attraction points for the new participants. The trend becomes evident with brokerage data, which show that during the last one month, 'Mphasis' stocks rose by 3.04 per cent followed by LTI (4.13 per cent), LTTS (2.09 per cent), Infosys (1.47 per cent), Persistent (1.39 per cent), Mindtree (1.04 per cent), HCL Tech (0.87 per cent) and OFSS (0.79 per cent) . "As compared to large-caps, which have risen slowly in the last one month compared to the last full quarter, mid-cap stocks like Tata Elxsi, Mindtree, Mastek, Mphasis, LTI, LTTS and Happiest Minds have risen well even in the last one month, topping up a good three-month gain," said Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research, HDFC Securities. "Mid-cap IT companies are present in the niche areas that may come in demand from time to time, have low base of sales and profits and have lower institutional ownership," he added. According to Likhita Chepa, Senior Research Analyst, CapitalVia Global Research: "The rally in the tier 2 stocks of the IT sector is majorly due to the valuation gap between large-caps and mid-caps. Mid-caps are comparatively better valued. "Although the valuation of the both tier 1 and tier 2 stocks appear to be stretched, the continued rush among retail investors is driving up the prices. With no major fiscal risks in the near term, investors are participating in mid and small-caps." New Delhi, Sep 23 : Prominent Afghan Hazara figure, Mohammad Mohaqiq, has said that Taliban officials in central Daykundi province have forced people to leave their lands. Taliban officials are forcing people in Daykundi to leave their lands in Kandir and Dahan Nala areas in Gizab district in favour of Taliban fans, Mohaqiq, the former security advisor to ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and leader of Hazb-e-Wahdat Islami Mardom Afghanistan, posted on his official Facebook page, Raha Press reported. He warned of a humanitarian crisis ahead of the winter if the Taliban's order on people to leave their lands are followed. Mohaqiq has also shared two letters claiming to be issued by Taliban officials in which the order has been given and the military commission of the Taliban is tasked in case of any need. The Taliban officials in Daykundi have given the people a few hours to leave the said lands, Mohaqiq added, the report said. "According to information I just received, Taliban say if anyone has objection to the said move, he can refer to the court after he has left the land. This means that Taliban courts issue verdicts first and then it proceeds with the investigation process," Mohaqiq said. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) carried out raids in eight cities, including New Delhi and Noida, in wake of the seizure of 2,988.22 kilogramme heroin from Gujarat's Mundra port, and arrested eight people, including four Afghanistan nationals and one Uzbek national, from across the country. The agency stated that immediate follow-up operations were carried out in New Delhi, Noida, Chennai, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Mandvi, Gandhidham, and Vijayawada. "This led to recovery of 16.1 kg of heroin from a godown in Delhi, 10.2 kgs powder suspected to be cocaine and 11 kgs of substance suspected to be heroin from a residential place in Noida," it said. The three Indians arrested in the case so far include the holders of the Import Export Code (IEC), which was used to import the consignment. M. Sudhakar and his wife Durga Vaishali, who allegedly ran Vijayawada-registered Aashi Trading Company which had imported heroin declaring the consignment as 'talc stones', were arrested from Chennai. The agency said the heroin was concealed in jumbo bags said to contain unprocessed talc powder. The narcotic was placed in the lower layers of the bags, which had talc stones on the top to avoid detection. Resultantly, the heroin had to be painstakingly separated from the talc stones. Two days ago, the Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case in a drug trafficking case. About the operation, a senior DRI officer stated that specific intelligence was developed by them that a consignment, imported by Aashi Trading Company, Vijaywada and declared as semi-processed talc stones, originating from Afghanistan and shipped from Iran's Bandar Abbas Port, to Mundra is suspected to contain narcotics. These drugs originated from Afghanistan. Accordingly, officers of DRI detained the consignment --two containers, 40 tonnes -- for examination under the provisions of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic substance Act. The examination was conducted in presence of experts from Forensics Science Lab, Gandhinagar. During examination, suspected narcotics drugs were recovered from both the containers. FSL conducted tests and confirmed the presence of heroin. "Accordingly, 1,999.579 kg recovered from the first container and 988.64 kg recovered from the second container, totalling 2,988.219 kg, were seized under the provisions of NDPS Act, 1985," the DRI had stated. New York, Sep 23 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi started his campaign to welcome more investments and enterprise creation in India with a meeting with wireless technology giant Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon in Washington on Thursday. After their meeting, the Prime Minister's Office tweeted that they "had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts". It added that they discussed "investment opportunities in hi-tech sectors in India. Discussed recent electronics & telecom manufacturing PLI schemes; & measures to strengthen innovation ecosystem". When the leaders of the Quad -- Modi, President Joe Biden and Prime Ministers Yoshihide Suga of Japan and Scott Morrison of Australia -- meet on Friday, semiconductors will likely be a priority in their agenda. The US and others plan to diversify their semiconductor manufacturing because of its strategic importance and India could benefit. The supply chain for semiconductors has been disrupted resulting in manufacturing from digital devices to automobiles hit by shortages creating strategic worries for the US. CNBC quoted consulting firm, Alix Partners, as reporting that the global automotive industry will alone suffer losses of $210 billion in revenue this year because of chip shortages. Japan's business publication Nikkei reported last week that a draft of the Quad summit joint statement would "agree to work toward creating a safe supply chain for semiconductors". In his address at the United Nations on Tuesday, Biden said that the Quad was being "elevated" to meet challenges in emerging technologies, among others. Qualcomm, with a market cap of about $150 billion, is a leader in the manufacture of chips used in everything from cameras to aircraft and a pioneer in 5G technology. Modi also held one-on-one meetings with CEOs of software company Adobe, renewable energy company First Solar, arms manufacturer General Atomics, and investment management company Blackstone. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Sunrisers Hyderabad's Sherfane Rutherford will leave the Indian Premier League (IPL) bio-bubble and return home as his father passed away. "The #SRH family conveys its heartfelt condolences to Sherfane Rutherford and his family on the passing away of his father. Sherfane will be leaving the IPL bio-bubble to be with his family in this difficult hour," SRH wrote on Twitter. Rutherford, who initially went unsold in the auction, was roped in by Hyderabad as a replacement for Jonny Bairstow after the Englishman pulled out from the remainder of the tournament. The left-handed batter was in superlative form with the bat in the recently concluded Caribbean Premier League. "In life death is always the hardest thing and sometimes I ask why it happens but only god knows why but my dad has now leave me for a lifetime, my heart is broken am definitely not the same anymore we had so much plans I even send home my winning cpl top for you to wear and enjoy my success but it didn't happen. god I Pray that u take me through this I just can't take it, it's too hard like how can he leave without saying anything why why why," Rutherford wrote on Instagram. Latest updates on IPL 2021 Aizawl, Sep 23 : Around 11,500 Myanmar nationals have taken refuge in Mizoram so far and the state authorities are apprehending a fresh influx of migrants from the military coup-hit neighbouring country after renewed clashes between the Army and the pro-democratic forces there, officials said on Thursday. Mizoram's lone Lok Sabha Member C. Lalrosanga, who along with a senior official from the state on Wednesday met Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla and top central government officials in Delhi, said that there are reports from across the border that heavy fightings are going on off and on during the past one week between the Myanmar Army and the pro-democratic forces. "We apprehend fresh influx of Myanmarese into Mizoram due to the armed conflict there. We have no sufficient details about the gun fight on the other side of the borders," Lalrosanga told IANS over phone. Security and district officials, legislators and others while talking to IANS over phone said that the distressed refugees from Myanmar have crossed the Tiau River in small country boats to take shelter in the bordering villages of the northeastern state. "The river Tiau (which flows along the Champhai district in eastern Mizoram and divides India and Myanmar) was infrequently crossed by the refugees in small boats with the help of local Mizo people. "The hapless people with no option to survive the Army onslaught took shelter in our side and the Mizo villagers on humanitarian ground provided them food and shelter," a Mizoram NGO leader said. According to the people familiar with the developments in Myanmar and media and intelligence reports, the fresh refugee influx took place in Mizoram and more might take place as the Burmese government-in-exile, the National Unity Government (NUG), had called for a countrywide uprising earlier this month and clashed with the Army, which carried out massive operations against the resistance forces. They said that the Chinland Defence Force and Chin National Army (or Chin National Force) in joint operations earlier captured a Myanmar Army camp at Lungler village opposite the Mizoram border and had detained 12 Myanmar soldiers. After that the military authority sent a few helicopters and two jet fighters to launch a counter attack. Sounds of fierce gunfights and bursting of shells and use of other firearms between the cadres of anti-coup NUG and the Myanmar Army could be heard from the villages bordering Myanmar. Lalrosanga, who along with Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Chief Minister, Pu Rosangzuala, met Intelligence Bureau Director Arvind Kumar and other senior Home Ministry officials besides the Home Secretary, apprised them of the situation arising in view of the arrival of Myanmarese nationals in Mizoram. The Lok Sabha member said that they briefed the MHA officials and narrated the prevailing crisis in Mizoram following the sheltering of people from across the border. "So far, the civil societies and various other NGOs in Mizoram are providing food and shelter to the Myanmar nationals. Their limited resources are already exhausted. The Central government must come forward to provide food and shelter to the ill-fated people," the parliamentarian said. Lalrosanga along with state's Rajya Sabha member K. Vanlalvena and other ruling Mizo National Front leaders earlier on a number of occasions met the central leaders and top officials and requested them to provide necessary assistance, including food, to the Myanmar nationals, who are taking shelter in the bordering state. Officials of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), which maintains the data of Myanmarese refugees, said that around 11,500 refugees, including about 20 legislators, have taken shelter in Mizoram's 11 districts since March this year. Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga had last week once again urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide humanitarian assistance to Myanmar nationals as the bordering northeastern state is witnessing a fresh influx of refugees from the military coup-hit neighbouring country after a renewed clash between the Army and the pro-democratic forces, officials said on Thursday. Mizoram planning board vice chairman H. Rammawi, who is closely dealing with the Myanmar refugee affairs, said on Thursday that the Chief Minister, besides writing letters, has also talked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah over phone on a number of occasions, requesting them to extend humanitarian assistance to the Myanmar refugees. "The Central government is yet to respond positively, and has remained silent on the issue for almost seven months now," he said, adding that he has been in constant touch with the External Affairs Ministry and the Home Ministry, and the people of Mizoram are deeply disappointed over the Centre's silence and 'apathetic' attitude towards the distressed people from Myanmar. He said that the state is now reeling under a severe financial crisis, limited infrastructure of health and other services and non-availability of required manpower, as the Covid pandemic has crippled the state's overall situation. An MHA advisory, recently sent out to the four northeastern states, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, which share 1,640-km unfenced border with Myanmar, said that the states and Union Territories have no power to grant "refugee" status to any foreigner, and India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol. A one-year state of emergency has been declared in Myanmar, where power has been transferred to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing after President U Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained by the military on February 1. (Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in) New Delhi, Sep 23 : Pakistan journalist Waris Raza, who had gone missing in Karachi, has returned home and said that he has been given a warning to exercise caution. The journalist, however, said that he will continue to exercise his right to free expression. Earlier, Raza's family had said that he was detained in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area of Karachi on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday. The police in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, however, claimed that they did not know any details of the incident, Friday Times reported. Returning home after having gone missing for 14 hours, Raza told the BBC that he had been blindfolded and taken to an unknown location. He said the men who took him said they were not with the Rangers. They mentioned that they were associated with an intelligence agency, but did not name it, Raza told BBC. Raza said his abductors told him that he was writing against the state, to which he responded that he was writing in accordance with Article 9 of the Constitution of Pakistan. The abductors then asked him which article was he talking about, to which Raza said that it relates to freedom of speech. The abductors also asked him questions about his Facebook posts and a column he wrote for a newspaper. "Why are you against the hybrid system? Is it really that bad," they asked Raza. Raza responded that the hybrid system was against democratic norms and that is why he opposed it. Raza's abductors told him that he was "an honest person" who should think about why he was against the Pakistan Media Development Authority. "Be careful, don't do it again," he was told, the report said. Raza said that he insisted that he would not give up his freedom of expression. Later, he was brought near the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police station and released. Raza is associated with the Urdu daily 'Express' and has been a leading member of the Communist Party of Pakistan. He was also a general secretary of the Progressive Writers' Association. Srinagar, Sep 23 : Jammu and Kashmir Police has busted a recruitment module of proscribed terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba in Bandipora district, arresting four terrorist associates, besides detaining two youth who were about to join terrorist ranks, officials said on Thursday. Acting on a specific input, Bandipora police arrested a terrorist associate, identified as Asadullah Parray, resident of Hajin, heading the terrorist recruitment module. "During investigation, it was revealed that the accused maintained a close contact with terrorist handlers across the border and would do their bidding in recruiting young boys in terrorist ranks and arranging weapons and other logistics for them," a police officer said. Parray was earlier associated with Jamaat-e-Islami before shifting his allegiance to the Masarat Alam-led Muslim League. The accused has about dozens of PSAs and FIRs lodged against him and spent a good part of previous decade in custody. Police said in the current instance, Parray was actively abetted in running the module by his nephew Naseer Ahmed Parray, resident of Hajin, Haseena, resident of Sheeri, Khurshid Ahmad, resident of Naidkhai and others. "The group was in continuous contact across the border and would receive detailed instructions for their day to day activities. Apart from recruiting individuals and arranging arms and ammunition for them, the group was also involved in motivating youth to carry out petrol bomb attacks on government buildings and protected persons and carrying out reccee of potential targets," police said. A huge quantity of incendiary materials which were to be used for making petrol bombs was also recovered from them. "On the disclosures made by the accused, two individuals, identified as Rafeeq Ahmad, resident of Naidkhai and Hilal Ahmed Shah, resident of Shah Mohalla Hajin, who were about to join terrorist ranks at the instance of this group have been detained and are being questioned," police said. A case has been registered and further investigation is in progress. Patna, Sep 23 : A Patna doctor and his wife have been arrested for allegedly giving a contract for murder of a gym trainer, police said on Thursday. Senior Superintendent of Police, Upendra Sharma said that the involvement of Dr Rajiv Kumar Singh and his wife Khusboo Singh in an alleged attempt to murder case of gym trainer Vikram Singh is established now. "Dr Rajiv Singh and his wife Khusboo Singh had given the contract to Mihir to execute the crime. He along with two other shooters executed the crime. They have been arrested. "The contract killers have confessed to the crime. They said that Dr Rajiv Kumar Singh had given the 'supari' to kill Vikram Singh. He has also paid Rs 2.5 lakh to them," the SSP said. Vikram Singh was shot at by the contract killers near Buddha Murti in Kadam Kuan locality on September 18. He sustained 5 injuries but managed to escape from there and reached Patna medical college and hospital. He is currently admitted in the ICU and given a statement accusing the doctor and his wife, with whom he had allegedly had an intimate relationship. However, the gym trainer was not the only one person having intimate physical relationship with Khusboo Singh, with a top Patna police official alleging that she has 15 boyfriends, and all of them are under the radar of the investigation team. Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 23 : Kerala's ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), led by the CPI-M, on Thursday announced that the state will observe a shutdown on Monday as part of the Bharat Bandh being observed across the country called by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM). The shutdown will be from dawn to dusk and all shops, establishments and markets will be closed across the state. "We have decided to take part in it as we are fighting the wrong policies of the Centre. Just look into the farmers protest... now it has been more than a year since the protest began and we here in Kerala will fully join the nationwide protest. Around 5 lakh people will take part in the state which will be split into groups of five each in one place to observe Covid protocols," said LDF convenor A. Vijayaraghavan. He also said that all public examinations scheduled for that day will be changed. Kolkata, Sep 23 : West Bengal Law Minister Moloy Ghatak has skipped the summon sent by the Enforcement Directorate for the second in connection with the multi-crore coal smuggling case, citing that he is busy with election work and cannot appear before the probe agency, at least for now. Ghatak was supposed to be present before the agency at 11 a.m. on Thursday. In a mail sent to the ED few hours before the scheduled appearance, the minister wrote that as there are bypolls in the state, he is preoccupied with election work for which he won't be able to the appear before the probe agency on Thursday, as scheduled, source close to Ghatak said. This was the second summon sent to the Law Minister this month. Earlier, he was asked to appear before the agency on September 2, but he avoided the interrogation citing health issues. At that time, the minister had also said that as he is stationed in Kolkata, and since the ED has an office in the city, the officers can come down to Kolkata and record his statement. The minister also said that he is ready to cooperate with the probe agency. After Trinamool Congress national General Secretary Abhidhek Banerjee and his wife Rujira Banerjee, Ghatak is the third person to get summon from the central agency investigating the coal scam case. Though Rujira Banerjee refused to go to Delhi, Abhishek Banerjee went to the ED office in New Delhi on September 6 where he was interrogated for nine hours. He was again called the next day, but he refused to go. Later, the ED issued a fresh notice and asked him to appear on September 21, which he avoided again. The case was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the ED after studying a November 2020 FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which alleged a multi-crore coal pilferage scam related to the mines of the Eastern Coalfields Ltd in and around Asansol. Local state operative Anup Majhi alias Lala is alleged to be the prime suspect in the case. The ED had earlier claimed that Ghatak was a beneficiary of the funds obtained from this illegal trade. The name of Ghatak came up on several occasions during the interrogations. Apart from the ED, the CBI is also investigating the coal scam. Hyderabad, Sep 23 : The stage is set for a stormy Telangana legislature session beginning on Friday. The Assembly and Legislative Council will meet with strict adherence to Covid-19 safety guidelines, it was decided at a meeting of presiding officers of both the houses with senior officials. Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and Council Pro-tem Chairman Bhoopal Reddy reviewed the arrangements for the session. Legislative Affairs Minister Vemula Prashanth Reddy, Chief Secretary Somesk Kumar, Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy and other officials attended the meeting. The Speaker directed the officials to ensure that Covid protocol is strictly followed. He sought the assistance of officials of all the departments in conducting the session in a transparent manner. The Business Advisory Committee will meet on Friday discuss the duration of the session. The state government plans to introduce five draft bills, including a Revenue Registration Act, and Housing Development Corporation Act, in the session, which it plans to extend for at least one week. The session, being held after six months, is likely to be stormy. This is the first session after the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election and after the exit of former minister E. Rajender from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). With the agenda for the session will be decided by the BAC, the TRS government wants a full-fledged debate on Dalit Bandhu scheme, which was launched on pilot basis in Huzurabad Assembly constituency, four mandals in four assembly constituencies and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's adopted village Vasalamarri. Under the scheme, the government is depositing Rs 10 lakh in the bank account of each Dalit family. The opposition Congress and the BJP have been demanding a similar scheme for backward classes. The TRS is likely to hit back demanding them to implement Dalit Bandhu like schemes in states ruled by them. The government is likely to make a statement on river water sharing issues with Andhra Pradesh and the row over alleged illegal projects taken up by the neighbouring state. Kolkata, Sep 23 : The ongoing tussle between the central probe agencies and West Bengal Speaker Biman Banerjee on the issue of filing chargesheet in the Narada sting operation case without the latter's permission is far from over. Unhappy with the response of the probe agencies, which refused to abide by the Speaker's summon to appear in the state Assembly on Wednesday, Banerjee on Thursday indicated not only to call them again, but also move a privilege motion against them if they fail to comply with his summon. There are strong indications that the secretariat of the state Assembly is not 'satisfied' with the response of the two central probe bodies -- the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Speaking to the media, Banerjee said, "It's not the end of the story." "No one is above the law. We are looking into all the aspects," sources close to the Speaker said. The conflict ensued after Banerjee sent a letter to the CBI and the ED on September 13, asking them to appear before him on September 21 to clarify how they could file a chargesheet against three MLAs -- Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukerjee and Mandan Mitra -- without the permission of the Speaker. Both the ED and the CBI refused to appear before the Speaker and sources in the agencies said that they are consulting legal experts in this matter. They would prefer to take the legal way rather than honouring the Speaker's summons, sources said. On Wednesday, an official of the ED handed over a letter to Banerjee saying that the agency has fulfilled all the legal formalities. But instead of meeting the Speaker, he just submitted the letter to the latter's office. Sources in the Assembly said that the ED authorities made it clear that they would not send any representative to the Assembly. Sources in the ED also said that its letter mentioned that the agency had taken permission from Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, and so the permission of the Speaker was not necessary. The letter also said that it is not possible for any ED representative to appear before the Speaker on this issue. Similarly, the CBI also sent a mail to the Speaker, saying that it cannot appear before him, pointing out that the Speaker did not have the authority to summon its officers for explanation. It has also been said that as the investigation is being conducted under the instruction and supervision of the high court, the CBI had the legal binding to submit the chargesheet before the court and in doing so they met will all the legal formalities. The Narada scam is a sting operation targeting high-ranking officials and politicians of the Trinamool-led West Bengal government carried out in 2014, which reportedly showed several of them accepting bribes and illegal gratifications in exchange for unofficial favours for the companies offering the bribes. The sting operation was made public ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections. The Calcutta High Court had ordered a CBI-led probe into the Narada scam in March 2017, while the ED was also roped in to investigate the case. An ethics committee of the Lok Sabha was also set up as the accused involved Members of Parliament. Four Trinamool leaders -- Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee -- were arrested by the CBI on May 17 after which West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee held a six-hour protest outside the CBI headquarters in Kolkata, demanding their unconditional release. Her supporters even gheraoed the compound housing the CBI office. A special CBI court granted interim bail to the four leaders because the agency had not requested for their custody. The CBI court also cited the Supreme Court's judgment on prison decongestion. Challenging the CBI court's order, the CBI appealed to the Calcutta High Court, which revoked the CBI court order and sent the four accused to judicial custody. However, the Calcutta High Court later ordered the house arrest of the four leaders. Later, they were granted interim conditional bail on May 28 by the Calcutta High Court. New Delhi, Sep 23 : A woman drug peddler has been apprehended 266 gm of fine quality heroin, valued at Rs 26 lakh in the international market, seized from her, Delhi Police said on Thursday. According to the police, they had received a tip-off that the woman, identified as Durga, resident of Aruna Nagar, used to sell heroin in her locality and was going to deliver a huge quantity of contraband to her customers on Wednesday. Acting on the input, a team of eight police personnel was constituted to conduct a raid, but, as it reached the specified location, the accused had shifted elsewhere. Despite that, the police was able to nab the accused. During interrogation, the 35-year-old woman revealed that she was lured by a person named Sanjay, resident of Majnu Ka Tila, to deliver contraband drugs for him in adjacent areas. She said that she started working for Sanjay around a month ago and has so far delivered 3-4 consignments for him. Sanjay used to call his customers and after fixing the deliveries, used to direct her accused woman to deliver the drugs at the place and time fixed. Police have registered a case under section 21 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act at Timarpur police station here. "Further investigation is in progress and efforts are being made to trace out the main source and supply," the police added. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Supreme Court on Thursday said it is high time that Information and Communication Technology tools are utilised for efficient transmission of its orders, emphasising that it is concerned about the plight of jail inmates, who are not released despite the bail orders passed by it, due to delay in communication. A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Surya Kant, said: "We direct the Chief Secretaries of all the states/UTs to ensure the availability of internet facility with adequate speed in each and every jail in their respective states/UTs and take necessary steps to arrange for internet facility expeditiously wherever the same is not available. "Till then, communication shall be made through the nodal officers of the state governments under FASTER (Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records) system." The FASTER system proposes transmission of e-authenticated copies of the interim orders, stay orders, bail orders, and record of proceedings to the duty-holders for compliance and due execution, through a secured electronic communication channel. The bench added that the Director General, National Informatics Centre, Home Secretaries of all the states/UTs and the Directors General/Inspectors General of Prisons of all states/UTs shall ensure smooth and successful implementation of FASTER system and shall coordinate with its registry. The scheme is conceived for delivery of orders to prisons, district courts, high courts, for instantaneous delivery of top court orders through a secure communication channel. The bench noted that 19 states have submitted compliance report/affidavits with regard to availability of internet facility in prisons. "The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam and Mizoram have indicated non-availability/partial availability of internet connectivity. Rest of the states have not filed affidavits in this regard," it noted. The bench noted that a proposal suggesting modalities to implement the FASTER system has been placed before it by the secretary general, and the requisite amendment in the Rules and Procedure for the Supreme Court of India be taken up on the administrative side. "Further, all the duty-holders shall amend their rules/procedure/practice/directions forthwith, to recognise the e-authenticated copy of the order of this court communicated to them through FASTER system and shall comply with the directions contained therein," it added in the order, and listed the matter after two weeks. The top court order came on suo motu proceedings, which were initiated on July 16, on the reports stating non-release of the prisoners after the grant of bail. The top court contemplated to adopt the procedure termed FASTER to ensure that such situation does not arise in future. On July 16, the Chief Justice had expressed concern in the era of internet and IT boom, it is seeming that jail authorities are relying on ancient mode of communication through pigeons. New Delhi, Sep 23 : Madhya Pradesh Director General of Police, V.K. Johri, said on Thursday that there has been no increase in Maoist footprints in the state. Talking exclusively to IANS, he said that the Mandla district has been classified under the 'District of Concern' category because of the movement of 'Vistar Dalam' of Maoists from Chhattisgarh recently, but they were not able to muster support from the locals. "They are also unable to hire local youth in their cadre here as the state police have taken effective measures to prevent their movement in the state, including encounters," Johri said. Talking about the Dindori district, the DGP said that it has been included in the Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme because the state administration wanted to fortify the police stations and other security set ups in the district to prevent the ultras from making inroads in these areas. Admitting that Maoist movement along the MP-Chhattisgarh border areas is a matter of concern for the state, he said that the police force is capable enough to handle the security situation. Under the SRE scheme, the Centre reimburses the bulk of the expenditure incurred by the Maoist-hit states, including ex-gratia payment to civilians and security personnel killed by the ultras, besides the expenses on mobility, logistics and communication and also for the ammunition used for operations against the ultras by the Central paramilitary and police forces. Till 2018, only Balaghat was listed under the Maoist-affected district category in the state. Recently, the Mandla district was included in the list of 'Districts of Concern' whereas Balaghat was upgraded as a 'most affected district', among the top 25 districts in the country. Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori are adjoining districts which fall in a straight line along the MP-Chhattishgarh border, which is also known as the 'north corridor' where the Maoists' Vistar Dalam (meaning extension) from Chhattisgarh used to visit to muster support of the local population and hire youth into their cadre. The Vistaar Dalam came up after the Maoists started losing control of territory in south Chhattisgarh and decided to explore new areas for operations. But the better infrastructure developments executed in these areas have left a good impression on the local population, while the youth too have been alienated from their ideology, an official privy to the developments said on condition of anonymity. The areas of operation of Vistar Dalam have been Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori on the MP side, Kawardha and Rajnandgaon on the Chhattisgarh side, and Gadchiroli on the Maharashtra side. New Delhi, Sep 23 : The BJP has claimed that sensing defeat in the Bhabanipur bypoll, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is making desperate appeals to the voters to elect her, saying otherwise someone else will become the CM of the state. During her election campaign on Wednesday, Banerjee had said that if she doesn't win the by-election, someone else will become the Chief Minister. "If I don't win, someone else will be the Chief Minister. Give me your votes to keep me as the Chief Minister. Every vote is precious to me. Don't waste them," Banerjee had said. The BJP said that Banerjee's statement shows that she is not confident of winning the election from her old constituency, and that she doesn't trust anyone in the Trinamool Congress. BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh told IANS, "Mamata di has realised that she will be defeated by the BJP candidate in Bhabanipur, just like what happened in Nandigram, and someone else will become the Chief Minister. Banerjee doesn't trust anyone and thinks that she would lose control over the party if someone else becomes the Chief Minister. That's why she is making desperate appeals to the voters." Ghosh claimed that Banerjee knows that this time she will face the toughest fight and might even lose the election in Bhabanipur, and that is why she is trying all the tricks to get votes. "The presence of all the state cabinet ministers in Bhabanipur tells the truth that she is not on a strong pitch," Ghosh said. BJP West Bengal co-incharge Amit Malviya said, "(Priyanka) Tibrewal has been campaigning in Bhabanipur and people seem to be listening to her. This has left Mamata Banerjee worried, especially as the defeat in Nandigram has proved that she is not invincible." A West Bengal BJP leader said that such a comment by the Chief Minister shows her fear of losing the polls from a constituency she represented in the last Assembly before unsuccessfully contesting from Nandigram this time. Banerjee had lost to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari from Nandigram in the Assembly elections held earlier this year. Washington, Sep 23 : In the first leg of his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met leading American CEOs in Washington. He held one-on-one meetings with the CEOs of semiconductor and wireless technology manufacturer Qualcomm, software major Adobe, renewable energy firm First Solar, arms manufacturer General Atomics and investment management company Blackstone. The first meeting was held with Cristiano Amon, President and CEO, Qualcomm. "President and CEO of @Qualcomm, @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts," the PMO tweeted. "We talked about 5G and acceleration of 5G. We talked about the incredible opportunity to advance the industry, as we think about the digital transformation enabled by 5G combined with the design in India," Amon said. He said Qualcomm may look at India as it builds a resilient supply chain for semiconductors if necessary infrastructure are provided in the country. Modi's meeting with Amon is significant as India is looking at fast adoption of 5G technology in the country for which it is eyeing investment in this high technology area from credible partners who can provide safe and secure networks. The San Diego-based company creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless technology and is getting big into 5G technology with its range of pioneering products. It is expected that high-level meetings would pave the way for big investment in the new tech area that is required to help the country leapfrog to providing its citizens with the next generation of networking services. The Prime Minister also met Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President and CEO, Adobe. The discussions focused on leveraging technology to provide smart education to the youngsters and enhance research. They also discussed the vibrant startup sector in India, powered by the youth of the country. "PM Modi believes that technology is the way to help things move forward," Narayen said after the meeting, adding that the company intends to continue to invest heavily in India. The CEO of FirstSolar, Mark Widmar, also called on Modi. During the meeting, Modi elaborated India's efforts to harness solar energy, including the 'One world, One sun and One grid' initiative and investment opportunities in the sector. "The strong balance created between India's industrial and trade policies has built ideal opportunities for companies like FirstSolar to establish manufacturing in India. The productivity linked incentive (PLI) schemes will help India attract more investment in manufacturing from the US," Widmar said. PM's discussions with Vivek Lall of GeneralAtomics Global Corporation hovered around India's strides in drone technology, including the reforms and the PLI scheme. "There are lots of potential areas of collaboration that we are in discussions with. The opportunities are a win win for both the countries," Lall said. India is in the process of procuring a significant number of drones for the three branches of its armed forces. It has also leased a few drones from General Atomics. Agartala, Sep 23 : Two Border Security Force (BSF) troopers were killed and a Sub-Inspector shot at in a fratricidal incident along the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura on Thursday, police said. A police official said that Havildar Sahid Singh and Constable Pratap Singh of 20th battalion engaged in a squabble on personal matters at a BSF outpost at Khagrachari in Gomati district before the constable shot his senior dead. Hearing the firing, BSF Sub-Inspector Ram Kumar rushed to the spot and tried to pacify Pratap Singh but the constable fired at him too. Abhimanyu Singh, who was on sentry duty, then fired on Pratap Singh, killing him on the spot. An executive magistrate, and senior police and BSF officials have rushed to the spot, 155 km south of Agartala, to probe the bizarre incident. New Delhi, Sep 23 : A day after the resignation of interlocutor R.N. Ravi, the Centre has resumed the negotiation with the Naga factions to find out a long-standing solution for the Naga issue and former Special Director, IB, A.K. Mishra will be initiating more talks in the days to come. Mishra was appointed as an Advisor to the Home Ministry after his retirement in April this year and has replaced Ravi. It was learnt that on last Sunday, Mishra, along with Intelligence Bureau chief, Arvind Kumar, met the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah) leader T. Muivah and other leaders of Naga National Political Groups (NNPGs) in Dimapur and had an informal round of talks for the peace process soon. Sources in the security set-up said very soon Mishra will be meeting Muivah and NNPGs leaders again. They also said that it would be a real challenge for the Centre's representative to convince them on the issue of a separate Constitution and flag. They also said that Assam Chief Minister and convener of BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) Himanta Biswa Sarma has also been brought into the peace process by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and he will also be meeting Muivah along with his Nagaland counterpart Neiphiu Rio. Sarma is also expected to meet the leaders of other stakeholders of the peace process and NNPGs. Mishra, a retired IPS officer of 1987 batch of Rajasthan cadre, has said to have played a significant role in signing a peace accord with militant groups based in Assam's Karbi-Anglong district and ceasefire agreement with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Niki group, another security source said. The huge trust deficit between Ravi and the Naga groups created hurdles in the peace process in early 2020 when Muivah refused to hold any dialogue with him following a dispute on the framework agreement signed in 2015. An IPS 1976 batch officer of Kerala cadre, Ravi was Special Director in Intelligence Bureau in 2012 and after his retirement, he was appointed as government interlocutor on the Naga peace talk in 2014 and in 2015, he signed a framework agreement with the NSCN-IM on behalf of the Centre on August 3, 2015, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2019, he was made the Nagaland Governor along with his interlocutor's responsibility despite protests from Muivah. Jaipur, Sep 23 : Strict security arrangements, including deployment of armed police forces, have been made in Rajasthan to ensure that the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) is organised in a full-proof manner on September 26. The Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan, would conduct the REET 2021 on September 26 in which around 16.51 lakh students are expected to appear. Video recording of printing of question papers and their transportation to the exam centres has been ordered by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Also, it has been ordered to install CCTV cameras in front of the examination centres. Gehlot said in a tweet that he has instructed the Collectors/SPs to ensure that law and order is maintained during REET. "They (the officials) should also visit and monitor the arrangements. Control rooms should be set up in every district. The Board of Secondary Education and the District Collectors have been instructed to videograph the entire porcess of printing of question papers to their transfer to the examination centres. Also, candidates appearing in REET should not carry mobile phones to the examination centres," he said. "In competitive examinations, the hard work of the candidates gets nullified when cases of cheating come to the fore. Do not be negligent at any examination centre. CCTV cameras should be installed at the examination centres," he instructed. Earlier, Gehlot had said in a tweet, "The state government has made special preparations for the successful conduct of REET, the biggest competitive exam in the state with 16 lakh candidates. Report any illegal activity to the police. Strict action will be taken against those spreading rumours about question paper leak during the exam." Meanwhile, sources in the police headquarters confirmed that armed forces will be deployed at each examination centre. "Along with this, two constables, two Home Guard volunteers and two women cops will be deployed for the checking of the candidates coming to each examination centre," the sources said. Additional Director General of Police (law and order), Saurabh Srivastava, informed that proper arrangements for police presence and patrolling will be made on the day of the examination. A total of 5,000 Home Guard volunteers, 500 Border Home Guard Volunteers and about 50 companies of RAC, MBC, SDRF etc. have been provided to the police in districts across the state. There will be police patrolling at the railway stations, bus stands, highways, major intersections, toll points etc. The government has also announced to provide free bus transportation to the candidates appearing for REET. The Gehlot-led government has also cancelled all university-level examinations scheduled between September 25 and September 27. New Delhi, Sep 23 : India has administered one Covid dose to around two-thirds of the adult population, officials said on Thursday. Addressing a press briefing on the current Covid situation across the country, NITI Aayog's Member, Health, Dr V.K. Paul said that India has successfully administered one dose to 66 per cent of the adult population, and almost a quarter have received the both doses. Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that though the daily cases continue to show declining trends, the country is still in the middle of the second wave and it has not been concluded yet. He said that people need to maintain Covid appropriate behaviour all the time and need to accelerate the mass vaccination drive at all levels. The majority of cases are still being reported from Maharashtra and Kerala, though the absolute number has declined, he said. "Around 62.73 per cent of the total cases reported last week are from Kerala." Bhushan said that the weekly positive rate continue to be below 3 per cent for the last 12 weeks, but 33 districts, including 13 from Kerala, still have over 10 per cent weekly positive rates, while 23 districts have a weekly positivity rate between 5 to 10 per cent. He said that a detailed SOP has been sent to all states and UTs to follow the proper guidelines from October to November in the upcoming festival season. The Health Secretary said that a total of 62 crore first doses, and 21.5 crore second doses have been given across the nation so far. While 99 per cent health care workers have received their first dose, 84 per cent have received their second dose. Meanwhile, 100 per cent front line workers have received their first dose and 80 per cent have got the second dose. Terming the present UK travel restrictions as discriminatory, he said that India has the right to reciprocate in the same manner. However, he added, both nations are working to find a solution soon. Asked about the vaccine administration in private sector, he replied that roughly 6 per cent of the vaccines have been administered from May so far in the private hospitals. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, Sep 24 : The government has allowed door-to-door Covid vaccination for differently-abled people and those with restricted mobility, officials said on Thursday. Addressing a press briefing on the Covid situation, NITI Aayog's Dr V.K. Paul said that guidelines have been issued in this regard. "We are starting vaccinations at home for those who are not able to visit the vaccination centres. Advisory has been issued. SOPs will be follow," he said. Noting the process will be effective, safe, nurturing, supportive and will follow the standard operating procedure, he said that persons with restricted mobility, disability and special needs that hamper their accessibility to the vaccine centres will get the vaccines at their home, and for this, teams will be formed at the local levels with the support of state government. It is advised that a list of such potential beneficiaries and their caregivers may be prepared in the catchment area of every planning unit and collated at the district level, he added. New Delhi, Sep 24 : Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Thursday that the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (PM-JAY) has reformed the healthcare system in India. "It gives me great happiness that the scheme has served more than 2.2 crore people in the last three years, including those residing in the remotest areas," the minister said while chairing the inaugural session of Aarogya Manthan 3.0 to mark the third anniversary of AB PM-JAY. Mandaviya said that the journey of the last three years of the implementation of the scheme has been tremendous, as it has empowered millions of citizens with their right to health. The theme of the programme was 'Service and Excellence'. Aarogya Manthan 3.0, a four-day event, commenced by observing 'Ayushman Bharat Diwas'. Mandaviya said, "Health and development are interlinked. Universal healthcare is the objective and vision of the Prime Minister. Leveraging digital technology in the healthcare sector, India aims to set national goals of digitising the healthcare landscape to make delivery of services smooth, robust, quick and efficient. In this regard, the National Digital Health Mission will prove to be a game-changer. Public-government partnership is the reason for the success of any government programme. Ayushman Mitra is one such initiative." The minister also virtually interacted with the AB PM-JAY beneficiaries from Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Andaman and Nicobar, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Assam. The AB PM-JAY was launched on September 23, 2018 from Ranchi by Narendra Modi with an aim to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Bengaluru, Sep 24 : Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Thursday that the state government will launch the 'Grama Seva Yojane' on a trial basis in five districts to provide online citizen services at the gram panchayat level. The Chief Minister was addressing the inaugural function of the Amrutha Grama Panchayat scheme held at the Banquet hall of the Vidhan Soudha here. The scheme would be implemented with the aspiration that the village panchayats would become centres for providing citizen services and the government facilities should be delivered at the doorsteps of the people. "Democracy can succeed with people's participation. Unfortunately, we have turned people into beneficiaries. Instead, we need to encourage their participation in governance. Planning should be done at the grassroots level and funds must be provided by the government," the CM said. Under the Amrutha Grama Panchayat scheme, overall development of 750 village panchayats is envisaged and on an average, Rs 3 crore is being provided to each panchayat, amounting to Rs 2,300 crore in total. An incentive of Rs 25 lakh is being provided to each panchayat that completes the programme by March 31, 2022, he said. If all the gram panchayats succeed to meet the deadline, 1,500 anchayats would be selected for the scheme for next year, he said. For the successful implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission, the flagship programme of the government of India to ensure 100 per cent coverage of functional household tap connection in rural areas, the state government released Rs 2,000 crore recently, the CM said. Speaking on the occasion, Giriraj Singh, Union Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, appreciated the functioning of th Panchayati Raj Institutions in the state. He said that all gram panchayats must be connected digitally by 2024, as he directed the state government to implement the same on priority. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, Sep 24 : Total area under organic farming and agro-forestry increased from 23,840 hectare (ha) to 1,03,780 ha along the river Ganga, a meeting of the Empowered Task Force was informed here on Wednesday. "Land for organic farming in Uttarakhand is 50,840 ha, Uttar Pradesh is 42,180 ha, Bihar is 16,060 ha and in Jharkhand is 4,540 ha along the Ganga," the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare informed the Taskforce. The Ministry of Agriculture said that it is also working to ensure that shifting to organic farming also boosts farmer's income, improves water use and crop diversification. "States are also using 'Namami Gange' brand for organic farm produce along the Ganga," it said during the meeting. Minister of State for Jal Shakti Bishweswar Tudu chaired a meeting of the Empowered Task Force that included several central ministries, departments and the state governments for ensuring better coordination and convergence among agencies and programs for holistic rejuvenation of Ganga River and its basin. The Ministries and states provided an update on the recent developments that have taken place and also mapped out their future plans. The Ministry of Tourism noted that the 'Ganga Museum' at Haridwar is now operational while the one at Rishikesh is ready for inauguration and another Museum in Patna has been sanctioned. The Ministry said, it is also working on developing tourists circuits along the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar. A report on architectural, cultural and natural mapping for 38 districts has also been submitted, it added. Among the states, Bihar has committed to promote production and marketing of organic products under their 'State Organic Mission'. Uttar Pradesh is working on promoting organic plantation in urban areas & developing Mandis (outlets) in urban residential colonies to encourage people to buy organic products. Similarly, Uttarakhand has started 20 big and 410 small outlets to promote organic products along Char Dham Yatra route while Jharkhand government said it has started 'Organic Farming Authority of Jharkhand' to promote organic farming in the state especially along the Ganga. Meanwhle West Bengal told the task force that the state has started a massive plantation drive in the Sunderban area. About 15 crore trees will be planted in three districts covering 10,000 acres of land. Tudu said, "Namami Gange is not only a programme for cleaning Ganga but to bring collective consciousness among masses. Hence, all the Central and the state ministries will have to come together under one umbrella to make Ganga 'aviral' and 'nirmal'." Dhaka, Sep 24 : Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Thursday granted conditional bail to Jhumon Das, a minority victim of militants, in a case lodged against him under the Digital Security Act for an "objectionable" post on social media against a Hefazat-e-Islam leader. "The court's high court division bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice K.M. Zahid Sarwar allowed the bail on condition that Das does not to go out of his home district without permission from the lower court concerned," Advocate Z.I. Khan Panna, who led the bail plea for Das, told IANS. Senior advocates Subroto Chowdhury, Panna and advocate Nahid Sultana Juthi argued for Das' bail, while Assistant Attorney General Mizanur Rahman stood for the state. Das had filed bail petitions in the trial court seven times and following their rejection, moved the high court for bail. Since Das's arrest, various political, social, and rights organisations have been demanding his release from jail. His wife, along with their one-year-old child, joined different programmes organised by various organisations in the city, demanding his release. On March 15, Hefazat-e-Islam's then leaders Junaid Babunagari and Mamunul Haque spoke at a rally in Sunamganj's Derai upazila to protest Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Bangladesh. Hefazat activists alleged Das, from Noagaon village under Habibpur union parishad of Shalla upazila, had posting an "objectionable" Facebook status against Mamunul Haque. Arrested on March 16, Das was produced on the next day before a court, which sent him to jail. Meanwhile, over a hundred Hefazat activists attacked the Hindu community in Noagaon village over the Facebook post on March 17, vandalising and looting around 90 houses and temples. A case was filed with Shalla police station over the attack while a case under the Digital Security Act was filed against Das at the same police station. Das's wife Sweety Rani Das had said: "Those who were arrested for attacking our village were freed but my husband is still languishing in jail." Das' son Soumya was six months old when his father landed in jail. He turned one on September 12 and he is yet to recognise his father, though playing with his photograph. His aunts threw a small party on Soumya's first birthday. A small cake was cut and some children from nearby houses were invited. Meanwhile, Das's elder brother, 27-year-old Nupur Das said: "Managing bread and butter is a big challenge for us. We now have to spend money on the case of my brother. I don't know how long this will continue." Das' wife was struggling to manage the family in her husband's absence. New Delhi, Sep 24 : Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday called for balanced use of chemicals and fertilisers in agriculture sector. "There was a time when the 'Green Revolution' was needed for ensuring food security. And that time, fertilizers were encouraged. But now that we have the food security, we need to ensure that there is no excess use of fertilisers. "I can understand, fertilisers cannot vanish overnight. Organic or natural farming must also be encouraged, and it is necessary to maintain balance in farming," the Minister said while addressing the session on 'India@75: Expediting the Sustainable Growth of Agrochemicals Industry for Self-Reliant India', organised by FICCI, virtually from Bhopal. Citing the government's efforts at encouraging technology in farming, he said: "Farmers are getting direct profits from new technology and various policies of the government in the country. Price of saffron grown in Kashmir increased from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh a kilo after technological intervention." He lauded the FICCI for its continuous support towards the development of the country. The government is making all the efforts towards realising Prime Minister's vision of doubling farmers' income, he said. "The agriculture sector is crucial for the country's economy, which has proved its significance even in undesirable circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic," he added. Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers, Bhagwanth Khuba, said: "It is our responsibility to focus on judicious use of agrochemicals and reducing residue level. Research and development in the agrochemical sector should be strengthened and it is the need of the hour." Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Kailash Choudhary also spoke on the occasion. Mentioning that working towards curbing the ill effects of agrochemicals is needed, NITI Aayog Member, Ramesh Chand said: "To obtain efficiency, agrochemical and biochemical play an important role. We need to focus on 'waste to wealth' from 'waste to burning'." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Srinagar, Sep 24 : The Indian Army on Thursday paid tributes to rifleman Shakir Manzoor Wagay of 162 Infantry Battallion (Territorial Army) at the Chinar Corps War Memorial in Srinagar. Wagay was on bonafide military duty in Balapur, Shopian, on August 2, 2020, when he went missing. Security forces had launched an extensive search operation at that time to locate him. After comprehensive search, his burnt vehicle was found at Rambhama, Kulgam. However, despite persistent efforts of the security forces, Wagay could not be traced. "His father, Manzoor Ahmed Wagay, anticipated that his son had been abducted by terrorists. Some anti-national social media accounts had alleged at that time that Wagay had been killed and that his body had been deliberately buried at an unidentified location," the army said. On Wednesday, an unidentified decomposed body was found at Mohandpura village in Kulgam. The father of the rifleman identified the body as that of his son. "As per the post-mortem report, the death of Wagay has been attributed to grievous injuries. The injury marks on him indicate that he was tortured and murdered in the most brutal and inhumane manner by the terrorists," the army said. Wagay, 26, had joined the Army on June 2, 2016. He belonged to Rishipura village of South Kashmir's Shopian district. He is survived by his parents. "The mortal remains of Wagay will be taken for last rites to his native place, where he would be laid to rest with full military honours. In this hour of grief, the army stands in solidarity with the bereaved family and remains committed to their dignity and wellbeing," the army said. "The Indian Army condemns this heinous crime. The sacrifice of the braveheart in service of the country will not go in vain. All means will be utilised to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice. Indian Army salutes the bravery of the departed son and soldier of India," it added. ZI Bengaluru, Sep 24 : The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has issued a circular asking apartment owners not to change or modify balconies in wake of the recent tragedy at an apartment where two elderly women were burnt to death. The order, issued by BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta, said: "In the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits, as per the building construction guidelines 2003, National Building Code of India 2016, after obtaining Occupancy Certificate, Commencement Certificate, covering the balcony and additional construction/modifying the balconies is against the rules of these guidelines which lead to unsafe practices, and this has been observed across the city." It said that "going forward... these kinds of unsafe practices, leading to danger, in the construction of the houses will not be permitted". If there is a need for modification at the residential complexes/other buildings, pre-approval must be obtained from BBMP's competent authorities, it said. Bengaluru, Sep 24 : Pitching Karnataka as the best place for global investors, Large and Medium Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani said on Thursday that Karnataka will be the only state in India to have three major industrial corridors. The minister was speaking at a programme organised by the KIADB as part of the 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' (platinum jubilee celebrations of Independence) at a private hotel here. Highlighting the thriving business ecosystem in the state, Nirani said Karnataka offers excellent investment opportunities. "Karnataka will be the only state in India to have three major industrial corridors connecting Bengaluru with three metropolises of India. The three industrial corridors -- Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor (CBIC), Bangalore-Mumbai Economic Corridor (BMEC) and Hyderabad-Bangalore Industrial Corridor (HBIC) are being developed by the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd (NICDC). the implementation of CBIC is gaining momentum. Our government will take necessary measures to make sure that the CBIC becomes a great success story for Karnataka and the nation," Nirani said. Explaining the state's dominant position in the industrial sector, Nirani said successive governments strived to make Karnataka the No. 1 investor-friendly state in India. "Karnataka has become a preferred destination for leading businesses as it provides a cost-competitive manufacturing environment. With 7.09 per cent GSDP during the last decade, Karnataka is emerging as the fourth largest economy in India and its per capita income is the highest among all the other states. We are in the fourth position in terms of skilled workforce and now we have reached the pinnacle of attaining No. 1 position in terms of attracting FDIs in India for Q1 FY 2021-22," stated the minister. Patna, Sep 24 : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had reportedly asked Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad to clarify corruption charges levelled against him. Prasad was asked to appear before the Chief Minister at the latter's official residence at 1 Anne Marg to clarify his stand. Sources have said that Nitish Kumar is angry with Prasad who was involved in giving contracts of "Har Ghar Nal Ka Jal" programme, to the tune of Rs 58 crore, to his relatives including, daughter-in law,under Saat Nishchay Yojana. Nitish Kumar reportedly asked Prasad to clarify his stand on a public forum. He also wants the BJP top leadership to take cognisance of this matter as the state government is facing huge embarrassment due to his deputy's alleged involvement in corruption. Earlier, Leader of Opposition in Assembly Tejashwi Yadav, said that the alleged scam was discovered by Ram Prakash Mahto in August 2020 and he had also written a letter to Nitish Kumar in February 2021, but still, the Chief Minister had not taken cognisance. "As per the laws, contracts should be given to expert companies or contractors. In this case, the ministers of Nitish Kumar government have given contracts to their own relatives. Tarkishore Prasad has given the contract to daughter-in-law, daughter and her husband," Yadav said. "The PHED department has come under BJP for years. Earlier, Sushil Kumar Modi was holding the portfolio of PHED and now Tarkishore Prasad. Nitish Kumar giving protection to his junior ministers leading to scams," he added. LJP leader Chirag Paswan also attacked Nitish Kumar, alleging that all ministers of his government are involved in corruption. "The Saat Nishchay Yojana which is the pet project of Nitish Kumar is actually a mother of corruption. Not a single minister in his cabinet has stopped from giving government contracts to relatives. The Chief Minister always talks about zero tolerance but his ministers are involved in corruption," he said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, Sep 24 : The Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Department of Biotechnology, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, on Thursday entered into a research collaboration with the Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC, a Vietnamese pharmaceutical company which is developing a new vaccine for Covid-19. THSTI has been at the fore front of research on Covid vaccines. A team of Nanogen Pharmaceutical led by Pham Sanh Chau, the Ambassador of Vietnam to India, visited THSTIA to sign the MoU on Thursday. Speaking on the ocassion, Pramod Garg, Director, THSTI, highlighted the importance of bilateral cooperation between India and Vietnam in the field of science and technology besides other areas. Garg thanked the Vietnam ambassador for facilitating the pact between THSTI and Nanogen Pharmaceutical and hoped that this collaboration will add another vaccine to strengthen the collective fight against the pandemic. Pranay Verma, Indian Ambassador to Vietnam, talked about the wider areas of collaboration and appreciated the efforts of the government of India in supporting and helping Vietnam during the Covid-19 pandemic, including supply of oxygen tankers and concentrators. Pham Sanh Chau also expressed his gratitude to THSTI and MEA for extending their support to evaluate the vaccine candidate, NanoCovax, developed by Nanogen. He said that these collaborations will have a far-reaching positive impact on India-Vietnam's friendly ties. Chau said that this MoU will pave the way for more such opportunities between India and Vietnam and contribute to vaccine research in both the countries. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New York, Sep 24 : India has great potential for attracting investments and manufacturing under the various programmes introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as companies try to diversify their global footprints, according to hi-tech CEOs who met him. "Because of the necessity to diversify and build a very resilient supply chain for semiconductors, we believe India could be an important destination for manufacturing," Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told reporters in Washington after his meeting with Prime Minister Modi on Thursday. Prime Minister Modi's "approach to drive economic growth in making India, a destination for investment for investment has been very successful", said the CEO of the $150 billion company that is a leader in the manufacture of chips used in everything from cameras to aircraft and a pioneer in 5G technology. The high level of optimism for India comes as the US and several other countries rethink their supply chains and their manufacturing bases, while also keeping an eye on China, which is set on trying to get a stranglehold on future technologies with strategic goals. When the leaders of the Quad - Prime Minister Modi, President Joe Biden and Prime Ministers Yoshihide Suga of Japan and Scott Morrison of Australia - hold their summit on Friday diversification of hi-tech is expected to be one of their priorities because of the strategic importance of technologies. Japan's business publication Nikkei reported last week that a draft of the Quad summit joint statement would "agree to work toward creating a safe supply chain for semiconductors." Speaking at the UN on Tuesday, Biden has said that the Quad would be elevated to meet challenges in emerging technologies, among others. India's goals of inviting hi-tech manufacturing mesh with the US and the Quad plans. First Solar's CEO Mark Widmar said that what Prime Minister Modi has done to "create a really strong balance between industrial policy as well as trade policy" makes it an ideal opportunity for companies like First Solar to establish manufacturing in India. "His commitment to ensuring domestic capabilities and ensuring his long term climate goals and objectives with focus on energy independence and security", Widmar said is an alignment that "couldn't be better for companies that are looking to manufacture in India. And I think the enablement of an environment that is pro-business, this is more opportunity for us to be successful to help India achieve its climate goals." First Solar is one of the world's largest developer and financier of photovoltaic solar power systems connected to grids. The "very laudable policy prescriptions and reforms" introduced by Prime Minister Modi "will certainly catalyse a lot of interest and investments in India," Vivek Lal, the CEO of General Atomics, said in the series of video interviews posted on twitter by the Ministry of External Affairs. "Many of my colleagues at US companies see India as a very promising destination," he said. He said that the reforms in both India and the US have created a "win-win" situation and both countries can benefit from their collaboration. General Atomics is a defence and technology company and a leader in the development and manufacture of drones. Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, said he was "a huge supporter, and fan of what the Prime Minister's doing" to improve the business and investment climate in India. He said the ecosystem for startups in India is "awesome". "As Indian Americans, I mean, what could be more inspiring or a matter of pride than seeing what the Prime Minister is doing to really encourage startups, to really encourage investment in India," he said. "What's really inspiring, is that these Indian startups are actually having as their growth the entire world," he said. "So their aspirations are not restricted to India, they're actually thinking about how they conquer the world." Adobe is the maker of ubiquitous document software and the leader in multi-media solutions. Prime Minister Modi met with Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the investment company, Blackstone. A tweet from the Prime Minister's Office said that "giving greater momentum to investments in India," they discussed "various investment opportunities in India, including those arising due to the National Infrastructure Pipeline and National Monetisation Pipeline." (The two programmes provide for privatisation with time limits for some national resources or government enterprises.) About his meeting with Modi, Amon said, "We talked about incredible opportunity to advance the industry not only domestically in India but Indian as an exporter of technology as we think about the digital transformation." "Very pleased with the conversations and we're very, very happy with everything we're doing together with India," he added. Narayen said that the key topic was "continued investment in innovation, because he certainly believes that technology is the way to help move things forward." They also "talked about artificial intelligence and what might happen with artificial intelligence, we talked about creativity, the importance of creativity and how media, the ever-changing nature of video," he said. About his company's plans, he said, "India is a big area of investment for us. Adobe has three growth initiatives: Everything around creativity, document productivity and powering digital businesses, and artificial intelligence is going to change how all those three solutions are delivered. So we intend to continue to invest heavily in it." Widmar said, "One of the things we want to do in India is not only to be there to support the domestic market, but we want to be a technology leader in leveraging capabilities that India can provide. And then also compete on a global platform and to participate in export into international markets." He said that India's goal of producing 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 was of global significance in dealing with climate change and "we would want to be part of this." He said that the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) programme of the government to encourage productivity was a draw. Lal said that in the areas of critical technologies "one wants to leapfrog into the next generation." This would be "not only the platform systems but as well as the design and development of various aspects of the ecosystem so that could include the maintenance and so forth," he said. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, Sep 24 : Amarinder Singh has been in news these days for his rhetoric since he resigned as the Chief Minister of Punjab, on which the Congress made a formal statement that 'there is no place for anger in politics'. To this the Captain retorted, 'Is there room for humiliation and harassment?' Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate, reacting to Captain's rhetoric, said, "In politics, there is no place for anger, jealousy, malice, remarks against individuals and the feeling of taking revenge on them." Addressing a media briefing, she expressed hope that Amarinder Singh will reconsider his alleged statement in which he had called former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi "inexperienced". Shrinate said that Amarinder Singh's statement is not according to his stature, but he is a senior Congress leader and it is possible that he must have said something in anger. She told reporters, "He will probably be of my father's age. Elders get very angry and sometimes they speak a lot in anger. We respect his temper, his age, his experience and I think he will definitely reconsider it." "As he has been a strong warrior of the Congress party, we hope that he will definitely reconsider what he has said, showing his own wisdom," she asserted. "The Congress party made him the Chief Minister for 9 years and 9 months. It seems to me that such things do not suit his stature, considering his experience, his contribution to public life," Shrinate added. After repeatedly attacking Sidhu, Captain on Wednesday allegedly targeted Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi by calling them "inexperienced". The Captain had accused the advisors of misleading them. In response to Shrinate's statement, Amarinder said, "Yes, there is no place for anger in politics but is there room for humiliation and harassment in such an old party like Congress?" In his statement on Thursday, he referred to the "insult" and asked what would have happened to a common worker of the party if he was being treated like this. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text United Nations, Sep 24 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has highlighted "three absolute priorities" in climate action in the context of climate and security. Much bolder climate action is needed ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (or COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, this November -- with the Group of 20 largest economies in the lead -- to maintain international peace and security, Xinhua news agency quoted Guterres as saying. "Our window of opportunity to prevent the worst climate impacts is rapidly closing. No region is immune. Wildfires, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather events are affecting every continent," he told a Security Council high-level open debate on climate and security on Thursday. The effects of climate change are particularly profound when they overlap with fragility and past or current conflicts. It is clear that climate change and environmental mismanagement are risk multipliers. Where coping capacities are limited and there is high dependence on shrinking natural resources and ecosystem services, such as water and fertile land, grievances and tensions can explode, complicating efforts to prevent conflict and to sustain peace, he warned. The threats are clear and present. But it is not too late to act to ensure that climate action contributes to international peace and security, he said, highlighting three priorities in climate action. The first priority is unambiguous commitment and credible actions by all countries to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. He urged all UN member states to show more ambition in their Nationally Determined Contributions by the convening of COP26 and to translate their commitments into concrete and immediate action so that global greenhouse gas emissions can be cut by 45 percent by 2030. The second priority is a breakthrough on adaptation and resilience to deal with the already dire impacts of climate disruption on the lives and livelihoods of people all over the world. The third priority is to make climate adaptation and peacebuilding reinforce each other, he said. The open debate is a signature event in Ireland, which holds the Security Council presidency for the month of September. Scheduled to coincide with the high-level week of the UN General Assembly, the debate was attended by two heads of state, one head of government and several ministers. Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin presided over the debate. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Silver Coast Portugal To see for themselves, International Living is giving readers the chance to win a month-long stay in Portugal to try a retirement there on for size. Its easy to see why Portugal has become a desirable retirement destination in Europe. It boasts over 300 days of sunshine each year, affordable living and healthcare, a large expat network, stunning scenery and beaches, an easy visa process, and English is widely spoken. With a long coastline and an interior that harks back centuries in time, Portugal in many ways still belongs to an earlier era. As expats regularly report, people are friendly and courteous, with an almost courtly manner. Family and friends are important, and people know their neighbors and the local shopkeepers. Ancient buildings look worn and lived-in, and quiet, cobbled lanes wind through seaside villages. This is Europe as it used to be. And although modern infrastructure makes it convenient and easy to live here, its still possible to enjoy a slower-paced, Old World, genteel lifestyle here. To see for themselves, International Living is giving readers the chance to win a month-long stay in Portugal to try a retirement there on for size. Readers can enter, here: Win Your Dream Retirement Overseas Competition The report from International Living identifies five great places for expat living in Portugal and two to avoid. Here are five places worth an expats attention: Lisbon Portugals capital city, Lisbon, combines Old World charm with all the modern conveniences needed to feel at home and some of the best weather in Europe. Lisbon has much to offer with its impressive city center, sunny yellow cable cars that climb the narrow streets, over 60 museums, an English-speaking theater, family-friendly beaches, varied cuisine, and plenty of expats from around the world to hang out with. Folks will never be bored living here with the nearby beaches of Cascais, the fairy-tale village of Sintra within easy reach, and an international airport that provides easy access to the rest of the world. Healthcare in Portugal is some of the best in the world, and with so many expats in Lisbon, its easy to find English-speaking doctors. Lagos A few hours south of Lisbon is the Algarve region with some of the warmest weather in the country. The town of Lagos has retained much of its charm with a tiled plaza in the old town and remnants of a fort perched along the waterfront. The coastline offers spectacular vistas of grottoes, rock formations, and caves that can be explored by hiring a boat. No need to stress about learning Portuguese in Lagos as British vacationers have long visited the region, meaning English is spoken by almost everyone. Summers here are hot and dry in Lagos while winters are mild with some rain. Local shops and restaurants dot the old town while larger grocery stores can be found nearby. Excellent healthcare is never far away and with plenty of expats, folks will never be lonely. Porto Porto is Portugals second largest city, three hours north of Lisbon. Situated on the Douro River, this is the port wine-making region of the country. Rich in culture and history, this is another part of Portugal where English is commonly spoken, which makes it easy to fit in. From great shopping along Rua Santa Catarina to local cuisine, excellent healthcare, a large expat community, and a cooler climate this could be the perfect place to call home. Plus, Porto has one of the countrys three international airports, making it easy to visit friends and family back home. Silver Coast One hour north of Lisbon is the town of Caldas da Rainha. Famous for its Thermal Hospital, Caldas, as its called, has various medical and dental clinics along with a public and private hospital. English is widely spoken among the younger generation. The lively old town features a daily fruit-and-vegetable market, nearby fish market, and weekly flea market just up the hill. This compact city has plenty of shopping from large grocery stores, a modern multi-level shopping center, a variety of cuisine, and a handful of museums. Dom Carlos Park is where locals and expats go to enjoy the walking trails, grab a bite to eat at the restaurant, or paddle a boat across the man-made lake. Caldas has a large expat community along with a public and private hospital plus clinics for all your healthcare needs. The nearby beaches of Foz do Arelho and Nadadouro provide a welcome break on a hot summer day. The lagoon offers a safe place for those of all ages to enjoy tranquil waters or relax with friends at a waterfront cafe. Summer temperatures here are springlike, though winters tend to be cold and rainy. Tavira Another popular Algarve hotspot is Tavira. Located close to the Spanish border, Tavira has retained much of its old town with whitewashed houses decorated with colorful Portuguese tile. Life here is as slow as the Gilao river that runs through it. Stroll along the old Roman bridge to admire the village or relax on nearby sun-drenched beaches. Many expats from North America and Europe have long called Tavira home, making it easy to fit in and get by speaking only English. Like the rest of the Algarve, here you will find some of the best weather in the country. Local shops tend to cater to the British population, but Americans need only drive a few hours into Seville, Spain to stock up on American goods at a Costco warehouse. Here are two places where settling in as an expat may not be so easy and perhaps, should be avoided. Monsanto Considered by many to be the most Portuguese village in the country, this quaint little village is a delight to visit, but not a place I would recommend living, says Terry Coles, IL Portugal Correspondent. Granite homes are squeezed in, on, and around giant boulders that look as though they fell from the sky. The steep, rustic lanes are wide enough only for a donkey, and its a climb some 400 feet up to the pinnacle of the village where the remains of a castle still stand. A few local shops exist inside the cave-like structuresthough no English is uttered. In Monsanto, time seems to have stopped long ago. While locals here are used to seeing tourists, its doubtful expats are living among them. Anybody looking for an easy place to fit in is less likely to find it here without a firm grasp of Portuguese. The Alentejo The Alentejo, in southern Portugal, is the largest region in the country, offering vast, uninhabited plains. Extreme temperatures are the norm here, with summer highs reaching well over 100 F and winters bringing bone-chilling rains. This region makes up a full 30% of Portugal but its rural countryside is sparsely populated, with less than 5% of the population. Home to walled cities, forts, a few sleepy villages, and cities like Beja and Evora, this is the heartland of Portugal. Few expats call the Alentejo home so to integrate here would require full immersion into the Portuguese lifestyle with a good understanding of the Portuguese language. For a vacation, the Alentejo is the ideal spot to escape the tourist crowds, and step back in time to experience the rich Portuguese culture. However, the vastness of this region makes it challenging for expats to meet or access adequate healthcare. And the weather could be off-putting for somebody seeking easy year-round living. The full report can be found, here: 5 Places to Live in Portugal; 2 To Avoid Editor's Note: Members of the media have permission to republish the article linked above once credit is given to Internationalliving.com. Further information, as well as interviews with expert authors for radio, TV, or print, is available on request. Photos are also available. For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, source material or to book an interview with one of our experts, contact PR Managing Editor, Marita Kelly, +001 667 312 3532, mkelly@internationalliving.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/internationalliving/ Twitter: @inliving Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/International.Living/ About International Living Since 1979, Internationaliving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. Its incredibly fulfilling to see an independent artist growing his career not only with creative talent, but with our royalty financing services, said Alex Heiche, Sound Royalties CEO. Self-described Afrofuturist Yuni Wa has unveiled 'Shimmer', his inspirational new electronic EP. The Little Rock, Arkansas-based artist is known for breaking boundaries with his high-end concepts and experimental sounds, and 'Shimmer' finds him exploring how to be the light even when surrounded by darkness. The EP will be released at midnight on Friday, September 24, 2021, and available on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, plus many other streaming sites. Since Yuni unveiled his first album, 'Wa', in 2014, hes released a continuous stream of music to his fans, racking up an impressive 39 projects on Bandcamp in just a few years. A skilled businessman in addition to being an innovative musician, Yuni has utilized the services of Sound Royalties to fund the production and release of his ongoing projects. Its incredibly fulfilling to see an independent artist growing his career not only with creative talent, but with our royalty financing services, said Alex Heiche, Sound Royalties CEO. We work with a diverse spectrum of creatives, both independent and signed, and stories like Yunis are at the heart of why our company exists. We live in a new era of the music industry where musicians can be independently self-funded by financing their royalties, and this is a perfect example of how. Sound Royalties has provided me with a great service that offers cash flow security and the opportunity to make music in a way that sets it up for structural success, said Yuni. I have been able to use funding from them and put it to work making me money through marketing, ad promotions, merchandise, and PR. Yunis new album, 'Shimmer', seeks to answer many of the questions his fans have found themselves facing in the past year. How does one move forward in the face of adversity? Where does strength come from when youre consumed by fear or heartbreak? The EPs first single, Closed System, dives into feelings of isolation, showcasing the Electronic Synthwave sound for which Yuni has become well known. A closed system is a system that does not allow transfer of matter in or out of the system, such as physics, chemistry or engineering - the transfer of energy is, or is not, allowed, said Yuni. So Closed System is about how sometimes I tend to feel isolated from the rest of the world. 'Shimmer' is a project about being the light even when you cant control the conditions, he said. Its about letting your inner strength and passion shimmer. Over the years, Yuni has collaborated with southern rapper Chris Travis, Def Jams GOON DES GARCONS*, Cuz Lightyear, the rap protege of Killer Mike, and more. In early 2021, Amazon Music put Yuni on the cover of their Electronic Breakthrough playlist and chose him to perform on the official Amazon Music Twitch account for a music concert series. Shimmer follows up a stream of music released by Yuni Wa in 2021, including his previous EP, 'Context 4'. We look forward to the increased safety our SpeedAlert sign will provide the growing pedestrian traffic in our historic downtown area. Sergeant Christopher Walk, Boerne Police Department All Traffic Solutions awarded SpeedAlert 18 radar message signs to Boerne Police Department in Texas and Selma Police Department in California through the companys ATS Gives Back initiative. Over the years, All Traffic Solutions found that police departments in smaller communities have a need for All Traffic Solutions signs but lack the necessary funds and do not qualify for grants. The ATS Gives Back goal is to bridge this gap. Each month the All Traffic Solutions team selects two police departments to receive radar feedback signs free of charge. ATS Gives Back recipients also receive a subscription to TraffiCloud, All Traffic Solutions patented traffic device and data management system. Boerne is the county seat of Kendall County, Texas. The city has a population of nearly 16,000 residents and a police department comprised of 41 sworn officers. Boerne has 11 school zones for its eight public schools, and the police department plans to use the SpeedAlert sign to help reduce speeding in those areas when officers cant be there. Boerne Police Department believes that implementing the sign will help keep citizens safer than ever and hopes to show other communities of similar size how technology can be used to improve safety for residents. We look forward to the increased safety our SpeedAlert sign will provide the growing pedestrian traffic in our historic downtown area. said Sergeant Christopher Walk of Boerne Police Department. Selma is a city in Fresno County, California, with a population of around 25,000 residents. Due to its small size, Selma Police Department does not have a designated traffic control unit. The SpeedAlert 18 will be used as a force multiplier for the department to help calm traffic near schools where there is a high volume of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The Selma Police Department is excited to be the recipient of a Speed Alert 18 traffic sign. The sign will be placed near schools within the City of Selma to help with traffic control [it] will help those who travel the area to be more aware of their speed, said Sergeant Justin Holt of Selma Police Department. You can nominate a department and learn more about the ATS Gives Back criteria by visiting the All Traffic Solutions website. About All Traffic Solutions All Traffic Solutions (ATS) is a leader in portable, durable products and web-based solutions for traffic management and safety. We help law enforcement agencies and municipalities use data and devices such as web-enabled radar speed displays and variable message signs to calm traffic, resolve complaints, and improve safety outcomes while maximizing resources and budget. For more information, visit http://www.alltrafficsolutions.com. ASI Construction of Burr Ridge, Illinois wins a Gold Globee Award for Executive Achievement of the Year in the category of Real Estate and Construction. We are proud to win the Globee and be recognized as an industry player that has been named a winner in this years CEO World Awards." ASI Construction of Burr Ridge, Illinois, announced today that The Globee Awards, organizers of worlds premier business awards programs and business ranking lists, has named ASI Construction, a winner in the 9th Annual 2021 CEO World Awards. These prestigious global awards recognize disruptive technologies and innovative solutions that are transforming consumer experiences everywhere. ASI Construction won a Gold Award for Executive Achievement of the Year in the category of Real Estate and Construction. CEO World Awards celebrate the achievements of leaders, executives, and their management teams behind the years most outstanding initiatives and achievements. Chief Executive Officers, also known as CEOs lead the development of the organizations short- and long-term strategy. This annual awards program recognizes individuals and teams who set industry benchmarks for excellence. All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors, and government organizations worldwide and from every industry are eligible to participate. ASI Construction is one of the most advanced Roofing, Siding, Window and Door companies in the United States. ASI processes insurance claims from start to finish and is partnered with a world-class supplement department. The business is a well-respected leader in the wind and hail / storm damage market. ASI provides exterior remodeling and restoration services for residential and commercial properties along with one of the best consulting programs in the industry. We are proud to win the Globee and be recognized as an industry player that has been named a winner in this years CEO World Awards, said ASI Construction CEO Jay Andreas. It is an honor to be in the company of other world-famous brands such as P.F. Changs and Avaya that have won in their respective Globee categories. As ASIs CEO, its my mission to see down the street, around the corner and a little to the left. We provide top of the line customer service, partnered with positive and strong leadership for our team members who take pride in every work project with every important safety measure in place. We believe this recognition from Globee Awards further validates our commitment to safety, our customers and our staff. Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores and inputs determined the 2021 award winners. See the complete list of 2021 winners here: https://globeeawards.com/ceo-world-awards/winners/. CEO World Awards are an annual industry and peers recognition program honoring CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and their management teams from organizations in every industry and of every size in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the USA, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean & Central, and South America, Middle East, and Africa. The Annual CEO World Awards is part of the SVUS Awards recognition program from Silicon Valley in the United States of America. The coveted annual CEO World Awards program encompasses the worlds best in leadership, innovation, organizational performance, new products and services, excellence studies, corporate social responsibility, and milestones from every major industry in the world. Organizations from all over the world are eligible to submit nominations including public and private, for-profit and non-profit, largest to smallest and new start-ups. 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, Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards, Disruptor Company Awards, Golden Bridge Awards, International Best in Business Awards, IT World Awards, Sales, Marketing, & Service Excellence Awards, and Women World Awards. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com. About ASI Construction ASI Construction, founded in 2013, is a premier construction and remodeling company serving commercial and residential markets in the Chicagoland area. The company provides a wide variety of exterior services, such as the installation of roofs, siding, gutters, soffit and fascia. In addition, ASI offers an extensive line of windows and doors to tackle any residential project. The company also has a public adjusting department, managing all aspects of insurance assessments and negotiations for repairs related to wind, hail, rain, and lightning. As a fast-growing business, ASI takes great pride in ensuring excellent customer service and performing each job with the utmost integrity. ASI Construction is a member of the Better Business Bureau with an A+ rating and has over 100+ 5 Star ratings on Google. For further information, please visit our website: https://constructionbyasi.com/. Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google. ### A special lease with the purchase of a 2022 Honda Civic Atlantic Honda, a dealership in Bay Shore, is offering a special lease offer on the new 2022 Honda Civic for $269 per month. The term for the lease is 39 months. The 2022 Honda Civic model that is available with this special financing deal is of the LX trim level. Drivers will not be asked for a down payment of a security deposit for the lease offer. Customers who want to take advantage of this offer are urged to act fast and contact the dealership at the earliest. The dealerships website provides details about the model and what it offers. The 2022 Honda Civic is an ideal pick for drivers looking for a feature-rich sedan in the Bay Shore area. The 2022 Honda Civic LX boasts a long list of impressive interior and technology features. With features like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, Smart Entry, Push Button Start, and many more, the premium compact sedan offers high levels of convenience. Drivers who are interested in leasing or purchasing a new 2022 Honda Civic can visit the dealerships website. In case of any questions or concerns, customers can contact the dealership by calling 631-892-7266 or by visiting the dealership in-person at 1375 Sunrise Hwy, Bay Shore, New York, 11706. To celebrate our anniversary, we are providing updated end-to-end services from planning, casting, hosting, and recording to distribution, promotion, and more so that people can quickly and easily establish their voice-brand via audiobook production and podcasting. Past News Releases RSS Audiobook and podcast production company, Audivita Studios, at http://www.audivita.com, celebrates their 10-year anniversary this month with new, easy remote recording and done-for-you services. According to Grand View Research (https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/audiobooks-market), the global audio book market size was valued at USD 2.67 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.4% from 2020 to 2027. Many new services are popping up to be part of this growing trend, but Audivita Studios has been in this industry for over a decade. Unlike others, our clients have access to a team of fun, audio production and marketing experts with a combined experience level of over 100 years, so they can relax and let us do all of the work with guaranteed results, states David Wolf, Audivita Studios CEO and Founder. To celebrate our anniversary, we are providing updated end-to-end services from planning, casting, hosting, and recording to distribution, promotion, and more so that people can quickly and easily establish their voice-brand via audiobook production and podcasting. Specifically, Audivita Studios clients can now quickly and easily: Publish an audiobook with remote recording or professional voice talent and distribute it on over 35 online bookstores including Audible, Amazon and iTunes; Connect their voice to the world, boost online authority and grow their business with an original podcast series; Produce live events to stream on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and repackage them as podcasts for distribution iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart, TuneIn, Google Play, and Amazon; Create new income streams via publishing partnerships and direct sales of their creative content; and Finish a film or television show with audio post-production, dialog and music scoring and editing, sound design, foley and full composite mixing. David Wolf and his team at Audivita have been instrumental in the growth of the Rich Dad Radio Show, states Robert LeCount, The Rich Dad Company VP of Operations. They are so easy to work with, never miss a deadline and their quality of work is off the charts. They literally bend over backwards to ensure we are always well taken care of and supported. Im extremely grateful we have the opportunity to work with Audivita and cant wait to see what our futures hold. To learn more about the audiobook production and podcasting services, visit http://www.audivita.com. About Audivita Formed in 2011, Audivita provides easy audio book production, podcasting and post-production audio services to leaders who want to connect their voice to the world. As a future-oriented company with a long-term view and team approach, we are obsessed with inspiring and pleasing clients. We thrive in a culture of creativity, innovation and continuous improvement, celebrate fun, joy and laughter in every way and put philanthropy at the heart of our business model. Ready for a stress-free, easy experience that helps grow your business? Contact us at http://www.audivita.com. # # # Media Contact: Melanie Rembrandt, Rembrandt Communications, 800-771-0116 Ovid Priffer, a Jewish emigre who lived in the new state of Israel before moving to Canada and, later, the United States, where he now resides, has completed his new book On the Edge of the Precipice: a spellbinding saga inspired by the lives of his family members during the Second World War and beyond. The author writes, On the Edge of the Precipice is a saga of a Jewish Eastern European family caught in the historical throes of the early and mid-twentieth century. It follows the historical path of anti-Semitism, with the backdrop of the First and Second World War and into the birth of Communism. It edges on through the beginning of the existence of the State of Israel and ends in North America. It is also a story of great love and great loss. Although the book is based on actual people, still it must be deemed as a work of fiction. Published by Page Publishing, Ovid Priffers engrossing book is a superb choice for avid readers of historical and twentieth-century fiction. Readers who wish to experience this riveting work can purchase On the Edge of the Precipice 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 understands that authors should 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. Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Alta Hospitals System, 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 Alta Hospitals System, LLC, alleging the company violated the California Labor Code. The lawsuit against Alta Hospitals System, LLC is currently pending in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Case No. 21STCV30149. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here. According to the lawsuit filed, Alta Hospitals System, LLC allegedly (a) failed to pay minimum wages, (b) failed to pay overtime wages, (c) failed to provide legally required meal and rest periods, (d) failed to provide accurate itemized wage statements, (e) failed to reimburse employees for required expenses, and (f) failed to provide wages when due, all in violation of the applicable Labor Code sections listed in Labor Code Sections 201, 202, 203, 226, 226.7, 510, 512, 1194, 1197, 1197.1, 2802, and the applicable Wage Order(s), and thereby gives rise to civil penalties as a result of such alleged conduct. The complaint further alleges Alta Hospitals System, LLC committed acts of unfair competition in violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 17200, et seq. (the UCL), by engaging in a company-wide policy and procedure which allegedly failed to accurately calculate and record all missed meal and rest periods by Plaintiff and other California Class Members. As a result of Defendant's alleged disregard of the obligation to meet this burden, Defendant allegedly failed to properly calculate and/or pay all required compensation for work performed by members of the California Class and violated the California Labor Code. For more information about the class action lawsuit against Alta Hospitals System, 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*** Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a controversial topic that has ignited a contentious national dialogue. Those who argue against using CRT in the classroom often portray it as a frightening symbolic enemy to help drive people who hold a wide variety of racial, cultural, and political grievances to support right wing politicians and policies. To address these arguments and provide a better understanding of what CRT entails, the National Education Policy Center today released Understanding the Attacks on Critical Race Theory, authored by Francesca Lopez of Penn State University, Alex Molnar of the University of Colorado Boulder, Royel Johnson, Ashley Patterson, and LaWanda Ward of Penn State University, and independent scholar Kevin Kumashiro. The authors describe the history of attempts to legislate race-related curriculum. Since early 2021, eight states have passed legislation that broadly speaking seeks to exclude historical information and analysis related to race and racism from school curriculum. Additional legislation has been, or is being, considered in 15 other states and in the U.S. Congress, as well as policies by local school boards and state boards of education. Advocates of this legislation argue that providing students with such information is un-American, divisive, and racist, and that including it in the curriculum is a result of schools incorporating CRT into their curricula and staff training programs. The authors explain how the assault on CRT can be understood as part of a larger ideological effort to delegitimize historically accurate presentations of race and racism in American history; to thwart attempts by members of marginalized groups to participate fully in the civic life; and to retain political power. In their review of these contemporary attacks against CRT, the authors expand upon the political objectives of these tactics and provide historical examples of similar ones, and in conclusion offer resources on evidence-based strategies to counter the propaganda. Find Understanding the Attacks on Critical Race Theory, by Francesca Lopez, Alex Molnar, Royel Johnson, Ashley Patterson, LaWanda Ward, and Kevin Kumashiro, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/crt The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: https://nepc.colorado.edu Cannabox, the leading cannabis subscription box and online smoke shop, has announced the launch of its crowdfunding campaign on Start Engine. The monthly membership is asking for the public's help to raise funds to accelerate subscriber growth and brand awareness. The company delivers subscribers a monthly box of innovative products like glass, papers, wraps, gear, snacks and more. Boxes are curated on a monthly basis by in-house experts, industry leaders and special guests. Given the need for products on a recurring basis and the trend of shopping online, Cannabox offers a fun, yet accessible solution. Over the past decade weve seen states across the US push to legalize weed - kicked off by Colorado in 2012, there are now 18 US states where cannabis has been legalized. Such legalization has resulted in a vast expansion of the market - according to a 2020 report by Grand View research, the global legal marjiuana market is valued at $24.6 billion and is expected to reach $55.9 billion by 2026. Cannaboxs crowdfunding campaign is crucial to keep up with increased demand and new consumers of cannabis products. It has been exciting to watch the market evolve since we launched back in 2013, when cannabis was only legal in Colorado and Washington, said Michael Berk, Founder and CEO at Cannabox. As states across the country have pushed towards legalization weve seen an increased diverse pool of customers. Were excited to use our crowdfunding to continue to expand our offerings and provide our subscribers with the latest and greatest products. To date, Cannabox has crowdfunded $226,927. As of September 20, the Start Engine has raised $42,229 since launching on September 6. To learn more about or contribute to the Start Engine Campaign, visit https://www.startengine.com/cannabox. For more information about Cannabox, please visit https://www.cannabox.com/. ABOUT CANNABOX: Cannabox is a cannabis accessory subscription service and online smoke shop. Since launching in 2012, the company has developed clout as the leading monthly subscription service for 420 accessories. Earlier in 2021, they upleveled their offerings and added to their portfolio one of the biggest online smoke shop options. Cannabox is dedicated to providing brands with a reputation of high-quality products and at affordable rates. Products in boxes include bongs, hand pipes, rolling papers, dabbing tools, cannabis grinders and more. Chesapeake Bank (https://chesbank.com/), a Kilmarnock, Va.-based community bank with locations in several regions throughout Virginia, announces the rebranding of Flexent, a flexible financing service that allows entrepreneurs and small business owners to borrow against the strength of their invoices or inventory. Flexent, formerly known as CashFlow, is a national service designed especially for business owners who are long on ambition, vision and determination but often short on readily accessible cash to achieve the next step in their companys growth, such as making a strategic acquisition, paying off debt or pursuing an unexpected opportunity. The service is ideal for small businesses that may not qualify for a traditional loan but can benefit tremendously from financing that is fully backed by a community bank. The two primary products within our Flexent division are accounts receivable financing and asset-based lending, both of which offer significant benefits to small business customers, said Kevin Wood, senior vice president and managing director of the Flexent program at Chesapeake Bank. We can provide financing for needs up to several million dollars at critical junctures called inflection points along a companys growth trajectory. For example, customers who are approved for accounts receivable financing can send Flexent a copy of their invoices. Upon qualification, the bank will advance cash equating to 80%-90% of the invoices within 24 hours. Flexents asset-based lending product lets customers borrow against the strength of invoices and inventory for needs of $500,000-$4 million-plus. Upon qualification, Chesapeake Bank can advance businesses 80%-90% of accounts receivables and up to 50% of that amount in inventory. Just like it sounds, Flexent is more flexible, much less restrictive and less expensive than factoring or equity financing, added Wood. Theres no need to give up equity in your company and Flexent is competitively priced to help business owners save on interest and fees. Wood noted that other financial institutions in Chesapeake Banks footprint, and even outside of its market areas, have recommended using Flexent through Chesapeake Bank to assist small business customers needing bank-backed cash instead of a traditional loan. Working together, we invest in the success of our customers and referral partners, he said. John Marshall of Atlantic Coast Electric Supply began using CashFlow, now Flexent, in 2017 when he needed a flexible line of credit to purchase a distressed business and ultimately grow to five locations in the Carolinas. My primary bank referred me to Chesapeake Bank, which believed in our business plan and took a shot on us, increasing our line of credit from $1.2 million to $4.5 million over four years, he said. They made it such an easy process and we couldnt have done it without them. For more information about the Flexent program at Chesapeake Bank, visit https://flexent.com # # # About Flexent from Chesapeake Bank Flexent is inflection point financing that provides entrepreneurs access to the cash and advice they need to fund expansion, make a strategic acquisition, bring a vital hire onboard, pay off pressing debt, or pursue an unexpected opportunity when it looks like theyve exhausted other financing options. All with the backing of a bank thats been trusted by businesses for over 121 years. Aaron Caid (L), CCCU CMO, poses with Jedd Medefind, President of Childrens Alliance for Orphans, as they celebrate their new partnership at CAFOs Annual Summit. By having CAFO as our new charity partner, were fulfilling our members wishes while allowing us to serve more individuals and organizations who may not have otherwise been eligible to join the Credit Union. Christian Community Credit Union (CCCU) announces a new partnership with Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) which will widen the opportunity to serve the financial service needs of individuals, churches, and organizations. By offering an option to become a member of CAFO, one can now join the Credit Union. In addition, the $50 CAFO first-year membership fee will be paid by the Credit Union on behalf of the new member. With the Credit Unions desire of building community with Christ-followers to live and give more abundantly and CAFOs goal to help orphans and foster children experience Gods unfailing love, both organizations are strategically aligned in their passion and commitment to serve the least of these. In a recent member survey, protecting vulnerable children emerged as one of the top giving priorities thats near and dear to the heart of our members, said Aaron Caid, Christian Community Credit Union Chief Marketing Officer. By having CAFO as our new charity partner, were fulfilling our members wishes while allowing us to serve more individuals and organizations who may not have otherwise been eligible to join the Credit Union. Its our blessing to come alongside CAFO and the orphan and foster care movement. Were excited to see what the Lord has in store for us through this partnership. With the Credit Unions commitment to help members steward their finances wisely, Im thrilled that CCCU and its members are plunging in alongside the global CAFO community to extend Gods love, protection and care to children the world so often forgets, said Jedd Medefind, president of CAFO. "Its beautiful to see the Kingdom impact when Christians join together in a vision larger than any one organization could achieve alone. To better serve the larger Christian community as its strategic goal, the Credit Union allows more organizations, churches, and individuals to be part of the movement to care for orphans while helping them manage their money in a God-honoring way through membership with the Credit Union. For more information about joining Christian Community Credit Union through CAFO, please visit myCCCU.com/cafo. Christian Community Credit Union has over $800 million in assets and over 30,000 members nationwide. For over 64 years, the Credit Union has served as a financial partner of Christian ministries, churches, and their members. Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) unites more than 200 respected organizations and 800+ churches worldwide in joint initiatives that inspire and equip Christians to effectively live out the Bibles call to care for orphans and vulnerable children. This latest ClearAngel funding is going to help fuel their ideas as an innovative small business that is going beyond traditional online retail to harness the power of virtual community. - Andrew DSouza, CEO and co-founder, Clearco Clearco, the worlds largest e-commerce investor revolutionizing the way founders grow their businesses, today announced that its ClearAngel program is funding The Bling Barn Boutique, an online store that incorporates community through virtual socializing. ClearAngel gives early-stage founders access to revenue share capital, data-driven advice, and Clearcos extensive network of apps, agencies, and investors. Founded in 2020, The Bling Barn Boutique surpasses the common shopping experience, providing customers with a weekly virtual social event. The Bling Barn Boutique has laid a solid foundation for a growing social community, but is ready to take it a step further with marketing and more inventory. ClearAngel will help them invest in growing their reach. ClearAngel is one of a few equity-free, flexible capital options for early-stage founders who would benefit from raising an angel round or joining exclusive accelerators, but dont have the network to do so. In the short time since February 2021, the program has already funded over 350 companies. The Bling Barn Boutique is shifting the online retail space with its social approach, said Andrew DSouza, CEO and co-founder, Clearco. This latest ClearAngel funding is going to help fuel their ideas as an innovative small business that is going beyond traditional online retail to harness the power of virtual community. In addition to $10,000 of flexible capital, The Bling Barn Boutique will also get access to a network of more than 500 investors, growth teams, agencies, apps, lawyers, and buyers; and data-driven advice designed to help scale and hit new revenue milestones. With the ClearAngel funding, The Bling Barn Boutique will be able to invest in rebranding, consistent inventory renewal, and improving internal technology. Clear Angels investment means we will be able to have continuous inventory, add updated technology, and rebrand so that we can compete with top sites. said April Lynne, founder of Bling Barn Boutique. Weve also recently launched Bling Bucks, our much-anticipated rewards program. To learn more about The Bling Barn Boutique and experience social shopping for yourself, visit shopblingbarn.com. ClearAngel is currently onboarding E-commerce and product companies. There are limited spots available for SaaS, Apps, marketplace and stealth companies. To learn more, visit angel.clearbanc.com. About Clearco: Co-founded as Clearbanc in 2015 by Michele Romanow from Canadas Shark Tank (Dragons Den), Andrew DSouza, Ivan Gritsiniak, Charlie Feng, and Tanay Delima, Clearco offers the most founder-friendly capital solutions for e-commerce, mobile apps, and SaaS founders as well as a full suite of products and access to a powerful global network, insights and data, and recommendations. Clearco has invested over $2 Billion in over 4,500 companies to date, including Leesa Sleep, fashion-rental service Le Tote, home goods company Public Goods, shirtmaker UNTUCKit, online speech therapy practice Expressible, and digital real estate marketplace SetSchedule. For more information visit clear.co and @getClearco. Covered Care, a buy now, pay later solution for the healthcare industry, announced today its partnership with Dental Finance, a multi-lender financing platform. The partnership will allow dental practices using the Dental Finance platform to access Covered Cares financing solution, which offers the highest approval rates in the industry with no risk of loss to the healthcare providers and next-day funding. We are thrilled to add Covered Care to the Dental Finance platform along with our other top-tier financing partners, said Brandon DHaenens, CEO of Dental Finance. Our providers have asked for a solution to approve more patients and this offering allows them to approve nearly every patient that needs financing. More and more Americans need financing to pay for healthcare but are declined for credit or forced to go through multiple application processes, said Ken Rees, CEO of Covered Care. Dental Finance allows the patient to apply once and instantly see the offers they quality for without hassles or paperwork. Were excited about the ability to reach more healthcare providers through this partnership and help them care for more patients. Dental Finance will be demonstrating the simple and seamless application process and how dental practices can use improved financing solutions to grow their business at the Dentsply Sirona World conference in Las Vegas, from Thursday September 23 to Saturday, September 25, 2021. About Covered Care Covered Care is a buy now, pay later financing solution for growing healthcare practices. Our mission is to help healthcare providers care for more patients which means we provide the highest approval rates in the industry (up to 100%), affordable terms (as low as 0% APR for all credit tiers), and flexible pricing and integration options. For more information, visit CoveredCare.com. About Dental Finance Dental Finance is a FinTech platform that connects dental practices and their patients with multiple lending institutions through a seamless unified application process. The platform's modern architecture and user experience are capable of automatically cascading the application through multiple tiers of lenders to provide the best possible offers to the patient. For more information, visit http://www.dentalfinance.com 281 S Atlantic Ave Cocoa Beach, FL 32931 Martha and Steve go above and beyond to exceed their clients expectations and represent the Engel & Volkers brand in a manner that epitomizes local expertise with global branding prowess. Engel & Volkers Florida today announced the record-breaking sale of 281 S Atlantic Ave in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Martha Melendez and Steve Stark of the Aspire Group with Engel & Volkers Melbourne Beachside held the listing and Brianne Felton of The Felton Group with eXp Realty represented the buyer. With a $4,300,000 price tag, the transaction marks the most expensive single-family home ever recorded in Cocoa Beach and the highest sales price garnered for a beachfront home in Brevard County this year. Cocoa Beach has always held a special place in my heart, said Stark, I visited family here during the summers as a kid. Its such a fun place with awesome beaches, and it was actually a surprise to find out it was a record sale but this home deserves it. It is truly special, and we are thrilled that it is going to someone who will love it as much as the seller has. 281 S Atlantic Ave is a tropical oasis with 120-feet of private beachfront. The one-of-a-kind, 5,353 square foot home boasts six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Special features include a treehouse that connects to the main house via a suspended bridge, detached guest bungalow, interior and exterior surround sound, wine cellar, three-car garage, pool, jacuzzi and an outdoor fireplace. I couldnt be more proud to work with amazing real estate advisors like Martha and Steve, said Marcie Bolt, License Partner of Engel & Volkers Melbourne Beachside. They continue to exceed my expectations as their broker and always go the extra mile for their clients. Breaking this local record is a great honor for us all and a direct result of the bespoke, luxury service Engel & Volkers provides. 281 S Atlantic Ave was once owned by Allen Harold "Al" Neuharth, an American businessman who founded USA Today. It is located next to what was once Neuharths famous Pumpkin Center, which tragically burned down in 2016. The Pumpkin Center, located at 333 S Atlantic Ave, previously held the local record for its sale in 2015 at $4,000,000. This was a great success for all involved, said Peter Giese, Chief Growth Officer at Engel & Volkers Florida. Martha and Steve go above and beyond to exceed their clients expectations and represent the Engel & Volkers brand in a manner that epitomizes local expertise with global branding prowess. ### Press contact: Linzee Werkmeister, Junior Vice President, Marketing & Franchise Support Email: Linzee.Werkmeister(at)evrealestate.com Tel: (239) 348-9000 About Engel & Volkers: Engel & Volkers is a global luxury real estate brand. Founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1977, Engel & Volkers draws on its rich European history to deliver a fresh approach to luxury real estate in the Americas with a focus on creating a personalized client experience at every stage of the home buying or selling process for todays savvy homeowner. Engel & Volkers currently operates approximately 240 shop locations with 5,000 real estate advisors in the Americas, contributing to the brands global network of over 14,000 real estate professionals in more than 30 countries, offering both private and institutional clients a professionally tailored range of luxury services, including real estate and yachting. Committed to exceptional service, Engel & Volkers supports its advisors with an array of premium quality business services; marketing programs and platforms; as well as access to its global network of real estate professionals, property listings and market data. Each brokerage is independently owned and operated. For more information, visit http://www.evrealestate.com. About Engel & Volkers Florida: Engel & Volkers Florida is the Master License Partner of the global luxury real estate brand Engel & Volkers in the state of Florida. Recognized for uniquely recruiting, training and equipping some of the top professionals in the real estate industry, Engel & Volkers Floridas exclusive franchise model positions its license partners at the top of the premium market to gain market share and support their bottom line. The company represents franchise locations in: 30A Beaches, Amelia Island, Belleair, Boca Raton, Bonita Springs-Estero, Cape Coral, Clermont, Delray Beach, Destin, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers Downtown, Gainesville, Hollywood Beach, Islamorada, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Jupiter, Madeira Beach, Marco Island, Melbourne Beachside, Melbourne Central, Melbourne Downtown, Miami Coconut Grove, Neptune Beach, Olde Naples, Orlando, Orlando Downtown, Orlando-Winter Park, Palm Beach, Palm Coast, Ponte Vedra Beach, Sarasota, South Tampa, St. Augustine, St. Pete, St. Pete Beach, Stuart, Tampa Water Street, Venice Downtown, Wellington, and Windermere. Engel & Volkers Florida is continuing to strategically strengthen and expand its presence in premium real estate markets across the state of Florida. If you would like to know more about the Engel & Volkers brand or how to join its global networkwhich is known for demonstrating competence, exclusivity and passion, feel free to call our corporate office, located at 633 Tamiami Trl N, Suite 201, Naples, FL 34102 USA. Tel: +1 239-348-9000. For more information about Engel & Volkers Florida, please visit http://www.florida.evrealestate.com FirstService Residential, the North American residential property management leader, has recently acquired the Association Management Division of Atlantic | Pacific Companies. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Atlantic | Pacific Companies is a fourth-generation real estate company with expertise in acquisitions, development, property management and investments in Florida, Georgia, Texas and California. FirstService Residentials leadership position in the South Region is further cemented with the addition of 100 Atlantic | Pacific condominium high-rise and club communities and 900 property management professionals, including Tom Smith, CPA, LCAM and Chief Operating Officer of the Association Management Division, with decades of condominium financial and operational expertise. Our team was attracted to FirstService Residentials partnership philosophy and unwavering commitment to enhancing the property values and lifestyles of the residents they serve, said Randy Weisburd, Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic | Pacific Companies. Our customers will be in excellent hands based on FirstService Residentials reputation for attracting top talent in the industry and providing them with best-in-class resources and programs. This important acquisition further enhances our position in the South Florida market, said David Diestel, Chief Executive Officer of FirstService Residential. Not only does this acquisition support our growth strategy but it strengthens our talent pool and furthers our brand position, allowing us to deliver on each associations unique vision for their community. ABOUT FIRSTSERVICE RESIDENTIAL FirstService Residential is North Americas property management leader, partnering with more than 8,500 communities across the U.S. and Canada, including low-, mid- and high-rise condominiums and cooperatives; single-family communities; master-planned, lifestyle and active adult communities; and mixed-use and rental properties. HOAs, community associations, condos and strata corporations rely on their extensive experience, resources and local expertise to maximize property values and enhance residents lifestyles. Dedicated to making a difference, FirstService Residential goes above and beyond to deliver exceptional service every day. FirstService Residential is a subsidiary of FirstService Corporation (FSV), a North American leader in the property services sector. For more information, visit http://www.fsresidential.com From her first day, Annie has been integral to the vision, growth and success of Forcura, said Craig Mandeville, founder and CEO of Forcura. Forcura, a healthcare technology company that enables safer patient care transitions and coordination, today announced that Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Annie Erstling was recognized by the 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, winning a Silver Stevie Award. The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees and the companies they run worldwide. From her first day, Annie has been integral to the vision, growth and success of Forcura, said Craig Mandeville, founder and CEO of Forcura. In her role as chief strategy officer, weve benefitted not just from her business knowledge but also from her passionate commitment to what we strive to do every day: empower better patient care. Im honored to work alongside Annie and am thrilled to see her recognized as a Silver Award winner. As Forcuras CSO, Erstling oversees the companys strategic growth including partnerships, product innovation and management, and marketing and communications. She has been instrumental in defining the organizations growth and distribution strategy, formalizing numerous strategic industry partnerships and launching the companys brand and ongoing thought leadership program. During a tenure that began only in 2016, Erstling has been fundamentally involved in the companys 300% revenue growth, solidifying a strategy that aligns Forcuras technological capabilities with industry insights, leadership, collaboration, and advocacy. Maggie Gallagher Miller, president of the Stevie Awards, said, We thought the remarkable stories of achievement we saw in last years awards couldnt be topped, but we were wrong. Women-owned and -run organizations have contributed significantly to the increase in innovation and entrepreneurial activity weve seen globally since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nominations submitted to the 18th Stevie Awards for Women in Business that attest to this are inspiring, humbling, and motivating. We congratulate all of our Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners. We look forward to celebrating them during our January 13 virtual ceremony, and to hearing from some of them during our Women|Future Conference. Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of Gold, Silver and Bronze winners in all categories are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/Women. Winners will be celebrated during a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday, January 13, 2022. About Forcura Forcura, a leading healthcare technology company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, facilitates continuity of care via technology, analytics and a deep commitment to enabling better patient care. The Forcura suite of tools is powered by Forcura Connect, a proprietary framework for standardizing interoperability and integration among post-acute health care organizations, physicians, electronic health records (EHRs) and other supporting technology vendors. Through our technology and analytics solutions, we are a step closer every day to elevating the opportunities of post-acute care. The company has been recognized in 2021 as the Best Healthcare Technology Solution by the SIIA, ranked for the fifth consecutive year on the Inc. 5000 and is a top-20 ranked Fortune Best Small & Medium Workplaces. For more information visit http://www.forcura.com, call 800-378-0596 or follow Forcura on LinkedIn. About the Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com. The global reputation of Home Instead as a franchise industry leader continues to grow, earning additional recognition this year for cultivating a winning franchise for culture, receiving honors as a top recession-proof franchise, and being named a leading franchise for women and couples. With more than 1,100 independent franchises employing nearly 100,000 CAREGivers worldwide, delivering a culture-focused work environment is important to the Home Instead business strategy and success as the world's leading provider of in-home care services for older adults. Industry awards Home Instead has earned this year include: These recent industry awards build upon Home Insteads inclusion earlier this year on Franchise Business Reviews list of Top Franchises of 2021 and roster of Top 100 Recession-Proof Franchises. While our values remain steadfast over time, our practices have evolved to meet the needs of our clients and employees, said Jeff Huber, Home Instead CEO. This is even more critical as we recruit talented team members, from software engineers to frontline CAREGivers. The continued success of Home Instead as a franchise network is driven by entrepreneurs from all backgrounds and their individual achievements. In addition to national and international recognition, local Home Instead franchise owners are winning individual awards. Home Instead Franchisee Awarded 2021 Rock Star Award Seth Michael, owner of Home Instead in Livonia, Michigan, was named a 2021 Rock Star Franchise Owner in the Millennials category by Franchise Business Review, the leading market research firm in the franchise industry. Michael was recognized for dedicating his passion and energy to senior care and helping his team through challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Michael credits Home Instead with providing the training that he and other millennial-aged business owners require to create a business plan, hire and retain talent, and engage in marketing and advertising. Embracing responsibility and looking past typical stereotypes of his generation has driven Michael to success. The millennial generation cares about making an impact in their community. Im encouraged by the next wave of leaders and their dedication to providing outstanding care, said Jeff Huber, Home Instead CEO. Our younger owners bring so much entrepreneurial spirit to their role as franchisees, and we congratulate Seth on his well-deserved recognition for his hard work. Michael is dedicated to hiring and training CAREGivers who share his passion for service and can care for the growing senior population in their communities. He understands the impact on his community as a young business owner and mentor for others. As a result of his teams efforts, Michaels franchise serves older adults in 10 communities and is on track to record its fourth year of double-digit growth. Michael and his team created the catch phrase Believe More! to demonstrate their belief in each other, their families, and their business on a daily basis to have a positive impact on their communities. For more information on Home Instead, including details about franchise opportunities, visit franchises.homeinstead.com. ABOUT HOME INSTEAD Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, the Home Instead franchise network provides personalized care, support and education to enhance the lives of aging adults and their families. Today, the network is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for older adults, with more than 1,100 independently owned and operated franchises that provide nearly 90 million hours of care annually throughout the United States and 12 other countries. Local Home Instead offices employ nearly 100,000 CAREGivers worldwide who provide relationship-based care services that enable older adults to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. Home Instead franchise owners partner with clients and their family members to help meet varied individual needs. Services span the care continuum from providing personal care to specialized Alzheimers care and hospice support. Also available are family caregiver education and support resources. Visit HomeInstead.com. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter. Each Home Instead franchise office is independently owned and operated. Home Instead, Inc. is a subsidiary of Honor Technology, Inc. After years of participating in, creating, and judging cocktail competitions around the world, I wanted to bring that thrill of competition to our Fresh Victor fans, says Chief Mixology Officer, H. Joseph Ehrmann Fresh Victor, a line of fresh, cold-pressed juice-based mixers for making craft cocktails and mocktails, announces its first-ever virtual cocktail competition, Winter Cocktails? No ProbLlama! Brand mascot Victor the Llama is asking home bartenders 21 years and older to create an easy, visually-stunning seasonal cocktail using one or more of Fresh Victors seven flavors. The contest runs from September 22 through October 22. After years of participating in, creating, and judging cocktail competitions around the world, I wanted to bring that thrill of competition, creativity, and accomplishment to our Fresh Victor fans and allow them to engage in a competition that is easy and rewarding to be a part of, says Chief Mixology Officer H. Joseph Ehrmann. All they need to do is get creative on a wintery Fresh Victor cocktail recipe (by their own interpretation), take a good photo, and post it with the recipe. No ProbLlama! After registering online, contestants will post a photo of their cocktail on Instagram, along with the full recipe and hashtag #FVNoProbLlama to enter. The more creative, the better: hot, cold, up, over, in a coupe or steaming in a mug, whatever it is, its No ProbLlama! For full entry details and to register, contestants should visit https://bit.ly/FreshVictor_NoProbLlama. Judges include H. Joseph Ehrmann (Fresh Victors Chief Mixology Officer and owner of Elixir in San Francisco, @cocktailambassadors), Dan Dunn (Host of the popular podcast What Were Drinking, @theimbiber, @wwd_podcast), and Natalie Migliarini (@BeautifulBooze and author of cocktail book Beautiful Booze). The Grand Prize Victor will be announced via social media on November 12 and will receive a package of prizes to stock their ideal home bar, including Fresh Victor mixers, a complete bar tool kit from The Modern Mixologist, glassware and ice trays from Cocktail Kingdom, bitters from Bittered Sling, garnishes from DEHY, and various carbonated mixers from Q Mixers. Second and third place Victors will also receive prizes. Additional Victors (with prizes) will be announced for Best Garnish Game, Best Photo, and Best Spin on a Classic. About Fresh Victor & Winter Cocktails? No ProbLlama!: Founded by spirits industry entrepreneur Ken MacKenzie, Fresh Victor is a line of fresh, clean-label, cold-pressed juice-based mixers for making high quality, easy and versatile craft cocktails and mocktails. This contest, created and led by award-winning bar industry veteran (Elixir, San Francisco) and Chief Mixology Officer H. Joseph Ehrmann, aims to engage and inspire home bar enthusiasts to create and enjoy Fresh Victor cocktails throughout the winter. Sold in 16- and 64-ounce sizes, Fresh Victor comes in seven flavors including Mexican Lime & Agave, Cactus Pear & Pomegranate, Pineapple & Ginger Root, Three Citrus & Mint Leaf, Lemon Sour, Jalapeno & Lime, and Cucumber & Lime. Visit https://freshvictor.com/ to order and learn more, and follow on Instagram, Tik Tok, and on Facebook @freshvictorcocktails Media Contacts: Jen Neugeboren jneugeboren@gmail.com Debbie Rizzo, DRink PR debbie@drinkpr.com 617-233-8024 The Global Disability Summit The Global Disability Summit in London in 2018 succeeded in placing the issue of rights-based, disability-inclusive development on the agenda, and we have high ambitions for the Oslo Summit in 2022, said Kari Hauge Riisen, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Global Disability Summit (GDS) Secretariat, along with its partners, has officially launched its new website to address disability inclusion in the world's least developed countries. The site will track a set of global commitments, originally made at the Global Disability Summit in 2018, to help bring about the critical inclusion needed for all persons with disabilities, who make up 15% of the worlds population. It is exciting to see so much progress from the 2018 Global Disability Summit and the momentum that it sparked across the world. I am looking forward to the Norway Summit and pleased that people with disabilities continue to be at the centre of preparations, said Penny Innes, head of the Disability Inclusion team at FCDO in the UK. National governments, multilateral agencies, donors, foundations, private sector and civil society organisations made a total of almost 1,000 individual commitments around four central themes including ensuring dignity and respect for all, inclusive education, routes to economic empowerment, harnessing technology, and innovation. Goal of GDS and this website The Global Disability Summit has started a new wave in the disability rights movement. But GDS needs to show evidence that there is a move towards disability inclusive development and humanitarian action. Progress has begun. Despite the chaos caused by conflict, the economic repercussions of COVID-19 and the climate crisis, many of the commitments made at the first GDS in 2018 have reached their implementation phase. At the 2022 Summit, the GDS Secretariat is hoping to see even more commitments than in 2018. Many are expected to emerge from the national and regional consultations with organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) that will inform the next Summits themes, priorities and preparations. In total, 20 workshops are planned across all regions of the world. The first GDS was a pivotal moment for disability-inclusive development showcasing concrete change for persons with disabilities, said Vladimir Cuk, the Executive Director of the International Disability Alliance, and one of the co-hosts for GDS. Close consultation with active involvement of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations is critical to addressing their situation on the ground and seeing how change can happen. The numerous examples and case studies to come out of the GDS process show the breadth of work and can now be seen on the website. Those examples include the adoption of the OECD-DAC disability marker by national development agencies such as Australias DFAT, Swedens SIDA and Canadas GAC. UNICEFs commitments have led to success in implementing programmes that are inclusive of children with disabilities in 53 countries, far surpassing its original target of 35 countries, among many others. Importance of showing incremental change Structural bias in day-to-day life often leads to the seeds of discriminatory thought. Celebrating the progress towards disability inclusiveness will allow everyone to see a better world where persons with disabilities are meaningfully included in all areas of life. By following all past and future commitments, and supporting stakeholders to achieve the promises they have made, the GDS Secretariat provides substantive inputs and coordination to world changing discussions. Though the commitments themselves are really great the evidence of how the work being done locally is being used by policymakers and practitioners, countrywide or globally, gives us a picture of the important linkages being made worldwide, said Jose Viera, Senior Manager of the GDS Secretariat. This will allow us to know how we are advancing disability rights in development. Though the first Summit, which was the largest event of its kind, brought in the biggest players in disability and development, a number of new stakeholders, including many from the private sector and large foundations, will be joining the events in 2022. The Global Disability Summit in London in 2018 succeeded in placing the issue of rights-based, disability-inclusive development on the agenda, and we have high ambitions for the Oslo Summit in 2022. We wish to build on the progress made after the first Global Disability Summit. We will seek new commitments, improved and more concrete action, to accelerate inclusive development, through access, engagement and equality, said Kari Hauge Riisen, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "To make this happen we want close collaboration with states, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, and a wide range of other partners. We look forward to collaborating closely on raising the bar and inspiring new ambitious commitments in the time leading up to the GDS. It also allows OPDs to be the main stakeholder in the preparation of the Summits and the mechanisms that feed into them. The new website serves as a platform for OPDs to consider the implementation of the commitments and gives them the responsibility to follow the commitments made by governments, UN agencies, and others. Visit the website at https://www.globaldisabilitysummit.org/ and follow us on Twitter @GDS_Disability to get the most up-to-date information. About the Global Disability Summit The Global Disability Summit Secretariat was established to monitor the implementation of the commitments made at the first Global Disability Summit and the commitments that will be made in the future. It works to provide substantive inputs and coordination of the organization of the Global Disability Summits. The Secretariat has established an accountability mechanism to follow the implementation of commitments, supporting stakeholders to achieve the promises they made. Throughout the entirety of the pandemic, our team has continuously worked hard to support our mission of improving the quality of life. We are so excited to invest back into our employees and the Indianapolis community by providing them with access to our new headquarters. Greenlight Guru, pioneer of the only dedicated Medical Device Success Platform (MDSP), will host a grand opening celebration today to its new Indianapolis headquarters. The premier event will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony, live music and food trucks, with remarks from Governor Eric J. Holcomb, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett and Greenlight Guru CEO David DeRam. After more than a year and a half of operating remotely, Greenlight Guru is excited to safely welcome local employees back to a brand-new office space, which will accommodate 180 employees. Since the beginning of COVID-19, Greenlight Guru has more than doubled its headcount, aiding in the growth and development of the Indianapolis tech community. While the new headquarters is located in Indianapolis, the hybrid work culture has been embraced company-wide. The growing tech industry has become Indianas not-so-secret weapon anymore, helping other innovative entrepreneurs realize their dreams and along the way, creating quality career opportunities for Hoosiers," said Gov. Holcomb. Im proud to celebrate Greenlight Guru today and every day they continue to break down barriers and help take our medical device industry to the next level. Greenlight Guru was able to grow during a time when many businesses were struggling, which was critical for our customers success and the fight against COVID-19, said David DeRam, CEO at Greenlight Guru, Throughout the entirety of the pandemic, our team has continuously worked hard to support our mission of improving the quality of life. We are so excited to invest back into our employees and the Indianapolis community by providing them with access to our new headquarters. The Indianapolis tech community is invited to attend the grand opening event on Thursday, September 23, 2021today, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the new Greenlight Guru headquarters, located at 601 S Meridian St. Suite 500, Indianapolis, IN. 46225. Todays event follows the recent announcement of Greenlight Gurus $120 Million Strategic Growth Investment from JMI Equity, which will enable Greenlight Guru to accelerate product development efforts, rapidly expand its product capabilities across the patient-centric value chain, and support significant global growth. Greenlight Guru was also named the QMS software for the National Institute of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Tech program, led by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. This program aims to improve the speed of innovation in the development, commercialization and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing. Todays event also comes four years following Greenlight Gurus announcement to grow its footprint in downtown Indianapolis by adding 120 employees by the end of last year. About Greenlight Guru Greenlight Guru is the only dedicated Medical Device Success Platform (MDSP) designed specifically for medical device companies. The platform helps companies bring safer products to market faster, simplifies FDA and ISO regulatory compliance and provides a single source of truth by connecting the management of all quality processes like CAPAs, risk, audits and more. Greenlight Gurus platform is used by thousands of organizations across the globe to push beyond baseline compliance and achieve True Quality for their medical devices. For more information, visit http://www.greenlight.guru. Media Contact Naomi Gollmer naomi.gollmer@greenlight.guru (419) 518-0067 Dante DiSabato He gives clients 24/7 access, and is known for creating genuine one-on-one relationships with buyers and sellers. A concierge broker in the truest sense of the term, Dante DiSabato works tirelessly to ensure his clients satisfaction, bringing a discipline and competitive spirit to real estate thats perfectly in tune with getting the best for his customers. Over the course of his career specializing in the Naples, Florida, luxury market, hes helped his clients buy and sell more than $250M in real estate, providing him with the keen experience of navigating a large volume of transactions. In addition, DiSabato is one of Floridas youngest members of Whos Who in Luxury Real Estate, a global collection of the finest luxury real estate brokers in the world. Hes been named a Top Producer handling transactions in Old Naples, Port Royal, Aqualane Shores, Park Shore, Moorings, Coquina Sands, and Pelican Bay, and is licensed to sell both residential and commercial real estate in Ohio. And in moving to Naples from Columbus, Ohio, he has added insight to the process of relocating that many agents do not have. Year-to-date, DiSabato sales for 2018 are more than $36 million. He gives clients 24/7 access, and is known for creating genuine one-on-one relationships with buyers and sellers. DiSabato has a background in development, construction, product programming, and quality analysis, providing him with the experience his clients need to make informed decisions. Best of all, he makes himself available before, during and after the sale. He is associated with the National Board of Realtors, Florida Board of Realtors, Naples Board of Realtors, and Columbus Board of Realtors. DiSabato is invested in his community and donates energies to Gentlemen Against Domestic Violence: The Shelter for Abused Women and Children, and the James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University. Visit Dante DiSabato's Haute Residence Profile: https://www.hauteresidence.com/member/dante-disabato/ ABOUT HAUTE RESIDENCE Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the worlds most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners. The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts. HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more. Access all of this information and more by visiting http://www.hauteresidence.com Jeff Hyland Hilton & Hyland has prospered and grown from its original intent of a highly personalized real estate shop to the highest producing luxury boutique brokerage in the world. Jeff Hyland is a real estate expert, architectural historian and the co-founder and President of Hilton & Hyland. He has personally handled several billion dollars in real estate sales. Hyland formed an appreciation for homes and design at an early age. Growing up in the charming Little Holmby enclave between UCLA and Beverly Hills, he became fascinated with the great estates so emblematic of Hollywoods golden age. It was a transformative time in Southern California with rapid residential growth and the intersection of divergent styles. But for Hyland, the allure of classic architecture and rarified properties created a lasting impression. As a young adult, Hyland was accepted into the prestigious Cornell School of Hotel Administration in New York. Ultimately, however, Californias siren call beckoned him back. He attended United States International University in San Diego, graduating with a degree in Business Administration. There was also substantial time spent surfing Californias legendary Southern Coast during the halcyon era of the early 1970s. Thereafter, he became a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker and then Mike Silverman and Associates. Hyland was licensed as a broker in 1975. From 1980 to 1990 he was a founding partner at the brokerage firm Alvarez, Hyland & Young. His interest in noteworthy properties throughout Southern California continued to grow, particularly in the Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills and Bel-Air communities referred to as The Platinum Triangle. Hylands research into early to mid-20th century design led to recognition as an architectural historian and the co-authoring of The Estates of Beverly Hills (published in 1984 and re-published in 1990). In 1993, Hyland and Rick Hilton co-founded Hilton & Hyland. The firm has prospered and grown from its original intent of a highly personalized real estate shop to the highest producing luxury boutique brokerage in the world. Hylands reputation as a consummate broker with a passion for architecture and estate genealogy has been a symbiotic match with Hiltons real estate development, residential sales, hotels and commercial financing expertise. Hyland has continued to write, publishing The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills through Rizzoli International Publications. The definitive accounting of 45 magnificent estate properties spanning a century in time will soon be joined by a sequel. He was named The Gatekeeper of Beverly Hills by Town & Country and is frequently quoted in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, London Times and Wall Street Journal. He has served as President of the Beverly Hills Board of Realtors, President of the Los Angeles County Board of Real Estate and State Director for the California Association of Realtors. He recently received the Institute of Classical Architecture and Arts Legacy Award and The Will Rogers Real Estate Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Beverly Hills. Some of the fabled estates of Hylands youth have since slipped into the past, replaced by newer and larger properties. But consummate representation endures, furthered by forward vision and innovative technology. Passionate about philanthropy, Hyland is highly respected in his community and supports several charitable foundations. During those elusive moments of free time, he and artist wife Lori of 35 years enjoy reading, writing, horseback riding and sailing. Visit Jeff Hyland's Haute Residence Profile: https://www.hauteresidence.com/member/jeff-hyland/ ABOUT HAUTE RESIDENCE Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the worlds most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners. The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts. HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more. Access all of this information and more by visiting http://www.hauteresidence.com HerdDogg has joined the WKU SmartHolstein Lab program to equip scientists with real-time animal biometric data that is critical to understanding dairy cow health and wellbeing. With HerdDoggs real-time animal biometrics sensors and cloud-based Animal Record Collection platform, our scientific team can efficiently gather incredibly accurate data that we hope will provide additional insights into each animal. HerdDogg, the agtech innovator that creates more value for producers livestock, has joined the WKU SmartHolstein Lab program to equip scientists with real-time animal biometric data that is critical to understanding dairy cow health and wellbeing. The WKU SmartHolstein Lab is a strategic, synergistic partnership between Holstein Association USA and Western Kentucky University Department of Agriculture and Food Science. Its mission is to lead Holstein and dairy advancements through research, development, and outreach in technologies, analytics, and genetics. This week, HerdDogg tags were affixed to each of the 55 Holsteins at the SmartHolstein demonstration and development farm in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where scientists are studying novel phenotypic traits using the latest technologies such as wearable technologies, computer vision powered by artificial intelligence, and milk-based biomarkers. The SmartHolstein team is examining the practical use of data for on-farm decision making, with additional analytics performed by AgriTech Analytics, a DHI dairy records processing center owned by Holstein Association. The projects long-term goal is to develop a 100-percent A2, polled herd of cows in the top 20 percent of the breed for TPI (Total Performance Index) with additional emphasis on health, reproduction, and fitness traits. As a data-collection partner for SmartHolstein, HerdDogg is supplying its latest biometrics platform and Bluetooth tags for the 55 animals that comprise the nuclear herd, giving scientists access to accurate, real-time animal activity biometric data. By analyzing this data for each animal, the team aims to better understand the relationship between animal wellbeing on each animals estrous cycle, especially estrus. For example, the HerdDogg mobile app will provide real-time alerts to the team when an animal begins estrus. We are delighted to be a part of this landmark scientific study at the top research, development, and demonstration center for the dairy industry, said Melissa Brandao, HerdDoggs founder and chief revenue officer. Animal biometrics and welfare data are key to running a dairy more efficiently, and were eager to show Holstein producers the value delivered by the HerdDogg platform. With HerdDoggs real-time animal biometrics sensors and cloud-based Animal Record Collection platform, our scientific team can efficiently gather incredibly accurate data that we hope will provide additional insights into each animal, said Jeffrey Bewley, a long-time dairy tech researcher involved with the WKU SmartHolstein Lab project. How the HerdDogg animal biometrics platform works HerdDoggs patented technology is a small, lightweight tag designed for easy installation on cattle, bison, and other livestock. The HerdDogg TraceTag reports identification and location, while the HerdDogg WelfareTag tracks animal biometrics. HerdDoggs portable tag reader, the DoggBone, is a Bluetooth-to-cellular bridge engineered for remote monitoring of livestock that can read tags at a distance of 100 yards or more. Sensor data is recorded and automatically uploaded to the HerdDogg cloud-based Animal Traceability Platform, which can be accessed from any device, including smartphones and desktop web browsers. Animal data is captured and transmitted in real time, and producers can augment animal records with their own insights and reporting. About HerdDogg HerdDogg is passionate about livestock. Our innovative data platform sits at the intersection of agtech, the internet of things, and global food security. Our patented DoggTags and DoggBone, together with our Animal Traceability Platform, help producers make more money from every animal they raise. The HerdDogg system enables animal tracking, welfare monitoring and traceability via a cloud-based platform and an easy-to-use mobile application. For more information, visit herddogg.com. More than ever, Cybersecurity measurers require businesses to have internal responses that are grounded policies. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics for defrauding businesses and tend to increase these efforts during times of public confusion and crisis, such as the world has experienced over the last 18 months. In 2020, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) fielded 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime more than double the number from 2019 and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion impacting businesses and individuals. The cybersecurity consulting firm CyberEdge also reported that last year more than 86% of organizations they surveyed weathered successful cyberattacks. In this environment, companies need internal responses that are grounded in solid cybersecurity policies. But they must also go further, encompassing executive oversight, carefully crafted control procedures and the human resources needed to carry them out. Fortunately, there are many effective steps organizations can take to mitigate cybersecurity threats. Some of these best practices are discussed below. Strategy 1: Document critical online banking processes for your company and stick to them To protect your companys funds and individuals personal identifiable information, its important to document carefully the processes your company uses for critical banking processes. These should specify who has access to the companys accounts with updates if these people change and outline, in detail, steps to be taken if those people arent available. Strategy 2: Protect against Business Email Compromises Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud is one of the most financially dangerous categories of phishing cybercrime and a massive threat to U.S. businesses. BEC criminals use emails to trick recipients into initiating a fraudulent financial transaction, often by impersonating a high-ranking executive or a vendor/supplier. Most often, BEC scams target employees, such as financial directors and accountants, who typically are authorized to initiate a wire transfer. According to the FBI, phishers have stolen over 5.3 billion dollars in these scams. To protect your business against BECs: Use the fewest number of dedicated computers necessary for critical online banking functions and limit their use as feasible. Dont use email to store personally identifiable information. Train all employees to avoid clicking URLs in suspicious emails or open documents from unknown senders. Malicious emails usually have some telltale identifiers, like unusual grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax errors and/or email addresses that you cant identify. If theres any doubt about the legitimacy of an email, the recipient should call the sender to verify before opening. If someone on your team falls prey to a BEC crime involving your bank account or other financial information, immediately contact Alliance Association Bank or other institutions that might be involved. Next, notify the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center as soon as possible, ideally within 72 hours. Strategy 3: Back up critical data regularly Do this at least once a week or as often as it is applicable for your organization. Assign responsibility for this task to someone and keep at least two copies of backed up data in two different physical locations. Strategy 4: Get the most out of the cybersecurity tools you already have in your systems Maintain the tools that protect your computers and servers from viruses and malware and update them regularly. Strategy 5: Run tests on your own cybersecurity measures to make sure theyre working as they should Investigate firms that can test your cyber controls with a service called pentration testing. These firms act as white hack hackers and will attempt to access your environment, and then report to you on its weaknesses. You can also find vendors that provide tools for phishing testing or phishing simulation. These vendors and tools can send your team emails that simulate a phishing attack. They will then report back to you with a list of employees who are prone to click on suspicious emails. Strategy 6: Periodically review your cybersecurity processes Review your critical banking process and your cyber control with all stakeholders to ensure theyre still relevant to your business and industry best practices. Make sure all levels of management and employees know their role in the process. Adjust the plan when you onboard or off board vendors, suppliers or employees. While there are no one-size-fits-all solution for every business, the actions described here can go a long way toward helping any business increase data security and protect their data and assets. For more information about Alliance Association Bank or to watch a recent virtual training on cybersecurity that can be shared within your organization, please contact Stacy Dyer, Senior Director of Alliance Association Bank at (843) 637-7181 or sdyer@allianceassociationbank.com. About Alliance Association Bank Alliance Association Bank, a division of Western Alliance Bank, provides financing solutions to the growing community management and homeowner association industries with a high level of expertise and responsiveness. This specialized organization offers a wide range of innovative banking products and services designed to create efficiencies, reduce costs and increase revenue. Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, is the primary subsidiary of Phoenix-based Western Alliance Bancorporation, with approximately $50 billion in assets. Western Alliance is again #1 best-performing of the 50 largest public U.S. banks in the new S&P Global Market Intelligence listing for 2020 and ranks high on the Forbes Best Banks in America list year after year. Serving clients across the country wherever business happens, Western Alliance Bank operates individually branded, full-service banking divisions and has offices in key markets nationwide. For more information, visit allianceassociationbank.com. Trial Attorney Scott Harrison Being trusted by Bellas family to work this case is an honor and privilege. According to the lawsuit filed by Litigation Attorney Scott Harrison of Monge & Associates, on August 30, 2021, Bella Bennett, age 5, died of injuries she allegedly sustained after a negligently maintained monument at the Lee Street Resource Center toppled, crushing her and causing her death. Significantly, the lawsuit filed by Trial Attorney, Scott Harrison, alleges that Blackshear Consolidated Mens Club (CMC) was aware of the problem because the monument had allegedly fallen in the past and was repaired with adhesive at the base not strong enough to keep the monument in place. Being trusted by Bellas family to work this case is an honor and privilege. It is truly one of the most special moments in my professional life. Once we are able to make a successful recovery for them, we hope to find a way to honor Bellas memory with some of the proceeds, said Attorney Scott Harrison who represents Bellas Estate. Lorie Lee grandmother of Bella Bennett, deceased, v. The Blackshear Consolidated Men Club, Inc. Filed Sep. 08, 2021, State Court of Pierce County, Civil Action No. STSV2021000061. Monge & Associates, is a nationally recognized personal injury law firm that makes good things happen for other people by helping innocent injury victims hurt through the fault of another person. Primary practice areas include helping victims hurt on premises of business, victims of drunk drivers, car wrecks, truck collisions, motorcycle accidents, surgery cases, catastrophic injuries, negligent security injuries, injuries happening at businesses, workers compensation case and victims hurt by dangerous products. http://www.BecauseYouWantToWin.com "To retain heat and reduce energy bills, Insulation4Less experts recommend investing in basement insulation ahead of the heating season." Insulation4Less, an online store for insulation solutions with 18 years of industry expertise, explained what are the advantages and disadvantages of applying basement insulation inside vs. outside. As much as 10% to 30% of home heat escapes through uninsulated basements. To retain heat and reduce energy bills, Insulation4Less experts recommend investing in basement insulation ahead of the heating season. According to Insulation4Less, the first choice to make is whether to insulate the basement from the inside or the outside. Both insulation types are equally effective in retaining heat within; where they differ is the application method and the advantages and disadvantages that come with it such as cost and process duration. The advantages of internal basement insulation include: It can be applied anytime, i.e. in any season Easier application More affordable than insulating on the outside And more On the other hand, the disadvantages of inside insulation include: Partitions, plumbing and electrical panels can obstruct work If applied before eliminating the causes of moisture and condensation, it can leave room for mold and mildew, rodents and bugs And others For inside insulation, the experts suggested using fiberglass, polyurethane spray foam, rigid insulation boards or Prodex. While the inside insulation is a great choice for homeowners on tight deadlines and budgets, outside insulation is the recommended option for the homeowners who want to inspect and address the more structural issues of their home. The advantages of outside basement insulation include: Easy detection of structural and moisture problems like cracks and erosion Possibility to work simultaneously on waterproofing, drainage and foundation repair Typically fewer obstacles to the insulation process The disadvantages of outside basement insulation include: Limited yearly timeframes for execution Possible delays and complications due to fences, bushes or other obstructions Risk of interrupting underground services like gas, electricity and sewage The most common insulation materials for outside basement insulation include rigid mineral wool boards, high-density polystyrene and polyurethane boards. Homeowners can find more insights and insulation options on Insulation4Less.com. About Insulation4Less Headquartered in Houston, TX, Insulation4Less is an online store for insulation solutions for metal and non-metal buildings, pole barns and home structures such as walls, floors and roofs. This strategic partnership with PMMC is designed to create a better experience for our patients and prospective patients by educating and engaging with them about healthcare costs prior to service through our digital front door. Intermountain Healthcare, the largest healthcare provider in the Intermountain West, is partnering with PMMC, a leading revenue cycle management company, to improve the patient experience with a digital price transparency strategy. Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based, not-for-profit system with 24 hospitals and more than 2,400 physicians and advanced practice clinicians at about 160 clinics. Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in clinical quality improvement and efficient healthcare delivery. As the largest integrated health network across the Intermountain West, our goals are to provide better care and help our patients achieve better health at more affordable costs, said Kerry Gillespie, CFO, Specialty Based Care at Intermountain Healthcare. This strategic partnership with PMMC is designed to create a better experience for our patients and prospective patients by educating and engaging with them about healthcare costs prior to service through our digital front door. PMMCs online cost estimates will allow Intermountain Healthcares patients to price shop for healthcare services with quick, accurate cost estimates directly from Intermountains digital front door and health app My Health+. My Health+ brings powerful tools from across the healthcare experience into one place so its easier and more convenient for patients to manage all aspects of their health from booking an appointment to paying a bill. Cost estimates are a critical part of the patient experience and give patients more control over their healthcare decisions. Intermountain Healthcare is an extremely innovative and nationally recognized health system that strives every day to meet the demand for high quality care at a sustainable cost, said Robby Shaul, President at PMMC. We look forward to beginning a successful partnership and aligning with Intermountains goal of embracing price transparency to better serve patients in Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. Intermountain Healthcare will work in partnership with PMMCs client success team to make price shopping a reality for patients across the Intermountain West. For more information about PMMC, please visit http://www.pmmconline.com. For more information about Intermountain Healthcare, please visit http://www.intermountainhealthcare.org. Kelly Foundation logo The Kelly Foundation is excited to partner on this ambitious project, which will benefit dozens of deserving people over the course of the next several years. The Kelly Foundation has announced Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento as the recipient of its 2021 Major Gift Award. The $100,000 grant will be used to support the first phase of construction for Cornerstone Development in South Sacramento. Cornerstone Development is a collaboration between Habitat and Mutual Housing California and will feature 18 single-family homes positioned as equity-building home ownership opportunities for low-income families, along with 108 affordable rental apartment units for low-income individuals, including some who were formerly unhoused. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento is respected throughout the community for providing families with home ownership opportunities that may be otherwise out of reach, said Shawn Kelly Devlin, President of the Kelly Foundation and Chairman of the Board of River City Bank. The Kelly Foundation is excited to partner on this ambitious project, which will benefit dozens of deserving people over the course of the next several years. TWEET THIS: The Kelly Foundation, in partnership with @RiverCityBank, has pledged $100k to @SacHabitat to help fund the first phase of construction for the Cornerstone community in South Sacramento, a collaboration with @Mutual_Matters. #corporatephilanthropy The Kelly Foundation Major Gift award represents a huge leap forward for the Cornerstone Development project, said Laine Himmelmann, Chief Development Officer of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento. Our team was excited to the point of tears when we learned that the Kelly Foundation had decided to contribute $100,000 to the project because most home sponsorships fall within the $5,000-$10,000 range. During the next three years, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento plans to engage more than six thousand volunteers in the multi-phase construction effort. The team is looking to raise at least $300,000 for the first phase of construction for Cornerstone Development, which includes three homes that are projected to be move-in ready by early 2023. The Kelly Foundation grant constitutes one-third of that amount. The Kelly Foundation supports health and human services, education, culture, environment and civic improvement through its funding. For the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2022, the Foundation will provide approximately $1.5 million in grants to organizations that support the Sacramento and North Bay Area regions. Since merging with the RCB Foundation in 2009, the Kelly Foundation, of which River City Bank remains a major contributor, focuses on giving back to the greater Sacramento region through charitable donations. For more information about the Kelly Foundation, please visit KellyFoundationSacramento.org. Cornerstone Development Details Cornerstone Development, was just named 2021 Affordable Housing Development of the Year by the Sacramento Housing Alliance. It is also the largest single development in 36 years for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento. Groundbreaking is scheduled for February 2022, with the first phase of construction set to begin in June 2022. The seven-acre project site is located near the intersection of 46th Street and Lang Avenue and is planned to house approximately 400 people once construction is completed. The development will be fully electric, and each of the 18 single-family Habitat homes will include solar panels on the roof and be EV-ready for charging electric vehicles. To learn more about Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento, including opportunities for volunteer participation, visit HabitatGreaterSac.org. About the Kelly Foundation The Kelly Broadcasting Companys KCRA-TV (Sacramento-Stockton-Modest, CA) went on the air on Sept. 5, 1955, and the owners of the Kelly Broadcasting Company established the Kelly Foundation in December 1988 as a formal vehicle for structuring charitable contributions. The Kelly family sold KCRA-TV in 1999 and have continued the Kelly Foundation ever since. In 2009, the River City Bank Foundation merged with the Kelly Foundation, and some executives of the Bank currently serve on the Foundations Board. Jon S. Kelly founded River City Bank and continues to support the Bank. His daughter, Shawn Kelly Devlin, currently serves as President and Chairman of the Board. The Kelly Foundation is an expression of the importance the Kelly family places on being a good neighbor and citizen in regions where they do business. For more information on the Kelly Foundation, please visit KellyFoundationSacramento.org or call (916) 978-4892. About River City Bank Named one of Sacramento Business Journals 50 Fastest Growing Companies for each of the past five years, River City Bank is the Sacramento regions premier business bank with assets of almost $3.4 billion. River City Bank offers a comprehensive suite of banking services, including loans, deposits and cash management tools to the business, consumer and commercial real estate sectors. With tailored, executive-level service, an investment grade rating from S&P Global Ratings, and a Superior financial rating from the nations leading independent bank-rating firm, Bauer Financial, River City Bank redefines the banking experience and every touch point that surrounds it. River City Bank is the largest, independent, locally-owned bank in the Sacramento region with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and a presence in Southern California. For additional information, please visit RiverCityBank.com or call (916) 567-2600. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender. I decided that it was time for Santa Monica Press to take on a new challenge that could have a profound impact on young readers, while at the same time raising funds through the sales of the titles to help support non-profit literacy organizations such as Words Alive." -- Jeffrey Goldman, Publisher Santa Monica Press, long known as an eclectic independent publisher with a Southern California bent to its list of high-quality books, recently announced that after 25 years publishing Adult Nonfiction, the press is launching Santa Monica Press/Teen, featuring Young Adult Narrative Nonfiction and Historical Fiction. A percentage of sales from the entire YA line will be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting literacy. The initial set of Young Adult (YA) books, being published in Winter 2022, features four titlestwo novels and two memoirs: Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety: My Journey Through Depression, Bulimia, and Addiction by Yvonne Castaneda The Dressmakers Daughter: A Novel by Linda Boroff Flowing with the Pearl River: Memoir of a Red China Girl by Amy Chan Zhou Ventura and Zelzah: A Novel by J.G. Bryan For the past decade, publisher Jeffrey Goldman has been heavily involved in the nonprofit world, having served on the Board of Words Alive, a nonprofit literacy organization, as both a Board Member and as Board Chair. The power of YA really hit Goldman while working as a Words Alive Writing Facilitator at the Monarch School, which serves children impacted by homelessness. I knew from my own childrens education and my friendships and support of the librarians at their school, that YA literature could have a powerful effect on a young person. But what I saw at Monarch School was how YA literature could literally change lives, Goldman marvels. I decided that it was time for Santa Monica Press to take on a new challenge that could have a profound impact on young readers, while at the same time raising funds through the sales of the titles to help support non-profit literacy organizations such as Words Alive. High school kids who barely had an interest in school sparked to the carefully chosen books in Words Alives curriculum. I remember one young man, brand new to the school, a junior in high school, who had been in and out of different schools and in and out of different juvenile detention situations. And this kid was one of the most amazing student writers Id ever come across. But he thought nothing of it, because he had never had anybody at home to encourage him, until he read the book Words Alive gave him: Jimmy Baca Santiagos A Place to Stand. That memoir changed his life. He became devoted to his writing. As to Santa Monica Presss first foray into YA, Goldman says, True to our roots, its a diverse mix. Pork Belly Tacos is written by a writer whose mother is Mexican and father is Cuban, and explores a traditionally taboo subject in those communities. Pearl River is by an author who spent a good deal of her childhood in communist China. Ventura and Zelzah is a coming-of-age novel set in suburban Los Angeles in the 1970s, and The Dressmakers Daughter, which is set in Romania, presents a new perspective of the Holocaust. To top things off, the next release in the Santa Monica Press/Teen line is what Goldman claims is a book in the grand tradition of the Great American Novelonly written by a Brit! He pauses for effect, laughs, and then closes with, I assure you we will always keep things eclectic here at Santa Monica Press. About Santa Monica Press Santa Monica Press has been publishing an eclectic line of non-fiction books for over 25 years. Our critically acclaimed titles are sold in chain, independent, on-line, and university bookstores around the world, as well as in some of the most popular retail, gift, and museum outlets in North America. Our authors are recognized experts who are sought after by the media and receive newspaper, magazine, internet, social media, radio, and television coverage both nationally and internationally. At Santa Monica Press, were not afraid to cast a wide editorial net. Our list of lively and modern non-fiction titles includes books in such categories as pop culture, film, music, humor, biography, travel, and sports, as well as regional titles focused on California. We have recently added Young Adult Fiction and Young Adult Narrative Non-Fiction to our list! Remember to look for the shell! http://www.santamonicapress.com books@santamonicapress.com 800-784-9553 Mighty Swell today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Jeana Harrington as the companys Chief Executive Officer. Harrington joined the nations top independent spiked seltzer brand as a founding employee back in 2016. She quickly rose through the ranks as its National Accounts Director and VP of Sales, before graduating to the c-suite and thriving in her roles as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and, most recently, Chief Operating Officer (COO). Harrington has proven to be instrumental in the success of the brand. Under her management, Mighty Swell has continued to dramatically increase sales, achieving a 168% revenue growth this first half of year in comparison to this time last year. The brand also earned a ranking of 1,936 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 of the fastest-growing private companies in America and is the top independent hard seltzer brand in the US through July, according to IRI. Having worked with Jeana Harrington since the beginning, I speak for the Board when I say that we are confident that she is the right person for the job, and will lead Mighty Swell into our next chapter of growth, said Sean Cusack, founder and current board member of Mighty Swell. Her experience as a leader, combined with her impeccable work ethic and intimate knowledge of the brand are a recipe for success. We are fortunate to have her as our new leader. As Harrington takes charge of the hard seltzer brand, her focus will be leading Mighty Swell into a new phase of growth in 2021-2022. As someone who has been with the company since its inception, my commitment to expanding Mighty Swell, reaching new consumers and strengthening our team grows stronger each year, she explained. As we enter 2022, our focus will be two-fold: differentiating ourselves to seltzer drinkers through innovation and outreach, and streamlining our operations and supply chain. We have assembled an amazing team over the past six months to help us accomplish those objectives. Prior to Mighty Swell, Harrington helped launch OOLA Distillery in Seattle - one of Washington's first distilleries post prohibition. As Managing Director, she created a self-distribution network until the company scaled and expanded into multiple states. Harrington has helped formulate and launch products for multiple brands that have achieved Triple Gold and Best in Category as well as packaging accolades. Before transitioning to the alcohol industry, Harrington spent over a decade in the strategy consulting and finance space. For the latest updates on Mighty Swell, make sure to follow @mightyswell on Instagram or visit https://www.mightyswell.com/find-us to locate the Swell nearest you. ABOUT MIGHTY SWELL SPIKED SELTZER Founded in 2016, Austin, Texas-based Mighty Swell crafts spiked seltzers that pack a juicy punch with pure, natural ingredients and just 100 calories a can. The companys product line now includes eight refreshing flavors: Blackberry, Blood Orange, Cherry Lime, Grapefruit, Mango Raspberry, Peach, Pineapple and Watermelon Mint. Mighty Swell Spiked Seltzers are certified gluten-free, OU Kosher and vegan friendly and are available in supermarkets, drug stores, convenience stores and liquor stores in 25 states. More information on Mighty Swell products and retail locations is available at http://www.mightyswell.com/find-us or on Instagram (@mightyswell), Twitter (@mighty_swell) and Facebook (@mightyswellseltzer). Nitro Software (ASX: NTO), a global document productivity software company accelerating digital transformation in organizations around the world, is expanding its presence in North America with a new Toronto hub. With an existing headquarters in San Francisco and additional international hubs in Dublin, London, and Melbourne, Toronto as a second North American location is an ideal fit for the business. Over the last 12-18 months the landscape of how we operate and work has changed dramatically, said Gina OReilly, Chief Operating Officer of Nitro. There is no longer a need for employees to be physically present Monday through Friday in a single location, which is why weve launched a Flexible Forever policy at Nitro that we believe provides the best of both worlds it allows Nitronauts to live and work from wherever they choose with some regular in-person time as and when it makes the most sense (planning sessions, team meetings, social gatherings, etc.) This silver lining to the pandemic has allowed us to think outside the box and presented an opportunity for companies like Nitro to access more diverse, highly-skilled talent in other locations around the world, expanding a digital-first workforce to more effectively cover global time zones. Nitro selected Toronto as the optimal east coast location that could support hiring new and diverse talent. Additionally, Canadas relationship with both the U.S. and Europe opens the door for future internal employee transfers and growth. In establishing operations, Nitro worked closely with Toronto Global, a team of experienced business advisors assisting global businesses to expand into the Toronto Region. Toronto ticked all the boxes in terms of what we were looking for in a second North American hub an easily accessible East Coast location for optimal time zone coverage, general ease of doing business, cultural alignment, and most importantly, access to some of the worlds top tech talent, added OReilly. Toronto Global really helped accelerate our entire evaluation and setup process and their support has been invaluable. Since then, the team has grown to almost 25 people since the beginning of the year and were looking forward to even more growth in the future. With one of the most highly skilled and diverse workforces in the world, Toronto is a top destination for business and talent, said Toronto Mayor John Tory. Nitros investment is a testament to the Toronto Regions strong reputation as a technology hub and our attractiveness to international companies. I applaud Nitro for its mission to digitally transform businesses and I am pleased to welcome the company to our innovative business community. Nitro has experienced significant success in its Toronto hiring to date. What started out as a focused sales hub has since expanded to become a strong source of talent across sales, marketing, customer experience, people and finance. As Nitro scales, the company continues to see a strong pipeline of high-caliber talent throughout the Toronto Region. About Nitro Nitro is a global document productivity software company accelerating digital transformation in a world that demands the ability to work from anywhere, anytime, on any device. Nitro enables organizations to drive better business outcomes through 100% digital document processes and fast, efficient workflows. The Nitro Productivity Platform offers comprehensive business solutions, including powerful PDF productivity, unlimited eSigning and industry-leading analytics, all supported by a superior customer success team. Nitro has over 2.8 million licensed users and 12,000+ Business Customers in 155 countries, including over 68% of the Fortune 500 and three of the Fortune 10. Nitro is headquartered in San Francisco with international hubs in Toronto, Dublin, London, and Melbourne. Dr. Eun-Woo Chang, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer at NOVA I look forward to serving the diverse students here at NOVA. This college has always been a great incubator for inclusive education, and I want to encourage innovation, Dr. Eun-Woo Chang joined NOVA this summer as VP of Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer. Having gotten the lay of the land, he has now released his priorities for the college: to implement innovation, diversity and inclusivity into all facets of academic planning. Changs professional background spans more than 30 years in higher education. He previously served in academic leadership at Ashland University and Mercer County Community College. He also served as a program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. He has received national recognition from the American Chemical Society and the American Council on Education for his initiatives to further student success. I look forward to serving the diverse students here at NOVA. This college has always been a great incubator for inclusive education, and I want to encourage innovation, said Chang. I already knew that the faculty and staff are so dedicated here. I have worked with past institutions to assist with innovation grants so that faculty can scale what theyve done best into bigger models. I look forward to doing more of that in this role. Chang will be leading NOVAs academic initiatives, which include a nationally-renowned dual enrollment program, award winning ADVANCE program and other unique enrollment programs. Chang received his undergraduate degree in South Korea, his Masters degree from Minnesota State University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCLA. He also did post-doctoral work at Harvard. Chang currently serves on the Committee on Chemistry and Public Affairs at the American Chemical Society. Previously, he was a member of the OhioHealth Governing Advisory Board (Mansfield and Shelby Hospitals) and an advisory board of the Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S) led by University of California, Berkeley. Media Contact: Hoang Nguyen | 703.425.5839 | hdnguyen@nvcc.edu ### Northern Virginia Community College is the largest public institution of higher education in the Commonwealth of Virginia and one of America's largest community colleges. NOVA enrolls more than 75,000 students at its six campuses in Alexandria, Annandale, Loudoun, Manassas, Springfield and Woodbridge, and through NOVA Online. For more information about NOVA and its programs or services, call 703-323-3000 or visit the College's Web site, http://www.nvcc.edu Oak Point University's expansion to Oak Brook includes the most technologically advanced Simulation Center in the Chicago region. The world has changed and were proud to have evolved along with it so we can offer exceptional educational environments and top skills training for those seeking advancement in the vital healthcare professions we train, says Therese Scanlan, EdD, president of Oak Point University. Oak Point University, formerly Resurrection University, welcomes its first class to a new campus in Oak Brook, Ill. after expanding to two schools in nursing and health sciences. Building upon over one century of successful education, Oak Point University now complements its Chicago Campus in Wicker Park with the suburban location and entirely new facility at 2122 York Road in Oak Brook. According to the U.S. Health & Human Services Department, one million additional registered nurses are needed by 2030 to fill the current shortage and Oak Point University stands ready to help fill the openings with skilled health professionals. The world has changed and were proud to have evolved along with it so we can offer exceptional educational environments and top skills training for those seeking advancement in the vital healthcare professions we train, says Therese Scanlan, EdD, president of Oak Point University. The new campus includes 56 offices, 10 classrooms and a 12,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art Interprofessional Education (IPE) Simulation Learning Center consisting of simulated hospital, operating room, healthcare practitioner offices and home health settings, as well as observation rooms. Adaptable learning spaces, and adaptable learning environments throughout the facilities mirror the same advanced technology found on the Chicago campus, according to Dr. Scanlan. The second location provides flexibility and additional options for busy students. With an average age of 30, many Oak Point students are juggling multiple priorities and demands on their time. A blend of online and in-person classwork, clinical training in two locations and flexible class schedules make a bachelors degree attainable in 16-20 months. Students seeking additional certification or advanced degrees in nursing or radiography will also find options that meet todays needs. Evolving Education To Meet Healthcare Needs The simulation center includes a wide variety of patient simulation manikins that facilitate student learning. The newest addition to the Sim family sweats, breathes, talks and can simulate a variety of health challenges such as experiencing a stroke, seizure, or heart attack. The simulator has interchangeable face skins and fully articulating arms for students to practice administering intravenous fluids and medications. Oak Point University offers a wide range of programs for the healthcare professional. Degree programs at the bachelor, masters and doctoral levels are available as well as microcredential/badging programs and continuing education. The IPE Scholar Program is comprised of a series of learning activities such as online lectures, discussions and learning materials as a specialty area focus for the student. Nurses are in high demand and particularly for those with critical care and mental health training. With one of the highest employment rates of nurses in the country, Chicago nursing grads earn an average annual salary of over $77,000 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2020). Providing educational solutions for specialists, Oak Point University now offers a Master of Science in Nursing or Post-Master Certificates in Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) and Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner. Registration for Spring 2022 is now open along with tours on both campuses. For more information, visit oakpoint.edu. About Oak Point University Oak Point University is a private educational institution with two Illinois campus locations: AMITA Health Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center Chicago (Saint Elizabeth Campus) 1431 N. Claremont in Chicago and 2122 York Road in Oak Brook. Providing the highest quality nursing, radiography and education, exceptional educators, and the most advanced SIM technologies available in the region, Oak Point provides a high-ranking option for those seeking advanced education and certification. Visit oakpoint.edu and stay connected via social media @oakpointuniversity. Old Trapper Smoked Products today announced that the beef jerky brand will be attending this years NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores) Tradeshow from October 6-8 at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. Old Trapper will be showcasing their continued innovation with the debut of their new gusseted packaging and reformatted beef stick size. The NACS Show brings together convenience and fuel retailing industry professionals for four days of learning, buying and selling, and networking, while providing the most comprehensive representation of products and services for the convenience and fuel retailing industry, We are looking forward to the NACS show this year, and showcasing the latest in our packaging and product innovation, said Robert Leary, Director of Marketing of Old Trapper. Our new 15-ounce gusseted bag allows retail partners to hang Old Trapper products on pegs or display packages standing on shelves. The stick size has also been reformatted to a perfectly snackable smaller size. We are excited to show our retailers and industry partners these latest innovations as we gather in person at this years show. Old Trappers 15-ounce beef sticks in Original, Jalapeno, and Teriyaki flavors will be available in the state-of-the-art packaging format. MSRP $15.00 per 15 ounce bag. Six bags per case. Industry members and attending media are invited to stop by Booth 941 at this years NACS Show to meet with company executives and representatives and check out the complete Old Trapper product line. Old Trapper products are available at grocery and convenience stores nationwide and online at http://www.OldTrapper.com. ### About Old Trapper Smoked Products Old Trapper Smoked Products has produced its signature line of authentic beef jerky from its headquarters in Forest Grove, Oregon since 1969. That 50 years of experience, complemented by continued investments in state-of-the-art processes, result in top-quality products that are distributed nationwide. A family-run business, Old Trapper offers a full line of high-quality, naturally smoked meat snacks using only the best lean strips of beef, the freshest seasoning ingredients and real wood-fired smoke. For more information, please visit http://www.OldTrapper.com. Left to Right: Lisa Smith, North Fulton County Chamber of Commerce Gerry Fay, Board Member, Flip Electronics Michael Cotant, Board Member, Flip Electronics Joseph Vallee, Board Member, Flip Electroni Our growth has been spectacular due to our outstanding employees, our suppliers, and the trust of our clients. This move will give us the additional advantages to continue our growth. Flip Electronics has had major success and growth in the last five years. So much so that the authorized distributor of obsolete and excess semiconductor and electronic components recently moved from a 12,000 sq. ft. facility in Roswell, GA, (of which 9,000 sq. ft. was warehouse space and 3,000 sq. ft. was office space) to a new facility in Alpharetta, GA, that has office space of 9,300 sq. ft. and a warehouse of 63,700 sq. ft. for a total of 73,000 sq. ft. To celebrate the success that led to this expansion, Flip held a formal open house and walk-through on September 21, 2021, to honor the employees and suppliers that made this all possible. The late afternoon event, attended by over 75 people and led by President Bill Bradford and CEO Jason Murphy, was also shared with a few dignitaries and included a celebratory ribbon cutting. Jason Murphy, CEO of Flip Electronics, stated, Our growth has been spectacular due to our outstanding employees, our suppliers, and the trust of our clients. This move will give us the additional advantages to continue our growth. The new move to Alpharetta, GA, in Forsyth County, which has been excellent to work with, couldnt have come at a better time. Significant supply chain issues have impacted our industry. The original equipment manufacturers are trying to maintain their output, but finding older parts is difficult. Flip is positioned to help those companies by having an inventory of popular components that are no longer produced by semiconductor manufacturers today. Andrew Heaton from the Office of U.S. Senator Warnock and Zenobia Haynes from the Office of U.S. Senator Ossoff attended the event. Vivian Vakili, the Director of Building and Economic Development for Forsyth County stated, One of the goals of our Economic Development Strategic Plan is to attract technology companies, so we are very pleased that Flip has moved here. Based on their plans we are extremely excited that they will be adding quality jobs and add to our community culture. Flip is the first tenant in the custom-built space containing office, warehouse, and Q.C. areas to meet the needs of the current and anticipated growing business. The building was recently sold to Shiloh Owner LLC by Alpha Industrial Properties and KKR. About Flip Electronics Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Flip Electronics has been an authorized distributor of obsolete semiconductor and electronic components since 2015. Flip works closely with their OEM and contract manufacturer clients and considers every aspect of the logistics and supply chain process while delivering exceptional solutions to best suit clients needs. These services help avoid costly shutdowns and provide customers with the confidence that they are not dealing in the gray market. With industry-leading suppliers and knowledge and supply chain management expertise, Flip assists clients in the sourcing, pricing, and delivery of all their component needs. In addition, Flips focus on global trends in manufacturing makes it a leader in the electronics industry. The company has been honored and recognized by receiving awards from Inc. 5000 and Georgia's Fast 40 in the past two years. Contact: Learn more at Flipelectronics.com or 800.958.4578 or email info@flipelectronics.com. Al Maag 602-363-6038 is the press contact. For me, this work has always been about helping people, Dixon said. The Pioneer Award recognition from EFF is a heartening reminder that the high quality of our work has had an impact. Im honored to be receiving this award along with such remarkable fellow pioneers. Pam Dixon, researcher, author and executive director and founder of World Privacy Forum (WPF), has been named a 2021 Pioneer Award recipient by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The recognition acknowledges Dixons significant contributions in data privacy and data protection. Based in Portland, Dixon also serves on data governance work groups with the United Nations (U.N.) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and on the Oregon Attorney Generals Central Table, a multi-stakeholder group focused on privacy issues. Dixon founded WPF in 2003 and has established its reputation as a leading public interest group researching consumer privacy and data, and educating consumers about privacy. As WPFs executive director, Dixon has worked extensively on privacy and data governance in the U.S., EU, India, Africa and Asia. WPF has published numerous studies that have had a significant impact in the areas of identity, health, finance and AI. In addition to her work at WPF and with the U.N. and WHO, Dixon also works with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on the OECD Network of Experts on AI (ONE AI). As co-chair of the Center for Global Developments (CGD) Governing Data for Development Working Group, Dixon is working to bring attention to the inequities that underrepresented countries with fragile infrastructures face. In 2021 Dixon co-authored a report calling for a more inclusive approach to data governance and privacy standards in low- and middle-income countries. For many years, Dixon has been documenting and analyzing how individuals personal information interacts within larger data ecosystems and the consequences of those interactions. She has presented this work to the Royal Society and, most recently, the National Academy of Sciences. Key work that Dixon has completed includes her groundbreaking report on medical identity theft, which brought the issue to public attention for the first time, resulting in numerous positive changes, including states adding medical data breach notification. Dixons original research work conducted in India from 2010 to 2014 regarding problems with the Aadhaar biometric ID system was cited in the Supreme Court of Indias landmark Aadhaar Decision, which addressed many of the problems with the system. Currently, Dixon is working on a large WPF project to document and elucidate solutions to old and new privacy problems presented by the global COVID-19 pandemic, including proof of vaccine systems. For me, this work has always been about helping people, Dixon said. The Pioneer Award recognition from EFF is a heartening reminder that the high quality of our work has had an impact. Im honored to be receiving this award along with such remarkable fellow pioneers." In the past two decades the potential risks to privacy data have grown exponentially as the global economy has become increasingly digital and mobile, she said. I am grateful to the EFF for continuing to shine a light on this vital topic. Dixon and fellow 2021 Pioneer Award recipients were honored at a virtual ceremony September 16. A recording of the ceremony is available for viewing at https://www.youtube.com/user/EFForg/videos. About the EFF Pioneer Awards Awarded annually since 1992, EFFs Pioneer Awards recognize the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Previous honorees have included Malkia Cyril, William Gibson, danah boyd, Aaron Swartz, and computer pioneer Willis Ware. For a list of past Pioneer Award winners, visit https://www.eff.org/pioneer/past-winners. About the World Privacy Forum The World Privacy Forum (WPF) is a nonprofit, non-partisan 501(C)(3) public interest research group. The organization is focused on conducting in-depth research, analysis, and consumer education in the area of data privacy, and focuses on pressing and emerging issues. It is among one of the only privacy-focused NGOs conducting independent, original, longitudinal research. The WPF has had notable successes with its research, which has been groundbreaking and consistently ahead of trends. WPF research has provided insight in important issue areas, including predictive analytics, medical identity theft, data brokers, and digital retail data flows, among others. Areas of focus for the WPF include technology and data analytics broadly, with a focus on health care data and privacy, large data sets, machine learning, biometrics, workplace privacy issues, and the financial sector. The WPF was founded in 2003 and works both nationally and internationally. The WPF also works to encourage collaborative efforts among other nonprofits. https://www.worldprivacyforum.org. ### Rare Cannabinoid Company's high strength terpene-only Relief and Relax tinctures. "Having these terpene-only tinctures adds another dimension to the full spectrum effect." Rare Cannabinoid Company has added two more products to their apothecary line up. They are the world's first high strength terpene-only tinctures and are designed to amplify the effects of the brands full spectrum Rare Hawaiian CBD and rare cannabinoid extracts. The pioneering brand just launched the worlds first pure CBDV oil tincture and was also the first to create a pure THCV oil. They also sell 500mg tinctures of Delta-8-THC, CBN,CBG, CBC and CBDA, an extra strength 3000mg CBD booster, and 1:1 blends of rare cannabinoids with Maui-grown CBD. Our products are designed to be mixed and matched with each other so that each customer can create their perfect blend or blends, said Rare Cannabinoid Company founder and CEO Jared Dalgamouni. Having these terpene-only tinctures adds another dimension to the full spectrum effect, he said. Like cannabinoids, terpenes are compounds that naturally occur in hemp, cannabis and other plants. They are oils that have specific health and wellness uses as well as unique aromas. Terpenes are increasingly believed to play a major role in the unique effects attributed to different strains of cannabis. By isolating and then recombining them, one can tailor their use to their exact needs. The blends - Relax and Relief - contain a 450mg mix of pure, steam-distilled terpenes in certified organic MCT coconut oil. Each spray contains 6mg of terpenes. The Relax terpenes blend promotes calm, relaxation, and restful sleep. It contains 113mg -Myrcene, 113mg Linalool, 113 mg -Pinene, 68mg -Limonene, 45mg -3-Carene. The Relief terpenes blend is designed to reduce inflammation, speed up the recovery process, and support healthy joints. It contains 150mg -Pinene, 150mg -Caryophyllene, 100mg -Limonene, 50mg Linalool. Both blends support stress resilience, improved mood, immune function and brain health. Visit Rare Cannabinoid Companys Relax and Relief tincture pages for more information. There one can find descriptions of the individual terpenes in each blend, links to medical research into their potential uses, and which cannabis strains those terpenes are dominant in. The high strength terpene blends do not contain any CBD, THC or rare cannabinoids. Instead, they are intended to amplify the effects of the brand's cannabinoid tinctures or one's favorite hemp or cannabis oils, flowers or edibles. The apothecary concept is based on the idea that each persons health and wellness needs are unique and even differ depending on the time of day. Each cannabinoid and terpene offers different effects. For example, THCV acts like a stimulant, increasing energy and suppressing appetite while CBN promotes relaxation and sedation. It therefore makes sense to take THCV in the morning and CBN for sleep at night. For optimal effects, Rare Cannabinoid Company recommends using their 1000mg full spectrum Hawaiian CBD as a base oil. Like a multivitamin, it offers overall protection and balancing of the endocannabinoid system. Customers can then enhance specific effects by taking one or more single extracts of rare cannabinoids and/or a terpene blend. Rare Cannabinoid Company offers suggested combinations. Customers can choose to buy one, two or more oils and combine them for amplified effects. They can also be taken with hemp and cannabis products from other reputable brands or family members can share a selection of oils and combine them for multiple purposes. For rest and sleep: CBN oil + Delta-8-THC + Relax Terpenes + Rare Hawaiian CBD For soreness and discomfort: CBG oil + CBDV oil + Relief Terpenes + Rare Hawaiian CBD For improved mood: CBC oil + THCV oil + Relax Terpenes + Rare Hawaiian CBD Customers should be aware that hemp-derived Delta-8-THC offers many of the same effects as cannabis-derived THC and can therefore be intoxicating. Visit the website for more information and to buy Delta-8-THC. Visit the Apothecary page to learn more about and buy CBN, CBG, THCV and other single extracts. The brand also offers Ready Blends that pre-combine 250mg rare cannabinoid with 250mg full spectrum Rare Hawaiian CBD. They are: THCV:CBD, CBG:CBD, CBN:CBD, and CBC:CBD. They are daily hemp supplements and can be taken on their own, or combined with other cannabinoids or the terpene blends. Rare Cannabinoid Company is the sister brand of Hawaiian Choice, which is Hawaiis most popular CBD brand. Hawaiian Choice was one of the first to recognize the benefits of terpenes and incorporate them into their CBD oil tinctures. All Hawaiian Choice CBD oil tinctures contain 750mg broad spectrum Maui-grown CBD and are infused with organic or wild gathered extracts of Hawaiian pineapple, passion fruit, hibiscus, noni and Big Island honey. What makes each tincture unique is the addition of specific terpenes. Similar to Rare Cannabinoid Companys new terpene-only tinctures, Hawaiian Choice has Relax CBD and Relief CBD options. In addition, it offers an Active CBD oil for energy, exercise and appetite control and a Focus CBD oil for alertness and concentration. A lot of our long-time customers like to mix and match products from both brands, said Dalgamouni. Customers often buy THCV to go with Hawaiian Choices Active CBD as both can offer a pre-workout boost and support weight loss endeavors by helping you eat less. Or they buy CBC oil to go with Hawaiian Choices Focus CBD. CBC is known for raising anandamide levels. Anandamide is the brains bliss molecule and scientific studies show that people with higher levels of anandamide are happier. Combining it with the Focus CBD may offer additional clarity and positive focus. THCV can also add a further uplifting factor to the mix. The combinations and possibilities are almost endless, said Dalgamouni. We keep expanding our offering as more and more cannabinoids and terpenes are discovered and as research into their potential emerges, he said. Stay tuned for our high strength THCV, CBG, CBN and CBD gummies that will be coming next. Hawaiian Choice was founded in 2017 and is sold online and in luxury hotels, spas and health food stores across the United States, Japan and the Mariana Islands. Rare Cannabinoid Company was established in the first quarter of 2020 and has flourished despite the pandemic. Products are now sold in more than 200 stores across the United States, by prescription in Brazil, and online. Rare Cannabinoid Company offer 15% off all products ordered on auto-ship subscription and free U.S. shipping on orders over $50. Stores interested in stocking either brand can request a wholesale account through wellnessorders.com. Revvo Technologies, a Silicon Valley based advanced smart tire technology and predictive data analytics company, today announced that it has partnered with FasTire, a mobile tire installer, to support fleet customers deploying Revvos leading smart tire management solution. This partnership with FasTire helps demonstrate automated tire inspections, customer service, and dispatch for mobile tire installers. The impact for mobile tire service providers is best demonstrated in a last-mile fleet customer outfitted with Revvo by FasTire. The last mile fleet of over 30 Ford Transit vans has operations running 7 days a week with packages loaded at 9am daily. Previous to Revvo, tires were typically inspected every two weeks, and were the top reason for a van to be grounded and not able to deliver due to low tread, leaks, or damage. In one particular case, Revvo had alerted the fleet and FasTire of an overnight deflation of a tire due to a puncture via an automated email and SMS message. FasTire was able to arrive onsite before the vans were scheduled to be loaded, identified the tire, repaired it, and had the van ready for loading before the drivers arrived. The team at FasTire provided a wow experience for the customer all while being efficient with their time. Efficiency gains is exactly what Jose Rendon, Owner of FasTire is looking for in order to better serve his customers while growing his business. Rendon said, Revvo gives FasTire the ability to have eyes on our customers tires 24/7 enabling us to be at the right place at the right time. Revvo alerts help us streamline the response times by minimizing the communication previously required to initiate a service call and dispatch our crews. Revvo connects the tire to the teams that can take action and who can provide a level of service that delights a customer, without adding extra overhead. This is particularly impactful for mobile service providers and retailers looking to build a stronger relationship with their customer base, in order to be the trusted partner when it comes to tires, said Sunjay Dodani, Chief Executive Officer of Revvo. About Revvo Revvo is a real-time remote tire management solution that provides visibility into the status and condition of a vehicle's tires by making them smart and connected. This allows operators and drivers to increase vehicle uptime, optimize operational efficiency and improve safety. About FasTire FasTire is a locally owned and operated mobile tire service including tire installation and roadside assistance. FasTire is serving Phoenix, Glendale, Goodyear, Tempe, Surprise, Litchfield, Avondale, and the Lake Pleasant Marina area. To learn more about Revvos tire management solution for fleets, please visit: https://www.revvo.ai To learn more about the FasTire, please visit: https://www.fastire.com/ Rieke Office Interiors (ROI) of Elgin, Illinois wins a Silver Globee Award in the category of Company Innovation of the Year. We are proud to win the Globee and be recognized as an industry player that has been named a winner in this years CEO World Awards. Behind this distinguished success is our product innovations and relentless drive to stay customer focused. Rieke Office Interiors (ROI) of Elgin, Illinois announced today that The Globee Awards, organizers of worlds premier business awards programs and business ranking lists, has named Rieke Office Interiors, a winner in the 9th Annual 2021 CEO World Awards. These prestigious global awards recognize disruptive technologies and innovative solutions that are transforming consumer experiences everywhere. ROI won a Silver Award in the category of Company Innovation of the Year for its entry Creating the SafeSpace Product Line During the Pandemic. CEO World Awards celebrate the achievements of leaders, executives, and their management teams behind the years most outstanding initiatives and achievements. Chief Executive Officers, also known as CEOs lead the development of the organizations short- and long-term strategy. This annual awards program recognizes individuals and teams who set industry benchmarks for excellence. All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors, and government organizations worldwide and from every industry are eligible to participate. ROI is a company that has been designing and building custom workspaces and office furniture for over 25 years in the Chicagoland area. It offers turn-key commercial furniture solutions using smart design, positive customer service, and professional office furniture installation. We are proud to win the Globee and be recognized as an industry player that has been named a winner in this years CEO World Awards, says ROI President Melissa Kehl. Behind this distinguished success is our product innovations and relentless drive to stay customer focused. We believe this recognition from Globee Awards further validates our commitment to our customers. Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and their average scores and inputs determined the 2021 award winners. See the complete list of 2021 winners here: https://globeeawards.com/ceo-world-awards/winners/. CEO World Awards are an annual industry and peers recognition program honoring CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, innovators, and their management teams from organizations in every industry and of every size in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the USA, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean & Central, and South America, Middle East, and Africa. The Annual CEO World Awards is part of the SVUS Awards recognition program from Silicon Valley in the United States of America. The coveted annual CEO World Awards program encompasses the worlds best in leadership, innovation, organizational performance, new products and services, excellence studies, corporate social responsibility, and milestones from every major industry in the world. Organizations from all over the world are eligible to submit nominations including public and private, for-profit and non-profit, largest to smallest and new start-ups. 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, Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards, Disruptor Company Awards, Golden Bridge Awards, International Best in Business Awards, IT World Awards, Sales, Marketing, & Service Excellence Awards, and Women World Awards. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com. About Rieke Office Interiors: Rieke Office Interiors (ROI) has an impressive, state-of-the-art, 150,000 square foot, office furniture manufacturing facility in Elgin, Illinois. As a certified WBE business in its 27th year, ROI provides innovative products and services that are fully customizable, a unique capability that isnt found anywhere else in the office interior industry. This flexibility allows ROI to create a big impact for any budget, streamlining the project process to make each vision come to life. For more information, visit Rieke.com. Theres a long road ahead to recovery, said We Lift CEO Irell Warren, We Lift will continue to work with local government and hospital systems to provide relief to the people of Louisiana. Safr lends support as We Lift provides disaster evacuation services in south Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Ida. Partnered earlier this year to provide affordable, comprehensive on-demand wheelchair transportation service in rural areas, Safr Care supports non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers like We Lift with a technological foundation for their operations. We Lift offers non-emergency medical transportation including hospital discharges, nursing home residential relocation, disaster evacuation services, delivery/courier services, and transport to doctors appointments. Access to care is severely impacted during a natural disaster, making We Lifts services, always vital for the independence of elderly and disabled individuals, even more widely needed. Hurricane Idas landfall this August, on the 16-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, left tens of thousands of homes and businesses in south Louisiana without electricity. In some areas, this may be the case until mid-October. AccuWeather estimates hurricane Ida's economic impact reaching $95 billion, the 7th costliest hurricane since 2000. We Lift coordinated the evacuation of the Luling Living Center, of St. Charles Parish. Staff was relocated the day before Hurricane Ida to Kentwood, LA. The Luling Living Center was unfortunately destroyed, and clients were transferred to new nursing homes and staff released. It will take years to rebuild the nursing home and St. Charles Parish community. We Lift evacuated clients from their homes to hotels on the day of Hurricane Ida, in efforts to keep the elderly and disabled out of flood zones and connected to electricity. It is currently working with the Red Cross and FEMA to relocate clients across the gulf coast and coordinating transport for individuals returning home, to assess their homes and damage. We Lift is also working with Ochsner Health and New Orleans Veterans Affairs Department, servicing clients to their medical appointments during this recovery phase. Theres a long road ahead to recovery, said We Lift CEO Irell Warren, We Lift will continue to work with local government and hospital systems to provide relief to the people of Louisiana." Safr Care was created with vulnerable customers, such as women who have experienced a history of abuse, children, and older adults, in mind, stated Safrs CEO, Syed Gilani. Bolstering existing infrastructure with our software improves ease of use for transportation providers and quality of care for patients. Safr is proud to join We Lift in support of our most vulnerable communities. About We Lift Established in 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana, with the vision of providing on-demand access to individuals that require wheelchair transportation, We Lift is a NEMT Rideshare platform specializing in courier services and wheelchair transportation. We Lift wants to encourage wheelchair users to safely live outside of their homes and experience what life has to offer. For more information, please visit https://www.weliftrideshare.com. About Safr Care Safr Care is a healthcare technology platform focused on the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) market. The mission of SafrCARE is to help improve the healthcare transportation market while empowering women. Safr has been at the forefront of transportation technology since 2017. See https://gosafr.com/care/web; https://youtu.be/ZuSmZ7hv7vQ SEO.co (https://seo.co/), a premier SEO & digital marketing agency based in Seattle, Washington (https://seo.co/seattle/) is pleased to announce the opening of a new office location in Bentonville, Arkansas (https://seo.co/bentonville/). The move reflects the companys commitment toward expansion and growth, as it looks for new geographies with large expected population increases in the coming decade. As we have continued to expand our sales and operations teams, determined many of the growth areas in Northwest Arkansas, including Bentonville, Fayetteville and Fort Smith, fit our vision for the ideal client looking for more exposure online, says CEO, Nate Nead. We have been looking more heavily at the mid-west market, including locations that are growing and in need of expert assistance in the fields we operate, he says. The expansion to Northwest Arkansas means the company now has more direct access many of the large retail, wholesale and CPG players in Northwest Arkansas. SEO.co provides high quality search engine optimization, marketing, and content writing services to businesses throughout the United States. The company provides the tools necessary to effectively market their clients products and services online. Founded in 2010 as AudienceBloom, the company has expanded beyond its roots in content production and content marketing to include paid search management, website design and custom software development. Since its inception, the company grew rapidly, sold and is now continuing its growth path. We recognize the most important part of any SEO company is the people, Nead says. "Our team of SEO experts are capable of handling nearly ever facet of digital marketing from anchor text variation strategies, link velocity to technical SEO. Our results speak for themselves as we continue to service the SEO needs of dozens of Fortune 1000 companies, he says. About SEO.co SEO.co helps businesses in Bentonville, AR and beyond reach their highest potential online by providing the right mix of search marketing services. This includes effective keyword research, competitor monitoring, website optimization, social media presence expansion, link building, and more. The companys SEO services start with a complete and thorough website analysis, including a look at the competition. Next, the company builds strategic content and backlinks across the web based upon the initial and ongoing analysis, industry, and desired ranking. The company also tracks all rankings across multiple search engines so you can immediately see the results of our work. About DEV.co DEV.co is a sister company to SEO.co, providing custom website and software development services to middle-market companies. Want to add new features to your existing system? Our custom software development services let you add the perfect piece of software, at the right price. Our software engineers will work with you to design and develop any kind of application for your company, from a simple data collection form, to a complex web-based system. Our custom software development service at DEV.co (https://dev.co/) expertly engineers custom solutions to fit your business needs. Our software development team takes care of our customers, from design through implementation. Talk to an expert today about the custom software development service that fits your business. Jesus Is Love of Loves: a sweet story of faith and love. Jesus Is Love of Loves is the creation of published author Sherri Payne, a loving mother and grandmother who grew up on the family farm and has carried a love for farming ever since. Payne shares, This book is all about Jesus and his unconditional love and promises to you. Jesus is inside you and has been with you from the time you left heaven until you were born and, right now, while reading this book. Jesus is always with you forever and ever. Jesuss love for you never ends. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Sherri Paynes new book is a delightful opportunity to discuss God with young readers. Payne shares a charming story and illustrations she created that express her faith and devotion found in God. Consumers can purchase Jesus Is Love of Loves at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Jesus Is Love of Loves, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. Car insurance discounts are not that hard to obtain and they can help drivers save money on car insurance. Insurance companies are offering numerous types of discounts, but only a few can significantly lower the costs of insurance, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director IMC Car insurance companies are notorious for rewarding their customers with generous discounts that are offered for various reasons. These discounts can help drives keep their insurance costs under control and can encourage policyholders to become better drivers. The most important car insurance discounts are the following: Defensive driving discount. Drivers who manage to graduate from an approved defensive driving course will enjoy multiple benefits. The most important benefit is the 10% to 15% discount offered by the insurance companies. Also, drivers will recap their theoretical knowledge about driving and will learn more about the traffic obstacles, how to identify them and how to avoid them. Drivers who have traffic violations can remove points or dismiss a ticket from the driving record. This will help drivers avoid paying traffic fines and prevent premiums from increasing upon the next renewal. Low-mileage discount. Spending less time behind the wheel can help drivers save money on car insurance. Drivers who are driving fewer miles are less likely to get into car accidents, less likely to have their cars vandalized, and less likely to get their cars stolen. For these reasons, insurers are offering a low-mileage discount to those drivers who manage to drive fewer miles in a year than a certain limit. Good driver discount. One of the best methods used to lower the car insurance rates it to drive safely. Usually, this discount is earned after 5 years of safe driving without any accidents or other traffic violations. Good student discount. It is a well-known fact that students pay a higher price for car insurance due to their young age. Students who manage to obtain good grades at school can earn a good student discount. In order to qualify for this discount, students must provide proof to their insurers that they have at least a 3.0 GPA. 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 name insurance companies, etc. Were thrilled to welcome Travis as a managing partner. His expertise will be invaluable to us as we continue to bring on more clients, refine our product, and help staffing agencies grow faster. - David Folwell, president and founder of Staffing Referrals Staffing Referrals, the leading automated referral management (ARM) platform, announces the appointment of Travis Arnold, co-founder of Herefish by Bullhorn, as a managing partner. A thought leader in his field, Arnold will be instrumental in driving success for the Staffing Referrals platform, which has already generated thousands of placements for fast-growth staffing agencies. Travis Arnold, a staffing technology veteran and SaaS founder, brings nearly 15 years of experience in marketing, design, and product leadership to the Staffing Referrals team. Prior to joining Staffing Referrals, Arnold co-founded the automation platform Herefish, which was acquired by Bullhorn in 2020, and served as the head of marketing at Sendouts, which was acquired by Bullhorn in 2012. Arnold is also a charter member of the Agile Marketing Manifesto. "Referrals have been a long-overlooked and interesting problem in the staffing space," says Arnold. "Most firms have a referral program in place, but few unlock the full potential and nearly all of them are manual or based on a spreadsheet. This is why I'm excited to work with the Staffing Referrals team and help push the product and brand to the next level." David Folwell, president and founder of Staffing Referrals, says, Were thrilled to welcome Travis as a managing partner. His expertise will be invaluable to us as we continue to bring on more clients, refine our product, and help staffing agencies grow faster. About Staffing Referrals As the worlds first Automated Referral Management (ARM) platform, Staffing Referrals helps agencies reduce sourcing costs through recruiting automation. Founded in 2017 by a team with extensive expertise in staffing and software, Staffing Referrals is an enterprise solution that is changing the way staffing agencies source talent. Staffing Referrals helps thousands of staffing professionals extend their reach and is integrated with leading applicant tracking systems (ATS). Staffing Referrals is based in Denver and is privately held. To learn more about Staffing Referrals, visit https://staffingreferrals.com/. Wealth-X, the leader in applied wealth intelligence, has announced several significant expansions made to the companys proprietary global database today, adding more than 735,000 new profiles and enhancing more than 420,000 existing profiles on wealthy individuals around the world with additional data. In an effort led by Wealth-Xs Data Strategy team, these new data assets uncover individuals who are very high net worth (VHNW, $5 - $30 million), ultra high net worth (UHNW, $30 million+) or who are Potentially Wealthy and currently being researched further to confirm their appropriate wealth tier. Public Company Insider Shareholders Expansion Insider shareholders are directors or major shareholders of publicly listed companies who are required to disclose the number of shares they own in those companies and any transactions in those companies stock to regulators. This refresh created nearly 27,000 new profiles on wealthy individuals, including 4,537 new VHNW profiles, 4,440 new UHNW profiles, and 18,009 new Potentially Wealthy profiles. This update enhanced more than 11,500 pre-existing profiles with additional shareholdings added to their assets, which resulted in the promotion of more than 1,200 Potentially Wealthy profiles to VHNW or UHNW. The top countries & regions covered by this expansion were: United States: 9,559 new profiles APAC: 8,351 new profiles Europe: 4,055 new profiles Canada: 2,302 new profiles India: 1,753 new profiles Middle East: 467 new profiles New profiles include the basic demographic information like date of birth, residence and bio, as well as business contact information, career history and board positions, one or more valued public company shareholdings, and cash proceeds from any declared insider transactions. The Wealth-X Data Strategy team examined relationships between these new records and identified around 8,500 family relationship entries to 4,200 profiles using a relationship scoring algorithm. In addition, the team identified 720,000 Known Associate relationships entries to 92,000 dossiers using similar algorithm. Private Company Shareholders Expansion Wealth-X reviewed financial disclosures and ownership records for private companies across the globe and identified their ultimate beneficial owners estimated value of their private company ownership stakes. As a result, over 700,000 new Wealth-X profiles were created, including 61,816 new UHNW profiles, 207,090 new VHNW profiles, and 440,203 new Potentially Wealthy profiles. In total, over 760,000 private company stakes worth a total of US$1.97 trillion were added to the new profiles valuations. New profiles were also filled out with the following data points: Full Name, Date of Birth, Gender, Alternative Names, Residence, Hometown, Business Contact Address & Phone Number, Education History. Wealth-X also updated the values of private company stakes in more than 215,000 previously existing profiles. In total, private holdings in previously existing profiles worth $407 billion were updated. The updates resulted in 3,513 previously existing profiles being upgraded to the UHNW wealth category and 5,602 previously existing profiles being upgraded to the VHNW wealth category. Wherever possible, other data points including Date of Birth, Gender, Alternative Names, Residence, Hometown, Business Contact Address & Phone Number and Education History were updated in these 215,491 profiles to make them more complete. BoardEx LinkedIn Profiles Leveraging BoardExs dataset, 102,231 new LinkedIn profile URLs were added to pre-existing profiles matched to Wealth-X database records WealthEngine Residential Real Estate Leveraging WealthEngines US residential real estate data, the Wealth-X Data Strategy team identified and added 281,000 additional real estate properties worth $346.7 billion to 92,400 pre-existing Wealth-X profiles Leveraging WealthEngines database, more than 100,000 profiles were updated with email addresses. For more information on Wealth-X and how to gain access, please visit: https://www.wealthx.com/solutions/database-access/ About Wealth-X The global leader in wealth information and insight, Wealth-X partners with prestige brands across the financial services, luxury, nonprofit and higher-education industries to fuel strategic decision-making in sales, marketing and compliance. Wealth-X has developed the worlds largest collection of records on wealthy individuals and produces unparalleled data analysis to help organizations uncover, understand, and engage their target audience, as well as mitigate risk. Founded in 2010, with staff across North America, Europe and Asia, Wealth-X provides unique data, analysis, and counsel to a growing roster of over 500 clients worldwide. About Euromoney People Intelligence Euromoney People Intelligence, a Pillar of Euromoney PLC, provides organizations with unique data intelligence that connects them with the individuals who will have the greatest impact on their goals. Euromoney People Intelligence is comprised of three unique brands: BoardEx, Relationship Science, WealthEngine, and Wealth-X. We empower our clients to build greater relationships, obtain and manage their best talent and reduce commercial risk. Contemporary young activists offer first-person accounts of their trials and triumphs in I, Witness, a new middle-grade series from Norton Young Readers. Scheduled to debut on October 5 with two books, the series is coedited by author and publisher Dave Eggers; Amanda Uhle, publisher of McSweeneys; writer and editor Zoe Ruiz; and Zainab Nasrati, vice chairperson for Ordsklv, a Danish nonprofit writing website and publishing house. The inaugural I, Witness titlesAccused: My Story of Injustice by Adama Bah and Hurricane: My Story of Resilience by Salvador Gomez-Colonchronicle very different challenges encountered and conquered by two intrepid teens. Bah, who as a child moved from Conakry, Guinea, to Harlem, writes about being falsely identified as a terrorist in the wake of 9/11, when discrimination against Muslim Americans escalated precipitously. In his book, Gomez-Colon documents the devastation that 2017s Hurricane Maria wreaked on his native Puerto Rico when he was 15, and the humanitarian initiative he undertook in the cataclysmic storms aftermath. The series third volume, due in spring 2022, is Courage: My Story of Persecution by Freshta Tori Jan, a young woman from an ethnic minority in Afghanistan whose persecution by the Taliban inspired her to become a community activist. The cover of her book is revealed here for the first time. The majority of I, Witness releases will be penned by participants in the writing program at the International Congress of Youth Voices, an organization cofounded by Eggers and Uhle in 2015 to spotlight the words and work of teenage activists. The Congress hosted summit meetings attended by student delegates (nominated by nonprofit organizations around the world) in San Francisco in 2018 and San Juan in 2019. Bearing Witness Eggers explained that his 11-year tenure teaching a San Francisco high-school class called The Best American Nonrequired Reading helped plant a seed for the I, Witness series. In the class, we read a wide smattering of contemporary literature, from comics to journalism to poetry, and then put together the eponymous compilation, he said. The students tastes were varied, but they were uniformly electrified by first-person accounts of recent social and political upheaval. Watching the reaction of his students to Adama Bahs story underscored that fact for Eggers. Her account of her wrongful arrest and incarceration on suspicion of terrorism hit them like a thunderclap, he said. Most of the students were very young when 9/11 occurred, so Adamas story made the ensuing persecution of Muslim Americans incredibly vivid to them. What had been abstract became fully real, and provoked righteous outrage. The pervasive post-9/11 discrimination that Bah felt culminated in March 2005, at the age of 16, when she and her father were arrested by FBI agents, who suspected her of being a potential suicide bomber. She initially relayed her harrowing ordeal and its impact on her life in a 2016 film created by American Documentary, a nonprofit media arts organization, which caught Eggerss interest. When he asked Bah (who currently works in New York City as an advocate for immigration reform) if she was interested in writing a book, she recalled, I didnt feel ready to do that, but changed her mind when Eggers later proposed that she share her story as an I, Witness book. Bah soon discovered that recreating her teenage trauma was itself traumatic. I realized that no one had ever told me how to heal, they just said things would get better, she said. I thought that in order to heal I had to forget. As I wrote, I began to remember things that I thought I had forgotten. It was kind of like watching a movie rewindingI saw parts of my story that I didnt remember seeing before. Accused was very painful to write, and I almost hit rock bottom. But it was very important to me not to show my two young children those emotions. They dont know my story yet. Jumping In to Help Soon after Hurricane Maria knocked out Puerto Rican communities access to clean water and electricity, Salvador Gomez-Colon decided to take action to supplement the efforts of nongovernmental organizations and larger global philanthropic groups. He launched a crowd-funding campaign called Light and Hope for Puerto Rico, which raised more than $100,000 and provided solar lamps and hand-operated washing machines to households in need. What began as a humanitarian grassroots initiative expanded beyond my expectations after it was picked up by major media, he said. Eggers and Uhle tapped Gomez-Colon to be a delegate at the 2018 International Congress of Youth Voices summit in San Juan, and he was subsequently selected to write one of the debut I, Witness titles. Now a first-year student at Yale, Gomez-Colon expressed hope that Hurricane convinces kids to channel negative experiences to use them for positive purposes, and to never doubt your ability to create positive change no matter how young you are. My message is to do the best you can to act on your passions as early as possibleeven at age 10. The author also emphasized the importance of grasping the urgency of climate changes impact on individuals across the globe. I hope readers understand that climate change affects us alland appreciate that Puerto Rico, though it sometimes does not get much attention in the media or in conversation, is not far from the rest of America in terms of its location or ideals. As a young reader, I would have loved to read a book like Hurricane. Uhle was pleased that Norton Young Readers eagerly embraced the I, Witness series when agent Steve Malk proposed the project to publishing director Simon Boughton. I knew that Norton would bring to the series exactly what we hoped for, by celebrating and honoring the unique perspectives of young people who are writing their own stories that readers can really see themselves in, she said. Similarly, Eggers praised the appeal of the books accessible and identifiable narratives. Young readers are drawn to stories told by people like themselves, born into a similar era, speaking with a familiar voice, he noted. So Adama and Salvadors viewpoints bring immediacy to recent historical events. After reading Salvadors story, a 13-year-old told me it was as if their best friend lived through it, and was telling it to them, face to face. It helps that Salvador and Adama are wonderfully candid, vulnerable, and brilliant at remembering the most poignant and revealing details. I, Witness: Accused: My Story of Injustice by Adama Bah. Norton Young Readers, $16.95 Oct. 5 ISBN 978-1-3240-1663-2 I, Witness: My Story of Resilience by Salvador Gomez-Colon. Norton Young Readers, $16.95 Oct. 5 ISBN 978-1-3240-1665-6 This week, two authors discover their similar taste in glasses; slime and culture are celebrated; a debut author shows off his drawing skills; and a beloved author takes to the virtual road on tour. Coincidentally Cyberpunk On September 21, Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston hosted a virtual launch event for Battle Dragons: City of Thieves (Scholastic Press) featuring Alex London (r.) in conversation with Kwame Mbalia (l.) (Last Gate of the Emperor, Scholastic Press). The duo discussed how the protagonists in their respective books would interact with one another, whether dragons or middle school are rougher, and more. Both authors coincidentally purchased the same cyberpunk rave glasses from Etsy and wore them at the event for a happy surprise. Super Slime Symposium During an Instagram Live event on September 8 with Jhoanna Belfer (top), owner of Bel Canto Books in Long Beach, Calif., Mae Respicio (bottom) talked about her latest middle grade novel, How to Win A Slime War (Random House). The two had a lively discussion about the inspiration for Respicios new book, as well as how meaningful it is for both of them to be Filipina American women pursuing their passions within the literary community. Distant Drawing Middle grade author Stephan Pastis celebrated the launch of his first graphic novel, Trubble Town (Simon & Schuster), about a girl discovering the charms of the quirky town she lives in, with an in-person, outdoor event hosted by Copperfields in Petaluma, Calif. Pastis took questions from the audience and did drawing demonstrations for the students. On the Rhodes Author Jewell Parker Rhodes is currently in the midst of her virtual tour for her new middle grade novel Paradise on Fire (Little, Brown). Rhodes (r.) has participated in events with Elliot Bay Book Company in partnership with the NW African American Museum (in conversation with Brandy Colbert (l.), author of Black Birds In the Sky, Balzer + Bray), Politics and Prose (in conversation with Jason Reynolds, author of Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism and You, Little, Brown), Bookshop Santa Cruz (in conversation with Samira Ahmed, author of Amira & Hamza: The War to Save the Worlds, Little, Brown), Left Bank Books, and Curious Iguana. In a potentially significant development, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) this week presented a wide-ranging set of questions to the Big Five publishers regarding their practices in the library e-book market. In their letter to the publishers the lawmakers reference the exorbitant costs and burdensome restrictions that they contend are draining resources from many local libraries, and forcing [libraries] to make difficult choices to try and provide a consistent level of service to their communities. E-books play a critical role in ensuring that libraries can fulfill their mission of providing broad and equitable access to information for all Americans, and it is imperative that libraries can continue their traditional lending functions as technology advances, the letter states. The letter requests responses from each of the publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) by October 7. The questions seek a wide range of information not only on the publishers digital library practices, but also on the economics of the market. Among the questions, for example, lawmakers want to know the total revenue from e-book licenses from 2018 to 2020 as well as profit margins for each publishers top 100 sellers in both print and digital, from library sales and from the consumer market. The letter also asks for information about any legal actions the publishers have taken since 2016, including actions involving: Multiple checkouts of digital texts Interlibrary loan Controlled digital lending Libraries making copies of owned works to lend digitally on a one-for-one basis Schools making available electronic copies of books they physically own to students during the pandemic E-reserves The letter comes after a decade of tension and an especially fraught past two years in the digital library market, highlighted by Macmillan's controversial (and since abandoned) experiment to embargo new release e-book titles to libraries. Library e-books have become increasingly important, meanwhile, in the wake of the pandemic. Currently, a group of major publishers is suing the Internet Archive over its program to scan print copies of library books and to lend the scans in lieu of print under an untested legal theory known as controlled digital lending. In addition, two states, Maryland and New York, have recently passed laws requiring that publishers who make e-books available to consumers in the state must also make those works available to libraries on "reasonable" terms. The Association of American Publishers claims the laws run afoul of federal copyright law and are unconstitutional. Simon & Schuster has announced a new series of virtual author events, called AuthorFest, intended to "provide live author programming to communities and readers in the U.S. and Canada not traditionally part of an-in person author tour." S&S will partner with book festivals, literary venues, and other author lecture series on the series. The first event, to be held on October 14 at 7:00 p.m. ET, will feature the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, who will discuss their new book, Peril. Mindy Marques, v-p and executive editor at S&S and the former executive editor of the Miami Herald, will moderate the conversation. Currently, S&S plans to hold three AuthorFest events per year, one each in the fall, spring, and summer publishing seasons. AuthorFest event partners will be asked to set up their own registration pages, with the option to enroll attendees through their established ticketing systems. S&S will handle all technical matters for the event, in addition to providing partners with a Zoom link for attendee access. Partners will be asked to handle book sales through their preferred bookselling partner. While we love an in-person book festival, we recognize that the world has shifted and there is a struggle to develop meaningful programming in real time," Holly Lange, executive director of the Mississippi Book Festival, said in a statement. "Simon & Schusters AuthorFest is an opportunity for book lovers to meet their favorite authors and discover new ones from the safety and comfort of their own worlds." The new series is part of S&S's initiative to work more closely with book festivals. A newly-launched Book Festival Resource Page is intended to help book festivals and lecture series find authors relevant to their regions and interests more easily, in addition to requesting appearances. Book festivals play an important and vital role in celebrating book culture and promoting literacy," Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of S&S, said in a statement. "We are delighted that through AuthorFest we have found a way to partner with festivals that will enable them to provide their communities with world-class author events as a supplement to their regularly scheduled in-person and virtual programming." WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Purdue University Global and Cincinnati-based Lunken Flight Training Center have formed a partnership to address the projected global and regional demand for aviation professionals over the next 20 years. We are pleased to join forces with an established flight training center like Lunken to bolster our popular professional flight program, said Sara Sander, Purdue Global vice president and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the School of Education. Cincinnati is a major Midwest aviation hub and will provide flexibility and opportunities for many of our students. According to Jay Schmalfuss, owner of Lunken Flight Training Center, Cincinnati is home to many corporate flight departments, including Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Cintas and General Electric. Additionally, Amazon has undergone a huge expansion to its air hub at nearby Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, so a growing demand for professional pilots in the area is anticipated. Lunken Flight Training Center is excited to announce its affiliation with Purdue University Global, Schmalfuss said. Cincinnati is located within 600 miles of over half the population of the U.S., which makes Purdue Global and Lunken Flight Training Center the perfect choice to launch an aviation career. Purdue Globals professional flight degree program is a collaboration between Purdue Global and Purdue Universitys School of Aviation and Transportation Technology announced in June 2019. It combines the quality of Purdues legendary aviation program spanning more than six decades with the flexibility and affordability that Purdue Global offers. Students accepted into the program will complete their Bachelor of Science degree courses online through Purdue Global, which includes aviation and general education classes, while completing professional flight training at Lunken Flight Training Center or one of several other Purdue Global affiliates across the country. During flight training, students will work toward earning certificates and ratings in instrument, commercial, multi-engine and certified flight instructor. As students progress in their flight training to becoming certified flight instructors, they will have the foundation necessary to serve as flight instructors and accrue additional flight experience required by airlines and corporate flight departments to get hired as professional pilots. Upon reaching certified flight instructor status, students enrolled in the program can begin teaching others and earn compensation for their work, in addition to flight hours, which can help with education costs and living expenses. Purdues School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, one of six departments and schools in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, is recognized worldwide as a leader in aviation education and provides its expertise in curriculum development, faculty hiring and accreditation by the Aviation Accreditation Board International. As U.S. airline pilots approach the federally mandated retirement age of 65, combined with many pilots taking early retirement during the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry faces a shortage of pilots in the coming years. The Purdue Global program is designed to get students flying immediately, shortening the timeline to becoming a professional pilot in order to meet the growing demand. About Purdue University Global Purdue University Global delivers personalized online education tailored to the unique needs of adults who have work or life experience beyond the classroom, enabling them to develop essential academic and professional skills with the support and flexibility they need to achieve their career goals. It offers personalized paths for students to earn an associate, bachelors, masters or doctoral degree, based on their work experience, desired pace, military service, previous college credits and other considerations no matter where they are in their life journey. Purdue Global is a nonprofit, public university accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. It is affiliated with Purdue Universitys flagship institution, a highly ranked public research university located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue University also operates regional campuses in Fort Wayne and Northwest Indiana, as well as serving science, engineering and technology students at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. For more information, visit purdueglobal.edu. About Lunken Flight Training Center LFTC has been Cincinnatis choice for flight training since 2006, offering programs from private pilot to professional pilot. It is located at Cincinnatis historic Lunken Airport, which offers convenient access to Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana. With a fleet of modern aircraft and industry veterans, Lunken has trained hundreds of flight students, many of whom have gone on to fly for airlines and in business aviation. Students receive training they can trust with safety top of mind. The school is FAA approved with VA approval pending and offers in-house training programs and degrees through its university affiliation with Purdue University Global. For more information, visit flylftc.com. Media Contact, Purdue Global: Tom Schott, 765-427-1721, tschott@purdue.edu Sources: Sara Sander Jay Schmalfuss GAME, SET, MATCH: AEW DYNAMITE GRAND SLAM REPORT By Cory Strode on 2021-09-22 22:01:00 It's Wednesday and we're at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City and it's time for AEW Grand Slam, it's Dynamite! Our commentary team is Excalibur, Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone. Kenny Omega (AEW Champion) vs Bryan Danielson Non Title match Our first match with the American Dragon (yep, he has that nickname back) on AEW to kick off the show. Don Callis is with Omega. Bryan has the biggest smile on his face I have seen in ages and Omega has his game face on. The crowd is deafening and they take their time to get started. They lock up to the ropes and Kenny appears to break clean, but gives Bryan a chop and Bryan slowly brushes it off. Nice start to set the stage. The next time they go to the ropes, Bryan breaks clean and then kicks Omega as payback. The structure of the match is that they engage, and when one of them gets an advantage they break apart and pause. Bryan is working mat wrestling and Omega is going more for kicks and leaping power moves. They then turn to trading chops and kicks in the corner. After they go to the outside, Bryan starts working on Omega's shoulder to prep for the LeBell lock. Omega takes control and chops Bryan as well as other strikes, and the pace of the fight is slowly picking up. Feels a lot like one of Omega's New Japan matches, with a slow build through the match. Each of them get a good, long time of being in charge, two to three minutes each. Bryan is able to lock of Cattle Mutilation, which he hasn't used in ages. They also go to picture in picture during the match, which I have never seen in an opening match, but they are letting this one take its time. Omega gets to beat down Bryan during the commercial. When they go big screen again, Bryan is out on his feet and Omega gets a two count. Omega is able to cut off Bryan's comeback this time and starts attacking Bryan's neck with snap dragon suplexes and kicks. Bryan's second comeback is more successful and he is able to take down Omega with kicks and strikes and gets a German suplex and holds it for a two count. Omega hits an avalanche Dragon Suplex from the top rope and Omega gets a two count. Bryan's is able to twist around and land on his side, but it still looked brutal. Bryan escapes a One Winged Angel with a Hurricanrana and gets a two count. We now are in the part fo the match where they each hit a huge move and get a two count. Bryan then chops down Omega with chops and kicks again. Omega is able to stop the LeBell lock as we get a one minute warning for the 30 minute time limit and we get the bell as they are trading blows. We have a 30 minute time limit draw. The Elite show and pulls Bryan off of Omega, as he was still trying to get the Labell lock on. After they check on Omega, they give Bryan a kick, drawing out Christian Cage and Jurassic Express to drive the Elite off. After the commercial, Punk comes to the ring and says he's glad he doesn't have to follow that. Punk says he tried to come to the ring mad but the crowd cheered him up. He then talks about what Team Taz did last week, and them trying to put him thought a table, it made him mad, but when he hears his music, he comes out and it's a love fest. He says then he gets mad become no one will take this from him again. He then says Team Taz should have taken him out. He says Team Tax must have slept on the legend of CM Punk and Friday on Rampage, Powerhouse Hobbs will Go To Sleep. A transition promo from Gee I am glad to be back to a feud based on an issue other than just wanting to have a good match, and it wasn't a blow the roof off promo, but the crowd loved it. MJF w/Wardlow vs Brian Pillman Jr. w/Julia Hart MJF offers a handshake and Pillman responds with a takedown. Pillman starts out hot, brawling and just beating the tar out of MJF. MJF slaps Pillman and starts yelling at him, but Pillman slaps back and drops MJF. I like that Pillman doesn't want to WRESTLE and instead is just wanting to beat the crap out of MJF. MJF turns the tide and is able to stomp down Pillman, and then MJF keeps him on the mat in a arm bar. MJF takes over as we go to picture in picture. When we go back to the big screen, Pillman is able to reverse and get chops in the corner. He then gets a arm drag from the top, but the punishment MJF has put on his arm, starts to weaken him. Pillman slams MJF's head into the turnbuckle, get a spinning power slam for a two count. MJF goes outside the ring and pulls Hart in front of himself to stop Pillman. As MJF is yelling at Hart, Pillman gets a kick from the ring. They return to the ring, and MJF is able to catch Pillman and lock him in the Salt fo the Earth and makes Pillman tap out. Your winner: MJF Pillman got in good offense, but MJF had to go over as one of the biggest heels. He outsmarted Pillman, and their match was even up until then. A good match where MJF gets to put their feud behind him. In the back, Alex asks Jericho and Jake Hager about the challenge from The Men Of The Year. Hager brings back the Fat Faced Dips*** chant. Jericho says if Dan Patrick gets involved he will bite off his nose like Haku did in Japan and spit it into the 5th row. Quick little promo to set up their match and Jericho is in full fledged babyface mode on the mic now. Back in the ring, the lights go out. They come back on and Malaki Black has arrived. Cody has returned with a new American Flag style costume with Arn Anderson and his Denny's Menu (with Grand Slams on it) and Brandi Rhodes Cody Rhodes vs Malaki Black They start by going for each other's legs to take them down, and then go to strikes. Cody goes outside the ring and Black sits in the middle of the ring. Brandi joins him, flips him off and yells $#@k You before Cody comes in, and she bails. Cody is able to kick Black out of the ring and the crowd boos. When Cody leaps and gets nailed by Black outside the ring, the crowd cheers. Black keeps control through the commercials on the small screen. When we come back, Black nails the spinning kick and Cody drops out of the ring. Black tried to bring Cody back in the ring, but he has to go back into the ring to break the count. Cody rolls in to take a cover and a two count. Cody goes after Black's leg and even gets a Dragon Screw into the ropes. The crowd is NOT liking Cody's being in charge and the announcers are trying to explain the Cody is getting revenge for his whole family. When Black tosses Cody, the crowd cheers. The crowd reaction is surprising me. Cody gets a cutter and a crossroads and a two count. Arn gets on the apron after Black kicks out. Arn slips off the apron and when he gets up, Cody runs into him. Cody drops Black with a pump kick and then goes to check on Arn who tells him to get into the ring. Cody works over Black in the corner. When the ref tries to pull Cody off at the five count, Cody punches the ref. When the Ref isn't looking, Black sprays black mist into Cody's face and gets the three count. Your winner: Malaki Black A tough brawl of a match, but it looks like the attempt to make Black a truly hated heel has backfired, and the crowd in New York loves him. Sammy Guevara and Miro cuts promos on each other, and Sammy actually says that attacking someone after a match just isn't right. Bwa-ha-ha! FTR w/Tully Blanchard vs Sting and Darby Allin Darby gets the start, but Sting tags in after FTR start to double team. He waits until Cash leaves the ring so that it's just Dax and Sting. But FTR jump back into to try a double team quickly so that Sting can body slam each of them a couple of times. Dax gets in some offense before Sting is able to hit him with a clothesline, and because he's taken so much damage, Sting drops face first onto Dax's nether regions. Darby is tagged in to clean house which ends when he tries a coffin drop onto FTR outside the ring. They toss him into the apron, and go to the small screen for Darby to get a beatin'. FTR is using more heelish tactics like double teaming, assisting each other when the ref isn't looking and the like. Back on the big screen, Darby is trying to fight his way out of FTR's corner, and after a few tries, he tags in Sting for him to clean house. After a two count, Cash is able to knock Sting down, and drag Darby into the ring. Sting is able to fight back, Darby gets out of the ring, and Sting hits the cross body off the turnbuckle for a two count. Much faster pace in this match than any of the other matches tonight. Dax gets a two count on Sting and he tries to follow up with a tombstone. Sting escapes and gets in a couple of splashes, and while Sting and the Ref are disabled, Tully helps wedge a chair in the corner. And when they bait Sting into it, Sting avoid it and Dax goes into it instead. Tully gets a punch from Sting as well. Sting locks Dax into the Scorpion Death Lock, and Cash is pulling Dax toward the ropes. Darby hits a coffin drop on Cash, and Dax has to tap to Sting. Your winners; Sting and Darby Allin A fun, fast paced match where the heroes overcame cheating by the bad guys, and Tully takes a punch to the head from Sting. Crowd pleaser of a match. We get a recap of Britt Baker and Ruby Soho's promo war from Rampage last week. Before the main event, we get a rundown of Friday's Rampage and some of next week's show. Britt Baker (AEW Women's Champion) vs Ruby Soho Baker comes out with Jaime Hayter and Rebel. They lock up and trade holds and take downs. The announcers are positioning this as Ruby bringing Baker into the business and one of Baker's trainers, making it a teacher taking on the student. When the fight goes to the floor, Ruby takes down Hayter and Rebel, and Baker uses it as a distraction to take control as we go picture in picture. That means every single match has gone through commercials. Look for us to talk about this on the post show Party, if you are a subscriber. And if you aren't, then become one! Geez, I can't be the only one doing the hard sell for subscriptions, am I? Lots of heel work by Baker on the small screen. Ruby gets her comeback when we go back to full screen. They trade kicks and strikes until Baker drops her and goes for a lockjaw, and Ruby escapes. Baker gets a sling blade and gets her glove from Rebel. She goes for the stomp and Ruby is able to grab the foot and goes at Baker's legs. She hits a catapult, and enzuigiri, and then climbs to the top, nailing a senton and covering Baker for a two count. Baker is able to get up and hit a neck breaker and covers for two. They battle in the corner and flight to the top turnbuckle. Baker gets a avalanche air raid crash for a two count. Baker then drops Ruby on the steel steps. Ruby crawls into the ring to take a stomp and a two count from Baker. Ruby gets a two count rollup while Baker complains to the ref. Ruby hits the No Future kick on Baker. Rebel gets up on the rope and Ruby takes her out. While the ref is with Rebel, Hayter drops Ruby's head on the top rope, and Baker is able to get the lockjaw and Ruby has to tap out. Your winner and still champion : Britt Baker If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here! Nova has closed an exclusive, multi-year deal with NBCUniversal Global Distribution for the first run pay window rights for NBCUniversals films and TV series. Feature films that will premiere exclusively on Nova Cinema channels through the deal include: F9: The Fast Saga, as well as all eight previous movies in the Fast & Furious franchise; dramas such as Let Him Go, starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane; Every Breath You Take, with Casey Affleck; and Archive with Theo James. Additionally, the deal secures many of NBCUniversals family and children's movies such as the DreamWorks Animation films The Boss Baby: Family Business and The Croods: A New Age. Other popular films from NBCUniversals library include Jurassic Park, Penguins of Madagascar and Over the Hedge, along with Milk and Brokeback Mountain. Through this agreement, Nova has also secured a selection of first window TV series, such as The Thing About Pam, starring Renee Zellweger in her broadcast television debut; Fires, featuring Sam Worthington, Sullivan Stapleton, Miranda Otto and Anna Torv; The Undeclared War, starring Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg; and the upcoming dramas La Brea and Ordinary Joe. Belinda Menendez, president & CRO, global distribution and international, NBCUniversal, said: Nova is a valued partner for us, so were delighted that so many of our marquee films and upcoming TV series will debut on their channels in Greece and in Cyprus as part of this deal. Added Kiki Silvestriadou, CEO of Nova Media: We are very happy that we have reached the agreement with NBCUniversal Global Distribution as it will enrich our premium content even further by offering some of the best films and series available to our subscribers. The deal will serve our goal of delivering the most diverse and high-quality content via our four Novacinema channels. As well opening new CDN points in the capitals of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Yerevan and Baku, the company has launched an extra CDN cluster in Kazan. G-Core Labs solution offers the fastest content delivery in the CIS market, according to Citrix, an independent CDN productivity monitoring analytical system.The companys leadership by content delivery rate in Russia comes from the launch of the 19th CDN node with a new point of presence in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. After the launch of a new location, the average response time is decreased to 15 ms, according to independent analytical system Citrix. The companys global CDN supports all necessary protocols: HTTP/2, IPv6, TLS 1.3, HLS and provides system tuning agility, including advanced caching options. A redirect to HTTPS, flexible access policies, free Lets Encrypt certificates and access by key options are at the very core of the content security.In 2021, we bolstered our CIS infrastructure. The launch of three new locations allowed us to set new content delivery rate records in the region among local and international providers, commented Sam Davis, vice president of products at G-Core Labs. M inimising delays with CDN propels online business development, especially in areas requiring peak speed under high loads. The fast content delivery is essentially important for any online business. Speeding up the website fuels conversion and preloading the content relieves the clients own infrastructure.Overall, G-Cores CDN accounts for over 120 points of presence in over 100 cities worldwide. The global network architecture is designed by high-load system experts to withstand website traffic surges. The overall network capacity exceeds 75 Tbps. Starting this year, the global network of G-Core Labs also spans Armenia. The company launched a CDN location in its capital, Yerevan. The data center allows the company to deliver content with delays of about 5 ms, which is 5 times faster than the network of the fastest competitors. In 2021 G-Core Labs also launched its first location in Azerbaijan. The point of presence in Baku is said to be showing good results already with the average response time a record of 25 ms for the region. G-Core Labs also has the short-term plan of launching a location in Uzbekistan, expanding networking capacities in existing locations to offer its clients a competitive advantage in the content delivery rate all over the world. The 50:50 J/V, which is subject to regulatory approval, will see the two companies use their extensive expertise in infrastructure investment and development. Having operated Unitymedia for a decade, Liberty Global has extensive experience of the German market , including working closely with municipalities and regional authorities in Germany as its Unitymedia subsidiary expanded its network in the country. This reached 13 million homes passed and 7.2 million customers by the time of its sale to Vodafone in 2019.The J/V will take a modular approach, with the first phase targeting a small number of municipalities in Germany. If specifically defined success criteria are met during the first phase, it will open up further investment opportunities for the joint venture.Liberty Networks Germany offers an exciting opportunity to leverage our expertise in deploying critical broadband infrastructure in a market we know very well, explained Liberty Global Connectivity Investments managing director Robert Dunn. Were also excited by the attractive returns offered by greenfield fibre network deployment in a country where millions of homes dont yet have access to fast and reliable broadband. We look forward to working in partnership with InfraVia as we take a controlled approach to the opportunity as we move forward. InfraVia Capital partner Bruno Candes added: We are excited to be working with Liberty Global to explore this opportunity in Germany, seizing on the ever-increasing data usage and the acceleration of work from home patterns. We look forward to leveraging the investment capacity of our fifth infrastructure fund and our leading expertise in digital infrastructure investments during this project. On Tuesday, September 14th, the few California voters who had not already cast ballots by mail went in person to the polls to vote on the fate of Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom. The results, with around 85% of the vote counted are 63.4% against the recall and 36.6% in favor. About France and its submarines: Australia's decision to cancel a $60 billion contract to buy them and purchase American nuclear subs instead had to hurt. In response, France's foreign minister called the U.S.-backed move a "stab in the back," and President Emmanuel Macron recalled his ambassadors from both Washington and Canberra. The backstory should take precedence over the drama flowing from the rift between America and its oldest ally. It centers on a growing alarm at Chinese aggression in the Pacific and how seriously the U.S. and its Pacific allies are taking it. Australia's Defense minister denied charges that the United States and Australia schemed in secret to cut France out of the sale. He said his government had been "frank, open and honest" with France about its concerns -- also that the work was overbudget and behind schedule. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insists that U.S. officials had also spoken with the French about this before it was announced. Any diplomatic failure aside, the harsh reality is that American submarines are the superior machine for patrolling the Pacific. Nuclear-powered subs can stay underwater longer and at high speeds. France's diesel boats need to surface periodically. What about President Joe Biden's predecessor? Former President Donald Trump was, in many ways, a gift to the Chinese. He did ban U.S. investment in Chinese companies tied to China's military or surveillance, a policy Biden has largely continued. But much of his confrontation with China took the form of verbiage. Chinese elites saw him accelerating what they considered America's decline. They considered Trump "ignorant, erratic and tiresome," according to The Economist. They liked that he wouldn't condemn Chinese repression and that he opposed military action abroad. It must have also pleased them that Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The trade deal was designed to help its members -- which included Canada, Japan and Australia -- compete with China. America's exit from the TPP helped China advance its economic domination of Southeast Asia. Biden has vowed to engage in "extreme competition." China is plowing huge amounts of government money into building a massive semiconductor industry. Computer chips are the brains that run airplanes, mobile phones and cars. You can't have a modern economy without them, and a semiconductor shortage is hobbling American manufacturing. The U.S. is joining with Japan, India and Australia in developing their own semiconductor supply chains. One reason we and our allies need strong defense capability in the Pacific is fears that China would invade Taiwan, which produces over 60% of the world's computer chips. The administration seeks to greatly expand American manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. Used in electric cars and for storing renewable energy, these batteries are essential to a green economy. China has 93 "gigafactories" that make them. The U.S. has four. Australia has had its own battles with China. When it called for independent investigators to be let into Wuhan to study the origins of the virus, China retaliated against billions in Australian exports. The Biden administration called the move "economic coercion." What pains France must also pain the U.S. France does join our fights. In August, a French drone strike in West Africa took out an Islamic State mastermind of attacks that killed four U.S. soldiers and six French aid workers. France maintains a significant military presence in the Indo-Pacific. You can understand the blow to France's arms industry and pride in having such a huge submarine contract so publicly ripped up. But defense needs should be the No. 1 consideration. The United States has concluded that China has graduated from mere economic competitor to military rival and must act accordingly. COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM Tiger King 2, a sequel to the popular docuseries Tiger King, is in the works at Netflix. ADVERTISEMENT The streaming service shared the news Thursday alongside a teaser for its slate of new true crime shows. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, a docuseries about former exotic animal park owner and convicted felon Joe Exotic, premiered on Netflix in March 2020. Deadline said the sequel will be released this year. Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin will return as directors and executive producers on Tiger King 2, with Chris Smith and Fisher Stevens to also serve as executive producers. Exotic, born Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced to 264 months in prison in January 2020 after a court found him guilty of 21 charges, most stemming from wildlife charges concerning his care for the big cats he held in captivity. Two of the charges were in connection to his murder-for-hire plot to kill animal rights activist Carole Baskin, who also appeared on Tiger King. In July, an appeals court ordered for Exotic to be re-sentenced after he appealed his prison sentence as too long. Netflix's other projects include The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, a three-part series for release in January 2022; The Tinder Swindler, a new series coming in February; Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King, a film about Gerry Cotten for release in 2022; and Bad Vegan, a series about Sarma Melngailis coming in 2022. Athens, GA (30605) Today Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Fungi pottery on display at Brattleboro Claywork as organizers get ready for the inaugural Fungi Fest that starts on Oct. 8 and runs to Oct. 30. You are the owner of this article. RIGBY, Idaho (AP) A 13-year-old girl has been taken into custody after having a firearm at Rigby Middle School in eastern Idaho, authorities said Thursday. It's the same school in May where a shooting injured two students and a custodian. After the latest incident, Jefferson School District Superintendent Chad Martin immediately banned backpacks at two middle schools and two high schools. We ask our parents to partner with us in keeping all of our students safe," Martin said in a letter. Please keep your firearms safe and inaccessible to students. If you notice changes in your students behavior, attire, or personality notify us so we can help your student." The letter said a student reported to a staff member that another student was in the bathroom and struggling emotionally. The staff member went to check and saw that the student had a firearm, then called a school resource officer, who disarmed the student. Jefferson County Sheriff Steve Anderson said the gun was in the girls backpack, she never pointed it at anyone, there were no shots fired, and no one was injured. Effective immediately, backpacks will no longer be allowed at Rigby Middle School, Farnsworth Middle School, and both Rigby and Jefferson High Schools, Martin wrote in the letter. In May at Rigby Middle School, authorities say a sixth-grade girl opened fire, injuring two students and the custodian. That shooting was stopped by one of the teachers. MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) Vermont state officials are attributing the high number of COVID-19 cases in Orleans County in the Northeast Kingdom in part to the lower vaccination rate in the area. The county is reporting scattered COVID-19 outbreaks and a high degree of community transmission, state officials said Tuesday during the governor's weekly virus briefing. In the last two weeks, the county has reported 293 cases, according to Thursday's data from the Vermont Health Department. From my perspective, I think, you have to just look at the vaccination rates around the state and see that there's a higher population of unvaccinated up in the Northeast Kingdom than there is anywhere else so that would lead me to believe that it's again a pandemic of the unvaccinated at this point, Gov. Phil Scott said during the briefing. Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said he agreed that the higher population of unvaccinated people is a significant part of the increase in cases. According to state data, 74.6% of Orleans County residents ages 12 and older have gotten at least one dose while statewide 87.4% of eligible Vermonters have started vaccinations. To prevent the spread of the virus, the Newport City Elementary School has switched to remote classes for the rest of the week, WCAX-TV reported. Derby Elementary School decided to go remote a week ago. We are not able to definitively determine that cases are being transmitted in school but we started to have situations where we cant rule it out, said North Country Supervisory Union Superintendent John Castle. ____ THE NUMBERS Vermont reported 268 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, its second-highest daily total since the start of the pandemic, Vermont Public Radio reported. The Health Department reported 40 people were hospitalized with the illness, including 14 in intensive care. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Vermont has risen over the past two weeks from 148.14 new cases per day on Sept. 7 to 213.57 new cases per day on Sept. 21. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Vermont has risen over the past two weeks from 0.71 deaths per day on Sept. 7 to 1.29 deaths per day on Sept. 21. The AP is using data collected by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering to measure outbreak caseloads and deaths across the United States. ATLANTA (AP) The father of a bicyclist who died following a hit-and-run crash in Georgia has filed a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit against the driver, as well as against a state House member and a police chief chief who the father says caused his son's death by not reporting it. The federal lawsuit by Manfred Keais was filed Sept. 13 in federal court in Rome, seeking damages in the Sept. 11, 2019, death of Eric Keais. Ralph Ryan Dover III hit Eric Keais that night in the northwest Georgia town of Cedartown with his SUV. Instead of calling 911, he called his friend, state Rep. Trey Kelley. The Republican official in turn called Cedartown Police Chief Jamie Newsome at home, according to authorities. An officer was sent to the area, unaware that someone may have been injured, and eventually found Keais lying in a ditch, gravely wounded. Keais died from his injuries soon afterward. Defendants Dover, Kelley and Newsome conspired to cover up the seriousness of the hit-and-run by manipulating the police investigation, the lawsuit states. These defendants acted in concert to put Mr. Keais life in further jeopardy by recklessly and intentionally delaying and depriving him of lifesaving medical treatment. Manfred Keais also sued the city of Cedartown and its police department. He is demanding money damages for pain and suffering, medical and funeral expenses and compensatory and punitive damages. Kelley, a Cedartown resident and lawyer, represents all of Polk and parts of Floyd and Haralson counties in northwest Georgia. He was indicted in December on a charge of reckless conduct, alleging he wrongly didnt report the crash. Dover has been indicted on charges of felony hit-and-run and reckless conduct. You dont just go and look. You dial 911 first. None of them did that, Aaron Keais, Eric Keais' brother, told WAGA-TV. Lester Tate, Kelley's lawyer, said his client completely disputes the allegations. Kelley told police that night he wasnt sure whether Dover hit a person or a deer. He has said he cooperated with police. I am confident that Rep. Kelley acted in full accordance with Georgia law, Tate wrote in an email Thursday. He had no knowledge or legal duty that required him to do anything more than what he did. Kelley has asked a judge to throw out the indictment. But a judge has yet to rule on a motion to quash that has been pending since July. Kelley this year stepped down from his post as House majority whip after he was indicted and his wife filed for divorce. The lawsuit also claims that Kelley used his political office to obtain an improper personal favor and accuses Newsome of violating the department's procedures. City attorney Carey Pilgrim told WAGA-TV that the city and Newsome "deny the material allegations in the complaint and will be defending against the same. Dover did not immediately respond to a Facebook message seeking comment. ___ Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) Police have identified a man killed in an overnight shooting this week on a Kansas City street. Ernest Gibson, 63, died in the shooting that was reported around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday in a residential area several blocks west of the Kansas City Zoo, police said in a news release. Officers called to the scene found Gibson in the front yard of a home and suffering from gunshot wounds. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died of his injuries. Police said detectives are close to identifying a suspect and hope to soon present a case to prosecutors that would allow charges to be filed. SHARON Sharon Hospital and Nuvance Health will host a community update webinar from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Sept. 29, on Zoom. Members of the surrounding community are invited to join the webinar to hear from President Dr. Mark Hirko and members of the leadership team at Sharon Hospital and Nuvance Health, as they share important updates regarding new investments and transformative plans for the future, according to a statement. A question-and-answer period will follow the presentation. Participants are encouraged to submit questions in advance by emailing sharonhospital@nuvancehealth.org or calling 845-554-1734 with their name and phone number. Instructions on how to join the virtual meeting are posted on the hospitals website: nuvancehealth.org/sharonforum. The event will also be shown live at Facebook.com/sharonhospital. The recorded session and a copy of the digital presentation will be accessible on the website following the event. For more information, call (845) 554-1734 or contact sharonhospital@nuvancehealth.org (TTY/Accessibility: (800) 842-9710). SOUTHINGTON A Waterbury man was found with a gun in his sweatshirt pocket after an investigation into the theft of a motor vehicle from a town resident overnight this weekend, according to police. Garrett Gibbs, 20, of Meriden Road in Waterbury, was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit and first-degree larceny. His bond was set at $250,000. On Sunday, the Southington Police Auto Theft Task Force was contacted by another officer who reported a black Audi wagon, which had not yet been reported stolen by its owner, with multiple individuals wearing masks driving throughout town. The officer said he recognized one individual, who was unmasked, as a known juvenile car thief, police said. Soon after the officer called it in, police learned that same vehicle was seen on Meriden Waterbury Turnpike and other areas throughout town, with occupants in the vehicle getting out and pulling on door handles of other vehicles, according to police. As they investigated the calls, officers found evidence that the individuals discarded. Just before the Southington officer called him, the Audis owner reported it stolen to personnel at the Troop B barracks of Connecticut State Police. As police further investigated, they found that the vehicle was tied to multiple larcenies in Southington since being stolen and was reportedly driving toward Meriden. Task force officers found the stolen Audi parked at the Meriden Mall and notified local police. Before Meriden officers got to the scene, task force officers saw three individuals walking toward the vehicle, carrying shopping bags. The officers detained them. As the officers spoke to the three individuals, they noticed something heavy in the sweatshirt pocket of the man later identified as Gibbs. Inside his pocket, police said, was a semi-automatic handgun that had been reported stolen from the glove box of another vehicle back in July. One of the other individuals, a 16-year-old, had been reported missing by Milford and state police after having escaped a juvenile detention center on Sept. 18, police said. The third individual, an 18-year-old, was not in possession of any contraband and was released from custody. When officers searched the vehicle, police said, they found purses, wallets, handbags and key fobs, as well as other sensitive personal stolen items, taken from unlocked cars across the state. Police said the items the individuals bought at the mall were paid for in cash. Gibbs was found with $736 in cash, and the two teens had a combined $2,063 in cash. Gibbs and the 16-year-old were taken to police headquarters. The juvenile was issued a juvenile summons, charging him with first-degree larceny. He was turned over to state police and transported to the juvenile detention center in Bridgeport. UNITED NATIONS (AP) The head of the U.N. food agency is warning that 16 million people in Yemen are marching towards starvation and says food rations for millions in the war-torn nation will be cut in October unless new funding arrives. David Beasley said Wednesday at a meeting on Yemens humanitarian crisis that the United States, Germany, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other donors stepped up when the World Food Program was running out of money earlier this year and because of that we averted famine and catastrophe. WFP is running out of money again, he said, and without new funding, ration reductions will be made for 3.2 million people in October and for 5 million by December. At a virtual pledging conference co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland on March 1, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for $3.85 billion for Yemen this year. But donors pledged less than half the amount $1.7 billion, which the U.N. chief called disappointing. In the last six months, the total has grown to just over half the amount required. The meeting Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assemblys annual leaders' gathering raised about $600 million, according to the European Union, which co-hosted the session with Sweden and Switzerland. That still leaves at least $1 billion unfunded. In major pledges, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an additional $290 million in humanitarian assistance for Yemen and the European Union said it was allocating an additional 119 million euros (about $139 million) in humanitarian and development aid. The Yemen director for the Oxfam charity, Muhsin Siddiquey, commended the donors who made pledges and expressed hope the funds will be quickly made available to aid organizations. However, once again a few international donors have generously put their hands in their pockets while the rest of the world looks on as Yemen descends further into hunger, poverty and an even bleaker future, he said. Yemen has been fighting a civil war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the capital of Sanaa and much of the northern part of the country, forcing the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed by the United States, to try restore Hadi to power, and threw its support behind his internationally backed government. Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has deteriorated largely into a stalemate and caused a humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has since suspended its direct involvement in the conflict. We need this war to end, number one, WFPs Beasley said. "And if donors are getting fatigued well, end the war. He urged world leaders to put pressure on all parties to end the suffering of the Yemeni people who are seeing their currency, the riyal, devalued and food prices spike. They have no coping capacity, Beasley said. They dont have any money left over to buy anything. It is a heartbreak. It really is. Henrietta Fore, head of the U.N. childrens agency UNICEF, said 11.3 million Yemeni children need humanitarian assistance to survive, 2.3 million children under five are acutely malnourished and nearly 400,000 of them suffering from severe acute malnutrition are at imminent risk of death. In Yemen, one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes, including malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases, she said. Janez Lenarcic, the EU commissioner for crisis management, called on the warring parties to grant unrestricted humanitarian access and allow food and fuel into the country, saying humanitarian needs are unprecedented and rising. The U.S. secretary of state urged donors to fulfill their pledges as quickly as possible and urged other nations to help fill critical funding shortfalls. Blinken said the United States remains committed to the U.N.-led effort to end the war and urged all parties to seize the opportunity to achieve peace in Yemen. ___ Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has been reporting internationally for nearly 50 years. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EdithLedererAP Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media NEW LONDON A city man pleaded guilty Tuesday to a narcotics trafficking offense stemming from his role in a conspiracy in which authorities say cocaine was mailed from Puerto Rico to southeastern Connecticut. Raul Robles, 38, pleaded guilty before Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine, prosecutors said. In a boost to expand the aerospace ecosystem in India, Tata Group in partnership with Airbus will deliver 56 C-295 military aircraft to the Indian Air Force. On Thursday, Sept 23, Tata, Airbus has signed an Rs. 22,000 crore deal with the Centre to manufacture C-295 transport aircraft in India, Republic Media network has learned through its sources. Out of the total 56 aircraft, 40 will be manufactured locally in India, while 16 will be developed in Spain. The Tata & Airbus manufacturing plant is likely to be set up in Uttar Pradesh to develop these military aircraft. The deal was proposed to boost the Make in India initiative launched by the central government. Tata, Airbus strike deal to manufacture 40 C-295 military aircraft This was one of the many initiatives taken by the Central government to promote the involvement of the private sector in defence manufacturing. Tata, Airbus will be manufacturing 40 C-295 aircraft in India, at its manufacturing plant, proposed to be in Uttar Pradesh and the rest 16 will be transported from Europe within two years. The group has reportedly agreed to supply all the aircraft within 10 years. The C-295 aircraft is used as a transport aircraft by the military to transport tonnes of equipment, weapons, etc. This is the biggest private manufacturing military order to date. The deal was signed under the ambit of the Make in India initiative, launched by the PM Modi government to build an Atmanirbhar Bharat . Airbus, in collaboration with the Tata group decided to build a final assembly line in India to build the C-295 military transporter, a replacement for the Indian Air Forces Avro aircraft fleet, the space company had informed earlier. Airbus is Europe's largest space corporation, with a long history of collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). They collaborated on the design and construction of two communication satellites for European customers: Eutelsat W2M in 2008 and HYLAS-1 in 2010, among other projects. Tata group makes a bid in Air Indias disinvestment In another significant investment, the Tata group has also made a financial investment bid in national carrier Air Indias disinvestment. A Tata Sons spokesperson told PTI that it has put in a bid for Air India. Earlier, it was reported that apart from the Tata Group, SpiceJet too may place their bids in the Air India disinvestment. The Centre is planning to sell a 100% stake in the Air India airline and its low-cost subsidiary Air India Express, and a 50% stake in ground handling company Air India SATS Airport Services Private Limited (AISATS). Other properties including the Air India building in Mumbai, Airlines House in Delhi will also be part of the deal. (Image: Twitter/ @tapanbhuyan407) Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has embarked on a United States visit met with the CEOs of five top American companies associated with the IT, Finance, Defence and Renewable Energy sectors on Thursday at Washington DC where they talked about bringing fresh investments into India as well as expanding their current hold in the market. PM Modi's meeting with the head of Armed Drone manufacturer General Atomics, Vivek Lall concluded on 'outstanding' terms as remarked by the CEO. PM Modi and the CEO of General Atomics discussed pertinent topics including the advancement of defence manufacturing, use of emerging technologies and augmenting capacity building in India, said the MEA. The duo discussed India's strides in drone technology, highlighting the path-breaking reforms and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. PM Modi took to his official Twitter handle and shared glimpses of the meeting with Global Atomics CEO Vivek Lall and said that drones are an upcoming sector and have generated significant interest to the youth. Drones is an upcoming sector in India and it is of particular interest to the youth. Interacted with Mr. Vivek Lall of @GeneralAtomics Global Corporation and spoke about how India is ushering a paradigm shift in drones policy, seen in our PLI scheme and reform measures. pic.twitter.com/8cEE2YcJ2s Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2021 Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia, thanking PM Modi, expressed his happiness saying India's Drone Policy has finally yielded positive results. Glad to see that Indias strong impetus to the drone sector & the impending transformation have infused confidence among stakeholders beyond our own borders too - all thanks to PM @narendramodi Jis thrust on a tech-first approach for governance & growth. #DroneRevolutionBegins https://t.co/FXoGlcqELI Jyotiraditya M. Scindia (@JM_Scindia) September 23, 2021 US companies see India as a very promising destination: Vivek Lall General Atomics CEO Vivek Lall said that India is an attractive destination for the manufacturing of drones and that a dedicated drone hub can be created in the country to support the entire ecosystem of drones. Lall also appreciated India's space reforms. "There are a lot of potential areas of collaboration that we are in discussions with. I think US companies and many of my colleagues in US companies see India as a very promising destination," said CEO of General Atomics, Vivek Lall. General Atomics CEO Lall lauds India's space reforms Citing India's space reforms, Lall said, "These are very laudable policies, prescriptions and reforms that the PM and government have taken. I think that will certainly catalyze a lot of interest and investments in India." PM Modi's meeting with Lall holds significance for India as the country plans to procure 30 Predator MQ-9 unarmed drones designed and manufactured by General Atomics. Moreover, the Indian Navy has already operationalised two Predator MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicles in its bid to create maritime domain awareness from the Gulf of Aden to Lombok Straits in Indonesia. Image: @NARENDRA MODI/TWITTER Emraan Hashmi recently became the talk of the town as his picture with a fan from Austria went viral. Katrina Kaif and other cast and crew members of the spy thriller, Tiger 3 are also currently shooting in Austria. This comes after Emraan had initially denied that he would be part of the upcoming film. Emraan Hashmi was recently seen with a fan in Austria, who managed to click a selfie with the actor and also with Katrina Kaif. Kaif is currently in Austria shooting for her upcoming film, Tiger 3. Emraan Hashmi denies playing a role in Tiger 3 Emraan Hashmi recently denied that he would be part of the third instalment of the film franchise in an interview with Pinkvilla. The first film of the franchise was released in 2012 and was titled Ek Tha Tiger, while its sequel was named Tiger Zinda Hai and hit the big screen in 2017. When Tiger 3 was announced, several reports mentioned that Emraan Hashmi would take on the role of the antagonist. However, he denied these reports in an interview with Pinkvilla. The actor mentioned in the interview that although people are saying he will be seen in the third instalment on the franchise, he mentioned that he has not shot for the film and will not be part of it. He went on to say that he did not know why people were saying such things, as he had never given a quote or mentioned that he would take on a role in the film. The Katrina Kaif starrer will be helmed by Maneesh Sharma. Emraan Hashmi was recently in the news after his workout video went viral on social media and caught a lot of attention. The actor put his best foot forward as he posted the video, which sees him lifting dumbles, doing pull-ups, exercising with machines and also pulling battle ropes. His one-minute video saw the actor show determination and strength as he worked through each set of exercises. In his caption, he wrote, "Dear fat, prepare to die" and tagged several individuals including director Anthony D'Souza. The director is known for films including Blue, Boss and many others. Image: Instagram/@emraanhashmi Rapper G-Eazy is all geared up for the release of his fourth upcoming studio album, These Things Happen Too. G-Eazy's new album will act as a sequel to his 2014 album, These Things Happen. The rapper on Wednesday took to his Instagram and shared the tracklist of his upcoming album that features guest vocals from artists such as Demi Lovato, E-40, Jay Ant, Rick Ross, ASAP Ferg, Tory Lanez, Nipsey Hussle, Rockie Fresh, Kehlani, French Montana, and Too Short. G-Eazy's new album These Things Happen Too G-Eazy took to his Instagram to reveal the tracklist for his fourth studio album. The 19-track set, which has been three years in the making, includes the single Breakdown with Demi Lovato, plus appearances from artists like Lil Wayne, Ty Dolla $ign, and Marc E. Bassy and many more. G-Eazy's new album These Things Happen Too is set to release on September 24, 2021. Fans will be able to enjoy G-Eazys new studio album on most of the leading streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and YouTube. Talking about his upcoming album, G-Eazy told Consequence, "I want to do it with integrity and focusand make it feel like a true sequel to the first one, but at the same time show the maturation and evolution of a seven-year journey thats completely changed my world and universe." Why was G-Eazy Arrested? G-Eazy recently made headlines after he was arrested for an alleged physical altercation with a man in a New York City club last week. As per various media outlets, 29-year-old and a 32-year-old men accused G-Eazy, 32, whose real name is Gerald Gillum, of punching each of them in the face on Friday midnight, according to a police spokesperson from the New York City Police Department. Neither of the victims was hospitalized at the time of the incident, according to police. TMZ reported that the incident occurred at around 12:40 am at the Standard hotel when Fashion Week parties were underway in the hotel's clubs, Le Bain and the Boom Boom Room. As per Page Six, the rapper got into an altercation with a 32-year-old socialite's name is Daniel Chetrit. The reports further state that the 32-year-old man had to get stitches on his head after the alleged fight. (Image: Instagram/@g_eazy) The CBS' reality show Survivor is back with its 41st season. A new set of 18 contestants would compete in the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji this season. The show premiered on September 22, 2021, on CBS. As the show is returning after a year, the excitement among the viewers is reaching heights. Survivor 41 is one of the much-anticipated shows on the network. This year's Survivor Season 41 would see 26 days of shooting instead of 39. The show is again taking place in the Mamanuca Islands and would face some of the most dangerous challenges in the history of the series. Jeff Probst, the host of the show, revealed how Survivor 41 would treat its contestants and would be a delight to watch for the audience. He said the show would feature a likeable group of players, who would compete in the most intense, difficult and dangerous seasons they have ever done. Which TV channel airs Survivor 41? How to watch Survivor 41 online? Survivor has been on CBS since its premiere season in 2000. The show's first episode was aired on March 31, 2000. Survivor 41 also airs on CBS at 8 p.m. ET on September 22, 2021. The show would also be available on CBS.com and CBS app. Survivor 41 streaming details Several OTT platforms stream CBS shows. These platforms are Fubo TV, Paramount +, Hulu + Live TV, and YouTube TV. These streaming services would premiere the show a day after it is aired on TV. Subscribers of these platforms main what's the show on the same day of its TV premiere. Details about Survivor The American reality show Survivor dates back to 2000. The show became a success within no time after the premiere of its first season. Jeff Probst serves as the host and executive producer of Survivor. The show sees a group of strangers competing for a million-dollar prize. It places the group of contestants in an isolated location where they must find food, fire, and shelter for themselves. The contestants are provided with challenges and judged on the basis of their physical ability like swimming and running, mental strengths like solving puzzles, and some endurance exams. Contestants are eliminated progressively in the show and the sole survivor is awarded the grand prize of one million dollars. Image: Instagram/@sruvivorcbs Fahadh Faasil took to Facebook on Thursday to make an important announcement about his film, Joji. Inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth, the film received heaps of love and praise from its audience and now the Fahadh Faasil starrer also won a top honour at the Swedish International Film Festival as it was selected as the Best International Feature Film. Joji wins top honour at Swedish International Film Festival Fahadh Faasil made the exciting announcement on Thursday and gave fans the good news about Joji. The actor wrote on the social media platform, Good News from Sweden! JOJI won The Best International Feature Film Award @ the Swedish International Film Festival (SIFF) 2021. The much-awaited Swedish International Film Festival will commence on October 25 and will continue until October 31. The winners of the festival will be screened at the event and will span across multiple categories. Directed by Dileesh Pothan, the film was unable to release theatrically owing to the pandemic and the restrictions imposed across the country. The film was released directly on Amazon Prime Video, where it won everyone's hearts. Apart from Fahadh Faasil, the Malayalam crime drama also saw Baburaj, Shammi Thilakan and Unnimaya Prasad take on pivotal roles. The film marked the second collaboration of Faasil with director Dileesh Pothan and the writer of the film, Syam Pushkaran. The trio had earlier joined hands for the 2016 film, Maheshinte Prathikaaram. The much-loved Fahadh Faasil is currently gearing up for his debut in the Telugu film industry. He will star in Pushpa, alongside Allu Arjun as he takes on the role of the antagonist in the film. The makers of the film recently released the actor's first look for the film. Faasil will play an IPS officer named Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat and the poster revealed that his character will sport a bald look. The production house shared the poster and wrote, "Meet the #VillainofPushpa. The most talented #FahadhFaasil turns into the menacing Bhanwar Singh Shekhawat (IPS) and will lock horns with #PushpaRaj." The film will be released in two parts, with the first part being titled, Pushpa: The Rise. Image: Instagram/@jojimovie The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government has set its record straight on terrorism and it is the same anti-terrorism intent with which he will be taking part in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), on September 24. PM Modi landed in Washington DC on September 22, for the summit that will witness world leaders like US President Joe Biden, Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the diplomatic table. Joe Biden will be hosting the meeting that will bring him face to face with the Indian Prime Minister for the first time since the US President took office in January. What is QUAD? The idea of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also called QUAD, was pitched by Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in 2007. The rest of the members were assembled by roping in Australia's PM John Howard and US George W. Bush. The alliance now intends to tackle China's aggressive diplomacy and curb its expansionist policy in the Indo-pacific region. The upcoming summit will be the second this year after the world leaders met virtually in March that will focus on strengthening ties and addressing challenges like COVID-19 and climate change. Pertinently, it will be the first in-person QUAD summit. PM @narendramodi emplanes for USA, where he will take part in a wide range of programmes, hold talks with world leaders including @POTUS @JoeBiden and address the UNGA. pic.twitter.com/ohzDOIvtVd PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 22, 2021 Whats in it for India? Terrorism: India has not held back this time in addressing sensitive issues like terrorism after everything that has unfolded in Afghanistan. New Delhi has taken a strict approach towards terrorism and is leading the agenda on every platform possible. In the recently concluded 21st Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, PM Modi had raised the issue of confronting extremism, subtly hinting towards the fall of the Afghan government and power-seize by the Taliban. PM @narendramodi arrives in US to attend Quad leaders' summit, address UNGA. https://t.co/4Ymmz9q4pv via NaMo App pic.twitter.com/9ierVvzZPT PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 23, 2021 He said that the SCO must develop a shared template to fight radicalisation and extremism in the Middle East. PM Modis address also became highly significant as SCO member countries including Pakistan and China were also present, who have provided cover-fire to the anti-democratic Taliban. Before this, Modi had also revealed in his departure statement that discussing the anti-terrorism agenda at the UNGA will be among his topmost priorities. Securing the Indo-Pacific: Indias vigilance towards Chinas expansionist policies have heightened after the latters army encroached the Galwan valley in March 2020, which led to several Indian soldiers being martyred. The QUAD countries, in a joint statement issued in the previous summit, had pledged to promote a free and open rules-based order to advance security and prosperity along with countering threats to the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Image: Twitter/@PMOIndia As the United Kingdom continues to discriminate against India's vaccination certificate, India on Thursday asserted that the Indian certification maintains the highest standards of veracity and technology with QR codes. Assuaging UK's 'concerns' over India's Co-WIN certification, India has sought mutual recognition with other countries. While UK has 'recognised' India's Covishield vaccine, it is sorting out technical certification issues with Co-WIN developers. India assures of CoWIN's veracity to UK Expressing concerns regarding CoWIN, British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis said, "We're clear Covishield is not a problem. We have been having detailed technical discussions regarding certification, with the builders of the CoWIN app and the NHS app, about both apps. They're happening at a rapid pace, to ensure that both countries mutually recognise the vaccine certificates issued by each other". On Wednesday, PM Modi batted for the same at the Global COVID summit hosted by US President Joe Biden. Talking about India's open-source software Co-WIN for the vaccination drive, PM Modi urged nations to keep supply chains of the raw materials open. India and South Africa has urged the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to greenlight the TRIPS waiver - which will enable members to not grant or enforce patents on their vaccines. PM Modi stressed, "In the spirit of sharing, India has made COWIN and many other digital solutions available freely and open-source software. We also need to focus on addressing the pandemics economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates". India-UK tussle over vaccines UK has faced massive backlash from Indians after its new travel regulations which mandate countries including UAE, India, Turkey, Jordan, Thailand, Russia will be treated as unvaccinated. Passengers who arent recognized as being fully vaccinated with authorized vaccines and certificates under Englands international travel rules will still have to take a pre-departure test, a day 2 and day 8 PCR test, and self-isolate for 10 days. Amid backlash, UK revised its travel advisory accepting Covishield as an 'approved vaccine', but Indians will still have to undergo mandatory quarantine upon their arrival as the advisory has not mentioned India as a country with a recognised public healthy body giving certification. India has administered over 73 crore Covishield doses till date. In memory of Captain Raman Bakshi, a memorial was inaugurated on Wednesday, September 22, at Katunga Chowk of Madhya Pradesh. To honour the sacrifice of Raman Bakshi, the Katunga road of Jabalpur was also renamed as 'Raman Bakshi Marg'. Retired Major General GD Bakshi, brother of the martyr, and Minister of State for Jal Shakti, Prahalad Singh Patel, were present at the event. Captain Bakshi was martyred in the Indo-Pak war of 1965. Speaking on the occasion, Prahalad Singh Patel said, "The memorial will serve as an inspiration for the coming generation who will learn and understand the sacrifices and efforts made to bring Independence to the country". Indo-Pak war of 1965 India and Pakistan engaged in war in 1965 over the status of Jammu and Kashmir. As the war intensified, the United States and the Soviet Union had to interfere to resolve the clash. And further, when Pakistan troops invaded Kashmir, India took the matter to the United Nations, where the Security Council passed Resolution 211 on September 20 calling for an end to the war. On September 21, India accepted the cease-fire and Pakistan on September 22. Captain Bakshi was one of the brave soldiers who was martyred in the 1965 Indo-Pak war at the age of 23. GD Bakshi on Afghanistan crisis "Afghanistan is in a dire financial crisis and has no resources to aid Pakistan financially. Yet, Pakistan's ISI encourages the Taliban to terrorise the Afghan population to fall in line with their narrative and capture Panjshir valley. However, the Panjshir is a bastion held by the Northern Alliance, which had given a bloody nose to the Soviets. So breaching the Panjshir will be a mammoth task and it cannot be accomplished by the Taliban alone. If Pakistan gets involved, then the global community will be compelled to intervene in the crisis and so India would get an opportunity to intervene in the evolving crisis. "India doesn't need to get its boots on the ground in Afghanistan to manage the escalating situation. India needs to heavily guard and strengthen its western border right from the Line of Control to the Ran of Kutch to pressurise Pakistan. And if required, India can take the fight forward into enemy soil instead of waiting for the adversaries to breach the Indian frontiers." (Image: Republicworld) Union Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Ajay Bhatt paid tribute to the martyrs and received the 'Swarnim Vijay Mashaal' (Victory Flame) at the Tawang War Memorial on Wednesday. At Tawang, the MoS interacted with NCC cadets. In a tweet, he informed that he attended the Swarnim Vijay Varsh Celebrations at Tawang and witnessed the cultural programs performed by artists from residents and Indian Army. The minister interacted with army jawans in the district's forward outposts. He paid tribute to Subedar Joginder Singh of the 1st Battalion of the Sikh Regiment at the Bumla War Memorial in Arunachal Pradesh. At Jaswantgarh, the MoS also paid respect to MVC Jaswant Singh Rawat. Attended the Swarnim Vijay Varsh Celebrations at Tawang and witnessed the cultural programs performed by artists from residents and Indian Army.! pic.twitter.com/ZtCD7Wc5Fq Ajay Bhatt (@AjaybhattBJP4UK) September 22, 2021 Ajay Bhatt visited Leh Last month, MoS Defence Ajay Bhatt went to Leh for a two-day visit and was briefed on the security situation in Eastern Ladakh, a defence spokesperson had said. Lieutenant General PG K Menon, General Officer Commanding, Fire and Fury Corps, had greeted Bhatt upon his arrival. According to the spokesperson, the Union minister visited Chushul in Eastern Ladakh and was briefed on the security situation in the region by the GoC. "He was also briefed on the role played by the Indian Army as a partner in the development of Ladakh region through infrastructure, welfare and human resource development activities," the spokesperson had said. Speaking with commanders and troops stationed in Eastern Ladakh, Bhatt praised them for manning the borders in the harshest and toughest terrain while maintaining a high level of morale and professionalism. According to the spokesperson, the MoS defence had advised all ranks to be watchful and maintain a high level of operational readiness. Indian Army Celebrates 'Swarnim Vijay Varsh' To Honor Soldiers On 19 September, the Indian Army held 'Swarnim Vijay Varsh' in Jaipur to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1971 Indo-Pak War. Army men performed motorcycle stunts as well as an air display. The Army's South Western Command hosted a display of defence weapons at Jaipur's Chitrakoot Stadium. The Swarnim Vijay Varsh' was observed to remember India's military operation over Pakistan in the 1971 war, as well as the selfless sacrifice and dedication of Indian Army personnel in defending the country's sovereignty. (With inputs from ANI) (Image: @AjaybhattBJP4UK/Twitter) With PM Modi set to take part in the first in-person Quad Leaders' Summit, it is apparent that India has emerged as the centrepiece of the anti-China bloc. On September 22, he landed in Washington DC for a 3-day US visit in which he will have bilateral meetings with US president Joe Biden, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japan PM Yoshihide Suga. While India has always remained opposed to China's expansionist policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative, its approach towards the neighbouring country underwent a decisive shift after 21 Indian Army soldiers were martyred in the Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020. India's crucial role in the anti-China bloc SAARC diplomacy : Founded in 1985, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has been impacted in the last few years owing to the impasse between India and Pakistan. While India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Afghanistan are members, China is just one of the 9 observers in this forum. While Pakistan has desperately tried to make China a member, India has successfully thwarted this design. Moreover, India has also vociferously opposed China and Pakistan's pro-Taliban agenda on the SAARC platform. Thus, the meeting of the SAARC Foreign Ministers which was supposed to take place on September 25 was cancelled. As per sources, Pakistan wanted the Taliban to represent Afghanistan, a request that was declined by all other participants. The Quad focus : India, Australia, the US and Japan have formed the 'Quad' coalition to counter Chinas aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. In a joint statement issued on March 12, 2021, these 4 nations committed to promoting a free and open rules-based order rooted in international law to advance security and prosperity and counter threats to the Indo-Pacific and beyond. In the upcoming Quad Leaders' Summit, PM Modi, Biden, Morrison and Suga are likely to exchange views on the emerging challenges in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, climate challenge, COVID-19 crisis besides identifying new areas of cooperation. Explaining the importance of this grouping amid the rising threat of China, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla stated, "In view of the fact that the four countries share core attributes such as democracy, commitment to pluralism, market-based economic principles, they also have a shared vision of a free and open inclusive Indo-Pacific region to add prosperity to that as well and with respect for international law. This is a region that is home to all the four countries represented in the QUAD, and many partners including the ASEAN, which is central to Indo-Pacific outreach, are a very important part of that overall effort. India's approach to the Indo-Pacific was enunciated by the Prime Minister in his speech at the Shangri La dialogue in 2018, when he also expounded on his vision of SAGAR or Security And Growth for All in the Region." Australia takes India into confidence : Even before the UK, the UK and Australia announced the AUKUS, Morrison informed PM Modi of this new security partnership on September 15. The AUKUS is a security alliance formed in the backdrop of China's assertive actions across the India-Pacific and will support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. The very fact that India was only one of the few nations which Australia took into confidence is a reflection of the country's key role as a part of the anti-China bloc. The Uttar Pradesh Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday had arrested Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui in connection with India's largest religious conversion syndicate. Following his arrest, the 64-year-old was sent to 14-day judicial custody until October 5. Kaleem's arrest comes after the UP Police had earlier busted a major conversion racket in June wherein Umar Gautam was arrested. The investigation is still going on in the case. Kaleem Siddiqui was named in the case after the police grilled Umar Gautam. In addition, it is also being stated that Umar Gautam and his associates had converted people through IDC (Islamic Claims Center). During the interrogation, Gautam has revealed that Maulana Kaleem has converted more than 5 lakh people in the last few years. According to him, the conversion of minors was also being carried out through the IDCs. Details of UP conversion racket In another shocking revelation, it has emerged that the conversion racket has international links as it is spread in Singapore, England and Poland. The investigation so far has revealed that vulnerable people were targeted for conversion by providing them with financial help. It is also being said that Maulana Kaleem runs the Global Peace Center in Delhi where many were converted. Sources have stated that security agencies were keeping an eye on the Islamic scholar due to his suspicious activities. The arrest of Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui As the security agencies were keeping an eye on Maulana Kaleem, they knew in advance that he was coming to Meerut. Therefore, the security personnel had already set up camp at Lisari Gate for his arrest. As soon as Maulana Kaleem left for his home, he and his companions were picked up by the security agencies and taken to Lucknow. The Uttar Pradesh Police are interrogating him. 'Maulana Kaleem received foreign funding': UP Police Addressing a press conference after Kaleem's arrest, Uttar Pradesh ADG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar, informed that the scholar's Jamia Imam Waliullah trust received huge foreign funding amounting to Rs 3 crores. In addition, he also revealed that six teams of UP ATS have been formed to investigate the case. UP ATS has arrested Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui, a resident of Muzaffarnagar, in connection with India's largest religious conversion syndicate busted by the ATS. He runs Jamia Imam Waliullah trust that funds several madrassas for which he received huge foreign funding: Police pic.twitter.com/XxHIYhxJKx ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 22, 2021 In a big development on Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case in the Mundra port drug bust under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. This pertains to the seizure of 2988.21 kg of heroin by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence from two containers at Gujarat's Mundra port on around September 13. The consignment containing the drug worth Rs.21,000 crore in the global market is said to be of Afghanistan origin and was shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran to the Mundra Port. Reportedly, the heroin was concealed in the consignment of semi-processed talc stones imported by a trading company registered in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. Sources told PTI that the ED had earlier sought details from DRI on the seizure. The central agency is likely to investigate the people or syndicate behind this heroin smuggling, identify proceeds of crime, and may also attach assets of the accused if necessary. Enforcement Directorate (ED) to launch a money-laundering investigation into the recent seizure of nearly 3,000 kgs of heroin from two containers at Mundra port in Gujarat pic.twitter.com/NuIwCghe7C ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 DRI arrests 8 persons as part of probe So far, a total of 8 persons including 4 Afghans, one Uzbek national and three Indians including the holder of the Importer- Exporter Code have been arrested by the DRI. On Wednesday, a press release stated, "Immediate follow-up operations were carried out in New Delhi, Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Chennai, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Mandvi, Gandhidham, and Vijaywada. This led to recovery of 16.1 kilograms of heroin from a godown in Delhi, 10.2 kilograms of powder suspected to be cocaine and 11 kilograms of substance suspected to be heroin from a residential place in Noida". Addressing a press conference, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera described the drug seizure as a serious incident for India. He remarked, "It is a conspiracy to throw our youth into drug addiction. The money made through the sales of these drugs in India is used to fuel terrorism against our nation. This issue is serious and raises a lot of questions". Meanwhile, the Adani Group which operates the Mundra port lashed out against the "malicious" campaign over the single-largest heroin haul in India. It affirmed, "The law empowers the Government of India's competent authorities such as the Customs and the DRI to open, examine and seize unlawful cargo. No port operator across the country can examine a container. Their role is limited to running a port. We sincerely hope that this statement will put to rest the motivated, malicious and false propaganda being run on social media against the Adani Group". The Army on Thursday foiled an infiltration bid near the Line of Control (LoC) in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district, killing three terrorists and recovering a cache of arms and ammunition. In a joint press conference, here this afternoon, General Officer Commanding 15 Corps, Lt General D P Pandey, and Inspector General Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar asserted that from the looks of it, it seemed that the terrorists had come to stay in the valley to recruit youngsters into terror ranks and to give them arms training. Indian Army eliminates three terrorists in Uri We observed suspicious movement in the Hathlanga forest area near the LoC. On 18th September an attempt was made by heavily armed terrorists. We took necessary measures and today around 6:00 AM troops spotted 3 terrorists which were followed by two more. The infiltrators were challenged and three of them were neutralized," Lt General D P Pandey and Inspector General Police, Kashmir Zone", 15 Corps, GoC said, adding that a large cache of arms and ammunition, including 05 AK rifles. 24 UBGL, 7 Pakistani Hand Grenades, 35,000 Indian currency, and Pakistani currency, etc, were recovered. As per Lt General D P Pandey, there has been increased activity at the launch pads on the other side of the LoC recently. He said, "Attempts were made by the enemy to send terrorists before snowfall. We have credible inputs about a lot of activities on launch pads and thats what we saw today and on 18th September, the current month." He added, Lot of activities cant take place without the hand of local army (Pakistani) commanders. About the identity of the killed terrorists, he said We have found documents which reveal one of them is a Pakistani, but we arent sure about the rest of two. We are investigating. The way we recovered arms and ammunition, it indicates slain terrorists were not Fidayeen rather it seems they had come to stay in the valley to recruit youngsters into terror ranks and to give them arms training. Inspector General Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar said, Internet services in Uri were suspended only to break contact of terrorists with local handlers. He added, seeing the results of the mission to get back misguided youth, launched by police and Army this year, has increased frustration among the Pakistani handlers. People in Kashmir want the peace which was communicated to Pakistan in a loud voice when Hurriyat hawk Geelani died and people-maintained peace." 'Pistol has been used in terror-related incidents carried against cops/civilians in the valley, this year. From January 2021- to date,97 pistols have been recovered from terrorists and terror-related incidents, informed IGP Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar. General (Retd) VK Singh, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, paid tribute to soldiers at Teen Murti-Haifa Chowk in Delhi on Thursday in honour of 'Haifa Liberation Day.' The day commemorates the Battle of Haifa, in which Indian soldiers from the Jodhpur, Mysore, and Hyderabad Lancers freed Haifa, Israel, on September 23, 1918. Singh, speaking at the event, remarked, "We thank Indresh ji for taking initiatives to commemorate this day. Everyone knows the history to this day. During the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire and axis forces captured Haifa. They had modern weapons." The Battle of Haifa saw the last great cavalry campaign in history. The charge led by Indian soldiers altered the history of the entire Middle East. The city of Haifa was liberated under daunting circumstances from the Ottomans. I salute the heroes of Haifa.#HaifaDay pic.twitter.com/Wc03YdASCq General Vijay Kumar Singh (@Gen_VKSingh) September 23, 2021 Union MoS VK Singh marks 'Haifa Liberation Day' "British Forces and cavalry from India fought bravely to free Haifa. It was decided that we would attack from difficult terrain on horses. This was an example of the valour of Indian forces when we fought with spears and swords and got Haifa back. Teen murtis are three sainiks of Jodhpur, Hyderabad and Mysore. The Prime Minister House used to be the residence of the British commander in chief," he noted. On the occasion, Indresh Kumar of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Union Minister Parshottam Rupala, and others paid their tributes. More about the Battle of Haifa On September 23, 1918, more than a century ago, brave Indian Cavalrymen fought and defeated the Ottomans in the historical Battle of Haifa, which is considered one of the final cavalry charges in modern military history. The Great War, which concluded two months later on November 11, 1918, transformed the globe in ways that no one could have predicted. Because British forces were stationed elsewhere, the 15th Imperial Service Brigade, made up of Lancer Regiments from the state forces of Hyderabad, Mysore, and Jodhpur was tasked with carrying out the attack. The Battle of Haifa not only left the Turks angry, but it also damaged their army's morale, causing them to retreat in a rout, leading to the signing of the Treaty by both the Turks and Germany. Also, The Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College was formed in 1922 to prepare suitable applicants for entry to Sandhurst soon after the war. With inputs from ANI Image: @Gen_VKSingh/Twitter Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will relocate the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to make room for the arriving guests, adding to the excitement of the Russian movie crew, The arriving crew includes Russian movie director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild along with Soyuz commander and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov. The agency informed that the team will be blasting off to the station on October 5 from Kazakhstans Baikonur Cosmodrome, for a couple of weeks-long project. The early arrival of Russians on the ISS, to shoot a movie, is being considered Russias space race victory over the US as the latter also had similar plans. However, Russia grabbed a seat before Hollywood and will set a record for being the first country to shoot a movie in outer space. Titled The Challenge, Shipenko and Pereslid have set a schedule of 12 days for completing the shoot, following which they will land back on Earth. Reportedly, the Russians have been preparing for this to happen for a year at Moscows Yuri Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training. Besides, the crew also received its flight approval on September 16. Roscosmos this new step is also being considered significant as they were against their cold-war era arch-rivals NASA. The agency had teamed up with Elon Musks SpaceX to shoot the first-ever movie in space starring the death-defying action star Tom Cruise. The US lagged behind as Cruises ambitious movie collaboration with SpaceX and NASA is unplanned yet, whereas Roscosmos is strapping its belt. The Mission: Impossible star will collab with Edge of Tomorrows director Doug Liman, announcements of which were made in September 2020. How to watch the docking? As per details given by the agency, viewers can tune into the docking and undocking process of the Soyuz aircraft on the NASA TV, NASA app and the official website. American astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos' Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov will undock the Soyuz starting 5:30 pm (IST) and relocate at the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module. Interestingly, Vande Hei is set to make a record for the longest single spaceflight by an American after his return to Earth on March 2022. (IMAGE: TWITTER/ @NICK_STEVENS_GR) After the coup attempt failed in Sudan on Tuesday, the country's ousted President Omar al-Bashir is being widely criticised for the action. In a recent development, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) strongly condemned the attempt to disrupt Sudan's transition. On Tuesday, Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and nearby regions recorded major military activity, and shooting was heard near a military base adjoining Omdurman. Later it came to light that rivals had attempted a coup. In view of the situation, the UNSC issued a statement extending support to Sudan's present authority and assured allegiance to Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his endeavours to lead Sudan through a successful transition in a manner that will restore peace and harmony in the lives of the Sudanese people and provide a stable and democratic regime. Meanwhile, the present authority in Sudan blames ousted President Omar al-Bashir. Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said immediate action will be taken and the government will continue to dismantle all the coup attempts of the previous regime. UNSC condemns attempted coup in Sudan The UN Council also appealed to all stakeholders to actively take part in the ongoing transition in Sudan, the initiative known as "The National Crisis and issues of the Transition, The Way Forward". The Council, in a statement, also urged Sudan civilians and military forces to remain committed to achieving the national goal of Sudan's inclusive transition, as mentioned in the Constitutional Document and the Juba Peace Agreement. Notably, the Council members also expressed their solidarity with the people of Sudan and assured their support to the country in establishing democracy, independence, and unity. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also criticised the attempted coup. He said, "Any effort to undermine Sudan's political transition will jeopardise the hard-earned progress made on the political and economic fronts. The secretary-general calls on all parties to remain committed to the transition and the realisation of the aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive, peaceful, stable, and democratic future," Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for Guterres, said in a statement. Condemning the incident, the USA said that it stands with the Sudanese people and will continue to support them. The US strongly condemns the failed attempt to seize power from #Sudans Civilian-Led Transitional Government. We stand with the Sudanese people, and will continue supporting them as they work for a democratic, peaceful, & prosperous future. My statement: https://t.co/aCRdSZcUne Samantha Power (@PowerUSAID) September 22, 2021 Meanwhile, the Sudanese government claimed that they had foiled a coup plot by armed forces sent by the former regime. Ever since Bashir was removed from his position, several coup attempts have taken place in the country. However, the previous regime has not been successful in gaining control of the country, but their consistent attempts have escalated concerns among the current authorities. (With Inputs from ANI, Image: AP) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in Washington ahead of the first in-person Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) Summit to be hosted by US President Joe Biden and discussed a wide range of topics aimed at deepening the economic and people-to-people linkages between the two countries. Prime Minister's Office (PMO) took to its Twitter handle and wrote that both the leaders (PM Modi & Scott Morrison) discussed a wide range of subjects aimed at deepening economic and people-to-people linkages between India and Australia. MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on his Twitter handle shared that both the leaders discussed 'regional and global developments as well as ongoing bilateral cooperation in areas related to COVID-19, trade, defence, clean energy and more.' Advancing friendship with Australia. PM @ScottMorrisonMP held talks with PM @narendramodi. They discussed a wide range of subjects aimed at deepening economic and people-to-people linkages between India and Australia. pic.twitter.com/zTcB00Kb6q PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 23, 2021 Another chapter in our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Australia! PM @narendramodi and @ScottMorrisonMP met today. Discussed regional & global developments as well as ongoing bilateral cooperation in areas related to Covid-19, trade, defence, clean energy & more. pic.twitter.com/4d4npxDPky Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) September 23, 2021 PM Modi and Scott Morrison have met a number of times on the sidelines of various international conferences. Earlier, Australian PM Morrison had also called PM Modi to brief him about the plan to go ahead with the Australia, UK, and US (AUKUS) alliance. On September 15, both leaders also held a telephonic conversation, in which the duo reviewed the rapid progress in India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, including the recent 2+2 Dialogue. More on PM Modi's US Visit and Quad Summit PM Modi, who is visiting the US for the seventh time after assuming office in 2014, will be meeting President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the first time since they took office earlier this year. Another major highlight of the Prime Ministers visit would be the first-ever in-person QUAD Leaders' Summit. PM Modi has already concluded his meetings with the top 5 CEOs of American companies including Shantanu Narayen from Adobe, Vivek Lall from General Atomics, Cristiano E Amon from Qualcomm, Mark Widmar from First Solar, and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24. This is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders ever since Biden took charge as the US President on January 20. Biden will host the first-ever in-person Quad Leaders' Summit, which will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. (Image: @PMOIndia/Twitter) China batted for the lifting of sanctions and restrictions on Afghanistan as the Taliban continues to struggle for global recognition, more than a month after the extremists took over the country. As per the Chinese state media Global Times report, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a video conference with the Group of 20 (G20) foreign ministers on September 23 that Afghanistans foreign exchange reserves are national assets and hence, it should belong to Afghan people. He said that the reserves should be used by the citizens of the South Asian country. According to the Chinese Foreign Minister, the foreign reserves of the war-torn country should not be used as a bargaining chip to mount political pressure on Afghanistan. Wang said that it is essential for elevating the intensity of aid to Kabul and ensure that assistance is delivered timely and the most urgent needs of the people are fulfilled. The Xi Jinping-led government official also called on fellow G20 members on Thursday to actively participate in measures to help ease the current pressure of liquidity on the country. Wang reportedly said that people in Afghanistan should be supported in a way that they are able to independently choose a development path that is suitable for their needs. Ultimately, the Chinese Foreign Minister said that a broad and inclusive political structure should be formed. Addressing the issue of counter-terrorism, Wang said that the South Asian country must fulfil its commitments and evidently separate the various terrorist forces and subsequently launch a crackdown on them. Pakistan, Russia and China to maintain contact with Taliban Wangs remarks came after the United Nations General assembly (UNGA) opened its high-level week on September 21. Earlier Pakistan, Russia and China agreed to maintain contact with the new rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban. As per ANI, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, An agreement was reached to maintain constructive contacts in the interests of Afghanistan's peace and prosperity, and regional stability and development. The statement also noted that the extremists stressed promoting relations with Russia, China and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Taliban government in Afghanistan impacted print journalism in the country with several newspapers suspending printing citing financial crisis. IMAGE: AP In the newest source of worry for Chinese authorities, African nations are appearing to corner Beijing on matters related to investment with several of them even suspending contracts with Chinese companies, reported news agency ANI citing Singapore Post article. The article, published on Monday, 20 September 2021, stated that some of the African countries cancelled the contracts with China-based companies owing to shoddy work which has also budded tension for the ruling dispensations in several nations across Africa. Following Ghanas cancellation of the contract with Beijing Everyway Traffic and Lighting Tech company, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Felix Tshisekedi called for a review of mining contracts previously signed with China in 2008, stated the report. Beijing Everyway Traffic and Lighting Tech company had a contract with Ghana for developing an intelligent traffic management system for the country. However, DRC President has said that he is seeking fairer deals for the country. Expressing discontent with the exploitative tendency of China, Tshisekedi said, Those with whom his country signed contracts are getting richer while DRC people remain poor." Congos former Prez signed deals with Chinese firms Reportedly, former Congo President Joseph Kabila who held office from 2001 to 2019, signed deals with Chinese state-backed firms in 2008 including Sinohydro Corp and China Railway Group. Under the agreement, the Chinese firms were supposed to build roads, hospitals, bridges in the Democratic Republic of Congo in return for a 68 per cent stake in the countrys Sicomines venture. ANI further stated that the projects involving China-based companies fell in Congo due to a lack of transparency. The government of Ghana also cancelled the project because they found the work by Everyway Traffic and Lighting Tech unsatisfactory. Earlier in July 2020, a Kenyan High Court ordered the cancellation of a US$3.2 billion contract between Kenya and China for the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway. According to the court, the entire project was illegal and stated that the state-run Kenya railways were unsuccessful in complying with Kenyan law in the procurement of the Standard Gauge Railway. Notably, as per John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies' China-Africa Research Initiative, just between 2000 and 2019, China reached 1,141 loan commitments worth USD 153 billion with the African governments as well as their state-owned enterprises. As per the Singapore Post article cited by ANI, the whopping loan amounts have become unsustainable for the poor African nations considering the additional crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, with limited options in hand, the countries have taken the choice to suspend the projects and manage debts. Notably, what worries the Chinese authorities is that most of the suspended projects in Africa are of Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) started by Communist leader Xi Jinping in 2013 to connect Asia with Africa and Europe through land and maritime trade networks. IMAGE: AP In what is being termed as an apparent assassination attempt, a number of bullets were fired at a car carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys principal aide, Serhiy Shefir on September 22 injuring the driver. Following the attack on Wednesday, Zelensky has promised to respond strongly as Shafir is one of the top aides of the Ukrainian President. As per the BBC report, Shefirs car was struck with a volley of bullets as he left his home south of the capital Kyiv on Wednesday morning (local time). The attacker is still not identified. Zelensky suggested that it could have been a foreign or domestic attack. Meanwhile, Russia has categorically denied any involvement. Reportedly, Shefir described that when the bullets were fired at the vehicle carrying him, we had to speed up a little, it was scary". The driver, who suffered injuries, was praised by Zeleenskys top aide as he managed to get out after the shots rang out. He also suggested that he was targetted for intimidation of the highest echelon of power. Shefir also said that such an attempt would be unsuccessful. He reportedly said, "One has to understand that our president [Zelensky] is very strong-willed, he has a spine and cannot be intimidated." Kremlin denies involvement As per the report, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that any suggestion of Moscows link to the attack Shefirs vehicle bore the signs of an excessively excited emotional state. He reportedly also said that, Unfortunately nowadays, whatever happens in Ukraine, none of the current politicians is able to rule out the Russian trace. Meanwhile, Zelensky who is participating in the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), said from New York, Saying 'hello' to me by shooting out of the forest at my friend's car is weak. The response will be strong." Ukrainian police have opened an investigation into the incident which took place near the village of Lisnyky. Reportedly, the police also said that the law enforcement officers are determining the possibility of Shefir being targetted for his work or as a part of a bid to destabilise the entire government. (IMAGE: AP) The president of Ukraine Wednesday called on the international community to condemn Russia for occupying Crimea. At the 76th UN General Assembly, Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged world leaders to join the "declaration of the Crimean platform to condemn the occupation and to demonstrate that you are against changing borders by force in the world." Zelenskyy updated the members of the general assembly on the condition of Serhiy Shefir, the first assistant to the president who was shot . "Twelve shots fired, three of those hit the driver, this is the price of changes in the country," Zelenskyy said. The national police said more than 10 bullets were fired Wednesday at the car Shefir was riding in. Authorities said Shefir was not hurt, but did not clarify if he was in the car at the time of the shooting in a village on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv. The driver was seriously wounded but survived. IMAGE: AP (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) The bitter custody battle over a 6-year-old boy who survived a cable car crash in Italy inched forward in Israel with a hearing in family court. Eitan Birman's relatives on both sides attended the session Thursday in Tel Aviv in a contentious dispute rooted in tragedy and now spans the legal systems of both countries where his remaining relatives reside. Eitan's immediate family was among 14 people killed when the cable car carrying them crashed into a mountainside in May. The child's survival sparked an immediate international dispute between his maternal and paternal families. Members of both families met in family court in Tel Aviv, the next step in the dispute. Those present included Eitan's aunt Aya Biran, who lives in Italy and has filed a formal request with the Italian court system seeking Eitan's return to Italy. Also attending Monday's hearing was the child's grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, who spirited the boy away to Israel. Eitan's relatives in Italy say he was taken without their knowledge and are seeking his return. The child's relatives in Israel have denied to local media that they abducted Eitan and insist they are acting in his interest. Peleg has acknowledged driving the child from Italy into Switzerland before flying him back to Israel, telling Channel 12 that "we departed in a totally legal way." Peleg was questioned by Israeli police on kidnapping suspicions and placed under house arrest pending an ongoing investigation. Italian authorities also opened an investigation this week. Peleg told Channel 12 he had given up on contesting custody in the Italian court system and said he expected the boy to understand once he got older. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Officials of Pakistan and China on Thursday discussed various mega projects under the Phase-two of the multi-billion-dollar CPEC. The 10th meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was held through video conference, according to an official statement. It was co-chaired by Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar and Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China Ning Jizhe. The two sides held a detailed discussion on various projects being undertaken as part of the second phase of the CPEC and also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of a Joint Working Group (JWG) on Information Technology Industry. A Letter of Exchange of Provision of Balochistan Solar Power Lighting Equipment and Provision of Medical Equipment and Material were also signed, according to the statement. The JCC also announced the signing of an MoU on Karachi Coastal Comprehensive Development Zone (KCCDZ) and Agreement of Cooperation Framework between Ningbo Port and Gwadar Port as well as Lease deed of Gwadar Expo Center. Umar said Phase-2 of CPEC is even more promising as it broadens the scope of cooperation and focuses on Industrial, Scientific and Technological as well as Agricultural cooperation. He said with the CPEC second phase accelerating, the economic ties between the two friendly neighbors will continue to get stronger and stronger. He emphasised that we are working to ensure a stable policy, ease of doing business, and better incentives for private sector participation for a sustainable development model. Umar said Prime Minister Imran Khan has issued directions for empowering Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Authorities and Management Companies to provide full facilitation to investors and decided to establish a dedicated Investor Facilitation Centre for the Chinese investors. Umar told the Chinese officials that Pakistan was cognizant of the threats to the CPEC and had enhanced the security arrangements to deal with the threats in an effective manner. The minister thanked the Chinese government for unprecedented support to Pakistan in its efforts to combat COVID-19. It has been a true testimony to our iron brotherhood and a reflection of our historical strategic partnership, he said. Umar said that the CPEC cooperation and work on all projects continued unhindered despite the pandemic, mainly due to the resolute commitment of top leadership and workers from both sides. During the meeting, the conveners of the Joint Working Groups (JWGs) on Energy, Transport Infrastructure, Gwadar, Socio-Economic Development, Security, Long-Term Planning of the CPEC, Industrial Cooperation, International cooperation, Science and Technology, and Agriculture Cooperation made a presentation highlighting the progress on their specific areas and the future plans of actions. Other matters discussed during the JCC included a 700 MW Azad Pattan Hydropower Project; South-North Gas Pipeline; Policy Framework for Thar Coal Gasification; Strategic Underground Gas Storages; National Seismic Study of Sedimentary Area; Joint Prospecting, Exploration, Development, and Marketing of Metalic Minerals and other areas of mutual interest. The 10th session of the Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) for the CPEC was to be held in 2020 but was postponed due to coronavirus. It was later scheduled to take place in July this year but again called off due to a terrorist attack killing several Chinese nationals. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) International human rights organisations have raised alarm over the recent persecution of the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, reported news agency ANI on Thursday. The International Forum for Right and Security (IFFRAS) said that the organisations are documenting the systematic persecution which is being endured by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community by the religious extremists and state institutions. As per news agency ANI, in the latest incident, a Khatm-e-Nabuwat Conference that was held on September 12 under the aegis of Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan, demanded that the Imran Khan-led government remove Qadinias (Ahmadiyyas) from key posts. The conference was reportedly presided over by JUP (Punjab) Deputy President Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Saleem and the Ulema. According to IFFRAS, the Ulema reportedly said that Qadinias refuse to end the Prophethood and are traitors of Islam, said IFFRAS. Previously, some of the radical Muslim clerics have opposed the burial of an Ahmadiyya woman in the local graveyard in Safdarabad, Sheikhupura district in Punjab on June 6. This had further triggered violent clashes between both sides. Notably, dedicated Ahamdiyya graveyards in Pakistan are also kept locked the majority of the time amid gears of graves being destroyed by the extremists. Ahmadiyya mosque was demolished in July Additionally, in July, an Ahmadiyya mosque was demolished by Tahreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) extremists reportedly in connivance with the local law enforcement in the Faridabad district. ANI quoted Pakistani media reports to state that several Islamic clerics like Amir of Tahreek-e-Dawat-e-Haq Pakistan, Peer Allama Muhammad Ashgar Noorani, reprimand the Ahmadiyyas for distorting the Islam faith and have urged the western countries to cease their consideration as part of the Muslim community. The persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan has been underlined by the global community. Further, Siobhain McDonagh, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, UK said in a letter dated December 2020 to the Pakistan High Commissioner in the UK, flagged concerns over the reports of efforts to target, harass and persecute Ahmadi Muslims. The atrocities also include the murder of an Ahmadi doctor in Punjab and the murder of two Ahmadis in Peshawar in October and November 2020. Apart from British MP, in February, US Senators Richard Blumenthal and John Cornyn have also expressed worry over the continued and escalating persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan including the exploitation of cyber and blasphemy laws designed to target an already persecuted religious minority. The American lawmakers also underlined that six Ahmadiyya Muslims including one US citizen were killed in Pakistan in the last six months. As per the IFFRAS report, they said that another Ahmadi had died in prison facing charges for blasphemy. They noted that instead of denouncing the atrocities, the Pakistani lawmakers, in stark contrast, praised the killers in parliament and on social media. This, according to US senators, further ignites the anti-Ahmadi bias in the country. They also called on the government to take immediate action to deal with the situation involving the community. IMAGE: AP (With ANI inputs) As SAARC meeting stands cancelled, ANI sources reported that Pakistan wanted Taliban government nominee to represent Afghanistan in SAARC foreign ministers' meet later this week. Sources added that Pakistan had asked SAARC chair Nepal to give it in writing that Ghulam M Isaczai - Afghanistan govt's permanent representative - will not attend the meet. Amid Pakistan's ill-manoeuvres, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Foreign Ministers meet was cancelled. Pakistan sought in written that Ghani govt rep won't attend Sources added that Nepal refused to give the assurance in writing and argued that if Ghulam himself initiated to attend the meet "how can he be barred?". Taliban have not been officially recognised by any SAARC nation, other than Pakistan. Taliban has nominated its Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as Afghanistan's UN ambassador after being asked to address world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week. SAARC comprises of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Pak formally recognises Taliban Govt In a boost to the Taliban-led Afghanistan regime, Pakistan's Ministry of External Affairs asserted that the newly announced Cabinet would ensure that urgent needs of people are addressed. At the same time, it stated that it will continue to closely follow the evolving situation in the war-torn country. Pakistan also reiterated its "commitment" to a peaceful and sovereign Afghanistan. "We have noted the latest announcement about the formation of interim political set-up in Kabul, which would address the requirement of a governance structure to meet the urgent needs of the people of Afghanistan. We hope that the new political dispensation will ensure coordinated efforts for peace, security and stability in Afghanistan as well as work towards taking care of humanitarian and development needs of the Afghan people," stated Pakistan. China, on the other hand, has vowed to provide aid to the Taliban govt and urged the international committee to recognise the regime. Taliban takes over The Taliban took over Kabul on August 15 after major cities like Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Lashkar Gah fell without resistance as US troops retreat after 20 years from war-torn Afghanistan. The hasty withdrawal of the US troops saw thousands of people attempting to flee from Afghanistan with several clinging to a departing US plane's wheels, leading to them falling to their deaths. After a bloody fight with the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA), Taliban claimed capture of the last province in Afghanistan - Panjshir, taking over the governor's office. NRFA led by 'caretaker' President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud has refuted these allegations saying, "NRF forces are present in all strategic positions across the valley to continue the fight". Now, the Taliban announced its new government naming Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund as its interim Prime Minister and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as its deputy. (With ANI inputs) Kabul Universitys teaching staff, around 70 including assistant professors and professors have resigned after the new rulers of Afghanistan, Taliban on September 22 sacked PhD holder Vice-Chancellor Muhammad Osman Baburi. His position was replaced by a BA degree holder, Muhammad Ashraf Ghairat. However, Ghairats appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of the biggest university in Kabul has triggered protests on social media. His critics even drew attention to Ghairats post about justifying the killing of journalists posted last year. As per ANI, Afghans are furious over the new VC of Kabul University who is a young bachelor degree holder after the post was vacated by an intellectual, experienced PhD holder. Kabul University is also the very first university in Afghanistan. Reportedly, several people including Taliban members have denounced Ghairats appointment claiming that there were more eligible people than him. Ghairat is said to have been employed in the Ministry of Education in the previous government. He was the head of the assessment body of universities of IEA in the southwestern part of Afghanistan. Name of university named after Rabbani changed Before the appointment of Kabul Universitys VC, the Taliban on Monday officially changed the name of another government university in the name of Burhanuddin Rabbani to Kabul Education University. Burhanuddin Rabbani served as the former Afghan President and is also the founder of Afghanistans second-biggest political party. The university was named after Rabbani after he was killed in a suicide attack in his home in 2009. According to the official directive released by the Ministry of Higher education, universities are intellectual assets and hence, should not be named after political or even ethnic leaders. Reportedly, the directive also stated that lingual, regional and ethnic discrimination has prevailed in the South Asian country in the last 20 years and that the national places were named based on them. Additionally, the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan also removed Wahid Majrooh, who was the last remaining minister from former President Ashraf Ghanis cabinet. As per ANI, Majrooh was replaced by Qalandar Ebad as the acting Minister of Public Health on September 21. The former minister confirmed his removal on social media. Today was my last day as Acting Minister of Health,I wish my successor all the best,I thank those who helped me during my tenure, I m still in Kabul,a medical Doc,try 2 b a better Father to my Daughter ,& more active in social & professional life Pic:last launch@MoPH-delicious pic.twitter.com/CoSiZ5aqQu Dr. Wahid Majrooh (@WahidMajrooh) September 21, 2021 (With ANI inputs) Image: AP British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during his speech on climate crisis at the United Nations, urged humanity to "grow up" and "come of age." Johnson called on world leaders to "recognise the scale of the challenge." The British prime minister's statement comes just ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) to be held in Glasgow. Additionally, Johnson echoed UN Chief Antonio Guterres's urge to limit a global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 'The turning point for humanity' Speaking at the 76th UNGA, Prime Minister Johnson urged all world leaders to be a part of "the turning point for humanity." He urged all to take responsibility for the destruction inflicted on the planet and work towards mending the harm. "We have come to a faithful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal for ourselves and others," the British PM explained. "If you imagine that million years as the lifespan of an individual human being - about 80 years- then we are now at sweet 16," he said adding, "the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end." This week at #UNGA I will be making the case that a global recovery from the pandemic must be rooted in green growth. We only have a short time left. World leaders must deliver on their climate commitments ahead of @COP26.#BuildBackBetter Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) September 19, 2021 The British Prime Minister also compared the earth with an eggshell. "The world- this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and whisper fun atmosphere- is not some indestructible toy, some bouncer plastic romper room against which we can hold ourselves to our heart's content," he said. To explain the "serious trouble" about climate crisis he quoted Oxford philosopher Toby Ord and added that mankind is "doing such irreversible damage that along before a million years are up, we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable- not just for us but for many other species." Johnson calls on world leaders to cut carbon emissions Prime Minister Boris Johnson also called on world leaders to take vital actions to cut carbon emissions. In order to restrain the rise in temperature the countries need to opt for carbon neutrality, i.e. net-zero, by the middle of the century, he said. He urged all countries to step up and commit to substantial carbon reduction to comply with the Paris Agreement. He praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his step to end international coal financing, but also appealed to Beijing to gradually "phase out the domestic use of coal as well." Every country must cut down carbon by 68% to maintain the stipulated 1.5-degree mark, he noted. "If we keep on the current track then the temperatures will go up by 2.7 degrees or more by the end of the century," Johnson mentioned. Lastly, the UK PM appealed to the citizens and leaders "to come together in a collective coming of age." COP26: Glasgow climate change summit The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) was originally scheduled in November last year but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The conference, jointly hosted by the UK and Italy, is now planned to occur at Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. According to the official website of COP26, the conference aims to protect and restore ecosystems and build resistance against climate change. (Image: AP/Pixabay/Representative) A high-level meeting of the G4 nations took place on September 22 on the sidelines of the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). At the G4 summit held in New York, the member nations discussed the urgency of reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in order to make it more "legitimate, effective and representative." The meeting was attended by the Foreign Ministers of all the member countries- EAM S Jaishankar from India, Carlos Alberto Franco Ranca from Brazil, Heiko Maas from Germany, and Toshimitsu Motegi from Japan. Following an individual and joint meeting with all the leaders, Dr Jaishankar affirmed the reforms to be implemented in the UNSC. EAM Jaishankar took to Twitter to announce the much-awaited expansion declaration of the permanent and non-permanent seats in the UNSC to enable better dealing with ever-complex and evolving changes. "With G4 foreign ministers, send a clear message on the need for reformed multilateralism. Called for concrete outcomes in a fixed time frame," Dr. Jaishankar wrote. The G4 ministers also released a joint statement that explained the potential reforms to be included in the UNSC. Here are the highlights of the reforms announced: 1. The G4 Ministers expressed their strong determination to work towards launching text-based negotiations without further delay in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN), based on a single document, with a view to its adoption in the General Assembly. 2. The G4 Ministers reaffirmed that it is indispensable to reform the Security Council through an expansion of both categories, permanent and non-permanent seats, to enable the Security Council to better deal with the ever-complex and evolving challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security, and thereby to carry out its duties more effectively. 3. The Ministers expressed their strong support to the Common African Position (CAP) as enshrined in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration. 4. The G4 Ministers reiterated their support for each others candidatures as aspiring new permanent members in a reformed Security Council. With G4 Foreign Ministers (@heikomaas, @moteging, Carlos Franca), sent a clear message on the need for reformed multilateralism. Called for concrete outcomes in a fixed timeframe. pic.twitter.com/FPmOiq7u54 Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 The reforms explained The joint decision by the G4 counties sought to witness "concrete outcomes in a definite time-frame." To achieve this, the consensus considered Africa's goal of complete representation in the decision-making organ of the UN. Next, the two seats in the permanent and two in the non-permanent category will be entitled to the same rights, privileges and obligations as the current permanent members, including the right to veto. The joint statement also welcomed UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres's readiness to adapt the intergovernmental organisations' need to mould according to the "realities of today." The response came in the context of a statement the UN Chief said earlier. "I stand ready to provide the necessary support," he asserted then. Currently, the UNSC comprises 5 permanent members and 10 non-permanent ones. The permanent members are Russia, China, UK, the US and France. The 10 non-permanent countries are elected for a two-year term by the UNGA. With inputs from ANI Image: @Dr.SJaishankar/Twitter In what can be termed as a bizarre incident, New Zealand police recently detained two persons for carrying multiple KFC chicken buckets in a car along with thousands of dollars. The individuals, aged 23 and 30, were accused of being part of a gang that attempted to smuggle food into Auckland from Hamilton. The city is still under Level 4 lockdown, which means that all restaurants, including takeaway services, will remain closed. A police official told the BBC that they had seen a suspicious-looking vehicle on a gravel road. "Upon noticing the police car, the vehicle executed a u-turn and rushed away, attempting to elude authorities," he claimed. Police examined the vehicle and discovered the cash, as well as empty ounce bags and a huge number of takeout. The takeout bags were 'three buckets of chicken, ten cups of coleslaw, a large package of fries, and four large bags containing additional KFC things,' according to a photo released by the police agency. They also seized NZ$ 100,000 in addition (over 51 lakhs in Indian rupees) Culprits slapped with NZ$ 4000 fine The detained individuals will appear in court later for violating public health regulations. They will, however, most likely face additional charges. It's unclear whether they were simply carrying KFC takeout or whether this is merely a ruse. The men face a fine of NZ$ 4000 (nearly 2 lakhs in Indian rupees) and maybe six months in prison under the country's anti-COVID regulations. Four men smuggle frozen food to Laos In a similar case, four individuals were apprehended by maritime police while attempting to smuggle about a tonne of frozen food from That Phanom district to Laos over the Mekong river. At the riverbank in tambon That Phanom, the four were spotted loading packages of frozen food into a long-tail boat. Chicken, sausages, and meat balls were among the frozen foods seized. The overall weight was around one tonne. Kop Phonhalat, 40, Tan Angkawon, 21, Thuem Phonhalat, 19, and San Suphaphone, 18, were detained. (Image: Unsplash) On the sidelines of the UNGA, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday, 22 September, discussed developments in Afghanistan with his German counterpart Heiko Mass. The meeting between Mass and Jaishankar was held after the two ministers participated in the foreign ministers meeting of G4 countries. After the meeting, Jaishankar in a tweet said that he and the German Foreign Minister exchanged useful assessments. Useful exchange of assessments with FM @heikomaas of Germany on Afghanistan. Followed a productive G4 meeting. pic.twitter.com/iL4R90ptg2 Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 The foreign ministers meeting of G4 countries witnessed participation of India's S Jaishankar, Brazil's Carlos Alberto Franco Ranca, Germany's Heiko Maas, and Japan's Toshimitsu Motegi. Following the G4 meet, the ministers reaffirmed in a joint statement that it is indispensable to reform the Security Council through an expansion of both categories, permanent and non-permanent seats, to enable the Security Council to better deal with the ever-complex and evolving challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security, and thereby to carry out its duties more effectively. EAM Jaishankar is in New York for the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He has held several bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers from Iran, Australia, Egypt and Indonesia. Previously, Jaishankar met his counterparts from France, UK and Saudi Arabia, and discussed issues related to Indo-Pacific. He also held a meeting with Tanzanias Foreign Minister Liberata Mulamula and said that both the nations will work to advance development partnership and traditional political cooperation between them. Jaishankar addresses G20 FM meeting On Wednesday, Jaishankar also addressed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting on Afghanistan. While calling for a broad-based inclusive government in the war-ravaged nation, the EAM said that the Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any many should be implemented. Jaishakar further went on to say that Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented. The world expects a broad-based inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of Afghan society," Jaishankar said while addressing the meeting on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UNGA. He added, UNSC resolution 2593, which reflects global sentiment, should continue to guide our approach. Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. (Image: Twitter) Bhabanipur Bypolls: Mamata Warns Voters Against Complacency; Says 'my Victory Not Assured' Rousing her supporters to go out and vote for her in the Bhabanipur bypolls, CM Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday, highlighted them to not get complacent. Stating that her poll victory were not assured, she told her supporters to vote even if it rains. Assuring that there will be a TMC chief minister even if she loses, she said that it was destiny that she was contesting from Bhabanipur after losing from Nandigram. Read more here India Asserts High Standards Of Veracity Of Vaccine Certificates; Backs Mutual Recognition As the United Kingdom continues to discriminate against India's vaccination certificate, India on Thursday asserted that the Indian certification maintains the highest standards of veracity and technology with QR codes. Assuaging UK's 'concerns' over India's Co-WIN certification, India has sought mutual recognition with other countries. While UK has 'recognised' India's Covishield vaccine, it is sorting out technical certification issues with Co-WIN developers. Read more here UP Conversion Racket: ATS Arrests Maulana Kaleem; Read Full Details Here The Uttar Pradesh Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday had arrested Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui in connection with India's largest religious conversion syndicate. Following his arrest, the 64-year-old was sent to 14-day judicial custody until October 5. Kaleem's arrest comes after the UP Police had earlier busted a major conversion racket in June wherein Umar Gautam was arrested. The investigation is still going on in the case. Read more here IPL 2021: Venkatesh Iyer Displays Explosive Skills Ahead Of KKR Vs MI Match | Watch The Kolkata Knight Riders began their IPL 2021 UAE leg with a crushing win over the Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore. After bowling out RCB for just 92 runs, KKR chased down the target with nine wickets to spare. Opener Shubman Gill missed out on his half-century after being dismissed at 48 runs. However, it was Venkatesh Iyer's unbeaten knock of 41 runs in his debut match which caught everyone's eye. Read more here DG ISI Behind New Afghan Govt Formation; Taliban Being Manipulated From Outside: Sources Amid the tussle between different factions of the Taliban, sources told Republic TV that DG ISI Faiz Hameed had a big role in the formation of the caretaker Afghanistan Cabinet. Though the Taliban promised to form an "inclusive" government to run Afghanistan, it announced a 33-member caretaker Cabinet which neither has women nor mainstream politicians from previous regimes. While Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, the chief of the Taliban's Rehbari Shura, is the new Prime Minister, he has two deputies in Mullah Baradar and Mawlavi Hanafi. Read more here Covishield Not A Problem, Discussions On With Builders Of CoWIN App: UK High Commissioner Clarifying the "distrust" over the COVID-19 vaccination policy for those travelling to the UK from India, British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, stated that Covishield is not the "obstacle" and added that technical discussions are being held regarding certification of the vaccine. Read more here Indian Envoy To US Says Terrorism Will 'certainly' Be Discussed In High-level Summits In an exclusive interview with Republic, India's ambassador to the United States Taranjit Singh Sandhu on Thursday morning said that terrorism is one issue that will be part of the discussion in the high-level bilateral meetings that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will conduct in the following days. Read more here Boris Johnson Admits UK's Post-Brexit Trade Deal With US Not In The Offing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after visiting US Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, acknowledged that a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States was not seen as forthcoming. The statement from the United Kingdom Prime Minister came as he voiced confidence that the decades-long US ban on imports of British lamb would be lifted. Though President Joe Biden, on September 22, downplayed the prospect of a trade deal with the UK, Johnson reiterated British farmers, notably those in Wales, would soon be able to export lamb to the United States once again, despite knowing it's irrelevant to announce before making any formal agreement. Read more here Mahant Narendra Giri Death: MP Digvijaya Singh Demands Thorough Probe Of Suicide Note Expressing his condolences and urging the Uttar Pradesh government to conduct a thorough investigation of a recovered suicide note, Rajya Sabha MP and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday addressed the media on the demise of Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) President Mahant Narendra Giri. Mahant Narendra Giri was found dead on Monday in suspicious circumstances at his residence in Baghambari Matg in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj. Read more here PM Modi & Joe Biden To Hold Hour-long Meeting On Sept 24; Afghanistan Situation On Agenda On September 24, PM Modi will have a one-to-one meeting with US president Joe Biden which is expected to last for one hour, sources told Republic TV. The two leaders will review the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and exchange views on issues of mutual interest such as the need to stem terrorism and the situation in Afghanistan. This assumes significance as PM Modi stressed in his virtual address at the SCO Summit on September 18 that the new government in Afghanistan is not inclusive. The Taliban has not only inducted more than a dozen sanctioned terrorists in the Cabinet but also left out women. Read more here Dubai, Sep 23 (AP) Saudi Arabia's monarch has expressed hope that the kingdom's direct talks with Iran will lead to confidence building as the two bitter regional rivals take small steps toward dialogue following several years of heightened tensions. King Salman made the remarks in a pre-recorded speech delivered to leaders gathered for the UN General Assembly Wednesday. He said Iran is a neighbour of Saudi Arabia, and that the kingdom hopes talks between the two nations can lead to tangible results that pave the way to achieving the aspirations of the region's people. He cautioned, though, that relations must be based on respect of national sovereignty and the cessation of support for sectarian militias. Relations between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran hit a low when the Trump administration was exerting maximum pressure on Iran. During those years, Iran was accused of being behind multiple attacks on energy targets in the Persian Gulf including a stunning strike on an Aramco refinery in 2019 and of supporting Houthi fighters in Yemen, where the kingdom has been at war for more than six years. In April, news emerged that the rivals had held a first round of talks in Iraq after President Joe Biden's election. Former President Donald Trump had pulled the US out of a nuclear deal in 2018; Biden said the US wants to return to the pact, though talks have stalled. The two regional foes met again in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, according to Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. The site reported Wednesday that a meeting of foreign ministers and officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and France took place. The EU foreign policy chief was also in attendance. The meeting was chaired by Iraq's foreign minister. Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amirabollahian, was quoted by Mehr as saying the priority of Iran's new government "is to strengthen and develop relations with its neighbours and the region. He also met with Finnish, German, Austrian, Swiss and Croatian foreign ministers on Tuesday in New York, according to Mehr. Newly sworn-in Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has remained in Iran amid the ongoing pandemic. He was severely critical of American policies in his speech delivered remotely to the UN gathering Tuesday, speaking shortly after Biden's in-person remarks. King Salman reiterated Saudi concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful energy purposes. He also used his speech to stress Saudi Arabia's longstanding public position on Palestinian statehood, saying that a lasting peace must guarantee an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. He acknowledged economic difficulties, but said despite such challenges the kingdom remains a major donor of humanitarian aid and global efforts to combat COVID-19 as a Group of 20 nation. The coronavirus pandemic sent oil prices crashing last year, eating away at the kingdom's key source of revenue. Saudi Arabia has led major oil producers in a pact to curb production to help support oil prices. (AP) MGA MGA (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) An inaugural flight from the Spanish airline World2Fly arrived in Havana on Wednesday, as tourism venues resumed business in Cuba after authorities announced a relaxation of COVID-19 related regulations. Fifty passengers flew from Madrid to Havana, including Spanish billionaire and airline owner, Miguel Fluxa Rosello, who cut a ribbon at the airport upon arrival. Word2Fly, which began operations amid the pandemic at the beginning of this year, is focused on the Spanish market bound for the Caribbean in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Cancun. Passengers arriving in Havana on the inaugural flight had their temperature taken, and PCR tests were administered free of charge before leaving the airport. Fluxa Rossello's hotel consortium Iberostar announced that a gradual reopening of its 16 facilities in Cuba has begun, most reopening between November and January. Daily flights will resume only in 2022. Cuban healthcare authorities have said that by November, 90% of the population on the island will be vaccinated with nationally produced antigens: a mix of the two Soberana vaccines or with Abdala. Cuba kept the pandemic under relative control in 2020 in part due to the closure of its borders and relatively strict isolation measures, but the latest cases reported show extensive presence of the Delta variant. On Wednesday, health authorities reported 825,351 COVID-19 cases and 6,978 deaths. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Taiwan on Wednesday had filed an official application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade group. However, John Deng, Taiwanese minister without a portfolio has stated that the move could rattle China. Beijing had earlier submitted its application on September 16 and if it is approved, it could create an obstacle for the island nation. Deng remarked that China has been obstructing Taiwan in the international arena. China has been obstructing Taiwans opportunities in the international arena, said Deng at a news conference. If China joins ahead of Taiwan, it will endanger Taiwans application. he added Apart from John Deng, even Taiwanese experts have warned that if China was allowed to join, then Taiwan could face more obstacles in becoming part of a wide regional trade alliance. Trans-Pacific Partnership The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade group is a free trade agreement (FTA) between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. It was signed in March 2018 in Santiago, Chile. It was earlier, Trans-Pacific Partnership, a group promoted by then US President Barack Obama. His successor, Donald Trump, pulled out in 2017. President Joe Biden has not rejoined. Trump's decision to pull out paved the way for Japan to become the leading economy in the group. China-Taiwan tussle China and Taiwan have been engaged in a tussle as Beijing claims full sovereignty over the island nation, a thriving democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. Beijing continues to claim Taiwan even as the latter has been governed separately for more than seven decades. On the other hand, Taipei has countered Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies and rivals of China, mainly the United States. Beijing has repeatedly opposed US and Taiwan ties and has constantly threatened that "Taiwan's independence" means war. Moreover, the US has supported Taiwan by maintaining close ties and providing it with military assets. On the other hand, Taiwan also enjoys support from the United States. On June 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged complete reunification with self-ruled Taiwan and vowed to smash any attempts at formal independence for the island. (With inputs from Agencies) Image: AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yet again referred to the issue of Kashmir in his address to the world leaders at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 21. In 2020, Erdogan had raked up the issue in his pre-recorded video statement at the high-level General Debate and made reference to Jammu and Kashmir in India. On day two of the high-level UNGA on Tuesday, the Turkish President said, We maintain our stance in favour of solving the ongoing problem in Kashmir for 74 years, through dialogue between the parties and within the framework of relevant United Nations resolutions. A close ally of Pakistan, Turkey has repeatedly mentioned the issue prompting a stern response from India. Last year, when Erdogan echoed similar remarks about Kashmir being the burning issue, New Delhi called it completely unacceptable and asked Turkey to respect the sovereignty of other nations and reflect on its own policies. EAM meets Cyprus official hours after Erdogan speech This year, just hours after Erdogans remarks to the UNGA on Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar held bilateral meetings with his Cyprus counterpart Nikos Christodoulides. During the meeting, EAM Jaishankar stressed on the need to adhere to the relevant UN Security Council resolutions in respect to the Island nation. He also tweeted about his meeting with the Cyprus official on Wednesday and said, Working to take our economic ties forward. Appreciated his regional insights. Important that relevant UN Security Council resolutions in respect of Cyprus are adhered to by all." Delighted to meet FM @Christodulides of Cyprus. Working to take our economic ties forward. Appreciated his regional insights. Important that relevant UN Security Council resolutions in respect of Cyprus are adhered to by all. pic.twitter.com/pZXPefT9Sj Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 21, 2021 EAM Jaishankars remarks came in reference to the decades-long ongoing conflict in Cyprus that began after Turkey invaded the northern part of the country while responding to a military coup on the island which was backed by the Greek government. India has been a public advocate of a peaceful resolution in the same issue while adhering to the UN resolutions. Erdogan calls for peaceful, prosperous world Apart from referring to Kashmir in this years UNGA address, Erdogan also hailed Turkeys commitment to a peaceful world for everyone. He said, Turkey has been and will continue to be alongside every step taken towards a safer, peaceful, prosperous and equitable world for everyone. He also emphasised the countrys determination in European Union (EU) membership process and its solidarity with Europe and the African Union. He said, With our Asia Anew initiative, we are consolidating Turkey's unifying position between Europe and Asia. Likewise, we attach great importance to developing our relations with Latin America and the Caribbean region, on bilateral and multilateral platforms. (IMAGE: AP) President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Abdulla Shahid will be convening a high-level meeting on universal COVID-19 vaccination in 2022. Speaking at the Global COVID-19 Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden, Shahid said that as president of the UNGA, he will host a high-level event Towards Universal Vaccination: Frome Hope to Action. During the summit, he didnt reveal when the event will take place, however, Shahids spokesperson Monica Grayley informed that the event is slated for next year, i.e., 2022. Addressing the COVID-19 Summit on Wednesday, 22 September, Shahid said, We will work to shore up political support for COVAX and the multilateral mechanisms for vaccine supply and distribution. We will identify collective actions to quickly close the gap and ensure universal access to vaccines. The Maldives Foreign Minister Shahid, who took the oath of office as the President of the 76th session of the UNGA last week, further noted that the 2022 event will address the challenges in supply and distribution and added, I trust and hope that we can work together to make this a reality in leaving no one behind. Shahid even went on to say that he firmly believes that collectively the world can work together towards universal inoculation and reach global vaccination goals. He said that vaccines promise is the single greatest defence against COVID-19, our greatest opportunity to reopen the world, and our greatest asset in the race against variants. Meanwhile, the virtual Global Summit was hosted by the White House on Wednesday. The event revolved around the topic 'Ending the Pandemic and Building Better Health Security to Prepare for the Next. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is currently visiting the US, also marked his presence at the meeting with a small message. PM Modi addresses Global COVID Summit During the Summit, PM Modi highlighted that the world needs to focus on addressing the economic effects of the ongoing pandemic. He called for mutual recognition of vaccine certificates for easier international travel. The Indian Prime Minister also spoke about Indias pharmaceutical industry producing cost-effective diagnostic kits, drugs, medical devices and PPE kits and sharing them with over 150 countries. PM Modi said, "Two indegeniously developed vaccines have recieved EUA in India including the world's first DNA-based vaccine. Several Indian companies are also involved in licence production of various vaccines. Earlier, this year we shared our vaccine production with 95 other countries and with UN Peacekeepers and like a family, the world stood with India when it was going through a second phase. For the solidarity and support extended to India, I thank you all. (With inputs from ANI) Unvaccinated Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has decided to remain in isolation for five days. The decision came after his close aide, Health Minister Marcelo Querioga was tested positive for the novel Coronavirus on September 21, a senior official notified on Wednesday. It is noteworthy that the President recently returned from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) along with a delegation of 50 people, Wall Street Journal reported. While "totally asymptomatic" Bolsonaro and his delegation will be released if they test negative over the weekend, Querioga will remain quarantined for 14 days in New York, Xinhua News Agency reported quoting President's special communication secretary Andre de Sousa Costa. However, Bolsonaro will remain under medical observation for 14 days in Brasilia. Meanwhile, the Brazilian President will also follow the stipulated guidelines, Costa added. It is also noteworthy that Bolsonaro repeatedly mentioned in public that he chose to remain unvaccinated despite blasphemous COVID-19 infections in Brazil. Earlier in mid-2020, the president contracted COVID, however, he recovered soon after. Even before his visit to New York, Bolsonaro said that he has not been vaccinated against COVID-19, flouting the standard protocol for all attendees. The unvaccinated and unmasked President was also seen enjoying pizza on September 22 with his delegation at a New York street food joint. Brazil Health Minister tests positive for Covid-19 Brazilian Health Minister Marcelo Querioga tested positive for Coronavirus on September 21. He broke the news just after President Jair Bolsonaro addressed the UNGA forum on the same day. He took to Twitter to update him about his health. "I tell everyone that I tested positive for COVID-19 today. I will be quarantined in the US, following all health safety protocols, Querioga wrote on Twitter. Following the news, the Itamaraty (Brasilia Central Government Office) suspended all meetings of the delegation at the UNGA, CNN Brazil reported. However, Querioga was snapped side by side with Bolsonaro on several occasions this week and was seen at the UNGA summit where he met several world leaders, including mask-less UK PM Boris Johnson. Later, he was at a breakfast with employees of investment funds in New York, AP reported. On Saturday another envoy of Bolsonaro's presidential visit organising team tested positive for the virus. With inputs from AP Image: AP/ Pixabay Clarifying the "distrust" over the COVID-19 vaccination policy for those travelling to the UK from India, British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, stated that Covishield is not the "obstacle" and added that technical discussions are being held regarding certification of the vaccine. Ellis added that the United Kingdom is in constant touch with the builders of the CoWIN app and NHS app to short out the certification issues. Notably, CoWIN is the Indian government web portal for COVID-19 vaccination registration, owned and operated by India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It is considered the backbone of the COVID vaccination drive in India. NHS, on the other hand, is an application that allows patients to avail various National Health Service schemes in England. "We're clear Covishield is not a problem. The UK is open to travel and we're already seeing a lot of people going from India to the UK, be it tourists, business people or students. Over 62,500 student visas have been issued in the year ending June 2021, which is an increase of almost 30% as compared to the previous year," Ellis said in a statement. "We have been having detailed technical discussions regarding certification, with the builders of the CoWIN app and the NHS app, about both apps. They're happening at a rapid pace, to ensure that both countries mutually recognise the vaccine certificates issued by each other," added Alex Ellis. Indians still have to follow rules set out for "non-vaccinated" travellers It is worth noting that the statement from the British High Commissioner to India came after the updated international travel advisory included AstraZeneca's Covishield among the eligible COVID-19 vaccine formulations but kept India out of the 18 countries on an approved vaccinations list. As per the advisory issued on Wednesday, Indians still have to follow rules set out for "non-vaccinated" travellers. According to the updated UK vaccination certification policy, it has allowed the travellers who has taken vaccine from these public health bodies- Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Interestingly, during the initial days of rolling out the vaccination drive, the United Kingdom administered the AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine to its citizens. However, it has not accepted the Serum Institute of India's (SII) Covishield in the category of 'approved vaccine' despite knowing the vaccine has been developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, India on Tuesday that it will be within its rights to take reciprocal measures against UK's "discriminatory" move to recognise the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine but not Covishield if the issue is not satisfactorily resolved. (With inputs from ANI, Image: ANI/PTI) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, on Tuesday, September 21, warned that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan could inspire US-based extremists to plot attacks on American soil. According to The Hill, Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the domestic terrorism caseload has increased since 2020, from around 1,000 possible investigations to 2,700. He claimed that the extremist groups have never stop plotting attacks on the United States' soil. Wray said, We are concerned that, with developments in Afghanistan, among other things, that there will be more inspiration to the first bucket. So I think we anticipate, unfortunately, growth in both categories as we look ahead over the next couple of years, the FBI Director added. Separately, National National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid testified before the Committee that the terrorism threat to the country is less acute than it was two decades ago after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2001. But she added that preventing attacks remains a challenge because the threat is more ideologically diffuse and geographically diverse. Abizaid said that the US officials have been monitoring how Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) could rebuild their forces and conduct an attack on the United States. In the wake of our withdrawal, the question is, at what point does that regional threat build to a capability and intent that is focused externally and particularly focused on the homeland? Abizaid said. She added, I would say from an intelligence community perspective, thats one of our highest priorities, is just to monitor and assess the degree to which those groups actually present an external threat. US 'concerned' over Haqqani's position in Taliban govt Afghanistan had plunged into crisis last month after Kabul fell to the Taliban and the government of then-president Ashraf Ghani collapsed. Now, with no presence in the war-ravaged nation following the US withdrawal, experts have said that the United States will face a serious challenge in trying to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorism. It is worth mentioning that the Talibans new interior minister - Sirajuddin Haqqani - is the leader of the Haqqani network, which the US designated as a terrorist group in 2012. He is also wanted by the FBI for his potential connection to the 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel. The FBI Director said that the US is obviously concerned that Haqqani has a leadership position in the new Taliban cabinet. (With inputs from ANI) Image: AP The United Kingdom government has announced plans to share over a million doses of COVID vaccine with South Korea in a "vaccine swap". The United Kingdom government will be sending more than 1 million Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to South Korea in order to accelerate their vaccination programme. The Britain administration plans to ship the first batch of the Coronavirus vaccines to South Korea in the coming weeks. The decision has been taken by the United Kingdom government to help South Korea towards hitting its target of fully vaccinating 70 per cent of its population by the end of October. The first batch of COVID vaccines will be received by South Korea in the coming weeks. South Korea will return the same number of vaccine doses to the Britain government by the end of 2021. COVAX programme According to the Britain government statement, the decision of swapping vaccines will not impact the country's vaccine programme as 90 per cent of people aged above 16 have been vaccinated with one dose of vaccine. Moreover, it will not affect the commitment of the UK government to the COVAX programme. The decision follows the announcement this month of a similar swap deal between the UK and Australia. As per the statement, the announcement follows the Britain administration donating 10.3 million COVID vaccines to other nations, including 6.2 million to vulnerable nations through the COVAX programme. Really positive news weve been able to agree a vaccine swap with South Korea 1 million more COVID vaccines will boost their rollout, helping more people as quickly as possible. https://t.co/VIsGVT9cmb Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) September 22, 2021 Sajid Javid, Health and Social Care Secretary, in the statement said that the new announcement would not affect the UK vaccination programme. He said, "By working closely with our friends in South Korea, this vaccine swap will maximise their rollout speed without having an impact on the UKs vaccine programme". He added that they will continue their effort to deliver 100 million vaccine doses to nations around the world by 2022. The United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss said, "The UK is playing a leading role in the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic - donating 100 million vaccine doses across the world and have committed 548m to COVAX". Furthermore, Truss insisted that the new agreement between the UK and South Korea would benefit both countries as they combat COVID. In the statement, Liz Truss added, "The Republic of Korea is a strategic partner for the UK and the sharing of one million vaccines benefits both countries as we help build resistance against COVID-19 and save lives". Image: AP With Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarking on his visit to the United States, a lot of political and diplomatic buzz has been created around it. On Thursday, as PM met with the CEOs of the top global firms to highlight economic opportunities in India, a group of Balochistan and Bangladesh activists staged a protest against notorious Pakistan and sought Indias intervention against the nation. The Prime Ministers visit has created a stir and the human rights activists came out to highlight the sufferings of people in Balochistan. They staged an Anti-Pakistan protest during PM Modis visit to raise the issue of continuous atrocities being suffered by the Baloch people, because of Pakistan. The protestors also demanded Indias intervention in the matter and appealed to the PM to place sanctions against Pakistan. Speaking to Republic Media Network, an anti-Pak protester said, We request Indian govt to sanction Pakistan, trial to war criminal and declare Pak as genocide nation. Protestors also raised the issue of the abduction of Balochistan Activist Shabir Baloch by the Pakistan Army on Oct 4, 2016, and his detention by the Army. Bangladeshi protestors demanded justice against the 1971 genocide attack by Pakistan in Bangladesh. They also demanded to declare Pakistan as a genocide nation and war criminal. Several other global protests have been held by Baloch activists against Pakistan. The Free Balochistan Movement (FBM) has held a protest rally on Saturday in Hanover, Germany. The people protested against killing the victims of enforced disappearances in "fake encounters" in occupied Balochistan, according to ANI. The Free Balochistan Movement has alleged that the "fake encounters" have been carried out by the "Counter-Terrorism Department" (CTD) of Pakistani forces in Balochistan. Genocide in Balochistan Balochistan, a disputed territory currently under the control of Pakistan has witnessed numerous incidents of rebellion against the occupation of Pakistan. Time and again, Balochistan leaders and activists have sought help from India over the atrocities of Pakistan on its people. Balochistan province has been host to a long-running separatist insurgency. Activists in Balochistan say thousands of campaigners have gone missing in recent years and accuse the Pakistan military of brutally suppressing the region's aspirations for autonomy. Seemingly trying to replicate PM Modi's developmental policies for Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan PM Imran Khan said the biggest package has been given to Balochistan citing 'justice has indeed not been done with the people of Balochistan'. Attempting damage control, Pakistan PM Imran Khan indicated that he is considering "talking to insurgents" in Balochistan. (Image: Republic World) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday, 22 September, met with his Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi on the sidelines of the 76th UNGA session. Both the leaders had a good exchange of views on Afghanistan. In a tweet, the EAM said that he appreciated the Japanese Foreign Ministers insights on Indo-Pacific issues. Always nice to meet FM @moteging of Japan. Appreciated his insights on Indo-Pacific events. A good exchange of views on Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/1llVp5nTR3 Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 The meeting between Jaishankar and Motegi came after the two leaders participated in the foreign ministers meeting of G4 countries, which also saw the participation of Brazil's Carlos Alberto Franco Ranca and Germany's Heiko Maas. Following the meeting, the ministers reaffirmed in a joint statement that it is indispensable to reform the Security Council through an expansion of both categories, permanent and non-permanent seats, to enable the Security Council to better deal with the ever-complex and evolving challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security, and thereby to carry out its duties more effectively. G20 Foreign Ministers meeting It is worth mentioning that Jaishankar is in New York for the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Previously, he had held several bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers from Iran, Australia, Egypt and Indonesia. He also met his counterparts from France, United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, and discussed issues related to the Indo-Pacific. On Wednesday, Jaishankar addressed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting on Afghanistan. While calling for a broad-based inclusive government in the war-ravaged nation, the EAM said that the Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any many should be implemented. Jaishakar further went on to say that Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. Biden to host PM Modi on Sept 24 Meanwhile, PM Narendra Modi has arrived in the United States to hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, attend QUAD Summit and address the UNGA. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House for their bilateral meeting on 24 September. The same day, the US President will also host the QUAD Leaders Summit with PM Modi, Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga and Australian PM Scott Morrison. (Image: Twitter) On the sidelines of the UNGA session, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday, 22 September, held a meeting with Tanzanias Foreign Minister Liberata Mulamula. In a tweet, Jaishankar said that both the nations will work to advance development partnership and traditional political cooperation between them. Nice to meet my new Tanzanian colleague, FM @Amb_Mulamula. Will work to advance our development partnership and traditional political cooperation. pic.twitter.com/CxOrFeA66m Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 EAM Jaishankar is in New York for the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. His meeting with his Tanzanian counterpart comes after he held several bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers from Iran, Australia, Egypt and Indonesia. Previously, Jaishankar met his counterparts from France, UK and Saudi Arabia, and discussed issues related to Indo-Pacific. EAM addresses G20 FM meeting On Wednesday, Jaishankar also addressed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting on Afghanistan. While calling for a broad-based inclusive government in the war-ravaged nation, the EAM said that the Talibans commitment not to allow the use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any many should be implemented. Jaishakar further went on to say that Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. Talibans commitment not to allow use of Afghan soil for terrorism in any manner should be implemented. The world expects a broad-based inclusive process that involves representation from all sections of Afghan society," Jaishankar said while addressing the meeting on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UNGA. He added, UNSC resolution 2593, which reflects global sentiment, should continue to guide our approach. Indias engagement will be driven by its historical friendship with the Afghan people. Addressed the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting on Afghanistan. International community must come together in response to humanitarian needs. Assistance providers must be accorded unimpeded, unrestricted and direct access. pic.twitter.com/F737SoCgHL Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 22, 2021 PM Modi arrives in US Meanwhile, PM Narendra Modi has arrived in the United States to hold the first face-to-face meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, attend QUAD Summit and address the UNGA. PM Modi has said that his visit would be an occasion to strengthen the Indo-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and consolidate ties with Japan and Australia. PM Modi was received at the airport by senior officials of the Biden Administration and Indias Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Now, Biden will host PM Modi at the White House for their bilateral meeting on 24 September. The same day, the US President will also host the QUAD Leaders Summit with PM Modi, Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga and Australian PM Scott Morrison. (Image: Twitter) The United States on Wednesday, 22 September, announced an additional $180 million to aid over 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. According to a press release, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that the US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced the additional humanitarian assistance for those affected by the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, Myanmar and elsewhere in the region. Price said, With this new funding, our total humanitarian assistance for this response reaches more than USD 1.5 billion since August 2017, when more than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee ethnic cleansing and other horrific atrocities and abuses in Burma's [Myanmar's] Rakhine State to safety in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Further, Price went on to say that the Myanmar military must immediately stop the violence, release all those unjustly detained, restore the nations path to democracy and implement ASEANs Five Point Consensus. He called on the Junta to allow immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to people in need, including for the delivery of critical COVID-19 assistance. Price even lauded the humanitarian actors for a strong and well-coordinated humanitarian response. Rohingya refugee crisis Myanmar was engulfed in a fresh crisis earlier this year as the junta toppled the democratic government and claimed control while triggering nationwide protests amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017, when the military in Myanmar began a harsh crackdown on the Muslim ethnic group following an attack by insurgents. According to AP, the 2017 crackdown included rape, killings and torching thousands of homes. It was even termed as ethnic cleansing by global rights groups and the UN. The Rohingyas who now still remains in the country, on the other hand, have flagged several instances of discrimination and mistreatment in the country. It is worth mentioning that Myanmar does not recognise the Muslim minority as its citizens. Even though Bangladesh and Myanmar have sought to arrange repatriations, the Rohingyas are fearful to return home. (With inputs from ANI) Qorvis has agreed to provide strategic communications and media relations services in support of increasing public awareness along with travel and tourism for the Kingdom of Cambodia. In an attempt to burnish its tarnished reputation in Washington, Cambodias government has agreed to pay $70,000 a month to a U.S. lobbying firm known for representing some of the worlds most notorious regimes, according to papers lodged with the U.S. Justice Department. Cambodias ambassador to the United States, Chum Sounry, signed a contract on Sept. 15 with Qorvis Communications, according to a filing made two days later and viewable on a website that records the registration of agents who represent foreign governments in the U.S. In exchange for a $69,300 monthly retainer, Qorvis has agreed to provide strategic communications and media relations services in support of increasing public awareness along with travel and tourism for the Kingdom of Cambodia. Phnom Penhs international reputation has plummeted in recent years. In response to increasingly autocratic governance and human rights violations, the European Union has stripped Cambodia of its preferential trade status and the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on powerful figures within Prime Minister Hun Sens government. In response, Cambodia has gone on a lobbying spending spree, signing contracts with two agencies in 2019 alone. One of those agencies, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, lobbied State Department employees not to pursue further sanctions against Cambodian officials, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Many foreign governments hire lobbying firms to help press their case in the halls of power in Washington. But Dr Sophal Ear, author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia, said that as the latest firm to be signed up, Qorvis should be ashamed of itself for taking on the Cambodian government as a client. Its absolutely disheartening to see that $70,000 per month is being spent on public relations to defend human rights abuses, destruction of democracy and un-freedom, Ear told RFA. Cambodia is now engaged in the purchase of coal-generated electricity, the clear-cutting of the last of its precious forests, sand-dredging, and so on. All of this should give Qorvis pause, but instead they look only at their balance sheet and profit and loss. Qorvis did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article on Thursday. The firm was one of the few lobbyists not to drop Saudi Arabia as a client in the wake of the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. For roughly a decade Qorvis has represented Equatorial Guinea, which since 1979 has been subject to the deadly rule of its President Teodoro Obiang, whose son was made the subject of a travel ban and asset freeze by the United Kingdom this summer over allegations he embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds. But filings with the Justice Department show that Qorvis also provides services to the office of the prime minister of Japan and the Republic of Fiji. However, it also serviced the latter while it was in the throes of a military government roughly a decade ago. It remains to be seen precisely what services Qorvis will perform for Cambodia and for how long. The contract signed with Cambodia earlier this month stipulates that it can be terminated by either party at 30 days notice, and that the government may adjust or otherwise fine tune the Services in accordance with [its] priorities as they may evolve over time. Chinese writer Gu Xiao fully expects her son, the veteran pro-democracy activist Guo Quan, who recently stood trial for "subversion," to go to prison, but told RFA in a recent interview that she enjoyed watching him defend himself in court. A former ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda official in the Jiangsu provincial government, Gu graduated from Nanjing Normal University, where Guo later lectured, in the 1960s. As a writer, Gu has remained firmly a part of the CCP establishment. A member of the Jiangsu Provincial Writers' Association, she once netted a "Golden Eagle" award for a television screenplay. Her loyalty to the system she was raised in means she feels scant sympathy for Guo, a former judge, as he stood trial on Sept. 9, 2021 by video call at the Xuzhou Intermediate People's Court, pleading not guilty and defending himself vigorously in terms of free speech protections enshrined in the Chinese constitution. "Of course I don't have much empathy ... I think it would have been better if my son had never done these things, and had just been an ordinary person like me," Gu said. "I'm not the kind of person who likes to get involved in politics." Nonetheless, Gu said she enjoyed watching her son's defense by video link from Nanjing's Jiangning District Detention Center, and was proud of his eloquence. "I was happy seeing him there on the screen, talking and arguing in his own defense," she said. "You could tell that he used to be a university professor." In a trial that lasted more than five hours, Guo, now 53, addressed the court for nearly two hours, engaging in a systematic legal defense of the articles he published online that were submitted in evidence by the state prosecutor's office, his attorney said. 'He has ruined my old age' He told the court that he wasn't guilty, but understood that the court could decide to convict him anyway. Gu said she agreed with him. "I watched it for two hours, and actually I really got the impression that my son hadn't committed any crime," she said. "My friends were saying that my son would be home with me in no time, but I told them they'd got it wrong." "I have no hope of that. We all have our fate, and I think mine is to spend my old age alone," she said. Gu said she stopped short of feelings of pride for Guo. "I'm not proud of him; he has brought me too much suffering," she said. "He has ruined my old age; what is there to be proud of?" Gu said she is lonely sometimes, but also relishes the peace that solitude brings. "I watch TV or read the newspaper here on my own at home," she said. "It's nice and peaceful." "Solitude has its advantages. It's nice not to be disturbed," Gu said. "That way, I can forget everything, listen to my music, watch my shows, and it all suddenly fades into oblivion." "I live alone all year round. I have a domestic helper who comes in the mornings; the food I ate [for Mid-Autumn Festival] was made by her the day before," she said. Critic of Wuhan response "So I'm alone. I've gotten used to it," she said. "I don't feel lonely on my own at home, and I'm not scared of anything." "Sometimes I feel that solitude is something to enjoy, though it's fashionable to talk about loneliness," she said. "Wherever he is, in prison or wherever, my son will probably be thinking about his mom at home all by herself." "But I've also had enough of living on my own. I have to keep going for my son," she said. Guo was detained by Nanjing police on Jan. 31, 2020 and held at the Nanjing No. 2 Detention Center on charges that were unknown at the time. He had been writing online about the COVID-19 outbreak in China and had criticized the governments response, according to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network. His family were informed on Feb. 26, 2020 of his formal arrest for "incitement to subvert state power." Held incommunicado for much of his pretrial detention, Guo finally received a visit from defense attorney Si Weijiang in the Nanjing No. 2 Detention Center on Oct. 12, 2020, CHRD said. A former associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, Guo had previously served a 10-year jail term from 2009 on the same charge after he set up the China New People's Party in 2007. Gu said it was a struggle to get through that decade. "I made it through those 10 years -- I had to be my own hero," she said. "I just lived for his return, and then, after just over a year, he was detained again. "Imagine what that felt like, as his mother, for him to be away for so long, and then be suddenly taken away again after such a short time," Gu said. "But most people don't know how things are going for me. The lady who comes to take care of me can't tell how I'm feeling; she just thinks about my physical health," she said. The trial ended with a verdict and sentencing to be announced "at a later date." Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. The city's largest pro-democracy party debates dissolution in the face of new election rules designed to exclude genuine political opposition. A court in Hong Kong on Thursday denied bail to a 19-year-old activist, the fourth person to be arrested in connection with the group Student Politicism under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing. Wong Yuen-lam's arrest on Wednesday came as the West Kowloon Court denied bail to group convenor Wong Yat-chin, 20, its secretary general Chan Chi-sum, 20, and former member Jessica Chu, 19. Both Chu and Wong had previously acted as spokeperson for the group. Like the other three arrestees, Wong Yuen-lam is being held on suspicion of "conspiracy to incite subversion," with police warning that investigations are still ongoing, and that more arrests could follow. Senior superintendent Steve Li of the national security police has accused Student Politicism of a range of "subversive acts," including encouraging people not to use the government's voluntary LeaveHomeSafe pandemic app, and using street booths to "incite hatred of the government." The group was also accused of trying to "recruit" prisoners by sending them gifts of chocolate and hand cream. The investigation into the campus-based political group came as Hong Kong's Democratic Party contemplated dissolution, faced with a new electoral system that is unlikely to approve any of its candidates, and amid warnings by a pro-CCP figure that not running could be seen as a breach of the city's constitution, the Basic Law, and call the party's allegiance into question. Former Democratic Party lawmaker Fred Li said that while he believes the party should try to field candidates even if they face disqualification, it should dissolve if it can't represent the people of Hong Kong. "If a political party wants to run in elections, it also has to get seats," Li said. "If it continues to run for elections but never gets any seats in the Legislative Council [LegCo], then how representative is it?" "What kind of public recognition would it have, and ... how can it supervise the work of the government?" he said. "If it fails on all those counts, it would be better for that party to disband." Li was speaking ahead of a secret ballot on Sunday in which party members will vote on whether to boycott the LegCo election in December, the first to be held under a system designed to exclude genuine political opposition or dissenting voices. Further loss of power seen Former Democratic Party member Tik Chi-yuen, a centrist who became the only person to win a seat on the Beijing-approved Election Committee in last weekend's elections who isn't wholeheartedly supportive of the government and the CCP, said a boycott would likely lead to the demise of the Democratic Party. "If a powerful political party decides to boycott and abandon these elections, this will shrink any power the democrats may have still further," Tik said. "If the Democratic Party wants to continue to serve our society and promote democracy, and if it cares about people's lives, it should run for LegCo on that platform," he said. "Without a presence in the legislature, it will shrink further." The party's dilemma came after an opinion article in the Ming Pao newspaper penned by pro-CCP figure Lo Man-tuen warned that the party's leadership risks breaching the Basic Law if they decide to boycott the elections. Lo, who is vice chairman of the CCP-backed All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, said the loyalty of the party's members would then be called into question. Joseph Cheng, former politics lecturer at Hong Kong's City University, said the party may not be able to field candidates even if it decides to take part, however, as it needs to secure a certain number of nominations from a pro-CCP vetting system in order to do so. "I hope the environment will improve in the future, and that I will be able to take part in a free election," Cheng said. "Pro-democracy parties are considering restructuring ... and waiting until political conditions improve." Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Tibetan homes destroyed in a May 22, 2021 earthquake in Qinghai are shown under reconstruction in an undated photo. Survivors of an earthquake earlier this year in a Tibetan-populated county in northwestern Chinas Qinghai say they fear that homes and monasteries demolished in the quake will be rebuilt by authorities in a Chinese style, destroying their traditional Tibetan appearance, sources say. The 7.3 magnitude quake struck Qinghais Matoe (in Chinese, Maduo) county on May 22, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 300, local sources told RFA in earlier reports. Chinese authorities moved quickly to block information flows from the region, preventing independent confirmation of casualty figures. Local authorities began in July to rebuild affected areas, demolishing houses and monasteries, a Tibetan living in the region told RFAs Tibetan Service this week. But they are taking down not just the structures that were affected in the earthquake but also those that were not affected, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. And without consulting the wishes of the laypeople or the monks, they are demolishing their homes and living quarters and replacing them with steel-framed houses. It is of huge concern now that the government may soon reconstruct the whole area with houses that present only Chinese characteristics, he said. Even though severe damage was left behind by the earthquake in May, "there is no reason to simply tear everything down, the source said, adding that Chinese authorities are promising the new structures will be strong enough to withstand earthquakes in the future, and that other houses will eventually be built. However, all this new construction complies only with the governments agenda, and Tibetans are concerned that there will be no Tibetan characteristics left in these newly built houses, the source said. Tibetan residents of Matoe were barred by authorities from posting reports concerning damage from the May 22 quake, which followed a 6.4 magnitude quake earlier that same day in southwestern Chinas Yunnan province that left at least three dead and 32 injured, according to state media reports. On April 14, 2010, an earthquake in Qinghais Yushul (Yushu) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture largely destroyed the town of Kyegudo, displacing thousands of residents and killing almost 3,000 by official count. Chinese security forces later moved to evict Tibetan families from the new homes built for them after occupants said they could not pay the government back for the costs of additional construction. The Jan. 2015 action by authorities in Kyegudo followed official demands for payment and saw hundreds of police deployed into government-built housing projects, sources said. Tibetans living in Tibet and Tibetan areas of China frequently complain of political, economic, and religious discrimination as well as human rights abuses and say they fear Beijing is pursuing ever more intensive assimilation policies toward the six million Tibetans. Reported by Sangyal Kunchok for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney. China should respect international law as well as the common understanding shared by Vietnamese and Chinese leaders of remaining issues at sea," Hanoi said. A Y-20, Chinas largest type of transport plane, pictured in a screen grab from a July 15, 2021, video by state-run CGTN. Vietnam protested against a Chinese military transport mission in the disputed South China Sea last week, calling it a violation of Vietnams sovereignty, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Chinese state media reported that on Sept. 16, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) deployed a number of Y-20 large transport aircraft to return troops from three outposts in the Spratly Islands which China calls Nansha -- to the mainland. This was the first time the PLA confirmed that this new type of aircraft had been operating on islands and reefs in the South China Sea, according to the Global Times, part of the Chinese Communist Partys mouthpiece Peoples Daily. Vietnamese Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a regular press briefing in Hanoi on Thursday that Vietnam demands that China respect its sovereignty over the Paracel archipelago which Vietnam calls Hoang Sa -- and Spratlys (Truong Sa), and immediately stop and not repeat similar activities. Hang added that China should respect international law as well as the common understanding shared by Vietnamese and Chinese leaders of remaining issues at sea. The Global Times quoted the PLA South Sea Fleet as saying that several Y-20 transport aircraft of the PLA Air Force took off from airfields on Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef last Thursday, carrying veterans who were garrisoned there to the Chinese mainland. Previously, such missions were done by ships, it noted. The three reefs are controlled by China but also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China, which claims most of the South China Sea, has extensively developed the three features with military facilities and airstrips despite the unresolved territorial disputes. The Chinese newspaper quoted an unnamed military expert who said that the latest mission meant that the PLA airfields in the South China Sea can host large transport aircraft, which can transport a relatively large number of troops and numerous pieces of equipment between the islands and reefs and the mainland very fast. The Chinese-built base at Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands, pictured in an Aug. 20, 2021, satellite image. Credit: Planet Labs Inc. Suspicious activities Foreign media reported that a Y-20 cargo plane was spotted landing on Fiery Cross Reef in December last year but it was not confirmed until now. Malaysia in June accused China of breaching its airspace after detecting suspicious activity by 16 Chinese military aircraft including Il-76 and Y-20 transporters over disputed waters off its state of Sarawak. Malaysia dispatched fighter jets to intercept the Chinese planes, calling the maneuver a "serious threat to national sovereignty" and threatened to summon the Chinese ambassador in a diplomatic protest. China insisted that the Chinese air force strictly abided by international law without entering the airspace of other countries. The Xi'an Y-20 is China's first indigenously developed heavy military transport aircraft. It has a payload capacity of over 60 tons and can carry up to 300 troops. The PLA Air Force is believed to have 20 such aircraft in service. In another development, Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said on Twitter that 24 Chinese air force aircraft entered the islands air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Thursday. Beijing has yet to comment on this. This is the second-highest number of daily incursions by Chinese military airplanes into Taiwans ADIZ. The highest was 28 on June 15. North Macedonia had a "moral obligation" to take in Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban after the militants seized power in a blitz offensive last month, President Stevo Pendarovski has told the United Nations General Assembly. North Macedonia has agreed to temporarily host at least 750 Afghans who worked with U.S.-led international forces, as well as students, journalists, and employees of nongovernmental organizations. "Guided by the sense of moral obligation, as well as solidarity, my country, North Macedonia, immediately announced its readiness to host a considerable number of Afghan refugees, particularly the most vulnerable categories and the people who have worked for United Nations agencies in that country for many years," Pendarovski told the General Assembly in his address on September 23. The first group of 149 Afghan men, women, and children arrived in North Macedonia late last month and Pendarovski said the refugees have been offered conditions for "a dignified life." Pendarovski also said the birth of an Afghan child immediately upon the arrival of the first group of refugees in North Macedonia had a symbolic meaning for those who sought shelter in his country. "A baby was born in the local hospital immediately after the first plane with Afghan refugees landed at the Skopje airport, a symbolic sparkle of hope and a proof that life, indeed, prevails!" Pendarovski said. With reporting by AP A court in Belarus has extended the pretrial detention of Sofia Sapega, who was arrested along with her boyfriend, opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich, in Minsk after authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered a passenger plane they were on diverted as it flew over the country. Sapega's mother told the Deutsche Welle news agency by phone on September 23 that her daughter will remain under house arrest until December 25, according to a court ruling. She added that she was in daily contact with her daughter, who is treating the situation "philosophically" with the hope that "everything will work out." Sapega, a Russian citizen who lived most of her life in Belarus, and Pratasevich, who is Belarusian, were moved from the prisons where they were being held to house arrest on June 25. They were arrested on May 23 after Belarus scrambled a military jet to escort a Ryanair passenger flight over its airspace to land in Minsk in what many countries regard as a "state hijacking." After the plane landed, law enforcement immediately arrested the two, who were flying from Athens to Vilnius. Pratasevich faces charges of being behind civil disturbances that followed a disputed presidential election in August 2020, an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. He was a key administrator of the Telegram channel Nexta-Live, which has been covering mass protests denouncing the official results of the election, which handed Lukashenka a sixth presidential term. The charges against Sapega are less clear. She faces criminal offenses but the details of her transgressions have not been released. Belarusian authorities released a video of Sapega, a law student studying for her master's degree in Vilnius, where she says that she edits Black Book of Belarus, a Telegram channel that has published the personal information of security officials. Belarus has designated the channel as an extremist group. But critics say she made the statement under duress. Lukashenka's regime has been under international pressure since it launched a brutal crackdown on the political opposition and independent media in the wake of the disputed 2020 election. The protesters say the election was rigged, while the EU, the United States, and other countries have refused to recognize the official results of the vote and do not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader. The United States, the European Union, Britain, and Canada have slapped several rounds of coordinated sanctions on Belarus in response to the mounting repression against the political opposition and the free media. With reporting by Deutsche Welle The United States is permitting a company owned by a Ukrainian tycoon to sell a Texas building the government froze as part of a civil money-laundering case so that it can pay down the propertys back taxes and other debts. The Justice Department last year accused billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskiy along with his partner of embezzling money from their Ukraine-based Privatbank and then laundering the proceeds through shell companies to purchase U.S. commercial buildings worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Justice Department sued to seize three of the buildings, including one each in Ohio, Kentucky, and Texas. Kolomoyskiy denies the accusations and has filed for arbitration, saying the United States has no basis to expropriate his assets. In a September 22 filing, U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke granted a Justice Department request to allow Kolomoyskiys firm to sell a Dallas building that was once home to Electronic Data Systems, the company founded by former presidential candidate Ross Perot. Centurion American, a North Texas-based real estate firm, has agreed to buy the property for $23.3 million, according to the court filing. The sale is expected to be completed on September 27, court filings show. After debts and taxes are paid, the remaining proceeds from the sale will be held in an interest-bearing escrow account maintained by the United States pending the outcome of the civil case. The property owed more than $425,000 in property taxes, late penalties, and community association fees as of September 16, court documents show. This Court finds that an interlocutory sale of the Property is necessary and appropriate to preserve the value of the Property before the conclusion of the pending forfeiture proceedings, Cooke said in her ruling. The immediate sale will mitigate the risk of market fluctuations as well as the cost of maintaining the property in good condition. The Texas property is currently unoccupied and thus unable to generate revenue to cover its maintenance costs, taxes, and association fees. Kolomoyskiy is one of the most powerful tycoons in Ukraine with assets ranging from oil and gas to metals and media. His television stations backed the candidacy of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during the 2019 campaign and he is reported to have close ties to his administration. An investigation by RFE/RL has uncovered indirect ties between the chairman of Kazakhstan's monopoly gas trader, KazTransGas, and emergent companies that have benefited from massive business deals linked to the state -- including a multibillion-dollar, 20-year contract to process so-called associate gas from KazTransGas. Public documents showing KazTransGas Chairman Kairat Sharipbaev and other current or former statutory figures in Kazakh businesses raise the specters of industrial self-dealing or favorable state treatment for past Sharipbaev start-ups and an obscure business partner who figures in some of those same companies. It is unclear whether Sharipbaev directly profited from his discreet personal relationship with the eldest daughter of ex-leader Nursultan Nazarbaev, whose unrivaled influence has barely waned since he retreated from his presidential duties two years ago. But Sharipbaev's appointment to the chairmanship at KazTransGas and his rising business fortunes have coincided with reports of a long-term relationship with Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha -- possibly including a marriage that has never been publicly confirmed. Decades of accusations of rampant clientelism in Central Asia's wealthiest post-Soviet republic is buttressed by evidence of a tight circle of elites close to Nazarbaev's family enriching themselves through undisclosed personal and business networks. In one of the starkest examples of a little-known entity with indirect ties to Sharipbaev profiting from key services, a firm called GPC Investment was chosen to supervise the construction of a $860 million plant to process associated gas for KazTransGas. GPC Investment is only two years old and has just five registered employees. Seemingly corresponding to that government-assisted deal, GPC Investment's tax payments -- a frequent barometer of profits -- skyrocketed to around 500 million tenges, or about $1.17 million, in the first half of 2021, from a mere 400,000 tenges the previous year. Processing "associated gas" has become increasingly lucrative as natural-gas prices soar, but also as global pressure mounts to minimize environmental damage from fossil fuels and squeeze additional resources out of the byproducts of crude-oil extraction. Kazakhstan has rushed to capitalize, with much of that business so far going either to a firm called Gas Processing Company or to GPC Investment thanks in significant part to KazTransGas. Public documents say Gas Processing Company was founded by an individual named Aset Nurdos, and that GPC Investment is run by Nurdos. The enigmatic 34-year-old Nurdos has turned up atop several of Sharipbaev's former companies -- including one called Astana Group that since February has listed his daughter, Korlan Sharipbaeva, as its founder. Sharipbaev and Nurdos both also appear as statutory members of a company called Intergas Central Asia, where Sharipbaev led marketing and trade efforts in the early 2000s. A company originally founded by Sharipbaev in 2014, Innovation Invest, subsequently listed Nurdos as its founder. RFE/RL's Kazakh Service investigation could not locate any Aset Nurdos, and calls to the telephone numbers listed for Nurdos on commercial documents were out of service. Sharipbaev declined to respond to RFE/RLs questions -- including questions about Nurdos's identity, their business relationship, or activities involving firms founded by Sharipbaev or run by Sharipbaev's daughter. Rise To Power The 58-year-old Sharipbaev has risen from his roots as a soil scientist and greengrocer to become one of the most influential men in Kazakhstan. His two-decade career in the gas industry culminated in November 2020 when he took up the chairman's post at KazTransGas, which delivers natural gas to more than half of Kazakhstan's 18 million residents. The state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGas spun off KazTransGas in March, when ownership was transferred to the Kazakh state's sovereign wealth fund, known as Samruk-Kazyna. Around the same time, video appeared online showing Sharipbaev and Darigha Nazarbaeva, a former deputy prime minister and current lawmaker, at the center of what appeared to be a wedding celebration. Amid a frolicking group of around 20 other people tossing flower petals and singing a traditional wedding song known as "Jar-Jar," Sharipbaev hoists Nazarbaeva into his arms in the style of many modern Kazakh weddings. It was unclear when the video was made or by whom. But it has strengthened rumors dating back to at least 2013 that the two had quietly wed. Shortly before his death in London in August 2020, at the age of 29, Darigha's son from a previous marriage, Aisultan Nazarbaev, referred to Sharipbaev as "my mother's current husband." But while they have occasionally appeared together at public functions, neither has publicly confirmed they are married. Open government sites don't currently list Sharipbaev as owning or controlling any commercial entities outside of his role at KazTransGas. But major deals and activities involving entities linked to Nurdos and KazTransGas or state-controlled companies have continued apace. Gas Processing Company already owns one of the associated-gas processing plants that are cropping up in oil-rich western Kazakhstan, at Kozhasai in the Aqtobe region. In late 2018, then-President Nazarbaev helped mark its opening. It reportedly processes around 300 million cubic meters of associated gas annually before selling about 70 percent of its output abroad. In June, Nurdos's GPC Investment began construction on a new, $860 million associated-gas processing plant at the Kashagan field, in Kazakhstan's Atyrau region. The Kazakh newcomer GPC Investment was selected for the project by the Kazakh government despite initial suggestions that international energy companies like Eni, Total, Shell, Exxon Mobil, China's CNPC, or Japan's Inpex might be in the running. Sharipbaev attended the ground-breaking ceremony at Kashagan on behalf of KazTransGas. Five months earlier, in late December 2020, soon after Sharipbaev's appointment at KazTransGas, the Kazakh government approved a resolution clearing the way for KazTransGas to receive 1 billion cubic meters of associated gas from Kashagan. Two days later, on December 31, a consortium including state-held KazMunayGas signed a deal pledging to give the same amount of associated gas to KazTransGas, which would transfer it to GPC Investment's new plant. In February, GPC Investment struck a deal to "extract and process crude gas" for KazTransGas that is worth "50 or more percent of the total assets of KazTransGas," or upward of $2 billion. Officials from the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund declined to disclose its terms, citing "trade secrets." The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has agreed to add legislation to the annual defense-spending bill that would place sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 project, potentially putting into jeopardy an agreement reached between the Biden administration and Germany in July. The House on September 22 unanimously passed on a voice vote a package of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including the sanctions legislation. The House is expected to vote on the NDAA on September 23. The bill would still require approval in the Senate and President Joe Biden's signature to become law. Biden in May agreed to waive congressionally mandated sanctions on the pipeline in an attempt to smooth out relations with Germany, which has backed the construction of the pipeline. The move opened the door to the completion of the pipeline earlier this month. The decision sparked a backlash among lawmakers from both parties, prompting them to submit new legislation that essentially reverses that decision. "Kudos to Congress," John Herbst, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said in a tweet after the vote. Herbst, who is now an analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council and a fierce opponent of the pipeline, added that it was a "necessary step to prevent another Biden cave and stop Nord Stream 2." The amendment is considered a "hail Mary pass" by some Ukraine observers because they do not expect the Democrats to allow a bill onto the floor that is not backed by a president from their own party. The measure authorizes new mandatory sanctions on entities and individuals involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including those that certify the project. Russia announced earlier this month that it completed the construction of the $11 billion project, but it must still be certified before it can begin operating. That process can take several months, meaning the U.S. sanctions legislation could still have the potential to halt its launch if it becomes law by the start of the year. In what experts say is an attempt to speed up certification, Russia has refused to export gas volumes to Europe via Ukraine amid a supply crunch, causing prices to surge to record highs. The House amendment was introduced by a group of House lawmakers led by Representatives Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas) and Marcy Kaptur (Democrat-Ohio). Kaptur is the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. The Nord Stream 2 project is designed to carry Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing land routes through Ukraine and depriving Kyiv of as much as $2 billion a year in transit fees. Ukraine and Poland vehemently oppose the project on the grounds that it is a national security threat, while Germany has steadfastly supported it. The U.S. Congress has sided with Kyiv and Warsaw, imposing two rounds of mandatory sanctions via the NDAA in 2019 and 2020 to stop its completion. The Biden administration, in an attempt to improve frayed ties with Germany, agreed into waive the mandatory sanctions in exchange for commitments from Berlin to invest in Ukraine's energy industry and push the Kremlin to continue to export some gas through the country. Russia's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), has ratcheted up the charges against jailed Crimean Tatar politician Nariman Dzhelyal over the alleged sabotage of a pipeline last month. Authorities in Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea region detained Dzhelyal and four other Tatar activists in early September, accusing them of sabotaging a gas pipeline near the regional capital, Simferopol, a charge dismissed by Kyiv as fabricated. Dzhelyal is the deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatar's self-governing assembly, the Mejlis, which was banned in Crimea following Russia's annexation of the peninsula in 2014. He was initially accused of complicity in committing sabotage, but his lawyer said on September 23 he was later reclassified as a full participant in the alleged plot. Dzhelyal is now accused of committing sabotage as part of an organized group, as well as the illegal acquisition or storage of explosives, according to lawyer Mykola Polozov. He faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. The FSB has also accused Ukrainian military intelligence of procuring an explosive device and promising a cash reward of $2,000 to the alleged saboteur to plant it. Since Russia occupied Crimea, the authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars amid what rights groups and Western governments have described as a campaign of repression against members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula. Russia has also backed separatists in a war against Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 13,200 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. The EU called for the release of the five Crimean Tatar activists, saying it "considers the detentions to be politically motivated and illegal under international law." The United States called on "the Russian occupation authorities" to immediately release Dzhelyal and "at least 45 other Crimean Tatars, while accusing Moscow of politically motivated raids and detentions targeting the Mejlis and its leadership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the case against the five Tatar activists was in retaliation for the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform, an international initiative to bring about the restoration of Ukrainian-Russian relations by ending the Russian occupation of Crimea. A Russian court has rejected jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's appeal to annul his designation as a "flight risk," which subjects him to hourly nighttime checks while he is incarcerated. Navalny's lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, told Interfax on September 23 that the Vladimir regional court had refused to grant the Kremlin critic's request, upholding previous lower court rulings. In late May, Navalny turned to the courts to halt the nighttime checks, saying the measure amounted to "torture." The anti-corruption campaigner was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin --an accusation that Russian officials reject. He is serving a 2 1/2-year prison sentence on embezzlement charges that he says were trumped up because of his political activities. After his arrest, Navalny was labeled a flight risk, which he and his supporters challenged, saying that his return to Russia of his own free will, knowing that he likely faced imprisonment, showed he had no intention of fleeing. He went on a 24-day hunger strike in prison to protest a lack of medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs, ending it in April after getting the medical attention he demanded. Based on reporting by Interfax Serbia has raised the combat readiness of its troops on the border with Kosovo as a four-day flare-up over mutual recognition of state authority bedevils the Balkan neighbors, with Serbia's president suggesting there are limits to what Belgrade will "tolerate." The new frictions have dampened hopes that a decade of EU-mediated efforts to normalize relations between the two former Yugoslav entities will achieve a breakthrough anytime soon. Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo have been blocking the border since Kosovar authorities on September 20 began strictly enforcing a new policy of removing Serbian license plates from incoming vehicles and replacing them with temporary local plates. Serbian authorities for years have insisted on the removal of Kosovar license plates that cross their mutual border. Pristina this week deployed special troops to several major border checkpoints to maintain order as it invoked the new restriction. But ethnic Serb protesters have blocked two crossings in the north of Kosovo, at Jarinje and Brnjak, as well as roads leading to them. Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on September 22 his country and Serbia should start recognizing each other's car license plates, adding, Neither our state or citizens nor Kosovar Serbs or Serbia are interested in incidents and escalation." But Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said on a visit to the Raska and Novi Pazar garrisons on September 23 that Serbian troops there were on high alert as the standoff persisted. Stefanovic was accompanied by the chief of the Serbian General Staff, General Milan Mojsilovic. Kosovar officials have disputed Serbian media reports suggesting ethnic Serb protesters were beaten by police. Kosovo Police spokesman Baki Kelani said that apart from the presence of barricades reinforced by gravel, the situation was largely calm. On Serbian television, President Aleksandar Vucic was quoted as saying he was "concerned" and warning against violence targeting Serbs in Kosovo. We have made clear what are the boundaries by which we will tolerate violence by [Kosovar Prime Minister] Albin Kurti and his special forces," Vucic said on September 23. Both the Europeans and Americans know that. We have said very precisely what our next moves will be, and in which order they will be made." Ethnic Albanian guerrillas fought a 1998-99 war for independence for Kosovo and its nearly 2 million inhabitants from Serbia, now home to around 7 million people. Serbia refuses to recognize the 2008 declaration of sovereignty by its former province, whose independence is recognized by around 110 countries but whose presence in some international organizations is still prevented by the impasse. With reporting by AP Ukrainian lawmakers have approved a draft bill directed at limiting the influence of oligarchs, the day after a car carrying a top aide of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who pushed for the reform, was riddled with bullets as it traveled through a village. The second and final reading of the proposed legislation -- known as "the oligarch law" -- was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on September 23. The draft law, which must still be signed by Zelenskiy, would introduce a legal definition for an oligarch, create a register of tycoons, and impose limitations on their activities such as blocking them from financing political parties. Zelenskiy's team has suggested anger at the law could be behind an attempt to assassinate Serhiy Shefir, a top aide and close friend of the president, on September 22. Shefir was not injured, but his driver was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. The United States has long called on Ukraine to tackle the handful of tycoons who wield enormous political influence from behind the scenes to the detriment of the country and its citizens. However, critics of the law have warned that the proposed legislation opens the door for subjective targeting. According to the bill, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council would make the final determination of whether an individual meets the criteria of a person having significant economic or political influence in public life, or oligarch. The Council of Ministers, members of the central bank, the Defense Council, the Anti-Monopoly Ministry, or the Security Service (SBU), have the right to submit the name of a tycoon for review by the council. Ukraine's president has called on the United Nations to do more to respond to the ongoing war in Ukraine's east, where government forces continue to face off against Kremlin-backed separatists in a seven-year-war that has killed more than 13,200 people. Volodymyr Zelenskiy also used his September 22 speech before the UN General Assembly to highlight what appeared to be a brazen assassination attempt in Kyiv that targeted a key aide earlier the same day. In his speech, Zelenskiy suggested that the United Nations needed to "wake up" and tackle the world's most pressing problems. "Today the UN is like a retired superhero who has forgotten what he could do. He considers himself a burden, a weak, frail, useless old man whose life was in vain," he said. He also took aim at Russia, both for fueling the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine and also for its occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, just before the war broke out. Moscow has stepped up efforts to give Russian passports to Ukrainians living in separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, and even allowed passport holders to vote in the recent Russian parliamentary elections. "Isn't it evidence of an international crime? Isn't it proof of impunity and disrespect for international law? Moreover, the Russian Federation itself officially declares it. And it forces our citizens of Ukraine to take part in the elections to the Russian parliament," he said. "And if the UN does not react efficiently and strongly to this," he asked, "is that proof that it is too late to revive the UN?" The Zelenskiy aide who was targeted in the September 22 shooting south of Kyiv, Serhiy Shefir, is a top adviser and has played a key role in the administration's attempts to curb the power and influence of the country's "oligarchs" -- the powerful, wealthy businessmen who for years have played an outside role in domestic politics. Zelenskiy was elected in 2019 on a platform to rein in the oligarchs, and tackle the country's rampant corruption. But he's been criticized, both at home and abroad, for not doing more. Shefir was not injured, but his driver was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. "Here is the price of change in the state, here is the price of reforms," Zelenskiy said, referring to the shooting. Less than a day after Zelenskiy's speech, the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report showing a surge in violence in eastern Ukraine, where the separatists are battling government forces. The report said the number of cease-fire violations in the conflict zone "considerably increased" from February 1 to July 31, compared with the previous six months. Moreover, it noted a 51 percent increase in the number of civilian casualties, including the deaths of 13 people by "active hostilities," while dozens of injuries resulted from mine-related incidents and the handling of explosive remnants of war. One man was also killed in a security incident, while one woman was beaten to death by a soldier. The OHCHR said that "conflict and resulting economic hardship negatively affected the civilian population living near the contact line, including due to a lack of public transport and passable roads, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, difficulties in receiving medical aidand inability to visit/receive family members due to COVID-19 restrictions and checkpoints." The United States' mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has criticized Russia's recent national elections as taking place under conditions "not conducive to free or fair" voting and called Moscow's claims of outside interference as "baseless allegations" to distract from a flawed process. Acting U.S. political counselor Andrew Shepard leveled the criticisms in a statement to the OSCE's principal decision-making body, the Permanent Council, on September 23. "The repressive actions taken by the Russian Government before and during the September 17-19 Duma elections obstructed electoral transparency, hampered independent media coverage of the elections, and prevented genuine opposition participation, severely undermining the credibility of the elections," Shepard said. For the first time since 1993, election observers from the OSCE were not present for a Russian vote due to limitations imposed by authorities. "We regret that the elections took place under conditions not conducive to free and fair proceedings, and that the undue restrictions imposed by the Russian government prevented OSCE observation of the elections," Shepard said. The Kremlin-backed ruling United Russia party retained its constitutional majority amid bans and curbs on the opposition, along with widespread reports of voting irregularities and ballot tampering on election day. Shepard said Russian authorities had "targeted independent media in particular" to thwart Russians' choice. "In 2021 alone," he said, "30 more independent media outlets or individuals were added to the register of 'media foreign agents,'" a reference to a controversial 2012 law that has been amended multiple times to toughen conditions for media and journalists in Russia. United Russia's announced support slid 6 percentage points from the previous election in 2016 to a fraction under 50 percent, but still left it with a comfortable two-thirds majority in the 450-seat State Duma to enact constitutional changes. Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny accused the Kremlin of using "intimidation and repression" to steal the vote. Shepard cited Russian officials' designation of Navalny organizations as "extremist" as "a new tool to selectively disqualify from running for office thousands of politically engaged Russians who have been associated with those groups." In the run-up to the voting, Russia accused the United States and tech giants Apple and Google of interference, saying Navalny and his allies' Smart Voting app was "connected in one way or another with the Pentagon." "We are not aware of any credible evidence or reports that support Russias claims of outside election interference," Shepard told the OSCE Permanent Council. WATCH: Disappearing Ink: Another Item In Russia's Election Bag Of Tricks? The Smart Voting app -- a voting guide to mobilize support for candidates with a chance to defeat United Russia rivals -- was removed from Apple and Google stores as voting in Russia began. "These baseless allegations are designed to deflect attention from the real threat to the integrity of these elections -- the increasingly repressive environment Russian authorities have created to advantage ruling party candidates by obstructing electoral transparency, marginalizing independent media, and preventing opposition participation," Shepard said. The Association of Independent Municipal and Regional Deputies this week launched a petition demanding all results from the elections across Russia be invalidated due to numerous violations and irregularities in the voting. It has been more than a month since the international community was confronted with the fact that the Taliban had seized control over almost all of Afghanistan. Some countries are still cautious or vague about their positions on the Taliban-led government. But Uzbekistan, which shares a 160-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has shown it is ready to talk and do business with the Taliban. Some view Uzbekistans willingness to engage with the Taliban as simply pragmatic. After all, there are security issues to consider. There are citizens of Uzbekistan in Afghanistan who are members of various extremist groups, some allied with the Taliban, some not. The Uzbek government would prefer these people never return to Uzbekistan. The Taliban has given its guarantee that they will not allow anyone to use Afghan territory to plot attacks on neighboring countries. But the same security concerns exist for Tajikistan, and the Tajik government has not shown any inclination to talk with the Taliban. In Uzbekistans case, it would be costly to sever relations with Afghanistan -- no matter who is in control. In fact, the ties that bind the two countries are much stronger than they were 20 years ago. And it is not only Uzbekistan and Afghanistan that benefit. On September 20, the Uzbek presidents special representative on Afghanistan, Ismatulla Irgashev, said his government wants road and railway connections with Afghanistan to resume operation in order to help ship food and medical supplies. Irgashev could have mentioned many other goods the Uzbek government would like to see crossing in and out of Afghanistan through Uzbekistan. Uzbekistans road and railway connections with Afghanistan have improved since late 2001 when the previous Taliban regime was driven from power. Projects such the Asian Development Banks (ADB) Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) or Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have improved existing links between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Theyve also created new transit routes that extend to China and Europe. The Uzbek link was used as part of NATOs Northern Distribution Network -- the route the alliance used to bring supplies from Europe into Afghanistan and return equipment back to Europe. Uzbekistans land link with Afghanistan is the Dustlik (Friendship) Bridge, built in 1982 across the river that divides Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, the Amu-Darya. It was the gateway for the Soviet military to enter or exit Afghanistan. It is now a gateway for much of Europe and Asia to trade with Afghanistan. The railway track runs down the middle of the Dustlik Bridge. But until 10 years ago, it stopped just inside Afghanistan at Hairaton. Work started in 2010 to extend the line another 75 kilometers to Mazar-e Sharif, the biggest city in northern Afghanistan with decent road connections east, west and south. Operation of the new railway started in 2011. The project cost some $170 million, of which the ADB covered $165 million. It was meant to increase the monthly volume of cargo from about 4,000 tons before the line was opened to 25,000-40,000 tons. But it has not reached those figures so far. Chinas BRI uses this railway line, and it remains the only line connecting China directly to Afghanistan. The first train carrying Chinese goods into Afghanistan arrived in September 2016. China has pledged to send humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. Some of those shipments will probably be sent by rail through Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan also has been exporting wheat to Afghanistan through Uzbekistan. According to one report, up to two-thirds of the flour Kazakhstan exported in 2020 went to Afghanistan. The rapid changes in Afghanistan and subsequent moves to freeze Afghan central bank reserves has left Kazakh grain producers scrambling to find new buyers for about 3 million tons of wheat. Nevertheless, Kazakh Agriculture Minister Yerbol Karashukeev said on September 21 that Kazakhstan would continue exporting wheat and flour to Afghanistan. Uzbekistan receives transit fees for such shipments into Afghanistan from China, Kazakhstan, and other places. At the moment, Uzbekistan is the only country with such links. Turkmenistan has two railways connecting it to towns not far from the border in Afghanistan. Both connect to the Lapis Lazuli Transport Corridor that links Turkey to Afghanistan through the Caucasus. But this route is new, having just opened in 2018. The Turkmen section is underdeveloped and unlikely to be developed further in the near future. Tajikistan has only roads to Afghanistan through the mountains. Thus, Uzbekistans road and railway links are a much better option for trade with Afghanistan. And the traffic of goods through Uzbekistan could soon become even more active. Uzbekistan signed a deal with Pakistan in February 2021 to construct a 573-kilometer railway extension that would run from Mazar-e Sharif to Kabul and on to Peshawar. It would connect Uzbekistan, and the rest of Central Asia -- not to mention China -- to ports on the Arabian Sea. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Tashkent in July to attend the Central Asia-South Asia connectivity forum. He arrived early to meet with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev and discuss construction of the railway connecting their two countries via Afghanistan. Khan brought up the proposed railway line again when he attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe on September 17. Given Pakistans relationship with the Taliban, and Uzbekistans amicable engagement with the militant group, the Mazar-e Sharif-Peshawar railway might be more possible now than it had been in July when Khan visited Tashkent. In 2016, Uzbekistan opened the Termez Cargo Center about 2 kilometers from the Afghan border. That complex covers about 40 square hectares. It was intended to service what Uzbek officials hoped would be an increased transit of trade with Afghanistan through Uzbekistans land routes. Operations at the sprawling center have reportedly slowed to a crawl since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. The Uzbek government has offered use of the cargo center to countries and organizations wishing to send humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. That should at least keep operations running until the resumption of normal trade across the border. The United Nations World Food Program is already establishing a logistics hub at the Termez center. Since 2001, when the previous Taliban regime was ousted from power, electricity has been exported to Afghanistan from Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. But Uzbekistans energy exports have been the most by far. An ADB report said Afghanistan imports 73 percent of its electricity. Of that, Uzbekistan supplies 57 percent, Iran 22 percent, Turkmenistan 17 percent, and Tajikistan 4 percent. When a 500-kV transmission line from Uzbekistan to Kabul started operation in 2009, the ADB noted it was the first time there was a steady supply of electricity reaching the Afghan capital. It cost about $93 million to construct the Guzor-Surkhon power line that Uzbekistan built to send its electricity to Afghanistan. Some of that cost was covered by loans from the Islamic Development Bank. Uzbek electricity is now essential to Afghanistan. In 2018, construction began on a 260-kilometer section of a 500-kV power line from Surkhon in Uzbekistan to Pul-e Khumri, north of Kabul. With an estimated cost of about $150 million, Uzbekistan was to pay $32 million while the Afghan side funded the remainder using a $110 million loan from the ADB. When finished, the power line from Surkhon to Pul-e-Khumri would boost Uzbek electricity exports to Afghanistan by about 70 percent. It is not clear how close the project is to being completed. There are various estimates about how much Afghanistan has been paying for its electricity imports. But it appears to have been around $300 million per year -- with more than half of the payments going to Uzbekistan. In August 2020, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan signed a new 10-year deal for electricity supplies. How the Taliban-led government would pay for all of this is a big question. It is not surprising that at September's SCO meeting in Dushanbe, Mirziyoev called for the unfreezing of Afghan central bank assets in foreign banks. Were Uzbekistan to severe ties with the Taliban and stop or drastically decrease trade with Afghanistan, it would be a huge loss of time and money invested during the last 20 years -- funds meant to improve connectivity not only between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan but also as part of a much broader trade network for Asian countries. While Uzbekistan would incur its own financial losses by suspending electricity exports to Afghanistan, other countries also would lose out from not being able to trade with Afghanistan through Uzbekistan. (jckonline.com) - In 2019, after Trump administration officials demanded the industry declare the source of all its materials, a gem cutter complained to JCK that would be a nearly impossible task. Take the Tucson gem shows, he said. When grabbing lapis lazuli samples from a big bucket, there was no way he could determine whether every last piece came from a mine in an area controlled by the Taliban. (Most lapis comes from Afghanistan.) Then, as now, the Taliban was subject to U.S. sanctions. But the militant group was not on most peoples minds two years ago. Nor was the U.S. government issuing regular warnings about Taliban lapis, the way it has been doing with Burmese rubies. Now the Taliban is on everyones mind, and its quite possible that any gem that comes from the areas of Afghanistan it controls could be illegal to import into the United States. PUNJAB CM MOURNS DEATH OF VETERAN JOURNALIST SURINDER SINGH Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Thursday condoled the sad demise of former Deputy News Editor of Punjabi Tribune Surinder Singh aged 68 years, who passed away this morning at a private hospital in Mohali after a prolonged illness. He was taken care of by his wife and two sons Advertisement Charanjit Singh Channi . In a condolence message, the Chief Minister described Surinder Singh as a dedicated journalist and a fine human being, who was committed to his professional ethics and whose contribution in the promotion of Punjabi Art and Culture through his writings would be always remembered by one and all. Sharing his heartfelt sympathies with the bereaved family, relatives, and friends, the Chief Minister prayed to the Almighty to give courage to them to bear this huge loss in this hour of grief and grant eternal peace to the departed soul. Haryana's Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi Chandigarh: The newly appointed Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Chann i pays a courtesy call on Haryana's Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday in the evening to have a coordinated meeting in his office at Haryana Civil Secretariat, Chandigarh. Advertisement Both the chief ministers expressed their hope for cooperation and they will work together for the overall development of the region. Even the CM Charanjit Singh Channi said, "I hope Punjab and Haryana would work together with the spirit of friendship and cooperation." Advertisement Charanjit Singh Channi even offered sweets to CM Manohar Lal Khattar during his visit. Even according to the statements, Khattar even congratulated Channi on being sworn in as the new chief minister of Punjab. The Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar said that he will endeavor to ensure the smooth progress of the region by working together in the spirit of mutual love, harmony, and cooperation. Khattar wished Channi a bright future and also welcomed him by presenting him with a bouquet. Khattar even presented a copy of the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, shawl, and model of Arjun Krishna Rath to him as a token of respect. Manjinder Singh Sirsa, former head of the Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee New Delhi: Today 16 Punjabi faces in Canada, have been elected to the Canadian Parliament, have become a part of Canada's active politics. While 14 of them won public confidence for the second time or more, former Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee president Manjinder Singh Sirsa failed the Gurmukhi exam after losing the Delhi Committee election. I remember an anecdote heard in my childhood that Baba Nanak went to a village where the people were not good, so on his way he said, 'Stay in one place forever. Advertisement Manjinder Singh Sirsa, former head of the Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee Then he went to a good village and later promised that 'never sit still'. When astonished, Bhai Mardana asked a question, he was told that good people are good people who stay in one place, and good people run away to spread goodness. Seeing today, it seems that for those of us who have gone abroad, the inner Sikh is more secure than the people living in Punjab. The second or third generation of Punjabis living abroad may not be so religious, but they will be good people. The way Punjabis and Sikhs are making a name for themselves in every country by going abroad, one seems to be proud of it but at the same time, one has to wonder what was lacking among the Punjabis living here who are so backward? DSGMC Advertisement If Manjinder Singh Sirsa, a former head of the Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, cannot recite the Bani of the Guru Granth Sahib correctly, then it is worth considering. Manjinder Singh Sirsa BA from Guru Tegh Bahadur College and have done Punjabi. This only raises doubts about college degrees as the Punjabi student's education is MA level. Gurmukhi is not a subject that you forget to read. Whoever is responsible for the care of a Gurdwara Committee will understand (and should understand) the ideology given in the Guru Granth Sahib only if he reads and considers Gurbani with meaning every day. But even more important is that you do not lie and do not try to hide the truth behind the certificates. The turmoil in this whole affair is calming just by looking at Canada. GURBANI The Sikh and Punjabi faces of Canada have not won by their appearance or by the Punjabi vote, but they have repeatedly won the trust of whites because of their character, despite their distinct identities. Giving responsibility for the security of Canada to a Gursikh like Harjit Singh Sajjan is not only a sign of equality for all in Canada but also a victory for Sajjan's mindset which wins by a wide margin despite its differences. Jagmeet Singh is a big face in Canadian politics who is going to form a second government with Justin Trudeau. Advertisement JAGMEET SINGH In India, Mehbooba Mufti has said that Sikhs are considered Khalistanis. Our farmers are also suffering from being suppressed and defamed under this slogan. While the atmosphere of hypocrisy in the name of religion is predominant in India, it has now taken root in Gurdwaras including Punjab. This is the evil that is weakening religion. The administrators of the Gurdwaras, through elections, have become people who know nothing about learning or reading, or writing Punjabi. Reading and understanding Gurbani is also like climbing the Himalayas for them. Yet they preach from the gurdwara stages, humiliate them by issuing hukumnama from the priests against good people and try to subdue Sikhism in collaboration with the rulers of Delhi. Manjinder Singh Sirsa was then announced, President of Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee as well as BJP MLA. Have also been. Who will save Sikhism? -Nimrat Kaur. Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Uncertain if anyone would visit their new vaccination clinic inside the Balboa High School auditorium months after vaccines became widely available, surprised San Francisco health officials cheered out loud the other day when the first person walked in the door. And visit they did, in a slow but steady stream, not only at Balboa High but also at three other coronavirus vaccination clinics that opened in city schools beginning on Sept. 14, after students returned to in-person instruction. So far, the citys Department of Public Health has vaccinated 27 people at the schools once-a-week clinics. The idea, Mayor London Breed said, is to improve safety even in a city with a relatively high vaccination rate of 81% among those eligible. Most cases of COVID-19 occurring in schools come from children who pick the virus up from their household or exposure outside school settings, the mayor said in a statement, noting that employees, school families and members of the community are welcome. Everyone getting vaccinated at Balboa High last week had a unique story about why they waited so long. But nearly all said they were moved to get the shot because of San Franciscos first-in-the-nation vaccination requirements for joining in public life and returning to work and because of growing social pressure to not be that person who infects others with a debilitating or lethal disease. Nina Riggio/The Chronicle Theres this really nice restaurant I called, and they said, Sorry, you have to be vaccinated. So I said, Oh, there goes my birthday brunch! lamented Rolanda-Marie Chu, a mother of four, as she and her eldest son, 17, waited in the auditorium for their shots. I understand that COVID is real, Chu said. But getting vaccinated? I just feel kind of scared. Fear is why many people say they avoid the needle. Its visible and a little painful, and can feel more in-your-face frightening than an invisible virus. But then the rules changed, and people faced exclusion if they didnt get a shot. Chus son needs a vaccination to get a job. So I thought, Ill do it, too, Chu said. What made the difference for Sylvia Lacayo, a security guard, was getting a vaccination invitation from a trusted source: the school district. I didnt feel comfortable going to a Walgreens, Lacayo said with a shrug, as she sat with her 12-year-old daughter, Anastasia Johnson, waiting for their Pfizers. Anastasia said she wasnt comfortable getting the shot no matter where it was delivered. I feel like Im gonna start crying, she said, and did just that, punctuating her sobs with screams as the nurse prepared to inject her arm. No lollipops were offered. Nina Riggio/The Chronicle For Milu Maggin, a tax preparer, it was bad enough that she felt nervous about the vaccines side effects. But it also felt like former President Donald Trump was mixed up in it all. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Trump said, The vaccine is here because of me. And I was like, do I really want it if hes behind it? Maggin said. But people feel that people who dont get vaccinated are Trump supporters! Whats a frightened liberal to do? Ultimately, she said during the required post-shot wait at Balboa High, three things helped her decide: Thinking about how people might not want to associate with me because if they get sick, theyll think Im the cause. And all these rules in San Francisco! Like you cant eat here if you dont show your card? A nurse also spoke kindly with her recently about the importance of getting the shot on the very day she got the school districts invitation. It was like a sign, Maggin said. I thought, OK, Ill do it today. Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov Good morning, Bay Area. Its Thursday, Sept. 23, and our food critic finds out if plant-based Impossible Chicken Nuggets really taste like chicken. Heres what you need to know to start your day. The good news is that coronavirus case numbers have been declining since mid-August. The not so good news is that because of the highly contagious delta variant, being through the worst might mean leveling off at higher rates of transmission. Were clearly through the worst of the summer surge, said Dr. Nicholas Ross, the public health officer for Alameda County. Things have eased up, but were not out of the woods yet. Experts agree that until vaccination is more widespread, we will probably continue to see surges but the magic number we need to reach to halt that cycle is unclear, writes Danielle Echeverria. The Oakland Unified School District will require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the school board decided Wednesday night, making it the first in Northern California to impose a student mandate. Vaccination rules, social pressure and school-based clinics are helping spur hesitant San Francisco families to finally get coronavirus shots. West Contra Costa teachers file Cal/OSHA complaint over COVID safety rules. Burning again and again Plenty of space is susceptible to wildfires in California, with more than 33 million acres of forestland. But some areas are experiencing multiple burns in short periods of time. While experts say some smaller, less intense fires are good to remove dead vegetation and restore the ecological system of a forest, high-intensity fires occurring repeatedly in an area can deepen the areas fire scars and destroy any reforestation efforts. The Chronicle analyzed wildfire perimeters 300 acres or larger from the past 10 years to see which areas overlapped, and found overlaps in more than 170 areas across the state from 2011 to 2021. Also: Californias wine industry is in danger without the passage of the $10 billion federal disaster-relief package. Around the Bay Lea Suzuki / Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle A multipronged push: S.F. officials unveil a strategy to combat retail theft in the city after a summer of videos showing brazen shoplifting went viral. SFMTA: S.F. supervisors authorized the citys transportation agency to spend up to $200 million to replace parking meter hardware and procure 30 new light rail vehicles. Theranos trial: James Mattis, former Trump defense secretary, testified in court on Wednesday that he invested in failed startup Theranos. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Poll: Should San Franciscos JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park go car-free for good? On the fast-food nugget: Does Impossible Meats new take on the chicken nugget taste like chicken? Food critic Soleil Ho tried them, and her review is much more than a taste test. Also: L.A. hit Daves Hot Chicken, backed by Drake, is opening in the Bay Area. And: Chez Panisse delays reopening its dining room until next year, citing COVID concerns. Golden State Warriors: Warriors owner Joe Lacob was fined $50,000 on Wednesday for comments about Philadelphia superstar Ben Simmons. Also: Why Andrew Wiggins anti-vaccination choice gives Warriors reason to worry. Uncharted winemaking territory Alvin A.H. Jornada / Special to The Chronicle California winemaking couple Chenoa Ashton-Lewis and Will Basanta look to unexpected places to harvest fruit for their fledgling wine label, Ashanta Wines, including picking grapes from abandoned vines near Dodger Stadium. From these unusual sources theyve produced some pretty out-there wines, but also more customary varietals. And their wines are zero zero the most radical arm of natural winemaking but you wouldnt be able to tell from tasting them. Go inside one of the most promising new wineries with Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley. Bay Briefing is written by Kellie Hwang and Anna Buchmann and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writers at anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com and kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com. California is considering requiring children 12 and older to get vaccinated against the coronavirus in order to attend school, the states top health official said Thursday. That conversation is part of what were considering as a state, but no definitive action is being made at the moment, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said during a briefing with reporters to announce a new state vaccination plan. When asked whether the state is considering such a requirement, Ghaly noted California and many other states have a long tradition of requiring school children to get vaccinated against other diseases. This is not something that is a new part of the conversation, he said. Its been a long conversation about vaccines in schools and their role in protecting students. We of course are always looking at the data, understanding where there are opportunities to ensure Californias vulnerable those who can be protected are protected through vaccinations. We are watching the experience in Los Angeles, understanding what it means for students and families alike and staff as well, watching other counties consider the same. Ghalys remarks are a step further than Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone. Newsom said last week that there was nothing on the table currently with regard to requirements for childhood vaccinations, though he added that the state is closely following the science. Newsom also stressed the importance of full federal approval for the vaccines. Right now the Pfizer vaccine only has emergency use authorization, not full approval, for children 12-15. The Pfizer vaccine is fully approved for those 16 and older. Modernas vaccine can be administered only to those 18 and older under emergency authorization. Los Angeles Unified School District and Culver City Unified recently became the first California school districts to require students 12 and older to get vaccinated. Oakland Unified followed suit Wednesday, becoming one of the first Northern California districts to mandate COVID shots for students. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Piedmont Unifieds school board also voted unanimously Wednesday to require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate will go into effect Nov. 17, with exemptions for medical reasons, said Brian Killgore, a spokesperson for the school district. Religious or other exemptions will not be accepted. Statewide, children ages 12 to 17 are vaccinated at significantly lower rates compared to adults. As of Thursday, 54% of the states roughly 3.2 million 12-to-17-year-olds are fully vaccinated. By comparison, 67% of people 18 to 49 are fully vaccinated, as are 78% of people 50 to 64, and 73% of people 65 and older, according to state figures. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine, but emergency authorization could potentially come before Halloween for those 5-11. Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho A nationwide viral TikTok trend in which students record themselves vandalizing school restrooms and post the videos online has reached the Bay Area, prompting administrators at some schools to limit the use of restrooms during school hours. Officials with the Pleasanton and San Ramon Valley districts in the East Bay have reported incidents of vandalism in recent weeks, such as soap dispensers being ripped off walls. As a result, schools have closed some restrooms and warned parents and students that their child could be disciplined if they are caught destroying school property. We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior, Pleasanton Unified School District spokesperson Patrick Gannon said in an email. Three middle schools and two high schools in the district have been affected, he said. Some students who participated in the trend have come forward or have been identified through social media posts. Students are disciplined based on severity of the damage to property, which can also involve law enforcement as these can be considered criminal offenses, said Gannon. He said the district has not yet tallied the cost of the damage, but said the ruckus has resulted in additional work for custodians. We hope that this will convey the consequences that this destructive behavior has on our ability to provide a safe and positive learning environment for students, he said. We encourage our school community to say something if they see something while at school or on social media. Courtesy of the Pleasanton Unified School District/ Videos of the social media trend called the devious licks challenge, using the words as a hashtag appear to show students stealing soap dispensers, damaging sinks and staining bathroom walls with red dye in schools throughout the country. In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said the company does not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities, and has been removing videos and redirecting search results of the hashtag to the companys community guidelines. In Contra Costa County, about five schools in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District last week reported toilets intentionally being clogged, and mirrors and soap dispensers ripped off walls. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. District officials told NBC Bay Area that some students who participated in the trend have been identified and will be disciplined. Administrators sent a letter to parents urging them to remind their children that destroying school property is a crime. The two East Bay districts did not say whether any of their students had faced criminal penalties, but some arrests have occurred at campuses across the country related to the destructive online trend, USA Today reported. Laura Dudnick, a spokesperson for San Francisco Unified School District, said in an email that officials were aware of the social media trend and are warning families about it. She added that some schools have changed their bathroom access processes, but declined to say whether damage has been reported. Jessica Flores is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesssmflores The worst of Californias summer COVID-19 surge is probably over but with the highly contagious delta variant, that might mean the state levels off at higher case rates than after previous surges. Unlike the January surge when coronavirus rates hit their all-time pandemic highs, experts say, vaccinations are now widespread enough to keep severe disease low. But they add that future surges are still likely and the magic number for vaccination rates needed to halt that cycle is unclear. Were clearly through the worst of the summer surge, said Dr. Nicholas Moss, the public health officer for Alameda County. Things have eased up, but were not out of the woods yet. Case rates across the Bay Area and statewide have been ticking downward since their latest peak in mid-August. The Bay Areas average seven-day daily rate of new coronavirus cases dropped to 12 per 100,000 people on Wednesday, after hitting a summer surge high of 36 on Aug. 31. In the worst of the winter surge in early and mid-January, the rate hit a high of 61 per 100,000 in the region. Statewide, the average seven-day rate of coronavirus cases was at around 19 per 100,000 on Tuesday, down from this summers high of 38 on Aug. 31 and the all-time high of 112 in mid-January. I am cautiously optimistic the worst of the delta surge is over, said Sonoma County health officer Dr. Sundari Mase during a COVID-19 update on Wednesday. However, she added, Its hard to say if we will go down to the level of cases we were in May or June. We wont see that spike and that drop from earlier waves; that middle part is going to be longer. But were starting to see the tail end of delta, said Dr. Luke Day, chief medical officer for San Francisco General Hospital. He said he has followed data from other countries that experienced delta surges ahead of the U.S. to help him prepare for what might happen locally and while people are optimistic about the current surge, theyre cautious about what the fall and winter might bring. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Experts agree that until vaccination is even more widespread, surges will continue to occur, even in the highly vaccinated Bay Area and especially as people gather for the holidays. As long as theres virus in the population, as we increase our risk behaviors, we will see more infections, said Dr. Robert Siegel, an immunology expert at Stanford. But the vaccination levels needed to stop those surges is unclear. In a COVID-19 update on Tuesday, Contra Costa health officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said that a community would have to reach a rate of about 84 to 85% of the population fully vaccinated to prevent delta from causing more surges. Others said that, with delta and any other variants that might pop up, they arent sure what that number might be. We cant right now say what proportion of the population needs to be vaccinated in order to really interrupt transmission, Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease and vaccine expert at UC Berkeley, said. This idea that we had originally about herd immunity is probably not going to be achieved easily with the current set of vaccines. Siegel expressed a similar opinion. In looking at the history of pandemics ... I do not believe there is a magic vaccination threshold, he said. As long as SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in the world and there is mixing between regions, unvaccinated individuals will continue to be at risk of infection. However, he added, Higher vaccination rates result in lower prevalence of the virus even with the highly contagious delta variant. And lowering the prevalence decreases the risk for everyone. Higher vaccination rates also decrease the probability and the severity of future surges. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Stanford Medicine Children ages 5 to 11 could begin receiving the vaccine by late October. Experts agree that the Bay Areas relatively high level of vaccination even though its not enough to stop the spread of the virus has already helped ease pressure on the health care system and protect some of the most vulnerable. Eight of the Bay Areas nine counties rank among the most vaccinated counties in the state, according to the Los Angeles Times vaccine tracker. As of Wednesday, Marin Countys rate was the highest, at 79% of all residents fully vaccinated, followed by San Francisco at 74%, according to local dashboards. Statewide the rate was 59.3%. With the high vaccination rate in California and especially in the Bay Area, even with another highly transmissible variant appearing, we may be able to resist another big surge, Riley said. The Bay Area, I think, has really shown how you can do this with vaccinations and masking that limits the worst impacts of the pandemic, even with more activities happening, Moss said. Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com @DanielleEchev Via AlertWildfire A new fire blazing at the border of Napa and Sonoma counties on Wednesday afternoon was expected to cause delays on Highway 121, fire officials said. The blaze, dubbed the Fremont Fire, had burned 116 acres and was 80% contained shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to Cal Fire. Firefighters were battling the blaze in the area of Fremont Drive and Napa Road in Sonoma County. With California's ongoing drought and ever-increasing wildfire risk, here's how goats can part of the solution. San Francisco nonprofit City Grazing is using goats to combat fire risk in the city. With Californias ongoing drought and ever-increasing wildfire risk, the Bay Area has seen dry patches across the region, including inside city limits. These hungry goats focus on eating invasive plants and undergrowth like blackberries, fennel and ivy. City Grazing sends about 70 goats to each project, which last about a week on average, depending on how fast the goats can eat. UNITED NATIONS (AP) The European Unions top diplomat urged Iran to return to talks on its nuclear program while the country's foreign minister reiterated Tehran's willingness to resume negotiations during a meeting at the United Nations, the EU said Wednesday. The remaining parties to the 2015 deal that meant to contain Irans nuclear program have held several rounds of talks in Vienna earlier this year on how to bring the U.S. back into the deal and how Iran can return to compliance with its terms. But the last round ended in June, ahead of Irans elections that boosted the ranks of hard-liners. Irans new leaders have come under pressure to resume the talks. Former President Donald Trump pulled America out of the deal in 2018 and imposed strict sanctions on Iran that have since clobbered its economy. Iran, in turn, has violated limits that the deal had imposed on its nuclear activities, leaving it in tatters. There has been speculation that the remaining parties to the deal Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and Iran would meet on the sidelines of this weeks U.N. General Assembly. But it appears the meeting wont take place. Instead, the EUs foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Tuesday. The foreign minister is also expected to meet separately with the British and French foreign ministers. Borrell stressed the need for full cooperation" from Iran and reiterated his concern about the overall trajectory of the Iranian nuclear program, the EU statement said. It said Borrell underlined once again the great importance of a quick resumption of the Vienna talks" and added that the Iranian top diplomat assured him of the willingness to resume negotiations at an early date. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. On Afghanistan, Amirabdollahian referred to the high number of Afghan refugees in Iran, and Borrell underlined EUs willingness to engage actively with regional partners to address the challenges of the present situation a reference to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last month. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Iowa's medical director, who was a visible adviser to Gov. Kim Reynolds in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, will quit her job next month, the state's Department of Public Health announced Wednesday. Dr. Caitlin Pedati, who also serves as the state epidemiologist, appeared in numerous press conferences Reynolds regularly held last year as COVID-19 cases spread throughout Iowa. Pedati has taken a much less public role more recently, as the state has experienced a surge in cases involving the delta variant that has sickened more children and young adults. Officials didn't say why Pedati was leaving and only stated she plans to pursue new career opportunities." Throughout the pandemic Pedati largely followed Reynolds' policies even when they conflicted with medical science at the time. She was silent when Reynolds reopened businesses in May 2020 as the state continued to see high case counts and deaths. The governor took the posture that Iowans must "learn to live with COVID virus activity without letting it govern our lives, although infectious disease experts said it was too soon and would lead to more illness and death. Pedati also stood by as Reynolds refused to implement a mask mandate to slow virus spread as recommended by medical professionals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a White House virus task force. In early October, a federal task force in former President Donald Trump's administration told Reynolds that many preventable deaths were occurring in Iowa after she lifted business restrictions and refused to require that masks be worn in schools or other public places. Average daily deaths increased to 10 per day with 250 deaths in the month prior to the report. Reynolds eventually implemented a limited mask requirement in mid-November after a record 1,510 people infected with COVID-19 were hospitalized statewide. When she lifted it in February, she did not consult the public health department. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In August 2020, Pedati acknowledge she was aware of inaccuracies in the state's coronavirus data when her agency used it to release flawed calculations that helped guide decisions on school openings and enrollment. Pedati said she became aware the previous month of a problem in Iowas disease surveillance reporting system that backdated thousands of new test results. Prior to her role in Iowa, Pedati worked as medical epidemiologist for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Reynolds said Pedati was instrumental to our states strong COVID-19 response and a valued member of my team. The health department release said the agency will work quickly to fill the position. MADISON, Wis. (AP) Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Thursday accused Republicans of chasing conspiracy theories with a $680,000 taxpayer-funded investigation into the 2020 election instead of passing gun control measures polls have shown have broad public support. Kaul, a Democrat who is up for reelection next year, appeared with a host of Democratic lawmakers and gun safety advocates at a news conference to renew the call for a universal background check and red flag law. Republicans who control the state Legislature have repeatedly rejected both. Republicans have ordered investigations into the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden. Kaul said instead of spending money on that, Kaul said that Republicans should address real issues Wisconsinites are actually focused on. A Marquette University Law School poll in 2019 showed that 80% of respondents support a universal background check proposal and 81% of people who said they have a gun in their home back a red flag law, while 86% of people who said they didnt have a gun in their house back it. Under such a law, judges could seize guns from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others by courts. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have passed similar laws. The background check proposal is designed to require checks for nearly all gun sales, including online, at auctions or at a gun show. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is also up for reelection next year, backs both laws and called a special legislative session in 2019 to urge their passage. Republicans ignored his call and removed the items from his state budget proposal last year. Republican legislative leaders, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Wednesday. Two Republicans are running to challenge Kaul next year, University of Wisconsin professor Ryan Owens and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Toney said in a statement that Kaul was ignoring a homicide epidemic in Milwaukee, which reported 189 killings last year, the most in its history. Toney also said Kaul was pushing a radical agenda seeking to strip law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights." Toney didn't address the ongoing election investigation by retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman that was ordered by Vos. But he did accuse Kaul of not defending or clarifying election laws as attorney general. Owens said in a statement that Kaul was trying to take away your rights to protect yourself and your family by advocating for the two gun bills. Democratic lawmakers who appeared with Kaul said the measures would make Milwaukee and other Wisconsin communities safer. State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, of Milwaukee, described attending the funeral of 10-year-old Sierra Guyton, who was shot in the head and killed in 2014 after being caught in the crossfire of a gun battle while outside on a school playground. She called for passage of the bills as a way to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. Safety is not a partisan issue, said Democratic state Sen. Melissa Agard, of Madison. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) Pennsylvania senators grilled turnpike executives over their efforts to collect unpaid tolls that amounted to $104 million last year during a hearing Wednesday prompted by an Associated Press report last week regarding some 11 million rides that generated no revenue for the debt-hobbled agency. Transportation Committee Chairman Wayne Langerholc, R-Cambria, scolded the turnpike brass for not alerting him to the growing problem that he said should have been a red flag within your department. The Supreme Courts 5-4 decision to allow a Texas antiabortion statute to go into effect has triggered a statewide game of Texas Holdem poker. So far, Texas is successfully bluffing everyone away from the table. But, if abortion providers called Texas bluff and dared someone to sue under the law, the state would be forced to show its cards and the law would almost certainly be declared unconstitutional. Ordinarily, when a law threatens to punish someone for exercising a constitutional right, judges eliminate the threat by blocking the government from enforcing the law. But the Texas statute doesnt rely on state enforcement. It authorizes private bounty hunters to sue and collect at least $10,000 from anyone who assists a woman to procure an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. According to five Supreme Court Justices, until a private plaintiff seeks to collect the bounty, the threat can be left on the table, which has had the effect of bluffing many of the states abortion providers into shutting down. If, however, a genuine bounty hunter actually tried to enforce the statute, it would implode. Its one thing for five members of the Supreme Court to permit procedural technicalities to allow a blatantly unconstitutional statute to come into effect. Its quite another for the court to look the other way while such a statute is enforced by Texas officials. Article VI, paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the Supremacy Clause, provides that the Constitution ... shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the literal text of Supremacy Clause forbids state judges from enforcing any state law civil or criminal that violates the United States Constitution. In 1948, for example, in Shelley vs. Kraemer, the Supreme Court held that a Missouri state court could not enforce a contract that required racial discrimination in the sale of property. In 1964, in New York Times vs. Sullivan, the court found that an Alabama judge and jury violated the First Amendment when they awarded damages for defamation against the newspaper for publishing an advertisement with minor errors. Thats also what happened in Hustler Magazine vs. Falwell, when a federal judge and jury, applying Virginia law, awarded unconstitutional damages to Jerry Falwell against the magazine for engaging in constitutionally protected speech. And its what occurred in Snyder vs. Phelps, when a federal judge and jury, applying Maryland law, awarded unconstitutional damages against appalling bigots who picketed outside a fallen soldiers funeral. When a states law violates the federal Constitution, that state court cannot enforce said law civilly or criminally and must declare it unconstitutional. Even if a politically motivated Texas judge were to ignore the Supremacy Clause, any award granted under the antiabortion statute would not be worth the paper it was printed on. Roe vs. Wade is still the law of the land, and any effort by a private party to use Texas law to collect damages for the exercise of that federal constitutional right would itself be unconstitutional. Not only that, anyone seeking to enforce the judgment, including the person who brought the case in the first place, would be subject to ruinous damage liability in federal court for interfering with civil rights. Texas antiabortion groups know this law is a bluff, and theyre starting to show their hand. A courageous San Antonio doctor announced in a Washington Post opinion article that he had violated the statute on Sept. 6 and dared the big bad Texas antiabortion vigilantes to sue him under the statute. The only takers were a convicted felon serving time in Arkansas who claimed to oppose the law but would like the $10,000, anyway; and a Chicago man who sought to have the law invalidated. Neither are serious efforts to enforce the Texas law. The Texas antiabortion folks, meanwhile, confronted with a slam dunk win, huffed and puffed but, so far, are afraid to show their cards in court. Finally, as a practical matter, if Texas abortion providers continue to be bluffed away from the table by fear of such an unenforceable damage award, the deep-pocketed foundations Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Soros, Packard that fund the pro-choice movement can call Texas bluff themselves. While reproductive health care facilities dont have sufficient funding to risk liability under the Texas statute, these foundations can issue a virtually risk-free blanket promise of indemnity, holding any Texas abortion provider harmless from civil damages under the statute for performing a constitutionally protected abortion. Under current law, no foundation will ever have to pay a dime under such a promise. Of course, this promise is good only so long as Roe remains the law. The Supreme Court will hear arguments Dec. 1 in the most recent effort to erode a womans right to choose. But, as long as there is a constitutional right to abortion, no state can prohibit it, whether by civil or criminal liability. If the court deals a new hand and formally overrules Roe, the Texas law will become irrelevant because it and other states are sure to adopt criminal laws forbidding abortions. But, for now, its time for every Texas abortion provider to demand antiabortionists show their cards. Then watch Texas fold. Burt Neuborne is the Norman Dorsen Professor Emeritus of Civil Liberties at New York University Law School. Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press SACRAMENTO AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the Los Angeles nonprofit behind unsuccessful statewide rent-control ballot initiatives in the past two election cycles, sued Wednesday to block a new California law that could pave the way for more small apartment buildings. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure, SB10, last week as part of a package of light density legislation aimed at boosting housing production in the state. Starting in January, it will allow cities to rezone some parcels in urban areas, including those near public transit, for up to 10 units without going through a lengthy environmental review process. WASHINGTON House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed away criticism from San Franciscos archbishop over the abortion rights bill the House will vote on this week, explaining how she views the issue in line with her Catholic faith. The archbishop of the city, that area, of San Francisco, and I have a disagreement about who should decide this, Pelosi said at her Thursday news conference. I believe that God has given us a free will to honor our responsibilities. The San Francisco Democrat has long been a supporter of abortion rights and is a publicly devout Catholic. Meanwhile, San Franciscos archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, has often waded into political battles, speaking out not only against abortion but also against same-sex marriage and coronavirus restrictions on gathering for worship. Cordileone released a statement earlier this week attacking the legislation, called the Womens Health Protection Act of 2021, as heinous evil and nothing short of child sacrifice. In particular, he called out Catholic politicians, easily interpreted as a shot at Pelosi and the similarly devout President Biden. It is especially shameful that any self-professed Catholic would be implicated in such an evil, let alone advocate for it, he said, calling it the type of legislation one would expect from a devout Satanist, not a devout Catholic. Asked to respond Thursday, Pelosi acknowledged that she is observant and comes from a family that was against abortion. But she said her own views are also shaped by her experience as a mother of five. I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have five children in six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of any of us to tell anyone else what to do, Pelosi said. For us it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives, but its none of our business how other people choose the size and timing of their families. The bill, which the House is expected to pass with only Democratic votes on Friday, would prohibit restrictive state laws that interfere with womens ability to seek abortions. Democrats are rallying around the bill in particular as it relates to the Texas law that went into effect Sept. 1 without intervention from the Supreme Court banning abortion beginning at six weeks pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant. The bills unique enforcement mechanism allowing private citizens to sue for $10,000 anyone who facilitates an abortion has thus far allowed it to escape court action. Every woman everywhere has a constitutional right to basic reproductive health, Pelosi said at her news conference. The Texas law goes beyond a discussion of a womans right to choose; its about vigilantes and bounty hunters and something that is so un-American. Its unconstitutional and unjust. Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church and a holy figure in the faith, recently weighed in on the push by U.S. bishops to deny communion to pro-abortion rights politicians, saying he never denies anyone communion and urging bishops to be pastors, not politicians. Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan Incensed at images of Haitians rounded up by Border Patrol agents on horses in Del Rio, Texas, a group of East Bay ministers came to San Francisco on Thursday to lead a rally in front of ICE headquarters in the Financial District. Seeing a man being whipped by an official on a horse evokes hurt, pain and deja vu, said the Haitian-born Rev. Myrna Bernadel-Huey of Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Alameda. The mistreatment of brown and Black people is very distressing and a repeat of racist practices in this country. Standing at a microphone before a banner that read Community not Cages, Bernadel-Huey led a crowd of between 25 and 50 protesters as they blocked a lane of traffic on Sansome Street while repeating the prayer refrain Amwe, the Haitian-Creole word for help me. Among those gathered was Aaron Ruff of Oakland, who carried daughter Evangeline on his shoulders to emphasize the picture he carried of a desperate Haitian migrant with his own daughter on his shoulders. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle That image says it all, Ruff said of his placard. Who wouldnt cross a border for their kid if that is what it took? Thousands of Haitians have fled political unrest and natural disasters in their home country. This summer alone, Haiti had grappled with the assassination of a president and ensuing political turmoil, major damage from a 7.2 earthquake, flooding from Tropical Storm Grace, on top of chronic poverty and hunger. Thursdays rally was organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity as one of four in California and 25 in the nation. It is a national day of action calling for the end of immigration detention, said the Rev. Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, in Oakland. What we have witnessed with Border Patrol agents on horses is just one of the injustices that Haitians and other migrants are experiencing along the southern border. More for you 'What can we do right now?' Bay Area Haitians confront mounting toll of crises in the country they love Protesters stood in the right lane and encouraged passing motorists to honk in support. Even the driver of the 12-Folsom Muni bus managed to toot his horn while having to go around. Homemade signs carried messages like San Francisco Stands with Immigrants and Blood is on Biden-Harris hands. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. For those with a long view, mistreatment of Haitians goes back a lot further than that. During his turn with the microphone, Charlie Hinton of Haiti Action Committee took it all the way back to 1804 when Haiti won independence from France, and brought it all the way forward through Baby Doc and both Presidents Bush. Its the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Hinton said. Wednesdays rally was a prelude to what is expected to be a larger protest put on by the Haitian Action Committee on Friday at the Federal Building on Seventh Street. And it wont stop there. The Rev. Allison Tanner of Lakeshore Baptist Church in Oakland promised they would be back on Sansome Street at least once a month. As long as ICE continues to exclude and expel migrants, we will be here to demand this country welcomes and includes and cherishes those seeking safety, she said, while calling for the closure of all detention centers in the United States. Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@samwhitingsf OKLAHOMA CITY Ianthe Davis ended her bartending shift at 4 a.m. one recent morning in Dallas. An hour later, a friend picked her up and drove her three hours up Interstate 35 to this capital city so she could get an abortion a procedure that became almost impossible to obtain in her home state of Texas after a new law went into effect this month. At a clinic in Oklahoma City, Davis was treated by another woman who was far from home, Dr. Rebecca Taub. The obstetrician and gynecologist travels once a month from her home in the East Bay to the small clinic, where she performs dozens of abortions over the course of two days. After the procedure, Davis and her friend turned around and drove home. As a bartender, Davis said, If I dont work, I dont make money. A Texas woman, an Oklahoma clinic and a California doctor: The scene offered a snapshot of the landscape under the Texas law that bans nearly all abortions after an embryonic heartbeat is detected usually around six weeks and makes no exceptions for rape, sexual abuse or incest. The new law also enables private citizens to sue anyone who either performs an abortion or aids and abets one and collect $10,000 plus their legal fees if they win the case. The law has narrow exceptions to protect the life of the mother or if continuing a pregnancy would cause substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle The Chronicle spoke to several women on a recent weekend who traveled from Texas to a one-story, mustard-brick building in suburban Oklahoma City called the Trust Women clinic, where Taub has been working. Clinic officials said they have seen a roughly 50% increase in patients overall since the new legislation took effect, including 110 women from Texas over the past seven days. That is as many as visited the clinic during all of August. The length of Davis journey is not unusual. Before the ban, the average woman of childbearing age in Texas lived 17 miles from the nearest abortion provider, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Now, the average driving distance is 247 miles. The Texans most affected by the new law will be women of color, who constitute 70% of those who received abortions in 2019, according to Guttmacher. Abortion access is so limited in Dallas, the nations ninth-largest city, that Davis contacted a clinic there before the law took effect this month but was turned away. They said they wouldnt be able to perform the procedure, she said. Demand for the clinic was so strong that she would have been 14 weeks pregnant by the time an appointment was available. The new law confused Davis. She feared telling many people about her situation because if you do, you might get charged or something like that. I know there are $10,000 rewards for people who supply information about women obtaining abortions, she said. She had heard of clinics in Arkansas and New Mexico that were seeing patients, but Trust Women was closer. When she arrived in Oklahoma City, she was just a few days over six weeks pregnant. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle Davis said she understands placing limits on abortion. Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that provided women the right to have an abortion, permits the procedure until about 24 weeks, when the fetus can survive outside the womb. I do understand putting a limit, I get that part, said Davis, 27. Most people dont find out because its like, soon as hell. And then there are people who were raped. Davis had a supportive family and a friend willing to drive her to a clinic. But she said she knows other Texas women who, because they cant afford to travel out of state, are trying scientifically dubious methods of pregnancy termination that are popular online, like taking large amounts of vitamin C. But that just didnt sound that effective to me, she said. So I made the drive. She worried about the extreme measures that others confronting unwanted pregnancies might attempt. Its probably gonna get bad, Davis said. I mean, I heard one girl tried to drink bleach. The U.S. Justice Department sued the state of Texas to try to block the abortion law, saying it violates womens constitutional rights by creating an undue burden on those who want to have an abortion. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 1 in Texas. Until then, a steady stream of women like Davis will continue coming to the Trust Women clinic, where they will be greeted by doctors like Taub. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle The 35-year-old East Bay obstetrician and gynecologist, clad in blue surgical scrubs, performs roughly two dozen abortions a day when she is in town because it is difficult for the clinic to recruit local doctors, a common situation in states where the procedure is culturally shunned and women are required to scale many hurdles to obtain one. To Taub, this is a form of activism. After seeing out-of-state patients and calls to the Oklahoma City clinic swell after the Texas law passed two-thirds of the calls to the clinic inquiring about services are now from the neighboring state she wants to do more. On this day, the waiting room was full of women seeking services they couldnt find close to home. The clinics halls and waiting rooms were full of affirming messages, including posters saying, We Love You! Everyone Loves Someone Who Had an Abortion and Prove Them Wrong. Theres an urgency to the work that people who work with the clinic follow because theyre activists and they believe in this work, Taub said. Since the Texas law took effect, her work has definitely taken on a new urgency. The people who work at the clinic see the urgency in the faces of women like Daffnay McCoy. She, too, had an appointment for an abortion scheduled in Dallas. But she said that when the law took effect, clinic providers there explained that things had changed: They could give her a sonogram, they said, but wouldnt perform an abortion. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle It kind of kind of freaked me out. McCoy said. I got hysterical and started panicking. I was hallucinating like I was going crazy. She said she has suffered from depression in the past and was worried that not being able to secure an abortion was about to bring me back to that dark place. McCoy was already so stressed by her job in the payroll department for a Texas company, she said, that she had been suffering minor seizures. She has two children and felt she wouldnt be able to adequately care for another. She said she is no longer with the father of her two children who also impregnated her most recently though he drove her to the clinic along with their children. McCoy said she wouldnt have known she was even pregnant if she hadnt gone to the hospital because she was ill. But at that time, I was already past six weeks, she said. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle Once she arrived in Oklahoma City, wearing a T-shirt that said Fierce and Fabulous, she said she summoned an inner strength. She wished people who wrote the Texas law or those who criticize women for having abortions would be more empathetic toward women with unwanted pregnancies. You dont know how this life came about. You dont know if someone has been raped. Or if someone is going through an illness or a mental(ly unstable) state of mind. You just never know, she said. So to be on the safe side. I just feel as though no one should be obligated to make decisions for another individual. It just doesnt make sense. Judith said she felt the same way. The 33-year-old nurses assistant, who asked that her last name not be used because she does not want her family to know about her abortion, was five weeks along when she learned she was pregnant too far along to find a clinic that could accommodate her before the onset of the laws time limits. She left her home in Houston at 6:30 a.m. so she could arrive at the Oklahoma City clinic in time for her surgical procedure. She completed the 6-hour drive alone, but said it wasnt bad. I prayed. And I listened to my gospel music. It was worth it, she said, because she didnt feel healthy enough to have another child. She has diabetes, and her partner has kidney problems that will soon require dialysis. Plus, she already has four children. We both are sickly people. Were just not well, Judith said. If anything happens to us, whos gonna take care of our baby? Courtney, who also asked to be identified only by her first name, drove three hours to the clinic from a small town near Dallas. She was eight weeks pregnant. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle The 20-year-olds reasons for seeking an abortion were both personal and medical. She feared that if her devoutly Catholic family learned she was pregnant and unmarried, they would isolate me from the rest of the family. So going to term with this is not an option for me. She also has a medical condition that causes seizures, which had increased since she became pregnant. And so with that Im scared that being pregnant while having seizures could end my life, she said. She tried to find a clinic in Texas, but all of them said that they wouldnt do it because of the heartbeat bill, she said. Adding to her stress was a clutch of anti-abortion demonstrators beyond the 6-foot-high wooden picket stockade fence that surrounds the Oklahoma City clinic. As she walked inside, she said she heard them say, Youre committing murder. Youre sinning. If you need money, or a prayer, we can help. Your baby can be put up for adoption. Im sitting there having to bite my tongue. Literally having to bite my tongue to keep from speaking, she said. My arms are shaking, my hands are shaking, not even able to ignore them, because my emotions were being stirred up. Trust Women clinic officials are expecting the flood of Texas women driving north to grow. Theyre considering expanding their hours and adding staff, and are trying to recruit more doctors like Taub even if they have to pay to fly them into town. On Nov. 1, a similar fetal heartbeat bill is scheduled to take effect in Oklahoma. Abortion rights organizations are attempting to block it. Since the Texas ruling, Taub said some of her California colleagues have asked her about traveling to clinics like she does. But she has more immediate concerns about her patients once they leave Oklahoma and drive home to Texas. There are so many unknowns in how this law can and will be enforced that I am concerned that pharmacists in Texas may not fill prescriptions that they know come from an abortion clinic, even though they are not the medications that are going to enact the abortion, Taub said, referring to ibuprofen and anti-nausea medication she prescribes. Her advice to patients before they head back to Texas: I told them that they had to fill their prescriptions in Oklahoma. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer, and Gabrielle Lurie is a staff photographer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, glurie@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli, @gabriellelurie A man is believed to be experiencing severe amnesia following a bicycle crash in Sacramento almost a month ago, officials report. The California Highway Patrol's North Sacramento Office said that the man was riding on a bicycle Aug. 24 when an unidentified vehicle struck him, KMAX in Sacramento reported. Nearly a month later, he still doesn't know his name or where he's from, confounding CHP officers and medical experts at UC Davis Medical Center. Fingerprint scans and other record databases also yielded no results, KTXL in Sacramento reported. Charan Ranganath, a neuroscience professor at UC Davis, told KTXL that he is likely in a "fugue state." A form of "dissociative amnesia," Cleveland Clinic defines the phenomenon as when an individual cannot recall any "personal information" about their life, including their name and personal history. The individual, believed to be about 50 years old, speaks Spanish and is about 5 foot 11 inches, both KTXL and KMAX said. Anyone with information regarding the man's identity should contact CHP Officers Eulogio Ceja or A.J. McTaggart at (916) 754-7922 and (916) 798-0975, respectively. Representatives for the CHP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE. In July, a similar incident involving a 46-year-old woman found in the Davis area was resolved after a phone tip led detectives to her identity and origin; she was originally from the Los Angeles area. A Bakersfield woman is suing the hospital treating her husband for severe COVID-19 in order to force doctors to give the patient ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug typically used to treat roundworm infections that physicians say is not an effective nor safe treatment for COVID. The woman's husband is intubated in the COVID unit at San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield, according to the complaint, which was obtained by Courthouse News and filed Sept. 17. The plaintiff is not seeking monetary or compensatory damages. The complaint says the patient was admitted to the hospital a month ago for shortness of breath after testing positive for COVID. Doctors treated him with a host of different antibiotics and steroids, as well as high-flow oxygen, before intubating him. The man cannot breathe on his own, the complaint says. The complaint states that a physician had written the patient a prescription for ivermectin, which the hospital's chief medical officer refused to fulfill. The medical authority "insisted that Ivermectin was not within the Hospital protocols and would not help her husband," the complaint says. "It is the Hospitals position that there is nothing further that can be done and they can only 'hope for the best,'" the complaint alleges. San Joaquin Valley Hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Drug Administration warns that it has not approved ivermectin for the treatment of COVID, nor does it consider it an effective treatment. Widespread conspiracy theories, including those touted by podcast host Joe Rogan, have argued that ivermectin is a treatment for COVID, an argument physicians and medical authorities dispute widely. "Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea," the FDA says on its website. The National Institute of Health has also stressed that there is not sufficient data to recommend ivermectin as a COVID treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that "adverse effects associated with ivermectin misuse and overdose are increasing, as shown by a rise in calls to poison control centers reporting overdoses and more people experiencing adverse effects." Two San Francisco Bay Area school districts voted Wednesday to approve COVID vaccine mandates, requiring students ages 12 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Oakland Unified School District and Piedmont Unified School District are the first districts in Northern California to take this step. The districts haven't released timelines for when the mandate students will be rolled out. Berkeley Unified School District discussed the potential for a mandate Wednesday night. Los Angeles Unified the second largest district in the country with 600,000 students approved a mandate earlier this month amid a surge in the highly contagious delta variant. The Southern California districts requires all eligible students 12 years of age and older to get their first shot by no later than Nov. 21, and to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 19. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has emergency FDA approval for ages 12 to 15 and full approval for ages 16 and above. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are under FDA emergency use authorization and only for adults ages 18 years and up. Public schools have long required students to get vaccines such as measles, polio and chickenpox. The state of California stopped allowing public school students to skip vaccinations due to personal beliefs in 2016. Editor's note: This story was updated on Sept. 23 at 12:45 p.m. to clarify that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has emergency approval for ages 12 to 15 and not full approval as incorrectly stated in the original story. The global semiconductor shortage will lead to 7.7 million fewer vehicles produced in 2021, costing automakers billions in lost sales, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. The forecast, released Sept. 23, estimates that the shortage will cost the auto industry $210 billion globally in lost revenue in 2021, up sharply from the May projections of $110 billion in forgone sales and 3.9 million fewer vehicles built. Everyone had hoped that the chip crisis would have abated more by now, but unfortunate events such as the COVID-19 lockdowns in Malaysia and continued problems elsewhere have exacerbated things, Mark Wakefield, global co-leader of the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners, said in a statement. Wakefield added that the semiconductor crunch is just one of the supply-side dislocations impacting automakers, with shortages extending to materials such as resin, steel, and labor. There really are no shock absorbers left in the industry right now when it comes to production or obtaining material, Dan Hearsch, a managing director in AlixPartners automotive and industrial practice, said in a statement. Virtually any shortage or production interruption in any part of the world affects companies around the globe, and the impacts are now amplified due to all the other shortages. The updated forecast comes as Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and White House economic adviser Brian Deese were hosting a semiconductor supply chain meeting in Washington on Sept. 23. Participants at the meetingincluding producers, consumers, and industry groupswere to discuss the global chip shortage and the impact of the pandemic on semiconductor supply chains. Automobiles have become increasingly dependent on semiconductors for everything from safety features such as airbag deployment and emergency braking assistance to computer management of engines for better fuel economy and performance. The spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, has disrupted semiconductor manufacturing, with carmakers now facing stiff competition from the sprawling consumer electronics industry for the reduced supply of chips. The shortage has led to production cuts by automakers around the world. General Motors said several weeks ago it was cutting production at six North American assembly plants due to the chip shortage, while Chrysler parent Stellantis NV said last week it was cutting additional production at three facilities in the United States and Canada. And Ford announced in late August that it would temporarily shut its Kansas City assembly plant, which builds its best-selling F-150 pickup truck. The parts shortage forced Toyota to cut production by 40 percent in assembly plants in Japan and by as much as 60 percent in North America, while German car manufacturer Volkswagen said in late August that it may be forced to slow production in the fall. GM President Mark Reuss said on Sept. 21 that he expects the global supply of semiconductors to stabilize but at lower levels than automakers need to rebuild their inventories. Were going to see a stabilization to some extent before we see getting the volume that we really need, Reuss said at a conference hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber in Michigan. Weve got an inventory hole that then got exacerbated by the chip shortage, Reuss said, remarking on the pandemic impact on the auto industry. While the United States remains the global leader in chip design, roughly 80 percent of semiconductor foundries and assembly and test operations are concentrated in Asia. Washington has recognized the vulnerability of foreign semiconductor supply chain reliance, with Raimondo calling the lack of chip production in the United States a national security risk. President Joe Biden has called for increased investment to revitalize U.S. chip manufacturing, while bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill have sought to bolster domestic semiconductor supply chains by incentivizing manufacturing in the United States. By Tom Ozimek Tom Ozimek has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education. The best writing advice he's ever heard is from Roy Peter Clark: 'Hit your target' and 'leave the best for last.' Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Fifteen times, Sirhan Sirhan went before a California parole board to make his case to be released from prison for the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. On his 16th try, 53 years after the murder, Sirhan was granted his request. The recommendation for parole, which came down Aug. 27, has sent shock waves through the Kennedy family, already fractured by one members status as a prolific vaccine skeptic. The living children of RFK are now split between those who advocated for Sirhans release and those who are devastated by it. Kennedy was in California on June 5, 1968, as part of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. That night, he celebrated victories in the California and South Dakota primaries at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He left the ballroom through the hotel kitchen a decision that would have been utterly inconsequential if not for what followed. As Kennedy shook hands with staff in the tight confines of the kitchen, Sirhan approached him with a revolver and began firing. Bullets struck the senator and five other people in the melee. Kennedy was rushed to a local hospital, where he died from his wounds the next day. He is one of two sitting U.S. senators to be assassinated; the other is Louisianas Huey Long. Sirhan was held down by bystanders at the scene and confessed almost immediately to police. At the time, he told the court and the media that his primary motivation was his deep animosity toward Israel; Sirhan is a Jordanian citizen and a Christian Palestinian Arab. Sirhan allegedly viewed Kennedy, a supporter of Israel, as an enemy who had to be eliminated. According to police, diaries found in Sirhans apartment contained the lines, "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession. RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Sirhan was initially sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 when the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was unconstitutional. Over the years, Sirhan has walked back some of his earlier confident claims that he killed the senator. He maintains he was drunk and sometimes says he doesnt remember that night. At his parole hearing in August, Sirhan was still being cagey about his culpability. I harmed all of them and it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed, if I did in fact do that, he said. The parole board ruled that Sirhans wishy-washy personal accountability was not the most important factor in their decision. Instead, they were tasked with determining whether he still poses a danger to society. They decided he does not. Most of RFKs nine living children vehemently disagree. In a statement released after the parole boards ruling, Joseph, Courtney, Kerry, Christopher, Maxwell and Rory Kennedy said they were shocked by the decision. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive "We are devastated that the man who murdered our father has been recommended for parole. Our father's death is a very difficult matter for us to discuss publicly and for the past many decades we have declined to engage directly in the parole process," the statement said. "We are in disbelief that this man would be recommended for release," it went on. "... It is a recommendation we intend to challenge every step of the way, and we hope that those who also hold the memory of our father in their hearts will stand with us." Missing from the signatures on the statement are Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy. Kathleen, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, has opted to remain silent on the matter, but RFK Jr. and Douglas have not. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, without a doubt, the most controversial member of the immediate Kennedy family. He is one of the most prominent figures in the anti-vaccine disinformation sphere, pushing baseless conspiracy theories about vaccine efficacy long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Some conservatives view him as something of a defector from Americas most famous Democratic dynasty, giving him added stature for rejecting the familys traditional loyalties. Through his innocuously named corporation the Childrens Health Defense, Kennedy peddles in anti-science conspiracies, such as vaccines being linked to autism, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked by scientific study. Kennedy recently posted a video on his site where he urged his supporters to engage in acts of peaceful civil disobedience against vaccines and COVID-19 mandates. Sean Gallup/Getty Images A study this year by the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy one of its disinformation dozen, the 12 people who proliferate nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine propaganda on social media. His beliefs are so extreme and his platform so large that members of his family took the unusual step of publicly denouncing him. In May 2019, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II and Maeve Kennedy McKean published an op-ed headlined RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. Hes Tragically Wrong About Vaccines in Politico Magazine. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines, the piece reads. We love Bobby. However, on vaccines he is wrong. RFK Jr. has also dabbled in conspiracy regarding his own fathers murder. In 2018, the Washington Post published a profile about his visit to Sirhan in prison. Kennedy said he walked away believing Sirhan was not the man who killed his father after all, and that there must have been a second shooter. He is not alone in this belief. Much like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there are countless conspiracy theories around the murder of RFK. The most persistent is that another gunman shot the bullet that killed Bobby Kennedy; according to the autopsy, the fatal shot was fired into the back of his head, while witnesses say Sirhan stood in front of the senator. Although this has prompted much speculation, its never made a dent in the legal case. On appeals, judges have sided with experts who argued a second gunman was unlikely, especially considering no witness recalls seeing another shooter in that crowded hotel kitchen. Sirhans last appeal judge ruled that even if there was a second gunman, Sirhan was still rightfully convicted as an aider and abettor in the murder. Ira Wyman/Sygma via Getty Images RFK Jr.s skepticism has seeped into at least one of his siblings. At the time of the Post story, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend told the publication, Bobby makes a compelling case. I think [the investigation] should be reopened. Although Kathleen has thus far chosen not to speak out about Sirhans parole recommendation, brother Douglas has. He appeared at the virtual parole hearing and expressed appreciation at being able to advocate for Sirhans release. "I'm overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face to face," he said. "I think I've lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another. And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love." RFK Jr., who did not appear at the hearing, instead submitted a letter to the parole board. "While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Mr. Sirhan because of Sirhans impressive record of rehabilitation," he wrote. The parole boards recommendation is now in the review phase. The board has four months to issue its final ruling, which will then be put in front of Gov. Gavin Newsom. (For what it's worth, Newsom has a photograph of Robert F. Kennedy in his office and views him as one of his personal heroes.) If he does not veto it within 30 days, Sirhan will be freed. Sirhan has indicated in court filings that he wants to live with his brother in Los Angeles. Robert Kennedys widow, Ethel Kennedy, is now 93. She was three months pregnant when her husband was murdered and, in the years since, has buried two of her children. She rarely gives statements about the night of her husbands death, but recently she issued an impassioned plea against the release of Sirhan Sirhan. Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man, she wrote. We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in taming his act of violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again. Linda Evangelista, the supermodel made famous in the 1990s, said she had become brutally disfigured and unrecognizable after a cosmetic body-sculpting procedure that had turned her into a recluse. Today I took a big step towards righting a wrong that I have suffered and have kept to myself for over five years, she wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday. To my followers who have wondered why I have not been working while my peers careers have been thriving, the reason is that I was brutally disfigured by Zeltiqs CoolSculpting procedure which did the opposite of what it promised. Evangelista, 56, said after the fat-freezing procedure she developed paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, a side effect in which patients develop firm tissue masses in the treatment areas. She said the cosmetic procedure left her permanently deformed even after undergoing two painful, unsuccessful, corrective surgeries. She said she had not been told of the risk. PAH has not only destroyed my livelihood, it has sent me into a cycle of deep depression, profound sadness, and the lowest depths of self-loathing, she wrote. In the process, I have become a recluse. Although Evangelistas Instagram post mentioned a lawsuit, it was unclear whether one had been filed or where. According to CoolSculpting, the procedure has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of visible fat bulges. According to the website of Allergan Aesthetics, a global pharmaceutical company whose brands include CoolSculpting, the procedure may cause an enlargement in the treated area about 2-5 months after treatment, requiring surgical intervention for correction. Neither Allergan Aesthetics nor the FDA immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. San Francisco is an enigma. One of the most walkable cities in America yet filled with streets so steep your legs burn; a hub of zero-emission vehicles and electric bikes crisscrossed with the world's last manually operated cable car system; a leftist haven with more free-market billionaires per capita than any other city on Earth. This complexity may lead to some nuanced questions about the city, but also sometimes people open their phones and ask: Is San Francisco a country? I found the weirdest questions people have been asking Google about the city, seemingly largely informed by a misunderstanding of maps and a campaign of misinformation from right-wing media. Here goes. (The questions below are all drawn from the top 50 queries in Google search about San Francisco.) Is San Francisco in New York? No. Is San Francisco open? Yes! San Francisco is open. The city was the first to shutter during the outbreak of coronavirus and saw some of the fewest deaths per capita from the disease of any major city in America. Bars, restaurants, clubs and gyms are all now open (if youre vaccinated). Come visit. Take in the view from the Top of the Mark. Grab the best Sichuan food in the country at Spices. Go see the sea lions at Fishermans Wharf (don't worry, the Bushman seems to be long gone). Drink some cutty bangs in Dolores Park. You can even ride the cable cars again. Is San Francisco the city of love? No, thats Paris. But the Summer of Love was here. San Francisco is SF, or maybe Baghdad by the Bay, or even Frisco (if its good enough for Otis Redding, its good enough for us). It is never San Fran and it is definitely not the Golden City, despite what Goop thinks. Is San Francisco safe from fires? Despite the citys history being shaped by one devastating inferno, and the surrounding state increasingly seeing millions of acres of damage every year, San Francisco is largely safe from wildfires. The most recent urban wildfire near San Francisco occurred in Oakland in 1991 when a firestorm fueled by high winds razed nearly 3,000 homes and killed 25 people in the hills. Is San Francisco an island? Almost. The city is on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water that gets less salty from the Pacific through the Golden Gate to the bay. The south side of the city is a land border with San Mateo County and the cities of Daly City and Brisbane. San Francisco does have islands though, from the tiny rock formation of Seal Rock off Ocean Beach to Alcatraz, Treasure Island, a small portion of Angel Island and most distantly, the uninhabited Farallones home to many shipwrecks and a colony of elephant seals (and some hungry seal-eating sharks). Is San Francisco built on sand? Great question. Kind of. The whole western part of the city now filled with the green meadows of Golden Gate Park and suburban avenues was once sand dunes. A portion of the city on its eastern shore is built on the wrecks of ships abandoned by gold-crazed prospectors. Some downtown skyscrapers are literally built on sand, which hasnt worked out well for the residents of 301 Mission St. Is San Francisco a country? No. But it once had an emperor. In 1859, a San Francisco newspaper published a notice announcing that an English businessman in the city, one Joshua Norton, had proclaimed himself Emperor of the U.S., at the request of a large majority of the citizens. While he had no actual power, and all of his decrees were ignored, he became a bona fide city celebrity walking the streets with a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather. Most of his ideas were laughed at, like when he created his own currency with his face on it, but he did suggest building a bridge to Oakland 50 years before that became a reality. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive The city embraced Nortons kooky ways, selling pins and belt buckles with his likeness and even providing him with military regalia when his beaver hat wore thin. After he dropped dead on California Street in 1880, its said 10,000 San Franciscans attended his funeral. Is San Francisco better than Los Angeles? Yes. Is San Francisco safe? Its possible that this question is being asked by confused Fox News viewers with pleasant memories of the beautiful city, now ingesting primetime host Laura Ingrahams tirade against San Francisco, framing it as a dystopian town in decline. She recently claimed the city was "ruining itself" by building a bike lane in the city. Lets look at violent crime numbers. The murder/negligent homicide rate in San Francisco is 6.35 per 100,000 people, per FBI data from 2017. That number is far lower than years ago (in 2007 it was 13.63). It also makes the city safer in that metric than Miami, Las Vegas, Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska. In fact, San Francisco has fewer homicides, aggravated assaults and rapes per person than 65 of the 100 most populous cities in the country. More recent data shows that violent crime in the city dropped further from 2018 to 2020, though vehicle thefts are up. So, safe from crime? Relatively, yes. Safe from right-wing primetime agitprop? Maybe not. Is San Francisco coffee good? Despite an infamous 1963 headline that declared, The Terrible Coffee in S.F.s Restaurants: A great citys people forced to drink swill, Tea and Coffee magazine rates the citys coffee today as the second best in the country after Seattle. Coffee companies from Folgers to bougie third-wave roaster Blue Bottle (now owned by Nestle) got their start in the Bay Area. Its not cheap, and its not all tasty though. I once went to Lombard Street and paid $17 for a cup of coffee that had passed through the bowels of a cat and it tasted like ass. Is San Francisco Sodom and Gomorrah? No. The biblical towns of Sodom and Gomorrah were laid to waste by a very angry God due to their human wickedness through divine retribution. San Francisco is quite lovely, and doing well. Is San Francisco bike friendly? Yes, very. A SmartAsset study found it to be the safest city in the country for cyclists. One of the citys most ridden bike thoroughfares is the Wiggle. The zig-zagging bike path between the Panhandle and downtown that weaves through the hills is a hugely popular commuting route for cyclists looking to avoid calf-crushing inclines. The route actually follows an ancient creek used by livestock and settlers long before bikes were invented. Alexander Spatari/Getty Images Is San Francisco cold? Honestly, yes. Except for a few weeks in the early fall when its downright magical. Is San Francisco Chinatown safe? Yes. And beautiful. The largest Chinatown outside of Asia is a vibrant bustling neighborhood of hidden alleys, amazing food, ornate churches and some of the best bars in the city. Its also home to Portsmouth Square, where elders gather to play Chinese chess in the oldest public square in San Francisco. Is San Francisco dog friendly? Very. DogTime rates the city as the third best in the country for dog owners. Pups are welcome at many restaurants and even gyms, and the city has a lower relative pet deposit on rentals than anywhere in the country. The citys fondness for canines may start with a curious furry duo named Bummer and Lazarus. In 1860, the city dogs became beloved by San Francisco. The pair had a penchant for visiting saloons and drinking from fountains to the joy of residents. They became exempt from city ordinances and were even gifted nightly tickets to every opera house in town. Mark Twain eulogized their passing, and their taxidermied bodies were displayed at their favorite bar long after they uttered their last ruff. Is San Francisco known as the windy city? Come on now. Is San Francisco expensive? Very. Prohibitively so. A family of four needs to make $111,136 annually just to make ends meet in San Francisco. Investopedia lists the city as the second most expensive city in the nation after New York. Despite the endless stories of folks leaving San Francisco, the city is still hugely desirable. Time Out just declared it the greatest city in the world, and with the ocean and bay leaving no room for suburban sprawl, theres little chance of it becoming more affordable any time soon. Is San Francisco hilly? Extremely. There are 48 named hills in the city. Some, like Irish Hill, were obliterated by dynamite. Others, like Mount Davidson and Mount Sutro are hidden paradises right in the middle of the city. Many have their own famed identities, from the parrots on Telegraph Hill to the old-timey tranquility of Nob Hill. The hills and steep streets make the city what it is. One ambitious man tried to walk up the 10 steepest streets, and discovered the actual steepest block isnt where you think it is. Is San Francisco due for an earthquake? Yes. I mean no. Sorry, no one really knows. Experts say that a 1906 level quake in the city should occur in the bay at 200-year intervals. USGS says that the chances of that happening in the next 30 years are about 2%. So probably not? But it cant hurt to start building that earthquake kit. What is the main newspaper in San Francisco? San Francisco has a long history of warring newspapers that laid claim to that mantle, largely between the Call, the Examiner and the Chronicle. In the 1890s this resulted in an extravagant and sometimes stupid skyscraper war that was finally ended by the 1906 fire that gutted the publications downtown towers. This led to a very brief moment of brotherly love when all publications joined forces to publish under the Call-Chronicle-Examiner in the days following the disaster. Today the biggest news site in San Francisco is SFGATE. With about 25 million to 30 million monthly readers, only the LA Times can count more loyal readers in all of California. Is San Francisco dying? No. SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) A South Carolina man's family is now offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his killer. The Spartanburg County Sheriff made the announcement involving the death of Corey Bigcee Jackson during a news conference on Wednesday, WSPA-TV reported. Jacksons family had previously offered $6,000 for information that would lead to an arrest, but increased it to $10,000 hoping someone would come forward. If we had a million dollars to give, we would give it, its just money. We dont care, theres no value or amount that we could put on Coreys life to get information, said Jacksons sister, Hidiyah Yussif. Jackson, a well known promoter and community activist, was killed at his home in Spartanburg on early on July 25. With only a few leads, police are asking for the public's help in solving the crime. Somebody blatantly killed this young man and he did not deserve that. Thats the reason why I wanted the family to come in and if you dont want to give me the information Im okay with that, but do it for them, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said. Jackson's mother, Lillie Greene, said her grandson is having a tough time dealing with his father's sudden death. Hes grieving silently; he had an episode this morning. His question was I thought people died when they were 70 not 39, so how do you explain that to a 7 year old? Greene said. Wright said anyone with information about the case can call anonymously at 1-888-CRIME-SC. ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) New York might be on track to exhaust its $2.1 billion pandemic relief fund for undocumented workers, just weeks after it began accepting applications. Advocacy groups for immigrant workers are calling on the state to add as much as $1.4 billion to the fund the largest of its kind in the county to meet unexpectedly strong demand. Initially, the state had estimated that the fund could benefit as many as 300,000 people whose immigration status made them ineligible for federal stimulus checks, unemployment aid or other benefits. But contrary to expectations, nearly all 92,000 people approved for aid so far have qualified for the maximum $15,600 available under the program, the states website showed Thursday afternoon. Roughly 223,500 claims have been submitted overall, with a rush coming in recent days. Natividad Aguilar, a 31-year-old mother of three daughters in Manhattan, is among those waiting for her application to be processed. She works a string of jobs, including cleaning homes, and said some in her community were skeptical or worried about the fund initially. But she said such concerns are dwindling as tens of thousands have received financial assistance in recent weeks. I'm so excited for the help and so grateful that New York is providing this help, she said. So, so many people need it. The Department of Labor told advocates Wednesday that it will alert potential applicants as soon as Friday that assistance won't be guaranteed even if they're eligible. They told us that applications that have been submitted can be considered safe, that there might be a waitlist and that applications would be prioritized by the date of initial submission," Fund Excluded Workers Coalition campaign coordinator Bianca Guerrero said. The Department of Labor didnt answer questions Thursday about whether the fund was likely to run out of money, or whether assistance might not be guaranteed if that happened. It's unclear when or if the Democratic-led Legislature would consider a funding boost. Minority Republicans balked at Democrats' passage of the fund this spring. Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx who chairs the Senate health committee, said he supports increased funding. To be eligible, applicants must have made less than $26,208 in 2020, prove they are New York residents and show they have suffered loss of earnings because of the pandemic. They must also have worked at least six weeks during the six months before they lost earnings because of the pandemic. Eligibility documentation might include recent tax returns with a valid taxpayer identification number, pay stubs or employer letters. Immigrants who can only prove identity and residency can receive $3,200 in payments if they dont have required work documents. Even as the program has begun to run out of money, worker advocates have urged the state to loosen application rules. Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director at the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, said it's tough for workers who aren't listed on an apartment lease or utility bill to prove residency. Municipal ID programs in New York City and elsewhere allow roommates to write affidavits to help prove residency, she said. The state allows self-employed workers to write letters that attest to their income. Workers paid in cash can receive similar letters from employers. But Kaufman-Gutierrez and other advocates interviewed by The Associated Press say the state needs to let applicants know that workers paid in cash, like babysitters or domestic workers, can also provide their own letters in scenarios where employers refuse to do so. There are still these very significant barriers for those who are still not able to apply, she said. These are the most vulnerable workers who need funds the most and deserve them. Advocates are also urging New York to make its helpline and follow-up notifications available in other languages besides English. Department of Labor spokesperson Deanna Cohen said the state is working to expedite the application process. Meanwhile, some lawyers and notaries are charging applicants hundreds of dollars to help workers fill out the application. Advocates are reporting incidents to the attorney general and labor department. Rosanna Aran, co-executive director of the Manhattan-based Laundry Workers Center, which represents over 2,100 workers, urged workers to ignore such scams. We are hearing people are paying $300 just to fill out the application, sometimes $150, $500," she said. The state has provided grants to over 75 community-based organizations to provide free application assistance. NEW YORK (AP) After being pummeled by two tropical storms that submerged basements, cracked home foundations and destroyed belongings, Northeastern U.S. residents still in the throes of recovery are being hit with another unexpected blow: Thousands of families are now swamped with financial losses because they didn't have flood insurance. Most of those caught off guard by the intense downpours from the remnants of Hurricane Ida and Tropical Storm Henri lived in areas outside of coastal floodplains, making flood insurance an afterthought for most of the working-class families whose neighborhoods were among the hardest hit. When we called the insurance company, the first thing they told us is that they dont provide any assistance for anything thats caused by a storm. And they left it at that, Amit Shivprasad said, his rising voice echoing frustrations shared among his neighbors in the Jamaica section of Queens. For weeks now, Shivprasad and his parents have been crammed into a relatives apartment after New York City building inspectors declared their home uninhabitable. Floodwaters from Ida, exacerbated by overflowing storm and sewer drains, ripped through an exterior wall and drowned two of the family's tenants in a basement apartment. The storm killed about 50 people across the Northeast, many of whom drowned in basement apartments or in cars. It lashed the region less than two weeks after a drenching from Henri. Residents in Shivprasad's neighborhood have long complained about inadequate drainage that makes flooding a frequent worry. This is not a flood zone, which is something I was shocked at, said Shivprasad, whose family home lies 4 miles inland from the nearest flood plain. If it were in a flood zone, the familys mortgage company would have likely required flood insurance. Among the roughly 10,000 homes in his neighborhood, just 16 were protected by flood insurance, according to a database compiled by the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Flood damage is not covered by homeowners or renters insurance policies. People without a flood policy have few options for getting help paying for damage, according to Loretta Worters, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute. They may be able to get federal assistance, she said, including low-interest loans and grants for damage. While officials are still calculating the losses believed to be in the billions of dollars residents wonder how theyll come up with the money to repair homes and replace belongings. Fans continue to whir in dank basements and dump trucks still make the rounds to haul away mildewed couches, squishy mattresses and now-useless electronics. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has already disbursed at least $22 million to nearly 5,200 families in New York City. More than 38,000 households have applied for aid. In New Jersey, assistance to some 39,000 families is still pending, while FEMA has paid out about $11 million to nearly 3,000 families. Thus far, about $10 million in flood insurance claims has been paid out in New Jersey to 6,000 policy holders, according to FEMA. In New York City's five boroughs, about $3 million has been disbursed for 2,600 flood insurance claims. Flood insurance, offered through the National Flood Insurance Program, is generally required for mortgages on properties considered to have a roughly 1 in 100 chance each year of flooding but is optional for everyone else. Some see it as an unnecessary cost, even as severe weather now strikes with more frequency and greater intensity. You never know, particularly with the way the world is acting right now, when that flood is going to occur in your neighborhood, said Michael Wade, a FEMA spokesperson. All you got to do is look at this particular storm, he said, and youll see that people who didnt live in flood plains and who have never been flooded before all of a sudden they get inundated with 6 inches of rain an hour. Now they got problems. John and Roseann Kiernans neighborhood in Rossmoor, a sprawling senior living development in Monroe Township in central New Jersey, is 20 miles from the coastline and not near any major rivers. The Kiernans and others said they were told over the years that they didnt need flood insurance because the area isnt in a flood zone even though the neighborhood flooded in 2005. John Kiernans mother previously owned the house and had flood insurance that cost about $650 per year, he said. She died eight years ago, and they eventually let the insurance lapse. Now, the Kiernans estimate it will cost $100,000 to get their house back to a livable condition and replace their car. Their existing policy covered nothing, said John Kiernan, a retired corrections officer. The insurance company sent out some very nice, understanding people, they listened to everybody for an hour or so, then basically said, Youre not getting anything. So thats the way it is. Around the corner from the Kiernans, Joan Russo and her husband have lived in the same house for 16 years and moved in a few days before the flooding in 2005. Their house suffered extensive water damage during Henri, forcing them to move in with her sons family in another town. When we were getting our insurance, they said, Youre not in a flood area, theres no need for that, she said. You listen to the supplier and they say you dont need it, so you dont get it. Back in Queens, Sahadeo Bhagwandin worries about how he will get his family back home. They've been spending nights at a hotel, courtesy of the Red Cross, ever since the flooding. I dont know how Ill fix this, said Bhagwandin, a structural engineer, as he pointed to a thick fissure in his basement wall. It could cost upward of $125,000 to repair his homes foundation, which buckled after floodwaters gushed into the basement. Until a few years back, Bhagwandin said, he had flood insurance bought after a 2007 storm inundated streets but the policy was later canceled. Some of his neighbors, especially working-class immigrants who face language barriers, aren't as familiar with the complexities of property insurance and might not have realized they needed separate coverage for acts of God like flooding and earthquakes. Even if they were aware of the risk of flooding, he said, their financial priorities might have been elsewhere. Its not a rich community," Bhagwandin said. "People try to save every dollar they have to do something else with it, instead of buying flood insurance." __________ Associated Press writer Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report. Currently Reading Alert: Former Louisiana State Police trooper indicted on federal civil rights charge for beating Black man with flashlight ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) Algeria has closed its airspace to all Moroccan planes in the latest escalation of diplomatic tensions between the two North African neighbors. Algerias High Security Council announced the decision Wednesday following a meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and top officials. The council cited Moroccan provocations and hostile practices to justify the measure. BALTIMORE (AP) Federal authorities mistakenly released the alleged leader of a Crips gang in Baltimore last week, but he is now back in custody. Trayvon Hall, 30, was serving a three-year sentence for a gun conviction when he was indicted on racketeering charges last year. Federal prosecutors said Hall led the Baccwest Eight Tray Gangsters and the indictment alleged that he committed a murder and the crew he ran engaged in street violence, witness intimidation and recruitment efforts in correctional facilities. SAN DIEGO (AP) An alleged top lieutenant of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has been accused of helping smuggle tons of methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin and other drugs into the United States, federal authorities said Wednesday. A 2018 indictment by a federal grand jury in San Diego was unsealed Wednesday. It accuses Sergio Valenzuela Valenzuela, 52, of drug-related conspiracy, according to the U.S. attorney's office. A warrant for his arrest was issued. He remains a fugitive. The indictment alleges that Valenzuela was involved with cocaine and marijuana smuggling in San Diego and other counties. It was unsealed the same day that the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions against him and seven other Mexican citizens along with two Mexican businesses. Valenzuela was designated as a narcotics trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. Valenzuela was a plaza boss" who oversaw a major drug trafficking corridor that shipped multi-ton quantities" of illegal drugs across the border, and he reported directly to the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a treasury department statement alleged. The smuggling route includes the Mexican city of Nogales and a city of the same name across the border in Arizona, the U.S. attorney's office said. The sanction freezes all of Valenzuela's property and other interests in the U.S. and bars people and businesses in the U.S. from doing business with him. The alleged cartel leader, Ismael Zambada Garcia, is charged in a separate San Diego indictment and also remains a fugitive, the U.S. attorney's office said. It wasn't clear whether either Valenzuela or Zambada had attorneys who could speak for them in the San Diego cases. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) An Arkansas man has pleaded guilty to assaulting a flight attendant on a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Little Rock last year. Leon Anderson, 40, of Maumelle, pleaded guilty Wednesday to interfering with a flight attendant, federal prosecutors said. They said he grabbed a flight attendant several times during the February 2020 flight and made inappropriate sexual comments to him. ATLANTA (AP) President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated a key Georgia state lawmaker to become the United States ambassador to the Dominican Republic. State Rep. Calvin Smyre, a Black Democrat from Columbus first elected in 1974, must be confirmed by the Senate before taking his post. Smyre is acclaimed as the longest serving member of the Georgia House and has remained a crucial player in legislative affairs, especially as a go-between in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans. Smyre, 74, was the youngest member of the House when he was first elected. He became a vice president at of Synovus Financial Corp., a Columbus-based regional bank, before retiring in 2014. I am deeply honored to be nominated by President Biden to serve as the Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Smyre said in a text message to the Ledger-Enquirer. If confirmed, I look forward to advancing the interests of the United States in the Dominican Republic and our relationship with the Dominican government. Smyre was the first African American representative named as a floor leader for a Georgia governor when Joe Frank Harris tapped him in 1983. He authored legislation creating the Martin Luther King Jr. state holiday and was a co-sponsor of a bill that removed the Confederate battle emblem from the Georgia state flag. In 2020, Smyre was a co-sponsor of a bill that reinstated a hate crimes law in Georgia, breaking a years-long deadlock after the slaying of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick. He also chaired the House Rules Committee, which controls the flow of legislation in the lower chamber. Smyre was the first Black chair of the state Democratic Party, the first Black member of the Democratic National Committee from Georgia and a delegate to a number of Democratic conventions. Smyre supported Biden and voted for him as one of Georgia's members of the Electoral College after Biden won the state. The nomination brought an outpouring of praise from Georgia political figures including a number of Republicans. America could not have a better ambassador than Calvin Smyre, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, said in a statement. Few people have worked longer or harder to move our state and this nation forward. I am proud for my friend and congratulate him on this well-deserved honor. ___ Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy. BOSTON (AP) The Boston City Council has unanimously approved an ordinance that addresses climate change by requiring all buildings larger than 20,000 square feet to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050. Acting Mayor Kim Janey intends to sign the ordinance approved Wednesday, according to a spokesperson. This is the most transformative thing we have done for climate in Bostons 400-year history, said City Councilor Matt OMalley, the driving force behind the rule. Its aggressive, but achievable, and it allows for five-year increments to check on our progress. This is a big win for the city. It applies to about 3,500 commercial and residential buildings, or about 4% of structures in the city, according to city officials. They account for 60% of Bostons building emissions. The Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Janey's environment and energy chief, praised the decision. This indicates how serious we all understand the climate crisis to be for the city, she told The Boston Globe. The ordinance was modeled on similar measures in New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., she said. A group that represents developers and building owners worked with the city on the measure. Its a great step the city council took today, Anastasia Nicolaou, vice president of policy and public affairs for NAIOP Massachusetts, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, told GBH News. The two mayoral finalists, city councilors Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George, also supported the ordinance, which establishes declining emissions caps for 13 different sectors and timetables to reach certain emissions cap goals. The ordinance also establishes fines of up to $1,000 a day for owners alleged to be in violation of the benchmarks. Environmental groups lauded the rules. Energy efficiency is always the greenest, cheapest renewable energy, and Bostons aging large buildings are the Saudi Arabia of wasted energy for us to tap, Audrey Schulman, president of the Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge environmental advocacy group, told the Globe. MORICHES, N.Y. (AP) A bull that escaped from a farm on Long Island and eluded searchers for two months has been captured, authorities said Thursday. The 1,500-pound (680-kilogram) bull, nicknamed Barney or Barnie, was corralled late Wednesday by staff from Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue, Suffolk County SPCA Chief Roy Gross said in a news release. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) California on Wednesday became the first state to bar mega-retailers from firing warehouse workers for missing quotas that interfere with bathroom and rest breaks under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that grew from Amazon's drive to speed goods to consumers more quickly. The measure also bars Amazon, the online retail giant, and similar companies from disciplining workers for following health and safety laws and allows employees to sue to suspend unsafe quotas or reverse retaliation. The bill applies to all warehouse distribution centers, though proponents were driven by Amazon's dominance. We cannot allow corporations to put profit over people, Newsom, a Democrat, said in a news release announcing he had signed the law. The law, AB 701, was authored by Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a lawyer and former labor leader. She accused Amazon of disciplining warehouse workers at the direction of an algorithm that tracks employees' activities and can determine that anything not directly related to moving packages is off-task. Amazon is pushing workers to risk their bodies for next-day delivery, while they cant so much as use the restroom without fearing retaliation," Gonzalez said when the Legislature passed her bill. Amazon did not respond for requests for comment on her legislation or allegations. The law gives large warehouse employers 30 days to disclose quotas to employees. Workers who think their quotas lead to unsafe behavior can ask for 90 days' worth of documentation of how their work speed meets or fails the quota. Any discipline within that 90 days is presumed to be retaliation, as is any discipline within 90 days of an employee complaining to the company or a state agency about an unsafe quota. Gonzalez cited reports from several labor advocacy groups including the Warehouse Worker Resource Center and the Strategic Organizing Center to assert that Amazon employees are far more likely to suffer serious injuries than those working in other warehouses. California's workplace regulators would have to consider investigating if a worksite or employer has an annual employee injury rate at least 1.5 times higher than the warehousing industrys average annual injury rate, under her bill. Yesenia Barrera, a former warehouse employee who is now an organizer with the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, recalled the constant pressure to perform and carrying, bending, reaching, twisting and packing items from 30-60 pounds for hours a day. But 27 business organizations led by the California Retailers Association objected that California is home to thousands of warehouse distribution centers that together provide quality jobs to hundreds of thousands of working-class Californians. The groups in a letter to lawmakers cited U.S. Department of Labor data that wages in the transportation and warehousing sector have risen more than 17% in the last year. Amazon alone says it employs more than 150,000 Californians, including at dozens of fulfillment centers. The legislation is both burdensome and needlessly overbroad, the business groups said, arguing that workers are protected by existing occupational safety standards. In a statement, California Retailers Association President Rachel Michelin said the measure will exacerbate our current supply chain issues, increase the cost of living for all Californians and eliminate good-paying jobs." With Californias ports facing record backlogs of ships waiting off the coast and inflation spiking to the fastest pace in 13 years, AB 701 will make matters worse for everyone creating more backordered goods and higher prices for everything from clothes, diapers and food to auto parts, toys and pet supplies," Michelin said. Warehouse workers in California are a disproportionate 54% Latino and 9.5% Black, according to the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which co-sponsored the bill. It argued those groups also have fewer job options and were more likely to suffer during the coronavirus pandemic that increased consumers' reliance on on-line shopping and boosted retailers' profits. BEIJING (AP) Chinas central bank will soon have access to the private credit information of hundreds of millions of users of Ant Groups online credit service, in a move signaling more regulatory oversight of the financial technology sector. Huabei, Ant Groups credit service, said in a statement that consumer credit data it has collected will be included in the Peoples Bank of Chinas financial credit information database. The inclusion of Huabeis credit information into the credit reporting system will help users credit information be more comprehensive, Huabei said. Consumers who do not authorize the sharing of credit data with the central bank will not be able to use Huabeis service. The company did not give a timeline for when it would provide all of its customer credit data to the central bank. The move is part of various stricter regulations for Ant, which has been ordered to end its monopoly on information and behave more like a bank. Ant Group, the financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba, operates many digital payments, investment and insurance services and has over a billion users worldwide. In China, about 500 million people use its online credit and consumer loans services. Financial regulators have grown increasingly concerned at Ant's financial services business, abruptly halting its planned $34.5 billion listing days before its stock debut. Previously, Ant Groups private credit-scoring system would assess a users creditworthiness. Those deemed trustworthy enough could use Ants credit and loans services including Huabei, which was popular among consumers as it gave them access to online credit in a country where it is difficult to get a credit card. Ant Group would connect creditworthy users with banks that provided the credit, while taking a cut of the fees in the process. Banks were thus left to shoulder most of the credit risk. Ants trove of customer data has long been seen as an important advantage for the company, allowing it to design financial products to suit its users. Regulators have accused the firm of anti-competitive behavior, defying regulatory compliance requirements and engaging in regulatory arbitrage. Ant Group was ordered to hold minimum capital requirements as part of risk management measures. According to Huabei's statement, data such as a users credit lines, amount of credit used, repayment statuses and account creation dates will be shared with the central bank, while information such as individual purchases and transactions will remain private. Huabei said it would strictly follow the regulatory requirements. The credit reporting system is the foundation of the countrys financial sector. As society progresses and improves, more and more users will come into contact and better understand credit reporting, it said. An estimated 270,000 Connecticut residents who are 65 years and older and who originally received Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, including nursing home residents, can begin getting their third booster shot as soon as Friday, Gov. Ned Lamont's administration said Thursday. Residents ages 50 to 64 with risky underlying health conditions and who received the Pfizer vaccine will also be allowed to obtain a third dose at more than 800 locations across the state. They can be found online. The news comes as advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed Thursday that boosters should be offered to people 65 and older, nursing home residents and those ages 50 to 64 with health problems. The extra dose would be given once they are at least six months past their last Pfizer shot. Weve been preparing for this, said Josh Geballe, Lamont's chief operating officer. Weve been expecting this, and our providers have as well. Theyre ready to go. There are an estimated 160,000 people in the state under 65 years old with underlying health conditions who received the Pfizer vaccine. It's unclear how many are age 50 to 64. The federal government still hasnt considered boosters for people who received Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines and has no data on whether its safe or effective to mix-and-match and give those people a Pfizer shot. In other coronavirus-related news in Connecticut: ___ INDOOR AIR QUALITY Municipal leaders, teachers, school staff and school boards and superintendents teamed up Thursday to demand the state provide more funding to help cover the high cost of improving air quality in hundreds of aging schools, an issue that's been highlighted by the pandemic. The governor, however, noted that local superintendents have received about $500 million in federal COVID-relief funds and they have broad discretion over how that money is spent." During a news conference, Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said the money falls far short of what's needed to install air conditioning, upgrade old HVAC systems and improve air quality in some buildings that are more than 100 years old. Everyone seems to think that there are untold numbers of ESSER dollars, she said, referring to the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which was part of the American Rescue Act of 2021. But Rabinowitz said half of the state's districts received less than $5 million, while the average cost of upgrading HVAC systems in one elementary school can range from $5 million to $6 million. Many districts have relied on the funding to pay for other initiatives to help students recover from learning loss last school year and other pandemic-recovery expenses, leaving little to cover the cost of HVAC projects, she said. A survey conducted by the superintendents' association of more than 100 school districts in Connecticut found there are currently 233 elementary schools and 42 grade 9-12 schools that do not have air conditioning. Those figures do not include schools with outdated HVAC systems. It's unclear how much it will cost to upgrade buildings throughout the state. Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, called on the General Assembly to get involved, noting lawmakers vote on Lamont's plan for spending federal rescue funds. There is approximately $280 million in remaining American Rescue Plan money for Connecticut that has not yet been allocated. But Paul Mounds, Lamont's chief of staff, said that money is being kept in reserve and will be evaluated on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis as the pandemic continues to play out. ___ SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS Lamont said his administration has been working to accelerate getting additional bus drivers in place in order to bring students to school next week in case large numbers of school bus drivers decide not to get required vaccinations or testing. I can tell you we have some health care drivers, theyll be able to step in and help for some of those kids with special needs, said Lamont, adding that he has not yet received any requests from local school districts to have members of the Connecticut National Guard drive the school busses. Lamont recently signed an executive order that requires staff at pre-K-12 schools statewide to have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 27. Several school bus drivers from Bristol told members of the General Assembly's Conservative Caucus on Wednesday they are unwilling to get vaccinated or tested and expected they might lose their jobs. ___ UNEMPLOYMENT OVERPAYMENTS Leaders of the General Assembly's Labor and Public Employees Committee on Thursday called on the state Department for Labor to waive unemployment compensation overpayments that are being billed to workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic. Later in the day, the governor said if there were inadvertent errors, I think there are ways that we can mediate that without causing a lot of distress. House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, told the Hartford Courant that House Democrats may take up legislation requiring the state to cover the cost, which is estimated to be $6 million to $10 million. Juliet Manalan, spokeswoman for the Department of Labor, told the Courant overpayments not related to fraud stemmed from delays by employers who may have disputed a claim after benefits had already been paid. She said there are also cases where applicants made filing errors or the agency made a mistake. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A St. Thomas University student accused along with a prominent Minnesota GOP donor of child sex trafficking pleaded not guilty to numerous charges Thursday in federal court. Gisela Castro Medina, the former chairwoman of the Minnesota college's Republican Party chapter, made her initial appearance virtually before U.S. Magistrate Judge Becky Thorson, who agreed to a request by lawyers on both sides that allows Medina to await trial at a halfway house. Medina, who was arrested in Florida in August, answered a series of yes or no questions from the judge and said she understood the conditions of her pretrial release, which include GPS monitoring. Court documents allege that Medina and Republican operative Anton Lazzaro conspired to recruit and solicit people under the age of 18 to engage in commercial sex between May and December of 2020. Lazzaro has pleaded not guilty. His attorney has said he is being falsely accused and did not commit the crimes. Federal prosecutors allege Medina acted as Lazzaros recruiter, reaching out to girls on social media and setting up meetings with Lazzaro. Medina is also accused of trying to buy the silence of the girls once Lazzaro learned they were underage. Lazzaro has connections to prominent Minnesota Republicans and managed the campaign of Republican Lacy Johnson, who made an unsuccessful bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar last year. The former leader of the Minnesota Republican Party and Lazzaro's close friend, Jennifer Carnahan, resigned from her post last month after Lazzaro was charged in federal court. She had been under pressure to step down before the indictment was unsealed and insisted she knew nothing about the allegations against him. ROME (AP) An appeals court in Palermo, Sicily, acquitted a close associate of former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday of having negotiated with the Mafia during the 1990s. In 2018, a lower court convicted Marcello DellUtri, who had been a senator for Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party, of acting as a liaison between Italian state institutions and Cosa Nostra bosses in Sicily and gave him a 12-year prison sentence. Prosecutors alleged DellUtri was part of purported efforts to convince mobsters to stop a bombing campaign, which had included targets like the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, in exchange for authorities easing up on Mafia crackdowns and loosening particularly rigid prison conditions for top mobsters. But the appeals court in Palermo ruled that DellUtri had done no such thing. Dell'Utri was one of the forces behind the founding of Forza Italia in the early 1990s. Berlusconi served three stints as Italy's premier. In a separate, earlier case, Dell'Utri was convicted of Mafia association, a verdict upheld in 2014 by Italy's highest criminal court. He received a seven-year sentence and was released in 2019 after serving more than five years. Dell'Utri, who was free on his own recognizance in the run-up to the appeals court case, wasn't in the courtroom to hear of his acquittal, Sky TG24 TV reported from Palermo. Top bosses of the Sicily-based Cosa Nostra unleashed the 1990s bombing campaign. In 1993, five car bombs hit a basilica and a church in Rome, the Uffizi art museum in Florence and an art gallery in Milan. In all, 10 people were killed and dozens were wounded. Earlier that year, long time top Mafia chieftain Salvatore Toto Riina was arrested in an apartment in Palermo after decades as a fugitive. The bombings were ordered by the Mafia as retaliation and to intimidate the Italian government from cracking down organized crime, according to prosecutors. WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) The father of three young girls who were killed last week in New Zealand said Thursday his precious angels had been ripped away from him in a loss he would carry for the rest of his life. But orthopedic surgeon Graham Dickason also said he'd already forgiven his wife Lauren and urged others to do the same. He said she, too, was a victim in the tragedy. Dickason wrote his thoughts in a letter that was read aloud by a reverend during a candlelight vigil that was attended by hundreds of people outside the familys home in the South Island town of Timaru. Lauren Dickason, 40, has been charged with murder in the deaths of her twin 2-year-old girls Maya and Karla, and their 6-year-old sister Liane, in a crime that has shocked New Zealand. She is being kept at a psychiatric facility ahead of her next scheduled court appearance on Oct. 5. The Dickason family moved into housing for medical professionals near the Timaru Hospital in New Zealand less than a week before the killings. Before that, as new arrivals from South Africa, they were required to spend two weeks in a coronavirus quarantine hotel run by the military. Graham Dickason returned home just before 10 p.m. last Thursday and found the bodies of his daughters, according to reports. Emergency services said that when they responded, they found Lauren Dickason, who was hospitalized in stable condition and later charged by police. Neighbors called police when they heard a man screaming and crying. A judge has suppressed the details of the alleged crime. At the vigil, Graham Dickason said in his letter that parents of young children should remember to let them play wildly and to laugh. The family had just moved to New Zealand from South Africa, where former neighbors and others who knew them laid wreaths and flowers later Thursday outside the estate where they used to live. Colorful wreaths lay next to a white cross at the housing estates entrance in the South African capital, Pretoria. Christine Wright, who said she had been a patient of Graham Dickasons, was one of those to bring flowers. She said she and her husband had seen news of the killings in South Africa, where it has gained media attention. We couldnt believe it at first. I mean, it was just such a shock to us, she said. We had to read it twice to actually realize that it was our doctor. Wrights husband, Allan, said Dickason's wife had assisted in some surgeries and she seemed like a very nice person. Nothing on Lauren Dickasons social media pages over recent months when she was living in Pretoria indicated anything was amiss. She posted pictures of her family and of bakery treats, and wrote about the virus, urging people to get vaccinated. In May, she marked the couples wedding anniversary on Facebook. Happy 15th wedding anniversary Graham Dickason. What an adventure. We have truly created a beautiful family and had many good times together, she wrote. May the next years be more blessed, more happy and may the kids let us sleep. Her Facebook page says she went to high school in Pretoria and studied medicine in Cape Town. Mandy Sibanyoni, who worked as a childminder for the Dickasons in South Africa, described them as an awesome family with wonderful kids and no obvious problems. She said the only sign of stress she saw from Lauren Dickason was as a result of one of her daughters being born with a lip disfigurement, which needed surgical interventions. But both parents loved their kids like nobodys business, she said. Im torn apart, a part of mine is gone, Sibanyoni said in an interview with The Associated Press last week. And its like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them. I dont know what to do about this because the only question that Ive got now is, what happened? What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids. ___ Associated Press writer Mogomotsi Magome in Pretoria, South Africa contributed to this report. TAYLOR, Mich. (AP) A 15-year-old Detroit-area student has been charged after allegedly threatening a high school security guard and being caught with a gun. The teen was to appear Thursday at a preliminary hearing for carrying a concealed weapon, an intentional threat to commit an act of violence against school employees or school and weapons possession charges, the Wayne County prosecutors office said. CHICAGO (AP) Dozens of Afghan children have arrived in Chicago as refugees evacuated from Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal continue to reach American cities, officials said. The unaccompanied Afghan minors children who traveled without a parent or legal guardian arrived Wednesday at Chicago OHare International Airport, weeks after the U.S. ended its longest war. Nubia Willman, director of the citys Office of New Americans, said 75 Afghan minors had been expected to arrive in Chicago. She said at least 500 Afghans are expected to be resettled in the city, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The U.S Department of Homeland Security confirmed that a flight of Afghan children from Qatar had arrived Wednesday in Chicago. An agency spokesperson said the minors will be reunited with a vetted relative or will remain in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The children will receive COVID-19 vaccines if they are eligible for it, according to DHS. A spokesman for Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the citys Office of Emergency Management and Communications along with the Department of Aviation were working with state and federal officials to assist the children. They have given up their homes, their families, their lives as they know them for a chance to survive," Lightfoot spokesman Cesar Rodriguez said in the statement posted on Twitter. DECATUR, Mich. (AP) A woman's body was found in a wooded area in southwestern Michigan, miles from where the 64-year-old was struck by a vehicle while out for a walk, police said. Colby Martin was charged with manslaughter with a motor vehicle, concealing a death and another crime in Van Buren County. Bond was set Thursday at $300,000. SACRAMENTO (AP) California is preparing to administer third booster vaccine shots against COVID-19 for older people and immunocompromised adults as well as initial shots for students under 12 once the federal government approves them for children. On Thursday, state officials released a vaccine action plan. It still depends on direction that is expected to come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved third shots of the Pfizer formula for people who are 65 and older, people at high risk of severe illness, and health care workers and others in danger of becoming infected on the job. CDC advisers were set to vote Thursday on who is eligible. The U.S. has already authorized third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for certain people with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients and transplant recipients. California, with nearly 40 million residents, has the lowest transmission rate of any state and nearly 70% of eligible residents are fully vaccinated. Still, inoculation rates vary widely by region and the focus remains on getting unvaccinated people protected against the disease, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's secretary of health and human services said. HOW WILL CALIFORNIA GIVE BOOSTER SHOTS? The state plans to use its existing system, relying largely on pharmacies and primary care providers for adults 65 and older. Some large counties and health care groups are planning for mass vaccination sites and may turn to schools to eventually reach younger people. Some people will still need at-home vaccinations. The federal government will not be sending pharmacy staff into long-term care homes to deliver third shots. California's plan will include dedicated appointments at pharmacies and primary care providers and on-site vaccinations by local health departments, pharmacies and specialty strike teams. WILL CALIFORNIA REQUIRE VACCINATIONS FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN? Some school districts, including Los Angeles and Oakland, have mandated that children 12 and over be required to get the shots to attend in-person school, similar to other vaccine requirements that already exist for California public schools. Asked about the possibility of a statewide requirement, Dr. Ghaly said his agency is discussing it and watching what's happening at Los Angeles Unified. No definitive action or decision is being made, he said, but he noted the existing vaccination requirements for schoolkids. HOW WOULD YOUNGER CHILDREN GET VACCINATED IF THE SHOTS ARE APPROVED? California's plan calls for vaccine clinics at schools, pharmacies, and other primary care or pediatric providers to deliver the shots. But the emphasis on who gets shots first may change depending on ongoing hospitalization and infection data. Demand for early boosters could be substantial if transmission, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to grow; depending on impact, at-risk populations may be higher priority than under 12 population if disease severity in children remains low," the plan states. DOES CALIFORNIA HAVE THE CAPACITY TO DELIVER MORE SHOTS? The state estimates it will need to administer an extra 63 million doses by the end of 2022, assuming approval of initial shots for children under 12 and boosters for everyone. Nearly 12 million residents are not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated. Providers are administering an average of around 80,000 doses a day but have the capacity to give 420,000 doses a day. CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Tennessee officials say Florim USA will expand its operations at its facility in Clarksville, investing roughly $35 million and creating more than 30 jobs. According to a news release, the expansion of the porcelain floor and wall tile manufacturer will include construction of a new administration building and showroom. The project will also invest in additional tile crusher machinery to recycle fired scrap metal back into production. MADISON, Wis. (AP) Wisconsin Republicans on Thursday reiterated their concerns about the vetting of Afghan refugees being housed at an Army post in the state, after two Afghan men were charged with crimes there. The criticism from U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and others in Wisconsin comes as Republicans nationally, including aides to former President Donald Trump, are becoming increasingly hostile toward the refugees and are trying to turn the collapse of Afghanistan into another opportunity to push a hardline immigration agenda. Trump, in a statement in August, wondered, How many terrorists are among them? Wisconsin's Fort McCoy is housing about 12,700 Afghan refugees. When they first arrived in late August, Republicans repeatedly raised concerns about vetting and identification. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called their concerns dog whistle crap." The charges against the two men announced Wednesday by the U.S. attorney in Wisconsin are unrelated to terrorism. One of them, a 20-year-old man, was charged in federal court with three counts of engaging in sexual acts with a minor. The other, a 32-year-old man, was charged with assaulting his wife. Johnson called the charges the latest consequence of the Biden administration's incompetence. This is precisely why I have asked, and continue to ask, the administration about their vetting process and repeatedly raised the issue regarding Ft. McCoy, Johnson tweeted Thursday. U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald lodged similar complaints. Gov. Evers thinks concerns about the refugees are dog whistle crap," Fitzgerald tweeted. These are precisely the concerns many have about the vetting process. Evers should get his head out of the sand & pay attention." Britt Cudaback, a spokeswoman for the governor, called the allegations against the two men disturbing. The governor believes, and Wisconsinites would agree, there should be no tolerance for domestic abuse or sexual assault against anyone at Fort McCoy or otherwise and these individuals should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, Cudaback said. Cheryl Phillips, a spokeswoman for the task force handling the refugees, referred questions about the number of Afghans arrested at McCoy to the Department of Justice. Phillips noted that the post currently has about 12,700 Afghans, which is close to its capacity of 13,000. We went from 0 to 13,000, the size of a small city, in just a few weeks, she said. A Department of Justice spokeswoman said she was prohibited by law from talking about any ongoing investigation. The evacuees from Afghanistan began arriving at Fort McCoy in western Wisconsin four weeks ago and a large number of them will soon be leaving for resettlement, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The exact amount of time that a family will spend at Fort McCoy will vary from family to family. But we are now at a point at Fort McCoy where we anticipate that larger numbers of people will begin leaving the fort, said Skye Justice, the U.S. State Departments task force leader at the base. ___ Associated Press writer Doug Glass contributed from Minneapolis. FOND DU LAC, Wis. (AP) A 26-year-old Fond du Lac police officer died of complications from COVID-19, his department said Thursday. Officer Joseph Kurer's death on Wednesday came a day after his second child was born, according to police Chief Aaron Goldstein. Because evidence indicates he contracted COVID-19 while working, he died in the line of duty and his death will be treated as such, Goldstein said. Our entire Fond du Lac Police Department family mourns the passing of Officer Joseph Kurer. Our love and condolences go out to Josephs wife and children and all those with whom he served, Goldstein said in a statement on Facebook. It isn't clear if Kurer had been vaccinated against COVID-19. The police department said in the Facebook post that it doesn't provide details on an employee's medical conditions or vaccination status out of respect for their and their family's privacy. Kurer joined the Fond du Lac Police Department in August 2018 and was a member of the Tactical Field Force Team, the Honor Guard Unit and the Domestic Violence Intervention Team. He was also certified as a field training officer. According to police, Kurer was also a member of the Wisconsin National Guard. Before joining the Fond du Lac force, Kurer was a community service officer with the West Bend Police Department. Early Thursday, a long line of police vehicles with lights flashing escorted Kurer's body to a funeral home, where officers will stand watch until services are held. Funeral arrangements are pending. Gov. Tony Evers offered his condolences Thursday in a statement. "Our hearts go out to his wife, kids, parents, and sister, and all of his loved ones, especially as they had just welcomed a new baby to the family the night before Officer Kurers passing. We are also thinking of the Fond du Lac Police Department and the Fond du Lac community, and we ask the people of Wisconsin to join us in extending offers of support and prayers as they mourn Officer Kurers passing, Evers said. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A mother is upset with an Indiana school after a staff member gave a haircut to her son who is autistic. My baby has beautiful curly hair, Nikki Battle said. Now there are patches on his head. They nicked the side of his face. Jonathan Battle-Hayum, known as JJ, is a senior at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis. He said a teacher promised to make him look fresh this week with a haircut and clothes from the lost and found. JJ had hoped to get his hair braided with his first paycheck from a Walmart job. Battle said she didn't give anyone at the school permission to cut her son's hair. Were Hebrew Israelite. Youre not supposed to cut his hair," Battle told the Indianapolis Star. Im trusting you to take care of my kid, not chop off his hair," she said. "Now I have to rebuild from ground zero, to give him some type of confidence. He doesnt want to leave the house. Battle also told the story to WTHR-TV. The Lawrence Township school district said it was unaware of allegations around a violation of religious beliefs. It is not uncommon for school personnel to go above and beyond to meet the needs of students outside of the classroom, the district said in a written statement. The staff member in question acted with the best of intentions to support the student. In Michigan, the father of a 7-year-old girl whose hair was cut by a teacher filed a $1 million lawsuit last week against the Mount Pleasant district. TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) The bitter custody battle over a six-year-old boy who survived a cable car crash in Italy inched forward in Israel on Thursday, with a new court date and appeals made for privacy. Lawyers for the two family branches spoke after Eitan Biran's relatives on both sides emerged from family court in Tel Aviv, where a hearing date was set for next month and other logistics were discussed in a closely-watched international legal fight. Eitan's immediate family was among 14 people killed when the cable car carrying them crashed into a mountainside on May 23. At the center of the fight is the decision by Eitan's grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, who spirited the boy from Italy through Switzerland and back to Israel. Italian juvenile court officials had ruled that child could live with a paternal aunt near Pavia, in northern Italy. Both Peleg and Eitan's aunt Aya Biran, who lives in Italy, were among the relatives present Thursday for the hearing. Shmuel Moran, a lawyer for Eitan's aunt, said the court will again meet on Oct. 8 and that the sides had agreed on other arrangements. Both he and Ronen Dalyahu, the lawyer for the Israeli side of the family, appealed for privacy. But the images of Eitan's aunt and grandfather in the same building were striking given the tragedy and gravity of the dispute. Eitans relatives in Italy say he was taken without their knowledge and are seeking his return. The child's relatives in Israel have denied to local media that they abducted Eitan and insist they are acting in his interest. Peleg has acknowledged driving the child from Italy into Switzerland before flying him back to Israel, telling Channel 12 that we departed in a totally legal way. Peleg was questioned by Israeli police on kidnapping suspicions and placed under house arrest pending an ongoing investigation. Italian authorities also have opened an investigation. Peleg told Israel's Channel 12 that he had given up on contesting custody in the Italian court system and said he expected the boy to understand once he got older. I believe that one day Eitan will grow up and say grandfather, you did everything for me, you saved me, he said, breaking into tears. And my daughter, who one day will meet me in heaven, will be proud of me that I saved her son. MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) A former school principal who was extradited from Israel after a six-year legal battle was ordered to stand trial Thursday on 70 charges of child sex abuse. Malka Leifer, 55, pleaded not guilty to all the charges at the end of a court hearing. The committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates Court was held to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial. Leifer is accused of carrying out the abuse against sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper when Leifer was head of Melbournes Adass Israel School between 2004 and 2008. The three sisters testified by video link during a closed court hearing. Leifer also appeared by video from Melbournes womens prison, the Dame Phyillis Frost Centre. Melbourne is currently in lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak. The judge, Magistrate Johanna Metcalf, said she believed the evidence was of sufficient weight to support a conviction. Leifer faces 44 counts of indecent assault, 13 of an indecent act with a child, 10 of rape, and three of sexually penetrating a child. Prosecutors withdrew four further charges after it became clear those alleged incidents occurred in Israel. The next hearing will be held at Victorias County Court on Oct. 21. Leifer's lawyer Ian Hill didn't make any submissions at the end of the prosecutions case. The judge noted Leifer denied all allegations of wrongdoing. Five witnesses gave evidence on Thursday including former Adass Israel School staffer Esther Spigelman, who said she went to see Leifer the day after she was stood down by the school board over the allegations in 2008. It was a very big shock and I went to say goodbye. She was very upset with what they were doing to her, Spigelman said. We didnt go into detail of things but she definitely said I did nothing wrong and pretty much that she felt very unfair with what was happening. Erlichs former husband Joshua Erlich said that Erlich had previously described Leifer as taking the place of a mother, saying that the school had given the sisters respite from troubles at home with their mother. He said he heard Leifer had hugged her, rubbed her thighs and gave her special attention, but he didnt find it particularly concerning. If she had said it was under the clothes or something of that nature I would have been concerned, Joshua Erlich said. Last year, the sisters were granted a court order allowing them to speak publicly and under their real names about their allegations of being abused by Leifer. The Associated Press does not usually identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the siblings have spoken publicly about their accusations as part of their campaign to force Leifer to return to Australia. Leifer was extradited from Israel in January. The protracted court case and repeated delays over her extradition had drawn criticism from Australian officials as well as the countrys Jewish leaders. As accusations against her began surfacing in 2008, Israeli-born Leifer left the school and returned to Israel. The two countries have an extradition treaty, but critics, including Leifers accusers, said Israeli authorities had dragged out the case, while Leifer claimed she was mentally unfit to stand trial. Last year, an Israeli psychiatric panel determined Leifer was lying about her mental condition, setting in motion the extradition. In December, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a final appeal against her extradition, and Israels justice minister signed the order to send her to Australia. At the United Nations this week, the pandemic-era rules of engagement for General Assembly week are strict. Entourage sizes are tightly regulated, and there are no exceptions for kings, presidents or other excellencies. Yet somehow, in the middle of it all, the U.N. made room to fully embrace the diplomatic soft power of seven young Korean pop stars. While the mega-popular BTS may croon that they dont need Permission to Dance, the decision to allow the K-pop band to both give a serious speech to world leaders and film a sunny new music video at the U.N.s distinctive headquarters was another of the many signs that the elders are ready eager, even to turn to young people for diplomacy and relevance. In this era of kid icons and social media activism, the contrast was evident: globally cherished musical juggernaut fronted by the youthful South Korean men in perfect makeup on one hand, and the famously bureaucratic stodgy, even 76-year-old diplomatic institution built in the aftermath of WWII on the other. The paradox was captured by Trevor Noah, the millennial late-night talk show host: Old people were probably watching this, like, What the hell is a BTS?" he said. "And young people were watching it, like, What the hell is the U.N.? In his General Assembly opening address on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres practically scolded world leaders for disappointing young people with a perceived inaction on climate change, inequalities and the lack of educational opportunities, among other issues. Some 60% of your future voters feel betrayed by their governments, Guterres told the gathering of world leaders. We must prove to children and young people that despite the seriousness of the situation, the world does have a plan and the governments are committed to implementing it. Rather than initiating a sentiment, Guterres clearly was channeling one that already exists. Other world leaders from Slovakia to Maldives, Latvia to Costa Rica took a similar conciliatory tone toward the estimated 1.8 billion human beings aged 10 to 24 a cohort that the United Nations claims is the largest generation of young people in the history of the world. A new generation has grown up in the last 30 years, said Latvia President Egils Levits. In Latvia, like elsewhere, youth are deeply concerned about the climate crisis and about disinformation. They want to build inclusive societies where people of all generations, backgrounds and communities can feel included not only formally, but in practice. To this end, Guterres also announced the creation of a new U.N. Youth Office to bridge the generational divide in global affairs. While details are sparse on the actual functions and budget of this new office, it is designed to tackle issues distinctly tied to the activism of people between the ages of 15 and 29, including climate change and worldwide inequities. If we want to ask what kind of world do we want to have, 15 to 29 is kind of the age thats doing it, said Connie Flanagan, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies youth activism. Those are the years when youre taking stock of your life. And as a result, youre taking stock of your world. Flanagan said the United Nations must find a way to include young people in initiatives but not tokenize them, and in the process harness the strengths of late adolescents and early adults, who are generally less jaded about the pace of change and more collaborative and eager to make it happen. Whatever the motivation may be, its good they want to remain relevant with young people, Flanagan said. Its always hard for people who have power to give up power. The new office will be an expansion of the current U.N. youth envoys work, which has been slowly building up over the past decade just as a generation of young people have established their agency online earning corporate deals as entrepreneurs, developing loyal fans as entertainers and spearheading social movements, often using just their words, charisma and smartphone. The current appointed envoy, Jayathma Wickramanayake said young luminaries like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg have brought mainstream visibility to young people's agenda, and social media has democratized the work of activism and what it means to influence public policy. Yousafzai was a Pakistani schoolgirl when she was shot in the head for advocating for girls access to education, and the Swedish Thunberg has been an outspoken and sometimes confrontational force on climate change. Both were teenage girls when they, to much fanfare, addressed the United Nations in recent years. By paving the way for other young people to take on weighty issues, Wickramanayake said, the two have also helped shatter preconceptions that young people lack experience to deal with world leaders and expertise on issues like education or the extremes of climate change. Having those icons with really global outreach and also the power to reach out to the worlds most powerful people have destroyed those stereotypes about young people having leadership positions and being able to lead movements, said Wickramanayake, who at 30 years old is the youngest person in Guterres cabinet. She was first hired at 26, making her the youngest person ever to serve in the top ranks of the secretary-general's administration in the history of the United Nations. The sensibility is spreading. In Denmark, a childrens nonprofit on Tuesday also convened 20 delegates between the ages of 11 and 16 years old from across the globe to deliver a manifesto to the United Nations. They called themselves the Childrens General Assembly an initiative sponsored in part by the Lego toy company and discussed a range of issues from childrens rights and bullying to refugees and development goals. If you really want to do something about (injustice), it has to start with you, said Mankgara Maime, a 16-year-old girl from Johannesburg, South Africa, who participated in the Denmark presentation. You cant feel sorry about them and not think about how to help. There is already evidence that this week may prove to be a milestone for the U.N.'s engagement with young people. Nearly a million people tuned into the U.N. YouTube channel livestream on Monday to watch BTS discuss young peoples resilience, COVID-19 vaccines and the earths well-being. To date, that BTS music video which could easily be mistaken for a U.N. promotional reel has 16 million views on the same channel. The U.N. institution itself has just 1.7 million regular subscribers. Ive heard that people in their teens and 20s today are being referred to as COVID's lost generation, that theyve lost their way at a time when they need the most diverse opportunities, RM, the leader of BTS, said in their speech. But I think its a stretch to say theyre lost just because the paths they tread cant be seen by grown-up eyes. ____ Follow Sally Ho on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday issued the call for next weeks special session that largely focuses on prison construction as the chief response to the states longstanding problems in corrections. Ivey is calling lawmakers back to Montgomery to vote on a $1.3 billion prison construction plan that will use $400 million from the states virus relief funds to build three new prisons and renovate others. I am pleased and extremely hopeful that we are finally positioned to address our states prison infrastructure challenges, Ivey said in a statement. While this issue was many years in the making, we stand united to provide an Alabama solution to this Alabama problem. The construction is the centerpiece of the special session call, but it does include two policy changes: proposals to make retroactive both the 2013 sentencing standards and a 2015 law on mandatory supervision of inmates. However, that is far short of sweeping reforms and leadership changes some advocacy groups say are needed to address violence, overcrowding and other problems. The construction proposal calls for at least three new prisons at least a 4,000-bed prison in Elmore County with enhanced space for medical and mental health care needs; another at least 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County; and a womens prison as well as renovations to existing facilities. The projects would be done in phases and funded with a $785 million bond issue, $150 million in general fund dollars and $400 million from the states $2.2 billion share of American Rescue Plan funds. The sentencing change would allow 200 or so nonviolent inmates sentenced before 2013 to ask for a new sentence under the presumptive sentencing guidelines approved in 2013. The change was recommended by the governors study commission on criminal justice policy that said there are some inmates much lengthier than the sentence they may have received under the presumptive standards that became effective at that time. Bennet Wright, executive director of the Alabama Sentencing Commission, said they are trying to determine how many inmates would be affected by the sentencing change, but last time we reviewed this policy last year there were approximately 200 offenders that were potentially eligible pursuant to this legislation. Limiting the sentencing change to nonviolent inmates excludes most prisoners. Some lawmakers and advocacy groups said the state should do more to address policy, sentencing and leadership. Well just have shiny new buildings with old problems, Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said unless the state enacts comprehensive sentencing reform and leadership changes in corrections and the state parole board. Dillon Nettles, director of policy and advocacy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said the organization is disappointed that the governor is limiting the upcoming special session to prison infrastructure and only one minor sentencing reform. Our leaders need to ensure that we are not just building more prisons, but that we are devoting time to creating comprehensive and progressive policies that address the harsh conditions and unfair practices that currently plague our system. Alabama needs new policies, not new buildings, Nettles said. PHOENIX (AP) A lawyer for several Arizona abortion providers urged a federal judge Wednesday to block a new state law that would allow prosecutors to charge doctors who knowingly terminate a pregnancy solely because the fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome. The law, set to take effect on Wednesday, is so vague that it would dissuade doctors from performing an abortion anytime there's an indication that the fetus might have a genetic problem for fear of criminal prosecution, argued Emily Nestler, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. There are women in Arizona whose access to abortion will be eliminated altogether, Nestler said. So the burden is more than substantial. It's absolute for those patients. A lawyer for the state argued the law won't block any woman from getting an abortion, though she might have to refuse to tell her doctor why she wants to terminate her pregnancy. It sends a message to the medical community that the state believes strongly that physicians should not be performing intentionally discriminatory abortions, said Michael Catlett, a deputy solicitor general in Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office. Catlett argues the law upholds the state's interest in protecting the disability community from discrimination, preventing doctors from coercing women to abort fetuses believed to have genetic problems and upholding the integrity of the medical profession. Emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Courts turn to the right during former President Donald Trump's administration, Republican-controlled legislatures around the country have embraced efforts to further restrict or outright ban abortion. States enacted more than 90 new restrictions on abortion this year, the most in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. The high court in May signaled its willingness to reconsider Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion before a fetus could survive outside a mothers womb, generally around 24 weeks. And this month, the justices declined to block a Texas law that bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, which is usually around six weeks into a pregnancy before some people know theyre pregnant. In the Arizona case, U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, did not say which way he would rule. He sharply grilled both attorneys for more than two hours. He focused in particular on inconsistencies in the law. It allows criminal charges for doctors who perform an abortion based solely on a genetic abnormality, but also requires the physician to sign a form saying the abortion was not sought because of genetics omitting the word solely. It also requires doctors to tell women that Arizona law prohibits abortion of the unborn child's sex or race or because of a genetic abnormality which Catlett acknowledged was an inartful description of what the law actually does. Reyes said that would lead women to believe it's illegal for them to get an abortion because of a genetic abnormality, when the law only applies to doctors and specifically blocks charges against women seeking an abortion. Are you saying the woman should talk to a lawyer as well as her doctor so she can understand what her doctor is telling her? Rayes asked Catlett. Nestler, the abortion-rights attorney, said women have a First Amendment right to talk frankly with their doctor but would be prevented by the law. And she argued the law is unclear about when doctors could face criminal charges. Nestler asked if a doctor be charged, for example, if he performs an abortion on a woman who says she can't afford to raise a child with a disability. The Arizona lawsuit challenges key provisions of SB1457, which was signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in April after it passed the GOP-controlled Legislature in party-line votes. The measure allows prosecutors to seek felony charges against doctors who provide abortions when they know its solely because of a genetic abnormality in the fetus. Anyone who helps raise money or pay for such an abortion also could be charged. Doctors also can lose their medical license, and any medical or mental health professionals who fail to report such an abortion could be fined $10,000. The lawsuit also challenges a personhood provision that says the state will interpret all laws to confer the rights of people on unborn children, subject to the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Nestler said it's entirely unclear what that means and how it would be applied across the state's entire legal apparatus. A three-judge federal appeals court panel has put on hold a sweeping 2019 Missouri law that includes some of the same provisions as Arizona's, including the ban on abortions based on genetic abnormalities. That ruling is now being considered by the entire 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. ___ This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Emily Nestler's last name. COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) Vegetation found on the boots of a Columbia man place him at the site where his Chinese wife's body was found in March, Boone County Prosecutor Dan Knight said during a court hearing Thursday. Knight said experts at the Missouri Botanical Garden matched juniper needles on Joseph Elledge's boots to the place where Mengqi Ji's body was found at a park near Columbia. EATONTON, Ga. (AP) A Georgia inmate was found guilty of murder Thursday in the slayings of two prison guards shot during a bloody escape in 2017, leaving the jury to decide next whether the crime warrants a death sentence. The Putnam County jury took just a few hours to convict Donnie Rowe of malice murder and other crimes in the killings of Sgt. Christopher Monica and Sgt. Curtis Billue, news outlets reported. The two Baldwin State Prison officers were shot with one of their own guns on a prison transport bus. One of Rowe's defense attorneys told jurors there was no question he had committed serious crimes. Still, lawyer Adam Levin said during closing arguments Thursday that prosecutors had failed to prove that Rowe intended for either of the guards to die. Monica and Billue were transporting prisoners by bus in June 2017 when Rowe opened an unlocked security gate separating the guards from the inmates. Fellow inmate Ricky Dubose followed Rowe through the gate. Rowe used chains from his shackles to strike Monica, who had fallen asleep, while Dubose grabbed a gun from a weapons box and fired seven shots that killed the officers. The fugitive inmates were arrested in Tennessee days later. Security cameras on the bus recorded the violent escape southeast of Atlanta, while roughly 30 other prisoners witnessed the killings from the back of the bus. Rowe's defense attorneys hoped to spare him a possible death sentence by arguing Rowe didn't know Dubose would kill the guards. Donnie Rowe didnt shoot, Donnie Rowe did not kill," Levin told the jury. Donnie Rowe did not intend to kill. Donnie Rowe is not guilty of malice murder. District Attorney Wright Barksdale argued that Rowe had been the key that opened the gates of hell by hatching the escape plot, WGXA-TV reported. It was a calculated crime that took both of them to complete, Barksdale said. In addition to the security video, jurors got a firsthand look in the courthouse parking lot of the bus where the slayings occurred. They also heard from more than witnesses, from the man whose car the inmates stole right after fleeing the bus to a homeowner in Rutherford County, Tennessee, who grabbed a pistol and called 911 after seeing Rowe and Dubose walking toward his house. He testified that the exhausted fugitives laid down and surrendered. Rowe did not testify. His defense attorneys played the jury audio and video of Dubose saying he was the one who shot both officers. Then the defense lawyers rested their case. Following the verdict, Rowe's trial enters a penalty phase in which the jury will have to decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison. Rowe was already serving a sentence of life without parole for an armed robbery conviction when the guards were slain four years ago. Dubose will be tried separately for murder and other crimes. MADISON, Wis. (AP) Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Thursday accused Republicans of chasing conspiracy theories with a $680,000 taxpayer-funded investigation into the 2020 election instead of passing gun control measures polls have shown have broad public support. Kaul, a Democrat who is up for reelection next year, appeared with a host of Democratic lawmakers and gun safety advocates at a news conference to renew the call for a universal background check and red flag law. Republicans who control the state Legislature have repeatedly rejected both. Republicans have ordered investigations into the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden. Kaul said instead of spending money on that, Kaul said that Republicans should address real issues Wisconsinites are actually focused on. A Marquette University Law School poll in 2019 showed that 80% of respondents support a universal background check proposal and 81% of people who said they have a gun in their home back a red flag law, while 86% of people who said they didnt have a gun in their house back it. Under such a law, judges could seize guns from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others by courts. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have passed similar laws. The background check proposal is designed to require checks for nearly all gun sales, including online, at auctions or at a gun show. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is also up for reelection next year, backs both laws and called a special legislative session in 2019 to urge their passage. Republicans ignored his call and removed the items from his state budget proposal last year. Republican legislative leaders, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Wednesday. Two Republicans are running to challenge Kaul next year, University of Wisconsin professor Ryan Owens and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney. Toney said in a statement that Kaul was ignoring a homicide epidemic in Milwaukee, which reported 189 killings last year, the most in its history. Toney also said Kaul was pushing a radical agenda seeking to strip law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights." Toney didn't address the ongoing election investigation by retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman that was ordered by Vos. But he did accuse Kaul of not defending or clarifying election laws as attorney general. Owens said in a statement that Kaul was trying to take away your rights to protect yourself and your family by advocating for the two gun bills. Democratic lawmakers who appeared with Kaul said the measures would make Milwaukee and other Wisconsin communities safer. State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, of Milwaukee, described attending the funeral of 10-year-old Sierra Guyton, who was shot in the head and killed in 2014 after being caught in the crossfire of a gun battle while outside on a school playground. She called for passage of the bills as a way to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. Safety is not a partisan issue, said Democratic state Sen. Melissa Agard, of Madison. ATLANTA (AP) Gov. Brian Kemp is calling Georgia lawmakers back to the Capitol on Nov. 3 to redraw congressional and legislative districts, he announced Thursday. Legislators are already busy drawing new lines, with majority Republicans looking to increase the number of congressional seats that their party holds, while preserving control of the state House and Senate. Kemp in July had pledged to make anti-crime bills a part of the special session, but did not include any in the call. Spokesperson Katie Byrd said Kemp would instead focus on crime during the 2022 regular session. House Republican leaders had indicated they didn't want crime on the redistricting session agenda. Other substantive bills might be used for leverage in what is one of the General Assembly's most personal and partisan duties. Our office is currently working on a robust public safety package to accomplish that goal," Byrd said. The Georgia House and Senate are also currently conducting fact-finding public safety hearings, and will continue to do so through the end of this calendar year. Activists have clamored for lawmakers to release draft maps far enough in advance of the session for meaningful public comment, but Republican leaders have indicated that's unlikely. Some draft maps were released days before the session began 10 years ago. Committees approved the same guidelines in 2010, meaning lawmakers aren't required to give the public an advance look or draw district with an eye toward making it possible for candidates from different parties to win. The guidelines say lawmakers have to consider whether they are splitting counties or precincts, although not cities. Lawmakers must also consider whether a district is compact and whether communities of interest are kept whole. But there are no standards the guidelines say lawmakers should meet. The guidelines also say map drawers should avoid drawing incumbents together into the same district when its unnecessary. For majority Republicans, the process could help them pry back one or more U.S. House seats in a 14-member delegation now split 8-6 in favor of the GOP. Because the state constitution says that members of the state House and Senate must be residents of their district for at least a year before their election, the late start means that anyone who would like to move to run for a different district once the new lines are adopted wont be able to. The 2022 general election is on Nov. 8. Congressional candidates face no residency requirement. State and local governments must redraw lines for congressional, legislative and other electoral districts once every 10 years following the U.S. Census to equalize populations. The process helps determine which party will hold power for the following decade. The states overall population rose nearly 10% to 10.7 million people over the decade, but Census results showed uneven growth, with most new residents concentrated in the Atlanta area and around Savannah. Most rural areas lost population. Kemp did ask legislators to pass a law confirming his authority to suspend the collection of taxes on motor fuels, which he did by order while a key pipeline was crippled by hackers. Hes also asking lawmakers to amend the state tax code to conform with changes to the federal tax code. The starting date could also limit the length of the session, with Thanksgiving only three weeks later. The state constitution limits a special session to 40 days unless three-fifths of each house votes to extend it. ___ Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy. MOSCOW (AP) Politicians and activists who lost to Kremlin-backed candidates in Russia's parliamentary election last weekend have formed a coalition to contest the results from online voting in Moscow, which they believe was rigged and blame for their defeat. Opposition candidates were largely excluded from the ballot, and one of the few Kremlin critics allowed to run for seats in the State Duma, opposition politician Marina Litvinovich, announced the decision to challenge the capital's online election returns. On Sept. 17-19, millions of citizens of our country had their votes stolen. Thats why we, candidates for the 8th convocation of the State Duma that represent different political forces, have created a committee for abolishing the online voting, Litvinovich wrote on Facebook. Election results on Monday handed a win to the Kremlin's United Russia party. It received 49.8% of the vote for the 225 seats apportioned by parties and won 198 out of 225 seats for lawmakers who are chosen directly by voters. The opposition has denounced the results and pointed to a number of individual Moscow races as evidence of tampering. In those races, Kremlin-backed candidates were losing until the results of online voting, which was an option in Moscow and several other regions, came in Monday and they suddenly shot ahead. Litvinovich said the committee of unsuccessful candidates is seeking to invalidate the results of online voting in Moscow and to abolish the use of online voting in future elections, as well as to tackle vote-rigging in general. The committee plans to organize a nationwide protest against the election's outcome, file lawsuits to contest the results and draft legislation banning the use of online voting. The coalition includes the candidates of several political parties from the liberal Yabloko and the Communist Party, the second-biggest political force in the parliament, to New People, which was formed last year and is regarded by many as a Kremlin-sponsored project. The Communist Party does not recognize the results of the vote in Moscow, its senior member and one of the leaders of the coalition Valery Rashkin separately said Thursday. They all lost single-constituency races in Moscow, where nearly 2 million votes were cast online in addition to at polling stations. Many of the candidates were endorsed by the Smart Voting strategy designed by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalnys team hoped to undermine United Russias dominance in parliament with Smart Voting, which backed candidates who had the best chance of defeating those supported by the Kremlin. However, authorities undertook a massive effort to suppress the project, including pressuring Apple and Google to remove an app designed by Navalnys allies from their Russian online stores. In a social media post relayed through his lawyers from prison, Navalny blasted the almighty Big Tech for turning into President Vladimir Putins helpers and for recognizing the right of an authoritarian thief to subjugate the internet, turning it into an instrument of retaining the grip on power. The election has been widely seen as an important part of Putins efforts to cement his grip on power ahead of the 2024 presidential election, in which control of the State Duma, or parliament, will be key. Smart Voting-endorsed candidates were ahead in at least half of Moscow's 15 single-constituency races until the results of online voting came in on Monday afternoon. Unlike in several other Russian regions where voters had the option of casting ballots online, Moscow election officials didn't reveal the results of online voting immediately after polls closed on Sunday. The hours-long delay prompted fears the online balloting would be tampered with. Outrage mounted after the results of online voting upended races in Moscow at the last minute. In light of the rigging allegations, Alexey Venediktov, head of the Moscow Public Election Monitoring Headquarters and chief editor of the opposition-leaning Ekho Mosvky radio station, ordered a revision of the online voting results from Moscow. Venediktov said Thursday that no traces of hacking or ballot-stuffing have been detected. However, some Kremlin critics said that graphs and charts published by the Public Election Monitoring Headquarters to back its findings actually indicated incidents of ballot-stuffing. Navalny's top strategist, Leonid Volkov, on Thursday urged candidates and parties, whose victory was stolen, to fight on. The results of unverifiable, fraudulent online voting in Moscow must be completely invalidated. In St. Petersburg and many other regions, votes must be recounted. We support all peaceful protests that will help achieve this, Volkov said in a video statement posted on YouTube. Candidates and parties, whose victory was stolen, must fight on. No one will do it for them. We will support them, and people who voted for them will support them, Volkov said. Separately, more than 500 poll workers and election monitors in Moscow signed an open letter to Venediktov, urging to invalidate the results of online voting in the Russian capital, denouncing it as a rigging tool. ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) The U.S. should explore ways to expand its military contacts with the Russians, potentially to include allowing observers from each country to watch the other's combat exercises, in a broad effort to increase transparency and reduce the risk of conflict, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met in Finland for six hours Wednesday with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff. Speaking to two reporters traveling with him back to the U.S., Milley said that military contacts between the two great powers are currently largely limited to senior leaders such as the defense secretary, the chairman and the supreme allied commander for Europe. But he said the U.S. might look into allowing the military service chiefs to form stronger relationships with their Russian counterparts which is currently not allowed. That way, for example, naval leaders could reach out to avoid conflict when there are tensions at sea. We need to put in place policies and procedures to make sure that we increase certainty, to reduce uncertainty, increase trust to reduce distrust, increase stability to reduce instability in order to avoid miscalculation and reduce the possibility of great power war, Milley said. Thats a fundamental thing that we should try to do, and I am going to try to do it. Allowing observers at exercises and other changes, he said, are worth exploring. "We might not do it, but we should at least take a look at it, Milley said. Milley declined to detail the contents of his talks with Gerasimov, but a Joint Staff statement appeared to suggest that transparency was discussed. The statement said the meeting was focused on the military and that both sides seek increased transparency to reduce misunderstanding and increase stability. Milley's comments Thursday come in the midst of a furor over calls he made during the final turbulent months of Donald Trump's presidency to assure his Chinese counterpart that the United States was stable and wasnt going to suddenly go to war with or attack China. Milley has argued that the calls were routine and perfectly within the duties and responsibilities of his job to reassure an adversary and ensure strategic stability. Trump, however, has labeled his calls to the Chinese as treasonous, and some Congress members have called for him to step down. As the debate roiled in D.C., however, Milley was thousands of miles away doing much of the same thing: speaking to his military counterparts both allies and adversaries in a series of meetings in Europe. America's relationship with Russia has been precarious. After a period of post-Cold War cooperation on nuclear security and other defense issues, the relationship between Washington and Moscow took a nosedive, particularly after Russian forces entered the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. Tensions spiked with Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine. More recently, the U.S. has blasted Russia's attempts to interfere in American elections and linked Moscow to widespread cyberattacks, including the SolarWinds espionage campaign that exposed 80% of the email accounts used by the U.S. attorneys offices in New York and several other departments. In response to the Ukraine invasion, Congress in 2016 severely limited military cooperation with Russia. The law prohibits military-to-military cooperation until the secretary of defense certifies that Russia has ceased its occupation of Ukrainian territory and aggressive activities. The law was later amended to state that it does not limit military talks aimed at reducing the risk of conflict. Milley on Thursday said that military-to-military contacts with Russia have worked in the past to de-escalate tense situations. Without being specific, he said there were a couple of incidents that occurred between us and the Russians over the last two years that triggered calls between Milley and Gerasimov. Such calls, he said, are done with the full knowledge of the administration, and often are at the White House's request. In those cases, he said, the calls were successful in calming things down. That could have never happened had I not gotten to know him a little earlier, said Milley. Despite all the friction between the two countries, the U.S. also finds itself looking to Russia for some possible help in fighting extremists in Afghanistan. The U.S. is struggling to secure basing rights and other counterterrorism support in countries bordering Afghanistan. And there have been signals that the U.S. would like Russia to ease its opposition so it can better monitor, and if needed strike, al-Qaida and Islamic State militants who may seek to attack America again. _____ AP National Security writer Robert Burns contributed to this report. ELK RIVER, Minn. (AP) The father and stepmother of an 8-year-old Minnesota girl whose emaciated body was found in the family's apartment last year after she was beaten and starved to death were both sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison. Brett Hallow, 30, and Sarah Hallow, 28, pleaded guilty earlier to second-degree murder in the death of Autumn Hallow, who weighed 45 pounds when she died. GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) A Mississippi coast man has been sentenced to 21 years and five months in federal prison for shooting and wounding a U.S. marshal in 2020. Joseph Dale Sonnier, 32, of Hancock County, was found guilty of assault of a federal officer and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence in the July 21, 2020 incident, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) A Mississippi Department of Corrections probation officer has been arrested for allegedly embezzling money from people who have been ordered to pay court-sentenced fees and fines. Special agents with the Office of the State Auditor arrested Dendrick Hurd who was indicted on two counts of embezzlement in Forrest County, authorities said Wednesday. It was unknown if Hurd has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. It was a constant refrain from federal health officials after the coronavirus vaccines were authorized: These shots are all equally effective. That has turned out not to be true. Roughly 221 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been dispensed thus far in the United States, compared with about 150 million doses of Modernas vaccine. In a half-dozen studies published over the past few weeks, Modernas vaccine appeared to be more protective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the months after immunization. The latest such study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing symptomatic illness in about 5,000 health care workers in 25 states. The study found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had an effectiveness of 88.8%, compared with Modernas 96.3%. Research published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against hospitalization fell from 91% to 77% after a four-month period following the second shot. The Moderna vaccine showed no decline over the same period. If the efficacy gap continues to widen, it may have implications for the debate on booster shots. Federal agencies this week are evaluating the need for a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for some high-risk groups, including older adults. Scientists who were initially skeptical of the reported differences between the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have slowly become convinced that the disparity is small but real. Our baseline assumption is that the mRNA vaccines are functioning similarly, but then you start to see a separation, said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta. Its not a huge difference, but at least its consistent. But the discrepancy is small and the real-world consequences uncertain, because both vaccines are still highly effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization, she and others cautioned. Yes, likely a real difference, probably reflecting whats in the two vials, said John Moore, a virus expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. But truly, how much does this difference matter in the real world? Its not appropriate for people who took Pfizer to be freaking out that they got an inferior vaccine. Even in the original clinical trials of the three vaccines eventually authorized in the United States made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson it was clear that the J&J vaccine had a lower efficacy than the other two. Research since then has borne out that trend, although J&J announced this week that a second dose of its vaccine boosts its efficacy to levels comparable to the others. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines rely on the same mRNA platform, and in the initial clinical trials, they had remarkably similar efficacy against symptomatic infection: 95% for Pfizer-BioNTech and 94% for Moderna. This was in part why they were described as more or less equivalent. The subtleties emerged over time. The vaccines have never been directly compared in a carefully designed study, so the data indicating that effects vary are based mostly on observations. Results from those studies can be skewed by any number of factors, including the location, the age of the population vaccinated, when they were immunized and the timing between the doses, Dean said. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was rolled out weeks before Modernas to priority groups older adults and health care workers. Immunity wanes more quickly in older adults, so a decline observed in a group consisting mostly of older adults may give the false impression that the protection from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine falls off quickly. Given those caveats, Im not convinced that there truly is a difference, said Dr. Bill Gruber, a senior vice president at Pfizer. I dont think theres sufficient data out there to make that claim. But by now, the observational studies have delivered results from a number of locations Qatar, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, several other states in the United States and in health care workers, hospitalized veterans or the general population. Modernas efficacy against severe illness in those studies ranged from 92% to 100%. Pfizer-BioNTechs numbers trailed by 10 to 15 percentage points. The two vaccines have diverged more sharply in their efficacy against infection. Protection from both waned over time, particularly after the arrival of the delta variant, but the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines values fell lower. In two of the recent studies, the Moderna vaccine did better at preventing illness by more than 30 percentage points. A few studies found that the levels of antibodies produced by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were one-third to one-half those produced by the Moderna vaccine. Yet that decrease is trivial, Moore said: For comparison, there is a more than 100-fold difference in the antibody levels among healthy individuals. Still, other experts said that the corpus of evidence pointed to a disparity that would be worth exploring, at least in people who respond weakly to vaccines, including older adults and immunocompromised people. At the end of the day, I do think there are subtle but real differences between Moderna and Pfizer, Dr. Jeffrey Wilson, an immunologist and physician at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville who was a co-author of one such study, published in JAMA Network Open this month. In high-risk populations, it might be relevant. Itd be good if people took a close look. Pfizer is a big hammer, Wilson added, but Moderna is a sledgehammer. Several factors might underlie the divergence. The vaccines differ in their dosing and in the time between the first and second doses. Vaccine manufacturers would typically have enough time to test a range of doses before choosing one and they have done such testing for their trials of the coronavirus vaccine in children. But in the midst of a pandemic last year, the companies had to guess at the optimal dose. Pfizer went with 30 micrograms, Moderna with 100. Modernas vaccine relies on a lipid nanoparticle, which can deliver the larger dose. And the first and second shots of that vaccine are staggered by four weeks, compared with three for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The extra week may give immune cells more time to proliferate before the second dose, said Dr. Paul Burton, Modernas chief medical officer. We need to keep studying this and to do more research, but I think its plausible. Modernas team recently showed that a half dose of the vaccine still sent antibody levels soaring. Based on those data, the company asked the FDA this month to authorize 50 micrograms, the half dose, as a booster shot. There is limited evidence showing the effect of that dose, and none on how long the higher antibody levels might last. Federal regulators are reviewing Modernas data to determine whether the available data are sufficient to authorize a booster shot of the half dose. Ultimately, both vaccines are still holding steady against severe illness and hospitalization, especially in people younger than 65, Moore said. Scientists had initially hoped that the vaccines would have an efficacy of 50% or 60%. We would have all seen that as great result and been happy with it, he said. Fast forward to now, and were debating whether 96.3% vaccine efficacy for Moderna versus 88.8% for Pfizer is a big deal. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Yolanda Orosco-Arellano decided she would get the coronavirus vaccine long before it became available. But securing an appointment for it was less straightforward. The hotel housekeeper and mother of four worried about her anemia, a risk factor for severe illness from the virus. But Orosco-Arellano doesn't have a car and needed a vaccination slot scheduled around her shifts at the hotel. Barriers to getting the shot and information about the vaccines have hindered the "unvaccinated but willing," who account for approximately 10 percent of the American population, according to a report last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. Unlike those who have declined vaccines, some vocally, because of their politics or ideology, a quieter share - about 44% of unvaccinated people - were willing to get a shot in late June and early July, including those who said they would definitely or probably get a shot and those who are unsure, HHS estimated. Those who remain on the fence for certain reasons, like Orosco-Arellano, lack transportation or other means, while others wish to wait and see or don't know coronavirus vaccines are free. Immunizing that population could be critical to attaining herd immunity and protecting those disproportionately affected by the pandemic. But public health officials have, so far, struggled to reach young adults, Blacks, Hispanics and uninsured people, groups who are unvaccinated but willing at higher rates. To fill the gap, a motley contingent of volunteers has stepped in - from nurses ferrying patients in their own cars to retired health care workers manning phone lines to community members passing out educational fliers. Nearly 100 free and charitable clinics across the country, which offer services to uninsured or underinsured people, have forged bridges with underserved communities in an initiative dubbed "Project Finish Line," aiming to vaccinate 1 million hard-to-reach people like Orosco-Arellano. Her clinic, HealthNet in Rock County, Wis., is one of the ones adapting to reach the unvaccinated but willing and has offered rides to patients and expanded their hours around work schedules. Orosco-Arellano got her shot in May at the clinic. "I felt comfortable here," she said in Spanish, sitting in the clinic beside the caseworker, Alicia Alvarado, who drove her to the appointment and translated for her. The initiative by clinics has immunized more than 112,000 people since June said Joe Agoada, the CEO of Sostento, a nonprofit that supports front line health workers in underserved communities and launched the project. HHS noted in the report last month that the percentage of people who were unable but willing to get vaccinated has declined, indicating the outreach has had some success. But the effort has hinged on safety-net clinics like HealthNet that have become a bedrock in their communities but do not receive federal funding, Agoada said. The clinics' patients include those experiencing homelessness or those who are unable to get health insurance. Before the pandemic hit, the clinics offered vital health care to 2 million people who needed it. "They're overburdened by the number of patients, and their patients themselves are burdened," Agoada said. Sostento has raised $500,000 for the vaccination initiative, half of what the nonprofit says is needed. "Free and charitable clinics are vaccinating populations nobody else can, despite a lack of resources," Agoada said. "To defeat this pandemic, we cannot afford to overlook and underinvest in this group, and yet so far this is exactly what has happened." The clinics depend on grants and donations and, during the pandemic, thousands of volunteer hours, many at the front lines of the vaccination effort. At HealthNet in Wisconsin, in addition to clinic staff driving patients to their appointments, some have spent their lunches or off-hours vaccinating people who can't visit while the clinic is open. Even the clinic's CEO, Ian Hedges, has passed out his cell number, responding to texts on weekends to sign people up for appointments. "That was VIP red carpet service," he said. "I would have never done that for anyone else except for individuals who felt that no one else was listening or talking to them." The clinic has also brought on two "ambassadors" to educate their neighbors between jobs and classes. For Jovany Ochoa, this volunteer gig has been a chance to convince his former co-workers to get vaccinated. Ochoa, 23, grew up in the area's Mexican immigrant community and hopes to become a physician assistant. He got his first job in middle school at a construction company to help make ends meet at home. He later worked at a tobacco farm. Now, Ochoa, a college graduate, recalls how most of his former co-workers, at risk of serious injury on the job, didn't have health insurance. "I saw these individuals weren't getting the care that they needed," he said. "I think my love of health care came from that." Armed with a handful of brochures, Ochoa drives to places where he thinks he can talk to people about the vaccine, like the Mexican supermarket his mother shopped at and farms and factories where he knows many workers remain unvaccinated. Sometimes managers or employers tell him to leave. Often, the limited time he's allotted during lunch breaks drags on as workers pepper Ochoa with their questions about the vaccines. Without this chance to talk to Ochoa, the workers would have little opportunity to seek out information on their own, he said. "They were pretty simple questions," Ochoa said. "How they could get it, what they needed, if it was true they needed a social security number." Many undocumented immigrants, despite being eligible for the vaccine, fear needing official identification to receive it - although showing a driver's license, Social Security number or health insurance card is not mandated. Ochoa said it was unfair people he has talked to have been lumped in with those who refuse to get the vaccine because they are against it. He said their reasoning is far from political. "It isn't fair because there's a lot more to it than that," he said. "I just don't want them to be categorized for being selfish or anything like that because that's not the reason they're not getting it. They're not getting it because sometimes they literally can't or they don't know how to." The reasons people have not yet gotten their shot vary widely, making it difficult to find a one-size-fits-all approach. Medical Outreach Ministries, a clinic in Montgomery, Ala., surveyed its patients, who are mostly Black and middle-aged, to learn about their thoughts about the vaccines. While clinic staff had thought the nation's history of medical racism and victimization would play a large role in hesitancy, they learned it was much more complicated. "You assume people are hesitant because of the Tuskegee syphilis study or something like that but they have their other reasons," said Molly Stone, the clinic's executive director. "And that's something that we all had to learn." Volunteers, including pre-med student Cody Grier, found that patients were overwhelmed by information available online and preferred speaking to health workers about the vaccine by phone. Then, he found out through surveys and calls that patients had questions that people with better access to doctors would be able to ask at their appointments. "Before I started giving out the survey, I thought that hesitancy was maybe more of an abstract thing," Grier said. "I thought it was more general distrust. There is that, but it's more grounded too. They want it straight." Grier recalled some frequently asked questions: How is it going to affect me? What are the side effects? How will it interact with the drugs I already take? After finding some believed the vaccine might cost money, the clinic shared that getting a shot is free and watched that concern diminish in subsequent polling. Despite the progress made to vaccinate the scores of people willing to get their shot, many of the volunteers expressed fears that these inequities that have persisted long before the pandemic won't simply go away after herd immunity is reached or the pandemic wanes. Born and raised in segregated Milwaukee, Ericka Sinclair, the CEO of Health Connections clinic, has seen these gaps for her whole career. Sinclair decided to create the clinic six years ago to help bridge them. Before the vaccine became available, Sinclair expected her patients, many of them HIV-positive, transgender and Black, would have questions they struggle to find answers for. "I always knew that it was going to be an issue," she said. "It's always been an issue." Sinclair, who formerly worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in infectious-disease and emergency management, said the country lacks critical funding needed to support clinics like her own, furthering distrust at the worst time possible. The nation's top decision-makers are not the same as the people on the ground, Sinclair said, leaving people like her to figure out how to straddle the schism. For instance, when the state touted a $100 incentive to get immunized, Sinclair learned about the decision from watching the announcement on television. She scrambled to quickly address patients' inquiries about a program she just learned about. "If you leave too much of a gap between when the question is asked and when there's an answer, that creates distrust every moment that exists," she said. "People need to feel addressed, not dismissed." REDDING, Calif. (AP) A woman has been arrested on suspicion of starting a Northern California wildfire that spread rapidly, burning homes and prompting evacuation orders Thursday in a rural community, authorities said. Workers at a nearby quarry reported seeing a woman acting strangely and trespassing in the area in Shasta County where the Fawn Fire was sparked Wednesday afternoon, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement. Later Wednesday, Alexandra Souverneva walked out of the brush near the fire line and approached firefighters and told them she was dehydrated and needed medical help, Cal Fire said. Souverneva, 30, was taken out of the area for evaluation and treatment. During an interview with Cal Fire and law enforcement, officers came to believe Souverneva, of Palo Alto, was responsible for setting the fire, officials said. She was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail. It wasn't immediately known if she has an attorney. KRCR-TV aired video Thursday of multiple houses burning near the unincorporated Mountain Gate area north of the city of Redding. Officials said 25 structures were destroyed, but didn't specify how many were homes. The number of people affected by evacuation orders was not immediately known. People living in other areas were warned to be prepared to leave. About 2,000 structures were threatened. The fire scorched more than 8.5 square miles (22 square kilometers) of heavy timber on steep, rugged terrain amid hot, dry and gusty conditions. It was just 5% contained. Statewide, more than 9,000 firefighters remained assigned to 10 large, active wildfires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. California fires have burned 3,671 square miles (9,507 square kilometers) this year, destroying more than 3,200 homes, commercial properties and other structures. Those fires include two big forest blazes growing in the heart of Californias giant sequoia country on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Smoke from those fires raised air quality concerns for the southern end of the Central Valley and flowed over greater Los Angeles, darkening skies and causing mistaken reports of mountain fires. On Wednesday, officials showed reporters how Sequoia National Parks famous Giant Forest has been protected from the KNP Complex fire by years of using carefully set and controlled fires to burn away vegetation that can serve as wildfire fuel. The bases of some of the most famous giant sequoias were also wrapped in fire-resistant materials. Giant Forest has 2,000 sequoias and includes the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world by volume. The fear of catastrophic fire coming through that section of the national park has been greatly reduced because of the combination of the prescribed burns and the low intensity of the fire that moved into part of the forest, said Ed Christopher, deputy fire director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And because of that, we feel that the majority of the trees in this Giant Forest area should come out of this event like they have for the past thousands of years, he said. Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say 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. The KNP Complex began as two fires ignited by lighting on Sept. 9. The fires later merged into one and have charred more than 56 square miles (145 square kilometers). Sequoia and adjacent Kings Canyon National Park have been closed. Several communities are under evacuation orders or warnings for people to be prepared to leave. There was no containment. Nearby, the Windy Fire has burned through nearly 77 square miles (199 square kilometers) on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in Sequoia National Forest, including Giant Sequoia National Monument. It was just 6% contained. Also ignited by lightning on Sept. 9, the Windy Fire has forced the evacuation of small forest communities, but no privately owned structures had burned as of Thursday morning. A fire lookout structure and a radio repeater site on a peak were destroyed by the blaze. The fire has moved through several groves of giant sequoias and damaged one of the big trees on the famed Trail of 100 Giants. An expert from Yosemite National Park was expected to examine the groves Thursday. STOCKHOLM (AP) The Nobel Prize ceremonies will be reined in and scaled-down for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic, the foundation behind the coveted prizes said Thursday. The winners of this year's prizes in chemistry, literature, physics, medicine and economics, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, are set to be announced between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. It is now also clear that this years Nobel festivities in December when the laureates are honored in Stockholm and Oslo will be a mixture of digital and physical events, the Nobel Foundation said. The laureates will receive their Nobel Prize medals and diplomas in their home countries, the foundation said. It said the presentation events will be woven together with an awards ceremony at Stockholm City Hall on Dec. 10, which is the anniversary of the death of prize founder Albert Nobel. The peace prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, because Nobel wanted it that way for reasons he kept to himself. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is keeping open the possibility of welcoming the Nobel Peace Prize winner or winners to Oslo, the foundation said. The committee plans to announce the format of its festivities in mid-October. I think everybody would like the COVID-19 pandemic to be over, but we are not there yet, Nobel Foundation Executive Director Vidar Helgesen said in a statement. Uncertainty about the course of the pandemic and international travel possibilities is the reason why the 2021 laureates will receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries. Helgesen said the foundation is looking forward to reaching even more people around the world by using new formats and digital solutions. It is clear that in Stockholm and Sweden, there will be less attention around the award ceremony and banquet, but globally we try to arrange a really nice celebration of the award winners, he was quoted as saying by Swedish news agency TT. The pandemic curtailed the celebrations to honor the 12 laureates named in 2020. No formal banquet was held to honor the winners. Instead, their achievements were recognized and rewarded at low-key ceremonies in Europe and the United States. Looking at last years events, some of the digital production gained greater global reach than we have seen before, Helgensen told TT. A Nobel Prize comes with a 10-milion krona ($1.15 million) cash award to be shared in some cases diplomas and gold medals. The six awards are handed out by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Academy and the Norwegian Nobel Committee. ___ Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report. AHOSKIE, N.C. (AP) A North Carolina funeral home said it has reached out to apologize after two sisters who went to view their mothers body instead found another woman wearing her clothes inside the casket. Jennifer Taylor and Jennetta Archer had gone to see their mother's body at an Ahoskie funeral home Sept. 7 when they discovered the mistake, WAVY reported. COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) The board of trustees of a northern Idaho community college has fired the schools president in what one board member who opposed the move called 100% retaliation. The board with a 3-2 vote Wednesday fired Rick MacLennan, ending his five-year term. Board Chair Todd Banducci and two other board members didnt explain their votes to fire MacLennan. LONDON (AP) Roger Michell, the British stage, television and film director whose movies include the indelibly popular romcom Notting Hill, has died, his family said Thursday. He was 65. Michells family said in a statement that he died on Wednesday. They didn't disclose the place or cause of death. It is with great sadness that the family of Roger Michell, director, writer and father of Harry, Rosie, Maggie and Sparrow, announce his death at the age of 65 on September 22nd, said the statement released through Michells publicist. Born in South Africa, where his father was posted as a British diplomat, Michell began his directing career with British theaters including the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made acclaimed television series in the 1990s, including adaptations of Hanif Kureishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia and Jane Austens Persuasion. On the big screen, his biggest commercial hit was Notting Hill, the Richard Curtis-penned comedy about an awkward romance between a movie star played by Julia Roberts and a London bookshop owner, played by Hugh Grant. After its release in 1999 it was for a time the highest-grossing British film in history, and Michell followed it with Hollywood thriller Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson. He was courted to direct a James Bond film the one that became Quantum of Solace but turned it down because, he later said, the movie had everything, but no script. He largely made films in Britain, often drawing superb performances from actors. They include 2003 release The Mother, with Anne Reid and Daniel Craig; the next years Enduring Love, based on an Ian McEwan novel and again starring Craig; and Venus, which gained Peter OToole an Academy Award nomination in 2007. Later films included Hyde Park on Hudson, a 2012 historical drama starring Bill Murray as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Daphne du Maurier adaptation My Cousin Rachel, starring Rachel Weisz, released in 2017; and The Duke, a real-life art heist story starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren that premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. At the time of his death he was working on a documentary about Queen Elizabeth II. Michell was married twice: to actor Kate Buffery, and after their divorce to actor Anna Maxwell Martin, from whom he was separated. He is survived by both women and by his four children, two from each relationship. ANGOLA, La. (AP) A white man convicted of the apparently random killing of a Black man was found dead early Wednesday shortly after being moved to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to begin a life sentence, authorities said. Ken Pastorick, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said in a statement that the body of Kenneth Gleason was discovered by guards shortly after midnight. He said the corrections department and local law enforcement are investigating it as a suicide. While making routine rounds, correctional officers discovered Gleason unresponsive and hanging in his cell, Pastorick's statement said. Gleason, 27, of Baton Rouge, was transferred to Angola on Monday. He was alone in a cell, under a routine 14-day quarantine for COVID-19 for new inmates, Pastorick said, adding an autopsy is planned. Pastorick declined to release any other details or say where Gleason was being held before being moved to the penitentiary. Gleason was found guilty of first-degree murder in April for the killing of Donald Smart. Smart, 49, was shot in a park near Louisiana State University as he was walking to his overnight shift as a restaurant dishwasher in September 2017. Gleason also had been charged in the fatal shooting of Bruce Cofield, 59, a homeless man who was sitting at a bus stop on a busy street in Baton Rouge two days before Smart was killed. Evidence also was presented during the trial that Gleason fired gunshots through the front door of the only Black family that lived on the same suburban street as him and his parents. He wasnt charged with a hate crime, but an FBI agent testified that Gleason searched the internet around the time of the crimes for topics including Nazi propaganda and white nationalism. Law enforcement told The Associated Press that officers who searched his home found a handwritten copy of an Adolf Hitler speech. Law enforcement officials have said they believe the two killings were random. Detectives found no evidence that Gleason was acquainted with either of the men. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday pushed back against a San Francisco archbishop's denunciation of the Women's Health Protection Act, a bill in Congress to create a statutory right for health-care professionals to provide abortions. The Democratic-controlled House is expected to take up the measure Friday in response to a new Texas law that bans abortions as early as six weeks and allows anyone to file a lawsuit against any other person who has aided someone in obtaining an abortion, with the potential for a $10,000 payoff. The House legislation, H.R. 3755, would codify the protections provided by the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, legalized abortion nationwide. In a statement Tuesday, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone condemned the measure as "nothing short of child sacrifice" and asked Catholics to "immediately to pray and fast for members of Congress to do the right thing and keep this atrocity from being enacted in the law." "It is especially shameful that any self-professed Catholic would be implicated in such an evil, let alone advocate for it," Cordileone said, without naming anyone. Both President Joe Biden and Pelosi are Catholics and support abortion rights. Asked Thursday about Cordileone's remarks, Pelosi, whose district includes most of San Francisco, responded by noting that she is Catholic and that she and Cordileone have different views on the issue of reproductive rights. "The archbishop of the city - of that area, of San Francisco - and I have a disagreement about who should decide this," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. "I believe that God has given us a free will to honor our responsibilities." Pelosi also referred to her personal background, noting that she was raised in a family that opposed abortion rights and that she and her husband had five children in a span of roughly six years. "I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have five children in ... six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of any of us to tell any else to do," Pelosi said. "For us, it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives. But it's none of our business how other people choose the size and timing of their families." According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 56% of U.S. Catholics said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Catholic teaching opposes abortion, however, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently debated the meaning of Communion and whether it is appropriate to withhold the sacrament from Catholic politicians such as Biden who support abortion rights. After a firestorm of debate, the bishops clarified that there will be "no national policy on withholding Communion from politicians." They are scheduled to discuss a draft about Communion at their annual meeting in November. - - - The Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein contributed to this story. GEORGETOWN, Texas (AP) The city of Georgetown is recommending updates to the city's fire code after a pet boarding facility caught fire, killing all 75 dogs that were inside. Recommended updates include requiring smoke alarms and sprinklers systems in kennels and pet boarding facilities, regardless of their size, a city official said Tuesday. According to the Georgetown Fire Chief, John Sullivan, the Ponderosa Pet Resort facility was not required to have smoke alarms or a sprinkler system because of its square feet, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Businesses that are at least 10,000 square feet are required to have a sprinkler system, but the pet resort was 8,125 square feet. The Fire Department was notified about the fire shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday. Sullivan said firefighters arrived within five minutes and found the worst possible scenario, with heavy smoke and fire coming from the building. They were unable to save any of the dogs. No people were present. The pet facility was last inspected in 2015 and found no violations. It was considered a low-risk business, so it was inspected only three to five years, Sullivan said. City officials said Ponderosa Pet Resort had a permit to operate but did not have a kennel permit. The citys kennel permit has requirements about food, water, sanitary conditions and health, but doesnt require sprinklers, smoke alarms or around-the-clock staffing. The city is asking for residents to comment about the fire code and a petition has been started asking for state legislation to require smoke alarms and fire suppression systems in animal boarding facilities. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. Eric Torberson, chairman of the animal law section for the State Bar of Texas, said owners will only be able to sue for the fair market value of the pet, not for the emotional loss since there are no state laws governing animal boarding facilities. The owner of Ponderosa Pet Resort, Phillip Paris, did not respond to the American-Stateman's request for comment. PETERSBURG, Va. (AP) A Virginia city is banning firearms from public spaces. The Petersburg City Council unanimously passed a measure Tuesday barring people from carrying firearms in any place open to the public, The Progress-Index reported. The ban includes city buildings, public parks, city-owned recreation or community centers and any public street, road, alley or sidewalk. On-duty law enforcement officers and armed security personnel acting on a contract with the city are exempt. Councilor Charlie Cuthbert introduced the idea in July shortly after community activist Willie Noise III was fatally shot at the city-owned Patton Park. Cuthbert asked the city attorney to draft a law prohibiting firearms in city parks. The law is nearly identical to the Virginia State Code, City Attorney Anthony Williams said, adding that there may be issues with enforcing the law. I dont have a recommendation on whether this is going to be a challenge to enforce because I do think the language of the state code does lend itself to some ambiguities, Williams said. A violation is equal to a class one misdemeanor, which carries the possibility of a 12-month jail sentence and up to a $1,000 fine. CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) A plea agreement hearing is set next month for a former councilman for the city of Parkersburg, West Virginia, who is charged with breaching the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. The hearing for Eric Barber is scheduled for Oct. 14 in federal court in Washington, D.C., according to court documents. He remains free on personal recognizance. Barber is charged with theft, disorderly conduct, entering and remaining in a restricted area or grounds, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. A criminal complaint alleges photos and security video show Barber inside the Capitol wearing a green combat-style helmet and a green military-style field jacket. It said video reviewed by law enforcement recorded Barber saying, Theyre giving us the building, and that he took selfie images in the Capitol Rotunda. It also claims he stole a portable power station from a C-SPAN media stand. Barber was elected to the Parkersburg City Council in 2016 as a Democrat. He changed his registration to independent a year later, then changed it again to Republican before losing his re-election bid last November. His previous criminal history included convictions for breaking and entering, petit larceny, controlled substances, drunken driving and fleeing arrest. Later, as a council member, his drivers license was revoked on a marijuana charge. Barber pleaded guilty in a separate incident to disorderly conduct for ignoring police orders to stop taking photos and video near his Parkersburg home of someone being treated during a medical emergency. Other suspects from West Virginia who were charged in the riot include Morgantown sandwich shop owner George Tanios. He awaits trial in the assault of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after defending the Capitol. A federal appeals court in August ruled that Tanios can be released on bond while he awaits trial. Republican West Virginia state Del. Derrick Evans resigned his seat in early January after he was charged with entering the Capitol. He faces a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding and aiding or abetting along with several misdemeanors. Prosecutors said Evans livestreamed himself rushing into the U.S. Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trumps supporters on Jan. 6. Gracyn Dawn Courtright of Hurricane faces up to six months in prison when she's sentenced on Nov. 16 of her misdemeanor guilty plea to knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Prosecutors said Courtright was seen taking a Members Only sign near the Senate chambers after entering the Capitol. MADISON, Wis. (AP) A resolution from Wisconsin Republicans calling for new political boundary lines to adhere as closely as possible to existing congressional and legislative districts drew criticism Thursday from Democrats, who have long argued that the existing maps are gerrymandered and unconstitutional. A GOP-controlled state Assembly committee on Thursday approved putting the resolution up for a vote before the full Assembly on Tuesday. It lays out parameters for any maps submitted to the Assembly as it moves ahead with the once-a-decade task of redistricting. One of guidelines in the resolution calls for retaining as much as possible the core of existing districts, thus maintaining 11 existing communities of interest, and promoting the equal opportunity to vote by minimizing disenfranchisement." An argument Democrats make in a federal redistricting lawsuit is that the current Republican-drawn maps, which were approved in 2011, should be declared unconstitutional because of population changes over the past decade as reflected in the latest census numbers. Democrats don't want the new maps to be based on the current ones, which solidified Republican majorities in the Legislature. Attorney Doug Poland, who represents voting rights advocates in the federal redistricting lawsuit, called the Republican resolution a brazen attempt to try to say that it is the public policy of Wisconsin that the majority party is entitled to entrench itself and its sitting legislators in power for as long as they choose to do so, voters be damned. He said its the exact opposite of what the GOP-controlled Legislature did when creating maps in 2011, when it took a wrecking ball to the existing districts to redraw them to gerrymander themselves in control for the entire decade. Now the Legislature wants to say that the public policy of the state will be to cement in place the ruling party and all of its currently sitting members, Poland said. It really is quite shocking. Republican Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke said the resolution was not about helping the Republicans' position in court. The Legislature is backing a lawsuit that the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear. Republicans are opposing the Democratic lawsuit in federal court. Steineke downplayed concern about the intent of the resolution, saying it was an attempt to be transparent about the parameters for considering maps submitted to a website Republicans established to accept ideas from a map-drawing commission established by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers or any member of the public. Its about continuity of representation, Steineke said of the guideline related to disrupting current districts as little as possible. The parameters of reapportionment have always been the same, trying to keep districts compact, contiguous, keep communities of like interest together. An Associated Press analysis found that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats in 2018 and held on to seven more state legislative chambers, including the Wisconsin Assembly, than would have been expected to based on their average share of the vote in congressional districts across the country. Republicans are accepting maps from the public until Oct. 15. The Legislature has not said when exactly it will release its plan or vote on it. A three-judge federal court panel on Tuesday said it wants to conclude a trial over the Democratic-backed lawsuit by the end of January. Democratic state Rep. Evan Goyke, of Milwaukee, questioned the need for the resolution, noting that Republicans refuse to take up a Democratic plan calling for the creation of a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Look, they didn't need to put down in writing in a resolution that they want to maintain their gerrymander, Goyke said. This is maintaining partisan gerrymandering and trying to enshrine it as a resolution when what we should be doing is letting people choose their representatives rather than their representatives choosing their people. HELSINKI (AP) NATO member Estonia said Thursday that a Russian air force plane violated its airspace in what the Baltic nation alleged was the sixth such incident this year by a Russian aircraft. The alleged intrusion took place at noon Wednesday as the Beriev A-50 plane entered Estonias airspace near the Baltic Sea island of Vaindloo and stayed there for less than one minute, Estonias military said in a statement. LADY'S ISLAND, S.C. (AP) A man suspected of murder in El Salvador was arrested Thursday in South Carolina. The Bluffton Police Department, with help from other agencies, arrested Erick Salvador Hernandez Bonilla, 23, on Ladys Island, WSAV-TV reported. Bonilla, wanted by the International Criminal Police Organization also known as Interpol, faces six counts of murder and terrorist threat. Authorities said the charges are linked to Bonillas MS13 gang-related activities in El Salvador. Details of the murder case were not released. Bluffton Police, working with the Beaufort County Sheriffs Office, the U.S. Marshal Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended Bonilla after a month-long investigation with help from an anonymous source, police said. I am proud and grateful of the anonymous source who contacted the Bluffton Police Department and whose efforts resulted in a successful arrest of this dangerous suspect, Bluffton Police Chief Stephenie Price said. HOUSTON (AP) A Houston-area woman was run over and killed Thursday as a man was making his getaway after snatching her purse, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. The incident happened about 10:30 a.m. outside a McDonalds restaurant near Houstons eastern outskirts. HONOLULU (AP) South Korean President Moon Jae-in visited Hawaii this week as the remains of 68 Korean and six presumed U.S. service members were repatriated during a ceremony at Pearl Harbor. South Korean soldiers who died in the Korean War had been in the possession of the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency until Wednesday, when they were placed on a Korean government jet to be returned home, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. South Korea also returned the remains of the presumed U.S. service members to the accounting agency, which recovers and identifies those missing in past conflicts. More than 7,500 Americans are unaccounted for from the Korean War. American and Korean heroes are finally returning home to their families after a 70-year-long wait, said Moon, who laid a wreath at Honolulus National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. He had been at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where he said he proposed that the relevant parties gather together and proclaim an end to the Korean War, creating a new chapter of reconciliation and cooperation. South and North Korea signed a 1953 armistice that halted three years of war but never led to a formal declaration of peace. The 68 remains came to the accounting agency from North and South Korea. One was from a disinterment at the cemetery. U.S. Rear Adm. Darius Banaji, deputy director for operations with the accounting agency, said more than 200 sets of remains in the Hawaii lab were from South Korea. Most were returned to South Korea in 2018 and 2020, he said. So todays ceremony, likely the last of such magnitude, signifies the remaining 68 Republic of Korea service men in the care of the United States, Banaji said. The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. John Aquilino, said at the event at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam that the Korean War brought our two nations side by side to fight for and defend the values embodied in the ideals of freedom. TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) Taiwan announced Thursday it has applied to join an 11-nation Pacific trade group, setting up a potential clash with rival Beijing over the status of the island democracy. The Chinese government, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, gave no details of how it might respond but said the island has no right to join international bodies. A Taiwan Cabinet minister said the island's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership might be disrupted if China, which applied last week, is admitted first. The CPTPP, which took effect in 2018, includes agreements on market access, movement of labor and government procurement. Other members include Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and New Zealand. China has been obstructing Taiwans opportunities in the international arena, said John Deng, a minister without portfolio, at a news conference. If China joins ahead of Taiwan, it will endanger Taiwans application. The CPTPP was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a group promoted by then-President Barack Obama. His successor, Donald Trump, pulled out in 2017. President Joe Biden has not rejoined. China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since the Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949 following a civil war. They have extensive trade and investment ties but no official relations. "The Taiwan region is an inalienable part of China," said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian. We are firmly opposed to any official contacts between Taiwan and other countries, as well as Taiwans accession to any agreements or organizations that are of an official nature. Deng said Taiwans status as a democracy and market economy should count in its favor. Taiwan and China follow different systems of organization. We are an integrated market economy, he said. We have democracy and the rule of law backing us. Our laws are transparent to all. CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) A Virginia judge sentenced a woman on Thursday to two life sentences after she was found guilty earlier this year of sexually abusing and making child pornography of her 2-year-old son. Kayla Nicole Thomas was sentenced for the sexual abuse of her son, which she said was done at the insistence of her boyfriend, news outlets reported. A jury took just an hour to convict her in June and urged the courts to sentence her to two life terms plus 10 years. SEATTLE (AP) The Washington state Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a 46-year sentence for a man who killed his friends little sister when he was 17, finding the punishment focused more on retribution than rehabilitation. Timothy Haag of Longview was initially sentenced to life without parole for choking and drowning 7-year-old Rachel Dillard in a bathtub in 1994. But in 2018, after the U.S. Supreme Court found that automatic life sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional, Haag was resentenced to at least 46 years a term that could have seen him released at age 63. The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Cowlitz Superior Court Judge Michael Evans failed during resentencing to properly weigh the significant evidence of Haag's rehabilitation behind bars, which included good behavior, a high school diploma, work in the prison chapel and kitchen, and his religious conversion. Six of the nine justices also said a 46-year sentence for a juvenile is unconstitutional because it amounts to the equivalent of a life sentence, depriving them of a meaningful chance to return to society. The ruling builds on a steady trend in state and federal courts of recognizing that children must be treated differently from adults when they commit crimes, even heinous ones. I had 25 years of conduct the justices could look at that exemplifies what the courts have been saying about how children have a greater capacity for growth and rehabilitation, Mary Kay High, Haag's appeals lawyer, said Thursday. They want to make it very clear to trial courts that mitigation is what requires consideration and weight at these hearings. In resentencing hearings for people who committed crimes as juveniles, retributive factors must count for less than mitigating factors, Justice Helen Whitener wrote in the ruling. The resentencing courts inversion of this balance clearly misapplies our statutes and our precedent. The court awarded Haag a new sentencing hearing, though the justices did not suggest what might be an appropriate prison term. Haag had serious social and emotional troubles as a teen. He grew up in poverty, was bullied at school, abandoned by his father, mistreated by his stepfather and struggled with shame over his sexuality and attraction to his friend, Rachel Dillard's half-brother, Alex. Haag claimed that he killed the girl to punish her family for the way they treated Alex Dillard like dirt including abusing him and forcing him to live in a rat-infested garage. Alex had left the home to escape the abuse, compounding Haag's feelings of abandonment, psychologists testified. At his resentencing hearing, he asked the judge for leniency. The minimum possible sentence, 25 years, could have seen Haag released less than two years later. "There is nothing I can say to make up for what I did, Haag said, according to an account in The Daily News of Longview. I hate myself for it. But Rachel's family vehemently opposed Haag's release. Her mother described how even decades later she continued to lose sleep over her daughter's death, and her father warned the judge of eternal hellfire should he help Haag. In issuing the sentence, Judge Evans noted the difficulty of balancing a vile, cowardly and particularly heinous multistep strangulation and drowning of a defenseless, 65-pound little girl committed by a 300-pound, 17-year-old young man with Haag's troubled background, his youthfulness at the time of the killing and his stellar track record in prison. While the high court was unanimous in finding that the judge's decision failed to give enough weight to Haag's rehabilitation, the justices disagreed on another point: whether a 46-year term for a teenager was unconstitutional because it amounted to the equivalent of a life sentence. Six of the justices said it was. Three others said there was no need to answer that question in Haag's case, with one of them, Justice Debra Stephens, saying 46 years was not necessarily unconstitutional for a teen. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) Albuquerque city officials plan to use ground-penetrating radar as they research the history of a site where dozens of Native American boarding school students are believed to have been buried more than a century ago. Orange flags also will be placed at the city park to signify the importance of the site as more permanent plans are worked out among city officials, Indigenous leaders and advocacy groups. Orange is the color used to symbolize the movement that is bringing more awareness to the troubled legacy of the boarding school system that sought to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society over many decades. Indigenous activists became concerned earlier this year when a plaque memorializing the students from the former Albuquerque Indian School vanished. They established a makeshift memorial of flowers and other offerings and demanded an investigation. The plaque's disappearance came as the U.S. government began a nationwide investigation into boarding schools, where reports of physical and sexual abuse were widespread and where children who died while attending the schools were often buried in unmarked graves. Part of the massive undertaking aims to determine how many children perished. Recent discoveries of children's remains in Canada and the investigation in the U.S. have stirred strong emotions among tribal communities, including grief, anger, reflection and a deep desire for healing. City officials acknowledged the intergenerational pain caused by federal boarding school policies. While it can't be undone, they said reconciliation is in order. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller offered an apology on behalf of the city in a statement issued Wednesday. "This is important because we have an opportunity to learn and understand from our collective history and make meaningful change, said Rebecca Riley, who is from the Acoma Pueblo and serves on the city's Commission on American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs. We deserve to understand the truth, determine our steps forward, and owe the Native children and staff who never returned home to do better. In the United States, the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 and other laws and policies were enacted to establish and support hundreds of Indian boarding schools. For over 150 years, children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation. The Albuquerque Indian School was started in 1881 by the Presbyterian Church and came under federal control a few years later. The school closed in the 1980s, and the property was put into trust for New Mexicos 19 pueblos. The buildings eventually were torn down, and a tribal development corporation is working to make it a commercial hub. The park is a couple of blocks away. The Commission on American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs has recommended that the City Council pass a resolution acknowledging the history of the Albuquerque Indian School and its burial sites, with a pledge to work with Native American leaders and residents to ensure history is not forgotten. Over the long term, the commission recommended that Albuquerque commit to funding health and community initiatives that directly impact the health and well-being of Native American residents affected by federal boarding school policies. Another recommendation calls for working with Indigenous leaders to develop a curriculum on the history of the Albuquerque Indian School and Native Americans in New Mexico and the American Southwest. According to the commission, disease and sickness contributed heavily to the cause of deaths among students and staff at the former school, and information regarding the number of people buried and their location at the city park is inconclusive. The city said a public memorial event and additional meetings are planned over the coming weeks. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) The number of Mississippi students learning at or above grade level in math and English decreased across almost every age group during the first statewide assessments amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to results released by the Department of Education on Thursday. Still, the state's top education official said she was very thankful that we did not fall further behind than we did. The scores reflect a trend across the country of decreased academic performance in standardized testing as schools deal with almost two years of disrupted learning due to the pandemic. Math and English were subjects where students had steadily improving test scores in Mississippi since 2016, when the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) was first implemented. But the number of students learning at or above grade level in math declined from 47% in 2019 to 35% in 2021 a 25% decrease. The number of students at or above grade level in English declined from about 41.6% in 2019 to 34.9% in 2021 a 16% decrease. The only area where students improved overall in 2021 was eighth grade English, where the number of proficient students increased 0.1% from 2019. A total of 35.6% of eighth-graders demonstrated proficiency in math in 2021, based on test scores. The disruption and stress caused by COVID-19 has had an impact on student performance in every state in the country," said Carey Wright, Mississippi's state superintendent of education. MAAP measures student performance in English, math, science, and U.S. history. Students are assessed in grades 3 through 8 in English and math, grades 5 and 8 on science, Algebra I, Biology I, English II, and U.S. history. The MAAP tests were first used in 2016, and overall scores in math and English had been improving year-to-year. Students were not tested during 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Students across the country have endured uneven academic years since the beginning of the pandemic. Mississippi had their school year cut short in spring 2020 when the pandemic shut down school buildings. Some continued learning virtually, while others did not return at all. Though most Mississippi students had access to in-person learning most of the 2020-21 school year, hybrid learning, quarantining and weather-related school building closures curtailed learning. Test scores among students have decreased this year across the country. Texas test results released in late June showed t he percentage of students reading at their grade level slid to the lowest levels since 2017, while math scores plummeted to their lowest point since 2013. In Florida, officials said reading scores dropped by 4 percentage points compared to 2019, the last time the statewide tests were administered. In Indiana, state officials are warning of a drop in reading scores and a significant decline in math. Though overall scores decreased, student performance did not drop in every grade, subject and school in Mississippi. Ocean Springs School District improved its districtwide English proficiency level from 2019 to 2021. Ocean Springs School District and Petal School District were in the states top 10 districts in all four subject areas. Rankin County School District, Clinton Public School District, Madison County School District and Enterprise School District were in the top 10 districts for performance in math and English. In the bottom 10 for all four subject areas were Holmes County Consolidated School District, Humphreys County School District, North Panola School District and Yazoo City Municipal School District. The Mississippi Schools for the Blind and Deaf were in the bottom 10 for math and English. While experts have warned that low participation rates in some regions could leave entire states with unreliable data, Wright said Mississippi is among the U.S. states with the highest rates of testing participation. Mississippi had a 96.9% participation rate in 2021, close to the 98% to 99% participation rates of previous years. In Texas, 86% of students took the tests this spring, down from a typical rate of 96%. Rachel Canter, executive director of Mississippi First, a nonprofit working to improve access to education in Mississippi, said the biggest question of the 2021 data would be whether the forward progress Mississippi has been making for many years will be haltedor worse, reversedby the disruption of the pandemic. Right before the scores were released, she said any improvement over 2019 numbers or stability would have been a huge victory for teachers and students. A decline would be tragic after many years of growth, though we can all understand why this may occur, she said. "Whatever the case, finally knowing exactly where our kids stand is reason for hope because we will now know what our job is over the next few years." ___ Leah Willingham 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. This article was first published on NerdWallet.com. Today's housing market is hostile to home buyers because not enough homes are for sale. Would-be buyers find themselves in bidding wars and competing against cash offers. Someday the path to homeownership will be less arduous. Here are signs that will help you detect when the homebuying process is becoming less intimidating: When homes receive fewer offers Competition among buyers intensified this year. Homes sold in July 2020 received an average of 2.9 offers each; in July 2021, they received 4.5 offers on average, according to the National Association of Realtors. Those are just averages. Plenty of homes receive double-digit numbers of offers. When the market cools and conditions are kinder to buyers, "you won't see multiple offers of 15 or 20, you might have just one or two other offers, or you'll be the only one," says Selma Hepp, deputy chief economist for CoreLogic, a property information and analytics provider. When homes stay on the market longer Of homes sold in July, half had been on the market for 17 days or fewer, according to NAR. This metric, called "days on market," is an indicator of the level of competition, and 17 days is a sign of a competitive market. By comparison, 2019's median days on market was 59.5. Quick sales imply many competitors, and slower sales signal fewer competitors. "If things are staying on the market a little longer, versus staying for a couple of days, then it might be time for [buyers] to get back in the market," says Terri Robinson, a real estate agent with Re/Max Distinctive in Ashburn, Virginia. Robinson cautions that she's talking about median days on market for neighborhoods, cities and metro areas. She's not referring to individual properties. One particular home might stay on the market for a long time because the seller is asking too much. That would be a sign of a faulty selling strategy, not of a cooling market. When inventory and supply go up In real estate lingo, "inventory" refers to the number of homes for sale as well as pending sales, and "supply" is the number of months it would take to sell all of the homes on the market at the current month's pace. Inventory and supply have been low in 2021, a sign that sellers have a pricing and negotiating advantage. When the inventory and supply numbers rise, it's good news for home buyers. "That's certainly an indicator that you will have less competition because there are more homes for people to choose from," Hepp says. She adds that greater inventory means you can expect fewer bids over the asking price, too. What a good agent can tell you These indicators average number of offers, median days on market and inventory are national, not local, numbers. They're broadly suggestive. But depending on national data alone is like peering at a map of the United States to navigate from your house to the grocery store. The most useful real estate information is local and tends to be communicated person to person. It can be downright gossipy: how long this house has been on the market, how many offers that just-sold house got. "The easiest way for a person to get that kind of information is to talk to their local real estate agent and ask those questions," Robinson says. An agent can tell you when a surge of listings hits your target neighborhood, how many offers homes are getting and whether they're staying on the market longer. An agent can give you the scoop on less quantifiable information, too. Robinson says that in her area, outside of Washington, D.C., buyers were frequently waiving inspections earlier this year to make their offers more competitive. She knows an inspector who, responding to a need, "created a walk-and-talk, which was an abbreviated home inspection that could be done while someone was looking at a property." Recently, the inspector tells her that the demand for walk-and-talks has gone away, and buyers are back to getting full-fledged inspections that take a few hours. "It indicates that sellers are more amenable now to a buyer coming in and asking for a home inspection, so that's good news for buyers," Robinson says. That's the kind of juicy, useful anecdote you get when you develop a rapport with an agent who has plenty of contacts. To supplement talking with an agent, Hepp recommends signing up for emails from a real estate brokerage. You get notifications of new listings. Just as important, Hepp says, you get updates on price reductions. "As soon as you see those, you will know that the market is not as competitive as it was," she says. Where you can look for data on your own Maybe subjective information isn't good enough for you, and you want confirmation of what you're hearing from real estate agents. That's where objective data fits in. Every month, NAR releases its Realtors Confidence Index survey, and you can download the report as a PDF file. The monthly report's first page has a table bearing loads of data, including: Median days on market (in the top section, "Key Market Indicators"). Average number of offers (in the bottom section, "Other Market Indicators"). Three columns show the data from the report's month, the previous month and 12 months earlier. The release of that data coincides with NAR's monthly Existing Home Sales report, which lists inventory and supply, along with data about home prices. These reports have two drawbacks: They're national and they're dated. Each report comes out more than three weeks after the end of the month. For example, the July 2021 reports were released Aug. 23. Realtor.com's Local Market Trends page shows county and metro-area data, including days on market. But the information is still more than three weeks out of date, and you have to learn the wonky interface. Avoid analysis paralysis Shopping for a home is an anxiety-inducing experience, and it can be tempting to numb your unease by focusing on numbers. Don't procrastinate by dwelling excessively on statistics. "If you're trying to wait for the perfect time, I feel like you're going to sit and wait forever," says Rob Heck, head of origination for Morty, an online mortgage broker. The housing market will challenge buyers for a long time. If you're determined to buy, you'll have to put yourself out there and risk rejection by making offers. Holden Lewis writes for NerdWallet. Email: hlewis@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @HoldenL. The article The Property Line: Watch for Signs of a Better Market for Buyers originally appeared on NerdWallet. He said, "The use of vaccine as a tool for immigration control will be truly a retrogressive step." Speaking at the high-level General Assembly session on Wednesday, Akufo-Addo accused those countries, which he did not name, of using the non-recognition of Covishield as an anti-immigration device. "One unfortunate development appears to be the recent measures on entry into some countries in Europe which suggests that Covishield, the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, is not recognised by these countries," he said. He said that it was "intriguing" that the Covishield vaccines made by the Serum Institute of India and donated to African countries by COVAX, the international facility co-led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and includes UNICEF, were not recognised. India donated 50,000 doses to Ghana, and sent 600,000 through COVAX and 2,000 commercially, according to India's Ministry of External Affairs statistics. Akufo-Addo backed the Rome Declaration of the G20, of which India is a member, that proposed granting licences voluntarily for making vaccines. He said, "Ghana agrees with the call of the Rome Declaration of Global Health for voluntary licensing and technology transfer to boost vaccine production. The African Union is working with WHO WTO and other global partners to expand vaccine manufacturing and deployment." Ghana, which has a population of about 31 million, has vaccinated 5 million people and hoped to vaccinate 20 million by the end of the year, he said. But he noted that the African continent has a long way to go. "To vaccinate 70 per cent in the shortest possible time as is being done elsewhere in the world means some 900 million Africans have to be vaccinated," he said. Covishield does not appear on the list of acceptable vaccines of some countries like Germany and Italy while AstraZeneca does. The European Medicines Agency, which is an agency for evaluating and monitoring vaccines, does not list Covishield either. But some European countries like the Netherlands, France and Britain list Covishield among vaccines that are acceptable for travel to those countries. The United States will recognise Covishield when the vaccination mandate for travellers comes into effect in November because it is on the list of vaccines authorised for emergency use by the WHO. Suriname President Chan Santokhi, who decried the refusal of many industrialised countries to share vaccines, thanked India for sharing vaccines. India donated 50,000 vaccines to Suriname. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis) On Wednesday, Aoun renewed Lebanon's commitment to implementing UN Resolution 1701 in all aspects and upholding its rights to its waters and natural resources, reports Xinhua news agency. Beirut, Sep 23 (IANS) Lebanese President Michel Aoun said that his country is keen to resume indirect negotiations with Israel for the demarcation of maritime borders, an official statement said here. "This is why we expressed our objection to the Security Council and the UN over Israel's recent signing of contracts to start oil and gas exploration with an American company, as this step contradicts the path of indirect negotiations which requires freezing all exploration-related work in disputed areas, awaiting a resolution between the two countries," the statement quoted Aoun as saying. The President's remarks came during his meeting with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka to discuss the new cabinet's priorities in the near future. Wronecka told Aoun that the UN Security Council will convene on November 9 which will give Lebanon a chance to raise its concerns. Lebanon and Israel have border disputes both on sea and land. The neighbouring countries, mediated by the US, conducted a round of talks to demarcate the maritime borders in October 2020. But it was later suspended. --IANS ksk/ He made the remarks during the Sixth Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) here on Saturday, reports Xinhua news agency. Mexico City, Sep 19 (IANS) Bolivian President Luis Arce called the Organization of American States (OAS) "an obsolete and ineffective body that does not respond to the principles of multilateralism and the needs of our states". In a meeting in Mexico City, where the leaders and representatives of more than 30 CELAC countries had gathered, the President stated that the OAS "acts against the principles of democracy" and that "its interference does not contribute to the peaceful solution of controversies". "It must be strengthened and we must integrate ourselves into the principle of solidarity," he said, adding that the OAS had lost legitimacy due to its interference in Latin American democracies. Given this, he called for the joint construction of "an integrated and equitable world based on diplomacy for life, peace, human rights, and the rights of Mother Earth". This year, the CELAC summit, of which Mexico is serving as president "pro tempore", has proposed analysing whether to reform or replace the OAS, which was criticised for interfering in the Bolivian elections of 2019. --IANS ksk/ While the agenda of Wednesday's meeting was not made public, Milley's spokesperson told the media that the two officials discussed efforts to improve communications between the US and Russia as well as how to reduce potential risk factors, reports Xinhua news agency. Helsinki, Sep 23 (IANS) Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov in Finland amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow, according to authorities. Although the meeting was held at the Finnish government premises at Konigstedt Manor in Vantaa, near Helsinki, Finland was not represented in the meeting. A media representative for Milley was quoted by Finnish national radio as saying that in the meeting the talks continued aiming at "increasing communication and reducing risks". Russian news agency TASS quoted the country's Defence Ministry as saying that during the meeting the two sides addressed "issues of mutual interest, including reducing the risk of incidents during military activities". "Despite the ongoing and occasionally contentious disagreements between the US and Russia on Ukraine, cyberattacks, and the Arctic, the purpose of the meeting was to improve dialogue and deconfliction between the two militaries," a CNN report said. --IANS ksk/ The leaders from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States are all set to grace their presence in the maiden in-person Quad Summit 2021 that is to be held on September 24. This meeting is organized for the second time this year, post the virtual meet held on March 12, 2021. Again, US President Joe Biden will be hosting this Summit at White House and the other leaders, including Australia's Scott Morrison, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Yoshihide Suga representing Japan. On account of the prolonged travel curb, the discussion were held virtual just seven months back, and this marks the first personal meet of the leaders post the pandemic outbreak. In a statement, The US states, "Biden-Harris Administration has made elevating the Quad a priority, as seen through the first-ever Quad Leaders-level engagement in March, which was virtual, and now this Summit, which will be in-person. Hosting the leaders of the Quad demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration's priority of engaging in the Indo-Pacific, including through new multilateral configurations to meet the challenges of the 21st century." This first in-person Summit is slated to talk about the ongoing pandemic and what other possible measures the countries could take to accelerate their global vaccine supplies, climate crisis, collaboration on budding technologies and cyberspace, and encouraging a free and accessible Indo- Pacific. Alongside, some light would also be thrown on the semiconductor supply chain. Agenda Set to Discuss Before the Quad Summit, the Quad nations' leaders had set up an agenda to be focused on that includes creating a safe supply chain for semiconductors. This hints that all the four are keen on expanding their scope over the China in the Indo-Pacific, manufacturing giants, China in the Indo-Pacific. However, chief focus is set on the technological development, and robustly secures technology supply chains for hardware and software that are the nations' priority. Furthermore, the countries are also keen on the challenges of making waves, such as illicit transfer and technology burglary. Thus, the quad nations intend to design and develop the technology so that it could be shared and reformed by the nations according to democratic values. Additionally, the quad nations are set to roll out a joint initiative to analyze individual capability and their possible liability in semiconductor's supply chain. On this account, it is notable that the US and Japan have about 30 percent of chipmaking capacity. On the other hand, India and Australia do not possess any prominent chipmakers. A Zest on India's Chipmaking In the past few years, the Indian government has paid attention to semiconductor industries to turn self-sufficient in terms of the electronic sector. The Indian semiconductor industry is expecting high growth potential areas in the years to come. Thus, the government has taken several initiatives to support the industry. The Indian government has devised to infuse about $10 billion in two computer chip manufacturing amenities to encourage high-end innovation. Alongside this, the Indian government has also elevated the incentive schemes allocation to INR 745 crore for expecting an augment in the semiconductor and the electronic manufacturing industry. India's View On his three-day trip to the United States to participate in the Quad Summit, Prime Minister Modi is likely to talk to the United Nations General Assembly. PM Modi landed in Washington DC a day before the Summit; he was warmly welcomed by senior officials of the Joe Biden Administration and India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Regardless of bad weather, many Indian Americans had gathered at the Andrews Joint Airforce Base to welcome the Indian Prime Minister. In his tweet, Modi posts, "Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength. It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world." India's statement says, "As part of their ongoing efforts to curb the covid-19 pandemic, they would re-examine the Quad Vaccine scheme which was announced in March this year. They would also swap views on contemporary global issues such as critical and emerging technologies, connectivity and infrastructure, cyber security, maritime security, humanitarian assistance / disaster relief, climate change and education. The Summit is likely to offer a valuable opportunity for dialogue and interactions among the Leaders, anchored in their shared vision of ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region." It further adds that the theme for this year's General discussion is 'Building Resilience through hope to recuperate from covid-19, reconstructs sustainably, respond to the planet's requirements, respect the rights of people, and revitalize the United Nations. It is said that PM Narendra Modi will attend the Summit in New York on September 24. His word would mainly focus on global challenges that include the ongoing pandemic crisis, climate change, and addressing terrorism issues and other crucial matters. Following the Summit, the next day, Modi would be addressing the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Quad Quad refers to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue it is a strategic dialogue between Japan, India, the US, and Australia. In 2007, Japan's then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and US Vice President Dick Cheney formed the Quad. However, the strategic Summit has been terminated post-Australia withdrawing from Quad during the tenure of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Yet, the dialogue bounced back at the time of the ASEAN Summits 2017, when all the four countries' leaders agreed to restore the alliance all over again. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Apple will give store employees as much as $US1000 ($1378) in one-time bonuses next month, a rare move that follows a tumultuous effort to get its retail operations back on track after pandemic shutdowns. The iPhone maker will give $US1000 to retail staff hired before March 31, while anyone who joined after that date will receive $US500, according to people familiar with the situation. New workers for the Christmas shopping season will get $US200, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isnt public. The payouts also will go to AppleCare and online sales workers. But the good tidings came with a bit of coal. In a separate memo, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook criticised leaks to the press. Key details of Apples recent product launch event were reported ahead of time, along with information from a company-wide meeting held last week. Apple CEO Tim Cook wants to find out who is leaking details to reporters. Credit: Cook said hed heard from many employees who were incredibly frustrated to see the contents of the meeting leak to reporters, according to the memo, which was obtained by Bloomberg News. This comes after a product launch in which most of the details of our announcements were also leaked to the press. The European Union has unveiled plans to make USB-C connectors the standard charging port for all smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices sold across the region. The initiative aimed at reducing environmental waste is likely to hit Apple the hardest. The move would represent a long-awaited, yet aggressive step into product-making decisions by the European Commission, the blocs executive arm. Apple, whose iPhones are equipped with a different port, has long opposed the plan, arguing that it would stifle innovation and lead to more electronic waste as all current chargers that are not USB-C would become obsolete. The European Unions move will hit Apple the hardest as its iPhones have Lightning charging ports. Credit:Bloomberg The new legislation is likely to come into effect in 2024 because it first needs to be approved by the European Parliament and then adopted by manufacturers. Besides phones, it would apply to cameras, headphones, portable speakers and video game consoles. Wireless chargers would not be affected, but the main change would come for iPhones, which currently have a proprietary Lightning charging port. I was lucky to read an early copy of Symbols of Australia, a soon to be republished collection of essays about things that have traditionally been used to represent and define Australia. Included in the assortment are essays on wattle, Vegemite and cooees, all tired national cliches, yet the book still manages to surprise, and is packed with curious and unexpected detail. Take Waltzing Matilda. In the early 20th century, a copy of the song was included in packets of the popular Billy Tea, as a promotional stunt. The tea manufacturers were concerned that the song ended on a pretty grim note, so the word jolly was added to the opening line. To liven things up a bit. Shocking, isnt it? That one word changes the whole feel of the thing, elevating the swagman from an impoverished, homeless man, hounded to death by police, to a happy-go-lucky bush scamp. Yet the only reason the word is there is so the song would work better as an ad. Illustration: Robin Cowcher. Credit: I thought my daughter would enjoy this fact, but as I told her, I could see her zoning out. You do know the song Im talking about, dont you?, I asked. Well, she ventured, I think its the thing they used to sing at important events, before Australia had an official anthem? Fair enough. But could she sing it? I was a little shocked to discover that she could not. I certainly could, so I did. With gusto. Prompting my son to pop his head out of his bedroom, appalled, as he always is when I break into song. This gave me an opportunity to question him about his own familiarity with the adventures of the swagman and the jumbuck. Yeah, I know it, he grunted. Sort of. But can you please stop singing now? The Reckoning Mary L. Trump, Allen & Unwin, $29.99 The Reckoning by Mary L. Trump. As Donald Trumps niece, a psychologist who has taught courses on trauma and someone who has suffered from PTSD, Mary Trump is uniquely qualified to analyse how trauma has shaped the American psyche and nation. She knows from personal experience that the only way to overcome trauma is to look it in the eye. America, she argues, has allowed its primal wounds the Native American genocide, the enslavement of African populations, the grievances of white supremacists to fester by embracing a myth built on denial and lies. Her uncle is both a symptom and the product of this unchecked canker. Trump doesnt mince her words as she excavates the legacy of this suffering. Its an inevitably grim tale because trauma cant be prettied up. Wounds have to be tended to in order to heal. Theres a War Going On but No One Can See It Huib Modderkolk, Bloomsbury, $29.99 Theres a War Going On But No One Can See It by Huib Modderkolk. Dutch journalist Huib Modderkolk was a novice in the world of technology when he took a deep dive into digital data surveillance and hacking. Edward Snowden had just leaked thousands of US National Security Agency documents. Huibs job was to find out what European security agencies were up to. This book charts his journey into the invisible thickets of the internet superhighway, what he learnt about cyber espionage and sabotage by security agencies and shadowy hackers, and how we are all exposed. Its very much a blow-by-blow, immersive and slow-moving account in which Modderkolk plays up the cloak-and-dagger, paranoia-inducing nature of his task as intrepid investigative journalist trying to make sense of this ever-evolving and elusive netherworld in which the Russians are the main villains. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Happy Hour Jacquie Byron, Allen & Unwin, $32.99 Happy Hour by Jacquie Byron. Credit:Suppplied This delightful novel looks at first to be more fluffy than it is, but the further you read, the more substantial it becomes. Heroine Franny Calderwood is a sharp, sardonic and very funny 65-year-old artist, still in mourning for her beloved husband Frank three years after his death, and pushing away the sympathy of friends and family in favour of her pampered dogs and well-stocked drinks cabinet. But then a family moves in next door, and with the arrival of battling single mother Sallyanne and her angry teenage daughter and gentle, dressups-loving eight-year-old son, Franny lets the world back into her life, a little. Jacquie Byron manages this without sentimentality and with some genuinely sobering moments in this charming and highly intelligent example of good commercial fiction, effortlessly readable but full of thoughtful reflections on darker subjects. The Golden Book Kate Ryan, Scribe, $29.99 The Golden Book by Kate Ryan. This novel follows the well-worn narrative path of main characters who return reluctantly to their home town, where bad things have happened and secrets have been kept. This is what happens to Ali, who has long since grown up and moved away when she returns to her small home town for the funeral of her childhood friend Jessie. In describing the events of that long-ago 1980s summer, with Ali and Jessie on the cusp of adolescence, Kate Ryan is finely observant of the dynamics of friendship and the limits of responsibility. Jessie the wild risk-taker taunts the bookish Ali and urges her to take part in wild schemes, but the notebook in which Ali records their adventures tells a different story than the reality. This novel is strongly grounded in disquieting ideas about the relationship between writing and truth. The Night Village Zoe Deleuil, Fremantle Press, $29.99 The Night Village by Zoe Deleuil. Simone has left her happy life in Perth to travel to London and start a career in magazine publishing. Soon after she arrives, she drifts into flat-sharing and then into an accidental pregnancy with a boyfriend she still doesnt know very well, but who is happy to share parenthood. The birth is a difficult one that Simone finds traumatic, and her feelings about the baby are mixed. But the rot really sets in when her partners cousin Rachel comes to stay. Rachel is strange and there is something odd going on, but Simone cant quite work out what. The slow reveal doesnt quite go in the expected direction and the ending is disconcertingly abrupt. But the evocation of London is full of vivid detail, the writing is understated and intelligent, and the way Zoe Deleuil evokes the exhausted fragility and uncertainty of new motherhood is entirely convincing. Come Join Our Disease Sam Byers, Faber & Faber, $34.99 Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers. Sam Byers is a prize-winning British satirist whose most recent novel explores the limits of freedom imposed by capitalism and consumerism. When we meet the narrator-heroine, Maya, she is a homeless woman living in an encampment, from where she is scooped up by representatives of a company that wants to use her as a kind of social experiment. She is given money, a job and a place to live. But the constraints of her new life and its false representations of society are too much for her and she finds her way back onto the streets. With a like-minded companion, Maya becomes the embodiment of disorder, in deliberate defiance of societal structure and expectations. With a growing band of women they live out an unimaginable life of filth and degradation, described in protracted and wilfully shocking detail. Its very well done, but you may not be able to stomach it. Jemima Kirke makes a rock-star entrance in the third season of the constantly surprising delight that is Sex Education. Thirteen minutes into the first episode she arrives as Hope Haddon, the new principal at the fictional Moordale Secondary, with a singing-and-dancing debut on stage at the school assembly. Ncuti Gatwa as Eric Effiong and Jemima Kirke as high school principal Hope Haddon. Credit:Sam Taylor/NETFLIX The disbelieving students are suitably dazzled by the head teachers unconventional presentation You can call me Hope energy and jazzy style. Fashion maven Ruby (Mimi Keene), the recent hook-up of the shows central character, Otis (Asa Butterfield), gives her stamp of approval to Hopes chosen shade of lipstick. I love her, whispers a wide-eyed Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) to her equally gobsmacked pal, Maeve (Emma Mackey). A successful and smoothly assured Moordale graduate, Hope represents a significant departure from Kirkes best-known role as the self-absorbed, impulsive loose cannon Jessa in Girls. And the actor is well aware of the contrast. One of my frustrations with the business, she says over the phone from Belfast, is that, oftentimes, people see you playing a character and assume that thats your crutch, your gimmick, your thing, to play that type of role. They assume that because youve done that role well, you might not do a service to another completely different role. So I was refreshed, to say the least, to hear that I was being offered this role that was very different from Jessa. Sun Cable, the energy company backed by billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Twiggy Forrest has scaled up plans for the worlds biggest solar farm by as much as 40 per cent and secured key support from the Indonesian government. The company announced on Thursday that the size of the Powell Creek Solar Precinct planned for the Northern Territory to supply Darwin and Singapore would now be 17-20 gigawatts (GW) in capacity, up from the previous plan of 14GW. The associated storage system has also been lifted in size to 36-42 GW-hours from an earlier goal of 30GW-hours. Solar panels developed by Sydney-based 5B could be deployed in Sun Cables planned giant solar farm in the Northern Territory to supply Darwin and Singapore with low cost and zero-emissions electricity. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer In the process, the projects estimated cost has also increased to about $30 billion, up from $22 billion. Its an important step forward. Its all driven by some really positive developments from both customer demand and technological enhancements, David Griffin, chief executive of Sun Cable, told the Herald and The Age, adding that both the solar farm and storage system will obviously be the largest in the world. Medical clinics and a flight school are among new COVID-19 exposure sites identified by Victorian health authorities. MedicAid Medical Clinic in the regional city of Geelong was declared a tier-1 or close contact exposure site on Wednesday, September 22 between 11.45am and 1pm. Anyone who attended the clinic during that timeframe has to immediately get tested for COVID-19 and quarantine for 14 days from the exposure, regardless of whether they receive a negative test result. The University RMIT Flight School at the RAAF Base at Point Cook in Melbournes south west was declared a tier-1 site on Friday, September 17 between 8am and 5.30pm. Also declared tier 1 was Kelly Reynolds Hair at Camperdown, about 190 kilometres west of Melbourne. The remainder of new sites are tier 2, and include the Murray House Clinic at Berwick in Melbournes south east, and Warrnambool Train Station in Victorias south west. A number of other venues in Warrnambool were also identified as tier-2 sites, as were several venues in Camperdown, a V/Line bus from Warrnambool to Camperdown, and several venues in the regional city of Bendigo. Authorities also identified multiple new tier-2 sites at Brunswick and Coburg North in Melbournes north. A motel at Wodonga on the border of NSW and Victoria was identified as a casual contact site over three days. A full list of Victorian exposure sites can be found here. While the public discussion about Australias AUKUS pivot has been dominated by the geostrategic and technological angles, its mostly overlooked what I see as its biggest coup: good economics. Taking a French nuclear submarine and replacing the nuclear reactor with a diesel engine to avoid a domestic political dust-up over nuclear energy while holding out the possibility of converting back to nuclear later was a uniquely Australian solution to a simple problem. Just like its Collins-class predecessor, the French-designed Shortfin Barracuda was compromised by the need to reconcile our geographic isolation with our rejection of a domestic nuclear capability. President Joe Biden meets Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week. Credit:Ilya Savenok That an Australian government has finally refused to throw likely hundreds of billions in good money after bad should be a great relief to us all. The oppositions instinct was to call out the $2 billion or so wasted under the pivot. To the contrary, the decision is a triumph over what might otherwise have been the most expensive instance of sunk-cost fallacy in Australian history. This basic economic error the tendency to follow through on something weve already invested in regardless of the costs and benefits of doing so explains too many of our big public policy blunders. That doesnt mean the succession of governments that got us into this mess should escape blame. Both sides of politics had a hand in it: the Rudd-Gillard governments in dragging their feet, perhaps spooked by Labors Collins-class legacy; and the Abbott-Turnbull governments in overseeing the farcical competitive evaluation process that has now left two of our major allies in Japan and France bruised. The cost of holding council elections for more than five million voters in NSW in December has ballooned to $146 million, a near three-fold increase on the last polls during the controversial local body amalgamations. The bill has been blamed largely on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has twice forced the postponement of polls this year and last. The NSW Electoral Commissions latest estimate includes a $29 million cost from postponing the poll by three months to December 4, and $37 million for measures to reduce COVID-19 risks. Local council elections in NSW have already been postponed twice. Credit:Jono Searle/Getty Images It is a major cost increase on the last local government elections held over two years in 2016 and 2017 due to council amalgamations, which ran to just over $50 million. First atomic test soon Sir William Penney, the British atomic expert, is expected to leave Adelaide by air for Woomera today to direct final preparations for the forthcoming atomic explosions at the range. Scores of scientists have already gathered at the test site, the Herald reported. Last night the Minister for Supply, Mr H. Beale, said that the bombs would be exploded only when meteorological conditions were completely safe. Locomotive derailed Wooden props were used to support a locomotive which was derailed and almost crashed on to the road near Auburn railway station yesterday. The locomotive, which was hauling a railway workers special, jumped a set of points. Train services were disrupted for eight hours until two oclock, and passengers travelling from Liverpool, Parramatta, Granville and Auburn were provided with bus transport. Meat shortage The NSW Education Department only began an audit of school classrooms last week more than two weeks after it announced its back-to-school plan and has not placed an order for any air purification devices despite conceding they may be necessary for some indoor spaces when students return next month. Department secretary Georgina Harrisson and chief executive of School Infrastructure NSW Anthony Manning said natural ventilation through windows remained the best way to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission in classrooms but admitted they did not yet know whether schools would need further measures. Education Department secretary Georgina Harrisson said the school ventilation audit began last week. Credit:Nick Moir The ventilation plan will be complete once the audit is complete. It is not simply open the windows. It is [to] audit and understand the need of each of our learning spaces, and respond to those needs specifically, Ms Harrisson told a parliamentary inquiry into the states COVID-19 response on Thursday. Deputy secretary Ruth Owen had previously said that no one with any scientific or medical qualifications showed evidence that air purifiers or filters would help with ventilation any more than windows; a claim which was disputed by science group OzSAGE. People in their 20s and 30s are pushing NSW closer to reopening as they come forward for second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in droves. In the week ending Tuesday, roughly one in 10 people aged between 16 and 39 in the state completed their vaccination against COVID-19, federal government data shows. The group would have included many who received the Pfizer vaccine, as well as others who followed national vaccine advisory group ATAGIs advice to bring forward second AstraZeneca shots to four to eight weeks after the first due to the states ongoing outbreak. It was something we have been recommending from June and July, but certainly the reopening has become an incentive for younger people who are only coming to the party later to bring their doses forward, said Royal Australian College of GPs NSW/ACT chair Charlotte Hespe. Plans to ditch the New Years Eve family fireworks could be reversed after the NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the multimillion-dollar celebration on Sydney Harbour should go ahead if it can be held safely. The City of Sydney Council attracted criticism after it emerged the council planned to replicate last years celebrations and scrap the 9pm fireworks, despite the states scheduled reopening in October. Fireworks on Sydney Harbour during last years truncated New Years Eve display at midnight. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer The council had resumed responsibility for this years event after the state government took over planning for the celebrations in 2020, and planned for the midnight fireworks to go ahead. Mr Perrottet said on Thursday the government would explore options for developing a COVID-safe plan to hold the traditional New Years Eve fireworks in the heart of Sydney. A serving senior officer said Mr Duttons interventions had been highly destructive of the chain of command and showed the Defence Minister had no faith in General Campbells reform package. A former defence service branch chief said Mr Duttons undermining of General Campbell was breathtaking. The process is doing even more to damage the leadership, of a level I cant recall, the ex-general said. This [ministerial intervention] might be legal but it stretches or contravenes the civil-control-of-the-military conventions. Head of the Australian Defence Association Neil James Another retired senior officer blamed the federal governments sensitivity about voter or veterans community backlash for Mr Duttons actions. He questioned if General Campbell had been silenced, adding, I am told it is Dutton who wants to do all the talking. Another serving senior officer said Chief of Defence and the Chief of Army now have no credibility that is what Dutton has done to them. In a rare public statement, General Campbell addressed the controversy by saying he had worked for a number of ministers and all, including Mr Dutton, treated me professionally, and with courtesy and respect. General Campbells statement did not address the issue of his reforms being ditched. Mr Dutton said: I wont always agree with every decision General Campbell makes. If there is a decision I disagree with and I believe its in the national interest to change that decision, and where I have the power to do so, I will do so. Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen That doesnt undermine General Campbell, it means Im doing the job Im paid to do. And I am held to account through the Parliament, as it should be, he said. He also expressed total confidence in General Campbell and in his capacity to lead reform post-Brereton. However, the executive director of the Australia Defence Association, Neil James, who is also considered in military circles to be close to senior defence figures, disputed Mr Duttons assertion that it was appropriate for the defence minister to overturn decisions made by the defence force chief. The ADA disagrees with the minister overriding several Chief of Defence Force command decisions designed to preserve the professional and moral accountability of ADF units and ADF personnel, such as the revocation of meritorious unit citations and the institution of joint-selection training for SF units. This [ministerial intervention] might be legal but it stretches or contravenes the civil-control-of-the-military conventions, Mr James said. Loading The job of ministers is ... not to hamper him [General Campbell] by overriding command decisions that cut to the quick of the serious lapses in military professionalism that led to systemic war crimes. One senior serving officer said rather than deferring to General Campbell, Army Chief Rick Burr or Special Operations Commander Australia, Paul Kenny, Mr Dutton had turned to assistant minister Andrew Hastie for advice. Mr Hastie, a former SAS captain and Afghanistan veteran, was the first prominent political voice to urge the public and military to support the Brereton inquiry, which in November referred 19 former SAS soldiers to the federal police for the alleged involvement in the execution of up to 39 Afghans. Mr Hastie has also stood against the claim in sections of the tabloid media and veterans community that war crimes and prisoner executions were acceptable, arguing instead that perpetrators must be held to account via the legal system. But Mr Hastie has also played a key role in overturning the recommendation from former special forces commander Adam Findlay to change the way special forces soldiers are recruited and is seen by the military top brass as more influential than they are. Loading Mr Findlay recommended a new recruitment process which would have put the second branch of the special forces, the Commandos, on an equal footing as the SAS in order to stamp out what Justice Brereton identified as a poisonous culture of elitism and competitiveness in special forces ranks. But Mr Hastie has publicly argued that the SAS should retain its unique character, albeit with greater oversight, and scrapped the recruitment reform while adding an additional layer of SAS oversight by giving a more senior officer responsible for the elite unit. Defenders of Mr Duttons approach, including senior politicians, have accused General Campbell of failing to assert himself by consistently making the case for his reform package. General Campbell has been silent since his November press conference to announce the Brereton inquirys shocking findings and sweeping reforms. Mr Duttons supporters, also speaking anonymously, say General Campbell has failed to display moral leadership by not penalising the most senior commanders in charge of the special forces during the most disgraceful period in its history. Loading A senior military observer has also attacked General Campbell and army chief Rick Burr for the armys botched recent attempted sacking of relatively junior SAS soldiers. In his war crimes report in November, Justice Brereton cautioned against sacking war-crimes accused, saying it may be preferable to allow the federal police to complete still-ongoing inquiries into the men. The AFP, backed by the Office of Special Investigations, is investigating 19 former SAS soldiers based on Justice Breretons detailed findings about their alleged conduct. A Queensland police officer will face court for alleged misconduct in public office after a border breach involving a family member at the NSW state line last week. The 55-year-old male senior constable was suspended earlier this week after reports emerged he allegedly travelled to a Gold Coast border checkpoint on September 15 as his daughter was trying to cross from NSW without a valid pass. Queensland police officers stopping cars at the Griffith Street border checkpoint in Coolangatta last month. (File image) Credit:Chris Hyde - Getty Images She is accused of illegally entering Queensland on that date, in breach of the Chief Health Officers border directions, police later confirmed. The 20-year-old, believed to work in NSW but originally from Queensland, has been issued a $4135 fined and placed in hotel quarantine. Ethical standards command had been tasked with investigating the matter, with a police statement on Thursday morning stating the senior constable, from the road policing and regional support unit, had been issued a notice to appear for the alleged offence of misconduct in relation to public office. I believe, and all the vice chancellors here, believe that were here to transform students to give them a place in society, to make them good citizens, to get them good jobs, we want to make them rounded individuals, he said. Thats nothing to do with intake. The good thing about universities in Western Australia is that they have a diversity of culture. There are students who want to go to ECU who wouldnt think of going to UWA, Professor Chapman said, and the idea of a homogenous, one-culture university in WA was appalling. Professor Chapman said a way to cater further to students needs was moving towards year-round campuses. With travel restrictions and an increase in online tertiary education, WA universities are having to compete more than ever before for students from around the world. But Murdoch vice chancellor Romy Lawson said international students still wanted to come to Australia and New Zealand particularly WA and universities were diversifying their offerings to cater to those who had to remain overseas for the time being. Loading Were getting 60 per cent of our international students opting to start their courses online rather than defer, which is quite encouraging, she said. Weve opened opportunities to students to start your degree in Singapore and finish it in Australia, or start it in Singapore and do the middle bit in Dubai and finish it in Australia, and that is such a rich experience that we can offer to international students. Curtin vice chancellor Harlene Hayne said the university currently had more international students studying at one of its four campuses around the world than in Australia. The reason for that is students dont actually necessarily want to study online, they want to come and study with their peers, she said. WA universities have taken a financial hit as a result of the COVID pandemic, due mainly to a loss of international students, but the panel did not think finding ways to commercialise their research was a tangible solution. We need to start ranking unis by the quality of the education that they produce, rather than their economic contribution Curtin vice chancellor Harlene Hayne Professor Hayne said while there were examples around the world where universities had discovered a piece of technology or had a great piece of intellectual property they had been able to generate income from, those were few and far between. She said the university was a school and its research should be done in the service of educating students rather than creating material to keep the business going. We need to start ranking and considering our universities on the basis of the quality of the education that they produce, rather than all these other markers that are tied to their economic contribution, Professor Hayne said. Loading While the last two years had been tough for all universities, Professor Chapman said there had been plenty of positives, especially when it came to culture. Culture at our university has improved because of COVID, he said. The critical thing for keeping that culture was clear communication to staff and not hiding the scale of the issue. Addressing the 15,000 jobs lost in the sector, Professor Hayne said everyone did what they had to do to balance the books, however it wasnt sustainable much longer. The federal government should reveal the full list of big companies that gained help from the $88 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy, according to a clear majority of Australians who want to know the amounts paid out of taxpayer funds. An exclusive survey shows that 68 per cent of voters support calls on the Australian Taxation Office to reveal the top 10,000 companies and the amounts they received after a political storm over wasted payments to people who did not need help. A majority of Australian voters surveyed want the top JobKeeper recipients revealed. Credit:Fairfax Media Only 8 per cent of voters oppose the disclosure while another 24 per cent are unsure, as the Senate prepares for a debate within weeks on whether to force tax officials to obey a formal order to release the employer names and payments. ATO commissioner Chris Jordan has declined a Senate order to produce the documents on the grounds he cannot release confidential tax information, but independent Senator Rex Patrick is insisting that taxpayers deserve to know where the funds went. Nobody needs an angry gang of protesters to tell them that tempers are fraying in big parts of the country as Australians suffer through lockdowns and wait, grimly, for their political leaders to take them out of a tunnel with a very small light at a very distant end. The mob on the streets of Melbourne, occupying the Shrine of Remembrance to claim to fight for freedom, is only the extreme sign of the fury felt by many who obey the law behind a locked front door. Stuck in their households, subject to extraordinary powers that make so much of ordinary life a crime, many Australians are worn out by 18 months of pandemic rule and can easily turn their resentment on those who run the show. Police clash with protestors at the Shrine on Wednesday. Credit:Jason South Which means the next leader to face the people might want to be careful. Some of Scott Morrisons colleagues believe the Prime Minister is in for a shock when he calls the election and voters get a way to vent their anger. He cannot delay this date any later than May. The only state leader to face the same reckoning around the same time will be South Australian Premier Steven Marshall on March 19. Liberals who used to dream of a crushing victory across federal seats in NSW and Queensland are now much gloomier about their prospects. Queenslands mandatory COVID contact tracing app has malfunctioned, with users unable to check in to businesses and office buildings. The Check In Queensland App displayed an error message on Thursday morning. Attempts to use the state governments official Check In Queensland app on Thursday morning returned an error message, complete with a big thumbs-down image: The QR code entered did not return a registered business location. Please try again. Users on iPhones and Android systems reported the app did not recognise businesses and entering the code manually crashed the app. The Queensland government mandated the use of its contact-tracing app for pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants from May, arguing it was a vital tool for authorities in quickly quashing any outbreaks. Liberal leader David Honey says the highest law officer in the state, Attorney-General John Quigley, has no wriggle room as pressure mounts over his decision to hitch a lift on Perth businessman John Poyntons helicopter in December. The opposition turned up the heat on Mr Quigley in estimates hearings on Thursday for accepting the flight to former federal Labor member for Perth Tim Hammonds birthday party in Yallingup. WA Attorney General John Quigley. Credit:Philip Gostelow The flight was not declared by Mr Quigley and took place two months after Mr Poynton, a former Crown director, appeared before the NSW Crown inquiry, which ultimately made no adverse findings against his conduct while on the Crown board. The ministerial code of conduct states that ministers should declare gifts such as free flights, but a loophole is provided for gifts from family members or personal friends. When the villagers left the Shengsi Islands in the early 1990s, Chinas property market was at the start of a boom that would last until this year. The old villages were giving way to the towering blocks of concrete that would become synonymous with the countrys rapid economic rise. Houtouwan Village on the Shengsi Islands. Credit:Sanghee Liu The fishermen and women of the islands off the coast of Shanghai only received four hours of electricity for the first time in 1979. But two decades later many of their homes would be abandoned. Thousands had left in the hope of joining the apartment, school and job surge that had taken hold of the mainland. My father was a fisherman, but he only had a small boat, said 59-year-old Wang Shuier, who left her village of Houtouwan in the 1990s but still lives nearby. Cherbourg: If Australia did - as Paris claims - stab France in the back by axing a $90 billion defence contract, nowhere is the pain felt more acutely than in Cherbourg. The coastal city is home to the enormous shipyards where Australias new fleet of 12 submarines were being designed, and work was well underway before Prime Minister Scott Morrison killed what locals called the contract of the century last week. French President Emmanuel Macron inspects a new nuclear submarine at the Cherbourg shipyard in 2019. Credit:AFP The future of the 650 French people working on the project for the state-owned Naval Group is now in doubt, as are dozens of jobs in subcontracted private firms, making the Morrison government public enemy number one in this proud industrial city of 80,000. Australia lied to us and now we have to pay for that, said Sophie Laurent, a cafe worker. We will not forget this. London: Britains Foreign Office has warned a British parliamentarian as well as a trio of prominent human rights campaigners against travelling to more than 50 countries that have extradition treaties with China after being named in a Hong Kong security case. Sources not free to talk on the record have confirmed to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that Lord David Alton, who has been pushing Boris Johnsons government to adopt a tougher China policy, was told by senior Foreign Office officials that he needed to consider the implications of travelling to third countries that could send them to China. Bill Browder led the push for the US Magnitsky Act. Credit:Bloomberg Officials also warned human rights campaigner Bill Browder and Luke de Pulford, co-ordinator of the Inter-parliamentary Alliance (IPAC), as well as the British Hong Kong activist Jack Hazlewood. They were warned because they had been named in court documents as communicating with 30-year-old activist Andy Li, who was arrested trying to flee Hong Kong for Taiwan in August last year. Washington: Beginning more than a millennium ago, intrepid seafarers traversed vast Pacific Ocean expanses in double-hulled sailing canoes to reach the far-flung islands of Polynesia, the planets last habitable region to be settled by people. The area was settled in a series of extraordinary voyages across an ocean spanning one third of the Earth and several centuries, but the sequences of islands settled remain unknown and their timings disputed. Now a genetic study has deciphered the timed sequence of this settlement, with Samoa as the starting point while Rapa Nui, also called Easter Island, among the last to be reached. Moais at the Easter Island, a territory of Chile. Moais are human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people in rock. Credit:iStock Many of the distances were immense, said Stanford University computational geneticist Alexander Ioannidis, lead author of the research published in Nature on Wednesday. At the moment, the PMs of the former Netherlands Antilles, so-called autonomous islands or countries attend the 76th UN GA while their islands governments and parliaments are subordinated to the Dutch PM Ruttes government power. The Dutch Kingdom State Secretary Mr Knops, who forced them Curacao, Aruba, and St Maarten (CAS-islands)- to surrender and sign away more of the already limited autonomy they possessed, which was already below the minimum UN and International law standards, in order to get COVID-19 aid. The question is if their participation is voluntary or under Dutch duress for Dutch propaganda? Will they participate in high-level meetings and lobby for the Sustainable Development Goals and SIDS UN funds under Dutch duress? Are the four prime ministers at equal level? Which PM is head of the Kingdom delegation to the UN General Assembly? Who will speak at the podium - a prime minister, a Kingdom minister, the ambassador to the UN, the PM of Curacao, Aruba or St Maarten? The main question is if these PMs will expose and denounce to the GA and the world the Dutch aggression and violations committed to the Caribbean peoples of the Kingdom. Will they tell the UN and world the truth? Hypocrisy at the highest is that the Dutch Prime Minister Rutte attending is not the new official government of Holland as the Dutch elections were held in March 2021, and up to now they have not been able to form a government. Especially as this process is mainly undermined by exploded racism/discrimination/corruption scandals victimizing the same Caribbean peoples that are misrepresented at the UN by this Dutch propaganda. Furthermore, how is it possible that the CERD Committee recently accused the Dutch government of human rights violations and seriously and heavily questioned the same Dutch PM government who forced the agreement on COHO and the continuation of Dutch colonialism on the Caribbean peoples of the Kingdom while these Caribbean PMs attend the Dutch-UN-show. Are they not committing treason to their own peoples? Will the SDG 2030 and SIDS funds lobbying campaign by the subordinated Caribbean PMs not be used in the same strategy as with MDG UN poverty eradication funds that the Dutch used successfully to bait, divide, and destroy the Netherlands Antilles? Will these so-called autonomous islands not undergo the same fate as Bonaire, believing that by surrendering their autonomy they will receive these SDG funds? As up to today, the Bonaire people did not receive any MDG poverty-eradication funding. This is in sharp contrast to the promises made at the 10-10-10 illegal annexation of Bonaire which has led to more poverty than ever before: 3 food-banks emerged under Dutch rule; the locals have to work two to three jobs to survive, and more than 50% off the population lives under the poverty line. Dutch standard: same plan, same results for the CAS-islands? Finally, the most serious threat to our islands re-listing trajectory is that their presence at the UN as "Prime Ministers" of the 'semi-autonomous countries 'countries (which are not independent) can confuse some independent States -especially when the issue of re-inscription on the UN list for these same autonomous countries is raised - at the UN. This could seriously jeopardize the legitimate rights of our peoples to be protected as a NSGT under UN scrutiny, where Holland will have the obligation to report annually to the UN in compliance to article 73. This will be another critical moment where the PMs of our Caribbean peoples will have to make a historical choice. Will they under Dutch duress side with the colonial oppressor and betray our peoples once more as was the case at the 1955 at the 10th UN GA? Foundation Nos Ke Boneiru Bek Bonaire Human Rights Organization Decolonization Chapter Former Netherlands Antilles CC United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Manuel de Oliveira Guterres The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Parliament and Government of the Netherlands Parliament of Curacao Parliament of Aruba Parliament of St Maarten Caricom COPPPAL Parlatino CELAC Global African Congress Facts on continuation of Dutch colonialism in the Caribbean Curacao-Aruba-St Maarten- Bonaire- St Eustatius: Curacao: the Curacao prime-minister and parliament are under an undemocratic budgetary financial supervision and remain under heavy threat of intervention by The Hague, are subordinated to Kingdom Acts, and recently due to the COVID-19 crisis, they were blackmailed to sign away more autonomy and be subordinated to an undemocratic Dutch entity (COHO), which possesses powers to control all aspects of the islands. In other words, back to colonial rule in a modern jacket. Aruba: the Aruba prime-minister and parliament are currently under an undemocratic budgetary financial supervision and were, like Curacao, are subordinated to Kingdom Acts and recently due to Covid-19 crisis aid blackmailed to sign and surrender more autonomy, subordinating of their government under an undemocratic Dutch institution (COHO), which possesses powers to control all aspects of the islands. In other words, back to colonial rule in a modern jacket. St Maarten: St Maarten prime minister and parliament are currently under undemocratic budgetary control and government are steered by The Hague. And subordinated to Kingdom Acts. The Dutch abused the post-hurricane Irma chaos, the need for financial aid for the reconstruction, and recently the COVID-19 crisis with a cynical quid-pro-quo attitude to put the St. Maarten parliament under duress and blackmailed it after some resistance to sign an illegal COHO agreement, subordinating their democracy under this undemocratic Dutch institution. Bonaire: the Bonaire people are being ruled in a colonial status against their wishes. They democratically and legally rejected that status, but still more pressing is the ongoing systematic process: a new settlers/colonization drive started with an open-immigration policy without restrictions to all European Dutch and with no possibility to be addressed or stopped. The destitution and eradication of our people is completed as we are reduced to a minority group on our own island in the short space of time since the open immigration and illegal annexation on October 10, 2010, and were embedded under unequal rights in the Dutch Constitution in October 2017 St Eustatius: same situation as Bonaire and furthermore on the undemocratic unilateral action and intervention of the Dutch in Sint Eustatius in February 2018 consisting in the removal and overthrow of the legitimate elected democratic governance through abuse of legislative power with the police and military force on standby. This was followed by the appointment of non-democratic colonial rulers ruling the Statian people and holding farce-elections in 2020 as the democratically elected leaders possess no decision and executive powers and remains under Dutch-colonial-rule THE HAGUE:--- On Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021, the Honorable Minister of Justice Anna E. Richardson along with her support staff met with the Mayor of Leiden Henri Lenferink, the District Chief of Police Marieke Bosch, and the Public Prosecutor Fleur Simonis. The meeting was arranged for Minister Richardson to gain an understanding of how the "triangle" meeting also known as the "driehoeksoverleg", functions in the Netherlands. In Leiden, the triangle meeting is held once a month to discuss issues that are impacting the municipality. In Sint Maarten, the meetings were agreed to be held quarterly. One of the positive aspects of Minister Richardsons work visit to the Netherlands is gaining more insight into the way certain structures are intended to function and how beneficial these meetings can be once utilized in the correct structure and manner. During the meeting mayor, Lenferink stated to which Minister Richardson agreed that: "Safety and security are all about collaboration with all organizations involved that contribute to a positive result". Mayor Lenferink explained that the triangle operates from a safety plan which is developed and agreed upon by majors of cities who also hold meetings with stakeholders in the community. This sort of systematic approach differs from that of Sint Maarten as those discussions are mostly based on the topics that have been placed on the agenda for that meeting and are then discussed amongst the Minister of Justice, the Prosecutor, and the Chief of Police. Though it is recognized that our structures differ due to geographical size, Minister Richardson believes that adapting an approach with a safety plan as the point of departure and applying it in Sint Maarten can contribute positively to the current situation. Thereafter Minister Richardson met with the Mayor of Leidschendam-Voorburg, Mr. Jules Bijles, where they discussed public safety and security matters. Mayor Bijles explained the structures and procedures of his organization and gave a presentation that specifically delved into the assistance of the municipality community officers. The Municipality Community Officers can be seen as equivalent to Sint Maartens Community Police Officers (CPO). These are BAVPOLers and take on minor offenses and tasks such as supervising public areas, offering fines, and so on. Recognizing the plus of the CPOs, Minister Richardson sees a great opportunity to increase the number of this division with the aim to outfit our schools and school districts for heightened law enforcement presence and quicker action. We recognize strategies used by those who wish to continue with negative behavior such as assaulting other students and more. As such, efforts will be made to heighten and tighten every area possible, stated Minister Richardson Upon Minister Richardsons return, this will be one of the prioritized agenda points that will be discussed with the Chief of Police, Public Prosecutor, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, schools boards, and other stakeholders as a plan of action to protect our students, faculty, staff, and communities. Finally, Minister Richardsons evening ended with a dinner hosted by members of the Progress Committee namely Mr. Nico Schoof and Mr. Michel Marijnen. The latter also invited the Mayor drs. Elizabeth Spies of Alphen aan de Rijn to the dinner, giving Minister Richardson an opportunity to dialogue with a third Mayor with over seven years in service. In conclusion, Minister Richardson experienced a full day of interaction with persons who have a vast amount of knowledge and experience when it comes to managing safety and security in their communities, working with the relevant authorities tasked to do so and who passionately hold interest to make a positive difference in the communities as Ministers Richardson also aims to do. Billionaire Jared Isaacman's privately chartered spaceflight launched on Sept. 15, 2021, becoming the first crewed orbital mission with no professional astronauts on board. The flight, dubbed "Inspiration4," was named to commemorate the four-person crew and their associated "pillars" of support for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee: leadership, hope, generosity and prosperity. Aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Resilience, Isaacman a self-described space geek who has accrued more than 6,000 hours piloting various aircraft was the commander of the flight. Joining him were physician assistant Hayley Arcenaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski, and geoscientist and science communication specialist Sian Proctor. Resilience and its four occupants circled Earth for three days, splashing down off the Florida coast on Sept. 18. The primary purposes of Inspiration4, according to the mission's official website, were to raise awareness and funds for St. Jude and to begin "a new era for human spaceflight and exploration." Inspiration4: SpaceX's historic private spaceflight in photos Who was behind Inspiration4? Inspiration4 was chartered by Jared Isaacman, billionaire CEO and founder of Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company that he established as a 16-year-old and which now handles billions of transactions each year. "Inspiration4 is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step toward a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars," Isaacman said in a statement . He recalls being in kindergarten at Wilson Elementary School in New Jersey looking at high-resolution picture books of the space shuttle, Space.com previously reported . "I did tell my kindergarten teacher I would go to space someday, and she said she'd be watching," Isaacman recalled. Isaacman holds several world records, including a speed-around-the-world flight that, according to the New Jersey Local News Service , raised money and awareness for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. In addition, he has flown in more than 100 airshows with the Black Diamond Jet Team, reported Business Wire . Each of those performances was dedicated to some charitable cause. Inspiration4 was motivated in part by Isaacman's effort to raise more than $200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a pediatric cancer research hospital that does not charge the families of children for their treatment. Isaacman pledged $100 million toward the cause out of his own pocket. "I've been very lucky in life; you really don't get to a position that I'm fortunate enough to be in without the ball bouncing your way a couple times," said Isaacman in an interview with Space.com . "These families [at St. Jude] were dealt horrible hands. They're going through what no one should ever have to go through. It's immense heartache, and the sad part is many of those kids will not grow up to have any of the experiences that I've been lucky enough to have in life. We've just got to do something about that." How was the crew chosen for Inspiration4? Inspiration4 mission crew members (from left) Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski pose at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, March 29, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX) Isaacman, who commanded the mission, donated the remaining three seats of his four-person flight to sponsor St. Jude. The first crewmember to join him was Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St. Jude in Memphis who, as a child, also received treatment for bone cancer from the same organization. She was chosen to join the crew by St. Jude, and according to the New York Times became the first person with a prosthetic body part to go to space, as during her treatment she received metal rods to replace parts of bones in her left leg. She was also one of the youngest people to go to space and the youngest American to do so, edging out pioneering astronaut Sally Ride by just a few years. Arceneaux served as medical officer for the flight. Related: Childhood bone cancer survivor joins private Inspiration4 spaceflight on SpaceX rocket The remaining two seats were given away in two different competitions. Chris Sembroski, 41, is a data engineer and long-time space enthusiast who once worked as a counselor at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. His seat was up for grabs in a fundraiser sweepstakes meant to support St. Jude, but while Sembroski entered the competition, an unnamed friend actually won. The friend then offered the seat to Sembroski, recalling his avid interest in spaceflight and astronomy, Space.com previously reported. Sembroski served as mission specialist, and according to a press release , helped manage "payload, science experiments, communications to mission control and more." Proctor, 51, a geology and planetary science professor and science communication specialist, was awarded her seat as winner of the Shift4Shop competition. The contest asked entrants to set up an e-commerce site using a platform owned by Isaacmans company, Shift4 Payments. As part of the contest, Proctor, 51, also recorded a video sharing her "inspirational entrepreneurial story" and why her business "should be elevated to the stars." Proctor's "Space2Inspire" shop offered postcards and prints of her AfronautSpace art, which she uses to encourage conversations about women of color in the space industry. Long interested in spaceflight, Proctor was a finalist for the 2009 NASA astronaut selection and has participated in four analog space missions, including a NASA-funded four-month "Mars mission" at the Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) Habitat. Proctor was pilot of the Inspiration4 mission. How did the Inspiration4 crew train for their trip to space? Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman commanded a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceflight in September 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX) While government astronauts typically spend at least two years getting ready for a space station flight, Inspiration4's training timeline was much shorter. Their mission was shorter than most of those undertaken by professional astronauts (just three days in orbit, while many stays on the ISS are now six months or longer) and the team had no need for training in space station systems or spacewalks. Still, Isaacman has said in previous reporting from Space.com , training for Inspiration4 drew upon the "NASA-approved curriculum" to get the new astronauts ready for spaceflight. In April, the Inspiration4 crew completed their first centrifuge training, according to a press release . Among many other physical trials, that training was meant to prepare astronauts for the gravitational forces they were subjected to during launch, and re-entry. Isaacman also carried on NASA's tradition of putting astronauts into isolated, challenging environments before flight, bringing his crew into the mountains. "It will get us all super uncomfortable and [in] close quarters and hopefully in snowy conditions, because I definitely want to make sure we all get along really well under those circumstances here on Earth before we go off in space together," he said in a previous interview with Space.com. Overall, the Inspiration4 crew endured about six months of training, some of which was held at SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles, leading up to the September 2021 launch. What was the flight like? The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Inspiration4 crew launches atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Sept. 15, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX via Twitter) The crew launched on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket inside a Dragon capsule , the same type of spacecraft used to fly astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station on Demo-2, the first private crewed mission in history. The capsule itself was a slightly retooled reuse of the Crew Dragon Resilience, the craft that brought Crew-1 astronauts to the International Space Station in November 2020 as part of the first fully operational private crewed mission to the ISS. (Demo-2 was a test flight, as its name suggests.) Resilience gained a new domed window for Inspiration4, offering the crewmembers 360-degree views. "Probably most 'in space' you could possibly feel by being in a glass dome," tweeted SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The window replaced the equipment that allowed the capsule to dock with the space station on Crew-1, since the Inspiration4 flight remained independently in orbit. Resilience and its crew circled Earth solo for three days, zooming about 367 miles (590 kilometers) above our planet. That's higher than any Crew Dragon had ever gone before, and significantly higher than the International Space Station, which orbits at an average altitude of 250 miles (400 km). While in orbit, Isaacman and his colleagues recorded a variety of biometric data and collected samples, in an effort to help scientists better understand how spaceflight affects the human body. The spaceflyers also made some calls down to Earth, including one chat with patients at St. Jude. The crewmembers spent a lot of time looking out the cupola window at our gorgeous planet. In addition, Sembroski strummed some tunes on the ukelele he brought along and Proctor produced some art, including a drawing of a dragon carrying Crew Dragon to space. The Inspiration4 crew enjoyed a diverse menu, munching on pizza, Mediterranean lamb, pasta bolognese, sandwiches and a variety of snacks. All the food was cold, a limitation that Musk promised to remedy for future flights. The billionaire entrepreneur also vowed to improve Crew Dragon's toilet, which featured a great view it was right under the cupola but apparently didn't work entirely as planned. Such hiccups didn't detract significantly from the overall experience, which all four crewmembers said was life-altering. "Each of us [has] been changed in a way that maybe we didn't expect," Sembroski told NBC News' Lester Holt in an interview that aired Sept. 20. "For me, it was being able to see the Earth in a way that made me realize there is so much to see in person. I need to go and find those places and explore more." Why SpaceX? The Inspiration4 crew placed a video call to Earth on Sept. 17, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX) When weighing his space tourism options, Isaacman said, "there was no question it was going to be SpaceX," as Crew Dragon was already flying crewed missions to the International Space Station for NASA. "They're leading the path," he said. Isaacman said he was proud to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon for this mission, because he believes Musk's company "reinvigorated the world's interest in space" following the end of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011. The shuttle ferried hundreds of astronauts to space between 1981 and its 2011 retirement. After that, the next crewed mission to Earth orbit that launched from the United States was SpaceX's Demo-2 mission in May 2020. In a teleconference announcing Inspiration4 , Musk said that he believes the mission is "an important milestone towards enabling access to space for everyone." Isaacman paid SpaceX an unspecified amount for the flight, but USA Today speculated a cost of "easily at least tens of millions of dollars." "At first, things are very expensive," Musk noted, "and it's only through missions like this that we're able to bring the costs down over time and make space accessible to all." What records did the Inspiration4 flight set? Inspiration4's major claim to fame was to be the "World's First All-Civilian Mission to Space," according to the mission website. What does that mean? None of the four participants are professional astronauts. In the past, most space travelers have been government-employed and trained civilians or members of the military. Some tourists have also made their way to space, but previously only under the supervision of professionals associated with a government agency like NASA or its European, Russian or Japanese counterparts, ESA , Roscosmos and JAXA . The crew of Inspiration4 received commercial astronaut training and became the first people to complete an orbital spaceflight with no direct government agency oversight. Leslie Bibb (Jupiters Legacy) has been tapped as the female lead opposite Keegan-Michael Key and Johnny Knoxville in Reboot, Hulus comedy pilot from Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan. Also cast in the project are Rachel Bloom, in her return to series television after her starring turn on her CW series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Michael McKean and Krista Marie Yu.In Reboot, when Hulu reboots an early-2000s family sitcom, its dysfunctional cast is forced back together and now must deal with their unresolved issues in todays fast-changing world.Calum Worthy also stars.Bibb plays Bree, a former pageant girl from rural Virginia turned sitcom star who left the country after the show to marry a prince. Marcus Rashford could make his return from a shoulder operation in Manchester United's Premier League clash with Leicester City on October 16. Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has suggested that Marcus Rashford could make his return from a shoulder operation in the Premier League clash with Leicester City on October 16. The attacker underwent surgery on a long-standing shoulder issue over the summer and has not yet been involved for the Red Devils during the 2021-22 campaign. Rashford has recently been pictured in training, and there had been claims that the England international would be available for selection before the international break. However, Solskjaer told Man United's official website that the 23-year-old attacker is unlikely to return until after the next set of international fixtures in October. The Red Devils have three home matches against Aston Villa, Villarreal and Everton before returning to the field on October 16 with a trip to the King Power Stadium to take on Leicester. Rashford, who featured for his country at Euro 2020 despite his injury issues, scored 21 goals and registered 15 assists in 57 appearances for Man United last term. SOPA Images | Getty Images A bunch of new restaurants will soon be opening at the new Kansas City International Airport terminal -- but Chick-fil-A might not be among them. According to 41 KSHB Kansas City, Vantage Airport Group informed the city council Wednesday that the chicken chain has been removed from its list of proposed restaurants. Thinking of a local and national market is no longer enough. To achieve the survival and growth of your small and medium-sized company (SME) you should think about entering new markets. This will allow you to: maintain the operation of your business model, preserve and generate new sources of employment. Selling in Mexico represents an opportunity to reach 130 million inhabitants while selling worldwide increases the potential to 7 billion , highlights Fernando Jimenez Riveroll, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at DHL Express Mexico. Aware of the importance of SMEs entering international trade in a professional manner, COPARMEX CDMX and DHL Express signed a collaboration agreement. Thus, with the support of the UNAM, small and medium-sized companies will be provided with the tools, skills and capacities that contribute to the development of new alternatives with a vision towards new international markets. Depositphotos.com The training will be carried out through the 30-hour self-managed online course Prepare your SME for Export: Induction to International Trade , aimed at SMEs associated with COPARMEX CDMX. This online course will be carried out through the MOODLE platform of the Faculty of Accounting and Administration with a duration of six weeks (suggesting one hour of study per day), with materials available 24 X 7 prepared by specialists in the field. Upon completion and approval of the course, participants will receive a certificate with curricular value issued by the UNAM . The course was developed with the collaboration of the following entities of the UNAM: Coordination of Linkage and Technology Transfer (CVTT); Faculty of Accounting and Administration (FCA), through the National Center for Support to Small and Medium Enterprises (CENAPYME) and its Continuing Education Division (DEC-FCA); as well as the Center for Continuing Education of the Faculty of Higher Studies Acatlan (FES Acatlan). As a business center, we have the mission of contributing to the establishment of conditions for the prosperity of all Mexicans that fosters growing social cohesion and for companies to develop, multiply and fulfill their function of creating employment and wealth with social responsibility. We are very happy to collaborate with DHL Express Mexico, so that, through UNAM, national entrepreneurs can be trained , Armando Zuniga, president of COPARMEX CDMX. Temary The following topics will be addressed in the course: Towards an Entrepreneurial Culture. The ABC of International Trade. Development of strategic tools for the internationalization of an SME. Messaging plays a very important role for SMEs to achieve a successful expansion of their business both in the national and international markets and they need a strategic partner that easily and reliably allows them to expand their business. Having a good, wide-ranging distribution arm such as DHL Express Mexico will help them reach customers in places where they cannot reach themselves. Depositphotos.com "The objective of this strategic alliance is to raise awareness in small and medium-sized entrepreneurs of the need for an Export Culture, who know the context, tools and fundamental concepts to expand their business as much as they want," said Jimenez Riveroll. For his part, Mtro. Francisco Martinez Garcia from CENAPYME of the FCA, pointed out: As a National center to support SMEs, in the last year we have developed initiatives that adapt to the needs of the environment, such as the Hospital for SMEs where we have impacted more than 14,000 business owners and entrepreneurs nationwide through training, specialized consulting services, videoconferences, and support materials, as well as the completion of the MiPYME Reinvention Forum and business incubation and acceleration programs. With this alliance with COPARMEX CDMX and DHL Express Mexico we endorse our contribution to the development of the country's SMEs . The course for SMEs will be marketed exclusively by COPARMEX CDMX and will cost: 5,000 pesos for the general public. DHL will grant 90% scholarships to its clients who wish to export, so the cost for them will be 500 pesos . The pre-registration link is at this link . Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved After almost a year and a half since the pandemic began, which brought various challenges and important changes to the country's economic sector, some Mexican startups have stood out for reinventing themselves and adapting to the new panorama of the world of work and, above all, for their growth, commitment and attraction of talent. In this context, LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network, presents for the third consecutive year in Mexico its list of Top Startups which, this year, is led by Fintechs and young e-commerce companies that have helped Mexicans to adapt to a new reality. Faced with a scenario in which consumers have sought to carry out each of their economic activities through remote schemes, the electronic commerce and financial services sectors have witnessed an accelerated boom, thus opening the way for the growth of companies seeking to satisfy the needs of people with innovative offerings that overcome the limitations of social distancing. In Mexico, Fintechs continue to record unprecedented figures, even with the obstacles of the pandemic, reflected in investments that exceeded 700 million dollars just last year, which is due to the growing need of users to be able to manage their activities financial at a distance. On the other hand, electronic commerce has witnessed enormous growth, in fact, according to the research firm, eMarketer, in 2020 more than 10.8 million consumers made their first online purchase in Latin America, and in Mexico this was translated into an expansion of more than 300% in two out of three ecommerce companies. Photo: Courtesy LinkedIn Taking into account the growth of its employees, the mutual commitment between the company and them, the interest shown by the vacancies published and the attraction of the best candidates, the 10 most prominent emerging companies in Mexico, in 2021, are: Kavak.com . Site specialized in buying and selling cars. Justo . Company dedicated to online supermarket service. Bitso. Platform for cryptocurrency transactions. Credited . Company that offers credit alternatives for SMEs. Minu . Financial services platform. Homie.mx . Company dedicated to the rental of real estate. Clara . Business expense management platform. Cocoa Paycard . Company focused on digital financial accounts. We load . Logistics services company. One three . Online phone recharge service. "The startups on this year's list are a clear example of how, despite the obstacles of the pandemic, Mexican companies continue to show their spirit of resilience by evolving and adapting to the new scenarios of today's world of work," said Rafael Kato, Editor-in-Chief for LinkedIn Latin America News. "The purpose of listings like this is to inspire the millions of companies in Mexico to grow and be a useful resource for professionals who want to take the next step in their careers by working in a startup," he concluded. How is the ranking done? The Top Startups methodology is based on data analysis conducted by the LinkedIn editorial team. From January to July 2020 they evaluated the behavior of more than 700 million members on LinkedIn focusing on four main areas: employee growth, the company's engagement with its employees, interest in job vacancies and attraction. of the best candidates. To be eligible, these companies must be seven years old or less, have at least 50 employees, be private, and be based in Mexico. A startup is considered to be an independent company not a current or former subsidiary of another company and privately owned, with 50 or more employees, founded seven years ago or less, based in the country in which it appears. Recruitment firms, think tanks, non-profit organizations, accelerators, philanthropies, venture capital firms, and state agencies are excluded. Neither are startups that had layoffs of 20% or more of their workforce between June 1, 2020 and June 20, 2021, when the methodology was applied. Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Social media has certainly played a role in the case of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old woman who went missing while on a cross-country road trip with her fiance, 23-year-old Brian Laundrie. Earlier this week, Petitos body was found in Wyoming, and authorities determined her death was a homicide. As the case continues to develop, Laundrie's whereabouts remain unknown. He was last seen by his parents in North Port, Florida on September 11. There were alleged reports swirling around that Laundrie had been spotted everywhere from other parts of Florida all the way to Alabama, with none confirmed. But the latest social media theory regarding activity on Laundries Instagram and Spotify accounts could be a major piece to the puzzle. Related: The Gabby Petito Case: How Social Media Completely Changed the Crime-Solving Landscape Many have been closely following Laundries Instagram account, @bizarre_design_ for activity, and a video started making its rounds on social media earlier this week that alleges Laundrie "accidentally" went live on Instagram. The video, which has made its rounds on TikTok and Twitter, shows what appears to be the person filming it on a boat in the middle of the water. Many suggested that the video could be a decoy in an attempt to throw off police and the public. Some are saying that #BrianLaundrie accidentally went live on Instagram for 2 seconds. Here is a still image taken from the video. Do the shoes look familiar to anyone?#GabbyPetito#BrianLaudrie pic.twitter.com/WRV78nr2kB Cheyenne W (@FalkorPhoenix) September 21, 2021 I doubt it was in accident, one user wrote. He did it to let us know he got away. Hes so smug that way. Multiple comments suggested that Laundrie was headed for Cuba, though others pointed out that if he really wanted to escape, he probably wouldnt keep his phone, because it could be used to track him. The alleged Instagram was not saved to Laundrie's account, and the video did not include a screenshot of Laundrie's handle attached to it, so it is undetermined as to whether or not the live video was actually from his account. Related: Brian Laundrie Still Missing as Gabby Petito's Death Pronounced a Homicide Perhaps another clearer clue that Laundrie (or someone with access to his logins) still has access to social media lies in his playlists portion of his Spotify account. One Twitter user discovered that Laundries account, Nomadic Statik, deleted the title of a playlist called Mtn tops on September 21, something that cannot be auto generated by the Spotify platform and has to be manually done. Ok guys what the fuck. The name on the Mtn Tops playlist on Nomadic Statik Spotify profile just disappeared. Literally right now as I was checking! #BrianLaundrie #gabypetito pic.twitter.com/OBzlPdAuvD Gerard (@gwayathat) September 22, 2021 On September 22, the same user noticed that the playlist van vibin had also been wiped from his account, and by early Thursday morning, another user noticed that all of Laundries playlist titles had been deleted along with photos of Petito that were used for the playlist covers. He just deleted the picture of gabby from the mellow yellow playlist, one user noticed on September 22. As of Thursday afternoon, both Laundries Instagram and Spotify accounts were public. Bug bites are better than being brainwashed by the media, his Instagram bio read at the time of this report. Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Just for a few seconds, Angela Edwards re-enacts a defining moment she had with her father more than 30 years ago. He was persistent, she was resistant. William E. Edwards was a bus driver and part-time cop in Stamford who wanted his daughter to revive bus tours of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for high school students. She launched the initiative in 1986 while working for CTE, then stopped organizing them as she moved on to other jobs. You need to go back and start doing the tour again, he suggested. Naah, I dont think so, she responded. Angela returns to the present to reflect. You know how young people are with their parents, she says. Then she flips back to her 1990 identity: Naah, Im good. He didnt stop asking. As hundreds who have taken the tours can testify, William Edwards won that argument. So Angela planned another bus trip for April 1991. And my dad died that March, she recalls. A month before I left. So he did not get to see it physically, but I know he is with me spiritually. Its been a long ride since Angela named the annual trip the William E. Edwards Academic College Tours (WEE-ACT) in honor of her father. A Sept. 24 gala and awards ceremony at the Stamford Marriott was planned as a 30-year anniversary celebration. I ask Angela to take me even further back, to when she was about to graduate from Stamford High School in 1974 and was considering colleges. Her dad did not go to college, and she was initially thrilled to be accepted by the University of Connecticut and University of Bridgeport. Then an opportunity came to take a church bus trip to visit Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. She had heard of HBCUs such as Morehouse College (which Martin Luther King, Jr. attended) and Howard University, but had never been to a campus. As she recalls those days, she sounds like a teenager again (a modern one at that). When I went on the (Shaw) campus, I was like, Oh my God! This is where I want to go. Im feeling this. She was thrilled to be accepted to Shaw. After another drive that fall, she arrived at the school with her parents. It hit a spot in my dads heart, she says. There were so many students who looked like me. And to look up and see professors that looked like me. And the president of a college ... Angela admits there have been times over the past three decades that she nearly ended the tradition for high schoolers. Among other things, she is not paid for the work. Then shes back on a campus, looking at bus mates and embracing the sensation of feeling like an incoming freshman again. A feeling of opportunity. A feeling of life pivoting. So I never stopped. The intention has never been simply to recruit high schoolers to one of the 107 HBUCs. Its to expose them to a variety of possibilities (hence the motto One Ride, Many Choices). The trip, which rotates colleges each spring, showcases large and small schools, urban and suburban. I ask Angela to make her typical pitch. She starts by asking about five-year goals, noting that I dont know is a common response. She asks about familiarity with HBUCs. The boilerplate answer is similar to her own as a teen. She mentions bold-faced names that graduated from the schools, the ones that dont require mention of a surname, such as Oprah, Common, Spike, Toni, Thurgood and Chadwick. She tosses in a few more history lessons, noting New Haven land around Yale University that might have become the nations first Black college, but they were told no because their property value might go down. That happened at a town meeting on Sept. 10, 1831. Michael Morand of Yales Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library delivered a compelling lecture on the topic with period documents earlier this month (see it on YouTube). Slavery was still legal at the time in Connecticut, which was slow among Northern states to abolish it. Angelas trips revisit the past to seize the present and change futures. She remains surrounded by her own history. I remind her the students of those first trips have lapped 50 years. As I tell them, You have caught up with me now. Regardless of age, she calls them my WEE-ACT babies. Three of her former charges asked her to be godmother to their own children. They arent all from Stamford. Students from as far away as Los Angeles have joined the tour. Atlanta parents sent their kids to meet the WEE-ACT group upon their arrival in Southern states. Those who come along for the ride are required to follow strict dress codes with the understanding they are on a business trip. That means the boys, who have caught up in numbers with the girls over the decades, do the tie thing. After skipping the tradition during the 2020 COVID crisis, they returned with a smaller group of 15 (down from about 50) in June. It was also the first trip since the deaths of two of WEE-ACTs biggest supporters: her mother, Peggy, and Jack Bryant, one of the states earliest prominent victims of the coronavirus. Bryant, former head of the Stamford NAACP and a Board of Education member, was WEE-ACTs vice president and male chaperone on the tour for 23 years. To honor him, she has created The Jack Bryant Community Award. It echoes her decision to name the organization 30 years ago after the man who wouldnt take Naah for an answer. I needed to do something to show my gratitude for his persistence, she says of the inspiration for WEE-ACT. Angela Edwards is pretty persistent as well. But then, she is her fathers daughter. John Breunig is editorial page editor of the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time. jbreunig@scni.com; twitter.com/johnbreunig. Limited $100 tickets are available for Fridays 6 p.m. gala at the Stamford Marriott. For more information, call Edwards at 203-570-2328. SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AP) Taking center stage in a prestigious Spanish film festival to receive a top career award, actor Johnny Depp presented himself as a victim of the "cancel culture" that, he said, has spread across the cinema industry. Depp was addressing questions on Wednesday by reporters at the San Sebastian International Film Festival about the loss of Hollywood's favor for new roles ever since his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, went public with allegations of domestic violence against him. A British judge last year found the allegations to be substantially correct. Its a very complex situation, this cancel-culture, or this instant rush to judgment based on essentially what amounts to polluted air, the 58-year-old actor responded. Its got so far out of hand that I can assure you, no one is safe. Not one of you, so long as someone is willing to say one thing." Female filmmakers and other groups had criticized the organizer's decision to distinguish Depp with the Donostia Award, the festival's highest honor, saying it tarnished the event's image and delivered the wrong message to victims of gender violence. Last year, Depp lost a libel case against a British newspaper that accused him of domestic violence, with the judge on the case ruling the allegations were substantially correct. In March, a British court refused Depp permission to appeal the ruling that he assaulted his former wife, Amber Heard, saying his attempt to overturn the decision had no real prospect of success. Depp is also suing Heard for $50 million in Virginia over a Washington Post op-ed essay that she wrote about domestic violence. The trial in that case was recently delayed until April 2022. Spains Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media, which has close links to the festival, said that awards should not be granted based only on professional or artistic achievements. What is the message that remains when men denounced for sexist violence are applauded, photographed on red carpets, surrounded by unconditional fans?" the association, known as CIMA, wrote in a Twitter thread in which it acknowledged the "complexity" of the issue. The actor, who played the famous Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean and leading roles in Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, spoke to reporters hours before the awards gala. The controversy emerged despite the festival's request for media questions to be constrained to Depps career. A press conference moderator blocked a question from a reporter about the CIMA's criticism. It takes one sentence, then theres no more ground, the carpet has been pulled," Depp said without mentioning Heard or the libel cases. Its not just me that its happened to. Its happened to a lot of people: women, men, children have suffered from various types of unpleasantries that sadly at a certain point they begin to think its normal, that its them. Its not," he said. The actor also talked about how the coronavirus pandemic has brought more people to watch movies on screens at homes rather than going to cinemas, which closed during lockdowns. The majority of the world went, You know, this aint bad. We can sit and watch this thing at home. We can cook some popcorn, as opposed to the idea of a guy who makes $700 a week and wants to take his wife and kids out to dinner and a movie on the weekend, which is a $200 deal. I think the Hollywood movie machine has a few design flaws they are just realizing." "Im glad I saw it coming, personally, he added. Asked about his views of the industry's health, particularly in the U.S., Depp said that Hollywood is certainly not what it was. The grudge matches, the pandemonium and chaos of cinematic release to streaming... It is a case of, No matter what, Im going to get mine." the actor said. "Thats where these people are coming from. They realize they are just as disposable as I am. Some even more. The San Sebastian International Film Festival, held in northern Spain, takes place Sept. 17-25 this year. Depp was scheduled to receive the award late on Wednesday in what is the actors third appearance at the event. French actress Marion Cotillard also received a Donostia Award last Friday, on the festival's opening day. __ Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report. LITCHFIELD White Memorial Conservation Centers 39th annual Family Nature Day returns to Litchfield from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Our annual celebration of Mother Nature is a must for folks of all ages, said Gerri Griswold, education director, in a statement. This long awaited 39th edition is chock full of the greatest presenters. Those presenters include Brian Bradley with free-flying hawks and falcons from Riverside Reptiles, visits from native turtles, Ferncroft Wildlife Rescue and their Opossum Ambassadors, and raptors with Horizon Wings Raptor Rehabilitation and Education Center. Vendors, local conservation organizations and many demonstrations and talks will be provided througout the day, as well as nature crafts for children, guided nature walks, wagon rides and an artisans market. An online silent auction opened in June. Tickets are $10 each. First prize is a trip to Iceland, donated by Krummi Travel, fron Jan. 2-7, 2022. The trip includes accommodation, breakfast and dinner daily, round trip airfare from Boston or New York, and transportation while in Iceland. Second prize is a 14-foot Mohawk Rheaume Cedar Canoe, paddles and life jackets. Third prize is a $500 LL Bean gift card. All proceeds from the raffle benefit programming expenses at the Conservation Center. Tickets can be purchased by calling 860-567-0857 and in person at the centers gift shop. Live music will be provided by Andes Manta. Food and refreshments will be avaialble for purchase. Admission is $6 for guests, free for members and children under 12. To learn more, visit https://whitememorialcc.org/ STAMFORD Artwork from 15 members of ARI of Connecticut returns to the Mayors Gallery for the first time since COVID-19 shut down live exhibits there. ARI (Always Reaching for Independence) is a nonprofit that aims to enrich the lives of people with disabilities. For nearly two decades, the ARI Artists Initiative has provided individuals a chance to express themselves through art. Founded by award-winning artist Donald Axleroad, the ARI Artists Initiative has showcased the work of nearly 30 artists in shows throughout the state. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two laws on Wednesday that aim to protect the privacy of abortion providers and their patients, declaring California to be a reproductive freedom state while drawing a sharp contrast with Texas and its efforts to limit the procedure. One law makes it a crime to film people within 100 feet (30 meters) of an abortion clinic for the purpose of intimidation a law abortion rights groups believe to be the first of its kind in the country. The other law makes it easier for people on their parents' insurance plans to keep sensitive medical information secret, including abortions. The laws, coupled with Newsom's comments, have only intensified the political rivalry between the nation's two most populous states. California and Texas have become bastions of their respective political ideologies, with each state carving out opposing positions on issues including health care, immigration and the environment. That rivalry has come into sharper focus recently with a new Texas law that bans abortions once a heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks and before some women know they are pregnant. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to let the law take effect for now, banning most abortions in the state. These are dark days. I don't think one can understate the consequential nature of the moment that we are living in, Newsom said. It becomes of outsized importance that California assert itself. It's already illegal in California to post personal information about abortion providers or their patients online. But that law hasn't been updated since the mid-2000s, before the proliferation of smart phones with high-tech cameras that can rapidly post to social media websites. The new law authored by state Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from Orinda, makes it a misdemeanor to film someone without their consent for the purpose of intimidation. Offenders can be punished by up to one year in a county jail, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. The law also requires extensive training for local law enforcement agencies on how to enforce it. Were upping the ante. Were saying in California we will not accept that our reproductive health care providers and patients be subject to threats both online and in person, Bauer-Kahan said. The Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative legal defense organization, opposed the bill. In a letter to lawmakers, the group said violence is outside the bounds of legitimate political discourse regardless of who perpetrates it. At the same time, spirited debate must not be punished or stifled by merely relabeling it as intimidating or threatening, based on the viewpoint of the speaker, the group wrote. Newsom also signed a law on Wednesday making it easier for people who are still on their parents' health plans to keep their medical treatment secret. State and federal law already provide privacy protections for people who are not the primary policyholder on a health insurance plan. But state Assemblyman David Chiu, a Democrat from San Francisco, said patients had to request that confidentiality, and the law has not been consistently enforced. This new law, authored by Chiu, requires insurance companies in California to automatically keep certain medical procedures confidential including abortions. Chiu said the bill is important now because the federal Affordable Care Act lets people stay on their parents' health insurance plans until age 26. This violation of privacy has put them in a terrible and, in some instances, an even dangerous position, Chiu said. If you're receiving sensitive health services, only you should get confidential communications about it. Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, said the bill should have distinguished between a 25-year-old on their parents' health plan and a 12-year-old. Parents should be consulted before their minor children are given life-altering medical treatment," he said. "It's deeply concerning that the Legislature and the governor continue to usurp parental authority. BANGKOK (AP) An Australian economist who was arrested when Myanmars military seized power in February made an appearance Thursday in a court in the capital Naypyitaw, where he will be tried for violation of the official secrets law, his lawyer said. Sean Turnell had been serving as an advisor to the countrys leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was also arrested when her elected government was ousted by the army. Suu Kyi and three of her former Cabinet ministers have also been charged under the law. Violating the official secrets law carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. The colonial-era statute criminalizes the possession, collection, recording, publishing, or sharing of state information that is directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy. The exact details of Turnells alleged offense and those of the others charged have not been made public, though Myanmar state television, citing government statements, has said the Australian academic had access to secret state financial information and had tried to flee the country. Ye Lin Aung, one of Turnells lawyers, said he is also being prosecuted under the immigration law and that he is being held at a prison in Naypyitaw. All the defendants except for Suu Kyi were present Thursday in the Dekkhina District Court in Naypyitaw. Suu Kyi appeared on a video link. They had been charged in Yangon in March, but the case was moved last week to the capital. Turnell and the others appeared haggard, said Khin Maung Zaw, one of Suu Kyis lawyers. Turnells lawyer Ye Lin Aung said he appeared to be in good health as far as he could tell, and that the defendants were all masked and not allowed to consult directly with their lawyers. The lawyers applied to the court for permission to meet with their clients, and were told to submit applications, said Khin Maung Zaw. The court scheduled hearings in the case to be held every Thursday. Suu Kyi is currently being tried in Naypyitaw on five other charges. The cases against her, lodged at the behest of the military-installed government, are widely seen as an effort to discredit Suu Kyi and prevent her from returning to politics. A Florida father of six who nearly died from complications arising from COVID-19 was saved after a doctor at a Hartford hospital heard about his case on CNN. Robby Walker tested positive for COVID-19 on July 9, his wife Susan Walker said Wednesday. His symptoms worsened to the point where a week later he was taken to the emergency room for a chest X-ray, where the family learned Walker had pneumonia in both of his lungs. Robby Walker was admitted to the emergency room July 18 and then was moved to an intensive care unit by the third day he was in the hospital, Susan Walker said. The disease blindsided the family, Susan Walker told CNN, also infecting other members along with Robby. The 52-year-old was not vaccinated against the disease, Susan Walker said. He was experiencing a lot of anxiety, she said, which doctors could not medicate because of his condition. On July 25, he called Susan Walker to tell her hed signed papers to be intubated and placed on a ventilator. Some patients succumb to the disease while on a ventilator, meaning their families never hear from them again. A little more than a week later, doctors told Susan Walker that her husband was not going to survive COVID and there was nothing else they could do for him. She called a family meeting to talk about any other alternatives. They were told a lung transplant was unlikely due to the existing list of patients waiting for transplants along with the number of COVID patients waiting for lung transplants. Susan and other family members then began looking for hospitals throughout the South with an available bed for an ECMO machine. The medical device, an extra corporeal membrane oxygenation machine, acts as an artificial lung, drawing the patients blood from a major artery, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide before pumping the blood back into the body. We went back to our hotel room and cried about it, of course, because we felt like we had lost the battle and that there was nothing else we could do for him, Susan Walker said. Next morning we woke up and I turned our hotel room into a makeshift call center. The family began calling hospitals all around Florida hoping to find one with an ECMO bed available. If they did, Susan Walker would run the list to her husbands doctor to have her present his case to them. But every time, Robby Walker didnt qualify for the treatment. His age played into it, how long he was intubated played into it, she said. They were not alone. Similar reports of families desperately trying to find a hospital with an open machine have cropped up as cases surge in the South. Other hospitals have said they dont have enough nurses to run the machines. Exhausting those efforts, Susan Walker was offered the chance to go on CNN on Aug. 8, where she pleaded for any facility inside Florida or outside to take Robby Walker in. We have searched every hospital from the south of Florida to the north part of Florida, she said during the interview. ... Now were desperately searching outside of the state. A turn of fate brought the familys case to the attention of Dr. Robert Gallagher, head of cardiothoracic surgery at Trinity Health of New England, who spotted Susans interview on Facebook. She described her frustration at not being able to find a center that could provide ECMO services for her husband who had been stricken with COVID and was on a ventilator, Gallagher said Wednesday during a media event. He discussed the case with his perfusionist, who agreed to take on the case and contacted the family through a friend in Florida. They then worked to have Robby Walker transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, part of the health systems network. The transfer involved a medical flight to Connecticut, while the family had to drive separately. By early September, Robby Walker was taken off of ECMO, his wife said. He progressively improved, she said. After other treatments, he was released from St. Francis Hospital last Tuesday. Hes now recovering at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford. Robby Walker said the staff at both St. Francis and Gaylord have been great. I cant thank them enough for saving my life, he said. Dr. Gallagher took a chance on me. He described his rehabilitation as a slow process, after losing more than 50 pounds during his treatment. Im basically learning how to... walk and hold my balance. I do have an elevated heart rate. He said his lungs are also not up to full capacity. Its a struggle but were making progress at it. Dr. Megan Panico, medical director at Gaylord Hospital, said his recovery within the last week was amazing. He clearly was as sick as the sick get, she said. Now hes breathing on his own and working on therapy, and may soon be taken off of oxygen. He is gonna be one of our COVID patients that walks out the door, Panico said. Susan Walker said the couple had been vaccine hesitant prior to Robbys experience. We werent educated enough to know the science behind the vaccine so of course we were skeptical on our end, she said. Since then she said shes sat in the hospital and listened as family members lose their loved ones to COVID-19. Its real, and just get vaccinated... its definitely real, I can promise you that its definitely real, she said. Robby Walker said in hindsight he would have been vaccinated 100 percent. He said he plans to begin his vaccination at Gaylord, while his wife has already been vaccinated against the disease. We know quite a few people that have gotten vaccinated because of this, so if theres any good thats come out of this people getting vaccinated, he said. WASHINGTON (AP) The man who claimed he had a bomb in a pickup truck near the U.S. Capitol last month, prompting evacuations and an hourslong standoff with police, is competent to stand trial, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Floyd Ray Roseberry pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges that include threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction. SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) State agencies spent federal pandemic aid at a furious pace during the month of August, channeling about $630 million in efforts to bolster unemployment reserves, provide emergency housing assistance and promote COVID-19 vaccination efforts, the Legislature's budget and accountability office said Wednesday. An update on pandemic relief spending from the office shows that New Mexico agencies have pushed out more than half of their $10.5 billion share of federal relief tied to the pandemic. Of the $6.3 billion spent so far, about 70% has gone toward unemployment benefits to prop up household income amid economic turmoil associated with COVID-19. State finance officials are racing against a deadline at the end of September to distribute at least $104 million in federal rental assistance to residential landlords and tenants or risk forfeiting additional money to the program. As of mid-September, the state had spent or assigned $51 million of that federal rental assistance. State finance officials are providing assurances that New Mexico will meet the deadline as it partners with courts to avoid housing disruptions. New Mexico is among about a dozen states that still have a moratorium on evictions for people who cannot afford to pay rent. Federal supplementary unemployment benefits of $300 a week expired in early September, but New Mexico is allowing a 13-week extension of standard benefit payments. The federal government will pay for half of those extended benefits as long as the state's unemployment rate exceeds 6.5%. The August unemployment rate was 7.2%, down from 7.6% in July. Unemployment benefit-eligibility notices were sent to 11,000 state residents, but many already may have exhausted their benefits during the pandemic. Full enrollment for a 13-week period would cost the state unemployment insurance trust $23.5 million. Ordinarily payroll taxes underwrite the trust. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has lifted the states once-aggressive pandemic-related restrictions on gatherings and business operations, though masks are still required in public, indoor settings. About 4,700 have died from COVID-19 across the state of 2.1 million residents. Nearly 250,000 cases have been diagnosed. State health officials said during a briefing Wednesday that despite persistent high community transmission rates, COVID-19 cases appear to have plateaued and that hospitalizations are projected to decline in the coming weeks. They also reported that 70% of New Mexicans 18 and older are now fully vaccinated. Deputy Health Secretary Laura Parajon called it an incredible milestone. The latest state data also shows that children ages 5 to 17 make up one-fifth of the states new COVID-19 cases but that very few of those cases have resulted in hospitalizations. Vaccinations have yet to be approved for many within that age group. In other financial developments, relief spending has been painstakingly slow when it comes to $200 million set aside from the state general fund for grants to small- and medium-sized businesses that can offset rent, lease or mortgage payments as they rehire staff. New Mexico Finance Authority CEO Marquita Russel told legislators that about 17% of applications are declined because businesses are rehiring contract workers and not staff. We have only funded about $10 million outright, Russel said of applications to the grant program. We have additional ones that we are currently working through. Chris Pizzello/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP NEW YORK (AP) Owen Wilson, Kim Kardashian West, Rami Malek and Jason Sudeikis are lined up to host the first four episodes of Saturday Night Live this fall. NBC announced Wednesday that Wilson, who is starring in the upcoming film The French Dispatch, will host the show for the first time to open its 47th season on Oct. 2. Kacey Musgraves will be the musical guest. WARREN, N.Y. (AP) A 22-year-old man is accused of killing his father and 12-year-old sister at home with his younger brother, 9, witnessing it. Michael J. Andreev Jr. has been arrested and charged with two counts of murder and a weapons charge in Sunday's killings, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported. COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a state law preventing anyone from moving a Confederate monument or changing the historical name of a street or building without the Legislature's permission is legal. But in the same ruling, the justices struck down a requirement that two-thirds of the General Assembly must approve a move or name change. The unanimous decision keeps intact South Carolina's Heritage Act, which has stopped colleges and local governments from removing statues honoring Civil War soldiers or segregationists even as other areas of the South took them down after protests sparked by the killing of African American George Floyd last year by white police officers in Minnesota. The law was passed in 2000 as part of a compromise to remove the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina Statehouse dome. The rebel banner was moved to a pole on the capitol lawn, where it flew until 2015 when lawmakers removed it after nine Black church members were killed in a racist massacre at a Charleston church. One of the people who sued lawmakers over the Heritage Act is the widow of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor at Emanuel AME church in Charleston who died in the attack. The law specifically protects monuments from 10 wars from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War. It also protects monuments honoring African Americans and Native Americans as well as a catchall phrase of any historic figure or historic event. Jennifer Pinkney has pointed out that means she couldn't make changes to a monument to her late husband unveiled this year without asking lawmakers for permission. Her lawyer, state Sen. Gerald Malloy, called the ruling a victory since monuments to racists are no longer protected by a two-thirds vote. The voice of the majority can now be heard about which statues and names best reflect our values and heritage. The road to justice is a long one that takes constant care. Todays decision gets us further on our journey, the Democrat from Hartsville said. Days after the Confederate flag was removed in 2015, South Carolina legislative leaders vowed they would not approve the removal of any other statues or renaming of buildings under the Heritage Act and have kept their word. South Carolina Senate President Harvey Peeler said in the summer of 2020 that changing the name of a stack of bricks and mortar is at the bottom of my to-do list. He issued another statement Wednesday: The protections over all of our states monuments and statues were ruled constitutional and they will remain in place. House Speaker Jay Lucas said in 2015 that no other changes would be considered while he was the chamber's leader. After Wednesday's ruling he again repeated that promise. Lawmakers in 2021 refused to even take the first step toward requests to remove monuments like Orangeburg asking to remove a Confederate statue or change names like Clemson University asking to rename a building that currently honors the late U.S. Sen. Pitchfork Ben Tillman, who led violent racist mobs to stop Blacks from voting. Left undecided after Wednesday's ruling is what might happen if a local government ignores the law. The act included no specific punishment for breaking it. Some Republicans have suggested taking away a local government or school's state funding, but that idea hasn't gained traction in the Legislature. Charleston did remove a statue of former U.S. Vice President John Calhoun from a downtown park in 2020, arguing the city owned the statue and it was on private land so it didnt fall under the law. Calhoun was a fierce defender of slavery with a racist view that Blacks were better off owned by other people. Much of Wednesday's 22-page ruling traced the history of the 2000 compromise, praising it for soothing racial tensions in the state. It was signed by all justices, including Chief Justice Don Beatty, who is just the second African American to lead the high court. As individual citizens even Justices we might look back on these events and wish the negotiations had been handled differently. The reality, however, is the Heritage Act brought the Confederate flag down from atop the seat of South Carolina sovereignty," Associate Justice John Cannon Few wrote in the ruling. The justices also rejected an argument that the Heritage Act broke what is called home rule in South Carolina and illegally let the General Assembly mettle in local affairs. They contend local governments are in a better position to act with regard to this subject because they can be more responsive' to the thoughts of the community. This may be true, but Home Rule is not about who holds the better wisdom," Few wrote. Even though the justices found the two-thirds requirement to remove or move a monument illegal, they upheld a clause in the law that said if any part was ruled unconstitutional, the rest would stand. ___ Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP. BANGKOK (AP) With increasingly strong talk in support of Taiwan, a new deal to supply Australia with nuclear submarines, and the launch of a European strategy for greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. and its allies are becoming more assertive in their approach toward a rising China. China has bristled at the moves, and the growing tensions between Beijing and Washington prompted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the weekend to implore U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to repair their completely dysfunctional relationship, warning they risk dividing the world. As the U.N. General Assembly opened Tuesday, both leaders chose calming language, with Biden insisting we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs, and Xi telling the forum that China has never, and will never invade or bully others or seek hegemony. But the underlying issues have not changed, with China building up its military outposts as it presses its maritime claims over critical sea lanes, and the U.S. and its allies growing louder in their support of Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and deepening military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. On Thursday, China sent 24 fighter jets toward Taiwan in a large display of force after the island announced its intention to join a Pacific trade group, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, that China has also applied to join. On Friday, Biden hosts the leaders of Japan, India and Australia for an in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue for broad talks including the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, but also how to keep the Indo-Pacific, a vast region spanning from India to Australia, free and open," according to the White House. It comes a week after the dramatic announcement that Australia would be dropping a contract for conventional French submarines in favor of an Anglo-American offer for nuclear-powered vessels, a bombshell that overshadowed the unveiling of the European Unions strategy to boost political and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific. One thing is certain, that everyone is pivoting toward the Indo-Pacific, said Garima Mohan, an Asia program fellow with the German Marshall Fund think tank. As partners pursue moves that play to their own strengths and needs, however, the past week has underscored the lack of coordination as a networked security strategy develops, she said. Not everyone has the same threat assessment of China, she said in a telephone interview from Berlin. The EU policy emphasizes the need for dialogue with Beijing, to encourage China to play its part in a peaceful and thriving Indo-Pacific region, while at the same time proposing an enhanced naval presence and expanded security cooperation with regional partners. It also notes China's increased military buildup, and that the display of force and increasing tensions in regional hotspots such as in the South and East China Sea, and in the Taiwan Strait, may have a direct impact on European security and prosperity. Germany, which has close economic ties to China, got a wake-up call last week when China rejected its request for a port call for the frigate Bavaria, which is currently conducting maneuvers in the Indo-Pacific. China is telling them this inclusive approach is not going to work, so in a way its a rude awakening for Berlin, Mohan said. You have to take a position, you cant have your cake and eat it too, and if you have an Indo-Pacific strategy ... you cant make it neutral. Other EU countries, most notably France, have also sent naval assets for exercises in the Indo-Pacific, and Britain has had a whole carrier strike group conducting exercises for several months as London pursues the new tilt toward the region recommended by a recent British government review of defense and foreign policy. Chinas Foreign Ministry said after rejecting the Bavaria's port call that it remained willing to carry out friendly exchanges with Germany on the basis of mutual respect and mutual trust, but made clear it was displeased with the increased naval presence in the region. Individual powers... have repeatedly dispatched military aircraft and warships to the South China Sea for some time in the name of exercising freedom of navigation to flex muscle, stir up trouble and deliberately provoke conflicts on maritime issues, spokesman Zhao Lijian said. Chinas determination to safeguard national and territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests is unwavering, and will continue to properly handle differences with the countries concerned through consultations and negotiations. Beijing was less reserved in its reaction to the submarine deal with Australia, under which the U.S. and Britain will help Canberra construct nuclear-powered submarines, calling it highly irresponsible and saying it would seriously damage regional peace and stability. In signing the pact with the U.S. and Britain, Australia canceled a $66 billion deal with France for diesel-powered submarines, infuriating Paris, which recalled its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra and suggested it calls into question the entire cooperative effort to blunt Chinas growing influence. While clearly irked by the surprise deal, many observers have suggested that the vociferous reaction from France may be more directed toward a domestic audience, where President Emmanuel Macron faces a reelection bid early next year. But there was clear disappointment that the U.S. seemed to be ignoring France's own engagement in the region by not informing them in advance, said Laurence Nardon, an expert at the French Institute for International Relations. There was a way to do this while keeping Europeans in the loop, she said. The Indo-Pacific is important for the EU too; it's not one or the other. In a call with Macron late Wednesday, Biden reaffirmed "the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, according to a joint statement. More than just a decision to pursue nuclear submarines, the deal was a clear signal of Australia committing long term to being in the U.S. camp on China policy, said Euan Graham, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. The submarine decision represents an emphatic doubling down on the Australia-U.S. alliance by both countries, he said in an analysis of the deal. As the pact was introduced, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison alluded to the long-term nature, saying at its heart, todays announcements are about the oldest of friendships, the strongest of values and the deepest of commitment. The submarine deal seems likely to exacerbate the ongoing trade war between China and Australia, and Australia is hoping to strike a free trade deal with Quad partner India to help offset the economic impact. While the European strategy outline will take time, the plan provides clarity in how the EU is prepared to work with the U.S. and its allies in the region something that has been lacking in the past. Theres a lack of understanding on the U.S. side of why Europe is interested in the Indo-Pacific and exactly what kind of role it wants to play, Mohan said in a podcast on the issue. Theres also a lack of understanding of the U.S. approach. In the outline of the strategy, the EU broadly looks to pool its resources for greater effect, and to work more closely with the Quad countries, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and others. It also envisions enhancing current operations, such as the Atalanta anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa and in the western Indian Ocean, and the expansion of the EU maritime security and safety mission in the wider Indian Ocean area, which has already been broadened to Southeast Asia. The European assessment is very realistic about what they can and cannot do in the region, Mohan said. Its about making sure the resources, the spending, thats done right and has an impact. ___ Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report. NEW YORK (AP) One of the most intriguing parts of the costumes at the Broadway play A Soldier's Story was something the audience likely never saw. Each of the 12 actors wore uniforms carefully reflecting the attire of real soldiers in 1944. Their boots, too, were faithful replications. But around their necks were dog tags carefully etched with each character's name, age and religious affiliation. The dog tags usually tucked under the costumes and out of sight gave the actors something they could physically hold as they got into character. They became touchstones for their roles. It was the brainchild of Dede Ayite, who has earned two 2021 Tony Award costume design nominations. Even if few sitting in the audience knew about the dog tags or what they said, it was her gift to the actors, her attempt to deepen the experience. Stuff like that brings me joy. I dont need the audience to know that," said Ayite. "Its building up of those layers that adds even more texture to a piece. Showing her versatility, Ayite also is nominated for designing the costumes for Slave Play, Jeremy O. Harris bracing work about an antebellum fantasy therapy workshop. If A Soldier's Play was regimented and historically accurate, Slave Play is fantasy and fetishism. I love the way clothes make me feel. I love the stories you can tell through clothing, said Ayite, who noted that on this interview day her red sweater had shifted her demeanor. Thats the power and the beauty of what clothes can do. I want to be able to tap into that. For A Soldier's Play, which explores racism within a Black U.S. Army unit, Ayite created special padding in the elbows and knees for actor David Alan Grier, who was frequently pummeled onstage. The soldiers' boots had to look broken in so she handed them out at the beginning of rehearsals. For Slave Play, Ayite put a leather dominatrix outfit under a hoop skirt for one character and mixed contemporary items like Calvin Klein underwear with Civil War-era pieces to make the viewer question what they were seeing. There is a sort of home-grown quality to it. The characters have sort of like put their own spin on each of these costumes, said Slave Play director Robert OHara. I think that people watching the show will say, Wait a minute. That looks out of time with the time period. So there are winks in the costumes throughout. Ayite said she's always been curious about what makes humans tick, and she had one of the more astounding double majors of anyone on Broadway theater and behavioral neuroscience. She excelled at both, but at some point had to pick career paths. I needed to choose the thing that brought me the most joy and the thing that sort of kept my heart intact and my spirit intact. And that was art, she said. I just kept saying yes to the thing that spoke to my heart. And its brought me here today. And for that Im grateful. She has a masters in design from the Yale School of Drama and teaches at Harvard University. Ayite said she likes the collaborative nature of theater, and her art is a soul calling. Theres nothing like watching an audience experience the world you helped to create and to see them moved, she said. "I dont need to run up there and say, Hey, look at me, because I see that, I see the effect. Her other Broadway credits include American Son and Children of a Lesser God. Her work has been seen at Steppenwolf, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory, Baltimore Center Stage, Arena Stage and Cleveland Playhouse. Ayite learned she had earned two Tony nominations last fall while at the dentist, who was encouraging. He said, You know what? I feel good about this. I think its going to be a good day she said he told her. She was still processing the first text message of a nomination when a second arrived with more good news. It is it is a huge honor to think that people who see theater and people who appreciate theater are seeing my work and theyre recognizing the effort that goes into it, she said. The pandemic put on hold two plays she also worked on revivals of How I Learned to Drive and American Buffalo." Both sets of costumes are in storage, awaiting the return of live theater. But when it does, Ayite is ready to tweak and enhance. I definitely would like to look at the costumes again, acknowledge what weve done so far, but then also think of them through the lens of what weve all gone through in the last year and a half, she said. Were all different today. ___ Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) The proficiency of New Mexico's elementary students in math and reading has dropped significantly amid the pandemic, with only 31% achieving it, according to a review of preliminary academic data made public Wednesday. The drop in math and reading proficiency from 37% in the 2018-2019 school year, before the pandemic began, has prompted legislators to suggest that elementary students should spend longer hours in class or face a longer school year. The report by legislative analysts presented to the powerful Legislative Finance Committee estimated that students lost between 10 and 60 days of learning time because of the coronavirus pandemic. Even before the pandemic, New Mexico students spent fewer school days than their counterparts in many other states. Some rural New Mexico schools have four-day school weeks. Amid the pandemic, the state's students faced school closures, were absent more frequently, and many had limited access to online learning. Nonpartisan legislative policy researchers said in the report that about half of the state's school districts rejected funding for extra school days because of criticism from parents and staff. The extra school funding has been part of a yearslong effort by the Legislature to increase learning time for students while allowing communities the local control to accept or reject additional time in school for students. Some legislators said after the report was released that the state should consider mandating between 10 and 25 additional days to the school year. New Mexico students must be in school 180 days annually. But some schools get waivers allowing their students to spend as few 150 days if those days are proportionally longer. Maybe we need to do more mandates, take education more serious and have a sense of urgency, said Sen. Bill Tallman, a Democrat from Albuquerque. Others criticized longer school years for children, calling for more research and days off from school for Indigenous holidays important in many school districts. Assimilation in Indian country that has been the purpose of (education) and adding on 25 days the calendar takes those kids out of my community 25 more days, said Jeremy Oyenque, director of Youth and Learning at Santa Clara Pueblo, an Indigenous tribe north of Santa Fe. Oyenque told committee members on Tuesday that extended learning days often ignored tribal religious holidays forcing students to choose between their culture and being marked as absent. Mandating an increase in school days would most dramatically impact a small number of rural school districts that have four-day school weeks. They are allowed to cram more school hours into longer days to give students the shorter school week. Up in my district, there are quite a lot of schools that go four days. And I think they spend less time putting up their pencils and more time studying, said Rep. Jack Chatfield, a Republican from the northeastern community of Mosquero. I would really encourage us to do a little bit of research as to how those schools with a four-day school (week) compare in their testing. The legislative report suggests the drop in learning proficiency from 39% to 31% could be even worse than the preliminary data suggests because student testing was optional and likely drew students who had better access to school during the pandemic. Also, some students who took the tests at home received help from parents and scored higher than they should have, the report said. The testing is required by the federal government, but the New Mexico Public Education Department received a testing waiver because of the pandemic. Normally, 95% of the state's students must be tested, but the waiver allowed as little as 1% to be tested. The testing cited in the report included around 80% of elementary students in grades that were tested, researchers said. White students were significantly overrepresented in the testing by around 2.5%. Groups that had less access to remote learning during the pandemic Native American students, students with disabilities, and low-income students were underrepresented in the testing by between around 2.5% and around 9%. ___ Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter. The crisis at Toquam Magnet School is a perfect example of the larger crisis playing out across the entire Stamford Public School system. Toquam is a brilliant magnet school, with excellent teachers and wonderful, diverse students from around the city. But we have been letting these teachers and students down by failing to properly maintain the building. Ive personally inspected Toquam as part of a tour of SPS facilities to see our infrastructure issues first-hand. Toquam teachers and students have improvised for years in offices that were adapted into classrooms, and with heating and cooling systems that have been pushed long past their usable lifespan. We clearly are not setting our teachers and students up for success when we send them into humid, poorly ventilated classrooms. School should be a place of learning and exploration, not muddling through and getting by. This situation is unacceptable. But to be clear, the problem is not simply some individual failure. Toquam is built into the side of a hill. Half of the school is literally underground. The engineering challenges of maintaining airflow and fighting against water intrusion in a neighborhood named Glenbrook home to a large aquifer have been obvious since the day the school was built. The failures at Toquam were years in the making and systemic. To fix this kind of systemic problem, we need to do two things. Clearly state our values and then live them. Our teachers and children deserve to teach and learn in clean, healthy environments. We must do whatever we have to do to make that happen. Fix the broken processes that led to this crisis. The current Board of Education struggles to pass an operating budget. This dysfunction must end, and a new Board of Education must take responsibility for seeing the budget process all the way through to make sure the right resources get to our teachers and students. Naturally, the cynics will rush to say that neither of these things has happened in Stamfords recent history, that the cost of refurbishing our school system is too great, and that our political process is irrevocably broken. Indeed, the mountain of problems stretches to the sky, and so they will proclaim it cant be climbed. I reject that thinking. Cynicism without any determination to overcome the challenge isnt wisdom. Its cowardice. Its the fear of those who never want to be wrong. I congratulate the cynics on being right and hope that gives them joy in their hearts; for myself, Id rather take the chance of believing that we can accomplish great things. We can do this. We can solve these problems. Maintaining proper airflow and fighting water intrusion, even in challenging environments, is simply a matter of engineering. None of these problems are new and there are proven engineering-based solutions for all of them. Solving such a problem is not simply a question of money one must also have the discipline and good processes to spend that money wisely but otherwise this is a straightforward matter. Stamford is the second largest city in Connecticut and has immense resources at its disposal. We are fortunate to be an era where the federal government is again recognizing its obligation to provide infrastructure funding, and there is well-founded hope that we will soon receive our share of such funding. The state has a remarkable budget surplus under Gov. Ned Lamont and I strongly believe that there is widespread political consensus in Stamford that the school infrastructure crisis must end. Put simply, we have the resources to get this done. A truly great school system needs dedicated, motivated teachers, staff, and administrators, and a passionate body of students and parents. We have that. Lets give them the buildings they deserve. Ben Lee is a current member of the Stamford Board of Representatives and is running for the Board of Education as an endorsed Democratic candidate. More information about Ben can be found at benleeboe.com and @benleeboe on Instagram , Facebook , and Twitter . The Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce will host Dr. Gary Lawler, chancellor of Penn State Hazleton, who will speak about Penn States Hazleton LaunchBox supported by Pasco L. Schiavo Esq., at its next hybrid red carpet breakfast from 7:45 to 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Launchbox, 13 W. Broad St., Hazleton. Chamber members and guests who would like to attend should contact the chamber office at 570-455-1509, ext. 101, or register online at hazletonchamber.org by Friday. Due to pandemic restrictions, there is a limited number of in-person registrations, and no registrations will be taken at the door. Debra Conway, director of continuing education, William Andahazy, entrepreneurship educator, and Fermin Diaz, entrepreneurship facilitator, will also speak. The Hazleton LaunchBox is a tool for students to help take their start-up idea to the next level. The program is sponsored by Penn State Hazleton and includes a full breakfast at $20 for chamber members and $25 for non-chamber members. There is a $5 charge for members attending via the internet and its $10 for non-members. We are excited to get back to the face-to-face sessions and the ability to network prior to the event, said Mary Malone, president of the chamber, in a news release. Those in attendance will be introduced to the services of the event sponsor. Attendees are encouraged to participate in the business card drop for a chance to win a free breakfast. Masks will be required. There is parking behind the building. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) claims that President Klaus Iohannis violates the Constitution "by openly supporting the candidate Florin Citu [incumbent PM - editor's note] for the position of PNL (National Liberal Party) leader, while the latter violates the law "by bribing Liberal mayors." "AUR deplores the paralysis of state institutions because of an obvious action of the candidate for the PNL top job Florin Citu, who tries to bribe the Liberal mayors, and draws attention to the violation of the Constitution by President Klaus Iohannis, who backs a politician running for the presidency of a political party. For several months, an entire country faces a blockage because of the PNL Congress. All the authorities are on standby, waiting for Saturday's outcome, but the despair is so great that Iohannis himself has come to give statements in support of the candidate Florin Citu, and to announce that he will be present at the event, to send a clear message including from there," said MP George Simion, AUR's co-chair, in a statement sent to AGERPRES on Thursday. Simion also says that Prime Minister Florin Citu "uses public budget resources to buy his votes, in front of everyone.""The government recently informed the mayors that they will receive additional money for projects and salaries, not provided for in the 2021 budget, precisely now, around the PNL internal elections. Everything must work in favour of Citu. It seems that nothing else matters: Constitution, laws, common sense," says the AUR co-chair. AGERPRES Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu participated on Thursday in the informal ministerial meeting on the International Criminal Court (ICC), traditionally organised by Liechtenstein, on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) announces, agerpres reports. According to the cited source, in his intervention, Minister Aurescu reconfirmed Romania's constant and firm support for the essential role of the International Criminal Court in combating impunity and consolidating the rule of law on an international level. The Romanian minister brought to mind that Romania got involved, ever since the inter-war period, in the development of international criminal law, through the exceptional contribution of diplomat and jurist Vespasian Pella, founder of this branch of law and the concept of permanent international criminal court.He hailed the initiation of the comprehensive process of revision of the Rome Statute system, the founding act of ICC, giving guarantees on Romania's availability to contribute to this exercise being carried out successfully.In context, Bogdan Aurescu underscored the need for the demarches of consolidation of the Rome Statute not to limit only to the International Criminal Court, but also approach the role of courts of justice nationwide, which are the first called to enforce the Statute, based on the complementarity principle provided by it, as well as the modalities of cooperation among state to make the response to the ICC support requests be as efficient as possible.The Romanian chief diplomat also underscored Romania's determination to further act for ensuring the efficiency of the Court and protecting its independence, including from the perspective of exercising the term as member in the Assembly of States Parties Bureau in the period 2021-2023.At the same time, Aurescu referred to the importance of consolidating the Court's public profile, meant to communicate more efficiently about its activity, thus supporting misinformation combat.Foreign affairs ministers from over 35 states of all geographic areas worldwide, as well as EU's special representative for human rights participated in the event.The meeting facilitated an exchange of opinions on the proper manners of capitalising on the national commitments to support international criminal justice and the good functioning of the only international court with capacities of investigation and penalisation of individuals involved in the most serious crimes based on international criminal law. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, had a meeting in New York on Thursday with Eric Swalwell, member of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, member of the Special Committee for Intelligence and chairman of its Subcommittee for Intelligence Modernization and Readiness, agerpres reports. The discussion took place in the context of the presence in the USA of Minister Bogdan Aurescu, for the participation in the works of the high level segment of the UN General Assembly. During the meeting, Minister Bogdan Aurescu reiterated the importance given by Romania to strengthening the Strategic Partnership and the political dialogue with the USA. He reviewed recent and substantial contacts in recent times, including President Biden's participation in the B9 Summit successfully hosted in May by President Klaus Iohannis. Aurescu also spoke about talks he had with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.This calendar of contacts reflects the maturity of the bilateral relationship ten years after the adoption of the Joint Declaration on the 21st Century Strategic Partnership between Romania and the United States and the signing of the Agreement on the location of the US ballistic missile defence system in Romania - documents that represent the current foundation of the Strategic Partnership and which the head of the Romanian diplomacy negotiated on behalf of the Romanian state more than 10 years ago, the Foreign Ministry (MAE) informs.The Romanian Minister pointed out that the anniversary moment represents an opportunity to take stock of the Strategic Partnership, which is at an excellent level of depth and substance.He also stressed that next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Strategic Partnership, which will create new opportunities for its development. He emphasized the desire to materialize additional possibilities for cooperation between Romania and the USA, on all dimensions of the partnership, including the parliamentary component. The American official expressed appreciation for Romania's firm commitment as a US Strategic Partner, as well as for our country's essential contribution to regional stability and resilience, strengthening transatlantic security and promoting common values and interests.The head of Romanian diplomacy welcomed the visits made to Romania by delegations of the US Congress during 2021 and stressed the importance of further strengthening parliamentary cooperation, including through friendship groups in the legislatures of the two countries, and said the need for new organization of visits to Romania in the near future.The two officials exchanged views on the security situation in the Black Sea region, resulting in a high level of convergence on the existence of persistent security challenges, which - as the Romanian Foreign Minister pointed out - require strengthening the positions of deterrence and defense of NATO on the Eastern Side of NATO, in a unitary and coherent approach. In this context, Minister Bogdan Aurescu called for an increased US military presence in Romania and in the region.The head of Romanian diplomacy also stressed the importance of strengthening the US economic and investment presence in the region, reiterating the need for US financial involvement in the implementation of Rail2Sea, a strategic regional interconnection project promoted by Romania and within the Three Seas Initiative and which could make a relevant contribution to the economic development of the region, as well as to military mobility on NATO's Eastern Flank.Minister Bogdan Aurescu also highlighted the special importance for Romania and Romanian citizens of accessing the Visa Waiver program. He thus pointed out the need to make tangible progress in achieving this common goal of Romania and the USA. Gabriela Alexandrescu, the executive president of the Save the Children Romania organization, said on Thursday that during the pandemic there were the most asylum applications in our country's history, namely 6,156, of whom 1,551 children. "It is alarming that out of the 1,551 children, 62% were unaccompanied children, children who came without their family together. This upward trend continues in the first six months of 2021, in the first half year alone, as many as 5,102 applications were submitted, of whom 1,511 minors, and 875 of them, more than half, are children alone," said Gabriela Alexandrescu during an online debate, during which the "Social inclusion of migrants through the involvement of local communities" project was launched. The main countries of origin of asylum seekers in Romania are Afghanistan, which has more than half of the asylum applications and of the total number of children, over 70% come from Afghanistan, Syria - 15% and Iraq - 7%.The project "Social inclusion of migrants through the involvement of local communities" is developed in partnership with the Association of Jesuit Refugee Service in Romania, with the financial support Active Citizens Fund Romania, funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA 2014-2021 grants. The aim of the project is to develop a sustainable and favorable framework for advocacy actions at local and national level aimed at achieving social justice, inclusion and increasing the capacity of refugees and asylum seekers to know and demand their rights.Gabriela Alexandrescu also drew attention to the vulnerabilities in the refugee centers, amid the worsening situation in Afghanistan.Save the Children has been active in taking care of refugees seeking asylum since 1995.AGERPRES More than a third (35.5%) of the total cases of COVID-19 were registered, in the week of September 13-19, in Bucharest and in the counties of Timis (northwest of Bucharest), Cluj (northwest of Bucharest), Ilfov (surrounding Bucharest) and Iasi (northeast of Bucharest), informed, on Thursday, the National Institute of Public Health (INSP). Three-quarters (75.8%) of confirmed cases were reported in people unvaccinated against COVID, the INSP said in its weekly supervision report. According to INSP, 28% of all deaths were recorded in Suceava (northeast of Bucharest), Bistrita (northeast of Bucharest), Maramures (northwest of Bucharest) and Botosani (northeast of Bucharest) counties and in Bucharest.The report shows that 91.5% of deaths occurred in unvaccinated people, and 85.9% in people over the age of 60. According to the INSP, 57.4% of deaths were in men.The INSP also said that 94.5% of the fatalities had at least one associated comorbidity.From the beginning of the pandemic to the present, one in 77 cases of COVID-19 has been reported in medical staff.AGERPRES The interim Minister of Health, Cseke Attila, declared on Thursday that a possible mandatory vaccination measure cannot be made unless through a draft law, in Parliament. "Please allow us a few days to come up with a solution, because each of these means must be discussed with specialists. Vaccinating medical staff is absolutely to be desired. We are guiding, firmly recommending everyone who has not yet vaccinated, including among doctors or medical staff, to get vaccinated. From a procedural viewpoint, is a longer legal procedure and then we are analyzing all possibilities which lead us to a safety of hospital functioning. What am I referring to? Regarding a possible measure of mandatory vaccination, it cannot be made unless through a draft law, through Parliament, which will have to provide a certain transitional period or time when it would come into effect, in order to give everyone the possibility of getting vaccinated. So here we have a deadline, if you wish, prolonged," the interim Minister said, for RFI broadcaster, asked if he would agree with mandatory vaccination for certain category of employees. As for the testing of the staff who is not vaccinated, Cseke Attila specified that there is "a possibility of introducing a quicker measure, even if this measure also needs to go through Parliament".He highlighted that these aspects are currently being discussed with specialists and jurists and that a solution will be presented.President Klaus Iohannis declared on Tuesday that the anti-COVID vaccination should become mandatory for certain categories from essential areas, given that the pandemic is evolving and the number of infections is rising, giving the medical staff as an example."It is not normal for some doctors to give out anti-vaccine messages," Iohannis said, in a discussion with journalists who accompanied him to New York, at the UN General Assembly.Regarding restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he said that these will be differentiated between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people. In this context, the head of state said that the vaccination certificate is the solution for fewer restrictions.AGERPRES Romania's Ambassador in Washington, Andrei Muraru, told AGERPRES in an interview that he gave assurances to US investors, whom he encourages to come to Romania, that the Executive in Bucharest is a functional one, and the change of its makeup should not affect the business environment. "I have given everyone the necessary assurances that this crisis is short-lived, that the Government is a functional one and that President Iohannis together with the Government will continue to manage public affairs in Romania and that this instability should not affect the business environment, because we do not have a legislative instability, we have a change in the makeup of the Government and, from this point of view, the Government, in any way, will move forward," the Romanian diplomat maintained. He also said that the 25th anniversary of the inauguration of the Strategic Partnership between the United States and Romania could be honored next year either by a visit of US President Joe Biden to Bucharest or by a visit of President. Klaus Iohannis to Washington."This year marks the 25th anniversary of the inauguration of this Strategic Partnership between the United States and Romania. (...) We are not even considering not honoring this anniversary in a completely special way. And here we have two options: either a visit of the US president to Bucharest, or a visit of the Romanian president to Washington," said Muraru.The Romanian Ambassador in Washington also talks in an interview about the Visa Waiver program, pointing out that the goal is for Romania to join it by 2024.AGERPRES: You recently received the letter of accreditation as Ambassador of Romania from the US President, Joe Biden. Romania and the United States have a strong Strategic Partnership, but there is a general desire to deepen it. Along which dimensions?Andrei Muraru: The dimensions along which we want the deepening of this Partnership are inscribed, on the one hand, in this Joint Declaration On Strategic Partnership For The 21st Century Between The United States Of America and Romania, which was signed in 2011 and from which there have been ten years, but also in the recent Joint Declaration of the US and Romanian Presidents from 2019, which adds other dimensions to this Strategic Partnership. First of all, the political, military and security dimension, which means, in addition to a very robust cooperation in this field, which was agreed last year, with the visit of the Romanian Minister of Defense to Washington and the conclusion of a new military cooperation agreement, but also the conclusion of a roadmap for 2020-2030, on a robust American presence in Romania. Today, we have over 1,100 soldiers on Romanian territory, and what we want is to increase this military presence. We have a missile shield at Deveselu, which was fully operationalized and passed under NATO command five years ago, but we also have a very important air base for the United States, but also for NATO - Mihail Kogalniceanu -, in which Romania is investing over three billion in the coming years. We also have a base in the Turzii Plain, which, through the European Deterrence Initiative, the US is investing 130 million dollars this year, the largest American investment this year in Europe, but also along other dimensions of this military cooperation.Then we have a robust cooperation on the energy component. We have signed a memorandum that has since become a law, an intergovernmental agreement between the United States and Romania on the construction of two new nuclear reactors at Cernavoda [Nuclear Power Plant] by 2030, the refurbishment of reactor 1 at Cernavoda. Just tomorrow [ed.n. - Thursday] the US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, and the Romanian Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, are meeting in Vienna to discuss in detail how this investment in Cernavoda will be financed and how it will be carried out, as it will be led by the United States, but at the same time it will be operationalized through a transatlantic consortium.We also have, at the same time, a component related to the encouragement and strengthening of the rule of law and the defense of human rights, in which Romania has taken concrete steps for which there is a continuous search in Romanian society to strengthen the resilience of the Romanian democratic system to the current challenges. We have another component here, which was and will be highlighted at the end of this year's Democracy Summit, in which Romania will take part, namely a dimension of the fight against corruption, which was strongly institutionalized in Romania, this fight, through a prosecutor's office that has become an example of good practice in our part of Europe and there are ways in which we would like to export this model of good practice to countries such as [the Republic of] Moldova, which has recently seen a resounding victory of pro-European forces through President Maia Sandu and a majority that won the parliamentary elections and aims to fight this scourge of corruption. Romania can offer this model in the region.Other dimensions are related to innovation, education, economic cooperation, in which we will certainly take important steps in the next period.AGERPRES: You talked about the Cernavoda reactor project, a project announced during the Trump administration. What happens to the other projects announced then, namely the construction of a motorway and a railway to connect Constanta to Gdansk? Will they be continued?Andrei Muraru: The United States' commitment to the Three Seas Initiative is still extremely robust. At the last summit of this Initiative, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, a few months ago, and which was also attended by President Klaus Iohannis, the United States was present with a very important delegation. In addition to the fact that the American President, Joe Biden, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent recorded messages, in the field there was a delegation of the American Congress, a delegation of the Department of Energy, a delegation of the State Department. These projects remain standing. Romania wants their implementation in the next period, precisely because they have not only a strategic commercial, but also a military importance because they provide transport from Gdansk to Constanta, which is practically fundamental for the security of NATO's Eastern Flank.AGERPRES: On the economic side, the USA is among the first investors in Romania, a country that is currently facing a government crisis. You have already had meetings with some US investors. How do they see the situation in Romania? Are they concerned?Andrei Muraru: No one is certainly happy to witness a government crisis, but I have given everyone the necessary assurances that this crisis is short-lived, that the Government is a functioning one and that President Iohannis and the Government will continue to manage public affairs in Romania and that this instability should not affect the business environment, because we do not have a legislative instability, we have a change in the makeup of the Government and, from this point of view, the Government, in whatever way, will move forward. We assured them that, from our point of view, they have all the support to have a direct contact with Romanian officials, regardless of the structure and political color of the Government, and we are doing everything in our power to encourage US investors or Romanian investors to get over these less pleasant news about the politics in Bucharest.AGERPRES: Are there chances for these American investments to grow in Romania?Andrei Muraru: Not only is there a chance, but we have very direct signals that these investments in the coming period... This year, we exceed the psychological threshold of 4 billion dollars in commercial exchanges, for the first time in the history of bilateral relations. And we have very clear signals that important US companies, that desire in the coming period to relocate some operations in other areas of the globe, from Asia, and are seeking in Romania opportunities to create other areas to build successful businesses. We are in contact with them, we had a meeting with the Romanian-American Business Council, we met officials from companies such as Tesla, Oracle, UiPath. The signal we want to give is that we are very open to receiving these investors, because they, through the business they make in Romania, are doing nothing but creating jobs in the US as well, because if you're an important company, such as Boeing, which received an order for planes from two Romanian companies, that means jobs created in the USA as well. The interest is not only to create such jobs in Romania, but to build this economic ecosystem that both sides benefit from.AGERPRES: In the hearing in the parliamentary committees you stated that you are confident that, until 2024, Romania will be included in the Visa Waiver program. What are the chances, in the context in which a problem is posed by the high refusal rate of Romanians' requests for visas for the United States?Andrei Muraru: It's true, we have quite a high refusal rate for visa requests for short stay visas of up to 90 days - 9.41 in 2019, 10.14 last year - and we are in a plateau for approximately five years. Our purpose is to get closer to a 3 pct rejection rate, which could offer us this perspective to build together with the American side a very predictable path for the moment we enter this program - Visa Waiver, at the gates of which we've been for approximately 15 years. We are working on two paths: on the executive path and the legislative path, because this inflexible legislation depends on Congress. We are in the process of elaborating a very coherent strategy to approach the US administration on these two paths. At the same time, with the visit of the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs in Washington, last year, a working group that is working specifically on this problem was created and has met already six times.We are very confident that we will make concrete steps in this sense. We discussed with the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the United States having this very recent experience with Poland and with Croatia that entered the Visa Waiver program. The closer we work, the faster we will enter this program. We will not see spectacular developments overnight, but I remain with the conviction that until the end of 2024 we can have this chance to enter this program, either by reaching this percentage under 3 pct rejection rate, either by obtaining this waiver from the US administration, if a biometric exit system from the United States is implemented by then. A very costly program that is now being implemented on the main US airports and which will be finalized in two years - this is the estimate of the American side - it gives the possibility to the State Department to ask the Department of Homeland Security for a country that does not fulfill the 3 pct criteria, but is under 10 pct rejection rate, enter the program based on the firm commitment to trans-Atlantic values, towards democracy, rule of law - principles that Romania respects in every dimension of this partnership.AGERPRES: What could be done so that this rejection rate for applications be smaller?Andrei Muraru: We could make Romanian citizens be aware that an incorrect application, an application with many inexact details certainly represents a vulnerability when requesting a short stay visa of up to 90 days. And this is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is doing: they're working on a public information campaign to make Romanians understand how to apply for these visas, what are the vulnerabilities of a weak or incomplete application and what are the risks to apply again, using the same inexact information for a new visa. Surely this rejection rate is not definitively tied to Romanian authorities, because the US authorities are those to process these applications for visas, namely Homeland Security, which manages this system, but our obligation is to make Romanian citizens understand what the risks and what the benefits are to making a successful application.AGERPRES: President Klaus Iohannis invited his American counterpart, Joe Biden, to conduct a visit to Romania. Have demarches for such a visit started and when could it take place?Andrei Muraru: As you know, we have not benefited from a visit of a US head of state since 2008, since the participation of President George Bush in the NATO summit in Bucharest. Efforts are made in this sense. I reiterated this invitation to the American side whenever I had the occasion, either at the State Department, either in the interactions with the National Security Council, nonetheless, this pandemic which does not want to pass obviously represents an obstacle for any travel of officials, either American or Romanian. Next year marks 25 years since the inauguration of this Strategic Partnership between the United States and Romania, when President Bill Clinton came to Bucharest and there was that letter exchange between Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State at the time, and the Romanian Foreign Minister at the time. We're not even considering this anniversary being marked otherwise than in a totally special way. And here we have two options: either a visit of the US President in Bucharest, either a visit of the Romanian President in Washington. Whichever finalizes quicker will represent, without a doubt, a great benefit for bilateral relations and for this Strategic Partnership which is at the highest level at this time. AGERPRES President Klaus Iohannis emphasized on Wednesday, at the Global Summit on the topic of coordinating the international response in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of solidarity, stating that the best way to guarantee security is equitable access to life-saving vaccines, as well as therapies and diagnoses. "I thank President Biden for the initiative to coordinate the international response to the most important current threat - the novel coronavirus. In order to come out on top in this fight it's extremely important to think and to plan globally. Solidarity is a global imperative. I believe the best way to guarantee our safety is equitable access to life-saving vaccines, as well as therapies and diagnoses. He shoed that Romania is hosting rescEU - a strategic mechanism for medical reserves and distribution of the European Union, as part of international efforts to combat the pandemic. Furthermore, the head of state recalled that Romania has helped other countries in their efforts to manage the devastating effects of the pandemic, by sending medical teams to Italy, the Republic of Moldova and Tunisia, but also the United States of America, emphasizing the Romanian contribution in May 20202, with medical staff and experts deployed to the US state of Alabama.President Iohannis recalled the fact that Romania already donated COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia, Egypt, Tunisia and Vietnam."Romania is committed and is involved in the support of the ambitious agenda for the consolidation of the security architecture of the world, in view of constructing a global system which is resilient and more adequate to manage unforeseen crises, as this pandemic," the head of state concluded.President Iohannis participated in the Global Summit upon the invitation of the US President, Joe Biden, who organized the event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.The head of states is leading, from Tuesday to Thursday, the Romanian delegation at the high level segment of the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations, which is taking place in New York. AGERPRES President Klaus Iohannis met on Wednesday with the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), David Harris, on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, on which occasion the former underlined Romania's concern about the rising anti-Semitic rhetoric in the context of the health crisis, especially in the online environment, informs the Presidential Administration. The head of state reiterated Romania's firm condemnation of these developments, underlining the recent efforts undertaken by our country, materialized in the adoption, in May of this year, of the "National Strategy for preventing and combating anti-Semitism, xenophobia, radicalization and hate speech". On the occasion of the meeting in New York, were also addressed topics of common interest regarding the Romanian-American bilateral relations, the Romania-Israel relations, the developments in the Middle East, the Israel-European Union relations, the Romania-United States of America agenda priorities, Romania's commitment to fighting anti-Semitism, preserving the memory of the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism.According to the cited source, Iohannis welcomed the "intensity and substance" of the Romania-US bilateral cooperation within the Strategic Partnership, in all its dimensions, respectively of the strategic dialogue between Romania and Israel, welcoming the AJC's activity in support of fundamental democratic values.In this context, Klaus Iohannis reaffirmed Romania's "constant commitment" to assuming the past and punishing any form of anti-Semitism, as well as condemning Holocaust denial and distortion.AGERPRES Compensation of gas and electricity bills will be applied as of November 1, for both household consumers, and for non-household ones, because we must also take into consideration SMEs and small companies, Prime Minister Florin Citu declared on Thursday. "At this moment, I want to be sure that what we are doing on the compensation side to be quick, simple, and not to involve the consumer too much. And here I want to be very clear, I am talking about the household and non-household consumer, because this is also about SMEs and small companies, which do not have the same negotiating power as a large company. So, we are talking about the household and non-household consumer. Solutions will be for both categories and we will have this solution as quickly as possible, so that they will come into effect as of November 1," Citu explained, during the online debate "Capping versus Compensation. The saving solution for the topic of the moment: electricity and natural gas bills", organized by DC News. The Prime Minister said that this compensation needs to be "a good, simple, transparent product", which will be used this winter, but also in the future for "other exceptional situations"."Compensation moves forward, November 1 - May 31, there is no discussion here," Citu added.According to him, there will be approximately 5.3 million households, which is almost 10,000,000 people.The PM also advised caution in the case of an eventual capping of electricity and gas prices, because Romania is a producer of electricity and gas, but it must make sure that it will not affect the companies' investment plans. But, he added, if the European Union decides on capping prices, then Romania will do the same.AGERPRES Prime Minister Florin Citu commented, on Thursday, in Ramnicu Valcea, the result of the USR PLUS (Save Romania Union, Freedom, Unity, Solidarity Party) elections, stating that it was a "penalty" given for those who removed this party from government, agerpres reports. "As far as the USR PLUS elections are concerned, I do not see a surprise here, it is clear that it the voters gave a penalty to those who removed USR PLUS from the government and joined AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians). This is how I see things," said Florin Citu, when asked how he commented on the result of the first round of elections for the USR PLUS top job. The head of Executive reaffirmed that the Liberals will not ask USR PLUS to return to the ruling coalition."I told you that on Monday they will talk to me as president of the PNL (National Liberal Party), and we are not going to ask USR PLUS to come back in the government team," Citu said.USR PLUS co-chair Dacian Ciolos collected the most votes in the first round of the online elections for the party leadership.USR PLUS co-chairs Dacian Ciolos and Dan Barna are going to the second round of elections for the party's leadership, announced on Thursday the party's spokesman, Ionut Mosteanu. According to him, Dacian Ciolos obtained 15,111 votes (46%), Dan Barna - 14,404 votes (43.9%), and Irineu Darau got 3,300 votes (10.1%). Prime Minister Florin Citu on Thursday said that the PNL (National Liberal Party, ed. n.) Congress can be held on Saturday under sanitary safety conditions, as the specialists recommend, and, as a result, he will "ignore" the political statements of some former prefects. The former prefect of Bucharest, Alin Stoica claimed that the PNL Congress cannot be organized with 5,000 participants given that the infection rate with SARS-CoV-2 exceeds 3 per thousand inhabitants in Bucharest. "The political statements from those who were prefects, I ignore them. Politicians make all sorts of statements. The specialists, we have a recommendation from the specialists, and they say that if all the norms are respected... We have 15,000 square meters there, which means that each person, if 5,000 delegates come, we respect the three meters recommended for each person. They will also be certified with green certificate and with testing centers, all safety conditions will be respected so that this Congress can be held under safety conditions. It is not an event that happens every day, it is something that happens every four years, so it can be done, but with the observance of all conditions," he said.The prime minister had an online intervention on Thursday at the debate "Capping versus compensation. The saving solution for the topic of the moment: energy and natural gas bills".AGERPRES Prime Minister Florin Citu stated, on Thursday, that, once the vulnerable consumer law enters into force, the subsidies for heating should be applied only to those persons who need aid. He said, in the online debate titled "Capping versus compensation", organized by online news outlet DC News, that the role of this law is to make the transition and that this subsidy should be only for people in need, "because today, for example, in Bucharest, the subsidy is received by those who earn a lot as well, which isn't fair. This vulnerable consumer law will help those persons who truly need help, not everyone. Ultimately, this subsidy also supported an inefficient system and allowed prior mayors and companies to not desire to increase efficiency in the system because they had this subsidy from the budget," said Citu. The Prime Minister added that, from what he knows, Bucharest has the highest subsidy for heating, although it has the highest income per capita.Asked whether he maintains that once the vulnerable consumer law comes into force, this subsidy for heating should not be granted anymore by local authorities, the Prime Minister explained: "Exactly. So what I'm saying, at this time, we should move in the direction where only those who need it will receive this subsidy, the others should pay, but the others should put pressure on energy producers to increase efficiency.""We all know that, in fact, a large part of the cost that we pay is represented by losses in the system because investments aren't being made, and so forth. We have to cut things somehow and (...) we either have efficient companies, or... We can't support inefficiency from the budget forever," Citu emphasized.The Prime Minister mentioned that the vulnerable consumer law would benefit 550,000 households, meaning nearly one million persons. AGERPRES Prosecutors with the General Prosecutor's Office on Thursday morning were seizing documents from the City Insurance company's headquarters, as part of a criminal case opened following a complaint filed by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF). The representatives of the General Prosecutor's Office claimed that there were no searches, but documents were seized from the insurance company. Another criminal case regarding the insurance company is also in progress at the DIICOT (Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism), for committing the offences of an organized criminal group, fraudulent bankruptcy, embezzlement, IT forgery and use of forgery. This file was opened a few months ago, following a complaint filed by City Insurance and would concern several former and current employees of the company.On 17 September, the ASF decided to withdraw the operating authorization of the Insurance-Reinsurance Company City Insurance and requested the opening of bankruptcy proceedings against the company.Between 2014 and 2021, the ASF imposed on City Insurance SA, but also on the management of the company, several sanctions, respectively fines totalling 18,736,666 lei and issued a decision to increase the solvency capital applied to the company of 16,500,000 euros.AGERPRES Boko Haram, a local Islamic terror group that appeared two decades ago claiming it was the African incarnation of the Afghan Taliban, continues its rapid collapse. This began in July and accelerated after the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan during mid-August. Boko Haram originated in Borno State, in northeast Nigeria adjacent to other Moslem African countries like Niger, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso that have more experience dealing with Islamic terrorists and some of that experience is spreading to the Nigerian military. The decline in popular support for Boko Haram came from the failure of the group to offer anything better than the existing corrupt political system. Doing that was the principal reason for founding Boko Haram two decades ago. Boko Haram reached its peak in 2014, the same year ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) did in Iraq and Syria. Like ISIL, Boko Haram lost all its territory by 2017. By then a growing number of Boko Haram had declared they were now an affiliate of ISIL. That made matters worse because there were now two major Boko Haram factions. Neither faction had any success in gaining control over territory and came to be regarded by people in Borno as bandits. For some Borno politicians and businessmen both Boko Haram factions had become a lucrative business opportunity. This is an old Nigerian custom, where politicians make mutually beneficial agreements with organized crime groups. In 2004 the newly organized Boko Haram condemned that cooperation as a major problem. By 2014 it survived only by using those same practices. The newly formed Boko Haram ISIL faction used the same corrupt financial practices. This caused problems in Nigeria because the national government refused to name and shame local officials and businessmen known as financial supporters of Boko Haram and would be prosecuted once enough evidence was gathered that would make prosecution. The collapse of Boko Haram has been percolating for several years and peaked in mid-June when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was killed by a large ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) raiding party and the factional dispute declared over because of the ISIL faction raid. It wasnt. The death of veteran Boko Haram leader Shekau did not lead to a reunification of Boko Haram under pro-ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) leadership. Shekau was killed by dissident Boko Haram members that had joined ISIL and considered any Boko Haram who did not do the same as traitors to Islam. Shekau had been active in Boko Haram from the beginning, in the 1990s, and had been leader since 2009. Shekau was correct about ISWAP, the local ISIL affiliate, seeking to absorb Boko Haram and seemed to realize more than ISIL leaders that many Boko Haram members preferred to fight ISWAP, or simply leave the movement. ISWAP leaders backed this forced reunification idea without realizing the impact the death of Shekau would have on most Islamic terrorists in the northeast. This became obvious when the number of Boko Haram and ISWAP members abandoning Islamic terrorism increased after the merger and death of Shekau was first announced. Many of those defectors are switching to organized crime and ditching their religious pretensions. This has already been happening in the last few years but the merger caused the trend to spike. By the end of August over 8,000 Boko Haram/ISWAP members, including many family members who lived in Islamic terrorist camps, had officially surrendered, something which merely resulted in an update of government records and agreeing to answer questions about their experience with Boko Haram. Nearly all the Boko Haram/ISWAP already named as criminals and wanted for specific crimes, are leaders and could negotiate a surrender deal that could spare them any punishment at all. That has upset a lot of northern political and business leaders, but these men know that if you have enough cash and connections, you can avoid conviction. This has been the case during the last decade as more and more notorious (they often flaunted it) politicians and business magnates were prosecuted, often with the help of foreign countries, like the UAE and many other Western nations, who provided evidence of financial activities locally. Boko Haram quickly appointed a new leader; Bakura Modu (or Sahaba) who had much less experience than Shekau and he moved Boko Haram headquarters from the Sambia forces to Rijana forest in neighboring Kaduna State. These changes did not stem the defections. Boko Haram and ISWAP are both beset by money problems. Over a decade of Islamic terrorist violence in the north have ruined the local economy, there are more unemployed young men who can be enticed to join the Islamic terrorist for a joining bonus of less than $20 with the promise of more if they can learn to handle an assault rifle and succeed at looting and plundering what is left to steal in the northeast. A merger of economic, not religious, convenience was one thing most Islamic terrorists could agree on. Boko Haram and ISWAP leaders tried to turn this collapse around by declaring the recent success of the Taliban in Afghanistan was still possible in Nigeria. The Islamic terrorist violence has been going on for over fifteen years in Borno state and portions of central and northern Borno where Boko Haram and ISWAP remained active are now depopulated economic wastelands. The Islamic terrorists are not strong enough to expand and, unlike the Afghan Taliban, Boko Haram does not have a powerful Moslem neighbor like Pakistan supporting them and providing sanctuary. There is also no massive drug production operation, like the heroin cartels of southern Afghanistan. While Boko Haram and ISWAP leaders insist prospects are great, that really only applies to the leadership. Most Islamic terrorists in Nigeria have destroyed their own communities for a decade and have nothing to show for it. Their leaders are seen as another bunch of corrupt officials who prosper while the majority sinks deeper into poverty. The Taliban Effect The recent ouster of an elected government by the Taliban in Afghanistan had African governments and media fretting about Islamic terrorism in Africa, especially the ISIL ultraviolence. It took a few weeks for everyone to note that Africa is not Afghanistan. ISIL is at the top of the food chain when it comes to Islamic terror groups. That means ISIL is always at war with all other Islamic terror groups. In other words, the Taliban has long had problems with the local ISIL affiliates and even cooperated with the elected Afghan government and American forces to greatly reduce, but not eliminate, the ISIL presence in Afghanistan. In Africa most of the local Islamic terrorists are affiliated with al Qaeda. Africa also has a multitude of small ISIL affiliates. Since 2018 there have been two ISIL provinces in central Africa. The smaller one is ISGS (Islamic State in Greater Sahara), which showed up in 2018. ISGS is currently active in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The other, slightly older and larger, ISIL province was ISWAP, which is actually a faction of Boko Haram. ISWAP personnel were concentrated in northeastern Nigeria as well as smaller numbers in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. There is also ISCAP (Islamic State Central Africa Province) which is actually most present in southern Africa and only really active in the southeast African state of Mozambique. The problem with ISIL in southern Africa is that Moslems are a small minority there and the Christian and pre-Christian religions are the majority and fight back, often while ISIL is trying to get established locally. Another tiny ISIL affiliate is ISS (Islamic State in Somalia) which was never popular with the local Islamic terrorists (al Shabaab). ISS spends most of its time and effort trying to survive in the northern mountains. In Africa, corrupt local governments are a far greater threat but those same governments appreciate Islamic terrorists, especially ISIL, because it gives the local leaders something to blame all the economic and political problems on. What Makes A Difference In Africa In Africa most of the local Islamic terrorists are affiliated with al Qaeda in addition to a multitude of small ISIL affiliates. Since 2018 there have been two ISIL provinces in central Africa. The smaller one is ISGS (Islamic State in Greater Sahara), which showed up in 2018. ISGS is currently active in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The other, slightly older and larger, ISIL province was ISWAP, which is actually a faction of the Nigerian Boko Haram Islamic terror group, which saw itself as the African Taliban and has been around since 2004. For a few years Boko Haram was, in terms of people killed, more of a problem than any other ISIL group, including the combined ISIL operations in Syria and Iraq. ISWAP personnel are mostly in northeastern Nigeria as well as smaller numbers in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. Earlier in 2021 ISWAP killed the Boko Haram leaders and is trying to absorb Boko Haram. That is encountering a lot of resistance. There is also ISCAP (Islamic State Central Africa Province) which is actually mostly present in southern Africa and only really active in the southeast African state of Mozambique. The problem with ISIL in southern Africa is that Moslems are a small minority there, while the majority Christian and pre-Christian religions fight back, often while ISIL is trying to get established. Another tiny ISIL affiliate is ISS (Islamic State in Somalia) which was never popular with the local Islamic terrorists (al Shabaab). ISS spends most of its time and effort trying to survive in the northern mountains. Most independent media in Africa, including Nigeria, openly accept that their own politicians and businesses keep Islamic terrorists going as long as it is profitable. This raises the question, who is terrorizing who. Islamic terror groups declare war on the corrupt politicians and soon become their paid employees or partners. This is an ancient phenomenon that takes time, effort and resolve to overcome. In the last few centuries more and more nations have done it and managed to hang onto clean government. Despite that, the majority of people still live in areas where the elected or unelected gangsters are still in charge. September 22, 2021: In the south (Ondo and Delta States) the state governors warned northern governors that the new anti-grazing laws would be enforced. The northern governors defend the violent actions of expansionist Moslem Fulani tribesmen herders who attack southern farmers who try to protect their crops from the herds of hungry animals. Since 2016 these clashes have killed more people than Boko Haram violence. Unlike Boko Haram violence, which was mostly in Borno state and two others in the northeast, the Fulani violence has spread throughout states from the north to the far south, mainly interior areas of Ondo and Delta states, which are on the Gulf of Guinea. The heaviest losses still occur in the north and central Nigeria (Adamawa, Nasarawa and Benue states). Adamawa is one of the three northeastern states where Boko Haram has been a major problem since 2014. The other two states are in central Nigeria. The federal government has failed to deal with the problem and the southern states passed local laws banning the illegal grazing and supporting armed resistance by their citizens. In Nigeria the federal government controls the security forces, especially the police via a national police force. The police and military have long been criticized for being corrupt and ineffective. The other major crisis, which has not been as fatal, yet, as Boko Haram and the Fulani herders, is in the southeast, where Christian Igbo seek to revive the movement to partition Nigeria and let the Igbo for a separate state of Biafra. Unlike 1967, when a bloody civil war over the demand ended, there is not a lot of Igbo support for openly partitioning Nigeria. In the southeast Imo, Enugu and Anambra states are meant to be the core of the independent Igbo Biafra. Pro-Biafra groups began to appear again in the late 1990s, trying to revive the separatist movement. Since the late 1990s over a thousand separatists have been killed, and many more imprisoned, while the government continues to insist that Biafra is gone forever. But as details of the extent of government corruption during the last few decades came out, Biafra again seemed like something worth fighting for. Senior government officials, including president Buhari, paid attention and sought to work out a compromise with the Igbos. That has slowed the escalation towards another war, but if the federal government proves unable to work out an acceptable compromise, the Igbo anger will continue escalating. September 20, 2021: In the northwest (Zamfara State), a cross the border in Niger, local security forces caught a large group of tribal gangsters fleeing from a recent defeat in Nigeria. Niger is a favorite place to find sanctuary but that has become more dangerous and this time the Niger forces ambushed the Nigerian gunmen, killing 43 of them while losing seven soldiers. The smaller number of armed Nigerians who got away are also being pursued. The violence in the northwest and central Nigeria is more about tribal animosity or feuds over territory. Since 2016 this has been killing more people than Islamic terrorism. September 17, 2021: In the northeast (Borno State) Boko Haram gunmen once more used explosives to bring down electricity transmission towers (four of them) and cut power to much of the state capital (Maiduguri). This is the fifth time this year that Boko Haram has done this, which is a form of terrorism and takes days to repair and get the power flowing again. It is unclear if Boko Haram is offering to halt such attacks if the government will pay them a monthly fee to keep the electric power flowing . Technically such payments are illegal but that law is more frequently obeyed as Boko Haram power wanes. September 16, 2021: In the northeast (Borno State) Boko Haram gunmen ambushed a military convoy carrying supplies from the state capital Maiduguri to Monguno, 135 kilometers to the northeast. Twelve soldiers were killed and the gunmen were able to drive away with considerable loot. September 13, 2021: In the UAE (United Arab Emirates) the government released a list of 53 individuals and entities that the UAE knew were supports of Islamic terrorism. Six of them were Nigerians, who were prosecuted in the UAE and serving prison terms for sending $782,000 to Boko Haram in 2015 and 2016. There may have been more money involved but the UAE prosecuted based on what they could prove. The six Nigerians were detected and arrested in 2017 and prosecuted for raising and sending money to Nigeria. Expatriate Nigerians have long been a source of cash for Boko Haram. For a while, until about 2015, Boko Haram was seen as a realistic solution to the corruption and bad government the group was founded to deal with. Founded in 2004, Boko Haram tried peaceful means at first. Violence police responses to that turned the group to violence in 2009 and by 2015 most Nigerians saw Boko Haram as a cure worse than the disease. September 1, 2021: The coalition of international shipowners associations officially reduced the HRA (High Risk Area) off Somalia while expanding the HRA off the Nigerian coast and the surrounding Gulf Of Guinea. Pressure from the ship owners led to the creation of an International Piracy Patrol off Somalia and within a few years the pirates were reduced from major threat to chronic nuisance. That piracy problem had its greatest impact on East African ports and potentially to the economically crucial Red Sea and Persian Gulf shipping. That promoted the creation of the continuing International Piracy Patrol. Meanwhile the piracy problem had been going from nuisance to a major threat for ship owners who deliver goods and take away mineral and oil exports along the West African coast. The piracy threat off the West African coast, mainly in the Gulf of Guinea and off the Nigerian coast was noted and that led to the new HRA off West Africa that will encompass over 3.2 million square kilometers (910,000 square miles). Within the area the risk is rising and some shipping companies refuse to send their ships into waters near the Niger River Delta, an area controlled by Nigeria that has experienced the most attacks. Some crews are demanding double pay to enter this area. While the Nigerian Navy has established guarded anchorages and purchased coastal patrol UAVs the risk remains. Nigeria will not allow any armed security teams on merchant ships, as has become common in the Somali HRA. This makes the crews feel even more vulnerable. In the Gulf of Guinea piracy is becoming a major problem and shipping companies warn that this will increase maritime ship insurance and other piracy related costs that will be passed on to consumers in Nigeria and neighboring countries. Off the Nigerian coast the pirate activity is increasing despite growing Nigerian efforts to curb the threat. Nigeria will not get as bad as Somalia, which was the only place in the world where pirates could, for nearly a decade, take a large ship and anchor it off a small coastal town controlled by pirates. With no threats from local authorities, the pirates threatened to murder hostages, especially the ones taken ashore, if the anti-piracy patrol attempts to take back the ship. This lack of any Somali coast guard or government control of the entire coast was why Somalia was the only region seriously enough threatened by pirates that armed guards were allowed on large commercial ships passing through the most dangerous areas. In the other pirate hotspots, like Nigeria/Gulf of Guinea, the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, and parts of the Caribbean, local police, navies and coast guard keep the pirates under control and usually forbid armed guards on ships. The main risk outside Somali waters is nighttime raids by local pirates who rob the crew of valuables and the ships of anything portable. These robbery tactics escalated in Nigeria since 2016 because the pirates realized that kidnapping key crew members and holding them for ransom was safer and more lucrative than hauling away portable valuables. Kidnapping was slow to catch on because initially local security forces could locate the kidnappers hideouts and free their hostages. That changed in Nigeria because pirates made deals with local political and military officials to share the large ransoms paid for kidnapped foreign sailors. Once these ransom sharing deals were in place it became more difficult to find the pirate hideouts where hostages were held. This corrupt profit-sharing arrangement is nothing new in Nigeria and has been a component of the crippling corruption Nigeria has suffered since independence in the 1960s. Currently about five million dollars in ransoms are being paid each year and that is increasing. This is what is threatening to raise ship insurance rates and the cost of shipping anything in or out of the Gulf of Guinea. Ultimately the customer pays, otherwise shippers could not continue doing business in high-risk areas. These robberies and kidnappings are common in areas where a lot of large ships have to anchor off a busy major port and await their turn to dock for loading or unloading cargo. What enabled the Nigerian pirates to become more of a menace was the entrenched gangster culture in the Niger River Delta. This is where most of Nigerias oil is produced. More of the oil is coming from offshore rigs and these became attractive targets for pirates. The seemingly entrenched gangster culture is made possible by the culture of corruption among local politicians and local security forces. Many politicians adopt a local gang to provide muscle for ensuring voters select the most corrupt candidates. Nigeria has been undergoing increasingly vigorous and effective reform efforts since 2000 but the gangster culture is so pervasive and entrenched that progress is slow in the more profitable areas. Nigerian leaders dont like being compared to Somalia, but there are similarities. One difference is that there is more to steal in Nigeria and that many Nigerians, unlike Somalis, consider the outlaw culture a flaw not a feature. August 31, 2021: In the northeast (Borno State) several hundred ISWAP gunmen raided Rann, a town on the Cameroon border, killing 17 people and driving off towards Cameroon with lots of loot. The raid included an attack on a small army base, where the troops withdrew and called for reinforcements. The raiders knew this and limited their loot to what they could quickly find and put in a truck. August 24, 2021: In the northeast (Borno State), across the border in Niger over a hundred Boko Haram gunmen attacked the Niger border town of Diffa, killing sixteen soldiers and wounding nine. They came by boat and landed on the Lake Chad coast. The army had detected this and hastily organized an ambush that left at least fifth of the attackers dead and many wounded who were able to get away with the unwounded. Diffa has been the scene of clashes between the Niger troops and Boko Haram forces for years. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALTAIR RESOURCES INC. (ALTAIR or the Company) (TSX-V: AVX; OTC: AAEEF; Germany FRA: 90A; ISIN: CA02137W2004; WKN: WKN A2ALMP) Mr. George S. Young, Chairman and CEO is pleased to announce, further to the Companys press release of August 23, 2021, that Altair has completed its initial due diligence of the gold properties in Kazakhstan, including site visits, and has further engaged SRK Consulting (Kazakhstan) Limited (SRK) to update and convert its previously prepared JORC reports for the Vasilyevskoe asset, including the Tikhaya zone, (Property A, below), as well as the Tokum and Yuzhnoe assets (Property B, below, in East Kazakhstan) into a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report, and address it to the Company. An NI 43-101 report covering Property C (the Zhaltyrbulak Property, below, in Central Kazakhstan), will be completed at a later stage. The Company expects the report to include a current Mineral Resource Estimate on the producing gold projects in Kazakhstan that are included in the Acquisition Agreement announced by the Company, as well as a discussion of their upside exploration potential. The SRK report will be in addition to the further technical reporting being prepared, as previously announced by International Mining Services Ltd. of Almaty, Kazakhstan. The company expects that the latter work will include evaluations leading toward the preparation of a full Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) for the expansion of the operations in the oxide portions of the properties, as well as the commencement of additional production in the sulfide zones. The reader is cautioned that historical gold resources cannot be relied upon as they need to be confirmed by a Qualified Person through additional sampling, analysis and possibly additional drilling. A National Instrument 43-101 Mineral Estimate Report on the property has now been commissioned by the Company to qualify the historical estimate and profile the property characteristics. Acquisition highlights Current aggregate gold production at the two properties is approximately 21,000 ounces of gold per year from the oxide zones of the two properties. Highlights of the Eastern Kazakhstan gold properties (Property A and the nearby Property B) include the following: The 31st August 2020, SRK JORC (Joint Ore Reserves Committee) (2012) MRE report for Property A stated a total Indicated Resource of 785 koz gold at an average grade of 1.62 g/t Au, and a total Inferred Resource of 765 koz of gold at an average grade of 1.22 g/t Au. A cut-off grade of 0.25 g/t Au was used for open pit, and a 0.55 g/t Au cut-off grade was used for underground. Two higher-grade shoots, mostly classified as an Inferred Resource, extend below the current optimised pit shell, and at this stage appear to comprise a grade of up to 3 g/t gold. The 31st December 2020, SRK JORC (Joint Ore Reserves Committee) (2012) MRE report for Property B stated a total Indicated Resource of 257 koz at an average grade of 1.36 g/t Au, and a total Inferred Resource of 110 koz of gold at an average grade of 1.35 g/t Au. A cut-off grade of 0.25 g/t Au was used for open pit, and a 0.59 g/t Au cut-off grade was used for underground. The SRK reports were prepared for the Vendor of the properties, who consented to their reference in the Companys July 12, 2021 press release. Current oxide mining is being carried out on Property A to a depth of 40 m with material being processed using conventional heap leach technology. Current annual production is 12 koz gold, which may be increased to 30 koz gold per annum with mining of additional oxide deposits in the A license. The Company has commissioned a National Instrument 43-101 PEA for Properties A and B. Exploration potential in the Property A license is good, with potential for adding additional ounces at multiple target areas in strong alteration zones ready to be soil sampled and drilled along previously delineated major controlling structures. Highlights of the Central Kazakhstan property (the C gold Property) include the following: Deposit C has a historic GKZ resource of 480 to 500 koz of gold with a grade of 1.40 g/t to 1.45 g/t. Altair intends to develop this project to NI 43-101 compliance. C is an operating oxide heap leach gold mine, producing 9 koz gold per annum. The Company will be evaluating ways to increase this production. The mineralization being processed at C includes significant free gold with excellent metallurgical properties, currently yielding 70% Au recovery in the oxide zone in current test operations using both a gravity circuit and heap leach processing. Exploration potential at C is believed to be good, as the existing initial test mining operations cover only a small part of a much larger mineralized system. Gold and Copper geochemical anomalies, defined in 2020 to the east of both existing open cut pits, cover areas of 1,000 m by 800 m each, and are ready to be drill tested to increase the oxide gold resource. Based on hydrothermal alteration associated with the mineralization, the potential for a large copper-gold porphyry stockwork deposit underlies the currently identified mineralization. District-scale exploration, including both alteration mapping and a 3-D IP (induced polarization) geophysical survey, will assess this possibility. Success could form the basis for a future large open pit mine. Both the Eastern Kazakhstan and Central Kazakhstan properties recover gold using heap leach technology, while gravity recovery is also used on the Central property. The Acquisition includes the infrastructure and capital facilities of both gold operations that are both currently delivering gold dore bars from their respective oxide zones. Altair, in conjunction with Core Mining Group, its technical consultant, anticipates that the ongoing PEA will demonstrate robust project economics and extended mine lives for the two Kazakhstan projects, even without the anticipated exploration success. Altair is targeting a production rate in excess of 100,000 ounces Au per year. George S. Young, Altair chairman and chief executive officer, stated: "We are extremely pleased to create additional value for our shareholders not only by acquiring the Marbera tenements in Burkina Faso as recently announced, but also by concurrently advancing the producing projects in Kazakhstan. Engaging high quality engineering consultants with recent regional experience in constructing gold projects where we are engaged, represents a big advantage. We look forward to forging ahead with the PEA and feasibility process in Kazakhstan, where the mines are already in production, and with advanced exploration in the very prolific gold-producing region of Burkina Faso, where nearly 400 kilometres of drilling and over 294,000 samples have already been completed. Information of a technical and scientific nature that forms the basis of the disclosure in this press release has been prepared and approved by Dr. Stewart A. Jackson, a Qualified Person, under National Instrument 43-101, and independent consultant of Altair Resources. About Altair Resources Inc. Altair is a gold and precious metal exploration company. Altair recently announced the signing of a binding agreement for the purchase of the Marbera 2 permits in Burkina Faso, hosting historic resources of over 1.3 million ounces of gold as shown by over 387,000 metres of drilling and over 294,000 samples. The company also recently announced an agreement for the acquisition of two gold-producing properties in Kazakhstan containing a total historic indicated resource of 947,900 ounces of gold, open pit and underground, and a total historic inferred resource of 892,600 oz of gold, open pit and underground, with current aggregate gold production at the two properties of approximately 21,000 ounces of gold per year from the oxide zones of the properties. The in situ acquisition cost of these gold-producing assets is $58 per ounce. Altair also has rights to acquire a 65-per-cent interest in the Simon gold and silver property located in the State of Nevada. A past producer, the Simon property presents an excellent opportunity for adding value, employing low-cost exploration activities to identify prime drilling sites in six anomalous zones previously identified with gold, silver and copper mineralization. The Simon property lies within the region that hosts the prolific Tonopah District, the Round Mountain gold mine and numerous other successful mining projects. For further information: George S. Young Chairman, CEO, Altair Resources Inc. +1 (806) 886-3317 gyoung@altairresources.com, www.altairresources.com Fraser Ruth Investor Relations fruth@altairresources.com Kirsti Mattson Media Relations kirsti.mattson@gmail.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 press release contains forward-looking statements with respect to the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results suggested by the forward-looking statements. In addition, the forward-looking statements require management to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that the forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate, that the managements assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Generally forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as anticipate, will, expect, may, continue, could, estimate, forecast, plan, potential and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may include, but are not limited to, the completion of the private placement and the Company receiving regulatory approval to the partial revocation order. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect including, but not limited to, the Company receiving regulatory approval to the private placement and the partial revocation order application. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof or the dates specifically referenced in this press release, where applicable. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any forward-looking statements that are contained or incorporated in this press release. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Source: Altair Resources Inc. The R&D project with Yissum Research Development Company will contribute to Clearminds IP portfolio TORONTO, Sept. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- Clearmind Medicine Inc. (CSE: CMND) (Clearmind or the "Company"), a psychedelic medicine biotech company focused on the discovery and development of novel psychedelic-derived therapeutics to solve widespread and undertreated health problems, is pleased to announce it has established a research and development project with Yissum Research Development Company (Yissum), the technology transfer company of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The collaboration will focus on developing novel, innovative, patentable psychedelics as potential drug candidates to expand Clearminds IP portfolio. Yissum is known for its ability to discover, analyze and design advanced molecular scaffolds to serve as common platforms for synthesizing various structurally related compounds as potential therapeutic agents and drug candidates. According to the terms of the agreement, The Hebrew University researchers, professors Dmitry Tsvelikhovsky, Masha Niv and Avi Priel, will work together to investigate and innovate synthetic novel analogs of known psychedelic compounds, conduct in silico 3D docking studies and rational design, and screen the compounds in an in vitro platform. Adi Zuloff-Shani, Ph.D., CEO of Clearmind, commented on the announcement, This is an important partnership for Clearmind. The academic/technology transfer model is responsible for many medical breakthroughs, and the Hebrew University-Yissum partnership is one of the most prolific in the field. I am certain that our collaboration will yield many potential candidates for further evaluation. Yissum is looking forward to collaborating with Clearmind in its mission to discover novel psychedelic compounds. We have assigned our top researchers from multiple fields to this project, and I am confident their broad expertise and know-how will facilitate Clearminds ability to expand their pipeline portfolio, said Dr. Ilya Pittel, VP of business development at Yissum Research Development Company. Professor Tsvelihovsky added, Professors Avi Priel and Masha Niv and I are excited to work with the team at Clearmind to create unique synthetic compounds for the development of novel GPCR-focused therapeutics. We believe psychedelics are going to revolutionize the treatment of mental health, and Clearmind's plans put it on the leading edge of innovation in the field. We are quite optimistic that our efforts will lead to new psychotherapy drug candidates. About Yissum Research Development Company Yissum is the technology transfer company of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Founded in 1964, it serves as a bridge between cutting-edge academic research and a global community of entrepreneurs, investors and industry. Yissums mission is to benefit society by converting extraordinary innovations and transformational technologies into commercial solutions that address our most urgent global challenges. Yissum has registered over 10,875 patents globally, licensed over 1,140 technologies and has spun out more than 191 companies. Yissums business partners span the globe and include companies such as Boston Scientific, Google, ICL, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Microsoft, Novartis and many more. For further information, please visit www.yissum.co.il . About the Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's first university, formed in 1918 and opened in 1925. Today, there are over 23,000 students enrolled at the university, including undergraduates, master's degree students and doctoral candidates. The university has four campuses: Mount Scopus, The Edmond J. Safra (Givat Ram) Campus, and Ein Kerem, all in Jerusalem, and Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, located in Rehovot. Hebrew University Alumni are invited to visit https://new.huji.ac.il . About Clearmind Medicine Inc. Clearmind is a psychedelic pharmaceutical biotech company focused on the discovery and development of novel psychedelic-derived therapeutics to solve widespread and underserved health problems, including alcohol use disorder. Its primary objective is to research and develop psychedelic-based compounds and attempt to commercialize them as regulated medicines, foods or supplements. The Companys intellectual portfolio currently consists of two patent families. The first, "Binge Behavior Regulators," has been granted in the U.S., Europe, China and India, with pending divisional applications in Europe and the U.S. The second, Alcohol Beverage Substitute, has been approved for a European patent, with pending applications in the U.S., China and India. The Company intends to seek additional patents for its compounds whenever warranted and will remain opportunistic regarding the acquisition of additional intellectual property to build its portfolio. Shares of Clearmind are listed for trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol "CMND" and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol CWYO. For further information, please contact: Investor Relations, Email: invest@clearmindmedicine.com Telephone: (778) 400-5347 General Inquiries, Info@Clearmindmedicine.com www.Clearmindmedicine.com FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release may contain forward-looking statements and information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Such statements include submission of the relevant documentation within the required timeframe to the satisfaction of the relevant regulators and raising sufficient financing to complete the Company's business strategy. There is no certainty that any of these events will occur. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be correct. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Investing into early-stage companies inherently carries a high degree of risk, and investment into securities of the Company shall be considered highly speculative. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of, the securities in any province in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities issued, or to be issued, under the Private Placement have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (the CSE) nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. TICKERS: LGIQ Source: Streetwise Reports (9/23/21) Logiq Inc. has been a champion of small and medium sized businesses, providing tools to help them compete in an e-commerce world dominated by large players. And now the company inked several large, potentially lucrative deals in emerging markets. If you are a small- or medium-sized business, how do you get noticed online when megabrands control almost 70% of the U.S. e-commerce market? Small-cap Logiq Inc. (LGIQ:NEO; LGIQ:OTCQX) aims to level the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses by offering access to tools that previously were available only to large companies. And the company is branching out in lucrative niche markets in emerging economies such as Indonesia and Nigeria. The company has been around since late 2014, with a product now called AppLogiq, a mobile app designed for micro to small businesses to get their offline business to an online format with zero technical expertise. "With no technical expertise, we could build your own mobile website, using a smartphone, and have it published within two hours," Brent Suen, Logiq's executive chairman and president, told Streetwise Reports. "Businesses can take online orders, do promotions, and use up to 70 different functions, from human resources to Quickbooks." "We ... grew the business from 2014 until about 2019, so in five years we went as high as US$34 million in revenue." Logiq began in the mobile app space because "in emerging markets, up to 90% of the population has a smartphone, but only 1020% have desktop or laptop computers," Suen explained. "We used the subscription model and grew the business from 2014 until about 2019, so in five years we went as high as US$34 million in revenue." With about 300,000 micro to small business users, AppLogiq contributes about 30% of revenue. In 2019, the company looked at how to expand into more developed markets. Suen noted that e-commerce only captures 20% of all retail sales, so there's lots of room for growth of e-commerce, but within e-commerce itself, 53% of sales are controlled by only five companies, well-known names like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Target. "That means that the other 1.6 million businesses that are online have to compete against some monster ad budgets. And the tools out there are only available to e-commerce companies that have a minimum of $10 million a month, which basically rules out everyone but the largest brands," he said. Logiq acquired a company called Push Interactive, based in Minneapolis, that helps find customers for existing online businesses, using lead generation, SEO, digital marketing, etc. "We didn't depart from our core roots, essentially enabling micro to small businesses to get online, but we evolved into helping existing online businesses find new customers," Suen noted. Logiq's DataLogiq business unit includes the acquisition of Push Interactive and two other acquisitions made in the past year. "Whether it's an ad agency that services small businesses, or the actual small business itself, they now have access to the same types of tools that an Amazon or an eBay or one of the large e-commerce retailers has, whereas before they were priced out of the market. We trying to help small business better compete, find better customers and be more relevant," Suen said. DataLogiq provides a platform that enables a business of any size with a minimum monthly budget of $10,000 to compete against the ad spend of the larger companies. "Our platform is literally the same as TradeDesk, which makes money by charging between 35% and 45% of the ad spend," Suen explained. "We make money by showing the actual price that we bought the ad for the client and we mark it up by 15%. So not only do we have full transparency, our customers get better pricing." DataLogiq contributes 70% of Logiq's revenue. Initially focused on the North American and European market, Logiq recently expanded Logiq Digital Marketing to the Asia Pacific region. No stranger to emerging markets, Logiq is now expanding beyond its initial mobile app, and recently signed deals in Indonesia and Nigeria. "We view Indonesia has a huge opportunity; with a population of 270 million people, smartphone penetration is 90%, and a large percentage of the businesses are micro or small," Suen said. "We have branched out to areas that others are not going after," he explained. The first is microlending; Logiq is working with Indonesia's Social Security Administration, which has 52 million members, and expects to begin a pilot project soon with its 6,000 employees, working in partnership with a bank or financial institution in Indonesia to loan small amounts. "It represents low risk because the Social Security Administration already administers payroll benefits, pension savings and insurance. It's a captive market on one hand; it's a high barrier to entry because we've been chosen as the sole source provider, and so it's a huge opportunity. The lending rates are attractive and the risk is relatively low," Suen said. "We figure that at a 2% penetration rate, the contract could be worth $2 or $3 million in additional revenue per year." The banks will charge 16% interest and Logiq will share in part of that. "Even more attractive is access to the data," Suen said. "Once we have the consumer data, we can target those consumers for other products and services." The company expects everything to be fully operating at scale by this time next year. "We figure that at a 2% penetration rate, the contract could be worth $2 or $3 million in additional revenue per year, and that does not include the value of the data. It's about 80% gross profit margin, so it's very attractive. Plus it scales nicely and could very well eclipse our entire revenue run rate right now," Suen said. Logiq's second opportunity in Indonesia is psychological testing that is required to receive a driver's license. In the past, one would have to go into a police station and take a written and oral test, but that changed with COVID. The sole source provider in Indonesia is a company named Mentalku, which is Logiq's partner with the Social Security Administration. "As we started moving forward with Mentalku, they asked about creating a completely app-based test that people could take through their phone and pay through their phone. That was the nexus of us partnering with them to do these psychological tests. There's an e-commerce functionality to it: customers can order over-the-counter or prescription pharmaceuticals, wellness products, make epayments using the other functions of the app," Suen explained. The app launces on September 28. In Nigeria, Logiq has made a preliminary agreement with Novaji Introserve, "a value-added IT and financial services company based in Lagos, to provide home delivery and mobile financial services to millions of unbanked and underbanked people in Nigeria." Joining with Novaji "marks our first foray into emerging markets outside of Indonesia," stated Suen. "Nigeria, with a population of 212 million, is one of the most populous countries in the world, yet most people don't have bank accounts. This creates a major opportunity for our mobile commerce and fintech platforms that have been especially designed for emerging markets. These field-proven solutions can provide much-needed financial services to tens of millions across the region." "I think we're quite undervalued where we are now." Logiq has approximately 23 million shares outstanding and 26 million fully diluted. It trades on Canada's NEO exchange under the ticker LGIQ, and in the U.S. on the OTCQX as LGIQ. Logiq is moving ahead to uplist to the New York Stock Exchange. We asked Suen why should an investor be interested in Logiq. He noted that the average company in its peer space is trading 23 times revenue, while Logiq is trading currently a little bit below two times revenue. "I think we're quite undervalued where we are now. And from an investor perspective, that certainly minimizes risk and maximizes upside," he concluded. [NLINSERT] Disclosure: 1) Patrice Fusillo compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. She owns, or members of her immediate household or family own, securities of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She is, or members of her immediate household or family 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: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Logiq Inc. Please click here for more information. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. 3) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 4) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Logiq Inc., a company mentioned in this article. CANNON AFB, N.M. (Tribune News Service) Cannon Air Force Base is starting work with nearby landowners to test their water and soil for a group of chemicals known as PFAS. Tests will help the military determine where an underground contamination plume migrated off the base. But complex federal legal requirements have made the cleanup process of toxins that leaked into the Ogallala Aquifer frustratingly slow, Clovis dairy farmers and residents told Cannon officials last week. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) leaked into the ground from firefighting foam used in military training exercises. Similar problems have been reported at military bases and industrial sites across the country. John Kern, director of the community group Clean Water Partnership at Cannon, said he is concerned that a short-term water treatment solution will not be operational until 2023. "Much of the community considers that to be a woefully inadequate response to the problem," Kern said during Cannon's quarterly virtual public meeting about PFAS last week. Chris Segura with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center said the $16.6 million on-base project of three wells and a filtration system is a necessary step. "This is bounded by law," Segura said. "Flexibility and our agility to be able to manage this under a different framework just is not there. So our hands are tied." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency links PFAS to cancers and low birth weights. Col. Terence Taylor, who became commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon in June, said he understands that Department of Defense project timelines don't always "match up with the urgency" the community wants. "My family lives here on the installation, as well as over 500 military families," Taylor said. "We're all interested in ensuring that we have clean, consumable water for the health and wellbeing of everyone. We are not looking for ways to halt progress. In fact, we're trying to speed things up as best we can." The toxic plume spread in the aquifer from Cannon's southeast corner. Art Schaap at nearby Highland Dairy euthanized at least 1,000 cows because of PFAS in the animals' meat and milk. "I know that you guys are going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to get to a resolution here someday," Schaap said. "I'm just wondering why we don't just have filters on all those contaminated wells that are being used right now to feed our animals, to water our crops, our homes. We've had to pay for all that ourselves." Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal. (c)2021 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) Visit the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.) at www.abqjournal.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Virginia Waller-Torres stands with Cpl. Mitchell Wojtowicz, left, and Cpl. Jared Tosner, at Marine Barracks Washington, Sept. 20, 2021. Waller-Torres thanked them for helping push her car out of floodwaters near Arlington Cemetery during a downpour on Sept. 16. (Mark A. Morales/U.S. Marine Corps) A woman who shot a viral video of Marines in dress blue-white uniforms rescuing her from floodwaters on a northern Virginia road thanked two of the service members at their barracks this week. Virginia Waller-Torres met Monday with two of the half-dozen Marines who waded through knee-high water in their ceremonial white trousers during a downpour to push her Mini Cooper on Columbia Pike in Arlington, near the Pentagon. Marine power! This is so cool, Waller-Torres says in the clip as the car is pushed past a parked Marine Corps bus emblazoned with the services emblem. Oh, my God, this is the most American thing ever. The Mini Cooper was on a highway exit when it was hit by the flash flood, stalling the engine, she said in an online post. There was no safe way to exit as cars kept passing. The group of Marines pushed the car to a spot under a nearby overpass, where the driver and Waller-Torres could get out. The police arrived soon after and took over. Cpls. Jared Tosner and Mitchell Wojtowicz met with Waller-Torres at the Marine Corps Barracks Washington, also known as 8th & I, where they presented her with a challenge coin. Her Marine rescuers are members of the services Body Bearer section, an elite unit of hand-picked service members who perform funerals for Marines, veterans and their family members, as well as presidents and other dignitaries. They had done five funerals earlier that day at Arlington National Cemetery, 8th & I said on Facebook. Tosner told Fox 5 in Washington earlier this week that theyd just completed a 3 p.m. funeral and saw it as a small task to give the Mini a push. Definitely didnt do it for attention or views or anything like that, Tosner said. Just trying to do the right thing when no ones watching. In this case, somebody was recording. Marines selected for the body bearer duty must be active-duty sergeants or below and must possess outstanding physical stamina, as well as unquestionable moral character, leadership, and organizational skills, the service said in a message calling for applicants in January. The requirements call for Marines who can perform 10 repetitions of each of the following: bench presses at 225 pounds, squats at 315 pounds, military presses at 135 pounds and straight bar curls at 115 pounds. Once selected, they train for six to 12 months before joining the team, then spend much of their time in the gym, lugging weight-filled trash cans through a parking garage to simulate carrying a casket and practicing other ceremonial duties. The Marine Corps is the only service to use six body bearers instead of eight, the service said in a 2016 video. Marine body bearers are also the only ones to carry the casket at shoulder height and to give it a final head-high raise. Their mission is to render those honors flawlessly without showing emotion, pain or physical strain. "If theres anyone whos going to help these people, itd be us, Wojtowicz told Fox 5. We were the right ones for the job and hopped out without hesitation. The reaction to the video showed that people are starved for just wholesome positivity, Wojtowicz said. Virginia Waller-Torres talks to Cpl. Mitchell Wojtowicz, left, and Cpl. Jared Tosner after she met them at Marine Barracks Washington, Sept. 20, 2021. Waller-Torres thanked them for helping push her car out of floodwaters near Arlington Cemetery during a downpour on Sept. 16. (Mark A. Morales/U.S. Marine Corps) Waller-Torres praised the Marines in a public post on Facebook. The country has been divided for what feels like so long now, she said, but that day, it felt like hope was sent dressed in beautifully adorned uniforms. I prayed to God or whatever you may call the higher power and I guess it answered, she wrote. I am so eternally grateful for everything. I cannot even begin to compose how it all feels Thank you (praying hands emoji) fight the good fight. Petty Officer 1st Class Ryan L. Crosby, assigned to Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Atlantic in Virginia Beach, Va., died Sept. 19 due to complications related to COVID-19 at a hospital in Norfolk. (U.S. Navy) A Navy petty officer based in Virginia died Sunday of complications related to the coronavirus at a Norfolk hospital, the service said. Petty Officer 1st Class Ryan L. Crosby, a gas turbine system technician, is the 13th sailor to die of causes related to COVID-19. The 39-year-old was assigned to the Navys Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Atlantic in Virginia Beach. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, friends and coworkers of Petty Officer Crosby during this extremely difficult time, Marine Col. Christopher Browning, the group commander, said in a statement. A colleague described Crosby on Facebook as someone whose commitment to his wife and daughters was a model most could follow for a happy family. Crosby received a positive test result for COVID-19 on Aug. 26, said Lt. Cmdr. Laura K. Stegherr, a spokeswoman for Carrier Strike Group Four. He was admitted to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth on Sept. 8 and transferred the following day to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where he died. The sailors death comes a little over a week after three Navy civilian employees died of complications related to the disease. A civilian employee with Naval Air Station Oceana and Dam Neck Annex in Virginia Beach died Sept. 10. Two others died Sept. 12 one with the Navy Information Warfare Center, Atlantic in Charleston, S.C., and another with Fleet Readiness Center Southeast, Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla. At least 90 Navy civilians, 36 contractors and two dependents have died since the pandemic began, the service said in an updated tally last week. Crosby trained crews of the Landing Craft Air Cushion. The hovercraft is used in amphibious operations to transport gear and Marines. He joined the service in February 2002, according to data Stegherr provided. A native of the Cincinnati, Ohio area, he spent much of his career assigned to Assault Craft Unit Four in Virginia Beach. He was close to retirement, wrote a Facebook commenter, who described themselves as a fellow LCAC crew instructor. Crosby had a reassuringly calm demeanor when they would fly together on the craft where they spent countless hours, the commenter wrote. Others in public Facebook comments reacted with disbelief at Crosbys death. This whole thing is just so damn surreal, wrote Brian Wemmerus, whose Facebook page says hes a former senior chief petty officer who served with Assault Craft Unit Four. I keep thinking hes going to pop onto someones feed with a smartass comment or jab. Among Crosbys awards and decorations were a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, a Humanitarian Service Medal, and surface and aviation warfare specialist badges. Citing privacy laws, Stegherr declined to say whether Crosby was vaccinated. His positive test came just days before Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro issued an order Aug. 30 requiring all sailors and Marines to be fully vaccinated. All Navy COVID deaths have been individuals not immunized (one individual was partially vaccinated), the Navy said in an Aug. 31 administrative message implementing the vaccination order. A sailor rings a bell to honor the fallen during the first Bells Across America ceremony at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. (Kaleb Sarten/U.S. Navy) YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan The names of more than 200 sailors who lost their lives over the past year, along with those who died in the destroyer collisions of 2017, were read aloud during a memorial service here on Thursday. About 60 sailors and civilians gathered at Ombudsman Park to pay their respects. Part of the Navy Gold Star Programs Bells Across America for Fallen Service Members, the hourlong memorial is being mirrored at bases across the world. This ceremony is very important, as it sets time aside for us all to recognize the contributions that the fallen have made in our community and throughout our great Navy, said Yokosukas commander, Capt. Rich Jarrett, during the ceremony. After a prayer and Jarretts remarks, sailors in dress whites gathered in front of the small crowd to read off the names of the sailors being remembered. A ships bell was rung as each finished reading their list of names. The event also featured a display of dozens of pairs of boots, representing the sailors who lost their lives, along with photos of those sailors affiliated with Yokosuka. Boots representing fallen sailors are displayed during a Bells Across America ceremony at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. (Kaleb Sarten/U.S. Navy) This year marks the sixth annual Bells Across America service, but the first commemoration at Yokosuka. It honored not only those who died in the past year, but 17 sailors lost four years ago in two collisions involving the Yokosuka-based guided-missile destroyers USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain. In June 2017, the Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged container vessel, killing seven sailors in Japanese waters. Just two months later, 10 sailors died aboard the McCain after the ship collided with a Liberian-flagged tanker near Singapore. We've not done this ceremony before. As we look back at years past, we've not had the opportunity to reflect and to remember, Jarrett told Stars and Stripes after the ceremony. We wanted to make sure we did that in this initial event, so that it could be recognized, at least for the first time. Buy Photo Leaders at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, including installation commander Capt. Rich Jarrett, right, look at photos of fallen sailors during a Bells Across America service, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes) Of the more than 200 sailors honored, two were stationed at Yokosuka at the time of their death: Cmdr. Charles Harris and Petty Officer 2nd Class Adam Thomas. Harris, the former commander of the destroyer USS Howard, died in August from health complications. Thomas, a mass communications specialist, was killed in a July vehicle accident, according to base spokesman Randall Baucom. Harris family, as well as the families of three other sailors who died while stationed at Yokosuka in past years Cmdr. Frank Bivins, Chief Petty Officer Abraham Lopez and Chief Petty Officer Demond Walker were also present Thursday. It's sometimes difficult to remember, but it's important for us to remember those that have given the ultimate sacrifice particularly while serving on active duty and then recognize that there are families left behind, Jarrett told Stars and Stripes. Two of the fallen sailors spouses, Makiko Walker and Yuko Bivins, described the service as emotional, but said it served a dual purpose in helping with the grieving process and honoring their husbands memory. After I lost my husband, Ive received a lot of support from the military and that helped a lot with the grieving, Walker told Stars and Stripes after the ceremony. To me its very important to participate and attend these [ceremonies] to remember them. Alex Wilson Mamoru Hosoda draws at his office in Studio Chizu in Tokyo on Sept. 9. (Shiho Fukada/For The Washington Post) In her life in rural Japan, Suzu is a freckled and shy 17-year-old who is self-conscious about her looks and has lost her will to play music after her mom's death. But in the virtual world, known as "U," she transforms into Belle, an enchanting global pop superstar with flowing pink hair and a mesmerizing facial design that resembles freckles. The animated film "Belle" a hit in Japan that will make its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 25 also carries a bit of artistic rebellion. The film's message of female empowerment has gained attention for flipping the script on anime, Japan's signature style of animated movies and graphic novels that often portrays girls and women as weak, vacuous and hyper-sexualized. The message has resonated in Japan during a time when growing numbers of women are calling for change most recently laid bare through a string of sexist comments by high-ranking Olympic officials that drew fierce backlash. Director Mamoru Hosoda at his office in Tokyo on Sept. 9. (Shiho Fukada/For The Washington Post) "I feel that women characters in Japanese anime are often depicted through a lens of desire leading to their sexual exploitation, and too much is brushed off as a freedom of expression," the film's director, Mamoru Hosoda, said during an interview earlier this month at Studio Chizu, his animation studio in the Tokyo suburbs. From Disney princesses to Marvel superheroes, from anime to pop music, creators across genres are rethinking how to portray women and girls with agency and dignity, and show that being imperfect is beautiful, too. Global movements such as #MeToo have also underscored a sense of common purpose. Hosoda said he hopes to draw attention to the ways that Japanese animation has shaped the public's perceptions of women and girls, and what it means to be beautiful and powerful. "Such exploitation [has been] ... justified with the notion that it's happening in a fantasy world, and not in reality. But I feel that, surely, such perceptions are connected and will influence our reality," he added, as he sipped on coffee at his office, decorated with posters and figurines. Japanese animation, which includes anime and manga, is among the country's biggest cultural exports and has become popularized through digital streaming services. But problematic female representation in anime, especially in television shows aimed at men, has been a concern for gender equality advocates. Such depictions are both overt - exaggerated breasts and barely clothed girls - and subtle, such as story lines in which girls are damsels in distress and secondary to boys. In recent years, directors such as Hosoda have sought to challenge views in Japanese society that can devalue women, said Akiko Sugawa, professor at Japan's Yokohama National University specializing in gender and anime studies. "Anime has the power to create and break gender stereotypes," she said. Sugawa said there is still much room for improvement, including the need for more women and LGBTQ anime directors. "There are now more positive portrayals of LGBTQ characters, issues and works that pose questions about societal problems. And with the rise of more diverse directors and anime decision-makers, there's hope for more change to come," Sugawa said. "Belle" is a modern twist on the Disney classic "Beauty and the Beast." After her mother dies while trying to save a child from danger, Suzu struggles to fit in at school. She joins the virtual world "U" as Belle, a talented performer with eye-catching outfits who instantaneously gains billions of followers. With the computer savvy of her female best friend and the emotional support of her late mother's female friends, Suzu/Belle embarks on an adventure to help a mysterious beast. Along the way, Belle performs several songs that can now be heard throughout shopping districts of Tokyo. Since its release in July, "Belle" has become Japan's third-highest-grossing film this year. A sketch of the movie poster Belle at director Mamoru Hosodas studio in Tokyo. The film will make its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 25. (Shiho Fukada/For The Washington Post) In the movie, Hosoda seeks to give women and girls greater depth and humanity than is normally depicted in anime. Through Suzu/Belle, he juxtaposes the way that the inner beauty of Suzu and dynamism of Belle coexist in one person. For Suzu, an introverted teen, her online persona is not just an imagination or an escape, but rather a part of herself that she eventually grows into. Hosoda said he wanted to give Belle more complexity, in the way the character of Beast in the original Disney movie was afforded that depth. "Just like the beast having a duality, I wanted Belle to also have two sides and focus on how the two sides come to play, ultimately leading to her self-growth," he said. Hosoda received a 14-minute standing ovation when his movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in July. Belle has been replicated by cosplayers, who dress up as anime characters. The animated character Belle "performed" the movie's title song at the Fuji Rock Festival last month. On social media, Japanese fans have raved about the movie's positive message, stunning visuals and catchy tunes. "Those who are feeling difficulty in their lives, those who want to change but can't, I hope they see this film. It really helps you take a step forward," one person tweeted. Hosoda, 53, has long focused on the cyber world in his works, including the film versions of "Digimon" in1999 and 2000 and from his earliest feature films such as "Summer Wars." His movies, particularly in recent years, have depicted women and girls as independent and strong-willed characters, including the 2018 "Mirai,"a story about a boy who lashes out after his younger sister is born but learns the importance of family bonds. The movie earned Hosoda an Oscar nomination for best animated feature film. But through "Belle," Hosoda has delivered perhaps his most explicit message about female empowerment and the power of technology as a force for good. He said he was inspired by his 5-year-old daughter, as he contemplates the future she will face growing up. "She is still in preschool and is quite introverted, so I imagined how she was going to survive once she gets on social media and begins having all sorts of online interactions," he said. Hosoda said he wanted to challenge the narratives warning against increasing reliance on the Internet. "For the younger generation, the norm will be to live in both worlds and that both worlds are their realities," he said. "And the Internet plays a huge role for them to raise their voice and go out into the world." "Belle" is scheduled to be released in U.S. theaters this winter. Danish pop star Zindy Laursen has spent the past 30 years searching for her bioligical father, a man she believes may be an American veteran of the Vietnam War. (Anne-Sofie Hjort) A Danish musician hopes she is close, after searching more than 30 years, to learning the identity of her father, whom she believes may be an American veteran of the Vietnam War. Zindy Laursen, 50, is known in Denmark as just Zindy. She bides her time awaiting the results of a DNA profile, she recently told Stars and Stripes in a video interview, by writing songs and preparing for the day she performs again at post-pandemic concerts and music festivals. After years of unsuccessful searches, Zindy enlisted the help of an amateur genealogist to find her father, whom she believes, based on her mothers story, is a Vietnam vet who visited Australia during the war. I have butterflies of hope, but my guard is still up in case I get disappointed again, she said. The reality is that he could be dead or has other children discouraging him from meeting me. A lot is going through my mind. Zindy said she hopes the DNA analysis she received from 23andMe will eventually lead her to her father. That road is contingent on her father, or one of his relatives, having made their own DNA profile available for comparison. Pop star Zindy Laursen, 50, is known in Denmark as just Zindy. She has been searching more than 30 years to learn the identity of her father, whom she believes may be an American veteran of the Vietnam War. (Bjorn Vido) I always felt half In 1969, Zindys mother was a go-go dancer in Sydney, where she often met U.S. service members on leave. The soldiers inevitably returned to duty, some to Vietnam, and she eventually moved back to her home country, Denmark. Zindy grew up eager to find out who this mysterious person was that her mom met dancing, like something out of a movie. Meanwhile, in 1992, she was runner-up for the chance to represent Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest. Record labels scouted her during the audition process. I flew to America to make a record, and I had this thought that maybe my dad could be there around any corner, she said. In 1998, she hired a private investigator to track down Cleveland Mason, an American working for Veterans Affairs in San Francisco with whom Zindys mom had a months-long relationship, and Zindy believed could be her father. Zindy and Mason got to know each other over the next few years. She produced a song about the meaning of family inspired by the joy of perhaps finding her long-lost dad. But DNA tests proved Mason was not Zindys father. The search, and her subsequent disappointment, made tabloid papers in Denmark because of Zindys budding fame. I was so devastated, she said. I thought, Im going to give up. Im never going to meet my dad. Over the years, Zindy said, she has developed confidence in herself, and finding her father is more about closure than identity. But, despite her fame and success, she always felt like a piece was missing, especially growing up as a biracial woman in predominantly white Europe. I always felt half, Zindy said. I wanted to be around more people who looked like me and know more about my ethnic and cultural identity. A tough task This year, Zindys hope was renewed when she met DNA and family lineage hobbyist Brian Hjort while waiting in line to get a coronavirus test at a Copenhagen gym. Hjort recognized Zindy from her fame as a musician and stories about her search for her father. Zindy was hesitant at first but agreed to let him help. Hjort, a Danish antique furniture repairman, became interested in reuniting families of war veterans when he was backpacking in Vietnam in 1992 and heard stories about people speculating about their possible GI fathers, he told Stars and Stripes in a phone interview Aug. 10. Once back home in Denmark, one of his Vietnamese friends asked his help finding the American father of a person in her village. Using military records requests, an archive of the names of American soldiers who served in Vietnam and contacting the U.S. Embassy, he found a name and address. Since then, Hjort has volunteered his time helping families research their ancestry. Brian Hjort, center, poses in this undated photo with a family he reunited in Vietnam. Since the early 1990s, Hjort has been using DNA analysis programs and databases to help people find their long-lost relatives. (Brian Hjort) I do it purely for the joy of making a difference to someone, he said. At first it was hard; all I had was a typewriter, white pages and limited access to internet cafes. Its gotten better now with new DNA testing kits. The hardest part of the job is taking lineage maps and family tree results and tracking down relatives. He said the toughest part, emotionally, is finding a family member who is either recently deceased or does not wish to have contact with unacknowledged family members. There is no manual on how to do this, but some of the successes are worth the failures, he said. Continue to have hope Finding an absent family member can take from several months to several years, Hjort said, depending on what someone knows about the person theyre trying to find. Hjort said Zindys DNA test results do not point to any clear answers. Finding relatives is easier if they have already had a DNA test whose results are available for comparison. If many relatives have tested before, the easier it is, he recently told Stars and Stripes via Facebook Messenger. Then its to figure out how they all match up in the puzzle. DNA analysis kits from companies such as Ancestry.com rely on existing databases and do not guarantee results. The companys pro genealogy package for clients searching for their biological parents starts at $3,000, but even at that price tag, not all cases are solved. Danish pop star Zindy Laursen has spent the past 30 years searching for her bioligical father, a man she believes may be an American veteran of the Vietnam War. (Anne-Sofie Hjort) Zindy said she received her 23andMe DNA results Sept. 10 and is still awaiting results from Ancestry.com. She remains anxious but optimistic that she may find her dad, perhaps soon. Its crazy to think after all this time, I could be meeting my father this year, she said, smiling and cupping her face in her hands. At this point, all I can do is continue to have hope. Then-Vice President Joe Biden gets a glimpse of North Korea from the Ouellette observation point inside the Demilitarized Zone, Dec. 7, 2013. (Chris Church/U.S. Navy) The United States is open to discussing the possibility of formally ending the Korean War in an effort to achieve the complete denuclearization of the peninsula, the Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. The United States remains committed to achieving lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea, John Kirby told reporters during a press briefing. We continue to seek engagement with [North Korea] to address a variety of issues. Kirby added that we're open to a discussion about an end of war declaration, but qualified his remarks by noting that the ultimate goal is to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons. We know that this is a complex issue, and we're committed to supporting the role of our diplomats in having that kind of dialogue going forward, he said. Although the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, the U.S. and South Korea technically remain at war with communist North Korea. Wartime hostilities have ended but the North is still subjected to international sanctions due to its development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons programs. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has floated the idea of formally ending the conflict throughout his tenure. Most recently, Moon renewed his call for the armistice signatories to come together and declare that the war on the Korean Peninsula is over during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. When the parties involved in the Korean War stand together and proclaim an end to the war, I believe we can make irreversible progress in denuclearization and usher in an era of complete peace, he said in his speech. Moon also broached the subject during a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018, when the two leaders signed a document to declare the end of war that same year. Formally ending the Korean War has led to some concerns among policy-watchers, particularly in light of Pyongyangs continued development of its weapons programs. It test-fired cruise missiles and ballistic missiles this month, and evidence it restarted its nuclear reactor also came to light in August. The biggest beneficiary to the wars end would be Moon and his political party, according to professor Sung-Yoon Lee of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts. All these illusory, very promising signs would boost Moon Jae-in and his supporters approval rating, Lee told Stars and Stripes in a phone interview Thursday. Lee cautioned that formally ending the war would be basically meaningless to the United States," adding that it may be playing right into Kim Jong Uns game plan." Lee said an end-of-war declaration and a possible peace treaty with North Korea would call into question the legitimacy of the United Nations Command and the presence of American troops in South Korea. Roughly 28,500 U.S. service members are stationed on the peninsula to "deter aggression" and defend South Korea, ostensibly from the North, according to a statement from U.S. Forces Korea's website. Why would North Korea be so interested in another paper agreement when it has violated virtually every single major international agreement its signed? Lee said. U.S. and Philippine marines land on a beach in an assault amphibious vehicle during an Exercise Balikatan drill in Zambales, Philippines, April 3, 2019. (Trystan Jordan/U.S. Marine Corps) Plans to build facilities for U.S. troops in the Philippines, which had stalled for years amid wrangling over rules for visiting forces, are back on track, officials from both countries said Thursday. We plan to move fairly quickly, Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said during an online conference sponsored by Pacific Forum. The Hawaii-based think tank organized the event to discuss the allies 70-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty. Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez and Lindsey Ford, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, discuss the allies 70-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty with the Pacific Forums Jeffrey Ordaniel, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. (Zoom) Facilities for U.S. forces at five bases were authorized by the Philippines government under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. The pact allows U.S. troops and contractors to operate at agreed-upon locations in the Philippines. Although the revised Philippine constitution bans permanent U.S. bases, the agreement hands U.S. forces operational control of the shared facilities and allows them to stockpile defense equipment and supplies. Doubts were raised about the program in February 2020 after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte began a process to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement that permits U.S. troops to train in the country. The maverick leader canceled the plan after meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in July. One shared basing project, a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief warehouse at Cesar Basa Air Base on the Philippines main island of Luzon, opened in January 2019. However, the allies are looking at projects at all five sites specified under the shared basing agreement, according to Lindsey Ford, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia. We are working through various projects now, she said during Thursdays online conference. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in January 2019 identified Palawan island as the site of another planned shared facility. The Palawan site is significant because of its proximity to the South China Sea, Carl Baker, then executive director of the Pacific Forum, said at the time. China has built its own military bases and placed missiles on artificial islands in the contested waters that are subject to claims by several neighboring states, including the Philippines. The Palawan base includes a 9,000-foot World War II-era runway, Baker said. That warehouse could be used to store equipment for surveillance flights, he said. The U.S. is also working with the Philippine government on projects at Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation, Lumbia Airfield and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base, according to a U.S. Embassy report posted online in 2019. Seth Robson Buy Photo Volunteer Erin Shah gives a bottle of formula to an Afghan girl at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2021. Volunteers staff formula and tea stations at ROB 12 hours a day. Soldiers provide formula to evacuee children during overnight shifts. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany The line for formula usually starts forming in a Rhine Ordnance Barracks warehouse housing Afghan evacuees around breakfast time. Young children drink it in a cup or mix it with cereal, while mothers with babies ask for bottles. Afghan teens, who speak some English and are eager to help, assist others to mix the formula and heat bottled water in a large electric tank. The operation is run by a dedicated group of volunteers, who have sanitized more than 10,000 baby bottles and on a daily basis put a clean bottle in the hands of every mother or young child at ROB and Ramstein Air Base. The bases have provided temporary lodging since Aug. 20 for tens of thousands of Afghans who fled their homes after the Taliban seized power. About 9,000 remain while waiting for flights to the United States to resume. In the early days of supporting evacuees, generous donations from the U.S. military community could not keep up with the demand for baby bottles, said volunteer and military spouse Erin Gonzalez. We had given out hundreds if not thousands of bottles, she said. Mothers were using bottles to supplement their childrens nutrition or compensate for their inability to produce breast milk because of malnourishment and stress, Gonzalez said. Gonzalez was told that mothers were throwing away smelly and moldy bottles because they had no way to clean them while living in temporary shelters on the flight line. Gonzalez and fellow volunteer Lisa Quadros went to work to find a solution. Buy Photo Erfan Ahmadi, 14, takes requests for formula and tea while volunteering at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2021. Ahmadi and his family are evacuees from Afghanistan. He speaks Dari, Pashto and English and is one of several Afghan teens who translate for American volunteers at the stations where baby formula and hot tea are served. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Volunteer Erin Shah grabs a lid at the formula and tea station at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2021. Afghan children watch intently while she works. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Madina Fahim, 15, hands out cups of tea and formula at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2021. Fahim, whose family fled Afghanistan last month, practices her English while helping American volunteers take requests for formula and tea at the temporary living area for evacuees at ROB. She is eager to go to the United States, where she wants to study medicine. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Madina Fahim, 15, fills a tank with bottled water to be heated for formula and tea at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021. She practices her English while helping American volunteers take requests for formula and tea at the temporary living area for Afghan evacuees at ROB. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo A little boy carries an empty bottle in the temporary living area for Afghan evacuees at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Germany, Sept. 20, 2021. Volunteers have been instrumental in ensuring that Afghan women and children there have clean bottles for formula. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Volunteers Emma Harre, left, and Erin Gonzalez clean baby bottles at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Sept. 15, 2021. Volunteers have cleaned and sanitized more than 10,000 baby bottles for Afghan evacuees at Ramstein and Rhine Ordnance Barracks in less than a month. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Volunteers Kimberly Barney, left, and Kara ONeil clean bottles at the officers club at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Sept. 15, 2021. Volunteers have cleaned and sanitized more than 10,000 baby bottles for Afghan evacuees at Ramstein and Rhine Ordnance Barracks in less than a month. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes) This was all thrown together so quick I dont think anybody thought of all the logistical needs, Quadros said. The command at Ramstein approved the volunteer effort, and the officers club offered its bar, which has an industrial dishwasher and space for storing, sorting and drying. Bottle Buddies, the name of the Facebook page created for volunteer signups, was launched. Groups of six to eight volunteers sanitize hundreds of bottles daily, working two four-hour shifts, which often go longer. It takes about an hour to clean 200 bottles, and an air compressor speeds up drying. On the busiest day, about 900 bottles are sanitized. The job isnt for the faint of heart, volunteers say. The odor from dirty bottles can be overwhelming. The bottle cleaning has since shifted to the Ramstein flight kitchen. Twice a day, Gonzalez makes the rounds at Ramstein and ROB, delivering clean bottles at the crack of dawn and picking up dirty bottles in the afternoon. At Ramstein, airmen inside the temporary living areas make the formula and also recently began making tea. At ROB, the job is handled by volunteers. Afghan women had been making their own formula, but the instructions were in German and some were not using the right measurements, Gonzalez said. The Army provides the formula, while volunteers staff two stations to provide it for 12 hours a day. Soldiers take the overnight shifts. Water is heated in an 8-gallon kettle for formula and tea, which Afghans typically drink throughout the day. If you get 10,000 tea bags a day, you would run out, an interpreter had told Gonzalez. Theyre currently making do with a few hundred tea bags a day provided through donations. This is such an upheaval in their lives, said Katie Poppe, who volunteers at ROB after substitute-teaching at Landstuhl Elementary School. I just want to help in a way I would want someone to help me in a similar situation. President Joe Biden finishes speaking about the end of the war in Afghanistan from the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP) NEW YORK When President Joe Biden told global leaders this week that he had ended Americas era of insurgent war, his assertion appeared to contrast sharply with the prolonged military missions that have locked the United States in low-level conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden vowed to launch a new period of relentless diplomacy after the war in Afghanistan and turn toward Asia after two decades of counterterrorism campaigns set in motion by the 9/11 attacks. I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war, Biden said. Weve turned the page. As he spoke, a force of more than 3,000 American military service members are arrayed on bases across Iraq and Syria, dug in on an extended mission against the Islamic State that exposes them to dangers including drone and rocket attacks. In Somalia and Yemen, smaller cadres of Special Operations troops operate alongside local forces as part of more-shadowy missions against al-Qaeda-linked fighters, while periodic drone strikes in those countries demonstrate American firepower from the air. In Afghanistan, officials are refining plans to conduct what they call over the horizon counterterrorism strikes if a terrorist threat emerges in the country that sheltered al-Qaeda and now has a branch of the Islamic State. The immediacy of those conflicts was evident as recently as this week, when U.S. aircraft launched an attack on a suspected al-Qaeda target in northwestern Syria. Stephen Pomper, who served as a White House official during the Obama administration and is now chief of policy for the International Crisis Group, said Bidens desire to pivot away from war is understandable as Americans have grown weary of the financial and human cost. The reality is that the United States is not anywhere near ending these wars, he said. Bidens apparent statement to the contrary is good politics, he said, but I worry that its not going to be good governance. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration, said Bidens mention of turning the page referred to the departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan. While ending the war in Afghanistan represents a historic break with 20 years of U.S. policy, the president made clear that it fits squarely with the need, as Biden said in his address, to face todays terrorism threats, the official said in an email. But while Biden cited security alliances, financial tools and economic development as means for addressing far-flung extremist threats, he made no specific references to the ongoing missions in places such as Iraq and Syria, where the combined number of U.S. troops exceeds the number stationed in Afghanistan when Biden made his decision to withdraw. Well meet terrorist threats that arise today and in the future with a full range of tools available to us, including working in cooperation with local partners so that we need not be so reliant on large-scale military deployments, Biden said in the speech. The presidents first remarks to the General Assembly come as he attempts to refocus government resources on priorities at home, including deep political divisions and the coronavirus pandemic. On foreign policy, Biden has also shown himself willing to risk opprobrium in taking steps to anchor U.S. strategy around competition with China, as he did in a new deal to share sensitive technology with Australia that infuriated France. Bidens political challenges are mounting as he faces congressional pushback over his handling of Afghanistan, where the Kabul government fell to the Taliban amid the U.S. withdrawal and a hastily arranged American evacuation effort was marred by violence and disorder. The president has repeatedly defended his Afghanistan policy, arguing the exit was a necessary if unpleasant decision after 20 years of war. Officials have said far less about the ongoing counterterrorism missions in at least five countries that grind on largely out of sight of the public. The low-boil campaigns have also attracted far less congressional scrutiny than the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan did at their height, except in instances when U.S. troops have been injured or killed. Critics have challenged the notion that the United States can truly end insurgent wars while continuing airstrikes from afar, highlighting disagreements about how to define when the United States is at war or engaged in hostilities. While Pentagon officials have highlighted the focus of ongoing operations on supporting local partners, U.S. forces have sometimes been caught in deadly firefights, as they were in Yemen and Niger in 2017. Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said the congressional response to a deadly Aug. 29 bombing by the United States that killed 10 civilians in Kabul, including numerous children, may indicate a change in that dynamic as the risks of the over the horizon strategy for containing extremist threats in Afghanistan and other places come into focus. The United States has long grappled with the civilian toll of remote airstrikes. While the Pentagon took steps under the Trump administration to review rules around targeting operations, the recent Kabul strike, in which officials misidentified an employee of a U.S. aid organization as an Islamic State militant, shows the potential for deadly mistakes. The August 29 strike is prompting a lot of members to ask questions about the long-term strategy, Prasow said. While White House aides have been conducting a review of counterterrorism policies, including guidelines for drone strikes, military officials say there is no indication Biden will soon unveil significant changes to ongoing operations. That includes operations at the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 39 inmates remain imprisoned. While the administration has stated its goal of shuttering the prison, a host of obstacles remains, and it is unclear how much political capital Biden will spend in an attempt to do so. In the meantime, the prison remains a global symbol of American excesses in the wake of 9/11. Its impossible to close the era of endless war without closing #Guantanamo, Wells Dixon, a defense attorney for one of the prisoners, said on Twitter. In addition, the Biden administration, like others before it, has cited a 2001 legal justification, or Authorization for Use of Military Force, as a basis for ongoing insurgent operations. Administration officials have yet to decisively push for repeal of the 2001 authority, suggesting they may also prefer to maintain a status quo that gives them a relatively free hand overseas. Pomper said that Bidens assertions about wrapping up Americas wars may be most problematic in that they reduce the chances for a substantive public conversation that might put end to the missions that he and many Americans would like to conclude. The question of whether the U.S. is at war deserves to be openly debated, he said. By glossing over what is occurring, it could actually be perpetuating forever wars, he said. The Washington Posts Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report. SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Tribune News Service) An active-duty member of the military was taken into custody Wednesday after he threatened to hurt himself, then holed up with his children during a roughly nine-hour standoff in a home east of Dehesa, the Sheriffs Department said. Just after 1:30 a.m., the mans wife called 9-11 to report that her husband had a gun and was threatening to harm himself in front of their children, Lt. Anthony OBoyle said in a news release. Deputies responded to the home, but the man refused to release the children, OBoyle said. The lieutenant did not give the age of the man or his children, nor did he say what branch of military the man belongs to. Aside from the departments Crisis Negotiation Team and SWAT team, Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents also responded, as did a military chaplain who was familiar with the man. Just before 11 a.m., the man agreed to release the children and surrender. The children were unharmed and reunited with their mother, officials said. OBoyle said the man was taken into custody for a mental health evaluation and could face charges. A search of the home turned up 50 firearms. 2021 The San Diego Union-Tribune Visit sandiegouniontribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at the airport in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Aug. 24, 2021. Harris landed in Vietnam after an anomalous health incident in Hanoi delayed her flight from Singapore, the U.S. embassy said. (EVELYN HOCKSTEIN, Pool/AFP/Getty Images/TNS) WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) Officials across the U.S. government have grown concerned in recent weeks that suspected sensory attacks against American personnel are escalating as an intelligence probe into the phenomenon known as Havana syndrome gains steam. A panel of experts and scientists has been examining what is causing the suspected attacks for several months, while the CIA is investigating who might be responsible by using resources similar to the spy agencys hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter. At the State Department, the lead adviser overseeing its response to the phenomenon is leaving this week, officials told McClatchy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to name a replacement in the coming days for Pamela Spratlen, who is entering retirement. Blinken considers choosing her replacement an important decision, a senior State Department official said. The secretary has been seized with this issue even before he became secretary, the official said. One of the meetings he proactively requested before the transition was on this issue. At the Pentagon, recent cases were reported within the military after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin advised personnel who believed they had symptoms to report their experiences immediately. A Defense Department spokesperson would not comment on the investigation or on reports of specific incidents. The possible targeting of U.S. diplomats in Hanoi just before Vice President Kamala Harris visit to Vietnam in August and an intelligence officer traveling with CIA Director Bill Burns in India this month have stoked a sense of alarm across national security agencies that the suspected attacks are becoming increasingly brazen. The latest high-profile incidents in Vietnam and India come as intelligence officials say they are getting closer to understanding what is causing the episodes that have affected more than 200 American personnel in recent years. In terms of have we gotten closer? I think the answer is yes but not close enough to make the analytic judgment that people are waiting for, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said last week on a panel at the 2021 Intelligence and National Security Summit. One official said the two recent incidents have underscored the need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. The message appears to be that we can reach you anywhere, another government source said. The reported cases in Vietnam and India are still being investigated. The U.S. government has not officially concluded that they were intentional attacks by a foreign power against American personnel. But privately, Biden administration officials have become increasingly convinced that Havana syndrome cases are the result of targeted attacks. A report published by the National Academy of Sciences last year concluded that directed microwave energy was likely causing the incidents. Three consecutive administrations have suspected that Russia is the most likely culprit, and administration officials referenced the matter with their Russian counterparts during President Joe Bidens summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. It shows I would think increasing boldness on the part of whoevers doing it Russia, if thats the case and a complete lack of concern about retaliation, John Bolton, former national security adviser under President Donald Trump, said in an interview. When you go after the VPs party, youre getting pretty close to the top. And to do it in a foreign country, as opposed to trying to do it in the United States or something like that that indicates they believe theyre effectively immune from retaliation, he said. In June, Biden directed the formation of two panels of experts to study the phenomenon. The one housed under the Director of National Intelligence is more focused on identifying the cause, while the other is focused on identifying ways to protect U.S. personnel. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has asked for a report from the first panel after 100 days. It is unclear how far along the panel of experts is within that time frame. Administration officials said that the 100-day time frame is an internal goal, but there is not an official deadline on completing the report. We want them to have all the time that they need, if they need more time, a senior administration official said. We have seen a proliferation of these health incidents with our personnel around the world. It shows no sign of abatement if anything, it shows indications of escalation, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told McClatchy. We still dont have the answers. Theres a lot of work to be done. But we are, I think, moving in the right direction, Schiff said, both in terms of how we take care of our people but also in getting answers as to who and how whos responsible for these attacks, and how theyre being conducted. American diplomats stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Havana were among the first to report the series of strange symptoms in 2017, including dizziness, tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo and cognitive difficulties. Since then, cases have been identified around the world and in the Washington area. Recent guidance from government agencies offer hints of a theory on how the suspected attacks are executed. In a letter addressed to all service members and civilian staff at the Pentagon, Austin advised personnel who believed they were experiencing symptoms to immediately remove yourself, co-workers, and/or family members from the area. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, a Defense Department spokesman, said the letter was sent to employees last week because given the size and scope of our workforce, it was important our internal reporting processes were standardized and synchronized with the government-wide approach before communicating to our military, civil service, contractor, and dependent communities. The secretary will continue to track the AHI issue and the departments support efforts closely, and he is committed to keeping the workforce aware of the issue, informed on how to report potential incidents and, most importantly, helping our employees remain healthy and safe, Semelroth said, referring to anomalous health incidents, which is the governments term for these events. Last month, Harris travel from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed over three hours while her staff conducted a security review of the recent incidents there. After that episode, a government source said that senior officials remaining in the interior rooms of buildings or outside lines of sight from cars provides protection from a potential device that is unlikely to be equipped to cast a wide net. 2021 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Ivan Ocon, who grew up in Las Cruces but was deported to Mexico for breaking the law, stands in front of a U.S. flag at his home in Juarez in 2019. (Blake Gumprecht, Las Cruces Sun-News/TNS) LAS CRUCES, N.M. (Tribune News Service) A U.S. Army veteran from Las Cruces who was deported to Mexico has enlisted some help in his push to come home. Ivan Ocon, 44, served in the military for close to seven years, including a stint in Jordan during the Iraq War. He has lived in Ciudad Juarez since being deported to Mexico in 2016, prohibited even from visiting his mother and daughter in Las Cruces. Now the Yale Law School's Veterans Legal Services Clinic is assisting him in his petition for military naturalization. Born in Juarez, where he lived for the first seven years of his life, Ocon was a legal permanent resident but not a U.S. citizen. His 18th birthday passed without him applying for citizenship through his father, with whom he says he has no relationship. Ocon's next opportunity at citizenship would have been through the military, but VSLC said the Army failed to assist him. Ocon has stated that, at the time, he did not understand immigration laws that would have allowed him to apply for naturalization. After he left the service, his prospects grew more complicated after he got into trouble with the law. Ocon says he, like many veterans of wars abroad, entered a troubled period after coming home. A 2019 Las Cruces Sun-News story detailed his legal plight following a 2006 incident in El Paso that led to him being charged with aiding and abetting an armed kidnapping. Ocon said he was not a participant, but had knowledge of his brother's actions in the crime and did not report him to authorities. After serving nine years in federal prison, Ocon was deported. However, he calls Las Cruces, where he grew up and graduated from Onate High School (since renamed Organ Mountain High), his home and considers himself an American. "When I was deported, I lost everything," Ocon said in a written statement. "I know I have a complicated past. I went through a dark time when I returned from the service, and I have taken responsibility for my actions and served my time. I now want nothing more than to live my life with my family and friends in the United States." During his time south of the border, he has supported fellow service members through the Deported Veterans Support House, which described him as a leader and advocate. The legal clinic says that under current law, his criminal conviction, for which he completed his sentence, would not prevent Ocon's naturalization. With the clinic's help, Ocon has filed a N-400 application, beginning a process that could take a year or more, based on median processing times reported by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Casey Smith, a law student intern with the VLSC, expressed hope for an expedited process. "Veterans like Mr. Ocon often serve our military only to live their lives in exile. Countless veterans have been deported," Smith said in a news release. "President Biden has committed to repatriating veterans, and one way he can do so is by speedily approving naturalization petitions like Mr. Ocon's, where the law now allows for his return." In July, the federal departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs announced a new collaboration pushing to assist deported veterans eligible to repatriate and extend veterans benefits. The effort aims to fulfill a Biden campaign promise to stop targeting veterans for removal and welcome back as many as are eligible which could amount to thousands. 2021 www.lcsun-news.com. Visit lcsun-news.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Dan Altieri, whom the Lima Company Marines considered the heart and soul of the unit, died unexpectedly this week. (U.S. Marine Corps) COLUMBUS, Ohio (Tribune News Service) When one of his Marines hit a milestone got married, became a parent, took a new job, bought a house retired Sgt. Maj. Dan Altieri generally was the first to reach out. And he would speak to them the words that meant the most. "He would say 'Hey, I'm proud of you, man,' and you wanted to hear him say that," said Sgt. Jason Dominguez, a 41-year-old from Columbus' Northwest Side who served with Altieri and deployed under his leadership in 2005 with the Columbus-based Lima Company, a reserve unit that suffered the historic loss of 22 Marines and a Navy corpsman during its time in Iraq that year. "He embodied semper fidelis, always faithful. We were like his sons, his children," Dominguez said. "He always put each of his Marines above himself." Now, those same Marines find themselves reeling from the unexpected news that the 62-year-old Altieri died in his sleep Monday night of what his friends say was an apparent heart attack at his home in Kure Beach, North Carolina. He had retired there after 30 years of active-duty and reserve Marines service, ending his career as the regimental sergeant major for the 25th Regiment. Following a service in North Carolina, his friends say a military funeral is being planned for sometime next week in Northeast Ohio. Altieri was a North Canton native and former Stark County deputy sheriff A North Canton native from Northeast Ohio, Altieri also was retired from the Stark County sheriff's office in Canton, where he had spent more than 25 years as a deputy. Lima Company is part of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Marine Division headquartered in Brook Park, near Cleveland. It was in 2001 that Altieri was named company first sergeant (its highest ranking enlisted position) for Lima Company, which operates out of the Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Columbus. A decorated combat veteran, his more than 10 overseas deployments included Grenada, Lebanon, the Gulf War, and a tour of duty to Afghanistan in 2010, which was also with Lima Company. His uniform bore too many ribbons and medals to easily count, and while his bravery and heroics in combat were legendary, it was his care and compassion as both a leader and a human that set him apart, those who served with him say. When about 160 Marines from Lima Company deployed to Haditha in the Anbar province of Iraq in 2005, they knew it was some of the most lawless and dangerous territory in that country. The losses mounted quickly from May through July. Then came Aug. 3. That's when a buried land mine exploded under an amphibious assault vehicle in a convoy, killing 11 Marines who were from Lima Company's 12-man, 1st Squad of the 3rd Platoon. No other company had suffered greater losses in the war at that time, and it seemed the whole of the United States rallied around Lima Company as it found itself suddenly the public face of the realities of war. And it was up to the commanding officer and Altieri, as the highest ranking enlisted man, to carry the men through. When the company returned to Columbus in October of that year, one in three of the Marines who deployed had been killed or wounded. Master Sgt. Steve Hooper said that having a leader like Altieri to help them deal with all that had happened was immeasurable. "It was amazing to have someone like him to turn to. He truly cared for every one of us," said the 43-year-old Hooper, who lives in Ashville in Pickaway County and is in his 21st year with the Marines. "His Marines tell everyone that they would follow Sgt. Major Altieri through to the gates of hell. And they would. No doubt about it." And Altieri continued that support even through a pandemic. Earlier this year, he helped to organize a retreat for Marines he served with. A group met in Nashville for a weekend of fun, fellowship and to talk about scars and memories that only other combat veterans could ever understand. Dominguez and Hooper were there. "The impact he had on this world is so evident," Dominguez said, pausing to collect himself. "When I learned the news that he was gone, someone might as well have told me that my own father just passed away. He was like a dad to all of us." The sergeant major not only supported Marines but was devoted family man And those feelings aren't held by just the Marines who served under Altieri, but also by those who commanded him. Retired Lt. Col. Tom Foos was friends with Altieri for more than 20 years and was the commanding officer of Lima Company when Altieri became first sergeant. (Foos was promoted and received another assignment just before the unit deployed to Iraq.) He said when Lima Company returned to Columbus in 2005, Altieri spent the night at the Foos' Westerville home. They stayed up all night, draining a couple bottles of wine as the ghosts of battle lingered in the air. "He loved every Marine in that company. I know he took those losses personally," Foos said. "He was the glue of Lima Company. He was an unselfish man and an unselfish leader who they could count on for the rest of their lives." But Altieri, of course, was more than a Marine. A rabid Cleveland Browns fan with a booming voice and gregarious personality, he also was a committed family man. His survivors include his wife, Kovette, two grown sons and a sister. He was devoted to them all, said his cousin Trudy Altieri-Yacko of Canton. "For him, it was family first," Altieri-Yacko said. "In his own family and in his Marine family, Dan saw the good in everyone. He made you want to be a better person." hzachariah@dispatch.com 2021 www.dispatch.com. Visit dispatch.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Simon Bridges National Party MP simonbridges.co.nz The governments decision to extend stringent restrictions in Auckland and level two restrictions elsewhere without additional urgent support has sadly already seen many Kiwi businesses go under. Many more hundreds will too if the Labour government doesnt step up to help them through. New Zealands economy is driven by the many thousands of ambitious, hardworking small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. SMEs comprise 97 per cent of all Kiwi enterprises and employ more than a third of our people. As such, these businesses hold the key to New Zealands economic recovery from Covid. Its inarguable, then, that these business owners should be at the front of the governments mind. Instead, the governments lack of additional targeted support for businesses suggests it is okay with the fact that many will go to the wall, meaning thousands more Kiwis will lose their livelihoods. We know Delta levels three and four mean no, or next to no revenue for the majority of SMEs, while revenue is severely constrained for many businesses operating at level two outside of Auckland. This is especially the case for our hospitality and retail businesses. Im hearing each week from business owners in hospo and retail here in Tauranga whore taking on more and more debt including taking on bigger mortgages to meet mounting weekly fixed costs like rent, power and paying staff and suppliers. More than this, though, they feel the weight of responsibility for the livelihoods of the families of their staff and suppliers which depend on their businesses staying afloat. Were not talking about a few operations here and there. This will be catastrophic for hundreds of hospo and retail businesses nationally. A recent survey by Hospitality New Zealand, for example, showed more than 80 per cent of hospo businesses werent sustainable after four weeks at level four. The Labour government must urgently do two things to save the many businesses here in Tauranga and across New Zealand at breaking point. Firstly, it should adopt Nationals Business Rental Support Package, to better support both tenants and landlords in meeting weekly overheads. Secondly, it must set a target to have 70-75 per cent of Kiwis double vaccinated in the first instance, and work to this at pace. At this level of vaccination, Covid can still be stamped out by using tools and techniques widely available in other counties, such as saliva testing, rapid antigen testing, aggressive contact tracing and, as a last resort, regional lockdowns. And lets remember, New Zealand had the slowest vaccine rollout in the OECD before the current outbreak occurred. This meant Delta spread faster, and our current lockdown is longer than it wouldve been if we hadnt been so slow at vaccinating Kiwis. Ten Western Bay of Plenty primary and intermediate schools are soon to experience a boost to their healthy active learning thanks to a $365k investment from TECT over three years. Healthy Active Learning is a joint government initiative between Sport New Zealand and the Ministries of Health and Education to improve the wellbeing of tamariki through quality physical activity and healthy eating and drinking. The TECT investment will support Sport Bay of Plentys expansion of the initiative into 10 Western Bay of Plenty schools, some of which have previously been part of the GO4it fundamental movement skills programme. Sport Bay of Plenty chief executive Heidi Lichtwark says the commitment from TECT will enable more schools to experience the benefits of the Healthy Active Learning initiative. Healthy Active Learning was initially rolled out to 30 schools in the Central Bay region in 2019. Since then the initiative has gone from strength-to-strength, and were really starting to see the impact in participating schools. Sport New Zealand is helping us expand the initiative into a further 40 schools and kura across the Bay of Plenty in 2022, so its really exciting to have the support of TECT to help us reach even more schools than we initially thought we would be able to. Lichtwark says a big reason for the success of Healthy Active Learning is that the initiative draws together a number of different organisations to collaborate and support schools to co-design local curricula aimed at improving tamariki wellbeing. As part of the initiative, participating schools and kura have access to a skilled workforce at Sport Bay of Plenty and local primary healthy organisations that can collaboratively help them develop engaging physical activity opportunities and healthy food and drink environments. Its a great way to combine professional expertise with local knowledge and lived experiences to ensure these school communities can develop sustainable practices around healthy eating, drinking and quality physical activity, explains Lichtwark. In the long run that supports our tamariki to have positive attitudes, knowledge and behaviours towards nutrition and physical activity that they can carry through life. TECT Trustee Mark Arundel says the local trust is proud to support the initiative, which will have a long-lasting impact on thousands of young lives. Here at TECT, we were keen to support the Healthy Active Learning initiative as we work to create a thriving, caring, connected community here in the Western Bay of Plenty through our funding. We know that this initiative will keep tamariki thriving by helping them to make positive, informed choices and develop critical perspectives about food, nutrition and physical activity. The initiative also ensures young people are actively and positively engaging in learning, it encourages schools to develop cultures that value and prioritise quality physical activity and nutrition, and it supports schools and communities to provide access to healthy food and quality physical education. The ripple effects of this initiative reaching more children with the additional ten schools we are supporting is a lifetime of healthy choices. The impact will be huge, and were so pleased we can be a part of that. New interest deductability rules affecting property investors will come into effect from Friday week, despite full details not yet being announced and Opposition calls for a delay, it is understood. The broad rule will prevent most property investors from offsetting interest charges against their taxable income. That was announced by Finance Minister Grant Robertson in March as the centrepiece of a package of measures intended to rein back surging house prices. The rules already apply to investors who bought property on or after March 27 and are expected to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of extra tax revenue a year once fully applied. However, some details of the new regime have yet to be spelt out 10 days before they are due to take broader effect, including the rules surrounding what will be limited exceptions for new builds. A spokesman for Revenue Minister David Parker confirmed the Government was still targeting an October 1 start date. The intended rules may be set out in a supplementary order paper published before next Friday, but wont be finalised until they have been examined by a select committee some time later and then enacted. National Party shadow treasurer Andrew Bayly has called for the Government to delay the tax change until April, so it would not kick-in until after it had been examined and potentially amended by Parliament. Taxpayers have a right to know how the new interest limitation rules will work in practice: for example, what is the definition of a new build and who will be entitled to the concession to deduct interest and for how long; and whether build-to-rent properties will be captured, he said. The New Zealand tax leader of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, John Cuthbertson, supported the call for a delay. It's likely that if there is any fine-tuning that came about as a result of the select committee process that would be in the form of concessions that might make the new regime more generous to investors than the legislation as it would first be proposed, he says. But it was always best to avoid uncertainty, he says. I suspect the Government is relying on the fact that in a lot of cases people wont need to do tax returns until next year. But at the moment people will be having to make decisions about what they do and whether something stacks up or not, not knowing whether they are getting an interest deduction or not. You have a situation where you'll have, in essence, retrospective enactment of the legislation. Cuthbertson says the main uncertainties for investors included how long investors in new homes would be able to deduct interest against their property income, and whether their right to do that would automatically extinguish if they sold a property, or if any balance could carry over to a new owner. We would certainly support a deferral of the date when the legislation become operative, he says. The right to transfer an unused portion of any exemption allowing interest deductability appears particularly important to a new group of professional housing investors who are building apartment and town house complexes for rent. They tend to have a desire to sell buildings to institutional investors soon after construction, so they can recycle capital for other developments. The Property Council has suggested the Government go a step further and create a specific carve-out for such build-to-rent investments from the new tax deductibility rules, treating them as a new asset class in their own right. -Stuff/Tom Puller. An Auckland endocrinologist is calling for more to be done to address obesity, and associated health issues, in New Zealand Dr Ole Schmiedel says steps need to be taken to improve obesity messaging and to target those most at risk if we are to stem the impact of a diabetes epidemic on our health system. Latest government health figures show almost one in three Kiwis over the age of 15 are obese. The national prevalence of obesity has increased in the year to 2019/2020, particularly levels of morbid-obesity - defined as having a body mass index (BMI) 40-50 kg/m2. The life expectancy of those living with severe or morbid obesity is shortened by about 8-10 years. Obesity affects Maori and Pasifika to a greater degree with prevalence rates of 48 per cent and 63 per cent respectively, is a modifiable risk factor contributing to inequities in health outcomes and unnecessary premature deaths, says Schmiedel. Obesity and diabetes are closely linked, with 80 per cent of patients with type 2 diabetes considered obese. Obesity is also associated with other comorbidities, including kidney failure, fatty liver, breathing problems, reduced mobility, chronic joint pain, and increased death rates from heart disease and several cancers. In New Zealand, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is estimated to be 4.7 per cent, however, the prevalence is higher for Maori (5.3 per cent), Asian (5.7 per cent), and Pasifika (11.1 per cent) than European and other ethnicities (4.7 per cent). Schmiedel says Pasifika people are also set to see the largest increases in type two diabetes, with estimates of up to 16.2 per cent of their people living with the disease by 2040. He says Maori and Pasifika also make up the largest population group in New Zealand dialysis units. Dr Ole Schmiedel says he's especially concerned about the rising incidence of type 2 diabetes in children and young adults, as this early presentation causes a more aggressive disease, greater numbers of complications and earlier death from complications of the disease than type 1 or type 2 diabetes diagnosed in older age groups. Dr Ole Schmiedel. Supplied image. He says a report, recently presented to the Ministry of Health, points to the cost associated with type 2 diabetes in young people, which costs the country more than half a million dollars additionally for each person over their lifetime. Two decades ago, type 2 diabetes in childhood and adolescents was virtually unknown, however now it is common for patients of this age group to present with the disease. One current method of care for super-obesity after exhausting all other options is bariatric surgery, however, each gastric sleeve/bypass costs the government around $9,000-$12,000, and only a very limited number of surgeries are publicly funded per year. Consequently, this method does not substantially impact the rising number of people living with obesity and diabetes in New Zealand; and only approximately 0.5 per cent of the eligible population can receive this treatment in the public sector, he says. Schmiedel says research shows in adults with type 2 diabetes, weight loss of 5-10 per cent can increase the likelihood of disease remission as well as improving other obesity related comorbidities. Talking about weight is not easy and many misconceptions, stigma and denial prevent us from having an open and educated debate. It is essential that we never blame and shame those who carry excess weight and struggle with obesity. As a society we need to broaden our understanding that there are many social determinants of health, including our obesogenic environment, which is responsible for this problem. In addition, we know that complex mechanisms in the brain play a role in regulating hunger and cravings which can manifest as a further barrier to weight loss, he says. Schmiedel says, if we start having conversations with people and their whanau at an early stage we can prevent many complications and may even be able to bring type 2 diabetes into remission. It is well proven that modest weight reductions can lead to significant improvements in many of the associated complications, including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. This is something achievable and we need to aim for realistic and sustainable weight loss, he says. Schmiedel says, when we are talking about weight it is not so much about the kilograms lost but more about the reduction of problems related to excess weight. When people come to me for management of their weight, they are concerned about weight related problems. People want sustainable weight loss and as clinicians we need to be able to support them on this lifelong journey. It is so important that people have a chance to be understood with respect to their weight problems, that we as a community, address weight without stigmatisation and blame, overcome old misconceptions, and support and help wherever possible. I encourage people to find an empathetic healthcare provider they feel safe initiating a conversation with who can tell them about the options available to them. It is time that we as society start taking obesity seriously and head off a preventable disease epidemic that we are facing, he says. The Bay of Plenty is going live to the world on a special online version of Time Team. Waihi Beach-based archaeologist and conservator Brigid Gallagher together with partner Raysan Al-Kubaisi, who is an architect, buildings adviser and head of graphics creating some of the programmes 3D reconstructions and animations are take part in an excavation, virtually, of a Roman villa site at Broughton Estate, Oxfordshire, this week. The estate is the seat of the Fiennes family. The duo, working within the wider Time Team whanau, will play a key role in the work of the excavation as it unfolds on September 23-26. Brigid who for seven years featured in the much-loved British TV series that celebrates all things archaeological will provide her expertise as a conservator, offering insights into the intriguing finds expected to be unearthed. Due to current travel restrictions she is unable to be present onsite as an archaeologist and because it is not feasible to lead an excavation remotely she is instead focusing on conservation and investigative work to learn about the artefacts that are found, and stabilise them. Raysan meanwhile will develop some of the all-important digital graphics that help the audience visualise clearly the features found by the archaeological team. Besides providing graphic interpretation, Raysans work also allows him to take the raw information, like laser scans and other data, to develop reconstructions of the discoveries, such as the villa itself. The reconstructions are so sophisticated and detailed, the images enable archaeological theories to be tested and to visualise what the archaeologist interprets and determine whether the theories are viable. Whats remarkable is that this work central to the success of the excavation and the TV programme will take place with Brigid and Raysan on the other side of the world from where the archaeological action is taking place. Waihi Beach to be precise. So how does that work? Nothing beats being on an excavation, being part of the discoveries, seeing it with your own eyes and piecing it all together. You need the trowel and spade in hand, says Brigid. However, like lots of projects or jobs these days, reaching out across the globe to other experts has become common practice; to plan, discuss and interpret. The internet worm holds no bounds in the sharing of knowledge. The producer of the series has put together a cast of original and new faces, and my role as the teams archaeological conservator is a better fit for the new format working with the finds specialists in the UK to reveal important information on vulnerable artefacts excavated, and advise on their analysis options and care. The ability to communicate the science of materials and chemistry in an accessible way also makes it easier for me to be an expert in this new format, rather than as one of the field archaeological team which is where I began. That really isnt the same without being there. Physical distance is also no obstacle when it comes to processing digital data and imagery according to Raysan. Nowadays, with the use of laser scanning and photogrammetry we are able to see landscapes and artefacts here in New Zealand on screen, manipulate them and discuss them in real time which could never have happened before, he says. This gives an increased ability to manipulate images and apply multiple data sets to single graphics which can then be understood in context as an excavation is happening in real time. This in turn aids decision making, strategy and interpretation as field work takes place. Two weeks ago, the New Zealand-based team managed to get one live excavation under their belts; the excavation of a fogou an underground stonewall structure unique to the Cornwall area. With ongoing human occupation spanning the Neolithic to at least the Roman period, the site was a difficult one to come to grips with during the three days of excavation. Besides the complexity of the site, the team itself also worked through the usual challenges expected with a new team configuration and format. Before long, though, everyone found their groove. It was hectic, adrenaline-filled and great to see old friends, says Brigid. Being part of the Time Team is like having another large family. It was hard not to be at the excavation site, though, as it sounded very exciting particularly on the last day. Because of the complexity and scale of the excavation and the short filming period the site in Cornwall was handed back to an archaeological society to continue working on it. Participating in the excavation across the distance wasnt a major problem however. We had a set time to meet with the UK Dig Watch presenting team Derek and Lawrence. They gave us an update of progress and we then set them some tasks to do for us, and vice versa, says Brigid. They let us know if something had come up that we were needed for from their end. My role, as archaeological conservator, was to provide advice as needed by the finds team though my fingers were definitely itchy for some excavation work and being on the ground among the conversations and interpretation. It worked well, though, and it was really good to try this new way of working remotely. The format, different time zones and remoteness meant Raysan and Brigid were testing things to the limits such as working through part of the night though it worked and the duo are looking forward to this weeks excavation. I certainly feel more connected with the world through this Time Team project, particularly since Covid arrived, says Brigid. Although it has its challenges, this method of working has good environmental outcomes in terms of lowering carbon footprints while also maintaining professional and academic relationships across the globe. Who knows when the next time will be when we can legitimately just get on a plane and attend a meeting, conference or take part in an excavation, and then pop home again? Crowd-funded by Patreon a viewing platform that enables subscribers to check out video clips and interviews as the excavations unfold the video footage from both projects will eventually be edited to make a final Time Team episode that will be shown online; first on Patreon and then You Tube. In the meantime tantalising snippets of the filming and interviews will be made available to subscribers during the excavations giving people a taste of what is going on, and enabling people to feel part of it even if they happen to be on the other side of the world. Various social media channels are offering video and information on the excavation but just be aware that the final wow moments may be being held back for the final programme, says Brigid. People interested in experiencing the excavation in real time or as close to the real thing as you can get can follow any of the links below. They can also go online and ask questions over the three-day excavation. Follow the links: Website: https://www.timeteamdigital.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timeteamofficial YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TimeTeamOfficial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeteamofficial Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetimeteam Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialtimeteam Brigid and Raysan also have some official Time Team Merchandise for giveaways to fans on this side of the world. So if you want to be in to receive some of this over next weekend, Pop over to their accounts with your question/favourite Time Team moment. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mishmishheritage Or Twitter: https://twitter.com/brigidmg Political and community leaders in Rotorua are sharing their pleasure after it was confirmed the Bay of Plenty city will not be getting another Managed Isolation/Quarantine facility. The new MIQ facility will instead be located in Christchurch, as the Government looks to increase the options for New Zealanders stuck overseas to return home and alleviate the stress on the current MIQ system. Rotoruas three main MPs, National MP Todd McClay, Maori Party MP Rawiri Waititi and Labour List MP Tamati Coffey, joined together this week to announce their collective opposition to a potential new MIQ facility in Rotorua. Rotorua already has three facilities in use and Waiariki MP Waititi stated this week that he held fears over the risk to the local community, especially the regions large Maori population. With predispositions to poorer health outcome a worry, so too are poor Maori vaccination rates provided by Lakes DHB, he said. Lakes DHB has the poorest delivery in equitable vaccination rates for Maori in Aotearoa. For every 5 non-Maori vaccinated among the 20-34 group, only 2-Maori are being vaccinated. This rate is atrocious but only further justifies why additional MIQ-facilities cannot be welcomed in Rotorua. The Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has now confirmed that The Quality Hotel Elms in Papanui, Christchurch will be the new MIQ location for New Zealand. Other managed isolation facility options were considered in Auckland and Rotorua but were rejected primarily because of health and MIQ workforce constraints, Hipkins confirms. Hamilton and Wellington were also prospective locations but no suitable facilities were found. The decision has been welcomed by Rotorua Mayor Steve Chadwick. She is thankful for Hipkins and Cabinet for understanding the communitys combined concerns. The prospect of more MIQ in our city was genuinely worrying and it was good to see the community and local leaders, including our MPs, getting activated and voicing their concerns, she says. Those of us who met with MIQ officials last month, including representatives from Council, Lakes DHB, Te Arawa and Rotorua Economic Development, were very emphatic that Rotorua is already doing its share of the MIQ load for New Zealand and cannot sustain any more. Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick is pleased with the decision. File image. For us it was about supporting our health and police staff, who are already stretched supporting our existing MIQ facilities, supporting all of our businesses and operators who rely on tourism and ensuring we retain capacity for visitors. Te Awara Covid hub chair Monty Morrison says local iwi are relieved at the decision. He says whilst he understands the plight of New Zealanders stranded abroad, stretching the MIQ capability in Rotorua carried too heavy a risk. We are a community that is particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 and the threat of community transmission from an MIQ is an ever-present danger, says Morrison. While we have a base level of confidence around our existing sites, they werent without their teething issues in the initial months. The seriousness of Delta means we simply cannot afford that level of risk in our rohe. We would like to publicly thank Government Ministers for listening to our concerns and making an appropriate decision based on those. The announcement today is the culmination of many weeks of discussions and hui, involving a large number of people, and this joint effort has paid off. Labour List MP Tamati Coffey. File Image. Labour List MP Tamati Coffey says the decision acknowledges the work done by the Rotorua community so far in the fight against Covid-19 and also ensures the responsibility is fairly shared across the nation. These decisions are not easy, these facilities have to go somewhere, however I thank the Minister who I believe, made the right call on this, he says. Being at the table has given me the opportunity to lead the charge bringing together Ministers and our Te Arawa leaders, and weve been able to get this positive outcome. Western Bay of Plenty Mayor Gary Webber says an initial review into the Governments Three Waters reform proposal has highlighted significant issues. Western Bay of Plenty District Council will therefore be seeking more clarity and information on the proposal before it engages with the community on the Districts involvement. Council this week discussed an initial analysis of the Governments draft proposal to shift responsibility for councils Three Waters, water supply, wastewater, and stormwater, from local government into four large entities known as water supply entities. The Government is currently seeking feedback on the potential impacts of the proposed reform, with responses due by 1 October 2021. Mayor Webber says Councils initial review highlighted significant issues with the direction of the Three Waters reform to date. These include concerns about the proposed governance framework and how councils and communities could influence decisions that need to be made by the proposed new water entities. They state the status of asset ownership and control was not clear in the proposed framework and it was important this was clarified. Council also identified concerns with the credibility of Governments financial projections under reform, and in particular how they related to Western Bay of Plenty District Councils Three Waters networks and their Long Term Planning provisions. The Council say they need more information to clarify how debt and funding mechanisms like financial contributions will be treated if reform went ahead. Council strongly expresses disappointment with the Government's public advertising campaign and lack of meaningful public communication. They claim this has resulted in local government having to shoulder the responsibility of explaining the Governments reform direction to communities. WBOPDC confirms its intention to take any final credible proposal from Government to the Western Bay of Plenty community for consultation prior to making a decision to opt-in or out of the reform proposal. Western Bay of Plenty Mayor Gary Webber. File Image. SunLive. Mayor Webber says Council has always done a good financially prudent job when investing in water infrastructure whilst providing a good service to its residents. Our councils Three Waters infrastructure is fit for purpose and is future proof in our opinion, says Webber. We have made the hard decisions and have the appropriate charging strategy to fairly charge our ratepayers for the cost of providing our Three Water services. However, from a national perspective this is the most complex reform, along with The Future of Local Government and Resource Management, that local government has faced for 30 years and therefore it is important this is a decision that is not rushed. He says it is against that background that before any community conversation can be had, Council needs to be absolutely confident that it understands any final proposal and what decision councils are being asked to make. We understand our community has a vested interest in how our District's Three Waters services are delivered in the future, he says. But many of the details of the programme are still unclear, including whether participation remains voluntary. The Three Waters reform could potentially and significantly change the way water infrastructure and services are delivered in our District which is why our communities will be consulted extensively when the time is right. The areas of concern were identified through the eight-week window councils were provided to study the Government's current reform direction. For Western Bay this included undertaking a long-term view in the analysis of Council information to assess the impacts of Three Waters reform, comparing the reform scenario to the scenario where Council continues to deliver the services as they currently do. That analysis covered several areas including service levels, finance and funding, workforce and capability, and social, community, environmental and economic wellbeing. Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription. Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service. Bureau Veritas issues novel design approval for what will be the worlds largest VLGCS A new Panda design is conceived at Jiangnan as the shipyard and BV cooperate on an enhanced and revolutionary design for 93,000 CBM Very Large Gas Carriers (VLGCS). The Panda 93P VLGC design has been developed by Jiangnan Shipyard, a leading Chinese gas carrier builder in the CSSC Group (China State Shipbuilding Corporation). Sinogas, the Singapore-based gas shipowner has placed a firm order for two of the 93,000 cubic-metre (cbm) VLGCs, with options for three more vessels. On delivery, these ships will be the largest VLGCs in the world and they will be powered by liquefied petroleum gas. The delivery of these gas carriers, principally dedicated to the carriage of LPG, is scheduled for the first half of 2023 and will mark a further technological leap for Jiangnan in its development of new gas carrier concepts in long-term collaboration with Bureau Veritas. Jiangnan Shipyard has now completed a significant number of projects in cooperation with BV during the last two decades and most notably for gas carriers. The Sinogas order is a significant milestone for both shipyard and class society on the journey to a decarbonized industry. Once in operation, the new design will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 32% less in comparison with the previous generation of 84,000 cbm VLGCs powered by low-sulfur fuel oil. This dramatic reduction reflects the highly optimized design and economies of scale, as well as the use of LPG as fuel. The design is an evolution of Jiangnans Panda Series of VLGCs with optimized hull-form to allow increased cargo capacity without significant increases in fuel consumption. The design incorporates two deck-mounted LPG fuel tanks, enabling LPG-fuelled operations when carrying non-LPG cargo. A scheduled review of IMO policy measures could result in more stringent emissions targets, says Jiangnan Shipyards Hu Keyi, Chief of Corporate Technology. He believes gas as fuel will be a reliable pathway to bridge the emission gap. Furthermore, Jiangnan aims to be on the cutting-edge of technological development in this field by pushing for initiative green solutions, as opposed to passive green based on existing technology. Hu further explained that the "Panda 93P" builds on Jiangnans tradition of Innovation with Confidence in the design of gas carriers at the Jiangnan Institute of Technology (JIT), supported by engineering and design expertise from classification societies, like Bureau Veritas. Through a revolutionary structural configuration, Jiangnan has been able to enhance cargo capacity within traditional Houston Ship Channel dimensions without significantly increasing fuel consumption, Hu said. This achievement has been realized by the Jiangnan teams use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for hull line optimization. Jiangnan also adopted smart shipbuilding techniques with the use of digital technology, 3D digital mock-ups, 3D model submission and production planning, erection simulation and lifecycle management. Hu continued: As the strategy of forthcoming transition in marine industry, Jiangnan has positioned itself to establish a multiple party program focused on a fully circular approach to the management of gas-fuelled green ships. "Definitely, we will invite Bureau Veritas involvement in this program. We think the future maritime industry will be dependent on momentum for continued innovation through increased studies of disruptive technologies and non-traditional materials. Decarbonization is not only the responsibility of shipbuilding and shipping, it will need collaboration across the value chain. More stakeholders need to be involved." Alex Gregg-Smith, Senior Vice President & Chief Executive, North Asia & China, at Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore said: Bureau Veritas has had many successful projects with Jiangnan Shipyard, especially in gas carrier segment, during the past decades. This new generation of VLGCs establishes a significant milestone towards decarbonization. At BV, we are now more than ever committed to helping in the reduction of our industrys environmental impact, as well as supporting our stakeholders through their unique sustainability journey. Tanker Khoshbakht Yusifzade launched on the Day of Oil Workers A new stage has begun in the construction of the Academician Khoshbakht Yusifzade oil tanker, which is being built at the Baku Shipyard LLC by order of the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC (ASCO). The vessel was launched from the floating dock at the construction site of the plant using hydraulic carts. On September 20 - the Day of Oil Workers, ASCO Chairman Rauf Veliyev, Baku Shipyard General Manager Imanverdi Khasanov, employees of both institutions, as well as honors students of the Azerbaijan State Marine Academy took part in the ceremony on ship launching. ASCO Chairman Rauf Veliyev noted that in accordance with the Order signed by President Ilham Aliyev on January 15, 2020, the ship, launched for the next stage of construction, was named after the living legend of the oil industry, a prominent oil scientist and geologist, first vice-president of SOCAR, Academician Khoshbakht Yusifzadeh. This vessel is the third tanker to be built by order of ASCO at the Baku Shipyard. Prior to that, the plant successfully built and commissioned the same-type oil tankers "Lachin" and "Kelbajar". Rauf Veliyev noted that over the past 8 years, ASCO's fleet has been enlarged by 18 new vessels. 10 such ships were ordered to be constructed on the Baku Shipyard. The cooperation in this direction will continue in the future due to special state support and care, as well as sufficient human resources. It is gratifying that among the many young people playing an active role in this area, there are also graduates of the Azerbaijan State Marine Academy. The Chairman congratulated the ASCO and Baku Shipyard teams on the launching ceremony, expressed gratitude to everyone who participated in the construction process, and wished them success in their work. The next speaker was the Chief Manager of the Baku Shipyard Imanverdi Khasanov, He spoke about the existing capabilities of the shipbuilding industry, as well as future goals. He noted that the Shipyard, which is constantly expanding its activities, demonstrates high professionalism and fulfills the assigned tasks in a timely manner. He also stressed that the projects carried out in the framework of cooperation with ASCO are of great significance for our country. The most important thing is that the ships built and commissioned instill a sense of pride in each of us. There were also provided detailed information on the parameters and technical indicators of the tanker "Academician Khoshbakht Yusifzade". It was noted that the concept of the ship was developed jointly with the Odessa Marine Engineering Bureau and experienced ASCO specialists. The ship belonging to the Volqa-Don MAX class can pass through the Volga-Don Canal with maximum carrying capacity. The length of the tanker "Academician Khoshbakht Yusifzade" is 141 meters, width - 16.9 meters, and height - 6 meters. A ship with a crew of 15 will be able to move at a speed of 10 knots per hour. The tanker, designed for the transportation of crude oil and oil products, has 6 cargo tanks with a total capacity of 9212 cubic meters. The vessel with a deadweight of 7,875 tons at sea and 5,447 tons in the river is equipped with two Wartsila engines, each with a capacity of 1200 kW. After the speeches, the tanker Academician Khoshbakht Yusifzade was launched to start the next stage of construction. The students of the ASMA and the employees of the Shipyard pressed the launch button. It should be noted that during the event, ASMA students got closely acquainted with the activities of the Baku Shipyard and new ships under construction. Vitols Singaporean bunker operations company, V-Bunkers, has placed an order to build two electric-hybrid bunker tankers. V-Bunkers intends to deploy these bunker tankers for harbour operations in Singapore, thereby significantly reducing carbon emissions within the port. The bunker tankers are being built with Electric-Hybrid notation and will employ state of the art Energy Storage Systems (ESS) technology comprising Lithium ion batteries for energy storage and a highly automated Power Management System (PMS) which will efficiently manage power consumption and thereby reduce GHG emissions. In addition, the ESS has the capability to charge its battery system from onshore power supply sources once such charging facilities become available in Singapore. Delivery of the first of the two bunker tankers is expected in the second half of 2022. Mike Muller, Head of Vitol Asia said: We are proud and delighted to be the first to contribute to the reduction of emissions in the port of Singapore through deployment of these electric-hybrid bunker tankers. We support Singapores aspirations to be a leader in maritime decarbonisation and we look forward to using these new craft to even more efficiently deliver bunkers to customers here in the worlds biggest bunkering port. Our Most Popular Magazines + Digital We get it. You live by the Ski Valleys snow report even when youre hours away. You follow every Taos post on Instagram. Our small town occupies a BIG part of your heart. Keep in touch with all things Taos when you subscribe to FIVE of our national award-winning magazines, plus access to the website and e-edition for a full year at the special low rate of just $55. The Taos News delivered to your Taos County address every week for a full year! We offer our lowest mail rates to zip codes in the county. Click Here to See if you Qualify. Plan includes unlimited website access and e-edition print replica online. Your auto pay plan will be conveniently renewed at the end of the subscription period. You may cancel at anytime. In brief: Hard disk drives are set to become much larger in the near future, but getting there has proven to be quite a challenge for manufacturers like Seagate. The company has been transitioning from traditional PMR technology to HAMR, and after being quiet on that front for a couple of years, it looks like it won't be long before we see HDDs that can hold 30 terabytes of data. The race to cram more bits into mechanical storage devices is far from over, but lately, the pace of advancement in this space has slowed down to a crawl. Pretty much all HDD manufacturers now offer 18-terabyte models commercially, while the largest drives available for data center operators clock in at 20 terabytes. That said, we've been promised 30+ terabytes by 2023-2024 for a while now, and that's starting to look increasingly unlikely. Seagate has an 18-terabyte IronWolf HDD for high-end desktops and network-attached storage. Earlier this year, the company shipped its first 20-terabyte drives based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology to some of its hyperscale clients, albeit in relatively small quantities. Speaking of HAMR, Seagate has high hopes that it can leverage it to enable larger generational leaps in capacity when compared to the traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) tech. The latter only allows increases of around two terabytes at a time, while HAMR theoretically enables increases of anywhere between four to ten terabytes. The company did manage to get the areal density of hard drive platters to the point where a nine-platter device could store between 30 to 40 terabytes of data, but there's still more work to do on the drive controller, read/write heads, and other components that form a complete product that can ship to consumers and businesses. According to Seagate CFO Gianluca Romano (via Tom's Hardware), the company has been relatively quiet on the HAMR front because it didn't feel like the first-generation drives were suitable for mass adoption. Instead, the company has been hard at work on a second-generation HAMR drive that will likely store around 30 terabytes of data. This is the model that Seagate wants to ship in higher volumes. Romano didn't say when exactly we can expect to see this new HAMR family of drives on the market, but judging by the company's most recent roadmap, it's safe to assume he's referring to the 2023-2024 timeframe. This means that unlike Toshiba and others, Seagate plans to skip the microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) step and go all-in on HAMR and dual-actuator technologies. Something we know for sure about the second-generation HAMR drives from Seagate is that the company has partnered with Japanese platter and media supplier Showa Denko. The latter company recently developed an iron-platinum magnetic material that enables areal densities of up to 6 Tb per square inch. This should make it possible for Seagate to deliver on its promise to have 100-terabyte drives by 2030. What just happened? Chrome 94 has arrived for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows, bringing several new features to the world's most popular browser, but not all of them are being warmly received. The new Idle Detection API that detects user inactivity has raised privacy concerns from some big tech companies. In the latest version of Chromethe first to use the new four-week release cycle instead of the old six-week scheduleGoogle has introduced the Idle Detection API. It works by notifying web applications when users are idle, recognized by a lack of keyboard or mouse use, activation of a screensaver, locking of the screen, or moving to a different screen. Designed for multi-user applications such as chat apps and online games, the Idle Detection API is enabled by default in Chrome 94. "Applications which facilitate collaboration require more global signals about whether the user is idle than are provided by existing mechanisms that only consider a user's interaction with the application's own tab," states the release notes. Mozilla is one company that isn't a fan of the feature, calling it an "opportunity for surveillance capitalism." "As it is currently specified, I consider the Idle Detection API too tempting of an opportunity for surveillance capitalism motivated websites to invade an aspect of the user's physical privacy, keep longterm records of physical user behaviors, discerning daily rhythms (e.g. lunchtime), and using that for proactive psychological manipulation (e.g. hunger, emotion, choice). In addition, such coarse patterns could be used by websites to surreptiously max-out local compute resources for proof-of-work computations, wasting electricity (cost to user, increasing carbon footprint) without the user's consent or perhaps even awareness," wrote Mozilla web standards lead Tantek Celik, on GitHub. "Thus I propose labeling this API harmful, and encourage further incubation, perhaps reconsidering simpler, less-invasive alternative approaches to solve the motivating use-cases." Apple also has reservations. Ryosuke Niwa, a software engineer in the company's WebKit Architecture team (Safari uses WebKit) said, "Our concerns are not limited to fingerprinting. There is an obvious privacy concern that this API lets a website observe whether a person is near the device or not. This could be used, for example, to start mining bitcoins when the user is not around or start deploying security exploits, etc." Elsewhere in Chrome 94, Google is continuing its embracing of HTTPS with HTTPS-First Mode, a feature that was originally planned for Chrome 92. This ensures all page loads are automatically upgraded from HTTP to HTTPS when possible. If it isn't, a full-screen warning will appear before the older HTTP standard is loaded. There's also a new WebGPU API that should improve in-browser games by utilizing modern graphics capabilities, specifically Direct3D 12, Metal, and Vulkan; a sharing menu on desktop, which is currently behind a Chrome flag, filled with sharing shortcuts; the ability for Android tablets to host desktop websites; and several other bug fixes and changes. In context: Like most tech companies out there, Apple has been experiencing a lot of leaks about unreleased or unfinished products as of late. The Cupertino giant has built a reputation of being among the most secretive in the world, while some tech companies are usually tolerant of information that goes out a bit ahead of time, especially when it builds up hype that spreads like wildfire. Earlier this year, Apple's legal team went on a crusade against reputable leakers with a clear warning message that they should stop sharing details about unreleased products and services, as they could mislead customers and give competitors access to information they shouldn't have. However, those are not the only reasons the company is against this practice. In a recent email sent to employees earlier this week (leaked to the press), CEO Tim Cook reassured that the company will hunt and find those who have shared confidential information. At the same time, he expressed that such people "do not belong" at Apple. I could do a lot of damage to Apple but I'm not that kind of person, I only publish things that are not too secret that cannot harm Apple in any way Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial) September 22, 2021 Cook doesn't appear to take into consideration that some leaks may be educated guesses made by people with knowledge of the tech supply chain, as well as innovations that are announced by suppliers well before they make it into commercial products. It also helps that many new products announced in recent years have been incremental upgrades over mature designs. There are, of course, people with real access to confidential information from Cupertino's developments, but they don't seem to be moved by Cook's memo. In any case, whatever Apple is doing to curb leaks appears to be working so far. According to reliable leaker Jon Prosser, sources from China's supply chain are less willing to share any interesting bits of information they might have. Prosser believes the current situation will be short-lived, but only time will tell. Something to look forward to: In the era of super-fast and relatively inexpensive PCIe 4.0 SSDs, it's hard to imagine why you'd need a faster storage drive. However, Kioxia is making it anywaythe company is close to releasing a PCIe 5.0 SSD that can deliver speeds of up to 14,000 megabytes per second, which is no small feat. Only a few months ago, Seagate joined the PCIe 4.0 elite SSD club of Samsung and Sabrent with speeds of over 7,000 megabytes per second. Corsair was the latest to join the party this month with the MP600 Pro, which is overcompensating with a massive heat spreader. Last year, Kioxia promised it would be the first to take things one step further with a new generation of SSDs built for the PCIe 5.0 age. This month, the company held a presentation at the China Flash Market Summit (CFMS) 2021, where it detailed what's coming from the Japanese company's labs in the coming months. Kioxia's most touted innovation is BiCS Flash, a 3D NAND layering technology built in collaboration with Western Digital used in both companies' solid-state storage products for the past five years. The upcoming 6th generation BiCS technology accommodates 162 layers on a 40 percent smaller die than the previous generation 112-layer BiCS. The NAND cells can be programmed up to 2.4 times faster than before, allowing for 66 percent faster write speeds on average. The company says stacking more NAND layers is not practical, so it's currently experimenting with two things to improve flash storage density and performance. The first is to use a 5-bit per cell (PLC) configuration, but doing so adds complexity for reading and writing operations. While this does improve density, it does so at the cost of endurance and performance. The second is to pack the layers more closely together using a CMOS Under Array (CUA) structure or even a CMOS Bonded Array (CBA) one. Moving on, Kioxia says it's managed to solve most of the problems in adopting the PCIe 5.0 interface, from signal integrity to developing a 16-channel SSD controller that will debut in the upcoming 5th generation CM6 and CD7 SSDs. These will be available for sampling to enterprise clients sometime later this year and ship in volume next year. They'll be available in capacities between 1.6 and 30 terabytes, with endurance ratings between one to three drive writes per day (DWPD). However, the most exciting aspect of these new drives is the performance. Kioxia says its 5th generation prototype SSDs are capable of up to 14,000 megabytes per second for sequential reads and up to 7,000 megabytes per second for sequential writes. A new controller leverages the 32 Gbps per lane that PCIe 5.0 offers over an x4 interface. Compared to Kioxia's fourth-generation PCIe 4.0 CM6 SSD, the sequential read speed has doubled while the sequential write speed has seen a 67 percent uplift. The prototype drive appears to also excel at random performance, with 2,5 million IOPS in random reads, 290,000 IOPS in random writes, and 750,000 IOPS in a mixed scenario with 70 percent reads and 30 percent writes. These, too, are vast improvements over the previous generation CM6 SSD. To be clear, Kioxia doesn't think PCIe 5.0 drives will replace PCIe 4.0 drives anytime soon. Instead, they will coexist with the older technology both in the data center and consumer devices for years to come. As of writing, PCIe 4.0 drives are faster than most people need them to be. Still, with software technologies like DirectStorage on the way, it's easy to imagine we'll be craving for more as developers start implementing it into their games. A hot potato: In early July, hackers hit remote management and IT platform Kaseya with a ransomware attack from the REvil ransomware gang. Towards the end of that month, it received a decryption key from the FBI, used to unlock the victims' systems. Earlier this month, security firm Bitdefender released a universal decryptor to help those affected. This week, current and former US officials told the Washington Post that the FBI held the key back for almost three weeks, during which some victims suffered. Soon after Kaseya reported the attack by REvil on July 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation got the decryption key for the ransomware by accessing that gang's servers. In agreement with other agencies, the FBI initially withheld the key because it was planning an operation to disrupt REvil, and was afraid using the key to help victims would've tipped off the gang. However, REvil disappeared on July 13, before the FBI could enact its plan. According to the Washington Post, that disappearance was not due to any US government action. "The questions we ask each time are: What would be the value of a key if disclosed? How many victims are there? Who could be helped?" an anonymous source told the Washington Post. "And on the flip side, what would be the value of a potential longer-term operation in disrupting an ecosystem? Those are the questions we will continue to have to balance." The FBI shared the key with Kaseya on July 21, and security firm Emsisoft was able to use it to have a decryption tool ready by the following day. FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing that the decryptor also needed to be tested and validated. However, Emsisoft Chief Technology Officer Fabian Wosar claimed that the company took less than 10 minutes to test it once it received the key. In the worst-case scenario, it would have taken about four hours, the CTO said. Image courtesy of Bleeping Computer Although assessments from Kaseya and the US government determined the damage from REvil's attack was lighter than initially feared, it still brought a substantial cost to some victims during the period before the FBI released the key. "The decryptor key would have been nice three weeks before we got it, but we had already begun a complete restoration of our clients' systems," Maryland IT company JustTech owner Joshua Justice told the Washington Post. JustTech is one of Kaseya's clients affected by the attack, and about 120 of JustTech's consumers were also affected. "I had grown individuals crying to me in person and over the phone asking if their business was going to continue," JustTech related. "I had one man say, 'Should I just retire? Should I let my employees go?'" Bitdefender's universal decryptor should help any victim hit before REvil's July 13th disappearance. Sources told the Washington Post the law enforcement agency which Bitdefender worked with to release the decryptor was not the FBI. REvil has since reappeared and has already announced new victims. The universal decryptor doesn't work for victims of those more recent attacks. (Photo : Image from Commons.Wikipedia.com) Security Audit Highlights Huawei and Xiaomi | Software Modules Included to Leak Data to Chinese Authorities and Potentially 'Malicious' App Repacking A security audit that included Huawei's P40 5G, OnePlus' 8T 5G, and the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G revealed certain oddities with the smartphone brands. Only OnePlus passed without having raised any red flags. NCSC Security Assessment on Three Chinese-made Smartphones A recent security assessment was made by the Lithuanian National Cyber Security Center or NCSC and included security data on the three most recent Chinese-made smartphones. It was found that the Xiaomi phone actually included software modules that were designed to leak certain data to Chinese authorities. It was also reportedly designed to censor certain media that is related to topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government. Huawei reportedly replaced the standard Google Play app store with a third-party substitute which was found to have sketchy, potentially malicious repackaging of certain common apps, according to the NCSC. There has also been a 100% increase in cybercriminal activities in Telegram. OnePlus Passes while Xiaomi Raises Red Flags OnePlus 8T 5G was reportedly able to escape without having raised any red flags with the NSCS. The Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G comes with its own nonstandard browser known as the Mi Browser. It was found that the Mi Browser had two components that the NSCS didn't like, including Google Analytics, as well as a less familiar module known as Sensor Data. According to the story by arsTechnina, the Google Analytics module inside the Mi Browser can reportedly read the device's search and browsing history and send the data to Xiaomi servers for unspecified analysis as well as use. The Google Analytics module is reportedly automatically updated after any factory reset or the phone's first activation. NSCS on Singapore The NCSC reportedly found Sensor Data's module actually collects certain statistics on 61 different parameters that relate to application activity. This includes app activation, language used, and more. The statistics are encrypted and sent to the Xiaomi servers in Singapore. This is a country that the NSCS says is not really covered by the EU's own GDPR and has also been tied directly to excessive data collection, according to an article by Android Authority, as well as abuse of user privacy. Read Also: OPPO, OnePlus Merging Teams Sees 20% Staff Cut for Software and Hardware Teams Encrypted SMS Sent Upon Activation The NSCS reportedly found mobile phone numbers that were even registered to servers in Singapore through encrypted SMS messages on activasion, which is a default Xiaomi cloud service. The encrypted SMS is also not visible to its user. For those that have forgotten their crypto wallets, a father and son hacker duo is on a quest to help owners get back their lost assets. There are a number of Xiaomi system applications that are on the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G that regularly download a file that is known as MiAdBlackListConfig coming from Singapore servers. The NCSC found 449 records in the file identifying political, religious, and even social groups. Certain software classes in the Xiaomi applications even use MiAdBlackListConfig in order to analyze certain multimedia which could be displayed on the device. It will then block the content if ever "undesirable" keywords are then associated with it. Related Article: Apple Issues Emergency Security Update as Pegasus Spyware from Israel-Based NGO Group is On the Loose This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Urian B. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. (Photo : Image from Unsplash Website) Game Changing 'Dime-Sized' Hearing Aid Helps Millions of Americans but Costs $12,000 a Pair A game-changing "dime-sized" hearing aid is reportedly helping millions of Americans but costs $12,000 a pair! This new technology takes a different approach compared to the traditional hearing aid through gentle vibration. Hearing Aids According to the story by NBC Washington, traditional hearing aids actually make sounds a bit louder through the use of tiny speakers within the device. New technology, however, uses a small lens in order to gently vibrate the eardrum in order to make sounds clearer as well as more natural. The device can be installed without surgery, and its settings can reportedly be adjusted through a simple iPhone. Cindy Griswold noted that she had lost about 90% of her right ear hearing in 2008 and tried traditional hearing aids ever since then. Earlens Device She noted that over time, she felt like she needed more. She said that she was still missing out when it came to conversations when there was actually a lot of background noise. She then learned about the Earlens device and tried it. Other technological devices like the AI MRI screening tool can be used for dementia adaptation, as seen in a hospital in Singapore. She stated that she was floored about how much she was able to hear. She was able to hear the radiator ticking and everything else. Ear, nose, and throat specialist Dr. Seth Oringher with Feldman ENT Division in Chevy Chase, Maryland, now calls the device a "game changer" for those having problems hearing. FDA-Approved Non-Surgical Lens It was noted that this is a condition that affects up to 40 million Americans. He noted that Earlens offers the first FDA approved non-surgical lens in the world that directly vibrates the eardrum without the use of a speaker. Neuroengineering is also being used to help treat addiction and other brain fogs. He noted that users get a richer, clearer, and even more natural sound, which is what has been a game-changer. The process reportedly takes two visits to the doctor's office. The first thing needed to be done is to make a mold of the patient's ear which includes the eardrum. This is then sent to the company in order for the devices to be custom-built for the patient. Read Also: Apple Will Reportedly Upgrade 'Future' iPhones That Can Detect Cognitive Decline, Childhood Autism, and Depression How It is Installed After two weeks, a small lens is placed into the patient's eardrum, and it gets custom programmed by an audiologist. Oringher then noted that even with the use of a small lens, patients can still bathe, swim, and shower. The lens reportedly stays in potentially for years without even having to be removed! Due to the device's Bluetooth, she can reportedly listen to podcasts and audiobooks directly from her hearing aid. She notes that the device has been with her ever since July and that she is grateful for the device. The Earlens, however, is more expensive compared to traditional hearing aids but still less expensive compared to surgically implanted hearing aid devices. It reportedly costs $12,000 to get a pair. Users can still use health insurance to help cover some of the costs. Related Article: Virologist Clarifies Spray Guns was a 'Bad Idea to Aim' at People Noting Dry Fog is Good for 'Large Surface Areas' This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Urian B. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. New Android malware, "TangleBot," hides underneath COVID-19 SMS to infect smartphone users in the United States and Canada. The SMS malware that lures in Android users uses text messages related to the COVID-19 vaccination schedule and regulation announcements. Android Malware on COVID-19 Related SMS As per CBS News, security analysts discovered the scheme of the TangleBot malware to capitalize on COVID-19 to steal data from its victims. The executive vice president of cybersecurity ProofPoint, the parent company of Cloudmark, Ryan Kalember, revealed that the TangleBot virus has been infecting Android phones for "weeks" by using such a scheme. The Proofpoint exec further warned that the wrath of the new malware is possibly already "very widespread." Kalember also disclosed that the scheme of the malware infection begins by sending text messages about COVID-19 to Android users specifically located in the United States and Canada. For instance, one of the sample messages talks about the "new regulations about COVID-19 in your region." The SMS then ends with a link. Another version of the text message claims that your "third COVID-19 vaccine appointment has been scheduled." Similar to the first one, there is a link provided as well. The seemingly COVID-19 related link will instead redirect to a prompt that says that the Adobe Flash player on the victim's smartphone needs to be updated. But instead of installing the latest patch, a virus gets into the device of the victim, Cloudmark further noted. Read Also: Xiaomi's MIUI Pure Mode Disables Sideloading on Android to Protect Users from Malicious Apps Android TangleBot Malware: How it Works According to The Hacker News, Cloudmark researchers gave the moniker "TangeBot" to the recently discovered Android malware due to its ability to take over various entangled smartphone features, such as call logs, camera, microphone, SMS, and even internet access. Although the malware primarily steals information from its victims, the TangleBot could also access interaction in their financial apps. The capability of the hackers to record the interaction inside the device is made possible by the "overlay" screen that allows the attackers to create a fake window that logs the banking credentials. That said, the victims will be tricked, making it seem like they are entering their banking details on the financial app. So, the Android virus could go to the extent of stealing money from your bank accounts. Kalember further warned that the TangleBot malware is difficult to remove from the infected device. On top of that, the stolen information from the victim could also help fund the attackers even more as the hackers sell it in the growing market of personal data. As such, even if the attackers decide not to open your bank accounts. The mined personal information is already worth something for the hackers. Elsewhere, an Android malware is targeting US and Spain users to steal from their financial apps. Plus, here's the list of apps to avoid on Android due to the Joker malware. Related Article: Joker Malware Returns--Spyware Has Infected Over 500,000 Huawei Users Through Android Apps in April This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Teejay Boris 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TSMC, a prominent Apple processor manufacturer based in Taiwan, has reportedly kicked out seven employees who have bypassed the company's core values. The violation was attributed to more than that reason. The involved employees have been found out to be leaking confidential company data, according to the local reports. TSMC Employees Fired Over Improper Behavior A recent report linked to the Cupertino giant's microprocessor supplier appeared. It highlighted that all employees should serve with integrity. According to 9to5Mac's report, TSMC has recently fired some of its staff after they violated the company's policies. However, some Taiwan-based sources explained that the potential reason for the dismissal was the leakage of customer products and other related data. TSMC has established a firm set of rules that every employee should abide by. Nevertheless, there are times that an employee can be disobedient about following the regulations. They even resorted to violating the most essential core values that the company treasures. Earlier this week, the Taiwanese chipmaker noted that the company values integrity. While other core values could be more significant than it, this crucial value should drive TSMC staff to obey at all times. TSMC made sure this time that the employees who violated them will receive corresponding punishment. The company continued that it will stick with its core values for the betterment of the whole organization. The company is Apple's most trusted partner when it comes to chips that are often used in iPhones, tablets, and other Apple devices. Patently Apple indicated in its report that TSMC's leaks regarding the information of the customers will "likely" yield bad news for the tech giant. Recent Apple Fiasco Involving an Employee The latest controversial report about Apple was Tim Cook's decision to launch an investigation against the unknown employees who leaked the company's memo. The company's CEO was disappointed after learning that some details of the meeting reached the media. It has become even worse when product leaks were involved in such a cause. Cook found out that there were sensitive details about iPhone 13 which were still unannounced to the public that have been leaked ahead of the Apple event. The information was reportedly spread to the reporters. Tech companies are known to be secretive when it comes to their products. This culture of secrecy has been a huge part of their success during product launches. However, the case for Apple could only mean one thing for the company: it might affect their promotion in the future. In addition, this situation could also affect the atmosphere of the workplace. Read Also: Epic Games CEO Calls Apple a 'Monopoly' After Prohibiting 'Fortnite' Back in the App Store How TSMC Combats Global Chip Shortage Over the past months, TSMC admitted that it was struggling with the crisis involving the semiconductors. As a solution, the chipmaker, together with its co-manufacturer, Intel has decided to develop factories in Arizona. To keep up with the issue, these plants would provide the needed supplies for the tech chips. Related Article: TSMC Warns That The Chip Shortage CONTINUES Until Next Year, Despite Revenue Increase This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Joseph Henry 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Microsoft Surface Duo 2 is currently the latest foldable smartphone that entered the market. This new handset, which starts at $1,499, was announced by the tech giant creator last Sept. 22 during its Surface hardware event. Tomorrow morning at about 10:45 a.m. eastern I will be live reacting to everything being announced at the Microsoft Surface event. If you are as stoked for Surface Duo 2 as I am please consider sharing the stream and stopping by to talk.https://t.co/Uzq5Qo5RdK pic.twitter.com/MRJQ4r1w5D Shane Craig (@ScaryifLiteral) September 21, 2021 During the event, the manufacturer also confirmed that it would go on sale this coming Oct. 20 across the United States. Meanwhile, consumers in the United Kingdom and Germany could purchase the new foldable smartphone as early as Oct. 21, at around 1:00 a.m., local time. The new Microsoft smartphone is the second-generation version of the popular Surface Duo. With its advanced features, the giant tech firm claimed that it is more than just a handset. The company also confirmed that the recent bugs in the Surface Duo models were already fixed since some consumers were already complaining about them. Although the new Surface Duo 2 seems to be a very advanced foldable gadget, some critics claim that not everyone would find it satisfying. Microsoft Surface Duo 2 Not for Everyone? According to Android Headlines' latest report, the audience that Microsoft Surface Duo 2 currently targets consists of professional users. Pleasant surprise! Surface Duo 2 is in the house! Thought I'd visit Microsoft Store London on the off chance and can confirm they have Pro 8 Graphite and Duo 2 Obsidian and Glacier #MicrosoftEvent pic.twitter.com/VUEx8ws944 Matthew (@matthewejpaul) September 23, 2021 Also Read: Microsoft Surface Event: Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop Studio, and MORE This simply means that all of its features revolve around Microsoft apps and software. If you are just a regular consumer looking for a foldable smartphone to use for your hobbies and other daily activities, then this Microsoft-reliant device would have little use for you. Aside from relying on Microsoft services, critics are also questioning the use of Android 11. They are asking why the tech giant manufacturer has integrated the smartphone system when the new Surface Duo 2 is actually an extension for Windows PC or laptops. On the other hand, they also claimed that the new Microsoft Surface Duo 2 also should not be considered foldable since they are just two different displays connected by a hinge. But, you'll never really know unless you purchase it. Remember, this new flexible device would certainly cost you a lot since its price tag is more expensive compared to other foldable. Surface Duo 2's Details GSM Arena reported that the base 8GB/128GB variant of the new Microsoft Surface Duo 2 would cost $1,499. As of writing, consumers can already start pre-ordering the new foldable handset in Glacier White and Obsidian Black color models. Aside from this, they could also purchase the new Surface Slim Pen 2 as an add-on, which is priced at $129.99, as well as the Surface 23W USB-C Power Supply for $39.99. For more news updates about Surface Duo 2 and other upcoming Microsoft gadgets, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes. Related Article: How To Preorder Microsoft Surface Duo 2? Price, Availability, and More! This article is owned by TechTimes Written by: Griffin Davis 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. What now for UK data protection laws? Guest Blog: Peter Church, TMT Counsel, Linklaters discusses the UK Government's proposals to reform UK data protection laws. The UK Government has now published its long-awaited proposals to reform UK data protection law. The 146-page paper Data: A new direction contains detailed and well-thought-out proposals that raise valid questions about the cost and effectiveness of many aspects of the UK GDPR. The answers to those questions, at least on the face of it, appear to be underpinned by the UK Governments desire to deliver a Brexit dividend and remove unnecessary red tape for UK businesses. So what is, and is not, in the proposals? Incremental reform, not radical reinvention Importantly, while the proposal contains significant and wide-ranging changes, the core principles in the UK GDPR are unaffected. The data protection principles and legal bases for processing are largely unaffected - though there are some minor tweaks at the margin. In other words, UK law will still closely align to the EU GDPR in many respects. The UK Government could have pursued a more radical reinvention of these laws but given the likely impact of UK adequacy (see below) and the tumultuous last couple of years, many UK businesses may welcome the continuity and stability these proposals provide. A rose by any other name The proposal are, however, significant. The key principle is to remove some of the more rigid requirements in the UK GDPR and replace them with more flexible obligations that can be tailored to the business in question. For example, the proposals recommend: removing the duty to appoint a data protection officer, either in all cases or just for public authorities either in all cases or just for public authorities r emoving the obligation to conduct data protection impact assessment s removing the duty to prepare records of processing activities However, in their place comes a more amorphous obligation to implement a privacy management programme which might well oblige the business to appoint someone responsible for the programme and to produce: (a) personal data inventories; (b) internal policies; (c) risk assessment tools; (d) procedures for communicating with data subjects; and (e) procedures for handling breaches. Given the Information Commissioners likely demanding expectations for such a programme it is not immediately clear this is a less onerous framework or that it will, in substance, make much different to the way many businesses try and comply with the law in practice. No economy is an island One of the most significant implications of these new reforms is the impact on the EUs finding that the UK has adequate data protection laws. There are good arguments that these proposals should not affect the adequacy finding; in that the changes will not necessarily result in a lessening of the protection of personal data, rather it means the process to ensure that protection is more flexible. However, this is ultimately a question for the EU Commission who will, no doubt, be scrutinising these proposals closely. The loss of adequacy would have immediate and significant negative effects that might well outweigh the other benefits these reforms will deliver. Enabling a robotic future Alongside these proposals are a range of other changes, such as to enable the development of AI, to allow better use of data for innovation, amend the rules on transborder dataflow and change the powers and duties of the Information Commissioner. Read a more detailed review of all of these changes in our DigiLinks blog post. Author: Peter Church, TMT Counsel, Linklaters Laura Foster Laura is techUKs Programme Manager for Technology and Innovation. She supports the application and expansion of emerging technologies across business, including Geospatial Data, Quantum Computing, AR/VR/XR and Edge technologies. Before joining techUK, Laura worked internationally in London, Singapore and across the United States as a conference researcher and producer covering enterprise adoption of emerging technologies. This included being part of the strategic team at London Tech Week. Laura has a degree in History (BA Hons) from Durham University, focussing on regional social history. Outside of work she loves reading, travelling and supporting rugby team St. Helens, where she is from. Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lauraalicefoster Read lessmore A judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by 48 Ochsner Lafayette General Health System employees and contractors seeking to stop the hospital's vaccine mandate. Judge Thomas Frederick of the 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette, after listening to arguments for two hours, dismissed all action the employees requested against Ochsner Lafayette General, including a request for a permanent injunction that would have declared the mandatory vaccine plan unlawful and unenforceable. James Faircloth Jr. of Alexandria, attorney for the employees, said his clients have an automatic right to appeal Frederick's decision to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal. He will ask for emergency consideration and reversal of the decision. More than 40 people watched the hearing Thursday from a courtroom too small to accommodate social distancing. About half in attendance did not wear masks, inlcuding at least a half-dozen people in hospital scrubs and lab coats. Neither Frederick nor deputies serving as bailiffs attempted to enforce the statewide indoor mask mandate. Nursing student sues UL, Ochsner Lafayette General over COVID vaccine mandate for clinicals A nursing student preparing for clinicals is suing the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Ochsner Lafayette General over COVID-19 vaccin On Aug. 24, after full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, Ochsner issued an order requiring all physicians, vendors, students, staff and residents to take the COVID-19 vaccine by Oct. 29 or risk suspension or loss of their jobs. The 48 filed a lawsuit Monday. Frederick said he did not consider any of the evidence admitted, including affidavits from employees and experts, because there was no cause of action. The employees maintained they would suffer irreparable injury, loss or damage without an injunction. The hospital system, Frederick said in announcing his decision, is a private business, not a "state actor." The hospital's actions, he said, are not unconstitutional. Faircloth, in arguing the case, said the hospital's vaccine policy is "unmitigated coercion" because it states that employees who refuse the vaccine will face disciplinary action, including dismissal. Attorney Jim Gibson representing Lafayette General argued .009% of the hospital's employees are trying to put patients and other health care workers at risk by refusing the vaccine. They have no cause of action, he said, because they are at-will employees who, in Louisiana, can be fired for no reason. +2 Nurses, employees sue Lourdes, Ochsner Lafayette General over vaccine mandates Nurses, a respiratory therapist and anesthetists are among the employees of Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center and Ochsner Lafayette Top stories in Acadiana in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up "If these people," Gibson said, motioning toward some of the plaintiffs in the courtroom, "don't get the vaccine by Oct. 29, they're fired." The hospital's policy says any employee not vaccinated by Oct. 29 will placed on leave Nov. 1 until vaccinated or up to 30 days. If not vaccinated after 30 days they will be terminated. The suit was one of two filed Monday by employees of Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center and Ochsner Lafayette General facilities across Acadiana to halt mandates requiring employees to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Both groups of employees are represented by Faircloth. Both health systems adopted mandatory vaccination policies as a fourth surge of COVID-19, the delta variant, spread through the state. A hearing date has not been set in the Our Lady of Lourdes case. Ochsner, in a statement issued Monday afternoon, declined to comment on the lawsuit but wrote that it stands by the science and data demonstrating "the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations. Employees with medical or religious objections to the vaccine may file an exemption or deferral request that will be reviewed by a panel of experts," the hospital system stated. On Wednesday, a nursing student preparing for clinicals is suing the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Ochsner Lafayette General over COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Mia Bourg, an Erath resident enrolled in UL's nursing program, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette through her attorney L. Shaun Trahan. The lawsuit alleges the hospital system's employee vaccine mandate, which provides exemptions only for verified religious or medical reasons, differs from the university's vaccine policy that allows students to opt out for any reason, provided it is documented in writing. Fewer than half of University of Louisiana at Lafayette students have been vaccinated by this week, according to a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, but the university expects most students will be in good standing by the time registration rolls around. UL Lafayette spokesman Eric Maron said 7,144 students, 47%, were fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or had received one shot by Tuesday, while 1,588 students had submitted exemptions to the vaccine requirements that were issued by the state Department of Health. All of those students have met the requirements to be cleared for registration for winter session or spring semester by completing the mandated process. The Health Department issued its vaccination ruling, listing COVID-19 as a mandatory vaccination, on Aug. 23. That was after the Food and Drug Administration declared that the Pfizer vaccine had cleared all required safety hurdles. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were also OKd. The UL administration said that week that students would have to be vaccinated or submit approved waivers before they could be enrolled for classes for the winter session and spring semester. Registration starts Nov. 1. Students could meet the mandates requirement by submitting a doctors statement saying they should not take the vaccine because of health reasons. Or, students have the right to submit a form that says they had personal reasons for not taking the vaccine. UL said the deadline for submitting the form was Sept. 20. That gave students time to take both doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is administered but once. UL Lafayette President E. Joseph Savoie said in his State of the University speech Wednesday that 80 percent of faculty and staff had taken the vaccine. He also noted that two on-campus campaigns to urge students to take the vaccine had received widespread acclaim. Students who took at least one dose of the vaccine qualified for a $100 gift card from the state. The vaccine is offered free on campus. Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that gift card program Aug. 13 and visited UL the following week to tout its use. On Sept. 17, the university said 1,284 UL Lafayette students were among Louisiana students who had activated their cards. The hurricanes have not helped in terms of the target. We had hoped to have 75,000 cards used by the end of the calendar year, as the governor was challenging us to do, Ramesh Kolluru,vice president of research, innovation and economic development, said. Top stories in Acadiana in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, caused campus closures around Louisiana and caused students to flee such campuses as Nicholls State in Thibodaux, University of New Orleans and Southeastern University in Hammond, among others. The university said in its statement Wednesday that 4,898 students had neither received a single dose of the vaccine nor submitted their waiver forms, while 1,562 students were categorized as number of students who are in progress. Maron said in progess may indicate compliance with the vaccination mandate but with paperwork in progress. Dual enrollment students are not required to provide vaccination information to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Maron said. UL students who talked with The Acadiana Advocate when the mandate was announced presented mixed views on the vaccine. Most said they dont believe vaccinations should be mandatory. On Wednesday, a nursing student preparing for clinicals filed a lawsuit against the university and Ochsner Lafayette General over vaccine requirements. Mia Bourg, an Erath resident enrolled in UL's nursing program, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette through her attorney L. Shaun Trahan. The lawsuit alleges the hospital system's employee vaccine mandate, which provides exemptions only for verified religious or medical reasons, differs from the university's vaccine policy that allows students to opt out for any reason, provided it is documented in writing. "The whole basis of the suit was just protecting the due process for this individual as a student," Trahan said in a Wednesday phone call. "I think it could impact other nursing schools because according to the revised statute, all students that attend universities have that right to file an exemption." The Louisiana Illuminator reported Tuesday that student vaccination rates among the nine UL System campuses ranged from a low of 24 percent at McNeese State in Lake Charles to a high of 76 percent at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. UL Lafayette ranked sixth among the nine campuses for student vaccinations. UL System campuses include McNeese, UL Lafayette, Nicholls, Southeastern Louisiana, University of New Orleans, Northwestern State, Grambling, Louisiana Tech and ULM. The latest round of annexations within the proposed boundaries of the city of St. George moved forward Wednesday, with a hospital and several properties in unincorporated parts of the parish opting to instead be absorbed into the city of Baton Rouge. In a 9-2 vote, the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council approved the annexation of Woman's Hospital, several adjacent commercial lots and a small chunk of a residential neighborhood. The requested annexations inspired heated debate among city-parish leaders, proponents of the incorporation and those who oppose it. And much of that debate was focused around the legality of council approving annexations while a pending lawsuit challenges the creation of St. George in southeastern part of the parish. "If and when St. George is successful, our incorporation date will revert back to the day the election results were certified," Andrew Murrell, spokesman for the St. George incorporation effort, argued during the two-hour annexation debate Wednesday night. "If that's the case, the annexations will have to undergo a different process." In lawsuit filed to block St. George incorporation, defendants accused of ducking depositions Attorneys in the lawsuit seeking to block the St. George incorporation effort have accused organizers of not cooperating with recent depositio Voters within the approved boundaries voted in October 2019 to create what would be a predominately White new city in the parish. Its incorporation is in limbo due to a legal challenge from Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome and Council Pro Tem LaMont Cole, who was absent from Wednesday's meeting. Murrell tried to argue that a retroactive incorporation date, which happened when the city of Central incorporated years ago, would mean property owners within the boundaries would first have to annex out of St. George and then request they be pulled into the Baton Rouge city limits. Parish Attorney Andy Dotson repeatedly argued Murrell was wrong and that the judge would determine the incorporation date, implying that things might not play out the same as they with Central. "These individuals have met the criteria for annexation, so please know that if you vote against them, and they met the criteria, they can file a lawsuit against the city," Dotson said. "Please make sure you understand that." Dotson said St. George proponents could ask the court to block annexations if they wanted. As of yet, no such request has been filed. But Murrell indicated they have a lawsuit ready to challenge annexations approved by the council since the election. However, he made no indication of when it would be filed. Wednesday's annexations marked the first time the Metro Council has entertained St. George-related annexations since last fall's municipal elections, which changed the faces of half of the 12-member body. But since the 2019 incorporation election, the council has approved 10 other annexation requests. That was a point repeated by proponents leading the new batch that were approved Wednesday. Woman's Hospital asked that its 225-acre main campus on Airline Highway at Stumberg Lane be pulled out of the proposed city of St. George and into Baton Rouge, officials telling council members Wednesday they wanted their campus to align with collaborations among the other healthcare providers in the hospital district formed in the Bluebonnet-Essen Lane-Perkins Road area. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Included in the hospital's request was the adjacent 100-acre master-planned community known as Materra, the nearby headquarters of local construction services company H&E Equipment Services and Resource Bank in the 9500 block of Jefferson Highway. The petition also included a stretch of Airline Highway, which is a state roadway, as part of the request, in addition to Stumberg Lane. Those roadways would connect the properties to the city of Baton Rouge, which is required for annexation to be considered. H&E Equipment Executive Chairman John M. Engquist threatened to pack up his Fortune 500 company and move out of the state should his business and development be forced to remain in the St. George area. But the most controversial included in the batch were from the 12 homeowners in the Willow Ridge subdivision who want their properties pulled into the city limits as well as a portion of Willow Bay Drive and a triangular plot of private property east of the subdivision. The 40-home neighborhood has become sharply divided, with a growing number of residents strongly opposed to what their neighbors wanted, arguing to the council it would create confusing service issues for garbage collection and fire protection. Broome, who made a rare appearance at Wednesday's meeting, assured the council that the city-parish consolidated government set-up would not cause the hiccup in services that opponents feared, noting the agreements the parish has with other municipalities. "These aren't new," she said, "they have existed for decades." Councilmen Dwight Hudson, a staunch supporter of the St. George movement, and Councilwoman Laurie Adams cast the only two opposing votes. Adams argued the proposed boundaries outlined in the petition that lead to the incorporation election locked in the proposed limits and that it's illegal for the city-parish to chip away at that through annexations targeted to hurt the movement while the lawsuit plays out. "We're literally interfering with the petition," she said. Hudson asserted the logistical ramifications, specifically related to the Willow Ridge annexations, won't be as easy as Broome and others portrayed. "What happens if there is a block drain in the right-of-way for Baton Rouge that's impacting neighbors that are in St. George downstream?" Hudson asked. "St. George the municipality won't be able to clear that because they don't own that right-of-way. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission When billionaire retailer Solomon Lew declared cash is king he wasnt only referring to his company Premier near doubling its 2021 profit - Lew is on the hunt for retailers wounded by the pandemic. After more than 40 years in retail no one appreciates a bargain better than Lew. Premier has, in Lews words, not just survived but thrived and amassed a war chest that would be the envy of the industry. Lew made the point of saying there are retailers that didnt navigate the pandemic successfully and were now lined up at the door of liquidators and work-out specialists. I think there are going to be opportunities - there will be a big shakeout here, he said on Thursday. Premier Investments chairman Solomon Lew looks for wounded retailers while Premier Retail chief executive Richard Murray rides shotgun. Credit:Eamon Gallagher Sure, this sounds like jungle law but Premiers retail crown is no accident - it has demonstrated its retail expertise in managing its way through the pandemic better than almost anyone else. NSW has reported 1063 new local coronavirus cases on Thursday, and six additional deaths from the virus as two Sydney hospitals continue to investigate outbreaks within its wards. NSW Health said four of the people who died, all from western and south-west Sydney, were not vaccinated. There has been a COVID-29 outbreak at the Mater Hospital in Crows Nest. Credit:Kate Geraghty NSW Chief Paediatrician Matthew OMeara also said it is remarkable that 28 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 have now received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The vast majority of the age group only became eligible for the shot on September 13. A woman from the citys west in her 50s who was fully vaccinated also died. The ministry said she had significant underlying health conditions. A Brisbane prisoner has bitten a correctional officer on the hand while in an agitated and volatile state during a medical emergency. Queensland Corrective Services said the officers were trying to help the prisoner when the officer was bitten about 5am. The correctional officer was taken to hospital following the incident. Credit:Greg Henderson The officer was treated at the scene before being taken to hospital. QCS confirmed the hand injury was not serious. Other responding officers were assessed after blood from the prisoner splashed on their skin and clothing. The legal battle involving the fabulously wealthy Valmorbida coffee family is simmering. CBD readers will recall the backstory: The Valmorbida familys $500 million fortune and AFR Rich List status was largely built on introducing punters to Lavazza coffee, Sirena tuna and La Gina canned tomatoes. Credit:Illustration: John Shakespeare Family patriarch Mariano Valmorbidas son, Adrian, was a flamboyant property developer who once hired a crane to hoist his $100,000 Ferrari Dino supercar into his eight-floor penthouse bedroom near the Queen Victoria Market. He married Kairu Erica Chan before tragically dying in 2016 from cancer, leaving Chan and their two school-age daughters, Xuan and Ruowei, as beneficiaries of various trusts, one of which has had an income in excess of $17 million since 2014. And the year before he died, Valmorbida and his father incorporated Valmorbida Custodians Pty Ltd. Now those trustees are pitted against Chan in a family legal dispute. A controversial $85 million luxury resort proposed for Victorias south-west coast has been knocked back by the state government following a long campaign of opposition. But the developer behind the eco-tourism hotel proposed for a stunning stretch of coastline at Cape Bridgewater has been offered the chance to redesign the project, opening the possibility it may proceed in a different form. The bay at Cape Bridgewater. Credit:Jason South The applicant, known as Australian Tourism Trust, had won the support of the Glenelg Shire Council to build an 88-room hotel as part of a 10-hectare development overlooking the ocean. But it failed to convince a state government advisory committee, which found the resort would have unacceptable landscape impacts. Planning Minister Richard Wynne accepted the committees recommendation that the project should not proceed in its proposed form. Three media companies have successfully challenged temporary airspace restrictions that would have prevented them telecasting live footage from above Melbournes CBD of the ongoing protests that have rocked the city. Nine, owner of The Age, the Seven Network and ABC were granted a stay on Thursday against two notices that banned helicopters from flying above the CBD and showing live footage of the unrest. Aerial footage of the protesters approaching the West Gate Bridge on Monday. Credit:Nine News The application, heard in the Federal Court, will now proceed to a trial. The stay means the media companies can resume live coverage in the interim. The airspace restrictions were made on Wednesday by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority at the request of Victoria Police. They were set to remain in place until 9am on Sunday. A Melbourne chiropractor who spouted dangerous misinformation about vaccinations, including likening childhood vaccinations to poison, has been suspended from practising for six months. The Chiropractic Board of Australia referred Simon Floreani, who has a practice in Middle Park, to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for professional misconduct in March 2019. Chiropractor Dr Simon Floreani. The board said Dr Floreani, the former head of the Chiropractic Association of Australia, participated in an interview called Nazi vaccine regime in Australia on YouTube. The tribunal found he made flawed, inaccurate and dangerous statements during the interview. He likened childhood vaccination to poison and said, we could not find one shred of evidence to show the efficacy of childhood vaccination. The message has been loud and clear from the protesters: they are enraged over the mandating of vaccinations in the construction industry and, with elements of the anti-vax movement in tow, have put their case against being inoculated at all. Images of their sometimes aggressive tactics have filled TV screens for the past few nights. It has been confronting to see the level of violence taking place each day on Melbournes streets. No doubt some of this can be put down to frustration at being in lockdown for such a long period, and far-right groups that have infiltrated the demonstrations are well known for their penchant for violent confrontation. It has been a combustible mix, and a huge challenge for the police. Police respond to a protest at the Shrine of Remembrance on Wednesday. Credit:Wayne Taylor Melbourne has witnessed the use of an ever-increasing array of equipment to confront protesters and rioters: rubber pellets, smoke rounds, foam baton rounds, pepper balls and tear gas. All in the cause of enforcing public health orders to prevent COVID-19 infections. The protesters behaviour has been deplorable, and the task of police unenviable, but this is law enforcement we rarely if ever see. It is reasonable to question whether the response was effective and proportionate. Mistakes have been made. As senior crime editor John Silvester has stated, in the past few weeks police tactics have changed and changed again. As he saw it, on Saturday, after public transport to the CBD was stopped, the reasonable people stayed home and the usual suspects turned up. Then police screwed up. They used ordinary tactics for an extraordinary event, keeping back the public order specialists and using general duties police on the front line. The result was chaos leaving many police feeling they had not been supported by senior officers. On Wednesday, it will be Police Remembrance Day to reflect on the officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty the ultimate moment of solidarity. It is a contract that binds police from the most senior to junior. But earlier this week that bond became as frayed as the relationship between Paris and Canberra. The reason? Last Saturdays violent protest in Richmond. Street police werent angry at the angry young men who went to fight cops. They were angry at their bosses who, they feel, left them swinging in the breeze. While 50 police, who had just graduated days earlier, were called to the front line, the experienced Public Order Response Team was held back to protect the city. Anti-authority protesters clash with Victoria police at an anti-lockdown rally in Richmond. Credit:Chris Hopkins Mainstream and social media has been filled with strong opinions. To some, the police went too hard against legitimate protesters and to others they were too soft on mindless thugs. So let us go to the coalface and talk to someone who was there. His views were shared by thousands of colleagues reflected in hundreds of angry emails fired off to the Police Association from cops who felt abandoned. Here is the view of one experienced street cop. It reflects the mood of many. I have never been so disillusioned and disappointed in my many years as a police officer as I was on Saturday. Simply put, we were betrayed by our own command. There was a leadership failure, plain and simple. As police, day after day we manage with limited resources and scrape by with limited staff. We understand that at times things happen beyond the control of supervisors, but this was a planned event and there was a deliberate choice by Command to throw their staff into the proverbial meat grinder. This pure obsession with protecting the CBD over the safety of their own employees left police members vulnerable in the City of Yarra with limited resources deployed there. Despite repeated requests over the radio for extra resources, PORT [Public Order Response Team anti-riot police] was left to sit in their vehicles blocks away. PORT was made impotent and ultimately did nothing, a deliberate choice by Command. Sector commanders and sergeants asked again and again for extra reinforcements. These were denied again and again by Command. Our members were those who paid the price. When the members were trampled at the [Richmond] cutting, multiple members set off their duress buttons and were screaming for help. A duress going off is a very rare event and I can assure you this is something that makes my blood run cold and makes me sick to my core. There is not a more helpless feeling in the world than hearing a call for help and knowing you are not able to assist. The Commands response to this was to tell members to stop pressing their duress buttons. Members were left feeling scared and vulnerable in a situation where there was ample resourcing and the situation could have been avoided. It is pure luck that these officers who were betrayed by Command in this way have not received more significant injuries, and I would strongly encourage WorkSafe to investigate. Command threw some of our newest and most vulnerable members to the wolves. Police on the front line operate under high levels of scrutiny. We wear body-worn cameras, we are filmed and we are under constant review by those above us and members of the public. Close observation in a dichotomy where the same standard does not apply to Executive Command. They are yet to face their own staff with so much as an email or explanation. How are police meant to protect the public whilst in an environment where they are constantly undermined? Some have suggested they will never work a protest again. I, for one, will still turn up to stand on that thin blue line because that is what I swore an oath to do many years ago, as did many others and as will many others. The bare minimum is to have a Command who have our backs and support us. If we cant count on that, what can we count on? We have a right to feel safe in the workplace that is being ignored by superior officers. These supervisors clearly no longer recall their days of general duty policing, and utterly lack the empathy to maintain strong leadership over those who still work the coal face. We dont police in the corporate world of plush furnishings and nice office chairs; we are on the street in the thick of it. Experienced policeman We dont police in the corporate world of plush furnishings and nice office chairs; we are on the street in the thick of it. For far too long has the front line been ignored, pillaged of members to bolster someones resume. Words are no longer enough and action must be taken at an executive level. PORT members that were there and were prevented from acting or being involved are traumatised. No one blames them, it was not their choice. I have actually never seen the lower ranks so united over a single issue such as this against management. None of us are talking about the protesters, we expected that behaviour from them. The blame is levelled firmly at management. Another message came from a relative. My brother was one of the coppers hurt on Saturday. Dragged to the ground and kicked, punched and stomped on. Hes pretty sore today and wondering whether he will ever go back. Was furious at Command for not deploying the PORT. Reckons they were left high and dry. Senior police privately admit they got it horribly wrong on Saturday and needed to change tactics. The events this week in the heart of Melbourne forced their hand and left them no choice but to use PORT and other heavily armed units on the front line. While cops in riot gear is a confronting image, they actually can de-escalate violence using the philosophy of speak quietly and carry a big stick. A trained PORT member is less likely to lash out than an angry and frightened general duties cop. And angry men are less likely to go hands on with police armed with pepperball guns and stinger grenades. Police clash with protestors at the Shrine on Wednesday. The occupation of the shirtless gentleman is unknown, although we note he is wearing Tradie underwear. Sadly, his refreshing can of Wild Boar bourbon and cola appears to have been collateral damage in the fracas. Credit:Jason South The police strategy has changed from a couple of lines of stationary uniform police to what they call a strong and agile response. The next few weeks will be critical for Victorias COVID-19 modelling, as scientists watch to see how fast the states coronavirus outbreak is growing after recording its highest-ever daily case number of 766. The Burnet Institutes model for Victorias reopening, which projects large caseloads of COVID-19, and an overwhelmed healthcare system, includes a key uncertainty about how fast the outbreak will spread in the weeks ahead. Victorias COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar (left) walks behind Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Credit: Eddie Jim The model assumes the outbreak will continue to grow at its current pace before vaccination starts to bend the curve in a few weeks. But the virus might be spreading in particularly vulnerable communities at the moment, which would make it look like it is spreading quickly. As it passes into less vulnerable communities, it may slow. Western Australias post woes are set to worsen after 2000 freight truck drivers walked off the job nationwide on Thursday morning following months of failed negotiations to improve their work conditions. More than 100 StarTrack workers rallied outside the companys facility at Perth Airport to call for job security guarantees and equal pay and conditions for labour hire as employees following a surge in outsourcing by the freight company. StarTrack workers in WA rally at Perth Airport. Workers at the Australia Post subsidiary also want caps on the use of outside hire and a commitment by the company to allocate work to employees before contracting it out. Union representatives claim major freight companies are replacing outgoing permanent staff with cheaper outsourced employees, as they deal with unprecedented volumes of deliveries sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. Australias already heaving delivery network will be further stretched after StarTrack workers went on strike on Thursday as part of rolling national stoppages in the industry orchestrated by the Transport Workers Union as it bargains for more job security. The Australia Post-owned business said less than a third of its staff, or about 750 workers, had stopped work for the day, but it would still cause delays in deliveries, especially in Victoria. Transport Workers Union boss Michael Kaine claims StarTrack undercounted the number of personnel on strike. Credit:Nick Moir It comes after a strike at rival logistics firm Toll last month and will be followed by another at FedEx next Thursday. In each case, the TWU is negotiating new enterprise agreements and wants greater restrictions on the use of outsourcing. The companies say they already offer a high level of job security. StarTrack had tried to cancel or delay the strike by appealing to the Fair Work Commission on the basis that the stoppage could delay coronavirus vaccine deliveries, however, it was knocked back. The risk of at most a day or two delay was of very low order, commissioner Ian Cambridge decided. Three members of the Tamil asylum seeker family fighting to return to the central Queensland town of Biloela have been given 12-month bridging visas, exceeding what was promised last week. But the family are still stuck in Perth, where they live in detention in the community, because the youngest daughter of the Murugappan family, Tharnicaa, has not received a visa. Nades and Priya Murugappan with their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa. Supporters were concerned the family would be sent back into a closed immigration detention centre or deported to Sri Lanka when their bridging visas expired on Wednesday this week. Immigration Minister Alex Hawke last week made an undertaking to grant the mother Priya, father Nades, and eldest daughter Kopika, 6, a further three-month bridging visa from Thursday this week on compassionate grounds unless new adverse material came to light. A combative Queensland Premier has again cast doubt on borders opening when an 80 per cent vaccination target is reached, as she gave a full-throated defence of her states handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking at Pinkenba on Thursday, Annastacia Palaszczuk said the nationally agreed threshold for reopening could ultimately be adjusted because of updated Doherty Institute modelling. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk fired up when asked whether the states borders would reopen with NSW and Victoria when an 80 per cent vaccination target was met. Credit:Matt Dennien Eighty per cent, she said, meant different things to different states. At the moment, Queenslanders have more freedoms than what Victoria will have at 80 per cent and what New South Wales will have at 80 per cent, Ms Palaszczuk said. Our road map out of lockdown may have provided some much-needed certainty for Victorians, but it also ensured that Melbourne will surpass Buenos Aires as the worlds most locked-down city. Since March 2020, Argentinians have spent months living under what they called quaranternity where all social gatherings, both indoors or outdoors, were banned by the countrys centre-left Fernandez government. Premier Daniel Andrews speaks at a press conference. Credit:Getty Images Just two months after introducing the strict health measures, the popularity of the countrys president Alberto Fernandez soared to a record high as he stuck to his narrative of prioritising saving lives over economic concerns. South American political observers pinned his strong support to his coronavirus response, even though it damaged the countrys fragile economy and caused tens of thousands of businesses to close. 1.5 Million UK Households Affected as Energy Firms Collapse Almost 1.5 million households in the UK have lost their chosen energy suppliers as six companies collapsed in less than three weeks amid a global wholesale natural gas price hike. On Wednesday, Avro Energy and Green Supplier Limited became the most recent companies to announce a cessation of trade, orphaning 580,000 and 255,000 customers respectively. The UKs energy regulator Ofgem told customers of the two companies to take a meter reading on Wednesday and wait to be contacted by a new supplier, which will be appointed by Ofgem. I want to reassure customers of Avro Energy and Green Supplier Limited (Green.) that they do not need to worry, Neil Lawrence, director of retail at Ofgem, said in a statement. Under our safety net well make sure your energy supplies continue. If you have credit on your Avro Energy or Green Supplier Limited account this is protected and you will not lose the money that is owed to you. Ofgem said that the unprecedented increase in global gas prices in recent weeks has put financial pressure on suppliers. Since Sept. 7, six British suppliers have gone bust, including Peoples Energy, Utility Point, PfP Energy, and MoneyPlus Energy, affecting around 1,496,000 households. Energy companies that have gone bust in September 2021. (PA Graphics) EDF was appointed to take over the 22o,000 customers from Utility Point, while British Gas was tasked with absorbing 441,000 customers from three other failed companies. The energy supply to homes is not expected to suffer disruptions, but households are likely to face higher bills as theyre adopted by new companies. Business Minister Paul Scully on Wednesday told Times Radio that it wont be possible to guarantee people can pay the same amount as they did before. Peter McGirr, founder and CEO of Green Supplier Limited, told the BBC, You will see larger suppliers feeling the pain as well, and they will come cap in hand for a bailout. McGirr apologised to his staff and customers but said he didnt think the company did anything wrong. Answering an urgent question in Parliament on Wednesday, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed the claims the UKs limited gas storage capacity is causing prices to soar. Asked why the UKs storage capacity is 2 percent of annual demand while average European capacity is 25 percent, Kwarteng told MPs that it is not a function of storage to be able to mitigate a quadrupling of the gas price. This is a complete red herring, he said. And one of the reasons why we have less storage is because we have a greater diversity of energy supply. That is a strength, not a weakness. Kwarteng insisted that the government wont remove the price capwhich companies said diminishes the profit marginarguing that its needed to protect consumers. He also ruled out bailing out failed energy companies. PA contributed to this report. Police guard the crime scene following a shooting at a Kroger's grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., on Sept. 23, 2021. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian via AP) 1 Dead, 12 Injured in Mass Shooting Inside Memphis-Area Kroger: Police Authorities near Memphis, Tennesse, said that a shooting inside a Kroger supermarket has left at least one dead and about a dozen people injured on Thursday afternoon. The alleged gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police in Coillerville confirmed to local media. Other details about the nature of those who were injured were not provided. Police Chief Dale Lane, who confirmed the deaths and injuries, said it was the most horrific event thats occurred in Collierville history. Its with a broken heart that I have to stand before you today, Lane also remarked to reporters. Please keep the families in your prayers. Lane said that officers were dispatched to the Kroger at around 1:30 p.m. local time, adding that he doesnt know how many people were inside the store at the time of the shooting. Law enforcement work in front of a Kroger grocery store as an investigation goes into the night following a shooting earlier in the day in Collierville, Tenn., on Sept. 23, 2021. (Mark Humphrey/AP Photo) We found people hiding in freezers and in locked offices, Lane said, adding that one employee was rescued from the roof. They were doing what they had been trained to do. Run, hide, fight. I hate that we had to do it here. The alleged gunmans identity and motive were not disclosed. The suspected shooters vehicle is in the parking lot and we are waiting on some additional equipment to get here to be able to safely check that vehicle as well as some property that was on him, Lane told reporters on the scene. A Kroger employee talks on a cellphone following a shooting at a Krogers grocery store in Collierville, Tenn., on Sept. 23, 2021. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian via AP) Meanwhile, the extent of some injuries was described by the police chief as serious, according to local media. Lane did not elaborate on the type of weapon used by the shooter. He told Local24 that its not clear if the shooter was a former employee at the store. Glenda McDonald, who works at the Kroger location, said she was not injured. I just ran out the door, McDonald said after she recalled hearing something like a gunshot inside the store, reported USA Today. I left my purse, my keys, everything. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is responding to the scene, Lane told Local24. Nearby Collierville High School was placed on lockdown after the shooting. Collierville, located in Shelby County, is a suburb of Memphis. The Windsor Regional Hospital is shown in Windsor, Ont., on Jan. 6, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Rob Gurdebeke) 170 Hospital Staff in Windsor, Ont., Suspended Without Pay for Not Receiving COVID-19 Vaccine About 170 staff members at Windsor, Ont., hospitals have been placed on unpaid leave for not receiving their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by the deadlines set out by their employers. Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) and Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) had given staff and physicians until Sept. 22 to get their first COVID-19 shot or risk being suspended without pay, unless they could provide a valid medical exemption. Employees have until Oct. 6 and Oct. 7 respectively to get vaccinated before they have their jobs terminated or privileges suspended, according to the hospitals. A senior official at HDGH confirmed that 30 of their employees have now been suspended without pay for failing to meet the vaccine deadline. If these employees do not have the first vaccination on or before October 6th, they will face termination with cause, wrote Biagio Marra, vice president of communications and corporate affairs at HDGH, in an email statement to The Epoch Times. HDGH has reached a 97 percent vaccination rate amongst staff and physicians, as of Sept. 23. WRH said in a news release on Sept. 22, that 96 percent of its employees are fully vaccinated. However, 140 individuals, who represent approximately 4 percent of the workforce, have not complied with the policy, including 84 clinical staff, 56 non-clinical staff, and seven professional staff members. They are now placed on a two-week unpaid leave. The workplace policies follow a directive from Ontarios top public health official requiring all hospitals to develop COVID-19 vaccination policies. The directive requires hospitals to, at a minimum, require regular virus testing for unvaccinated workers. David Musyj, CEO of WRH, who took a similar approach as HDGH in implementing stricter vaccine mandates, said his hospital made the decision in order to put the safety and well-being of patients, our community, and team members first. Mandatory vaccination policies have triggered a series of protests by public employees recently, including health workers demonstrating outside hospitals across Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned such protests as intimidation, while vowing to criminalize protests that block access to hospitals, vaccine clinics, testing centres, or other health services. Canadian Frontline Nurses, a medical freedom advocacy group, who organized the protests outside hospitals on Sept. 1 and Sept. 13, responded to Trudeau in an open letter on Sept. 17, saying this type of rhetoric creates a divisive environment that pits family and friends against one another based on medical choices that individuals have made with careful consideration. As healthcare providers we believe that a one size fits all healthcare policy is not wise. There are many factors which need to be considered and Canadians have expressed their desire to contemplate and discuss their decisions with their doctors without any government interference, the letter read. We believe that doctors should be providing guidance with education and informed consent based on individual needs and that coercion and intimidation has no place in creating a fair, just, healthcare outcome. Rights group Stand Up Canada, which has been vocal on the issue of vaccine choice, said Canada is at the end of medical freedom. No matter if you are pro-vaccination, against these measures or somewhere in between, to have a vaccination forced on you is not only illegal, it is unconstitutional, discriminatory and unenforceable, says a posting on the groups website. Can anyone, including your employer force you to put anything into your body that you do not want? U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load people being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force via AP) 2 Fort McCoy Afghan Refugees Indicted on Child Sex, Spousal Assault Charges Two Afghan nationals who fled Kabul, Afghanistan, following the Taliban takeover of the country in August have been accused of committing crimes during their stay at Fort McCoy, a military base in Wisconsin. A federal grand jury in Wisconsin indicted the pair in unrelated cases. Bahrullah Noori, 20, is charged with one count of attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor by using force and three counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, with one count also alleging the use of force. Both of Nooris alleged victims were under the age of 16, making them at least four years younger than him, according to the indictment. During his stay at the U.S. military base, located about 100 miles northwest of Madison, Wisconsin, Noori allegedly touched the genitalia of one of his victims on three separate occasions, with one of the alleged assaults taking place in a barrack and the others in a bathroom, the indictment states. The second Afghan refugee, Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, is charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her. That incident allegedly took place on Sept. 7. According to an indictment, Imaads wife told soldiers through an interpreter that he had hit their children on multiple occasions. She alleged that her husband beat me many times in Afghanistan to the point I lost vision in both eyes. His wife also alleged that she had been raped by her husband and that he threatened to send her back to Afghanistan where the Taliban could deal with her, according to the indictment. Noori and Imaad appeared in court in Madison on Sept. 16 to face the charges against them and are currently being detained at the Dane County Jail. Theyre both scheduled for arraignment on Sept. 23, at 9.30 a.m. and 10.15 a.m., respectively, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker, the Department of Justice said in a statement. If convicted, Noori faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charges alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other two charges. Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The charges follow an investigation by the FBI and the Fort McCoy police. The pair were among more than 12,000 Afghan nationals who were evacuated from the country and transported to Fort McCoy as President Joe Biden withdrew U.S. troops, according to The Associated Press. 21-Year-Old Quadruplets in UK All Follow in Their Mothers Footsteps by Becoming Nurses Four sisterswho happen to be non-identical quadrupletsare making their family proud by following their mother into the medical profession. All four are trained nurses entering the UKs government health service, each having their own unique specialty. Anjel, Aneetta, Aleena, and Aneesha Mathew, all 21, started their new roles in August. Anjel, Aneetta, and Aleena joined the ranks of the NHS at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge; while Aneesha, who trained in physiotherapy, will work at Kettering Hospital in Northamptonshire. We are really enjoying it, the sisters told The Epoch Times by email. We are working in different specialties, so it is easier for us to share our experiences. (Courtesy of Joby Shibu Mathew) Right now, we are newly-qualified, and we understand that the medical field can be a challenging career choice, they added. But we are enjoying it. There are always opportunities for learning developments. The quads proud mother, 52-year-old Joby Shibu Mathew, works in the oncology department at Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk. They said to me they saw my passion for caring and being a nurse, and that they wanted to do it too, Joby told the Daily Mail. Its just how it worked out that they all wanted to do the same thing. Unable to use her overseas nursing qualifications in England, Joby requalified in 2017, the year before her daughters started their training. The sisters completed placementsalso at Ipswich Hospital. (Courtesy of Joby Shibu Mathew) Aneesha, who branched off slightly from her sisters, marvels at her mothers journey. When she completed her degree it was a huge inspiration for us all, she said. Its challenging, and you work long hours, but that feeling that your skills are making a difference to people is really rewarding. The quads father, 53-year-old maintenance engineer Shibu Mathew, moved to England with Joby in 2007. They brought their girls from south India to Suffolk the following year. Family back home has always been supportive, and the quads remained close to them despite the distance. The Mathews only found out during Jobys labor that they were having four babies. (Courtesy of Joby Shibu Mathew) Initially, we were told we were only having three babies, he told The Epoch Times. So we were pleased with the news and bought everything for three having four [came] as a huge shock! The couple stayed close to their daughters as they grew up and have always supported their choices. The girls also keep good relationships with each other, said the father. They have the usual arguments, like any siblings do, he shared. However, they are happy if we parents dont interfere and let them talk through. Usually, they get back together fairly quickly, and act like nothing ever happened. There is also no rivalry or competition. (Courtesy of Joby Shibu Mathew) The siblings have similar personalities, although Anjel and Aneetta take everything a little calmer than the other two and can reassure their sisters when they have anxieties, the dad said. The Mathews are often asked whether it was hard to raise four girls together. We had kind and helpful people around us, so it made the initial stage easier, Shibu said. The girls learnt to share things from an early age, and we are happy that they continue to share and help each other out. Anjel, Aneetta, Aleena, and Aneeshawho used to perform in dance shows together but now prefer to watch moviessay there have been several times in their lives when their dreams converged. They share feelings, too; whenever one sister feels low, the others also feel it without knowing why. (Courtesy of Joby Shibu Mathew) At the age of 21, their life choices have truly converged as they enter the health profession together. Their sisterly bond remains unshakable. We often get asked whether we get bored of each other, they added. Because we have always been together, we are used to being with each other most times. Even if we are together, or not together, we can still make conversation about anything. Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter As Monday Deadline Looms, Democratic House Leadership Remains Optimistic After over a month of infighting between progressive and moderate wings of the party, House Democrats have indicated that they are moving toward completion of their expansive $3.5 trillion budget bill. Despite continuing challenges that threaten to derail President Joe Bidens legislative agenda, the Democratic leadership is still confident of the agendas success in the lower chamber. Bidens build back better agendaincluding both the budget bill and the Senate-passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure billhas faced many hiccups over the course of its short existence. Rushed Deadline, Splits Between Moderates and Progressives Threaten Budget Bill Most notably, a drawn-out feud between moderates and progressives through much of August and September threatened the bills. Nine moderates, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), demanded that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have the House vote on the infrastructure bill before considering the budget. Progressives, suspecting that the moderates would not support the budget after the infrastructure bill was passed, made a corollary promise. The 95-strong caucus said that they would not vote for the infrastructure bill without first passing the budget. In a closed-door meeting with Gottheimer, Pelosi made a deal to satiate the moderates. The speaker promised that the infrastructure bill would be voted on by Sept. 27 in exchange for the moderates votes to advance the bill to be drafted by House committees. Though this deal satisfied the moderates, it has left House Democrats with precious little time to draft the expansive piece of legislation. And sustained disagreement between moderates and progressives continues to threaten to derail the process if the agreement is not kept. This short time scale has turned some supporters of the bill into hesitant opponents. During a meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee on the bill, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) emphasized her support for the bill, but said that the rushed deadline had created many problems for lawmakers trying to understand the bill. Murphy argued that the House should step back and take time to evaluate the legislation in depth before rushing into passage of the law, and said that she could not support the bill without these concessions. In the Senate as well, moderates skepticism of the budget remains on the minds of House Democrats as they work to frantically craft the legislation. The challenges were clear early in the process: The budget bill only managed to move out of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Budget Committee by a thin 50-49 party-line vote. This was only possible with moderate Sen. Joe Manchins (D-W. Va.) vote, which he said he gave out of respect for [his] colleagues. But the senator also emphasized then that he was making no promises to vote for the bill when it comes back to the upper chamber. Since then, Manchin has taken a definitive stance against the bill, writing in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he would not be supporting such an expensive bill. Another moderate, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, has joined with Manchin. A spokesman for the senator said definitively that Sinema would not vote for a $3.5 trillion bill. Crafting a bill that these moderates will approve adds another challenge to House Democrats already loaded dockets. Democratic Leadership Unfazed By Challenges Despite these challenges, the Democratic leadership maintains its confidence that the bill will succeed. On Wednesday, Pelosi was asked by a reporter whether the House would still be holding a vote on the infrastructure bill on the agreed-upon date. She responded quickly in the affirmative, saying, We are on schedule, let me put it that way. The reporter followed up the question by asking whether the reconciliation bill would be on schedule as well. Though unwilling to go into specifics, Pelosi again expressed confidence. She responded: We are on schedule. Thats all I will say. And were calm and everybodys good and our works almost done. Were in good shape. At a press conference Tuesday, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said of the fast approaching Monday deadline, Six days is an eternity in this place, and were going to get this done. During the conference, Jeffries touched on the negotiations with hesitant senators. He said that talks were ongoing with the Senate, but was unwilling to go into specifics. Jeffries touched on the difficulty of making cuts to appease the Senate, saying, Everything is important in terms of making [the] investments necessary to lift up everyday Americans. Still, he conceded that the cuts were necessary to craft a bill that could pass the Senate. Vice Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) added that Democrats were working to get the final bill as close to $3.5 trillion as possible. An audience member asked about the House leaderships plan if the reconciliation bill is not ready by Sept. 27. Jeffries indicated that the House leadership is in communication with progressives and will ensure that the caucus will not tank the infrastructure bill if the reconciliation bill is not ready. Jeffries explained, At the end of the day, what motivates usDemocrats across the ideological spectrumis delivering for the people. He continued: This is the presidents agenda He promised he would undertake this transformational effort to the American people. And we are going to make sure that promise is kept. At the end of the day, we always land at the highest common denominator [between progressives and moderates in the party] and we will do that in this case, he said. Were gonna pass the infrastructure agreement, and were gonna pass the Build Back Better Act. Jeffries expressed the caucuss determination to succeed in passing the agenda, stating Failure is not an option. Audit Finds California Regularly Sends Pension Checks to Dead People An audit of the California Public Employees Retirement System, Americas largest public pension fund, found regular payments to pensioners well after they died, so much so its challenging to get the money back. Around 1,800 CalPERS pensioners die every month, according to a June memorandum from the funds Office of Audit Services that recently become public. CalPERS had more than $41 million in wrongful pension payments outstanding as of July 31, 2020, the audit said. It estimated CalPERS made those payments to about 22,000 dead pensioners. The CalPERS Death and Survivor Benefits Division (DSBD) is responsible for verifying a pensioner has passed away and stopping payment. The audit found this process is done by a part-time employee thats not given regular supervisory oversight. DSBD did not consistently identify deaths timely to minimize the issuance of benefit payments after death and related receivables, the report said. The pension relies equally on family members reporting deaths and weekly audits of death reports from a third party, the audit said. Of the sample of 30 cases audited, the report found DSBD learned pensioners had died an average of 47 months after the date of their deaths, resulting in $2.34 million in wrongful payments that had yet to be recovered. In one situation, the pension paid out a lump sum to survivors before it realized original payments had been wrongly paid. CalPERS agreed with the findings of the report but not the severity of the finding, adding it would work to record the deaths in a more timely manner. The wrongful payments are minuscule compared with the funds overall operation. CalPERS paid more than $25 billion over the time the audit was conducted. The audit classified the finding as high, meaning the issue is considered an immediate concern and could cause significant risks if not addressed as soon as possible. Responsible for most of Californias public employees, CalPERS is monetarily the largest pension fund in the country. Its most recent valuation was $472 billion. It is funded partially by pensioner contributions and taxpayer dollars in the form of government contributions. By Cole Lauterbach 13-year-old boy from Newcastle receives the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Excelsior Academy on September 22, 2021 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images) Australia Eyes COVID-19 Vaccination for Under-12s Despite Extremely Low Hospitalisation Risk Australia is looking to commence its COVID-19 vaccinations for children as young as five amidst a debate on the pros and cons of vaccinating young kids, whose risk of developing severe symptoms from COVID-19 is extremely low according to studies. Health Minister Greg Hunt on Tuesday invited Pfizer to seek approval from Australias medical regulator to have its vaccine trial approved for children aged five to 11. In a letter to Pfizers Australia and New Zealand managing director, Hunt suggested the jab manufacturer should apply to the Therapeutic Goods Administration in parallel with its U.S application. I am heartened by your advice that trials of the Pfizer vaccine are showing promise in children under the age of 12 years of age, Hunt wrote. Should the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation also approve vaccination of this age cohort, vaccination would commence as a priority. If regulators gave the green light, it would be possible for younger children to be vaccinated this year, Chief Nursing Officer Alison McMillan said. On Monday, Pfizer announced its first result from a pivotal trial of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2,268 participants aged five to 11. The vaccine manufacturer reported that young children have robust neutralizing antibody responses and strong immune response one month after the second dose, but noted that the vaccine may not protect everyone. Benefits vs Risks However, some experts have questioned whether the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines would outweigh the risks for kids, given the high rate of adverse events in those vaccinated and the mounting evidence that children are substantially less likely to develop a severe illness or die from COVID-19 than adults, which has been shown by several large U.K. studies. As of Sept. 21, children aged 0-9 account for around just 11 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Australia while those aged 10-19 make up 13.4 percent, with no deaths reported in children younger than 10. For those who are infected, the symptoms normally do not persist longer than 12 weeks, research published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal found. The debate was heightened as a recent U.S research revealed that boys aged 12 to 15 with no underlying medical condition are four to six times more likely to suffer rare but serious heart inflammation from vaccines than ending up in hospital with COVID-19 over a four-month period. While several health experts argued that not vaccinating kids against COVID-19 may expose them to severe disease and harm already disadvantaged children, the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that the health benefits of vaccination on transmission are relatively small, given the highly vaccinated population and the lower effectiveness of the vaccine against infection with the Delta variant. The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time, JCVI said in a statement this month. The committee recommended that children aged between 12 and 15 should only get a jab if they are clinically vulnerable or live with someone who is. A healthcare worker fills a syringe with Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 11, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images) Scientists Argue Vaccinating the Young An Ethical Question Even though only around 2 per cent of children are infected by COVID-19, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute immunisation researcher Margie Danchin insisted vaccination for kids is necessary in order to protect unvaccinated adults. Kids can still transmit the virus and particularly transmit it to adults. Unvaccinated adults, unvaccinated grandparents are vulnerable, she told ABC TV. So they (children) do play a role in transmission as well. Of course, we want to see them get back to school. We want to see them get back to lives. However, the assertion that vaccinating young cohorts will keep adults safe remains hypothetical argued a group of researchers from Canada, the U.S and France in an op-ed for the UK peer-reviewed medical trade journal BMJ. They said that even if one assumes protection against severe COVID-19, an extremely high number of children would need to be vaccinated in order to protect an adult from a bout of severe COVID-19, considering the low transmission rates, the high proportion of children already being already infected, and most adults being vaccinated or already infected. If the goal is to protect adults, shouldnt efforts be focused on ensuring adults are fully vaccinated rather than targeting children? the scientists asked, saying this raises a crucial question of ethics. It is highly inequitable to be vaccinating very low-risk children in wealthy countries while many vulnerable adults in low-income countries have not had any doses. Furthermore, the long term effects of gene-based vaccines, which involve novel vaccine platforms, remain essentially unknown, the researchers added. A study published in The Lancet Europe in March reported that school teachers are more likely to get SARS-CoV-2 from other adults than they are from their students. Professor Adam Finn, a member of the JCVI, told The Times last Saturday that normally, scientists would have fully investigated the long-term consequences of rare side effects of the vaccines before recommending them to children, but the COVID-19 public health crisis has prevented them from doing so. It (vaccinating children) is a finely balanced decision. Its not a black-and-white decision. Its not essential that these children receive the vaccine, but equally, its a perfectly sensible thing to do, he said. A Rivercat ferry passes by the Royal Australian Navy's Collins-class submarine HMAS Waller as it leaves Sydney Harbour, Australia, on May 4, 2020. (Reuters) Australia Says Trade Pact Would Benefit EU in Indo-Pacific Amid Submarine Deal Fallout CANBERRAAn Australian-EU trade deal would be mutually beneficial and allow EU members a greater presence in the Indo-Pacific, said Australias trade minister, as Canberra tries to repair ties with Paris after the scrapping of a $40 billion submarine deal. Australia last week cancelled a deal with Frances Naval Group to build a fleet of conventional submarines and will instead build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with U.S. and British technology after striking a trilateral security partnership with those two countries. The cancellation has angered France, which accused both Australia and the United States of stabbing it in the back, and it recalled its ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington. In solidarity with France, EU lawmakers have publicly questioned whether a trade deal with Australia could be possible. Australias Minister for Trade Dan Tehan on Wednesday urged the EU to progress ahead with a trade deal. The AustraliaEU FTA is in the best interests of all parties, Tehan said in a speech in Canberra. The EU will use it as a way to strengthen its engagement with the Indo-Pacific because they realize that the region carries the economic weight of the world. Australia and the EU are set to hold the next round of talks on a trade deal on Oct 12. Australia expects those talks to go ahead, though the depth of anger was on stark display in New York at the United Nations when a senior EU lawmaker dispelled with normal pleasantries when speaking to Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday. For us transparency and loyalty are fundamental principles in order to build stronger partnerships and stronger alliances, European Council President Charles Michel told Morrison in a bilateral meeting in New York on Tuesday. Morrison is in the United States to attend the quadrilateral security dialogue, made up of India, Japan, the United States and Australiawhich convenes later this week. He met with U.S. President Joe Biden in New York but Morrison said he would not be able to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron. By Colin Packham Protesters are seen at the Shrine of Remembrance as Victorian Police patrol the area in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images) Australian Federal Court Overturns Ban on Live Aerial Broadcasts of Melbourne Protests A temporary restriction on Australian media flying helicopters over Melbourne to live broadcast unrest in the city over mandatory COVID-19 vaccines and health restrictions has been overturned by the Federal Court on Thursday, according to local media. On Wednesday, Victoria Police applied to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to temporarily restrict air space above Melbournes central business district (CBD). A police statement said this was for operational and safety reasons related to their response to protest activity. Related Coverage Melbourne Police Fire Large Projectiles, Pepper Balls at Protesters on 3rd Day of Demonstrations Its a victory for common sense and it should have never had gotten to this point, said Craig McPherson, director of news for the Seven Network, according to News Corps The Australian. The temporary ban was implemented on late Wednesday following three days of protests. It was alleged that protesters were using the medias live aerial broadcasts to stay ahead of police movements on the ground, allowing the protests to evade capture for several hours. However, following outrage at the restriction by media heads, Victoria Police later said media could apply for permits to operate helicopters over the CBD to gather footage provided they allow a 60-minute delay before broadcasting. This is because protestors were actively monitoring aerial live streams, compromising the police operation and putting the safety of members at risk, the Victoria Police statement read. The Australian reported that Channel 9, Channel 7, and the ABC challenged the CASA decision in the Federal Court on Thursday, arguing the restriction affected their ability to live broadcast the Melbourne protests. Legal counsel Will Houghton QC represented all three broadcasters, with the local outlet reporting that he told the hearing CASA wasnt authorised to assign power to Victoria Police to use specifically against the media. The media being the eyes and the ears of the public, we would submit, cannot be muzzled or censored in that task by having to go to Victoria Police first to seek an approval each time we want to lift our helicopter into the air for the dissemination of news around the country, he said. Secondly it cant be censored by Victoria Police by a refusal of approval when operations are proceeding within the city of Melbourne. Houghton also argued that everyday citizens had a right to know what was happening right now in their city to better inform their daily decisions. Peter Hanks QC, representing CASA, told the court he would require more time to gather evidence for his client. Australian Military a One-Shot Defence Force: Senator Warns Federal Senator Jim Molan has warned Australians against complacency, saying there is a need to be prepared for conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. He made the comments to Emeritus Professor of Law David Flint in an episode of Australia Calling, saying Australias defence force could not sustain a prolonged conflict. The government from 2013 until now has done more for national security than any other government in relation to the Australian Defence Force (ADF). They brought our defence force up to where it should have been for the last 75 years, he said. He pointed to the June 2020 new Strategic Update, which saw the federal government pledge $270 billion (US$196 million) into the ADF over the next decade in response to an Indo-Pacific region that Prime Minister Scott Morrison said was the epicentre of rising strategic competition. However, according to Molan, It still leaves us with a defence force that is not lethal enough. Its not sustainable enough, and it cant fight for a long period of time A lot of people say they are a one-shot defence force. Senator Jim Molan delivers his first speech in the Australian Senate in Canberra, Australia, on February 14, 2018. (Michael Masters/Getty Images) Molan has previously warned the precarious nature of the nations fuel reserves left the military in a vulnerable position if conflict were to break out. Australia is heavily dependent on international supply lines keeping the nations engines running. Current estimates believe the country has a few weeks of fuel reserves available if supplies are cut (well below the 90-day threshold recommended by the International Energy Agency). Such an event would be devastating for the nation as cars, planes, trains, and trucks would grind to a halt, which would, in turn, have a major effect on transporting goods such as food or medical supplies around the nation. There is no conception, within government or within this country, on what the nature of war is like, he warned. Australians have been fabulously at peace for 75 years, and there is this perception that every now and again the ADF goes away and does something with the Americans. Weve paid our dues to the Americans, and life goes on as normal. It will not be like that if there is a Taiwan scenario, he said, noting a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would likely involve every country in the region, including Australia and the United States. We are probably one of the richest countries in the world per GDP capita, its about the 13th largest economy in the world, and weve got a fabulously educated population, he said. We could defend this country; we just elect not to do it. The Australian government has, over the last year, bolstered its defence force with the acquisition and development of new weapons systems, including a March announcement to spend $1 billion (US$730 million) into developing its own guided-missile production industry. However, the recently signed AUKUS agreement with the U.S. and UK governments signals the biggest step up in the countrys military capability. AUKUS will allow the United States and the UK to assist Australia with the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. A move that would significantly influence the power balance in the Indo-Pacific, elevate the potency of Australias naval capability and make it one of six nations globally to operate nuclear-powered subs, despite being a non-nuclear power. Currently, only India, the UK, the U.S., China, France, and Russia have similar capabilities. The formation of AUKUS comes amid increasing concern over Beijings posturing and aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, from actions such as the takeover of Hong Kong, building artificial islands in the South China Sea, economic coercion against Australia, and an ongoing military build-up. Australian Professor Leaves for China After Ethnic Facial Recognition Research Found to Be Unethical An Australian academic has abruptly departed the country for China after his work on developing technology to identify Uyghurs based on visual data was found to be unethical. Research conducted by professor Wanquan Liu at the University of Curtin in Western Australia and published in 2018 used artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to accurately identify whether an individual was Uyghur, Tibetan, or Korean. While facial recognition technology has been developed and used globally, the ability to identify facial features of certain ethnic groups hasnt. Concern has been raised that the technology could be used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to further persecute the minority groups, with Internet Protocol Video Market (IPVM) reporting that police in China have since widely deployed Uyghur recognition technology supplied by China-based tech groups Huawei, Megvii, Dahua, and Hikvision. The finding comes as the CCP has received international criticism around the treatment of Uyghurs and Tibetans, along with the deportation of North Korean escapees. Curtin University found Liu to have breached the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research on several accounts and has since requested that the publisher remove its name from the research. Front of a building at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, on Aug. 13, 2018. (Orderinchaos/Wikimedia Commons) IPVM alleges that emails show that Liu refused to respond to the university during the investigation and claimed that he had become ill. The academic then resigned and took a position at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Sources such as ShouyeData and PHPYuan have reported that Liu had previously been recruited under the Beijing Overseas Talents Program (BOTP). According to China Today, the BOTP plans to recruit 1,000 overseas high-level talented academics and 10,000 studentssimilar to the CCPs Thousand Talents Program. The sources also reported that following the research in 2018, Liu spoke at the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, where he lauded the vigorous development of the technology in China. Tshung Chang, an expert on CCP influence in Australia, told The Epoch Times that the CCP utilized facial recognition software and its social credit system to punish groups that werent subservient to the communist regime. Its a matter of getting total and absolute control over the people, Chang said. Before 1949, Tibetans had their own autonomy, and in various stages, the Uyghurs had their autonomy. Theyve realized over time that they have their own independent way of thinking, and some of them still yearn for that autonomy. So [the CCP] tries to get them to conformwhether culturally or religiouslyso that theres no god other than the CCP. A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) Chang also said that the technology could be used overseas to track down and obtain information from family members of Uyghurs or Tibetans living in China, particularly given the international presence of Huawei and other China-based organizations with surveillance capabilities. In an email to The Epoch Times, Curtin University said they were unaware of Lius work. The involvement of the Curtin University academic in this research had not been known to the University, as it was undertaken informally [without the support of formal documentation, such as a contract, grant or memorandum of understanding], a Curtin spokesperson said. The spokesperson said Curtin had established a new risk-based framework and guidelines to handle future informal research activities. Biden Nominates Ambassadors to Sweden, Belgium, Dominican Republic President Joe Biden on Sept. 22 nominated ambassadors to Sweden, Belgium, and the Dominican Republic. Biden nominated Erik Ramanathan to serve as the ambassador to Sweden, Michael Adler as the ambassador to Belgium, and Calvin Smyre as the ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Ramanathan, an attorney and activist, chairs the board of Heluna Health, a nonprofit that describes itself as the leading provider of program services and fiscal sponsorship for over 500 population health projects. He donated thousands to the Biden campaign, the DNC, and other Democratic campaigns. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was a member of the Biden campaigns national finance committee and served as the national co-chair of Lawyers for Biden. He was also a trustee of the Obama campaign in 2012 and 2013. Adler, whose ties to Biden date back decades, is the owner of one of Floridas largest real estate companies. He served as the national finance chair for the Biden campaign in 2008 and as a campaign surrogate in Florida in 2020. He told Forward magazine that he first met Biden in 1973 when his sister started working for the senators Washington office. Shortly after Biden took office, Adler told Forward that he would want to become the ambassador to Israel. Adler is a civic and community leader and has held key leadership roles in many charities and non-profit organizations, an Adler bio provided by the White House states. Smyre has served as an elected representative in the Georgia State Assembly for more than four decades. Hes served as Georgias delegate to every Democratic National Convention since 1980. He served as Georgias presidential elector in 2020. The nominations for the three ambassadorships were announced at the tail end of a larger batch of nominations, which included Mary Lu Jordan for commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, Susan Harthill for commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, and Joseph DeCarolis for administrator of the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy, among others. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Bidens Special Envoy to Haiti Resigns in Protest of Deportations President Joe Bidens special envoy for Haiti, Ambassador Daniel Foote, announced on Sept. 23 that hes resigning from the position, accusing the United States of mistreating Haitian illegal immigrants by deporting them back to their country of origin after more than 15,000 Haitians had surged into Del Rio, Texas. With deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes, I resign from my position as Special Envoy for Haiti, effective immediately, Foote, a career member of the foreign service, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and obtained by The Epoch Times. I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life. The U.S. approach to Haiti, a country that has long been a hotbed for poverty and instability, is deeply flawed, Foote wrote before stating that his recommendations to the State Department were ignored or dismissed. Foote was appointed to the post following the assassination of Haitis president. A spokesperson for the State Department confirmed Footes resignation to several media outlets on Sept. 23. Officials with the department didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) While thanking Foote for his service, the spokesperson issued a statement to The Washington Post defending U.S. policies toward Haiti. The United States remains committed to supporting safe, orderly, and humane migration throughout our region, and we engage with partners throughout the migratory corridor to impress upon them our shared responsibility for humane migration management, which includes enforcing migration laws and protecting vulnerable populations, the spokesperson said. The United States is working with the U.N.s International Organization on Migration to ensure that returning Haitian migrants are met at the airport and provided with immediate assistance, the official told Fox News. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed to The Epoch Times that deportation flights containing Haitians have been carried out this week, stating that more than 1,000 Haitians who streamed into Del Rio were sent back. Officials, however, have suggested that many others have been released into the U.S. interior, while declining to say how many. White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to give the data during a briefing in Washington and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has twice this week declined before Congress to share data about the number of illegal immigrants being released. On Sept. 21, he told senators in Washington that he didnt have the precise numbers and wanted to wait so that he could provide accurate information. On Sept. 22, he again said that he didnt have the data. The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation over the crisis. Democrats and many pro-immigration groups say that the efforts to deport thousands of Haitians without a chance to seek asylum violates the Biden administrations immigration policies, while Republicans said that the surge of illegal immigrants in Del Rio is yet another sign of weakness and ineffective policy under Biden. Foote previously served in Haiti as deputy chief of mission and is also the former ambassador to Zambia. Over the summer, after President Jovenel Moises assassination, Foote worked with the U.S. ambassador to support Haiti. Zachary Stieber and Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report. California Governor Signs Laws Aimed at Ensuring Access to Abortion California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed two laws that are meant to make sure women have access to abortion. California Assembly Bill 1356 boosts penalties for crimes established by the California Freedom of Access to Clinic Act, including posting the home address or home telephone number of abortion providers. The bill elevates the crimes from a misdemeanor to a felony and makes it so those who violate the law face more jail time and higher fines. Violators used to face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. They now face up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000, as well as a fine of up to $50,000 if the violation leads to an injury. The bill also creates new offenses for recording or photographing patients or providers within 100 feet of the entrance to an abortion clinic. The other law, California Assembly Bill 1184, prohibits health insurers in many cases from sharing information on people who obtain sensitive services, including abortion. The reason we needed it is at this time when a patient is on someone elses health insurance, such as a parent or a spouse, there has unfortunately been a real risk that insurers send communications about sensitive health services such as reproductive care, gender affirming care, substance abuse care, mental health care to the policyholder, instead of the patient, state Assemblyman David Chiu, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said during a virtual press conference. Newsom, a Democrat who just survived a recall battle, said new laws protecting access to abortion are critical, especially in light of anti-abortion legislation being passed in states like Texas and the looming Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade. God forbid Roe is overturned, Newsom said during the briefing, adding later that were reaffirming the constitutionally protected fundamental rights of women to have the safe and accessible reproductive and sexual health care that they deserve. The bills drew some pushback. All Republican state senators wrote to Newsom this month urging him to veto Assembly Bill 1184. They said it prevents parents from being informed when children as young as 12 receive medical services such as abortion. We should be encouraging parents and family to be involved in their childrens lives, not removing them further from it, state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh and the other lawmakers wrote. The California Family Council also opposed the bill. Jonathan Keller, president of the group, said that an insurance policy owner deserves to know what medical procedures they are paying for. Others spoke out in favor of the new laws. Access is grateful to our fellow advocates and the legislature for their commitment to ensuring California maintains its reputation as a reproductive freedom state, said Jessica Pinckney, executive director of Access Reproductive Justice. Californias Ill-Conceived New Housing Laws Commentary On Sept. 16, two days after he handily survived a recall attempt, Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into a law a bill that obliterates zoning for detached single-family housing in the state. The bill, SB 9, enjoyed the support of nearly everyone whose interests seemed to count: affordable-housing advocates, environmentalists concerned about suburban sprawl, the states powerful real estate industry, and nearly all the media. There was only one group whose voices were studiously ignored: homeowners themselves and their local elected officials who have traditionally been in charge of zoning decisions in California and elsewhere. SB 9, overriding residential land-use planning in all cities and towns in California with populations of more than 2,500, is a major strike at the grassroots local control of local institutions that has been a hallmark of American democracy. The new state law permits the owner of a parcel of land zoned for a single detached residence to split the parcel in two and build a duplex on each of the new half-size plots. That would mean four units of housing on land originally zoned for just one. That number could go up to as many as six units, because a 2017 California law already permits owners to add a granny flata backyard guesthouseto any piece of residential property. SB 9s only proviso is that each of the new parcels must be a minimum of 1,200 square feet in size, which works out to a tiny 600-square-foot footprint for each half of a duplex. As for parking, SB 9 allows localities to require only one parking space per unitor none at all if the site is close to public transportation or a shared-vehicle location. And thanks to convoluted language about fireproofing in the new law, the new, higher-density provisions seem to apply even in vulnerable burn zones such as the rural towns wiped out in recent California wildfires where escape roads are few. The new law is wildly unpopular. A poll taken by David Binder Research in late July, while SB 9 was pending in the California legislature, found that 63 percent of registered voters opposed it, and 67 percent opposed a companion bill, SB 10, also signed into law by Newsom on Sept. 16, that allows cities to streamline their zoning processes to allow the construction of apartment houses of up to 10 units on single-family lots near public transit. More than 240 California municipalities joined a statement opposing both bills. Opponents included affluent Silicon Valley suburbs such as Palo Alto, and the City Council of Los Angeles, whose San Fernando Valley, with 1.9 million inhabitants, nearly half the citys total population, is about 43 percent Latino, many of them occupying modest 1950s-era tract houses on leafy streets. That kind of opposition killed similar bills in 2019. But eliminating single-family residential zoning is a top goal of progressive policy elites across America. In 2019 Oregon became the first state to ban it effectively in many cities. In 2018 the city of Minneapolis adopted a long-range plan that would eventually eliminate it, and the California cities of Berkeley, Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose have all begun similar processes. Opponents say single-family zoning is systemically racist, pointing out that the first such local law in America, passed in Berkeley in 1916, seemed designed to exclude black dance halls and Chinese laundries from wealthy white neighborhoods. This although Jim Crow is long gone, and according to research by urbanologists Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, in metropolitan areas of more than 1 million more than two-thirds of blacks and Latinos live in outer areas where single-family houses are the rule. Other single-family opponents cite the perceived negatives of suburban sprawl, arguing that packing people into high-density housing units will negate the burden on the environment from additional water, electrical, street, and sewage infrastructureignoring the obvious negative effects of increased density on current infrastructure. Anti-automobile Greens hope that reductions in residential parking will force Americans out of their cars and onto public transportation. Anti-poverty advocates claim that forging multifamily structures out of single-family parcels will make housing affordable in a densely populated state, California, where the median price for a single-family house now tops $800,000, making homeownership an increasingly elusive dream for the middle class. And real estate developers, whose hugely funded lobby aligned itself with the left to push SB 9 and SB 10 through the California legislature and onto Newsoms desk, undoubtedly salivate at the teardowns, the massive construction frenzy, and the idea of boosting one home sale into four. Indeed, the new California law is likely to be a bonanza for the corporate investors who are already gobbling up houses once owned by middle-class people and turning them into rentals. Of course, as with all such utopian visions, the reality is likely to be somewhat different. Just for starters, SB 9 exempts houses that are historic landmarks or are in designated historic districts. That means the charming Victorians and Queen Annes and Craftsmans that are already in the multi-million-dollar range. The rich wont suffer from seeing their neighborhoods destroyed and their property values diminished by teardowns, cheesy multifamily construction blighting their blocks, trees and other landscaping chopped to the ground, and impossible parking for any household where more than one member needs a car to get to work. Indeed, the value of single-family homes in prime neighborhoods is likely to soar as they become rarer. They will soar out of sight for middle-class people who had hoped that a house of their own, with a yard where they could grill and their children could play, would be a part of their future. Kotkin and Cox call the aspiration of regular people to own homes arguably one of the greatest achievements of postwar democracy. Count with that the ability through local zoning to create and maintain the kinds of communities where they want to live. There are ways in which California and other states could make housing genuinely more affordable: eliminating fees and regulations that are disincentives for construction as well as green restrictions hindering the development of outer suburbs. We can hope that the Californians of all races who treasure their neighborhoods will act to bring to an end a badly conceived density law that the overwhelming number of them oppose. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla., on Aug. 10, 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP Photo) Charter Schools Saw Enrollment Growth as 1.4 Million Students Left Public Schools: Report Charter schools across the United States took in hundreds of thousands of new students, as families sought alternatives to public schools during the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report reveals. Publicly funded, privately managed charters schools in 39 states saw an additional 240,000 students during the 2020-2021 school year, according to the latest Voting with Their Feet report (pdf) by the pro-school choice organization National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS). That translates to a 7 percent growththe highest theyve seen in half a decade. Of the 42 states covered in the report, only Illinois, Iowa and Wyoming saw modest decreases in charter enrollment. Oklahoma (35,751), Texas (29,030), and Pennsylvania (22,696) top the list of states with the highest number of new students. In terms of percentages of increase in charter enrollment, the top three states are Oklahoma (78 percent), Alabama (65 percent), and Idaho (24 percent). The changes took place at the same time that district public schools lost over 1.4 million students. The report acknowledges that many parents who pulled their children out of public schools chose options other than charters, such as home schooling or private schools. But the unmistakable message is that something wasnt working for more than one million parents, the reports authors wrote. They voted with their feet and chose options that are a better fit for their children. Public schools moving classes to online during pandemic lockdowns wasnt the only reason parents switched to charters, according to the report. In a few states, such as Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah, charter school enrollment increases were primarily driven by charter schools that offered full-time online instruction. The authors also provided some additional context from a few states, including Arizona and California. Both states saw increased charter school enrollment from nearly every racial and ethnic group, with Californias district public schools seeing a particularly large decrease in white and black students. In Arizona, 20 percent of public school students now attend charter schools. While its possible that some parents have sent their children back to public schools for the ongoing 2021-2022 school year, NAPCS President and CEO Nina Rees believes that scenario is very unlikely. Families are sending a clear message. They want more public school options, said Rees in a press release. From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South, the pandemic forced families to rethink where and how education could be delivered to their children. And now that they know whats available, why would they go back to an option that never really worked for them in the first place? Families are voting with their feet and finding the best fit for their children, she continued. It is gratifying to see the data prove what I hear from families of charter school students everyday: Public charter schools work for them, and they want more. China, Russia, Pakistan Special Envoys Meet Taliban in Kabul, Call for Inclusivity Special envoys of China, Russia, and Pakistan have met and held talks with representatives of the Taliban terrorist groups self-appointed government, Russias Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The three special envoys during their visit to Kabul on Tuesday and Wednesday held talks with the Taliban-appointed acting prime minister Mohammad Hasan Akhund, foreign minister Amir Khan Mutaqi, finance minister, and other officials. Russias Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, Pakistans Special Representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq, and Chinas Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Yue Xiaoyong, were invited to participate in talks by the Taliban, which seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15. According to the foreign ministrys statement, the officials discussed encouraging friendly relations with foreign countries and Afghanistans neighboring countries. They also touched upon having an inclusive government to ensure territorial integrity, unity of the country, human rights, and improving economic and social ties. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters at a media briefing that the three special envoys also met with former president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, president of the Council for National Reconciliation under the former government. Pakistans ambassador to Kabul, Mansoor Ahmed Khan, said on Twitter that the three countries pushed for an inclusive government in their meeting with Taliban officials. Special Envoys on [Afghanistan] of Pakistan Amb Sadiq, Russia Zamir Kabulov and China Yue Xiayong visited Kabul & called on Afghan Acting Prime Minister M. Hasan AKhund & senior leaders to discuss peace, stability & inclusive governance, he wrote. Amid talks of inclusivity, and the terrorist groups public promises of amnesty toward its opponents, the Taliban is coming under increasing fire following its move this month to ask female Kabul government workers to exit the workforce and remain at home, and to suspend secondary school education for girls in the country. The decision to prevent most female city workers from returning to their jobs has largely been seen as another sign that the terrorist group is enforcing its harsh interpretation of Islam, despite initial promises by those involved in peace talks that they would form a representative government with other Afghan leaders that was more inclusive and respected human rights. In their previous rule in the 1990s, the Taliban had barred girls and women from schools, jobs, and public life. The anti-Taliban National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) on Sept. 20 condemned the Taliban regimes move to ban secondary schools for girls in the country, saying that it has always been separated in the country, and therefore, the question of segregating classrooms should never arise in the first place. The regimes position as elaborated by its various spokesmen is but a reaffirmation of its long-held retrograde view that women should be consigned to household chores, the NRF said. Its utter ignorance of the age-old reality of secondary education system in the country betrays the alien nature of the regime. The U.N. hasnt recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last month that the Talibans desire for international recognition is the Security Councils only leverage to press for an inclusive government and the respect for rights. Meanwhile, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that the U.N. is not in a place yet where we are prepared to recognize the Taliban. Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said on Sept. 22 that the Taliban shouldnt be allowed to address the United Nations. Theyre whipping women in the streets, ordering girls not to go to school, and murdering opponents. They havent changed, she wrote on Twitter. The Taliban is a terrorist group holding a country hostage, not the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The regime has said it wants international recognition and financial help to rebuild the war-battered country. But the makeup of the new Taliban government poses a dilemma for the U.N. Several of the interim ministers are on the U.N.s so-called blacklist of international terrorists and funders of terrorism. Separately on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) held a phone call with Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Massoud. In a joint statement, the pair said that they appreciated hearing his continued commitment to resisting the brutality of the Afghan Taliban and standing for basic human rights and freedoms. Graham and Waltz said that after their conversation, it is clear that the Taliban regime is deeply unpopular and resented throughout the country. Their cabinet and forces are comprised of al-Qaeda and other listed terrorist groups, the statement said. It is in Americas interest that the Afghan Taliban not be legitimized by the international community because they are, and have been, terrorists. They concluded their statement by calling on the Biden administration to resist any effort to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan and resist all calls to provide the regime representation at the U.N. The Associated Press contributed to this report. (L-R) Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang, New Zealand's Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker, Malaysia's Minister for Trade and Industry Datuk J. Jayasiri, Canada's International Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne, Australia's Trade Minister Steven Ciobo, Chile's Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz, Brunei's Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs Erywan Dato Pehin, Japan's Minister of Economic Revitalization Toshimitsu Motegi, Mexico's Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, Peru's Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism Eduardo Ferreyros Kuppers, and Vietnam's Industry and Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh pose for an official picture after signing the rebranded 11-nation Pacific trade pact Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in Santiago, on March 8, 2018.(Claudio Reyes/AFP via Getty Images) Chinas Bid to Join Trans-Pacific Trade Bloc Highly Unlikely to Be Greenlit: Analysts Beijing officially applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). However, experts said the possibility of getting approved was quite low due to high entry standards and Chinas unfair market practices. On Sept. 16, Chinas commerce minister, Wang Wentao, submitted a written application for CPTPP membership to Damien OConnor, Minister for Trade and Export Growth of New Zealand, the depository state of the deal. One day later, Chinas foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said at a press briefing that Chinas entry would enhance regional economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as boost global recovery from the pandemic. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faces strong resistance, especially from high CPTPP standards in the forefront, said The Epoch Times columnist Wang He. Some of the core clauses pose challenges to the CCP, Wang said. Current affairs magazine The Diplomats editor-in-chief, Shannon Tiezzi, said in a Sept. 17 article that it is highly unlikely that Beijing will meet the CPTPPs standards. She stressed that those provisions included regulations on market access, labor rights, and government procurementnot merely tariff removal. She particularly mentioned challenges posed by Chinas frequent clampdowns on independent labor organizations and subsidies to state-owned enterprises. Chances Close to Zero Vice chair of state-run Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Zhao Ping, told state media China News Service on Sept. 16 that China was favorably considering the bid, which was meant to boost domestic reform and growth at a high level. However, Japans deputy finance minister posted a tweet on Sept. 17 that said chances that it [China] can join are close to zero, considering Chinas subsidies of state-owned firms and arbitrary application of the law. Under the CPTPP, member states are expected to help create a consistent, transparent, and fair environment to do business in their markets, for example, when they deal with their own state-owned enterprises. Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan said that China would have to meet the agreements high standards and its World Trade Organization commitments, and fully implement its commitments under the Agreement in good faith, according to a Sept. 17 article in The Australian Financial Review. The article suggests that Chinas bans and restrictions on $20 billion worth of Australian exports including beef, wine, and barley over the last year would be seen as a breach of that agreement. After Australia pushed for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus outside of the WTO in April 2020, China has carried out an array of bans on Australian exports, making them much less competitive in the Chinese market. Since then, the two countries have not reopened ministerial talks due to diplomatic tensions. To join the bloc, China needs to seek the support of its existing 11 member states. They are Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Mexico, Chile, and Peru. In the United States, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, when asked to comment on Chinas bid, hoped that Chinas non-market trade practices and use of economic coercion against other countries would factor into CPTPP parties evaluation of China as a potential candidate for accession. Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former acting deputy U.S. Trade Representative, said Chinas membership in the group isnt assured given its trade regime and direction toward more central control of its economy. Its extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how they could embrace the CPTPP rules governing state-owned enterprises, labor, e-commerce, the free flow of data, among others, as well as comprehensive market access commitments, she said on Sept. 16 according to Bloomberg. Moreover, Wang noted the move suggested a well-planned CCP control scheme. If communist China, already a member of RCEP [The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership], could join the CPTPP, it could draw on the two to drive the CCP-oriented Asia-Pacific trade area, Wang said. That would serve as a card up its sleeve. At the same time, the analyst warned that once China gained the membership, it would likely gut the CPTPP from the inside, as it had done with the WTO after its entry in 2001. The CPTPP was formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership TPP, which was created under the Obama administration as a tool to counteract the Chinese regime in 2016. Later, President Trump withdrew from the TPP. The bloc was renamed as the CPTPP, whose combined GDP would be $13.5 trillion or 13.4 percent of the world total in 2018. This aerial photo shows the logo (L) of China's pioneering digital payments firm Alipay on the office block of its parent company Ant Group in Shanghai on Nov. 4, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) Chinas Crackdown Reminds Big Tech Whos in Charge Commentary Chinas political leaders fear the power of their ultra-wealthy Big Tech CEOs and react to the threat with political persecution. But in the United States? Not so much. The old adage, Money is power, is proving to be much less reliable these days than it used to be, particularly in communist China. Just ask Jack Ma. Berating Beijing Will Cost You Ma, the billionaire (or one-time trillionaire) founder and head of internet giant Alibaba, isor wasthe richest man in China. Its estimated that Mas net worth was over $1 trillion. But his riches didnt serve as well as he might have thought they would, or could. On Oct. 24, 2020, Ma made the mistake of being critical of China, and by extension, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that runs the country. Ma publicly stated in Shanghai that China lacked a functioning financial system and that Chinese banks were run with a pawnshop mentality. As he now undoubtedly knows, thats no way to talk about the newest superpower whose leadership is supposedly infallible. Worse, Mas criticism was really a shot at Chinas dictator-for-life Xi Jinping and threatening the already fragile legitimacy of the CCP. The Disappearing of Jack Ma Predictably, the sole leader and ultimate authority in China reacted quickly and decisively. Suddenly, Ma was nowhere to be found. He simply disappeared. No tweets, no posts on any media, no appearances anywhere, for months. When asked by the Financial Times about Mas sudden absence from events, the excuse from an Alibaba representative simply offered the excuse of a scheduling conflict. Coincidentally, Alibabas fintech division, Ant Group, saw its $37 billion public listing suddenly go away. An investigation into Alibabas operations was also begun by state regulators. In December 2020, Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion by Chinese authorities. The logo of Alibaba Group is seen at its office in Beijing, China, on Jan. 5, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) One need not wonder where the proceeds of the fines ended up. Deconstructing Mas Empire But that wasnt the end of the CCPs wrath. Mas empire would take more blows. Beijing askedor rather, directedthat Alibaba liquidate its media assets, including ownership in the South China Morning Post newspaper and Weibo, Chinas Twitter equivalent social media platform. And the banking system that Ma criticized? Chinas central bank cut the Ant Groups links to its payment services firm, Alipay. This action financially separated Mas tightly connected companies and their ability to communicate with each other. The bank ended up in control of all of Mas fund products, including the information and financial liquidity of those funds. The CCP Hates Competition Clearly, Ma chose the wrong path. But he isnt the only Chinese Big Tech mogul to be targeted by the CCP. It seems likely that Beijing figured Mas audacity wasnt a one-off. Other tech and media-related firms such as Tencent, Baidu, Didi Chuxing, SoftBank, and others have been targeted by market regulators with fines, divestiture orders, and even cessation of business for the crime of operating as monopolies. More than likely, the Chinese leadership viewed Ma as indicative of the other tech billionaires, in that they posed a clear and present danger to the Party and must be dealt with swiftly. There are more examples, from streaming music video services to tutorial services to cryptocurrency mining, but you get the picture. When it comes to monopolies and power, the CCP hates competition. The consequences to the targeted companies are immaterial to the Party. Whether a companys stock price craters by billions or trillions, or the founders suddenly cant be found, makes no difference. The bottom line is that whatever or whoever gets in the way of the CCPs totalitarian grip on the country is dealt with severely. The Re-education of Ma? That could be because the founders of privately-owned successful companies can see that life and great success are possible without the Party getting in the way. Therefore, crackdowns come quickly and examples are made to keep others in line. To that end, in a video released months after his disappearance, Ma appeared subdued and somber, quite different than his typical flamboyant personality. His statement, I have been studying and thinking, and have become more determined to devote myself to education and public welfare, is quite out of character. Few, if any people, have seen or produced photographs of Ma since. Alibabas co-founder Jack Ma (R) and Tencent Holdings CEO Pony Ma applaud during a celebration meeting marking the 40th anniversary of Chinas reform and opening up policy at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on Dec. 18, 2018. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images) What they have seen, however, is what Ma discovered: Ultimately, money isnt always power, but political power is. US Big Tech and Government Overreach Curiously, however, no such problem with the American Big Tech moguls seems to exist. They dont threaten the growing power and legal overreach of the current administration whatsoever. They enable it. That could be because, instead of an adversarial relationship, Big Tech and the current U.S. administration are cooperative in nature. Dozens of top administration officials have deep professional ties with Big Tech firms such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Uber, and many others. Sure, theres a publicity campaign about an effort to rein in Big Tech, but will that really happen? The administration and the manipulation of media and data favor one political side over the other, providing tremendous advantages. Dr. Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, explained to the U.S. Senate just how big of a threat Google and other tech firms are to American democracy. A Case of Forgetfulness Theyd be perfectly at home in China, where the CCP punishes the Big Tech leaders because they threaten the Partys claim to legitimacy. As Ma and others like him have realized, all their billions of dollars dont matter without liberty and justice. Money, theyre now learning, is power only when the powers allow you the freedom and opportunity to earn it, spend it, express yourself, and legally protect those rights. Ultimately, Mas problem is a simple case of forgetfulness. When he spoke out against the CCP, he forgot that he wasnt free to do so. He forgot who he was criticizing. He forgot that ultimately, those who control the money and the military hold the real power. He certainly remembers now. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Workers are seen inside the production chain at a semiconductor manufacturing factory in Beijing, China on May 14, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images) Chinas High-Tech Push Seeks to Reassert Factory Dominance At a factory in northern China, workers are busy testing an automated vehicle designed to move bulky items around industrial spaces, one of a new generation of robots Beijing wants to shift the countrys manufacturing up the value chain. The Tianjin-based robot maker has received tax breaks and government-guaranteed loans to build products that modernize Chinas vast factory sector and advance its technological expertise. The Chinese regime is paying great attention to the manufacturing sector and the real economywe can feel that, said Ren Zhiyong, general manager of Tianjin Langyu Robot Co, as he gave Reuters a guided tour of his plant. China is backing R&D efforts by high-tech manufacturers like Langyu, driven by an urgent desire to reduce reliance on imported technology and reinforce its dominance as a global factory power, even as it cracks down on other parts of the economy. Beijings pivot puts the focus on advanced manufacturing, rather than the services sector, to steer the worlds second-largest economy past the so-called middle income trap, where countries lose productivity and stagnate in lower-value economic output. Ren expects revenues to more than double to $15.52 million this year from 2020, on increased demand for high-tech products such as Langyus automated guided vehicles. More broadly, the city of Tianjin plans to invest $311 billion between 2021 and 2025, with 60 percent earmarked for strategic emerging industries, Yin Jihui, head of the Tianjin Industry and Information Technology Bureau, told Reuters. The investment, comprising corporate and government outlays, will help boost manufacturing to 25 percent of economy in 2025 from 21.8 percent in 2020, Yin said. The share of strategic industries in Tianjins factory output will also rise to 40 percent, Yin said, from 26.1 percent last year. COVID-19 and the Sino-U.S. trade war have reframed the way policymakers see factories: no longer just grimy relics of an old economy but assets of strategic value. During the pandemic, Chinas factories have churned out everything from masks and ventilators to work-from-home electronics, propelling the economic recovery from its record slump in early 2020. Additionally, the trade war with the United States and Washingtons tech curbs exposed Chinas lack of high-tech knowhow, hardening Beijings resolve to speed up innovation. For China to achieve tech self-reliance in some sectors is, in my understanding, a matter of survival, said Tu Xinquan, head of China Institute for WTO Studies at University of International Business and Economics. Chip Shortage to Cost Automakers $210 Billion in Sales: Analysis The global semiconductor shortage will lead to 7.7 million fewer vehicles produced in 2021, costing automakers billions in lost sales, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. The forecast, released Sept. 23, estimates that the shortage will cost the auto industry $210 billion globally in lost revenue in 2021, up sharply from the May projections of $110 billion in forgone sales and 3.9 million fewer vehicles built. Everyone had hoped that the chip crisis would have abated more by now, but unfortunate events such as the COVID-19 lockdowns in Malaysia and continued problems elsewhere have exacerbated things, Mark Wakefield, global co-leader of the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners, said in a statement. Wakefield added that the semiconductor crunch is just one of the supply-side dislocations impacting automakers, with shortages extending to materials such as resin, steel, and labor. There really are no shock absorbers left in the industry right now when it comes to production or obtaining material, Dan Hearsch, a managing director in AlixPartners automotive and industrial practice, said in a statement. Virtually any shortage or production interruption in any part of the world affects companies around the globe, and the impacts are now amplified due to all the other shortages. Workers assemble cars at the newly retooled Ford Assembly Plant in Chicago on June 24, 2019. (Jim Young/AFP via Getty Images) The updated forecast comes as Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and White House economic adviser Brian Deese were hosting a semiconductor supply chain meeting in Washington on Sept. 23. Participants at the meetingincluding producers, consumers, and industry groupswere to discuss the global chip shortage and the impact of the pandemic on semiconductor supply chains. Automobiles have become increasingly dependent on semiconductors for everything from safety features such as airbag deployment and emergency braking assistance to computer management of engines for better fuel economy and performance. The spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, has disrupted semiconductor manufacturing, with carmakers now facing stiff competition from the sprawling consumer electronics industry for the reduced supply of chips. The shortage has led to production cuts by automakers around the world. General Motors said several weeks ago it was cutting production at six North American assembly plants due to the chip shortage, while Chrysler parent Stellantis NV said last week it was cutting additional production at three facilities in the United States and Canada. And Ford announced in late August that it would temporarily shut its Kansas City assembly plant, which builds its best-selling F-150 pickup truck. The parts shortage forced Toyota to cut production by 40 percent in assembly plants in Japan and by as much as 60 percent in North America, while German car manufacturer Volkswagen said in late August that it may be forced to slow production in the fall. GM President Mark Reuss said on Sept. 21 that he expects the global supply of semiconductors to stabilize but at lower levels than automakers need to rebuild their inventories. Were going to see a stabilization to some extent before we see getting the volume that we really need, Reuss said at a conference hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber in Michigan. General Motors CEO Mark Reuss attends an event in New York on May 20, 2019. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images) Weve got an inventory hole that then got exacerbated by the chip shortage, Reuss said, remarking on the pandemic impact on the auto industry. While the United States remains the global leader in chip design, roughly 80 percent of semiconductor foundries and assembly and test operations are concentrated in Asia. Washington has recognized the vulnerability of foreign semiconductor supply chain reliance, with Raimondo calling the lack of chip production in the United States a national security risk. President Joe Biden has called for increased investment to revitalize U.S. chip manufacturing, while bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill have sought to bolster domestic semiconductor supply chains by incentivizing manufacturing in the United States. Illegal migrants cross the Rio Grande River near a temporary migrant camp under the international bridge on Sept. 18, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images) Civilization Requires Deterrence Commentary Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends, or your interestswithout a major war. Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed. Its an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence still remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited. The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitlers serial aggressions. Hitlers Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscows lost deterrence after its lackluster performances in Poland and Finland, its pact with the Nazis, and its recent purges of its own officer corps. Deterrence is omnipresent and also applies well beyond matters of war and peace. The current crime wave of murder and violent assault in our major cities is the wage of loud efforts to defund the police and contextualize crimes as somehow societys rather than the criminals fault. As a result, lawbreakers now believe there is a good chance that robbing people or hurting or killing them might result in monetary gain or at least bloody satisfaction. They no longer fear a likely sentence of 30 years in prison. So, they see little risk in hurting people. And innocents suffer. With a border wall, an end to catch and release, and tough jawboning of the Mexican and Central American governments, a new American deterrent stance in 201920 discouraged once-unstoppable waves of migrants. Northern-bound migrants knew that even if they reached and crossed the border, there was a good chance all such effort would be for naught, given quick apprehension and deportation. So, in their rational calculations, migrants waited at home for less deterrent times. And they found them when Joe Biden stopped construction on the wall, renewed catch and release, and eased pressures on Mexico to interrupt caravans headed northward. Abroad, Donald Trump restored the strategic deterrence lost by his predecessor. Barack Obama had dismissed the murderous ISIS as JVsand they thrived. He shrugged when China stole territory in the South China Sea to build military bases. He dismantled missile defense in Europe to coax Vladimir Putin to behave during his own 2012 reelection campaign. Obama loudly announced redlines in Syria while never intending to enforce them. He gave the Taliban back their incarcerated terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of the U.S. deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And he sent the Iranians nocturnal cash to coax them to conclude an appeasing Iran deal. Aggression followed as U.S. deterrence eroded. As an antidote to all that, Trump destroyed the ISIS caliphate. He obliterated an attack of Russian mercenaries in Syria. He took out terrorist masterminds like Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the ISIS cutthroat Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. To dangerous actors, an unpredictable Trump appeared likely to strike back if provoked. As a result, Americas enemies become fearful of challenging the United States. And its friends and neutrals were more ready to join a power again deemed not just reliable, but willing to take reasonable risks to assist in their safety. Key to deterrence is for all parties to know beforehand the relative power of each and the likelihood that it may be used. When strong powers unfortunately transmit signals of weakness, whether deliberately or inadvertently, then weak powers are confused and come to believe their rivals may not be so strong as their armed forces appear. Often, unnecessary wars are the unfortunate result. These are quite dangerous times because Joe Biden has cut the defense budget. He withdrew recklessly from Afghanistan, leaving behind American citizens, our Afghan allies and friends, and tens of billions of dollars worth of modern weaponry and equipment. He angered our NATO partners who were abandoned with some 8,000 troops, in a country that the United States had once implored them to enter. He has politicized the military into a caricature of an elite woke top brass at odds with traditionalist enlisted soldiers. The result is that our enemiesPutins Russia, the Chinese Communist apparat, the Iranian theocrats, the lunatic North Koreansare now pondering whether Bidens reckless laxity is an aberration. Or is it now characteristic of his administration? Or does it even signal a new weaker and confused America that offers enemies strategic openings? Like the would-be felon, or the potential border crosser, our enemies know the United States has the power to deter unwanted behavior, given its vast military, huge economy, and global culture. But they may have contempt that with such strength comes such perceived confusion. And thus, in the manner of an emboldened criminal, or migrant, they try something that they would otherwise not. In sum, deterrence at home and abroad is now dangerously lost. And it will be even scarier trying to recover what was so rashly and foolishly thrown away. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses the 76th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 22, 2021. (Eduardo Munoz - Pool/Getty Images) Climate Activism No Pretext for Assault on Capitalism: UKs Johnson British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the United Nations on Wednesday that he did not agree with environmental activists who use climate change as a pretext to attack capitalism. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Johnson said: I dont see the green movement as a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism. Far from it. Extinction Rebellion, a climate activist group driven by an extreme anti-capitalist ideology, has in recent years been trying to rally people to its cause by deliberately causing disruption. The group staged prolonged demonstrations in April and October 2019 and September 2020, when protesters blocked entrances, halted traffic, glued themselves to buildings and roads, defaced a statue of Britains wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and disrupted newspaper printing. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel described the group as so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals, and the London Metropolitan Police said last month more than 50 million ($68 million) had been spent on policing Extinction Rebellion protests since 2019. Earlier this month, activists from Insulate Britain, another campaign group, shut down parts of the M25the UKs busiest motorwayfive times in just over a week. But Johnson suggested that the activists anti-capitalist message is misguided, arguing that capitalism and free markets can actually help cut emissions. The whole experience of the COVID pandemic is that the way to fix the problem is through science and innovation, the breakthroughs and the investment that are made possible by capitalism and by free markets, and it is through our Promethean faith in new green technology that we are cutting emissions in the UK, he said. To cut emissions, the U.N. has urged wealthy countries to end the use of coal power by 2030, and the rest of the world should do so by 2040. Johnson said this is an ambitious target but the experience of the UK shows that it can be done. When I was a kid we produced almost 80 percent of our electricity from coal; that is now down to 2 percent or less and will be gone altogether by 2024, he said. Johnson said last year that the UK has got huge, huge gusts of wind and he wanted to turn the country into the Saudi Arabia of wind power. But earlier this month, the UK was forced to fire up a coal power plant to ensure electricity supply, as low winds prevented the countrys wind farms from generating as much power as expected. The power plantWest Burton Ais energy firm EDFs only remaining coal-fired power station. In March, the company announced it had decided to decommission the plant in September 2022. At the time, EDF said it was the right time to make the decision in this key year for UK leadership on climate change. Lily Zhou contributed to this report. Members of the Walton family (L-R) Rob, Alice, and Jim speak during the annual Walmart shareholders meeting event in Fayetteville, Ark., on June 1, 2018. (Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images) Combined Fortune of Worlds Wealthiest Families Increased 22 Percent in the Last Year Last names like Walton, Mars, Koch and Hermes are only part of the list of the world's richest families Right now, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bernard Arnault dominate the ranking of the worlds great billionaires. However, if we talk about entire families, the list changes completely. As reported by Bloomberg, the combined fortune of the 25 richest families of the world increased 22 percent last year and the new list is led by the Waltons, owners of Walmart, the largest retail chain more globally. The agency, which specializes in monitoring the great fortunes of the planet, estimates that the Walton family has a fortune of $238.2 billion. This equates to the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries like Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Paraguay, together. Entrepreneur Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 and today his descendants hold 48 percent of the shares of the retail and wholesale giant. The chain has more than 10,500 stores around the world, which generate revenues estimated at $559 billion a year. The Bloomberg ranking includes a total of 25 families, whose combined wealth is estimated at about $1.7 trillion. Since August 2020, these families together have added $312 billion to their fortunes, up 22 percent from the previous year. These are the richest families in the world: 1. The Walton family, owner of the Walmart, Sams Club, Bodega Aurrera, and Superama stores, among others. Fortune: $238.2 billion. 2. The Mars family, owners of the Mars food manufacturer that includes brands such as Milky Way, M & Ms, Skittles, Snickers, Royal Canin, Whiskas, and Pedigree. Fortune: $141.9 billion. 3. Koch family, owners of the American petrochemical company Koch Industries. Fortune: $124.4 billion. 4. Hermes family, owners of the French fashion house Hermes, specialized in luxury clothing, accessories, and watches. Fortune: $111.6 billion. 5. Al Saud family, the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Fortune: $100 billion. 6. Ambani family, owners of the Indian oil refining and production holding company Reliance Industries. Fortune: $93.7 billion. 7. Wertheimer family, owns the French fashion house Chanel. Fortune: $61.8 billion. 8. Johnson family, owner of the U.S. asset management company Fidelity Investments. Fortune: $61.2 billion. 9. Thomson family, owners of the Thomson Reuters media company. Fortune: $61.1 billion. 10. Boehringer family, owners of the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. Fortune: $59.2 billion. The Lauder family, of luxury cosmetics firm Estee Lauder, debuted on the list at No. 13 with $49.3 billion. The Quant family, which owns the carmaker BMW, ranked 16th with $42.3 billion, while the Pritzkers, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, came in at 23rd with a net worth of $35.3 billion. The list is completed with the Ferrero chocolate family ($33.8 billion) and the Johnsons, owners of the giant of products for the home SC Johnson. A sign outside of Columbus Elementary School lets visitors know that the playground has been closed in Chicago, Illinois, on Jan. 25, 2021. Chicago Public School teachers were scheduled to return to the classroom for in-person learning, but the union objected and voted to continue remote learning. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) COVID-19 Exacerbates Teacher Shortages Across Public Schools, Forcing Some to Return to Remote Learning The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated teacher shortages in public schools across the United States, forcing some to return to remote learning. Teacher shortages and difficulties filling job openings have been reported in Tennessee, New Jersey, and South Dakota, which saw one school district begin the year with 120 teacher vacancies. In Texas, Houston, Waco, and a number of other districts saw hundreds of teaching vacancies unfilled at the start of the year. In one California school district, staff are reportedly sending flyers home with students to let parents know the district is now hiring. The shortage comes amid a spike in retirements and resignations of teachers prompted by the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, schools are already under pressure to hire tutors to make up for lost learning time, while more positions need to be filled in order to run online learning classes for those who arent ready to return. According to a June poll that surveyed 2,690 members of the National Education Association between May 19 and May 26, one-third of members reported plans to leave education sooner than they had initially planned as a result of the pandemic, which could further exacerbate the existing teacher shortage. A separate survey conducted by the RAND Corp. in January and February found that nearly one in four teachers said that they were likely to leave their jobs by the end of the 202021 school year, compared with one in six teachers who were likely to leave prior to the pandemic. The survey noted that a higher proportion of teachers had reported experiencing frequent job-related stress and symptoms of depression when compared to the general population, citing pandemic-era teaching conditions, such as technical problems while teaching remotely, as just some of those job-related stresses. Public schools across the United States were already suffering from teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education, and languages, prior to the pandemic. But several of them have now been forced to shut down and return to remote learning amid further unfilled vacancies. Remote learning works well when its thoughtfully planned and voluntary for both students and teachers. (Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock) Linda Darling-Hammond, president of Californias State Board of Education, said the shortage was really a nationwide issue and definitely a statewide issue. The shortages could potentially lead to some schools, particularly those in low-income communities, hiring under-qualified teachers as they race to fill vacant positions while class sizes expand. One school, Mount Diablo Unified School District, which serves 28,000 students east of San Francisco, has filled several of its elementary classrooms at the maximum capacity of 32 studentseven while social distancing rules remain in placein an effort to relieve pressure from remote teachers. Initially, around 150 children had signed up for distance learning. But that number soon spiked to 600 during the pandemic. As a result, some schoolsincluding Mount Diablo districtare now offering sizable bonus schemes for some of their teachers in an effort to fill vacancies. Adam Clark, superintendent of Mount Diablo Unified, said the district is offering $5,000 signing bonuses for speech pathologists and $1,500 bonuses for paraeducators who help students with learning needs. Another California school district, San Francisco Unified, is offering a similar bonus scheme for 100 paraeducator jobs, while nearby West Contra Costa County Unified School District is providing $6,000 signing bonuses for teachers, with a third of that paid out after the first month. And the teacher shortage isnt just a problem facing U.S. schools. In New South Wales (NSW), Australia, the alarming shortage of teachers led to numerous occasions of combined classes of up to 45 students and minimal supervision throughout regional and intercity schools. This is an example of the very real impact teacher shortages are having on students and teachers in schools from the inner west of Sydney to the Far West of NSW, NSW Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos said in a statement. As we prepare for schools to go back next term, it is a stark reminder of why teacher shortages must be addressed as a matter of urgency. Rebecca Zhu and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Children arrive in line using physical distancing before getting their picture taken at picture day at St. Barnabas Catholic School during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scarborough, Ont., on Oct. 27, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette) COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates for California Students Aged 12 and up Being Considered: Official Children aged 12 and older may have to receive the COVID-19 vaccine before returning to school in California, the states top health official said Thursday. While speaking at a news conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly was asked about a potential statewide mandate for children returning to class. He said that no decision has been made yet for students but said officials are considering the move. That conversation is part of what were considering as a state, but no definitive action is being made at the moment, Ghaly told reporters. Its been a long conversation about vaccines in schools and their role in protecting students. We of course are always looking at the data, understanding where there are opportunities to ensure Californias vulnerablethose who can be protectedare protected through vaccinations. Los Angeles County earlier this month voted to approve a resolution requiring vaccinations for children attending public schools. This week, the Oakland Unified School District in the Bay Area voted to require vaccinations. Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use in children aged 12 and older earlier this year. Pfizer and Moderna have recently submitted data in bids to try and recommend vaccines for kids under the age of 12. Some studies have found that children have a very low risk of severe illness, death, or contracting long-term complications from COVID-19. Several weeks ago, researchers from the University of Liverpool, the University College of London, the University of York, and the University of Bristol released a paper that found that among 12 million children in the United Kingdom, only 25 died from COVID-19 directly. A recent study, meanwhile, found that long COVID, or lingering symptoms from the virus, is less common among children than in adults. That paper, released in August, found that 4.4 percent of children who tested positive and showed symptoms had symptoms lasting four weeks or longer, while 1.8 percent had symptoms lasting longer than eight weeks. At the same time, several U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-released studies have found that fully vaccinated people can transmit COVID-19. While in some countries that have a high vaccination rate, including Israel and Singapore, most new COVID-19 cases are among vaccinated individuals. Earlier this month, Pfizer and partner BioNTech said that a lower dose of their COVID-19 vaccine is safe and triggered a robust immune system response in children as young as five years old, according to a news release. They said that the dose administered to young children was one-third that of the dose given to adults. Health officials in the United States, Israel, and the vaccine manufacturers have said COVID-19 vaccines can prevent serious illness or hospitalization. The CDC released a report that found the body mass index, used to determine whether someone is overweight or obese, among a sample of more than 400,000 American children had sharply increased during the pandemic. According to the health agencys Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, officials found that individuals between the ages of 2 to 19 saw their BMI increase approximately doubled during the pandemic compared to a prepandemic period, while continuing to say that persons with prepandemic overweight or obesity and younger school-aged children experienced the largest increases. Democrats Express Concern About Looming US Debt Default, Government Shutdown Several Democrats in Congress have expressed concern about the looming U.S. deficit default and government shutdown next month, saying there is no backup plan. The Senate could vote on a House-passed measure that would provide funding to the federal government into early December and suspend the debt ceiling until 2022. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Republicans are unwilling to raise the debt ceiling, pointing to Democrats having control over both houses of Congress and the executive branch. I dont know what the plan B is Plan B is to have Republicans step up and be responsible, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told The Hill. So then whats the plan? Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told the publication. Weve got to pay our bills, he added. This is asinine People need to remove their heads from their lower extremities. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the upper chamber, when asked about the plan, told the paper that I assume Democrats go to the drawing board. On Wednesday, McConnell and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a member of the Republican leadership in the Senate, called on Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. This is a totally Democratic government. They have an obligation to raise the debt ceiling and they will do it, McConnell said. Both said that Democrat lawmakers want the debt ceiling to be raised in order to pass mammoth spending packages, including the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation measure. McConnell has introduced an alternative continuing resolution earlier this week that excludes suspension of the borrowing limit. Without Republican support in the 50-50 Senate, the measures could be blocked by a GOP filibuster. Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.), center, speaks to reporters as other senators stand by, in Washington on Sept. 22, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) In the meantime, some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have said that Republican votes are needed to pass both bills. I dont know where else the debt ceiling would go, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told the paper, noting that he was open to different pathways, but theres no question in my mind that it will only happen with Republican votes. On Thursday, Pelosi said during a weekly news conference that the continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown and a measure to suspend the debt ceiling will be passed by the end of September. Its quite appalling, because when Republican presidents were there, we always had bipartisan support for that, Pelosi remarked. The White House circulated a memo in Congress last week that should the United States default on its debt, a number of federal programs and agencies would not be funded while adding that millions of jobs could be lost, triggering an economic recession. Previously, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the ceiling could be hit sometime in October. Bond rating firm Moodys this week warned that six million jobs could be lost if the U.S. defaults. Shutting the government down would not be an immediate hit to the economy, but a default would be a catastrophic blow to the nascent economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Moodys report said, noting that the stock market could drop by as much as a third and wipe out trillions of dollars in household wealth. But, the report noted that numerous experts believe that Congress will ultimately act to raise or suspend the borrowing limit. A guard tower stands at the entrance of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, also known as "Gitmo", at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Oct. 23, 2016. (John Moore/Getty Images) DHS Looking to Hire Private Contractor Fluent in Haitian Creole for Guantanamo Bay Migrant Operations Center The Biden administration is looking to hire a private contractor to provide security officers to oversee a Migrant Operations Center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, according to a recent government advertisement. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a continuing need to contract for services to provide unarmed custody and security officers to provide guard/security services at the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) at the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), Cuba, the listing, which was posted on Sept.17, reads. Contractor support is required to assist the Department of State (DOS) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in meeting their responsibilities for the safety, security and care of protected and non-protected migrants at NSG under Executive Order 13276. The listing says that the detention facility has a capacity of 120 people, and will house 20 migrants daily, but notes that the service provider shall be responsible to maintain on site the necessary equipment to erect temporary housing facilities for populations that exceed 120 and up to 400 migrants in a surge event. Those who apply must also be able to assemble equipment, such as tents and cots, on short notice, the add says. ICE is looking for 50 people to work at the facility, and at least 10 percent of those must be fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole The job posting comes amid a surge in illegal immigrants who have amassed in Del Rio, a small Texas city with a population of about 35,000, in recent days. Some 16,000 illegal aliens, the majority hailing from Haiti, have entered the city in the past week or so, according to Texas officials, leaving Border Patrol agents overwhelmed. Federal officials have begun releasing many of those migrants into the United States this week, despite the Biden administrations public statements that thousands of those in the camp would be expelled back to Haiti on flights, AP reported. The timing of the job posting raises questions about whether or not the Biden administration would use the facility, which is located on the same U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, to house some of those Haitian migrants at the southern border. However, there is no suggestion of this in the advertisement. A DHS spokesperson also confirmed in a statement to The Hill that this was not the case. DHS is not and will not send Haitian nationals being encountered at the southwest border to the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay, the spokesperson said. The MOC has been used for decades to process migrants interdicted at sea for third-country resettlement. The request for information (RFI) recently posted is a typical, routine first step in a contract renewal, and unrelated to the Southwest Border. The Guantanamo detention center opened in 2002 and under President George W. Bushs administration, it became a place to interrogate and imprison people suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban terrorist groups after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. From 1991 to 1993, then-Attorney General William Barr indefinitely detained as many as 12,000 Haitian asylum seekers at an immigration facility in Guantanamo Bay. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: Herd Immunity Doesnt Mean a Disease Goes Away Herd immunity refers to when a population has immunity from a disease either through vaccination or recovery. Some health experts hope to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 in the United States. But people should keep in mind that reaching herd immunity does not mean that a disease has gone away, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times. The concept is built on how many people each person who contracts a disease transmits that disease to, with people with some immunity infecting fewer people, on average. So if I get COVID, I only infect one person or fewer than one person on average and what that means is that the disease will decrease in prevalence, so that whenever the case counts are coming down, youre actually in herd immunity, Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, said on The Epoch Times American Thought Leaders. Herd immunity is not a synonym for zero COVID. I think that is the problem that many people have had in thinking about herd immunity. Its not a synonym for the disease has gone away, we never have to think about it again,' he added. Top health experts have differed on the percentage of people needing immunity to achieve herd immunity in a certain population. Dr. Anthony Fauci, said last year that a floor of 60 percent immunity would be required, but later gave a range of up to 90 percent. Experts say both vaccines and so-called natural immunity, or the immunity enjoyed post-recovery, contribute to herd immunity. But COVID-19 vaccines, which were initially touted as preventing infection, have sharply waned in effectiveness against infection over time. They continue to work well with [the] Delta [variant] with regard to severe illness and death, but what they cant do anymore is prevent transmission, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on CNN over the summer. That makes natural immunity the more important piece, according to Bhattacharya, even as federal health officials like Fauci and Walensky focus on vaccinations. Ironically, the vaccines seem to protect against transmission for only a short time, and certainly incompletely, so that means the natural immunity is going to be the more important contributor to herd immunity when it happens, he said. Now, let me just tell you what it will look like. It wont look like the diseases gone. During high COVID seasons the disease will return, during low COVID seasons it will go back down again. And disease will continue to spread in the population over and over, he continued. People are likely to contract COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, more than once, similar to other colds, Bhattacharya said. But the good news is, the second, third, fourth times you get it, your body remembers how to deal with it, and its likely to be much milder than the first time you got it, he added. So learning to live with COVID is not as scary as you might think. Its better the first time you get it to be protected with the vaccine, because the vaccine blunts the worst of the diseasedeath and hospitalization. But I dont envision a future where you have to get boosters over and over and over again, because such a large fraction of the population has already had it and therefore has pretty effective protection against severe disease if they are effective, he said. Zachary Stieber Reporter Follow Zachary Stieber covers U.S. news, including politics and court cases. He started at The Epoch Times as a New York City metro reporter. zackstieber Chinese vessels, believed to be manned by Chinese maritime militia personnel, are seen at Whitsun Reef, South China Sea, on March 27, 2021. (Philippine Coast Guard/National Task Force-West Philippine Sea/Handout via Reuters) Equipping Australia With Nuclear-Powered Submarines A Smart Move, Experts Say Through a new security partnership called AUKUS, the United States and the United Kingdom will help equip Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Former Chinese navy colonel and military experts from Taiwan say that AUKUS is a smart move, and it will be effective in countering Beijings maritime aggression. Forming a Military Stronghold Cheng Yao, former lieutenant colonel of the Chinese naval command center, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the AUKUS move is very clever. It forms a military stronghold, with Australia, Japan, and Guam, against Beijings aggression into the Pacific Ocean. Screenshot from Google Maps showing Australia, Guam, and Japan which are forming a military stronghold against Beijings maritime ambition to reach the Pacific Ocean, taken on Sept. 23, 2021. (Screenshot via Google maps) Yao said that from the military point of view, its necessary for the United States to help Australia. Australias geographic location makes it especially important in stopping Beijings attempt to break through the first island chain and reach the Pacific Ocean. With the fast expansion of the Chinese navy in recent years, it is imperative to form an alliance against Chinas aggression, which clearly is the U.S. strategy, Yao said. Blocking CCP Military Behind First Island Chain Regarding Beijings threat to Taiwan, Yao thinks that in order to invade Taiwan, Beijing has to first remove the United States from the first island chain. However, Beijing currently does not have the capability to do so. But in 18 months or longer, it might. Therefore, the 18-month timeline of AUKUS addresses this possibility. Screenshot from Google Maps showing the first island chain, taken on Sept. 23, 2021. (Screenshot via Google maps) Dr. TsungChi Yu, Dean of Fu Hsing Kang College at National Defense University, Taiwan, told The Epoch Times that AUKUS directly targets the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to Yu, Japan has been strengthening the defense to its south and has formed an Indo-Pacific version of the Maginot Line. However, one weak link is the Bashi Channel, located in between Taiwan and the Philippines. It is an important pathway for CCP submarines. The AUKUS agreement grants Australia long-distance underwater capability to safeguard the Bashi Channel. This will greatly strengthen the overall defense capability along the First Island Chain. A Well-Organized String of Events Yu thinks that the U.S. support for Taiwan is getting stronger, slowly and steadily. It is similar to CCPs tactic in the South China Seagradually taking over the islands in small stepsto prevent heightened level of confrontation from the United States and its allies. A series of events have happened. First, the United States is considering changing the name of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office to the Taiwan Representative Office. Secondly, Taiwans high-level diplomats and national security officials visited the United States for Special Channel talks in mid-September. Thirdly, the QUAD summit in Washington D.C. is scheduled in late September. All these prove that the United States is executing a well-planned series of events to counter Beijings threat. Dr. Yu said because Xi is seeking to retain power next October, he must be very careful not to make any mistakes on military, foreign relations, and Taiwan issues. If one thing goes wrong, he wont be able to retain power. So, Xi will not make any offensive move. While the moves by the U.S. is to provoke Xi to make mistakes. Anything that happens will speed up [the] CCPs demise. Safeguarding Bashi Channel Important to Europe Su Ziyun, director of the Institute of Military Strategy and Industry at Taiwans Institute for National Defense and Security Studies, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that one of the reasons the UK and the United States want to equip Australia with long-distance underwater capabilities is to safeguard the Bashi Channel. This explains why the U.S. P-8A Poseidon Maritime Surveillance Aircraft have been active around Bashi Channel, to make sure CCPs nuclear-powered submarines do not pass through it and enter the Philippines Sea to threaten the U.S. mainland. The UK also wants to stop the CCPs maritime expansion. If the CCP controls the South China Sea, then it controls the maritime route to Europe through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. That will hurt the European economy. In addition, it is to prevent CCPs intercontinental missiles from reaching Europe. In addition, the Indo-Pacific region is an important platform for the UK to re-enter the global stage after it exited the European Union. It has permanently deployed two warships to the Indo-Pacific region. British Prime Minister Johnson stated recently that the UK will follow the United States in its hard stance against Beijing. The gold thread used for this rose, for a Piaget watch face, was hair-thin and had to be handled with extreme care. (Piaget/Courtesy of Le Begonia d'Or ) Exceptional French Gold Embroidery Master Artist Sylvie Deschamps and her Le Begonia d'Or atelier For the past 26 years, gold-thread embroiderer Sylvie Deschamps has headed Le Begonia dOr, a gold-embroidery workshop in the historic town of Rochefort, just south of La Rochelle in the west of France. The town dates back to the 11th century, when Rochefort Castle was built to prevent a Norman attack. But the modern fortified town of Rochefort was established in the late 17th century, when the Sun King Louis XIVs minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, founded an arsenal and military port there. To embellish the mens military attire, gold-embroidery workshops were established in the town. Deschamps continues the towns gold-embroidery tradition. She holds the prestigious title of Master Artist, an honor bestowed by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication to fine craftspeople who are recognized by their peers as virtuoso artists, and who are capable of passing on the embroidery heritage to future generations. Master Artist, gold-thread embrioderer Sylvie Deschamps at work. (Guerlain/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) There are only 89 master artists in France, and Deschamps is currently the only gold-thread embroiderer with the title. Recalling the day she received the honor in 2010, Deschamps said in a telephone interview, It was one of the most memorable days of my life. The Master Artist title brought Deschamps and Le Begonia dOr much media attention, and many illustrious commissions from luxury companies such as the fashion houses of Hermes, Cartier, and Valentino; the perfumer Guerlain; the Swiss watchmaker Piaget; and the shoemaker John Lobb. Swiss watchmaker Piaget commissioned Le Begonia dOr to create 350 watch faces in two designs: a rose and a branch of laurel. (Piaget/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) The laurel branch motif took Sylvie Deschamps and her assistant Marlene Rouhaud 10 hours to create, for Swiss watchmaker Piaget. (Piaget/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) Besides the luxury brands, the Le Begonia dOr atelier also undertakes commissions to design and create unique embellishments for interiors of private jets, yachts, and homes. In addition, Deschamps and her team restore and repair gold embroidery on many items, from ecclesiastical banners to customers couches. A Parisian customer asked Le Begonia dOr to restore this couch. (Le Begonia dOr) To fully restore a badly damaged couch, gold embroidery had to be set on new velvet. (Le Begonia dOr) Le Begonia dOr restored this velvet couch to its former glory. (Le Begonia dOr) An important part of the atelier is ensuring that the tradition of gold-thread embroidery is taught to future generations. Deschampss apprentice, Marlene Rouhaud works alongside her, and the atelier runs classes throughout the year for different skill levels. Mastering Gold-Thread Embroidery As a teenager, Deschamps once set her heart on becoming a lingerie maker, as she loved different types of delicate lace. Her love for lace remains, but her professional lingerie-making hopes were dashed when she was 15 years old. A lack of students interested in learning to make lingerie meant the course she wanted to take didnt run that year. The school also specialized in gold-thread embroidery, and when Deschamps saw some of the finished pieces, she knew that was what she wanted to study. The gold thread chose me, rather than me choosing the material, she said. For six years, Deschamps learned from the best embroiderer in Lyon, Lucie Teston, at Bouvard & Duviard. Under Testons strict tutelage, she perfected her embroidery skills, learning all kinds of embroidery techniquessome of which date back to the 15th century. In 1995, Deschamps was approached to be director of the new atelier, Le Begonia dOr. The atelier is the only state-funded gold-embroidery workshop in France, Deschamps said. The atelier was established to serve the local school for its gold-embroidery students to gain work experience, as per traditional training. Sylvie Deschamps and her team at Le Begonia dOr embroider haute couture. Here, they work on a piece for Valentino. (Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) Meticulously Made in France All the materials used in the atelier are made in France. And the gold thread itself is made by the historic gold-thread maker in the country, Ets Carlhian. Gold thread differs from normal embroidery threads such as silk. Gold thread consists of a little spring of gold which is cut to size and then strung on a thread, like stringing pearls. The precious metal thread isnt as supple as normal thread, and it requires delicate, expert handling since it can easily be damaged, Deschamps explained. When you touch gold thread, its smooth and cold and its wonderful to handle and have between your fingers, she said. Many of Le Begonia dOrs commissions demonstrate Deschampss exquisite skills, and indeed her patience. For instance, Swiss watchmaker Piaget approached Deschamps to make 350 limited-edition watch faces for its exclusive Altiplano ultrathin watches. Sylvie Deschamps and her assistant Marlene Rouhaud took 35 hours to hand embroider each rose for this limited-edition Piaget watch. (Piaget/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) The Altiplano watches are wafer-thin, and Deschamps and her assistant Rouhaud had to work with hair-fine gold thread to embroider several different designs: for instance, a rose in pink silk and white-gold thread, and a laurel branch in white-gold thread. Deschamps explained that they had to stop many times due to the gold thread snapping. Each rose took 35 hours to create, and each laurel branch took 10 hours. The gold thread used for this rose, for a Piaget watch face, was hair-thin and had to be handled with extreme care. (Piaget/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr ) In 2013, the French cosmetic company Guerlain celebrated the 160th anniversary of its iconic perfume LEau Imperiale. The company organized a competition for master artists to create a limited-edition embellished perfume bottle or its packaging. Nine designs were selected. Le Begonia dOr gold-thread embroiderers Sylvie Deschamps and Marlene Rouhaud took 135 hours to embellish the iconic Guerlain perfume bottle, to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Guerlains perfume LEau Imperiale. (Guerlain/Courtesy of Le Begonia dOr) One of those selected was Le Begonia dOrs entry. Deschamps along with Rouhaud took 135 hours to embroider the bottle, which is on display in Guerlains boutique on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. To discover more about Le Begonia dOr, visit Broderieor.com. Evelyn Combeau acted as translator from French to English. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Experts: Del Rio Bridge Shantytown Could Cause Outbreak of COVID-19, Other Diseases The squalid illegal immigrant shantytown under a bridge in Del Rio, Texaswhere thousands of Haitians have gathered in recent dayswill likely lead to an outbreak of COVID-19 and other transmissible diseases, say experts. Stark images captured from the scene showed throngs of Haitian illegal aliens in makeshift camps made from plastic bags, tarps, scrap lumber, and sticks. Trash, empty bottles, and other items can be seen strewn about the encampment, while aerial photos showed large piles of garbage just several feet away from where people are sleeping. What you have at Del Rio is a large encampment of people who are refugees from Haiti. And one thing we know about transmissible diseases is anytime you have an area thats densely populated, it promotes the spread of that disease, said Angela Clendenin, instructional assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, in a comment to the Washington Examiner. She was referring to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Other diseases such as measles and influenza may also proliferate, said Georges Benjamin, executive director at the American Public Health Association. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) You also have to worry about influenza, diarrheal diseases, or pick a vaccine-preventable disease like measles, Benjamin told the outlet. I have no reason to think that they will have a measles outbreak. But all you need is one person come through with any of those childhood diseases for which theyre not vaccinated. While Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents require illegal aliens to wear masks, enforcing that mandate is another story, he said. Masking has been proven to be very difficult to enforce in large settings like that, Clendenin told the outlet. In response to questions about whether the illegal immigrant encampment could lead to the widespread transmission of the CCP virus and if they have to provide proof of vaccination, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that many of the aliens were not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told The Epoch Times that about 1,000 Haitians have been deported back to their country of origin but refused to say how many are being released into the United States interior. Psaki and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in public comments to reporters this week, refused to provide information about how many are being released. The Epoch Times has contacted CBP about COVID-19 testing. Experts: Why AUKUS Is a Game Changer for Countering China; Australias Role in the Security Pact We discuss the emerging new alliance called AUKUS between the United States, the UK, and Australia. Its first actions include selling Australia new missiles and helping the country build nuclear-powered submarines. These are not typical of an alliance, but more of a level up for the Australian military. So what is its goal? Though it didnt mention China, experts and reports have guessed it is to counter the aggression by the Chinese Communist Party in the Indo-Pacificincluding using tariffs in a recent trade war with Australia, continuing South China Sea maritime actions, and increasing pressure to conquer Taiwan. These are a few key reasons that allied the three countries, but they have also long been historical allies dating back to the major world wars. The United States, Australia, and the UK will build the backbone of a new front against the growing China threat. I have two special guests: Alexander Gray, senior fellow in National Security Affairs, and previously deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff in the National Security Council under President Donald Trump; and Richard Bitzinger, an independent international security analyst and defense researcher. They take us into the details and the greater political aspects AUKUS provides. Join us for this part 1 episodewhat AUKUS means to the United States and world, and Australias importance in it. A smartphone screen displays the logo of Facebook with a Facebook website in the background, in Arlington, Virginia, on April 7, 2021. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images) Facebook Chief Technology Officer Makes Difficult Decision to Step Down in 2022 Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer has made the difficult decision to step down from his role, he announced Wednesday. Schroepfer, who has worked for the social network for 13 years and oversees its work in artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and the blockchain, said he will transition to a new part time role as Facebooks first senior fellow at the company next year. This is a difficult decision because of how much I love Facebook and how excited I am about the future we are building together, Schroepfer wrote on his Facebook profile. This change in role will allow me to dedicate more time to my family and my personal philanthropic efforts while staying deeply connected to the company working on key initiatives including recruiting and developing technical talent and continuing to foster our AI investments in critical technologies like PyTorch. Another longtime Facebook executive, Andrew Bosworth, who Schroepfer affectionately referred to as Boz, will take over as CTO in 2022, Schroepfer said. Boz created Facebooks AR/VR organization, which was renamed Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) in 2020, where he drives all of Facebooks efforts in augmented reality, virtual reality and consumer hardware across Oculus, Portal, and Facebook Reality Labs Research. These contributions are foundational components of our broader efforts to help build the metaverse. Im confident and grateful for Bozs leadership and the deep and talented technical bench of leaders we have at the helm, Schroepfer said. Schroepfer informed Facebook of his intention to resign as CTO on Monday, according to a company filing. The change in leadership marks the most significant departure from the company in years and follows a number of other veteran executives leaving in recent months. Fidji Simo, the head of the companys flagship social networking app, left in July to become CEO at Instacart, and hired her longtime colleague Carolyn Everson, Facebooks former global ad chief, as her new companys president, shortly after. Schroepfer stepping down from the role also comes at a time when Facebook faces mounting criticism over its failure to properly address multiple issues affecting its users across the site, including content moderation, transparency, privacy and safety, and dealing with misleading or false information about a number of subjects such as COVID-19 vaccines, on their sites. Earlier this year, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vice Adm. Vivek Murthy urged Facebook and other social media platforms to do a better job at dealing with the spread of so-called health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, stating it was a serious threat to public health. Last year, Facebook updated its COVID-19 misinformation policy and said it would remove content with what it deemed false claims or conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines that were flagged by global health organizations and local health authorities. The network also added that it would block and restrict hashtags used to spread what it called misinformation on its Instagram platform, which it acquired in 2012. More recently, the networking giant has come under fire from campaign groups for its secret internal research into the effect social media has on teenage users, which showed that teens blamed Instagram for increased levels of anxiety and depression. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Joint Hearing in Washington on April 10, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Facebook Investor: Company Paid $5 Billion to FTC as Quid Pro Quo to Shield Zuckerberg A recently filed lawsuit against Facebook reveals new details about the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, claiming among other allegations that company executives massively overpaid the Federal Trade Commission to shield CEO Mark Zuckerberg from personal liability. The lawsuit was filed in a Delaware state court by the Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI), following a battle over whether troves of internal Facebook communications should be publicly disclosed. The pension fund won that case in February, and used those records to file its latest lawsuit in August. ERSRI, an investor in Facebook, claims that the $5 billion settlement harmed the social media companythereby breaching its fiduciary duty to the pension fund. According to the 200-plus page claim, Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and other Facebook directors agreed to authorize a multibillion-dollar settlement with the FTC as an express quid pro quo to protect Zuckerberg from being named in the FTCs complaint, made subject to personal liability, or even required to sit for a deposition. The lawsuit suggests that Facebook overpaid the FTC by some $4.9 billion, since the commissions previous record fine was $168 million. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the Facebook executives actions were improper, as well as awards for damages. ERSRI may have a difficult time proving harm in this case, as Facebooks stock has risen from about $198 when the FTC issued its enforcement action in July, to nearly $350 per share today. The lawsuit doesnt suggest impropriety by the FTC, whose budget doesnt benefit from the $5 billion since that money goes to the Treasury Department. However, the lawsuit does allege wrongdoing by other parties, including billionaire Facebook investor Peter Thiel and his data analytics firm Palantirnaming them as defendants in the case along with Zuckerberg and other Facebook board members. ERSRIs lawsuit corroborates earlier reports that Thiela Trump donorused his analytics firm to help facilitate the privacy violations committed by Facebook and Cambridge. Palantir employees, including at least one of Palantirs lead data scientists, regularly worked in person, during normal business hours, at the offices of Cambridge Analytica in London, the lawsuit says. It was a Palantir employee, Alfredas Chmieliauskas, who first suggested that Cambridge Analytica create its own appspecifically, a mobile-based personality quizto gain access to Facebook users friend networks. According to the lawsuit, Palantir and Thiel benefited from Trump and the Republicans winning, with the analytics firm becoming one of the largest recipients of government defense contracts with the United States government since Trump took office. Facebook and the FTC declined to comment; Palantir didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. Though the lawsuit was filed in August, it has only recently been widely publicized. According to Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint, the suit wasnt initially noticed due to exorbitant fees the Delaware court registry charges for court records. As to how this suit wasnt noticed, Delaware Chancery charges a fortune per document limiting public awareness, Kint said Sept. 21 on Twitter. Original case to inspect board docs (Rhode Island) was won, derivative suits were amended/filed/consolidated in shell game. I followed the breadcrumbs. The now-defunct company Cambridge Analytica used an app called This Is Your Digital Life to scrape the data of millions of users, and then allegedly used that data to target people with pro-Republican ads ahead of the 2016 elections. It was never found that Cambridge Analytica affected the results of the 2016 election. Publications such as the National Reviewwhich came out in opposition to Donald Trumpdescribed it as a nothingburger. However, the scandal did reveal the startling extent to which Facebook and its app developers have access to intimate details about its users, including demographics, internet activity, consumer behavior, and political beliefsthousands of data points on each user, according to numerous sources. In total, Cambridge Analytica collected data on some 70 million people30 million Americansincluding those who never used Cambridge Analyticas This Is Your Digital Life app. Facebook still faces lawsuits and regulatory actions over the scandal worldwide, including places such as the Netherlands. The company also faces an antitrust case brought by the FTC, driven in part by the political backlash from the scandal. Facts Matter (Sept. 22): North Carolina Hospital System Suspends Hundreds of Employees After Vaccine Mandate Recently, the Biden administration moved to nationalize the distribution of monoclonal antibodies, which is a popular, non-hospital treatment for COVID-19. And they essentially took the power away from the states and placed the federal government in charge of allocating, distributing, and choosing which states get this treatment. Meanwhile, according to newly released financial disclosure filings, it turns out that John Kerrys wife has over $1 million invested into a hedge fund that specializes in equity investments in China. Lastly, in North Carolina, a hospital system has suspended hundreds of their employees after they implemented their vaccine mandate. This, along with similar actions by other hospitals, has some experts believing that the country is headed toward a nationwide shortage of nurses. Resources: AMAC: https://ept.ms/3bzYr8f Monoclonal Antibodies: https://ept.ms/3nXliAS https://ept.ms/2ZcKTeP North Carolina: https://ept.ms/3u2sNHT Indiana: https://ept.ms/3u5iWkD John Kerry: https://ept.ms/3CC8Mef https://ept.ms/3EKNixC Stay tuned for our newsletter so you wont miss out on our exclusive videos and private events. Facts Matter is an Epoch Times show available on YouTube. Follow Roman on Instagram: @epoch.times.roman Follow EpochTV on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpochTVus Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpochTVus Gabrielle Petito, 22, poses for a photo with Brian Laundrie in this undated handout photo. (North Port/Florida Police/Handout via Reuters) Federal Arrest Warrant Issued for Gabby Petitos Boyfriend, FBI Says The U.S. District Court of Wyoming issued a federal arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie, who was named earlier as a person of interest in the disappearance and death of his girlfriend, Gabby Petito, in Wyoming, the FBI said on Thursday. Authorities have been searching for Laundrie, who hasnt yet been found, in a swampy wilderness area in Sarasota County, Florida. The body of Petito was found on Sunday in a national park area in Wyoming. Weeks before that, Laundrie returned to his home in Florida without Petitio after the two went on a cross-country road trip, and officials said that he was not cooperative with their investigation. A coroners office confirmed that the body was Petitos and her cause of death was homicide. Gabby Petito in an undated photo. (FBI) A federal grand jury indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in Wyoming alleges Brian Laundrie used a Capital One bank card and someones personal identification number to make unauthorized withdrawals or charges worth more than $1,000 during the period in which Petito went missing. It does not say who the card belonged to. FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider said an arrest warrant issued Wednesday over the alleged fraudulent use of the bank card will allow law enforcement across the country to continue pursuing Laundrie while the investigation continues into Petitos homicide. He urged anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts or who knows other details about the case to contact the FBI. Meanwhile, the search for Laundrie could be complicated by the mans extensive backpacking and hiking experience. A friend of Petito, Rose Davis, told the Daily Mail that Laundrie has taken months-long nature trips in the Appalachian Mountains. I know he lived in the Appalachians for what I believe was three months, and he did it by himself, so I know hes skilled at it, she told the paper. He and Gabby both told me stories about it. Vehicles from members of the media and curious passersby line a road outside the entrance of the Carlton Reserve during a search for Brian Laundrie, in Venice, Fla., on Sept. 21, 2021. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP Photo) Law enforcement officials conduct a search for Brian Laundrie in the Carlton Reserve in Sarasota, Fla., on Sept. 18, 2021. (North Port Police Department via AP) You could see the enthusiasm in his voice when he would talk about his adventures by himself like that trip into the Appalachians, Davis added. Laundries parents last week said Laundrie left their home in North Port, Florida, and went hiking in the Carlton Reserve, a 25,000-acre park. Authorities are using helicopters, drones, dogs, and officers in all-terrain vehicles in their search for Laundrie. About 75 percent of the search area is underwater. On Monday, the FBI went to Laundries parents home in North Port and removed several boxes and towed away a car neighbors said Laundries mother typically used. When the young couple had set out in July in a converted van to visit national parks in the West, they got into a fight along the way, and Laundrie was alone when he returned in the van to his parents home Sept. 1, police said. Laundrie has been named a person of interest in the case, but his whereabouts in recent days were unknown. Petitos father, Joseph, posted on social media an image of a broken heart above a picture of his daughter, with the message: She touched the world. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Federal Court Throws Out Gun Rights Ruling on Handgun Sales to People Under 21 A federal appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a July ruling that said a federal law banning handgun sales to young adults under the age of 21 was unconstitutional. A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond unanimously ruled the case moot because the plaintiff in the case, a woman from Virginia named Natalia Marshall, turned 21 before the courts decision became official, and is now able to purchase a handgun legally from licensed firearms dealers. Although the 1968 Gun Control Act bars federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to people under age 21, theyre still allowed to sell long guns to those 18 and over. Exceptions to the age ban also exist for the limited purposes of employment, ranching, farming, target practice, or hunting. In July, the same three-judge panel had ruled that a law passed by Congress in 1968 that sets a minimum age of 21 for purchasing handguns violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The judges on Wednesday ruled that because Marshall is now 21, she no longer has a legally recognized interest in the outcome of the case. She filed the lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in 2018, when she was 18, after she was denied a handgun from a licensed firearms dealer because of her age. When she filed the lawsuit three years ago, Marshall had said she wanted to purchase a handgun to be able to defend herself against her abusive ex-boyfriend, and other potential threats. Another plaintiff joined the suit but he has also turned 21. Despite efforts to add parties and reframe her claimed injuries, it is too late to revive this case. So it must be dismissed as moot,Judge Julius N. Richardson, author of the courts initial opinion, wrote on Wednesday. Once she turned 21, nothing prohibited her from buying the handgun she desired from a dealer of her choice. So her original claims are now moot, the judge added. Following the decision, Elliot Harding, Marshalls attorney, said that he intends to challenge the courts ruling. One way or another, these laws are going to continue to be challenged, he said, The Washington Post reported. Its unfortunate that the government will evade the repercussions of the courts thorough ruling simply because the nature of the laws at issue allow them to escape final review through our lengthy litigation process. The attorney added that the plaintiffs are disappointed that the system continues to deny their equal access to fundamental liberties simply because of their youth. The Justice Department had asked the 4th Circuit to rehear the case after the first panel ruling in July found the law unconstitutional. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is interviewed by The Epoch Times at Florida International University in Miami, Fla., on May 24, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Federal Judge Strikes Down Portions of Florida Law Banning Sanctuary Cities Claims bill was racially motivated because of groups involved in the process A Florida law prohibiting the establishment of so-called sanctuary cities, or municipalities trying to shield illegal immigrants from arrest, violates federal law, a federal judge ruled this week. Florida Senate Bill 168 bars sanctuary policies, or policies that prohibit or impede law enforcement from complying with federal immigration law or that block law enforcement agencies from communicating or cooperating with federal immigration agencies. The Florida Legislature passed the legislation in 2019 and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed it into law. But some of the groups that supported and were involved with crafting the law, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), have been described as anti-immigrant hate groups, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom, an Obama nominee, wrote in her 110-page ruling. This involvement strongly suggests that the Legislature enacted SB 168 to promote and ratify the racist views of these advocacy groups. As part of the ruling, Bloom highlighted a press conference held by state Sen. Joe Gruters and state Rep. Cord Byrd with Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN) that highlighted victims of illegal immigrant criminals, including a couple who spoke about how their son was killed by an illegal alien who had been deported twice before reentering the United States. We are very, very proud to be here today with these groups of people and to stand with our Angel familiesto end the kind of anarchy that does exist with the criminal activity of some members of the illegal alien population, Karyn Morton, of FLIMEN, said at the time. By referring to immigrants as illegals, criminals, murderers, and victimizers, the press conference was clearly intended to cast immigrants in a demeaning and threatening light, thus demonstrating the speakers racial animus toward the immigrant population, Bloom said. Gruters description of illegal immigrants as illegals also revealed a racial animus, the judge claimed. That contributed to the finding that the passage of the bill was racially motivated, she added. She struck down some portions, including parts aimed to ban sanctuary cities. The Community Justice Center, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the ruling was a victory for immigrants across the state of Florida. This law was clearly developed to encourage racial profiling, civil rights violations, isolation of immigrant communities, and unjust deportations. It did more harm for the causes of public safety than good. This should send a clear message to Gov. DeSantis and all those proponents of this racist law that they will not go unchallenged, the center stated. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the University of Miami School of Laws Immigration Clinic joined with the center in filing the lawsuit. Dan Stein, FAIRs president, told The Epoch Times that the ruling is an example of judges legislating from the bench. This is a mockery of justice; this is a complete insult to the democratic process and the freedom of Americans to petition the legislature, he said. He said Bloom repeatedly put forth unsubstantiated derogatory pronouncements in an attempt to usurp the legislatures prerogative to decide what the laws state are. FLIMEN and two legislators singled out in the ruling, Gruters and Byrd, both Republicans, didnt immediately respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment. The state plans to appeal the ruling; Stein and a spokesperson for DeSantis both predicted the appeal will be successful. Yet again, a federal trial court judge partially enjoins a plainly constitutional state statute, Taryn Fenske, the governors spokesperson, said in a statement to news outlets. We disagree with the judges ruling and expect to win on appeal. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a news conference at the Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Sept. 16, 2021. (Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo) Florida Acquires Monoclonal Antibodies From GlaxoSmithKline After Biden Administrations Rationing The state of Florida has obtained thousands of monoclonal antibody treatments to treat COVID-19 from a UK-based company after the Biden administrations abrupt rationing of federally acquired doses. Florida went to GlaxoSmithKline, which produces monoclonals that havent yet been bought up by the federal government. They reached an agreement on about 3,000 doses, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Sept. 23. Thats showing that were going to leave no stone unturned. And, if theres somebody that needs a monoclonal antibody treatment, were going to work hard to get it to them, the Republican told a press conference in Tampa. The Biden administration seized control of monoclonals this month in response to what some officials have described as a national shortage. The federal government has bought millions of doses from Eli Lilly and Regeneron. The only other monoclonal authorized for use in the United States is produced by GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK. A GSK spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times in an email that Florida obtained doses of its treatment, which is known as sotrovimab. The doses were through AmerisourceBergen by CDR Health, the company stated. Any health care providers or facilities have an option of directly ordering the treatment. The wholesale cost per dose is $2,100roughly the same as its competitors were charging the government. Patients often pay much less, if anything. Drug regulators in May authorized GSKs treatment for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in patients 12 and older and weighing at least 88 pounds. Regulators and state officials say the drug and similar others help keep people out of hospitals. DeSantis estimated thousands of Floridians have been able to avoid going to the hospital after getting COVID-19 or being exposed to a positive case because of the treatments. But, like other states across the country, Florida is struggling with a looming shortage because of the Biden administrations sudden rationing. Florida announced last week it was in touch with GSK. Health officials in other states told The Epoch Times theyre not exploring buying their own treatments, with some suggesting that cost was a factor. Earlier this month, sites in Florida were getting more than 30,000 doses. That doesnt include hospitals. All sites could order directly however much they needed, and the federal government provides the doses for free. In the next weekly shipment, Florida was scheduled to receive less than 18,000, state officials say. I would hate to see somebody who really could benefit from this treatment not be able to have access to it. When we know that the track record has been very, very positive, DeSantis said. He hosted Floridians who credit monoclonal treatments for their recovery. Betsy Palmer Bigler, a former teacher in Pascoe County, received Regenerons monoclonal antibody treatment, as did her husband and her father after her husband tested positive for COVID-19. I certainly feel that it saved probably one or all three of our lives, she said. Florida Makes Quarantine Optional for COVID-19 Exposed Students Floridas new Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a new measure allowing parents to decide whether their children who have been exposed to COVID-19 should quarantine rather than giving schools the authority to do so. Guidelines signed on Wednesday by Ladapo remove prior statewide rules requiring students to quarantine for at least four days off-campus if they were potentially exposed to COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Students who have been exposed, under the new rules, can continue to attend class in person without restrictions or separate treatment if they are asymptomatic. Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging for their educational advancement, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday at a news conference in Oscelola County. Its also disruptive for families. We are going to be following a symptoms-based approach. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that students should quarantine for 14 days if they are not vaccinated against COVID-19. If they test negative, the CDC recommends that students quarantine for seven days. Florida rules saying that COVID-19 infected students quarantine for 10 days, get a negative test, or offer a doctors note granting permission to return to school remain intact. On Wednesday, Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran said that the new rules would put an end to chronic absenteeism and described the mandate as common sense. But some local school district officials and teachers unions disagreed with the DeSantis administrations quarantine rule. The spread of the virus among children has gone up by triple digits, yet our governor and his newly appointed surgeon general continue to bury their heads in the sand, Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said in a statement. This is clearly politically, not public health, motivated. Contact tracing and quarantining are working to minimize the viruss spread. Why are we fixing whats not broken? DeSantis named Ladapo as Surgeon General on Tuesday. Ladapo, who previously was a UCLA doctor and health policy researcher, shares the governors approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Like DeSantis, Ladapo has said he doesnt believe in school closures, lockdowns, or vaccine mandates. Ladapo said during the news conference on Wednesday that he is very happy to be working with someone like the governor, who has a similar vision about how to think about weighing costs and benefits with managing this pandemic. We respect that some parents may be less comfortable sending their kid back to school after being exposed, he said. And so the new rule allows for those parents to keep their children home for a period of time. And the new rule also allows for parents who are more comfortable letting their healthy child return to school. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd year of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, in Brooklyn, New York, on July 18, 2021. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times) Forced Organ Harvesting in China Is Medical Genocide for Profit Part 1 of the 4-part series 'World Summit on Forced Organ Harvesting' News Analysis New details are emerging about the billion-dollar forced organ harvesting industry in China that has resulted in a million or more deaths of unwilling donors. The World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, held between Sept. 17 and Sept. 26, brought together academics, lawyers, and politicians from around the world to discuss the overwhelming evidence of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) transplant abuse, committed mostly against prisoners of conscience. But the CCP isnt the only perpetrator, according to summit participants. Political, academic, and media silence in the West, for reasons of commerce, amounts to complicity. The CCPs goal of eroding international norms of consent in order to maximize its profit from this industry must be stopped, participants argued, by more forcefully speaking out and legislating against the abuse, including through individualized sanctions against those CCP members who are most responsible, as well as an end to the international training of transplant surgeons from China. Medical Genocide More than a million, by some estimates, have fallen prey to forced organ harvesting in what could be considered medical genocide, according to organizers of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting. The killings meet the U.N. Genocide Convention definition of genocide, which includes attempts to eradicate not only races but religions, when there is state-level intent to do so. The mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs serves a dual purpose for the [Chinese Communist] Party, according to David Matas, an international human rights lawyer from Canada. The killings eliminate what the Party sees as its political enemies. David Matas presents a new report on mass organ harvesting in China, at the National Press Club in Washington on June 22, 2016. (Lisa Fan/Epoch Times) Carlos Iglesias Jimenez, an international human rights lawyer from Spain, agreed. The CCPs aim is to eradicate, to physically eliminate people because of their spiritual beliefsthese prisoners of consciencesuch as Christians, Tibetans, Buddhists, and especially the millions of Falun Gong practitioners. The priority objective is their elimination, their eradication, and this logically has the connotations of a crime of genocide, he said. According to Theresa Chu, a lawyer with the Taiwan Falun Gong Attorney Group, Forced organ harvesting is not only used to carry out the genocide of Falun Gong practitioners and ethnic minority groups, such as Uyghurs, but also implicated in massive economic profits from organ transplantation, transnational organ sale, transplant tourism, and organ brokerage. Forced organ harvesting in China has a pecuniary root, as it has likely produced billions of dollars in revenue for Chinas hospitals, and hundreds of millions in taxes for use by Beijing. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in London, called the practice commercialized murder. Indeed, it is mass murder carried out on an industrial scale, with the involvement of Chinas military. On close read, the evidence of forced organ harvesting in China sounds a lot like genocide, given that its focused against a particular religion that the state seeks to eradicate. Dr. Declan Lyons at Trinity College in Dublin said that organ transplantation is estimated to be a billion-dollar business per annum in China, and up to 60,000 to 100,000 transplants occur on an annual basis in the Peoples Republic [of China]. Chinas organ transplant customers are global. Dr. Huang Shi-wei, from Taiwan, said that over the past 20 years, over 4,000 Taiwanese went to China for liver or kidney transplants. Besides Taiwan, people from South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and even Western countries flocked to China to receive transplant surgeries after 2000. Dr. Weldon Gilcrease, director of oncology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, said, This kind of egregious and mass crime has never really been at the hand, so largely, of the medical community in history. Huang stated that from 2000 to 2006, Chinas military maintained the countrys organ banks, which hold data about organ donors. After evidence was first published in 2006 that Falun Gong practitioners were being targeted for forced organ removal, the CCP started to more effectively hide the practice. That year, David Matas and David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian parliament, published their book Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China. Chu recounted the story of a woman named Annie, who helped reveal the existence of forced organ harvesting in China that singles out Falun Gong practitioners. Annie was the ex-wife of a Chinese physician who was harvesting corneas from living Falun Gong detainees, and her account exposing the crime caused a global uproar, Chu said. Transplants provide the primary source of income for some hospitals in China, according to Huang, with one in Beijing registering an increase in transplantation revenues from $4.5 million in 2006 to $30 million in 2010. He said that after 2007, Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were added to Falun Gong as victims of forced organ harvesting. Falun Gong, Uyghurs Targeted Dr. Raymond Scalettar, former chair of the American Medical Association, noted at the summit that the World Medical Association (WMA) has taken a stand against forced organ harvesting, including against Uyghurs, who the United States and the United Kingdom have recognized as being victims of genocide. The WMA in 2020 issued a declaration to prevent and battle transplant-related crimes, he said. Previous resolutions condemned the many reports of continued violations of these ethical standards by the PRC with imprisoned members of Uyghurs and the Falun Gong. An international coalition of five nonprofit groupsDoctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) in the United States, CAP Freedom of Conscience in France, the Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants, the Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants in South Korea, and the Transplant Tourism Research Association in Japanorganized the event. The founder of DAFOH and host of the summit, Dr. Torsten Trey, alleged on Sept. 15 that Beijings goal with organ harvesting exceeds the bounds of Chinas borders. It is to erode international norms requiring the consent of organ donors, he told Epoch TV. Such an erosion would advantage Chinas organ transplant industry, which depends upon a massive and ready supply of organs from living prisoners of conscience. So China is highly interested in tearing down this system of [Western medical ethics] to basically make forced organ harvesting the common standard in transplant medicine, Trey said. DAFOH was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2019, it received the Mother Teresa Social Justice Award. Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) holds an event at the University of Arizona in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 19, 2019. (Lucy Fan/Epoch Times) In 2019, the London tribunal on forced organ harvesting in China heard evidence that the practice is widespread and state-sanctioned. Falun Gong practitioners, whose religion the Chinese regime seeks to eradicate, are imprisoned and made the main source of organs, as recognized by many at the World Summit. A key component of the Falun Gong religion is truthfulness, which makes them easy targets for Chinese authorities, who simply knock on their doors and ask for admissions of guilt on the spot, according to a Falun Gong source. Falun Gong practitioners also avoid substances such as alcohol and tobacco that could harm their organs, making them optimal targets of unethical transplant surgeons. In 1999, there were as many as 100 million Falun Gong adherents in China, according to its state media. They were seen as a threat to the state because they exceeded the number of CCP members at the time, and they organized demonstrations against misrepresentation in Chinas state media. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the persecution began in earnest after an April 25, 1999, mobilization. From all reports, more than 10,000 practitioners, most of them middle-aged, lined up in an orderly column around two sides of Zhongnanhai, the compound in the heart of Beijing where Chinas leaders live and work. While the U.S. government and establishment media have paid extensive attention to Chinas genocide against the Uyghurs, less attention is being given to the similar genocide against Falun Gong. This arguably has three reasons. First, Falun Gong is seen by some scholars as a relatively new religion, which therefore is less known and gets less sympathy from members of the public. Second, the Uyghur genocide targets the more established Muslim religion. And third, CCP authorities have made a concerted propaganda push to label the Falun Gong with the derogatory term of cult. Andre Gattolin, a senator from France, is co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. He told the summit that the CCP tactic of smearing Falun Gong as a cult was effective at chilling debate in France about forced organ transplants. The fact that the victims of these forced removals are most often followers of religious minorities such as Falun Gong, presented by the Chinese government as a cult, always provokes distrust within our population, where a sometimes rather intolerant conception of secularism has prevailed for more than a century, he said. The accusation of sectarianism sounds like an anathema and often leads to a dismissal without appeal. This is the case even though the Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuse has already pointed out several times that Falun Gong does not fall into this category. The Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuse is a French government agency charged with analyzing cults and protecting their victims. Beijing has played a masterstroke of propaganda in order to cover Falun Gong with an image of being unacceptable and therefore indefensible, Gattolin said. The CCP has likewise tried to tar Uyghurs as anathema, labeling their legitimate protest activities as terrorism, even though the CCP themselves are the terrorists, according to an authoritative reading of U.S. law. American human rights lawyer Terri Marsh and University of Chicago academic Teng Biao make this argument forcefully in a 2020 article in the Journal of Political Risk, which includes a discussion of forced organ harvesting as one kind of terrorism committed by the CCP. U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) noted that the CCP is the principal perpetrator of forced organ harvesting. As the lead Republican on the Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Chabot said he closely monitors Beijings efforts to remake the world in the image of the Chinese Communist Party. Given the CCPs brutal repression of Uyghurs and Tibetans, Chabot said, it should come as no surprise, then, that the PRC under communist leadership is engaged in one of the most barbaric practices in human historyforced organ harvestingto bring health and wealth to the CCP and its cronies. As identified by Trey, a danger for the West is that the CCP could become so powerful that its able to export its lack of medical ethics globally. Chabot added: A world that conforms to the values of the CCP is one in which those who dont toe the Party line can be put in a concentration camp or have their organs harvested. Thats a vision for a world that nobody wants to live in. And thats the vision of the world that we are all fighting against. Dehumanization, which forced organ harvesting executes in an almost literal fashion, is an integral part of the CCPs terror campaign and genocide against Falun Gong. One doesnt need to be an international lawyer to realize that the brutal suppression of Falun Gong that began in 1999 meets the U.N. definition of genocide. And the rise in transplant tourism to China in the early 2000s corresponds to the start of the genocide against Falun Gong. The two are connected. Forced organ harvesting against Falun Gong is a medical and profit-driven means of genocide. Read part 2, part 3, and part 4. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks to reporters after a ceremonial swearing-in ceremony at the state Capitol in Albany, N.Y., on Aug. 24, 2021. (Hans Pennink/AP Photo) Foreigners May Replace Unvaccinated Health Care Workers in New York State: Governor New Yorks governor said on Wednesday that the state will look for workers abroad to substitute for employees at hospitals and nursing homes who are unvaccinated against COVID-19. Health care and nursing home workers in New York state can possibly lose their jobs if they do not comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed on them by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and taking effect on Sept. 27. Gov. Kathy Hochul told Spectrum News 1 in a videotaped interview following a press conference in Rochester, New York that New York state will take steps to replace unvaccinated workers. The state government works with various hospital systems to seek other potential workers who can supplement staff in nursing homes, Hochul told Spectrum News 1. We also have state individuals that are trained to be helpful, she added. Another option outlined by Hochul is to find substitute employees who would be hired from other countries. Were also reaching out to the Department of State to find out about visas for foreign workers on a limited basis to bring more nurses over here, Hochul said. The governor blamed those who refused the COVID-19 vaccine for the current situation. People who will not get vaccinated are the only reason that this country, and these communities, and our cities have not been able to be fully engaged in a state of normalcy, Hochul said. To date, approximately 84 percent of the states 450,000 hospital workers, 85 percent of the states adult care facility workers, and 83 percent of the states nursing home staff have been fully vaccinated, according to the New York state governments data. The vaccine mandate was introduced by Cuomo in mid-August with a goal to halt the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, especially its Delta variant, according to a statement. Then-New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said at that time in the statement, The data and science tell us that getting more people vaccinated as quickly as possible is the best way to keep people safe, prevent further mutations, and enable us to resume our daily routines. This mandate will both help close the vaccination gap and reduce the spread of the Delta variant, Zucker added. A federal judge temporarily blocked the state of New York on Sept. 14 from forcing medical workers to be vaccinated after a group of 17 health professionals, including doctors and nurses, filed a lawsuit against the state. The plaintiffs claimed that their constitutional rights were violated because the states mandate disallowed religious exemptions. The restraining order is valid until Oct. 12. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Part of Falun Gong practitioners salute their master Li Hongzhi and wish him a happy Mid-Autumn Festival in New York City, on Sept. 12, 2021. (Lin Dan/The Epoch Times) Founder of Falun Gong Receives Global Greetings on Chinese Holiday Over the past few days, greetings have flooded to the founder of Falun Gong for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday for family reunions that fell on Sept. 21 this year. Mr. Li Hongzhi brought the ancient Chinese spiritual practice of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, to the public in 1992. It helps relieve stress and increases energy with five simple, slow-moving meditation exercises and moral teachings based on embodying the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance in daily life. Well-wishers included Falun Gong practitioners as well as non-practitionerscoming from different countries and cultural backgrounds. However, well-wishers inside China had to keep their greetings anonymous as the Chinese Communist Party continues to carry out its 20-year-long persecution of Falun Dafa practitionersarresting and killing those known to practice. New York City, the United States Hundreds of Falun Gong adherents rallied at Kissena Corridor Park in Flushing, Queens, on Sept. 12 to express their best wishes. They say that it is their biggest honor to be able to cultivate Falun Gong, which provides them with improved physical and mental health. They thanked Mr. Li for introducing the practice. Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners rally to express their gratitude to Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, and wish him a happy Mid-Autumn Festival, on Sept. 12, 2021. (Lin Dan/The Epoch Times) Chris Petallides said he used to suffer from a severe heart disease ten years ago, having to take nearly 20 medications each day before finally having bypass surgery. Chris Petallides, a Falun Gong practitioner, at New York City, on Sept. 12, 2021. (Lin Dan/The Epoch Times) My health improved and Ive never touched a single pill since then! Petallides said about the positive effects on his health after he started practicing. The 82-year-old engineer told The Epoch Times that he returned to work, something he never imagined would happen. Toronto, Canada Sanez Bahedon, an international student from Iran, participated in a similar event in the square at the City Hall of Toronto, Canada, on Sept. 18. She told The Epoch Times that she had lost herself in a degenerating world and taken to bad habits such as smoking and drinking. She said she happened to obtain a copy of Zhuan Falun, the principal book for the practice. On that same day, she stopped smoking and drinking. Sanez Bahedon, an international student from Iran, presses her hands together to salute Master Li and wishes him a happy Mid-Autumn Festival at Toronto, Canada, on Sept. 18, 2021. (Yin Ling/The Epoch Times) Bahedon said Falun Dafa solved all her life issues and steered her into the true meaning of life. Falun Dafa changed me entirely into another person, Bahedon said. My thankfulness is indescribable. Melbourne, Australia Practitioner Yu Yanchun also sent her heartfelt thanks to Li on the traditional Chinese holiday. In an interview with The Epoch Times, Yu said she developed functional uterine bleeding at 13 and epilepsy at 15 in her home city of Dalian in Liaoning Province, China. My capillary vessels were always damaged, unable to heal, Yu said. So, bleeding haunted me on most days of the month. She was stuck with severe anemia. Yu said a local senior traditional Chinese medicine expert told her she could only depend on medicine to stem the bleeding and that she had nearly lost her fertility forever. In 1997, however, a colleague and practitioner from Shandong Province introduced Falun Gong to her husband. Soon Yu joined them in the exercises. To her amazement, both her bleeding and epilepsy disappeared. Since then, I had no need at all to control my condition with medicine, Yu said. Nor did I need to see any doctor. To her great surprise, she got pregnant in 1999 and had her first son. In 2012, her family moved to Australia. Three years later, she had her second son. Practitioners Yu Yanchun, her husband, and her second son salute Master Li and send him their best wishes for Mid-Autumn Festival at Melbourne, Australia, in mid-September, 2021. (Li Yi/The Epoch Times) What Falun Dafa has given me is an exact rebirth. Yu said. She credited the practice for blessing her with two smart and healthy children. Lin Dan, Luo Ya, and Zhi Qing contributed to this report. French Luxury Group LVMH Seeks 25,000 Young Staff in Recruitment Drive PARISLVMH aims to hire 25,000 people under 30 years of age by the end of 2022, the French luxury behemoth said on Wednesday, as it accelerates recruitment to meet brisk demand for high-end goods. The European luxury sector has seen a fast pace of growth in recent months, as stores reopened following lockdown periods and consumers drew on money saved during periods of confinement to splash out on pricey goods. LVMH has more than recovered business lost to pandemic disruptions. In July, it reported first-half sales grew 11 percent on an organic basis compared to the same period in 2019, before the crisis hit, fuelled by demand for clothing and accessories from its star fashion labels Louis Vuitton and Dior. The companys focus on recruiting younger staff comes as it seeks to bolster the popularity of its brands with younger consumers, weaving streetwear styles like cargo pants and sneakers into its luxury fashion collections. The hiring target for the upcoming year marks an acceleration of around 20 percent compared to previous years, according to Chantal Gaemperle, director of human resources and synergies at LVMH. The group intends to use various methods to recruit younger staff, including drawing on a company training institute in France and other countries that is focused on design, crafts, and sales techniques. It plans to expand training, which covers areas such as pastry baking and vineyard techniques, and further roll out the teaching in countries including Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan. Seeking to broaden and diversify its recruitment further still, LVMH is opening a public online training platform and says it has forged partnerships in underprivileged areas in France to recruit high school students for apprenticeships. The group said it expects to grant 2,500 long-term contracts in France along with 5,000 internships in the country, but did not provide further details on the expected geographic breakdown of its hiring plan. A view of the Pacific Ocean from Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands in French Polynesia, in 2018. (Alexander Ioannidis/Handout via Reuters) Genetic Study Reveals How Ancient Seafarers Settled Vast Polynesia WASHINGTONBeginning more than a millennium ago, intrepid seafarers traversed vast Pacific Ocean expanses in double-hulled sailing canoes to reach the far-flung islands of Polynesia, the planets last habitable region to be settled by people. A genetic study published on Wednesday has deciphered the timing and sequence of this settlement of an area spanning about a third of Earths surface, with Samoa as the starting point while Rapa Nui, also called Easter Island, and other locales known for megalithic statues were among the last to be reached. Many of the distances were immense, said Stanford University computational geneticist Alexander Ioannidis, lead author of the research appearing in the journal Nature. For example, the study found that Rapa Nui was settled in about 1210 AD after an open-sea voyage covering roughly 1,600 miles (2,575 km). Historians believe that family groups of perhaps 30 to 200 people sailed at a time aboard double-hulled canoes that operated similarly to modern catamarans and used a lateen, or triangular, sail. Genomic data from 430 modern-day people from 21 Pacific island populations helped unravel Polynesias genetic history. Each living individual retains a genetic record of all the ancestors from whom they inherited their DNA, so by analyzing together hundreds of individuals we can create a genomic network where connections, splitting patterns and dates can be inferred, said geneticist and study co-author Andres Moreno-Estrada of Mexicos CINVESTAV network of research centers. The first voyages were found to have been from Samoa to Fiji and Tonga and then to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands in the 9th century AD. In the 11th century, the islands of Totaiete ma (Society Islands) were next, followed in the 12th century by Tuhaa Pae (Austral Islands) and the Tuamotu Archipelago. An ancient stone statue from Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands in French Polynesia, is seen on display in Tahiti in 2018. (Alexander Ioannidis/Handout via Reuters) Eventually in the 12th and 13th centuries seafarers from Mangareva in the Gambier Islands reached Te Henua Enana (Marquesas Islands), Rapa Nui and Raivavaeplaces where megaliths like Rapa Nuis monumental head-and-torso stone statues, known as moai, were created. It is one of the most impressive and fascinating chapters of human expansion and long-distance exploration, Moreno-Estrada said. There has been an ongoing debate based on archeological remains as to when the Polynesian islands were settled. Unraveling these histories is not only a fascinating challenge, but also an incredible demonstration that modern populations are still connected physically to their ancestors stories, Ioannidis said. Navigation may have involved following the paths of long-distance seabirds as well as guidance from the stars, winds, weather, ocean currents and water patterns caused by islands and atolls. The voyagers brought with them crops like the root vegetable taro and food sources such as chickens. These were initially voyages into the unknown, and it is believed that Polynesians would sail upwind so that if they were unable to find a new island they could return, Ioannidis added. Polynesians established sophisticated artistic and cultural traditions in carving, boat ornamentation, religious and social rules, the practice of tattooing and, in Rapa Nui, North Marquesas, South Marquesas and Raivavae, megalithic statues. An ancient stone statue from Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands in French Polynesia, is seen on display in Tahiti in 2018. (Alexander Ioannidis/Handout via Reuters) The people of the megalith islands were found to be genetically connected, settled from a common Tuamotu origin. The discovery of a common genetic source for people on the eastern islands where megalithic sites have been found is not an intuitive connection given how distant and widely dispersed these group of islands are, Moreno-Estrada said. The researchers dated those lengthy voyages close to the time when, as detailed in their genetic study published last year, there was contact by Polynesians with native people in South America. This suggests that when the maritime culture of the widely spread Tuamotu Archipelago was embarking on its longest voyages of discovery, which gave rise to widely dispersed monumental sculpture-building populations, it also made contact with the Americas, Ioannidis said. While Samoa was the springboard for remote Polynesias settlement, the researchers called it merely an intermediate stop in a larger Pacific regional human expansion beginning in Taiwan around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. It is believed Samoa was settled by around 800 BC. By Will Dunham Los Angeles Homeless Moving Back Onto Street After Cleanups This month, Los Angeles resumed its CARE Plus homeless encampment cleanups in the city. Some Angelenos welcome the cleanups, saying it improves the quality and safety of their neighborhoods, while others are concerned about the unhoused who are left scrambling after their belongings are often completely thrown out by the city. Earlier this year, the city council voted to resume the cleanups, which require the homeless to take down their tents so the Los Angeles Sanitation Department can sweep and wash the streets and remove trash and waste from the area, beginning on Sept. 1. Peggy Lee Kennedy of Venice Justice and Service Not Sweeps told The Epoch Times previously that the CARE Plus cleanup crews put aside some of the peoples belongings in bins, but that other belongings are often destroyed by the crew. The [cleanup crew] put the police tape up, and they really just went at it and started destroying everything with very minimal going through belongings, Kennedy said. They had, I guess for these four blue tubs that they stored peoples belongings in, but [everyones belongings were mixed up]. And a front loader was pushing things and sort of crushing them, and then a crane picked everything up and threw it in the trash truckfull tents and everything. A homeless encampment in Venice Beach, Calif., on June 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Julian von Loesch, founder of activist organization Sidewalk Society, decided to rent a U-Haul truck to help the unhoused store their larger belongings during the encampment cleanups. On Sept. 16, photojournalist Fabian Lewkowicz posted a video of von Loesch helping a homeless person unpack their things from the U-Haul truck after an encampment cleanup on Hampton Drive in Los Angeles. Lewkowitz told The Epoch Times that he saw von Loesch help people in the encampment load up their belongings into the U-Haul earlier that day before the citys scheduled CARE Plus cleanup. After the cleanup, von Loesch and others helped people unpack their belongings. In the video, von Loesch said that part of what hes trying to do is help people in encampments downsize. A lot of people have lost a lot of stuff, von Loesch said. I want to transition people slowly. So what were trying to do is were trying to reduce this as much as possible smaller tents less stuff, less clutter The problem is, people have too much stuff, so it looks ugly. Von Loesch said his organization was trying to help people raise money for nice tents and [have] less stuff. So far whats happening is a lot of money is being spent on the cleanups but like three hours later, the same [expletive] is there again, he said. So, slowly, were gonna raise money so we can get people whatever they need, housing, and save [lots of] dollars in taxpayer money. Tents line the sidewalks on Skid Row, in Los Angeles on Sept. 6, 2011. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) The video led to outrage among some Venice Beach residents who expressed frustration that the encampments just returned after the cleanupswith some calling it illegal dumping. [Von Loesch] isnt helping anyone by moving them on the sidewalk. He is actually setting them up for their slow demise, especially if he is moving them into one of these large encampments, resident James Baum commented on the video, which was also posted on the Venice Community Facebook page. He is moving items onto a sidewalk in an encampment, which is technically illegal dumping. He says he is trying to make it so there is less clutter but in reality, he is doing the exact opposite. Resident Rick Swinger, who advocates against illegal dumping in Los Angeles, said on his Facebook page, Stop Illegal Dumping, that von Loesch was ignoring the facts that unregulated camping leads to pollution, rodent infestation, diseases and used bloody needles on our beach putting everybody in harms way especially our children playing in the sand. Silicia Sol Slade Jensen, an unhoused Venice resident, told the Epoch Times that she disagreed with the way the cleanups were being handled and said she thought it showed a double standard for homeless people. You cant allow anyone to get comfortable in a space for over a year in some places, and then all of a sudden give less than 48 hours notice that things are going back to pre-pandemic and expect people not to be displaced, Jensen said. Its cruel, unusual and if it were done to someone housed, thered be attorneys from here to kingdom come suing the city. But because were looked at as less than citizens its ok? No, its not. Its dependents abuse. Van Loesch didnt respond to a request for comment by press time. Hong Kong Tycoon Sells Shanghai Property for $540 Million Hong Kongs richest man has sold a 24-story commercial building in Shanghai for $540 million, further reducing his assets in mainland China. Hysan Development announced last Friday it would acquire the commercial project in Shanghai from CK Asset Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based investment holding company founded by business magnate Li Ka-shing. The newly completed yet unoccupied tower sits in a central business district in Shanghai named Jingan, with over 700,000 square feet gross floor area. The acquisition is expected to close by early 2022, according to the announcement. The land was bought by Li in 2005. As Hong Kongs biggest investor, Li entered the mainland real estate market in 1989 but has been selling off his property there since 2013. The billionaire denied repeatedly his divestment was driven by a lack of confidence in Chinas economy and political climate, saying buying and selling were what a businessman does. The sale of the Shanghai commercial building occurred just prior to Chinas property giant Evergrande debt crisis capturing headlines this week. It also comes as Chinas ruling Communist Party has been tightening its grip not only on high-profile businesses on the mainland but in Hong Kong as well, especially on the citys powerful property tycoons and big conglomerates. Beijing is no longer willing to tolerate monopoly behavior in Hong Kong, a source told Reuters, with Li and his sprawling businesses expected to be affected. Property tycoons in Hong Kong have held sway not only in the citys economy but also in the former-British colonys political leadership race and policymaking. The then-Hong Kong chief executive candidate Carrie Lam (L) shakes hands with tycoon Li Ka-shing before he votes during the Hong Kong chief executive election on March 26, 2017. (Dale De La Rey/AFP via Getty Images) Beijing began to marginalize Li in 2019 for his perceived failure to prevent anti-government movements in Hong Kong and for expressing sympathy toward the protesters. The regime then criticized him for pushing up housing prices and seized upon skyrocketing home rates as a reason for the widespread protests. This year, Li was not among the Election Committeetasked with choosing the citys leaderfor the first time since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. This was the first election since Beijing overhauled the citys electoral system to ensure that only Beijing-approved patriots will come into power. But still, last month, the Hong Kong General Administration announced that Lis CK Asset won the bid for a 50-year land grant plot for $92 million. Israel's Iron Dome aerial defense system is activated to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, above the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, on May 12, 2021. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images) House Passes Bill to Provide $1 Billion for Israels Iron Dome The House of Representatives on Sept. 23 overwhelmingly passed a bill to provide $1 billion for Israels Iron Dome defensive system after some Democrats tried to abandon the funding. The bill drew widespread support from both parties and passed 4209. Eight Democrats voted against the legislation and two voted present. One Republican voted no. Funding for the Iron Dome, which helps Israel defend against rocket attacks from terrorist groups in adjoining countries and territories, has become a contentious issue among a small number of members of Congress, as illustrated on the House floor before the vote. The provision was initially part of a stopgap government funding bill House Democrats later passed, but party leaders chose later to put it into a separate bill because of opposition to the bill from so-called progressives such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). House Democrats have a slim majority and couldnt pass the bill with no Republican support and no votes from the progressive bloc. Tlaib, a Palestinian American, said on Sept. 23 before the vote on the standalone bill that Congress cannot be talking only about Israelis need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system. We should also be talking about Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks, she said. That triggered a response from Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), a Jew, who said that Tlaib besmirched our ally. I cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid state. I reject it, he said. The broad bipartisan support is likely to continue in the Senate, which includes members of both parties who have backed it in the past. President Joe Biden has also vowed to keep supporting Israel. The commitment of the United States to Israels security is without question, and our support for an independent Jewish state is unequivocal, he said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21. Openness and mutual respect should be at the foundation of every doctor-patient relationship. (Studio Romantic/Shutterstock) How to Disagree With Your Doctor Be engaged and informed about treatment options as you pursue medical services When my daughter was 5 months old, she developed a rash on her face. I watched it for a couple of days and noticed it was worsening, so I took her to a family physician in Hadley, Massachusetts. What do you thinks wrong? Dr. Robert Weitzman asked. I cuddled the baby on my lap, a little taken aback by the question. Thats what I came here to ask you, I said. He was quiet for a moment. I think you know, Weitzman said. And he was right. I was pretty sure that the baby had an infection caused by an overgrowth of some type of Staphylococcal bacteria. In other words, a staph infection, I said. He nodded in agreement. So, what do you think we should do? he asked. That time I burst out laughing. Arent you supposed to tell me?! I asked. I think you know, Weitzman said again. And, as I realized as soon as I started to answer his question that he was right again. I really didnt want to give the baby antibiotics if I could help it. I knew they were often prescribed unnecessarily, but I was also concerned that if left untreated, her rash might worsen and the infection could become systemic. We decided what to do together: Weitzman would write a prescription for oral antibiotics and I would go to the drug store to get a topical antibiotic. I could fill the prescription if I wanted to, just to have medicine on hand if we needed it. In the meantime, he felt comfortable waiting for another 24 to 48 hours, as long as the rash didnt get angrier or oozier and the baby didnt spike a fever or start acting lethargic. Just keep an eye on it, Weitzman said. If the rash worsened, or if my husband and I started to feel more worried, we could always start the treatment. I left the doctors office feeling empowered. We had a good plan going forward: One that appealed to my wait-and-see tendencies, would keep the baby safe, and would also avoid potentially harmful and possibly unnecessary intervention. Shared Decision Making I was a young mom then, and I didnt know it at the time, but Weitzman and I had done what medical experts refer to as shared decision making (SDM). SDM, according to a team of Canadian researchers in a 2017 article in the medical journal Canadian Family Physician, is a process whereby clinicians collaboratively help patients reach evidence-informed and value-congruent medical decisions. Instead of authoritatively telling me what to do, Weitzman had taken the time to ask me questions, listen to my concerns, and craft a treatment strategy for the baby with methe parentas a member of her care team. Patient-Centered Care Matters But having such a positive interaction with the doctor may be the exception, not the rule. When compared to patients in other countries, Americans tend to be among the most dissatisfied in the world with the quality of care we receive. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the availability of affordable health care and 49 percent were dissatisfied with the quality of medical care. A growing body of scientific research, including a 2015 study of 52 hospitals by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, shows that when patients feel theyre receiving individualized, patient-centered care, their feelings of satisfaction increase and their health outcomes improve. At the heart of patient-centered care is an open and mutually respectful relationship with your health care providers. That means finding providersincluding medical doctors, nurse practitioners, naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, and massage therapistswho are willing to listen to your concerns, ask and answer open-ended questions, and talk honestly about the pros and cons of the treatments they recommend. I appreciate when my patient is a partner with me in determining treatment strategies, said Dr. Jeffrey I. Barke, a board-certified primary care physician based in Orange County, California. I want my patient to push back and challenge and ask questions and not just expect me to do it all. Barke said in every aspect of medicinewhether the issue is back pain or treating a fast-growing cancerthere are always several possible treatment strategies. Its important to come up with a strategy together, Barke said. However, that isnt always easy to do. Most doctors are very invested in their own narrative, Barke said. How to Disagree (Politely) With Your Doctor So how do you disagree respectfully to find the best way forward? 1. Ask Open-Ended Questions Disagreement for disagreements sake is unproductive and hardly worth the effort, said Dr. Rick Kirschner, bestselling co-author of Dealing With People You Cant Stand: How to Be Your Best With People at their Worst and past president of the Naturopathic Medicine Institute. But if getting support for a plan of action or introducing new information into a seemingly closed mind is the goal, one of the best ways to disagree is by asking information-rich, open-ended questions. To do that without openly disagreeing, Kirschner suggested asking questions as if you are running information by your doctor to get their response. One question is not enough, so be prepared to ask follow-up questions, with the end goal of getting either a hmm or I dont know response, he said. Dont be disagreeable yourself, though. An attitude of openness and curiosity will get you much further than an attitude of smug self-certainty. 2. Prepare Some Questions in Advance (and Write Down Your Doctors Answers) Its easy to get tongue-tied when you go to the doctor. Often youve had a longer-than-hoped-for wait in the waiting room, the medical assistant may be acting rushed, and when the doctor finally comes in, it often seems as though theyre more interested in checking boxes off on the computer screen than they are in examining you. Its important to let your doctor know you brought a list of questions. Write or use an app on your phone to record the answers. That way, if theres something the doctor said that you didnt understandor perhaps you didnt agree withyou can review it later when youre not being rushed. England Miano, a holistic health practitioner based in Floridas Tampa Bay area, works with people who have severe medical issues and are often using both allopathic and more natural, holistic-centered care. Miano recommends asking direct questions. Get the information you need, she said. Dont be contrary about their suggestions. But do go back and research what they say. Some of the questions you may want to ask include: Why do you recommend this particular test, treatment, or protocol? What are the side effects or downsides of doing this particular test, treatment, or protocol? What kind of problems may arise if I choose not to do this particular test, treatment, or protocol? What alternatives are you aware of for this particular test, treatment, or protocol? What kind of patient outcomes have you had with this particular test, treatment, or protocol? What happened with your patients who said, No, thank you, to this particular test, treatment, or protocol? Is there some peer-reviewed scientific literature that you can recommend that I can read about this particular test, treatment, or protocol? 3. Bring Along a Friend, Loved One, or Patient Advocate Finding someone to bring with you to your medical appointments may feel overwhelming, especially if you live alone or are widowed. But its really important, whenever possible, not to go to the doctor or to the hospital alone. Given current COVID-19 protocols in place in some health systems, you may have to fight to have an advocate by your side. If your doctor is seeing patients via telemedicine and your situation isnt dire, consider making the appointment by phone or computer. Going to the doctor with a friend or family member in tow makes it easier to get your questions answered and also to push back when your doctors recommended course of action doesnt dovetail with what you think may be best. Your companion can take notes for you. And, even if neither of you writes anything down, having another set of ears along will help you think through your doctors recommendations afterward. 4. Know What Your Doctor Doesnt Know Miano reminds her patients that highly skilled medical doctors are often very good at what they do, but they often dont know much outside their special skill set. Your surgeon may be excellent, but they also may know nothing about wound-healing and dressing changes or detoxing the anesthesia out of your system, she said. Understand that theyre an expert at what they were taught, but that they were only taught allopathic options. They arent going to know that magnesium citrate can help with constipation or that niacinwhich is just vitamin B3is the No. 1 cure for high cholesterol and outscores every pharmaceutical medication [or that] high doses can be used to detox from drug addiction and are also a very effective cure for schizophrenia. While its important to get your doctors advice, if youre a more holistic-minded patient, you may have to weigh that advice against other treatment options, Miano said. The key takeaway is that your doctor isnt all-knowing. Youre the final authority on your health. After all, its you, not your doctor, who has to live with the consequences. 5. Seek a 2nd (or 3rd) Opinion Before Deciding If you feel that your doctor may not be recommending the best way forward, Barke advised getting a second or even a third opinion when theres a significant underlying problem. Get multiple opinions for significant treatment decisions, Barke said. Im not talking if someone has a cold. Im talking about if you need back surgery or shoulder surgery or youve been diagnosed with cancer. Go to at least two different doctors before you decide. Dr. Weitzman called in the prescription for the oral antibiotic, and I picked up the bright pink liquid at the pharmacy on the way home from the appointment. But I didnt need to give it to the baby. Instead, I dabbed a little powdered goldenseal (a plant that has natural antibacterial properties) on the rash. As the rash was drying out, before it went away for good, some of the skin on her cheeks and chin started to turn brown. It looked disturbingly like the baby had smeared chocolate on her face. But she remained her bubbly curious self the whole time. So there was no need for the medication, and no need to disagree with our doctor, either. Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an investigative health journalist and science writer and a frequent contributor to The Epoch Times. Find out more at JenniferMargulis.net. A logo of Italian multinational energy company Enel is seen at the Milan headquarters, Italy on Feb. 5, 2020. (Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters) Italys Enel Sets Up Digital Grid Service Company MILANItalys biggest utility, Enel, has set up a new company to offer digital grid services to power distributors round the world to help upgrade networks as the energy transition gathers pace. Gridspertise will manage all activities related to digital meters and intelligent grid services to help its clients deal with the increasing amounts of power generated from intermittent renewable energy sources. The spinoff will mainly target markets in Europe and Latin America, where Enel already has extensive business, but will also look to expand in North America and Asia-Pacific. Europes biggest utility manages power distribution grids in eight countries in Latin America and Europe with around 74.8 million end users. More than 40 percent of its core earnings came from networks last year. The company will help electricity distribution companies of any size and geography roll-out integrated smart grid solutions to meet the evolving needs of grid users and electricity end-customers, Gridspertise CEO Robert Denda said in a statement. Governments around the world are seeking to improve the digital resilience of their distribution networks as they are using more electricity for energy. Earlier this year Enel said it was setting up a company to offer digital grids services. On Thursday Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore said Gridspertise aimed to have 1.5 billion euro ($1.8 billion) sales by 2030 and could sell a minority stake in its capital to investors. Lava and smoke rise following the eruption of a volcano in Los Llanos de Aridane on the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Nacho Doce/Reuters) Lava, Smoke, and Ash Cover La Palma as Volcano Threatens Banana Crop LA PALMA, SpainJets of red hot lava shot into the sky on Spains La Palma on Thursday as a huge cloud of toxic ash drifted from the Cumbre Vieja volcano toward the mainland and jeopardized the islands economically crucial banana crops. Walls of lava, which turns black when exposed to the air, have advanced slowly westward since Sunday, engulfing everything in their path, including houses, schools and some banana plantations. Farmers near the town of Todoque raced to save as much as possible of their crop, piling their trucks high with sacks of the green bananas, on which many of the islanders depend for their livelihood. Were just trying to take everything we can, said a farmer who gave his name as Roberto from the window of his pickup. Some 15 percent of La Palmas 140 million kilogram (309 million pounds) annual banana production could be at risk if farmers are unable to access plantations and tend to their crops, Sergio Caceres, manager of producers association Asprocan, told Reuters. There is the main tragedy of destroyed housesmany of those affected are banana producers or employeesbut their livelihood is further down the hill, he said. Some farms have already been covered. Caceres said the farmers were already suffering losses and warned that if lava pollutes the water supply it could potentially cause problems for months to come. The island produces around a quarter of the Canary Islandss renowned bananas, which hold protected designation of origin status. With more than 200 houses destroyed and thousands of evacuated people unable to return home, the Canary Islands regional government said it would buy two housing developments with a combined 73 properties for those made homeless. Spanish banks jointly announced they would offer vacant homes they hold across the Canaries as emergency shelter. Property portal Idealista estimated the volcano had so far destroyed property worth around 87 million euros ($102 million). Experts had originally predicted the lava would hit the Atlantic Ocean late on Monday but its descent has slowed to a glacial pace of around 4 meters (13 feet) per hour and authorities say it may stop before reaching the sea. A cloud of smoke from an erupting volcano in the Cumbre Vieja national park, is seen from an aircraft, on the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain, on Sept. 23, 2021. (Jon Nazca/Reuters) Volcanologists have said gases from the eruption are not harmful to health. But a plume of thick cloud now extends some 4.2 km (2.6 miles) into the air, raising concerns of visibility for flights. The airport remains open but authorities have created two exclusion zones where only authorized aircrafts can fly. Prevailing winds are expected to propel the cloud northeast over the rest of the Canary archipelago, the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean, according to the European Unions Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. National weather service AEMET said air quality had not been affected at surface level and ruled out acid rain falling over the mainland or the Balearic Islands and was even unlikely in Canary islands. Local authorities have warned people to clean food and clothes to avoid ingesting the toxic ash. By Nacho Doce and Marco Trujillo Vials with Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine labels are displayed in front of a European Union flag, on March 19, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters) Lithuania to Donate More COVID-19 Vaccines to Taiwan Lithuania announced on Wednesday that it will donate over 230,000 additional doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, on top of the first 20,000 doses delivered to the self-ruled island since June. A Sept. 22 official statement said the Lithuanian health ministry would allocate 235,900 vaccine doses to Taiwan in the next three weeks, helping the latter to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Global vaccines equity and solidarity is crucial in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, said Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, according to the statement. The support came after a Sept. 16 request for help from Taipeis mission in neighboring Latvia. Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen expressed her gratitude via Twitter and thanked the prime minister for the continued support. Lithuania is the first European Union member state to help Taiwan, which was battling a strong COVID-19 surge in June Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland followed Lithuanias lead with additional aid. Previously, Taiwan gave the Baltic state 100,000 medical-grade protective masks in April 2020, when the pandemic was spreading around the world. Lithuania has boosted relationships with the self-governing island, which China claims as its own. The Baltic country angered Beijing in March by saying it would open a trade representative office on the island this year. Later in July, it agreed to allow Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital under its own name, rather than Chinese Taipei. Earlier this year, Lithuania donated 200,000 Vaxzevria vaccine doses to Ukraine, Moldova, Sakartvelo, and Armenia, the statement reads. Los Angeles to Seek Rental Subsidies to House Homeless The City of Los Angeles will seek increased rental subsidies to house its growing homeless population, particularly those with physical and mental health concerns. The city voted to advance the Housing Now Fund on Sept. 21, which would partner with Los Angeles Countys Department of Health Services to instruct the city administrative officer to find funds available to increase flexible rental subsidies and provide physical and mental health services for 10,000 homeless people. According to the motion, the city currently has 15,000 shelter beds and 24,600 permanent housing slots. The Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) 2020 data estimates, however, that 28,852 of the 41,290 total homeless are unsheltered, while 12,438 are sheltered. LAHSA estimated a 14.3 percent increase in homeless from 2019 to 2020; some believe that the homeless population in Los Angeles is growing at a faster rate than the local government can address with resources and shelter. Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas, who co-introduced the motion with Councilmembers Mike Bonin and Curren Price, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times that the additional capacity and resources that the funding could provide would help the city tackle the growing rate of homelessness. Successful street engagement depends on having a supply of affordable and supportive housing that is readily available to place unhoused clients without delay. We need to accelerate our investment in these long-term permanent housing solutions, if we want to make a difference in the lives of our unsheltered residents, Ridley-Thomas said. We need to work at the scale that this crisis requires. The Housing Now Fund envisions creating 10,000 new slots of permanent supportive housing using the tried and tested model of Los Angeles Countys Housing for Health Program. There is no better medicine for someone suffering from physical and mental health challenges on the street than supportive housing. Prescribing housing now is the right remedy. At the council meeting, Bonin said the program would likely be more cost-effective than other city-led programs. Whats really key about this isnt just that its fast, but that its cost-effective, Bonin said. This is actually less expensive than many of the interventions that we rely on. In many cases, this is less expensive than bridge housing; this is less expensive than tiny homes. Some Angelenos who regularly work with the homeless, however, think that inexpensive and rapidly-built shelters are not always the solution for everyone. Peggy Lee Kennedy, of Venice Justice and Service Not Sweeps, told the Epoch Times in a previous interview that temporary shelters were not a one-size-fits-all deal. Shelters are not great for everybody; it could be a really traumatizing experience. We need permanent solutions you cant just throw shelter at people, expect it to workits not working, Kennedy said. Kennedy said homeless encampment cleanups are especially hard on those with major mental health issues, whose tents are often destroyed; she said they often end up displaced because shelters dont have mental health solutions for them. Reba Stevens, Homeless Lived Experience Community Advocate, said in an emailed statement that resources and support should be readily available for effective street engagement. This is especially important for individuals in need of mental health services and supportive housing, Stevens said. The collaboration with the County Department of Mental Health is crucial for connecting some of our most vulnerable houseless neighbors with permanent housing that serves their needs long-term. I applaud the City Council for adopting this important motion. The motion would also direct the city administrative officer, along with the citys Housing Authority and the Los Angeles Housing Department, to report to the Homelessness and Poverty Committee in 30 days on the subsidy needs of current, temporary, and permanent housing programs. It also instructs the city administrative officer to create recommendations to create 10,000 ongoing flexible housing subsidies for the Housing Now Program. Bonin did not respond to a request for comment by press deadline. Malaysia's Minister of Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (2R) listens to questions from the floor during a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Mar. 20, 2014 (Rahman Roslan/Getty Images) Malaysia Seeking Beijings Views on New Australia, US, UK Nuclear Submarine Pact Malaysias Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein is contemplating a trip to China to discuss the newly minted AUKUS alliance between Australia, the United States (U.S.), and the United Kingdom (UK). Malaysian and Indonesian authorities have raised concerns about a potential arms race in the region, which is in contrast to the Philippines government who backed the agreement. We need to get the views from the leadership of China, especially Chinas defence, on AUKUS that was announced by the three countries and what are their actions following the announcement, Hishammuddin told Malaysias Parliament on Sept. 22. Our strength is not when we are alone. Our strength is when these 10 ASEAN member countries are united to see the position and security of the region be defended, he said. He went on to say that he had spoken with Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton in recent days and called for more dialogue with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This is because it has the potential to disrupt security and stability in the South-East Asia region, Hishammuddin said. Therefore, all parties should refrain from using any military action that can be considered provocative. The announcement of AUKUS last week saw the three allies sign up to a new pact that would see increased collaboration across fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cyber, and undersea capabilities. Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and U.S. President Joe Biden at a joint press conference via AVL from The Blue Room at Parliament, in Canberra, Australia, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image) However, at the heart of the agreement is a pledge from the U.S. and UK governments to assist the Australian government with acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. The move is argued to significantly influence the power balance in the Indo-Pacific while elevating the potency of Australias naval capability, making it one of the six nations globally to operate nuclear-powered subs, despite being a non-nuclear power. Currently, only India, the UK, the U.S., China, France, and Russia have similar capabilities. The formation of AUKUS comes amid increasing concern over Beijings posturing and aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, from actions such as the takeover of Hong Kong, building artificial islands in the South China Sea, economic coercion against Australia, and an ongoing military build-up. Indonesian authorities issued a statement on Sept. 17 in response to AUKUS saying it was deeply concerned over a potential arms race and power projection. It also stressed the importance of Australias commitments to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Evan Laksmana, a senior research fellow with the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore, said the deeper problem was of Indonesia becoming a strategic spectator. What can we do other than watching from the sidelinesperhaps with occasional ASEAN cheeras its regional environment continues to deteriorate and regional states are out for themselves? he wrote on Twitter on Sept. 16. A state police officer stands guard outside the home of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker during a "Liberate Massachusetts" rally in Swampscott on April 23, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) Massachusetts Police Union Asks Judge to Suspend COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate The State Police Association of Massachusetts has called upon a judge to suspend the states COVID-19 vaccine mandate for troopers. Suffolk Superior Court judge Jackie Cowin heard the case on Wednesday. The state police union filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth last Friday, seeking an injunctive relief prohibiting the state from implementing its vaccine mandate without bargaining with the union. The complaint (pdf) claimed that the mandate would cause the union and its members foreseeable, immediate harm, which includes the impacts of vaccinations, potential side effects, and subjecting troopers to discipline up to termination. On Aug. 19, Gov. Charlie Baker issued an executive order, stating that all executive department employees must demonstrate by Oct. 17 that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. Violators will be subject to disciplinary up to and including termination, reads the executive order, which will affect 44,000 executive state employees. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker speaks to the press at the Hynes Convention Center FEMA Mass Vaccination Site on March 30, 2021, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Erin Clark/Getty Images) During Wednesdays hearing, Paul Hynes, an attorney representing the police union, told the judge that the Oct. 17 deadline was arbitrary and made bargaining impossible. He said that because of the timing required between shots, unvaccinated troopers would need to schedule their first of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine by Sunday to comply. About 20 percent of troopers are not yet vaccinated, Hynes said. The police union represents about 1,800 troopers in the state. Jennifer Greaney, an attorney for the Commonwealth, said the state should have the authority to set up a deadline, CBS Boston reported. There has to be situations where there is an ability of the government, in an exigency such as the COVID-19 pandemic, to have a deadline of implementation of policy, said Greaney. She also argued that troopers could get the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to comply by the deadline. Judge Cowin didnt make her decision Wednesday. The union negotiated with the state in August, wanting their members whove recovered from COVID-19 or who choose not to get the vaccine for either medical, religious, or personal reasons to be able to take a weekly test and wear a mask at work, the complaint shows. The union also requested presumptive protection for its members. If a trooper becomes ill or dies from COVID-19 or the vaccine, that would be considered a line-of-duty injury. In a press conference Wednesday, Baker said that the mandate is intended to protect the public, and he expects the lawsuit to be resolved amicably. A union representing prison guards and other corrections officials in Massachusetts also threatened its own legal action against the vaccine mandate, WBUR reported. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Kavak Chief Executive Carlos Garcia poses for a photo at used autos platform Kavak in Mexico City, Mexico, on Aug. 25, 2020. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters) Mexicos Kavak Says New Funds Make It Second-Most Valuable Startup in Latin America MEXICO CITYMexican used-car platform Kavak said it has more than doubled its valuation to $8.7 billion based on its latest funding round, making it the second-most valuable startup in Latin America as it eyes further expansion beyond its home market. Kavaks chief executive, Carlos Garcia, told Reuters the Mexico City-based firm netted $700 million in its Series E round, making the platform second only to Brazilian fintech Nubank among the highest-valued startups in the region. The injection of capital has delivered a boost to Kavaks plans to expand outside the region as a one-stop shop for browsing, purchasing, and financing pre-owned cars via an app. Kavak said funding was led by U.S. venture capital firm General Catalyst, while SoftBank Group Corp, billionaire Peter Thiels Founders Fund, Singapore-based gaming and e-commerce company Sea Ltd, Tiger Global, Spruce House, hedge fund D1, and Ribbit Capital also participated. The new funding round is the latest sign of an aggressive push into Latin Americas startup scene by Japans SoftBank, which last week launched a $3 billion fund to invest in the regions technology companies. Founded nearly five years ago in Mexico, Kavak expanded to Argentina in 2020, before landing in Brazil this year, which it described as its largest market. The company will most likely focus next on expanding to emerging markets beyond Latin America, CEO Garcia told Reuters, noting that announcements could come within six months. Were looking outside the region for our next step, he said in an interview. We want to go into the biggest, most broken market where we can really make a dent, where we can really make users lives better, so were not agnostic to Latin America. Kavak previously said it had doubled its valuation to $4 billion just months ago after an earlier investment round. Since then, Garcia said, the company has grown rapidly as more consumers became eager for an alternative to peer-to-peer car buying which can be unreliable or financially risky. Demand only increased during the coronavirus pandemic as public transportation shuttered and more people turned to pre-owned cars. Kavak says it now has 5,000 employees across Latin America. Just over a year ago, the firm had only 300. A severe semiconductor shortage that slammed the brakes on the global auto industry, first felt in the United States, was also starting to creep in to Mexicos car market, Garcia said. In the U.S., youre seeing a shortage of products in the new and used car industry. Were starting to see this early trend in Latin America, we think its going to be a huge driver for Kavak in the next few months, Garcia said. Kavak looks to expand what Garcia called the super app experience, offering multiple services through a single app. National Demand Makes Monoclonal Antibodies Hard to Get in California By Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money From Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELESHealth officials in California are warning of shortages and distribution problems for a medical treatment that can keep COVID-19 patients from falling critically ill. Monoclonal antibodies have been developed as a treatment for COVID-19. They are thought to be a way to counteract the coronavirus before it can begin destroying the bodys organs, said Dr. Rais Vohra, the interim Fresno County health officer. The antibodies can be used to treat mild or moderate COVID-19 in patients who are not hospitalized. Recently, the nation has seen a twentyfold increase in demand for monoclonal antibodies; as a result, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is reserving the treatment for areas hit hardest by the pandemic, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County. Because of this, we likely are going to see a drop in monoclonal antibody access for our county, Chinsio-Kwong said. Health care providers are being asked to prioritize the highest-risk people for the therapy. In Central California, widespread distribution of monoclonal antibodies has been challenging, Vohra said. In addition to being difficult to order from the state and from manufacturers, the therapy requires nursing staff who can administer it, in a process that can take up to three hours. Its also a challenge in crowded hospitals to find space for patients to get the infusions. A lot of our clinics and hospitals are just saying that they dont have the resources to commit that amount of time, Vohra said. While not a substitute for vaccinations, monoclonal antibodies are a promising therapeutic, Vohra said, noting that its unfortunate when a medication cant be administered because of staffing and infrastructure problems. Every patient that gets an infusion today, we may actually save them an [intensive care unit] hospitalization in just a couple of weeks from now, so its definitely worth investing in this, he said. The Fresno County health official said hed like the state to increase access to monoclonal antibody treatments for more Californians. Lets be realistic: COVID is not going to go away anytime soon, Vohra said. We hope we can get it under control, but theres always going to be patients that come in and if theyre at high risk, this is going to be one of the first medications that we reach for, regardless of whether were in a surge or not. So we really do need to build the infrastructure around giving monoclonal antibodies. Because if we dont nip their problem in the bud, then it is going to bloom into a bilateral pneumonia, or something else that will land them into the ICU, Vohra said. 2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. A cigarette box of pills that was found with two people in an abandoned home in Dayton, Ohio, is seen in a Aug. 3, 2017, file photograph. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times) Sens. Grassley, Ossoff Introduce Bill to Fight Opioid Epidemic in Rural Areas A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate is aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic in rural areas of the United States. Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have teamed to introduce the proposal (pdf), which is called the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act. Among the provisions are codifying a Department of Justice program that provides grants to rural communities to help them combat opioid overdoses; shifting some of the federal funding from the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to rural areas; and examining gaps in prevention, treatment, and recovery services for people who are caught up with the law. Like so many Georgians, Ive lost friends to the opioid epidemic. My bipartisan bill with Senator Grassley will fund efforts in rural communities to prevent and treat addiction and to save lives, Ossoff, a freshman senator from Georgia, said in a statement. Grassley added: Weve made some progress in fighting the opioid crisis, but with overdose deaths rising, Congress needs to act. Our bill will help communities in Iowa and across the country to prevent and handle any surge in opioid overdoses. I look forward to working to pass this bipartisan legislation and preventing more Americans from falling victim to addiction, including those individuals in the criminal justice system. Reps. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) and Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives earlier this year. The bipartisan support in both legislative chambers signals that the bill may be approved by the closely divided Congress. Americans have struggled for years with opioids, a class of drugs typically prescribed as painkillers. Heroin, which is illegal, and synthetic prescription drugs such as oxycodone are opioids. A surge in drug overdose deaths in 2020 was primarily attributed to opioids. They were found to be a factor in approximately three-quarters of the 93,331 estimated deaths. Researchers have found that the harsh rules imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic led to higher deaths, including more drug overdose fatalities. The new measure has the support of the National Rural Health Association, the Small & Rural Law Enforcement Executives Association, and Faces & Voices of Recovery. We urge Congress to enact the Rural Area Opioid Prevention Program Act to sustain the vital efforts to reduce overdose in high-risk rural areas and create opportunities for more individuals and families to achieve long-term recovery from addiction, Patty McCarthy, CEO of Faces & Voices of Recovery, said in a statement. Servicemen coordinate people in their cars as they line up to be vaccinated at a vaccination center in Londonderry, N.H., on Feb. 4, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) New Hampshire House Speaker Files Bill to Block Vaccine Mandate New Hampshire House Speaker Sherman Packard is working on legislation that would ban state or local enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Packard, a Londonderry Republican, said his office is working on a bill that is aimed at blunting the impact of President Joe Bidens new federal vaccine requirements to prevent federal overreach, protect our citizens and prevent worker shortages should this mandate take place. The end goal is to find a workable solution to this latest development out of Washington that is evolving as we learn more about the mandate, Packard said in a statement to House GOP members. We have made it clear that government mandates are not the path to success for vaccination rates and will only cause further division in this country. Packard urged constituents to reach out to congressional lawmakers and ask them to speak out against this tyrannical policy that would displace thousands of workers and devastate our economy. Packards proposal, which was filed with the Office of Legislative Services, would need to be considered in the next legislative session that gets underway in January. Bidens mandate will require employers with more than 100 workers to require them to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 weekly. The new rules will apply to federal workers and contractors who do business with the federal government. Companies face fines of up to $14,000 per violation, Biden administration officials said. The plan will also require vaccinations for about 17 million health care workers at hospitals and other facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. The White House estimates the mandates will affect as many as 100 million Americans who are still not vaccinated against the virus, including thousands of workers in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is not one of the 26 states that have a state plan agreement quote with the federal government requiring them to enforce workplace health and safety regulations. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said he opposes Bidens vaccine mandate and expects New Hampshire will eventually join legal challenges against the nationwide requirements. The states Attorney General, John Formella, was one of 20 Republican attorneys general who wrote to Biden last week urging him to drop his vaccine requirement for employers, calling the plan disastrous and counterproductive. New Hampshire, like most states, has seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, with active infections averaging about 400 per day, according to state health officials. Only 54.3 percent of New Hampshire residents are fully vaccinated, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly 60 percent have had at least one shot, the agency says. By Christian Wade A man stand by his car in front of his home facing an apartment complex in Newport Beach, Calif.,on Jan. 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) New Housing Laws Will Increase Housing Costs in California Commentary The housing bills Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into lawafter the recall, of courseare being touted nationally as a way to ease Californias housing affordability crisis. Vox called it a step toward addressing the housing crisis. Its the opposite. It will make the housing crisis worse by increasing costs. I covered the legislation in detail in The Epoch Times in July. Basically, the three measures are supposed to make it easier for people to expand housing, such as doubling the number of houses on a lot. Something sure needs to be done in a state where the median price of a home is $800,000even more in coastal areas. But the real meanings are 1: They undermine local control of zoning. 2. They cast uncertainty on the market. A study (pdf) by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley summarized its view of the key bill, Senate Bill 9, by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego): SB 9 has potential to expand the supply of smaller-scaled housing, particularly in higher-resourced, single-family neighborhoods. In this way, SB 9 builds on recent state legislation that opened up access to accessory dwelling units (ADUs) for virtually all California single-family parcels. What distinguishes SB 9 is that it allows for the development of new, for-sale homes, either on a newly subdivided lot or through the conversion of existing single-family homes into multiple units. And: Our analysis shows that approximately 700,000 new, market-feasible homes would be enabled under SB 9. But the key problem is the bills destabilize property rights. When you buy a home, you depend on existing laws to protect your ownership rights. For Americans, those property rights laws extend back far into the past, even to the Middle Ages. If those laws are changed substantially, you even can sue the government for the loss of value, what is called takings. Thats named after the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. This is an incredibly complex area of the law. And my old friend, the late Orange County Register columnist Alan Bock, used to invoke a libertarian, saying: You have a right to property, but not to property values. For example, suppose you buy a house with a great view of the Pacific Ocean. But the neighbor in front of you, following existing law, builds a second story to his house, partly obscuring your view. Do you have a right to sue him for the reduction of your houses value? The answer: No, because your neighbor was following the law. Although not directly addressing these new California laws, the Center for Progressive Reform discussed similar situations: Often when the government regulates the use of a persons property, the effect on the particular person is adverse. For example, when the government zones an area for residential use, the owner of a particular property might like to open a convenience store or dog kennel, which might bring a greater economic return than a residential structure. Until 1922, the Supreme Court did not consider such diminution of the value of a particular persons property incidental to a general regulation as raising an issue under the Takings Clause. In that year, however, in a celebrated opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court held that if a regulation went too far, it could constitute a taking that would require just compensation by the government. Since that time, the question has remained, how far is too far. But lets return to the overall big picture. By destabilizing all property rights in California, the new state laws reduce the control owners have over their property. That includes future owners, including developers. So: Why would developers pour money into new developments if they are not sure they could make a profit? New laws beget new laws. This isnt the end of the tinkering with property laws, but the beginning. Nobody knows what will be passed next year, during an election year, or in the years following. Already, the state government has imposed such laws as mandating that a certain amount of new housing must be for lower-income people. Well, who pays for that benefit for the poor? The middle class that occupies the other, non-subsidized housing units, whose costs are raised to pay for the lower-rent units. The money has to come from somewhere. The government has been avoiding building its own housing projects because of such disasters as the Cabrini Green Rowhouses and Extensions in Chicago, whose construction began in 1942. It became a byword for inner-city crime, poverty, and drug abuse. It was torn down in 1995. Passing such laws as SB 9 also precludes working for such real solutions as reforming the California Environmental Quality Act and other regulations that severely limit development. California has plenty of vacant land, even in urban areas. Just look around. It just needs to be freed for development. Heres a simple idea. The California High-Speed Rail boondoggle already has acquired more than 1,400 pieces of property. Cancel what even Newsom called a project that would cost too much and take too long. Sell the property to developers for multi-family homes and return the money to taxpayers. Doing so wouldnt harm property rights, but strengthen them. Instead of tampering with long-existing property laws that homeowners have depended on, it would return property the government seized to private use. A woman works at a packing station at the 855,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, on Feb. 5, 2019. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images) Newsom Signs Bill to Limit Production Quotas at Amazon, Other Warehouse Operators California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill that restricts the ability of retailers such as Amazon to enforce production quotas on warehouse workers, a move hailed by labor advocacy groups but opposed by business organizations as needless and burdensome. The measure, called AB 701, was approved by the state Assembly earlier in the month and signed into law by Newsom on Sept. 23. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2022, bars mega-retailers such as Amazon from firing or retaliating against warehouse workers for missing quotas that interfere with bathroom and rest breaks. It also requires greater transparency related to production quotas, with large warehouse employers having to disclose quotas to workers within 30 days and provide authorities with detailed descriptions of productivity goals that workers are expected to meet. The law, which applies to all warehouse distribution centers, also allows employees to sue to suspend unsafe quotas or reverse retaliation. We cannot allow corporations to put profit over people. The hardworking warehouse employees who have helped sustain us during these unprecedented times should not have to risk injury or face punishment as a result of exploitative quotas that violate basic health and safety, Newsom said in a statement. California Gov. Gavin Newsom addresses reporters at the John L. Burton California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., on Sept. 14, 2021. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo) The measure was authored by Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a lawyer and former labor leader, who accused Amazon of disciplining warehouse workers at the direction of an algorithm that tracks employees activities and can determine that anything not directly related to moving packages is off-task. Weve heard disturbing stories of back-breaking working conditions in Amazon warehouses that use algorithms to enforce dangerous work speeds, Gonzalez said in a statement following the bills passage by the Legislature. Amazon is pushing workers to risk their bodies for next-day delivery, while they cant so much as use the restroom without fearing retaliation. AB 701 gives workers the tools and protections necessary to be able to speak up and seek real relief against the health and safety abuses theyve experienced in these warehouses, she said. Amazon officials didnt immediately respond to a request for comment on AB 701. A worker assembles a box for delivery at the Amazon fulfillment center in Baltimore, on April 30, 2019. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters) Advocates of the bill view the legislation as a needed measure to protect the health and safety of workers. Thanks to AB 701, warehouse workers at places like Amazon will no longer be fired for simply using the restroom in the middle of their shift, Ron Herrera, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement. Workers can finally make a living instead of making a trip to the emergency room. A coalition of 27 business organizations led by the California Retailers Association objected to the measure, writing in an Aug. 30 letter (pdf) to state lawmakers that the bill is both burdensome and needlessly overboard. The specific complaints made by sponsors are already enforceable under existing occupational regulatory standards, the coalition wrote, arguing that the bill creates substantial liability for businesses by providing plaintiffs attorneys more grounds to leverage large settlements from warehouse employees. This bill also establishes anti-retaliation provisions that will make it more costly and difficult to take job actions against underperforming employees, the letter argues. The business coalition also said that the measure would add warehousing costs that will be passed onto consumers and would have a chilling effect on production at distribution centers that will ripple through the rest of the supply chain. U.S. Capitol Police vehicles and other emergency vehicles respond as police investigated reports of a suspicious vehicle near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Aug. 19, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) North Carolina Man Pleads Not Guilty to US Capitol Bomb Threat Charges Floyd Ray Roseberry pleaded not guilty in federal court on Wednesday to charges of threatening use of weapons of mass destruction and threats to use explosive materials. The court found him competent to go forward with proceedings and he was arraigned on an indictment returned last week, Bill Miller, the public information officer for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia, told The Epoch Times. A grand jury returned an indictment of Roseberry on Sept. 14. From Grover, North Carolina, the 49-year-old defendant was reported to have a bipolar disorder being treated with ineffective medication. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ruled that a new treatment that had been prescribed within the month since the incident happened was proving effective, allowing Roseberry to stand trial. Roseberry was taken into custody on Aug. 19, after claiming that he had a bomb in his truck parked outside the Library of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. That morning the suspect drove the truck onto the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress, prompting the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) to respond to a suspicious vehicle near the Library of Congress before announcing on Twitter that there was an active bomb threat. In a press release, the USCP said that Roseberry had said he had a bomb, and that one officer noticed what appeared to be a detonator in the mans hand. Officers delivered him a phone in hopes of trying to continue the dialogue, the USPC said. According to an Aug. 20 affidavit (pdf) signed by Brandon Camiliere, a special agent with the FBI, Roseberry live-streamed video through his Facebook account. As nearby buildings were evacuated, Roseberry communicated through hand-written signs on a dry erase board through the front, driver-side window. Partial messages written on the board were: please dont shoot the windows the vibe will explode the bomb, I have no control of it, and decimals [sic] is what sets off not me, according to Camiliere. Roseberry eventually got out of the truck to surrender and was taken into custody at 2:15 p.m. Camiliere said that the old metal can Roseberry was observed holding appeared to have been fashioned into an explosive device. The can was old and rusted and had approximately 1 to 2 inches of an unknown powder in the bottom of it, Camiliere said. A fabricated trigger was attached to the top of the can. The can was sent to an FBI laboratory for further examination. Roseberry remains detained pending the next court date, a status hearing set for Oct. 8, according to Miller. Jack Phillips and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla., on Aug. 10, 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP Photo) Pennsylvania School Administrators Say They Are Stuck in the Middle of Mask Debate Pennsylvania School administrators are trapped in the middle of the school mask debate and need better communication from the state Department of Health. That was the testimony Thursday during a hearing of the Senate Education Committee that explored the impact of the Department of Healths order requiring masking of students and children at schools and daycare centers. Have you ever tried to put a mask on a 2-year-old and have them wear it all day? How about 10-minutes without them touching it? Often times bodily fluids from their nose and mouth soak the mask and it ends up being a suction cup to their face, Jessica Daugherty, director of Lititz Christian Early Learning Center testified. It becomes more contaminated with germs than if they had nothing on at all. The center aims to partner with parents and support their wishes when children are in the centers care, Daugherty said. But the mask mandate cripples the relationship between parents and the center by forcing the center to enforce the mandate. I was appalled at the level this administration would go to, to control the level at which masks are worn, Daugherty testified, recalling when she received notice of the mandate from the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning. Not only did the choice of wearing a mask get taken away from the parent, but the obligation of requiring that mask was placed on the childcare provider. The notice gives the center the choice of complying with the mandate or risk losing its license to operate. The order is not optional and failure to comply will lead to an initial citation for non-compliance, with a 10-day window to come into compliance or have your license downgraded to provisional. That would result in the inability to apply for or receive the Child Care Stabilization Grant. Continued non-compliance would result in an emergency removal order. Its About Control Honestly, this is no longer about masks; its about control. Who has it? Not the parents, Daugherty said. If we do not make some changes, the rope of freedom we now know will grow shorter, and the children we are providing quality care for will only know control without choices. Barry Fillman, administrative director at Jefferson County-Dubois Area Vocational-Technical School testified that ordinarily, families show up at board meetings or have conversations with educators and they work together to resolve problems, but that is not how it works with the mask mandate. The people in education have little control over what happened when this fire was lit. And then threats from the government pile on to an already intense situation. You should realize this, Fillman said. Great people are being pushed to a breaking point. The only thing that can solve this is for people from both sides to get together and actually work together and figure out a way to involve families instead of driving them out. Pushing parents out of the process with a poorly written, ill-timed mandate and then stoking their pain without actually solving their grievance is taking its toll. Just as schools were starting this fall, Pennsylvanias acting Health Secretary Alison Beam issued an order effective Sept. 7 requiring masks to be worn inside K-12 school buildings, early learning programs, and childcare providers. Before that, schools had been told they were to determine their own rules at the local level. The mandate caught many schools by surprise. We as school administrators have been put in a position to absorb everything that politics creates, and its breaking the will of decent, loving people, Fillman said. We work so hard to build trust with all of our stakeholders, especially with our families, and Im begging you to stop pitting us against one another at every level. Michael Bromiriski, superintendent of the Hempfield School District said schools are getting less interaction with the Department of Health compared to last year, and that schools have been doing the departments work, including case investigation work, contact tracing, communications with parents and guardians, quarantining students and staff, issuing isolation directives and reporting COVID-19 cases. Last-Minute Changes Yet a day before school was to start, Bromiriski told The Epoch Times the school received word from the Department of Health that Schools do not issue quarantine or isolation directives, but rather assist Department of Health staff with identifying close contacts. The department said CDC guidance would serve as public health best practices for schools. Schools are not required to follow the CDC guidance, but it is strongly encouraged. The school wanted some clarifications because it was already getting pushback from parents about their authority to mandate masks and quarantines, Bromiriski testified. The department responded that any close contact to a COVID-19 case would receive a legally binding quarantine order from the state. The school asked what they should tell parents, and suggested As a close contact, we have provided your contact information to the Department of Health and someone from the Department of Health will be in touch with quarantine information. The department said that was a perfect response, Bromirski said. But parents are not receiving quarantine information from the Department of Health. Parents look to us and wonder why we can exclude their children from school, because the Department of Health has not contacted them, Bromiriski said. We are attempting to abide by the directions we have been given by the Department of Health, but they are not following through in their stated responsibilities. The current mask mandate was ordered after many schools already opened with a mask optional policy. To say this changed caused an extreme amount of anger, frustration and volatility in our communities is an understatement. Bromiriski said educators are being threatened. In the span of one day, I was informed that I could be arrested if I followed the order and if I didnt follow the order. Our communities are divided, and the faith in public education is diminishing. Lack of Communication When the mandate was ordered, Bromiriski said, the Department of Education sent schools an email address to use for communication. But email limits the ability to truly communicate and it does not allow for meaningful dialogue that brings about clarity and understanding about information that must be interpreted and ultimately enforced, Bromirski said. School leaders began requesting meetings with the Department of Health and the Department of Education to get clarity on some of the details in the mandate but could not get a meeting until an unexpected 15-minute conversation with a Department of Health policy person, on Wednesday, the day before the hearing. I dont have a way, other than sending emails or leaving phone messages, to get in touch with anybody at the Department of Health, Bromiriski, said. The Departments of Health and Education were both asked to attend the hearing but did not because the mask mandate is being challenged in court, said Republican Senator Scott Martin who organized the hearing. The Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Education (PDE) are continuously communicating with schools about the constantly evolving response to COVID-19, Department of Health Deputy Press Secretary Maggi Barton told The Epoch Times in an email. As such, DOH has offered one-on-one support with numerous schools throughout the pandemic, prior to and during the 2021-2022 school year. Including just yesterday, when the PDE shared the following resources created by DOH with all schools: additional guidance to support schools with responding to COVID-19 cases and outbreaks in schools, Barton said. This guidance includes two flowchartsWhat to Do When Theres a Positive COVID Case and How to Respond to a COVID-19 Outbreakfor quick access to managing cases. More specific detail on isolation, quarantining, and case investigations are available on the PDE website, Barton said. DOH is committed to providing information to school districts and will continue to work with the school districts and sister agencies on these important issues. A nurse prepares a Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination as part of a vaccine drive by the Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians in Arleta, Los Angeles, on Aug. 23, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters) Pfizer COVID-19 Booster Shouldnt Be Used for J&J, Moderna Vaccine Recipients: FDA Official Pfizers COVID-19 booster shot shouldnt be administered to those who previously received vaccines made by Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, a top federal health official says. Doran Fink, a deputy director in the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) vaccine regulation division, made the assessment during a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory panel on whether the agency should recommend an additional dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Data are not available to inform the interchangeability of a booster dose of one vaccine with the primary series of another vaccine, Fink said at a meeting of the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Sept. 22. Ultimately, the FDA on Sept. 22 authorized Pfizer booster shots for individuals aged 65 and older as well as for those at a high risk of COVID-19, coming after an advisory panel last week voted overwhelmingly against recommending the third Pfizer dose for the general public. The FDA, meanwhile, has said it needs more time to review whether booster doses for J&J and Moderna vaccines are needed. After considering the totality of the available scientific evidence and the deliberations of our advisory committee of independent, external experts, the FDA amended the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for a booster dose in certain populations, such as health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers, and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others, Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said during the meeting. Johnson & Johnson this week said that second doses of its vaccine boosted its efficacy in the United States to 94 percent against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. J&Js shot uses an adenovirus, whereas Moderna and Pfizer use mRNA technology. Moderna said it has applied for permission to market third doses of the vaccine. The FDA, however, hasnt provided a timeline on when it may make a decision, while Fink on Sept. 22 said his department is working as quickly as possible on the firms submission. During last weeks FDA advisory panel meeting on booster doses, some experts expressed concern that a third dose of Pfizers shot could cause significant side effects, including myocarditis, in younger recipients. I honestly dont think there is enough good quality data at this point to make an informed decision, Brittany Kmush, an epidemiologist at Syracuse University, said of an Israeli study that Pfizer cited to claim that third doses are needed in the United States, noting the 12-day follow-up period and the variability of the authors estimates. And Dr. James Hildreth, a voting member on the FDA expert panel, added that he has a serious concern of myocarditis in young people. The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment. Polish Gene Project Moves to Drop Chinese Tech Over Data Concerns WARSAWA European Union-funded project to build a genomic map of Poland plans to drop gene-sequencing technology from Chinas BGI Group over concerns about data security, one of the projects leaders told Reuters. The Genomic Map of Polands concerns stem from questions over how Polish genomic data may be used that relate to national security, said Marek Figlerowicz, a Professor at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry at the Polish Academy of Sciences who steers the project. Figlerowicz said the concerns were initially raised by a report earlier this year from the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) which said BGI may be serving as a global collection mechanism for Chinese government genetic databases. BGI told Reuters in response that the U.S. report was disinformation, not borne out by the facts; The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called it groundless accusations and smears. An NSCAI spokesperson said it stood by its report, and has recommended the United States and allies double-down on techniques to better protect patient privacy. Since 2015, Beijing has restricted foreign researchers from accessing gene data on Chinese people. In August, a human genetics committee at the Polish Academy of Sciences said a lack of compliance by what it called Far East companies with the principles of genetic testing ethics raised serious doubts. It did not name any companies or countries but urged labs and scientific institutions that sequence genetic material abroad to stop using biotechnology companies there. It said about 100,000 complete Polish genomes may already be in Far Eastern laboratories, citing a rough estimate which Reuters could not verify. Poland has no control over that sensitive personal data, the committee said. Figlerowicz said the Genomic Map, which is expected to cost over 100 million zlotys ($25.35 million) and is about halfway through its program of sequencing 5,000 Polish genomes, has outsourced the work to a third party since 2019. That company, Bialystok-based Central Europe Genomics Center sp. z o.o. (CEGC), started using BGIs technology last year, he said; now Figlerowicz said the Genomic Map of Poland had decided not to send any genetic data out of the country and is likely to cancel the contract it has with CEGC. He added that the final decision, still to be approved by the funding institutions, is expected within the next week or two. As the technology to sequence genetic data has advanced and become cheaper, Figlerowicz said, the mapping project plans to bring the remaining sequencing in-house. The project wants to ensure Poland has genomic independence so it can ensure data security. CEGC did not respond to requests for comment. Poznan-based biotech company Inno-Gene S.A., which holds a minority stake in CEGC, said it did not know of a possible cancellation. The European Union, which provided about 65 percent of the total funding for the Genomic Map, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Polands Ministry of Education and National Information Processing Institute, also involved with funding the project. Polands special services declined to comment. National Security Reuters reported in July that BGI had developed and improved a prenatal screening test sold in at least 52 countries in collaboration with Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) hospitals. The privacy policy on the tests website says data collected can be shared when it is directly relevant to national security or national defense security in China, although BGI says it hasnt been asked to do that. BGI uses the pregnant womens genetic data for research into the traits of populations. It also collaborates with the PLA in other areas of research. BGI rejects any suggestion that it developed the test, branded NIFTY, in collaboration with the military, and says working with military hospitals is not equivalent. ($1 = 3.9448 zlotys) Psaki: Horse Patrols Temporarily Suspended at Haitian Camp in Del Rio White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that there will be no more Border Patrol horse operations in Del Rio, Texas, following images of agents on horseback apprehending illegal immigrants near a river crossing area. Psaki on Thursday again claimed that the images show horrible and horrific treatment of mostly Haitian illegal immigrants in the area. We will no longer be using horses in Del Rio, she said following criticism of the images. In the same statement, Psaki also made reference to the Trump administrations border policies, alleging that the Biden administration could not see it as any more different from the policy of the prior administration. Which the president feels, we all feel, was inhumane, immoral, ineffective, wasnt operationally working. And because of the disfunction of it, we have led to a very broken system that were dealing with today, she said in a comment. Over the past week, White House officials have echoed claims made by some media pundits, pro-immigration activists, and certain Democrats about images and video footage of agents grabbing people who illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico. Some have claimed, without providing evidence, that Border Patrol officials were whipping the Haitians with their reins, which are used to control the horse. The Biden administration, which controls Border Patrol agents via the Department of Homeland Security, has received significant bipartisan criticism over a swelling immigration crisis near a bridge in Del Rio, where more than 15,000 Haitians have amassed in recent days. Some experts say that the camps under the bridgewhere piles of garbage are located just feet from sleeping areaswill lead to outbreaks of COVID-19 and other transmissible diseases. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) This week, Psaki and other White House officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in response to questions about the crisis in Del Rio, have often made reference to the horse patrol images while saying that it is currently carrying out an investigation into the matter. However, a top Border Patrol union official, Brandon Judd, told The Epoch Times this week that agents were not whipping their reins at the illegal aliens. Agents have to keep the migrants away from the horses for their own protection. And so they will use the reins, to twirl the reins, so that they will stay away from the horses. But they do not use those reins to lash out, to try to strike people. Those agents did not use those reins in any way, shape, or form to try to strike anybody, he said, adding that horses are used as a deterrent technique to prevent illegals from entering the country. Regarding comments made by White House officials, Judd said Border Patrol officials feel abandoned in the wake of a burgeoning crisis. A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian illegal alien from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuna Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 19, 2021. (PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images) I get that all the time. My agents are constantly reaching out to me asking, Why isnt this administration standing up and doing something to secure the border? Why is this administration allowing cartels to have free rein of the border? Why is this administration [doing nothing] when they said that they were going to have humane immigration practices? I dont know, Judd, who is the head of the National Border Patrol Council, told the Epoch Times. Judd also pointed to the makeshift shantytown that was erected by Haitians under the Del Rio bridge: You tell me. Does this look like its humane right here? This looks like a warzone refugee camp. Thats what this looks like. And if anybody says that this is humane, I would love for them to come and explain to me how this, right here, is humane, he said. But this is the Biden administration. This never happened with the Trump administration. Jack Phillips Senior Reporter Follow Jack Phillips is a reporter at The Epoch Times based in New York. A solar flare (R) erupting from giant sunspot 649. The powerful explosion hurled a coronal mass ejection(CME) into space, but it was directed toward Earth on Aug. 19, 2004. (HO/AFP via Getty Images) Rare Solar Superstorm Could Prompt Internet Apocalypse Lasting Several Months: Study The black swan event of a solar superstorm directed at earth could prompt an internet apocalypse across the entire globe that could last for several months, new research (pdf) has warned. University of California Irvine assistant professor Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi presented the new research, titled Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse, last month during the Association for Computing Machinerys annual conference for their Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM). One of the greatest dangers facing the internet with the potential for global impact is a powerful solar superstorm, Jyothi wrote in the new research paper. Although humans are protected from these storms by the earths magnetic field and atmosphere, they can cause significant damage to man-made infrastructure. The scientific community is generally aware of this threat with modeling efforts and precautionary measures being taken, particularly in the context of power grids. However, the networking community has largely overlooked this risk during the design of the network topology and geo-distributed systems such as DNS and data centers, he continued. A solar storm, also known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), occurs when a large mass of plasma and highly magnetized particles violently eject from the sun. Large CMEs can contain up to a billion tons of matter and can get accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light. When the earth is in the direct path of a CME, these magnetized and charged solar particles interact with the earths magnetic field, producing geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) that can potentially disrupt communication satellites and long-distance cables that provide the world with the internet. According to Jyothis research, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, and networking cables are the most vulnerable to the impacts of GICs, while submarine cables, which span hundreds or thousands of kilometres, are even more vulnerable than land cables, due to their larger lengths. Owing to a lack of real world data on the impacts of GICs on these submarine cables, scientists still dont know how long it would take to repair them if such an event were to occur, andjust like natural disasters such as earthquakesCMEs are extremely difficult for scientists to predict. The research noted that the distribution of internet infrastructure is skewed when compared to the distribution of internet users, and high-latitude climates are more at risk if a solar storm were to occur. Artists rendering of a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the planets upper atmosphere. (NASA) Cables on servers at an internet data center in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on July 25, 2018. (Yann Sschreiber/AFP/Getty Images) The U.S. is one of the most vulnerable locations with a high risk of disconnection from Europe during extreme solar events. Intra-continental connections in Europe are at a lower risk due to the presence of a large number of shorter land and submarine cables interconnecting the continent, the report notes. Meanwhile, if a severe solar superstorm were to occur, Singapore would maintain good connectivity to neighboring countries, while cities in China would be more likely to lose connectivity than India because China connects to much longer cables. Australia, New Zealand, and other island countries in the region would be at high risk of losing most of their long-distance connections. The research warns that a collapse of the interneteven one lasting a few minutescould cause devastating losses to service providers and damage cyber-physical systems. The economic impact of an internet disruption for a day in the United States is estimated to be over $7 billion. While the likelihood of a solar superstorm hitting earth is rarewith astrophysicists noting that the probability of extreme space weather events that directly impact earth occurring are between 1.6 percent to 12 percent per decadethey can still happen. In 1921, a solar storm, driven by a series of coronal mass ejections, triggered extensive power outages and caused damage to telephone and telegraph systems associated with railroad systems in New York City and across the state. Years later, in 1989, a solar storm bought an electrical power blackout to the entire province of Quebec, Canada. Although we have sentinel spacecraft that can issue early warnings of CMEs providing at least 13 hours of lead time, our defenses against GIC are limited. Hence, we need to prepare the infrastructure for an eventual catastrophe to facilitate efficient disaster management, Jyothi said. The research pointed to increasing capacity in lower latitudes for improved resiliency during solar storms, and having mechanisms for electrically isolating cables connecting to higher latitudes from the rest at submarine cable landing points to prevent large-scale failures. The paper has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal. The SNC-Lavalin headquarters is seen in Montreal on Feb. 12, 2019. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson) RCMP Charge SNC Lavalin, Former Execs With Fraud Over Alleged Bribery MONTREALThe RCMP say they have charged two former SNC-Lavalin executives for allegedly paying bribes to obtain a contract, and have also laid charges against the Quebec engineering giant and its international business arm. The Mounties have not revealed the nature of the contract, but did identify the two people arrested and charged as former SNC-Lavalin vice-president Normand Morin and Kamal Francis, a former vice-president at SNC-Lavalin International Inc. They along with the firms that they previously represented have each been charged with forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud against the government, and conspiracy to commit fraud against the government. The two former executives have been released from custody and are due to appear in a Montreal court on Sept. 27 along with representatives from SNC-Lavalin and SNC-Lavalin International. RCMP Inspector Denis Beaudoin in a statement said the charges are the result of a long and complex investigation that saw evidence gathered over a number of years. SNC-Lavalin was previously charged with bribery in relation to its past work in Libya, which was at the centre of the high-profile 2019 battle between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. A farmer works in his field next to a state-owned coal-fired power plant in Huainan, Anhui Province, China, on June 15, 2017. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Responding to Chinese Leader Xi, Skeptics Point to Chinas Domestic Coal Power Plants Chinese leader Xi Jinpings Sept. 21 claim to the United Nations General Assembly that China will not build new coal-fired projects abroad has drawn a range of reactions, including comments on Chinas large and growing domestic reliance on coal power. Its not the major issuethe major issue is coal plants in China, Gordon G. Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, told The Epoch Times. China, already the worlds largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, is financing the equivalent of more than 40 gigawatts of coal power in preconstruction in countries around the world, according to climate change think tank E3G. Xis remarks suggest that those projects could be impeded. Yet at home, China reportedly has 247 gigawatts of coal power at some stage of development, greater than all coal power capacity in the United States and roughly six times greater than Germanys capacity. In the scheme of things, Chinas financing of offshore coal projects is very small, Chang said. Its progress, but its extremely small progress. While Xi also claimed that China will strive to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 and peak carbon emissions by 2030, he didnt mention Chinas 1,000-plus domestic coal plants during his remarks. Our World in Data reported that the world produced 36.44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from fuel in 2019. Of that total, 7.24 billion tonnes, or roughly 20 percent, came from Chinas use of coala percentage that can be expected to increase as China brings more coal-fired plants online. China also degrades the natural environment in a variety of other ways. For example, a 2019 Nature study revealed that China violated the Montreal Protocol by emitting ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry, who had engaged in climate talks with China during previous weeks, praised Xi on MSNBCs Morning Joe. Wed been talking about the effect of funding coal in other countries, which just doesnt make sense today, Kerry said. Thank you, President Xi, because its an important contribution to making the [U.N. climate] meeting in Glasgow a success. The environmental group 350.org also offered praise. This is HUGE. 350 welcomes Chinas declaration to stop funding coal overseas. This could be a real game-changer depending on when it comes into effect and which plants it covers, the group wrote on Twitter. Yet Chang and others voiced skepticism about the merit and ultimate significance of Xis statement. This is far from where John Kerry says we need to be, Chang said. Energy expert Alex Epstein shared his thoughts on Xis claim in a Twitter thread on the speech. For the last few years, Western nations and financial institutions have been withdrawing funding for coal plants abroad. Now China is doing the same. What does this mean? It means a lot of poor people are not going to be able to bring themselves out of poverty like China has, he wrote. Also writing on Twitter, Columbia University political scientist and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer observed that last year, China built more than 3x more new coal power capacity (in China) than all other countries in the world combined. Bremmer didnt respond to requests for comment by press time. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.V.), who represent one of the top coal-producing states in the United States, didnt respond to requests for comment by press time. Other commenters highlighted the stated commitment in a positive light while alluding to Chinas extensive domestic investments in coal. Chinese President Xi announced China will no longer build new coal projects abroada big blow to the global coal pipeline. China can raise its ambitions by stopping new domestic coal projects and phasing out existing coal, the Sierra Club wrote on Twitter. Chang sees no reason to applaud Xi for his statement. Praising [Xi] for a promise is really inappropriate, he said. A screen displays the company logo for Toast Inc. during the companys IPO at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City on Sept. 22, 2021. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) Restaurant-Software Maker Toast Valued at Nearly $33 Billion as Shares Surge in Debut Toast Inc fetched a valuation of nearly $33 billion in its New York Stock Exchange debut on Wednesday, as shares of the restaurant software provider jumped 63 percent, underscoring a deep investor appetite for fast-growing software firms. The stock opened at $65.26, compared with its initial public offering price of $40 per share. The valuation marked a substantial jump from the companys last private funding round when it was valued at $4.9 billion in February 2020. Toasts listing comes at a time when digital transformation among restaurants has accelerated during the pandemic, and merchants have adopted Toast software to manage takeout system through first-party delivery or working with partners, including DoorDash Inc and Uber Eats. Were in our early days, and we believe that we could be the unified platform that powers the restaurant industry, said Chris Comparato, chief executive at Toast. The Boston-based company builds software that helps restaurants manage online orders and dine-in order, operate an on-demand delivery network and integrate payments. Founded in 2011, Toast counts TPG, Tiger Global Management, and Bessemer Venture Partners among its backers. It partnered with nearly 48,000 restaurant locations and processed more than $38 billion in gross payment volumes over the 12 months ended June 30. As restaurant revenues plunged due to lockdowns and other restrictions, Toast cut its workforce and launched new features to cater to the shifts in dining behavior, including contactless ordering, indoor dining payments through QR codes, curbside notifications for takeout and deliveries on a flat-fee basis. Toasts net loss widened to $235 million for the six months ended June 30, from $125 million a year earlier. Revenue, however, more than doubled to $704 million. The company sold 21.7 million shares in its IPO, raising about $869.6 million. Its IPO was priced above an earlier targeted price range of $34 to $36 per share. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan were the lead underwriters for Toasts IPO. By Sohini Podder, Echo Wang, and Krystal Hu Russia and China Differ in Afghanistan Ambitions: Experts Policy factions in Russia are split on whether the nation should commit to trying to match the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) economic ambitions in Afghanistan or merely recommit to working in the central Asia security space, according to experts familiar with the matter. Maxim Suchkov, a senior fellow at the Laboratory for International Trends Analysis at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said that there was a divide over whether the risks of state building in the Middle East were worth the potential lucre of tapping into Afghanistans $1 trillion worth of rare earth metals. There is this debate in the Russian policymaking community right now about the scale of ambition that Russia should seek in Afghanistan, Suchkov said, with one group suggesting that Russia should seek the full deal, not only security, but also trying to exploit some opportunities of the exploration of rare earth metals, and other economic development projects. He added: The other group is cautioning against this deep involvement and says our strategy should be security-oriented only. So Russia should not care about the state building or the development or infrastructure of Afghanistan because its a black hole that will drain all the resources. Suchkovs comments came during an online panel hosted by Tuft Universitys Fletcher School that explored the repercussions of a Taliban-led Afghanistan on the futures of Russia, China, and Central Asia. Following the resurgence of the Taliban, there was some speculation that Russia and China would be quick to seize upon the opportunity to develop the massive mineral wealth of Afghanistan, but Suchkovs remarks indicated that, for Russia at least, such a proposition had clear pitfalls. Suchkov also noted that this difference might be overlooked in the American context because there was a tendency to view Russia and China as acting together against the United States when, in point of fact, they may just be acting similarly. He highlighted the Russian and Chinese attacks on the United States failure in Afghanistan as an example of this. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the U.S. has done a lot more than Russia and China together in terms of undermining its position, Suchkov said. So Russia and China here are in a way picking up the low hanging fruits of gloating and bashing, and making the most of U.S. actions in Afghanistan. It may create the sense that theyre trying to do something together in Afghanistan. But, perhaps the only new factor that unites Moscow and Beijing right now is a grave concern over what may come next [in Afghanistan]. Niva Yau Tsz Yan, a fellow at the Eurasia Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, agreed that Russia and China maintained a solid consensus about one anothers goals in central Asia, but that there was a pressure in China for the CCP to try to match Russian security presence. Chinese scholars have said that if China doesnt engage militarily or China doesnt do more on the security front, then eventually the Central Asian states are going to realize that Russia after all is the only security provider that can concretely do things that provide actual reassurance that things are going to be okay, Yau said. China is extremely insecure about this, Yau added. Yau noted that Chinese commanders in the region were frequently flanked by translators because Russian was the regular language of the security space. Though China may be economically ascendent, the Russian military was the team to beat in military matters, Yau said. According to Nargis Kassenova, a senior fellow at the Program on Central Asia at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University who also spoke on the panel, the security dominance of Russia in Central Asia may be waning. In central Asia there is some competition in the security sphere. The situation is changing, Kassenova said. Before, Russia had this sort of monopoly, but its getting diluted now. As evidence of this shifting tide, Kassenova pointed out that the CCP recently developed a military base on the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, African forces with Chinese ties were beginning to learn Mandarin and could thus begin to move the linguistic hurdle to greater military cooperation, she said. In all, the three experts agreed that Russia and China had differing ambitions in Afghanistan, but that any reports of fractures in their relationship were overstated. They maintained that the two nations were likely to continue building their relationship but, as with so many Sino-Russian endeavors, the shape that the process will take is likely to be one of two nations pursuing their own goals side by side, rather than in tandem. Sabina Nessa May Have Been Killed in Attack by Stranger, Police Say Detectives are investigating whether primary school teacher Sabina Nessa was killed by a stranger who is still at large, a senior officer has said. The 28-year-old had been walking to meet a friend at a pub in Kidbrooke, south east London, on a journey that should have taken just five minutes when she was fatally attacked near Cator Park. Speaking at the park where flowers had been laid beside a police cordon, Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lawry said he is keeping a completely open mind on what the motive of the attacker may have been but is concerned that they are still on the loose. Asked whether the Metropolitan Police are worried that the killer could attack someone else, he said: We have lines of inquiry that were pursuing at the moment. Its always a concern that it may happen, but thats not something that we have any intelligence on at this time. And asked whether he believes a stranger was behind the attack, Lawry added, Thats definitely a line of inquiry that were looking at. Infographic shows Sabina Nessas last movements. (Infographic/PA Graphics) Nessas body was found by a member of the public almost 24 hours after her death. Asked by reporters why it took police so long to find her in a small and busy park, he said, It was found by somebody walking their dog and it was off the track that you would normally walk so thats not that unexpected. Her death comes just months after the killing of Sarah Everard, who was abducted in Clapham, south London, and just over a year after sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered at a park in Wembley, north London. Lawry insisted the streets of the capital were safe for women and officers were listening to concerns. He said, The streets are safe for women, Id like to reassure the public around that, Id like to make sure that people are free to walk around free from fear and my officers will make sure that that can take place. On whether the Met had changed their approach to policing violent crime against women following these murders, he added: I think the main things that are changing are that one, were listening to people, were understanding where people are feeling not so safe and were putting out patrols to make sure that we do that. This isnt just a policing issue, theres lots of issues to be able to make people feel safe in an open space and were working with our partners to ensure we do that. Downing Street said the Prime Ministers thoughts were with the family and friends of Nessa. A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, The Prime Ministers focus is on making sure that we make our streets safe for absolutely everybody, thats why were investing the money we are in recruiting more police officers and which is why we, as I say, introduced the strategy when it comes to violence against women and girls earlier this year. He added that Metropolitan Police officers will be attending a planned vigil for Nessa on Friday. Officers have said Nessa left her home on Astell Road and was killed on her way to The Depot bar in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke Village, at around 8:30 p.m. last Friday. Her body was found near the OneSpace community centre at Kidbrooke Park Road in the Royal Borough of Greenwich at around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. Sabina never arrived at the pub and is thought to have been murdered as she walked through the park, the force said. A post-mortem examination, carried out on Monday, was inconclusive. It came as Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said violence against women should be treated with the same level of priority as counter terrorism following the murder of Sabina Nessa. Speaking to the PA news agency on Thursday morning, Khan said: I think we need to make sure we have a fully joined up policy to address this issue from school with boys being taught to respect girls and proper healthy relationship education, to the government outlawing misogyny and making it a hate crime and making the harassment of women in a public place a criminal offence, to making sure the police have the support they need to address violence against women and girls but also to making sure the criminal justice service gives this the seriousness it deserves. I think this deserves the same priority as counter terrorism. I agree with the inspector who called this an epidemic. I think it is an epidemic and I think its really important that people like me, who have not had to live the experiences of women and girls listen to the experience of women and girls and work with them to have policies that address this awful issue. He added, Im in close contact with the Metropolitan Police Service and my thoughts and prayers are with Sabina Nessas family. Its just awful what happened to Sabina last Friday. When I think of Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, Sarah Everard, its heartbreaking. Anyone with information is asked to call police on 0208 721 4266 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. By Laura Parnaby In this May 12, 2015 photo, a San Francisco Police officer stands on a street in San Francisco. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo) San Francisco Launches Initiative to Tackle Retail Crime The City of San Franciso, in collaboration with the police department, aims to tackle the rise in retail crimes through a new initiative in partnership with local retailers. The Organized Retail Crime Initiative will result in an expansion of the police departments Organized Retail Crime Unit while providing more resources to retailers amid ongoing theft. Retail theft and commercial burglaries are not victimless crimes, San Fransico Mayor London Breed said in a Sept. 22 statement. They hurt working families due to reduced work hours, shuttered stores, and lost jobs. They hurt customers and seniors who are losing convenient access to prescription medications and vaccinations because of pharmacy closures. They hurt neighborhoods suffering from fewer local retailers and more empty storefronts. The strategy were outlining today is an all-hands-on-deck approach that brings the full partnership of state and local law enforcement and retailers to bear to aggressively pursue, investigate and deter organized retail crime in San Francisco. The plan has three major potions that include expanding and reallocating investigative resources, strategically restructuring fund deployments, and partnerships in reporting, investigating, and solving crime cases. According to data provided by the San Francisco Police Department, since the start of 2021, there have been nearly 20,000 larceny-theft cases and over 1,600 robbery cases. In 2020, larceny-theft reached over 25,500 cases while robberies hit slightly over 2,400. The initiative seeks to expand the police departments retail crime unit from two investigators to five. Officials expect to see a decrease in larceny and commercial theft as resources are made more accessible for retailers to report crimes. This collaborative approach reflects the full promise of community policingnot solely to support our Citys economic recovery, but to better protect public safety that is too often endangered by retail theft crews and the sophisticated criminal enterprises funding them, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement. The retail crime initiatives come months after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to expand upon the Organized Retail Crime Task Force to prevent retail theft. Santa Ana Moves Forward With Rent Control Ordinance Santa Ana is on track to pass a rent control ordinance that will restrict landlords from raising their rent more than 3 percent annually. The 43 vote in the midnight hours of Sept. 2122 wasnt enough to pass the urgency ordinancewhich would have taken effect prior to the end of the states eviction moratorium on Sept. 30as more than a simple council majority would have been needed to pass it on the first reading. However, the vote does push the measure forward to the second reading, which will need a majority vote to pass at the councils next meeting. Councilmembers Nelida Mendoza, Phil Bacerra, and David Penaloza voted against the ordinance, questioning the plan for funding the ordinance, its effectiveness in preventing evictions, and the negative impact it would have on small landlords. The proposed rent control ordinance does not protect residents from being evicted, Mendoza said during the meeting. The sense of urgency does not exist, and for us to be open and transparent to the constituents who elected us to this position, it is recommended that the matter be sent out with instructions for further analyzing and comparison with other cities where there is rent control. What were the benefits? What were the consequences? We need to see long-term studies; we cannot vote on something tonight when we dont have that information. Bacerra criticized the councils decision to discuss the ordinance after many viewers had already gone to bed. The five hours of public commenters half of them are asleep by now, he said. None of them heard all these 10 changes that we added to these ordinances. So how is that transparent? Councilmembers Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, Jessie Lopez, Thai Viet Phan, and Mayor Vicente Sarmiento voiced in favor of the ordinance, arguing that it would protect renters, especially those of low income. According to the 2019 U.S. Census, Santa Ana has the highest percentage of residents living in poverty compared to the rest of Orange County, Hernandez said. So almost 59 percent of our renters in our city are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. So when you have a single mom thats making $24,000 a year and her rent is $2132, what quality of life is that? You wonder why so many kids are joining neighborhoods and doing drugs and dying before they ever have the chance to live. While four councilmembers voted in favor of the ordinance, the three opposing votes removed the urgency of the ordinance, so it wont come into effect by the Sept. 30 eviction moratorium end date. Santa Ana City Council, set to meet again on Oct. 5, signified that the ordinance would come back for discussion at another meeting, needing only a majority vote to pass. If approved, rather than being effective immediately, it would be implemented 30 days after the official vote. Santa Ana School District to Start Paying Faculty After Delay The Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) is set to start paying employees again after a month during which new hires didnt receive paychecks. According to the school district, just over 100 employees out of more than 350 new hires have gone without pay due to the school rapidly hiring new employees in a short time frame after being understaffed during the pandemic. After the checks didnt come in on time, calls from educators flooded into the Santa Ana Educators Association office near the end of August, and the issue was brought up further during a Sept. 14 SAUSD board meeting when Shayna Lathus, a teacher in the district, told the trustees that they needed to do something to fix the problem. This afternoon I was shocked to learn that our newest certificated staff in our district have not yet been paid, Lathus said. How on Earth is this in any way acceptable? Im outraged that we have teachers and counselors who are doing everything they can to serve our SAUSD community and it is appalling they have not been paid It makes me incredibly sad to know that this is something that our district has accepted as okay, these are people who have been out of work for months. These are people who lost other jobs in good faith to come work for our district. They are working for our students, and we are leaving them high and dry, and I think this is unacceptable. Lathus suggested that the board utilize some of the money received from the American Rescue Plan Act to hire more human resources to help. One week after that meeting, the district said in a statement that some of the faculty members have now been paid and that theyre working on paying the rest, although they didnt specify numbers. The problem will not happen again, the district noted, saying the employees will receive their paychecks on their regular pay cycles going forward. As part of the effort to reopen schools for in-person instruction after 17 months, and to continue to ensure healthy and safe places for learning, Santa Ana Unified School District has been working to hire hundreds of new staff members to support students in a variety of roles, SAUSD told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. SAUSD is proud to have hired more than 350 teachers, counselors, social workers, school psychologists, and other staff since summer began. A District and Board of Education priority as we restart in-person instruction at all schools this year is to lower student to staff ratios to better support childrens academic and social-emotional needs while we continue to navigate through this pandemic. As a result of bringing so many new staff members on board in a relatively short amount of time, delays have occurred in the processing of new hire documentation for some staff members. This situation resulted in a delay of some employees initial paychecks. The District assures that these employees have now been compensated, or are currently in the process of being compensated, for all days worked. The school district didnt say how long it would take to fully fund all the employees. Second Afghan Interpreter Email Data Breach Uncovered at UK Ministry of Defence A second data breach that may bring risks to dozens of Afghan interpreters has been uncovered on Wednesday as the UKs Ministry of Defence (MoD) investigates an almost identical incident uncovered three days ago. The BBC revealed that defence officials mistakenly copied in 55 applicants of Afghan Relocations Assistance Policy (ARAP) in an email that could be seen by all recipients earlier this month. According to the report, the email said ARAP team officials couldnt reach the recipients and asked them to update their contact details. The ARAP scheme is designed to relocate Afghanswho are at risk of Taliban retaliation for their work with the British military or governmentto the UK, along with their families. After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, many former employees of Western countries have reportedly been targeted by the Taliban and have gone into hiding. The BBC said that at least one of the individuals copied in the email was a member of the Afghan National Army. The broadcaster on Monday reported on a similar incident involving at least 250 ARAP applicants, prompting Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to apologise and launch an investigation. Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday about the previously uncovered data breach, Wallace apologised again to the Afghans affected, and said his department was working with the Home Office to provide them with security advice. As I speak, the Minister for the Armed Forces [James Heappey] is in the region speaking to neighbouring countries to see what more we can do with both third countries and in-country applicants, Wallace told MPs. It is an unacceptable level of service that has let down the thousands of members of the armed forces and veterans. On behalf of the Ministry of Defence, I apologise, he said. The defence secretary said the ARAP scheme will continue to operate and bring people back to the United Kingdom for however many are eligible and however long it takes. Wallace later confirmed that Admiral Sir Ben Key, the commander of joint operations who led the planning and evacuation from Kabul, is leading the investigation, and one person had been suspended. In light of the newly uncovered breach, an MoD spokesperson said: We have been made aware of a data breach that occurred earlier this month by the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy team. This week, the defence secretary instigated an investigation into data handling within that team. Steps have now been taken to ensure this does not happen in the future. We apologise to those affected and extra support is being offered to them. The incidents came after an MoD staff lost 50 pages of sensitive documents at a bus stop in June, and Foreign Office staff left documents identifying some Afghans who worked for British authorities on the ground in the abandoned British Embassy compound in Kabul. A man walks past the headquarters of SNC Lavalin in Montreal on Nov. 6, 2014. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson) SNC-Lavalin and 2 Former Execs Charged With Fraud and Forgery The RCMP has arrested and laid charges against two former SNC-Lavalin executives, who are now facing multiple criminal charges including fraud, fraud against the government, forgery, and conspiracy, police said on Sept. 23. The two men, identified as Normand Morin, a former vice-president of SNC-Lavalin, and Kamal Francis, a former vice-president of SNC-Lavalin International Inc., were charged, along with their former companies, in relation to criminal activities involving the Quebec-based engineering consortium. Known as Project Agrafe, the RCMP investigation is looking into various SNC subsidiaries and employees in relation to bribes that police allege were paid in exchange for obtaining contracts. This was a lengthy and highly complex investigation, said Denis Beaudoin, Inspector of the National Division RCMP Sensitive and International Investigations section, in a statement. As a result of [investigators] continued dedication, evidence was identified and gathered over a number of years, which has ultimately resulted in the charges announced today. Morin and Francis have been released from custody and are scheduled to appear in a Montreal court on Sept. 27, along with representatives for SNC Lavalin Inc. and SNC Lavalin International Inc. While the RCMP did not disclose details of the charges laid against the two men, along with SNC-Lavalin Inc. and its international branch, they involve offences under Canadas Criminal Code including forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud against the government, and conspiracy to commit fraud against the government. SNC-Lavalin was previously charged with bribery in relation to its dealings in Libya, which became the centre of a high-profile conflict between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould in 2019. Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya speaks remotely with The Epoch Times on COVID-19 data and criticism from other faculty, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times) Stanford Professor Responds to Masking Criticism, Discussion on COVID-19 Data Earlier this month, individuals at Stanford University attempted to link professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to COVID-19 death counts in Florida because of his comments on the efficacy of masks on children. Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times in a Sept. 21 interview that Stanford University hasnt taken any action in support of or against him in response. Governor DeSantis had tweeted a picture of me with a quote that was said during one of these policy roundtables. I said that vaccinating the old protects the vulnerable, said Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University. The Aug. 1 Twitter post was one of three posts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis created featuring quotes from policy roundtables. We have protected the vulnerable by vaccinating the older population. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University pic.twitter.com/M83erwn0js Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) August 1, 2021 In early September, some posters with Bhattacharyas portrait were anonymously posted around campus. The poster had a picture of me, a big picture of me, and circled Governor DeSantiss name, circled me, and then put up next to it a graph of Florida death rates from COVID, he said. Bhattacharya said he notified campus police and his department chair of the posters, but no action was taken. Its currently unknown who organized the effort or put up the posters around campus. Around the same time, Stanfords epidemiology department chair, Dr. Melissa Bondy, circulated a petition saying that several Stanford faculty members have publicly advocated for policies for others that are contrary to those the university has adopted, and that these recommendations are disturbing and contrary to public health standards; they foster uncertainty and anxiety and put lives at risk. The Federalist reported that the petition asked the university president to clarify for the faculty the limits of public pronouncements when proclaiming on public health policy. While the petition did not directly name Bhattacharya, it did include a quote from one of the Florida roundtables on child masking, during which the professor said, there are no high-quality randomized studies evaluating masks on children. Stanford has not taken any action in response to the petition. Bhattacharya said he believes disagreements in academia should be addressed through conversations, debates, and written op-eds to build discussions and knowledge. I dont believe intimidation campaigns have any place in scientific discussion. Im going to continue to speak up, he said. The Stanford School of Medicine told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: Stanford Medicine supports the freedom of faculty to voice their position, including opposing views. We do not endorse any individual views expressed by faculty, and their views do not represent an institutional position by Stanford Medicine. Conversation on Data According to the Florida Health Department, the state saw a spike in COVID-19 related deaths in late July through August, with the majority of deaths resulting among the senior population (age 65 and older). Some elected officials and other researchers have attributed the death rates to the states lack of a mask mandate; however, Bhattacharya says Floridas high death rates are due to states large senior population in relation to its overall population. Age is the single most important risk factor in determining COVID deaths. An area, region, state, or country that has an older population will just, based on that fact alone and nothing that theyve done, have higher death rates from COVID, said Bhattacharya. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Harvard University professor and co-author of the article in The Federalist, also said that data reports should adjust for age when comparing COVID-19 mortality rates across different states. Kulldorff posted a graph on Twitter showing Florida with a lower age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality per 100,000 people compared to many other states. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Florida ranks second in terms of the largest senior population (20.9 percent) in relation to the states overall population. Maine ranks first with 21.2 percent of its population over the age of 65. Bhattacharya also stated that existing research on masks on children lacks randomized trials, which he says are necessary in scientific research for developing concrete evidence and determining the effects of interventions. The evidence for masks are these mechanistic studies, where they put the masks on mannequins and theres droplets. But, the disease, at least the hypothesis is that it also spreads by aerosol. Masks, unless worn very tightly fitits very difficult to stop the spread, Bhattacharya said. Its a situation where theres a lot of uncertainty because of the data. He referred to the World Health Organizations (WHO) position that children under 5 shouldnt be required to wear masks, which differs from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) recommendation for universal indoor masking for everyone age 2 and older. Starmer Urges Labour Party to Stop Squabbling Over Past Keir Starmer has urged the Labour party to stop squabbling over its own past, saying harmful and alienating ideological contestation has made the party feel like separate families living under one roof. In an essay published ahead of Labours annual party conference in Brighton, Starmer called for unity and urged party factions to stop focusing on ideological differences, especially over the legacy of Tony Blairs New Labour government. Blairs centrist domestic policies and his pro-American foreign policy have been fiercely opposed by Labours left wing, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn and his followers. Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves his home in London, on Oct. 29, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images) In recent decades, the legacy of the 1997 Labour government has become contested to the extent that the party has at times felt like separate families living under one roof. This has been harmful and alienating, Starmer wrote. He said Labour had become a party squabbling over its own past, rather than one focused on the future of the country. When we win, it is not because the country has come round to our way of thinking but because we have seized the future and moulded it. Starmer said the ruling Conservative Partys strength is in no small part due to its ability to shed its skin and adopt flexible policy positions under different circumstances. The Conservatives are not an easy opponent to pin downand even less so when Labour has tied its own arms behind its back. Starmer set out his vision for his party to become Britains bricks and mortara symbol of solidity, reliability, shelter and the prospect of building something new and better. To do that, our party must have a relentless focus on the challenges and opportunities of the future and how they can be shaped to the interest of working people. The essay, published by The Fabian Society, has been seen as a bid to reset his leadership and craft an ambition for what Labour would look like in government ahead of his first in-person appearance at a party conference as leader. But his comments come at a time where Labour is again gripped in an internal dispute over potential changes he wants to make to leadership election rules. The current one member, one vote system introduced under former Labour leader Ed Miliband was widely seen as a key factor in the election of Corbyn as party leader in 2015, when thousands of far left activists joined and swung the party further to the left. Starmer has proposed a return to an electoral college system made up of the unions and affiliate organisations, MPs, and party members, giving unions and MPs a greater say. But left-wingers have accused Starmer of attacking party members democratic rights. The Momentum campaign group, which was born out of support for Corbyns leadership, said any attempts to change the rules at the party conference would mark the start of a civil war in the party. Oliver Dowden, Conservative Party co-chairman, commented that Labour is still talking to themselves about themselves. PA contributed to this report. Taiwan's national flags flutter beside Taipei 101 at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on Oct. 7, 2012. (Mandy Cheng/AFP via Getty Images) Taiwan Moves to Join Pacific Trade Pact Before China Taiwan has formally applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on Sept. 20, following Chinas bid last week. Taiwan submitted its application to New Zealand, who handles the paperwork for the trade bloc, but warned that if Chinas application were approved, it would struggle to join the CPTPP. Taiwan has been excluded from numerous international bodies because of pressure from Beijing for nations to abide by the One China policywhich sees the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims rulership over Taiwan. The CPTPP is a trade bloc comprised of 11 nations covering 13.4 percent of global GDP. Prospective members (including the United Kingdom, Thailand, and China) can gain entry only with unanimous support from all pact members, which currently includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. On the weekend, Australian and Japanese trade ministers expressed reluctance at the possibility of China joining the group due to its use of economic coercion against other nations, namely Australia. Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan said China could not join until members were convinced of a track record of compliance with existing trade and World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements. It would also require Beijing to resume high-level dialogue with Australia, he told Newscorps Weekend Australian. CPTPP parties would also want to be confident that an accession candidate would fully implement its commitments under the agreement in good faith, Tehan said. Japanese Deputy Finance Minister Kenji Nakanishi suggested in a post on Twitter that same day that Beijings subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises and its arbitrary application of law would hinder its efforts to join CPTPP. China is far removed from the free, fair and highly transparent world of TPP, chances that it can join are close to zero, he wrote in a Twitter post. This can be thought of as a move to prevent Taiwan from joining. Chief Trade Negotiator John Deng said Beijing could obstruct Taiwans application. So, if China joins first, Taiwans membership case should be quite risky. This is quite obvious, he told reporters on Sept. 23. He noted that the island had a different system of governance from Beijing which focused on democracy, rule of law, transparency, and respect for personal property. Taiwanese authorities have tried to avoid controversy when joining other groups, including its recent application to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where it applied using the name: Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. I stress that Taiwan is an sovereign, independent nation. It has its own name. But for trade deals the name we have used for years is the least controversial, he said. Tales of Wisdom: Lustful, Lazy Mans One Good Thought Saves Village From Starving Our Tales of Wisdom series aims to highlight important morals and inspire a cherishing of the age-old virtues that can uplift our souls and help us return to tradition. We hope you will enjoy reading this. At times, we reach a dead-end in life and accept things just the way they are. But traditional cultures and wise men across the world have said it takes just one compassionate thought or deed to actually change things for the better. This inspiring tale of wisdom passed down over the years in traditional Chinese culturelong before the communist party took over Chinatalks about how one good thought, born out of compassion, can have life-transforming effects. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Buddha Shakayamuni The Great Wall of China. (Illustration zhu difeng/Shutterstock) The fable rolls back to the times in the western mountainous area of Zhejiang province, where lived a young, lazy man who loved to eat. His was a dishonest life, marred with theft, gluttony, and lustful desires. He often stole from his friends and family in the village. The villagers also constantly complained about how he didnt live out even a single day of honest work, and often, harassed the village women. Frustrated by his actions, they wondered that what awaited him was nothing but a dreadful end. Then one fateful day, a calamity befell the village. Suddenly, the village was enveloped in dark clouds, roaring thunder, and lightning filled the sky. It seemed like this was the end, and maybe the village wouldnt survive. Almost everyone was trying to save themselves from the tragedy that was unfolding. Villagers started to flee from the fields to their houses so that they could save themselves from the heavy downpour and be with their families. However, the lazy man did the exact opposite of what the villagers did. Instead of staying home with his family, he had the sudden urge to visit the fields. Witnessing his impetuous action, his family members warned him about the dangers of going out at that time. Seeing that he paid no heed to what they said, they cursed him and said, Go, go let the lightning kill you, and when that happens, we might not be there to help you. Undeterred by all the blaspheming, he picked up his hoe and rushed to the fields, as this was not the first time he had heard such crude words and was pretty used to it as no one in the village seemed to respect him. When he arrived at the wheat fields, he saw that they had been flooded and was dismayed by the sight. However, he knew he had to act quickly to save the crops. With firm determination, he told himself, I need to do something, or all the hard work the villagers have put in will be for naught, and it would mean the entire village would be left starving. Despite the heavy rains and roaring thunder, the man rolled up his sleeves and got to work. All by himself, he picked up the hoe and started to work on the wheat fields, one row at a time, supporting the wheat stalks. Not once did he think he was going to do this task all by himself, and that he was risking his life just to support the village during this crucial period. The ancient wisdom says that the heavens and the divines saw his selfless thought of helping his fellow men and not worrying about what would happen to him and that, miraculously, after he finished working at the fields, the clouds cleared. The downpour stopped and the sky once again became bright. It was as if the divines were truly rewarding the once lazy man for his kindness and selflessness. It is like what Buddha Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama) has said: We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Indeed, one positive thought rooted in kindness can propel you in the right direction, which in turn can lead to a successful outcome. The same was experienced by the lazy man after his selfless good deed. Everything changed for him. Even though he was physically drained, mentally and spiritually, he felt transformed and uplifted. He realized the significance of his life and each action that he takes, and he promised to change for the better. As the fable goes, seeing his unbelievable transformation, not long after, everyone in the village started to respect him. He took up the path of true kindness and worked diligently from that day forth. This story serves to remind us that one compassionate thought has the power to guide us back to the light during those dark and dismaying days of our life. Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter Front to back; HNLMS Evertsen, JS Izumo, HMS Defender, HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMCS Winnipeg, JS Ise, RFA Tidespring. UK Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group 21 HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Defender, RFA Tidespring and HNLMS Evertsen from CSG21 sails with Japanese ships JS Izumo and JS Ise along with the Canadian ship HMCS Winnipeg in the Pacific Ocean, Sept. 2021. (UK Ministry of Defence via AP) Tensions Grow as US, Allies Deepen Indo-Pacific Involvement BANGKOKWith increasingly strong talk in support of Taiwan, a new deal to supply Australia with nuclear submarines, and the launch of a European strategy for greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the United States and its allies are becoming more assertive in their approach toward a rising China. China has bristled at the moves, and the growing tensions between Beijing and Washington prompted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the weekend to implore U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to repair their completely dysfunctional relationship, warning they risk dividing the world. As the U.N. General Assembly opened Tuesday, both leaders chose calming language, with Biden insisting we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs, and Xi telling the forum that China has never, and will never invade or bully others or seek hegemony. But the underlying issues have not changed, with China building up its military outposts as it presses its maritime claims over critical sea lanes, and the United States and its allies growing louder in their support of Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and deepening military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. On Thursday, China sent 24 fighter jets toward Taiwan in a large display of force after the island announced its intention to join a Pacific trade group, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, that China has also applied to join. On Friday, Biden hosts the leaders of Japan, India, and Australia for an in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue for broad talks on things such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, but also how to keep the Indo-Pacific, a vast region spanning from India to Australia, free and open, according to the White House. It comes a week after the dramatic announcement that Australia would be dropping a contract for conventional French submarines in favor of an Anglo-American offer for nuclear-powered vessels, a bombshell that overshadowed the unveiling of the European Unions strategy to boost political and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific. One thing is certain, that everyone is pivoting toward the Indo-Pacific, said Garima Mohan, an Asia program fellow with the German Marshall Fund think tank. As partners pursue moves that play to their own strengths and needs, however, the past week has underscored the lack of coordination as a networked security strategy develops, she said. Not everyone has the same threat assessment of China, she said in a telephone interview from Berlin. The EU policy emphasizes the need for dialogue with Beijing, to encourage China to play its part in a peaceful and thriving Indo-Pacific region, while at the same time proposing an enhanced naval presence and expanded security cooperation with regional partners. It also notes Chinas increased military buildup, and that the display of force and increasing tensions in regional hotspots such as in the South and East China Sea, and in the Taiwan Strait, may have a direct impact on European security and prosperity. Germany, which has close economic ties to China, got a wake-up call last week when China rejected its request for a port call for the frigate Bavaria, which is currently conducting maneuvers in the Indo-Pacific. China is telling them this inclusive approach is not going to work, so in a way its a rude awakening for Berlin, Mohan said. You have to take a position, you cant have your cake and eat it too, and if you have an Indo-Pacific strategy you cant make it neutral. Other EU countries, most notably France, have also sent naval assets for exercises in the Indo-Pacific, and Britain has had a whole carrier strike group conducting exercises for several months as London pursues the new tilt toward the region recommended by a recent British government review of defense and foreign policy. Chinas Foreign Ministry said after rejecting the Bavarias port call that it remained willing to carry out friendly exchanges with Germany on the basis of mutual respect and mutual trust, but made clear it was displeased with the increased naval presence in the region. Beijing was less reserved in its reaction to the submarine deal with Australia, under which the United States and Britain will help Canberra construct nuclear-powered submarines, calling it highly irresponsible and saying it would seriously damage regional peace and stability. In signing the pact with the United States and Britain, Australia canceled a $66 billion deal with France for diesel-powered submarines, infuriating Paris, which recalled its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra and suggested it calls into question the entire cooperative effort to blunt Chinas growing influence. While clearly irked by the surprise deal, many observers have suggested that the vociferous reaction from France may be more directed toward a domestic audience, where President Emmanuel Macron faces a reelection bid early next year. But there was clear disappointment that the United States seemed to be ignoring Frances own engagement in the region by not informing them in advance, said Laurence Nardon, an expert at the French Institute for International Relations. There was a way to do this while keeping Europeans in the loop, she said. The Indo-Pacific is important for the EU too; its not one or the other. In a call with Macron late Wednesday, Biden reaffirmed the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, according to a joint statement. More than just a decision to pursue nuclear submarines, the deal was a clear signal of Australia committing long term to being in the U.S. camp on China policy, said Euan Graham, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. The submarine decision represents an emphatic doubling down on the Australia-U.S. alliance by both countries, he said in an analysis of the deal. As the pact was introduced, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison alluded to the long-term nature, saying at its heart, todays announcements are about the oldest of friendships, the strongest of values and the deepest of commitment. The submarine deal seems likely to exacerbate the ongoing trade war between China and Australia, and Australia is hoping to strike a free trade deal with Quad partner India to help offset the economic impact. While the European strategy outline will take time, the plan provides clarity in how the EU is prepared to work with the United States and its allies in the regionsomething that has been lacking in the past. Theres a lack of understanding on the U.S. side of why Europe is interested in the Indo-Pacific and exactly what kind of role it wants to play, Mohan said in a podcast on the issue. Theres also a lack of understanding of the U.S. approach. In the outline of the strategy, the EU broadly looks to pool its resources for greater effect, and to work more closely with the Quad countries, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and others. It also envisions enhancing current operations, such as the Atalanta anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa and in the western Indian Ocean, and the expansion of the EU maritime security and safety mission in the wider Indian Ocean area, which has already been broadened to Southeast Asia. By David Rising Texas State Police vehicles are lined up along the border as thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the International Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico, while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Texas Governor Sends Steel Wall of Cars to Block Illegal Immigrants at Border Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he directed hundreds of state Department of Public Safety vehicles to create a steel wall to block illegal immigrantsmostly Haitiansfrom crossing into the United States. During an interview with Fox News, the Republican governor said the barrier of vehicles prevented people from illegally walking into the state of Texas. In photos taken at the scene in Del Rio, thousands of Haitians can be seen congregating under a bridge, and a significant number of DPS vehicles are parked along a road near a waterway. The wall of vehicles, Abbott said, has prevented illegal aliens from crossing a dam into Texas. The Texas Department of Public Safety stepped up, he said, adding that if President Joe Biden followed a judges order to reimplement the Trump-era Remain in Mexico protocols, there wouldnt be chaos in Del Rio. Because the Biden administration has been promoting and allowing open border policies, it has been the state of Texas that had to step up, Abbott said Sept. 21 during a news conference in Del Rio with local officials, including the citys mayor, Bruno Lozano. Abbott has long championed the construction of a border wall in Texas, which was a top priority of former President Donald Trump. The governor has attempted to gain funding and approval from private landowners to construct a state-backed border wall in Texas. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the International Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico, while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the International Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico, while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Biden, meanwhile, has faced significant criticism from Republicans and some Democrats whose districts lie along the border for dozens of immigration-related orders, including one that suspended construction of the physical border wall. The president has described it as ineffective and a waste of money. The White House, amid the surge of Haitian illegal immigrants, has attempted to pivot away from the burgeoning crisis by focusing on photos of Border Patrol agents on horseback apprehending people who illegally crossed the border. At the same time, the administration said its planning to double the number of Haitians being deported back to their country of origin. What I saw depicted about those individuals on horseback treating human beings the way they were, was horrible, said Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden has tasked with taking the lead on migration issues. Im deeply troubled about it, she added, voicing support for a Homeland Security investigation into the matter. Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the International Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico, while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) However, a top Border Patrol union official said that statements made by White House officials, including press secretary Jen Psaki, are false. Thats your defund the police movement right there, Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council, told The Epoch Times of the images and video footage of agents on horseback. They only show a short segment of a video. The horse patrol agents under the administration are trained to ensure the safety of the migrants, to keep them away from the horses, because the horses can harm peoplethey can inadvertently step on them, they can rear up, they can kick them. White House officials didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. The China-Pakistan-Taliban Dynamic: What It Means for the US and India News Analysis China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran have maintained their embassies in Afghanistan. Taliban representatives also met with those governments, as well as the government of Turkmenistan, before assuming power. India and the United States, by contrast, closed their embassies and recalled their diplomats. At a recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, both Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan, called on the international community to engage with the Taliban, particularly on the subject of antiterrorism. It is estimated that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 foreign terrorists in Afghanistan, roughly 6,000 of whom are from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. The so-called Iron Brotherhoodthe relationship between China and Pakistanhas been strengthened by the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan as the two countries find that their policies on the Taliban running Afghanistan broadly align. Both Pakistan and the Chinese regime welcome the Taliban into power as they hope that the Taliban can help curb terrorism in their respective countries and because a Taliban takeover will complicate decision making for India and the United States. Pakistan applauded the U.S. withdrawal because it meant an end to Indias influence in Kabul. China and India have had several border clashes, which have resulted in a year-long standoff in the Himalayas. India got on well with the previous Afghanistan government. The Taliban, on the other hand, is likely to become Indias adversary, particularly if it aligns with China. The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) engagement with the Taliban will ensure that India has no influence in Kabul. An Indian Air Force Hercules military transport plane prepares to land at an airbase in Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh bordering China, on Sept. 8, 2020. (Mohd Arhaan Archer/AFP via Getty Images) The United States has been fighting the Taliban for the better part of two decades and is expected to remain at odds with the terrorist organization. At the same time, the relationship between Beijing and Washington continues to be adversarial in terms of economics, trade, and national defense. Consequently, the CCP and Pakistan strengthening ties with the Taliban has put the United States in a difficult position. Pakistan sees an opportunity to expand its geo-economic interests, connecting Central Asia with the Arabian Sea at Gwadar Port. These hopes hinge on the assumption that the Taliban could stabilize Afghanistan and that the Taliban could and would prevent terrorist attacks from being launched from Afghanistan into Pakistan, China, and Central Asia. But so far, the U.S. pullout has emboldened terrorists across the region as they see this as a major victory. The Syria-based chapter of the Turkestan Islamic Party issued a congratulatory statement when the Taliban took Kabul. Although the Taliban has promised to clamp down on foreign terrorists, it has not given any indication of how to do that. Terrorist attacks on Chinese targets in China are rare, but the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an obvious, soft target. CPEC projects have come under attack in the past, either because the Pakistan Taliban resented Chinas presence in Pakistan or as reprisals for the CCPs repression against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Pakistani naval personnel stands guard near a ship carrying containers at Gwadar Port, Pakistan, on Oct. 4, 2017. (Amelie Herenstein/AFP via Getty Images) The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, has increased its attacks in Pakistan, killing seven Pakistani soldiers near the Afghanistan border and in a separate incident, killing 13 civilians on a bus, as well as claiming responsibility for a suicide attack in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. Consequently, the TTP has been identified as one of the greatest threats to stability in Pakistan. Pakistans Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has offered a pardon to TTP members if they promise not to get involved in terrorist activities, but the offer has been rejected. He has since expressed his hope that the Taliban would help convince TTP members to drop their armed insurgency. Meanwhile, there are reports that TTP fighters were released from Afghanistan prisons when the Taliban took over the country. The Taliban has said that it would like to join CPEC. While this may seem like a win-win situation, it would require providing additional investment and taking more risks by Beijing. It is possible the Taliban will cooperate with the Chinese regime, in some limited way, preventing terrorist attacks, in exchange for recognition and financial support. But it is unclear if the Taliban would have the power or the willingness to do that. One motivation for the Taliban to make good on its antiterrorist promises to Beijing is that it is hoping China will extract the $1 trillion to $3 trillion of mineralsincluding lithium for electric car batteriesthat are sitting idle under the earth in Afghanistan. Economic support from China has become even more important for Afghanistan as international financial institutions have frozen bank accounts and other overseas assets, and international donors have stopped sending money. As there will most likely be no money from the West, the Taliban knows that China may be its only major source of funding. But this does not guarantee the safety of Chinese investments. In the past, Taliban promises of protection for Chinese projects proved ineffective. Meanwhile, in addition to attacks by the Taliban, Chinese investments will be vulnerable to attacks by other militant groupsforeign or anti-Taliban groups. Even under the relative stability of the U.S. involvement, China had made little progress on its existing investments in Afghanistan and had not even begun the extraction of Afghanistans rare earth minerals. On the other hand, Beijing may be encouraged to invest in Afghanistan just to extend the country an economic lifeline. The CCP probably does not need a pariah state, another North Korea, on its border. Aside from terrorism and security concerns, alignment between the CCP and the Taliban could have economic implications for the domination of Central Asian markets and geopolitics. As the influence of Russia slowly diminishes in the region, India hoped to benefit, filling some of the void. In 2016, the CCP briefly established a military base in Tajikistan to conduct counterterrorism operations against ethnic Uyghur separatists. Through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Beijing has increased its engagement with and influence over Central Asia, working to counter independence movements by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from destabilizing Chinas Xinjiang region. Chinese investment in the region has already eclipsed Indian investment, and Beijing hopes to widen the gap. Chinese soldiers stand at attention during Peace Mission-2016 joint military exercises of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Balykchy, Kyrgyzstan, on Sept. 19, 2016. (Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images) The CCPs propaganda machine is exploiting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a signal of diminishing U.S. hegemony, military, and geopolitical power. Beijing has warned both Taiwan and India that the United States may no longer be a reliable ally. Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh similarly said that Biden had dealt a blow to Indian national security and that India-U.S. ties would suffer as a result. The Times of India, an Indian English-language daily news media, however, has interpreted the U.S. pullout a bit differently, saying that the Taliban has not won a war. It has simply exploited the flawed policies of a fatigued American president, rather than the United States itself. Whether Delhi turns away from the United States remains to be seen. India has more than $3 billion in investments in Afghanistan, which it may want to preserve. It is possible that India and the United States may allow a Taliban-led Afghanistan, as long as it ends regional terrorism. India is also a major economic player. So the Taliban may be willing to engage economically with India as a way of counter-balancing Chinese influence. President Joe Biden has moved the U.S. foreign policy away from overseas nation-building, instead, focusing on maintaining U.S. primacy, ahead of China and Russia. As such, the United States may be satisfied with a stable Afghanistan and an end to international terrorism, rather than be concerned about Afghanistans internal affairs or whether China and Pakistan maintain most of the influence in the country. In spite of Beijings warnings to U.S. allies, there is no reason to believe that the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan signals a lessening of U.S. commitments to its partners and allies, including India. India currently participates in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, one of the primary U.S.-led strategies to contain Beijing. The task of creating a functioning economy and a stable civil society in Afghanistan will now fall on Pakistan and China, neither of which has much experience in these areas. It is possible that that task will be an expensive and painful one for them, providing the United States and India more room to plan and maneuver. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Its Time to Break Up the FBI Commentary FBI director Christopher Wray says that he would like to do away with encrypted messenger services like Signal that I and many of my friends and colleagues use to communicate with each other. Wray claims that would make it easier to counter so-called domestic extremism that he and secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas, not to mention most of the staff of MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times, are insisting (forget al-Qaeda, et al.) is the greatest threat to our nation today. You know, folks like that hapless fellow in horns thats been in solitary confinement since Jan. 6 as if he were a serial killer, he and those thousands of other terrorists and insurrectionists, only one of whom, it turns out, had a gun, who stormed (or were they waved in) to the Capitol that day. But truth to tell, the very reason Iand I assume othersam on Signal and Telegraph is to stay as far as possible from prying prevaricators like Wray and Mayorkas and, most of all, from the organizations they lead. I recommend others do the same. One doesnt have to go much further than last weeks revelation the FBI looked the other way for years on multiple cases of sexual abuse of our very young female Olympic gymnasts to know the organization is not only corrupt, its morally repellent. As Jon Gabriel notes in Larry Nassar got his due punishment. When will his FBI enablers get theirs? the FBI was busy chasing imaginary crimes instead of ending the serial abuse these national heroes suffered. Of course, this mostly took place when James Comey was director. Wray is merely covering up, just as he has been for that great, even more monstrous, if thats possible, other national malfeasance (i.e., imaginary crime) that has affected all of usthe little matter of supposed Trump-Russia collusion. That collusion was concoctedas has been demonstrated by John Durhams latest indictment, if we didnt know in the first placeby Hillary Clinton and her ever-complaisant legal representatives (a privacy & data security attorney no less) and mainlined to the public by an FBI who took Hillary and the attorneys lies at face value and ran with them. Oh, how they ran with them, running roughshod over the rights of Americans, destroying the careers of the most patriotic citizens, like Gen. Michael Flynn, all in the attempt to upend the democratic election of a president or destroy his reputation once he had won. This was attempted or accomplished by what has been revealed as a highly-politicized and secretive national police force. Then there was this putative kidnapping of Michigan governor Whitmer in which more FBI agents were involved than kidnappers. And the recent paltry Jan. 6 demonstration in which FBI attendance was only exceeded by the press (or maybe it was the other way around). There has been little or no accountability, thus far, for any of this, with two minor exceptions due to Durhams work. Many of us are hoping for more. Maybe we will have it. Christopher Wray is clearly hoping for the opposite, practicing the old Nixonian technique of the limited hangout while doing his best to obfuscate the demonstrated evil that occurred in any way possible. Meanwhile, he points the finger at the rest of us as extremists with no evidence of anything other than Constitutionally-protected political opposition. If Mr. Wray is really concerned about domestic terrorists, he should look in the mirror. Nevertheless, since Im a good guy and like to think of myself as a patriot, I will save his techno-goons some time and effort, forego Signal and say right here in public what I well might say in encrypted form. Its not all that hard, since its so obvious. Like Carthage, the FBI delenda est. The FBI must be destroyed. (Holman Jenkins has written similarly in Abolish the FBI in the Sept. 22 Wall Street Journal.) In The American Mind the estimable Angelo Codevilla advocates reforming it, but it is too late, not just because of its recent activities, but because of its history that has consistently, since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, devoted far too much attention to domestic spying on so-called enemies within (actually political enemies for one reason or another) and far too little to serious crimes like the Olympic gymnast scandal. The identity of those enemies varied with the political winds or with the out-of-control power ambitions of people like Hoover. When I say the FBI delenda est, I mean not just the Seventh Floor leadership that some, like Sean Hannity, blame for the entire problem, but the whole organization and everyone in it. The fish may rot from the top but the rot seeps down, fatally if left alone long enough. And in this case the rank-and-file agents below apparently went along with a lot of malevolent activities. Is it possible they were all blind to them? Where were the whistleblowers? No, everyone must go and the organization too. After the FBI is gone, we can think about how to build a replacement. With 16 other intelligence agencies, thered probably be plenty of backup, although a number of them should probably go too. Nevertheless, as they say in that horrible cliche at the end of the day, what a relief it would be that when the Feds come calling, the first thing you think about would not be where you put your lawyers phone number. It might even be how can I help. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. StarTrack workers on strike in Sydney after crisis talks failed in Sydney, Australia on Sept. 23, 2021. (AAP Image/Supplied by Transport Workers Union) Thousands of Australian Delivery Workers Strike Across the Country for Job Security Thousands of delivery workers at Australian courier company StarTrack have walked off the job for 24 hours from midnight Sept. 23 after negotiations over job security and pay broke down. Around 2,000 StarTrack employees are striking across the country after the Fair Work Commission approved the industrial action while rejecting StarTracks claim that it would jeopardise lives and health by delaying vaccine deliveries. The Transport Workers Union (TWU) said StarTrack management should be trying to reach a mutually beneficial agreement with their workers rather than using COVID-19 to threaten jobs. Were pleased the Fair Work Commission has approved this action, TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said in a statement. Had StarTrack been genuinely concerned about any impact to vaccines or medical supplies, it would have flagged this weeks ago when it opposed a protected action ballot and worked cooperatively with the union to ensure provisions could be made, as undertaken by the TWU. A StarTrack spokesman said they were offering a guaranteed pay rise of nine percent over three years, the best pay offer among competitors. StarTrack is not proposing any reductions in pay or conditions for its employees, the spokesman told AAP. However, Kaine said the strike was more about job security than better pay after there was a surge in outsourcing to rates as high as 70 percent in some areas. Demand is sky-high, but standards are at rock bottom thanks to unregulated exploitation through the likes of Uber and AmazonFlex, which are smashing good, safety standards and jobs, Kaine said. A worker assembles a box for delivery at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 30, 2019. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters) StarTrack said while they have contingency plans to minimise the impact of the strike, customers will be impacted with delays. StarTrack are disappointed that the TWU is taking this action during a time when the crucial supply of essential goods has never been more important, particularly given we have offered a market-leading guaranteed pay rise, reflecting the hard work of our workforce, StarTrack said in a statement. Australians are already experiencing increased delivery delays as delivery companies are under pressures of lockdown restrictions and higher volumes of online shopping orders. However, Aussies are likely to experience further delays once workers from rival company FedEx also walk off the job for a 24-hour strike next Thursday, Sept. 30, for the same reasons. TWU said an overwhelming 97 percent of members voted for the action after FedEx rejected worker demands for caps for outside hire and guaranteed work for existing employees before turning to outside contractors. Kaine said the two strikes affecting an estimated 6,000 workers showed the deep insecurity that transport workers felt, and called on the federal government to create minimum protections for workers. Operators have the impossible task of trying to compete with exploitative gig companies like Amazon Flex which threaten to obliterate good, safe jobs if regulation is not urgently forthcoming, he said. Students and parents arrive masked for the first day of the school year at Grant Elementary School in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2021. (Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images) Three More California School Districts Mandate COVID-19 Vaccines for Students At least three more school districts in California are going to require students aged 12 and older to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school, following the states largest school districtLos Angeles Unified School Districtannouncing the mandate two weeks ago. On Wednesday night, school boards of the Oakland Unified School District, the Piedmont Unified School District, and the Hayward Unified School District voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for students. The School board of the Oakland Unified School District passed a resolution by 51, with one abstention. The resolution requires all students 12 and older to be fully vaccinated. Exemptions would be for medical and personal belief reasons, San Francisco Chronicle reported. The superintendent told the board the school district couldnt implement the mandate before January. According to the proposed resolution (pdf), the superintendent is tasked to initiate a vaccination campaign and establish vaccination thresholds and incentives for each school. Students who do not want to get a COVID-19 vaccine and do not qualify for an exemption may ultimately be unenrolled from the district, the proposed resolution showed. The Piedmont Unified School District board approved a similar mandate unanimously, KRON4 reported. A student adjusts her facemask at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, Calif., on Nov. 16, 2020. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images) Currently, only Pfizers vaccine has been granted emergency use authorization for kids 12 years old and up. On Aug. 23, Pfizers Comirnaty vaccine received full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for 16 years old and older. On Monday, Pfizer announced that phase 2/3 trial results showed that its vaccine was safe, well-tolerated among 5 to 11 years of age, and demonstrating strong immune response. Californias top health official said Thursday that a statewide vaccine requirement for kids 12 and older could be forthcoming. Ghaly issued a joint statement Wednesday with California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Tomas J. Aragon, saying, Vaccines are safe and effective, and theyre how we end this pandemic. It continues to be incredibly important that unvaccinated Californians get vaccinated as soon as possible to protect both themselves and their loved ones, the statement reads. The statement says California supports administering Pfizer boosters to people eligible and is ready to do so. FDA approved the booster under emergency use earlier that day. On Aug. 11, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that all school employees must be fully vaccinated or submit to testing at least once per week to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Taliban leader Mullah Nooruddin Turabi poses for a photo in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 22, 2021. Mullah Turabi, one of the founders of the Taliban, says the hard-line movement will once again carry out punishments like executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) Top Taliban Official: Executions, Strict Punishment Will Return to Afghanistan A top Taliban official in Afghanistan said that the extremist group that now rules the country will carry out executions and the amputations of hands and feet. Speaking to The Associated Press, Taliban co-founder Mullah Nooruddin Turabi dismissed criticism of the groups previous rule of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, where public executions, floggings, stonings, and amputations were commonplace. Turabi, who lost an eye and a leg fighting against Soviet invaders in the 1980s, is the head of the new Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and is in charge of enforcing punishments. Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments, Turabi told the Associated Press in a report published Thursday. No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran. During the Talibans rule more than 20 years ago, convicted murderers were executed by a single shot to the head and typically by the victims familysometimes in stadiums and in other public arenas. Convicted thieves face the amputation of their hand, and for those who are convicted of highway robbery, a foot and a hand were cut off. Taliban fighters stand guard as they check commuters at a road checkpoint in Kabul on Sept. 4, 2021. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images) In a change from a previous Taliban rule, Turabi told the outlet that female judges will now be able to adjudicate cases. But the foundation of the South Asian countys laws will be its interpretation of the Quran, he said. Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security, he told AP, saying it had a deterrent effect. Its not clear whether the punishment will be carried out in public, but the government is studying the topic and will develop a policy. Defending the prior Taliban rule, which allowed for the harboring of terrorist networks including al-Qaeda, Turabi told AP: We had complete safety in every part of the country. He pointed to the groups public punishment methods, saying they deter crime. But already, human rights groups such as Amnesty International have said the Taliban is steadily dismantling human rights gains made during the past 20 years. That includes the targeted killings of civilians and surrendered soldiers and the blockading of humanitarian supplies in the Panjshir Valley, which constitute crimes under international law, said Amnesty on Tuesday. Restrictions have also been reimposed on women, freedom of expression, and civil society. The Taliban, which is described by some U.S. intelligence agencies as a terrorist group, took over Afghanistan in a matter of days after a blistering offensive. The takeover was preceded by the U.S. militarys total withdrawal from the country, which morphed into a rushed and chaotic evacuation effort that saw thousands of Afghan nationals and Americans flee the country via airplanes. Some senators have expressed concern that the Taliban, as it captured the country, was able to seize billions of dollars worth of U.S. military hardware including Black Hawk helicopters, weapons, and other technology. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss boarding RAF Voyager at Stansted Airport ahead of a four-day visit to New York and Washington on Sept. 19, 2021. (Stefan Rousseau/PA) UK Foreign Secretary to Push for CPTPP Membership on Mexico Trip British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will visit Mexico on Thursday to seek its continued support for the UK to join a Trans-Pacific trade pack, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said. The newly appointed foreign secretary is travelling from New York, where she represented the UK at the U.N. General Assembly along with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. As hopes to seal a U.S.UK free trade agreement (FTA) fell through, the UK government is now focusing on trade deals with other Western partners as well as finding its way to the Asia-Pacific region. According to the FCDO, Truss is expected to discuss plans to develop a new, updated UK-Mexico FTA; open a new British embassy building; and seek Mexicos continued support for Britains accession into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Closer ties with Mexico are a key part of our plan to strengthen economic, security, and diplomatic links with like-minded allies who share our belief in free enterprise and free trade, the foreign secretary said in a statement. A trade deal with Mexico, for example, will pave the way for us to join the CPTTP, one of the worlds biggest free trade areas, she added. Our relationship with Mexico has huge potential. It could open vast new opportunities for businesses, support jobs across Britain, and help ensure we play a key role in an open and dynamic Indo-Pacific. Truss is also expected to visit an AstraZeneca vaccine bottling site and attend a dinner with celebrity British-Mexican chef Fernando Stovell to celebrate British food. CPTPP is a landmark 11-country trade deal that includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, and Peru. The UK started exploring CPTPP membership in 2018 in the hope of stimulating exports after Brexit. Truss applied for a British membership on Feb. 1 when she was the minister for international trade, and in June the CPTPP announced that the accession process would begin. The UKs exploration of business ties in the Indo-Pacific region echos the governments new Integrated Review of security, defence, development, and foreign policy, which said the UK is pivoting toward the region in support of mutually-beneficial trade, shared security, and values. On Sept. 16, China has also filed an application to join the CPTPP, followed by Taiwan four days later. An aerial view shows field workers picking vegetables on a farm in Oxnard, California, on Feb. 24, 2015. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters) US Farm Group Seeks Stronger Antitrust Action With New Campaign The National Farmers Union, the nations second-largest farm group, said on Wednesday it is launching a campaign to expose the negative effects of consolidation in the agriculture industry on family farms and rural towns. The campaign, which it said will include a public relations blitz and lobbying, is part of an effort to push Washington to crack down on monopolistic behavior in the industry as lawmakers propose legislation to bring more price and market transparency to highly consolidated farm markets. Meat companies have faced scrutiny for their market power, which critics say has allowed them to buy at low prices from small farm suppliers, who have few other options to sell to, and then make big profits on the retail market. The Department of Justice is conducting an investigation into alleged price-fixing by big meat companies like Koch Foods and Pilgrims Pride, which has resulted in several indictments. NFU president Rob Larew expressed optimism that the Biden administration would act. Republican Montana Senator Jon Tester and Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison attended the event. In his July executive order on competition, President Joe Biden directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to better enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act, a century-old law regulating meat industry competition. The White House also recently attributed higher meat prices to a lack of competition. The North American Meat Institute, which represents packers who control 95 percent of U.S. meat processing, denies that packer concentration is related to rising meat prices. Small toy figures are seen in front of a Zoom logo in this illustration picture taken on March 15, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters) US Government to Probe Zooms $14.7 Billion Five9 Deal for National Security Risks A U.S. government committee that reviews foreign investment in telecom is probing videoconferencing company Zooms $14.7 billion deal for cloud call center company Five9. In an August filing with the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department, which chairs the committee, said it would review the deal to determine whether this application poses a risk to the national security or law enforcement interests of the United States. The Justice Department believes that such risk may be raised by the foreign participation (including the foreign relationships and ownership) associated with the application. The Wall Street Journal first reported the probe. The Justice Department did not say in its filing what the foreign ties of concern were and spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle declined to answer questions Tuesday. Five9 spokesperson Allison Wilson declined to comment. Zoom said in an emailed statement that it anticipates getting the required regulatory approvals and closing the Five9 deal in the first half of 2022. Zoom spokesperson CJ Lin did not respond to further questions. Zoom is based in San Jose, California, and says more than half of its employees are in the United States. But it has a sizable number of research and development workers in China, which the company has noted has exposed it to government and media scrutiny. Zooms CEO, Eric Yuan, was born in China and became a U.S. citizen in 2007. The company said in a late August regulatory filing that it is cooperating with ongoing investigations by prosecutors in New York and California, who last summer had sent subpoenas that asked about interactions with the Chinese regime, among other things. Zoom last year drew attention for blocking online meetings related to Beijings 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and temporarily suspending the accounts of three U.S. or Hong Kong-based activists at the request of the Chinese communist regime. The company then said it would no longer allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China. Tensions in recent years have increased between Washington and Beijing, with disputes over trade, technology, cybersecurity, and human rights. The U.S. government has taken a tougher stance on Chinese investment, with more scrutiny of deals. Zoom has said that buying San Ramon, California-based Five9 will accelerate its growth and give it access to more business clients. Zoom Video Communications Inc. went public in early 2019, before the pandemic made the company a household name with the shift to online school and work. A surfer practices for the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) US Open of Surfing Returns to Huntington Beach The largest surfing event in the world has returned to the shores of Huntington Beach, California, after its cancellation in 2020. The reactivation of the 2021 U.S. Open of Surfing Huntington Beach is being held from September 20th26th. As a major stop on the World Surf Leagues (WSL) worldwide tour, 96 men and 64 female professional surfers compete for a first-place cash prize of $20,000 for both male and female divisions. The contest, formerly known for drawing upwards of 500,000 people, is divided into 5 stages of rounds surfed between four surfers per heat until reaching the sixth state of the final round this Sunday, where surfers are judged by their two highest-ranking waves, ranging from one to ten points during their heats 30-minute interval. Tuesday mornings surf conditions ranged into the 14-foot range with light winds, but the lack of power on the peaking waves created a challenge for the surfers as they pumped with their boards through the surfs flat sections. We are actually fortunate to even have a little of this Northwest swell, big wave surfer and WSL commentator Peter Mel announced during the contest. He chuckled, Because if not, it would be even smaller. If successful in making the reforming section of the surf, the competitors could use the remainder of the wave to sneak in their most powerful maneuver before the wave collapses on itself near the sand. People gather to watch surfers practice for the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) The last heat of the womens contest on Wednesday saw surfersMolly Picklum (Australia); Alyssa Spencer, 18, of Carlsbad, California; Ella McCaffray, 18, of Encinitas, California; and Nadia Erostarbe (Spain)battle it out in the inconsistent waist to chest high waves as hundreds watched from the beach and Huntington Beach Pier. McCaffray caught the first wave of the heat with a quick drop-in followed by a confident turn off the top of the wave. After making it through the flat section, the wave speed increased closer to the shore allowing her to complete a final snap with the judges giving her a 4.83 out of 10. Up next was Erostarbe whose aggressive style made the most a wave that lacked power on takeoff by pumping her board into steeper sections of the wave and throwing two backside snaps, but unfortunately stumbled off her board shortly after her second maneuver. The fall will definitely factor in, Mel commentated. Even if you have a nice maneuver, a fall will generally leave a sour taste in the judges mouth and not necessarily throw down big numbers. The next wave of the heat saw Spencer give way to a rocky start by failing to access a surfable part of her wave for tricks and pulled off of it for a better option. Those watching the contest have the option of selecting who will win between the surfers of each heat, and predicted McCaffray as the WSL fan-picked favorite of the heat, with 51 percent of the votes. With over 20 minutes left on the clock, she had the time she needed to make selective decisions on her upcoming wave. A surfer practices for the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Picklum took on the next wave to roll through, only to also pull off after not obtaining the speed needed to make it to the inside section, receiving a 0.57 from watching judges. Though each woman managed to commit to several point-making maneuvers over the course of the 15 waves, only two would advance to the next round of contenders hungry for the win. There looks like there could be an opportunity here, Mel shared watching Picklum paddling into a crumbling chest-high wave. This could be the big moment It was now the final 3 minutes of the heat and Picklum, still in last place, needed a 7.16 to advance to the next round. No longer having the time for wave selections, she took off on a wave and did a small top turn while surfing towards the pier when her wave began to flatten off. She then powerfully pumped her board through the flat section with the wave reforming to flow in the opposite direction, allowing her the speed to throw her fins over the top of the wave and complete a turn for the completion of a two-trick wave. Judges gave her a 5.30, moving her to 3rd place within the heat. Spencer, smoothly surfing the wave of the heat just before Picklum, would go on to winning between the four women with a score total of 9.17. She will progress to the next round of the contest taking place tomorrow, along with Erostarbe who achieved an 8.83 from contest judges. The two women will continue pushing towards the final round set to happen Sunday, which is forecasted to have improved surfing conditions. Watch the U.S Open of Surfing Hunting Beach live at: https://www.worldsurfleague.com/watch US Treasurys Yellen Urges Irish Finance Minister to Take Global Tax Deal WASHINGTONU.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged Paschal Donohoe, the finance minister of low-tax Ireland, to take a once in a generation opportunity for a global deal that would stop a race to the bottom on corporate tax rates, the Treasury said on Wednesday. Despite pressure from Yellen and European Union officials, Ireland has not wavered in its opposition as an October deadline approaches to finalize a deal for a global minimum tax of at least 15 percentwell above Irelands 12.5 percent rate. Donohoe said on Monday that Ireland was still some bit away from joining the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tax agreement as he waits to see whether a deeply divided U.S. Congress will accept the Biden administrations proposed tax increases. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (L) meets with Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe as finance ministers from across the G7 nations meet at Lancaster House in London on June 5, 2021. (Alberto Pezzali/WPA Pool/Getty Images) Yellen, during a call with Donohoe, expressed appreciation for Irelands constructive participation in the OECD tax reform talks, and the two ministers agreed to keep in close communication on the issue, the Treasury said in a statement. Secretary Yellen emphasized the goal of stabilizing the international tax system and stopping the race to the bottom through this once in a generation opportunity offered by the OECD Inclusive Framework, the Treasury added. By David Lawder Western Australia Govt. Pushes For Children to Roll up Sleeves and Get COVID-19 Jab The Western Australian (WA) government is urging students to roll up their sleeves and receive a COVID-19 vaccination ahead of Term 4 as children aged 12 and over have been given the green light to receive the Moderna vaccine. Having access to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in selected pharmacies provides another option for Western Australians to get the jab, WA Health Minister Roger Cook said. Students aged 16 and over and school staff can also walk into designated COVID-19 vaccination clinics to get vaccinated without the need for a booking. If you are eligible, I urge you to get the COVID-19 vaccine now, WA Premier Mark McGowan said on Sept. 17. Senior secondary students aged 16 and older and school staff should get along to one of the walk-in clinics as soon as you get the chance. It takes hardly any time and is a great opportunity for you to roll up your sleeve and help keep WA safe. Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan during a press release at the COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic in Claremont, Perth, Australia, on May 3, 2021. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images) Walk-in opportunities will be available at specific clinics outside of school hours and during school holidays in city and regional areas around the state. There are a number of additional ways students and school staff can now get vaccinated if they are unable to book an appointment and attend one of the existing clinics, WA education minister Sue Ellery said. This is a busy period for our school students and staff but, as we draw to the end of this term, there is a greater opportunity for eligible people from our schools to get vaccinated. Once Term 4 begins, some Year 12 students and staff will also have the option to get vaccinated on campus with the WA government launch a rolling school-based vaccination program beginning with 20 schools, with priority given to residential, agriculture, and boarding colleges. You dont want to have COVID for Christmas; we want to get this vaccination out in the community in all eligible people before we have any crossing of our borders of COVID in our community, WA vaccine commander Chris Dawson said on Sept. 17. McGowan has been strongly pushing for the states adolescents to receive vaccinations ever since children aged 12 and over became eligible for Pfizer vaccines on Sept. 12. Parents have also been called on to push young teens to get jabbed. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference organized by Geneva Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 3, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters) WHOs Tedros Wins German Backing for Second Term BERLINGerman Health Minister Jens Spahn backed a second term for World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and called on other countries to support the former Ethiopian health minister ahead of a deadline this week. We invite partner countries to join us nominating DG (Director General) Tedros, Spahn told Reuters. The support is significant as Germany is a major financial backer of the WHO. Last week, sources told Reuters that Tedros looks set to run unopposed for a second term at the helm of the WHO as it tries to guide the world through its biggest health crisis in a century, even though he lacks the support of Ethiopia due to friction over the Tigray conflict. Tedros, who has been the public face of the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, has trodden a fine line while managing to anger both China and the United States at different times. The Trump administration accused him of being China-centric, a charge he denies. Tedros said in July that a second phase of studies into the origins of the coronavirus in China were needed, including audits of laboratories. While Tedros has not publicly acknowledged his plans to run again for a second five-year term, saying he was focusing on fighting the pandemic, four sources said he is the only known candidate. The Wisconsin State Capitol, in Madison, Wisconsin, houses both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature along with the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Office of the Governor. (Carol M. Highsmith via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain) Wisconsin Supreme Court Agrees to Consider Redrawing States Electoral Map A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 43 to take up a lawsuit from Wisconsin voters over the states redistricting process that may lead to the court drawing up the states new electoral map for 2022 if the Democratic governor and Republican state legislature fail to agree on one. The lawsuit, Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Aug. 23 invoking the courts original jurisdiction. Although the state legislature and the governor, currently Tony Evers, normally approve new legislative maps, some Wisconsinites fear that a divided government will lead to an impasse that will require a judicial plan for apportionment. They note that the two branches of government have repeatedly failed in recent decades to agree on new maps after new census results are released and view the lawsuit as a kind of insurance policy against the chaos that the absence of a redistricting blueprint could bring. On Sept. 22 the court agreed to hear the case. The petitioners are represented by a conservative group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). WILLs petition to the court states that the results of the 2020 census make clear what everyone knew would occur. Based on population increases and decreases in different geographic areas, the existing apportionment plans for Wisconsins Congressional, State Senate, and State Assembly seats no longer meet the Wisconsin constitutional requirements summarized in the principle of one person, one vote. The U.S. Census Bureau delivered apportionment counts on Aug. 12 to President Joe Biden based upon the 2020 census, the petition states. From 2010 to 2020, Wisconsins population rose to 5,893,718 from 5,686,986. Because there are eight Wisconsin congressional districts, this means the ideal population of each district is 736,715. The population of the districts ranges from a low of 695,395 in the 4th Congressional District to a high of 789,393 in the 2nd Congressional District. Republicans hold five of the states seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; Democrats hold three. The Petitioners, among many others, now live in state and/or congressional voting districts that have many more people than live in other districts and, as a result, have a diluted vote relative to the votes of others who live in less populated districts. WILL deputy counsel Anthony LoCoco explained why his organization brought the legal action. With the new census results, Wisconsins districts are no longer constitutionally apportioned, due to population shifts, LoCoco told The Epoch Times. Some districts are overpopulated and some are underpopulated, meaning that Wisconsinites right to the principle of one person one vote is no longer being protected. LoCoco said the legal team filed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to vindicate our clients rights to their undiluted vote, and to ensure that if a court has to draw a new district map, that itd be a state court, rather than a federal court. The United States Supreme Court has made clear that redistricting is primarily a state duty and responsibility. In its decision agreeing to take the case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court stated that it has long deemed redistricting challenges a proper subject for the courts exercise of its original jurisdiction. We are mindful that judicial relief becomes appropriate in reapportionment cases only when a legislature fails to reapportion according to constitutional requisites in a timely fashion after having had an adequate opportunity to do so. But, the court added, in the states modern history, redistricting has primarily fallen to the judiciary. We have a history of letting federal courts handle these matters, perhaps because it removes us from the thicket of political conflicts. Our job, however, is not to avoid controversy but to declare the law. The timeline for the case isnt yet clear, LoCoco said. And thats something that we observed in our petitionwe noted that the legislature and the governor should absolutely be given a chance to reach agreement on a new set of maps, he said. Because nomination papers have to be circulated by April 2022, presumably, any maps would need to be in place by then so candidates know what districts theyre running for. A case over Wisconsins new electoral map is also pending in federal court, with a trial date expected in January. Your Call May Be Monitored: China-Like Surveillance Comes to the US Commentary In China, WeChat has become an indispensable tool for 1.2 billion of the countrys 1.4 billion people. Need to transfer money? Use WeChat. Need to book a doctors appointment? Use WeChat. Need to order a taxi? Use WeChat. Need to message a friend? Use WeChat. The super-app, as you can see, is used for everything imaginable. Not surprisingly, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) uses WeChat to spy on Chinese citizens. After all, data is power. The more of it you have, the easier it is to detect patterns and irregularities. In China, information gleaned through social media monitoring is used to control the people and punish those who step out of line. Sadly, this type of monitoring is not restricted to communist nations. In fact, right now, its happening in one of the United States most populated cities. Surveillance cameras in Hangzhou, in east Chinas Zhejiang Province on May 29, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) Los Angeles Lurkers Eighty percent of Americans have zero trust in the government. Theyre wary of politicians with nefarious agendas. Who can blame them? Two decades ago, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act was passed. With the country still in shock, the U.S. government, never known to let a good crisis go to waste, rolled out a comprehensive set of surveillance laws. The new legislation allowed government agencies to spy on American citizensall in the name of keeping the country safe, of course. Fast forward to 2021, and the U.S. government is still spying on innocent Americans, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In California, the most illiberal liberal state in the country, First Amendment Rights are being violated. As documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice show, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is now instructed to monitor the online activity of the citys 4 million residents, regardless of whether or not they happen to be criminal suspects. In addition to surveilling social media accounts, according to Mary Pat Dwyer, a researcher at the Brennan Center, the LAPD will also use Media Sonar, a cloud-based platform that assists in the collection and analysis of online data. With such a powerful tool, as Dwyer writes, the LAPD will have the ability to build detailed profiles on individuals and identify links between them. More worryingly, as the aforementioned documents highlight, officers are not obliged to report any of the searches they carry out. Without any justification whatsoever, officers can monitor citizens for as long as they wantfor hours, days, or even months. Furthermore, the document actively encourages police officers to engage in something called social media listening. This involves closely monitoring and analyzing online conversations. Whats even more bizarre, like something out of an Orwell novel, is that officers are asked to collect social media account information from people they meet on the streets. After being handed a Field Interview Report Form, an interviewee is required to provide their name, address, phone number, and email, as well as their Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram account information. This information is then fed into Palantir, an analytic system that allows officers to aggregate data from a whole host of sources. LAPD officers arent the only ones amassing huge amounts of data on unsuspecting citizens. No, its happening all across the land. The United States of Surveillance The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created 14 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, also collects social media information on Americans. Since 2018, there has been a marked increase in the amount of geofence warrants being issued. These reverse-location warrants allow law enforcement agencies to obtain anonymized data from Google. If a person is deemed to have engaged in suspicious behavior, agencies have the power to demand further, far more specific information. Its not difficult to see how genuine abuses might occur. In 2019, as Forbes reported, shortly after a crime was committed by one man, Google handed over 1,500 different phone locations to police officers. Its common knowledge that our data has been bought and sold for years, often without users consent. Less known, however, is the fact that the DEA has purchased the smartphone records of American citizens. Billions of calls have been tracked for decades. In the United States, privacy, like Blockbuster and flip phones, is now a thing of the past. Eight years ago, by leaking highly classified information to the masses, Edward Snowden woke Americans up to the reality of government surveillance. Unperturbed by the revelations, the National Security Agency (NSA), Snowdens former employer, still spies on Americans. The CIA, another organization with a questionable history, also spies on Americans. To compound matters, Big Tech companies, including the aforementioned Facebook and Google, have probably shared your personal information with at least one of these organizations. With the convergence of Big Tech and government, will the abuses become more or less frequent? Ill let you decide. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. A pair of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the state to stop pursuing thousands of people who collected unemployment benefits over the past year and are now being ordered to return all, or part, of that aid. Sen. Julie Kushner and Rep. Robyn Porter, the co-chairs of the legislatures Labor and Public Employees Committee, are scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday in an effort to push the state Department of Labor to provide debt forgiveness for those who unintentionally received jobless benefits they were not eligible for. The public pressure from the lawmakers comes several days after the CT Mirror published a story about the growing number of people who are being confronted with an alleged overpayment of unemployment benefits and the burden those debts can place on low-income individuals who have been out of work for months. Between April and June of this year, the state identified more than $8.6 million in overpayments a huge uptick from previous years. Some of those overpayments can be attributed to fraud. But many stem from unintentional mistakes on the part of the applicant or the state unemployment agency itself. In other cases, people are notified about an overpayment as a result of their former employer appealing and overturning the initial decision to grant them benefits. Porter and Kushner said they are concerned about the growing number of people facing potential repayments and the size of some of the debts, which have ballooned into the tens of thousands of dollars. State officials have the ability to waive the repayment of the money under certain circumstances, as long as the unemployment applicant isnt directly accused of fraud. But both Kushner and Porter want to see that process expanded and sped up. The burden of correcting these overpayments shouldnt be on the recipients who filed their applications in good faith, Kushner said, in a prepared statement. Its incumbent on us in state government to resolve this and resolve it quickly to put peoples minds at ease. Were still in the midst of a pandemic and we need to step up. It is unfathomable to me that there would even be a demand for claimants to repay overpayments, especially as a result of a pandemic that continues to persist, Porter added. I am very frustrated but also hopeful that we will get this issue resolved expeditiously for those who legitimately made claims to the best of their ability. Juliet Manalan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Labor, did not address the concerns of lawmakers Wednesday night, but she said the agency had released all of the information it had about overpayments. Spotting and correcting overpayments is a normal part of the state unemployment system. But the problem is far more complicated and consequential right now because of the pandemic and the economic downturn it brought on last year. The coronavirus pandemic created a litany of problems that led to the spike in overpayments this year: The unemployment system was overwhelmed, many applicants had never filed for jobless benefits before, and the labor department was asked to roll out several brand new federal unemployment programs. Eric Brown, a labor attorney based in Watertown, said hes represented people in the unemployment system for 28 years but has rarely dealt with overpayment issues until this year. Several of the people Brown counseled and represented in recent months, he said, were facing overpayments between $20,000 and $30,000. Those individuals were approved for unemployment benefits by the state in 2020, he said, but they had their benefits overturned roughly a year later after their employers appealed the initial decision to grant them aid. In normal times, the state would have reviewed those cases within a month or two and decided whether the applicants were actually eligible for state unemployment assistance. But with the record-breaking number of unemployment claims filed during the pandemic, those contested cases dragged on for months as the applicants continued to collect jobless benefits. Time ticked on, and the debts ballooned. At the end of August, data provided to the federal government showed there were nearly 12,000 unemployment cases stuck in the first phase of an appeal. And more than 4,000 of those appeals had been waiting for a decision for more than half a year. This is a problem that could follow these people for the rest of their working lives, Brown said. Theres got to be a way to assist them. If people dont voluntarily repay the money, the Department of Labor can move to garnish peoples wages or seize their state and federal tax returns. House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora agrees that the overpayments are a problem. He told the CT Mirror on Wednesday that he shares his Democratic colleagues concerns about trying to claw back funds from households that desperately needed the money. But Candelora is also worried about the long term health of states unemployment trust fund, and the Connecticut businesses that pay taxes into that system. That fund took a huge hit over the past year as the state paid out billions of dollars to more than half a million unemployment applicants. In fact, the situation was so dire in the past year that the state was forced to take out a $725 million loan from the federal government just to keep cash flowing to unemployed workers. The point is that there is already a lot of financial pressure on the trust fund, and if the state chooses to waive a large number of overpayments, that pressure will continue to grow potentially by millions of dollars. Candelora does not oppose forgiving many of the overpayments, but he wants to find a way to do that without hiking taxes on Connecticut businesses, which are also still recovering from the pandemic. One solution, he believes, would be to dedicate more federal relief money to the states unemployment trust fund. Connecticut leaders already decided earlier this year to use $155 million in federal aid to shore up the trust fund. But Candelora wants the Democratic-controlled legislature to dedicate even more money to that cause. The state, Candelora said, still has roughly $280 million available from the American Rescue Plan, approved by Congress earlier this year. He thinks that money would be best spent rehabilitating the unemployment system, which many economists credited with propping up the state and national economies over the past year. We cant put this on the backs of businesses, he said. EAST HAVEN - The only two employees at an East Haven assisted living facility were incapacitated Wednesday afternoon as they suffered from accidental fentanyl overdoses, leaving patients unsupervised, according to the East Haven Police Department. A visiting nurse stopped by the Caroline Manor Assisted Living Facility on Clark Avenue Wednesday afternoon to check on one of her patients. She found the only two employees of the assisted living facility overdosing on fentanyl, according to Capt. Joseph Murgo with the East Haven Police Department. The visiting nurse reported the possible overdoses around 3:07 p.m., according to Murgo. A male employee was found on the lower level of the facility while a female employee was on the main floor. The narcotics were left out and in plain view when officers and fire department personnel arrived, Murgo said. East Haven Fire Department personnel administered Narcan, which can treat opioid overdoses, to both of the employees before they were rushed to Yale New Haven Hospital for further treatment, according to Murgo. Murgo said their conditions are unknown at this time. Murgo said the facility did not have anyone else on staff during this incident. While this took place, patients were left with no supervision, he added. No patients were injured during the incident, Murgo said. The East Haven Police Department later seized the narcotics and is investigating the incident. The state Department of Public Health, along with the East Haven Fire Marshal, conducted a surprise inspection of the facility in late August. Officials identified several violations at the time and scheduled another inspection for Oct. 6, Murgo said. The Department of Public Healt and the fire marshal, are coordinating a response and will further investigate the matter, Murgo added. In 2020, there were 1,150 overdoses involving fentanyl statewide, according to data from the state Department of Public Health. Those struggling with substance abuse issues can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration national hotline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for a free and confidential treatment referral or for more information. liz.hardaway@hearst.com Connecticut lawmakers pressured the state Department of Labor Thursday to ease up on its efforts to recover overpayments issued on claims for unemployment compensation. The department is demanding return payments from some people who made claims and received money, in cases where the Department of Labor subsequently determined money was awarded to people who did not actually qualify for those amounts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking Thursday in Hartford, state Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, urged people affected to contact their state legislators to pressure Gov. Ned Lamonts administration to ratchet back collections. She and other lawmakers, including state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, also advised people to contact the Connecticut Legal Services nonprofit for possible assistance if needed. Kushner and Porter are co-chairs of the General Assemblys Labor and Public Employees Committee. The issue arose this week after a story in The CT Mirror that the state had 30,000 overpayment cases totaling $8.7 million this past spring, and a subsequent Hearst CTInsider column calling for the state to back off from clawing back the money. Asked Thursday afternoon by Hearst Connecticut about the Department of Labors response, Lamont indicated he expected the department to show flexibility in instances of inadvertent error in his words. He noted the example of people who received back pay from employers under the federal Paycheck Protection Program after having claimed unemployment benefits for the same period of time. If there are people that filed for unemployment and then they also got PPP money, I think theres ways that we can mediate that without causing a lot of distress, Lamont said Thursday. The overpayments happened for several reasons: mistakes made by claimants in the crush of the pandemic economic crisis, as the federal government rolled out six separate benefits programs, all with little notice; outright fraud that was later caught; successful challenges by employers that were made after the department issued payments; and errors by the department, which was operating during the pandemic with a 40-year-old computer system and did not have a functioning call center for people to ask questions. In the 18 months from the start of the coronavisis crisis to Sept. 15, the Department of Labor paid out $9.7 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits to Connecticut residents. That compares with about $900 million in a typical 18-month period. As we have since the beginning of the pandemic, CTDOL continues to work closely with our state and federal partners, stated Department of Labor spokesperson Juliet Manalan, in response to a Hearst Connecticut Media on the legislators press conference. We couldnt agree more that this pandemic has damaged our workforce and our business community; its one of the reasons we applaud Governor Lamonts decision to ensure that the Connecticut workforce had access to all the federal benefits available and right up to the federal deadline for eligibility. All labor agencies are required to follow state and federal law when it comes to administering unemployment programs and stewarding the Trust Fund; we report on that data frequently. For instances of fraudulent claims of unemployment or identity theft, Kushner said we have no mercy for those folks and backed Department of Labors efforts to recover those payments. Kushner said the Department of Labor needs to make clearer to people receiving clawback letters that they can request a waiver, in addition to any other formal appeal process that is available. Kushner later clarified she was still learning herself about any formal mechanisms for waivers. Kushner said the Department of Labor has shown responsiveness in the past in resolving cases that legislators have called to the attention of its staff. But throughout the pandemic, many people have complained on social media of difficulties getting their Department of Labor questions or disputes addressed in a timely manner. Sen. Jorge Cabrera, D-Hamden, said he has received notices from multiple constituents the past few days who have received Department of Labor demands for repayment of tens of thousands of dollars, after filing claims in what Cabrera called a chaotic stretch for the department last year. Lamont ordered limitations or outright closures on many categories of business establishments, triggering mass layoffs. Workers making the lowest wages should be the immediate priority, Kushner said, given the choices some had to make between caring for kids at home during school closures. She said that policy should extend to people who might not have qualified for unemployment outside the context of the pandemic emergency. In some cases these are large amounts of money that they are now being asked to repay, Kushner said, in comments webcast on CT-N. There are procedures for waivers to be given in the case of overpayment, but unfortunately too many people are not aware of this. It is not clear when you get a bill from the Department of Labor that there are mechanisms in place that you can get a waiver. Porter, the co-chair of the labor committee, said she is mindful of the issue in the context of the unemployment trust fund which the state is trying to replenish. Employers are responsible for paying into the trust fund through assessments but the state and federal governments have paid in some backstop money. Porter said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, assured her the state has the resources to address this. Im appalled that we even have to be standing here talking about repayment of overpayments during a time when it was a result of pandemic that still persists, Porter said Thursday. We do know the devil is in the details, and we need to make sure we know what we are talking about and if we make demands, they are demands that can be met legally. Staff writer Ken Dixon contributed to this report. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman LANSING, Mich. (AP) Michigan has recorded more than 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, the health department said Wednesday. The state crossed that threshold by reporting 6,079 new cases over the last two days. There have been at least 20,781 deaths in Michigan linked to COVID-19. OEIRAS, Portugal (AP) As Portugal closes in on its goal of fully vaccinating 85% of the population against COVID-19 in nine months, other countries in Europe and beyond want to know how it was accomplished. A lot of the credit is going to Rear Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo. With his team from the three branches of the armed forces, the naval officer took charge of the vaccine rollout in February perhaps the moment of greatest tension in Portugal over the pandemic. Now, the county could be just days away from hitting its target. As of Wednesday, 84% of the total population was fully vaccinated, the highest globally, according to Our World in Data. Along with the rising number of shots, the COVID-19 infection rate and hospitalizations from the virus have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly 18 months. The government announced Thursday that it would scrap most of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions starting Oct. 1, though the wearing of face masks will still be mandatory on public transit, in hospitals and care homes, and in shopping malls. Such a move would be a welcome development for many countries still in the grip of the highly infectious delta variant and lagging in their own vaccination rollouts. Previously unheralded outside the military, Gouveia e Melo is now a household name in Portugal, having made a point of going on television regularly to answer public concerns about the vaccination program. Easily recognizable even behind a face mask due to his blue eyes, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and 1.93-meter (6-foot-3-inch) height, he's often greeted in the street by people wanting to thank him. People are very nice, he says. But the 60-year-old officer also is quick to insist he is just the tip of the iceberg in the operation and that many others share the credit. Military involvement in rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine is not uncommon elsewhere, but Portugal has given it the leading role. It turned out to be an inspired choice: Although Gouveia e Melos team works hand-in-hand with health authorities, police and town councils, the military's expertise has proven invaluable. People in the military are used to working under stress in uncertain environments, he said at his office in a NATO building near Lisbon that commands a view of the Atlantic. Theyre organized, have a good logistics set-up ... and are usually very focused on the mission. Gouveia e Melo set the tone of the rollout with his no-nonsense approach and emphasis on discipline. His straight-talking style endeared him to many who worried they might not get vaccinated in time. In an interview with The Associated Press, he admitted that replacing a political appointee who quit after only three months was intimidating. At the time, Portugal was in the worst phase of the pandemic, when it was among the hardest-hit countries with public hospitals near collapse. Promised vaccine deliveries werent arriving. And jockeying for shots was threatening to undermine public trust in the rollout. I felt like I had the eyes of 10 million people on me, Gouveia e Melo said, referring to Portugals population. His 42-year military career helps explain how he handled the pressure. He was a submarine commander, and at one point was in charge of two of the vessels at the same time -- returning to base with one, eating a meal on shore and then taking another out to sea. Gouveia e Melo also captained a frigate, led Euromarfor, the European Unions Maritime Force, and has logged the most hours at sea of any serving Portuguese naval officer. He is unapologetic about couching the vaccine rollout as a battle and has worn combat fatigues ever since taking over the effort. He said he wanted to send a message that it was a call to arms. This uniform...was symbolic for people to comprehend the need to roll up our sleeves and fight this virus, he says. Gouveia e Melo did away with Portugals initial efforts to piggyback on established vaccination strategies, such as those used annually for flu shots in usually small, public health centers. The demands of scale and speed to address COVID-19 required a very different approach. Portugal began using large sports facilities around the country to set up what Gouveia e Melo called a production line: a reception and processing area; a waiting room; cubicles where injections are given; and a recovery area. He used soldiers as guinea pigs at the Lisbon military hospital to figure out the fastest flow of people through a building. A major push came with what he described as a tsunami of vaccine deliveries in mid-June, which allowed a shift into a higher gear. Tiago Correia, an associate professor in international public health at Lisbons New University Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reckons that the public view of Gouveia e Melo as the principal factor in the successful rollout is an exaggeration of his role. A key factor, Correia says, is the traditional consenting attitude in Portugal toward national vaccination programs. Its vaccination rate for measles, mumps and rubella, for example, is 95% -- one of the EUs highest - and there is no significant anti-vaccination movement. Even so, Gouveia e Melos military background meant he was able to cut through all the politics and ensure public trust in the rollout, Correia told AP. These days, Gouveia e Melo is often greeted with spontaneous applause from the public when he visits vaccine centers and poses for selfies. He has been the subject of TikTok videos and poems. Framed on the wall behind his desk is a drawing given to him by a child who wrote Obrigado Thank you in capital letters. On a visit Tuesday to a vaccine center at the Lisbon University campus, Gouveia e Melo strode around in his combat fatigues and handed out a cloth crest he designed for the rollout to those waiting for their shots. The emblem, worn by many in the effort, depicts a three-headed hydra lunging at two virus cells, with a green border representing the more than 4,700 people who have worked at Portugals vaccine centers. Claudia Boigues, a 53-year-old waiting in the recovery area with her 15-year-old son who had just been vaccinated, said she marveled at the swift rollout. I never thought we'd reach 85%, she said. But now we deserve congratulations. Other countries, which Gouveia e Melo declined to identify because their requests have not been made public, have asked Portugal about its effort. Gouveia e Melo will soon be able to say mission accomplished for his immediate goal. But with significant vaccination hesitancy in some wealthier countries and many poorer countries without sufficient doses, hes under no illusion that virus variants could come back to torment Portugal. Weve won a battle, he says. I dont know if weve won the war against the virus. This is a world war. ___ See AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic NORWALK A former state representative candidate and city clerk, and Norwalks current Republican deputy registrar of voters, was arrested Saturday afternoon following a landlord and tenant dispute. Ellen Wink, 61, was arrested during a dispute with a tenant of her property on Nelson Avenue, Sgt. Sofia Gulino said. The complainant, a tenant, advised officers that Ellen Wink locked the tenant out of the home and threw away all personal belongings, to include clothes, jewelry and cash, Gulino said. Wink was located outside of the home, and despite officer requests and warnings, Wink would not permit the tenant back in the home. Wink was arrested and charged with criminal lockout, first-degree criminal mischief and fourth-degree larceny, according to the arrest report. The tenant, a 54-year-old man, said he lived at the residence owned by Wink for the last year and came home Saturday to find Wink had locked him out of the building and was refusing to allow the victim back in the residence, according to the police report. She stated that (the victim) was behind on his rent for almost a month, the responding officer wrote in the report. She stated that she was tired of arguing with him cause every month its the same thing when trying to her get rent money. Wink admitted to the officer she threw out the victims belongings at the city dump Saturday morning, which the victim said included clothing, jewelry and cash, according to the report. When I advised her that she would be charged for not letting him back in the house, she was adamant that she would have to be arrested then, the report read. While currently serving as the Republican deputy registrar, Wink was previously city clerk from 2009 to 2011. Last fall, Wink ran for state r epresentative for the 137th District and lost to Democratic incumbent Chris Perone. Wink also previously served on the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency. In 2017, Wink ran for a Common Council District A seat and lost to current Democratic Town Committee Chair Eloisa Melendez and Christopher Yerinides. The city was made aware of Winks arrest, Director of Personnel and Labor Relations Ray Burney said Wednesday. At this point, the charges do not appear to relate to or impact Ms. Winks ability to perform her duties, Burney said. The city will continue to monitor the situation. Wink was held on $2,000 bond and subsequently released from custody with an arraignment scheduled for Monday, according to court records. Wink, who has no prior arrest record according to court documents, declined to comment on the arrest. abigail.brone @hearstmediact.com Maritime Aquarium NORWALK For its rapid shift to online education when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, the Maritime Aquarium was recognized as the best educational initiative in 2020 by any zoo or aquarium in the country. During Wednesdays annual conference of the 241-member Association of Zoos & Aquariums, Maritime was granted the top award for education, according to an aquarium statement. This is the fifth AZA award in the last six years for aquariums educational initiatives. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) The manager of a suburban Minneapolis Michaels store called police on a teenager looking for a job simply because he is Black and officers then used unreasonable force against him because of his race, a state agency that investigates civil rights abuses said in findings released Thursday. The 16-year-old boy repeatedly said "I want to live and Dont kill me as Brooklyn Center police were restraining him during a March 2019 incident that started when the store manager called police because the teen is Black, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found. Both the police department and Michaels Stores Inc. violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act and discriminated against the teen, the agency found, noting that it would seek monetary relief for the teen as well as structural changes to the police department and store. The facts of this case are both shocking and unsurprising. There was no reason for Michaels to call the police. And no Black child should ever have to plead for their life from police, Department of Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in a statement. What happened to this kid is a clear violation of his dignity and his civil rights. A spokesman for the police department, which has been under scrutiny since one of its officers shot Black motorist Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April, forwarded a request for comment to the city, which did not respond. A spokesperson for Michaels, which is headquartered in Irving, Texas, said the arts and crafts store disagrees with the findings based on the facts and plans to appeal. We take any claim of discrimination very seriously and work every day to make Michaels as inclusive and diverse as possible, the statement said. The store where the incident took place has since closed. The teenager, whose name wasnt released, said in a statement that the scariest day of my life started with applying for a job at Michaels. Police were called because of my skin color and they abused me to the point I thought I was going to die. According to the investigation, the teenager was trying to apply for a job at the Michaels store when a white store manager, who employees said had a history of racially profiling Black customers, called police, saying the teen was causing a disturbance and would not leave. Surveillance video from the store shows the teen was acting like a typical customer when the manager asked him to leave and that he hadn't been causing a disturbance, the investigation found. He voluntarily left but returned, believing he had been kicked out because of his race, the investigation found. The manager and another employee met him in the vestibule and blocked him from entering the store. They yelled at each other until the teen walked away, without touching anyone, the investigation found. The manager called police again and said the teen was a tyrant customer, hostile and starting to touch employees, the investigation found. When three white Brooklyn Center police officers arrived and found the teen in another store, he appeared frightened and put his hands in the air, the Department of Human Rights found. The officers did not follow their training and immediately used unjustified and unreasonable force, it determined. Two officers threw the teen to the ground and, while he was face down, they and a sergeant grabbed and pulled on his dreadlocks, put a knee into his back and handcuffed him, the investigation found. While on the ground, the teen cried out, Dont kill me, I want to grow up," the Human Rights Department said. The agency said that body camera footage shows the officers yanked the teen up, took him outside and put him against a brick wall as he continued to plead for his life. The investigation found that body camera footage, which was not made public but described in the agency's findings, contradicted police reports and officers' testimony. In one instance, an officer said that the teen, who was 5 feet tall and weighed 100 pounds, fought with officers and engaged in a temper tantrum. In a report meant to justify the police use of force, the officer also said he commanded the teen to put his hands behind his back. However, the investigation found that no command was given and that the teen didn't fight. It found that the body camera footage showed he was compliant and unarmed, and that he made no attempt to flee, raised his hands to surrender and was clearly frightened. The investigation found that the actions of the officers were so unreasonable that race discrimination is the only likely explanation for their behavior. The Brooklyn Center Police Department has faced heavy criticism since Officer Kim Potter, who is white, shot and killed Wright during a traffic stop. Potter, who is charged with manslaughter and who resigned after the shooting, said she mistook her handgun for her Taser. The shooting prompted days of protests, and the City Council in May voted in favor of a resolution that puts the city on track to making changes to its policing practices, including limiting situations in which officers can make arrests. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Saudi Arabia's monarch expressed hope Wednesday that the kingdom's direct talks with Iran will lead to confidence building as the two bitter regional rivals take small steps toward dialogue following several years of heightened tensions. King Salman made the remarks in a pre-recorded speech delivered to leaders gathered for the U.N. General Assembly. He said Iran is a neighbor of Saudi Arabia, and that the kingdom hopes talks between the two nations can lead to tangible results that pave the way to achieving the aspirations of the region's people. He cautioned, though, that relations must be based on respect of national sovereignty and the cessation of support for sectarian militias. Relations between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran hit a low when the Trump administration was exerting maximum pressure on Iran. During those years, Iran was accused of being behind multiple attacks on energy targets in the Persian Gulf including a stunning strike on an Aramco refinery in 2019 and of supporting Houthi fighters in Yemen, where the kingdom has been at war for more than six years. In April, news emerged that the rivals had held a first round of talks in Iraq after President Joe Biden's election. Former President Donald Trump had pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal in 2018; Biden said the U.S. wants to return to the pact, though talks have stalled. The two regional foes met again in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, according to Irans semi-official Mehr news agency. The site reported Wednesday that a meeting of foreign ministers and officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and France took place. The EU foreign policy chief was also in attendance. The meeting was chaired by Iraqs foreign minister. Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amirabollahian, was quoted by Mehr as saying the priority of Iran's new government "is to strengthen and develop relations with its neighbors and the region. He also met with Finnish, German, Austrian, Swiss and Croatian foreign ministers on Tuesday in New York, according to Mehr. Newly sworn-in Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has remained in Iran amid the ongoing pandemic. He was severely critical of American policies in his speech delivered remotely to the U.N. gathering Tuesday, speaking shortly after Biden's in-person remarks. King Salman reiterated Saudi concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful energy purposes. He also used his speech to stress Saudi Arabia's longstanding public position on Palestinian statehood, saying that a lasting peace must guarantee an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. He acknowledged economic difficulties, but said despite such challenges the kingdom remains a major donor of humanitarian aid and global efforts to combat COVID-19 as a Group of 20 nation. The coronavirus pandemic sent oil prices crashing last year, eating away at the kingdom's key source of revenue. Saudi Arabia has led major oil producers in a pact to curb production to help support oil prices. ___ Al-Shihri reported from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. WESTPORT When schools in town closed abruptly in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramin Ganeshram, executive director of the Westport Museum for History and Culture, decided to follow suit. We were prepping a new exhibit, Ganeshram said. And we closed down. This is when we thought wed be closed for a few weeks. But weve been closed ever since. But the museum, housed at the historic Bradley-Wheeler House at 25 Avery Place, is planning to reopen on Oct. 1 for the first time since the pandemic hit. Due to the continued presence of COVID-19, masks will be required, and visitors will have to book time slots in advance. No more than 10 people will be allowed in a tour group at any time, and capacity in the buildings program space where special events and presentations happen will be capped at 15 or 20 people. Were discussing requiring proof of vaccination, but we havent decided yet, Ganeshram said. Though the pandemic is soldiering on, she said she decided it was time to reopen the museum and history center because of the tone of conversations she had been hearing, largely around political and social justice issues. Were in the business of educating people about history, Ganeshram said. Were at a critical time in our nations history where there is a lot of acrimonious discourse. And a lot of that is based on a misunderstanding of history. History museums such as Westports are a place people can go to view primary documents about history everything from crockery and opera glasses to deeds of sale for slaves. This is a place to go for information, Ganeshram said. Even through the heights of the pandemic, Ganeshram said, museum staff worked to provide programming and education to the public. Shortly after last years shutdown, the center made some presentations available online. Staff also offered walking tours and even a driving tour of Westport that allowed people to scan a QR code and learn about the towns history as they drove. But Ganeshram said shes pleased to be able to offer in person programming once again. In preparation for the reopening, staff are readying a number of exhibits including one that had been up for only three weeks when the museum closed last year. That exhibit is about Sigrid Schultz, a female reporter, and longtime Westport resident, who Ganeshram said was embedded in Nazi Germany and was the first female bureau chief of the Chicago Tribunes Central Europe Bureau. As her job became increasingly treacherous, she was forced to write under a pseudonym and several attempts were made on her life. Eventually, Schultz was forced to leave Germany after being injured in an air raid. Even in Westport, historical records showed, she continued to write about anti-Semitism and extremism. Ganeshram said her story is an example of how the history of Westport is a good lens through which to examine national and even global history. (Schultz) was a Westport resident, but what was talked about was very important to our time, Ganeshram said. Other exhibits planned include one focusing on public health at large with a special focus on mental health and a hyperlocal exhibit on Westports past. The exhibit being prepared during the initial shutdown about photographer Nell Dorr is expected to open sometime next year. Ganeshram said shes looking forward to the reopening, because learning about the past can teach people about the present. Who we are culturally, who we are as a nation, and who we are as a town is based on our cultural habits, and those are based on past events, she said. And those past events are history. GLEN CARBON Anyone who visits the villages main parks will soon have an alternate way to contact someone in case of an emergency. Police Chief Todd Link said Wednesday that he recommended an Emergency Call Blue Tower be placed in Schon Park, one in Miner Park and the third in Greenspace East to the public safety committee Tuesday. The committee was in favor. The units will cost $42,450 or $14,150 each and were part of the villages capital improvement budget for this fiscal year. Our police department is very proactive; they get out of their cars, but they dont get into the parks much, or out on the Madison County Trails, Link said. Made by Case Emergency Systems out of Irvine, California, each tower is solar-powered and wireless. The towers would have a front facing camera and info and emergency buttons. Each unit is nearly 12 feet tall and weighs more than 200 pounds. They are 10.5 inches wide are illuminated at twilight or at night. To add a sense of security for park and trail users, he put a bid before the committee for the towers, he said. These units can be placed in any location within a park to provide audio and visual help in an emergency. The bid package includes an option for a standard one-year warranty, extended warranty and five-year parts and service warranty. The blue towers bid now goes before the village board for a vote at either its Tuesday meeting or its Oct. 12 forum. In other action, the committee voted in favor of plans to ask for additional stop signs at Evergreen Lane and Auerbach Place, near Meridian Village Senior Living. Link said Wednesday that a village resident contacted his department regarding traffic on Auerbach at Evergreen, where there is now a two-way stop, for northbound and southbound Evergreen traffic. The caller pointed out that many drivers use Auerbach Place as a shortcut to avoid the traffic light at Meridian Road and Route 157. Link said his department researched that area and found that since 2016, there have been 12 vehicle crashes at that location, eight of which involved injuries. Meridian Villages Director, Pam Guth, said her husband was one of those injury crashes in June 2020. But he is not the only reason she is for adding stop signs. She worries about her active residents. She said many of them use the adjoining sidewalk daily for exercise and she fears there may be another incident. Link said several other Meridian Village residents have concerns about traffic flow at this particular intersection. The added stop signs should appear on the village boards Sept. 28 agenda. Link said if the village board approves the stop sign placements, they would go up within the next 30-day period. Reach reporter Charles Bolinger at 618-659-5735 KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Ukrainian lawmakers on Thursday approved a law aimed at limiting the influence of oligarchs on politics. The move comes a day after the car of a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came under gunfire, an incident the president said could have been triggered by the reform. The law, initiated by Zelenskyy, contains a definition of an oligarch and bars those who fall under it from funding political parties or taking part in the privatization of state assets. It passed its first reading in July, and on Thursday 279 out of 450 lawmakers voted to adopt it. It will come into force after the president signs it. The law defines oligarchs as individuals who own significant financial assets and media outlets, and requires oligarchs to register as such. It may affect Ukraine's former president and candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko and businessman Ihor Kolomoisky, who backed Zelenskyy at the 2019 election and controls Ukraine's most popular TV channel, 1+1. The law also requires state officials to declare their dealings with oligarchs. The law should be the first step in changing the oligarchic system in Ukraine, which has become the reason for the rampant corruption that is poisoning all spheres of life, Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst and head of the Penta Center think tank, told The Associated Press. Zelenskyy is trying to distance himself from all of the oligarchs and change the vicious system in which six or seven people controlled the politics and the business in all of Ukraine, Fesenko said. Joe Ferrari case lifts lid on police corruption BANGKOK: A flashy cop with a taste for fast cars falls from grace following the leak of spine-chilling footage of a brutal interrogation gone wrong. corruptioncrimemurderdeathdrugspolice By AFP Thursday 23 September 2021, 03:09PM The case of Joe Ferrari has spotlighted police corruption that experts say infects almost every level of society in Thailand. Photo: via Bangkok Post Not the plot of a blockbuster thriller, but the vivid reality of a story that has gripped the country in recent weeks and spotlighted police corruption that experts say infects almost every level of society in the country. The case of Thitisan Utthanaphon, a former police station chief in a rural province nicknamed Joe Ferrari for his extravagant lifestyle has fired up calls for reform. The 41-year-old stands accused of murder, abuse of power and other offences after a drug suspect was suffocated with six plastic bags wrapped around his head in an alleged attempt to extort B2 million. The incident was initially hushed up and recorded as an amphetamine overdose until a lawyer revealed the cause of death in a Facebook post. In a move typical of the networks of patronage that critics say underpin systemic corruption, Pol Col Thitisan was then transferred to a regional police bureau in a nearby province commanded by the father of his television-presenter girlfriend. But worse was to come for him: another lawyer released a chilling video leaked by a junior policeman that appeared to show Pol Col Thitisan suffocating the handcuffed suspect while other officers held him down. The footage went viral, shocking the kingdom and prompting police to arrest Thitisan and several other officers. Thitisan denies all the charges against him. Sittra Biabungkerd, the lawyer who released the video, told AFP he did it to stop police helping each other to get away with murder. Many people may think that interrogating suspects using black plastic bags no longer goes on because times have changed, he said. But this case shows that in reality it still goes on in secret. Flash cop, fast cars Revelations about Thitisans wealthy lifestyle and a string of celebrity relationships made headlines after his arrest. Investigators told local media he owned a luxury mansion in Bangkok, a fleet of 42 top-end cars including a $1.5 million Lamborghini Aventador and had a personal fortune estimated at $18 million all on a police superintendents salary of B40,000 a month. Activist Srisuwan Janya told AFP the anti-money laundering authority has been asked to investigate Thitisans wealth. It is impossible that a man with some B40,000 salary can have 40 cars including luxury cars, Mr Srisuwan said. Some of Thitisans substantial wealth came from auctioning hundreds of imported luxury cars seized by Thai customs, according to senior officers quoted in local media. Investigators are due to hand over their findings to the National Anti-Corruption Commission tomorrow (Sept 24) before deciding whether to forward the case to the state prosecutor. Uphill reform After taking power as army chief in a 2014 coup, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha vowed to eradicate corruption. Seven years on, the Joe Ferrari case shows how little has been achieved in stamping out police malpractice, and observers hold out little hope of serious change. Reform has been a spectacular failure because those connected to the top are shielded by protection and favouritism and whistleblowers are punished or silenced, said analyst Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University. In an attempt to kickstart police reform, the government approved a draft amendment to the National Police Act early this year. But the draft remains under deliberation in parliament, moving at a snails pace as committee members some of them former policemen haggle over the details. Since the Prayut administration depends on police support, it is careful about reform, said lecturer Paul Chambers of Naresuan University. The only change which the Joe Ferrari case will likely spur is that rogue cops take greater care to hide the illegal activities in which they engage, Mr Chambers told AFP, pointing to repeated past efforts to reform the police. None have worked and none are likely to anytime soon. Royal Thai Police Chief Suwat Jangyodsuk has blamed the current scandal on one bad apple. But public trust in the khaki-uniformed police force has long been eroded. Almost every Thai entrepreneur, whether their business is legal or not, is familiar with paying local police just to operate from motorcycle taxi riders and street food hawkers to brothel owners and drug traffickers. Nearly half of Thais said they had paid bribes to the police in the previous 12 months, according to a study by Transparency International published in November 2020. And Thailands economic crisis, fuelled by the pandemic, has only made corruption worse, with police given more power to enforce COVID-related laws. Thailand has lost 19 places in Transparency Internationals corruption ranking since 2014, and now stands 104th out of 180 countries. Phuket COVID response teams test more than 4,000 in two days PHUKET: The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response teams (Phuket CCR) deployed across the island have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, and identified 212 infected people in the community. COVID-19Coronavirushealth By The Phuket News Thursday 23 September 2021, 05:47PM The PPHO report of the CCR teams progress on yesterday (Sept 22). Image: PPHO The PPHO report of the CCR teams progress on Tuesday (Sept 21). Image: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The nine Phuket Comprehensive COVID-19 Response (Phuket CCR) teams have tested more than 4,000 people over the past two days, as well as identified Group 608 patients and provided hundreds of vaccinations. Photo: PPHO The teams were deployed yesterday as part of a new strategy to counter the high number of infections, which have remained above 200 for the past two weeks. The initial goal announced was for the teams to test 25,000 people in a three-day intensive campaign that was announced as to conclude today (Sept 23). Officials have yet to announce whether or not the teams, which have been working with medical staff from other provinces in the Ministry of Public Health Region 11 office, responsible for Upper Southern Thailand, will continue their campaign tomorrow (Sept 24). Of note, Public Health Deputy Permanent Secretary Yongyot Thammawut was present in Phuket yesterday to observe the teams in action. The teams tested 2,593 people yesterday (Sept 22) by using antigen test kits (ATKs), with 115 returning positive results. The teams also provided 472 vaccination injections, and identified 82 people in the community not previously recorded with health officials as Group 608 (see definition at end of story) patients, meaning they are at great risk of developing serious symptoms of infection if they contract COVID-19. In Muang District, teams set up at Soi Samkong 1, on Thungkha Rd and along Soi Paniang, 344 people were tested, with 35 testing positive. In the Soi Kingkaew area in Rassada, another team tested 311 people, with 26 testing positive. The team also provided vaccination injections to 77 people and dispensed medication to 18 people in need, said a report by the PPHO. At Saphan Hin, 564 people were tested, with only14 testing positive. A total of 320 vaccination injections were provided and 54 people were identified as Group 608 patients. Medication was given to just 11 people. Elsewhere in Wichit, a team at Wichit Songkram Soi 4 tested 393 people, with 13 testing positive, and 24 vaccination injections were administered. In Soi Koktanode, Chalong, 157 people were tested, with six testing positive, and 86 people received vaccination injections, while in Soi Plukjae, Karon, just three of 81 people tested returned positive results. Another team at the Kian Waterfall in Patong tested 285 people, with just three people testing positive. Similar results returned from Thalang, said the report, with three of 295 tested returning positive results at Baan Nai Yang in Sakhu, and only two people testing positive from the 163 people tested at Baa Kor En in Mai Khao. However, attention turned quickly to Cherng Talay on the first day of the campaign on Tuesday (Sept 21). Throughout Tuesday the teams tested 1,581 people in total, with 97 people testing positive. In Baan Bang Tao in Cherng Talay, 38 people of 254 tested returned positive results. On Phukets east coast, at Ao Kung Mosque in Pa Khlok, 10 of 201 people tested positive for the virus. In Kathu, only six people tested positive at the site set up at Kathu Municipality where 283 people were tested, but 23 of the 321 people tested at the Sikor Market returned positive results. The number of positive cases identified in Phuket Town was much more subdued, with only eight people testing positive from the 289 tested by ATKs at the Community Hall in Talad Yai. At Baan Kuku School in Rassada, nine of 147 people tested positive, while only three of 86 people tested positive at Bang Chee Lao Mosque, also in Rassada. * Group 608 has become Phuket officials preferred term for higher at risk patients, comprising people over 60 years old along with those suffering from any of the seven recognised medical conditions that place patients at higher risk of developing serious signs of infection, plus women more than 12 weeks pregnant. Phuket domestic entry restrictions to be eased Oct 1 PHUKET: Phuket officials have agreed to ease the restrictions on domestic entry to the province starting Oct 1 in a move aimed at encouraging travel to the island. COVID-19Coronavirushealthtourismeconomics By The Phuket News Thursday 23 September 2021, 11:03AM Governor Narong announced the easing of entry restrictions yesterday (Sept 22). Photo: Phuket Radio Thailand Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew announced the easing of the screening measures at a meeting of the Phuket Communicable Disease Committee yesterday (Sept 22). The meeting resolved to relax travel to Phuket by allowing people to travel to Phuket by land, sea and air as long as they are fully vaccinated or have recovered from being infected with COVID-19 no more than six months previously. They must also have tested negative for COVID-19 by RT-PCR or antigen test kit (ATK) within seven days before arriving. Such measures will be announced from October 1, 2021 onwards, but people will have to wait for the official order from the province before it can come into effect, he said. The current restriction in place requires people entering Phuket to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of arriving to enter the province. People will also be able to bring their own ATK to the Phuket Check Point at Tha Chatchai, or to a sea port, and conduct the test in front of officers and be issued a certificate that can be used for seven days, Governor Narong said. All people entering the province must have the Mor Chana app installed on their phones with location sharing enabled, and must register their travel details through the gophuget.com website, he added. Surachai Chaiwat, honorary chairman of Phukets Chamber of Commerce, said the Phuket Sandbox programme saw around 300 tourists arriving each day, well below the target of 1,000 daily foreign arrivals, reported the Bangkok Post. From July 1 when the programme started to Sept 20, only 34,880 foreign tourists had visited Phuket, he said. Phuket is in crisis, so the province must fully reopen, Mr Surachai noted. We need at least 6,000 tourists, both local and foreign, to arrive each day if we are to break even, he added. Phuket Tourism Council President Thanet Tantipiriyakit said domestic travel is likely to pick up in the last quarter of the year, adding the segment is vital to Phukets recovery. Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 45F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 45F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Tomorrow Intervals of clouds and sunshine. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 71F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Ringo Starr will miss the late Charlie Watts and has described his fellow drummer as a "beautiful human being". The 81-year-old musician paid tribute to his fellow drummer - who passed away aged 80 last month - and spoke of how he used to enjoy "hanging out" with the Rolling Stones star when they lived near to one another because Charlie was "a lot of fun". Speaking to BANG Showbiz and other media to promote his new EP 'Change the World', he said: "Yeah, we will miss Charlie. He was a beautiful human being. He was like The Quiet Man... "Me and Charlie, we hung out. It's not liked we lived together, we lived close in London, or we'd find ourselves at dinner or a gig." And the Beatles legend joked Charlie had a hard time keeping the Rolling Stones together than he did, despite his own band going their separate ways in 1970 while their former chart rivals are still active. He quipped: He had a harder band than I did to keep together! Ringo's new EP will be released on Friday (24.09.21) . The veteran musician recorded all of his new tracks at his Roccabella West studio, just as he did for his 'Zoom In' EP, and Ringo previously revealed he's joined forces with "some new friends" for the record. He shared: "I've been saying I only want to release EPs at this point and this is the next one. What a blessing it's been during this year to have a studio here at home and be able to collaborate with so many great musicians, some I've worked with before and some new friends." The lead single 'Let's Change The World' is an optimistic track that features backing vocals from Amy Keys, Zelma Davis, Billy Valentine and Darryl Phinnessee. JERSEYVILLE A Jersey Community High School graduate is about wrap up filming for his latest project. Kevin Edwards has been filming in Jerseyville, St. Louis and St. Elmo for his upcoming film Schmetterling, which is the German word for butterfly. Parts of the project were filmed in a former Jerseyville hospital now owned by Got Faith? Ministry. Edwards graduated from JCHS in 2000 with the intention of becoming a wrestler, which he did for a number of years. In 2012, he fell into the film industry by chance and decided to quit wrestling to pursue filmmaking. I couldnt see myself doing anything else, Edwards said. Schmetterling follows a woman by that name who is struggling with drug addiction. She witnesses a murder outside of her home and spends the movie trying to escape the killer. Every place she goes to for help does not believe her story. Nobody takes her seriously because they know shes a drug addict, Edwards said. Edwards said that most drug addicts are depicted in movies and television as fodder or the villain. He noted that his main character is not in the recovery phase. Is what shes doing with her life great? No, its not, he said. But is she a human being? Yes, she is. According to Edwards, the films inspiration came from a local actress he meet in 2017 named Mackenzie Naylor. He said that, after working with Edwards on a project, Naylor fell into the wrong crowd. A year later, Naylor died from complications caused by her heroin addiction. Edwards said the way people perceived Naylor after her death angered him. They just saw her as a cautionary tale a statistic and treated her like she was nothing, Edwards said. That has stuck with me every day since she passed away. The film project has Dearra Johnson as its assistant director and Lonnie Craigg as its producer. It features St. Louis actors, including Ashley Pryor as Schmetterling, Caterina Clayton, Shaun Scott and J.D. Noll. The cast also includes John Lehr of Overland, Kansas, who played one of the cavemen in the iconic GEICO TV commercials and appeared in the films 10 Items or Less and The Sweetest Thing. Edwards expects filming for Schmetterling will be completed by November. His production company, Always Late TV, is most known for the reality TV series Local Ambition now in its ninth season. The show is described as a soap opera about women competing in a modeling competition reality series where the dangers they face are more interesting than the drama they create on-screen. For more information, visit www.alwayslatetv.com. THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) Azerbaijan on Thursday filed a case at the United Nations' top court accusing neighboring Armenia of a policy of ethnic cleansing targeting Azerbaijanis. The case was lodged at the International Court of Justice a week after Armenia filed suit against Azerbaijan at the same Hague-based world court, accusing Baku of a state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred." Both cases focus on the two countries' decades long territorial dispute that erupted into armed conflict again last year, leaving hundreds dead. Referring to that eruption of hostilities, Azerbaijan alleged in its written filing that Armenia once again targeted Azerbaijanis for brutal treatment motivated by ethnic hatred, the court said in a statement. Armenias policies and conduct of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and fomenting of hatred against Azerbaijanis systematically infringe the rights and freedoms of Azerbaijanis, as well as Azerbaijans own rights," the case alleges. It accuses Armenia of breaching an international convention aimed at eradicating discrimination. Armenia last week cited the same convention in bringing its case to the court, which handles disputes between nations. Both countries have signed the convention. The legal dispute is the latest battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian government for more than a quarter of a century. The predominantly Armenian-populated region had an autonomous status within Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. Tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris boiled over as the Soviet Union collapsed. Conflict broke out in 1988 when the region tried to join Armenia, and escalated into war after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, leaving an estimated 30,000 dead and displacing about 1 million. Azerbaijan asked the court to urgently order so-called provisional measures aimed at compelling Armenia to "protect Azerbaijanis from the irreparable harm caused by Armenias ongoing conduct. Armenia made a similar request last week aimed at protecting its interests while the case is heard. Cases at the court often take years, but hearings on the two requests for provisional measures will likely be scheduled in coming weeks. FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) While Kentucky's prolonged surge of COVID-19 cases has shown signs of leveling off, overstressed hospitals can't sustain the current pace of seriously ill virus patients, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday as he pleaded with people to take preventive steps. The governor who had much of his pandemic-fighting authority taken away by lawmakers stressed that the more Kentuckians who get vaccinated and wear masks when indoors in public, the "faster we can get this thing on the way down. We are hoping that, in the very least, we are plateauing in terms of new cases," Beshear said in offering a ray of optimism amid a period that turned into the state's worst COVID-19 escalation. "Certainly our hope is that we will start to see a decrease. But Kentucky remains in a "very dangerous situation, he warned, as the highly contagious delta variant makes younger Kentuckians sicker and as hospital intensive care units are still inundated with virus patients, many on ventilators. If we plateau at the level were at right now, we cannot sustain it in our hospitals," the governor said. "It is too much, with too many people sick. On Thursday, Beshear reported 4,099 new COVID-19 cases and 44 more virus-related deaths. Two-thirds of Kentucky's hospitals continue to deal with critical staffing shortages, he said. Meanwhile, most coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are among unvaccinated people. Kentucky recently reached another vaccination milestone with 70% of Kentuckians eligible to receive COVID-19 shots having received at least one dose. Some prominent Senate Republicans have urged the Democratic governor to call lawmakers back for another special legislative session to funnel aid to hospitals struggling to overcome those chronic staffing shortages. Nancy Galvagni, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, told a legislative panel on Wednesday that hospitals are paying significantly more to retain and recruit health care workers to try to keep up with the virus-related demand. Our hospitals tell me that they cannot sustain the amounts theyre having to pay for staffing, she said. Kentuckys hospitals lost about $1 billion last year due to increased pandemic costs, despite receiving federal assistance, Galvagni said. Hospitals are looking to the state government for help, she said, noting that several other states have used a portion of their federal pandemic aid to help their hospitals overcome staffing shortages. Resources are strained, and hospitals large and small ... are all saying that they need help, she said. Republican Sen. Ralph Alvarado urged the governor to call lawmakers into a special session to tackle the staffing issue, saying: The longer we wait, the worse this problem is going to get. Because this isnt the last surge for COVID-19," he said. If necessary, lawmakers could redirect previously appropriated funds to assist hospitals, he said. Beshear responded Thursday that lawmakers haven't offered a plan on where the money would come from or specifics about how the aid program would work. Before he called a previous pandemic-related special session this month, he had multiple meetings with legislative leaders and proposals were exchanged, Beshear said. Such consensus-building is typical before a special session, but none of that has occurred for a session to assist hospitals, he said. I think a lot of this is about being unwilling to truly do what it would take and it wouldnt cost us a dime to alleviate this crisis in hospitals," the governor said. "And thats require masking. Masking has flattened the curve every single surge weve had, and when I had the power to do it, we prevented our hospitals from being overrun. Beshear lost much of his authority to unilaterally combat the pandemic when the GOP-led legislature limited the governors emergency powers. The state Supreme Court upheld the legislatures actions, and lawmakers set pandemic policies in the recent special session. They scrapped the statewide school mask mandate and put a ban on any statewide mask rules until June 2023. The governor on Thursday touted efforts by his administration to assist overburdened hospitals. That includes deploying more than 500 Kentucky National Guard members to 29 Kentucky hospitals. ___ Follow more of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic BERLIN (AP) The three candidates hoping to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, and the four leaders of the other parties currently in parliament, clashed Thursday over a variety of topics in the last televised debate before Sunday's election. Unlike previous debates that repeatedly focused on climate change, poverty and other domestic topics, the candidates discussed foreign policy issues for the first time, too. Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, who is currently Germanys finance minister, said closer cooperation within Europe is needed but that at the same time the EU needs to continue to work closely together with the United States and NATO. We are the big country in the middle of the European Union with the biggest population and the biggest economic strength, Scholz said. And therefore we need to make sure that Europe speaks with a more united voice. His closest rival, Armin Laschet of the center-right Union bloc, also spoke out for a stronger and more united Europe, adding that the continent should cooperate on common arms projects. We need more Europe, we need to speak with one voice, Laschet said. We need to start projects together, also arms projects to be able to act together." Green party candidate Annalena Baerbock said Europe needed to find a common approach on how to interact with China. I want to make sure that we create a united, European approach toward China in which one (EU) country doesnt get played off against the other," she said. The candidates and party leaders also faced off over how to solve housing shortages in big German cities, fight hatred on social media, and tackle the radicalization of the protest movement against pandemic restrictions. Merkels Union bloc and its candidate for chancellorship, Laschet, have made small gains in the polls in recent weeks. But it remains narrowly behind the center-left Social Democrats, headed by Scholz. The Greens, who are putting forward their own candidate for chancellor for the first time, are trailing in third place, but could play kingmakers when it comes to forming a government. The close race and number of parties with significant support means the next government will be determined by post-election coalition negotiations between at least two and more likely three parties. Merkel, chancellor since 2005, is not seeking a fifth four-year term. Slightly over 60 million Germans will elect a new parliament. The party with the most seats will seek to form a coalition government and gets its candidate elected as chancellor by lawmakers. - Follow APs coverage of Germanys election at https://apnews.com/hub/germany-election AP TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) China sent 24 fighter jets toward Taiwan in a large display of force Thursday, after the self-governing island announced its intention to join an 11-nation Pacific trade group that China has also applied to join. China's People's Liberation Army flew fighter jets toward Taiwan twice on Thursday, once in the morning with 19 planes, and once in the afternoon with five more. Taiwan deployed air patrol forces in response to the Chinese jets and tracked them on its air defense systems, the islands Defense Ministry said in a statement. NEW YORK (AP) This weeks phone call between President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron may have soothed some of France's incandescent rage over its exclusion from a new Indo-Pacific defense initiative and loss of a submarine deal worth billions, but the anger and resentment remain clear. After meeting Thursday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pointedly referred to the situation as a crisis that will take time and U.S. action to overcome. As part of the defense pact, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. According to Le Drian, he and Blinken discussed the terms and topics to be dealt with in an in-depth consultation process between the two countries aimed at restoring trust. Le Drian "affirmed that a first step had been taken with the call between the two presidents but noted that it would take time to end the crisis between our two countries and would require actions, according to a statement from the French foreign ministry. Thats even after Macron told Biden he had decided to send his countrys ambassador recalled to Paris in an unprecedented move at the height of the spat back to Washington. Seeking rapprochement with Americas oldest ally appears not to come easily to the Biden administration, which has stopped short of apologizing for excluding France from its Indo-Pacific arrangement with Britain and Australia and seems intent on powering through the trouble. While Le Drian lingered on the hurt and damage done to the relationship, neither Blinken nor the State Department's account of the meeting gave it nary a mention. Nor did they mention "trust." Speaking to reporters at a news conference, Blinken said he would work closely with Le Drian on the process of in-depth consultations going forward, but he ignored a question about whether the U.S. regards the situation as a crisis and whether he apologized to the minister. We recognize this will take time and hard work and will be demonstrated not only in words but in deeds, and I committed to working closely with Mr. Le Drian on this crucial effort, Blinken said. On a personal note, I would just add that he and I have been friends for a long time, he is someone I hold in great esteem. Blinken's comments, though, appeared to suggest that both sides needed to work hard for the in-depth consultations to succeed. State Department spokesman Ned Price had said earlier that the two men "discussed the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which the United States welcomes, and the need for close cooperation with France and other European allies and partners active in the region. PONTOON BEACH The Illinois Department of Transportation has announced intermittent lane restrictions will begin on Illinois 111 between Horseshoe Lake Road and Collinsville Road on Monday, Sept. 27, weather permitting. Two-way traffic will be maintained through the work zone by the use of flaggers. This work is needed do pavement repairs and place a new asphalt driving surface. The work is expected to be completed by the end of November 2021. COLLINSVILLE While some employers were finding slim pickings at the annual Jobs Plus Regional Job Fair, Katie Johnson, vice president of HR and technology for WestStar Aviation in East Alton, had found the perfect candidate for a tough-to-fill position. The job fair, put on by Madison County Employment Training (MCET) and the St. Clair County Intergovernmental Grants Department, is held annually at the Gateway Convention Center, in Collinsville, although last years event was a drive-through job fair because of COVID restrictions. About 90 employers, agencies, schools and other groups vied for customers. But there were fewer than 60 job-seekers within the first hour of the fair, Madison County Employment and Training Director Tony Fuhrmann said. Things are a little slow from the job-seeker side, which was a concern, he said. Its sort of surprising to me, because of where were at in pandemic recovery. Extra unemployment benefits ended September 4 in Illinois, so we thought wed see more interest coming from those individuals. Also, kids are back in school. The states unemployment figures are expected to be released Thursday, but Fuhrmann has been saying the situation is so unsettled that the numbers are nearly meaningless. There has been a lot of discussion about employers need for workers. There are so many job opportunities at all levels, said Matt Jones, program coordinator for the St. Clair County Workforce Development Group. There are so many training opportunities, so many resources available. In my 30 years, there couldnt be a better time to look for a job. Fuhrmann also said that another factor being discussed is an estimated three million baby-boomers retired during the pandemic, a much larger number than normal. That has created a situation in which people graduating from high school, college or technical schools, because of all the extra employee retirements, are skipping taking hold over jobs, such as fast-food or hospitality, and waiting until something in their fields open up. Although it means better pay and starting their career path a little earlier, it also means lower-level service industry jobs are going unfilled. The talk is because there were so many more people retiring, it could be up to 10 years before you see the market adjust and recover and jobs and individuals match back up again, Jones explained. The things that are happening right now are not a short-term situation. For WestStars Johnson, her perfect candidate is a teacher displaced by COVID, who expressed interest in a training position. Were looking forward to interviewing her, Johnson said. She added that another person who came through had toured their facility while in high school, and was now in Southwestern Illinois Colleges aircraft maintenance program. She stopped by to visit us and reconnect again, Johnson said, noting that such follow-up was unusual. Another plus, it is a woman, seeking employment in what is a traditionally male-dominated field. For some of the other potential employers, the fair was a little slower. Traffic has been a little slim, said Anne Koleson, a practice administrator for Metro East Gastroenterology Ltd., a Belleville-based medical practice, but Ive made some good networking connections with other employers. We are looking for quality people to work in our growing medical practice. I wanted representation from the region. She noted it has been nearly impossible to find new employees. The employees we have right now and we have a very good core have all come through networking, Koleson said. We have an unwritten rule that once youre hired, you have to bring somebody in, and surprisingly thats worked very well for us. Jeff Bares, of Collinsville, was among the job-seekers. I thought I would see who was hiring in the local area, and get some face-to-face time with local employers, he said. With a background in healthcare and records management, he was able to develop a few leads. He also said having face-to-face conversations could be important. You can be more memorable and stand out, rather than be just another file in a database, he said. Johnson also emphasized that WestStar Aviation wanted face-to-face conversations. We do believe all the online interactions, in trying to recruit people, are getting tiring, she said. People want to be more interactive and see people, and get out of quarantine. We want to add more of those normal interactions and that might help us find better candidates. For those still looking for work, MCET offers services ranging from job postings and help with resumes or job searches, to paying for up to two years of training for high-value jobs. For information about employment and workforce training opportunities, call 618-296-4301, visit the Madison County website at www.co.madison.il.us/ or visit the departments Facebook page at www.facebook.com/MCETD. LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) Nigerian police have arrested three key suspects over the abduction for ransom of 121 students from a school in the northern Kaduna state, authorities said Thursday. Arrests of suspected school abduction masterminds in the country's northwest and central regions are rare. Assailants had stormed the Bethel Baptist High School on July 5, seizing the students from their hostels. All but 21 of them have been released, including 10 freed last week. Police spokesperson Frank Mba said Thursday that one assault rifle was recovered from each of the suspects. Security experts, parents and rescued students have told The Associated Press that kidnappers often use ransom money to buy weapons. Africas most populous country has witnessed at least ten mass school abductions in the last year during which more than 1,400 students were taken in total, often in remote areas where there is little security presence. The Rev. John Hayab, an official at the Kaduna school, told The Associated Press that since the school was attacked in July, attacks have continued in various parts of the state by gunmen using hideouts in abandoned forest reserves. They feel comfortable and are still coming back to kidnap more people, he said, adding that parents of affected students are frustrated that the state is not taking the war to (the gunmen). Students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale are working on a project aimed at ensuring people get what they pay for when purchasing cannabidiol products. The project began with Roberto Santos-Torres, a student from a university in Puerto Rico who spent the summer at SIU as part of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation, which pays for students to visit other universities and conduct research. SIU has recently hosted students from Tennessee, New Jersey, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and other programs in Illinois as part of the programs and sends some of its students to study at other universities as well. Santos-Torres worked with two SIU researchers, Mary and Gary Kinsel, using some of the universitys high-tech analytical instrumentation to examine various CBD products to verify active ingredients. His project examined the accuracy of product labelling on hemp-derived consumer products such as CBD tinctures intended for humans or pet consumption, CBD gummies, CBD honey and topical CBD creams. CBD, usually used in the form of an oil sold by itself or as an ingredient in other products, is derived from cannabis, which is becoming legal in more and more states. CBD doesnt create a high effect, which is caused by THC. It can be used as a stress reliever and sleep aid or a pain reliever. However, the Food and Drug Administration has reported a variety of hemp-derived products that dont contain the active ingredients in the amounts listed on product labels. Standardization in this field is therefore an important goal. It is problematic when the public cannot trust that the product labelling is accurate, said Mary Kinsel, associate scientist in the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration at SIU. Santos-Torres said use of medical cannabis is a growing in his home of Puerto Rico, the same as in many U.S. states. So Kinsel suggested he tackle the emerging problem of labeling issues. I was delighted, since it was a project that could start on my island before I got to SIU, Santos-Torres said. I hope this study can clarify the problem that currently exists with the label content of CBD products, and for the FDA to be more rigorous with this market. For Santos-Torres the first step was preparing standard solutions of five different known CBD concentrations, which provided a sort of yardstick by which to measure the CBD content of the consumer products. To do this, he prepared a stock solution with a known concentration of CBD, and then diluted it to make standards of the desired smaller CBD concentrations. By plotting the instrument response of each CBD standard signal against the known concentrations, the researchers could then fit an equation to the data that could be used to determine the CBD concentrations in the consumer products. The painstaking work effectively set the stage for further work to begin this fall, when Chloe Leonard, a senior in physiology at SIU, continues the project. Leonard said she chose to study under Mary Kinsel after taking her introduction to forensic science course in the fall of 2020. I was very intrigued by her research and asked if she had any openings for undergraduate research, Leonard said. She was kind enough to allow me to join her this semester in the lab and presented the idea of furthering Robertos research. As a physiology major, Leonard said she is very interested in the medicinal benefits of CBD, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity. It would allow me to gain a better understanding for potency testing and proper laboratory procedures that I could use in the future, she said. Leonard will repeat Santos-Torres work with the goal of determining the extraction efficiency by adding known quantities of CBD to consumer products and then extracting it to measure how much can be recovered. This will help optimize the extraction method. During this semester, we expect her to validate the extraction processes we came up with and carried out this summer, Santos-Torres said. After that, shell continue to examine more CBD products. EDWARDSVILLE Two Granite City residents were charged in the theft of a Lincoln Town Car in August. Katelyn E. Wense, 26, and Eric R. Burroughs, 22, both of Granite City, were charged Sept. 22 with offenses relating to motor vehicles, both Class 2 felonies. The cases were presented by the Metro East Auto Theft Task Force. According to court documents, on Aug. 15 the two allegedly were found to be in possession of a stolen 1995 Lincoln Town Car. Bail was set at $50,000 each. Other felony charges filed Sept. 22 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include: Dilynn J. Schel, 29, of Livingston, was charged with burglary and offenses relating to motor vehicles, both Class 2 felonies. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On Sept. 8 Schel allegedly entered the Silvercreek Glider Club building at 7410 Rockwell Road, New Douglas, to commit theft, and was found to be in possession of a stolen John Deere utility vehicle. Bail was set at $50,000. Douglas F. Manns, 43, of Alton, was charged with offenses relating to motor vehicles, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Metro East Auto Theft Task Force. On Aug. 5 Manns allegedly was found to be in possession of a stolen 2021 Big Tex trailer. Bail was set at $50,000. John W. Purnell, 58, of Granite City, was charged with offenses relating to motor vehicles, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Sept. 21 Purnell allegedly was found to be in possession of a stolen U-Haul trailer out of Arizona. Bail was set at $50,000. Jerry L. Parker II, 28, listed as homeless out of Cottage Hills, was charged with burglary, a Class 2 felony, and two counts of aggravated fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On Sept. 10 Parker allegedly entered a building in the first block of Northwood Drive, Bethalto, to commit theft. On Sept. 11 he allegedly was driving a Lincoln Town Car when he attempted to flee from a Madison County sheriffs deputy, reaching speeds in excess of 21 mile above the posted limit and disobeying two or more traffic control devices. Bail was set at $50,000. Joshua L. Main, 24, of Davidson, North Carolina, was charged with criminal damage to property over $10,000, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of criminal damage to property over $500, both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Pontoon Beach Police Department. On June 16 Main allegedly caused in excess of $10,000 in damage to property of Metro Marble and Granite, 4261 Crescent Industrial Drive. He also is accused of causing in excess of $500 damage each to a 2020 Kia Optima and a 2013 Freightliner tractor trailer, both on Illinois 111. Bail was set at $40,000. Kelsey N. Hagston, 28, of Granite City, was charged with identity theft, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Oct. 20, 2020 Hagston allegedly used another persons personal information to fraudulently obtain an Ameren account and services valued in excess of $300. Bail was set at $15,000. Jennifer D. Howard, 33, of East Alton, was charged with tampering with public records, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the East Alton Police Department. On Aug. 30 Howard allegedly altered a public record, a court order in reference to an eviction. Bail was set at $15,000. John M. Eckmann, 41, with a last known address in Granite City, was charged with theft under $500 (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Feb. 26 Eckmann allegedly took $400 from another person. It was noted he has a prior conviction for theft out of Madison County. Michael C. Barty, 41, of Hamel, was charged with unlawful possession of a debit card, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Feb. 4 Barty allegedly had a credit card without the owners consent. Bail was set at $15,000. Army combat veteran Spencer Sullivan has never felt more victorious. Sullivan spent years fighting to get his Afghan translator asylum after his former platoon's other interpreter was denied a U.S. visa before being killed by the Taliban in 2017. On Wednesday, Abdulhaq Sodais was finally granted asylum by a court in Germany, where he was forced to flee after being denied a U.S. visa repeatedly despite facing death threats for aiding U.S. troops during its 20-year war in Afghanistan. Sullivan, who now lives in Virginia, said he dropped his phone when he saw the text message from Sodais. I just started crying," Sullivan said. The decision marked the end of an eight-year journey between the two men who risked their lives together trying to eliminate the Taliban, bonding in a way that can only be forged in war. Sullivan dedicated himself to helping Sodais after losing another translator, Sayed Masoud, who was killed by the Taliban in 2017 while waiting for a U.S. visa. The former soldier is among scores of U.S. combat veterans who have been working on their own to rescue the Afghans who served alongside them. Its ultimately just cathartic relief," said Sullivan, adding that he was overwhelmed with emotion Wednesday in part because it also opened the war wound that he couldn't help Masoud. This long journey is over but Sayed didnt make it." Thousands of Afghans who aided U.S. troops have spent years stuck in a backlogged and beleaguered U.S. Special Immigrant Visa program, and countless others were denied because of minor inconsistencies in their work records, such as showing up late to their jobs, according to veterans who worked with them. Sodais first applied for a U.S. visa in 2013 but was denied. He appealed four times before ultimately fleeing to Germany after his uncle was beheaded and his neighbor who worked for the U.S. military was gunned down by the Taliban. Sodais traveled for seven months going through nearly a half dozen countries. He was beaten and abandoned by smugglers and jailed and beaten by police before reaching Germany, where his first asylum request was denied. Sullivan wrote letters of recommendation, provided photos of his time with his platoon and obtained records from the U.S. government that showed his denial was based on a vague review by a civilian contractor who Sodais said falsely accused him of checking social media on the job. On Aug. 11, Germany temporarily halted the deportation of all Afghans due to the upheaval but did not specify how long the order would last. Sodais said he believes Sullivan's letters of recommendation made the difference in finally being granted asylum. His case will be reviewed in three years when he can then apply to become a German citizen. Sodais said he looks forward to getting his German passport so he can someday visit Sullivan and they can travel together so Sodais can finally see the United States. I'm feeling right now that I will have an amazing future," he said. MEG BEAL, Westerly volleyball, senior: Beal had 13 aces and 28 assists in three Westerly victories. Beal also contributed 15 digs for the Bulldogs. ZOOT BOSCHWITZ, Chariho football, senior: Boschwitz completed 14 of 16 passes for 176 yards in the Chargers 42-6 win over Central Falls/Blacksone Valley Prep. Boschwitz threw three touchdown passes. MADDIE PERKINS, Wheeler girls soccer, senior: Perkins scored two goals and assisted on another in the Lions 3-0 victory against Tourtellotte. WILL SAWIN, Stonington boys soccer, senior: Sawin, a senior, scored four goals and assisted on three others in a pair of Stonington victories. For the season, Sawin has 11 goals and 10 assists for the Bears. Vote View Results Sir Peter Wood is putting 25m of his personal fortune into the Castlenau investment trust Two of Britains most innovative and patriotic entrepreneurs are combining financial and intellectual resources to form an investment trust to take some of the nations best known brands to the next level. Sir Peter Wood, the brains behind Direct Line, insurer Esure and a big investor in the publisher Future is combining with Gary Channon of Phoenix Asset Management to launch the Castelnau investment trust, which will be introduced to the London Stock Exchange today. The fund will be supported by Phoenixs investors and Wood is putting 25million of his personal fortune in. He is committing to an extra 75million and upwards should the right new opportunities among potentially valuable British firms come to the fore. Channon, who runs his funds from Barnes, west London, is known for his love of the UKs great hobby brands. He is the biggest investor in famous stamp auction and collecting firm Stanley Gibbons and, for 6million, recently bought the worlds most valuable stamp, the 1856 One-Cent Magenta, worth more than a third of Gibbons market capitalisation. His plan to syndicate the stamp, in the manner of a bloodstock racehorse, is seen as a means of transforming the rarefied world of philately, which is in acute need of modernisation. Yesterday, Channon played down events in New York where Stanley Gibbons has been forced into liquidation as a result of a lease dispute with the LVMH-controlled Stella McCartney fashion brand. All aboard: Sir Rod Stewarts Hornby trainset. The initial investments in the fund start with hobby favourite Hornby, best known for high-quality train sets but also home to Airfix models He argues it is time for Stanley Gibbons to tap into burgeoning interest among young people in India and China for stamps celebrating the heritage and culture of two of the worlds fastest-growing economies. Using technology provided by digital group Rawnet, one of the firms being injected into the Castelnau fund, Gibbons has begun a large project to put more than a century of its famous catalogues online. The valuation of the shareholdings of the companies being transferred into Castelnau is expected to be a modest 250million. But there is a confidence that with the right creative direction, it could be valued at 1bn or more within three to five years. The initial investments start with British hobby favourite Hornby, best known for high-quality electric train sets but also home to Airfix models, which made a huge comeback in the pandemic when craft industries prospered. Record breaker: The one-cent magenta stamp bought by Stanley Gibons for 6m Channon believes Hornby could appeal to the same hobbyists who have lifted Games Workshop into a stock market phenomenon. It will sit alongside Gibbons, another eclectic favourite. At the next stage, the Castelnau portfolio will include shares in Cambium Group, which has become the UKs leading wedding gift enterprise. Its victory over UK rivals such as John Lewis is down to a clever platform that goes beyond selling china and vacuum cleaners. At the less joyful end of life Castelnau will also hold a stake in leading funeral provider Dignity where Channon is chief executive although his role as the investment manager of the new trust will doubtless lead to claims in some quarters of a conflict of interest. Channon will count on Woods expertise in insurance and comparison site marketing to bring pizzazz to a sector steeped in tradition. Woods ability to break the mould, with Direct Line and Esure in the UK and Plymouth Rock in the US, should enable Dignity to provide funeral cover and add-ons that relieve some of the pain of bereavement. The engine of the new trust will be two privately-owned enabling firms. Rawnet provides digital knowhow while the data analytics comes from Ocula Technologies, founded by tech specialist Gerry Buggy, as firms embrace social media to sell their wares. Channon is seeking acquisitions and claims to have the disruptive technology to take famous but under-valued brands onwards. The Castelnau project looks risky. Previous efforts to turn around Gibbons and Hornby have failed. But with Wood and Channon in the Fat Controllers cabin, investors wont be steaming into the unknown. Mike Lynch is accused of cooking the books at his software firm Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard for 9bn A final decision on whether British technology tycoon Mike Lynch will be extradited to face fraud charges in the US has been delayed. Following a court judgement in July, the Home Office was this week due to make a decision on whether to send him for trial. The 56-year-old has been accused of cooking the books at his software firm Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard for 9billion in 2011. He denies the allegations. Yesterday, the Home Office said it was invoking a seven-day extension on the decision under the Extradition Act 2003. It declined to comment on its reasons. Home Secretary Priti Patel is under pressure from Tory backbenchers to overrule the court. MP David Davis has called the ruling an outrage and says the tycoons fate should be for UK courts to decide. If found guilty, Lynch faces 20 years in a US prison. He is still awaiting a separate civil case, brought by HP Enterprise, seeking damages for alleged accounting fraud. Vertical Aerospace has won a 585million order for its electric air taxis in a major boost for its prospects. Japanese conglomerate Marubeni has ordered 200, which it is due to receive in 2025. The deal means Vertical Aerospace now has orders for 1,350 aircraft, worth 4billion. Other companies ordering the taxis include American Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, the latter wanting to use them to fly passengers into Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports. Future flight: Japanese conglomerate Marubeni has ordered 200 of Vertical Aerospace's groundbreaking taxis, which it will receive in 2025 The latest order comes as the firm is set to float in New York by reversing into a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) in a 1.6billion deal later this year. Vertical Aerospace is designing and building electric aircraft which it says will be faster, quicker and greener than helicopters but with the same versatility. Founded five years ago by serial entrepreneur Stephen Fitzpatrick, it has developed a 200mph craft capable of taking four passengers and a pilot up to 120 miles. They are also silent, potentially making it easier for them to obtain permission to fly over homes. Fitzpatrick, the company's chief executive, said: 'Marubeni is one of the most respected companies in Japan and its option for up to 200 aircraft provides us with a potential direct route to market. 'This is the most exciting time in aviation for almost a century. Electrification will transform flying in the 21st century in the same way the jet engine did 70 years ago.' Veterinary care provider CVS has seen its sales surge as more Britons decided to adopt a feline or canine friend for company during the pandemic. A strong performance by its online retail and veterinary practice divisions helped the firm's total revenues grow by around a fifth to 510.1million in the year to the end of June, while its pre-tax profits more than tripled to 33.1million. The group also noted that people are spending more money looking after their pets and said it was expecting to benefit in the medium-term, as the puppies and kittens Britons have recently bought get older and require more advanced treatment. CVS said it was expecting to benefit materially in the medium-term as new pets the animals get older and require more advanced treatment Trade was further boosted from nine new acquisitions over the course of the year, as well as much higher numbers of tests provided to its diagnostic laboratories and sales in its analyser business. Because of the solid growth in demand, the company was able to slash its net debt by 11.9million and is awarding investors a 6.5p per share dividend payment after nothing last year. In the first two months after the period ended, CVS said overall sales were bolstered by 17.5 per cent, and comparable sales grew 14.4 per cent compared to an increase of just 3.9 per cent the previous year. Meanwhile, subscriptions to its pet health scheme, which provides services such as vaccinations, and flea and worming treatment, have risen 7.9 per cent to 455,000, and membership at its Horse Health Programme surpassed 10,000. 'These results demonstrate the resilience of our fully integrated veterinary model and our commitment to providing the very highest standards of clinical care,' remarked chief executive Richard Fairman. 'We continue to expand and develop our business, and, alongside our ongoing investments in high-quality facilities and practices, we have welcomed a number of new vets and nurses to the Group, as demand for veterinary services continues to increase in light of rising pet ownership.' Work companion: Among the reasons attributed for the pandemic-induced growth in pet ownership are Britons being forced to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic An estimated 3.2 million UK homes have acquired a new puppy or kitten, according to figures from the Pet Food Manufacturers Association, which CVS quoted in its trading update. Among the reasons attributed for this growth are Britons working from home during the pandemic and the potential mental health benefits of owning a pet. Other pet-related companies have also recorded a rip-roaring trade since the start of the pandemic. Pets at Home's annual store sales passed 1billion for the first time, and it has paid back business rates relief which it claimed from the UK Government. Sophie Lund-Yates, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'The vet-clinic giant is barking up the right, very fruitful, tree. 'A huge boom in pet ownership over lockdown - there are now over 24 million cats and dogs in the UK - means more trips to the vets and more online pet food orders, and that means a ballooning revenue stream for CVS. 'What's particularly impressive is that even when you strip out the effects of lockdowns, growth has been very impressive. Having an organic engine driver is much preferred to relying on favourable market dynamics.' She warned, though, that shortages affecting the UK veterinary sector were a potential danger for the company. Much of this shortfall is down to fewer qualified vets from the EU travelling to Britain since the UK left the political bloc. Lund-Yates added: "CVS' good reputation and improved remuneration packages should help it with staff retention and attraction, but it's an ongoing battle, and one CVS has lost in the past.' Kwasi Kwarteng is poised to launch an investigation into Meggitt's 6.3billion takeover in a move that will test the Business Secretary's mettle. In the second dramatic intervention since his appointment, the Mail understands he is gearing up to order regulators to study the deal on national security grounds. US aerospace group Parker Hannifin swooped on Meggitt in August, offering 8 a share for the FTSE 250 firm. Taking action: Kwasi Kwarteng (pictured) is poised to launch an investigation into Meggitt's 6.3billion takeover But military and political figures including former head of the Royal Navy Admiral Lord West and Tory grandee Lord Heseltine were among those who slammed the deal. Business department officials are holding discussions with Parker Hannifin about a series of commitments it could make to safeguard Meggitt and the UK's access to its technology. But an industry source said the deal was going to be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for a detailed probe into whether it could compromise national security. Kwarteng is waiting to receive advice from officials before initiating the inquiry. The move will be a serious test for Kwarteng and the Government to show that the UK is brave enough to stand up to US predators and protect one of Britain's most important industries. A Government spokesman said: 'Under the Enterprise Act 2002, the Business Secretary has powers to intervene in mergers and takeovers which raise national security concerns. While commercial transactions remain primarily a matter for the parties involved, the Government is closely monitoring the proposed acquisition of Meggitt by Parker Hannifin.' Earlier this week a staggering 99.8 per cent of Meggitt shareholders voted in favour of the sale. The UK is already investigating US private equity giant Advent International's 2.6billion pounce on Ultra Electronics, which makes submarine-hunting gear for the Royal Navy. Kwarteng ordered a review into that last month. An investigation would hold the Meggitt sale up for several months while the CMA compiles a report. The Business Secretary will then review its conclusions and would have the power to block the takeover, should it be deemed a serious risk to UK capabilities. If this happened, Meggitt chairman Nigel Rudd would miss out on a 2m payday for his 250,000 shares in the group. He has been dubbed 'Sir Sell-Off' for his role in seven mega-deals for UK firms such as Boots, Invensys and Pilkington Glass. The 74-year-old has been at the helm since 2015 and was due to step down last year before postponing his retirement when Covid hit. He has earned more than 2m already in chairman fees. 'Sir Sell-Off': Meggitt chairman Nigel Rudd Coventry-based Meggitt traces its history back to 1850s and the invention of the world's first altitude meter for hot air balloons. It has 9,000 staff including 2,000 in the UK and makes parts for planes and military aircraft such as the Typhoon, F-35s and Boeing's 737 Max. Commercial customers include BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Lockheed Martin. Parker Hannifin could agree to protect UK jobs and factories for several years in an attempt to get its 6.3billion buyout over the line. When making its initial offer, Parker Hannifin laid out a series of proposed legally binding commitments to preserve Meggitt, such as keeping its headquarters in the UK, to sweeten the deal. But these only lasted for one year. Sceptics believe any pledges are likely to be worthless. Missing pension money: Find out what information to give the DWP if your parent has died below Many women have died without knowing they were owed huge sums in state pension after shocking errors by the Government stretching back decades. Their adult children have deluged This is Money with enquiries about their late parents' lost pension money. Some of these families might never see a penny - but for many it's still worth scouring the records and sending their details to the Department for Work and Pensions. The National Audit Office revealed in its official report into the state pension debacle that deceased people's records are destroyed, either after four years or after the death of a surviving spouse. The DWP apparently has no idea how many pensioners have died while unwittingly being underpaid state pension due to its incompetence. As of last month, it also had no formal plan to trace relatives in these cases, including where it holds information on next of kin, according to the NAO. Unsurprisingly, Parliament's spending watchdog has recommended the DWP comes up with a plan soon. It suggests a process allowing beneficiaries or executors of estates to ask if deceased women were underpaid, to help tackle cases where the DWP cannot trace relatives. Meanwhile, the DWP recently gave us guidance on what information bereaved families who suspect their relatives were underpaid could provide - see below. Why are some women being underpaid state pension? Married women who retired on small state pensions before April 2016 should get an uplift to 60 per cent of their husband's payments once he reaches retirement age too. Since 17 March 2008, the increases are supposed to be automatic, but before that women had to apply to get the full sum they were due. It confirmed that it can investigate without a National Insurance number, contradicting its own call centre staff who declined to help one of our readers without one. Former Pensions Minister Steve Webb, who uncovered the state pension scandal with This is Money, says his advice to executors and beneficiaries is to write a letter to the DWP with as many details as they can muster. This is so that they will have written proof they contacted the DWP if needed, and because it is often difficult to get through on the phone. But Webb is worried many families of women whose records have been destroyed will miss out on backpayments. He warns women in this group might never be identified unless families have old DWP paperwork or bank statements - the latter can list NI numbers next to the state pension payments so are worth searching out - and come forward to claim. The NAO says that from from April 2021 onward, the DWP has started keeping records of pensioners that die. However, the news about destroyed records is another dismal development for those wanting the DWP to do its duty to elderly women. This is Money has reported on cases of women suffering a catalogue of errors and being repeatedly ignored or fobbed off by its staff. We have also covered cases of widows who lost out on more than 100,000 over two decades, and already explored two tragic situations where women died unaware they were owed tens of thousands of pounds. The DWP has already let so many people down. It must now get its act together and find a way to help families whose relatives were deprived of the state pension they should have received during their lives. What information should you give the DWP if your parent has died? Many bereaved adult children have written to This is Money asking how to check whether their late parents lost out on state pension. Anyone who wishes to do so should contact the DWP - its details are here. If you prefer to write, you can input your postcode here to find an address. If you think your parent's records might have been destroyed, it is worth giving the DWP as much detail - and especially copies of old pension and bank statements - that you can to show they were underpaid. We recently asked the DWP what information it needs, and it said: 'Ideally, we would require a National Insurance number from someone who believes their deceased parents were underpaid state pension. 'However, if this is not available, their full name, date of birth and address can be used to locate the claim records.' After This is Money heard from a reader who said DWP staff told them they couldn't look into a deceased person's pension without an NI number, the DWP said this was not the case and it was willing to investigate any specific instances where this had occurred. Try to have as much of the following information to hand as possible if you phone, or include it in any letter. Name of deceased person Date of birth and death NI number Most recent basic state pension - this can be found on the annual statement, but if not give the total weekly or monthly amount Last known address ... Spouses name Date of birth (and date of death if this applies) NI number Current basic state pension, or last known before death Address ... Your own address and phone number It is a good idea to keep a record of the dates you phone up and what was said, or copies of your letters. You could consider sending them by registered post. Since NI numbers would be useful if not essential to have, you can check your parents' old state pension statements, and also their bank statements on which these generally appear. What information should you give the DWP if your parent has died? If you are the executor of an estate, you can contact the bank into which state pension was paid to ask for information and old statements. Old benefits documents and health records might also include NI numbers. Steve Webb's firm LCP has launched an online tool to help older married women work out if they are getting the correct amount, and if you have enough details about your late mother you could use this too. LCP has a separate web page for widows (and widowers) and again this might be useful for working out whether parents who have died were underpaid. But Webb stresses that the LCP websites are simply designed as useful tools, and anyone with any doubt about the amount of pension they are receiving should contact the DWP. You can also write to This is Money at pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk. We will help if we can, but we receive huge numbers of messages about this and are not always able to reply. Please put DWP CLAIMS in the subject line. If youve ever pictured yourself in front of an easel, paintbrush in hand, capturing the majestic landscape that stretches before you while the breeze ruffles your hair then the Olana Plein Air Festival on Saturday is your chance to make that dream come true even if you havent made art since kindergarten. Artists of all skill levels, as well as newbies and nature lovers, are invited to experience the 250-acre Olana State Historic Site through the eyes of its creator, artist Frederic Church, and his teacher, Thomas Cole, whose home lies directly across the river in the Village of Catskill. We know that Church and Cole made sketches of the landscapethe Catskill Mountains and the expanse of sky and the sweeping views of the Hudson Riverand created paintings from them, so to be able to invite artists here to do that 160 years later is really a thrill, said Amy Hausmann, director of Olana State Historic Site. But this event is for everyone, not just for artists. I hope we have folks who have never tried painting or drawing outside, who will explore new ways of looking and seeing and experiencing Olana. The term plein air comes from the French en plein air, which may sound intimidating, but literally means in the open aira revolutionary concept for art-making back when late 19th-century painters began to venture outside their studios. The festival, which its organizers hope will become an annual event, is an opportunity for people to immerse themselves in this creative activity on their own terms to take advantage of Olana as a site of inspiration and an art-making laboratory, in which they can participate in a variety of different ways, explained Carolyn Keogh, director of Education and Public Programs, The Olana Partnership. Visitors can arrive as early as 7 a.m. to set up on the grounds, and stay as late as 7 p.m. to catch the changing light on paper and canvas, and there will be times throughout the day when they can come together to look at each others work. Teaching artists Eileen Murphy, Mario Robinson, Eudes Correia, William Low and Jean Mackay will offer a variety of outdoor workshops, on topics including plein air watercolor, landscape painting, painting the figure in nature and field sketching a practice used to observe and record flora and fauna in the era before the handheld camera. William Coleman, Olanas director of Collections and Exhibitions, The Olana Partnership, will give a free lunchtime lecture. Mackay leads a hike and sketch session at 2 p.m. for families with children ages 7 and up, and a separate family tour begins at 2:30 p.m. The mandate of this whole experience is accessibility, said Simon Levenson, founder of Drawing America, which has been coordinating plein art events in New York City since 2013 and partnered with Olana to organize the festival. One of the goals is just to enjoy ourselvesI dont think that thats incorporated into art enough. Making art is a really good part of our lives, and some of us will be professionals and some of us wont, and thats OK. Visitors will find source material not only in the environment but also in the art currently on view at Olana. Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment brings together the work of 19th- and 21st-century artists, with Martin Johnson Heades 19th-century hummingbird and habitat paintings as its guiding theme. On the East Lawn, Jean Shins site-specific installation, Fallen, is a response to the demise of an ancient Eastern hemlock tree. The estate itself is a work of art or earthwork, as Keogh called it. Over the 40 years he lived at Olana, Church carefully curated the property, planting trees on what had been farmland, damming up the stream to make a lake and building winding roads up the hillside. The result is a living painting, Hausmann said. As you travel along the five miles of carriage road, at every turn a new vista is revealed. with the main house, fusing Victorian and Middle Eastern architectural elements, as the culmination. Church once said, I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with oil and canvas in my studio, Keogh said. Thinking about those historic views and what we can do to protect them is integral to what we do. The Plein Air festival aims to provide for visitors not only a safe community event but also a new window on the natural world, which for Church, Cole and their fellow Hudson River School artists was both a muse and a vulnerable resource to be protected. When were making art in nature or looking at art made in nature, were figuring out how to process and understand it, and how it gets put on paper and canvas, said Levenson, who has been painting almost exclusively outdoors in New York City for nearly three decades. Once you look at nature in those ways, its going to expand how you see it in your everyday life. MALTA - It could be years until GlobalFoundries moves forward with recently announced plans to build a second computer chip factory at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Saratoga Country. The new factory, which could cost as much as $15 billion, is expected to mean job openings for 1,000 new highly paid workers on top of the 3,000 employees who already work at GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 complex. But Peter Struzzi, a commercial real estate broker and executive managing director with Pyramid Brokerage Co., doesn't think GlobalFoundries' plans to build what it will call Fab 8.2 - which are contingent on billions of dollars in state and federal subsidies - should stand in the way of his efforts to bring other manufacturers to Luther Forest. Struzzi has been hired to market a 245-acre parcel at Luther Forest that a Midwestern development firm named Scannell Properties has an option to buy. Scannell is a national real estate development company that has done projects for General Electric, FedEx, General Mills and Best Buy. But they are best known, at least locally, for developing the 1-million-square-foot Amazon warehouse and fulfillment center in Schodack, one of the largest buildings in Rensselaer County. Despite having paid for an option to acquire land at Luther Forest, Struzzi contends that Scannell is hamstrung by the special zoning laws that were put into place when the 1,400-acre Luther Forest was created to attract chip manufacturers. Most of the parcels at Luther Forest are specifically set aside for nanotechnology manufacturing, which is essentially semiconductor manufacturing, which includes computer chip manufacturing. Scannell has sought to change the zoning requirements at Luther Forest, which are controlled by the town of Malta, so that it can build several large buildings that could be used for manufacturing, research and development or warehouses. While many assume that Scannell is focusing its efforts on bringing an Amazon warehouse to Luther Forest, Struzzi says that's not the case. In fact, Struzzi says, he's gotten interest from a major pharmaceutical company and a food processor that were looking to build large facilities and employ hundreds of workers. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. But when he explained all the restrictions at Luther Forest, which he says include a requirement to undergo audits by the town, they were scared away. "It's just insane," Struzzi said. "Our objective right now is to have the language in the (zoning law) modified so we can create development opportunities to be utilized." The Malta planning board voted to reject Scannell's request to change the zoning laws, although the town board, which has the final say, declined to follow the planning board and is allowing Scannell to come back with more data and analysis of the issue. GlobalFoundries opposes the changes, saying it would hamper its own plans to build a second fab. "The town is working with Scannell, reviewing their submission, studies and data to make a decision," Malta town board member Timothy Dunn said. ALBANY The resignation of Department of Health Commissioner Howard A. Zucker, an ally of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, rung in a victory lap moment for Republicans lawmakers who have been calling for his departure for months. A handful of progressive Democrats also chimed in, but largely stayed out of the conversation. Zucker, in a letter he submitted to Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announcing his resignation, he said it was time to move on from his top position leading the state's health department after nearly 7 years in which he served with with a "fierce dedication to the public's health." "Perhaps in this era of social media and distrust in government, the countless unfounded criticisms have been met by conscientiousness and competence, tenacity and audacity," Zucker said in his letter to Hochul. Zucker was heavily critiqued by politicians for scandals concerning the safety of nursing home residents during the coronavirus pandemic, including an order for nursing homes to accept people with COVID-19, and the eventual count of how many people died from COVID-19 in the nursing homes, all the while Cuomo worked on a $5 million book deal about his successes of handling the pandemic. Zucker often appeared on stage with Cuomo during coronavirus news conferences, pushing forward messages of how New York was doing with the pandemic, some of which has been undercut by follow-up investigations, including by Attorney General Letitia James. "Dr. Zuckers resignation marks the end of a difficult chapter for our state," James said in a statement. "While I thank him for his service, we need more transparency and accountability at the Department of Health as we continue to battle COVID-19. I look forward to working with the next health commissioner, who must safeguard the health and wellbeing of all New Yorkers, especially the most vulnerable, and must do so with openness and great care." The state Republican Party took the moment to point attention to its longstanding calls for Zucker to resign. "To be clear, his resignation shouldve happened in January, when I first called for it," Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said in a statement that immediately followed the news. "Howard Zucker chose to protect Andrew Cuomos political career above protecting the health of New Yorkers. We hope that he and Andrew Cuomo have occasion to continue discussing and refining their warped version of science during their retirement from public service." Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay said the resignation was "an obvious and overdue step." New York GOP "presumptive" nominee for governor, U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin called Zucker's resignation a "joke." Howard Zucker should have been fired!" Zeldin said in a statement. "Instead of kicking Zucker to the curb, Kathy Hochul is letting him hang around for a couple extra months, and depart on his terms, giving him a pat on the back on the way out for a supposed job well done." Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville, hit on a similar sentiment in a statement. "Sadly, in New York corrupt governors and their sycophant henchmen who dont take responsibility for their bad actions dont get impeached or fired they just skulk away," Tedisco said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Sen. Daphne Jordan, R-Halfmoon, called for continued investigations. "The resignation of Howard Zucker as State Health Commissioner is a positive, necessary, long-overdue step for New York,"Jordan said in a statement. "While we can finally begin the fresh start that our state needs, Zuckers resignation does not equal a clean slate. There still must be answers, accountability, and justice regarding the tragic nursing home deaths that took place because of Zucker and Cuomos disastrous, deadly mandate." Queensbury Republican Rep. Dan Stec pointed his frustrations in part to the state's vaccination distribution plan. Many of us were also dismayed when Cuomo and Zucker bypassed our well-trained and well-prepared county health departments for vaccine distribution," Stec said in a statement. "Instead, a confusing and frustrating state distribution system had some seniors driving three hours across the Adirondacks in the middle of winter for a vaccine rather than getting one close to home." Bronx Democrat Sen. Gustavo Rivera said Zucker's ability to serve was "hindered beyond repair" because he allowed the agency to "become a political tool for Cuomo and his allies." "His resignation is warranted and another step toward ensuring we hold those who neglected their duties under the Cuomo administration accountable," Rivera said in a statement. ALBANY In the debate before New York's last gubernatorial election, Andrew Cuomo came for a knife fight and carved up a challenger, Republican Marc Molinaro, who struggled with the onslaught of insults and incivility. Cuomo called his opponent a fraud, liar, thief and "Trump mini-me," among many other insults. The incumbent governor angrily interrupted so often that both moderators all but begged him to stop, with one warning she would have to "punch (Cuomo) out" if he continued with the boorishness. When Molinaro managed to complete a sentence, a sneering, sarcastic Cuomo derided his "beautiful, flowery words." Eessh. It was ugly. The remarkable thing is that Cuomo didn't need to be on the attack. Molinaro, an underfunded underdog, was not going to win. Cuomo, possessing all the glories of incumbency, could have been gracious and decent. The Democrat could have calmly answered the questions and seriously debated the issues. Cuomo couldn't do it. He couldn't find the discipline or self control. He could only be the bully, and an arrogant one at that. For viewers, it should have been obvious that nobody with Cuomo's temperament should be within sniffing distance of power, that it was inevitable such a man would abuse whatever privileges he was granted. Meanwhile, some of the concerns Molinaro tried to raise amid Cuomo's hectoring the corruption fueled by campaign contributions, the politicization of health department data, the failure to take sexual harassment in state government seriously look prescient given all that has happened. Just think of what would have been avoided had New Yorkers heeded the red flags and rejected Cuomo in 2018. There would have been no hiding of nursing home deaths, no self-enriching book deal, no sexual harassment allegations. Most of all, there would have no resignation in disgrace. That's not to presume Molinaro would have been a perfect governor. We can't know, for instance, how he would have handled the unprecedented crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic although if he'd managed as well as Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, another Republican in a blue state, New York would have been in good hands. It's water under the bridge, anyhow. Cuomo won the election by 23 points, dishonored his office and is now off somewhere licking his wounds while plotting his revenge. His inevitable male-politician-in-exile beard must be coming in nicely. Molinaro went on to win his third term as county executive in Dutchess County. On Tuesday, he announced what has long been rumored: He's taking on U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado in the 19th Congressional District. Molinaro versus Delgado is going to be a big race with national implications. Although we don't yet know its new boundaries hello redistricting! the 19th has long been a swing district and the race will be close. (Joe Biden won with 50 percent of its vote in 2020, while Donald Trump garnered 51 percent four years earlier). Unlike the most recent election for governor, this won't be a choice between civility and, well, Cuomo. Even people who disagree politically describe both Delgado, 44, and Molinaro, 45, as decent fellows, moderate in temperament and outlook. Both are charismatic and telegenic. Both appeal to independents. Can Molinaro win? Oh, absolutely. He's popular in the district's most populous county, and, given Biden's sagging approval ratings, Republicans next year are likely to have wind in their sails. Opposition parties in midterm elections usually do. But Delgado has been a serious and dedicated congressman since winning in 2018. No, he isn't the flashiest or noisiest elected official, but the members of Congress who are provoking firestorms on Twitter, the ones who show up at galas and seem desperate for fame, are rarely doing the hard work of proposing and passing legislation. To the point, the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmakers ranked Delgado the 68th most effective Democrat in Congress, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at 230th, was among the least effective. (Paul Tonko was 34th among Democrats, while Elise Stefanik ranked 10th among Republicans.) Of course, with the balance of power in Congress at stake, the 19th is going to be flooded with outside money and interest. Ubiquitous television ads will portray Delgado and Molinaro as the villains of grainy photographs and outlandish behavior something akin to Pol Pot against Pinochet. Ignore the ads and the noise, because, in truth, this is a contest voters should welcome. Delgado versus Molinaro is a choice between decent, thoughtful and talented candidates who disagree on policy but are rarely disagreeable. Few districts are so fortunate. Let the race begin. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill CHATHAM A second Chatham official was convicted Wednesday of "scamming" the village after an investigation by the state Comptroller's Office and the Columbia County District Attorney. Barbara Henry, 60, of Chatham, was convicted in village court of attempted official misconduct, a misdemeanor, for using her position as village bookkeeper to have the village pay $1,000 of her health insurance premiums. Henry is also accused of stealing more than $8,420 in funds between October 2014 and December 2020 from a nonprofit center for people with developmental disabilities she worked at in Massachusetts, according to Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka. Henry paid $3,586 in restitution to the village and the nonprofit, according to the state Comptroller's Office. The restitution paid to the nonprofit was for thefts occurring in Columbia County, according to Czajka, who referred prosecution of that case to Massachusetts authorities. "Ms. Henry took advantage of her public position to have the taxpayers fully fund her insurance costs, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement. This kind of corruption drives up costs and erodes the public trust. Those who abuse the system will be caught and brought to justice." The conviction is the second stemming from a two-year investigation into Chatham's finances. Village Police Chief Peter Volkmann, who managed Chatham Cares 4 U, a program where people with drug problems could be transported and admitted to recovery centers with the help of Chatham police without facing charges, pleaded guilty in February to fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor. Volkmann admitted to ripping off the state retirement system to the tune of $74,222 and filing $18,607 in fake mileage-reimbursement claims with the village. Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter. Volkmann illegally bypassed the state's $30,000 cap on public wages for pensioners by having 19 municipalities and school districts pay his private company, PF Volkmann & Associates, for services. Volkmann's crimes came to light when a search warrant was executed at village offices in January 2019. Upon conviction, Volkmann was ordered to pay nearly $93,000 in restitution. Neither Volkmann nor Henry will serve time in prison for their crimes in Columbia County. Henry's guilty plea closes the investigation into Chatham' finances, according to Czajka. Neither Henry nor Volkmann can ever hold public office again. Kingston Mayor Steve Noble is proposing a traffic safety study campaign and Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan is urging the countys Traffic Safety Board to ramp up efforts after a recent fatal bicycle accident last weekend. Its important to reiterate how tragic this was, and how preventable it was, said Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan. On Saturday, Sept. 18 at around 1:30 p.m. the Kingston Police Department responded to a call regarding a motor vehicle accident involving a tractor trailer and a bicyclist. Officers who arrived at the scene found the bicyclist with severe injuries. The victim, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Kingston Police Departments Facebook post. The accident occurred in the area of Broadway and East St. James Street, near the citys new roundabout that was opened to the public recently. The roundabout realigns the intersection of I-587, Broadway and Albany Avenue. The redesigned section of Broadway in Midtown Kingston includes a two-way bike lane and vehicle turning lanes. The bike lane runs between the sidewalks and on-street parking spaces. The newly designed area can be tricky for a Kingston native to navigate, and even harder for drivers who are unfamiliar with the area. There is a lot of new roadwork done, particularly in the Midtown Kingston area, which is going to be a great, positive outcome, but with any change comes the risk and to not fully educate the public could result in more tragedies, said Ryan. We have to up the urgency more dramatically. Since the accident, Noble requested that city lawmakers revisit his earlier suggestion that $35,000 be spent on a traffic safety study campaign. In July, bicyclist John Lynch from Albany died after being hit by a vehicle on Washington Avenue near the Esopus Creek crossing in Kingston. And almost a year ago, on Nov. 4, a 54-year-old Kingston man, Darryl Savage, died when he was struck by a school bus on Greenkill Avenue. Its disappointing to me that despite the city mayors request to have funds to educate the public about traffic changes, it wasnt ultimately approved by the city council, said Ryan. Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter. Ryan said that he supports Nobles proposal, and that Ulster County is willing to assist in any way with funding and resources if needed. Hes calling on the Ulster County Traffic Safety Board to meet and work quickly to ramp up bicycle and pedestrian safety. The 12-member Ulster County Traffic Safety Board is responsible for promoting and overseeing traffic safety throughout the county. This isnt just a problem in Kingston, said Ryan. Were seeing it manifest as more and more new folks are coming [to our area] that are excited about biking as we head into the fall season with more tourists and visitors who dont know our roads. Its absolutely essential we step up our game on this. The Open Space Institute announced Tuesday that it has acquired and permanently protected more than 200 acres on the Shawangunk Ridge that once were slated to be developed as a casino resort. The parcel, which is the former site of the Shawanga Lodge, a well-known Catskill resort in the past, consists of 228 acres that sit prominently on top of the ridge. OSI acquired it for $1.7 million and eventually plans to turn the property over to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which will add it to the Wurtsboro Ridge State Forest. The site, east of the village of Wurtsboro in the town of Mamakating, is adjacent to thousands of other acres of protected lands in a series of interconnected state forests on the Shawangunk Ridge and in the 3,300-acre Bashakill Wildlife Management Area. The property also is adjacent to Route 17 and is highly visible from several vantage points in western Orange County. OSI's conservation of the property protects the southern Shawangunk Ridge viewshed. OSI said the acquisition also advances a larger effort by the institute and its partners to create a regional hiking trail that spans the ridge's 73-mile length, from the New Jersey border north to the Rosendale Trestle. OSI permanently protected the trestle in 2009 and restored it in 2013. "With this latest acquisition, OSI continues to forge a lasting conservation legacy in the southern Shawangunks by expanding recreational opportunities for visitors and protecting scenic and forested landscapes from development," Kim Elliman, president and CEO of OSI, said in a statement. New York-New Jersey Trail Conference Executive Director Joshua Howard said that the group "has been dedicated to the protection of the spectacular biodiversity and hiking experience along the Shawangunk Ridge since it came under threat in the 1980s." Howard said OSI shares their vision of creating green corridors and providing "uninterrupted access to nature via safe, sustainably built, long-distance trail networks." The former Shawanga Lodge property is near five popular recreational trail systems: the Shawangunk Ridge Trail, the Long Path, the Sullivan O&W Rail Trail, the Mamakating Rail Trail and the Delaware and Hudson Canal Trail. The Basha Kill Area Association also cheered OSI's acquisition of the property. "Beginning with our founding in 1972, the BKAA successfully staved off several off-the-wall proposals for this property," said Paula Medley, president of the association. "Throughout, our greatest hope was that this ridgetop gem would become publicly accessible." Downtime is the best time Make the most of your Hudson Valley weekend, every week with our newsletter. Janet Lybolt, supervisor of the town of Mamakating, said the full public access to the land "will increase the recreational opportunities for our residents and visitors to the region, which will greatly enhance the town's ecotourism industry." The purchase, which is in line with the town's 2019 comprehensive master plan, also will protect the town's water supply in local aquifers, she said. While it owns the property, OSI said it will allow hiking and other forms of passive recreation, with permission. OSI said during the past 40 years, it has protected more than 33,000 acres on and along the Shawangunk Ridge in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties. The affected land is more than twice the size of Manhattan. OSI, which is based in Manhattan, protects land for recreational purposes, animal habitats, clean water, climate protection and the promotion of healthy communities. ___ (c)2021 The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y. Visit The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y. at www.recordonline.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. The country is obsessed with the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito. Petito and her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, gained national attention earlier this month after Petito went missing and Laundrie returned to his parents' Florida home without his girlfriend. He never reported her missing and he refused to talk with authorities. Following a 2020 census in which the pandemic made access to group housing difficult, Census Bureau officials said Thursday they are going to reassess how they count people living in dorms, prisons and nursing homes in the next head count of every U.S. resident in 2030. The Census Bureau is going to rethink how residents of group quarters are accounted for, though it's too early at this point to say how that will be done, Al Fontenot, an associate director of the Census Bureau, told members of a scientific advisory committee during a virtual meeting. The pandemic hindered the Census Bureau's ability to get information about such residents since students on campus were sent home when the pandemic began in the U.S. in March 2020, and prisons and nursing homes went into lockdowns against the spread of the coronavirus. Clearly, COVID-19 had an impact on our operations, particularly group quarters," said Michael Bentley, a Census Bureau official told members of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee. In some places, such as Alaska, Hawaii the District of Columbia, information about residents' race originally was left blank in more than half of group quarter housing, a significant increase over decades past. Nationally, that rate was 30.2%, up from 18.1% in 2010. The rise in blank answers for residents of group quarters certainly raises eyebrows," said Mario Marazzi, the former former executive director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, who is a member of the advisory committee. Though people living in group quarters account for a small share of the overall population under 3% of the 331 million people living in the U.S. any inaccurate information can have a big impact on college towns or areas with a large prison population or a military base. That in turn can diminish representation in Congress and the amount of federal funding they are eligible to receive. The group housing count is under added scrutiny this census because the Census Bureau, for the first time, decided in the middle of crunching numbers to use a last-resort statistical technique called imputation to fill in the data gaps for dorms, nursing homes and prisons. The method has been used for some time to fill in missing information on individual households. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic to the 2020 census, Census Bureau officials told members of the scientific advisory committee that the quality of the census data is on par with the data collected in 2010. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The Census Bureau is trying to evaluate which operational challenges during the 2020 census were due to the pandemic or just due to regular operations. But one thing seems certain residents of homes visited by census takers were less likely to talk in 2020 than in 2010 because of the pandemic, Fontenot said. They tried to give them the minimal answers possible to get them to go away," Fontenot said. In 2010, we might have had longer conversations. In this case, you got a short answer and the door closed. In many ways, this was pandemic-related. People had a lot of resistance to talking to a stranger at their front door." ___ Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP "Devious licks," the online challenge where students steal or vandalize school property and post about it on TikTok, has surfaced at local school districts. There has been some damage in the high school and even the middle school. I dont know to what extent of it, but I do know we had some damage, said Lindsay Valenti, a spokeswoman for the Shenendehowa school district in Clifton Park. High school Principal Ron Agostinoni said, its been a challenge for our staff because we are trying to maintain a safe and orderly environment. We want to make sure our facilities are usable and safe for all our students. Agostinoni noted the damage has created more work for custodians and supervisory staff already handling extra work needed to keep school building clear of the coronavirus. If a kid is caught vandalizing the school or engaging in that behavior they could face a lengthy suspension and if warranted, we would refer to outside agencies, Agostinoni added. Were excited to have all students back and we dont want to let this get in the way. Were hoping it comes to an end here shortly. Similar things have happened in Albany schools. As a direct result of the 'Devious Licks' challenge, some of our schools unfortunately have had property destroyed, damaged or stolen," Superintendent Kaweeda G. Adams said in a message to parents. "We want to remind students, parents and guardians that these behaviors violate the school districts Student Code of Conduct. We encourage you to discuss this issue with your student. "Devious licks" is a viral TikTok challenge where students, ranging from middle school up to college level, are damaging school property, particularly bathrooms, by stealing various items like fire extinguishers and soap dispensers and leaving a mess. Students then post a video to TikTok, showing off the items that they stole and adding a caption with the hashtag of the challenge. The activity has gone from seeming like a prank to being categorized as criminal activity. In some cases, students have been arrested. When you participate in something thats damaging school property that taxpayers have paid for, then youve crossed that line and gone into a criminal act, Polk County Sheriffs Office spokesperson Alicia Manautou told CBS Tampa Bay after three students were arrested for vandalism in central Florida. On Sept. 16th, TikTok banned content of the challenge and the hashtag in an effort to keep it from surfacing in searches. "We expect our community to stay safe and create responsibly, and we do not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities," TikTok said in a statement to USA Today. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The challenge began in early September when a student posted a video after stealing a pack of disposable masks from school and bragging: a month into school absolutely devious lick. Should've brought a mask from home." The video gained over 239,000 views in one week. Trevor Noah commented on the challenge during an episode of "The Daily Show." "It's not just disrespectful, it's also dumb," Noah said. "When the U.S. government said you can't trust TikTok because it's a Chinese plot, I won't lie I didn't believe it," he said. "But now I'm starting to see it. Because Chinas figured it out: You don't need to fight this country you just need to convince Americans to go viral and theyll just destroy themselves." There has been a follow-up challenge called "Angelic Yields," where students who carried out "devious licks" give something back to their school anonymously. Some examples show rolls of toilet paper or money in school bathrooms. ISTANBUL (AP) The current course of U.S.-Turkey relations does not bode well, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before departing the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday. In a wide-ranging briefing to Turkish journalists, Erdogan highlighted divisions between the NATO allies over Turkeys purchase of a Russian missile defense system and its consequent removal from the U.S.-led F-35 stealth fighter aircraft program. I cannot honestly say that there is a healthy process in Turkish-American relations, the president was reported as saying in the Turkish media. Look, we bought the F-35s, paid $1.4 billion, and these F-35s were not delivered to us. He added: It is my hope that, as two NATO countries, we should treat each other with friendship, not hostility. But the current trajectory does not bode well. Erdogan said he had worked well with all the U.S. presidents during his 19-year rule but I cant say that we started well with Mr. Biden. Looking ahead to his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Sept. 29, Erdogan said they would discuss bilateral relations and Syria, particularly the situation in Idlib, the final rebel stronghold in the country. Erdogan also addressed his call for reform of the U.N. and said he had proposed the radical step of removing the veto power of the Security Councils five permanent members through an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly when necessary. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Questioned about the new Taliban government in Afghanistan, Erdogan said it was unfortunate that an inclusive leadership had not been formed earlier this month, when the group revealed an all-male cabinet of hardliners. There are signals coming that there may be some changes, that there may be a more inclusive atmosphere in the administration, he said. If such a step can be taken, then we can move to the point of discussing with them what we can do together. Turkish and Qatari technicians have been working to fully reopen Kabul airport following the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan last month. SARATOGA SPRINGS When Logan Haynes showed up for his costume fitting as an extra in HBOs The Gilded Age, he almost got cut. I just had a wedding and my hair was too short for the 1880s time period," Haynes said. "The hairdresser said I dont think we can use you. That was a little nerve-wracking." But luckily, his role came with a key garment. The hat saved me, the Malta actor said. As a police officer, I wore one of the old bowler hats. I lucked out. It went so well, he was chosen to play a doorman, too this time sporting a top hat ushering series star Morgan Spector into a "Gilded Age" club during filming in Troy. Though he knows hes only in the background, where few viewers will ever notice him, he understands hes doing important work setting the scene, creating an immersive and convincing atmosphere for the main players and the audience. Its something Haynes loves and will continue to do as he pursues his Screen Actor's Guild credentials a ticket that is key to a stable and paying acting career. It doesnt matter what the role is, I just love acting, said the 31-year-old who also worked as an extra in HBOs Succession when a scene was shot at Great Escape in Queensbury. I just love being able to be part of it. That was not always the case. Hayness first love is music. In high school and college, he concentrated first on trumpet, guitar, drums, harmonica, saxophone, some piano and singing. But about five years ago, his younger brother Garrett, who has acted since the age of 5, begged him to try out for Schuylerville Community Theaters Fiddler on the Roof because they desperately needed male vocalists. He agreed and was cast as the constable. I fell in love with it, Haynes said. I caught the bug. From then on, he was chosen as the lead in local community shows: Bert in Mary Poppins, which he loved because he learned to tap dance, and then Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Glens Falls Community Theatres Young Frankenstein. Ive gotten lucky, he said. He is currently prepping for the lead male role in Neil Simons Barefoot in the Park, also in Schuylerville. But gaining entry into the actors union will require credits from three union shows, thus the lure of working as an extra. And if he gets called up for HBO's "The White House Plumbers," which has filmed in Albany and Newburgh, he'll be one step closer to the credential. He is in talks with casting and hopeful. But it is a tough business. If you are cut from a film or series, you don't earn the credit. That's what happened with the scene he shot with actor Brian Cox in Succession" at Great Escape. Hes hoping his part in The Gilded Age will make it into the series. He thinks it will as the club scene with Spector is key to the narrative. He also spent a month filming the show, most of the time as a policeman, which placed him in a number of scenes, increasing his chances he'll make the final cut. He can't say much more as one of the rules for being an extra at least one that gets called back is to keep mum about the plot. There are other rules, too. There are no cellphones, no pictures, Haynes said. They dont want you to risk taking a picture of something that is not meant to be seen by the public yet. Of course, you have high profile actors there and they dont want the extras to take out their phones asking for selfies. Thats a big no-no. They are working. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. However, when he was chosen to be in a scene with Cox in Succession, Haynes talked with Cox about the actors life, even though that too is taboo in the extra universe. He engaged me in conversation first, Haynes said. He extended his hand to me. Hes a very nice individual. I got to pick his brain a little about acting. He told me acting is not as glamorous as everyone thinks it is. A lot of late nights and an outrageous amount of stress. Haynes said that setting up shots can also be complicated and time-consuming. Though there is a lot of waiting around, Haynes says extras are treated well. They usually have a room reserved for them to hang out where they are served plenty of food between shots. He also enjoys meeting the other extras, people from the area who share the same interest in film and television. Of course, Haynes, like many of the extras he meets, wants to emerge to the foreground. Once he gets his union card, his chances of getting speaking roles improve. I love memorizing lines. Thats my favorite part, he said. Its so cool to tell a story with someone elses words. Its a very unique thing. He's able to do it now because he works a compressed schedule, three or four days a week, at GlobalFoundries, allowing him the freedom to be in Troy for most of a month and now hopefully in Newburgh, too. Hes also grateful because at 16, he was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkins lymphoma after a doctor discovered 12 tumors throughout his body. He survived by responding well to an experimental trial treatment, in which a combination of chemo drugs were administered together in a short time frame. He has been cancer-free for 15 years. It had a tremendous impact on my life, he said. You try not to take life so serious. I kind of look at the glass half full. There is always a positive in any situation. And I try to take on challenges, head on. Thats why I do this now. I see it as a challenge and look forward to the challenge. Still, he felt he never had a focus until he discovered acting. To me, its a breath of fresh air, he said. "I love it." PARIS (AP) The most significant rift in decades between the United States and France seemed on the mend Wednesday after French President Emmanuel Macron and President Joe Biden got on the phone Wednesday to smooth things over. In a half-hour call that the White House described as friendly, the two leaders agreed to meet next month to discuss the way forward after the French fiercely objected when the U.S., Australia and Britain announced a new Indo-Pacific defense deal last week that cost the French a submarine contract worth billions. France also agreed to send its ambassador back to Washington. The White House made a point of releasing a photograph of Biden smiling during his call with Macron. In a carefully crafted joint statement, the two governments said Biden and Macron have decided to open a process of in-depth consultations, aimed at creating the conditions for ensuring confidence. So did Biden apologize? White House press secretary Jen Psaki sidestepped the question repeatedly, allowing that Biden did acknowledge "there could have been greater consultation. The president is hopeful this is a step in returning to normal in a long, important, abiding relationship that the United States has with France, she said. The call suggested a cooling of tempers after days of outrage from Paris directed at the Biden administration. In an unprecedented move, France last week recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia to protest what the French said amounted to a stab in the back by allies. As part of the defense pact, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. It was clear there is still repair work to be done. The joint statement said the French ambassador will have intensive work with senior U.S. officials upon his return to the United States. Biden and Macron agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners," the statement said. Biden reaffirmed in the statement the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a visit to Washington, didn't mince words in suggesting it was time for France to move past its anger over the submarine deal, saying French officials should get a grip. Using both French and English words, he added they should give him a break. Johnson said the deal was fundamentally a great step forward for global security. Its three very like-minded allies standing shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a new partnership for the sharing of technology. Its not exclusive. Its not trying to shoulder anybody out. Its not adversarial towards China, for instance. Psaki declined to weigh in on whether Johnsons comments were constructive at a moment when the U.S. was trying to mend relations with France. The European Union last week unveiled its own new strategy for boosting economic, political and defense ties in the vast area stretching from India and China through Japan to Southeast Asia and eastward past New Zealand to the Pacific. The United States also recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defense, that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to NATO, the statement said. No decision has been made about the French ambassador to Australia, the Elysee said, adding that no phone call with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was scheduled. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Earlier Wednesday, Macron's office had said the French president was expecting clarifications and clear commitments from Biden, who had requested the call. French officials described last week's U.S.-U.K.-Australia announcement as creating a crisis of trust, with Macron being formally notified only a few hours beforehand. The move had prompted fury in Paris, with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling it a stab in the back. Frances European Union partners agreed Tuesday to put the dispute at the top of the blocs political agenda, including at an EU summit next month. Following the Macron-Biden call, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in New York with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell as the administration worked to repair the damage done to broader EU-U.S. relations by the deal. Blinken spoke of the need for trans-Atlantic cooperation on any number issues quite literally around the world, to include of course Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific and Europe and beyond. Borrell, taking note of the phone call, said he hoped to be able to build a stronger confidence among us following the conversation that had been taking place this morning between President Biden and President Macron. Im sure well be working together. The French presidency categorically denied a report by Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper published on Wednesday saying Macron could offer the countrys permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council to the European Union if the bloc backs his plans on EU defense. Psaki echoed Johnson's point that the creation of the new security alliance which has been dubbed AUKUS wasn't meant to freeze out other allies on Indo-Pacific strategy. "During the conversation, the president reaffirmed the strategic importance of France French and European nations I should say in the Indo-Pacific region," Psaki said. The deal has widely been seen as part of American efforts to counter a more assertive China in the Indo-Pacific region. ____ Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Matthew Lee in New York City and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed reporting. ALBANY A Rensselaer County businessman who illegally sold Chinese-manufactured backpacks, T-shirts, duffel bags and other supplies to the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security and claimed the products were made in America will spend the next three months behind bars. Daren Arakelian, 53, of Brunswick, who operated his business, Great 4 Image, in North Greenbush, faced more than two years in prison for wire fraud. Instead, Chief U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby imposed a punishment below federal sentencing guidelines but not without jail time. The judge described Arakelians crime as an outrageous violation of trust. He ordered Arakelian to begin serving his jail term immediately. The judge indicated it could be in an area jail. Arakelian's family has been in the apparel and jacket-making business in Troy for nearly a century, based in the Standard Manufacturing building in Lansingburgh. Now, he must perform 100 hours of community service. He paid more than $702,000 to settle a civil portion of the case. After completing his sentence, Arakelian will be on supervised release for two years. Arakelian, clad in a pinstriped suit, sat beside his attorneys in Suddaby's first-floor courtroom, which was packed with Arakelian's family and supporters. "There are no excuses for my actions," Arakelian told the judge. He apologized to his family, including his wife and two sons, and the court. "I own what I did and I have learned from it and I'm a better man for it." Between March 2014 and December 2016, Arakelian and his business deceived the federal agencies into believing his products were made in New York, California and Georgia when he knew that they had been made in China, according to Arakelians plea agreement in March 2020. Arakelian, who had a contract with the federal General Services Administration, lied about the source and true nature of the products he was selling to the government, the plea agreement said. It said Arakelian made false statements to a federal contracting official. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Rosenthal told the judge that Arakelian had come from a privileged upbringing yet chose to use his status and skills to defraud the government. "This is still a crime of plain greed," the prosecutor told the judge. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Arakelian violated the Buy American Act, which restricts the governments ability to buy goods that are not domestically made, and the Trade Agreements Act, which restricts purchases of products made outside the country. It generally prohibits government contracting officials from buying products made outside the U.S. or a designated country. China is not designated, prosecutors said. Arakelian's lawyer, Julie Nociolo, told Suddaby that criminal prosecution for violators of the Buy American Act is rare. She noted Arakelian had already paid the more than $702,000 in civil costs. At least 30 people wrote letters to the judge, including family, friends and what the defense described as "local leaders." The supporters were identified in a defense sentencing memo, but their letters were sealed from public view. VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) Prosecutors in Virginia dropped all charges against a man charged with hiring a hitman to kill his ex-wife after the accused hitman withdrew his guilty pleas and refused to cooperate with the investigation into the 2004 double slayings that also left the woman's 7-year-old son dead. Christopher Schmidt, 49, had been held in jail without bond on murder charges for the last three years. He was released Tuesday after prosecutors asked a judge to withdraw the charges against him, The Virginian-Pilot reported. The case against Schmidt was thrown into disarray last week when a judge allowed accused hitman Richard Stoner to withdraw his guilty pleas for the slayings of 29-year-old Lois Schmidt and Jonathan Vetrano, her son from another marriage. In 2019, Stoner pleaded guilty to murder charges and agreed to testify against Schmidt after prosecutors promised not to seek the death penalty against him. But when capital punishment was abolished in Virginia this summer, Stoner asked to withdraw his guilty pleas. A judge agreed with Stoner's lawyer that the change in the law invalidated the plea deal. Prosecutors said that without Stoner's testimony, they don't believe they have enough evidence to win a conviction against Schmidt. At this point, the commonwealth sees no other option, Commonwealths Attorney Colin Stolle said during a brief court hearing Tuesday. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Macie Allen, a spokesperson for prosecutors, said they still hope to persuade Stoner to work with them. If they do, they'll reinstate charges against Schmidt, Allen said. Lois Schmidt and her son were killed in June 2004 at a Virginia Beach home Lois Schmidt shared with her parents. Lois Schmidt's brother was also shot but survived. The case remained cold until 2018, when investigators said theyd obtained a confession from Stoner. He testified during a preliminary hearing in 2019 that Schmidt hired him to kill his ex-wife, but he ended up killing her son, too. Stoner, an Indiana Army veteran, still faces trial in the case. No date has been set, Allen said. COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A gunman attacked a grocery store in an upscale Tennessee suburb on Thursday afternoon, killing one person and wounding 12 others before he was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at the store, authorities said. Collierville Police Chief Dale Lane said the shooting broke out at a Kroger grocery in Collierville, a suburban community 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Memphis. He said the gunman shot 13 others and himself, and that 12 of the victims were taken to hospitals, some with very serious injuries. Kroger worker Brignetta Dickerson told WREG-TV she was working a cash register when she heard what at first she thought were balloons popping. And, here he comes right behind us and started shooting, Dickerson said. And, he kept on shooting, shooting, shooting. He shot one of my co-workers in the head and shot one of my customers in the stomach. Lane said police received a call about 1:30 p.m. about the shooting and arrived almost immediately, finding multiple people with gunshot wounds upon entering the building. He said a police SWAT team and other officers went aisle to aisle plucking panicked people from hiding and taking them out safely. He said the shooter, whom he described as male, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. We found people hiding in freezers, in locked offices. They were doing what they had been trained to do: run, hide, fight," the chief said. The identities of the shooter and the victims were not immediately released. Lane declined to reveal more about the suspect at a news briefing Thursday evening, citing the ongoing investigation and search warrants that will be carried out. We're going to carry this thing as far as we can to see and make sure that there's no else involved, Lane said, adding that there was no credible evidence that there was a second shooter. The chief also said that, As far as we know there wasnt any other incident that led up to this. Dickerson, the employee, said her co-worker, who is in his 20s, was shot in the head and asked for his mother to be notified. I left her a voicemail that he was alert and talking, Dickerson said, unable to immediately reach her. Another employee, Glenda McDonald, described the chaotic scene to WHBQ-TV. I was walking back towards the floral department and I heard a gunshot, she said. It sounded like it was coming from the deli. And I ran out the front door and they had already shot the front door. Jason Lusk, 39, had just left a tool store beside Kroger when he heard some women screaming in the parking lot about a shooter. He didn't see the gunman, but heard 10 to 15 rounds in rapid succession at the grocery store. It sounded like they were directly over my head," he said, adding he could feel the concussion of every shot and knew the weapon was powerful. Even at a distance of some 40 yards, he said, he worried that he and others around him were in grave danger. As the firing started, I dove in front of my vehicle onto the ground to provide the most cover for myself and instructed the people around me panicking, trying to get into the cars, not to get in their cars, but to actually hide," he said. Then police arrived within minutes and they swarmed that place," Lusk said. He added that he used his phone to record at least two of the gunman's final shots, and then a final gunshot on his last recording of the SWAT team on the scene. At a new briefing afterward, the police chief Lane called it a sad day for his department. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. I've been involved in this for 34 years and Ive never seen anything like it," he said. The suspects vehicle was in the stores parking lot and remained part of the investigation, the chief said, adding investigators were trying to determine how events unfolded. Lets get through the investigation, Lane said. "Remember, were two hours away from the most horrific event thats occurred in Collierville history. Collierville is a growing suburb of more than 51,000 people with a median household income of about $114,000, according to U.S. census figures. Set in a rural and historic area, the town square has largely become known for its boutiques and bed and breakfasts. Earlier this year, Tennessee became the latest state to allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a state-level background check and training. The measure was signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee over objections from some law enforcement groups and gun control advocates concerned the measure would possibly lead to more gun violence. The Kroger Co., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, issued a statement that it was "deeply saddened" by the shooting and was cooperating with law enforcement. The company in 2019 asked its customers not to openly carry guns while visiting its stores. A Kroger spokesperson said the Collierville store will be closed until further notice. Lights were still on in the store after nightfall, chrysanthemums set out front. The parking lot, entirely roped off with police tape, was still full of cars, with a heavy police presence. Neighboring businesses, including a fast food restaurant and an auto parts store, were closed. ___ Mattise reported from Nashville. Associated Press writer Carrie Antfinger in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and News Researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report. AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Texas' highest criminal court on Wednesday overturned a death row inmate's capital murder conviction because one of the prosecutors in his 2003 trial was moonlighting as a clerk for the judge in the case. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the arrangement between Midland County State District Judge John Hyde and then-prosecutor Weldon Petty clearly violated Clinton Young's right to a fair trial. Young was convicted and sentenced to death in the shooting of a man during a 2001 drug-related crime rampage across Texas. Hyde died in 2012, but Midland County prosecutors in 2019 discovered the paid arrangement between the judge and Petty, who had also been working on the side for other district judges for years. The appeals court noted that as a prosecutor, Petty would oppose defense motions while also drafting recommendations of denial for judges to sign. As part of the legal team prosecuting Young, Petty drafted the legal motions submitted during the trial and sometimes participated in oral arguments. Petty's side agreement with Hyde was to perform legal work as a judicial clerk outside of his official duties. It paid him more $9,000 over the time spanning Young's initial indictment, trial and post-conviction appeals, which Petty handled both as prosecutor and as clerk for the judge, the appeals court noted. Judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, in the form of an undisclosed employment relationship between the trial judge and the prosecutor appearing before him, tainted (Young's) entire proceeding from the outset, the court wrote. As a result, little confidence can be placed in the fairness of the proceedings or the outcome of (Young's) trial." The appeals court ordered Young to be removed from death row and sent back to Midland County jail under his original indictment. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. District Attorney Laura Nodolf, who was elected in 2016 and who later discovered the paid agreement between the prosecutor and judge, said her office has been recused from Young's case going forward and any decision whether to retry him. If Mr. Young is retried, it needs to be the cleanest slate possible, Nodolf said. "The most ethical thing would be for us to take a step back and let another office take a look at the case." Petty, who worked as a full-time prosecutor in Midland County from 2002 to 2019, is retired. During an evidentiary hearing, he refused to testify about his paid work for the judge, citing a constitutional privilege against self-incrimination, the appeals court noted. The Latest on the UN General Assembly: ___ UNITED NATIONS With Kenya poised to assume the presidency of the United Nations Security Council next month, the countrys president outlined his priorities. Uhuru Kenyatta said Wednesday in a pre-recorded speech at the U.N. General Assembly that he believes multilateral systems need to be fair, inclusive and effective. He plans to chair several signature events while Kenya has the presidency. Those subjects include making diversity a core aim in statebuilding, examining the impact of small illicit arms and light weapons on global peacekeeping ops and better supporting female peacekeepers and peacebuilders. Kenyatta also declared Kenya ready to be a leading green industry economy. He said a fast-growing Africa could offer the entire world the benefit of its demographic dividend of youth and investment opportunities. He also touted Kenyas involvement in ocean conferences and spoke of the associated blue economy. On security issues, he said that states were ill equipped to deal with fragility that leads to crises and terrorism. He said it was important to increase the competence of states to manage social and political diversity. ___ UNITED NATIONS Jordans monarch recalled the 11-day Gaza War of this past summer in his speech before the United Nations, saying Tuesday the latest round of conflict was a reminder that the status quo is unsustainable. The war in May was the fourth in Gaza since the Hamas Islamic militant group seized power in 2007, triggering a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the Palestinian territory. More than 250 people were killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, including dozens of children and women, according to the U.N. There were 13 deaths in Israel. More than 4,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged. But how many more homes will be lost? How many more children will die before the world wakes up? said King Abdullah, who delivered his pre-recorded remarks remotely to the U.N. General Assembly, though some 100 heads of state and government are attending in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Genuine security for either side indeed, for the whole world can only be achieved through the two-state solution. He reiterated that such a solution must result in an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side-by-side with Israel in peace. King Abdullah called for the continued support of UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists millions of Palestinian refugees, among them the majority of Gazas 2 million residents. The Jordanian king is a close U.S. ally and his nation has custodianship over the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount. The area was the scene of violent confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinian worshippers during the last days of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in May. Since 2008, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflicts, according to the U.N. While many were fighters for Hamas or other militant groups, more than half were civilians. On the Israeli side, the death toll from the four wars stands at 106, officials say. ___ UNITED NATIONS The chair of Bosnia and Herzegovinas presidency called upon the United Nations to uphold its commitment to human rights, citing ethnic inequality within his own country. Zeljko Komsic is the Croat member of the western Balkan countrys presidency, which is shared between the countrys Croats, Bozniak Muslims and Serbs. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Komsic on Wednesday hailed bilateral and regional cooperation during the pandemic, saying neighbors provided aid before multilateral institutions did. But later in his speech, he spoke of neighbors intentions to annex parts of his country by fomenting ethnic tensions within. Bosnia was the site of a bloody civil war in the 1990s that ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement. Komsic says the international agreement created complex institutions that make it difficult for the country to come to a political consensus that would allow it to move toward a functioning state. He lambasted conditions that have created political, electoral and social inequality within his own country on ethnic and religious lines. In an address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Croatias president also called for electoral reform in Bosnia, saying its Croats were marginalized. Komsic bemoaned population outflows, saying a substantial segment of the population, including those of working age and with young families, have left Bosnia for better business and human rights opportunities. At the same time, Bosnia has received economic migrants from elsewhere. He says this combination has created additional social problems. __ UNITED NATIONS After two decades in Afghanistan, the United States should do more to help the countrys refugees, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks aired Wednesday. Turkey hosts the worlds largest refugee population some 4 million, mostly Syrians and has warned that it cannot accept any more arrivals from Afghanistan. Right now, the U.S. is failing to meet its obligations. We have more than 300,000 Afghan refugees and we will no longer be able to afford to welcome any more Afghan refugees in Turkey, Erdogan said in a preview of a CBS interview due to be broadcast Sunday. Of course, the U.S. should do a lot and should invest a lot because the U.S. has been there for the last 20 years but why, why? First, these questions should be answered by the U.S. Afghan refugees have been fleeing their country since last month, when the Taliban swept back into power as U.S. forces prepared to withdraw from the country at the end of August. A day earlier, Erdogan used his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York to warn of a potential wave of refugees sparked by climate change. Turkey is experiencing growing discontent at the levels of migration since the start of the Syrian conflict a decade ago. The government is in the process of bolstering security on its eastern border with Iran, including a wall, amid fears that the Talibans rule could drive refugees, many trying to reach Europe, to Turkeys frontier. TROY When the Syrian refugee crisis began to reach its peak in 2015, Pope Francis called on every Catholic parish to take in one Syrian refugee family. His proposal inspired Diya Abdo, a professor at Guilford College in North Carolina what if every college did the same? In 2015, Abdo founded Every Campus a Refuge with the mission to utilize resources available at college campuses to help new refugee families through their transition to the U.S. By early next year, Russell Sage College will be the first New York college to participate in the program and host a refugee family, in partnership with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). The exact time the college will welcome a family is not known yet. "Thousands of newcomers will be coming through Albany in the coming months and years," said Ali Schaeffing, Russell Sage's director of service learning and community engagement. "(USCRI) is trying to scale up their efforts to coordinate volunteers to work with families as they arrive. And we're really honored to be working with them directly on that program." College campuses are an ideal home for new refugees, Abdo said, because they have access to everything medical care, pharmacies, housing, career services, and more. Through the program, a refugee family will be provided with free housing (often owned by the college), utilities, amenities and access to campus resources for their first five months in the country. "This is a period that allows them to take a breath and settle in their new home," Abdo said. "It allows for a stronger beginning and a softer landing for families who are traumatized... and sets them up well for financial stability, for more holistic integration, and allows them to be part of a loving and supportive community, which is the campus community." The family will also be connected with a team of five people to support them through the transition period, whether that be setting up apartments with furniture, driving family members to doctor's appointments or helping to fill out forms. With the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan last month and subsequent influx of Afghan refugees, program leaders expect the hosted family this year to be from Afghanistan. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The program is specifically being coordinated through the college's Women's Institute, which is self-funded and will be raising the necessary money to support the program through fundraisers and donation drives. However, those involved in the program noted that with the college already equipped with numerous resources, the cost could realistically be as low as $500. The long-term vision for the program, however, is to focus on supporting female refugees, whom studies show often become the "shefault" parent tasked with managing the health and human services of the household and children and are in particular need of aid. "Our founder's philosophy was, if you're in a position to help, you have a responsibility to help and that could be providing a safe environment, and opportunities for education and to learn how to support oneself," said Shelly Calabrese, executive director of the Women's Institute. "So we're really keeping with her philosophy and her vision 105 years later." ALBANY - The road to the creation of new affordable housing is long. At least a year if not three years of lead time stretch between a proposal and occupancy. It is a complicated blend of private investment, public funding, regulatory requirements and local government approvals. The application process for state funding, therefore, should be predictable for housing developers, said Ruthanne Visnauskas, commissioner of the state Office of Housing and Community Renewal. But how affordable housing dollars are distributed may change as lawmakers move toward a new state housing plan next year. The plan will replace in the current five-year, $20 billion state housing plan in April, 2022. The state's next housing plan was a focus of the annual Upstate Affordable Housing Conference Wednesday, held at the Albany Capital Center by the state Association for Affordable Housing. About 400 people attended the event - the association's first in-person gathering since the pandemic. The crowd was a mix of government employees, representatives from financial institutions and developers. Visnauskas told the attendees that she is looking to strike a balance between stability and new initiatives to address issues that weren't discussed in 2017 sustainable construction, heating and cooling practices and broadband access, for example, as well as the ongoing impact of the pandemic. Visnauskas said she is optimistic about the massive influx of federal money in the form of infrastructure assistance that is expected to come into New York state. The pandemic both exacerbated and brought to light the shortage of affordable housing. Downstate, rent prices continue to outpace incomes and upstate, there is a general lack of options. Also Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a letter to Sec. Janet Yellen of the Department of the Treasury asking for more money in the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). After a slow start, the state has processed more than 205,000 applications from tenants who are behind on rent. The state has "obligated and/or paid more than $1.6 billion and actually paid more than $517.5 million to assist renters in more than 40,000 households. Hochul said the state will have spent all the money allocated by early October. Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, whose background prior to starting his career in politics was in affordable housing, addressed the criticism of ERAP. The program has been faulted for being difficult to access, and landlords cannot apply without their tenants' cooperation and tax return documents. "Rent relief is a moving target and we can't know the need until we get through COVID," Benjamin said. "We need to all be ambassadors for the vaccine. If we don't get to the other side, we will keep running up the bill." ALBANY The state Civil Service Employees Association has filed a petition on behalf of roughly 5,600 members who work in the state's court system seeking an injunction to halt the vaccine mandate that is scheduled to go into effect on Monday. A similar petition was also filed in state Supreme Court in Albany this week on behalf of a group of Buffalo-area physicians, nurses and a nursing home administrator. Assemblyman David DiPietro, an Erie County Republican, is also listed as a plaintiff in that case. Related: Dr. Howard Zucker resigns as New York's health commissioner The legal action is unfolding as Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration has not backed down from the mandate, which was announced in July by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. It requires a multitude of public-facing workers, mainly in hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, to receive at least their first vaccination by Sept. 27 and for others a deadline of Oct. 7 or risk being suspended or terminated from their jobs. The state Office of Court Administration issued its own mandate for vaccinations, triggering the legal action by CSEA, which contends the requirement must be negotiated when they involve workers protected by collective bargaining. The health department's mandate affects both public and private health care facilities. Thousands of nurses and other medical professionals have declined to be vaccinated. Officials with hospitals and group homes that care for the disabled said a staffing crisis that existed before the coronavirus pandemic will be exacerbated if many of those workers are off the job next week. Many hospitals are already reducing or eliminating elective surgeries and some are diverting patients to other hospitals to deal with the staffing issues. Hochul's office on Wednesday did not answer questions about whether the governor might delay the mandate or has a plan in place if large numbers of nurses and other health care professionals are suspended from their jobs beginning Monday. At a news conference Thursday morning, the governor said she "will be announcing a whole series of initiatives to be prepared for a situation on Monday that I hope doesn't happen. "These are obviously very caring people or they obviously would not have chose this profession," she said. "Every single person who ends up in your care has the right to know ... that there is no chance they will be infected by the person charged with protecting them and their health. ... Those who have done the right thing don't want to be with people who are not vaccinated ... they're entitled to a safe workplace as well." Health care industry officials, including many private hospitals, are separately making plans for a potential staffing crisis. The science is clear, vaccines work, and we need as many people vaccinated as soon as possible. But this could turn out to be the paradox of the mandate, Michael Balboni, executive director of the Greater New York Health Care Facilities Association, said in a statement issued Thursday morning. We want to make staff and residents safer through vaccination, but if people start walking off the job and there arent enough workers to take care of residents, we actually put them in jeopardy. Balboni is not calling for the mandate to be rescinded or delayed, urged the state to set up a staffing emergency plan, which may include mutual-aid requests, increased distribution of personal protective equipment and increased testing. Hochul's administration this week was locked in negotiations with multiple state labor unions, who have said the state's mandate should have been subject to collective bargaining and not simply imposed under a provision of state health law. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. In the case filed by CSEA this week, the union said the Public Employment Relations Board had determined the state Unified Court System's vaccination mandate for judges and nonjudicial employees "constitutes an improper practice" and authorized the union to file for a temporary injunction in state Supreme Court. CSEA is seeking a stay of the mandate until an administrative law judge issues a decision in their PERB case. In the case filed on behalf of the Buffalo-area medical professionals, they assert that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month reported a "1,000 percent increase" in adverse reactions to coronavirus vaccines at a meeting where it recommended against requiring booster shots for people younger than 65. That petition also states the mandate does not provide exemptions for religious beliefs or for those "that were previously infected with COVID-19 and who have natural immunity." Natural immunity "is at least as effective as vaccination at preventing future COVID-19 infections," the petition states, adding that a person who gets vaccinated to keep their job but suffers an adverse reaction "will be without any legal recourse for any such injuries or damages they suffer as a result of vaccination." Three people familiar with the negotiations between Hochul's administration and multiple labor unions said the incentive being offered by the administration is for affected health care employees to receive a half-day of vacation if they are vaccinated. That offer, however, is contingent on the unions agreeing that their members would not have contractual rights to use accrued time, such as sick or vacation days, to offset any lost hours while they are suspended. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals and other medical providers and long-term care facilities were facing a staffing crisis including group homes for disabled individuals, where some nurses are being forced to work 24-hour shifts. The mandate set to take effect Monday requires the workers to have at least one COVID-19 vaccination shot. ALBANY New York's top lawmakers have gotten behind growing support to protect small and mid-sized dairy in the Northeast, following Horizon Organic's announced departure from 89 dairy farms, with more than half of them in upstate New York. U.S. senators Charles E. Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik signed onto a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, along with federal elected officials from Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It was the delegation's first formal, collective step to protect the dairy farmers and an industry that experts and advocates warn could face dire consequences if other large corporations that collect milk from local dairies pull their business. The letter calls both for relief for the farmers hurt by the decision, and to create a more equal playing field in the organic dairy industry, something advocates and experts have noted put Northeast dairy farmers at a disadvantage. "We believe this matter further underscores the long overdue need to close existing loopholes in the rules governing how livestock are transitioned to organic and strengthen enforcement of the pasture rule, particularly for large-scale complex dairies," the delegation wrote in the letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. The letter was sent less than a week after the Times Union reported about an organic dairy industry in dire condition after the decision by Danone, which owns Horizon Organic, to pull out contracts with dairy farms in the Northeast, including 46 in upstate New York. Danone did offer the farms a one-year contract through August 2022 to "help facilitate a smooth transition," the company said. About 17 organic dairy farms in Washington County are believed to be facing termination, which would account for nearly one fifth of the dairy farms in the rural county, according to the state Department of Agriculture data. Schumer, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, called for Vilsack to "act immediately to secure the long-term economic viability of our upstate organic dairy farmers and close loopholes that threaten the entire industry." "New Yorks dairy farmers are the lifeblood of the upstate economy and after years of being wrung dry by a system that disadvantages them, theyre now at the edge of an economic precipice," Schumer said in a statement Thursday. "For many family-owned organic dairy farms, losing their contracts with Horizon Organics will be the final pull on the rug under them." A similar message came from Gillibrand, who is the chair of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, Local Food Systems, and Food Safety and Security. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "For years, organic dairy farmers have faced a significant competitive disadvantage against large-scale producers that threatens their livelihoods," Gillibrand said in a statement Thursday. "New York is home to more than 3,000 dairy farms and they serve as an economic cornerstone to many local and rural communities. The USDA must prioritize the Origin of Livestock Rule and close loopholes that favor large-scale, complex producers and put our small farmers in jeopardy." Experts told the Times Union earlier this month that the the USDA has had an open comment period on transitioning live stock to being in compliance with organics for years. The current iteration of the rule has had an open comment extending to 2015. Closing that rule, something Danone and the Organics Trade Association informed the USDA in 2019 they support, would help create more fair costs across the board and bring more integrity to the organic product, which consumers pay more for because of its standards for production, experts have said. Stefanik, a North Country Republican, was the lone New York member of Congress to sign onto the letter. The issue with Danone primarily is related to her district, although experts note the decision could be a harbinger for small-scale organic business statewide. "Our North Country dairy farmers work tirelessly, and I am proud to work to find targeted solutions to support them, Stefanik said in a statement. "I am committed to working with the USDA to provide the North Countrys dairy farmers the support they need during this time of transition." The audience watching the searing and provocative Slave Play on Broadway often caught a glimpse of themselves onstage in more ways than one The woman suspected of stabbing an employee of a Massachusetts hospital in an unprovoked attack was held without bail at her arraignment and ordered to undergo a competency evaluation Search teams were back out at a Florida nature park to look for the boyfriend of Gabby Petito, the young woman who authorities say was killed while on a cross-country trip with him 3 charged in death of 86-year-old woman left outside in heat Colorado officials say three assisted living facility workers are being prosecuted in the death of an 86-year-old woman with Alzheimers disease who was allegedly left outside in sweltering weather [September 23, 2021] 3i Inc. Raises US$24M in Oversubscribed Series A Funding Round SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 3i Inc., an industry-leading immersive experience company specializing in metaverse technology, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and a member of Born2global Centre, completed an investment of nearly $24M (?28B Won). The round included $20M from new financial and strategic investors and $4M from existing investors. SV Investment led the round, with other participants including Korean Development Bank, LB Investment, DS Asset, YG Investment, Intops Investment, Enlight Ventures, NBH Capital, and Korea Asset Investment Securities. Founded in 2017, 3i has 34 technology patents and includes two brands: Pivo and Beamo. Pivo is a platform business sitting at the intersection of hardware, software, and content focused on empowering everyday creators around the world with its Pivo Pod, a portable AI-powered smart pod, and suite of mobile apps that extend the capabilities of any smartphone and simplify rich content creation. Beamo is an enterprise-grade digital twin solution for mission-critical businesses and sites. Beamo creates a dynamic digital twin that allows enterprises to conduct remote inspections, maintain equipment remotely, collaborate with remote teams and provide the most immersive navigation of mission-critical assets. "3i is a company which is growing dramatically inB2B digital twin solutions using AI and AR/VR technologies and B2C video content creation platform", said Joo-wan Jeong, Director at SV Investment. He added, "I made this investment because I believe 3i will be able to grow into the only global player that possesses both technology and content in the integrated metaverse". 3i plans to use the funds raised to develop new products and expand its metaverse platform business. Additionally, 3i plans to invest significantly in scaling out the company with multiple open roles in recruiting, marketing, customer success, design and engineering, as well as key investments in the 3i brand experience in the market over the next year. Ken Kim, CEO of 3i said, "The metaverse is the next-generation platform, where soon, all media flows are expected to move. Our products and solutions help enterprises and content creators leap onto the metaverse much more easily, seamlessly, and quickly than ever before, changing the way the physical world interacts with the digital world". For more detailed information on 3i Inc., visit www.3i.ai. About 3i Inc. 3i Inc. (www.3i.ai) provides both hardware and software solutions that transform the way the physical world interacts with the digital world. With 29+ nationalities of employees working in more than 8 countries, 3i is a truly global and distributed company. Its solutions leverage state-of-the-art technologies such as AI/ML and AR/VR to help our customers create the most immersive experiences through rich content and digital twins. We believe 3i solutions will accelerate the creation of the metaverse through digital transformation, digitalization of content, and business workflows. About Pivo Pivo (www.getpivo.com) helps empower everyday creators to overcome the challenges of creation and produce high-quality, immersive content by providing smart, affordable enhancement tools, both hardware and software, that extend the capturing capabilities of smartphones. About Beamo Beamo (www.beamo.ai) is an enterprise-grade digital twin solution for mission-critical facilities and sites. We make it natural for you to capture your most critical assets, augment them with tribal knowledge and collaborate from anywhere. Beamo's state-of-the-art hardware and software platform simplifies and accelerates this for all enterprises. About Born2Global Centre Born2Global Centre (www.born2global.com) is a full-cycle service platform for global expansion. Since its inception in 2013, Born2Global has been setting the standard for successful startup ecosystem as the main Korean government agency under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Born2Global has expanded and transformed startups to be engaged, equipped and connected with the global market. Media Contact 3i Inc.: pr@3i.ai Born2Global Centre: jlee@born2global.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/3i-inc-raises-us24m-in-oversubscribed-series-a-funding-round-301383758.html SOURCE Born2Global Centre [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] A 498.9 Thousand Units Global Opportunity for Electric Buses by 2026 - New Research from StrategyR SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new market study published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., (GIA) the premier market research company, today released its report titled "Electric Buses - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics". The report presents fresh perspectives on opportunities and challenges in a significantly transformed post COVID-19 marketplace. FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 5; Released: April 2021 Executive Pool: 609 Companies: 42 - Players covered include AB Volvo; Anhui Ankai Automobile Co. Ltd; Ankai; BYD Co. Ltd; CAF Group; Daimler AG; Ebusco BV; Iveco Bus; King Long; New Flyer Industries; Proterra Inc.; Ryobi Bus; Scannia AB; VDL Groep; Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co. Ltd; Zhongtong Bus Holding and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Propulsion Type (BEV, PHEV, FCEV); Consumer Segment (Government, Fleet Operator); Component (Battery, Motor, Fuel Cell Stack, Ultra-capacitor); Application (Intracity, Intercity) Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific; Rest of World. Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry ABSTRACT- Global Electric Buses Market to Reach 498.9 Thousand Units by 2026 Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Electric Buses estimated at 132.8 Thousnd Units in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of 498.9 Thousand Units by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 24.3% over the analysis period. BEV, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 26.6% CAGR and reach 329.8 Thousand Units by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the PHEV segment is readjusted to a revised 23.1% CAGR for the next 7-year period. The U.S. Market is Estimated at 51.5 Thousand Units in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach 86.4 Thousand Units by 2026 The Electric Buses market in the U.S. is estimated at 51.5 Thousand Units in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of 86.4 Thousand Units by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 23.6% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 21.9% and 20.5% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 16.8% CAGR. FCEV Segment to Reach 90.8 Thousand Units by the year 2026 In the global FCEV segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 20.2% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of 23.6 Thousand Units in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of 85.7 Thousand Units by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. More MarketGlass Platform Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide. Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years. CONTACTS: Zak Ali Director, Corporate Communications Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Phone: 1-408-528-9966 www.StrategyR.com Email: ZA@StrategyR.com LINKS Join Our Expert Panel https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp Connect With Us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./ Follow Us on Twitter https://twitter.com/marketbytes Journalists & Media Info411@strategyr.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/a-498-9-thousand-units-global-opportunity-for-electric-buses-by-2026---new-research-from-strategyr-301382886.html SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Bitcoin Magazine opens Ukraine bureau as it targets international expansion NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bitcoin Magazine today announces the launch of a new Eastern European bureau to cover developments in some of the world's most exciting, high-growth Bitcoin markets. Following a new strategic partnership, to be announced later this month, Bitcoin Magazine will now cover events in 11 countries and serve the 240 million people currently living in the greater CIS region, including Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. The expansion comes days after Ukraine became the latest country to legalize Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies . The country already has the fourth-largest population of Bitcoin users in the world , while the government actively supports implementing cryptocurrency innovations into its financial system. The new bureau will be based in Kyiv, comprising a growing pool of the most talented and well-connected Bitcoin journalists in the region, producing a range of written, video, and podcast content in the Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakh languages. Bitcoin Magazine has already forged strong relationships with many of the most influential figures in the region, including those responsible for drafting Ukraine's new crypto law. "While the world's economists are fixated on superpowers like China and the United States, the future of money is being decded in places like El Salvador and Ukraine," said David Bailey, CEO Bitcoin Magazine. "At Bitcoin Magazine, we've always been focused on reporting from where the real news is happening, using local experts to break stories of global magnitude, and to provide thorough insight that you simply can't when you're reporting from outside the country. "Kyiv is the perfect launchpad for our regional efforts," he continued. "Ukraine is fast turning from a regional to a global leader in Bitcoin, and we look forward to playing a leading role in providing first-class reporting and analysis of the latest developments in these exciting markets." The organizer of the cryptocurrency industry's largest annual event Bitcoin 2022 and operator of its most established media publication BitcoinMagazine.com , the move marks Bitcoin Magazine's third international expansion, following the establishment of regional bureaus in Seoul and Shanghai. "Our goal is for Bitcoin Magazine to be the most trusted and important media outlet for anyone interested in Bitcoin. To achieve this, we are hiring the best reporters, storytellers, videographers, and producers globally who are members of the community and have firsthand experience on how Bitcoin can change the world," said Mike Germano, the Publisher of Bitcoin Magazine. Bitcoin Magazine is now looking to hire regional professionals who share passion and excitement for Bitcoin and its message of financial freedom ahead of its November 2021 website launch. For press and career inquiries, email Ukraine@BitcoinMagazine.com . About Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Magazine is the oldest and most established source of news, information, and expert commentary on Bitcoin, and since 2012 has provided analysis, research, education, and thought leadership at the intersection of finance and technology. It is also The organizer of the cryptocurrency industry's largest annual event Bitcoin 2022 Bitcoin Magazine has grown tremendously since its first magazine went on sale for 2 BTC back in 2012, now producing original content for articles on its website, social platform, print magazine, and across video and podcast platforms worldwide. Media Contact: nishal@sinhaconsulting.co.uk View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitcoin-magazine-opens-ukraine-bureau-as-it-targets-international-expansion-301383785.html SOURCE Bitcoin Magazine [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Come For The Music, Get An Optional COVID Jab Or Test At Miramar Latin Music Festival MIAMI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TESTD Inc., which provides medical testing software, will offer PCR tests and COVID vaccinations to anyone and everyone attending the Miramar Latin Music Festival, Saturday September 25th from 6:00 pm to 10 pm. Both the vaccines and the PCR tests, the gold standard for detecting COVID-19 infection, will be offered at no cost to individuals. The tests and vaccinations are optional and not a requirement for attending the event. COVID test management software company to offer tests and vaccines at Miramar music fest at no cost Saturday, Sept 25 . "The COVID-19 infection rate in South Florida this summer has been described by officials as 'staggering,'" said TESTD CEO Nicholus Andrews, whose company is based in South Florida. "Vaccines have done a terrific job in preventing serious illness and hospitalizations, and testing is the first step in knowing you need to islate yourself from others to keep them safe. We want everyone attending the festival for the music, the art, the food, and the community experience, to know they can also take steps that could protect many lives in our local communities." Andrews explained that his company's process creates a secure, encrypted account that guards your health data. Your personal information and health status are shielded from prying eyes but your account can receive a message from TESTD if your test results raise alarms. "The Delta variant that surged in Florida this summer is extremely transmissible," Andrews said. "Knowing you may be ill is the first step in isolating yourself from others and preventing infections, and getting the vaccine can keep you well. " The TESTD platform is in use at nursing homes, hotels, resorts, clinical labs, and high volume drive-up sites where oversight of large populations is required. With the new mandate from the federal government under its OSHA authority that companies with more than 100 employees require vaccinations or weekly testing for COVID, TESTD is now in conversations with enterprises that need a testing option. How TESTD works TESTD launched during the COVID-19 lockdown. While it has been employed for detecting the COVID-19 virus, it can manage tests for a variety of pathogens, as well as manage patient data for clinical trials and other medical needs. It uses blockchain and other technologies to shield data, putting it in sharp contrast to systems deployed elsewhere in the world where there have been questions about security. The platform allows speedy self-scheduling; the ability of a site administrator to expedite the test or shot and route information to the lab; test management through the lab resulting process; and reporting to individuals, managers, and providers. An individual self-schedules a test or vaccination from a mobile device, which can be done in person at the Miramar event. A tablet interface gives an operator at a test site the ability to check-in someone for a procedure and maintain custody of the data, while limiting that operator from accessing any protected health information. One individual can also sign up for tests or vaccinations for other eligible family members. While a cell phone is desired for sign-up and account management, there is an option for people without personal electronic devices. "One of the best ways to celebrate the contributions to South Florida from our enormously talented and influential Latin neighbors is to do what we can to keep them and all of their fans healthy," said Andrews. "We know this will be a day of celebration. Let's all do what we can to ensure we can celebrate together in the future." More information is available at www.TESTD.com . Media inquiries: Alan Goodman, alan@testd.com, 646-543-ALAN (2526) TESTD Inc. provides electronic health record (EHR) technology, based in Miami, FL. It was founded in March 2020. TESTD's initial product is its platform TESTD, which automates medical test scheduling, manages testing data, and organizes the data for easy reporting. For sales, contact Eric Forst at 310-403-4589. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/come-for-the-music-get-an-optional-covid-jab-or-test-at-miramar-latin-music-festival-301384116.html SOURCE Testd [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Easterly Asset Management Announces New Maritime Investment Company Easterly Asset Management announced the formation of Maritime Logistics Equity Partners (MLEP), a new company formed to take advantage of the enormous opportunities in international shipping markets, including the chemical tanker shipping sector that is projected to be a $9.5 billion market by 2026.1 "There is a compelling opportunity to invest in pre-owned chemical tankers, given the limited supply and growing demand for the vessels, a low future orderbook for shipping construction and the expansion of chemical trade lanes," said Darrell Crate, Managing Principal of Easterly Asset Management and MLEP's Chief Executive Officer. "Like the oceans themselves, the opportunities are vast." In its first transaction, MLEP acquired two stainless steel chemical tankers, the Easterly Beech Galaxy and the Easterly Lime Galaxy, from CIDO Shipping. "MLEP has recently acquired two additional vessels and is actively looking to acquire more stainless-steel tonnage of all sizes aged 10-15 years," said Crate. MLEP intends to acquire more stainless steel vessels by the end of 2021. By acquiring previously owned tankers to meet increased demand, MLEP can provide investors with an attractive level of regular, growing income as well as capital returns. "Chemical tankers may not be glamorous, but they keep the global economy humming and investors happy with a steady stream of income," added Crate. "We are actively looking to acquire more stainless-steel tonnage of all sizes aged 10-15 years," said Darrell Crate, Maritime Logistics Equity Partners' CEO. MLEP is responding to industry trends, including a decline in the building of chemical tankers intended for the transport of bulk liquids such as palm oil, feedstock and other commodities. Following a construction boom that peaked in 2008, shipbuilders are now focused on building other tanker types and sizes. With increasing chemical production, tight ship supply and a lack of liquidity in the capital markets for new tankers, there is growing demand for such vessels. MLEP is acquiring tankers built during the boom but with years of productive life remaining and putting them out for hire through WOMAR. "A tight shipping supply, combined with increased global chemical production, is a powerful tailwind for existing vessels," added Crate. MLEP will place all of its acquired vessel into WOMAR's Tanker Pools. WOMAR Chief Executive Officer Hans Van der Zijde said, "We welcome the opportunity to work with MLEP and to build a long-lasting commercial asset management relationship. Since September 2019, we have been working closely with US private equity investors and feel WOMAR has a unique product offering for institutional investors becoming ship owners." About the Vessels Acquired The Easterly Beech Galaxy was built in 2007 and has a gross tonnage of 11,623 and a summer deadweight of 19,998 tons. The Easterly Lime Galaxy was built in 2008 and has a gross tonnage of 11,623 and a summer deadweight of 19,992 tons. About Darrell Crate In addition to serving as CEO of MLEP, Crate founded private investment firm Easterly in 2009. He holds leadership positions in ventures including multi-affiliate manager Easterly Asset Management; Easterly Government Properties, (NYSE: DEA); Easterly Funds, a mutual fund platform; value manager Easterly Investment Partners; and Easterly EAB Risk Solutions, which provides defensive equity and derivatives strategies to help clients manage portfolio risk. About Maritime Logistics Equity Partners Maritime Logistics Equity Partners (MLEP) is a company formed to raise capital to take advantage of various opportunities in the international shipping markets. MLEP intends to acquire and operate previously owned chemical tankers. The Company's objective is to provide investors with an attractive level of regular, growing income and capital returns by investing in previously owned chemical tankers. The company expects a robust chemical tanker market due to a historically low order book, a lack of liquidity in the capital markets for new tankers, expanding ton-mile demand for chemical tankers and additional cargo coming online in 2021 and beyond. About Easterly Asset Management Easterly Asset Management (Easterly) is a multi-affiliate platform of high-performing boutique investment managers, and is also the holding company for MLEP. Founded by industry veterans with more than 20 years' experience, Easterly is committed to bringing investors innovative and novel strategies by partnering with quality managers who are craftsman in their respective asset classes and investment processes. We provide boutique firms a partnership that delivers a foundation to scale their business with best-in-class solutions in marketing, sales, technology, operations, human resources, and finance. We also offer affiliates, through our platform partnerships, the opportunity to access our retail & institutional distribution services. Additionally, we partner with outside firms on various private placements and fund offerings as well. For more information, please visit Easterly at https://easterlyam.com/. About WOMAR WOMAR is an experienced tanker pool operator with industry scale to operate the acquired vessels. WOMAR is one of the largest independent pool operators in the chemical tanker space. It has five offices globally: Singapore; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Mumbai, India; Houston, Texas; and Stamford, Connecticut. WOMAR's senior management has been with the company for over a decade and has deep industry experience. WOMAR deploys tonnage worldwide and leverages the synergies of global trade by being local in major areas of significance. For more information, please visit us at https://www.womarpools.com. ________________________________ 1 "Chemical Tanker Market Size In 2021: 2.0% CAGR with Top Countries Data, Research, High Demand, Share, Industry Analysis by Top Manufactures, Growth Insights and Forecasts to 2026," by 360 Research Reports, August 10, 2021 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005646/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Eastpak Re-enters North American Market DENVER, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eastpak, a global lifestyle brand owned by VF Corporation, is thrilled to announce its relaunch into North America. This comes after several years strategically focused on European and APAC regions, where the brand has deep roots, high aspiration, and strong business growth. Eastpak President Nina Flood has sharpened focus on growth in the Americas after initially entering the region through global ecommerce sites like ASOS and SSENSE and other high-end retail. Under Flood's direction, Eastpak is now fully platformed in the U.S. with the launch of us.eastpak.com. Appointed to the Eastpak role in 2020, Nina Flood was a logical choice to head the brand having previously served as President of Kipling Americas and, prior to that, VP of Strategy and Marketing at Nautica in her 17 years at VF Corp. In early 2021, Flood also took the helm of the iconic JanSport brand (in addition to Eastpak)to truly round out her "Packs" Presidency at VF, where she now leads both brands globally. "Consumers have been clamoring for Eastpak in the North Americaswhich led to launching our new website and opening new retail channels," says Flood. "It's amazing to see the potential for Eastpak as new consumers discover the brand and loyal ones can now get it much more quickly and easily through domestic retail." Eastpak's goals include an expanded presence in key US and Canada fashion and lifestyle retailers. The Fall 2021 relaunch will include iconic silhouettes such as the Padded Pak'r and Padded Zippl'r and also introduce soft carry and wheeled travel items, relatively new product categories for Eastpak since the brand was last distributed in North America. Eastpak is also rolling out several high-profile collaborations throughout 2021 and 2022, following many highly- anticipated collaboration releases from the brand, including Raf Simons, Vivienne Westwood, Kith and Neighborhood, to name a few. About Eastpak: Eastpak has been making bags that inspire people to move since 1952. From a manufacturer of military-issue packs and duffels for the US army to a leading lifestyle brand for people who live, work and play in the city. Since 2000, Eastpak forms part of the VF portfolio of international brands. We ensure that the same commitment to quality that made Eastpak famous lives on in its range of stylish and functional backpacks, shoulder bags, travel gear, and accessories. Eastpak continues to evolve with its loyal fans, and it is still very much the brand that is "Built to Resist. About VF Corporation: Founded in 1899, VF Corporation is one of the world's largest apparel, footwear and accessories companies connecting people to the lifestyles, activities, and experiences they cherish most through a family of iconic outdoor, active and workwear brands including Vans, The North Face, Timberland and Dickies. Our purpose is to power movements of sustainable and active lifestyles for the betterment of people and our planet. We connect this purpose with a relentless drive to succeed to create value for all stakeholders and use our company as a force for good. For more information, please visit vfc.com. About Nina: Nina Flood is currently President of VF Global PacksEastpak and JanSport. Combining strong strategic and branding experience with a passion for driving consumer centric demand, she oversees all aspects of commercial management, operations, product development and marketing for two iconic lifestyle brands globally. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eastpak-re-enters-north-american-market-301383237.html SOURCE Eastpak [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Eat Well Group Appoints Global Food Innovation Pioneer Dan Prefontaine to Its Advisory Board Eat Well Investment Group Inc., (the "Company" or "Eat Well Group") (CN:EWG) (US:EWGFF) (FRA:6BC0), a publicly-traded investment company, is pleased to announce that award-winning food innovation pioneer and President of the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre Inc. ("Food Centre"), Daniel Prefontaine, has joined the Company's strategic advisory board. Dan Prefontaine has been active in the plant-based food industry for over 35 years. He was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agriculture Hall of Fame in 2019 and was further recognized for his role in promoting the use of pulses in plant based-foods in 2020. Dan has played an integral part in establishing Canada as one of the global leaders in food production and technology. Mr. Prefontaine has led the Food Centre to assist over 400 companies to develop over 900 new food products ranging from a wide variety of ingredients and consumer packaged goods (CPG). These companies include some of the most well-known plant-based CPG brands from around the world. In 2016 Dan raised $27,000,000 to establish the new Agri-Food Innovation Centre in Saskatchewan, which has recently expanded to include an incubator to its portfolio, expanding its capacity in extrusion technology for plant-based foods. Additionally, Mr. Prefontaine has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of the Canadian Federal Grant Organization for Agriculture. "Rare are true pioneers in plant-based food development; rarer-still are pioneering culinary craftsmen who commercialize and lead as well as Dan Prefontaine," commented Marc Aneed, President of Eat Well Group. "His joining of our advisory board is a powerful, industry-level affirmation of Eat Well Group's vision and potential," continued Marc Aneed. The Company believes there is an immense opportunity to invest in the global food sector to support a healthier society through diversification with a focus on the conversion of plant and cell-based matrials as new ingredients that have the ability to change the landscape of consumer foods. Mr. Prefontaine's extensive track record and experience in product innovation together with his network of global leaders in plant-based foods and CPG will be a significant asset for the Company. "Over the past five years, we have seen the largest increase in entrepreneurship opportunities in the area of food, particularly in the plant protein space. It is clear Eat Well Group's strong assets, investments, and management are working to unmask new technologies to provide innovation and technological solutions to address the need for a secure food chain. I am incredibly excited to join Eat Well Group's experienced team to help expand their product offerings, capabilities, and markets," stated Dan Prefontaine, newly appointed Strategic Advisor of Eat Well Group. Mr. Prefontaine joins the recently announced Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed ("Prince Khaled") on Eat Well Group's newly formed Strategic Advisory Board. Prince Khaled is a known pioneer in plant-based food investing and venture-backed future food start-ups and among those global visionaries driving solutions at scale related to food security, human and animal welfare, and climate change. Prince Khaled is the CEO of KBW Ventures and serves in various key appointments in Saudi Arabia and globally. "With the appointment of Dan Prefontaine and the recently announced appointment of Prince Khaled to our Strategic Advisory Board, Eat Well Group is building an unparalleled senior leadership team with direct experience in scaling multi-national plant-based food companies; with a global impact in climate change, food sustainability and the democratization of plant-based foods," commented Mark Coles, Chief Investment Officer of Eat Well Group. To learn more, join Eat Well Group's mailing list for important updates. ABOUT EAT WELL GROUP Eat Well Group is a publicly-traded investment Company primarily focused on high-growth companies in the agribusiness, food tech, plant-based and ESG (environmental, social and governance) sectors. Eat Well Group's management team has an extensive record of sourcing, financing and building successful companies across a broad range of industries and maintains a current investment mandate on the health/wellness industry. The team has financed and invested in early-stage venture companies for greater than 25 years, resulting in unparalleled access to deal flow and the ability to construct a portfolio of opportunistic investments intended to generate superior risk-adjusted returns. The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005609/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] First Net Zero Mass Spectrometer Launched to Support Greener Future BREMEN, Germany, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The launch of the world's first net zero mass spectrometer (MS) will make it easier than ever for scientists working across geoscience, food and beverage, environmental science and forensics to practice science sustainably. The Thermo Scientific Delta Q Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS) is a next generation gas IRMS designed to enable detailed analysis with greater precision and accuracy. In addition to its improved specifications, including an upgrade in software to Qtegra ISDS to dramatically improve ease-of-use and laboratory productivity, the system's carbon footprint will be neutralized, allowing scientists to carry out their work, while minimizing their environmental impact. The Delta Q IRMS is the first product to be released as part of the IsoFootprint campaign, an initiative to permanently remove CO 2 emissions associated with the manufacture and supply chain of all new inorganic IRMS products. The Inorganic MS (IOMS) team at Thermo Fisher has committed to removing all embodied carbon in its new instrumentation, using technologies, like direct air capture and bio-oil sequestration, that lock away carbon from the atmsphere permanently. "The Delta Q IRMS, and our IsoFootprint initiative, is a major step forward in our commitment to supporting sustainable science," said Chris Cascella, general manager, inorganic mass spectrometry, chromatography and mass spectrometry, Thermo Fisher Scientific. "With the world in climate crisis, we want to be sure we play our part in limiting the damaging environmental impacts of climate change. By 2026, our IOMS instruments will become carbon neutral, removing 4500 tCO2e from the atmosphere each year. This is a bold, but necessary step world-class science should not be at a cost to the Earth." "Across industries, most products come with a carbon footprint, and direct air capture provides a mechanism to permanently eliminate this," said Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering, a direct air capture company working with Thermo Fisher as part of the IsoFootprint initiative. "It is inspiring to see Thermo Fisher leading the earth sciences field and taking the pioneering step to remove the CO2 emissions associated with their Delta Q IRMS product." To find out more about the IsoFootprint initiative, please visit www.thermofisher.com/IsoFootprint. About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with annual revenue of approximately $35 billion. Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. Whether our customers are accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics and therapies or increasing productivity in their laboratories, we are here to support them. Our global team of more than 90,000 colleagues delivers an unrivaled combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through our industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. Media Contact Information: Laura Bright Thermo Fisher Scientific +1 562-335-8318 laura.bright@thermofisher.com Janice Foley BioStrata +1 617-823-5555 jfoley@biostratamarketing.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-net-zero-mass-spectrometer-launched-to-support-greener-future-301384142.html SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Global Adoption of 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams Surpasses 100,000 Users 8x8, Inc. (NYSE: EGHT), a leading integrated cloud communications platform, today announced rapid adoption of the 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams solution, surpassing more than 100,000 business users globally. The 8x8 (News - Alert) direct routing solution provides organizations adopting Teams with enterprise-grade global telephony and other capabilities, further extending the Teams experience to enhance employee and customer experience. 8x8 also announced the latest 8x8 Voice for Microsoft (News - Alert) Teams enhancements, including call recordings and presence sync. "As organizations increase their usage of Microsoft Teams, 8x8 is delivering differentiated capabilities with its Voice for Microsoft Teams solution, such as new integrated features and expanded global reach for users in countries such as China, Russia, and Japan," said Dave Michels, founder and principal analyst at TalkingPointz. "For organizations relying on Teams that require enhanced communications and customer engagement capabilities, 8x8 offers a unique solution with its integrated global telephony and contact center solution." In a study commissioned by 8x8, Hanover Research found that 80 percent of respondents said their organizations are likely to integrate Microsoft Teams with third-party telephony providers. 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams helps organizations shift to hybrid work by expanding Teams into an advanced communications, collaboration, and engagement hub. The latest enhancements include: 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams is a core component of 8x8 XCaaS (eXperience Communications as a Service), which includes fully integrated, cloud native contact center, voice, team chat, video meetings, and CPaaS embeddable communications and APIs capabilities in a single-vendor solution. Organizations who recently signed and deployed 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams include: A global biopharmaceutical company sought a single vendor communication platform with Microsoft Teams integration. They selected 8x8 XCaaS with 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams to improve employee and customer experience for 1,200 employees and 30 contact center agents. Archway Marketing Services, selected 8x8 XCaaS and 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams to support their technology enhancement initiative after experiencing issues with their legacy on-premises systems. We quickly deployed the first of their 13 locations in 72 hours, and we will support 750 UCaaS and 70 CCaaS users. nVent, a high-performance electrical company, continues to add 8x8 XCaaS to more locations. They added more XCaaS and Microsoft Voice for Teams seats to support employees in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Germany, bringing their total global seat count to nearly 1,600. The Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex provides policing, fire, and rescue services for the County of Essex in the East of England and supports 1.8 million citizens. The Essex County Fire & Rescue Service selected 8x8 UCaaS and 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams to improve their communication capabilities across 50 fire stations and more than 1,400 members of staff. "We are committed to helping organizations extend the value of Teams by adding advanced communications and customer engagement features directly from any Teams endpoint," said Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8x8, Inc. "We continue to drive innovation with our 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams solution that goes far beyond direct routing, and we are seeing more and more organizations providing their distributed workforce with the ability to interact with colleagues and customers from anywhere using Teams." About 8x8, Inc. 8x8, Inc. (NYSE: EGHT) is transforming the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of 8x8 XCaaS, an integrated contact center, voice communications, video, chat and API solution built on one global cloud communications platform. 8x8 is powering all employees globally to connect individuals and teams so they can collaborate faster and work smarter. Real-time business analytics and intelligence provide businesses unique insights across all interactions and channels so they can delight end-customers and accelerate their business. For additional information, visit www.8x8.com, or follow 8x8 on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. 8x8 and 8x8 X Series are trademarks of 8x8, Inc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005258/en/ [September 23, 2021] The Hartford Announces $1 Million Scholarship Fund For UConn Hartford Students The Hartford has committed $1 million to provide funding for 50 UConn Hartford students who are residents of the City of Hartford. The funding will cover the gap between a student's existing financial aid package and the remaining tuition amount, allowing them to attend UConn Hartford tuition-free for all four years. Starting this semester, The Hartford will fund the scholars, as identified by The University of Connecticut's Division of Enrollment Planning and Management, in two groups - 25 first-year students in 2021, and an additional 25 first-year students in 2022. "We are proud to support incoming students in our namesake city as they begin their studies at UConn Hartford," said The Hartford's President Doug Elliot. "This new commitment builds on our enduring legacy of community engagement in the City of Hartford as we strive to advance equal economic, educational and workplace opportunities. We recognize that equitable access to a quality education can be a critical component to future success and look forward to mentoring The Hartford Scholars as they chart a course to accomplish their goals." Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, Ph.D., director of UConn Hartford said, "UConn Hartford extends our sincerest appreciation to our neighbor in the city, The Hartford, for their generous gift and meaningful partnership. The Hartford Scholars Program will ultimately provide support and mentoring opportunities to 50 students who live in the City of Hartford and attend the UConn Hartford campus. By supporting UConn Hartford - where first-generation college students and students of color represent the majority of the student population - The Hartford's partnership demonstrates the company's commitment to positive change in the City of Hartford and an understanding of the importance of higher education in expanding opportunity for the youth in our community. UConn Hartford is proud to partner with The Hartford in this worthy endeavor." The scholars must be residents of the City of Hartford and demonstrate a financial need. Scholarships for tuition and fees will be renewable for four years. Each student will also receive a set allowance for other expenses, such as books and transportation. In addition to financial support, The Hartford will provide mentorship opportunities, unique group experiences and interactions with the company and its employees, and utilize its existing resources for professional development. The new scholarship fund builds on a longstanding partnership with the University of Connecticut, which includes internships, research and recruiing. "I am beyond thankful for this opportunity. Being named a scholar gives me a push to keep doing whatever I need to do to succeed," said Cesar Carreno, a first-year UConn Hartford student who was born and raised in the City of Hartford and is one of The Hartford Scholars. "The financial support also means that I can rearrange my schedule so that I don't have to work as much, so I can focus more on my education and have more time to study." The Hartford's Commitment To City of Hartford The $1 million donation announced today is part of a broader commitment by The Hartford to advance equitable access to economic, educational and workforce opportunities for residents in the City of Hartford. Last year, the company made a $10 million, 5-year commitment to the Asylum Hill neighborhood to address top priorities identified by residents and non-profits through The Hartford's Asylum Hill Neighborhood Survey. Earlier this year, The Hartford announced a $1 million grant to make affordable homeownership more accessible in the Asylum Hill Neighborhood. About The Hartford The Hartford is a leader in property and casualty insurance, group benefits and mutual funds. With more than 200 years of expertise, The Hartford is widely recognized for its service excellence, sustainability practices, trust and integrity. More information on the company and its financial performance is available at https://www.thehartford.com. Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at @TheHartford_PR. The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., (NYSE: HIG) operates through its subsidiaries under the brand name, The Hartford, and is headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut. For additional details, please read The Hartford's legal notice. HIG-C Some of the statements in this release may be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that these forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially. Investors should consider the important risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ. These important risks and uncertainties include those discussed in our 2020 Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-Q, and the other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update this release, which speaks as of the date issued. From time to time, The Hartford may use its website and/or social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert) , to disseminate material company information. Financial and other important information regarding The Hartford is routinely accessible through and posted on our website at https://ir.thehartford.com, Twitter account at www.twitter.com/TheHartford_PR and Facebook at https://facebook.com/thehartford. In addition, you may automatically receive email alerts and other information about The Hartford when you enroll your email address by visiting the "Email Alerts" section at https://ir.thehartford.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005243/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Jimmy John's Leverages DailyPay for Competitive Edge in Hiring and Retaining Employees NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kensington Hill Capital LLC, a Jimmy John's franchisee, has partnered with DailyPay to provide access to on-demand pay to its Jimmy John's employees. Through this partnership, hundreds of hourly employees will now have the ability to receive their earned wages as they need it, rather than being bound by payday schedules. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Kensington Hill Capital is the latest quick service restaurant (QSR) to implement daily pay benefits for its 43 Jimmy John's restaurants across Ohio, Florida and Georgia. The benefit allows employees to pay bills on time, cover emergency expenses, and have more control over their finances. Recent research shows that employees with DailyPay stay up to 72% longer in their job. The data also shows that companies are able to fill positions 53% faster while 52% of job seekers polled saying they want an on-demand pay benefit in their next job. "I'm always looking for ways to enhance our employee benefits, to make people's lives easier," said Brandon Stewart , Kensington Hill Capital's president and COO. "I also have a very deep understanding, being in this industry, of what they go through especially our part-time employees. The decision to add this benefit was a no-brainer." Kensington Hill Capital will leverage DailyPay to hire employees faster and retain them for longer. Companies who use DailyPay reduce turnover by an average of 62%, helping employers save on turnover costs and invest in their employees. At this time, 45% of Kensington Hill Capital's employees are currently using DailyPay. "QSRs are eager to support their hourly employees and we're thrilled to be part of the equation. It's so essential that we encourage financial wellness we love to see partners like Kensington Hill Capital move the needle," said Jeanniey Walden, Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer at DailyPay. "Employees are more engaged at the workplace and willing to stay longer when they don't need to worry about paying Wednesday's electricity bill when payday hits on Friday with DailyPay, they can access their earned wages instantly that's financial freedom." About DailyPay DailyPay, powered by its industry-leading technology platform, is on a mission to build a new financial system. Partnering with America's best-in-class employers, including, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Applebee's, Dollar Tree, and Adecco. DailyPay is the recognized gold-standard in on-demand pay. Through its massive data network, proprietary funding model and connections into over 6,000 endpoints in the banking system, DailyPay works to ensure that money is always in the right place at the right time for employers, merchants, and financial institutions. DailyPay is building technology and the mindset to reimagine the way money moves, from the moment work starts. DailyPay is headquartered in New York City, with operations based in Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.dailypay.com/press. Media Contacts David Schwarz Email: david.schwarz@dailypay.com Adriana Ball Email: adriana.ball@dailypay.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jimmy-johns-leverages-dailypay-for-competitive-edge-in-hiring-and-retaining-employees-301384091.html SOURCE DailyPay [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] The Korea Herald introduces: Korea's Pyeongtaek to hold 2021 Global Peace and Security Forum to discuss ROK-U.S. alliance and coexistence PYEONGTAEK, South Korea, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following announcement covered by The Korea Herald, Pyeongtaek City will host the 2021 Pyeongtaek Global Peace and Security Forum from September 27 to 28 in Seoul, South Korea. Under the slogan of "Opening A New Chapter of Peace And Security," the forum will take place in a hybrid format according to the COVID-19 quarantine guidelines - a minimum number of on-site participants invited or pre-registered are expected to attend the forum, and those who do not can view the discussions live-streamed on Arirang TV's YouTube channel. Pyeongtaek City minimizes the number of on-site guests as well. Only a few figures are expected to appear at the forum to deliver their congratulatory messages. They include Pyeongtaek Mayor Jeong Jang-sun, Minister of Foreign Affairs Chung Eui-yong, Chairman of Pyeongtaek City Council Hong Sun-eui, and National Assembly members Yu Eui-dong and Hong Kee-won. Song Min-soon, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, will also attend the forum to make his keynot speech about the "Peace Process in Northeast Asia and the Korea-U.S. Alliance." Vincent Keith Brooks, former U.S. military commander, will give a special address online in real-time. Pyeongtaek City said that this peace and security forum, the first of its kind, will create an opportunity to discuss measures to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula. With this goal, Jung Seung-jo, President of Korea-US Alliance Foundation (KUSAF), and Jeon In-beom, former South Korean Army Lieutenant General, will preside the two main sessions: "The Changing Role of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) According to the Korea-U.S. Alliance and Northeast Asian Security Environment" and "The Role of Pyeongtaek City for the Evolved Korea-U.S. Alliance in Pyeongtaek," respectively. Since all sessions will be live-streamed on YouTube, those who want to participate in the forum from home and abroad can join the Q&A session and interactively communicate with the speakers in real-time through the video conferencing system. Mayor Jeong Jang-sun said, "As the central city of the Korea-U.S. alliance, Pyeongtaek is making every effort to discover and lead the role of local governments in the diplomatic and security sectors by holding the Global Peace and Security Forum." He added, "The city will make thorough preparations for the forum to make it safe amid the unprecedented situation of the COVID-19 pandemic." View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-korea-herald-introduces-koreas-pyeongtaek-to-hold-2021-global-peace-and-security-forum-to-discuss-rok-us-alliance-and-coexistence-301383703.html SOURCE The Korea Herald [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Delivers First Sample Fabrics to Spydasilk Enterprises ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB: KBLB) (Company or Kraig Labs), the biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of spider silk, announces today that it has delivered the first fabric samples to Spydasilk Enterprises (Spydasilk). These fabric blends will serve as the basis for developing the Companys first line of recombinant spider silk apparel. Spydasilk, a Singapore-based joint venture between Kraig Labs and Kings Group, was formed to produce, market, and sell spider silk-based apparel into the ASEAN region. These first sample fabrics blend traditional silk with cotton to produce a composite, blended material in line with the design specification requested by the Kings Groups lead designer. Once these sample fabrics have been tested and approved, the Company plans to begin weaving several thousand yards of finished fabric incorporating its recombinant spider silk. The delivery of these fabrics samples marks a significant milestone for the Company, Spydasilk, and the re-opening of Vietnams economy. The textile mill that Kraig Labs partnered with to reel and weave its specialized silk, which was closed due to COVID-19, has now re-opened. The delivery of the first composite fabrics to Spydasilk is a major advancement for the Company. This first delivery brings us ever closer to the public launch of Spydasilks first apparel line and our vision for large-scale commercialization of environmentally responsible and cost-effective spider silk, said Jon Rice, COO of Kraig Labs. To view the most recent news from Kraig Labs and/or to sign up for Company alerts, please go to www.KraigLabs.com/news . About Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. ( www.KraigLabs.com ), a fully reporting biotechnology company, is a developer of genetically engineered spider silk based fiber technologies. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information Statements in this press release about the Companys future and expectations other than historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are made on the basis of managements current views and assumptions. As a result, there can be no assurance that managements expectations will necessarily come to pass. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as believes, plans, expects, anticipates, foresees, estimated, hopes, if, develops, researching, research, pilot, potential, could or other words or phrases of similar import. Forward looking statements include descriptions of the Companys business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions and goals. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Ben Hansel, Hansel Capital, LLC (720) 288-8495 ir@KraigLabs.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Mendix is a Leader for the Third Year Running in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms - Low-code innovator is positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision, lands at top for Collaborative App Development - Mendix is creating a comprehensive ecosystem to address the burgeoning demand for enterprise-grade low-code solutions BOSTON, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in low-code application development for the enterprise, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Applications . Mendix was also positioned furthest to the right for Completeness of Vision. This is the third year in a row that Mendix has been positioned both as a Leader and furthest in Completeness of Vision. Mendix continues to lead and shape a market that is seeing meteoric growth, further accelerated by the sudden drive for digitalization triggered by the pandemic. As enterprises encounter imperatives to digitalize operations and customer interactions and support remote and hybrid work arrangements, low-code has emerged as the go-to technology for rapid solution development. These imperatives have effectively redefined the way enterprises approach digitalization both now and for the future, with advanced low-code platforms such as Mendix playing a pivotal role. In its introduction to the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner states, "By 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020." In an earlier report, Gartner said, "low-code application platforms have moved from the 'early adopter' to 'early majority' phase on its technology adoption curve; and that low-code is "a potent best-of-breed application delivery tool for mainstream business use cases, sometimes removing the need for high-control frameworks and platforms entirely in some organizations."(1) "Being recognized as a Leader by Gartner is validation of the ideas our company is built on and the success our customers have experienced by partnering with us to execute their most strategic digitalization initiatives," said Mendix founder and CEO Derek Roos. "Our vision goes far beyond application development. We built a digital solution ecosystem from the DNA of low-code by applying our core principles of abstraction, automation, collaboration, and community to every aspect of the digital enterprise. At our recently concluded Mendix World conference, we introduced an expanded Mendix Marketplace that now supports a platform economy -- one in which packaged capabilities, templated solutions, and tailored components are offered by Mendix and its partner community. These 'building blocks' enable developers to assemble their own custom solutions in a fraction of the time." Mendix gets highest score for 'Collaborative App Development' Use Case As part of the research, Gartner evaluated low-code vendors on a variety of critical use cases. In its 2021 "Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms" report, Mendix received the highest score of any vendor in "Collaborative App Development," and also performed well in the "Custom Business Applications" and "Business Workflow Automation" use cases. Collaborative App Development. Fluid collaboration across business stakeholders and IT is a founding principle of the Mendix platform. Ensuring this collaboration is integrated into the development process is central to realizing the core benefit promised by low-code: delivering better software faster. In Mendix, this focus on the importance of collaboration starts with the unique architecture of offering two purpose-built integrated developer environments (IDEs): Mendix Studo is designed for less technical business experts and citizen developers who can use it to build their own apps or add domain expertise to more sophisticated apps. Mendix Studio Pro empowers professional developers to create the most sophisticated, complex, enterprise-grade solutions. The two IDEs share development responsibilities with a common model-based language, so teams of developers, even of different skill sets or using different IDEs, are always in sync. Collaboration is enhanced in the platform through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, AI tools to assist development, real-time communication between developers, and robust version control. As an example, VGZ, the second largest health insurer in the Netherlands, leveraged Mendix's collaborative environment when it created a mobile application to better service its customers. Originally designed to simplify insurance claims by using OCR to scan invoices and automatically process them, the application has since grown to offer support on all tasks and answer all customer policy questions. Rob Polman, product owner at VGZ, explains, "Mendix was instrumental in getting an early, one-task mobile app to the market very quickly. Over the following years, we've used the platform to enhance it into a feature-rich, mature mobile offering that now supports over one million customer sessions per month. Throughout the process, from the earliest iteration on, the Mendix platform has enabled a fully collaborative BizDevOps process between our business and IT teams." The success of the application is reflected by 4.5 and 4.6 ratings from nearly 75,000 reviewers in the Android and Apple app stores, and a significant increase in NPS scores among customers using the application. Custom Business Applications. Increasingly, customers are using Mendix to create large-scale enterprise applications from scratch. As organizations increase the velocity with which they digialize, the limited customizations available in commercial off-the-shelf software solutions are no longer adequate to capture the changing business landscape and spate of new technologies that enhance solutions. Classic models of custom software development often remain economically infeasible and not agile enough to deliver the newest experiences end users are expecting. With the Mendix low-code platform, organizations can easily incorporate a broad range of technologies including AI, AR, and IoT into their solutions. Data Hub ensures that data sources across the enterprise are never more than a click away, while the multi-experience capabilities delivers stellar user experiences with a sleek, modern UI and support for conversational interfaces, native mobile and progressive web apps. Mitsubishi Elevator Europe is one company realizing their vision, with Mendix as the enabler of a series of fit-for-purpose applications including a field service app and IoT-driven monitoring system that were then integrated into a unified, holistic maintenance solution. "Our vision is clear," says Evert Visser, managing director, Mitsubishi Elevator Europe. "We want to adopt new technology in a fast and sustainable way. Our overarching goal is customer satisfaction. Mendix enabled us to leverage our existing assets and add new capabilities to create a solution that brings the benefits of technology to our customers." Business Workflow Automation. Mendix Workflow equips citizen and professional developers to automate processes across the enterprise. The Workflow Editor provides governed access to enterprise data via Data Hub and integrates seamlessly into enterprise applications and human touch points to create true intelligent automation solutions not just single workflows, but full-featured, adaptable applications. Reflecting on a recent project that digitized complex processes in the compliance context for major brands including Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, Jonathan Lamb of Kinetech said, "Using the Mendix Workflow platform allows us to quickly adapt to changes in the complex supplier compliance process, enabling brand owners to capitalize on the introduction of new products, components and ingredients." View the full Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms . (1) Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar: 2021; Published 21 November 2020 - ID G00730556; By Analyst(s): Tuong Nguyen, Martin Reynolds, Rajesh Kandaswamy, John Santoro, Danielle Casey Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved Learn more about the Mendix Platform and Pricing and Availability .} Connect with Mendix Follow @Mendix on Twitter Connect with Mendix on LinkedIn About Mendix Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in enterprise low-code, is fundamentally reinventing the way applications are built in the digital enterprise. With the Mendix platform, enterprises can "Make with More" by broadening an enterprise's development capability to conquer the software development bottleneck; "Make it Smart," by making apps with rich native experiences that are intelligent, proactive, and contextual; and "Make at Scale," to modernize core systems and build large app portfolios to keep pace with business growth. The Mendix platform is built to promote intense collaboration between business and IT teams and dramatically accelerate application development cycles while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and governance in short, to help enterprises confidently leap into their digital futures. Mendix's "Go Make It" platform has been adopted by more than 4,000 leading companies around the world. Press Inquiries Sara Black sara@bospar.com (213) 618-1501 Dan Berkowitz Senior Director Global Communications Mendix Dan.Berkowitz@mendix.com (415) 518-7870 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/440429/Mendix_Logo.jpg [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] MIC Announces Offer to Repurchase All 2.00% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2023 Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings, LLC (NYSE: MIC) ("MIC" or the "Company") today announced an Offer to Repurchase any and all of its 2.00% Convertible Senior Notes due 2023 (the "Notes") at par plus accrued interest. As of September 23, 2021, the Company had $34,039,000 aggregate principal amount of the Notes outstanding. The Offer to Repurchase will be conducted pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Indenture, dated as of July 15, 2014, between a predecessor to MIC Corp and Wells Fargo (News - Alert) Bank, National Association, as trustee (the "Trustee"), as amended and supplemented by the Second Supplemental Indenture, dated as of May 21, 2015, the Third Supplemental Indenture, dated as of October 13, 2016 and the Fourth Supplemental Indenture, dated as of September 22, 2021 (such Indenture, as so amended and supplemented, the "Indenture"). Pursuant to the Indenture, holders have the right (the "Fundamental Change Repurchase Right") to require the Company to repurchase all of such holder's Notes, or any portion thereof that is a multiple of $1,000 principal amount, on October 22, 2021, subject to extension (the "Fundamental Change Repurchase Date"), at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Notes being repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest thereon, to, but not including, the Fundamental Change Repurchase Date (the "Fundamental Change Repurchase Price"). Holders may surrender their Notes until 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on October 21, 2021, subject to extension (the "Fundamental Change Repurchase Offer Expiration Date"). The completion of the sale of the Company's Atlantic Aviation business on September 23, 2021, constitutes a Fundamental Change pursuant to the Indenture, triggering the Fundamental Change Repurchase Right. Assuming the Fundamental Change Repurchase Offer Expiration Date is not extended, the amount payable on the Notes, including accrued and unpaid interest, will be approximately $1,001.17 per $1,000 principal amount of Notes. For Notes that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Fundamental Change Repurchase Offer Expiration Date, settlement will occur promptly following the Fundamental Change Repurchase Offer Expiration Date. The Indenture provides that each holder of the Notes has the right, subject to certain conditions, at such holder's option, subject to the Company's settlement method election pursuant to the Indenture, to elect to convert its Notes at the conversion ratio then in effect, until the Fundamental Change Repurchase Date. The conversion ratio of the Notes as of the date of this Notice is 12.6572 common units of the Company per $1,000 principal amount of Notes. The Company will settle all conversions of Notes surrendered for conversion prior to the Fundamental Change Repurchase Date pursuant to the cash settlement provisions of the Indenture. The Offer to Repurchase contains a comparison of the amount holders would currently receive if their Notes are converted and the amount holders will receive if their Notes are repurchased through exercise of the Fundamental Change Repurchase Right. The right of holders to convert their Notes is separate from the Fundamental Change RepurchaseRight. The Company's board of directors has authorized a cash distribution of $37.386817 per common unit in connection with the closing of the Atlantic Aviation sale. Such distribution is payable on October 7, 2021, to holders of record of the common units on October 4, 2021, and will result in an adjustment to the conversion ratio pursuant to the Indenture. Any such adjustment will be announced when determined. The complete terms and conditions of the Tender Offer are set forth in the Offer to Purchase and the Letter of Transmittal that are being sent to holders of the Notes. Copies of the Offer to Purchase and the Letter of Transmittal may be obtained from the Trustee, Paying Agent and Conversion Agent for the Tender Offer, Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, by calling toll free at (800) 344-5128 or by email at bondholdercommunications@wellsfargo.com. Important Information Regarding the Tender Offer This press release is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to buy nor the solicitation of an offer to sell any of the Company's outstanding Notes. The Offer to Repurchase will be made solely by the Offer to Purchase and related materials, as they may be amended or supplemented. Holders of Notes should read the Company's Tender Offer Statement on Schedule TO filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (" SEC (News - Alert) ") in connection with the Offer to Repurchase, which will include as an exhibit the Offer to Purchase and related materials, as well as any amendments or supplements to the Schedule TO when they become available, because they will contain important information. Each of these documents will be filed with the SEC, and, when available, holders may obtain them for free from the SEC at its website (www.sec.gov) or from the Company's paying agent in connection with the Offer to Repurchase. This press release does not set forth all of the terms and conditions of the Tender Offer. Noteholders should carefully read the Offer to Purchase, the Letter of Transmittal and related materials for a complete description of all terms and conditions before making any decision with respect to the Tender Offer. None of the Company, its management, its board of directors, its officers, or the trustee, conversion agent and paying agent with respect to the Notes, or any of their respective affiliates, makes any recommendation that holders tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of the principal amount of their Notes, and no one has been authorized by any of them to make such a recommendation. Holders must make their own decision as to whether to tender their Notes and, if so, the principal amount of Notes to tender. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements In addition to historical information, this release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. The Company may, in some cases, use words such as "project", "believe", "anticipate", "plan", "expect", "estimate", "intend", "should", "would", "could", "potentially", "may", or other words that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify these forward-looking statements. Such statements include, among others, those concerning the Company's expected financial performance and strategic and operational plans, statements regarding sales of our businesses (including our previously approved reorganization), the ability to complete such sales and the anticipated uses of any proceeds therefrom, statements regarding the anticipated specific and overall impacts of COVID-19 and any related recovery, as well as all assumptions, expectations, predictions, intentions or beliefs about future events. Any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and a number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risks identified in the Company's Annual Report on the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and in other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Given the risks and uncertainties surrounding forward-looking statements, do not place undue reliance on these statements. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Other than as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About MIC MIC owns and operates businesses providing energy services, production and distribution in Hawaii. For additional information, please visit the MIC website at www.macquarie.com/mic. MIC is not an authorized deposit-taking institution for the purposes of the Banking Act 1959 (Commonwealth of Australia). The obligations of MIC do not represent deposits or other liabilities of Macquarie Bank Limited ABN 46 008 583 542 (MBL). MBL does not guarantee or otherwise provide assurance in respect of the obligations of MIC. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005748/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Panorays Closes $42 Million Series B Funding Round to Revolutionize Third-Party Security NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Panorays , a leading provider of third-party security risk management, today announced it has closed a $42 million Series B funding round led by Greenfield Partners with participation from existing investors Aleph and Oak HC/FT as well as new investors BlueRed Partners (Singapore), Greenspring Associates (which was recently acquired by StepStone Group) and Moneta VC. The investment will support the companys growth as the global standard in transforming third-party security risk management, and the fastest and easiest way for companies to do business together. Panorays intends to use the funds to expand in the U.S. and internationally, as well as innovate and develop additional advanced tools to streamline security between organizations and their vendors. In the wake of a tumultuous year in the industry, with numerous supply chain attacks including SolarWinds, Accellion, Kaseya and Codecov, businesses are searching for a solution to manage third-party security risk, said Matan Or-El, Co-Founder and CEO of Panorays. Panorays innovative technology ensures that companies seamlessly work together with their vendors to minimize security risks. Third-party security is quickly becoming a board-level issue, and the ability to credibly assess, continuously monitor and clearly report on an organizations posture vis-a-vis its third parties in a context-aware manner will be table stakes in the near future, said Avery Schwartz, Partner at Greenfield Partners. Panorays delivers that and more to enterprises, while at the same time facilitating increased trust with vendors in order to reduce onboarding friction significantly. According to a recent Interos report, 77% of organizations have suffered at least one cyber breach within their supply chain over the past year, with an average of two per organization. In addition, a recent survey by Panorays found that one-third of organizations work with more than 500 suppliers, and 33% of respondents said that they believe that a third-party data breach is likely within the next year. These facts have underscored the need for Panorays technology, evidenced by a 500% growth in its client base since its last funding round at the end of 2019. Panorays offers an automated, comprehensive and easy-to-use third-party security platform that manages the whole process from inherent to residual risk, remediation and ongoing monitoring. Unlike other solution providers, Panorays combines automated, dynamic security questonnaires with external attack surface assessments and business context to provide organizations with a rapid, accurate view of supplier cyber risk. It is the only such platform that automates, accelerates and scales customers third-party security evaluation and management process, enabling easy collaboration and communication between companies and suppliers, resulting in efficient and effective risk remediation in alignment with a companys security policies and risk appetite. The company was recently named a Strong Performer in The Forrester New Wave: Cybersecurity Risk Ratings Platforms, Q1 2021 evaluation. The analyst report found that Panorays differentiates with its complete questionnaire capabilities, accuracy and workflow. The risk context delivered by Panorays combines human factors, questionnaire management for third parties and a simple-to-use fourth-party discovery feature. In addition, Panorays was included in a recent Gartner report, Navigating the Vendor Risk Management Solution Market, as part of its new Cyber VRM category. This recognizes the growing demand for third-party cybersecurity management and Panorays unique solution. In the past year, Panorays has also: Added tens of thousands of new suppliers to its system for both security questionnaires and external attack surface assessments Grown its employee base by 42% Created its 360 Partner Program Achieved SOC 2 Type II Attestation Shortened the time organizations took to complete questionnaires from an average of 9 weeks to 9 days To see why leading investors are convinced that Panorays is transforming third-party security risk management, experience the platform and request a demo today. About Greenfield Partners Greenfield Partners is an investment firm focused on exceptional early growth stage technology businesses. With a dual presence in Tel Aviv and New York, the Greenfield team fuses deep local Israeli roots and an expansive global network to support entrepreneurs in their quest to build thriving technology companies. For more information, please visit http://greenfield-growth.com/. About Panorays Panorays is a rapidly growing provider of third-party security risk management software, offered as a SaaS-based platform. The company serves enterprise and mid-market customers primarily in North America, the UK and the EU, and has been adopted by leading banking, insurance, financial services and healthcare organizations, among others. Headquartered in New York and Israel, with offices around the world, Panorays is funded by numerous international investors, including Aleph VC, Oak HC/FT, Greenfield Partners, BlueRed Partners (Singapore), Greenspring Associates, Moneta VC, Imperva Co-Founder Amichai Shulman and former CEO of Palo Alto Networks Lane Bess. Visit us at www.panorays.com . Media Contact: Tila Pacheco Eskenzi PR panorays@eskenzipr.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6282d016-b962-46cf-8fff-7d53450e80f9 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Simshine Releases WiFi Baby Monitor for Real-Time Monitoring and Safety SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Simshine is excited to announce the release of the Simshine Baby Pro. The all-in-one smart baby monitor is a leading WiFi baby monitor for baby safety. The Simshine Baby Pro is equipped with a 2K QHD camera, two-way audio, night vision, AI for cry detection and soothing, a danger zone, auto photo capture, historical event recording, sleep tracking and more. The monitor comes with a crib stand and is the best way to parent intelligently with a crystal-clear view of the baby from anywhere in real time. With the Simshine Baby Pro, parents can feel more secure with the sharpest video feeds. The 2K QHD camera has a 400W pixel lens for high definition and a 360-degree, wide-angle view, allowing parents to view the entire room and not just the crib for peace of mind. The camera offers digital zoom and infrared night vision to check on babies while the lights are out without disturbing their sleep. With unique alert features, parents can be there for their young ones when needed. The camera sends sound and motion notifications to alert parents to activity in the nursery and provides danger zone detections through artificial intelligence. To help parents ease the baby back to sleep, the monitor includes auto soothing and two-way audio. The soothing music has a white noise option or parents can upload their own soothing music to the monitor. What makes the Simshine Baby Pro unique is the intelligent features offered to help parents more actively unerstand their baby's sleep habits through sleep tracking and analytics. The accompanying SimHome app (available for iOS or Android) provides detailed analytics of the baby's night, such as time crying, total sleep and longest sleep. The intelligent features of the monitor work with or without an internet connection and can store up to 128 gigs or 13 days of playback to help discover sleep issues. Videos are stored and processed locally on the device and only homeowners can access the camera through the SimHome app, where live videos can be streamed to a phone through a secured peer-to-peer network. The Simshine Baby Pro is easy to install, set up and pair to smartphones or tablets. The monitor can be adjusted in all directions to get the best view of the baby. The crib-mounted holder hides all cords inside, keeping the baby from having any access to the cords. The holder easily attaches to the crib with a c-clamp. The monitor comes in pink and yellow with two options for storage: a 64 gig and a 128 gig. Plugs are available for the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union. No subscription is required and Simshine offers free shipping, a one-year warranty and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Customer Danielle called the Simshine Baby Pro a must-have item for small kids. "This allayed my anxiety over sleep training so much. I love being able to share an account with my spouse and both sets of grandparents. Video and sound quality are great." Simshine is trusted by more than 60,000 parents worldwide. The company launched in 2017 when several computer vision scientists got together to develop locally run AI devices and take AI to the next level. The team wanted to tackle the common problems found in smart home cameras. "Our mission is to bring true peace of mind and more convenience to people's life by embedding advanced AI vision into easy-to-use cameras," said a spokesperson for Simshine. Simshine products offer a more proactive way for people to protect and connect with their homes. For more information and to shop now, visit simshinemall.com or find the Simshine Baby Pro on Amazon. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/simshine-releases-wifi-baby-monitor-for-real-time-monitoring-and-safety-301383756.html SOURCE Simshine [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] SPDB and Huawei Launch the SPDB Finwarehouse, Incorporating Digital Finance into Warehousing SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPD Bank) and Huawei presented the SPDB Finwarehouse Solution at HUAWEI CONNECT 2021. The solution is one of the biggest milestones in joint innovation for financial digitalization. It is also a step towards consolidating the Bank of Things, as the solution uses IoT to secure movable property pledges, making every object identifiable, every alarm traceable, and every item trustworthy. Last year, SPD Bank and Huawei released the Bank of Things White Paper, which proposes a new financial services model and system. Following this, SPD Bank began to apply innovative digital technologies to promote the Bank of Things, partnering with Huawei to "dive into digital". SPDB Finwarehouse is one of the important initiatives that has resulted from this partnership and direction. The solution is designed for industrial supply chains and is an innovative way to manage pledges for movable warehousing properties. Previously an area of financial services that wasn't seeing extensive digitalization, movable properties represent an innovation market space worth billions of yuan. SPDB Finwarehouse: Secure and Easy Management of Movable Properties Often, movable properties are subject to several risks. For example, ownership may not be clear, so property is pledged several times. At the same time, supervision companies may not always be completely ethical, which is why adulteration is likely to occur. Even if supervision is precise, it is costly without digital means. And without a disposal platform, goods are difficult to monetize. In response to these issues, SPD Bank has designed a more precise and trustworthy solution. SPDB Finwarehouse uses RFID, weighing devices, and blockchain PDA devices to record objective information directly at the warehouse. Inbound goods are matched with financing and lending, while outbound goods are linked with repayment. This makes goods supervision a lot easier and more effective. The solution also helps accurately determine the value of goods. It integrates verified trade, perception, and market information, and uses it to determine ownership, valuation, and efficient disposal. Essentially, logistics, commercial, capital, and information flows become centralized, providing the necessary data to properly valuate movable assets. Both upstream and downstream enterprises can now access accurate financial services, which cover the entirety of the supply chain. Trustworthy Asset Pool Powered by Smart IoT Logistics and warehouses frequently use digital technologies. As such, Huawei and SPD Bank are deploying intelligent IoT devices at warehouses along with introducing AI capabilities and multi-dimensional data verification. This transforms regular warehouses into financial ones, integrating financial services into management and business processes. Based on the HUAWEI CLOUD platform, SPDB Finwarehouse makes every object identifiable, every alarm traceable, and every item trustworthy. The solution features the following technologies: Distributed RFID positions objects within meters, takes stock automatically, and tracks items in real time. With Pangu models, most models can be reused, reducing the number of samples required for training and shortening the project development period. The Huawei IoT platform implements GUI-assisted modeling, flexibly defines and builds models, and centrally manages them. It cross-validates data through digital twin technology, and performs comprehensive risk analysis on the goods, processes, personnel, and environment of the warehouse. Monitoring Center Ensures Authenticity of Inbound Goods In the SPDB Finwarehouse Monitoring Center, operators can easily verify the authenticity of inbound goods. They can count cargo stacks through Pangu models and verify them using the scanning code, weight data, and trade background data. "SPDB Finwarehouse is a pilot digital finance project. We have performed an in-depth evaluation on the needs of the enterprise service market. Now, we need to continue looking for ways to transform our business logic and rebuild our technical capabilities in order to keep up digitalization." said by Mr. Chen Haining, GM of the IT Department at SPD Bank. He added, "By integrating digital technologies into industries, we can use digital capabilities to drill down into the supply chain scenarios of various real economy industries. SPD Bank looks forward to working with Huawei to integrate finance with the real economy." In a world where everything is connected, new scenarios and business models will continue to emerge. "Huawei and SPD Bank will continue to innovate, providing leading technology products and full-stack cloud infrastructure solutions for digital finance upgrades. We will use technology innovation for faster financial services upgrades, working together to further interconnect industries with tailored financial innovation." said by Mr. Jason Cao, President of Global Financial Business Unit, Huawei Enterprise BG, "Huawei has contributed its full-stack technologies to work on SPDB Finwarehouse with SPD Bank. With our customers, we are diving into digital and promoting the upgrade of digital finance. We hope to drive the real economy forward with the power of finance. Huawei is committed to helping financial institutions as they constantly upgrade their agility, intelligence, industry services, and ecosystem construction. We are helping financial institutions along their digital transformation journey and building a fully connected, intelligent, and ecosystem-based finance industry together." SPD Bank and Huawei set up a joint innovation lab in 2018, which has led to several successful projects. In August 2020, they signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement, and together published The Bank of Things White Paper a major milestone. SPD Bank will focus on user experience, apply digital technologies, and innovate with industries such as retail, communications, transportation, and healthcare, to boost the digital economy. In a world where everything is connected, finance, technology, and industry will be closely linked. Huawei and SPD Bank are drawing on the power of cloud-based FinTech to serve the community, enable customers, and create new industry value. Huawei hosts HUAWEI CONNECT 2021 online from September 23 to October 31. The theme of this year's event is Dive into Digital. We're going to dive deep into the practical application of technologies like cloud, AI, and 5G in all industries, and how they can make organizations of all shapes and sizes more efficient, more versatile, and ultimately more resilient as we move towards economic recovery. For more information, please contact our local team or check out https://www.huawei.com/en/events/huaweiconnect SOURCE Huawei [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Stream Realty Partners Expands Occupier Business; Launches Program Management Service Offering DALLAS and FORT WORTH, Texas, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stream Realty Partners (Stream), a national real estate services, development, and investment company, announced today the expansion of its national occupier platform by launching Program Management Services. Joe Iatauro, an 18-year industry veteran, has been recruited to lead the new service as Executive Managing Director. Stream's enhanced offering is designed to align an occupier's full spectrum of business needs with their real estate. This offering will encompass services, including, but not limited to, supply chain, business and economic incentives, development, design and construction, technology, security and loss prevention, FF&E, material handling, and racking, that provide flexibility to occupier business growth and achieve greater financial returns. Under Iatauro's leadership, the group will complement Stream's leasing, site selection, investment sales and property management services, with a priority focus on the industrial sector. With specialty expertise in food processing, cold storage, manufacturing and distribution facilities, future expansion plans include retail and office. "As business becomes more sophisticated, real estate efficiencies and speed-to-market are critical to an occupier's overall business success," said Stream President Chris Jackson. "Our occupier clients need partners who understand their operational and supply chain requirements in addition to the real estate to provide a competitive advantage. Joe is a real estate leader and business expert who understands the occupier's business needs and delivers nimble and integrated solutions." Iatauro comes to Stream from JLL, where he served as Senior Vice President and Business Unit Lead of the Industrial Project and Development Services Group in Atlanta, Georgia. Having led a team in the development and construction of more than 20 million square feet of manufacturing, warehouse, distribution, cold storage, and office, Iatauro's expertise includes managing diverse occupier portfolios of ground-up, build-to-suit, bend-to-suit greenfield and brownfield developments, existing building renovations, equipment decommissioning and relocations, and lab projects within the industrial sector. "With this offering, Stream will set the bar for occupier-focused business optimization and real estate strategies, raising client expectations throughout the industry," said Iatauro. "This is an evolutionary venture for Stream and the commercial real estate industry. I couldn't be more excited to launch this offering which places the occupier's business needs first." About Stream Realty Partners Stream is a commercial real estate firm with full-service offerings in leasing, property management, development, construction management, and investment sales services across the industry. In addition, Stream is dedicated to sourcing acquisition and development opportunities for the firm and its clients. Since 1996, Stream has grown to a staff of more than 950 real estate professionals with offices in Atlanta, Austin, the Carolinas, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Greater Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, Northern Virginia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. Stream completes more than $3.3 billion in real estate transactions annually and is an active investor and developer across the nation. Visit www.streamrealty.com . CONTACT: David Ebeling, 949-861-8351, david@ebelingcomm.com View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stream-realty-partners-expands-occupier-business-launches-program-management-service-offering-301383560.html SOURCE Stream Realty Partners [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Sun Capital Expands Partnership with Promotions of M. Steven Liff, Bruce Roberson and Tim Stubbs Sun Capital Partners, Inc. ("Sun Capital"), a leading private investment firm focused on defensible businesses in growing markets with tangible performance improvement opportunities, today announced the promotion of the three executives who currently serve as members of the Executive and Investment Committees alongside the firm's two founders. Senior Managing Director and Head of Private Equity North America, M. Steven Liff was named Senior Partner, and Senior Managing Directors, Operations Bruce Roberson and Tim Stubbs were promoted to Partner. Together with their promotions, each executive joined the ownership of the general partner. "We are very happy to welcome Steve, Bruce and Tim as Partners of Sun Capital," said Sun Capital Founders and Co-CEOs Marc Leder and Rodger Krouse. "All three have been instrumental to our success over the years, have proven to be tremendous colleagues and mentors to team members across the firm, and acted as true partners in developing and executing the firm's overall strategy. These promotions recognize the critical roles they play at Sun Capital today and their continued contributions in the future." Liff, who joined Sun Capital in 2000, has applied his extensive leveraged finance and mergers and acquisitions experience to lead deals and is a member of Sun Capital's Investment Committee, which approves all investments made by the firm. He also manages the North American transaction team, including offices in Boca Raton, Los Angeles, and New York City. Prior to joining Sun Capital, Liff worked at NationsBank and Bank of America Commercial Finance, focusig on marketing, underwriting, and closing new leveraged finance transactions. He received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Arizona. Roberson joined the firm as a Managing Director, Operations in 2015 and today oversees Sun Capital's North American operations teams and is a member of Sun Capital's Investment Committee. He was previously President and CEO of privately-held PSC Industrial Services Group for 10 years, served as an executive at Safety-Kleen Systems and was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company (News - Alert) where he worked for 19 years. He holds an economics degree from Stanford University, as well as a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School. Stubbs joined Sun European Partners, the European adviser to U.S.-based Sun Capital Partners, Inc., in 2011, oversees the European operations teams and is a member of Sun Capital's Investment Committee. Prior to joining Sun European he was President and CEO of the Sapa group in Stockholm, a $5 billion global aluminum products business with 65 locations throughout the world and also served as CEO of Indalex, an aluminum extrusion business and a former Sun Capital-affiliated portfolio company. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Metallurgy from Oxford University and a Master of Business Administration from London Business School. These promotions follow several additions to the senior team at Sun Capital in recent months, including Managing Directors Elizabeth de Saint Aignan, Susan Clark and Mark Braganza, Chief Human Resources Officer Angela Geffre, Chief Financial Officer Kelli Turner, and Head of Investor Relations Kelly Griffin. About Sun Capital Partners, Inc. Sun Capital Partners, Inc. is a global private equity firm focused on partnering with outstanding management teams to accelerate value creation. Since 1995, Sun Capital has invested in more than 425 companies worldwide with revenues in excess of $50 billion across a broad range of industries and transaction structures. The Firm has built a reputation as a trusted partner, recognized for its operational experience. Sun Capital focuses on defensible businesses in growing markets with tangible performance improvement opportunities in the Business Services, Consumer, Healthcare, Industrial, and Technology sectors. The Firm has offices in Boca Raton, Los Angeles and New York, and an affiliate with offices in London. For more information, please visit www.suncappart.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005154/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Tyler Technologies to Serve Small Texas Counties with Court Case Manager and Insights Solution Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: TYL) announced today it has signed an agreement with the Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA) for Tyler's Odyssey Case Manager and Court Insights solutions. Tyler has a strong presence in the state of Texas and provides its eFileTexas electronic filing solution and re:SearchTX portal statewide, as well as providing its Odyssey court case management solution to more than 90 counties, which cover nearly 90% of the state's population. This new agreement will serve small counties in the state - and can include any county with a population under 20,000 -with Tyler's Odyssey Case Manager and Courts Insights solution. The goal of the project is to streamline implementation of Tyler's solution by providing an out-of-the-box solution that is easily integrated with eFileTexas, re:SearchTX, and state reporting. Odyssey Case Manager will track all aspects of court administration, from e-filing through disposition, as well as manage a court's highly sensitive court case data. In addition to creating court dockets, the solution also calculates fees, fines, and distributes payments automatically to keep a courtroom running smoothly. The addition of Court Insights will allow court staff to evaluate its performance using standardized metrics developed by the National Center for State Courts, such as gauging the average time to disposition of cases and determining trial date certainty. Data will be displayed in an easy-to-understand dashboard that can be updated in real time. Nearly 200 court clerk offices may select Tyler's Odyssey Case Manager and Court Insights solution. The solutions will be rolled out first as a pilot program to select counties, with others following over the next few years. "The Texas OCA has always been very forward-thinking in how to best manage its court operations and connect its judiciaries," said Rusty Smith, president of Tyler's Courts & Justice Division. "We are pleased to be able to offer Odyssey and Court Insights to even more Texas courts and demonstrate why these solutions are a great choice to serve counties of all sizes." About Tyler Technologies (News - Alert) , Inc. Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) provides integrated software and technology services to the public sector. Tyler's end-to-end solutions empower local, state, and federal government entities to operate more efficiently and connect more transparently with their constituents and with each other. By connecting data and processes across disparate systems, Tyler's solutions are transforming how clients gain actionable insights that solve problems in their communities. Tyler has more than 27,000 successful installations across more than 11,000 sites, with clients in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, and other international locations. Tyler has been named to Government Technology's GovTech 100 list five times and has been recognized three times on Forbes' "Most Innovative Growth Companies" list. More information about Tyler Technologies, an S&P 500 company headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found at tylertech.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005047/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] UTAR Advancing Digitalisation by Signing MoU with H3C KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- H3C, a leader in digital solutions, today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) to improve and upgrade the campus's network. Through the collaboration, H3C has provided a campus network, Wi-Fi 6 solution and Cloudnet solution to UTAR using the latest public cloud management platform to monitor and manage their network devices. In addition, one of H3C's partners, Extreme Broadband Sdn Bhd, a local internet service provider, will be providing broadband internet service to the educational institution. The MoU was signed by Rockies Ma, Country General Manager of H3C Malaysia and Ir. Professor Dr. Ewe Hong Tat, President and CEO of UTAR. The Cloudnet solution is capable of overcoming the limitations of traditional IT infrastructure, which are becoming more inefficient oer the years. Cloud-based services offer a much more scalable and reliable IT infrastructure that is specifically designed to streamline business performance and support development and growth. These products and solutions will provide UTAR greater flexibility, agility and resilience to meet the demands of the new digital economy. Rockies Ma, Country General Manager of H3C Malaysia, said the partnership with UTAR underlines the company's goal of building its strategic partner ecosystem to support Malaysia's digital economy. "We work closely with partners in key sectors such as education, government, healthcare, telecommunications, and manufacturing to promote digital transformation and build a new smart future for them as Malaysia undergoes the Malaysian Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL) initiative." Affirming H3C's role in this partnership, UTAR's Dr. Ewe said, "With H3C coming on board, we are confident that we will be able to digitalise our campus operations to adapt to Malaysia's rapidly changing economy." Through the announcement of this partnership, H3C will provide training to certify academics at the Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science, and Faculty of Information and Communication Technology of UTAR with the necessary campus network solution skills. Besides donating devices for the students and lecturers to conduct experiments, H3C will also be offering UTAR graduates internship opportunities as the company believes this method would shape the future of talents to understand the world of the digital economy. UTAR first reached out to H3C last year in search of improving and upgrading its campus's network and wireless system as the campus expands and student enrollment increases. Since then, H3C has worked to curate a series of products and services for UTAR and successfully deployed them in Q2 2021. The partnership with UTAR is a significant milestone for H3C in the education industry as the company looks to establish a robust partner ecosystem in Malaysia and assist more enterprises in their digital transformation journey. For more information about H3C, please visit http://www.h3c.com/en/ SOURCE H3C [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Valmet to supply a high-capacity winder to Norske Skog in France HELSINKI, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Valmet will supply a high-capacity OptiWin Pro winder to Norske Skog's Golbey mill in France. The main target of Norske Skog Golbey is to have one winder to handle the 550,000-tonne capacity of the converted high-speed and high-capacity paper machine PM 1, following the paper machine conversion from production of newsprint to production of recycled containerboard. The start-up of the winder is scheduled for 2023. The order is included in Valmet's orders received of the third quarter 2021. The value of the order will not be disclosed. The value of an order of this type is typically around EUR 10-20 million. "The winder references Valmet was able to present us were convincing. Combined with our own experience with high-speed winders, we were convinced Valmet was the right choice for Golbey. We strongly believe Valmet's single winder solution will meet our high-performance targets for Golbey PM 1. We also liked to work with Valmet's sales team to reach this agreement," says Yves Bailly, Managing Director at Norske Skog Golbey. "The OptiWin Pro winder that will be delivered to Norske Skog Golbey is a state-of the-art winder combining all our expertise from our long history of winder development and deliveries. We have delivered already over 1,000 winders, and there is quite a number of Valmet winder references of high capacity and high level of automation. To meet our customer expectations even better, we are continuously developing our winders. We have pilot winder facilities and strong expertise to support this innovation work," says Kenneth Akerlund, Senior Manager, Reels and Winders at Valmet. Technical information about the delivery Valmet's delivery will include an OptiWin Pro high-capacity and high-speed pro winder with transfer rails and broke collection. To meet the high-capacity targets reliably with only one winder, the winder is equipped with all the high-tech features available; Dual Unwind system will improve capacity with an exceptionally fast parent roll change, a fast grade change system including automatic slitter positioning and automatic set change, and a core handling system with core grooving. The winder will be delivered installed. To support the winder operators with the new winder, a support package of 6 weeks will be included in the delivery. The process optimization and support conducted during those weeks will cover items around winder runnability, uptime, winder broke and roll quality. The winder will handle parent rolls with a width of 8,870 mm at a design speed of 3,000 m/min and a daily design capacity of 1,820 tonnes. Golbey PM 1 will produce recycled fluting and testliner grades with a design basis weight from 70 to 135 g/m2. About the customer Norske Skog Norske Skog is a world leading producer of publication paper with strong market positions and customer relations in Europe and Australasia. The Norske Skog Group operates four mills in Europe, of which two will produce recycled containerboard following planned conversion projects. In addition, the Group operates one paper mill in Australia and a wood pellets facility in New Zealand. Norske Skog aims to further diversify its operations and continue its transformation into a growing and high-margin business through a range of promising fibre projects. The group has approximately 2,100 employees in five countries and is headquartered in Norway. Norske Skog Golbey is a highly competitive publication paper mill with a total capacity of approximately 565,000 tonnes per year. The mill is strategically located in the Vosges in France area, within easy reach of major European cities and close to important raw material supply areas. Following the conversion of PM 1 to production of recycled containerboard, the Golbey mill will produce 550,000 tons of recycled containerboard (PM 1) and 330,000 tons of standard and improved newsprint (PM 2). Corporate Communications For further information, please contact: Marko Lassila, Vice President, SEMEA Sales, Valmet, tel. +358 40 516 0854 Kari Raisanen, Sales Director, EMEA and NA, Board and Paper Mills, Valmet, tel. +358 40 518 0567 Valmet is the leading global developer and supplier of process technologies, automation and services for the pulp, paper and energy industries. We aim to become the global champion in serving our customers. Valmet's strong technology offering includes pulp mills, tissue, board and paper production lines, as well as power plants for bioenergy production. Our advanced services and automation solutions improve the reliability and performance of our customers' processes and enhance the effective utilization of raw materials and energy. Valmet's net sales in 2020 were approximately EUR 3.7 billion. Our 14,000 professionals around the world work close to our customers and are committed to moving our customers' performance forward - every day. Valmet's head office is in Espoo, Finland and its shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki. Read more www.valmet.com, www.twitter.com/valmetglobal Processing of personal data This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/valmet-oyj/r/valmet-to-supply-a-high-capacity-winder-to-norske-skog-in-france,c3420158 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] When I Work and Clair Partner to Offer Free Payday Wallets to More Than 200,000 Workplaces When I Work, a Minnesota-based leading scheduling and time-tracking platform, and Clair, a New York-based financial technology company today announced a partnership to offer free on-demand pay through Clair's Payday Wallet to the more than 200,000 shift-based workplaces that use When I Work. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005342/en/ (Graphic: Business Wire) Through this partnership, When I Work and Clair build on their legacies as pioneers in workforce management and financial technology by offering When I Work shift workers the ability to get free access to their earnings every day after they clock out of work. The two companies accelerate a growing trend of workforce management companies providing employee benefits s part of their product offerings. To date, When I Work has worked with more than 1 million businesses and served over 10 million employees in its mission to "make shift work awesome" and help develop happier and more productive teams for its customers. The company's focus on bringing more employee-centric - not just employer-centric - tools to its arsenal of workforce management tools made the inclusion of on-demand pay an obvious next step. "Partnering with Clair is another way we're making shift work awesome at When I Work. Immediate access to wages is what shift-based workers want. It's the way of the future, and offering these employee-first benefits helps our customers attract and retain the talent they need. It's a win for everyone involved," says Martin Hartshorne, CEO of When I Work. Clair is an on-demand pay provider looking to revolutionize the earned wage access space and make workers' financial lives better. Unlike its competitors who often charge fees or use a tip-based model, Clair offers free wage advances through its Payday Wallet. "When I Work is the epitome of what we look for in an HR technology partner, based on the company's commitment to creating a product that not only goes above and beyond what's required of them in functionality, but also betters employees' experiences. Our missions align closely and our innovative approaches are highly compatible, which I believe will make us successful in rolling this out to the over 200,000 shift-based workplaces who use When I Work," says Nico Simko, Co-Founder and CEO of Clair. Starting early 2022, When I Work users will have access to Clair's Payday Wallet - one of the only free wage advance products in the market - as well as other offerings, including a Clair Debit Mastercard, fee-free cash withdrawals at over 40,000 in-network ATMs, free domestic ACH transfers, mobile wallet with Apple (News - Alert) Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, and more. About When I Work When I Work is a market leader in shift-based workforce management software and delivers a powerful, employee-first experience that creates happier and more productive teams. Trusted by nearly 200,000 workplaces worldwide, When I Work puts scheduling and collaboration at the center of workplace operations and brings empathy, agility, and consumer simplicity to organizations of all sizes. For more, visit wheniwork.com. About Clair Clair is a New York-based financial technology company that is breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle by offering the fastest free paydays to America's workers. Clair's Payday Wallet embeds seamlessly into human capital management and workforce management platforms and upgrades the overall employee experience. For more information, visit getclair.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005342/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 22, 2021] Ecrio and Edgecore Partner to Offer Carrier Voice and Messaging for Fixed Wireless Access and IoT Ecrio, the leading supplier of Mobile Carrier Communications and Messaging client software, and Edgecore Networks (News - Alert) , the leading provider of open network solutions for enterprises, data centers, and telecommunication service providers, today announced that Ecrio delivers Carrier Voice (4G VoLTE, 5G VoNR and VoWiFi) and Rich Communication Services (RCS) capability integrated on the Edgecore family of OpenWiFi-ready Access Points. The Ecrio's FlexIMS Software is compliant with the 3GPP and GSMA (News - Alert) standards. It offers secured communication and messaging to the mobile Operators across varied radio and core network configurations. It serves a variety of end points such as Gateways (FWA and IoT) and Devices (Smartphones, Wearables, AR/VR glasses and Drones). Edgecore's Access Points, with the pre-loaded TIP OpenWiFi Image, offer a highly customizable, open platform featuring Wi-Fi 6 ultra-fast, low-latency technology suited for live audio/video streaming, conferencing, and collaboration. The EAP101 and EAP102 access points include built-in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and ZigBee (News - Alert) , enabling value-added IoT applications for Industrial and Home Automation. "We are pleased to enter into this partnership with Edgecore, a major player for disaggregated network solutions," said Michel Gannage, Founder and CEO of Ecrio. "We look forward to delivering our pre-certified, carrier communication and messaging solutions on Edgecore's OpenWiFi-ready Access Points". "We are excited about this collaboration with Ecrio to deliver pre-integrated standards-compliant communication applications on our open access-point latform", said Tengtai Hsu, Vice President of Edgecore Networks. "Working with Ecrio and the OpenWiFi ecosystem, we look forward to enabling innovative FWA and IoT Services serving the Wireless Operators and Internet Service Providers". About Ecrio Ecrio is the leading supplier of 4G and 5G Communications and Messaging client software serving a variety of end points such as Gateways (FWA and IoT) and Devices (Smartphones, Wearables, AR/VR glasses and Drones). Ecrio offers a comprehensive suite of standards compliant solutions including Messaging (RCS), Voice (VoLTE, VoNR, VoWiFi) and Video calling (ViLTE) Solutions. Built on the patented FlexIMSTM Architecture, and shipped in over 100 million devices, Ecrio's client software can be pre-integrated on devices, distributed as part of an OTT application or deployed in the Cloud. With headquarters in Cupertino, California and presence in Japan, Korea and India, Ecrio's global support team works closely with customers across the globe. For more information, please visit www.ecrio.com. FlexIMSTM is a trademark of Ecrio Inc. About Edgecore Networks Edgecore Networks Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Accton Technology (News - Alert) Corporation, the leading networking ODM. Edgecore Networks delivers wired and wireless networking products and solutions through channel partners and system integrators worldwide for data center, service provider, enterprise, and SMB customers. Edgecore Networks is the leader in open networking, providing a full line of open 1G-400G Ethernet OCP (News - Alert) Accepted switches, core routers, cell site gateways, virtual PON OLTs, optical packet transponders, and Wi-Fi access points that offer choice of commercial and open-source NOS and SDN software. For more information, visit wifi.edge-core.com or contact sales@edge-core.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005367/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 22, 2021] Professional Consultancy Services for Singapore PR Application launched By Epica Immigration SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Epica Immigration, an Immigration Consulting division of Epica Singapore, announced today the launch of its professional consultancy services for PR Application. Close to 600,000 people reside in Singapore on Employment pass, S Pass or on dependant passes. Most of these people are keen to obtain Singapore Permanent Residency status, commonly known as Singapore PR. Immigration and Checkpoint Authority of Singapore approves approximately 30,000 PR applications every year, whereas it is estimated that more than 100,000 people apply. As a result, there is significant competition for obtaining the Singapore PR. More and more people are applying Singapore PR, but the slots are limited. With COVID-19 restrictions, the number of applicants is expected to grow even further. Residing as a foreigner working in Singapore has its diadvantages. If the job is lost, then the person needs to go back to home country in 30 days. People can not buy property easily. In most of cases, their kids need to go to costly international schools. Immigration and Checkpoint Authority, which grants Singapore PR to applicants, introduced a completely new e-PR system few years back. As a result all applications are done online. Many people find this process overwhelming and complicated. Unlike Australia or Canada, criteria of Singapore's PR approval is not disclosed by the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority. Applicants therefore are always confused as to how to present the strength of their profile and improve chances of getting PR in Singapore. Using a consultant for PR application was not a norm, say ten years back. However, now there are many applicants, and the places are limited. Because of the extreme competition, many applicants prefer to use a professional consultancy for filing their PR application. With more and more people getting interested in Singapore PR, the competition for obtaining Singapore PR is expected to remain high. Commenting on the launch, Mr Vaibhav Joshi, founder of Epica mentioned, "Assisting client in PR application filing is a holistic process. We start by reviewing their profile thoroughly and identify any points to improve the score. For every PR application filed by us, there is a strict quality check. All documents are checked multiple times and only highly qualified people are handling your case." Epica Immigration has Significant Experience in immigration, PR application, and Citizenship application fields. Its founder has previously worked in business registration and immigration field for many years. He has successfully handled many immigration cases. About Epica Group: Epica Singapore has three divisions, Epica Immigration focuses on helping foreigners working in Singapore to file their PR application. Epica Consulting Specialises in business and company registration in Singapore. And Singapore Compliance help fintech companies to obtain necessary licenses from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. SOURCE Epica Consulting Pte Ltd [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 22, 2021] PouchNATION raises a Bridge Funding Round as Markets are preparing to reopen and launches Contactless Hospitality Tech SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia's leading Guest Management and Contactless Payment provider for venues and events, PouchNATION, has raised a Bridge Funding Round. Investors that participated include SOSV, Artesian, Found Ventures, Huashan Capital and other angel investors as well as existing investor Traveloka, one of SE Asia's leading lifestyle tech unicorns. The round is aiming to accelerate the growth of PouchNATION's Contactless Hospitality Platform as many tourist destinations are reopening in SEA. High Hygiene Standards with Contactless Technology PouchNATION's new Contactless Hospitality Platform is focusing on increasing hygiene standards and providing a contactless experience for guests staying at hostels, hotels, resorts and theme parks. Upon arrival guests are given an NFC wristband that acts as guests' digital identifer, door key as well as cashless wallet all in one. Indeed it allows guests to purchase food and drinks and redeem breakfast vouchers without any physical touch. "We've always felt that faster adoption of technology can play a big role in providing a better experience for the hospitality industry. Indeed, the pandemic has accelerated that trend and currently many hospitality providers are embracing contactless technology to guarantee higher hygiene standards for their guests," says Ricardo Santos, PouchNATION's VP of Growth. Increase in F&B spend as an additional Adoption Driver Since the launch of the new Contactless Hospitality Platform PouchNATION has signed some high caliber clients including Collective Hospitality, Asia's largest hostel company and fourth largest globally. Collective Hospitality counts over 2,500 beds with brands such as Bodega, Slumber Party, Socialtel and Path being part of the group. "One of the main drivers for the adoption of Contactless Payments systems using NFC wearable devices is the overall increase in F&B spend that the Venue will experience right from the start," says Edmund Lowman, CEO of Collective Hospitality. Historical data shows that PouchNATION's system increases spend on average by 30% which is extremely important in a post pandemic revival phase when Venues are still lacking the same room booking volumes as before. Plans for the Future PouchNATION has big plans for 2022. Its new Contactless Hospitality Platform SaaS business model has proven to be extremely scalable with clients already using the platform not only in SEA but also in Latin America and other continents. Indeed, PouchNATION is currently in discussions to close an additional round of funding to expand the SaaS system beyond Asian borders and pursue a truly global strategy. About PouchNATION All-in-one Cashless and Guest Management solution for venues and events to digitize operations and increase guest spend using NFC wearable technology. With operations in 7 countries in Asia and Australia PouchNATION has already processed using its innovative solution over 2mln of Guests and 100mln USD in transaction value. For inquiries, please contact PouchNATION at jrs@pouchnation.com, or +60 1129 6027 92 (Ricardo Santos), and visit www.pouchnation.com. SOURCE PouchNATION [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Hyloris Appoints Jean-Luc Vandebroek as Chief Financial Officer Brings >25 years of executive financial leadership Liege, Belgium 23 September 2021 Hyloris Pharmaceuticals SA (Euronext Brussels: HYL), a specialty biopharma company committed to addressing unmet medical needs through reinventing existing medications, today announces that Jean-Luc Vandebroek will be joining the Company as its Chief Financial Officer. In addition to his new role at Hyloris, Jean-Luc will remain Non-Executive Director of the Board of Bone Therapeutics during a transition period to lead a managed succession. Jean-Luc will report to Hyloris CEO, and previously acting interim CFO, Stijn Van Rompay. Jean-Luc Vandebroek is a seasoned executive who most recently served as CFO of Bone Therapeutics, a publicly traded biotech company based in Gosselies, Belgium. Prior to that, he was CFO and CIO at Alcopa and Fluxys, and before that, he held various senior financial positions at Delhaize Group. Jean-Luc is an experienced Executive Board member and has a track record of developing and implementing financing strategies and transactions and has a large, global network of investors and financial institutions. Jean-Luc holds a Master in Business Administration from the Louvain Management School. Jean-Luc Vandebroek, Chief Financial Officer of Hyloris, commented: I am very excited to join this unique and fast-growing company and look forward to working with the team and start interacting with investors and analysts over the next coming weeks. I am committed to leveraging my expertise to support the company to realise its ambition of becoming a global leader in patented, reformulated and repurposed value-added medicines. Stijn Van Rompay, Chief Executive Officer of Hyloris, added: On behalf of our staff and our Board of Directors, am very pleased to welcome Jean-Luc as our Chief Financial Officer. His demonstrated track record of biotech financing and executive leadership will be incremental as we further expand our shareholders base internationally and prepare for the next growth phase of our Company. We remain on track to deliver on our promise to enlarge our R&D portfolio with 4 new product candidates this year and look forward to updating the market on our progression over the coming period. About Hyloris Pharmaceuticals Hyloris is a specialty biopharma company focused on innovating, reinventing, and optimising existing medications to address important healthcare needs and deliver relevant improvements for patients, healthcare professionals and payors. Hyloris has built a broad, patented portfolio of 13 reformulated and repurposed value-added medicines that have the potential to offer significant advantages over available alternatives. Two products are currently in initial phases of commercialisation with partners: Sotalol IV for the treatment of atrial fibrillation, and Maxigesic IV, a non-opioid post-operative pain treatment. The Companys development strategy primarily focuses on the FDAs 505(b)2 regulatory pathway, which is specifically designed for pharmaceuticals for which safety and efficacy of the molecule have already been established. This pathway can reduce the clinical burden required to bring a product to market, and significantly shorten the development timelines and reduce costs and risks. Hyloris is based in Liege, Belgium. For more information, visit www.hyloris.com and follow-us on LinkedIn. For more information, please contact Hyloris Pharmaceuticals: Marieke Vermeersch VP Investor Relations and Corporate Communications M: +32 (0)479 490 603 investorrelations@hyloris.com Disclaimer and forward-looking statements Hyloris means high yield, lower risk, which relates to the 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway for product approval on which the Issuer focuses, but in no way relates or applies to an investment in the Shares. Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified using forward-looking terminology, including the words "believes", "estimates," "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", "plans", "continue", "ongoing", "potential", "predict", "project", "target", "seek" or "should", and include statements the Company makes concerning the intended results of its strategy. These statements relate to future events or the Companys future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the Companys control, that may cause the actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements of the Company or its industry to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Attachment 210923 Hyloris Press Release CFO Appointment_ENG [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Santhera Completes Capital Increase for Financing Arrangements NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH IT WOULD BE UNLAWFUL TO DO SO. Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR Pratteln, Switzerland, September 23, 2021 Santhera Pharmaceuticals (SIX: SANN) announces completion of the ordinary capital increase resolved by its shareholders on June 22, 2021. Santhera's share capital currently amounts to CHF 46,470,235. On September 22, 2021, 9,972,502 shares were issued in an ordinary capital increase to investors who subscribed for Santhera shares in the private placement announced on September 20, 2021. The new shares will be listed as per September 23, 2021. In addition, Santhera updated its articles of association to reflect past share issuances out of the conditional capital for employee participation and out of the conditional capital for financings. Santhera plans to issue the remaining shares subscribed by investors in the private placement on or around September 24, 2021. About Santhera Santhera Pharmaceuticals (SIX: SANN) is a Swiss specialty phamaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative medicines for rare neuromuscular and pulmonary diseases with high unmet medical need. Santhera has an exclusive license for all indications worldwide to vamorolone, a first-in-class dissociative steroid with novel mode of action, which was investigated in a pivotal study in patients with DMD as an alternative to standard corticosteroids. The clinical stage pipeline also includes lonodelestat (POL6014) to treat cystic fibrosis (CF) and other neutrophilic pulmonary diseases as well as an exploratory gene therapy approach targeting congenital muscular dystrophies. Santhera out-licensed rights to its first approved product, Raxone (idebenone), outside North America and France for the treatment of Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) to Chiesi Group. For further information, please visit www.santhera.com. Raxone is a trademark of Santhera Pharmaceuticals. For further information please contact: public-relations@santhera.com or Eva Kalias, Head External Communications Phone: +41 79 875 27 80 eva.kalias@santhera.com Disclaimer / Forward-looking statements This communication does not constitute an offer or invitation to subscribe for or purchase any securities of Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding AG. This publication may contain certain forward-looking statements concerning the Company and its business. Such statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Readers should therefore not place undue reliance on these statements, particularly not in connection with any contract or investment decision. The Company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. # # # Attachment 2021 09 23_CapIncreaseFinancings_e_final [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Carillon Awarded DARPA Contract for Next Generation Satellite-to-Satellite Free Space Optical Communication (FSOC) The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Carillon Technologies a $6.4M contract to prototype next generation satellite-to-satellite communication systems derived from cutting edge commercial Holographic Optical Beam Steering (HOBS) technology. "Lightweight and affordable satellite-to-satellite optical communication is a breakthrough technology, not only for commercial and defense communication constellations currently being deployed, but also for new high-performance, highly-survivable space architectures," said Dr. John D. Evans, CEO of Carillon Technologies. "This new solid-state HOBS technology will provide a step change in size, weight, and cost for satellite Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) systems." HOBS technology is being developed for automotive LIDAR applications by the commercial start-up Lumotive (Seattle, WA). Dr. Geb Akselrod, CTO of Lumotive notes, "We're excited to collaborate with Carillon and DARPA. Carillon's unique expertise forming business relationships that bridge the defense and commercial sectors has made this a win-win for everyone involved." Akselrod continued, "Lumotive isn't in the space business, but this effort is important to us because it will advance our technology and expand our supply chain, improving our product and allowing us to scale rapidly and with confidence as our commercial markets come on online." Currently R&D investments by venture, commercial and global companies dwarf those of the U.S. Government, with just 4% of global R&D performed within the defense ecosystem. "Carillon's mission is to help ensure the secrity of America and the American people," says Evans. "As a country, we cannot realistically hope to secure our Nation's defense without robust access to commercial technology. Unfortunately, necessary government requirements make this collaboration nearly impossible. This DARPA effort exemplifies how Carillon's team can bridge the defense and commercial worlds, and ensure America's soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and guardians have the technology they need to ensure our security now, and into the future." About Carillon Technologies Founded in 2017, Carillon Technologies serves as America's nexus for Defense innovation. Currently, R&D investments by venture, commercial and global companies dwarf that of the U.S. government, with less than 4% of global R&D performed by the Defense community. Unfortunately, necessary Government requirements make collaboration between the defense and commercial sectors nearly impossible. Carillon's team of experts bridge the commercial and defense sectors by creating novel business structures that meet government's need for rapid secure access to cutting edge technology, while accelerating partner companies' commercialization timeline and profitability. For more information, please visit www.CarillonTechnologies.com or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @CarillonTech. About Lumotive Founded in 2018, Lumotive is a leader in solid-state, 3D-sensing systems, developing high-performance solutions for consumer electronics, industrial automation, robotics and automotive applications. The Seattle-based company's lidar solutions leverage revolutionary beam-steering technology based on patented Light Control Metasurfaces to deliver an unprecedented combination of high performance (as measured by range, resolution and frame rate) and readiness for mass adoption (measured by cost, reliability and size). Lumotive's random access beam-steering chips enable the industry's first software-defined lidar with region-of-interest scanning, object tracking and advanced perception capabilities. Lumotive's investors include Bill Gates (News - Alert) and Quan FundsCEP. For more information, go to www.lumotive.com or on Twitter @LumotiveLidar. 2021, Carillon Technologies LLC Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005965/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Knowlarity becomes a Business Solution Provider (BSP) for WhatsApp Business API GURGAON, India, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Knowlarity becomes a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider for WhatsApp Business API. The Cloud Business Communication Company has added WhatsApp Business API in its basket of Voice, AI-Enabled Speech Analytics Platform & ChatBots/VoiceBots offerings. The WhatsApp Business API empowers businesses to connect with customers in a simple, reliable and private manner on WhatsApp. Knowlarity, one of Asia's foremost Cloud Business Communication Companies, excels at meeting the communication challenges of ever-evolving businesses and customer expectations. Through its offerings in Voice, AI-Enabled Speech Analytics Platform & ChatBots/VoiceBots, the Cloud Business Communication leader is continuously adding new offerings to help businesses solve some of the most complex communication challenges efficiently. Knowlarity recently became a Business Solution Provider (BSP) for WhatsApp Business API. With the WhatsApp Business API, enterprises can streamline their communication efforts for sales, support, etc. on WhatsApp. Boasting of 2 billin active user base, India forms a substantial figure of the aforementioned number. It's a platform that businesses have started extending their customer service to optimize their productivity and enhance customer experience. "The WhatsApp Business API is a great offering in tandem with Knowlarity's ambit of cloud-based communication solutions. The WhatsApp Business API will empower businesses to bolster customer experience, and further define our footprint in the ever-evolving world of engagement," said Yatish Mehrotra, CEO, Knowlarity. With Knowlarity as a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider, businesses can leverage WhatsApp as a platform to communicate with their customers reliably. The three main offerings cater to businesses of all types - IVR Deflection, Conversational ChatBots and Notifications. IVR Deflection with WhatsApp Business API lets businesses move their customer calls to the asynchronous and inexpensive channel of WhatsApp; letting agents and even bots offer faster query resolution for customers and a better CSat Score for businesses. IVR Deflection is a win-win for a business as well as its customers. In case a business deploys Conversational ChatBots from Knowlarity on the WhatsApp Business API, they can serve their customers well beyond their working hours while also making sure that generic queries don't require agent intervention. The WhatsApp Business API for notifications would ensure that a business' customers that choose to receive them are always updated with the information that matters to them; order and payment updates, confirmations, etc. Knowlarity as a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider for the WhatsApp Business API, would be an obvious choice for enterprises that want a provider that's secure, reliable and comes with round-the-clock customer service. Hence, whether it is a large enterprise, a growing small business, or a new-age start-up, one can derive multiple benefits by leveraging WhatsApp Business API. About Knowlarity: Knowlarity enables automated communication by allowing operators to work online via Cloud. It allows businesses to work on an effective communication network via cloud solutions such as Click to call, number masking, multi-level IVR system, WhatsApp Business API, Toll-free no, Embeddable Video Platform, AI-enabled solutions like Speech Analytics & VoiceBot/ChatBot, and more. Knowlarity has the ability to empower your teams with virtual working solutions to ensure business operations shouldn't get affected by enabling working from anywhere. For more information, please visit https://www.knowlarity.com. Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1633240/Knowlarity_WhatsApp.jpg [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Biohaven's Nurtec ODT Garners Greater Early-Line Use as a Preventive Therapy Among Patients with Less Severe Migraine Compared to Eli Lilly's Emgality, According to Spherix Patient-Level Data EXTON, Pa., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Just weeks after the FDA approval of Nurtec ODT's label expansion for the preventive treatment of episodic migraine, Eli Lilly announced initiation of a head-to-head Phase IV trial comparing their Emgality to Biohaven's gepant in patients with episodic migraine by the end of this year. With all metrics pointing to extremely strong uptake of Nurtec ODT in the prevention segment, Eli Lilly is looking to proactively defend their brand's opportunity within the market, while also adding to the body of scientific evidence supporting the role of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in migraine. In the third annual audit included in Spherix's RealWorld Dynamix: Preventive Treatment in Migraine (US) service, 221 neurologists and migraine specialists provided data on 1,013 patients. The patients included in the study were prescribed Nurtec ODT, Emgality, Amgen's Aimovig, Teva's Ajovy, Lundbeck's Vyepti, or AbbVie's (formerly Allergan, an AbbVie company) Botox for the preventive treatment of migraine no more than three months prior to the July 2021 fielding. According to the chart audit data, Nurtec ODT-treated patients were almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with low frequency episodic migraine in line with the gepant's approved prevention indication for episodic migraine. In comparison, close to one-third of patients recently prescribed Emgality were diagnosed with chronic migraine. Consistent with this pattern, Emgality-treated patients were more likely to have typically severe migraine attacks and to have a 21+ score on the Migraine Disability Assessment (MIDAS) questionnaire, reflecting severe or very severe migraine-related disability at the time of the brand selection. Indeed, almost two out of five patients were considered occupationally disabled due to migraine when prescribed Emgality. The decision to make a change to the patient's preventive therapy regimen, whether by initiating preventive treatment for the first time or by prescribing a new option, was driven by efficacy needs in the majority of audited cases. The leadingefficacy-related factor was prolonged or increased duration of migraine attacks when prescribed Emgality and persistently high or worsening migraine severity when prescribed Nurtec ODT. Reasons other than efficacy that were relevant for regimen changes toward Emgality included patient request, tolerability, and sample availability. Likely benefiting from broad use as an acute therapy, Nurtec ODT is currently being prescribed as an earlier-line preventive therapy compared to Emgality. The majority of patients prescribed Nurtec ODT had failed at most one prior therapy, whereas more than half of patients were prescribed Emgality after two or more prior preventive therapy failures. Among those who discontinued a therapy, topiramate and/or an antidepressant were the most likely prior therapies for both brands. While contributing physicians were substantially more likely to agree that the responder rates of the CGRP monoclonal antibodies (i.e., Emgality) versus that of Nurtec ODT are superior to topiramate or Botox, efficacy expectations were key to decisions to prescribe the gepant. Nurtec ODT was most commonly prescribed due to a desire for sustained efficacy, speed of efficacy onset, and =50% responder rate. Although Nurtec ODT represents the first oral CGRP antagonist, attributes related to its dosing profile did not break the top five most common reasons for prescribing. In comparison, favorable tolerability profile and preferred autoinjector were among the most common reasons for deciding to prescribe Emgality. Suggesting strong competitive pressure within the prevention segment, Emgality lost more than half of the brand's possible new prescription opportunities to other brands. In comparison, Nurtec ODT tends to emerge successful when up against a likely alternative option during the therapy selection process. When competing directly with Emgality, preferred dosing formulation and better convenience were central to Nurtec ODT winning the new prescription opportunity. However, in the end, it is Aimovig and Botox (and not Emgality) that appear to be Nurtec ODT's toughest competitors, with monthly migraine day reduction expectations and patient requests driving those brands' respective wins over the new kid on the block. With Nurtec ODT approved for episodic migraine and Botox for chronic migraine, it's expected that AbbVie's focus is on atogepant the potentially second-to-segment gepant assuming a positive PDUFA later this month for the preventive treatment of migraine. While Aimovig and Emgality antagonize CGRP through different mechanisms, positive outcomes from Eli Lilly's planned head-to-head trial demonstrating efficacy superiority to Nurtec ODT could help Amgen buffer future competition from Nurtec ODT and atogepant. About RealWorld Dynamix RealWorld Dynamix is an independent, data-driven service unveiling real patient management patterns through rigorous analysis of large-scale patient chart audits. Insights reveal the "why" behind treatment decisions, include year over year trending to quantify key aspects of market evolution, and integrate specialists' attitudinal & demographic data to highlight differences between stated and actual treatment patterns. The 2021 audit is the third annual edition included in the RealWorld Dynamix: Preventive Treatment in Migraine (US) service. Learn more about our services here. About Spherix Global Insights Spherix Global Insights is a hyper-focused market intelligence firm that leverages our own independent data and expertise to provide strategic guidance, so biopharma stakeholders make decisions with confidence. We specialize in select dermatology, gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, and rheumatology markets. All company, brand or product names in this document are trademarks of their respective holders. For more information contact: Kristen Henn, Business Development Manager Email: info@spherixglobalinsights.com www.spherixglobalinsights.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biohavens-nurtec-odt-garners-greater-early-line-use-as-a-preventive-therapy-among-patients-with-less-severe-migraine-compared-to-eli-lillys-emgality-according-to-spherix-patient-level-data-301383545.html SOURCE Spherix Global Insights [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] New Short-Term Contracts Platform 'TurboXBT' Offers 90% Profits On A SINGLE Deal - So How Does It Work? Victoria, Seychelles, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Investing in the digital currency ecosystem has been enmeshed with the potential for high and instant profits with the emergence of TurboXBT, a short-term exchange dedicated to the trading of synthetic assets. It is no longer a myth that a lot of money can be made in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, a reality made possible with the volatility of the nascent industry. Actually, this volatility is double faced and it can either make or mar a trader. Unless it is through defined, and less risky trading options such as that offered by the TurboXBT platform, the profitability of a trader may be subjected to chance or extreme uncertainties. TurboXBT is a relatively new exchange but with the promise to be a formidable player, especially in the synthetic asset trading ecosystem. As one of the ways to boost the diversity that the broader digital currency industry embodies, the trading platform has integrated solutions to welcome a broad range of customers all over the world. The promise of the TurboXBT platform is simple, to offer profitability on single trades up to 90% with value additions to all users. Irrespective of its newness, TurboXBTs service is on track to lead the dive into crypto synthetic trading, taking on existing players in this challenging niche. The Money Making Diversity: Highlighting the TurboXBT Advantage Full fledged crypto investors are those whose profiles detailed active engagement in multiple offerings, whether currently, or at some points in their careers. While not coming off as a rule of thumb, some traders have actively participated in backing crypto projects through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) or Initial Decentralized Offerings (IDOs) as we have it today, deposited money into liquidity pools, and the staking in a functional Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. Each of these investment options offers its own uniqueness, and pathway to profitability, sandwiched with obvious risks across each option. While many fraudulent projects are always launched on a daily basis to take advantage of the positive tilt towards ICO/IDOs, unsuspecting users may fall victim. The growth of crypto and its tilt towards decentralized finance has made liquidity provisions and staking a more prevalent alternative to growth capital in todays digital world. Fundamentally, both involve locking up funds in smart contracts to aid the maintenance of these underlying protocols for which fuds can be earned in return. Both Liquidity providers and stakers earn rewards in fees generated by the platform and the earnings are based on varying ROI which can be in the range of 3% to 20%. Despite these positive earning prospects, the learning curve for both options is steep, and the underlying modalities surrounding liquidity provision and staking can be very challenging for a new user to adapt to. The emergence of TurboXBT short-term trading lends a different narrative to the money making options in the digital currency industry, through simplified, yet profitable trading options. Unlike liquidity provision and staking, TurboXBT offers a clear, simplified and fast path to put your capital to work for you. Trades are typically executed in a matter of minutes, and earnings can be as high as 90% per a single trade. A Deeper Look into the TurboXBT Platform Getting started on the TurboXBT platform is as easy as opening an account with your email address and password. The complexity in opening a trading account on most exchanges can be quite frustrating, and TurboXBT has considerably lowered the barriers that serve as a bottleneck to those looking to catch up with the trend. On TurboXBT, users can enter into short term contracts which can either be inline with price gains, UP contracts, or price falls dubbed DOWN contracts. These trades can be executed once an active account has been funded with the right funds, which can be any one of the supported deposit assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and the top two stablecoins, USDC, and USDT respectively. This is how the synthetic short-term contracts work; the user selects the asset pair to trade, for example, the BTC/USD pair. Thereafter, the time frame comfortable with the trader is chosen. This can be any time from 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes respectively. Following this, the trade is executed by clicking either the green UP button for the upward trend or the red DOWN button to bet on price falls. Trade winnings are dependent on whether the traded pair gained or lost in value within the set time limit. Users can get the worst and best case estimates of their profits in advance by multiplying the percentage payout rate quoted on the TurboXBT platform. Each of the 38 trading pairs across 17 synthetic assets have their own unique payout rate. The user needs to be familiar with this figure per time to calculate the potential worth of the risk being taken to trade on the platform. Executing a contract trade on TurboXBT is further enhanced with the platforms physical attributes including a unique user friendly design, and a bold interface that is appealing to all site visitors. There are no restrictions on deposits and withdrawals on the TurboXBT exchange, and the barriers to entry have further been lowered down with no need for Know-Your-Customer (KYC) verification at the point of opening the account. The Big Takeaway Creating a new product in an ecosystem that is evolving at a very fast pace is commendable, but comes with risks. TurboXBT is not only willing to assume this risk, the exchange is doing so without transferring any burden on the customer. With no commission on deposits, withdrawals or trades executed on the platform, users can benefit from the platforms superior technological offerings to maximize what earnings their capital can get them. Above all, TurboXBTs profitability comes with an assurance of data security and the safety of funds stored on the platform. All these features are bolstered by the platforms speed, and 99.9% uptime, a feature that prevents loss of funds owing to unforeseen platform downtime. For More Info: https://www.TurboXBT.com https://twitter.com/turboxbt https://www.facebook.com/TurboXBT/ Disclaimer: This press release is not intended to be a source of investment, financial, technical, tax, or legal advice. All of this content is for informational purposes only. Readers should do their own research. TurboXBT is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by reliance on any information mentioned in this article. Ross Ivica Global Crypto Press Association team@globalcryptopress.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] mdf commerce, North American leader in public eprocurement, partners with leading budget cycle management software provider ClearGov to offer a broader set of solutions to local governments MONTREAL, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF), a leader in SaaS commerce technology solutions, is pleased to announce it has signed a partnership agreement with ClearGov, a leading provider of cloud-based budget cycle and performance management software purpose-built for local governments. Under this partnership, mdf commerce and ClearGov will collaborate to provide end-to-end budgeting and eprocurement solutions to local agencies and schools, as well as equip supplier communities with greater insights into the upcoming needs of their governmental customers. Local public agencies such as cities, counties and schools face unprecedented budgeting challenges due to pandemic-related issues as well as availability of time-limited Federal recovery funds. mdf commerce, through its recent acquisition of Periscope Holdings, provides a complete set of end-to-end eprocurement solutions to over 6,000 of these local government agencies. Both ClearGov and mdf commerce clients will greatly benefit from a wider access to solutions that meet their needs at every stage of the procurement process. "mdf commerce has the procurement tools proven to help local public agencies deliver on their budgeting goalsgreatly improving efficiency and transparency while generating meaningful cost savingsso we've been looking to partner with a leading provider of budgeting software to complement our own solutions," said Mark Eigenbauer, President of eprocurement at mdf commerce. "We've been impressed by the market's rapid adoption of ClearGov's budgeting solutions, so we are confident our local government customers will benefit from more collaborative and streamlined budgeting processes. ClearGov already works with hundreds of local governments from large cities to small school districts to help them modernize and streamline their annual budgeting process. The procurement solutions from mdf commerce align well with our local government focus, ease-of-use principles and freemium model, which enables any agencylarge or smallto benefit from best-of-breed software," said Bryan Burdick, President and Co-founder of ClearGov. "Enabling work streams to flow from budgeting to procurement, to contract management and back again to budgeting is ideal for the long-term success of our customers." About mdf commerce inc. mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF) enables the flow of commerce by providing a broad set of SaaS solutions that optimize and accelerate commercial interactions between buyers and sellers. Our platforms and services empower businesses around the world, allowing them to generate billions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis. Our eprocurement, Unified Commerce and emarketplace platforms are supported by a strong and dedicated team of approximately 800 employees based in Canada, the United States, Denmark, Ukraine and China. For more information, please visit us at mdfcommerce.com, follow us on LinkedIn or call at 1-877-677-9088. For further information: mdf commerce Mark Eigenbauer President, eprocurement Toll-free number: 1-877-677-9088, ext. 6250 Email: mark.eigenbauer@mdfcommerce.com mdf commerce Andre Leblanc Vice President, Marketing and Public Affairs Phone: +1 (514) 961-0882 Email: andre.leblanc@mdfcommerce.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Orca Capital Inc. Advises Sale of 30 SECONDS Cleaners Orca Capital Inc. (www.orcacapinc.com) acted as the exclusive financial advisor to COLLIER Manufacturing, LLC dba 30 SECONDS Cleaners in its acquisition by an undisclosed buyer. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005024/en/ (Graphic: Business Wire) 30 SECONDS Cleaners is a premier branded manufacturer of unique, high-performance outdoor cleaning products. Safe, effective, and easy to use, COLLIER's 30 SECONDS branded productshave been trusted to solve outdoor cleaning problems for over 40 years. With manufacturing locations in Oregon and Tennessee, 30 SECONDS Cleaners has grown from its Pacific Northwest roots to a nationally recognized brand. Products are sold at over 20,000 locations throughout the U.S. According to the Colliers, the Company's tremendous growth was the result of a clear vision and careful planning. "We grew rapidly by keeping things simple, focusing on our strengths, and hiring great people," said James Collier, CEO, and co-owner of COLLIER Manufacturing. "The Colliers built an amazing business through advanced planning and execution. We could not be prouder to have represented them in this transaction. It is a great outcome for the owners, the employees and the brand," explained Randy Moe, President of Orca Capital. The Colliers' vision helped Orca find a buyer with powerful strategic synergies, capable of taking the Company to the next level. "We selected Orca because we wanted an expert financial advisor that fit our management style. Orca demonstrated their value in every step of the sale process, and we could not be happier with the outcome," said Jill Collier, CFO and co-owner of COLLIER Manufacturing. About Orca Capital Inc. Orca Capital is a leading provider of M&A advisory services to businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest. Orca's M&A team combines nearly 140 years of experience with an extensive track record of successful transactions valued at over $14 billion to deliver superior client outcomes. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 to startups, the team uniquely combines Northwest sensibilities with unmatched experience, expertise, and global reach. For more information on Orca Capital Inc., visit www.orcacapinc.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005024/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] MEDITECH's 2021 Physician and CIO Forum Highlights Industry Shift to Transformational Care On September 29-30, healthcare professionals across the globe will gather both virtually and in person for MEDITECH's 2021 Physician and CIO Forum. The event will focus on the ways in which healthcare has changed in the age of COVID-19, as clinicians move beyond the transactional patient/provider relationships of the past, to embrace more holistic and transformational care strategies for all. Following the success of MEDITECH's prior virtual events, the forum's hybrid format provides the flexibility of in-person attendance - with masks and proof of vaccination - or virtual, for those who prefer this option. "I am looking forward to interacting with colleagues again, in the ways that work best for them," said Berkshire Health Systems CIO and Forum Moderator Bill Young (News - Alert) . "In the same way that telehealth has given patients safe and convenient access to their providers over the past year, hybrid and virtual events are enabling us all to connect and share strategies during this important time." Keynote presenters for the event include New York Times best-selling author and ED physician Dr. Michele Harper. Her book, The Beauty in Breaking, delves into the ways that Dr. Harper's personal experiences have helped her to address issues of racism and inequality in healthcare, as well as the physical and emotional needs of those patients who are disproportionately affected. Attendees will also hear from Micky Tripathi, PhD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Tripathi leads the formulation of the federal health IT strategy and coordinates federal health IT policies, standards, programs, and investments. The forum will also host over 20 MEDITECH customer presenters and panelists, who will share their strategies on such topics as leeraging the EHR to improve health equity, building a "smart" healthcare facility, and navigating vaccine schedules. MEDITECH's latest solutions for genomics, patient engagement, cloud technology, telehealth, and interoperability will be explored, while personalized tracks for CIOs, Canadian healthcare, integrated health, acute care, and ambulatory care offer over 30 different education opportunities. New this year, MEDITECH is offering 1.0 Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit for both in-person and virtual attendees during our session, Genomics in the Era of the EMR, on Wednesday at 12 p.m. Learn more about the session and reserve your spot. MEDITECH customers can register for the 2021 Physician and CIO Forum, and connect with other attendees on social media using the hashtag #MDCIO2021. About MEDITECH MEDITECH has driven EHR innovation during every stage of the industry's evolution. Today we're helping healthcare organizations around the world expand their vision of what's possible with MEDITECH Expanse, a web-based EHR setting new standards for usability, efficiency, and clinician satisfaction. Our software is used by a quarter of all hospitals in the U.S., nearly half of all Canadian hospitals, and healthcare organizations in 23 countries. We help power the best care possible in every setting, from acute centers and ambulatory practices, to home health and hospice, long-term care facilities, patients' homes and beyond. Expand your possibilities. See why KLAS rates MEDITECH Expanse the #1 EHR in three categories and the #2 Overall Software Suite. Visit ehr.meditech.com, find MEDITECH Podcasts on your favorite podcast app, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005112/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] AUSA 2021: Logos Technologies Unveils MicroKestrel Wide-Area Sensor for Tethered UAS Logos Technologies LLC, a leader in wide-area motion imagery (WAMI), announced today that it will be unveiling its new MicroKestrel sensor for small, tethered, multirotor-type unmanned aerial systems (UASs) at the upcoming Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Meeting & Exposition, in Washington, D.C. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.busiesswire.com/news/home/20210923005155/en/ MicroKestrel delivers real-time wide-area motion imagery from a Group 1 tethered UAS. (Photo: Business Wire) When mounted on a tethered UAS and hovering at 200 feet, a single MicroKestrel can image three square kilometers, tracking every vehicle and detecting every moving dismount within its 180-degree field of regard. The WAMI system can also cue high-definition video cameras for close-in inspection should an operator require a positive identification of a target. "The amazing thing, though, is MicroKestrel's weight. At just under 5 pounds, the new WAMI system is so light that some tethered UAS can actually accommodate two units, each pointed in a different direction," said Doug Rombough, VP of Business Development for Logos Technologies. "In such a doubled-up configuration, you get twice the coverage area and a 360-degree field of view." The idea of getting WAMI on a small, tethered unmanned aerial vehicles once seemed impossible. Now, these sensors will be able to go on tethered UAVs or free-flying UAVs that have been connected to a third-party tethering station. This greatly expands the types of operators who will be able to use WAMI. "People who would never have access to runway or catapult-launched UAVs, let alone big Predators, can pop open a container, set up a tethered UAV, and launch a WAMI sensor into the air," said Rombough. "Think about what that means for base protection, event security, or other mission sets." Logos Technologies will be showcasing MicroKestrel and other sensor systems at the company's booth (No. 1143) at AUSA, on October 11-13. About Logos Technologies Founded in 1996, Logos Technologies LLC is a diversified science, engineering, and technology company specializing in the fields of advanced sensors, wide-area motion imagery, advanced analytics, and processing of large, multisource datasets. Logos serves government customers, including the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Department of Homeland Security, as well as a range of customers in commercial and international markets. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005155/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Reed Switch Developments Corp. Achieves WBE Certification RACINE, Wis., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Reed Switch Developments Corp. (www.reedswitchdevelopments.com), global experts in the design, manufacture and supply of standard and custom magnetic reed switch and proximity sensor assemblies, today announced that it is now a formally certified Woman Business Enterprise (WBE) by the State of Wisconsin. The certification, valid for three years, was facilitated via the Wisconsin Department of Administration's Supplier Diversity Program. To qualify, an eligible business must undergo a series of stringent evaluations conducted by program facilitators, and must demonstrate that it is, at minimum, 51% owned, managed, and controlled by the woman applicant. Notes president, Debra Dahlin, "We are honored to learn that Reed Switch Developments Corp. has successfully met all WBE certification requirements in Wisconsin. We are a second-generation family-owned small business and a Racine area manufacturer for over 50 years. We believe that this important company milestone reaffirms our continued commitment to excellence in serving our many valued customers, including with new WBE certification that helps us o more visibly support industry-wide supplier diversity initiatives." Since its 1967 founding, Reed Switch Developments Corp. has been an industry pioneer in the design and manufacture of magnetic reed switches and proximity sensor assemblies for aircraft interiors, off-highway and agricultural vehicles, appliances, consumer electronics, industrial motors, robotics, factory automation and medical equipment. All products are free from mechanical wear, hermetically sealed, and provide reliable, fast-acting performance within demanding applications, including over many years of field service. They are available in SPST and SPDT configurations; multiple reed material types, with varying sensitivities and wattages (0.25W 100W); a wide selection of case materials, including Celanex, Celcon, Lexan, Epoxy and Valox; and with choice of housings, including aluminum, stainless steel, and brass housings, for extreme applications. The most popular insulating materials are typically specified in 18-26 AWG sizes. Also, a variety of connectors, including AMP, Molex, JST, Packard, threaded, weather sealed, snap lock, and lug types, can be supplied. Most assemblies are also UL recognized and RoHS/REACH compliant. Custom magnetic reed switch sensors and actuators are available with competitive lead times, in quantities ranging from prototypes to OEM volumes, Each custom design can be mated together with customer choice from among a large selection of permanent magnets. Custom-configured molded magnets, wires and cabling options are also available to meet specific end-user mounting and operational requirements. For more information about Reed Switch Developments Corp. and its products, visit: www.reedswitchdevelopments.com. Media Contact Maureen K. (Molly) Bakewell Chamberlin 716-646-0927 319607@email4pr.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reed-switch-developments-corp-achieves-wbe-certification-301383648.html SOURCE Reed Switch Developments Corp. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Pudu Robotics Completes Series C2 Financing, with Nearly $155M in Total Raise from C1 and C2 SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On September 14, global technology company Pudu Robotics announced the completion of its C2-series financing, a joint investment led by Meituan, Greater Bay Area Homeland Development Fund, Shenzhen Investment Holdings and Sequoia Capital China, Taihecap as the independent financial adviser. The funding was secured within only four months after the C1 series of $78 million raised in May, the combination of C1 and C2 has raised nearly $155 million in total. The C2 round funds will be utilized for cutting-edge R&D development, new product development, new site launches, and expansion of the company's global network. With an aging population and the pandemic driving the need for contactless delivery, the robotics market has seen a rapid surge in demand particularly in the commercial service robot segment. As a world-leading provider of service robots, Pudu Robotics has developed an intimate understanding of user needs and products catering to an extensive range of scenarios. These include the smart delivery robot PuduBot, premium delivery robot BellaBot, delivery robot with paging and notification features HolaBot, disinfection robot Puductor 2, delivery and reception robot KettyBot, and building delivery robot FlashBot. Launched this year, KettyBot is a brand-new offering that combines multiple features such as Ad display, customer interaction, greeting and ushering, and AI voice interaction. Distinct from KettyBot, FlashBot is the new-generation "building delivery expert", the world's first building delivery solution designed for hotels and offices, with the ability to ride in an elevator with human passengers. Since its founding, Pudu Robotics has gone "from Zero to One" in merely five years and remained a leader in the commercial service robotics industry. The company's achievements were built upon its in-deph R&D on cutting-edge robotics technology, expansion of robotics use scenarios, and constant improvement of its products' service quality. Pudu Robotics' dedicated R&D team has achieved innovations and breakthroughs in its products' core technology, having built a wide technical moat covering areas like positioning and navigation, movement control, multi-machine scheduling, and obstacle avoidance. This has led to over 600 patent applications, more than 60% of which are for invention patents. The robots are widely applied in restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, government offices, airports, high-speed train stations, and hospitals. The company has achieved total cumulative sales of several tens of thousands of units, with footprints covering more than 60 countries and regions worldwide. The post-pandemic period has seen demand skyrocket for contactless service and disinfection, resulting in the rapid expansion of the robotics market and unprecedented opportunities. Whether at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic or in the current new norm of outbreak prevention, Pudu Robotics has provided crucial support in contactless delivery especially at restaurants and hospitals. The Puductor 2 is used by various organizations such as Square Cabin Hospitals in Thailand, and hospital chains in Russia, with its intelligent disinfecting functions proven valuable in disease control efforts and the safeguarding of public health. The C2 round funding will be a tremendous catalyst for the company's growth as it enters a new phase in its development. Felix Zhang, company founder said: "At Pudu Robotics , we are committed to the 'Spirit of Invention' on a mission to use robots to improve the efficiency of human production and living. With the most advanced technology and powerful drive for innovation, we will continue to develop practical robotics solutions that lead smart living into people's lives." Meanwhile, he added "The company's impressive growth can in large part be attributed to the quality of its personnel; we always welcome talents to join Pudu family and become a true robotics visionary! " For more information, please visit the official social media below: Facebook / YouTube / Linkedin / Instagram / Twitter About Pudu Robotics Shenzhen-based and founded in 2016, Pudu Robotics is a world-leading tech-focused enterprise dedicated to the design, R&D, production and sales of commercial service robots, which aims to use robots to improve the efficiency of human production and living. Pudu Robotics has been rapidly growing in recent years to become a "leader" in the global markets with coverage of over 60 countries and regions worldwide. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pudu-robotics-completes-series-c2-financing-with-nearly-155m-in-total-raise-from-c1-and-c2-301383962.html SOURCE Pudu Robotics [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Sysorex Awarded $16 Million in New Government Contracts HERNDON, Va., Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sysorex (OTCQB: SYSX) (Sysorex or the Company), the preeminent, U.S.-based, publicly traded Ethereum mining and technologies company, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Sysorex Government Services, Inc. (SGS) has been awarded multiple government contracts totaling more than $16 million during this third quarter of 2021, to date. These new orders are from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The new contracts include five BOP orders totaling approximately $11.3 million and two USDA orders totaling approximately $4.9 million. Revenue recognition for these orders is expected as the contracts are performed during the next four-to-six months, subject to accounting standards prior to invoicing. Under the SecurPASS Full Body Security Screening Program, SGS previously installed more than 100 Canon body scanners in federal correctional facilities and one of the BOP contracts is for annual maintenance of these scanners totaling approximately $1.5 million. The balance of the BOP contracts, which total approximately $9.8 million, are for security assessment services. Pursuant to the USDA contracts, SGS will procure, customize and deliver tablet computers to the USDA supporting Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). The FSIS contract totals approximately $3.1 million and the USFS contract totals approximately $1.8 million. These latest contracts from the USDA were entered into as part of SGSs nearly $30 million Blanket Purchase Agreement and prior to these awards, SGS was awarded $3 million in USDA contracts earlier this year, said Zaman Khan, President of SGS. We are also excited to report that the new BOP contracts were competitively solicited and awarded to SGS and are in addition to the $10 million contract for secure video relay systems previously announced on July 13, 2021. Our recent merger and capital offering, producing gross proceeds of approximately $12.4 million, has greatly improved SGSs position with our suppliers and partners, continued Mr. Khan. These contracts are a clear indicator that our strategy is working, and we are allocating resources towards business development initiatives that are providing a favorable return on investment. We are in an excellent position to secure further orders through SGS government contracts. Wayne Wasserberg, Chief Executive Officer of Sysorex said, By working closely with management of our SGS subsidiary, we have been able to offer resources that have expanded SGS access to suppliers, resulting in competitive pricing and favorable terms that mitigate the need for upfront cash. Onboarding of new original equipment manufactrers has also improved SGS offerings, translating into new business lines. At the same time, we continue to pursue opportunities to work with smart contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain, especially in the public sector, and we are capitalizing on SGS experience and best-in-class contracts. We are confident that we will add to our portfolio of services to include blockchain implementation for government clients in the near future. ABOUT SYSOREX, INC. Sysorex, Inc. (Company) is a data center owner and operator and is the preeminent U.S.-based, publicly traded Ethereum mining and Ethereum Blockchain technologies company. Following the Companys merger with TTM Digital Assets & Technologies, Inc. (TTM), the Company shifted its primary business focus to the mining of Ether (ETH) and opportunities related to the Ethereum Blockchain. The Company currently owns and operates approximately 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs generating approximately 500 Gigahash of computing power, which GPUs include thousands of Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs). These GPUs are currently online and securing the Ethereum Blockchain and generating ETH around the clock with industry leading efficiency. In addition to the mining of ETH, the Company continues to operate its wholly owned subsidiary, Sysorex Government Services, Inc. (SGS), a business that provides information technology products, solutions and services to federal, state, and local government, including system integrators. The Company is also advancing strategies to leverage decentralized finance (De-Fi) and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) opportunities powered by the Ethereum Blockchain. Safe Harbor Statement All statements in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the size and timing of the offering, the anticipated use of any proceeds from the offering, and the impact of the closing on the Companys business, operations, and strategies. The words anticipate, believe, continue, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, plan, potential, predict, project, should, target, will, would, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements in this communication include, among other things, statements about the potential benefits of the private offering, the intended use of proceeds, and possible or assumed business strategies of the Company. While the Company has based any forward-looking statements included in this release on its current expectations, the information on which such expectations were based may change. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of the control of the Company and its subsidiaries, which could cause actual results to materially differ from such statements, including the uncertainties related to market conditions and the completion of the offering on the anticipated terms or at all, the other factors discussed in the Risk Factors section of the Companys Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 24, 2021 and the Companys subsequent periodic reports, and the risks and uncertainties described in other filings that the Company made or may make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof, and the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Investor Relations Crescendo Communications, LLC David Waldman/Natalya Rudman Tel: (212) 671-1020 Email: SYSX@crescendo-ir.com Company info@ttmdigitalassets.com Investor Relations ir@ttmdigitalassets.com Jimmy Caplan, Market Makers Public Relations pr@ttmdigitalassets.com Rick Eisenberg, Eisenberg Communications [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Living Security Wins Three 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Living Security has been named the winner of a Gold Stevie Award in the Startup of the Year-Business Service Industries category in the 18th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Living Security CEO and co-founder Ashley Rose also was honored with Silver Awards in two categories: Woman of the Year-Technology and Female Executive of the Year-Business Services for companies with 11-2,500 employees. The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run worldwide. The Stevie Awards have been hailed as the worlds premier business awards. Winners will be celebrated during a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Registration for the ceremony is now on sale. More than 1,500 entries were submitted this year for consideration in more than 100 categories, including Executive of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Company of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women, and Women Run Workplace of the Year. Were honored to receive this recognition from the Stevie Awards for the work Living Security is doing to help enterprises address cybersecurity human risk, as well as making progress to increase the number of female voices in what has been a traditionally male-dominated industry, Rose said. Its especially gratifying to be recognized alongside all of these other strong women business leaders. Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of Gold, Silver and Bronze winners in all categories are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Women. more than 160 business professionals around the world, working on eight juries. Maggie Gallagher Miller, president of the Stevie Awards, said, We thought the remarkable stories of achievement we saw in last years awards couldnt be topped, but we were wrong. Women-owned and -run organizations have contributed significantly to the increase in innovation and entrepreneurial activity weve seen globally since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nominations submitted to the 18th Stevie Awards for Women in Business that attest to this are inspiring, humbling, and motivating. We congratulate all of our Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners. We look forward to celebrating them during our January 13 virtual ceremony, and to hearing from some of them during our Women|Future Conference. The Stevie Awards will stage its fourth annual Women|Future Conference virtually on November 1-5. Registration is just $115, or $49 for current students with an active student ID. Details and registration are available at www.WomenFutureConference.com. Yet to be announced are the winners in three Red Ladder Women in Technology categories, sponsored by HCL Technologies, as well as five Grand Stevie Award winners in the competition. Grand Stevie winners will be announced on October 5. HCL category winners will be announced in late November. Entries for the 2022 Stevie Awards for Women in Business will open in May. About Living Security Founded in 2017, Living Security's mission is to help prevent cybersecurity breaches with a human risk management solution that does more than meet compliance needs, it also truly changes behavior. Living Security believes empowering people is the key to ending cybersecurity breaches, picking up where traditional security awareness training drops off. Gamified learning and immersive experiences engage and educate users, while the science-backed, tech-enabled platform uniquely provides CISOs the ability to measure training efficacy and program ROI. About the Stevie Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com. HCL Technologies sponsors the Red Ladder Women in Technology Awards in the 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Media Contact: Brad Hem brad@thedialoglab.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Thoughtful Automation Raises $5M Seed Round to Automate Soul-Crushing Work and Improve Employee Happiness for Mid-Market Companies CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Thoughtful Automation , the first and only cost-effective automation-as-a-service platform for mid-market companies, today announced a $5 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Columbus-based venture capital firm Drive Capital. Thoughtful Automation provides mid-market companies with a digital workforce management platform that offers customization, implementation, and continued monitoring and optimization of digital workers (or bots). As companies across the healthcare, legal, and financial services industries continue to grapple with labor shortages and decreasing employee satisfaction with manual work, Thoughtful Automations digital workers provide a much-needed boost to companies struggling to fill back office roles while also freeing up staff for higher value and more fulfilling work. Digital workers are transforming large enterprises, but until now, mid-market companies have been priced out, said Alex Zekoff, cofounder and CEO of Thoughtful Automation. Thoughtful Automation helps mid-market companies rapidly introduce digital workers, becoming more productive and freeing up staff for more engaging and higher value work. The platform is easy to use and has a fast onboarding experience with 300% return on investment in the first year alone. With Thoughtful Automations platform and digital workers, mid-market companies can: Accelerate Growth : Companies can launch digital workers in just a few weeks and at a fraction of the cost compared to legacy automation providers. Instead of four to six months, Thoughtful Automation digital workers get to work in matter of weeks. : Companies can launch digital workers in just a few weeks and at a fraction of the cost compared to legacy automation providers. Instead of four to six months, Thoughtful Automation digital workers get to work in matter of weeks. Increase Efficiency : Thoughtful Automations intelligent automation technology builds customized digital workers for healthcare, legal, behavioral health, and other industries featuring repetitive back office responsibilities, like processing invoices, payroll, data entry, financial transactions, and more. Its digital workforce management platform monitors bot performance over time while optimizing performance and eliminating human error. : Thoughtful Automations intelligent automation technology builds customized digital workers for healthcare, legal, behavioral health, and other industries featuring repetitive back office responsibilities, like processing invoices, payroll, data entry, financial transactions, and more. Its digital workforce management platform monitors bot performance over time while optimizing performance and eliminating human error. Reduce Fixed Costs: Because back office work is automated, businesses can expect to reduce overhead costs by up to 66%. Clients also enjoy low or zero implementation fees and businesses pay monthly based on their unique service needs. Because back office work is automated, businesses can expect to reduce overhead costs by up to 66%. Clients also enjoy low or zero implementation fees and businesses pay monthly based on their unique service needs. Improve Quality Control: Because its built on Thoughtful Automations cloud-based digital workforce management platform, business processes, documents, workflows, digital worker automation rules, and more are all updated instantly, and include a track record of changes. Because its built on Thoughtful Automations cloud-based digital workforce management platform, business processes, documents, workflows, digital worker automation rules, and more are all updated instantly, and include a track record of changes. Increase Employee Satisfaction and Productivity: Digital bots handle mundane tasks and work alongside human employees, removing the drudgery of routine and empowering human workers to do more fulfilling and creative work. "Ultimately, our vision is to open our platform to other automation developers. We want to build trust and transparency between humans and their digital co-workers," added Zekoff. The seed funding will be used to expand Thoughtful Automations platform and further develop offerings and capabilities to support business automation for middle market companies. The company also recently relocated to Chicagos West Loop neighborhood from San Francisco. Software automation is an entirely new category of work, and just like the traditional work done by people, work handled by software needs to be managed and optimized," said Nick Solaro, Partner at Drive Capital. "Thoughtful Automation understands this new work paradigm and their solution is making software automation accessible, affordable, and easy to deploy for mid market companies." For more information about Thoughtful Automation, visit www.thoughtfulautomation.com . About Thoughtful Automation Thoughtful Automation is the only automation-as-a-service provider with cost-effective, efficient, and scalable business automation solutions purpose-built for mid-market companies. Its intelligent automation technology and cloud-based digital management platform provides everything middle market businesses need to customize, implement, and continuously monitor and optimize digital workers. Thoughtful Automations digital management platform allows businesses to launch digital workers in a matter of weeks at a fraction of the cost. Media Contact: Becca Reyes, rebecca@propllr.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Reading Plus Announces Expanded Partnership with South Carolina's Beaufort County School District WINOOSKI, Vt., Sept. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reading Plus, an evidence-based online program that uses personalized instruction to improve students reading proficiency, today announced the expanded use of its platform within the Beaufort County School District in South Carolina. Beginning with the 2021-2022 school year, all middle and high school students within the district will have access to Reading Plus for the following three years. The significant expansion follows a successful pilot program and small implementation at six of the districts middle schools. Reading Plus provides individual, strategic support that increases the fluency of our readers, said Melissa Murray, director of literacy, Beaufort County School District. As our students become more fluent readers, they will also be able to comprehend at a higher level. The science behind Reading Plus focuses on creating efficient readers, which allows the brain to focus on comprehension. The team at Reading Plus is extremely supportive and I look forward to our continued partnership. Reading Plus is an adaptive literacy tool designed to support teachers with differentiated instruction for all students, including Tiers 1-3 and multilingual learners. Used by more than 1 million students, Reading Plus improves striving students reading proficiency by 2.0-2.5 grade levels in a single school year when used with fidelity. Having a district implement our program on a large scale after a pilot is always extremely gratifying, said Janine Walker-Caffrey, Chief Research Officer of Reading Plus. Our goal is to work witheducators to ensure academic success for students, and were excited to have the opportunity to do that within the Beaufort County School District. The program holds the highest Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) evidence of effectiveness rankinglevel one for strong evidenceillustrating a statistically significant effect on improving student outcomes. In 2020, Reading Plus doubled its content library to over 2,500 engaging and diverse selections to provide students with meaningful representation and culturally responsive texts as they grow into global, lifelong learners. In addition to Reading Plus, a DreamBox Learning English Language Arts solution, Beaufort County School District also offers DreamBox Learning Math to provide students with proven-effective and personalized reading and math learning experiences that accelerate learning growth. To learn more about the benefits of Reading Plus, visit www.readingplus.com . ABOUT READING PLUS Reading Plus* is an evidence-based, online program that provides personalized instruction and intervention for students with diverse needs, including multilingual learners, students who qualify for special education services, RTI/MTSS tiers 13, and advanced readers. The program develops fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary, while also measuring student motivation. On average, striving students using Reading Plus with fidelity achieve 2.0-2.5 years of proficiency grade-level gains in a single school year. Reading Plus provides educators with an easy-to-use management and reporting system, extensive resources to guide differentiated instruction, professional development, and highly rated customer support. The Reading Plus program is used in more than 7,800 schools, helping over one million students become confident, lifelong readers. For more information, visit www.readingplus.com . *In August 2021, DreamBox Learning, the leading education technology provider, announced it completed the acquisition of Reading Plus. The combined programs offer school districts the only dual-discipline solution rated Strong by Johns Hopkins EvidenceforESSA.org in both mathematics and reading. PRESS CONTACT: Kelsey BaRoss RoseComm for Reading Plus 201-450-2716 kbaross@rosecomm.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Ally Bridge Group Lead $135 Million Investment in Elligo Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Ally Bridge Group, today announced the firms have completed an investment in Elligo Health Research, ("Elligo"), a healthcare-enabling research organization powered by the novel IntElligo technology. The $135 million Series E financing also included participation from Norwest Venture Partners and all major existing investors, including Cerner (News - Alert) , Hatteras Venture Partners, Noro-Moseley Partners, Piper Sandler Merchant Banking, Shumway Capital, and Syneos Health. In addition to funding the purchase of ClinEdge, this financing allows Elligo to invest further in its technology platform and leverage data in new ways to address current challenges in the clinical trial industry, enhancing Elligo's mission of accelerating clinical research and allowing it to further the industry's goal to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion among research participants. With access to over 150 million diverse patients, Elligo combines proprietary data, technology, and services to support all trial designs - traditional, hybrid, and direct-to-patient - to expand and accelerate patient access to client trials. Elligo's solutions address rising challenges faced by all key stakeholders in the clinical trial industry, including top pharma and biotech companies, contract research organizations, and research sites. "This investment allows Elligo to execute on a key acquisition, as well as evaluate other complementary acquisitions to add technologies and services to accelerate research, improve the patient experience, and make research more accessible," said Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital Managing Director and General Partner, Melissa Daniels, who has joined Elligo's board. "The clinical trials industry is experiencing a new phase of disruption. There's an opportunity to use technology, data analytics, and services to eliminate long-standing trial conduct pitfalls and bottlenecks that primarily impact patients." "We are pleased to support Elligo in this exciting new chapter," said Charles Chon, Partner and Head of Medical Technologies at Ally Bridge Group. "In combination with ClinEdge, the company is uniquely positioned to continue its tremendous growth trajectory and have substantial impact on access to clinical trials." "This commitment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Ally Bridge Group, and others will not only help us better serve our existing clients, but also empower us to expand our technology and services on a global scale," said Elligo CEO John Potthoff. "The net effect of that will be increased access to clinical trials as a care optionfor large numbers of patients. We will accelerate revolutionizing the way clinical trials are conducted from pre-identification of patients through healthcare to study enrollment, conduct, and study data delivery." Elligo made use of a portion of this infusion of capital immediately, with its recently announced acquisition of ClinEdge, a research practice management and clinical services organization for clinical research sites, pharma companies, and clinical research organizations. This combination creates the largest end-to-end healthcare-enabling research organization in the world. Holland & Knight LLP served as lead legal counsel to the investor syndicate. Perella Weinberg Partners served as financial advisor and Goodwin Proctor LLP served as legal counsel to Elligo. About Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital is the growth-focused private investment platform within Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital targets growth equity and credit investments within technology, healthcare, consumer, digital media, and other high-growth sectors. For over three decades, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital has successfully pursued growth investment opportunities and has completed investments in over 200 companies leveraging the global brand and network of Morgan Stanley. For further information about Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, please visit https://www.morganstanley.com/im/expansioncapital. About Ally Bridge Group Ally Bridge Group (the "Firm") is a global healthcare investment management firm focused on high-impact life science innovation across private and public markets. The Firm was founded in 2013 by Frank Yu, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, with approximately $3.0 billion of assets under management as of September 1, 2021 across its offices in New York and Hong Kong. Through its scientific and clinical research overlaid with M&A and capital markets expertise, Ally Bridge Group seeks to capture investment opportunities across the capital structure addressing unmet medical needs. For more information, please visit https://www.ally-bridge.com. About Norwest Venture Partners Norwest is a leading venture and growth equity investment firm managing more than $9.5 billion in capital. Since our inception, we have invested in more than 600 companies and currently partner with over 160 companies in our venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early to late stage businesses across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. We offer a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses. Norwest has offices in Palo Alto (News - Alert) and San Francisco, with subsidiaries in India and Israel. For more information, please visit www.nvp.com. Follow Norwest on Twitter (News - Alert) @NorwestVP. About Elligo Health Research Elligo Health Research, a healthcare-enabling research organization powered by our novel IntElligo Research Stack technology, uses electronic health records and the trusted patient and physician relationship to ensure all patients have access to clinical research as a care option. We directly engage physicians and patients who otherwise would not participate in clinical research and accelerate the development of new pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device and diagnostic products. Learn more at elligodirect.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005816/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] PsychoGenics Chief Innovation Officer Honored for Scientific Excellence PsychoGenics announces that Daniela Brunner Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer, was named the recipient of Great Minds in STEMTM (GMiS) Scientist of the Year Award (GMiS 2021 Award Winners). Dr. Brunner was recognized for her contribution to the development of PsychoGenics' AI-based, phenotypic platforms, including its transformative SmartCube technology that predicts the therapeutic potential of compounds for neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Brunner, a native of Argentina, received her Ph.D. at Cambridge University (UK) and post-doctoral training at Columbia University (USA). She joined PsychoGenics in 1999 where she developed preclinical tests for cognition, neurodegeneration, autism, among others. She conceived of the SmartCube discovery system and worked on the development of PsychoGenics' AI technologies. In the recent past she also worked in digital healthcare, having founded Early Signal Foundation and ScienceForward LLC, organizations focused on emerging technologies. She has also worked closely with non-profits, focused on rare/underserved disorders such as the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance, Children's Tumor Foundation, Cohen Veterans Bioscience, and International Rett Syndrome Foundation. "Dr. Brunner's work has revolutionized neuropsychiatric drug discovery leading to several promising treatments in clinical trials. This includes SEP-363856 (Ulotaront), a novel treatment for schizophrenia now in Phase 3, discovered in partnership with Sunovion," said Emer Leahy, CEO and President of PsychoGenics. "She continues to have a profound impact as she leads the company's Data Science group developing novel AI approaches to drug discovery and bringing hope to millions of patients suffering from severely disabling conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and more." About SmartCube-driven Drug Discovery PsychoGenics' propritary, high-throughput SmartCube platform combines in vivo behavioral testing with developments in computer vision and modern artificial intelligence to phenotypically discover drug candidates for potential utility across the spectrum of CNS disease indications. Using SmartCube and other capabilities, PsychoGenics collects and analyzes multidimensional preclinical data of novel compounds and disease mouse model phenotypes, and employs proprietary machine learning algorithms to find new treatments. PsychoGenics has screened and optimized diverse and targeted libraries of compounds delivering hundreds of hits from which numerous neuropsychiatric drug candidates have emerged. PsychoGenics' phenotypic drug discovery approach can significantly reduce the time and cost to reaching approved Investigational New Drug status, potentially resulting in the identification of a viable drug candidate from a few hundred analogs tested in lead optimization in just over a year. This compares favorably to most target-driven programs, which typically synthesize thousands of analogs over many years. Due to its target-agnostic nature, the SmartCube approach has increased the probability of successfully finding drug candidates with novel first-in-class mechanisms of action and improved side effect profiles that are suitable for treating the symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders. About PsychoGenics PsychoGenics Inc. and its discovery arm PGI Drug Discovery LLC (collectively known as PsychoGenics) have pioneered the translation of rodent behavioral and physiological responses into robust, high-throughput and high-content phenotyping. PsychoGenics' drug discovery platforms, SmartCube, NeuroCube, PhenoCube, and eCube have been used in shared-risk partnerships with major pharma companies including Sunovion, Roche, and Karuna resulting in the discovery of several novel compounds now in clinical trials or advanced preclinical development. PsychoGenics' capabilities also include standard behavioral testing, electrophysiology, translational EEG, molecular biology, microdialysis and quantitative immunohistochemistry. In addition, the company offers a variety of in-licensed transgenic mouse models that support research in areas such as Huntington's disease, autism spectrum disorders, psychosis/schizophrenia, depression, PTSD, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy, ALS and seizure disorders. For more information on PsychoGenics Inc., visit www.psychogenics.com. About GMiS GMiS, established in 1989, is a non-profit organization that focuses on education, recognition, and recruitment of Hispanics in STEM at a national level, connecting engineering and science efforts to the general population. The scientist of the year award is given to the top five candidates in any of the many professional award categories given by GMiS, and is chosen by special committees, only presented when it is determined that a candidate's achievements merit this special recognition of overall leadership and technical and scientific achievement. These special candidates have mastered the art of managing multi-skilled teams to solve complex technical and business problems, exemplifying STEM excellence and executive leadership that significantly impacts the population. To learn more about this award and HENAAC, go to: greatmindsinstem.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005825/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] PEWIN Announces 2021 Annual LP/GP Awards Recipients Private Equity Women Investor Network (PEWIN), the pre-eminent organization for senior-level women investment professionals in private equity, has announced the winners of its 2021 LP/GP awards. The awards were presented at PEWIN's 13th Annual All Members Meeting with over 200 members attending. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005831/en/ PEWIN Awards 2021 Winners - Dana Johns, 1315 Capital, Asia Alternatives, CalPERS, University of Cambride, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ancala (Photo: Business Wire) The PEWIN annual awards program recognizes outstanding organizations who are transforming the private equity industry by supporting increased gender diversity in three categories: Female Founded Firm of the Year, Limited Partner of the Year and General Partner of the Year, and in two regions: North American and International. The firms are nominated by PEWIN membership and voted on by the PEWIN Steering Committee. In past years, these awards have recognized the following outstanding institutions: Avante Capital Partners, Beringea, Development Partners International (DPI), Kinzie Capital Partners, Luminate Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, TPG, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Hamilton Lane, Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, Riverside Company, and Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Kirsty McGuire, Executive Director of PEWIN, said of the awards, "PEWIN is so pleased to recognize 1315 Capital, Asia Alternatives, CalPERS, the Cambridge University Endowment Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Ancala Partners, each of whom are leaders in empowering women in private equity. We are also grateful for the tremendous contributions of this year's Member of the Year, Dana Johns, who is Co-CEO of PEWIN and a Senior Portfolio Manager at Maryland State Retirement and Pension System." Kelly Williams, Founding Chair of PEWIN, said, "This year's award recipients build upon the legacy of our past winners in continuing to grow the amount of private equity activity driven by women. We are thrilled to celebrate the important role they play in transforming the private equity landscape." View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005831/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Huawei Hosts an Energy Summit -- Digital Energy, Powering the Low Carbon Era SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei hosted the Energy Summit online, which was held within the framework of HUAWEI CONNECT 2021 and themed "Digital Energy, Powering the Low Carbon Era". During the summit, customers and partners discussed best practices in using new technologies to transition the energy industry toward carbon neutrality. Huawei also released the Global Energy Transition and Zero Carbon Development White Paper and shared its Energy Trans-Cube Strategy. Energy Trans-Cube, Creating New Value for the Industry After signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, more countries than ever before are committed to carbon neutrality and are taking positive actions to address climate change. Each one follows a different path, suitable to its resource profile, energy, and environment. "Despite the strong will to go carbon neutral, we need to take into account three challenges: green and low carbon development, economic development, as well as the security and continuity of energy supply. The convergence of energy transformation and digital transformation will pave the digital way for carbon neutrality," said David Sun, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise BG and President of the Global Energy Business Unit. He added, "Huawei has developed a Trans-Cube methodology. It suggests that to get closer to a net-zero carbon intelligent energy system and achieve global zero-carbon development, we should build three core capabilities net-zero carbon transformation, energy transformation, and digital transformation." The first capability net-zero carbon transformation will help various industries manage their carbon assets, and implement de-carbonization actions suitable to their specific contexts. In the process, they will go from low-carbon to near-zero carbon, and eventually achieve carbon neutrality. Then, energy transformation will make energy production and consumption more reliable, secure, and efficient, transforming from a single centralized system to a diversified, distributed, and integrated one. The ultimate goal is to achieve multi-energy coordination and optimize efficiency. Last but not least, there is digital trnsformation. With data at its core, digital transformation will enable net-zero carbon transformation and energy transformation. White Paper Release New Ideas to Lead the Industry According to Guo Xiaobo, Energy expert at Deloitte China, going carbon neutral means achieving energy transformation and zero-carbon development as soon as possible, using more renewable resources, changing the way we use energy, and using new technologies to reduce emissions. Based on this, the Global Energy Transition and Zero Carbon Development White Paper analyzes the key factors affecting energy transition, and proposes a new plan for the energy sector building a net-zero intelligent energy system. The said system focuses on interconnecting oil, gas, electricity, heat, and hydrogen systems, and aims to achieve secure, reliable, efficient, cost-effective, and clean energy. Anthony Hu , Chief Representative for Energy Transition (Carbon Neutrality), Global Energy Business Unit of Huawei Enterprise BG, said, "The architecture of the net-zero intelligent energy system will interconnect the energy system, carbon system, and ICT infrastructure as well as eventually converging energy, carbon, information, and value flows. Gradually, it will form a system with data at its core, promoting the digitalization of the energy industry." Drive Data to Barrel, Embrace Intelligence to Grow The digital transformation and intelligent development of the oil and gas industry is still in its infancy. According to Lv Gongxun, Senior Consultant of Huawei and Former General Manager of China National Corporation for Exploration and Development of Oil and Gas (CNODC), digital transformation signals four opportunities for the industry: rebuilding business models, transforming management models, innovating business models, and accelerating transformation and value growth. Lv Gongxun also discussed the value of cloud for the oil and gas industry: "Cloud technologies enable centralized information resource planning, intelligent management and control, flexible provisioning, convenient services, and high security and efficiency. They will transform the existing business models." Power grids are another important area of energy transformation, rapidly evolving with new technologies. In this context, Felix Chifwaila, Senior Manager of Electro-Technical Services at ZESCO, introduced the role of video and AI in improving grid O&M capabilities. For example, visualizing channel data leads to fewer operational risks and makes inspection 80 times more efficient. Video and AI also help detect potential faults in time, helping eliminate 90% of power outages every year. Having an intelligent inspection platform and apps leads to 30% more efficient emergency response and maintenance. Mr. Chifwaila noted, "ZESCO is looking forward to continued cooperation with Huawei, helping ZESCO become a regional power hub in digital transformation." ICT and OT Drive Energy Digital Transformation "As an Operation Technology (OT) system service provider, DFE actively cooperates with ICT vendors, including Huawei, to complement each other's strengths, promote energy digital transformation, and build intelligent and innovative solutions." Fang Zhengji, General Manager of DFE. He introduced the innovative solutions DFE developed with Huawei Intelligent Substation Inspection System and Automatic Transmission Line Inspection System. Powered by DFE and Huawei technologies, the two solutions help enterprises further their digital and intelligent transformation. Like many others, Huawei started out as a non-digital native enterprise. This means that the company has accumulated extensive experience and lessons learnt through both internal projects and industry practices. It has a first-hand understanding of the challenges traditional enterprises face during digital transformation and has paved a "digital way" for the transformation and development of the energy industry. Huawei hosts HUAWEI CONNECT 2021 online from September 23 to October 31. The theme of this year's event is Dive into Digital. We're going to dive deep into the practical application of technologies like cloud, AI, and 5G in all industries, and how they can make organizations of all shapes and sizes more efficient, more versatile, and ultimately more resilient as we move towards economic recovery. For more information, please contact our local team or check out https://www.huawei.com/en/events/huaweiconnect For more information about the Global Energy Transformation and Zero Carbon Development White Paper, click Global Energy Transition and Zero Carbon Development White Paper SOURCE Huawei [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Alyce Announces Next Generation of Its Platform with the Launch of Smart Gifting Alyce, the world's first Smart Gifting Platform, today announced the launch of Smart Gifting, the next generation of its AI-powered personal corporate gifting solution. The launch includes a new suite of intelligent features and a set of global partnerships that will enable revenue-accountable teams to achieve greater business impacts with personal gifting, direct mail, swag, kitting, and eGifts. With Alyce's unique Smart Gifting Platform capabilities, marketers, sales professionals, and customer success teams now have new ways to create memorable moments that deliver outsized results. Alyce's proven recipient-first gifting model and new Smart Gifting features help enterprise businesses to earn trust and build loyalty with their prospects and customers while optimizing the power of gifting, swag, and direct mail to increase sales pipeline and accelerate deals. The launch of Smart Gifting will further expand on Alyce's best-in-class gifting experience, advancing users' ability to control, execute, and measure the impact of strategic programs and creative campaigns. "Across the B2B marketing and sales landscape, technology has given us more time to do more than we ever imagined possible. And what will separate the winners from everyone else will be how teams choose to use that time. Alyce's new Smart Gifting Platform launch is not only giving revenue-driving teams more efficiency and intelligence, but it's designed to help those teams invest their time-savings into creating memorable moments and greater business impacts through the power of gifting. From custom experience creation to intelligence optimization to efficient execution, Smart Gifting gives marketers and sales teams what they need to unleash creativity and drive results," says Greg Segall, CEO and Founder of Alyce. The Alyce Smart Gifting lanch offers a variety of updates, including: Custom Gift Marketplaces . With Custom Marketplaces, marketers can seamlessly provide physical, virtual, and branded gifts that fit perfectly with any occasion, event, or campaign theme. . With Custom Marketplaces, marketers can seamlessly provide physical, virtual, and branded gifts that fit perfectly with any occasion, event, or campaign theme. Global Gifting Execution through Staples (News - Alert) Promotional Products. Powered by a new partnership with Staples Promotional Products, marketing and sales teams can now access a network of swag, kitting, warehousing, and logistics providers through a single platform to efficiently and creatively deliver gifts at critical moments in every program and campaign. Powered by a new partnership with Staples Promotional Products, marketing and sales teams can now access a network of swag, kitting, warehousing, and logistics providers through a single platform to efficiently and creatively deliver gifts at critical moments in every program and campaign. 1-to-Many Gifting On Behalf of Sales . Group gifting (1-to-many campaigns) empowers marketers to send gifts and set up resulting meetings on behalf of their sales reps. With these capabilities, marketing and sales teams can optimize the delivery of both gifts and results that foster stronger personal relationships without sacrificing active selling time. . Group gifting (1-to-many campaigns) empowers marketers to send gifts and set up resulting meetings on behalf of their sales reps. With these capabilities, marketing and sales teams can optimize the delivery of both gifts and results that foster stronger personal relationships without sacrificing active selling time. Gifting on the Fly . With Gifting on the Fly, sellers can enroll recipients into a gifting campaign without having to log onto Alyce. This feature is perfect for use at events, trade shows, or when a sales rep is pinched for time. . With Gifting on the Fly, sellers can enroll recipients into a gifting campaign without having to log onto Alyce. This feature is perfect for use at events, trade shows, or when a sales rep is pinched for time. Alyce for Salesloft. Previously announced, with Alyce for Salesloft, marketers, sales teams, and business development representatives have an efficient, unified platform with built-in intelligence that enables personal gifting across marketing campaigns and sales cadences. "Alyce's new Smart Gifting functionality, global partnerships, and integrations with platforms including Salesloft bring more depth and breadth in gifting capabilities to our market. Our enhanced Smart Gifting platform couldn't be more timely for enterprise companies looking to drive impact at each phase of the customer lifecycle. Our unique Smart Gifting approach will ultimately enable these companies to increase qualified pipeline, shorten sales cycles, and improve customer retention rates," said Daria Marmer, VP of Product at Alyce. The launch of Smart Gifting comes on the heels of Alyce, a VC-backed startup based in Boston, Mass., announcing a new integration with sales technology platform Salesloft, a new partnership with Staples Promotional Products, and a $30 million venture investment in the company. About Alyce Alyce is the only Smart Gifting platform, enabling sales, marketing, and customer success teams to create memorable moments and greater impact through a relational, recipient-first approach to gifting. With an AI-powered platform and global network of partners, Alyce bridges the physical and digital world of marketing and revenue generation so that enterprises can better engage prospects, customers, and employees while delivering measurable results. Alyce is a venture-backed, privately held company headquartered in Boston, MA. Learn more at alyce.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005227/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Audax Private Equity Portfolio Company, Emplifi, Acquires Go Instore Audax Private Equity ("Audax") announced that its portfolio company, Emplifi, Inc. ("Emplifi"), a leading global provider of SaaS-based, omnichannel consumer experience software, has acquired SYM- SYS (News - Alert) LTD ("Go Instore"). Headquartered in London, UK, Go Instore is a pioneer in live commerce software. Go Instore leverages immersive HD live video to connect customers with a brand's data driven product experts. Their leading-edge video technology provides brands with a new channel via which they can engage with and serve their customers, strengthening Emplifi's omnichannel CX approach along all stages of the customer journey. "We are thrilled to partner with the Go Instore team and welcome their outstanding people, culture, platform, and customers into the Emplifi family," said Emplifi CEO Mark Zablan. "This acquisition marks another important milestone on Emplifi's path towards being the customer experience platform of choice. The addition of Go Instore's live commerce capabilities will further enable Emplifi to provide differentiated experiences at every touchpoint along the customer journey. We're excited to start helping brands connect and convert consumers more quickly and directly through the power of livestream video and social media." "We are incredibly excited to join forces with Emplifi to deliver even more powerful shopping experiences across our client's websites and social channels," said Andre Hordagoda, Co-Founder, Go Instore. "Emplifi's vision, innovation, and speed-to-market align perfectly with Go Instore." added Aman Khurana, Co-Founder, Go Instore. With the addition of live streaming video technology, Emplifi continues its fast-paced go-to-market strategy. Coming off the recent rebanding and fusion of Astute Solutions and Socialbakers companies, Emplifi's acquisition of Go Instore helps strengthen its position as a global CX leader and provides brands with an end-to-end platform for social marketing, social commerce and omnichannel service and care. ABOUT EMPLIFI Emplifi is a leading unified CX platform that brings marketing, commerce, and care together to help businesses close the customer experience gap. More than 7,000 brands, including Delta Air Lines, Ford Motor Company (News - Alert) , and McDonalds, rely on Emplifi to provide their customers with outstanding experiences at every touchpoint. For more information, visit www.emplifi.io. ABOUT GO INSTORE Go Instore is a leading provider of live commerce software. Go Instore serves over 100 global clients including Currys PC World, Marks & Spencer, Pandora (News - Alert) , and Signet Jewelers. For more information, visit www.goinstore.com. ABOUT AUDAX PRIVATE EQUITY Audax Group is a leading alternative investment manager with offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Since its founding in 1999, the firm has raised over $27 billion in capital across its Private Equity and Private Debt businesses. Audax Private Equity has invested over $5 billion in more than 140 platforms and over 1,000 add-on companies, and is currently investing out of its $3.5 billion, sixth private equity fund. Through its disciplined Buy & Build approach, Audax seeks to help platform companies execute add-on acquisitions that fuel revenue growth, optimize operations, and significantly increase equity value. With more than 300 employees and over 100 investment professionals, the firm is a leading capital partner for North American middle market companies. For more information, visit the Audax Group website www.audaxgroup.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005844/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] New IDC Best in Future of Connectedness North America Awards Open for Submissions International Data Corporation (IDC) today announced the inaugural IDC Future Enterprise Best in Future of Connectedness North America Awards, designed to recognize organizations that are able to rethink the way people, things, processes, and applications connect to enable the seamless flow of data and drive business outcomes. Awards recognizing unique solutions and business success stories will be presented at a ceremony in May 2022. The transformation of connectedness is fundamental to realizing sustainable and scalable digital transformation. IDC's (News - Alert) Future of Connectedness research practice asserts it is an enterprise-wide approach that will foster human-machine collaboration, enable new skills and worker experiences, and support an intelligent and dynamic environment unbounded by time or physical space. In the nominations, IDC is looking for details on implemented initiatives, such as pilots or projects, as opposed to ideas or planned initiatives. Primary requirements of all Best in Future of Connectedness nominations are: Must be a Future of Connectedness initiative as defined by IDC. All nominations must be in production with existing customers/users since January 2019. Must be able to articulate and show key performance indicators to ascribe value to the completed project. The winner of this category must demonstrate at least one of the following: Ability to deliver a solution and/or business strategy (i.e., using technologies like 5G, virtual private networks, remote access solutions, SD-WAN, deployment of mobile devices) fostering human-human and human-machine collaboration toward delivery of defined business outcomes. Ability to deliver connectivity and networking solutions that provide scalable, secure access anytime, anywhere, and drive pervasive experiences for employees, customers, and partner. Ability to deliver a secure and dynamic environment that allows the enterprise to maintain business operations in light of disruptive events including cyberattacks, pandemics, and natural disasters. HERE. Deadline for submission is October 30, 2021. If you have questions regarding your entry, please contact Heather Ball at hball@idc.com. Note: IT Vendors and Technology Consultants do not qualify for the IDC Future Enterprise Awards. Vendors may instead nominate completed projects on behalf of their clients. "Connectivity is the common denominator in how people, things and processes interact. For consumers and organizations, increased reliance on digital engagement requires ubiquitous, reliable, and robust connectivity. As digital interactions continue to increase, however, it's clear that connectivity is not yet seamless or pervasive," said Paul Hughes, research director, Future of Connectedness at IDC. "Our Best in Future of Connectedness Awards will shine a light on those organizations that have successfully addressed this unevenness in connectivity across different environments and locations to successfully meet employee and consumer expectations." About IDC's Future of Connectedness Research Practice IDC's Future of Connectedness helps organizations recognize the imperative need to address unevenness in connectivity across different environments and locations and provide employees and consumers with digital experiences supported by ubiquitous, reliable, and robust connectivity. To learn more about all nine of IDC's Future of X research practices, please visit https://www.idc.com/promo/future-of-x/connectedness. For more information on the IDC Future of Digital Infrastructure Awards, please contact Sarah Murray at sarah@attunecommunications.com. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005126/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Outraged, the University of Toronto Colluded With Conservative Government to Strip Them of COVID-19 Protections in the Name of Revenue; CUPE 3902 Encourages Members to Learn How to Refuse Unsafe Work 11,500 academic workers at the University of Toronto, who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902, are mobilizing for an education campaign today geared towards teaching each other how to refuse unsafe work during this hazardous return to campus. Contract academic workers are frustrated that the Ford (News - Alert) Conservatives are allowing universities like the University of Toronto to lobby for reduced pandemic protection for students and workers. Following a press conference today by CUPE Ontario's University Sector, CUPE Local 3902 launches a series of online information sessions for members and the extended U of T community on workers' rights under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Measures like capacity limits and physical distancing requirements are crucial for the safety of indoor instructional spaces. The campaign will therefore empower members to speak out and protect themselves and their families if their work on campus is unsafe. "Rather than creating a comprehensive plan to bring more workers and students back safely o campus, the University of Toronto lobbied the Ford government for exemptions to Ontario's Stage 3 safety measures. It's unconscionable that the university would spend tuition fees and donations on lobbying the Ford Conservatives for less protections against COVID-19," says Amy Conwell, Chair of CUPE 3902. U of T's Governing Council and President Meric Gertler embraced the opening up of campus and lifting of regulations, disrespecting the significant concerns raised on behalf of the community. "As a first step to resolving this recipe for disaster," continues Conwell, "President Gertler and the Governing Council must reverse course on these exemptions. Post-secondary institutions are close-quarters, congregate settings, petri dishes for the Delta variant and other variants to come. Our members need capacity limits and distancing measures in order to do their work safely." In Ontario, workers are guaranteed the right to be informed about workplace hazards, form Joint Health and Safety Committees in their workplace, and refuse unsafe work. Members of CUPE Local 3902 have already reached out with great concern. Some are making the hard choice to turn down contracts or resign rather than put themselves and their families at risk. "Our members are already precarious, contract-based workers," says Conwell. "It's unacceptable that they would have to take a pay cut in order to keep their families safe. Schools are able to institute their own safer rules, so we call on U of T to do the same." CUPE 3902 represents teaching assistants, sessional lecturers, course instructors, postdoctoral fellows, and other academic workers. lf/cope491 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005869/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] ChenMed Donates Nearly $750,000 to Help Employees and the New Orleans Community After Hurricane Ida NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ChenMed, one of the largest providers of primary care to Medicare-eligible seniors and the parent company of JenCare Senior Medical Center, announces a gift of nearly $750,000 in monetary and in-kind donations to employees and members of the community who suffered losses from Hurricane Ida. The donations, which are a combination of company-sponsored offerings and contributions from its team members, has reached thousands of seniors living in underserved communities in New Orleans. I'm so proud of all that our team members have done to help out each other and the seniors they serve. "Our hearts go out to our colleagues and patients in New Orleans," said Stephanie Chen, chief legal and culture officer at ChenMed. "They have been through a lot. We started mobilizing support and relief efforts immediately after the storm and continue to provide support for the things they need, like housing, supplies and food. Not only did our local JenCare teams get involved in the relief efforts, but team members from Houston centers, other Florida centers, and our corporate office also took part through volunteering and donating monetary gifts. Taking care of each other and our community is part of our mission, and I'm so proud of all that our team members have done to help out each other and the seniors they serve." One of th employees who jumped into action to help others is Vijay Jaligam, M.D., chief medical officer of JenCare's cardiovascular care in New Orleans. "I've been going around and checking on patients," said Dr. Jaligam. Since JenCare medical centers across the city were closed due to damage and loss of power, Dr. Jaligam drove around and made house calls, checking on patients to make sure they were safe and healthy. He recalls one patient who was pleasantly surprised to see him. "While visiting one of the patients, the woman saw me and said, 'they told me JenCare was going to come.' I said, 'We're here! I'm JenCare!' She was so relieved to hear that." "This journey has been fulfilling," Dr. Jaligam added. "I'm doing it because it's a privilege to be a doctor and an honor to serve patients." ChenMed's donations to the community in the days since Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans amount to $562,000, and the company's donations to employees amount to $180,000. In addition to the company-sponsored donations, ChenMed employees have donated $30,000 so far to help their colleagues. "The amount of support our team members have given each other during this crisis is so heartwarming," said Ms. Chen. "We're continuing to collect monetary donations from those employees who would like to help out their coworkers, and our volunteer efforts will continue as long as our seniors and the communities in which they live are in need." Earlier this year, in response to the COVID-19 crisis in India and the earthquake in Haiti, ChenMed donated $50,000 and $14,425, respectively, to help people suffering in those countries. Monies were donated to various not-for-profit organizations that organized relief efforts in those countries to ensure the help reached those who needed it the most. About ChenMed ChenMed, headquartered in Miami, is a privately owned medical, management and technology company that delivers the high-touch and personalized primary care Medicare-eligible seniors need to enjoy better health. The company operates more than 85 senior medical centers in 12 states. Named one of Fortune 2020 "Change the World" companies, ChenMed brings concierge-style medicine and better health outcomes to the neediest populations. ChenMed brands include Chen Senior Medical Center, Dedicated Senior Medical Center and JenCare Senior Medical Center. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chenmed-donates-nearly-750-000-to-help-employees-and-the-new-orleans-community-after-hurricane-ida-301384292.html SOURCE ChenMed [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] BrandStar Studios Invests Millions in Technology and Equipment to Provide Virtual Production, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality Capabilities in Real-Time BrandStar Studios, a division of BrandStar, has completed a multi-million dollar upgrade to its studios, allowing them to provide the newest, most cutting-edge technologies in the world of production, including virtual Production, extended reality, augmented reality and mixed-reality capabilities, all in real-time. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005908/en/ Mark Alfieri in LED Volume Studio at BrandStar. (Photo: Business Wire) Already recognized as South Florida's largest production studio, the upgrade also includes implementation of the state-of-the-art, Unreal Engine software, the world's most opened and advanced real-time 3D creation tool, which virtually renders the most complex of sets, allowing real-time shooting, while exponentially reducing editing and post-production work. BrandStar Studios has employed a full team of Unreal Engine CGI (News - Alert) artists, allowing for the development of the highest photo realism virtual environments for set builds, with available interior and exterior scenes from around the world. "We can basically put anyone, anywhere, in real-time," said Mark Alfieri, CEO of BrandStar. "The combination of equipment and technology makes us a true next-generation studio. We are comparable to the most sophisticated movie studios in California." The enhancements feature one of the largest LED Volumes (screens) on the East Coast, measuring over 13 feet high and over 100 feet long, all within BrandStar's 43,000-square-foot facilities. The LEDs are the latest technology with a 1.9M pixel size allowing for true 8K resolution. "There's a reason the technology leverages 'Unreal,'" adds Alfieri. "It allows us to create super high-end roductions quickly, utilizing the same in-camera virtual environments that major studios are deploying to film their most technology-intensive programming. We will use this technology to produce music videos, virtual events, high-end commercials, television shows, feature films, basically anything anyone can dream up, we can produce it." BrandStar is using this advanced technology in production of their own shows, which include The Balancing Act and Military Makeover with Montel, airing on Lifetime. Other Critical aspects of the multi-million-dollar upgrades include: Three motorized 27 ft. x 10 ft. LED Ceilings, called the 'Star Walkers.' These ceilings are super high resolution, 2.9M pixels. They hover across the studio and can flip down in four different directions, to become additional LED walls, when needed, offering multiple lighting and VFX (visual effects) capabilities. The 'Star Walkers' allow the studio to become a five-wall, fully enclosed LED setup. Total pixel count between the ceilings and walls is in excess of 30 million, making it a one-of-a-kind system which does not exist in any other studio. Sony VENICE Cameras, allowing for the cleanest cinematic productions for virtual environments. BrandStar, in partnership with Scorpio Techno-Cranes, has acquired one of the first 17 ft. jibs with robotics, a state-of-the-art, fully automated camera head housing. This is one of the first combination rigs in the world, and will allow multiple programmable camera and crane moves, creating a best-in-class production capture. A fully equipped Control room, housing the latest Grass Valley (News - Alert) 4K/8K Switcher, allowing for high-end camera switching for Virtual Productions. BrandStar Studios, in Partnership with Mo-Sys, is the first in the USA to house the new Mo-Sys VP Pro XR an all-in-one virtual set hardware and software, combining multi-node nDisplay architecture, an improved VP Pro real-time compositor/synchronizer, and a new XR toolset. This XR server system is focused on delivering a new Cinematic non-destructive compositor capabilities. The Cinematic XR Focus allows focus pullers to pull focus between real and virtual elements in an LED volume - a world first - and is now a part of the system. To view a sample of BrandStar's expanded studio capabilities, click here. "The response from our clients to the upgrades has been extraordinary," concludes Alfieri. "We have clients from California booking the studio for their Virtual Productions. We have no doubt these advancements will be an extraordinary step forward for all of Florida's production capabilities." About BrandStar BrandStar is a fully horizontally and vertically integrated production company, marketing agency, and content exchange platform. Offering everything a full-service marketing firm provides, but with a twist - our focus is on positively impacting people's lives. Fueled by the collective passion of entrepreneurs, creatives, technologists, and thinkers, we pride ourselves in being Marketing Matchmakers - connecting people with brands to do life better. Utilizing a combination of creative storytelling, marketing strategy, results-driven media, technology innovation, and unrivaled television production capabilities, we have succeeded in giving startups a national footprint, and national companies a global one. For additional information, visit www.brandstar.com. About BrandStar Studios BrandStar Studios is South Florida's leading Production Hub. The 43,000 sq ft facility is home to a 13' x 100' plus LED video wall with three 27' x 9' ft LED ceilings. Powered by a Grass Valley control room we can adapt any vision into a live format, also offering live streaming feeds. Constantly aware of the industry's rapid evolution, the studio's virtual capabilities are endless, integrating Unreal Engine environments, modular sets for both Hybrid/ Virtual Events and Productions. The studio also features two fully equipped kitchens, and serves as a one-stop-shop for your complete production needs. For additional information, visit www.BrandStarStudios.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005908/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] AvalonBay Communities, Inc. Provides Third Quarter 2021 Operating and Acquisition Activity Update AVALONBAY COMMUNITIES, INC. (NYSE: AVB) (the "Company") announced today that for the three months ending September 30, 2021 it expects total residential rental revenue for Same Store communities to increase between 0.9% and 1.1% over the prior year period. The midpoint of this range is 180 basis points above what the Company's expectation was for total residential rental revenue change for Same Store communities for the three months ending September 30, 2021 when the Company published its outlook on July 28, 2021. This outperformance is attributable to (i) lower-than-expected uncollectible lease revenue, due to higher-than-expected delinquent rent payments from COVID rental assistance programs(1), and (ii) better-than-expected effective lease rates and occupancy. The Company also provided the following residential operating information for Same Store communities: Average Physical Occupancy 2021 Q1 Q2 July August September(2) Suburban Communities 95.6% 96.3% 96.4% 96.5% 96.3% Urban Communities 93.6% 94.8% 94.8% 95.9% 96.1% Total 95.0% 95.9% 96.0% 96.3% 96.3% Average Like-Term Effective Rent Change 2021 Q1 Q2 July August September(2) New England (10.4%) (1.8%) 5.8% 10.0% 12.8% Metro New York / New Jersey (7.8%) (1.6%) 4.0% 8.1% 11.4% Mid-Atlantic (8.0%) (2.2%) 2.3% 4.2% 8.1% Southeast Florida 1.0% 7.3% 16.2% 19.3% 23.8% Denver 5.2% 9.7% 12.1% 13.2% 16.4% Pacific Northwest (11.7%) (0.5%) 6.8% 8.8% 14.5% Northern California (15.7%) (7.5%) 2.1% 5.2% 6.4% Southern California (1.4%) 3.6% 8.6% 11.0% 12.8% Total (8.3%) (1.3%) 5.0% 8.1% 11.0% Suburban Communities (3.8%) 2.3% 6.7% 8.7% 10.4% Urban Communities (17.4%) (8.3%) 1.7% 7.1% 12.3% Total (8.3%) (1.3%) 5.0% 8.1% 11.0% The average Move-in Rent Value in September 2021, as of September 22, 2021, was approximately 24% above the average Move-in Rent Value for the month of December 2020, and it was approximately 6% above the average Move-in Rent Value for the month of September 2019. (1) Between July 1st, 2021 and September 22nd, 2021, the Company recognized approximately $10 million of delinquent rent payments from COVID rental assistance programs as Same Store total residential rental revenue. This compares to the Company's July 28, 2021 outlook for projected Same Store total residential rental revenue for the three months ending September 30, 2021, which included approximately $3 million of projected delinquent rent payments from COVID rental assistance programs. (2) Data through September 22nd. In addition, the Company announced that it acquired: The Nexus Lakeside, located in Flower Mound, Texas, on September 1, 2021 for a purchase price of approximately $117 million. The Nexus Lakeside contains 425 apartment homes and approximately 18,000 square feet of commercial space. Hub South End, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 23, 2021 for a purchase price of approximately $104 million. Hub South End contains 265 apartment homes and approximately 21,000 square feet of commercial space. Three30Five, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 23, 2021 for a purchase price of approximately $53 million. Three30Five contains 164 apartment homes. Definitions Like-Term Effective Rent Change represents the percentage change in effective rent between two leases of the same lease term category for the same apartment. The Company defines effective rent as the contractual rent for an apartment less amortized concessions and discounts. Average Like-Term Effective Rent Change is weighted based on the number of leases meeting the criteria for new move-in and renewal like-term effective rent change. New Move-In Like-Term Effective Rent Change is the change in effective rent between the contractual rent for a resident who moves out of an apartment, and the contractual rent for a resident who moves into the same apartment with the same lease term category. Renewal Like-Term Effective Rent Change is the change in effective rent between two consecutive leases of the same lease term category for the same resident occupying the same apartment. Move-in Rent Value reflects the average effective rent that the Company's apartments would rent for based on recent leasing activity, adjusting for apartment specific characteristics (e.g., view premiums, renovation premiums). For a given month, up to the ten most recent leases during the immediately preceding last three months are used for each unit type at a property. If no recent leasing activity has occurred for a sparse unit type, then active leases or current asking rents, in that order, would be used. Same Store is composed of consolidated communities in the markets where the Company has a significant presence and where a comparison of operating results from the prior year to the current year is meaningful, as these communities were owned and had Stabilized Operations, as defined below, as of the beginning of the respective prior year period. Therefore, for 2021 operating results, Same Store is composed of consolidated communities that have Stabilized Operations as of January 1, 2020, are not conducting or are not probable to conduct substantial redevelopment activities and are not held for sale or probable for disposition within the current year. Stabilized Operations is defined as the earlier of (i) the attainment of 90% physical occupancy or (ii) the one-year anniversary of completion of development or redevelopment. Suburban Communities are communities located in submarkets with less than 3,500 households per square mile. Urban Communities are communities located in submarkets with 3,500 households or more per square mile. Forward-Looking Statements The projected change in total residential rental revenue for Same Store communities in this press release is a forward-looking statement under federal securities laws and is based on the Company's expectations, forecasts, and assumptions at the time of this press release. The actual change, if any, may differ materially from the projected change. Factors that could result in a material difference include, among others, those related to the COVID-19 pandemic and trends affecting the Company's financial condition or results of operations. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the factors that are discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the sections titled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, as such factors may be updated from time to time in the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company does not undertake a duty to update forward-looking statements, including its expected operating results and other financial data forecasts contained in this press release. The Company may, in its discretion, provide information in future public announcements regarding its outlook that may be of interest to the investment community. The format and extent of future outlooks may be different from the format and extent of the information contained in this press release. About AvalonBay Communities, Inc. As of June 30, 2021, the Company owned or held a direct or indirect ownership interest in 288 apartment communities containing 85,749 apartment homes in 11 states and the District of Columbia, of which 16 communities were under development and two communities were under redevelopment. The Company is an equity REIT in the business of developing, redeveloping, acquiring, and managing apartment communities in leading metropolitan areas in New England, the New York/New Jersey Metro area, the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast Florida, Denver, Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, and Northern and Southern California. More information may be found on the Company's website at http://www.avalonbay.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005899/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. Announces Resolution of Commercial Loan L, Representing Full Exit from Legacy Commercial Investments AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. (NYSE: MITT) (the "Company") announced today that Commercial Loan L, the Company's sole remaining legacy Commercial Investment, was repaid in full for gross proceeds of $54.0 million to the Company. The Commercial Loan L proceeds were well in excess of the Company's June 30, 2021 fair value for the investment of $43.9 million, providing full recovery of principal and all outstanding deferred interest. Following the repayment of associated financing, the Commercial Loan L pay-off generated $28.1 million in net proceeds to the Company and, together with the previously announced Commercial Loan K pay-off, generated an aggregate of $48.2 million in net proceeds to the Company. The repayment of Commercial Loan L represents an additional $0.63 per share ($0.17 of which represents deferred interest received) to the Company's June 30, 2021 book value per share of $15.18. The completion of the Company's exit from its Commercial Investments advances the Company's goals to: Transition to a Pure-Play Residential Mortgage Credit REIT - During 2021, the Company sold or resolved Commercial loans and CMBS with aggregate fair values at December 31, 2020 of $125.5 million and $56.8 million, respectively, generating capital for reinvestment in Residential Investments, specifically newly originated Non-Agency residential mortgage loans. Drive Growth through Residential Mortgage Origination and Securitization - The proceeds generated through exiting all Commercial Investments, coupled with excess capacity on existing financing lines, provide a significant boost to the Company's ability to continue sourcing Non-Agency residential mortgage assets either through its vertically integrated mortgage originator, Arc Home, or through existing relationships with third-party originators. The Company has completed three Non-QM securitizations through its proprietary GCAT shelf since May 2021 and expects to utilize available liquidity to continue ramping up its Residential Investments expansion followed by securitization. "This transaction marks a pivotal point in MITT's history," said David N. Roberts, the Company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "The loan resolutions significantly simplify our business and, along with the full support and resources of Angelo Gordon and our strategic advantages, should enable us to accelerate MITT's ability to capitalize on the exciting opportunities within the Non-Agency residential loan market and to become a leader in the space." "The extremely positive resolution of Commercial Loan L is a testament to Angelo Gordon's long-standing reputation of investing based on in-depth underwriting and employing prudent leverage," said T.J. Durkin, the Company's President. "And now, with MITT's legacy commercial loans in the rearview mirror and ample liquidity, we remain dedicated to focuing all of our energy and resources to executing on our mission to build a premier residential origination and securitization platform. We expect the current market conditions, along with our ownership in the multi-channel mortgage lender, Arc Home, to provide MITT with a robust pipeline of residential mortgage investments, driving both portfolio growth and returns for our shareholders." Mr. Durkin continued "While growing the business is our primary focus, we will also continue to evaluate accretive ways to strengthen our capital structure including through the use of our existing stock repurchase programs." About AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. is a mortgage REIT that opportunistically invests in a diversified risk-adjusted portfolio of Residential Investments and Agency RMBS. AG Mortgage Investment Trust, Inc. is externally managed and advised by AG REIT Management, LLC, a subsidiary of Angelo, Gordon & Co., L.P., a leading privately-held alternative investment firm focusing on credit and real estate strategies. Additional information can be found on the Company's website at www.agmit.com. About Angelo, Gordon & Co., L.P. Angelo, Gordon & Co., L.P. ("Angelo Gordon") is a privately held limited partnership founded in November 1988. The firm currently manages approximately $44 billion with a primary focus on credit and real estate strategies. Angelo Gordon has over 550 employees, including more than 200 investment professionals, and is headquartered in New York, with associated offices elsewhere in the U.S., Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.angelogordon.com. Forward Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements relate to expectations, beliefs, projections, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," or "potential" or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases which are predictions of or indicate future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, and may cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. Factors that may cause such a difference, include, without limitation, the Company's ability to maintain or increase its book value per share, the Company's ability to continue to generate or grow Core Earnings, whether the Company will realize any of the anticipated benefits of its transition to a residential mortgage origination and securitization focused strategy, the Company's liquidity, the Company's financing capacity, the pace of the Company's Non-Agency securitizations, regulatory changes that may impact the Company's ability to execute on opportunities within the Non-Agency residential loan market on the terms anticipated or at all, the Company's ability to become a leader in the Non-Agency residential loan space and build a premier residential origination and securitization platform, demand in the Non-Agency securitization markets, the Company's management and resources, Arc Home's performance, including its ability to provide the Company with a robust pipeline of investment opportunities, the Company's relationships with third-party originators, the timing and pace of growth in the Company's loan portfolio, including whether such growth will result in returns to stockholders at the levels anticipated or at all, the strength of the Company's capital structure, including its ability to repurchase stock, and other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and its other reports filed from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements reflect the Company's good faith beliefs, assumptions and expectations, but they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions investors not to unduly rely on any forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company is under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this press release, nor to conform prior statements to actual results or revised expectations, and the Company does not intend to do so. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005940/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation Declares Third Quarter Dividend of $0.06 Per Share Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation (the "Company") (NYSE: WMC) announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.06 per share for the third quarter of 2021. Today's dividend is payable on October 26, 2021 to common shareholders of record as of October 4, 2021, with an ex-dividend date of October 1, 2021. In addition, the Company estimates that its GAAP book value per share, as of August 31, 2021, was approximately $3.67. The August 31, 2021 estimated GAAP book value is unaudited, has not been verified or reviewed by our external auditors and is subject to normal quarterly reconciliation and other procedures. Further, the estimated book value is as of August 31, 2021 and does not include the dividend announced today. GAAP book value will fluctuate with market conditions, the results of the Company's operations and other factors. The Company's current GAAP book value may be materially different from the August 31, 2021 estimated GAAP book value. ABOUT WESTERN ASSET MORTGAGE CAPITAL CORPORATION Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation is a real estate investment trust that invests in, acquires and manages a diverse portfolio of assets consisting of Residential Whole Loans, Commercial Loans, Non-Agency CMBS, Non-Agency RMS, GSE Risk Transfer Securities and to a lesser extent Agency RMBS, Agency CMBS and ABS (News - Alert) . The Company's investment strategy may change, subject to the Company's stated investment guidelines, and is based on its manager Western Asset Management Company, LLC's perspective of which mix of portfolio assets it believes provide the Company with the best risk-reward opportunities at any given time. The Company is externally managed and advised by Western Asset Management Company, LLC, an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc. Please visit the Company's website at www.westernassetmcc.com. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" For these statements, the Company claims the protections of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in such sections. Forward-looking statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and are generally beyond the Company's control. In particular, it is difficult to fully assess the impact of COVID-19 at this time due to, among other factors, uncertainty regarding the severity and duration of the outbreak domestically and internationally and the effectiveness of federal, state and local governments' efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and respond to its direct and indirect impact on the U.S. economy and economic activity. Other factors are described in Risk Factors section of the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2020 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (" SEC (News - Alert) "). The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005848/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Camfil Air Purifier - City M Video Explaining Lifetime Costs of Air Purifiers - Does Your Air Purifier Stack Up? RIVERDALE, N.J., Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The market is oversaturated with products labeled as air purifiers claiming to deliver HEPA filtration, for your home, office, or classroom. A search for the term "air purifier" on Amazon yields over a thousand results, with the top suggestions boasting price points as low as $50. Air Purifier Comparison Air purifiers have become a hot ticket item due to the role of proper air filtration and ventilation in preventing the spread of COVID-19 infections. However, many of the products that have appeared in response to this demand don't use actual HEPA filters, much less deliver the circulation necessary to protect you from airborne COVID-19 infected particles. While actual HEPA filters should capture 99.995% of particles of the most penetrating particle size (MPPS) and be individually factory tested and certified, the term HEPA is largely unregulated, leading many manufacturers to falsely claim to use 'true' HEPA filters in their air cleaners or air purifiers. Furthermore, lower-cost units can turn out to be significantly more expensive in the long run compared to their seemingly pricier counterparts. Air Purifier Video: Camfil USA City M Air Purifier Comparison Benefits In a new video, Camfil USA air purifier experts explains the factors beyond the initial purchase price that should be considered when choosing which air purifier unit to use, such as: The unit's operational efficiencies. The certified particle capture efficiency of the HEPA airfilters used in the unit. The filter lifetime and frequency of replacement. The air changes per hour (ACH) that the unit delivers. The unit's energy consumption. Watch the full video City M Air Purifier Comparison Benefits for more information on choosing the right air cleaner to protect your lungs and reduce operational costs. About Camfil Clean Air Solutions For more than half a century, Camfil has been helping people breathe cleaner air. As a leading manufacturer of premium clean air solutions, we provide commercial and industrial systems for air filtration and air pollution control that improve worker and equipment productivity, minimize energy use, and benefit human health and the environment. We firmly believe that the best solutions for our customers are the best solutions for our planet, too. That's why every step of the way from design to delivery and across the product life cycle we consider the impact of what we do on people and on the world around us. Through a fresh approach to problem-solving, innovative design, precise process control, and a strong customer focus we aim to conserve more, use less and find better ways so we can all breathe easier. The Camfil Group is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, and has 33 manufacturing sites, six R&D centers, local sales offices in 30 countries, and about 4,800 employees and growing. We proudly serve and support customers in a wide variety of industries and in communities across the world. To discover how Camfil USA can help you to protect people, processes and the environment, visit us at www.camfil.us/ F: Friend Camfil USA on Facebook T: Follow Camfil USA on Twitter Y: Watch Camfil Videos on YouTube L: Follow our LinkedIn Page This press release about City M Air Purifier Comparison Benefits first appeared on Camfil. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/camfil-air-purifier---city-m-video-explaining-lifetime-costs-of-air-purifiers---does-your-air-purifier-stack-up-301384427.html SOURCE Camfil USA [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Chicago Children's Museum Launches Construction Of Its Newest Exhibit, Moen Presents Water City CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Chicago Children's Museum announced the kick-off of the building of its newest exhibit, MOEN Presents Water City. The MOEN Presents Water City exhibit will replace the well-loved Water Ways exhibit, which debuted when Chicago Children's Museum opened at Navy Pier more than 25 years ago. Moen's generous donation will match the grant awarded by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (ILDNR) to begin the construction of the exhibit, which will connect water play and STEM experiences for the next generation of young explorers and their families. "Countless children and families from Chicagoland and around the world have fond memories of Water Ways," said Chicago Children's Museum President and CEO Jennifer Farrington. "While we have had great times with the Water Ways exhibit, we are excited to partner with Moen and ILDNR to engage children in playing and learning with water one of the universal pursuits of childhood." Cheri Phyfer, president of Fortune Brands Global Plumbing Group, said: "Since Moen's founding over 80 years ago, our purpose has been to find new ways for people to experience water, and those experiences aren't limited to the kitchen or bathroom. We're committed to making water experiences better in our communities and environment as well. Partnering with Children's Museum is a great way for us to help educate future generations about the importance of this essential natural resource." The MOEN Presents Water City exhibit will be located in a 1,645 sq. ft. gallery on the museum's third floor, the former location of the Water Ways exhibit. The gallery is in the historic part of Navy Pier called the Head House, which is a 50 ft. tall tower that can be seen on the western elevation of the historic Navy Pier. The current design of MOEN Presents Water City includes a central water feature with three legs radiating from the center to echo the three branches of the Chicago River. The exhibit will include elements that are uniquely Chicago, such as a lock/dam system, Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and recognizable skyscrapers from Chicago's skylie. "Moen is the right partner for the reinvention of the water exhibit," said Farrington. "We share a commitment to successful approaches to STEM learning experiences and believe in the unique potential of water play to inspire children to explore, observe, and nurture their innate curiosity. These are the basic elements of STEM and scientific inquiry." MOEN Presents Water City is scheduled be completed in 2022. About Chicago Children's Museum The mission of Chicago Children's Museum (CCM) is to improve children's lives by creating a community where play and learning connect. CCM is dedicated to young children and the important adults in their lives. Play-filled experiences, including more than 13 interactive exhibits and daily programming in Tinkering Lab, the Art Studio, and Pritzker Playspace, tap into how kids learn. Intentional play-filled experiences for children ages 0-10 develop the foundation for a lifelong love of learning. For the latest information, visit chicagochildrensmuseum.org. About Moen Moen is the #1 consumer faucet brand in North America, offering a vast array of stylish and innovative kitchen and bath faucets, showerheads, accessories, bath safety products, kitchen sinks, garbage disposals, leak detection products and connected home offerings for residential applications that give consumers more power than ever before to understand and control the water that flows through their homes. These thoughtful designs deliver an exceptional user experience and elevate the way people interact with water every day. Moen is committed to sustainability and through its Mission Moen initiative has committed to saving 1 trillion gallons of water, and repurposing 2,000 tons of ocean plastic, by the year 2030 through product and packaging innovation. In addition, Moen Commercial offers superior-performing products that can deliver lower lifetime costs for today's facilities. Moen is part of Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc. (NYSE: FBHS), which creates products and services that fulfill the dreams of home. Moen anchors the Global Plumbing Group (GPG), which also includes several brands under the House of Rohl including Perrin & Rowe, ROHL, Riobel, Shaws and Victoria + Albert. Fortune Brands' other brands include Fiberon composite decking and railing products, Master Lock and Sentry Safe security products, LARSON storm doors and windows, MasterBrand Cabinets and Therma-Tru entry door systems. Fortune Brands is part of the S&P 500 Index and a Fortune 500 Company. For more information, please visit www.FBHS.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chicago-childrens-museum-launches-construction-of-its-newest-exhibit-moen-presents-water-city-301384331.html SOURCE Chicago Children's Museum [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] W. R. Berkley Corporation to Announce Third Quarter 2021 Earnings on October 21, 2021 W. R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE: WRB) will release its third quarter 2021 earnings after the market closes on Thursday, October 21, 2021. A copy of the earnings release will be available on the Company's website at www.berkley.com. The Company has scheduled its quarterly conference call with analysts and investors to discuss its earnings and other information on Thursday,October 21, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. eastern time. A live audio webcast of the conference call may be accessed via the Company's website at www. berkley.com. Please log on at least ten minutes early to register and download and install any necessary software. A replay of the webcast will be available on the Company's website approximately two hours after the end of the call. Founded in 1967, W. R. Berkley Corporation is an insurance holding company that is among the largest commercial lines writers in the United States and operates worldwide in two segments of the property casualty insurance business: Insurance and Reinsurance & Monoline Excess. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005964/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [September 23, 2021] Piper Sandler Expands Global Financial Sponsors Group with Addition of Christian Hess Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE: PIPR), a leading investment bank, is pleased to announce the addition of Christian Hess. He is joining the London office as a managing director and European head of financial sponsors. Hess brings over 30 years of experience and a proven track record in successfully developing and managing relationships with private equity firms spanning across the mid-cap and large-cap sponsor universe. Prior to joining Piper Sandler, Hess served six years at Investec as a private equity client group head. Prior to that, he served 16 years at UBS, where he co-founded and led the European financial sponsors and served as head of investment banking coverage, EMEA. Piper Sandler global head of financial sponsors, David Lee (News - Alert) , said "With the addition of Christian, we are extending our highly successful North Americanfinancial sponsors coverage model in Europe. Not only will Christian enhance the firm's connectivity with key European sponsors and family offices, but as the number of cross-border transactions continues to rise, he will play a critical role in helping the firm better serve our domestic sponsor client base with actionable deal flow and relevant geographic insights." Peter Hall, head of European investment banking, said "Christian's UK and pan-European experience will benefit both the firm and our private equity clients. As we grow Piper Sandler's European sector capabilities in healthcare, energy, chemicals, consumer, technology, industrial services and financial services, a coordinated sponsor coverage effort will be hugely additive. We look forward to leveraging Christian's deep relationships and strategic insights for the benefit of our clients." Hess is trilingual in German, English and French and read law and Betriebswirtschaftslehre at Hamburg University before graduating with first class honors from EAP - European School of Management. ABOUT PIPER SANDLER Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE: PIPR) is a leading investment bank driven to help clients Realize the Power of Partnership. Securities brokerage and investment banking services are offered in the U.S. through Piper Sandler & Co., member SIPC and NYSE; in Europe through Piper Sandler Ltd., authorized and regulated by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority; and in Hong Kong through Piper Sandler Hong Kong Limited, authorized and regulated by the Securities and Futures Commission. Alternative asset management and fixed income advisory services are offered through separately registered advisory affiliates. 2021. Since 1895. Piper Sandler Companies. 800 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402-7036 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005968/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Today LGBT activists savor their victory over delicious chicken sandwiches as Mayor & Council tacitly admit that the bidding process for New KCI contracts is sketchy at best. Translation . . . NOBODY IS HAPPY WITH NEW KCI AND SLAP FIGHTING OVER CONCESSIONS REVEALS KANSAS CITY'S NEW AIRPORT SUFFERING TROUBLE WITH TAKEOFF!!! Of course TKC readers predicted all of this and none of today's drama is REALLY that surprising for those who realize that the new airport is really just a feeding frenzy for the politically connected. Nevertheless . . . We share MSM feigning surprise over a process that has been corrupted from the start. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . . Plans For Chick-Fil-A At Kansas City Airport Out, More Minority-Owned Eateries In After pushback from LGBTQ advocates, Chick-Fil-A has been removed as a possible fast food option at the new KCI Airport terminal. But the proposed vendor still faces opposition from Kansas City staples Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que and J. Rieger & Co. Distillery City council tables KCI concession management contract KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The Kansas City Transportation, infrastructure and operations committee stopped short of approving a concessions management group at the new airport. The Mayor and other council members asked for more information on how proposals compare across the board, hoping to make a decision next week. KCMO City Council committee decision on company to manage concessions at KCI terminal postponed KANSAS CITY, Mo - A big-ticket agenda item at the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council's Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee meeting was whether to recommend Vantage Airport Group as the head of concessions at the new terminal of the Kansas City International Airport. Developing . . . Amid a crisis on the border, once again Kansas City could soon be receiving new guests. To wit . . . ACTIVISTS URGE MAYOR & COUNCIL TO QUICKLY PASS A RESOLUTION THAT WELCOMES HAITIANS TO KANSAS CITY!!! Debate over whipping and chasing down refugees has sparked a new wave of advocacy and a call to action. Already Mayor Q has welcomed Afghan refugees and his progressive housing/camping policies have inspired many new homeless residents to make their home in Kansas City. And so . . . A great many local advocates don't think welcoming even more new guests would be such a stretch. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . . Haitian migrants and refugees cross the Rio Grande - in pictures In the past few weeks more than 12,000 Haitians have arrived in Del Rio, Texas, gathering in a huge makeshift camp. Many have to cross the Rio Grande from Del Rio to Ciudad Acuna to seek food and supplies in Mexico to bring back to family members waiting in the US. Grim echoes of history in images of Haitians at US-Mexico border Shocking images of horse-mounted officers corralling Haitian migrants along the US-Mexico border are evoking dark comparisons to US slavery and the country's historical mistreatment of black people. The widely shared images, taken by an AFP photographer earlier this week, appear to show US Border Patrol agents on horseback using their reins against Haitian migrants and pushing them back towards the Rio Grande river that divides Texas and Mexico. House Democrats urge Biden to halt deportations of Haitian migrants President Biden is facing increased scrutiny from members of his own party over his administration's treatment of Haitian migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. In letters to administration officials, meetings at the White House and a press conference outside the Capitol on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers urged the administration to suspend deportation flights to Haiti, and demanded accountability for the alleged mistreatment of Haitian migrants by U.S. Expelled Haitian migrants try to get back on plane returning to US A tense situation in Port-au-Prince occurred Tuesday when many deported Haitian migrants expressed anger and some even tried unsuccessfully to get back on a plane returning to the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Fox News Tuesday that three U.S. Angry scenes at Haiti airport as deported migrants arrive The US is flying migrants out of a Texas border town where 13,000 have gathered in makeshift camps. Clip of Biden saying it wouldn't matter if Haiti 'sunk' into the sea reemerges A three-decade-old clip of US president Joe Biden saying "it would not matter" if Haiti sunk has resurfaced as his administration faces a backlash for its handling of the influx of Haitian migrants. The remarks were made by Mr Biden in 1994 during an interview with PBS when he was the senator for Delaware. Some Haitians at U.S. border released, others deported as pressure builds on Biden Amid deteriorating conditions in migrant camps on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. authorities on Wednesday tried to deal with thousands of the mostly Haitian migrants that have gathered, releasing some in south Texas while deporting others on flights. Developing . . . As of this writing there are three prog blogs propped up by donations that are attempting to replace the Kansas City Star by giving freelance work to a couple of dozen washed up reporters, filing a few fiery blog posts a day and constantly begging for donations. Ailing local media outlets are regurgitating their content without warning readers that a great deal of it is backed by way of dark money political donations. And today their target is the Kansas City pro-police recall effort that has CONSISTENTLY FAILED over the past year. The shocker and local journalism groundbreaking fun fact . . . "Some of the PACs members have close ties to the Kansas City Police Department." Really!?!?! The scintillating deets . . . Stop the presses: It's a former lady cop and two housewives. Or at least that's as much as these newsies know. The exhaustive and mostly biased report only hints at support on council and the Northland millionaire McMansion power players who REALLY are backing up this mostly doomed effort. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . . And be sure to donate 50 bucks to one of these J-School beggars for the pleasure of reading . . . Who is Taking KC Back? Behind the PAC Hoping to Oust Multiple Council Members A new political action committee in Kansas City, Missouri, is quietly raising its influence and aims to have a say in how City Hall conducts business - and who is in office to do it. Taking KC Back was behind the push to recall Mayor Quinton Lucas and 4th District Councilman Eric Bunch. Developing . . . In this quick compilation we share info on local convictions reported and ongoing legal battles. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . . Authorities talk about how national missing persons cases can affect cases in the Kansas City Website after website shows photo after photo. But behind every face, the same question: Where are they?Officer John Lacy has worked with Overland Park's Police Department for years and has spoken to countless families. "We want answers," he said. "The family, they want answers."Authorities said when stories like Gabby Petito's grab national headlines, it does give a boost to local cases. Olathe business owner pleads guilty to three counts of sexual battery JOHNSON COUNTY, KS (KCTV) --- An Olathe man has pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery. Kulavudhi Kasemvudhi, the owner of Balanced Life Massage and Wellness in Olathe, will spend the next 36 months in prison and was placed on probation for 24 months. 21-year-old woman pleads guilty to carjacking in Country Club Plaza parking garage by: Brian Dulle Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A 21-year-old Kansas City, Kansas woman pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to stealing a vehicle at gunpoint from a parking garage at the Country Club Plaza last year. Maricela Delores Lozano pleaded guilty to one count of carjacking and one count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. East Bottoms man sentenced in 2019 fatality hit and run A Kansas City man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison in connection with a hit and run accident at 1800 E. Front Street that resulted in the death of 78 year old Emma Hayes of Kansas City on April 9th, 2019. Kansas City man charged with murder in Monday night shooting by: Juan Cisneros Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Jackson County Prosecutor's Office has charged a Kansas City man with second-degree murder in a Monday night shooting. Paul Johnson, 56, also faces charges of second-degree assault, two counts of armed criminal action, unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm. Missouri Attorney General argues Kevin Strickland case needs to be moved out of Jackson County, files new motions to appeals court JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -- Kevin Strickland is the first Missouri defendant to road test a new law which gives prosecutors the power to bring old convictions back before judges. He's hitting every road block. How did the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department get Jay-Z's attention? KANSAS CITY, Kan. - On Monday, Jay-Z's group, Roc Nation, filed a petition looking for records of alleged misconduct at the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department. Since then, one of his attorneys told KSHB 41 News that they've received a lot of calls - not just from ordinary folks, but from former law enforcement who want to share their stories of alleged corruption within the department. Developing . . . For newbies, here's a fundamental lesson . . . A big part of politics is about forming coalitions with like-minded people in order to garner greater representation. The voting game is also about a lot of shady backdoor shenanigans but that post is for another day. Let's get one thing straight . . . Missouri Democrats don't know what they're doing. They're a SUPER MINORITY party and even when running against BOOGEYMAN FORMER PREZ TRUMP they still managed to lose EVERY STATEWIDE CONTEST . Missouri Democrats have become possibly the most hapless, misguided and incompetent group of politicos the Midwest has ever witnessed. They stand to lose even more ground in the upcoming midterms as Republicans are out for blood and even the most diehard CNN pundit expects a massive red wave. Don't get it twisted . . . TKC is not MAGA and we completely recognize that a great deal of KCMO will always vote along Democratic Party lines . . . That's a fact of life and somewhat comforting. However . . . Missouri State Senator Greg Razer entered office as a one issue candidate and his focus on the expulsion of a historical exhibit seems myopic and lame given so many other worthwhile challenges confronting Kansas City. What's worse is that he does a disservice to every other LGBT office-holder who might follow . . . His focus is stereotypical and typecasts every openly gay politico into the role of activist. Meanwhile . . . Kansas City continues to lose ground in Jeff City and Missouri Democrats risk becoming even less than totally irrelevant . . . The current doldrums endured by the Missouri Dems and their DOUBLE DOWN ON IDENTITY POLITICS threatens to bolster the ranks of Republicans and chase away voters who would otherwise support the more important items from their agenda like healthcare access, more money for education, voting rights and higher wages. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . . This is just a hunch but it seems likely that far more adults are upset about this issue than students who might already understand how to ignore trolling. Still, the controversy is good for clicks, shares, likes and interaction amongst adults who have likely forgotten that so much high school drama is a waste of time. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . . Park Hill School District hosts listening session with students, staff after racist petition circulates on social media KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- Students and staff in the Park Hill School District spent some time on Wednesday discussing their feelings about a racist incident that occurred within the Park Hill South High School community late last week. After Racist Incident At Park Hill South High School, A Black Parent Calls For More Transparency High schoolers at Park Hill South in Kansas City allegedly circulated a racist petition last week that called to bring slavery back. On Friday, the school's principal, Kerrie Herren, informed parents via email that a racist incident had occurred, but did not go into detail. School district investigates after Park Hill South students circulate racist petition KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Park Hill School District is responding after some students circulated a petition calling for the return of slavery. Other students are also weighing in, saying all this has created an uncomfortable environment in the halls of Park Hill South High School. Here's an "alternartive" hot take just for balance . . . Park Hill South Students Say Black Student "Can Work in My Fields, it Will Help Him Lose Weight" A Missouri school district is in a state of outrage following the explosive discovery of a petition created by white students demanding the reinstatement of slavery. The incident has been confirmed by Ryan Staley who is Principal of Lead Innovation Studio, an educational program within the Park Hill South School District. Park Hill South condemns petition students circulated calling to bring back slavery Park Hill South is taking action to condemn a petition that students circulated calling to bring back slavery. The reaction from district leaders was swift after a group of Park Hill South students posted unacceptable, racists comments online."It doesn't matter their intent, the impact is real. Developing . . . Tonight's reminder to drive safely and will certainly be a talking point for activists who profit by way of consulting on building equally dangerous bike lanes. Here's how the traffic accident happened . . . "That's when the 84-year-old pedestrian began to cross Wornall against the light. Another SUV in the adjacent lane stopped to let her cross, blocking the GMC Acadia's view." Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . . Need negative Covid PCR test within 3 days of ARRIVAL - quite tricky unless you use one of the really expensive, NOT covered by state or health plans, testing servicesand be prepared to wear mask, and possibly for requirement to have recent (done in Russia) PCR test to get into some venuesCovid while not as bad as US these days had soared in June and July, going up 5-6 times, now back down quite a bit, but still high-ish. A number of folks have posted here not that big a deal in say Moscow, this attitude on the part of Russians is what led from a daily case count in the range of 1-2,000 to close to 10,000with deaths also soaring. As for phone, if it works in GSM mode, should workGoogle this to also check the band and make sure yours supports it. Most folks tend to just get a Russian SIM from one of 3 big providers thereplans are dirt cheap for local calls, texts, etc. You can and should just do a query here at TA in box above for cell phones as there have been literally thousands of posts and questions answered on this topic. As for temps, check any reputable weather site for daily averagesWAY more informative then relying on anecdotal comments from any of us, including our SUPERB Russian locals! 9/21: This was our big driving day: We drove from Meteora all the way to Nafplio, through probably 30 or more tunnels (some of them really long) and spent a lot of money at toll stations. Zeus made his presence briefly known with some lightning, and it rained a bit, the first time in our entire trip. We crossed over to the Peloponnese on the Rio-Antirrio Bridge (near Patras), one of the world's longest cable-stayed bridges. We didn't make a stop until we got to Ancient Corinth, where we had lunch at a taverna overlooking the archeological site, which has yet another Temple of Apollo, dating to 560 BC. Corinth is also famous for being the site where St. Paul lived and preached. Then we proceeded on to Nafplio, where we are staying at Marianna, which has a gorgeous view of the harbor. At check-in we were treated with fresh lemonade. 9/22: In the morning we drove to Mycenae (a short distance from Nafplio), the home of Agamemnon, walked around the site, enjoyed the wonderful view from the top, and visited the museum. We have seen so many ruins and museums on this trip it seems that it should be getting repetitious, but it isn't. Each have their own fascinating histories. We got back in the early afternoon to get our Covid tests, which turned out negative... whew. We didn't think they wouldn't, but the uncertainty had been a little dark cloud following us on this trip. Glad that's over, but not glad the trip is almost over! We spent the rest of the day exploring around old Town Nafplio and walking along the water and relaxing. 9/23: Our last full day in Greece. We made the most of it: Drove from Nafplio to Mystras, through Sparta which is just a modern town, no remnants of its fascinating past. But it was cool to see the area which holds that history. We chose Mystras to visit because of its difference to the classical ruins we've seen. The Byzantine ruins are a few thousand years newer, and much more intact. We climbed up to near the top, which was a bit easier today; in the 70s F instead of the 90s! We were supposed to have one more day in Nafplio, but our airline changed our flight to one day earlier so we missed the opportunity to go to Epidaurus and explore more of Nafplio. I guess we'll just have to come back! The assassination attempt on Serhiy Shefir, First Aide to the President of Ukraine, was a real one, not a staged stunt, so today law enforcement will continue searching for evidence in the forest area outside Kyiv, around the ambush site. Thats according to Artem Shevchenko, Communications Chief at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ukrinform reports. "Yesterday, two dozen cartridge casings were retrieved, left by a shooter at the crime scene following the assassination attempt on president's first aide. These are caliber 7'62 by 39 mm. Experts with the State Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine believe that such casings can rarely be found in our country," Shevchenko said. The spokesman noted that the casings were made in Hungary, "but the cartridge itself may have been reassembled in Germany. Old Hungarian cartridges had been bought, gunpowder had been swapped, then the cartridges were re-marked as civilian ammunition, and then bullets were re-inserted. Experts will tell you more about them once they examine what doctors have retrieved from the body of a driver who, fortunately, is alive, and maybe they'll find another bullet in the punctured wheel of the Audi A8. So the detailed ballistic examination is yet to be performed. Already now it is clear that the culprit chose simple and rather cheap ammo. So, although it wasnt sniper fire, it was still an actual assassination attempt, not a staging." According to Shevchenko, "the shooter has carefully selected a firing position, allowing him to observe the vehicle from afar, identify a moving target, prepare for the shot, and open fire on the approaching car." "We have interrogated witnesses mushroom pickers who were around and the passengers of the car that was driving behind Shefir's. Their testimonies about the sounds of the fire are quite similar. Tree branches, possibly broken by the shooter as he was getting into position, were also retrieved from the scene, Shevchenko added. Today, the police and the National Guard will continue a thorough search in the forest area. "They will look for anything important. It is possible that the criminal has dropped their weapon there. Or maybe not. In another attempt, on Amina Okueva, on October 30, 2017, which unfortunately was successful for the perpetrators, we found a Cheskaya Zbroyovka army rifle, a rather rare piece, in a forest on the third day following the attack. The DNA of who is now a defendant in the case, Redkin, was recovered from three spots on the rifle. His second victim, the wounded Adam Osmayev, has already pointed out in a social network the similarity of the scheme of the two crimes," Shevchenko said. "In general, such an attack from the forest area on a moving car, involving such ammunition doesnt guarantee a fatal outcome for the passenger, while, as Okuyeva's case shows, it can indeed be fatal," said the spokesman. As Ukrinform reported earlier, on September 22, Serhiy Shefir's car was fired on just outside Kyiv. The driver was wounded in the incident. He is alive and underwent surgery. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, more than 10 bullets have hit the targeted car. The National Police suggest the attempt aimed to exert pressure on the authorities and destabilize the political situation. An inquiry is underway into the case, tentatively qualified as "attempted murder of two or more persons" (Article 115 of the Criminal Code). im Over the past 24 hours, on September 22, Russia-led armed groups intensified their attacks on the defense positions of Ukraines Joint Forces in Ukraines east, violating the ceasefire 12 times, including two times with the use of weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements. Thats according to the defense ministrys press service, Ukrinform reports. In the direction of Svitlodarsk, the enemy opened aimed fire on the positions of Ukrainian soldiers, using large-caliber machine guns. In the Azov Sea littoral, the enemy flew unmanned aerial vehicles three times, using them to drop VOG-17 shells near Pavlopil and twice near Vodyane. Also near the said villages, the enemy fired three times their grenade launchers of various systems and small arms, with two of the attacks targeting Vodiane. Russian mercenaries fired small arms at the settlements of Zaitseve and Novotoshkivske. Outside the latter settlement, illegal armed groups twice used grenade launchers of various systems. Near Prychepylivka, Russian occupation forces twice used banned weapons, firing 120 mm mortars 23 times. Amid past days hostilities, two Ukrainian soldiers sustained gunshot wounds. After receiving first aid, they were evacuated to a medical facility where they will be undergoing treatment. Both remain in satisfactory condition, the report adds. Read also: Defense Minister Taran approves concept of military personnel policy Ukrainian military defended pro-actively and suppressed enemy fire, using weapons green-lighted by the Minsk agreements. Thanks to the efforts of Ukrainian defenders, their positions remained intact. Over the past day, September 23, no new ceasefire violations were reported. The number of civilian casualties due to active hostilities and damage to civilian objects in eastern Ukraine has halved compared to the previous six months. This was stated by the head of the UN Monitoring Mission for Human Rights in Ukraine (HRMMU), Matilda Bogner, as she presented the 32nd report on human rights over the monitoring period from February 1 to July 31, 2021, according to an Ukrinform correspondent. It was noted that from the beginning of the new monitoring period on February 1, 2021, to September 20 inclusive, the UN Monitoring Mission for Human Rights in Ukraine had recorded 17 civilian deaths were as a result of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. From February 1 to July 31, 2021, a total of 62 civilian casualties were confirmed, including 15 dead and 47 wounded. This is 51% more than in the previous six months, Bogner said. She added that the trend toward the increase in civilian casualties as a result of active hostilities prevails as from the end of the reporting period to September 20, 16 civilian casualties were recorded amid active hostilities, including two dead and 14 wounded. According to the HRMMU, these monthly figures are the highest since June 2020. In addition, the Mission added, the ceasefire sealed on July 27, 2020, led to an 83% reduction in civilian casualties compared to the previous year. Read also: President of Slovakia calls attention to human rights violations in occupied Crimea This means that it is possible to establish an effective ceasefire that protects the lives of civilians, the HRMMU believes. The Mission called on all parties to the conflict to fully implement the ceasefire, and thus significantly reduce the impact of hostilities on the civilian population. The HRMMU report is based on observations made during 92 field visits, 12 visits to detention sites, 82 court hearings, and 75 meetings, as well as 1,156 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses of human rights violations, and other stakeholders. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) monitors, reports and advocates on the human rights situation in Ukraine, with a particular focus on the conflict area of eastern Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. HRMMU was deployed as part of the Human Rights Up Front policy of the UN Secretary-General. im Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba took part in a meeting of the Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM, which includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian MFA press service. The meeting took place as part of the official visit of the President of Ukraine and the Ukrainian delegation to New York to participate in the high segment of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. We have outlined certain economic steps and projects that we will take to develop trade and international logistics through the GUAM countries. Secretary General Altai Efendiev noted that today was the most substantive meeting of GUAM ministers in recent years, Kuleba said. The parties discussed further political cooperation within the organization, sectoral cooperation between Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan in the fields of economy, trade, transport, IT and innovation. Kuleba reminded of the successful holding of the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform in Kyiv and thanked GUAM Secretary General Altai Efendiev, Moldovan President Maia Sandu and Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili for their participation. As Ukrinform reported, on September 20, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the United States on an official visit to participate in the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. iy Gas shortages in Europe can be avoided if Gazprom allows European companies to buy natural gas at receipt points located on the Russia-Ukraine border. Thats according to Chairman of the board of Naftogaz of Ukraine, Yuriy Vitrenko, Ukrinform reports referring to his Facebook post. To this end (to tackle the gas shortage in Europe ed.) Gazprom on its electronic platform should now start offering its European counterparts gas supplies with a receipt point at the Russia-Ukraine border (the Sudzha gas measuring station). Gazprom's European counterparts would thus be able to book transit through Ukraine themselves. There are definitely no issues with this on our side as we have everything open and accessible, Vitrenko said. Read also: Zelensky sets up special group to counter threats from Nord Stream 2 In his opinion, the fact that Gazprom refuses to move the gas receipt point proves the abuse of their dominant position in the European market. The Naftogaz chief has stressed that the Russian monopoly does not play by European rules, and that the Kremlin continues to use gas as a geopolitical weapon against Europe and Ukraine. To those who believe in the Kremlin and succumb to blackmail that its with the launch of Nord Stream 2 that Europe will see more gas and, consequently, lower prices: Gazprom after the launch of Nord Stream 2 may switch the volumes that now flow through Ukraine to Nord Stream 2. And therefore therell be no additional volumes of gas, its only the route that will change, Vitrenko noted. He also welcomed the decision by the German regulator to allow Polands PGNiG to process the certification application filed by the Nord Stream 2 operator. As reported, Polands oil and gas company PGNiG has gained the right to participate in the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. On September 10, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom announced the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipe laid from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing Ukraine. Gazprom is the projects sole shareholder. At the same time, throughout September, gas prices in the EU energy markets were rising steadily, almost reaching the psychological mark of $1,000 per 1,000 cubic meters. This price jump occurred on the eve of certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and against the background of Gazprom's refusal to transmit additional volumes to the European Union. As a result, gas reserves in European gas storage facilities currently stand below 71% of whats required to safely pass the winter period, while in previous years by this date the stocks had reached about 96%. In Ukraine, 3.8% of the working population work in the creative industries. "The creative economy contributes UAH 117 billion to the country's GDP, accounting almost for 4% of added value. A total of 3.8% of the working population of Ukraine work in creative industries," Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko said at the 5th annual international forum "Creative Ukraine", an Ukrinform correspondent reports. According to him, such data are similar to those of developed democracies. "Every tenth business entity is a creative entrepreneur. And it does not mean anything if a company is small as everything may change tomorrow," the minister added. Tkachenko believes that investors may benefit from investing in the creative economy. For example, he added, a creative industry worker generates greater value than a worker of other sectors of the economy. "This is UAH 332 compared to transport, machine building, and financial and insurance activities," Tkachenko said. At the same time, the minister added, the creative industries account for 30% of total exports of services. ol Turkey has thanked Ukraine for assistance in extinguishing massive wildfires in the country this summer, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry has reported. According to the report, this issue was discussed during a phone call between Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky and his Turkish counterpart Suleyman Soylu. "The Turkish minister of the interior expressed his deep gratitude to the Ukrainian side for the assistance provided by the fire brigade of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in extinguishing massive wildfires," the report said. Monastyrsky, in turn, thanked Turkey for the prompt response and effective assistance from Turkish border guards in the recent return to Ukraine of its citizen who is an important witness in a number of criminal cases. Soylu said the Turkish side was ready for further concrete steps in the search for, detention and extradition of dangerous criminals. "We are at a distance of one phone call to resolve urgent issues," Soylu said. Monastyrsky praised the level of cooperation between the interior ministries of Ukraine and Turkey, adding that Ukraine intends to develop the projects that have already been launched and to implement the previously reached agreements. Both parties expressed hope for the closest opportunity for personal acquaintance. On July 28, wildfires broke out in the area of Manavgat (Antalya province), spreading to the provinces of Osmaniye, Kayseri, Kocaeli, Adana, Mersin, and Mugla. On July 30, Ukraine deployed two An-32P firefighting planes with a 14-strong support group to help Turkish firefighters. op Ukraine is well aware of all the threats stemming from the ongoing integration process between Belarus and Russia, although it has not yet raised the issue at the UN General Assembly. Thats according to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba who spoke at a virtual briefing in New York, posted on his Facebook page, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "We are very aware of all the dangers of the integration process of Belarus and Russia, while ensuring the security of the state is also one of the priorities of our Foreign Policy Strategy. However, at the meetings here in New York, the issue hasnt been raised yet," Kuleba said. He has noted the two key topics running through all meetings the president of Ukraine had in New York. The first is the release of Ukrainian political prisoners held by the Kremlin in the occupied territories of Ukraine and Russia. "At each meeting, we pass on a list of these prisoners and ask for any help to have them released. And the second issue is the Crimea Platform, on which all our interlocutors comment very positively as we discuss further development of this initiative," said the head of Ukrainian diplomacy. As reported earlier, on September 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belaruss Alexander Lukashenko agreed on 28 programs to deepen the "integration" of the two countries. At the same time, international experts believe Russia is actually absorbing the neighboring country. im Ukraine is actively working to ensure that U.S. financial assistance to the country in the coming years reaches $1 billion. Thats according to Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba who spoke at a virtual briefing in New York, aired on his Facebook page, Ukrinform reports. "My position is very simple, and I have already started discussing it with the U.S. Congress and administration. I believe that the level of financial support for Ukraine on the part of the United States should reach $1 billion, and it should happen in the coming years. There are all the political and security preconditions to this end, and there are many forces in Congress that already support the initiative," Kuleba said. He noted that this "will not happen now," but Ukraine will actively work to make it happen in the coming years. Kuleba stressed that a significant part of the amount should be allocated for the security sector. According to the top diplomat, the "club of states" that receive $1 billion and over in aid from the United States is a "club of the chosen ones its better than any generalized status," and Ukraine will strive to achieve this. The head of Ukrainian diplomacy also said that the issue of purchasing or obtaining technology to strengthen Ukraine's air and missile defenses is a top priority in the countrys dialogue with the United States. "This is all realistic ... By the way, look at how nervously Russia reacts to the process, to our cooperation, because you should understand that they want us to be weak, while we strive to be strong. Therefore, we will work with the United States and other powers to strengthen Ukraine's defense capabilities," the minister concluded. As reported earlier, a U.S. House committee approved a security aid package to Ukraine for 2022 in the amount of $300 million. im In New York, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson have discussed cooperation between the two countries in some areas. President Zelensky wrote about this on his Twitter account, Ukrinform reports. During a meeting with my friend Boris Johnson discussed strengthening interaction in the fields of trade, defense, finance, energy. Summed up the first results of the FTA - a 70% increase in trade, reads the report. According to the Presidents Office, Zelensky and Johnson discussed the security situation in the east and around Ukraine, in particular in the region of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Zelensky also thanked for supporting Ukraines territorial integrity and Crimea Platform. During the meeting, special attention was paid to further cooperation with the United Kingdom on the development of Ukraine's defense capabilities and strengthening the Ukrainian fleet. In addition, Zelensky handed over to the British prime minister a list of almost 450 Ukrainians who are illegally detained in temporarily uncontrolled territories and in Russia. The parties also discussed cooperation in the field of energy, including nuclear, and the challenges for the European region in connection with the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project. President Zelensky stressed that this project is a geopolitical weapon of Russia. The parties discussed further political dialogue activities at the highest level, including the inaugural meeting of the Strategic Partnership Dialogue. Zelensky also informed Johnson about his intention to take part in the high-level segment of the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is due to place in Glasgow on November 1-2. Zelensky invited Johnson to pay a visit to Ukraine. As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on September 22. President Zelensky called on NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to facilitate the release of Ukrainians illegally detained in temporarily uncontrolled territories and in the Russian Federation. iy Ukraine authorities dont know when the country will receive a NATO Membership Action Plan as its Euro-Atlantic integration has been dragging for an indecently long time. This was stated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba who spoke at a virtual briefing in New York, aired on his Facebook page, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "There is no understanding when Ukraine will receive the MAP, but its actually a frank discussion, a friendly one, by the way, an open conversation that we have with NATO, stating that this integration (process ed.) cant last forever," Kuleba said. The foreign minister also mentioned his recent meeting with the head of one of the delegations to the 2008 Bucharest summit, who told Kuleba that he had thought at the time it would only take a few years for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. But the process has been dragging on. Its been dragging on for an indecently long time. Therefore, I think everyone needs to approach the issue more pragmatically and practically, because there can be no endless integration. Everything must have its certainty and its clarity, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy stressed. Kuleba noted that both NATO and Ukraine are convinced that they are making each other stronger, and that his country would pursue further reform, required for Euro-Atlantic integration. Today, the NATO secretary general praised Ukraine's reforms and thanked the president of Ukraine for his commitment to the path of reforms, the minister said. The official noted that Ukraine will speak openly about the members of the Alliance who have no interest in Ukraines reforms, while simply exploiting this argument to hinder the countrys Euro-Atlantic integration. Read also: Military expert tells how NATO helping Ukraine strengthen its defense capabilities As Ukrinform reported earlier, during his New York visit, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The head of state expressed confidence that without a country like Ukraine, the Alliance would be weaker. im Estonia calls on the international community not to forget about Russia's occupation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine. We cant forget the occupied Crimean peninsula and the situation in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has our strong and unwavering support for their sovereignty, territorial integrity and for the nonrecognition policy of the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, President of the Republic of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid said at the 76th United Nations General Assembly on September 22, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. In her view, security is indivisible Ukrainian security is also ours. As an elected member of the UN Security Council, we continue to keep the issue of Russias aggression in Donbas and illegal annexation of Crimea on the UNSC agenda, the President of Estonia stressed. As reported, in late August, Kaljulaid said the EU should be bolder in its enlargement as regards Eastern partners, but Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia may need another 20 years of work to get prepared for EU membership. ol The Cabinet of Ministers sealed the agreement between the governments of Ukraine and the Republic of Peru on the abolition of short-stay visa requirements. The relevant decision was made at the Cabinets meeting on September 22, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. According to the explanatory note, the agreement between the governments enters into force on the 30th day upon the date of receipt of the last written notification of the parties' completion of the necessary domestic procedures through diplomatic channels. It is expected that the implementation of the agreement will intensify people-to-people contacts and increase the number of Peruvian citizens traveling to Ukraine, which will have a positive impact on the development of the domestic tourism industry and boost partnerships and cooperation in economic, cultural, humanitarian, and other areas. As reported, on July 15, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba and Ambassador of Peru to Poland and Ukraine Alberto Efrain Wilfredo Salas Baraona signed the agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Peru to abolish short-stay visa requirements. ol In times of hybrid wars, Ukraine's reputation and positive recognition abroad is what is able to ensure national security. Thats according to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba who delivered a welcoming speech at the International Cultural Diplomacy Forum, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. Ukraine's reputation and its positive recognition abroad is more than just a country's brand. In times of hybrid wars and misinformation, this is the key to the security of our state. We are systematically working to change the way Ukraine is perceived globally, to form and promote a positive national brand by means of soft power, Kuleba said. The minister noted that shaping and promoting a positive image of Ukraine in the world is one of the six key priorities of the countrys Foreign Policy Strategy. The head of Ukrainian diplomacy also outlined four key tasks of cultural diplomacy: to defend the countrys cultural and information sovereignty; to promote the added value that Ukraine creates for the rest of the world; to strengthen understanding of and trust in the country; and to spread awareness about Ukraine as a country of new opportunities. As Ukrinform reported earlier, in March 2021, the Foreign Ministry adopted a five-year Strategy of Public Diplomacy, which formulated areas of efforts to promote the countrys positive image abroad. im Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has thanked Japanese Ambassador to Ukraine Takashi Kurai, who is ending his diplomatic functions, for strengthening cooperation between the two countries, according to a statement posted on the website of the Ukrainian government. Shmyhal thanked the ambassador for his personal efforts aimed at enhancing friendly relations and strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and Japan in all areas, the report said. "Our active cooperation has given an important impetus to the further comprehensive development of relations between the two countries," Shmyhal said. He thanked Japan for participating in the inaugural summit of the Crimea Platform and for joining the declaration of its participants. "We appreciate financial and humanitarian assistance from the Government of Japan, as well as efforts to support democratic reforms in our country, rebuild the eastern regions affected by armed aggression and support internally displaced persons from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine," Shmyhal said. Kurai, in turn, said that Japan would continue to actively support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. op The Russian Federation, as an occupying power, must stop violating international humanitarian law, international law, and human rights in Crimea. "We continued to record violations of international law, human rights, and international humanitarian law in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, occupied by the Russian Federation. We gave recommendations for eliminating these violations committed by the Russian Federation as an occupying power," Matilda Bogner, the Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said at the presentation of the 32nd report on human rights situation, Ukrinform reports. In particular, the Mission pointed to restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly on the peninsula, persecution of Crimean Tatars, torture and ill-treatment of Crimean residents, as well as violations of the right to a fair trial. "Russia's total requirement to obtain prior permission to hold any public assembly restricts the freedom of peaceful assembly on the peninsula," Bogner said. In particular, she mentioned the detention of supporters of opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who held peaceful protests in Crimea, as well as the detention and imposition of administrative sanctions on 58 people who had a peaceful assembly in support of Crimean Tatar activists Nariman Dzhelyalov, Eldar Odamanov, Aziz Akhmetov, Asan Akhmetov, and Shevket Useinov. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission reminded of the torture and ill-treatment of Crimean journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko who had been convicted of illegal manufacture of an explosive device. "Reprisals against those who express critical or independent views must end, and fundamental freedoms must be respected," Bogner concluded. The new 32nd report on the human rights situation in Ukraine covers six months of monitoring from 1 February to 31 July 2021. The Mission plans to publish updated information on the human rights situation in Ukraine in early November, and the next full report in March 2022. ol Over 144,000 people were vaccinated against COVID-19 in Ukraine on September 22, the Ukrainian Health Ministry has reported on Facebook. "As many as 144,768 people were vaccinated against COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, on September 22, 2021. Some 91,615 people received their first dose, and 53,153 people were fully vaccinated," the report reads. According to the ministry, 953 mobile vaccination teams, 2,993 vaccination sites, and 344 vaccination centers were operating across the country in the past day. A total of 11,826,357 doses have been administered in Ukraine since it launched the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with 6,527,040 people receiving their first dose and 5,299,317 people receiving both doses (two people received their first dose abroad). Some 7,866 new COVID-19 cases were recorded in Ukraine on September 22. op A civilian plane took off from Kabul airport with about 100 Ukrainian nationals on board, the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported on its Facebook page. "International negotiations on the possible evacuation of Ukrainian citizens from Afghanistan have been held over the past few days. Throughout the period, Ukrainian diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representatives of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the Office of the President of Ukraine have been negotiating the possibility of evacuating Ukrainian citizens and their families, the report says. Representatives of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Republic of Turkey, the State of Qatar and Afghanistan took an active part in the talks. "This morning the success was achieved in negotiations and a civilian plane took off from Kabul airport. There are about 100 people on board. The plane with the evacuees is expected to arrive in Kyiv within 24 hours," the Main Directorate of Intelligence said. "Once again, Ukraine has showed its determination to help its own citizens abroad, and has extended a helping hand to citizens of other countries who need it. iy Refaat Ziadeh, 59, a refugee from Syria while receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Refaat Ziadeh, 59, a refugee from Syria, never thought he would be one of the first refugees to receive the COVID vaccine in Egypt, but as Egypt started vaccine rollout nationwide earlier this year, refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR have been included in the Governments national response plan. I had not initially realized at first that my family is eligible to register to receive the vaccine using our UNHCR identification documents until one of the doctors at Caritas [UNHCR implementing partner for primary healthcare] informed me, said Ziadeh. In Egypt, UNHCR is mandated by the Government of Egypt to register asylum-seekers and determine refugee status since 1954. By providing a UNHCR identification document, UNHCR ensures that refugees and asylum-seekers can access an array of rights, including access to residence permits, access to services and protection against Refoulement. I was very reluctant at first but a few weeks after I recovered from a severe COVID infection that gravely affected my health and left me unemployed for a month, I registered myself and my entire family there was no way I would survive another infection, Ziadeh explained. Only a few weeks went by before their appointment was confirmed and Ziadeh and his wife were greeted by a doctor at a vaccination center in their neighborhood who addressed their questions and dispelled many of the rumors spreading in their community. In less than 30 minutes, the couple had received their first inoculation free of charge. We are grateful to the Government of Egypt for their generosity in including refugees and asylum-seekers in the COVID national response plan, both healthcare and vaccination, said Mr. Pablo Mateu, UNHCR Egypt Representative. Ziadeh is one of more than 300 refugees and asylum-seekers who have received COVID vaccines across Egypt, following the Governments plan to prioritize the elderly and individuals with chronic health conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges globally and has rendered refugees and asylum seekers particularly vulnerable. UNHCR has been advocating for refugee inclusion in national vaccine roll outs worldwide because no one is safe until everyone is safe and this means leaving no one behind, including refugees and asylum-seekers, added Mr. Mateu. A refugee in Egypt for eight years with a chronic health condition, Ziadeh has been receiving medical support from UNHCR partners as well as from public healthcare facilities under a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016 between the Egyptian government and UNHCR that ensures that all refugees and asylum-seekers are granted access to healthcare on equal footing as Egyptian citizens. In addition, refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt are also included in national health initiatives such as the 100 Million Seha campaign that aims at detecting and eradicating Hepatitis C in Egypt by 2023; the national anti-polio campaigns targeting children aged up to five years of age; and more recently, the Governments early detection and rehabilitation of hearing deficit campaign rolled out in 1,346 health facilities across Egypt. As of September 2021, Egypt hosts more than 265,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR from 60 nationalities. Most refugees in Egypt are among the most vulnerable groups, as seven out of 10 refugees struggle and are often unable to meet their basic needs. With the generous cooperation of the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP), UNHCR, its partners and public healthcare providers ensure refugees and asylum seekers like Ziadeh and others are granted the necessary assistance and support to receive medical care at nominal cost. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter LONDON - As it stands, the UK Nationality and Borders Bill would penalise most refugees seeking asylum in the country via damaging and unjustified penalties, creating an asylum model that undermines established international refugee protection rules and practices, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said Wednesday. At the heart of the Bill is the creation of a new, lower class of status to be assigned to the majority of refugees those arriving spontaneously. The Bill would make it a criminal offence for an asylum-seeker who requires entry clearance to arrive in the UK without it; the maximum sentence would be four years imprisonment. Those arriving irregularly will be stigmatised as unworthy and unwelcome, kept in a precarious status for ten years, denied access to public funds unless destitute. Family reunion will be restricted, said Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, UNHCRs UK Representative. This is likely to damage mental health and hamper integration for those recognised as refugees. The costs financial, personal and social -- will be high. As the Bill moves through Committee stage in the House of Commons, UNHCR urged lawmakers to re-assess parts that would create an unfair two-tier asylum system and cause unnecessary suffering to asylum-seekers. For most asylum-seekers, attempts to transfer to other safe third countries would be made. If that is impossible, access to asylum would be provided but with temporary status, regularly reviewed, with fewer rights and benefits and a constant threat of removal. A minority of refugees primarily those being resettled would have more security, and stronger rights and entitlements. Ms. Pagliuchi-Lor will address the House of Commons Bill Committee on Thursday, outlining a UNHCR legal analysis of the Bill, a summary of which can be seen here. This Bill would undermine, not promote, the Governments stated goal of improving protection for those at risk of persecution. It seems to be aimed at deterring refugees, but theres no evidence that would be the result, said Ms. Pagliuchi-Lor. Theres scope for improving the efficiency of the asylum system. We want to support the UK with that and are heartened that the Home Office is working on it. The Bill is based on the premise that people should claim asylum in the first safe country they arrive in. But this principle is not found in the 1951 Refugee Convention and there is no such requirement under international law, where primary responsibility for protecting refugees is with the State in which an asylum-seeker arrives. Requiring all refugees to claim in the first safe country reached would be unworkable and undermine global humanitarian and cooperative principles. Of the worlds 34.4 million refugees and asylum-seekers, 86% are in less wealthy countries. The policy would put even more pressure on such countries and undermine solutions. It might also encourage further refugee movements. There are no quick fixes to what is a global problem, she added. The humane solution lies in working with neighbours on refugee transfers -- and with countries of origin on returns of those who are not refugees and have no right to remain and improving the UK system. This differentiation of treatment has no basis in international law, Ms. Pagliuchi-Lor added. The Conventions definition of a refugee doesnt vary according to the route of travel, choice of country of asylum, or the timing of a claim. Are we saying that an Afghan refugee is less deserving in the UK than when in Iran or Pakistan?" For more information, please contact: (Photo : Image by Borko Manigoda from Pixabay ) Every person in this world can benefit from civil engineering. Civil engineers are responsible for most public work projects, structures, and buildings that make our modern lifestyle a reality. Let's talk about what civil engineering is, why it matters, and how it can help reshape the world we live in today. What is civil engineering? Civil engineering is the study of the best practices and techniques to plan, design, build and maintain structures in the natural habitat. While some consider it the oldest type of engineering, the modern structures we see today wouldn't be possible without the latest civil engineering education and technology. Civil engineering can be anything, from the construction of a simple bridge to the most complex skyscrapers. Thanks to modern technology in the classroom, professional civil engineers can now work both in the field and in offices. That is extremely useful, as they can gather all the insights to plan every project ahead of time and carefully inspect every detail before selecting materials and designing the technical systems to ensure the highest safety standards and top levels of efficiency. However, their duties don't stop there. Civil engineers are also in charge of monitoring the entire job site and a project's environmental and structural essentials, both during and after construction. How civil engineering helps reshape the world The easiest way to explain the importance of civil engineering today is to say that the world as we know it wouldn't exist without civil engineers. They built every aspect of modern society - airports, train stations, docks, bridges, roads, and transportation infrastructure are just the tip of the iceberg. Professional civil engineering education is necessary for the development of all utilities, such as internet and phone service, electricity, water, etc. On the other hand, there is also the use of civil engineering for public structures on a much larger scale, such as highways, water treatment plants, power plants, dams, the list goes on and on. While the immense importance of civil engineering cannot be overstated, there is also an aesthetic side to it. Just take a look at some of the most beautiful projects, such as: Palm Islands of Dubai The Hoover Dam The Golden Gate Bridge The Eiffel Tower Civil engineering education is simply crucial to the advancement of society, and the advances in technology over the past few decades have made all manner of complex canals, pipelines, tunnels, and viaducts possible. That's why there is an increased need for a civil engineering degree, as we need civil engineers to improve the quality of life and take better care of our natural environment. They are also essential to building protective structures like traffic barriers and levees. However, the area where they excel is accounting for a wide range of different factors that may cause danger in the time to come, including natural disasters. Taking a civil engineering course allows you to become a professional and tap into a broad range of different industries to extend your expertise to many other professionals such as: Architects - they need assistance when designing large buildings; Environmental engineers - civil engineers help ensure the environmental safety of projects; Transportation agencies - rely on civil engineering to determine the best practices for managing traffic; Public officials - civil engineers cooperate with public officials to determine the best ways of satisfying the needs of the modern public. Civil engineering is a good career Choosing a civil engineer career is an excellent choice, as it includes many great benefits, such as opportunities for personal advancement, excellent pay, and more. Civil engineers are problem-solvers and good thinkers. They are open to teamwork and will make an effort to develop multiple solutions for solving any kind of problem a society might have. Because of that, they are needed in many different areas such as architecture, construction, environmental engineering, structural engineering, and transportation. Conclusion While there are many fulfilling career paths you can take, civil engineering is one of the essential occupations in modern society. Every aspect of any construction project today depends on civil engineers to assess the risks and make it happen. If you're interested in using your creativity and critical thinking skills to help the public, becoming a civil engineer makes the most sense. Glass partitions are placed on either side of the center chair of the council chamber in place for new COVID-19 guidelines, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, at City Hall. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The medical experts on Thursday advised the citizens of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to take special preventive measures to protect them from carrying the dengue virus ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :The medical experts on Thursday advised the citizens of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to take special preventive measures to protect them from carrying the dengue virus. According to them, citizens should properly dispose of solid waste and stop water storage practices at their residences to prevent any access to egg-laying female mosquitoes. They said mosquitoes breed primarily in containers like earthenware jars, metal drums and concrete cisterns used for domestic water storage, as well as discarded plastic food containers, used automobile tyres and other items that collect rainwater. Dr Wasim Khawaja from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) said that dengue is a mosquito-borne infection, which in recent years has become a major public health concern. He said dengue fever is a severe, flu-like illness that affects infants, young children and adults. He added the spread of dengue is attributed to expanding geographic distribution of the four dengue viruses and of their mosquito vectors, the most important of which is the predominantly urban species Aedes aegypti. He said the rapid growth of the urban population is bringing ever greater numbers of people into contact with this vector, especially in areas that are favourable for mosquito breeding like in places where household water storage is common and where solid waste disposal services are inadequate. Dr Wasim Khawaja said that dengue viruses are transmitted to humans through the bites of infective female Aedes mosquitoes. He added mosquitoes generally acquire the virus while feeding on the blood of an infected person. He said after virus incubation for eight to ten days, an infected mosquito is capable, during probing and blood feeding, of transmitting the virus to susceptible individuals for the rest of its life. He said the virus circulates in the blood of infected humans for two to seven days, at approximately the same time as they suffer from fever. He added the clinical features of dengue fever vary according to the age of the patient. Medical expert, Dr Sharif Astori said infants and young children may have a non-specific febrile illness with a rash as older children and adults may have either a mild febrile syndrome or the classical incapacitating disease with an abrupt onset and high fever, severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pains and rash. He said dengue haemorrhagic fever is a potentially deadly complication that is characterized by high fever, haemorrhagic phenomena. (@FahadShabbir) The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 17,411 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,434,753 MANILA, Sept. 23 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 17,411 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,434,753. The DOH also reported that 177 more people died from COVID-19 complications, pushing the country's death toll to 37,405. The Philippines has been reporting below 20,000 daily cases since Sept. 19. On Sept. 11, the DOH reported its highest ever daily tally with 26,303 cases. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to help augment the medical staff of hospitals in Metro Manila that are "filled to the brim" with COVID-19 patients. In a pre-recorded public address aired late Wednesday night, Duterte said he ordered the medical corps of the AFP and the PNP to be "on deck." Duterte noted that frontline health workers in some public and private hospitals are sickened by COVID-19 and unable to work. "Our government workers are being impaired. Our healthcare workers are getting sick, our hospitals are being filled to the brim, and more of our people are getting sick and dying from COVID-19," Duterte said. "Many of our public and private hospitals are already running at full capacity. Their health workers are quarantined, so they can not accept COVID-19 admissions anymore," he added. Kinshasa, Sept 23 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :A Congolese journalist suspected of having information about the 2017 killing of two UN experts in central Democratic Republic of Congo was charged on Wednesday, the military prosecutor's office said. Sosthene Kambidi, who has been held since his arrest in the capital Kinshasa on Monday night, "is no longer being questioned as a witness, but as an accused," a senior prosecutor told AFP, declining to be identified. "The interrogation is continuing," the prosecutor added, declining to say what the journalist had been charged with. American Michael Sharp and Swedish-Chilean Zaida Catalan, had been hired by the United Nations to probe violence in the Kasai region of central DRC. They were kidnapped and murdered in March 2017. At the time, authorities said they were killed by members of the Kamuina Nsapu rebel group, which was at war with the state army. A video purporting to show Sharp and Catalan being murdered by the Kamuina Nsapu has been broadcast on state television. The prosecution is investigating how Kambidi came into possession of the video and who gave it to him. Kambidi, who has worked as a freelancer for AFP and at the Congolese online news site Actualite.cd in Kananga, capital of Kasai Central province, calmly told journalists from both outlets on Wednesday about being questioned over the video. The journalist said he had been questioned by a Congolese military prosecutor and, via video conference, "people from the UN mechanism set to up to assist Congolese military justice". Around 30 people have been accused of taking part in the UN experts' murder, but the trial that began in June 2017 has stalled and the UN has appointed a judicial expert to assist. Kambidi was allowed to have a lawyer present. However, his lawyer could not be reached on Wednesday evening. The conflict with Kamuina Nsapu -- a rebel group centred on a local tribal leader -- left an estimated 3,400 people dead and tens of thousands displaced between September 2016 and mid-2017 in the Kasai region. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Bamako, Sept 23 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :Mahamadou Camara, the ex-chief of staff of Mali's deposed president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was detained Thursday in connection with the allegedly fraudulent purchase of a presidential plane in 2014, officials said. The move follows the August 26 detention of former prime minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, and an ex-finance minister in the unstable Sahel state, as part of the same affair. A Supreme Court official who declined to be named told AFP on Thursday that Camara and two other people were issued arrest warrants on Monday. Camara appeared before a judge on Thursday and was then detained in the central prison in the capital Bamako, said a prison official who also requested anonymity. Like Maiga, Camara is being held over a corruption investigation into the purchase, without tender, of a presidential plane in 2014 for nearly $40 million (34 million Euros). Mali's government auditor investigated the purchase and found that government officials had embezzled public money by overbilling for the plane. The International Monetary Fund froze payments to Mali for six months over the plane purchase, as well as over untendered state dealings with a local military supplier. Supporters of former prime minister Maiga -- who remains a political heavyweight in the vast nation of 19 million people -- view his detention as a ploy to keep him from running in the next elections. Army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita deposed Keita last year after weeks of protests over his failure to defeat jihadists and anger over perceived government corruption. The military strongman has promised to restore civilian rule and stage elections in February next year. However, there are doubts about whether the army-dominated government will be able to stick to this timetable. Much of Mali remains outside of government control because of rampant jihadist violence. There has also been little apparent preparation for elections. NEW YORK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Sep, 2021 ) :Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday and discussed bilateral relations and the situation in Afghanistan following the Taliban take over of the war-torn country. Although the two top diplomats have been in touch with since January this year, but this was their first face-to-face meeting in New York. which took place on the margins of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. They last spoke to each other by phone on August 16. The Foreign Minister, according to a press release issued by the Pakistani embassy, said at the meeting that close engagement between Pakistan and the United States had always been mutually beneficial and a factor for stability in South Asia. He reiterated Pakistan's desire for a balanced relationship with the United States that was anchored in trade, investment, energy and regional connectivity. FM Qureshi also reiterated Pakistan's commitment to facilitating efforts for an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan. He stressed that only a stable and broad-based government in Afghanistan, which reflects its diversity and preserves the gains made by the country since 2001, would be able to ensure that Afghan territory is never exploited by transnational terrorist groups ever again. Noting that a new political reality had emerged in Afghanistan, the foreign minister said while the Taliban should be held to their commitments, the international community has a moral obligation to help the Afghan people deal with the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. He hoped that the world would not repeat the mistake of disengaging with Afghanistan. The Foreign Minister highlighted the grave human rights situation in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and underscored the importance of resolving the Kashmir dispute for lasting peace and stability in South Asia. Secretary Blinken appreciated Pakistan's support for the evacuation of U.S citizens and other nationals from Afghanistan, and its continued efforts for peace in the region, according to the press release. (@FahadShabbir) BISHKEK, Sept. 23 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) --:An official handover ceremony of Chinese food and anti-pandemic assistance to Kyrgyzstan was held here on Wednesday. The humanitarian aid, donated by China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is to assist the friendly Kyrgyz people in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, said a press release of the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan. Speaking at the ceremony, Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Du Dewen noted that China and Kyrgyzstan have helped each other and cooperated sincerely in the fight against the epidemic, which has further deepened the traditional friendship between the two countries. Kyrgyzstan's Minister of Health and Social Development Alymkadyr Beishenaliev and State Secretary of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Azamat Mambetov also attended the event. On behalf of the government of Kyrgyzstan, the officials expressed gratitude to China for the assistance, noting that the anti-epidemic materials and vaccines have played an important role in promoting Kyrgyzstan's anti-epidemic efforts and mass vaccination campaign. UNITED NATIONS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has called for building a "global alliance" against the rise and spread of contemporary forms of racism, including Islamophobia, at a high-level UN General Assembly meeting held Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) "Even after two decades," he said, "the landmark document remains the most comprehensive, action-oriented global framework to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance." The foreign minister said the occasion was an opportunity to assess the progress made in implementation of the outcome of the World Conference against Racism that took place South African city of Durban in 2001. In this regard, FM Qureshi welcomed the adoption of an ambitious political declaration by the General Assembly. "Racism is a repudiation of our common humanity," the foreign minister said, pointing out that expressions of racial hatred, religious supremacy and violent nationalism have moved from the fringe to the political mainstream. "From the resurgence of neo-Nazi and other violent nationalist groups to the racist and xenophobic attitudes of politicians, from pervasive Islamophobia and racial profiling of Muslims to excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies against people of African descent, from discriminatory citizenship laws to vaccine apartheid the assault on the human dignity of millions around the world has reached alarming proportions, FM Qureshi said. The coronavirus pandemic, he added, has further intensified these divisions and reinforced racial discrimination and aggravated existing inequalities. Noting that the "Black Lives Matter" campaign last year prompted important discussions on the legacies of slavery and colonialism, the foreign minister said it also triggered a debate on systemic racism and human rights violations specially targeted against people of African descent. Against this backdrop, Pakistan fully supported the special theme of this meeting to focus on "Reparation, racial justice and equality for people of African descent". "It is a long overdue recognition of the profound injustices and systemic discrimination that people of African descent have endured for centuries and continue to confront today," he said, adding that there was an urgent need to renew the call to action and address the structural causes of racial inequality. including those rooted in the legacy of colonialism. To that end, FM Qureshi proposed a four-point action plan: -- Redress for slavery and colonialism entail moral, economic, political and legal responsibilities; -- Adoption of action plans by all concerned states to ensure equality and improve the economic situation of people of African descent and other oppressed ethnic and religious groups facing discrimination; -- Reforming the culture, policies and practices of the law-enforcement in the relevant countries, and, -- Building a global alliance against the rise and spread of contemporary forms of racism including Islamophobic, anti-sematic and other violent nationalist and racist groups. The political declaration, which the meeting adopted, welcomed the progress made in many parts of the world in the elimination of the scourge in the past 20 years, while acknowledging with concern that the scourge still persists in all parts of the world and countless human beings continue to be victims to the present day. It notes with deep concern the rise in discrimination, hate speech, stigmatization, racism, systemic racism, stereotypes, racial profiling, violence, xenophobia and intolerance, both in-person and online, directed against, among others, Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent, indigenous peoples, Roma and persons belonging to other racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, as well as motivated by prejudices against persons based on their religions or beliefs, such as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia, and against women and children, migrants, refugees, forcibly displaced persons, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, persons with disabilities, older persons, youth and other persons in vulnerable situations. The Pakistani delegation participated actively in the drafting of the declaration and was instrumental in working into the text the concern over growing Islamophobia, despite opposition mainly from India, according to diplomatic sources. The political declaration also vows to pursue the common goal of ensuring the effective enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, while continuing to promote respect for human rights and to enhance democratic governance, the rule of law, independent judicial institutions and the fight against impunity nationally and internationally. It reiterates that the Primary responsibility for effectively combating acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance lies with states and affirms that, whenever such acts occur, they must be condemned and their reoccurrence prevented, and urges states to take appropriate preventive measures, including legislative measures, in this regard. It reaffirms member states' strong determination to mobilize political will at the national, regional and international levels and to accelerate momentum to make the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and the protection of the victims a high priority. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Maputo, Sept 23 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :Mozambican troops have rescued dozens of civilians from a northern district recently recovered from jihadists, a local official said Thursday, as military forces backed by foreign soldiers gain ground against the insurgents. Troops sent by several African countries since July have helped the army in Mozambique's gas-rich Cabo Delgado to push back Islamic State-linked militants who have been terrorising the province since 2017. Mozambican and Rwandan troops scored a major victory in August, when they drove the insurgents out of their de facto headquarters in the port city of Mocimboa da Praia. A joint operation with Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) this week rescued 87 people from the town and brought them to safety in the provincial capital Pemba. Cabo Delgado governor Valige Tauabo told AFP the group was mainly made up of elderly women and children. "I confirm the rescue of 87 people in Mocimboa da Praia (district) this week," he told AFP via telephone on Thursday. The rescued are staying with family members or in shelter camps, he said. Locally referred to as Al-Shabab, Mozambique's insurgents have been raiding towns and villages in Cabo Delgado for four years in a bid to establish an Islamist caliphate. The group grew bolder last year, escalating attacks that culminated in a brazen assault on natural gas hub town of Palma in March. This week much needed humanitarian aid reached the coastal town for the first time since it was overrun by jihadists six months ago. Despite the gains made in smoking out the insurgents, suspected militants last week beheaded five civilians in the village of Namaluco, around 150 kilometres (about 90 miles) south of Palma, according to military and local sources. The violence in Mozambique has killed more than 3,306 people -- half of them civilians -- and displaced at least 800,000 from their homes over the past four years. FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam has said that modern agriculture technology must be trickled down to the farmers so that they could enhance per acre yield in addition to switching over to value addition. He was addressing an online workshop jointly organized byUniversity of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF) andChinese academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATAS). On the occasion, a memorandum of understanding was also inked among five institutions one of China and four from Pakistan to promote technology transfer and cooperation. The institutions include Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology of CATAS, China; University of AgricultureFaisalabad (UAF); MINSOL consultant (Pvt) Limited, Pir Meher Ali Shah Arid AgricultureUniversity Rawalpindi; and MNS University of Agriculture (MNSUA) Multan. As per agreement, MINSOL will strive to viably commercialize the products developed in collaboration with other parties. Syed Fakhar Imam said that we must switch over to high-value crops to secure space in the global food market. He said that we have to learn from the experiences of the other countries. He hoped that the collaboration will China will bring the tangible results to address the problems of the farming community.He said that this year we had substantial increase in the production of three majorcrops. This year, per acre wheat production had boosted up which was stagnant for the last ten years, resulting in the significant increase of 2.2 million ton in the national wheat production.He said that itwas increasedby 1.5 ton per acre. We had harvested a bumper wheat crop of 27.5 million tons, while rice and maize production also stood at around 8.5million tons each. He said that the production of cotton in Punjab was touching 4.5m bales at an increase of approximately 8.5 per cent from last year. Overall cotton production is likely to reach 8.46 million bales.He said that provision of certified seed, value addition and mechanization was one of challenges in which agriculture experts should play their pivotal role. He said that the country was producing the excellent fruit but export was the negligible. He said value addition and the adaptation of the international standard were prerequisite to enhance our exports. UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that all institutions will work on the establishment of the commercial tissues culture facilities in Pakistan. They would also work on commercialization of tissue culture, development of varieties adapted to indigenous needs and climatic conditions. He said these institutions will also explore other crops for cooperation and will conduct joint academic and research activities. He said that our agriculture was in the grip of different challenges despite the being of the best eco system, climate and others. He said that we have to switch the modern trends and reach out the farming community. He said effective measures were being taken at the government level to stabilize agricultural development and increase production per acre. This will ensure adequate food availability for the growing population, he added. Vice Chancellor MNSUA Dr Asif Ali said joint collaboration will help uplift the agriculture sector for the food security. He said that agriculture sector was the backbone of our economy that was directly liked to poverty alleviation. Arid Agriculture University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman stressed upon the need to learn from the experiences of other nations. He said that they were making all efforts for the agriculture development. MINSOL Consultant (Pvt) Limited CEO Nihal Ahmed said that MINSOL Consultants (Private) Limited was an SECP Listed General Consultancy firm focused on the fields of agricultural technology development, testing, adoption and commercialization. The company is providing professional and legal consultancy for farming initiatives, commercial agriculture, technology adoption, intellectual property rights, artificial intelligence, agriculture policy, agricultural development, and internet policy. Dr Gu Wenliang said that the Pakistan and China were enjoying excellent ties and the collaboration will produce tangible results for the agricultural development. Prof Dr Jafar Jiskani, Dr Aman Ullah Malik, Dr Rahid Waseem, Dr Muhammad Azam, Dr Gu Wenliang Agriculture Official of China, Dr Li Kaimian Vice President of CATAS; Chen Yixi from China and other notables spoke. The Vice Chancellor University of Karachi Prof Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi on Thursday said that majority of Pakistanis want to be entrepreneurs but are afraid to take a risk and that is why they could not succeed in achieving their goals KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :The Vice Chancellor University of Karachi Prof Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi on Thursday said that majority of Pakistanis want to be entrepreneurs but are afraid to take a risk and that is why they could not succeed in achieving their goals. He was addressing 'boot camp training of Khud Mukhtar' program organized by the Karachi University Business Incubation Centre (KUBIC) here at the Arts Auditorium. The KUBIC, which is a part of the varsity's Office of Research, Innovation, and Commercialization, had arranged the event for grooming the students and young entrepreneurs. He mentioned that to be a good entrepreneur, one has to take some risks but with proper planning regarding his/her work. The right use of skill and technology is the key to success and one of the major differences between us and the rest of the world is that they practically implement their ideas and we most of the time just talk about plans rather than working on those start-ups. "We need to change the mindset as well as our syllabus right from the grass-root level. We have to create an environment which encourages fresh innovative ideas and support creative-minded people as they can bring changes in society." The KU VC Prof Dr Khalid said that failure is a part of learning and failure of one project does not mean that you cannot be successful in your life. He advised the audience not to be afraid while starting any project and do proper research and necessary work before initiating any project on the ground. Another speaker, the founding partner Bykea Rafiq Malik shared that entrepreneurship looks glamorous from the outside but this is a very challenging task. He informed the audience that one must realize that this is not an easy job at all and demands a lot of detail planning and determination. He shared that a good entrepreneur has the skill to see the market and the ability to quickly analyze what is required, what kind of problem could occur while launching the project, what type of solutions could be provided to the masses, and how to implement the ideas. The Chief Executive Officer Sizzlers Waqas Azeem shared that young people after completing studies usually search for a job to support their family and hardly think about launching his/her business ventures. The work cannot give you passion and satisfaction but through your entrepreneurship projects, you can feel it because it does not limit your dream and gives you a boost in your life. He advised the audience to collect relevant information and share their ideas with experts before launching it so that they could avoid chances of losses. Meanwhile, The Chairman Health and education Committee Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jawed Siddiq Mitiwala said that motivation without practical work would never produce fruitful results. He said that an online platform is ideal for young entrepreneurs. The Executive Director Dream World Resorts Abdul Jabbar Rathod said that person could not ignore unseen challenges and natural disasters. The situation that occurred after the Covid-19 pandemic was very difficult for every business as they faced huge financial losses but also learned a lesson on how to survive in such situations. The CEO Trax Logistics Muhammad Hassan Khan shared his own story of how he started the start-up during his studies and why he launched another innovative project. He said that he witnessed a German company was working in Pakistan realized that he could also work on the same line. He mentioned the Pakistani market hardly making 0.3 percent in the e-commerce sector and that is why there is huge room for others to avail the opportunity. Salim Sheikh while representing Progressive Traders Private Limited mentioned that youngsters should also consider agriculture and food sectors while preparing to work on their start-up projects as they have more scope than other fields. The Assistant General Manager SWVL Commercial Shayan Shamim said entrepreneurs should give preference to affordability and comfort for the public rather than thinking of it as a tool of making money. The KU Students' Advisor Dr Syed Asim Ali said that programs like Khud Mukhtar are designed to bring out the hidden talent and positional of students. He advised students to look at different fields as well and not rely only on the technology industry. Earlier, the Director KU ORIC Professor Dr Aliya Rehman and the Manager KUBIC Talha Bin Shuja spoke about the background of ORIC and KUBIC respectively and briefed the audience about the future plans as well. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, discussed the process of consultations to restore confidence between the countries, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement PARIS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, discussed the process of consultations to restore confidence between the countries, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden discussed by phone the termination of the submarine contract and agreed to launch consultations aimed at creating conditions for confidence, and to meet in Europe in late October. Macron also decided that the French ambassador, previously recalled for consultations in Paris, would return to Washington next week. "The minister (Le Drian) discussed with his UScounterpart the conditions and main themes of the process of in-depth consultations between the two countries aimed at restoring confidence," the statement says. Le Drian agreed to maintain close contact with Blinken to overcome the crisis, it says. "He (Le Drian) recalled that the first step was taken during a telephone conversation between the two presidents, but noted that overcoming the crisis between our two countries would take time and action," the ministry added. In mid-September, Australia partnered with the United Kingdom and the United States on the AUKUS defense and security alliance and announced its withdrawal from the submarine agreement with France's Naval Group. The 56 billion euro agreement, dubbed the "contract of the century," provided for the production of 12 Barracuda-class attack submarines. NEW YORK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2021) The next meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held whenever necessary, Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik on the margins of the UN General Assembly. "I think whenever necessary, they will me," Mekdad said when asked about the timing of the next meeting. Poland will deploy 250 Abrams tanks, which it will buy from the United States, on its eastern border, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Thursday WARSAW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) Poland will deploy 250 Abrams tanks, which it will buy from the United States, on its eastern border, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Thursday. Poland has contracted 250 tanks model M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 from the United States, hoping to receive them in 2022. "These are 250 state-of-the-art tanks that will be deployed in the east of our country," Blaszczak told Polish Radio. According to the minister, the tanks are required to reduce the risk of attack on the country. Poland has called on NATO to more actively confront Russia, which Warsaw considers a security threat.Moscow has consistently denied any plans to attack other countries, including NATO members, but vowed to respond to any attempts to encroach on its territory or hinder its development. (@ChaudhryMAli88) WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) The incidence of unruly passenger incidents on US airlines has decreased significantly since the start of 2021 but it remains much higher than in 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on Thursday. "As of last week, unruly passenger incidents were occurring approximately six times per every 10,000 flights. That's an approximately 50 percent drop from early 2021, but it's more than twice as high as the end of 2020," the statement said. According to FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, the agency's work is having an impact and the trend of unruly passenger incidents is moving in the right direction. "But we need the progress to continue. This remains a serious safety threat, and one incident is one too many," he stressed He added that the FAA will continue its Zero Tolerance policy and will keep its public awareness campaign going. "We appreciate the tremendous work of all our partners in the airline, airport, labor, and law enforcement communities," Dickson concluded. In the summer of this year, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) told the US Congress that the assaults on their officials rose six times per capita during the coronavirus pandemic, usually because of complaints about the enforcement of regulations to wear masks during flights. Numerous videos posted across social media this year show US airline passengers getting violent and kicked off flights for refusing to comply with the federal mask mandate. In August this year, the TSA extended its federal mask mandate to January 18 which aims to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation. :South Africa's embattled national airline on Thursday flew its first plane since March 2020 after emerging from bankruptcy proceedings Johannesburg, Sept 23 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Sep, 2021 ) :South Africa's embattled national airline on Thursday flew its first plane since March 2020 after emerging from bankruptcy proceedings. Passengers on the South African Airways (SAA) flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town were greeted on their departure by singing and dancing airline staff. Once Africa's second-largest airline after Ethiopian Airlines, SAA had survived for decades on government bailouts and was shedding routes even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The government agreed in June to sell a 51-percent stake to a group of investors called the Takatso Consortium, opening the way to a potential injection of $200 million (171 million Euros). Even after a state bailout of more than $500 million (426 million euros) and a restructuring of its debt, the airline only emerged from bankruptcy after slashing hundreds of jobs. In addition to the domestic route that resumed on Thursday, SAA plans to begin regional services next week to Accra, Kinshasa, Lusaka, Harare and Maputo. Chief finance officer Fikile Mhlonto said this week that the airline's fleet is down to six planes, from a previous 46. SAA low-cost subsidiary Mango remains grounded and in bankruptcy proceedings. NEW YORK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th September, 2021) Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik he had a great meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the UN General Assembly during which they talked about the coordination of efforts. "It was great as usual. We are coordinating our efforts," Mekdad said. "Recently there was a visit by (Syrian) President (Bashar) Assad, where together with the (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin, they arranged our strategy for the next to come." NEW YORK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told Sputnik he will hold a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the General Assembly and will convey that Damascus is anticipating better relations with the UN system. "Of course, we shall have a very good meeting," Mekdad said when asked if he would meet the UN chief. "We shall ask for the preservation of the (UN) Charter and its main principles and we shall tell him (Guterres) how much we look forward (to) good and better relations with the UN system." Mekdad said there are no plans yet for a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. ROSTOV-ON-DON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) ON-DON, Russia, September 23 (Sputnik) - A common media development strategy for the Union State of Russia and Belarus should be developed, given the current trends of information dissemination, Belarusian politician Gennady Davydko said on Thursday. "It is necessary to devise a media development strategy of the Union State, providing for the technical equipment of the media at the modern level, diverse content covering all directions of the Union State's development, the use of social media, and the increase in the youth audience," Davydko stated at a meeting of the committee on information policy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which he chairs. As noted by the committee chairman, the need to develop a new strategy is dictated by changes in society and the information space of Russia and Belarus. "Internet resources and social networks forming the public consciousness are increasingly participating in the life of modern man," he said. Davydko added that the Union State of Russia and Belarus face a long-term objective of the redistribution of funds "in favor of certain segments of informational influence." Another member of the committee, Russian lawmaker Margarita Pavlova, noted in turn that the internet was gradually becoming an information weapon, which confirms the importance of devising a common media development strategy for the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Russia and Belarus signed a bilateral agreement on the establishment of the Union State on December 8, 1999. The countries defined a number of important objectives, including the gradual creation of a single economic space. The partnership of Belarus and Russia within the Union State is built on the principles of preserving state sovereignty and territorial integrity. The representative and legislative body of the Union State is the Parliamentary Assembly composed of two chambers, the House of the Union and the House of Representatives. (@FahadShabbir) WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen highlighted the need for a compromise on withdrawal of digital services taxes during her call with UK Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, the Treasury said on Wednesday. "Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen spoke with United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. Secretary Yellen stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to improve the international tax system. She also emphasized the importance of reaching a compromise on the withdrawal of digital services taxes," the statement said. Yellen also thanked Sunak for his leadership of the G7 and in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Inclusive Framework. "(Yellen) expressed gratitude for the close cooperation between the U.S. and UK to level and playing field and end the race to the bottom on international corporate taxes," she said. The UK government has been long negotiating with other EU member states and the OECD the introduction of an international digital revenue levy, which will tackle the issue of tax avoidance of big technology firms. Tumorigenicity and metastasis are distinct phenotypes Primary tumours and metastasis cannot (and should not) be treated equivalently mtDNA can serve as a regulator for cancer progression and metastasis and this is likely due to alterations in mitochondria ROS and subsequent cellular signaling changes in diverse pathways. mtDNA is depleted in human bladder cancer although the implications of this are currently unclear. The MNX model provides a potential means for evaluating the contribution of mtDNA to progression and metastases. The potential to define SNPs and/or deletions associated with alterations in mtDNA function may ultimately lead to biomarkers associated with BCa incidence/progression/metastasis. Welch DR & Hurst DR. Defining the hallmarks of metastasis. Cancer Res 2019; 79: 3011-2027 Matthew Barnes J, Nauseef JT, Henry MD. Resistance to fluid shear stress is a conservedbiophysical property of malignant cells. PLOS One 2012; 7: e50973 Chivukula VK, Krog BL, Nauseef JT et al. Alterations in cancer cell mechanical properties after fluid shear stress exposure: a micropipette aspiration study. Cell Health Cytoskelet 2015; 7: 25-35. Moose DL, Krog BL, Kim TH et al. Cancer cells resist mechanical destruction in circulation via RhoA/Actomyosin-dependent mechano-adaptation. Cell Reports 2020; 30: 3864-3874 Sjodahl G, Eriksson P, Lovgren K et al. Discordant molecular subtype classification in the basal-squamous subtype of bladder tumors and matched lymph-node metastases. Mod Pathol 2018; 31: 1869-1881 Thomsen MBH, Nordentoft I, Lamy P. Spatial and temporal clonal evolution during development of metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Mol Oncol 2016; 10: 1450-1460 Faltas BM, Prandi D, Tagawa ST. Clonal evolution of chemotherapy-resistant urothelial carcinoma. Nature Genetics 2016; 48: 1490-1499 (UroToday.com) Day 2 of the 7th Annual Albert Institute for Bladder Cancer Care and Research Symposium began with a session on bladder cancer metastases. Metastasis is the primary cause of cancer morbidity and mortality and the process involves a complex interplay between intrinsic tumour cell properties and interactions between tumour cells and multiple microenvironments.In the first presentation of the session, Dr. Danny Welch (University of Kansas Medical Center) provided an overview of the molecular biology driving metastasis, highlighting key steps of the metastatic cascade. Dr. Welch explained that four distinct types of tumour cell migration have been characterized and also highlighted the ability of these cells to alter their behavior, a phenomenon known as cellular plasticity.Dr. Welch then went on to describe the 3 different types of genes involved in the regulation of metastasis: 1) pro-metastatic genes which drive tumour spread; 2) metastasis suppressors which are defined by their ability to block metastasis without preventing primary tumour growth, and 3) metastasis modifiers. Dr.Welch subsequently explained that the existence of metastasis suppressor genes provides genetic proof that metastases are a distinct phenotype.His take-home messages were:In the next talk, Dr. Michael Henry (University of Iowa Health Care) discussed the biomechanics of circulating tumour cells (CTCs). He began by describing the journey of CTCs into the vasculature, emphasizing that the vast majority of CTCs entering the circulation do not produce clinically evident metastases. Dr. Henry explained that CTCs only exist freely in the circulation for brief periods of time, spending much longer entrapped in the microcirculation of various organs. During this time, CTCs are exposed to a number of different forces including fluid shear stress (FSS), traction, and compression. Although these forces were previously thought to be mechanically destructive to CTCs, emerging data provides evidence to the contrary. Dr. Henry highlighted work from his lab, which found that resistance to FSS is a biophysical property of malignant cells.Additionally FSS exposure was found to make cancer cells stiffer.Furthermore, viable CTCs have been found to actively resist destruction in the circulation by hemodynamic forces through a mechano-adaptive mechanism involving the RhoA-myosin II axis.Dr. Henry concluded his talk by considering the potential role of FSS resistance as a biomarker that might be exploited for diagnostic or therapeutic applications in bladder and other cancers.In the third talk of the session, Dr. William Kim (UNC-Chapel Hill) provided clinical perspectives, highlighting work from his own lab in addition to discussing studies demonstrating that luminal and basal-squamous subtypes may have different subtype stability in lymph node (LN) metastases,and that LN and distant metastases undergo clonal evolution.In the penultimate talk, Dr. Ben Woolbright (University of Kansas Medical Center) discussed the possible contributions of mitochondrial polymorphisms to bladder cancer development and metastasis. He began by discussing the N-butyl-N-(4-hydroxybutyl)-nitrosamine (BBN) mouse model and its utility for studying metastasis. The model has been shown to produces tumours that are similar to human MIBC. Dr. Welch concluded that although the BBN model may not well suited to finding negative regulators of metastasis, it may be an acceptable model for identifying positive regulators of metastasis.The next part of his talk focused on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The mitochondrial genome is maternally derived and encodes genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. His summary points were:Dr. Welch gave the last talk of the morning session where he discussed the impact of stromal mitochondrial polymorphisms on cancer metastasis. He concluded by suggesting mtDNA SNP may partially explain racial and sex differences observed in bladder cancer.Presented by: Danny Welch, PhD, University of Kansas Medical Center; Michael Henry, PhD, University of Iowa Health Care; William Kim, MD, UNC-Chapel Hill; Ben Woolbright, PhD, University of Kansas Medical CenterWritten by: Niyati Lobo, MD, The Urology Foundation Fulbright Scholar, Twitter: @niyatilobo, with Professor Ashish Kamat, Professor of the Department of Urology, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Twitter: @UroDocAsh at the 7th Annual Albert Institute for Bladder Cancer Care and Research (AIBCCR) Symposium, Sept 16, 2021- Sep 18, 2021. References: (UroToday.com) The European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2021 annual meetings prostate cancer mini oral session included a presentation by Dr. Karim Fizazi discussing health-related quality of life, pain, and safety outcomes in the phase 3 VISION study. [177Lu]Lu-PSMA-617 (177Lu-PSMA-617) delivers -particle radiation to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) expressing cells and the surrounding microenvironment. In the phase III VISION study (NCT03511664), 177Lu-PSMA-617 + protocol-permitted standard of care prolonged radiographic progression-free survival (rPFS; HR 0.40, 99.2% CI 0.29-0.57), overall survival (OS; HR 0.62, 95% CI 0.52-0.74) and time to first symptomatic skeletal event (SSE, HR 0.50, 95% CI 0.40-0.62) versus standard of care (all p < 0.001) [1]. At the ESMO 2021 congress, Dr. Fizazi and colleagues presented health-related quality of life, pain assessments, and safety outcomes from VISION. VISION was an international, open-label study of 177Lu-PSMA-617 in adults with PSMA-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) previously treated with 1 androgen receptor pathway inhibitor and 12 taxane regimens. Patients were randomized 2:1 to 177Lu-PSMA-617 (7.4 GBq every 6 weeks, 6 cycles) plus standard of care or to standard of care alone. The trial design for VISION is as follows: rPFS and OS were alternate primary endpoints, and time to SSE was a key secondary endpoint. Other secondary endpoints included safety and patient-reported health-related quality of life (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Prostate [FACT-P]) and pain (Brief Pain Inventory Short Form [BPI-SF]). Pre-specified analyses included time to the first occurrence of health-related quality of life/pain worsening, disease progression or death. Health-related quality of life was assessed in the pre-specified rPFS analysis set comprising 581 of the 831 randomized patients (177Lu-PSMA-617 arm, n = 385; control arm, n = 196). Health-related quality of life and pain time-to-worsening analyses favored the 177Lu-PSMA-617 arm. For the FACT-P total score, time to worsening was 9.7 months for 177Lu-PSMA-617 compared to 2.4 months for standard of care alone (HR 0.46, 95% CI 0.35-0.61): Additionally, for the BPI-SF pain intensity score, time to worsening was 14.3 months for 177Lu-PSMA-617 compared to 2.9 months for standard of care alone (HR 0.45, 95% CI 0.33-0.60): A key secondary endpoint was time to first SSE, with a median time to SSE of 11.5 months for 177Lu-PSMA-617 and 6.8 months for standard of care (HR 0.50, 95% CI 0.40-0.62): These outcomes were achieved by 177Lu-PSMA-617 despite a higher incidence of grade 3 adverse events versus standard of care alone. The most common grade 3-5 adverse events for 177Lu-PSMA-617 included bone marrow suppression (23.4%) and anemia (12.9%). There were no new or unexpected safety concerns noted, including changes in creatinine clearance. Dr. Fizazi concluded his presentation of health-related quality of life, pain, and safety outcomes from the VISION trial with the following-take home points: The combination of 177 Lu-PSMA-617 and standard of care in adults with mCRPC who were previously treated with androgen receptor pathway inhibitors and taxane chemotherapy extended overall survival, delayed radiographic progression-free survival, and was generally well-tolerated Lu-PSMA-617 and standard of care in adults with mCRPC who were previously treated with androgen receptor pathway inhibitors and taxane chemotherapy extended overall survival, delayed radiographic progression-free survival, and was generally well-tolerated Additionally, 177Lu-PSMA-617 plus standard of care delayed time to worsening in health-related quality of life and pain and delayed the time to first symptomatic skeletal event versus standard of care alone in adults with advanced mCRPC Presented by: Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, Head of the Department of Cancer Medicine at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France and Professor of Oncology at the University of Paris Written by: Zachary Klaassen, MD, MSc Urologic Oncologist, Assistant Professor of Urology, Georgia Cancer Center, Augusta University/Medical College of Georgia, @zklaassen_md on Twitter during the 2021 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Annual Congress 2021, Thursday, Sep 16, 2021 Tuesday, Sep 21, 2021. References: Zambias new President, Hakainde Hichilema, has set for his new government an ambitious economic and governance agenda. Paul Samasumo - Vatican City. During his inauguration as Zambias seventh President, Hichilema said his UPND government would pursue an ambitious economic and social transformation agenda. No Zambian should go to bed hungry Zambia is saddled, among many other challenges, with high indebtedness to various foreign lenders. To start with, Hichilema proclaimed that it was unacceptable that any Zambian should go to bed hungry. You have entrusted the UPND alliance with the responsibility of serving you and running the affairs of the nation with your interests at heart. We do not take this responsibility lightly. We will truly be your servants and you the people, our masters. As your President, I will ensure that we deliver on our promises, said President Hichilema. Bally will fix it. Nicknamed Bally by young Zambian social media users, President Hichilema has the daunting task of turning around the countrys economy. Bally in the local slang means parent or father. The young people in Zambia, who also promoted President Hichilemas pre-election slogan, Bally will fix it, have high expectations. On Tuesday, Hichilema promised jobs, freedoms and good governance. We said Bally and team will fix our economy, but we will do more than that. We will grow our economy so we can lift more people out of poverty than ever before. We will promote unity in diversity and ensure respect for the fundamental human rights and freedoms for all. We will restore the rule of law, general order in our public places and communities, and return our country back to normalcy, Hichilema told a packed National Heroes Stadium in the capital, Lusaka. Many were dressed in red, the partys campaign colour. Uniting Zambians regardless of tribe The previous government was accused of discriminating against regions that were perceived to be strongholds of the opposition. Many civil servants were removed from the service simply because they belonged to tribes of the Southern, Western or Northwestern Provinces. We have no tolerance for any form of discrimination, and we commit to ensuring our government will be a reflection of our ten provinces. We treat diversity as a strength, never again should any difference be used for political mileage or to favour one over another. Every citizen will be availed equal opportunity to participate in the socio-economic development of our nation. We will not be selective when it comes to the development of our country. All regions will have an equitable share of investment, assured the new Zambian President. Tackling corruption The Zambian head of State also promised zero tolerance for corruption. The scourge of corruption has not only eroded our much-needed resources, but it has also robbed us of the opportunity for growth. We shall have zero tolerance for corruption. This will be our hallmark. The fight against corruption will be professional and not vindictive. The institutions mandated to investigate and prosecute will be given unfettered autonomy to effectively and efficiently carry out their mandate without fear or favour of political bias, President Hichilema said. The Vietnamese government issued Resolution 105/NQ-CP on September 9 to help support businesses affected by the pandemic. Apart from helping businesses, the Resolution includes easing regulations for issuing, extending, and certification of documents for work permits of foreigners in Vietnam. The Resolution is a welcome change from the strict requirements of Decree 152, which went into effect in February of this year. Nevertheless, employers should study the new regulations carefully to ensure they are in compliance or risk strict penalties. The Vietnamese government issued Resolution 105/NQ-CP on September 9 to support businesses affected by Vietnams fourth wave of the pandemic. Apart from helping businesses, the Resolution has issued guidelines on easing regulations for issuing, extending, and certification of documents for work permits of foreigners in Vietnam. This has relaxed some measures that were in Decree 152, which was issued earlier in February of this year. Some work permit requirements eased: Resolution 105 To ease restrictions, the government has asked the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) to instruct local provincial authorities to relax restrictions and some conditions on the issuing and renewing of work permits. Specifically, these include: As per Decree 152, the university degree had to be related to the job position in Vietnam. Now as per Resolution 105, authorities have been asked to be flexible where the degree does not have to necessarily be related to the job position in Vietnam. Second, the training field does not have to be related to the job role or relevant experience. Thirdly, for experts and technicians, previously issued work permits can be accepted as work experience rather than work experience of the foreign company from the home country. Certificates may also be used. Lastly, as per the Resolution, foreign workers with valid work permits can be sent to another province or city for not more than six months without having to reapply for a work permit. However, the employer must report to the labor department where the foreign workers have gone to work. The Ministry of Education and Training has been tasked with cooperating with MoLISA to provide further guidance and qualifications for foreign teachers teaching at short-term training centers, high schools, vocational training centers, and universities as per international best practices. In addition, notarization requirements for passports have been removed; just a copy of the passport is sufficient. The government has also tasked relevant agencies to streamline entry procedures for foreign employees to enter Vietnam as well as the recognition of a vaccine passport. The government is likely to issue further guidance on these issues. Nevertheless, businesses have welcomed the government decision particularly on easing work permit requirements for foreign workers. Decree 152 highlights Prior to this, the government introduced Decree 152/2020/ND-CP (Decree 152), which came into effect on February 15. The Decree overlooks the management of foreign workers in Vietnam as well as the hiring of Vietnamese employees that work for foreign businesses. Decree 152 replaced Decree 11 and Decree 75 and states how businesses can employ foreign individuals. The regulations were stricter compared to previous decrees with several businesses voicing concerns on hiring and entry of foreign workers. Employers that require hiring a foreign employee must submit a written request to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), 30 days before the commencement of employment. A response is typically received within 10 days after submission. The employer should then request a work permit from the MoLISA. This should ideally be applied 15 days before the foreign worker commences their employment. Work permit processing times take up to 10 business days. A work permit cannot be applied directly by the workers/foreigners, but with the assistance of their employers from Vietnam. Work permit requirements As per Decree 152, a foreign expert is defined as: Having a bachelors degree or higher and having at least three years of experience working in the relevant field to the job position that the foreign employee has been hired for; Have at least five years of experience with a practice certificate relevant to the job that the foreign employee has been hired for; Special cases that fall under the discretion of the Prime Minister as per the MoLISA. A manager is defined as: A person in charge of the organization. An executive is defined as: An employee directly administering affiliated entities of the employer. A technical worker is defined as: An individual that has been training in a technical field or another major for at least one year and has been working for at least three years in their trained field; or Has at least five years experience related to the job for which they will be employed in Vietnam. Decree 152 requires several documents required for a work permit application. These include: Application form; Health certificate issued in the past year as per guidelines by the Ministry of Health; Police or criminal clearance certificate, no less than six months old; Proof as a manager or executive; Proof as an expert or technical worker; and Acceptance from MoLISA for the demand for foreign employees. Work permit exemptions Decree 152 lists several cases for work permit exemptions. As such, foreigners can only be exempt from a work permit if their capital contribution to the company is at least US$130,400 (VND 3 billion). Experts, managers, or technicians that enter Vietnam for up to 30 days no more than three times in a year may be exempted from a work permit. Foreign workers married to Vietnamese citizens and living in Vietnam are also exempted from work permits. In addition, businesses that employ foreign personal that are exempted from a work permit must inform MoLISA at least three days before the employee start working in Vietnam. Work permit renewals Work permits should be renewed at least five days but not more than 45 days before the expiry date with an application to MoLISA. Vietnamese employees As per the new Decree, foreign businesses can now directly recruit Vietnamese employees without having to use a competent authority for recruitment. Stricter criteria for foreign workers As mentioned earlier, Decree 152 requires foreigners to have a practicing certificate with at least five years of work experience in the job that they will be hired for in Vietnam. The Decree also does not specify what the practicing certificate should entail leaving largely the local MoLISA to decide. Alternatively, an expert needs to have a relevant bachelors degree or higher relevant to their job position in Vietnam and a minimum of three years of work experience. In addition, the practicing certificate must be confirmed by an overseas company or organization. Resolution 105 has eased some of these requirements as mentioned earlier, but further guidance will be needed so businesses can plan accordingly. Several businesses have expressed concerns regarding the new regulations and have stated that not all degrees that foreigners obtain are relevant to their current jobs while the employee may be highly experienced. Employers should ensure they are compliant The recent regulations and updates show that the government is listening and wants to ensure economic growth, as Vietnam suffers its worst outbreak yet. Nevertheless, businesses are advised to take note and study the new regulations carefully to ensure they are in compliance of the requirements. Businesses and employees that are not in compliance face strict penalties and even deportation if they are found without a work permit, flouting labor rules. Note this article was first published in February 2021 and has been updated to include the latest developments. Chad has decided to recall half of its 1,200 troops battling Islamist militants in the tri-border area of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, a spokesperson for Chadian authorities said Saturday. Chad deployed the soldiers in February to support a France-backed regional fight with insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State who have destabilized swaths of territory in West Africa's Sahel region in recent years. The decision to withdraw 600 of these soldiers was made in agreement with Chad's Sahel allies, General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said, speaking on behalf of the Transitional Military Council in Chad. The recalled Chadian troops would be redeployed elsewhere, Agouna said, without giving further details. The authorities in Chad have faced a separate conflict this year with insurgents in the north. France has also said it plans to reduce its presence in the Sahel to around half the 5,100 soldiers there, although it has given no timeframe. The former colonial power has hailed some successes against the militants in recent months, but the situation is extremely fragile with hundreds of civilians killed in rebel attacks this year. Mahamat Idriss Deby, who leads the Transitional Military Council (CMT), has run Chad since his father, the former president, was killed while visiting the front line in April. Earlier in August, Deby invited the rebels to participate in a national dialogue. A military source said the 600 troops would be sent to Chad's northern border with Libya and Sudan to disarm rebels seeking to return to take part in these talks, which are scheduled for the end of the year. On Saturday, Deby said the talks would not succeed unless all stakeholders were represented. A Chadian military-political rebel group behind this year's deadly insurgency said on Friday it was prepared to take part in a national dialogue proposed by transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby. Deby seized power in April after his father, the former president, was killed while visiting troops fighting the rebels, who had crossed the border from Libya to take a stand against the elder's 30-year rule. The Libya-based rebel group that claimed responsibility for Deby's death, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), has now welcomed his son's offer to hold talks with all stakeholders, including opposition armed groups. "If there are peaceful initiatives to build a new democratic Chad without dictatorship and the absolute confiscation of power, of course we will join them," said FACT spokesperson Kingabe Ogouzeimi de Tapol. Deby's Transitional Military Council (CMT) has previously refused to negotiate with rebel groups, in particular members of FACT, which in April swept south from bases in Libya and reached within 300 kilometers of the capital, N'Djamena, before being pushed back by the army. Former Chadian president Hissene Habre, who was serving a life term in Senegal for war crimes and crimes against humanity, has died, Senegalese Justice Minister Malick Sall said Tuesday. He was 79. "Habre is in his Lord's hands," Sall told the television channel TFM. The Chadian consulate said he had died of Covid-19. Habre, who ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at an African Union-backed trial in the Senegalese capital Dakar in 2016. He seized power in Chad in 1982, but fled to Senegal in 1990 after he was in turn overthrown. Habre's rule was marked by brutal crackdowns on dissent, including alleged torture and executions of opponents. Some 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed under his leadership of the semi-desert country. In exile in Dakar, Habre lived a quiet life in an upmarket suburb with his wife and children. But the former dictator -- who was dubbed "Africa's Pinochet" -- was finally arrested in 2013 and tried by a special tribunal set up by the AU under a deal with Senegal. Habre began serving his life sentence in the Cap Manuel penitentiary in Dakar. His supporters voiced concerned for his health and pushed for more lenient detention conditions given his advanced age. Last year, a Senegalese judge granted him a two-month furlough designed to shield him from coronavirus. Groups representing Habre's victims recognised his right to be treated humanely, but fiercely resisted preferential treatment for the former dictator. 'Pitiless' Reed Brody, a lawyer who represented Habre's victims, said in a statement on Tuesday that he had been calling "for months" for the former dictator to be vaccinated against Covid. AFP was unable to independently verify whether Habre had received a jab. Brody was nonetheless withering about Habre's legacy, saying he would "go down in history as one of the world's most pitiless dictators." Habre "slaughtered his own people to seize and maintain power... burned down entire villages, sent women to serve as sexual slaves for his troops and built clandestine dungeons to inflict torture on his enemies, Brody said. Habre's conviction in 2016 was seen as a turning point for pursuing rights abusers in Africa, where the International Criminal Court (ICC), located in The Hague, was becoming increasingly unpopular. The former dictator was ordered to pay up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) to each victim who suffered rape, arbitrary detention and imprisonment during his rule, as well as to their relatives. A popular Rwandan rapper known as Jay Polly died in custody early Thursday, officials and media reports said, the second detained musician to die in mysterious circumstances in less than two years. Polly, whose real name was Joshua Tuyishime, was being held on drugs charges and had just found out that he was due to stand trial in December. The 33-year-old was taken to Muhima hospital in the capital Kigali at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT), its director Pascal Nkubito told AFP. "He was in a bad shape and unresponsive. Doctors tried to revive him but he unfortunately died shortly after," he said. "The cause of death is not something I want to speculate about. We will know that after the post-mortem." The musician was arrested at his home in April for hosting a party in violation of Covid regulations and was later paraded along with other suspects in front of the media. Police said Tuyishime and other defendants were found to be drinking and in possession of marijuana and fake negative Covid certificates. He had denied the charges but requests for bail were rejected. Parties are strictly prohibited in Rwanda because of the coronavirus pandemic and thousands of people have been detained for breaking restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the disease. Some have been forced to spend the night in open-air stadiums and to listen to Covid-19 guidelines on loudspeakers, while others have been held for weeks in detention facilities. 'Cultural icon' Rwandans took to Twitter to pay tribute to Tuyishime, with one describing him as a "cultural icon who contributed so much to our music." In February last year, Kizito Mihigo, whose music was banned by the regime of President Paul Kagame, was found dead in his cell, just days after he was caught trying to flee the country. Police said Mihigo, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide whose gospel songs angered Kagame's government, had committed suicide by hanging himself from his cell window using bedsheets. Mihigo, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2015 for conspiracy against the government but later released on pardon, was captured trying to cross the border in Rwanda's south. He fell foul of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front in 2013 after composing songs that questioned the government's tight control of the legacy of the 1994 tragedy. His music, once popular among the ruling elite, was swiftly banned. Two years later he was accused of terrorism and raising support for an opposition political movement and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His lawyers said prosecutors had little evidence to jail him. He was released on presidential pardon in September 2018. Mihigo and Polly are not the first figures to die in mysterious circumstances while in police custody in Rwanda. Last year, a former director-general in Kagame's office was found dead in a military jail after being sentenced to 10 years for corruption. In 2015, Kagame's personal doctor, Emmanuel Gasakure, was shot dead in custody by police. Kagame, who has been in power since 1994, has been accused of ruling with an iron fist, clamping down on all forms of dissent and jailing or exiling opposition politicians. Human Rights Watch (HRW), among other groups, has accused Kagame's regime of summary executions, unlawful arrests and torture in custody. The federal government of Somalia has called on diplomats in the country not to interfere in the countrys internal political affairs. The notice by Information Minister Osman Dube came after representatives of various entities, including the United States, the European Union and the U.N. office in Somalia, said they would not support a possible partial term extension for Somalias current president. Dubbe said his government expected its international partners to respect Somalia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within the principles of international law. He added that its illegal to intervene in a sovereign state's internal issues, calling it a red line that must never be crossed. The government of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, popularly known as Farmajo, is facing international pressure to conduct elections. Disputes over the electoral process have held up the polls, and talks among political stakeholders to end the standoff have yet to bear fruit. Meanwhile, the presidents term officially expired last month, and opposition groups have said he no longer has a mandate to run the government. Political analyst Mohamed Muse Aden said the strong comments from the international community were expected because Farmajos administration failed to utilize its mandate during its term in office to plan for transparent polls. Actually, the role of the international community for pressuring the Somali actors in conducting the elections is very crucial, especially in this period where the electoral impasse creates uncertainties for the Somali people," Aden said. "Although historically, they used to play similar roles in helping the stakeholders to come together and chart out peaceful and inclusive electoral processes, but this time round, their influence and presence is more critical. Mohamed Matan, a senior lecturer of international relations at the University of Somalia, said the international community has invested in Somalias recovery and has a say when things are not going in the right direction. Matan said international relations are based on economy, security and law, and that therefore it's not right for Somalia, through the minister, to warn against interference. He added that in his opinion, the diplomats' comments about delayed elections were not against sovereignty of the nation, but were for the norms of international law. Meanwhile, U.N. envoy James Swan has held meetings with Somali state leaders in the past week to iron out differences. Some Haitian officials are expressing doubt and criticism about U.S. Special Envoy Daniel Foote's mission in Haiti after he had meetings over the weekend with National Police Chief Leon Charles and Senate President Joseph Lambert. "(This is just) one more American official. But to do what?" Senator Patrice Dumont, one of 10 Haitian senators whose parliament terms have not expired, told VOA. "Haiti is an adult and should resolve its own problems." Asked by VOA if Haiti should accept American assistance in resolving its political crisis, Dumont responded, "Absolutely not." A State Department statement emailed to VOA said Foote will lead "U.S. diplomatic efforts and coordinate the effort of U.S. federal agencies in Haiti from Washington, advise the secretary and acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and coordinate closely with the National Security Council staff on the administration's efforts to support the Haitian people and Haiti's democratic institutions in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of (President) Jovenel Moise." On Saturday, the national police posted three photos on its official Twitter account showing Charles meeting with Foote, U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison and a police official. The message did not provide any details about what was discussed during the meeting. It said only that it was in response to a request for assistance made by former Prime Minister Claude Joseph shortly after Moise's assassination. Lambert also posted on Twitter a photo of his meeting on Sunday with Foote and Sison. "I was invited by Ambassadors Sison and Foote. Our conversation was intense. Our exchanges took into consideration Haiti's situation, which is currently at an impasse, as well as the urgent need to restore the country's institutions," Lambert tweeted. Foote is a Foreign Service officer whose experience as a diplomat includes serving twice as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. He also served as U.S. ambassador to Zambia during the Trump administration. The envoy arrived in Haiti on Friday with a delegation of American officials named by President Joe Biden to represent the United States at the national funeral of Moise. The delegation was evacuated from Haiti after gunfire erupted and angry protesters approached a private compound serving as the site of the funeral. Pastor Edouard Paultre, who heads the civil society organization National Council of Non-State Actors, said Foote should follow the will of the Haitian people. "This is a period of extreme distress for our nation, as well as institutional bankruptcy. None of our institutions are able to function properly. It's in this context that Daniel Foote is arriving in Haiti. But he is also arriving at a time when civil society is collaborating with other sectors of Haiti to search for a solution to the crisis," Paultre told VOA. "I don't know what he's looking for, but he should not be making any unilateral decisions." The pastor said he thinks Foote should work with Haitians toward an "inter-Haitian" consensus. Foote has not yet commented on his meetings with Haitian officials. But two U.S. representatives who traveled with him from Washington to Haiti for the funeral on Friday issued statements about their brief time in the country. New York Democrat Gregory Meeks, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. wants to support the Haitian people as they work toward security and a stable government. "Now is the time for the international community to listen to the voices of the Haitian people and stand shoulder to shoulder with them as they navigate these turbulent times, helping bring about a better future for all of Haiti," Meeks said in a statement emailed to VOA. U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican, posted a video message on Twitter that he had recorded on the tarmac at the Cap-Haitien airport. He expressed regret about having to leave so abruptly. "I regret that, because it's a bit undignified, the way we had to leave," Fortenberry said. "This is an important country, in proximity to America. It's on our doorstep as we've tried to help significantly over the years, and we want to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people as they mourn and suffer." Fortenberry expressed hope that the tragedy of Moise's assassination would lead to redevelopment and hope for Haiti's people in the future. Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. As the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the gruff, highly decorated Army General Mark Milley reportedly was handpicked by then-President Donald Trump because of his tough guy swagger and blunt talk. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president, not the chairman, is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. And from the beginning in 2019, the Princeton-educated Milley strongly signaled that his main responsibility was to protect and defend the Constitution and not cater to a controversial president. Officials close to Milley tell VOA his focus toward allies and competitors alike has been one that pursues strategic stability while reducing tensions. But the chairmans efforts to remain apolitical have sometimes been interpreted by his critics as politicizing his position. The man who has said he wants to keep the military out of politics has repeatedly found himself at the center of political debate and controversy. 2020 protests Milley apologized in June 2020 for walking with Trump across Lafayette Square, where demonstrators were protesting the death of African American George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. Riot police and members of the National Guard forcibly cleared protesters out of the public park in front of the White House before Trump crossed the square with several members of his Cabinet and Milley. The president then stood in front of an historic church, posing for photographs with a Bible in his hands. I should not have been there, Milley said later in remarks to students at National Defense University. Immediately after the incident, a senior defense official told reporters that neither Milley nor then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper had intended to take part in the photo-op and thought they were merely walking outside to view troops present at the protests. In the final days of Trumps presidency, Milley also issued a message to the military denouncing the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters attempting to overturn President Joe Bidens election victory. The violent riot in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process, Milley and other chiefs of staff wrote in a force-wide memo. We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection, the chiefs added. Privately, Milley is reported to have bitterly blamed Trump for the tone of the election leading up to the riot, likening it to the circumstances around an election in Nazi-era Germany. This is a Reichstag moment, he told others, referring to the 1933 attack on the German Parliament, according to a book by Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Peril reignites criticism Now, new information shared in the book Peril, an account of the final days of the Trump administration by reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, has some experts once again claiming Milley has damaged the relationship between civilian and military leadership. The generals actions have strained important civil-military precedent, and that trust will need to be repaired." Retired Army Colonel Jeff McCausland, a former member of the National Security Council, wrote this week in an NBC News essay. But they have also revealed the ripple effects of a president desperate to stay in office. The backlash centers around two phone calls Milley made to Chinese General Li Zuocheng. According to the book, Milley is reported to have told Li in the first call on October 30, 2020, that he would contact him if a nuclear attack by the United States was imminent. Milley reached out a second time in the aftermath of the January 6 assault on the Capitol to attempt to reassure the Chinese that the U.S. remained stable, reportedly telling Li that democracy can be sloppy sometimes. In addition to the two calls to his Chinese counterpart, Milley also reportedly held a secret meeting of the countrys senior military leaders in the Pentagon after Trumps refusal to accept the presidential election results. According to the book, during the meeting, he reminded officers of the procedure for launching nuclear weapons and sought to ensure that nuclear launch control officers would notify him if an order of that magnitude was issued. Republican Senator Marco Rubio and retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman have called for Milleys resignation over the revelations, with Rubio saying the general was trying to "actively undermine" Trump. Milley said Friday that the calls he made to Li were perfectly within the duties and responsibilities of his job. Concerning the meeting on the nuclear weapons procedures, Milleys spokesman, Army Colonel Dave Butler, said it was to remind uniformed leaders in the Pentagon of the long-established and robust procedures in light of media reporting on the subject. President Joe Biden threw his support to Milley shortly after the books findings were revealed, saying he had great confidence in the general. Chairman of the joint chiefs The chairman typically serves one four-year term upon nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. While the president is the commander-in-chief of the military, Congress also controls the military through its sole power to declare war and its responsibility to raise and support armed forces. This civilian control, split between the executive and legislative branches of government, was built into the Constitution to advance the nations security, while at the same time ensuring that instruments of force do not undermine the practice of American democracy, according to a Congressional Research Service report from June 2020. While the chairman outranks all other military officers and is a very prestigious position, he or she is prohibited by law from operational command of combat troops. Instead, the chairman is the principal military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense as they carry out their command authorities. The Goldwater-Nichols DOD Reorganization Act of 1986 delineates the chain of military command from the president to the secretary of defense directly to the commander of a combatant command. Therefore, military activities in Iraq, for example, would be carried out by U.S. Central Command chief Marine General Frank McKenzie, not by the joint chiefs. The joint chiefs include the chairman, the vice chairman and the heads of the six military branches, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force and the National Guard Bureau. Cameroon's military says separatist fighters have, for the first time, used anti-tank rockets smuggled from Nigeria to attack army convoys. The military reported rebel rocket attacks on a military convoy in the western village of Bammssing in the past week have killed at least 15 troops and 13 civilians, and destroyed several armored vehicles. Cameroon Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Wednesday from a military base in Bamenda, an English-speaking western town, that President Paul Biya wants a change of military strategy in handling the separatist crisis. Without providing details on strategic changes, Assomo said Biya wants his military to immediately stop the attacks on government troops by separatists equipped with increasingly sophisticated weapons. He added that military intelligence indicates fighters are benefiting from outside human and material support. The military said rebels attacked government troops with anti-tank rockets four times this week in western villages, including Sabga. Assomo said troops have been adequately equipped and deployed to separatist hot spots in English-speaking western regions, especially on the border with Nigeria, suspected to be the origin of the anti-tank rockets. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon's minister of employment and vocational training, said English-speaking civilians should help government troops by reporting those suspected of smuggling separatist weapons from neighboring Nigeria. "We need the support of our population," he said. "Please, denounce them. Decry it [killing]. The kind of arms they [separatists] are using is an indication that there is a kind of support they [fighters] are receiving from abroad." In August, Cameroon and Nigeria said Cameroon separatists, called the Ambazonia Defense Forces, and Indigenous People of Biafra, a group that wants a breakaway state in southeast Nigeria, were partnering to create an alliance. Prince Ekosso, president of the opposition United Socialist Democratic Party, said Biya should call for a cease-fire to spare the lives of troops, civilians and separatists. "It is time to end the war [crisis]," he said. "Everybody in the [English-speaking western regions] is bleeding in his or her heart and the whole country is bleeding. It is not helping us, it will not help us." Separatists have congratulated fighters on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp for using anti-tank rocket launchers to kill Cameroon troops. Videos circulating online appear to show separatist fighters asking for more anti-tank rocket launchers to fight the Cameroon military. Cameroon has previously said that separatists use porous borders to import weapons through Nigeria. Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities met in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, August 26 to 28 and agreed to jointly fight armed separatists in both countries. They also promised to stop arms trafficking in the two countries. Chinas top diplomat Thursday urged a virtual conference of G-20 foreign ministers to end economic sanctions against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to help the country tackle a looming humanitarian crisis and an economic meltdown. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the conference, which took place on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, that member states of the G-20 as the premiere global platform for international economic cooperation are obligated to play a constructive role in helping the South Asian nation. All kinds of unilateral sanctions or restrictions on Afghanistan should be lifted, said Wang. The Islamist Talibans return to power last month prompted the United States to freeze billions of dollars held in its reserve for Kabul while the World Bank and International Monetary Fund both halted Afghanistans access to developmental funding. Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserves are its national assets and should be owned by and used for the people, rather than being used as a bargaining chip to exert political pressure on Afghanistan, Wang told the conference, which was focused on the situation in Afghanistan. The United States and other countries have called on the Taliban to put together an inclusive government that includes respect for human rights, and to desist from bringing back their harsh Islamist rule, before any direct engagement or diplomatic recognition can occur. China calls on G-20 members to actively take practical steps to help Afghanistan ease the current liquidity stress, Wang said. He went on to urge international financial institutions to also provide financing support for the Afghan poverty reduction, sustainable development, livelihood and infrastructure projects. Wang also called for redoubling efforts and speeding up the provision of humanitarian assistance to address urgent needs of Afghan citizens. He said Beijing has decided to provide around $31 million worth of related materials" to Kabul, including the donation of COVID-19 vaccine doses. The Chinese diplomat also renewed his governments expectations the Taliban caretaker government in Kabul will eventually build into a broad and inclusive political structure, which respects the basic rights of minority groups, women and children. Wang said Afghanistan must earnestly honor its commitments by making a clean break with and resolutely fighting all kinds of international terrorist forces. The Taliban announced this week an expansion in their all-male interim Cabinet, saying all Afghan ethnicities have now been given representation in the government. But they again failed bring any women on board, fueling fears the Islamist movement intends to restrict female participation. Some of the top Cabinet slots have been given to Taliban leaders who are blacklisted by the U.S. and the U.N., which makes it difficult for Washington and other countries to directly engage with the group. During their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban barred women and girls from work and public life, and from receiving an education. Taliban officials have promised to give women a role in their government, but they have not yet said when. They've also vowed not to make such changes amid foreign pressure. But global rights defenders are skeptical about the Talibans intentions and are accusing the group of steadily dismantling Afghan gains in human rights achieved over the past two decades with the help of the international community. Pakistan hails Taliban cabinet changes Pakistan, which shares a nearly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan and has traditionally maintained close ties with the Taliban, reiterated Thursday that ensuing peace and stability in Afghanistan was a shared responsibly of the international community. We have taken note of the expansion in the interim [Taliban] Cabinet with representation of different ethnic and political groups, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Asim Iftikhar told a weekly news conference in Islamabad. This is a positive direction, and we hope they continue to take steps leading to lasting stability in the country, he added. The Pakistani spokesman said his country continues to urge the world to address the imperative of constructive engagement and timely mobilization of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that the Afghan health care system is on the verge of collapse and the nation faces a humanitarian catastrophe without urgent action by the international community. South Africas President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chads President Mahamat Idriss Deby and Ugandas President Yoweri Museveni are set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday. Access to COVID-19 vaccines has been one of the major topics of the annual meeting in New York and is likely to be one of the most discussed again Thursday as leaders from African nations make up a large portion of the days list of speakers. While some countries such as the United States have had vaccine doses widely available to their populations for months, other countries have struggled to access COVID-19 vaccine supplies. The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 4% of the population is fully vaccinated. Ramaphosa was among a group of leaders who participated in a virtual summit Wednesday convened by U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss boosting efforts to vaccinate people all over the world. Biden announced the United States was buying another 500 million doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine to distribute to other countries. Of the around 6 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, only 2% of these have been administered in Africa, a continent of more than 1.2 billion people, Ramaphosa said. This is unjust and immoral. Other speakers Thursday include Iraqs President Barham Salih, Cubas President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, El Salvadors President Nayib Bukele and Italys Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The coronavirus pandemic has prompted a number of world leaders to pre-record their remarks instead of traveling to New York to speak in person. About half of Thursdays speeches were recorded in advance. Government minister in New Zealand Chris Hipkins admitted that the countrys elimination approach to achieve a COVID zero status may no longer be viable as the delta variant is proving difficult to control. The government in Wellington has extended a nationwide lockdown until at least Friday and 107 infections have been detected so far. Stay-at-home orders in the city of Auckland the center of the outbreak are to remain until at least August 31. New Zealand has been imposing lockdowns at the first sign of an outbreak implementing a strategy to crush COVID-19 and curb the spread of the virus. It also closed its borders to most foreign nationals in March 2020, and returning citizens are subject to strict quarantine controls. The country has tried keep the pandemic at bay and earned the name Fortress New Zealand due to the strategy. However, the government is now admitting there are cracks in the countrys approach in combatting the pandemic. Health officials have linked the delta variant outbreak to a traveler who returned from the Australian state of New South Wales on August 7. Hipkins told a local TV station TVNZ on Sunday that eliminating the virus would be a difficult task. Delta does raise some big questions that were going to have to grapple with, you know, less than a 24-hour period for someone getting it and passing it on to others thats like nothing weve dealt with in this pandemic so far, and it does change everything. It does mean that all of our existing protections start to look less adequate and less robust as a result of that. So, we are looking very closely at what more we can do there, but, yes, it does raise some pretty big questions about what the long-term future of our plans are, Hipkins said. Australia is also moving away from its long-held elimination strategy. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned that people would have to learn to live with the virus. But he said lockdowns would continue until at least 70% of the population was fully vaccinated. So far, just under a third of Australians have received two doses. A night-time curfew in virus-hit parts of Sydney began Monday as delta variant infections increase in Australias biggest city. Masks are now mandatory for all residents outdoors. The police have been given greater powers to lock down apartment blocks, and order people to isolate for 14 days if they break any restrictions. New South Wales and Victoria Australias most populous states are in lockdown, along with the national capital, Canberra. New Zealand has recorded about 3,000 coronavirus cases and 26 deaths since the pandemic began. Australia has reported 44,000 infections and 981 deaths, according to the countrys health department. The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are facing what may be the most politically fraught moment since they took unified control of Washington in January. Lawmakers are battling to avoid a potential government shutdown and a default on the national debt at the same time that Democratic infighting is endangering two pieces of legislation meant to further the partys key priorities. The stakes, for both the U.S. economy and President Joe Bidens domestic agenda, could scarcely be higher. A combination of a few missteps or delays in passing a budget resolution and raising the amount of money that the Treasury Department is allowed to borrow could have catastrophic economic impacts on the United States and the world economy. An estimate by Moodys Analytics found that the worst-case scenario, in which the U.S. defaults on its debts, could result in a loss of 6 million jobs and destruction of as much as $15 trillion in household wealth. If House Democrats are unable to muster the votes to pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that has been approved by the Senate and a $3.5 trillion bill that would lock in spending on social services, climate change mitigation and other party priorities, they will face voters in 2022 with little to show for two years of Democratic control of Washington. Likely outcomes unclear For sure, there are few experts in Washington who expect the battle over the budget and debt limit to actually end in a government default. Lawmakers have gone down this path many times, and have always pulled back at the last minute. On the spending bills so important to the Biden administration, expectations are not so clear. Wednesday afternoon, Biden brought Democratic lawmakers to the White House to try to hammer out an agreement. This is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to how he can get them together, said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. Can he be the same dealmaker that united progressives and centrists throughout the [presidential] campaign? He has to do that same thing now in the White House. Budget problems The most immediate problem facing lawmakers is that the federal government will lose the authority to spend money on many of its key functions unless a new budget resolution is passed before a September 30 deadline. The federal government has shut down before, but never in the midst of a pandemic, and it is unclear just how damaging a significant halt in federal operations would be to the countrys public health response to the coronavirus. Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night passed a continuing resolution that would allow the government to continue operating until December, giving lawmakers time to pass separate budget bills for different parts of the government. However, Republicans in the Senate are expected to block that bill by denying Democrats the 60 votes they will need to end debate. The reason is that Democrats have attached it to legislative language that would waive enforcement of the debt ceiling until December 2022. Debt ceiling Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have said that they will not supply any votes to raise the debt ceiling even votes to cut off debate so that Democrats can pass the bill on their own. McConnell has publicly said that the debt limit must be raised and that the government must not be allowed to default. However, he is demanding that the Democrats take full responsibility for making that happen historically a politically onerous task by using a budget reconciliation bill, which is immune to the filibusters 60-vote threshold. Democrats are refusing to use budget reconciliation for the debt limit because they believe Republicans should share responsibility for raising the debt limit, which will help pay for measures adopted and signed when Republicans had united control of Washington just a few years ago. Battle lines firm On Wednesday, six former Treasury secretaries wrote a letter to congressional leaders warning them that legislative brinkmanship might push the country into default, even accidentally, with dire consequences. Even a short-lived default could threaten economic growth, they wrote. It creates the risk of roiling markets, and of sapping economic confidence, and it would prevent Americans from receiving vital services. It would be very damaging to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States, and this damage would be hard to repair. On Tuesday night, McConnell said he had introduced a continuing resolution of his own that would fund the government through December, but that removes the debt limit language [which waives enforcement until December 2022] that Democrats have known since July will not receive bipartisan support from Senate Republicans. On Wednesday morning, however, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it would be the House bill, not McConnells, that he brings to a vote in the Senate. That's the bill that will be on the floor, he said. Those who will vote yes will vote to avoid default, to avoid a government shutdown. Those who vote no will be saying, 'We're OK with default and we're OK with the government shutdown.' To say, 'Do it another way,' that doesn't cut it. This is whats on the floor. Democratic squabbling At the same time that lawmakers are trying to navigate around a government shutdown and potential default, Democratic leaders are working to avoid a derailment of the Biden administrations domestic policy agenda. Early in his term, Biden had insisted that Democrats in Congress find a way to compromise with Republicans on an infrastructure bill. As a result, the Senate passed a bipartisan $1.5 trillion bill funding infrastructure basics like roads, highways and bridges. That allowed Biden to claim that he had kept his campaign promise to work across the aisle. However, the Senate bill left out an enormous number of provisions that Democrats wanted and on which Biden had campaigned, including increased social spending, funding to fight climate change and more. As a result, progressive members of the House of Representatives announced that they would not support the $1.5 trillion Senate bill until the House and Senate both passed a separate $3.5 trillion package that contained all of the Democrats other priorities something they expected to accomplish by using a budget reconciliation bill to bypass the filibuster. Centrist Dems revolt In both the Senate and the House, more centrist members objected to both the progressives tactics and their demands. House centrists demanded and received assurances from Democratic leaders that the $1.5 trillion bill would get a vote no later than September 27. Months ago, it seemed at least possible that the larger $3.5 trillion bill could be passed by that date. However, in the Senate, Democratic lawmakers Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that they would not support the larger bill, blocking progress. Now, without the $3.5 trillion bill in hand, Democratic progressives are threatening to withhold support for the $1.5 trillion bill, raising the possibility that the Biden administration could be left with neither. Losing bills deadly for Biden Some experts are still expecting that the Democrats will find some sort of agreement, if only because the alternative is so bad. My assumption all along has been that Democrats know losing these bills is deadly for Biden, and for them, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. My sense of it is that in the end, reluctantly, they'll find something to agree on, because the alternative is so disagreeable, he said. The compromise may not be tasty, but the alternative is poisonous. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday that it would take time and actions to repair ties with the U.S. in the wake of a submarine deal that undercut a French agreement to supply Australia with diesel subs. Last week, the United States, United Kingdom and Australia announced a deal under which the U.K. and U.S. will instead supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. The move angered France, which withdrew its ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia. Earlier in the week, Le Drian expressed concern about what he characterized as deceit by one of its oldest allies. He told reporters at the United Nations this week that the United States had gone behind Frances back and had hidden the new deal for months. According to State Department spokesperson Ned Price, Le Drian and Blinken spoke about plans for in-depth bilateral consultations on issues of strategic importance. They discussed the EU strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke by phone in an attempt to rebuild trust between the NATO allies. Some information for this report came from Reuters. Former Chadian president Hissene Habre was ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars to victims of human rights abuses after his conviction by a special court in 2017. But by the time he died in August, Habres victims had still not received a dime. The African Union-backed court tried Chads ex-ruler Hissene Habre in Senegal and found him guilty of crimes he committed in the 1980s a first for the continent. On September 15, a team of AU lawyers arrived in Chad to meet with victims advocates, lawyers and government officials, to begin the process of establishing a trust fund for Habres victims. Habre oversaw the killing and torture of tens of thousands of people during his rule as Chads president from 1982 to 1990. When he was convicted, the African Union was ordered to raise about $150 million that would be allocated to more than 7,000 of Habres victims. The money was supposed to come from Habres assets, as well as from outside contributions. But the victims still havent been paid. Their plight gained renewed attention in August when Habre died just five years into his life sentence. Jacqueline Moudeina is the lead counsel for Habres victims. She says the African Union has not made much progress. They have yet to furnish their headquarters and hire an executive secretary, among many other tasks. "Theres still a lot left to do," she says. "They waited four years; and they dont know how many more years theyll have to wait." If it were up to her, they would have done it all in one week. One important task is raising money. Maadjitonke Trahohgra, the director general of Chads Ministry of Justice, says the Chadian government will contribute money toward the trust fund, but he doesnt know how much. He says many of the victims have already passed away, but the fund will provide relief for those who survived. Clement Abaifouta is one of the surviving victims tortured for four years during Habres rule. He witnessed the deaths of many fellow prisoners and in some cases, was forced to dig their graves. Now 63, he serves as president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissene Habre regime, an organization advocating for victims and their families. He says now that the African Union has come to expedite the process, victims are satisfied and they hope the process will go faster than expected. Experts from the African Union plan to return to Chad in the coming weeks to continue setting up the trust fund. Iran is threatening to expand a bombing campaign targeting rebels in border villages of Iraqs autonomous Kurdistan region, saying Iraqi Kurdish authorities must expel the rebels or the offensive will broaden. Since the beginning of September, Irans forces have been carrying out attacks using artillery and drone strikes on border villages accused of harboring Iranian Kurdish rebels. Tehran said it aims to dismantle the militant groups, which are accused of staging attacks on Iranian territory. Nazim Dabagh, Kurdistan Regional Government representative in Tehran, told VOA this week that Iraqi Kurdish officials needed to take Irans warning seriously and asked both sides to avoid using the Kurdistan region in their conflict. The position of the Kurdistan Regional Government is that it condemns this bombing and activities that lead to it, Dabagh said. He added, We are trying to resolve this through diplomacy, negotiation and communication. Iranian officials in recent weeks have called Kurdish rebels American and Zionist mercenaries, accusing them of using Iraqs Kurdistan region to launch cross-border attacks on Iranian forces. On Sunday, Mohammad Bagheri, chief commander of Irans armed forces, directly accused the United States of supporting the Kurdish insurgents and demanded the closure of Harir air base, which houses American troops near the Kurdish capitals Erbil International Airport. The airport in Erbil has come under assault several times in recent months, including an attack by explosive-laden drones on September 11. While Kurdish authorities are yet to announce the group responsible, U.S. officials have blamed previous attacks on Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite militias. In his statement on Sunday, Bagheri warned that the Kurdistan region should not allow armed anti-revolutionaries, who are agents of America and the Zionist regime in northern Iraq, to have military bases, radio and TV stations and attack our borders, according to London-based broadcaster Iran International Iranian Kurdish officials reject the accusations of foreign backing and say the Iranian government, emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan, is trying to increase its grip on Iraq and the Kurdistan region. Let Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps provide one evidence, a single proof, that the forces of East Kurdistan, in any trench or location, have engaged in a military activity against them, said Omar Balaki, a leader of Irans Kurdistan Democratic Party. Kurds use the term East Kurdistan to describe areas in northwest Iran where millions of Kurds live. Human rights organizations say Iranian authorities in the region use excessive force to suppress peaceful protests and prosecute Kurdish activists. Balaki accused Tehran of distracting public attention from Irans internal problems by scapegoating the Kurds. The regime of Islamic Republic, since its establishment, has always attempted to create international crisis to cover up its internal problems, he told VOA. According to Kawa Bahrami, a commander of Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, the Iranian armed forces since the beginning of this month have attacked border villages of the Kurdistan region with artillery and drones at least 15 times. Bahrami told VOA via phone that the attacks have caused major damage to farms of villagers in the area. Fortunately, he said, there was no human casualty among us or the civilians because (Iranian Kurdish) Peshmerga forces do not have a stationary base in the region. Irans Kurdish minority rebel groups have for decades staged an armed insurgency against Tehran, saying they are denied basic cultural rights. The rebels have been able to survive Tehrans armed pressure by taking shelter in the ungoverned mountains on Irans and Iraqs borders. Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program and a senior fellow of the Frontier Europe Initiative at the Middle East Institute, argued that Iranian authorities needed to seek peaceful means to resolve the Kurdish issue in the country. The fundamental solution, which the authorities in Tehran refuse to acknowledge, is that there are genuine grievances among Iran's minority community, including the Kurds of Iran. There are about 10 million of them. Irans failure to address the problem, according to Vatanka, has fueled resentment, with a very small part of it being expressed in militant forms. That's where the solution to Iran's Kurdish problem is. But the Iranians don't want to go there for whatever reason it is. They're trying to sort of deal with the issue by managing the problem, as opposed to trying to solve the problem, which would be the ideal thing to do, he said. Ahmed Zebari contributed to this report from Erbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region. Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misidentified East Kurdistan as West Kurdistan. VOA regrets the error. Show more Show less Jerusalem is a mixed city, and more than a third of its residents are Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem. Most of them are permanent residents rather than citizens, and their native language is Arabic, not Hebrew. But many East Jerusalem women are expressing interest in learning Hebrew, and an Israeli nonprofit group is helping to meet the demand. Linda Gradstein reports from East Jerusalem. Camera: Ricki Rosen Jets of red hot lava shot into the sky on Spain's La Palma on Thursday as a huge cloud of toxic ash drifted from the Cumbre Vieja volcano toward the mainland and jeopardized the island's economically crucial banana crops. Walls of lava, which turn black when exposed to the air, have advanced slowly westward since Sunday, engulfing everything in their path, including houses, schools and some banana plantations. Farmers near the town of Todoque raced to save as much as possible of their crop, piling their trucks high with sacks of the green bananas, on which many of the islanders depend for their livelihood. "We're just trying to take everything we can," said a farmer who gave his name as Roberto from the window of his pickup. Some 15% of La Palma's 140 million kilogram annual banana production could be at risk if farmers are unable to access plantations and tend to their crops, Sergio Caceres, manager of producer's association Asprocan, told Reuters. "There is the main tragedy of destroyed houses -- many of those affected are banana producers or employees -- but their livelihood is further down the hill," he said. "Some farms have already been covered." Caceres said the farmers already were suffering losses and warned that if lava pollutes the water supply it could potentially cause problems for months to come. The island produces around a quarter of the Canary Islands' renowned bananas, which hold protected designation of origin status. With more than 200 houses destroyed and thousands of evacuated people unable to return home, the Canary Islands' regional government said it would buy two housing developments with a combined 73 properties for those made homeless. Spanish banks jointly announced they would offer vacant homes they hold across the Canaries as emergency shelter. Property portal Idealista estimated the volcano had so far destroyed property worth about 87 million euros ($102 million). Experts had originally predicted the lava would hit the Atlantic Ocean late Monday, but its descent has slowed to a glacial pace of around 4 meters per hour and authorities say it may stop before reaching the sea. Volcanologists have said gases from the eruption are not harmful to health. But a plume of thick cloud now extends some 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles) into the air, raising concerns of visibility for flights. The airport remains open, but authorities have created two exclusion zones where only authorized aircraft can fly. Prevailing winds are expected to propel the cloud northeast over the rest of the Canary archipelago, the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean, according to the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. National weather service AEMET said air quality had not been affected at surface level and ruled out acid rain falling over the mainland or the Balearic Islands and was even unlikely in the Canary islands. Local authorities have warned people to clean food and clothes to avoid ingesting the toxic ash. Leaders of the United States, Japan, Australia and India are expected to meet in person Friday in Washington to discuss cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in the face of Chinas growing power in the region. U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan met virtually in March, but this would be the first time the group meets face to face. The Quad Leaders will be focused on deepening our ties and advancing practical cooperation on areas such as combatting COVID-19, addressing the climate crisis, partnering on emerging technologies and cyberspace, and promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific, White House spokesman Jenn Psaki said in a statement. China has been steadily building military outposts in the region and using them to back claims it controls vital sea lanes. The Washington meeting comes in the wake of a recently announced agreement among the U.S., U.K. and Australia to supply Australia with nuclear submarines. The deal angered France by undercutting a deal it had with Australia to supply it with diesel submarines. France recalled its ambassadors from both the U.S. and Australia in protest. China condemned the deal, calling it damaging to regional peace. The Quad meeting also comes amid stronger talk by the U.S. and its allies in support of Taiwan, which China views as a rogue province, and a renewed effort by the European Union to enhance its naval presence in the region. An estimated 3,000 Malians marched Wednesday through the streets of Bamako on the country's day of independence from France. Protesters, many of whom were against what they perceive as "foreign meddling," marched in support of the military government, as Colonel Assimi Goita, Mali's interim president, faced pressure from Western governments to cancel a deal with Russian security firm Wagner. Over the past week, Paris in particular has expressed concern over a reported deal between Bamako and Moscow to hire 1,000 mercenaries. "Such a choice would be one of isolation," French Defense Minister Florence Parly said Monday during a visit to Mali. Germany and the European Union have also expressed concern about the deal. But demonstrators throughout the country Wednesday seemed to support the deal, with some carrying Russian flags in addition to Malian flags and pro-military placards, Agence France-Presse reported. France, the country's former colonial ruler, has thousands of troops in Mali to help fight a jihadist resurgence throughout the country. But many in Mali consider the mission a failure, and protests against the French military presence have taken place before. In addition to their worries about the deal with Russia, many Western powers and Malian neighbors have expressed concern that the military government may fail to hold elections early next year as promised. Goita and his military government took power in a coup in May, just months after new leadership had been chosen. Goita, who also led a coup that overthrew the elected government last October, said the transitional government had violated an agreement to advise him on a cabinet reshuffle. Mali gained independence from France in 1958. Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. As more businesses, universities, and federal and local governments demand proof of inoculation against COVID-19, the black market for fake vaccine cards appears to be booming. U.S. Customs officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, intercepted five shipments containing 1,683 counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards and 2,034 fake Pfizer inoculation stickers since August 16. The shipments from China were headed to private homes and apartments in the states o Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New York and Texas. In August, a Chicago pharmacist was arrested after being accused of selling dozens of authentic Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay. In July, a naturopathic physician in Northern California was arrested for allegedly selling fake COVID-19 immunization treatments and forged vaccination cards. 'A type of fraud' Legal experts compare phony vaccine cards to counterfeit money or fake drivers licenses. It's a type of fraud, says Wesley Oliver, professor of law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There's another theory that you are stealing from the government their insignia and their imprimatur that you are in fact vaccinated, and both are just sort of different styles of the same crime. President Joe Biden recently called on all businesses with 100 or more employees to require their workers either be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 once a week. A global cybersecurity company reports that the price of fake vaccine cards and the numbers of people selling them shot up since Biden announced the vaccine mandate in early September. Pretending to be vaccinated trespasses on other peoples rights, according to Boston University law professor Christopher Robertson. Part of the free enterprise system is we decide where we want to go, and who we want to interact with and on what terms. And so, it really is an invasion of everyone else's bodily integrity, their security, and knowing that they can be safe going into a place that's requiring proof of vaccination, Robertson says. It's kind of similar to battery in exposing someone to risk that they didn't consent to be exposed to. Exposing others to risk Last month, 15 people in New York were charged in connection with selling and buying phony COVID-19 vaccine cards. A woman who called herself @AntiVaxMomma on Instagram stands accused of selling 250 fake vaccination certificates for about $200 per card. A second suspect, a 27-year-old medical clinic worker, allegedly charged an extra $250 to enter fake vaccine data for at least 10 people into New Yorks immunization database. Front-line health care and essential workers are among the people accused of buying the phony cards. The idea of health care workers falsifying their vaccination status terrifies cancer patient Diana Martinez, who lives in California. She is one of millions of Americans with an impaired immune system, which makes it harder for her body to fight off disease. She dreads the thought of getting on an elevator with an unmasked, unvaccinated person. They don't understand how they look to me. Its like someone has jumped on with a loaded gun, Martinez says. Those few moments when I'm just trying to get up to my doctor's floor, they may have infected me. They may have ended my life because my immune system is so compromised that I'm more vulnerable to whatever they might be spreading. Martinez could be especially vulnerable because the COVID-19 vaccines may not be as effective in people with suppressed immune systems. For example, Martinezs physician finds that patients with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, dont respond as well as healthy people do to mRNA vaccines, like the ones produced by Pfizer and Moderna. We found that in the patients who got the vaccination, that 45% had a normal response, 22% had an impaired response, and 33% had no response, says Dr. James Berenson, founder and president of the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research in West Hollywood, California. Berenson adds that the list of people with compromised immune systems include older folks, those who are on immunosuppressive therapies like patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriatic arthritis, people on therapies that are trying to tamp down the immune system. 'Wide latitude for penalties When it comes to suspects charged with buying and selling phony vaccination certificates, the judges are certain to look at who was harmed by the alleged crime, according to Oliver. Basically, people are buying the right to take a risk with other people's lives. That's not something that we typically see in criminal law, Oliver says. The real harm that you've done is create a risk to the population. And with most crimes, the degree of harm that you create, or the risk of physical harm, is part of the sentencing scheme. Which could mean that health care workers, or those who work in nursing homes, involved in the buying or selling of forged vaccine cards could face worse penalties. The more people you put at risk, the more vulnerable the population put at risk, clearly, the more harshly you're going to be sentenced, Oliver says. The integrity of the entire vaccination card system is at stake, Robertson says. Its similar to forging money. If half of all the currency in circulation was actually fake, then nobody could trust the currency at all, he says. When we do detect it, we really have to drop the hammer and make that deterrent signal clear to the public, that we're not messing around, that lives are at stake. Judges have wide latitude when it comes to sentencing. When making their decision, they consider both physical and financial harm caused by the perpetrator, according to Oliver. He estimates that if convicted, vaccine card fakers could face anywhere from probation to up to 20 years in prison. Berenson hopes judges will deliver harsh punishments that encourage people in the broader community to look beyond themselves and focus on the big picture. We're all in this together. Its not about you it's about the bigger good. You need to think about the bigger good, the cancer physician says. So, if you get vaccinated, we can get rid of this. And if you actually wear a mask and socially distance, there's no place for the virus to go. If you don't, this is going to go on and on and on for years. A U.N. investigator on Myanmar has accused the countrys military junta of systematic attacks against the people of Myanmar that may amount to crimes against humanity. The report by the special rapporteur was submitted Wednesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council. In a blistering attack against Myanmars coup leaders, special investigator Thomas Andrews presented documented evidence of mass atrocity crimes against the people of Myanmar. He said more than 1,100 people have been killed, at least 8,000 arbitrarily arrested and more than 230,000 forcibly displaced. This, since the military junta seized control of the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi February 1. Andrews described in wrenching detail the killings of protesters in the streets, the beatings and torture of people in detention, of entire villages being attacked by bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. He said no one is spared, not even the children. He noted at least 75 children aged 14 months to 17 years have been killed by junta forces as of July. "I have also received credible reports of children being tortured, including two boys who were starved and then had their legs burnt with iron rods. "Now the junta is increasingly relying on another depraved tactic, the use of collective punishment, including the abduction of family members of those who have been issued arrest warrants, but who police and military forces are unable to locate," he said. Andrews said the people are not taking the generals abuse lying down. He said members of the deposed civilian government and ethnic leaders have formed a National Unity Government as a legitimate opposition to the junta. He said civilian-led Peoples Defense Forces are providing security for villages. But he noted Myanmar would not gain its freedom without vigorous support and action by the international community. "In my view, the well-intentioned efforts of those who have sought to end this violence through engagement and dialogue will not succeed as long as the military junta lacks the will to end its brutality, and this can only come with leverage. "The fact is, current efforts by the international community to stop the downward spiral of events in Myanmar are simply not working," Andrews said. The U.N. investigator called for coordinated international action and targeted economic sanctions against the junta. For example, he said, sanctions on the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise could stop the junta from continuing to steal the countrys natural resource wealth. He said a comprehensive embargo on weapons and dual use technology could save lives. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somalia's National Army (SNA) launched a center this week to better coordinate their fight against al-Shabab militants, who have threatened to disrupt Somalia's elections. The Joint Operations Coordination Center at AMISOM Sector One headquarters in Mogadishu was officially launched Wednesday at a ceremony presided over by the army chief of defense forces, General Odowaa Yusuf Rageh, and the AMISOM deputy force commander in charge of operations and planning, Major General William Kitsao Shume. There are currently more than 20,000 peacekeepers in the country, trying to keep Somalis secure from attacks by al-Shabab and Islamic State. Rageh stressed the need for continuous collaboration between the army and AMISOM. He said he success of the center would depend on the relationship of the two headquarters "and how they coordinate in delegating work to the sectors, which then execute any such directives for a successful execution and implementation. I believe our long cooperation and experiences gained over the years will help us get the best out of this center so we can confront the challenges that are ahead." AMISOM's Shume said the launch of the operations center, or JOCC, was an important step in the effort to establish fully operational centers across the country. This event marks a milestone in our endeavor to have all the JOCCs around the sectors fully functioning and operating," he said. "I am happy to note that the JOCCs in all the other sectors are also already established. We will be jointly planning, coordinating and synchronizing current and future operations together. Therefore, we will be able to optimize the utilization of combat support and combat service support together as we plan for our operations. Security analyst Samira Ahmed of the Hiral Institute said creation of the centers was a step in the right direction. She said there was a need for Somali armed forces and AU peacekeepers to closely work together during this transitional period following political tensions that have slowed the process. Somalias indirect parliamentary and presidential elections have been delayed repeatedly this year by disputes over the process. In addition, al-Shabab has threatened electoral delegates who take part in the elections. According to the Hiral Institute in Mogadishu, the militant group killed at least 29 people in August. TRANSCRIPT: The Inside Story: Bidens U.N. Debut (Episode 06 September 23, 2021) Voice of KATHERINE GYPSON, VOA Congressional Correspondent: In his first U.N. speech, President Biden reasserts Americas place in the world. U.S. President Joe Biden: I stand here today for the first time in 20 years the United States not at war. We have turned the page. KATHERINE GYPSON: Topping Bidens foreign policy priorities: Climate, COVID and China. U.S. President Joe Biden: I know this: as we look ahead, we will lead, we will lead on all the greatest challenges of our time. KATHERINE GYPSON: The global challenges facing the new U.S. president, next on The Inside Story: Bidens U.N. Debut. KATHERINE GYPSON: Hi. Im Katherine Gypson, VOAs Congressional Correspondent. Shortly after his inauguration as the new U.S. president, Joe Biden told State Department workers, quote, America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy. This week, Biden outlined his foreign policy vision and priorities to an audience of fellow world leaders at the 76th UN General Assembly. Having ended Americas longest war by pulling troops out of Afghanistan, Biden pressed an agenda that could be described as the three Cs: climate, COVID and China. Add a diplomatic spat between the US and France and Biden had plenty to deal with for his first U.N. speech. VOAs White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara gets us started from New York: PATSY WIDAKUSWARA, VOA White House Bureau Chief: In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Joe Biden declared his administration ready to help the world tackle global challenges. U.S. President Joe Biden: Ending this pandemic, addressing the climate crisis, managing the shifts in global power dynamics, shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber and emerging technologies, and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: Recognizing rising U.S. tensions with China and Russia, Biden said major powers must manage relationships and avoid conflict. U.S. President Joe Biden: The United States is ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared challenges, even if we have intense disagreement in other areas, because we'll all suffer the consequences of our failure. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also urged immediate action. Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General: COVID and the climate crisis have exposed profound fragilities of societies and as a planet. Yet instead of humility in the face of these epic challenges, we see hubris. Instead of the pacts of solidarity, we are on a dead end to destruction. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: Biden promised to boost funding up to $11.4 billion to help developing nations cope with the ravages of climate change and build greener economies. Some are skeptical of his commitment. Joseph Majkut, Center for Strategic and International Studies: The U.S. also has a history of making fairly large pledges of internet support for national climate finance but missing them when it comes to actually sending the money. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: Still, Bidens speech is a departure from his predecessors rejection of multilateralism and globalism. But he faces an uphill battle convincing allies that America is back and ready to lead. Michael Kugelman, Wilson Center: The fiasco that took place in Afghanistan over the last few weeks of the withdrawal certainly caused a lot of alarm in many key capitals. And I think that President Biden needs to use global forums like the UNGA meetings to try to send a very important message to the world, and including NATO partners and treaty allies in Asia, that despite what may have happened in Afghanistan, the U.S. remains committed to its allies and its partners. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: Despite the chaotic withdrawal, Biden framed the U.S. exit from Afghanistan as an end to relentless war" and the beginning of a new era of relentless diplomacy. But on the diplomatic front, Biden is already dealing with French anger over the recent U.S. and U.K. announcement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, which scuttled President Emmanuel Macrons conventional submarine deal. While frayed relations need to be repaired, analysts say, its unlikely to have long-term impact. Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College Political Science Professor: The bigger issue of U.S. credibility is whether or not the United States can continue to signal that it willing to provide global public goods of security, of economic aid to its allies and partners and, when necessary, to work with the rest of the globe. PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: Patsy Widakuswara, VOA News. KATHERINE GYPSON: The head of the United Nations welcomed world leaders back, after a pandemic-induced virtual gathering in 2020. UN Chief Antonio Guterres starkly outlined the challenges the world is facing. He also specifically called on the United States and China to reduce tensions in their relationship. In his own words, the Secretary General urged both superpowers to tone down their increasingly heated rhetoric. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: It will be impossible for the dramatic economic and develop challenges, while the world's two largest economies are at odds with each other. Yet I fear our world is creeping towards two different sets of economic, trade, financial, and technological rules. Two divergent approaches into development artificial intelligence. And ultimately, the risk of two different military and geopolitical strategies. And this is a recipe for trouble. It will be far less predictable than the Cold War. To restore trust, and inspire hope, we need cooperation. We need dialogue. We need understanding. We need to invest in prevention, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. We need progress on nuclear disarmament and in our shared efforts to counter terrorism. We need actions anchored in respect for human rights. And we need a new comprehensive agenda for peace. KATHERINE GYPSON: For many Afghan women, the recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban represents a return to a lifestyle of limited opportunities. Even with government officials announcing policies on womens education, many are skeptical. VOAs Arash Arabasadi reports on how some women are taking the street marching for their rights. Voices of demonstrators: Panjshir is fighting for all of Afghanistan. ARASH ARABASADI, VOA Correspondent: The Taliban said Sunday that women can continue their higher education in gender-segregated classrooms and so long as they wear a hijab. Abdul Baqi Haqqani, Taliban Acting Higher Education Minister: The first solution is that there must be places where boys can be separated from girls. Or, the second solution, there should be specified times for boys and specified times for girls. The third solution is there must be a partition in class. ARASH ARABASADI: Haqqani says the Taliban-dubbed Islamic Emirate will not oppose education that follows Islamic law. Advocates for women have voiced skepticism. Alison Davidian, UN Women in Afghanistan: Every day we are receiving reports of rollbacks on womens rights. Women are prohibited from leaving the house without a mahra. In some provinces theyre stopped from going to work. Women protection centers that provide essential services for women who flee violence have been attacked. ARASH ARABASADI: Davidian added that safe houses are at full capacity. Last week in Afghanistan, women joined anti-Taliban protests in Kabul. The interior ministry of the Taliban government recently issued an order to end all protests in the country unless demonstrators first receive permission, including for slogans and banners. Arash Arabasadi, VOA News. KATHERINE GYPSON: With the U.S. now out of Afghanistan, the international community is waiting to see which countries step in to provide support. Some experts say China and Pakistan are already laying the groundwork to offer short-term aid and long-term investment for the Taliban acting government in Kabul. While Afghanistans border with China is relatively short, how they and neighboring Pakistan act has major implications for the region -- and for U.S. security interests. VOA senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine explains. CINDY SAINE, VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent: Some Afghans are selling their prized possessions to finance their escape from Taliban rule, or just to pay for food. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General: Humanitarian aid will not solve the problem if the economy of Afghanistan collapses, and we know that the risk is enormous and that there is a dramatic lack of cash. CINDY SAINE: The international community pledged more than $1.2 billion for humanitarian and development assistance for Afghanistan. The Talibans acting foreign minister also called for access to the countrys $10 billion in foreign assets, much of which has been frozen in the United States. Amir Khan Muttaqi, Taliban Acting Foreign Minister: We believe that the USA is a big country; they need to have a big heart. Afghanistan is a poor country and must not be treated cruelly. We want positive and inclusive relations with the international community, and we ask them also to stop putting more pressure on the Afghan people. CINDY SAINE: The U.S. and other Western countries are calling on the Taliban to respect human rights and in particular, the rights of women and girls before the assets are released. But China and Pakistan have sent food and health supplies to the Taliban acting government and held meetings with Taliban representatives. Experts say for Pakistan, this support for the Taliban is nothing new. Maximilian Hess, Foreign Policy Research Institute: Pakistan certainly has had a relationship with the Taliban or individuals who constitute some of the Taliban leadership going back over 30 years. CINDY SAINE: The U.S. State Department is calling on Pakistan to hold the Taliban accountable, as Islamabad had pledged to do. Ned Price, State Department Spokesperson: We are going to continue to look to Pakistan and to other countries in the region to make good on their public statements on commitments they have made to in different ways to step up to support the people of Afghanistan. CINDY SAINE: Another analyst points out that for Pakistan, India is always a factor in the equation. Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Council on Foreign Relations: Pakistan is worried about India. India is its number one enemy, and so it definitely wants a government in Afghanistan that is friendly towards Pakistan and not towards India. CINDY SAINE: As for China, one expert says the important thing to keep an eye on is long-term investment in Afghanistan. Maximilian Hess, Foreign Policy Research Institute: With regards to China, it's the potential for investment over the long term following the template that is used on its Belt and Road program in Central Asia. This would typically begin with grants for large-scale road and infrastructure construction. Those have not been announced yet. CINDY SAINE: Another expert points out that investing in Afghanistan is a risky proposition. Manjari Chattarjee Miller, Council on Foreign Relations: China has been very careful about how it supports Afghanistan and essentially doesn't want to be sinking money into a black hole with no guarantees of either government survival or any guarantees of the jihadi groups that China's worried about that the Taliban supports. CINDY SAINE: Qatar is also providing tons of medical and food aid to Afghanistan and is working to get the Kabul airport back up and running. Cindy Saine, VOA News. Voice of narrator: Long before China began using N95 masks and COVID-19 vaccines as part of its diplomatic efforts, it used pandas. The furry bears have been used by China to generate goodwill with other countries for more than 1000 years. During the Tang Dynasty, Chinese emperor Wu Zeitan presented Japan with two handouts. During the modern era, in 1941, just before the United States entered World War Two, Beijing sent two cuddly black and whites to the Bronx Zoo as a thank you gift. The practice hit its stride during the Cold War. Moa Tse Tung sent pandas to China's Communist allies, Russia and North Korea, in the 1950s. After US President Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972, Beijing gave the United States two giant pandas. Nixon said of the pandas impending us arrival, it's going to be a hell of a story. He was right. More than 20,000 people visited the pandas the first day they were on display at the National Zoo in Washington in 1972, the first of 1.1 million visitors during the first year. The gift inspired British Prime Minister Edward Heath, to ask China for pandas London Zoo during his 1974 visit to China. The panda adoration inspired the World Wildlife Fund to adopt the bear as its logo. In 1984 China changed its panda policy as environmental groups began to list the bears as an endangered species. Beijing switched to lending the bears instead of gifting them, and made it clear that any cubs born overseas belonged to China. During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles the United States paid $50,000 a month to borrow pandas. Now, zoos around the world typically pay up to $10 million for a 10-year loan period. The animals bring zoos millions in revenue each year. When new pandas arrived at the National Zoo in Washington in 2001, the zoo, which charges no entry fee, nearly doubled its merchandise and food sales. The animals are also an enormous expense, however. Apart from China's lone charge, pandas cost roughly $500,000 a year in care. National Geographic reports that is more than five times the cost of the next most expensive animals, elephants. The costs add up because pandas eat special bamboo, live ain custom built enclosures, and often require invitro fertilization treatments to produce panda cubs. Chinese officials have acknowledged that pandas popularity has aided diplomatic efforts. The Chinese ambassador to the United States said that in 2013 there are actually two Chinese ambassadors in Washington: me and the panda cub at the National Zoo. Voice of narrator, continued: An Oxford University study in 2013 found that China gave pandas, either to Asian countries with which it had recently signed trade agreements or to nations that had supplied it with natural resources and technology. The study also found that China would recall its pandas to show disapproval. In 2010 two US born panda cubs that were due to return to China were put on a flight just days after US President Barack Obama defied China's wishes by meeting the Dalai Lama. Recently, as tensions between the United States and China have been strained by a range of issues, China renewed the national zoos panda loan for three more years but called for them to be returned in 2023. Pandas in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee have come under scrutiny after Chinese social media posts went viral, claiming that the animals looked unwell. Memphis Zoo officials have denied the bears are sick and said they are checked by veterinary teams every day. Beijing controls all the world's pandas, which are native only to South Central China's mountain ranges. They also used to inhabit lowland areas, but their terrain has become more restricted because of farming and development. An estimated 1800 pandas within the wild live in China, while 600 pandas live in zoos or breeding centers around the world. The animals are no longer endangered but are listed as vulnerable. KATHERINE GYPSON: One possible flashpoint in the US-China relationship is Taiwan. The island is east of mainland China and governed independently since 1949. But China views Taiwan as part of its territory. But the US still sells military weapons to Taiwan even though it no longer recognizes Taiwan diplomatically. And China is using the U.S. departure from Afghanistan to sow doubt in Taiwan about the strength of Americas backing. VOAs Elizabeth Lee walks us through the situation. ELIZABETH LEE, VOA Correspondent: With the rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the American troop withdrawal, Chinas government-backed Global Times newspaper is suggesting Taiwan could suffer the same fate as Afghanistan. A newspaper editorial described the U.S. as an unreliable partner. But the U.S. considers the Taiwan Strait to be key to the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific region. Ned Price, U.S. State Department Spokesperson: We urge Beijing, as we have before, to cease its military, diplomatic, economic pressure against Taiwan and instead to engage in meaningful dialogue. ELIZABETH LEE: On Twitter, Taiwans Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Wu, accused China of emulating the Taliban. He wrote, we have the will and means to defend ourselves. Analysts say Chinas aim is to isolate Taiwan. Scott Harold, RAND Corporation: I think that that article needs to be understood as for what it is, which is a piece of political warfare. ELIZABETH LEE: Without an American presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. may be able to focus more on Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, says political scientist Scott Harold. Scott W. Harold, RAND Corporation: The United States explanation for why it was withdrawing from Afghanistan was so as to focus on countering China, Russia and other malign great power actors and not continuing to try to sustain a government that unfortunately we saw was not able to survive much beyond the period when the United States withdrew its very active support. ELIZABETH LEE: Analysts say the U.S. is not the only country that has an interest in security in the region. Chinas control of Taiwan would have serious implications for U.S. allies in the region, says analyst Michael Shoebridge. Michael Shoebridge, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Being in the possession of the Chinese would be a huge power projection platform for them way beyond those tiny little bases they built in the South China Sea, and it would have a more profound power projection effect for them as a result that it would cut right into the U.S. alliance relationships with Japan and Korea, so it's a fundamental security issue for the Indo-Pacific and for Australia as a result. Scott Harold, RAND Corporation: Taiwan is not only the key to the first island chain of the security of America's allies and partners in the Philippines, Japan and South Korea as well as Australia, but it's also the key to the global supply chain of semiconductors and other advanced technologies. ELIZABETH LEE: With news of how Beijing represses the countrys Uyghur Muslim minority and continuing questions about COVID-19's origins, analysts say there is also more public support in the U.S. to defend Taiwan against China than to remain in Afghanistan. Scott Harold, RAND Corporation: The trends that we see in the populace as a whole are substantially greater. In the elite and decision-making circles, I think China is more widely recognized as a threat there, and I think Taiwan's importance has only grown over the last four or five years from an already fairly strong base. ELIZABETH LEE: China considers Taiwan a renegade province and a domestic matter. Beijing, through the editorial, encourages Taiwan to seek peace with China politically. Elizabeth Lee, VOA News, Washington. KATHERINE GYPSON: Word of a new trilateral defense pact by the U.S, Britain and Australia has jeopardized ties with one of Americas major European allies. France, caught off guard by news of the deal, recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia. The developments are also coming at a time when North and South Korea are ramping up missile testing in the Indo-Pacific region. VOAs Bill Gallo is monitoring the latest missile activity and what it means regionally and globally. He spoke to us earlier from Seoul. WILLIAM GALLO, VOA Seoul Bureau Chief: So, we haven't seen any North Korean missile activity in about six months. Then we saw them launch a cruise missile, which could actually reach all of South Korea and most of Japan. That was last week and then a couple days later we saw them launch a ballistic missile. This missile was launched from a train, which is very interesting because North Korea seems to be trying to launch missiles from as many different types of basing platforms as it can. It's already working on launching them from submarines, it can do this from road mobile launchers and now trains. It's not, you know, that dangerous in and of itself, it just forces the US, South Korea and Japan to monitor all these different types of missile launchers, and that makes it a bit more difficult. This is definitely not just a North Korea thing, its not just a North and South Korea thing. China is doing it, Taiwan is doing it, Japan is even thinking of doing it. We saw Australia in the news with these nuclear-powered submarines that they're getting with the help of the US. So it's true I think North Korea will see this as, why should we be the only ones to stop testing our missiles it everyone else, including our main rival in South Korea, is getting really advanced weapons? Coming into the start of the Biden administration there was I think a widespread expectation in both North and South Korea that we would see a return to the Barack Obama era of strategic patience, which was sort of gradually ramp up pressure on North Korea, in the hopes that this would return them to the negotiating table. but don't do anything really to rock the boat, whether that's through diplomacy, whether it, whether that's through big, big sanctions. And so basically that's somewhat the approaching youve seen the Biden administration take. It repeatedly says almost on a daily basis, it's open talks with North Korea. However, it's not really seeming to offer anything that North Korea wants in the form of relaxed sanctions, or any kind of an end of hostilities agreement for the Korean War that's been going on for 70 years, technically. And so I don't really know that even though you have these offers of talks from the Biden administration that there really is going to be any progress on this. There is some frustration in South Korea because they really desperately want progress on denuclearization and on peace talks. But despite there being some sort of high-level diplomacy as Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense of the US have also visited the region since the Biden administration began. However, you know, most of this was just repeating talking points, there may be something going on behind the scenes we don't know about, but it doesn't seem like it. KATHERINE GYPSON: Thats all for now. Stay with VOANews.com for the latest news from the United Nations General Assembly meetings. And stay connected @VOANews on Instagram and Facebook. Im Katherine Gypson reporting from Washington, D.C. See you next week for The Inside Story. ### The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday criticized treatment of Haitian migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, as the U.S. increased deportation flights out of Texas. Top Biden administration officials condemned images showing Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing asylum-seekers. VOA's Katherine Gypson has more. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned that the country is suffering a human rights crisis of epic proportions, enmeshing its population in a cycle of violence, abuse and poverty. The report was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday. According to the report, nine of the 10 states in South Sudan are engulfed in what the U.N. Commission calls alarming levels of conflict 10 years after independence was declared and despite multiple peace treaties signed to end the civil war that erupted in 2013. Commission Chair Yasmin Sooka said violence in Warran and Lakes states is of particular concern. In March and July, the governors of Warran state and Lakes state ordered the summary execution of more than 56 individuals including minors," Sooka said. "These extrajudicial killings orchestrated by governors from the ruling party are sufficiently similar, widespread and systematic and may constitute crimes against humanity. The report documents the prevalence of enforced disappearances, torture, rape, and conflict-related sexual violence and the forced recruitment of child soldiers throughout the country. It finds widespread lawlessness and violence have intensified, resulting in many deaths and the forcible displacement of millions of people. A separate commission report dealing with economic crimes accuses South Sudanese political elites of illicitly diverting millions of dollars from public coffers into private bank accounts. Commission member Andrew Clapham said these practices are undermining human rights, endangering security, and keeping 80% of the population living in extreme poverty. We have sought to clarify that the government of South Sudan has responsibility for violations of the right to health and the right to education, and the failure to provide adequate resources to fulfill these rights is related to the misappropriation of the revenue, which ought to be deposited in bank accounts of the state and then used to provide for education and health, Clapham said. The South Sudanese minister of justice and constitutional affairs, R.M.A. Kachuoli, rebutted the report, saying he does not agree with the commissions view of his country. Kachuoli said the security situation across South Sudan is relatively calm and peaceful. He said the government is dealing with ethnic conflict through dialogue and the use of traditional courts. He calls a peace agreement reached in 2018 a significant milestone toward achieving peace in his country. He said his government deems the report on economic crimes and corruption exaggerated, and questions whether the three-member panel even has a mandate to look at this issue. Belarus and Myanmar registered a significant decline in global internet freedom ratings following political turmoil in which authorities in the two countries arrested journalists and blocked access to the internet. In its annual Freedom on the Net report, the global nonprofit Freedom House found digital rights had declined globally for the 11th consecutive year, with China ranking the worst for the seventh time, and the U.S. seeing a decline for a fifth year. Freedom on the Net is an annual assessment of digital rights in 70 states, with each country given a score on a 100-point scale based on factors including access, limits to content and violations of users' rights. As well as new regulations and pressure on internet companies to comply with government demands, Freedom House found an increase in the arrests of social media users. The most significant declines came in Belarus, Myanmar and Uganda, all of which experienced political unrest. While all three sought to limit access to online communication, Freedom House found that officials in Belarus and Myanmar also targeted media and online reporters. Allie Funk, co-author of Freedom on the Net, told VOA that in Belarus and Myanmar, current events hastened what had been a multiyear decline for both countries. Particularly around elections or protests these really tense political moments you tend to have a flashpoint for internet freedom restrictions, said Funk, a senior research analyst at Freedom House. Both regimes resorted to very blunt forms of censorship, so just broad-scale internet shutdowns in both countries, she added. Myanmar fell 14 points in the ratings, the largest decline Freedom House has ever recorded. The country scored 17 out of 100, categorized as not free, after the junta blocked social media, websites and internet access as part of the February 1 coup in which the military seized power and ousted the democratically elected government. The junta initially said it was blocking Facebook temporarily to ensure stability and prevent the spread of false news after the military takeover. But Freedom House found messaging apps, other social media sites and some national media outlets were also blocked. The apparent use of surveillance along with the arrests of journalists, digital activists and others for online activity were also cited in the report. Freedom House noted an increase in self-censorship and said hundreds of journalists remain in hiding to avoid arrest for their earlier coverage of anti-coup protests. VOA attempted to contact Myanmars military for comment, but the spokesperson did not respond to the call or a request sent via messaging app. Analysts and media in Myanmar told VOA the restrictions have not only curtailed reporting on the nations political turmoil but also have impacted daily life, from education to access to online health care during the coronavirus pandemic. Myo Naying, a Myanmar-based tech expert, told VOAs Burmese Service that the military councils restrictions are damaging across large sectors, including e-commerce, education and health. Since the coup, many residents have relied on the internet and social media to access news, and have turned away from state-controlled media, Myo Naying said. In response, the military has tried to block access to independent news and imposed restrictions and surveillance on the internet, the tech expert said. Myo Naying added that security forces often check peoples phones and social media posts. Anyone found to be sharing posts critical of the military is arrested. As of Thursday, the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Burma, had documented 6,718 arrests or charges since the coup. Freedom House said that surveillance had increased even in the months before the coup, and that in early February, the military circulated a draft cybercrime law that would place private data under the militarys control. Since the coup, security forces have also allegedly seized phones of those arrested and extracted data. A journalist in Yangon, who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation, told VOA that the surveillance puts reporters at risk. "The internet surveillance, it made it difficult for journalists to do their work. It created risk and insecure communication through internet and social media, both for journalist and their news sources," the journalist said. Unprecedented pressure Media in Belarus have faced similar restrictions and retaliation since Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in presidential elections in August 2020, resulting in mass protests and arrests. Freedom House, which examined conditions between June 2020 and May 2021, described the time frame as an unprecedented campaign of repression against Belarusian online journalists, activists and internet users, with more than 500 arrests. The country is categorized as not free with a score of 31 out of 100. The digital rights group cited internet shutdowns after the election and during protests; amendments to media laws including a ban on reporting live from breaking news events and provisions that made it easier to revoke or reject accreditation; the monitoring of social media; and the diversion of a passenger jet to facilitate the arrest of Raman Pratasevich, the founder of a popular Telegram channel. The Belarusian Embassy in Washington did not respond to VOAs email requesting comment. What Myanmar and Belarus exemplify is how increased surveillance, increased censorship, increased in-person attacks are really key tactics of digital repression that are here to stay, unfortunately, said Funk of Freedom House. Natalia Belikova, the head of international projects at the media network Press Club Belarus, told VOA that unprecedented pressure was put on independent media last year. The result, Belikova said, is an entirely sterile media environment where only state-authorized journalism is allowed. Nearly all print media are state-controlled and most independent media work online, Belikova said. The government blocked access to more than 50 websites and issued an order to shut down one of the countrys most popular news sites, Tut.by. State-authorized journalism means basically propaganda, which works to polarize society and to divide society into those who support the incumbent regime and those who don't," Belikova said. The journalist said that while there is little to be optimistic about, there's still data that shows that independent sources of information still have a foothold on the Belarusian audience." Despite a tougher online environment, Funk said there were positive signs, because of the courage of civil society and activists, including a youth movement in Myanmar. Funk said the young people are going out on the streets and really pushing back [against] the really intense digital oppression and the really egregious violence that they're facing. Their courage and resilience of pushing back against a brutal military is, I think, really incredible. I think there's a really tough hill to climb. Liam Scott and VOAs Burmese Service contributed to this report. The special U.S. envoy to Haiti has abruptly resigned, attacking the administration of President Joe Biden for what he characterized as its "inhumane" and "counterproductive" decision to deport thousands of Haitian migrants back to the Caribbean country. Ambassador Daniel Foote, who has held the position for just two months, sent his resignation Wednesday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, contending the U.S. approach to Haiti "remains deeply flawed." He said his advice had been "ignored and dismissed" in Washington "when not edited to project a different narrative from my own." Since Sunday, the U.S. has been flying hundreds of Haitian migrants back to their homeland after they flocked to the U.S.-Mexican border in Del Rio, Texas, in hopes of entering and then staying in the United States. Many of the migrants, however, have not lived in Haiti for a decade, having moved to Chile, Brazil or other South American countries after escaping the rubble of Haiti's massive 2010 earthquake. The U.S. has allowed thousands of the Haitian migrants into the U.S. to seek asylum but is sending others back on up to seven flights a day to Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, or to the country's second-biggest city, Cap-Haitien. 'Simply false' State Department spokesperson Ned Price rebuffed Foote's complaints, saying his views, along with those of others, "were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent policy process. Some of those proposals were determined to be harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti and were rejected during the policy process. For him to say his proposals were ignored is simply false." The top U.S. diplomatic agency said it was "unfortunate that instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterized the circumstances of his resignation. He failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead." In his resignation letter, Foote, a career diplomat, said, "The people of Haiti, mired in poverty, hostage to terror, kidnappings, robberies, and massacres of armed gangs and suffering under a corrupt government with gang alliances, simply cannot support the forced infusion of thousands of returned migrants lacking food, shelter, and money without additional, avoidable human tragedy." Foote's attack on the government's Haitian deportations is the latest complaint about the chaotic scene at the border at Del Rio, where as many as 14,000 Haitians encamped last weekend under an international bridge between the U.S. and Mexico. The number now has been sharply cut with the deportations of hundreds of Haitians and the U.S. processing of even more migrants to stay on U.S. soil on the promise they will report to an immigration office within 60 days for asylum claims. Numerous human rights groups have called for ending the deportations, while conservative Republican critics of Biden have assailed his administration for allowing thousands of Haitians into the U.S. rather than forcing them to make their asylum claims from wherever they were living before trekking through Mexico to reach the United States. Horse patrols suspended Meanwhile, U.S. immigration officials are investigating widely viewed videos and photographs of U.S. border agents on horseback corralling some Haitian migrants last Sunday to push them back toward Mexico. The actions of the agents have been widely condemned by the White House and top government officials, but no conclusions have been reached yet about how the agents were performing their jobs. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspended use of horse patrols at the border. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday the U.S. is deporting Haitians to their homeland under a health code provision citing the coronavirus pandemic as a reason to clear the border as quickly as possible. These deportees are being sent home without the opportunity to request asylum proceedings, while others are being registered and permitted, at least for weeks, to stay on U.S. soil. Officials say there are various reasons why individuals may not be expelled. Seven flights to Haiti are set for Thursday. Immigration activists say the migrants being deported should be allowed to make asylum claims to stay in the U.S. Leading Democrat speaks out Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, normally an ally of Biden, this week urged the U.S. leader and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas "to immediately put a stop to these expulsions," contending the flights echoed "the hateful and xenophobic" policies of former president Donald Trump "that disregard our refugee laws." Mayorkas told a congressional hearing that government officials hope to clear out the migrant camp under the bridge at Del Rio within the next nine or 10 days. "We expect to see dramatic results in the next 48 to 96 hours, and we'll have a far better sense in the next two days," he said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a staunch critic of Biden's administration and its handling of migrants at the border, ordered state workers to line up dozens of state-owned cars in a kilometers-long "steel wall" to prevent more migrants from surging past overwhelmed U.S. border agents into Texas. The Texas governor blamed the Biden administration for the chaos at the border. "When you have an administration that is not enforcing the law in this country, when you have an administration that has abandoned any pretense of securing the border and securing our sovereignty, you see the onrush of people," Abbott said earlier this week at a news conference in Del Rio. Donors led by the United States and the European Union on Wednesday pledged another $600 million for Yemen, but the United Nations said that a financial shortfall meant millions could go hungry. The United States promised an additional $290 million but said the ultimate solution was to end the war that has led to what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian situation. "Humanitarian assistance makes a critical difference in people's lives, but it alone cannot resolve this crisis," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement to a pledging event at the United Nations. He called on Saudi Arabia, which has led a devastating air campaign in Yemen, as well as Houthi rebels and the government, to help ensure the flow of fuel into the country, one factor that has destabilized the economy and kept staples out of reach for many Yemenis. The EU promised 119 million euros ($139 million). Oxfam said around $600 million was pledged in total, although the U.N. plea for $3.9 billion to help Yemen was still underfunded by around $1 billion. David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, welcomed the new pledges but said the U.N. agency still did not have enough to support the 12.9 million people dependent on aid, which is nearly half the country. The WFP expects it will need to cut rations for 3.2 million people in October and more in December, Beasley said. While donations have averted widespread famine, every 10 minutes a child in Yemen is dying from preventable causes, according to the U.N. "We are predicting that if we don't receive the funds that we need in the next six months which is $800 million when we start cutting rations, you could actually see that number go to 400,000 children under age 5 dying in the next year," Beasley said. "What if that was your little girl, and your little boy? We have a moral obligation to speak out and step up," he said. Beasley also said the priority needed to be on ending the war, in which the Houthi rebels have seized much of the nation as they battle a Saudi-backed government and a military coalition spearheaded by Riyadh. "If donors are getting fatigued, well, end the war," he said. The top U.S. military officers from the United States and Russia held six hours of talks in Helsinki, Finland, on Wednesday, the first face-to-face meeting between them since 2019, as both nations adjust to the U.S. pullout and Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, do not typically disclose the details of their discussions, and statements from both sides were minimal. A U.S. military statement, which included details on the length of the meeting but not the agenda, said the talks were aimed at "risk reduction and operational de-confliction." Russia's RIA news agency reported that the talks were aimed at discussions on risk mitigation. The United States and Russia often have competing military interests around the world, including in countries such as Syria, where U.S. and Russian forces have operated in close proximity. How Washington and Moscow navigate next steps in Afghanistan remains to be seen. The U.S. military is under pressure from Congress to shore up a counterterrorism strategy to address risks from Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover in August. President Joe Biden's administration has said it would rely on "over-the-horizon" operations that could strike groups such as al-Qaida or Islamic State in Afghanistan if they threaten the United States. But, with no troops on the ground, the extent of Washington's ability to detect and halt plots is unclear. After 20 years of war, U.S. military officials also have a dim view of the Taliban and note its ties to al-Qaida. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow needs to work with the Taliban government and that world powers should consider unfreezing Afghanistan's assets. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is cautiously embracing nuclear energy, despite lingering safety concerns, to help achieve its goal of a net-zero carbon economy for America by the year 2050. The 94 nuclear power reactors across the United States the most of any country will be "absolutely essential" for the country to meet Biden's climate projections, according to his climate adviser, Gina McCarthy. "Now, I don't expect those old ones [nuclear reactors] to be around a long time. But I do expect them to be safe, and I expect them to continue in a way that's going to allow us to keep the greenhouse gas emissions down with really stable baseload capacity," McCarthy recently told a webinar hosted by the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. "We are not going to be able to achieve our climate goals if nuclear power plants shut down. We have to find ways to keep them operating," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said early last month before a House Appropriations subcommittee. "I absolutely agree," said Dan Stoddard, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for Dominion Energy. "If we are going to achieve our zero carbon or net-zero goals, nuclear has to be a part of the solution. So, it's very gratifying to see people at the federal level important people in important positions acknowledging that, as well." Aside from its reliability and independence from any other source of fuel, nuclear power production is relatively compact, with a footprint of little more than 5 hectares per megawatt. It would take 3 million solar panels or more than 400 wind turbines to provide the same power as a 1-gigawatt reactor, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. "Solar is good. Wind is good. [Battery] storage is good. But they are not the entire technological answer to the question," Stoddard said. "Nuclear is going to be, for the foreseeable future, an important part of the equation if we're going to have a carbon-free supply of electricity." 20% of US electricity Despite the expensive upfront costs to build and commission a nuclear power reactor which easily run into the billions of dollars the efficiency of splitting uranium atoms has resulted in 20% of the electricity being currently generated in the United States. Dominion Energy operates seven reactors at two nuclear plants in Virginia one in South Carolina and one in Connecticut all together producing about 6,500 megawatts of energy. Combined, its two nuclear plants in Virginia, in rural Louisa and Surry counties, provide power to nearly 900,000 homes, or about one-third of the state's total electrical production and 90% of Virginia's carbon-free electricity. "There's not a sufficient recognition of nuclear as being carbon-free," Stoddard said in a VOA interview at the North Anna facility. "I think that's, in part, on us as an industry to better communicate that fact. We have a great story to tell in nuclear." For decades, however, environmental groups have told a scary story about nuclear power, with chapters about accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan. They've also raised concerns about where and how to store and protect spent radioactive fuel for thousands of years. Greenpeace, once at the forefront of this issue, no longer actively campaigns against nuclear power in the United States. But in response to a query from VOA about the group's contemporary stance, it did send a statement. "The climate crisis demands solutions that are fast, equitable and affordable. Nuclear energy is none of these. Nuclear energy is both expensive and dangerous, and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's clean," according to Greenpeace USA Climate Campaign Manager Anusha Narayanan. "We have the renewable energy technology needed to meet the demands of the climate crisis. Instead of pouring money into new nukes, the Biden administration should focus on phasing out fossil fuels and investing in the transition to a renewable energy economy." The nuclear industry calls that outdated thinking. "These plants, some approaching 50 years of operation, have never operated more safely or more reliably in their history," Stoddard responded. "The United States' nuclear industry has an incredible track record of safe and reliable operation. While nuclear plants remain the country's top source of emissions-free power generation, they were not designed to last forever, and very few new ones are being built in the United States. Decommissioning too many of them could send Biden's clean energy goals up in smoke. The White House has recently sent signals to lawmakers and industry stakeholders that it supports subsidies to prevent those old nuclear units from shutting down. The Energy Department "has not historically subsidized plants, but this is a moment to consider to make sure we keep the current fleet active," Granholm said in her testimony before Congress. The European Unions drug watchdog said Thursday that it planned to decide in early October whether to approve a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those over age 16. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said breakthrough infections in those already vaccinated had added urgency to its review of a third dose for people 16 and older, six months after being fully vaccinated. The outcome of this evaluation is expected in early October, unless supplementary information is needed," EMA official Marco Cavaleri said at a news briefing. In the United States on Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine for people 65 and older, those at high risk of severe disease and people who are routinely exposed to the coronavirus. Meanwhile, pregnant women who are vaccinated against COVID-19 also pass on the coronavirus antibodies to their unborn children, according to a study published this week in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Researchers at New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine examined 36 newborns whose mothers received either the Pfizer or Moderna two-dose vaccine before giving birth, and found that all the babies had antibodies when they were delivered. The study did not determine how well the babies were protected from COVID-19, which is the illness caused by the virus, or how long the protection might last. Scientists have discovered that pregnant women develop antibodies in response to a vaccine or an infection, then pass them on to their babies either through the umbilical cord or breast milk. Studies continue to reinforce the importance of vaccines during pregnancy and their power to protect two lives at once by preventing severe illness in both mothers and babies, said Dr. Ashley Roman, one of the studys principal investigators. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month urged pregnant women and women who were recently pregnant to get vaccinated for COVID-19, saying there is mounting evidence that the benefits of the shot far outweigh any known or potential risks. In related news: Portugal will lift most remaining COVID-19 restrictions on October 1, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said Thursday. A study published in the medical journal Nature Communications found that some COVID-19 patients develop so-called autoantibodies, or self-destructive antibodies, that could trick the immune system into attacking otherwise healthy tissue and cause inflammatory diseases. Scientists at Stanford University found autoantibodies in blood samples of at least 50% of nearly 150 patients admitted for treatment of COVID-19, compared with 15% of 41 healthy volunteers. The researchers found the antibodies have the potential to aggravate the symptoms of COVID-19. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has issued a mandatory vaccination rule for all athletes aiming to compete in next years Winter Games in Beijing. A letter issued Wednesday by Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of USOPC, sets a November 1 deadline for all athletes and team staff members to be fully inoculated against COVID-19, with a deadline of December 1 for any athlete who is selected to join the Team USA delegation to show proof of vaccination. The stark reality is that this pandemic is far from over, Hirshland wrote. This step will increase our ability to create a safe and productive environment for Team USA athletes and staff, and allow us to restore consistency in planning, preparation and service to athletes. The Beijing Winter Games are scheduled to begin on February 4, 2022, with the Paralympic Games to follow one month later. The International Olympic Committee did not mandate vaccinations for athletes who competed in this years Tokyo Games. The foundation that awards the Nobel Prizes announced Thursday that its annual banquet for the laureates in Stockholm, Sweden, has been canceled for the second consecutive year because of the pandemic. The Nobel Foundation said the winners for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics would receive their medals and diplomas in their home countries. In a statement announcing the decision, the foundation said, Everybody would like the COVID-19 pandemic to be over, but we are not there yet. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. Half a billion more doses of vaccine are headed from the U.S. to the rest of the worldor, as President Joe Biden put it Wednesday as he convened a summit to tackle the global pandemic: For every shot given to an American, Americans are giving three shots to the world. "I'm keeping the promise that America will become the arsenal of vaccines, as we were the arsenal for democracy during World War II," Biden said Tuesday, as he met virtually in the White House with the leaders of South Africa, Indonesia, Canada, Britain and the European Union and World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In a speech Tuesday at the United Nations, Biden touted the more than 160 million doses the U.S. had already distributed to more than 100 countriesmore doses than all other nations combined. Wednesday's announcement increases to 1.1 billion the number of doses the U.S. has committed to purchase for other countries. The latest tranche of donations are of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine. Biden also announced Wednesday an additional $370 million to get those shots in arms around the world, and $380 million to the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), to further facilitate global vaccine distribution. The U.S. also is providing $1.4 billion to reduce COVID-19 deaths and mitigate transmission. Also Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a U.S. commitment of $250 million to a new global financing mechanism at the World Bank to prevent future pandemics, with $10 billion as the collective goal. "This pandemic caught us off guard, and it should not have," she said. "We have learned the cost of failing to prepare. With every death, we have learned all too much the seriousness of that cost. And it is time, then, to act." Biden embraced the WHO's goal of vaccinating at least 70% of the world's population within the next year and leveraged the announcement to encourage other wealthier countries to escalate efforts to contain the infection. Tedros, the WHO's director-general, said in June that reaching the goal would require 11 billion doses. 'Welcome and needed' But global organizations and some world leaders have been increasingly critical of the distribution disparities and the slow pace of vaccinations, especially in the developing world. They have complained that the U.S. response has been inadequate, particularly as the nation pushes for booster shots for Americans before vulnerable people in poorer countries get their first dose. "Any pledge of additional doses for the numerous countries that have been left devastatingly behind in terms of vaccine access during this pandemic is welcome and is needed," said Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders' Access Campaign. "But we are not going to be able to donate our way out of this pandemic." But, she added, "donations are done at the discretion of the donor. There's very little accountability for delivery. We've already seen hundreds of millions of doses pledged by wealthy governments similar to the United States, other countries in Europe with a pretty, pretty poor delivery rate so far. So, we need doses in arms right now. It's welcome. They're needed in these countries, but it's not going to solve the pandemic." Booster shot debate Dr. Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank that seeks to bridge American political divisions, also said it's about how the vaccines are distributed, not just how many are sent out. "How quickly does the world want to end this pandemic?" Parekh asked. "And if it truly is within the next year, then the president and others need to galvanize the entire world to ensure that we have the capacity and the equitable distribution plans to vaccinate the world." Parekh defended the Biden administration's push for some vaccinated Americans to receive booster shots, a view that the WHO does not share. When speaking to reporters last month, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, likened the booster shot idea to "hand(ing) out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets while we're leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket." "Both of these objectives are critical," Parekh said. "They can't be pitted against one another. But of course that is predicated on having a robust manufacturing capacity of vaccines." One way to quickly boost capacity is to force vaccine producers to waive intellectual property rights on vaccine technology through the so-called TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver at the World Trade Organization. The Biden administration said in May that it supported the waiver, and 100 other countries had also voiced their support. But without the backing of all members, the proposal is languishing at the WTO. "We always knew that it would be a lengthy process," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in response to a question from VOA. "But that's never been the only basket that we're focused on. We've also been focused on increasing supplyor vaccine supplyto the world. We provide more vaccines to the world than any other country in the world combined. We've also been working with countries on manufacturing capacity and making sure they have the materials they need." On Thursday, Biden will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the world's largest vaccine manufacturing nation. Biden also will host Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in the first in-person meeting of the "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue," a strategic interchange that includes Australia and is seen as a bulwark against growing Chinese influence. That group, Biden said Wednesday, is on its way to meeting its goal of producing at least 1 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2022. Patsy Widakuswara and Wayne Lee contributed to this report. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Livetalk: On the Diaspora Forum we are focusing on COVID-19, the donation of some computers to a primary school by a Zimbabwean living in Britain and President Emmerson Mnangagwa's address at the United Nations General Assembly Tackling the threat of climate change and COVID-19 were the dominant themes of leaders' speeches Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly annual debate. "While the world was fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis also struck at full force," said President Andry Rajoelina of the African island nation of Madagascar. Successive years of climate change-driven droughts have ravaged parts of his country. This year, swarms of locusts and armyworms have wiped out crops. The U.N. says more than 1 million Malagasy people in the country's south are "marching toward starvation" with thousands already in famine-like conditions. "If we do not act, the crisis will continue and get worse," Rajoelina said of the consequences of global warming. "Madagascar calls upon each state to act in an equitable fashion and commensurate with their polluting activities." In six weeks, nations will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for a progress report on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. All signs point to the planet falling short of keeping global warming to a cap of 1.5 degrees Celsius. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has focused much of his engagement this week on getting the robust commitments needed to reach that target. Rich nations have benefited from growth that resulted in pollution, and now "have a duty to help developing countries grow their economies in a green and sustainable way," Johnson said in a Twitter post Monday. He is due to deliver his address late Wednesday. Combating climate change was among the topics of discussion in separate meetings U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held Tuesday with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez ahead of their remarks to the assembly. Fighting COVID-19 After the coronavirus pandemic kept heads of state from attending last year's General Assembly meetings, about 100 are attending this year's session in New York. Others are choosing to stay home and deliver recorded remarks. U.S. President Joe Biden delivered his remarks in person on Tuesday and then returned to Washington, where he convened a virtual summit Wednesday on ending the COVID-19 pandemic. "We're not going to solve this crisis with half-measures or middle-of-the-road ambitions, we need to go big," he said. "And we need to do our part: governments, the private sector, civil society leaders, philanthropists. This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis." He announced that the United States which has already donated some 600 million vaccine doses to developing countries is buying another 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to give to low- and middle-income countries. They will start shipping out in January 2022. Unresolved issues Entrenched geopolitical issues also came up. In video remarks, Jordan's King Abdullah reiterated the need for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, while Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud chastised Iran over its nuclear activities. "We support international efforts aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon," King Salman said. "We are very concerned at Iranian steps that go counter to its commitments, as well as daily declarations from Iran that its nuclear program is peaceful." Only three female leaders were scheduled to speak Wednesday in a field of 30, highlighting the obstacles women still face in reaching the highest levels of government. Meanwhile, it is mostly on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly debate that the real diplomacy takes place. Wednesday evening the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States were to meet. Britain's newly appointed foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said the group shares an interest in maintaining stability in volatile regions and in preventing terrorism. "If we want to avoid Afghanistan becoming a haven for global terror then the international community including Russia and China needs to act as one in its engagement with the Taliban," she said. G-20 foreign ministers also were to meet Wednesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. The current wave of Covid-19 cases driven by the Delta coronavirus variant has the potential to be the country's last major wave of infection -- but it's far from over, and even endemic Covid will pose problems, a former Food and Drug Administration chief said. "I think this Delta wave may be the last major wave of infection, assuming nothing unexpected happens, (such as getting) a variant that pierces the immunity offered by prior infection (and) by vaccination," former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNN Thursday. "So, assuming that doesn't happen, and I think it's unlikely, this will be the last major wave of infection, and this becomes a more persistent, endemic risk," he said. Current vaccinations and immunity from infection help prop this possibility. Still, he says, vaccination rates need to get "higher if we want to create a backstop against the kind of spread that we've seen this past summer." He pointed to CDC data showing 76.7% of adults having received at least one vaccine dose. "We really need to get to around 80% to 85% to have enough vaccination in the population that you start to see case rates decline and the velocity of spread start to slow," Gottlieb said. Though national daily cases are inching downward for over a week, the overall Delta-influenced wave isn't done and cases still may spike -- especially as colder weather approaches, and especially in regions like the Northeast that haven't been as hard hit as other places, he said. "I think we're going to see infections start to pick up here (in the Northeast), as well, as kids go back to school, schools become sources of community transmission, and people start to go back to work and the weather gets cold," Gottlieb said. "I think we're still going to have a lit of cases this winter. ... It likes to spread in the cold weather," he said. He painted a picture of what living with Covid-19 could look like once the wave diminishes, if no other variant pierces immunity. "This becomes a more persistent, endemic risk. So, you continue to have coronavirus spread, but not the same rates we're seeing right now, and it settles into ... more of a seasonal pattern, and basically becomes a second flu, (but) probably more pathogenic than the flu," Gottlieb said. "The challenge is that we already have a flu, and if we have Covid circulating alongside flu, the cumulative death and disease caused by those two pathogens is going to be too much for society to bear," he said. So society still will have to do things differently, especially in winter, he said. That includes improving indoor air quality and filtration, making offices less densely populated, and wearing masks at least voluntarily in public spaces. "I think you're going to see masks become much more culturally acceptable and used in parts of the country," he said. Coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations jumped after the early summer, as the highly contagious Delta variant became dominant, though cases and hospitalizations have recently dipped. The country averaged more than 130,790 new Covid-19 cases each day over the past week as of Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data. That's down from the summer 2021 peak average of 172,001 daily reached September 14, but still is more than 11 times what the figure was two and a half months ago. More than 86,920 Covid-19 patients were in US hospitals on Thursday -- a number that has dropped in recent weeks, but is still significantly higher than early summer, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Across the country, nearly 80% of ICU beds are in use -- more than a quarter of those taken up by Covid-19 patients, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Pace of first vaccine doses is the slowest in two months Despite the call from health care professionals for the public to get vaccinated, the current pace of people receiving a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine is the slowest in two months, according to CDC data. Meanwhile, federal health officials are considering expanding the groups of people eligible for boosters. Last month, the CDC recommended an extra dose of Covid-19 vaccine for some immunocompromised people. On Wednesday, the FDA granted an emergency use authorization for Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine booster for people 65 and older, people at high risk of severe disease and people whose jobs put them at risk of infection. Vaccine advisers to the CDC will meet Thursday to act on the FDA's decision. The CDC must give its stamp of approval for any booster doses to be officially given. Some schools up preventative measures, others dial back Another consideration in managing the virus is the return of children to in-person learning, which schools are handling differently. Some schools have amped up Covid-19 preventative measures as more students have been infected across the country. In South Carolina, the Charleston County School District began fully enforcing its mask mandate Wednesday -- and as a result, a number of students were sent home for not complying, district spokesperson Andy Pruitt said. Students who don't come back to school adhering to the new policy will learn virtually until at least October 15, though they are welcome to return to the classroom wearing a mask, he said. Elsewhere, precautions are being eased. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a revised rule for the school year under which parents can send asymptomatic children exposed to Covid-19 back to class. The policy, which some educators opposed, recognizes that quarantining healthy students is "incredibly damaging" for students' educational advancement and disruptive for families, he said. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. David Robinson has been in Arizona for the last three months searching for his 24-year-old son, Daniel Robinson, who went missing after leaving a work site in the desert in his Jeep Renegade on June 23. Robinson, who lives in South Carolina, hired an independent investigator and assembled a volunteer search team when he says he felt the police weren't making progress in the investigation. He also says he failed to get the amount of media coverage he believed the case needed. The case was reported by the local media as early as July 9. Robinson said he sympathizes with the family of Gabby Petito, whose remains were recovered Sunday after she disappeared while exploring parks in Wyoming prompting a highly publicized search. Still, Robinson said it's "hurtful" to see a young White woman's case met with more urgency and national attention than his son, who is Black. "You wish you lived in a world where everything was equal but it's really not equal," Robinson told CNN. Robinson is among the Black and brown families whose loved ones remain missing and say they have struggled to get fair attention on their cases. Some say they have grown frustrated with watching the search for missing White women like Petito be in the spotlight, while police appear to allow their cases to go cold or classify their loved one as a "runaway." The issue has for years prompted people of color to take matters into their own hands, holding rallies, launching independent probes and seeking help from community advocates and lawmakers to get their cases in the public eye. Some experts say the nation faces "Missing White Women Syndrome," which is defined by the heavier media attention White women and girls receive when they go missing compared to anyone outside of those demographics, according to a study published by the Northwestern University School of Law in 2016. The study points out that missing Black people are less likely to garner media attention at the outset than other groups and when they do make the news and they receive a lower intensity of coverage. Zach Sommers, a criminologist and author of the Northwestern study, told CNN that bias and systemic racism play a role in Missing White Women Syndrome -- a term he said was coined by the late TV news anchor Gwen Ifill. "As a culture we are readily willing to accept stories about White folks as victims as something we should care about," he said. "When we see a White person who has gone missing, we say that could be my daughter, neighbor or cousin or friend... and they identify with that person and are more likely to read the story than we would if it were a person of color." And while the cases of missing White women are given more focus and urgency, people of color are disappearing at disproportionate rates. According to 2020 FBI data, Black people make up 35% of missing persons reports but only 13% of the US population. White people, meanwhile, make up 54% of missing persons reports and 76% of the US population. A father has lost his faith in police David Robinson, who described his son as an outspoken geologist who loves the outdoors and has a lot of friends, said he believes that if Daniel were White, police would be working harder to find him. "It bothers me and it upsets me that my son being missing is not important, it's not urgent and hasn't gotten much attention," he said. "I've lost faith in the Buckeye police department." Daniel's car was discovered by a rancher on July 19 about three miles away from the work site where he was last seen, Robinson said. The vehicle had suffered crash damage and a pile of his clothing and belongings was discovered nearby. Buckeye police assistant chief Bob Sanders told CNN that his officers have "covered all of our bases" in the search for Daniel Robinson. Sanders said the department has followed up on every lead, interviewed co-workers, friends and relatives, and reviewed all evidence. As of Wednesday, no foul play is suspected in Daniel Robinson's disappearance, Sanders said, but the investigation is ongoing. "Daniel is a member of our community and we are committed to finding him," Sanders said. "We relate to him (David Robinson) as a father and we are trying to give him closure one way or the other." 'There has not been the drive to find Jelani' Other Black families say they are also angered by how police have handled their cases. Some have gained more attention on social media in light of Petito's case. On Thursday the body of missing graduate student Jelani Day was identified a month after he went missing. The coroner of LaSalle County, Illinois, confirmed Day's identity through forensic dental identification and DNA testing and comparison, the office said in a news release shared by the Bloomington Police Department. The cause of death remains unknown, the release said, pending further investigation. Day, a 25-year-old graduate student at Illinois State University whose mother said he aspired to become a speech pathologist, was reported missing on August 25 in Bloomington, Illinois. His mother Carmen Bolden Day has spoken out in recent days, pleading for answers and more help finding Jelani. "The Bloomington Police Department, I have been in frequent contact with them," Day told HLN. "However, there has been no urgency. There has not been the drive to find Jelani." A mother's plea to find daughter missing nearly 5 years Toni Jacobs said her daughter Keeshae Jacobs has been missing since Sept. 26, 2016 when she left the family's apartment in Richmond, Virginia. Jacobs said Keeshae, now 26, said she was going to spend the night with a friend but never returned home the next day. Jacobs said police initially suggested Keeshae was ignoring her mother's calls and likely wasn't missing. However, 14 months after Keeshae went missing, police said they suspected foul play was a factor in her disappearance. Jacobs said it's unfair that Keeshae, who was only a year younger than Gabby Petito when she vanished, did not receive the same intense search effort and publicity as Petito. "My heart goes out to everybody that's missing, I don't want any parent to go through what I've gone through," Jacobs told CNN. "But at the same time it does frustrate me because Keeshae didn't get that attention. What made the FBI think her case was more important than Keeshae's?" 'Cases are just not taken seriously' The years long disparity prompted Derrica Wilson to launch Black and Missing Foundation, Inc. in 2008 to help raise awareness for missing people of color. Wilson, a former law enforcement officer, said too often police label missing Black people, including children, as runaways or suggest they were involved in criminal activity. And with most police agencies allocating minimal resources to missing persons units, people of color are more likely to fall through the cracks, Wilson said. Some of those same families have sought national and local news coverage to no avail, she said. Wilson said her organization is hoping to combat the issue -- which she insists is the result of systemic racism -- by sharing and promoting the stories of Black and brown families with missing loved ones through the media. "We look at it and we say 'why not us?'" Wilson said. "Our families, our communities are desperate to find their missing loved ones and sadly their cases are just not taken seriously." Lawmakers have also made efforts to address the issue. Earlier this year, Minnesota's state legislature passed a bill authored by State Rep. Ruth Richardson that would create a Missing and Murdered African American Women and Girls Taskforce. Richardson said the group will be tasked with making recommendations for improving how the state handles cases of missing Black women and girls. She pointed to the story of 18-year-old Brittany Clardy who went missing in St. Paul in 2013 and police suggested to the family that she'd run away with her boyfriend. Clardy's family launched their own investigation and started to get leads, Richardson said. Clark's body was later found in the trunk of her car. Alberton Palmer was sentenced to 40 years in prison for her death. Richardson said she wants to see police give these cases fairer treatment, figure out a trajectory for the stories to make the news and create a state level office for missing and murdered Black women and girls. "What we tend to see is when Black women and girls go missing, they are much more likely to be identified as runaways and then you don't get the same level of law enforcement engagement, support and you don't get Amber Alerts," Richardson said. "So there are lots of things within our systems that have been set up in ways that are really failing these families and these Black women and girls when they go missing." The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. At least one person was killed and 14 others injured in a shooting at a Kroger in Collierville, Tennessee, police officials said Thursday afternoon. The shooter was also found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Police Chief Dale Lane said. Lane said 13 victims were taken to hospitals and one person suffered an anxiety attack and went on their own. An employee at the supermarket told CNN affiliate WMC that when the shooting started, she thought it was just "balloons popping." Brignetta Dickerson was working the cash register when she said the shooting began in the deli section. She told WMC she ran with some of her coworkers to hide but the gunman came right behind them and started shooting. "He kept on shooting, shooting, shooting," Dickerson said. "He shot one of my coworkers in the head, and then shot one of the customers in the stomach, and then my other customer got kind of like cuts because of the asphalt." Dickerson, who has worked at Kroger for 32 years, said she was OK but a little scared and shaky. Lane said as far as police know, there was no incident that led up to the shooting. Regional One Health Medical Center in Memphis received nine patients, said Angie Golding, a spokesperson at Regional One Health. According to Golding, four were in critical condition when they arrived and five were in non-critical condition. Golding did not provide further information, as the hospital was still working to notify relatives. At least one patient was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital's location in Collierville, spokesperson Kimberly Alexander told CNN. She would not provide any information on the condition of the patient. Lane said 44 people were working in the Kroger when the shooting happened. Some employees hid in freezer Around 1:30 p.m. CT, Collierville Communications Center received a 911 call about an active shooter at the Kroger, Lane told reporters outside the store. There actually was a patrol car near the store when the 911 call came in, Lane said. When officers entered the store, they found people who had been shot. A SWAT team, patrol officers and other command staff members went aisle to aisle and room to room, bringing out employees who were hiding and helping the injured victims, Lane said. Several employees were found hiding in freezers or locked in offices. "They were doing what they had been trained to do: Run, hide, fight," Lane said. The chief said he was part of a team that brought a Kroger employee down from the top of the building. The chief said the shooter's vehicle was in the parking lot and was being searched. FBI Special Agent in Charge Douglas Korneski with the Memphis field office said the FBI has deployed an evidence response team to support Collierville Police and is providing specialists to provide assistance to victims. Kroger spokesperson Teresa Dickerson said the grocery chain is providing counseling for store workers. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. Authorities on Thursday resumed their search of a Florida nature reserve for Brian Laundrie, who returned home this month from a road trip without his fiancee, Gabby Petito. Investigators have now spent several days scouring the swampy 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve for any sign of the 23-year-old with the help of dogs, drones and, on Wednesday, a dive team from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. Laundrie's family told police he left home with his backpack September 14 and told them he was going to the reserve near their home. Petito's remains were found Sunday in an undeveloped camping area in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and her death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday in preliminary findings. She was reported missing by her family on September 11, after Laundrie returned home to Florida without her on September 1. Meantime, a small crowd gathered Wednesday night in Salt Lake City to mourn the 22-year-old, whose death has captured the attention of people nationwide. The couple had been visiting national parks in the West in their van, chronicling their travels on social media with the hashtag #VanLife, before Petito went missing. And though she never lived in Utah, Petito's love of nature and her time there -- including an encounter with Moab police that was captured on bodycam -- has connected her with the community. "We won't forget about you. We won't let your light dim," vigil organizer Serena Chavez said before the group. "We will remember other women or children who are missing," Chavez continued, raising a broader problem highlighted by Petito's disappearance. "Their families are devastated, and I can only imagine what Gabby's family is going through." Before she moved to Florida, Petito had worked as a hostess at Smoke on the Water in Wilmington, North Carolina. Coworkers there say she made everyone feel loved, according to CNN affiliate WWAY. It was another community upon which the young woman made her mark. "She's not just a name. She's not just a case. She was a person, and she was very special to a lot of people and many of us here," the restaurant's general manager, Lara Witschen, told WWAY. "She was a good soul, a good spirit, and touched so many lives. That's what we want her to be remembered for." Laundrie's neighbor last saw him weekend of Sept. 10 A neighbor who lives directly across the street from the home Petito shared with Laundrie and her family told CNN the last time she saw Laundrie at the North Port, Florida, home was the weekend of September 10. Karyn Aberts said she saw Laundrie and his family "in the neighborhood out in the front yard," saying it looked like "a normal ... they were going for a walk kind of thing," and that she "never thought anything about it." Aberts told CNN outside her home that she'd watched Petito and Laundrie converting the van they eventually drove across the country. (Officials would later find that van, a white Ford, at the Laundrie home.) "They seemed to be sitting and laughing in their car and then the van that they were working on," Aberts said, noting the last time she saw Petito was early in the summer, before the coupe left on their road trip. Asked if she ever saw anything odd between Petito and Laundrie that would have been a red flag, Aberts said no. Overall, Aberts described the Laundrie family as "very nice people." "We saw them take walks as a family," she told CNN. "We saw them ride their bikes as a family and things like that." Witness says she saw a 'commotion' involving the couple Petito's story has become a national obsession for many, spurring digital detectives to comb through the couple's online trail to try to solve the case. The story has also further highlighted the nearly 90,000 missing persons cases active at the end of 2020, according to the National Crime Information Center. Few missing persons cases are met with as much urgency and national attention as Petito's. It also has spurred people to come forward with accounts of Petito's last days. Nina Angelo and her boyfriend, Matt England, saw a "commotion" last month as Petito and Laundrie were leaving The Merry Piglets Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming, she told CNN Wednesday. Petito was in tears and Laundrie was visibly angry, going into and out of the restaurant several times, showing anger toward the staff around the hostess stand, Angelo said. The couple's waitress was also visibly shaken by the incident, said Angelo, who told CNN she did not see any violence or physical altercation between Petito and Laundrie. A manager at The Merry Piglets, who declined to give her name, did see "an incident" at the restaurant on August 27 and called the FBI on Wednesday, she told CNN. The manager declined to describe what happened and said the restaurant did not have surveillance video of the incident. Separately, Jessica Schultz saw Laundrie parked in a white van on August 26 at Grand Teton National Park, and no one appeared to be with him, she told the San Francisco Chronicle. And in a series of videos on TikTok, Miranda Baker said she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a ride on August 29 in Wyoming -- and that he claimed he was camping by himself for multiple days while Petito was back at their van working on social media posts. Baker said they picked up Laundrie while he was hitchhiking in Colter Bay, Wyoming, which is not far from where Petito's remains were found. He offered to pay $200 for the ride before he even got in the car, she said. 911 call of a domestic dispute Petito's mother received an odd text on August 27 that became the last communication from her, police in Florida said in a recent search warrant affidavit. Petito also stopped posting to social media at that time. Evidence from a 911 call about a "domestic dispute" involving Petito and Laundrie shows the couple's volatile relationship was not as aspirational as their sun-drenched lives on Instagram and YouTube suggested. A man who saw the domestic dispute between Petito and Laundrie in Utah last month said, "They were talking aggressively at each other, and something seemed off." In a handwritten sworn statement, the witness said it appeared the two were arguing over control of Petito's phone. "At one point she was punching him in the arm and/or face and trying to get into the van." The witness's first name is Chris and last name was redacted in the document provided by Moab City Police to CNN. The witness said he heard Petito say, "Why do you have to be so mean?" although Chris added that he couldn't be sure if the comment was meant to be taken seriously. Police later stopped the couple, and previously released police documents and body-camera video reveal what followed that day. Moab city officials are investigating the Moab City Police Department's handling of a possible domestic dispute, a statement from the city said. Although the Petito and Laundrie are described in a police report as getting into a physical fight following an argument, "both the male and female reported they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately didn't wish to see anyone charged with a crime," Officer Eric Pratt wrote in the report. At the suggestion of police, the couple separated for the night, the report said, which described Petito as "confused and emotional." A National Park Service ranger who also responded to the call spent about 90 minutes with Petito and warned her that her relationship with Laundrie had markings of a "toxic" one, the ranger told the Deseret News of Utah. "I was imploring with her to reevaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life," ranger Melissa Hulls told the Deseret News. CNN has sought comment from Hulls. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. Virtual learning became an unexpected reality for North Alabama students when the pandemic took the nation by storm. Many schools and students were forced to adapt to the changes of online learning, and now many students are facing a learning gap. However, Conway Brooks, a parent of a student enrolled in the Alabama Virtual Academy, said that's not a problem his daughter ever had to face. ALVA never faced a transition in learning methods, because the free academy is virtual the entire school year. "There was really no change with us, with any of the delta variant, the original Covid none of that has even caused a hiccup in ALVA's system," Brooks said. Brooks' daughter has been enrolled in the virtual academy for five years now. "I was open to it; I didn't see how it'd be a huge difference," said Dorothy Brooks, who is currently a seventh-grade student. But switching from in-person to virtual learning did make a great difference. "We had two big issues, one being bullying," Conway Brooks said. "She was having a lot of bullying locally at the public schools, traditional brick and mortar, and we werent getting help from the school administrators." His daughter is also a competitive ballroom dancer. Virtual learning provided flexibility when traveling for competitions. "She would be missing a lot of days in school, so for us, we're able to do classes in the car while traveling," Conway Brooks said. Melissa Stokkelarson, with ALVA, said the virtual academy is different than the emergency online teaching seen during the pandemic. "We are backed by K12 Stride curriculum, which has been around for decades, and we were set up to be a virtual school, so we are schooling in a way that is meeting the needs of students schooling from home," Stokkelarson said. Students' curriculum mirrors traditional, in-person learning. "They have their courses on the computer, so they have their course content on an online platform and have the opportunity to meet with teachers throughout the day," Stokkelarson said. Conway Brooks said he actually thinks his daughter is doing better in the online learning format. "Shes able to spend more time focusing on an individual subject, and during the week, she picks her time," he said. The Alabama Virtual Learning Academy is a partnership with Eufaula City Schools. To enroll, you need to live in Alabama and agree to in-person testing. High school students cannot be credit deficient. ALVA follows all state testing guidelines. Testing sites are set up throughout the state, so no matter where you live, your child meets all state-required assessments. Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security completed their raid at a Lexington business, and WAAY 31 has learned they came with a warrant for the owner. Francisco Guerra owns Global Special Effects and, according to law enforcement sources, he was taken into custody but has been released. The raid happened Wednesday morning in Lexington, a small town nestled in cornfields in rural Lauderdale County. It remains unclear what charges Guerra faces at this time. Thursday, a worker inside the business on County Road 71 said she couldnt comment on the investigation and referred me to the owner. WAAY 31 has reached out for comment but has not heard back. Lexington Police Chief Augie Hendershot says this raid was a surprise to everyone, and even he was not given any heads up the feds were coming. That is unusual for us here, we are the best little town to me in the whole little world," he said Thursday. "We are a very tight-knit community so when something different happens or something unusual happens it attracts a lot of attention. WAAY 31 has not uncovered any federal paperwork filed and so far nothing is showing in statewide justice records either. (Guerra) is one of our largest employers, but being from such a small community we know everybody. We know him, so we just want everybody to know that we are going to put our thoughts and prayers into this," Hendershot said. "We are just gonna pray for the family and for everyone involved and the employees. The Racking Horse community celebrates a milestone this week in Morgan County. A lot of horsing around in Priceville this week for the 50th Annual Racking Horse World Celebration. The first racking horses were bred right here in Alabama. "Basically started on the farms in the South, called single-footed horses, because they were on them all day long," Morgan County Celebration Arena COO Bill Stricklend, said. It didn't take long for the fancy footwork to make its way into an arena. And for 50 years, Celebration Arena has held the Racking Horse Breeders Association of America World Celebration! "These people are working class folks, they plan their vaction , their savings around this, instead of going to the beach, they come to the racking horse celebration in Priceville Alabama," Stricklend said. The Meisenheimers are a three-generation racking horse family. "I like doing it with my family because we do it together and we work together," Reese said. Lance has spent his whole life driving to Alabama from Illinois to show off his horse. "As a dad I totally undersatnd it now the joy that he got watching my sister and I grow up showing and riding," Lance added. As much as the showcase is about winning, its even more about community. "I was born into this and not going anywhere," Lance said. And why would you? The world celebration in Morgan County is one of a kind. "They can show all year but they have to come here to be a world grand champion," Stricklend said. So don't hold your horses, only two days left of this event. Stricklend added if you plan to come out to the arena visit the stables and meet some of the riders. He said they would love to meet people in their second home! The celebration is hosting a fish fry at 11 a.m. Friday if you're feeling hungry. There could soon be a new option for your car's license plate that will help support small businesses in Alabama. WAAY 31 is connecting North Alabama by showing the push of the nonprofit organization, Main Street Alabama, to launch the "Shop Local, Support Small" license plate and how it will fund grants for struggling small businesses. A building housing several small businesses in Limestone County would have been demolished years back if it weren't for Athens Main Street. The nonprofit organization and Main Street Alabama partner saw its potential for small businesses. The owner of Boutique Bliss, Brandi Griffin, told WAAY 31 that it allowed her dreams of owning her own boutique to become a reality. She said the grants from the license plate initiative will do that for many others as well. This is a dream come true. When I say Im going to work, it doesnt seem right, because I love it so much," Griffin said. "Its not work to me at all. Griffin runs Boutique Bliss by The Square in Athens. She's been in business for nearly three years and hopes Main Street Alabama's new initiative will provide grant money to help improve her business. Covid has really hurt some businesses," she said. "I think that this would be a great time for that to help them in any way. Mark Stahl, owner of Das Stahl Bierhaus in Huntsville, agrees the anticipated grant amount of $500 would help him. Any little bit and every little bit helps," he said. Continuous improvement is sort of our shtick here. Any opportunity I get to put money back into the business and replace weather-beaten tabletops, wooden tabletops, with concrete tabletops is an example of that. Griffin is like Stahl and would use the grant money to improve the aesthetics and curbside appeal of her business. We had talked about getting a new sign that would light up, maybe work on the website some, marketing that would help tremendously," Griffin said. The "Shop Local, Support Small" license plates are not in production yet. Main Street Alabama needs at least 250 pre-orders before they can start. To learn more about the initiative, click here. To pre-order a license plate, click here. Nakell Williams Nakell comes to WAAY from Macon, Georgia. Title: Evening Anchor Nakell Williams TV NakellWill Nakell Williams, an award-winning journalist joined WAAY 31 in September 2021 as an evening anchor. She joined the team after serving as an anchor/reporter for WGXA Fox 24/ABC 16 in Macon, Georgia. Nakell moved to Georgia from Richmond, Virginia after working for WRIC-TV 8 as a multi-media journalist covering the Tri-Cities region including Petersburg, Colonial Heights and Hopewell. While at WRIC, Nakell provided hard-hitting coverage of one of the biggest financial crises in the history of Petersburg, Virginia. Her stories exposed unprecedented government mismanagement, theft and budgeting discrepancies in excess of$18M within the City of Petersburg. As a part of the WRIC team, Nakell also covered John Hinckley, Jr.s release from prison in 2016. Hinckley was released from prison after serving more than 30 years for shooting President Ronald Reagan, a Secret Service agent, D.C. police officer and James Brady, President Reagans press secretary. During her tenure with WRIC, Nakell interviewed newsmakers including former vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine and Gold Star Father Khizr Khan. Nakell also spent time working in Waterville and Augusta, Maine. She served as the bureau chief and state capitol reporter for WABI-TV 5 covering the LePage Administration. She spent the early years of her career reporting and anchoring nightly newscasts for WEIU-TV News Watch in Charleston, Illinois. Prior to joining WEIU, Nakell worked for CBS affiliate WBTW News 13 in Florence, South Carolina as an editor and newsroom assistant. While at News 13, Nakell earned a bachelor's degree in mass communications from Francis Marion University. She also studied abroad at the Universidad Internacional in Cuernavaca, Mexico and earned a master's degree in public administration/public policy from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. After her time at Clark Atlanta, Nakell had the privilege of serving administrations on both sides of the isle including Governor David Paterson, Governor Eliot Spitzer and Governor Sonny Perdue focusing on public issues including community & economic development and environmental conservation. She helped managed program-budgets aimed at eliminating social and economic barriers facing the people of Georgia and New York. In her spare time, Nakell volunteers and devotes her energy to organizations that combat domestic violence and advocate for the empowerment of women and children. Her favorite things to do include enjoying time outdoors, running, traveling and spending time with her husband, sons, family and friends. She is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., an organization founded in 1908 and has a global commitment to servant-leadership. Nakell also serves as a board member of the nonprofit Four Giving Hearts which promotes responsible citizenship with emphasis on education, health, family, and community. Nakell is a native of sunny South Carolina. This content is expired! Unfortunely this content is expired and cannot be viewed anymore; if You are the owner of this content please login to our Website, go to our access panel and enable this content again. Wild boar continue to make the news in Italy. A video showing a dozen wild boar, or cinghiali, strutting along a busy Roman street has gone viral in Italy. The footage, filmed on Via Trionfale in the city's northern suburbs, comes amid a heated debate over how to handle the animals' growing incursion into city life. The video displays the ease with which the 'urbanised' boar navigate the traffic, leading some Romans to joke that after 'piste ciclabili' bike lanes the city should introduce 'piste cinghiabili' - wild boar lanes. Jokes aside, the problem is a serious one, with several cases in recent days of cinghiali present outside schools and kindergartens in north Rome, where they have become a frequent sight. Over the summer the animals were photographed outside Italy's foreign ministry at the Farnesina, in the Monte Mario suburb near the city's Stadio Olimpico. Once confined to nature reserves such as Insugherata in the northern fringes of Rome, in recent years cinghiali have discovered that it is easier to rifle through the city's trash than go foraging for food in the woods. This problem is compounded by reports of people feeding the tusked animals which can be extremely dangerous to humans if approached when there are young cinghiali present. The wild hogs have also caused multiple road accidents at night, posing particular risks for motorcyclists. So who exactly is in charge of Rome's wild boar? The answer appears complex, with multiple agencies involved, complicated further by animals moving in between public and privately-owned land. Rome mayor Virginia Raggi recently initiated legal proceedings against the surrounding Lazio regional government over the "massive and uncontrolled presence" of wild boar in the capital, accusing the region of failing to implement effective management plans for these animals. Yesterday the mayor repeated that the responsibility lies squarely with Lazio, pointing to newspaper headlines about wild boar in other areas of the region such as Rieti and Viterbo, far from Rome. Raggi wrote on Facebook that the Lazio region "has not bothered to prepare effective plans to counter the problem", accusing regional authorities of "doing nothing." The cinghiali have now become a election issue in Rome, as the mayor seeks a second five-year term in office in just 10 days' time. "My detractors continue to use photos and videos of wild boar around Rome, giving me full responsibility", Raggi said. "It is clear that wild boar are a problem that does not only concern the capital. If a lady is chased by a wild boar in Formello, a small town north of Rome, the next day the newspapers say I am responsible." Raggi said she understood that an electoral campaign is in full swing but claimed: "This attitude is intolerable." Wild boar in Italy The issue of wild boar does not only concern Rome or the Lazio region, with the animals making headlines across Italy, including in Turin where a pair of cinghiali were filmed in the city centre the other night. Farming group Coldiretti estimate the animal's population in Italy to have reached a record 2.3 million, blaming the boar for causing "at least 200 million worth of damage to crops" every year. The video that everyone is talking about in #Rome this week: a dozen wild boar walking calmly through traffic on Via Trionfale. #cinghiali pic.twitter.com/ZrLfK49lOZ Wanted in Rome (@wantedinrome) September 22, 2021 Italy moves to defend Prosecco amid record sales for the bubbly Italian drink. The 'Prosecco War' between Italy and Croatia has stepped up a gear after the European Commission published an application for EU-protected label status for the Croatian Prosek wine. Italy's Prosecco producers claim that Prosek's similar-sounding name could confuse consumers and would risk weakening the image of the sparkling Italian drink. The Italian agriculture minister Stefano Patuanelli has now waded into the debate, establishing a technical group to fight any decision by Brussels to classify Prosek as a recognised protected label (PDO). Under the application rules, Italy has two months to file objections, with Patuanelli stressing that the EU had made "no definitive decision" yet regarding the registration of the label. However he warned that "Italy can and must object, at a European level, to defend its product of absolute excellence." Prosecco Hills, Farra di Soligo, Veneto. Luca Zaia, governor of Italy's northern Veneto region which is home to the UNESCO-recognised 'Prosecco Hills' of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano, has slammed Croatia's application as "disgraceful". "The government must strike a hard blow, and we are ready, by their side, for a massive fight against this initiative" - said Zaia - "because an important brand from our country is being snatched from us, it's as if they wanted to take the Ferrari away from us." Italy's main farming group Coldiretti is also on the warpath, describing the application by Croatia as "an attack against Made in Italy." It claims the move could "ruin the historic record for world prosecco exports, which rose 35 per cent in the first six months of 2021", with Prosecco production set to reach 700 million bottles this year - "the biggest wine brand in the world". Croatian wine-makers have acknowledged that the two names sound similar but argue that customers could easily tell the difference between the two products. Producers of Prosek, a dessert wine made using dried grapes grown in the Dalmatia region, also say the drink has its own identity and dates back more than 2,000 years. An auction featuring 117 Meissen porcelain pieces has fetched over 10 million. The items auctioned off once belonged to lawyer and industrialist Dr. Franz Oppenheimer and his wife, Margarethe. The collection later fell into the hands of the Nazi regime, from whom it had to be rescued. The collection was held at various Dutch museums over the course of 70 years. It was in the hands of the Rijksmuseum when the Oppenheimers descendants approached the Dutch Restitutions Constitution Committee, arguing they were its rightful owners. The committee sided with the family in 2019, citing theyd lost possession of the objects involuntarily due to circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime. Upon getting ownership of the collection, the family approached auctioneers Sothebys about selling it. After the defeat of the Nazi regime, the collection was discovered by Allied Monuments officers in a salt mine in Austria, where it had been placed by Hitlers curators for safety, said Lucian Simmons, worldwide head on restitution at Sothebys. The collection was taken first to Munich and was then sent by the Allies to Holland. The Dutch government placed it in three museums, including the Rijksmuseum, where it remained until it was restituted to the Oppenheimer heirs. We cannot comment on their motives, but they are group of individuals and it is quite common for restituted collections to be sold to convert the inheritance into a form that is more easily distributed amongst the descendants of a victim of Nazi persecution, he continued. The Meissen factory was established in 1710 and was the first in Europe to produce hard-paste porcelain products equal to those seen in China, which had produced porcelain for 2,000 years. As such, its products are highly valued. While the auction was expected to bring in 2 million, it ended up fetching 10.5 million, as many of the items sold over asking. Among the items sold was a rare Meissen armorial tea and coffee service from 1731, which brought 958,000. The highest-earning item was a 17-inch-high Meissen clock from 1727, which fetched 1.16 million. More than half of the collection was bought by the Rijksmuseum. The Rembrandt Association confirmed it made a contribution to the museum to allow it to purchase back the items. According to Richard Hird, a specialist in Sothebys English and European ceramics department, the sale marks the highest-ever total for a European ceramics sale. The depth of the bidding and sustained competition that we witnessed throughout the sale, as well as the numerous acquisitions by the Rijksmuseum, were not only a testament to the extraordinary quality of the pieces themselves but also the exceptional taste and vision of Dr. Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer. The collection of German porcelain was acquired by Oppenheimer and his wife during the 1920s and 30s. They purchased the items at a time when they were being deaccessioned from the Royal Collection in Dresden. In 1936, as the Nazis began to place restrictions of Jewish people in Germany, the Oppenheimers fled their home in Berlin and relocated to Vienna. They emigrated to the United States two years later, just before Austria was annexed by Germany. Before moving, they sold off their Meissen ornaments and figurines, in an attempt to keep them out of Nazi hands. A large portion of their collection was purchased by a man named Fritz Mannheimer, who died in 1939, and it was later liquidated by his bank. The 117 pieces of 17th and 18th century Meissen were ultimately found in the Netherlands in 1941by a member of the SS and handed over to Hitler. First housed in the Vyssi Brod Monastery in South Bohemia, the collection, like other stolen artwork, was moved to Austrian salt mines to keep it safe from Allied bombings. The items were eventually located by members of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives, a group of art experts, librarians, and museum curators tasked with recovering stolen art before the Nazis could destroy it. The collection was transferred to the Central Holding Point and sent back to the Netherlands, where it remained until 1949. As Mannheimers executors were not interested in seeking restitution, the collection was passed into Dutch state holdings, of which some were held as property available for restitution and the rest given to the Rijksmuseum. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. By clicking I agree below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. You also agree to our Terms of Service. What you want to try to do is create work that embodies those concepts, that doesnt just illustrate them, he said in a Zoom interview from the cathedral, along with Alexander and Hollerith, on Wednesday. My job is to synthesize all those concepts in a way that presents itself so that people are able to wonder, about the relationship between these windows, the cathedral, its vision and American history. That is what I will try to do. A UBS trader sued his employer over allegations the toxic London work environment and punishing workload caused his mental health to deteriorate so far he was no longer able to work. A 35-year veteran at the Swiss bank, Simon Rope, is seeking more than 200,000 ($273,000), for negligence over an anxiety disorder caused by the stress to which he was subjected in UBSs London office, his lawyers alleged in a UK lawsuit. Rope has survived at least 17 rounds of redundancies but hasnt returned to the trading floor since 2018, they said. The case offers a window into the stressful world of trading, and the mental toll it can have on workers under pressure to drive profits and not make costly mistakes. In recent years, European traders have pushed for shorter days to address concerns over work-life balance and the impact on their mental health. Trading veteran Simon Rope said the stressful work environment at UBS caused his anxiety disorder. Credit:Bloomberg UBS has denied negligence and breaching its duty of care to Rope. The fiction was compounded after Porter released his updated register of interests, then said he could not name donors to a blind trust helping pay the costs of his defamation suit against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan over the airing of historic rape allegations, which Porter vehemently denied. Desperate to get some clear air for his major strategic announcement, soon befouled by the French, Morrison had tried to buy time by asking his department head, Phil Gaetjens, to advise on the bleeding obvious whether Porter had conformed with the ministerial code of conduct. Loading Then on Sunday afternoon, without waiting for Gaetjens, Morrison hastily called a press conference to announce Porter had upheld those standards by opting to resign from the ministry. He could have, should have, said Porters actions did not conform to the high standards expected of a member of his government and sacked him. But he didnt. He also said Porter had disclosed the amount he had received. He hadnt. Incredibly, when asked whether Porter should remain in Parliament while in receipt of the money (given the disclosure rules which apply to all parliamentarians, requiring them to fess up to everything including freebie footy tickets), Morrison protested that had nothing to do with him because he was no longer Porters boss. Of course. He is only the Prime Minister, the leader of the government and the leader of the Liberal Party. Of course. He is only the Prime Minister, the leader of the government and the leader of the Liberal Party. Perhaps Morrison had been given a heads-up on a poll to be published the following day and went into a blind panic because it showed that while the government remained in a losing position, his personal ratings had slumped. Quelle horreur. Porters case will land with the privileges and members interests committee chaired by the very well regarded, independently minded Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent which has the power to determine breaches of disclosure rules. Government MPs were speculating that Porter might not be in technical breach because he had disclosed receiving monies from a named entity (the trust). Knowing how vulnerable they would all be if this was so, given the turbo-charging of integrity issues by independents, they are now considering changes to the rules to seal the gap. Loading Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus scoffs at this, insisting that Porter is in breach of both the letter and the spirit of the existing rules. He describes suggestions to the contrary as bullshit. If Porter is found to be in breach and refuses to abide by any direction, Parliament cannot expel him, but it does have the power to censure, fine, or even gaol him not that anyone is saying that will happen. Once again, like so many other things, it was turning to creme patissiere. The ongoing Porter saga and the clumsy, slippery way the announcement of the awkwardly named AUKUS was handled without apology and with the overt insult the French could not be trusted to keep a secret has dimmed any hope that it could work as another road map out of COVID to an early election. Over breakfast, Australians watched Morrison standing beside a man who could not remember his name, who looked like he should have stayed in bed, and another man who looked like he had just got out of bed. Prime ministers Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, with US President Joe Biden, announce the AUKUS pact. Credit:AAP Sleepy Joe Biden, fresh from the Afghanistan withdrawal disaster, and Boris Johnson, who has had trouble counting the number of children he has, desperately seeking to create a place for Britain in the world post-Brexit. One of Australias most senior and most respected former diplomats, John McCarthy, who chafes at the overhyping of the deal while not dismissing its importance, is still mulling over its implications. But he seems sure about one thing: none of those three leaders is up to the challenges which lie ahead. Loading The imposition of mandatory vaccinations is expected to grow. State and federal governments and some businesses have already mandated vaccination for workers in sectors including aged care, health and quarantine. In Victoria, the directions were issued by Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, who also required the vaccination of construction workers. Those directions are powerful, with limited legal challenges available, but employers and unions are also grappling with mandatory vaccination for workplaces not subject to health orders, where the legal position is less clear. The federal government says vaccination should be voluntary, arguing the issue of whether to mandate is up to individual businesses, taking into account workplace safety, anti-discrimination and privacy laws. Most unions encourage vaccination but baulk at supporting mandatory jabs, although some such as the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation are comfortable with mandates. Apart from the legal issues, some experts say the mandatory approach is misguided. Liberty Victoria president Julia Kretzenbacher said promoting vaccine passports is better than forcing people to get vaccinated because it respects peoples choice, as long as access to government services or fundamental needs or groceries were not limited. Ms Kretzenbacher noted that while there were some workplaces where the use of a mandate is proportionate to human rights such as in aged care or prisons the government should instead boost funds to grassroots organisations that could help counter misinformation about vaccination. Its easy to demonise people who feel vaccine hesitancy, but that doesnt resolve the issue of vaccine hesitancy, said the Melbourne-based barrister. RACGP president Dr Karen Price. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The notion of linking vaccination rates to certain freedoms has also raised the prospect that more people could end up seeking medical exemptions to avoid immunisation. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Karen Price said there had been a steady stream of people requesting exemptions from vaccination, but she expected this to increase when it gets closer to the point that some freedoms and access to jobs and services will only be offered to those who are fully vaccinated. Loading The Melbourne GP said it was vanishingly rare for people to have a genuine medical reason that would mean they could not safely receive any of the available coronavirus vaccines in Australia. However, Dr Price said mandating vaccines was an ethically and legally challenging issue, fuelled by hesitancy, misinformation, and in some cases, people who simply wanted to be uncooperative and dont like the idea that its mandated. But, you know, we dont drive on the other side of the road because we want to. There is a level of co-operation we need in our society, she said. GPs and pharmacists say this weeks protests were not indicative of their experiences. Pharmacy Guild state president Anthony Tassone said his pharmacy was booked out last Saturday and most of our patients were tradespeople, many of whom were not initially intending on getting the COVID vaccination but rolled up to the pharmacy with minimum fuss. Bentleigh GP Nathan Pinskier said that when the vaccine rollout began six months ago, some of his patients were concerned about potential side effects of getting jabbed, but most people now are reasonably comfortable and his clinics were often booked out solid. Daniel Matcham getting his second vaccine dose at a vaccine clinic in Hoppers Crossing on Tuesday. Credit:Jason South Anti-vaxxers are in the minority theyre just getting a lot of oxygen at the moment, Dr Pinskier said. Across town in Melbournes west, 40-year-old Daniel Matcham is one among many Victorians who have recently had a change of heart. Loading The sense that COVID vaccination would eventually be made mandatory in his industry was one of the many reasons he ended up deciding to have his first jab last month. The father of five became eligible in the early stages of the vaccine rollout because he has diabetes, but the warehouse worker and chef decided to wait. By the time he got his first shot on August 28, his neighbourhood of Truganina in Melbournes outer west had become a COVID hotspot. Al-Taqwa College, which was at the centre of a significant community outbreak, was just around the corner and he and his family kept on being caught up in exposure sites. After receiving his second jab at a Hoppers Crossing clinic on Tuesday, Mr Matcham said he felt relieved. The latest deaths included a man aged in his 80s from the Moreland council area and three people from the Hume council area: a man in his 70s, another man in his 80s and a woman in her 90s. Of the new cases, 257 are in hospital, 60 are in intensive care, and 41 are on a ventilator. Mr Andrews said of the hospital cases, 81 per cent were not vaccinated, 15 per cent had received one dose and 3 per cent were fully vaccinated. Mr Andrews said the figures showed those who were fully vaccinated were far, far less likely to find yourselves gravely unwell and in intensive care. Loading The states previous daily high was 725 new infections on August 5 last year. Victorian Deputy Chief Health Officer Deb Friedman said more than 23 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds had now received their first COVID-19 vaccination dose, an impressive feat since they only became eligible earlier this month. Dr Friedman said that 80 per cent of Victorians over the age of 40 have received their first dose of vaccine. Moderna vaccine doses were being administered in pharmacies across Victoria, and Dr Friedman said those outlets were a good vaccine option for those aged under 60. Dr Friedman said there had been a good turnout yesterday in the vaccination blitz for the construction sector and urged more construction workers to use a two-week, government-imposed lay-off to get vaccinated. She said the deadline for first-dose construction vaccinations was midnight on Thursday. She also urged Victorians to avoid gathering socially on Fridays grand final public holiday the states first long weekend in three months. Unfortunately, its not the time for home visits or group gatherings, she said. And if we want to make sure that our next public holiday may afford us some of those opportunities it is incredibly important, and I know its tough to make sure that you dont use this weekend to visit friends, to visit your cousin, to visit your parents. Loading In terms of catching COVID, that would be one of the most dangerous things that could be done this long weekend. Instead, we urge people to use the day off to go and get vaccinated. There were 62,408 COVID-19 tests processed on Wednesday, while more than 96,000 Victorians received a coronavirus vaccine, including 40,957 at state-run hubs. Nationally, 49.3 per cent of Australians aged 16 and over are fully vaccinated, while 74.1 have received one dose. In Victoria, 45.86 per cent of those eligible for jabs are fully vaccinated, and 75.37 per cent have had their first dose. The state now has 6666 active cases of the virus. Victorias COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said that a high number of COVID-19 cases continued to come from Melbournes northern suburbs. He said that 468, or more than 60 per cent, of the new coronavirus cases across the state come from that area. Mr Weimar said the northern suburbs of concern included Craigieburn, Roxburgh Park and Meadow Heights. There were 172 cases in Melbournes western suburbs, about 22 per cent of todays total. Of the 21 cases in regional Victoria, there were eight in Mitchell Shire, north of Melbourne. Six of those are linked to known cases in three different households. Loading In the Moorabool area north of Geelong there were four new cases, all linked to exposure sites and workplaces in metropolitan Melbourne. In the Macedon Ranges, there were five new cases. The number of active COVID-19 cases linked to Fitzroy Community School has risen to 60 and Mr Weimar said authorities were keen to see more members of the school community get tested. Victorian health authorities identified a number of new COVID-19 exposure sites on Thursday, including more early learning centres and a hospital emergency department. Explorers Early Learning Centre at Brighton East was declared a tier-1 site between 7am and 6.30pm over three days: Tuesday, September 14, Wednesday, September 15, and Thursday, September 16. Jaybelle Childcare Centre at Fawkner was declared tier 1 on Friday, September 17 between 9.30am and 6pm. A Chinese restaurant in the Macedon Ranges and a tyre and auto shop at Roxburgh Park were also declared tier 1, while the remainder of new sites were tier 2, including the Casey Hospital emergency department waiting room. The waiting room was declared a casual contact exposure site on Saturday, September 18 between 3.21pm and 4.38pm. About 6am, 12 miners made their routine trip down a deep shaft that most of them had made hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. Just south of Gaffneys Creek, in Victorias High Country, the A1 mine sits within the historic Woods Point-Walhalla goldfield. For a moment just after 9am, the mens colleagues 450 metres above feared they would never be seen again, as the terrifying roar of the 5.9 magnitude earthquake and its three aftershocks hit the historic operation. It was just a feeling of panic, Shawn Panton, the mines geological manager, says. It was the biggest shock, it just roared. There was just a lot of confusion at first and then of course a bit of dread. There was huge relief of making radio contact with them and getting them back up. Labor MPs have blasted former prime minister Paul Keating for claiming the federal opposition was complicit in the Morrison governments surrender of its military to the United States as part of a new defence pact to build nuclear-powered submarines. Mr Keating on Wednesday escalated his attack on the AUKUS defence partnership between Australia, the US and Britain, criticising his own side for promoting a false representation of Chinas foreign policy by implying that Beijing presented a military threat to Australia. Labor MPs have criticised Paul Keating for his comments on Australias new submarine deal. Credit:Kate Geraghty Mr Keatings attack on the oppositions foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong, who he claimed had neutered Labors traditional stance as to Australias right to strategic autonomy in an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, has particularly angered federal MPs on his own side. In a speech to the United States Studies Centre on Thursday, Senator Wong will warn Beijing is becoming more assertive, and at times aggressive, but will also say the debate shouldnt be reduced to the two fatalisms of acquiescing to China or going to war. Rome: Her face was bloodied and bruised, she spoke fluent English but had no idea what her name was or where she had come from, when she was found on a rocky outcrop off the coast of Croatia. Ten days after the woman was spotted by a fisherman on the island of Krk, her identity has been revealed. Croatian police identified her as Daniela Adamcova, 57, a jewellery designer who once made pieces for Brigitte Bardot, Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross. The woman discovered by Croatian police has been identified as jeweller Daniela Adamcova. Credit:Croatian police Her handmade jewellery even made an appearance on the long-running TV series Friends. NAUGATUCK A state police SWAT raid on a home on Carrol Street Thursday prompted a school across the street to go into lockdown, after the two suspects being sought by authorities fled on foot. The two people sought by police were not at home during the raid, but happened to drive by while police were on scene, according to state police. State police said the statewide narcotics task force and an emergency services team were at the home to execute a narcotics search warrant during the early morning hours. As a result of that search warrant numerous firearms, cocaine, and narcotics packaging were seized, Trooper First Class Sarah Salerno, a spokeswoman for state police said. The targets of the investigation were not home at the time; however, two minor children were in the home. The state Department of Children and Families was notified and took both children into their custody. After authorities searched the home, the targets drove by the residence, Salerno said. Naugatuck police ordered the man behind the wheel to stop, but he pulled into a driveway and fled on foot along with a female passenger, according to state police. The man threw a weapon and narcotics as he ran, which were later recovered, state police said. He was later found hiding with injuries to his leg that happened during his escape, Salerno said, and transported to the hospital. The woman was also captured. State police said they are seeking an arrest warrant for the man on numerous charges. The woman was charged with possession of cocaine, possession of narcotics in a school zone, possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, operating a drug Factory, two counts of risk of injury and interfering. The names of both have not been released. The incident prompted a temporary lockdown of the Early Childhood Center at Central Avenue around 8 a.m. Thursday morning, according to Naugatuck police. As the suspects fled the scene, area schools were placed into a brief lockdown until the male and female were located and the scene was secure, Salerno said. The lockdown was subsequently lifted. WATERBURY Officers seized more than 4,000 bags of heroin and other drugs from three Waterbury homes Wednesday, according to the Waterbury Police Department. Around 7 a.m. Wednesday, the Waterbury Police Departments Vice and Intelligence Division, along with the Street Crimes Unit, Gang Task Force and Drug Enforcement Agency, raided three Waterbury homes connected to an ongoing narcotics investigation, officials said. The homes were on Lounsbury Street, Oak Street and Industry Lane. These agencies have been conducting an ongoing narcotics investigation into three people that worked in tandem to distribute heroin throughout the city, according to the police department. Officers found 3,068 bags of heroin in the home of 24-year-old James Black on Industry Lane, police said. Officers also discovered three handgun magazines, a box of ammunition, packaging material and $2,751 in cash, according to police. Black was arrested and charged with possession of an ounce or more of heroin and operating a drug factory. He was held on a $500,000 bond, according to the police department. Inside 24-year-old Kupenda Momma Bonds home on Lounsbury Street, officers found 1,160 bags of heroin, 3.6 grams of raw heroin, numerous fentanyl pills, 202 grams of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, baggies and scales, police said. Officers also discovered a .31 caliber Derringer powder pistol, a handgun magazine and $464 in cash, police said. Bond was arrested and charged with operating a drug factory, possession of narcotics with intent to sell, possession of an ounce or more of heroin, possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of drug paraphernalia, illegal possession near a school zone, criminal possession of a pistol or revolver and illegal sale or transfer of a firearm. She was held on a $500,000 bond, according to police. Officers also went to the home of 39-year-old Efrem Duke Collins home on Oak Street. There, they found $32,845 in cash, 486.5 grams of marijuana, nine bags of heroin and 16.5 grams of crack cocaine, the police department said. Collins was arrested and charged with possession of an ounce or more of heroin, possession of narcotics with intent to sell, illegal possession near a school zone and sale of cannabis over 8 ounces. Collins bond was set at $50,000 and he was later released, according to the Waterbury Police Department. In 2020, there were 1,150 overdoses involving fentanyl and 205 overdoses involving heroin statewide, according to data from the Connecticut State Department of Public Health. Those struggling with substance abuse issues can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration national hotline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for a free and confidential treatment referral or for more information. It may not feel much like fall with temperatures that are still in the upper 80s, but fall festival time is starting with multiple festivals across the region. The extensive coverage of the Gabby Petito case is renewing calls to also shine a spotlight on the cases of missing people of color. NOTE: Facebook is currently experiencing technical issues which are preventing us from displaying comments at this time Lea Salonga will kickstart a new tour with her solo show Dream Again in June 2022. Salonga, who has performed in the likes of Les Miserables, Aladdin, and Mulan (as well as originating the role of Kim in Miss Saigon), will visit locations across Great Britain, with a night at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 June 2022. Salonga said today: "I owe the UK audiences and fans so much of my success, after they took me to their hearts as Kim in Miss Saigon which I will always be so grateful for." Salonga will also be joined by her brother Gerard Salonga (resident conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra) as musical director for the concert tour. Salonga added: "Returning to the stage and to international touring will be an absolute thrill and I am so excited to get back to the UK, to meet fans again and to perform some of my all-time favourite songs." HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) The chief investigator for a Boston museum still working to recover $500 million worth of art stolen in 1990 said Thursday he was hoping for new leads to emerge following the death of a highly scrutinized figure in the case. HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) The chief investigator for a Boston museum still working to recover $500 million worth of art stolen in 1990 said Thursday he was hoping for new leads to emerge following the death of a highly scrutinized figure in the case. A Connecticut mobster who died last week, Robert Gentile, had long been suspected of possessing at one time some of the pieces taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in history's largest art heist. He denied having any role or knowledge of the paintings' location up until the end of his life. FILE - In this Sept. 5, 2017 file photo, Robert Gentile is wheeled into the federal courthouse in Hartford, Conn. Gentile, a mobster who for years denied suspicions from authorities that he knew anything about a trove of artwork valued in the millions that was stolen in a 1990 museum heist and remains missing, has died. He was 85. His attorney, Ryan McGuigan, said Gentile died Sept. 17, 2021, after a stroke.(Patrick Raycraft/Hartford Courant via AP, File) But Anthony Amore, who is also the museum's security director, said investigators had not been focused entirely on Gentile. "One interesting thing is when masterpieces like these are stolen they are often recovered and oftentimes it happens a generation or two after the heist," Amore said in an interview. "And sometimes thats because somebody passes away or relationships become estranged. And perhaps with Mr. Gentiles passing, someone will feel liberated to speak about what they know. Thats conjecture. Thats hopeful talk." Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Nathaniel Mendell said his office is encouraging anyone with information to contact the FBI. The museum, which is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the artworks recovery, is conducting its investigation alongside and in partnership with the FBI, Amore said. Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. On March 18, 1990, two men masquerading as Boston police officers got into the museum by telling a security guard they were responding to a report of a disturbance, according to authorities. The guard and a co-worker were handcuffed and locked in the basement while the thieves made off with the 13 pieces of art. The missing pieces include Rembrandts only known seascape, "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee," and Vermeers "The Concert," one of fewer than 40 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch painter. Federal authorities described Gentile as a person of interest, saying he talked about the stolen paintings with fellow prisoners and once told an undercover FBI agent he had access to two of the paintings and could negotiate the sale of each for $500,000. His home outside Hartford was searched several times by federal agents, and he served several years in prison after they found firearms he was prohibited from owning as a convicted felon. Robert Fisher, who worked on the investigation as a member of the U.S. attorney's office in Boston until 2016, said the investigation likely had determined all there was to know about Gentile's possible role. "To me I thought if he really did know or have information about the paintings that he would have given that up before he passed away, particularly considering the reward was now up to $10 million," Fisher said. "If the theory was that he had access to paintings, he had every opportunity to come forward when he was in prison and out of prison and very ill." A spokesperson for the FBI in Boston, Kristen Setera, said its investigation remains active. "We vigorously investigate every tip we receive," Setera said. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Alaska officials outlined plans Wednesday to help hospitals with crisis standards of care if needed amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and announced short-term contracts for more than 400 health care personnel to relieve medical facilities with overtaxed staffs. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Alaska officials outlined plans Wednesday to help hospitals with crisis standards of care if needed amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and announced short-term contracts for more than 400 health care personnel to relieve medical facilities with overtaxed staffs. State health commissioner Adam Crum signed an addendum to a public health emergency order that he said provides guidance to hospitals, care providers and local health authorities if the crisis standards of care are needed. Crisis standards of care provide guidelines for administering care in extraordinary circumstances in which there are insufficient resources to provide levels of care that patients would normally get. Crum said providers will have access to committees that can help them provide strategies and alternate tools in order to provide care. Hospitals or health care facilities can contact the state health department if they think they need to implement crisis standards of care and a 15-member committee will meet and help provide guidance on options, according to a department statement. The document signed by Crum calls for the department to facilitate daily statewide meetings to identify and prioritize transfers to available beds, treatments, and identify and mitigate gaps in the health care system." Earlier this month, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage implemented crisis standards, with Dr. Kristen Solana Walkinshaw, the hospitals chief of staff, writing the number of patients and level of care that they needed was exceeding the hospitals resources. Alaska has recently had the highest per-capita rate of COVID-19 cases, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins. The number of COVID-19 cases among Alaskans since the pandemic began has now topped 100,000, the state health department reported Wednesday, putting the tally at 100,111. During that same period, the department reports there have been 466 COVID-19-related deaths. The states chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, one of the public faces of Alaska's COVID-19 response, said she fought back tears during a Wednesday news conference outlining the latest state actions. I was really trying not to lose it, she said in an interview afterward. Id hoped wed never be at this point in the pandemic. I think this is what weve always been trying to avoid, was getting to the point where our hospital systems were being overwhelmed by the number of patients and starting to see that impact not only COVID patients but non-COVID patients as well, she said. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the state will build-up its health care capacity and will continue to ask Alaskans to seriously consider getting a readily available vaccine. He said he hoped the message coming out of the news conference is that the state is on top of this. The state health department said it has contracted to bring on about 470 health care workers, including about 300 nurses, to help the strained workforce. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Heidi Hedberg, director of the state Division of Public Health, said there will be a phased rollout of the contracted workers, who will have to go through emergency credentialing, background checks and orientation. The state is working with a hospital association and health care facilities to prioritize where those workers go, Hedberg said. The contract is for 90 days, with renewal options, she said. The health department also announced it had ordered $2 million in at-home testing kits to help support student testing and that it is working with the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association in efforts to recruit and grow the number of certified nursing assistants. The association, in a statement, thanked state officials for efforts to secure additional resources. Our caregivers have endured unspeakable stress as they work to keep us safe, and our health care system has been tested in ways we never imagined possible, the statement said. The prospect of relief staff coming to Alaska, a call to action for mobilizing and expanding our certified nurse aide workforce and the recognition that care standards are rapidly escalating to crisis are welcome developments that will help us get through the current surge. The association also called on Alaskans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and to wear masks in indoor public settings. BRUSSELS (AP) A top European Union legal adviser said Thursday that software installed in Volkswagen cars to alter the amount of pollutants coming out of their exhaust pipes in hot or cold weather and at high altitude doesn't conform to the 27-nation blocs laws laws unless it prevents dangerous sudden engine damage. BRUSSELS (AP) A top European Union legal adviser said Thursday that software installed in Volkswagen cars to alter the amount of pollutants coming out of their exhaust pipes in hot or cold weather and at high altitude doesn't conform to the 27-nation blocs laws laws unless it prevents dangerous sudden engine damage. The case arose when Austrian courts asked the European Court of Justice to rule on whether the software made by Volkswagen, which also includes Porsche, was permitted and not a defeat device used to cheat on car emissions tests. In a legal opinion for the Luxembourg-based ECJ, European Court of Justice, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos said that the software at issue reduces the effectiveness of the emission control system in normal vehicle operation and use, with the result that it constitutes a defeat device. Rantos said it would not be such a device only if it prevents sudden engine damage that could not be avoided through routine maintenance. He said it would be up to national courts to decide if this is the case. His legal opinion is not binding on the ECJ, but Europes top court follows such advice in most cases. Doug Speirs | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The VW software reduces the purification of exhaust gases, chiefly nitrogen oxide, when the weather is colder than 15 C (59 F) or climbs above 33 C (91.4 F), as well as when the vehicle is driven at an altitude of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) or more. Rantos said that the temperature window when the exhaust fumes were being cleaned is not representative of real driving conditions because temperatures often drop below 15 C (59 F) in Austria and Germany, where cars are also routinely driven at higher altitude. The automaker faced a diesel emissions scandal after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 found that the company had installed special software to rig U.S. emissions tests for its latest clean diesel vehicles. Volkswagen has apologized and paid more than 31 billion euros ($36 billion) in fines, recall costs and compensation to car owners. The German car manufacturer admitted to fitting millions of cars with the device and it turned out that the use of the cheating software hadn't been isolated to the U.S. In Europe, it had argued that the software could be justified by the fact that it helps protect the engine over time. ___ This story was first published on September 23, 2021. It was updated on September 24, 2021 to add that software in Volkswagen cars to alter pollutant emissions in hot or cold weather doesnt conform to EU law unless it prevents sudden damage to the engine in case of the failure of certain components, and that damage cant be prevented by regular maintenance. CALGARY - With North American natural gas prices soaring to heights not seen in years, Canadians can expect to pay significantly more to heat their homes this winter. An oil and gas pumpjack near Cremona, Alta., Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh CALGARY - With North American natural gas prices soaring to heights not seen in years, Canadians can expect to pay significantly more to heat their homes this winter. While natural gas prices in Canada and the U.S. have not hit the record levels being experienced right now in Europe and the U.K. where supply shortages are raising the spectre of potential outages this winter they are still higher than they've been in more than six years. Increased economic activity, the loosening of COVID-19 restrictions around the globe and the phaseout of coal are all helping to drive increased demand for the fossil fuel. At the same time, production hasn't caught up with demand. The uncertainties of the global pandemic have made producers reluctant to make significant capital investments in new drilling programs, and Canadian natural gas storage levels are at five-year lows. North American LNG exports are also running at peak volume to meet global demand, draining inventories. "This is definitely something that does not bode well for consumers, because if we have a cold winter and we dont have a lot of gas in storage to rely on, that could be a concern," said Dulles Wang, an analyst and director of Wood Mackenzie's Canadian gas research team, in an interview. "We do expect to see rising prices for consumers this winter." On Thursday, the Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price was US$4.95 per one million British thermal units, a 133 per cent increase from the same day one year ago. Rob Roach, chief economist for financial institution and Alberta Crown corporation ATB Financial, pointed out that's still far from the heyday of the mid-2000s, when natural gas prices spiked as high as $10-$11 at times. Still, Roach said it's been some time since we've seen a natural gas market like this, and prices will likely get higher still before spring. "These aren't record highs, but in the North American market prices have been quite low the last few years," he said. "So we're going to feel this, as consumers. It's going to be an expensive winter," he said. Already, a number of Canadian natural gas distributors have advised their customers of rate hikes. FortisBC Energy Inc., British Columbia's largest natural gas distributor, will increase rates as of Oct. 1, with most customers expected to see their monthly bills increase by approximately $8, or nine per cent. "We dont actually mark up the cost of gas. Customers pay what we pay for the cost of the commodity," said FortisBC spokeswoman Diana Sorace, in an interview. Enbridge Gas, which serves 3.8 million customers in Ontario, heating over 75 per cent of the homes in that province, has also said it will increase rates Oct. 1. In a news release, the company said the typical residential customer will see a bill increase of about $7 to $44 a year depending on where they live. Manitoba Hydro, which has already increased its rates to reflect rising commodity prices, said the annual bill for a typical residential customer will increase by approximately 8.7 per cent, but larger volume customers could see increases as high as 19 per cent. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Rising commodity prices, while bad news for consumers, are good news for Canada's natural gas sector. Improved balance sheets should result in increased spending, production, and employment into 2022. "Here in Alberta, its quite a boon to a lot of people working in that sector, and the spill-off effects are pretty positive for our economy," Roach said. But other industries, everything from manufacturing to agriculture, will feel the pinch. Mark Reusser, vice-president for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, said natural gas is the second-largest expense on his turkey farm, after feed. Each year, he pays to heat three 2,160 square-metre barns. "Ive spent enormous amounts of money insulating and making sure theyre as up to date as possible in terms of energy conservation. But you still need heat this is Canada," Reusser said. "So this is going to be a significant hit to my bottom line." This report by The Canadian Press was first published September 23, 2021. Companies in this story: (TSX:FTS, TSX:ENB) TODOQUE, Canary Islands (AP) The advance of lava from a volcanic eruption on one of Spains Canary Islands has slowed significantly, raising fears Thursday that the molten rock might fan out further in coming days and wreak more destruction instead of just flowing out into the sea. Lava from a volcano eruption flows on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. A volcano on a small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean erupted on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people. Experts say the volcanic eruption and its aftermath on a Spanish island could last for up to 84 days. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) TODOQUE, Canary Islands (AP) The advance of lava from a volcanic eruption on one of Spains Canary Islands has slowed significantly, raising fears Thursday that the molten rock might fan out further in coming days and wreak more destruction instead of just flowing out into the sea. One giant river of lava 600 meters (2,000 feet) wide slowed to four meters (13 feet) per hour after reaching a plain on Wednesday, officials said. On Monday, a day after the eruption on La Palma, it was moving at 700 meters (2,300 feet) per hour. A second stream of lava has virtually ground to a halt, the head of the National Geographic Institute in the Canary Islands, Maria Jose Blanco, told a news conference. It wont reach the Atlantic Ocean before the weekend, she said, with some scientists saying it might never reach the sea. Blanco said seismic activity on La Palma island was now low but molten rock is still being thrown out of the volcano 26 million cubic meters so far. Stavros Meletlidis, a volcanologist at Spains National Geographic Institute, said the dynamics of any eruption were in constant flux. The lava is advancing very slowly because it cools in contact with the atmosphere, through friction with the ground and building materials and, above all, because its front edge is widening out, he told Radio Television Canaria. As it slowed, the lava grew thicker. In places, it rose up to 15 meters (50 feet) high, authorities said. It now covers 166 hectares (410 acres) and has swallowed up around 350 homes. The uncertainty left many residents on the western side of the island of 85,000 people in limbo. Scientists say the lava flows could last for weeks or months. Joel Francisco, 38, said he and his elderly parents had to evacuate the area around the village of Todoque in a rush, taking only a few belongings and important documents. Now that the flow seems to have slowed, he hopes to go back and retrieve some more things in case the house is entombed in lava if police let him. We dont know how long we have to wait until we can return to our homes because the roads are closed, he told The Associated Press. Some people have it worse off, their houses are gone. Like many on the island, Francisco works on a banana plantation, and his livelihood is also at risk of being ruined by lava or damaged by volcanic ash. We are waiting to see if we can go out to work or not, he said. This changed our life. Spains King Felipe VI, who visited the homeless Thursday along with Queen Letizia and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, vowed to help the islands needy. Suddenly, you have had almost everything taken from you, in one fell swoop. No home, no equipment, no clothes, no food, no resources, no work, the monarch told reporters. We have to do everything we can to help these families. The eruption occurred along the islands Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge. The Canary Islands are a volcanic archipelago. La Palma witnessed its last eruption in 1971. As lava, ash and smoke continued to pour from the volcano, shooting up to 4,200 meters (nearly 14,000 feet) high, there were concerns about whether airspace above the island should remain open. ENAIRE, which manages Spains airspace, said two areas above the affected area are being declared no-fly zones to allow emergency services to operate freely. Many flights to and from La Palma were delayed early Thursday. Volcanic ash can be dangerous for aircraft. It can also cause respiratory problems, as well as potentially being an irritant for the eyes and skin. Doug Speirs | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The Emergency Military Unit deployed on the island said the readings it has taken of the air found no threat to health. Authorities haven't reported any casualties from the eruption. Scientists had been monitoring the volcanic activity and had warned of a possible eruption, allowing almost 7,000 people to be evacuated in time. Officials had initially expressed fears about what would happen when the lava reached the Atlantic. The molten rock, whose temperature exceeds 1,000 C (more than 1,800 F), could cause explosions, trigger landslides and produce toxic gas when it hits the water, experts say. Life on the rest of La Palma, which is roughly 35 kilometers (22 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide at its broadest point, has been largely unaffected, with undeterred tourists landing for previously scheduled vacations. ___ Barry Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. HELENA, Mont. (AP) Medical providers and Montana residents with compromised immune systems are challenging the only law in the U.S. that prevents employers from mandating workers get vaccinated amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. FILE - In this April 1, 2021, file photo Gov. Greg Gianforte receives a shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from pharmacist Drew Garton at a Walgreen's pharmacy, in Helena, Mont. Medical providers and Montana residents with compromised immune systems are challenging the only law in the U.S. that prevents state employers from mandating workers get vaccinated amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. They argue the new law violates federal requirements for safe workplaces and reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and want a federal judge to rule that it doesn't apply to hospitals and other medical providers. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File) HELENA, Mont. (AP) Medical providers and Montana residents with compromised immune systems are challenging the only law in the U.S. that prevents employers from mandating workers get vaccinated amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. They argue the new law violates federal requirements for safe workplaces and reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities and want a federal judge to rule that it doesnt apply to hospitals and other medical providers. The Montana Medical Association, private physician groups, a Missoula hospital and seven individuals filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Wednesday, arguing the law inhibits providers ability to practice ethical and effective medicine by requiring them to employ unvaccinated workers who are more likely to spread infections and diseases than vaccinated workers. The law which applies to all vaccinations prevents medical providers from complying with national standards for the care and treatment of patients, including observing and enforcing infectious disease prevention protocols, the complaint says. The Montana Medical Association is joining this lawsuit to restore a physicians ability to protect the safety of their vulnerable patients when providing needed medical services," the group said in a statement. Montanas Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law this year that says requiring vaccines as a condition of employment is discriminatory and violates the states human rights laws. Supporters said the law was needed in response to employers coercing employees to get vaccinations under the threat of losing their jobs. This month, President Joe Biden asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to write a rule requiring employers with at least 100 workers to mandate they get vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has said he would challenge that rule, calling it unlawful and un-American. The Republican has encouraged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 but has maintained it should be a voluntary decision. Biden also announced the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will require vaccinations of employees at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, including hospitals and nursing homes. The Montana law allows health care facilities to require unvaccinated workers or those who refuse to disclose their vaccination status to wear masks and take other precautions against spreading disease. However, the complaint argues that the law prevents medical providers from taking steps to protect employees and patients who have compromised immune systems and also violates the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which requires employers to provide workplaces free from hazards. The presence of unvaccinated medical workers undermines the credibility of medical providers when they urge vaccine-hesitant patients to become vaccinated, even when the vaccines may be in the best interest of the patients and of the public at large, the complaint argues. It does not challenge the law as it applies to employers other than medical providers. Doug Speirs | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. State Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Commissioner of Labor and Industry Laurie Esau were named as defendants. Attorney General Knudsen will defend the law," spokesperson Emilee Cantrell said. He is committed to protecting Montanans' right to privacy and their ability to make their own health care decisions." Esau hasn't been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment on pending litigation. Montana has reported nearly 17,000 new cases of COVID-19 in September and 123 deaths in the past three weeks. Just over 400 people were hospitalized Thursday, compared with about 250 at the beginning of the month. ___ This story has been corrected to show that seven individuals, not five, were named as plaintiffs The global market for plant-based foods is growing dramatically with various estimates suggesting it could be worth somewhere around $250 billion by 2035 and theres now a concerted effort to make sure Canada will get its fair share. The global market for plant-based foods is growing dramatically with various estimates suggesting it could be worth somewhere around $250 billion by 2035 and theres now a concerted effort to make sure Canada will get its fair share. Protein Industries Canada (PIC), the federally funded supercluster, along with input from industry representatives across the country, has established a goal for Canadian operations in the sector to reach revenues of $25 billion by 2035. 'It is a moon shot but I do believe it is infinitely doable in Canada.' Bill Greuel (above), the chief executive officer of Protein Industries Canada At its annual meeting in Regina on Wednesday, PIC released a report that lays out a road map to reach that goal, "The road to $25 billion for Canadas plant-based food, feed and ingredient ecosystem." SUPPLIED Merit Functional Foods pea and canola protein plant has begun operations. Bill Greuel, the chief executive officer of PIC, said, "It is a moon shot but I do believe it is infinitely doable in Canada." The road map focuses on the need to innovate, then to be able to scale up production and for it all to be sustainable to ensure ongoing prosperity. Estimates are that the current size of the Canadian value added plant-based food and ingredient market, excluding canola processing and wheat milling, ranges between $2.5 and $3.0 billion in annual value comprised of the domestic retail sales of plant-based foods and production of high-value ingredients that are destined for human consumption. In Manitoba, the Roquette pea protein plant and the Merit Functional Foods pea and canola protein operations have both begun operations. Greuel and others say they are great examples of the kind of enterprise that will allow that kind of growth to occur. Greuel said he is aware of other similar enterprises getting ready to scale up. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files During a press conference at Merit Functions Foods on Silver Avenue, Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada, announces a new project from the Protein Industries Canada supercluster and Merit Functional Foods that will see the consortium work to commercialize high quality plant-based proteins. Murad Al-Katib, the CEO of AGT Foods out of Regina, who is on PICs advisory committee for this campaign, said the industry has a lot going for it, but there are a lot of other places in the world that also see the same opportunity. "This road map can function as an aspirational foundation," he said. Martin Scanlon, the dean of the faculty of agriculture at the University of Manitoba, who is also part of the advisory committee, said there is no denying there is an awful lot of interest in plant-based alternatives to dairy and meat and Canada has such huge reserves of arable land and expertise in producing the raw commodities that it has as much of a chance to capitalize on the opportunity as any other country. He believes recent developments, such as those occurring at Roquette and Merit, are generating a buzz. Don Healy / Leader-Post Murad Al-Katib, the CEO of AGT Foods out of Regina. "It is exciting," he said, "I have been here for 30 odd years and the kind of value-added operations that have arisen in the last five years, I have not seen it in the previous 30 years." The road map envisions the creation of new technologies and new products that have not even been imagined before. It will take an accelerated rate of innovation and it will also require investment of capital on a scale that the industry is not necessarily used to. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Greuel said there is greater interest from the capital markets, but that the industry is still not viewed as being highly innovative like aerospace or the digital technology industries. It will also require creativity and support, both financial and from the regulatory area, from government. Greuel said, "I have been knocking around the ag industry for 25 plus years and I would say now more than ever there is recognition from both elected politicians and senior government officials that agricultural and food processing are growth industries for Canada." The report makes clear there is plenty of international competition in the space and that there is a window of opportunity that exists now. "There is urgency for Canada to compete for investment, to secure ingredient processing capacity and to lay the foundation for a globally competitive plant-based foods manufacturing sector," the report states. "Value chains are being built around the globe. Over the next decade, ingredient processing infrastructure will be established to meet the global demand for plant-based food consumption. This capital-intensive infrastructure is immobile, and where its built will determine the trade flows of commodities." martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) The U.S. government released projections Wednesday that indicate an even more troubling outlook for a river that serves 40 million people in the American West. FILE - In this Aug. 13, 2021, file photo a buoy rests on the ground at a closed boat ramp on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nev. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released projections Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, that indicate an even more troubling outlook for a river that serves millions of people in the U.S. West. The agency recently declared the first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, which means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico won't get all the water they were allocated next year. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) The U.S. government released projections Wednesday that indicate an even more troubling outlook for a river that serves 40 million people in the American West. The Bureau of Reclamation recently declared the first-ever shortage on the Colorado River, which means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will get less water than normal next year. By 2025, there's a 66% chance Lake Mead, a barometer for how much river water some states get, will reach a level where California would be in its second phase of cuts. The nation's most populated state has the most senior rights to river water. While the reservoir on the Nevada-Arizona border is key for those three lower Colorado River basin states, Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border is the guide for Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah in the upper basin. Smaller reservoirs upstream of Lake Powell have been releasing water into the massive lake so it can continue producing hydropower. But any bump from the releases that started this summer isn't factored into the five-year projections, the Bureau of Reclamation said. The agency's projections show a 3% chance Lake Powell will hit a level where Glen Canyon Dam that holds it back cannot produce hydropower as early as July 2022 if the region has another dry winter. The latest outlook for Lake Powell is troubling, Wayne Pullan, the bureaus director for the upper basin, said in a statement. This highlights the importance of continuing to work collaboratively with the basin states, tribes and other partners toward solutions. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoirs in the U.S., largely rely on melted snow. They have been hard hit by persistent drought amid climate change, characterized by a warming and drying trend in the past 30 years. Both have dipped to historic lows. The lakes had a combined capacity of 39% on Wednesday, down from 49% at this time last year, the Bureau of Reclamation said. The seven states that rely on the Colorado River signed off on a drought plan in 2019 to help prop up the lakes by voluntarily contributing water. All agree more needs to be done and are discussing what will replace a set of guidelines for the river and the overlapping drought plan when they both expire in 2026. The federal government also has formed a working group. The Bureau of Reclamation's five-year projections are meant to help water managers better plan for the future using the best available data, said Jacklynn Gould, who oversees the lower basin for the agency. Its August projections are what determine water deliveries to the states. Doug Speirs | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The agency says there's a 22% chance that Lake Mead will drop to an elevation of 1,000 feet (304 meters) above sea level in 2025. Federal officials have said water would become inaccessible to states downstream at 895 feet (272 meters) feet, often referred to as dead pool. The agency that supplies water to most people in Nevada has constructed straws to draw water from further down in Lake Mead as its levels fall. ___ This story has been corrected to show Lake Powell has a 3% chance of reaching a point where hydropower from Glen Canyon Dam would be impacted in 2022, not 90%. ___ See APs complete coverage of the drought: https://apnews.com/hub/droughts When Providence University College and Theological Seminary implemented a mandatory vaccine policy in August, the southern Manitoba school feared a large drop in enrolment. When Providence University College and Theological Seminary implemented a mandatory vaccine policy in August, the southern Manitoba school feared a large drop in enrolment. "We were afraid of a 20 to 50 per cent drop," Nicholas Greco, provost pro tem, said. "We were prepared to lose a good amount." Instead, only "a handful" of students decided not to study at the school, located in Otterburne. "We didnt lose as many as anticipated," Greco said. A total of 438 students are enrolled for the fall term, up from last year. "We were pleasantly surprised," Greco said, adding the school had a pop-up vaccine clinic this month and plans to hold one in October for those who need a second shot. Classes are being offered mostly in person, with a few online and some hybrid. In-person classes follow health guidelines for limits on size and social distancing. Everyone on campus is expected to wear a mask. Greco said there has been only limited pushback from the schools supporters, alumni and the larger community. "Its less than we expected," he said. "We feel deeply we did something good with the mandate, that we are working toward a greater good." Enrolment at Canadian Mennonite University is down one per cent from last year, with 647 students at the Tuxedo campus and 649 at the downtown Menno Simons College campus. "Its great to have 90 per cent of the classes fully in person," president Cheryl Pauls said. "Theres good energy and engagement in and out of class." Pauls said she has noticed students are taking smaller course loads. "Theyre being cautious with what they think they can pull off," she said, noting while the number of students has decreased only slightly, there has been a bigger decline in course registrations. Response to the vaccine requirement has been overwhelmingly positive, Pauls said. "Im heartened to see the joy and energy of students as they come together," she said. "The pandemic has been a difficult season for many, and Im encouraged by how ready students are to return to community." At Steinbach Bible College, enrolment is similar to last year, with 120 students on campus. Enrolment is strong with returning students but lower for first year, president Rob Reimer said, noting thats because the school has been unable to engage in person with high school students and church youth groups during the pandemic. Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "We havent been able to go out and do recruiting, so the drop isnt a surprise," he said. Unlike the three other schools, there is no vaccine mandate at the college. Reimer said it is hard to tell if that has impacted student numbers. "A couple students said they were grateful we dont require vaccinations," he said, adding the school is following all provincial health protocols. Booth University College in downtown Winnipeg has 257 students enrolled, a 10 per cent increase over last year. All of the classes are being offered online. "We remained consistent with returning students," vice-president academic and dean Michael Boyce said. "The increase is the result of more new students." faith@freepress.mb.ca A Winnipeg man is looking for an apology and compensation for a troubling incident in which he and his family had to jump out of their 2021 Ford Explorer after it suddenly caught fire. A Winnipeg man is looking for an apology and compensation for a troubling incident in which he and his family had to jump out of their 2021 Ford Explorer after it suddenly caught fire. Steven Paradis and his family had left Blue Lake Provincial Park in northwestern Ontario, with their camper in tow. While driving on Highway 647 toward the Trans-Canada Highway late last month, the dashboard warning lights flashed. The family had owned the SUV for less than a year and it had around 8,000 kilometres on it. Concerned, Paradis, who was in the vehicle with his wife, mother-in-law and two young children, pulled over. "I went, OK, this is serious, and went to stop and you could smell the smoke already," he said. SUPPLIED Steven Paradis and his family had left Blue Lake Provincial Park in northwestern Ontario, with their camper in tow, when their 2021 Ford Explorer suddenly caught fire. He popped the hood and saw flames, Paradis rushed to get his family out of the vehicle and grabbed the fire extinguisher from his camper, but it was too late to save either the SUV or the camper. "She was already engulfed. We were just able to get everyone out of the vehicle and get away, and thats when she just burned down in front of us," he said. MPIs investigation confirmed the fire started in the engine but the cause was undetermined. The vehicle and the camper are covered by insurance, but clothes, food, car seats and the family's electronics were burned in the fire. Their two-year-old daughter had no shoes or diapers. The financial burden is only a small aspect of what the family lost. SUPPLIED The damage caused to Steven Paradis' 2021 Ford Explorer after it suddenly caught fire. Paradis said his wife is getting therapy to deal with the incident, and his young daughter has suffered trauma. He said she reacts negatively to seeing exhaust smoke and smelling asphalt from construction near their home. So, Paradis reached out to Ford Canada with their story last week. He wants the company to apologize for the incident and compensate them for items that burned. He said they received a cookie-cutter reply that didnt address the issue. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "They pretty much came back and said, We keep a high standard of our vehicles. Unfortunately this happened to you guys. Please go through your insurance and if they need to contact us, they will. Goodbye," he said. He said their dealership tried to reach out to Ford Canada and received the same reply. Ford Canada did not reply to the Free Press. Paradis said they might contact Transport Canada if Ford doesn't address their concerns. malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: malakabas_ BRANDON THE Manitoba NDP caucus toured the former Brandon residential school Wednesday as guests of Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. Chief Jennifer Bone said they were honoured to host the NDP on the first day of its retreat in Brandon. She said she hopes the caucus gained a better understanding of the impact of residential schools in First Nations and the need to investigate unmarked graves. Its believed there are 104 graves at the site. "Sioux Valley has been carrying on with our own project in relation to the residential schools since 2012," Bone said. "It makes people aware of the history of residential schools and how it has brought us to where we are today." It was powerful to see Dakota elders share their stories with the politicians, she said. "(The NDP caucus) have a better understanding of what we have gone through as Indigenous people, and what we continue to go through," Bone said. Healing is needed in communities, she said, and the calls to actions cited by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission show there is unfinished work in Canada. She added many issues must be addressed to see true reconciliation take place. "Weve come a long way but theres still a lot of work that needs to be done," Bone said. Sioux Valley has hosted other groups at the site, including Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak and Southern Chiefs Organization. Bone said Sioux Valley wants to see groups work together to ensure students buried at former residential schools can find their way home. NDP Leader Wab Kinew said given the conversations surrounding former residential schools and unmarked graves in Canada this year, it was important to reach out to Sioux Valley because they have stepped up as caretaker for the Brandon residential school site. "I am the son of a residential school survivor. Ive heard many recollections and memories and it never fails to have an emotional impact, even though Ive probably heard from residential school survivors more than the average person," Kinew said. "Listening to the people talk today about some very painful memories from their childhood and how it affected their family relationships for years afterwards, it really affects you on an emotional level." Kinew said there is a pressing need to take action because there is a short window of time to preserve the stories and oral histories of survivors. He expects that within the next two decades or so, the voices of those who attended residential schools will be lost. Kinew would like to see work done to commemorate and honour survivors. This can be in the form of dates like the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30 or through installations that honour survivors and victims at the former Brandon school site. "You have to have people dedicated to it, people whose job it is to move the work of commemorations and education forward," Kinew said. "As people involved in the provincial system, I think thats what well be pushing for a dedicated task force, dedicated resources to help make this work happen." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Sioux Valley Coun. Elton Taylor and Simon Fraser University PhD candidate Katherine Nichols spoke to guests about the potential unmarked graves at the site. Nichols is originally from the Brandon area, and Sioux Valley chief and council and other landowners have collaborated with her to identify graves. "These children need the respect and the honour that they deserve. We honour and respect all other cemeteries and all other graves. Why are these ones being left out and unattended? Why arent these ones protected in the same manner as all others? It is an injustice that these kids are left out," Taylor said. Each site with potential unmarked graves is unique, and its important to use all available evidence, including survivors stories, archival records, archeology and forensic anthropology, to identify potential areas of interest. The duo provided a tour of the area, highlighting the site of the former school and potential unmarked graves. They are currently working to confirm locations and figure out how to best protect and honour the children found in a way desired by their communities. The project to have the graves recognized has been underway for more than a decade, Taylor said, and it can be a challenging task when the changes and answers needed are at the institutional level provincially and nationally. Brandon Sun Three-year-old Hunter Smith-Straights body showed no signs he was able to resist a knife attack that left him with six stab wounds to the head and neck, Manitobas chief medical examiner testified Thursday. Three-year-old Hunter Smith-Straights body showed no signs he was able to resist a knife attack that left him with six stab wounds to the head and neck, Manitobas chief medical examiner testified Thursday. Hunter had no defensive wounds to his hands or arms, suggesting he was unable to move at the time he was attacked, Dr. John Younes told jurors in Winnipeg. SUPPLIED Three-year-old Hunter Smith-Straight was stabbed Oct. 30, 2019 at his Pritchard Avenue home. "Generally speaking, if there is an altercation and injuries are being sustained by one party due to repeated attacks, the injuries tend to be dispersed, due to a lot of movement," Younes said. "When a pathologist sees a number of injuries that are tightly clustered in a small area, the conclusion we come to is that the victim was not moving or not moving effectively at the time the injuries were sustained." Daniel Jensen, 34, is on trial, charged with first-degree murder in the Oct. 30, 2019, killing. Hunter was attacked as he slept in the second-floor suite of a Pritchard Avenue duplex. Prosecutors allege Jensen returned to the house after a violent argument with Hunters mother, with whom he was in a relationship at the time, and killed the boy in an act of vengeance. Justice Herbert Rempel issued a rare caution to jurors prior to Youness testimony, reminding them to raise a hand if they needed a break from the graphic evidence, which included autopsy pictures. "You may find the testimony of Dr. Younes and the photographs to be upsetting," Rempel said. "The (Crown and defence) lawyers have agreed he will only comment on six photographs during his testimony, as they are necessary to assist you in understanding his opinion as to the cause of death." Court has heard several of Hunters older cousins lived in the main-floor suite and were home at the time, but did not hear the attack. Younes said the boy could have been rendered unconscious by one of the knife strikes or possibly smothered. "Generally, (smothering) leaves no evidence at autopsy if it is done gently, and its quite easy to do with a small child without a great deal of force," Younes said. Hunter was taken to hospital suffering massive blood loss and irreversible brain damage. He was taken off life support three days later and died. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "The child died due to a lack of oxygen delivered to the brain which was caused by the loss of most of his blood," Younes said. Hunter suffered four intersecting stab wounds to his neck, one or more of which sliced his jugular vein. "The jugular vein is the largest vein of the neck having an opening of that vein is a life-threatening process," Younes said. Another stab wound penetrated Hunters ear, through his occipital bone and into his cranial cavity, Younes said. "That would have taken a very powerful blow to accomplish, even with a very sharp knife." dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca Some residents of Waverley Heights fear a new Transit-oriented development could block their views, snarl traffic and create parking woes. Some residents of Waverley Heights fear a new Transit-oriented development could block their views, snarl traffic and create parking woes. Proponents of the project say its an ideal fit for the south Winnipeg areas transportation infrastructure. The proposal aims to create two apartment buildings (one four-story, one 10-storey) at a vacant property on the northeast corner of Markham and Gull Lake roads, which is adjacent to the southwest rapid transit line. However, a group of Waverley Heights residents is accusing the city of ignoring its long list of issues with the project. "Theyre seeking a profit and are not concerned how it affects the existing community," said Audrey VanderSpek. VanderSpek said residents expect the plan could lower property values for surrounding homes and entirely obstruct some views. She said a plan to create fewer parking stalls than housing units could also lead apartment residents to rely heavily on street spots. Adding more traffic to the area could also spark new safety concerns, VanderSpek said Thursday. "This is about a block away from a school, so theres lots of kids walking back and forth... If you increase the traffic on there, thats just going to create a safety hazard." If the residents cant stop the development to leave room for future green space, she said they hope to convince the city to ensure both buildings are capped at a maximum of four storeys. However, the projects proponents describe it as a great opportunity to make use of the citys $605-million rapid transit line, which would generate taxes that help pay for the infrastructure. "Its the ideal location for a rapid transit development, being less than a minute or so walk (from) proposed buildings to the Markham Transit station," said Chris Gibson, a planner with Richard and Wintrup. Gibson said its not a surprise to see a strong reaction to a large project that would change the landscape of a neighbourhood. He added traffic impacts should, however, be "minimal," based on studies so far. Coun. Janice Lukes, who represents the area, is calling for amendments that would reduce the tallest building to eight storeys and require an additional traffic study. Lukes (Waverley West) said she hopes to find a compromise that supports the development and acknowledges community feedback. "I completely understand the residents frustration. Whats happening is weve got single-family homes that are mere metres from a rapid transit corridor If the transit corridor wasnt there, none of this would be happening," she said. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Lukes added the project does follow every policy requirement the city has for rapid transit development and would provide a significant financial benefit. She expects the close access to the rapid transit line should help reduce traffic volumes throughout the area, which she said has been the case with other similar projects. "The essence of rapid transit is to not use your vehicle as much because the buses are running every three to four minutes," said Lukes. Council is expected to cast a final vote on the proposal Sept. 29. joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga It is arguably the biggest question hanging over the Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership race: will the next leader, who will also become premier, keep vaccine mandates and passports? It is arguably the biggest question hanging over the Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership race: will the next leader, who will also become premier, keep vaccine mandates and passports? It's hardly surprising vaccine mandates would invade the Tory leadership. The imposition of vaccine mandates is one of the most incendiary issues in Canadian politics right now. After months of refusals, Ontario and Alberta are scrambling to get vaccine mandates in place. The issue also proved to be impactful in the federal election campaign. However, what doesn't make sense is the utter confusion the two leadership candidates have created on one of the most important issues of the pandemic. The issue burst into the leadership campaign on Sept. 10 when former MP and federal cabinet minster Shelly Glover entered the race and stunned onlookers by declaring her steadfast opposition to vaccine mandates. Glover, who had worked as an aide in a personal care home during the pandemic, said it was unfair to demand health-care workers be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment. Despite working in health care, she also said she personally had not heard a compelling scientific or medical argument that indicated mandates were necessary. Glover, who had worked as an aide in a personal care home during the pandemic, said it was unfair to demand healthcare workers be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment. Despite working in health care, she also said she personally had not heard a compelling scientific or medical argument that indicated mandates were necessary. In an interview later that day, however, Glover softened her stance. She said she would support vaccine mandates if it was clear, on a medical and scientific basis, it was the best way of protecting people. For someone applying to serve as Manitoba's premier, it was a horrible debut. Her only opponent, MLA and former cabinet minister Heather Stefanson has taken a different but nonetheless confusing position. After saying very little on vaccine mandates since launching her campaign in mid-August, Stefanson re-entered the debate on Sept. 16 by posting a video to social media in which she said, "I don't believe in mandatory vaccines." In that brief but largely unintelligible video, Stefanson seems unable to make a clear statement to explain her position. In a statement that is little more than a string of non-sequiturs held together with some buzz words, Stefanson talks about "what is currently in place right now" and ensuring that "those individuals" who work in health care, education and government "get tested." So, does Stefanson oppose public health orders that require public-facing workers in health care and education to be fully vaccinated? Is she suggesting that vaccinations no longer be mandated and that only testing be done? What about private businesses that have been compelled by public health orders to limit access to the fully vaccinated? The spokeswoman said Stefanson supports current public health orders (which include vaccine mandates and passports), and would not lift those requirements until public health officials say it's OK. But she does not believe anyone should be forcibly vaccinated. A Stefanson campaign spokeswoman would later explain Stefanson does not oppose "vaccine mandates" per se, but does oppose "mandatory vaccines." Asked to elaborate, the spokeswoman said Stefanson supports current public health orders (which include vaccine mandates and passports), and would not lift those requirements until public health officials say it's OK. But she does not believe anyone should be forcibly vaccinated. There's a lot to unpack in that statement, and none of it makes sense. First, nobody is proposing that Manitobans be forcibly vaccinated. Stefanson is answering a question that nobody is asking. More importantly, if the reaction she got from other social media users is any indication, everyone thought she was talking about vaccine mandates, not mandatory vaccinations. Her campaign denied that was her intention. Or was it? More than a few Tories are afraid Glover and Stefanson are trying to out-pander each other to draw the support of the far-right wing of the party, which was mobilized by the near-candidacy of former party treasurer Ken Lee. More than a few Tories are afraid Glover and Stefanson are trying to outpander each other to draw the support of the farright wing of the party, which was mobilized by the nearcandidacy of former party treasurer Ken Lee. A vehement opponent of all government measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, Lee seemed to have met most of the requirements to be a candidate, but was disqualified for reasons that remain unclear. Although he won't have his name on the leadership ballot, it seems Lee's effect on the race is still being felt. Party sources say Lee sold a significant number of memberships, somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000, many of them to the anti-vaccine crowd. Given the PC party had about 5,000 members in good standing prior to the leadership campaign, that is not an insignificant influx of new blood. But it hardly justifies the two official candidates turning their backs on the best principles of science and public health. There are really only two possible explanations. Dan Lett | Not for Attribution A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world that is sent every Tuesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. First, neither Glover nor Stefanson is articulate enough to make a clear statement on what is easily one of the most important issues of our time. Or, both candidates are so greedy and cynical they are prepared to say anything to capture the support of a motivated, far-right wing of the PC party. Both explanations are unbecoming for the candidates, may prove to be demoralizing for PC party members, and are no doubt worrisome to the public. There were many Manitobans both within and outside the PC party who thought things could only get better when the utterly unpopular Brian Pallister stepped down as premier. The performance of Glover and Stefanson on this important issue suggests we should not rush to any conclusions. dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca Manitobas largest school board is reviewing all of its K-12 building titles to determine whether the namesakes and their respective legacies are in line with modern-day morals. Manitobas largest school board is reviewing all of its K-12 building titles to determine whether the namesakes and their respective legacies are in line with modern-day morals. JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Last week, Jamie Dumont, vice-chairwoman of the board of trustees in the Winnipeg School Division, introduced a motion to undertake an evaluation of all schools named after people and research each historical figures resume. Last week, Jamie Dumont, vice-chairwoman of the board of trustees in the Winnipeg School Division, introduced a motion to undertake an evaluation of all schools named after people and research each historical figures resume. "We operate, as a school division, under a number of values and, in many cases, we are very much a leader in diversity, equity, inclusion and Indigenous education so I think its important that, as a board, we ensure that our schools and our buildings dont contradict these values," Dumont said during a virtual board meeting Sept. 13. The review will identify whether any buildings are named after individuals with a history of actions that are discriminatory or not in accordance with WSD values, namely: inclusiveness, diversity, reconciliation, and respect for the rights and human dignity of others, or both. Sample of WSD school names Andrew Mynarski V.C. School: Mynarski, born in Winnipeg, was an air force gunner over France in 1944 when his plane was struck. He was badly burned during a vain attempt to free the rear gunner, who was trapped in their falling aircraft. He died and was decorated with the Victoria Cross. click to read more Andrew Mynarski V.C. School: Mynarski, born in Winnipeg, was an air force gunner over France in 1944 when his plane was struck. He was badly burned during a vain attempt to free the rear gunner, who was trapped in their falling aircraft. He died and was decorated with the Victoria Cross. David Livingstone School: Livingstone was a Scottish explorer, doctor, philanthropist and missionary who explored Africa in the 19th century. He was an advocate for British colonial expansion, but fought against slavery. He died in 1873 in what is now Zambia. Gordon Bell High School: Bell was born in Ontario and attended medical college in Manitoba in the late 19th century. He was superintendent of the Brandon Asylum for the Insane, which later became the Brandon Mental Health Centre. He was also Manitoba's first ophthalmologist, chair of the Manitoba Board of Health in the early 20th century and one of the first six professors hired by the University of Manitoba. Isaac Brock School: Brock, born in 1769, was a British army officer and colonial administrator in Canada in the early 1800s, responsible for defending Upper Canada against the United States. John M. King School: Rev. John Marks King, born in 1829 in Scotland, was president of Manitoba College (now the University of Winnipeg) and was involved in several public charities in the city. Ralph Brown School: Ralph Russell James Brown, born in Ontario, was a principal of Somerset School at Notre Dame Avenue and Sherbrook Street in Winnipeg in the early 20th century. He was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War in 1917 and later died. Ecole Robert H. Smith School: In 1926, the former River Heights school was renamed for Robert Huston Smith, who died that year. Smith was a secretary-treasurer of the Winnipeg School Division for 20 years and helped open libraries in the city. William Whyte School: William Methven Whyte, born in Scotland in 1843, was a railway executive in charge of all Canadian Pacific lines west of Lake Superior. He was pivotal in the massive expansion of the railroad in Canada. He was knighted in 1911. Source: School websites, Manitoba Historical Society Close Per the motion, which was unanimously approved by trustees, community members will then be invited to submit feedback on names. Public recommendations are then to be presented to the divisions building and transportation committee to consider new monikers. While noting naming has been a topic of interest across the country in recent months, Dumont told the Free Press conducting a thorough evaluation of schools in central Winnipeg is an opportunity for the division to be a leader on the file. The trustee indicated no school in particular is being targeted but the division wants to be proactive and continue its work on analyzing names. There are currently 80 schools in WSD, which are attended by upwards of 32,000 students. SASHA SEFTER / FREE PRESS FILES WSD started having discussions about renaming Cecil Rhodes School in June 2020. Dumont added: "If we dont take a proactive approach, are we at risk of sending a message that were OK with (honouring problematic figures)?" The board started having discussions about renaming Cecil Rhodes School in June 2020, after community members put pressure on administration to address the K-9 building's affiliation with a former prime minister of what is now South Africa, whose ideas laid the groundwork for racist apartheid policies. In the spring, after reviewing the results of a division survey on the subject, trustees voted overwhelmingly to start consultations on a new name. A similar process is currently underway in south Winnipeg to rename Ryerson School in the Pembina Trails School Division, in order to cut its ties with Egerton Ryerson, an architect of Canada's residential school system. A 2017 study of WSD school titles, which was undertaken by an education student at the University of Manitoba for her master's thesis, suggests approximately 70 per cent of them are named after people. ALEX LUPUL / FREE PRESS FILES A similar process is currently underway in south Winnipeg to rename Ryerson School in the Pembina Trails School Division Katya Adamov Ferguson determined those names often honour white European colonialists, missionaries and explorers, who were men who lived between the 18th and 20th centuries. "If the data of school names were listed in chronological order, it would tell the story of imperialism and colonization," wrote Adamov Ferguson. Among the academics observations is the roster of chosen names fails to reflect the history, culture and contributions of Indigenous peoples. She recommended in 2017 the division rethink both current school names and the way historical figures are uncritically described on school webpages, so backgrounders do not continue to retell a one-sided version of history. maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @macintoshmaggie It was an election that changed very little. Much ado about nothing, according to Angus Reid. A 600-million-dollar cabinet shuffle, opined Chantal Hebert of the Toronto Star. Opinion It was an election that changed very little. "Much ado about nothing," according to Angus Reid. "A 600-million-dollar cabinet shuffle," opined Chantal Hebert of the Toronto Star. On Monday, Canadians went to the polls and not much changed in terms of who is sitting in the House of Commons. We still have a Liberal minority government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who may want to start dusting off his resume. But there are some interesting numbers lurking in the results produced by our the first-past-the-post system and its winner-takes-all outcome. Yes, the Liberals and Conservatives were very close in terms of popular support, but on the Prairies, theres a Quebecois leader who suddenly has become very popular. So popular, in fact, hes in a virtual tie with the NDP in terms of support. Peoples Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier or "Mad Max," as hes been dubbed has pulled off what the Green Party has been trying to do for more than a decade. Hes managed to make major inroads across the country in growing support, and his brand of libertarian, pro-oil and gas, pro-gun, anti-vax rhetoric has resonated in the West much like Donald Trumps confrontational style did in the U.S. region known as the Rust Belt. In an election-night interview, Bernier was ebullient: "This is not just a political party. This is a movement. It is an ideological revolution that we are starting now." But when you check the talking points of the "revolution" outlined on the partys website, theyre full of canards that have a Trumpian ring. The numbers are sobering. In national support, the PPC came in fifth, behind the Bloc and ahead of the Greens, with just over five per cent of support. In Portage Lisgar, Conservative Candice Bergen won handily, but PPC candidate Solomon Wiebe came in second with more than 20 per cent of the vote. In Provencher, PPC candidate Noel Gautron came in came in third to Conservative Ted Falk, in a virtual tie with Liberal Trevor Kirczenow with slightly more than 16 per cent. The riding of Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley was hotly contested, with no winner being declared until the mail-in votes were tallied. But theres no doubt incumbent Conservative Marty Morantzs chances were affected by the presence of the PPC, as candidate Angela Van Hussen bled off almost four per cent of the right-leaning vote. In a tight election, every vote counts. Consider what happened in Edmonton Griesbach, a riding bombastic former city councillor Kerry Diotte had held as a Conservative since 2015. He lost to NDP Blake Desjarlais, who will be Albertas only Indigenous MP and is also believed to be Canadas first openly two-spirited MP. The margin of victory was less than three per cent of the overall vote; PPC candidate Thomas Matty attracted more than six per cent. Across the Prairies, the PPC garnered about seven per cent of the popular vote, and in such places as Red Deer, Westlock, Fort McMurray in Alberta places where men and women work with their hands and their backs and worry these days about making their mortgages the support ranged from 12 to 13 per cent. In hardcore Conservative country, Mad Max a Quebecer is the one making inroads. Whats the draw? Some pundits suggest the minute Conservative Leader Erin OToole waffled on gun control, Berniers support grew. One of the major PPC platform promises is to repeal the Firearms Act and replace it with legislation that will target criminals instead of law-abiding gun owners. The PPCs stated belief that gun ownership is part of Canadas culture and tradition sounds eerily like something imported from the American gun-control debate. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The PPC also found support from those who are against public-health restrictions. The party website includes such misinformation as "Lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and other authoritarian sanitary measures have not had any noticeable effect on the course of the pandemic." Its total poppycock, of course, but it feeds into the audience that supports the party. The final pillar that garnered the PPC support on the Prairies is its climate-change denial stance, and its support of the construction of pipelines and expansion of the oil and gas industry. In other words, its the economy at all costs, damn the consequences and full speed ahead, the right to bear arms but the right to refuse to bare arms (for vaccines), even though in Canada gun ownership has never part of the discussion of our rights or part of our constitution. The party with the purple logo has definite shades of Trumpish pumpkin orange. Starting to get worried yet? Lets hope the ideology Bernier is spouting is just a response to a pandemic election call, and not a more widespread infection that needs to be excised like an 1812 invasion. Shannon Sampert is a Winnipeg-based political scientist and the former politics and perspectives editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. shannon@mediadiva.ca Public-health officials and government leaders are safely distant in their offices when they compose decrees that Manitobans in public places should wear masks and be fully immunized. Its considerably more stressful for restaurant wait staff, store clerks and cashiers who get stuck with the unenviable duty of declaring those same decrees to anti-vax customers who may be antagonistic and even violent. Public-health officials and government leaders are safely distant in their offices when they compose decrees that Manitobans in public places should wear masks and be fully immunized. Its considerably more stressful for restaurant wait staff, store clerks and cashiers who get stuck with the unenviable duty of declaring those same decrees to anti-vax customers who may be antagonistic and even violent. The workers on the front lines of vaccination hostility dont deserve to be yelled at, cursed and spat on, which are all indignities experienced recently in Manitoba stores and restaurants. To get the respect they deserve, workers need backup from officials who have the authority to substantially increase the enforcement of public-health orders. To get the respect they deserve, workers need backup from officials who have the authority to substantially increase the enforcement of publichealth orders. A blitz of tickets carrying heavy fines will make more of an impression on anti-vaxxers than polite reminders from restaurant servers who, after all, are paid to satisfy, not anger, customers. This dismaying erosion of civility in Manitoba has been triggered in large part by fervent opposition to public-health measures that require proof of COVID-19 immunization and mandatory face masks for admittance to many public places. Disagreement with government measures is a freedom allowed in a healthy democracy, but its wrong to express this discord in an aggressive manner to store clerks and servers who are just doing their job in refusing service to bare-faced customers. "We are better than this," Winkler Police Chief Ryan Hunt said in an appeal posted last weekend. He said his community is fractured by anger and resentment, with mask mandates leading to disputes that included one driver trying to run another off the road, and one shopper pushing his cart at another while cursing. Minister of Justice Cameron Friesen (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files) Provincial statistics show just 41 per cent of eligible Winkler resident have been vaccinated against COVID-19 while, in the surrounding RM of Stanley, the rate is only 24 per cent. A Free Press reporter who visited a dozen businesses in Winkler found none of them was implementing provincial public-health orders. Business owners said enforcing the orders would result in staff being abused by some customers. The owners also feared that, in a small-town culture, refusing service to anti-vaxx customers could prompt enduring grudges that might threaten businesses viability. What could help considerably is a widely publicized crackdown on individuals and businesses that defy the orders. The enforcement should be conducted by public-health officers, not the owners and staff whose livelihoods depend on the continuing good will of customers, including anti-vaxxers. If officials are already handing out tickets with diligence, theyre largely keeping it a secret. A provincial government spokesperson refused to answer a Free Press request for the number of tickets issued in Winkler since the return of the mask mandate on Aug. 28. This dismaying erosion of civility in Manitoba has been triggered in large part by fervent opposition to publichealth measures that require proof of COVID19 immunization and mandatory face masks for admittance to many public places. Welcome exceptions to the apparent reluctance to ticket offenders came this week in the form of news that fines were levied against several Manitoba businesses, including two Corydon Avenue restaurants that received $40,000 in fines for allowing unmasked and potentially unvaccinated patrons to eat inside for weeks. Officials should continue to hit public-health scofflaws in the pocketbook, and they should also publicize their efforts widely to make others think twice before they defy health orders. Justice Minister Cameron Friesen must be well aware of the problem, since he is also MLA for the Morden-Winkler constituency. He should remember the responsibilities of his office didnt end with the announcement of the public-health orders. Ensuring compliance with the restrictions is also the responsibility of the government that enacted the restrictions, not the wait staff slinging coffee at Winkler restaurants. Local manufacturers in Winkler stayed open late so employees could be immunized against COVID-19 without their co-workers knowing. Local manufacturers in Winkler stayed open late so employees could be immunized against COVID-19 without their co-workers knowing. Groups of citizens recently gathered to discuss how they could bridge the COVID-19 divide growing in the southern Manitoba city and beyond. Despite the steady stream of negative news coming out of Winkler and the surrounding area, there are positive steps being taken to increase the immunization rate and heal the growing divisions, said Tory MLA Cameron Friesen, who represents the constituency. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES There are positive steps being taken to increase the immunization rate and heal the growing divisions, said Tory MLA Cameron Friesen, who represents the constituency. "Even though things are hard right now, there are good things going on, and that we should also be looking at the good things, and looking at those modelling the behaviour we want to see," Friesen said Wednesday. However, that doesnt mean the pandemic divide isnt significant. "Something has to change. The anger and resentment that we are seeing in our community are unacceptable," Winkler Police Service Chief Ryan Hunt posted on social media last weekend, after public displays of bad behaviour by pro-and anti-maskers and both sides of the vaccine passport issue were reported. Winkler-based Dr. Eric Lane has spoken publicly he is concerned doctors in the area with some of Manitoba's lowest vaccination rates are looking to move. Winkler-based Dr. Eric Lane has spoken publicly he is concerned doctors in the area with some of Manitoba's lowest vaccination rates are looking to move to a place where "their advice was taken more seriously." Mayor Martin Harder has urged doctors to stay, because the community wouldn't survive without medical professionals. Friesen, who also serves as Manitoba justice minister, said he's meeting with community members and "digging deep" into his teaching toolkit to restore the lines of communication. "People are complex and we need to have complex ways of reaching people right now... Vaccines and COVID-19 is on everyone's hearts and minds," said Friesen, who met with a large group of restaurant owners and operators last week. "What I hear from people... is we're losing the ability to speak with one another. The lines are being drawn. The divisions are in families, in workplaces and community settings and those divisions are deepening. We need to work to move toward each other, and not away." There are people in Winkler doing that work, he said. "Last week, a group of concerned citizens got together in a parking lot to safely converse and physically distance and they just talked about what they saw happening in their community and about what they could do as individuals and as a group to cross the divide." "People are complex and we need to have complex ways of reaching people right now... Vaccines and COVID19 is on everyone's hearts and minds." MLA Cameron Friesen Local manufacturers in Winkler co-ordinated pop-up vaccine clinics, where supervisors went around to have conversations with each employee, Friesen said. The clinics stayed open after work hours to immunize people who didn't want co-workers to see them getting the vaccine. The province started with a "macro approach" trying to get the maximum number of people vaccinated at super sites as quickly as possible; now it's time for a more targeted, finessed approach, the Winkler-Morden MLA said. "As we get more into that group of the vaccine hesitant, we have to be sophisticated in our thinking. We have to understand that not all of these people are vaccine deniers," said Friesen. "There are people that are reachable." He expects the $14 million the province just announced for enlisting the help of doctors and pharmacists to target the unvaccinated for one-on-one discussions and outreach will be a successful. The strategy relies on professional relationships with patients and customers. "I think all people are influenced by the people around them. We need to create channels for adults" to talk to someone who is objective, Friesen said. "There's too much condemnation, generalization and judgment going on." "We must overcome suspicion. We must build bridges and refuse to generalize and we must do this outreach." MLA Cameron Friesen For instance, COVID-19 vaccination rates aren't same throughout his constituency: Morden has a higher rate than Winkler, while Winkler has a higher rate than the Rural Municipality of Stanley. Southern Manitoba has traditionally had lower immunization rates than the rest of the province, Friesen said. "This has been an issue for a long time" and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted it, he said. "We must overcome suspicion. We must build bridges and refuse to generalize and we must do this outreach." And it is working, Friesen said: "We see, every day, first doses are happening, they're taking place in our community." Meantime, the MLA who has represented the area since 2011 said he's still telling people about the high correlation between the non-vaccinated and hospitalizations and ICU admissions, and how "We're not out the woods yet" and "COVID is real." "But, at the end of the day, how we do things matters very much." carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Fake medical-exemption badges for people looking to sidestep public-health orders are starting to show up in Manitoba. Fake medical-exemption badges for people looking to sidestep public-health orders are starting to show up in Manitoba. In one case, a woman visiting a big-box store said she was able to convince employees who asked her to put on a mask that she was exempt, using a badge she purchased online. "I was asked twice, and I specifically pointed to my badge and said I had a medical exemption. Everyone left and said, Thank you, sorry about that," she said in a social media post sent to the Free Press Tuesday. "Stand up people, nows the time." The website she recommends others purchase the badge from is bare-bones, with just a small description and a simple checkout system. The professional-looking laminated badges read: "I have a medical condition that prevents me from wearing a mask or face covering," and have small images of the Canadian flag and a caduceus the medical symbol of two snakes curled around a winged staff. A French version is available, along with one displaying an American flag. All three are selling for $10. A fourth option, listed as "Rally" and offering no other information, is priced at $500. Proof of your medical condition is not required in order to purchase. Mask exempt persons who wear this card report feeling an immediate boost in self confidence and empowerment when accessing public services. Website "Proof of your medical condition is not required in order to purchase," the website reads. "Mask exempt persons who wear this card report feeling an immediate boost in self confidence and empowerment when accessing public services." The site says the badges are sent free in "letter mail" and expedited shipping is available for another $20. Funds are sent to someone named Patrick McNulty, but the location is not provided. There are no valid medical exemption cards in Manitoba, a spokesperson from the province said Wednesday. "Enforcement officials use professional judgment in every case and do not ask for proof of a mask exemption in the form of a medical certificate. Manitobans wishing to access specific services or venues are required to show proof of vaccination," the spokesperson said in an email. "If an individual receives a citation for not wearing a mask, they would then have the opportunity to go before a judge to support a claim of a valid medical reason." Photo from website selling medical exemption badges without requiring prroof of medical exemption. Some versions of fake medical exemption cards shared on social media include contact information for the Canadian Human Rights Commission to report "violations of disability rights" that may arise while using the card. In a response to someone sharing their concerns about the card on social media, a representative from the Canadian Human Rights Commission confirmed the group was not associated with the producers of medical exemption cards. "These are fake. The Commission has not and would not produce posters or cards claiming that the cardholder has an exemption from wearing a face mask in closed public places," the CHRC previously tweeted. "We strongly recommend to Canadians that they do not share or use these fraudulent cards." Manitobas guidance on who is exempt from masks is basic anyone who cannot wear one, shouldnt. The provinces website offers examples, including children under the age of five, someone unable to put it on or take it off without assistance and people who are "actively having breathing difficulties." Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president Loren Remillard said hes heard many stories from his members about patrons claiming theyre exempt from the mandate, but the use of a fake badge was new to him. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "We would hope that all Manitobans appreciate that the best way you can help a business is to patronize that business, but don't put them in a position where you're exposing them to a potential fine," he said. "Businesses are trying to, with the information they have, make the best sense of it as they can, and trying to comply. And it's unfortunate that there may be instances where theyre operating with best intention and people are able to circumvent that and potentially expose that business to a fine." Hes been told the province is working on a more streamlined way to prove medical exemptions to businesses and hopes the process moves quicker to avoid both misunderstandings and fraudsters. "We really hope the province is able to move expeditiously to be able to really articulate that process and the proof-of-exemption documentation that businesses can recognize as valid government identification," he said. "For those that are seeking to use a homemade card to circumvent the public-health orders, the easiest way to be able to get into that establishment is to get vaccinated, get your vaccination card and enter that place of business fully compliant with the public-health orders and doing what's really best for your community." malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: malakabas_ QUEBEC - The Quebec legislature rapidly adopted a bill Thursday banning protests related to the COVID-19 pandemic within 50 metres of schools, daycares, and health-care facilities. People lineup at a COVID-19 testing clinic in Montreal on September 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz QUEBEC - The Quebec legislature rapidly adopted a bill Thursday banning protests related to the COVID-19 pandemic within 50 metres of schools, daycares, and health-care facilities. The bill was introduced earlier in the day and passed unanimously after a few hours of debate. Under the law, demonstrations of "any manner" near protected institutions are prohibited if they are related to the health orders issued under the COVID-19 state of emergency, vaccination against the novel coronavirus or "any other recommendation issued by public health authorities in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic." Adult education centres and junior colleges were added to the list of protected places at the suggestion of Liberal member Marwah Rizqy. The government also accepted an amendment introduced by Quebec solidaire member Andres Fontecilla specifying that the law doesn't apply to employees of protected institutions, who are allowed to protest for better working conditions. Public Security Minister Genevieve Guilbault, who introduced the bill, said the law would apply to parents protesting for better ventilation at their children's school because that issue is related to COVID-19. The law came following several recent protests outside Quebec schools and hospitals against COVID-19 vaccination and health orders. In a post on Facebook Thursday morning, Premier Francois Legault said he understands that restricting the right to protest is a delicate matter, "but, frankly, there are limits." "What is perhaps most shocking for me is imagining how our nurses feel to see this," he added. "Those women and men have worked tirelessly for months to care for people sick with COVID despite difficult working conditions." People who violate the ban can face fines of between $1,000 and $6,000, with the penalty doubled if they threaten or intimidate anyone who is entering or leaving one of the sites specified in the bill. An amendment to the bill means the new measures will expire after 30 days, but the government reserves the right to renew them while the COVID-19 state of emergency order remains in effect. Earlier in the day, the sole elected member of the Quebec Conservative party, Claire Samson, said she had concerns about the law and needed more information. "I'm taking this very seriously, but I need some time," she said. "I need to ask my questions, I need some answers and I need to propose some amendments." Samson said she was concerned the law didn't have an expiration date. Despite her concerns, Samson ultimately supported the adoption of the bill. The bill has also faced criticism from the Ligue des droits et libertes, a Quebec civil liberties group. In a statement on Thursday, the group said the law creates an "undue restriction on the right to protest," adding that existing laws guaranteeing access to schools and hospitals as well as the Criminal Code are sufficient. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "Everyone can exercise their right to freedom of expression and their right to demonstrate, even if the message is unpopular," Catherine Descoteaux, the group's coordinator said in a statement. Quebec reported 754 new cases of COVID-19 Thursday and seven additional deaths linked to the novel coronavirus. Hospitalizations rose by three, to 283, with 90 patients in intensive care. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23, 2021. With files from Jacob Serebrin in Montreal. This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship. It's a squeaker, but the Conservative incumbent appears to have retained his seat in west Winnipeg by a tiny margin of 24 votes. It's a squeaker, but the Conservative incumbent appears to have retained his seat in west Winnipeg by a tiny margin of 24 votes. Marty Morantz has defeated Liberal candidate Doug Eyolfson in the Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley riding, who had hoped to win back the seat after representing it from 2015 to 2019, after he was elected during a Trudeau sweep. MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Federal Conservative incumbent in the Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley riding Marty Morantz appears to have retained his seat with a victory over Liberal candidate Doug Eyolfson by a margin of just 24 votes. Elections Canada posted the result on its website late Wednesday after two days in which more than 3,000 special ballots were counted, including mail-in votes and ballots from hospitals, correctional institutions and from members of the military. As of Thursday morning, 95 per cent of the special ballots in the riding had been counted, according to Elections Canada. The 24-vote difference means a recount is mandatory. Morantz said he was relieved Elections Canada had finally posted the results and he looks forward to getting back to work in Ottawa. Morantz thanked his family, the campaign volunteers, and the riding's residents, "who bore with us through this really unnecessary and unwarranted election that nobody really wanted. It's unfortunate that $600 million later, we wind up with a House of Commons that looks substantially the same as the one we had before the election was called," he said. Morantz said he will respect the official process, which requires a judicial recount, and he declined to speculate on the reasons for such a tight race, including the impact of the far-right, anti-mask and anti-vaccine People's Party of Canada, which garnered 1,573 votes. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "I think there will be lots of analysis done about this race and how it turned out, but at the end of the day, my focus is really on getting back to work for the constituents." There were 44,327 votes cast in the riding; a recount has to happen if there's a difference of 44 votes or less. Morantz unseated Eyolfson after a similarly tight race in the 2019 election. "Our election laws dictate a judicial recount must take place if the difference in votes is less than one one-thousandth of the total votes cast. As that is the case for this riding, we anticipate that will happen in the coming days. I want to extend a thank you to all of the Elections Canada workers who are carrying out this very important job and look forward to seeing the final results," Eyolfson said in a written statement. katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Majozi to lead the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment Esteemed process engineer to steer the Faculty as Wits embarks on its strategic journey to 2033. The Council of the University of the Witwatersrand today approved the appointment of Professor Thokozani Majozi as the new Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment for a period of five years (renewable). He replaces Professor Ian Jandrell, who was recently appointed as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Systems and Operations at Wits. On behalf of the Wits community, I would like to congratulate Professor Majozi on his appointment to this important role. Professor Majozi, an NRF B1-rated scientist, brings with him the requisite academic profile, industry experience, and agility to charter a new course for the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, particularly as Wits embarks on its strategic journey to 2033. His knowledge and expertise traverses multiple disciplines, and coupled with his leadership experience, places him in good stead to take the Faculty to new heights, says Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi. I must add that we were fortunate to have many excellent candidates apply for this position, and I would sincerely like to thank all those who put their names forward. Majozi has spent 17 years in academia, of which seven have been at Wits. He is a full professor in the Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering and also serves as the National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Innovation Chair in Sustainable Process Engineering. His main research interest is in batch chemical process integration, where he has made significant scientific contributions that have earned him international recognition. Some of these contributions have been adopted by industry. It gives me great pleasure to accept the position of Dean of this prestigious Faculty. I look forward to working with the many talented academics, researchers, students and staff, to take this Faculty to new heights, says Majozi. I have outlined my vision in my statement of intent, which includes developing high-caliber, accredited graduates who will be able to make a contribution to society, increasing the number of postgraduate students, driving an innovative research agenda, optimising ICT and other systems, enhancing the student experience, ensuring our financial sustainability, and creating a distinguished and caring faculty for all. I look forward to working with you all to achieve these goals. Education and Experience Prior to joining Wits, Majozi spent almost ten years at the University of Pretoria, initially as an associate professor and later as a full professor of chemical engineering. He also served as an associate professor in computer science at the University of Pannonia in Hungary from 2005 to 2009. He completed his PhD in Process Integration at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in the United Kingdom. Majozi started his professional career as a junior process engineer at Unilever in 1994. In 1996 he was appointed as a senior process engineer: competency improvement specialist at Dow AgroSciences and in 2002 he joined Sasol Technology as a technology leader for optimisation and integration. He was the Vice-President of the Engineering Council of South Africa between 2009 and 2012, where he also chaired the Strategic and Education Committees, and is currently the Chairperson of the Board of the CSIR. He was recently appointed to serve as a member of the Advisory Board for ASSAf Council, and is a member of the Academic Advisory Board for Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies. Honours, Books and Awards A prolific researcher, Majozi is the author or co-author of over 200 scientific publications including four books in Process Integration, published by Springer and CRC Press. Three of these were published after joining Wits in October 2013. He is also a member of various editorial boards, including the Journal of Cleaner Production and the Process Safety and Environmental Protection Journal, which are both published by Elsevier. His contribution to science has been recognised through several scientific awards, including the Bill Neal-May Gold Medal from the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers, the British Association Medal, National Science and Technology Forum awards (three times), National Research Foundation (NRF) Presidents Awards (two times). Recently, he was awarded the National Order of Mapungubwe by the President of South Africa, specifically for his contribution to industrial wastewater minimisation. He has also delivered several keynote addresses at international conferences. Several students in South Carolina's second-largest school district were sent home Wednesday for not complying with a mask mandate aimed at mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. Fifteen students at Thomas C. Cario Middle School in the Charleston County School District (CCSD) will continue their learning remotely until at least October 15 -- which is when administrators will revisit the mask policy, district spokesperson Andy Pruitt told CNN. In addition, students at other schools were also sent home, though Pruitt didn't specify how many. Some parents gathered outside the middle school to protest the students being sent home over not adhering to the mask requirement, he said. The school district's Board of Trustees voted last week to require everyone to wear a face covering in all CCSD schools and properties as well as on school transportation. The district has about 49,000 students in 88 schools and specialized programs, according to the district's website. "It remains our collective opinion that wearing facemasks in school is an essential health and safety measure. Just that simple act of each of us will help prevent severe illness or death from COVID and reduce the number of students who are forced to quarantine," the Board of Trustees said at the time of its vote. The policy became effective September 20, but it wasn't fully enforced until Wednesday. With the prevalence of the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in July that students from kindergarten through grade 12 wear masks in school. The American Academy of Pediatrics also moved to recommend masks in schools for everyone over age 2. Mask mandates in schools have become a polarizing issue-- especially in states including Texas and Florida, where legal battles have occurred between local and state officials. In addition, the US Department of Education announced last month that it had sent letters to chief state school officials in five states -- Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah -- notifying them of new directed investigations into whether their state mask restrictions prevented students with disabilities from "safely returning to in-person education, in violation of Federal law." The Covid-19 transmission level in South Carolina is high, according to the CDC, which defines that category as having 100 or more cases per 100,000 people or a positivity rate of 10% or higher over a 7-day period. Charleston County has fully vaccinated 63.1% of its total eligible population, according to the CDC. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. An international group of 13 scientists has released a statement calling for the health care community to carefully consider the use of acetaminophen (APAP) during pregnancy until the painkiller is thoroughly investigated for any potential impact on fetal development in the womb. Outside the United States, acetaminophen is known as paracetamol. According to the statement published Thursday in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology, a growing body of research shows that "prenatal exposure to APAP might alter fetal development, which could increase the risks of some neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders." The statement is not health guidance, but urges health care providers and regulators to take action. "The authors are not recommending anything counter to what is already done by obstetrician-gynecologists when prescribing acetaminophen for a given clinical condition," said Dr. Christopher Zahn, vice president of practice activities for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who was not involved in the statement. "However, as always, any medication taken during pregnancy should be used only as needed, in moderation, and after the pregnant patient has consulted with their doctor," he added. 'Medically indicated' Signed by 91 scientists from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Israel, Scotland, the UK and US, the consensus statement calls for pregnant women to be cautioned to "forgo use" of acetaminophen during pregnancy "unless its use is medically indicated." Even after getting approval from a physician, the statement said, women should "minimize exposure by using the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time." "There are good medical reasons for pregnant women to use APAP, after consulting physicians or pharmacists, and that is for fever and severe pain," said David Kristensen, an associate professor of cell biology and physiology at the University of Copenhagen and one of the 13 co-authors of the statement. High fever is a known risk for multiple fetal disorders, "including neural tube defects and later life cardiovascular disorders," the statement noted. However, studies show only a third of pregnant women use acetaminophen to treat fever, the statement added. Instead, "headache, muscle pain, back pain and infection" were the most common reasons for use. "Data suggests more than 50% of women worldwide are using APAP during their pregnancies," Kristensen said. "Many of these women do not consider APAP as a true medication that can have potential side effects. "It is those women who do not consider it as a true medication that we are trying to reach and want them to reflect a moment on their use," he added. Limited options Acetaminophen has been the only pain reliever generally considered safe for use throughout pregnancy, which leaves mothers-to-be with few medical options if it is shown to be harmful to a fetus. "Ibuprofen has already been linked with birth defects and damage to the baby's heart and blood vessels," while high doses of aspirin have been linked to "bleeding in the brain and congenital defects," said pediatrician Dr. Leonardo Trasande, director of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health, who was not involved with the creation of the statement. "Research on acetaminophen shows this is an emerging field of concern," Trasande said. "I'm always going to say that further research is needed to understand the mechanisms and to control for other exposures. But the fact is there is substantial evidence to suggest that at the very least, this is a hazard for the fetus." Melissa Munoz, the media relations director for Johnson & Johnson, told CNN in an email that "the label on our adult TYLENOL products, in which acetaminophen is the active ingredient, states, "If pregnant or breast-feeding, ask a health professional before use. "The current evidence does not support a causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and the risk of adverse neurological, urogenital and reproductive outcomes. Consumers who have medical concerns or questions about acetaminophen should contact their health care professional." In their analysis of existing research on acetaminophen, the authors of the statement found that short term use -- two weeks or less -- carried the least risk. "It is among the women reporting use for a longer duration -- about two weeks or over two weeks during pregnancy -- that's where the strongest associations are," Kristensen said. Those results suggest that "short-term use may be less of a risk, which gives healthcare providers and pregnant women some reassuring leeway for the occasional use of APAP," said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies Bright Futures, an alliance of non-profit organizations which tracks babies' exposures to toxic chemicals that harm brain development. Reproductive and neurological impact Scientists have been studying the potential impact of acetaminophen on the developing fetus for some time. One reason is a similarity between APAP and a group of synthetic chemicals called phthalates, which are found in hundreds of auto, home, food and personal care items. "Acetaminophen's chemical structure and the way it breaks down seems to have a similar backbone to phthalates," said NYU's Trasande, who researches the impact of chemicals on babies. In their analysis of the studies. Lab studies, animal research and 29 studies of acetaminophen use in 220,000 mother and child pairs have been done, the statement said, including two studies that found acetaminophen in cord blood and meconium, the baby's first stool. "There is now a significant body of evidence that suggests that APAP disrupts the reproductive development of animals and humans," said co-author Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. "There's enough evidence to find increased risk of undescended testicles and a shortening of the ano-genital distance, which is a predictive of later decreased sperm count and decreased fertility," Swan said. "We also see impaired ovarian function which has consequences for later fertility, although females have been less studied." Twenty-six of the mother and child studies found a link between acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes, the statement noted. "The identified disorders were primarily attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and related ADHD behavior abnormalities that also include autism spectrum disorder, language delays, decreased IQ and conduct disorders," said co-author Ann Bauer, a postdoctoral fellow and researcher at the Center for Autism Research & Education at UMass Lowell. Research needed ACOG's Zahn disagreed with the statement's conclusions. "This consensus statement, and studies that have been conducted in the past, show no clear evidence that proves a direct relationship between the prudent use of acetaminophen during any trimester and fetal developmental issues," ACOG's Zahn said. "Neurodevelopmental disorders, in particular, are multifactorial and very difficult to associate with a singular cause," Zahn continued. "The brain does not stop developing until at least 15 months of age, which leaves room for children to be exposed to a number of factors that could potentially lead to these issues." There are many areas that need further study, according to the statement, which is why the group is calling for a massive research effort -- while at the same time cautioning pregnant women against using acetaminophen without medical supervision. "The ideal human study has not been done," Swan said, adding that more objective measures of when during pregnancy and how long a baby was exposed are needed. "And then we have to follow these children, and look not only at their general development at birth and 1 year of age, but also how was their neurodevelopment over time. Then I think we'd clear up a lot of these uncertainties." The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. A home health aide from Port Leyden is facing charges after allegedly stealing more than $32,000 from an elderly couple she was hired to care for in Lewis County. The Lewis County Sheriffs Office started investigating 35-year-old Stacey Dixon in October of 2020. According to the Lewis County Sheriffs Office, from March to October of 2020, Dixon allegedly charged more than $17,700 on the couples credit card, endorsed and cashed forged checks for more than $8,600 from the couple's checking account and received checks from their personal account that she was not entitled to in the amount of $6,200. Dixon was arrested on Sept. 22 and charged with 16 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument and three counts of grand larceny, all felonies. She was arraigned and released, and is scheduled to appear in court at a later date. A source close to the family of Brian Laundrie told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Thursday that Gabby Petito's fiance, who is now the subject of a federal warrant, left his parents' Florida home last Tuesday without his cell phone and wallet. Laundrie's parents were concerned that he might hurt himself, the source said. Laundrie has not been seen since that Tuesday and authorities have been searching a nature reserve in Venice, not far from the parents' home in North Port. A North Port Police spokesperson declined to comment on the report. "I can not give any statement to a timeline at this time. That investigation is being conducted by the FBI," North Port Police Public Information Officer Josh Taylor told CNN. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier, the US District Court of Wyoming issued a federal arrest warrant for Laundrie, according to the FBI's Denver field office, after a grand jury indicted him for his "use of unauthorized devices" after Petito died. "While this arrest warrant allows law enforcement to arrest Mr. Laundrie, the FBI and our partners across the country continue to investigate the facts and circumstances of Ms. Petito's homicide," FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Schneider said in a statement posted on Twitter. According to the indictment, Laundrie used a debit card and PIN number for accounts that did not belong to him for charges over $1,000 between the dates of August 30 and September 1. The news comes as investigators again searched a 25,000-acre Florida nature reserve for any sign of Laundrie, who returned home September 1 from a road trip without Petito. Laundrie's family told police he left home with his backpack September 14 and told them he was going to the reserve near their home. On Thursday evening, North Port Police announced via a tweet that it had halted its search for Laundrie at the reserve and that search teams would be back on Friday. Petito's remains were found Sunday in an undeveloped camping area in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and her death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday in preliminary findings. She was reported missing by her family on September 11. "We urge individuals with knowledge of Mr. Laundrie's role in this matter or his current whereabouts to contact the FBI," Schneider said Thursday. "No piece of information is too small or inconsequential to support our efforts in this investigation. An attorney for Laundrie's family emphasized in a statement that the warrant was not for Petito's death but related to activities that took place afterward. "It is my understanding that the arrest warrant for Brian Laundrie is related to activities occurring after the death of Gabby Petito and not related to her actual demise," Steve Bertolino said. "The FBI is focusing on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum." 'We won't forget about you' Meantime, a small crowd gathered Wednesday night in Salt Lake City to mourn the 22-year-old, whose death has captured the attention of people nationwide. The couple had been visiting national parks in the West in their van, chronicling their travels on social media with the hashtag #VanLife, before Petito went missing. And though she never lived in Utah, Petito's love of nature and her time there -- including an encounter with Moab police that was captured on bodycam -- has connected her with the community. "We won't forget about you. We won't let your light dim," vigil organizer Serena Chavez said before the group. "We will remember other women or children who are missing," Chavez continued, raising a broader problem highlighted by Petito's disappearance. "Their families are devastated, and I can only imagine what Gabby's family is going through." Before she moved to Florida, Petito had worked as a hostess at Smoke on the Water in Wilmington, North Carolina. Coworkers there say she made everyone feel loved, according to CNN affiliate WWAY. It was another community upon which the young woman made her mark. "She's not just a name. She's not just a case. She was a person, and she was very special to a lot of people and many of us here," the restaurant's general manager, Lara Witschen, told WWAY. "She was a good soul, a good spirit, and touched so many lives. That's what we want her to be remembered for." A small memorial now also marks the spot in Wyoming where Petito's remains were found this week. Petito's stepfather, Jim Schmidt, left a memorial at the site and sunflowers, "which were his daughter's favorite flower," family attorney Rick Stafford told CNN. Laundrie's neighbor last saw him weekend of Sept. 10 A neighbor who lives directly across the street from the home Petito shared with Laundrie and her family told CNN the last time she saw Laundrie at the North Port home was the weekend of September 10. Karyn Aberts said she saw Laundrie and his family "in the neighborhood out in the front yard," saying it looked like "a normal ... they were going for a walk kind of thing," and that she "never thought anything about it." Aberts told CNN outside her home that she'd watched Petito and Laundrie converting the van they eventually drove across the country. (Officials would later find that van, a white Ford, at the Laundrie home.) "They seemed to be sitting and laughing in their car and then the van that they were working on," Aberts said, noting the last time she saw Petito was early in the summer, before the couple left on their road trip. Asked whether she ever saw anything odd between Petito and Laundrie that would have been a red flag, Aberts said no. Overall, Aberts described the Laundrie family as "very nice people." "We saw them take walks as a family," she told CNN. "We saw them ride their bikes as a family and things like that." Witness says she saw a 'commotion' involving the couple Petito's story has become a national obsession for many, spurring digital detectives to comb through the couple's online trail to try to solve the case. The story has also further highlighted the nearly 90,000 missing persons cases active at the end of 2020, according to the National Crime Information Center. Few missing persons cases are met with as much urgency and national attention as Petito's. It also has spurred people to come forward with accounts of Petito's last days. Nina Angelo and her boyfriend, Matt England, saw a "commotion" last month as Petito and Laundrie were leaving the Merry Piglets Tex-Mex restaurant in Jackson, Wyoming, she told CNN Wednesday. Petito was in tears and Laundrie was visibly angry, going into and out of the restaurant several times, showing anger toward the staff around the hostess stand, Angelo said. The couple's waitress was also visibly shaken by the incident, said Angelo, who told CNN she did not see any violence or physical altercation between Petito and Laundrie. A manager at Merry Piglets, who declined to give her name, did see "an incident" at the restaurant on August 27 and called the FBI on Wednesday, she told CNN. The manager declined to describe what happened and said the restaurant did not have surveillance video of the incident. Separately, Jessica Schultz saw Laundrie parked in a white van on August 26 at Grand Teton National Park, and no one appeared to be with him, she told the San Francisco Chronicle. And in a series of videos on TikTok, Miranda Baker said she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a ride on August 29 in Wyoming -- and that he claimed he was camping by himself for multiple days while Petito was back at their van working on social media posts. Baker said they picked up Laundrie while he was hitchhiking in Colter Bay, Wyoming, which is not far from where Petito's remains were found. He offered to pay $200 for the ride before he even got in the car, she said. 911 call of a domestic dispute Petito's mother received an odd text on August 27 that became the last communication from her, police in Florida said in a recent search warrant affidavit. Petito also stopped posting to social media at that time. Evidence from a 911 call about a "domestic dispute" involving Petito and Laundrie shows the couple's volatile relationship was not as aspirational as their sun-drenched lives on Instagram and YouTube suggested. A man who saw the domestic dispute between Petito and Laundrie in Utah last month said, "They were talking aggressively at each other, and something seemed off." In a handwritten sworn statement, the witness said it appeared the two were arguing over control of Petito's phone. "At one point she was punching him in the arm and/or face and trying to get into the van." The witness's first name is Chris and last name was redacted in the document provided by Moab City Police to CNN. The witness said he heard Petito say, "Why do you have to be so mean?" although Chris added that he couldn't be sure if the comment was meant to be taken seriously. Police later stopped the couple, and previously released police documents and body-camera video reveal what followed that day. Moab city officials have since announced they will investigate the Moab City Police Department's handling of the dispute between Petito and Laundrie. Although the Petito and Laundrie are described in a police report as getting into a physical fight following an argument, "both the male and female reported they are in love and engaged to be married and desperately didn't wish to see anyone charged with a crime," Officer Eric Pratt wrote in the report. At the suggestion of police, the couple separated for the night, the report said, which described Petito as "confused and emotional." A National Park Service ranger who also responded to the call spent about 90 minutes with Petito and warned her that her relationship with Laundrie had markings of a "toxic" one, the ranger told the Deseret News of Utah. "I was imploring with her to reevaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life," ranger Melissa Hulls told the Deseret News. CNN has sought comment from Hulls. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) According to Indiana American Water, a water transmission line near Indiana 43 and River road broke Thursday morning causing low water pressures in the system for more than 9,600 customers located in the high-pressure zone on the north side of West Lafayette. Indiana American Water has issued a precautionary boil water advisory for all customers located in the high-pressure zone, which includes about 75 percent of the companys customers in West Lafayette. The order will be in effect for the next 24 hours Customers in the area have been notified of the break and boil advisory by phone, e-mail, and text through the companys CodeRED emergency notification tool. Due to the break, West Lafayette Intermediate School will dismiss today at 10 a.m. West Lafayette Elementary will be dismissing at 10:45 a.m. The Jr. Sr. High School will dismiss after lunch at 12:35 p.m. Indiana American Water said customers in the affected area are advised to drink and cook with tap water only after boiling it for three minutes. Tap water can be used for washing/bathing. Due to the location of the water main break relative to the companys Davis Ferry water treatment facility, water pressures in the system will continue to decrease as repairs are being made throughout the morning, states Indiana American Water. It estimates repairs should be completed by mid-afternoon and that water pressures in the area will begin to return to normal by late afternoon on Thursday. Indiana American Water said customers can call the Indiana American Water Customer Service Center at 1-800-492-8373 for the latest updates. More information on the West Lafayette boil water advisory is available online at https://amwater.com/inaw/alerts. TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - Sara McMillan from the Purdue University Center for the Environment will be advising policy makers on decisions regarding wetlands development. It stems from a requirement for a wetlands task force outlined in Senate Bill 389, which as News 18 previoiusly reported, caused controversy among environmentalists and homeowners. "There was a lot concern among fellow scientists and just questions about how that would be affecting wetland protections across the state," McMillan said. McMillan, along with Jennifer Freeman and Lynne Dahmen at the Center for the Environment, had previously worked to gather over 700 people to a forum on the value of Wetlands, including those no longer protected in Senate Bill 389. With the attention of the governor's office, McMillan now plans to highlight the many environmental uses of isolated wetlands. "And it's those kind of multiple uses of wetlands that I think are hard to quantify but also then sometimes hard for folks to figure out how to regulate because they have so many... there's so many different kinds of wetlands," McMillan said. McMillan and others appointed to the task force will give a report of recommendations to the governor by November 1st, 2022. In the meantime, McMillan will be preparing to help the task force find a balance between environmental protection and development. "And that will help form what we can do as a task force to move towards a really resilient wetland protection that does balance needs of development, right? I think we need to be pragmatic, but we can also do so in a way that preserves and protects the functions of the few existing wetlands we have left in Indiana," McMillan said. Chen Ning Yang, a Nobel prize-winning physicist and also an initiator of the Xplorer Prize, speaks during the 2019 Xplorer Prize award ceremony in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 2, 2019. [Xinhua/Shen Bohan] BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent best wishes to renowned physicist Chen Ning Yang on his birthday. Entrusted by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, senior officials of the Ministry of Education visited Yang at Tsinghua University on Wednesday, presented him with a flower basket on Xi's behalf and conveyed Xi's greetings. Yang is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yang was born in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, on Sept. 22, 1922. In 1957, Yang shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Tsung-Dao Lee for work on the so-called parity laws, which led to important discoveries regarding elementary particles. The Yang-Mills gauge theory introduced by him is one of the most important achievements of physics in the 20th century. After returning to China, Yang started working at Tsinghua University in 2003 and has made important contributions to cultivating and recruiting talent and promoting international academic exchanges. (Source: Xinhua) The coroner of LaSalle County, Illinois, identifies a body found earlier this month as missing graduate student Jelani Day, pictured here, on August 25, in Bloomington, Illinois. Knife Dragon sculpture under construction in Wrexham to be used as a weapon for education A Knife Dragon will be used as a weapon for education. Coleg Cambria, North Wales Police, Wrexham Council and other stakeholders have joined forces to construct a three-metre Knife Dragon using weapons safely handed in at local police stations as part of regional amnesty campaigns. The sculpture is under construction at the colleges Bersham Road site, where students and staff will spend the next year welding and fabricating submitted items including blades and knuckle dusters onto a steel frame. Inspired by the 20ft Knife Angel designed by artist Alfie Bradley, unveiled in 2017, Assistant Principal for the Institute of Technology and Site Lead at Bersham Road Karl Jackson said: This statue will form the centrepiece for multi-agency work that will inform and educate in an effort to maintain low instances and reduce occurrences of knife crime in the area. For several years we have been in discussions with North Wales Police and Wrexham Council about designing and constructing an artwork that will help raise the profile of knife awareness campaigns. Our concept is that of a dragon protecting a child; the dragon will be welded by our skilled tutors and learners, and Im sure will look incredible on completion. It will be placed on a concrete plinth of Welsh stone slate in front of the Institute of Technology, with red, white, and green up-lighting to represent the dragon sitting amongst the remnants of a Welsh Castle. He added: The sculpture will be based at the college but in partnership with the council and local knife crime group it can be moved and transported to spread the message and help educate people as to the dangers of carrying weapons and the devastation knife crime can cause. Wrexham Town Inspector Luke Hughes said the area experiences a low level of knife crime, adding: Wrexham is a particularly safe place where knife crime isnt as big a problem as it is in other parts of the country. However, through the very nature of offences involving knives, it only takes a single act to cause devastation. In a moment of madness, the lives of so many people can be changed in an instant. As such, it is particularly important that we can create opportunities to highlight knife crime and what we can do to prevent it. In recent months we have taken more than a hundred knives off the streets of Wrexham in our local amnesty. The Knife Dragon offers a way in which we can work with our partners on a project that just might prevent another tragedy. Made with weapons we have seized from our own streets; they will never again be in position to harm anyone. We all have a responsibility to educate anyone who may think it acceptable to carry a knife. The consequences for doing so can be catastrophic. This project serves as a reminder that as a community we can protect our most vulnerable by working together to raise awareness and educate anyone who might otherwise make the wrong choices. Wrexhams Lead Member for Communities Collaboration and Partnerships, Cllr Hugh Jones, said: North Wales and Wrexham are very safe places to live and work. We work closely with local and national organisations in efforts to curtail instances of crime. Knife related crime doesnt just impact on the victim and their immediate family, it also impacts on the wider community. We are proud to be part of this project, and hope that the dragon will bring about discussion on how and why these weapons have no place in our communities. North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Andy Dunbobbin said: North Wales is one of the safest areas in the UK in which to live and work and my focus remains on keeping our communities safe. This is an issue about which I will never be complacent, and this sculpture will send out a powerful message about the dangers of knife crime. The more we can do to raise awareness the better. For more information, email karl.jackson@cambria.ac.uk or visit www.cambria.ac.uk. If you have concerns about knife crime, call North Wales Police on 101 or CrimeStoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Alternatively, visit www.fearless.org/en/give-info. Lack of resources blamed for North Wales firefighter recruitment drive being shelved A lack of resources has been blamed for a firefighter recruitment drive being delayed in North Wales. North Wales Fire and Rescue Service apologised last week after shelving plans to take on more full-time fighters. However little detail was given regarding the reasons behind the decision. Our sister site asked the fire service for further information after disappointment was expressed about the move by many would-be recruits. Chief fire officer Dawn Docx said in a statement that having limited resources and staff time to recruit and train firefighters was the main reason why the plans were placed on hold. She said: The decision to delay opening the recruitment window for full-time firefighters for a few months was not taken lightly. I realise this might be disappointing for people who were looking to apply and I can only apologise for any inconvenience caused. However, after much deliberation it had become clear that it would be better overall to pause this process for now. Recruiting full-time firefighters always attracts a lot of interest and involves a lengthy selection process, but we have limited resources to recruit and train firefighters and we have to be realistic about the amount of staff time available. I would like to emphasise that we are still recruiting on-call firefighters, and we continue to encourage people to apply for on-call firefighter roles with us. Of our 44 fire stations, 36 are on-call fire stations that rely on having sufficient trained on-call firefighters available to make up crews in those areas. Whilst the role can be demanding and unpredictable at times, many on-call firefighters get a huge sense of satisfaction from knowing that they are providing a crucial and highly respected service to their local community. Another of our priorities at the moment is to address the issue of internal promotions. We have a number of staff filling posts temporarily so we want to ensure that we focus on filling posts permanently through a new internal promotions process. That process also relies on having enough staff available to plan and run it. In the meantime, I hope that the people who had considered applying to be full-time firefighters this year will maintain their interest until we can resume the process in a few months time. The full-time firefighter recruitment process is always popular and very competitive so I encourage potential candidates to keep up with their preparations for the assessments involved. We also intend to continue to hold positive action days to encourage applications from a diversity of people to best reflect the communities we serve. Again, please keep looking out for further information about these on our website. North Wales Police issues advice on preventing theft from vehicles Having your car broken into and losing your things to thieves can be very distressing. North Wales Police has shared a few simple steps people can take to keep vehicles, and whats in it, safe. 1. Always lock it Fuelling up or popping back into your house to get something are perfect examples of how easy it is to turn your back for a moment and forget your vehicle is unsecured. So get into the habit of locking your vehicle even if youre only going to be away from it for a moment. If your vehicle has wing mirrors that fold in automatically when locked, make sure you lock it properly. Criminal gangs are looking for vehicles like these where the w ing mirrors are still out because it is clear to them that the vehicle has been left unlocked. 2. Close windows and the sun roof to prevent fishing Leaving windows and the sunroof open invites fishing for items through the gap by hand or with, say, a bent coat hanger, which could also be used to unlock a door for them to get in. Thieves can be ingenious. Dont give them the opportunity. 3. Secure your number plates with tamper-resistant screws The easiest way to change the identity of a stolen vehicle or avoid speeding tickets and parking tickets is to fit stolen number plates. Using security screws to attach your vehicles number plates makes it harder for thieves to get your number. 4. Fit locking, anti-tamper wheel nuts to secure alloy wheels Stolen wheels are valuable, either as parts or for their scrap value. Using locking wheel nuts reduces the risk of your vehicles wheels being stolen. 5. Secure anything thats on the outside of your vehicle Anything left on roof-racks, tailgate racks, holiday top boxes or in tool chests are easily stolen when the vehicle is parked. The use of cable locks, padlocks and self-locking tools chests, which are secured to the vehicle, makes them more secure, but still, dont leave things in them if you can avoid it. 6. Take it with you or hide it Your mobile phone, coins for the car park, sunglasses, packs of medication or other items that can earn quick cash are irresistible to the opportunist thief. Remember, the cost of replacing a window is often much more than that of whats stolen. And it should go without saying that wallets, handbags, purses and credit cards sho uld never be left in an unattended vehicle. 7. Hide electrical items and leave no clues Leaving sat nav mounts, suction cup marks on windows or cables on view gives it away that you have left a Sat Nav, smartphone or other device in your car. Even if they cant see the Sat Nav or iPad they might still break in to see if its stored in the car, out of sight. 8. Tool theft from vans Vans are often targeted by thieves for the tools stored inside. If you have to leave tools in a van overnight, its a good idea to mark them clearly with your name / company name and address using paint pens and seal with a clear lacquer spray. Alternatively, you can use a variety of other property marking systems. Items that are clearly marked are less desirable and more difficult to sell on. Consider using a lockable cabinet within your van to store tools a number of security rated products are available. Small cameras are also des igned to record inside vehicles. Visit Secured by Design for more details. You can also take photographs of items of value, make a note of the serial numbers and consider registering them online at a property register site. 9. Park in well-lit and busier areas It can take less than 30 seconds to break into a vehicle. Parking in well-lit areas and busy streets increases the chances of a thief being seen, so theyll probably steer clear. 10. Take your documents with you Having a vehicles registration and insurance documents could let a thief pretend to be the owner. Which means they could sell it on quite easily. So, never leave any documents in the vehicle. 11. Choose your car park wisely If possible, always try to park in well-lit and staffed car parks or those with a Park Mark safer parking award. To find one, simply check out Park Mark. For more crime prevention advice visit https://www.northwales.police. uk/cp/crime-prevention/ Welsh Government ministers must declare ambulance emergency say opposition politicians Welsh government ministers must declare ambulance emergency, say opposition politicians. It comes after the Welsh Ambulance Service confirmed that it requested support from the military in a bid to ease some of the pressures being faced ahead of what is expected to be a difficult winter. The Trust has submitted a request for additional support to Welsh Government under the Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) arrangement. If approved, it will be the third time that soldiers have supported the service through the pandemic. More than 200 British Army soldiers have already assisted the Trusts Covid-19 effort by driving and decontaminating ambulance vehicles as part of Operation Rescript. Among them were 90 soldiers from 9 Regiment Royal Logistic Corps, who were enlisted on Christmas Eve at the height of the second wave of the pandemic. More broadly, more than 20,000 military personnel have been supporting public services across the UK during the pandemic as part of a COVID Support Force. Leading a debate in the Senedd yesterday, Conservative Shadow Health Minister Russell George MS called for immediate action from the Welsh Government to support the ambulance service and also to ensure that the people of Wales get the ambulance service that they deserve and need. There have been 47,871 lost hours because of the delays in moving people from ambulances into hospitals in the first six months of this year, and only just over half of red calls the most serious emergencies reached their patients within the eight-minute target this July. Mr George relayed the experience of a resident in his constituency who was asked by the ambulance service themselves to take their family member with a suspected heart attack to hospital themselves. He said: Our debate today is couched in that way. Its about support for the ambulance service and making sure that they receive the support that they need from the Welsh Government. But, be in no doubt: the ambulance service is in crisis. Its not just in near-crisis. Its in crisis now, and it has been in crisis for some months. We need immediate action from the Welsh Government to support the ambulance service and also to ensure that the people of Wales get the ambulance service that they deserve and need. Now, I think that the Government first of all need to accept that the ambulance service is in crisis. You cant resolve a problem unless you accept that there is a problem. Now, I hope that this Chamber will know that I am not somebody who throws around statements and words easily; I choose my words carefully. So, I stand by that: the ambulance service is in a crisis. He called on the Welsh Government to improve access to primary care appointments, redouble the efforts for a rapid recruitment of paramedics, mobilise members of the public and former healthcare professionals to join their local NHS teams, establish routes of support for NHS staff, care workers and families who have experienced the trauma of the pandemic and to set out a plan and timetable to raise the wages of care workers, as we called for also in our manifesto earlier this year. Liberal Democrat MS Jane Dodds described the situation as a perfect storm of ambulance waiting times, with patients needing to stay in hospital due to the lack of social care, increased use of our services and health and social care workers being stressed and exhausted and taking time off sick. She said: We cannot wait another decade to see change. The health Minister helpfully said earlier this month that it would take significant time to introduce the reforms necessary for the NHS and social care system, but this needs to be about people. And I would just appeal to us all to work together to develop a plan and support that plan that clearly addresses this health and social care crisis. Mabon ap Gwynfor, Plaid Cymru MS for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, spoke of a constituent in Abererch who had to wait for 15 hours for an ambulance. Reference was also made to the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, which earlier this week urged people to only attend the A&E department if necessary due to significant pressure. Conservative MS for North Wales Mark Isherwood said waiting times at Wrexham Maelor A&E department have got to atrocious levels and that the issue was that there is no space to see patients. Health Minister Eluned Morgan said it would not be appropriate for the Welsh Government to declare an emergency in the Welsh Ambulance Service, but agreed that there is a problem that needs to be resolved. She also cited issues about staffing levels, with many facing burnout after a year of the pandemic, isolation, sickness and annual leave. She said: Welsh ambulance staff have been working to their limit, and often going beyond what could be reasonably expected of them over the course of the pandemic. And of course, that is impacting on staff morale and well-being. Theres also been a reduced uptake of overtime, which has prompted the trust to consider options to incentivise overtime in order to make it more appealing to staff to fill gaps, and increase capacity over the forthcoming months. Now, practical requirements, including the need to don personal protective equipment and deep cleaning equipment, and vehicles for each ambulance response. Dont forget, were working in a COVID environment; it changes what they do usually to something more difficult and more sophisticated. And that also impacts therefore on ambulance availability and responsiveness at times of peak demand. Now, these capacity-limiting factors have been accentuated by difficulties in timely discharge of patients from hospital which, again, so many Members alluded to, and this reduces available hospital beds and causes delays for the transfer of patients from ambulance crews to the emergency department staff. Despite all of these challenges, almost 60 per cent of immediately life-threatened patients received a response within eight minutes in July. Almost a third of these patients received a response within five minutes. Now, I dont think it would be appropriate for the Welsh Government to declare an emergency in the Welsh ambulance service, but of course we accept there is a problem here that needs to be resolved. The trust is taking actions to transition from the recovery phase of its COVID-19 effort back to the response phase, the monitoring position, in response to the current and anticipated pressures. Now, this places the trust on a similar footing to when we were at the height of the pandemic, so Im underlining the point that the problem now is as great as it was at the point of the greatest risk in terms of the pandemic. That gives a stark perspective on the level of the pressure the service continues to experience. The Welsh Ambulance Service has been considering a number of options to supplement existing capacity, including exploring options with a number of national agencies. So, the trust has already contracted St John Ambulance Cymru to support additional support over the busy winter months, and the trust has also been working with military planners as part of the MACA, or the military aid to the civil authorities process, which the First Minister explained in the Chamber yesterday. The Welsh Government received the MACA from the trust earlier today, and both the First Minister and I have now agreed that that should now be passed on as a formal request. A spokesperson for Joint Military Command Wales said: Defence remains ready to offer support to civil authorities in the UK and we will work with the Welsh Government and the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust to understand their requirements and offer assistance where appropriate. Since March 2020, Defence has supported more than 450 Military Aid to Civilian Authority (MACA) requests as part of the Covid Response Force. Heaven Hill strikers (Source: UFCW) With the strike by distillery workers in Kentucky approaching the end of the second week, Heaven Hill owners have turned to the courts and robbed employees of health insurance to break the strike. Nelson County Circuit Court Judge Charles Simms Tuesday afternoon issued an injunction limiting the actions of picketing workers at the Heaven Hill distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. More than 400 workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23 D (UFCW), walked out September 10 after voting by 96 percent to reject the companys proposed five-year contract, which included higher out-of-pocket health care costs and a new schedule to lengthen the workweek. In the face of the strikebreaking injunction and the cutoff of health benefits, the UFCW continues to isolate the strike keeping union members on the job at the nearby Jim Beam distilleries in Boston and Clermont, Kentucky, where the UFCW sold out a 2016 strike, and other local facilities. Announcing the cutoff of health care to the strikers and their familiesin the middle of a pandemicmanagement told workers in a letter, Your current coverage will be reinstated as soon as the work stoppage has ceased, concurrent with the ratification of the new contract, and you have returned to work. The injunction bars picketers from blocking entrances and gives the company a green light to send strikebreakers through the picket lines. It also prohibits strikers from tailing any trucks entering or exiting the distillery and any harassment of employees at affiliated companies. The judge said, Im not going to put up with chaos and urged Heaven Hill management to come back to him if the injunction in violated. Im telling you right now, if you have a camera up there and somebody is pulling in and somebody keeps walking in front of them, you file a motion. Im telling you right now, the court enforces its orders. Somebody will be held in contempt. Somebody will be paying a big fine. The injunction also prohibits any burning within 250 feet of the facilities entrances or warehouses. This is designed to make picketing at night as uncomfortable as possible since workers normally burn wood in 55-gallon barrels to provide heat and light. The injunction is a major escalation of the attack on striking workers. There is a long history of companies hiring private security to stage provocations against striking workers and then video them to provide evidence for massive fines, frameups and arrests. One striking worker responded on Reddit, saying the judge was a money man for the company and that many of things said in the suit are flat out lies. Heaven Hill, he said, is a s**thole place to work and this has completely severed any respect we had for each other. The worker added, The day to day job isnt honestly that bad, its the fact that they schedule us for 4050 days in a row sometimes mandatory, and If you call in more than one time a month during those 50 day mandatory streaks you get written up and let go. Heaven Hill has refused to budge of its demands to eliminate a cap on health insurance premium increases, which will slice deeply into take-home pay. The company also wants major changes to work schedules including forced overtime and a non-traditional workweek, which would introduce Saturday and Sunday work. While demanding these concessions, Heaven Hill raked in $500 million in the last quarter. Industry analysts say bourbon sales have seen a huge growth during the pandemic and the main beneficiaries of this trend have been larger distillers like Heaven Hill, according to vincepair.com. Even brands that were flat before are seeing growth in this environment, said Heaven Hills Susan Wahl, vice president of American Whiskeys. Like other sections of workers, Heaven Hill workers are already livid over longer working hours and are steadfastly opposing the demand for weekend work. The schedule is going to take time away from us and our kids and our families, one worker told local media. We are going to miss everything. We are going to miss graduation, birthdays; were going to miss all that stuff [because] well be working weekends. Another worker said, Basically, its going to end up making us work seven days a week with no overtime. There is popular support for the striking workers in Bardstown, a town of 13,500 people about 40 miles southeast of Louisville. Several restaurants and small businesses have stopped serving the companys products. Its not just about the business, its not just about the money, its about doing what you believe in, one local restaurant manager told the media. Distillery workers were part of her Bardstown family. The strike, however, is in great danger due to the isolation of the struggle by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and other unions, including the United Auto Workers, which has thousands of members at Fords two giant Louisville assembly plants. To fight the strikebreaking injunction, Heaven Hill workers should form a rank-and-file strike committee to expand the strike to Jim Beam and other distilleries and to mobilize broader sections of the working class to win their demands. At the same time, Ford workers should send delegations to aid the Kentucky distillery workers. We urge striking workers to contact the World Socialist Web Site for more information about building rank-and-file committees. Yesterday the lockdown in Auckland, New Zealands largest city, was eased from alert level 4 to level 3, despite new cases of the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19 being reported every day. The decision is a gamble with the health and lives of working people. Like governments internationally, Prime Minister Jacinda Arderns Labour Party-led government is placing the demands of big business ahead of a science-based public health response. A vaccination centre in Auckland. (Source: Te Whanau o Waipreira Facebook page) The entire country went into a strict level 4 lockdown on August 18, with the government saying its aim was to eliminate a Delta outbreak. Since then, 1,123 cases have been identified (861 of these have recovered), dozens of people have been hospitalised and one has died. Today another 15 new cases were reported, following 23 yesterday. The lockdown was lifted for the rest of the country on September 8, with alert level 2 restrictions still in place, such as mandatory masking in businesses and public transport. The lack of restrictions in schools, in particular, raises the risk of the virus spreading if it gets out of Auckland. While level 3 is still classified as a lockdown, with the government advising people to work from home if they can, between 200,000 and 300,000 people are estimated to have returned to workplaces. A survey by the Auckland Business Chamber found that 80 percent of businesses could operate in some form. The Chambers chief executive Michael Barnett told the New Zealand Herald: Now we want to see a flexible level 3 to enable as many businesses to ramp up productivity and operations as quickly as possible. Cafes, restaurants and fast food stores, and other retailers, can open for contactless services. Construction sites are also operating. Schools and early childhood education centres can reopen with small class sizes. Epidemiologist Michael Baker told the Guardian moving to level 3 in Auckland was a gamble that increases the risk that we wont contain the outbreak. He warned that undetected chains of transmission could be simmering on, and while it was still possible to eliminate the virus, this would depend on luck. Speaking to Radio NZ on Wednesday, microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles urged the country to stick with elimination. She pointed out that in the US, where shutdowns have never been properly implemented, an estimated 9 million years of life have been lost due to COVID-19. She said the reason its so high is because about half of those years lost are from deaths in 25- to 64-year-olds, people who would have a considerable life still ahead of them. The National Maori Pandemic Group, made up of public health experts and doctors, had urged the government to maintain level 4 in Auckland and called for the lockdown to be extended to the Waikato region, where three cases were detected over the weekend. The source was a remand prisoner who had been released from Auckland on bail to live in the Waikato. The cases highlight the dangerously porous boundary between Auckland and the rest of the country, which is crossed by thousands of people, mainly transport workers, every day. Professor Sue Crengle, co-leader of the Group, told Radio NZ she feared that the disaster in New South Wales, Australia, could be repeated in New Zealand. Case numbers have exploded in the state due to lax restrictions. Like Australias indigenous population, Maori and Pacific Islanders are at greater risk from COVID-19 due to poor health and much higher levels of poverty. The Auckland outbreak has predominantly affected Pacific people in working class areas of the city. The situation is made more dangerous by the low level of vaccination. Just over one third of NZs population has received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The countrys District Health Boards revealed yesterday that only 75 percent of healthcare workers are fully vaccinated. In Auckland the figure is 89 percent. Reopening schools and early childhood centres, so that parents can return to work, poses another major risk. More than a third of Aucklands cases have been in people aged 0-19. An early childhood teacher in the city told the World Socialist Web Site she was concerned that teachers will be risking our lives if forced to work. We are vulnerable to the virus like everyone else. Its also putting children at risk, who are vulnerable as well and can spread the virus in the community. She added that early childhood teachers were not even encouraged to wear masks, and it was impossible to enforce social distancing when working with young children. We have to be cautious, especially when this virus has killed so many people around the world. The Delta variant spreads super-fast and it may still be out there somewhere, even though cases have gone down. We dont know yet, she said. Such concerns have been brushed aside, not only by the government but also the primary and secondary teacher unions. These pro-business organisations are fully supporting the reopening policy, just like the unions in the US and other countries, where schools have played a central role in spreading the Delta variant. Ardern claims that the government still aims to eliminate COVID-19 from the communitya strategy overwhelmingly supported by the population. Due to relatively stringent lockdowns, New Zealand has only recorded 27 deaths from the pandemic. There is growing pressure from sections of the corporate media and political establishment to abandon the strategy and allow the virus to spread. Stuff columnist Luke Malpass declared on September 21 that if the Auckland lockdown is not lifted in two weeks, elimination as a worthwhile public policy goal will have failed. He demanded a shift to learning to live with Covid. Opposition National Party leader Judith Collins told the media that the drop to level 3 in Auckland showed the Labour government had already given up on the elimination strategy. She said the government should have vaccinated more people and prepared for a surge of hospitalisations. The government is, in fact, preparing to move away from lockdowns. Health Minister Andrew Little told Newshub on September 18 that reimposing level 4 would be unlikely once 90 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated. This figure does not include hundreds of thousands of children aged under 12, and vaccination alone is not enough to prevent outbreaks. The government is clearly preparing for much larger outbreaks, which would overwhelm the severely underfunded and understaffed health system. Ominously, Little said: Im attracted to the Australian model of admitting fewer COVID-19 patients to hospital and having as many people as possible recovering at home, in the community, with monitoring from the hospital. In Australia, dozens of people are dying every week, some in their own homes, unable to access hospitals, which are in a state of crisis. Agnes Buzyn, right (Flickr/Ville de Nevers) On September 10, the French Court of Justice questioned former Health Minister Agnes Buzyn and charged her for endangering the lives of others. Buzyn was health minister in the Macron government from 2017 to 2020, including during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her indictment underscores the widely felt understanding in the populations of France and internationally that the ruling class pursued a policy of social murder in response to the pandemic. While Frances political establishment either supports Macrons policies or has backed the reactionary anti-vaccine campaign launched by the far right and supported by the trade unions, another response to the bankruptcy of the capitalist class is developing from elsewhere. The public prosecutor has so far received 14,500 complaints about the lack of protective equipment for health care workers and the public, a reflection of the enormous social opposition in the working class. To date, nine complaints have been deemed admissible by the court. The charging of Buzyn follows the opening of a judicial investigation by the General Prosecutors Office of the appeals court on July 3, 2020. The plaintiffs, including representatives of a group of doctors, were interviewed at the beginning of September and documented their claims of endangering the life of others, involuntary manslaughter and non-assistance to a person in danger. The investigation led to several searches in October 2020 at the homes and offices of Buzyn, but also of the Minister of Health, Olivier Veran; of the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe; of Sibeth Ndiaye, former spokesperson for the government; of the Director General of Health, Jerome Salomon; and of the General Director of Public Health France, Genevieve Chene. Buzyn is the first public figure to be charged in this case. Buzyn has also been placed under the status of witness for refusal to take appropriate measures to combat a disaster. This offence, punishable by two years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros, concerns anyone who voluntarily refrains from taking or initiating measures that would allow, without risk to himself or to third parties, combating a disaster likely to endanger peoples safety. The current Minister of Health, Olivier Veran, the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and current Prime Minister Jean Castex will also be questioned. Not surprisingly, these ministers have the support of the major media outlets and hope to turn the trials to their advantage and legitimize their ongoing policy of permitting the virus to spread. On the morning of her hearing, Agnes Buzyn declared: Today is an excellent opportunity for me to explain myself and to restore the truth of the case. I will not let the governments action, my action as a minister, be tarnished when we have done so much to prepare our country for a global health crisis which, I remind you, is still ongoing. The decision to indict Buzyn and the hearing of high officials by the court is the product, above all, of the fear of popular opinion in official circles. Large sections of the working class are convinced that the Macron government has perpetrated a social crime by allowing the coronavirus to kill around 115,000 people in France. Buzyns statement before her hearing contradicts her admission at the beginning of 2020 to the newspaper Le Monde that for months, all the top leaders of the Macron government had knowingly minimized the danger posed by the virus. She explained then that on December 20, an English-language blog detailed a strange infectious lung disease. I alerted the General Director of Health. On January 11, I sent a message to the president about the situation. On January 30, I warned [Prime Minister] Edouard Philippe that the elections should probably not be held. I was wrestling against my restraints. According to Buzyn, she warned at that time that there would be thousands of deaths. For months, presenting the coronavirus as a simple flu, the French authorities did nothing to prepare for an epidemic. They did not even buy masks when government stocks were empty. Not only were the municipal elections held as Europe became the world center of the pandemic, but Buzyn lied publicly, stating on January 24 that the risk of propagation of the coronavirus in the population is very low. The reactions of the political class, including the opposition parties, to the indictment of the former health minister, show the complicity of the entire political establishment with the strategy of the Macron government and the EU of herd immunity. No political or trade union organization warned of the deadly danger workers would be exposed to, because they were all agreed to keep workers on the job. The prime ministers office defended Buzyn, stating, No one can doubt the seriousness and commitment that [Agnes Buzyn] showed at the first signs of the epidemic. France took the necessary measures very quickly. Damien Abad, president of the Republicans group in the National Assembly, and deputy for the region of Ain, told BFMTV that he does not share the desire to charge everyone; thats not how we do politics. Laurent Berger, secretary general of the CFDT trade union, said he was uncomfortable with the fact that politicians who had done their job as best they could were being thrown into the public eye. The decisive question in this case is to politically mobilize the working class, who cannot expect the capitalist courts to rule on the responsibility of the Macron government and the international financial aristocracy. Nor can any faith be placed in the trade union apparatuses to lead a struggle. It is the workers themselves who through wildcat strikes forced European governments, including Macrons, into the initial lockdowns in March 2020. The ruling class, however, refused to organize systematic contact tracing and limitation of the virus after the ending of the first lockdown, while refusing to re-implement a lockdown of non-essential industries and schools. The entire ruling class is responsible for a social murder that has killed 115,000 people in France and 1.2 million in Europe. This is in contrast to China, which pursued a serious scientific policy against the pandemic from the beginning, and thus limited the number of deaths to 5,000. However, in order to carry out this policy on an international scale and put an end to the pandemic, the international working class must be mobilized, independently of the trade union apparatuses, which are allies of governments and the capitalist elites policy of herd immunity. Such a struggle will be fiercely opposed by the financial aristocracy and its military and political leaders. In April, thousands of retired and current French officers signed tribunes proposing to conduct military operations to repress social opposition in France and kill thousands of people. Far-right politicians speak openly of their terror at the danger of revolution and of their plans to establish a military dictatorship. Today, to the security crisis is added the pandemic, all against the backdrop of an economic, social and political crisis, while there is no confidence in government leaders, said retired General Philippe de Villiers. I fear that this pent-up anger will explode, all at the same time. The rule of law is obviously important, but at some point, it is also necessary to think strategically. Against this small reactionary ruling elite, isolated and terrorized by the population, it is necessary to mobilize the workers in a struggle to defend democratic rights and impose a strategy of eradication of the virus. To this end, the Socialist Equality Party advocates the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-file Committees. The defense of democratic rights and lives will require the development of a political movement for socialism and the transfer of political power to the workers. The walkout of more than 2,000 carpenters in Seattle and across Washington state escalated Wednesday as rank-and-file workers defied the Northwest Carpenters Union (NWCU) and expanded the strike to other construction sites. The strike for better wages and to protect healthcare and pension benefits began on September 16 after carpenters defeated the fourth effort by NWCU to push through a pro-company contract proposal. On the picket lines in Seattle strikers denounced the deliberate sabotage of the strike by union officials. The NWCU has ordered more than 80 percent of its 12,000 members to stay on the job at dozens of construction sites, citing previous sweetheart contracts that contain no-strike pledges. As for the official picket lines set up by the union, reporting teams from the World Socialist Web Site found many that were not even being manned. At one location, the union officials reportedly called for picketers at 5:30 a.m., only to disperse them an hour later. Pickets in downtown Seattle (WSWS Media) In response to this charade, carpenters are organizing on social media to call out non-striking carpenters and other building trades workers. Workers reported on Facebook that they were able to pull out non-striking workers and shut down sites where the union agreed to a no-strike clause on Wednesday. WSWS reporters spoke with striking carpenters in downtown Seattle about the issues in their struggle. One worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said, The union is doing everything they can to minimize the impact of our strike and sell us out. It is very clear to me that is their goal, to mitigate the losses to the contractors instead of fighting for us. Reporters passed out the statement Mobilize the working class to support the striking Washington state carpenters! and discussed the need organize rank-and-file workers independently of the union to win the strike. Responding, the worker noted, This is on the cusp of being the largest labor movement in 20 years. [To win], I think we need to stop worrying about the installation of fear by the union. Not a moments hesitation. We are being led to a predetermined ending, and our union does not have our back. They are working with the contractors. Ive been a carpenter since 2007 and have been in the military for 11 years on and off. The union had absolute corruption back in 2007. Bottom line is that our union-appointed leaders are working for their benefit. They are interested more in saving face and building relationships with the contractors, rather than improving the lives of rank-and-file carpenters and the family, who they took an oath to represent and whose dues pay for their salaries. The worker also described the out-of-control living costs in Seattle. Carpenters are working blue-collar families. We get paid a wage that keeps us right below the middle-class line. Between the poverty line and a middle-class line. We live within proximity to some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Most of us cannot afford to live within an hour and half from where we work. The majority of the time, parking is not paid. I get up at 4:30 a.m., leave in my car at 4:45. I drive from 4:45-6:00 to get to the job, but being in traffic, thats just life. When I get to work for the Big Greed [Associated General Contractors of Washington-AGC] I spend $25-40 per day parking. Now take a $30 average for daily parking, multiply it by five days per week and you can get an idea of the amount of money taken out of our wages before we even start the job. Really, we work six days a week often to make ends meet for our families. Striking Seattle carpenters (WSWS Media) Another worker, Calvin, said a war was being waged against the working class in general. The cards are so stacked against us. We all need to band together, and if we did, nobody would want for anything. Calvin said the contractors were surprised that the deal didnt pass when they had a deal with the NWCU. The AGC said, Look we don't know why your guys are striking. We accepted the offer they [UBC] pitched us, and then it was voted down. A strike makes no sense. Well, it does make sense to you and me, Calvin continued, speaking to the WSWS reporter. Whats really going on is that Evelyn [Shapiro, NWCU Executive Treasurer-Secretary] is fighting her own people, its her holding us down. I mean, it's kind of smoke and mirrors, really. The union had a lawyer come on to a Zoom meeting, claiming that the companies would fold within the first week. Then, all of a sudden, the union starts pulling out sweetheart agreements and now all these picketable sites are supposedly not picketable anymore. As a result of this sabotage, Calvin said, We have dug our heels in against our own union. Calvin called for a unified struggle among the striking carpenters and other workers. I have been talking about all these other professions banding together. If you just take the workers in unions that already exist, like Nabisco and in other struggles, if we banded together, they couldnt stop us. The only way they hold us back is by dividing us. What I keep preaching is that they can't take our numbers, so we just need to band together in solidarity. The WSWS reporting team also spoke to Javier who stressed that the union is attempting to divide the workers and stop all carpenters from striking. Whats weird is that we have something like different branches in the union, so like me, some of us are under different agreements. Were out here voluntarily. We can vote on the contract, but we can't strike. And if you do strike, you don't get paid. We're volunteering our time, 100% of our time. He continued, Were being segregated within our own union, which is really unfair. When they would say you're going on strike, you would see everybody, all the carpenters go on strike, but now they had verbiage in there that messes everything up for all of us. They're saying we can get penalized and fined for striking, Javier said, referring to the threats by union officials over unauthorized job actions. Javier further explained how the union was trying to render the strike impotent. I went to Tacoma yesterday and we didn't hit any job sites. Instead, we hit sites where nobody was there. The freeway was louder than us. We couldn't even chant. We were just walking in a circle. It was pointless. It's common sense, if the contractor leaves, you shut down that job site, and go to the next job site. But we're not doing that. Carpenters picket Lydig Construction site in Seattle (WSWS Media) Another worker, Rick, who is a 4th term apprentice, said he was striking because we need fair pay, fully paid parking, not just partial, and increases to our benefits. The AGC and our leadership are not willing to work on our behalf. I think its time to take matters into our own hands. To do this, carpenters need new organizations of struggle, independent of the corporatist unions and the two big business parties, to share information, ensure democratic discussion outside of the control of the union bureaucracy, and coordinate common action. Such a rank-and-file committee will not carry out fruitless appeals to the corrupt union leaders or the Democrats who run the state and the Seattle City Council but fight to mobilize the broadest sections of the working classteachers, healthcare workers, Amazon workersin common struggle against the corporate-government-union conspiracy to impoverish the working class. We urge workers to contact the WSWS for information on building rank-and-file committees. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnsons government sent 10 million children back to school this term in the certain knowledge they would be infected with COVID-19. This monumental crime was openly admitted by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam on Wednesday. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer of England speaking at Parliaments Education Select Committee on Wednesday (credit: screenshot from Parliament TV) Their comments were made giving evidence to parliaments education select committee on the inclusion of children aged 12-15 in the governments COVID-19 vaccination programme. Whitty estimated that roughly half of all schoolchildren this age in England have already been infected. He added, virtually any child unvaccinated is likely to get an infection at some point between 12 and 15. Answering a question on the (miniscule) risks of vaccination, he responded, Youre not comparing a child being vaccinated against nothing happening, youre comparing a child being vaccinated against a near-certainty that child will get COVID. Van-Tam confirmed, we are not looking at a theoretical risk of children 12-17 becoming infected. I think it is really quite inevitable that they will be so at some point. Mass infection of children will have incalculable consequences. Close to 90 children in the UK have already been killed by COVID-19 and an estimated 38,000 aged 2-16 are currently living with Long COVID, according to the Office for National Statistics. Whitty admitted, we dont know the long-term effects of catching COVID in children. Whitty and Van-Tam made their comments in support of the Tory governments decision to vaccinate 12-15-year-olds, against anti-scientific opposition from the ultra-reactionary wing of the Conservative Party. But this necessary decision has been made only after children have already returned to the classrooms, and it will be longer still before vaccinations in this age group actually begin. The government, with the support of the Labour Party and the education trade unions, rushed children back to school to facilitate the reopening of the economy, in the interests of the corporations and the super-rich. So vital was this policy to the ruling class that Johnson did not even wait for the cover of a vaccination rollout to enforce it, sending overwhelmingly unvaccinated children into crowded settings five days a week. The move to vaccination is driven by the same cold economic calculation, out of fear that the unchecked spread of COVID-19 will cause a breakdown in the school system, undermining the reopening of the economy and the return of parents to work. Whitty argued, You would have fewer days lost as a result of being vaccinated compared to allowing people to be infected. He spoke of damage that could be done only in terms of disruption. Children of secondary school age already have the highest rate of COVID infections, followed by primary school children, and the numbers are increasing rapidly. Infection rates among five to 14-year-olds increased 80 percent week-on-week to September 19, to a record 811 per 100,000. Infection rates for the five to nine age group stood at 382 per 100,000. A snapshot of the social crime now unfolding was provided by the Department for Education (DfE)s school attendance figures the day before Whitty and Van-Tams appearance. On September 16, only two weeks after state schools in England formally reopened, and less than two weeks after most did so in practice, over 100,000 children were absent with a confirmed or suspected infection. This dwarfed the previous record set in mid-July of 82,000. Some 59,000 had a confirmed COVID-19 infection and another 45,000 were absent with suspected cases. One in every 100 secondary school pupils is ill with the disease. The DfE figures found that staff are being infected at a high rate with one in every 100 teachers in state schools off work with Covid last week. There is also clear evidence that children are spreading the virus to older generations. The Financial Times noted Wednesday, The steep jump in Covid-19 infections among children has been followed by an uptick in cases affecting people aged 30 to 49their parents generationwhich now stand at 286 per 100,000, having grown 7 per cent in the past four days. This is despite their estimated levels of social mixing remaining steady. Responding to Whitty and Van-Tams comments, Lisa Diaz, a parent and member of the SafeEdforAll (Safe Education for All) group, told the World Socialist Web Site, How can you say that it is really quite inevitable children will get COVID-19, and its a near-certainty a child will catch it, without it causing huge concern, without saying now we have to do this and take these actions to prevent it? Even in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, has said that no child should just be left to catch COVID. Now 88 children have died in the UK from this, and there is the risk of Long COVID which we know one in seven of those infected will get. So this is horrific. Especially when it is not inevitable that children will be infected. It is only inevitable when they are being forced into schools. People are being gas-lighted, told that children arent a risk and everything is under control. Those who fight for eradication, for Zero COVID, are treated as if we are the outliers, as if we are out of step with reality. The opposite is the case. We are now in a worse situation than we were one year ago. Infections are 26 times greater. Britain is basically like Bolsonaros Brazilno eradication, no mitigation, they are just letting it rip. Mass infection of children has always been the governments plan. In June, the Byline Times website revealed that the UKs Cabinet Office asked the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) to model herd immunity through a resurgence of infection in young people. A document authored by SAGE in February noted that many younger age groups have not yet been vaccinated or infected before concluding in bold, herd immunity is not reached without a large resurgence of transmission. At this stage, the government was still speaking in terms of herd immunity, through the murderous policy of mass infection, bringing an eventual end to transmission. It now pursues the same policy while admitting the extremely infectious Delta variant and waning immunity renders herd immunity impossible. Johnsons winter autumn/winter strategy is based on the acceptance that COVID-19 is endemic and will remain so. Whitty confirmed this approach on Wednesday, saying, because immunity wanes, were not going to see a situation where this just sort of stops at a certain point. Highlighting the fraud of the Johnson governments focus on vaccination to the exclusion of all public health measures, Whitty added, I dont think we should assume that either having had an infection or having been vaccinated provides full long-term protection. This leaves the door wide open to the development of even more infectious, dangerous and/or vaccine-resistant variants. Every infection of a child is an act of violence carried out by the ruling class. Pfizer reported in March that a study of 2,260 children aged 1215 found its vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID-19. Had schools been closed as part of a programme of workplace closures, rigorous testing and tracing, strict safety measures in essential industries and vaccination, tens of thousands of Long COVID cases, thousands of hospitalisations, and scores of deaths among children could have been prevented. Precisely this policy is necessary to avert the next tidal wave of infections and suffering already underway. The biggest obstacle to its implementation is not scientific knowledge or technical skill but the treachery of the trade unions and the Labour Party, complicit at every stage of the reopening of schools and the economy. The National Education Union, the largest education union in Europe, responded to the DfE figures with a call for the education minister to report more details of COVID infections to help the union and the government do everything we can collectively to ensure that as many young people as possible continue to learn on site. The Socialist Equality Party calls on school workers to form rank-and-file committees independent of the unions to defend their safety and that of the children in their care and fight for the necessary programme of eliminating COVID-19. Contact the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee today for information and guidance in this vital struggle. Join the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee and take up the fight against Dana and the USW and UAW! Email them at danawrfc@gmail.com or texting them at (248) 6020936. Oil coating the floor at Dana Fort Wayne More details are emerging about the brutal working conditions at the Fort Wayne, Indiana plant operated by auto parts company Dana. According to workers who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site on condition of anonymity, coworkers in the plant have suffered head injuries and seizures, severed fingers, COVID-19 outbreaks and, in one case, even death inside the plant. The new information comes as the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers continue to keep Dana workers nationwide on the job on an indefinite contract extension, even after workers voted down a tentative agreement by a more than 9 to 1 margin. A new memo posted in the plants by the USW confirm warnings made by the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee, an independent group of workers set up to oppose the unions treachery, and the WSWS that the unions are deliberately attempting to drag negotiations out past the critical changeover period when the auto industry retools to produce next years models, and when a strike by the 3,500 unionized Dana workers in the US would be most effective. The memo declared that negotiations over a second agreement are tentatively scheduled to continue through October 10, when the changeover will mostly have already taken place. Significantly, the USW repeated its justification for the contract extension by claiming that it was necessary in order to keep the company from ending automatic dues collectionin other words, shut off one source of cash to the privileged union bureaucracy. At least some of the incidents at Fort Wayne reported to the WSWS took place after the initial contract was rejected at the beginning of the month, meaning these injuries were made possible by the unions contract extension and their deliberate sabotage of Dana workers struggles. For example, earlier this month, a production worker handling parts inside a robot cage at the Fort Wayne plant stepped on a loose controller cord, fell and slammed her head twice on the concrete floor. After management sent her back to work despite her injuries, last week she collapsed from a seizure and was sent to the emergency room but has been sent back to work once again. Workers on her line say the shift supervisor is married to the physicians assistant who diagnosed her with something in between a kind of concussion but not full concussion, and sent her back to work the next day. The lady who fell and hit her head, what I am hearing her equilibrium is STILL messed up, one worker said. The company doctor ordered an x-ray but didnt want to, due to how expensive they were! One worker reported that the right side of her face and neck lost sensation. I noticed that the union stewards and production managers surrounded her when she came back to work. She had a cane. We heard about the [diagnosis] and it didnt seem right. In this department theres oil everywhere. Shes not the first person to fall. Ive been here a long time. The company claims there has been only 30 [falls] in ten years, theres been over 15 just this year. These robot cages have oil everywhere, the worker continued. They break down and we are told to go inside this cage and manually move the parts. The union claims its cleaned, honestly they never help us, they just help the company. In response to employee complaints, the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration (IOSHA) launched an investigation over various safety issues, including unlabeled chemicals, blind spots for motorized vehicles and foot traffic, employees hammering parts stuck on robots leading to injuries, safety sensors on machines malfunctioning, oil-coated areas and the spraying of fungicide in one area of the plant after a coronavirus outbreak, causing physical discomfort among workers. In its report, IOSHA dismissed all of these complaints except for unlabeled chemicals, for which the company was assessed a penalty of $1,275. According to workers, management hastily tried to correct more obvious issues in the plant before the inspection. In its official report, IOSHA admitted observing pools of oil on the floors which constituted, by any objective standard, serious safety hazards, only to wave it off on the flimsiest of pretexts: Areas heavily coated in machine oil with pools of it in most areas. Power cords are lying in these oil pools. Response: Oil was observed on the floors during the inspection process. To prevent falls the employer has installed anti-slip flooring throughout the department. The floors are regularly cleaned by a ride on floor cleaner. The employees also have access to floor scrubbers and mop stations. No safety order recommended. Dangerous conditions at Dana With respect to use of disinfectant in the plant, the report takes Dana managements account of the incident at face value: Employer is disinfecting workspaces with employees nearby causing them to become nauseous due to the fume. Response: The employer is aware of a onetime incident where the work area was inadvertently spraying with hand sanitizer instead of the correct disinfectant. The employer was attempting to disinfect the workplace because of Covid-19. No safety order recommended. This, however, is contradicted by accounts from workers, who reported and documented Aspen One Step as being the disinfectant sprayed on workers, and that it was used not only once but as a normal practice. Aspen ONE STEP sprayed onto workers on the line Workers also report other serious physical injuries sustained during work. One worker told the World Socialist Web Site that a burr broaching machine tore the thumb off of a co-worker. [She] lost her finger and no one saw her again, nothing from the company or union on what happened. There are five machines with a hydraulic press rod with sharp teeth to remove burrs [from the parts]. Three of the machines have doors for safety [and] two dont ... heard that another worker lost the tip of his glove because he was tired one night. Should have never happened. Burr broaching machine with incomplete safety door One worker also described a recent death inside of the plant. There was a skilled tradesman, an electrician named Joe McDougall. He wasnt feeling good and was found in the back of the plant. His wife who was also was working in the plant started looking for him since they took breaks together. We never heard anything from either the union or the company. It was all word of mouth. After he was found the union and management claimed it was within 20 minutes, but really it was an hour or two later. The plants Environmental Health & Safety Coordinator is particularly despised by workers in the plant for covering up a coronavirus outbreak in the plant which led to five confirmed cases. Neither the line nor the surrounding workers were informed, who found out only through word of mouth. In a separate incident, the supervisor attempted to downplay the risk of a machine leaking coolant over electrical wires, after workers refused to work on the machine out of safety concerns. [He] downplayed the risk and denounced [the worker who reported it]. On this line we try to be careful all day, one worker said. We have come full circle [compared to factory conditions a century ago]. Its a human rights violation. Theres times where human resources reject workmans compensation to make workers pay for their own treatment. Were isolated by the unions. We had concessions in 2007 that saved the company, but we workers were screwed. Young people are made desperate for work. I want them to do better, like before when workers were making closer to $25 an hour. Workers need to unite, he concluded. The union and management isolate you and pick you apart. The union tries to protect people who are close to them. When were mandated they tell us to deal with it. We need to unite internationally, the better it is for everyone. Theyre doing this to all working class people. Theres no regard to life or family. Since the Liberal-National government and the Labor Party joined forces to ram nakedly anti-democratic electoral laws through the Australian parliament last month, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has conducted an intensive campaign against the legislation. These laws compel all parties, including the SEP, that do not have a seat in parliament to submit lists of the names and addresses of 1,500 members to the electoral authoritiessuddenly trebling the previous requirement. These parties must do so by December 2, amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic and widespread lockdowns, or they will be denied the elementary democratic right to have their party names on ballot papers. SEP candidates speaking with meat workers during the 2019 Australian federal election [Source: WSWS Media] These laws make a mockery of any concept of democracy. Both the government and the Labor Party insist that being able to stand as a candidate under a party name is a privilege, not a right. And that an arbitrary figure of 1,500 members is needed to prove sufficient community support. That overrides the very function of elections themselves, which are meant to allow the voters to determine which political parties and programs they support. The SEP is demanding the repeal of these laws and the removal of all restrictions on the right of parties and individuals to run in elections. This stands in stark contrast to the ongoing wall of silence in the corporate media and throughout the political establishment, including by those who claimed to oppose the laws but have conducted no campaign whatsoever against them. Why are the socialists fighting these laws, and why are they the only ones doing so? With the ruling class and its political servants making a farce of the democratic pretensions of the electoral process, it falls to the socialists to defend fundamental democratic rights, which have been won by the working class in two centuries of bitter struggles against the capitalist class. This goes back to the Marxist movements support for the fight for universal suffrage and secret ballots, as was taken up by the mass Chartist movement in Britain in the 19th century against the prohibitive property qualifications imposed by the capitalist elite. In fact, the fight to defendand extendbasic democratic rights is part and parcel of the struggle for socialism, that is, a genuinely democratic and egalitarian society based on the informed, active and articulate participation of all working people. As we explain in the SEPs Statement of Principles, there will be no democracy without socialism because political equality is impossible without economic equality. While genuine socialists understand well the limited and increasingly corroded character of capitalist parliamentary democracy, we defend to the hilt all the democratic and social gains won by the working class in the past. We are not indifferent at all to the drive by the corporate and financial elite to tear up essential democratic rights, including the right to vote and freedom of speech and association, and resort to authoritarian forms of rule. These electoral laws are an obvious bid to prop up the increasingly loathed parliamentary establishment and stifle political opposition by seeking to de-register most parties outside the political elite, including the SEP. It is no coincidence that this legislation was suddenly unveiled amid the COVID-19 disaster and the growing toll of hospitalisations and deaths caused by the capitalist elites reopening drive, and just before the announcement of the new anti-China AUKUS pact and war preparations announced by the governments of the US, Britain and Australia. Above all, the ruling establishment fears that the widespread popular opposition and political discontent that these conditions are generating will find conscious expression in a turn by workers and youth to the socialist alternative advanced by the SEP. Real social change will not come through the current anti-democratic apparatus. Nevertheless, the SEP stands candidates in elections in order to broadcast the fight for a socialist program as widely as possible and inform the growing struggles of the working class with a clear socialist perspective. For all the claims of capitalist governments, such as Australias, to represent democracy, the latest laws are another warning that there is no support whatsoever within the capitalist class and its political servants for fundamental democratic rights. Around the world the ruling classes are resorting to vote-stripping laws and other anti-democratic measures. The ever-widening social inequality and rising class tensions are proving incompatible with democratic forms of rule. In Australia, the 1901 Constitution, a colonial-era relic, reflects the true anti-democratic history and character of the ruling establishment. No right to vote is enshrined and the word democracy appears nowhere. There is no Bill of Rights protecting free speech, due process, habeas corpus (no detention without trial), freedom of assembly and association or any other key democratic right, unlike the US Constitution, which still stands as a product of a popular revolution against British rule, despite its evisceration by successive US administrations. The readiness of the capitalist class to cast aside the facade of parliamentary democracy was already displayed in 1975. The reserve powers of the British monarchy, preserved by the Constitution in the hands of the governor-general, were invoked to dismiss an elected government, that of Whitlam, under conditions of global class struggles and political turmoil. Another warning came in 2017-18. A nationalist witch-hunt, accompanied by intensifying anti-China propaganda, saw the High Court effectively disqualify millions of people from even standing for parliament under this Constitution, due to their immigrant background. Because they are possibly entitled to dual citizenship, they are deemed to lack sole loyalty to the Australian capitalist nation-state. To defeat the bipartisan attempt to strangle democratic rights and stifle the struggle for socialism, the SEP is also appealing to our supporters and readers and all working people, students and youth to become electoral members of the SEP. Help us recruit the extra 1,000 electoral members that we need to retain our party registration and take forward the fight for socialism! Less than a week after Paris recalled its ambassador to the United States over Australias canceling of a 56 billion contract with France to build submarines, amid the sudden signing of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) alliance against China, Paris and Washington announced moves to repair ties. US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron will meet next month in Europe to discuss the crisis. The two spoke in a 30-minute phone call yesterday, according to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. The Elysee presidential palace posted a brief communique on the Biden-Macron telephone call in English and in French on its website, which announced that Washington and Paris will open a process of in-depth consultations to try to reestablish trust. President Joe Biden meets with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the Intercontinental Barclay Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Biden apparently accepted responsibility for not consulting Paris about AUKUS, according to the communique, which states: The two leaders agreed that the situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies on matters of strategic interest to France and our European partners. President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard. Biden and Macron are to meet next month in Europe for discussions, and a French ambassador will return to Washington, it added. It reaffirms the strategic importance of French and European engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, including in the framework of the European Unions recently published strategy for the Indo-Pacific. The statement commits Washington to supporting a stronger and more capable European defense, which it called complementary to NATO. It also endorses Frances ongoing neo-colonial war in Mali and the Sahel. This brief statement does little more than paper over deep contradictions emerging between Washington and its European Union (EU) allies, however. The press has widely described these events as the deepest crisis in US-French relations since 2002-2003, when Paris joined Berlin and Moscow in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq. The question of how to manage relations with Chinas rising economy is provoking deep and bitter conflicts inside the NATO alliance. While Biden endorses the EUs strategy on the Indo-Pacific and European defense as complementary to Europes NATO alliance with Washington, the way the Australian-French contract was broken and the AUKUS alliance was announced gives the lie to these claims. Washington, London and Canberra did not discuss AUKUS or the breaking of the French contract with any of the EU powers before announcing these decisions September 15. In 2015, all the major EU powers rejected US pressure and signed up for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the investment arm of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has led, however, to hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese investment across the Middle East, Central Asia and beyond, and the signing of strategic alliances between China and countries like Iran, which US imperialism routinely threatens with war. The Wall Street Journal, for its part, hailed Washingtons breaking of the French-Australian submarine contract as smart in a recent editorial, stressing that it was in retaliation for French policy: French President Emmanuel Macron has made a point of emphasizing strategic autonomy from the US, including on China, Russia and Iran. Europe cant play Chinas game of divide-and-conquer on economic and strategic issues without consequences for its US relationship. While Biden formally endorsed the EUs Indo-Pacific strategy, this strategy paper is incompatible with a US policy of arming Australia with nuclear submarines to threaten China. In it, the EU pledges to pursue its multifaceted engagement with China, engaging bilaterally to promote solutions to common challenges, cooperating on issues of common interest and encouraging China to play its part in a peaceful and thriving Indo-Pacific region. The conflict between US and European imperialist policy on China underlay French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drians criticism of the AUKUS alliance as a step towards war. Le Drian said, We see the rise of an Indo-Pacific strategy launched by the United States that is militarily confrontational. That is not our position. We dont believe in the logic of systematic military confrontation, even if sometimes we must use military means. Indeed, conflicts continued between the AUKUS countries and the EU yesterday, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ridiculed French concerns: Its time for some of our dearest friends around the world to prenez un grip about all this and donnez-moi un break. Johnsons mock-French call to get a grip and give me a break was his response to angry comments from the EU officials, criticizing the AUKUS alliance as a breach of faith, targeting not just France but the EU as a whole. Such statements must be taken as a warning to workers around the world that, whatever the official attempts to downplay the crisis, tensions between the United States and Europe that twice in the last century exploded into world war are again reaching explosive levels. EU Council leader Charles Michel denounced the United States for bad faith, adding, The elementary principles among allies are transparency and confidence, these go together. But now, what do we see? An obvious lack of transparency and good faith. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell of Spain said a meeting of EU foreign ministers amid the ongoing UN General Assembly meeting in New York had come out in support of France. The ministers clearly expressed their solidarity with France, Borrell said, adding that the AUKUS alliance is not a bilateral issue between Washington and Paris but affects the whole EU. Foreign ministers of the EU imperialist powers made similar statements. I can understand the anger of our French friends, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. What was decidedand the manner in which it was decidedis irritating and disappointing, and not only for France. Belgian Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes called the signing of the AUKUS alliance at Frances expense a thunderbolt in contemporary life in France, in Europe certainly and geostrategically at the level of the entire world. She called on Europe to be more vocal and present on the international scene, particularly on the issue of relations with China. In Italy, former Foreign Minister Marta Dassu told La Repubblica that AUKUS contains a risk: the division of the West between an Anglo-Saxon sphere aiming to contain China on the one hand, and a traditional Euro-Atlantic sphere with NATO concentrated against Russia. The question that is posed is how long these two Western alliances can remain united. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte responded to the AUKUS crisis by proposing to delay EU trade talks with the United States. We support not having the meeting on economic safety at this point with the US, Rutte told reporters on Tuesday. Russian officials also said they see both the US-Australia-Japan-India Asian Quad alliance and the AUKUS alliance as targeting Russia. Speaking of the Quad, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said, Washington will also try to involve other countries in this organization, especially to pursue anti-Chinese and anti-Russian policies. Just now, another military bloc was formed in the region, AUKUS, which pursues the same objectives. Yet neither the EU imperialist powers nor the post-Soviet capitalist kleptocracy have a progressive policy to oppose the US war drive against China. They either seek to adapt themselves to the framework of US policy, or furiously arm themselves in an attempt to compete with Washington militarilya policy that entails massive military spending and attacks on the living standards and social rights of the working class. The way forward against US war threats targeting China is the independent and international mobilization of the working class in a socialist, antiwar movement. The September 11 death of Abimael Guzman, founder and ideological leader of the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL), has unleashed a hysterical torrent of anti-communist propaganda from every section of the Peruvian ruling establishment and corporate media. Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman Guzman, better known by his nom de guerre, Chairman Gonzalo, has been cast as the incarnation of evil. He has been portrayed as singlehandedly responsible for the deaths of some 70,000 Peruvians in the bloody internal armed conflict initiated by Shining Path in 1980, even though at least half of them were killed by government security forces and their allied militias. A report published by the RPP media conglomerate on Guzmans death was typical, beginning: Bloodthirsty, merciless, cruel. There is no precise adjective to classify the evil of the chief of the Sendero Luminoso terrorist group ... In the days following Guzmans death, the political life of the country was dominated by a heated and macabre debate over what was to be done with his corpse. Finally on September 17, recently inaugurated President Pedro Castillo signed into law a bill passed by Perus congress providing for the summary cremation of those convicted of terrorism or treason, with the Ministry of Justice empowered to dispose of the ashes as it saw fit. The new law warns that the normal burial of bodies of such individuals may put at risk national security or internal order. No one has made a serious case for the body of the 86-year-old Guzman, who died of pneumonia at the Naval prison where he had been held for nearly three decades, posing such a threat to the Peruvian state. The claim by right-wing legislators that his tomb would become a rallying point for Shining Path supporters is absurd. The Maoist group has had no significant presence in Peru for decades, its remnants reduced to criminal gangs working with drug dealers. The anti-communist tirade unleashed by the Peruvian bourgeoisie in response to the death of the aged prisoner has several purposes. First, it is an intensification of a longstanding practice of vilifying any left-wing opposition as terrorist and is aimed at intimidating Peruvian workers, youth and rural poor under conditions of an unprecedented social and economic crisis sharply exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more lives per capita in Peru than in any other country in the world. Pushing Castillo government to the right Second, it is aimed at intimidating and pushing ever further to the right Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, the former rural teachers strike leader who took office in late July. His right-wing opponents and much of the media have cast him and his supporters as Shining Path sympathizers, demanding the dismissal of cabinet members and laying the groundwork for ousting his government entirely. The three-time defeated presidential candidate of the ultra-right Popular Force party, Keiko Fujimori, spoke about banishing his [Guzmans] bloody ideology and those who promote it, who today infiltrate the government. Castillo responded with his own obligatory statement denouncing Guzman for taking countless lives and declaring, Our position condemning terrorism is firm and unwavering. He went on to tout his participation in the rondas campesinas, or peasant self-defense committees, in the northern highlands region of Cajamarca. The rondas were allied with the security forces in the suppression of the Shining Path insurgency and were themselves responsible for numerous atrocities. The Peruvian president is currently on a five-day mission to the US directed at convincing Wall Street, the major corporations, the IMF and the World Bank that they have nothing to fear from his populist rhetoric. Finally, the furor promoted over Guzmans death is aimed at preventing a new generation of Peruvian workers, students and oppressed from drawing the real lessons of the bitter experience with Shining Path and the dirty war fought by the Peruvian state against it. The origins of what became known as the Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path lay in the Sino-Soviet split of 1961, when Chinas Mao Zedong denounced the Soviet Unions leadership as revisionist and traitors after growing conflicts over Nikita Khrushchevs 1956 speech exposing the crimes of Stalin and over Moscows policy of peaceful coexistence with US imperialism. These disputes were rooted in the diverging interests of the two nationally based Stalinist bureaucracies. Falsely posturing as a more radical alternative to the policies of the pro-Moscow Communist parties, Maoism appealed to a layer of students and intellectuals radicalized by the wave of postwar social struggles in Latin America. Such was the case with Guzman, who was born into a middle-class family in Arequipa in 1934, and became a professor of philosophy at a university in Ayacucho, one of the poorest Andean regions that would be the epicenter of Perus internal conflict. Inspired by Cultural Revolution He traveled to China during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-67, in which Mao mobilized student youth and later elements of the lumpen proletariat and poor peasants, who were organized in the so-called Red Guards, to settle accounts with rivals within the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy. Guzman took his inspiration from this retrograde movement, which denounced virtually everyone and everything related to science and culture as bourgeois, while the doggerel of Maos Little Red Book was transformed into a state religion. Returning to Peru, Guzman founded Shining Path as a split from Perus original Maoist group, Communist Party of PeruBandera Roja (Red Flag), insisting on immediate preparations for armed struggle and a peoples war. The core of the new organization was composed of Guzmans fellow professors, as well as students from Ayacuchos Huamanga University who came from rural peasant areas. The moment chosen by Shining Path for launching this armed struggle in 1980 was the eve of the first election following the Peruvian militarys decision to cede power to a civilian government after 12 years of rule by the generals. On the day before the election, a group of Shining Path members attacked a voter registration office and burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi in Ayacucho. The end of military rule had been forced by mass strikes by the working class. The upsurge against the military regime led to the growth of left-wing parties and trade unions, which returned to legality, and the radicalization of millions of Peruvian workers and youth seeking an alternative to capitalism. The Maoist ideology promoted by Guzman was hostile to this movement and to the working class as a whole. It rejected the Marxist perspective of the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and the struggle to educate a revolutionary leadership in the working class. Instead, it advanced the pernicious theory of peoples war based on protracted warfare by a peasant-based army encircling the cities. In practice, this was reduced to terrorist attacks in which the masses were relegated to the role of passive spectators. To this end, it conducted assassinations of leftists, union officials, leaders of peasant organizations and workers who failed to observe Shining Path-decreed strikes. It attacked factories, destroyed machinery and dynamited power pylons and roads, cutting off electricity and food supplies to the cities. It was initially able to gain some support from among an oppressed layer of Quechua-speaking peasants in southern Peru by attacking corrupt and repressive government officials and institutions and carrying out vigilante justice against criminals. Shining Path increasingly engaged in savage attacks against the rural population, however, after the government declared a state of emergency in Ayacucho in 1983 and sent the armed forces into a dirty war to suppress the insurgency. Shining Path responded with violence to the peasantrys failure to live up to its Maoist perspective of casting the peasants as the leading revolutionary force. Impoverished peasants found themselves in the crossfire between the Maoist guerrillas and the military, subjected to reprisals and counter-reprisals on the grounds of alleged collaboration with one side or the other. A 2003 report issued by Perus Truth Commission found that 79 percent of the internal conflicts victims lived in rural areas and that 75 percent spoke Quechua or other native languages as their mother tongue. Guzmans capture and Shining Paths collapse By the time of Guzmans capture in Lima in September 1992, Shining Path had already lost its ability to operate in the southern and central highlands due both to military repression and the governments arming of the peasant rondas, which aligned themselves with the security forces to put an end to the bloody war. Guzman after his capture on September 12, 1992 The movements defeat was also bound up with global changes, most significantly the Stalinist bureaucracys dissolution of the Soviet Union and the broader collapse of movements basing themselves on national programs. The same period saw the Sandinistas ousted from power in Nicaragua and the winding up of the guerrilla insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala. A major element of Shining Paths ideology had been a cult of personality around Guzman, who was proclaimed the fourth sword of Marxism after Marx, Lenin and Mao, with his writings propagated as Gonzalo Thought. With his capture, along with several other leading members, there was no political leadership to direct the Maoist groups operations. Shortly after his capture, Guzman renounced the armed struggle and formally surrendered to the Peruvian state. Shining Path rapidly collapsed, with insignificant remnants continuing operations in league with narco-traffickers. The anti-communist uproar surrounding Guzmans death has been accompanied by a glorification of the security forcesresponsible for countless massacres, executions, acts of torture, rape and abuseas the saviors of Peruvian democracy. In reality, what followed Guzmans capture was not a flowering of democracy but rather a dictatorship imposed by means of the autogolpe (self-coup) carried out by President Alberto Fujimori, who in 1992 dissolved the parliament and suspended the judicial system, arrogating to himself the right to rule by decree. State violence only intensified, with vicious repression of anyone daring to criticize the regime or the security forces as terrorist sympathizers, and massacres carried out against innocent civilians. Today Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption, while his principal accomplice, the sinister intelligence chief and CIA asset Vladimiro Montesinos is jailed at the same naval prison where Guzman died. The Peruvian working class must reject with contempt the anti-communist propaganda of the bourgeoisie, while learning the lessons of the bitter price paid because of Maoism, a tendency that combines bourgeois nationalism, peasant radicalism and Stalinism for the purpose of blocking the construction of genuine proletarian revolutionary parties. In Latin America, Maoisms influence was facilitated by the Pabloite revisionist tendency that rejected both the revolutionary role of the proletariat and the paramount mission of the revolutionary party in fighting for the development of socialist consciousness in the working class. Instead, the Pabloites sought to liquidate the cadres of the Fourth International into Stalinism, bourgeois nationalism, petty-bourgeois guerrillaism and Maoism. If the capitalist parties and media are so intent on exploiting the death of Guzman to promote anti-communism and exalt the security forces, it is because they know that revolutionary struggles are on the horizon in a country where the conditions of the masses of workers, youth and rural poor have become intolerable under the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and deepening economic crisis. The decisive question is the building of a new revolutionary leadership, a Peruvian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The South Australian (SA) hospital system is at risk of collapse, due to understaffing and lack of facilities, even though COVID-19 infections remain low, with the state recording only three community transmissions in the past weeks. Late last month leading hospitalsthe Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) and the Queen Elizabeth Hospitalwere forced to declare internal emergencies and enter major incident mode when their emergency departments were overwhelmed. This included cancelling elective surgery, medical treatments and procedural services, except for emergency cases. According to media reports, it also meant moving patients to private hospitals. For the RAH, it was the third month in a row a major incident alert had been declared. Royal Adelaide Hospital [Source: Wikipedia] At the Womens and Childrens Hospital a group of emergency doctors spoke out publicly on September 1, voicing their outrage at the chronic lack of resources and understaffing. They were described as being at their wits end, over a shortage of ten fulltime training medical officers. In addition, there are insufficient treatment spaces. According to national guidelines there should be 32 treatment spaces, but in SA there are only 19. Spokesperson Dr. Davinder Gill told InDaily Clinicians are stretched beyond their limit. Patients shouldnt be subjected to this risk. He added that doctors had no confidence that current management understand the seriousness of the issue. Many patients wait more than four hours, some even up to eight hours, to be seen. Almost nine percent of patients dont even wait to be seen. The situation has been deteriorating for years, and has been continuously neglected by hospital management. Claims by Liberal state health minister Steven Wade that there are more doctors, nurses and ambulance staff employed in South Australia than ever before, fly in the face of reality. According to the Ambulance Service CES, every second day during August the Ambulance Service was at Operational Status Red, which is defined as levels of demand having a potential impact on SA Ambulance Service ability to deliver safe, quality patient services. The state has reported record ambulance ramping outside hospitals in Adelaide due to bed and staff shortages. The flow-on effect of ambulance shortages means people who call 000 wait hours for an ambulance to arrive, only to face full hospitals and lengthy delays in emergency departments before admission. In response, the leading health union, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF), is preparing to run a thinly disguised pro-Labor campaign for the state elections, due to take place on March 19 next year. Last month ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adjunct Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars addressed the closure of Adelaides Mental Health Hospital in the Home, which has increased pressure on hospital emergency departments, forcing many mental health patients to wait over 24 hours for a bed. Never before have we seen such alarming levels of ramping and overcrowding, Dabars insisted, to the point where our health system is failing even our frail aged and our children. South Australians deserve a State Government that is willing to prioritise the health of the community, and that will require significant investment. We have seen leaders in other states, such as Western Australia, make a serious financial commitment to providing the best health care services possible to their residents. We need to see that same level of action here, she said. Her praise of the McGowan Labor state government in Western Australia, revealed her own organisations actual political agendato suppress the independent action by health workers and, instead, vote Labor, or divert the anger of workers into drawn out and fruitless legal challenges. On September 1, 50 nurses at Eastern Community Mental Health Service, in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide, commenced industrial bans in response to safety and workload issues, caused by serious staffing shortages. The Service has a shortfall of over 20 full time clinicians. Dabars said, The Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) has not provided an acceptable response to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of employees. She pointed out that The state health system requires an urgent injection of an additional 30-40 mental health nurses in the community, and about 100 to fill vacant shifts, including those in CALHN. This is only to cover existing workforce shortfall, let alone to meet any additional and desperately needed bed capacity. At the same time the ANMF filed a legal case in the SA Employment Tribunal against the Womens and Childrens Hospital, seeking orders to remedy and restrain certain contraventions of the enterprise agreement. These include not meeting the base staffing requirement of one nurse to three patients, and not maintaining a mental health nurse on every shift. While lauding the record of Mark McGowans government, the union covers over the real situation in WA hospitals. The Labor government has left the hospital system in Western Australia just as unprepared for a COVID crisis as has the Marshall Liberal governments approach to South Australian hospitals. Moreover the Western Australian branch of the ANMF has colluded with the Labor government to stifle the concerns of its nursing members over chronic understaffing. On September 4, a rally was held in Adelaide, outside the Liberal Partys Annual Conference, by SA Unions, including members of the ANMF, the Ambulance Employees Association, United Firefighters Union and Australian Education Union. The rally was purportedly held to highlight the parlous state of the health system, and it proposed to provide a government workforce planning committee, in partnership with the ANMF, to identify and monitor skills shortages and implement new supports and programs. Such a body would serve to entrench the corporatist relationship between the union and the government. Under the previous Labor government, which ruled South Australia for 16 years, from 2002 to 2018, there was a continual process of government attacks on public health. Typically, after the previous health minister announced a plan to cut 350 jobs and close 114 hospital beds in October 2012, the following year Health Minister Jack Snelling declared, I think we can reduce the number of staff and still maintain a reasonable level of service. In 2014, SA Health unveiled Labors Transforming Health program, which, under the guise of consolidating specialist services to three major hospitals, pursued an economic rationalist outcome, including the closure of Adelaide General Repatriation Hospital. Doctors who criticised the program for ignoring patient safety were labelled naysayers. The ANMF, described as a stakeholder, in the program by the then Liberal opposition, belatedly expressed some opposition, due to reduction in nurse numbers. In 2016, when Lyell McEwin Hospital was dangerously overcrowded, its entire radiology service was outsourced to a private firm. Meanwhile, in a massive privatisation exercise, the Royal Adelaide Hospital rebuild through a public private partnership (PPP) ended up costing $2.1 billion by the time it was signed off in 2017, making it the most expensive hospital project in Australia to date. By 2017, spokesman for the Ambulance Employees Association, Phil Palmer summed up the result of years of neglect: There has been no improvement in patient flow through hospitals, the discharge system remains inefficient, emergency departments are more overcrowded than ever and ramping is the worst we have ever seen in South Australia. This description continues to apply to the situation under the Marshall government. The ongoing, dire state of the health system, only exposes the fact that the declarations of all state governments, South Australias included, are lies. They have not prepared for what will be an inevitable resurgence of COVID-19. If an outbreak occurs, the hospital system will be unable to cope, resulting in unnecessary deaths. Health workers, and the working class as a whole, oppose the deepening crisis and continuing budget slashing in hospitals. But not a step forward can be taken under the present union organisations, whose efforts are directed to turning workers into making fruitless pleas to the big business parties and governments. Only through the formation of rank-and-file committees in the health industry, completely independent of the trade unions, based on a socialist program and democratically organised by the workers themselves, can public health care prioritise lives over profit and business. Around 30,000 Sri Lankan state sector health employees held nationwide lunch time protests yesterday, in defiance of the governments anti-democratic essential public services law, to demand improved COVID-19 protection amid rising infections and deaths across the country. Those involved included nurses, paramedics, midwives, public health inspectors, attendants, and office staff. The health unions have announced a five-hour strike on September 27, if the government does not address their demands. Nurses demonstrate at Kalubovila Hospital (Source: Government Nursing Officers Association Facebook) Public health is one of the many state sectors declared essential services by the government at the end of May. Under this law, harsh punishment, including long jail terms and heavy fines, can be imposed on any worker involved industrial action and inducing or inciting such action. On August 30, President Rajapakse also proclaimed a state of emergency that can be extended to ban strikes and to sack and arrest workers. There are around 1,103 state hospitals in Sri Lanka. Yesterdays action involved workers from all of these hospitals, including major institutions such as the Colombo National Hospital, along with teaching hospitals in Colombo north and south. Workers from hospitals in Karapitiya, Galle, Matara, Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Badulla, Batticaloa, Kandy and Peradeniya also participated. Maternity and childrens hospitals, as well as emergency and intensive care units and COVID-19 treatment facilities, were exempted. The lunchtime protest was called by the health sector union collectivea loose alliance of 44 health sector unions. Those participating included members of the Government Nurse Officers Union, Medical Laboratory Technologists Alliance, Janaraja Health Employees Union, and the All Ceylon Health Workers Union, led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Health Service Union, which is affiliated with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The Public Services United Nurses Union, which is associated with President Gotabhaya Rajapakses regime, did not join the campaign. Kandy Hospital workers during lunchtime protest (Source: Government Nursing Officers Association Facebook) The health unions are demanding the government continue a special 7,500- rupee ($US37) allowance, paid over the last three months, and special leave for those with higher workloads caused by the coronavirus. Health workers also want safe transport to and from their workplaces, as well as better working conditions and proper provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In June and July, thousands of health employees launched powerful protests and other action, demanding special allowances, salary increases and improved health safety measures. Demonstrations were held on June 4 and 11, involving 20,000 and 50,000 health employees respectively. More than 30,000 nurses held a two-day sick note campaign on July 12. Three days later, on July 5, over 25,000 supplementary medicine and paramedical services employees began an indefinite strike. These actions were shut down by the health unions, who accepted a series of bogus government promises. Having betrayed these struggles, the unions called yesterdays protests in response to rising anger among health workers, over dangerous and worsening conditions, in state sector health facilities. Protesting Peradeniya Hospital workers (Source: Government Nursing Officers Association Facebook) The Health Employees Action Committee, initiated by the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), intervened in yesterdays protests, distributing a statement entitled Health workers! Let us take the struggle for demands into our hands! Excerpts from that statement are published below. **** *Amid the difficult working conditions exacerbated by the pandemic, there is a burning need for the continuous provision of special monthly allowances, special leave and assurances of our own healthcare. * For most hospital wards, only one third of the required PPE is being provided. Therefore, we are forced to reuse the same dressings after washing them, which means they are unusable. A threat to our lives emerges in this situation. Health authorities claim we are being infected because of our own negligence and are frequently issuing circulars on how we should behave! * One of the main issues we face is the lack of transport facilities during the governments limited lockdown. Several of us have been forced to spend between 500 and 750 rupees daily on transport. Other workers have to spend a good portion of their salaries on transport and meals. * Infected health workers have to return to work after 10 days, while those who do not show symptoms have to keep working continuously. This has deadly consequences for both healthy workers and the patients they treat. Although the official figures have been hidden, at least 6,000 health employees have so far been infected and several have died. Infections among our own family members are also increasing, and some of them have also died. We are determined to take forward our fight until we win our demands, but determination alone is not enough, as proven by our past struggles. It is essential to identify the real challenges we face and adopt a scientific program. The governments mantra in response to every workers struggle is that it cannot grant any demands because of the enormous economic crisis facing the country. Strike action by 250,000 teachers, who are demanding higher pay, has entered its third month, because the government has rejected their claims. Recently, the finance ministry ordered cuts in state expenditure and for an end to new job recruitment in every public institution, including the health and education ministries. Time and time again, the trade unions have held closed-door talks with the government, offering advice and negotiating over how the burden of the economic crisis can be imposed on their members. The struggle of health workers began on June 11, for a special allowance equal to 78 percent of the basic salary. This was betrayed by the health union collective, which accepted the governments proposal of just of 7,500 rupees and for only three months. In fact, we are being forced to repeat our original claims, because the unions accepted the governments slashed allowance. The teachers unions are also seeking a deal proposed by the government, which slashes their original demand to a third of their original claims and without the consent of their members. At the same time, the government is stepping up its preparations to crackdown on workers, now coming into struggles over their legitimate rights. Last May, it imposed the essential public service act, bringing many state institutions under this edict. Under this decree, industrial action has been banned and harsh penalties imposed for violation of these regulations. Last month, the government declared a national state of emergency in the country, on the pretext of supplying essential food items and imposing price controls. This draconian law can be extended against all workers struggles. The trade unions, including those in the health sector, are hiding from working people the dangers posed by these repressive laws. The unions remain completely silent about these measures, which is tantamount to approving them, because they defend the government and the capitalist system. Like its international counterparts, the Rajapakse government has turned to authoritarian forms of rule, in order to impose the burden of the economic crisis on working people and to brutally suppress these struggles. In these circumstances, workers cannot win their demands by pressuring capitalist regimes. That is why we need to take the struggle for our rights into our own hands. It is essential that health workers build action committees, independent of the unions, at hospitals and other health institutions. These committees will be democratically controlled by their members. While we have already built such committees in some hospitals, we need to expand them to every hospital. We also have to prepare politically to take forward this struggle. Without defeating the policies of the government and the capitalist class, which is determined to impose the economic crisis on our backs, we cannot win our demands. We are not responsible for their crisis. We have to fight for an alternative program that ends the social order that puts profits before human lives. The unions, which are utterly hostile to such a perspective, have called the current protest actions in order to dissipate the growing militancy of their members and divert them behind claims that it is possible to pressure the government. While organising the struggle across all grade divisions and to unite health employees, we should also reach out to all other workers, who face common problems like us. We should immediately extend our support to the teachers struggle. The Health Workers Action Committee calls on workers in the health and other sectors to build these independent workers organisations, and a network of such committees. We must support the struggle to build an international alliance of rank-and-file committees, uniting with workers in countries throughout the world. Angela Merkel has been written off many times in her career -- by the politician's rivals, her own party members and, yes, the press. It's difficult to imagine today, as Germany's widely respected Chancellor prepares to step down after more than 15 years in the top job, but in the early stages of her career Merkel was regularly belittled and looked down on -- even by those who were supposedly on her side. The protege of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel was known by him as "mein Maedel" -- "my girl." "She always was underestimated by her enemies and by other politicians, and when they realized that a woman from the east is able to play this power game, it was too late," Ralph Bollmann, author of the authoritative Merkel biography "Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her Time," told CNN. The media only added to this sense that Merkel was not a serious political contender. At one of her earliest media appearances as the new leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin in 2001, Merkel appeared out of her depth. Uneasy in front of the bright lights and cameras of the press pack, she seemed not to know where to look or what to do with her hands, and gave flat, boring answers to reporters' questions. Chatting afterwards, many of the (mostly male) journalists present agreed: This woman would never be chancellor. But what did they know? Merkel went on to secure four terms in office, making her one of the longest-serving chancellors in German history -- only Kohl, the mentor she eventually turned her back on, has served longer in the modern era. Two decades on, she has cemented her position as an elder stateswoman, having led her nation -- indeed some would argue Europe as a whole -- through a series of potentially devastating crises. Named the most powerful woman in the world several times over, Merkel also played a crucial role on the international stage, helping to manage the global financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the war in Ukraine. As Germany prepares to go to the polls this weekend to elect a new government, and by extension her successor, it is not clear whether any of those lining up to replace her -- Armin Laschet of Merkel's own CDU, the center-left Socialist Party (SPD)'s Olaf Scholz, or the Greens' Annalena Baerbock -- will be able to fill her shoes. Bollmann says the world will sorely miss Merkel's steady leadership: "I think there is one common thing in Germany and abroad: She is seen as a guarantor of stability. In future times many people will look back at this time as a time -- perhaps the last time -- of stability." 'Don't fool yourself' Merkel, 67, grew up under Communism in East Germany, and trained as a scientist, earning a doctorate in quantum chemistry before making a move into politics following the fall of the Berlin Wall. She won a seat in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, in the first election after reunification. In the years that followed, Merkel would not only become the first female Chancellor of Germany but would also change the country's politics for good. Yet when the CDU won Germany's elections in 2005 -- by just 1% -- it was widely seen as having happened despite Merkel's perceived weaknesses, not because of her. Appearing on TV talk show "The Elephant Round," after the nail-bitingly close 2005 vote, the incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder appeared dismissive of Merkel, laughing off the notion that she would be able to form a governing coalition. "She will not manage to form a coalition with my Social Democratic Party," he said. "Don't fool yourself." Merkel held her tongue, but went on to do just that, patiently biding her time before working to form a so-called "grand coalition" between the two largest parties -- the CDU and the SPD -- and, in doing so, ending Schroeder's political career. The imperturbable, unemotional Merkel had triumphed. "There are many things she learnt from her youth ... in the GDR, in Communism, because she had to hide her real opinions, not saying something ... she's a very quiet person, she's patient," Merkel biographer Bollmann told CNN. The early years of Merkel's chancellorship were largely uneventful. Germany's economy slowly gained steam after years of stagnation. But in 2008, when investment banking company Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world seemed headed for an economic abyss, Germans feared their export-dependent nation could go under. That's when Merkel took charge, becoming the country's crisis manager. On October 5, 2008, she told Germans: "Your savings are secure, the federal government guarantees that." Her calm, reassuring words helped to prevent a run on the banks and marked the start of a period of confidence in the face of adversity for Germany, led by Merkel. Her government started a short-term labor program, known as "Kurzarbeit," which helped companies keep their employee on staff by making them work shorter hours, while the government supplemented their incomes. The program cost around 6 billion euros, according to the Federal Employment Agency, but it helped Germany avoid mass unemployment and ensured that German companies were at an advantage once the global economy picked up, since they had retained their skilled workforces. By the time the Greek debt crisis hit in 2012, Germans had faith in their chancellor, trusting that she could handle the adversity. Merkel took charge, creating giant funds to save not just Greece's economy but those of other debt-ridden Eurozone nations as well. Though Greece and other countries criticized what they saw as the draconian terms of their bailouts, Merkel likely saved the single currency. "Europe will fail if the euro fails. Europe wins if the euro wins," Merkel told the German Bundestag in 2012. "She has led Germany, Europe and, in parts, the rest of the world through an era of crises -- big crises -- which we never thought could happen in a Western democracy," says Bollmann. But while Merkel is seen as a bold and accomplished crisis manager, critics say she risked alienating the conservative voter base of her own party, the CDU, by taking left-of-center positions on key topics including nuclear energy, foreign policy and immigration. Merkel's government had initially halted Germany's planned exit from nuclear energy, but she reversed that decision in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The move was popular with those on the left, but not necessarily with CDU supporters. "The phenomenon of Angela Merkel is basically leading from behind," said Julian Reichelt, managing editor of Germany's largest daily tabloid newspaper, the right-leaning BILD. "You see where people are going and you follow the masses, you don't lead the masses. She was brilliant at doing that." The same was often true in foreign policy, which saw Germany's role shrink, compared to the Schroeder years. "Germany certainly punches below its weight when it comes to foreign policy," Reichelt told CNN. "Angela Merkel tried to ignore all major conflicts and problems all over the world as good as she could. She was one of the champions of ignoring all the problems that were so obvious in Afghanistan and which would obviously hit us after the withdrawal." Arguably, Merkel's highest-profile moment of international leadership came in the summer of 2015 when hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly displaced by the civil war in Syria, made their way to Europe. While many of her fellow leaders across the European Union argued in favour of trying to stop the masses from entering thebloc, Merkel believed that the moment called for a huge humanitarian response. "Germany is a strong country. We have achieved so much -- we can do it!" Merkel famously said at a press conference in 2015, opening her country's doors to the refugees. "We will manage this, and if something stands in the way, it must be overcome." Germany eventually welcomed an estimated 1.2 million refugees over the next year and a half. Hajo Funke, a professor at Berlin's Freie University, believes opening Germany and Europe up to the influx of people in need was one of the greatest humanitarian acts in German history. "This was a golden hour of the post-World War II democracy. This is the legacy: To be non-nationalist," Funke told CNN. In the wake of Merkel's call to action, many Germans welcomed the asylum seekers with food and clothes; some opened their homes to those who had made the arduous journey, or helped them find work. But the magic of the moment eventually wore off. Integrating the new arrivals was a tricky task some critics say was handled poorly. Her handling of the refugee crisis put a dent in Merkel's popularity at home and helped fuel the rise of far-right political forces including the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD became the first far-right group elected to the Bundestag since 1961. It came third in the 2017 election, with 12.6% of the vote. While Merkel did win another term as chancellor, poor showings for her party at local elections convinced her it was time for change; in 2018 she announced that she would hand over the leadership of the CDU, and that she would not seek re-election in 2021. But a new crisis soon came knocking. In early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Merkel was one of the first world leaders to acknowledge the scale of the health threat posed by coronavirus. "Since German unification, no, since the Second World War there has not been a challenge to our nation that required us to act in solidarity with one another so much," she said. Under her leadership, Germany quickly introduced a strict lockdown, reinstated the "Kurzarbeit" program to protect the economy, and helped launch the search for a vaccine. Merkel's handling of the pandemic saw her popularity spike, as Germans once again learned to appreciate the dogged resolve of their often-underestimated leader. Some are left doubting whether those lining up to take her place as chancellor will match up to their predecessor. "The question is: Who's going to replace (Merkel), and will that person have the same charisma and ability that she did?" Ben Schreer, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) wondered in an interview with CNN earlier this week. "Allies are skeptical, and Germans as well are quite cautious in that regard." Laschet, Scholz and Baerbock can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that pundits and politicians alike once doubted Merkel's abilities too. As the politician who arrived on the scene as an inexperienced "Maedchen" prepares to leave the world stage, Germany's voters are left wondering who will fill the void left by the woman they came to know affectionately as "Mutti": the mother of the nation. The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. WABASH VALLEY (WTHI) -- Experts say 'corn tar spot disease' is sweeping across Indiana and Illinois. This disease will impact yield totals. Allen Walters, the Co-Owner of Walters Farms in Clark County, Illinois, heard about this disease before - black spots on your corn, weakening stock, and yield loss, all because of something called 'tar spot disease." "I had never seen it really until this year, and it's just kind of coming on like gangbusters," Walters explained. Tar spot disease comes from a fungus that thrives in wet and humid conditions. It grows raised, black spots of fungal structures on leaves, stalks, and husks. Dan Quinn, an Assistant Professor of Agronomy and Extension Corn Specialist at Purdue University, told News 10 that this disease impacts kernel weight and yield. "It can spread very quickly. It almost kind of overtakes the corn plant and can lead to the premature death of that corn plant. It just reduces that green leaf area," Quinn explained. According to Quinn, so far, they haven't found that it taints the quality of the grain, so, depending on the severity, farmers can still harvest it. Walters said he noticed tar spots on all 750 acres of corn he has. He said the farming community is learning to understand this disease together. "Every year is different. I mean, this year started great. It started good and then turned wet on us and then turned really wet on us. And then this comes in late, so I mean, every year, it's just something different," said Walters. Walters plans to continue spraying his corn with fungicides to slow the spread of the disease until harvest is complete. Walters said his concern is now shifting to how this could impact his land long term. He hopes to have a plan in place to prevent this from affecting future crops. PENDLETON, Ind. (AP) An Indiana school district was sued Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union after a group that supports LGBT students said it has been barred from promoting its meetings. The free speech rights of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Pendleton Heights High School are being violated along with other laws, the lawsuit alleged. The differential treatment aimed at Pendleton Heights Gay-Straight Alliance by administrators is unwarranted and these students must be treated in the same manner that all other student groups are treated, said Kit Malone, advocacy strategist at ACLU of Indiana. A message seeking comment was left with the superintendent of the South Madison Community School Corp. The principal at Pendleton Heights High has barred the group from advertising on school bulletin boards or anywhere else on school property, according to the lawsuit. The group is severely hindered in its beneficial function to be a place of shelter, support and education, not just for gay, lesbian, transgender and non-binary students, but for all Pendleton Heights High School students, the lawsuit states. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) The board that governs Mississippi's public universities has voted to prohibit schools from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for students and staff. The Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning took the vote on Friday, said Caron Blanton, communications director for the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. At an earlier meeting on Aug. 27, the board voted not to require public university students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Board members decided to vote again because there was confusion about whether officials at individual schools could choose to mandate the shots if they wished to, Blanton said. Except for clinical settings within institutions, centers, departments, and programs, institutions are directed to refrain from mandating the COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of enrollment or employment, the new motion passed Friday reads. The clinical exception means that the policy adopted by the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which already announced that it will require students and staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 1, will stay in place. Friday's meeting took place during the board's annual retreat away from Jackson. It was not livestreamed, so the public could not hear what was discussed. During the livestreamed August meeting, nine board members said the vaccine should not be mandated. Many said they support students getting the COVID-19 vaccine, but that shots should be voluntary. The board's two physician members, Dr. Alfred McNair Jr. and Dr. Steven Cunningham, were the only two board members who voted to mandate vaccinations. Mississippis public universities already mandate that students be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, according to Institutions of Higher Learning bylaws. Students studying in a health-related field must be vaccinated against hepatitis B. Some Mississippi cities, including the capital of Jackson, have required workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Jackson Mayor Antar Lumumba extended a deadline for city workers to show proof of vaccination until Oct. 15. The extension also applies to contractors and subcontractors who are paid in whole or in part from funds provided under a city contract, WLBT-TV reported. Those who choose not to provide proof of vaccination must undergo weekly testing at their own expense. Employees who dont show their vaccination status must also wear masks at all times while at work. HOUSTON, Miss. (WTVA) - The pandemic is making it difficult for many local police departments to find and hire new officers. In Houston, Police Chief Adam Harmon ended his search after hiring six new full-time officers. The department now has 10 officers on the force, plus a school resource officer. Harmon said the additional officers are making a difference. Watch the interview in the video above. Melvin Van Peebles John Lamparski/WireImage Melvin Van Peebles Melvin Van Peebles, an iconic auteur of Black cinema, has died. He was 89. Van Peebles died on Tuesday night "at home with family," according to a statement released on Wednesday by his family, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films. "In an unparalleled career distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music," the statement read. "His work continues to be essential and is being celebrated at the New York Film Festival this weekend with a 50th anniversary screening of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song; a Criterion Collection box set, Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films next week; and a revival of his play Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, slated for a return to Broadway next year." Van Peebles son and longtime collaborator, Mario Van Peebles, said in the statement, "Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer's mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people." We are saddened to announce the passing of a giant of American cinema, Melvin Van Peebles, who died last night, at home with family, at the age of 89. In an unparalleled career, Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape. He will be deeply missed. pic.twitter.com/HpciXXVoYo Criterion Collection (@Criterion) September 22, 2021 Van Peebles was born on Aug. 21, 1932, in Chicago. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University and joined the Air Force after graduating. Story continues The actor, writer and director worked as a cable car gripman in San Francisco, which was the subject of his first book The Big Heart. He shot his first short film in 1957 called Pickup Men for Herrick. His first feature-length film The Story of a Three-Day Pass debuted in 1968. RELATED: Celebrities Who've Died in 2021 Melvin Van Peebles Randall Michelson/WireImage Mario and Melvin Van Peebles Van Peebles' follow-up film was 1970's Watermelon Man, a comedy about a casually racist white man who wakes up as a Black man and finds himself alienated from his friends, family and job. In 1971, Van Peebles released the groundbreaking Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss, which was funded by his own money and in part by a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby. Van Peebles wrote, directed, edited and starred in the movie which grossed $10 million. That same year, the multihyphenate penned the Broadway musical and score Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death. His son Mario's 2003 film BAADASSSSS! tells the story about the making of the 1971 film. RELATED: Michael K. Williams, Norm Macdonald and Cicely Tyson Honored in Emmys In Memoriam Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song courtesy everette collection Melvin Van Peebles in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song While he continued to work in films and in theater, Van Peebles also became an options trader on the American Stock Exchange in the 1980s. Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. In 2005, Van Peebles was the subject of the documentary How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It), as well as Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis. Other credits of Van Peebles include roles in Jaws: The Revenge, Posse, the miniseries The Shining as Dick Hallorann, All My Children alongside his son, Redemption Road and 2018's Armed, his last screen credit. Nikkie de Jager is releasing a beauty brand of her own. The YouTube star, best known to her 13 million subscribers as NikkieTutorials, has worked with a number of beauty brands throughout her career, including Marc Jacobs Beauty, which named de Jager its first global artistry adviser in 2019. For the past three years, de Jager has been building her own company, she told WWD, and on Sept. 23, Nimya by NikkieTutorials will launch via its own website. More from WWD The initial product lineup includes a moisturizer-primer hybrid called Where It All Starts Cream, 25.99 euros, Set It & Forget It Setting Spray, 21.99 euros, License to Glow Serum, 31.99 euros, and Brr Brr Cooling Eye Stick, 18.99 euros. Nimya, like de Jager, is based in the Netherlands and will be sold throughout Europe, the U.K. and the United States, where the majority of her followers are from. The brand does not have a set launch cadence, and new products will release as de Jager feels confident in them. Nimya, whose name de Jager declined to elaborate on, marks the influencers first solo beauty venture, which she funded with her own earnings from YouTube and beauty partnerships. Nimyas initial product lineup includes a setting spray, serum, moisturizer and cooling eye stick. - Credit: Photo courtesy of Nikkietutorials Photo courtesy of Nikkietutorials I want people to know that this isnt another cash grab. In fact, I think its going to take quite some time before I even earn money from this, de Jager said in a Zoom interview. I poured pretty much every cent I had into this just to make sure that I could come up with products that were made by me, funded by me. I wanted this to be a one-woman Nikkie show. This way, people truly know that I poured everything I could into this project. Funding and ownership are important to de Jager, who has been the subject of conversations about influencer compensation. In 2017, controversial YouTuber Jeffree Star alleged that de Jager was paid $50,000 for her Too Faced collaboration despite it raking in more than $10 million for the company. Story continues De Jager went on to collaborate with Ofra Cosmetics and last year, she released an eyeshadow palette with Beauty Bay in the midst of personally trying times. A few weeks before the palette was set to drop, de Jager announced via Instagram that she had been robbed at gunpoint in her Netherlands home. Earlier that year, she came out via Youtube as a transgender woman after receiving threats from people who knew of her transition. Last week, de Jager made her Met Gala debut in an outfit that paid homage to Marsha P. Johnson. She has simultaneously been working with the United Nations as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador for the Netherlands. Im trying to educate myself [on] what the human rights for LGBTI people are in the entire world, de Jager said of her U.N. role. I know what my bubble looks like in the Netherlands, but I dont know whats going on in other places in the world. Not even two years ago, I came out I was blackmailed out, she continued. It felt like for a minute, everything would stop. Fast-forward to September 2021, Im talking to the U.N., and I can be part of change. For Nimya, de Jager envisions a customer who is fierce, confident, boy or girl or anything in between, she said, while making a larger point about gender-ing beauty products and brands overall. This is for anyone and everyone out there, she said. I think we have to step away from that putting a gender to a makeup product. Makeup is for everybody, skin care is for everybody. You dont have to put a label on that. Screw gender, honestly. More from WWD.com: The Met Gala, Like Fashion Week, Is Officially For the Masses Saweetie Helps MAC Cosmetics Kick Off Beautys Roaring Twenties Essence Ventures Acquires BeautyCon, Moj Mahdara Out Sign up for WWD's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Thailand Luke Duggleby/Bloomberg via Getty Images Wat Phra Singh temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. As Thailand continues to navigate welcoming back international travelers, the country has opened some beloved beach destinations to tourists but is postponing plans to reopen other areas. Several notable cities in Thailand like Bangkok, Hua Hin, Pattaya, and Chiang Mai were initially slated to open to tourism on Oct. 1, travelers will now have to wait until November, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. The reopening will now be done in four phases, starting on Oct. 1 by allowing tourists in Krabi to go into designated areas. On Nov. 1, the reopening will be extended to 10 other destinations, including Bangkok along with designated areas in Chiang Mai, Chon Buri, and Ranong. On Dec. 1, the country will look to reopen 20 more provinces: Ayutthaya, Chiang Rai, Khon Kaen, Lamphun, Mae Hong Son, Nakhon Ratchasima, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Narathiwat, Nong Khai, Pathum Thani, Phatthalung, Phetchabun, Phrae, Rayong, Samut Prakan, Songkhla, Sukhothai, Trang, Trat, and Yala. And on Jan. 1, 2022, Thailand will plan to open 13 border provinces. The decision to postpone the opening until November came after vaccination rates fell short of targets, Reuters has reported. In order to open to international tourists without quarantine measures, at least 70% of Bangkok residents must be fully vaccinated, infection rates must decrease, and the rate of hospitalizations must decrease, according to local news outlet Thansettakij. While Bangkok had been placed under strict lockdown over the summer, restrictions were eased in September, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. "Cities we've targeted have not reached 70% vaccination rates and so we have to push out the date to November," Tourism Authority of Thailand governor Yuthasak Supasorn told Reuters. While the reopening of some cities has been postponed, Thailand has already started welcoming fully-vaccinated tourists to Phuket and Ko Samui in special travel programs which also allow tourists to visit nearby areas like Krabi and Phang-Nga. Story continues To go, travelers must secure a Certificate of Entry, obtain proof of insurance that would cover up to $100,000 in potential COVID-19 treatments, pre-book a stay at an SHA Plus-certified hotel for at least seven nights, and book and prepay for all required on-the-ground testing. Travelers must also show proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours of their departure. After seven days, people can ask their hotel for a "transfer form" to leave Phuket or Ko Samui and travel to one of the extension areas. Alison Fox is a contributing writer for Travel + Leisure. When she's not in New York City, she likes to spend her time at the beach or exploring new destinations and hopes to visit every country in the world. Follow her adventures on Instagram. Sep. 22A Lebanon man was arraigned Wednesday in Warren County Common Pleas Court on multiple sexual assault charges for allegedly engaging in sexual conduct with developmentally delayed victim and caused the victim to have sexual contact with another developmentally delayed person. A Warren County grand jury last week indicted Jeremy Ray Weinsheimer, 40, for two counts of rape, a first-degree felony; two counts of gross sexual imposition-force, a fourth-degree felony; and two counts of gross sexual imposition-victim has mental or physical condition, a fourth-degree felony. Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said Weinsheimer was a family acquaintance with a male and female victim, who were both developmentally delayed, and he had worked with the male victim. Weinsheimer invited both victims to swim at the beach at Caesar Creek State Park on Aug. 6 but instead took them to a covered bridge in Wayne Twp., Fornshell said. Weinsheimer allegedly had the male victim walk ahead of him and the female victim. While the male victim continued ahead of them, Weinsheimer allegedly had the female victim lay on the ground where he had sexual contact with her. When the male victim went back to them, Weinsheimer allegedly told him to sexually assault the female victim, Fornshell said. He said the male victim did so because he was afraid of Weinsheimer. The female victim disclosed what happened to a friend, and her mother learned of it, Fornshell said. The Child Advocacy Center interviewed the female victim and started the investigation. Fornshell said the charges are based on the developmental disabilities of both victims. Weinsheimer is held on a $100,000 cash-only bond in the Warren County Jail, records show. The US-Canada border in Derby Line, Vermont. Thomas Pallini/Insider Americans flocked across the US-Canada border after its reopening to vaccinated US tourists. Crossings have since dropped given strict requirements and the end of the summer travel season. Canadian businesses haven't been able to capitalize on the border reopening as leaders had hoped. See more stories on Insider's business page. Canadians expecting a tsunami of US visitors once the border reopened were disappointed to find that Americans had other travel plans. The US-Canada border finally opened to vaccinated American travelers on August 9, allowing US tourists to visit the Great White North for the first time since March 2021. Eager Americans flocked to the country and wait times at the border totaled seven hours in some locations. Canada's newly-reopened border drew around 219,000 non-commercial crossings, according to Canada Border Services Agency crossing data viewed by the Wall Street Journal, in its first week. The high point for 2021 was around 15% of summer 2019's crossing levels. But crossings dropped as summer came to a close, and businesses in border towns are still without the American customers on which they rely. That's because the Canadian border isn't as easy to cross as it once was. Gone are the days when just the flash of a passport and a few questions from a border guard would grant entry into Canada. Vaccinated American citizens looking to travel north need a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken no more than 72 hours from a flight's scheduled departure or arrival at a land border crossing. Travelers that have recently recovered from COVID-19 can show a positive test from between 14 and 180 days prior to entry. Antigen tests are not accepted to enter Canada, as they are to enter other countries such as the UK. Unvaccinated travelers or those within 14 days from their final vaccine dose are also not allowed to enter Canada. And before arriving in Canada - whether by air, land, or sea - travelers must have completed an online form called "ArriveCan." Its requirements include providing an address in Canada at which visitors could quarantine should they test positive and providing the exact dates of a traveler's vaccination. Story continues Upon arrival at the border, CBSA personnel now perform a question-based health screening to each arrival, increasing crossing times. Business leaders cite the restrictions as the reason for a reduction in casual crossings. "In the past, you'd have people who just crossed the border for dinner and then drove back home," Ritu Khanna, executive director of the South Surrey & White Rock Chamber of Commerce in Canada's British Columbia province, told the Wall Street Journal. "Now, the feeling is, people are coming cautiously, still, because there are so many requirements." Foreign visitors to the country arriving by air rose by 67%, the Journal reported, but those travelers typically bypass border cities altogether and land directly in Canada's major cities. Not all businesses have felt the squeeze as one eco-lodge operator in Manitoba has been reporting an increase in customers since the reopening announcement. Adam Pauls of Churchill Wild told the Journal that foreign visitors are the reason his business is booked to capacity from mid-September, albeit with the business operating at limited capacity due to government restrictions. The US is also contributing to the problem as Canadians have less of a reason to pass through their own border cities. Canadians are not allowed to cross the land border for non-essential reasons through at least September 21, as part of the ongoing border closure that the Biden administration is keeping in place. Air travel into the US remains unrestricted and Canadians can fly into the US for non-essential reasons. Some businesses near the border have adapted, including a helicopter company that flies tourists from St. Catherines, Ontario near Niagara Falls to Buffalo, New York to avoid border restrictions. Canada is expanding entry to all other fully vaccinated foreign nationals on September 7, which may give businesses more of a boost. But with the summer coming to its official close, seasonal American tourists are becoming a negligible source of revenue for many Canadian businesses. Read the original article on Business Insider Art pros and collectors are flocking to Basel this week to attend the 2021 edition of Art Basel, slated to begin on Sept. 24. The annual event, known as the most influential and significant contemporary art fair in the world since 1970, is back after an 18-month pause due to COVID-19. And judging by the sales numbers and news coming from the VIP previews that opened on Monday, it's safe to say that the three-day art fair is going to be one for the books. This year, the Messe Basel exhibition hall will host 272 leading galleries from 33 countries, presenting exquisite works of art across all media by more than 4,000 established and emerging artists. ABB21, Misc, General Impressions, PR, MC at Art Basel in Basel 2021 Nici Jost/Courtesy of Art Basel One of the leading New York City galleries, Van de Weghe, already made the news by bringing a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that has never been on the market before. "Hardware Store," a two-canvas artwork, measures 7 x 11 feet and was painted in 1983. It is on offer for $40 million, making it one of the priciest works of art on display at the fair. ABB21, Unlimited, The Mayor Gallery, M77 Gallery, Braco Dimitrijevic, at Art Basel in Basel 2021 Caroline Minjolle/Courtesy of Art Basel Salon94 gallery will be offering photographs by Brooklyn-born photographer Kwame Brathwaite who, in the 1960s helped popularize the phrase "Black is beautiful." One of the works is "Untitled (Model who embraced natural hairstyles at AJASS photo shoot)." A Keith Haring painting brought by Gladstone gallery with an asking price of $5.2 million has already found a buyer, while a 1975 painting by Philip Guston has fetched $6.5 million. Jessica Silverman is presenting a series of ceramic sculptures by Native American artist Rose B. Simpson. It is Simpson's European debut. According to the gallery's website, the androgynous figurines are a study of "native and colonial narratives as they pertain to family, gender, marginality, and the self." Here's what else is making a buzz in the Swiss city this week and how you can tune in at home. Story continues ABB21, Unlimited, General Impressions, PR, MC at Art Basel in Basel 2021 Nici Jost/Courtesy of Art Basel Unlimited The fair's section for large-scale art, Unlimited, is already making headlines. It is where you'll find monumental installations, sculptures and paintings that are too big to fit in a traditional art fair stand. This year, 62 projects, curated for the first time by Giovanni Carmine, the director of the prestigious Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, will welcome visitors in Hall 1. Among the highlights are David Hockney's photographic drawing "Pictures at an Exhibition" brought by Chicago's Gray gallery. The larger-than-life piece shows people looking at paintings in a gallery. And while this is a 2D work of art, since most subjects in the painting are to scale, with those walking around the fair hall, it really gives the impression that everyone is participating in the artwork. Another standout piece is Urs Fischer's iconic installation "Untitled (Bread House)," presented by Jeffrey Deitch gallery. It is a sculpture constructed with loaves of bread attached to a wooden frame. In this case, fresh bread from Zurich's oldest bakery was brought in for the unconventional (and Instagram-worthy) installation. Parcours The artworks in this section are displayed in venues around the city of Basel, and this year, it features 20 installations and performances, united under the theme "Can we find happiness together again?" A public walk by Hamish Fulton titled "Walking in Every Direction" takes place on Basel's Marktplatz. It is a performance piece that calls on volunteers to simply walk for an hour. Enormous sculptures by Texas-born Bunny Rogers will be on display on Munsterplatz, while 12 large-scale paintings and performances by Swiss artist Claudia Comte, presented by Gladstone Gallery and Konig Galerie, can be enjoyed at the remodeled Stadtcasino. Messeplatz will also host two site-specific interventions by artists Monster Chetwynd and Cecilia Bengolea. NFTs NFT art is also making its debut at Art Basel, courtesy of German gallery Nagel Draxler. It is presenting digital artwork by eight artists, including Olive Allen and Kevin Abosch. The only catch here is that you can't actually buy any of the works the traditional way (you know, with good old physical currency). Those who'd like to own any of the pieces are redirected to OpenSea, a crypto platform, to purchase it in cryptocurrency. How to Follow Art Basel at Home Not in Basel? No problem. Following last year's success of the first digital edition of the fair and given the strict entry requirements in Switzerland at the moment, organizers have also included a virtual component in the program. You can see a lot of the artwork on display in the Viewing Rooms section on the fair's website that will be open for the duration of the fair. What's Next for Art Basel So what's next for Art Basel? After Art Basel's Hong Kong edition in May (the fair's regular date in March was moved due to international travel restrictions), industry pros are speculating that Tokyo may get its own edition of the prestigious event. Until we know more, though, we have one more Art Basel event to look forward to this year the famed Miami Beach edition of Art Basel will take place from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4. CONCORD, N.H. Fall visitors to New Hampshire are being asked to keep their tempers in check and their trash off the ground during their leaf peeping trips this year. With interest in outdoor recreation on the rise during the coronavirus pandemic, state tourism officials last year launched a Leave No Trace campaign to remind visitors not to sully the state's natural resources. This year, they added a new message Don't Take New Hampshire for Granite to encourage visitors to be understanding about rules and respectful of other people and property. Now, with foliage season just beginning, officials are again reminding visitors to show courtesy to workers and the environment alike. We need to protect the natural resources that you're using for future generations, but also because it is literally the lifeblood for our tourism industry, said Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the Department of Business and Economic Development. Fall foliage forecast: The best times for leaf peeping this year Leave No Trace: How to protect crowded national parks and other natural spaces Fall colors are seen at New Hampshire's Cathedrel Ledge on Oct. 24, 2016, in Conway, N.H. Fall is New Hampshire's second-busiest tourism season, behind summer, and state officials expect 3.2 million visitors to spend $1.4 billion this year. That's close to the nearly $1.5 billion tourists dropped in 2018 and 2019, and a significant rebound from last year, when fall tourism spending was $1.2 billion. While the state's hospitality industry came roaring back this summer, businesses still are struggling with workforce shortages and supply chain delays, said Mike Somers, president of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association. That, in turn, has led to an increase in rude and abusive customer behavior. We're really asking folks to plan ahead and have a little bit of patience and understanding, he said. Just call ahead, find out what the hours of operation are, and please don't get upset if we're not open until 11 o'clock at night. Story continues 'We did it!': Floki the cat summits New Hampshire's 48 tallest mountains with her human The workforce and supply chain problems experienced by the hospitality industry also are seen across business sectors, said Caswell, who highlighted his agency's recent efforts to take a more regional approach to attracting businesses and recruiting and training workers. Two regional organizations have been set up, and two more are planned later this year. Darren Winham, director of economic development for the town of Exeter, said sharing ideas with his peers in other communities has been invaluable. In some cases, if one town can't accommodate a business looking to move in or expand, it will refer it to a more suitable location, he said. Rising tides lift all boats. If something good happens in Hampton, it's good for Exeter, he said. When we're working together, we're more effective. We can serve our businesses and communities better, we can serve New Hampshire better, and frankly, it's a lot more fun. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New Hampshire welcomes leaf peepers but wants bad tempers to stay home Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are taking a bite out of the Big Apple! The couple kicked off their cross-country trip to New York City on Thursday with a visit to One World Observatory at the World Trade Center with Mayor Bill de Blasio, the mayor's wife Chirlane McCray, their son Dante de Blasio and Governor Kathy Hochul. They both dressed in black for the occasion: Meghan sported a black turtleneck with matching trousers under a jacket with her hair pulled back into her signature low bun, while Harry sported a classic suit and tie. While posing for a group photo, Meghan was asked about her return to New York. "It's wonderful to be back, thank you," she replied. For more on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's New York City trip and other top stories, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day. It's unclear if the couple's two children son Archie Harrison, 2, and daughter Lilibet Diana, born in June remained in California. RELATED: Meghan Markle Wore a Special Accessory from Her Royal Wedding to Prince Harry for NYC Visit Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex pose with NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio at One World Observatory Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Mayor Bill de Blasio Meghan, 40, and Prince Harry, 37, announced earlier this week that they were heading to New York for Saturday's Global Citizen Live from Central Park "to continue their urgent work with world leaders in the pursuit of global vaccine equity to end the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone, everywhere," according to Global Citizen. The duo previously served as Campaign Chairs of Global Citizen's VAX Live: The Concert to Reunite the World, where Prince Harry gave an impassioned speech about the importance of vaccine equity. Prince Harry And Meghan Markle Arrive At One World Trade Center Christopher Peterson/SplashNews.com Prince Harry and Meghan Markle "Over the past year, our world has experienced pain, loss and struggle together. Now we need to recover and heal together," the couple said in a previous statement on the subject. "We can't leave anybody behind. We will all benefit, we will all be safer, when everyone, everywhere has equal access to the vaccine." Story continues They continued, "We must pursue equitable vaccine distribution and, in that, restore faith in our common humanity. The mission couldn't be more critical or important." The Duke And Duchess Of Sussex Visit One World Observatory Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Meghan Markle and Prince Harry The New York event which will feature performances from Coldplay, Jennifer Lopez, Lizzo and more from Central Park's Great Lawn joins a 24-hour broadcast from cities around the world calling on G7 countries and the European Union to share at least 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses with those most in need and support calls for a waiver on COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property rights. The campaign is also calling on vaccine providers to share mRNA technology with the new World Health Organization-backed transfer hub based in South Africa. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! New York City is a special place for Meghan. It's where she reunited with friends including Serena Williams, Amal Clooney, Gayle King and Jessica Mulroney in February 2019 for a baby shower ahead of the birth of son Archie. Meghan also returned to the Big Apple in September 2019 to support Williams in the US Open final. David Simon wont force his cast and crew to step foot in Texas after the passage of a new law that requires them to forgo civil liberties. The Wire creator has pulled an upcoming HBO series out of the state due to the new abortion law that makes procedures illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know theyre pregnant. (As) an employer, this is beyond politics. Im turning in scripts next month on an HBO non-fiction miniseries based on events in Texas, but I cant and wont ask female cast/crew to forgo civil liberties to film there, Simon tweeted Monday. What else looks like Dallas/Ft. Worth? Its unclear what project Simon was referring to, but nothing has been publicly announced. This is not a political decision for us, he tweeted. We cant ethically ask any female cast/crew to relocate to any state that requires them to forgo civil liberties. The end. The Dallas Film & Creative Industries Office accused the showrunner of punishing an entire state of people, saying his decision only serves to further disenfranchise those that live here. We need talent/crew/creatives to stay & vote, not get driven out by inability to make a living, the organization said. But Simon reiterated that his decision wasnt about politics, but rather the safety of his crew. My singular responsibility is to securing and maintaining the civil liberties of all those we employ during the course of a production, he replied. Rob Phillips: You never know what you'll come across in the outdoors Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. New Delhi: As many as two persons were killed and several were left injured including police personnel, as clashes broke out on Thursday between the police and local people in Dholpur Gorukhuti area of Assams Darrang district. Violence ensued after a team of security personnel went to the area to evict illegal encroachers, as per reports by ANI. The Superintendent of Police Darrang, Sushanta Biswa Sarma said, "They (people at the spot) pelted stones & attacked Police personnel. 9 Policeman injured, I'm inquiring about the video that's doing rounds on social media." Assam: Violence broke out in Sipajhar of Darrang during an anti-encroachment drive SP Darrang, Sushanta Biswa Sarma says, "They (people at the spot) pelted stones & attacked Police personnel. 9 Policeman injured, I'm inquiring about the video that's doing rounds on social media" ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 The injured police personnel were taken to a hospital and are being administered treatment. Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi condemned the police firing incident. Taking to Twitter he wrote, "Assam is on state-sponsored fire. I stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the state- no children of India deserve this." Over 800 families were rendered homeless after the Assam government carried out a massive eviction drive in Dholpur Gorukhuti village of Darrang district on Monday, as per media reports. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the project following a day after the first eviction drive had been carried out by the Dholpur Gorukhuti district administration on June 7. New Delhi: Automobile dealers' body FADA has urged the government to formulate a task force to monitor the compensation structure being worked out by Ford India for its dealer partners across the country. In a letter to Heavy Industries Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey, FADA President Vinkesh Gulati also requested the government to instruct Ford India to keep the industry body in the loop regarding the compensation structure for the dealerships. "We humbly request your Ministry's intervention... Create a task force which takes day-to-day updates from Ford India to monitor the compensation plan for automobile dealers and dealership employees," Gulati said in the letter. Also, instruct Ford India to keep FADA in the loop for dealership related issues and compensation structure, he noted. Besides, Gulati also requested the ministry to make sure that Ford India indemnifies dealers from various consumer and civil cases, both under pendency and against any future cases that may arise directly or indirectly out of the automaker's restructuring announcement. (Also Read: Post Office Recurring Deposit Account: Invest Rs 10,000 per month to get Rs 16 lakh on maturity) "Ford India is forcing its dealers to first sign Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) latest by September 14, 2021, before any compensation package is worked out. Many Ford dealers have directly or indirectly requested FADA to take up the matter for an amicable resolution," he noted. Such coercive efforts on Ford's part to get their channel partners to sign an NDA with the imposition of unreasonably tight timelines, under economic duress is not the right approach and adversely impacts dealer interests, he added. FADA, which represents over 15,000 automobile dealers having 26,500 dealerships across the country, said that automotive dealers have lost around Rs 2,485 crore since 2017 due to the exit of five OEMs from the country. Almost 64,000 people have lost jobs at the dealerships due to the exit of companies like General Motors, Harley-Davidson, Man Trucks, UM & Lohia and now Ford India, it added. Gulati also urged the government to formally initiate a discussion on the Automobile Dealers' Protection Act. "I would request that your Ministry work on protection of auto dealers' rights, possibly through legislation as suggested by the Parliamentary Committee on Commerce and Industry? and create a sense of equilibrium in the industry as an increasing number of international players are entering the Indian auto market. This will not only safeguard the dealers' and customers' interests in India but would also protect the interests of people employed by the dealerships," Gulati noted. (Also Read: Market at fresh peak: Sensex skyrockets 958 pts, Nifty tops 17,800 ) Earlier this month, US auto major Ford Motor Co announced that it will stop vehicle production at its two plants in the country and will sell only imported vehicles going ahead as part of a restructuring exercise. The company, which invested about USD 2.5 billion at its Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and Sanand (Gujarat) plants, has accumulated operating losses of around USD 2 billion in India in the last ten years. Its decision will impact over 4,000 employees and about 150 dealer principals who operate over 300 outlets. With the shutting down of the vehicle manufacturing operations, the automaker will stop selling vehicles such as the EcoSport, Figo, Endeavour, Freestyle and Aspire, which are produced from these plants. Live TV #mute As Amazon Business completes 4 years in India, the marketplace claims that in the past 4 years over 4 lakh sellers have benefited from the platform. There is a huge 102% CAGR jump, which puts India after the US. We caught up with Suchit Subhas, Director, Amazon Business to decode the plans for the upcoming festive season. 1) Its been 4 years since Amazon Business started operations in India, how have the MSMEs in India benefited since the inception? Since its launch in 2017, Amazon Business has onboarded over 4 lakh sellers selling to business customers on Amazon Business. There are over 15 Cr GST enabled products on the platform, coupled with a strong delivery network that has a presence in 99.6% of pin codes in India. our focus has been to simplify purchasing for businesses and help them reduce cost to improve profitability. Apart from catering to MSME customers, our sellers have also catered to requirements from large enterprises such as Mahindra, GE, Tata Group. In the last four years, we have added a host of features such as multi-user account features to enhance account security and compliance, bulk purchase features, shared payment methods and business analytics tools. In its four-year journey, Amazon Business has registered millions of businesses as customers in India and has continued to see exponential growth, with a CAGR of 102% in customer base, making the Indian marketplace of Amazon Business is the second biggest after the US. We have seen a 39% increase in monthly active users, resulting in a 69% increase in orders and an 85% increase in sales. We are also encouraged that we have been able to cater to businesses from smaller markets as well and have seen 30% buying customers and 25% orders from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. 2) Has the business environment for MSMEs changed in India? What sort of benefits are they getting? How is Amazon planning to digitally support and boost exports for MSMEs? Amazon has invested a lot of time and effort in enabling MSMEs to benefit from technology adoption through partnerships with central and state Govt bodies, partners in the industry and others. To digitally support MSMEs, this year we launched Business PAN as an additional license type through which MSMEs with an annual turnover of less than Rs 20 Lks, Education Institutes and NGOs can register and avail Amazon Business benefits. We also launched the Bill to Ship to feature we have taken a lead in solving this unique customer problem and offered a solution that allows them to claim GST credit on their billing address for their pan-India shipments. This convenient feature allows customers to consolidate the tax credit to one state and make use of GST credit more effectively. 3) What can the government do to make the environment better for MSMEs? We are working together with the government to help e-commerce realize its potential and empower MSMEs to go online. We believe we can enable MSMEs to leverage e-commerce by appropriately structuring incentives that encourage online selling and help with offsetting digital marketing costs and promote ease of doing business online. 4) Festive trends ahead of festive season? We complete four years in India and on account of its four-year anniversary, Amazon Business plans to run an Anniversary Sale from 24th to 29th September, where customers can avail up to 20% cashback on orders above Rs 1500/. We also have multiple deals across different product categories like laptops, printers, televisions, office furnishing, kitchen products, work from home and study from home essentials. In addition to these business exclusive deals, businesses would continue to save more with GST input tax credit and bulk discounts as part of the anniversary special offer. With the festive season around the corner, Amazon Business has introduced Corporate Gifting Store to cater to all the gifting needs of businesses and their office administrations. With a wide array of corporate gifting selection across headphones, speakers, wearables, gift hampers, work from home essentials, festive coins, Amazon gift cards and more, Amazon Business offers top deals and great savings with exclusive business deals, GST invoices for input tax credit and bulk purchase discounts. Also Read: 2021 Volkswagen Taigun India launch today: Check expected price, features and specs In addition to that, during the Diwali period we will continue to offer great deals and discounts to our customers along with GST input credit and bulk discounts. Also Read: Microsoft Surface Pro 8 with 120Hz display launched: Price, features, specs Live TV #mute New Delhi: SoftBank Group-backed Indian hospitality startup Oyo Hotels and Rooms is expected to file for an initial public offering (IPO) next week to raise around $1 billion, a source told Reuters on Thursday. The hotel aggregator is looking to list in India`s financial capital of Mumbai and its IPO is tentatively pegged at between $1 billion and $1.2 billion, the source said, adding it will consist of a fresh issue of shares and an offer for sale from existing shareholders. Oyo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The listing plan follows a stellar debut by food delivery firm Zomato Ltd in July. Berkshire Hathaway Inc-backed Paytm and private equity firm TPG-backed Nykaa have also filed for IPO. Ride-hailing firm Ola, which is also backed by SoftBank, is also set to enter markets. Oyo, in which SoftBank owns a 46% stake and is one of its biggest bets, has endured months of layoffs, cost-cuts and losses during the global health crisis. Its founder and Chief Executive Ritesh Agarwal had said in July that business was likely to return to levels seen before the second wave of COVID-19 infections in India and "grow from there". Also Read: LIC IPO: Centre could block Chinese investment in state-backed insurers public offer - Report Last month, Oyo received a $5 million investment from Microsoft Corp. Kotak Mahindra Capital, JP Morgan and Citi are the bankers advising Oyo on the IPO, the source said. Also Read: Throw away your Chinese phones, urges Defence Ministry New Delhi: The Indian government could reportedly block Chinese investors from buying shares in the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of Indias upcoming mega initial public offering due to the underscoring tensions between the two nations. According to a report by Reuters, the Centre is planning to allow foreign investors to participate in the IPO that could help the government rake in a potential $12.2 billion. However, the Centre could potentially discourage Chinese ownership of Indias crown jewel. The state-owned insurer enjoys more than a 60% share of Indias life insurance market. The companys assets are valued at more than $500 billion. The political tensions between the two nations escalated last year after the Galwan Valley clashes. Since then, the Indian government has increased its scrutiny on Chinese investments while banning scores of Chinese mobile apps. "With China after the border clashes, it cannot be business as usual. The trust deficit has significantly widen(ed)," A government official told Reuters. The official added that Chinese investment in companies like LIC could pose risks. However, as of now, the Centre hasnt taken a final decision on how its planning to block Chinese investment. At present, no final decisions have been made by the Centre. Also Read: Vinata Aeromobility hopes to perform flying car trial by 2023 and flights by 2025, says CEO Yogesh Ramanathan The Indian government is planning to sell 5% to 10% shares of LIC in the ongoing fiscal year with the upcoming IPO. The Centre is also mulling over launching two separate tranches of the IPO of the insurer to raise the expected funds. Also Read: Delhi University's first cut-off list likely to be announced on October 1 Live TV #mute Mumbai: EsselWorld Bird Park brightened up Ganesh Chaturthi festivities with the launch of campaign #HamareGharKeGaneshji which gave a chance to pose with your adored Ganesh ji. It was a 10-day festival marking the birth of Lord Bappa - the god of prosperity and wisdom. Every year around August-September, the city of Mumbai is shaken up by a storm of activities during this ten-day festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. The festival celebrates Lord Ganesha as the God of new beginnings and the remover of obstacles as well as the god of wisdom and intelligence respectively. This year Ganesh Chaturthi started on September 10 and ended on September 19 (Anant Chaturdashi). Due to current COVID-19 pandemic, the enthusiasm and zeal for the festival among the people was low due to various restrictions to curb coronavirus. EsselWorld Bird Park #HamareGharKeGaneshji contest tried to bring back the fun, enjoyment and passion for the festival among its patrons. Patrons could participate by uploading the pictures of Ganesh puja celebration in their home and Mohalla (neighbourhood) on a specially designed microsite http://hamaregharkeganeshji.com/ Shared the details along with the picture within 8th to 18th September 2021. The campaign was well received by the people and saw an overwhelming response with more than 250 entries of happy and joyful celebrations. The internal jury team had a tough time in selecting the winners which were declared on Anand Chaturthi day i.e. 19th September 2021. The winners were declared under three categories i.e. Most unique celebration, Best Decoration and Best looking Ganesha. Mr Ashish Ganatra, Mr Mitesh Mehta and Mr Vrinda Motasha were declared as the winners of respective categories. Addition to this every participant was also gratified for their participation. We wanted to bring back the brightness, joy, passion and zeal of festivity in the lives of people this Ganesh Chaturthi, with the launched of specially designed microsite on which people could share their creativity to welcome and celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi.Mr. Paresh Mishra, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, EsselWorld, Water Kingdom and EsselWorld Bird Park. Twenty-six illegal furnaces causing air pollution were bulldozed in Loni town of Ghaziabad on Thursday, taking the number of such units which faced similar action to 30 within a week, officials said. Joint teams of the district administration, Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) were constituted last week in compliance of a letter dated September 3 sent by the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas. District Magistrate Rakesh Kumar Singh said stringent 26 illegal furnaces were identified and bulldozed on Thursday. Another four illegal furnaces were bulldozed within a couple of days. All these illegal units were melting metal scrap and making ingots due to which air quality was deteriorating day by day. The officials have been instructed to keep a watch on these illegal furnaces so that the owners may not operate them even in the future, the DM said. He said the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation has demolished illegal milk dairies on the Delhi-Meerut road because bovines cannot be kept in the city. Dairies are allowed only in the villages for the purpose of supplying milk. Meanwhile, Regional officer of UPPCB, Utsav Sharma, said a report would be submitted fortnightly before the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas. Live TV New Delhi: Ahead of the festival season, Intelligence agencies have warned of a possible attempt by terror groups to infiltrate India in order to execute terror activities. According to Intelligence officials, about 40 Pakistan-backed terrorists of Afghanistan-origin are positioned in terror camps near the Line of Control (LoC). The state police and paramilitary have been issued alert about the intel inputs, an Intelligence official said. After Taliban took over the government in Afghanistan, we have got the input regarding the movement of Afghanistan-based terrorists entering India with the help of Pakistan-based terrorist organizations which are backed by ISI, the official was quoted as saying by ANI. The agencies have got the input that around 40 such terrorists are stationed at a terror camp in the Nakyal sector of Pakistan near the Line of Control (LoC). They have been trained to enter Indian by crossing the Poonch River using tubes and snorkeling, added the official. The Intelligence agencies said that they have got the input regarding the movement of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat ul-Ansar (HuA) and Hizbul Mujahideen. "We have got the inputs that these terrorist are trained in making Tiffin bomb. The raw material will be provided to them through sleeper cells active in India. All agencies concerned, the state police and paramilitary have been issued alert about the intel inputs," said the official. Also Read: Four arrested in terror cum recruitment module of LeT outfit in Jammu and Kashmir's Hajin Live TV New Delhi: Trinamool Congress leader Firhad Hakim on Thursday (September 23) said that a "big BJP leader" will join the ruling party in West Bengal soon. Busy campaigning for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the September 30 Bhabanipur by-poll, Hakim, a senior minister in state cabinet, said, Trinamool Congress is checking the antecedents, track record and image of each BJP leader who has made overtures to TMC leaders and is deciding on his/her appeal after due deliberation. Hakims hint of more possible cross overs comes amid former union minister Babul Supriyo, BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy and three BJP MLAs switching over to Mamata Banerjees party. After recently defecting to TMC, Supriyo projected the West Bengal CM as the PM face in 2024. "I want that the captain of our party Mamata Banerjee becomes the Prime Minister in 2024. Opposition plays an important role in a democratic system. Nobody can deny the fact that Mamata Banerjee is among the top frontrunners for the prime ministerial post," the former Union minister said. "The process of returning has only started," Hakim told reporters on possible cross overs. "Wait for a few more days. A big time BJP leader is all set to join our party ... BJP will disintegrate in West Bengal, PTI quoted him as saying. Reacting to Hakim's claim, BJP spokesman Shamik Bhattacharya said: "TMC should think about ethics and ideology before trying to poach BJP leaders". "Those not interested in power and position, but love BJP will not leave," Bhattacharya added. New BJP state president Sumit Majumder urged disgruntled party leaders to discuss their grievances with their seniors. "Don't take any decision which will weaken the fight for people's democratic rights in Bengal," he said. Meanwhile, Abhishek Banerjee, national general secretary of TMC, said if his party keeps its door open, the saffron party will collapse, claiming that BJP leaders, mostly MLAs, have been queuing up at the TMC office. "We have kept the doors closed. If the doors are opened, the BJP will surely collapse," he said addressing a rally at Murshidabad district's Samserganj constituency. (With agency inputs) Live TV New Delhi: After taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban have publicly stated that they have completely disassociated themselves from Al-Qaeda, but ground realities are starkly different as there have been sightings of "foreigners" or non-Afghan fighters in their ranks. There is a very clear disconnect between the words of moderate Taliban spokespersons and the reality on the ground. Al-Qaeda praised the Doha agreement as a great victory and celebrated the US withdrawal and the fall of Kabul. In addition to Al-Qaeda, the ISIS-K (ISIS's Afghanistan affiliate) also remains a potent threat, as it always found it difficult to win a major foothold in Afghanistan. With the Talibans take over of the country and indirect benefits to Al-Qaeda, there is mounting pressure on ISIS-K to prove its relevance, which is reportedly forcing them to be more violent and destructive. This is made clear by the deadly Kabul airport attack that took place on August 26. The devastating bomb attack so soon after the Taliban take over was just another reminder that even with the end of the civil war, Afghanistan remains fertile territory for jihadi terrorism. There is a concern of the influx of foreign fighters from neighbouring countries like Pakistan will swell the ranks of jihadist organisations operating in Afghanistan. Colin Clarke, author of "After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Future of the Terrorist Diaspora while speaking to Time magazine stated that the current situation in Afghanistan is like a rising tide lifts all boat situation, adding Theres going to be an influx of jihadi, some are going to go to [Al-Qaeda], and some are going to go to ISIS-K. Almost immediately following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly overpowered the Afghan Security Forces and took over the entire country, and the world is coming to the realization that a ruthless, fundamentalist terrorist group has taken over an entire nation and is well on its way to forming the government. The events of the past month can be roughly traced back to the Doha Agreement signed between the US and the Taliban. The agreement stated that the US would withdraw its ground forces from the country and the Taliban would enter into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Another stipulation was that in the event that the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, it would not allow Afghanistan to be used as a staging ground for terrorist attacks on the US or other nations. While this additional condition seems to be logical there seems to be one flaw that the Taliban can not use Afghanistan as a launchpad for global terror attacks, the agreement does not touch upon the topic of providing a safe haven for other jihadist groups or the need to expel the ones already in Afghanistan. This distinction which was highlighted by Dr Antonio Giustozzi is extremely important because following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the country can now become a safe haven for fundamentalist jihadists from all over the Muslim world and the Taliban would still be able to claim that they are abiding with the Doha Agreement. This would be the worst-case scenario as many countries like India, Russia and the US feared that with the rise of the Taliban, Afghanistan will become a base of groups like Al-Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Already three Jihadist groups, Lashkar-e Taiba, Lashkar-e Jhangvi and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have already signed agreements with the Taliban and have forsaken some of their autonomy to the Taliban. Other more notorious groups are still in negotiations with the Taliban. The last time the Taliban governed Afghanistan was from 1996-2001, and during those years the Taliban provided to not only Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation but numerous other budding terrorist groups as well. During that time, Al-Qaeda's terror training camps became known as a university of terror" and it is estimated that 20,000 jihadists were trained in its camp alone. With the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan after 2 decades, the same situation seems to be repeating itself. The Afghan Taliban have a close relationship with Al-Qaeda. The relationship has reached such an extent that Edmund Fitton-Brown, the coordinator of the UN panel responsible for tracking the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan has stated that the top leadership of Al-Qaeda is still under Taliban protection. According to a UN report, there are 200-500 Al Qaeda fighters spread across the 11 Afghan provinces. According to Rita Katz, the executive director of the Site Intelligence Group, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is one of the biggest boosts and game-changer for Al-Qaeda and Muslim fundamentalist jihadist groups since 9/11. The Taliban takeover is the biggest boost to Al Qaeda since 9/11 and a global game-changer for jihadism generally, said Rita Katz in an interview with The New Yorker. Although the Taliban will be relatively busy trying to secure the funds and govern a country, the same does not apply to other terrorist organisations that now have a safe haven to rest and launch their attacks. For the past 20 years, the western countries had relied on the Afghan intelligence service and its network of human informants, but now following the Taliban takeover, the western countries and other nations are essentially blind about the internal workings of Afghanistan allowing jihadists to set up safe havens and training camps. The Jihadists have used the media and their spokespersons to send a moderate message and reiterate that they are the Taliban 2.0 which will form an inclusive government, not take revenge on collaborators of the previous regime and give rights to girls. But one must not forget that the Taliban have many faces. They are trying very hard to appeal to the international community because they are in desperate need of humanitarian aid and funds, and that is why they seem to be making lofty promises. The Talibans promises, however, are as fickle as the rain and should always be taken with a grain of salt. The Taliban claims to have stopped cooperating with Al-Qaeda, but in reality, they are still shielding Al-Qaeda leaders. Taliban spokesperson promised an inclusive government but there have been no steps taken in that direction. They promised rights for girls but women and girls have not been allowed to return to work or schools. The deal of not allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for global terrorist activity is also most likely a veil to cover the truth of an Afghanistan filled with terrorist training camps and drug production fields in order to fund terror activities. The international community and especially the neighbouring countries must not hastily recognize the Taliban and hold it accountable. Live TV Chennai: Top Australian government officials, representatives of the Australian Space Agency and entrepreneurs expressed interest towards an active bilateral cooperation with India in the Space sector. This gains significance given how Australia is planning on tripling its Space Economy by 2030 and Indias recent reforms to permit end-to-end private participation in space activities, besides the ongoing plan to permit Foreign Direct Investment in the Space sector. In a discussion facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industry, top officials from the Indian and Australian Space agencies and industry representatives discussed the Commercial Opportunities across the Aus-India Space Ecosystem. Speaking at the event, Australian High Commissioner to India, Barry OFarrell AO, said he wanted to see Australian and Indian firms partner and grow together. He welcomed Indias planned revisions to FDI norms in the space sector, saying this could be a real game-changer for bilateral commercial space collaboration. On Australias advantages, he said our geographical position in the southern hemisphere, wide-open spaces and relatively low light pollution, make us a natural partner for India. We also have expertise to offer in satellite tech, earth observation, leapfrog R&D, comms, robotics and remote asset management. He also recalled the Ind-Aus cooperation in space, which dates back to 1987. Sreerekha, Assistant Scientific Secretary, ISRO, said that ISRO was in the process of bringing out Industry-friendly policies and also assured that the Draft policy would be made available for public consultation. Regarding the FDI Policy for space, she added that it would soon be made available, thus enabling foreign firms to invest in all areas of space. According to Karl Rodrigues, an official of the Australian Space Agency, it was projected that the Australian Space Economy would see a three-fold growth to $12bn by 2030 and employ as many as 20,000 people. He also said that Australia would be returning to space by performing commercial rocket launches and also via collaborative missions to put Australian satellites in lunar orbit or probes on the lunar surface. Though Australia has been involved in space activities for a long time, it is notable that the Australian Space Agency was established barely three years ago and they dont yet have a standalone, independent space-faring programme. So far, they have been collaborating with and supporting other agencies and countries to jointly perform missions. However, Peter Williams, of Southern Launch said that the Australian government recently approved the first commercial rocket launch from the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex, of their company. This is an important outcome in establishing Australias commercial launch capability and demonstrating what our country can offer international rocket manufacturers and their payload customers he added. Indian entrepreneur Awais Ahmed, CEO, Pixxel mentioned about the prospects of their constellation of Hyperspectral imaging satellites that could collect vast amounts of data, which can be used for studying agriculture, pest infestation, emissions, impact on forests etc. Pixxel was looking at Australia to further expand its global network, and explore partnerships with Australian data application providers to help develop a user-friendly interface for end-users in the agricultural and mining sectors he added. When asked about the reasons why Indian firms had to invest in Australia, given the low costs at home and high-costs in Australia, an Australian representative acknowledged the cost advantage in India and also pointed out their country's capability in terms of processes, systems engineering, components, robotics, optical technologies, laser, AI etc. "There are a lot of complementary skills and talent, Aus-India can work together for developing low-cost and high-performance systems and even joint missions" it was added. Entrepreneurs from India and Australia agreed that, given the high investment in developing space capabilities, the respective Governments had to provide access to capital, which would enable more innovation and foster an ecosystem for Space technology. Also Read: Explained: What ISROs latest MoU with startups mean for Indias space industry Live TV Samastipur: A court here has awarded life sentence to 14 persons for the murder of a local journalist more than a decade ago. Vikas Ranjan, who worked for a Hindi daily, was shot dead on November 25, 2008 while he was coming out of his office in Rosera sub-division of the district. Life imprisonment was awarded on Wednesday by Additional District and Sessions Judge Rajiv Ranjan Sahay, who had on September 15 convicted all 14 in the case. According to the prosecution, the conspiracy to get the scribe killed was hatched by his cousins over a land dispute. Those sentenced by the court include Swayamvar Yadav, who is at present a block president of the Lok Janshakti Party and mukhiya of Mahuli panchayat. Krishna Kumar Yadav, another convict who is said to have pulled the trigger, is already in jail in connection with a separate murder case. Live TV New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj on Thursday alleged that the BJP is lying to the people of Delhi by saying MCD has reduced house tax, and several licence fees. He said they havent done it. AAPs NDMC Leader of Opposition had written to the NDMC Commissioner seeking accountability of the BJPs claims, who in turn refuted all the claims saying nothing as such has been implemented, Bhardwaj said. Bhardwaj said that the BJP-ruled MCD is functioning like a Khap Panchayat and is selling lies to people. He said, BJP increased several licence fees by 17-25 times last year and is now putting up posters saying theyve reduced them, when they have actually done nothing. He added that BJP had put up such posters all over Delhi before Lok Sabha elections too but made people pay the fees after elections. Bhardwaj asked Delhi BJP President Adesh Gupta why he was putting up posters to congratulate himself for reducing taxes in Delhi when in reality the taxes have not been rolled back. Saurabh Bhardwaj said, The BJP-ruled MCD is functioning like a Khap-Panchayat. There is no rule of law and order. There is no credibility in their functioning. They do whatever they feel like. In fact, theyve become experts in getting fake news published in the media. The BJP-ruled MCD did not miss any opportunity to loot the innocent and hardworking people of Delhi. We had earlier informed how the MCD is increasing House Tax, Factory Licence Fee, General Trade Licence Fee, Health Trade Licence Fee and Food Trade Licence Fee. Taxes are being increased for rental and commercial properties too. They brought a proposal in the Standing Committee and ended up increasing the taxes. The MCD hiked the Factory Licence Fees to make it almost 20 times as high as it was. In the pandemic, when everyone is rolling back such fees, they have the guts to increase it a staggering 20 times. Similarly, General Trade Licence Fees was increased by 17 to 25 times. On one hand, people are stressed about the loss of business, on the other they doubled the property tax on commercial properties. A year later, in August 2021, they got articles published saying all these fee hikes have been rolled back. They said theyve rolled back all these licence fees, and also house tax for plots up to 50 square yards, he added. Bhardwaj further went ahead to show a handful of news pieces that were published on the issue. Throughout North Delhi, they put up boards and advertisements blowing their own trumpets, citing their move as a historic gift. Delhi BJP President Adesh Gupta is congratulating himself on reducing the taxes that he only had increased a year back. They have no credibility at all. They just keep getting fake news published everywhere. AAPs NDMC Leader of Opposition had submitted 10 questions seeking accountability for their announcements. On asking whether Factory Trade Licence Fees had been reduced, he was told that the fees hadnt been reduced. Similarly, house tax also wasn't decreased, and neither were any other fees. All the announcements they made have been refuted on paper. Thats not it, they had put up boards all over the markets of Delhi thanking the PM for reducing Conversion Fees and Parking Fees. But once the elections were done, they made all the shopkeepers pay Conversion Fees and Parking Fees. Were seeing the same happen now. They are misleading the people of Delhi, selling them absolute lies. The NDMC Commissioner has given in writing that no such thing that was promised by them has been implemented, he said. Live TV Bengaluru: A cab driver of an app-based aggregator, 25, was arrested in Bengaluru after a woman passenger filed a complaint of rape. The woman, a hotel employee, was taken to a city hospital for medical tests after an FIR was registered. The accused also underwent medical test. The police said that the incident took place after 3.40 am when the woman took the cab which she booked from her friends place at HSR Layout to her house at Murugeshpalya. As per media reports, the woman fell asleep on the way home. I had met my friends in an apartment in HSR Layout on Tuesday night. After partying with them, I decided to return to my apartment. I was alone. I booked the cab through the app around 3.30am and it arrived at 3.40am, the woman was quoted as saying by the Times of India. The cab driver was arrested from his house in Avalahalli. During interrogation, the cab driver - who had reortedly come to Bengaluru in 2019 to look for a job - has denied the allegations and told the police that they had a fight over payment, but he never touched her. Live TV New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate unearthed a chit fund scam case in which people were being duped of money they invested for online trading through some private individuals. As it turned out, the accused running the scheme were investing the money as recurring deposits in a jewellery shop. The ED seized 11 immovable properties worth Rs 1.01 crore in Ranchi, Latehar and Garhwa districts of Jharkhand belonging to DJN Jewellers represented by various individuals. Enforcement Directorate has taken possession of 11 immovable properties worth Rs. 1.01 Crore belonging to M/s DJN Jewellers Pvt. Ltd., represented through Jeetendra Mohan Sinha (CMD of DJN Group), Vipin Kumar Sinha, Ram Kishun Thakur and Vishal Kumar Sinha in a case of Chit Fund Scam. The properties are in the form of Flat, Shop and plots situated at Ranchi, Latehar and Garhwa district, the agency said in a statement. ED had earlier attached assets worth Rs 1.66 crore on December 31, 2019. The agency initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of FIR and chargesheet filed by Ranchi Police against Jeetendra Mohan Sinha and others. The investigation revealed that Sinha conspired with other proprietors and directors to cheat the investors and developed software in the name DJN Commodities for conducting offline trading. DJN Commodities was collecting public deposits offline in the name of conducting online trading with the promise to offer return at high rate of interest per month, the ED noted. It further said that the accused persons created an ingenious scheme of recurring deposits in a jewellery shop to dupe the innocent investors and to rob their hard-earned money. Also Read: Massive bank scam: CBI books private firm, others in Rs 1528 crore fraud case involving 16 banks Live TV New Delhi: In order to make COVID-19 vaccine more accessible, the Centre on Thursday (September 23) said that differently-abled people and those with restricted mobility will be inoculated at their homes. Addressing a press conference, Niti Aayog Member Health Dr V K Paul said, I am pleased to inform that an advisory has been issued to make arrangements for 'vaccination at home' for those who have disabilities or are differently challenged, in line with COVID SOPs. I am pleased to inform that an advisory has been issued to make arrangements for 'vaccination at home' for those who have disabilities or are differently challenged, in line with COVID SOPs: Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog pic.twitter.com/dporNW9dEL ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 The Union Health Ministry officials warned that the country is still in the midst of the second wave of COVID-19 even though the number of daily new cases is declining. Thirty-three districts in the country are now reporting over 10 per cent weekly positivity rate, while 23 are recording between 5-10 per cent, the officials said. The Health Ministry informed that 66 per cent of the country's adult population has been administered at least one dose while 23 per cent is fully vaccinated. A total of 68.2 lakh doses (approximately 0.95 per cent) has been administered at Covid vaccination centres not tagged as rural or urban, they said. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that six states and union territories including Lakshadweep, Chandigarh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Sikkim have vaccinated all eligible citizens with the first dose. Four states/UTs have more than 90% coverage of first dose - these are Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Kerala, Ladakh and Uttarakhand, he added. Commenting on the UK rule of 10-day quarantine for those vaccinated in India, Bhushan said, Dispensation that is to be implemented from Oct 4 is a discriminatory practice. Both sides are in dialogue and we believe a quick resolution will be found. We do reserve the right to reciprocate similarly. Amid huge outcry, the UK on Wednesday amended its guidelines to include the Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine in its updated international travel advisory. However, even after Covishields inclusion, the officials added that fully vaccinated Indian travellers will still have to undergo 10 days of quarantine in the UK notwithstanding the amendment. (With agency input) Live TV New Delhi: The Defence Ministry on Thursday sealed a contract to procure 118 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) Arjun for the Indian Army at a cost of Rs 7,523 crore, in a major move to boost its combat capabilities. The defence ministry placed the order for the Arjuna Mk-1A tanks with the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF), Avadi, Chennai. The MBT Mk-1A is a new variant of Arjun Tank designed to enhance fire power, mobility and survivability, infused with 72 new features and more indigenous content from the Mk-1 variant. "The Ministry of Defence (MoD) placed an order with Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF), Avadi, Chennai for supply of 118 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) Arjun Mk-1A for the Indian Army on September 23," the ministry said in a statement. "The order, worth Rs 7,523 crore, will provide further boost to the 'Make in India' initiative in defence sector and is a big step towards achieving 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'," it said. The ministry said the tanks would ensure effortless mobility in all terrains, besides precise target engagement during day and night. It has been designed and developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) by incorporating numerous upgrades on Arjun MBT, the in-service main battle tank with the Indian Army. "The MK-1A is equipped with accurate and superior firepower, all-terrain mobility and an invincible multi-layered protection provided by an array of advanced technology systems. It can take on the enemy during day and night conditions and in both static and dynamic modes," the ministry said. It said the production order to Heavy Vehicles Factory will open up a large avenue in defence manufacturing for over 200 Indian vendors including MSMEs, with employment opportunities to around 8,000 people. "This will be a flagship project showcasing the indigenous capability in cutting edge defence technologies," the ministry said. It said the MBT Arjun Mk-1A has been designed and developed by Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE), along with other laboratories of DRDO within two years (2010-12). "The development activities commenced from June 2010 and the tank was fielded for user trials in June 2012. It took only two years to develop and field the MBT Arjun Mk-1A for user trials from the user requirement," the ministry said. "Extensive trial evaluation was conducted in various phases covering 7000 plus kms (both in DRDO and user trials) of automotive and substantial firing of various ammunition during 2012-2015," it said. Ranchi: The CBI, which is probing the death case of Dhanbad judge Uttam Anand, told the Jharkhand High Court on Thursday that the autorickshaw driver, who has been apprehended in this connection, intentionally hit him with his three-wheeler. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), during the hearing of the case on a virtual platform, said a probe is underway to find out who all are involved in the conspiracy. The 49-year-old district judge was allegedly mowed down by a heavy autorickshaw while he was out jogging near Randhir Verma Chowk in Dhanbad on the morning of July 28. CBI zonal joint director Sharad Agarwal submitted before the court that his death was not a case of accident. Agarwal appeared before the division bench of Chief Justice Ravi Ranjan and Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad and said that officers of the agency are working round the clock to uncover the truth behind the incident. The bench observed that the case has shaken the morale of the judiciary. Time is the essence of this investigation, it said. The more time is spent, harder it will be to ascertain the truth, the bench stated. Agarwal further said that the autorickshaw driver, Lakhan Verma, had earlier committed mobile thefts. Verma has been changing his statements every now and then, but the agency is doing everything to reach to the depth of the matter, the CBI zonal joint director said. The police had initially taken up the investigation into the death case, with the Dhanbad SSP and DGP assuring the court of a speedy inquiry. The government later decided to recommend a CBI probe into the matter. The CBI then took up the matter on August 4, with the high court monitoring the progress in its investigation. The central agency had been submitting sealed reports to the court on the status of the probe into the case. Ranchi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday submitted a progress report on the alleged murder of Dhanbad Additional District Judge (ADJ) Uttam Anand. The High Court has expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of the agency`s investigation and said that the delay in the matter was affecting the morale of the judicial officers. During the hearing in the Court, advocate Dheeraj Kumar said, "Expressing disappointment over the progress report filed by the CBI, the Jharkhand High Court asked the CBI to expedite the investigations as the delay in resolving the case has lowered the morale of judicial officers." In the last hearing, the Court had directed the zonal director of CBI to appear in the Court. Today, the Zonal Director appeared before the Court through video conferencing and informed about the progress of the case. "The CBI zonal director informed the court that the CBI team is working on the case and all suspects are being interrogated thoroughly. The CBI also informed the Court that it is trying to find out whether the judge was hit by the auto-rickshaw intentionally, or it was an accident. All aspects are being taken into consideration," Dheeraj Kumar told ANI. The agency has submitted a progress report before the court and informed the judge about the incident. "All four reports conclusively suggest that the judge was intentionally hit," CBI informed the court. Further, CBI sources told ANI that, "The agency has engaged four different forensic expert teams in connection with alleged Dhanbad judge murder case. CCTV footage, 3D analysis of crime footage, crime scene recreations were examined by four forensic teams." The investigating agency is also taking digital and scientific help to expedite the alleged murder case. "The report from DFS Gandhinagar on the brain mapping and narco analysis are being examined. The investigation on the motive and conspiracy is on," sources said.The Supreme Court took up the case on its own on July 30. The case was then handed to the CBI, which took over August 4. Live TV New Delhi: In developed countries like the US and the UK, people who get vaccinated against COVID-19 are given a hand-written paper certificate. India has a much more robust system in place. Here, people get digital vaccination certificates instantly through CoWIN. It is needless to stress that digital records are far more secure and reliable than hand-written ones. But the UK has refused to recognize Indias vaccine certificates. What is this if not discrimination! Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Thursday (September 23) called out the UKs discriminatory policy on recognition of vaccine certificates and travel guidelines when it comes to India. He compared the vaccination certification process of India to that of the US and the UK. India is presently running the largest digital vaccination drive through CoWIN platform. It is also vaccinating its citizens fastest in the world. Despite such a mammoth population, India has been conducting the drive in a very efficient manner, thanks to its digital prowess. CoWIN is a licensed product of the Government of India. As many as 76 countries of the world want to use this technology. India has vaccinated more than 7 crore people in just the last 6 days, while the entire population of Britain is only 6 crore. India is not only rapidly vaccinating its citizens, but people also get a digital certificate of vaccination in India. Within a few minutes after getting jabbed, a digital certificate is sent to the mobile phone of the beneficiary which can be easily downloaded. On the other hand, in the UK, people get the digital certificate after two weeks of getting the vaccine and that too only after applying for it. The same is the case with the US. There also, the vaccination information is given in a hand-written note. There is no provision for digital certificates. In India, one can see the real-time data of vaccination on the CoWIN portal. But countries like the US and the UK do not have this facility. In fact, there are only seven states in the US where there are mobile apps to track records of COVID-19 vaccination. As many as 22 states of the country have banned such apps. Yet, the UK recognises the vaccination certificate of people coming from the US but forces the people of India to quarantine on arrival. Moreover, The UK has now recognised vaccine certificates of smaller countries in terms of population such as Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, and Malaysia. But it doubts the massive vaccination programme of India. India has lodged a strong protest against the UKs discriminatory policy. Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the Global COVID Summit that the countries of the world should think about making international travel easier and give recognition to one anothers vaccine certificates. The UK must heed to this. It should come out of its colonial mindset and give the respect that is due to India by recognising the digital vaccine certificates. Live TV New Delhi: The day Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached the US on a three-day visit, BJPs Foreign Affairs Department In-charge Vijay Chauthaiwale stressed the need for the two countries to work together. Highlighting the global issues such as drug trafficking, global extremism and terrorism, particularly in the context of Afghanistan, Chauthaiwale said that these challenges were not just before India but for the entire world. He called for close cooperation between India and the US to deal with these issues. Issues like drug trafficking, global extremism, terrorism (in Afghanistan) are challenging not just for India, but for the entire world. Therefore, it's important for both India and US to work in tandem on these issues, Chauthaiwale was quoted as saying by ANI. The BJP leader further underlined the importance of the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world by India and the US. He hailed Indias recent decision to resume its vaccine maitre initiative. In an important development pertaining to COVID, India has decided to resume vaccine export, while America announced to make 500 million vaccine doses available for free to the world. He said. Just a day ago, PM Modi, before leaving for the US, called for international cooperation in recognising the vaccine certificates. He asserted that international travel should be made easier through mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccine certificates. In a video message at the Global COVID Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden, PM Modi also said that India is ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines, pointing out that the supply chains of raw materials must be kept open so that vaccine supplies to other countries can be resumed. Live TV Bandipora: The Bandipora police on Thursday (September 23) arrested Asadullah Parray from Hajin, who was heading a recruitment cum terror module of Lashkar-e Toiba outfit. Parray maintained close contact with terrorist handlers across the border and would do their bidding in recruiting young boys in terrorist ranks and arranging weapons and other logistics for them, the police said. The individual has about a dozen PSAs and FIRs lodged against him and spent a good part of the previous decade in custody, they added. In the current instance, Asadullah Parray enlisted the help and was actively abetted in running the module by his nephew Naseer Ahmed Parray from Hajin, Haseena from Sheeri, Khursheed from Naidkhai and others. The group was in continuous contact across the border and would receive detailed instructions for their day-to-day activities. Apart from recruiting individuals and arranging arms and ammunition for them, the group was also involved in motivating youth to carry out petrol bombs on government buildings and protected persons and carrying out recce of potential targets. A huge quantity of incendiary materials was recovered from them which was to be used for making petrol bombs. On the disclosures made by the accused two individuals, Rafeeq and Hilal Ahmed Shah, who were about to join terrorist ranks at the instance of this group have been detained and are being questioned. In this regard, further investigation is underway and more arrests are expected. Live TV Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has commended the Indian Diaspora for distinguishing itself across the world, as he received an enthusiastic welcome from the community on his arrival here on a major visit to further enhance Indo-US relations. PM Narendra Modi was warmly greeted by groups of Indian-Americans at the airport soon after his plane landed here on Wednesday and later at the hotel where he had an interaction with the members of the community. Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength, PM Modi said in a tweet along with a set of pictures of his interaction with Indian-American CEOs. It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world, PM Modi said. Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength. It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world. pic.twitter.com/6cw2UR2uLH Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 22, 2021 One of the signature events of Prime Minister Modi's overseas visits has been his meetings with the diaspora community in large gatherings. However, due to the current COVID-19 situation, the prime minister is unlikely to have a large gathering or meeting with the diaspora. PM Modi has been popular among Indian-Americans, who constitute more than 1.2 per cent of the country's population. The community is increasingly playing an important role, including in American politics. PM Modi, who is visiting the US for the 7th time after assuming office in 2014, has said that his visit would be an occasion to strengthen the Indo-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and consolidate ties with Japan and Australia. Apart from meeting US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, PM Modi is also scheduled to have separate bilateral talks with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Live TV Srinagar: The Army killed three heavily armed terrorists on Thursday (September 23) thwarting an infiltration bid near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district. This is the second infiltration bid in the last one week in Uri sector after five-day combing operation was called off. This was disclosed in a joint press conference of the Army and police by GOC 15 Corps Lieutenant General D P Pandey. Pandey said, Today morning, alert troops spotted a group of infiltrators in the Hathlanga area of Uri sector. They were challenged and three militants were killed. The September 18 bid was foiled and the militants were pushed back. The Commanding Officer of the operation, while briefing the media men through video-conferencing said, "Today morning, army spotted a group of militants in Hathlanga area of Uri at 6 am. Surveillance was enhanced and the group was challenged. Three militants were killed after a brief exchange of fire." Further, he said that the three killed terrorists were carrying huge quantity of arms and ammunition that included five AK-47 riffles, seven pistols, 5 AK magazines, 24 UBGl grenades, 38 Chinese grenades, seven Pakistan made grenades, Rs 35000 Pakistani currency and some edibles. Lieutenant General further said, We have found documents which reveal one of them is a Pakistani but we arent sure about the rest of two. We will see and let you know about which organization they belong to." He added, "Army is alert and that we were anticipating change in the behavior of Pakistan in the month of September and expecting infiltration ahead of the onset of winter. We are ready to foil all bids." Pandey informed, "We have credible inputs about lot of activities on launch pads and thats what we saw today and on 18th. And those activities cant take place without the hand of local army (Pakistani) commanders." In addition, he said, We are deployed with adequate forces on the ground. In terms of behavior, we had appreciated this in September and October. We suspended internet to break contact of terrorists with local handlers. On 18th night there was an attempt to infiltrate. There were six, 4 were on their side and two had crossed. Its a rugged terrain, we pressure two went back. To verify, we took an intense search. And now after area is fully sanitised we have called off the Operation." Live TV Srinagar: One terrorist has been killed in the encounter that broke out between security forces and terrorists in Chitragam village of Shopian district in south Kashmir on Thursday (September 23, 2021). Kashmir zone police tweeted, #Encounter has started at Kashwa area of #Shopian. Police & Security Forces are on the job. Further details shall follow. @JmuKmrPolice. #Encounter has started at Kashwa area of #Shopian. Police & Security Forces are on the job. Further details shall follow. @JmuKmrPolice Kashmir Zone Police (@KashmirPolice) September 23, 2021 A top security official said that during the initial exchange of gunfire, one terrorist has been killed in the fight. The security forces were acting on a specific input about the presence of terrorists in the village, following which a joint cordon and search operation was launched by Jammu Kashmir police, Army and CRPF, the officer said. As the joint searching party cordoned the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired upon the searching part and that was retaliated and an encounter started, the officer added. Additionally, the sources in the police said that as per the input, 2-3 terrorists are trapped in the cordon. However, the actual number can only be told once the operation is over. Live TV Pune: In a shocking case in Maharashtra, the husband and father-in-law of a woman were arrested for alleged sexual harrasment and trying to force the woman to drink chicken's blood! As per media reports, the duo were following the instructions of a self-proclaimed godman. A case has also been registered against her mother-in-law, Hindustan Times reported. The woman, 33, siad that her husband is impotent, a fact that was hidden from her by her in-laws at the time of marriage. The victim also alleged that her father-in-law tried to force himself upon her to impregnate her. When she shared with her relatives the fact about husband's impotence, she was physically assaulted by her in-laws, claims media reports. Also read: Cab driver arrested for allegedly raping woman passenger in Bangalore He is a diploma engineer and she has a bachelors degree. They have been living separately for the past four months after being married since December 30, 2018. We will investigate all claims made in the complaint. We have arrested the two, Inspector Jitendra Kadam of Bhosari police station told Hindustan Times (HT). The woman has complained to the cops that she was mentally and physically abused by her in-laws since 2018. A case under Sections 498(a), 354(a), 323, 504, 506, and 34 of Indian Penal Code, reported HT, along with Section 3 of Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013 was registered at Bhosari police station. Live TV New Delhi: On the occasion of Sign Language Day on Thursday (September 23, 2021), the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC), an autonomous body within the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment will embark on celebrations at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi. Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment, Dr. Virendra Kumar will be the Chief Guest and Ministers of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, Km. PratimaBhoumik and Shri A. Narayanswami will be the Guests of Honour. Smt. Anjali Bhawra, Secretary, DEPwD, Sh. Santosh Sarangi, Additional Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education and Dr. Prabodh Seth, Joint Secretary, DEPwD& Director, ISLRTC, Sh. V. Gopala Krishnan, General Secretary, All Indian Federation of Deaf will also grace the occasion. The Ministry in a press release said that ever since the United Nations declared September 23 as the International Sign Language Day, the ISLRTC has celebrated it every year. The objective of the program is to sensitize the general public about the importance of Indian sign languages, and the information and communication accessibility for persons with hearing disabilities. Sign language not only plays an important role in educating people but also is vital in creating employment and vocational training for persons with hearing disabilities. During the event, the Centre will present a documentary on the `Indian Sign Language Journey`, and also announce the winners of the 4th Indian Sign Language Competition, 2021 - a national-level competition held for students with hearing disabilities. The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment is also likely to hold live interactions with some of the winners from various parts of India to share their experiences. ISLRTC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on October 6, 2020, for converting NCERT textbooks from Class I to XII into Indian Sign Language (digital format) to make the textbooks accessible to children with hearing disabilities. The first phase of the project for the conversion of Class I to V textbooks has been completed and e-Content thereof will be launched during the programme. (With ANI inputs) Live TV New Delhi: The Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police Gautam Sawang on Thursday (September 23) reiterated that there's no link to the state with that of the huge drugs seizure in Mundra port, Gujarat. Rejecting claims of opposition TDP and media, the DGP said the case is linked to Chennai and that the Vijayawada office address of the accused in the case has been shut for the last seven years. He added that he was in touch with the central agencies on the issue. Notably, days after seizing about 3000 kg heroin valued at around Rs 21,000 crore in a shipping consignment that arrived at Gujarats Mundra port, the investigative agencies have arrested several persons including an Indian couple. The couple - M Sudhakar and his wife Durga Vaishali - was arrested from Chennai. They allegedly ran Aashi Trading Company registered in Andhra Pradeshs Vijayawada. The firm had allegedly imported the consignment of talc stones'. The drugs consignment was imported under the guise of semi-processed talc stones. The DRI had detained two containers carrying the huge cache of drugs on September 13 for examination that had arrived at Mundra Port from Kandhar, Afghanistan via Bandar Abbas, Iran. Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is all set to begin a money-laundering investigation into the recent seizure of a record nearly 3,000 kg heroin from two containers at Gujarat`s Mundra port. Live TV Washington: On the itinerary-packed first day of his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold meetings with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison, US Vice President Kamala Harris and the select heads of corporates that have the potential to invest significantly in India. According to sources, Prime Minister Modi will start his day by meeting with select heads of corporates in the United States. The CEOs will include the heads of Qualcomm, Adobe, Blackstone, General Atomics and First Solar. The Prime Minister reached Washington on Wednesday local time. "Prime Minister will start the day with meetings with select heads of corporates in the United States I think these are CEOs that represent fairly large corporate interests, companies that have particular expertise and invested in India and has the potential to invest significantly in India," the source added. "They represent diverse areas from technology, the IT sector to finance to defence to renewable energy. I think it is a very good mix of CEOs, that would be meeting Prime Minister Modi on a one-to-one basis, investments in the United States have been very important and very significant in India`s recent development activities in line with our major economic initiatives, the flagship program. In particular what we call Make in India," the source further added. On Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to meet Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The official said that Prime Minister Modi is looking forward to meeting Prime Minister Morrison on a range of issues. "In the afternoon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. They have met on a number of occasions on the sidelines of various international conferences, Prime Minister Morrison recently called Prime Minister Modi to brief him about the plan to go ahead with the AUKUS Alliance," he said. "And I think, you know this meeting has been long overdue because Prime Minister Morrison was to visit India in January last year but he couldn`t be here, he could not make it because of the fairly severe fires at that time in parts of Australia. He was then supposed to come in May last year but because of the COVID situation he could not make it," the source added. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24, this is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Ahead of leaving for the US to participate in Quad Leaders` Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said his visit will be an occasion to strengthen the strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia. He will then come to the White House where he will meet Vice President Kamala Harris in her ceremonial office. The discussion on issues is expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides. "We have allocated one hour for the discussions and discussions are expected to range from a number of issues of interest to both sides, from the management of COVID-19 to issues like cooperation in the high-tech sector the space sector, where the Vice President has an interest and owned a number of areas including the resilient and secure supply chain are something that both sides have great interest in," he said. Live TV New Delhi: The Union government and the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) told the Delhi High Court that the Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situation Fund (PM-CARES Fund), a charitable trust under the law, is not a fund of the Government of India. The Centre also added that the PM-CARES fund can neither be brought under the ambit of Right to Information (RTI) Act as a public authority nor can it be listed as a State. The statement came in response to the pleas in the court seeking to know the legal status of the PM-CARES fund. The Centre in an affidavit told a bench of chief justice DN Patel and Jyoti Singh that the fund was set up as a public charitable trust, and not created by or under the Constitution of India. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the Centre, while opposing the pleas, told the court that the fund was neither intended to be or owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Union government, any state government, or any instrumentality of any government. PM CARES Fund comprises voluntary donations made by individuals and institutions and is not a part of business or function of the central government in any manner. PM CARES Fund is not a part of any government scheme or business of the central government and being a public trust, it is also not subject to audit of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), it stated. that PM CARES Fund is not a public authority under the ambit of Section 2(h) of the RTI Act and therefore the present petition is liable to be dismissed, the Centre said in its affidavit submitted on September 14, 2020, adding, there is no control of either the central government or any state government/s, either direct or indirect, in functioning of the Trust in any manner whatsoever, it added. Additionally, a lawyer Samyak Gangwal sought to declare the PM CARES Fund a State under the Constitution, believing that this will ensure transparency in its functioning. The matter was scheduled to be heard on Wednesday but was not taken up. The next date of hearing is September 27. It may be noted that the PM-CARES fund was created by the Prime Minister of India on March 27, 2020 to extend assistance to the people in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, it faced a lot of resistance from activists, lawyers and the political parties who had questioned the transparency of the donations. Live TV Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached United States for his three-day visit, and received a warm welcome from the members of the Indian community at Joint Base Andrews in Washington DC. He was received at the airport by senior officials of the Biden Administration and India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Despite heavy rains since early in the morning, a significant number of Indian Americans were also there at the Andrews Joint Airforce Base to welcome the Prime Minister. "During my visit, I will review the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with President Biden and exchansge views on regional and global issues of mutual interest," Modi had said just before leaving for the US. But even before he actually got to the US, he was busy working during his flight. "A long flight also means opportunities to go through papers and some file work," the prime minister posted on Instagram. At the Quad summit along with Biden, Morrison and Suga, Modi will take stock of the progress made by the group since their virtual meeting in March and plan on extending their reach in the Indo-Pacific region, which has become important in US geopolitical strategy to face a confrontational China,. "We elevated the Quad partnership among Australia, India, Japan and the United States to take on challenges ranging from health security to climate to emerging technologies, engaging with regional institutions," Biden said on Tuesday at the UN. This is the first in-person summit of the Quad. Modi is also expected to meet with business leaders and investors to pitch his "Make in India" initiative. During his visit, he will address the UN General Assembly and attend the Quad leaders Summit as well as hold a bilateral meet with US President Joe Biden at the White House. Biden will host PM Modi at the White House on September 24, this is going to be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders after Biden took over as the US President on January 20. Ahead of leaving for the US to participate in Quad Leaders` Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also said his visit will be an occasion to strengthen the strategic partnership with the United States, Japan and Australia. (With Agency inputs) Live TV Washington DC: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (September 23) met with the CEOs of the top technology companies of the United States in Washington DC. He discussed a wide range of technology-related issues including 5G, start-up and Digital India, the PMO said in a tweet. The prime minister had a productive interaction with Cristiano R Amon, the President and CEO of electronic major Qualcomm, the PMO said. President and CEO of @Qualcomm, @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts, the PMO tweeted. Talking technology... President and CEO of @Qualcomm, @cristianoamon and PM @narendramodi had a productive interaction. PM Modi highlighted the vast opportunities India offers. Mr. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G and other @_DigitalIndia efforts. pic.twitter.com/kKcaXhpFtB PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 23, 2021 Following the meeting, Amon said he was proud to have a partnership with India. It was a great meeting. We're so proud of a partnership with India. We talked about 5G and its acceleration. We talked about an incredible opportunity to advance the industry not only domestically in India but India as an exporter of technology, Amon was quoted as saying by ANI. We spoke on semiconductors which is an important topic of conversation. We spoke on the opportunity to continue to build an incredible mobile ecosystem developing in India. We're happy with everything we're doing together with India, he added. Modi also met Adobe Chairman Shantanu Narayen. The two discussed smart education for youngsters and enhancement in the field of research, said the PMO. Mr. Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President and CEO of @Adobe met PM @narendramodi. Discussions focussed on leveraging technology to provide smart education to youngsters and enhance research. They also discussed the vibrant start-up sector in India, powered by the Indian youth. pic.twitter.com/oNTY95nrV0 PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 23, 2021 Also Read: On first day of US visit, PM Narendra Modi to meet Kamala Harris, Australian PM, global CEOs Live TV New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a US visit, paid tributes to legendary Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar on his birth anniversary, saying his poems that showed the way to the country and society will remain a source of inspiration for every generation. In a tweet in Hindi on Thursday (September 23), PM Modi said, "Tributes to 'Rashtrakavi' Ramdhari Singh Dinkar ji on his birth anniversary. His poems which showed the way to the country and society will remain a source of inspiration for every generation." - Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2021 Born at Simariya in Bihar in 1908, Dinkar's poetry was considered inspirational during the freedom struggle, and his work remained a source of motivation for politicians and others, including during the movement against Emergency. The former Rajya Sabha member died in 1974. Notably, PM Modi is visiting the US for the 7th time after assuming office in 2014. According to him, the visit would be an occasion to strengthen the Indo-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and consolidate ties with Japan and Australia. Apart from meeting US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, PM Modi is also scheduled to have separate bilateral talks with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. He was warmly greeted by groups of Indian-Americans at the airport soon after his plane landed here on Wednesday and later at the hotel where he had an interaction with the members of the community. "Grateful to the Indian community in Washington DC for the warm welcome. Our diaspora is our strength," Modi said in a tweet along with a set of pictures of his interaction with Indian-American CEOs, adding "It is commendable how the Indian diaspora has distinguished itself across the world." (With Agency Inputs) Live TV New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plane en route to the United States flew over the Pakistan airspace on Wednesday after the neighbouring country gave permission for the aircraft, according to sources. There was no official confirmation from the government on whether the prime minister's aircraft flew over the Pakistan airspace, but sources confirmed that the route included Pakistan airspace. According to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the plane -- Boeing 777-337 (ER) -- took off from the national capital at a little past 11.40 am and the route shows it flying over Pakistan and Iran, among other countries. The sources said the permission came late from Pakistan authorities for the prime minister's plane to fly over its airspace. In case, permission was not given, there was an alternative plan for the prime minister and his entourage to make a stop at Frankfurt and then proceed to the US, they added. In October 2019, Pakistan had denied India's request to use its airspace for Modi's flight to Saudi Arabia. The same year in September also, Pakistan had denied overflight clearance for the prime minister's aircraft. Modi emplaned for the US on Wednesday morning. His office tweeted a picture of him just before boarding the plane for the US where he will take part in a wide range of programmes. PM @narendramodi emplanes for USA, where he will take part in a wide range of programmes, hold talks with world leaders including @POTUS @JoeBiden and address the UNGA. pic.twitter.com/ohzDOIvtVd PMO India (@PMOIndia) September 22, 2021 In a statement just before leaving for the US, Modi said he will conclude his visit with an address at the United Nations General Assembly focusing on the pressing global challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to combat terrorism, climate change and other important issues. Live TV Kapurthala: Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Thursday (September 23) said he has asked the state police to reduce his security cover as having so many men to protect him is a "sheer wastage of resources". Overruling the rationale of threat to his life, Channi said he is a "common man" and "brother of every Punjabi". "I am one of you and I don't need an army of 1,000 security personnel to protect me from my own brethren," said Channi during his address at Kapurthala's IK Gujral Punjab Technical University, according to a statement. Channi said he was surprised to learn that after assuming the charge, he had 1,000 security personnel to guard him. Terming it a "sheer wastage of government resources", he said, "This cannot be allowed as what harm my own Punjabis will do to me as I too am a common man like them." The CM also said he was surprised to learn that being the head of the state, he is also entitled to a car as big as a room for comfortable travel. However, he said what peeved him was that Rs 2 crore was spent from taxpayers' money to purchase this car. Channi said this luxury is unwarranted and undesirable as these funds could have been well utilised for the welfare of the public, especially those from weaker and underprivileged sections, according to the statement. The CM said he is a votary of simple living and high thinking, so this VIP culture has to go at all cost. He said, I am not fond of luxurious lifestyle. Rather he is there to serve the Punjabis, the CM said, asking officials to ensure reduction in vehicles constituting his cavalcade. Channi also said he is not a VIP rather a normal Punjabi and anyone can call him anytime on his phone as he is available to serve the people round the clock. Live TV New Delhi: Newly-appointed Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi showed off his Bhangra skills at an event in Kapurthala on Thursday (September 23). In the video shared by news agency ANI, Channi can be seen sharing a stage with dancers dressed in traditional wear and joining them in Bhangra with full enthusiasm. Have a look at the Punjab CMs dance here: #WATCH | Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi breaks into Bhangra at an event in Kapurthala. (Source: Information Public Relations Punjab) pic.twitter.com/4xg7iDKorW ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 Channi, who replaced Amarinder Singh as the Punjab CM, took oath on September 20, along with Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and OP Soni, who were sworn in as deputy chief ministers. The oath-taking ceremony was attended by many top Congress leaders, including Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu. Channi, a three-time MLA from Chamkaur Sahib constituency, is the first Dalit Chief Minister of Punjab. The 16th Punjab CM served as the Technical Education Minister in Captain Amarinder Singh's cabinet. His selection to the top job was marred in controversy as BJP called out Congress recalling that Channis name came up during Me Too. Attacking Rahul Gandhi, BJP leader Amit Malviya, who is its IT department head, tweeted, "Congress's CM pick Charanjit Channi faces action in a 3-year-old MeToo case. He had allegedly sent an inappropriate text to a woman IAS officer in 2018. It was covered up but the case resurfaced when Punjab Women's Commission sent notice. Well done, Rahul." Meanwhile, after his swearing-in ceremony, Channi said his government will work for the welfare of the people of Punjab. The party is supreme, not the CM or the cabinet. The government will work as per the party's ideology, he said at a press conference. To woo the farmers, Channi assured his government will waive the water and electricity bills of the farmers in Punjab. "I have been a Rickshaw puller myself... I won't let anyone hurt the farming sector... I will appeal Centre to repeal black laws. I fully support the farmers' struggle," he told reporters. Channis taking over the CM post becomes significant as Punjab will witness Assembly elections next year. (With agency inputs) Live TV New Delhi: With China`s shadow being a central theme, the Quad has taken a meandering path to its current prominence in the last 17 years. In early 2021, Quad returned to the big stage after a nearly 10-year lull. India, Japan, the US and Australia gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quad in November 2017, to develop a new strategy to keep the critical sea routes in the Indo-Pacific free of any influence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, US President Joe Biden and outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, are meeting on Thursday (September 24) for the first-ever in-person leader level summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in the backdrop of China`s growing economic and military strength and Covid-19. Beginning from its roots in crisis, here is a timeline that captures some of the key moments that have nudged the Quad into a closer embrace: 2004: The earliest framework for the Quad surfaced when the US, Japan, India and Australia formed a "core group" during their joint response to the 2004 tsunami. 2006: While in Tokyo, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that Japan and India wanted to begin a dialogue with other "like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific region". In the same year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed an "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity". 2007: In August, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe`s "Confluence of the Two Seas" speech sparked the ideological foundations for the Quad. Speaking in the Indian Parliament, he said, "The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity. A `broader Asia` that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form. Our two countries have the ability -- and the responsibility -- to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become seas of clearest transparence." 2007: Quad countries held their first official meeting, in Manila. The Prime Ministers of India, Japan, and Australia met with then US Vice President Dick Cheney on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In the same year, within four months of the first meeting, Quad countries, along with Singapore, held an ambitious naval exercise in the Indian Ocean. But the downplaying went in parallel. Australia framed the Quad as a construct limited to trade and culture, India said the Quad had "no security implication." 2007: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a champion of the Quad grouping, resigned in September 2007. The Quad lost its most vocal champion. 2008: Soon after the 2007 Malabar exercise, Australia pulled out of the Quad. Subsequently, Australia was dropped from the 2008 Malabar exercise. More than a decade later, in a 2019 article, former Aussie PM Kevin Rudd recounted that in a full day of meetings with President George W Bush and senior members of his cabinet in 2008, Quad wasn`t raised even once by the American side. The grouping came apart. Between Quad 1.0 and its revival 10 years on, the four countries realigned with minilaterals. Japan and India became important fixtures in two such arrangements. A steady string of "2+2" bilaterals and trilaterals among foreign and defence ministers took off. 2011: After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan received massive support from the US, Australia, and India. 2012: Shinzo Abe returned to the office and wasted no time in calling for a "democratic security diamond." 2013-2020: During this period, each of the Quad countries saw their share of China aggression. India dealt with four Chinese border aggressions in 2103, 2014, 2017 and 2020. 2017: Japan announced plans to propose a top-level dialogue with the US, India and Australia. The stated intention was to counter Chinese aggression. 2017: Late this year, Australia began re-engaging with Quad partners. Senior officials met on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Biannual meetings continued at the "senior official" level. Also happening this year, a Japan-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement. 2019: First ministerial-level meeting of Quad 2.0. 2020: All four navies participated in their first joint exercise in over a decade, in November. 2021: In March, US President Joe Biden convened a virtual Quad meeting attended by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. They formed working groups on Covid-19 vaccines, climate change, and technological innovation and supply-chain resilience. 2021: First leader level in-person summit, scheduled for September 24 at the White House. Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday is scheduled to have as many as eight meetings, including with Vice President Kamala Harris, on the first working day of his current US trip. He will have two bilateral meetings with his Australian and Japanese counterparts -- Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga. PM Modi, who arrived in the US capital on Wednesday evening, would kick off his day's engagements with a series of one-on-one meetings with five top American CEOs representing diverse areas from technology, the IT sector to finance, defence and renewable energy. These CEO's include Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Vivek Lall from General Atomics, Cristiano E Amon from Qualcomm, Mark Widmar from First Solar and Stephen A Schwarzman from Blackstone. On Friday, the Prime Minister would spend most of his time at the White House, first a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office with President Biden, followed by the first-ever in-person Quad summit. (With Agency Inputs) Live TV New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday appreciated the Centre's step to grant ex-gratia assistance to the kin of those who died due to COVID-19 saying it has to take judicial notice of the fact that what India has done, no other country has been able to do. We are happy that something has been done to wipe the tears of many families, apex court said. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Centre said, We cannot repair the loss of life but whatever the country could do for the families who have suffered, is being done." The NDMA has recommended that Rs 50,000 be given to the kin of those who died of COVID-19, the Centre had informed the top court on Wednesday. The ex-gratia assistance will be provided by states from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF). A bench of Justices M R Shah and A S Bopanna, which took on record two affidavits filed by the Centre, said it will pass orders on October 4 with some directions, authorising the grievance redressal committees at district level to call for hospital records of the deceased, in case of any dispute over issuance of death certificate. We are happy that there will be some solace to the persons who have suffered. It will wipe the tears of many families. We must take judicial notice of the fact despite so many problems of population and overpopulation, something has been done. What India has done, no other country has been able to do, the bench said. The top court was hearing a batch of pleas filed by advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal and some intervenors who lost their family members to COVID-19. At the outset, the top court raised some concern as to what will happen if hospitals do not mention the cause of death as COVID-19, despite the person losing his life due to post COVID complications. Mehta said the next of kin can approach the district level committee, to be constituted under the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) guidelines, for redressal of grievances over the issuance of death certificate. The bench said, Sometimes hospitals behave like a monarch and don't give medical records to the family members or hand over the dead bodies to them. We have to take care of those people also. Such family members of the COVID-19 victims can also approach the committee which can call for the hospital records, Mehta said. The bench said it will pass orders authorising such committees to call for hospital records of patients, if needed. Mehta said the next of the kin of the deceased can show to the committee some evidence like RT-PCR test report to show that the patient was COVID positive before his death in case the hospital does not mention the cause of death. Live TV New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday orally observed that it would be setting up a technical expert committee to inquire into the Pegasus snooping matter. The top court also said that an order will be passed next week on a batch of pleas seeking an independent probe into the issue. A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana said the order, which was to be pronounced earlier, will now be delivered next week. "We will be able to finalise the members of the technical expert team by next week and then pronounce our orders, said the bench. CJI NV Ramana says the Supreme Court is setting up a Technical Expert Committee to inquire into the alleged Pegasus snooping row pic.twitter.com/MGoxyFauZ8 ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2021 The observation assumes significance as the Centre had earlier offered to set up an expert panel on its own to look into the grievances of alleged snooping on phones. The top court on September 13 had reserved its order, saying it only wanted to know whether or not the Centre used the Pegasus spyware through illegal methods to allegedly snoop on citizens. The Centre had stoutly refused to file an affidavit citing national security on pleas seeking an independent probe into the snooping row. The pleas seeking an independent probe are related to reports of alleged snooping by government agencies on eminent citizens, politicians and scribes by using Israeli firm NSO's spyware Pegasus. An international media consortium has reported that over 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of potential targets for surveillance using Pegasus spyware. Live TV London: Amid concerns over non-recognition of vaccination certification issued by India, the United Kingdom government has said that COVID-19 vaccine certification from all countries must meet the minimum criteria for international travel. The UK government further assured that it is working with India on a phased approach to its international travel norms. The development came after the UK government said that Covishield, the Serum Institute of India manufactured Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, has qualified as an approved vaccine. It said that Covishield has been added as eligible to an expanded UK travel advisory on Wednesday. "As part of our recently expanded inbound vaccination policy, we recognise the following vaccines Pfizer BioNTech, Oxford AstraZeneca, Moderna and Janssen (J&J), for the purposes of international travel. This now includes the formulations AstraZeneca Covishield, AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Moderna Takeda," a UK government spokesperson said. But since India's vaccine certification is not on a list of 18 approved countries, Indian travellers to the UK will continue to be treated as non-vaccinated and therefore required to quarantine for 10 days on arrival. Following much confusion over this process, UK government sources had said on Wednesday night that additions or changes to the approved country listings are being kept under regular consideration, but there was no further clarity on the required criteria for approving a country's vaccine certification. "Our top priority remains to protect public health, and reopening travel in a safe and sustainable way, which is why vaccine certification from all countries must meet the minimum criteria taking into account public health and wider considerations. We continue to work with international partners, including India, to roll out our phased approach," the spokesperson said. According to the new UK travel advisory, travellers who are not fully vaccinated, or vaccinated in a country such as India currently not on the UK government's recognised list, must take a pre-departure test, pay for day two and day eight PCR tests after arrival in England and self-isolate for 10 days, with an option to test to release after five days following a negative PCR test. With reference to an outcry over India's vaccination certification not being recognised despite Covishield being one of two main COVID-19 vaccines administered in India, UK government sources said that the rollout of its inbound vaccination programme to other countries and territories was always intended as a phased approach, building on the success of pilots with the US and Europe. It may be noted that from 4 October, England's traffic light system of red, amber and green countries based on levels of COVID-19 risk will be officially scrapped. However, despite Covishield now being recognised within the UK's eligible vaccine formulations, it would not offer any advantage to Covishield-vaccinated Indian travellers planning a UK visit. The Indian government has earlier expressed its strong concerns regarding such a move and warned of reciprocal measures if vaccinated travellers from India continued to be treated in a "discriminatory" way. Significantly, at a global COVID-19 summit hosted by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated that international travel should be made easier through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates. (With Agency Inputs) Live TV Mumbai: A teenaged girl was allegedly gang-raped multiple times at different places in Maharashtra's Thane district over the last eight months, Mumbai police have taken 26 persons including two minor's into custody. After the girl registered a complaint at the Manpada police at Dombivli in Kalyan naming 29 accused, a case was lodged against them on Wednesday night under IPC sections 376 (rape), 376 (n) (repeated rape), 376 (d) (gang-rape), 376 (3) (rape on a woman under sixteen years of age) and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The Additional Commissioner of Police (East region), Dattatray Karale informed that crime was committed between January 29 and September 22. "It all started when the lover of the girl raped her in January and made a video of the incident. He started blackmailing her on the basis of that video. Later on, his friends and acquaintances gang-raped her at least on four to five occasions at different places, including Dombivili, Badlapur, Murbad and Rabale in the district," he told PTI. "Of the accused named by the girl, 24 persons have been arrested and two minors have been detained. The girl's condition is said to be stable," Karale told reporters. Meanawhile, a special investigation team (SIT) has been formed to probe the case. The police is searching for the other accused involved in the case. New Delhi: Veteran actor Resham Arora, who has played numerous supporting roles in films and television shows, including a doctor in Mithun Chakrabortys film Agneepath is in dire need of financial assistance and has had no work offers since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. There is absolutely no work for me. This has been the state ever since the lockdown began. While people say 'cheezein khul rahi hai (things are opening up now)', I still don't see sufficient work opportunities available, the veteran actor told ETimes. Resham opened up about how he and his family are also dealing with numerous health problems, which have aggravated financial, physical and emotional burden on them. I fell off a train a couple of years ago, and then was bitten in the leg by some strange insect at a shoot for Ashwini Dheer's show 'Chidiya Ghar', which hindered my movement for some time. Being in a precarious condition, tragedy further struck me when my wife's eyesight started deteriorating; she contracted acute glaucoma, shared the actor. He further added, I am seriously in need of work. CINTAA (Cine & TV Artistes Association) has helped me a bit but that's definitely not enough to keep us in good condition. I am broke. I need financial aid." Resham Arora is one of the many actors who faced acute financial woes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in available work. Shagufta Ali, Nupur Alankar, Asiesh Roy are some other actors who have faced the financial crunch in these precarious times. Mumbai: Superstar Salman Khan on Thursday said his over a decade-long association with the reality show "Bigg Boss" is his "longest relationship" and he keeps coming back to it every year, faithfully. Khan, who is currently shooting for his upcoming actioner "Tiger 3" in Austria, has been associated with the show since its season four in 2010. The superstar will be seen hosting the 15th season of the Colors show, set to premiere on October 2. In a video message shown to the media during a special event at the Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh, the 55-year-old actor said the show has a strong hold on him and it brings a certain "permanency" in his life. "My relationship with 'Bigg Boss'... This is perhaps my only relationship that has lasted this long. Some relationships, what do I say... Let it go. "(But) 'Bigg Boss' has brought certain permanency in my life. Though sometimes for those four months, we don't see eye to eye but when we are parting ways (after a season's end), we are desperate to reunite," Khan said in the message. Present at the special event were former "Bigg Boss" contestants Devoleena Bhattacharjee and Arti Singh. The latest season will see contestants staying in a jungle, fighting for basic amenities before they enter the Bigg Boss house. "The facilities that contestants will get this time will be lesser than before. They will only get a tiny survival kit but will be scolded by Bigg Boss, punished, luxury budgets will be slashed," Khan said. During the special media event, the makers revealed that some of the contestants joining for the latest season include actor Shamita Shetty and choreographer Nishant Bhatt -- who was recently seen on "Bigg Boss OTT", the live digital show that aired on Voot Select. New entrants include TV actor Donal Bisht and Umar Riaz, the brother of Bigg Boss 13 finalist Asim Riaz. Khan, who will return to India next week to shoot for the series, said a show like "Bigg Boss" offers him tremendous learnings: from managing his temper to increasing his patience. "I like the show. I get to learn a lot from the show. It tries my patience. Every time I lose my cool, I wish I hadn't lost it. Then I try harder (to be patient). But the show's format is such that something keeps happening and then I've to go and correct it. "So you get to not only learn a lot but also meet so many new people, know their personalities," he added. New Delhi: Bollywood's beloved 'bad man' Gulshan Grover revealed he was initially cast as the villain in the James Bond film 'Casino Royale' starring Daniel Craig. However, he lost the opportunity after the news was leaked before the official announcement. The villain in the film Le Chiffre, a banker, mathematical genius and brilliant chess player, was eventually essayed by Mads Mikkelsen. In an interview with a leading daily, Gulshan recounted the story of how he lost such a pivotal role. He told Rediff that the news was leaked by a reporter friend of his to whom the actor had spoken about the role in a moment of excitement. During his meeting with Prince Charles in 2005, Gulshan revealed, that the Royal Highness's cousin asked him if he was really doing the next Bond film. Later, he realised that the British tabloid Daily Mirror had leaked the news and that's how the Royals and everyone else got the news. "Unfortunately, it appeared before a formal announcement was made. That upset the producers, who replaced me with Mads Mikkelsen," Gulshan expressed in the interview. Gulshan Grover is one of Bollywood's most prominent actors and is known as the 'Bad Man' of the industry due to his impactful, intense villainous roles. Over the course of his illustrious career, he has starred in over 400 films. New Delhi: India Post Office offers some of the safest investment schemes providing returns better than fixed deposits or savings accounts. For instance, the Post Office Recurring Deposit Account offers impressive interest along with the safety and security of returns. Investors can invest a minimum of Rs 100 in the Post Office Recurring Deposit Account to start saving for their future. Moreover, investors can invest as much they want because there is no upper cap on investments. The account matures after a fixed term of five years. Investors will then have to withdraw the funds from the account. At present, investors receive a 5.8 per cent interest on their investments in Post Office Recurring Deposit Account. Investors receive interest every quarter, so with the power of compounding investors can witness their money growing in a snap. For instance, if investors invest Rs 10,000 per month in the Post Office Recurring Deposit Account, then their investment coupled with interests will grow into Rs lakh in just 10 years. However, for that, investors need to continue investing every month. In case, if an investor fails to pay the sum on time, then her or she needs to pay a penalty as well. Moreover, the account gets automatically closed if an investor fails to pay the premium for four continuous months. But the good news is that investors can renew the account within two months from the date of default. However, if they miss that window too, then the account is closed permanently. Also Read: Gold Price Today, 23 September: Gold loses sheen, trades at near six-month low Investors can also nominate their relatives or friends. At the time of the death of the investor, a nominee can claim the funds. Also Read: Market at fresh peak: Sensex skyrockets 958 pts, Nifty tops 17,800 Live TV #mute Jaipur: The BJP, in its 2-day Chintan Shivir organised in Kumbhalgarh, held deliberations on Mission 2023 and pledged to remove the perception in Rajasthan that power gets shifted after every five years. "In one of our goals under Mission 2023, we want to end the notion that power slips in alternate hands in Rajasthan after every five years. With the blessings of people, we will end this notion and shall ensure that BJP forms government each time voting is held in the state," said Satish Poonia, party`s state president. "The organization will become stronger and we will be more vocal on political issues. I see the future of BJP very bright in Rajasthan, we will be able to break the old belief and shall form the government following the plans set under mission 2023. To return to power and to stay elected thereafter, the party is working hard," he added. The two-day Chintan Shivir was held on Monday and Tuesday under the guidance of BJP`s National General Secretary (Organization) B L Santhosh. Poonia said, "We will work to give shape to the ideas of nationalism and follow `Antyodaya` on ground. We have been energised by the guidance of our organization`s general secretary BL Santhosh." Live TV Chennai: Indias Department of Space, under which the state-run Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) operates - signed a slew of Memoranda of Understanding in recent weeks with Indian private rocket startups. This move sets into motion Indias space sector reforms that were announced in 2020 by Chairman ISRO, Dr K Sivan. Simply put, the reforms would enable private industry and startups to perform space activities such as - rocket-building, satellite-building, owning and operating spacecraft and providing space and ground-based services. Given that activities in the space domain are capital intensive and technologically not-so-easy to access, ISRO would be enabling startups to use their own facilities to perform various processes and functions, besides offering mentoring support, that would help the fledgling firms get closer to their orbital launch aspirations. Zee Media spoke to the heads of Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul Cosmos, the two space startups that are to be supported by ISRO in their respective activities, based on the MoUs. According to Pawan K Chandana, CEO of Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace signed a second MoU which is a step towards working closely with ISRO, the first one being a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the state-run space agency. This MoU is focused on legal and working framework, based on which all testing activity of rocket components and subsystems will take place henceforth. This is a green light to move our hardware to ISRO facilities for testing, he said. Explaining the rationale behind testing at ISRO facilities, he says that some engines require sophisticated, one-of-its-kind testing facilities, which only ISRO can offer in India. Even though the testing and other procedures would be done on a commercial basis, the startups manage to save up on costs as ISRO facilities are provided at a nominal fee. However, testing could take a little longer. Depending on the types of tests required, some specific agreements also would have to be signed with the respective ISRO facilities that are located across the country. The specific arrangements would deal with which engine is being tested, what parameters need to be tested and the people involved in testing etc. But once this process is complete, we are looking at testing in a couple of months Pawan added. For Chennai-based Agnikul Cosmos, their MoU with ISRO involved the testing of all avionics packages and engine systems, besides working on various aspects and sub-domains of rocketry. CEO, Srinath Ravichandran expressed hope that testing would commence anytime soon and that the major work involved interface-matching (taking their hardware to ISRO facilities and getting them ready). Queried on the benefits of testing at ISRO, he said, the experience and expertise gained from testing at ISRO is very crucial. It helps us prepare for launch and we also get to explain our design and technology to ISRO and gain a better understanding. In an encouraging sign, after months of disruption and Work From Home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, both rocket companies have now resumed their in-person activities at their respective facilities. Though the rocket companies did perform design and other remote functions during their WFH phase, now they are gearing up for rocket testing, as industries have also resumed functions in a full-fledged manner and are supplying components. While Skyroot is hoping for their maiden launch by the third quarter of 2022, Agnikul is targeting their maiden launch by end of 2022. This would mean that the companies have to perform multiple tests of its rocket stages, propulsion systems, structures, subsystems etc and qualify them, before the actual orbital launch. Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has recommended a CBI probe in connection with the mysterious death of Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad president Mahant Narendra Giri. "On the instructions of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a probe by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) has been recommended in the incident pertaining to the sad death of chairman of Akhara Parishad Mahant Narendra Giri," the department said in a tweet in Hindi. Uttar Pradesh Government recommends CBI investigation into the death case of president of Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad, Mahant Narendra Giri. pic.twitter.com/EN3dOwoT1P ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 22, 2021 This was announced by the state's home department on Wednesday. The seer, who was the president of the largest organisation of sadhus in India, was found hanging by his disciples at the Baghambari Mutt in Allahabad on Monday. The Uttar Pradesh Police had on Tuesday constituted an 18-member SIT to probe the death of the seer and detained a disciple of his in Haridwar. A purported suicide note was also found, in which the seer had written that he was mentally disturbed and upset with one of his disciples, the police had said. A panel of five doctors on Wednesday conducted a post-mortem examination. After the autopsy, the body was taken to the Baghambri Gaddi Mutt. The seer was buried in a "bhoo samadhi" under a lemon tree around 3 pm. There was heavy deployment of security personnel at the site where the autopsy was conducted. Former Union Minister Swami Chinmayanand had on Tuesday demanded a CBI inquiry into the death. Live TV Delhi restaurant Aquila which allegedly denied the entry to a woman wearing saree has issued clarification and responded to the controversy. Aquila took to its Instagram account to say that it is a home grown brand that believes in honouring the Indian community and has always welcomed their guests in all dress codes from modern to traditional. "We believe in utmost transparency and are hence attaching snippets of people who have visited our restaurant in a traditional dress code previously," added the restaurant in the statement. "A guest visited the restaurant and was politely requested to wait at the gate as there was no reservation under her name. However, while we discussed internally as to where we could seat them, the guest entered the restaurant and began to abuse our staff. What unfolded after was beyond our imagination, with the guest slapping our manager," the restaurant claimed in the statement. It said further that to tackle the situation and the guest to leave, one of our staff made a statement that saree is not a part of our smart causal dress code and our whole team apologises for the same. However, Anita Choudhary, the woman who was denied entry to the restaurant, has a different story to tell. She told IANS that all allegations are baseless and the video released by the restaurant is fabricated. She said, "I never pushed any of their staff. No video footage shows that I pushed any of them." Saree is not allowed in Aquila restaurant as Indian Saree is now not an smart outfit.What is the concrete definition of Smart outfit plz tell me @AmitShah @HardeepSPuri @CPDelhi @NCWIndia Please define smart outfit so I will stop wearing saree @PMishra_Journo #lovesaree pic.twitter.com/c9nsXNJOAO anita choudhary (@anitachoudhary) September 20, 2021 On Wednesday, a woman claimed that she was denied entry to a restaurant in a South Delhi mall because she was dressed in a saree, the video of which went viral on the social media. In the video which was uploaded by Anita Chaudhry herself, a restaurant staff can be seen saying that they don`t allow women wearing saree as it is not a smart outfit. New Delhi: Raksha Bandhan, a festival that cherishes the bond between brothers and sisters, is celebrated by Hindus everywhere. Its never too late to celebrate this bond and ring in the festival as did members of Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) in the United States. Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA celebrated the festival of love and togetherness with the Irving Police Department in Texas. Taking to Twitter, the official handle of Irving PD posted pictures of the celebration with HSS members. Have a look at the tweet: Thank you Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA it was an honor to celebrate Raksha Bandhan with you. pic.twitter.com/YrBGb6s5UA Irving Police Dept. (@IrvingPD) September 21, 2021 Raksha Bandhan, also known as Rakhi, was celebrated this year on August 22 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In this festival, sisters tie rakhi on their brothers hand and exchange gifts. Live TV New Delhi: As the world leaders gather for the 76th UN General Assembly at New York, the General Debate which began from September 21. It has been noted that there is very unique tradition at the UNGA of Brazil Head of State as the first speaker and has been now for over six decades. The tradition dates back to the early formation years of the United Nations all the way to 1947, Brazils top diplomat Oswaldo Aranha had presided over the Assemblys First Special Session. It was noted then that most countries were reluctant to speak first but, Brazil was the only country that volunteered to address the chamber first. #tbt to 1947, when a tradition begins! Brazilian diplomat Oswaldo Aranha presided the 1st #UNGA Special Session & its 2nd Regular Session. Since then (with rare exceptions) Brazil has been the 1st Member State to address the annual General Debate of the @UN General Assembly! pic.twitter.com/R4Tbhjdqbq Brazil Mission UN (@Brazil_UN_NY) September 20, 2018 Since 1955, it has come to be that Brazil speaks first, followed by the United States, with only a few exceptions. Keeping the tradition, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro addressed the general debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). As per tradition, Brazil opens the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech, this morning, President @JairBolsonaro highlighted the Brazilian governments steadfast commitment to bettering not only our country, but the world as a whole. #UNGA76 #BolsonaroUN21 @Brazil_UN_NY pic.twitter.com/LTgy9QmLYF Government of Brazil (@govbrazil) September 21, 2021 This year's week-long segment will see many top speakers including US President Joe Biden - who will be addressing the 193-member General Assembly for the first time. China's Premier XI Jinping too will address the UNGA. While, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the forum on September 25. Vilnius (Lithuania): Lithuanian cybersecurity experts are urging the country's government agencies to abandon the use of Chinese smartphone brands after an investigation identified security vulnerabilities and censorship concerns with certain devices. Lithuania's National Cyber Security Center said it found four major cybersecurity risks for devices made by Huawei and Xiaomi, including two relating to pre-installed apps and one involving personal data leakage, and warned against using these two brands. Xiaomi phones, which contain a content-filtering feature for 449 keywords or groups of keywords in Chinese characters, also carry the risk of possible restrictions on freedom of expression, according to the Lithuanian investigation. The cybersecurity center warned the function could be activated at any time and said it did not rule out the possibility that words written in Latin characters could be added. According to the Lithuanian report, apps receive updated lists of censored words and phrases and are capable of blocking them. The phrases include "Free Tibet", "Voice of America", "Democratic Movement" and "Long Live Taiwan Independence." Although the content-filtering feature was disabled and no censorship was performed on the phones the Lithuanian center inspected, the center warned the function could be activated at any time. A Huawei spokesperson in Lithuania denied the allegations. Xiaomi denied its phones could be used to censor or posed privacy risks, saying they complied with the European Union's stringent privacy regulations. "Xiaomi's devices do not censor communications to or from its users," the company said in a statement. "Xiaomi has never and will never restrict or block any personal behaviors of our smartphone users, such as searching, calling, web browsing or the use of third-party communication software. Xiaomi fully respects and protects the legal rights of all users." The cybersecurity center, which is a Defence Ministry agency, also investigated phones made by another Chinese company, OnePlus, but found no problems. "We strongly recommend that state and public institutions not use those devices and plan to initiate legislation which regulates acquiring certain devices for the ministries and various state agencies," Deputy Defence Minister Margiris Abukevicius has said. Also read: Now Xiaomi phones will track earthquakes, send alerts in emergency More than 200 public authorities have purchased such phones, and over 4,500 phones are in use, "which, in our opinion, increases the risks," Abukevicius said. He didn't specify the makes of all the phones. The center's investigation, released Tuesday, was done "to ensure the safe use of 5G mobile devices sold in our country and the software they contain," he said. Also, ordinary "people should also know what's inside these phones, about the certain software and consider safety before making their decisions," the minister said. Beijing-based Xiaomi, known for its value-for-money devices, became the world's No. 2 smartphone maker by sales this year, trailing only Samsung. The company was put on a U.S. Defense Department blacklist in the last few days of the Trump administration, which accused it of links to China's military. It was later removed after suing the US Government and denies having any links with China's People's Liberation Army. The move comes amid tensions between Lithuania and China. Earlier this month, Lithuania recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic country's decision in July to allow Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name. In August, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to "immediately rectify its wrong decision." China says Taiwan is part of its territory and doesn't have the right to diplomatic recognition, although the island maintains informal ties with all major nations through trade offices, including in the United States and Japan. Chinese pressure has reduced Taiwan's formal diplomatic allies to just 15. Taiwan and Lithuania agreed in July that the office in the capital, Vilnius, set to open this fall, will bear the name Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipei ? a term often used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing. On Wednesday, Lithuania said it was sending another 236,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan. Live TV Washington: The United States has earmarked an additional USD 180 million to aid more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced nearly USD 180 million in additional humanitarian assistance for those affected by the Rakhine State/Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma, Bangladesh, and elsewhere in the region. "With this new funding, our total humanitarian assistance for this response reaches more than USD 1.5 billion since August 2017, when more than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee ethnic cleansing and other horrific atrocities and abuses in Burma`s [Myanmar`s] Rakhine State to safety in Cox`s Bazar, Bangladesh," Price said in a press release on Wednesday (September 22, 2021). The state department lauded humanitarian actors for a strong and well-coordinated humanitarian response, which includes preventing and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup on February 1, when the Myanmar military led by Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing overthrew the civilian government and declared a year-long state of emergency. The coup triggered mass protests and was met by deadly violence. US state department said that the military junta must immediately stop the violence, release all those unjustly detained, restore Burma`s path to democracy, and implement ASEAN`s Five Point Consensus. "We also call on the regime to allow immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to people in need --including for the delivery of critical COVID-19 assistance," the spokesperson said. Live TV WASHINGTON: The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots. The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of the second dose, and the authorization would include people most susceptible to severe disease and those in jobs that left them at risk, the FDA said. A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel could vote on Thursday on the use of a third shot of the vaccine, an agency official said at a public meeting of the panel on Wednesday. President Joe Biden announced in August the government's intention to roll out booster shots for people aged 16 and older this week, pending approval by the FDA and CDC. Advisers to the FDA voted on Friday to recommend COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for Americans 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness, after overwhelmingly rejecting a call for broader approval. The advisory panel said there was not enough evidence to support booster shots for all those aged 16 and older who had received a second dose at least six months earlier and also sought more safety data. The agency could revisit the issue of additional shots for a broader authorization in the future. Top FDA members have been split on the need for boosters for the general population, with interim head Janet Woodcock backing them and some of the agency's senior scientists arguing current evidence does not support them. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) said on Tuesday the second shot of its COVID-19 vaccine increased its effectiveness in the United States against moderate to severe forms of the disease. Data from Moderna Inc's (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine on booster doses is just weeks away, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday. Some countries, including Israel and Britain, have already rolled out COVID-19 booster campaigns. The United States authorized extra shots for people with compromised immune systems last month and over 2 million people had already received a third shot, CDC data showed. Live TV